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Our Mutual Friend
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND ***
Produced by Donald Lainson
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
Charles Dickens
CONTENTS
Book the First
THE CUP AND THE LIP
1. ON THE LOOK OUT
2. THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE
3. ANOTHER MAN
4. THE R. WILFER FAMILY
5. BOFFIN’S BOWER
6. CUT ADRIFT
7. MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF
8. MR BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
9. MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
10. A MARRIAGE CONTRACT
11. PODSNAPPERY
12. THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN’S BROW
13. TRACKING THE BIRD OF PREY
14. THE BIRD OF PREY BROUGHT DOWN
15. TWO NEW SERVANTS
16. MINDERS AND RE-MINDERS
17. A DISMAL SWAMP
Book the Second
BIRDS OF A FEATHER
1. OF AN EDUCATIONAL CHARACTER
2. STILL EDUCATIONAL
3. A PIECE OF WORK
4. CUPID PROMPTED
5. MERCURY PROMPTING
6. A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER
7. IN WHICH A FRIENDLY MOVE IS ORIGINATED
8. IN WHICH AN INNOCENT ELOPEMENT OCCURS
9. IN WHICH THE ORPHAN MAKES HIS WILL
10. A SUCCESSOR
11. SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
12. MORE BIRDS OF PREY
13. A SOLO AND A DUETT
14. STRONG OF PURPOSE
15. THE WHOLE CASE SO FAR
16. AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION
Book the Third
A LONG LANE
1. LODGERS IN QUEER STREET
2. A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT
3. THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE
4. A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY
5. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO BAD COMPANY
6. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY
7. THE FRIENDLY MOVE TAKES UP A STRONG POSITION
8. THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY
9. SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION
10. SCOUTS OUT
11. IN THE DARK
12. MEANING MISCHIEF
13. GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME, AND HANG HIM
14. MR WEGG PREPARES A GRINDSTONE FOR MR BOFFIN’S NOSE
15. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN AT HIS WORST
16. THE FEAST OF THE THREE HOBGOBLINS
17. A SOCIAL CHORUS
Book the Fourth
A TURNING
1. SETTING TRAPS
2. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN RISES A LITTLE
3. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN
4. A RUNAWAY MATCH
5. CONCERNING THE MENDICANT’S BRIDE
6. A CRY FOR HELP
7. BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN
8. A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER
9. TWO PLACES VACATED
10. THE DOLLS’ DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD
11. EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS’ DRESSMAKER’S DISCOVERY
12. THE PASSING SHADOW
13. SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER DUST
14. CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE
15. WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET
16. PERSONS AND THINGS IN GENERAL
17. THE VOICE OF SOCIETY
POSTSCRIPT, IN LIEU OF PREFACE
BOOK THE FIRST -- THE CUP AND THE LIP
Chapter 1
ON THE LOOK OUT
In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no
need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with
two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which
is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening
was closing in.
The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled
hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty,
sufficiently like him to be recognizable as his daughter. The girl
rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the
rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband,
kept an eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line, and he could
not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no
inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boathook and a coil of rope,
and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy and too small
to take in cargo for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or
river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked
for something, with a most intent and searching gaze. The tide, which
had turned an hour before, was running down, and his eyes watched
every little race and eddy in its broad sweep, as the boat made slight
head-way against it, or drove stern foremost before it, according as he
directed his daughter by a movement of his head. She watched his face
as earnestly as he watched the river. But, in the intensity of her look
there was a touch of dread or horror.
Allied to the bottom of the river rather than the surface, by reason of
the slime and ooze with which it was covered, and its sodden state, this
boat and the two figures in it obviously were doing something that they
often did, and were seeking what they often sought. Half savage as the
man showed, with no covering on his matted head, with his brown arms
bare to between the elbow and the shoulder, with the loose knot of a
looser kerchief lying low on his bare breast in a wilderness of beard
and whisker, with such dress as he wore seeming to be made out of the
mud that begrimed his boat, still there was a business-like usage in his
steady gaze. So with every lithe action of the girl, with every turn of
her wrist, perhaps most of all with her look of dread or horror; they
were things of usage.
‘Keep her out, Lizzie. Tide runs strong here. Keep her well afore the
sweep of it.’
Trusting to the girl’s skill and making no use of the rudder, he eyed
the coming tide with an absorbed attention. So the girl eyed him. But,
it happened now, that a slant of light from the setting sun glanced into
the bottom of the boat, and, touching a rotten stain there which bore
some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human form, coloured it as
though with diluted blood. This caught the girl’s eye, and she shivered.
‘What ails you?’ said the man, immediately aware of it, though so intent
on the advancing waters; ‘I see nothing afloat.’
The red light was gone, the shudder was gone, and his gaze, which had
come back to the boat for a moment, travelled away again. Wheresoever
the strong tide met with an impediment, his gaze paused for an instant.
At every mooring-chain and rope, at every stationery boat or barge that
split the current into a broad-arrowhead, at the offsets from the piers
of Southwark Bridge, at the paddles of the river steamboats as they beat
the filthy water, at the floating logs of timber lashed together lying
off certain wharves, his shining eyes darted a hungry look. After a
darkening hour or so, suddenly the rudder-lines tightened in his hold,
and he steered hard towards the Surrey shore.
Always watching his face, the girl instantly answered to the action in
her sculling; presently the boat swung round, quivered as from a sudden
jerk, and the upper half of the man was stretched out over the stern.
The girl pulled the hood of a cloak she wore, over her head and over her
face, and, looking backward so that the front folds of this hood were
turned down the river, kept the boat in that direction going before the
tide. Until now, the boat had barely held her own, and had hovered about
one spot; but now, the banks changed swiftly, and the deepening shadows
and the kindling lights of London Bridge were passed, and the tiers of
shipping lay on either hand.
It was not until now that the upper half of the man came back into the
boat. His arms were wet and dirty, and he washed them over the side. In
his right hand he held something, and he washed that in the river too.
It was money. He chinked it once, and he blew upon it once, and he spat
upon it once,--‘for luck,’ he hoarsely said--before he put it in his
pocket.
‘Lizzie!’
The girl turned her face towards him with a start, and rowed in silence.
Her face was very pale. He was a hook-nosed man, and with that and his
bright eyes and his ruffled head, bore a certain likeness to a roused
bird of prey.
‘Take that thing off your face.’
She put it back.
‘Here! and give me hold of the sculls. I’ll take the rest of the spell.’
‘No, no, father! No! I can’t indeed. Father!--I cannot sit so near it!’
He was moving towards her to change places, but her terrified
expostulation stopped him and he resumed his seat.
‘What hurt can it do you?’
‘None, none. But I cannot bear it.’
‘It’s my belief you hate the sight of the very river.’
‘I--I do not like it, father.’
‘As if it wasn’t your living! As if it wasn’t meat and drink to you!’
At these latter words the girl shivered again, and for a moment paused
in her rowing, seeming to turn deadly faint. It escaped his attention,
for he was glancing over the stern at something the boat had in tow.
‘How can you be so thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The very
fire that warmed you when you were a babby, was picked out of the river
alongside the coal barges. The very basket that you slept in, the tide
washed ashore. The very rockers that I put it upon to make a cradle
of it, I cut out of a piece of wood that drifted from some ship or
another.’
Lizzie took her right hand from the scull it held, and touched her
lips with it, and for a moment held it out lovingly towards him: then,
without speaking, she resumed her rowing, as another boat of similar
appearance, though in rather better trim, came out from a dark place and
dropped softly alongside.
‘In luck again, Gaffer?’ said a man with a squinting leer, who sculled
her and who was alone, ‘I know’d you was in luck again, by your wake as
you come down.’
‘Ah!’ replied the other, drily. ‘So you’re out, are you?’
‘Yes, pardner.’
There was now a tender yellow moonlight on the river, and the new comer,
keeping half his boat’s length astern of the other boat looked hard at
its track.
‘I says to myself,’ he went on, ‘directly you hove in view, yonder’s
Gaffer, and in luck again, by George if he ain’t! Scull it is,
pardner--don’t fret yourself--I didn’t touch him.’ This was in answer
to a quick impatient movement on the part of Gaffer: the speaker at the
same time unshipping his scull on that side, and laying his hand on the
gunwale of Gaffer’s boat and holding to it.
‘He’s had touches enough not to want no more, as well as I make him
out, Gaffer! Been a knocking about with a pretty many tides, ain’t he
pardner? Such is my out-of-luck ways, you see! He must have passed me
when he went up last time, for I was on the lookout below bridge here. I
a’most think you’re like the wulturs, pardner, and scent ‘em out.’
He spoke in a dropped voice, and with more than one glance at Lizzie who
had pulled on her hood again. Both men then looked with a weird unholy
interest in the wake of Gaffer’s boat.
‘Easy does it, betwixt us. Shall I take him aboard, pardner?’
‘No,’ said the other. In so surly a tone that the man, after a blank
stare, acknowledged it with the retort:
‘--Arn’t been eating nothing as has disagreed with you, have you,
pardner?’
‘Why, yes, I have,’ said Gaffer. ‘I have been swallowing too much of
that word, Pardner. I am no pardner of yours.’
‘Since when was you no pardner of mine, Gaffer Hexam Esquire?’
‘Since you was accused of robbing a man. Accused of robbing a live man!’
said Gaffer, with great indignation.
‘And what if I had been accused of robbing a dead man, Gaffer?’
‘You COULDN’T do it.’
‘Couldn’t you, Gaffer?’
‘No. Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a dead man to
have money? What world does a dead man belong to? ‘Tother world. What
world does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse’s? Can
a corpse own it, want it, spend it, claim it, miss it? Don’t try to go
confounding the rights and wrongs of things in that way. But it’s worthy
of the sneaking spirit that robs a live man.’
‘I’ll tell you what it is--.’
‘No you won’t. I’ll tell you what it is. You got off with a short time
of it for putting your hand in the pocket of a sailor, a live sailor.
Make the most of it and think yourself lucky, but don’t think after
that to come over ME with your pardners. We have worked together in time
past, but we work together no more in time present nor yet future. Let
go. Cast off!’
‘Gaffer! If you think to get rid of me this way--.’
‘If I don’t get rid of you this way, I’ll try another, and chop you over
the fingers with the stretcher, or take a pick at your head with the
boat-hook. Cast off! Pull you, Lizzie. Pull home, since you won’t let
your father pull.’
Lizzie shot ahead, and the other boat fell astern. Lizzie’s father,
composing himself into the easy attitude of one who had asserted the
high moralities and taken an unassailable position, slowly lighted a
pipe, and smoked, and took a survey of what he had in tow. What he had
in tow, lunged itself at him sometimes in an awful manner when the boat
was checked, and sometimes seemed to try to wrench itself away, though
for the most part it followed submissively. A neophyte might have
fancied that the ripples passing over it were dreadfully like faint
changes of expression on a sightless face; but Gaffer was no neophyte
and had no fancies.
Chapter 2
THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE
Mr and Mrs Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a
bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick
and span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new,
all their servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was
new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures
were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly married as was
lawfully compatible with their having a bran-new baby, and if they had
set up a great-grandfather, he would have come home in matting from the
Pantechnicon, without a scratch upon him, French polished to the crown
of his head.
For, in the Veneering establishment, from the hall-chairs with the new
coat of arms, to the grand pianoforte with the new action, and upstairs
again to the new fire-escape, all things were in a state of high varnish
and polish. And what was observable in the furniture, was observable in
the Veneerings--the surface smelt a little too much of the workshop and
was a trifle sticky.
There was an innocent piece of dinner-furniture that went upon easy
castors and was kept over a livery stable-yard in Duke Street, Saint
James’s, when not in use, to whom the Veneerings were a source of blind
confusion. The name of this article was Twemlow. Being first cousin
to Lord Snigsworth, he was in frequent requisition, and at many houses
might be said to represent the dining-table in its normal state. Mr and
Mrs Veneering, for example, arranging a dinner, habitually started with
Twemlow, and then put leaves in him, or added guests to him. Sometimes,
the table consisted of Twemlow and half a dozen leaves; sometimes, of
Twemlow and a dozen leaves; sometimes, Twemlow was pulled out to his
utmost extent of twenty leaves. Mr and Mrs Veneering on occasions of
ceremony faced each other in the centre of the board, and thus the
parallel still held; for, it always happened that the more Twemlow was
pulled out, the further he found himself from the center, and nearer
to the sideboard at one end of the room, or the window-curtains at the
other.
But, it was not this which steeped the feeble soul of Twemlow in
confusion. This he was used to, and could take soundings of. The abyss
to which he could find no bottom, and from which started forth the
engrossing and ever-swelling difficulty of his life, was the insoluble
question whether he was Veneering’s oldest friend, or newest friend.
To the excogitation of this problem, the harmless gentleman had devoted
many anxious hours, both in his lodgings over the livery stable-yard,
and in the cold gloom, favourable to meditation, of Saint James’s
Square. Thus. Twemlow had first known Veneering at his club, where
Veneering then knew nobody but the man who made them known to one
another, who seemed to be the most intimate friend he had in the world,
and whom he had known two days--the bond of union between their souls,
the nefarious conduct of the committee respecting the cookery of
a fillet of veal, having been accidentally cemented at that date.
Immediately upon this, Twemlow received an invitation to dine with
Veneering, and dined: the man being of the party. Immediately upon
that, Twemlow received an invitation to dine with the man, and dined:
Veneering being of the party. At the man’s were a Member, an Engineer, a
Payer-off of the National Debt, a Poem on Shakespeare, a Grievance, and
a Public Office, who all seem to be utter strangers to Veneering. And
yet immediately after that, Twemlow received an invitation to dine at
Veneerings, expressly to meet the Member, the Engineer, the Payer-off
of the National Debt, the Poem on Shakespeare, the Grievance, and the
Public Office, and, dining, discovered that all of them were the most
intimate friends Veneering had in the world, and that the wives of all
of them (who were all there) were the objects of Mrs Veneering’s most
devoted affection and tender confidence.
Thus it had come about, that Mr Twemlow had said to himself in his
lodgings, with his hand to his forehead: ‘I must not think of this. This
is enough to soften any man’s brain,’--and yet was always thinking of
it, and could never form a conclusion.
This evening the Veneerings give a banquet. Eleven leaves in the
Twemlow; fourteen in company all told. Four pigeon-breasted retainers in
plain clothes stand in line in the hall. A fifth retainer, proceeding up
the staircase with a mournful air--as who should say, ‘Here is another
wretched creature come to dinner; such is life!’--announces, ‘Mis-ter
Twemlow!’
Mrs Veneering welcomes her sweet Mr Twemlow. Mr Veneering welcomes
his dear Twemlow. Mrs Veneering does not expect that Mr Twemlow can in
nature care much for such insipid things as babies, but so old a friend
must please to look at baby. ‘Ah! You will know the friend of your
family better, Tootleums,’ says Mr Veneering, nodding emotionally at
that new article, ‘when you begin to take notice.’ He then begs to make
his dear Twemlow known to his two friends, Mr Boots and Mr Brewer--and
clearly has no distinct idea which is which.
But now a fearful circumstance occurs.
‘Mis-ter and Mis-sus Podsnap!’
‘My dear,’ says Mr Veneering to Mrs Veneering, with an air of much
friendly interest, while the door stands open, ‘the Podsnaps.’
A too, too smiling large man, with a fatal freshness on him, appearing
with his wife, instantly deserts his wife and darts at Twemlow with:
‘How do you do? So glad to know you. Charming house you have here. I
hope we are not late. So glad of the opportunity, I am sure!’
When the first shock fell upon him, Twemlow twice skipped back in
his neat little shoes and his neat little silk stockings of a bygone
fashion, as if impelled to leap over a sofa behind him; but the large
man closed with him and proved too strong.
‘Let me,’ says the large man, trying to attract the attention of his
wife in the distance, ‘have the pleasure of presenting Mrs Podsnap
to her host. She will be,’ in his fatal freshness he seems to find
perpetual verdure and eternal youth in the phrase, ‘she will be so glad
of the opportunity, I am sure!’
In the meantime, Mrs Podsnap, unable to originate a mistake on her own
account, because Mrs Veneering is the only other lady there, does her
best in the way of handsomely supporting her husband’s, by looking
towards Mr Twemlow with a plaintive countenance and remarking to Mrs
Veneering in a feeling manner, firstly, that she fears he has been
rather bilious of late, and, secondly, that the baby is already very
like him.
It is questionable whether any man quite relishes being mistaken for
any other man; but, Mr Veneering having this very evening set up the
shirt-front of the young Antinous in new worked cambric just come home,
is not at all complimented by being supposed to be Twemlow, who is dry
and weazen and some thirty years older. Mrs Veneering equally resents
the imputation of being the wife of Twemlow. As to Twemlow, he is
so sensible of being a much better bred man than Veneering, that he
considers the large man an offensive ass.
In this complicated dilemma, Mr Veneering approaches the large man with
extended hand and, smilingly assures that incorrigible personage that he
is delighted to see him: who in his fatal freshness instantly replies:
‘Thank you. I am ashamed to say that I cannot at this moment recall
where we met, but I am so glad of this opportunity, I am sure!’
Then pouncing upon Twemlow, who holds back with all his feeble might, he
is haling him off to present him, as Veneering, to Mrs Podsnap, when the
arrival of more guests unravels the mistake. Whereupon, having re-shaken
hands with Veneering as Veneering, he re-shakes hands with Twemlow as
Twemlow, and winds it all up to his own perfect satisfaction by saying
to the last-named, ‘Ridiculous opportunity--but so glad of it, I am
sure!’
Now, Twemlow having undergone this terrific experience, having likewise
noted the fusion of Boots in Brewer and Brewer in Boots, and having
further observed that of the remaining seven guests four discrete
characters enter with wandering eyes and wholly declined to commit
themselves as to which is Veneering, until Veneering has them in his
grasp;--Twemlow having profited by these studies, finds his brain
wholesomely hardening as he approaches the conclusion that he really is
Veneering’s oldest friend, when his brain softens again and all is
lost, through his eyes encountering Veneering and the large man linked
together as twin brothers in the back drawing-room near the conservatory
door, and through his ears informing him in the tones of Mrs Veneering
that the same large man is to be baby’s godfather.
‘Dinner is on the table!’
Thus the melancholy retainer, as who should say, ‘Come down and be
poisoned, ye unhappy children of men!’
Twemlow, having no lady assigned him, goes down in the rear, with
his hand to his forehead. Boots and Brewer, thinking him indisposed,
whisper, ‘Man faint. Had no lunch.’ But he is only stunned by the
unvanquishable difficulty of his existence.
Revived by soup, Twemlow discourses mildly of the Court Circular with
Boots and Brewer. Is appealed to, at the fish stage of the banquet, by
Veneering, on the disputed question whether his cousin Lord Snigsworth
is in or out of town? Gives it that his cousin is out of town. ‘At
Snigsworthy Park?’ Veneering inquires. ‘At Snigsworthy,’ Twemlow
rejoins. Boots and Brewer regard this as a man to be cultivated; and
Veneering is clear that he is a remunerative article. Meantime the
retainer goes round, like a gloomy Analytical Chemist: always seeming
to say, after ‘Chablis, sir?’--‘You wouldn’t if you knew what it’s made
of.’
The great looking-glass above the sideboard, reflects the table and the
company. Reflects the new Veneering crest, in gold and eke in silver,
frosted and also thawed, a camel of all work. The Heralds’ College found
out a Crusading ancestor for Veneering who bore a camel on his shield
(or might have done it if he had thought of it), and a caravan of camels
take charge of the fruits and flowers and candles, and kneel down be
loaded with the salt. Reflects Veneering; forty, wavy-haired, dark,
tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy--a kind of sufficiently
well-looking veiled-prophet, not prophesying. Reflects Mrs Veneering;
fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not so much light hair as she might
have, gorgeous in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory,
conscious that a corner of her husband’s veil is over herself. Reflects
Podsnap; prosperously feeding, two little light-coloured wiry wings, one
on either side of his else bald head, looking as like his hairbrushes as
his hair, dissolving view of red beads on his forehead, large allowance
of crumpled shirt-collar up behind. Reflects Mrs Podsnap; fine woman
for Professor Owen, quantity of bone, neck and nostrils like a
rocking-horse, hard features, majestic head-dress in which Podsnap has
hung golden offerings. Reflects Twemlow; grey, dry, polite, susceptible
to east wind, First-Gentleman-in-Europe collar and cravat, cheeks drawn
in as if he had made a great effort to retire into himself some years
ago, and had got so far and had never got any farther. Reflects mature
young lady; raven locks, and complexion that lights up well when well
powdered--as it is--carrying on considerably in the captivation of
mature young gentleman; with too much nose in his face, too much ginger
in his whiskers, too much torso in his waistcoat, too much sparkle in
his studs, his eyes, his buttons, his talk, and his teeth. Reflects
charming old Lady Tippins on Veneering’s right; with an immense obtuse
drab oblong face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long Walk up
the top of her head, as a convenient public approach to the bunch of
false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs Veneering opposite, who
is pleased to be patronized. Reflects a certain ‘Mortimer’, another
of Veneering’s oldest friends; who never was in the house before,
and appears not to want to come again, who sits disconsolate on Mrs
Veneering’s left, and who was inveigled by Lady Tippins (a friend of
his boyhood) to come to these people’s and talk, and who won’t talk.
Reflects Eugene, friend of Mortimer; buried alive in the back of his
chair, behind a shoulder--with a powder-epaulette on it--of the mature
young lady, and gloomily resorting to the champagne chalice whenever
proffered by the Analytical Chemist. Lastly, the looking-glass reflects
Boots and Brewer, and two other stuffed Buffers interposed between the
rest of the company and possible accidents.
The Veneering dinners are excellent dinners--or new people wouldn’t
come--and all goes well. Notably, Lady Tippins has made a series of
experiments on her digestive functions, so extremely complicated and
daring, that if they could be published with their results it might
benefit the human race. Having taken in provisions from all parts of the
world, this hardy old cruiser has last touched at the North Pole, when,
as the ice-plates are being removed, the following words fall from her:
‘I assure you, my dear Veneering--’
(Poor Twemlow’s hand approaches his forehead, for it would seem now,
that Lady Tippins is going to be the oldest friend.)
‘I assure you, my dear Veneering, that it is the oddest affair! Like
the advertising people, I don’t ask you to trust me, without offering
a respectable reference. Mortimer there, is my reference, and knows all
about it.’
Mortimer raises his drooping eyelids, and slightly opens his mouth. But
a faint smile, expressive of ‘What’s the use!’ passes over his face, and
he drops his eyelids and shuts his mouth.
‘Now, Mortimer,’ says Lady Tippins, rapping the sticks of her closed
green fan upon the knuckles of her left hand--which is particularly rich
in knuckles, ‘I insist upon your telling all that is to be told about
the man from Jamaica.’
‘Give you my honour I never heard of any man from Jamaica, except the
man who was a brother,’ replies Mortimer.
‘Tobago, then.’
‘Nor yet from Tobago.’
‘Except,’ Eugene strikes in: so unexpectedly that the mature young lady,
who has forgotten all about him, with a start takes the epaulette out
of his way: ‘except our friend who long lived on rice-pudding and
isinglass, till at length to his something or other, his physician said
something else, and a leg of mutton somehow ended in daygo.’
A reviving impression goes round the table that Eugene is coming out. An
unfulfilled impression, for he goes in again.
‘Now, my dear Mrs Veneering,’ quoth Lady Tippins, I appeal to you
whether this is not the basest conduct ever known in this world? I carry
my lovers about, two or three at a time, on condition that they are very
obedient and devoted; and here is my oldest lover-in-chief, the head of
all my slaves, throwing off his allegiance before company! And here is
another of my lovers, a rough Cymon at present certainly, but of whom
I had most hopeful expectations as to his turning out well in course of
time, pretending that he can’t remember his nursery rhymes! On purpose
to annoy me, for he knows how I doat upon them!’
A grisly little fiction concerning her lovers is Lady Tippins’s point.
She is always attended by a lover or two, and she keeps a little list
of her lovers, and she is always booking a new lover, or striking out an
old lover, or putting a lover in her black list, or promoting a lover to
her blue list, or adding up her lovers, or otherwise posting her book.
Mrs Veneering is charmed by the humour, and so is Veneering. Perhaps it
is enhanced by a certain yellow play in Lady Tippins’s throat, like the
legs of scratching poultry.
‘I banish the false wretch from this moment, and I strike him out of
my Cupidon (my name for my Ledger, my dear,) this very night. But I am
resolved to have the account of the man from Somewhere, and I beg you
to elicit it for me, my love,’ to Mrs Veneering, ‘as I have lost my own
influence. Oh, you perjured man!’ This to Mortimer, with a rattle of her
fan.
‘We are all very much interested in the man from Somewhere,’ Veneering
observes.
Then the four Buffers, taking heart of grace all four at once, say:
‘Deeply interested!’
‘Quite excited!’
‘Dramatic!’
‘Man from Nowhere, perhaps!’
And then Mrs Veneering--for the Lady Tippins’s winning wiles are
contagious--folds her hands in the manner of a supplicating child, turns
to her left neighbour, and says, ‘Tease! Pay! Man from Tumwhere!’ At
which the four Buffers, again mysteriously moved all four at once,
explain, ‘You can’t resist!’
‘Upon my life,’ says Mortimer languidly, ‘I find it immensely
embarrassing to have the eyes of Europe upon me to this extent, and my
only consolation is that you will all of you execrate Lady Tippins in
your secret hearts when you find, as you inevitably will, the man from
Somewhere a bore. Sorry to destroy romance by fixing him with a local
habitation, but he comes from the place, the name of which escapes me,
but will suggest itself to everybody else here, where they make the
wine.’
Eugene suggests ‘Day and Martin’s.’
‘No, not that place,’ returns the unmoved Mortimer, ‘that’s where they
make the Port. My man comes from the country where they make the Cape
Wine. But look here, old fellow; its not at all statistical and it’s
rather odd.’
It is always noticeable at the table of the Veneerings, that no man
troubles himself much about the Veneerings themselves, and that any
one who has anything to tell, generally tells it to anybody else in
preference.
‘The man,’ Mortimer goes on, addressing Eugene, ‘whose name is Harmon,
was only son of a tremendous old rascal who made his money by Dust.’
‘Red velveteens and a bell?’ the gloomy Eugene inquires.
‘And a ladder and basket if you like. By which means, or by others, he
grew rich as a Dust Contractor, and lived in a hollow in a hilly country
entirely composed of Dust. On his own small estate the growling old
vagabond threw up his own mountain range, like an old volcano, and its
geological formation was Dust. Coal-dust, vegetable-dust, bone-dust,
crockery dust, rough dust and sifted dust,--all manner of Dust.’
A passing remembrance of Mrs Veneering, here induces Mortimer to address
his next half-dozen words to her; after which he wanders away again,
tries Twemlow and finds he doesn’t answer, ultimately takes up with the
Buffers who receive him enthusiastically.
‘The moral being--I believe that’s the right expression--of this
exemplary person, derived its highest gratification from anathematizing
his nearest relations and turning them out of doors. Having begun (as
was natural) by rendering these attentions to the wife of his bosom,
he next found himself at leisure to bestow a similar recognition on the
claims of his daughter. He chose a husband for her, entirely to his own
satisfaction and not in the least to hers, and proceeded to settle upon
her, as her marriage portion, I don’t know how much Dust, but something
immense. At this stage of the affair the poor girl respectfully
intimated that she was secretly engaged to that popular character whom
the novelists and versifiers call Another, and that such a marriage
would make Dust of her heart and Dust of her life--in short, would
set her up, on a very extensive scale, in her father’s business.
Immediately, the venerable parent--on a cold winter’s night, it is
said--anathematized and turned her out.’
Here, the Analytical Chemist (who has evidently formed a very low
opinion of Mortimer’s story) concedes a little claret to the Buffers;
who, again mysteriously moved all four at once, screw it slowly into
themselves with a peculiar twist of enjoyment, as they cry in chorus,
‘Pray go on.’
‘The pecuniary resources of Another were, as they usually are, of a very
limited nature. I believe I am not using too strong an expression when
I say that Another was hard up. However, he married the young lady, and
they lived in a humble dwelling, probably possessing a porch ornamented
with honeysuckle and woodbine twining, until she died. I must refer
you to the Registrar of the District in which the humble dwelling was
situated, for the certified cause of death; but early sorrow and anxiety
may have had to do with it, though they may not appear in the ruled
pages and printed forms. Indisputably this was the case with Another,
for he was so cut up by the loss of his young wife that if he outlived
her a year it was as much as he did.’
There is that in the indolent Mortimer, which seems to hint that if good
society might on any account allow itself to be impressible, he, one of
good society, might have the weakness to be impressed by what he here
relates. It is hidden with great pains, but it is in him. The gloomy
Eugene too, is not without some kindred touch; for, when that appalling
Lady Tippins declares that if Another had survived, he should have gone
down at the head of her list of lovers--and also when the mature young
lady shrugs her epaulettes, and laughs at some private and confidential
comment from the mature young gentleman--his gloom deepens to that
degree that he trifles quite ferociously with his dessert-knife.
Mortimer proceeds.
‘We must now return, as novelists say, and as we all wish they wouldn’t,
to the man from Somewhere. Being a boy of fourteen, cheaply educated
at Brussels when his sister’s expulsion befell, it was some little time
before he heard of it--probably from herself, for the mother was dead;
but that I don’t know. Instantly, he absconded, and came over here. He
must have been a boy of spirit and resource, to get here on a stopped
allowance of five sous a week; but he did it somehow, and he burst in
on his father, and pleaded his sister’s cause. Venerable parent promptly
resorts to anathematization, and turns him out. Shocked and terrified
boy takes flight, seeks his fortune, gets aboard ship, ultimately
turns up on dry land among the Cape wine: small proprietor, farmer,
grower--whatever you like to call it.’
At this juncture, shuffling is heard in the hall, and tapping is heard
at the dining-room door. Analytical Chemist goes to the door, confers
angrily with unseen tapper, appears to become mollified by descrying
reason in the tapping, and goes out.
‘So he was discovered, only the other day, after having been expatriated
about fourteen years.’
A Buffer, suddenly astounding the other three, by detaching himself, and
asserting individuality, inquires: ‘How discovered, and why?’
‘Ah! To be sure. Thank you for reminding me. Venerable parent dies.’
Same Buffer, emboldened by success, says: ‘When?’
‘The other day. Ten or twelve months ago.’
Same Buffer inquires with smartness, ‘What of?’ But herein perishes a
melancholy example; being regarded by the three other Buffers with a
stony stare, and attracting no further attention from any mortal.
‘Venerable parent,’ Mortimer repeats with a passing remembrance that
there is a Veneering at table, and for the first time addressing
him--‘dies.’
The gratified Veneering repeats, gravely, ‘dies’; and folds his arms,
and composes his brow to hear it out in a judicial manner, when he finds
himself again deserted in the bleak world.
‘His will is found,’ said Mortimer, catching Mrs Podsnap’s
rocking-horse’s eye. ‘It is dated very soon after the son’s flight. It
leaves the lowest of the range of dust-mountains, with some sort of a
dwelling-house at its foot, to an old servant who is sole executor, and
all the rest of the property--which is very considerable--to the son.
He directs himself to be buried with certain eccentric ceremonies and
precautions against his coming to life, with which I need not bore you,
and that’s all--except--’ and this ends the story.
The Analytical Chemist returning, everybody looks at him. Not because
anybody wants to see him, but because of that subtle influence in nature
which impels humanity to embrace the slightest opportunity of looking at
anything, rather than the person who addresses it.
‘--Except that the son’s inheriting is made conditional on his marrying
a girl, who at the date of the will, was a child of four or five years
old, and who is now a marriageable young woman. Advertisement and
inquiry discovered the son in the man from Somewhere, and at the present
moment, he is on his way home from there--no doubt, in a state of great
astonishment--to succeed to a very large fortune, and to take a wife.’
Mrs Podsnap inquires whether the young person is a young person of
personal charms? Mortimer is unable to report.
Mr Podsnap inquires what would become of the very large fortune, in the
event of the marriage condition not being fulfilled? Mortimer replies,
that by special testamentary clause it would then go to the old servant
above mentioned, passing over and excluding the son; also, that if
the son had not been living, the same old servant would have been sole
residuary legatee.
Mrs Veneering has just succeeded in waking Lady Tippins from a snore, by
dexterously shunting a train of plates and dishes at her knuckles across
the table; when everybody but Mortimer himself becomes aware that the
Analytical Chemist is, in a ghostly manner, offering him a folded paper.
Curiosity detains Mrs Veneering a few moments.
Mortimer, in spite of all the arts of the chemist, placidly refreshes
himself with a glass of Madeira, and remains unconscious of the Document
which engrosses the general attention, until Lady Tippins (who has a
habit of waking totally insensible), having remembered where she is, and
recovered a perception of surrounding objects, says: ‘Falser man than
Don Juan; why don’t you take the note from the commendatore?’ Upon
which, the chemist advances it under the nose of Mortimer, who looks
round at him, and says:
‘What’s this?’
Analytical Chemist bends and whispers.
‘WHO?’ Says Mortimer.
Analytical Chemist again bends and whispers.
Mortimer stares at him, and unfolds the paper. Reads it, reads it twice,
turns it over to look at the blank outside, reads it a third time.
‘This arrives in an extraordinarily opportune manner,’ says Mortimer
then, looking with an altered face round the table: ‘this is the
conclusion of the story of the identical man.’
‘Already married?’ one guesses.
‘Declines to marry?’ another guesses.
‘Codicil among the dust?’ another guesses.
‘Why, no,’ says Mortimer; ‘remarkable thing, you are all wrong. The
story is completer and rather more exciting than I supposed. Man’s
drowned!’
Chapter 3
ANOTHER MAN
As the disappearing skirts of the ladies ascended the Veneering
staircase, Mortimer, following them forth from the dining-room, turned
into a library of bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally gilded,
and requested to see the messenger who had brought the paper. He was a
boy of about fifteen. Mortimer looked at the boy, and the boy looked
at the bran-new pilgrims on the wall, going to Canterbury in more gold
frame than procession, and more carving than country.
‘Whose writing is this?’
‘Mine, sir.’
‘Who told you to write it?’
‘My father, Jesse Hexam.’
‘Is it he who found the body?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What is your father?’
The boy hesitated, looked reproachfully at the pilgrims as if they had
involved him in a little difficulty, then said, folding a plait in the
right leg of his trousers, ‘He gets his living along-shore.’
‘Is it far?’
‘Is which far?’ asked the boy, upon his guard, and again upon the road
to Canterbury.
‘To your father’s?’
‘It’s a goodish stretch, sir. I come up in a cab, and the cab’s waiting
to be paid. We could go back in it before you paid it, if you liked.
I went first to your office, according to the direction of the papers
found in the pockets, and there I see nobody but a chap of about my age
who sent me on here.’
There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted savagery, and
uncompleted civilization. His voice was hoarse and coarse, and his face
was coarse, and his stunted figure was coarse; but he was cleaner than
other boys of his type; and his writing, though large and round,
was good; and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened
curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks
at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.
‘Were any means taken, do you know, boy, to ascertain if it was possible
to restore life?’ Mortimer inquired, as he sought for his hat.
‘You wouldn’t ask, sir, if you knew his state. Pharaoh’s multitude that
were drowned in the Red Sea, ain’t more beyond restoring to life. If
Lazarus was only half as far gone, that was the greatest of all the
miracles.’
‘Halloa!’ cried Mortimer, turning round with his hat upon his head, ‘you
seem to be at home in the Red Sea, my young friend?’
‘Read of it with teacher at the school,’ said the boy.
‘And Lazarus?’
‘Yes, and him too. But don’t you tell my father! We should have no peace
in our place, if that got touched upon. It’s my sister’s contriving.’
‘You seem to have a good sister.’
‘She ain’t half bad,’ said the boy; ‘but if she knows her letters it’s
the most she does--and them I learned her.’
The gloomy Eugene, with his hands in his pockets, had strolled in and
assisted at the latter part of the dialogue; when the boy spoke these
words slightingly of his sister, he took him roughly enough by the chin,
and turned up his face to look at it.
‘Well, I’m sure, sir!’ said the boy, resisting; ‘I hope you’ll know me
again.’
Eugene vouchsafed no answer; but made the proposal to Mortimer, ‘I’ll
go with you, if you like?’ So, they all three went away together in the
vehicle that had brought the boy; the two friends (once boys together at
a public school) inside, smoking cigars; the messenger on the box beside
the driver.
‘Let me see,’ said Mortimer, as they went along; ‘I have been, Eugene,
upon the honourable roll of solicitors of the High Court of Chancery,
and attorneys at Common Law, five years; and--except gratuitously taking
instructions, on an average once a fortnight, for the will of Lady
Tippins who has nothing to leave--I have had no scrap of business but
this romantic business.’
‘And I,’ said Eugene, ‘have been “called” seven years, and have had no
business at all, and never shall have any. And if I had, I shouldn’t
know how to do it.’
‘I am far from being clear as to the last particular,’ returned
Mortimer, with great composure, ‘that I have much advantage over you.’
‘I hate,’ said Eugene, putting his legs up on the opposite seat, ‘I hate
my profession.’
‘Shall I incommode you, if I put mine up too?’ returned Mortimer. ‘Thank
you. I hate mine.’
‘It was forced upon me,’ said the gloomy Eugene, ‘because it was
understood that we wanted a barrister in the family. We have got a
precious one.’
‘It was forced upon me,’ said Mortimer, ‘because it was understood that
we wanted a solicitor in the family. And we have got a precious one.’
‘There are four of us, with our names painted on a door-post in right of
one black hole called a set of chambers,’ said Eugene; ‘and each of us
has the fourth of a clerk--Cassim Baba, in the robber’s cave--and Cassim
is the only respectable member of the party.’
‘I am one by myself, one,’ said Mortimer, ‘high up an awful staircase
commanding a burial-ground, and I have a whole clerk to myself, and he
has nothing to do but look at the burial-ground, and what he will turn
out when arrived at maturity, I cannot conceive. Whether, in that shabby
rook’s nest, he is always plotting wisdom, or plotting murder; whether
he will grow up, after so much solitary brooding, to enlighten his
fellow-creatures, or to poison them; is the only speck of interest that
presents itself to my professional view. Will you give me a light? Thank
you.’
‘Then idiots talk,’ said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking
with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, ‘of Energy.
If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that
I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such
parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I to rush out into the street, collar
the first man of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake him, and say,
“Go to law upon the spot, you dog, and retain me, or I’ll be the death
of you”? Yet that would be energy.’
‘Precisely my view of the case, Eugene. But show me a good opportunity,
show me something really worth being energetic about, and I’ll show you
energy.’
‘And so will I,’ said Eugene.
And it is likely enough that ten thousand other young men, within the
limits of the London Post-office town delivery, made the same hopeful
remark in the course of the same evening.
The wheels rolled on, and rolled down by the Monument and by the Tower,
and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe; down by where
accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds,
like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced
it over the bank and sunk it in the river. In and out among vessels
that seemed to have got ashore, and houses that seemed to have got
afloat--among bow-splits staring into windows, and windows staring
into ships--the wheels rolled on, until they stopped at a dark corner,
river-washed and otherwise not washed at all, where the boy alighted and
opened the door.
‘You must walk the rest, sir; it’s not many yards.’ He spoke in the
singular number, to the express exclusion of Eugene.
‘This is a confoundedly out-of-the-way place,’ said Mortimer, slipping
over the stones and refuse on the shore, as the boy turned the corner
sharp.
‘Here’s my father’s, sir; where the light is.’
The low building had the look of having once been a mill. There was a
rotten wart of wood upon its forehead that seemed to indicate where
the sails had been, but the whole was very indistinctly seen in the
obscurity of the night. The boy lifted the latch of the door, and they
passed at once into a low circular room, where a man stood before a red
fire, looking down into it, and a girl sat engaged in needlework. The
fire was in a rusty brazier, not fitted to the hearth; and a common
lamp, shaped like a hyacinth-root, smoked and flared in the neck of a
stone bottle on the table. There was a wooden bunk or berth in a corner,
and in another corner a wooden stair leading above--so clumsy and steep
that it was little better than a ladder. Two or three old sculls and
oars stood against the wall, and against another part of the wall was a
small dresser, making a spare show of the commonest articles of crockery
and cooking-vessels. The roof of the room was not plastered, but was
formed of the flooring of the room above. This, being very old, knotted,
seamed, and beamed, gave a lowering aspect to the chamber; and roof, and
walls, and floor, alike abounding in old smears of flour, red-lead (or
some such stain which it had probably acquired in warehousing), and
damp, alike had a look of decomposition.
‘The gentleman, father.’
The figure at the red fire turned, raised its ruffled head, and looked
like a bird of prey.
‘You’re Mortimer Lightwood Esquire; are you, sir?’
‘Mortimer Lightwood is my name. What you found,’ said Mortimer, glancing
rather shrinkingly towards the bunk; ‘is it here?’
‘’Tain’t not to say here, but it’s close by. I do everything reg’lar.
I’ve giv’ notice of the circumstarnce to the police, and the police have
took possession of it. No time ain’t been lost, on any hand. The police
have put into print already, and here’s what the print says of it.’
Taking up the bottle with the lamp in it, he held it near a paper on
the wall, with the police heading, BODY FOUND. The two friends read the
handbill as it stuck against the wall, and Gaffer read them as he held
the light.
‘Only papers on the unfortunate man, I see,’ said Lightwood, glancing
from the description of what was found, to the finder.
‘Only papers.’
Here the girl arose with her work in her hand, and went out at the door.
‘No money,’ pursued Mortimer; ‘but threepence in one of the
skirt-pockets.’
‘Three. Penny. Pieces,’ said Gaffer Hexam, in as many sentences.
‘The trousers pockets empty, and turned inside out.’
Gaffer Hexam nodded. ‘But that’s common. Whether it’s the wash of the
tide or no, I can’t say. Now, here,’ moving the light to another similar
placard, ‘HIS pockets was found empty, and turned inside out. And here,’
moving the light to another, ‘HER pocket was found empty, and turned
inside out. And so was this one’s. And so was that one’s. I can’t read,
nor I don’t want to it, for I know ‘em by their places on the wall. This
one was a sailor, with two anchors and a flag and G. F. T. on his arm.
Look and see if he warn’t.’
‘Quite right.’
‘This one was the young woman in grey boots, and her linen marked with a
cross. Look and see if she warn’t.’
‘Quite right.’
‘This is him as had a nasty cut over the eye. This is them two young
sisters what tied themselves together with a handkecher. This the
drunken old chap, in a pair of list slippers and a nightcap, wot had
offered--it afterwards come out--to make a hole in the water for a
quartern of rum stood aforehand, and kept to his word for the first and
last time in his life. They pretty well papers the room, you see; but I
know ‘em all. I’m scholar enough!’
He waved the light over the whole, as if to typify the light of his
scholarly intelligence, and then put it down on the table and stood
behind it looking intently at his visitors. He had the special
peculiarity of some birds of prey, that when he knitted his brow, his
ruffled crest stood highest.
‘You did not find all these yourself; did you?’ asked Eugene.
To which the bird of prey slowly rejoined, ‘And what might YOUR name be,
now?’
‘This is my friend,’ Mortimer Lightwood interposed; ‘Mr Eugene
Wrayburn.’
‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn, is it? And what might Mr Eugene Wrayburn have asked
of me?’
‘I asked you, simply, if you found all these yourself?’
‘I answer you, simply, most on ‘em.’
‘Do you suppose there has been much violence and robbery, beforehand,
among these cases?’
‘I don’t suppose at all about it,’ returned Gaffer. ‘I ain’t one of the
supposing sort. If you’d got your living to haul out of the river every
day of your life, you mightn’t be much given to supposing. Am I to show
the way?’
As he opened the door, in pursuance of a nod from Lightwood, an
extremely pale and disturbed face appeared in the doorway--the face of a
man much agitated.
‘A body missing?’ asked Gaffer Hexam, stopping short; ‘or a body found?
Which?’
‘I am lost!’ replied the man, in a hurried and an eager manner.
‘Lost?’
‘I--I--am a stranger, and don’t know the way. I--I--want to find the
place where I can see what is described here. It is possible I may know
it.’ He was panting, and could hardly speak; but, he showed a copy of
the newly-printed bill that was still wet upon the wall. Perhaps its
newness, or perhaps the accuracy of his observation of its general look,
guided Gaffer to a ready conclusion.
‘This gentleman, Mr Lightwood, is on that business.’
‘Mr Lightwood?’
During a pause, Mortimer and the stranger confronted each other. Neither
knew the other.
‘I think, sir,’ said Mortimer, breaking the awkward silence with his
airy self-possession, ‘that you did me the honour to mention my name?’
‘I repeated it, after this man.’
‘You said you were a stranger in London?’
‘An utter stranger.’
‘Are you seeking a Mr Harmon?’
‘No.’
‘Then I believe I can assure you that you are on a fruitless errand, and
will not find what you fear to find. Will you come with us?’
A little winding through some muddy alleys that might have been
deposited by the last ill-savoured tide, brought them to the
wicket-gate and bright lamp of a Police Station; where they found the
Night-Inspector, with a pen and ink, and ruler, posting up his books in
a whitewashed office, as studiously as if he were in a monastery on
top of a mountain, and no howling fury of a drunken woman were banging
herself against a cell-door in the back-yard at his elbow. With the
same air of a recluse much given to study, he desisted from his books to
bestow a distrustful nod of recognition upon Gaffer, plainly importing,
‘Ah! we know all about YOU, and you’ll overdo it some day;’ and to
inform Mr Mortimer Lightwood and friends, that he would attend them
immediately. Then, he finished ruling the work he had in hand (it might
have been illuminating a missal, he was so calm), in a very neat and
methodical manner, showing not the slightest consciousness of the woman
who was banging herself with increased violence, and shrieking most
terrifically for some other woman’s liver.
‘A bull’s-eye,’ said the Night-Inspector, taking up his keys. Which a
deferential satellite produced. ‘Now, gentlemen.’
With one of his keys, he opened a cool grot at the end of the yard,
and they all went in. They quickly came out again, no one speaking but
Eugene: who remarked to Mortimer, in a whisper, ‘Not MUCH worse than
Lady Tippins.’
So, back to the whitewashed library of the monastery--with that liver
still in shrieking requisition, as it had been loudly, while they looked
at the silent sight they came to see--and there through the merits of
the case as summed up by the Abbot. No clue to how body came into river.
Very often was no clue. Too late to know for certain, whether injuries
received before or after death; one excellent surgical opinion said,
before; other excellent surgical opinion said, after. Steward of ship in
which gentleman came home passenger, had been round to view, and could
swear to identity. Likewise could swear to clothes. And then, you
see, you had the papers, too. How was it he had totally disappeared on
leaving ship, ‘till found in river? Well! Probably had been upon some
little game. Probably thought it a harmless game, wasn’t up to things,
and it turned out a fatal game. Inquest to-morrow, and no doubt open
verdict.
‘It appears to have knocked your friend over--knocked him completely off
his legs,’ Mr Inspector remarked, when he had finished his summing up.
‘It has given him a bad turn to be sure!’ This was said in a very low
voice, and with a searching look (not the first he had cast) at the
stranger.
Mr Lightwood explained that it was no friend of his.
‘Indeed?’ said Mr Inspector, with an attentive ear; ‘where did you pick
him up?’
Mr Lightwood explained further.
Mr Inspector had delivered his summing up, and had added these words,
with his elbows leaning on his desk, and the fingers and thumb of his
right hand, fitting themselves to the fingers and thumb of his left.
Mr Inspector moved nothing but his eyes, as he now added, raising his
voice:
‘Turned you faint, sir! Seems you’re not accustomed to this kind of
work?’
The stranger, who was leaning against the chimneypiece with drooping
head, looked round and answered, ‘No. It’s a horrible sight!’
‘You expected to identify, I am told, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘HAVE you identified?’
‘No. It’s a horrible sight. O! a horrible, horrible sight!’
‘Who did you think it might have been?’ asked Mr Inspector. ‘Give us a
description, sir. Perhaps we can help you.’
‘No, no,’ said the stranger; ‘it would be quite useless. Good-night.’
Mr Inspector had not moved, and had given no order; but, the satellite
slipped his back against the wicket, and laid his left arm along the top
of it, and with his right hand turned the bull’s-eye he had taken from
his chief--in quite a casual manner--towards the stranger.
‘You missed a friend, you know; or you missed a foe, you know; or you
wouldn’t have come here, you know. Well, then; ain’t it reasonable to
ask, who was it?’ Thus, Mr Inspector.
‘You must excuse my telling you. No class of man can understand better
than you, that families may not choose to publish their disagreements
and misfortunes, except on the last necessity. I do not dispute that you
discharge your duty in asking me the question; you will not dispute my
right to withhold the answer. Good-night.’
Again he turned towards the wicket, where the satellite, with his eye
upon his chief, remained a dumb statue.
‘At least,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘you will not object to leave me your
card, sir?’
‘I should not object, if I had one; but I have not.’ He reddened and was
much confused as he gave the answer.
‘At least,’ said Mr Inspector, with no change of voice or manner, ‘you
will not object to write down your name and address?’
‘Not at all.’
Mr Inspector dipped a pen in his inkstand, and deftly laid it on a
piece of paper close beside him; then resumed his former attitude.
The stranger stepped up to the desk, and wrote in a rather tremulous
hand--Mr Inspector taking sidelong note of every hair of his head when
it was bent down for the purpose--‘Mr Julius Handford, Exchequer Coffee
House, Palace Yard, Westminster.’
‘Staying there, I presume, sir?’
‘Staying there.’
‘Consequently, from the country?’
‘Eh? Yes--from the country.’
‘Good-night, sir.’
The satellite removed his arm and opened the wicket, and Mr Julius
Handford went out.
‘Reserve!’ said Mr Inspector. ‘Take care of this piece of paper, keep
him in view without giving offence, ascertain that he IS staying there,
and find out anything you can about him.’
The satellite was gone; and Mr Inspector, becoming once again the quiet
Abbot of that Monastery, dipped his pen in his ink and resumed
his books. The two friends who had watched him, more amused by the
professional manner than suspicious of Mr Julius Handford, inquired
before taking their departure too whether he believed there was anything
that really looked bad here?
The Abbot replied with reticence, couldn’t say. If a murder, anybody
might have done it. Burglary or pocket-picking wanted ‘prenticeship. Not
so, murder. We were all of us up to that. Had seen scores of people come
to identify, and never saw one person struck in that particular way.
Might, however, have been Stomach and not Mind. If so, rum stomach.
But to be sure there were rum everythings. Pity there was not a word
of truth in that superstition about bodies bleeding when touched by the
hand of the right person; you never got a sign out of bodies. You got
row enough out of such as her--she was good for all night now (referring
here to the banging demands for the liver), ‘but you got nothing out of
bodies if it was ever so.’
There being nothing more to be done until the Inquest was held next day,
the friends went away together, and Gaffer Hexam and his son went their
separate way. But, arriving at the last corner, Gaffer bade his boy go
home while he turned into a red-curtained tavern, that stood dropsically
bulging over the causeway, ‘for a half-a-pint.’
The boy lifted the latch he had lifted before, and found his sister
again seated before the fire at her work. Who raised her head upon his
coming in and asking:
‘Where did you go, Liz?’
‘I went out in the dark.’
‘There was no necessity for that. It was all right enough.’
‘One of the gentlemen, the one who didn’t speak while I was there,
looked hard at me. And I was afraid he might know what my face meant.
But there! Don’t mind me, Charley! I was all in a tremble of another
sort when you owned to father you could write a little.’
‘Ah! But I made believe I wrote so badly, as that it was odds if any one
could read it. And when I wrote slowest and smeared but with my finger
most, father was best pleased, as he stood looking over me.’
The girl put aside her work, and drawing her seat close to his seat by
the fire, laid her arm gently on his shoulder.
‘You’ll make the most of your time, Charley; won’t you?’
‘Won’t I? Come! I like that. Don’t I?’
‘Yes, Charley, yes. You work hard at your learning, I know. And I work
a little, Charley, and plan and contrive a little (wake out of my
sleep contriving sometimes), how to get together a shilling now, and a
shilling then, that shall make father believe you are beginning to earn
a stray living along shore.’
‘You are father’s favourite, and can make him believe anything.’
‘I wish I could, Charley! For if I could make him believe that learning
was a good thing, and that we might lead better lives, I should be
a’most content to die.’
‘Don’t talk stuff about dying, Liz.’
She placed her hands in one another on his shoulder, and laying her
rich brown cheek against them as she looked down at the fire, went on
thoughtfully:
‘Of an evening, Charley, when you are at the school, and father’s--’
‘At the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters,’ the boy struck in, with a
backward nod of his head towards the public-house.
‘Yes. Then as I sit a-looking at the fire, I seem to see in the burning
coal--like where that glow is now--’
‘That’s gas, that is,’ said the boy, ‘coming out of a bit of a forest
that’s been under the mud that was under the water in the days of Noah’s
Ark. Look here! When I take the poker--so--and give it a dig--’
‘Don’t disturb it, Charley, or it’ll be all in a blaze. It’s that dull
glow near it, coming and going, that I mean. When I look at it of an
evening, it comes like pictures to me, Charley.’
‘Show us a picture,’ said the boy. ‘Tell us where to look.’
‘Ah! It wants my eyes, Charley.’
‘Cut away then, and tell us what your eyes make of it.’
‘Why, there are you and me, Charley, when you were quite a baby that
never knew a mother--’
‘Don’t go saying I never knew a mother,’ interposed the boy, ‘for I knew
a little sister that was sister and mother both.’
The girl laughed delightedly, and her eyes filled with pleasant tears,
as he put both his arms round her waist and so held her.
‘There are you and me, Charley, when father was away at work and locked
us out, for fear we should set ourselves afire or fall out of window,
sitting on the door-sill, sitting on other door-steps, sitting on the
bank of the river, wandering about to get through the time. You
are rather heavy to carry, Charley, and I am often obliged to rest.
Sometimes we are sleepy and fall asleep together in a corner, sometimes
we are very hungry, sometimes we are a little frightened, but what is
oftenest hard upon us is the cold. You remember, Charley?’
‘I remember,’ said the boy, pressing her to him twice or thrice, ‘that I
snuggled under a little shawl, and it was warm there.’
‘Sometimes it rains, and we creep under a boat or the like of that:
sometimes it’s dark, and we get among the gaslights, sitting watching
the people as they go along the streets. At last, up comes father and
takes us home. And home seems such a shelter after out of doors! And
father pulls my shoes off, and dries my feet at the fire, and has me
to sit by him while he smokes his pipe long after you are abed, and
I notice that father’s is a large hand but never a heavy one when it
touches me, and that father’s is a rough voice but never an angry one
when it speaks to me. So, I grow up, and little by little father trusts
me, and makes me his companion, and, let him be put out as he may, never
once strikes me.’
The listening boy gave a grunt here, as much as to say ‘But he strikes
ME though!’
‘Those are some of the pictures of what is past, Charley.’
‘Cut away again,’ said the boy, ‘and give us a fortune-telling one; a
future one.’
‘Well! There am I, continuing with father and holding to father, because
father loves me and I love father. I can’t so much as read a book,
because, if I had learned, father would have thought I was deserting
him, and I should have lost my influence. I have not the influence I
want to have, I cannot stop some dreadful things I try to stop, but I
go on in the hope and trust that the time will come. In the meanwhile
I know that I am in some things a stay to father, and that if I was
not faithful to him he would--in revenge-like, or in disappointment, or
both--go wild and bad.’
‘Give us a touch of the fortune-telling pictures about me.’
‘I was passing on to them, Charley,’ said the girl, who had not changed
her attitude since she began, and who now mournfully shook her head;
‘the others were all leading up. There are you--’
‘Where am I, Liz?’
