Our Mutual Friend - Part 2

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Our Mutual Friend - Part 2

    Part 1    Part 2    Part 3

This fellow,
Fledgeby, presumes to be impertinent to me, Lammle. Give me your nose
sir!’

‘No! Stop! I beg your pardon,’ said Fledgeby, with humility.

‘What do you say, sir?’ demanded Mr Lammle, seeming too furious to
understand.

‘I beg your pardon,’ repeated Fledgeby.

‘Repeat your words louder, sir. The just indignation of a gentleman has
sent the blood boiling to my head. I don’t hear you.’

‘I say,’ repeated Fledgeby, with laborious explanatory politeness, ‘I
beg your pardon.’

Mr Lammle paused. ‘As a man of honour,’ said he, throwing himself into a
chair, ‘I am disarmed.’

Mr Fledgeby also took a chair, though less demonstratively, and by
slow approaches removed his hand from his nose. Some natural diffidence
assailed him as to blowing it, so shortly after its having assumed a
personal and delicate, not to say public, character; but he overcame
his scruples by degrees, and modestly took that liberty under an implied
protest.

‘Lammle,’ he said sneakingly, when that was done, ‘I hope we are friends
again?’

‘Mr Fledgeby,’ returned Lammle, ‘say no more.’

‘I must have gone too far in making myself disagreeable,’ said Fledgeby,
‘but I never intended it.’

‘Say no more, say no more!’ Mr Lammle repeated in a magnificent tone.
‘Give me your’--Fledgeby started--‘hand.’

They shook hands, and on Mr Lammle’s part, in particular, there ensued
great geniality. For, he was quite as much of a dastard as the other,
and had been in equal danger of falling into the second place for good,
when he took heart just in time, to act upon the information conveyed to
him by Fledgeby’s eye.

The breakfast ended in a perfect understanding. Incessant machinations
were to be kept at work by Mr and Mrs Lammle; love was to be made for
Fledgeby, and conquest was to be insured to him; he on his part
very humbly admitting his defects as to the softer social arts, and
entreating to be backed to the utmost by his two able coadjutors.

Little recked Mr Podsnap of the traps and toils besetting his Young
Person. He regarded her as safe within the Temple of Podsnappery, hiding
the fulness of time when she, Georgiana, should take him, Fitz-Podsnap,
who with all his worldly goods should her endow. It would call a blush
into the cheek of his standard Young Person to have anything to do with
such matters save to take as directed, and with worldly goods as per
settlement to be endowed. Who giveth this woman to be married to this
man? I, Podsnap. Perish the daring thought that any smaller creation
should come between!

It was a public holiday, and Fledgeby did not recover his spirits or his
usual temperature of nose until the afternoon. Walking into the City in
the holiday afternoon, he walked against a living stream setting out of
it; and thus, when he turned into the precincts of St Mary Axe, he found
a prevalent repose and quiet there. A yellow overhanging plaster-fronted
house at which he stopped was quiet too. The blinds were all drawn down,
and the inscription Pubsey and Co. seemed to doze in the counting-house
window on the ground-floor giving on the sleepy street.

Fledgeby knocked and rang, and Fledgeby rang and knocked, but no
one came. Fledgeby crossed the narrow street and looked up at the
house-windows, but nobody looked down at Fledgeby. He got out of temper,
crossed the narrow street again, and pulled the housebell as if it were
the house’s nose, and he were taking a hint from his late experience.
His ear at the keyhole seemed then, at last, to give him assurance that
something stirred within. His eye at the keyhole seemed to confirm his
ear, for he angrily pulled the house’s nose again, and pulled and pulled
and continued to pull, until a human nose appeared in the dark doorway.

‘Now you sir!’ cried Fledgeby. ‘These are nice games!’

He addressed an old Jewish man in an ancient coat, long of skirt, and
wide of pocket. A venerable man, bald and shining at the top of his
head, and with long grey hair flowing down at its sides and mingling
with his beard. A man who with a graceful Eastern action of homage bent
his head, and stretched out his hands with the palms downward, as if to
deprecate the wrath of a superior.

‘What have you been up to?’ said Fledgeby, storming at him.

‘Generous Christian master,’ urged the Jewish man, ‘it being holiday, I
looked for no one.’

‘Holiday he blowed!’ said Fledgeby, entering. ‘What have YOU got to do
with holidays? Shut the door.’

With his former action the old man obeyed. In the entry hung his rusty
large-brimmed low-crowned hat, as long out of date as his coat; in the
corner near it stood his staff--no walking-stick but a veritable staff.
Fledgeby turned into the counting-house, perched himself on a business
stool, and cocked his hat. There were light boxes on shelves in the
counting-house, and strings of mock beads hanging up. There were samples
of cheap clocks, and samples of cheap vases of flowers. Foreign toys,
all.

Perched on the stool with his hat cocked on his head and one of his legs
dangling, the youth of Fledgeby hardly contrasted to advantage with the
age of the Jewish man as he stood with his bare head bowed, and his eyes
(which he only raised in speaking) on the ground. His clothing was worn
down to the rusty hue of the hat in the entry, but though he looked
shabby he did not look mean. Now, Fledgeby, though not shabby, did look
mean.

‘You have not told me what you were up to, you sir,’ said Fledgeby,
scratching his head with the brim of his hat.

‘Sir, I was breathing the air.’

‘In the cellar, that you didn’t hear?’

‘On the house-top.’

‘Upon my soul! That’s a way of doing business.’

‘Sir,’ the old man represented with a grave and patient air, ‘there must
be two parties to the transaction of business, and the holiday has left
me alone.’

‘Ah! Can’t be buyer and seller too. That’s what the Jews say; ain’t it?’

‘At least we say truly, if we say so,’ answered the old man with a
smile.

‘Your people need speak the truth sometimes, for they lie enough,’
remarked Fascination Fledgeby.

‘Sir, there is,’ returned the old man with quiet emphasis, ‘too much
untruth among all denominations of men.’

Rather dashed, Fascination Fledgeby took another scratch at his
intellectual head with his hat, to gain time for rallying.

‘For instance,’ he resumed, as though it were he who had spoken last,
‘who but you and I ever heard of a poor Jew?’

‘The Jews,’ said the old man, raising his eyes from the ground with his
former smile. ‘They hear of poor Jews often, and are very good to them.’

‘Bother that!’ returned Fledgeby. ‘You know what I mean. You’d persuade
me if you could, that you are a poor Jew. I wish you’d confess how much
you really did make out of my late governor. I should have a better
opinion of you.’

The old man only bent his head, and stretched out his hands as before.

‘Don’t go on posturing like a Deaf and Dumb School,’ said the ingenious
Fledgeby, ‘but express yourself like a Christian--or as nearly as you
can.’

‘I had had sickness and misfortunes, and was so poor,’ said the old
man, ‘as hopelessly to owe the father, principal and interest. The son
inheriting, was so merciful as to forgive me both, and place me here.’

He made a little gesture as though he kissed the hem of an imaginary
garment worn by the noble youth before him. It was humbly done, but
picturesquely, and was not abasing to the doer.

‘You won’t say more, I see,’ said Fledgeby, looking at him as if he
would like to try the effect of extracting a double-tooth or two, ‘and
so it’s of no use my putting it to you. But confess this, Riah; who
believes you to be poor now?’

‘No one,’ said the old man.

‘There you’re right,’ assented Fledgeby.

‘No one,’ repeated the old man with a grave slow wave of his head. ‘All
scout it as a fable. Were I to say “This little fancy business is not
mine”;’ with a lithe sweep of his easily-turning hand around him,
to comprehend the various objects on the shelves; ‘“it is the little
business of a Christian young gentleman who places me, his servant, in
trust and charge here, and to whom I am accountable for every single
bead,” they would laugh. When, in the larger money-business, I tell the
borrowers--’

‘I say, old chap!’ interposed Fledgeby, ‘I hope you mind what you DO
tell ‘em?’

‘Sir, I tell them no more than I am about to repeat. When I tell them,
“I cannot promise this, I cannot answer for the other, I must see my
principal, I have not the money, I am a poor man and it does not rest
with me,” they are so unbelieving and so impatient, that they sometimes
curse me in Jehovah’s name.’

‘That’s deuced good, that is!’ said Fascination Fledgeby.

‘And at other times they say, “Can it never be done without these
tricks, Mr Riah? Come, come, Mr Riah, we know the arts of your
people”--my people!--“If the money is to be lent, fetch it, fetch it; if
it is not to be lent, keep it and say so.” They never believe me.’

‘THAT’S all right,’ said Fascination Fledgeby.

‘They say, “We know, Mr Riah, we know. We have but to look at you, and
we know.”’

‘Oh, a good ‘un are you for the post,’ thought Fledgeby, ‘and a good ‘un
was I to mark you out for it! I may be slow, but I am precious sure.’

Not a syllable of this reflection shaped itself in any scrap of Mr
Fledgeby’s breath, lest it should tend to put his servant’s price up.
But looking at the old man as he stood quiet with his head bowed and his
eyes cast down, he felt that to relinquish an inch of his baldness,
an inch of his grey hair, an inch of his coat-skirt, an inch of his
hat-brim, an inch of his walking-staff, would be to relinquish hundreds
of pounds.

‘Look here, Riah,’ said Fledgeby, mollified by these self-approving
considerations. ‘I want to go a little more into buying-up queer bills.
Look out in that direction.’

‘Sir, it shall be done.’

‘Casting my eye over the accounts, I find that branch of business pays
pretty fairly, and I am game for extending it. I like to know people’s
affairs likewise. So look out.’

‘Sir, I will, promptly.’

‘Put it about in the right quarters, that you’ll buy queer bills by the
lump--by the pound weight if that’s all--supposing you see your way to a
fair chance on looking over the parcel. And there’s one thing more. Come
to me with the books for periodical inspection as usual, at eight on
Monday morning.’

Riah drew some folding tablets from his breast and noted it down.

‘That’s all I wanted to say at the present time,’ continued Fledgeby in
a grudging vein, as he got off the stool, ‘except that I wish you’d take
the air where you can hear the bell, or the knocker, either one of the
two or both. By-the-by how DO you take the air at the top of the house?
Do you stick your head out of a chimney-pot?’

‘Sir, there are leads there, and I have made a little garden there.’

‘To bury your money in, you old dodger?’

‘A thumbnail’s space of garden would hold the treasure I bury, master,’
said Riah. ‘Twelve shillings a week, even when they are an old man’s
wages, bury themselves.’

‘I should like to know what you really are worth,’ returned Fledgeby,
with whom his growing rich on that stipend and gratitude was a very
convenient fiction. ‘But come! Let’s have a look at your garden on the
tiles, before I go!’

The old man took a step back, and hesitated.

‘Truly, sir, I have company there.’

‘Have you, by George!’ said Fledgeby; ‘I suppose you happen to know
whose premises these are?’

‘Sir, they are yours, and I am your servant in them.’

‘Oh! I thought you might have overlooked that,’ retorted Fledgeby, with
his eyes on Riah’s beard as he felt for his own; ‘having company on my
premises, you know!’

‘Come up and see the guests, sir. I hope for your admission that they
can do no harm.’

Passing him with a courteous reverence, specially unlike any action that
Mr Fledgeby could for his life have imparted to his own head and hands,
the old man began to ascend the stairs. As he toiled on before, with his
palm upon the stair-rail, and his long black skirt, a very gaberdine,
overhanging each successive step, he might have been the leader in some
pilgrimage of devotional ascent to a prophet’s tomb. Not troubled by any
such weak imagining, Fascination Fledgeby merely speculated on the time
of life at which his beard had begun, and thought once more what a good
‘un he was for the part.

Some final wooden steps conducted them, stooping under a low penthouse
roof, to the house-top. Riah stood still, and, turning to his master,
pointed out his guests.

Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren. For whom, perhaps with some old instinct of
his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against
no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack over which some
bumble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book; both
with attentive faces; Jenny with the sharper; Lizzie with the more
perplexed. Another little book or two were lying near, and a common
basket of common fruit, and another basket full of strings of beads and
tinsel scraps. A few boxes of humble flowers and evergreens completed
the garden; and the encompassing wilderness of dowager old chimneys
twirled their cowls and fluttered their smoke, rather as if they were
bridling, and fanning themselves, and looking on in a state of airy
surprise.

Taking her eyes off the book, to test her memory of something in it,
Lizzie was the first to see herself observed. As she rose, Miss Wren
likewise became conscious, and said, irreverently addressing the great
chief of the premises: ‘Whoever you are, I can’t get up, because my
back’s bad and my legs are queer.’

‘This is my master,’ said Riah, stepping forward.

[‘Don’t look like anybody’s master,’ observed Miss Wren to herself, with
a hitch of her chin and eyes.)

‘This, sir,’ pursued the old man, ‘is a little dressmaker for little
people. Explain to the master, Jenny.’

‘Dolls; that’s all,’ said Jenny, shortly. ‘Very difficult to fit too,
because their figures are so uncertain. You never know where to expect
their waists.’

‘Her friend,’ resumed the old man, motioning towards Lizzie; ‘and as
industrious as virtuous. But that they both are. They are busy early and
late, sir, early and late; and in bye-times, as on this holiday, they go
to book-learning.’

‘Not much good to be got out of that,’ remarked Fledgeby.

‘Depends upon the person!’ quoth Miss Wren, snapping him up.

‘I made acquaintance with my guests, sir,’ pursued the Jew, with an
evident purpose of drawing out the dressmaker, ‘through their coming
here to buy of our damage and waste for Miss Jenny’s millinery. Our
waste goes into the best of company, sir, on her rosy-cheeked little
customers. They wear it in their hair, and on their ball-dresses, and
even (so she tells me) are presented at Court with it.’

‘Ah!’ said Fledgeby, on whose intelligence this doll-fancy made rather
strong demands; ‘she’s been buying that basketful to-day, I suppose?’

‘I suppose she has,’ Miss Jenny interposed; ‘and paying for it too, most
likely!’

‘Let’s have a look at it,’ said the suspicious chief. Riah handed it to
him. ‘How much for this now?’

‘Two precious silver shillings,’ said Miss Wren.

Riah confirmed her with two nods, as Fledgeby looked to him. A nod for
each shilling.

‘Well,’ said Fledgeby, poking into the contents of the basket with his
forefinger, ‘the price is not so bad. You have got good measure, Miss
What-is-it.’

‘Try Jenny,’ suggested that young lady with great calmness.

‘You have got good measure, Miss Jenny; but the price is not so
bad.--And you,’ said Fledgeby, turning to the other visitor, ‘do you buy
anything here, miss?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nor sell anything neither, miss?’

‘No, sir.’

Looking askew at the questioner, Jenny stole her hand up to her
friend’s, and drew her friend down, so that she bent beside her on her
knee.

‘We are thankful to come here for rest, sir,’ said Jenny. ‘You see, you
don’t know what the rest of this place is to us; does he, Lizzie? It’s
the quiet, and the air.’

‘The quiet!’ repeated Fledgeby, with a contemptuous turn of his head
towards the City’s roar. ‘And the air!’ with a ‘Poof!’ at the smoke.

‘Ah!’ said Jenny. ‘But it’s so high. And you see the clouds rushing
on above the narrow streets, not minding them, and you see the golden
arrows pointing at the mountains in the sky from which the wind comes,
and you feel as if you were dead.’

The little creature looked above her, holding up her slight transparent
hand.

‘How do you feel when you are dead?’ asked Fledgeby, much perplexed.

‘Oh, so tranquil!’ cried the little creature, smiling. ‘Oh, so peaceful
and so thankful! And you hear the people who are alive, crying, and
working, and calling to one another down in the close dark streets, and
you seem to pity them so! And such a chain has fallen from you, and such
a strange good sorrowful happiness comes upon you!’

Her eyes fell on the old man, who, with his hands folded, quietly looked
on.

‘Why it was only just now,’ said the little creature, pointing at him,
‘that I fancied I saw him come out of his grave! He toiled out at
that low door so bent and worn, and then he took his breath and stood
upright, and looked all round him at the sky, and the wind blew upon
him, and his life down in the dark was over!--Till he was called back
to life,’ she added, looking round at Fledgeby with that lower look of
sharpness. ‘Why did you call him back?’

‘He was long enough coming, anyhow,’ grumbled Fledgeby.

‘But you are not dead, you know,’ said Jenny Wren. ‘Get down to life!’

Mr Fledgeby seemed to think it rather a good suggestion, and with a nod
turned round. As Riah followed to attend him down the stairs, the little
creature called out to the Jew in a silvery tone, ‘Don’t be long gone.
Come back, and be dead!’ And still as they went down they heard the
little sweet voice, more and more faintly, half calling and half
singing, ‘Come back and be dead, Come back and be dead!’

When they got down into the entry, Fledgeby, pausing under the shadow of
the broad old hat, and mechanically poising the staff, said to the old
man:

‘That’s a handsome girl, that one in her senses.’

‘And as good as handsome,’ answered Riah.

‘At all events,’ observed Fledgeby, with a dry whistle, ‘I hope she
ain’t bad enough to put any chap up to the fastenings, and get the
premises broken open. You look out. Keep your weather eye awake and
don’t make any more acquaintances, however handsome. Of course you
always keep my name to yourself?’

‘Sir, assuredly I do.’

‘If they ask it, say it’s Pubsey, or say it’s Co, or say it’s anything
you like, but what it is.’

His grateful servant--in whose race gratitude is deep, strong, and
enduring--bowed his head, and actually did now put the hem of his coat
to his lips: though so lightly that the wearer knew nothing of it.

Thus, Fascination Fledgeby went his way, exulting in the artful
cleverness with which he had turned his thumb down on a Jew, and the old
man went his different way up-stairs. As he mounted, the call or song
began to sound in his ears again, and, looking above, he saw the face
of the little creature looking down out of a Glory of her long bright
radiant hair, and musically repeating to him, like a vision:

‘Come up and be dead! Come up and be dead!’



Chapter 6

A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER


Again Mr Mortimer Lightwood and Mr Eugene Wrayburn sat together in the
Temple. This evening, however, they were not together in the place of
business of the eminent solicitor, but in another dismal set of
chambers facing it on the same second-floor; on whose dungeon-like black
outer-door appeared the legend:

PRIVATE

MR EUGENE WRAYBURN

MR MORTIMER LIGHTWOOD

(Mr Lightwood’s Offices opposite.)

Appearances indicated that this establishment was a very recent
institution. The white letters of the inscription were extremely white
and extremely strong to the sense of smell, the complexion of the
tables and chairs was (like Lady Tippins’s) a little too blooming to
be believed in, and the carpets and floorcloth seemed to rush at the
beholder’s face in the unusual prominency of their patterns. But the
Temple, accustomed to tone down both the still life and the human life
that has much to do with it, would soon get the better of all that.

‘Well!’ said Eugene, on one side of the fire, ‘I feel tolerably
comfortable. I hope the upholsterer may do the same.’

‘Why shouldn’t he?’ asked Lightwood, from the other side of the fire.

‘To be sure,’ pursued Eugene, reflecting, ‘he is not in the secret of
our pecuniary affairs, so perhaps he may be in an easy frame of mind.’

‘We shall pay him,’ said Mortimer.

‘Shall we, really?’ returned Eugene, indolently surprised. ‘You don’t
say so!’

‘I mean to pay him, Eugene, for my part,’ said Mortimer, in a slightly
injured tone.

‘Ah! I mean to pay him too,’ retorted Eugene. ‘But then I mean so much
that I--that I don’t mean.’

‘Don’t mean?’

‘So much that I only mean and shall always only mean and nothing more,
my dear Mortimer. It’s the same thing.’

His friend, lying back in his easy chair, watched him lying back in his
easy chair, as he stretched out his legs on the hearth-rug, and said,
with the amused look that Eugene Wrayburn could always awaken in him
without seeming to try or care:

‘Anyhow, your vagaries have increased the bill.’

‘Calls the domestic virtues vagaries!’ exclaimed Eugene, raising his
eyes to the ceiling.

‘This very complete little kitchen of ours,’ said Mortimer, ‘in which
nothing will ever be cooked--’

‘My dear, dear Mortimer,’ returned his friend, lazily lifting his head
a little to look at him, ‘how often have I pointed out to you that its
moral influence is the important thing?’

‘Its moral influence on this fellow!’ exclaimed Lightwood, laughing.

‘Do me the favour,’ said Eugene, getting out of his chair with much
gravity, ‘to come and inspect that feature of our establishment which
you rashly disparage.’ With that, taking up a candle, he conducted
his chum into the fourth room of the set of chambers--a little narrow
room--which was very completely and neatly fitted as a kitchen. ‘See!’
said Eugene, ‘miniature flour-barrel, rolling-pin, spice-box, shelf of
brown jars, chopping-board, coffee-mill, dresser elegantly furnished
with crockery, saucepans and pans, roasting jack, a charming kettle, an
armoury of dish-covers. The moral influence of these objects, in forming
the domestic virtues, may have an immense influence upon me; not upon
you, for you are a hopeless case, but upon me. In fact, I have an idea
that I feel the domestic virtues already forming. Do me the favour to
step into my bedroom. Secretaire, you see, and abstruse set of solid
mahogany pigeon-holes, one for every letter of the alphabet. To what use
do I devote them? I receive a bill--say from Jones. I docket it neatly
at the secretaire, JONES, and I put it into pigeonhole J. It’s the next
thing to a receipt and is quite as satisfactory to ME. And I very much
wish, Mortimer,’ sitting on his bed, with the air of a philosopher
lecturing a disciple, ‘that my example might induce YOU to cultivate
habits of punctuality and method; and, by means of the moral influences
with which I have surrounded you, to encourage the formation of the
domestic virtues.’

Mortimer laughed again, with his usual commentaries of ‘How CAN you be
so ridiculous, Eugene!’ and ‘What an absurd fellow you are!’ but when
his laugh was out, there was something serious, if not anxious, in his
face. Despite that pernicious assumption of lassitude and indifference,
which had become his second nature, he was strongly attached to his
friend. He had founded himself upon Eugene when they were yet boys at
school; and at this hour imitated him no less, admired him no less,
loved him no less, than in those departed days.

‘Eugene,’ said he, ‘if I could find you in earnest for a minute, I would
try to say an earnest word to you.’

‘An earnest word?’ repeated Eugene. ‘The moral influences are beginning
to work. Say on.’

‘Well, I will,’ returned the other, ‘though you are not earnest yet.’

‘In this desire for earnestness,’ murmured Eugene, with the air of one
who was meditating deeply, ‘I trace the happy influences of the little
flour-barrel and the coffee-mill. Gratifying.’

‘Eugene,’ resumed Mortimer, disregarding the light interruption, and
laying a hand upon Eugene’s shoulder, as he, Mortimer, stood before him
seated on his bed, ‘you are withholding something from me.’

Eugene looked at him, but said nothing.

‘All this past summer, you have been withholding something from me.
Before we entered on our boating vacation, you were as bent upon it as I
have seen you upon anything since we first rowed together. But you cared
very little for it when it came, often found it a tie and a drag upon
you, and were constantly away. Now it was well enough half-a-dozen
times, a dozen times, twenty times, to say to me in your own odd manner,
which I know so well and like so much, that your disappearances were
precautions against our boring one another; but of course after a short
while I began to know that they covered something. I don’t ask what it
is, as you have not told me; but the fact is so. Say, is it not?’

‘I give you my word of honour, Mortimer,’ returned Eugene, after a
serious pause of a few moments, ‘that I don’t know.’

‘Don’t know, Eugene?’

‘Upon my soul, don’t know. I know less about myself than about most
people in the world, and I don’t know.’

‘You have some design in your mind?’

‘Have I? I don’t think I have.’

‘At any rate, you have some subject of interest there which used not to
be there?’

‘I really can’t say,’ replied Eugene, shaking his head blankly, after
pausing again to reconsider. ‘At times I have thought yes; at other
times I have thought no. Now, I have been inclined to pursue such a
subject; now I have felt that it was absurd, and that it tired and
embarrassed me. Absolutely, I can’t say. Frankly and faithfully, I would
if I could.’

So replying, he clapped a hand, in his turn, on his friend’s shoulder,
as he rose from his seat upon the bed, and said:

‘You must take your friend as he is. You know what I am, my dear
Mortimer. You know how dreadfully susceptible I am to boredom. You know
that when I became enough of a man to find myself an embodied conundrum,
I bored myself to the last degree by trying to find out what I meant.
You know that at length I gave it up, and declined to guess any more.
Then how can I possibly give you the answer that I have not discovered?
The old nursery form runs, “Riddle-me-riddle-me-ree, p’raps you can’t
tell me what this may be?” My reply runs, “No. Upon my life, I can’t.”’

So much of what was fantastically true to his own knowledge of this
utterly careless Eugene, mingled with the answer, that Mortimer could
not receive it as a mere evasion. Besides, it was given with an engaging
air of openness, and of special exemption of the one friend he valued,
from his reckless indifference.

‘Come, dear boy!’ said Eugene. ‘Let us try the effect of smoking. If it
enlightens me at all on this question, I will impart unreservedly.’

They returned to the room they had come from, and, finding it heated,
opened a window. Having lighted their cigars, they leaned out of this
window, smoking, and looking down at the moonlight, as it shone into the
court below.

‘No enlightenment,’ resumed Eugene, after certain minutes of silence. ‘I
feel sincerely apologetic, my dear Mortimer, but nothing comes.’

‘If nothing comes,’ returned Mortimer, ‘nothing can come from it. So
I shall hope that this may hold good throughout, and that there may be
nothing on foot. Nothing injurious to you, Eugene, or--’

Eugene stayed him for a moment with his hand on his arm, while he took a
piece of earth from an old flowerpot on the window-sill and dexterously
shot it at a little point of light opposite; having done which to his
satisfaction, he said, ‘Or?’

‘Or injurious to any one else.’

‘How,’ said Eugene, taking another little piece of earth, and shooting
it with great precision at the former mark, ‘how injurious to any one
else?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And,’ said Eugene, taking, as he said the word, another shot, ‘to whom
else?’

‘I don’t know.’

Checking himself with another piece of earth in his hand, Eugene looked
at his friend inquiringly and a little suspiciously. There was no
concealed or half-expressed meaning in his face.

‘Two belated wanderers in the mazes of the law,’ said Eugene, attracted
by the sound of footsteps, and glancing down as he spoke, ‘stray into
the court. They examine the door-posts of number one, seeking the name
they want. Not finding it at number one, they come to number two. On the
hat of wanderer number two, the shorter one, I drop this pellet. Hitting
him on the hat, I smoke serenely, and become absorbed in contemplation
of the sky.’

Both the wanderers looked up towards the window; but, after
interchanging a mutter or two, soon applied themselves to the door-posts
below. There they seemed to discover what they wanted, for they
disappeared from view by entering at the doorway. ‘When they emerge,’
said Eugene, ‘you shall see me bring them both down’; and so prepared
two pellets for the purpose.

He had not reckoned on their seeking his name, or Lightwood’s. But
either the one or the other would seem to be in question, for now there
came a knock at the door. ‘I am on duty to-night,’ said Mortimer, ‘stay
you where you are, Eugene.’ Requiring no persuasion, he stayed there,
smoking quietly, and not at all curious to know who knocked, until
Mortimer spoke to him from within the room, and touched him. Then,
drawing in his head, he found the visitors to be young Charley Hexam
and the schoolmaster; both standing facing him, and both recognized at a
glance.

‘You recollect this young fellow, Eugene?’ said Mortimer.

‘Let me look at him,’ returned Wrayburn, coolly. ‘Oh, yes, yes. I
recollect him!’

He had not been about to repeat that former action of taking him by the
chin, but the boy had suspected him of it, and had thrown up his arm
with an angry start. Laughingly, Wrayburn looked to Lightwood for an
explanation of this odd visit.

‘He says he has something to say.’

‘Surely it must be to you, Mortimer.’

‘So I thought, but he says no. He says it is to you.’

‘Yes, I do say so,’ interposed the boy. ‘And I mean to say what I want
to say, too, Mr Eugene Wrayburn!’

Passing him with his eyes as if there were nothing where he stood,
Eugene looked on to Bradley Headstone. With consummate indolence, he
turned to Mortimer, inquiring: ‘And who may this other person be?’

‘I am Charles Hexam’s friend,’ said Bradley; ‘I am Charles Hexam’s
schoolmaster.’

‘My good sir, you should teach your pupils better manners,’ returned
Eugene.

Composedly smoking, he leaned an elbow on the chimneypiece, at the side
of the fire, and looked at the schoolmaster. It was a cruel look, in its
cold disdain of him, as a creature of no worth. The schoolmaster looked
at him, and that, too, was a cruel look, though of the different kind,
that it had a raging jealousy and fiery wrath in it.

Very remarkably, neither Eugene Wrayburn nor Bradley Headstone looked at
all at the boy. Through the ensuing dialogue, those two, no matter
who spoke, or whom was addressed, looked at each other. There was some
secret, sure perception between them, which set them against one another
in all ways.

‘In some high respects, Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ said Bradley, answering
him with pale and quivering lips, ‘the natural feelings of my pupils are
stronger than my teaching.’

‘In most respects, I dare say,’ replied Eugene, enjoying his cigar,
‘though whether high or low is of no importance. You have my name very
correctly. Pray what is yours?’

‘It cannot concern you much to know, but--’

‘True,’ interposed Eugene, striking sharply and cutting him short at his
mistake, ‘it does not concern me at all to know. I can say Schoolmaster,
which is a most respectable title. You are right, Schoolmaster.’

It was not the dullest part of this goad in its galling of Bradley
Headstone, that he had made it himself in a moment of incautious anger.
He tried to set his lips so as to prevent their quivering, but they
quivered fast.

‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ said the boy, ‘I want a word with you. I have
wanted it so much, that we have looked out your address in the book, and
we have been to your office, and we have come from your office here.’

‘You have given yourself much trouble, Schoolmaster,’ observed
Eugene, blowing the feathery ash from his cigar. ‘I hope it may prove
remunerative.’

‘And I am glad to speak,’ pursued the boy, ‘in presence of Mr Lightwood,
because it was through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw my sister.’

For a mere moment, Wrayburn turned his eyes aside from the schoolmaster
to note the effect of the last word on Mortimer, who, standing on the
opposite side of the fire, as soon as the word was spoken, turned his
face towards the fire and looked down into it.

‘Similarly, it was through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw her again, for
you were with him on the night when my father was found, and so I found
you with her on the next day. Since then, you have seen my sister often.
You have seen my sister oftener and oftener. And I want to know why?’

‘Was this worth while, Schoolmaster?’ murmured Eugene, with the air of
a disinterested adviser. ‘So much trouble for nothing? You should know
best, but I think not.’

‘I don’t know, Mr Wrayburn,’ answered Bradley, with his passion rising,
‘why you address me--’

‘Don’t you? said Eugene. ‘Then I won’t.’

He said it so tauntingly in his perfect placidity, that the respectable
right-hand clutching the respectable hair-guard of the respectable watch
could have wound it round his throat and strangled him with it. Not
another word did Eugene deem it worth while to utter, but stood leaning
his head upon his hand, smoking, and looking imperturbably at the
chafing Bradley Headstone with his clutching right-hand, until Bradley
was wellnigh mad.

‘Mr Wrayburn,’ proceeded the boy, ‘we not only know this that I have
charged upon you, but we know more. It has not yet come to my sister’s
knowledge that we have found it out, but we have. We had a plan, Mr
Headstone and I, for my sister’s education, and for its being advised
and overlooked by Mr Headstone, who is a much more competent authority,
whatever you may pretend to think, as you smoke, than you could produce,
if you tried. Then, what do we find? What do we find, Mr Lightwood? Why,
we find that my sister is already being taught, without our knowing
it. We find that while my sister gives an unwilling and cold ear to our
schemes for her advantage--I, her brother, and Mr Headstone, the most
competent authority, as his certificates would easily prove, that could
be produced--she is wilfully and willingly profiting by other schemes.
Ay, and taking pains, too, for I know what such pains are. And so does
Mr Headstone! Well! Somebody pays for this, is a thought that naturally
occurs to us; who pays? We apply ourselves to find out, Mr Lightwood,
and we find that your friend, this Mr Eugene Wrayburn, here, pays. Then
I ask him what right has he to do it, and what does he mean by it, and
how comes he to be taking such a liberty without my consent, when I
am raising myself in the scale of society by my own exertions and Mr
Headstone’s aid, and have no right to have any darkness cast upon my
prospects, or any imputation upon my respectability, through my sister?’

The boyish weakness of this speech, combined with its great selfishness,
made it a poor one indeed. And yet Bradley Headstone, used to the little
audience of a school, and unused to the larger ways of men, showed a
kind of exultation in it.

‘Now I tell Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ pursued the boy, forced into the use
of the third person by the hopelessness of addressing him in the first,
‘that I object to his having any acquaintance at all with my sister, and
that I request him to drop it altogether. He is not to take it into his
head that I am afraid of my sister’s caring for HIM--’

(As the boy sneered, the Master sneered, and Eugene blew off the
feathery ash again.)

--‘But I object to it, and that’s enough. I am more important to my
sister than he thinks. As I raise myself, I intend to raise her;
she knows that, and she has to look to me for her prospects. Now I
understand all this very well, and so does Mr Headstone. My sister is an
excellent girl, but she has some romantic notions; not about such things
as your Mr Eugene Wrayburns, but about the death of my father and other
matters of that sort. Mr Wrayburn encourages those notions to make
himself of importance, and so she thinks she ought to be grateful to
him, and perhaps even likes to be. Now I don’t choose her to be grateful
to him, or to be grateful to anybody but me, except Mr Headstone. And
I tell Mr Wrayburn that if he don’t take heed of what I say, it will be
worse for her. Let him turn that over in his memory, and make sure of
it. Worse for her!’

A pause ensued, in which the schoolmaster looked very awkward.

‘May I suggest, Schoolmaster,’ said Eugene, removing his fast-waning
cigar from his lips to glance at it, ‘that you can now take your pupil
away.’

‘And Mr Lightwood,’ added the boy, with a burning face, under the
flaming aggravation of getting no sort of answer or attention, ‘I hope
you’ll take notice of what I have said to your friend, and of what
your friend has heard me say, word by word, whatever he pretends to the
contrary. You are bound to take notice of it, Mr Lightwood, for, as I
have already mentioned, you first brought your friend into my sister’s
company, and but for you we never should have seen him. Lord knows none
of us ever wanted him, any more than any of us will ever miss him. Now
Mr Headstone, as Mr Eugene Wrayburn has been obliged to hear what I had
to say, and couldn’t help himself, and as I have said it out to the last
word, we have done all we wanted to do, and may go.’

‘Go down-stairs, and leave me a moment, Hexam,’ he returned. The boy
complying with an indignant look and as much noise as he could make,
swung out of the room; and Lightwood went to the window, and leaned
there, looking out.

‘You think me of no more value than the dirt under your feet,’ said
Bradley to Eugene, speaking in a carefully weighed and measured tone, or
he could not have spoken at all.

‘I assure you, Schoolmaster,’ replied Eugene, ‘I don’t think about you.’

‘That’s not true,’ returned the other; ‘you know better.’

‘That’s coarse,’ Eugene retorted; ‘but you DON’T know better.’

‘Mr Wrayburn, at least I know very well that it would be idle to set
myself against you in insolent words or overbearing manners. That lad
who has just gone out could put you to shame in half-a-dozen branches of
knowledge in half an hour, but you can throw him aside like an inferior.
You can do as much by me, I have no doubt, beforehand.’

‘Possibly,’ remarked Eugene.

‘But I am more than a lad,’ said Bradley, with his clutching hand, ‘and
I WILL be heard, sir.’

‘As a schoolmaster,’ said Eugene, ‘you are always being heard. That
ought to content you.’

‘But it does not content me,’ replied the other, white with passion. ‘Do
you suppose that a man, in forming himself for the duties I discharge,
and in watching and repressing himself daily to discharge them well,
dismisses a man’s nature?’

‘I suppose you,’ said Eugene, ‘judging from what I see as I look at you,
to be rather too passionate for a good schoolmaster.’ As he spoke, he
tossed away the end of his cigar.

‘Passionate with you, sir, I admit I am. Passionate with you, sir, I
respect myself for being. But I have not Devils for my pupils.’

‘For your Teachers, I should rather say,’ replied Eugene.

‘Mr Wrayburn.’

‘Schoolmaster.’

‘Sir, my name is Bradley Headstone.’

‘As you justly said, my good sir, your name cannot concern me. Now, what
more?’

‘This more. Oh, what a misfortune is mine,’ cried Bradley, breaking off
to wipe the starting perspiration from his face as he shook from head to
foot, ‘that I cannot so control myself as to appear a stronger creature
than this, when a man who has not felt in all his life what I have felt
in a day can so command himself!’ He said it in a very agony, and even
followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn
himself.

Eugene Wrayburn looked on at him, as if he found him beginning to be
rather an entertaining study.

‘Mr Wrayburn, I desire to say something to you on my own part.’

‘Come, come, Schoolmaster,’ returned Eugene, with a languid approach to
impatience as the other again struggled with himself; ‘say what you have
to say. And let me remind you that the door is standing open, and your
young friend waiting for you on the stairs.’

‘When I accompanied that youth here, sir, I did so with the purpose of
adding, as a man whom you should not be permitted to put aside, in case
you put him aside as a boy, that his instinct is correct and right.’
Thus Bradley Headstone, with great effort and difficulty.

‘Is that all?’ asked Eugene.

‘No, sir,’ said the other, flushed and fierce. ‘I strongly support him
in his disapproval of your visits to his sister, and in his objection to
your officiousness--and worse--in what you have taken upon yourself to
do for her.’

‘Is THAT all?’ asked Eugene.

‘No, sir. I determined to tell you that you are not justified in these
proceedings, and that they are injurious to his sister.’

‘Are you her schoolmaster as well as her brother’s?--Or perhaps you
would like to be?’ said Eugene.

It was a stab that the blood followed, in its rush to Bradley
Headstone’s face, as swiftly as if it had been dealt with a dagger.
‘What do you mean by that?’ was as much as he could utter.

‘A natural ambition enough,’ said Eugene, coolly. ‘Far be it from me
to say otherwise. The sister who is something too much upon your lips,
perhaps--is so very different from all the associations to which she had
been used, and from all the low obscure people about her, that it is a
very natural ambition.’

‘Do you throw my obscurity in my teeth, Mr Wrayburn?’

‘That can hardly be, for I know nothing concerning it, Schoolmaster, and
seek to know nothing.’

‘You reproach me with my origin,’ said Bradley Headstone; ‘you cast
insinuations at my bringing-up. But I tell you, sir, I have worked my
way onward, out of both and in spite of both, and have a right to be
considered a better man than you, with better reasons for being proud.’

‘How I can reproach you with what is not within my knowledge, or how
I can cast stones that were never in my hand, is a problem for the
ingenuity of a schoolmaster to prove,’ returned Eugene. ‘Is THAT all?’

‘No, sir. If you suppose that boy--’

‘Who really will be tired of waiting,’ said Eugene, politely.

‘If you suppose that boy to be friendless, Mr Wrayburn, you deceive
yourself. I am his friend, and you shall find me so.’

‘And you will find HIM on the stairs,’ remarked Eugene.

‘You may have promised yourself, sir, that you could do what you
chose here, because you had to deal with a mere boy, inexperienced,
friendless, and unassisted. But I give you warning that this mean
calculation is wrong. You have to do with a man also. You have to do
with me. I will support him, and, if need be, require reparation for
him. My hand and heart are in this cause, and are open to him.’

‘And--quite a coincidence--the door is open,’ remarked Eugene.

‘I scorn your shifty evasions, and I scorn you,’ said the schoolmaster.
‘In the meanness of your nature you revile me with the meanness of my
birth. I hold you in contempt for it. But if you don’t profit by this
visit, and act accordingly, you will find me as bitterly in earnest
against you as I could be if I deemed you worth a second thought on my
own account.’

With a consciously bad grace and stiff manner, as Wrayburn looked so
easily and calmly on, he went out with these words, and the heavy door
closed like a furnace-door upon his red and white heats of rage.

‘A curious monomaniac,’ said Eugene. ‘The man seems to believe that
everybody was acquainted with his mother!’

Mortimer Lightwood being still at the window, to which he had in
delicacy withdrawn, Eugene called to him, and he fell to slowly pacing
the room.

‘My dear fellow,’ said Eugene, as he lighted another cigar, ‘I fear my
unexpected visitors have been troublesome. If as a set-off (excuse the
legal phrase from a barrister-at-law) you would like to ask Tippins to
tea, I pledge myself to make love to her.’

‘Eugene, Eugene, Eugene,’ replied Mortimer, still pacing the room, ‘I am
sorry for this. And to think that I have been so blind!’

‘How blind, dear boy?’ inquired his unmoved friend.

‘What were your words that night at the river-side public-house?’ said
Lightwood, stopping. ‘What was it that you asked me? Did I feel like a
dark combination of traitor and pickpocket when I thought of that girl?’

‘I seem to remember the expression,’ said Eugene.

‘How do YOU feel when you think of her just now?’

His friend made no direct reply, but observed, after a few whiffs of his
cigar, ‘Don’t mistake the situation. There is no better girl in all this
London than Lizzie Hexam. There is no better among my people at home; no
better among your people.’

‘Granted. What follows?’

‘There,’ said Eugene, looking after him dubiously as he paced away to
the other end of the room, ‘you put me again upon guessing the riddle
that I have given up.’

‘Eugene, do you design to capture and desert this girl?’

‘My dear fellow, no.’

‘Do you design to marry her?’

‘My dear fellow, no.’

‘Do you design to pursue her?’

‘My dear fellow, I don’t design anything. I have no design whatever.
I am incapable of designs. If I conceived a design, I should speedily
abandon it, exhausted by the operation.’

‘Oh Eugene, Eugene!’

‘My dear Mortimer, not that tone of melancholy reproach, I entreat. What
can I do more than tell you all I know, and acknowledge my ignorance
of all I don’t know! How does that little old song go, which, under
pretence of being cheerful, is by far the most lugubrious I ever heard
in my life?

     “Away with melancholy,
     Nor doleful changes ring
     On life and human folly,
     But merrily merrily sing
                              Fal la!”

Don’t let us sing Fal la, my dear Mortimer (which is comparatively
unmeaning), but let us sing that we give up guessing the riddle
altogether.’

‘Are you in communication with this girl, Eugene, and is what these
people say true?’

‘I concede both admissions to my honourable and learned friend.’

‘Then what is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?’

‘My dear Mortimer, one would think the schoolmaster had left behind him
a catechizing infection. You are ruffled by the want of another cigar.
Take one of these, I entreat. Light it at mine, which is in perfect
order. So! Now do me the justice to observe that I am doing all I can
towards self-improvement, and that you have a light thrown on those
household implements which, when you only saw them as in a glass darkly,
you were hastily--I must say hastily--inclined to depreciate. Sensible
of my deficiencies, I have surrounded myself with moral influences
expressly meant to promote the formation of the domestic virtues.
To those influences, and to the improving society of my friend from
boyhood, commend me with your best wishes.’

‘Ah, Eugene!’ said Lightwood, affectionately, now standing near him,
so that they both stood in one little cloud of smoke; ‘I would that you
answered my three questions! What is to come of it? What are you doing?
Where are you going?’

‘And my dear Mortimer,’ returned Eugene, lightly fanning away the smoke
with his hand for the better exposition of his frankness of face and
manner, ‘believe me, I would answer them instantly if I could. But
to enable me to do so, I must first have found out the troublesome
conundrum long abandoned. Here it is. Eugene Wrayburn.’ Tapping his
forehead and breast. ‘Riddle-me, riddle-me-ree, perhaps you can’t tell
me what this may be?--No, upon my life I can’t. I give it up!’



Chapter 7

IN WHICH A FRIENDLY MOVE IS ORIGINATED


The arrangement between Mr Boffin and his literary man, Mr Silas Wegg,
so far altered with the altered habits of Mr Boffin’s life, as that
the Roman Empire usually declined in the morning and in the eminently
aristocratic family mansion, rather than in the evening, as of yore,
and in Boffin’s Bower. There were occasions, however, when Mr Boffin,
seeking a brief refuge from the blandishments of fashion, would present
himself at the Bower after dark, to anticipate the next sallying
forth of Wegg, and would there, on the old settle, pursue the downward
fortunes of those enervated and corrupted masters of the world who were
by this time on their last legs. If Wegg had been worse paid for his
office, or better qualified to discharge it, he would have considered
these visits complimentary and agreeable; but, holding the position of
a handsomely-remunerated humbug, he resented them. This was quite
according to rule, for the incompetent servant, by whomsoever employed,
is always against his employer. Even those born governors, noble and
right honourable creatures, who have been the most imbecile in high
places, have uniformly shown themselves the most opposed (sometimes in
belying distrust, sometimes in vapid insolence) to THEIR employer. What
is in such wise true of the public master and servant, is equally true
of the private master and servant all the world over.

When Mr Silas Wegg did at last obtain free access to ‘Our House’, as he
had been wont to call the mansion outside which he had sat shelterless
so long, and when he did at last find it in all particulars as different
from his mental plans of it as according to the nature of things it
well could be, that far-seeing and far-reaching character, by way of
asserting himself and making out a case for compensation, affected to
fall into a melancholy strain of musing over the mournful past; as if
the house and he had had a fall in life together.

‘And this, sir,’ Silas would say to his patron, sadly nodding his head
and musing, ‘was once Our House! This, sir, is the building from which I
have so often seen those great creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master
George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker’--whose very names were of his own
inventing--‘pass and repass! And has it come to this, indeed! Ah dear
me, dear me!’

So tender were his lamentations, that the kindly Mr Boffin was quite
sorry for him, and almost felt mistrustful that in buying the house he
had done him an irreparable injury.

Two or three diplomatic interviews, the result of great subtlety on Mr
Wegg’s part, but assuming the mask of careless yielding to a fortuitous
combination of circumstances impelling him towards Clerkenwell, had
enabled him to complete his bargain with Mr Venus.

‘Bring me round to the Bower,’ said Silas, when the bargain was closed,
‘next Saturday evening, and if a sociable glass of old Jamaikey warm
should meet your views, I am not the man to begrudge it.’

‘You are aware of my being poor company, sir,’ replied Mr Venus, ‘but be
it so.’

It being so, here is Saturday evening come, and here is Mr Venus come,
and ringing at the Bower-gate.

Mr Wegg opens the gate, descries a sort of brown paper truncheon under
Mr Venus’s arm, and remarks, in a dry tone: ‘Oh! I thought perhaps you
might have come in a cab.’

‘No, Mr Wegg,’ replies Venus. ‘I am not above a parcel.’

‘Above a parcel! No!’ says Wegg, with some dissatisfaction. But does not
openly growl, ‘a certain sort of parcel might be above you.’

‘Here is your purchase, Mr Wegg,’ says Venus, politely handing it over,
‘and I am glad to restore it to the source from whence it--flowed.’

‘Thankee,’ says Wegg. ‘Now this affair is concluded, I may mention to
you in a friendly way that I’ve my doubts whether, if I had consulted a
lawyer, you could have kept this article back from me. I only throw it
out as a legal point.’

‘Do you think so, Mr Wegg? I bought you in open contract.’

‘You can’t buy human flesh and blood in this country, sir; not alive,
you can’t,’ says Wegg, shaking his head. ‘Then query, bone?’

‘As a legal point?’ asks Venus.

‘As a legal point.’

‘I am not competent to speak upon that, Mr Wegg,’ says Venus, reddening
and growing something louder; ‘but upon a point of fact I think myself
competent to speak; and as a point of fact I would have seen you--will
you allow me to say, further?’

‘I wouldn’t say more than further, if I was you,’ Mr Wegg suggests,
pacifically.

--‘Before I’d have given that packet into your hand without being paid
my price for it. I don’t pretend to know how the point of law may stand,
but I’m thoroughly confident upon the point of fact.’

As Mr Venus is irritable (no doubt owing to his disappointment in love),
and as it is not the cue of Mr Wegg to have him out of temper, the
latter gentleman soothingly remarks, ‘I only put it as a little case; I
only put it ha’porthetically.’

‘Then I’d rather, Mr Wegg, you put it another time, penn’orth-etically,’
is Mr Venus’s retort, ‘for I tell you candidly I don’t like your little
cases.’

Arrived by this time in Mr Wegg’s sitting-room, made bright on the
chilly evening by gaslight and fire, Mr Venus softens and compliments
him on his abode; profiting by the occasion to remind Wegg that he
(Venus) told him he had got into a good thing.

‘Tolerable,’ Wegg rejoins. ‘But bear in mind, Mr Venus, that there’s
no gold without its alloy. Mix for yourself and take a seat in the
chimbley-corner. Will you perform upon a pipe, sir?’

‘I am but an indifferent performer, sir,’ returns the other; ‘but I’ll
accompany you with a whiff or two at intervals.’

So, Mr Venus mixes, and Wegg mixes; and Mr Venus lights and puffs, and
Wegg lights and puffs.

‘And there’s alloy even in this metal of yours, Mr Wegg, you was
remarking?’

‘Mystery,’ returns Wegg. ‘I don’t like it, Mr Venus. I don’t like to
have the life knocked out of former inhabitants of this house, in the
gloomy dark, and not know who did it.’

‘Might you have any suspicions, Mr Wegg?’

‘No,’ returns that gentleman. ‘I know who profits by it. But I’ve no
suspicions.’

Having said which, Mr Wegg smokes and looks at the fire with a most
determined expression of Charity; as if he had caught that cardinal
virtue by the skirts as she felt it her painful duty to depart from him,
and held her by main force.

‘Similarly,’ resumes Wegg, ‘I have observations as I can offer upon
certain points and parties; but I make no objections, Mr Venus. Here
is an immense fortune drops from the clouds upon a person that shall be
nameless. Here is a weekly allowance, with a certain weight of coals,
drops from the clouds upon me. Which of us is the better man? Not the
person that shall be nameless. That’s an observation of mine, but I
don’t make it an objection. I take my allowance and my certain weight of
coals. He takes his fortune. That’s the way it works.’

‘It would be a good thing for me, if I could see things in the calm
light you do, Mr Wegg.’

‘Again look here,’ pursues Silas, with an oratorical flourish of his
pipe and his wooden leg: the latter having an undignified tendency
to tilt him back in his chair; ‘here’s another observation, Mr Venus,
unaccompanied with an objection. Him that shall be nameless is liable to
be talked over. He gets talked over. Him that shall be nameless, having
me at his right hand, naturally looking to be promoted higher, and you
may perhaps say meriting to be promoted higher--’

(Mr Venus murmurs that he does say so.)

‘--Him that shall be nameless, under such circumstances passes me by,
and puts a talking-over stranger above my head. Which of us two is the
better man? Which of us two can repeat most poetry? Which of us two has,
in the service of him that shall be nameless, tackled the Romans, both
civil and military, till he has got as husky as if he’d been weaned and
ever since brought up on sawdust? Not the talking-over stranger. Yet the
house is as free to him as if it was his, and he has his room, and is
put upon a footing, and draws about a thousand a year. I am banished to
the Bower, to be found in it like a piece of furniture whenever wanted.
Merit, therefore, don’t win. That’s the way it works. I observe it,
because I can’t help observing it, being accustomed to take a powerful
sight of notice; but I don’t object. Ever here before, Mr Venus?’

‘Not inside the gate, Mr Wegg.’

‘You’ve been as far as the gate then, Mr Venus?’

‘Yes, Mr Wegg, and peeped in from curiosity.’

‘Did you see anything?’

‘Nothing but the dust-yard.’

Mr Wegg rolls his eyes all round the room, in that ever unsatisfied
quest of his, and then rolls his eyes all round Mr Venus; as if
suspicious of his having something about him to be found out.

‘And yet, sir,’ he pursues, ‘being acquainted with old Mr Harmon, one
would have thought it might have been polite in you, too, to give him a
call. And you’re naturally of a polite disposition, you are.’ This last
clause as a softening compliment to Mr Venus.

‘It is true, sir,’ replies Venus, winking his weak eyes, and running
his fingers through his dusty shock of hair, ‘that I was so, before a
certain observation soured me. You understand to what I allude, Mr Wegg?
To a certain written statement respecting not wishing to be regarded in
a certain light. Since that, all is fled, save gall.’

‘Not all,’ says Mr Wegg, in a tone of sentimental condolence.

‘Yes, sir,’ returns Venus, ‘all! The world may deem it harsh, but I’d
quite as soon pitch into my best friend as not. Indeed, I’d sooner!’

Involuntarily making a pass with his wooden leg to guard himself as Mr
Venus springs up in the emphasis of this unsociable declaration, Mr Wegg
tilts over on his back, chair and all, and is rescued by that harmless
misanthrope, in a disjointed state and ruefully rubbing his head.

‘Why, you lost your balance, Mr Wegg,’ says Venus, handing him his pipe.

‘And about time to do it,’ grumbles Silas, ‘when a man’s visitors,
without a word of notice, conduct themselves with the sudden wiciousness
of Jacks-in-boxes! Don’t come flying out of your chair like that, Mr
Venus!’

‘I ask your pardon, Mr Wegg. I am so soured.’

‘Yes, but hang it,’ says Wegg argumentatively, ‘a well-governed mind can
be soured sitting! And as to being regarded in lights, there’s bumpey
lights as well as bony. IN which,’ again rubbing his head, ‘I object to
regard myself.’

‘I’ll bear it in memory, sir.’

‘If you’ll be so good.’ Mr Wegg slowly subdues his ironical tone and his
lingering irritation, and resumes his pipe. ‘We were talking of old Mr
Harmon being a friend of yours.’

‘Not a friend, Mr Wegg. Only known to speak to, and to have a little
deal with now and then. A very inquisitive character, Mr Wegg, regarding
what was found in the dust. As inquisitive as secret.’

‘Ah! You found him secret?’ returns Wegg, with a greedy relish.

‘He had always the look of it, and the manner of it.’

‘Ah!’ with another roll of his eyes. ‘As to what was found in the dust
now. Did you ever hear him mention how he found it, my dear friend?
Living on the mysterious premises, one would like to know. For instance,
where he found things? Or, for instance, how he set about it? Whether
he began at the top of the mounds, or whether he began at the bottom.
Whether he prodded’; Mr Wegg’s pantomime is skilful and expressive here;
‘or whether he scooped? Should you say scooped, my dear Mr Venus; or
should you as a man--say prodded?’

‘I should say neither, Mr Wegg.’

‘As a fellow-man, Mr Venus--mix again--why neither?’

‘Because I suppose, sir, that what was found, was found in the sorting
and sifting. All the mounds are sorted and sifted?’

‘You shall see ‘em and pass your opinion. Mix again.’

On each occasion of his saying ‘mix again’, Mr Wegg, with a hop on
his wooden leg, hitches his chair a little nearer; more as if he were
proposing that himself and Mr Venus should mix again, than that they
should replenish their glasses.

‘Living (as I said before) on the mysterious premises,’ says Wegg when
the other has acted on his hospitable entreaty, ‘one likes to know.
Would you be inclined to say now--as a brother--that he ever hid things
in the dust, as well as found ‘em?’

‘Mr Wegg, on the whole I should say he might.’

Mr Wegg claps on his spectacles, and admiringly surveys Mr Venus from
head to foot.

‘As a mortal equally with myself, whose hand I take in mine for the
first time this day, having unaccountably overlooked that act so full of
boundless confidence binding a fellow-creetur TO a fellow creetur,’ says
Wegg, holding Mr Venus’s palm out, flat and ready for smiting, and now
smiting it; ‘as such--and no other--for I scorn all lowlier ties betwixt
myself and the man walking with his face erect that alone I call my
Twin--regarded and regarding in this trustful bond--what do you think he
might have hid?’

‘It is but a supposition, Mr Wegg.’

‘As a Being with his hand upon his heart,’ cries Wegg; and the
apostrophe is not the less impressive for the Being’s hand being
actually upon his rum and water; ‘put your supposition into language,
and bring it out, Mr Venus!’

‘He was the species of old gentleman, sir,’ slowly returns that
practical anatomist, after drinking, ‘that I should judge likely to
take such opportunities as this place offered, of stowing away money,
valuables, maybe papers.’

‘As one that was ever an ornament to human life,’ says Mr Wegg, again
holding out Mr Venus’s palm as if he were going to tell his fortune by
chiromancy, and holding his own up ready for smiting it when the time
should come; ‘as one that the poet might have had his eye on, in writing
the national naval words:

     Helm a-weather, now lay her close,
            Yard arm and yard arm she lies;
     Again, cried I, Mr Venus, give her t’other dose,
            Man shrouds and grapple, sir, or she flies!

--that is to say, regarded in the light of true British Oak, for such
you are explain, Mr Venus, the expression “papers”!’

‘Seeing that the old gentleman was generally cutting off some near
relation, or blocking out some natural affection,’ Mr Venus rejoins, ‘he
most likely made a good many wills and codicils.’

The palm of Silas Wegg descends with a sounding smack upon the palm
of Venus, and Wegg lavishly exclaims, ‘Twin in opinion equally with
feeling! Mix a little more!’

Having now hitched his wooden leg and his chair close in front of Mr
Venus, Mr Wegg rapidly mixes for both, gives his visitor his glass,
touches its rim with the rim of his own, puts his own to his lips, puts
it down, and spreading his hands on his visitor’s knees thus addresses
him:

‘Mr Venus. It ain’t that I object to being passed over for a stranger,
though I regard the stranger as a more than doubtful customer. It ain’t
for the sake of making money, though money is ever welcome. It ain’t for
myself, though I am not so haughty as to be above doing myself a good
turn. It’s for the cause of the right.’

Mr Venus, passively winking his weak eyes both at once, demands: ‘What
is, Mr Wegg?’

‘The friendly move, sir, that I now propose. You see the move, sir?’

‘Till you have pointed it out, Mr Wegg, I can’t say whether I do or
not.’

‘If there IS anything to be found on these premises, let us find it
together. Let us make the friendly move of agreeing to look for it
together. Let us make the friendly move of agreeing to share the
profits of it equally betwixt us. In the cause of the right.’ Thus Silas
assuming a noble air.

‘Then,’ says Mr Venus, looking up, after meditating with his hair held
in his hands, as if he could only fix his attention by fixing his head;
‘if anything was to be unburied from under the dust, it would be kept a
secret by you and me? Would that be it, Mr Wegg?’

‘That would depend upon what it was, Mr Venus. Say it was money, or
plate, or jewellery, it would be as much ours as anybody else’s.’

Mr Venus rubs an eyebrow, interrogatively.

‘In the cause of the right it would. Because it would be unknowingly
sold with the mounds else, and the buyer would get what he was never
meant to have, and never bought. And what would that be, Mr Venus, but
the cause of the wrong?’

‘Say it was papers,’ Mr Venus propounds.

‘According to what they contained we should offer to dispose of ‘em to
the parties most interested,’ replies Wegg, promptly.

‘In the cause of the right, Mr Wegg?’

‘Always so, Mr Venus. If the parties should use them in the cause of the
wrong, that would be their act and deed. Mr Venus. I have an opinion of
you, sir, to which it is not easy to give mouth. Since I called upon you
that evening when you were, as I may say, floating your powerful mind in
tea, I have felt that you required to be roused with an object. In this
friendly move, sir, you will have a glorious object to rouse you.’

Mr Wegg then goes on to enlarge upon what throughout has been uppermost
in his crafty mind:--the qualifications of Mr Venus for such a search.
He expatiates on Mr Venus’s patient habits and delicate manipulation; on
his skill in piecing little things together; on his knowledge of various
tissues and textures; on the likelihood of small indications leading him
on to the discovery of great concealments. ‘While as to myself,’ says
Wegg, ‘I am not good at it. Whether I gave myself up to prodding,
or whether I gave myself up to scooping, I couldn’t do it with that
delicate touch so as not to show that I was disturbing the mounds.
Quite different with YOU, going to work (as YOU would) in the light of
a fellow-man, holily pledged in a friendly move to his brother man.’ Mr
Wegg next modestly remarks on the want of adaptation in a wooden leg
to ladders and such like airy perches, and also hints at an inherent
tendency in that timber fiction, when called into action for the
purposes of a promenade on an ashey slope, to stick itself into the
yielding foothold, and peg its owner to one spot. Then, leaving this
part of the subject, he remarks on the special phenomenon that before
his installation in the Bower, it was from Mr Venus that he first heard
of the legend of hidden wealth in the Mounds: ‘which’, he observes with
a vaguely pious air, ‘was surely never meant for nothing.’ Lastly,
he returns to the cause of the right, gloomily foreshadowing the
possibility of something being unearthed to criminate Mr Boffin (of whom
he once more candidly admits it cannot be denied that he profits by a
murder), and anticipating his denunciation by the friendly movers to
avenging justice. And this, Mr Wegg expressly points out, not at all for
the sake of the reward--though it would be a want of principle not to
take it.

To all this, Mr Venus, with his shock of dusty hair cocked after the
manner of a terrier’s ears, attends profoundly. When Mr Wegg, having
finished, opens his arms wide, as if to show Mr Venus how bare his
breast is, and then folds them pending a reply, Mr Venus winks at him
with both eyes some little time before speaking.

‘I see you have tried it by yourself, Mr Wegg,’ he says when he does
speak. ‘You have found out the difficulties by experience.’

‘No, it can hardly be said that I have tried it,’ replies Wegg, a little
dashed by the hint. ‘I have just skimmed it. Skimmed it.’

‘And found nothing besides the difficulties?’

Wegg shakes his head.

‘I scarcely know what to say to this, Mr Wegg,’ observes Venus, after
ruminating for a while.

‘Say yes,’ Wegg naturally urges.

‘If I wasn’t soured, my answer would be no. But being soured, Mr Wegg,
and driven to reckless madness and desperation, I suppose it’s Yes.’

Wegg joyfully reproduces the two glasses, repeats the ceremony of
clinking their rims, and inwardly drinks with great heartiness to the
health and success in life of the young lady who has reduced Mr Venus to
his present convenient state of mind.

The articles of the friendly move are then severally recited and agreed
upon. They are but secrecy, fidelity, and perseverance. The Bower to
be always free of access to Mr Venus for his researches, and every
precaution to be taken against their attracting observation in the
neighbourhood.

‘There’s a footstep!’ exclaims Venus.

‘Where?’ cries Wegg, starting.

‘Outside. St!’

They are in the act of ratifying the treaty of friendly move, by shaking
hands upon it. They softly break off, light their pipes which have gone
out, and lean back in their chairs. No doubt, a footstep. It approaches
the window, and a hand taps at the glass. ‘Come in!’ calls Wegg; meaning
come round by the door. But the heavy old-fashioned sash is slowly
raised, and a head slowly looks in out of the dark background of night.

‘Pray is Mr Silas Wegg here? Oh! I see him!’

The friendly movers might not have been quite at their ease, even
though the visitor had entered in the usual manner. But, leaning on the
breast-high window, and staring in out of the darkness, they find the
visitor extremely embarrassing. Especially Mr Venus: who removes his
pipe, draws back his head, and stares at the starer, as if it were his
own Hindoo baby come to fetch him home.

‘Good evening, Mr Wegg. The yard gate-lock should be looked to, if you
please; it don’t catch.’

‘Is it Mr Rokesmith?’ falters Wegg.

‘It is Mr Rokesmith. Don’t let me disturb you. I am not coming in. I
have only a message for you, which I undertook to deliver on my way home
to my lodgings. I was in two minds about coming beyond the gate without
ringing: not knowing but you might have a dog about.’

‘I wish I had,’ mutters Wegg, with his back turned as he rose from his
chair. St! Hush! The talking-over stranger, Mr Venus.’

‘Is that any one I know?’ inquires the staring Secretary.

‘No, Mr Rokesmith. Friend of mine. Passing the evening with me.’

‘Oh! I beg his pardon. Mr Boffin wishes you to know that he does not
expect you to stay at home any evening, on the chance of his coming. It
has occurred to him that he may, without intending it, have been a tie
upon you. In future, if he should come without notice, he will take his
chance of finding you, and it will be all the same to him if he does
not. I undertook to tell you on my way. That’s all.’

With that, and ‘Good night,’ the Secretary lowers the window, and
disappears. They listen, and hear his footsteps go back to the gate, and
hear the gate close after him.

‘And for that individual, Mr Venus,’ remarks Wegg, when he is fully
gone, ‘I have been passed over! Let me ask you what you think of him?’

Apparently, Mr Venus does not know what to think of him, for he makes
sundry efforts to reply, without delivering himself of any other
articulate utterance than that he has ‘a singular look’.

‘A double look, you mean, sir,’ rejoins Wegg, playing bitterly upon the
word. ‘That’s HIS look. Any amount of singular look for me, but not a
double look! That’s an under-handed mind, sir.’

‘Do you say there’s something against him?’ Venus asks.

‘Something against him?’ repeats Wegg. ‘Something? What would the relief
be to my feelings--as a fellow-man--if I wasn’t the slave of truth, and
didn’t feel myself compelled to answer, Everything!’

See into what wonderful maudlin refuges, featherless ostriches plunge
their heads! It is such unspeakable moral compensation to Wegg, to be
overcome by the consideration that Mr Rokesmith has an underhanded mind!

‘On this starlight night, Mr Venus,’ he remarks, when he is showing that
friendly mover out across the yard, and both are something the worse
for mixing again and again: ‘on this starlight night to think that
talking-over strangers, and underhanded minds, can go walking home under
the sky, as if they was all square!’

‘The spectacle of those orbs,’ says Mr Venus, gazing upward with his hat
tumbling off; ‘brings heavy on me her crushing words that she did not
wish to regard herself nor yet to be regarded in that--’

‘I know! I know! You needn’t repeat ‘em,’ says Wegg, pressing his hand.
‘But think how those stars steady me in the cause of the right against
some that shall be nameless. It isn’t that I bear malice. But see how
they glisten with old remembrances! Old remembrances of what, sir?’

Mr Venus begins drearily replying, ‘Of her words, in her own
handwriting, that she does not wish to regard herself, nor yet--’ when
Silas cuts him short with dignity.

‘No, sir! Remembrances of Our House, of Master George, of Aunt Jane, of
Uncle Parker, all laid waste! All offered up sacrifices to the minion of
fortune and the worm of the hour!’



Chapter 8

IN WHICH AN INNOCENT ELOPEMENT OCCURS


The minion of fortune and the worm of the hour, or in less cutting
language, Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, the Golden Dustman, had become
as much at home in his eminently aristocratic family mansion as he
was likely ever to be. He could not but feel that, like an eminently
aristocratic family cheese, it was much too large for his wants, and
bred an infinite amount of parasites; but he was content to regard this
drawback on his property as a sort of perpetual Legacy Duty. He felt the
more resigned to it, forasmuch as Mrs Boffin enjoyed herself completely,
and Miss Bella was delighted.

