Chapter 67

Chapter 17

THE VOICE OF SOCIETY

Behoves Mortimer Lightwood, therefore, to answer a dinner card
from Mr and Mrs Veneering requesting the honour, and to signify
that Mr Mortimer Lightwood will be happy to have the other
honour. The Veneerings have been, as usual, indefatigably dealing
dinner cards to Society, and whoever desires to take a hand had
best be quick about it, for it is written in the Books of the Insolvent
Fates that Veneering shall make a resounding smash next week.
Yes. Having found out the clue to that great mystery how people
can contrive to live beyond their means, and having over-jobbed
his jobberies as legislator deputed to the Universe by the pure
electors of Pocket-Breaches, it shall come to pass next week that
Veneering will accept the Chiltern Hundreds, that the legal
gentleman in Britannia's confidence will again accept the Pocket-
Breaches Thousands, and that the Veneerings will retire to Calais,
there to live on Mrs Veneering's diamonds (in which Mr
Veneering, as a good husband, has from time to time invested
considerable sums), and to relate to Neptune and others, how that,
before Veneering retired from Parliament, the House of Commons
was composed of himself and the six hundred and fifty-seven
dearest and oldest friends he had in the world. It shall likewise
come to pass, at as nearly as possible the same period, that Society
will discover that it always did despise Veneering, and distrust
Veneering, and that when it went to Veneering's to dinner it
always had misgivings--though very secretly at the time, it would
seem, and in a perfectly private and confidential manner.

The next week's books of the Insolvent Fates, however, being not
yet opened, there is the usual rush to the Veneerings, of the people
who go to their house to dine with one another and not with them.
There is Lady Tippins. There are Podsnap the Great, and Mrs
Podsnap. There is Twemlow. There are Buffer, Boots, and
Brewer. There is the Contractor, who is Providence to five
hundred thousand men. There is the Chairman, travelling three
thousand miles per week. There is the brilliant genius who turned
the shares into that remarkably exact sum of three hundred and
seventy five thousand pounds, no shillings, and nopence.

To whom, add Mortimer Lightwood, coming in among them with
a reassumption of his old languid air, founded on Eugene, and
belonging to the days when he told the story of the man from
Somewhere.

That fresh fairy, Tippins, all but screams at sight of her false
swain. She summons the deserter to her with her fan; but the
deserter, predetermined not to come, talks Britain with Podsnap.
Podsnap always talks Britain, and talks as if he were a sort of
Private