‘Still in the hollow down by the flare.’
‘There seems to be the deuce-and-all in the hollow down by the flare,’
said the boy, glancing from her eyes to the brazier, which had a grisly
skeleton look on its long thin legs.
‘There are you, Charley, working your way, in secret from father, at
the school; and you get prizes; and you go on better and better; and you
come to be a--what was it you called it when you told me about that?’
‘Ha, ha! Fortune-telling not know the name!’ cried the boy, seeming to
be rather relieved by this default on the part of the hollow down by the
flare. ‘Pupil-teacher.’
‘You come to be a pupil-teacher, and you still go on better and better,
and you rise to be a master full of learning and respect. But the secret
has come to father’s knowledge long before, and it has divided you from
father, and from me.’
‘No it hasn’t!’
‘Yes it has, Charley. I see, as plain as plain can be, that your way is
not ours, and that even if father could be got to forgive your taking
it (which he never could be), that way of yours would be darkened by our
way. But I see too, Charley--’
‘Still as plain as plain can be, Liz?’ asked the boy playfully.
‘Ah! Still. That it is a great work to have cut you away from father’s
life, and to have made a new and good beginning. So there am I, Charley,
left alone with father, keeping him as straight as I can, watching
for more influence than I have, and hoping that through some fortunate
chance, or when he is ill, or when--I don’t know what--I may turn him to
wish to do better things.’
‘You said you couldn’t read a book, Lizzie. Your library of books is the
hollow down by the flare, I think.’
‘I should be very glad to be able to read real books. I feel my want of
learning very much, Charley. But I should feel it much more, if I didn’t
know it to be a tie between me and father.--Hark! Father’s tread!’
It being now past midnight, the bird of prey went straight to roost. At
mid-day following he reappeared at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, in
the character, not new to him, of a witness before a Coroner’s Jury.
Mr Mortimer Lightwood, besides sustaining the character of one of the
witnesses, doubled the part with that of the eminent solicitor who
watched the proceedings on behalf of the representatives of the
deceased, as was duly recorded in the newspapers. Mr Inspector watched
the proceedings too, and kept his watching closely to himself. Mr Julius
Handford having given his right address, and being reported in solvent
circumstances as to his bill, though nothing more was known of him at
his hotel except that his way of life was very retired, had no summons
to appear, and was merely present in the shades of Mr Inspector’s mind.
The case was made interesting to the public, by Mr Mortimer Lightwood’s
evidence touching the circumstances under which the deceased, Mr John
Harmon, had returned to England; exclusive private proprietorship in
which circumstances was set up at dinner-tables for several days, by
Veneering, Twemlow, Podsnap, and all the Buffers: who all related them
irreconcilably with one another, and contradicted themselves. It was
also made interesting by the testimony of Job Potterson, the ship’s
steward, and one Mr Jacob Kibble, a fellow-passenger, that the deceased
Mr John Harmon did bring over, in a hand-valise with which he did
disembark, the sum realized by the forced sale of his little landed
property, and that the sum exceeded, in ready money, seven hundred
pounds. It was further made interesting, by the remarkable experiences
of Jesse Hexam in having rescued from the Thames so many dead bodies,
and for whose behoof a rapturous admirer subscribing himself ‘A friend
to Burial’ (perhaps an undertaker), sent eighteen postage stamps, and
five ‘Now Sir’s to the editor of the Times.
Upon the evidence adduced before them, the Jury found, That the body
of Mr John Harmon had been discovered floating in the Thames, in an
advanced state of decay, and much injured; and that the said Mr John
Harmon had come by his death under highly suspicious circumstances,
though by whose act or in what precise manner there was no evidence
before this Jury to show. And they appended to their verdict, a
recommendation to the Home Office (which Mr Inspector appeared to think
highly sensible), to offer a reward for the solution of the mystery.
Within eight-and-forty hours, a reward of One Hundred Pounds was
proclaimed, together with a free pardon to any person or persons not the
actual perpetrator or perpetrators, and so forth in due form.
This Proclamation rendered Mr Inspector additionally studious, and
caused him to stand meditating on river-stairs and causeways, and to go
lurking about in boats, putting this and that together. But, according
to the success with which you put this and that together, you get a
woman and a fish apart, or a Mermaid in combination. And Mr Inspector
could turn out nothing better than a Mermaid, which no Judge and Jury
would believe in.
Thus, like the tides on which it had been borne to the knowledge of men,
the Harmon Murder--as it came to be popularly called--went up and down,
and ebbed and flowed, now in the town, now in the country, now among
palaces, now among hovels, now among lords and ladies and gentlefolks,
now among labourers and hammerers and ballast-heavers, until at last,
after a long interval of slack water it got out to sea and drifted away.
Chapter 4
THE R. WILFER FAMILY
Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather a grand sound, suggesting on
first acquaintance brasses in country churches, scrolls in stained-glass
windows, and generally the De Wilfers who came over with the Conqueror.
For, it is a remarkable fact in genealogy that no De Any ones ever came
over with Anybody else.
But, the Reginald Wilfer family were of such commonplace extraction and
pursuits that their forefathers had for generations modestly subsisted
on the Docks, the Excise Office, and the Custom House, and the existing
R. Wilfer was a poor clerk. So poor a clerk, though having a limited
salary and an unlimited family, that he had never yet attained the
modest object of his ambition: which was, to wear a complete new suit
of clothes, hat and boots included, at one time. His black hat was brown
before he could afford a coat, his pantaloons were white at the seams
and knees before he could buy a pair of boots, his boots had worn out
before he could treat himself to new pantaloons, and, by the time he
worked round to the hat again, that shining modern article roofed-in an
ancient ruin of various periods.
If the conventional Cherub could ever grow up and be clothed, he might
be photographed as a portrait of Wilfer. His chubby, smooth, innocent
appearance was a reason for his being always treated with condescension
when he was not put down. A stranger entering his own poor house at
about ten o’clock P.M. might have been surprised to find him sitting up
to supper. So boyish was he in his curves and proportions, that his
old schoolmaster meeting him in Cheapside, might have been unable to
withstand the temptation of caning him on the spot. In short, he was
the conventional cherub, after the supposititious shoot just mentioned,
rather grey, with signs of care on his expression, and in decidedly
insolvent circumstances.
He was shy, and unwilling to own to the name of Reginald, as being too
aspiring and self-assertive a name. In his signature he used only the
initial R., and imparted what it really stood for, to none but chosen
friends, under the seal of confidence. Out of this, the facetious habit
had arisen in the neighbourhood surrounding Mincing Lane of making
christian names for him of adjectives and participles beginning with R.
Some of these were more or less appropriate: as Rusty, Retiring, Ruddy,
Round, Ripe, Ridiculous, Ruminative; others, derived their point from
their want of application: as Raging, Rattling, Roaring, Raffish. But,
his popular name was Rumty, which in a moment of inspiration had been
bestowed upon him by a gentleman of convivial habits connected with the
drug-markets, as the beginning of a social chorus, his leading part in
the execution of which had led this gentleman to the Temple of Fame, and
of which the whole expressive burden ran:
‘Rumty iddity, row dow dow,
Sing toodlely, teedlely, bow wow wow.’
Thus he was constantly addressed, even in minor notes on business, as
‘Dear Rumty’; in answer to which, he sedately signed himself, ‘Yours
truly, R. Wilfer.’
He was clerk in the drug-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles.
Chicksey and Stobbles, his former masters, had both become absorbed in
Veneering, once their traveller or commission agent: who had signalized
his accession to supreme power by bringing into the business a quantity
of plate-glass window and French-polished mahogany partition, and a
gleaming and enormous doorplate.
R. Wilfer locked up his desk one evening, and, putting his bunch of keys
in his pocket much as if it were his peg-top, made for home. His home
was in the Holloway region north of London, and then divided from it by
fields and trees. Between Battle Bridge and that part of the Holloway
district in which he dwelt, was a tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles
and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was
shot, dogs were fought, and dust was heaped by contractors. Skirting
the border of this desert, by the way he took, when the light of its
kiln-fires made lurid smears on the fog, R. Wilfer sighed and shook his
head.
‘Ah me!’ said he, ‘what might have been is not what is!’
With which commentary on human life, indicating an experience of it
not exclusively his own, he made the best of his way to the end of his
journey.
Mrs Wilfer was, of course, a tall woman and an angular. Her lord being
cherubic, she was necessarily majestic, according to the principle which
matrimonially unites contrasts. She was much given to tying up her head
in a pocket-handkerchief, knotted under the chin. This head-gear, in
conjunction with a pair of gloves worn within doors, she seemed to
consider as at once a kind of armour against misfortune (invariably
assuming it when in low spirits or difficulties), and as a species of
full dress. It was therefore with some sinking of the spirit that her
husband beheld her thus heroically attired, putting down her candle in
the little hall, and coming down the doorsteps through the little front
court to open the gate for him.
Something had gone wrong with the house-door, for R. Wilfer stopped on
the steps, staring at it, and cried:
‘Hal-loa?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘the man came himself with a pair of pincers,
and took it off, and took it away. He said that as he had no expectation
of ever being paid for it, and as he had an order for another LADIES’
SCHOOL door-plate, it was better (burnished up) for the interests of all
parties.’
‘Perhaps it was, my dear; what do you think?’
‘You are master here, R. W.,’ returned his wife. ‘It is as you think;
not as I do. Perhaps it might have been better if the man had taken the
door too?’
‘My dear, we couldn’t have done without the door.’
‘Couldn’t we?’
‘Why, my dear! Could we?’
‘It is as you think, R. W.; not as I do.’ With those submissive words,
the dutiful wife preceded him down a few stairs to a little basement
front room, half kitchen, half parlour, where a girl of about nineteen,
with an exceedingly pretty figure and face, but with an impatient and
petulant expression both in her face and in her shoulders (which in
her sex and at her age are very expressive of discontent), sat playing
draughts with a younger girl, who was the youngest of the House of
Wilfer. Not to encumber this page by telling off the Wilfers in detail
and casting them up in the gross, it is enough for the present that the
rest were what is called ‘out in the world,’ in various ways, and that
they were Many. So many, that when one of his dutiful children called in
to see him, R. Wilfer generally seemed to say to himself, after a little
mental arithmetic, ‘Oh! here’s another of ‘em!’ before adding aloud,
‘How de do, John,’ or Susan, as the case might be.
‘Well Piggywiggies,’ said R. W., ‘how de do to-night? What I was
thinking of, my dear,’ to Mrs Wilfer already seated in a corner with
folded gloves, ‘was, that as we have let our first floor so well, and as
we have now no place in which you could teach pupils even if pupils--’
‘The milkman said he knew of two young ladies of the highest
respectability who were in search of a suitable establishment, and he
took a card,’ interposed Mrs Wilfer, with severe monotony, as if she
were reading an Act of Parliament aloud. ‘Tell your father whether it
was last Monday, Bella.’
‘But we never heard any more of it, ma,’ said Bella, the elder girl.
‘In addition to which, my dear,’ her husband urged, ‘if you have no
place to put two young persons into--’
‘Pardon me,’ Mrs Wilfer again interposed; ‘they were not young persons.
Two young ladies of the highest respectability. Tell your father, Bella,
whether the milkman said so.’
‘My dear, it is the same thing.’
‘No it is not,’ said Mrs Wilfer, with the same impressive monotony.
‘Pardon me!’
‘I mean, my dear, it is the same thing as to space. As to space. If you
have no space in which to put two youthful fellow-creatures, however
eminently respectable, which I do not doubt, where are those youthful
fellow-creatures to be accommodated? I carry it no further than that.
And solely looking at it,’ said her husband, making the stipulation at
once in a conciliatory, complimentary, and argumentative tone--‘as I am
sure you will agree, my love--from a fellow-creature point of view, my
dear.’
‘I have nothing more to say,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, with a meek
renunciatory action of her gloves. ‘It is as you think, R. W.; not as I
do.’
Here, the huffing of Miss Bella and the loss of three of her men at a
swoop, aggravated by the coronation of an opponent, led to that young
lady’s jerking the draught-board and pieces off the table: which her
sister went down on her knees to pick up.
‘Poor Bella!’ said Mrs Wilfer.
‘And poor Lavinia, perhaps, my dear?’ suggested R. W.
‘Pardon me,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘no!’
It was one of the worthy woman’s specialities that she had an amazing
power of gratifying her splenetic or worldly-minded humours by extolling
her own family: which she thus proceeded, in the present case, to do.
‘No, R. W. Lavinia has not known the trial that Bella has known. The
trial that your daughter Bella has undergone, is, perhaps, without
a parallel, and has been borne, I will say, Nobly. When you see your
daughter Bella in her black dress, which she alone of all the family
wears, and when you remember the circumstances which have led to
her wearing it, and when you know how those circumstances have been
sustained, then, R. W., lay your head upon your pillow and say, “Poor
Lavinia!”’
Here, Miss Lavinia, from her kneeling situation under the table, put in
that she didn’t want to be ‘poored by pa’, or anybody else.
‘I am sure you do not, my dear,’ returned her mother, ‘for you have a
fine brave spirit. And your sister Cecilia has a fine brave spirit
of another kind, a spirit of pure devotion, a beau-ti-ful spirit! The
self-sacrifice of Cecilia reveals a pure and womanly character, very
seldom equalled, never surpassed. I have now in my pocket a letter from
your sister Cecilia, received this morning--received three months after
her marriage, poor child!--in which she tells me that her husband must
unexpectedly shelter under their roof his reduced aunt. “But I will be
true to him, mamma,” she touchingly writes, “I will not leave him, I
must not forget that he is my husband. Let his aunt come!” If this is
not pathetic, if this is not woman’s devotion--!’ The good lady waved
her gloves in a sense of the impossibility of saying more, and tied the
pocket-handkerchief over her head in a tighter knot under her chin.
Bella, who was now seated on the rug to warm herself, with her brown
eyes on the fire and a handful of her brown curls in her mouth, laughed
at this, and then pouted and half cried.
‘I am sure,’ said she, ‘though you have no feeling for me, pa, I am one
of the most unfortunate girls that ever lived. You know how poor we are’
(it is probable he did, having some reason to know it!), ‘and what a
glimpse of wealth I had, and how it melted away, and how I am here in
this ridiculous mourning--which I hate!--a kind of a widow who never was
married. And yet you don’t feel for me.--Yes you do, yes you do.’
This abrupt change was occasioned by her father’s face. She stopped
to pull him down from his chair in an attitude highly favourable to
strangulation, and to give him a kiss and a pat or two on the cheek.
‘But you ought to feel for me, you know, pa.’
‘My dear, I do.’
‘Yes, and I say you ought to. If they had only left me alone and told
me nothing about it, it would have mattered much less. But that nasty Mr
Lightwood feels it his duty, as he says, to write and tell me what is in
reserve for me, and then I am obliged to get rid of George Sampson.’
Here, Lavinia, rising to the surface with the last draughtman rescued,
interposed, ‘You never cared for George Sampson, Bella.’
‘And did I say I did, miss?’ Then, pouting again, with the curls in her
mouth; ‘George Sampson was very fond of me, and admired me very much,
and put up with everything I did to him.’
‘You were rude enough to him,’ Lavinia again interposed.
‘And did I say I wasn’t, miss? I am not setting up to be sentimental
about George Sampson. I only say George Sampson was better than
nothing.’
‘You didn’t show him that you thought even that,’ Lavinia again
interposed.
‘You are a chit and a little idiot,’ returned Bella, ‘or you wouldn’t
make such a dolly speech. What did you expect me to do? Wait till you
are a woman, and don’t talk about what you don’t understand. You only
show your ignorance!’ Then, whimpering again, and at intervals biting
the curls, and stopping to look how much was bitten off, ‘It’s a shame!
There never was such a hard case! I shouldn’t care so much if it wasn’t
so ridiculous. It was ridiculous enough to have a stranger coming over
to marry me, whether he liked it or not. It was ridiculous enough to
know what an embarrassing meeting it would be, and how we never
could pretend to have an inclination of our own, either of us. It was
ridiculous enough to know I shouldn’t like him--how COULD I like him,
left to him in a will, like a dozen of spoons, with everything cut and
dried beforehand, like orange chips. Talk of orange flowers indeed!
I declare again it’s a shame! Those ridiculous points would have been
smoothed away by the money, for I love money, and want money--want it
dreadfully. I hate to be poor, and we are degradingly poor, offensively
poor, miserably poor, beastly poor. But here I am, left with all the
ridiculous parts of the situation remaining, and, added to them all,
this ridiculous dress! And if the truth was known, when the Harmon
murder was all over the town, and people were speculating on its being
suicide, I dare say those impudent wretches at the clubs and places made
jokes about the miserable creature’s having preferred a watery grave to
me. It’s likely enough they took such liberties; I shouldn’t wonder! I
declare it’s a very hard case indeed, and I am a most unfortunate girl.
The idea of being a kind of a widow, and never having been married!
And the idea of being as poor as ever after all, and going into black,
besides, for a man I never saw, and should have hated--as far as HE was
concerned--if I had seen!’
The young lady’s lamentations were checked at this point by a knuckle,
knocking at the half-open door of the room. The knuckle had knocked two
or three times already, but had not been heard.
‘Who is it?’ said Mrs Wilfer, in her Act-of-Parliament manner. ‘Enter!’
A gentleman coming in, Miss Bella, with a short and sharp exclamation,
scrambled off the hearth-rug and massed the bitten curls together in
their right place on her neck.
‘The servant girl had her key in the door as I came up, and directed me
to this room, telling me I was expected. I am afraid I should have asked
her to announce me.’
‘Pardon me,’ returned Mrs Wilfer. ‘Not at all. Two of my daughters. R.
W., this is the gentleman who has taken your first-floor. He was so good
as to make an appointment for to-night, when you would be at home.’
A dark gentleman. Thirty at the utmost. An expressive, one might say
handsome, face. A very bad manner. In the last degree constrained,
reserved, diffident, troubled. His eyes were on Miss Bella for an
instant, and then looked at the ground as he addressed the master of the
house.
‘Seeing that I am quite satisfied, Mr Wilfer, with the rooms, and with
their situation, and with their price, I suppose a memorandum between us
of two or three lines, and a payment down, will bind the bargain? I wish
to send in furniture without delay.’
Two or three times during this short address, the cherub addressed had
made chubby motions towards a chair. The gentleman now took it, laying
a hesitating hand on a corner of the table, and with another hesitating
hand lifting the crown of his hat to his lips, and drawing it before his
mouth.
‘The gentleman, R. W.,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘proposes to take your
apartments by the quarter. A quarter’s notice on either side.’
‘Shall I mention, sir,’ insinuated the landlord, expecting it to be
received as a matter of course, ‘the form of a reference?’
‘I think,’ returned the gentleman, after a pause, ‘that a reference is
not necessary; neither, to say the truth, is it convenient, for I am
a stranger in London. I require no reference from you, and perhaps,
therefore, you will require none from me. That will be fair on both
sides. Indeed, I show the greater confidence of the two, for I will pay
in advance whatever you please, and I am going to trust my furniture
here. Whereas, if you were in embarrassed circumstances--this is merely
supposititious--’
Conscience causing R. Wilfer to colour, Mrs Wilfer, from a corner (she
always got into stately corners) came to the rescue with a deep-toned
‘Per-fectly.’
‘--Why then I--might lose it.’
‘Well!’ observed R. Wilfer, cheerfully, ‘money and goods are certainly
the best of references.’
‘Do you think they ARE the best, pa?’ asked Miss Bella, in a low voice,
and without looking over her shoulder as she warmed her foot on the
fender.
‘Among the best, my dear.’
‘I should have thought, myself, it was so easy to add the usual kind of
one,’ said Bella, with a toss of her curls.
The gentleman listened to her, with a face of marked attention, though
he neither looked up nor changed his attitude. He sat, still and silent,
until his future landlord accepted his proposals, and brought writing
materials to complete the business. He sat, still and silent, while the
landlord wrote.
When the agreement was ready in duplicate (the landlord having worked
at it like some cherubic scribe, in what is conventionally called a
doubtful, which means a not at all doubtful, Old Master), it was signed
by the contracting parties, Bella looking on as scornful witness. The
contracting parties were R. Wilfer, and John Rokesmith Esquire.
When it came to Bella’s turn to sign her name, Mr Rokesmith, who was
standing, as he had sat, with a hesitating hand upon the table, looked
at her stealthily, but narrowly. He looked at the pretty figure bending
down over the paper and saying, ‘Where am I to go, pa? Here, in this
corner?’ He looked at the beautiful brown hair, shading the coquettish
face; he looked at the free dash of the signature, which was a bold one
for a woman’s; and then they looked at one another.
‘Much obliged to you, Miss Wilfer.’
‘Obliged?’
‘I have given you so much trouble.’
‘Signing my name? Yes, certainly. But I am your landlord’s daughter,
sir.’
As there was nothing more to do but pay eight sovereigns in earnest of
the bargain, pocket the agreement, appoint a time for the arrival of his
furniture and himself, and go, Mr Rokesmith did that as awkwardly as it
might be done, and was escorted by his landlord to the outer air. When
R. Wilfer returned, candlestick in hand, to the bosom of his family, he
found the bosom agitated.
‘Pa,’ said Bella, ‘we have got a Murderer for a tenant.’
‘Pa,’ said Lavinia, ‘we have got a Robber.’
‘To see him unable for his life to look anybody in the face!’ said
Bella. ‘There never was such an exhibition.’
‘My dears,’ said their father, ‘he is a diffident gentleman, and I
should say particularly so in the society of girls of your age.’
‘Nonsense, our age!’ cried Bella, impatiently. ‘What’s that got to do
with him?’
‘Besides, we are not of the same age:--which age?’ demanded Lavinia.
‘Never YOU mind, Lavvy,’ retorted Bella; ‘you wait till you are of an
age to ask such questions. Pa, mark my words! Between Mr Rokesmith and
me, there is a natural antipathy and a deep distrust; and something will
come of it!’
‘My dear, and girls,’ said the cherub-patriarch, ‘between Mr Rokesmith
and me, there is a matter of eight sovereigns, and something for supper
shall come of it, if you’ll agree upon the article.’
This was a neat and happy turn to give the subject, treats being rare in
the Wilfer household, where a monotonous appearance of Dutch-cheese at
ten o’clock in the evening had been rather frequently commented on by
the dimpled shoulders of Miss Bella. Indeed, the modest Dutchman himself
seemed conscious of his want of variety, and generally came before the
family in a state of apologetic perspiration. After some discussion on
the relative merits of veal-cutlet, sweetbread, and lobster, a decision
was pronounced in favour of veal-cutlet. Mrs Wilfer then solemnly
divested herself of her handkerchief and gloves, as a preliminary
sacrifice to preparing the frying-pan, and R. W. himself went out
to purchase the viand. He soon returned, bearing the same in a fresh
cabbage-leaf, where it coyly embraced a rasher of ham. Melodious sounds
were not long in rising from the frying-pan on the fire, or in seeming,
as the firelight danced in the mellow halls of a couple of full bottles
on the table, to play appropriate dance-music.
The cloth was laid by Lavvy. Bella, as the acknowledged ornament of the
family, employed both her hands in giving her hair an additional
wave while sitting in the easiest chair, and occasionally threw in a
direction touching the supper: as, ‘Very brown, ma;’ or, to her sister,
‘Put the saltcellar straight, miss, and don’t be a dowdy little puss.’
Meantime her father, chinking Mr Rokesmith’s gold as he sat expectant
between his knife and fork, remarked that six of those sovereigns came
just in time for their landlord, and stood them in a little pile on the
white tablecloth to look at.
‘I hate our landlord!’ said Bella.
But, observing a fall in her father’s face, she went and sat down by him
at the table, and began touching up his hair with the handle of a fork.
It was one of the girl’s spoilt ways to be always arranging the family’s
hair--perhaps because her own was so pretty, and occupied so much of her
attention.
‘You deserve to have a house of your own; don’t you, poor pa?’
‘I don’t deserve it better than another, my dear.’
‘At any rate I, for one, want it more than another,’ said Bella, holding
him by the chin, as she stuck his flaxen hair on end, ‘and I grudge
this money going to the Monster that swallows up so much, when we all
want--Everything. And if you say (as you want to say; I know you want
to say so, pa) “that’s neither reasonable nor honest, Bella,” then I
answer, “Maybe not, pa--very likely--but it’s one of the consequences
of being poor, and of thoroughly hating and detesting to be poor, and
that’s my case.” Now, you look lovely, pa; why don’t you always wear
your hair like that? And here’s the cutlet! If it isn’t very brown, ma,
I can’t eat it, and must have a bit put back to be done expressly.’
However, as it was brown, even to Bella’s taste, the young lady
graciously partook of it without reconsignment to the frying-pan, and
also, in due course, of the contents of the two bottles: whereof
one held Scotch ale and the other rum. The latter perfume, with
the fostering aid of boiling water and lemon-peel, diffused itself
throughout the room, and became so highly concentrated around the warm
fireside, that the wind passing over the house roof must have rushed off
charged with a delicious whiff of it, after buzzing like a great bee at
that particular chimneypot.
‘Pa,’ said Bella, sipping the fragrant mixture and warming her favourite
ankle; ‘when old Mr Harmon made such a fool of me (not to mention
himself, as he is dead), what do you suppose he did it for?’
‘Impossible to say, my dear. As I have told you time out of number since
his will was brought to light, I doubt if I ever exchanged a hundred
words with the old gentleman. If it was his whim to surprise us, his
whim succeeded. For he certainly did it.’
‘And I was stamping my foot and screaming, when he first took notice of
me; was I?’ said Bella, contemplating the ankle before mentioned.
‘You were stamping your little foot, my dear, and screaming with your
little voice, and laying into me with your little bonnet, which you
had snatched off for the purpose,’ returned her father, as if the
remembrance gave a relish to the rum; ‘you were doing this one Sunday
morning when I took you out, because I didn’t go the exact way you
wanted, when the old gentleman, sitting on a seat near, said, “That’s a
nice girl; that’s a VERY nice girl; a promising girl!” And so you were,
my dear.’
‘And then he asked my name, did he, pa?’
‘Then he asked your name, my dear, and mine; and on other Sunday
mornings, when we walked his way, we saw him again, and--and really
that’s all.’
As that was all the rum and water too, or, in other words, as R. W.
delicately signified that his glass was empty, by throwing back his head
and standing the glass upside down on his nose and upper lip, it might
have been charitable in Mrs Wilfer to suggest replenishment. But that
heroine briefly suggesting ‘Bedtime’ instead, the bottles were put away,
and the family retired; she cherubically escorted, like some severe
saint in a painting, or merely human matron allegorically treated.
‘And by this time to-morrow,’ said Lavinia when the two girls were alone
in their room, ‘we shall have Mr Rokesmith here, and shall be expecting
to have our throats cut.’
‘You needn’t stand between me and the candle for all that,’ retorted
Bella. ‘This is another of the consequences of being poor! The idea of a
girl with a really fine head of hair, having to do it by one flat candle
and a few inches of looking-glass!’
‘You caught George Sampson with it, Bella, bad as your means of dressing
it are.’
‘You low little thing. Caught George Sampson with it! Don’t talk about
catching people, miss, till your own time for catching--as you call
it--comes.’
‘Perhaps it has come,’ muttered Lavvy, with a toss of her head.
‘What did you say?’ asked Bella, very sharply. ‘What did you say, miss?’
Lavvy declining equally to repeat or to explain, Bella gradually lapsed
over her hair-dressing into a soliloquy on the miseries of being poor,
as exemplified in having nothing to put on, nothing to go out in,
nothing to dress by, only a nasty box to dress at instead of a
commodious dressing-table, and being obliged to take in suspicious
lodgers. On the last grievance as her climax, she laid great stress--and
might have laid greater, had she known that if Mr Julius Handford had a
twin brother upon earth, Mr John Rokesmith was the man.
Chapter 5
BOFFIN’S BOWER
Over against a London house, a corner house not far from Cavendish
Square, a man with a wooden leg had sat for some years, with his
remaining foot in a basket in cold weather, picking up a living on
this wise:--Every morning at eight o’clock, he stumped to the corner,
carrying a chair, a clothes-horse, a pair of trestles, a board, a
basket, and an umbrella, all strapped together. Separating these, the
board and trestles became a counter, the basket supplied the few small
lots of fruit and sweets that he offered for sale upon it and became a
foot-warmer, the unfolded clothes-horse displayed a choice collection of
halfpenny ballads and became a screen, and the stool planted within it
became his post for the rest of the day. All weathers saw the man at the
post. This is to be accepted in a double sense, for he contrived a
back to his wooden stool, by placing it against the lamp-post. When the
weather was wet, he put up his umbrella over his stock in trade, not
over himself; when the weather was dry, he furled that faded article,
tied it round with a piece of yarn, and laid it cross-wise under the
trestles: where it looked like an unwholesomely-forced lettuce that had
lost in colour and crispness what it had gained in size.
He had established his right to the corner, by imperceptible
prescription. He had never varied his ground an inch, but had in the
beginning diffidently taken the corner upon which the side of the house
gave. A howling corner in the winter time, a dusty corner in the summer
time, an undesirable corner at the best of times. Shelterless fragments
of straw and paper got up revolving storms there, when the main street
was at peace; and the water-cart, as if it were drunk or short-sighted,
came blundering and jolting round it, making it muddy when all else was
clean.
On the front of his sale-board hung a little placard, like a
kettle-holder, bearing the inscription in his own small text:
Errands gone
On with fi
Delity By
Ladies and Gentlemen
I remain
Your humble Servt:
Silas Wegg
He had not only settled it with himself in course of time, that he
was errand-goer by appointment to the house at the corner (though he
received such commissions not half a dozen times in a year, and then
only as some servant’s deputy), but also that he was one of the house’s
retainers and owed vassalage to it and was bound to leal and loyal
interest in it. For this reason, he always spoke of it as ‘Our House,’
and, though his knowledge of its affairs was mostly speculative and
all wrong, claimed to be in its confidence. On similar grounds he never
beheld an inmate at any one of its windows but he touched his hat. Yet,
he knew so little about the inmates that he gave them names of his own
invention: as ‘Miss Elizabeth’, ‘Master George’, ‘Aunt Jane’, ‘Uncle
Parker ‘--having no authority whatever for any such designations, but
particularly the last--to which, as a natural consequence, he stuck with
great obstinacy.
Over the house itself, he exercised the same imaginary power as over its
inhabitants and their affairs. He had never been in it, the length of
a piece of fat black water-pipe which trailed itself over the area-door
into a damp stone passage, and had rather the air of a leech on the
house that had ‘taken’ wonderfully; but this was no impediment to his
arranging it according to a plan of his own. It was a great dingy house
with a quantity of dim side window and blank back premises, and it
cost his mind a world of trouble so to lay it out as to account for
everything in its external appearance. But, this once done, was quite
satisfactory, and he rested persuaded, that he knew his way about the
house blindfold: from the barred garrets in the high roof, to the two
iron extinguishers before the main door--which seemed to request all
lively visitors to have the kindness to put themselves out, before
entering.
Assuredly, this stall of Silas Wegg’s was the hardest little stall of
all the sterile little stalls in London. It gave you the face-ache
to look at his apples, the stomach-ache to look at his oranges, the
tooth-ache to look at his nuts. Of the latter commodity he had always
a grim little heap, on which lay a little wooden measure which had
no discernible inside, and was considered to represent the penn’orth
appointed by Magna Charta. Whether from too much east wind or no--it was
an easterly corner--the stall, the stock, and the keeper, were all as
dry as the Desert. Wegg was a knotty man, and a close-grained, with a
face carved out of very hard material, that had just as much play
of expression as a watchman’s rattle. When he laughed, certain jerks
occurred in it, and the rattle sprung. Sooth to say, he was so wooden
a man that he seemed to have taken his wooden leg naturally, and rather
suggested to the fanciful observer, that he might be expected--if his
development received no untimely check--to be completely set up with a
pair of wooden legs in about six months.
Mr Wegg was an observant person, or, as he himself said, ‘took a
powerful sight of notice’. He saluted all his regular passers-by every
day, as he sat on his stool backed up by the lamp-post; and on the
adaptable character of these salutes he greatly plumed himself. Thus,
to the rector, he addressed a bow, compounded of lay deference, and
a slight touch of the shady preliminary meditation at church; to the
doctor, a confidential bow, as to a gentleman whose acquaintance with
his inside he begged respectfully to acknowledge; before the Quality he
delighted to abase himself; and for Uncle Parker, who was in the army
(at least, so he had settled it), he put his open hand to the side
of his hat, in a military manner which that angry-eyed buttoned-up
inflammatory-faced old gentleman appeared but imperfectly to appreciate.
The only article in which Silas dealt, that was not hard, was
gingerbread. On a certain day, some wretched infant having purchased the
damp gingerbread-horse (fearfully out of condition), and the adhesive
bird-cage, which had been exposed for the day’s sale, he had taken a tin
box from under his stool to produce a relay of those dreadful specimens,
and was going to look in at the lid, when he said to himself, pausing:
‘Oh! Here you are again!’
The words referred to a broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in
mourning, coming comically ambling towards the corner, dressed in a pea
over-coat, and carrying a large stick. He wore thick shoes, and thick
leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger’s. Both as to his dress
and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds
in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his
ears; but with bright, eager, childishly-inquiring, grey eyes, under his
ragged eyebrows, and broad-brimmed hat. A very odd-looking old fellow
altogether.
‘Here you are again,’ repeated Mr Wegg, musing. ‘And what are you now?
Are you in the Funns, or where are you? Have you lately come to settle
in this neighbourhood, or do you own to another neighbourhood? Are you
in independent circumstances, or is it wasting the motions of a bow on
you? Come! I’ll speculate! I’ll invest a bow in you.’
Which Mr Wegg, having replaced his tin box, accordingly did, as he rose
to bait his gingerbread-trap for some other devoted infant. The salute
was acknowledged with:
‘Morning, sir! Morning! Morning!’
[‘Calls me Sir!’ said Mr Wegg, to himself; ‘HE won’t answer. A bow
gone!’)
‘Morning, morning, morning!’
‘Appears to be rather a ‘arty old cock, too,’ said Mr Wegg, as before;
‘Good morning to YOU, sir.’
‘Do you remember me, then?’ asked his new acquaintance, stopping in
his amble, one-sided, before the stall, and speaking in a pounding way,
though with great good-humour.
‘I have noticed you go past our house, sir, several times in the course
of the last week or so.’
‘Our house,’ repeated the other. ‘Meaning--?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Wegg, nodding, as the other pointed the clumsy forefinger
of his right glove at the corner house.
‘Oh! Now, what,’ pursued the old fellow, in an inquisitive manner,
carrying his knotted stick in his left arm as if it were a baby, ‘what
do they allow you now?’
‘It’s job work that I do for our house,’ returned Silas, drily, and with
reticence; ‘it’s not yet brought to an exact allowance.’
‘Oh! It’s not yet brought to an exact allowance? No! It’s not yet
brought to an exact allowance. Oh!--Morning, morning, morning!’
‘Appears to be rather a cracked old cock,’ thought Silas, qualifying his
former good opinion, as the other ambled off. But, in a moment he was
back again with the question:
‘How did you get your wooden leg?’
Mr Wegg replied, (tartly to this personal inquiry), ‘In an accident.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Well! I haven’t got to keep it warm,’ Mr Wegg made answer, in a sort of
desperation occasioned by the singularity of the question.
‘He hasn’t,’ repeated the other to his knotted stick, as he gave it a
hug; ‘he hasn’t got--ha!--ha!--to keep it warm! Did you ever hear of the
name of Boffin?’
‘No,’ said Mr Wegg, who was growing restive under this examination. ‘I
never did hear of the name of Boffin.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Why, no,’ retorted Mr Wegg, again approaching desperation; ‘I can’t say
I do.’
‘Why don’t you like it?’
‘I don’t know why I don’t,’ retorted Mr Wegg, approaching frenzy, ‘but I
don’t at all.’
‘Now, I’ll tell you something that’ll make you sorry for that,’ said the
stranger, smiling. ‘My name’s Boffin.’
‘I can’t help it!’ returned Mr Wegg. Implying in his manner the
offensive addition, ‘and if I could, I wouldn’t.’
‘But there’s another chance for you,’ said Mr Boffin, smiling still, ‘Do
you like the name of Nicodemus? Think it over. Nick, or Noddy.’
‘It is not, sir,’ Mr Wegg rejoined, as he sat down on his stool, with an
air of gentle resignation, combined with melancholy candour; ‘it is not
a name as I could wish any one that I had a respect for, to call ME
by; but there may be persons that would not view it with the same
objections.--I don’t know why,’ Mr Wegg added, anticipating another
question.
‘Noddy Boffin,’ said that gentleman. ‘Noddy. That’s my name. Noddy--or
Nick--Boffin. What’s your name?’
‘Silas Wegg.--I don’t,’ said Mr Wegg, bestirring himself to take the
same precaution as before, ‘I don’t know why Silas, and I don’t know why
Wegg.’
‘Now, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, hugging his stick closer, ‘I want to make a
sort of offer to you. Do you remember when you first see me?’
The wooden Wegg looked at him with a meditative eye, and also with a
softened air as descrying possibility of profit. ‘Let me think. I ain’t
quite sure, and yet I generally take a powerful sight of notice, too.
Was it on a Monday morning, when the butcher-boy had been to our house
for orders, and bought a ballad of me, which, being unacquainted with
the tune, I run it over to him?’
‘Right, Wegg, right! But he bought more than one.’
‘Yes, to be sure, sir; he bought several; and wishing to lay out his
money to the best, he took my opinion to guide his choice, and we went
over the collection together. To be sure we did. Here was him as it
might be, and here was myself as it might be, and there was you, Mr
Boffin, as you identically are, with your self-same stick under your
very same arm, and your very same back towards us. To--be--sure!’ added
Mr Wegg, looking a little round Mr Boffin, to take him in the rear,
and identify this last extraordinary coincidence, ‘your wery self-same
back!’
‘What do you think I was doing, Wegg?’
‘I should judge, sir, that you might be glancing your eye down the
street.’
‘No, Wegg. I was a listening.’
‘Was you, indeed?’ said Mr Wegg, dubiously.
‘Not in a dishonourable way, Wegg, because you was singing to the
butcher; and you wouldn’t sing secrets to a butcher in the street, you
know.’
‘It never happened that I did so yet, to the best of my remembrance,’
said Mr Wegg, cautiously. ‘But I might do it. A man can’t say what he
might wish to do some day or another.’ (This, not to release any little
advantage he might derive from Mr Boffin’s avowal.)
‘Well,’ repeated Boffin, ‘I was a listening to you and to him. And what
do you--you haven’t got another stool, have you? I’m rather thick in my
breath.’
‘I haven’t got another, but you’re welcome to this,’ said Wegg,
resigning it. ‘It’s a treat to me to stand.’
‘Lard!’ exclaimed Mr Boffin, in a tone of great enjoyment, as he settled
himself down, still nursing his stick like a baby, ‘it’s a pleasant
place, this! And then to be shut in on each side, with these ballads,
like so many book-leaf blinkers! Why, its delightful!’
‘If I am not mistaken, sir,’ Mr Wegg delicately hinted, resting a hand
on his stall, and bending over the discursive Boffin, ‘you alluded to
some offer or another that was in your mind?’
‘I’m coming to it! All right. I’m coming to it! I was going to say that
when I listened that morning, I listened with hadmiration amounting to
haw. I thought to myself, “Here’s a man with a wooden leg--a literary
man with--“’
‘N--not exactly so, sir,’ said Mr Wegg.
‘Why, you know every one of these songs by name and by tune, and if you
want to read or to sing any one on ‘em off straight, you’ve only to whip
on your spectacles and do it!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘I see you at it!’
‘Well, sir,’ returned Mr Wegg, with a conscious inclination of the head;
‘we’ll say literary, then.’
‘“A literary man--WITH a wooden leg--and all Print is open to him!”
That’s what I thought to myself, that morning,’ pursued Mr Boffin,
leaning forward to describe, uncramped by the clotheshorse, as large an
arc as his right arm could make; ‘“all Print is open to him!” And it is,
ain’t it?’
‘Why, truly, sir,’ Mr Wegg admitted, with modesty; ‘I believe you
couldn’t show me the piece of English print, that I wouldn’t be equal to
collaring and throwing.’
‘On the spot?’ said Mr Boffin.
‘On the spot.’
‘I know’d it! Then consider this. Here am I, a man without a wooden leg,
and yet all print is shut to me.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ Mr Wegg returned with increasing self-complacency.
‘Education neglected?’
‘Neg--lected!’ repeated Boffin, with emphasis. ‘That ain’t no word for
it. I don’t mean to say but what if you showed me a B, I could so far
give you change for it, as to answer Boffin.’
‘Come, come, sir,’ said Mr Wegg, throwing in a little encouragement,
‘that’s something, too.’
‘It’s something,’ answered Mr Boffin, ‘but I’ll take my oath it ain’t
much.’
‘Perhaps it’s not as much as could be wished by an inquiring mind, sir,’
Mr Wegg admitted.
‘Now, look here. I’m retired from business. Me and Mrs
Boffin--Henerietty Boffin--which her father’s name was Henery, and her
mother’s name was Hetty, and so you get it--we live on a compittance,
under the will of a diseased governor.’
‘Gentleman dead, sir?’
‘Man alive, don’t I tell you? A diseased governor? Now, it’s too late
for me to begin shovelling and sifting at alphabeds and grammar-books.
I’m getting to be a old bird, and I want to take it easy. But I want
some reading--some fine bold reading, some splendid book in a gorging
Lord-Mayor’s-Show of wollumes’ (probably meaning gorgeous, but misled
by association of ideas); ‘as’ll reach right down your pint of view, and
take time to go by you. How can I get that reading, Wegg? By,’ tapping
him on the breast with the head of his thick stick, ‘paying a man truly
qualified to do it, so much an hour (say twopence) to come and do it.’
‘Hem! Flattered, sir, I am sure,’ said Wegg, beginning to regard himself
in quite a new light. ‘Hew! This is the offer you mentioned, sir?’
‘Yes. Do you like it?’
‘I am considering of it, Mr Boffin.’
‘I don’t,’ said Boffin, in a free-handed manner, ‘want to tie a literary
man--WITH a wooden leg--down too tight. A halfpenny an hour shan’t part
us. The hours are your own to choose, after you’ve done for the day
with your house here. I live over Maiden-Lane way--out Holloway
direction--and you’ve only got to go East-and-by-North when you’ve
finished here, and you’re there. Twopence halfpenny an hour,’ said
Boffin, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket and getting off the
stool to work the sum on the top of it in his own way; ‘two long’uns and
a short’un--twopence halfpenny; two short’uns is a long’un and two two
long’uns is four long’uns--making five long’uns; six nights a week at
five long’uns a night,’ scoring them all down separately, ‘and you mount
up to thirty long’uns. A round’un! Half a crown!’
Pointing to this result as a large and satisfactory one, Mr Boffin
smeared it out with his moistened glove, and sat down on the remains.
‘Half a crown,’ said Wegg, meditating. ‘Yes. (It ain’t much, sir.) Half
a crown.’
‘Per week, you know.’
‘Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain upon the intellect now. Was
you thinking at all of poetry?’ Mr Wegg inquired, musing.
‘Would it come dearer?’ Mr Boffin asked.
‘It would come dearer,’ Mr Wegg returned. ‘For when a person comes to
grind off poetry night after night, it is but right he should expect to
be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.’
‘To tell you the truth Wegg,’ said Boffin, ‘I wasn’t thinking of poetry,
except in so fur as this:--If you was to happen now and then to feel
yourself in the mind to tip me and Mrs Boffin one of your ballads, why
then we should drop into poetry.’
‘I follow you, sir,’ said Wegg. ‘But not being a regular musical
professional, I should be loath to engage myself for that; and therefore
when I dropped into poetry, I should ask to be considered so fur, in the
light of a friend.’
At this, Mr Boffin’s eyes sparkled, and he shook Silas earnestly by the
hand: protesting that it was more than he could have asked, and that he
took it very kindly indeed.
‘What do you think of the terms, Wegg?’ Mr Boffin then demanded, with
unconcealed anxiety.
Silas, who had stimulated this anxiety by his hard reserve of manner,
and who had begun to understand his man very well, replied with an air;
as if he were saying something extraordinarily generous and great:
‘Mr Boffin, I never bargain.’
‘So I should have thought of you!’ said Mr Boffin, admiringly. ‘No, sir.
I never did ‘aggle and I never will ‘aggle. Consequently I meet you at
once, free and fair, with--Done, for double the money!’
Mr Boffin seemed a little unprepared for this conclusion, but assented,
with the remark, ‘You know better what it ought to be than I do, Wegg,’
and again shook hands with him upon it.
‘Could you begin to night, Wegg?’ he then demanded.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Wegg, careful to leave all the eagerness to him.
‘I see no difficulty if you wish it. You are provided with the needful
implement--a book, sir?’
‘Bought him at a sale,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Eight wollumes. Red and gold.
Purple ribbon in every wollume, to keep the place where you leave off.
Do you know him?’
‘The book’s name, sir?’ inquired Silas.
‘I thought you might have know’d him without it,’ said Mr
Boffin slightly disappointed. ‘His name is
Decline-And-Fall-Off-The-Rooshan-Empire.’ (Mr Boffin went over these
stones slowly and with much caution.)
‘Ay indeed!’ said Mr Wegg, nodding his head with an air of friendly
recognition.
‘You know him, Wegg?’
‘I haven’t been not to say right slap through him, very lately,’ Mr Wegg
made answer, ‘having been otherways employed, Mr Boffin. But know him?
Old familiar declining and falling off the Rooshan? Rather, sir! Ever
since I was not so high as your stick. Ever since my eldest brother left
our cottage to enlist into the army. On which occasion, as the ballad
that was made about it describes:
‘Beside that cottage door, Mr Boffin,
A girl was on her knees;
She held aloft a snowy scarf, Sir,
Which (my eldest brother noticed) fluttered in the breeze.
She breathed a prayer for him, Mr Boffin;
A prayer he coold not hear.
And my eldest brother lean’d upon his sword, Mr Boffin,
And wiped away a tear.’
Much impressed by this family circumstance, and also by the friendly
disposition of Mr Wegg, as exemplified in his so soon dropping into
poetry, Mr Boffin again shook hands with that ligneous sharper, and
besought him to name his hour. Mr Wegg named eight.
‘Where I live,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘is called The Bower. Boffin’s Bower is
the name Mrs Boffin christened it when we come into it as a property.
If you should meet with anybody that don’t know it by that name (which
hardly anybody does), when you’ve got nigh upon about a odd mile, or
say and a quarter if you like, up Maiden Lane, Battle Bridge, ask for
Harmony Jail, and you’ll be put right. I shall expect you, Wegg,’ said
Mr Boffin, clapping him on the shoulder with the greatest enthusiasm,
‘most joyfully. I shall have no peace or patience till you come. Print
is now opening ahead of me. This night, a literary man--WITH a wooden
leg--’ he bestowed an admiring look upon that decoration, as if it
greatly enhanced the relish of Mr Wegg’s attainments--‘will begin to
lead me a new life! My fist again, Wegg. Morning, morning, morning!’
Left alone at his stall as the other ambled off, Mr Wegg subsided
into his screen, produced a small pocket-handkerchief of a
penitentially-scrubbing character, and took himself by the nose with
a thoughtful aspect. Also, while he still grasped that feature, he
directed several thoughtful looks down the street, after the retiring
figure of Mr Boffin. But, profound gravity sat enthroned on Wegg’s
countenance. For, while he considered within himself that this was
an old fellow of rare simplicity, that this was an opportunity to
be improved, and that here might be money to be got beyond present
calculation, still he compromised himself by no admission that his new
engagement was at all out of his way, or involved the least element of
the ridiculous. Mr Wegg would even have picked a handsome quarrel with
any one who should have challenged his deep acquaintance with those
aforesaid eight volumes of Decline and Fall. His gravity was unusual,
portentous, and immeasurable, not because he admitted any doubt of
himself but because he perceived it necessary to forestall any doubt of
himself in others. And herein he ranged with that very numerous class
of impostors, who are quite as determined to keep up appearances to
themselves, as to their neighbours.
A certain loftiness, likewise, took possession of Mr Wegg; a
condescending sense of being in request as an official expounder of
mysteries. It did not move him to commercial greatness, but rather to
littleness, insomuch that if it had been within the possibilities of
things for the wooden measure to hold fewer nuts than usual, it would
have done so that day. But, when night came, and with her veiled eyes
beheld him stumping towards Boffin’s Bower, he was elated too.
The Bower was as difficult to find, as Fair Rosamond’s without the clue.
Mr Wegg, having reached the quarter indicated, inquired for the Bower
half a dozen times without the least success, until he remembered to
ask for Harmony Jail. This occasioned a quick change in the spirits of a
hoarse gentleman and a donkey, whom he had much perplexed.
‘Why, yer mean Old Harmon’s, do yer?’ said the hoarse gentleman, who was
driving his donkey in a truck, with a carrot for a whip. ‘Why didn’t yer
niver say so? Eddard and me is a goin’ by HIM! Jump in.’
Mr Wegg complied, and the hoarse gentleman invited his attention to the
third person in company, thus;
‘Now, you look at Eddard’s ears. What was it as you named, agin?
Whisper.’
Mr Wegg whispered, ‘Boffin’s Bower.’
‘Eddard! (keep yer hi on his ears) cut away to Boffin’s Bower!’
Edward, with his ears lying back, remained immoveable.
‘Eddard! (keep yer hi on his ears) cut away to Old Harmon’s.’ Edward
instantly pricked up his ears to their utmost, and rattled off at such
a pace that Mr Wegg’s conversation was jolted out of him in a most
dislocated state.
‘Was-it-Ev-verajail?’ asked Mr Wegg, holding on.
‘Not a proper jail, wot you and me would get committed to,’ returned
his escort; ‘they giv’ it the name, on accounts of Old Harmon living
solitary there.’
‘And-why-did-they-callitharm-Ony?’ asked Wegg.
‘On accounts of his never agreeing with nobody. Like a speeches of
chaff. Harmon’s Jail; Harmony Jail. Working it round like.’
‘Doyouknow-Mist-Erboff-in?’ asked Wegg.
‘I should think so! Everybody do about here. Eddard knows him. (Keep yer
hi on his ears.) Noddy Boffin, Eddard!’
The effect of the name was so very alarming, in respect of causing a
temporary disappearance of Edward’s head, casting his hind hoofs in the
air, greatly accelerating the pace and increasing the jolting, that Mr
Wegg was fain to devote his attention exclusively to holding on, and to
relinquish his desire of ascertaining whether this homage to Boffin was
to be considered complimentary or the reverse.
Presently, Edward stopped at a gateway, and Wegg discreetly lost no time
in slipping out at the back of the truck. The moment he was landed, his
late driver with a wave of the carrot, said ‘Supper, Eddard!’ and he,
the hind hoofs, the truck, and Edward, all seemed to fly into the air
together, in a kind of apotheosis.
Pushing the gate, which stood ajar, Wegg looked into an enclosed space
where certain tall dark mounds rose high against the sky, and where the
pathway to the Bower was indicated, as the moonlight showed, between two
lines of broken crockery set in ashes. A white figure advancing along
this path, proved to be nothing more ghostly than Mr Boffin, easily
attired for the pursuit of knowledge, in an undress garment of short
white smock-frock. Having received his literary friend with great
cordiality, he conducted him to the interior of the Bower and there
presented him to Mrs Boffin:--a stout lady of a rubicund and cheerful
aspect, dressed (to Mr Wegg’s consternation) in a low evening-dress of
sable satin, and a large black velvet hat and feathers.
‘Mrs Boffin, Wegg,’ said Boffin, ‘is a highflyer at Fashion. And her
make is such, that she does it credit. As to myself I ain’t yet as
Fash’nable as I may come to be. Henerietty, old lady, this is the
gentleman that’s a going to decline and fall off the Rooshan Empire.’
‘And I am sure I hope it’ll do you both good,’ said Mrs Boffin.
It was the queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a luxurious
amateur tap-room than anything else within the ken of Silas Wegg. There
were two wooden settles by the fire, one on either side of it, with
a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables, the eight
volumes were ranged flat, in a row, like a galvanic battery; on the
other, certain squat case-bottles of inviting appearance seemed to stand
on tiptoe to exchange glances with Mr Wegg over a front row of tumblers
and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on the hearth,
a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool,
and a little table, formed a centrepiece devoted to Mrs Boffin.
They were garish in taste and colour, but were expensive articles of
drawing-room furniture that had a very odd look beside the settles
and the flaring gaslight pendent from the ceiling. There was a flowery
carpet on the floor; but, instead of reaching to the fireside, its
glowing vegetation stopped short at Mrs Boffin’s footstool, and gave
place to a region of sand and sawdust. Mr Wegg also noticed, with
admiring eyes, that, while the flowery land displayed such hollow
ornamentation as stuffed birds and waxen fruits under glass-shades,
there were, in the territory where vegetation ceased, compensatory
shelves on which the best part of a large pie and likewise of a cold
joint were plainly discernible among other solids. The room itself was
large, though low; and the heavy frames of its old-fashioned windows,
and the heavy beams in its crooked ceiling, seemed to indicate that it
had once been a house of some mark standing alone in the country.
‘Do you like it, Wegg?’ asked Mr Boffin, in his pouncing manner.
‘I admire it greatly, sir,’ said Wegg. ‘Peculiar comfort at this
fireside, sir.’
‘Do you understand it, Wegg?’
‘Why, in a general way, sir,’ Mr Wegg was beginning slowly and
knowingly, with his head stuck on one side, as evasive people do begin,
when the other cut him short:
‘You DON’T understand it, Wegg, and I’ll explain it. These arrangements
is made by mutual consent between Mrs Boffin and me. Mrs Boffin, as I’ve
mentioned, is a highflyer at Fashion; at present I’m not. I don’t go
higher than comfort, and comfort of the sort that I’m equal to the
enjoyment of. Well then. Where would be the good of Mrs Boffin and me
quarrelling over it? We never did quarrel, before we come into Boffin’s
Bower as a property; why quarrel when we HAVE come into Boffin’s Bower
as a property? So Mrs Boffin, she keeps up her part of the room, in her
way; I keep up my part of the room in mine. In consequence of which
we have at once, Sociability (I should go melancholy mad without Mrs
Boffin), Fashion, and Comfort. If I get by degrees to be a higher-flyer
at Fashion, then Mrs Boffin will by degrees come for’arder. If Mrs
Boffin should ever be less of a dab at Fashion than she is at the
present time, then Mrs Boffin’s carpet would go back’arder. If we should
both continny as we are, why then HERE we are, and give us a kiss, old
lady.’
Mrs Boffin who, perpetually smiling, had approached and drawn her plump
arm through her lord’s, most willingly complied. Fashion, in the form
of her black velvet hat and feathers, tried to prevent it; but got
deservedly crushed in the endeavour.
‘So now, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, wiping his mouth with an air of much
refreshment, ‘you begin to know us as we are. This is a charming spot,
is the Bower, but you must get to apprechiate it by degrees. It’s a spot
to find out the merits of; little by little, and a new’un every day.
There’s a serpentining walk up each of the mounds, that gives you the
yard and neighbourhood changing every moment. When you get to the top,
there’s a view of the neighbouring premises, not to be surpassed. The
premises of Mrs Boffin’s late father (Canine Provision Trade), you look
down into, as if they was your own. And the top of the High Mound is
crowned with a lattice-work Arbour, in which, if you don’t read out loud
many a book in the summer, ay, and as a friend, drop many a time into
poetry too, it shan’t be my fault. Now, what’ll you read on?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ returned Wegg, as if there were nothing new in his
reading at all. ‘I generally do it on gin and water.’