That young lady was, no doubt, an acquisition to the Boffins. She
was far too pretty to be unattractive anywhere, and far too quick of
perception to be below the tone of her new career. Whether it improved
her heart might be a matter of taste that was open to question; but as
touching another matter of taste, its improvement of her appearance and
manner, there could be no question whatever.

And thus it soon came about that Miss Bella began to set Mrs Boffin
right; and even further, that Miss Bella began to feel ill at ease, and
as it were responsible, when she saw Mrs Boffin going wrong. Not that so
sweet a disposition and so sound a nature could ever go very wrong even
among the great visiting authorities who agreed that the Boffins were
‘charmingly vulgar’ (which for certain was not their own case in saying
so), but that when she made a slip on the social ice on which all the
children of Podsnappery, with genteel souls to be saved, are required to
skate in circles, or to slide in long rows, she inevitably tripped Miss
Bella up (so that young lady felt), and caused her to experience great
confusion under the glances of the more skilful performers engaged in
those ice-exercises.

At Miss Bella’s time of life it was not to be expected that she should
examine herself very closely on the congruity or stability of her
position in Mr Boffin’s house. And as she had never been sparing of
complaints of her old home when she had no other to compare it with,
so there was no novelty of ingratitude or disdain in her very much
preferring her new one.

‘An invaluable man is Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin, after some two or
three months. ‘But I can’t quite make him out.’

Neither could Bella, so she found the subject rather interesting.

‘He takes more care of my affairs, morning, noon, and night,’ said Mr
Boffin, ‘than fifty other men put together either could or would; and
yet he has ways of his own that are like tying a scaffolding-pole right
across the road, and bringing me up short when I am almost a-walking arm
in arm with him.’

‘May I ask how so, sir?’ inquired Bella.

‘Well, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘he won’t meet any company here, but
you. When we have visitors, I should wish him to have his regular place
at the table like ourselves; but no, he won’t take it.’

‘If he considers himself above it,’ said Miss Bella, with an airy toss
of her head, ‘I should leave him alone.’

‘It ain’t that, my dear,’ replied Mr Boffin, thinking it over. ‘He don’t
consider himself above it.’

‘Perhaps he considers himself beneath it,’ suggested Bella. ‘If so, he
ought to know best.’

‘No, my dear; nor it ain’t that, neither. No,’ repeated Mr Boffin, with
a shake of his head, after again thinking it over; ‘Rokesmith’s a modest
man, but he don’t consider himself beneath it.’

‘Then what does he consider, sir?’ asked Bella.

‘Dashed if I know!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘It seemed at first as if it
was only Lightwood that he objected to meet. And now it seems to be
everybody, except you.’

Oho! thought Miss Bella. ‘In--deed! That’s it, is it!’ For Mr Mortimer
Lightwood had dined there two or three times, and she had met him
elsewhere, and he had shown her some attention. ‘Rather cool in a
Secretary--and Pa’s lodger--to make me the subject of his jealousy!’

That Pa’s daughter should be so contemptuous of Pa’s lodger was odd;
but there were odder anomalies than that in the mind of the spoilt girl:
spoilt first by poverty, and then by wealth. Be it this history’s part,
however, to leave them to unravel themselves.

‘A little too much, I think,’ Miss Bella reflected scornfully, ‘to
have Pa’s lodger laying claim to me, and keeping eligible people off!
A little too much, indeed, to have the opportunities opened to me by Mr
and Mrs Boffin, appropriated by a mere Secretary and Pa’s lodger!’

Yet it was not so very long ago that Bella had been fluttered by the
discovery that this same Secretary and lodger seem to like her. Ah! but
the eminently aristocratic mansion and Mrs Boffin’s dressmaker had not
come into play then.

In spite of his seemingly retiring manners a very intrusive person, this
Secretary and lodger, in Miss Bella’s opinion. Always a light in his
office-room when we came home from the play or Opera, and he always at
the carriage-door to hand us out. Always a provoking radiance too on
Mrs Boffin’s face, and an abominably cheerful reception of him, as if it
were possible seriously to approve what the man had in his mind!

‘You never charge me, Miss Wilfer,’ said the Secretary, encountering her
by chance alone in the great drawing-room, ‘with commissions for home.
I shall always be happy to execute any commands you may have in that
direction.’

‘Pray what may you mean, Mr Rokesmith?’ inquired Miss Bella, with
languidly drooping eyelids.

‘By home? I mean your father’s house at Holloway.’

She coloured under the retort--so skilfully thrust, that the words
seemed to be merely a plain answer, given in plain good faith--and said,
rather more emphatically and sharply:

‘What commissions and commands are you speaking of?’

‘Only little words of remembrance as I assume you sent somehow or
other,’ replied the Secretary with his former air. ‘It would be a
pleasure to me if you would make me the bearer of them. As you know, I
come and go between the two houses every day.’

‘You needn’t remind me of that, sir.’

She was too quick in this petulant sally against ‘Pa’s lodger’; and she
felt that she had been so when she met his quiet look.

‘They don’t send many--what was your expression?--words of remembrance
to me,’ said Bella, making haste to take refuge in ill-usage.

‘They frequently ask me about you, and I give them such slight
intelligence as I can.’

‘I hope it’s truly given,’ exclaimed Bella.

‘I hope you cannot doubt it, for it would be very much against you, if
you could.’

‘No, I do not doubt it. I deserve the reproach, which is very just
indeed. I beg your pardon, Mr Rokesmith.’

‘I should beg you not to do so, but that it shows you to such admirable
advantage,’ he replied with earnestness. ‘Forgive me; I could not help
saying that. To return to what I have digressed from, let me add that
perhaps they think I report them to you, deliver little messages, and
the like. But I forbear to trouble you, as you never ask me.’

‘I am going, sir,’ said Bella, looking at him as if he had reproved her,
‘to see them tomorrow.’

‘Is that,’ he asked, hesitating, ‘said to me, or to them?’

‘To which you please.’

‘To both? Shall I make it a message?’

‘You can if you like, Mr Rokesmith. Message or no message, I am going to
see them tomorrow.’

‘Then I will tell them so.’

He lingered a moment, as though to give her the opportunity of
prolonging the conversation if she wished. As she remained silent, he
left her. Two incidents of the little interview were felt by Miss Bella
herself, when alone again, to be very curious. The first was, that he
unquestionably left her with a penitent air upon her, and a penitent
feeling in her heart. The second was, that she had not an intention or
a thought of going home, until she had announced it to him as a settled
design.

‘What can I mean by it, or what can he mean by it?’ was her mental
inquiry: ‘He has no right to any power over me, and how do I come to
mind him when I don’t care for him?’

Mrs Boffin, insisting that Bella should make tomorrow’s expedition
in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs Wilfer and Miss
Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and improbabilities of
her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the chariot from
the window at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed
that it must be detained at the door as long as possible, for the
mortification and confusion of the neighbours. Then they repaired to
the usual family room, to receive Miss Bella with a becoming show of
indifference.

The family room looked very small and very mean, and the downward
staircase by which it was attained looked very narrow and very crooked.
The little house and all its arrangements were a poor contrast to the
eminently aristocratic dwelling. ‘I can hardly believe,’ thought Bella,
‘that I ever did endure life in this place!’

Gloomy majesty on the part of Mrs Wilfer, and native pertness on the
part of Lavvy, did not mend the matter. Bella really stood in natural
need of a little help, and she got none.

‘This,’ said Mrs Wilfer, presenting a cheek to be kissed, as sympathetic
and responsive as the back of the bowl of a spoon, ‘is quite an honour!
You will probably find your sister Lavvy grown, Bella.’

‘Ma,’ Miss Lavinia interposed, ‘there can be no objection to your being
aggravating, because Bella richly deserves it; but I really must request
that you will not drag in such ridiculous nonsense as my having grown
when I am past the growing age.’

‘I grew, myself,’ Mrs Wilfer sternly proclaimed, ‘after I was married.’

‘Very well, Ma,’ returned Lavvy, ‘then I think you had much better have
left it alone.’

The lofty glare with which the majestic woman received this answer,
might have embarrassed a less pert opponent, but it had no effect upon
Lavinia: who, leaving her parent to the enjoyment of any amount of
glaring at she might deem desirable under the circumstances, accosted
her sister, undismayed.

‘I suppose you won’t consider yourself quite disgraced, Bella, if I give
you a kiss? Well! And how do you do, Bella? And how are your Boffins?’

‘Peace!’ exclaimed Mrs Wilfer. ‘Hold! I will not suffer this tone of
levity.’

‘My goodness me! How are your Spoffins, then?’ said Lavvy, ‘since Ma so
very much objects to your Boffins.’

‘Impertinent girl! Minx!’ said Mrs Wilfer, with dread severity.

‘I don’t care whether I am a Minx, or a Sphinx,’ returned Lavinia,
coolly, tossing her head; ‘it’s exactly the same thing to me, and I’d
every bit as soon be one as the other; but I know this--I’ll not grow
after I’m married!’

‘You will not? YOU will not?’ repeated Mrs Wilfer, solemnly.

‘No, Ma, I will not. Nothing shall induce me.’

Mrs Wilfer, having waved her gloves, became loftily pathetic.

‘But it was to be expected;’ thus she spake. ‘A child of mine deserts me
for the proud and prosperous, and another child of mine despises me. It
is quite fitting.’

‘Ma,’ Bella struck in, ‘Mr and Mrs Boffin are prosperous, no doubt; but
you have no right to say they are proud. You must know very well that
they are not.’

‘In short, Ma,’ said Lavvy, bouncing over to the enemy without a word
of notice, ‘you must know very well--or if you don’t, more shame for
you!--that Mr and Mrs Boffin are just absolute perfection.’

‘Truly,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, courteously receiving the deserter, ‘it
would seem that we are required to think so. And this, Lavinia, is
my reason for objecting to a tone of levity. Mrs Boffin (of whose
physiognomy I can never speak with the composure I would desire to
preserve), and your mother, are not on terms of intimacy. It is not
for a moment to be supposed that she and her husband dare to presume to
speak of this family as the Wilfers. I cannot therefore condescend to
speak of them as the Boffins. No; for such a tone--call it familiarity,
levity, equality, or what you will--would imply those social
interchanges which do not exist. Do I render myself intelligible?’

Without taking the least notice of this inquiry, albeit delivered in an
imposing and forensic manner, Lavinia reminded her sister, ‘After all,
you know, Bella, you haven’t told us how your Whatshisnames are.’

‘I don’t want to speak of them here,’ replied Bella, suppressing
indignation, and tapping her foot on the floor. ‘They are much too kind
and too good to be drawn into these discussions.’

‘Why put it so?’ demanded Mrs Wilfer, with biting sarcasm. ‘Why adopt a
circuitous form of speech? It is polite and it is obliging; but why do
it? Why not openly say that they are much too kind and too good for US?
We understand the allusion. Why disguise the phrase?’

‘Ma,’ said Bella, with one beat of her foot, ‘you are enough to drive a
saint mad, and so is Lavvy.’

‘Unfortunate Lavvy!’ cried Mrs Wilfer, in a tone of commiseration. ‘She
always comes for it. My poor child!’ But Lavvy, with the suddenness of
her former desertion, now bounced over to the other enemy: very sharply
remarking, ‘Don’t patronize ME, Ma, because I can take care of myself.’

‘I only wonder,’ resumed Mrs Wilfer, directing her observations to her
elder daughter, as safer on the whole than her utterly unmanageable
younger, ‘that you found time and inclination to tear yourself from
Mr and Mrs Boffin, and come to see us at all. I only wonder that our
claims, contending against the superior claims of Mr and Mrs Boffin,
had any weight. I feel I ought to be thankful for gaining so much, in
competition with Mr and Mrs Boffin.’ (The good lady bitterly emphasized
the first letter of the word Boffin, as if it represented her chief
objection to the owners of that name, and as if she could have born
Doffin, Moffin, or Poffin much better.)

‘Ma,’ said Bella, angrily, ‘you force me to say that I am truly sorry I
did come home, and that I never will come home again, except when poor
dear Pa is here. For, Pa is too magnanimous to feel envy and spite
towards my generous friends, and Pa is delicate enough and gentle enough
to remember the sort of little claim they thought I had upon them and
the unusually trying position in which, through no act of my own, I had
been placed. And I always did love poor dear Pa better than all the rest
of you put together, and I always do and I always shall!’

Here Bella, deriving no comfort from her charming bonnet and her elegant
dress, burst into tears.

‘I think, R.W.,’ cried Mrs Wilfer, lifting up her eyes and
apostrophising the air, ‘that if you were present, it would be a
trial to your feelings to hear your wife and the mother of your family
depreciated in your name. But Fate has spared you this, R.W., whatever
it may have thought proper to inflict upon her!’

Here Mrs Wilfer burst into tears.

‘I hate the Boffins!’ protested Miss Lavinia. ‘I don’t care who objects
to their being called the Boffins. I WILL call ‘em the Boffins. The
Boffins, the Boffins, the Boffins! And I say they are mischief-making
Boffins, and I say the Boffins have set Bella against me, and I tell the
Boffins to their faces:’ which was not strictly the fact, but the
young lady was excited: ‘that they are detestable Boffins, disreputable
Boffins, odious Boffins, beastly Boffins. There!’

Here Miss Lavinia burst into tears.

The front garden-gate clanked, and the Secretary was seen coming at a
brisk pace up the steps. ‘Leave Me to open the door to him,’ said Mrs
Wilfer, rising with stately resignation as she shook her head and dried
her eyes; ‘we have at present no stipendiary girl to do so. We have
nothing to conceal. If he sees these traces of emotion on our cheeks,
let him construe them as he may.’

With those words she stalked out. In a few moments she stalked in again,
proclaiming in her heraldic manner, ‘Mr Rokesmith is the bearer of a
packet for Miss Bella Wilfer.’

Mr Rokesmith followed close upon his name, and of course saw what was
amiss. But he discreetly affected to see nothing, and addressed Miss
Bella.

‘Mr Boffin intended to have placed this in the carriage for you
this morning. He wished you to have it, as a little keepsake he had
prepared--it is only a purse, Miss Wilfer--but as he was disappointed in
his fancy, I volunteered to come after you with it.’

Bella took it in her hand, and thanked him.

‘We have been quarrelling here a little, Mr Rokesmith, but not more than
we used; you know our agreeable ways among ourselves. You find me just
going. Good-bye, mamma. Good-bye, Lavvy!’ and with a kiss for each Miss
Bella turned to the door. The Secretary would have attended her, but
Mrs Wilfer advancing and saying with dignity, ‘Pardon me! Permit me to
assert my natural right to escort my child to the equipage which is
in waiting for her,’ he begged pardon and gave place. It was a very
magnificent spectacle indeed, to see Mrs Wilfer throw open the
house-door, and loudly demand with extended gloves, ‘The male domestic
of Mrs Boffin!’ To whom presenting himself, she delivered the brief but
majestic charge, ‘Miss Wilfer. Coming out!’ and so delivered her over,
like a female Lieutenant of the Tower relinquishing a State Prisoner.
The effect of this ceremonial was for some quarter of an hour afterwards
perfectly paralyzing on the neighbours, and was much enhanced by the
worthy lady airing herself for that term in a kind of splendidly serene
trance on the top step.

When Bella was seated in the carriage, she opened the little packet in
her hand. It contained a pretty purse, and the purse contained a bank
note for fifty pounds. ‘This shall be a joyful surprise for poor dear
Pa,’ said Bella, ‘and I’ll take it myself into the City!’

As she was uninformed respecting the exact locality of the place of
business of Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, but knew it to be near
Mincing Lane, she directed herself to be driven to the corner of that
darksome spot. Thence she despatched ‘the male domestic of Mrs Boffin,’
in search of the counting-house of Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, with
a message importing that if R. Wilfer could come out, there was a lady
waiting who would be glad to speak with him. The delivery of these
mysterious words from the mouth of a footman caused so great an
excitement in the counting-house, that a youthful scout was instantly
appointed to follow Rumty, observe the lady, and come in with his
report. Nor was the agitation by any means diminished, when the scout
rushed back with the intelligence that the lady was ‘a slap-up gal in a
bang-up chariot.’

Rumty himself, with his pen behind his ear under his rusty hat, arrived
at the carriage-door in a breathless condition, and had been fairly
lugged into the vehicle by his cravat and embraced almost unto choking,
before he recognized his daughter. ‘My dear child!’ he then panted,
incoherently. ‘Good gracious me! What a lovely woman you are! I thought
you had been unkind and forgotten your mother and sister.’

‘I have just been to see them, Pa dear.’

‘Oh! and how--how did you find your mother?’ asked R. W., dubiously.

‘Very disagreeable, Pa, and so was Lavvy.’

‘They are sometimes a little liable to it,’ observed the patient cherub;
‘but I hope you made allowances, Bella, my dear?’

‘No. I was disagreeable too, Pa; we were all of us disagreeable
together. But I want you to come and dine with me somewhere, Pa.’

‘Why, my dear, I have already partaken of a--if one might mention such
an article in this superb chariot--of a--Saveloy,’ replied R. Wilfer,
modestly dropping his voice on the word, as he eyed the canary-coloured
fittings.

‘Oh! That’s nothing, Pa!’

‘Truly, it ain’t as much as one could sometimes wish it to be, my
dear,’ he admitted, drawing his hand across his mouth. ‘Still, when
circumstances over which you have no control, interpose obstacles
between yourself and Small Germans, you can’t do better than bring a
contented mind to hear on’--again dropping his voice in deference to the
chariot--‘Saveloys!’

‘You poor good Pa! Pa, do, I beg and pray, get leave for the rest of the
day, and come and pass it with me!’

‘Well, my dear, I’ll cut back and ask for leave.’

‘But before you cut back,’ said Bella, who had already taken him by the
chin, pulled his hat off, and begun to stick up his hair in her old way,
‘do say that you are sure I am giddy and inconsiderate, but have never
really slighted you, Pa.’

‘My dear, I say it with all my heart. And might I likewise observe,’ her
father delicately hinted, with a glance out at window, ‘that perhaps
it might be calculated to attract attention, having one’s hair publicly
done by a lovely woman in an elegant turn-out in Fenchurch Street?’

Bella laughed and put on his hat again. But when his boyish figure
bobbed away, its shabbiness and cheerful patience smote the tears out
of her eyes. ‘I hate that Secretary for thinking it of me,’ she said to
herself, ‘and yet it seems half true!’

Back came her father, more like a boy than ever, in his release from
school. ‘All right, my dear. Leave given at once. Really very handsomely
done!’

‘Now where can we find some quiet place, Pa, in which I can wait for you
while you go on an errand for me, if I send the carriage away?’

It demanded cogitation. ‘You see, my dear,’ he explained, ‘you really
have become such a very lovely woman, that it ought to be a very quiet
place.’ At length he suggested, ‘Near the garden up by the Trinity House
on Tower Hill.’ So, they were driven there, and Bella dismissed the
chariot; sending a pencilled note by it to Mrs Boffin, that she was with
her father.

‘Now, Pa, attend to what I am going to say, and promise and vow to be
obedient.’

‘I promise and vow, my dear.’

‘You ask no questions. You take this purse; you go to the nearest place
where they keep everything of the very very best, ready made; you buy
and put on, the most beautiful suit of clothes, the most beautiful hat,
and the most beautiful pair of bright boots (patent leather, Pa, mind!)
that are to be got for money; and you come back to me.’

‘But, my dear Bella--’

‘Take care, Pa!’ pointing her forefinger at him, merrily. ‘You have
promised and vowed. It’s perjury, you know.’

There was water in the foolish little fellow’s eyes, but she kissed them
dry (though her own were wet), and he bobbed away again. After half an
hour, he came back, so brilliantly transformed, that Bella was obliged
to walk round him in ecstatic admiration twenty times, before she could
draw her arm through his, and delightedly squeeze it.

‘Now, Pa,’ said Bella, hugging him close, ‘take this lovely woman out to
dinner.’

‘Where shall we go, my dear?’

‘Greenwich!’ said Bella, valiantly. ‘And be sure you treat this lovely
woman with everything of the best.’

While they were going along to take boat, ‘Don’t you wish, my dear,’
said R. W., timidly, ‘that your mother was here?’

‘No, I don’t, Pa, for I like to have you all to myself to-day. I was
always your little favourite at home, and you were always mine. We have
run away together often, before now; haven’t we, Pa?’

‘Ah, to be sure we have! Many a Sunday when your mother was--was a
little liable to it,’ repeating his former delicate expression after
pausing to cough.

‘Yes, and I am afraid I was seldom or never as good as I ought to have
been, Pa. I made you carry me, over and over again, when you should
have made me walk; and I often drove you in harness, when you would much
rather have sat down and read your news-paper: didn’t I?’

‘Sometimes, sometimes. But Lor, what a child you were! What a companion
you were!’

‘Companion? That’s just what I want to be to-day, Pa.’

‘You are safe to succeed, my love. Your brothers and sisters have all
in their turns been companions to me, to a certain extent, but only to a
certain extent. Your mother has, throughout life, been a companion that
any man might--might look up to--and--and commit the sayings of, to
memory--and--form himself upon--if he--’

‘If he liked the model?’ suggested Bella.

‘We-ell, ye-es,’ he returned, thinking about it, not quite satisfied
with the phrase: ‘or perhaps I might say, if it was in him. Supposing,
for instance, that a man wanted to be always marching, he would find
your mother an inestimable companion. But if he had any taste for
walking, or should wish at any time to break into a trot, he might
sometimes find it a little difficult to keep step with your mother.
Or take it this way, Bella,’ he added, after a moment’s reflection;
‘Supposing that a man had to go through life, we won’t say with a
companion, but we’ll say to a tune. Very good. Supposing that the tune
allotted to him was the Dead March in Saul. Well. It would be a very
suitable tune for particular occasions--none better--but it would
be difficult to keep time with in the ordinary run of domestic
transactions. For instance, if he took his supper after a hard day, to
the Dead March in Saul, his food might be likely to sit heavy on him.
Or, if he was at any time inclined to relieve his mind by singing a
comic song or dancing a hornpipe, and was obliged to do it to the Dead
March in Saul, he might find himself put out in the execution of his
lively intentions.’

‘Poor Pa!’ thought Bella, as she hung upon his arm.

‘Now, what I will say for you, my dear,’ the cherub pursued mildly and
without a notion of complaining, ‘is, that you are so adaptable. So
adaptable.’

‘Indeed I am afraid I have shown a wretched temper, Pa. I am afraid
I have been very complaining, and very capricious. I seldom or never
thought of it before. But when I sat in the carriage just now and saw
you coming along the pavement, I reproached myself.’

‘Not at all, my dear. Don’t speak of such a thing.’

A happy and a chatty man was Pa in his new clothes that day. Take it
for all in all, it was perhaps the happiest day he had ever known in his
life; not even excepting that on which his heroic partner had approached
the nuptial altar to the tune of the Dead March in Saul.

The little expedition down the river was delightful, and the little
room overlooking the river into which they were shown for dinner was
delightful. Everything was delightful. The park was delightful, the
punch was delightful, the dishes of fish were delightful, the wine
was delightful. Bella was more delightful than any other item in the
festival; drawing Pa out in the gayest manner; making a point of always
mentioning herself as the lovely woman; stimulating Pa to order things,
by declaring that the lovely woman insisted on being treated with them;
and in short causing Pa to be quite enraptured with the consideration
that he WAS the Pa of such a charming daughter.

And then, as they sat looking at the ships and steamboats making their
way to the sea with the tide that was running down, the lovely woman
imagined all sorts of voyages for herself and Pa. Now, Pa, in the
character of owner of a lumbering square-sailed collier, was tacking
away to Newcastle, to fetch black diamonds to make his fortune with;
now, Pa was going to China in that handsome threemasted ship, to bring
home opium, with which he would for ever cut out Chicksey Veneering
and Stobbles, and to bring home silks and shawls without end for the
decoration of his charming daughter. Now, John Harmon’s disastrous fate
was all a dream, and he had come home and found the lovely woman just
the article for him, and the lovely woman had found him just the article
for her, and they were going away on a trip, in their gallant bark,
to look after their vines, with streamers flying at all points, a band
playing on deck and Pa established in the great cabin. Now, John Harmon
was consigned to his grave again, and a merchant of immense wealth
(name unknown) had courted and married the lovely woman, and he was
so enormously rich that everything you saw upon the river sailing or
steaming belonged to him, and he kept a perfect fleet of yachts for
pleasure, and that little impudent yacht which you saw over there, with
the great white sail, was called The Bella, in honour of his wife, and
she held her state aboard when it pleased her, like a modern Cleopatra.
Anon, there would embark in that troop-ship when she got to Gravesend, a
mighty general, of large property (name also unknown), who wouldn’t
hear of going to victory without his wife, and whose wife was the lovely
woman, and she was destined to become the idol of all the red coats and
blue jackets alow and aloft. And then again: you saw that ship being
towed out by a steam-tug? Well! where did you suppose she was going to?
She was going among the coral reefs and cocoa-nuts and all that sort of
thing, and she was chartered for a fortunate individual of the name
of Pa (himself on board, and much respected by all hands), and she
was going, for his sole profit and advantage, to fetch a cargo of
sweet-smelling woods, the most beautiful that ever were seen, and the
most profitable that ever were heard of; and her cargo would be a great
fortune, as indeed it ought to be: the lovely woman who had purchased
her and fitted her expressly for this voyage, being married to an Indian
Prince, who was a Something-or-Other, and who wore Cashmere shawls all
over himself and diamonds and emeralds blazing in his turban, and was
beautifully coffee-coloured and excessively devoted, though a little too
jealous. Thus Bella ran on merrily, in a manner perfectly enchanting to
Pa, who was as willing to put his head into the Sultan’s tub of water as
the beggar-boys below the window were to put THEIR heads in the mud.

‘I suppose, my dear,’ said Pa after dinner, ‘we may come to the
conclusion at home, that we have lost you for good?’

Bella shook her head. Didn’t know. Couldn’t say. All she was able to
report was, that she was most handsomely supplied with everything she
could possibly want, and that whenever she hinted at leaving Mr and Mrs
Boffin, they wouldn’t hear of it.

‘And now, Pa,’ pursued Bella, ‘I’ll make a confession to you. I am the
most mercenary little wretch that ever lived in the world.’

‘I should hardly have thought it of you, my dear,’ returned her father,
first glancing at himself; and then at the dessert.

‘I understand what you mean, Pa, but it’s not that. It’s not that I care
for money to keep as money, but I do care so much for what it will buy!’

‘Really I think most of us do,’ returned R. W.

‘But not to the dreadful extent that I do, Pa. O-o!’ cried Bella,
screwing the exclamation out of herself with a twist of her dimpled
chin. ‘I AM so mercenary!’

With a wistful glance R. W. said, in default of having anything better
to say: ‘About when did you begin to feel it coming on, my dear?’

‘That’s it, Pa. That’s the terrible part of it. When I was at home, and
only knew what it was to be poor, I grumbled but didn’t so much mind.
When I was at home expecting to be rich, I thought vaguely of all the
great things I would do. But when I had been disappointed of my splendid
fortune, and came to see it from day to day in other hands, and to have
before my eyes what it could really do, then I became the mercenary
little wretch I am.’

‘It’s your fancy, my dear.’

‘I can assure you it’s nothing of the sort, Pa!’ said Bella, nodding at
him, with her very pretty eyebrows raised as high as they would go, and
looking comically frightened. ‘It’s a fact. I am always avariciously
scheming.’

‘Lor! But how?’

‘I’ll tell you, Pa. I don’t mind telling YOU, because we have always
been favourites of each other’s, and because you are not like a Pa, but
more like a sort of a younger brother with a dear venerable chubbiness
on him. And besides,’ added Bella, laughing as she pointed a rallying
finger at his face, ‘because I have got you in my power. This is a
secret expedition. If ever you tell of me, I’ll tell of you. I’ll tell
Ma that you dined at Greenwich.’

‘Well; seriously, my dear,’ observed R. W., with some trepidation of
manner, ‘it might be as well not to mention it.’

‘Aha!’ laughed Bella. ‘I knew you wouldn’t like it, sir! So you keep my
confidence, and I’ll keep yours. But betray the lovely woman, and you
shall find her a serpent. Now, you may give me a kiss, Pa, and I should
like to give your hair a turn, because it has been dreadfully neglected
in my absence.’

R. W. submitted his head to the operator, and the operator went on
talking; at the same time putting separate locks of his hair through
a curious process of being smartly rolled over her two revolving
forefingers, which were then suddenly pulled out of it in opposite
lateral directions. On each of these occasions the patient winced and
winked.

‘I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can’t
beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry
it.’

R. W. cast up his eyes towards her, as well as he could under the
operating circumstances, and said in a tone of remonstrance, ‘My de-ar
Bella!’

‘Have resolved, I say, Pa, that to get money I must marry money. In
consequence of which, I am always looking out for money to captivate.’

‘My de-a-r Bella!’

‘Yes, Pa, that is the state of the case. If ever there was a mercenary
plotter whose thoughts and designs were always in her mean occupation, I
am the amiable creature. But I don’t care. I hate and detest being
poor, and I won’t be poor if I can marry money. Now you are deliciously
fluffy, Pa, and in a state to astonish the waiter and pay the bill.’

‘But, my dear Bella, this is quite alarming at your age.’

‘I told you so, Pa, but you wouldn’t believe it,’ returned Bella, with a
pleasant childish gravity. ‘Isn’t it shocking?’

‘It would be quite so, if you fully knew what you said, my dear, or
meant it.’

‘Well, Pa, I can only tell you that I mean nothing else. Talk to me of
love!’ said Bella, contemptuously: though her face and figure certainly
rendered the subject no incongruous one. ‘Talk to me of fiery dragons!
But talk to me of poverty and wealth, and there indeed we touch upon
realities.’

‘My De-ar, this is becoming Awful--’ her father was emphatically
beginning: when she stopped him.

‘Pa, tell me. Did you marry money?’

‘You know I didn’t, my dear.’

Bella hummed the Dead March in Saul, and said, after all it signified
very little! But seeing him look grave and downcast, she took him round
the neck and kissed him back to cheerfulness again.

‘I didn’t mean that last touch, Pa; it was only said in joke. Now mind!
You are not to tell of me, and I’ll not tell of you. And more than that;
I promise to have no secrets from you, Pa, and you may make certain
that, whatever mercenary things go on, I shall always tell you all about
them in strict confidence.’

Fain to be satisfied with this concession from the lovely woman, R. W.
rang the bell, and paid the bill. ‘Now, all the rest of this, Pa,’ said
Bella, rolling up the purse when they were alone again, hammering it
small with her little fist on the table, and cramming it into one of the
pockets of his new waistcoat, ‘is for you, to buy presents with for them
at home, and to pay bills with, and to divide as you like, and spend
exactly as you think proper. Last of all take notice, Pa, that it’s
not the fruit of any avaricious scheme. Perhaps if it was, your little
mercenary wretch of a daughter wouldn’t make so free with it!’

After which, she tugged at his coat with both hands, and pulled him all
askew in buttoning that garment over the precious waistcoat pocket, and
then tied her dimples into her bonnet-strings in a very knowing way, and
took him back to London. Arrived at Mr Boffin’s door, she set him with
his back against it, tenderly took him by the ears as convenient handles
for her purpose, and kissed him until he knocked muffled double knocks
at the door with the back of his head. That done, she once more reminded
him of their compact and gaily parted from him.

Not so gaily, however, but that tears filled her eyes as he went away
down the dark street. Not so gaily, but that she several times said,
‘Ah, poor little Pa! Ah, poor dear struggling shabby little Pa!’
before she took heart to knock at the door. Not so gaily, but that the
brilliant furniture seemed to stare her out of countenance as if it
insisted on being compared with the dingy furniture at home. Not so
gaily, but that she fell into very low spirits sitting late in her own
room, and very heartily wept, as she wished, now that the deceased old
John Harmon had never made a will about her, now that the deceased young
John Harmon had lived to marry her. ‘Contradictory things to wish,’ said
Bella, ‘but my life and fortunes are so contradictory altogether that
what can I expect myself to be!’



Chapter 9

IN WHICH THE ORPHAN MAKES HIS WILL


The Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was
informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy.
The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause
before uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his
reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had
the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have
spared the feelings of him the bearer.

‘Mrs Boffin will be very well pleased,’ said the Secretary in a
perfectly composed way. ‘Show him in.’

Mr Sloppy being introduced, remained close to the door: revealing
in various parts of his form many surprising, confounding, and
incomprehensible buttons.

‘I am glad to see you,’ said John Rokesmith, in a cheerful tone of
welcome. ‘I have been expecting you.’

Sloppy explained that he had meant to come before, but that the Orphan
(of whom he made mention as Our Johnny) had been ailing, and he had
waited to report him well.

‘Then he is well now?’ said the Secretary.

‘No he ain’t,’ said Sloppy.

Mr Sloppy having shaken his head to a considerable extent, proceeded
to remark that he thought Johnny ‘must have took ‘em from the Minders.’
Being asked what he meant, he answered, them that come out upon him and
partickler his chest. Being requested to explain himself, he stated that
there was some of ‘em wot you couldn’t kiver with a sixpence. Pressed to
fall back upon a nominative case, he opined that they wos about as
red as ever red could be. ‘But as long as they strikes out’ards, sir,’
continued Sloppy, ‘they ain’t so much. It’s their striking in’ards
that’s to be kep off.’

John Rokesmith hoped the child had had medical attendance? Oh yes, said
Sloppy, he had been took to the doctor’s shop once. And what did the
doctor call it? Rokesmith asked him. After some perplexed reflection,
Sloppy answered, brightening, ‘He called it something as wos wery
long for spots.’ Rokesmith suggested measles. ‘No,’ said Sloppy with
confidence, ‘ever so much longer than THEM, sir!’ (Mr Sloppy was
elevated by this fact, and seemed to consider that it reflected credit
on the poor little patient.)

‘Mrs Boffin will be sorry to hear this,’ said Rokesmith.

‘Mrs Higden said so, sir, when she kep it from her, hoping as Our Johnny
would work round.’

‘But I hope he will?’ said Rokesmith, with a quick turn upon the
messenger.

‘I hope so,’ answered Sloppy. ‘It all depends on their striking
in’ards.’ He then went on to say that whether Johnny had ‘took ‘em’
from the Minders, or whether the Minders had ‘took em from Johnny,
the Minders had been sent home and had ‘got em. Furthermore, that Mrs
Higden’s days and nights being devoted to Our Johnny, who was never out
of her lap, the whole of the mangling arrangements had devolved upon
himself, and he had had ‘rayther a tight time’. The ungainly piece of
honesty beamed and blushed as he said it, quite enraptured with the
remembrance of having been serviceable.

‘Last night,’ said Sloppy, ‘when I was a-turning at the wheel pretty
late, the mangle seemed to go like Our Johnny’s breathing. It begun
beautiful, then as it went out it shook a little and got unsteady, then
as it took the turn to come home it had a rattle-like and lumbered a
bit, then it come smooth, and so it went on till I scarce know’d which
was mangle and which was Our Johnny. Nor Our Johnny, he scarce know’d
either, for sometimes when the mangle lumbers he says, “Me choking,
Granny!” and Mrs Higden holds him up in her lap and says to me “Bide a
bit, Sloppy,” and we all stops together. And when Our Johnny gets his
breathing again, I turns again, and we all goes on together.’

Sloppy had gradually expanded with his description into a stare and a
vacant grin. He now contracted, being silent, into a half-repressed gush
of tears, and, under pretence of being heated, drew the under part of
his sleeve across his eyes with a singularly awkward, laborious, and
roundabout smear.

‘This is unfortunate,’ said Rokesmith. ‘I must go and break it to Mrs
Boffin. Stay you here, Sloppy.’

Sloppy stayed there, staring at the pattern of the paper on the wall,
until the Secretary and Mrs Boffin came back together. And with Mrs
Boffin was a young lady (Miss Bella Wilfer by name) who was better worth
staring at, it occurred to Sloppy, than the best of wall-papering.

‘Ah, my poor dear pretty little John Harmon!’ exclaimed Mrs Boffin.

‘Yes mum,’ said the sympathetic Sloppy.

‘You don’t think he is in a very, very bad way, do you?’ asked the
pleasant creature with her wholesome cordiality.

Put upon his good faith, and finding it in collision with his
inclinations, Sloppy threw back his head and uttered a mellifluous howl,
rounded off with a sniff.

‘So bad as that!’ cried Mrs Boffin. ‘And Betty Higden not to tell me of
it sooner!’

‘I think she might have been mistrustful, mum,’ answered Sloppy,
hesitating.

‘Of what, for Heaven’s sake?’

‘I think she might have been mistrustful, mum,’ returned Sloppy with
submission, ‘of standing in Our Johnny’s light. There’s so much trouble
in illness, and so much expense, and she’s seen such a lot of its being
objected to.’

‘But she never can have thought,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘that I would grudge
the dear child anything?’

‘No mum, but she might have thought (as a habit-like) of its standing
in Johnny’s light, and might have tried to bring him through it
unbeknownst.’

Sloppy knew his ground well. To conceal herself in sickness, like a
lower animal; to creep out of sight and coil herself away and die; had
become this woman’s instinct. To catch up in her arms the sick child who
was dear to her, and hide it as if it were a criminal, and keep off all
ministration but such as her own ignorant tenderness and patience could
supply, had become this woman’s idea of maternal love, fidelity, and
duty. The shameful accounts we read, every week in the Christian year,
my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, the infamous records of
small official inhumanity, do not pass by the people as they pass by
us. And hence these irrational, blind, and obstinate prejudices, so
astonishing to our magnificence, and having no more reason in them--God
save the Queen and Confound their politics--no, than smoke has in coming
from fire!

‘It’s not a right place for the poor child to stay in,’ said Mrs Boffin.
‘Tell us, dear Mr Rokesmith, what to do for the best.’

He had already thought what to do, and the consultation was very short.
He could pave the way, he said, in half an hour, and then they would go
down to Brentford. ‘Pray take me,’ said Bella. Therefore a carriage was
ordered, of capacity to take them all, and in the meantime Sloppy
was regaled, feasting alone in the Secretary’s room, with a complete
realization of that fairy vision--meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding.
In consequence of which his buttons became more importunate of public
notice than before, with the exception of two or three about the region
of the waistband, which modestly withdrew into a creasy retirement.

Punctual to the time, appeared the carriage and the Secretary. He sat
on the box, and Mr Sloppy graced the rumble. So, to the Three Magpies as
before: where Mrs Boffin and Miss Bella were handed out, and whence they
all went on foot to Mrs Betty Higden’s.

But, on the way down, they had stopped at a toy-shop, and had bought
that noble charger, a description of whose points and trappings had on
the last occasion conciliated the then worldly-minded orphan, and also a
Noah’s ark, and also a yellow bird with an artificial voice in him,
and also a military doll so well dressed that if he had only been of
life-size his brother-officers in the Guards might never have found him
out. Bearing these gifts, they raised the latch of Betty Higden’s door,
and saw her sitting in the dimmest and furthest corner with poor Johnny
in her lap.

‘And how’s my boy, Betty?’ asked Mrs Boffin, sitting down beside her.

‘He’s bad! He’s bad!’ said Betty. ‘I begin to be afeerd he’ll not be
yours any more than mine. All others belonging to him have gone to
the Power and the Glory, and I have a mind that they’re drawing him to
them--leading him away.’

‘No, no, no,’ said Mrs Boffin.

‘I don’t know why else he clenches his little hand as if it had hold of
a finger that I can’t see. Look at it,’ said Betty, opening the wrappers
in which the flushed child lay, and showing his small right hand lying
closed upon his breast. ‘It’s always so. It don’t mind me.’

‘Is he asleep?’

‘No, I think not. You’re not asleep, my Johnny?’

‘No,’ said Johnny, with a quiet air of pity for himself; and without
opening his eyes.

‘Here’s the lady, Johnny. And the horse.’

Johnny could bear the lady, with complete indifference, but not the
horse. Opening his heavy eyes, he slowly broke into a smile on beholding
that splendid phenomenon, and wanted to take it in his arms. As it was
much too big, it was put upon a chair where he could hold it by the mane
and contemplate it. Which he soon forgot to do.

But, Johnny murmuring something with his eyes closed, and Mrs Boffin
not knowing what, old Betty bent her ear to listen and took pains to
understand. Being asked by her to repeat what he had said, he did so two
or three times, and then it came out that he must have seen more than
they supposed when he looked up to see the horse, for the murmur was,
‘Who is the boofer lady?’ Now, the boofer, or beautiful, lady was Bella;
and whereas this notice from the poor baby would have touched her of
itself; it was rendered more pathetic by the late melting of her heart
to her poor little father, and their joke about the lovely woman. So,
Bella’s behaviour was very tender and very natural when she kneeled on
the brick floor to clasp the child, and when the child, with a child’s
admiration of what is young and pretty, fondled the boofer lady.

‘Now, my good dear Betty,’ said Mrs Boffin, hoping that she saw her
opportunity, and laying her hand persuasively on her arm; ‘we have come
to remove Johnny from this cottage to where he can be taken better care
of.’

Instantly, and before another word could be spoken, the old woman
started up with blazing eyes, and rushed at the door with the sick
child.

‘Stand away from me every one of ye!’ she cried out wildly. ‘I see what
ye mean now. Let me go my way, all of ye. I’d sooner kill the Pretty,
and kill myself!’

‘Stay, stay!’ said Rokesmith, soothing her. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘I understand too well. I know too much about it, sir. I’ve run from
it too many a year. No! Never for me, nor for the child, while there’s
water enough in England to cover us!’

The terror, the shame, the passion of horror and repugnance, firing the
worn face and perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite terrible
sight, if embodied in one old fellow-creature alone. Yet it ‘crops
up’--as our slang goes--my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, in
other fellow-creatures, rather frequently!

‘It’s been chasing me all my life, but it shall never take me nor mine
alive!’ cried old Betty. ‘I’ve done with ye. I’d have fastened door and
window and starved out, afore I’d ever have let ye in, if I had known
what ye came for!’

But, catching sight of Mrs Boffin’s wholesome face, she relented, and
crouching down by the door and bending over her burden to hush it, said
humbly: ‘Maybe my fears has put me wrong. If they have so, tell me, and
the good Lord forgive me! I’m quick to take this fright, I know, and my
head is summ’at light with wearying and watching.’

‘There, there, there!’ returned Mrs Boffin. ‘Come, come! Say no more of
it, Betty. It was a mistake, a mistake. Any one of us might have made it
in your place, and felt just as you do.’

‘The Lord bless ye!’ said the old woman, stretching out her hand.

‘Now, see, Betty,’ pursued the sweet compassionate soul, holding the
hand kindly, ‘what I really did mean, and what I should have begun by
saying out, if I had only been a little wiser and handier. We want to
move Johnny to a place where there are none but children; a place set
up on purpose for sick children; where the good doctors and nurses pass
their lives with children, talk to none but children, touch none but
children, comfort and cure none but children.’

‘Is there really such a place?’ asked the old woman, with a gaze of
wonder.

‘Yes, Betty, on my word, and you shall see it. If my home was a better
place for the dear boy, I’d take him to it; but indeed indeed it’s not.’

‘You shall take him,’ returned Betty, fervently kissing the comforting
hand, ‘where you will, my deary. I am not so hard, but that I believe
your face and voice, and I will, as long as I can see and hear.’

This victory gained, Rokesmith made haste to profit by it, for he saw
how woefully time had been lost. He despatched Sloppy to bring the
carriage to the door; caused the child to be carefully wrapped up; bade
old Betty get her bonnet on; collected the toys, enabling the little
fellow to comprehend that his treasures were to be transported with
him; and had all things prepared so easily that they were ready for
the carriage as soon as it appeared, and in a minute afterwards were
on their way. Sloppy they left behind, relieving his overcharged breast
with a paroxysm of mangling.

At the Children’s Hospital, the gallant steed, the Noah’s ark, yellow
bird, and the officer in the Guards, were made as welcome as their
child-owner. But the doctor said aside to Rokesmith, ‘This should have
been days ago. Too late!’

However, they were all carried up into a fresh airy room, and there
Johnny came to himself, out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever it was,
to find himself lying in a little quiet bed, with a little platform over
his breast, on which were already arranged, to give him heart and urge
him to cheer up, the Noah’s ark, the noble steed, and the yellow bird;
with the officer in the Guards doing duty over the whole, quite as much
to the satisfaction of his country as if he had been upon Parade. And at
the bed’s head was a coloured picture beautiful to see, representing as
it were another Johnny seated on the knee of some Angel surely who loved
little children. And, marvellous fact, to lie and stare at: Johnny had
become one of a little family, all in little quiet beds (except two
playing dominoes in little arm-chairs at a little table on the hearth):
and on all the little beds were little platforms whereon were to be
seen dolls’ houses, woolly dogs with mechanical barks in them not very
dissimilar from the artificial voice pervading the bowels of the yellow
bird, tin armies, Moorish tumblers, wooden tea things, and the riches of
the earth.

As Johnny murmured something in his placid admiration, the ministering
women at his bed’s head asked him what he said. It seemed that he wanted
to know whether all these were brothers and sisters of his? So they told
him yes. It seemed then, that he wanted to know whether God had brought
them all together there? So they told him yes again. They made out then,
that he wanted to know whether they would all get out of pain? So they
answered yes to that question likewise, and made him understand that the
reply included himself.

Johnny’s powers of sustaining conversation were as yet so very
imperfectly developed, even in a state of health, that in sickness they
were little more than monosyllabic. But, he had to be washed and tended,
and remedies were applied, and though those offices were far, far more
skilfully and lightly done than ever anything had been done for him in
his little life, so rough and short, they would have hurt and tired him
but for an amazing circumstance which laid hold of his attention. This
was no less than the appearance on his own little platform in pairs,
of All Creation, on its way into his own particular ark: the elephant
leading, and the fly, with a diffident sense of his size, politely
bringing up the rear. A very little brother lying in the next bed with a
broken leg, was so enchanted by this spectacle that his delight exalted
its enthralling interest; and so came rest and sleep.

‘I see you are not afraid to leave the dear child here, Betty,’
whispered Mrs Boffin.

‘No, ma’am. Most willingly, most thankfully, with all my heart and
soul.’

So, they kissed him, and left him there, and old Betty was to come back
early in the morning, and nobody but Rokesmith knew for certain how that
the doctor had said, ‘This should have been days ago. Too late!’

But, Rokesmith knowing it, and knowing that his bearing it in mind would
be acceptable thereafter to that good woman who had been the only light
in the childhood of desolate John Harmon dead and gone, resolved that
late at night he would go back to the bedside of John Harmon’s namesake,
and see how it fared with him.

The family whom God had brought together were not all asleep, but were
all quiet. From bed to bed, a light womanly tread and a pleasant fresh
face passed in the silence of the night. A little head would lift itself
up into the softened light here and there, to be kissed as the face went
by--for these little patients are very loving--and would then submit
itself to be composed to rest again. The mite with the broken leg was
restless, and moaned; but after a while turned his face towards Johnny’s
bed, to fortify himself with a view of the ark, and fell asleep. Over
most of the beds, the toys were yet grouped as the children had left
them when they last laid themselves down, and, in their innocent
grotesqueness and incongruity, they might have stood for the children’s
dreams.

The doctor came in too, to see how it fared with Johnny. And he and
Rokesmith stood together, looking down with compassion on him.

‘What is it, Johnny?’ Rokesmith was the questioner, and put an arm round
the poor baby as he made a struggle.

‘Him!’ said the little fellow. ‘Those!’

The doctor was quick to understand children, and, taking the horse,
the ark, the yellow bird, and the man in the Guards, from Johnny’s bed,
softly placed them on that of his next neighbour, the mite with the
broken leg.

With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an action as if he
stretched his little figure out to rest, the child heaved his body on
the sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith’s face with his lips, said:

‘A kiss for the boofer lady.’

Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose of, and arranged his affairs
in this world, Johnny, thus speaking, left it.



Chapter 10

A SUCCESSOR


Some of the Reverend Frank Milvey’s brethren had found themselves
exceedingly uncomfortable in their minds, because they were required to
bury the dead too hopefully. But, the Reverend Frank, inclining to the
belief that they were required to do one or two other things (say out of
nine-and-thirty) calculated to trouble their consciences rather more if
they would think as much about them, held his peace.

Indeed, the Reverend Frank Milvey was a forbearing man, who noticed many
sad warps and blights in the vineyard wherein he worked, and did not
profess that they made him savagely wise. He only learned that the more
he himself knew, in his little limited human way, the better he could
distantly imagine what Omniscience might know.

Wherefore, if the Reverend Frank had had to read the words that troubled
some of his brethren, and profitably touched innumerable hearts, in
a worse case than Johnny’s, he would have done so out of the pity and
humility of his soul. Reading them over Johnny, he thought of his own
six children, but not of his poverty, and read them with dimmed eyes.
And very seriously did he and his bright little wife, who had been
listening, look down into the small grave and walk home arm-in-arm.

There was grief in the aristocratic house, and there was joy in the
Bower. Mr Wegg argued, if an orphan were wanted, was he not an orphan
himself; and could a better be desired? And why go beating about
Brentford bushes, seeking orphans forsooth who had established no claims
upon you and made no sacrifices for you, when here was an orphan ready
to your hand who had given up in your cause, Miss Elizabeth, Master
George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker?

Mr Wegg chuckled, consequently, when he heard the tidings. Nay, it was
afterwards affirmed by a witness who shall at present be nameless,
that in the seclusion of the Bower he poked out his wooden leg, in the
stage-ballet manner, and executed a taunting or triumphant pirouette on
the genuine leg remaining to him.

John Rokesmith’s manner towards Mrs Boffin at this time, was more the
manner of a young man towards a mother, than that of a Secretary towards
his employer’s wife. It had always been marked by a subdued affectionate
deference that seemed to have sprung up on the very day of his
engagement; whatever was odd in her dress or her ways had seemed to have
no oddity for him; he had sometimes borne a quietly-amused face in her
company, but still it had seemed as if the pleasure her genial temper
and radiant nature yielded him, could have been quite as naturally
expressed in a tear as in a smile. The completeness of his sympathy with
her fancy for having a little John Harmon to protect and rear, he
had shown in every act and word, and now that the kind fancy was
disappointed, he treated it with a manly tenderness and respect for
which she could hardly thank him enough.

‘But I do thank you, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘and I thank you
most kindly. You love children.’

‘I hope everybody does.’

‘They ought,’ said Mrs Boffin; ‘but we don’t all of us do what we ought,
do us?’

John Rokesmith replied, ‘Some among us supply the short-comings of the
rest. You have loved children well, Mr Boffin has told me.’

‘Not a bit better than he has, but that’s his way; he puts all the good
upon me. You speak rather sadly, Mr Rokesmith.’

‘Do I?’

‘It sounds to me so. Were you one of many children?’ He shook his head.

‘An only child?’

‘No there was another. Dead long ago.’

‘Father or mother alive?’

‘Dead.’--

‘And the rest of your relations?’

‘Dead--if I ever had any living. I never heard of any.’

At this point of the dialogue Bella came in with a light step. She
paused at the door a moment, hesitating whether to remain or retire;
perplexed by finding that she was not observed.

‘Now, don’t mind an old lady’s talk,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘but tell me. Are
you quite sure, Mr Rokesmith, that you have never had a disappointment
in love?’

‘Quite sure. Why do you ask me?’

‘Why, for this reason. Sometimes you have a kind of kept-down manner
with you, which is not like your age. You can’t be thirty?’

‘I am not yet thirty.’

Deeming it high time to make her presence known, Bella coughed here to
attract attention, begged pardon, and said she would go, fearing that
she interrupted some matter of business.

‘No, don’t go,’ rejoined Mrs Boffin, ‘because we are coming to business,
instead of having begun it, and you belong to it as much now, my dear
Bella, as I do. But I want my Noddy to consult with us. Would somebody
be so good as find my Noddy for me?’

Rokesmith departed on that errand, and presently returned accompanied by
Mr Boffin at his jog-trot. Bella felt a little vague trepidation as to
the subject-matter of this same consultation, until Mrs Boffin announced
it.

‘Now, you come and sit by me, my dear,’ said that worthy soul, taking
her comfortable place on a large ottoman in the centre of the room,
and drawing her arm through Bella’s; ‘and Noddy, you sit here, and Mr
Rokesmith you sit there. Now, you see, what I want to talk about, is
this. Mr and Mrs Milvey have sent me the kindest note possible (which
Mr Rokesmith just now read to me out aloud, for I ain’t good at
handwritings), offering to find me another little child to name and
educate and bring up. Well. This has set me thinking.’

[‘And she is a steam-ingein at it,’ murmured Mr Boffin, in an admiring
parenthesis, ‘when she once begins. It mayn’t be so easy to start her;
but once started, she’s a ingein.’)

‘--This has set me thinking, I say,’ repeated Mrs Boffin, cordially
beaming under the influence of her husband’s compliment, ‘and I have
thought two things. First of all, that I have grown timid of reviving
John Harmon’s name. It’s an unfortunate name, and I fancy I should
reproach myself if I gave it to another dear child, and it proved again
unlucky.’

‘Now, whether,’ said Mr Boffin, gravely propounding a case for his
Secretary’s opinion; ‘whether one might call that a superstition?’

‘It is a matter of feeling with Mrs Boffin,’ said Rokesmith, gently.
‘The name has always been unfortunate. It has now this new unfortunate
association connected with it. The name has died out. Why revive it?
Might I ask Miss Wilfer what she thinks?’

‘It has not been a fortunate name for me,’ said Bella, colouring--‘or
at least it was not, until it led to my being here--but that is not the
point in my thoughts. As we had given the name to the poor child, and as
the poor child took so lovingly to me, I think I should feel jealous of
calling another child by it. I think I should feel as if the name had
become endeared to me, and I had no right to use it so.’

‘And that’s your opinion?’ remarked Mr Boffin, observant of the
Secretary’s face and again addressing him.

‘I say again, it is a matter of feeling,’ returned the Secretary. ‘I
think Miss Wilfer’s feeling very womanly and pretty.’

‘Now, give us your opinion, Noddy,’ said Mrs Boffin.

‘My opinion, old lady,’ returned the Golden Dustman, ‘is your opinion.’

‘Then,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘we agree not to revive John Harmon’s name, but
to let it rest in the grave. It is, as Mr Rokesmith says, a matter of
feeling, but Lor how many matters ARE matters of feeling! Well; and so
I come to the second thing I have thought of. You must know, Bella,
my dear, and Mr Rokesmith, that when I first named to my husband my
thoughts of adopting a little orphan boy in remembrance of John Harmon,
I further named to my husband that it was comforting to think that how
the poor boy would be benefited by John’s own money, and protected from
John’s own forlornness.’

‘Hear, hear!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘So she did. Ancoar!’

‘No, not Ancoar, Noddy, my dear,’ returned Mrs Boffin, ‘because I am
going to say something else. I meant that, I am sure, as much as
I still mean it. But this little death has made me ask myself the
question, seriously, whether I wasn’t too bent upon pleasing myself.
Else why did I seek out so much for a pretty child, and a child quite to
my liking? Wanting to do good, why not do it for its own sake, and put
my tastes and likings by?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Bella; and perhaps she said it with some little
sensitiveness arising out of those old curious relations of hers towards
the murdered man; ‘perhaps, in reviving the name, you would not have
liked to give it to a less interesting child than the original. He
interested you very much.’

‘Well, my dear,’ returned Mrs Boffin, giving her a squeeze, ‘it’s kind
of you to find that reason out, and I hope it may have been so, and
indeed to a certain extent I believe it was so, but I am afraid not to
the whole extent. However, that don’t come in question now, because we
have done with the name.’

‘Laid it up as a remembrance,’ suggested Bella, musingly.

‘Much better said, my dear; laid it up as a remembrance. Well then; I
have been thinking if I take any orphan to provide for, let it not be
a pet and a plaything for me, but a creature to be helped for its own
sake.’

‘Not pretty then?’ said Bella.

‘No,’ returned Mrs Boffin, stoutly.

‘Nor prepossessing then?’ said Bella.

‘No,’ returned Mrs Boffin. ‘Not necessarily so. That’s as it may happen.
A well-disposed boy comes in my way who may be even a little wanting in
such advantages for getting on in life, but is honest and industrious
and requires a helping hand and deserves it. If I am very much in
earnest and quite determined to be unselfish, let me take care of HIM.’

Here the footman whose feelings had been hurt on the former occasion,
appeared, and crossing to Rokesmith apologetically announced the
objectionable Sloppy.

The four members of Council looked at one another, and paused. ‘Shall he
be brought here, ma’am?’ asked Rokesmith.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Boffin. Whereupon the footman disappeared, reappeared
presenting Sloppy, and retired much disgusted.

The consideration of Mrs Boffin had clothed Mr Sloppy in a suit of
black, on which the tailor had received personal directions from
Rokesmith to expend the utmost cunning of his art, with a view to the
concealment of the cohering and sustaining buttons. But, so much
more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy’s form than the strongest
resources of tailoring science, that he now stood before the Council,
a perfect Argus in the way of buttons: shining and winking and gleaming
and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of bright metal, at the
dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had
furnished him with a hatband of wholesale capacity which was fluted
behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, and terminated in a black
bunch, from which the imagination shrunk discomfited and the reason
revolted. Some special powers with which his legs were endowed, had
already hitched up his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged them at
the knees; while similar gifts in his arms had raised his coat-sleeves
from his wrists and accumulated them at his elbows. Thus set forth, with
the additional embellishments of a very little tail to his coat, and a
yawning gulf at his waistband, Sloppy stood confessed.

‘And how is Betty, my good fellow?’ Mrs Boffin asked him.

‘Thankee, mum,’ said Sloppy, ‘she do pretty nicely, and sending her
dooty and many thanks for the tea and all faviours and wishing to know
the family’s healths.’

‘Have you just come, Sloppy?’

‘Yes, mum.’

‘Then you have not had your dinner yet?’

‘No, mum. But I mean to it. For I ain’t forgotten your handsome orders
that I was never to go away without having had a good ‘un off of meat
and beer and pudding--no: there was four of ‘em, for I reckoned ‘em
up when I had ‘em; meat one, beer two, vegetables three, and which was
four?--Why, pudding, HE was four!’ Here Sloppy threw his head back,
opened his mouth wide, and laughed rapturously.

‘How are the two poor little Minders?’ asked Mrs Boffin.

‘Striking right out, mum, and coming round beautiful.’

Mrs Boffin looked on the other three members of Council, and then said,
beckoning with her finger:

‘Sloppy.’

‘Yes, mum.’

‘Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here every day?’

‘Off of all four on ‘em, mum? O mum!’ Sloppy’s feelings obliged him to
squeeze his hat, and contract one leg at the knee.

‘Yes. And should you like to be always taken care of here, if you were
industrious and deserving?’

‘Oh, mum!--But there’s Mrs Higden,’ said Sloppy, checking himself in his
raptures, drawing back, and shaking his head with very serious meaning.
‘There’s Mrs Higden. Mrs Higden goes before all. None can ever be better
friends to me than Mrs Higden’s been. And she must be turned for, must
Mrs Higden. Where would Mrs Higden be if she warn’t turned for!’ At the
mere thought of Mrs Higden in this inconceivable affliction, Mr Sloppy’s
countenance became pale, and manifested the most distressful emotions.

‘You are as right as right can be, Sloppy,’ said Mrs Boffin ‘and far be
it from me to tell you otherwise. It shall be seen to. If Betty Higden
can be turned for all the same, you shall come here and be taken care of
for life, and be made able to keep her in other ways than the turning.’

‘Even as to that, mum,’ answered the ecstatic Sloppy, ‘the turning might
be done in the night, don’t you see? I could be here in the day, and
turn in the night. I don’t want no sleep, I don’t. Or even if I any ways
should want a wink or two,’ added Sloppy, after a moment’s apologetic
reflection, ‘I could take ‘em turning. I’ve took ‘em turning many a
time, and enjoyed ‘em wonderful!’

On the grateful impulse of the moment, Mr Sloppy kissed Mrs Boffin’s
hand, and then detaching himself from that good creature that he might
have room enough for his feelings, threw back his head, opened his mouth
wide, and uttered a dismal howl. It was creditable to his tenderness of
heart, but suggested that he might on occasion give some offence to the
neighbours: the rather, as the footman looked in, and begged pardon,
finding he was not wanted, but excused himself; on the ground ‘that he
thought it was Cats.’



Chapter 11

SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART


Little Miss Peecher, from her little official dwelling-house, with its
little windows like the eyes in needles, and its little doors like the
covers of school-books, was very observant indeed of the object of her
quiet affections. Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is
a vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him on double duty over Mr
Bradley Headstone. It was not that she was naturally given to playing
the spy--it was not that she was at all secret, plotting, or mean--it
was simply that she loved the irresponsive Bradley with all the
primitive and homely stock of love that had never been examined or
certificated out of her. If her faithful slate had had the latent
qualities of sympathetic paper, and its pencil those of invisible ink,
many a little treatise calculated to astonish the pupils would have come
bursting through the dry sums in school-time under the warming influence
of Miss Peecher’s bosom. For, oftentimes when school was not, and her
calm leisure and calm little house were her own, Miss Peecher would
commit to the confidential slate an imaginary description of how, upon
a balmy evening at dusk, two figures might have been observed in the
market-garden ground round the corner, of whom one, being a manly form,
bent over the other, being a womanly form of short stature and some
compactness, and breathed in a low voice the words, ‘Emma Peecher, wilt
thou be my own?’ after which the womanly form’s head reposed upon the
manly form’s shoulder, and the nightingales tuned up. Though all unseen,
and unsuspected by the pupils, Bradley Headstone even pervaded the
school exercises. Was Geography in question? He would come triumphantly
flying out of Vesuvius and Aetna ahead of the lava, and would boil
unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland, and would float majestically
down the Ganges and the Nile. Did History chronicle a king of men?
Behold him in pepper-and-salt pantaloons, with his watch-guard round
his neck. Were copies to be written? In capital B’s and H’s most of the
girls under Miss Peecher’s tuition were half a year ahead of every other
letter in the alphabet. And Mental Arithmetic, administered by Miss
Peecher, often devoted itself to providing Bradley Headstone with a
wardrobe of fabulous extent: fourscore and four neck-ties at two and
ninepence-halfpenny, two gross of silver watches at four pounds fifteen
and sixpence, seventy-four black hats at eighteen shillings; and many
similar superfluities.

The vigilant watchman, using his daily opportunities of turning his eyes
in Bradley’s direction, soon apprized Miss Peecher that Bradley was more
preoccupied than had been his wont, and more given to strolling about
with a downcast and reserved face, turning something difficult in his
mind that was not in the scholastic syllabus. Putting this and that
together--combining under the head ‘this,’ present appearances and the
intimacy with Charley Hexam, and ranging under the head ‘that’ the
visit to his sister, the watchman reported to Miss Peecher his strong
suspicions that the sister was at the bottom of it.

‘I wonder,’ said Miss Peecher, as she sat making up her weekly report on
a half-holiday afternoon, ‘what they call Hexam’s sister?’

Mary Anne, at her needlework, attendant and attentive, held her arm up.

‘Well, Mary Anne?’

‘She is named Lizzie, ma’am.’

‘She can hardly be named Lizzie, I think, Mary Anne,’ returned Miss
Peecher, in a tunefully instructive voice. ‘Is Lizzie a Christian name,
Mary Anne?’

Mary Anne laid down her work, rose, hooked herself behind, as being
under catechization, and replied: ‘No, it is a corruption, Miss
Peecher.’

‘Who gave her that name?’ Miss Peecher was going on, from the mere force
of habit, when she checked herself; on Mary Anne’s evincing theological
impatience to strike in with her godfathers and her godmothers, and
said: ‘I mean of what name is it a corruption?’

‘Elizabeth, or Eliza, Miss Peecher.’

‘Right, Mary Anne. Whether there were any Lizzies in the early Christian
Church must be considered very doubtful, very doubtful.’ Miss Peecher
was exceedingly sage here. ‘Speaking correctly, we say, then, that
Hexam’s sister is called Lizzie; not that she is named so. Do we not,
Mary Anne?’

‘We do, Miss Peecher.’

‘And where,’ pursued Miss Peecher, complacent in her little transparent
fiction of conducting the examination in a semiofficial manner for Mary
Anne’s benefit, not her own, ‘where does this young woman, who is called
but not named Lizzie, live? Think, now, before answering.’

‘In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank, ma’am.’

‘In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,’ repeated Miss Peecher,
as if possessed beforehand of the book in which it was written. Exactly
so. And what occupation does this young woman pursue, Mary Anne? Take
time.’

‘She has a place of trust at an outfitter’s in the City, ma’am.’

‘Oh!’ said Miss Peecher, pondering on it; but smoothly added, in a
confirmatory tone, ‘At an outfitter’s in the City. Ye-es?’

‘And Charley--’ Mary Anne was proceeding, when Miss Peecher stared.

‘I mean Hexam, Miss Peecher.’

‘I should think you did, Mary Anne. I am glad to hear you do. And
Hexam--’

‘Says,’ Mary Anne went on, ‘that he is not pleased with his sister, and
that his sister won’t be guided by his advice, and persists in being
guided by somebody else’s; and that--’

‘Mr Headstone coming across the garden!’ exclaimed Miss Peecher, with a
flushed glance at the looking-glass. ‘You have answered very well, Mary
Anne. You are forming an excellent habit of arranging your thoughts
clearly. That will do.’

The discreet Mary Anne resumed her seat and her silence, and stitched,
and stitched, and was stitching when the schoolmaster’s shadow came in
before him, announcing that he might be instantly expected.

‘Good evening, Miss Peecher,’ he said, pursuing the shadow, and taking
its place.

‘Good evening, Mr Headstone. Mary Anne, a chair.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bradley, seating himself in his constrained manner.
‘This is but a flying visit. I have looked in, on my way, to ask a
kindness of you as a neighbour.’

‘Did you say on your way, Mr Headstone?’ asked Miss Peecher.

‘On my way to--where I am going.’

‘Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,’ repeated Miss Peecher, in
her own thoughts.

‘Charley Hexam has gone to get a book or two he wants, and will probably
be back before me. As we leave my house empty, I took the liberty of
telling him I would leave the key here. Would you kindly allow me to do
so?’

‘Certainly, Mr Headstone. Going for an evening walk, sir?’

‘Partly for a walk, and partly for--on business.’

‘Business in Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,’ repeated Miss
Peecher to herself.

‘Having said which,’ pursued Bradley, laying his door-key on the table,
‘I must be already going. There is nothing I can do for you, Miss
Peecher?’

‘Thank you, Mr Headstone. In which direction?’

‘In the direction of Westminster.’

‘Mill Bank,’ Miss Peecher repeated in her own thoughts once again. ‘No,
thank you, Mr Headstone; I’ll not trouble you.’

‘You couldn’t trouble me,’ said the schoolmaster.

‘Ah!’ returned Miss Peecher, though not aloud; ‘but you can trouble
ME!’ And for all her quiet manner, and her quiet smile, she was full of
trouble as he went his way.