‘Keeps the organ moist, does it, Wegg?’ asked Mr Boffin, with innocent
eagerness.
‘N-no, sir,’ replied Wegg, coolly, ‘I should hardly describe it so, sir.
I should say, mellers it. Mellers it, is the word I should employ, Mr
Boffin.’
His wooden conceit and craft kept exact pace with the delighted
expectation of his victim. The visions rising before his mercenary mind,
of the many ways in which this connexion was to be turned to account,
never obscured the foremost idea natural to a dull overreaching man,
that he must not make himself too cheap.
Mrs Boffin’s Fashion, as a less inexorable deity than the idol usually
worshipped under that name, did not forbid her mixing for her literary
guest, or asking if he found the result to his liking. On his returning
a gracious answer and taking his place at the literary settle, Mr Boffin
began to compose himself as a listener, at the opposite settle, with
exultant eyes.
‘Sorry to deprive you of a pipe, Wegg,’ he said, filling his own, ‘but
you can’t do both together. Oh! and another thing I forgot to name! When
you come in here of an evening, and look round you, and notice anything
on a shelf that happens to catch your fancy, mention it.’
Wegg, who had been going to put on his spectacles, immediately laid them
down, with the sprightly observation:
‘You read my thoughts, sir. DO my eyes deceive me, or is that object up
there a--a pie? It can’t be a pie.’
‘Yes, it’s a pie, Wegg,’ replied Mr Boffin, with a glance of some little
discomfiture at the Decline and Fall.
‘HAVE I lost my smell for fruits, or is it a apple pie, sir?’ asked
Wegg.
‘It’s a veal and ham pie,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘Is it indeed, sir? And it would be hard, sir, to name the pie that is
a better pie than a weal and hammer,’ said Mr Wegg, nodding his head
emotionally.
‘Have some, Wegg?’
‘Thank you, Mr Boffin, I think I will, at your invitation. I wouldn’t
at any other party’s, at the present juncture; but at yours, sir!--And
meaty jelly too, especially when a little salt, which is the case where
there’s ham, is mellering to the organ, is very mellering to the organ.’
Mr Wegg did not say what organ, but spoke with a cheerful generality.
So, the pie was brought down, and the worthy Mr Boffin exercised his
patience until Wegg, in the exercise of his knife and fork, had finished
the dish: only profiting by the opportunity to inform Wegg that although
it was not strictly Fashionable to keep the contents of a larder thus
exposed to view, he (Mr Boffin) considered it hospitable; for the
reason, that instead of saying, in a comparatively unmeaning manner, to
a visitor, ‘There are such and such edibles down stairs; will you have
anything up?’ you took the bold practical course of saying, ‘Cast your
eye along the shelves, and, if you see anything you like there, have it
down.’
And now, Mr Wegg at length pushed away his plate and put on his
spectacles, and Mr Boffin lighted his pipe and looked with beaming
eyes into the opening world before him, and Mrs Boffin reclined in a
fashionable manner on her sofa: as one who would be part of the audience
if she found she could, and would go to sleep if she found she couldn’t.
‘Hem!’ began Wegg, ‘This, Mr Boffin and Lady, is the first chapter of
the first wollume of the Decline and Fall off--’ here he looked hard at
the book, and stopped.
‘What’s the matter, Wegg?’
‘Why, it comes into my mind, do you know, sir,’ said Wegg with an air
of insinuating frankness (having first again looked hard at the book),
‘that you made a little mistake this morning, which I had meant to set
you right in, only something put it out of my head. I think you said
Rooshan Empire, sir?’
‘It is Rooshan; ain’t it, Wegg?’
‘No, sir. Roman. Roman.’
‘What’s the difference, Wegg?’
‘The difference, sir?’ Mr Wegg was faltering and in danger of breaking
down, when a bright thought flashed upon him. ‘The difference, sir?
There you place me in a difficulty, Mr Boffin. Suffice it to observe,
that the difference is best postponed to some other occasion when Mrs
Boffin does not honour us with her company. In Mrs Boffin’s presence,
sir, we had better drop it.’
Mr Wegg thus came out of his disadvantage with quite a chivalrous air,
and not only that, but by dint of repeating with a manly delicacy,
‘In Mrs Boffin’s presence, sir, we had better drop it!’ turned the
disadvantage on Boffin, who felt that he had committed himself in a very
painful manner.
Then, Mr Wegg, in a dry unflinching way, entered on his task; going
straight across country at everything that came before him; taking all
the hard words, biographical and geographical; getting rather shaken by
Hadrian, Trajan, and the Antonines; stumbling at Polybius (pronounced
Polly Beeious, and supposed by Mr Boffin to be a Roman virgin, and by
Mrs Boffin to be responsible for that necessity of dropping it); heavily
unseated by Titus Antoninus Pius; up again and galloping smoothly with
Augustus; finally, getting over the ground well with Commodus: who,
under the appellation of Commodious, was held by Mr Boffin to have been
quite unworthy of his English origin, and ‘not to have acted up to his
name’ in his government of the Roman people. With the death of this
personage, Mr Wegg terminated his first reading; long before which
consummation several total eclipses of Mrs Boffin’s candle behind
her black velvet disc, would have been very alarming, but for being
regularly accompanied by a potent smell of burnt pens when her feathers
took fire, which acted as a restorative and woke her. Mr Wegg, having
read on by rote and attached as few ideas as possible to the text, came
out of the encounter fresh; but, Mr Boffin, who had soon laid down his
unfinished pipe, and had ever since sat intently staring with his eyes
and mind at the confounding enormities of the Romans, was so severely
punished that he could hardly wish his literary friend Good-night, and
articulate ‘Tomorrow.’
‘Commodious,’ gasped Mr Boffin, staring at the moon, after letting
Wegg out at the gate and fastening it: ‘Commodious fights in that
wild-beast-show, seven hundred and thirty-five times, in one character
only! As if that wasn’t stunning enough, a hundred lions is turned into
the same wild-beast-show all at once! As if that wasn’t stunning enough,
Commodious, in another character, kills ‘em all off in a hundred goes!
As if that wasn’t stunning enough, Vittle-us (and well named too) eats
six millions’ worth, English money, in seven months! Wegg takes it easy,
but upon-my-soul to a old bird like myself these are scarers. And even
now that Commodious is strangled, I don’t see a way to our bettering
ourselves.’ Mr Boffin added as he turned his pensive steps towards the
Bower and shook his head, ‘I didn’t think this morning there was half so
many Scarers in Print. But I’m in for it now!’
Chapter 6
CUT ADRIFT
The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of
a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale
infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and
hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet
outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house.
Externally, it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows
heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges,
with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed the whole
house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended
over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a
faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will
never go in at all.
This description applies to the river-frontage of the Six Jolly
Fellowship Porters. The back of the establishment, though the chief
entrance was there, so contracted that it merely represented in its
connexion with the front, the handle of a flat iron set upright on its
broadest end. This handle stood at the bottom of a wilderness of court
and alley: which wilderness pressed so hard and close upon the Six Jolly
Fellowship Porters as to leave the hostelry not an inch of ground beyond
its door. For this reason, in combination with the fact that the house
was all but afloat at high water, when the Porters had a family wash the
linen subjected to that operation might usually be seen drying on lines
stretched across the reception-rooms and bed-chambers.
The wood forming the chimney-pieces, beams, partitions, floors and
doors, of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, seemed in its old age
fraught with confused memories of its youth. In many places it had
become gnarled and riven, according to the manner of old trees; knots
started out of it; and here and there it seemed to twist itself into
some likeness of boughs. In this state of second childhood, it had an
air of being in its own way garrulous about its early life. Not without
reason was it often asserted by the regular frequenters of the Porters,
that when the light shone full upon the grain of certain panels, and
particularly upon an old corner cupboard of walnut-wood in the bar, you
might trace little forests there, and tiny trees like the parent tree,
in full umbrageous leaf.
The bar of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters was a bar to soften the
human breast. The available space in it was not much larger than a
hackney-coach; but no one could have wished the bar bigger, that space
was so girt in by corpulent little casks, and by cordial-bottles
radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and by lemons in nets, and
by biscuits in baskets, and by the polite beer-pulls that made low
bows when customers were served with beer, and by the cheese in a snug
corner, and by the landlady’s own small table in a snugger corner near
the fire, with the cloth everlastingly laid. This haven was divided from
the rough world by a glass partition and a half-door, with a leaden
sill upon it for the convenience of resting your liquor; but, over this
half-door the bar’s snugness so gushed forth that, albeit customers
drank there standing, in a dark and draughty passage where they were
shouldered by other customers passing in and out, they always appeared
to drink under an enchanting delusion that they were in the bar itself.
For the rest, both the tap and parlour of the Six Jolly Fellowship
Porters gave upon the river, and had red curtains matching the noses of
the regular customers, and were provided with comfortable fireside tin
utensils, like models of sugar-loaf hats, made in that shape that they
might, with their pointed ends, seek out for themselves glowing nooks
in the depths of the red coals, when they mulled your ale, or heated for
you those delectable drinks, Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose. The first of
these humming compounds was a speciality of the Porters, which, through
an inscription on its door-posts, gently appealed to your feelings as,
‘The Early Purl House’. For, it would seem that Purl must always be
taken early; though whether for any more distinctly stomachic reason
than that, as the early bird catches the worm, so the early purl catches
the customer, cannot here be resolved. It only remains to add that in
the handle of the flat iron, and opposite the bar, was a very little
room like a three-cornered hat, into which no direct ray of sun, moon,
or star, ever penetrated, but which was superstitiously regarded as a
sanctuary replete with comfort and retirement by gaslight, and on the
door of which was therefore painted its alluring name: Cosy.
Miss Potterson, sole proprietor and manager of the Fellowship Porters,
reigned supreme on her throne, the Bar, and a man must have drunk
himself mad drunk indeed if he thought he could contest a point with
her. Being known on her own authority as Miss Abbey Potterson, some
water-side heads, which (like the water) were none of the clearest,
harboured muddled notions that, because of her dignity and firmness, she
was named after, or in some sort related to, the Abbey at Westminster.
But, Abbey was only short for Abigail, by which name Miss Potterson had
been christened at Limehouse Church, some sixty and odd years before.
‘Now, you mind, you Riderhood,’ said Miss Abbey Potterson, with emphatic
forefinger over the half-door, ‘the Fellowship don’t want you at all,
and would rather by far have your room than your company; but if you
were as welcome here as you are not, you shouldn’t even then have
another drop of drink here this night, after this present pint of beer.
So make the most of it.’
‘But you know, Miss Potterson,’ this was suggested very meekly though,
‘if I behave myself, you can’t help serving me, miss.’
‘CAN’T I!’ said Abbey, with infinite expression.
‘No, Miss Potterson; because, you see, the law--’
‘I am the law here, my man,’ returned Miss Abbey, ‘and I’ll soon
convince you of that, if you doubt it at all.’
‘I never said I did doubt it at all, Miss Abbey.’
‘So much the better for you.’
Abbey the supreme threw the customer’s halfpence into the till, and,
seating herself in her fireside-chair, resumed the newspaper she had
been reading. She was a tall, upright, well-favoured woman, though
severe of countenance, and had more of the air of a schoolmistress than
mistress of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. The man on the other side
of the half-door, was a waterside-man with a squinting leer, and he eyed
her as if he were one of her pupils in disgrace.
‘You’re cruel hard upon me, Miss Potterson.’
Miss Potterson read her newspaper with contracted brows, and took no
notice until he whispered:
‘Miss Potterson! Ma’am! Might I have half a word with you?’
Deigning then to turn her eyes sideways towards the suppliant, Miss
Potterson beheld him knuckling his low forehead, and ducking at her with
his head, as if he were asking leave to fling himself head foremost over
the half-door and alight on his feet in the bar.
‘Well?’ said Miss Potterson, with a manner as short as she herself was
long, ‘say your half word. Bring it out.’
‘Miss Potterson! Ma’am! Would you ‘sxcuse me taking the liberty of
asking, is it my character that you take objections to?’
‘Certainly,’ said Miss Potterson.
‘Is it that you’re afraid of--’
‘I am not afraid OF YOU,’ interposed Miss Potterson, ‘if you mean that.’
‘But I humbly don’t mean that, Miss Abbey.’
‘Then what do you mean?’
‘You really are so cruel hard upon me! What I was going to make
inquiries was no more than, might you have any apprehensions--leastways
beliefs or suppositions--that the company’s property mightn’t be
altogether to be considered safe, if I used the house too regular?’
‘What do you want to know for?’
‘Well, Miss Abbey, respectfully meaning no offence to you, it would
be some satisfaction to a man’s mind, to understand why the Fellowship
Porters is not to be free to such as me, and is to be free to such as
Gaffer.’
The face of the hostess darkened with some shadow of perplexity, as she
replied: ‘Gaffer has never been where you have been.’
‘Signifying in Quod, Miss? Perhaps not. But he may have merited it. He
may be suspected of far worse than ever I was.’
‘Who suspects him?’
‘Many, perhaps. One, beyond all doubts. I do.’
‘YOU are not much,’ said Miss Abbey Potterson, knitting her brows again
with disdain.
‘But I was his pardner. Mind you, Miss Abbey, I was his pardner. As
such I know more of the ins and outs of him than any person living does.
Notice this! I am the man that was his pardner, and I am the man that
suspects him.’
‘Then,’ suggested Miss Abbey, though with a deeper shade of perplexity
than before, ‘you criminate yourself.’
‘No I don’t, Miss Abbey. For how does it stand? It stands this way. When
I was his pardner, I couldn’t never give him satisfaction. Why couldn’t
I never give him satisfaction? Because my luck was bad; because I
couldn’t find many enough of ‘em. How was his luck? Always good. Notice
this! Always good! Ah! There’s a many games, Miss Abbey, in which
there’s chance, but there’s a many others in which there’s skill too,
mixed along with it.’
‘That Gaffer has a skill in finding what he finds, who doubts, man?’
asked Miss Abbey.
‘A skill in purwiding what he finds, perhaps,’ said Riderhood, shaking
his evil head.
Miss Abbey knitted her brow at him, as he darkly leered at her. ‘If
you’re out upon the river pretty nigh every tide, and if you want to
find a man or woman in the river, you’ll greatly help your luck, Miss
Abbey, by knocking a man or woman on the head aforehand and pitching ‘em
in.’
‘Gracious Lud!’ was the involuntary exclamation of Miss Potterson.
‘Mind you!’ returned the other, stretching forward over the half door
to throw his words into the bar; for his voice was as if the head of his
boat’s mop were down his throat; ‘I say so, Miss Abbey! And mind you!
I’ll follow him up, Miss Abbey! And mind you! I’ll bring him to hook at
last, if it’s twenty year hence, I will! Who’s he, to be favoured along
of his daughter? Ain’t I got a daughter of my own!’
With that flourish, and seeming to have talked himself rather more drunk
and much more ferocious than he had begun by being, Mr Riderhood took up
his pint pot and swaggered off to the taproom.
Gaffer was not there, but a pretty strong muster of Miss Abbey’s pupils
were, who exhibited, when occasion required, the greatest docility. On
the clock’s striking ten, and Miss Abbey’s appearing at the door, and
addressing a certain person in a faded scarlet jacket, with ‘George
Jones, your time’s up! I told your wife you should be punctual,’
Jones submissively rose, gave the company good-night, and retired. At
half-past ten, on Miss Abbey’s looking in again, and saying, ‘William
Williams, Bob Glamour, and Jonathan, you are all due,’ Williams, Bob,
and Jonathan with similar meekness took their leave and evaporated.
Greater wonder than these, when a bottle-nosed person in a glazed hat
had after some considerable hesitation ordered another glass of gin and
water of the attendant potboy, and when Miss Abbey, instead of sending
it, appeared in person, saying, ‘Captain Joey, you have had as much as
will do you good,’ not only did the captain feebly rub his knees and
contemplate the fire without offering a word of protest, but the rest
of the company murmured, ‘Ay, ay, Captain! Miss Abbey’s right; you
be guided by Miss Abbey, Captain.’ Nor, was Miss Abbey’s vigilance in
anywise abated by this submission, but rather sharpened; for, looking
round on the deferential faces of her school, and descrying two other
young persons in need of admonition, she thus bestowed it: ‘Tom Tootle,
it’s time for a young fellow who’s going to be married next month, to
be at home and asleep. And you needn’t nudge him, Mr Jack Mullins, for
I know your work begins early tomorrow, and I say the same to you.
So come! Good-night, like good lads!’ Upon which, the blushing Tootle
looked to Mullins, and the blushing Mullins looked to Tootle, on the
question who should rise first, and finally both rose together and went
out on the broad grin, followed by Miss Abbey; in whose presence the
company did not take the liberty of grinning likewise.
In such an establishment, the white-aproned pot-boy with his
shirt-sleeves arranged in a tight roll on each bare shoulder, was a mere
hint of the possibility of physical force, thrown out as a matter of
state and form. Exactly at the closing hour, all the guests who were
left, filed out in the best order: Miss Abbey standing at the half door
of the bar, to hold a ceremony of review and dismissal. All wished
Miss Abbey good-night and Miss Abbey wished good-night to all, except
Riderhood. The sapient pot-boy, looking on officially, then had the
conviction borne in upon his soul, that the man was evermore outcast and
excommunicate from the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters.
‘You Bob Gliddery,’ said Miss Abbey to this pot-boy, ‘run round to
Hexam’s and tell his daughter Lizzie that I want to speak to her.’
With exemplary swiftness Bob Gliddery departed, and returned. Lizzie,
following him, arrived as one of the two female domestics of the
Fellowship Porters arranged on the snug little table by the bar fire,
Miss Potterson’s supper of hot sausages and mashed potatoes.
‘Come in and sit ye down, girl,’ said Miss Abbey. ‘Can you eat a bit?’
‘No thank you, Miss. I have had my supper.’
‘I have had mine too, I think,’ said Miss Abbey, pushing away the
untasted dish, ‘and more than enough of it. I am put out, Lizzie.’
‘I am very sorry for it, Miss.’
‘Then why, in the name of Goodness,’ quoth Miss Abbey, sharply, ‘do you
do it?’
‘I do it, Miss!’
‘There, there. Don’t look astonished. I ought to have begun with a word
of explanation, but it’s my way to make short cuts at things. I always
was a pepperer. You Bob Gliddery there, put the chain upon the door and
get ye down to your supper.’
With an alacrity that seemed no less referable to the pepperer fact
than to the supper fact, Bob obeyed, and his boots were heard descending
towards the bed of the river.
‘Lizzie Hexam, Lizzie Hexam,’ then began Miss Potterson, ‘how often have
I held out to you the opportunity of getting clear of your father, and
doing well?’
‘Very often, Miss.’
‘Very often? Yes! And I might as well have spoken to the iron funnel of
the strongest sea-going steamer that passes the Fellowship Porters.’
‘No, Miss,’ Lizzie pleaded; ‘because that would not be thankful, and I
am.’
‘I vow and declare I am half ashamed of myself for taking such an
interest in you,’ said Miss Abbey, pettishly, ‘for I don’t believe I
should do it if you were not good-looking. Why ain’t you ugly?’
Lizzie merely answered this difficult question with an apologetic
glance.
‘However, you ain’t,’ resumed Miss Potterson, ‘so it’s no use going into
that. I must take you as I find you. Which indeed is what I’ve done. And
you mean to say you are still obstinate?’
‘Not obstinate, Miss, I hope.’
‘Firm (I suppose you call it) then?’
‘Yes, Miss. Fixed like.’
‘Never was an obstinate person yet, who would own to the word!’ remarked
Miss Potterson, rubbing her vexed nose; ‘I’m sure I would, if I was
obstinate; but I am a pepperer, which is different. Lizzie Hexam, Lizzie
Hexam, think again. Do you know the worst of your father?’
‘Do I know the worst of father!’ she repeated, opening her eyes.
‘Do you know the suspicions to which your father makes himself liable?
Do you know the suspicions that are actually about, against him?’
The consciousness of what he habitually did, oppressed the girl heavily,
and she slowly cast down her eyes.
‘Say, Lizzie. Do you know?’ urged Miss Abbey.
‘Please to tell me what the suspicions are, Miss,’ she asked after a
silence, with her eyes upon the ground.
‘It’s not an easy thing to tell a daughter, but it must be told. It is
thought by some, then, that your father helps to their death a few of
those that he finds dead.’
The relief of hearing what she felt sure was a false suspicion, in place
of the expected real and true one, so lightened Lizzie’s breast for the
moment, that Miss Abbey was amazed at her demeanour. She raised her eyes
quickly, shook her head, and, in a kind of triumph, almost laughed.
‘They little know father who talk like that!’
[‘She takes it,’ thought Miss Abbey, ‘very quietly. She takes it with
extraordinary quietness!’)
‘And perhaps,’ said Lizzie, as a recollection flashed upon her, ‘it is
some one who has a grudge against father; some one who has threatened
father! Is it Riderhood, Miss?’
‘Well; yes it is.’
‘Yes! He was father’s partner, and father broke with him, and now he
revenges himself. Father broke with him when I was by, and he was very
angry at it. And besides, Miss Abbey!--Will you never, without strong
reason, let pass your lips what I am going to say?’
She bent forward to say it in a whisper.
‘I promise,’ said Miss Abbey.
‘It was on the night when the Harmon murder was found out, through
father, just above bridge. And just below bridge, as we were sculling
home, Riderhood crept out of the dark in his boat. And many and many
times afterwards, when such great pains were taken to come to the bottom
of the crime, and it never could be come near, I thought in my own
thoughts, could Riderhood himself have done the murder, and did he
purposely let father find the body? It seemed a’most wicked and cruel
to so much as think such a thing; but now that he tries to throw it upon
father, I go back to it as if it was a truth. Can it be a truth? That
was put into my mind by the dead?’
She asked this question, rather of the fire than of the hostess of the
Fellowship Porters, and looked round the little bar with troubled eyes.
But, Miss Potterson, as a ready schoolmistress accustomed to bring her
pupils to book, set the matter in a light that was essentially of this
world.
‘You poor deluded girl,’ she said, ‘don’t you see that you can’t open
your mind to particular suspicions of one of the two, without opening
your mind to general suspicions of the other? They had worked together.
Their goings-on had been going on for some time. Even granting that it
was as you have had in your thoughts, what the two had done together
would come familiar to the mind of one.’
‘You don’t know father, Miss, when you talk like that. Indeed, indeed,
you don’t know father.’
‘Lizzie, Lizzie,’ said Miss Potterson. ‘Leave him. You needn’t break
with him altogether, but leave him. Do well away from him; not because
of what I have told you to-night--we’ll pass no judgment upon that,
and we’ll hope it may not be--but because of what I have urged on you
before. No matter whether it’s owing to your good looks or not, I like
you and I want to serve you. Lizzie, come under my direction. Don’t
fling yourself away, my girl, but be persuaded into being respectable
and happy.’
In the sound good feeling and good sense of her entreaty, Miss Abbey
had softened into a soothing tone, and had even drawn her arm round the
girl’s waist. But, she only replied, ‘Thank you, thank you! I can’t. I
won’t. I must not think of it. The harder father is borne upon, the more
he needs me to lean on.’
And then Miss Abbey, who, like all hard people when they do soften,
felt that there was considerable compensation owing to her, underwent
reaction and became frigid.
‘I have done what I can,’ she said, ‘and you must go your way. You make
your bed, and you must lie on it. But tell your father one thing: he
must not come here any more.’
‘Oh, Miss, will you forbid him the house where I know he’s safe?’
‘The Fellowships,’ returned Miss Abbey, ‘has itself to look to, as well
as others. It has been hard work to establish order here, and make the
Fellowships what it is, and it is daily and nightly hard work to keep it
so. The Fellowships must not have a taint upon it that may give it a bad
name. I forbid the house to Riderhood, and I forbid the house to Gaffer.
I forbid both, equally. I find from Riderhood and you together, that
there are suspicions against both men, and I’m not going to take upon
myself to decide betwixt them. They are both tarred with a dirty brush,
and I can’t have the Fellowships tarred with the same brush. That’s all
I know.’
‘Good-night, Miss!’ said Lizzie Hexam, sorrowfully.
‘Hah!--Good-night!’ returned Miss Abbey with a shake of her head.
‘Believe me, Miss Abbey, I am truly grateful all the same.’
‘I can believe a good deal,’ returned the stately Abbey, ‘so I’ll try to
believe that too, Lizzie.’
No supper did Miss Potterson take that night, and only half her usual
tumbler of hot Port Negus. And the female domestics--two robust sisters,
with staring black eyes, shining flat red faces, blunt noses, and strong
black curls, like dolls--interchanged the sentiment that Missis had had
her hair combed the wrong way by somebody. And the pot-boy afterwards
remarked, that he hadn’t been ‘so rattled to bed’, since his late mother
had systematically accelerated his retirement to rest with a poker.
The chaining of the door behind her, as she went forth, disenchanted
Lizzie Hexam of that first relief she had felt. The night was black and
shrill, the river-side wilderness was melancholy, and there was a sound
of casting-out, in the rattling of the iron-links, and the grating of
the bolts and staples under Miss Abbey’s hand. As she came beneath
the lowering sky, a sense of being involved in a murky shade of Murder
dropped upon her; and, as the tidal swell of the river broke at her feet
without her seeing how it gathered, so, her thoughts startled her by
rushing out of an unseen void and striking at her heart.
Of her father’s being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure. Sure.
And yet, repeat the word inwardly as often as she would, the attempt to
reason out and prove that she was sure, always came after it and failed.
Riderhood had done the deed, and entrapped her father. Riderhood had
not done the deed, but had resolved in his malice to turn against her
father, the appearances that were ready to his hand to distort. Equally
and swiftly upon either putting of the case, followed the frightful
possibility that her father, being innocent, yet might come to be
believed guilty. She had heard of people suffering Death for bloodshed
of which they were afterwards proved pure, and those ill-fated persons
were not, first, in that dangerous wrong in which her father stood. Then
at the best, the beginning of his being set apart, whispered against,
and avoided, was a certain fact. It dated from that very night. And as
the great black river with its dreary shores was soon lost to her view
in the gloom, so, she stood on the river’s brink unable to see into the
vast blank misery of a life suspected, and fallen away from by good and
bad, but knowing that it lay there dim before her, stretching away to
the great ocean, Death.
One thing only, was clear to the girl’s mind. Accustomed from her very
babyhood promptly to do the thing that could be done--whether to keep
out weather, to ward off cold, to postpone hunger, or what not--she
started out of her meditation, and ran home.
The room was quiet, and the lamp burnt on the table. In the bunk in the
corner, her brother lay asleep. She bent over him softly, kissed him,
and came to the table.
‘By the time of Miss Abbey’s closing, and by the run of the tide, it
must be one. Tide’s running up. Father at Chiswick, wouldn’t think of
coming down, till after the turn, and that’s at half after four. I’ll
call Charley at six. I shall hear the church-clocks strike, as I sit
here.’
Very quietly, she placed a chair before the scanty fire, and sat down in
it, drawing her shawl about her.
‘Charley’s hollow down by the flare is not there now. Poor Charley!’
The clock struck two, and the clock struck three, and the clock struck
four, and she remained there, with a woman’s patience and her own
purpose. When the morning was well on between four and five, she slipped
off her shoes (that her going about might not wake Charley), trimmed
the fire sparingly, put water on to boil, and set the table for
breakfast. Then she went up the ladder, lamp in hand, and came down
again, and glided about and about, making a little bundle. Lastly, from
her pocket, and from the chimney-piece, and from an inverted basin
on the highest shelf she brought halfpence, a few sixpences, fewer
shillings, and fell to laboriously and noiselessly counting them, and
setting aside one little heap. She was still so engaged, when she was
startled by:
‘Hal-loa!’ From her brother, sitting up in bed.
‘You made me jump, Charley.’
‘Jump! Didn’t you make ME jump, when I opened my eyes a moment ago, and
saw you sitting there, like the ghost of a girl miser, in the dead of
the night.’
‘It’s not the dead of the night, Charley. It’s nigh six in the morning.’
‘Is it though? But what are you up to, Liz?’
‘Still telling your fortune, Charley.’
‘It seems to be a precious small one, if that’s it,’ said the boy. ‘What
are you putting that little pile of money by itself for?’
‘For you, Charley.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Get out of bed, Charley, and get washed and dressed, and then I’ll tell
you.’
Her composed manner, and her low distinct voice, always had an influence
over him. His head was soon in a basin of water, and out of it again,
and staring at her through a storm of towelling.
‘I never,’ towelling at himself as if he were his bitterest enemy, ‘saw
such a girl as you are. What IS the move, Liz?’
‘Are you almost ready for breakfast, Charley?’
‘You can pour it out. Hal-loa! I say? And a bundle?’
‘And a bundle, Charley.’
‘You don’t mean it’s for me, too?’
‘Yes, Charley; I do; indeed.’
More serious of face, and more slow of action, than he had been, the
boy completed his dressing, and came and sat down at the little
breakfast-table, with his eyes amazedly directed to her face.
‘You see, Charley dear, I have made up my mind that this is the right
time for your going away from us. Over and above all the blessed change
of by-and-bye, you’ll be much happier, and do much better, even so soon
as next month. Even so soon as next week.’
‘How do you know I shall?’
‘I don’t quite know how, Charley, but I do.’ In spite of her unchanged
manner of speaking, and her unchanged appearance of composure, she
scarcely trusted herself to look at him, but kept her eyes employed on
the cutting and buttering of his bread, and on the mixing of his tea,
and other such little preparations. ‘You must leave father to me,
Charley--I will do what I can with him--but you must go.’
‘You don’t stand upon ceremony, I think,’ grumbled the boy, throwing his
bread and butter about, in an ill-humour.
She made him no answer.
‘I tell you what,’ said the boy, then, bursting out into an angry
whimpering, ‘you’re a selfish jade, and you think there’s not enough for
three of us, and you want to get rid of me.’
‘If you believe so, Charley,--yes, then I believe too, that I am a
selfish jade, and that I think there’s not enough for three of us, and
that I want to get rid of you.’
It was only when the boy rushed at her, and threw his arms round her
neck, that she lost her self-restraint. But she lost it then, and wept
over him.
‘Don’t cry, don’t cry! I am satisfied to go, Liz; I am satisfied to go.
I know you send me away for my good.’
‘O, Charley, Charley, Heaven above us knows I do!’
‘Yes yes. Don’t mind what I said. Don’t remember it. Kiss me.’
After a silence, she loosed him, to dry her eyes and regain her strong
quiet influence.
‘Now listen, Charley dear. We both know it must be done, and I alone
know there is good reason for its being done at once. Go straight to the
school, and say that you and I agreed upon it--that we can’t overcome
father’s opposition--that father will never trouble them, but will never
take you back. You are a credit to the school, and you will be a greater
credit to it yet, and they will help you to get a living. Show what
clothes you have brought, and what money, and say that I will send some
more money. If I can get some in no other way, I will ask a little help
of those two gentlemen who came here that night.’
‘I say!’ cried her brother, quickly. ‘Don’t you have it of that chap
that took hold of me by the chin! Don’t you have it of that Wrayburn
one!’
Perhaps a slight additional tinge of red flushed up into her face and
brow, as with a nod she laid a hand upon his lips to keep him silently
attentive.
‘And above all things mind this, Charley! Be sure you always speak well
of father. Be sure you always give father his full due. You can’t deny
that because father has no learning himself he is set against it in
you; but favour nothing else against him, and be sure you say--as you
know--that your sister is devoted to him. And if you should ever happen
to hear anything said against father that is new to you, it will not be
true. Remember, Charley! It will not be true.’
The boy looked at her with some doubt and surprise, but she went on
again without heeding it.
‘Above all things remember! It will not be true. I have nothing more to
say, Charley dear, except, be good, and get learning, and only think of
some things in the old life here, as if you had dreamed them in a dream
last night. Good-bye, my Darling!’
Though so young, she infused in these parting words a love that was far
more like a mother’s than a sister’s, and before which the boy was quite
bowed down. After holding her to his breast with a passionate cry, he
took up his bundle and darted out at the door, with an arm across his
eyes.
The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a
frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black
substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark
masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on
fire. Lizzie, looking for her father, saw him coming, and stood upon the
causeway that he might see her.
He had nothing with him but his boat, and came on apace. A knot of those
amphibious human-creatures who appear to have some mysterious power
of extracting a subsistence out of tidal water by looking at it, were
gathered together about the causeway. As her father’s boat grounded,
they became contemplative of the mud, and dispersed themselves. She saw
that the mute avoidance had begun.
Gaffer saw it, too, in so far as that he was moved when he set foot on
shore, to stare around him. But, he promptly set to work to haul up his
boat, and make her fast, and take the sculls and rudder and rope out of
her. Carrying these with Lizzie’s aid, he passed up to his dwelling.
‘Sit close to the fire, father, dear, while I cook your breakfast.
It’s all ready for cooking, and only been waiting for you. You must be
frozen.’
‘Well, Lizzie, I ain’t of a glow; that’s certain. And my hands seem
nailed through to the sculls. See how dead they are!’ Something
suggestive in their colour, and perhaps in her face, struck him as he
held them up; he turned his shoulder and held them down to the fire.
‘You were not out in the perishing night, I hope, father?’
‘No, my dear. Lay aboard a barge, by a blazing coal-fire.--Where’s that
boy?’
‘There’s a drop of brandy for your tea, father, if you’ll put it in
while I turn this bit of meat. If the river was to get frozen, there
would be a deal of distress; wouldn’t there, father?’
‘Ah! there’s always enough of that,’ said Gaffer, dropping the liquor
into his cup from a squat black bottle, and dropping it slowly that it
might seem more; ‘distress is for ever a going about, like sut in the
air--Ain’t that boy up yet?’
‘The meat’s ready now, father. Eat it while it’s hot and comfortable.
After you have finished, we’ll turn round to the fire and talk.’
But, he perceived that he was evaded, and, having thrown a hasty angry
glance towards the bunk, plucked at a corner of her apron and asked:
‘What’s gone with that boy?’
‘Father, if you’ll begin your breakfast, I’ll sit by and tell you.’ He
looked at her, stirred his tea and took two or three gulps, then cut at
his piece of hot steak with his case-knife, and said, eating:
‘Now then. What’s gone with that boy?’
‘Don’t be angry, dear. It seems, father, that he has quite a gift of
learning.’
‘Unnat’ral young beggar!’ said the parent, shaking his knife in the air.
‘And that having this gift, and not being equally good at other things,
he has made shift to get some schooling.’
‘Unnat’ral young beggar!’ said the parent again, with his former action.
‘--And that knowing you have nothing to spare, father, and not wishing
to be a burden on you, he gradually made up his mind to go seek his
fortune out of learning. He went away this morning, father, and he cried
very much at going, and he hoped you would forgive him.’
‘Let him never come a nigh me to ask me my forgiveness,’ said the
father, again emphasizing his words with the knife. ‘Let him never come
within sight of my eyes, nor yet within reach of my arm. His own father
ain’t good enough for him. He’s disowned his own father. His own father
therefore, disowns him for ever and ever, as a unnat’ral young beggar.’
He had pushed away his plate. With the natural need of a strong rough
man in anger, to do something forcible, he now clutched his knife
overhand, and struck downward with it at the end of every succeeding
sentence. As he would have struck with his own clenched fist if there
had chanced to be nothing in it.
‘He’s welcome to go. He’s more welcome to go than to stay. But let him
never come back. Let him never put his head inside that door. And let
you never speak a word more in his favour, or you’ll disown your own
father, likewise, and what your father says of him he’ll have to come to
say of you. Now I see why them men yonder held aloof from me. They says
to one another, “Here comes the man as ain’t good enough for his own
son!” Lizzie--!’
But, she stopped him with a cry. Looking at her he saw her, with a face
quite strange to him, shrinking back against the wall, with her hands
before her eyes.
‘Father, don’t! I can’t bear to see you striking with it. Put it down!’
He looked at the knife; but in his astonishment still held it.
‘Father, it’s too horrible. O put it down, put it down!’
Confounded by her appearance and exclamation, he tossed it away, and
stood up with his open hands held out before him.
‘What’s come to you, Liz? Can you think I would strike at you with a
knife?’
‘No, father, no; you would never hurt me.’
‘What should I hurt?’
‘Nothing, dear father. On my knees, I am certain, in my heart and soul
I am certain, nothing! But it was too dreadful to bear; for it looked--’
her hands covering her face again, ‘O it looked--’
‘What did it look like?’
The recollection of his murderous figure, combining with her trial of
last night, and her trial of the morning, caused her to drop at his
feet, without having answered.
He had never seen her so before. He raised her with the utmost
tenderness, calling her the best of daughters, and ‘my poor pretty
creetur’, and laid her head upon his knee, and tried to restore her. But
failing, he laid her head gently down again, got a pillow and placed it
under her dark hair, and sought on the table for a spoonful of brandy.
There being none left, he hurriedly caught up the empty bottle, and ran
out at the door.
He returned as hurriedly as he had gone, with the bottle still empty.
He kneeled down by her, took her head on his arm, and moistened her lips
with a little water into which he dipped his fingers: saying, fiercely,
as he looked around, now over this shoulder, now over that:
‘Have we got a pest in the house? Is there summ’at deadly sticking to my
clothes? What’s let loose upon us? Who loosed it?’
Chapter 7
MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF
Silas Wegg, being on his road to the Roman Empire, approaches it by way
of Clerkenwell. The time is early in the evening; the weather moist and
raw. Mr Wegg finds leisure to make a little circuit, by reason that he
folds his screen early, now that he combines another source of income
with it, and also that he feels it due to himself to be anxiously
expected at the Bower. ‘Boffin will get all the eagerer for waiting a
bit,’ says Silas, screwing up, as he stumps along, first his right eye,
and then his left. Which is something superfluous in him, for Nature has
already screwed both pretty tight.
‘If I get on with him as I expect to get on,’ Silas pursues, stumping
and meditating, ‘it wouldn’t become me to leave it here. It wouldn’t be
respectable.’ Animated by this reflection, he stumps faster, and looks
a long way before him, as a man with an ambitious project in abeyance
often will do.
Aware of a working-jeweller population taking sanctuary about the church
in Clerkenwell, Mr Wegg is conscious of an interest in, and a respect
for, the neighbourhood. But, his sensations in this regard halt as to
their strict morality, as he halts in his gait; for, they suggest the
delights of a coat of invisibility in which to walk off safely with the
precious stones and watch-cases, but stop short of any compunction for
the people who would lose the same.
Not, however, towards the ‘shops’ where cunning artificers work in
pearls and diamonds and gold and silver, making their hands so rich,
that the enriched water in which they wash them is bought for the
refiners;--not towards these does Mr Wegg stump, but towards the poorer
shops of small retail traders in commodities to eat and drink and keep
folks warm, and of Italian frame-makers, and of barbers, and of brokers,
and of dealers in dogs and singing-birds. From these, in a narrow and
a dirty street devoted to such callings, Mr Wegg selects one dark
shop-window with a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a
muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick,
but among which nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save
the candle itself in its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs
fighting a small-sword duel. Stumping with fresh vigour, he goes in at
the dark greasy entry, pushes a little greasy dark reluctant side-door,
and follows the door into the little dark greasy shop. It is so dark
that nothing can be made out in it, over a little counter, but another
tallow candle in another old tin candlestick, close to the face of a man
stooping low in a chair.
Mr Wegg nods to the face, ‘Good evening.’
The face looking up is a sallow face with weak eyes, surmounted by a
tangle of reddish-dusty hair. The owner of the face has no cravat on,
and has opened his tumbled shirt-collar to work with the more ease.
For the same reason he has no coat on: only a loose waistcoat over his
yellow linen. His eyes are like the over-tried eyes of an engraver, but
he is not that; his expression and stoop are like those of a shoemaker,
but he is not that.
‘Good evening, Mr Venus. Don’t you remember?’
With slowly dawning remembrance, Mr Venus rises, and holds his candle
over the little counter, and holds it down towards the legs, natural and
artificial, of Mr Wegg.
‘To be SURE!’ he says, then. ‘How do you do?’
‘Wegg, you know,’ that gentleman explains.
‘Yes, yes,’ says the other. ‘Hospital amputation?’
‘Just so,’ says Mr Wegg.
‘Yes, yes,’ quoth Venus. ‘How do you do? Sit down by the fire, and warm
your--your other one.’
The little counter being so short a counter that it leaves the
fireplace, which would have been behind it if it had been longer,
accessible, Mr Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales
a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop. ‘For
that,’ Mr Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two,
‘is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy, and,’ with another
sniff, ‘as it might be, strong of old pairs of bellows.’
‘My tea is drawing, and my muffin is on the hob, Mr Wegg; will you
partake?’
It being one of Mr Wegg’s guiding rules in life always to partake, he
says he will. But, the little shop is so excessively dark, is stuck so
full of black shelves and brackets and nooks and corners, that he sees
Mr Venus’s cup and saucer only because it is close under the candle, and
does not see from what mysterious recess Mr Venus produces another
for himself until it is under his nose. Concurrently, Wegg perceives a
pretty little dead bird lying on the counter, with its head drooping
on one side against the rim of Mr Venus’s saucer, and a long stiff wire
piercing its breast. As if it were Cock Robin, the hero of the ballad,
and Mr Venus were the sparrow with his bow and arrow, and Mr Wegg were
the fly with his little eye.
Mr Venus dives, and produces another muffin, yet untoasted; taking the
arrow out of the breast of Cock Robin, he proceeds to toast it on the
end of that cruel instrument. When it is brown, he dives again and
produces butter, with which he completes his work.
Mr Wegg, as an artful man who is sure of his supper by-and-bye, presses
muffin on his host to soothe him into a compliant state of mind, or, as
one might say, to grease his works. As the muffins disappear, little by
little, the black shelves and nooks and corners begin to appear, and Mr
Wegg gradually acquires an imperfect notion that over against him on the
chimney-piece is a Hindoo baby in a bottle, curved up with his big
head tucked under him, as he would instantly throw a summersault if the
bottle were large enough.
When he deems Mr Venus’s wheels sufficiently lubricated, Mr Wegg
approaches his object by asking, as he lightly taps his hands together,
to express an undesigning frame of mind:
‘And how have I been going on, this long time, Mr Venus?’
‘Very bad,’ says Mr Venus, uncompromisingly.
‘What? Am I still at home?’ asks Wegg, with an air of surprise.
‘Always at home.’
This would seem to be secretly agreeable to Wegg, but he veils his
feelings, and observes, ‘Strange. To what do you attribute it?’
‘I don’t know,’ replies Venus, who is a haggard melancholy man, speaking
in a weak voice of querulous complaint, ‘to what to attribute it, Mr
Wegg. I can’t work you into a miscellaneous one, no how. Do what I will,
you can’t be got to fit. Anybody with a passable knowledge would pick
you out at a look, and say,--“No go! Don’t match!”’
‘Well, but hang it, Mr Venus,’ Wegg expostulates with some little
irritation, ‘that can’t be personal and peculiar in ME. It must often
happen with miscellaneous ones.’
‘With ribs (I grant you) always. But not else. When I prepare a
miscellaneous one, I know beforehand that I can’t keep to nature, and
be miscellaneous with ribs, because every man has his own ribs, and no
other man’s will go with them; but elseways I can be miscellaneous. I
have just sent home a Beauty--a perfect Beauty--to a school of art. One
leg Belgian, one leg English, and the pickings of eight other people in
it. Talk of not being qualified to be miscellaneous! By rights you OUGHT
to be, Mr Wegg.’
Silas looks as hard at his one leg as he can in the dim light, and after
a pause sulkily opines ‘that it must be the fault of the other people.
Or how do you mean to say it comes about?’ he demands impatiently.
‘I don’t know how it comes about. Stand up a minute. Hold the light.’
Mr Venus takes from a corner by his chair, the bones of a leg and foot,
beautifully pure, and put together with exquisite neatness. These he
compares with Mr Wegg’s leg; that gentleman looking on, as if he were
being measured for a riding-boot. ‘No, I don’t know how it is, but so it
is. You have got a twist in that bone, to the best of my belief. I never
saw the likes of you.’
Mr Wegg having looked distrustfully at his own limb, and suspiciously at
the pattern with which it has been compared, makes the point:
‘I’ll bet a pound that ain’t an English one!’
‘An easy wager, when we run so much into foreign! No, it belongs to that
French gentleman.’
As he nods towards a point of darkness behind Mr Wegg, the latter, with
a slight start, looks round for ‘that French gentleman,’ whom he at
length descries to be represented (in a very workmanlike manner) by his
ribs only, standing on a shelf in another corner, like a piece of armour
or a pair of stays.
‘Oh!’ says Mr Wegg, with a sort of sense of being introduced; ‘I
dare say you were all right enough in your own country, but I hope no
objections will be taken to my saying that the Frenchman was never yet
born as I should wish to match.’
At this moment the greasy door is violently pushed inward, and a boy
follows it, who says, after having let it slam:
‘Come for the stuffed canary.’
‘It’s three and ninepence,’ returns Venus; ‘have you got the money?’
The boy produces four shillings. Mr Venus, always in exceedingly low
spirits and making whimpering sounds, peers about for the stuffed
canary. On his taking the candle to assist his search, Mr Wegg observes
that he has a convenient little shelf near his knees, exclusively
appropriated to skeleton hands, which have very much the appearance of
wanting to lay hold of him. From these Mr Venus rescues the canary in a
glass case, and shows it to the boy.
‘There!’ he whimpers. ‘There’s animation! On a twig, making up his mind
to hop! Take care of him; he’s a lovely specimen.--And three is four.’
The boy gathers up his change and has pulled the door open by a leather
strap nailed to it for the purpose, when Venus cries out:
‘Stop him! Come back, you young villain! You’ve got a tooth among them
halfpence.’
‘How was I to know I’d got it? You giv it me. I don’t want none of your
teeth; I’ve got enough of my own.’ So the boy pipes, as he selects it
from his change, and throws it on the counter.
‘Don’t sauce ME, in the wicious pride of your youth,’ Mr Venus retorts
pathetically. ‘Don’t hit ME because you see I’m down. I’m low enough
without that. It dropped into the till, I suppose. They drop into
everything. There was two in the coffee-pot at breakfast time. Molars.’
‘Very well, then,’ argues the boy, ‘what do you call names for?’
To which Mr Venus only replies, shaking his shock of dusty hair, and
winking his weak eyes, ‘Don’t sauce ME, in the wicious pride of your
youth; don’t hit ME, because you see I’m down. You’ve no idea how small
you’d come out, if I had the articulating of you.’
This consideration seems to have its effect on the boy, for he goes out
grumbling.
‘Oh dear me, dear me!’ sighs Mr Venus, heavily, snuffing the candle,
‘the world that appeared so flowery has ceased to blow! You’re casting
your eye round the shop, Mr Wegg. Let me show you a light. My working
bench. My young man’s bench. A Wice. Tools. Bones, warious. Skulls,
warious. Preserved Indian baby. African ditto. Bottled preparations,
warious. Everything within reach of your hand, in good preservation.
The mouldy ones a-top. What’s in those hampers over them again, I don’t
quite remember. Say, human warious. Cats. Articulated English baby.
Dogs. Ducks. Glass eyes, warious. Mummied bird. Dried cuticle, warious.
Oh, dear me! That’s the general panoramic view.’
Having so held and waved the candle as that all these heterogeneous
objects seemed to come forward obediently when they were named, and
then retire again, Mr Venus despondently repeats, ‘Oh dear me, dear
me!’ resumes his seat, and with drooping despondency upon him, falls to
pouring himself out more tea.
‘Where am I?’ asks Mr Wegg.
‘You’re somewhere in the back shop across the yard, sir; and speaking
quite candidly, I wish I’d never bought you of the Hospital Porter.’
‘Now, look here, what did you give for me?’
‘Well,’ replies Venus, blowing his tea: his head and face peering out
of the darkness, over the smoke of it, as if he were modernizing the old
original rise in his family: ‘you were one of a warious lot, and I don’t
know.’
Silas puts his point in the improved form of ‘What will you take for
me?’
‘Well,’ replies Venus, still blowing his tea, ‘I’m not prepared, at a
moment’s notice, to tell you, Mr Wegg.’
‘Come! According to your own account I’m not worth much,’ Wegg reasons
persuasively.
‘Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant you, Mr Wegg; but you might
turn out valuable yet, as a--’ here Mr Venus takes a gulp of tea, so
hot that it makes him choke, and sets his weak eyes watering; ‘as a
Monstrosity, if you’ll excuse me.’
Repressing an indignant look, indicative of anything but a disposition
to excuse him, Silas pursues his point.
‘I think you know me, Mr Venus, and I think you know I never bargain.’
Mr Venus takes gulps of hot tea, shutting his eyes at every gulp, and
opening them again in a spasmodic manner; but does not commit himself to
assent.
‘I have a prospect of getting on in life and elevating myself by my own
independent exertions,’ says Wegg, feelingly, ‘and I shouldn’t like--I
tell you openly I should NOT like--under such circumstances, to be what
I may call dispersed, a part of me here, and a part of me there, but
should wish to collect myself like a genteel person.’
‘It’s a prospect at present, is it, Mr Wegg? Then you haven’t got the
money for a deal about you? Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you;
I’ll hold you over. I am a man of my word, and you needn’t be afraid of
my disposing of you. I’ll hold you over. That’s a promise. Oh dear me,
dear me!’
Fain to accept his promise, and wishing to propitiate him, Mr Wegg looks
on as he sighs and pours himself out more tea, and then says, trying to
get a sympathetic tone into his voice:
‘You seem very low, Mr Venus. Is business bad?’
‘Never was so good.’
‘Is your hand out at all?’
‘Never was so well in. Mr Wegg, I’m not only first in the trade, but I’m
THE trade. You may go and buy a skeleton at the West End if you like,
and pay the West End price, but it’ll be my putting together. I’ve as
much to do as I can possibly do, with the assistance of my young man,
and I take a pride and a pleasure in it.’
Mr Venus thus delivers himself, his right hand extended, his smoking
saucer in his left hand, protesting as though he were going to burst
into a flood of tears.
‘That ain’t a state of things to make you low, Mr Venus.’
‘Mr Wegg, I know it ain’t. Mr Wegg, not to name myself as a workman
without an equal, I’ve gone on improving myself in my knowledge of
Anatomy, till both by sight and by name I’m perfect. Mr Wegg, if you was
brought here loose in a bag to be articulated, I’d name your smallest
bones blindfold equally with your largest, as fast as I could pick ‘em
out, and I’d sort ‘em all, and sort your wertebrae, in a manner that
would equally surprise and charm you.’
‘Well,’ remarks Silas (though not quite so readily as last time), ‘THAT
ain’t a state of things to be low about.--Not for YOU to be low about,
leastways.’
‘Mr Wegg, I know it ain’t; Mr Wegg, I know it ain’t. But it’s the heart
that lowers me, it is the heart! Be so good as take and read that card
out loud.’
Silas receives one from his hand, which Venus takes from a wonderful
litter in a drawer, and putting on his spectacles, reads:
‘“Mr Venus,”’
‘Yes. Go on.’
‘“Preserver of Animals and Birds,”’
‘Yes. Go on.’
‘“Articulator of human bones.”’
‘That’s it,’ with a groan. ‘That’s it! Mr Wegg, I’m thirty-two, and a
bachelor. Mr Wegg, I love her. Mr Wegg, she is worthy of being loved by
a Potentate!’ Here Silas is rather alarmed by Mr Venus’s springing to
his feet in the hurry of his spirits, and haggardly confronting him with
his hand on his coat collar; but Mr Venus, begging pardon, sits down
again, saying, with the calmness of despair, ‘She objects to the
business.’
‘Does she know the profits of it?’
‘She knows the profits of it, but she don’t appreciate the art of
it, and she objects to it. “I do not wish,” she writes in her own
handwriting, “to regard myself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney
light”.’
Mr Venus pours himself out more tea, with a look and in an attitude of
the deepest desolation.
‘And so a man climbs to the top of the tree, Mr Wegg, only to see that
there’s no look-out when he’s up there! I sit here of a night surrounded
by the lovely trophies of my art, and what have they done for me? Ruined
me. Brought me to the pass of being informed that “she does not wish to
regard herself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney light”!’ Having
repeated the fatal expressions, Mr Venus drinks more tea by gulps, and
offers an explanation of his doing so.
‘It lowers me. When I’m equally lowered all over, lethargy sets in. By
sticking to it till one or two in the morning, I get oblivion. Don’t let
me detain you, Mr Wegg. I’m not company for any one.’
‘It is not on that account,’ says Silas, rising, ‘but because I’ve got
an appointment. It’s time I was at Harmon’s.’
‘Eh?’ said Mr Venus. ‘Harmon’s, up Battle Bridge way?’
Mr Wegg admits that he is bound for that port.
‘You ought to be in a good thing, if you’ve worked yourself in there.
There’s lots of money going, there.’
‘To think,’ says Silas, ‘that you should catch it up so quick, and know
about it. Wonderful!’
‘Not at all, Mr Wegg. The old gentleman wanted to know the nature and
worth of everything that was found in the dust; and many’s the bone, and
feather, and what not, that he’s brought to me.’
‘Really, now!’
‘Yes. (Oh dear me, dear me!) And he’s buried quite in this
neighbourhood, you know. Over yonder.’
Mr Wegg does not know, but he makes as if he did, by responsively
nodding his head. He also follows with his eyes, the toss of Venus’s
head: as if to seek a direction to over yonder.
‘I took an interest in that discovery in the river,’ says Venus.
‘(She hadn’t written her cutting refusal at that time.) I’ve got up
there--never mind, though.’
He had raised the candle at arm’s length towards one of the dark
shelves, and Mr Wegg had turned to look, when he broke off.
‘The old gentleman was well known all round here. There used to be
stories about his having hidden all kinds of property in those dust
mounds. I suppose there was nothing in ‘em. Probably you know, Mr Wegg?’
‘Nothing in ‘em,’ says Wegg, who has never heard a word of this before.
‘Don’t let me detain you. Good night!’
The unfortunate Mr Venus gives him a shake of the hand with a shake of
his own head, and drooping down in his chair, proceeds to pour himself
out more tea. Mr Wegg, looking back over his shoulder as he pulls the
door open by the strap, notices that the movement so shakes the crazy
shop, and so shakes a momentary flare out of the candle, as that the
babies--Hindoo, African, and British--the ‘human warious’, the French
gentleman, the green glass-eyed cats, the dogs, the ducks, and all
the rest of the collection, show for an instant as if paralytically
animated; while even poor little Cock Robin at Mr Venus’s elbow turns
over on his innocent side. Next moment, Mr Wegg is stumping under the
gaslights and through the mud.
Chapter 8
MR BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
Whosoever had gone out of Fleet Street into the Temple at the date of
this history, and had wandered disconsolate about the Temple until he
stumbled on a dismal churchyard, and had looked up at the dismal windows
commanding that churchyard until at the most dismal window of them
all he saw a dismal boy, would in him have beheld, at one grand
comprehensive swoop of the eye, the managing clerk, junior clerk,
common-law clerk, conveyancing clerk, chancery clerk, every refinement
and department of clerk, of Mr Mortimer Lightwood, erewhile called in
the newspapers eminent solicitor.
Mr Boffin having been several times in communication with this clerkly
essence, both on its own ground and at the Bower, had no difficulty in
identifying it when he saw it up in its dusty eyrie. To the second floor
on which the window was situated, he ascended, much pre-occupied in mind
by the uncertainties besetting the Roman Empire, and much regretting the
death of the amiable Pertinax: who only last night had left the Imperial
affairs in a state of great confusion, by falling a victim to the fury
of the praetorian guards.
‘Morning, morning, morning!’ said Mr Boffin, with a wave of his hand, as
the office door was opened by the dismal boy, whose appropriate name was
Blight. ‘Governor in?’