She was right touching his destination. He held as straight a course
for the house of the dolls’ dressmaker as the wisdom of his ancestors,
exemplified in the construction of the intervening streets, would let
him, and walked with a bent head hammering at one fixed idea. It had
been an immoveable idea since he first set eyes upon her. It seemed to
him as if all that he could suppress in himself he had suppressed, as
if all that he could restrain in himself he had restrained, and the time
had come--in a rush, in a moment--when the power of self-command had
departed from him. Love at first sight is a trite expression quite
sufficiently discussed; enough that in certain smouldering natures like
this man’s, that passion leaps into a blaze, and makes such head as fire
does in a rage of wind, when other passions, but for its mastery, could
be held in chains. As a multitude of weak, imitative natures are
always lying by, ready to go mad upon the next wrong idea that may be
broached--in these times, generally some form of tribute to Somebody
for something that never was done, or, if ever done, that was done by
Somebody Else--so these less ordinary natures may lie by for years,
ready on the touch of an instant to burst into flame.

The schoolmaster went his way, brooding and brooding, and a sense of
being vanquished in a struggle might have been pieced out of his worried
face. Truly, in his breast there lingered a resentful shame to find
himself defeated by this passion for Charley Hexam’s sister, though in
the very self-same moments he was concentrating himself upon the object
of bringing the passion to a successful issue.

He appeared before the dolls’ dressmaker, sitting alone at her work.
‘Oho!’ thought that sharp young personage, ‘it’s you, is it? I know your
tricks and your manners, my friend!’

‘Hexam’s sister,’ said Bradley Headstone, ‘is not come home yet?’

‘You are quite a conjuror,’ returned Miss Wren.

‘I will wait, if you please, for I want to speak to her.’

‘Do you?’ returned Miss Wren. ‘Sit down. I hope it’s mutual.’ Bradley
glanced distrustfully at the shrewd face again bending over the work,
and said, trying to conquer doubt and hesitation:

‘I hope you don’t imply that my visit will be unacceptable to Hexam’s
sister?’

‘There! Don’t call her that. I can’t bear you to call her that,’
returned Miss Wren, snapping her fingers in a volley of impatient snaps,
‘for I don’t like Hexam.’

‘Indeed?’

‘No.’ Miss Wren wrinkled her nose, to express dislike. ‘Selfish. Thinks
only of himself. The way with all of you.’

‘The way with all of us? Then you don’t like ME?’

‘So-so,’ replied Miss Wren, with a shrug and a laugh. ‘Don’t know much
about you.’

‘But I was not aware it was the way with all of us,’ said Bradley,
returning to the accusation, a little injured. ‘Won’t you say, some of
us?’

‘Meaning,’ returned the little creature, ‘every one of you, but you.
Hah! Now look this lady in the face. This is Mrs Truth. The Honourable.
Full-dressed.’

Bradley glanced at the doll she held up for his observation--which had
been lying on its face on her bench, while with a needle and thread she
fastened the dress on at the back--and looked from it to her.

‘I stand the Honourable Mrs T. on my bench in this corner against the
wall, where her blue eyes can shine upon you,’ pursued Miss Wren, doing
so, and making two little dabs at him in the air with her needle, as
if she pricked him with it in his own eyes; ‘and I defy you to tell me,
with Mrs T. for a witness, what you have come here for.’

‘To see Hexam’s sister.’

‘You don’t say so!’ retorted Miss Wren, hitching her chin. ‘But on whose
account?’

‘Her own.’

‘O Mrs T.!’ exclaimed Miss Wren. ‘You hear him!’

‘To reason with her,’ pursued Bradley, half humouring what was present,
and half angry with what was not present; ‘for her own sake.’

‘Oh Mrs T.!’ exclaimed the dressmaker.

‘For her own sake,’ repeated Bradley, warming, ‘and for her brother’s,
and as a perfectly disinterested person.’

‘Really, Mrs T.,’ remarked the dressmaker, ‘since it comes to this, we
must positively turn you with your face to the wall.’ She had hardly
done so, when Lizzie Hexam arrived, and showed some surprise on seeing
Bradley Headstone there, and Jenny shaking her little fist at him close
before her eyes, and the Honourable Mrs T. with her face to the wall.

‘Here’s a perfectly disinterested person, Lizzie dear,’ said the knowing
Miss Wren, ‘come to talk with you, for your own sake and your brother’s.
Think of that. I am sure there ought to be no third party present at
anything so very kind and so very serious; and so, if you’ll remove the
third party upstairs, my dear, the third party will retire.’

Lizzie took the hand which the dolls’ dressmaker held out to her for
the purpose of being supported away, but only looked at her with an
inquiring smile, and made no other movement.

‘The third party hobbles awfully, you know, when she’s left to herself;’
said Miss Wren, ‘her back being so bad, and her legs so queer; so she
can’t retire gracefully unless you help her, Lizzie.’

‘She can do no better than stay where she is,’ returned Lizzie,
releasing the hand, and laying her own lightly on Miss Jenny’s curls.
And then to Bradley: ‘From Charley, sir?’

In an irresolute way, and stealing a clumsy look at her, Bradley rose to
place a chair for her, and then returned to his own.

‘Strictly speaking,’ said he, ‘I come from Charley, because I left him
only a little while ago; but I am not commissioned by Charley. I come of
my own spontaneous act.’

With her elbows on her bench, and her chin upon her hands, Miss Jenny
Wren sat looking at him with a watchful sidelong look. Lizzie, in her
different way, sat looking at him too.

‘The fact is,’ began Bradley, with a mouth so dry that he had some
difficulty in articulating his words: the consciousness of which
rendered his manner still more ungainly and undecided; ‘the truth is,
that Charley, having no secrets from me (to the best of my belief), has
confided the whole of this matter to me.’

He came to a stop, and Lizzie asked: ‘what matter, sir?’

‘I thought,’ returned the schoolmaster, stealing another look at her,
and seeming to try in vain to sustain it; for the look dropped as it
lighted on her eyes, ‘that it might be so superfluous as to be almost
impertinent, to enter upon a definition of it. My allusion was to this
matter of your having put aside your brother’s plans for you, and
given the preference to those of Mr--I believe the name is Mr Eugene
Wrayburn.’

He made this point of not being certain of the name, with another uneasy
look at her, which dropped like the last.

Nothing being said on the other side, he had to begin again, and began
with new embarrassment.

‘Your brother’s plans were communicated to me when he first had them in
his thoughts. In point of fact he spoke to me about them when I was
last here--when we were walking back together, and when I--when the
impression was fresh upon me of having seen his sister.’

There might have been no meaning in it, but the little dressmaker here
removed one of her supporting hands from her chin, and musingly turned
the Honourable Mrs T. with her face to the company. That done, she fell
into her former attitude.

‘I approved of his idea,’ said Bradley, with his uneasy look wandering
to the doll, and unconsciously resting there longer than it had
rested on Lizzie, ‘both because your brother ought naturally to be the
originator of any such scheme, and because I hoped to be able to promote
it. I should have had inexpressible pleasure, I should have taken
inexpressible interest, in promoting it. Therefore I must acknowledge
that when your brother was disappointed, I too was disappointed. I wish
to avoid reservation or concealment, and I fully acknowledge that.’

He appeared to have encouraged himself by having got so far. At all
events he went on with much greater firmness and force of emphasis:
though with a curious disposition to set his teeth, and with a curious
tight-screwing movement of his right hand in the clenching palm of his
left, like the action of one who was being physically hurt, and was
unwilling to cry out.

‘I am a man of strong feelings, and I have strongly felt this
disappointment. I do strongly feel it. I don’t show what I feel; some
of us are obliged habitually to keep it down. To keep it down. But to
return to your brother. He has taken the matter so much to heart that
he has remonstrated (in my presence he remonstrated) with Mr Eugene
Wrayburn, if that be the name. He did so, quite ineffectually. As any
one not blinded to the real character of Mr--Mr Eugene Wrayburn--would
readily suppose.’

He looked at Lizzie again, and held the look. And his face turned from
burning red to white, and from white back to burning red, and so for the
time to lasting deadly white.

‘Finally, I resolved to come here alone, and appeal to you. I resolved
to come here alone, and entreat you to retract the course you have
chosen, and instead of confiding in a mere stranger--a person of most
insolent behaviour to your brother and others--to prefer your brother
and your brother’s friend.’

Lizzie Hexam had changed colour when those changes came over him, and
her face now expressed some anger, more dislike, and even a touch of
fear. But she answered him very steadily.

‘I cannot doubt, Mr Headstone, that your visit is well meant. You have
been so good a friend to Charley that I have no right to doubt it. I
have nothing to tell Charley, but that I accepted the help to which he
so much objects before he made any plans for me; or certainly before I
knew of any. It was considerately and delicately offered, and there were
reasons that had weight with me which should be as dear to Charley as to
me. I have no more to say to Charley on this subject.’

His lips trembled and stood apart, as he followed this repudiation of
himself; and limitation of her words to her brother.

‘I should have told Charley, if he had come to me,’ she resumed, as
though it were an after-thought, ‘that Jenny and I find our teacher very
able and very patient, and that she takes great pains with us. So much
so, that we have said to her we hope in a very little while to be able
to go on by ourselves. Charley knows about teachers, and I should also
have told him, for his satisfaction, that ours comes from an institution
where teachers are regularly brought up.’

‘I should like to ask you,’ said Bradley Headstone, grinding his words
slowly out, as though they came from a rusty mill; ‘I should like to
ask you, if I may without offence, whether you would have objected--no;
rather, I should like to say, if I may without offence, that I wish I
had had the opportunity of coming here with your brother and devoting my
poor abilities and experience to your service.’

‘Thank you, Mr Headstone.’

‘But I fear,’ he pursued, after a pause, furtively wrenching at the seat
of his chair with one hand, as if he would have wrenched the chair to
pieces, and gloomily observing her while her eyes were cast down, ‘that
my humble services would not have found much favour with you?’

She made no reply, and the poor stricken wretch sat contending with
himself in a heat of passion and torment. After a while he took out his
handkerchief and wiped his forehead and hands.

‘There is only one thing more I had to say, but it is the most
important. There is a reason against this matter, there is a personal
relation concerned in this matter, not yet explained to you. It might--I
don’t say it would--it might--induce you to think differently. To
proceed under the present circumstances is out of the question. Will you
please come to the understanding that there shall be another interview
on the subject?’

‘With Charley, Mr Headstone?’

‘With--well,’ he answered, breaking off, ‘yes! Say with him too.
Will you please come to the understanding that there must be another
interview under more favourable circumstances, before the whole case can
be submitted?’

‘I don’t,’ said Lizzie, shaking her head, ‘understand your meaning, Mr
Headstone.’

‘Limit my meaning for the present,’ he interrupted, ‘to the whole case
being submitted to you in another interview.’

‘What case, Mr Headstone? What is wanting to it?’

‘You--you shall be informed in the other interview.’ Then he said, as
if in a burst of irrepressible despair, ‘I--I leave it all incomplete!
There is a spell upon me, I think!’ And then added, almost as if he
asked for pity, ‘Good-night!’

He held out his hand. As she, with manifest hesitation, not to say
reluctance, touched it, a strange tremble passed over him, and his face,
so deadly white, was moved as by a stroke of pain. Then he was gone.

The dolls’ dressmaker sat with her attitude unchanged, eyeing the door
by which he had departed, until Lizzie pushed her bench aside and sat
down near her. Then, eyeing Lizzie as she had previously eyed Bradley
and the door, Miss Wren chopped that very sudden and keen chop in which
her jaws sometimes indulged, leaned back in her chair with folded arms,
and thus expressed herself:

‘Humph! If he--I mean, of course, my dear, the party who is coming to
court me when the time comes--should be THAT sort of man, he may spare
himself the trouble. HE wouldn’t do to be trotted about and made useful.
He’d take fire and blow up while he was about it.’

‘And so you would be rid of him,’ said Lizzie, humouring her.

‘Not so easily,’ returned Miss Wren. ‘He wouldn’t blow up alone. He’d
carry me up with him. I know his tricks and his manners.’

‘Would he want to hurt you, do you mean?’ asked Lizzie.

‘Mightn’t exactly want to do it, my dear,’ returned Miss Wren; ‘but a
lot of gunpowder among lighted lucifer-matches in the next room might
almost as well be here.’

‘He is a very strange man,’ said Lizzie, thoughtfully.

‘I wish he was so very strange a man as to be a total stranger,’
answered the sharp little thing.

It being Lizzie’s regular occupation when they were alone of an evening
to brush out and smooth the long fair hair of the dolls’ dressmaker, she
unfastened a ribbon that kept it back while the little creature was at
her work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over the poor shoulders that
were much in need of such adorning rain. ‘Not now, Lizzie, dear,’ said
Jenny; ‘let us have a talk by the fire.’ With those words, she in her
turn loosened her friend’s dark hair, and it dropped of its own weight
over her bosom, in two rich masses. Pretending to compare the colours
and admire the contrast, Jenny so managed a mere touch or two of her
nimble hands, as that she herself laying a cheek on one of the dark
folds, seemed blinded by her own clustering curls to all but the fire,
while the fine handsome face and brow of Lizzie were revealed without
obstruction in the sombre light.

‘Let us have a talk,’ said Jenny, ‘about Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’

Something sparkled down among the fair hair resting on the dark hair;
and if it were not a star--which it couldn’t be--it was an eye; and
if it were an eye, it was Jenny Wren’s eye, bright and watchful as the
bird’s whose name she had taken.

‘Why about Mr Wrayburn?’ Lizzie asked.

‘For no better reason than because I’m in the humour. I wonder whether
he’s rich!’

‘No, not rich.’

‘Poor?’

‘I think so, for a gentleman.’

‘Ah! To be sure! Yes, he’s a gentleman. Not of our sort; is he?’ A shake
of the head, a thoughtful shake of the head, and the answer, softly
spoken, ‘Oh no, oh no!’

The dolls’ dressmaker had an arm round her friend’s waist. Adjusting the
arm, she slyly took the opportunity of blowing at her own hair where
it fell over her face; then the eye down there, under lighter shadows
sparkled more brightly and appeared more watchful.

‘When He turns up, he shan’t be a gentleman; I’ll very soon send him
packing, if he is. However, he’s not Mr Wrayburn; I haven’t captivated
HIM. I wonder whether anybody has, Lizzie!’

‘It is very likely.’

‘Is it very likely? I wonder who!’

‘Is it not very likely that some lady has been taken by him, and that he
may love her dearly?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know. What would you think of him, Lizzie, if you were
a lady?’

‘I a lady!’ she repeated, laughing. ‘Such a fancy!’

‘Yes. But say: just as a fancy, and for instance.’

‘I a lady! I, a poor girl who used to row poor father on the river. I,
who had rowed poor father out and home on the very night when I saw him
for the first time. I, who was made so timid by his looking at me, that
I got up and went out!’

[‘He did look at you, even that night, though you were not a lady!’
thought Miss Wren.)

‘I a lady!’ Lizzie went on in a low voice, with her eyes upon the fire.
‘I, with poor father’s grave not even cleared of undeserved stain and
shame, and he trying to clear it for me! I a lady!’

‘Only as a fancy, and for instance,’ urged Miss Wren.

‘Too much, Jenny, dear, too much! My fancy is not able to get that far.’
As the low fire gleamed upon her, it showed her smiling, mournfully and
abstractedly.

‘But I am in the humour, and I must be humoured, Lizzie, because after
all I am a poor little thing, and have had a hard day with my bad child.
Look in the fire, as I like to hear you tell how you used to do when you
lived in that dreary old house that had once been a windmill. Look in
the--what was its name when you told fortunes with your brother that I
DON’T like?’

‘The hollow down by the flare?’

‘Ah! That’s the name! You can find a lady there, I know.’

‘More easily than I can make one of such material as myself, Jenny.’

The sparkling eye looked steadfastly up, as the musing face looked
thoughtfully down. ‘Well?’ said the dolls’ dressmaker, ‘We have found
our lady?’

Lizzie nodded, and asked, ‘Shall she be rich?’

‘She had better be, as he’s poor.’

‘She is very rich. Shall she be handsome?’

‘Even you can be that, Lizzie, so she ought to be.’

‘She is very handsome.’

‘What does she say about him?’ asked Miss Jenny, in a low voice:
watchful, through an intervening silence, of the face looking down at
the fire.

‘She is glad, glad, to be rich, that he may have the money. She is glad,
glad, to be beautiful, that he may be proud of her. Her poor heart--’

‘Eh? Her poor heart?’ said Miss Wren.

‘Her heart--is given him, with all its love and truth. She would
joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows he
has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like
one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and
think well of. And she says, that lady rich and beautiful that I can
never come near, “Only put me in that empty place, only try how little
I mind myself, only prove what a world of things I will do and bear for
you, and I hope that you might even come to be much better than you are,
through me who am so much worse, and hardly worth the thinking of beside
you.”’

As the face looking at the fire had become exalted and forgetful in the
rapture of these words, the little creature, openly clearing away
her fair hair with her disengaged hand, had gazed at it with earnest
attention and something like alarm. Now that the speaker ceased, the
little creature laid down her head again, and moaned, ‘O me, O me, O
me!’

‘In pain, dear Jenny?’ asked Lizzie, as if awakened.

‘Yes, but not the old pain. Lay me down, lay me down. Don’t go out of
my sight to-night. Lock the door and keep close to me.’ Then turning away
her face, she said in a whisper to herself, ‘My Lizzie, my poor Lizzie!
O my blessed children, come back in the long bright slanting rows, and
come for her, not me. She wants help more than I, my blessed children!’

She had stretched her hands up with that higher and better look, and
now she turned again, and folded them round Lizzie’s neck, and rocked
herself on Lizzie’s breast.



Chapter 12

MORE BIRDS OF PREY


Rogue Riderhood dwelt deep and dark in Limehouse Hole, among the
riggers, and the mast, oar and block makers, and the boat-builders, and
the sail-lofts, as in a kind of ship’s hold stored full of waterside
characters, some no better than himself, some very much better, and
none much worse. The Hole, albeit in a general way not over nice in
its choice of company, was rather shy in reference to the honour of
cultivating the Rogue’s acquaintance; more frequently giving him the
cold shoulder than the warm hand, and seldom or never drinking with him
unless at his own expense. A part of the Hole, indeed, contained so
much public spirit and private virtue that not even this strong leverage
could move it to good fellowship with a tainted accuser. But, there may
have been the drawback on this magnanimous morality, that its exponents
held a true witness before Justice to be the next unneighbourly and
accursed character to a false one.

Had it not been for the daughter whom he often mentioned, Mr Riderhood
might have found the Hole a mere grave as to any means it would yield
him of getting a living. But Miss Pleasant Riderhood had some little
position and connection in Limehouse Hole. Upon the smallest of small
scales, she was an unlicensed pawnbroker, keeping what was popularly
called a Leaving Shop, by lending insignificant sums on insignificant
articles of property deposited with her as security. In her
four-and-twentieth year of life, Pleasant was already in her fifth year
of this way of trade. Her deceased mother had established the business,
and on that parent’s demise she had appropriated a secret capital of
fifteen shillings to establishing herself in it; the existence of
such capital in a pillow being the last intelligible confidential
communication made to her by the departed, before succumbing to
dropsical conditions of snuff and gin, incompatible equally with
coherence and existence.

Why christened Pleasant, the late Mrs Riderhood might possibly have
been at some time able to explain, and possibly not. Her daughter had no
information on that point. Pleasant she found herself, and she couldn’t
help it. She had not been consulted on the question, any more than on
the question of her coming into these terrestrial parts, to want a name.
Similarly, she found herself possessed of what is colloquially termed
a swivel eye (derived from her father), which she might perhaps have
declined if her sentiments on the subject had been taken. She was not
otherwise positively ill-looking, though anxious, meagre, of a muddy
complexion, and looking as old again as she really was.

As some dogs have it in the blood, or are trained, to worry certain
creatures to a certain point, so--not to make the comparison
disrespectfully--Pleasant Riderhood had it in the blood, or had been
trained, to regard seamen, within certain limits, as her prey. Show
her a man in a blue jacket, and, figuratively speaking, she pinned him
instantly. Yet, all things considered, she was not of an evil mind or an
unkindly disposition. For, observe how many things were to be considered
according to her own unfortunate experience. Show Pleasant Riderhood a
Wedding in the street, and she only saw two people taking out a regular
licence to quarrel and fight. Show her a Christening, and she saw a
little heathen personage having a quite superfluous name bestowed upon
it, inasmuch as it would be commonly addressed by some abusive epithet:
which little personage was not in the least wanted by anybody, and would
be shoved and banged out of everybody’s way, until it should grow
big enough to shove and bang. Show her a Funeral, and she saw an
unremunerative ceremony in the nature of a black masquerade, conferring
a temporary gentility on the performers, at an immense expense, and
representing the only formal party ever given by the deceased. Show her
a live father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own father, who from
her infancy had been taken with fits and starts of discharging his duty
to her, which duty was always incorporated in the form of a fist or a
leathern strap, and being discharged hurt her. All things considered,
therefore, Pleasant Riderhood was not so very, very bad. There was even
a touch of romance in her--of such romance as could creep into Limehouse
Hole--and maybe sometimes of a summer evening, when she stood with
folded arms at her shop-door, looking from the reeking street to the
sky where the sun was setting, she may have had some vaporous visions
of far-off islands in the southern seas or elsewhere (not being
geographically particular), where it would be good to roam with a
congenial partner among groves of bread-fruit, waiting for ships to be
wafted from the hollow ports of civilization. For, sailors to be got the
better of, were essential to Miss Pleasant’s Eden.

Not on a summer evening did she come to her little shop-door, when a
certain man standing over against the house on the opposite side of
the street took notice of her. That was on a cold shrewd windy evening,
after dark. Pleasant Riderhood shared with most of the lady inhabitants
of the Hole, the peculiarity that her hair was a ragged knot, constantly
coming down behind, and that she never could enter upon any undertaking
without first twisting it into place. At that particular moment, being
newly come to the threshold to take a look out of doors, she was winding
herself up with both hands after this fashion. And so prevalent was the
fashion, that on the occasion of a fight or other disturbance in the
Hole, the ladies would be seen flocking from all quarters universally
twisting their back-hair as they came along, and many of them, in the
hurry of the moment, carrying their back-combs in their mouths.

It was a wretched little shop, with a roof that any man standing in it
could touch with his hand; little better than a cellar or cave, down
three steps. Yet in its ill-lighted window, among a flaring handkerchief
or two, an old peacoat or so, a few valueless watches and compasses, a
jar of tobacco and two crossed pipes, a bottle of walnut ketchup, and
some horrible sweets these creature discomforts serving as a blind to
the main business of the Leaving Shop--was displayed the inscription
SEAMAN’S BOARDING-HOUSE.

Taking notice of Pleasant Riderhood at the door, the man crossed so
quickly that she was still winding herself up, when he stood close
before her.

‘Is your father at home?’ said he.

‘I think he is,’ returned Pleasant, dropping her arms; ‘come in.’

It was a tentative reply, the man having a seafaring appearance. Her
father was not at home, and Pleasant knew it. ‘Take a seat by the fire,’
were her hospitable words when she had got him in; ‘men of your calling
are always welcome here.’

‘Thankee,’ said the man.

His manner was the manner of a sailor, and his hands were the hands of
a sailor, except that they were smooth. Pleasant had an eye for sailors,
and she noticed the unused colour and texture of the hands, sunburnt
though they were, as sharply as she noticed their unmistakable looseness
and suppleness, as he sat himself down with his left arm carelessly
thrown across his left leg a little above the knee, and the right arm
as carelessly thrown over the elbow of the wooden chair, with the hand
curved, half open and half shut, as if it had just let go a rope.

‘Might you be looking for a Boarding-House?’ Pleasant inquired, taking
her observant stand on one side of the fire.

‘I don’t rightly know my plans yet,’ returned the man.

‘You ain’t looking for a Leaving Shop?’

‘No,’ said the man.

‘No,’ assented Pleasant, ‘you’ve got too much of an outfit on you for
that. But if you should want either, this is both.’

‘Ay, ay!’ said the man, glancing round the place. ‘I know. I’ve been
here before.’

‘Did you Leave anything when you were here before?’ asked Pleasant, with
a view to principal and interest.

‘No.’ The man shook his head.

‘I am pretty sure you never boarded here?’

‘No.’ The man again shook his head.

‘What DID you do here when you were here before?’ asked Pleasant. ‘For I
don’t remember you.’

‘It’s not at all likely you should. I only stood at the door, one
night--on the lower step there--while a shipmate of mine looked in to
speak to your father. I remember the place well.’ Looking very curiously
round it.

‘Might that have been long ago?’

‘Ay, a goodish bit ago. When I came off my last voyage.’

‘Then you have not been to sea lately?’

‘No. Been in the sick bay since then, and been employed ashore.’

‘Then, to be sure, that accounts for your hands.’

The man with a keen look, a quick smile, and a change of manner, caught
her up. ‘You’re a good observer. Yes. That accounts for my hands.’

Pleasant was somewhat disquieted by his look, and returned it
suspiciously. Not only was his change of manner, though very sudden,
quite collected, but his former manner, which he resumed, had a
certain suppressed confidence and sense of power in it that were half
threatening.

‘Will your father be long?’ he inquired.

‘I don’t know. I can’t say.’

‘As you supposed he was at home, it would seem that he has just gone
out? How’s that?’

‘I supposed he had come home,’ Pleasant explained.

‘Oh! You supposed he had come home? Then he has been some time out?
How’s that?’

‘I don’t want to deceive you. Father’s on the river in his boat.’

‘At the old work?’ asked the man.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Pleasant, shrinking a step back.
‘What on earth d’ye want?’

‘I don’t want to hurt your father. I don’t want to say I might, if I
chose. I want to speak to him. Not much in that, is there? There shall
be no secrets from you; you shall be by. And plainly, Miss Riderhood,
there’s nothing to be got out of me, or made of me. I am not good for
the Leaving Shop, I am not good for the Boarding-House, I am not good
for anything in your way to the extent of sixpenn’orth of halfpence. Put
the idea aside, and we shall get on together.’

‘But you’re a seafaring man?’ argued Pleasant, as if that were a
sufficient reason for his being good for something in her way.

‘Yes and no. I have been, and I may be again. But I am not for you.
Won’t you take my word for it?’

The conversation had arrived at a crisis to justify Miss Pleasant’s hair
in tumbling down. It tumbled down accordingly, and she twisted it up,
looking from under her bent forehead at the man. In taking stock of his
familiarly worn rough-weather nautical clothes, piece by piece, she took
stock of a formidable knife in a sheath at his waist ready to his hand,
and of a whistle hanging round his neck, and of a short jagged knotted
club with a loaded head that peeped out of a pocket of his loose
outer jacket or frock. He sat quietly looking at her; but, with these
appendages partially revealing themselves, and with a quantity
of bristling oakum-coloured head and whisker, he had a formidable
appearance.

‘Won’t you take my word for it?’ he asked again.

Pleasant answered with a short dumb nod. He rejoined with another short
dumb nod. Then he got up and stood with his arms folded, in front of
the fire, looking down into it occasionally, as she stood with her arms
folded, leaning against the side of the chimney-piece.

‘To wile away the time till your father comes,’ he said,--‘pray is there
much robbing and murdering of seamen about the water-side now?’

‘No,’ said Pleasant.

‘Any?’

‘Complaints of that sort are sometimes made, about Ratcliffe and Wapping
and up that way. But who knows how many are true?’

‘To be sure. And it don’t seem necessary.’

‘That’s what I say,’ observed Pleasant. ‘Where’s the reason for it?
Bless the sailors, it ain’t as if they ever could keep what they have,
without it.’

‘You’re right. Their money may be soon got out of them, without
violence,’ said the man.

‘Of course it may,’ said Pleasant; ‘and then they ship again and get
more. And the best thing for ‘em, too, to ship again as soon as ever
they can be brought to it. They’re never so well off as when they’re
afloat.’

‘I’ll tell you why I ask,’ pursued the visitor, looking up from the
fire. ‘I was once beset that way myself, and left for dead.’

‘No?’ said Pleasant. ‘Where did it happen?’

‘It happened,’ returned the man, with a ruminative air, as he drew his
right hand across his chin, and dipped the other in the pocket of his
rough outer coat, ‘it happened somewhere about here as I reckon. I don’t
think it can have been a mile from here.’

‘Were you drunk?’ asked Pleasant.

‘I was muddled, but not with fair drinking. I had not been drinking, you
understand. A mouthful did it.’

Pleasant with a grave look shook her head; importing that she understood
the process, but decidedly disapproved.

‘Fair trade is one thing,’ said she, ‘but that’s another. No one has a
right to carry on with Jack in THAT way.’

‘The sentiment does you credit,’ returned the man, with a grim smile;
and added, in a mutter, ‘the more so, as I believe it’s not your
father’s.--Yes, I had a bad time of it, that time. I lost everything,
and had a sharp struggle for my life, weak as I was.’

‘Did you get the parties punished?’ asked Pleasant.

‘A tremendous punishment followed,’ said the man, more seriously; ‘but
it was not of my bringing about.’

‘Of whose, then?’ asked Pleasant.

The man pointed upward with his forefinger, and, slowly recovering that
hand, settled his chin in it again as he looked at the fire. Bringing
her inherited eye to bear upon him, Pleasant Riderhood felt more
and more uncomfortable, his manner was so mysterious, so stern, so
self-possessed.

‘Anyways,’ said the damsel, ‘I am glad punishment followed, and I say
so. Fair trade with seafaring men gets a bad name through deeds of
violence. I am as much against deeds of violence being done to seafaring
men, as seafaring men can be themselves. I am of the same opinion as my
mother was, when she was living. Fair trade, my mother used to say, but
no robbery and no blows.’ In the way of trade Miss Pleasant would have
taken--and indeed did take when she could--as much as thirty shillings
a week for board that would be dear at five, and likewise conducted the
Leaving business upon correspondingly equitable principles; yet she had
that tenderness of conscience and those feelings of humanity, that the
moment her ideas of trade were overstepped, she became the seaman’s
champion, even against her father whom she seldom otherwise resisted.

But, she was here interrupted by her father’s voice exclaiming angrily,
‘Now, Poll Parrot!’ and by her father’s hat being heavily flung from his
hand and striking her face. Accustomed to such occasional manifestations
of his sense of parental duty, Pleasant merely wiped her face on her
hair (which of course had tumbled down) before she twisted it up. This
was another common procedure on the part of the ladies of the Hole, when
heated by verbal or fistic altercation.

‘Blest if I believe such a Poll Parrot as you was ever learned to
speak!’ growled Mr Riderhood, stooping to pick up his hat, and making
a feint at her with his head and right elbow; for he took the delicate
subject of robbing seamen in extraordinary dudgeon, and was out of
humour too. ‘What are you Poll Parroting at now? Ain’t you got nothing
to do but fold your arms and stand a Poll Parroting all night?’

‘Let her alone,’ urged the man. ‘She was only speaking to me.’

‘Let her alone too!’ retorted Mr Riderhood, eyeing him all over. ‘Do you
know she’s my daughter?’

‘Yes.’

‘And don’t you know that I won’t have no Poll Parroting on the part of
my daughter? No, nor yet that I won’t take no Poll Parroting from no
man? And who may YOU be, and what may YOU want?’

‘How can I tell you until you are silent?’ returned the other fiercely.

‘Well,’ said Mr Riderhood, quailing a little, ‘I am willing to be silent
for the purpose of hearing. But don’t Poll Parrot me.’

‘Are you thirsty, you?’ the man asked, in the same fierce short way,
after returning his look.

‘Why nat’rally,’ said Mr Riderhood, ‘ain’t I always thirsty!’ (Indignant
at the absurdity of the question.)

‘What will you drink?’ demanded the man.

‘Sherry wine,’ returned Mr Riderhood, in the same sharp tone, ‘if you’re
capable of it.’

The man put his hand in his pocket, took out half a sovereign, and
begged the favour of Miss Pleasant that she would fetch a bottle. ‘With
the cork undrawn,’ he added, emphatically, looking at her father.

‘I’ll take my Alfred David,’ muttered Mr Riderhood, slowly relaxing into
a dark smile, ‘that you know a move. Do I know YOU? N--n--no, I don’t
know you.’

The man replied, ‘No, you don’t know me.’ And so they stood looking at
one another surlily enough, until Pleasant came back.

‘There’s small glasses on the shelf,’ said Riderhood to his daughter.
‘Give me the one without a foot. I gets my living by the sweat of my
brow, and it’s good enough for ME.’ This had a modest self-denying
appearance; but it soon turned out that as, by reason of the
impossibility of standing the glass upright while there was anything in
it, it required to be emptied as soon as filled, Mr Riderhood managed to
drink in the proportion of three to one.

With his Fortunatus’s goblet ready in his hand, Mr Riderhood sat down on
one side of the table before the fire, and the strange man on the other:
Pleasant occupying a stool between the latter and the fireside. The
background, composed of handkerchiefs, coats, shirts, hats, and other
old articles ‘On Leaving,’ had a general dim resemblance to human
listeners; especially where a shiny black sou’wester suit and hat hung,
looking very like a clumsy mariner with his back to the company, who
was so curious to overhear, that he paused for the purpose with his
coat half pulled on, and his shoulders up to his ears in the uncompleted
action.

The visitor first held the bottle against the light of the candle,
and next examined the top of the cork. Satisfied that it had not been
tampered with, he slowly took from his breastpocket a rusty clasp-knife,
and, with a corkscrew in the handle, opened the wine. That done,
he looked at the cork, unscrewed it from the corkscrew, laid each
separately on the table, and, with the end of the sailor’s knot of his
neckerchief, dusted the inside of the neck of the bottle. All this with
great deliberation.

At first Riderhood had sat with his footless glass extended at arm’s
length for filling, while the very deliberate stranger seemed absorbed
in his preparations. But, gradually his arm reverted home to him, and
his glass was lowered and lowered until he rested it upside down upon
the table. By the same degrees his attention became concentrated on
the knife. And now, as the man held out the bottle to fill all round,
Riderhood stood up, leaned over the table to look closer at the knife,
and stared from it to him.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked the man.

‘Why, I know that knife!’ said Riderhood.

‘Yes, I dare say you do.’

He motioned to him to hold up his glass, and filled it. Riderhood
emptied it to the last drop and began again.

‘That there knife--’

‘Stop,’ said the man, composedly. ‘I was going to drink to your
daughter. Your health, Miss Riderhood.’

‘That knife was the knife of a seaman named George Radfoot.’

‘It was.’

‘That seaman was well beknown to me.’

‘He was.’

‘What’s come to him?’

‘Death has come to him. Death came to him in an ugly shape. He looked,’
said the man, ‘very horrible after it.’

‘Arter what?’ said Riderhood, with a frowning stare.

‘After he was killed.’

‘Killed? Who killed him?’

Only answering with a shrug, the man filled the footless glass, and
Riderhood emptied it: looking amazedly from his daughter to his visitor.

‘You don’t mean to tell a honest man--’ he was recommencing with
his empty glass in his hand, when his eye became fascinated by the
stranger’s outer coat. He leaned across the table to see it nearer,
touched the sleeve, turned the cuff to look at the sleeve-lining (the
man, in his perfect composure, offering not the least objection), and
exclaimed, ‘It’s my belief as this here coat was George Radfoot’s too!’

‘You are right. He wore it the last time you ever saw him, and the last
time you ever will see him--in this world.’

‘It’s my belief you mean to tell me to my face you killed him!’
exclaimed Riderhood; but, nevertheless, allowing his glass to be filled
again.

The man only answered with another shrug, and showed no symptom of
confusion.

‘Wish I may die if I know what to be up to with this chap!’ said
Riderhood, after staring at him, and tossing his last glassful down his
throat. ‘Let’s know what to make of you. Say something plain.’

‘I will,’ returned the other, leaning forward across the table, and
speaking in a low impressive voice. ‘What a liar you are!’

The honest witness rose, and made as though he would fling his glass in
the man’s face. The man not wincing, and merely shaking his forefinger
half knowingly, half menacingly, the piece of honesty thought better of
it and sat down again, putting the glass down too.

‘And when you went to that lawyer yonder in the Temple with that
invented story,’ said the stranger, in an exasperatingly comfortable
sort of confidence, ‘you might have had your strong suspicions of a
friend of your own, you know. I think you had, you know.’

‘Me my suspicions? Of what friend?’

‘Tell me again whose knife was this?’ demanded the man.

‘It was possessed by, and was the property of--him as I have made
mention on,’ said Riderhood, stupidly evading the actual mention of the
name.

‘Tell me again whose coat was this?’

‘That there article of clothing likeways belonged to, and was wore
by--him as I have made mention on,’ was again the dull Old Bailey
evasion.

‘I suspect that you gave him the credit of the deed, and of keeping
cleverly out of the way. But there was small cleverness in HIS keeping
out of the way. The cleverness would have been, to have got back for one
single instant to the light of the sun.’

‘Things is come to a pretty pass,’ growled Mr Riderhood, rising to his
feet, goaded to stand at bay, ‘when bullyers as is wearing dead men’s
clothes, and bullyers as is armed with dead men’s knives, is to come
into the houses of honest live men, getting their livings by the sweats
of their brows, and is to make these here sort of charges with no rhyme
and no reason, neither the one nor yet the other! Why should I have had
my suspicions of him?’

‘Because you knew him,’ replied the man; ‘because you had been one with
him, and knew his real character under a fair outside; because on the
night which you had afterwards reason to believe to be the very night of
the murder, he came in here, within an hour of his having left his ship
in the docks, and asked you in what lodgings he could find room. Was
there no stranger with him?’

‘I’ll take my world-without-end everlasting Alfred David that you warn’t
with him,’ answered Riderhood. ‘You talk big, you do, but things look
pretty black against yourself, to my thinking. You charge again’ me that
George Radfoot got lost sight of, and was no more thought of. What’s
that for a sailor? Why there’s fifty such, out of sight and out of
mind, ten times as long as him--through entering in different names,
re-shipping when the out’ard voyage is made, and what not--a turning
up to light every day about here, and no matter made of it. Ask my
daughter. You could go on Poll Parroting enough with her, when I warn’t
come in: Poll Parrot a little with her on this pint. You and your
suspicions of my suspicions of him! What are my suspicions of you? You
tell me George Radfoot got killed. I ask you who done it and how you
know it. You carry his knife and you wear his coat. I ask you how you
come by ‘em? Hand over that there bottle!’ Here Mr Riderhood appeared
to labour under a virtuous delusion that it was his own property. ‘And
you,’ he added, turning to his daughter, as he filled the footless
glass, ‘if it warn’t wasting good sherry wine on you, I’d chuck this at
you, for Poll Parroting with this man. It’s along of Poll Parroting
that such like as him gets their suspicions, whereas I gets mine by
argueyment, and being nat’rally a honest man, and sweating away at the
brow as a honest man ought.’ Here he filled the footless goblet again,
and stood chewing one half of its contents and looking down into the
other as he slowly rolled the wine about in the glass; while Pleasant,
whose sympathetic hair had come down on her being apostrophised,
rearranged it, much in the style of the tail of a horse when proceeding
to market to be sold.

‘Well? Have you finished?’ asked the strange man.

‘No,’ said Riderhood, ‘I ain’t. Far from it. Now then! I want to know
how George Radfoot come by his death, and how you come by his kit?’

‘If you ever do know, you won’t know now.’

‘And next I want to know,’ proceeded Riderhood ‘whether you mean to
charge that what-you-may-call-it-murder--’

‘Harmon murder, father,’ suggested Pleasant.

‘No Poll Parroting!’ he vociferated, in return. ‘Keep your mouth
shut!--I want to know, you sir, whether you charge that there crime on
George Radfoot?’

‘If you ever do know, you won’t know now.’

‘Perhaps you done it yourself?’ said Riderhood, with a threatening
action.

‘I alone know,’ returned the man, sternly shaking his head, ‘the
mysteries of that crime. I alone know that your trumped-up story cannot
possibly be true. I alone know that it must be altogether false, and
that you must know it to be altogether false. I come here to-night to
tell you so much of what I know, and no more.’

Mr Riderhood, with his crooked eye upon his visitor, meditated for some
moments, and then refilled his glass, and tipped the contents down his
throat in three tips.

‘Shut the shop-door!’ he then said to his daughter, putting the glass
suddenly down. ‘And turn the key and stand by it! If you know all this,
you sir,’ getting, as he spoke, between the visitor and the door, ‘why
han’t you gone to Lawyer Lightwood?’

‘That, also, is alone known to myself,’ was the cool answer.

‘Don’t you know that, if you didn’t do the deed, what you say you could
tell is worth from five to ten thousand pound?’ asked Riderhood.

‘I know it very well, and when I claim the money you shall share it.’

The honest man paused, and drew a little nearer to the visitor, and a
little further from the door.

‘I know it,’ repeated the man, quietly, ‘as well as I know that you and
George Radfoot were one together in more than one dark business; and as
well as I know that you, Roger Riderhood, conspired against an innocent
man for blood-money; and as well as I know that I can--and that I swear
I will!--give you up on both scores, and be the proof against you in my
own person, if you defy me!’

‘Father!’ cried Pleasant, from the door. ‘Don’t defy him! Give way to
him! Don’t get into more trouble, father!’

‘Will you leave off a Poll Parroting, I ask you?’ cried Mr Riderhood,
half beside himself between the two. Then, propitiatingly and
crawlingly: ‘You sir! You han’t said what you want of me. Is it fair, is
it worthy of yourself, to talk of my defying you afore ever you say what
you want of me?’

‘I don’t want much,’ said the man. ‘This accusation of yours must not be
left half made and half unmade. What was done for the blood-money must
be thoroughly undone.’

‘Well; but Shipmate--’

‘Don’t call me Shipmate,’ said the man.

‘Captain, then,’ urged Mr Riderhood; ‘there! You won’t object to
Captain. It’s a honourable title, and you fully look it. Captain! Ain’t
the man dead? Now I ask you fair. Ain’t Gaffer dead?’

‘Well,’ returned the other, with impatience, ‘yes, he is dead. What
then?’

‘Can words hurt a dead man, Captain? I only ask you fair.’

‘They can hurt the memory of a dead man, and they can hurt his living
children. How many children had this man?’

‘Meaning Gaffer, Captain?’

‘Of whom else are we speaking?’ returned the other, with a movement of
his foot, as if Rogue Riderhood were beginning to sneak before him in
the body as well as the spirit, and he spurned him off. ‘I have heard
of a daughter, and a son. I ask for information; I ask YOUR daughter; I
prefer to speak to her. What children did Hexam leave?’

Pleasant, looking to her father for permission to reply, that honest man
exclaimed with great bitterness:

‘Why the devil don’t you answer the Captain? You can Poll Parrot enough
when you ain’t wanted to Poll Parrot, you perwerse jade!’

Thus encouraged, Pleasant explained that there were only Lizzie, the
daughter in question, and the youth. Both very respectable, she added.

‘It is dreadful that any stigma should attach to them,’ said the
visitor, whom the consideration rendered so uneasy that he rose, and
paced to and fro, muttering, ‘Dreadful! Unforeseen? How could it be
foreseen!’ Then he stopped, and asked aloud: ‘Where do they live?’

Pleasant further explained that only the daughter had resided with the
father at the time of his accidental death, and that she had immediately
afterwards quitted the neighbourhood.

‘I know that,’ said the man, ‘for I have been to the place they dwelt
in, at the time of the inquest. Could you quietly find out for me where
she lives now?’

Pleasant had no doubt she could do that. Within what time, did she
think? Within a day. The visitor said that was well, and he would return
for the information, relying on its being obtained. To this dialogue
Riderhood had attended in silence, and he now obsequiously bespake the
Captain.

‘Captain! Mentioning them unfort’net words of mine respecting Gaffer,
it is contrairily to be bore in mind that Gaffer always were a precious
rascal, and that his line were a thieving line. Likeways when I went to
them two Governors, Lawyer Lightwood and the t’other Governor, with
my information, I may have been a little over-eager for the cause of
justice, or (to put it another way) a little over-stimilated by them
feelings which rouses a man up, when a pot of money is going about,
to get his hand into that pot of money for his family’s sake. Besides
which, I think the wine of them two Governors was--I will not say
a hocussed wine, but fur from a wine as was elthy for the mind. And
there’s another thing to be remembered, Captain. Did I stick to them
words when Gaffer was no more, and did I say bold to them two Governors,
“Governors both, wot I informed I still inform; wot was took down I hold
to”? No. I says, frank and open--no shuffling, mind you, Captain!--“I
may have been mistook, I’ve been a thinking of it, it mayn’t have been
took down correct on this and that, and I won’t swear to thick and thin,
I’d rayther forfeit your good opinions than do it.” And so far as
I know,’ concluded Mr Riderhood, by way of proof and evidence to
character, ‘I HAVE actiwally forfeited the good opinions of several
persons--even your own, Captain, if I understand your words--but I’d
sooner do it than be forswore. There; if that’s conspiracy, call me
conspirator.’

‘You shall sign,’ said the visitor, taking very little heed of this
oration, ‘a statement that it was all utterly false, and the poor girl
shall have it. I will bring it with me for your signature, when I come
again.’

‘When might you be expected, Captain?’ inquired Riderhood, again
dubiously getting between him and door.

‘Quite soon enough for you. I shall not disappoint you; don’t be
afraid.’

‘Might you be inclined to leave any name, Captain?’

‘No, not at all. I have no such intention.’

‘“Shall” is summ’at of a hard word, Captain,’ urged Riderhood, still
feebly dodging between him and the door, as he advanced. ‘When you say a
man “shall” sign this and that and t’other, Captain, you order him about
in a grand sort of a way. Don’t it seem so to yourself?’

The man stood still, and angrily fixed him with his eyes.

‘Father, father!’ entreated Pleasant, from the door, with her disengaged
hand nervously trembling at her lips; ‘don’t! Don’t get into trouble any
more!’

‘Hear me out, Captain, hear me out! All I was wishing to mention,
Captain, afore you took your departer,’ said the sneaking Mr Riderhood,
falling out of his path, ‘was, your handsome words relating to the
reward.’

‘When I claim it,’ said the man, in a tone which seemed to leave some
such words as ‘you dog,’ very distinctly understood, ‘you shall share
it.’

Looking stedfastly at Riderhood, he once more said in a low voice, this
time with a grim sort of admiration of him as a perfect piece of evil,
‘What a liar you are!’ and, nodding his head twice or thrice over the
compliment, passed out of the shop. But, to Pleasant he said good-night
kindly.

The honest man who gained his living by the sweat of his brow remained
in a state akin to stupefaction, until the footless glass and the
unfinished bottle conveyed themselves into his mind. From his mind he
conveyed them into his hands, and so conveyed the last of the wine into
his stomach. When that was done, he awoke to a clear perception that
Poll Parroting was solely chargeable with what had passed. Therefore,
not to be remiss in his duty as a father, he threw a pair of sea-boots
at Pleasant, which she ducked to avoid, and then cried, poor thing,
using her hair for a pocket-handkerchief.



Chapter 13

A SOLO AND A DUETT


The wind was blowing so hard when the visitor came out at the shop-door
into the darkness and dirt of Limehouse Hole, that it almost blew him
in again. Doors were slamming violently, lamps were flickering or blown
out, signs were rocking in their frames, the water of the kennels,
wind-dispersed, flew about in drops like rain. Indifferent to the
weather, and even preferring it to better weather for its clearance of
the streets, the man looked about him with a scrutinizing glance. ‘Thus
much I know,’ he murmured. ‘I have never been here since that night, and
never was here before that night, but thus much I recognize. I wonder
which way did we take when we came out of that shop. We turned to the
right as I have turned, but I can recall no more. Did we go by this
alley? Or down that little lane?’

He tried both, but both confused him equally, and he came straying
back to the same spot. ‘I remember there were poles pushed out of upper
windows on which clothes were drying, and I remember a low public-house,
and the sound flowing down a narrow passage belonging to it of the
scraping of a fiddle and the shuffling of feet. But here are all these
things in the lane, and here are all these things in the alley. And I
have nothing else in my mind but a wall, a dark doorway, a flight of
stairs, and a room.’

He tried a new direction, but made nothing of it; walls, dark doorways,
flights of stairs and rooms, were too abundant. And, like most people so
puzzled, he again and again described a circle, and found himself at
the point from which he had begun. ‘This is like what I have read in
narratives of escape from prison,’ said he, ‘where the little track of
the fugitives in the night always seems to take the shape of the great
round world, on which they wander; as if it were a secret law.’

Here he ceased to be the oakum-headed, oakum-whiskered man on whom Miss
Pleasant Riderhood had looked, and, allowing for his being still wrapped
in a nautical overcoat, became as like that same lost wanted Mr Julius
Handford, as never man was like another in this world. In the breast of
the coat he stowed the bristling hair and whisker, in a moment, as the
favouring wind went with him down a solitary place that it had swept
clear of passengers. Yet in that same moment he was the Secretary also,
Mr Boffin’s Secretary. For John Rokesmith, too, was as like that same
lost wanted Mr Julius Handford as never man was like another in this
world.

‘I have no clue to the scene of my death,’ said he. ‘Not that it matters
now. But having risked discovery by venturing here at all, I should have
been glad to track some part of the way.’ With which singular words he
abandoned his search, came up out of Limehouse Hole, and took the way
past Limehouse Church. At the great iron gate of the churchyard he
stopped and looked in. He looked up at the high tower spectrally
resisting the wind, and he looked round at the white tombstones, like
enough to the dead in their winding-sheets, and he counted the nine
tolls of the clock-bell.

‘It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals,’ said he, ‘to be
looking into a churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no
more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know
that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here. Nothing uses
me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or
lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel.

‘But this is the fanciful side of the situation. It has a real side, so
difficult that, though I think of it every day, I never thoroughly think
it out. Now, let me determine to think it out as I walk home. I know
I evade it, as many men--perhaps most men--do evade thinking their way
through their greatest perplexity. I will try to pin myself to mine.
Don’t evade it, John Harmon; don’t evade it; think it out!


‘When I came to England, attracted to the country with which I had none
but most miserable associations, by the accounts of my fine inheritance
that found me abroad, I came back, shrinking from my father’s money,
shrinking from my father’s memory, mistrustful of being forced on a
mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father’s intention in thrusting that
marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious,
mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the two dear noble
honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life or
that of my heartbroken sister. I came back, timid, divided in my mind,
afraid of myself and everybody here, knowing of nothing but wretchedness
that my father’s wealth had ever brought about. Now, stop, and so far
think it out, John Harmon. Is that so? That is exactly so.

‘On board serving as third mate was George Radfoot. I knew nothing of
him. His name first became known to me about a week before we sailed,
through my being accosted by one of the ship-agent’s clerks as
“Mr Radfoot.” It was one day when I had gone aboard to look to my
preparations, and the clerk, coming behind me as I stood on deck, tapped
me on the shoulder, and said, “Mr Rad-foot, look here,” referring to
some papers that he had in his hand. And my name first became known to
Radfoot, through another clerk within a day or two, and while the ship
was yet in port, coming up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder and
beginning, “I beg your pardon, Mr Harmon--.” I believe we were alike
in bulk and stature but not otherwise, and that we were not strikingly
alike, even in those respects, when we were together and could be
compared.

‘However, a sociable word or two on these mistakes became an easy
introduction between us, and the weather was hot, and he helped me to a
cool cabin on deck alongside his own, and his first school had been at
Brussels as mine had been, and he had learnt French as I had learnt it,
and he had a little history of himself to relate--God only knows how
much of it true, and how much of it false--that had its likeness to
mine. I had been a seaman too. So we got to be confidential together,
and the more easily yet, because he and every one on board had known
by general rumour what I was making the voyage to England for. By such
degrees and means, he came to the knowledge of my uneasiness of mind,
and of its setting at that time in the direction of desiring to see and
form some judgment of my allotted wife, before she could possibly know
me for myself; also to try Mrs Boffin and give her a glad surprise. So
the plot was made out of our getting common sailors’ dresses (as he was
able to guide me about London), and throwing ourselves in Bella Wilfer’s
neighbourhood, and trying to put ourselves in her way, and doing
whatever chance might favour on the spot, and seeing what came of it. If
nothing came of it, I should be no worse off, and there would merely
be a short delay in my presenting myself to Lightwood. I have all these
facts right? Yes. They are all accurately right.

‘His advantage in all this was, that for a time I was to be lost. It
might be for a day or for two days, but I must be lost sight of on
landing, or there would be recognition, anticipation, and failure.
Therefore, I disembarked with my valise in my hand--as Potterson
the steward and Mr Jacob Kibble my fellow-passenger afterwards
remembered--and waited for him in the dark by that very Limehouse Church
which is now behind me.

‘As I had always shunned the port of London, I only knew the church
through his pointing out its spire from on board. Perhaps I might
recall, if it were any good to try, the way by which I went to it alone
from the river; but how we two went from it to Riderhood’s shop, I don’t
know--any more than I know what turns we took and doubles we made, after
we left it. The way was purposely confused, no doubt.

‘But let me go on thinking the facts out, and avoid confusing them with
my speculations. Whether he took me by a straight way or a crooked way,
what is that to the purpose now? Steady, John Harmon.

‘When we stopped at Riderhood’s, and he asked that scoundrel a question
or two, purporting to refer only to the lodging-houses in which there
was accommodation for us, had I the least suspicion of him? None.
Certainly none until afterwards when I held the clue. I think he must
have got from Riderhood in a paper, the drug, or whatever it was, that
afterwards stupefied me, but I am far from sure. All I felt safe in
charging on him to-night, was old companionship in villainy between
them. Their undisguised intimacy, and the character I now know Riderhood
to bear, made that not at all adventurous. But I am not clear about the
drug. Thinking out the circumstances on which I found my suspicion, they
are only two. One: I remember his changing a small folded paper from one
pocket to another, after we came out, which he had not touched before.
Two: I now know Riderhood to have been previously taken up for being
concerned in the robbery of an unlucky seaman, to whom some such poison
had been given.

‘It is my conviction that we cannot have gone a mile from that shop,
before we came to the wall, the dark doorway, the flight of stairs, and
the room. The night was particularly dark and it rained hard. As I think
the circumstances back, I hear the rain splashing on the stone pavement
of the passage, which was not under cover. The room overlooked the
river, or a dock, or a creek, and the tide was out. Being possessed of
the time down to that point, I know by the hour that it must have been
about low water; but while the coffee was getting ready, I drew back the
curtain (a dark-brown curtain), and, looking out, knew by the kind
of reflection below, of the few neighbouring lights, that they were
reflected in tidal mud.

‘He had carried under his arm a canvas bag, containing a suit of his
clothes. I had no change of outer clothes with me, as I was to buy
slops. “You are very wet, Mr Harmon,”--I can hear him saying--“and I am
quite dry under this good waterproof coat. Put on these clothes of
mine. You may find on trying them that they will answer your purpose
to-morrow, as well as the slops you mean to buy, or better. While you
change, I’ll hurry the hot coffee.” When he came back, I had his clothes
on, and there was a black man with him, wearing a linen jacket, like
a steward, who put the smoking coffee on the table in a tray and never
looked at me. I am so far literal and exact? Literal and exact, I am
certain.

‘Now, I pass to sick and deranged impressions; they are so strong, that
I rely upon them; but there are spaces between them that I know nothing
about, and they are not pervaded by any idea of time.

‘I had drank some coffee, when to my sense of sight he began to swell
immensely, and something urged me to rush at him. We had a struggle near
the door. He got from me, through my not knowing where to strike, in the
whirling round of the room, and the flashing of flames of fire between
us. I dropped down. Lying helpless on the ground, I was turned over by
a foot. I was dragged by the neck into a corner. I heard men speak
together. I was turned over by other feet. I saw a figure like myself
lying dressed in my clothes on a bed. What might have been, for anything
I knew, a silence of days, weeks, months, years, was broken by a violent
wrestling of men all over the room. The figure like myself was assailed,
and my valise was in its hand. I was trodden upon and fallen over. I
heard a noise of blows, and thought it was a wood-cutter cutting down
a tree. I could not have said that my name was John Harmon--I could not
have thought it--I didn’t know it--but when I heard the blows, I thought
of the wood-cutter and his axe, and had some dead idea that I was lying
in a forest.

‘This is still correct? Still correct, with the exception that I cannot
possibly express it to myself without using the word I. But it was not
I. There was no such thing as I, within my knowledge.

‘It was only after a downward slide through something like a tube, and
then a great noise and a sparkling and crackling as of fires, that the
consciousness came upon me, “This is John Harmon drowning! John Harmon,
struggle for your life. John Harmon, call on Heaven and save yourself!”
 I think I cried it out aloud in a great agony, and then a heavy horrid
unintelligible something vanished, and it was I who was struggling there
alone in the water.

‘I was very weak and faint, frightfully oppressed with drowsiness, and
driving fast with the tide. Looking over the black water, I saw the
lights racing past me on the two banks of the river, as if they were
eager to be gone and leave me dying in the dark. The tide was running
down, but I knew nothing of up or down then. When, guiding myself safely
with Heaven’s assistance before the fierce set of the water, I at last
caught at a boat moored, one of a tier of boats at a causeway, I was
sucked under her, and came up, only just alive, on the other side.

‘Was I long in the water? Long enough to be chilled to the heart, but
I don’t know how long. Yet the cold was merciful, for it was the cold
night air and the rain that restored me from a swoon on the stones of
the causeway. They naturally supposed me to have toppled in, drunk, when
I crept to the public-house it belonged to; for I had no notion where
I was, and could not articulate--through the poison that had made me
insensible having affected my speech--and I supposed the night to be
the previous night, as it was still dark and raining. But I had lost
twenty-four hours.

‘I have checked the calculation often, and it must have been two nights
that I lay recovering in that public-house. Let me see. Yes. I am sure
it was while I lay in that bed there, that the thought entered my head
of turning the danger I had passed through, to the account of being
for some time supposed to have disappeared mysteriously, and of proving
Bella. The dread of our being forced on one another, and perpetuating
the fate that seemed to have fallen on my father’s riches--the fate that
they should lead to nothing but evil--was strong upon the moral timidity
that dates from my childhood with my poor sister.

‘As to this hour I cannot understand that side of the river where I
recovered the shore, being the opposite side to that on which I was
ensnared, I shall never understand it now. Even at this moment, while I
leave the river behind me, going home, I cannot conceive that it rolls
between me and that spot, or that the sea is where it is. But this is
not thinking it out; this is making a leap to the present time.

‘I could not have done it, but for the fortune in the waterproof
belt round my body. Not a great fortune, forty and odd pounds for the
inheritor of a hundred and odd thousand! But it was enough. Without it I
must have disclosed myself. Without it, I could never have gone to that
Exchequer Coffee House, or taken Mrs Wilfer’s lodgings.

‘Some twelve days I lived at that hotel, before the night when I saw the
corpse of Radfoot at the Police Station. The inexpressible mental horror
that I laboured under, as one of the consequences of the poison, makes
the interval seem greatly longer, but I know it cannot have been longer.
That suffering has gradually weakened and weakened since, and has only
come upon me by starts, and I hope I am free from it now; but even now,
I have sometimes to think, constrain myself, and stop before speaking,
or I could not say the words I want to say.

‘Again I ramble away from thinking it out to the end. It is not so far
to the end that I need be tempted to break off. Now, on straight!

‘I examined the newspapers every day for tidings that I was missing, but
saw none. Going out that night to walk (for I kept retired while it was
light), I found a crowd assembled round a placard posted at Whitehall.
It described myself, John Harmon, as found dead and mutilated in the
river under circumstances of strong suspicion, described my dress,
described the papers in my pockets, and stated where I was lying for
recognition. In a wild incautious way I hurried there, and there--with
the horror of the death I had escaped, before my eyes in its most
appalling shape, added to the inconceivable horror tormenting me at
that time when the poisonous stuff was strongest on me--I perceived that
Radfoot had been murdered by some unknown hands for the money for which
he would have murdered me, and that probably we had both been shot into
the river from the same dark place into the same dark tide, when the
stream ran deep and strong.

‘That night I almost gave up my mystery, though I suspected no one,
could offer no information, knew absolutely nothing save that the
murdered man was not I, but Radfoot. Next day while I hesitated, and
next day while I hesitated, it seemed as if the whole country were
determined to have me dead. The Inquest declared me dead, the Government
proclaimed me dead; I could not listen at my fireside for five minutes
to the outer noises, but it was borne into my ears that I was dead.

‘So John Harmon died, and Julius Handford disappeared, and John
Rokesmith was born. John Rokesmith’s intent to-night has been to repair
a wrong that he could never have imagined possible, coming to his ears
through the Lightwood talk related to him, and which he is bound by
every consideration to remedy. In that intent John Rokesmith will
persevere, as his duty is.

‘Now, is it all thought out? All to this time? Nothing omitted? No,
nothing. But beyond this time? To think it out through the future, is a
harder though a much shorter task than to think it out through the past.
John Harmon is dead. Should John Harmon come to life?

‘If yes, why? If no, why?’

‘Take yes, first. To enlighten human Justice concerning the offence of
one far beyond it who may have a living mother. To enlighten it with the
lights of a stone passage, a flight of stairs, a brown window-curtain,
and a black man. To come into possession of my father’s money, and with
it sordidly to buy a beautiful creature whom I love--I cannot help it;
reason has nothing to do with it; I love her against reason--but who
would as soon love me for my own sake, as she would love the beggar at
the corner. What a use for the money, and how worthy of its old misuses!

‘Now, take no. The reasons why John Harmon should not come to life.
Because he has passively allowed these dear old faithful friends to pass
into possession of the property. Because he sees them happy with it,
making a good use of it, effacing the old rust and tarnish on the money.
Because they have virtually adopted Bella, and will provide for her.
Because there is affection enough in her nature, and warmth enough in
her heart, to develop into something enduringly good, under favourable
conditions. Because her faults have been intensified by her place in my
father’s will, and she is already growing better. Because her marriage
with John Harmon, after what I have heard from her own lips, would be a
shocking mockery, of which both she and I must always be conscious, and
which would degrade her in her mind, and me in mine, and each of us in
the other’s. Because if John Harmon comes to life and does not marry
her, the property falls into the very hands that hold it now.

‘What would I have? Dead, I have found the true friends of my lifetime
still as true as tender and as faithful as when I was alive, and making
my memory an incentive to good actions done in my name. Dead, I have
found them when they might have slighted my name, and passed
greedily over my grave to ease and wealth, lingering by the way, like
single-hearted children, to recall their love for me when I was a poor
frightened child. Dead, I have heard from the woman who would have been
my wife if I had lived, the revolting truth that I should have purchased
her, caring nothing for me, as a Sultan buys a slave.

‘What would I have? If the dead could know, or do know, how the living
use them, who among the hosts of dead has found a more disinterested
fidelity on earth than I? Is not that enough for me? If I had come back,
these noble creatures would have welcomed me, wept over me, given up
everything to me with joy. I did not come back, and they have passed
unspoiled into my place. Let them rest in it, and let Bella rest in
hers.

‘What course for me then? This. To live the same quiet Secretary life,
carefully avoiding chances of recognition, until they shall have become
more accustomed to their altered state, and until the great swarm of
swindlers under many names shall have found newer prey. By that time,
the method I am establishing through all the affairs, and with which I
will every day take new pains to make them both familiar, will be, I may
hope, a machine in such working order as that they can keep it going.
I know I need but ask of their generosity, to have. When the right time
comes, I will ask no more than will replace me in my former path of
life, and John Rokesmith shall tread it as contentedly as he may. But
John Harmon shall come back no more.

‘That I may never, in the days to come afar off, have any weak misgiving
that Bella might, in any contingency, have taken me for my own sake if
I had plainly asked her, I WILL plainly ask her: proving beyond all
question what I already know too well. And now it is all thought out,
from the beginning to the end, and my mind is easier.’


So deeply engaged had the living-dead man been, in thus communing with
himself, that he had regarded neither the wind nor the way, and had
resisted the former instinctively as he had pursued the latter. But
being now come into the City, where there was a coach-stand, he stood
irresolute whether to go to his lodgings, or to go first to Mr Boffin’s
house. He decided to go round by the house, arguing, as he carried his
overcoat upon his arm, that it was less likely to attract notice if left
there, than if taken to Holloway: both Mrs Wilfer and Miss Lavinia being
ravenously curious touching every article of which the lodger stood
possessed.

Arriving at the house, he found that Mr and Mrs Boffin were out, but
that Miss Wilfer was in the drawing-room. Miss Wilfer had remained at
home, in consequence of not feeling very well, and had inquired in the
evening if Mr Rokesmith were in his room.

‘Make my compliments to Miss Wilfer, and say I am here now.’

Miss Wilfer’s compliments came down in return, and, if it were not too
much trouble, would Mr Rokesmith be so kind as to come up before he
went?

It was not too much trouble, and Mr Rokesmith came up.

Oh she looked very pretty, she looked very, very pretty! If the father
of the late John Harmon had but left his money unconditionally to his
son, and if his son had but lighted on this loveable girl for himself,
and had the happiness to make her loving as well as loveable!

‘Dear me! Are you not well, Mr Rokesmith?’

‘Yes, quite well. I was sorry to hear, when I came in, that YOU were
not.’

‘A mere nothing. I had a headache--gone now--and was not quite fit for
a hot theatre, so I stayed at home. I asked you if you were not well,
because you look so white.’

‘Do I? I have had a busy evening.’

She was on a low ottoman before the fire, with a little shining jewel
of a table, and her book and her work, beside her. Ah! what a different
life the late John Harmon’s, if it had been his happy privilege to take
his place upon that ottoman, and draw his arm about that waist, and say,
‘I hope the time has been long without me? What a Home Goddess you look,
my darling!’

But, the present John Rokesmith, far removed from the late John Harmon,
remained standing at a distance. A little distance in respect of space,
but a great distance in respect of separation.

‘Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, taking up her work, and inspecting it all
round the corners, ‘I wanted to say something to you when I could have
the opportunity, as an explanation why I was rude to you the other day.
You have no right to think ill of me, sir.’

The sharp little way in which she darted a look at him, half sensitively
injured, and half pettishly, would have been very much admired by the
late John Harmon.

‘You don’t know how well I think of you, Miss Wilfer.’

‘Truly, you must have a very high opinion of me, Mr Rokesmith, when you
believe that in prosperity I neglect and forget my old home.’

‘Do I believe so?’

‘You DID, sir, at any rate,’ returned Bella.

‘I took the liberty of reminding you of a little omission into which you
had fallen--insensibly and naturally fallen. It was no more than that.’

‘And I beg leave to ask you, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, ‘why you took
that liberty?--I hope there is no offence in the phrase; it is your own,
remember.’

‘Because I am truly, deeply, profoundly interested in you, Miss Wilfer.
Because I wish to see you always at your best. Because I--shall I go
on?’

‘No, sir,’ returned Bella, with a burning face, ‘you have said more than
enough. I beg that you will NOT go on. If you have any generosity, any
honour, you will say no more.’

The late John Harmon, looking at the proud face with the down-cast eyes,
and at the quick breathing as it stirred the fall of bright brown hair
over the beautiful neck, would probably have remained silent.

‘I wish to speak to you, sir,’ said Bella, ‘once for all, and I don’t
know how to do it. I have sat here all this evening, wishing to speak to
you, and determining to speak to you, and feeling that I must. I beg for
a moment’s time.’

He remained silent, and she remained with her face averted, sometimes
making a slight movement as if she would turn and speak. At length she
did so.

‘You know how I am situated here, sir, and you know how I am situated
at home. I must speak to you for myself, since there is no one about
me whom I could ask to do so. It is not generous in you, it is not
honourable in you, to conduct yourself towards me as you do.’

‘Is it ungenerous or dishonourable to be devoted to you; fascinated by
you?’

‘Preposterous!’ said Bella.

The late John Harmon might have thought it rather a contemptuous and
lofty word of repudiation.

‘I now feel obliged to go on,’ pursued the Secretary, ‘though it were
only in self-explanation and self-defence. I hope, Miss Wilfer, that
it is not unpardonable--even in me--to make an honest declaration of an
honest devotion to you.’

‘An honest declaration!’ repeated Bella, with emphasis.

‘Is it otherwise?’

‘I must request, sir,’ said Bella, taking refuge in a touch of timely
resentment, ‘that I may not be questioned. You must excuse me if I
decline to be cross-examined.’

‘Oh, Miss Wilfer, this is hardly charitable. I ask you nothing but what
your own emphasis suggests. However, I waive even that question. But
what I have declared, I take my stand by. I cannot recall the avowal of
my earnest and deep attachment to you, and I do not recall it.’

‘I reject it, sir,’ said Bella.

‘I should be blind and deaf if I were not prepared for the reply.
Forgive my offence, for it carries its punishment with it.’

‘What punishment?’ asked Bella.

‘Is my present endurance none? But excuse me; I did not mean to
cross-examine you again.’

‘You take advantage of a hasty word of mine,’ said Bella with a little
sting of self-reproach, ‘to make me seem--I don’t know what. I spoke
without consideration when I used it. If that was bad, I am sorry; but
you repeat it after consideration, and that seems to me to be at least
no better. For the rest, I beg it may be understood, Mr Rokesmith, that
there is an end of this between us, now and for ever.’

‘Now and for ever,’ he repeated.

‘Yes. I appeal to you, sir,’ proceeded Bella with increasing spirit,
‘not to pursue me. I appeal to you not to take advantage of your
position in this house to make my position in it distressing and
disagreeable. I appeal to you to discontinue your habit of making your
misplaced attentions as plain to Mrs Boffin as to me.’

‘Have I done so?’

‘I should think you have,’ replied Bella. ‘In any case it is not your
fault if you have not, Mr Rokesmith.’

‘I hope you are wrong in that impression. I should be very sorry to
have justified it. I think I have not. For the future there is no
apprehension. It is all over.’

‘I am much relieved to hear it,’ said Bella. ‘I have far other views in
life, and why should you waste your own?’

‘Mine!’ said the Secretary. ‘My life!’

His curious tone caused Bella to glance at the curious smile with which
he said it. It was gone as he glanced back. ‘Pardon me, Miss Wilfer,’
he proceeded, when their eyes met; ‘you have used some hard words, for
which I do not doubt you have a justification in your mind, that I do
not understand. Ungenerous and dishonourable. In what?’

‘I would rather not be asked,’ said Bella, haughtily looking down.

‘I would rather not ask, but the question is imposed upon me. Kindly
explain; or if not kindly, justly.’

‘Oh, sir!’ said Bella, raising her eyes to his, after a little struggle
to forbear, ‘is it generous and honourable to use the power here which
your favour with Mr and Mrs Boffin and your ability in your place give
you, against me?’

‘Against you?’

‘Is it generous and honourable to form a plan for gradually bringing
their influence to bear upon a suit which I have shown you that I do not
like, and which I tell you that I utterly reject?’

The late John Harmon could have borne a good deal, but he would have
been cut to the heart by such a suspicion as this.

‘Would it be generous and honourable to step into your place--if you did
so, for I don’t know that you did, and I hope you did not--anticipating,
or knowing beforehand, that I should come here, and designing to take me
at this disadvantage?’

‘This mean and cruel disadvantage,’ said the Secretary.

‘Yes,’ assented Bella.

The Secretary kept silence for a little while; then merely said, ‘You
are wholly mistaken, Miss Wilfer; wonderfully mistaken. I cannot say,
however, that it is your fault. If I deserve better things of you, you
do not know it.’

‘At least, sir,’ retorted Bella, with her old indignation rising, ‘you
know the history of my being here at all. I have heard Mr Boffin say
that you are master of every line and word of that will, as you are
master of all his affairs. And was it not enough that I should have been
willed away, like a horse, or a dog, or a bird; but must you too begin
to dispose of me in your mind, and speculate in me, as soon as I had
ceased to be the talk and the laugh of the town? Am I for ever to be
made the property of strangers?’

‘Believe me,’ returned the Secretary, ‘you are wonderfully mistaken.’

‘I should be glad to know it,’ answered Bella.

‘I doubt if you ever will. Good-night. Of course I shall be careful to
conceal any traces of this interview from Mr and Mrs Boffin, as long as
I remain here. Trust me, what you have complained of is at an end for
ever.’

‘I am glad I have spoken, then, Mr Rokesmith. It has been painful and
difficult, but it is done. If I have hurt you, I hope you will forgive
me. I am inexperienced and impetuous, and I have been a little spoilt;
but I really am not so bad as I dare say I appear, or as you think me.’

He quitted the room when Bella had said this, relenting in her wilful
inconsistent way. Left alone, she threw herself back on her ottoman, and
said, ‘I didn’t know the lovely woman was such a Dragon!’ Then, she
got up and looked in the glass, and said to her image, ‘You have been
positively swelling your features, you little fool!’ Then, she took an
impatient walk to the other end of the room and back, and said, ‘I
wish Pa was here to have a talk about an avaricious marriage; but he
is better away, poor dear, for I know I should pull his hair if he WAS
here.’ And then she threw her work away, and threw her book after
it, and sat down and hummed a tune, and hummed it out of tune, and
quarrelled with it.

And John Rokesmith, what did he?

He went down to his room, and buried John Harmon many additional fathoms
deep. He took his hat, and walked out, and, as he went to Holloway or
anywhere else--not at all minding where--heaped mounds upon mounds of
earth over John Harmon’s grave. His walking did not bring him home until
the dawn of day. And so busy had he been all night, piling and piling
weights upon weights of earth above John Harmon’s grave, that by that
time John Harmon lay buried under a whole Alpine range; and still the
Sexton Rokesmith accumulated mountains over him, lightening his labour
with the dirge, ‘Cover him, crush him, keep him down!’



Chapter 14

STRONG OF PURPOSE


The sexton-task of piling earth above John Harmon all night long, was
not conducive to sound sleep; but Rokesmith had some broken morning
rest, and rose strengthened in his purpose. It was all over now. No
ghost should trouble Mr and Mrs Boffin’s peace; invisible and voiceless,
the ghost should look on for a little while longer at the state of
existence out of which it had departed, and then should for ever cease
to haunt the scenes in which it had no place.

He went over it all again. He had lapsed into the condition in which
he found himself, as many a man lapses into many a condition, without
perceiving the accumulative power of its separate circumstances. When
in the distrust engendered by his wretched childhood and the action for
evil--never yet for good within his knowledge then--of his father and
his father’s wealth on all within their influence, he conceived the idea
of his first deception, it was meant to be harmless, it was to last
but a few hours or days, it was to involve in it only the girl so
capriciously forced upon him and upon whom he was so capriciously
forced, and it was honestly meant well towards her. For, if he had
found her unhappy in the prospect of that marriage (through her heart
inclining to another man or for any other cause), he would seriously
have said: ‘This is another of the old perverted uses of the
misery-making money. I will let it go to my and my sister’s only
protectors and friends.’ When the snare into which he fell so
outstripped his first intention as that he found himself placarded by
the police authorities upon the London walls for dead, he confusedly
accepted the aid that fell upon him, without considering how firmly it
must seem to fix the Boffins in their accession to the fortune. When he
saw them, and knew them, and even from his vantage-ground of inspection
could find no flaw in them, he asked himself, ‘And shall I come to life
to dispossess such people as these?’ There was no good to set against
the putting of them to that hard proof. He had heard from Bella’s own
lips when he stood tapping at the door on that night of his taking
the lodgings, that the marriage would have been on her part thoroughly
mercenary. He had since tried her, in his own unknown person and
supposed station, and she not only rejected his advances but resented
them. Was it for him to have the shame of buying her, or the meanness of
punishing her? Yet, by coming to life and accepting the condition of the
inheritance, he must do the former; and by coming to life and rejecting
it, he must do the latter.

Another consequence that he had never foreshadowed, was the implication
of an innocent man in his supposed murder. He would obtain complete
retraction from the accuser, and set the wrong right; but clearly the
wrong could never have been done if he had never planned a deception.
Then, whatever inconvenience or distress of mind the deception cost him,
it was manful repentantly to accept as among its consequences, and make
no complaint.

Thus John Rokesmith in the morning, and it buried John Harmon still many
fathoms deeper than he had been buried in the night.

Going out earlier than he was accustomed to do, he encountered the
cherub at the door. The cherub’s way was for a certain space his way,
and they walked together.

It was impossible not to notice the change in the cherub’s appearance.
The cherub felt very conscious of it, and modestly remarked:

‘A present from my daughter Bella, Mr Rokesmith.’

The words gave the Secretary a stroke of pleasure, for he remembered the
fifty pounds, and he still loved the girl. No doubt it was very weak--it
always IS very weak, some authorities hold--but he loved the girl.

‘I don’t know whether you happen to have read many books of African
Travel, Mr Rokesmith?’ said R. W.

‘I have read several.’

‘Well, you know, there’s usually a King George, or a King Boy, or a King
Sambo, or a King Bill, or Bull, or Rum, or Junk, or whatever name the
sailors may have happened to give him.’

‘Where?’ asked Rokesmith.

‘Anywhere. Anywhere in Africa, I mean. Pretty well everywhere, I may
say; for black kings are cheap--and I think’--said R. W., with an
apologetic air, ‘nasty’.

‘I am much of your opinion, Mr Wilfer. You were going to say--?’

‘I was going to say, the king is generally dressed in a London hat only,
or a Manchester pair of braces, or one epaulette, or an uniform coat
with his legs in the sleeves, or something of that kind.’

‘Just so,’ said the Secretary.

‘In confidence, I assure you, Mr Rokesmith,’ observed the cheerful
cherub, ‘that when more of my family were at home and to be provided
for, I used to remind myself immensely of that king. You have no idea,
as a single man, of the difficulty I have had in wearing more than one
good article at a time.’

‘I can easily believe it, Mr Wilfer.’

‘I only mention it,’ said R. W. in the warmth of his heart, ‘as a proof
of the amiable, delicate, and considerate affection of my daughter
Bella. If she had been a little spoilt, I couldn’t have thought so very
much of it, under the circumstances. But no, not a bit. And she is so
very pretty! I hope you agree with me in finding her very pretty, Mr
Rokesmith?’

‘Certainly I do. Every one must.’

‘I hope so,’ said the cherub. ‘Indeed, I have no doubt of it. This is a
great advancement for her in life, Mr Rokesmith. A great opening of her
prospects?’

‘Miss Wilfer could have no better friends than Mr and Mrs Boffin.’

‘Impossible!’ said the gratified cherub. ‘Really I begin to think things
are very well as they are. If Mr John Harmon had lived--’

‘He is better dead,’ said the Secretary.

‘No, I won’t go so far as to say that,’ urged the cherub, a little
remonstrant against the very decisive and unpitying tone; ‘but he
mightn’t have suited Bella, or Bella mightn’t have suited him, or fifty
things, whereas now I hope she can choose for herself.’

‘Has she--as you place the confidence in me of speaking on the subject,
you will excuse my asking--has she--perhaps--chosen?’ faltered the
Secretary.

‘Oh dear no!’ returned R. W.

‘Young ladies sometimes,’ Rokesmith hinted, ‘choose without mentioning
their choice to their fathers.’

‘Not in this case, Mr Rokesmith. Between my daughter Bella and me there
is a regular league and covenant of confidence. It was ratified only the
other day. The ratification dates from--these,’ said the cherub,
giving a little pull at the lappels of his coat and the pockets of his
trousers. ‘Oh no, she has not chosen. To be sure, young George Sampson,
in the days when Mr John Harmon--’

‘Who I wish had never been born!’ said the Secretary, with a gloomy
brow.

R. W. looked at him with surprise, as thinking he had contracted an
unaccountable spite against the poor deceased, and continued: ‘In the
days when Mr John Harmon was being sought out, young George Sampson
certainly was hovering about Bella, and Bella let him hover. But it
never was seriously thought of, and it’s still less than ever to be
thought of now. For Bella is ambitious, Mr Rokesmith, and I think I may
predict will marry fortune. This time, you see, she will have the person
and the property before her together, and will be able to make her
choice with her eyes open. This is my road. I am very sorry to part
company so soon. Good morning, sir!’

The Secretary pursued his way, not very much elevated in spirits by this
conversation, and, arriving at the Boffin mansion, found Betty Higden
waiting for him.

‘I should thank you kindly, sir,’ said Betty, ‘if I might make so bold
as have a word or two wi’ you.’

She should have as many words as she liked, he told her; and took her
into his room, and made her sit down.

‘’Tis concerning Sloppy, sir,’ said Betty. ‘And that’s how I come here
by myself. Not wishing him to know what I’m a-going to say to you, I got
the start of him early and walked up.’

‘You have wonderful energy,’ returned Rokesmith. ‘You are as young as I
am.’

Betty Higden gravely shook her head. ‘I am strong for my time of life,
sir, but not young, thank the Lord!’

‘Are you thankful for not being young?’

‘Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again,
and the end would be a weary way off, don’t you see? But never mind me;
‘tis concerning Sloppy.’

‘And what about him, Betty?’

‘’Tis just this, sir. It can’t be reasoned out of his head by any powers
of mine but what that he can do right by your kind lady and gentleman
and do his work for me, both together. Now he can’t. To give himself up
to being put in the way of arning a good living and getting on, he must
give me up. Well; he won’t.’

‘I respect him for it,’ said Rokesmith.

‘DO ye, sir? I don’t know but what I do myself. Still that don’t make it
right to let him have his way. So as he won’t give me up, I’m a-going to
give him up.’

‘How, Betty?’

‘I’m a-going to run away from him.’

With an astonished look at the indomitable old face and the bright eyes,
the Secretary repeated, ‘Run away from him?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Betty, with one nod. And in the nod and in the firm set
of her mouth, there was a vigour of purpose not to be doubted.

‘Come, come!’ said the Secretary. ‘We must talk about this. Let us take
our time over it, and try to get at the true sense of the case and the
true course, by degrees.’

‘Now, lookee here, by dear,’ returned old Betty--‘asking your excuse
for being so familiar, but being of a time of life a’most to be your
grandmother twice over. Now, lookee, here. ‘Tis a poor living and a
hard as is to be got out of this work that I’m a doing now, and but for
Sloppy I don’t know as I should have held to it this long. But it did
just keep us on, the two together. Now that I’m alone--with even Johnny
gone--I’d far sooner be upon my feet and tiring of myself out, than a
sitting folding and folding by the fire. And I’ll tell you why. There’s
a deadness steals over me at times, that the kind of life favours and I
don’t like. Now, I seem to have Johnny in my arms--now, his mother--now,
his mother’s mother--now, I seem to be a child myself, a lying once
again in the arms of my own mother--then I get numbed, thought and
sense, till I start out of my seat, afeerd that I’m a growing like the
poor old people that they brick up in the Unions, as you may sometimes
see when they let ‘em out of the four walls to have a warm in the sun,
crawling quite scared about the streets. I was a nimble girl, and have
always been a active body, as I told your lady, first time ever I see
her good face. I can still walk twenty mile if I am put to it. I’d far
better be a walking than a getting numbed and dreary. I’m a good fair
knitter, and can make many little things to sell. The loan from your
lady and gentleman of twenty shillings to fit out a basket with, would
be a fortune for me. Trudging round the country and tiring of myself
out, I shall keep the deadness off, and get my own bread by my own
labour. And what more can I want?’

‘And this is your plan,’ said the Secretary, ‘for running away?’

‘Show me a better! My deary, show me a better! Why, I know very well,’
said old Betty Higden, ‘and you know very well, that your lady and
gentleman would set me up like a queen for the rest of my life, if so be
that we could make it right among us to have it so. But we can’t make it
right among us to have it so. I’ve never took charity yet, nor yet has
any one belonging to me. And it would be forsaking of myself indeed, and
forsaking of my children dead and gone, and forsaking of their children
dead and gone, to set up a contradiction now at last.’

‘It might come to be justifiable and unavoidable at last,’ the Secretary
gently hinted, with a slight stress on the word.

‘I hope it never will! It ain’t that I mean to give offence by being
anyways proud,’ said the old creature simply, ‘but that I want to be of
a piece like, and helpful of myself right through to my death.’

‘And to be sure,’ added the Secretary, as a comfort for her, ‘Sloppy
will be eagerly looking forward to his opportunity of being to you what
you have been to him.’

‘Trust him for that, sir!’ said Betty, cheerfully. ‘Though he had need
to be something quick about it, for I’m a getting to be an old one. But
I’m a strong one too, and travel and weather never hurt me yet! Now, be
so kind as speak for me to your lady and gentleman, and tell ‘em what I
ask of their good friendliness to let me do, and why I ask it.’

The Secretary felt that there was no gainsaying what was urged by
this brave old heroine, and he presently repaired to Mrs Boffin and
recommended her to let Betty Higden have her way, at all events for the
time. ‘It would be far more satisfactory to your kind heart, I know,’
he said, ‘to provide for her, but it may be a duty to respect this
independent spirit.’ Mrs Boffin was not proof against the consideration
set before her. She and her husband had worked too, and had brought
their simple faith and honour clean out of dustheaps. If they owed a
duty to Betty Higden, of a surety that duty must be done.

‘But, Betty,’ said Mrs Boffin, when she accompanied John Rokesmith back
to his room, and shone upon her with the light of her radiant face,
‘granted all else, I think I wouldn’t run away’.

‘’Twould come easier to Sloppy,’ said Mrs Higden, shaking her head.
‘’Twould come easier to me too. But ‘tis as you please.’

‘When would you go?’

‘Now,’ was the bright and ready answer. ‘To-day, my deary, to-morrow.
Bless ye, I am used to it. I know many parts of the country well. When
nothing else was to be done, I have worked in many a market-garden afore
now, and in many a hop-garden too.’

‘If I give my consent to your going, Betty--which Mr Rokesmith thinks I
ought to do--’

Betty thanked him with a grateful curtsey.

‘--We must not lose sight of you. We must not let you pass out of our
knowledge. We must know all about you.’

‘Yes, my deary, but not through letter-writing, because
letter-writing--indeed, writing of most sorts hadn’t much come up for
such as me when I was young. But I shall be to and fro. No fear of
my missing a chance of giving myself a sight of your reviving face.
Besides,’ said Betty, with logical good faith, ‘I shall have a debt to
pay off, by littles, and naturally that would bring me back, if nothing
else would.’

‘MUST it be done?’ asked Mrs Boffin, still reluctant, of the Secretary.

‘I think it must.’

After more discussion it was agreed that it should be done, and Mrs
Boffin summoned Bella to note down the little purchases that were
necessary to set Betty up in trade. ‘Don’t ye be timorous for me, my
dear,’ said the stanch old heart, observant of Bella’s face: ‘when I
take my seat with my work, clean and busy and fresh, in a country
market-place, I shall turn a sixpence as sure as ever a farmer’s wife
there.’

The Secretary took that opportunity of touching on the practical
question of Mr Sloppy’s capabilities. He would have made a wonderful
cabinet-maker, said Mrs Higden, ‘if there had been the money to put him
to it.’ She had seen him handle tools that he had borrowed to mend
the mangle, or to knock a broken piece of furniture together, in a
surprising manner. As to constructing toys for the Minders, out of
nothing, he had done that daily. And once as many as a dozen people had
got together in the lane to see the neatness with which he fitted the
broken pieces of a foreign monkey’s musical instrument. ‘That’s well,’
said the Secretary. ‘It will not be hard to find a trade for him.’

John Harmon being buried under mountains now, the Secretary that very
same day set himself to finish his affairs and have done with him. He
drew up an ample declaration, to be signed by Rogue Riderhood (knowing
he could get his signature to it, by making him another and much shorter
evening call), and then considered to whom should he give the document?
To Hexam’s son, or daughter? Resolved speedily, to the daughter. But it
would be safer to avoid seeing the daughter, because the son had seen
Julius Handford, and--he could not be too careful--there might possibly
be some comparison of notes between the son and daughter, which would
awaken slumbering suspicion, and lead to consequences. ‘I might even,’
he reflected, ‘be apprehended as having been concerned in my own
murder!’ Therefore, best to send it to the daughter under cover by the
post. Pleasant Riderhood had undertaken to find out where she lived,
and it was not necessary that it should be attended by a single word of
explanation. So far, straight.

But, all that he knew of the daughter he derived from Mrs Boffin’s
accounts of what she heard from Mr Lightwood, who seemed to have a
reputation for his manner of relating a story, and to have made this
story quite his own. It interested him, and he would like to have
the means of knowing more--as, for instance, that she received the
exonerating paper, and that it satisfied her--by opening some channel
altogether independent of Lightwood: who likewise had seen Julius
Handford, who had publicly advertised for Julius Handford, and whom
of all men he, the Secretary, most avoided. ‘But with whom the common
course of things might bring me in a moment face to face, any day in the
week or any hour in the day.’

Now, to cast about for some likely means of opening such a channel. The
boy, Hexam, was training for and with a schoolmaster. The Secretary knew
it, because his sister’s share in that disposal of him seemed to be
the best part of Lightwood’s account of the family. This young fellow,
Sloppy, stood in need of some instruction. If he, the Secretary, engaged
that schoolmaster to impart it to him, the channel might be opened. The
next point was, did Mrs Boffin know the schoolmaster’s name? No, but she
knew where the school was. Quite enough. Promptly the Secretary wrote
to the master of that school, and that very evening Bradley Headstone
answered in person.

The Secretary stated to the schoolmaster how the object was, to send to
him for certain occasional evening instruction, a youth whom Mr and Mrs
Boffin wished to help to an industrious and useful place in life. The
schoolmaster was willing to undertake the charge of such a pupil. The
Secretary inquired on what terms? The schoolmaster stated on what terms.
Agreed and disposed of.

‘May I ask, sir,’ said Bradley Headstone, ‘to whose good opinion I owe a
recommendation to you?’

‘You should know that I am not the principal here. I am Mr Boffin’s
Secretary. Mr Boffin is a gentleman who inherited a property of which
you may have heard some public mention; the Harmon property.’

‘Mr Harmon,’ said Bradley: who would have been a great deal more at a
loss than he was, if he had known to whom he spoke: ‘was murdered and
found in the river.’

‘Was murdered and found in the river.’

‘It was not--’

‘No,’ interposed the Secretary, smiling, ‘it was not he who recommended
you. Mr Boffin heard of you through a certain Mr Lightwood. I think you
know Mr Lightwood, or know of him?’

‘I know as much of him as I wish to know, sir. I have no acquaintance
with Mr Lightwood, and I desire none. I have no objection to Mr
Lightwood, but I have a particular objection to some of Mr Lightwood’s
friends--in short, to one of Mr Lightwood’s friends. His great friend.’

He could hardly get the words out, even then and there, so fierce did
he grow (though keeping himself down with infinite pains of repression),
when the careless and contemptuous bearing of Eugene Wrayburn rose
before his mind.

The Secretary saw there was a strong feeling here on some sore point,
and he would have made a diversion from it, but for Bradley’s holding to
it in his cumbersome way.

‘I have no objection to mention the friend by name,’ he said, doggedly.
‘The person I object to, is Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’

The Secretary remembered him. In his disturbed recollection of that
night when he was striving against the drugged drink, there was but a
dim image of Eugene’s person; but he remembered his name, and his manner
of speaking, and how he had gone with them to view the body, and where
he had stood, and what he had said.

‘Pray, Mr Headstone, what is the name,’ he asked, again trying to make a
diversion, ‘of young Hexam’s sister?’

‘Her name is Lizzie,’ said the schoolmaster, with a strong contraction
of his whole face.

‘She is a young woman of a remarkable character; is she not?’

‘She is sufficiently remarkable to be very superior to Mr Eugene
Wrayburn--though an ordinary person might be that,’ said the
schoolmaster; ‘and I hope you will not think it impertinent in me, sir,
to ask why you put the two names together?’

‘By mere accident,’ returned the Secretary. ‘Observing that Mr Wrayburn
was a disagreeable subject with you, I tried to get away from it: though
not very successfully, it would appear.’

‘Do you know Mr Wrayburn, sir?’

‘No.’

‘Then perhaps the names cannot be put together on the authority of any
representation of his?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘I took the liberty to ask,’ said Bradley, after casting his eyes on
the ground, ‘because he is capable of making any representation, in the
swaggering levity of his insolence. I--I hope you will not misunderstand
me, sir. I--I am much interested in this brother and sister, and the
subject awakens very strong feelings within me. Very, very, strong
feelings.’ With a shaking hand, Bradley took out his handkerchief and
wiped his brow.

The Secretary thought, as he glanced at the schoolmaster’s face, that he
had opened a channel here indeed, and that it was an unexpectedly dark
and deep and stormy one, and difficult to sound. All at once, in the
midst of his turbulent emotions, Bradley stopped and seemed to challenge
his look. Much as though he suddenly asked him, ‘What do you see in me?’

‘The brother, young Hexam, was your real recommendation here,’ said the
Secretary, quietly going back to the point; ‘Mr and Mrs Boffin happening
to know, through Mr Lightwood, that he was your pupil. Anything that
I ask respecting the brother and sister, or either of them, I ask for
myself out of my own interest in the subject, and not in my official
character, or on Mr Boffin’s behalf. How I come to be interested, I need
not explain. You know the father’s connection with the discovery of Mr
Harmon’s body.’

‘Sir,’ replied Bradley, very restlessly indeed, ‘I know all the
circumstances of that case.’

‘Pray tell me, Mr Headstone,’ said the Secretary. ‘Does the sister
suffer under any stigma because of the impossible accusation--groundless
would be a better word--that was made against the father, and
substantially withdrawn?’

‘No, sir,’ returned Bradley, with a kind of anger.

‘I am very glad to hear it.’

‘The sister,’ said Bradley, separating his words over-carefully, and
speaking as if he were repeating them from a book, ‘suffers under no
reproach that repels a man of unimpeachable character who had made
for himself every step of his way in life, from placing her in his own
station. I will not say, raising her to his own station; I say, placing
her in it. The sister labours under no reproach, unless she should
unfortunately make it for herself. When such a man is not deterred from
regarding her as his equal, and when he has convinced himself that
there is no blemish on her, I think the fact must be taken to be pretty
expressive.’

‘And there is such a man?’ said the Secretary.

Bradley Headstone knotted his brows, and squared his large lower jaw,
and fixed his eyes on the ground with an air of determination that
seemed unnecessary to the occasion, as he replied: ‘And there is such a
man.’

The Secretary had no reason or excuse for prolonging the conversation,
and it ended here. Within three hours the oakum-headed apparition once
more dived into the Leaving Shop, and that night Rogue Riderhood’s
recantation lay in the post office, addressed under cover to Lizzie
Hexam at her right address.

All these proceedings occupied John Rokesmith so much, that it was not
until the following day that he saw Bella again. It seemed then to be
tacitly understood between them that they were to be as distantly easy
as they could, without attracting the attention of Mr and Mrs Boffin to
any marked change in their manner. The fitting out of old Betty Higden
was favourable to this, as keeping Bella engaged and interested, and as
occupying the general attention.

‘I think,’ said Rokesmith, when they all stood about her, while she
packed her tidy basket--except Bella, who was busily helping on her
knees at the chair on which it stood; ‘that at least you might keep a
letter in your pocket, Mrs Higden, which I would write for you and date
from here, merely stating, in the names of Mr and Mrs Boffin, that they
are your friends;--I won’t say patrons, because they wouldn’t like it.’

‘No, no, no,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘no patronizing! Let’s keep out of THAT,
whatever we come to.’

‘There’s more than enough of that about, without us; ain’t there,
Noddy?’ said Mrs Boffin.

‘I believe you, old lady!’ returned the Golden Dustman. ‘Overmuch
indeed!’

‘But people sometimes like to be patronized; don’t they, sir?’ asked
Bella, looking up.

‘I don’t. And if THEY do, my dear, they ought to learn better,’ said Mr
Boffin. ‘Patrons and Patronesses, and Vice-Patrons and Vice-Patronesses,
and Deceased Patrons and Deceased Patronesses, and Ex-Vice-Patrons and
Ex-Vice-Patronesses, what does it all mean in the books of the Charities
that come pouring in on Rokesmith as he sits among ‘em pretty well up to
his neck! If Mr Tom Noakes gives his five shillings ain’t he a Patron,
and if Mrs Jack Styles gives her five shillings ain’t she a Patroness?
What the deuce is it all about? If it ain’t stark staring impudence,
what do you call it?’

‘Don’t be warm, Noddy,’ Mrs Boffin urged.

‘Warm!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘It’s enough to make a man smoking hot. I can’t
go anywhere without being Patronized. I don’t want to be Patronized. If
I buy a ticket for a Flower Show, or a Music Show, or any sort of Show,
and pay pretty heavy for it, why am I to be Patroned and Patronessed as
if the Patrons and Patronesses treated me? If there’s a good thing to be
done, can’t it be done on its own merits? If there’s a bad thing to
be done, can it ever be Patroned and Patronessed right? Yet when a new
Institution’s going to be built, it seems to me that the bricks and
mortar ain’t made of half so much consequence as the Patrons and
Patronesses; no, nor yet the objects. I wish somebody would tell me
whether other countries get Patronized to anything like the extent of
this one! And as to the Patrons and Patronesses themselves, I wonder
they’re not ashamed of themselves. They ain’t Pills, or Hair-Washes, or
Invigorating Nervous Essences, to be puffed in that way!’

Having delivered himself of these remarks, Mr Boffin took a trot,
according to his usual custom, and trotted back to the spot from which
he had started.

‘As to the letter, Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘you’re as right as a
trivet. Give her the letter, make her take the letter, put it in her
pocket by violence. She might fall sick. You know you might fall sick,’
said Mr Boffin. ‘Don’t deny it, Mrs Higden, in your obstinacy; you know
you might.’

Old Betty laughed, and said that she would take the letter and be
thankful.

‘That’s right!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Come! That’s sensible. And don’t be
thankful to us (for we never thought of it), but to Mr Rokesmith.’

The letter was written, and read to her, and given to her.

‘Now, how do you feel?’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Do you like it?’

‘The letter, sir?’ said Betty. ‘Ay, it’s a beautiful letter!’

‘No, no, no; not the letter,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘the idea. Are you sure
you’re strong enough to carry out the idea?’

‘I shall be stronger, and keep the deadness off better, this way, than
any way left open to me, sir.’

‘Don’t say than any way left open, you know,’ urged Mr Boffin; ‘because
there are ways without end. A housekeeper would be acceptable over
yonder at the Bower, for instance. Wouldn’t you like to see the
Bower, and know a retired literary man of the name of Wegg that lives
there--WITH a wooden leg?’

Old Betty was proof even against this temptation, and fell to adjusting
her black bonnet and shawl.

‘I wouldn’t let you go, now it comes to this, after all,’ said Mr
Boffin, ‘if I didn’t hope that it may make a man and a workman of
Sloppy, in as short a time as ever a man and workman was made yet. Why,
what have you got there, Betty? Not a doll?’

It was the man in the Guards who had been on duty over Johnny’s bed.
The solitary old woman showed what it was, and put it up quietly in her
dress. Then, she gratefully took leave of Mrs Boffin, and of Mr Boffin,
and of Rokesmith, and then put her old withered arms round Bella’s young
and blooming neck, and said, repeating Johnny’s words: ‘A kiss for the
boofer lady.’

The Secretary looked on from a doorway at the boofer lady thus
encircled, and still looked on at the boofer lady standing alone there,
when the determined old figure with its steady bright eyes was trudging
through the streets, away from paralysis and pauperism.



Chapter 15

THE WHOLE CASE SO FAR


Bradley Headstone held fast by that other interview he was to have with
Lizzie Hexam. In stipulating for it, he had been impelled by a feeling
little short of desperation, and the feeling abided by him. It was very
soon after his interview with the Secretary, that he and Charley Hexam
set out one leaden evening, not unnoticed by Miss Peecher, to have this
desperate interview accomplished.

‘That dolls’ dressmaker,’ said Bradley, ‘is favourable neither to me nor
to you, Hexam.’

‘A pert crooked little chit, Mr Headstone! I knew she would put herself
in the way, if she could, and would be sure to strike in with something
impertinent. It was on that account that I proposed our going to the
City to-night and meeting my sister.’

‘So I supposed,’ said Bradley, getting his gloves on his nervous hands
as he walked. ‘So I supposed.’

‘Nobody but my sister,’ pursued Charley, ‘would have found out such an
extraordinary companion. She has done it in a ridiculous fancy of giving
herself up to another. She told me so, that night when we went there.’

‘Why should she give herself up to the dressmaker?’ asked Bradley.

‘Oh!’ said the boy, colouring. ‘One of her romantic ideas! I tried to
convince her so, but I didn’t succeed. However, what we have got to do,
is, to succeed to-night, Mr Headstone, and then all the rest follows.’

‘You are still sanguine, Hexam.’

‘Certainly I am, sir. Why, we have everything on our side.’

‘Except your sister, perhaps,’ thought Bradley. But he only gloomily
thought it, and said nothing.

‘Everything on our side,’ repeated the boy with boyish confidence.
‘Respectability, an excellent connexion for me, common sense,
everything!’

‘To be sure, your sister has always shown herself a devoted sister,’
said Bradley, willing to sustain himself on even that low ground of
hope.

‘Naturally, Mr Headstone, I have a good deal of influence with her.
And now that you have honoured me with your confidence and spoken to me
first, I say again, we have everything on our side.’

And Bradley thought again, ‘Except your sister, perhaps.’

A grey dusty withered evening in London city has not a hopeful aspect.
The closed warehouses and offices have an air of death about them, and
the national dread of colour has an air of mourning. The towers and
steeples of the many house-encompassed churches, dark and dingy as the
sky that seems descending on them, are no relief to the general gloom;
a sun-dial on a church-wall has the look, in its useless black shade, of
having failed in its business enterprise and stopped payment for ever;
melancholy waifs and strays of housekeepers and porter sweep melancholy
waifs and strays of papers and pins into the kennels, and other more
melancholy waifs and strays explore them, searching and stooping and
poking for anything to sell. The set of humanity outward from the City
is as a set of prisoners departing from gaol, and dismal Newgate
seems quite as fit a stronghold for the mighty Lord Mayor as his own
state-dwelling.

On such an evening, when the city grit gets into the hair and eyes and
skin, and when the fallen leaves of the few unhappy city trees grind
down in corners under wheels of wind, the schoolmaster and the pupil
emerged upon the Leadenhall Street region, spying eastward for Lizzie.
Being something too soon in their arrival, they lurked at a corner,
waiting for her to appear. The best-looking among us will not look very
well, lurking at a corner, and Bradley came out of that disadvantage
very poorly indeed.

‘Here she comes, Mr Headstone! Let us go forward and meet her.’

As they advanced, she saw them coming, and seemed rather troubled. But
she greeted her brother with the usual warmth, and touched the extended
hand of Bradley.

‘Why, where are you going, Charley, dear?’ she asked him then.

‘Nowhere. We came on purpose to meet you.’

‘To meet me, Charley?’

‘Yes. We are going to walk with you. But don’t let us take the great
leading streets where every one walks, and we can’t hear ourselves
speak. Let us go by the quiet backways. Here’s a large paved court by
this church, and quiet, too. Let us go up here.’

‘But it’s not in the way, Charley.’

‘Yes it is,’ said the boy, petulantly. ‘It’s in my way, and my way is
yours.’

She had not released his hand, and, still holding it, looked at him with
a kind of appeal. He avoided her eyes, under pretence of saying, ‘Come
along, Mr Headstone.’ Bradley walked at his side--not at hers--and the
brother and sister walked hand in hand. The court brought them to a
churchyard; a paved square court, with a raised bank of earth about
breast high, in the middle, enclosed by iron rails. Here, conveniently
and healthfully elevated above the level of the living, were the dead,
and the tombstones; some of the latter droopingly inclined from the
perpendicular, as if they were ashamed of the lies they told.

They paced the whole of this place once, in a constrained and
uncomfortable manner, when the boy stopped and said:

‘Lizzie, Mr Headstone has something to say to you. I don’t wish to be an
interruption either to him or to you, and so I’ll go and take a little
stroll and come back. I know in a general way what Mr Headstone intends
to say, and I very highly approve of it, as I hope--and indeed I do
not doubt--you will. I needn’t tell you, Lizzie, that I am under great
obligations to Mr Headstone, and that I am very anxious for Mr Headstone
to succeed in all he undertakes. As I hope--and as, indeed, I don’t
doubt--you must be.’

‘Charley,’ returned his sister, detaining his hand as he withdrew it, ‘I
think you had better stay. I think Mr Headstone had better not say what
he thinks of saying.’

‘Why, how do you know what it is?’ returned the boy.

‘Perhaps I don’t, but--’

‘Perhaps you don’t? No, Liz, I should think not. If you knew what
it was, you would give me a very different answer. There; let go; be
sensible. I wonder you don’t remember that Mr Headstone is looking on.’

She allowed him to separate himself from her, and he, after saying, ‘Now
Liz, be a rational girl and a good sister,’ walked away. She remained
standing alone with Bradley Headstone, and it was not until she raised
her eyes, that he spoke.

‘I said,’ he began, ‘when I saw you last, that there was something
unexplained, which might perhaps influence you. I have come this evening
to explain it. I hope you will not judge of me by my hesitating manner
when I speak to you. You see me at my greatest disadvantage. It is most
unfortunate for me that I wish you to see me at my best, and that I know
you see me at my worst.’

She moved slowly on when he paused, and he moved slowly on beside her.

‘It seems egotistical to begin by saying so much about myself,’ he
resumed, ‘but whatever I say to you seems, even in my own ears, below
what I want to say, and different from what I want to say. I can’t help
it. So it is. You are the ruin of me.’

She started at the passionate sound of the last words, and at the
passionate action of his hands, with which they were accompanied.

‘Yes! you are the ruin--the ruin--the ruin--of me. I have no resources
in myself, I have no confidence in myself, I have no government of
myself when you are near me or in my thoughts. And you are always in my
thoughts now. I have never been quit of you since I first saw you. Oh,
that was a wretched day for me! That was a wretched, miserable day!’

A touch of pity for him mingled with her dislike of him, and she said:
‘Mr Headstone, I am grieved to have done you any harm, but I have never
meant it.’

‘There!’ he cried, despairingly. ‘Now, I seem to have reproached you,
instead of revealing to you the state of my own mind! Bear with me. I am
always wrong when you are in question. It is my doom.’

Struggling with himself, and by times looking up at the deserted windows
of the houses as if there could be anything written in their grimy panes
that would help him, he paced the whole pavement at her side, before he
spoke again.

‘I must try to give expression to what is in my mind; it shall and must
be spoken. Though you see me so confounded--though you strike me so
helpless--I ask you to believe that there are many people who think well
of me; that there are some people who highly esteem me; that I have in
my way won a Station which is considered worth winning.’

‘Surely, Mr Headstone, I do believe it. Surely I have always known it
from Charley.’

‘I ask you to believe that if I were to offer my home such as it is, my
station such as it is, my affections such as they are, to any one of the
best considered, and best qualified, and most distinguished, among the
young women engaged in my calling, they would probably be accepted. Even
readily accepted.’

‘I do not doubt it,’ said Lizzie, with her eyes upon the ground.

‘I have sometimes had it in my thoughts to make that offer and to settle
down as many men of my class do: I on the one side of a school, my wife
on the other, both of us interested in the same work.’

‘Why have you not done so?’ asked Lizzie Hexam. ‘Why do you not do so?’

‘Far better that I never did! The only one grain of comfort I have had
these many weeks,’ he said, always speaking passionately, and, when
most emphatic, repeating that former action of his hands, which was
like flinging his heart’s blood down before her in drops upon the
pavement-stones; ‘the only one grain of comfort I have had these many
weeks is, that I never did. For if I had, and if the same spell had come
upon me for my ruin, I know I should have broken that tie asunder as if
it had been thread.’

She glanced at him with a glance of fear, and a shrinking gesture. He
answered, as if she had spoken.

‘No! It would not have been voluntary on my part, any more than it is
voluntary in me to be here now. You draw me to you. If I were shut up in
a strong prison, you would draw me out. I should break through the wall
to come to you. If I were lying on a sick bed, you would draw me up--to
stagger to your feet and fall there.’

The wild energy of the man, now quite let loose, was absolutely
terrible. He stopped and laid his hand upon a piece of the coping of the
burial-ground enclosure, as if he would have dislodged the stone.

‘No man knows till the time comes, what depths are within him. To some
men it never comes; let them rest and be thankful! To me, you brought
it; on me, you forced it; and the bottom of this raging sea,’ striking
himself upon the breast, ‘has been heaved up ever since.’

‘Mr Headstone, I have heard enough. Let me stop you here. It will be
better for you and better for me. Let us find my brother.’

‘Not yet. It shall and must be spoken. I have been in torments ever
since I stopped short of it before. You are alarmed. It is another of my
miseries that I cannot speak to you or speak of you without stumbling at
every syllable, unless I let the check go altogether and run mad. Here
is a man lighting the lamps. He will be gone directly. I entreat of you
let us walk round this place again. You have no reason to look alarmed;
I can restrain myself, and I will.’

She yielded to the entreaty--how could she do otherwise!--and they paced
the stones in silence. One by one the lights leaped up making the cold
grey church tower more remote, and they were alone again. He said no
more until they had regained the spot where he had broken off; there, he
again stood still, and again grasped the stone. In saying what he said
then, he never looked at her; but looked at it and wrenched at it.

‘You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean
when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am
under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted
in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could
draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to
any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could
draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my
thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the
ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer
of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any good--every good--with
equal force. My circumstances are quite easy, and you would want for
nothing. My reputation stands quite high, and would be a shield for
yours. If you saw me at my work, able to do it well and respected in
it, you might even come to take a sort of pride in me;--I would try hard
that you should. Whatever considerations I may have thought of against
this offer, I have conquered, and I make it with all my heart. Your
brother favours me to the utmost, and it is likely that we might live
and work together; anyhow, it is certain that he would have my best
influence and support. I don’t know what I could say more if I tried. I
might only weaken what is ill enough said as it is. I only add that
if it is any claim on you to be in earnest, I am in thorough earnest,
dreadful earnest.’

The powdered mortar from under the stone at which he wrenched, rattled
on the pavement to confirm his words.

‘Mr Headstone--’

‘Stop! I implore you, before you answer me, to walk round this place
once more. It will give you a minute’s time to think, and me a minute’s
time to get some fortitude together.’

Again she yielded to the entreaty, and again they came back to the same
place, and again he worked at the stone.

‘Is it,’ he said, with his attention apparently engrossed by it, ‘yes,
or no?’

‘Mr Headstone, I thank you sincerely, I thank you gratefully, and hope
you may find a worthy wife before long and be very happy. But it is no.’

‘Is no short time necessary for reflection; no weeks or days?’ he asked,
in the same half-suffocated way.

‘None whatever.’

‘Are you quite decided, and is there no chance of any change in my
favour?’

‘I am quite decided, Mr Headstone, and I am bound to answer I am certain
there is none.’

‘Then,’ said he, suddenly changing his tone and turning to her, and
bringing his clenched hand down upon the stone with a force that laid
the knuckles raw and bleeding; ‘then I hope that I may never kill him!’

The dark look of hatred and revenge with which the words broke from his
livid lips, and with which he stood holding out his smeared hand as
if it held some weapon and had just struck a mortal blow, made her so
afraid of him that she turned to run away. But he caught her by the arm.

‘Mr Headstone, let me go. Mr Headstone, I must call for help!’

‘It is I who should call for help,’ he said; ‘you don’t know yet how
much I need it.’

The working of his face as she shrank from it, glancing round for her
brother and uncertain what to do, might have extorted a cry from her in
another instant; but all at once he sternly stopped it and fixed it, as
if Death itself had done so.

‘There! You see I have recovered myself. Hear me out.’

With much of the dignity of courage, as she recalled her self-reliant
life and her right to be free from accountability to this man, she
released her arm from his grasp and stood looking full at him. She had
never been so handsome, in his eyes. A shade came over them while
he looked back at her, as if she drew the very light out of them to
herself.

‘This time, at least, I will leave nothing unsaid,’ he went on, folding
his hands before him, clearly to prevent his being betrayed into any
impetuous gesture; ‘this last time at least I will not be tortured with
after-thoughts of a lost opportunity. Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’

‘Was it of him you spoke in your ungovernable rage and violence?’ Lizzie
Hexam demanded with spirit.

He bit his lip, and looked at her, and said never a word.

‘Was it Mr Wrayburn that you threatened?’

He bit his lip again, and looked at her, and said never a word.

‘You asked me to hear you out, and you will not speak. Let me find my
brother.’

‘Stay! I threatened no one.’

Her look dropped for an instant to his bleeding hand. He lifted it to
his mouth, wiped it on his sleeve, and again folded it over the other.
‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ he repeated.

‘Why do you mention that name again and again, Mr Headstone?’

‘Because it is the text of the little I have left to say. Observe! There
are no threats in it. If I utter a threat, stop me, and fasten it upon
me. Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’

A worse threat than was conveyed in his manner of uttering the name,
could hardly have escaped him.

‘He haunts you. You accept favours from him. You are willing enough to
listen to HIM. I know it, as well as he does.’

‘Mr Wrayburn has been considerate and good to me, sir,’ said Lizzie,
proudly, ‘in connexion with the death and with the memory of my poor
father.’

‘No doubt. He is of course a very considerate and a very good man, Mr
Eugene Wrayburn.’

‘He is nothing to you, I think,’ said Lizzie, with an indignation she
could not repress.

‘Oh yes, he is. There you mistake. He is much to me.’

‘What can he be to you?’

‘He can be a rival to me among other things,’ said Bradley.

‘Mr Headstone,’ returned Lizzie, with a burning face, ‘it is cowardly in
you to speak to me in this way. But it makes me able to tell you that
I do not like you, and that I never have liked you from the first, and
that no other living creature has anything to do with the effect you
have produced upon me for yourself.’

His head bent for a moment, as if under a weight, and he then looked up
again, moistening his lips. ‘I was going on with the little I had left
to say. I knew all this about Mr Eugene Wrayburn, all the while you were
drawing me to you. I strove against the knowledge, but quite in vain. It
made no difference in me. With Mr Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I went
on. With Mr Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I spoke to you just now. With Mr
Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I have been set aside and I have been cast
out.’

‘If you give those names to my thanking you for your proposal
and declining it, is it my fault, Mr Headstone?’ said Lizzie,
compassionating the bitter struggle he could not conceal, almost as much
as she was repelled and alarmed by it.

‘I am not complaining,’ he returned, ‘I am only stating the case. I had
to wrestle with my self-respect when I submitted to be drawn to you in
spite of Mr Wrayburn. You may imagine how low my self-respect lies now.’

She was hurt and angry; but repressed herself in consideration of his
suffering, and of his being her brother’s friend.

‘And it lies under his feet,’ said Bradley, unfolding his hands in spite
of himself, and fiercely motioning with them both towards the stones of
the pavement. ‘Remember that! It lies under that fellow’s feet, and he
treads upon it and exults above it.’

‘He does not!’ said Lizzie.

‘He does!’ said Bradley. ‘I have stood before him face to face, and he
crushed me down in the dirt of his contempt, and walked over me. Why?
Because he knew with triumph what was in store for me to-night.’

‘O, Mr Headstone, you talk quite wildly.’

‘Quite collectedly. I know what I say too well. Now I have said all. I
have used no threat, remember; I have done no more than show you how the
case stands;--how the case stands, so far.’

At this moment her brother sauntered into view close by. She darted to
him, and caught him by the hand. Bradley followed, and laid his heavy
hand on the boy’s opposite shoulder.

‘Charley Hexam, I am going home. I must walk home by myself to-night,
and get shut up in my room without being spoken to. Give me half an
hour’s start, and let me be, till you find me at my work in the morning.
I shall be at my work in the morning just as usual.’

Clasping his hands, he uttered a short unearthly broken cry, and went
his way. The brother and sister were left looking at one another near
a lamp in the solitary churchyard, and the boy’s face clouded and
darkened, as he said in a rough tone: ‘What is the meaning of this? What
have you done to my best friend? Out with the truth!’

‘Charley!’ said his sister. ‘Speak a little more considerately!’

‘I am not in the humour for consideration, or for nonsense of any sort,’
replied the boy. ‘What have you been doing? Why has Mr Headstone gone
from us in that way?’

‘He asked me--you know he asked me--to be his wife, Charley.’

‘Well?’ said the boy, impatiently.

‘And I was obliged to tell him that I could not be his wife.’

‘You were obliged to tell him,’ repeated the boy angrily, between his
teeth, and rudely pushing her away. ‘You were obliged to tell him! Do
you know that he is worth fifty of you?’

‘It may easily be so, Charley, but I cannot marry him.’

‘You mean that you are conscious that you can’t appreciate him, and
don’t deserve him, I suppose?’

‘I mean that I do not like him, Charley, and that I will never marry
him.’

‘Upon my soul,’ exclaimed the boy, ‘you are a nice picture of a sister!
Upon my soul, you are a pretty piece of disinterestedness! And so all my
endeavours to cancel the past and to raise myself in the world, and to
raise you with me, are to be beaten down by YOUR low whims; are they?’

‘I will not reproach you, Charley.’

‘Hear her!’ exclaimed the boy, looking round at the darkness. ‘She won’t
reproach me! She does her best to destroy my fortunes and her own,
and she won’t reproach me! Why, you’ll tell me, next, that you won’t
reproach Mr Headstone for coming out of the sphere to which he is an
ornament, and putting himself at YOUR feet, to be rejected by YOU!’

‘No, Charley; I will only tell you, as I told himself, that I thank him
for doing so, that I am sorry he did so, and that I hope he will do much
better, and be happy.’

Some touch of compunction smote the boy’s hardening heart as he looked
upon her, his patient little nurse in infancy, his patient friend,
adviser, and reclaimer in boyhood, the self-forgetting sister who had
done everything for him. His tone relented, and he drew her arm through
his.

‘Now, come, Liz; don’t let us quarrel: let us be reasonable and talk
this over like brother and sister. Will you listen to me?’

‘Oh, Charley!’ she replied through her starting tears; ‘do I not listen
to you, and hear many hard things!’

‘Then I am sorry. There, Liz! I am unfeignedly sorry. Only you do put me
out so. Now see. Mr Headstone is perfectly devoted to you. He has told
me in the strongest manner that he has never been his old self for one
single minute since I first brought him to see you. Miss Peecher, our
schoolmistress--pretty and young, and all that--is known to be very much
attached to him, and he won’t so much as look at her or hear of her.
Now, his devotion to you must be a disinterested one; mustn’t it? If he
married Miss Peecher, he would be a great deal better off in all worldly
respects, than in marrying you. Well then; he has nothing to get by it,
has he?’

‘Nothing, Heaven knows!’

‘Very well then,’ said the boy; ‘that’s something in his favour, and a
great thing. Then I come in. Mr Headstone has always got me on, and he
has a good deal in his power, and of course if he was my brother-in-law
he wouldn’t get me on less, but would get me on more. Mr Headstone
comes and confides in me, in a very delicate way, and says, “I hope my
marrying your sister would be agreeable to you, Hexam, and useful to
you?” I say, “There’s nothing in the world, Mr Headstone, that I could
be better pleased with.” Mr Headstone says, “Then I may rely upon your
intimate knowledge of me for your good word with your sister, Hexam?”
 And I say, “Certainly, Mr Headstone, and naturally I have a good deal of
influence with her.” So I have; haven’t I, Liz?’

‘Yes, Charley.’

‘Well said! Now, you see, we begin to get on, the moment we begin to
be really talking it over, like brother and sister. Very well. Then
YOU come in. As Mr Headstone’s wife you would be occupying a most
respectable station, and you would be holding a far better place in
society than you hold now, and you would at length get quit of the
river-side and the old disagreeables belonging to it, and you would be
rid for good of dolls’ dressmakers and their drunken fathers, and the
like of that. Not that I want to disparage Miss Jenny Wren: I dare
say she is all very well in her way; but her way is not your way as
Mr Headstone’s wife. Now, you see, Liz, on all three accounts--on
Mr Headstone’s, on mine, on yours--nothing could be better or more
desirable.’

They were walking slowly as the boy spoke, and here he stood still, to
see what effect he had made. His sister’s eyes were fixed upon him; but
as they showed no yielding, and as she remained silent, he walked her on
again. There was some discomfiture in his tone as he resumed, though he
tried to conceal it.

‘Having so much influence with you, Liz, as I have, perhaps I should
have done better to have had a little chat with you in the first
instance, before Mr Headstone spoke for himself. But really all this in
his favour seemed so plain and undeniable, and I knew you to have always
been so reasonable and sensible, that I didn’t consider it worth while.
Very likely that was a mistake of mine. However, it’s soon set right.
All that need be done to set it right, is for you to tell me at once
that I may go home and tell Mr Headstone that what has taken place is
not final, and that it will all come round by-and-by.’

He stopped again. The pale face looked anxiously and lovingly at him,
but she shook her head.

‘Can’t you speak?’ said the boy sharply.

‘I am very unwilling to speak, Charley. If I must, I must. I cannot
authorize you to say any such thing to Mr Headstone: I cannot allow you
to say any such thing to Mr Headstone. Nothing remains to be said to him
from me, after what I have said for good and all, to-night.’

‘And this girl,’ cried the boy, contemptuously throwing her off again,
‘calls herself a sister!’

‘Charley, dear, that is the second time that you have almost struck
me. Don’t be hurt by my words. I don’t mean--Heaven forbid!--that you
intended it; but you hardly know with what a sudden swing you removed
yourself from me.’

‘However!’ said the boy, taking no heed of the remonstrance, and
pursuing his own mortified disappointment, ‘I know what this means, and
you shall not disgrace me.’

‘It means what I have told you, Charley, and nothing more.’

‘That’s not true,’ said the boy in a violent tone, ‘and you know it’s
not. It means your precious Mr Wrayburn; that’s what it means.’

‘Charley! If you remember any old days of ours together, forbear!’

‘But you shall not disgrace me,’ doggedly pursued the boy. ‘I am
determined that after I have climbed up out of the mire, you shall not
pull me down. You can’t disgrace me if I have nothing to do with you,
and I will have nothing to do with you for the future.’

‘Charley! On many a night like this, and many a worse night, I have sat
on the stones of the street, hushing you in my arms. Unsay those words
without even saying you are sorry for them, and my arms are open to you
still, and so is my heart.’

‘I’ll not unsay them. I’ll say them again. You are an inveterately bad
girl, and a false sister, and I have done with you. For ever, I have
done with you!’

He threw up his ungrateful and ungracious hand as if it set up a barrier
between them, and flung himself upon his heel and left her. She remained
impassive on the same spot, silent and motionless, until the striking
of the church clock roused her, and she turned away. But then, with the
breaking up of her immobility came the breaking up of the waters that
the cold heart of the selfish boy had frozen. And ‘O that I were lying
here with the dead!’ and ‘O Charley, Charley, that this should be the
end of our pictures in the fire!’ were all the words she said, as she
laid her face in her hands on the stone coping.

A figure passed by, and passed on, but stopped and looked round at
her. It was the figure of an old man with a bowed head, wearing a large
brimmed low-crowned hat, and a long-skirted coat. After hesitating a
little, the figure turned back, and, advancing with an air of gentleness
and compassion, said:

‘Pardon me, young woman, for speaking to you, but you are under some
distress of mind. I cannot pass upon my way and leave you weeping here
alone, as if there was nothing in the place. Can I help you? Can I do
anything to give you comfort?’

She raised her head at the sound of these kind words, and answered
gladly, ‘O, Mr Riah, is it you?’

‘My daughter,’ said the old man, ‘I stand amazed! I spoke as to a
stranger. Take my arm, take my arm. What grieves you? Who has done this?
Poor girl, poor girl!’

‘My brother has quarrelled with me,’ sobbed Lizzie, ‘and renounced me.’

‘He is a thankless dog,’ said the Jew, angrily. ‘Let him go. Shake the
dust from thy feet and let him go. Come, daughter! Come home with me--it
is but across the road--and take a little time to recover your peace and
to make your eyes seemly, and then I will bear you company through the
streets. For it is past your usual time, and will soon be late, and the
way is long, and there is much company out of doors to-night.’

She accepted the support he offered her, and they slowly passed out
of the churchyard. They were in the act of emerging into the main
thoroughfare, when another figure loitering discontentedly by, and
looking up the street and down it, and all about, started and exclaimed,
‘Lizzie! why, where have you been? Why, what’s the matter?’

As Eugene Wrayburn thus addressed her, she drew closer to the Jew, and
bent her head. The Jew having taken in the whole of Eugene at one sharp
glance, cast his eyes upon the ground, and stood mute.

‘Lizzie, what is the matter?’

‘Mr Wrayburn, I cannot tell you now. I cannot tell you to-night, if I
ever can tell you. Pray leave me.’

‘But, Lizzie, I came expressly to join you. I came to walk home with
you, having dined at a coffee-house in this neighbourhood and knowing
your hour. And I have been lingering about,’ added Eugene, ‘like a
bailiff; or,’ with a look at Riah, ‘an old clothesman.’

The Jew lifted up his eyes, and took in Eugene once more, at another
glance.

‘Mr Wrayburn, pray, pray, leave me with this protector. And one thing
more. Pray, pray be careful of yourself.’

‘Mysteries of Udolpho!’ said Eugene, with a look of wonder. ‘May I be
excused for asking, in the elderly gentleman’s presence, who is this
kind protector?’

‘A trustworthy friend,’ said Lizzie.

‘I will relieve him of his trust,’ returned Eugene. ‘But you must tell
me, Lizzie, what is the matter?’

‘Her brother is the matter,’ said the old man, lifting up his eyes
again.

‘Our brother the matter?’ returned Eugene, with airy contempt. ‘Our
brother is not worth a thought, far less a tear. What has our brother
done?’

The old man lifted up his eyes again, with one grave look at Wrayburn,
and one grave glance at Lizzie, as she stood looking down. Both were so
full of meaning that even Eugene was checked in his light career, and
subsided into a thoughtful ‘Humph!’

With an air of perfect patience the old man, remaining mute and keeping
his eyes cast down, stood, retaining Lizzie’s arm, as though in his
habit of passive endurance, it would be all one to him if he had stood
there motionless all night.

‘If Mr Aaron,’ said Eugene, who soon found this fatiguing, ‘will be good
enough to relinquish his charge to me, he will be quite free for any
engagement he may have at the Synagogue. Mr Aaron, will you have the
kindness?’

But the old man stood stock still.

‘Good evening, Mr Aaron,’ said Eugene, politely; ‘we need not detain
you.’ Then turning to Lizzie, ‘Is our friend Mr Aaron a little deaf?’

‘My hearing is very good, Christian gentleman,’ replied the old man,
calmly; ‘but I will hear only one voice to-night, desiring me to leave
this damsel before I have conveyed her to her home. If she requests it,
I will do it. I will do it for no one else.’

‘May I ask why so, Mr Aaron?’ said Eugene, quite undisturbed in his
ease.

‘Excuse me. If she asks me, I will tell her,’ replied the old man. ‘I
will tell no one else.’

‘I do not ask you,’ said Lizzie, ‘and I beg you to take me home. Mr
Wrayburn, I have had a bitter trial to-night, and I hope you will not
think me ungrateful, or mysterious, or changeable. I am neither; I am
wretched. Pray remember what I said to you. Pray, pray, take care.’

‘My dear Lizzie,’ he returned, in a low voice, bending over her on the
other side; ‘of what? Of whom?’

‘Of any one you have lately seen and made angry.’

He snapped his fingers and laughed. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘since no better
may be, Mr Aaron and I will divide this trust, and see you home
together. Mr Aaron on that side; I on this. If perfectly agreeable to Mr
Aaron, the escort will now proceed.’

He knew his power over her. He knew that she would not insist upon his
leaving her. He knew that, her fears for him being aroused, she would
be uneasy if he were out of her sight. For all his seeming levity and
carelessness, he knew whatever he chose to know of the thoughts of her
heart.

And going on at her side, so gaily, regardless of all that had been
urged against him; so superior in his sallies and self-possession to
the gloomy constraint of her suitor and the selfish petulance of her
brother; so faithful to her, as it seemed, when her own stock was
faithless; what an immense advantage, what an overpowering influence,
were his that night! Add to the rest, poor girl, that she had heard him
vilified for her sake, and that she had suffered for his, and where the
wonder that his occasional tones of serious interest (setting off his
carelessness, as if it were assumed to calm her), that his lightest
touch, his lightest look, his very presence beside her in the dark
common street, were like glimpses of an enchanted world, which it was
natural for jealousy and malice and all meanness to be unable to bear
the brightness of, and to gird at as bad spirits might.

Nothing more being said of repairing to Riah’s, they went direct to
Lizzie’s lodging. A little short of the house-door she parted from them,
and went in alone.

‘Mr Aaron,’ said Eugene, when they were left together in the street,
‘with many thanks for your company, it remains for me unwillingly to say
Farewell.’

‘Sir,’ returned the other, ‘I give you good night, and I wish that you
were not so thoughtless.’

‘Mr Aaron,’ returned Eugene, ‘I give you good night, and I wish (for you
are a little dull) that you were not so thoughtful.’

But now, that his part was played out for the evening, and when in
turning his back upon the Jew he came off the stage, he was thoughtful
himself. ‘How did Lightwood’s catechism run?’ he murmured, as he stopped
to light his cigar. ‘What is to come of it? What are you doing? Where
are you going? We shall soon know now. Ah!’ with a heavy sigh.

The heavy sigh was repeated as if by an echo, an hour afterwards, when
Riah, who had been sitting on some dark steps in a corner over against
the house, arose and went his patient way; stealing through the streets
in his ancient dress, like the ghost of a departed Time.



Chapter 16

AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION


The estimable Twemlow, dressing himself in his lodgings over the
stable-yard in Duke Street, Saint James’s, and hearing the horses at
their toilette below, finds himself on the whole in a disadvantageous
position as compared with the noble animals at livery. For whereas, on
the one hand, he has no attendant to slap him soundingly and require him
in gruff accents to come up and come over, still, on the other hand,
he has no attendant at all; and the mild gentleman’s finger-joints and
other joints working rustily in the morning, he could deem it agreeable
even to be tied up by the countenance at his chamber-door, so he were
there skilfully rubbed down and slushed and sluiced and polished and
clothed, while himself taking merely a passive part in these trying
transactions.

How the fascinating Tippins gets on when arraying herself for the
bewilderment of the senses of men, is known only to the Graces and her
maid; but perhaps even that engaging creature, though not reduced to
the self-dependence of Twemlow could dispense with a good deal of the
trouble attendant on the daily restoration of her charms, seeing that
as to her face and neck this adorable divinity is, as it were, a diurnal
species of lobster--throwing off a shell every forenoon, and needing to
keep in a retired spot until the new crust hardens.

Howbeit, Twemlow doth at length invest himself with collar and cravat
and wristbands to his knuckles, and goeth forth to breakfast. And to
breakfast with whom but his near neighbours, the Lammles of Sackville
Street, who have imparted to him that he will meet his distant kinsman,
Mr Fledgely. The awful Snigsworth might taboo and prohibit Fledgely, but
the peaceable Twemlow reasons, If he IS my kinsman I didn’t make him so,
and to meet a man is not to know him.’

It is the first anniversary of the happy marriage of Mr and Mrs Lammle,
and the celebration is a breakfast, because a dinner on the desired
scale of sumptuosity cannot be achieved within less limits than those
of the non-existent palatial residence of which so many people are
madly envious. So, Twemlow trips with not a little stiffness across
Piccadilly, sensible of having once been more upright in figure and less
in danger of being knocked down by swift vehicles. To be sure that was
in the days when he hoped for leave from the dread Snigsworth to do
something, or be something, in life, and before that magnificent Tartar
issued the ukase, ‘As he will never distinguish himself, he must be a
poor gentleman-pensioner of mine, and let him hereby consider himself
pensioned.’

Ah! my Twemlow! Say, little feeble grey personage, what thoughts are in
thy breast to-day, of the Fancy--so still to call her who bruised thy
heart when it was green and thy head brown--and whether it be better or
worse, more painful or less, to believe in the Fancy to this hour, than
to know her for a greedy armour-plated crocodile, with no more capacity
of imagining the delicate and sensitive and tender spot behind thy
waistcoat, than of going straight at it with a knitting-needle. Say
likewise, my Twemlow, whether it be the happier lot to be a poor
relation of the great, or to stand in the wintry slush giving the hack
horses to drink out of the shallow tub at the coach-stand, into which
thou has so nearly set thy uncertain foot. Twemlow says nothing, and
goes on.

As he approaches the Lammles’ door, drives up a little one-horse
carriage, containing Tippins the divine. Tippins, letting down the
window, playfully extols the vigilance of her cavalier in being in
waiting there to hand her out. Twemlow hands her out with as much polite
gravity as if she were anything real, and they proceed upstairs. Tippins
all abroad about the legs, and seeking to express that those unsteady
articles are only skipping in their native buoyancy.

And dear Mrs Lammle and dear Mr Lammle, how do you do, and when are
you going down to what’s-its-name place--Guy, Earl of Warwick, you
know--what is it?--Dun Cow--to claim the flitch of bacon? And Mortimer,
whose name is for ever blotted out from my list of lovers, by reason
first of fickleness and then of base desertion, how do YOU do, wretch?
And Mr Wrayburn, YOU here! What can YOU come for, because we are all
very sure before-hand that you are not going to talk! And Veneering,
M.P., how are things going on down at the house, and when will you turn
out those terrible people for us? And Mrs Veneering, my dear, can it
positively be true that you go down to that stifling place night after
night, to hear those men prose? Talking of which, Veneering, why don’t
you prose, for you haven’t opened your lips there yet, and we are dying
to hear what you have got to say to us! Miss Podsnap, charmed to see
you. Pa, here? No! Ma, neither? Oh! Mr Boots! Delighted. Mr Brewer!
This IS a gathering of the clans. Thus Tippins, and surveys Fledgeby and
outsiders through golden glass, murmuring as she turns about and about,
in her innocent giddy way, Anybody else I know? No, I think not. Nobody
there. Nobody THERE. Nobody anywhere!