‘Mr Lightwood gave you an appointment, sir, I think?’
‘I don’t want him to give it, you know,’ returned Mr Boffin; ‘I’ll pay
my way, my boy.’
‘No doubt, sir. Would you walk in? Mr Lightwood ain’t in at the present
moment, but I expect him back very shortly. Would you take a seat in Mr
Lightwood’s room, sir, while I look over our Appointment Book?’
Young Blight made a great show of fetching from his desk a long thin
manuscript volume with a brown paper cover, and running his finger down
the day’s appointments, murmuring, ‘Mr Aggs, Mr Baggs, Mr Caggs, Mr
Daggs, Mr Faggs, Mr Gaggs, Mr Boffin. Yes, sir; quite right. You are a
little before your time, sir. Mr Lightwood will be in directly.’
‘I’m not in a hurry,’ said Mr Boffin
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll take the opportunity, if you please, of entering
your name in our Callers’ Book for the day.’ Young Blight made another
great show of changing the volume, taking up a pen, sucking it, dipping
it, and running over previous entries before he wrote. As, ‘Mr Alley,
Mr Balley, Mr Calley, Mr Dalley, Mr Falley, Mr Galley, Mr Halley, Mr
Lalley, Mr Malley. And Mr Boffin.’
‘Strict system here; eh, my lad?’ said Mr Boffin, as he was booked.
‘Yes, sir,’ returned the boy. ‘I couldn’t get on without it.’
By which he probably meant that his mind would have been shattered to
pieces without this fiction of an occupation. Wearing in his solitary
confinement no fetters that he could polish, and being provided with no
drinking-cup that he could carve, he had fallen on the device of ringing
alphabetical changes into the two volumes in question, or of entering
vast numbers of persons out of the Directory as transacting business
with Mr Lightwood. It was the more necessary for his spirits, because,
being of a sensitive temperament, he was apt to consider it personally
disgraceful to himself that his master had no clients.
‘How long have you been in the law, now?’ asked Mr Boffin, with a
pounce, in his usual inquisitive way.
‘I’ve been in the law, now, sir, about three years.’
‘Must have been as good as born in it!’ said Mr Boffin, with admiration.
‘Do you like it?’
‘I don’t mind it much,’ returned Young Blight, heaving a sigh, as if its
bitterness were past.
‘What wages do you get?’
‘Half what I could wish,’ replied young Blight.
‘What’s the whole that you could wish?’
‘Fifteen shillings a week,’ said the boy.
‘About how long might it take you now, at a average rate of going, to be
a Judge?’ asked Mr Boffin, after surveying his small stature in silence.
The boy answered that he had not yet quite worked out that little
calculation.
‘I suppose there’s nothing to prevent your going in for it?’ said Mr
Boffin.
The boy virtually replied that as he had the honour to be a Briton who
never never never, there was nothing to prevent his going in for it. Yet
he seemed inclined to suspect that there might be something to prevent
his coming out with it.
‘Would a couple of pound help you up at all?’ asked Mr Boffin.
On this head, young Blight had no doubt whatever, so Mr Boffin made him
a present of that sum of money, and thanked him for his attention to his
(Mr Boffin’s) affairs; which, he added, were now, he believed, as good
as settled.
Then Mr Boffin, with his stick at his ear, like a Familiar Spirit
explaining the office to him, sat staring at a little bookcase of Law
Practice and Law Reports, and at a window, and at an empty blue bag, and
at a stick of sealing-wax, and a pen, and a box of wafers, and an apple,
and a writing-pad--all very dusty--and at a number of inky smears
and blots, and at an imperfectly-disguised gun-case pretending to be
something legal, and at an iron box labelled HARMON ESTATE, until Mr
Lightwood appeared.
Mr Lightwood explained that he came from the proctor’s, with whom he had
been engaged in transacting Mr Boffin’s affairs.
‘And they seem to have taken a deal out of you!’ said Mr Boffin, with
commiseration.
Mr Lightwood, without explaining that his weariness was chronic,
proceeded with his exposition that, all forms of law having been at
length complied with, will of Harmon deceased having been proved, death
of Harmon next inheriting having been proved, &c., and so forth, Court
of Chancery having been moved, &c. and so forth, he, Mr Lightwood, had
now the gratification, honour, and happiness, again &c. and so forth, of
congratulating Mr Boffin on coming into possession as residuary legatee,
of upwards of one hundred thousand pounds, standing in the books of the
Governor and Company of the Bank of England, again &c. and so forth.
‘And what is particularly eligible in the property Mr Boffin, is, that
it involves no trouble. There are no estates to manage, no rents to
return so much per cent upon in bad times (which is an extremely dear
way of getting your name into the newspapers), no voters to become
parboiled in hot water with, no agents to take the cream off the
milk before it comes to table. You could put the whole in a cash-box
to-morrow morning, and take it with you to--say, to the Rocky Mountains.
Inasmuch as every man,’ concluded Mr Lightwood, with an indolent smile,
‘appears to be under a fatal spell which obliges him, sooner or later,
to mention the Rocky Mountains in a tone of extreme familiarity to some
other man, I hope you’ll excuse my pressing you into the service of that
gigantic range of geographical bores.’
Without following this last remark very closely, Mr Boffin cast his
perplexed gaze first at the ceiling, and then at the carpet.
‘Well,’ he remarked, ‘I don’t know what to say about it, I am sure. I
was a’most as well as I was. It’s a great lot to take care of.’
‘My dear Mr Boffin, then DON’T take care of it!’
‘Eh?’ said that gentleman.
‘Speaking now,’ returned Mortimer, ‘with the irresponsible imbecility
of a private individual, and not with the profundity of a professional
adviser, I should say that if the circumstance of its being too much,
weighs upon your mind, you have the haven of consolation open to you
that you can easily make it less. And if you should be apprehensive of
the trouble of doing so, there is the further haven of consolation that
any number of people will take the trouble off your hands.’
‘Well! I don’t quite see it,’ retorted Mr Boffin, still perplexed.
‘That’s not satisfactory, you know, what you’re a-saying.’
‘Is Anything satisfactory, Mr Boffin?’ asked Mortimer, raising his
eyebrows.
‘I used to find it so,’ answered Mr Boffin, with a wistful look. ‘While
I was foreman at the Bower--afore it WAS the Bower--I considered the
business very satisfactory. The old man was a awful Tartar (saying
it, I’m sure, without disrespect to his memory) but the business was
a pleasant one to look after, from before daylight to past dark. It’s
a’most a pity,’ said Mr Boffin, rubbing his ear, ‘that he ever went and
made so much money. It would have been better for him if he hadn’t so
given himself up to it. You may depend upon it,’ making the discovery
all of a sudden, ‘that HE found it a great lot to take care of!’
Mr Lightwood coughed, not convinced.
‘And speaking of satisfactory,’ pursued Mr Boffin, ‘why, Lord save
us! when we come to take it to pieces, bit by bit, where’s the
satisfactoriness of the money as yet? When the old man does right the
poor boy after all, the poor boy gets no good of it. He gets made away
with, at the moment when he’s lifting (as one may say) the cup and
sarser to his lips. Mr Lightwood, I will now name to you, that on behalf
of the poor dear boy, me and Mrs Boffin have stood out against the old
man times out of number, till he has called us every name he could lay
his tongue to. I have seen him, after Mrs Boffin has given him her mind
respecting the claims of the nat’ral affections, catch off Mrs Boffin’s
bonnet (she wore, in general, a black straw, perched as a matter of
convenience on the top of her head), and send it spinning across
the yard. I have indeed. And once, when he did this in a manner that
amounted to personal, I should have given him a rattler for himself, if
Mrs Boffin hadn’t thrown herself betwixt us, and received flush on the
temple. Which dropped her, Mr Lightwood. Dropped her.’
Mr Lightwood murmured ‘Equal honour--Mrs Boffin’s head and heart.’
‘You understand; I name this,’ pursued Mr Boffin, ‘to show you, now the
affairs are wound up, that me and Mrs Boffin have ever stood as we were
in Christian honour bound, the children’s friend. Me and Mrs Boffin
stood the poor girl’s friend; me and Mrs Boffin stood the poor boy’s
friend; me and Mrs Boffin up and faced the old man when we momently
expected to be turned out for our pains. As to Mrs Boffin,’ said Mr
Boffin lowering his voice, ‘she mightn’t wish it mentioned now she’s
Fashionable, but she went so far as to tell him, in my presence, he was
a flinty-hearted rascal.’
Mr Lightwood murmured ‘Vigorous Saxon spirit--Mrs Boffin’s
ancestors--bowmen--Agincourt and Cressy.’
‘The last time me and Mrs Boffin saw the poor boy,’ said Mr Boffin,
warming (as fat usually does) with a tendency to melt, ‘he was a child
of seven year old. For when he came back to make intercession for his
sister, me and Mrs Boffin were away overlooking a country contract which
was to be sifted before carted, and he was come and gone in a single
hour. I say he was a child of seven year old. He was going away, all
alone and forlorn, to that foreign school, and he come into our place,
situate up the yard of the present Bower, to have a warm at our fire.
There was his little scanty travelling clothes upon him. There was his
little scanty box outside in the shivering wind, which I was going to
carry for him down to the steamboat, as the old man wouldn’t hear of
allowing a sixpence coach-money. Mrs Boffin, then quite a young woman
and pictur of a full-blown rose, stands him by her, kneels down at the
fire, warms her two open hands, and falls to rubbing his cheeks; but
seeing the tears come into the child’s eyes, the tears come fast into
her own, and she holds him round the neck, like as if she was protecting
him, and cries to me, “I’d give the wide wide world, I would, to run
away with him!” I don’t say but what it cut me, and but what it at the
same time heightened my feelings of admiration for Mrs Boffin. The poor
child clings to her for awhile, as she clings to him, and then, when
the old man calls, he says “I must go! God bless you!” and for a moment
rests his heart against her bosom, and looks up at both of us, as if it
was in pain--in agony. Such a look! I went aboard with him (I gave him
first what little treat I thought he’d like), and I left him when he had
fallen asleep in his berth, and I came back to Mrs Boffin. But tell
her what I would of how I had left him, it all went for nothing, for,
according to her thoughts, he never changed that look that he had looked
up at us two. But it did one piece of good. Mrs Boffin and me had no
child of our own, and had sometimes wished that how we had one. But not
now. “We might both of us die,” says Mrs Boffin, “and other eyes might
see that lonely look in our child.” So of a night, when it was very
cold, or when the wind roared, or the rain dripped heavy, she would
wake sobbing, and call out in a fluster, “Don’t you see the poor child’s
face? O shelter the poor child!”--till in course of years it gently wore
out, as many things do.’
‘My dear Mr Boffin, everything wears to rags,’ said Mortimer, with a
light laugh.
‘I won’t go so far as to say everything,’ returned Mr Boffin, on whom
his manner seemed to grate, ‘because there’s some things that I never
found among the dust. Well, sir. So Mrs Boffin and me grow older and
older in the old man’s service, living and working pretty hard in it,
till the old man is discovered dead in his bed. Then Mrs Boffin and me
seal up his box, always standing on the table at the side of his bed,
and having frequently heerd tell of the Temple as a spot where lawyer’s
dust is contracted for, I come down here in search of a lawyer to
advise, and I see your young man up at this present elevation, chopping
at the flies on the window-sill with his penknife, and I give him a Hoy!
not then having the pleasure of your acquaintance, and by that
means come to gain the honour. Then you, and the gentleman in the
uncomfortable neck-cloth under the little archway in Saint Paul’s
Churchyard--’
‘Doctors’ Commons,’ observed Lightwood.
‘I understood it was another name,’ said Mr Boffin, pausing, ‘but you
know best. Then you and Doctor Scommons, you go to work, and you do the
thing that’s proper, and you and Doctor S. take steps for finding out
the poor boy, and at last you do find out the poor boy, and me and Mrs
Boffin often exchange the observation, “We shall see him again,
under happy circumstances.” But it was never to be; and the want of
satisfactoriness is, that after all the money never gets to him.’
‘But it gets,’ remarked Lightwood, with a languid inclination of the
head, ‘into excellent hands.’
‘It gets into the hands of me and Mrs Boffin only this very day and
hour, and that’s what I am working round to, having waited for this day
and hour a’ purpose. Mr Lightwood, here has been a wicked cruel
murder. By that murder me and Mrs Boffin mysteriously profit. For the
apprehension and conviction of the murderer, we offer a reward of one
tithe of the property--a reward of Ten Thousand Pound.’
‘Mr Boffin, it’s too much.’
‘Mr Lightwood, me and Mrs Boffin have fixed the sum together, and we
stand to it.’
‘But let me represent to you,’ returned Lightwood, ‘speaking now with
professional profundity, and not with individual imbecility, that the
offer of such an immense reward is a temptation to forced suspicion,
forced construction of circumstances, strained accusation, a whole
tool-box of edged tools.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Boffin, a little staggered, ‘that’s the sum we put o’
one side for the purpose. Whether it shall be openly declared in the new
notices that must now be put about in our names--’
‘In your name, Mr Boffin; in your name.’
‘Very well; in my name, which is the same as Mrs Boffin’s, and means
both of us, is to be considered in drawing ‘em up. But this is the first
instruction that I, as the owner of the property, give to my lawyer on
coming into it.’
‘Your lawyer, Mr Boffin,’ returned Lightwood, making a very short
note of it with a very rusty pen, ‘has the gratification of taking the
instruction. There is another?’
‘There is just one other, and no more. Make me as compact a little will
as can be reconciled with tightness, leaving the whole of the property
to “my beloved wife, Henerietty Boffin, sole executrix”. Make it as
short as you can, using those words; but make it tight.’
At some loss to fathom Mr Boffin’s notions of a tight will, Lightwood
felt his way.
‘I beg your pardon, but professional profundity must be exact. When you
say tight--’
‘I mean tight,’ Mr Boffin explained.
‘Exactly so. And nothing can be more laudable. But is the tightness to
bind Mrs Boffin to any and what conditions?’
‘Bind Mrs Boffin?’ interposed her husband. ‘No! What are you thinking
of! What I want is, to make it all hers so tight as that her hold of it
can’t be loosed.’
‘Hers freely, to do what she likes with? Hers absolutely?’
‘Absolutely?’ repeated Mr Boffin, with a short sturdy laugh. ‘Hah! I
should think so! It would be handsome in me to begin to bind Mrs Boffin
at this time of day!’
So that instruction, too, was taken by Mr Lightwood; and Mr Lightwood,
having taken it, was in the act of showing Mr Boffin out, when Mr Eugene
Wrayburn almost jostled him in the door-way. Consequently Mr Lightwood
said, in his cool manner, ‘Let me make you two known to one another,’
and further signified that Mr Wrayburn was counsel learned in the
law, and that, partly in the way of business and partly in the way of
pleasure, he had imparted to Mr Wrayburn some of the interesting facts
of Mr Boffin’s biography.
‘Delighted,’ said Eugene--though he didn’t look so--‘to know Mr Boffin.’
‘Thankee, sir, thankee,’ returned that gentleman. ‘And how do YOU like
the law?’
‘A--not particularly,’ returned Eugene.
‘Too dry for you, eh? Well, I suppose it wants some years of sticking
to, before you master it. But there’s nothing like work. Look at the
bees.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ returned Eugene, with a reluctant smile, ‘but will
you excuse my mentioning that I always protest against being referred to
the bees?’
‘Do you!’ said Mr Boffin.
‘I object on principle,’ said Eugene, ‘as a biped--’
‘As a what?’ asked Mr Boffin.
‘As a two-footed creature;--I object on principle, as a two-footed
creature, to being constantly referred to insects and four-footed
creatures. I object to being required to model my proceedings according
to the proceedings of the bee, or the dog, or the spider, or the camel.
I fully admit that the camel, for instance, is an excessively temperate
person; but he has several stomachs to entertain himself with, and I
have only one. Besides, I am not fitted up with a convenient cool cellar
to keep my drink in.’
‘But I said, you know,’ urged Mr Boffin, rather at a loss for an answer,
‘the bee.’
‘Exactly. And may I represent to you that it’s injudicious to say the
bee? For the whole case is assumed. Conceding for a moment that there is
any analogy between a bee, and a man in a shirt and pantaloons (which
I deny), and that it is settled that the man is to learn from the bee
(which I also deny), the question still remains, what is he to learn?
To imitate? Or to avoid? When your friends the bees worry themselves to
that highly fluttered extent about their sovereign, and become perfectly
distracted touching the slightest monarchical movement, are we men to
learn the greatness of Tuft-hunting, or the littleness of the
Court Circular? I am not clear, Mr Boffin, but that the hive may be
satirical.’
‘At all events, they work,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘Ye-es,’ returned Eugene, disparagingly, ‘they work; but don’t you think
they overdo it? They work so much more than they need--they make so much
more than they can eat--they are so incessantly boring and buzzing at
their one idea till Death comes upon them--that don’t you think they
overdo it? And are human labourers to have no holidays, because of the
bees? And am I never to have change of air, because the bees don’t? Mr
Boffin, I think honey excellent at breakfast; but, regarded in the light
of my conventional schoolmaster and moralist, I protest against the
tyrannical humbug of your friend the bee. With the highest respect for
you.’
‘Thankee,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Morning, morning!’
But, the worthy Mr Boffin jogged away with a comfortless impression he
could have dispensed with, that there was a deal of unsatisfactoriness
in the world, besides what he had recalled as appertaining to the Harmon
property. And he was still jogging along Fleet Street in this condition
of mind, when he became aware that he was closely tracked and observed
by a man of genteel appearance.
‘Now then?’ said Mr Boffin, stopping short, with his meditations brought
to an abrupt check, ‘what’s the next article?’
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Boffin.’
‘My name too, eh? How did you come by it? I don’t know you.’
‘No, sir, you don’t know me.’
Mr Boffin looked full at the man, and the man looked full at him.
‘No,’ said Mr Boffin, after a glance at the pavement, as if it were made
of faces and he were trying to match the man’s, ‘I DON’T know you.’
‘I am nobody,’ said the stranger, ‘and not likely to be known; but Mr
Boffin’s wealth--’
‘Oh! that’s got about already, has it?’ muttered Mr Boffin.
‘--And his romantic manner of acquiring it, make him conspicuous. You
were pointed out to me the other day.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘I should say I was a disappintment to you when
I WAS pinted out, if your politeness would allow you to confess it, for
I am well aware I am not much to look at. What might you want with me?
Not in the law, are you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No information to give, for a reward?’
‘No, sir.’
There may have been a momentary mantling in the face of the man as he
made the last answer, but it passed directly.
‘If I don’t mistake, you have followed me from my lawyer’s and tried
to fix my attention. Say out! Have you? Or haven’t you?’ demanded Mr
Boffin, rather angry.
‘Yes.’
‘Why have you?’
‘If you will allow me to walk beside you, Mr Boffin, I will tell you.
Would you object to turn aside into this place--I think it is called
Clifford’s Inn--where we can hear one another better than in the roaring
street?’
[‘Now,’ thought Mr Boffin, ‘if he proposes a game at skittles, or meets
a country gentleman just come into property, or produces any article
of jewellery he has found, I’ll knock him down!’ With this discreet
reflection, and carrying his stick in his arms much as Punch carries
his, Mr Boffin turned into Clifford’s Inn aforesaid.)
‘Mr Boffin, I happened to be in Chancery Lane this morning, when I saw
you going along before me. I took the liberty of following you, trying
to make up my mind to speak to you, till you went into your lawyer’s.
Then I waited outside till you came out.’
[‘Don’t quite sound like skittles, nor yet country gentleman, nor yet
jewellery,’ thought Mr Boffin, ‘but there’s no knowing.’)
‘I am afraid my object is a bold one, I am afraid it has little of the
usual practical world about it, but I venture it. If you ask me, or if
you ask yourself--which is more likely--what emboldens me, I answer, I
have been strongly assured, that you are a man of rectitude and plain
dealing, with the soundest of sound hearts, and that you are blessed in
a wife distinguished by the same qualities.’
‘Your information is true of Mrs Boffin, anyhow,’ was Mr Boffin’s
answer, as he surveyed his new friend again. There was something
repressed in the strange man’s manner, and he walked with his eyes
on the ground--though conscious, for all that, of Mr Boffin’s
observation--and he spoke in a subdued voice. But his words came easily,
and his voice was agreeable in tone, albeit constrained.
‘When I add, I can discern for myself what the general tongue says of
you--that you are quite unspoiled by Fortune, and not uplifted--I trust
you will not, as a man of an open nature, suspect that I mean to flatter
you, but will believe that all I mean is to excuse myself, these being
my only excuses for my present intrusion.’
[‘How much?’ thought Mr Boffin. ‘It must be coming to money. How much?’)
‘You will probably change your manner of living, Mr Boffin, in your
changed circumstances. You will probably keep a larger house, have many
matters to arrange, and be beset by numbers of correspondents. If you
would try me as your Secretary--’
‘As WHAT?’ cried Mr Boffin, with his eyes wide open.
‘Your Secretary.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Boffin, under his breath, ‘that’s a queer thing!’
‘Or,’ pursued the stranger, wondering at Mr Boffin’s wonder, ‘if you
would try me as your man of business under any name, I know you would
find me faithful and grateful, and I hope you would find me useful. You
may naturally think that my immediate object is money. Not so, for
I would willingly serve you a year--two years--any term you might
appoint--before that should begin to be a consideration between us.’
‘Where do you come from?’ asked Mr Boffin.
‘I come,’ returned the other, meeting his eye, ‘from many countries.’
Boffin’s acquaintances with the names and situations of foreign lands
being limited in extent and somewhat confused in quality, he shaped his
next question on an elastic model.
‘From--any particular place?’
‘I have been in many places.’
‘What have you been?’ asked Mr Boffin.
Here again he made no great advance, for the reply was, ‘I have been a
student and a traveller.’
‘But if it ain’t a liberty to plump it out,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘what do
you do for your living?’
‘I have mentioned,’ returned the other, with another look at him, and
a smile, ‘what I aspire to do. I have been superseded as to some slight
intentions I had, and I may say that I have now to begin life.’
Not very well knowing how to get rid of this applicant, and feeling the
more embarrassed because his manner and appearance claimed a delicacy
in which the worthy Mr Boffin feared he himself might be deficient, that
gentleman glanced into the mouldy little plantation or cat-preserve, of
Clifford’s Inn, as it was that day, in search of a suggestion. Sparrows
were there, cats were there, dry-rot and wet-rot were there, but it was
not otherwise a suggestive spot.
‘All this time,’ said the stranger, producing a little pocket-book and
taking out a card, ‘I have not mentioned my name. My name is Rokesmith.
I lodge at one Mr Wilfer’s, at Holloway.’
Mr Boffin stared again.
‘Father of Miss Bella Wilfer?’ said he.
‘My landlord has a daughter named Bella. Yes; no doubt.’
Now, this name had been more or less in Mr Boffin’s thoughts all the
morning, and for days before; therefore he said:
‘That’s singular, too!’ unconsciously staring again, past all bounds of
good manners, with the card in his hand. ‘Though, by-the-bye, I suppose
it was one of that family that pinted me out?’
‘No. I have never been in the streets with one of them.’
‘Heard me talked of among ‘em, though?’
‘No. I occupy my own rooms, and have held scarcely any communication
with them.’
‘Odder and odder!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Well, sir, to tell you the truth, I
don’t know what to say to you.’
‘Say nothing,’ returned Mr Rokesmith; ‘allow me to call on you in a few
days. I am not so unconscionable as to think it likely that you would
accept me on trust at first sight, and take me out of the very street.
Let me come to you for your further opinion, at your leisure.’
‘That’s fair, and I don’t object,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘but it must be on
condition that it’s fully understood that I no more know that I shall
ever be in want of any gentleman as Secretary--it WAS Secretary you
said; wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
Again Mr Boffin’s eyes opened wide, and he stared at the applicant from
head to foot, repeating ‘Queer!--You’re sure it was Secretary? Are you?’
‘I am sure I said so.’
--‘As Secretary,’ repeated Mr Boffin, meditating upon the word; ‘I no
more know that I may ever want a Secretary, or what not, than I do that
I shall ever be in want of the man in the moon. Me and Mrs Boffin have
not even settled that we shall make any change in our way of life. Mrs
Boffin’s inclinations certainly do tend towards Fashion; but, being
already set up in a fashionable way at the Bower, she may not make
further alterations. However, sir, as you don’t press yourself, I wish
to meet you so far as saying, by all means call at the Bower if you
like. Call in the course of a week or two. At the same time, I consider
that I ought to name, in addition to what I have already named, that I
have in my employment a literary man--WITH a wooden leg--as I have no
thoughts of parting from.’
‘I regret to hear I am in some sort anticipated,’ Mr Rokesmith answered,
evidently having heard it with surprise; ‘but perhaps other duties might
arise?’
‘You see,’ returned Mr Boffin, with a confidential sense of dignity, ‘as
to my literary man’s duties, they’re clear. Professionally he declines
and he falls, and as a friend he drops into poetry.’
Without observing that these duties seemed by no means clear to Mr
Rokesmith’s astonished comprehension, Mr Boffin went on:
‘And now, sir, I’ll wish you good-day. You can call at the Bower any
time in a week or two. It’s not above a mile or so from you, and your
landlord can direct you to it. But as he may not know it by its new
name of Boffin’s Bower, say, when you inquire of him, it’s Harmon’s;
will you?’
‘Harmoon’s,’ repeated Mr Rokesmith, seeming to have caught the sound
imperfectly, ‘Harmarn’s. How do you spell it?’
‘Why, as to the spelling of it,’ returned Mr Boffin, with great presence
of mind, ‘that’s YOUR look out. Harmon’s is all you’ve got to say to
HIM. Morning, morning, morning!’ And so departed, without looking back.
Chapter 9
MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
Betaking himself straight homeward, Mr Boffin, without further let or
hindrance, arrived at the Bower, and gave Mrs Boffin (in a walking dress
of black velvet and feathers, like a mourning coach-horse) an account of
all he had said and done since breakfast.
‘This brings us round, my dear,’ he then pursued, ‘to the question
we left unfinished: namely, whether there’s to be any new go-in for
Fashion.’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what I want, Noddy,’ said Mrs Boffin, smoothing her
dress with an air of immense enjoyment, ‘I want Society.’
‘Fashionable Society, my dear?’
‘Yes!’ cried Mrs Boffin, laughing with the glee of a child. ‘Yes! It’s
no good my being kept here like Wax-Work; is it now?’
‘People have to pay to see Wax-Work, my dear,’ returned her husband,
‘whereas (though you’d be cheap at the same money) the neighbours is
welcome to see YOU for nothing.’
‘But it don’t answer,’ said the cheerful Mrs Boffin. ‘When we worked
like the neighbours, we suited one another. Now we have left work off;
we have left off suiting one another.’
‘What, do you think of beginning work again?’ Mr Boffin hinted.
‘Out of the question! We have come into a great fortune, and we must do
what’s right by our fortune; we must act up to it.’
Mr Boffin, who had a deep respect for his wife’s intuitive wisdom,
replied, though rather pensively: ‘I suppose we must.’
‘It’s never been acted up to yet, and, consequently, no good has come of
it,’ said Mrs Boffin.
‘True, to the present time,’ Mr Boffin assented, with his former
pensiveness, as he took his seat upon his settle. ‘I hope good may be
coming of it in the future time. Towards which, what’s your views, old
lady?’
Mrs Boffin, a smiling creature, broad of figure and simple of nature,
with her hands folded in her lap, and with buxom creases in her throat,
proceeded to expound her views.
‘I say, a good house in a good neighbourhood, good things about us,
good living, and good society. I say, live like our means, without
extravagance, and be happy.’
‘Yes. I say be happy, too,’ assented the still pensive Mr Boffin.
‘Lor-a-mussy!’ exclaimed Mrs Boffin, laughing and clapping her hands,
and gaily rocking herself to and fro, ‘when I think of me in a light
yellow chariot and pair, with silver boxes to the wheels--’
‘Oh! you was thinking of that, was you, my dear?’
‘Yes!’ cried the delighted creature. ‘And with a footman up behind, with
a bar across, to keep his legs from being poled! And with a coachman
up in front, sinking down into a seat big enough for three of him, all
covered with upholstery in green and white! And with two bay horses
tossing their heads and stepping higher than they trot long-ways! And
with you and me leaning back inside, as grand as ninepence! Oh-h-h-h My!
Ha ha ha ha ha!’
Mrs Boffin clapped her hands again, rocked herself again, beat her feet
upon the floor, and wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes.
‘And what, my old lady,’ inquired Mr Boffin, when he also had
sympathetically laughed: ‘what’s your views on the subject of the
Bower?’
‘Shut it up. Don’t part with it, but put somebody in it, to keep it.’
‘Any other views?’
‘Noddy,’ said Mrs Boffin, coming from her fashionable sofa to his side
on the plain settle, and hooking her comfortable arm through his,
‘Next I think--and I really have been thinking early and late--of the
disappointed girl; her that was so cruelly disappointed, you know, both
of her husband and his riches. Don’t you think we might do something for
her? Have her to live with us? Or something of that sort?’
‘Ne-ver once thought of the way of doing it!’ cried Mr Boffin, smiting
the table in his admiration. ‘What a thinking steam-ingein this old lady
is. And she don’t know how she does it. Neither does the ingein!’
Mrs Boffin pulled his nearest ear, in acknowledgment of this piece of
philosophy, and then said, gradually toning down to a motherly strain:
‘Last, and not least, I have taken a fancy. You remember dear little
John Harmon, before he went to school? Over yonder across the yard, at
our fire? Now that he is past all benefit of the money, and it’s come to
us, I should like to find some orphan child, and take the boy and adopt
him and give him John’s name, and provide for him. Somehow, it would
make me easier, I fancy. Say it’s only a whim--’
‘But I don’t say so,’ interposed her husband.
‘No, but deary, if you did--’
‘I should be a Beast if I did,’ her husband interposed again.
‘That’s as much as to say you agree? Good and kind of you, and like you,
deary! And don’t you begin to find it pleasant now,’ said Mrs Boffin,
once more radiant in her comely way from head to foot, and once more
smoothing her dress with immense enjoyment, ‘don’t you begin to find
it pleasant already, to think that a child will be made brighter, and
better, and happier, because of that poor sad child that day? And isn’t
it pleasant to know that the good will be done with the poor sad child’s
own money?’
‘Yes; and it’s pleasant to know that you are Mrs Boffin,’ said her
husband, ‘and it’s been a pleasant thing to know this many and many a
year!’ It was ruin to Mrs Boffin’s aspirations, but, having so spoken,
they sat side by side, a hopelessly Unfashionable pair.
These two ignorant and unpolished people had guided themselves so far on
in their journey of life, by a religious sense of duty and desire to do
right. Ten thousand weaknesses and absurdities might have been detected
in the breasts of both; ten thousand vanities additional, possibly, in
the breast of the woman. But the hard wrathful and sordid nature that
had wrung as much work out of them as could be got in their best days,
for as little money as could be paid to hurry on their worst, had never
been so warped but that it knew their moral straightness and respected
it. In its own despite, in a constant conflict with itself and them, it
had done so. And this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short at
itself and dies with the doer of it; but Good, never.
Through his most inveterate purposes, the dead Jailer of Harmony Jail
had known these two faithful servants to be honest and true. While he
raged at them and reviled them for opposing him with the speech of the
honest and true, it had scratched his stony heart, and he had perceived
the powerlessness of all his wealth to buy them if he had addressed
himself to the attempt. So, even while he was their griping taskmaster
and never gave them a good word, he had written their names down in his
will. So, even while it was his daily declaration that he mistrusted all
mankind--and sorely indeed he did mistrust all who bore any resemblance
to himself--he was as certain that these two people, surviving him,
would be trustworthy in all things from the greatest to the least, as he
was that he must surely die.
Mr and Mrs Boffin, sitting side by side, with Fashion withdrawn to an
immeasurable distance, fell to discussing how they could best find their
orphan. Mrs Boffin suggested advertisement in the newspapers, requesting
orphans answering annexed description to apply at the Bower on a certain
day; but Mr Boffin wisely apprehending obstruction of the neighbouring
thoroughfares by orphan swarms, this course was negatived. Mrs Boffin
next suggested application to their clergyman for a likely orphan. Mr
Boffin thinking better of this scheme, they resolved to call upon the
reverend gentleman at once, and to take the same opportunity of making
acquaintance with Miss Bella Wilfer. In order that these visits might be
visits of state, Mrs Boffin’s equipage was ordered out.
This consisted of a long hammer-headed old horse, formerly used in the
business, attached to a four-wheeled chaise of the same period, which
had long been exclusively used by the Harmony Jail poultry as the
favourite laying-place of several discreet hens. An unwonted application
of corn to the horse, and of paint and varnish to the carriage, when
both fell in as a part of the Boffin legacy, had made what Mr Boffin
considered a neat turn-out of the whole; and a driver being added, in
the person of a long hammer-headed young man who was a very good match
for the horse, left nothing to be desired. He, too, had been formerly
used in the business, but was now entombed by an honest jobbing tailor
of the district in a perfect Sepulchre of coat and gaiters, sealed with
ponderous buttons.
Behind this domestic, Mr and Mrs Boffin took their seats in the back
compartment of the vehicle: which was sufficiently commodious, but had
an undignified and alarming tendency, in getting over a rough crossing,
to hiccup itself away from the front compartment. On their being
descried emerging from the gates of the Bower, the neighbourhood turned
out at door and window to salute the Boffins. Among those who were ever
and again left behind, staring after the equipage, were many youthful
spirits, who hailed it in stentorian tones with such congratulations as
‘Nod-dy Bof-fin!’ ‘Bof-fin’s mon-ey!’ ‘Down with the dust, Bof-fin!’ and
other similar compliments. These, the hammer-headed young man took in
such ill part that he often impaired the majesty of the progress by
pulling up short, and making as though he would alight to exterminate
the offenders; a purpose from which he only allowed himself to be
dissuaded after long and lively arguments with his employers.
At length the Bower district was left behind, and the peaceful dwelling
of the Reverend Frank Milvey was gained. The Reverend Frank Milvey’s
abode was a very modest abode, because his income was a very modest
income. He was officially accessible to every blundering old woman who
had incoherence to bestow upon him, and readily received the Boffins.
He was quite a young man, expensively educated and wretchedly paid, with
quite a young wife and half a dozen quite young children. He was under
the necessity of teaching and translating from the classics, to eke out
his scanty means, yet was generally expected to have more time to spare
than the idlest person in the parish, and more money than the richest.
He accepted the needless inequalities and inconsistencies of his life,
with a kind of conventional submission that was almost slavish; and any
daring layman who would have adjusted such burdens as his, more decently
and graciously, would have had small help from him.
With a ready patient face and manner, and yet with a latent smile that
showed a quick enough observation of Mrs Boffin’s dress, Mr Milvey, in
his little book-room--charged with sounds and cries as though the six
children above were coming down through the ceiling, and the roasting
leg of mutton below were coming up through the floor--listened to Mrs
Boffin’s statement of her want of an orphan.
‘I think,’ said Mr Milvey, ‘that you have never had a child of your own,
Mr and Mrs Boffin?’
Never.
‘But, like the Kings and Queens in the Fairy Tales, I suppose you have
wished for one?’
In a general way, yes.
Mr Milvey smiled again, as he remarked to himself ‘Those kings and
queens were always wishing for children.’ It occurring to him, perhaps,
that if they had been Curates, their wishes might have tended in the
opposite direction.
‘I think,’ he pursued, ‘we had better take Mrs Milvey into our Council.
She is indispensable to me. If you please, I’ll call her.’
So, Mr Milvey called, ‘Margaretta, my dear!’ and Mrs Milvey came down.
A pretty, bright little woman, something worn by anxiety, who had
repressed many pretty tastes and bright fancies, and substituted in
their stead, schools, soup, flannel, coals, and all the week-day cares
and Sunday coughs of a large population, young and old. As gallantly had
Mr Milvey repressed much in himself that naturally belonged to his old
studies and old fellow-students, and taken up among the poor and their
children with the hard crumbs of life.
‘Mr and Mrs Boffin, my dear, whose good fortune you have heard of.’
Mrs Milvey, with the most unaffected grace in the world, congratulated
them, and was glad to see them. Yet her engaging face, being an open as
well as a perceptive one, was not without her husband’s latent smile.
‘Mrs Boffin wishes to adopt a little boy, my dear.’
Mrs Milvey, looking rather alarmed, her husband added:
‘An orphan, my dear.’
‘Oh!’ said Mrs Milvey, reassured for her own little boys.
‘And I was thinking, Margaretta, that perhaps old Mrs Goody’s grandchild
might answer the purpose.
‘Oh my DEAR Frank! I DON’T think that would do!’
‘No?’
‘Oh NO!’
The smiling Mrs Boffin, feeling it incumbent on her to take part in the
conversation, and being charmed with the emphatic little wife and her
ready interest, here offered her acknowledgments and inquired what there
was against him?
‘I DON’T think,’ said Mrs Milvey, glancing at the Reverend Frank, ‘--and
I believe my husband will agree with me when he considers it again--that
you could possibly keep that orphan clean from snuff. Because his
grandmother takes so MANY ounces, and drops it over him.’
‘But he would not be living with his grandmother then, Margaretta,’ said
Mr Milvey.
‘No, Frank, but it would be impossible to keep her from Mrs Boffin’s
house; and the MORE there was to eat and drink there, the oftener she
would go. And she IS an inconvenient woman. I HOPE it’s not uncharitable
to remember that last Christmas Eve she drank eleven cups of tea, and
grumbled all the time. And she is NOT a grateful woman, Frank. You
recollect her addressing a crowd outside this house, about her wrongs,
when, one night after we had gone to bed, she brought back the petticoat
of new flannel that had been given her, because it was too short.’
‘That’s true,’ said Mr Milvey. ‘I don’t think that would do. Would
little Harrison--’
‘Oh, FRANK!’ remonstrated his emphatic wife.
‘He has no grandmother, my dear.’
‘No, but I DON’T think Mrs Boffin would like an orphan who squints so
MUCH.’
‘That’s true again,’ said Mr Milvey, becoming haggard with perplexity.
‘If a little girl would do--’
‘But, my DEAR Frank, Mrs Boffin wants a boy.’
‘That’s true again,’ said Mr Milvey. ‘Tom Bocker is a nice boy’
(thoughtfully).
‘But I DOUBT, Frank,’ Mrs Milvey hinted, after a little hesitation, ‘if
Mrs Boffin wants an orphan QUITE nineteen, who drives a cart and waters
the roads.’
Mr Milvey referred the point to Mrs Boffin in a look; on that smiling
lady’s shaking her black velvet bonnet and bows, he remarked, in lower
spirits, ‘that’s true again.’
‘I am sure,’ said Mrs Boffin, concerned at giving so much trouble, ‘that
if I had known you would have taken so much pains, sir--and you too, ma’
am--I don’t think I would have come.’
‘PRAY don’t say that!’ urged Mrs Milvey.
‘No, don’t say that,’ assented Mr Milvey, ‘because we are so much
obliged to you for giving us the preference.’ Which Mrs Milvey
confirmed; and really the kind, conscientious couple spoke, as if they
kept some profitable orphan warehouse and were personally patronized.
‘But it is a responsible trust,’ added Mr Milvey, ‘and difficult to
discharge. At the same time, we are naturally very unwilling to lose the
chance you so kindly give us, and if you could afford us a day or two
to look about us,--you know, Margaretta, we might carefully examine the
workhouse, and the Infant School, and your District.’
‘To be SURE!’ said the emphatic little wife.
‘We have orphans, I know,’ pursued Mr Milvey, quite with the air as if
he might have added, ‘in stock,’ and quite as anxiously as if there were
great competition in the business and he were afraid of losing an order,
‘over at the clay-pits; but they are employed by relations or friends,
and I am afraid it would come at last to a transaction in the way of
barter. And even if you exchanged blankets for the child--or books
and firing--it would be impossible to prevent their being turned into
liquor.’
Accordingly, it was resolved that Mr and Mrs Milvey should search for
an orphan likely to suit, and as free as possible from the foregoing
objections, and should communicate again with Mrs Boffin. Then, Mr
Boffin took the liberty of mentioning to Mr Milvey that if Mr Milvey
would do him the kindness to be perpetually his banker to the extent
of ‘a twenty-pound note or so,’ to be expended without any reference
to him, he would be heartily obliged. At this, both Mr Milvey and Mrs
Milvey were quite as much pleased as if they had no wants of their own,
but only knew what poverty was, in the persons of other people; and
so the interview terminated with satisfaction and good opinion on all
sides.
‘Now, old lady,’ said Mr Boffin, as they resumed their seats behind the
hammer-headed horse and man: ‘having made a very agreeable visit there,
we’ll try Wilfer’s.’
It appeared, on their drawing up at the family gate, that to try
Wilfer’s was a thing more easily projected than done, on account of the
extreme difficulty of getting into that establishment; three pulls
at the bell producing no external result; though each was attended
by audible sounds of scampering and rushing within. At the fourth
tug--vindictively administered by the hammer-headed young man--Miss
Lavinia appeared, emerging from the house in an accidental manner, with
a bonnet and parasol, as designing to take a contemplative walk. The
young lady was astonished to find visitors at the gate, and expressed
her feelings in appropriate action.
‘Here’s Mr and Mrs Boffin!’ growled the hammer-headed young man through
the bars of the gate, and at the same time shaking it, as if he were on
view in a Menagerie; ‘they’ve been here half an hour.’
‘Who did you say?’ asked Miss Lavinia.
‘Mr and Mrs BOFFIN’ returned the young man, rising into a roar.
Miss Lavinia tripped up the steps to the house-door, tripped down the
steps with the key, tripped across the little garden, and opened the
gate. ‘Please to walk in,’ said Miss Lavinia, haughtily. ‘Our servant is
out.’
Mr and Mrs Boffin complying, and pausing in the little hall until Miss
Lavinia came up to show them where to go next, perceived three pairs of
listening legs upon the stairs above. Mrs Wilfer’s legs, Miss Bella’s
legs, Mr George Sampson’s legs.
‘Mr and Mrs Boffin, I think?’ said Lavinia, in a warning voice. Strained
attention on the part of Mrs Wilfer’s legs, of Miss Bella’s legs, of Mr
George Sampson’s legs.
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘If you’ll step this way--down these stairs--I’ll let Ma know.’
Excited flight of Mrs Wilfer’s legs, of Miss Bella’s legs, of Mr George
Sampson’s legs.
After waiting some quarter of an hour alone in the family sitting-room,
which presented traces of having been so hastily arranged after a meal,
that one might have doubted whether it was made tidy for visitors,
or cleared for blindman’s buff, Mr and Mrs Boffin became aware of the
entrance of Mrs Wilfer, majestically faint, and with a condescending
stitch in her side: which was her company manner.
‘Pardon me,’ said Mrs Wilfer, after the first salutations, and as soon
as she had adjusted the handkerchief under her chin, and waved her
gloved hands, ‘to what am I indebted for this honour?’
‘To make short of it, ma’am,’ returned Mr Boffin, ‘perhaps you may be
acquainted with the names of me and Mrs Boffin, as having come into a
certain property.’
‘I have heard, sir,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, with a dignified bend of her
head, ‘of such being the case.’
‘And I dare say, ma’am,’ pursued Mr Boffin, while Mrs Boffin added
confirmatory nods and smiles, ‘you are not very much inclined to take
kindly to us?’
‘Pardon me,’ said Mrs Wilfer. ‘’Twere unjust to visit upon Mr and Mrs
Boffin, a calamity which was doubtless a dispensation.’ These words
were rendered the more effective by a serenely heroic expression of
suffering.
‘That’s fairly meant, I am sure,’ remarked the honest Mr Boffin; ‘Mrs
Boffin and me, ma’am, are plain people, and we don’t want to pretend
to anything, nor yet to go round and round at anything because there’s
always a straight way to everything. Consequently, we make this call
to say, that we shall be glad to have the honour and pleasure of your
daughter’s acquaintance, and that we shall be rejoiced if your daughter
will come to consider our house in the light of her home equally with
this. In short, we want to cheer your daughter, and to give her
the opportunity of sharing such pleasures as we are a going to take
ourselves. We want to brisk her up, and brisk her about, and give her a
change.’
‘That’s it!’ said the open-hearted Mrs Boffin. ‘Lor! Let’s be
comfortable.’
Mrs Wilfer bent her head in a distant manner to her lady visitor, and
with majestic monotony replied to the gentleman:
‘Pardon me. I have several daughters. Which of my daughters am I to
understand is thus favoured by the kind intentions of Mr Boffin and his
lady?’
‘Don’t you see?’ the ever-smiling Mrs Boffin put in. ‘Naturally, Miss
Bella, you know.’
‘Oh-h!’ said Mrs Wilfer, with a severely unconvinced look. ‘My daughter
Bella is accessible and shall speak for herself.’ Then opening the door
a little way, simultaneously with a sound of scuttling outside it,
the good lady made the proclamation, ‘Send Miss Bella to me!’ which
proclamation, though grandly formal, and one might almost say heraldic,
to hear, was in fact enunciated with her maternal eyes reproachfully
glaring on that young lady in the flesh--and in so much of it that she
was retiring with difficulty into the small closet under the stairs,
apprehensive of the emergence of Mr and Mrs Boffin.
‘The avocations of R. W., my husband,’ Mrs Wilfer explained, on resuming
her seat, ‘keep him fully engaged in the City at this time of the day,
or he would have had the honour of participating in your reception
beneath our humble roof.’
‘Very pleasant premises!’ said Mr Boffin, cheerfully.
‘Pardon me, sir,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, correcting him, ‘it is the abode
of conscious though independent Poverty.’
Finding it rather difficult to pursue the conversation down this road,
Mr and Mrs Boffin sat staring at mid-air, and Mrs Wilfer sat silently
giving them to understand that every breath she drew required to be
drawn with a self-denial rarely paralleled in history, until Miss Bella
appeared: whom Mrs Wilfer presented, and to whom she explained the
purpose of the visitors.
‘I am much obliged to you, I am sure,’ said Miss Bella, coldly shaking
her curls, ‘but I doubt if I have the inclination to go out at all.’
‘Bella!’ Mrs Wilfer admonished her; ‘Bella, you must conquer this.’
‘Yes, do what your Ma says, and conquer it, my dear,’ urged Mrs Boffin,
‘because we shall be so glad to have you, and because you are much too
pretty to keep yourself shut up.’ With that, the pleasant creature gave
her a kiss, and patted her on her dimpled shoulders; Mrs Wilfer sitting
stiffly by, like a functionary presiding over an interview previous to
an execution.
‘We are going to move into a nice house,’ said Mrs Boffin, who was woman
enough to compromise Mr Boffin on that point, when he couldn’t very well
contest it; ‘and we are going to set up a nice carriage, and we’ll go
everywhere and see everything. And you mustn’t,’ seating Bella beside
her, and patting her hand, ‘you mustn’t feel a dislike to us to begin
with, because we couldn’t help it, you know, my dear.’
With the natural tendency of youth to yield to candour and sweet temper,
Miss Bella was so touched by the simplicity of this address that she
frankly returned Mrs Boffin’s kiss. Not at all to the satisfaction
of that good woman of the world, her mother, who sought to hold the
advantageous ground of obliging the Boffins instead of being obliged.
‘My youngest daughter, Lavinia,’ said Mrs Wilfer, glad to make a
diversion, as that young lady reappeared. ‘Mr George Sampson, a friend
of the family.’
The friend of the family was in that stage of tender passion which bound
him to regard everybody else as the foe of the family. He put the round
head of his cane in his mouth, like a stopper, when he sat down. As if
he felt himself full to the throat with affronting sentiments. And he
eyed the Boffins with implacable eyes.
‘If you like to bring your sister with you when you come to stay with
us,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘of course we shall be glad. The better you please
yourself, Miss Bella, the better you’ll please us.’
‘Oh, my consent is of no consequence at all, I suppose?’ cried Miss
Lavinia.
‘Lavvy,’ said her sister, in a low voice, ‘have the goodness to be seen
and not heard.’
‘No, I won’t,’ replied the sharp Lavinia. ‘I’m not a child, to be taken
notice of by strangers.’
‘You ARE a child.’
‘I’m not a child, and I won’t be taken notice of. “Bring your sister,”
indeed!’
‘Lavinia!’ said Mrs Wilfer. ‘Hold! I will not allow you to utter in my
presence the absurd suspicion that any strangers--I care not what their
names--can patronize my child. Do you dare to suppose, you ridiculous
girl, that Mr and Mrs Boffin would enter these doors upon a patronizing
errand; or, if they did, would remain within them, only for one single
instant, while your mother had the strength yet remaining in her vital
frame to request them to depart? You little know your mother if you
presume to think so.’
‘It’s all very fine,’ Lavinia began to grumble, when Mrs Wilfer
repeated:
‘Hold! I will not allow this. Do you not know what is due to guests?
Do you not comprehend that in presuming to hint that this lady and
gentleman could have any idea of patronizing any member of your
family--I care not which--you accuse them of an impertinence little less
than insane?’
‘Never mind me and Mrs Boffin, ma’am,’ said Mr Boffin, smilingly: ‘we
don’t care.’
‘Pardon me, but I do,’ returned Mrs Wilfer.
Miss Lavinia laughed a short laugh as she muttered, ‘Yes, to be sure.’
‘And I require my audacious child,’ proceeded Mrs Wilfer, with a
withering look at her youngest, on whom it had not the slightest effect,
‘to please to be just to her sister Bella; to remember that her sister
Bella is much sought after; and that when her sister Bella accepts an
attention, she considers herself to be conferring qui-i-ite as much
honour,’--this with an indignant shiver,--‘as she receives.’
But, here Miss Bella repudiated, and said quietly, ‘I can speak for
myself; you know, ma. You needn’t bring ME in, please.’
‘And it’s all very well aiming at others through convenient me,’ said
the irrepressible Lavinia, spitefully; ‘but I should like to ask George
Sampson what he says to it.’
‘Mr Sampson,’ proclaimed Mrs Wilfer, seeing that young gentleman take
his stopper out, and so darkly fixing him with her eyes as that he put
it in again: ‘Mr Sampson, as a friend of this family and a frequenter of
this house, is, I am persuaded, far too well-bred to interpose on such
an invitation.’
This exaltation of the young gentleman moved the conscientious Mrs
Boffin to repentance for having done him an injustice in her mind, and
consequently to saying that she and Mr Boffin would at any time be glad
to see him; an attention which he handsomely acknowledged by replying,
with his stopper unremoved, ‘Much obliged to you, but I’m always
engaged, day and night.’
However, Bella compensating for all drawbacks by responding to the
advances of the Boffins in an engaging way, that easy pair were on the
whole well satisfied, and proposed to the said Bella that as soon as
they should be in a condition to receive her in a manner suitable to
their desires, Mrs Boffin should return with notice of the fact. This
arrangement Mrs Wilfer sanctioned with a stately inclination of her
head and wave of her gloves, as who should say, ‘Your demerits shall be
overlooked, and you shall be mercifully gratified, poor people.’
‘By-the-bye, ma’am,’ said Mr Boffin, turning back as he was going, ‘you
have a lodger?’
‘A gentleman,’ Mrs Wilfer answered, qualifying the low expression,
‘undoubtedly occupies our first floor.’
‘I may call him Our Mutual Friend,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘What sort of a
fellow IS Our Mutual Friend, now? Do you like him?’
‘Mr Rokesmith is very punctual, very quiet, a very eligible inmate.’
‘Because,’ Mr Boffin explained, ‘you must know that I’m not particularly
well acquainted with Our Mutual Friend, for I have only seen him once.
You give a good account of him. Is he at home?’
‘Mr Rokesmith is at home,’ said Mrs Wilfer; ‘indeed,’ pointing through
the window, ‘there he stands at the garden gate. Waiting for you,
perhaps?’
‘Perhaps so,’ replied Mr Boffin. ‘Saw me come in, maybe.’
Bella had closely attended to this short dialogue. Accompanying Mrs
Boffin to the gate, she as closely watched what followed.
‘How are you, sir, how are you?’ said Mr Boffin. ‘This is Mrs Boffin. Mr
Rokesmith, that I told you of; my dear.’
She gave him good day, and he bestirred himself and helped her to her
seat, and the like, with a ready hand.
‘Good-bye for the present, Miss Bella,’ said Mrs Boffin, calling out a
hearty parting. ‘We shall meet again soon! And then I hope I shall have
my little John Harmon to show you.’
Mr Rokesmith, who was at the wheel adjusting the skirts of her dress,
suddenly looked behind him, and around him, and then looked up at her,
with a face so pale that Mrs Boffin cried:
‘Gracious!’ And after a moment, ‘What’s the matter, sir?’
‘How can you show her the Dead?’ returned Mr Rokesmith.
‘It’s only an adopted child. One I have told her of. One I’m going to
give the name to!’
‘You took me by surprise,’ said Mr Rokesmith, ‘and it sounded like an
omen, that you should speak of showing the Dead to one so young and
blooming.’
Now, Bella suspected by this time that Mr Rokesmith admired her. Whether
the knowledge (for it was rather that than suspicion) caused her to
incline to him a little more, or a little less, than she had done at
first; whether it rendered her eager to find out more about him, because
she sought to establish reason for her distrust, or because she sought
to free him from it; was as yet dark to her own heart. But at most
times he occupied a great amount of her attention, and she had set her
attention closely on this incident.
That he knew it as well as she, she knew as well as he, when they were
left together standing on the path by the garden gate.
‘Those are worthy people, Miss Wilfer.’
‘Do you know them well?’ asked Bella.
He smiled, reproaching her, and she coloured, reproaching herself--both,
with the knowledge that she had meant to entrap him into an answer not
true--when he said ‘I know OF them.’
‘Truly, he told us he had seen you but once.’
‘Truly, I supposed he did.’
Bella was nervous now, and would have been glad to recall her question.
‘You thought it strange that, feeling much interested in you, I should
start at what sounded like a proposal to bring you into contact with the
murdered man who lies in his grave. I might have known--of course in a
moment should have known--that it could not have that meaning. But my
interest remains.’
Re-entering the family-room in a meditative state, Miss Bella was
received by the irrepressible Lavinia with:
‘There, Bella! At last I hope you have got your wishes realized--by your
Boffins. You’ll be rich enough now--with your Boffins. You can have as
much flirting as you like--at your Boffins. But you won’t take ME to
your Boffins, I can tell you--you and your Boffins too!’
‘If,’ quoth Mr George Sampson, moodily pulling his stopper out, ‘Miss
Bella’s Mr Boffin comes any more of his nonsense to ME, I only wish him
to understand, as betwixt man and man, that he does it at his per--’ and
was going to say peril; but Miss Lavinia, having no confidence in his
mental powers, and feeling his oration to have no definite application
to any circumstances, jerked his stopper in again, with a sharpness that
made his eyes water.
And now the worthy Mrs Wilfer, having used her youngest daughter as a
lay-figure for the edification of these Boffins, became bland to her,
and proceeded to develop her last instance of force of character,
which was still in reserve. This was, to illuminate the family with her
remarkable powers as a physiognomist; powers that terrified R. W. when
ever let loose, as being always fraught with gloom and evil which no
inferior prescience was aware of. And this Mrs Wilfer now did, be it
observed, in jealousy of these Boffins, in the very same moments when
she was already reflecting how she would flourish these very same
Boffins and the state they kept, over the heads of her Boffinless
friends.
‘Of their manners,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘I say nothing. Of their
appearance, I say nothing. Of the disinterestedness of their intentions
towards Bella, I say nothing. But the craft, the secrecy, the dark
deep underhanded plotting, written in Mrs Boffin’s countenance, make me
shudder.’
As an incontrovertible proof that those baleful attributes were all
there, Mrs Wilfer shuddered on the spot.