Mr Lammle, all a-glitter, produces his friend Fledgeby, as dying for the
honour of presentation to Lady Tippins. Fledgeby presented, has the air
of going to say something, has the air of going to say nothing, has an
air successively of meditation, of resignation, and of desolation,
backs on Brewer, makes the tour of Boots, and fades into the extreme
background, feeling for his whisker, as if it might have turned up since
he was there five minutes ago.

But Lammle has him out again before he has so much as completely
ascertained the bareness of the land. He would seem to be in a bad way,
Fledgeby; for Lammle represents him as dying again. He is dying now, of
want of presentation to Twemlow.

Twemlow offers his hand. Glad to see him. ‘Your mother, sir, was a
connexion of mine.’

‘I believe so,’ says Fledgeby, ‘but my mother and her family were two.’

‘Are you staying in town?’ asks Twemlow.

‘I always am,’ says Fledgeby.

‘You like town,’ says Twemlow. But is felled flat by Fledgeby’s taking
it quite ill, and replying, No, he don’t like town. Lammle tries to
break the force of the fall, by remarking that some people do not like
town. Fledgeby retorting that he never heard of any such case but his
own, Twemlow goes down again heavily.

‘There is nothing new this morning, I suppose?’ says Twemlow, returning
to the mark with great spirit.

Fledgeby has not heard of anything.

‘No, there’s not a word of news,’ says Lammle.

‘Not a particle,’ adds Boots.

‘Not an atom,’ chimes in Brewer.

Somehow the execution of this little concerted piece appears to raise
the general spirits as with a sense of duty done, and sets the company a
going. Everybody seems more equal than before, to the calamity of being
in the society of everybody else. Even Eugene standing in a window,
moodily swinging the tassel of a blind, gives it a smarter jerk now, as
if he found himself in better case.

Breakfast announced. Everything on table showy and gaudy, but with
a self-assertingly temporary and nomadic air on the decorations, as
boasting that they will be much more showy and gaudy in the palatial
residence. Mr Lammle’s own particular servant behind his chair; the
Analytical behind Veneering’s chair; instances in point that
such servants fall into two classes: one mistrusting the master’s
acquaintances, and the other mistrusting the master. Mr Lammle’s
servant, of the second class. Appearing to be lost in wonder and low
spirits because the police are so long in coming to take his master up
on some charge of the first magnitude.

Veneering, M.P., on the right of Mrs Lammle; Twemlow on her left; Mrs
Veneering, W.M.P. (wife of Member of Parliament), and Lady Tippins on Mr
Lammle’s right and left. But be sure that well within the fascination of
Mr Lammle’s eye and smile sits little Georgiana. And be sure that
close to little Georgiana, also under inspection by the same gingerous
gentleman, sits Fledgeby.

Oftener than twice or thrice while breakfast is in progress, Mr Twemlow
gives a little sudden turn towards Mrs Lammle, and then says to her, ‘I
beg your pardon!’ This not being Twemlow’s usual way, why is it his
way to-day? Why, the truth is, Twemlow repeatedly labours under the
impression that Mrs Lammle is going to speak to him, and turning finds
that it is not so, and mostly that she has her eyes upon Veneering.
Strange that this impression so abides by Twemlow after being corrected,
yet so it is.

Lady Tippins partaking plentifully of the fruits of the earth (including
grape-juice in the category) becomes livelier, and applies herself to
elicit sparks from Mortimer Lightwood. It is always understood among the
initiated, that that faithless lover must be planted at table opposite
to Lady Tippins, who will then strike conversational fire out of him.
In a pause of mastication and deglutition, Lady Tippins, contemplating
Mortimer, recalls that it was at our dear Veneerings, and in the
presence of a party who are surely all here, that he told them his
story of the man from somewhere, which afterwards became so horribly
interesting and vulgarly popular.

‘Yes, Lady Tippins,’ assents Mortimer; ‘as they say on the stage, “Even
so!”

‘Then we expect you,’ retorts the charmer, ‘to sustain your reputation,
and tell us something else.’

‘Lady Tippins, I exhausted myself for life that day, and there is
nothing more to be got out of me.’

Mortimer parries thus, with a sense upon him that elsewhere it is Eugene
and not he who is the jester, and that in these circles where Eugene
persists in being speechless, he, Mortimer, is but the double of the
friend on whom he has founded himself.

‘But,’ quoth the fascinating Tippins, ‘I am resolved on getting
something more out of you. Traitor! what is this I hear about another
disappearance?’

‘As it is you who have heard it,’ returns Lightwood, ‘perhaps you’ll
tell us.’

‘Monster, away!’ retorts Lady Tippins. ‘Your own Golden Dustman referred
me to you.’

Mr Lammle, striking in here, proclaims aloud that there is a sequel
to the story of the man from somewhere. Silence ensues upon the
proclamation.

‘I assure you,’ says Lightwood, glancing round the table, ‘I have
nothing to tell.’ But Eugene adding in a low voice, ‘There, tell
it, tell it!’ he corrects himself with the addition, ‘Nothing worth
mentioning.’

Boots and Brewer immediately perceive that it is immensely worth
mentioning, and become politely clamorous. Veneering is also visited by
a perception to the same effect. But it is understood that his attention
is now rather used up, and difficult to hold, that being the tone of the
House of Commons.

‘Pray don’t be at the trouble of composing yourselves to listen,’ says
Mortimer Lightwood, ‘because I shall have finished long before you have
fallen into comfortable attitudes. It’s like--’

‘It’s like,’ impatiently interrupts Eugene, ‘the children’s narrative:

     “I’ll tell you a story
     Of Jack a Manory,
     And now my story’s begun;
     I’ll tell you another
     Of Jack and his brother,
     And now my story is done.”

--Get on, and get it over!’

Eugene says this with a sound of vexation in his voice, leaning back in
his chair and looking balefully at Lady Tippins, who nods to him as
her dear Bear, and playfully insinuates that she (a self-evident
proposition) is Beauty, and he Beast.

‘The reference,’ proceeds Mortimer, ‘which I suppose to be made by my
honourable and fair enslaver opposite, is to the following circumstance.
Very lately, the young woman, Lizzie Hexam, daughter of the late Jesse
Hexam, otherwise Gaffer, who will be remembered to have found the body
of the man from somewhere, mysteriously received, she knew not from
whom, an explicit retraction of the charges made against her father, by
another water-side character of the name of Riderhood. Nobody believed
them, because little Rogue Riderhood--I am tempted into the paraphrase
by remembering the charming wolf who would have rendered society a great
service if he had devoured Mr Riderhood’s father and mother in their
infancy--had previously played fast and loose with the said charges,
and, in fact, abandoned them. However, the retraction I have mentioned
found its way into Lizzie Hexam’s hands, with a general flavour on it
of having been favoured by some anonymous messenger in a dark cloak and
slouched hat, and was by her forwarded, in her father’s vindication, to
Mr Boffin, my client. You will excuse the phraseology of the shop, but
as I never had another client, and in all likelihood never shall have, I
am rather proud of him as a natural curiosity probably unique.’

Although as easy as usual on the surface, Lightwood is not quite as easy
as usual below it. With an air of not minding Eugene at all, he feels
that the subject is not altogether a safe one in that connexion.

‘The natural curiosity which forms the sole ornament of my professional
museum,’ he resumes, ‘hereupon desires his Secretary--an individual
of the hermit-crab or oyster species, and whose name, I think, is
Chokesmith--but it doesn’t in the least matter--say Artichoke--to put
himself in communication with Lizzie Hexam. Artichoke professes his
readiness so to do, endeavours to do so, but fails.’

‘Why fails?’ asks Boots.

‘How fails?’ asks Brewer.

‘Pardon me,’ returns Lightwood, ‘I must postpone the reply for one
moment, or we shall have an anti-climax. Artichoke failing signally, my
client refers the task to me: his purpose being to advance the interests
of the object of his search. I proceed to put myself in communication
with her; I even happen to possess some special means,’ with a glance
at Eugene, ‘of putting myself in communication with her; but I fail too,
because she has vanished.’

‘Vanished!’ is the general echo.

‘Disappeared,’ says Mortimer. ‘Nobody knows how, nobody knows when,
nobody knows where. And so ends the story to which my honourable and
fair enslaver opposite referred.’

Tippins, with a bewitching little scream, opines that we shall every one
of us be murdered in our beds. Eugene eyes her as if some of us would
be enough for him. Mrs Veneering, W.M.P., remarks that these social
mysteries make one afraid of leaving Baby. Veneering, M.P., wishes to
be informed (with something of a second-hand air of seeing the Right
Honourable Gentleman at the head of the Home Department in his place)
whether it is intended to be conveyed that the vanished person has been
spirited away or otherwise harmed? Instead of Lightwood’s answering,
Eugene answers, and answers hastily and vexedly: ‘No, no, no; he doesn’t
mean that; he means voluntarily vanished--but utterly--completely.’

However, the great subject of the happiness of Mr and Mrs Lammle must
not be allowed to vanish with the other vanishments--with the vanishing
of the murderer, the vanishing of Julius Handford, the vanishing of
Lizzie Hexam,--and therefore Veneering must recall the present sheep
to the pen from which they have strayed. Who so fit to discourse of
the happiness of Mr and Mrs Lammle, they being the dearest and oldest
friends he has in the world; or what audience so fit for him to take
into his confidence as that audience, a noun of multitude or signifying
many, who are all the oldest and dearest friends he has in the world?
So Veneering, without the formality of rising, launches into a familiar
oration, gradually toning into the Parliamentary sing-song, in which he
sees at that board his dear friend Twemlow who on that day twelvemonth
bestowed on his dear friend Lammle the fair hand of his dear friend
Sophronia, and in which he also sees at that board his dear friends
Boots and Brewer whose rallying round him at a period when his dear
friend Lady Tippins likewise rallied round him--ay, and in the foremost
rank--he can never forget while memory holds her seat. But he is free
to confess that he misses from that board his dear old friend Podsnap,
though he is well represented by his dear young friend Georgiana. And he
further sees at that board (this he announces with pomp, as if exulting
in the powers of an extraordinary telescope) his friend Mr Fledgeby, if
he will permit him to call him so. For all of these reasons, and many
more which he right well knows will have occurred to persons of your
exceptional acuteness, he is here to submit to you that the time has
arrived when, with our hearts in our glasses, with tears in our eyes,
with blessings on our lips, and in a general way with a profusion of
gammon and spinach in our emotional larders, we should one and all drink
to our dear friends the Lammles, wishing them many years as happy as
the last, and many many friends as congenially united as themselves. And
this he will add; that Anastatia Veneering (who is instantly heard to
weep) is formed on the same model as her old and chosen friend Sophronia
Lammle, in respect that she is devoted to the man who wooed and won her,
and nobly discharges the duties of a wife.

Seeing no better way out of it, Veneering here pulls up his oratorical
Pegasus extremely short, and plumps down, clean over his head, with:
‘Lammle, God bless you!’

Then Lammle. Too much of him every way; pervadingly too much nose of a
coarse wrong shape, and his nose in his mind and his manners; too much
smile to be real; too much frown to be false; too many large teeth to be
visible at once without suggesting a bite. He thanks you, dear friends,
for your kindly greeting, and hopes to receive you--it may be on the
next of these delightful occasions--in a residence better suited to
your claims on the rites of hospitality. He will never forget that at
Veneering’s he first saw Sophronia. Sophronia will never forget that at
Veneering’s she first saw him. ‘They spoke of it soon after they
were married, and agreed that they would never forget it. In fact, to
Veneering they owe their union. They hope to show their sense of this
some day [‘No, no, from Veneering)--oh yes, yes, and let him rely
upon it, they will if they can! His marriage with Sophronia was not a
marriage of interest on either side: she had her little fortune, he had
his little fortune: they joined their little fortunes: it was a marriage
of pure inclination and suitability. Thank you! Sophronia and he are
fond of the society of young people; but he is not sure that their house
would be a good house for young people proposing to remain single, since
the contemplation of its domestic bliss might induce them to change
their minds. He will not apply this to any one present; certainly not
to their darling little Georgiana. Again thank you! Neither, by-the-by,
will he apply it to his friend Fledgeby. He thanks Veneering for the
feeling manner in which he referred to their common friend Fledgeby, for
he holds that gentleman in the highest estimation. Thank you. In fact
(returning unexpectedly to Fledgeby), the better you know him, the more
you find in him that you desire to know. Again thank you! In his dear
Sophronia’s name and in his own, thank you!

Mrs Lammle has sat quite still, with her eyes cast down upon the
table-cloth. As Mr Lammle’s address ends, Twemlow once more turns to her
involuntarily, not cured yet of that often recurring impression that she
is going to speak to him. This time she really is going to speak to him.
Veneering is talking with his other next neighbour, and she speaks in a
low voice.

‘Mr Twemlow.’

He answers, ‘I beg your pardon? Yes?’ Still a little doubtful, because
of her not looking at him.

‘You have the soul of a gentleman, and I know I may trust you. Will you
give me the opportunity of saying a few words to you when you come up
stairs?’

‘Assuredly. I shall be honoured.’

‘Don’t seem to do so, if you please, and don’t think it inconsistent if
my manner should be more careless than my words. I may be watched.’

Intensely astonished, Twemlow puts his hand to his forehead, and sinks
back in his chair meditating. Mrs Lammle rises. All rise. The ladies go
up stairs. The gentlemen soon saunter after them. Fledgeby has devoted
the interval to taking an observation of Boots’s whiskers, Brewer’s
whiskers, and Lammle’s whiskers, and considering which pattern of
whisker he would prefer to produce out of himself by friction, if the
Genie of the cheek would only answer to his rubbing.

In the drawing-room, groups form as usual. Lightwood, Boots, and Brewer,
flutter like moths around that yellow wax candle--guttering down,
and with some hint of a winding-sheet in it--Lady Tippins. Outsiders
cultivate Veneering, M P., and Mrs Veneering, W.M.P. Lammle stands with
folded arms, Mephistophelean in a corner, with Georgiana and Fledgeby.
Mrs Lammle, on a sofa by a table, invites Mr Twemlow’s attention to a
book of portraits in her hand.

Mr Twemlow takes his station on a settee before her, and Mrs Lammle
shows him a portrait.

‘You have reason to be surprised,’ she says softly, ‘but I wish you
wouldn’t look so.’

Disturbed Twemlow, making an effort not to look so, looks much more so.

‘I think, Mr Twemlow, you never saw that distant connexion of yours
before to-day?’

‘No, never.’

‘Now that you do see him, you see what he is. You are not proud of him?’

‘To say the truth, Mrs Lammle, no.’

‘If you knew more of him, you would be less inclined to acknowledge him.
Here is another portrait. What do you think of it?’

Twemlow has just presence of mind enough to say aloud: ‘Very like!
Uncommonly like!’

‘You have noticed, perhaps, whom he favours with his attentions? You
notice where he is now, and how engaged?’

‘Yes. But Mr Lammle--’

She darts a look at him which he cannot comprehend, and shows him
another portrait.

‘Very good; is it not?’

‘Charming!’ says Twemlow.

‘So like as to be almost a caricature?--Mr Twemlow, it is impossible
to tell you what the struggle in my mind has been, before I could bring
myself to speak to you as I do now. It is only in the conviction that I
may trust you never to betray me, that I can proceed. Sincerely promise
me that you never will betray my confidence--that you will respect it,
even though you may no longer respect me,--and I shall be as satisfied
as if you had sworn it.’

‘Madam, on the honour of a poor gentleman--’

‘Thank you. I can desire no more. Mr Twemlow, I implore you to save that
child!’

‘That child?’

‘Georgiana. She will be sacrificed. She will be inveigled and married
to that connexion of yours. It is a partnership affair, a
money-speculation. She has no strength of will or character to help
herself and she is on the brink of being sold into wretchedness for
life.’

‘Amazing! But what can I do to prevent it?’ demands Twemlow, shocked and
bewildered to the last degree.

‘Here is another portrait. And not good, is it?’

Aghast at the light manner of her throwing her head back to look at it
critically, Twemlow still dimly perceives the expediency of throwing his
own head back, and does so. Though he no more sees the portrait than if
it were in China.

‘Decidedly not good,’ says Mrs Lammle. ‘Stiff and exaggerated!’

‘And ex--’ But Twemlow, in his demolished state, cannot command the
word, and trails off into ‘--actly so.’

‘Mr Twemlow, your word will have weight with her pompous, self-blinded
father. You know how much he makes of your family. Lose no time. Warn
him.’

‘But warn him against whom?’

‘Against me.’

By great good fortune Twemlow receives a stimulant at this critical
instant. The stimulant is Lammle’s voice.

‘Sophronia, my dear, what portraits are you showing Twemlow?’

‘Public characters, Alfred.’

‘Show him the last of me.’

‘Yes, Alfred.’

She puts the book down, takes another book up, turns the leaves, and
presents the portrait to Twemlow.

‘That is the last of Mr Lammle. Do you think it good?--Warn her father
against me. I deserve it, for I have been in the scheme from the first.
It is my husband’s scheme, your connexion’s, and mine. I tell you this,
only to show you the necessity of the poor little foolish affectionate
creature’s being befriended and rescued. You will not repeat this to her
father. You will spare me so far, and spare my husband. For, though this
celebration of to-day is all a mockery, he is my husband, and we must
live.--Do you think it like?’

Twemlow, in a stunned condition, feigns to compare the portrait in his
hand with the original looking towards him from his Mephistophelean
corner.

‘Very well indeed!’ are at length the words which Twemlow with great
difficulty extracts from himself.

‘I am glad you think so. On the whole, I myself consider it the best.
The others are so dark. Now here, for instance, is another of Mr
Lammle--’

‘But I don’t understand; I don’t see my way,’ Twemlow stammers, as he
falters over the book with his glass at his eye. ‘How warn her father,
and not tell him? Tell him how much? Tell him how little? I--I--am
getting lost.’

‘Tell him I am a match-maker; tell him I am an artful and designing
woman; tell him you are sure his daughter is best out of my house and my
company. Tell him any such things of me; they will all be true. You know
what a puffed-up man he is, and how easily you can cause his vanity to
take the alarm. Tell him as much as will give him the alarm and make
him careful of her, and spare me the rest. Mr Twemlow, I feel my sudden
degradation in your eyes; familiar as I am with my degradation in my own
eyes, I keenly feel the change that must have come upon me in yours,
in these last few moments. But I trust to your good faith with me as
implicitly as when I began. If you knew how often I have tried to speak
to you to-day, you would almost pity me. I want no new promise from you
on my own account, for I am satisfied, and I always shall be satisfied,
with the promise you have given me. I can venture to say no more, for
I see that I am watched. If you would set my mind at rest with the
assurance that you will interpose with the father and save this harmless
girl, close that book before you return it to me, and I shall know what
you mean, and deeply thank you in my heart.--Alfred, Mr Twemlow thinks
the last one the best, and quite agrees with you and me.’

Alfred advances. The groups break up. Lady Tippins rises to go, and Mrs
Veneering follows her leader. For the moment, Mrs Lammle does not turn
to them, but remains looking at Twemlow looking at Alfred’s portrait
through his eyeglass. The moment past, Twemlow drops his eyeglass at its
ribbon’s length, rises, and closes the book with an emphasis which makes
that fragile nursling of the fairies, Tippins, start.

Then good-bye and good-bye, and charming occasion worthy of the Golden
Age, and more about the flitch of bacon, and the like of that; and
Twemlow goes staggering across Piccadilly with his hand to his forehead,
and is nearly run down by a flushed lettercart, and at last drops
safe in his easy-chair, innocent good gentleman, with his hand to his
forehead still, and his head in a whirl.





BOOK THE THIRD -- A LONG LANE



Chapter 1

LODGERS IN QUEER STREET


It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate
London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing,
and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose
between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither.
Gaslights flared in the shops with a haggard and unblest air, as knowing
themselves to be night-creatures that had no business abroad under the
sun; while the sun itself when it was for a few moments dimly indicated
through circling eddies of fog, showed as if it had gone out and were
collapsing flat and cold. Even in the surrounding country it was a foggy
day, but there the fog was grey, whereas in London it was, at about
the boundary line, dark yellow, and a little within it brown, and then
browner, and then browner, until at the heart of the City--which call
Saint Mary Axe--it was rusty-black. From any point of the high ridge of
land northward, it might have been discerned that the loftiest buildings
made an occasional struggle to get their heads above the foggy sea, and
especially that the great dome of Saint Paul’s seemed to die hard; but
this was not perceivable in the streets at their feet, where the whole
metropolis was a heap of vapour charged with muffled sound of wheels,
and enfolding a gigantic catarrh.

At nine o’clock on such a morning, the place of business of Pubsey and
Co. was not the liveliest object even in Saint Mary Axe--which is not a
very lively spot--with a sobbing gaslight in the counting-house window,
and a burglarious stream of fog creeping in to strangle it through the
keyhole of the main door. But the light went out, and the main door
opened, and Riah came forth with a bag under his arm.

Almost in the act of coming out at the door, Riah went into the fog, and
was lost to the eyes of Saint Mary Axe. But the eyes of this history
can follow him westward, by Cornhill, Cheapside, Fleet Street, and the
Strand, to Piccadilly and the Albany. Thither he went at his grave and
measured pace, staff in hand, skirt at heel; and more than one head,
turning to look back at his venerable figure already lost in the mist,
supposed it to be some ordinary figure indistinctly seen, which fancy
and the fog had worked into that passing likeness.

Arrived at the house in which his master’s chambers were on the
second floor, Riah proceeded up the stairs, and paused at Fascination
Fledgeby’s door. Making free with neither bell nor knocker, he struck
upon the door with the top of his staff, and, having listened, sat down
on the threshold. It was characteristic of his habitual submission,
that he sat down on the raw dark staircase, as many of his ancestors
had probably sat down in dungeons, taking what befell him as it might
befall.

After a time, when he had grown so cold as to be fain to blow upon his
fingers, he arose and knocked with his staff again, and listened again,
and again sat down to wait. Thrice he repeated these actions before his
listening ears were greeted by the voice of Fledgeby, calling from his
bed, ‘Hold your row!--I’ll come and open the door directly!’ But, in
lieu of coming directly, he fell into a sweet sleep for some quarter of
an hour more, during which added interval Riah sat upon the stairs and
waited with perfect patience.

At length the door stood open, and Mr Fledgeby’s retreating drapery
plunged into bed again. Following it at a respectful distance, Riah
passed into the bed-chamber, where a fire had been sometime lighted, and
was burning briskly.

‘Why, what time of night do you mean to call it?’ inquired Fledgeby,
turning away beneath the clothes, and presenting a comfortable rampart
of shoulder to the chilled figure of the old man.

‘Sir, it is full half-past ten in the morning.’

‘The deuce it is! Then it must be precious foggy?’

‘Very foggy, sir.’

‘And raw, then?’

‘Chill and bitter,’ said Riah, drawing out a handkerchief, and wiping
the moisture from his beard and long grey hair as he stood on the verge
of the rug, with his eyes on the acceptable fire.

With a plunge of enjoyment, Fledgeby settled himself afresh.

‘Any snow, or sleet, or slush, or anything of that sort?’ he asked.

‘No, sir, no. Not quite so bad as that. The streets are pretty clean.’

‘You needn’t brag about it,’ returned Fledgeby, disappointed in his
desire to heighten the contrast between his bed and the streets. ‘But
you’re always bragging about something. Got the books there?’

‘They are here, sir.’

‘All right. I’ll turn the general subject over in my mind for a minute
or two, and while I’m about it you can empty your bag and get ready for
me.’

With another comfortable plunge, Mr Fledgeby fell asleep again. The old
man, having obeyed his directions, sat down on the edge of a chair, and,
folding his hands before him, gradually yielded to the influence of the
warmth, and dozed. He was roused by Mr Fledgeby’s appearing erect at
the foot of the bed, in Turkish slippers, rose-coloured Turkish trousers
(got cheap from somebody who had cheated some other somebody out of
them), and a gown and cap to correspond. In that costume he would have
left nothing to be desired, if he had been further fitted out with a
bottomless chair, a lantern, and a bunch of matches.

‘Now, old ‘un!’ cried Fascination, in his light raillery, ‘what dodgery
are you up to next, sitting there with your eyes shut? You ain’t asleep.
Catch a weasel at it, and catch a Jew!’

‘Truly, sir, I fear I nodded,’ said the old man.

‘Not you!’ returned Fledgeby, with a cunning look. ‘A telling move with
a good many, I dare say, but it won’t put ME off my guard. Not a bad
notion though, if you want to look indifferent in driving a bargain. Oh,
you are a dodger!’

The old man shook his head, gently repudiating the imputation, and
suppressed a sigh, and moved to the table at which Mr Fledgeby was now
pouring out for himself a cup of steaming and fragrant coffee from a pot
that had stood ready on the hob. It was an edifying spectacle, the young
man in his easy chair taking his coffee, and the old man with his grey
head bent, standing awaiting his pleasure.

‘Now!’ said Fledgeby. ‘Fork out your balance in hand, and prove by
figures how you make it out that it ain’t more. First of all, light that
candle.’

Riah obeyed, and then taking a bag from his breast, and referring to
the sum in the accounts for which they made him responsible, told it out
upon the table. Fledgeby told it again with great care, and rang every
sovereign.

‘I suppose,’ he said, taking one up to eye it closely, ‘you haven’t been
lightening any of these; but it’s a trade of your people’s, you know.
YOU understand what sweating a pound means, don’t you?’

‘Much as you do, sir,’ returned the old man, with his hands under
opposite cuffs of his loose sleeves, as he stood at the table,
deferentially observant of the master’s face. ‘May I take the liberty to
say something?’

‘You may,’ Fledgeby graciously conceded.

‘Do you not, sir--without intending it--of a surety without intending
it--sometimes mingle the character I fairly earn in your employment,
with the character which it is your policy that I should bear?’

‘I don’t find it worth my while to cut things so fine as to go into the
inquiry,’ Fascination coolly answered.

‘Not in justice?’

‘Bother justice!’ said Fledgeby.

‘Not in generosity?’

‘Jews and generosity!’ said Fledgeby. ‘That’s a good connexion! Bring
out your vouchers, and don’t talk Jerusalem palaver.’

The vouchers were produced, and for the next half-hour Mr Fledgeby
concentrated his sublime attention on them. They and the accounts were
all found correct, and the books and the papers resumed their places in
the bag.

‘Next,’ said Fledgeby, ‘concerning that bill-broking branch of the
business; the branch I like best. What queer bills are to be bought, and
at what prices? You have got your list of what’s in the market?’

‘Sir, a long list,’ replied Riah, taking out a pocket-book, and
selecting from its contents a folded paper, which, being unfolded,
became a sheet of foolscap covered with close writing.

‘Whew!’ whistled Fledgeby, as he took it in his hand. ‘Queer Street is
full of lodgers just at present! These are to be disposed of in parcels;
are they?’

‘In parcels as set forth,’ returned the old man, looking over his
master’s shoulder; ‘or the lump.’

‘Half the lump will be waste-paper, one knows beforehand,’ said
Fledgeby. ‘Can you get it at waste-paper price? That’s the question.’

Riah shook his head, and Fledgeby cast his small eyes down the list.
They presently began to twinkle, and he no sooner became conscious of
their twinkling, than he looked up over his shoulder at the grave face
above him, and moved to the chimney-piece. Making a desk of it, he stood
there with his back to the old man, warming his knees, perusing the list
at his leisure, and often returning to some lines of it, as though
they were particularly interesting. At those times he glanced in the
chimney-glass to see what note the old man took of him. He took none
that could be detected, but, aware of his employer’s suspicions, stood
with his eyes on the ground.

Mr Fledgeby was thus amiably engaged when a step was heard at the outer
door, and the door was heard to open hastily. ‘Hark! That’s your doing,
you Pump of Israel,’ said Fledgeby; ‘you can’t have shut it.’ Then the
step was heard within, and the voice of Mr Alfred Lammle called aloud,
‘Are you anywhere here, Fledgeby?’ To which Fledgeby, after cautioning
Riah in a low voice to take his cue as it should be given him, replied,
‘Here I am!’ and opened his bedroom door.

‘Come in!’ said Fledgeby. ‘This gentleman is only Pubsey and Co. of
Saint Mary Axe, that I am trying to make terms for an unfortunate friend
with in a matter of some dishonoured bills. But really Pubsey and Co.
are so strict with their debtors, and so hard to move, that I seem to be
wasting my time. Can’t I make ANY terms with you on my friend’s part, Mr
Riah?’

‘I am but the representative of another, sir,’ returned the Jew in a low
voice. ‘I do as I am bidden by my principal. It is not my capital that
is invested in the business. It is not my profit that arises therefrom.’

‘Ha ha!’ laughed Fledgeby. ‘Lammle?’

‘Ha ha!’ laughed Lammle. ‘Yes. Of course. We know.’

‘Devilish good, ain’t it, Lammle?’ said Fledgeby, unspeakably amused by
his hidden joke.

‘Always the same, always the same!’ said Lammle. ‘Mr--’

‘Riah, Pubsey and Co. Saint Mary Axe,’ Fledgeby put in, as he wiped away
the tears that trickled from his eyes, so rare was his enjoyment of his
secret joke.

‘Mr Riah is bound to observe the invariable forms for such cases made
and provided,’ said Lammle.

‘He is only the representative of another!’ cried Fledgeby. ‘Does as
he is told by his principal! Not his capital that’s invested in the
business. Oh, that’s good! Ha ha ha ha!’ Mr Lammle joined in the laugh
and looked knowing; and the more he did both, the more exquisite the
secret joke became for Mr Fledgeby.

‘However,’ said that fascinating gentleman, wiping his eyes again, ‘if
we go on in this way, we shall seem to be almost making game of Mr Riah,
or of Pubsey and Co. Saint Mary Axe, or of somebody: which is far from
our intention. Mr Riah, if you would have the kindness to step into the
next room for a few moments while I speak with Mr Lammle here, I should
like to try to make terms with you once again before you go.’

The old man, who had never raised his eyes during the whole transaction
of Mr Fledgeby’s joke, silently bowed and passed out by the door which
Fledgeby opened for him. Having closed it on him, Fledgeby returned to
Lammle, standing with his back to the bedroom fire, with one hand under
his coat-skirts, and all his whiskers in the other.

‘Halloa!’ said Fledgeby. ‘There’s something wrong!’

‘How do you know it?’ demanded Lammle.

‘Because you show it,’ replied Fledgeby in unintentional rhyme.

‘Well then; there is,’ said Lammle; ‘there IS something wrong; the whole
thing’s wrong.’

‘I say!’ remonstrated Fascination very slowly, and sitting down with his
hands on his knees to stare at his glowering friend with his back to the
fire.

‘I tell you, Fledgeby,’ repeated Lammle, with a sweep of his right arm,
‘the whole thing’s wrong. The game’s up.’

‘What game’s up?’ demanded Fledgeby, as slowly as before, and more
sternly.

‘THE game. OUR game. Read that.’

Fledgeby took a note from his extended hand and read it aloud. ‘Alfred
Lammle, Esquire. Sir: Allow Mrs Podsnap and myself to express our united
sense of the polite attentions of Mrs Alfred Lammle and yourself towards
our daughter, Georgiana. Allow us also, wholly to reject them for the
future, and to communicate our final desire that the two families
may become entire strangers. I have the honour to be, Sir, your most
obedient and very humble servant, JOHN PODSNAP.’ Fledgeby looked at the
three blank sides of this note, quite as long and earnestly as at the
first expressive side, and then looked at Lammle, who responded with
another extensive sweep of his right arm.

‘Whose doing is this?’ said Fledgeby.

‘Impossible to imagine,’ said Lammle.

‘Perhaps,’ suggested Fledgeby, after reflecting with a very discontented
brow, ‘somebody has been giving you a bad character.’

‘Or you,’ said Lammle, with a deeper frown.

Mr Fledgeby appeared to be on the verge of some mutinous expressions,
when his hand happened to touch his nose. A certain remembrance
connected with that feature operating as a timely warning, he took it
thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger, and pondered; Lammle
meanwhile eyeing him with furtive eyes.

‘Well!’ said Fledgeby. ‘This won’t improve with talking about. If we
ever find out who did it, we’ll mark that person. There’s nothing more
to be said, except that you undertook to do what circumstances prevent
your doing.’

‘And that you undertook to do what you might have done by this time, if
you had made a prompter use of circumstances,’ snarled Lammle.

‘Hah! That,’ remarked Fledgeby, with his hands in the Turkish trousers,
‘is matter of opinion.’

‘Mr Fledgeby,’ said Lammle, in a bullying tone, ‘am I to understand that
you in any way reflect upon me, or hint dissatisfaction with me, in this
affair?’

‘No,’ said Fledgeby; ‘provided you have brought my promissory note in
your pocket, and now hand it over.’

Lammle produced it, not without reluctance. Fledgeby looked at it,
identified it, twisted it up, and threw it into the fire. They both
looked at it as it blazed, went out, and flew in feathery ash up the
chimney.

‘NOW, Mr Fledgeby,’ said Lammle, as before; ‘am I to understand that
you in any way reflect upon me, or hint dissatisfaction with me, in this
affair?’

‘No,’ said Fledgeby.

‘Finally and unreservedly no?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fledgeby, my hand.’

Mr Fledgeby took it, saying, ‘And if we ever find out who did this,
we’ll mark that person. And in the most friendly manner, let me mention
one thing more. I don’t know what your circumstances are, and I don’t
ask. You have sustained a loss here. Many men are liable to be involved
at times, and you may be, or you may not be. But whatever you do,
Lammle, don’t--don’t--don’t, I beg of you--ever fall into the hands of
Pubsey and Co. in the next room, for they are grinders. Regular flayers
and grinders, my dear Lammle,’ repeated Fledgeby with a peculiar relish,
‘and they’ll skin you by the inch, from the nape of your neck to the
sole of your foot, and grind every inch of your skin to tooth-powder.
You have seen what Mr Riah is. Never fall into his hands, Lammle, I beg
of you as a friend!’

Mr Lammle, disclosing some alarm at the solemnity of this affectionate
adjuration, demanded why the devil he ever should fall into the hands of
Pubsey and Co.?

‘To confess the fact, I was made a little uneasy,’ said the candid
Fledgeby, ‘by the manner in which that Jew looked at you when he heard
your name. I didn’t like his eye. But it may have been the heated
fancy of a friend. Of course if you are sure that you have no personal
security out, which you may not be quite equal to meeting, and which can
have got into his hands, it must have been fancy. Still, I didn’t like
his eye.’

The brooding Lammle, with certain white dints coming and going in his
palpitating nose, looked as if some tormenting imp were pinching it.
Fledgeby, watching him with a twitch in his mean face which did duty
there for a smile, looked very like the tormentor who was pinching.

‘But I mustn’t keep him waiting too long,’ said Fledgeby, ‘or he’ll
revenge it on my unfortunate friend. How’s your very clever and
agreeable wife? She knows we have broken down?’

‘I showed her the letter.’

‘Very much surprised?’ asked Fledgeby.

‘I think she would have been more so,’ answered Lammle, ‘if there had
been more go in YOU?’

‘Oh!--She lays it upon me, then?’

‘Mr Fledgeby, I will not have my words misconstrued.’

‘Don’t break out, Lammle,’ urged Fledgeby, in a submissive tone,
‘because there’s no occasion. I only asked a question. Then she don’t
lay it upon me? To ask another question.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Very good,’ said Fledgeby, plainly seeing that she did. ‘My compliments
to her. Good-bye!’

They shook hands, and Lammle strode out pondering. Fledgeby saw him
into the fog, and, returning to the fire and musing with his face to it,
stretched the legs of the rose-coloured Turkish trousers wide apart, and
meditatively bent his knees, as if he were going down upon them.

‘You have a pair of whiskers, Lammle, which I never liked,’ murmured
Fledgeby, ‘and which money can’t produce; you are boastful of your
manners and your conversation; you wanted to pull my nose, and you have
let me in for a failure, and your wife says I am the cause of it. I’ll
bowl you down. I will, though I have no whiskers,’ here he rubbed the
places where they were due, ‘and no manners, and no conversation!’

Having thus relieved his noble mind, he collected the legs of the
Turkish trousers, straightened himself on his knees, and called out
to Riah in the next room, ‘Halloa, you sir!’ At sight of the old man
re-entering with a gentleness monstrously in contrast with the character
he had given him, Mr Fledgeby was so tickled again, that he exclaimed,
laughing, ‘Good! Good! Upon my soul it is uncommon good!’

‘Now, old ‘un,’ proceeded Fledgeby, when he had had his laugh out,
‘you’ll buy up these lots that I mark with my pencil--there’s a tick
there, and a tick there, and a tick there--and I wager two-pence you’ll
afterwards go on squeezing those Christians like the Jew you are. Now,
next you’ll want a cheque--or you’ll say you want it, though you’ve
capital enough somewhere, if one only knew where, but you’d be peppered
and salted and grilled on a gridiron before you’d own to it--and that
cheque I’ll write.’

When he had unlocked a drawer and taken a key from it to open another
drawer, in which was another key that opened another drawer, in which
was another key that opened another drawer, in which was the cheque
book; and when he had written the cheque; and when, reversing the key
and drawer process, he had placed his cheque book in safety again; he
beckoned the old man, with the folded cheque, to come and take it.

‘Old ‘un,’ said Fledgeby, when the Jew had put it in his pocketbook, and
was putting that in the breast of his outer garment; ‘so much at present
for my affairs. Now a word about affairs that are not exactly mine.
Where is she?’

With his hand not yet withdrawn from the breast of his garment, Riah
started and paused.

‘Oho!’ said Fledgeby. ‘Didn’t expect it! Where have you hidden her?’

Showing that he was taken by surprise, the old man looked at his master
with some passing confusion, which the master highly enjoyed.

‘Is she in the house I pay rent and taxes for in Saint Mary Axe?’
demanded Fledgeby.

‘No, sir.’

‘Is she in your garden up atop of that house--gone up to be dead, or
whatever the game is?’ asked Fledgeby.

‘No, sir.’

‘Where is she then?’

Riah bent his eyes upon the ground, as if considering whether he could
answer the question without breach of faith, and then silently raised
them to Fledgeby’s face, as if he could not.

‘Come!’ said Fledgeby. ‘I won’t press that just now. But I want to know
this, and I will know this, mind you. What are you up to?’

The old man, with an apologetic action of his head and hands, as not
comprehending the master’s meaning, addressed to him a look of mute
inquiry.

‘You can’t be a gallivanting dodger,’ said Fledgeby. ‘For you’re a
“regular pity the sorrows”, you know--if you DO know any Christian
rhyme--“whose trembling limbs have borne him to”--et cetrer. You’re one
of the Patriarchs; you’re a shaky old card; and you can’t be in love
with this Lizzie?’

‘O, sir!’ expostulated Riah. ‘O, sir, sir, sir!’

‘Then why,’ retorted Fledgeby, with some slight tinge of a blush, ‘don’t
you out with your reason for having your spoon in the soup at all?’

‘Sir, I will tell you the truth. But (your pardon for the stipulation)
it is in sacred confidence; it is strictly upon honour.’

‘Honour too!’ cried Fledgeby, with a mocking lip. ‘Honour among Jews.
Well. Cut away.’

‘It is upon honour, sir?’ the other still stipulated, with respectful
firmness.

‘Oh, certainly. Honour bright,’ said Fledgeby.

The old man, never bidden to sit down, stood with an earnest hand laid
on the back of the young man’s easy chair. The young man sat looking at
the fire with a face of listening curiosity, ready to check him off and
catch him tripping.

‘Cut away,’ said Fledgeby. ‘Start with your motive.’

‘Sir, I have no motive but to help the helpless.’

Mr Fledgeby could only express the feelings to which this incredible
statement gave rise in his breast, by a prodigiously long derisive
sniff.

‘How I came to know, and much to esteem and to respect, this damsel, I
mentioned when you saw her in my poor garden on the house-top,’ said the
Jew.

‘Did you?’ said Fledgeby, distrustfully. ‘Well. Perhaps you did,
though.’

‘The better I knew her, the more interest I felt in her fortunes. They
gathered to a crisis. I found her beset by a selfish and ungrateful
brother, beset by an unacceptable wooer, beset by the snares of a more
powerful lover, beset by the wiles of her own heart.’

‘She took to one of the chaps then?’

‘Sir, it was only natural that she should incline towards him, for he
had many and great advantages. But he was not of her station, and to
marry her was not in his mind. Perils were closing round her, and the
circle was fast darkening, when I--being as you have said, sir, too
old and broken to be suspected of any feeling for her but a
father’s--stepped in, and counselled flight. I said, “My daughter, there
are times of moral danger when the hardest virtuous resolution to form
is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is flight.” She answered,
she had had this in her thoughts; but whither to fly without help she
knew not, and there were none to help her. I showed her there was one to
help her, and it was I. And she is gone.’

‘What did you do with her?’ asked Fledgeby, feeling his cheek.

‘I placed her,’ said the old man, ‘at a distance;’ with a grave smooth
outward sweep from one another of his two open hands at arm’s length;
‘at a distance--among certain of our people, where her industry would
serve her, and where she could hope to exercise it, unassailed from any
quarter.’

Fledgeby’s eyes had come from the fire to notice the action of his hands
when he said ‘at a distance.’ Fledgeby now tried (very unsuccessfully)
to imitate that action, as he shook his head and said, ‘Placed her in
that direction, did you? Oh you circular old dodger!’

With one hand across his breast and the other on the easy chair, Riah,
without justifying himself, waited for further questioning. But, that it
was hopeless to question him on that one reserved point, Fledgeby, with
his small eyes too near together, saw full well.

‘Lizzie,’ said Fledgeby, looking at the fire again, and then looking up.
‘Humph, Lizzie. You didn’t tell me the other name in your garden atop of
the house. I’ll be more communicative with you. The other name’s Hexam.’

Riah bent his head in assent.

‘Look here, you sir,’ said Fledgeby. ‘I have a notion I know something
of the inveigling chap, the powerful one. Has he anything to do with the
law?’

‘Nominally, I believe it his calling.’

‘I thought so. Name anything like Lightwood?’

‘Sir, not at all like.’

‘Come, old ‘un,’ said Fledgeby, meeting his eyes with a wink, ‘say the
name.’

‘Wrayburn.’

‘By Jupiter!’ cried Fledgeby. ‘That one, is it? I thought it might be
the other, but I never dreamt of that one! I shouldn’t object to your
baulking either of the pair, dodger, for they are both conceited enough;
but that one is as cool a customer as ever I met with. Got a beard
besides, and presumes upon it. Well done, old ‘un! Go on and prosper!’

Brightened by this unexpected commendation, Riah asked were there more
instructions for him?

‘No,’ said Fledgeby, ‘you may toddle now, Judah, and grope about on the
orders you have got.’ Dismissed with those pleasing words, the old man
took his broad hat and staff, and left the great presence: more as if he
were some superior creature benignantly blessing Mr Fledgeby, than the
poor dependent on whom he set his foot. Left alone, Mr Fledgeby locked
his outer door, and came back to his fire.

‘Well done you!’ said Fascination to himself. ‘Slow, you may be; sure,
you are!’ This he twice or thrice repeated with much complacency, as he
again dispersed the legs of the Turkish trousers and bent the knees.

‘A tidy shot that, I flatter myself,’ he then soliloquised. ‘And a Jew
brought down with it! Now, when I heard the story told at Lammle’s, I
didn’t make a jump at Riah. Not a hit of it; I got at him by degrees.’
Herein he was quite accurate; it being his habit, not to jump, or
leap, or make an upward spring, at anything in life, but to crawl at
everything.

‘I got at him,’ pursued Fledgeby, feeling for his whisker, ‘by degrees.
If your Lammles or your Lightwoods had got at him anyhow, they would
have asked him the question whether he hadn’t something to do with that
gal’s disappearance. I knew a better way of going to work. Having got
behind the hedge, and put him in the light, I took a shot at him and
brought him down plump. Oh! It don’t count for much, being a Jew, in a
match against ME!’

Another dry twist in place of a smile, made his face crooked here.

‘As to Christians,’ proceeded Fledgeby, ‘look out, fellow-Christians,
particularly you that lodge in Queer Street! I have got the run of Queer
Street now, and you shall see some games there. To work a lot of power
over you and you not know it, knowing as you think yourselves, would
be almost worth laying out money upon. But when it comes to squeezing a
profit out of you into the bargain, it’s something like!’

With this apostrophe Mr Fledgeby appropriately proceeded to divest
himself of his Turkish garments, and invest himself with Christian
attire. Pending which operation, and his morning ablutions, and his
anointing of himself with the last infallible preparation for the
production of luxuriant and glossy hair upon the human countenance
(quacks being the only sages he believed in besides usurers), the murky
fog closed about him and shut him up in its sooty embrace. If it had
never let him out any more, the world would have had no irreparable
loss, but could have easily replaced him from its stock on hand.



Chapter 2

A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT


In the evening of this same foggy day when the yellow window-blind of
Pubsey and Co. was drawn down upon the day’s work, Riah the Jew once
more came forth into Saint Mary Axe. But this time he carried no bag,
and was not bound on his master’s affairs. He passed over London Bridge,
and returned to the Middlesex shore by that of Westminster, and so, ever
wading through the fog, waded to the doorstep of the dolls’ dressmaker.

Miss Wren expected him. He could see her through the window by the light
of her low fire--carefully banked up with damp cinders that it might
last the longer and waste the less when she was out--sitting waiting
for him in her bonnet. His tap at the glass roused her from the musing
solitude in which she sat, and she came to the door to open it; aiding
her steps with a little crutch-stick.

‘Good evening, godmother!’ said Miss Jenny Wren.

The old man laughed, and gave her his arm to lean on.

‘Won’t you come in and warm yourself, godmother?’ asked Miss Jenny Wren.

‘Not if you are ready, Cinderella, my dear.’

‘Well!’ exclaimed Miss Wren, delighted. ‘Now you ARE a clever old boy!
If we gave prizes at this establishment (but we only keep blanks), you
should have the first silver medal, for taking me up so quick.’ As she
spake thus, Miss Wren removed the key of the house-door from the keyhole
and put it in her pocket, and then bustlingly closed the door, and tried
it as they both stood on the step. Satisfied that her dwelling was safe,
she drew one hand through the old man’s arm and prepared to ply her
crutch-stick with the other. But the key was an instrument of such
gigantic proportions, that before they started Riah proposed to carry
it.

‘No, no, no! I’ll carry it myself,’ returned Miss Wren. ‘I’m awfully
lopsided, you know, and stowed down in my pocket it’ll trim the ship. To
let you into a secret, godmother, I wear my pocket on my high side, o’
purpose.’

With that they began their plodding through the fog.

‘Yes, it was truly sharp of you, godmother,’ resumed Miss Wren with
great approbation, ‘to understand me. But, you see, you ARE so like the
fairy godmother in the bright little books! You look so unlike the rest
of people, and so much as if you had changed yourself into that shape,
just this moment, with some benevolent object. Boh!’ cried Miss Jenny,
putting her face close to the old man’s. ‘I can see your features,
godmother, behind the beard.’

‘Does the fancy go to my changing other objects too, Jenny?’

‘Ah! That it does! If you’d only borrow my stick and tap this piece of
pavement--this dirty stone that my foot taps--it would start up a coach
and six. I say! Let’s believe so!’

‘With all my heart,’ replied the good old man.

‘And I’ll tell you what I must ask you to do, godmother. I must ask you
to be so kind as give my child a tap, and change him altogether. O my
child has been such a bad, bad child of late! It worries me nearly
out of my wits. Not done a stroke of work these ten days. Has had the
horrors, too, and fancied that four copper-coloured men in red wanted to
throw him into a fiery furnace.’

‘But that’s dangerous, Jenny.’

‘Dangerous, godmother? My child is always dangerous, more or less. He
might’--here the little creature glanced back over her shoulder at the
sky--‘be setting the house on fire at this present moment. I don’t know
who would have a child, for my part! It’s no use shaking him. I have
shaken him till I have made myself giddy. “Why don’t you mind your
Commandments and honour your parent, you naughty old boy?” I said to him
all the time. But he only whimpered and stared at me.’

‘What shall be changed, after him?’ asked Riah in a compassionately
playful voice.

‘Upon my word, godmother, I am afraid I must be selfish next, and get
you to set me right in the back and the legs. It’s a little thing to you
with your power, godmother, but it’s a great deal to poor weak aching
me.’

There was no querulous complaining in the words, but they were not the
less touching for that.

‘And then?’

‘Yes, and then--YOU know, godmother. We’ll both jump up into the coach
and six and go to Lizzie. This reminds me, godmother, to ask you a
serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought
up by the fairies), and you can tell me this: Is it better to have had a
good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?’

‘Explain, god-daughter.’

‘I feel so much more solitary and helpless without Lizzie now, than I
used to feel before I knew her.’ (Tears were in her eyes as she said
so.)

‘Some beloved companionship fades out of most lives, my dear,’ said the
Jew,--‘that of a wife, and a fair daughter, and a son of promise, has
faded out of my own life--but the happiness was.’

‘Ah!’ said Miss Wren thoughtfully, by no means convinced, and chopping
the exclamation with that sharp little hatchet of hers; ‘then I tell you
what change I think you had better begin with, godmother. You had better
change Is into Was and Was into Is, and keep them so.’

‘Would that suit your case? Would you not be always in pain then?’ asked
the old man tenderly.

‘Right!’ exclaimed Miss Wren with another chop. ‘You have changed me
wiser, godmother.--Not,’ she added with the quaint hitch of her chin and
eyes, ‘that you need be a very wonderful godmother to do that deed.’

Thus conversing, and having crossed Westminster Bridge, they traversed
the ground that Riah had lately traversed, and new ground likewise; for,
when they had recrossed the Thames by way of London Bridge, they struck
down by the river and held their still foggier course that way.

But previously, as they were going along, Jenny twisted her venerable
friend aside to a brilliantly-lighted toy-shop window, and said: ‘Now
look at ‘em! All my work!’

This referred to a dazzling semicircle of dolls in all the colours of
the rainbow, who were dressed for presentation at court, for going to
balls, for going out driving, for going out on horseback, for going out
walking, for going to get married, for going to help other dolls to get
married, for all the gay events of life.

‘Pretty, pretty, pretty!’ said the old man with a clap of his hands.
‘Most elegant taste!’

‘Glad you like ‘em,’ returned Miss Wren, loftily. ‘But the fun is,
godmother, how I make the great ladies try my dresses on. Though it’s
the hardest part of my business, and would be, even if my back were not
bad and my legs queer.’

He looked at her as not understanding what she said.

‘Bless you, godmother,’ said Miss Wren, ‘I have to scud about town at
all hours. If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing,
it would be comparatively easy work; but it’s the trying-on by the great
ladies that takes it out of me.’

‘How, the trying-on?’ asked Riah.

‘What a mooney godmother you are, after all!’ returned Miss Wren. ‘Look
here. There’s a Drawing Room, or a grand day in the Park, or a Show, or
a Fete, or what you like. Very well. I squeeze among the crowd, and I
look about me. When I see a great lady very suitable for my business, I
say “You’ll do, my dear!” and I take particular notice of her, and run
home and cut her out and baste her. Then another day, I come scudding
back again to try on, and then I take particular notice of her again.
Sometimes she plainly seems to say, ‘How that little creature is
staring!’ and sometimes likes it and sometimes don’t, but much more
often yes than no. All the time I am only saying to myself, “I must
hollow out a bit here; I must slope away there;” and I am making a
perfect slave of her, with making her try on my doll’s dress. Evening
parties are severer work for me, because there’s only a doorway for a
full view, and what with hobbling among the wheels of the carriages
and the legs of the horses, I fully expect to be run over some night.
However, there I have ‘em, just the same. When they go bobbing into the
hall from the carriage, and catch a glimpse of my little physiognomy
poked out from behind a policeman’s cape in the rain, I dare say they
think I am wondering and admiring with all my eyes and heart, but they
little think they’re only working for my dolls! There was Lady Belinda
Whitrose. I made her do double duty in one night. I said when she came
out of the carriage, “YOU’ll do, my dear!” and I ran straight home and
cut her out and basted her. Back I came again, and waited behind the men
that called the carriages. Very bad night too. At last, “Lady Belinda
Whitrose’s carriage! Lady Belinda Whitrose coming down!” And I made her
try on--oh! and take pains about it too--before she got seated. That’s
Lady Belinda hanging up by the waist, much too near the gaslight for a
wax one, with her toes turned in.’

When they had plodded on for some time nigh the river, Riah asked
the way to a certain tavern called the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters.
Following the directions he received, they arrived, after two or three
puzzled stoppages for consideration, and some uncertain looking about
them, at the door of Miss Abbey Potterson’s dominions. A peep through
the glass portion of the door revealed to them the glories of the bar,
and Miss Abbey herself seated in state on her snug throne, reading the
newspaper. To whom, with deference, they presented themselves.

Taking her eyes off her newspaper, and pausing with a suspended
expression of countenance, as if she must finish the paragraph in hand
before undertaking any other business whatever, Miss Abbey demanded,
with some slight asperity: ‘Now then, what’s for you?’

‘Could we see Miss Potterson?’ asked the old man, uncovering his head.

‘You not only could, but you can and you do,’ replied the hostess.

‘Might we speak with you, madam?’

By this time Miss Abbey’s eyes had possessed themselves of the small
figure of Miss Jenny Wren. For the closer observation of which, Miss
Abbey laid aside her newspaper, rose, and looked over the half-door of
the bar. The crutch-stick seemed to entreat for its owner leave to come
in and rest by the fire; so, Miss Abbey opened the half-door, and said,
as though replying to the crutch-stick:

‘Yes, come in and rest by the fire.’

‘My name is Riah,’ said the old man, with courteous action, ‘and my
avocation is in London city. This, my young companion--’

‘Stop a bit,’ interposed Miss Wren. ‘I’ll give the lady my card.’ She
produced it from her pocket with an air, after struggling with the
gigantic door-key which had got upon the top of it and kept it down.
Miss Abbey, with manifest tokens of astonishment, took the diminutive
document, and found it to run concisely thus:--


MISS JENNY WREN

DOLLS’ DRESSMAKER.

Dolls attended at their own residences.


‘Lud!’ exclaimed Miss Potterson, staring. And dropped the card.

‘We take the liberty of coming, my young companion and I, madam,’ said
Riah, ‘on behalf of Lizzie Hexam.’

Miss Potterson was stooping to loosen the bonnet-strings of the dolls’
dressmaker. She looked round rather angrily, and said: ‘Lizzie Hexam is
a very proud young woman.’

‘She would be so proud,’ returned Riah, dexterously, ‘to stand well in
your good opinion, that before she quitted London for--’

‘For where, in the name of the Cape of Good Hope?’ asked Miss Potterson,
as though supposing her to have emigrated.

‘For the country,’ was the cautious answer,--‘she made us promise to
come and show you a paper, which she left in our hands for that special
purpose. I am an unserviceable friend of hers, who began to know her
after her departure from this neighbourhood. She has been for some time
living with my young companion, and has been a helpful and a comfortable
friend to her. Much needed, madam,’ he added, in a lower voice. ‘Believe
me; if you knew all, much needed.’

‘I can believe that,’ said Miss Abbey, with a softening glance at the
little creature.

‘And if it’s proud to have a heart that never hardens, and a temper
that never tires, and a touch that never hurts,’ Miss Jenny struck in,
flushed, ‘she is proud. And if it’s not, she is NOT.’

Her set purpose of contradicting Miss Abbey point blank, was so far from
offending that dread authority, as to elicit a gracious smile. ‘You do
right, child,’ said Miss Abbey, ‘to speak well of those who deserve well
of you.’

‘Right or wrong,’ muttered Miss Wren, inaudibly, with a visible hitch of
her chin, ‘I mean to do it, and you may make up your mind to THAT, old
lady.’

‘Here is the paper, madam,’ said the Jew, delivering into Miss
Potterson’s hands the original document drawn up by Rokesmith, and
signed by Riderhood. ‘Will you please to read it?’

‘But first of all,’ said Miss Abbey, ‘--did you ever taste shrub,
child?’

Miss Wren shook her head.

‘Should you like to?’

‘Should if it’s good,’ returned Miss Wren.

‘You shall try. And, if you find it good, I’ll mix some for you with hot
water. Put your poor little feet on the fender. It’s a cold, cold night,
and the fog clings so.’ As Miss Abbey helped her to turn her chair, her
loosened bonnet dropped on the floor. ‘Why, what lovely hair!’ cried
Miss Abbey. ‘And enough to make wigs for all the dolls in the world.
What a quantity!’

‘Call THAT a quantity?’ returned Miss Wren. ‘Poof! What do you say to
the rest of it?’ As she spoke, she untied a band, and the golden stream
fell over herself and over the chair, and flowed down to the ground.
Miss Abbey’s admiration seemed to increase her perplexity. She beckoned
the Jew towards her, as she reached down the shrub-bottle from its
niche, and whispered:

‘Child, or woman?’

‘Child in years,’ was the answer; ‘woman in self-reliance and trial.’

‘You are talking about Me, good people,’ thought Miss Jenny, sitting in
her golden bower, warming her feet. ‘I can’t hear what you say, but I
know your tricks and your manners!’

The shrub, when tasted from a spoon, perfectly harmonizing with Miss
Jenny’s palate, a judicious amount was mixed by Miss Potterson’s skilful
hands, whereof Riah too partook. After this preliminary, Miss Abbey read
the document; and, as often as she raised her eyebrows in so doing,
the watchful Miss Jenny accompanied the action with an expressive and
emphatic sip of the shrub and water.

‘As far as this goes,’ said Miss Abbey Potterson, when she had read it
several times, and thought about it, ‘it proves (what didn’t much need
proving) that Rogue Riderhood is a villain. I have my doubts whether he
is not the villain who solely did the deed; but I have no expectation of
those doubts ever being cleared up now. I believe I did Lizzie’s father
wrong, but never Lizzie’s self; because when things were at the worst I
trusted her, had perfect confidence in her, and tried to persuade her
to come to me for a refuge. I am very sorry to have done a man wrong,
particularly when it can’t be undone. Be kind enough to let Lizzie know
what I say; not forgetting that if she will come to the Porters, after
all, bygones being bygones, she will find a home at the Porters, and a
friend at the Porters. She knows Miss Abbey of old, remind her, and she
knows what-like the home, and what-like the friend, is likely to turn
out. I am generally short and sweet--or short and sour, according as it
may be and as opinions vary--’ remarked Miss Abbey, ‘and that’s about
all I have got to say, and enough too.’

But before the shrub and water was sipped out, Miss Abbey bethought
herself that she would like to keep a copy of the paper by her. ‘It’s
not long, sir,’ said she to Riah, ‘and perhaps you wouldn’t mind just
jotting it down.’ The old man willingly put on his spectacles, and,
standing at the little desk in the corner where Miss Abbey filed her
receipts and kept her sample phials (customers’ scores were interdicted
by the strict administration of the Porters), wrote out the copy in
a fair round character. As he stood there, doing his methodical
penmanship, his ancient scribelike figure intent upon the work, and the
little dolls’ dressmaker sitting in her golden bower before the fire,
Miss Abbey had her doubts whether she had not dreamed those two rare
figures into the bar of the Six Jolly Fellowships, and might not wake
with a nod next moment and find them gone.

Miss Abbey had twice made the experiment of shutting her eyes and
opening them again, still finding the figures there, when, dreamlike,
a confused hubbub arose in the public room. As she started up, and they
all three looked at one another, it became a noise of clamouring voices
and of the stir of feet; then all the windows were heard to be hastily
thrown up, and shouts and cries came floating into the house from
the river. A moment more, and Bob Gliddery came clattering along the
passage, with the noise of all the nails in his boots condensed into
every separate nail.

‘What is it?’ asked Miss Abbey.

‘It’s summut run down in the fog, ma’am,’ answered Bob. ‘There’s ever so
many people in the river.’

‘Tell ‘em to put on all the kettles!’ cried Miss Abbey. ‘See that the
boiler’s full. Get a bath out. Hang some blankets to the fire. Heat some
stone bottles. Have your senses about you, you girls down stairs, and
use ‘em.’

While Miss Abbey partly delivered these directions to Bob--whom she
seized by the hair, and whose head she knocked against the wall, as a
general injunction to vigilance and presence of mind--and partly hailed
the kitchen with them--the company in the public room, jostling one
another, rushed out to the causeway, and the outer noise increased.

‘Come and look,’ said Miss Abbey to her visitors. They all three hurried
to the vacated public room, and passed by one of the windows into the
wooden verandah overhanging the river.

‘Does anybody down there know what has happened?’ demanded Miss Abbey,
in her voice of authority.

‘It’s a steamer, Miss Abbey,’ cried one blurred figure in the fog.

‘It always IS a steamer, Miss Abbey,’ cried another.

‘Them’s her lights, Miss Abbey, wot you see a-blinking yonder,’ cried
another.

‘She’s a-blowing off her steam, Miss Abbey, and that’s what makes the
fog and the noise worse, don’t you see?’ explained another.

Boats were putting off, torches were lighting up, people were rushing
tumultuously to the water’s edge. Some man fell in with a splash, and
was pulled out again with a roar of laughter. The drags were called for.
A cry for the life-buoy passed from mouth to mouth. It was impossible to
make out what was going on upon the river, for every boat that put off
sculled into the fog and was lost to view at a boat’s length. Nothing
was clear but that the unpopular steamer was assailed with reproaches
on all sides. She was the Murderer, bound for Gallows Bay; she was the
Manslaughterer, bound for Penal Settlement; her captain ought to be
tried for his life; her crew ran down men in row-boats with a relish;
she mashed up Thames lightermen with her paddles; she fired property
with her funnels; she always was, and she always would be, wreaking
destruction upon somebody or something, after the manner of all her
kind. The whole bulk of the fog teemed with such taunts, uttered in
tones of universal hoarseness. All the while, the steamer’s lights moved
spectrally a very little, as she lay-to, waiting the upshot of whatever
accident had happened. Now, she began burning blue-lights. These made a
luminous patch about her, as if she had set the fog on fire, and in the
patch--the cries changing their note, and becoming more fitful and more
excited--shadows of men and boats could be seen moving, while voices
shouted: ‘There!’ ‘There again!’ ‘A couple more strokes a-head!’
‘Hurrah!’ ‘Look out!’ ‘Hold on!’ ‘Haul in!’ and the like. Lastly, with
a few tumbling clots of blue fire, the night closed in dark again,
the wheels of the steamer were heard revolving, and her lights glided
smoothly away in the direction of the sea.

It appeared to Miss Abbey and her two companions that a considerable
time had been thus occupied. There was now as eager a set towards the
shore beneath the house as there had been from it; and it was only
on the first boat of the rush coming in that it was known what had
occurred.

‘If that’s Tom Tootle,’ Miss Abbey made proclamation, in her most
commanding tones, ‘let him instantly come underneath here.’

The submissive Tom complied, attended by a crowd.

‘What is it, Tootle?’ demanded Miss Abbey.

‘It’s a foreign steamer, miss, run down a wherry.’

‘How many in the wherry?’

‘One man, Miss Abbey.’

‘Found?’

‘Yes. He’s been under water a long time, Miss; but they’ve grappled up
the body.’

‘Let ‘em bring it here. You, Bob Gliddery, shut the house-door and stand
by it on the inside, and don’t you open till I tell you. Any police down
there?’

‘Here, Miss Abbey,’ was official rejoinder.

‘After they have brought the body in, keep the crowd out, will you? And
help Bob Gliddery to shut ‘em out.’

‘All right, Miss Abbey.’

The autocratic landlady withdrew into the house with Riah and Miss
Jenny, and disposed those forces, one on either side of her, within the
half-door of the bar, as behind a breastwork.

‘You two stand close here,’ said Miss Abbey, ‘and you’ll come to no
hurt, and see it brought in. Bob, you stand by the door.’

That sentinel, smartly giving his rolled shirt-sleeves an extra and a
final tuck on his shoulders, obeyed.

Sound of advancing voices, sound of advancing steps. Shuffle and talk
without. Momentary pause. Two peculiarly blunt knocks or pokes at the
door, as if the dead man arriving on his back were striking at it with
the soles of his motionless feet.

‘That’s the stretcher, or the shutter, whichever of the two they are
carrying,’ said Miss Abbey, with experienced ear. ‘Open, you Bob!’

Door opened. Heavy tread of laden men. A halt. A rush. Stoppage of rush.
Door shut. Baffled boots from the vexed souls of disappointed outsiders.

‘Come on, men!’ said Miss Abbey; for so potent was she with her subjects
that even then the bearers awaited her permission. ‘First floor.’

The entry being low, and the staircase being low, they so took up the
burden they had set down, as to carry that low. The recumbent figure, in
passing, lay hardly as high as the half door.

Miss Abbey started back at sight of it. ‘Why, good God!’ said she,
turning to her two companions, ‘that’s the very man who made the
declaration we have just had in our hands. That’s Riderhood!’



Chapter 3

THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE


In sooth, it is Riderhood and no other, or it is the outer husk and
shell of Riderhood and no other, that is borne into Miss Abbey’s
first-floor bedroom. Supple to twist and turn as the Rogue has ever
been, he is sufficiently rigid now; and not without much shuffling of
attendant feet, and tilting of his bier this way and that way, and
peril even of his sliding off it and being tumbled in a heap over the
balustrades, can he be got up stairs.

‘Fetch a doctor,’ quoth Miss Abbey. And then, ‘Fetch his daughter.’ On
both of which errands, quick messengers depart.

The doctor-seeking messenger meets the doctor halfway, coming under
convoy of police. Doctor examines the dank carcase, and pronounces, not
hopefully, that it is worth while trying to reanimate the same. All the
best means are at once in action, and everybody present lends a hand,
and a heart and soul. No one has the least regard for the man; with them
all, he has been an object of avoidance, suspicion, and aversion; but
the spark of life within him is curiously separable from himself now,
and they have a deep interest in it, probably because it IS life, and
they are living and must die.

In answer to the doctor’s inquiry how did it happen, and was anyone to
blame, Tom Tootle gives in his verdict, unavoidable accident and no one
to blame but the sufferer. ‘He was slinking about in his boat,’ says
Tom, ‘which slinking were, not to speak ill of the dead, the manner of
the man, when he come right athwart the steamer’s bows and she cut him
in two.’ Mr Tootle is so far figurative, touching the dismemberment, as
that he means the boat, and not the man. For, the man lies whole before
them.

Captain Joey, the bottle-nosed regular customer in the glazed hat, is a
pupil of the much-respected old school, and (having insinuated himself
into the chamber, in the execution of the important service of carrying
the drowned man’s neck-kerchief) favours the doctor with a sagacious
old-scholastic suggestion that the body should be hung up by the heels,
‘sim’lar’, says Captain Joey, ‘to mutton in a butcher’s shop,’ and
should then, as a particularly choice manoeuvre for promoting easy
respiration, be rolled upon casks. These scraps of the wisdom of the
captain’s ancestors are received with such speechless indignation by
Miss Abbey, that she instantly seizes the Captain by the collar, and
without a single word ejects him, not presuming to remonstrate, from the
scene.

There then remain, to assist the doctor and Tom, only those three other
regular customers, Bob Glamour, William Williams, and Jonathan (family
name of the latter, if any, unknown to man-kind), who are quite enough.
Miss Abbey having looked in to make sure that nothing is wanted,
descends to the bar, and there awaits the result, with the gentle Jew
and Miss Jenny Wren.

If you are not gone for good, Mr Riderhood, it would be something to
know where you are hiding at present. This flabby lump of mortality that
we work so hard at with such patient perseverance, yields no sign of
you. If you are gone for good, Rogue, it is very solemn, and if you are
coming back, it is hardly less so. Nay, in the suspense and mystery of
the latter question, involving that of where you may be now, there is a
solemnity even added to that of death, making us who are in attendance
alike afraid to look on you and to look off you, and making those below
start at the least sound of a creaking plank in the floor.

Stay! Did that eyelid tremble? So the doctor, breathing low, and closely
watching, asks himself.

No.

Did that nostril twitch?

No.

This artificial respiration ceasing, do I feel any faint flutter under
my hand upon the chest?

No.

Over and over again No. No. But try over and over again, nevertheless.

See! A token of life! An indubitable token of life! The spark may
smoulder and go out, or it may glow and expand, but see! The four
rough fellows, seeing, shed tears. Neither Riderhood in this world, nor
Riderhood in the other, could draw tears from them; but a striving human
soul between the two can do it easily.

He is struggling to come back. Now, he is almost here, now he is far
away again. Now he is struggling harder to get back. And yet--like us
all, when we swoon--like us all, every day of our lives when we wake--he
is instinctively unwilling to be restored to the consciousness of this
existence, and would be left dormant, if he could.

Bob Gliddery returns with Pleasant Riderhood, who was out when sought
for, and hard to find. She has a shawl over her head, and her first
action, when she takes it off weeping, and curtseys to Miss Abbey, is to
wind her hair up.

‘Thank you, Miss Abbey, for having father here.’

‘I am bound to say, girl, I didn’t know who it was,’ returns Miss Abbey;
‘but I hope it would have been pretty much the same if I had known.’

Poor Pleasant, fortified with a sip of brandy, is ushered into the
first-floor chamber. She could not express much sentiment about her
father if she were called upon to pronounce his funeral oration, but she
has a greater tenderness for him than he ever had for her, and crying
bitterly when she sees him stretched unconscious, asks the doctor, with
clasped hands: ‘Is there no hope, sir? O poor father! Is poor father
dead?’

To which the doctor, on one knee beside the body, busy and watchful,
only rejoins without looking round: ‘Now, my girl, unless you have the
self-command to be perfectly quiet, I cannot allow you to remain in the
room.’

Pleasant, consequently, wipes her eyes with her back-hair, which is in
fresh need of being wound up, and having got it out of the way, watches
with terrified interest all that goes on. Her natural woman’s aptitude
soon renders her able to give a little help. Anticipating the doctor’s
want of this or that, she quietly has it ready for him, and so by
degrees is intrusted with the charge of supporting her father’s head
upon her arm.

It is something so new to Pleasant to see her father an object of
sympathy and interest, to find any one very willing to tolerate his
society in this world, not to say pressingly and soothingly entreating
him to belong to it, that it gives her a sensation she never experienced
before. Some hazy idea that if affairs could remain thus for a long time
it would be a respectable change, floats in her mind. Also some vague
idea that the old evil is drowned out of him, and that if he should
happily come back to resume his occupation of the empty form that lies
upon the bed, his spirit will be altered. In which state of mind she
kisses the stony lips, and quite believes that the impassive hand she
chafes will revive a tender hand, if it revive ever.

Sweet delusion for Pleasant Riderhood. But they minister to him with
such extraordinary interest, their anxiety is so keen, their vigilance
is so great, their excited joy grows so intense as the signs of life
strengthen, that how can she resist it, poor thing! And now he begins
to breathe naturally, and he stirs, and the doctor declares him to have
come back from that inexplicable journey where he stopped on the dark
road, and to be here.

Tom Tootle, who is nearest to the doctor when he says this, grasps
the doctor fervently by the hand. Bob Glamour, William Williams, and
Jonathan of the no surname, all shake hands with one another round, and
with the doctor too. Bob Glamour blows his nose, and Jonathan of the
no surname is moved to do likewise, but lacking a pocket handkerchief
abandons that outlet for his emotion. Pleasant sheds tears deserving her
own name, and her sweet delusion is at its height.

There is intelligence in his eyes. He wants to ask a question. He
wonders where he is. Tell him.

‘Father, you were run down on the river, and are at Miss Abbey
Potterson’s.’

He stares at his daughter, stares all around him, closes his eyes, and
lies slumbering on her arm.

The short-lived delusion begins to fade. The low, bad, unimpressible
face is coming up from the depths of the river, or what other depths, to
the surface again. As he grows warm, the doctor and the four men cool.
As his lineaments soften with life, their faces and their hearts harden
to him.

‘He will do now,’ says the doctor, washing his hands, and looking at the
patient with growing disfavour.

‘Many a better man,’ moralizes Tom Tootle with a gloomy shake of the
head, ‘ain’t had his luck.’

‘It’s to be hoped he’ll make a better use of his life,’ says Bob
Glamour, ‘than I expect he will.’

‘Or than he done afore,’ adds William Williams.

‘But no, not he!’ says Jonathan of the no surname, clinching the
quartette.

They speak in a low tone because of his daughter, but she sees that they
have all drawn off, and that they stand in a group at the other end of
the room, shunning him. It would be too much to suspect them of being
sorry that he didn’t die when he had done so much towards it, but they
clearly wish that they had had a better subject to bestow their pains
on. Intelligence is conveyed to Miss Abbey in the bar, who reappears on
the scene, and contemplates from a distance, holding whispered discourse
with the doctor. The spark of life was deeply interesting while it was
in abeyance, but now that it has got established in Mr Riderhood, there
appears to be a general desire that circumstances had admitted of its
being developed in anybody else, rather than that gentleman.

‘However,’ says Miss Abbey, cheering them up, ‘you have done your duty
like good and true men, and you had better come down and take something
at the expense of the Porters.’

This they all do, leaving the daughter watching the father. To whom, in
their absence, Bob Gliddery presents himself.

‘His gills looks rum; don’t they?’ says Bob, after inspecting the
patient.

Pleasant faintly nods.

‘His gills’ll look rummer when he wakes; won’t they?’ says Bob.

Pleasant hopes not. Why?

‘When he finds himself here, you know,’ Bob explains. ‘Cause Miss Abbey
forbid him the house and ordered him out of it. But what you may call
the Fates ordered him into it again. Which is rumness; ain’t it?’

‘He wouldn’t have come here of his own accord,’ returns poor Pleasant,
with an effort at a little pride.

‘No,’ retorts Bob. ‘Nor he wouldn’t have been let in, if he had.’

The short delusion is quite dispelled now. As plainly as she sees on her
arm the old father, unimproved, Pleasant sees that everybody there will
cut him when he recovers consciousness. ‘I’ll take him away ever so soon
as I can,’ thinks Pleasant with a sigh; ‘he’s best at home.’

Presently they all return, and wait for him to become conscious that
they will all be glad to get rid of him. Some clothes are got together
for him to wear, his own being saturated with water, and his present
dress being composed of blankets.

Becoming more and more uncomfortable, as though the prevalent dislike
were finding him out somewhere in his sleep and expressing itself to
him, the patient at last opens his eyes wide, and is assisted by his
daughter to sit up in bed.

‘Well, Riderhood,’ says the doctor, ‘how do you feel?’

He replies gruffly, ‘Nothing to boast on.’ Having, in fact, returned to
life in an uncommonly sulky state.

‘I don’t mean to preach; but I hope,’ says the doctor, gravely shaking
his head, ‘that this escape may have a good effect upon you, Riderhood.’

The patient’s discontented growl of a reply is not intelligible; his
daughter, however, could interpret, if she would, that what he says is,
he ‘don’t want no Poll-Parroting’.

Mr Riderhood next demands his shirt; and draws it on over his head (with
his daughter’s help) exactly as if he had just had a Fight.

‘Warn’t it a steamer?’ he pauses to ask her.

‘Yes, father.’

‘I’ll have the law on her, bust her! and make her pay for it.’

He then buttons his linen very moodily, twice or thrice stopping to
examine his arms and hands, as if to see what punishment he has received
in the Fight. He then doggedly demands his other garments, and slowly
gets them on, with an appearance of great malevolence towards his late
opponent and all the spectators. He has an impression that his nose is
bleeding, and several times draws the back of his hand across it, and
looks for the result, in a pugilistic manner, greatly strengthening that
incongruous resemblance.

‘Where’s my fur cap?’ he asks in a surly voice, when he has shuffled his
clothes on.

‘In the river,’ somebody rejoins.

‘And warn’t there no honest man to pick it up? O’ course there was
though, and to cut off with it arterwards. You are a rare lot, all on
you!’

Thus, Mr Riderhood: taking from the hands of his daughter, with special
ill-will, a lent cap, and grumbling as he pulls it down over his ears.
Then, getting on his unsteady legs, leaning heavily upon her, and
growling, ‘Hold still, can’t you? What! You must be a staggering next,
must you?’ he takes his departure out of the ring in which he has had
that little turn-up with Death.



Chapter 4

A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY


Mr and Mrs Wilfer had seen a full quarter of a hundred more
anniversaries of their wedding day than Mr and Mrs Lammle had seen of
theirs, but they still celebrated the occasion in the bosom of
their family. Not that these celebrations ever resulted in anything
particularly agreeable, or that the family was ever disappointed by that
circumstance on account of having looked forward to the return of the
auspicious day with sanguine anticipations of enjoyment. It was kept
morally, rather as a Fast than a Feast, enabling Mrs Wilfer to hold
a sombre darkling state, which exhibited that impressive woman in her
choicest colours.

The noble lady’s condition on these delightful occasions was one
compounded of heroic endurance and heroic forgiveness. Lurid indications
of the better marriages she might have made, shone athwart the awful
gloom of her composure, and fitfully revealed the cherub as a little
monster unaccountably favoured by Heaven, who had possessed himself of a
blessing for which many of his superiors had sued and contended in vain.
So firmly had this his position towards his treasure become established,
that when the anniversary arrived, it always found him in an apologetic
state. It is not impossible that his modest penitence may have even gone
the length of sometimes severely reproving him for that he ever took the
liberty of making so exalted a character his wife.

As for the children of the union, their experience of these festivals
had been sufficiently uncomfortable to lead them annually to wish, when
out of their tenderest years, either that Ma had married somebody else
instead of much-teased Pa, or that Pa had married somebody else instead
of Ma. When there came to be but two sisters left at home, the daring
mind of Bella on the next of these occasions scaled the height of
wondering with droll vexation ‘what on earth Pa ever could have seen in
Ma, to induce him to make such a little fool of himself as to ask her to
have him.’

The revolving year now bringing the day round in its orderly sequence,
Bella arrived in the Boffin chariot to assist at the celebration. It was
the family custom when the day recurred, to sacrifice a pair of fowls
on the altar of Hymen; and Bella had sent a note beforehand, to intimate
that she would bring the votive offering with her. So, Bella and the
fowls, by the united energies of two horses, two men, four wheels, and a
plum-pudding carriage dog with as uncomfortable a collar on as if he
had been George the Fourth, were deposited at the door of the parental
dwelling. They were there received by Mrs Wilfer in person, whose
dignity on this, as on most special occasions, was heightened by a
mysterious toothache.

‘I shall not require the carriage at night,’ said Bella. ‘I shall walk
back.’

The male domestic of Mrs Boffin touched his hat, and in the act of
departure had an awful glare bestowed upon him by Mrs Wilfer, intended
to carry deep into his audacious soul the assurance that, whatever his
private suspicions might be, male domestics in livery were no rarity
there.

‘Well, dear Ma,’ said Bella, ‘and how do you do?’

‘I am as well, Bella,’ replied Mrs Wilfer, ‘as can be expected.’

‘Dear me, Ma,’ said Bella; ‘you talk as if one was just born!’

‘That’s exactly what Ma has been doing,’ interposed Lavvy, over the
maternal shoulder, ‘ever since we got up this morning. It’s all very
well to laugh, Bella, but anything more exasperating it is impossible to
conceive.’

Mrs Wilfer, with a look too full of majesty to be accompanied by any
words, attended both her daughters to the kitchen, where the sacrifice
was to be prepared.

‘Mr Rokesmith,’ said she, resignedly, ‘has been so polite as to place
his sitting-room at our disposal to-day. You will therefore, Bella, be
entertained in the humble abode of your parents, so far in accordance
with your present style of living, that there will be a drawing-room for
your reception as well as a dining-room. Your papa invited Mr Rokesmith
to partake of our lowly fare. In excusing himself on account of a
particular engagement, he offered the use of his apartment.’

Bella happened to know that he had no engagement out of his own room at
Mr Boffin’s, but she approved of his staying away. ‘We should only have
put one another out of countenance,’ she thought, ‘and we do that quite
often enough as it is.’

Yet she had sufficient curiosity about his room, to run up to it with
the least possible delay, and make a close inspection of its contents.
It was tastefully though economically furnished, and very neatly
arranged. There were shelves and stands of books, English, French, and
Italian; and in a portfolio on the writing-table there were sheets upon
sheets of memoranda and calculations in figures, evidently referring to
the Boffin property. On that table also, carefully backed with canvas,
varnished, mounted, and rolled like a map, was the placard descriptive
of the murdered man who had come from afar to be her husband. She shrank
from this ghostly surprise, and felt quite frightened as she rolled and
tied it up again. Peeping about here and there, she came upon a print, a
graceful head of a pretty woman, elegantly framed, hanging in the corner
by the easy chair. ‘Oh, indeed, sir!’ said Bella, after stopping to
ruminate before it. ‘Oh, indeed, sir! I fancy I can guess whom you
think THAT’S like. But I’ll tell you what it’s much more like--your
impudence!’ Having said which she decamped: not solely because she was
offended, but because there was nothing else to look at.

‘Now, Ma,’ said Bella, reappearing in the kitchen with some remains of a
blush, ‘you and Lavvy think magnificent me fit for nothing, but I intend
to prove the contrary. I mean to be Cook today.’

‘Hold!’ rejoined her majestic mother. ‘I cannot permit it. Cook, in that
dress!’

‘As for my dress, Ma,’ returned Bella, merrily searching in a
dresser-drawer, ‘I mean to apron it and towel it all over the front; and
as to permission, I mean to do without.’

‘YOU cook?’ said Mrs Wilfer. ‘YOU, who never cooked when you were at
home?’

‘Yes, Ma,’ returned Bella; ‘that is precisely the state of the case.’

She girded herself with a white apron, and busily with knots and pins
contrived a bib to it, coming close and tight under her chin, as if it
had caught her round the neck to kiss her. Over this bib her dimples
looked delightful, and under it her pretty figure not less so. ‘Now,
Ma,’ said Bella, pushing back her hair from her temples with both hands,
‘what’s first?’

‘First,’ returned Mrs Wilfer solemnly, ‘if you persist in what I cannot
but regard as conduct utterly incompatible with the equipage in which
you arrived--’

[‘Which I do, Ma.’)

‘First, then, you put the fowls down to the fire.’

‘To--be--sure!’ cried Bella; ‘and flour them, and twirl them round, and
there they go!’ sending them spinning at a great rate. ‘What’s next,
Ma?’

‘Next,’ said Mrs Wilfer with a wave of her gloves, expressive of
abdication under protest from the culinary throne, ‘I would recommend
examination of the bacon in the saucepan on the fire, and also of the
potatoes by the application of a fork. Preparation of the greens will
further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly demeanour.’

‘As of course I do, Ma.’

Persisting, Bella gave her attention to one thing and forgot the
other, and gave her attention to the other and forgot the third, and
remembering the third was distracted by the fourth, and made amends
whenever she went wrong by giving the unfortunate fowls an extra spin,
which made their chance of ever getting cooked exceedingly doubtful. But
it was pleasant cookery too. Meantime Miss Lavinia, oscillating between
the kitchen and the opposite room, prepared the dining-table in the
latter chamber. This office she (always doing her household spiriting
with unwillingness) performed in a startling series of whisks and bumps;
laying the table-cloth as if she were raising the wind, putting down
the glasses and salt-cellars as if she were knocking at the door, and
clashing the knives and forks in a skirmishing manner suggestive of
hand-to-hand conflict.

‘Look at Ma,’ whispered Lavinia to Bella when this was done, and they
stood over the roasting fowls. ‘If one was the most dutiful child in
existence (of course on the whole one hopes one is), isn’t she enough
to make one want to poke her with something wooden, sitting there bolt
upright in a corner?’

‘Only suppose,’ returned Bella, ‘that poor Pa was to sit bolt upright in
another corner.’

‘My dear, he couldn’t do it,’ said Lavvy. ‘Pa would loll directly. But
indeed I do not believe there ever was any human creature who could keep
so bolt upright as Ma, ‘or put such an amount of aggravation into one
back! What’s the matter, Ma? Ain’t you well, Ma?’

‘Doubtless I am very well,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, turning her eyes upon
her youngest born, with scornful fortitude. ‘What should be the matter
with Me?’

‘You don’t seem very brisk, Ma,’ retorted Lavvy the bold.

‘Brisk?’ repeated her parent, ‘Brisk? Whence the low expression,
Lavinia? If I am uncomplaining, if I am silently contented with my lot,
let that suffice for my family.’

‘Well, Ma,’ returned Lavvy, ‘since you will force it out of me, I must
respectfully take leave to say that your family are no doubt under
the greatest obligations to you for having an annual toothache on your
wedding day, and that it’s very disinterested in you, and an immense
blessing to them. Still, on the whole, it is possible to be too boastful
even of that boon.’

‘You incarnation of sauciness,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘do you speak like that
to me? On this day, of all days in the year? Pray do you know what
would have become of you, if I had not bestowed my hand upon R. W., your
father, on this day?’

‘No, Ma,’ replied Lavvy, ‘I really do not; and, with the greatest
respect for your abilities and information, I very much doubt if you do
either.’

Whether or no the sharp vigour of this sally on a weak point of Mrs
Wilfer’s entrenchments might have routed that heroine for the time, is
rendered uncertain by the arrival of a flag of truce in the person of
Mr George Sampson: bidden to the feast as a friend of the family, whose
affections were now understood to be in course of transference from
Bella to Lavinia, and whom Lavinia kept--possibly in remembrance of his
bad taste in having overlooked her in the first instance--under a course
of stinging discipline.

‘I congratulate you, Mrs Wilfer,’ said Mr George Sampson, who had
meditated this neat address while coming along, ‘on the day.’ Mrs Wilfer
thanked him with a magnanimous sigh, and again became an unresisting
prey to that inscrutable toothache.

‘I am surprised,’ said Mr Sampson feebly, ‘that Miss Bella condescends
to cook.’

Here Miss Lavinia descended on the ill-starred young gentleman with a
crushing supposition that at all events it was no business of his. This
disposed of Mr Sampson in a melancholy retirement of spirit, until the
cherub arrived, whose amazement at the lovely woman’s occupation was
great.

However, she persisted in dishing the dinner as well as cooking it, and
then sat down, bibless and apronless, to partake of it as an illustrious
guest: Mrs Wilfer first responding to her husband’s cheerful ‘For what
we are about to receive--’ with a sepulchral Amen, calculated to cast a
damp upon the stoutest appetite.

‘But what,’ said Bella, as she watched the carving of the fowls, ‘makes
them pink inside, I wonder, Pa! Is it the breed?’

‘No, I don’t think it’s the breed, my dear,’ returned Pa. ‘I rather
think it is because they are not done.’

‘They ought to be,’ said Bella.

‘Yes, I am aware they ought to be, my dear,’ rejoined her father, ‘but
they--ain’t.’

So, the gridiron was put in requisition, and the good-tempered cherub,
who was often as un-cherubically employed in his own family as if he had
been in the employment of some of the Old Masters, undertook to grill
the fowls. Indeed, except in respect of staring about him (a branch of
the public service to which the pictorial cherub is much addicted), this
domestic cherub discharged as many odd functions as his prototype; with
the difference, say, that he performed with a blacking-brush on the
family’s boots, instead of performing on enormous wind instruments and
double-basses, and that he conducted himself with cheerful alacrity to
much useful purpose, instead of foreshortening himself in the air with
the vaguest intentions.

Bella helped him with his supplemental cookery, and made him very happy,
but put him in mortal terror too by asking him when they sat down at
table again, how he supposed they cooked fowls at the Greenwich dinners,
and whether he believed they really were such pleasant dinners as people
said? His secret winks and nods of remonstrance, in reply, made the
mischievous Bella laugh until she choked, and then Lavinia was obliged
to slap her on the back, and then she laughed the more.

But her mother was a fine corrective at the other end of the table; to
whom her father, in the innocence of his good-fellowship, at intervals
appealed with: ‘My dear, I am afraid you are not enjoying yourself?’

‘Why so, R. W.?’ she would sonorously reply.

‘Because, my dear, you seem a little out of sorts.’

‘Not at all,’ would be the rejoinder, in exactly the same tone.

‘Would you take a merry-thought, my dear?’

‘Thank you. I will take whatever you please, R. W.’

‘Well, but my dear, do you like it?’

‘I like it as well as I like anything, R. W.’ The stately woman would
then, with a meritorious appearance of devoting herself to the general
good, pursue her dinner as if she were feeding somebody else on high
public grounds.

Bella had brought dessert and two bottles of wine, thus shedding
unprecedented splendour on the occasion. Mrs Wilfer did the honours of
the first glass by proclaiming: ‘R. W. I drink to you.

‘Thank you, my dear. And I to you.’

‘Pa and Ma!’ said Bella.

‘Permit me,’ Mrs Wilfer interposed, with outstretched glove. ‘No. I
think not. I drank to your papa. If, however, you insist on including
me, I can in gratitude offer no objection.’

‘Why, Lor, Ma,’ interposed Lavvy the bold, ‘isn’t it the day that made
you and Pa one and the same? I have no patience!’

‘By whatever other circumstance the day may be marked, it is not the
day, Lavinia, on which I will allow a child of mine to pounce upon me.
I beg--nay, command!--that you will not pounce. R. W., it is appropriate
to recall that it is for you to command and for me to obey. It is your
house, and you are master at your own table. Both our healths!’ Drinking
the toast with tremendous stiffness.

‘I really am a little afraid, my dear,’ hinted the cherub meekly, ‘that
you are not enjoying yourself?’

‘On the contrary,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, ‘quite so. Why should I not?’

‘I thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might--’

‘My face might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or who should
know it, if I smiled?’

And she did smile; manifestly freezing the blood of Mr George Sampson
by so doing. For that young gentleman, catching her smiling eye, was so
very much appalled by its expression as to cast about in his thoughts
concerning what he had done to bring it down upon himself.

‘The mind naturally falls,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘shall I say into a
reverie, or shall I say into a retrospect? on a day like this.’

Lavvy, sitting with defiantly folded arms, replied (but not audibly),
‘For goodness’ sake say whichever of the two you like best, Ma, and get
it over.’

‘The mind,’ pursued Mrs Wilfer in an oratorical manner, ‘naturally
reverts to Papa and Mamma--I here allude to my parents--at a period
before the earliest dawn of this day. I was considered tall; perhaps I
was. Papa and Mamma were unquestionably tall. I have rarely seen a finer
women than my mother; never than my father.’

The irrepressible Lavvy remarked aloud, ‘Whatever grandpapa was, he
wasn’t a female.’

‘Your grandpapa,’ retorted Mrs Wilfer, with an awful look, and in an
awful tone, ‘was what I describe him to have been, and would have struck
any of his grandchildren to the earth who presumed to question it. It
was one of mamma’s cherished hopes that I should become united to a
tall member of society. It may have been a weakness, but if so, it was
equally the weakness, I believe, of King Frederick of Prussia.’ These
remarks being offered to Mr George Sampson, who had not the courage to
come out for single combat, but lurked with his chest under the table
and his eyes cast down, Mrs Wilfer proceeded, in a voice of increasing
sternness and impressiveness, until she should force that skulker
to give himself up. ‘Mamma would appear to have had an indefinable
foreboding of what afterwards happened, for she would frequently urge
upon me, “Not a little man. Promise me, my child, not a little man.
Never, never, never, marry a little man!” Papa also would remark to me
(he possessed extraordinary humour), “that a family of whales must not
ally themselves with sprats.” His company was eagerly sought, as may
be supposed, by the wits of the day, and our house was their continual
resort. I have known as many as three copper-plate engravers exchanging
the most exquisite sallies and retorts there, at one time.’ (Here Mr
Sampson delivered himself captive, and said, with an uneasy movement on
his chair, that three was a large number, and it must have been highly
entertaining.) ‘Among the most prominent members of that distinguished
circle, was a gentleman measuring six feet four in height. HE was NOT
an engraver.’ (Here Mr Sampson said, with no reason whatever, Of course
not.) ‘This gentleman was so obliging as to honour me with attentions
which I could not fail to understand.’ (Here Mr Sampson murmured that
when it came to that, you could always tell.) ‘I immediately announced
to both my parents that those attentions were misplaced, and that I
could not favour his suit. They inquired was he too tall? I replied it
was not the stature, but the intellect was too lofty. At our house,
I said, the tone was too brilliant, the pressure was too high, to be
maintained by me, a mere woman, in every-day domestic life. I well
remember mamma’s clasping her hands, and exclaiming “This will end in
a little man!”’ (Here Mr Sampson glanced at his host and shook his head
with despondency.) ‘She afterwards went so far as to predict that it
would end in a little man whose mind would be below the average, but
that was in what I may denominate a paroxysm of maternal disappointment.
Within a month,’ said Mrs Wilfer, deepening her voice, as if she were
relating a terrible ghost story, ‘within a-month, I first saw R. W. my
husband. Within a year, I married him. It is natural for the mind to
recall these dark coincidences on the present day.’

Mr Sampson at length released from the custody of Mrs Wilfer’s eye, now
drew a long breath, and made the original and striking remark that there
was no accounting for these sort of presentiments. R. W. scratched his
head and looked apologetically all round the table until he came to his
wife, when observing her as it were shrouded in a more sombre veil than
before, he once more hinted, ‘My dear, I am really afraid you are not
altogether enjoying yourself?’ To which she once more replied, ‘On the
contrary, R. W. Quite so.’

The wretched Mr Sampson’s position at this agreeable entertainment
was truly pitiable. For, not only was he exposed defenceless to the
harangues of Mrs Wilfer, but he received the utmost contumely at the
hands of Lavinia; who, partly to show Bella that she (Lavinia) could do
what she liked with him, and partly to pay him off for still obviously
admiring Bella’s beauty, led him the life of a dog. Illuminated on the
one hand by the stately graces of Mrs Wilfer’s oratory, and shadowed
on the other by the checks and frowns of the young lady to whom he
had devoted himself in his destitution, the sufferings of this young
gentleman were distressing to witness. If his mind for the moment reeled
under them, it may be urged, in extenuation of its weakness, that it
was constitutionally a knock-knee’d mind and never very strong upon its
legs.

The rosy hours were thus beguiled until it was time for Bella to have
Pa’s escort back. The dimples duly tied up in the bonnet-strings and the
leave-taking done, they got out into the air, and the cherub drew a long
breath as if he found it refreshing.

‘Well, dear Pa,’ said Bella, ‘the anniversary may be considered over.’

‘Yes, my dear,’ returned the cherub, ‘there’s another of ‘em gone.’

Bella drew his arm closer through hers as they walked along, and gave it
a number of consolatory pats. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said, as if
she had spoken; ‘I am all right, my dear. Well, and how do you get on,
Bella?’

‘I am not at all improved, Pa.’

‘Ain’t you really though?’

‘No, Pa. On the contrary, I am worse.’

‘Lor!’ said the cherub.

‘I am worse, Pa. I make so many calculations how much a year I must have
when I marry, and what is the least I can manage to do with, that I am
beginning to get wrinkles over my nose. Did you notice any wrinkles over
my nose this evening, Pa?’

Pa laughing at this, Bella gave him two or three shakes.

‘You won’t laugh, sir, when you see your lovely woman turning haggard.
You had better be prepared in time, I can tell you. I shall not be able
to keep my greediness for money out of my eyes long, and when you see it
there you’ll be sorry, and serve you right for not being warned in time.
Now, sir, we entered into a bond of confidence. Have you anything to
impart?’

‘I thought it was you who was to impart, my love.’

‘Oh! did you indeed, sir? Then why didn’t you ask me, the moment we came
out? The confidences of lovely women are not to be slighted. However, I
forgive you this once, and look here, Pa; that’s’--Bella laid the
little forefinger of her right glove on her lip, and then laid it on her
father’s lip--‘that’s a kiss for you. And now I am going seriously
to tell you--let me see how many--four secrets. Mind! Serious, grave,
weighty secrets. Strictly between ourselves.’

‘Number one, my dear?’ said her father, settling her arm comfortably and
confidentially.

‘Number one,’ said Bella, ‘will electrify you, Pa. Who do you think
has’--she was confused here in spite of her merry way of beginning ‘has
made an offer to me?’

Pa looked in her face, and looked at the ground, and looked in her face
again, and declared he could never guess.

‘Mr Rokesmith.’

‘You don’t tell me so, my dear!’

‘Mis--ter Roke--smith, Pa,’ said Bella separating the syllables for
emphasis. ‘What do you say to THAT?’

Pa answered quietly with the counter-question, ‘What did YOU say to
that, my love?’

‘I said No,’ returned Bella sharply. ‘Of course.’

‘Yes. Of course,’ said her father, meditating.

‘And I told him why I thought it a betrayal of trust on his part, and an
affront to me,’ said Bella.

‘Yes. To be sure. I am astonished indeed. I wonder he committed himself
without seeing more of his way first. Now I think of it, I suspect he
always has admired you though, my dear.’

‘A hackney coachman may admire me,’ remarked Bella, with a touch of her
mother’s loftiness.

‘It’s highly probable, my love. Number two, my dear?’

‘Number two, Pa, is much to the same purpose, though not so
preposterous. Mr Lightwood would propose to me, if I would let him.’

‘Then I understand, my dear, that you don’t intend to let him?’

Bella again saying, with her former emphasis, ‘Why, of course not!’ her
father felt himself bound to echo, ‘Of course not.’

‘I don’t care for him,’ said Bella.

‘That’s enough,’ her father interposed.

‘No, Pa, it’s NOT enough,’ rejoined Bella, giving him another shake or
two. ‘Haven’t I told you what a mercenary little wretch I am? It
only becomes enough when he has no money, and no clients, and no
expectations, and no anything but debts.’

‘Hah!’ said the cherub, a little depressed. ‘Number three, my dear?’

‘Number three, Pa, is a better thing. A generous thing, a noble thing, a
delightful thing. Mrs Boffin has herself told me, as a secret, with her
own kind lips--and truer lips never opened or closed in this life, I am
sure--that they wish to see me well married; and that when I marry with
their consent they will portion me most handsomely.’ Here the grateful
girl burst out crying very heartily.

‘Don’t cry, my darling,’ said her father, with his hand to his eyes;
‘it’s excusable in me to be a little overcome when I find that my dear
favourite child is, after all disappointments, to be so provided for
and so raised in the world; but don’t YOU cry, don’t YOU cry. I am very
thankful. I congratulate you with all my heart, my dear.’ The good soft
little fellow, drying his eyes, here, Bella put her arms round his neck
and tenderly kissed him on the high road, passionately telling him
he was the best of fathers and the best of friends, and that on her
wedding-morning she would go down on her knees to him and beg his pardon
for having ever teased him or seemed insensible to the worth of such
a patient, sympathetic, genial, fresh young heart. At every one of her
adjectives she redoubled her kisses, and finally kissed his hat off, and
then laughed immoderately when the wind took it and he ran after it.

When he had recovered his hat and his breath, and they were going on
again once more, said her father then: ‘Number four, my dear?’

Bella’s countenance fell in the midst of her mirth. ‘After all, perhaps
I had better put off number four, Pa. Let me try once more, if for never
so short a time, to hope that it may not really be so.’

The change in her, strengthened the cherub’s interest in number four,
and he said quietly: ‘May not be so, my dear? May not be how, my dear?’

Bella looked at him pensively, and shook her head.

‘And yet I know right well it is so, Pa. I know it only too well.’

‘My love,’ returned her father, ‘you make me quite uncomfortable. Have
you said No to anybody else, my dear?’

‘No, Pa.’

‘Yes to anybody?’ he suggested, lifting up his eyebrows.

‘No, Pa.’

‘Is there anybody else who would take his chance between Yes and No, if
you would let him, my dear?’

‘Not that I know of, Pa.’

‘There can’t be somebody who won’t take his chance when you want him
to?’ said the cherub, as a last resource.

‘Why, of course not, Pa,’ said Bella, giving him another shake or two.

‘No, of course not,’ he assented. ‘Bella, my dear, I am afraid I must
either have no sleep to-night, or I must press for number four.’

‘Oh, Pa, there is no good in number four! I am so sorry for it, I am so
unwilling to believe it, I have tried so earnestly not to see it, that
it is very hard to tell, even to you. But Mr Boffin is being spoilt by
prosperity, and is changing every day.’

‘My dear Bella, I hope and trust not.’

‘I have hoped and trusted not too, Pa; but every day he changes for
the worse, and for the worse. Not to me--he is always much the same
to me--but to others about him. Before my eyes he grows suspicious,
capricious, hard, tyrannical, unjust. If ever a good man were ruined by
good fortune, it is my benefactor. And yet, Pa, think how terrible the
fascination of money is! I see this, and hate this, and dread this, and
don’t know but that money might make a much worse change in me. And yet
I have money always in my thoughts and my desires; and the whole life I
place before myself is money, money, money, and what money can make of
life!’



Chapter 5

THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO BAD COMPANY


Were Bella Wilfer’s bright and ready little wits at fault, or was the
Golden Dustman passing through the furnace of proof and coming out
dross? Ill news travels fast. We shall know full soon.

On that very night of her return from the Happy Return, something
chanced which Bella closely followed with her eyes and ears. There was
an apartment at the side of the Boffin mansion, known as Mr Boffin’s
room. Far less grand than the rest of the house, it was far more
comfortable, being pervaded by a certain air of homely snugness, which
upholstering despotism had banished to that spot when it inexorably set
its face against Mr Boffin’s appeals for mercy in behalf of any other
chamber. Thus, although a room of modest situation--for its windows gave
on Silas Wegg’s old corner--and of no pretensions to velvet, satin, or
gilding, it had got itself established in a domestic position analogous
to that of an easy dressing-gown or pair of slippers; and whenever the
family wanted to enjoy a particularly pleasant fireside evening, they
enjoyed it, as an institution that must be, in Mr Boffin’s room.

Mr and Mrs Boffin were reported sitting in this room, when Bella got
back. Entering it, she found the Secretary there too; in official
attendance it would appear, for he was standing with some papers in his
hand by a table with shaded candles on it, at which Mr Boffin was seated
thrown back in his easy chair.

‘You are busy, sir,’ said Bella, hesitating at the door.

‘Not at all, my dear, not at all. You’re one of ourselves. We never
make company of you. Come in, come in. Here’s the old lady in her usual
place.’

Mrs Boffin adding her nod and smile of welcome to Mr Boffin’s words,
Bella took her book to a chair in the fireside corner, by Mrs Boffin’s
work-table. Mr Boffin’s station was on the opposite side.

‘Now, Rokesmith,’ said the Golden Dustman, so sharply rapping the table
to bespeak his attention as Bella turned the leaves of her book, that
she started; ‘where were we?’

‘You were saying, sir,’ returned the Secretary, with an air of some
reluctance and a glance towards those others who were present, ‘that you
considered the time had come for fixing my salary.’

‘Don’t be above calling it wages, man,’ said Mr Boffin, testily. ‘What
the deuce! I never talked of any salary when I was in service.’

‘My wages,’ said the Secretary, correcting himself.

‘Rokesmith, you are not proud, I hope?’ observed Mr Boffin, eyeing him
askance.

‘I hope not, sir.’

‘Because I never was, when I was poor,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Poverty and
pride don’t go at all well together. Mind that. How can they go well
together? Why it stands to reason. A man, being poor, has nothing to be
proud of. It’s nonsense.’

With a slight inclination of his head, and a look of some surprise,
the Secretary seemed to assent by forming the syllables of the word
‘nonsense’ on his lips.

‘Now, concerning these same wages,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Sit down.’

The Secretary sat down.

‘Why didn’t you sit down before?’ asked Mr Boffin, distrustfully. ‘I
hope that wasn’t pride? But about these wages. Now, I’ve gone into the
matter, and I say two hundred a year. What do you think of it? Do you
think it’s enough?’

‘Thank you. It is a fair proposal.’

‘I don’t say, you know,’ Mr Boffin stipulated, ‘but what it may be more
than enough. And I’ll tell you why, Rokesmith. A man of property, like
me, is bound to consider the market-price. At first I didn’t enter into
that as much as I might have done; but I’ve got acquainted with other
men of property since, and I’ve got acquainted with the duties of
property. I mustn’t go putting the market-price up, because money may
happen not to be an object with me. A sheep is worth so much in the
market, and I ought to give it and no more. A secretary is worth so much
in the market, and I ought to give it and no more. However, I don’t mind
stretching a point with you.’

‘Mr Boffin, you are very good,’ replied the Secretary, with an effort.

‘Then we put the figure,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘at two hundred a year.
Then the figure’s disposed of. Now, there must be no misunderstanding
regarding what I buy for two hundred a year. If I pay for a sheep, I buy
it out and out. Similarly, if I pay for a secretary, I buy HIM out and
out.’

‘In other words, you purchase my whole time?’

‘Certainly I do. Look here,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘it ain’t that I want to
occupy your whole time; you can take up a book for a minute or two when
you’ve nothing better to do, though I think you’ll a’most always find
something useful to do. But I want to keep you in attendance. It’s
convenient to have you at all times ready on the premises. Therefore,
betwixt your breakfast and your supper,--on the premises I expect to
find you.’

The Secretary bowed.

‘In bygone days, when I was in service myself,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘I
couldn’t go cutting about at my will and pleasure, and you won’t expect
to go cutting about at your will and pleasure. You’ve rather got into
a habit of that, lately; but perhaps it was for want of a right
specification betwixt us. Now, let there be a right specification
betwixt us, and let it be this. If you want leave, ask for it.’

Again the Secretary bowed. His manner was uneasy and astonished, and
showed a sense of humiliation.

‘I’ll have a bell,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘hung from this room to yours,
and when I want you, I’ll touch it. I don’t call to mind that I have
anything more to say at the present moment.’

The Secretary rose, gathered up his papers, and withdrew. Bella’s eyes
followed him to the door, lighted on Mr Boffin complacently thrown back
in his easy chair, and drooped over her book.

‘I have let that chap, that young man of mine,’ said Mr Boffin, taking a
trot up and down the room, ‘get above his work. It won’t do. I must have
him down a peg. A man of property owes a duty to other men of property,
and must look sharp after his inferiors.’

Bella felt that Mrs Boffin was not comfortable, and that the eyes of
that good creature sought to discover from her face what attention she
had given to this discourse, and what impression it had made upon her.
For which reason Bella’s eyes drooped more engrossedly over her book,
and she turned the page with an air of profound absorption in it.

‘Noddy,’ said Mrs Boffin, after thoughtfully pausing in her work.

‘My dear,’ returned the Golden Dustman, stopping short in his trot.

‘Excuse my putting it to you, Noddy, but now really! Haven’t you been
a little strict with Mr Rokesmith to-night? Haven’t you been a
little--just a little little--not quite like your old self?’

‘Why, old woman, I hope so,’ returned Mr Boffin, cheerfully, if not
boastfully.

‘Hope so, deary?’

‘Our old selves wouldn’t do here, old lady. Haven’t you found that out
yet? Our old selves would be fit for nothing here but to be robbed and
imposed upon. Our old selves weren’t people of fortune; our new selves
are; it’s a great difference.’

‘Ah!’ said Mrs Boffin, pausing in her work again, softly to draw a long
breath and to look at the fire. ‘A great difference.’

‘And we must be up to the difference,’ pursued her husband; ‘we must be
equal to the change; that’s what we must be. We’ve got to hold our own
now, against everybody (for everybody’s hand is stretched out to be
dipped into our pockets), and we have got to recollect that money makes
money, as well as makes everything else.’

‘Mentioning recollecting,’ said Mrs Boffin, with her work abandoned,
her eyes upon the fire, and her chin upon her hand, ‘do you recollect,
Noddy, how you said to Mr Rokesmith when he first came to see us at the
Bower, and you engaged him--how you said to him that if it had pleased
Heaven to send John Harmon to his fortune safe, we could have been
content with the one Mound which was our legacy, and should never have
wanted the rest?’

‘Ay, I remember, old lady. But we hadn’t tried what it was to have the
rest then. Our new shoes had come home, but we hadn’t put ‘em on. We’re
wearing ‘em now, we’re wearing ‘em, and must step out accordingly.’

Mrs Boffin took up her work again, and plied her needle in silence.

‘As to Rokesmith, that young man of mine,’ said Mr Boffin, dropping
his voice and glancing towards the door with an apprehension of being
overheard by some eavesdropper there, ‘it’s the same with him as with
the footmen. I have found out that you must either scrunch them, or let
them scrunch you. If you ain’t imperious with ‘em, they won’t believe
in your being any better than themselves, if as good, after the stories
(lies mostly) that they have heard of your beginnings. There’s nothing
betwixt stiffening yourself up, and throwing yourself away; take my word
for that, old lady.’

Bella ventured for a moment to look stealthily towards him under her
eyelashes, and she saw a dark cloud of suspicion, covetousness, and
conceit, overshadowing the once open face.

‘Hows’ever,’ said he, ‘this isn’t entertaining to Miss Bella. Is it,
Bella?’

A deceiving Bella she was, to look at him with that pensively abstracted
air, as if her mind were full of her book, and she had not heard a
single word!

‘Hah! Better employed than to attend to it,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘That’s
right, that’s right. Especially as you have no call to be told how to
value yourself, my dear.’

Colouring a little under this compliment, Bella returned, ‘I hope sir,
you don’t think me vain?’

‘Not a bit, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘But I think it’s very creditable
in you, at your age, to be so well up with the pace of the world, and to
know what to go in for. You are right. Go in for money, my love. Money’s
the article. You’ll make money of your good looks, and of the money Mrs
Boffin and me will have the pleasure of settling upon you, and you’ll
live and die rich. That’s the state to live and die in!’ said Mr Boffin,
in an unctuous manner. R--r--rich!’

There was an expression of distress in Mrs Boffin’s face, as, after
watching her husband’s, she turned to their adopted girl, and said:

‘Don’t mind him, Bella, my dear.’

‘Eh?’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘What! Not mind him?’

‘I don’t mean that,’ said Mrs Boffin, with a worried look, ‘but I mean,
don’t believe him to be anything but good and generous, Bella, because
he is the best of men. No, I must say that much, Noddy. You are always
the best of men.’

She made the declaration as if he were objecting to it: which assuredly
he was not in any way.

‘And as to you, my dear Bella,’ said Mrs Boffin, still with that
distressed expression, ‘he is so much attached to you, whatever he says,
that your own father has not a truer interest in you and can hardly like
you better than he does.’

‘Says too!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘Whatever he says! Why, I say so, openly.
Give me a kiss, my dear child, in saying Good Night, and let me confirm
what my old lady tells you. I am very fond of you, my dear, and I am
entirely of your mind, and you and I will take care that you shall be
rich. These good looks of yours (which you have some right to be vain
of; my dear, though you are not, you know) are worth money, and you
shall make money of ‘em. The money you will have, will be worth money,
and you shall make money of that too. There’s a golden ball at your
feet. Good night, my dear.’

Somehow, Bella was not so well pleased with this assurance and this
prospect as she might have been. Somehow, when she put her arms
round Mrs Boffin’s neck and said Good Night, she derived a sense of
unworthiness from the still anxious face of that good woman and her
obvious wish to excuse her husband. ‘Why, what need to excuse him?’
thought Bella, sitting down in her own room. ‘What he said was very
sensible, I am sure, and very true, I am sure. It is only what I often
say to myself. Don’t I like it then? No, I don’t like it, and, though
he is my liberal benefactor, I disparage him for it. Then pray,’ said
Bella, sternly putting the question to herself in the looking-glass as
usual, ‘what do you mean by this, you inconsistent little Beast?’

The looking-glass preserving a discreet ministerial silence when thus
called upon for explanation, Bella went to bed with a weariness upon her
spirit which was more than the weariness of want of sleep. And again
in the morning, she looked for the cloud, and for the deepening of the
cloud, upon the Golden Dustman’s face.

She had begun by this time to be his frequent companion in his morning
strolls about the streets, and it was at this time that he made her a
party to his engaging in a curious pursuit. Having been hard at work in
one dull enclosure all his life, he had a child’s delight in looking
at shops. It had been one of the first novelties and pleasures of his
freedom, and was equally the delight of his wife. For many years their
only walks in London had been taken on Sundays when the shops were shut;
and when every day in the week became their holiday, they derived an
enjoyment from the variety and fancy and beauty of the display in the
windows, which seemed incapable of exhaustion. As if the principal
streets were a great Theatre and the play were childishly new to them,
Mr and Mrs Boffin, from the beginning of Bella’s intimacy in their
house, had been constantly in the front row, charmed with all they saw
and applauding vigorously. But now, Mr Boffin’s interest began to centre
in book-shops; and more than that--for that of itself would not have
been much--in one exceptional kind of book.

‘Look in here, my dear,’ Mr Boffin would say, checking Bella’s arm at a
bookseller’s window; ‘you can read at sight, and your eyes are as sharp
as they’re bright. Now, look well about you, my dear, and tell me if you
see any book about a Miser.’

If Bella saw such a book, Mr Boffin would instantly dart in and buy
it. And still, as if they had not found it, they would seek out another
book-shop, and Mr Boffin would say, ‘Now, look well all round, my
dear, for a Life of a Miser, or any book of that sort; any Lives of odd
characters who may have been Misers.’

Bella, thus directed, would examine the window with the greatest
attention, while Mr Boffin would examine her face. The moment she
pointed out any book as being entitled Lives of eccentric personages,
Anecdotes of strange characters, Records of remarkable individuals, or
anything to that purpose, Mr Boffin’s countenance would light up, and
he would instantly dart in and buy it. Size, price, quality, were of no
account. Any book that seemed to promise a chance of miserly biography,
Mr Boffin purchased without a moment’s delay and carried home. Happening
to be informed by a bookseller that a portion of the Annual Register was
devoted to ‘Characters’, Mr Boffin at once bought a whole set of that
ingenious compilation, and began to carry it home piecemeal, confiding
a volume to Bella, and bearing three himself. The completion of this
labour occupied them about a fortnight. When the task was done, Mr
Boffin, with his appetite for Misers whetted instead of satiated, began
to look out again.

It very soon became unnecessary to tell Bella what to look for, and an
understanding was established between her and Mr Boffin that she was
always to look for Lives of Misers. Morning after morning they roamed
about the town together, pursuing this singular research. Miserly
literature not being abundant, the proportion of failures to successes
may have been as a hundred to one; still Mr Boffin, never wearied,
remained as avaricious for misers as he had been at the first onset. It
was curious that Bella never saw the books about the house, nor did she
ever hear from Mr Boffin one word of reference to their contents. He
seemed to save up his Misers as they had saved up their money. As they
had been greedy for it, and secret about it, and had hidden it, so he
was greedy for them, and secret about them, and hid them. But beyond all
doubt it was to be noticed, and was by Bella very clearly noticed, that,
as he pursued the acquisition of those dismal records with the ardour of
Don Quixote for his books of chivalry, he began to spend his money with
a more sparing hand. And often when he came out of a shop with some new
account of one of those wretched lunatics, she would almost shrink from
the sly dry chuckle with which he would take her arm again and trot
away. It did not appear that Mrs Boffin knew of this taste. He made
no allusion to it, except in the morning walks when he and Bella were
always alone; and Bella, partly under the impression that he took her
into his confidence by implication, and partly in remembrance of Mrs
Boffin’s anxious face that night, held the same reserve.

While these occurrences were in progress, Mrs Lammle made the discovery
that Bella had a fascinating influence over her. The Lammles, originally
presented by the dear Veneerings, visited the Boffins on all grand
occasions, and Mrs Lammle had not previously found this out; but now the
knowledge came upon her all at once. It was a most extraordinary thing
(she said to Mrs Boffin); she was foolishly susceptible of the power of
beauty, but it wasn’t altogether that; she never had been able to resist
a natural grace of manner, but it wasn’t altogether that; it was more
than that, and there was no name for the indescribable extent and degree
to which she was captivated by this charming girl.

This charming girl having the words repeated to her by Mrs Boffin (who
was proud of her being admired, and would have done anything to give her
pleasure), naturally recognized in Mrs Lammle a woman of penetration
and taste. Responding to the sentiments, by being very gracious to Mrs
Lammle, she gave that lady the means of so improving her opportunity,
as that the captivation became reciprocal, though always wearing an
appearance of greater sobriety on Bella’s part than on the enthusiastic
Sophronia’s. Howbeit, they were so much together that, for a time, the
Boffin chariot held Mrs Lammle oftener than Mrs Boffin: a preference
of which the latter worthy soul was not in the least jealous, placidly
remarking, ‘Mrs Lammle is a younger companion for her than I am, and
Lor! she’s more fashionable.’

But between Bella Wilfer and Georgiana Podsnap there was this one
difference, among many others, that Bella was in no danger of being
captivated by Alfred. She distrusted and disliked him. Indeed, her
perception was so quick, and her observation so sharp, that after all
she mistrusted his wife too, though with her giddy vanity and wilfulness
she squeezed the mistrust away into a corner of her mind, and blocked it
up there.

Mrs Lammle took the friendliest interest in Bella’s making a good match.
Mrs Lammle said, in a sportive way, she really must show her beautiful
Bella what kind of wealthy creatures she and Alfred had on hand, who
would as one man fall at her feet enslaved. Fitting occasion made,
Mrs Lammle accordingly produced the most passable of those feverish,
boastful, and indefinably loose gentlemen who were always lounging in
and out of the City on questions of the Bourse and Greek and Spanish and
India and Mexican and par and premium and discount and three-quarters
and seven-eighths. Who in their agreeable manner did homage to Bella
as if she were a compound of fine girl, thorough-bred horse, well-built
drag, and remarkable pipe. But without the least effect, though even Mr
Fledgeby’s attractions were cast into the scale.

‘I fear, Bella dear,’ said Mrs Lammle one day in the chariot, ‘that you
will be very hard to please.’

‘I don’t expect to be pleased, dear,’ said Bella, with a languid turn of
her eyes.

‘Truly, my love,’ returned Sophronia, shaking her head, and smiling
her best smile, ‘it would not be very easy to find a man worthy of your
attractions.’

‘The question is not a man, my dear,’ said Bella, coolly, ‘but an
establishment.’

‘My love,’ returned Mrs Lammle, ‘your prudence amazes me--where DID you
study life so well!--you are right. In such a case as yours, the object
is a fitting establishment. You could not descend to an inadequate one
from Mr Boffin’s house, and even if your beauty alone could not command
it, it is to be assumed that Mr and Mrs Boffin will--’

‘Oh! they have already,’ Bella interposed.

‘No! Have they really?’

A little vexed by a suspicion that she had spoken precipitately, and
withal a little defiant of her own vexation, Bella determined not to
retreat.

‘That is to say,’ she explained, ‘they have told me they mean to portion
me as their adopted child, if you mean that. But don’t mention it.’

‘Mention it!’ replied Mrs Lammle, as if she were full of awakened
feeling at the suggestion of such an impossibility. ‘Men-tion it!’

‘I don’t mind telling you, Mrs Lammle--’ Bella began again.

‘My love, say Sophronia, or I must not say Bella.’

With a little short, petulant ‘Oh!’ Bella complied. ‘Oh!--Sophronia
then--I don’t mind telling you, Sophronia, that I am convinced I have
no heart, as people call it; and that I think that sort of thing is
nonsense.’

‘Brave girl!’ murmured Mrs Lammle.

‘And so,’ pursued Bella, ‘as to seeking to please myself, I don’t;
except in the one respect I have mentioned. I am indifferent otherwise.’

‘But you can’t help pleasing, Bella,’ said Mrs Lammle, rallying her with
an arch look and her best smile, ‘you can’t help making a proud and an
admiring husband. You may not care to please yourself, and you may not
care to please him, but you are not a free agent as to pleasing: you
are forced to do that, in spite of yourself, my dear; so it may be a
question whether you may not as well please yourself too, if you can.’

Now, the very grossness of this flattery put Bella upon proving that she
actually did please in spite of herself. She had a misgiving that she
was doing wrong--though she had an indistinct foreshadowing that some
harm might come of it thereafter, she little thought what consequences
it would really bring about--but she went on with her confidence.

‘Don’t talk of pleasing in spite of one’s self, dear,’ said Bella. ‘I
have had enough of that.’

‘Ay?’ cried Mrs Lammle. ‘Am I already corroborated, Bella?’

‘Never mind, Sophronia, we will not speak of it any more. Don’t ask me
about it.’

This plainly meaning Do ask me about it, Mrs Lammle did as she was
requested.

‘Tell me, Bella. Come, my dear. What provoking burr has been
inconveniently attracted to the charming skirts, and with difficulty
shaken off?’

‘Provoking indeed,’ said Bella, ‘and no burr to boast of! But don’t ask
me.’

‘Shall I guess?’

‘You would never guess. What would you say to our Secretary?’

‘My dear! The hermit Secretary, who creeps up and down the back stairs,
and is never seen!’

‘I don’t know about his creeping up and down the back stairs,’ said
Bella, rather contemptuously, ‘further than knowing that he does no such
thing; and as to his never being seen, I should be content never to have
seen him, though he is quite as visible as you are. But I pleased HIM
(for my sins) and he had the presumption to tell me so.’

‘The man never made a declaration to you, my dear Bella!’

‘Are you sure of that, Sophronia?’ said Bella. ‘I am not. In fact, I am
sure of the contrary.’

‘The man must be mad,’ said Mrs Lammle, with a kind of resignation.

‘He appeared to be in his senses,’ returned Bella, tossing her head,
‘and he had plenty to say for himself. I told him my opinion of his
declaration and his conduct, and dismissed him. Of course this has all
been very inconvenient to me, and very disagreeable. It has remained a
secret, however. That word reminds me to observe, Sophronia, that I have
glided on into telling you the secret, and that I rely upon you never to
mention it.’

‘Mention it!’ repeated Mrs Lammle with her former feeling. ‘Men-tion
it!’

This time Sophronia was so much in earnest that she found it necessary
to bend forward in the carriage and give Bella a kiss. A Judas order of
kiss; for she thought, while she yet pressed Bella’s hand after giving
it, ‘Upon your own showing, you vain heartless girl, puffed up by the
doting folly of a dustman, I need have no relenting towards YOU. If my
husband, who sends me here, should form any schemes for making YOU a
victim, I should certainly not cross him again.’ In those very same
moments, Bella was thinking, ‘Why am I always at war with myself? Why
have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to
have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in
spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?’

As usual, there was no answer in the looking-glass when she got home and
referred these questions to it. Perhaps if she had consulted some better
oracle, the result might have been more satisfactory; but she did not,
and all things consequent marched the march before them.

On one point connected with the watch she kept on Mr Boffin, she felt
very inquisitive, and that was the question whether the Secretary
watched him too, and followed the sure and steady change in him, as she
did? Her very limited intercourse with Mr Rokesmith rendered this hard
to find out. Their communication now, at no time extended beyond the
preservation of commonplace appearances before Mr and Mrs Boffin; and if
Bella and the Secretary were ever left alone together by any chance,
he immediately withdrew. She consulted his face when she could do so
covertly, as she worked or read, and could make nothing of it. He looked
subdued; but he had acquired a strong command of feature, and, whenever
Mr Boffin spoke to him in Bella’s presence, or whatever revelation of
himself Mr Boffin made, the Secretary’s face changed no more than a
wall. A slightly knitted brow, that expressed nothing but an almost
mechanical attention, and a compression of the mouth, that might have
been a guard against a scornful smile--these she saw from morning to
night, from day to day, from week to week, monotonous, unvarying, set,
as in a piece of sculpture.

The worst of the matter was, that it thus fell out insensibly--and most
provokingly, as Bella complained to herself, in her impetuous little
manner--that her observation of Mr Boffin involved a continual
observation of Mr Rokesmith. ‘Won’t THAT extract a look from him?’--‘Can
it be possible THAT makes no impression on him?’ Such questions Bella
would propose to herself, often as many times in a day as there were
hours in it. Impossible to know. Always the same fixed face.

‘Can he be so base as to sell his very nature for two hundred a year?’
Bella would think. And then, ‘But why not? It’s a mere question of price
with others besides him. I suppose I would sell mine, if I could get
enough for it.’ And so she would come round again to the war with
herself.

A kind of illegibility, though a different kind, stole over Mr
Boffin’s face. Its old simplicity of expression got masked by a certain
craftiness that assimilated even his good-humour to itself. His very
smile was cunning, as if he had been studying smiles among the portraits
of his misers. Saving an occasional burst of impatience, or coarse
assertion of his mastery, his good-humour remained to him, but it had
now a sordid alloy of distrust; and though his eyes should twinkle and
all his face should laugh, he would sit holding himself in his own
arms, as if he had an inclination to hoard himself up, and must always
grudgingly stand on the defensive.

What with taking heed of these two faces, and what with feeling
conscious that the stealthy occupation must set some mark on her own,
Bella soon began to think that there was not a candid or a natural face
among them all but Mrs Boffin’s. None the less because it was far less
radiant than of yore, faithfully reflecting in its anxiety and regret
every line of change in the Golden Dustman’s.

‘Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin one evening when they were all in his room
again, and he and the Secretary had been going over some accounts, ‘I
am spending too much money. Or leastways, you are spending too much for
me.’

‘You are rich, sir.’

‘I am not,’ said Mr Boffin.

The sharpness of the retort was next to telling the Secretary that he
lied. But it brought no change of expression into the set face.

‘I tell you I am not rich,’ repeated Mr Boffin, ‘and I won’t have it.’

‘You are not rich, sir?’ repeated the Secretary, in measured words.

‘Well,’ returned Mr Boffin, ‘if I am, that’s my business. I am not going
to spend at this rate, to please you, or anybody. You wouldn’t like it,
if it was your money.’

‘Even in that impossible case, sir, I--’

‘Hold your tongue!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘You oughtn’t to like it in any
case. There! I didn’t mean to be rude, but you put me out so, and after
all I’m master. I didn’t intend to tell you to hold your tongue. I beg
your pardon. Don’t hold your tongue. Only, don’t contradict. Did you
ever come across the life of Mr Elwes?’ referring to his favourite
subject at last.

‘The miser?’

‘Ah, people called him a miser. People are always calling other people
something. Did you ever read about him?’

‘I think so.’

‘He never owned to being rich, and yet he might have bought me twice
over. Did you ever hear of Daniel Dancer?’

‘Another miser? Yes.’

‘He was a good ‘un,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and he had a sister worthy of him.
They never called themselves rich neither. If they HAD called themselves
rich, most likely they wouldn’t have been so.’

‘They lived and died very miserably. Did they not, sir?’

‘No, I don’t know that they did,’ said Mr Boffin, curtly.

‘Then they are not the Misers I mean. Those abject wretches--’

‘Don’t call names, Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin.

‘--That exemplary brother and sister--lived and died in the foulest and
filthiest degradation.’

‘They pleased themselves,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and I suppose they could
have done no more if they had spent their money. But however, I ain’t
going to fling mine away. Keep the expenses down. The fact is, you ain’t
enough here, Rokesmith. It wants constant attention in the littlest
things. Some of us will be dying in a workhouse next.’

‘As the persons you have cited,’ quietly remarked the Secretary,
‘thought they would, if I remember, sir.’

‘And very creditable in ‘em too,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Very independent in
‘em! But never mind them just now. Have you given notice to quit your
lodgings?’

‘Under your direction, I have, sir.’

‘Then I tell you what,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘pay the quarter’s rent--pay the
quarter’s rent, it’ll be the cheapest thing in the end--and come here at
once, so that you may be always on the spot, day and night, and keep the
expenses down. You’ll charge the quarter’s rent to me, and we must try
and save it somewhere. You’ve got some lovely furniture; haven’t you?’

‘The furniture in my rooms is my own.’

‘Then we shan’t have to buy any for you. In case you was to think it,’
said Mr Boffin, with a look of peculiar shrewdness, ‘so honourably
independent in you as to make it a relief to your mind, to make that
furniture over to me in the light of a set-off against the quarter’s
rent, why ease your mind, ease your mind. I don’t ask it, but I won’t
stand in your way if you should consider it due to yourself. As to your
room, choose any empty room at the top of the house.’

‘Any empty room will do for me,’ said the Secretary.

‘You can take your pick,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and it’ll be as good as eight
or ten shillings a week added to your income. I won’t deduct for it; I
look to you to make it up handsomely by keeping the expenses down. Now,
if you’ll show a light, I’ll come to your office-room and dispose of a
letter or two.’

On that clear, generous face of Mrs Boffin’s, Bella had seen such traces
of a pang at the heart while this dialogue was being held, that she
had not the courage to turn her eyes to it when they were left alone.
Feigning to be intent on her embroidery, she sat plying her needle until
her busy hand was stopped by Mrs Boffin’s hand being lightly laid upon
it. Yielding to the touch, she felt her hand carried to the good soul’s
lips, and felt a tear fall on it.

‘Oh, my loved husband!’ said Mrs Boffin. ‘This is hard to see and hear.
But my dear Bella, believe me that in spite of all the change in him, he
is the best of men.’

He came back, at the moment when Bella had taken the hand comfortingly
between her own.

‘Eh?’ said he, mistrustfully looking in at the door. ‘What’s she telling
you?’

‘She is only praising you, sir,’ said Bella.

‘Praising me? You are sure? Not blaming me for standing on my own
defence against a crew of plunderers, who could suck me dry by driblets?
Not blaming me for getting a little hoard together?’

He came up to them, and his wife folded her hands upon his shoulder, and
shook her head as she laid it on her hands.

‘There, there, there!’ urged Mr Boffin, not unkindly. ‘Don’t take on,
old lady.’

‘But I can’t bear to see you so, my dear.’

‘Nonsense! Recollect we are not our old selves. Recollect, we must
scrunch or be scrunched. Recollect, we must hold our own. Recollect,
money makes money. Don’t you be uneasy, Bella, my child; don’t you be
doubtful. The more I save, the more you shall have.’

Bella thought it was well for his wife that she was musing with her
affectionate face on his shoulder; for there was a cunning light in
his eyes as he said all this, which seemed to cast a disagreeable
illumination on the change in him, and make it morally uglier.



Chapter 6

THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY


It had come to pass that Mr Silas Wegg now rarely attended the minion of
fortune and the worm of the hour, at his (the worm’s and minion’s) own
house, but lay under general instructions to await him within a certain
margin of hours at the Bower. Mr Wegg took this arrangement in great
dudgeon, because the appointed hours were evening hours, and those he
considered precious to the progress of the friendly move. But it was
quite in character, he bitterly remarked to Mr Venus, that the upstart
who had trampled on those eminent creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master
George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, should oppress his literary man.

The Roman Empire having worked out its destruction, Mr Boffin next
appeared in a cab with Rollin’s Ancient History, which valuable work
being found to possess lethargic properties, broke down, at about the
period when the whole of the army of Alexander the Macedonian (at that
time about forty thousand strong) burst into tears simultaneously, on
his being taken with a shivering fit after bathing. The Wars of the
Jews, likewise languishing under Mr Wegg’s generalship, Mr Boffin
arrived in another cab with Plutarch: whose Lives he found in the sequel
extremely entertaining, though he hoped Plutarch might not expect him to
believe them all. What to believe, in the course of his reading, was Mr
Boffin’s chief literary difficulty indeed; for some time he was divided
in his mind between half, all, or none; at length, when he decided, as a
moderate man, to compound with half, the question still remained, which
half? And that stumbling-block he never got over.

One evening, when Silas Wegg had grown accustomed to the arrival of
his patron in a cab, accompanied by some profane historian charged with
unutterable names of incomprehensible peoples, of impossible descent,
waging wars any number of years and syllables long, and carrying
illimitable hosts and riches about, with the greatest ease, beyond the
confines of geography--one evening the usual time passed by, and no
patron appeared. After half an hour’s grace, Mr Wegg proceeded to the
outer gate, and there executed a whistle, conveying to Mr Venus,
if perchance within hearing, the tidings of his being at home and
disengaged. Forth from the shelter of a neighbouring wall, Mr Venus then
emerged.

‘Brother in arms,’ said Mr Wegg, in excellent spirits, ‘welcome!’

In return, Mr Venus gave him a rather dry good evening.

‘Walk in, brother,’ said Silas, clapping him on the shoulder, ‘and take
your seat in my chimley corner; for what says the ballad?

     “No malice to dread, sir,
     And no falsehood to fear,
     But truth to delight me, Mr Venus,
     And I forgot what to cheer.
     Li toddle de om dee.
     And something to guide,
     My ain fireside, sir,
     My ain fireside.”’

With this quotation (depending for its neatness rather on the spirit
than the words), Mr Wegg conducted his guest to his hearth.

‘And you come, brother,’ said Mr Wegg, in a hospitable glow, ‘you come
like I don’t know what--exactly like it--I shouldn’t know you from
it--shedding a halo all around you.’

‘What kind of halo?’ asked Mr Venus.

‘’Ope sir,’ replied Silas. ‘That’s YOUR halo.’

Mr Venus appeared doubtful on the point, and looked rather
discontentedly at the fire.

‘We’ll devote the evening, brother,’ exclaimed Wegg, ‘to prosecute our
friendly move. And arterwards, crushing a flowing wine-cup--which I
allude to brewing rum and water--we’ll pledge one another. For what says
the Poet?

     “And you needn’t Mr Venus be your black bottle,
     For surely I’ll be mine,
     And we’ll take a glass with a slice of lemon in it to which
     you’re partial,
     For auld lang syne.”’

This flow of quotation and hospitality in Wegg indicated his observation
of some little querulousness on the part of Venus.