Chapter 10
A MARRIAGE CONTRACT
There is excitement in the Veneering mansion. The mature young lady is
going to be married (powder and all) to the mature young gentleman, and
she is to be married from the Veneering house, and the Veneerings are to
give the breakfast. The Analytical, who objects as a matter of principle
to everything that occurs on the premises, necessarily objects to the
match; but his consent has been dispensed with, and a spring-van is
delivering its load of greenhouse plants at the door, in order that
to-morrow’s feast may be crowned with flowers.
The mature young lady is a lady of property. The mature young gentleman
is a gentleman of property. He invests his property. He goes, in
a condescending amateurish way, into the City, attends meetings of
Directors, and has to do with traffic in Shares. As is well known to the
wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to
do with in this world. Have no antecedents, no established character, no
cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have Shares. Have Shares enough to
be on Boards of Direction in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious
business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come
from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares.
Has he any principles? Shares. What squeezes him into Parliament?
Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never
originated anything, never produced anything? Sufficient answer to all;
Shares. O mighty Shares! To set those blaring images so high, and to
cause us smaller vermin, as under the influence of henbane or opium, to
cry out, night and day, ‘Relieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy
us and sell us, ruin us, only we beseech ye take rank among the powers
of the earth, and fatten on us’!
While the Loves and Graces have been preparing this torch for Hymen,
which is to be kindled to-morrow, Mr Twemlow has suffered much in his
mind. It would seem that both the mature young lady and the mature young
gentleman must indubitably be Veneering’s oldest friends. Wards of his,
perhaps? Yet that can scarcely be, for they are older than himself.
Veneering has been in their confidence throughout, and has done much to
lure them to the altar. He has mentioned to Twemlow how he said to
Mrs Veneering, ‘Anastatia, this must be a match.’ He has mentioned to
Twemlow how he regards Sophronia Akershem (the mature young lady) in the
light of a sister, and Alfred Lammle (the mature young gentleman) in the
light of a brother. Twemlow has asked him whether he went to school as
a junior with Alfred? He has answered, ‘Not exactly.’ Whether Sophronia
was adopted by his mother? He has answered, ‘Not precisely so.’
Twemlow’s hand has gone to his forehead with a lost air.
But, two or three weeks ago, Twemlow, sitting over his newspaper,
and over his dry-toast and weak tea, and over the stable-yard in Duke
Street, St James’s, received a highly-perfumed cocked-hat and monogram
from Mrs Veneering, entreating her dearest Mr T., if not particularly
engaged that day, to come like a charming soul and make a fourth at
dinner with dear Mr Podsnap, for the discussion of an interesting family
topic; the last three words doubly underlined and pointed with a note
of admiration. And Twemlow replying, ‘Not engaged, and more than
delighted,’ goes, and this takes place:
‘My dear Twemlow,’ says Veneering, ‘your ready response to Anastatia’s
unceremonious invitation is truly kind, and like an old, old friend. You
know our dear friend Podsnap?’
Twemlow ought to know the dear friend Podsnap who covered him with so
much confusion, and he says he does know him, and Podsnap reciprocates.
Apparently, Podsnap has been so wrought upon in a short time, as to
believe that he has been intimate in the house many, many, many years.
In the friendliest manner he is making himself quite at home with his
back to the fire, executing a statuette of the Colossus at Rhodes.
Twemlow has before noticed in his feeble way how soon the Veneering
guests become infected with the Veneering fiction. Not, however, that he
has the least notion of its being his own case.
‘Our friends, Alfred and Sophronia,’ pursues Veneering the veiled
prophet: ‘our friends Alfred and Sophronia, you will be glad to hear, my
dear fellows, are going to be married. As my wife and I make it a family
affair the entire direction of which we take upon ourselves, of course
our first step is to communicate the fact to our family friends.’
[‘Oh!’ thinks Twemlow, with his eyes on Podsnap, ‘then there are only
two of us, and he’s the other.’)
‘I did hope,’ Veneering goes on, ‘to have had Lady Tippins to meet you;
but she is always in request, and is unfortunately engaged.’
[‘Oh!’ thinks Twemlow, with his eyes wandering, ‘then there are three of
us, and SHE’S the other.’)
‘Mortimer Lightwood,’ resumes Veneering, ‘whom you both know, is out of
town; but he writes, in his whimsical manner, that as we ask him to be
bridegroom’s best man when the ceremony takes place, he will not refuse,
though he doesn’t see what he has to do with it.’
[‘Oh!’ thinks Twemlow, with his eyes rolling, ‘then there are four of
us, and HE’S the other.’)
‘Boots and Brewer,’ observes Veneering, ‘whom you also know, I have not
asked to-day; but I reserve them for the occasion.’
[‘Then,’ thinks Twemlow, with his eyes shut, ‘there are si--’ But here
collapses and does not completely recover until dinner is over and the
Analytical has been requested to withdraw.)
‘We now come,’ says Veneering, ‘to the point, the real point, of our
little family consultation. Sophronia, having lost both father and
mother, has no one to give her away.’
‘Give her away yourself,’ says Podsnap.
‘My dear Podsnap, no. For three reasons. Firstly, because I couldn’t
take so much upon myself when I have respected family friends to
remember. Secondly, because I am not so vain as to think that I look
the part. Thirdly, because Anastatia is a little superstitious on the
subject and feels averse to my giving away anybody until baby is old
enough to be married.’
‘What would happen if he did?’ Podsnap inquires of Mrs Veneering.
‘My dear Mr Podsnap, it’s very foolish I know, but I have an instinctive
presentiment that if Hamilton gave away anybody else first, he would
never give away baby.’ Thus Mrs Veneering; with her open hands pressed
together, and each of her eight aquiline fingers looking so very like
her one aquiline nose that the bran-new jewels on them seem necessary
for distinction’s sake.
‘But, my dear Podsnap,’ quoth Veneering, ‘there IS a tried friend of
our family who, I think and hope you will agree with me, Podsnap, is
the friend on whom this agreeable duty almost naturally devolves. That
friend,’ saying the words as if the company were about a hundred and
fifty in number, ‘is now among us. That friend is Twemlow.’
‘Certainly!’ from Podsnap.
‘That friend,’ Veneering repeats with greater firmness, ‘is our dear
good Twemlow. And I cannot sufficiently express to you, my dear Podsnap,
the pleasure I feel in having this opinion of mine and Anastatia’s so
readily confirmed by you, that other equally familiar and tried friend
who stands in the proud position--I mean who proudly stands in the
position--or I ought rather to say, who places Anastatia and myself in
the proud position of himself standing in the simple position--of baby’s
godfather.’ And, indeed, Veneering is much relieved in mind to find that
Podsnap betrays no jealousy of Twemlow’s elevation.
So, it has come to pass that the spring-van is strewing flowers on
the rosy hours and on the staircase, and that Twemlow is surveying the
ground on which he is to play his distinguished part to-morrow. He has
already been to the church, and taken note of the various impediments in
the aisle, under the auspices of an extremely dreary widow who opens the
pews, and whose left hand appears to be in a state of acute rheumatism,
but is in fact voluntarily doubled up to act as a money-box.
And now Veneering shoots out of the Study wherein he is accustomed,
when contemplative, to give his mind to the carving and gilding of
the Pilgrims going to Canterbury, in order to show Twemlow the little
flourish he has prepared for the trumpets of fashion, describing how
that on the seventeenth instant, at St James’s Church, the Reverend
Blank Blank, assisted by the Reverend Dash Dash, united in the bonds of
matrimony, Alfred Lammle Esquire, of Sackville Street, Piccadilly,
to Sophronia, only daughter of the late Horatio Akershem, Esquire,
of Yorkshire. Also how the fair bride was married from the house of
Hamilton Veneering, Esquire, of Stucconia, and was given away by Melvin
Twemlow, Esquire, of Duke Street, St James’s, second cousin to Lord
Snigsworth, of Snigsworthy Park. While perusing which composition,
Twemlow makes some opaque approach to perceiving that if the Reverend
Blank Blank and the Reverend Dash Dash fail, after this introduction, to
become enrolled in the list of Veneering’s dearest and oldest friends,
they will have none but themselves to thank for it.
After which, appears Sophronia (whom Twemlow has seen twice in his
lifetime), to thank Twemlow for counterfeiting the late Horatio Akershem
Esquire, broadly of Yorkshire. And after her, appears Alfred (whom
Twemlow has seen once in his lifetime), to do the same and to make a
pasty sort of glitter, as if he were constructed for candle-light only,
and had been let out into daylight by some grand mistake. And after
that, comes Mrs Veneering, in a pervadingly aquiline state of figure,
and with transparent little knobs on her temper, like the little
transparent knob on the bridge of her nose, ‘Worn out by worry and
excitement,’ as she tells her dear Mr Twemlow, and reluctantly revived
with curacoa by the Analytical. And after that, the bridesmaids begin
to come by rail-road from various parts of the country, and to come like
adorable recruits enlisted by a sergeant not present; for, on arriving
at the Veneering depot, they are in a barrack of strangers.
So, Twemlow goes home to Duke Street, St James’s, to take a plate of
mutton broth with a chop in it, and a look at the marriage-service, in
order that he may cut in at the right place to-morrow; and he is low,
and feels it dull over the livery stable-yard, and is distinctly aware
of a dint in his heart, made by the most adorable of the adorable
bridesmaids. For, the poor little harmless gentleman once had his fancy,
like the rest of us, and she didn’t answer (as she often does not),
and he thinks the adorable bridesmaid is like the fancy as she was then
(which she is not at all), and that if the fancy had not married some
one else for money, but had married him for love, he and she would
have been happy (which they wouldn’t have been), and that she has a
tenderness for him still (whereas her toughness is a proverb). Brooding
over the fire, with his dried little head in his dried little hands,
and his dried little elbows on his dried little knees, Twemlow is
melancholy. ‘No Adorable to bear me company here!’ thinks he. ‘No
Adorable at the club! A waste, a waste, a waste, my Twemlow!’ And so
drops asleep, and has galvanic starts all over him.
Betimes next morning, that horrible old Lady Tippins (relict of the late
Sir Thomas Tippins, knighted in mistake for somebody else by His
Majesty King George the Third, who, while performing the ceremony, was
graciously pleased to observe, ‘What, what, what? Who, who, who?
Why, why, why?’) begins to be dyed and varnished for the interesting
occasion. She has a reputation for giving smart accounts of things, and
she must be at these people’s early, my dear, to lose nothing of the
fun. Whereabout in the bonnet and drapery announced by her name, any
fragment of the real woman may be concealed, is perhaps known to her
maid; but you could easily buy all you see of her, in Bond Street; or
you might scalp her, and peel her, and scrape her, and make two Lady
Tippinses out of her, and yet not penetrate to the genuine article. She
has a large gold eye-glass, has Lady Tippins, to survey the proceedings
with. If she had one in each eye, it might keep that other drooping
lid up, and look more uniform. But perennial youth is in her artificial
flowers, and her list of lovers is full.
‘Mortimer, you wretch,’ says Lady Tippins, turning the eyeglass about
and about, ‘where is your charge, the bridegroom?’
‘Give you my honour,’ returns Mortimer, ‘I don’t know, and I don’t
care.’
‘Miserable! Is that the way you do your duty?’
‘Beyond an impression that he is to sit upon my knee and be seconded
at some point of the solemnities, like a principal at a prizefight, I
assure you I have no notion what my duty is,’ returns Mortimer.
Eugene is also in attendance, with a pervading air upon him of having
presupposed the ceremony to be a funeral, and of being disappointed. The
scene is the Vestry-room of St James’s Church, with a number of leathery
old registers on shelves, that might be bound in Lady Tippinses.
But, hark! A carriage at the gate, and Mortimer’s man arrives, looking
rather like a spurious Mephistopheles and an unacknowledged member
of that gentleman’s family. Whom Lady Tippins, surveying through her
eye-glass, considers a fine man, and quite a catch; and of whom Mortimer
remarks, in the lowest spirits, as he approaches, ‘I believe this is my
fellow, confound him!’ More carriages at the gate, and lo the rest of
the characters. Whom Lady Tippins, standing on a cushion, surveying
through the eye-glass, thus checks off. ‘Bride; five-and-forty if a
day, thirty shillings a yard, veil fifteen pound, pocket-handkerchief
a present. Bridesmaids; kept down for fear of outshining bride,
consequently not girls, twelve and sixpence a yard, Veneering’s flowers,
snub-nosed one rather pretty but too conscious of her stockings, bonnets
three pound ten. Twemlow; blessed release for the dear man if she really
was his daughter, nervous even under the pretence that she is, well he
may be. Mrs Veneering; never saw such velvet, say two thousand pounds
as she stands, absolute jeweller’s window, father must have been a
pawnbroker, or how could these people do it? Attendant unknowns; pokey.’
Ceremony performed, register signed, Lady Tippins escorted out of sacred
edifice by Veneering, carriages rolling back to Stucconia, servants
with favours and flowers, Veneering’s house reached, drawing-rooms most
magnificent. Here, the Podsnaps await the happy party; Mr Podsnap, with
his hair-brushes made the most of; that imperial rocking-horse, Mrs
Podsnap, majestically skittish. Here, too, are Boots and Brewer, and
the two other Buffers; each Buffer with a flower in his button-hole, his
hair curled, and his gloves buttoned on tight, apparently come prepared,
if anything had happened to the bridegroom, to be married instantly.
Here, too, the bride’s aunt and next relation; a widowed female of
a Medusa sort, in a stoney cap, glaring petrifaction at her
fellow-creatures. Here, too, the bride’s trustee; an oilcake-fed style
of business-gentleman with mooney spectacles, and an object of much
interest. Veneering launching himself upon this trustee as his oldest
friend (which makes seven, Twemlow thought), and confidentially retiring
with him into the conservatory, it is understood that Veneering is his
co-trustee, and that they are arranging about the fortune. Buffers are
even overheard to whisper Thir-ty Thou-sand Pou-nds! with a smack and a
relish suggestive of the very finest oysters. Pokey unknowns, amazed
to find how intimately they know Veneering, pluck up spirit, fold
their arms, and begin to contradict him before breakfast. What time Mrs
Veneering, carrying baby dressed as a bridesmaid, flits about among
the company, emitting flashes of many-coloured lightning from diamonds,
emeralds, and rubies.
The Analytical, in course of time achieving what he feels to be due to
himself in bringing to a dignified conclusion several quarrels he has on
hand with the pastrycook’s men, announces breakfast. Dining-room no less
magnificent than drawing-room; tables superb; all the camels out, and
all laden. Splendid cake, covered with Cupids, silver, and true-lovers’
knots. Splendid bracelet, produced by Veneering before going down, and
clasped upon the arm of bride. Yet nobody seems to think much more of
the Veneerings than if they were a tolerable landlord and landlady
doing the thing in the way of business at so much a head. The bride and
bridegroom talk and laugh apart, as has always been their manner;
and the Buffers work their way through the dishes with systematic
perseverance, as has always been THEIR manner; and the pokey unknowns
are exceedingly benevolent to one another in invitations to take
glasses of champagne; but Mrs Podsnap, arching her mane and rocking her
grandest, has a far more deferential audience than Mrs Veneering; and
Podsnap all but does the honours.
Another dismal circumstance is, that Veneering, having the captivating
Tippins on one side of him and the bride’s aunt on the other, finds
it immensely difficult to keep the peace. For, Medusa, besides
unmistakingly glaring petrifaction at the fascinating Tippins, follows
every lively remark made by that dear creature, with an audible snort:
which may be referable to a chronic cold in the head, but may also be
referable to indignation and contempt. And this snort being regular in
its reproduction, at length comes to be expected by the company, who
make embarrassing pauses when it is falling due, and by waiting for it,
render it more emphatic when it comes. The stoney aunt has likewise an
injurious way of rejecting all dishes whereof Lady Tippins partakes:
saying aloud when they are proffered to her, ‘No, no, no, not for me.
Take it away!’ As with a set purpose of implying a misgiving that if
nourished upon similar meats, she might come to be like that charmer,
which would be a fatal consummation. Aware of her enemy, Lady Tippins
tries a youthful sally or two, and tries the eye-glass; but, from the
impenetrable cap and snorting armour of the stoney aunt all weapons
rebound powerless.
Another objectionable circumstance is, that the pokey unknowns support
each other in being unimpressible. They persist in not being frightened
by the gold and silver camels, and they are banded together to defy
the elaborately chased ice-pails. They even seem to unite in some vague
utterance of the sentiment that the landlord and landlady will make a
pretty good profit out of this, and they almost carry themselves
like customers. Nor is there compensating influence in the adorable
bridesmaids; for, having very little interest in the bride, and none
at all in one another, those lovely beings become, each one of her own
account, depreciatingly contemplative of the millinery present; while
the bridegroom’s man, exhausted, in the back of his chair, appears to be
improving the occasion by penitentially contemplating all the wrong he
has ever done; the difference between him and his friend Eugene, being,
that the latter, in the back of HIS chair, appears to be contemplating
all the wrong he would like to do--particularly to the present company.
In which state of affairs, the usual ceremonies rather droop and flag,
and the splendid cake when cut by the fair hand of the bride has but
an indigestible appearance. However, all the things indispensable to
be said are said, and all the things indispensable to be done are
done (including Lady Tippins’s yawning, falling asleep, and waking
insensible), and there is hurried preparation for the nuptial journey
to the Isle of Wight, and the outer air teems with brass bands and
spectators. In full sight of whom, the malignant star of the Analytical
has pre-ordained that pain and ridicule shall befall him. For he,
standing on the doorsteps to grace the departure, is suddenly caught a
most prodigious thump on the side of his head with a heavy shoe, which
a Buffer in the hall, champagne-flushed and wild of aim, has borrowed on
the spur of the moment from the pastrycook’s porter, to cast after the
departing pair as an auspicious omen.
So they all go up again into the gorgeous drawing-rooms--all of them
flushed with breakfast, as having taken scarlatina sociably--and there
the combined unknowns do malignant things with their legs to ottomans,
and take as much as possible out of the splendid furniture. And so, Lady
Tippins, quite undetermined whether today is the day before yesterday,
or the day after to-morrow, or the week after next, fades away; and
Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene fade away, and Twemlow fades away, and
the stoney aunt goes away--she declines to fade, proving rock to the
last--and even the unknowns are slowly strained off, and it is all over.
All over, that is to say, for the time being. But, there is another time
to come, and it comes in about a fortnight, and it comes to Mr and Mrs
Lammle on the sands at Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight.
Mr and Mrs Lammle have walked for some time on the Shanklin sands, and
one may see by their footprints that they have not walked arm in arm,
and that they have not walked in a straight track, and that they have
walked in a moody humour; for, the lady has prodded little spirting
holes in the damp sand before her with her parasol, and the gentleman
has trailed his stick after him. As if he were of the Mephistopheles
family indeed, and had walked with a drooping tail.
‘Do you mean to tell me, then, Sophronia--’
Thus he begins after a long silence, when Sophronia flashes fiercely,
and turns upon him.
‘Don’t put it upon ME, sir. I ask you, do YOU mean to tell me?’
Mr Lammle falls silent again, and they walk as before. Mrs Lammle opens
her nostrils and bites her under-lip; Mr Lammle takes his gingerous
whiskers in his left hand, and, bringing them together, frowns furtively
at his beloved, out of a thick gingerous bush.
‘Do I mean to say!’ Mrs Lammle after a time repeats, with indignation.
‘Putting it on me! The unmanly disingenuousness!’
Mr Lammle stops, releases his whiskers, and looks at her. ‘The what?’
Mrs Lammle haughtily replies, without stopping, and without looking
back. ‘The meanness.’
He is at her side again in a pace or two, and he retorts, ‘That is not
what you said. You said disingenuousness.’
‘What if I did?’
‘There is no “if” in the case. You did.’
‘I did, then. And what of it?’
‘What of it?’ says Mr Lammle. ‘Have you the face to utter the word to
me?’
‘The face, too!’ replied Mrs Lammle, staring at him with cold scorn.
‘Pray, how dare you, sir, utter the word to me?’
‘I never did.’
As this happens to be true, Mrs Lammle is thrown on the feminine
resource of saying, ‘I don’t care what you uttered or did not utter.’
After a little more walking and a little more silence, Mr Lammle breaks
the latter.
‘You shall proceed in your own way. You claim a right to ask me do I
mean to tell you. Do I mean to tell you what?’
‘That you are a man of property?’
‘No.’
‘Then you married me on false pretences?’
‘So be it. Next comes what you mean to say. Do you mean to say you are a
woman of property?’
‘No.’
‘Then you married me on false pretences.’
‘If you were so dull a fortune-hunter that you deceived yourself, or
if you were so greedy and grasping that you were over-willing to be
deceived by appearances, is it my fault, you adventurer?’ the lady
demands, with great asperity.
‘I asked Veneering, and he told me you were rich.’
‘Veneering!’ with great contempt.’ And what does Veneering know about
me!’
‘Was he not your trustee?’
‘No. I have no trustee, but the one you saw on the day when you
fraudulently married me. And his trust is not a very difficult one, for
it is only an annuity of a hundred and fifteen pounds. I think there are
some odd shillings or pence, if you are very particular.’
Mr Lammle bestows a by no means loving look upon the partner of his joys
and sorrows, and he mutters something; but checks himself.
‘Question for question. It is my turn again, Mrs Lammle. What made you
suppose me a man of property?’
‘You made me suppose you so. Perhaps you will deny that you always
presented yourself to me in that character?’
‘But you asked somebody, too. Come, Mrs Lammle, admission for admission.
You asked somebody?’
‘I asked Veneering.’
‘And Veneering knew as much of me as he knew of you, or as anybody knows
of him.’
After more silent walking, the bride stops short, to say in a passionate
manner:
‘I never will forgive the Veneerings for this!’
‘Neither will I,’ returns the bridegroom.
With that, they walk again; she, making those angry spirts in the sand;
he, dragging that dejected tail. The tide is low, and seems to have
thrown them together high on the bare shore. A gull comes sweeping by
their heads and flouts them. There was a golden surface on the brown
cliffs but now, and behold they are only damp earth. A taunting roar
comes from the sea, and the far-out rollers mount upon one another,
to look at the entrapped impostors, and to join in impish and exultant
gambols.
‘Do you pretend to believe,’ Mrs Lammle resumes, sternly, ‘when you talk
of my marrying you for worldly advantages, that it was within the bounds
of reasonable probability that I would have married you for yourself?’
‘Again there are two sides to the question, Mrs Lammle. What do you
pretend to believe?’
‘So you first deceive me and then insult me!’ cries the lady, with a
heaving bosom.
‘Not at all. I have originated nothing. The double-edged question was
yours.’
‘Was mine!’ the bride repeats, and her parasol breaks in her angry hand.
His colour has turned to a livid white, and ominous marks have come to
light about his nose, as if the finger of the very devil himself had,
within the last few moments, touched it here and there. But he has
repressive power, and she has none.
‘Throw it away,’ he coolly recommends as to the parasol; ‘you have made
it useless; you look ridiculous with it.’
Whereupon she calls him in her rage, ‘A deliberate villain,’ and so
casts the broken thing from her as that it strikes him in falling. The
finger-marks are something whiter for the instant, but he walks on at
her side.
She bursts into tears, declaring herself the wretchedest, the most
deceived, the worst-used, of women. Then she says that if she had
the courage to kill herself, she would do it. Then she calls him vile
impostor. Then she asks him, why, in the disappointment of his base
speculation, he does not take her life with his own hand, under the
present favourable circumstances. Then she cries again. Then she is
enraged again, and makes some mention of swindlers. Finally, she sits
down crying on a block of stone, and is in all the known and unknown
humours of her sex at once. Pending her changes, those aforesaid marks
in his face have come and gone, now here now there, like white steps
of a pipe on which the diabolical performer has played a tune. Also his
livid lips are parted at last, as if he were breathless with running.
Yet he is not.
‘Now, get up, Mrs Lammle, and let us speak reasonably.’
She sits upon her stone, and takes no heed of him.
‘Get up, I tell you.’
Raising her head, she looks contemptuously in his face, and repeats,
‘You tell me! Tell me, forsooth!’
She affects not to know that his eyes are fastened on her as she droops
her head again; but her whole figure reveals that she knows it uneasily.
‘Enough of this. Come! Do you hear? Get up.’
Yielding to his hand, she rises, and they walk again; but this time with
their faces turned towards their place of residence.
‘Mrs Lammle, we have both been deceiving, and we have both been
deceived. We have both been biting, and we have both been bitten. In a
nut-shell, there’s the state of the case.’
‘You sought me out--’
‘Tut! Let us have done with that. WE know very well how it was. Why
should you and I talk about it, when you and I can’t disguise it? To
proceed. I am disappointed and cut a poor figure.’
‘Am I no one?’
‘Some one--and I was coming to you, if you had waited a moment. You,
too, are disappointed and cut a poor figure.’
‘An injured figure!’
‘You are now cool enough, Sophronia, to see that you can’t be injured
without my being equally injured; and that therefore the mere word is
not to the purpose. When I look back, I wonder how I can have been such
a fool as to take you to so great an extent upon trust.’
‘And when I look back--’ the bride cries, interrupting.
‘And when you look back, you wonder how you can have been--you’ll excuse
the word?’
‘Most certainly, with so much reason.
‘--Such a fool as to take ME to so great an extent upon trust. But the
folly is committed on both sides. I cannot get rid of you; you cannot
get rid of me. What follows?’
‘Shame and misery,’ the bride bitterly replies.
‘I don’t know. A mutual understanding follows, and I think it may carry
us through. Here I split my discourse (give me your arm, Sophronia),
into three heads, to make it shorter and plainer. Firstly, it’s enough
to have been done, without the mortification of being known to have been
done. So we agree to keep the fact to ourselves. You agree?’
‘If it is possible, I do.’
‘Possible! We have pretended well enough to one another. Can’t we,
united, pretend to the world? Agreed. Secondly, we owe the Veneerings
a grudge, and we owe all other people the grudge of wishing them to be
taken in, as we ourselves have been taken in. Agreed?’
‘Yes. Agreed.’
‘We come smoothly to thirdly. You have called me an adventurer,
Sophronia. So I am. In plain uncomplimentary English, so I am. So are
you, my dear. So are many people. We agree to keep our own secret, and
to work together in furtherance of our own schemes.’
‘What schemes?’
‘Any scheme that will bring us money. By our own schemes, I mean our
joint interest. Agreed?’
She answers, after a little hesitation, ‘I suppose so. Agreed.’
‘Carried at once, you see! Now, Sophronia, only half a dozen words more.
We know one another perfectly. Don’t be tempted into twitting me with
the past knowledge that you have of me, because it is identical with
the past knowledge that I have of you, and in twitting me, you
twit yourself, and I don’t want to hear you do it. With this good
understanding established between us, it is better never done. To wind
up all:--You have shown temper today, Sophronia. Don’t be betrayed into
doing so again, because I have a Devil of a temper myself.’
So, the happy pair, with this hopeful marriage contract thus signed,
sealed, and delivered, repair homeward. If, when those infernal
finger-marks were on the white and breathless countenance of Alfred
Lammle, Esquire, they denoted that he conceived the purpose of subduing
his dear wife Mrs Alfred Lammle, by at once divesting her of any
lingering reality or pretence of self-respect, the purpose would seem
to have been presently executed. The mature young lady has mighty little
need of powder, now, for her downcast face, as he escorts her in the
light of the setting sun to their abode of bliss.
Chapter 11
PODSNAPPERY
Mr Podsnap was well to do, and stood very high in Mr Podsnap’s opinion.
Beginning with a good inheritance, he had married a good inheritance,
and had thriven exceedingly in the Marine Insurance way, and was
quite satisfied. He never could make out why everybody was not quite
satisfied, and he felt conscious that he set a brilliant social example
in being particularly well satisfied with most things, and, above all
other things, with himself.
Thus happily acquainted with his own merit and importance, Mr Podsnap
settled that whatever he put behind him he put out of existence. There
was a dignified conclusiveness--not to add a grand convenience--in
this way of getting rid of disagreeables which had done much towards
establishing Mr Podsnap in his lofty place in Mr Podsnap’s satisfaction.
‘I don’t want to know about it; I don’t choose to discuss it; I don’t
admit it!’ Mr Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his
right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by
sweeping them behind him (and consequently sheer away) with those words
and a flushed face. For they affronted him.
Mr Podsnap’s world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor even
geographically: seeing that although his business was sustained upon
commerce with other countries, he considered other countries, with that
important reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and customs would
conclusively observe, ‘Not English!’ when, PRESTO! with a flourish of
the arm, and a flush of the face, they were swept away. Elsewise, the
world got up at eight, shaved close at a quarter-past, breakfasted at
nine, went to the City at ten, came home at half-past five, and dined
at seven. Mr Podsnap’s notions of the Arts in their integrity might have
been stated thus. Literature; large print, respectfully descriptive of
getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting
at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five,
and dining at seven. Painting and Sculpture; models and portraits
representing Professors of getting up at eight, shaving close at a
quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming
home at half-past five, and dining at seven. Music; a respectable
performance (without variations) on stringed and wind instruments,
sedately expressive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter
past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at
half-past five, and dining at seven. Nothing else to be permitted to
those same vagrants the Arts, on pain of excommunication. Nothing else
To Be--anywhere!
As a so eminently respectable man, Mr Podsnap was sensible of its being
required of him to take Providence under his protection. Consequently he
always knew exactly what Providence meant. Inferior and less respectable
men might fall short of that mark, but Mr Podsnap was always up to it.
And it was very remarkable (and must have been very comfortable) that
what Providence meant, was invariably what Mr Podsnap meant.
These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school
which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling, after its
representative man, Podsnappery. They were confined within close bounds,
as Mr Podsnap’s own head was confined by his shirt-collar; and they
were enunciated with a sounding pomp that smacked of the creaking of Mr
Podsnap’s own boots.
There was a Miss Podsnap. And this young rocking-horse was being trained
in her mother’s art of prancing in a stately manner without ever getting
on. But the high parental action was not yet imparted to her, and
in truth she was but an undersized damsel, with high shoulders, low
spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of nose, who seemed to
take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood into womanhood, and to
shrink back again, overcome by her mother’s head-dress and her father
from head to foot--crushed by the mere dead-weight of Podsnappery.
A certain institution in Mr Podsnap’s mind which he called ‘the young
person’ may be considered to have been embodied in Miss Podsnap, his
daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring
everything in the universe to be filed down and fitted to it. The
question about everything was, would it bring a blush into the cheek of
the young person? And the inconvenience of the young person was, that,
according to Mr Podsnap, she seemed always liable to burst into
blushes when there was no need at all. There appeared to be no line of
demarcation between the young person’s excessive innocence, and another
person’s guiltiest knowledge. Take Mr Podsnap’s word for it, and the
soberest tints of drab, white, lilac, and grey, were all flaming red to
this troublesome Bull of a young person.
The Podsnaps lived in a shady angle adjoining Portman Square. They were
a kind of people certain to dwell in the shade, wherever they dwelt.
Miss Podsnap’s life had been, from her first appearance on this planet,
altogether of a shady order; for, Mr Podsnap’s young person was likely
to get little good out of association with other young persons, and had
therefore been restricted to companionship with not very congenial older
persons, and with massive furniture. Miss Podsnap’s early views of life
being principally derived from the reflections of it in her father’s
boots, and in the walnut and rosewood tables of the dim drawing-rooms,
and in their swarthy giants of looking-glasses, were of a sombre cast;
and it was not wonderful that now, when she was on most days solemnly
tooled through the Park by the side of her mother in a great tall
custard-coloured phaeton, she showed above the apron of that vehicle
like a dejected young person sitting up in bed to take a startled look
at things in general, and very strongly desiring to get her head under
the counterpane again.
Said Mr Podsnap to Mrs Podsnap, ‘Georgiana is almost eighteen.’
Said Mrs Podsnap to Mr Podsnap, assenting, ‘Almost eighteen.’
Said Mr Podsnap then to Mrs Podsnap, ‘Really I think we should have some
people on Georgiana’s birthday.’
Said Mrs Podsnap then to Mr Podsnap, ‘Which will enable us to clear off
all those people who are due.’
So it came to pass that Mr and Mrs Podsnap requested the honour of the
company of seventeen friends of their souls at dinner; and that they
substituted other friends of their souls for such of the seventeen
original friends of their souls as deeply regretted that a prior
engagement prevented their having the honour of dining with Mr and Mrs
Podsnap, in pursuance of their kind invitation; and that Mrs Podsnap
said of all these inconsolable personages, as she checked them off with
a pencil in her list, ‘Asked, at any rate, and got rid of;’ and that
they successfully disposed of a good many friends of their souls in this
way, and felt their consciences much lightened.
There were still other friends of their souls who were not entitled to
be asked to dinner, but had a claim to be invited to come and take a
haunch of mutton vapour-bath at half-past nine. For the clearing off
of these worthies, Mrs Podsnap added a small and early evening to the
dinner, and looked in at the music-shop to bespeak a well-conducted
automaton to come and play quadrilles for a carpet dance.
Mr and Mrs Veneering, and Mr and Mrs Veneering’s bran-new bride and
bridegroom, were of the dinner company; but the Podsnap establishment
had nothing else in common with the Veneerings. Mr Podsnap could
tolerate taste in a mushroom man who stood in need of that sort
of thing, but was far above it himself. Hideous solidity was the
characteristic of the Podsnap plate. Everything was made to look as
heavy as it could, and to take up as much room as possible. Everything
said boastfully, ‘Here you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I
were only lead; but I am so many ounces of precious metal worth so much
an ounce;--wouldn’t you like to melt me down?’ A corpulent straddling
epergne, blotched all over as if it had broken out in an eruption rather
than been ornamented, delivered this address from an unsightly silver
platform in the centre of the table. Four silver wine-coolers, each
furnished with four staring heads, each head obtrusively carrying a big
silver ring in each of its ears, conveyed the sentiment up and down the
table, and handed it on to the pot-bellied silver salt-cellars. All the
big silver spoons and forks widened the mouths of the company expressly
for the purpose of thrusting the sentiment down their throats with every
morsel they ate.
The majority of the guests were like the plate, and included several
heavy articles weighing ever so much. But there was a foreign gentleman
among them: whom Mr Podsnap had invited after much debate with
himself--believing the whole European continent to be in mortal alliance
against the young person--and there was a droll disposition, not only on
the part of Mr Podsnap but of everybody else, to treat him as if he were
a child who was hard of hearing.
As a delicate concession to this unfortunately-born foreigner, Mr
Podsnap, in receiving him, had presented his wife as ‘Madame Podsnap;’
also his daughter as ‘Mademoiselle Podsnap,’ with some inclination to
add ‘ma fille,’ in which bold venture, however, he checked himself. The
Veneerings being at that time the only other arrivals, he had added (in
a condescendingly explanatory manner), ‘Monsieur Vey-nair-reeng,’ and
had then subsided into English.
‘How Do You Like London?’ Mr Podsnap now inquired from his station of
host, as if he were administering something in the nature of a powder or
potion to the deaf child; ‘London, Londres, London?’
The foreign gentleman admired it.
‘You find it Very Large?’ said Mr Podsnap, spaciously.
The foreign gentleman found it very large.
‘And Very Rich?’
The foreign gentleman found it, without doubt, enormement riche.
‘Enormously Rich, We say,’ returned Mr Podsnap, in a condescending
manner. ‘Our English adverbs do Not terminate in Mong, and We Pronounce
the “ch” as if there were a “t” before it. We say Ritch.’
‘Reetch,’ remarked the foreign gentleman.
‘And Do You Find, Sir,’ pursued Mr Podsnap, with dignity, ‘Many
Evidences that Strike You, of our British Constitution in the Streets Of
The World’s Metropolis, London, Londres, London?’
The foreign gentleman begged to be pardoned, but did not altogether
understand.
‘The Constitution Britannique,’ Mr Podsnap explained, as if he were
teaching in an infant school. ‘We Say British, But You Say Britannique,
You Know’ (forgivingly, as if that were not his fault). ‘The
Constitution, Sir.’
The foreign gentleman said, ‘Mais, yees; I know eem.’
A youngish sallowish gentleman in spectacles, with a lumpy forehead,
seated in a supplementary chair at a corner of the table, here caused
a profound sensation by saying, in a raised voice, ‘ESKER,’ and then
stopping dead.
‘Mais oui,’ said the foreign gentleman, turning towards him. ‘Est-ce
que? Quoi donc?’
But the gentleman with the lumpy forehead having for the time delivered
himself of all that he found behind his lumps, spake for the time no
more.
‘I Was Inquiring,’ said Mr Podsnap, resuming the thread of his
discourse, ‘Whether You Have Observed in our Streets as We should say,
Upon our Pavvy as You would say, any Tokens--’
The foreign gentleman, with patient courtesy entreated pardon; ‘But what
was tokenz?’
‘Marks,’ said Mr Podsnap; ‘Signs, you know, Appearances--Traces.’
‘Ah! Of a Orse?’ inquired the foreign gentleman.
‘We call it Horse,’ said Mr Podsnap, with forbearance. ‘In England,
Angleterre, England, We Aspirate the “H,” and We Say “Horse.” Only our
Lower Classes Say “Orse!”’
‘Pardon,’ said the foreign gentleman; ‘I am alwiz wrong!’
‘Our Language,’ said Mr Podsnap, with a gracious consciousness of being
always right, ‘is Difficult. Ours is a Copious Language, and Trying to
Strangers. I will not Pursue my Question.’
But the lumpy gentleman, unwilling to give it up, again madly said,
‘ESKER,’ and again spake no more.
‘It merely referred,’ Mr Podsnap explained, with a sense of meritorious
proprietorship, ‘to Our Constitution, Sir. We Englishmen are Very Proud
of our Constitution, Sir. It Was Bestowed Upon Us By Providence. No
Other Country is so Favoured as This Country.’
‘And ozer countries?--’ the foreign gentleman was beginning, when Mr
Podsnap put him right again.
‘We do not say Ozer; we say Other: the letters are “T” and “H;” You say
Tay and Aish, You Know; (still with clemency). The sound is “th”--“th!”’
‘And OTHER countries,’ said the foreign gentleman. ‘They do how?’
‘They do, Sir,’ returned Mr Podsnap, gravely shaking his head; ‘they
do--I am sorry to be obliged to say it--AS they do.’
‘It was a little particular of Providence,’ said the foreign gentleman,
laughing; ‘for the frontier is not large.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ assented Mr Podsnap; ‘But So it is. It was the Charter
of the Land. This Island was Blest, Sir, to the Direct Exclusion of
such Other Countries as--as there may happen to be. And if we were all
Englishmen present, I would say,’ added Mr Podsnap, looking round upon
his compatriots, and sounding solemnly with his theme, ‘that there is in
the Englishman a combination of qualities, a modesty, an independence,
a responsibility, a repose, combined with an absence of everything
calculated to call a blush into the cheek of a young person, which one
would seek in vain among the Nations of the Earth.’
Having delivered this little summary, Mr Podsnap’s face flushed, as he
thought of the remote possibility of its being at all qualified by
any prejudiced citizen of any other country; and, with his favourite
right-arm flourish, he put the rest of Europe and the whole of Asia,
Africa, and America nowhere.
The audience were much edified by this passage of words; and Mr Podsnap,
feeling that he was in rather remarkable force to-day, became smiling
and conversational.
‘Has anything more been heard, Veneering,’ he inquired, ‘of the lucky
legatee?’
‘Nothing more,’ returned Veneering, ‘than that he has come into
possession of the property. I am told people now call him The Golden
Dustman. I mentioned to you some time ago, I think, that the young lady
whose intended husband was murdered is daughter to a clerk of mine?’
‘Yes, you told me that,’ said Podsnap; ‘and by-the-bye, I wish you would
tell it again here, for it’s a curious coincidence--curious that the
first news of the discovery should have been brought straight to your
table (when I was there), and curious that one of your people should
have been so nearly interested in it. Just relate that, will you?’
Veneering was more than ready to do it, for he had prospered exceedingly
upon the Harmon Murder, and had turned the social distinction it
conferred upon him to the account of making several dozen of bran-new
bosom-friends. Indeed, such another lucky hit would almost have set him
up in that way to his satisfaction. So, addressing himself to the most
desirable of his neighbours, while Mrs Veneering secured the next most
desirable, he plunged into the case, and emerged from it twenty minutes
afterwards with a Bank Director in his arms. In the mean time, Mrs
Veneering had dived into the same waters for a wealthy Ship-Broker, and
had brought him up, safe and sound, by the hair. Then Mrs Veneering had
to relate, to a larger circle, how she had been to see the girl, and how
she was really pretty, and (considering her station) presentable.
And this she did with such a successful display of her eight aquiline
fingers and their encircling jewels, that she happily laid hold of a
drifting General Officer, his wife and daughter, and not only restored
their animation which had become suspended, but made them lively friends
within an hour.
Although Mr Podsnap would in a general way have highly disapproved of
Bodies in rivers as ineligible topics with reference to the cheek of the
young person, he had, as one may say, a share in this affair which made
him a part proprietor. As its returns were immediate, too, in the way
of restraining the company from speechless contemplation of the
wine-coolers, it paid, and he was satisfied.
And now the haunch of mutton vapour-bath having received a gamey
infusion, and a few last touches of sweets and coffee, was quite ready,
and the bathers came; but not before the discreet automaton had got
behind the bars of the piano music-desk, and there presented the
appearance of a captive languishing in a rose-wood jail. And who now
so pleasant or so well assorted as Mr and Mrs Alfred Lammle, he all
sparkle, she all gracious contentment, both at occasional intervals
exchanging looks like partners at cards who played a game against All
England.
There was not much youth among the bathers, but there was no youth
(the young person always excepted) in the articles of Podsnappery. Bald
bathers folded their arms and talked to Mr Podsnap on the hearthrug;
sleek-whiskered bathers, with hats in their hands, lunged at Mrs Podsnap
and retreated; prowling bathers, went about looking into ornamental
boxes and bowls as if they had suspicions of larceny on the part of the
Podsnaps, and expected to find something they had lost at the bottom;
bathers of the gentler sex sat silently comparing ivory shoulders. All
this time and always, poor little Miss Podsnap, whose tiny efforts (if
she had made any) were swallowed up in the magnificence of her mother’s
rocking, kept herself as much out of sight and mind as she could,
and appeared to be counting on many dismal returns of the day. It was
somehow understood, as a secret article in the state proprieties of
Podsnappery that nothing must be said about the day. Consequently this
young damsel’s nativity was hushed up and looked over, as if it were
agreed on all hands that it would have been better that she had never
been born.
The Lammles were so fond of the dear Veneerings that they could not for
some time detach themselves from those excellent friends; but at length,
either a very open smile on Mr Lammle’s part, or a very secret elevation
of one of his gingerous eyebrows--certainly the one or the other--seemed
to say to Mrs Lammle, ‘Why don’t you play?’ And so, looking about her,
she saw Miss Podsnap, and seeming to say responsively, ‘That card?’ and
to be answered, ‘Yes,’ went and sat beside Miss Podsnap.
Mrs Lammle was overjoyed to escape into a corner for a little quiet
talk.
It promised to be a very quiet talk, for Miss Podsnap replied in a
flutter, ‘Oh! Indeed, it’s very kind of you, but I am afraid I DON’T
talk.’
‘Let us make a beginning,’ said the insinuating Mrs Lammle, with her
best smile.
‘Oh! I am afraid you’ll find me very dull. But Ma talks!’
That was plainly to be seen, for Ma was talking then at her usual
canter, with arched head and mane, opened eyes and nostrils.
‘Fond of reading perhaps?’
‘Yes. At least I--don’t mind that so much,’ returned Miss Podsnap.
‘M-m-m-m-music.’ So insinuating was Mrs Lammle that she got half a dozen
ms into the word before she got it out.
‘I haven’t nerve to play even if I could. Ma plays.’
(At exactly the same canter, and with a certain flourishing appearance
of doing something, Ma did, in fact, occasionally take a rock upon the
instrument.)
‘Of course you like dancing?’
‘Oh no, I don’t,’ said Miss Podsnap.
‘No? With your youth and attractions? Truly, my dear, you surprise me!’
‘I can’t say,’ observed Miss Podsnap, after hesitating considerably, and
stealing several timid looks at Mrs Lammle’s carefully arranged face,
‘how I might have liked it if I had been a--you won’t mention it, WILL
you?’
‘My dear! Never!’
‘No, I am sure you won’t. I can’t say then how I should have liked it,
if I had been a chimney-sweep on May-day.’
‘Gracious!’ was the exclamation which amazement elicited from Mrs
Lammle.
‘There! I knew you’d wonder. But you won’t mention it, will you?’
‘Upon my word, my love,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘you make me ten times more
desirous, now I talk to you, to know you well than I was when I sat over
yonder looking at you. How I wish we could be real friends! Try me as a
real friend. Come! Don’t fancy me a frumpy old married woman, my dear;
I was married but the other day, you know; I am dressed as a bride now,
you see. About the chimney-sweeps?’
‘Hush! Ma’ll hear.’
‘She can’t hear from where she sits.’
‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ said Miss Podsnap, in a lower voice.
‘Well, what I mean is, that they seem to enjoy it.’
‘And that perhaps you would have enjoyed it, if you had been one of
them?’
Miss Podsnap nodded significantly.
‘Then you don’t enjoy it now?’
‘How is it possible?’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘Oh it is such a dreadful
thing! If I was wicked enough--and strong enough--to kill anybody, it
should be my partner.’
This was such an entirely new view of the Terpsichorean art as
socially practised, that Mrs Lammle looked at her young friend in some
astonishment. Her young friend sat nervously twiddling her fingers in
a pinioned attitude, as if she were trying to hide her elbows. But this
latter Utopian object (in short sleeves) always appeared to be the great
inoffensive aim of her existence.
‘It sounds horrid, don’t it?’ said Miss Podsnap, with a penitential
face.
Mrs Lammle, not very well knowing what to answer, resolved herself into
a look of smiling encouragement.
‘But it is, and it always has been,’ pursued Miss Podsnap, ‘such a trial
to me! I so dread being awful. And it is so awful! No one knows what
I suffered at Madame Sauteuse’s, where I learnt to dance and make
presentation-curtseys, and other dreadful things--or at least where they
tried to teach me. Ma can do it.’
‘At any rate, my love,’ said Mrs Lammle, soothingly, ‘that’s over.’
‘Yes, it’s over,’ returned Miss Podsnap, ‘but there’s nothing gained by
that. It’s worse here, than at Madame Sauteuse’s. Ma was there, and Ma’s
here; but Pa wasn’t there, and company wasn’t there, and there were not
real partners there. Oh there’s Ma speaking to the man at the piano! Oh
there’s Ma going up to somebody! Oh I know she’s going to bring him
to me! Oh please don’t, please don’t, please don’t! Oh keep away, keep
away, keep away!’ These pious ejaculations Miss Podsnap uttered with her
eyes closed, and her head leaning back against the wall.
But the Ogre advanced under the pilotage of Ma, and Ma said, ‘Georgiana,
Mr Grompus,’ and the Ogre clutched his victim and bore her off to his
castle in the top couple. Then the discreet automaton who had surveyed
his ground, played a blossomless tuneless ‘set,’ and sixteen disciples
of Podsnappery went through the figures of - 1, Getting up at eight and
shaving close at a quarter past - 2, Breakfasting at nine - 3, Going to
the City at ten - 4, Coming home at half-past five - 5, Dining at seven,
and the grand chain.
While these solemnities were in progress, Mr Alfred Lammle (most loving
of husbands) approached the chair of Mrs Alfred Lammle (most loving of
wives), and bending over the back of it, trifled for some few seconds
with Mrs Lammle’s bracelet. Slightly in contrast with this brief airy
toying, one might have noticed a certain dark attention in Mrs Lammle’s
face as she said some words with her eyes on Mr Lammle’s waistcoat, and
seemed in return to receive some lesson. But it was all done as a breath
passes from a mirror.
And now, the grand chain riveted to the last link, the discreet
automaton ceased, and the sixteen, two and two, took a walk among
the furniture. And herein the unconsciousness of the Ogre Grompus was
pleasantly conspicuous; for, that complacent monster, believing that
he was giving Miss Podsnap a treat, prolonged to the utmost stretch
of possibility a peripatetic account of an archery meeting; while his
victim, heading the procession of sixteen as it slowly circled about,
like a revolving funeral, never raised her eyes except once to steal a
glance at Mrs Lammle, expressive of intense despair.
At length the procession was dissolved by the violent arrival of a
nutmeg, before which the drawing-room door bounced open as if it were a
cannon-ball; and while that fragrant article, dispersed through several
glasses of coloured warm water, was going the round of society, Miss
Podsnap returned to her seat by her new friend.
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘THAT’S over! I hope you didn’t
look at me.’
‘My dear, why not?’
‘Oh I know all about myself,’ said Miss Podsnap.
‘I’ll tell you something I know about you, my dear,’ returned Mrs Lammle
in her winning way, ‘and that is, you are most unnecessarily shy.’
‘Ma ain’t,’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘--I detest you! Go along!’ This shot
was levelled under her breath at the gallant Grompus for bestowing an
insinuating smile upon her in passing.
‘Pardon me if I scarcely see, my dear Miss Podsnap,’ Mrs Lammle was
beginning when the young lady interposed.
‘If we are going to be real friends (and I suppose we are, for you are
the only person who ever proposed it) don’t let us be awful. It’s awful
enough to BE Miss Podsnap, without being called so. Call me Georgiana.’
‘Dearest Georgiana,’ Mrs Lammle began again.
‘Thank you,’ said Miss Podsnap.
‘Dearest Georgiana, pardon me if I scarcely see, my love, why your
mamma’s not being shy, is a reason why you should be.’
‘Don’t you really see that?’ asked Miss Podsnap, plucking at her fingers
in a troubled manner, and furtively casting her eyes now on Mrs Lammle,
now on the ground. ‘Then perhaps it isn’t?’
‘My dearest Georgiana, you defer much too readily to my poor opinion.
Indeed it is not even an opinion, darling, for it is only a confession
of my dullness.’
‘Oh YOU are not dull,’ returned Miss Podsnap. ‘I am dull, but you
couldn’t have made me talk if you were.’
Some little touch of conscience answering this perception of her having
gained a purpose, called bloom enough into Mrs Lammle’s face to make it
look brighter as she sat smiling her best smile on her dear Georgiana,
and shaking her head with an affectionate playfulness. Not that it meant
anything, but that Georgiana seemed to like it.
‘What I mean is,’ pursued Georgiana, ‘that Ma being so endowed with
awfulness, and Pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being
so much awfulness everywhere--I mean, at least, everywhere where I
am--perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened
at it--I say it very badly--I don’t know whether you can understand what
I mean?’
‘Perfectly, dearest Georgiana!’ Mrs Lammle was proceeding with every
reassuring wile, when the head of that young lady suddenly went back
against the wall again and her eyes closed.
‘Oh there’s Ma being awful with somebody with a glass in his eye! Oh I
know she’s going to bring him here! Oh don’t bring him, don’t bring him!
Oh he’ll be my partner with his glass in his eye! Oh what shall I do!’
This time Georgiana accompanied her ejaculations with taps of her feet
upon the floor, and was altogether in quite a desperate condition. But,
there was no escape from the majestic Mrs Podsnap’s production of an
ambling stranger, with one eye screwed up into extinction and the other
framed and glazed, who, having looked down out of that organ, as if he
descried Miss Podsnap at the bottom of some perpendicular shaft, brought
her to the surface, and ambled off with her. And then the captive at the
piano played another ‘set,’ expressive of his mournful aspirations after
freedom, and other sixteen went through the former melancholy motions,
and the ambler took Miss Podsnap for a furniture walk, as if he had
struck out an entirely original conception.
In the mean time a stray personage of a meek demeanour, who had wandered
to the hearthrug and got among the heads of tribes assembled there in
conference with Mr Podsnap, eliminated Mr Podsnap’s flush and
flourish by a highly unpolite remark; no less than a reference to the
circumstance that some half-dozen people had lately died in the streets,
of starvation. It was clearly ill-timed after dinner. It was not adapted
to the cheek of the young person. It was not in good taste.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Mr Podsnap, putting it behind him.
The meek man was afraid we must take it as proved, because there were
the Inquests and the Registrar’s returns.
‘Then it was their own fault,’ said Mr Podsnap.
Veneering and other elders of tribes commended this way out of it. At
once a short cut and a broad road.
The man of meek demeanour intimated that truly it would seem from
the facts, as if starvation had been forced upon the culprits in
question--as if, in their wretched manner, they had made their weak
protests against it--as if they would have taken the liberty of staving
it off if they could--as if they would rather not have been starved upon
the whole, if perfectly agreeable to all parties.
‘There is not,’ said Mr Podsnap, flushing angrily, ‘there is not a
country in the world, sir, where so noble a provision is made for the
poor as in this country.’
The meek man was quite willing to concede that, but perhaps it
rendered the matter even worse, as showing that there must be something
appallingly wrong somewhere.
‘Where?’ said Mr Podsnap.
The meek man hinted Wouldn’t it be well to try, very seriously, to find
out where?
‘Ah!’ said Mr Podsnap. ‘Easy to say somewhere; not so easy to say
where! But I see what you are driving at. I knew it from the first.
Centralization. No. Never with my consent. Not English.’
An approving murmur arose from the heads of tribes; as saying, ‘There
you have him! Hold him!’
He was not aware (the meek man submitted of himself) that he was driving
at any ization. He had no favourite ization that he knew of. But he
certainly was more staggered by these terrible occurrences than he was
by names, of howsoever so many syllables. Might he ask, was dying of
destitution and neglect necessarily English?
‘You know what the population of London is, I suppose,’ said Mr Podsnap.
The meek man supposed he did, but supposed that had absolutely nothing
to do with it, if its laws were well administered.
‘And you know; at least I hope you know;’ said Mr Podsnap, with
severity, ‘that Providence has declared that you shall have the poor
always with you?’
The meek man also hoped he knew that.
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Mr Podsnap with a portentous air. ‘I am
glad to hear it. It will render you cautious how you fly in the face of
Providence.’
In reference to that absurd and irreverent conventional phrase, the meek
man said, for which Mr Podsnap was not responsible, he the meek man had
no fear of doing anything so impossible; but--
But Mr Podsnap felt that the time had come for flushing and flourishing
this meek man down for good. So he said:
‘I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It is not pleasant to
my feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings. I have said that I do not
admit these things. I have also said that if they do occur (not that I
admit it), the fault lies with the sufferers themselves. It is not for
ME’--Mr Podsnap pointed ‘me’ forcibly, as adding by implication though
it may be all very well for YOU--‘it is not for me to impugn the
workings of Providence. I know better than that, I trust, and I have
mentioned what the intentions of Providence are. Besides,’ said
Mr Podsnap, flushing high up among his hair-brushes, with a strong
consciousness of personal affront, ‘the subject is a very disagreeable
one. I will go so far as to say it is an odious one. It is not one to be
introduced among our wives and young persons, and I--’ He finished with
that flourish of his arm which added more expressively than any words,
And I remove it from the face of the earth.
Simultaneously with this quenching of the meek man’s ineffectual fire;
Georgiana having left the ambler up a lane of sofa, in a No Thoroughfare
of back drawing-room, to find his own way out, came back to Mrs Lammle.
And who should be with Mrs Lammle, but Mr Lammle. So fond of her!
‘Alfred, my love, here is my friend. Georgiana, dearest girl, you must
like my husband next to me.’
Mr Lammle was proud to be so soon distinguished by this special
commendation to Miss Podsnap’s favour. But if Mr Lammle were prone to be
jealous of his dear Sophronia’s friendships, he would be jealous of her
feeling towards Miss Podsnap.
‘Say Georgiana, darling,’ interposed his wife.
‘Towards--shall I?--Georgiana.’ Mr Lammle uttered the name, with a
delicate curve of his right hand, from his lips outward. ‘For never have
I known Sophronia (who is not apt to take sudden likings) so attracted
and so captivated as she is by--shall I once more?--Georgiana.’
The object of this homage sat uneasily enough in receipt of it, and then
said, turning to Mrs Lammle, much embarrassed:
‘I wonder what you like me for! I am sure I can’t think.’
‘Dearest Georgiana, for yourself. For your difference from all around
you.’
‘Well! That may be. For I think I like you for your difference from all
around me,’ said Georgiana with a smile of relief.
‘We must be going with the rest,’ observed Mrs Lammle, rising with a
show of unwillingness, amidst a general dispersal. ‘We are real friends,
Georgiana dear?’
‘Real.’
‘Good night, dear girl!’
She had established an attraction over the shrinking nature upon which
her smiling eyes were fixed, for Georgiana held her hand while she
answered in a secret and half-frightened tone:
‘Don’t forget me when you are gone away. And come again soon. Good
night!’
Charming to see Mr and Mrs Lammle taking leave so gracefully, and going
down the stairs so lovingly and sweetly. Not quite so charming to see
their smiling faces fall and brood as they dropped moodily into separate
corners of their little carriage. But to be sure that was a sight behind
the scenes, which nobody saw, and which nobody was meant to see.
Certain big, heavy vehicles, built on the model of the Podsnap plate,
took away the heavy articles of guests weighing ever so much; and the
less valuable articles got away after their various manners; and the
Podsnap plate was put to bed. As Mr Podsnap stood with his back to the
drawing-room fire, pulling up his shirtcollar, like a veritable cock
of the walk literally pluming himself in the midst of his possessions,
nothing would have astonished him more than an intimation that Miss
Podsnap, or any other young person properly born and bred, could not be
exactly put away like the plate, brought out like the plate, polished
like the plate, counted, weighed, and valued like the plate. That such
a young person could possibly have a morbid vacancy in the heart for
anything younger than the plate, or less monotonous than the plate;
or that such a young person’s thoughts could try to scale the region
bounded on the north, south, east, and west, by the plate; was a
monstrous imagination which he would on the spot have flourished into
space. This perhaps in some sort arose from Mr Podsnap’s blushing young
person being, so to speak, all cheek; whereas there is a possibility
that there may be young persons of a rather more complex organization.
If Mr Podsnap, pulling up his shirt-collar, could only have heard
himself called ‘that fellow’ in a certain short dialogue, which passed
between Mr and Mrs Lammle in their opposite corners of their little
carriage, rolling home!
‘Sophronia, are you awake?’
‘Am I likely to be asleep, sir?’
‘Very likely, I should think, after that fellow’s company. Attend to
what I am going to say.’
‘I have attended to what you have already said, have I not? What else
have I been doing all to-night.’
‘Attend, I tell you,’ (in a raised voice) ‘to what I am going to say.
Keep close to that idiot girl. Keep her under your thumb. You have her
fast, and you are not to let her go. Do you hear?’
‘I hear you.’
‘I foresee there is money to be made out of this, besides taking that
fellow down a peg. We owe each other money, you know.’
Mrs Lammle winced a little at the reminder, but only enough to shake her
scents and essences anew into the atmosphere of the little carriage, as
she settled herself afresh in her own dark corner.
Chapter 12
THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN’S BROW
Mr Mortimer Lightwood and Mr Eugene Wrayburn took a coffee-house dinner
together in Mr Lightwood’s office. They had newly agreed to set up a
joint establishment together. They had taken a bachelor cottage near
Hampton, on the brink of the Thames, with a lawn, and a boat-house; and
all things fitting, and were to float with the stream through the summer
and the Long Vacation.
It was not summer yet, but spring; and it was not gentle spring
ethereally mild, as in Thomson’s Seasons, but nipping spring with an
easterly wind, as in Johnson’s, Jackson’s, Dickson’s, Smith’s, and
Jones’s Seasons. The grating wind sawed rather than blew; and as it
sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit. Every street was a sawpit,
and there were no top-sawyers; every passenger was an under-sawyer, with
the sawdust blinding him and choking him.
That mysterious paper currency which circulates in London when the
wind blows, gyrated here and there and everywhere. Whence can it come,
whither can it go? It hangs on every bush, flutters in every tree, is
caught flying by the electric wires, haunts every enclosure, drinks at
every pump, cowers at every grating, shudders upon every plot of grass,
seeks rest in vain behind the legions of iron rails. In Paris, where
nothing is wasted, costly and luxurious city though it be, but where
wonderful human ants creep out of holes and pick up every scrap, there
is no such thing. There, it blows nothing but dust. There, sharp eyes
and sharp stomachs reap even the east wind, and get something out of it.
The wind sawed, and the sawdust whirled. The shrubs wrung their many
hands, bemoaning that they had been over-persuaded by the sun to bud;
the young leaves pined; the sparrows repented of their early marriages,
like men and women; the colours of the rainbow were discernible, not
in floral spring, but in the faces of the people whom it nibbled and
pinched. And ever the wind sawed, and the sawdust whirled.
When the spring evenings are too long and light to shut out, and such
weather is rife, the city which Mr Podsnap so explanatorily called
London, Londres, London, is at its worst. Such a black shrill city,
combining the qualities of a smoky house and a scolding wife; such a
gritty city; such a hopeless city, with no rent in the leaden canopy of
its sky; such a beleaguered city, invested by the great Marsh Forces of
Essex and Kent. So the two old schoolfellows felt it to be, as, their
dinner done, they turned towards the fire to smoke. Young Blight was
gone, the coffee-house waiter was gone, the plates and dishes were gone,
the wine was going--but not in the same direction.
‘The wind sounds up here,’ quoth Eugene, stirring the fire, ‘as if we
were keeping a lighthouse. I wish we were.’
‘Don’t you think it would bore us?’ Lightwood asked.
‘Not more than any other place. And there would be no Circuit to go. But
that’s a selfish consideration, personal to me.’
‘And no clients to come,’ added Lightwood. ‘Not that that’s a selfish
consideration at all personal to ME.’
‘If we were on an isolated rock in a stormy sea,’ said Eugene, smoking
with his eyes on the fire, ‘Lady Tippins couldn’t put off to visit us,
or, better still, might put off and get swamped. People couldn’t ask one
to wedding breakfasts. There would be no Precedents to hammer at,
except the plain-sailing Precedent of keeping the light up. It would be
exciting to look out for wrecks.’
‘But otherwise,’ suggested Lightwood, ‘there might be a degree of
sameness in the life.’
‘I have thought of that also,’ said Eugene, as if he really had been
considering the subject in its various bearings with an eye to the
business; ‘but it would be a defined and limited monotony. It would
not extend beyond two people. Now, it’s a question with me, Mortimer,
whether a monotony defined with that precision and limited to that
extent, might not be more endurable than the unlimited monotony of one’s
fellow-creatures.’
As Lightwood laughed and passed the wine, he remarked, ‘We shall have an
opportunity, in our boating summer, of trying the question.’
‘An imperfect one,’ Eugene acquiesced, with a sigh, ‘but so we shall. I
hope we may not prove too much for one another.’
‘Now, regarding your respected father,’ said Lightwood, bringing him
to a subject they had expressly appointed to discuss: always the most
slippery eel of eels of subjects to lay hold of.
‘Yes, regarding my respected father,’ assented Eugene, settling himself
in his arm-chair. ‘I would rather have approached my respected father by
candlelight, as a theme requiring a little artificial brilliancy; but we
will take him by twilight, enlivened with a glow of Wallsend.’
He stirred the fire again as he spoke, and having made it blaze,
resumed.
‘My respected father has found, down in the parental neighbourhood, a
wife for his not-generally-respected son.’
‘With some money, of course?’
‘With some money, of course, or he would not have found her. My
respected father--let me shorten the dutiful tautology by substituting
in future M. R. F., which sounds military, and rather like the Duke of
Wellington.’
‘What an absurd fellow you are, Eugene!’
‘Not at all, I assure you. M. R. F. having always in the clearest manner
provided (as he calls it) for his children by pre-arranging from the
hour of the birth of each, and sometimes from an earlier period, what
the devoted little victim’s calling and course in life should be, M. R.
F. pre-arranged for myself that I was to be the barrister I am (with
the slight addition of an enormous practice, which has not accrued), and
also the married man I am not.’
‘The first you have often told me.’
‘The first I have often told you. Considering myself sufficiently
incongruous on my legal eminence, I have until now suppressed my
domestic destiny. You know M. R. F., but not as well as I do. If you
knew him as well as I do, he would amuse you.’
‘Filially spoken, Eugene!’
‘Perfectly so, believe me; and with every sentiment of affectionate
deference towards M. R. F. But if he amuses me, I can’t help it. When my
eldest brother was born, of course the rest of us knew (I mean the rest
of us would have known, if we had been in existence) that he was heir
to the Family Embarrassments--we call it before the company the Family
Estate. But when my second brother was going to be born by-and-by,
“this,” says M. R. F., “is a little pillar of the church.” Was born,
and became a pillar of the church; a very shaky one. My third brother
appeared, considerably in advance of his engagement to my mother; but
M. R. F., not at all put out by surprise, instantly declared him
a Circumnavigator. Was pitch-forked into the Navy, but has not
circumnavigated. I announced myself and was disposed of with the highly
satisfactory results embodied before you. When my younger brother was
half an hour old, it was settled by M. R. F. that he should have a
mechanical genius. And so on. Therefore I say that M. R. F. amuses me.’
‘Touching the lady, Eugene.’
‘There M. R. F. ceases to be amusing, because my intentions are opposed
to touching the lady.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Not in the least.’
‘Hadn’t you better see her?’
‘My dear Mortimer, you have studied my character. Could I possibly go
down there, labelled “ELIGIBLE. ON VIEW,” and meet the lady, similarly
labelled? Anything to carry out M. R. F.’s arrangements, I am sure, with
the greatest pleasure--except matrimony. Could I possibly support it? I,
so soon bored, so constantly, so fatally?’
‘But you are not a consistent fellow, Eugene.’
‘In susceptibility to boredom,’ returned that worthy, ‘I assure you I am
the most consistent of mankind.’
‘Why, it was but now that you were dwelling in the advantages of a
monotony of two.’
‘In a lighthouse. Do me the justice to remember the condition. In a
lighthouse.’
Mortimer laughed again, and Eugene, having laughed too for the first
time, as if he found himself on reflection rather entertaining, relapsed
into his usual gloom, and drowsily said, as he enjoyed his cigar, ‘No,
there is no help for it; one of the prophetic deliveries of M. R. F.
must for ever remain unfulfilled. With every disposition to oblige him,
he must submit to a failure.’
It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing and the
sawdust was whirling outside paler windows. The underlying churchyard
was already settling into deep dim shade, and the shade was creeping up
to the housetops among which they sat. ‘As if,’ said Eugene, ‘as if the
churchyard ghosts were rising.’
He had walked to the window with his cigar in his mouth, to exalt its
flavour by comparing the fireside with the outside, when he stopped
midway on his return to his arm-chair, and said:
‘Apparently one of the ghosts has lost its way, and dropped in to be
directed. Look at this phantom!’
Lightwood, whose back was towards the door, turned his head, and there,
in the darkness of the entry, stood a something in the likeness of a
man: to whom he addressed the not irrelevant inquiry, ‘Who the devil are
you?’
‘I ask your pardons, Governors,’ replied the ghost, in a hoarse
double-barrelled whisper, ‘but might either on you be Lawyer Lightwood?’
‘What do you mean by not knocking at the door?’ demanded Mortimer.
‘I ask your pardons, Governors,’ replied the ghost, as before, ‘but
probable you was not aware your door stood open.’
‘What do you want?’
Hereunto the ghost again hoarsely replied, in its double-barrelled
manner, ‘I ask your pardons, Governors, but might one on you be Lawyer
Lightwood?’
‘One of us is,’ said the owner of that name.
‘All right, Governors Both,’ returned the ghost, carefully closing the
room door; ‘’tickler business.’
Mortimer lighted the candles. They showed the visitor to be an
ill-looking visitor with a squinting leer, who, as he spoke, fumbled
at an old sodden fur cap, formless and mangey, that looked like a furry
animal, dog or cat, puppy or kitten, drowned and decaying.
‘Now,’ said Mortimer, ‘what is it?’
‘Governors Both,’ returned the man, in what he meant to be a wheedling
tone, ‘which on you might be Lawyer Lightwood?’
‘I am.’
‘Lawyer Lightwood,’ ducking at him with a servile air, ‘I am a man as
gets my living, and as seeks to get my living, by the sweat of my brow.
Not to risk being done out of the sweat of my brow, by any chances, I
should wish afore going further to be swore in.’
‘I am not a swearer in of people, man.’
The visitor, clearly anything but reliant on this assurance, doggedly
muttered ‘Alfred David.’
‘Is that your name?’ asked Lightwood.
‘My name?’ returned the man. ‘No; I want to take a Alfred David.’
(Which Eugene, smoking and contemplating him, interpreted as meaning
Affidavit.)
‘I tell you, my good fellow,’ said Lightwood, with his indolent laugh,
‘that I have nothing to do with swearing.’
‘He can swear AT you,’ Eugene explained; ‘and so can I. But we can’t do
more for you.’
Much discomfited by this information, the visitor turned the drowned
dog or cat, puppy or kitten, about and about, and looked from one of
the Governors Both to the other of the Governors Both, while he deeply
considered within himself. At length he decided:
‘Then I must be took down.’
‘Where?’ asked Lightwood.
‘Here,’ said the man. ‘In pen and ink.’
‘First, let us know what your business is about.’
‘It’s about,’ said the man, taking a step forward, dropping his hoarse
voice, and shading it with his hand, ‘it’s about from five to ten
thousand pound reward. That’s what it’s about. It’s about Murder. That’s
what it’s about.’
‘Come nearer the table. Sit down. Will you have a glass of wine?’
‘Yes, I will,’ said the man; ‘and I don’t deceive you, Governors.’
It was given him. Making a stiff arm to the elbow, he poured the wine
into his mouth, tilted it into his right cheek, as saying, ‘What do you
think of it?’ tilted it into his left cheek, as saying, ‘What do YOU
think of it?’ jerked it into his stomach, as saying, ‘What do YOU think
of it?’ To conclude, smacked his lips, as if all three replied, ‘We
think well of it.’
‘Will you have another?’
‘Yes, I will,’ he repeated, ‘and I don’t deceive you, Governors.’ And
also repeated the other proceedings.
‘Now,’ began Lightwood, ‘what’s your name?’
‘Why, there you’re rather fast, Lawyer Lightwood,’ he replied, in a
remonstrant manner. ‘Don’t you see, Lawyer Lightwood? There you’re a
little bit fast. I’m going to earn from five to ten thousand pound by
the sweat of my brow; and as a poor man doing justice to the sweat of my
brow, is it likely I can afford to part with so much as my name without
its being took down?’
Deferring to the man’s sense of the binding powers of pen and ink and
paper, Lightwood nodded acceptance of Eugene’s nodded proposal to take
those spells in hand. Eugene, bringing them to the table, sat down as
clerk or notary.
‘Now,’ said Lightwood, ‘what’s your name?’
But further precaution was still due to the sweat of this honest
fellow’s brow.
‘I should wish, Lawyer Lightwood,’ he stipulated, ‘to have that T’other
Governor as my witness that what I said I said. Consequent, will the
T’other Governor be so good as chuck me his name and where he lives?’
Eugene, cigar in mouth and pen in hand, tossed him his card. After
spelling it out slowly, the man made it into a little roll, and tied it
up in an end of his neckerchief still more slowly.
‘Now,’ said Lightwood, for the third time, ‘if you have quite completed
your various preparations, my friend, and have fully ascertained that
your spirits are cool and not in any way hurried, what’s your name?’
‘Roger Riderhood.’
‘Dwelling-place?’
‘Lime’us Hole.’
‘Calling or occupation?’
Not quite so glib with this answer as with the previous two, Mr
Riderhood gave in the definition, ‘Waterside character.’
‘Anything against you?’ Eugene quietly put in, as he wrote.
Rather baulked, Mr Riderhood evasively remarked, with an innocent air,
that he believed the T’other Governor had asked him summa’t.
‘Ever in trouble?’ said Eugene.
‘Once.’ (Might happen to any man, Mr Riderhood added incidentally.)
‘On suspicion of--’
‘Of seaman’s pocket,’ said Mr Riderhood. ‘Whereby I was in reality the
man’s best friend, and tried to take care of him.’
‘With the sweat of your brow?’ asked Eugene.
‘Till it poured down like rain,’ said Roger Riderhood.
Eugene leaned back in his chair, and smoked with his eyes negligently
turned on the informer, and his pen ready to reduce him to more writing.
Lightwood also smoked, with his eyes negligently turned on the informer.
‘Now let me be took down again,’ said Riderhood, when he had turned the
drowned cap over and under, and had brushed it the wrong way (if it had
a right way) with his sleeve. ‘I give information that the man that done
the Harmon Murder is Gaffer Hexam, the man that found the body. The hand
of Jesse Hexam, commonly called Gaffer on the river and along shore, is
the hand that done that deed. His hand and no other.’
The two friends glanced at one another with more serious faces than they
had shown yet.
‘Tell us on what grounds you make this accusation,’ said Mortimer
Lightwood.
‘On the grounds,’ answered Riderhood, wiping his face with his sleeve,
‘that I was Gaffer’s pardner, and suspected of him many a long day and
many a dark night. On the grounds that I knowed his ways. On the grounds
that I broke the pardnership because I see the danger; which I warn you
his daughter may tell you another story about that, for anythink I can
say, but you know what it’ll be worth, for she’d tell you lies, the
world round and the heavens broad, to save her father. On the grounds
that it’s well understood along the cause’ays and the stairs that he
done it. On the grounds that he’s fell off from, because he done it. On
the grounds that I will swear he done it. On the grounds that you may
take me where you will, and get me sworn to it. I don’t want to back out
of the consequences. I have made up MY mind. Take me anywheres.’
‘All this is nothing,’ said Lightwood.
‘Nothing?’ repeated Riderhood, indignantly and amazedly.
‘Merely nothing. It goes to no more than that you suspect this man of
the crime. You may do so with some reason, or you may do so with no
reason, but he cannot be convicted on your suspicion.’
‘Haven’t I said--I appeal to the T’other Governor as my witness--haven’t
I said from the first minute that I opened my mouth in this here
world-without-end-everlasting chair’ (he evidently used that form of
words as next in force to an affidavit), ‘that I was willing to swear
that he done it? Haven’t I said, Take me and get me sworn to it? Don’t I
say so now? You won’t deny it, Lawyer Lightwood?’
‘Surely not; but you only offer to swear to your suspicion, and I tell
you it is not enough to swear to your suspicion.’
‘Not enough, ain’t it, Lawyer Lightwood?’ he cautiously demanded.
‘Positively not.’
‘And did I say it WAS enough? Now, I appeal to the T’other Governor.
Now, fair! Did I say so?’
‘He certainly has not said that he had no more to tell,’ Eugene observed
in a low voice without looking at him, ‘whatever he seemed to imply.’
‘Hah!’ cried the informer, triumphantly perceiving that the remark was
generally in his favour, though apparently not closely understanding it.
‘Fort’nate for me I had a witness!’
‘Go on, then,’ said Lightwood. ‘Say out what you have to say. No
after-thought.’
‘Let me be took down then!’ cried the informer, eagerly and anxiously.
‘Let me be took down, for by George and the Draggin I’m a coming to it
now! Don’t do nothing to keep back from a honest man the fruits of the
sweat of his brow! I give information, then, that he told me that he
done it. Is THAT enough?’
‘Take care what you say, my friend,’ returned Mortimer.
‘Lawyer Lightwood, take care, you, what I say; for I judge you’ll be
answerable for follering it up!’ Then, slowly and emphatically beating
it all out with his open right hand on the palm of his left; ‘I,
Roger Riderhood, Lime’us Hole, Waterside character, tell you, Lawyer
Lightwood, that the man Jesse Hexam, commonly called upon the river and
along-shore Gaffer, told me that he done the deed. What’s more, he told
me with his own lips that he done the deed. What’s more, he said that he
done the deed. And I’ll swear it!’
‘Where did he tell you so?’
‘Outside,’ replied Riderhood, always beating it out, with his head
determinedly set askew, and his eyes watchfully dividing their
attention between his two auditors, ‘outside the door of the Six Jolly
Fellowships, towards a quarter after twelve o’clock at midnight--but I
will not in my conscience undertake to swear to so fine a matter as
five minutes--on the night when he picked up the body. The Six Jolly
Fellowships won’t run away. If it turns out that he warn’t at the Six
Jolly Fellowships that night at midnight, I’m a liar.’
‘What did he say?’
‘I’ll tell you (take me down, T’other Governor, I ask no better). He
come out first; I come out last. I might be a minute arter him; I might
be half a minute, I might be a quarter of a minute; I cannot swear to
that, and therefore I won’t. That’s knowing the obligations of a Alfred
David, ain’t it?’
‘Go on.’
‘I found him a waiting to speak to me. He says to me, “Rogue
Riderhood”--for that’s the name I’m mostly called by--not for any
meaning in it, for meaning it has none, but because of its being similar
to Roger.’
‘Never mind that.’
‘’Scuse ME, Lawyer Lightwood, it’s a part of the truth, and as such I
do mind it, and I must mind it and I will mind it. “Rogue Riderhood,”
he says, “words passed betwixt us on the river tonight.” Which they had;
ask his daughter! “I threatened you,” he says, “to chop you over the
fingers with my boat’s stretcher, or take a aim at your brains with my
boathook. I did so on accounts of your looking too hard at what I had in
tow, as if you was suspicious, and on accounts of your holding on to the
gunwale of my boat.” I says to him, “Gaffer, I know it.” He says to me,
“Rogue Riderhood, you are a man in a dozen”--I think he said in a score,
but of that I am not positive, so take the lowest figure, for precious
be the obligations of a Alfred David. “And,” he says, “when your
fellow-men is up, be it their lives or be it their watches, sharp is
ever the word with you. Had you suspicions?” I says, “Gaffer, I had;
and what’s more, I have.” He falls a shaking, and he says, “Of what?” I
says, “Of foul play.” He falls a shaking worse, and he says, “There WAS
foul play then. I done it for his money. Don’t betray me!” Those were
the words as ever he used.’
There was a silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the grate.
An opportunity which the informer improved by smearing himself all
over the head and neck and face with his drowned cap, and not at all
improving his own appearance.
‘What more?’ asked Lightwood.
‘Of him, d’ye mean, Lawyer Lightwood?’
‘Of anything to the purpose.’
‘Now, I’m blest if I understand you, Governors Both,’ said the informer,
in a creeping manner: propitiating both, though only one had spoken.
‘What? Ain’t THAT enough?’
‘Did you ask him how he did it, where he did it, when he did it?’
‘Far be it from me, Lawyer Lightwood! I was so troubled in my mind, that
I wouldn’t have knowed more, no, not for the sum as I expect to earn
from you by the sweat of my brow, twice told! I had put an end to the
pardnership. I had cut the connexion. I couldn’t undo what was done; and
when he begs and prays, “Old pardner, on my knees, don’t split upon me!”
I only makes answer “Never speak another word to Roger Riderhood, nor
look him in the face!” and I shuns that man.’
Having given these words a swing to make them mount the higher and go
the further, Rogue Riderhood poured himself out another glass of wine
unbidden, and seemed to chew it, as, with the half-emptied glass in his
hand, he stared at the candles.
Mortimer glanced at Eugene, but Eugene sat glowering at his paper,
and would give him no responsive glance. Mortimer again turned to the
informer, to whom he said:
‘You have been troubled in your mind a long time, man?’
Giving his wine a final chew, and swallowing it, the informer answered
in a single word:
‘Hages!’
‘When all that stir was made, when the Government reward was offered,
when the police were on the alert, when the whole country rang with the
crime!’ said Mortimer, impatiently.
‘Hah!’ Mr Riderhood very slowly and hoarsely chimed in, with several
retrospective nods of his head. ‘Warn’t I troubled in my mind then!’
‘When conjecture ran wild, when the most extravagant suspicions were
afloat, when half a dozen innocent people might have been laid by the
heels any hour in the day!’ said Mortimer, almost warming.
‘Hah!’ Mr Riderhood chimed in, as before. ‘Warn’t I troubled in my mind
through it all!’
‘But he hadn’t,’ said Eugene, drawing a lady’s head upon his
writing-paper, and touching it at intervals, ‘the opportunity then of
earning so much money, you see.’
‘The T’other Governor hits the nail, Lawyer Lightwood! It was that as
turned me. I had many times and again struggled to relieve myself of the
trouble on my mind, but I couldn’t get it off. I had once very nigh
got it off to Miss Abbey Potterson which keeps the Six Jolly
Fellowships--there is the ‘ouse, it won’t run away,--there lives the
lady, she ain’t likely to be struck dead afore you get there--ask
her!--but I couldn’t do it. At last, out comes the new bill with your
own lawful name, Lawyer Lightwood, printed to it, and then I asks the
question of my own intellects, Am I to have this trouble on my mind for
ever? Am I never to throw it off? Am I always to think more of Gaffer
than of my own self? If he’s got a daughter, ain’t I got a daughter?’
‘And echo answered--?’ Eugene suggested.
‘“You have,”’ said Mr Riderhood, in a firm tone.
‘Incidentally mentioning, at the same time, her age?’ inquired Eugene.
‘Yes, governor. Two-and-twenty last October. And then I put it to
myself, “Regarding the money. It is a pot of money.” For it IS a pot,’
said Mr Riderhood, with candour, ‘and why deny it?’
‘Hear!’ from Eugene as he touched his drawing.
‘“It is a pot of money; but is it a sin for a labouring man that
moistens every crust of bread he earns, with his tears--or if not with
them, with the colds he catches in his head--is it a sin for that man to
earn it? Say there is anything again earning it.” This I put to myself
strong, as in duty bound; “how can it be said without blaming Lawyer
Lightwood for offering it to be earned?” And was it for ME to blame
Lawyer Lightwood? No.’
‘No,’ said Eugene.
‘Certainly not, Governor,’ Mr Riderhood acquiesced. ‘So I made up my
mind to get my trouble off my mind, and to earn by the sweat of my brow
what was held out to me. And what’s more,’ he added, suddenly turning
bloodthirsty, ‘I mean to have it! And now I tell you, once and away,
Lawyer Lightwood, that Jesse Hexam, commonly called Gaffer, his hand and
no other, done the deed, on his own confession to me. And I give him up
to you, and I want him took. This night!’
After another silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the
grate, which attracted the informer’s attention as if it were the
chinking of money, Mortimer Lightwood leaned over his friend, and said
in a whisper:
‘I suppose I must go with this fellow to our imperturbable friend at the
police-station.’
‘I suppose,’ said Eugene, ‘there is no help for it.’
‘Do you believe him?’
‘I believe him to be a thorough rascal. But he may tell the truth, for
his own purpose, and for this occasion only.’
‘It doesn’t look like it.’
‘HE doesn’t,’ said Eugene. ‘But neither is his late partner, whom he
denounces, a prepossessing person. The firm are cut-throat Shepherds
both, in appearance. I should like to ask him one thing.’
The subject of this conference sat leering at the ashes, trying with
all his might to overhear what was said, but feigning abstraction as the
‘Governors Both’ glanced at him.
‘You mentioned (twice, I think) a daughter of this Hexam’s,’ said
Eugene, aloud. ‘You don’t mean to imply that she had any guilty
knowledge of the crime?’
The honest man, after considering--perhaps considering how his answer
might affect the fruits of the sweat of his brow--replied, unreservedly,
‘No, I don’t.’
‘And you implicate no other person?’
‘It ain’t what I implicate, it’s what Gaffer implicated,’ was the dogged
and determined answer. ‘I don’t pretend to know more than that his words
to me was, “I done it.” Those was his words.’
‘I must see this out, Mortimer,’ whispered Eugene, rising. ‘How shall we
go?’
‘Let us walk,’ whispered Lightwood, ‘and give this fellow time to think
of it.’
Having exchanged the question and answer, they prepared themselves
for going out, and Mr Riderhood rose. While extinguishing the candles,
Lightwood, quite as a matter of course took up the glass from which that
honest gentleman had drunk, and coolly tossed it under the grate, where
it fell shivering into fragments.
‘Now, if you will take the lead,’ said Lightwood, ‘Mr Wrayburn and I
will follow. You know where to go, I suppose?’
‘I suppose I do, Lawyer Lightwood.’
‘Take the lead, then.’
The waterside character pulled his drowned cap over his ears with both
hands, and making himself more round-shouldered than nature had made
him, by the sullen and persistent slouch with which he went, went
down the stairs, round by the Temple Church, across the Temple into
Whitefriars, and so on by the waterside streets.
‘Look at his hang-dog air,’ said Lightwood, following.
‘It strikes me rather as a hang-MAN air,’ returned Eugene. ‘He has
undeniable intentions that way.’
They said little else as they followed. He went on before them as an
ugly Fate might have done, and they kept him in view, and would have
been glad enough to lose sight of him. But on he went before them,
always at the same distance, and the same rate. Aslant against the hard
implacable weather and the rough wind, he was no more to be driven back
than hurried forward, but held on like an advancing Destiny. There came,
when they were about midway on their journey, a heavy rush of hail,
which in a few minutes pelted the streets clear, and whitened them. It
made no difference to him. A man’s life being to be taken and the price
of it got, the hailstones to arrest the purpose must lie larger and
deeper than those. He crashed through them, leaving marks in the
fast-melting slush that were mere shapeless holes; one might have
fancied, following, that the very fashion of humanity had departed from
his feet.
The blast went by, and the moon contended with the fast-flying clouds,
and the wild disorder reigning up there made the pitiful little tumults
in the streets of no account. It was not that the wind swept all
the brawlers into places of shelter, as it had swept the hail still
lingering in heaps wherever there was refuge for it; but that it seemed
as if the streets were absorbed by the sky, and the night were all in
the air.
‘If he has had time to think of it,’ said Eugene, ‘he has not had time to
think better of it--or differently of it, if that’s better. There is no
sign of drawing back in him; and as I recollect this place, we must be
close upon the corner where we alighted that night.’
In fact, a few abrupt turns brought them to the river side, where they
had slipped about among the stones, and where they now slipped more; the
wind coming against them in slants and flaws, across the tide and the
windings of the river, in a furious way. With that habit of getting
under the lee of any shelter which waterside characters acquire, the
waterside character at present in question led the way to the leeside of
the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters before he spoke.
‘Look round here, Lawyer Lightwood, at them red curtains. It’s the
Fellowships, the ‘ouse as I told you wouldn’t run away. And has it run
away?’
Not showing himself much impressed by this remarkable confirmation of
the informer’s evidence, Lightwood inquired what other business they had
there?
‘I wished you to see the Fellowships for yourself, Lawyer Lightwood,
that you might judge whether I’m a liar; and now I’ll see Gaffer’s
window for myself, that we may know whether he’s at home.’
With that, he crept away.
‘He’ll come back, I suppose?’ murmured Lightwood.
‘Ay! and go through with it,’ murmured Eugene.
He came back after a very short interval indeed.
‘Gaffer’s out, and his boat’s out. His daughter’s at home, sitting
a-looking at the fire. But there’s some supper getting ready, so
Gaffer’s expected. I can find what move he’s upon, easy enough,
presently.’
Then he beckoned and led the way again, and they came to the
police-station, still as clean and cool and steady as before, saving
that the flame of its lamp--being but a lamp-flame, and only attached to
the Force as an outsider--flickered in the wind.
Also, within doors, Mr Inspector was at his studies as of yore.
He recognized the friends the instant they reappeared, but their
reappearance had no effect on his composure. Not even the circumstance
that Riderhood was their conductor moved him, otherwise than that as he
took a dip of ink he seemed, by a settlement of his chin in his stock,
to propound to that personage, without looking at him, the question,
‘What have YOU been up to, last?’
Mortimer Lightwood asked him, would he be so good as look at those
notes? Handing him Eugene’s.
Having read the first few lines, Mr Inspector mounted to that (for him)
extraordinary pitch of emotion that he said, ‘Does either of you two
gentlemen happen to have a pinch of snuff about him?’ Finding that
neither had, he did quite as well without it, and read on.
‘Have you heard these read?’ he then demanded of the honest man.
‘No,’ said Riderhood.
‘Then you had better hear them.’ And so read them aloud, in an official
manner.
‘Are these notes correct, now, as to the information you bring here and
the evidence you mean to give?’ he asked, when he had finished reading.
‘They are. They are as correct,’ returned Mr Riderhood, ‘as I am. I
can’t say more than that for ‘em.’
‘I’ll take this man myself, sir,’ said Mr Inspector to Lightwood. Then
to Riderhood, ‘Is he at home? Where is he? What’s he doing? You have
made it your business to know all about him, no doubt.’
Riderhood said what he did know, and promised to find out in a few
minutes what he didn’t know.
‘Stop,’ said Mr Inspector; ‘not till I tell you: We mustn’t look like
business. Would you two gentlemen object to making a pretence of taking
a glass of something in my company at the Fellowships? Well-conducted
house, and highly respectable landlady.’
They replied that they would be happy to substitute a reality for the
pretence, which, in the main, appeared to be as one with Mr Inspector’s
meaning.
‘Very good,’ said he, taking his hat from its peg, and putting a pair of
handcuffs in his pocket as if they were his gloves. ‘Reserve!’ Reserve
saluted. ‘You know where to find me?’ Reserve again saluted. ‘Riderhood,
when you have found out concerning his coming home, come round to the
window of Cosy, tap twice at it, and wait for me. Now, gentlemen.’
As the three went out together, and Riderhood slouched off from under
the trembling lamp his separate way, Lightwood asked the officer what he
thought of this?
Mr Inspector replied, with due generality and reticence, that it was
always more likely that a man had done a bad thing than that he hadn’t.
That he himself had several times ‘reckoned up’ Gaffer, but had never
been able to bring him to a satisfactory criminal total. That if this
story was true, it was only in part true. That the two men, very shy
characters, would have been jointly and pretty equally ‘in it;’ but that
this man had ‘spotted’ the other, to save himself and get the money.
‘And I think,’ added Mr Inspector, in conclusion, ‘that if all goes
well with him, he’s in a tolerable way of getting it. But as this is the
Fellowships, gentlemen, where the lights are, I recommend dropping
the subject. You can’t do better than be interested in some lime works
anywhere down about Northfleet, and doubtful whether some of your lime
don’t get into bad company as it comes up in barges.’
‘You hear Eugene?’ said Lightwood, over his shoulder. ‘You are deeply
interested in lime.’
‘Without lime,’ returned that unmoved barrister-at-law, ‘my existence
would be unilluminated by a ray of hope.’
Chapter 13
TRACKING THE BIRD OF PREY
The two lime merchants, with their escort, entered the dominions of
Miss Abbey Potterson, to whom their escort (presenting them and their
pretended business over the half-door of the bar, in a confidential
way) preferred his figurative request that ‘a mouthful of fire’ might
be lighted in Cosy. Always well disposed to assist the constituted
authorities, Miss Abbey bade Bob Gliddery attend the gentlemen to
that retreat, and promptly enliven it with fire and gaslight. Of this
commission the bare-armed Bob, leading the way with a flaming wisp of
paper, so speedily acquitted himself, that Cosy seemed to leap out of a
dark sleep and embrace them warmly, the moment they passed the lintels
of its hospitable door.
‘They burn sherry very well here,’ said Mr Inspector, as a piece of
local intelligence. ‘Perhaps you gentlemen might like a bottle?’
The answer being By all means, Bob Gliddery received his instructions
from Mr Inspector, and departed in a becoming state of alacrity
engendered by reverence for the majesty of the law.
‘It’s a certain fact,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘that this man we have
received our information from,’ indicating Riderhood with his thumb over
his shoulder, ‘has for some time past given the other man a bad name
arising out of your lime barges, and that the other man has been avoided
in consequence. I don’t say what it means or proves, but it’s a certain
fact. I had it first from one of the opposite sex of my acquaintance,’
vaguely indicating Miss Abbey with his thumb over his shoulder, ‘down
away at a distance, over yonder.’
Then probably Mr Inspector was not quite unprepared for their visit that
evening? Lightwood hinted.
‘Well you see,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘it was a question of making a move.
It’s of no use moving if you don’t know what your move is. You had
better by far keep still. In the matter of this lime, I certainly had
an idea that it might lie betwixt the two men; I always had that idea.
Still I was forced to wait for a start, and I wasn’t so lucky as to get
a start. This man that we have received our information from, has got
a start, and if he don’t meet with a check he may make the running and
come in first. There may turn out to be something considerable for him
that comes in second, and I don’t mention who may or who may not try
for that place. There’s duty to do, and I shall do it, under any
circumstances; to the best of my judgment and ability.’
‘Speaking as a shipper of lime--’ began Eugene.
‘Which no man has a better right to do than yourself, you know,’ said Mr
Inspector.
‘I hope not,’ said Eugene; ‘my father having been a shipper of lime
before me, and my grandfather before him--in fact we having been a
family immersed to the crowns of our heads in lime during several
generations--I beg to observe that if this missing lime could be got
hold of without any young female relative of any distinguished gentleman
engaged in the lime trade (which I cherish next to my life) being
present, I think it might be a more agreeable proceeding to the
assisting bystanders, that is to say, lime-burners.’
‘I also,’ said Lightwood, pushing his friend aside with a laugh, ‘should
much prefer that.’
‘It shall be done, gentlemen, if it can be done conveniently,’ said
Mr Inspector, with coolness. ‘There is no wish on my part to cause any
distress in that quarter. Indeed, I am sorry for that quarter.’
‘There was a boy in that quarter,’ remarked Eugene. ‘He is still there?’
‘No,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘He has quitted those works. He is otherwise
disposed of.’
‘Will she be left alone then?’ asked Eugene.
‘She will be left,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘alone.’
Bob’s reappearance with a steaming jug broke off the conversation. But
although the jug steamed forth a delicious perfume, its contents had not
received that last happy touch which the surpassing finish of the Six
Jolly Fellowship Porters imparted on such momentous occasions. Bob
carried in his left hand one of those iron models of sugar-loaf hats,
before mentioned, into which he emptied the jug, and the pointed end of
which he thrust deep down into the fire, so leaving it for a few moments
while he disappeared and reappeared with three bright drinking-glasses.
Placing these on the table and bending over the fire, meritoriously
sensible of the trying nature of his duty, he watched the wreaths of
steam, until at the special instant of projection he caught up the iron
vessel and gave it one delicate twirl, causing it to send forth one
gentle hiss. Then he restored the contents to the jug; held over the
steam of the jug, each of the three bright glasses in succession;
finally filled them all, and with a clear conscience awaited the
applause of his fellow-creatures.
It was bestowed (Mr Inspector having proposed as an appropriate
sentiment ‘The lime trade!’) and Bob withdrew to report the
commendations of the guests to Miss Abbey in the bar. It may be here
in confidence admitted that, the room being close shut in his absence,
there had not appeared to be the slightest reason for the elaborate
maintenance of this same lime fiction. Only it had been regarded by Mr
Inspector as so uncommonly satisfactory, and so fraught with mysterious
virtues, that neither of his clients had presumed to question it.
Two taps were now heard on the outside of the window. Mr Inspector,
hastily fortifying himself with another glass, strolled out with a
noiseless foot and an unoccupied countenance. As one might go to survey
the weather and the general aspect of the heavenly bodies.
‘This is becoming grim, Mortimer,’ said Eugene, in a low voice. ‘I don’t
like this.’
‘Nor I’ said Lightwood. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Being here, let us stay. You ought to see it out, and I won’t leave
you. Besides, that lonely girl with the dark hair runs in my head. It
was little more than a glimpse we had of her that last time, and yet
I almost see her waiting by the fire to-night. Do you feel like a dark
combination of traitor and pickpocket when you think of that girl?’
‘Rather,’ returned Lightwood. ‘Do you?’
‘Very much so.’
Their escort strolled back again, and reported. Divested of its various
lime-lights and shadows, his report went to the effect that Gaffer was
away in his boat, supposed to be on his old look-out; that he had been
expected last high-water; that having missed it for some reason or
other, he was not, according to his usual habits at night, to be counted
on before next high-water, or it might be an hour or so later; that his
daughter, surveyed through the window, would seem to be so expecting
him, for the supper was not cooking, but set out ready to be cooked;
that it would be high-water at about one, and that it was now barely
ten; that there was nothing to be done but watch and wait; that the
informer was keeping watch at the instant of that present reporting, but
that two heads were better than one (especially when the second was
Mr Inspector’s); and that the reporter meant to share the watch. And
forasmuch as crouching under the lee of a hauled-up boat on a night when
it blew cold and strong, and when the weather was varied with blasts of
hail at times, might be wearisome to amateurs, the reporter closed with
the recommendation that the two gentlemen should remain, for a while at
any rate, in their present quarters, which were weather-tight and warm.
They were not inclined to dispute this recommendation, but they wanted
to know where they could join the watchers when so disposed. Rather than
trust to a verbal description of the place, which might mislead, Eugene
(with a less weighty sense of personal trouble on him than he usually
had) would go out with Mr Inspector, note the spot, and come back.
On the shelving bank of the river, among the slimy stones of a
causeway--not the special causeway of the Six Jolly Fellowships, which
had a landing-place of its own, but another, a little removed, and
very near to the old windmill which was the denounced man’s
dwelling-place--were a few boats; some, moored and already beginning to
float; others, hauled up above the reach of the tide. Under one of these
latter, Eugene’s companion disappeared. And when Eugene had observed its
position with reference to the other boats, and had made sure that he
could not miss it, he turned his eyes upon the building where, as he had
been told, the lonely girl with the dark hair sat by the fire.
He could see the light of the fire shining through the window. Perhaps
it drew him on to look in. Perhaps he had come out with the express
intention. That part of the bank having rank grass growing on it, there
was no difficulty in getting close, without any noise of footsteps: it
was but to scramble up a ragged face of pretty hard mud some three or
four feet high and come upon the grass and to the window. He came to the
window by that means.
She had no other light than the light of the fire. The unkindled lamp
stood on the table. She sat on the ground, looking at the brazier, with
her face leaning on her hand. There was a kind of film or flicker on
her face, which at first he took to be the fitful firelight; but, on a
second look, he saw that she was weeping. A sad and solitary spectacle,
as shown him by the rising and the falling of the fire.
It was a little window of but four pieces of glass, and was not
curtained; he chose it because the larger window near it was. It showed
him the room, and the bills upon the wall respecting the drowned people
starting out and receding by turns. But he glanced slightly at them,
though he looked long and steadily at her. A deep rich piece of colour,
with the brown flush of her cheek and the shining lustre of her hair,
though sad and solitary, weeping by the rising and the falling of the
fire.
She started up. He had been so very still that he felt sure it was not
he who had disturbed her, so merely withdrew from the window and stood
near it in the shadow of the wall. She opened the door, and said in an
alarmed tone, ‘Father, was that you calling me?’ And again, ‘Father!’
And once again, after listening, ‘Father! I thought I heard you call me
twice before!’
No response. As she re-entered at the door, he dropped over the bank and
made his way back, among the ooze and near the hiding-place, to Mortimer
Lightwood: to whom he told what he had seen of the girl, and how this
was becoming very grim indeed.
‘If the real man feels as guilty as I do,’ said Eugene, ‘he is
remarkably uncomfortable.’
‘Influence of secrecy,’ suggested Lightwood.
‘I am not at all obliged to it for making me Guy Fawkes in the vault and
a Sneak in the area both at once,’ said Eugene. ‘Give me some more of
that stuff.’
Lightwood helped him to some more of that stuff, but it had been
cooling, and didn’t answer now.
‘Pooh,’ said Eugene, spitting it out among the ashes. ‘Tastes like the
wash of the river.’
‘Are you so familiar with the flavour of the wash of the river?’
‘I seem to be to-night. I feel as if I had been half drowned, and
swallowing a gallon of it.’
‘Influence of locality,’ suggested Lightwood.
‘You are mighty learned to-night, you and your influences,’ returned
Eugene. ‘How long shall we stay here?’
‘How long do you think?’
‘If I could choose, I should say a minute,’ replied Eugene, ‘for the
Jolly Fellowship Porters are not the jolliest dogs I have known. But
I suppose we are best here until they turn us out with the other
suspicious characters, at midnight.’
Thereupon he stirred the fire, and sat down on one side of it. It struck
eleven, and he made believe to compose himself patiently. But gradually
he took the fidgets in one leg, and then in the other leg, and then in
one arm, and then in the other arm, and then in his chin, and then in
his back, and then in his forehead, and then in his hair, and then in
his nose; and then he stretched himself recumbent on two chairs, and
groaned; and then he started up.
‘Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am
tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary
under the meanest circumstances, and the myrmidons of justice are at my
heels.’
‘I am quite as bad,’ said Lightwood, sitting up facing him, with a
tumbled head; after going through some wonderful evolutions, in which
his head had been the lowest part of him. ‘This restlessness began with
me, long ago. All the time you were out, I felt like Gulliver with the
Lilliputians firing upon him.’
‘It won’t do, Mortimer. We must get into the air; we must join our dear
friend and brother, Riderhood. And let us tranquillize ourselves by
making a compact. Next time (with a view to our peace of mind) we’ll
commit the crime, instead of taking the criminal. You swear it?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Sworn! Let Tippins look to it. Her life’s in danger.’
Mortimer rang the bell to pay the score, and Bob appeared to transact
that business with him: whom Eugene, in his careless extravagance, asked
if he would like a situation in the lime-trade?
‘Thankee sir, no sir,’ said Bob. ‘I’ve a good sitiwation here, sir.’
‘If you change your mind at any time,’ returned Eugene, ‘come to me at
my works, and you’ll always find an opening in the lime-kiln.’
‘Thankee sir,’ said Bob.
‘This is my partner,’ said Eugene, ‘who keeps the books and attends to
the wages. A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work is ever my partner’s
motto.’
‘And a very good ‘un it is, gentlemen,’ said Bob, receiving his fee, and
drawing a bow out of his head with his right hand, very much as he would
have drawn a pint of beer out of the beer engine.
‘Eugene,’ Mortimer apostrophized him, laughing quite heartily when they
were alone again, ‘how CAN you be so ridiculous?’
‘I am in a ridiculous humour,’ quoth Eugene; ‘I am a ridiculous fellow.
Everything is ridiculous. Come along!’
It passed into Mortimer Lightwood’s mind that a change of some sort,
best expressed perhaps as an intensification of all that was wildest and
most negligent and reckless in his friend, had come upon him in the last
half-hour or so. Thoroughly used to him as he was, he found something
new and strained in him that was for the moment perplexing. This passed
into his mind, and passed out again; but he remembered it afterwards.
‘There’s where she sits, you see,’ said Eugene, when they were standing
under the bank, roared and riven at by the wind. ‘There’s the light of
her fire.’
‘I’ll take a peep through the window,’ said Mortimer.
‘No, don’t!’ Eugene caught him by the arm. ‘Best, not make a show of
her. Come to our honest friend.’
He led him to the post of watch, and they both dropped down and crept
under the lee of the boat; a better shelter than it had seemed before,
being directly contrasted with the blowing wind and the bare night.
‘Mr Inspector at home?’ whispered Eugene.
‘Here I am, sir.’
‘And our friend of the perspiring brow is at the far corner there? Good.
Anything happened?’
‘His daughter has been out, thinking she heard him calling, unless it
was a sign to him to keep out of the way. It might have been.’
‘It might have been Rule Britannia,’ muttered Eugene, ‘but it wasn’t.
Mortimer!’
‘Here!’ (On the other side of Mr Inspector.)
‘Two burglaries now, and a forgery!’
With this indication of his depressed state of mind, Eugene fell silent.
They were all silent for a long while. As it got to be flood-tide, and
the water came nearer to them, noises on the river became more frequent,
and they listened more. To the turning of steam-paddles, to the clinking
of iron chain, to the creaking of blocks, to the measured working
of oars, to the occasional violent barking of some passing dog on
shipboard, who seemed to scent them lying in their hiding-place. The
night was not so dark but that, besides the lights at bows and mastheads
gliding to and fro, they could discern some shadowy bulk attached; and
now and then a ghostly lighter with a large dark sail, like a warning
arm, would start up very near them, pass on, and vanish. At this time
of their watch, the water close to them would be often agitated by some
impulsion given it from a distance. Often they believed this beat and
plash to be the boat they lay in wait for, running in ashore; and again
and again they would have started up, but for the immobility with which
the informer, well used to the river, kept quiet in his place.
The wind carried away the striking of the great multitude of city
church clocks, for those lay to leeward of them; but there were bells to
windward that told them of its being One--Two--Three. Without that aid
they would have known how the night wore, by the falling of the tide,
recorded in the appearance of an ever-widening black wet strip of shore,
and the emergence of the paved causeway from the river, foot by foot.
As the time so passed, this slinking business became a more and more
precarious one. It would seem as if the man had had some intimation of
what was in hand against him, or had taken fright? His movements might
have been planned to gain for him, in getting beyond their reach, twelve
hours’ advantage? The honest man who had expended the sweat of his brow
became uneasy, and began to complain with bitterness of the proneness of
mankind to cheat him--him invested with the dignity of Labour!
Their retreat was so chosen that while they could watch the river, they
could watch the house. No one had passed in or out, since the daughter
thought she heard the father calling. No one could pass in or out
without being seen.
‘But it will be light at five,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘and then WE shall be
seen.’
‘Look here,’ said Riderhood, ‘what do you say to this? He may have
been lurking in and out, and just holding his own betwixt two or three
bridges, for hours back.’
‘What do you make of that?’ said Mr Inspector. Stoical, but
contradictory.
‘He may be doing so at this present time.’
‘What do you make of that?’ said Mr Inspector.
‘My boat’s among them boats here at the cause’ay.’
‘And what do you make of your boat?’ said Mr Inspector.
‘What if I put off in her and take a look round? I know his ways, and
the likely nooks he favours. I know where he’d be at such a time of the
tide, and where he’d be at such another time. Ain’t I been his pardner?
None of you need show. None of you need stir. I can shove her off
without help; and as to me being seen, I’m about at all times.’
‘You might have given a worse opinion,’ said Mr Inspector, after brief
consideration. ‘Try it.’
‘Stop a bit. Let’s work it out. If I want you, I’ll drop round under the
Fellowships and tip you a whistle.’
‘If I might so far presume as to offer a suggestion to my honourable and
gallant friend, whose knowledge of naval matters far be it from me to
impeach,’ Eugene struck in with great deliberation, ‘it would be, that
to tip a whistle is to advertise mystery and invite speculation.
My honourable and gallant friend will, I trust, excuse me, as an
independent member, for throwing out a remark which I feel to be due to
this house and the country.’
‘Was that the T’other Governor, or Lawyer Lightwood?’ asked Riderhood.
For, they spoke as they crouched or lay, without seeing one another’s
faces.
‘In reply to the question put by my honourable and gallant friend,’
said Eugene, who was lying on his back with his hat on his face, as an
attitude highly expressive of watchfulness, ‘I can have no hesitation in
replying (it not being inconsistent with the public service) that those
accents were the accents of the T’other Governor.’
‘You’ve tolerable good eyes, ain’t you, Governor? You’ve all tolerable
good eyes, ain’t you?’ demanded the informer.
All.
‘Then if I row up under the Fellowship and lay there, no need to
whistle. You’ll make out that there’s a speck of something or another
there, and you’ll know it’s me, and you’ll come down that cause’ay to
me. Understood all?’
Understood all.
‘Off she goes then!’
In a moment, with the wind cutting keenly at him sideways, he was
staggering down to his boat; in a few moments he was clear, and creeping
up the river under their own shore.
Eugene had raised himself on his elbow to look into the darkness after
him. ‘I wish the boat of my honourable and gallant friend,’ he murmured,
lying down again and speaking into his hat, ‘may be endowed
with philanthropy enough to turn bottom-upward and extinguish
him!--Mortimer.’
‘My honourable friend.’
‘Three burglaries, two forgeries, and a midnight assassination.’ Yet
in spite of having those weights on his conscience, Eugene was somewhat
enlivened by the late slight change in the circumstances of affairs. So
were his two companions. Its being a change was everything. The suspense
seemed to have taken a new lease, and to have begun afresh from a recent
date. There was something additional to look for. They were all three
more sharply on the alert, and less deadened by the miserable influences
of the place and time.
More than an hour had passed, and they were even dozing, when one of the
three--each said it was he, and he had NOT dozed--made out Riderhood
in his boat at the spot agreed on. They sprang up, came out from their
shelter, and went down to him. When he saw them coming, he dropped
alongside the causeway; so that they, standing on the causeway, could
speak with him in whispers, under the shadowy mass of the Six Jolly
Fellowship Porters fast asleep.
‘Blest if I can make it out!’ said he, staring at them.
‘Make what out? Have you seen him?’
‘No.’
‘What HAVE you seen?’ asked Lightwood. For, he was staring at them in
the strangest way.
‘I’ve seen his boat.’
‘Not empty?’
‘Yes, empty. And what’s more,--adrift. And what’s more,--with one scull
gone. And what’s more,--with t’other scull jammed in the thowels and
broke short off. And what’s more,--the boat’s drove tight by the tide
‘atwixt two tiers of barges. And what’s more,--he’s in luck again, by
George if he ain’t!’
Chapter 14
THE BIRD OF PREY BROUGHT DOWN
Cold on the shore, in the raw cold of that leaden crisis in the
four-and-twenty hours when the vital force of all the noblest and
prettiest things that live is at its lowest, the three watchers looked
each at the blank faces of the other two, and all at the blank face of
Riderhood in his boat.
‘Gaffer’s boat, Gaffer in luck again, and yet no Gaffer!’ So spake
Riderhood, staring disconsolate.
As if with one accord, they all turned their eyes towards the light of
the fire shining through the window. It was fainter and duller. Perhaps
fire, like the higher animal and vegetable life it helps to sustain, has
its greatest tendency towards death, when the night is dying and the day
is not yet born.
‘If it was me that had the law of this here job in hand,’ growled
Riderhood with a threatening shake of his head, ‘blest if I wouldn’t lay
hold of HER, at any rate!’
‘Ay, but it is not you,’ said Eugene. With something so suddenly fierce
in him that the informer returned submissively; ‘Well, well, well,
t’other governor, I didn’t say it was. A man may speak.’
‘And vermin may be silent,’ said Eugene. ‘Hold your tongue, you
water-rat!’
Astonished by his friend’s unusual heat, Lightwood stared too, and then
said: ‘What can have become of this man?’
‘Can’t imagine. Unless he dived overboard.’ The informer wiped his
brow ruefully as he said it, sitting in his boat and always staring
disconsolate.
‘Did you make his boat fast?’
‘She’s fast enough till the tide runs back. I couldn’t make her faster
than she is. Come aboard of mine, and see for your own-selves.’
There was a little backwardness in complying, for the freight looked too
much for the boat; but on Riderhood’s protesting ‘that he had had half a
dozen, dead and alive, in her afore now, and she was nothing deep in the
water nor down in the stern even then, to speak of;’ they carefully took
their places, and trimmed the crazy thing. While they were doing so,
Riderhood still sat staring disconsolate.
‘All right. Give way!’ said Lightwood.
‘Give way, by George!’ repeated Riderhood, before shoving off. ‘If he’s
gone and made off any how Lawyer Lightwood, it’s enough to make me give
way in a different manner. But he always WAS a cheat, con-found him!
He always was a infernal cheat, was Gaffer. Nothing straightfor’ard,
nothing on the square. So mean, so underhanded. Never going through with
a thing, nor carrying it out like a man!’