‘Why, as to the friendly move,’ observed the last-named gentleman,
rubbing his knees peevishly, ‘one of my objections to it is, that it
DON’T move.’

‘Rome, brother,’ returned Wegg: ‘a city which (it may not be generally
known) originated in twins and a wolf; and ended in Imperial marble:
wasn’t built in a day.’

‘Did I say it was?’ asked Venus.

‘No, you did not, brother. Well-inquired.’

‘But I do say,’ proceeded Venus, ‘that I am taken from among my trophies
of anatomy, am called upon to exchange my human warious for mere
coal-ashes warious, and nothing comes of it. I think I must give up.’

‘No, sir!’ remonstrated Wegg, enthusiastically. ‘No, Sir!

     “Charge, Chester, charge,
     On, Mr Venus, on!”

Never say die, sir! A man of your mark!’

‘It’s not so much saying it that I object to,’ returned Mr Venus, ‘as
doing it. And having got to do it whether or no, I can’t afford to waste
my time on groping for nothing in cinders.’

‘But think how little time you have given to the move, sir, after all,’
urged Wegg. ‘Add the evenings so occupied together, and what do they
come to? And you, sir, harmonizer with myself in opinions, views, and
feelings, you with the patience to fit together on wires the whole
framework of society--I allude to the human skelinton--you to give in so
soon!’

‘I don’t like it,’ returned Mr Venus moodily, as he put his head between
his knees and stuck up his dusty hair. ‘And there’s no encouragement to
go on.’

‘Not them Mounds without,’ said Mr Wegg, extending his right hand with
an air of solemn reasoning, ‘encouragement? Not them Mounds now looking
down upon us?’

‘They’re too big,’ grumbled Venus. ‘What’s a scratch here and a scrape
there, a poke in this place and a dig in the other, to them. Besides;
what have we found?’

‘What HAVE we found?’ cried Wegg, delighted to be able to acquiesce.
‘Ah! There I grant you, comrade. Nothing. But on the contrary, comrade,
what MAY we find? There you’ll grant me. Anything.’

‘I don’t like it,’ pettishly returned Venus as before. ‘I came into
it without enough consideration. And besides again. Isn’t your own Mr
Boffin well acquainted with the Mounds? And wasn’t he well acquainted
with the deceased and his ways? And has he ever showed any expectation
of finding anything?’

At that moment wheels were heard.

‘Now, I should be loth,’ said Mr Wegg, with an air of patient injury,
‘to think so ill of him as to suppose him capable of coming at this time
of night. And yet it sounds like him.’

A ring at the yard bell.

‘It is him,’ said Mr Wegg, ‘and he is capable of it. I am sorry, because
I could have wished to keep up a little lingering fragment of respect
for him.’

Here Mr Boffin was heard lustily calling at the yard gate, ‘Halloa!
Wegg! Halloa!’

‘Keep your seat, Mr Venus,’ said Wegg. ‘He may not stop.’ And then
called out, ‘Halloa, sir! Halloa! I’m with you directly, sir! Half a
minute, Mr Boffin. Coming, sir, as fast as my leg will bring me!’ And
so with a show of much cheerful alacrity stumped out to the gate with
a light, and there, through the window of a cab, descried Mr Boffin
inside, blocked up with books.

‘Here! lend a hand, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin excitedly, ‘I can’t get out
till the way is cleared for me. This is the Annual Register, Wegg, in a
cab-full of wollumes. Do you know him?’

‘Know the Animal Register, sir?’ returned the Impostor, who had caught
the name imperfectly. ‘For a trifling wager, I think I could find any
Animal in him, blindfold, Mr Boffin.’

‘And here’s Kirby’s Wonderful Museum,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and Caulfield’s
Characters, and Wilson’s. Such Characters, Wegg, such Characters! I must
have one or two of the best of ‘em to-night. It’s amazing what places
they used to put the guineas in, wrapped up in rags. Catch hold of that
pile of wollumes, Wegg, or it’ll bulge out and burst into the mud. Is
there anyone about, to help?’

‘There’s a friend of mine, sir, that had the intention of spending
the evening with me when I gave you up--much against my will--for the
night.’

‘Call him out,’ cried Mr Boffin in a bustle; ‘get him to bear a hand.
Don’t drop that one under your arm. It’s Dancer. Him and his sister made
pies of a dead sheep they found when they were out a walking. Where’s
your friend? Oh, here’s your friend. Would you be so good as help Wegg
and myself with these books? But don’t take Jemmy Taylor of Southwark,
nor yet Jemmy Wood of Gloucester. These are the two Jemmys. I’ll carry
them myself.’

Not ceasing to talk and bustle, in a state of great excitement, Mr
Boffin directed the removal and arrangement of the books, appearing
to be in some sort beside himself until they were all deposited on the
floor, and the cab was dismissed.

‘There!’ said Mr Boffin, gloating over them. ‘There they are, like the
four-and-twenty fiddlers--all of a row. Get on your spectacles, Wegg;
I know where to find the best of ‘em, and we’ll have a taste at once of
what we have got before us. What’s your friend’s name?’

Mr Wegg presented his friend as Mr Venus.

‘Eh?’ cried Mr Boffin, catching at the name. ‘Of Clerkenwell?’

‘Of Clerkenwell, sir,’ said Mr Venus.

‘Why, I’ve heard of you,’ cried Mr Boffin, ‘I heard of you in the
old man’s time. You knew him. Did you ever buy anything of him?’ With
piercing eagerness.

‘No, sir,’ returned Venus.

‘But he showed you things; didn’t he?’

Mr Venus, with a glance at his friend, replied in the affirmative.

‘What did he show you?’ asked Mr Boffin, putting his hands behind him,
and eagerly advancing his head. ‘Did he show you boxes, little cabinets,
pocket-books, parcels, anything locked or sealed, anything tied up?’

Mr Venus shook his head.

‘Are you a judge of china?’

Mr Venus again shook his head.

‘Because if he had ever showed you a teapot, I should be glad to know of
it,’ said Mr Boffin. And then, with his right hand at his lips, repeated
thoughtfully, ‘a Teapot, a Teapot’, and glanced over the books on the
floor, as if he knew there was something interesting connected with a
teapot, somewhere among them.

Mr Wegg and Mr Venus looked at one another wonderingly: and Mr Wegg, in
fitting on his spectacles, opened his eyes wide, over their rims, and
tapped the side of his nose: as an admonition to Venus to keep himself
generally wide awake.

‘A Teapot,’ repeated Mr Boffin, continuing to muse and survey the books;
‘a Teapot, a Teapot. Are you ready, Wegg?’

‘I am at your service, sir,’ replied that gentleman, taking his usual
seat on the usual settle, and poking his wooden leg under the table
before it. ‘Mr Venus, would you make yourself useful, and take a seat
beside me, sir, for the conveniency of snuffing the candles?’

Venus complying with the invitation while it was yet being given, Silas
pegged at him with his wooden leg, to call his particular attention to
Mr Boffin standing musing before the fire, in the space between the two
settles.

‘Hem! Ahem!’ coughed Mr Wegg to attract his employer’s attention. ‘Would
you wish to commence with an Animal, sir--from the Register?’

‘No,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘no, Wegg.’ With that, producing a little book
from his breast-pocket, he handed it with great care to the literary
gentlemen, and inquired, ‘What do you call that, Wegg?’

‘This, sir,’ replied Silas, adjusting his spectacles, and referring to
the title-page, ‘is Merryweather’s Lives and Anecdotes of Misers. Mr
Venus, would you make yourself useful and draw the candles a little
nearer, sir?’ This to have a special opportunity of bestowing a stare
upon his comrade.

‘Which of ‘em have you got in that lot?’ asked Mr Boffin. ‘Can you find
out pretty easy?’

‘Well, sir,’ replied Silas, turning to the table of contents and slowly
fluttering the leaves of the book, ‘I should say they must be pretty
well all here, sir; here’s a large assortment, sir; my eye catches John
Overs, sir, John Little, sir, Dick Jarrel, John Elwes, the Reverend Mr
Jones of Blewbury, Vulture Hopkins, Daniel Dancer--’

‘Give us Dancer, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin.

With another stare at his comrade, Silas sought and found the place.

‘Page a hundred and nine, Mr Boffin. Chapter eight. Contents of chapter,
“His birth and estate. His garments and outward appearance. Miss Dancer
and her feminine graces. The Miser’s Mansion. The finding of a treasure.
The Story of the Mutton Pies. A Miser’s Idea of Death. Bob, the Miser’s
cur. Griffiths and his Master. How to turn a penny. A substitute for a
Fire. The Advantages of keeping a Snuff-box. The Miser dies without a
Shirt. The Treasures of a Dunghill--“’

‘Eh? What’s that?’ demanded Mr Boffin.

‘“The Treasures,” sir,’ repeated Silas, reading very distinctly, ‘“of a
Dunghill.” Mr Venus, sir, would you obleege with the snuffers?’ This, to
secure attention to his adding with his lips only, ‘Mounds!’

Mr Boffin drew an arm-chair into the space where he stood, and said,
seating himself and slyly rubbing his hands:

‘Give us Dancer.’

Mr Wegg pursued the biography of that eminent man through its various
phases of avarice and dirt, through Miss Dancer’s death on a sick
regimen of cold dumpling, and through Mr Dancer’s keeping his rags
together with a hayband, and warming his dinner by sitting upon it, down
to the consolatory incident of his dying naked in a sack. After which he
read on as follows:

‘“The house, or rather the heap of ruins, in which Mr Dancer lived, and
which at his death devolved to the right of Captain Holmes, was a most
miserable, decayed building, for it had not been repaired for more than
half a century.”’

(Here Mr Wegg eyes his comrade and the room in which they sat: which had
not been repaired for a long time.)

‘“But though poor in external structure, the ruinous fabric was very
rich in the interior. It took many weeks to explore its whole contents;
and Captain Holmes found it a very agreeable task to dive into the
miser’s secret hoards.”’

(Here Mr Wegg repeated ‘secret hoards’, and pegged his comrade again.)

‘“One of Mr Dancer’s richest escretoires was found to be a dungheap in
the cowhouse; a sum but little short of two thousand five hundred
pounds was contained in this rich piece of manure; and in an old jacket,
carefully tied, and strongly nailed down to the manger, in bank notes
and gold were found five hundred pounds more.”’

(Here Mr Wegg’s wooden leg started forward under the table, and slowly
elevated itself as he read on.)

‘“Several bowls were discovered filled with guineas and half-guineas;
and at different times on searching the corners of the house they found
various parcels of bank notes. Some were crammed into the crevices of
the wall”’;

(Here Mr Venus looked at the wall.)

‘“Bundles were hid under the cushions and covers of the chairs”’;

(Here Mr Venus looked under himself on the settle.)

‘“Some were reposing snugly at the back of the drawers; and notes
amounting to six hundred pounds were found neatly doubled up in the
inside of an old teapot. In the stable the Captain found jugs full of
old dollars and shillings. The chimney was not left unsearched, and paid
very well for the trouble; for in nineteen different holes, all filled
with soot, were found various sums of money, amounting together to more
than two hundred pounds.”’

On the way to this crisis Mr Wegg’s wooden leg had gradually elevated
itself more and more, and he had nudged Mr Venus with his opposite
elbow deeper and deeper, until at length the preservation of his balance
became incompatible with the two actions, and he now dropped over
sideways upon that gentleman, squeezing him against the settle’s edge.
Nor did either of the two, for some few seconds, make any effort to
recover himself; both remaining in a kind of pecuniary swoon.

But the sight of Mr Boffin sitting in the arm-chair hugging himself,
with his eyes upon the fire, acted as a restorative. Counterfeiting a
sneeze to cover their movements, Mr Wegg, with a spasmodic ‘Tish-ho!’
pulled himself and Mr Venus up in a masterly manner.

‘Let’s have some more,’ said Mr Boffin, hungrily.

‘John Elwes is the next, sir. Is it your pleasure to take John Elwes?’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Let’s hear what John did.’

He did not appear to have hidden anything, so went off rather flatly.
But an exemplary lady named Wilcocks, who had stowed away gold and
silver in a pickle-pot in a clock-case, a canister-full of treasure in
a hole under her stairs, and a quantity of money in an old rat-trap,
revived the interest. To her succeeded another lady, claiming to be a
pauper, whose wealth was found wrapped up in little scraps of paper and
old rag. To her, another lady, apple-woman by trade, who had saved a
fortune of ten thousand pounds and hidden it ‘here and there, in cracks
and corners, behind bricks and under the flooring.’ To her, a French
gentleman, who had crammed up his chimney, rather to the detriment
of its drawing powers, ‘a leather valise, containing twenty thousand
francs, gold coins, and a large quantity of precious stones,’ as
discovered by a chimneysweep after his death. By these steps Mr Wegg
arrived at a concluding instance of the human Magpie:

‘Many years ago, there lived at Cambridge a miserly old couple of the
name of Jardine: they had two sons: the father was a perfect miser, and
at his death one thousand guineas were discovered secreted in his bed.
The two sons grew up as parsimonious as their sire. When about twenty
years of age, they commenced business at Cambridge as drapers, and
they continued there until their death. The establishment of the Messrs
Jardine was the most dirty of all the shops in Cambridge. Customers
seldom went in to purchase, except perhaps out of curiosity. The
brothers were most disreputable-looking beings; for, although surrounded
with gay apparel as their staple in trade, they wore the most filthy
rags themselves. It is said that they had no bed, and, to save the
expense of one, always slept on a bundle of packing-cloths under the
counter. In their housekeeping they were penurious in the extreme. A
joint of meat did not grace their board for twenty years. Yet when the
first of the brothers died, the other, much to his surprise, found large
sums of money which had been secreted even from him.’

‘There!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘Even from him, you see! There was only two of
‘em, and yet one of ‘em hid from the other.’

Mr Venus, who since his introduction to the French gentleman, had been
stooping to peer up the chimney, had his attention recalled by the last
sentence, and took the liberty of repeating it.

‘Do you like it?’ asked Mr Boffin, turning suddenly.

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Do you like what Wegg’s been a-reading?’

Mr Venus answered that he found it extremely interesting.

‘Then come again,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and hear some more. Come when you
like; come the day after to-morrow, half an hour sooner. There’s plenty
more; there’s no end to it.’

Mr Venus expressed his acknowledgments and accepted the invitation.

‘It’s wonderful what’s been hid, at one time and another,’ said Mr
Boffin, ruminating; ‘truly wonderful.’

‘Meaning sir,’ observed Wegg, with a propitiatory face to draw him out,
and with another peg at his friend and brother, ‘in the way of money?’

‘Money,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Ah! And papers.’

Mr Wegg, in a languid transport, again dropped over on Mr Venus, and
again recovering himself, masked his emotions with a sneeze.

‘Tish-ho! Did you say papers too, sir? Been hidden, sir?’

‘Hidden and forgot,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Why the bookseller that sold me
the Wonderful Museum--where’s the Wonderful Museum?’ He was on his knees
on the floor in a moment, groping eagerly among the books.

‘Can I assist you, sir?’ asked Wegg.

‘No, I have got it; here it is,’ said Mr Boffin, dusting it with the
sleeve of his coat. ‘Wollume four. I know it was the fourth wollume,
that the bookseller read it to me out of. Look for it, Wegg.’

Silas took the book and turned the leaves.

‘Remarkable petrefaction, sir?’

‘No, that’s not it,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘It can’t have been a
petrefaction.’

‘Memoirs of General John Reid, commonly called The Walking Rushlight,
sir? With portrait?’

‘No, nor yet him,’ said Mr Boffin.

‘Remarkable case of a person who swallowed a crown-piece, sir?’

‘To hide it?’ asked Mr Boffin.

‘Why, no, sir,’ replied Wegg, consulting the text, ‘it appears to have
been done by accident. Oh! This next must be it. “Singular discovery of
a will, lost twenty-one years.”’

‘That’s it!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘Read that.’

‘“A most extraordinary case,”’ read Silas Wegg aloud, ‘“was tried at
the last Maryborough assizes in Ireland. It was briefly this. Robert
Baldwin, in March 1782, made his will, in which he devised the lands now
in question, to the children of his youngest son; soon after which his
faculties failed him, and he became altogether childish and died, above
eighty years old. The defendant, the eldest son, immediately afterwards
gave out that his father had destroyed the will; and no will being
found, he entered into possession of the lands in question, and so
matters remained for twenty-one years, the whole family during all
that time believing that the father had died without a will. But after
twenty-one years the defendant’s wife died, and he very soon afterwards,
at the age of seventy-eight, married a very young woman: which caused
some anxiety to his two sons, whose poignant expressions of this feeling
so exasperated their father, that he in his resentment executed a will
to disinherit his eldest son, and in his fit of anger showed it to his
second son, who instantly determined to get at it, and destroy it, in
order to preserve the property to his brother. With this view, he broke
open his father’s desk, where he found--not his father’s will which he
sought after, but the will of his grandfather, which was then altogether
forgotten in the family.”’

‘There!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘See what men put away and forget, or mean to
destroy, and don’t!’ He then added in a slow tone, ‘As--ton--ish--ing!’
And as he rolled his eyes all round the room, Wegg and Venus likewise
rolled their eyes all round the room. And then Wegg, singly, fixed his
eyes on Mr Boffin looking at the fire again; as if he had a mind to
spring upon him and demand his thoughts or his life.

‘However, time’s up for to-night,’ said Mr Boffin, waving his hand after
a silence. ‘More, the day after to-morrow. Range the books upon the
shelves, Wegg. I dare say Mr Venus will be so kind as help you.’

While speaking, he thrust his hand into the breast of his outer coat,
and struggled with some object there that was too large to be got out
easily. What was the stupefaction of the friendly movers when this
object at last emerging, proved to be a much-dilapidated dark lantern!

Without at all noticing the effect produced by this little instrument,
Mr Boffin stood it on his knee, and, producing a box of matches,
deliberately lighted the candle in the lantern, blew out the kindled
match, and cast the end into the fire. ‘I’m going, Wegg,’ he then
announced, ‘to take a turn about the place and round the yard. I don’t
want you. Me and this same lantern have taken hundreds--thousands--of
such turns in our time together.’

‘But I couldn’t think, sir--not on any account, I couldn’t,’--Wegg was
politely beginning, when Mr Boffin, who had risen and was going towards
the door, stopped:

‘I have told you that I don’t want you, Wegg.’

Wegg looked intelligently thoughtful, as if that had not occurred to his
mind until he now brought it to bear on the circumstance. He had nothing
for it but to let Mr Boffin go out and shut the door behind him. But,
the instant he was on the other side of it, Wegg clutched Venus
with both hands, and said in a choking whisper, as if he were being
strangled:

‘Mr Venus, he must be followed, he must be watched, he mustn’t be lost
sight of for a moment.’

‘Why mustn’t he?’ asked Venus, also strangling.

‘Comrade, you might have noticed I was a little elewated in spirits when
you come in to-night. I’ve found something.’

‘What have you found?’ asked Venus, clutching him with both hands, so
that they stood interlocked like a couple of preposterous gladiators.

‘There’s no time to tell you now. I think he must have gone to look for
it. We must have an eye upon him instantly.’

Releasing each other, they crept to the door, opened it softly, and
peeped out. It was a cloudy night, and the black shadow of the Mounds
made the dark yard darker. ‘If not a double swindler,’ whispered Wegg,
‘why a dark lantern? We could have seen what he was about, if he had
carried a light one. Softly, this way.’

Cautiously along the path that was bordered by fragments of crockery set
in ashes, the two stole after him. They could hear him at his peculiar
trot, crushing the loose cinders as he went. ‘He knows the place by
heart,’ muttered Silas, ‘and don’t need to turn his lantern on, confound
him!’ But he did turn it on, almost in that same instant, and flashed
its light upon the first of the Mounds.

‘Is that the spot?’ asked Venus in a whisper.

‘He’s warm,’ said Silas in the same tone. ‘He’s precious warm. He’s
close. I think he must be going to look for it. What’s that he’s got in
his hand?’

‘A shovel,’ answered Venus. ‘And he knows how to use it, remember, fifty
times as well as either of us.’

‘If he looks for it and misses it, partner,’ suggested Wegg, ‘what shall
we do?’

‘First of all, wait till he does,’ said Venus.

Discreet advice too, for he darkened his lantern again, and the mound
turned black. After a few seconds, he turned the light on once more, and
was seen standing at the foot of the second mound, slowly raising the
lantern little by little until he held it up at arm’s length, as if he
were examining the condition of the whole surface.

‘That can’t be the spot too?’ said Venus.

‘No,’ said Wegg, ‘he’s getting cold.’

‘It strikes me,’ whispered Venus, ‘that he wants to find out whether any
one has been groping about there.’

‘Hush!’ returned Wegg, ‘he’s getting colder and colder.--Now he’s
freezing!’

This exclamation was elicited by his having turned the lantern off
again, and on again, and being visible at the foot of the third mound.

‘Why, he’s going up it!’ said Venus.

‘Shovel and all!’ said Wegg.

At a nimbler trot, as if the shovel over his shoulder stimulated him by
reviving old associations, Mr Boffin ascended the ‘serpentining walk’,
up the Mound which he had described to Silas Wegg on the occasion of
their beginning to decline and fall. On striking into it he turned his
lantern off. The two followed him, stooping low, so that their figures
might make no mark in relief against the sky when he should turn his
lantern on again. Mr Venus took the lead, towing Mr Wegg, in order that
his refractory leg might be promptly extricated from any pitfalls it
should dig for itself. They could just make out that the Golden Dustman
stopped to breathe. Of course they stopped too, instantly.

‘This is his own Mound,’ whispered Wegg, as he recovered his wind, ‘this
one.

‘Why all three are his own,’ returned Venus.

‘So he thinks; but he’s used to call this his own, because it’s the one
first left to him; the one that was his legacy when it was all he took
under the will.’

‘When he shows his light,’ said Venus, keeping watch upon his dusky
figure all the time, ‘drop lower and keep closer.’

He went on again, and they followed again. Gaining the top of the Mound,
he turned on his light--but only partially--and stood it on the ground.
A bare lopsided weatherbeaten pole was planted in the ashes there,
and had been there many a year. Hard by this pole, his lantern stood:
lighting a few feet of the lower part of it and a little of the ashy
surface around, and then casting off a purposeless little clear trail of
light into the air.

‘He can never be going to dig up the pole!’ whispered Venus as they
dropped low and kept close.

‘Perhaps it’s holler and full of something,’ whispered Wegg.

He was going to dig, with whatsoever object, for he tucked up his cuffs
and spat on his hands, and then went at it like an old digger as he
was. He had no design upon the pole, except that he measured a shovel’s
length from it before beginning, nor was it his purpose to dig deep.
Some dozen or so of expert strokes sufficed. Then, he stopped, looked
down into the cavity, bent over it, and took out what appeared to be an
ordinary case-bottle: one of those squat, high-shouldered, short-necked
glass bottles which the Dutchman is said to keep his Courage in. As soon
as he had done this, he turned off his lantern, and they could hear that
he was filling up the hole in the dark. The ashes being easily moved by
a skilful hand, the spies took this as a hint to make off in good time.
Accordingly, Mr Venus slipped past Mr Wegg and towed him down. But Mr
Wegg’s descent was not accomplished without some personal inconvenience,
for his self-willed leg sticking into the ashes about half way down, and
time pressing, Mr Venus took the liberty of hauling him from his tether
by the collar: which occasioned him to make the rest of the journey on
his back, with his head enveloped in the skirts of his coat, and his
wooden leg coming last, like a drag. So flustered was Mr Wegg by this
mode of travelling, that when he was set on the level ground with his
intellectual developments uppermost, he was quite unconscious of his
bearings, and had not the least idea where his place of residence was
to be found, until Mr Venus shoved him into it. Even then he staggered
round and round, weakly staring about him, until Mr Venus with a hard
brush brushed his senses into him and the dust out of him.

Mr Boffin came down leisurely, for this brushing process had been well
accomplished, and Mr Venus had had time to take his breath, before he
reappeared. That he had the bottle somewhere about him could not be
doubted; where, was not so clear. He wore a large rough coat, buttoned
over, and it might be in any one of half a dozen pockets.

‘What’s the matter, Wegg?’ said Mr Boffin. ‘You are as pale as a
candle.’

Mr Wegg replied, with literal exactness, that he felt as if he had had a
turn.

‘Bile,’ said Mr Boffin, blowing out the light in the lantern, shutting
it up, and stowing it away in the breast of his coat as before. ‘Are you
subject to bile, Wegg?’

Mr Wegg again replied, with strict adherence to truth, that he didn’t
think he had ever had a similar sensation in his head, to anything like
the same extent.

‘Physic yourself to-morrow, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘to be in order
for next night. By-the-by, this neighbourhood is going to have a loss,
Wegg.’

‘A loss, sir?’

‘Going to lose the Mounds.’

The friendly movers made such an obvious effort not to look at one
another, that they might as well have stared at one another with all
their might.

‘Have you parted with them, Mr Boffin?’ asked Silas.

‘Yes; they’re going. Mine’s as good as gone already.’

‘You mean the little one of the three, with the pole atop, sir.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Boffin, rubbing his ear in his old way, with that new
touch of craftiness added to it. ‘It has fetched a penny. It’ll begin to
be carted off to-morrow.’

‘Have you been out to take leave of your old friend, sir?’ asked Silas,
jocosely.

‘No,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘What the devil put that in your head?’

He was so sudden and rough, that Wegg, who had been hovering closer
and closer to his skirts, despatching the back of his hand on exploring
expeditions in search of the bottle’s surface, retired two or three
paces.

‘No offence, sir,’ said Wegg, humbly. ‘No offence.’

Mr Boffin eyed him as a dog might eye another dog who wanted his bone;
and actually retorted with a low growl, as the dog might have retorted.

‘Good-night,’ he said, after having sunk into a moody silence, with
his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes suspiciously wandering about
Wegg.--‘No! stop there. I know the way out, and I want no light.’

Avarice, and the evening’s legends of avarice, and the inflammatory
effect of what he had seen, and perhaps the rush of his ill-conditioned
blood to his brain in his descent, wrought Silas Wegg to such a pitch of
insatiable appetite, that when the door closed he made a swoop at it and
drew Venus along with him.

‘He mustn’t go,’ he cried. ‘We mustn’t let him go? He has got that
bottle about him. We must have that bottle.’

‘Why, you wouldn’t take it by force?’ said Venus, restraining him.

‘Wouldn’t I? Yes I would. I’d take it by any force, I’d have it at any
price! Are you so afraid of one old man as to let him go, you coward?’

‘I am so afraid of you, as not to let YOU go,’ muttered Venus, sturdily,
clasping him in his arms.

‘Did you hear him?’ retorted Wegg. ‘Did you hear him say that he was
resolved to disappoint us? Did you hear him say, you cur, that he was
going to have the Mounds cleared off, when no doubt the whole place will
be rummaged? If you haven’t the spirit of a mouse to defend your rights,
I have. Let me go after him.’

As in his wildness he was making a strong struggle for it, Mr Venus
deemed it expedient to lift him, throw him, and fall with him; well
knowing that, once down, he would not be up again easily with his wooden
leg. So they both rolled on the floor, and, as they did so, Mr Boffin
shut the gate.



Chapter 7

THE FRIENDLY MOVE TAKES UP A STRONG POSITION


The friendly movers sat upright on the floor, panting and eyeing one
another, after Mr Boffin had slammed the gate and gone away. In the weak
eyes of Venus, and in every reddish dust-coloured hair in his shock of
hair, there was a marked distrust of Wegg and an alertness to fly at him
on perceiving the smallest occasion. In the hard-grained face of Wegg,
and in his stiff knotty figure (he looked like a German wooden toy),
there was expressed a politic conciliation, which had no spontaneity in
it. Both were flushed, flustered, and rumpled, by the late scuffle; and
Wegg, in coming to the ground, had received a humming knock on the back
of his devoted head, which caused him still to rub it with an air of
having been highly--but disagreeably--astonished. Each was silent for
some time, leaving it to the other to begin.

‘Brother,’ said Wegg, at length breaking the silence, ‘you were right,
and I was wrong. I forgot myself.’

Mr Venus knowingly cocked his shock of hair, as rather thinking Mr Wegg
had remembered himself, in respect of appearing without any disguise.

‘But comrade,’ pursued Wegg, ‘it was never your lot to know Miss
Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, nor Uncle Parker.’

Mr Venus admitted that he had never known those distinguished persons,
and added, in effect, that he had never so much as desired the honour of
their acquaintance.

‘Don’t say that, comrade!’ retorted Wegg: ‘No, don’t say that! Because,
without having known them, you never can fully know what it is to be
stimilated to frenzy by the sight of the Usurper.’

Offering these excusatory words as if they reflected great credit on
himself, Mr Wegg impelled himself with his hands towards a chair in
a corner of the room, and there, after a variety of awkward gambols,
attained a perpendicular position. Mr Venus also rose.

‘Comrade,’ said Wegg, ‘take a seat. Comrade, what a speaking countenance
is yours!’

Mr Venus involuntarily smoothed his countenance, and looked at his hand,
as if to see whether any of its speaking properties came off.

‘For clearly do I know, mark you,’ pursued Wegg, pointing his words
with his forefinger, ‘clearly do I know what question your expressive
features puts to me.’

‘What question?’ said Venus.

‘The question,’ returned Wegg, with a sort of joyful affability, ‘why
I didn’t mention sooner, that I had found something. Says your speaking
countenance to me: “Why didn’t you communicate that, when I first come
in this evening? Why did you keep it back till you thought Mr Boffin had
come to look for the article?” Your speaking countenance,’ said Wegg,
‘puts it plainer than language. Now, you can’t read in my face what
answer I give?’

‘No, I can’t,’ said Venus.

‘I knew it! And why not?’ returned Wegg, with the same joyful candour.
‘Because I lay no claims to a speaking countenance. Because I am well
aware of my deficiencies. All men are not gifted alike. But I can answer
in words. And in what words? These. I wanted to give you a delightful
sap--pur--IZE!’

Having thus elongated and emphasized the word Surprise, Mr Wegg shook
his friend and brother by both hands, and then clapped him on both
knees, like an affectionate patron who entreated him not to mention so
small a service as that which it had been his happy privilege to render.

‘Your speaking countenance,’ said Wegg, ‘being answered to its
satisfaction, only asks then, “What have you found?” Why, I hear it say
the words!’

‘Well?’ retorted Venus snappishly, after waiting in vain. ‘If you hear
it say the words, why don’t you answer it?’

‘Hear me out!’ said Wegg. ‘I’m a-going to. Hear me out! Man and brother,
partner in feelings equally with undertakings and actions, I have found
a cash-box.’

‘Where?’

‘--Hear me out!’ said Wegg. (He tried to reserve whatever he could, and,
whenever disclosure was forced upon him, broke into a radiant gush of
Hear me out.) ‘On a certain day, sir--’

‘When?’ said Venus bluntly.

‘N--no,’ returned Wegg, shaking his head at once observantly,
thoughtfully, and playfully. ‘No, sir! That’s not your expressive
countenance which asks that question. That’s your voice; merely your
voice. To proceed. On a certain day, sir, I happened to be walking in
the yard--taking my lonely round--for in the words of a friend of my own
family, the author of All’s Well arranged as a duett:

     “Deserted, as you will remember Mr Venus, by the waning
     moon,
     When stars, it will occur to you before I mention it, proclaim
     night’s cheerless noon,
     On tower, fort, or tented ground,
     The sentry walks his lonely round,
     The sentry walks:”

--under those circumstances, sir, I happened to be walking in the yard
early one afternoon, and happened to have an iron rod in my hand, with
which I have been sometimes accustomed to beguile the monotony of a
literary life, when I struck it against an object not necessary to
trouble you by naming--’

‘It is necessary. What object?’ demanded Venus, in a wrathful tone.

‘--Hear me out!’ said Wegg. ‘The Pump.--When I struck it against the
Pump, and found, not only that the top was loose and opened with a lid,
but that something in it rattled. That something, comrade, I discovered
to be a small flat oblong cash-box. Shall I say it was disappointingly
light?’

‘There were papers in it,’ said Venus.

‘There your expressive countenance speaks indeed!’ cried Wegg. ‘A
paper. The box was locked, tied up, and sealed, and on the outside was
a parchment label, with the writing, “MY WILL, JOHN HARMON, TEMPORARILY
DEPOSITED HERE.”’

‘We must know its contents,’ said Venus.

‘--Hear me out!’ cried Wegg. ‘I said so, and I broke the box open.’

‘Without coming to me!’ exclaimed Venus.

‘Exactly so, sir!’ returned Wegg, blandly and buoyantly. ‘I see I take
you with me! Hear, hear, hear! Resolved, as your discriminating good
sense perceives, that if you was to have a sap--pur--IZE, it should be
a complete one! Well, sir. And so, as you have honoured me by
anticipating, I examined the document. Regularly executed, regularly
witnessed, very short. Inasmuch as he has never made friends, and has
ever had a rebellious family, he, John Harmon, gives to Nicodemus Boffin
the Little Mound, which is quite enough for him, and gives the whole
rest and residue of his property to the Crown.’

‘The date of the will that has been proved, must be looked to,’ remarked
Venus. ‘It may be later than this one.’

‘--Hear me out!’ cried Wegg. ‘I said so. I paid a shilling (never mind
your sixpence of it) to look up that will. Brother, that will is dated
months before this will. And now, as a fellow-man, and as a partner in a
friendly move,’ added Wegg, benignantly taking him by both hands again,
and clapping him on both knees again, ‘say have I completed my labour of
love to your perfect satisfaction, and are you sap--pur--IZED?’

Mr Venus contemplated his fellow-man and partner with doubting eyes, and
then rejoined stiffly:

‘This is great news indeed, Mr Wegg. There’s no denying it. But I could
have wished you had told it me before you got your fright to-night, and
I could have wished you had ever asked me as your partner what we were
to do, before you thought you were dividing a responsibility.’

‘--Hear me out!’ cried Wegg. ‘I knew you was a-going to say so. But
alone I bore the anxiety, and alone I’ll bear the blame!’ This with an
air of great magnanimity.

‘No,’ said Venus. ‘Let’s see this will and this box.’

‘Do I understand, brother,’ returned Wegg with considerable reluctance,
‘that it is your wish to see this will and this--?’

Mr Venus smote the table with his hand.

‘--Hear me out!’ said Wegg. ‘Hear me out! I’ll go and fetch ‘em.’

After being some time absent, as if in his covetousness he could hardly
make up his mind to produce the treasure to his partner, he returned
with an old leathern hat-box, into which he had put the other box,
for the better preservation of commonplace appearances, and for the
disarming of suspicion. ‘But I don’t half like opening it here,’ said
Silas in a low voice, looking around: ‘he might come back, he may not be
gone; we don’t know what he may be up to, after what we’ve seen.’

‘There’s something in that,’ assented Venus. ‘Come to my place.’

Jealous of the custody of the box, and yet fearful of opening it under
the existing circumstances, Wegg hesitated. ‘Come, I tell you,’ repeated
Venus, chafing, ‘to my place.’ Not very well seeing his way to a
refusal, Mr Wegg then rejoined in a gush, ‘--Hear me out!--Certainly.’
So he locked up the Bower and they set forth: Mr Venus taking his arm,
and keeping it with remarkable tenacity.

They found the usual dim light burning in the window of Mr Venus’s
establishment, imperfectly disclosing to the public the usual pair
of preserved frogs, sword in hand, with their point of honour still
unsettled. Mr Venus had closed his shop door on coming out, and now
opened it with the key and shut it again as soon as they were within;
but not before he had put up and barred the shutters of the shop window.
‘No one can get in without being let in,’ said he then, ‘and we couldn’t
be more snug than here.’ So he raked together the yet warm cinders in
the rusty grate, and made a fire, and trimmed the candle on the little
counter. As the fire cast its flickering gleams here and there upon the
dark greasy walls; the Hindoo baby, the African baby, the articulated
English baby, the assortment of skulls, and the rest of the collection,
came starting to their various stations as if they had all been out,
like their master and were punctual in a general rendezvous to assist
at the secret. The French gentleman had grown considerably since Mr Wegg
last saw him, being now accommodated with a pair of legs and a head,
though his arms were yet in abeyance. To whomsoever the head had
originally belonged, Silas Wegg would have regarded it as a personal
favour if he had not cut quite so many teeth.

Silas took his seat in silence on the wooden box before the fire, and
Venus dropping into his low chair produced from among his skeleton
hands, his tea-tray and tea-cups, and put the kettle on. Silas inwardly
approved of these preparations, trusting they might end in Mr Venus’s
diluting his intellect.

‘Now, sir,’ said Venus, ‘all is safe and quiet. Let us see this
discovery.’

With still reluctant hands, and not without several glances towards the
skeleton hands, as if he mistrusted that a couple of them might spring
forth and clutch the document, Wegg opened the hat-box and revealed the
cash-box, opened the cash-box and revealed the will. He held a corner
of it tight, while Venus, taking hold of another corner, searchingly and
attentively read it.

‘Was I correct in my account of it, partner?’ said Mr Wegg at length.

‘Partner, you were,’ said Mr Venus.

Mr Wegg thereupon made an easy, graceful movement, as though he would
fold it up; but Mr Venus held on by his corner.

‘No, sir,’ said Mr Venus, winking his weak eyes and shaking his head.
‘No, partner. The question is now brought up, who is going to take care
of this. Do you know who is going to take care of this, partner?’

‘I am,’ said Wegg.

‘Oh dear no, partner,’ retorted Venus. ‘That’s a mistake. I am. Now look
here, Mr Wegg. I don’t want to have any words with you, and still less
do I want to have any anatomical pursuits with you.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Wegg, quickly.

‘I mean, partner,’ replied Venus, slowly, ‘that it’s hardly possible
for a man to feel in a more amiable state towards another man than I
do towards you at this present moment. But I am on my own ground, I am
surrounded by the trophies of my art, and my tools is very handy.’

‘What do you mean, Mr Venus?’ asked Wegg again.

‘I am surrounded, as I have observed,’ said Mr Venus, placidly, ‘by
the trophies of my art. They are numerous, my stock of human warious is
large, the shop is pretty well crammed, and I don’t just now want any
more trophies of my art. But I like my art, and I know how to exercise
my art.’

‘No man better,’ assented Mr Wegg, with a somewhat staggered air.

‘There’s the Miscellanies of several human specimens,’ said Venus,
‘(though you mightn’t think it) in the box on which you’re sitting.
There’s the Miscellanies of several human specimens, in the lovely
compo-one behind the door’; with a nod towards the French gentleman. ‘It
still wants a pair of arms. I DON’T say that I’m in any hurry for ‘em.’

‘You must be wandering in your mind, partner,’ Silas remonstrated.

‘You’ll excuse me if I wander,’ returned Venus; ‘I am sometimes rather
subject to it. I like my art, and I know how to exercise my art, and I
mean to have the keeping of this document.’

‘But what has that got to do with your art, partner?’ asked Wegg, in an
insinuating tone.

Mr Venus winked his chronically-fatigued eyes both at once, and
adjusting the kettle on the fire, remarked to himself, in a hollow
voice, ‘She’ll bile in a couple of minutes.’

Silas Wegg glanced at the kettle, glanced at the shelves, glanced at the
French gentleman behind the door, and shrank a little as he glanced at
Mr Venus winking his red eyes, and feeling in his waistcoat pocket--as
for a lancet, say--with his unoccupied hand. He and Venus were
necessarily seated close together, as each held a corner of the
document, which was but a common sheet of paper.

‘Partner,’ said Wegg, even more insinuatingly than before, ‘I propose
that we cut it in half, and each keep a half.’

Venus shook his shock of hair, as he replied, ‘It wouldn’t do to
mutilate it, partner. It might seem to be cancelled.’

‘Partner,’ said Wegg, after a silence, during which they had
contemplated one another, ‘don’t your speaking countenance say that
you’re a-going to suggest a middle course?’

Venus shook his shock of hair as he replied, ‘Partner, you have kept
this paper from me once. You shall never keep it from me again. I offer
you the box and the label to take care of, but I’ll take care of the
paper.’

Silas hesitated a little longer, and then suddenly releasing his corner,
and resuming his buoyant and benignant tone, exclaimed, ‘What’s life
without trustfulness! What’s a fellow-man without honour! You’re welcome
to it, partner, in a spirit of trust and confidence.’

Continuing to wink his red eyes both together--but in a self-communing
way, and without any show of triumph--Mr Venus folded the paper now left
in his hand, and locked it in a drawer behind him, and pocketed the key.
He then proposed ‘A cup of tea, partner?’ To which Mr Wegg returned,
‘Thank’ee, partner,’ and the tea was made and poured out.

‘Next,’ said Venus, blowing at his tea in his saucer, and looking over
it at his confidential friend, ‘comes the question, What’s the course to
be pursued?’

On this head, Silas Wegg had much to say. Silas had to say That, he
would beg to remind his comrade, brother, and partner, of the impressive
passages they had read that evening; of the evident parallel in Mr
Boffin’s mind between them and the late owner of the Bower, and the
present circumstances of the Bower; of the bottle; and of the box. That,
the fortunes of his brother and comrade, and of himself were evidently
made, inasmuch as they had but to put their price upon this document,
and get that price from the minion of fortune and the worm of the hour:
who now appeared to be less of a minion and more of a worm than had been
previously supposed. That, he considered it plain that such price was
stateable in a single expressive word, and that the word was, ‘Halves!’
That, the question then arose when ‘Halves!’ should be called. That,
here he had a plan of action to recommend, with a conditional clause.
That, the plan of action was that they should lie by with patience;
that, they should allow the Mounds to be gradually levelled and cleared
away, while retaining to themselves their present opportunity of
watching the process--which would be, he conceived, to put the trouble
and cost of daily digging and delving upon somebody else, while they
might nightly turn such complete disturbance of the dust to the account
of their own private investigations--and that, when the Mounds were
gone, and they had worked those chances for their own joint benefit
solely, they should then, and not before, explode on the minion and
worm. But here came the conditional clause, and to this he entreated the
special attention of his comrade, brother, and partner. It was not to
be borne that the minion and worm should carry off any of that property
which was now to be regarded as their own property. When he, Mr Wegg,
had seen the minion surreptitiously making off with that bottle, and its
precious contents unknown, he had looked upon him in the light of a mere
robber, and, as such, would have despoiled him of his ill-gotten gain,
but for the judicious interference of his comrade, brother, and partner.
Therefore, the conditional clause he proposed was, that, if the minion
should return in his late sneaking manner, and if, being closely
watched, he should be found to possess himself of anything, no matter
what, the sharp sword impending over his head should be instantly shown
him, he should be strictly examined as to what he knew or suspected,
should be severely handled by them his masters, and should be kept in
a state of abject moral bondage and slavery until the time when they
should see fit to permit him to purchase his freedom at the price of
half his possessions. If, said Mr Wegg by way of peroration, he had
erred in saying only ‘Halves!’ he trusted to his comrade, brother, and
partner not to hesitate to set him right, and to reprove his weakness.
It might be more according to the rights of things, to say
Two-thirds; it might be more according to the rights of things, to say
Three-fourths. On those points he was ever open to correction.

Mr Venus, having wafted his attention to this discourse over three
successive saucers of tea, signified his concurrence in the views
advanced. Inspirited hereby, Mr Wegg extended his right hand, and
declared it to be a hand which never yet. Without entering into more
minute particulars. Mr Venus, sticking to his tea, briefly professed his
belief as polite forms required of him, that it WAS a hand which never
yet. But contented himself with looking at it, and did not take it to
his bosom.

‘Brother,’ said Wegg, when this happy understanding was established, ‘I
should like to ask you something. You remember the night when I first
looked in here, and found you floating your powerful mind in tea?’

Still swilling tea, Mr Venus nodded assent.

‘And there you sit, sir,’ pursued Wegg with an air of thoughtful
admiration, ‘as if you had never left off! There you sit, sir, as if you
had an unlimited capacity of assimilating the flagrant article! There
you sit, sir, in the midst of your works, looking as if you’d been
called upon for Home, Sweet Home, and was obleeging the company!

     “A exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,
     O give you your lowly Preparations again,
     The birds stuffed so sweetly that can’t be expected to come at
     your call,
     Give you these with the peace of mind dearer than all.
     Home, Home, Home, sweet Home!”

--Be it ever,’ added Mr Wegg in prose as he glanced about the shop,
‘ever so ghastly, all things considered there’s no place like it.’

‘You said you’d like to ask something; but you haven’t asked it,’
remarked Venus, very unsympathetic in manner.

‘Your peace of mind,’ said Wegg, offering condolence, ‘your peace of
mind was in a poor way that night. HOW’S it going on? IS it looking up
at all?’

‘She does not wish,’ replied Mr Venus with a comical mixture of
indignant obstinacy and tender melancholy, ‘to regard herself, nor yet
to be regarded, in that particular light. There’s no more to be said.’

‘Ah, dear me, dear me!’ exclaimed Wegg with a sigh, but eyeing him while
pretending to keep him company in eyeing the fire, ‘such is Woman! And
I remember you said that night, sitting there as I sat here--said that
night when your peace of mind was first laid low, that you had taken an
interest in these very affairs. Such is coincidence!’

‘Her father,’ rejoined Venus, and then stopped to swallow more tea, ‘her
father was mixed up in them.’

‘You didn’t mention her name, sir, I think?’ observed Wegg, pensively.
‘No, you didn’t mention her name that night.’

‘Pleasant Riderhood.’

‘In--deed!’ cried Wegg. ‘Pleasant Riderhood. There’s something moving in
the name. Pleasant. Dear me! Seems to express what she might have
been, if she hadn’t made that unpleasant remark--and what she ain’t,
in consequence of having made it. Would it at all pour balm into your
wounds, Mr Venus, to inquire how you came acquainted with her?’

‘I was down at the water-side,’ said Venus, taking another gulp of
tea and mournfully winking at the fire--‘looking for parrots’--taking
another gulp and stopping.

Mr Wegg hinted, to jog his attention: ‘You could hardly have been out
parrot-shooting, in the British climate, sir?’

‘No, no, no,’ said Venus fretfully. ‘I was down at the water-side,
looking for parrots brought home by sailors, to buy for stuffing.’

‘Ay, ay, ay, sir!’

‘--And looking for a nice pair of rattlesnakes, to articulate for a
Museum--when I was doomed to fall in with her and deal with her. It was
just at the time of that discovery in the river. Her father had seen the
discovery being towed in the river. I made the popularity of the subject
a reason for going back to improve the acquaintance, and I have never
since been the man I was. My very bones is rendered flabby by brooding
over it. If they could be brought to me loose, to sort, I should hardly
have the face to claim ‘em as mine. To such an extent have I fallen off
under it.’

Mr Wegg, less interested than he had been, glanced at one particular
shelf in the dark.

‘Why I remember, Mr Venus,’ he said in a tone of friendly commiseration
‘(for I remember every word that falls from you, sir), I remember that
you said that night, you had got up there--and then your words was,
“Never mind.”’

‘--The parrot that I bought of her,’ said Venus, with a despondent rise
and fall of his eyes. ‘Yes; there it lies on its side, dried up; except
for its plumage, very like myself. I’ve never had the heart to prepare
it, and I never shall have now.’

With a disappointed face, Silas mentally consigned this parrot to
regions more than tropical, and, seeming for the time to have lost
his power of assuming an interest in the woes of Mr Venus, fell to
tightening his wooden leg as a preparation for departure: its gymnastic
performances of that evening having severely tried its constitution.

After Silas had left the shop, hat-box in hand, and had left Mr Venus
to lower himself to oblivion-point with the requisite weight of tea, it
greatly preyed on his ingenuous mind that he had taken this artist into
partnership at all. He bitterly felt that he had overreached himself in
the beginning, by grasping at Mr Venus’s mere straws of hints, now shown
to be worthless for his purpose. Casting about for ways and means of
dissolving the connexion without loss of money, reproaching himself for
having been betrayed into an avowal of his secret, and complimenting
himself beyond measure on his purely accidental good luck, he beguiled
the distance between Clerkenwell and the mansion of the Golden Dustman.

For, Silas Wegg felt it to be quite out of the question that he could
lay his head upon his pillow in peace, without first hovering over
Mr Boffin’s house in the superior character of its Evil Genius. Power
(unless it be the power of intellect or virtue) has ever the greatest
attraction for the lowest natures; and the mere defiance of the
unconscious house-front, with his power to strip the roof off the
inhabiting family like the roof of a house of cards, was a treat which
had a charm for Silas Wegg.

As he hovered on the opposite side of the street, exulting, the carriage
drove up.

‘There’ll shortly be an end of YOU,’ said Wegg, threatening it with the
hat-box. ‘YOUR varnish is fading.’

Mrs Boffin descended and went in.

‘Look out for a fall, my Lady Dustwoman,’ said Wegg.

Bella lightly descended, and ran in after her.

‘How brisk we are!’ said Wegg. ‘You won’t run so gaily to your old
shabby home, my girl. You’ll have to go there, though.’

A little while, and the Secretary came out.

‘I was passed over for you,’ said Wegg. ‘But you had better provide
yourself with another situation, young man.’

Mr Boffin’s shadow passed upon the blinds of three large windows as he
trotted down the room, and passed again as he went back.

‘Yoop!’ cried Wegg. ‘You’re there, are you? Where’s the bottle? You
would give your bottle for my box, Dustman!’

Having now composed his mind for slumber, he turned homeward. Such
was the greed of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond halves,
two-thirds, three-fourths, and gone straight to spoliation of the whole.
‘Though that wouldn’t quite do,’ he considered, growing cooler as he got
away. ‘That’s what would happen to him if he didn’t buy us up. We should
get nothing by that.’

We so judge others by ourselves, that it had never come into his head
before, that he might not buy us up, and might prove honest, and prefer
to be poor. It caused him a slight tremor as it passed; but a very
slight one, for the idle thought was gone directly.

‘He’s grown too fond of money for that,’ said Wegg; ‘he’s grown too fond
of money.’ The burden fell into a strain or tune as he stumped along the
pavements. All the way home he stumped it out of the rattling streets,
PIANO with his own foot, and FORTE with his wooden leg, ‘He’s GROWN too
FOND of MONEY for THAT, he’s GROWN too FOND of MONEY.’

Even next day Silas soothed himself with this melodious strain, when he
was called out of bed at daybreak, to set open the yard-gate and admit
the train of carts and horses that came to carry off the little Mound.
And all day long, as he kept unwinking watch on the slow process which
promised to protract itself through many days and weeks, whenever
(to save himself from being choked with dust) he patrolled a little
cinderous beat he established for the purpose, without taking his eyes
from the diggers, he still stumped to the tune: He’s GROWN too FOND of
MONEY for THAT, he’s GROWN too FOND of MONEY.’



Chapter 8

THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY


The train of carts and horses came and went all day from dawn to
nightfall, making little or no daily impression on the heap of ashes,
though, as the days passed on, the heap was seen to be slowly melting.
My lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, when you in the course
of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking have piled up a mountain of
pretentious failure, you must off with your honourable coats for the
removal of it, and fall to the work with the power of all the queen’s
horses and all the queen’s men, or it will come rushing down and bury us
alive.

Yes, verily, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, adapting your
Catechism to the occasion, and by God’s help so you must. For when we
have got things to the pass that with an enormous treasure at disposal
to relieve the poor, the best of the poor detest our mercies, hide their
heads from us, and shame us by starving to death in the midst of us, it
is a pass impossible of prosperity, impossible of continuance. It may
not be so written in the Gospel according to Podsnappery; you may not
‘find these words’ for the text of a sermon, in the Returns of the Board
of Trade; but they have been the truth since the foundations of the
universe were laid, and they will be the truth until the foundations of
the universe are shaken by the Builder. This boastful handiwork of
ours, which fails in its terrors for the professional pauper, the sturdy
breaker of windows and the rampant tearer of clothes, strikes with a
cruel and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and is a horror to
the deserving and unfortunate. We must mend it, lords and gentlemen and
honourable boards, or in its own evil hour it will mar every one of us.

Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage as many ruggedly honest
creatures, women and men, fare on their toiling way along the roads
of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare living, and quietly to die,
untouched by workhouse hands--this was her highest sublunary hope.

Nothing had been heard of her at Mr Boffin’s house since she trudged
off. The weather had been hard and the roads had been bad, and her
spirit was up. A less stanch spirit might have been subdued by such
adverse influences; but the loan for her little outfit was in no part
repaid, and it had gone worse with her than she had foreseen, and she
was put upon proving her case and maintaining her independence.

Faithful soul! When she had spoken to the Secretary of that ‘deadness
that steals over me at times’, her fortitude had made too little of it.
Oftener and ever oftener, it came stealing over her; darker and ever
darker, like the shadow of advancing Death. That the shadow should
be deep as it came on, like the shadow of an actual presence, was in
accordance with the laws of the physical world, for all the Light that
shone on Betty Higden lay beyond Death.

The poor old creature had taken the upward course of the river Thames as
her general track; it was the track in which her last home lay, and of
which she had last had local love and knowledge. She had hovered for a
little while in the near neighbourhood of her abandoned dwelling, and
had sold, and knitted and sold, and gone on. In the pleasant towns of
Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and Staines, her figure came to be quite
well known for some short weeks, and then again passed on.

She would take her stand in market-places, where there were such things,
on market days; at other times, in the busiest (that was seldom very
busy) portion of the little quiet High Street; at still other times she
would explore the outlying roads for great houses, and would ask leave
at the Lodge to pass in with her basket, and would not often get it. But
ladies in carriages would frequently make purchases from her trifling
stock, and were usually pleased with her bright eyes and her hopeful
speech. In these and her clean dress originated a fable that she was
well to do in the world: one might say, for her station, rich. As making
a comfortable provision for its subject which costs nobody anything,
this class of fable has long been popular.

In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you may hear the fall of
the water over the weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the
rushes; and from the bridge you may see the young river, dimpled like a
young child, playfully gliding away among the trees, unpolluted by the
defilements that lie in wait for it on its course, and as yet out of
hearing of the deep summons of the sea. It were too much to pretend that
Betty Higden made out such thoughts; no; but she heard the tender river
whispering to many like herself, ‘Come to me, come to me! When the cruel
shame and terror you have so long fled from, most beset you, come to me!
I am the Relieving Officer appointed by eternal ordinance to do my work;
I am not held in estimation according as I shirk it. My breast is softer
than the pauper-nurse’s; death in my arms is peacefuller than among the
pauper-wards. Come to me!’

There was abundant place for gentler fancies too, in her untutored mind.
Those gentlefolks and their children inside those fine houses, could
they think, as they looked out at her, what it was to be really hungry,
really cold? Did they feel any of the wonder about her, that she felt
about them? Bless the dear laughing children! If they could have seen
sick Johnny in her arms, would they have cried for pity? If they could
have seen dead Johnny on that little bed, would they have understood it?
Bless the dear children for his sake, anyhow! So with the humbler houses
in the little street, the inner firelight shining on the panes as the
outer twilight darkened. When the families gathered in-doors there, for
the night, it was only a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little
hard in them to close the shutter and blacken the flame. So with the
lighted shops, and speculations whether their masters and mistresses
taking tea in a perspective of back-parlour--not so far within but that
the flavour of tea and toast came out, mingled with the glow of light,
into the street--ate or drank or wore what they sold, with the greater
relish because they dealt in it. So with the churchyard on a branch of
the solitary way to the night’s sleeping-place. ‘Ah me! The dead and
I seem to have it pretty much to ourselves in the dark and in this
weather! But so much the better for all who are warmly housed at home.’
The poor soul envied no one in bitterness, and grudged no one anything.

But, the old abhorrence grew stronger on her as she grew weaker, and
it found more sustaining food than she did in her wanderings. Now, she
would light upon the shameful spectacle of some desolate creature--or
some wretched ragged groups of either sex, or of both sexes, with
children among them, huddled together like the smaller vermin for
a little warmth--lingering and lingering on a doorstep, while the
appointed evader of the public trust did his dirty office of trying to
weary them out and so get rid of them. Now, she would light upon some
poor decent person, like herself, going afoot on a pilgrimage of
many weary miles to see some worn-out relative or friend who had been
charitably clutched off to a great blank barren Union House, as far from
old home as the County Jail (the remoteness of which is always its worst
punishment for small rural offenders), and in its dietary, and in
its lodging, and in its tending of the sick, a much more penal
establishment. Sometimes she would hear a newspaper read out, and would
learn how the Registrar General cast up the units that had within the
last week died of want and of exposure to the weather: for which that
Recording Angel seemed to have a regular fixed place in his sum, as if
they were its halfpence. All such things she would hear discussed, as
we, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, in our unapproachable
magnificence never hear them, and from all such things she would fly
with the wings of raging Despair.

This is not to be received as a figure of speech. Old Betty Higden
however tired, however footsore, would start up and be driven away
by her awakened horror of falling into the hands of Charity. It is a
remarkable Christian improvement, to have made a pursuing Fury of the
Good Samaritan; but it was so in this case, and it is a type of many,
many, many.

Two incidents united to intensify the old unreasoning
abhorrence--granted in a previous place to be unreasoning, because the
people always are unreasoning, and invariably make a point of producing
all their smoke without fire.

One day she was sitting in a market-place on a bench outside an inn,
with her little wares for sale, when the deadness that she strove
against came over her so heavily that the scene departed from before
her eyes; when it returned, she found herself on the ground, her head
supported by some good-natured market-women, and a little crowd about
her.

‘Are you better now, mother?’ asked one of the women. ‘Do you think you
can do nicely now?’

‘Have I been ill then?’ asked old Betty.

‘You have had a faint like,’ was the answer, ‘or a fit. It ain’t that
you’ve been a-struggling, mother, but you’ve been stiff and numbed.’

‘Ah!’ said Betty, recovering her memory. ‘It’s the numbness. Yes. It
comes over me at times.’

Was it gone? the women asked her.

‘It’s gone now,’ said Betty. ‘I shall be stronger than I was afore.
Many thanks to ye, my dears, and when you come to be as old as I am, may
others do as much for you!’

They assisted her to rise, but she could not stand yet, and they
supported her when she sat down again upon the bench.

‘My head’s a bit light, and my feet are a bit heavy,’ said old Betty,
leaning her face drowsily on the breast of the woman who had spoken
before. ‘They’ll both come nat’ral in a minute. There’s nothing more the
matter.’

‘Ask her,’ said some farmers standing by, who had come out from their
market-dinner, ‘who belongs to her.’

‘Are there any folks belonging to you, mother?’ said the woman.

‘Yes sure,’ answered Betty. ‘I heerd the gentleman say it, but I
couldn’t answer quick enough. There’s plenty belonging to me. Don’t ye
fear for me, my dear.’

‘But are any of ‘em near here?’ said the men’s voices; the women’s
voices chiming in when it was said, and prolonging the strain.

‘Quite near enough,’ said Betty, rousing herself. ‘Don’t ye be afeard
for me, neighbours.’

‘But you are not fit to travel. Where are you going?’ was the next
compassionate chorus she heard.

‘I’m a going to London when I’ve sold out all,’ said Betty, rising with
difficulty. ‘I’ve right good friends in London. I want for nothing. I
shall come to no harm. Thankye. Don’t ye be afeard for me.’

A well-meaning bystander, yellow-legginged and purple-faced, said
hoarsely over his red comforter, as she rose to her feet, that she
‘oughtn’t to be let to go’.

‘For the Lord’s love don’t meddle with me!’ cried old Betty, all her
fears crowding on her. ‘I am quite well now, and I must go this minute.’

She caught up her basket as she spoke and was making an unsteady rush
away from them, when the same bystander checked her with his hand on
her sleeve, and urged her to come with him and see the parish-doctor.
Strengthening herself by the utmost exercise of her resolution, the poor
trembling creature shook him off, almost fiercely, and took to flight.
Nor did she feel safe until she had set a mile or two of by-road between
herself and the marketplace, and had crept into a copse, like a hunted
animal, to hide and recover breath. Not until then for the first time
did she venture to recall how she had looked over her shoulder before
turning out of the town, and had seen the sign of the White Lion hanging
across the road, and the fluttering market booths, and the old grey
church, and the little crowd gazing after her but not attempting to
follow her.

The second frightening incident was this. She had been again as bad, and
had been for some days better, and was travelling along by a part of
the road where it touched the river, and in wet seasons was so often
overflowed by it that there were tall white posts set up to mark the
way. A barge was being towed towards her, and she sat down on the bank
to rest and watch it. As the tow-rope was slackened by a turn of the
stream and dipped into the water, such a confusion stole into her
mind that she thought she saw the forms of her dead children and dead
grandchildren peopling the barge, and waving their hands to her in
solemn measure; then, as the rope tightened and came up, dropping
diamonds, it seemed to vibrate into two parallel ropes and strike her,
with a twang, though it was far off. When she looked again, there was no
barge, no river, no daylight, and a man whom she had never before seen
held a candle close to her face.

‘Now, Missis,’ said he; ‘where did you come from and where are you going
to?’

The poor soul confusedly asked the counter-question where she was?

‘I am the Lock,’ said the man.

‘The Lock?’

‘I am the Deputy Lock, on job, and this is the Lock-house. (Lock or
Deputy Lock, it’s all one, while the t’other man’s in the hospital.)
What’s your Parish?’

‘Parish!’ She was up from the truckle-bed directly, wildly feeling about
her for her basket, and gazing at him in affright.

‘You’ll be asked the question down town,’ said the man. ‘They won’t let
you be more than a Casual there. They’ll pass you on to your settlement,
Missis, with all speed. You’re not in a state to be let come upon
strange parishes ‘ceptin as a Casual.’

‘’Twas the deadness again!’ murmured Betty Higden, with her hand to her
head.

‘It was the deadness, there’s not a doubt about it,’ returned the man.
‘I should have thought the deadness was a mild word for it, if it had
been named to me when we brought you in. Have you got any friends,
Missis?’

‘The best of friends, Master.’

‘I should recommend your looking ‘em up if you consider ‘em game to do
anything for you,’ said the Deputy Lock. ‘Have you got any money?’

‘Just a morsel of money, sir.’

‘Do you want to keep it?’

‘Sure I do!’

‘Well, you know,’ said the Deputy Lock, shrugging his shoulders with his
hands in his pockets, and shaking his head in a sulkily ominous manner,
‘the parish authorities down town will have it out of you, if you go on,
you may take your Alfred David.’

‘Then I’ll not go on.’

‘They’ll make you pay, as fur as your money will go,’ pursued the
Deputy, ‘for your relief as a Casual and for your being passed to your
Parish.’

‘Thank ye kindly, Master, for your warning, thank ye for your shelter,
and good night.’

‘Stop a bit,’ said the Deputy, striking in between her and the door.
‘Why are you all of a shake, and what’s your hurry, Missis?’

‘Oh, Master, Master,’ returned Betty Higden, ‘I’ve fought against the
Parish and fled from it, all my life, and I want to die free of it!’

‘I don’t know,’ said the Deputy, with deliberation, ‘as I ought to let
you go. I’m a honest man as gets my living by the sweat of my brow, and
I may fall into trouble by letting you go. I’ve fell into trouble afore
now, by George, and I know what it is, and it’s made me careful. You
might be took with your deadness again, half a mile off--or half of half
a quarter, for the matter of that--and then it would be asked, Why did
that there honest Deputy Lock, let her go, instead of putting her safe
with the Parish? That’s what a man of his character ought to have done,
it would be argueyfied,’ said the Deputy Lock, cunningly harping on the
strong string of her terror; ‘he ought to have handed her over safe to
the Parish. That was to be expected of a man of his merits.’

As he stood in the doorway, the poor old careworn wayworn woman burst
into tears, and clasped her hands, as if in a very agony she prayed to
him.

‘As I’ve told you, Master, I’ve the best of friends. This letter will
show how true I spoke, and they will be thankful for me.’

The Deputy Lock opened the letter with a grave face, which underwent no
change as he eyed its contents. But it might have done, if he could have
read them.

‘What amount of small change, Missis,’ he said, with an abstracted air,
after a little meditation, ‘might you call a morsel of money?’

Hurriedly emptying her pocket, old Betty laid down on the table, a
shilling, and two sixpenny pieces, and a few pence.

‘If I was to let you go instead of handing you over safe to the Parish,’
said the Deputy, counting the money with his eyes, ‘might it be your own
free wish to leave that there behind you?’

‘Take it, Master, take it, and welcome and thankful!’

‘I’m a man,’ said the Deputy, giving her back the letter, and pocketing
the coins, one by one, ‘as earns his living by the sweat of his brow;’
here he drew his sleeve across his forehead, as if this particular
portion of his humble gains were the result of sheer hard labour and
virtuous industry; ‘and I won’t stand in your way. Go where you like.’

She was gone out of the Lock-house as soon as he gave her this
permission, and her tottering steps were on the road again. But, afraid
to go back and afraid to go forward; seeing what she fled from, in the
sky-glare of the lights of the little town before her, and leaving a
confused horror of it everywhere behind her, as if she had escaped it
in every stone of every market-place; she struck off by side ways, among
which she got bewildered and lost. That night she took refuge from the
Samaritan in his latest accredited form, under a farmer’s rick; and
if--worth thinking of, perhaps, my fellow-Christians--the Samaritan had
in the lonely night, ‘passed by on the other side’, she would have most
devoutly thanked High Heaven for her escape from him.

The morning found her afoot again, but fast declining as to the
clearness of her thoughts, though not as to the steadiness of her
purpose. Comprehending that her strength was quitting her, and that the
struggle of her life was almost ended, she could neither reason out the
means of getting back to her protectors, nor even form the idea. The
overmastering dread, and the proud stubborn resolution it engendered
in her to die undegraded, were the two distinct impressions left in her
failing mind. Supported only by a sense that she was bent on conquering
in her life-long fight, she went on.

The time was come, now, when the wants of this little life were passing
away from her. She could not have swallowed food, though a table had
been spread for her in the next field. The day was cold and wet, but
she scarcely knew it. She crept on, poor soul, like a criminal afraid of
being taken, and felt little beyond the terror of falling down while it
was yet daylight, and being found alive. She had no fear that she would
live through another night.

Sewn in the breast of her gown, the money to pay for her burial was
still intact. If she could wear through the day, and then lie down to
die under cover of the darkness, she would die independent. If she were
captured previously, the money would be taken from her as a pauper who
had no right to it, and she would be carried to the accursed workhouse.
Gaining her end, the letter would be found in her breast, along with
the money, and the gentlefolks would say when it was given back to them,
‘She prized it, did old Betty Higden; she was true to it; and while she
lived, she would never let it be disgraced by falling into the hands
of those that she held in horror.’ Most illogical, inconsequential, and
light-headed, this; but travellers in the valley of the shadow of death
are apt to be light-headed; and worn-out old people of low estate have
a trick of reasoning as indifferently as they live, and doubtless
would appreciate our Poor Law more philosophically on an income of ten
thousand a year.