‘Hallo! Steady!’ cried Eugene (he had recovered immediately on
embarking), as they bumped heavily against a pile; and then in a lower
voice reversed his late apostrophe by remarking [‘I wish the boat of my
honourable and gallant friend may be endowed with philanthropy enough
not to turn bottom-upward and extinguish us!) Steady, steady! Sit close,
Mortimer. Here’s the hail again. See how it flies, like a troop of wild
cats, at Mr Riderhood’s eyes!’
Indeed he had the full benefit of it, and it so mauled him, though he
bent his head low and tried to present nothing but the mangy cap to it,
that he dropped under the lee of a tier of shipping, and they lay there
until it was over. The squall had come up, like a spiteful messenger
before the morning; there followed in its wake a ragged tear of light
which ripped the dark clouds until they showed a great grey hole of day.
They were all shivering, and everything about them seemed to be
shivering; the river itself; craft, rigging, sails, such early smoke as
there yet was on the shore. Black with wet, and altered to the eye by
white patches of hail and sleet, the huddled buildings looked lower
than usual, as if they were cowering, and had shrunk with the cold. Very
little life was to be seen on either bank, windows and doors were shut,
and the staring black and white letters upon wharves and warehouses
‘looked,’ said Eugene to Mortimer, ‘like inscriptions over the graves of
dead businesses.’
As they glided slowly on, keeping under the shore and sneaking in and
out among the shipping by back-alleys of water, in a pilfering way
that seemed to be their boatman’s normal manner of progression, all
the objects among which they crept were so huge in contrast with their
wretched boat, as to threaten to crush it. Not a ship’s hull, with its
rusty iron links of cable run out of hawse-holes long discoloured with
the iron’s rusty tears, but seemed to be there with a fell intention.
Not a figure-head but had the menacing look of bursting forward to run
them down. Not a sluice gate, or a painted scale upon a post or wall,
showing the depth of water, but seemed to hint, like the dreadfully
facetious Wolf in bed in Grandmamma’s cottage, ‘That’s to drown YOU in,
my dears!’ Not a lumbering black barge, with its cracked and blistered
side impending over them, but seemed to suck at the river with a
thirst for sucking them under. And everything so vaunted the spoiling
influences of water--discoloured copper, rotten wood, honey-combed
stone, green dank deposit--that the after-consequences of being crushed,
sucked under, and drawn down, looked as ugly to the imagination as the
main event.
Some half-hour of this work, and Riderhood unshipped his sculls, stood
holding on to a barge, and hand over hand long-wise along the barge’s
side gradually worked his boat under her head into a secret little
nook of scummy water. And driven into that nook, and wedged as he had
described, was Gaffer’s boat; that boat with the stain still in it,
bearing some resemblance to a muffled human form.
‘Now tell me I’m a liar!’ said the honest man.
[‘With a morbid expectation,’ murmured Eugene to Lightwood, ‘that
somebody is always going to tell him the truth.’)
‘This is Hexam’s boat,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘I know her well.’
‘Look at the broken scull. Look at the t’other scull gone. NOW tell me I
am a liar!’ said the honest man.
Mr Inspector stepped into the boat. Eugene and Mortimer looked on.
‘And see now!’ added Riderhood, creeping aft, and showing a stretched
rope made fast there and towing overboard. ‘Didn’t I tell you he was in
luck again?’
‘Haul in,’ said Mr Inspector.
‘Easy to say haul in,’ answered Riderhood. ‘Not so easy done. His luck’s
got fouled under the keels of the barges. I tried to haul in last time,
but I couldn’t. See how taut the line is!’
‘I must have it up,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘I am going to take this boat
ashore, and his luck along with it. Try easy now.’
He tried easy now; but the luck resisted; wouldn’t come.
‘I mean to have it, and the boat too,’ said Mr Inspector, playing the
line.
But still the luck resisted; wouldn’t come.
‘Take care,’ said Riderhood. ‘You’ll disfigure. Or pull asunder
perhaps.’
‘I am not going to do either, not even to your Grandmother,’ said Mr
Inspector; ‘but I mean to have it. Come!’ he added, at once persuasively
and with authority to the hidden object in the water, as he played the
line again; ‘it’s no good this sort of game, you know. You MUST come up.
I mean to have you.’
There was so much virtue in this distinctly and decidedly meaning to
have it, that it yielded a little, even while the line was played.
‘I told you so,’ quoth Mr Inspector, pulling off his outer coat, and
leaning well over the stern with a will. ‘Come!’
It was an awful sort of fishing, but it no more disconcerted Mr
Inspector than if he had been fishing in a punt on a summer evening by
some soothing weir high up the peaceful river. After certain minutes,
and a few directions to the rest to ‘ease her a little for’ard,’ and
‘now ease her a trifle aft,’ and the like, he said composedly, ‘All
clear!’ and the line and the boat came free together.
Accepting Lightwood’s proffered hand to help him up, he then put on his
coat, and said to Riderhood, ‘Hand me over those spare sculls of yours,
and I’ll pull this in to the nearest stairs. Go ahead you, and keep out
in pretty open water, that I mayn’t get fouled again.’
His directions were obeyed, and they pulled ashore directly; two in one
boat, two in the other.
‘Now,’ said Mr Inspector, again to Riderhood, when they were all on the
slushy stones; ‘you have had more practice in this than I have had, and
ought to be a better workman at it. Undo the tow-rope, and we’ll help
you haul in.’
Riderhood got into the boat accordingly. It appeared as if he had
scarcely had a moment’s time to touch the rope or look over the stern,
when he came scrambling back, as pale as the morning, and gasped out:
‘By the Lord, he’s done me!’
‘What do you mean?’ they all demanded.
He pointed behind him at the boat, and gasped to that degree that he
dropped upon the stones to get his breath.
‘Gaffer’s done me. It’s Gaffer!’
They ran to the rope, leaving him gasping there. Soon, the form of the
bird of prey, dead some hours, lay stretched upon the shore, with a new
blast storming at it and clotting the wet hair with hail-stones.
Father, was that you calling me? Father! I thought I heard you call me
twice before! Words never to be answered, those, upon the earth-side
of the grave. The wind sweeps jeeringly over Father, whips him with the
frayed ends of his dress and his jagged hair, tries to turn him where he
lies stark on his back, and force his face towards the rising sun, that
he may be shamed the more. A lull, and the wind is secret and prying
with him; lifts and lets falls a rag; hides palpitating under another
rag; runs nimbly through his hair and beard. Then, in a rush, it cruelly
taunts him. Father, was that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless
and the dead? Was it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was
it you, thus baptized unto Death, with these flying impurities now flung
upon your face? Why not speak, Father? Soaking into this filthy ground
as you lie here, is your own shape. Did you never see such a shape
soaked into your boat? Speak, Father. Speak to us, the winds, the only
listeners left you!
‘Now see,’ said Mr Inspector, after mature deliberation: kneeling on one
knee beside the body, when they had stood looking down on the drowned
man, as he had many a time looked down on many another man: ‘the way of
it was this. Of course you gentlemen hardly failed to observe that he
was towing by the neck and arms.’
They had helped to release the rope, and of course not.
‘And you will have observed before, and you will observe now, that this
knot, which was drawn chock-tight round his neck by the strain of his
own arms, is a slip-knot’: holding it up for demonstration.
Plain enough.
‘Likewise you will have observed how he had run the other end of this
rope to his boat.’
It had the curves and indentations in it still, where it had been twined
and bound.
‘Now see,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘see how it works round upon him. It’s a
wild tempestuous evening when this man that was,’ stooping to wipe
some hailstones out of his hair with an end of his own drowned jacket,
‘--there! Now he’s more like himself; though he’s badly bruised,--when
this man that was, rows out upon the river on his usual lay. He carries
with him this coil of rope. He always carries with him this coil of
rope. It’s as well known to me as he was himself. Sometimes it lay in
the bottom of his boat. Sometimes he hung it loose round his neck.
He was a light-dresser was this man;--you see?’ lifting the loose
neckerchief over his breast, and taking the opportunity of wiping the
dead lips with it--‘and when it was wet, or freezing, or blew cold, he
would hang this coil of line round his neck. Last evening he does this.
Worse for him! He dodges about in his boat, does this man, till he gets
chilled. His hands,’ taking up one of them, which dropped like a leaden
weight, ‘get numbed. He sees some object that’s in his way of business,
floating. He makes ready to secure that object. He unwinds the end of
his coil that he wants to take some turns on in his boat, and he takes
turns enough on it to secure that it shan’t run out. He makes it too
secure, as it happens. He is a little longer about this than usual, his
hands being numbed. His object drifts up, before he is quite ready for
it. He catches at it, thinks he’ll make sure of the contents of the
pockets anyhow, in case he should be parted from it, bends right over
the stern, and in one of these heavy squalls, or in the cross-swell of
two steamers, or in not being quite prepared, or through all or most or
some, gets a lurch, overbalances and goes head-foremost overboard. Now
see! He can swim, can this man, and instantly he strikes out. But in
such striking-out he tangles his arms, pulls strong on the slip-knot,
and it runs home. The object he had expected to take in tow, floats by,
and his own boat tows him dead, to where we found him, all entangled
in his own line. You’ll ask me how I make out about the pockets? First,
I’ll tell you more; there was silver in ‘em. How do I make that out?
Simple and satisfactory. Because he’s got it here.’ The lecturer held up
the tightly clenched right hand.
‘What is to be done with the remains?’ asked Lightwood.
‘If you wouldn’t object to standing by him half a minute, sir,’ was
the reply, ‘I’ll find the nearest of our men to come and take charge of
him;--I still call it HIM, you see,’ said Mr Inspector, looking back as
he went, with a philosophical smile upon the force of habit.
‘Eugene,’ said Lightwood and was about to add ‘we may wait at a little
distance,’ when turning his head he found that no Eugene was there.
He raised his voice and called ‘Eugene! Holloa!’ But no Eugene replied.
It was broad daylight now, and he looked about. But no Eugene was in all
the view.
Mr Inspector speedily returning down the wooden stairs, with a police
constable, Lightwood asked him if he had seen his friend leave them? Mr
Inspector could not exactly say that he had seen him go, but had noticed
that he was restless.
‘Singular and entertaining combination, sir, your friend.’
‘I wish it had not been a part of his singular entertaining combination
to give me the slip under these dreary circumstances at this time of the
morning,’ said Lightwood. ‘Can we get anything hot to drink?’
We could, and we did. In a public-house kitchen with a large fire. We
got hot brandy and water, and it revived us wonderfully. Mr Inspector
having to Mr Riderhood announced his official intention of ‘keeping
his eye upon him’, stood him in a corner of the fireplace, like a wet
umbrella, and took no further outward and visible notice of that honest
man, except ordering a separate service of brandy and water for him:
apparently out of the public funds.
As Mortimer Lightwood sat before the blazing fire, conscious of drinking
brandy and water then and there in his sleep, and yet at one and the
same time drinking burnt sherry at the Six Jolly Fellowships, and
lying under the boat on the river shore, and sitting in the boat that
Riderhood rowed, and listening to the lecture recently concluded, and
having to dine in the Temple with an unknown man, who described himself
as M. H. F. Eugene Gaffer Harmon, and said he lived at Hailstorm,--as
he passed through these curious vicissitudes of fatigue and slumber,
arranged upon the scale of a dozen hours to the second, he became aware
of answering aloud a communication of pressing importance that had
never been made to him, and then turned it into a cough on beholding
Mr Inspector. For, he felt, with some natural indignation, that that
functionary might otherwise suspect him of having closed his eyes, or
wandered in his attention.
‘Here just before us, you see,’ said Mr Inspector.
‘I see,’ said Lightwood, with dignity.
‘And had hot brandy and water too, you see,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘and
then cut off at a great rate.’
‘Who?’ said Lightwood.
‘Your friend, you know.’
‘I know,’ he replied, again with dignity.
After hearing, in a mist through which Mr Inspector loomed vague and
large, that the officer took upon himself to prepare the dead man’s
daughter for what had befallen in the night, and generally that he took
everything upon himself, Mortimer Lightwood stumbled in his sleep to
a cab-stand, called a cab, and had entered the army and committed a
capital military offence and been tried by court martial and found
guilty and had arranged his affairs and been marched out to be shot,
before the door banged.
Hard work rowing the cab through the City to the Temple, for a cup of
from five to ten thousand pounds value, given by Mr Boffin; and hard
work holding forth at that immeasurable length to Eugene (when he had
been rescued with a rope from the running pavement) for making off in
that extraordinary manner! But he offered such ample apologies, and was
so very penitent, that when Lightwood got out of the cab, he gave
the driver a particular charge to be careful of him. Which the driver
(knowing there was no other fare left inside) stared at prodigiously.
In short, the night’s work had so exhausted and worn out this actor in
it, that he had become a mere somnambulist. He was too tired to rest in
his sleep, until he was even tired out of being too tired, and dropped
into oblivion. Late in the afternoon he awoke, and in some anxiety sent
round to Eugene’s lodging hard by, to inquire if he were up yet?
Oh yes, he was up. In fact, he had not been to bed. He had just come
home. And here he was, close following on the heels of the message.
‘Why what bloodshot, draggled, dishevelled spectacle is this!’ cried
Mortimer.
‘Are my feathers so very much rumpled?’ said Eugene, coolly going up to
the looking-glass. They ARE rather out of sorts. But consider. Such a
night for plumage!’
‘Such a night?’ repeated Mortimer. ‘What became of you in the morning?’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Eugene, sitting on his bed, ‘I felt that we
had bored one another so long, that an unbroken continuance of those
relations must inevitably terminate in our flying to opposite points of
the earth. I also felt that I had committed every crime in the Newgate
Calendar. So, for mingled considerations of friendship and felony, I
took a walk.’
Chapter 15
TWO NEW SERVANTS
Mr and Mrs Boffin sat after breakfast, in the Bower, a prey to
prosperity. Mr Boffin’s face denoted Care and Complication. Many
disordered papers were before him, and he looked at them about as
hopefully as an innocent civilian might look at a crowd of troops whom
he was required at five minutes’ notice to manoeuvre and review. He had
been engaged in some attempts to make notes of these papers; but being
troubled (as men of his stamp often are) with an exceedingly distrustful
and corrective thumb, that busy member had so often interposed to
smear his notes, that they were little more legible than the various
impressions of itself; which blurred his nose and forehead. It is
curious to consider, in such a case as Mr Boffin’s, what a cheap article
ink is, and how far it may be made to go. As a grain of musk will scent
a drawer for many years, and still lose nothing appreciable of its
original weight, so a halfpenny-worth of ink would blot Mr Boffin to the
roots of his hair and the calves of his legs, without inscribing a line
on the paper before him, or appearing to diminish in the inkstand.
Mr Boffin was in such severe literary difficulties that his eyes were
prominent and fixed, and his breathing was stertorous, when, to the
great relief of Mrs Boffin, who observed these symptoms with alarm, the
yard bell rang.
‘Who’s that, I wonder!’ said Mrs Boffin.
Mr Boffin drew a long breath, laid down his pen, looked at his notes
as doubting whether he had the pleasure of their acquaintance, and
appeared, on a second perusal of their countenances, to be confirmed
in his impression that he had not, when there was announced by the
hammer-headed young man:
‘Mr Rokesmith.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Oh indeed! Our and the Wilfers’ Mutual Friend, my
dear. Yes. Ask him to come in.’
Mr Rokesmith appeared.
‘Sit down, sir,’ said Mr Boffin, shaking hands with him. ‘Mrs Boffin
you’re already acquainted with. Well, sir, I am rather unprepared to see
you, for, to tell you the truth, I’ve been so busy with one thing and
another, that I’ve not had time to turn your offer over.’
‘That’s apology for both of us: for Mr Boffin, and for me as well,’ said
the smiling Mrs Boffin. ‘But Lor! we can talk it over now; can’t us?’
Mr Rokesmith bowed, thanked her, and said he hoped so.
‘Let me see then,’ resumed Mr Boffin, with his hand to his chin. ‘It was
Secretary that you named; wasn’t it?’
‘I said Secretary,’ assented Mr Rokesmith.
‘It rather puzzled me at the time,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and it rather
puzzled me and Mrs Boffin when we spoke of it afterwards, because (not
to make a mystery of our belief) we have always believed a Secretary to
be a piece of furniture, mostly of mahogany, lined with green baize or
leather, with a lot of little drawers in it. Now, you won’t think I take
a liberty when I mention that you certainly ain’t THAT.’
Certainly not, said Mr Rokesmith. But he had used the word in the sense
of Steward.
‘Why, as to Steward, you see,’ returned Mr Boffin, with his hand still
to his chin, ‘the odds are that Mrs Boffin and me may never go upon the
water. Being both bad sailors, we should want a Steward if we did; but
there’s generally one provided.’
Mr Rokesmith again explained; defining the duties he sought to
undertake, as those of general superintendent, or manager, or
overlooker, or man of business.
‘Now, for instance--come!’ said Mr Boffin, in his pouncing way. ‘If you
entered my employment, what would you do?’
‘I would keep exact accounts of all the expenditure you sanctioned,
Mr Boffin. I would write your letters, under your direction. I would
transact your business with people in your pay or employment. I would,’
with a glance and a half-smile at the table, ‘arrange your papers--’
Mr Boffin rubbed his inky ear, and looked at his wife.
‘--And so arrange them as to have them always in order for immediate
reference, with a note of the contents of each outside it.’
‘I tell you what,’ said Mr Boffin, slowly crumpling his own blotted note
in his hand; ‘if you’ll turn to at these present papers, and see what
you can make of ‘em, I shall know better what I can make of you.’
No sooner said than done. Relinquishing his hat and gloves, Mr Rokesmith
sat down quietly at the table, arranged the open papers into an orderly
heap, cast his eyes over each in succession, folded it, docketed it on
the outside, laid it in a second heap, and, when that second heap was
complete and the first gone, took from his pocket a piece of string and
tied it together with a remarkably dexterous hand at a running curve and
a loop.
‘Good!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Very good! Now let us hear what they’re all
about; will you be so good?’
John Rokesmith read his abstracts aloud. They were all about the new
house. Decorator’s estimate, so much. Furniture estimate, so much.
Estimate for furniture of offices, so much. Coach-maker’s estimate, so
much. Horse-dealer’s estimate, so much. Harness-maker’s estimate, so
much. Goldsmith’s estimate, so much. Total, so very much. Then came
correspondence. Acceptance of Mr Boffin’s offer of such a date, and to
such an effect. Rejection of Mr Boffin’s proposal of such a date and to
such an effect. Concerning Mr Boffin’s scheme of such another date to
such another effect. All compact and methodical.
‘Apple-pie order!’ said Mr Boffin, after checking off each inscription
with his hand, like a man beating time. ‘And whatever you do with your
ink, I can’t think, for you’re as clean as a whistle after it. Now, as
to a letter. Let’s,’ said Mr Boffin, rubbing his hands in his pleasantly
childish admiration, ‘let’s try a letter next.’
‘To whom shall it be addressed, Mr Boffin?’
‘Anyone. Yourself.’
Mr Rokesmith quickly wrote, and then read aloud:
‘“Mr Boffin presents his compliments to Mr John Rokesmith, and begs
to say that he has decided on giving Mr John Rokesmith a trial in the
capacity he desires to fill. Mr Boffin takes Mr John Rokesmith at his
word, in postponing to some indefinite period, the consideration of
salary. It is quite understood that Mr Boffin is in no way committed
on that point. Mr Boffin has merely to add, that he relies on Mr John
Rokesmith’s assurance that he will be faithful and serviceable. Mr John
Rokesmith will please enter on his duties immediately.”’
‘Well! Now, Noddy!’ cried Mrs Boffin, clapping her hands, ‘That IS a
good one!’
Mr Boffin was no less delighted; indeed, in his own bosom, he regarded
both the composition itself and the device that had given birth to it,
as a very remarkable monument of human ingenuity.
‘And I tell you, my deary,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘that if you don’t close
with Mr Rokesmith now at once, and if you ever go a muddling yourself
again with things never meant nor made for you, you’ll have an
apoplexy--besides iron-moulding your linen--and you’ll break my heart.’
Mr Boffin embraced his spouse for these words of wisdom, and then,
congratulating John Rokesmith on the brilliancy of his achievements,
gave him his hand in pledge of their new relations. So did Mrs Boffin.
‘Now,’ said Mr Boffin, who, in his frankness, felt that it did not
become him to have a gentleman in his employment five minutes, without
reposing some confidence in him, ‘you must be let a little more into our
affairs, Rokesmith. I mentioned to you, when I made your acquaintance,
or I might better say when you made mine, that Mrs Boffin’s inclinations
was setting in the way of Fashion, but that I didn’t know how
fashionable we might or might not grow. Well! Mrs Boffin has carried the
day, and we’re going in neck and crop for Fashion.’
‘I rather inferred that, sir,’ replied John Rokesmith, ‘from the scale
on which your new establishment is to be maintained.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘it’s to be a Spanker. The fact is, my
literary man named to me that a house with which he is, as I may say,
connected--in which he has an interest--’
‘As property?’ inquired John Rokesmith.
‘Why no,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘not exactly that; a sort of a family tie.’
‘Association?’ the Secretary suggested.
‘Ah!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Perhaps. Anyhow, he named to me that the house
had a board up, “This Eminently Aristocratic Mansion to be let or sold.”
Me and Mrs Boffin went to look at it, and finding it beyond a doubt
Eminently Aristocratic (though a trifle high and dull, which after all
may be part of the same thing) took it. My literary man was so friendly
as to drop into a charming piece of poetry on that occasion, in which he
complimented Mrs Boffin on coming into possession of--how did it go, my
dear?’
Mrs Boffin replied:
‘“The gay, the gay and festive scene,
The halls, the halls of dazzling light.”’
‘That’s it! And it was made neater by there really being two halls
in the house, a front ‘un and a back ‘un, besides the servants’.
He likewise dropped into a very pretty piece of poetry to be sure,
respecting the extent to which he would be willing to put himself out
of the way to bring Mrs Boffin round, in case she should ever get low
in her spirits in the house. Mrs Boffin has a wonderful memory. Will you
repeat it, my dear?’
Mrs Boffin complied, by reciting the verses in which this obliging offer
had been made, exactly as she had received them.
‘“I’ll tell thee how the maiden wept, Mrs Boffin,
When her true love was slain ma’am,
And how her broken spirit slept, Mrs Boffin,
And never woke again ma’am.
I’ll tell thee (if agreeable to Mr Boffin) how the steed drew
nigh,
And left his lord afar;
And if my tale (which I hope Mr Boffin might excuse) should
make you sigh,
I’ll strike the light guitar.”’
‘Correct to the letter!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘And I consider that the poetry
brings us both in, in a beautiful manner.’
The effect of the poem on the Secretary being evidently to astonish
him, Mr Boffin was confirmed in his high opinion of it, and was greatly
pleased.
‘Now, you see, Rokesmith,’ he went on, ‘a literary man--WITH a wooden
leg--is liable to jealousy. I shall therefore cast about for comfortable
ways and means of not calling up Wegg’s jealousy, but of keeping you in
your department, and keeping him in his.’
‘Lor!’ cried Mrs Boffin. ‘What I say is, the world’s wide enough for all
of us!’
‘So it is, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘when not literary. But when so,
not so. And I am bound to bear in mind that I took Wegg on, at a time
when I had no thought of being fashionable or of leaving the Bower. To
let him feel himself anyways slighted now, would be to be guilty of
a meanness, and to act like having one’s head turned by the halls of
dazzling light. Which Lord forbid! Rokesmith, what shall we say about
your living in the house?’
‘In this house?’
‘No, no. I have got other plans for this house. In the new house?’
‘That will be as you please, Mr Boffin. I hold myself quite at your
disposal. You know where I live at present.’
‘Well!’ said Mr Boffin, after considering the point; ‘suppose you keep
as you are for the present, and we’ll decide by-and-by. You’ll begin to
take charge at once, of all that’s going on in the new house, will you?’
‘Most willingly. I will begin this very day. Will you give me the
address?’
Mr Boffin repeated it, and the Secretary wrote it down in his
pocket-book. Mrs Boffin took the opportunity of his being so engaged,
to get a better observation of his face than she had yet taken. It
impressed her in his favour, for she nodded aside to Mr Boffin, ‘I like
him.’
‘I will see directly that everything is in train, Mr Boffin.’
‘Thank’ee. Being here, would you care at all to look round the Bower?’
‘I should greatly like it. I have heard so much of its story.’
‘Come!’ said Mr Boffin. And he and Mrs Boffin led the way.
A gloomy house the Bower, with sordid signs on it of having been,
through its long existence as Harmony Jail, in miserly holding. Bare of
paint, bare of paper on the walls, bare of furniture, bare of experience
of human life. Whatever is built by man for man’s occupation, must,
like natural creations, fulfil the intention of its existence, or soon
perish. This old house had wasted--more from desuetude than it would
have wasted from use, twenty years for one.
A certain leanness falls upon houses not sufficiently imbued with life
(as if they were nourished upon it), which was very noticeable here.
The staircase, balustrades, and rails, had a spare look--an air of being
denuded to the bone--which the panels of the walls and the jambs of the
doors and windows also bore. The scanty moveables partook of it; save
for the cleanliness of the place, the dust--into which they were all
resolving would have lain thick on the floors; and those, both in colour
and in grain, were worn like old faces that had kept much alone.
The bedroom where the clutching old man had lost his grip on life, was
left as he had left it. There was the old grisly four-post bedstead,
without hangings, and with a jail-like upper rim of iron and spikes; and
there was the old patch-work counterpane. There was the tight-clenched
old bureau, receding atop like a bad and secret forehead; there was the
cumbersome old table with twisted legs, at the bed-side; and there
was the box upon it, in which the will had lain. A few old chairs with
patch-work covers, under which the more precious stuff to be preserved
had slowly lost its quality of colour without imparting pleasure to any
eye, stood against the wall. A hard family likeness was on all these
things.
‘The room was kept like this, Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘against the
son’s return. In short, everything in the house was kept exactly as it
came to us, for him to see and approve. Even now, nothing is changed
but our own room below-stairs that you have just left. When the son came
home for the last time in his life, and for the last time in his life
saw his father, it was most likely in this room that they met.’
As the Secretary looked all round it, his eyes rested on a side door in
a corner.
‘Another staircase,’ said Mr Boffin, unlocking the door, ‘leading down
into the yard. We’ll go down this way, as you may like to see the yard,
and it’s all in the road. When the son was a little child, it was up
and down these stairs that he mostly came and went to his father. He was
very timid of his father. I’ve seen him sit on these stairs, in his
shy way, poor child, many a time. Mr and Mrs Boffin have comforted him,
sitting with his little book on these stairs, often.’
‘Ah! And his poor sister too,’ said Mrs Boffin. ‘And here’s the sunny
place on the white wall where they one day measured one another. Their
own little hands wrote up their names here, only with a pencil; but the
names are here still, and the poor dears gone for ever.’
‘We must take care of the names, old lady,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘We must
take care of the names. They shan’t be rubbed out in our time, nor yet,
if we can help it, in the time after us. Poor little children!’
‘Ah, poor little children!’ said Mrs Boffin.
They had opened the door at the bottom of the staircase giving on the
yard, and they stood in the sunlight, looking at the scrawl of the two
unsteady childish hands two or three steps up the staircase. There was
something in this simple memento of a blighted childhood, and in the
tenderness of Mrs Boffin, that touched the Secretary.
Mr Boffin then showed his new man of business the Mounds, and his own
particular Mound which had been left him as his legacy under the will
before he acquired the whole estate.
‘It would have been enough for us,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘in case it had
pleased God to spare the last of those two young lives and sorrowful
deaths. We didn’t want the rest.’
At the treasures of the yard, and at the outside of the house, and at
the detached building which Mr Boffin pointed out as the residence
of himself and his wife during the many years of their service, the
Secretary looked with interest. It was not until Mr Boffin had shown
him every wonder of the Bower twice over, that he remembered his having
duties to discharge elsewhere.
‘You have no instructions to give me, Mr Boffin, in reference to this
place?’
‘Not any, Rokesmith. No.’
‘Might I ask, without seeming impertinent, whether you have any
intention of selling it?’
‘Certainly not. In remembrance of our old master, our old master’s
children, and our old service, me and Mrs Boffin mean to keep it up as
it stands.’
The Secretary’s eyes glanced with so much meaning in them at the Mounds,
that Mr Boffin said, as if in answer to a remark:
‘Ay, ay, that’s another thing. I may sell THEM, though I should be sorry
to see the neighbourhood deprived of ‘em too. It’ll look but a poor dead
flat without the Mounds. Still I don’t say that I’m going to keep ‘em
always there, for the sake of the beauty of the landscape. There’s no
hurry about it; that’s all I say at present. I ain’t a scholar in much,
Rokesmith, but I’m a pretty fair scholar in dust. I can price the Mounds
to a fraction, and I know how they can be best disposed of; and likewise
that they take no harm by standing where they do. You’ll look in
to-morrow, will you be so kind?’
‘Every day. And the sooner I can get you into your new house, complete,
the better you will be pleased, sir?’
‘Well, it ain’t that I’m in a mortal hurry,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘only when
you DO pay people for looking alive, it’s as well to know that they ARE
looking alive. Ain’t that your opinion?’
‘Quite!’ replied the Secretary; and so withdrew.
‘Now,’ said Mr Boffin to himself; subsiding into his regular series of
turns in the yard, ‘if I can make it comfortable with Wegg, my affairs
will be going smooth.’
The man of low cunning had, of course, acquired a mastery over the man
of high simplicity. The mean man had, of course, got the better of the
generous man. How long such conquests last, is another matter; that they
are achieved, is every-day experience, not even to be flourished away by
Podsnappery itself. The undesigning Boffin had become so far immeshed
by the wily Wegg that his mind misgave him he was a very designing man
indeed in purposing to do more for Wegg. It seemed to him (so skilful
was Wegg) that he was plotting darkly, when he was contriving to do the
very thing that Wegg was plotting to get him to do. And thus, while he
was mentally turning the kindest of kind faces on Wegg this morning, he
was not absolutely sure but that he might somehow deserve the charge of
turning his back on him.
For these reasons Mr Boffin passed but anxious hours until evening came,
and with it Mr Wegg, stumping leisurely to the Roman Empire. At about
this period Mr Boffin had become profoundly interested in the fortunes
of a great military leader known to him as Bully Sawyers, but perhaps
better known to fame and easier of identification by the classical
student, under the less Britannic name of Belisarius. Even this
general’s career paled in interest for Mr Boffin before the clearing of
his conscience with Wegg; and hence, when that literary gentleman had
according to custom eaten and drunk until he was all a-glow, and when
he took up his book with the usual chirping introduction, ‘And now, Mr
Boffin, sir, we’ll decline and we’ll fall!’ Mr Boffin stopped him.
‘You remember, Wegg, when I first told you that I wanted to make a sort
of offer to you?’
‘Let me get on my considering cap, sir,’ replied that gentleman, turning
the open book face downward. ‘When you first told me that you wanted
to make a sort of offer to me? Now let me think.’ (as if there were the
least necessity) ‘Yes, to be sure I do, Mr Boffin. It was at my corner.
To be sure it was! You had first asked me whether I liked your name,
and Candour had compelled a reply in the negative case. I little thought
then, sir, how familiar that name would come to be!’
‘I hope it will be more familiar still, Wegg.’
‘Do you, Mr Boffin? Much obliged to you, I’m sure. Is it your pleasure,
sir, that we decline and we fall?’ with a feint of taking up the book.
‘Not just yet awhile, Wegg. In fact, I have got another offer to make
you.’
Mr Wegg (who had had nothing else in his mind for several nights) took
off his spectacles with an air of bland surprise.
‘And I hope you’ll like it, Wegg.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ returned that reticent individual. ‘I hope it may
prove so. On all accounts, I am sure.’ (This, as a philanthropic
aspiration.)
‘What do you think,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘of not keeping a stall, Wegg?’
‘I think, sir,’ replied Wegg, ‘that I should like to be shown the
gentleman prepared to make it worth my while!’
‘Here he is,’ said Mr Boffin.
Mr Wegg was going to say, My Benefactor, and had said My Bene, when a
grandiloquent change came over him.
‘No, Mr Boffin, not you sir. Anybody but you. Do not fear, Mr Boffin,
that I shall contaminate the premises which your gold has bought, with
MY lowly pursuits. I am aware, sir, that it would not become me to carry
on my little traffic under the windows of your mansion. I have already
thought of that, and taken my measures. No need to be bought out, sir.
Would Stepney Fields be considered intrusive? If not remote enough, I
can go remoter. In the words of the poet’s song, which I do not quite
remember:
Thrown on the wide world, doom’d to wander and roam,
Bereft of my parents, bereft of a home,
A stranger to something and what’s his name joy,
Behold little Edmund the poor Peasant boy.
--And equally,’ said Mr Wegg, repairing the want of direct application
in the last line, ‘behold myself on a similar footing!’
‘Now, Wegg, Wegg, Wegg,’ remonstrated the excellent Boffin. ‘You are too
sensitive.’
‘I know I am, sir,’ returned Wegg, with obstinate magnanimity. ‘I am
acquainted with my faults. I always was, from a child, too sensitive.’
‘But listen,’ pursued the Golden Dustman; ‘hear me out, Wegg. You have
taken it into your head that I mean to pension you off.’
‘True, sir,’ returned Wegg, still with an obstinate magnanimity. ‘I am
acquainted with my faults. Far be it from me to deny them. I HAVE taken
it into my head.’
‘But I DON’T mean it.’
The assurance seemed hardly as comforting to Mr Wegg, as Mr Boffin
intended it to be. Indeed, an appreciable elongation of his visage might
have been observed as he replied:
‘Don’t you, indeed, sir?’
‘No,’ pursued Mr Boffin; ‘because that would express, as I understand
it, that you were not going to do anything to deserve your money. But
you are; you are.’
‘That, sir,’ replied Mr Wegg, cheering up bravely, ‘is quite another
pair of shoes. Now, my independence as a man is again elevated. Now, I
no longer
Weep for the hour,
When to Boffinses bower,
The Lord of the valley with offers came;
Neither does the moon hide her light
From the heavens to-night,
And weep behind her clouds o’er any individual in the present
Company’s shame.
--Please to proceed, Mr Boffin.’
‘Thank’ee, Wegg, both for your confidence in me and for your frequent
dropping into poetry; both of which is friendly. Well, then; my idea is,
that you should give up your stall, and that I should put you into the
Bower here, to keep it for us. It’s a pleasant spot; and a man with
coals and candles and a pound a week might be in clover here.’
‘Hem! Would that man, sir--we will say that man, for the purposes of
argueyment;’ Mr Wegg made a smiling demonstration of great perspicuity
here; ‘would that man, sir, be expected to throw any other capacity in,
or would any other capacity be considered extra? Now let us (for the
purposes of argueyment) suppose that man to be engaged as a reader: say
(for the purposes of argueyment) in the evening. Would that man’s pay as
a reader in the evening, be added to the other amount, which, adopting
your language, we will call clover; or would it merge into that amount,
or clover?’
‘Well,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘I suppose it would be added.’
‘I suppose it would, sir. You are right, sir. Exactly my own views,
Mr Boffin.’ Here Wegg rose, and balancing himself on his wooden leg,
fluttered over his prey with extended hand. ‘Mr Boffin, consider it
done. Say no more, sir, not a word more. My stall and I are for ever
parted. The collection of ballads will in future be reserved for private
study, with the object of making poetry tributary’--Wegg was so proud
of having found this word, that he said it again, with a capital
letter--‘Tributary, to friendship. Mr Boffin, don’t allow yourself to
be made uncomfortable by the pang it gives me to part from my stock and
stall. Similar emotion was undergone by my own father when promoted
for his merits from his occupation as a waterman to a situation under
Government. His Christian name was Thomas. His words at the time (I was
then an infant, but so deep was their impression on me, that I committed
them to memory) were:
Then farewell my trim-built wherry,
Oars and coat and badge farewell!
Never more at Chelsea Ferry,
Shall your Thomas take a spell!
--My father got over it, Mr Boffin, and so shall I.’
While delivering these valedictory observations, Wegg continually
disappointed Mr Boffin of his hand by flourishing it in the air. He now
darted it at his patron, who took it, and felt his mind relieved of a
great weight: observing that as they had arranged their joint affairs
so satisfactorily, he would now be glad to look into those of Bully
Sawyers. Which, indeed, had been left over-night in a very unpromising
posture, and for whose impending expedition against the Persians the
weather had been by no means favourable all day.
Mr Wegg resumed his spectacles therefore. But Sawyers was not to be of
the party that night; for, before Wegg had found his place, Mrs Boffin’s
tread was heard upon the stairs, so unusually heavy and hurried, that Mr
Boffin would have started up at the sound, anticipating some occurrence
much out of the common course, even though she had not also called to
him in an agitated tone.
Mr Boffin hurried out, and found her on the dark staircase, panting,
with a lighted candle in her hand.
‘What’s the matter, my dear?’
‘I don’t know; I don’t know; but I wish you’d come up-stairs.’
Much surprised, Mr Boffin went up stairs and accompanied Mrs Boffin into
their own room: a second large room on the same floor as the room in
which the late proprietor had died. Mr Boffin looked all round him,
and saw nothing more unusual than various articles of folded linen on a
large chest, which Mrs Boffin had been sorting.
‘What is it, my dear? Why, you’re frightened! YOU frightened?’
‘I am not one of that sort certainly,’ said Mrs Boffin, as she sat down
in a chair to recover herself, and took her husband’s arm; ‘but it’s
very strange!’
‘What is, my dear?’
‘Noddy, the faces of the old man and the two children are all over the
house to-night.’
‘My dear?’ exclaimed Mr Boffin. But not without a certain uncomfortable
sensation gliding down his back.
‘I know it must sound foolish, and yet it is so.’
‘Where did you think you saw them?’
‘I don’t know that I think I saw them anywhere. I felt them.’
‘Touched them?’
‘No. Felt them in the air. I was sorting those things on the chest, and
not thinking of the old man or the children, but singing to myself, when
all in a moment I felt there was a face growing out of the dark.’
‘What face?’ asked her husband, looking about him.
‘For a moment it was the old man’s, and then it got younger. For a
moment it was both the children’s, and then it got older. For a moment
it was a strange face, and then it was all the faces.’
‘And then it was gone?’
‘Yes; and then it was gone.’
‘Where were you then, old lady?’
‘Here, at the chest. Well; I got the better of it, and went on sorting,
and went on singing to myself. “Lor!” I says, “I’ll think of something
else--something comfortable--and put it out of my head.” So I thought
of the new house and Miss Bella Wilfer, and was thinking at a great rate
with that sheet there in my hand, when all of a sudden, the faces seemed
to be hidden in among the folds of it and I let it drop.’
As it still lay on the floor where it had fallen, Mr Boffin picked it up
and laid it on the chest.
‘And then you ran down stairs?’
‘No. I thought I’d try another room, and shake it off. I says to myself,
“I’ll go and walk slowly up and down the old man’s room three times,
from end to end, and then I shall have conquered it.” I went in with the
candle in my hand; but the moment I came near the bed, the air got thick
with them.’
‘With the faces?’
‘Yes, and I even felt that they were in the dark behind the side-door,
and on the little staircase, floating away into the yard. Then, I called
you.’
Mr Boffin, lost in amazement, looked at Mrs Boffin. Mrs Boffin, lost in
her own fluttered inability to make this out, looked at Mr Boffin.
‘I think, my dear,’ said the Golden Dustman, ‘I’ll at once get rid of
Wegg for the night, because he’s coming to inhabit the Bower, and it
might be put into his head or somebody else’s, if he heard this and it
got about that the house is haunted. Whereas we know better. Don’t we?’
‘I never had the feeling in the house before,’ said Mrs Boffin; ‘and I
have been about it alone at all hours of the night. I have been in the
house when Death was in it, and I have been in the house when Murder was
a new part of its adventures, and I never had a fright in it yet.’
‘And won’t again, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Depend upon it, it comes of
thinking and dwelling on that dark spot.’
‘Yes; but why didn’t it come before?’ asked Mrs Boffin.
This draft on Mr Boffin’s philosophy could only be met by that gentleman
with the remark that everything that is at all, must begin at some time.
Then, tucking his wife’s arm under his own, that she might not be left
by herself to be troubled again, he descended to release Wegg. Who,
being something drowsy after his plentiful repast, and constitutionally
of a shirking temperament, was well enough pleased to stump away,
without doing what he had come to do, and was paid for doing.
Mr Boffin then put on his hat, and Mrs Boffin her shawl; and the pair,
further provided with a bunch of keys and a lighted lantern, went
all over the dismal house--dismal everywhere, but in their own two
rooms--from cellar to cock-loft. Not resting satisfied with giving that
much chace to Mrs Boffin’s fancies, they pursued them into the yard and
outbuildings, and under the Mounds. And setting the lantern, when all
was done, at the foot of one of the Mounds, they comfortably trotted to
and fro for an evening walk, to the end that the murky cobwebs in Mrs
Boffin’s brain might be blown away.
‘There, my dear!’ said Mr Boffin when they came in to supper. ‘That was
the treatment, you see. Completely worked round, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, deary,’ said Mrs Boffin, laying aside her shawl. ‘I’m not nervous
any more. I’m not a bit troubled now. I’d go anywhere about the house
the same as ever. But--’
‘Eh!’ said Mr Boffin.
‘But I’ve only to shut my eyes.’
‘And what then?’
‘Why then,’ said Mrs Boffin, speaking with her eyes closed, and her
left hand thoughtfully touching her brow, ‘then, there they are! The old
man’s face, and it gets younger. The two children’s faces, and they get
older. A face that I don’t know. And then all the faces!’
Opening her eyes again, and seeing her husband’s face across the table,
she leaned forward to give it a pat on the cheek, and sat down to
supper, declaring it to be the best face in the world.
Chapter 16
MINDERS AND RE-MINDERS
The Secretary lost no time in getting to work, and his vigilance
and method soon set their mark on the Golden Dustman’s affairs. His
earnestness in determining to understand the length and breadth and
depth of every piece of work submitted to him by his employer, was as
special as his despatch in transacting it. He accepted no information
or explanation at second hand, but made himself the master of everything
confided to him.
One part of the Secretary’s conduct, underlying all the rest, might have
been mistrusted by a man with a better knowledge of men than the
Golden Dustman had. The Secretary was as far from being inquisitive
or intrusive as Secretary could be, but nothing less than a complete
understanding of the whole of the affairs would content him. It soon
became apparent (from the knowledge with which he set out) that he must
have been to the office where the Harmon will was registered, and must
have read the will. He anticipated Mr Boffin’s consideration whether he
should be advised with on this or that topic, by showing that he
already knew of it and understood it. He did this with no attempt at
concealment, seeming to be satisfied that it was part of his duty to
have prepared himself at all attainable points for its utmost discharge.
This might--let it be repeated--have awakened some little vague mistrust
in a man more worldly-wise than the Golden Dustman. On the other hand,
the Secretary was discerning, discreet, and silent, though as zealous as
if the affairs had been his own. He showed no love of patronage or the
command of money, but distinctly preferred resigning both to Mr
Boffin. If, in his limited sphere, he sought power, it was the power
of knowledge; the power derivable from a perfect comprehension of his
business.
As on the Secretary’s face there was a nameless cloud, so on his
manner there was a shadow equally indefinable. It was not that he was
embarrassed, as on that first night with the Wilfer family; he was
habitually unembarrassed now, and yet the something remained. It was not
that his manner was bad, as on that occasion; it was now very good, as
being modest, gracious, and ready. Yet the something never left it. It
has been written of men who have undergone a cruel captivity, or who
have passed through a terrible strait, or who in self-preservation have
killed a defenceless fellow-creature, that the record thereof has never
faded from their countenances until they died. Was there any such record
here?
He established a temporary office for himself in the new house, and all
went well under his hand, with one singular exception. He manifestly
objected to communicate with Mr Boffin’s solicitor. Two or three times,
when there was some slight occasion for his doing so, he transferred
the task to Mr Boffin; and his evasion of it soon became so curiously
apparent, that Mr Boffin spoke to him on the subject of his reluctance.
‘It is so,’ the Secretary admitted. ‘I would rather not.’
Had he any personal objection to Mr Lightwood?
‘I don’t know him.’
Had he suffered from law-suits?
‘Not more than other men,’ was his short answer.
Was he prejudiced against the race of lawyers?
‘No. But while I am in your employment, sir, I would rather be excused
from going between the lawyer and the client. Of course if you press it,
Mr Boffin, I am ready to comply. But I should take it as a great favour
if you would not press it without urgent occasion.’
Now, it could not be said that there WAS urgent occasion, for Lightwood
retained no other affairs in his hands than such as still lingered and
languished about the undiscovered criminal, and such as arose out of the
purchase of the house. Many other matters that might have travelled to
him, now stopped short at the Secretary, under whose administration they
were far more expeditiously and satisfactorily disposed of than they
would have been if they had got into Young Blight’s domain. This the
Golden Dustman quite understood. Even the matter immediately in hand
was of very little moment as requiring personal appearance on the
Secretary’s part, for it amounted to no more than this:--The death of
Hexam rendering the sweat of the honest man’s brow unprofitable, the
honest man had shufflingly declined to moisten his brow for nothing,
with that severe exertion which is known in legal circles as swearing
your way through a stone wall. Consequently, that new light had gone
sputtering out. But, the airing of the old facts had led some one
concerned to suggest that it would be well before they were reconsigned
to their gloomy shelf--now probably for ever--to induce or compel that
Mr Julius Handford to reappear and be questioned. And all traces of Mr
Julius Handford being lost, Lightwood now referred to his client for
authority to seek him through public advertisement.
‘Does your objection go to writing to Lightwood, Rokesmith?’
‘Not in the least, sir.’
‘Then perhaps you’ll write him a line, and say he is free to do what he
likes. I don’t think it promises.’
‘I don’t think it promises,’ said the Secretary.
‘Still, he may do what he likes.’
‘I will write immediately. Let me thank you for so considerately
yielding to my disinclination. It may seem less unreasonable, if I avow
to you that although I don’t know Mr Lightwood, I have a disagreeable
association connected with him. It is not his fault; he is not at all to
blame for it, and does not even know my name.’
Mr Boffin dismissed the matter with a nod or two. The letter was
written, and next day Mr Julius Handford was advertised for. He was
requested to place himself in communication with Mr Mortimer Lightwood,
as a possible means of furthering the ends of justice, and a reward was
offered to any one acquainted with his whereabout who would communicate
the same to the said Mr Mortimer Lightwood at his office in the Temple.
Every day for six weeks this advertisement appeared at the head of all
the newspapers, and every day for six weeks the Secretary, when he
saw it, said to himself; in the tone in which he had said to his
employer,--‘I don’t think it promises!’
Among his first occupations the pursuit of that orphan wanted by
Mrs Boffin held a conspicuous place. From the earliest moment of his
engagement he showed a particular desire to please her, and, knowing her
to have this object at heart, he followed it up with unwearying alacrity
and interest.
Mr and Mrs Milvey had found their search a difficult one. Either an
eligible orphan was of the wrong sex (which almost always happened)
or was too old, or too young, or too sickly, or too dirty, or too much
accustomed to the streets, or too likely to run away; or, it was found
impossible to complete the philanthropic transaction without buying the
orphan. For, the instant it became known that anybody wanted the orphan,
up started some affectionate relative of the orphan who put a price upon
the orphan’s head. The suddenness of an orphan’s rise in the market was
not to be paralleled by the maddest records of the Stock Exchange. He
would be at five thousand per cent discount out at nurse making a mud
pie at nine in the morning, and (being inquired for) would go up to
five thousand per cent premium before noon. The market was ‘rigged’ in
various artful ways. Counterfeit stock got into circulation. Parents
boldly represented themselves as dead, and brought their orphans with
them. Genuine orphan-stock was surreptitiously withdrawn from the
market. It being announced, by emissaries posted for the purpose, that
Mr and Mrs Milvey were coming down the court, orphan scrip would be
instantly concealed, and production refused, save on a condition usually
stated by the brokers as ‘a gallon of beer’. Likewise, fluctuations of
a wild and South-Sea nature were occasioned, by orphan-holders keeping
back, and then rushing into the market a dozen together. But, the
uniform principle at the root of all these various operations was
bargain and sale; and that principle could not be recognized by Mr and
Mrs Milvey.
At length, tidings were received by the Reverend Frank of a charming
orphan to be found at Brentford. One of the deceased parents (late his
parishioners) had a poor widowed grandmother in that agreeable town, and
she, Mrs Betty Higden, had carried off the orphan with maternal care,
but could not afford to keep him.
The Secretary proposed to Mrs Boffin, either to go down himself and
take a preliminary survey of this orphan, or to drive her down, that
she might at once form her own opinion. Mrs Boffin preferring the latter
course, they set off one morning in a hired phaeton, conveying the
hammer-headed young man behind them.
The abode of Mrs Betty Higden was not easy to find, lying in such
complicated back settlements of muddy Brentford that they left their
equipage at the sign of the Three Magpies, and went in search of it on
foot. After many inquiries and defeats, there was pointed out to them
in a lane, a very small cottage residence, with a board across the open
doorway, hooked on to which board by the armpits was a young gentleman
of tender years, angling for mud with a headless wooden horse and line.
In this young sportsman, distinguished by a crisply curling auburn head
and a bluff countenance, the Secretary descried the orphan.
It unfortunately happened as they quickened their pace, that the orphan,
lost to considerations of personal safety in the ardour of the moment,
overbalanced himself and toppled into the street. Being an orphan of a
chubby conformation, he then took to rolling, and had rolled into the
gutter before they could come up. From the gutter he was rescued by John
Rokesmith, and thus the first meeting with Mrs Higden was inaugurated by
the awkward circumstance of their being in possession--one would say at
first sight unlawful possession--of the orphan, upside down and purple
in the countenance. The board across the doorway too, acting as a trap
equally for the feet of Mrs Higden coming out, and the feet of Mrs
Boffin and John Rokesmith going in, greatly increased the difficulty of
the situation: to which the cries of the orphan imparted a lugubrious
and inhuman character.
At first, it was impossible to explain, on account of the orphan’s
‘holding his breath’: a most terrific proceeding, super-inducing in the
orphan lead-colour rigidity and a deadly silence, compared with which
his cries were music yielding the height of enjoyment. But as he
gradually recovered, Mrs Boffin gradually introduced herself; and
smiling peace was gradually wooed back to Mrs Betty Higden’s home.
It was then perceived to be a small home with a large mangle in it, at
the handle of which machine stood a very long boy, with a very little
head, and an open mouth of disproportionate capacity that seemed to
assist his eyes in staring at the visitors. In a corner below the
mangle, on a couple of stools, sat two very little children: a boy and a
girl; and when the very long boy, in an interval of staring, took a turn
at the mangle, it was alarming to see how it lunged itself at those two
innocents, like a catapult designed for their destruction, harmlessly
retiring when within an inch of their heads. The room was clean and
neat. It had a brick floor, and a window of diamond panes, and a flounce
hanging below the chimney-piece, and strings nailed from bottom to top
outside the window on which scarlet-beans were to grow in the coming
season if the Fates were propitious. However propitious they might have
been in the seasons that were gone, to Betty Higden in the matter of
beans, they had not been very favourable in the matter of coins; for it
was easy to see that she was poor.
She was one of those old women, was Mrs Betty Higden, who by dint of
an indomitable purpose and a strong constitution fight out many years,
though each year has come with its new knock-down blows fresh to the
fight against her, wearied by it; an active old woman, with a bright
dark eye and a resolute face, yet quite a tender creature too; not a
logically-reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in
Heaven as high as heads.
‘Yes sure!’ said she, when the business was opened, ‘Mrs Milvey had the
kindness to write to me, ma’am, and I got Sloppy to read it. It was a
pretty letter. But she’s an affable lady.’
The visitors glanced at the long boy, who seemed to indicate by a
broader stare of his mouth and eyes that in him Sloppy stood confessed.
‘For I aint, you must know,’ said Betty, ‘much of a hand at reading
writing-hand, though I can read my Bible and most print. And I do love a
newspaper. You mightn’t think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a
newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.’
The visitors again considered it a point of politeness to look at
Sloppy, who, looking at them, suddenly threw back his head, extended his
mouth to its utmost width, and laughed loud and long. At this the two
innocents, with their brains in that apparent danger, laughed, and Mrs
Higden laughed, and the orphan laughed, and then the visitors laughed.
Which was more cheerful than intelligible.
Then Sloppy seeming to be seized with an industrious mania or fury,
turned to at the mangle, and impelled it at the heads of the innocents
with such a creaking and rumbling, that Mrs Higden stopped him.
‘The gentlefolks can’t hear themselves speak, Sloppy. Bide a bit, bide a
bit!’
‘Is that the dear child in your lap?’ said Mrs Boffin.
‘Yes, ma’am, this is Johnny.’
‘Johnny, too!’ cried Mrs Boffin, turning to the Secretary; ‘already
Johnny! Only one of the two names left to give him! He’s a pretty boy.’
With his chin tucked down in his shy childish manner, he was looking
furtively at Mrs Boffin out of his blue eyes, and reaching his fat
dimpled hand up to the lips of the old woman, who was kissing it by
times.
‘Yes, ma’am, he’s a pretty boy, he’s a dear darling boy, he’s the child
of my own last left daughter’s daughter. But she’s gone the way of all
the rest.’
‘Those are not his brother and sister?’ said Mrs Boffin.
‘Oh, dear no, ma’am. Those are Minders.’
‘Minders?’ the Secretary repeated.
‘Left to be Minded, sir. I keep a Minding-School. I can take only three,
on account of the Mangle. But I love children, and Four-pence a week is
Four-pence. Come here, Toddles and Poddles.’
Toddles was the pet-name of the boy; Poddles of the girl. At their
little unsteady pace, they came across the floor, hand-in-hand, as if
they were traversing an extremely difficult road intersected by brooks,
and, when they had had their heads patted by Mrs Betty Higden, made
lunges at the orphan, dramatically representing an attempt to bear him,
crowing, into captivity and slavery. All the three children enjoyed this
to a delightful extent, and the sympathetic Sloppy again laughed long
and loud. When it was discreet to stop the play, Betty Higden said
‘Go to your seats Toddles and Poddles,’ and they returned hand-in-hand
across country, seeming to find the brooks rather swollen by late rains.
‘And Master--or Mister--Sloppy?’ said the Secretary, in doubt whether he
was man, boy, or what.
‘A love-child,’ returned Betty Higden, dropping her voice; ‘parents
never known; found in the street. He was brought up in the--’ with a
shiver of repugnance, ‘--the House.’
‘The Poor-house?’ said the Secretary.
Mrs Higden set that resolute old face of hers, and darkly nodded yes.
‘You dislike the mention of it.’
‘Dislike the mention of it?’ answered the old woman. ‘Kill me sooner
than take me there. Throw this pretty child under cart-horses feet and
a loaded waggon, sooner than take him there. Come to us and find us all
a-dying, and set a light to us all where we lie and let us all blaze
away with the house into a heap of cinders sooner than move a corpse of
us there!’
A surprising spirit in this lonely woman after so many years of hard
working, and hard living, my Lords and Gentlemen and Honourable
Boards! What is it that we call it in our grandiose speeches? British
independence, rather perverted? Is that, or something like it, the ring
of the cant?
‘Do I never read in the newspapers,’ said the dame, fondling the
child--‘God help me and the like of me!--how the worn-out people that
do come down to that, get driven from post to pillar and pillar to post,
a-purpose to tire them out! Do I never read how they are put off, put
off, put off--how they are grudged, grudged, grudged, the shelter, or
the doctor, or the drop of physic, or the bit of bread? Do I never
read how they grow heartsick of it and give it up, after having let
themselves drop so low, and how they after all die out for want of help?
Then I say, I hope I can die as well as another, and I’ll die without
that disgrace.’