So, keeping to byways, and shunning human approach, this troublesome
old woman hid herself, and fared on all through the dreary day. Yet so
unlike was she to vagrant hiders in general, that sometimes, as the day
advanced, there was a bright fire in her eyes, and a quicker beating at
her feeble heart, as though she said exultingly, ‘The Lord will see me
through it!’

By what visionary hands she was led along upon that journey of escape
from the Samaritan; by what voices, hushed in the grave, she seemed
to be addressed; how she fancied the dead child in her arms again, and
times innumerable adjusted her shawl to keep it warm; what infinite
variety of forms of tower and roof and steeple the trees took; how many
furious horsemen rode at her, crying, ‘There she goes! Stop! Stop,
Betty Higden!’ and melted away as they came close; be these things left
untold. Faring on and hiding, hiding and faring on, the poor harmless
creature, as though she were a Murderess and the whole country were up
after her, wore out the day, and gained the night.

‘Water-meadows, or such like,’ she had sometimes murmured, on the day’s
pilgrimage, when she had raised her head and taken any note of the real
objects about her. There now arose in the darkness, a great building,
full of lighted windows. Smoke was issuing from a high chimney in
the rear of it, and there was the sound of a water-wheel at the side.
Between her and the building, lay a piece of water, in which the lighted
windows were reflected, and on its nearest margin was a plantation of
trees. ‘I humbly thank the Power and the Glory,’ said Betty Higden,
holding up her withered hands, ‘that I have come to my journey’s end!’

She crept among the trees to the trunk of a tree whence she could see,
beyond some intervening trees and branches, the lighted windows, both in
their reality and their reflection in the water. She placed her orderly
little basket at her side, and sank upon the ground, supporting herself
against the tree. It brought to her mind the foot of the Cross, and
she committed herself to Him who died upon it. Her strength held out to
enable her to arrange the letter in her breast, so as that it could
be seen that she had a paper there. It had held out for this, and it
departed when this was done.

‘I am safe here,’ was her last benumbed thought. ‘When I am found dead
at the foot of the Cross, it will be by some of my own sort; some of
the working people who work among the lights yonder. I cannot see the
lighted windows now, but they are there. I am thankful for all!’


The darkness gone, and a face bending down.

‘It cannot be the boofer lady?’

‘I don’t understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again with this
brandy. I have been away to fetch it. Did you think that I was long
gone?’

It is as the face of a woman, shaded by a quantity of rich dark hair.
It is the earnest face of a woman who is young and handsome. But all is
over with me on earth, and this must be an Angel.

‘Have I been long dead?’

‘I don’t understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again. I hurried
all I could, and brought no one back with me, lest you should die of the
shock of strangers.’

‘Am I not dead?’

‘I cannot understand what you say. Your voice is so low and broken that
I cannot hear you. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you mean Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was coming from my work just now, along the path outside (I was up
with the night-hands last night), and I heard a groan, and found you
lying here.’

‘What work, deary?’

‘Did you ask what work? At the paper-mill.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Your face is turned up to the sky, and you can’t see it. It is close
by. You can see my face, here, between you and the sky?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dare I lift you?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Not even lift your head to get it on my arm? I will do it by very
gentle degrees. You shall hardly feel it.’

‘Not yet. Paper. Letter.’

‘This paper in your breast?’

‘Bless ye!’

‘Let me wet your lips again. Am I to open it? To read it?’

‘Bless ye!’

She reads it with surprise, and looks down with a new expression and an
added interest on the motionless face she kneels beside.

‘I know these names. I have heard them often.’

‘Will you send it, my dear?’

‘I cannot understand you. Let me wet your lips again, and your forehead.
There. O poor thing, poor thing!’ These words through her fast-dropping
tears. ‘What was it that you asked me? Wait till I bring my ear quite
close.’

‘Will you send it, my dear?’

‘Will I send it to the writers? Is that your wish? Yes, certainly.’

‘You’ll not give it up to any one but them?’

‘No.’

‘As you must grow old in time, and come to your dying hour, my dear,
you’ll not give it up to any one but them?’

‘No. Most solemnly.’

‘Never to the Parish!’ with a convulsed struggle.

‘No. Most solemnly.’

‘Nor let the Parish touch me, not yet so much as look at me!’ with
another struggle.

‘No. Faithfully.’

A look of thankfulness and triumph lights the worn old face.

The eyes, which have been darkly fixed upon the sky, turn with meaning
in them towards the compassionate face from which the tears are
dropping, and a smile is on the aged lips as they ask:

‘What is your name, my dear?’

‘My name is Lizzie Hexam.’

‘I must be sore disfigured. Are you afraid to kiss me?’

The answer is, the ready pressure of her lips upon the cold but smiling
mouth.

‘Bless ye! NOW lift me, my love.’

Lizzie Hexam very softly raised the weather-stained grey head, and
lifted her as high as Heaven.



Chapter 9

SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION


‘“We give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver
this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world.”’ So read the
Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled voice, for his heart misgave
him that all was not quite right between us and our sister--or say our
sister in Law--Poor Law--and that we sometimes read these words in an
awful manner, over our Sister and our Brother too.

And Sloppy--on whom the brave deceased had never turned her back until
she ran away from him, knowing that otherwise he would not be separated
from her--Sloppy could not in his conscience as yet find the hearty
thanks required of it. Selfish in Sloppy, and yet excusable, it may be
humbly hoped, because our sister had been more than his mother.

The words were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner of a
churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there was
nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single tombstone.
It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the diggers and
hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their graves at the common
charge; so that a new generation might know which was which: so that the
soldier, sailor, emigrant, coming home, should be able to identify the
resting-place of father, mother, playmate, or betrothed. For, we turn up
our eyes and say that we are all alike in death, and we might turn
them down and work the saying out in this world, so far. It would
be sentimental, perhaps? But how say ye, my lords and gentleman and
honourable boards, shall we not find good standing-room left for a
little sentiment, if we look into our crowds?

Near unto the Reverend Frank Milvey as he read, stood his little wife,
John Rokesmith the Secretary, and Bella Wilfer. These, over and above
Sloppy, were the mourners at the lowly grave. Not a penny had been
added to the money sewn in her dress: what her honest spirit had so long
projected, was fulfilled.

‘I’ve took it in my head,’ said Sloppy, laying it, inconsolable, against
the church door, when all was done: ‘I’ve took it in my wretched head
that I might have sometimes turned a little harder for her, and it cuts
me deep to think so now.’

The Reverend Frank Milvey, comforting Sloppy, expounded to him how the
best of us were more or less remiss in our turnings at our respective
Mangles--some of us very much so--and how we were all a halting,
failing, feeble, and inconstant crew.

‘SHE warn’t, sir,’ said Sloppy, taking this ghostly counsel rather ill,
in behalf of his late benefactress. ‘Let us speak for ourselves, sir.
She went through with whatever duty she had to do. She went through with
me, she went through with the Minders, she went through with herself,
she went through with everythink. O Mrs Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a
woman and a mother and a mangler in a million million!’

With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from the
church door, and took it back to the grave in the corner, and laid it
down there, and wept alone. ‘Not a very poor grave,’ said the Reverend
Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes, ‘when it has that
homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could be made by most of
the sculpture in Westminster Abbey!’

They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket-gate. The
water-wheel of the paper-mill was audible there, and seemed to have a
softening influence on the bright wintry scene. They had arrived but a
little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them the little she could
add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr Rokesmith’s letter and
had asked for their instructions. This was merely how she had heard the
groan, and what had afterwards passed, and how she had obtained leave
for the remains to be placed in that sweet, fresh, empty store-room of
the mill from which they had just accompanied them to the churchyard,
and how the last requests had been religiously observed.

‘I could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,’ said Lizzie.
‘I should not have wanted the will; but I should not have had the power,
without our managing partner.’

‘Surely not the Jew who received us?’ said Mrs Milvey.

[‘My dear,’ observed her husband in parenthesis, ‘why not?’)

‘The gentleman certainly is a Jew,’ said Lizzie, ‘and the lady, his
wife, is a Jewess, and I was first brought to their notice by a Jew. But
I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.’

‘But suppose they try to convert you!’ suggested Mrs Milvey, bristling
in her good little way, as a clergyman’s wife.

‘To do what, ma’am?’ asked Lizzie, with a modest smile.

‘To make you change your religion,’ said Mrs Milvey.

Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. ‘They have never asked me what
my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told them. They
asked me to be industrious and faithful, and I promised to be so.
They most willingly and cheerfully do their duty to all of us who are
employed here, and we try to do ours to them. Indeed they do much more
than their duty to us, for they are wonderfully mindful of us in many
ways.’

‘It is easy to see you’re a favourite, my dear,’ said little Mrs Milvey,
not quite pleased.

‘It would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,’ returned Lizzie,
‘for I have been already raised to a place of confidence here. But that
makes no difference in their following their own religion and leaving
all of us to ours. They never talk of theirs to us, and they never talk
of ours to us. If I was the last in the mill, it would be just the same.
They never asked me what religion that poor thing had followed.’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Milvey, aside to the Reverend Frank, ‘I wish you
would talk to her.’

‘My dear,’ said the Reverend Frank aside to his good little wife, ‘I
think I will leave it to somebody else. The circumstances are hardly
favourable. There are plenty of talkers going about, my love, and she
will soon find one.’

While this discourse was interchanging, both Bella and the Secretary
observed Lizzie Hexam with great attention. Brought face to face for the
first time with the daughter of his supposed murderer, it was natural
that John Harmon should have his own secret reasons for a careful
scrutiny of her countenance and manner. Bella knew that Lizzie’s
father had been falsely accused of the crime which had had so great an
influence on her own life and fortunes; and her interest, though it had
no secret springs, like that of the Secretary, was equally natural. Both
had expected to see something very different from the real Lizzie Hexam,
and thus it fell out that she became the unconscious means of bringing
them together.

For, when they had walked on with her to the little house in the clean
village by the paper-mill, where Lizzie had a lodging with an elderly
couple employed in the establishment, and when Mrs Milvey and Bella
had been up to see her room and had come down, the mill bell rang.
This called Lizzie away for the time, and left the Secretary and Bella
standing rather awkwardly in the small street; Mrs Milvey being engaged
in pursuing the village children, and her investigations whether they
were in danger of becoming children of Israel; and the Reverend Frank
being engaged--to say the truth--in evading that branch of his spiritual
functions, and getting out of sight surreptitiously.

Bella at length said:

‘Hadn’t we better talk about the commission we have undertaken, Mr
Rokesmith?’

‘By all means,’ said the Secretary.

‘I suppose,’ faltered Bella, ‘that we ARE both commissioned, or we
shouldn’t both be here?’

‘I suppose so,’ was the Secretary’s answer.

‘When I proposed to come with Mr and Mrs Milvey,’ said Bella, ‘Mrs
Boffin urged me to do so, in order that I might give her my small
report--it’s not worth anything, Mr Rokesmith, except for it’s being
a woman’s--which indeed with you may be a fresh reason for it’s being
worth nothing--of Lizzie Hexam.’

‘Mr Boffin,’ said the Secretary, ‘directed me to come for the same
purpose.’

As they spoke they were leaving the little street and emerging on the
wooded landscape by the river.

‘You think well of her, Mr Rokesmith?’ pursued Bella, conscious of
making all the advances.

‘I think highly of her.’

‘I am so glad of that! Something quite refined in her beauty, is there
not?’

‘Her appearance is very striking.’

‘There is a shade of sadness upon her that is quite touching. At least
I--I am not setting up my own poor opinion, you know, Mr Rokesmith,’
said Bella, excusing and explaining herself in a pretty shy way; ‘I am
consulting you.’

‘I noticed that sadness. I hope it may not,’ said the Secretary in
a lower voice, ‘be the result of the false accusation which has been
retracted.’

When they had passed on a little further without speaking, Bella, after
stealing a glance or two at the Secretary, suddenly said:

‘Oh, Mr Rokesmith, don’t be hard with me, don’t be stern with me; be
magnanimous! I want to talk with you on equal terms.’

The Secretary as suddenly brightened, and returned: ‘Upon my honour I
had no thought but for you. I forced myself to be constrained, lest you
might misinterpret my being more natural. There. It’s gone.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bella, holding out her little hand. ‘Forgive me.’

‘No!’ cried the Secretary, eagerly. ‘Forgive ME!’ For there were tears
in her eyes, and they were prettier in his sight (though they smote him
on the heart rather reproachfully too) than any other glitter in the
world.

When they had walked a little further:

‘You were going to speak to me,’ said the Secretary, with the shadow so
long on him quite thrown off and cast away, ‘about Lizzie Hexam. So was
I going to speak to you, if I could have begun.’

‘Now that you CAN begin, sir,’ returned Bella, with a look as if she
italicized the word by putting one of her dimples under it, ‘what were
you going to say?’

‘You remember, of course, that in her short letter to Mrs Boffin--short,
but containing everything to the purpose--she stipulated that either
her name, or else her place of residence, must be kept strictly a secret
among us.’

Bella nodded Yes.

‘It is my duty to find out why she made that stipulation. I have it in
charge from Mr Boffin to discover, and I am very desirous for myself to
discover, whether that retracted accusation still leaves any stain upon
her. I mean whether it places her at any disadvantage towards any one,
even towards herself.’

‘Yes,’ said Bella, nodding thoughtfully; ‘I understand. That seems wise,
and considerate.’

‘You may not have noticed, Miss Wilfer, that she has the same kind of
interest in you, that you have in her. Just as you are attracted by her
beaut--by her appearance and manner, she is attracted by yours.’

‘I certainly have NOT noticed it,’ returned Bella, again italicizing
with the dimple, ‘and I should have given her credit for--’

The Secretary with a smile held up his hand, so plainly interposing ‘not
for better taste’, that Bella’s colour deepened over the little piece of
coquetry she was checked in.

‘And so,’ resumed the Secretary, ‘if you would speak with her alone
before we go away from here, I feel quite sure that a natural and easy
confidence would arise between you. Of course you would not be asked to
betray it; and of course you would not, if you were. But if you do not
object to put this question to her--to ascertain for us her own feeling
in this one matter--you can do so at a far greater advantage than I or
any else could. Mr Boffin is anxious on the subject. And I am,’ added
the Secretary after a moment, ‘for a special reason, very anxious.’

‘I shall be happy, Mr Rokesmith,’ returned Bella, ‘to be of the least
use; for I feel, after the serious scene of to-day, that I am useless
enough in this world.’

‘Don’t say that,’ urged the Secretary.

‘Oh, but I mean that,’ said Bella, raising her eyebrows.

‘No one is useless in this world,’ retorted the Secretary, ‘who lightens
the burden of it for any one else.’

‘But I assure you I DON’T, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, half-crying.

‘Not for your father?’

‘Dear, loving, self-forgetting, easily-satisfied Pa! Oh, yes! He thinks
so.’

‘It is enough if he only thinks so,’ said the Secretary. ‘Excuse the
interruption: I don’t like to hear you depreciate yourself.’

‘But YOU once depreciated ME, sir,’ thought Bella, pouting, ‘and I hope
you may be satisfied with the consequences you brought upon your head!’
However, she said nothing to that purpose; she even said something to a
different purpose.

‘Mr Rokesmith, it seems so long since we spoke together naturally, that
I am embarrassed in approaching another subject. Mr Boffin. You know I
am very grateful to him; don’t you? You know I feel a true respect for
him, and am bound to him by the strong ties of his own generosity; now
don’t you?’

‘Unquestionably. And also that you are his favourite companion.’

‘That makes it,’ said Bella, ‘so very difficult to speak of him. But--.
Does he treat you well?’

‘You see how he treats me,’ the Secretary answered, with a patient and
yet proud air.

‘Yes, and I see it with pain,’ said Bella, very energetically.

The Secretary gave her such a radiant look, that if he had thanked her a
hundred times, he could not have said as much as the look said.

‘I see it with pain,’ repeated Bella, ‘and it often makes me miserable.
Miserable, because I cannot bear to be supposed to approve of it, or
have any indirect share in it. Miserable, because I cannot bear to be
forced to admit to myself that Fortune is spoiling Mr Boffin.’

‘Miss Wilfer,’ said the Secretary, with a beaming face, ‘if you could
know with what delight I make the discovery that Fortune isn’t spoiling
YOU, you would know that it more than compensates me for any slight at
any other hands.’

‘Oh, don’t speak of ME,’ said Bella, giving herself an impatient little
slap with her glove. ‘You don’t know me as well as--’

‘As you know yourself?’ suggested the Secretary, finding that she
stopped. ‘DO you know yourself?’

‘I know quite enough of myself,’ said Bella, with a charming air of
being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, ‘and I don’t improve
upon acquaintance. But Mr Boffin.’

‘That Mr Boffin’s manner to me, or consideration for me, is not what it
used to be,’ observed the Secretary, ‘must be admitted. It is too plain
to be denied.’

‘Are you disposed to deny it, Mr Rokesmith?’ asked Bella, with a look of
wonder.

‘Ought I not to be glad to do so, if I could: though it were only for my
own sake?’

‘Truly,’ returned Bella, ‘it must try you very much, and--you must
please promise me that you won’t take ill what I am going to add, Mr
Rokesmith?’

‘I promise it with all my heart.’

‘--And it must sometimes, I should think,’ said Bella, hesitating, ‘a
little lower you in your own estimation?’

Assenting with a movement of his head, though not at all looking as if
it did, the Secretary replied:

‘I have very strong reasons, Miss Wilfer, for bearing with the drawbacks
of my position in the house we both inhabit. Believe that they are not
all mercenary, although I have, through a series of strange fatalities,
faded out of my place in life. If what you see with such a gracious
and good sympathy is calculated to rouse my pride, there are other
considerations (and those you do not see) urging me to quiet endurance.
The latter are by far the stronger.’

‘I think I have noticed, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, looking at him with
curiosity, as not quite making him out, ‘that you repress yourself, and
force yourself, to act a passive part.’

‘You are right. I repress myself and force myself to act a part. It is
not in tameness of spirit that I submit. I have a settled purpose.’

‘And a good one, I hope,’ said Bella.

‘And a good one, I hope,’ he answered, looking steadily at her.

‘Sometimes I have fancied, sir,’ said Bella, turning away her eyes,
‘that your great regard for Mrs Boffin is a very powerful motive with
you.’

‘You are right again; it is. I would do anything for her, bear anything
for her. There are no words to express how I esteem that good, good
woman.’

‘As I do too! May I ask you one thing more, Mr Rokesmith?’

‘Anything more.’

‘Of course you see that she really suffers, when Mr Boffin shows how he
is changing?’

‘I see it, every day, as you see it, and am grieved to give her pain.’

‘To give her pain?’ said Bella, repeating the phrase quickly, with her
eyebrows raised.

‘I am generally the unfortunate cause of it.’

‘Perhaps she says to you, as she often says to me, that he is the best
of men, in spite of all.’

‘I often overhear her, in her honest and beautiful devotion to him,
saying so to you,’ returned the Secretary, with the same steady look,
‘but I cannot assert that she ever says so to me.’

Bella met the steady look for a moment with a wistful, musing little
look of her own, and then, nodding her pretty head several times, like
a dimpled philosopher (of the very best school) who was moralizing on
Life, heaved a little sigh, and gave up things in general for a bad job,
as she had previously been inclined to give up herself.

But, for all that, they had a very pleasant walk. The trees were bare of
leaves, and the river was bare of water-lilies; but the sky was not bare
of its beautiful blue, and the water reflected it, and a delicious
wind ran with the stream, touching the surface crisply. Perhaps the old
mirror was never yet made by human hands, which, if all the images it
has in its time reflected could pass across its surface again, would
fail to reveal some scene of horror or distress. But the great serene
mirror of the river seemed as if it might have reproduced all it had
ever reflected between those placid banks, and brought nothing to the
light save what was peaceful, pastoral, and blooming.

So, they walked, speaking of the newly filled-up grave, and of Johnny,
and of many things. So, on their return, they met brisk Mrs Milvey
coming to seek them, with the agreeable intelligence that there was no
fear for the village children, there being a Christian school in the
village, and no worse Judaical interference with it than to plant its
garden. So, they got back to the village as Lizzie Hexam was coming from
the paper-mill, and Bella detached herself to speak with her in her own
home.

‘I am afraid it is a poor room for you,’ said Lizzie, with a smile of
welcome, as she offered the post of honour by the fireside.

‘Not so poor as you think, my dear,’ returned Bella, ‘if you knew all.’
Indeed, though attained by some wonderful winding narrow stairs, which
seemed to have been erected in a pure white chimney, and though very low
in the ceiling, and very rugged in the floor, and rather blinking as
to the proportions of its lattice window, it was a pleasanter room than
that despised chamber once at home, in which Bella had first bemoaned
the miseries of taking lodgers.

The day was closing as the two girls looked at one another by the
fireside. The dusky room was lighted by the fire. The grate might have
been the old brazier, and the glow might have been the old hollow down
by the flare.

‘It’s quite new to me,’ said Lizzie, ‘to be visited by a lady so nearly
of my own age, and so pretty, as you. It’s a pleasure to me to look at
you.’

‘I have nothing left to begin with,’ returned Bella, blushing, ‘because
I was going to say that it was a pleasure to me to look at you, Lizzie.
But we can begin without a beginning, can’t we?’

Lizzie took the pretty little hand that was held out in as pretty a
little frankness.

‘Now, dear,’ said Bella, drawing her chair a little nearer, and taking
Lizzie’s arm as if they were going out for a walk, ‘I am commissioned
with something to say, and I dare say I shall say it wrong, but I
won’t if I can help it. It is in reference to your letter to Mr and Mrs
Boffin, and this is what it is. Let me see. Oh yes! This is what it is.’

With this exordium, Bella set forth that request of Lizzie’s touching
secrecy, and delicately spoke of that false accusation and its
retraction, and asked might she beg to be informed whether it had any
bearing, near or remote, on such request. ‘I feel, my dear,’ said Bella,
quite amazing herself by the business-like manner in which she was
getting on, ‘that the subject must be a painful one to you, but I
am mixed up in it also; for--I don’t know whether you may know it or
suspect it--I am the willed-away girl who was to have been married to
the unfortunate gentleman, if he had been pleased to approve of me. So
I was dragged into the subject without my consent, and you were dragged
into it without your consent, and there is very little to choose between
us.’

‘I had no doubt,’ said Lizzie, ‘that you were the Miss Wilfer I have
often heard named. Can you tell me who my unknown friend is?’

‘Unknown friend, my dear?’ said Bella.

‘Who caused the charge against poor father to be contradicted, and sent
me the written paper.’

Bella had never heard of him. Had no notion who he was.

‘I should have been glad to thank him,’ returned Lizzie. ‘He has done a
great deal for me. I must hope that he will let me thank him some day.
You asked me has it anything to do--’

‘It or the accusation itself,’ Bella put in.

‘Yes. Has either anything to do with my wishing to live quite secret and
retired here? No.’

As Lizzie Hexam shook her head in giving this reply and as her glance
sought the fire, there was a quiet resolution in her folded hands, not
lost on Bella’s bright eyes.

‘Have you lived much alone?’ asked Bella.

‘Yes. It’s nothing new to me. I used to be always alone many hours
together, in the day and in the night, when poor father was alive.’

‘You have a brother, I have been told?’

‘I have a brother, but he is not friendly with me. He is a very good
boy though, and has raised himself by his industry. I don’t complain of
him.’

As she said it, with her eyes upon the fire-glow, there was an
instantaneous escape of distress into her face. Bella seized the moment
to touch her hand.

‘Lizzie, I wish you would tell me whether you have any friend of your
own sex and age.’

‘I have lived that lonely kind of life, that I have never had one,’ was
the answer.

‘Nor I neither,’ said Bella. ‘Not that my life has been lonely, for I
could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going on
like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners, and Lavvy
being spiteful--though of course I am very fond of them both. I wish
you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have
no more of what they call character, my dear, than a canary-bird, but I
know I am trustworthy.’

The wayward, playful, affectionate nature, giddy for want of the
weight of some sustaining purpose, and capricious because it was always
fluttering among little things, was yet a captivating one. To Lizzie it
was so new, so pretty, at once so womanly and so childish, that it won
her completely. And when Bella said again, ‘Do you think you could,
Lizzie?’ with her eyebrows raised, her head inquiringly on one side,
and an odd doubt about it in her own bosom, Lizzie showed beyond all
question that she thought she could.

‘Tell me, my dear,’ said Bella, ‘what is the matter, and why you live
like this.’

Lizzie presently began, by way of prelude, ‘You must have many lovers--’
when Bella checked her with a little scream of astonishment.

‘My dear, I haven’t one!’

‘Not one?’

‘Well! Perhaps one,’ said Bella. ‘I am sure I don’t know. I HAD one, but
what he may think about it at the present time I can’t say. Perhaps I
have half a one (of course I don’t count that Idiot, George Sampson).
However, never mind me. I want to hear about you.’

‘There is a certain man,’ said Lizzie, ‘a passionate and angry man, who
says he loves me, and who I must believe does love me. He is the friend
of my brother. I shrank from him within myself when my brother first
brought him to me; but the last time I saw him he terrified me more than
I can say.’ There she stopped.

‘Did you come here to escape from him, Lizzie?’

‘I came here immediately after he so alarmed me.’

‘Are you afraid of him here?’

‘I am not timid generally, but I am always afraid of him. I am afraid
to see a newspaper, or to hear a word spoken of what is done in London,
lest he should have done some violence.’

‘Then you are not afraid of him for yourself, dear?’ said Bella, after
pondering on the words.

‘I should be even that, if I met him about here. I look round for him
always, as I pass to and fro at night.’

‘Are you afraid of anything he may do to himself in London, my dear?’

‘No. He might be fierce enough even to do some violence to himself, but
I don’t think of that.’

‘Then it would almost seem, dear,’ said Bella quaintly, ‘as if there
must be somebody else?’

Lizzie put her hands before her face for a moment before replying: ‘The
words are always in my ears, and the blow he struck upon a stone wall as
he said them is always before my eyes. I have tried hard to think it
not worth remembering, but I cannot make so little of it. His hand was
trickling down with blood as he said to me, “Then I hope that I may
never kill him!”

Rather startled, Bella made and clasped a girdle of her arms round
Lizzie’s waist, and then asked quietly, in a soft voice, as they both
looked at the fire:

‘Kill him! Is this man so jealous, then?’

‘Of a gentleman,’ said Lizzie. ‘--I hardly know how to tell you--of a
gentleman far above me and my way of life, who broke father’s death to
me, and has shown an interest in me since.’

‘Does he love you?’

Lizzie shook her head.

‘Does he admire you?’

Lizzie ceased to shake her head, and pressed her hand upon her living
girdle.

‘Is it through his influence that you came here?’

‘O no! And of all the world I wouldn’t have him know that I am here, or
get the least clue where to find me.’

‘Lizzie, dear! Why?’ asked Bella, in amazement at this burst. But then
quickly added, reading Lizzie’s face: ‘No. Don’t say why. That was a
foolish question of mine. I see, I see.’

There was silence between them. Lizzie, with a drooping head, glanced
down at the glow in the fire where her first fancies had been nursed,
and her first escape made from the grim life out of which she had
plucked her brother, foreseeing her reward.

‘You know all now,’ she said, raising her eyes to Bella’s. ‘There is
nothing left out. This is my reason for living secret here, with the aid
of a good old man who is my true friend. For a short part of my life
at home with father, I knew of things--don’t ask me what--that I set my
face against, and tried to better. I don’t think I could have done more,
then, without letting my hold on father go; but they sometimes lie heavy
on my mind. By doing all for the best, I hope I may wear them out.’

‘And wear out too,’ said Bella soothingly, ‘this weakness, Lizzie, in
favour of one who is not worthy of it.’

‘No. I don’t want to wear that out,’ was the flushed reply, ‘nor do I
want to believe, nor do I believe, that he is not worthy of it. What
should I gain by that, and how much should I lose!’

Bella’s expressive little eyebrows remonstrated with the fire for some
short time before she rejoined:

‘Don’t think that I press you, Lizzie; but wouldn’t you gain in peace,
and hope, and even in freedom? Wouldn’t it be better not to live a
secret life in hiding, and not to be shut out from your natural and
wholesome prospects? Forgive my asking you, would that be no gain?’

‘Does a woman’s heart that--that has that weakness in it which you have
spoken of,’ returned Lizzie, ‘seek to gain anything?’

The question was so directly at variance with Bella’s views in life, as
set forth to her father, that she said internally, ‘There, you little
mercenary wretch! Do you hear that? Ain’t you ashamed of your self?’
and unclasped the girdle of her arms, expressly to give herself a
penitential poke in the side.

‘But you said, Lizzie,’ observed Bella, returning to her subject when
she had administered this chastisement, ‘that you would lose, besides.
Would you mind telling me what you would lose, Lizzie?’

‘I should lose some of the best recollections, best encouragements,
and best objects, that I carry through my daily life. I should lose my
belief that if I had been his equal, and he had loved me, I should have
tried with all my might to make him better and happier, as he would have
made me. I should lose almost all the value that I put upon the little
learning I have, which is all owing to him, and which I conquered the
difficulties of, that he might not think it thrown away upon me. I
should lose a kind of picture of him--or of what he might have been,
if I had been a lady, and he had loved me--which is always with me, and
which I somehow feel that I could not do a mean or a wrong thing before.
I should leave off prizing the remembrance that he has done me nothing
but good since I have known him, and that he has made a change within
me, like--like the change in the grain of these hands, which were
coarse, and cracked, and hard, and brown when I rowed on the river with
father, and are softened and made supple by this new work as you see
them now.’

They trembled, but with no weakness, as she showed them.

‘Understand me, my dear;’ thus she went on. ‘I have never dreamed of
the possibility of his being anything to me on this earth but the
kind picture that I know I could not make you understand, if the
understanding was not in your own breast already. I have no more dreamed
of the possibility of MY being his wife, than he ever has--and words
could not be stronger than that. And yet I love him. I love him so much,
and so dearly, that when I sometimes think my life may be but a weary
one, I am proud of it and glad of it. I am proud and glad to suffer
something for him, even though it is of no service to him, and he will
never know of it or care for it.’

Bella sat enchained by the deep, unselfish passion of this girl or woman
of her own age, courageously revealing itself in the confidence of her
sympathetic perception of its truth. And yet she had never experienced
anything like it, or thought of the existence of anything like it.

‘It was late upon a wretched night,’ said Lizzie, ‘when his eyes first
looked at me in my old river-side home, very different from this. His
eyes may never look at me again. I would rather that they never did; I
hope that they never may. But I would not have the light of them taken
out of my life, for anything my life can give me. I have told you
everything now, my dear. If it comes a little strange to me to have
parted with it, I am not sorry. I had no thought of ever parting with a
single word of it, a moment before you came in; but you came in, and my
mind changed.’

Bella kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her warmly for her
confidence. ‘I only wish,’ said Bella, ‘I was more deserving of it.’

‘More deserving of it?’ repeated Lizzie, with an incredulous smile.

‘I don’t mean in respect of keeping it,’ said Bella, ‘because any
one should tear me to bits before getting at a syllable of it--though
there’s no merit in that, for I am naturally as obstinate as a Pig. What
I mean is, Lizzie, that I am a mere impertinent piece of conceit, and
you shame me.’

Lizzie put up the pretty brown hair that came tumbling down, owing to
the energy with which Bella shook her head; and she remonstrated while
thus engaged, ‘My dear!’

‘Oh, it’s all very well to call me your dear,’ said Bella, with a
pettish whimper, ‘and I am glad to be called so, though I have slight
enough claim to be. But I AM such a nasty little thing!’

‘My dear!’ urged Lizzie again.

‘Such a shallow, cold, worldly, Limited little brute!’ said Bella,
bringing out her last adjective with culminating force.

‘Do you think,’ inquired Lizzie with her quiet smile, the hair being now
secured, ‘that I don’t know better?’

‘DO you know better though?’ said Bella. ‘Do you really believe you know
better? Oh, I should be so glad if you did know better, but I am so very
much afraid that I must know best!’

Lizzie asked her, laughing outright, whether she ever saw her own face
or heard her own voice?

‘I suppose so,’ returned Bella; ‘I look in the glass often enough, and I
chatter like a Magpie.’

‘I have seen your face, and heard your voice, at any rate,’ said Lizzie,
‘and they have tempted me to say to you--with a certainty of not going
wrong--what I thought I should never say to any one. Does that look
ill?’

‘No, I hope it doesn’t,’ pouted Bella, stopping herself in something
between a humoured laugh and a humoured sob.

‘I used once to see pictures in the fire,’ said Lizzie playfully, ‘to
please my brother. Shall I tell you what I see down there where the fire
is glowing?’

They had risen, and were standing on the hearth, the time being come for
separating; each had drawn an arm around the other to take leave.

‘Shall I tell you,’ asked Lizzie, ‘what I see down there?’

‘Limited little b?’ suggested Bella with her eyebrows raised.

‘A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes
through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never
daunted.’

‘Girl’s heart?’ asked Bella, with accompanying eyebrows.

Lizzie nodded. ‘And the figure to which it belongs--’

Is yours,’ suggested Bella.

‘No. Most clearly and distinctly yours.’

So the interview terminated with pleasant words on both sides, and with
many reminders on the part of Bella that they were friends, and pledges
that she would soon come down into that part of the country again. There
with Lizzie returned to her occupation, and Bella ran over to the little
inn to rejoin her company.

‘You look rather serious, Miss Wilfer,’ was the Secretary’s first
remark.

‘I feel rather serious,’ returned Miss Wilfer.

She had nothing else to tell him but that Lizzie Hexam’s secret had
no reference whatever to the cruel charge, or its withdrawal. Oh yes
though! said Bella; she might as well mention one other thing; Lizzie
was very desirous to thank her unknown friend who had sent her the
written retractation. Was she, indeed? observed the Secretary. Ah! Bella
asked him, had he any notion who that unknown friend might be? He had no
notion whatever.

They were on the borders of Oxfordshire, so far had poor old Betty
Higden strayed. They were to return by the train presently, and, the
station being near at hand, the Reverend Frank and Mrs Frank, and Sloppy
and Bella and the Secretary, set out to walk to it. Few rustic paths are
wide enough for five, and Bella and the Secretary dropped behind.

‘Can you believe, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, ‘that I feel as if whole
years had passed since I went into Lizzie Hexam’s cottage?’

‘We have crowded a good deal into the day,’ he returned, ‘and you were
much affected in the churchyard. You are over-tired.’

‘No, I am not at all tired. I have not quite expressed what I mean. I
don’t mean that I feel as if a great space of time had gone by, but that
I feel as if much had happened--to myself, you know.’

‘For good, I hope?’

‘I hope so,’ said Bella.

‘You are cold; I felt you tremble. Pray let me put this wrapper of mine
about you. May I fold it over this shoulder without injuring your dress?
Now, it will be too heavy and too long. Let me carry this end over my
arm, as you have no arm to give me.’

Yes she had though. How she got it out, in her muffled state, Heaven
knows; but she got it out somehow--there it was--and slipped it through
the Secretary’s.

‘I have had a long and interesting talk with Lizzie, Mr Rokesmith, and
she gave me her full confidence.’

‘She could not withhold it,’ said the Secretary.

‘I wonder how you come,’ said Bella, stopping short as she glanced at
him, ‘to say to me just what she said about it!’

‘I infer that it must be because I feel just as she felt about it.’

‘And how was that, do you mean to say, sir?’ asked Bella, moving again.

‘That if you were inclined to win her confidence--anybody’s
confidence--you were sure to do it.’

The railway, at this point, knowingly shutting a green eye and opening
a red one, they had to run for it. As Bella could not run easily so
wrapped up, the Secretary had to help her. When she took her opposite
place in the carriage corner, the brightness in her face was so charming
to behold, that on her exclaiming, ‘What beautiful stars and what a
glorious night!’ the Secretary said ‘Yes,’ but seemed to prefer to see
the night and the stars in the light of her lovely little countenance,
to looking out of window.

O boofer lady, fascinating boofer lady! If I were but legally executor
of Johnny’s will! If I had but the right to pay your legacy and to take
your receipt!--Something to this purpose surely mingled with the blast
of the train as it cleared the stations, all knowingly shutting up their
green eyes and opening their red ones when they prepared to let the
boofer lady pass.



Chapter 10

SCOUTS OUT


‘And so, Miss Wren,’ said Mr Eugene Wrayburn, ‘I cannot persuade you to
dress me a doll?’

‘No,’ replied Miss Wren snappishly; ‘if you want one, go and buy one at
the shop.’

‘And my charming young goddaughter,’ said Mr Wrayburn plaintively, ‘down
in Hertfordshire--’

[‘Humbugshire you mean, I think,’ interposed Miss Wren.)

‘--is to be put upon the cold footing of the general public, and is
to derive no advantage from my private acquaintance with the Court
Dressmaker?’

‘If it’s any advantage to your charming godchild--and oh, a precious
godfather she has got!’--replied Miss Wren, pricking at him in the air
with her needle, ‘to be informed that the Court Dressmaker knows
your tricks and your manners, you may tell her so by post, with my
compliments.’

Miss Wren was busy at her work by candle-light, and Mr Wrayburn, half
amused and half vexed, and all idle and shiftless, stood by her bench
looking on. Miss Wren’s troublesome child was in the corner in deep
disgrace, and exhibiting great wretchedness in the shivering stage of
prostration from drink.

‘Ugh, you disgraceful boy!’ exclaimed Miss Wren, attracted by the sound
of his chattering teeth, ‘I wish they’d all drop down your throat and
play at dice in your stomach! Boh, wicked child! Bee-baa, black sheep!’

On her accompanying each of these reproaches with a threatening stamp of
the foot, the wretched creature protested with a whine.

‘Pay five shillings for you indeed!’ Miss Wren proceeded; ‘how many
hours do you suppose it costs me to earn five shillings, you infamous
boy?--Don’t cry like that, or I’ll throw a doll at you. Pay five
shillings fine for you indeed. Fine in more ways than one, I think! I’d
give the dustman five shillings, to carry you off in the dust cart.’

‘No, no,’ pleaded the absurd creature. ‘Please!’

‘He’s enough to break his mother’s heart, is this boy,’ said Miss Wren,
half appealing to Eugene. ‘I wish I had never brought him up. He’d be
sharper than a serpent’s tooth, if he wasn’t as dull as ditch water.
Look at him. There’s a pretty object for a parent’s eyes!’

Assuredly, in his worse than swinish state (for swine at least fatten on
their guzzling, and make themselves good to eat), he was a pretty object
for any eyes.

‘A muddling and a swipey old child,’ said Miss Wren, rating him with
great severity, ‘fit for nothing but to be preserved in the liquor
that destroys him, and put in a great glass bottle as a sight for other
swipey children of his own pattern,--if he has no consideration for his
liver, has he none for his mother?’

‘Yes. Deration, oh don’t!’ cried the subject of these angry remarks.

‘Oh don’t and oh don’t,’ pursued Miss Wren. ‘It’s oh do and oh do. And
why do you?’

‘Won’t do so any more. Won’t indeed. Pray!’

‘There!’ said Miss Wren, covering her eyes with her hand. ‘I can’t
bear to look at you. Go up stairs and get me my bonnet and shawl. Make
yourself useful in some way, bad boy, and let me have your room instead
of your company, for one half minute.’

Obeying her, he shambled out, and Eugene Wrayburn saw the tears exude
from between the little creature’s fingers as she kept her hand before
her eyes. He was sorry, but his sympathy did not move his carelessness
to do anything but feel sorry.

‘I’m going to the Italian Opera to try on,’ said Miss Wren, taking away
her hand after a little while, and laughing satirically to hide that she
had been crying; ‘I must see your back before I go, Mr Wrayburn. Let me
first tell you, once for all, that it’s of no use your paying visits
to me. You wouldn’t get what you want, of me, no, not if you brought
pincers with you to tear it out.’

‘Are you so obstinate on the subject of a doll’s dress for my godchild?’

‘Ah!’ returned Miss Wren with a hitch of her chin, ‘I am so
obstinate. And of course it’s on the subject of a doll’s dress--or
ADdress--whichever you like. Get along and give it up!’

Her degraded charge had come back, and was standing behind her with the
bonnet and shawl.

‘Give ‘em to me and get back into your corner, you naughty old thing!’
said Miss Wren, as she turned and espied him. ‘No, no, I won’t have your
help. Go into your corner, this minute!’

The miserable man, feebly rubbing the back of his faltering hands
downward from the wrists, shuffled on to his post of disgrace; but not
without a curious glance at Eugene in passing him, accompanied with what
seemed as if it might have been an action of his elbow, if any action of
any limb or joint he had, would have answered truly to his will. Taking
no more particular notice of him than instinctively falling away from
the disagreeable contact, Eugene, with a lazy compliment or so to Miss
Wren, begged leave to light his cigar, and departed.

‘Now you prodigal old son,’ said Jenny, shaking her head and her
emphatic little forefinger at her burden, ‘you sit there till I come
back. You dare to move out of your corner for a single instant while I’m
gone, and I’ll know the reason why.’

With this admonition, she blew her work candles out, leaving him to the
light of the fire, and, taking her big door-key in her pocket and her
crutch-stick in her hand, marched off.

Eugene lounged slowly towards the Temple, smoking his cigar, but saw
no more of the dolls’ dressmaker, through the accident of their taking
opposite sides of the street. He lounged along moodily, and stopped at
Charing Cross to look about him, with as little interest in the crowd
as any man might take, and was lounging on again, when a most unexpected
object caught his eyes. No less an object than Jenny Wren’s bad boy
trying to make up his mind to cross the road.

A more ridiculous and feeble spectacle than this tottering wretch making
unsteady sallies into the roadway, and as often staggering back again,
oppressed by terrors of vehicles that were a long way off or were
nowhere, the streets could not have shown. Over and over again, when the
course was perfectly clear, he set out, got half way, described a loop,
turned, and went back again; when he might have crossed and re-crossed
half a dozen times. Then, he would stand shivering on the edge of the
pavement, looking up the street and looking down, while scores of people
jostled him, and crossed, and went on. Stimulated in course of time
by the sight of so many successes, he would make another sally, make
another loop, would all but have his foot on the opposite pavement,
would see or imagine something coming, and would stagger back again.
There, he would stand making spasmodic preparations as if for a great
leap, and at last would decide on a start at precisely the wrong moment,
and would be roared at by drivers, and would shrink back once more, and
stand in the old spot shivering, with the whole of the proceedings to go
through again.

‘It strikes me,’ remarked Eugene coolly, after watching him for some
minutes, ‘that my friend is likely to be rather behind time if he has
any appointment on hand.’ With which remark he strolled on, and took no
further thought of him.

Lightwood was at home when he got to the Chambers, and had dined alone
there. Eugene drew a chair to the fire by which he was having his wine
and reading the evening paper, and brought a glass, and filled it for
good fellowship’s sake.

‘My dear Mortimer, you are the express picture of contented industry,
reposing (on credit) after the virtuous labours of the day.’

‘My dear Eugene, you are the express picture of discontented idleness
not reposing at all. Where have you been?’

‘I have been,’ replied Wrayburn, ‘--about town. I have turned up at the
present juncture, with the intention of consulting my highly intelligent
and respected solicitor on the position of my affairs.’

‘Your highly intelligent and respect solicitor is of opinion that your
affairs are in a bad way, Eugene.’

‘Though whether,’ said Eugene thoughtfully, ‘that can be intelligently
said, now, of the affairs of a client who has nothing to lose and who
cannot possibly be made to pay, may be open to question.’

‘You have fallen into the hands of the Jews, Eugene.’

‘My dear boy,’ returned the debtor, very composedly taking up his glass,
‘having previously fallen into the hands of some of the Christians, I
can bear it with philosophy.’

‘I have had an interview to-day, Eugene, with a Jew, who seems
determined to press us hard. Quite a Shylock, and quite a Patriarch. A
picturesque grey-headed and grey-bearded old Jew, in a shovel-hat and
gaberdine.’

‘Not,’ said Eugene, pausing in setting down his glass, ‘surely not my
worthy friend Mr Aaron?’

‘He calls himself Mr Riah.’

‘By-the-by,’ said Eugene, ‘it comes into my mind that--no doubt with an
instinctive desire to receive him into the bosom of our Church--I gave
him the name of Aaron!’

‘Eugene, Eugene,’ returned Lightwood, ‘you are more ridiculous than
usual. Say what you mean.’

‘Merely, my dear fellow, that I have the honour and pleasure of a
speaking acquaintance with such a Patriarch as you describe, and that I
address him as Mr Aaron, because it appears to me Hebraic, expressive,
appropriate, and complimentary. Notwithstanding which strong reasons for
its being his name, it may not be his name.’

‘I believe you are the absurdest man on the face of the earth,’ said
Lightwood, laughing.

‘Not at all, I assure you. Did he mention that he knew me?’

‘He did not. He only said of you that he expected to be paid by you.’

‘Which looks,’ remarked Eugene with much gravity, ‘like NOT knowing me.
I hope it may not be my worthy friend Mr Aaron, for, to tell you the
truth, Mortimer, I doubt he may have a prepossession against me. I
strongly suspect him of having had a hand in spiriting away Lizzie.’

‘Everything,’ returned Lightwood impatiently, ‘seems, by a fatality,
to bring us round to Lizzie. “About town” meant about Lizzie, just now,
Eugene.’

‘My solicitor, do you know,’ observed Eugene, turning round to the
furniture, ‘is a man of infinite discernment!’

‘Did it not, Eugene?’

‘Yes it did, Mortimer.’

‘And yet, Eugene, you know you do not really care for her.’

Eugene Wrayburn rose, and put his hands in his pockets, and stood with a
foot on the fender, indolently rocking his body and looking at the fire.
After a prolonged pause, he replied: ‘I don’t know that. I must ask you
not to say that, as if we took it for granted.’

‘But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave her to
herself.’

Having again paused as before, Eugene said: ‘I don’t know that, either.
But tell me. Did you ever see me take so much trouble about anything, as
about this disappearance of hers? I ask, for information.’

‘My dear Eugene, I wish I ever had!’

‘Then you have not? Just so. You confirm my own impression. Does that
look as if I cared for her? I ask, for information.’

‘I asked YOU for information, Eugene,’ said Mortimer reproachfully.

‘Dear boy, I know it, but I can’t give it. I thirst for information.
What do I mean? If my taking so much trouble to recover her does not
mean that I care for her, what does it mean? “If Peter Piper picked a
peck of pickled pepper, where’s the peck,” &c.?’

Though he said this gaily, he said it with a perplexed and inquisitive
face, as if he actually did not know what to make of himself. ‘Look on
to the end--’ Lightwood was beginning to remonstrate, when he caught at
the words:

‘Ah! See now! That’s exactly what I am incapable of doing. How very
acute you are, Mortimer, in finding my weak place! When we were at
school together, I got up my lessons at the last moment, day by day and
bit by bit; now we are out in life together, I get up my lessons in the
same way. In the present task I have not got beyond this:--I am bent
on finding Lizzie, and I mean to find her, and I will take any means
of finding her that offer themselves. Fair means or foul means, are all
alike to me. I ask you--for information--what does that mean? When I
have found her I may ask you--also for information--what do I mean now?
But it would be premature in this stage, and it’s not the character of
my mind.’

Lightwood was shaking his head over the air with which his friend held
forth thus--an air so whimsically open and argumentative as almost to
deprive what he said of the appearance of evasion--when a shuffling was
heard at the outer door, and then an undecided knock, as though
some hand were groping for the knocker. ‘The frolicsome youth of the
neighbourhood,’ said Eugene, ‘whom I should be delighted to pitch from
this elevation into the churchyard below, without any intermediate
ceremonies, have probably turned the lamp out. I am on duty to-night,
and will see to the door.’

His friend had barely had time to recall the unprecedented gleam of
determination with which he had spoken of finding this girl, and which
had faded out of him with the breath of the spoken words, when Eugene
came back, ushering in a most disgraceful shadow of a man, shaking from
head to foot, and clothed in shabby grease and smear.

‘This interesting gentleman,’ said Eugene, ‘is the son--the
occasionally rather trying son, for he has his failings--of a lady of my
acquaintance. My dear Mortimer--Mr Dolls.’ Eugene had no idea what his
name was, knowing the little dressmaker’s to be assumed, but presented
him with easy confidence under the first appellation that his
associations suggested.

‘I gather, my dear Mortimer,’ pursued Eugene, as Lightwood stared at
the obscene visitor, ‘from the manner of Mr Dolls--which is occasionally
complicated--that he desires to make some communication to me. I have
mentioned to Mr Dolls that you and I are on terms of confidence, and
have requested Mr Dolls to develop his views here.’

The wretched object being much embarrassed by holding what remained
of his hat, Eugene airily tossed it to the door, and put him down in a
chair.

‘It will be necessary, I think,’ he observed, ‘to wind up Mr Dolls,
before anything to any mortal purpose can be got out of him. Brandy, Mr
Dolls, or--?’

‘Threepenn’orth Rum,’ said Mr Dolls.

A judiciously small quantity of the spirit was given him in a
wine-glass, and he began to convey it to his mouth, with all kinds of
falterings and gyrations on the road.

‘The nerves of Mr Dolls,’ remarked Eugene to Lightwood, ‘are
considerably unstrung. And I deem it on the whole expedient to fumigate
Mr Dolls.’

He took the shovel from the grate, sprinkled a few live ashes on it, and
from a box on the chimney-piece took a few pastiles, which he set upon
them; then, with great composure began placidly waving the shovel in
front of Mr Dolls, to cut him off from his company.

‘Lord bless my soul, Eugene!’ cried Lightwood, laughing again, ‘what a
mad fellow you are! Why does this creature come to see you?’

‘We shall hear,’ said Wrayburn, very observant of his face withal. ‘Now
then. Speak out. Don’t be afraid. State your business, Dolls.’

‘Mist Wrayburn!’ said the visitor, thickly and huskily. ‘--‘TIS Mist
Wrayburn, ain’t?’ With a stupid stare.

‘Of course it is. Look at me. What do you want?’

Mr Dolls collapsed in his chair, and faintly said ‘Threepenn’orth Rum.’

‘Will you do me the favour, my dear Mortimer, to wind up Mr Dolls
again?’ said Eugene. ‘I am occupied with the fumigation.’

A similar quantity was poured into his glass, and he got it to his lips
by similar circuitous ways. Having drunk it, Mr Dolls, with an evident
fear of running down again unless he made haste, proceeded to business.

‘Mist Wrayburn. Tried to nudge you, but you wouldn’t. You want that
drection. You want t’know where she lives. DO you Mist Wrayburn?’

With a glance at his friend, Eugene replied to the question sternly, ‘I
do.’

‘I am er man,’ said Mr Dolls, trying to smite himself on the breast, but
bringing his hand to bear upon the vicinity of his eye, ‘er do it. I am
er man er do it.’

‘What are you the man to do?’ demanded Eugene, still sternly.

‘Er give up that drection.’

‘Have you got it?’

With a most laborious attempt at pride and dignity, Mr Dolls rolled
his head for some time, awakening the highest expectations, and then
answered, as if it were the happiest point that could possibly be
expected of him: ‘No.’

‘What do you mean then?’

Mr Dolls, collapsing in the drowsiest manner after his late intellectual
triumph, replied: ‘Threepenn’orth Rum.’

‘Wind him up again, my dear Mortimer,’ said Wrayburn; ‘wind him up
again.’

‘Eugene, Eugene,’ urged Lightwood in a low voice, as he complied, ‘can
you stoop to the use of such an instrument as this?’

‘I said,’ was the reply, made with that former gleam of determination,
‘that I would find her out by any means, fair or foul. These are foul,
and I’ll take them--if I am not first tempted to break the head of Mr
Dolls with the fumigator. Can you get the direction? Do you mean that?
Speak! If that’s what you have come for, say how much you want.’

‘Ten shillings--Threepenn’orths Rum,’ said Mr Dolls.

‘You shall have it.’

‘Fifteen shillings--Threepenn’orths Rum,’ said Mr Dolls, making an
attempt to stiffen himself.

‘You shall have it. Stop at that. How will you get the direction you
talk of?’

‘I am er man,’ said Mr Dolls, with majesty, ‘er get it, sir.’

‘How will you get it, I ask you?’

‘I am ill-used vidual,’ said Mr Dolls. ‘Blown up morning t’night. Called
names. She makes Mint money, sir, and never stands Threepenn’orth Rum.’

‘Get on,’ rejoined Eugene, tapping his palsied head with the
fire-shovel, as it sank on his breast. ‘What comes next?’

Making a dignified attempt to gather himself together, but, as it were,
dropping half a dozen pieces of himself while he tried in vain to pick
up one, Mr Dolls, swaying his head from side to side, regarded his
questioner with what he supposed to be a haughty smile and a scornful
glance.

‘She looks upon me as mere child, sir. I am NOT mere child, sir. Man.
Man talent. Lerrers pass betwixt ‘em. Postman lerrers. Easy for man
talent er get drection, as get his own drection.’

‘Get it then,’ said Eugene; adding very heartily under his breath,
‘--You Brute! Get it, and bring it here to me, and earn the money for
sixty threepenn’orths of rum, and drink them all, one a top of another,
and drink yourself dead with all possible expedition.’ The latter
clauses of these special instructions he addressed to the fire, as he
gave it back the ashes he had taken from it, and replaced the shovel.

Mr Dolls now struck out the highly unexpected discovery that he had been
insulted by Lightwood, and stated his desire to ‘have it out with him’
on the spot, and defied him to come on, upon the liberal terms of
a sovereign to a halfpenny. Mr Dolls then fell a crying, and then
exhibited a tendency to fall asleep. This last manifestation as by far
the most alarming, by reason of its threatening his prolonged stay
on the premises, necessitated vigorous measures. Eugene picked up his
worn-out hat with the tongs, clapped it on his head, and, taking him by
the collar--all this at arm’s length--conducted him down stairs and out
of the precincts into Fleet Street. There, he turned his face westward,
and left him.

When he got back, Lightwood was standing over the fire, brooding in a
sufficiently low-spirited manner.

‘I’ll wash my hands of Mr Dolls physically--’ said Eugene, ‘and be with
you again directly, Mortimer.’

‘I would much prefer,’ retorted Mortimer, ‘your washing your hands of Mr
Dolls, morally, Eugene.’

‘So would I,’ said Eugene; ‘but you see, dear boy, I can’t do without
him.’

In a minute or two he resumed his chair, as perfectly unconcerned as
usual, and rallied his friend on having so narrowly escaped the prowess
of their muscular visitor.

‘I can’t be amused on this theme,’ said Mortimer, restlessly. ‘You can
make almost any theme amusing to me, Eugene, but not this.’

‘Well!’ cried Eugene, ‘I am a little ashamed of it myself, and therefore
let us change the subject.’

‘It is so deplorably underhanded,’ said Mortimer. ‘It is so unworthy of
you, this setting on of such a shameful scout.’

‘We have changed the subject!’ exclaimed Eugene, airily. ‘We have found
a new one in that word, scout. Don’t be like Patience on a mantelpiece
frowning at Dolls, but sit down, and I’ll tell you something that you
really will find amusing. Take a cigar. Look at this of mine. I
light it--draw one puff--breathe the smoke out--there it goes--it’s
Dolls!--it’s gone--and being gone you are a man again.’

‘Your subject,’ said Mortimer, after lighting a cigar, and comforting
himself with a whiff or two, ‘was scouts, Eugene.’

‘Exactly. Isn’t it droll that I never go out after dark, but I find
myself attended, always by one scout, and often by two?’

Lightwood took his cigar from his lips in surprise, and looked at his
friend, as if with a latent suspicion that there must be a jest or
hidden meaning in his words.

‘On my honour, no,’ said Wrayburn, answering the look and smiling
carelessly; ‘I don’t wonder at your supposing so, but on my honour, no.
I say what I mean. I never go out after dark, but I find myself in the
ludicrous situation of being followed and observed at a distance, always
by one scout, and often by two.’

‘Are you sure, Eugene?’

‘Sure? My dear boy, they are always the same.’

‘But there’s no process out against you. The Jews only threaten. They
have done nothing. Besides, they know where to find you, and I represent
you. Why take the trouble?’

‘Observe the legal mind!’ remarked Eugene, turning round to the
furniture again, with an air of indolent rapture. ‘Observe the dyer’s
hand, assimilating itself to what it works in,--or would work in, if
anybody would give it anything to do. Respected solicitor, it’s not
that. The schoolmaster’s abroad.’

‘The schoolmaster?’

‘Ay! Sometimes the schoolmaster and the pupil are both abroad. Why, how
soon you rust in my absence! You don’t understand yet? Those fellows
who were here one night. They are the scouts I speak of, as doing me the
honour to attend me after dark.’

‘How long has this been going on?’ asked Lightwood, opposing a serious
face to the laugh of his friend.

‘I apprehend it has been going on, ever since a certain person went off.
Probably, it had been going on some little time before I noticed it:
which would bring it to about that time.’

‘Do you think they suppose you to have inveigled her away?’

‘My dear Mortimer, you know the absorbing nature of my professional
occupations; I really have not had leisure to think about it.’

‘Have you asked them what they want? Have you objected?’

‘Why should I ask them what they want, dear fellow, when I am
indifferent what they want? Why should I express objection, when I don’t
object?’

‘You are in your most reckless mood. But you called the situation just
now, a ludicrous one; and most men object to that, even those who are
utterly indifferent to everything else.’

‘You charm me, Mortimer, with your reading of my weaknesses. (By-the-by,
that very word, Reading, in its critical use, always charms me. An
actress’s Reading of a chambermaid, a dancer’s Reading of a hornpipe, a
singer’s Reading of a song, a marine painter’s Reading of the sea,
the kettle-drum’s Reading of an instrumental passage, are phrases
ever youthful and delightful.) I was mentioning your perception of my
weaknesses. I own to the weakness of objecting to occupy a ludicrous
position, and therefore I transfer the position to the scouts.’

‘I wish, Eugene, you would speak a little more soberly and plainly, if
it were only out of consideration for my feeling less at ease than you
do.’

‘Then soberly and plainly, Mortimer, I goad the schoolmaster to madness.
I make the schoolmaster so ridiculous, and so aware of being made
ridiculous, that I see him chafe and fret at every pore when we cross
one another. The amiable occupation has been the solace of my life,
since I was baulked in the manner unnecessary to recall. I have derived
inexpressible comfort from it. I do it thus: I stroll out after dark,
stroll a little way, look in at a window and furtively look out for the
schoolmaster. Sooner or later, I perceive the schoolmaster on the watch;
sometimes accompanied by his hopeful pupil; oftener, pupil-less. Having
made sure of his watching me, I tempt him on, all over London. One
night I go east, another night north, in a few nights I go all round the
compass. Sometimes, I walk; sometimes, I proceed in cabs, draining the
pocket of the schoolmaster who then follows in cabs. I study and get
up abstruse No Thoroughfares in the course of the day. With Venetian
mystery I seek those No Thoroughfares at night, glide into them by means
of dark courts, tempt the schoolmaster to follow, turn suddenly, and
catch him before he can retreat. Then we face one another, and I pass
him as unaware of his existence, and he undergoes grinding torments.
Similarly, I walk at a great pace down a short street, rapidly turn the
corner, and, getting out of his view, as rapidly turn back. I catch him
coming on post, again pass him as unaware of his existence, and again
he undergoes grinding torments. Night after night his disappointment is
acute, but hope springs eternal in the scholastic breast, and he follows
me again to-morrow. Thus I enjoy the pleasures of the chase, and derive
great benefit from the healthful exercise. When I do not enjoy the
pleasures of the chase, for anything I know he watches at the Temple
Gate all night.’

‘This is an extraordinary story,’ observed Lightwood, who had heard it
out with serious attention. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘You are a little hipped, dear fellow,’ said Eugene; ‘you have been too
sedentary. Come and enjoy the pleasures of the chase.’

‘Do you mean that you believe he is watching now?’

‘I have not the slightest doubt he is.’

‘Have you seen him to-night?’

‘I forgot to look for him when I was last out,’ returned Eugene with the
calmest indifference; ‘but I dare say he was there. Come! Be a British
sportsman and enjoy the pleasures of the chase. It will do you good.’

Lightwood hesitated; but, yielding to his curiosity, rose.

‘Bravo!’ cried Eugene, rising too. ‘Or, if Yoicks would be in better
keeping, consider that I said Yoicks. Look to your feet, Mortimer, for
we shall try your boots. When you are ready, I am--need I say with a Hey
Ho Chivey, and likewise with a Hark Forward, Hark Forward, Tantivy?’

‘Will nothing make you serious?’ said Mortimer, laughing through his
gravity.

‘I am always serious, but just now I am a little excited by the glorious
fact that a southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a hunting evening.
Ready? So. We turn out the lamp and shut the door, and take the field.’

As the two friends passed out of the Temple into the public street,
Eugene demanded with a show of courteous patronage in which direction
Mortimer would you like the run to be? ‘There is a rather difficult
country about Bethnal Green,’ said Eugene, ‘and we have not taken in
that direction lately. What is your opinion of Bethnal Green?’ Mortimer
assented to Bethnal Green, and they turned eastward. ‘Now, when we come
to St Paul’s churchyard,’ pursued Eugene, ‘we’ll loiter artfully, and
I’ll show you the schoolmaster.’ But, they both saw him, before they got
there; alone, and stealing after them in the shadow of the houses, on
the opposite side of the way.

‘Get your wind,’ said Eugene, ‘for I am off directly. Does it occur
to you that the boys of Merry England will begin to deteriorate in an
educational light, if this lasts long? The schoolmaster can’t attend to
me and the boys too. Got your wind? I am off!’

At what a rate he went, to breathe the schoolmaster; and how he then
lounged and loitered, to put his patience to another kind of wear;
what preposterous ways he took, with no other object on earth than to
disappoint and punish him; and how he wore him out by every piece of
ingenuity that his eccentric humour could devise; all this Lightwood
noted, with a feeling of astonishment that so careless a man could be so
wary, and that so idle a man could take so much trouble. At last, far on
in the third hour of the pleasures of the chase, when he had brought the
poor dogging wretch round again into the City, he twisted Mortimer up
a few dark entries, twisted him into a little square court, twisted him
sharp round again, and they almost ran against Bradley Headstone.

‘And you see, as I was saying, Mortimer,’ remarked Eugene aloud with
the utmost coolness, as though there were no one within hearing
by themselves: ‘and you see, as I was saying--undergoing grinding
torments.’

It was not too strong a phrase for the occasion. Looking like the hunted
and not the hunter, baffled, worn, with the exhaustion of deferred
hope and consuming hate and anger in his face, white-lipped, wild-eyed,
draggle-haired, seamed with jealousy and anger, and torturing himself
with the conviction that he showed it all and they exulted in it, he
went by them in the dark, like a haggard head suspended in the air: so
completely did the force of his expression cancel his figure.

Mortimer Lightwood was not an extraordinarily impressible man, but this
face impressed him. He spoke of it more than once on the remainder of
the way home, and more than once when they got home.

They had been abed in their respective rooms two or three hours, when
Eugene was partly awakened by hearing a footstep going about, and was
fully awakened by seeing Lightwood standing at his bedside.

‘Nothing wrong, Mortimer?’

‘No.’

‘What fancy takes you, then, for walking about in the night?’

‘I am horribly wakeful.’

‘How comes that about, I wonder!’

‘Eugene, I cannot lose sight of that fellow’s face.’

‘Odd!’ said Eugene with a light laugh, ‘I can.’ And turned over, and
fell asleep again.



Chapter 11

IN THE DARK


There was no sleep for Bradley Headstone on that night when Eugene
Wrayburn turned so easily in his bed; there was no sleep for little
Miss Peecher. Bradley consumed the lonely hours, and consumed himself in
haunting the spot where his careless rival lay a dreaming; little Miss
Peecher wore them away in listening for the return home of the master
of her heart, and in sorrowfully presaging that much was amiss with him.
Yet more was amiss with him than Miss Peecher’s simply arranged little
work-box of thoughts, fitted with no gloomy and dark recesses, could
hold. For, the state of the man was murderous.

The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it. More; he irritated
it, with a kind of perverse pleasure akin to that which a sick man
sometimes has in irritating a wound upon his body. Tied up all day with
his disciplined show upon him, subdued to the performance of his routine
of educational tricks, encircled by a gabbling crowd, he broke loose at
night like an ill-tamed wild animal. Under his daily restraint, it was
his compensation, not his trouble, to give a glance towards his state at
night, and to the freedom of its being indulged. If great criminals told
the truth--which, being great criminals, they do not--they would very
rarely tell of their struggles against the crime. Their struggles are
towards it. They buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody shore,
not to recede from it. This man perfectly comprehended that he hated his
rival with his strongest and worst forces, and that if he tracked him to
Lizzie Hexam, his so doing would never serve himself with her, or serve
her. All his pains were taken, to the end that he might incense himself
with the sight of the detested figure in her company and favour, in her
place of concealment. And he knew as well what act of his would follow
if he did, as he knew that his mother had borne him. Granted, that he
may not have held it necessary to make express mention to himself of the
one familiar truth any more than of the other.

He knew equally well that he fed his wrath and hatred, and that he
accumulated provocation and self-justification, by being made the
nightly sport of the reckless and insolent Eugene. Knowing all
this,--and still always going on with infinite endurance, pains, and
perseverance, could his dark soul doubt whither he went?

Baffled, exasperated, and weary, he lingered opposite the Temple gate
when it closed on Wrayburn and Lightwood, debating with himself should
he go home for that time or should he watch longer. Possessed in his
jealousy by the fixed idea that Wrayburn was in the secret, if it were
not altogether of his contriving, Bradley was as confident of getting
the better of him at last by sullenly sticking to him, as he would have
been--and often had been--of mastering any piece of study in the way
of his vocation, by the like slow persistent process. A man of rapid
passions and sluggish intelligence, it had served him often and should
serve him again.

The suspicion crossed him as he rested in a doorway with his eyes upon
the Temple gate, that perhaps she was even concealed in that set of
Chambers. It would furnish another reason for Wrayburn’s purposeless
walks, and it might be. He thought of it and thought of it, until
he resolved to steal up the stairs, if the gatekeeper would let him
through, and listen. So, the haggard head suspended in the air flitted
across the road, like the spectre of one of the many heads erst hoisted
upon neighbouring Temple Bar, and stopped before the watchman.

The watchman looked at it, and asked: ‘Who for?’

‘Mr Wrayburn.’

‘It’s very late.’

‘He came back with Mr Lightwood, I know, near upon two hours ago. But if
he has gone to bed, I’ll put a paper in his letter-box. I am expected.’

The watchman said no more, but opened the gate, though rather
doubtfully. Seeing, however, that the visitor went straight and fast in
the right direction, he seemed satisfied.

The haggard head floated up the dark staircase, and softly descended
nearer to the floor outside the outer door of the chambers. The doors
of the rooms within, appeared to be standing open. There were rays of
candlelight from one of them, and there was the sound of a footstep
going about. There were two voices. The words they uttered were not
distinguishable, but they were both the voices of men.