Absolutely impossible my Lords and Gentlemen and Honourable Boards, by
any stretch of legislative wisdom to set these perverse people right in
their logic?
‘Johnny, my pretty,’ continued old Betty, caressing the child, and
rather mourning over it than speaking to it, ‘your old Granny Betty is
nigher fourscore year than threescore and ten. She never begged nor had
a penny of the Union money in all her life. She paid scot and she
paid lot when she had money to pay; she worked when she could, and
she starved when she must. You pray that your Granny may have strength
enough left her at the last (she’s strong for an old one, Johnny), to
get up from her bed and run and hide herself and swown to death in a
hole, sooner than fall into the hands of those Cruel Jacks we read of
that dodge and drive, and worry and weary, and scorn and shame, the
decent poor.’
A brilliant success, my Lords and Gentlemen and Honourable Boards to
have brought it to this in the minds of the best of the poor! Under
submission, might it be worth thinking of at any odd time?
The fright and abhorrence that Mrs Betty Higden smoothed out of her
strong face as she ended this diversion, showed how seriously she had
meant it.
‘And does he work for you?’ asked the Secretary, gently bringing the
discourse back to Master or Mister Sloppy.
‘Yes,’ said Betty with a good-humoured smile and nod of the head. ‘And
well too.’
‘Does he live here?’
‘He lives more here than anywhere. He was thought to be no better than a
Natural, and first come to me as a Minder. I made interest with Mr Blogg
the Beadle to have him as a Minder, seeing him by chance up at church,
and thinking I might do something with him. For he was a weak ricketty
creetur then.’
‘Is he called by his right name?’
‘Why, you see, speaking quite correctly, he has no right name. I always
understood he took his name from being found on a Sloppy night.’
‘He seems an amiable fellow.’
‘Bless you, sir, there’s not a bit of him,’ returned Betty, ‘that’s not
amiable. So you may judge how amiable he is, by running your eye along
his heighth.’
Of an ungainly make was Sloppy. Too much of him longwise, too little of
him broadwise, and too many sharp angles of him angle-wise. One of those
shambling male human creatures, born to be indiscreetly candid in the
revelation of buttons; every button he had about him glaring at the
public to a quite preternatural extent. A considerable capital of knee
and elbow and wrist and ankle, had Sloppy, and he didn’t know how to
dispose of it to the best advantage, but was always investing it in
wrong securities, and so getting himself into embarrassed circumstances.
Full-Private Number One in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of
life, was Sloppy, and yet had his glimmering notions of standing true to
the Colours.
‘And now,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘concerning Johnny.’
As Johnny, with his chin tucked in and lips pouting, reclined in Betty’s
lap, concentrating his blue eyes on the visitors and shading them from
observation with a dimpled arm, old Betty took one of his fresh fat
hands in her withered right, and fell to gently beating it on her
withered left.
‘Yes, ma’am. Concerning Johnny.’
‘If you trust the dear child to me,’ said Mrs Boffin, with a face
inviting trust, ‘he shall have the best of homes, the best of care, the
best of education, the best of friends. Please God I will be a true good
mother to him!’
‘I am thankful to you, ma’am, and the dear child would be thankful if
he was old enough to understand.’ Still lightly beating the little hand
upon her own. ‘I wouldn’t stand in the dear child’s light, not if I had
all my life before me instead of a very little of it. But I hope you
won’t take it ill that I cleave to the child closer than words can tell,
for he’s the last living thing left me.’
‘Take it ill, my dear soul? Is it likely? And you so tender of him as to
bring him home here!’
‘I have seen,’ said Betty, still with that light beat upon her hard
rough hand, ‘so many of them on my lap. And they are all gone but this
one! I am ashamed to seem so selfish, but I don’t really mean it. It’ll
be the making of his fortune, and he’ll be a gentleman when I am dead.
I--I--don’t know what comes over me. I--try against it. Don’t notice
me!’ The light beat stopped, the resolute mouth gave way, and the fine
strong old face broke up into weakness and tears.
Now, greatly to the relief of the visitors, the emotional Sloppy no
sooner beheld his patroness in this condition, than, throwing back his
head and throwing open his mouth, he lifted up his voice and bellowed.
This alarming note of something wrong instantly terrified Toddles and
Poddles, who were no sooner heard to roar surprisingly, than Johnny,
curving himself the wrong way and striking out at Mrs Boffin with a pair
of indifferent shoes, became a prey to despair. The absurdity of the
situation put its pathos to the rout. Mrs Betty Higden was herself in
a moment, and brought them all to order with that speed, that Sloppy,
stopping short in a polysyllabic bellow, transferred his energy to
the mangle, and had taken several penitential turns before he could be
stopped.
‘There, there, there!’ said Mrs Boffin, almost regarding her kind self
as the most ruthless of women. ‘Nothing is going to be done. Nobody need
be frightened. We’re all comfortable; ain’t we, Mrs Higden?’
‘Sure and certain we are,’ returned Betty.
‘And there really is no hurry, you know,’ said Mrs Boffin in a lower
voice. ‘Take time to think of it, my good creature!’
‘Don’t you fear ME no more, ma’am,’ said Betty; ‘I thought of it for
good yesterday. I don’t know what come over me just now, but it’ll never
come again.’
‘Well, then, Johnny shall have more time to think of it,’ returned Mrs
Boffin; ‘the pretty child shall have time to get used to it. And you’ll
get him more used to it, if you think well of it; won’t you?’
Betty undertook that, cheerfully and readily.
‘Lor,’ cried Mrs Boffin, looking radiantly about her, ‘we want to make
everybody happy, not dismal!--And perhaps you wouldn’t mind letting me
know how used to it you begin to get, and how it all goes on?’
‘I’ll send Sloppy,’ said Mrs Higden.
‘And this gentleman who has come with me will pay him for his trouble,’
said Mrs Boffin. ‘And Mr Sloppy, whenever you come to my house, be
sure you never go away without having had a good dinner of meat, beer,
vegetables, and pudding.’
This still further brightened the face of affairs; for, the highly
sympathetic Sloppy, first broadly staring and grinning, and then roaring
with laughter, Toddles and Poddles followed suit, and Johnny trumped
the trick. T and P considering these favourable circumstances for
the resumption of that dramatic descent upon Johnny, again came
across-country hand-in-hand upon a buccaneering expedition; and this
having been fought out in the chimney corner behind Mrs Higden’s chair,
with great valour on both sides, those desperate pirates returned
hand-in-hand to their stools, across the dry bed of a mountain torrent.
‘You must tell me what I can do for you, Betty my friend,’ said Mrs
Boffin confidentially, ‘if not to-day, next time.’
‘Thank you all the same, ma’am, but I want nothing for myself. I can
work. I’m strong. I can walk twenty mile if I’m put to it.’ Old Betty
was proud, and said it with a sparkle in her bright eyes.
‘Yes, but there are some little comforts that you wouldn’t be the worse
for,’ returned Mrs Boffin. ‘Bless ye, I wasn’t born a lady any more than
you.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Betty, smiling, ‘that you were born a lady, and
a true one, or there never was a lady born. But I couldn’t take anything
from you, my dear. I never did take anything from any one. It ain’t that
I’m not grateful, but I love to earn it better.’
‘Well, well!’ returned Mrs Boffin. ‘I only spoke of little things, or I
wouldn’t have taken the liberty.’
Betty put her visitor’s hand to her lips, in acknowledgment of the
delicate answer. Wonderfully upright her figure was, and wonderfully
self-reliant her look, as, standing facing her visitor, she explained
herself further.
‘If I could have kept the dear child, without the dread that’s always
upon me of his coming to that fate I have spoken of, I could never have
parted with him, even to you. For I love him, I love him, I love him! I
love my husband long dead and gone, in him; I love my children dead and
gone, in him; I love my young and hopeful days dead and gone, in him. I
couldn’t sell that love, and look you in your bright kind face. It’s a
free gift. I am in want of nothing. When my strength fails me, if I
can but die out quick and quiet, I shall be quite content. I have stood
between my dead and that shame I have spoken of; and it has been kept
off from every one of them. Sewed into my gown,’ with her hand upon
her breast, ‘is just enough to lay me in the grave. Only see that it’s
rightly spent, so as I may rest free to the last from that cruelty and
disgrace, and you’ll have done much more than a little thing for me, and
all that in this present world my heart is set upon.’
Mrs Betty Higden’s visitor pressed her hand. There was no more breaking
up of the strong old face into weakness. My Lords and Gentlemen and
Honourable Boards, it really was as composed as our own faces, and
almost as dignified.
And now, Johnny was to be inveigled into occupying a temporary
position on Mrs Boffin’s lap. It was not until he had been piqued into
competition with the two diminutive Minders, by seeing them successively
raised to that post and retire from it without injury, that he could be
by any means induced to leave Mrs Betty Higden’s skirts; towards which
he exhibited, even when in Mrs Boffin’s embrace, strong yearnings,
spiritual and bodily; the former expressed in a very gloomy visage,
the latter in extended arms. However, a general description of the
toy-wonders lurking in Mr Boffin’s house, so far conciliated this
worldly-minded orphan as to induce him to stare at her frowningly,
with a fist in his mouth, and even at length to chuckle when a
richly-caparisoned horse on wheels, with a miraculous gift of cantering
to cake-shops, was mentioned. This sound being taken up by the Minders,
swelled into a rapturous trio which gave general satisfaction.
So, the interview was considered very successful, and Mrs Boffin was
pleased, and all were satisfied. Not least of all, Sloppy, who undertook
to conduct the visitors back by the best way to the Three Magpies, and
whom the hammer-headed young man much despised.
This piece of business thus put in train, the Secretary drove Mrs Boffin
back to the Bower, and found employment for himself at the new house
until evening. Whether, when evening came, he took a way to his lodgings
that led through fields, with any design of finding Miss Bella Wilfer
in those fields, is not so certain as that she regularly walked there at
that hour.
And, moreover, it is certain that there she was.
No longer in mourning, Miss Bella was dressed in as pretty colours as
she could muster. There is no denying that she was as pretty as they,
and that she and the colours went very prettily together. She was
reading as she walked, and of course it is to be inferred, from her
showing no knowledge of Mr Rokesmith’s approach, that she did not know
he was approaching.
‘Eh?’ said Miss Bella, raising her eyes from her book, when he stopped
before her. ‘Oh! It’s you.’
‘Only I. A fine evening!’
‘Is it?’ said Bella, looking coldly round. ‘I suppose it is, now you
mention it. I have not been thinking of the evening.’
‘So intent upon your book?’
‘Ye-e-es,’ replied Bella, with a drawl of indifference.
‘A love story, Miss Wilfer?’
‘Oh dear no, or I shouldn’t be reading it. It’s more about money than
anything else.’
‘And does it say that money is better than anything?’
‘Upon my word,’ returned Bella, ‘I forget what it says, but you can find
out for yourself if you like, Mr Rokesmith. I don’t want it any more.’
The Secretary took the book--she had fluttered the leaves as if it were
a fan--and walked beside her.
‘I am charged with a message for you, Miss Wilfer.’
‘Impossible, I think!’ said Bella, with another drawl.
‘From Mrs Boffin. She desired me to assure you of the pleasure she has
in finding that she will be ready to receive you in another week or two
at furthest.’
Bella turned her head towards him, with her prettily-insolent eyebrows
raised, and her eyelids drooping. As much as to say, ‘How did YOU come
by the message, pray?’
‘I have been waiting for an opportunity of telling you that I am Mr
Boffin’s Secretary.’
‘I am as wise as ever,’ said Miss Bella, loftily, ‘for I don’t know what
a Secretary is. Not that it signifies.’
‘Not at all.’
A covert glance at her face, as he walked beside her, showed him that
she had not expected his ready assent to that proposition.
‘Then are you going to be always there, Mr Rokesmith?’ she inquired, as
if that would be a drawback.
‘Always? No. Very much there? Yes.’
‘Dear me!’ drawled Bella, in a tone of mortification.
‘But my position there as Secretary, will be very different from yours
as guest. You will know little or nothing about me. I shall transact
the business: you will transact the pleasure. I shall have my salary to
earn; you will have nothing to do but to enjoy and attract.’
‘Attract, sir?’ said Bella, again with her eyebrows raised, and her
eyelids drooping. ‘I don’t understand you.’
Without replying on this point, Mr Rokesmith went on.
‘Excuse me; when I first saw you in your black dress--’
[‘There!’ was Miss Bella’s mental exclamation. ‘What did I say to them
at home? Everybody noticed that ridiculous mourning.’)
‘When I first saw you in your black dress, I was at a loss to account
for that distinction between yourself and your family. I hope it was not
impertinent to speculate upon it?’
‘I hope not, I am sure,’ said Miss Bella, haughtily. ‘But you ought to
know best how you speculated upon it.’
Mr Rokesmith inclined his head in a deprecatory manner, and went on.
‘Since I have been entrusted with Mr Boffin’s affairs, I have
necessarily come to understand the little mystery. I venture to remark
that I feel persuaded that much of your loss may be repaired. I
speak, of course, merely of wealth, Miss Wilfer. The loss of a perfect
stranger, whose worth, or worthlessness, I cannot estimate--nor you
either--is beside the question. But this excellent gentleman and lady
are so full of simplicity, so full of generosity, so inclined towards
you, and so desirous to--how shall I express it?--to make amends for
their good fortune, that you have only to respond.’
As he watched her with another covert look, he saw a certain ambitious
triumph in her face which no assumed coldness could conceal.
‘As we have been brought under one roof by an accidental combination of
circumstances, which oddly extends itself to the new relations before
us, I have taken the liberty of saying these few words. You don’t
consider them intrusive I hope?’ said the Secretary with deference.
‘Really, Mr Rokesmith, I can’t say what I consider them,’ returned the
young lady. ‘They are perfectly new to me, and may be founded altogether
on your own imagination.’
‘You will see.’
These same fields were opposite the Wilfer premises. The discreet
Mrs Wilfer now looking out of window and beholding her daughter in
conference with her lodger, instantly tied up her head and came out for
a casual walk.
‘I have been telling Miss Wilfer,’ said John Rokesmith, as the majestic
lady came stalking up, ‘that I have become, by a curious chance, Mr
Boffin’s Secretary or man of business.’
‘I have not,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, waving her gloves in her chronic
state of dignity, and vague ill-usage, ‘the honour of any intimate
acquaintance with Mr Boffin, and it is not for me to congratulate that
gentleman on the acquisition he has made.’
‘A poor one enough,’ said Rokesmith.
‘Pardon me,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, ‘the merits of Mr Boffin may be highly
distinguished--may be more distinguished than the countenance of Mrs
Boffin would imply--but it were the insanity of humility to deem him
worthy of a better assistant.’
‘You are very good. I have also been telling Miss Wilfer that she is
expected very shortly at the new residence in town.’
‘Having tacitly consented,’ said Mrs Wilfer, with a grand shrug of her
shoulders, and another wave of her gloves, ‘to my child’s acceptance of
the proffered attentions of Mrs Boffin, I interpose no objection.’
Here Miss Bella offered the remonstrance: ‘Don’t talk nonsense, ma,
please.’
‘Peace!’ said Mrs Wilfer.
‘No, ma, I am not going to be made so absurd. Interposing objections!’
‘I say,’ repeated Mrs Wilfer, with a vast access of grandeur, ‘that I am
NOT going to interpose objections. If Mrs Boffin (to whose countenance
no disciple of Lavater could possibly for a single moment subscribe),’
with a shiver, ‘seeks to illuminate her new residence in town with the
attractions of a child of mine, I am content that she should be favoured
by the company of a child of mine.’
‘You use the word, ma’am, I have myself used,’ said Rokesmith, with a
glance at Bella, ‘when you speak of Miss Wilfer’s attractions there.’
‘Pardon me,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, with dreadful solemnity, ‘but I had
not finished.’
‘Pray excuse me.’
‘I was about to say,’ pursued Mrs Wilfer, who clearly had not had
the faintest idea of saying anything more: ‘that when I use the term
attractions, I do so with the qualification that I do not mean it in any
way whatever.’
The excellent lady delivered this luminous elucidation of her views
with an air of greatly obliging her hearers, and greatly distinguishing
herself. Whereat Miss Bella laughed a scornful little laugh and said:
‘Quite enough about this, I am sure, on all sides. Have the goodness, Mr
Rokesmith, to give my love to Mrs Boffin--’
‘Pardon me!’ cried Mrs Wilfer. ‘Compliments.’
‘Love!’ repeated Bella, with a little stamp of her foot.
‘No!’ said Mrs Wilfer, monotonously. ‘Compliments.’
[‘Say Miss Wilfer’s love, and Mrs Wilfer’s compliments,’ the Secretary
proposed, as a compromise.)
‘And I shall be very glad to come when she is ready for me. The sooner,
the better.’
‘One last word, Bella,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘before descending to the
family apartment. I trust that as a child of mine you will ever be
sensible that it will be graceful in you, when associating with Mr
and Mrs Boffin upon equal terms, to remember that the Secretary, Mr
Rokesmith, as your father’s lodger, has a claim on your good word.’
The condescension with which Mrs Wilfer delivered this proclamation of
patronage, was as wonderful as the swiftness with which the lodger
had lost caste in the Secretary. He smiled as the mother retired down
stairs; but his face fell, as the daughter followed.
‘So insolent, so trivial, so capricious, so mercenary, so careless, so
hard to touch, so hard to turn!’ he said, bitterly.
And added as he went upstairs. ‘And yet so pretty, so pretty!’
And added presently, as he walked to and fro in his room. ‘And if she
knew!’
She knew that he was shaking the house by his walking to and fro; and
she declared it another of the miseries of being poor, that you couldn’t
get rid of a haunting Secretary, stump--stump--stumping overhead in the
dark, like a Ghost.
Chapter 17
A DISMAL SWAMP
And now, in the blooming summer days, behold Mr and Mrs Boffin
established in the eminently aristocratic family mansion, and behold
all manner of crawling, creeping, fluttering, and buzzing creatures,
attracted by the gold dust of the Golden Dustman!
Foremost among those leaving cards at the eminently aristocratic door
before it is quite painted, are the Veneerings: out of breath, one
might imagine, from the impetuosity of their rush to the eminently
aristocratic steps. One copper-plate Mrs Veneering, two copper-plate
Mr Veneerings, and a connubial copper-plate Mr and Mrs Veneering,
requesting the honour of Mr and Mrs Boffin’s company at dinner with
the utmost Analytical solemnities. The enchanting Lady Tippins leaves a
card. Twemlow leaves cards. A tall custard-coloured phaeton tooling up
in a solemn manner leaves four cards, to wit, a couple of Mr Podsnaps, a
Mrs Podsnap, and a Miss Podsnap. All the world and his wife and daughter
leave cards. Sometimes the world’s wife has so many daughters, that her
card reads rather like a Miscellaneous Lot at an Auction; comprising Mrs
Tapkins, Miss Tapkins, Miss Frederica Tapkins, Miss Antonina Tapkins,
Miss Malvina Tapkins, and Miss Euphemia Tapkins; at the same time,
the same lady leaves the card of Mrs Henry George Alfred Swoshle, NEE
Tapkins; also, a card, Mrs Tapkins at Home, Wednesdays, Music, Portland
Place.
Miss Bella Wilfer becomes an inmate, for an indefinite period, of the
eminently aristocratic dwelling. Mrs Boffin bears Miss Bella away to
her Milliner’s and Dressmaker’s, and she gets beautifully dressed. The
Veneerings find with swift remorse that they have omitted to invite Miss
Bella Wilfer. One Mrs Veneering and one Mr and Mrs Veneering requesting
that additional honour, instantly do penance in white cardboard on
the hall table. Mrs Tapkins likewise discovers her omission, and
with promptitude repairs it; for herself; for Miss Tapkins, for Miss
Frederica Tapkins, for Miss Antonina Tapkins, for Miss Malvina Tapkins,
and for Miss Euphemia Tapkins. Likewise, for Mrs Henry George Alfred
Swoshle NEE Tapkins. Likewise, for Mrs Tapkins at Home, Wednesdays,
Music, Portland Place.
Tradesmen’s books hunger, and tradesmen’s mouths water, for the gold
dust of the Golden Dustman. As Mrs Boffin and Miss Wilfer drive out, or
as Mr Boffin walks out at his jog-trot pace, the fishmonger pulls off
his hat with an air of reverence founded on conviction. His men cleanse
their fingers on their woollen aprons before presuming to touch their
foreheads to Mr Boffin or Lady. The gaping salmon and the golden mullet
lying on the slab seem to turn up their eyes sideways, as they would
turn up their hands if they had any, in worshipping admiration. The
butcher, though a portly and a prosperous man, doesn’t know what to do
with himself; so anxious is he to express humility when discovered by
the passing Boffins taking the air in a mutton grove. Presents are made
to the Boffin servants, and bland strangers with business-cards
meeting said servants in the street, offer hypothetical corruption. As,
‘Supposing I was to be favoured with an order from Mr Boffin, my dear
friend, it would be worth my while’--to do a certain thing that I hope
might not prove wholly disagreeable to your feelings.
But no one knows so well as the Secretary, who opens and reads the
letters, what a set is made at the man marked by a stroke of notoriety.
Oh the varieties of dust for ocular use, offered in exchange for the
gold dust of the Golden Dustman! Fifty-seven churches to be erected with
half-crowns, forty-two parsonage houses to be repaired with shillings,
seven-and-twenty organs to be built with halfpence, twelve hundred
children to be brought up on postage stamps. Not that a half-crown,
shilling, halfpenny, or postage stamp, would be particularly acceptable
from Mr Boffin, but that it is so obvious he is the man to make up the
deficiency. And then the charities, my Christian brother! And mostly in
difficulties, yet mostly lavish, too, in the expensive articles of print
and paper. Large fat private double letter, sealed with ducal coronet.
‘Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire. My Dear Sir,--Having consented to preside
at the forthcoming Annual Dinner of the Family Party Fund, and feeling
deeply impressed with the immense usefulness of that noble Institution
and the great importance of its being supported by a List of Stewards
that shall prove to the public the interest taken in it by popular and
distinguished men, I have undertaken to ask you to become a Steward on
that occasion. Soliciting your favourable reply before the 14th instant,
I am, My Dear Sir, Your faithful Servant, LINSEED. P.S. The Steward’s
fee is limited to three Guineas.’ Friendly this, on the part of the Duke
of Linseed (and thoughtful in the postscript), only lithographed by
the hundred and presenting but a pale individuality of an address to
Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, in quite another hand. It takes two noble
Earls and a Viscount, combined, to inform Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire,
in an equally flattering manner, that an estimable lady in the West of
England has offered to present a purse containing twenty pounds, to
the Society for Granting Annuities to Unassuming Members of the Middle
Classes, if twenty individuals will previously present purses of one
hundred pounds each. And those benevolent noblemen very kindly point out
that if Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, should wish to present two or more
purses, it will not be inconsistent with the design of the estimable
lady in the West of England, provided each purse be coupled with the
name of some member of his honoured and respected family.
These are the corporate beggars. But there are, besides, the individual
beggars; and how does the heart of the Secretary fail him when he has to
cope with THEM! And they must be coped with to some extent, because they
all enclose documents (they call their scraps documents; but they are,
as to papers deserving the name, what minced veal is to a calf), the
non-return of which would be their ruin. That is say, they are utterly
ruined now, but they would be more utterly ruined then. Among these
correspondents are several daughters of general officers, long
accustomed to every luxury of life (except spelling), who little
thought, when their gallant fathers waged war in the Peninsula,
that they would ever have to appeal to those whom Providence, in its
inscrutable wisdom, has blessed with untold gold, and from among whom
they select the name of Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, for a maiden effort
in this wise, understanding that he has such a heart as never was. The
Secretary learns, too, that confidence between man and wife would seem
to obtain but rarely when virtue is in distress, so numerous are the
wives who take up their pens to ask Mr Boffin for money without the
knowledge of their devoted husbands, who would never permit it; while,
on the other hand, so numerous are the husbands who take up their pens
to ask Mr Boffin for money without the knowledge of their devoted
wives, who would instantly go out of their senses if they had the least
suspicion of the circumstance. There are the inspired beggars, too.
These were sitting, only yesterday evening, musing over a fragment of
candle which must soon go out and leave them in the dark for the rest
of their nights, when surely some Angel whispered the name of Nicodemus
Boffin, Esquire, to their souls, imparting rays of hope, nay
confidence, to which they had long been strangers! Akin to these are the
suggestively-befriended beggars. They were partaking of a cold potato
and water by the flickering and gloomy light of a lucifer-match, in
their lodgings (rent considerably in arrear, and heartless landlady
threatening expulsion ‘like a dog’ into the streets), when a gifted
friend happening to look in, said, ‘Write immediately to Nicodemus
Boffin, Esquire,’ and would take no denial. There are the nobly
independent beggars too. These, in the days of their abundance, ever
regarded gold as dross, and have not yet got over that only impediment
in the way of their amassing wealth, but they want no dross from
Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire; No, Mr Boffin; the world may term it pride,
paltry pride if you will, but they wouldn’t take it if you offered it;
a loan, sir--for fourteen weeks to the day, interest calculated at the
rate of five per cent per annum, to be bestowed upon any charitable
institution you may name--is all they want of you, and if you have the
meanness to refuse it, count on being despised by these great spirits.
There are the beggars of punctual business-habits too. These will
make an end of themselves at a quarter to one P.M. on Tuesday, if no
Post-office order is in the interim received from Nicodemus Boffin,
Esquire; arriving after a quarter to one P.M. on Tuesday, it need not
be sent, as they will then (having made an exact memorandum of the
heartless circumstances) be ‘cold in death.’ There are the beggars on
horseback too, in another sense from the sense of the proverb. These
are mounted and ready to start on the highway to affluence. The goal is
before them, the road is in the best condition, their spurs are on,
the steed is willing, but, at the last moment, for want of some special
thing--a clock, a violin, an astronomical telescope, an electrifying
machine--they must dismount for ever, unless they receive its equivalent
in money from Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire. Less given to detail are the
beggars who make sporting ventures. These, usually to be addressed
in reply under initials at a country post-office, inquire in feminine
hands, Dare one who cannot disclose herself to Nicodemus Boffin,
Esquire, but whose name might startle him were it revealed, solicit
the immediate advance of two hundred pounds from unexpected riches
exercising their noblest privilege in the trust of a common humanity?
In such a Dismal Swamp does the new house stand, and through it does
the Secretary daily struggle breast-high. Not to mention all the people
alive who have made inventions that won’t act, and all the jobbers who
job in all the jobberies jobbed; though these may be regarded as the
Alligators of the Dismal Swamp, and are always lying by to drag the
Golden Dustman under.
But the old house. There are no designs against the Golden Dustman
there? There are no fish of the shark tribe in the Bower waters? Perhaps
not. Still, Wegg is established there, and would seem, judged by his
secret proceedings, to cherish a notion of making a discovery. For,
when a man with a wooden leg lies prone on his stomach to peep under
bedsteads; and hops up ladders, like some extinct bird, to survey the
tops of presses and cupboards; and provides himself an iron rod which he
is always poking and prodding into dust-mounds; the probability is that
he expects to find something.
BOOK THE SECOND -- BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Chapter 1
OF AN EDUCATIONAL CHARACTER
The school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a
book--the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great Preparatory
Establishment in which very much that is never unlearned is learned
without and before book--was a miserable loft in an unsavoury yard. Its
atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it was crowded, noisy,
and confusing; half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of
waking stupefaction; the other half kept them in either condition by
maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out
of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated
solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable
jumble was the upshot of their kind endeavours.
It was a school for all ages, and for both sexes. The latter were kept
apart, and the former were partitioned off into square assortments. But,
all the place was pervaded by a grimly ludicrous pretence that every
pupil was childish and innocent. This pretence, much favoured by the
lady-visitors, led to the ghastliest absurdities. Young women old in
the vices of the commonest and worst life, were expected to profess
themselves enthralled by the good child’s book, the Adventures of
Little Margery, who resided in the village cottage by the mill; severely
reproved and morally squashed the miller, when she was five and he was
fifty; divided her porridge with singing birds; denied herself a new
nankeen bonnet, on the ground that the turnips did not wear nankeen
bonnets, neither did the sheep who ate them; who plaited straw and
delivered the dreariest orations to all comers, at all sorts of
unseasonable times. So, unwieldy young dredgers and hulking mudlarks
were referred to the experiences of Thomas Twopence, who, having
resolved not to rob (under circumstances of uncommon atrocity) his
particular friend and benefactor, of eighteenpence, presently came into
supernatural possession of three and sixpence, and lived a shining light
ever afterwards. (Note, that the benefactor came to no good.) Several
swaggering sinners had written their own biographies in the same strain;
it always appearing from the lessons of those very boastful persons,
that you were to do good, not because it WAS good, but because you were
to make a good thing of it. Contrariwise, the adult pupils were taught
to read (if they could learn) out of the New Testament; and by dint of
stumbling over the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the
particular syllables coming round to their turn, were as absolutely
ignorant of the sublime history, as if they had never seen or heard of
it. An exceedingly and confoundingly perplexing jumble of a school,
in fact, where black spirits and grey, red spirits and white, jumbled
jumbled jumbled jumbled, jumbled every night. And particularly every
Sunday night. For then, an inclined plane of unfortunate infants would
be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers with good
intentions, whom nobody older would endure. Who, taking his stand on
the floor before them as chief executioner, would be attended by a
conventional volunteer boy as executioner’s assistant. When and where it
first became the conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant
in a class must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when
and where the conventional volunteer boy first beheld such system in
operation, and became inflamed with a sacred zeal to administer it,
matters not. It was the function of the chief executioner to hold forth,
and it was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants,
yawning infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth their
wretched faces; sometimes with one hand, as if he were anointing them
for a whisker; sometimes with both hands, applied after the fashion of
blinkers. And so the jumble would be in action in this department for a
mortal hour; the exponent drawling on to My Dearert Childerrenerr, let
us say, for example, about the beautiful coming to the Sepulchre; and
repeating the word Sepulchre (commonly used among infants) five hundred
times, and never once hinting what it meant; the conventional boy
smoothing away right and left, as an infallible commentary; the whole
hot-bed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes,
whooping-cough, fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were assembled
in High Market for the purpose.
Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy
exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having
learned it, could impart it much better than the teachers; as being
more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood
towards the shrewder pupils. In this way it had come about that Charley
Hexam had risen in the jumble, taught in the jumble, and been received
from the jumble into a better school.
‘So you want to go and see your sister, Hexam?’
‘If you please, Mr Headstone.’
‘I have half a mind to go with you. Where does your sister live?’
‘Why, she is not settled yet, Mr Headstone. I’d rather you didn’t see
her till she is settled, if it was all the same to you.’
‘Look here, Hexam.’ Mr Bradley Headstone, highly certificated
stipendiary schoolmaster, drew his right forefinger through one of the
buttonholes of the boy’s coat, and looked at it attentively. ‘I hope
your sister may be good company for you?’
‘Why do you doubt it, Mr Headstone?’
‘I did not say I doubted it.’
‘No, sir; you didn’t say so.’
Bradley Headstone looked at his finger again, took it out of the
buttonhole and looked at it closer, bit the side of it and looked at it
again.
‘You see, Hexam, you will be one of us. In good time you are sure to
pass a creditable examination and become one of us. Then the question
is--’
The boy waited so long for the question, while the schoolmaster looked
at a new side of his finger, and bit it, and looked at it again, that at
length the boy repeated:
‘The question is, sir--?’
‘Whether you had not better leave well alone.’
‘Is it well to leave my sister alone, Mr Headstone?’
‘I do not say so, because I do not know. I put it to you. I ask you to
think of it. I want you to consider. You know how well you are doing
here.’
‘After all, she got me here,’ said the boy, with a struggle.
‘Perceiving the necessity of it,’ acquiesced the schoolmaster, ‘and
making up her mind fully to the separation. Yes.’
The boy, with a return of that former reluctance or struggle or whatever
it was, seemed to debate with himself. At length he said, raising his
eyes to the master’s face:
‘I wish you’d come with me and see her, Mr Headstone, though she is not
settled. I wish you’d come with me, and take her in the rough, and judge
her for yourself.’
‘You are sure you would not like,’ asked the schoolmaster, ‘to prepare
her?’
‘My sister Lizzie,’ said the boy, proudly, ‘wants no preparing, Mr
Headstone. What she is, she is, and shows herself to be. There’s no
pretending about my sister.’
His confidence in her, sat more easily upon him than the indecision with
which he had twice contended. It was his better nature to be true to
her, if it were his worse nature to be wholly selfish. And as yet the
better nature had the stronger hold.
‘Well, I can spare the evening,’ said the schoolmaster. ‘I am ready to
walk with you.’
‘Thank you, Mr Headstone. And I am ready to go.’
Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent
white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of
pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its
decent hair-guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man
of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there
was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were
a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in
their holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great store of
teacher’s knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing
at sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even
play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood up,
his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of
his wholesale warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the
demands of retail dealers history here, geography there, astronomy to
the right, political economy to the left--natural history, the physical
sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in
their several places--this care had imparted to his countenance a look
of care; while the habit of questioning and being questioned had given
him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would be better described as
one of lying in wait. There was a kind of settled trouble in the face.
It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect
that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that had to hold it now
that it was gotten. He always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should
be missing from his mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure
himself.
Suppression of so much to make room for so much, had given him a
constrained manner, over and above. Yet there was enough of what was
animal, and of what was fiery (though smouldering), still visible in
him, to suggest that if young Bradley Headstone, when a pauper lad, had
chanced to be told off for the sea, he would not have been the last man
in a ship’s crew. Regarding that origin of his, he was proud, moody, and
sullen, desiring it to be forgotten. And few people knew of it.
In some visits to the Jumble his attention had been attracted to this
boy Hexam. An undeniable boy for a pupil-teacher; an undeniable boy
to do credit to the master who should bring him on. Combined with this
consideration, there may have been some thought of the pauper lad now
never to be mentioned. Be that how it might, he had with pains gradually
worked the boy into his own school, and procured him some offices to
discharge there, which were repaid with food and lodging. Such were the
circumstances that had brought together, Bradley Headstone and young
Charley Hexam that autumn evening. Autumn, because full half a year had
come and gone since the bird of prey lay dead upon the river-shore.
The schools--for they were twofold, as the sexes--were down in that
district of the flat country tending to the Thames, where Kent and
Surrey meet, and where the railways still bestride the market-gardens
that will soon die under them. The schools were newly built, and there
were so many like them all over the country, that one might have thought
the whole were but one restless edifice with the locomotive gift of
Aladdin’s palace. They were in a neighbourhood which looked like a toy
neighbourhood taken in blocks out of a box by a child of particularly
incoherent mind, and set up anyhow; here, one side of a new street;
there, a large solitary public-house facing nowhere; here, another
unfinished street already in ruins; there, a church; here, an immense
new warehouse; there, a dilapidated old country villa; then, a medley
of black ditch, sparkling cucumber-frame, rank field, richly cultivated
kitchen-garden, brick viaduct, arch-spanned canal, and disorder of
frowziness and fog. As if the child had given the table a kick, and gone
to sleep.
But, even among school-buildings, school-teachers, and school-pupils,
all according to pattern and all engendered in the light of the latest
Gospel according to Monotony, the older pattern into which so many
fortunes have been shaped for good and evil, comes out. It came out in
Miss Peecher the schoolmistress, watering her flowers, as Mr Bradley
Headstone walked forth. It came out in Miss Peecher the schoolmistress,
watering the flowers in the little dusty bit of garden attached to her
small official residence, with little windows like the eyes in needles,
and little doors like the covers of school-books.
Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom was Miss Peecher;
cherry-cheeked and tuneful of voice. A little pincushion, a little
housewife, a little book, a little workbox, a little set of tables and
weights and measures, and a little woman, all in one. She could write
a little essay on any subject, exactly a slate long, beginning at the
left-hand top of one side and ending at the right-hand bottom of the
other, and the essay should be strictly according to rule. If Mr Bradley
Headstone had addressed a written proposal of marriage to her, she would
probably have replied in a complete little essay on the theme exactly a
slate long, but would certainly have replied Yes. For she loved him. The
decent hair-guard that went round his neck and took care of his decent
silver watch was an object of envy to her. So would Miss Peecher have
gone round his neck and taken care of him. Of him, insensible. Because
he did not love Miss Peecher.
Miss Peecher’s favourite pupil, who assisted her in her little
household, was in attendance with a can of water to replenish her little
watering-pot, and sufficiently divined the state of Miss Peecher’s
affections to feel it necessary that she herself should love young
Charley Hexam. So, there was a double palpitation among the double
stocks and double wall-flowers, when the master and the boy looked over
the little gate.
‘A fine evening, Miss Peecher,’ said the Master.
‘A very fine evening, Mr Headstone,’ said Miss Peecher. ‘Are you taking
a walk?’
‘Hexam and I are going to take a long walk.’
‘Charming weather,’ remarked Miss Peecher, ‘FOR a long walk.’
‘Ours is rather on business than mere pleasure,’ said the Master. Miss
Peecher inverting her watering-pot, and very carefully shaking out the
few last drops over a flower, as if there were some special virtue in
them which would make it a Jack’s beanstalk before morning, called for
replenishment to her pupil, who had been speaking to the boy.
‘Good-night, Miss Peecher,’ said the Master.
‘Good-night, Mr Headstone,’ said the Mistress.
The pupil had been, in her state of pupilage, so imbued with the
class-custom of stretching out an arm, as if to hail a cab or omnibus,
whenever she found she had an observation on hand to offer to Miss
Peecher, that she often did it in their domestic relations; and she did
it now.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’ said Miss Peecher.
‘If you please, ma’am, Hexam said they were going to see his sister.’
‘But that can’t be, I think,’ returned Miss Peecher: ‘because Mr
Headstone can have no business with HER.’
Mary Anne again hailed.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’
‘If you please, ma’am, perhaps it’s Hexam’s business?’
‘That may be,’ said Miss Peecher. ‘I didn’t think of that. Not that it
matters at all.’
Mary Anne again hailed.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’
‘They say she’s very handsome.’
‘Oh, Mary Anne, Mary Anne!’ returned Miss Peecher, slightly colouring
and shaking her head, a little out of humour; ‘how often have I told you
not to use that vague expression, not to speak in that general way? When
you say THEY say, what do you mean? Part of speech They?’
Mary Anne hooked her right arm behind her in her left hand, as being
under examination, and replied:
‘Personal pronoun.’
‘Person, They?’
‘Third person.’
‘Number, They?’
‘Plural number.’
‘Then how many do you mean, Mary Anne? Two? Or more?’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ said Mary Anne, disconcerted now she came
to think of it; ‘but I don’t know that I mean more than her brother
himself.’ As she said it, she unhooked her arm.
‘I felt convinced of it,’ returned Miss Peecher, smiling again. ‘Now
pray, Mary Anne, be careful another time. He says is very different from
they say, remember. Difference between he says and they say? Give it
me.’
Mary Anne immediately hooked her right arm behind her in her left
hand--an attitude absolutely necessary to the situation--and replied:
‘One is indicative mood, present tense, third person singular, verb
active to say. Other is indicative mood, present tense, third person
plural, verb active to say.’
‘Why verb active, Mary Anne?’
‘Because it takes a pronoun after it in the objective case, Miss
Peecher.’
‘Very good indeed,’ remarked Miss Peecher, with encouragement. ‘In fact,
could not be better. Don’t forget to apply it, another time, Mary Anne.’
This said, Miss Peecher finished the watering of her flowers, and
went into her little official residence, and took a refresher of the
principal rivers and mountains of the world, their breadths, depths, and
heights, before settling the measurements of the body of a dress for her
own personal occupation.
Bradley Headstone and Charley Hexam duly got to the Surrey side of
Westminster Bridge, and crossed the bridge, and made along the Middlesex
shore towards Millbank. In this region are a certain little street
called Church Street, and a certain little blind square, called Smith
Square, in the centre of which last retreat is a very hideous church
with four towers at the four corners, generally resembling some
petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with its legs
in the air. They found a tree near by in a corner, and a blacksmith’s
forge, and a timber yard, and a dealer’s in old iron. What a rusty
portion of a boiler and a great iron wheel or so meant by lying
half-buried in the dealer’s fore-court, nobody seemed to know or to want
to know. Like the Miller of questionable jollity in the song, They cared
for Nobody, no not they, and Nobody cared for them.
After making the round of this place, and noting that there was a deadly
kind of repose on it, more as though it had taken laudanum than fallen
into a natural rest, they stopped at the point where the street and the
square joined, and where there were some little quiet houses in a row.
To these Charley Hexam finally led the way, and at one of these stopped.
‘This must be where my sister lives, sir. This is where she came for a
temporary lodging, soon after father’s death.’
‘How often have you seen her since?’
‘Why, only twice, sir,’ returned the boy, with his former reluctance;
‘but that’s as much her doing as mine.’
‘How does she support herself?’
‘She was always a fair needlewoman, and she keeps the stockroom of a
seaman’s outfitter.’
‘Does she ever work at her own lodging here?’
‘Sometimes; but her regular hours and regular occupation are at their
place of business, I believe, sir. This is the number.’
The boy knocked at a door, and the door promptly opened with a spring
and a click. A parlour door within a small entry stood open, and
disclosed a child--a dwarf--a girl--a something--sitting on a little low
old-fashioned arm-chair, which had a kind of little working bench before
it.
‘I can’t get up,’ said the child, ‘because my back’s bad, and my legs
are queer. But I’m the person of the house.’
‘Who else is at home?’ asked Charley Hexam, staring.
‘Nobody’s at home at present,’ returned the child, with a glib assertion
of her dignity, ‘except the person of the house. What did you want,
young man?’
‘I wanted to see my sister.’
‘Many young men have sisters,’ returned the child. ‘Give me your name,
young man?’
The queer little figure, and the queer but not ugly little face, with
its bright grey eyes, were so sharp, that the sharpness of the manner
seemed unavoidable. As if, being turned out of that mould, it must be
sharp.
‘Hexam is my name.’
‘Ah, indeed?’ said the person of the house. ‘I thought it might be. Your
sister will be in, in about a quarter of an hour. I am very fond of your
sister. She’s my particular friend. Take a seat. And this gentleman’s
name?’
‘Mr Headstone, my schoolmaster.’
‘Take a seat. And would you please to shut the street door first? I
can’t very well do it myself; because my back’s so bad, and my legs are
so queer.’
They complied in silence, and the little figure went on with its work of
gumming or gluing together with a camel’s-hair brush certain pieces
of cardboard and thin wood, previously cut into various shapes. The
scissors and knives upon the bench showed that the child herself had cut
them; and the bright scraps of velvet and silk and ribbon also strewn
upon the bench showed that when duly stuffed (and stuffing too was
there), she was to cover them smartly. The dexterity of her nimble
fingers was remarkable, and, as she brought two thin edges accurately
together by giving them a little bite, she would glance at the visitors
out of the corners of her grey eyes with a look that out-sharpened all
her other sharpness.
‘You can’t tell me the name of my trade, I’ll be bound,’ she said, after
taking several of these observations.
‘You make pincushions,’ said Charley.
‘What else do I make?’
‘Pen-wipers,’ said Bradley Headstone.
‘Ha! ha! What else do I make? You’re a schoolmaster, but you can’t tell
me.’
‘You do something,’ he returned, pointing to a corner of the little
bench, ‘with straw; but I don’t know what.’
‘Well done you!’ cried the person of the house. ‘I only make pincushions
and pen-wipers, to use up my waste. But my straw really does belong to
my business. Try again. What do I make with my straw?’
‘Dinner-mats?’
‘A schoolmaster, and says dinner-mats! I’ll give you a clue to my trade,
in a game of forfeits. I love my love with a B because she’s Beautiful;
I hate my love with a B because she is Brazen; I took her to the sign of
the Blue Boar, and I treated her with Bonnets; her name’s Bouncer, and
she lives in Bedlam.--Now, what do I make with my straw?’
‘Ladies’ bonnets?’
‘Fine ladies’,’ said the person of the house, nodding assent. ‘Dolls’.
I’m a Doll’s Dressmaker.’
‘I hope it’s a good business?’
The person of the house shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. ‘No.
Poorly paid. And I’m often so pressed for time! I had a doll married,
last week, and was obliged to work all night. And it’s not good for me,
on account of my back being so bad and my legs so queer.’
They looked at the little creature with a wonder that did not diminish,
and the schoolmaster said: ‘I am sorry your fine ladies are so
inconsiderate.’
‘It’s the way with them,’ said the person of the house, shrugging her
shoulders again. ‘And they take no care of their clothes, and they
never keep to the same fashions a month. I work for a doll with three
daughters. Bless you, she’s enough to ruin her husband!’ The person of
the house gave a weird little laugh here, and gave them another look out
of the corners of her eyes. She had an elfin chin that was capable of
great expression; and whenever she gave this look, she hitched this chin
up. As if her eyes and her chin worked together on the same wires.
‘Are you always as busy as you are now?’
‘Busier. I’m slack just now. I finished a large mourning order the day
before yesterday. Doll I work for, lost a canary-bird.’ The person of
the house gave another little laugh, and then nodded her head several
times, as who should moralize, ‘Oh this world, this world!’
‘Are you alone all day?’ asked Bradley Headstone. ‘Don’t any of the
neighbouring children--?’
‘Ah, lud!’ cried the person of the house, with a little scream, as
if the word had pricked her. ‘Don’t talk of children. I can’t bear
children. I know their tricks and their manners.’ She said this with an
angry little shake of her tight fist close before her eyes.
Perhaps it scarcely required the teacher-habit, to perceive that the
doll’s dressmaker was inclined to be bitter on the difference between
herself and other children. But both master and pupil understood it so.
‘Always running about and screeching, always playing and fighting,
always skip-skip-skipping on the pavement and chalking it for their
games! Oh! I know their tricks and their manners!’ Shaking the little
fist as before. ‘And that’s not all. Ever so often calling names in
through a person’s keyhole, and imitating a person’s back and legs. Oh!
I know their tricks and their manners. And I’ll tell you what I’d do, to
punish ‘em. There’s doors under the church in the Square--black doors,
leading into black vaults. Well! I’d open one of those doors, and I’d
cram ‘em all in, and then I’d lock the door and through the keyhole I’d
blow in pepper.’
‘What would be the good of blowing in pepper?’ asked Charley Hexam.
‘To set ‘em sneezing,’ said the person of the house, ‘and make their
eyes water. And when they were all sneezing and inflamed, I’d mock ‘em
through the keyhole. Just as they, with their tricks and their manners,
mock a person through a person’s keyhole!’
An uncommonly emphatic shake of her little fist close before her eyes,
seemed to ease the mind of the person of the house; for she added
with recovered composure, ‘No, no, no. No children for me. Give me
grown-ups.’
It was difficult to guess the age of this strange creature, for her poor
figure furnished no clue to it, and her face was at once so young and so
old. Twelve, or at the most thirteen, might be near the mark.
‘I always did like grown-ups,’ she went on, ‘and always kept company
with them. So sensible. Sit so quiet. Don’t go prancing and capering
about! And I mean always to keep among none but grown-ups till I marry.
I suppose I must make up my mind to marry, one of these days.’
She listened to a step outside that caught her ear, and there was a soft
knock at the door. Pulling at a handle within her reach, she said,
with a pleased laugh: ‘Now here, for instance, is a grown-up that’s my
particular friend!’ and Lizzie Hexam in a black dress entered the room.
‘Charley! You!’
Taking him to her arms in the old way--of which he seemed a little
ashamed--she saw no one else.
‘There, there, there, Liz, all right my dear. See! Here’s Mr Headstone
come with me.’
Her eyes met those of the schoolmaster, who had evidently expected
to see a very different sort of person, and a murmured word or two
of salutation passed between them. She was a little flurried by the
unexpected visit, and the schoolmaster was not at his ease. But he never
was, quite.
‘I told Mr Headstone you were not settled, Liz, but he was so kind as to
take an interest in coming, and so I brought him. How well you look!’
Bradley seemed to think so.
‘Ah! Don’t she, don’t she?’ cried the person of the house, resuming her
occupation, though the twilight was falling fast. ‘I believe you she
does! But go on with your chat, one and all:
You one two three,
My com-pa-nie,
And don’t mind me.’
--pointing this impromptu rhyme with three points of her thin
fore-finger.
‘I didn’t expect a visit from you, Charley,’ said his sister. ‘I
supposed that if you wanted to see me you would have sent to me,
appointing me to come somewhere near the school, as I did last time.
I saw my brother near the school, sir,’ to Bradley Headstone, ‘because
it’s easier for me to go there, than for him to come here. I work about
midway between the two places.’
‘You don’t see much of one another,’ said Bradley, not improving in
respect of ease.
‘No.’ With a rather sad shake of her head. ‘Charley always does well, Mr
Headstone?’
‘He could not do better. I regard his course as quite plain before him.’
‘I hoped so. I am so thankful. So well done of you, Charley dear! It is
better for me not to come (except when he wants me) between him and his
prospects. You think so, Mr Headstone?’
Conscious that his pupil-teacher was looking for his answer, that he
himself had suggested the boy’s keeping aloof from this sister, now seen
for the first time face to face, Bradley Headstone stammered:
‘Your brother is very much occupied, you know. He has to work hard. One
cannot but say that the less his attention is diverted from his work,
the better for his future. When he shall have established himself, why
then--it will be another thing then.’
Lizzie shook her head again, and returned, with a quiet smile: ‘I always
advised him as you advise him. Did I not, Charley?’
‘Well, never mind that now,’ said the boy. ‘How are you getting on?’
‘Very well, Charley. I want for nothing.’
‘You have your own room here?’
‘Oh yes. Upstairs. And it’s quiet, and pleasant, and airy.’
‘And she always has the use of this room for visitors,’ said the
person of the house, screwing up one of her little bony fists, like an
opera-glass, and looking through it, with her eyes and her chin in that
quaint accordance. ‘Always this room for visitors; haven’t you, Lizzie
dear?’
It happened that Bradley Headstone noticed a very slight action of
Lizzie Hexam’s hand, as though it checked the doll’s dressmaker. And it
happened that the latter noticed him in the same instant; for she made
a double eyeglass of her two hands, looked at him through it, and cried,
with a waggish shake of her head: ‘Aha! Caught you spying, did I?’
It might have fallen out so, any way; but Bradley Headstone also noticed
that immediately after this, Lizzie, who had not taken off her bonnet,
rather hurriedly proposed that as the room was getting dark they should
go out into the air. They went out; the visitors saying good-night to
the doll’s dressmaker, whom they left, leaning back in her chair with
her arms crossed, singing to herself in a sweet thoughtful little voice.
‘I’ll saunter on by the river,’ said Bradley. ‘You will be glad to talk
together.’
As his uneasy figure went on before them among the evening shadows, the
boy said to his sister, petulantly:
‘When are you going to settle yourself in some Christian sort of place,
Liz? I thought you were going to do it before now.’
‘I am very well where I am, Charley.’
‘Very well where you are! I am ashamed to have brought Mr Headstone with
me. How came you to get into such company as that little witch’s?’
‘By chance at first, as it seemed, Charley. But I think it must have
been by something more than chance, for that child--You remember the
bills upon the walls at home?’
‘Confound the bills upon the walls at home! I want to forget the bills
upon the walls at home, and it would be better for you to do the same,’
grumbled the boy. ‘Well; what of them?’
‘This child is the grandchild of the old man.’
‘What old man?’
‘The terrible drunken old man, in the list slippers and the night-cap.’
The boy asked, rubbing his nose in a manner that half expressed vexation
at hearing so much, and half curiosity to hear more: ‘How came you to
make that out? What a girl you are!’
‘The child’s father is employed by the house that employs me; that’s how
I came to know it, Charley. The father is like his own father, a weak
wretched trembling creature, falling to pieces, never sober. But a good
workman too, at the work he does. The mother is dead. This poor ailing
little creature has come to be what she is, surrounded by drunken people
from her cradle--if she ever had one, Charley.’
‘I don’t see what you have to do with her, for all that,’ said the boy.
‘Don’t you, Charley?’
The boy looked doggedly at the river. They were at Millbank, and
the river rolled on their left. His sister gently touched him on the
shoulder, and pointed to it.
‘Any compensation--restitution--never mind the word, you know my
meaning. Father’s grave.’
But he did not respond with any tenderness. After a moody silence he
broke out in an ill-used tone:
‘It’ll be a very hard thing, Liz, if, when I am trying my best to get up
in the world, you pull me back.’
‘I, Charley?’
‘Yes, you, Liz. Why can’t you let bygones be bygones? Why can’t you, as
Mr Headstone said to me this very evening about another matter, leave
well alone? What we have got to do, is, to turn our faces full in our
new direction, and keep straight on.’
‘And never look back? Not even to try to make some amends?’
‘You are such a dreamer,’ said the boy, with his former petulance. ‘It
was all very well when we sat before the fire--when we looked into the
hollow down by the flare--but we are looking into the real world, now.’
‘Ah, we were looking into the real world then, Charley!’
‘I understand what you mean by that, but you are not justified in it. I
don’t want, as I raise myself to shake you off, Liz. I want to carry you
up with me. That’s what I want to do, and mean to do. I know what I owe
you. I said to Mr Headstone this very evening, “After all, my sister got
me here.” Well, then. Don’t pull me back, and hold me down. That’s all I
ask, and surely that’s not unconscionable.’
She had kept a steadfast look upon him, and she answered with composure:
‘I am not here selfishly, Charley. To please myself I could not be too
far from that river.’
‘Nor could you be too far from it to please me. Let us get quit of it
equally. Why should you linger about it any more than I? I give it a
wide berth.’
‘I can’t get away from it, I think,’ said Lizzie, passing her hand
across her forehead. ‘It’s no purpose of mine that I live by it still.’
‘There you go, Liz! Dreaming again! You lodge yourself of your own
accord in a house with a drunken--tailor, I suppose--or something of the
sort, and a little crooked antic of a child, or old person, or whatever
it is, and then you talk as if you were drawn or driven there. Now, do
be more practical.’
She had been practical enough with him, in suffering and striving
for him; but she only laid her hand upon his shoulder--not
reproachfully--and tapped it twice or thrice. She had been used to
do so, to soothe him when she carried him about, a child as heavy as
herself. Tears started to his eyes.
‘Upon my word, Liz,’ drawing the back of his hand across them, ‘I mean
to be a good brother to you, and to prove that I know what I owe you.
All I say is, that I hope you’ll control your fancies a little, on my
account. I’ll get a school, and then you must come and live with me,
and you’ll have to control your fancies then, so why not now? Now, say I
haven’t vexed you.’
‘You haven’t, Charley, you haven’t.’
‘And say I haven’t hurt you.’
‘You haven’t, Charley.’ But this answer was less ready.
‘Say you are sure I didn’t mean to. Come! There’s Mr Headstone stopping
and looking over the wall at the tide, to hint that it’s time to go.
Kiss me, and tell me that you know I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
She told him so, and they embraced, and walked on and came up with the
schoolmaster.
‘But we go your sister’s way,’ he remarked, when the boy told him he was
ready. And with his cumbrous and uneasy action he stiffly offered her
his arm. Her hand was just within it, when she drew it back. He looked
round with a start, as if he thought she had detected something that
repelled her, in the momentary touch.
‘I will not go in just yet,’ said Lizzie. ‘And you have a distance
before you, and will walk faster without me.’
Being by this time close to Vauxhall Bridge, they resolved, in
consequence, to take that way over the Thames, and they left her;
Bradley Headstone giving her his hand at parting, and she thanking him
for his care of her brother.
The master and the pupil walked on, rapidly and silently. They had
nearly crossed the bridge, when a gentleman came coolly sauntering
towards them, with a cigar in his mouth, his coat thrown back, and his
hands behind him. Something in the careless manner of this person,
and in a certain lazily arrogant air with which he approached, holding
possession of twice as much pavement as another would have claimed,
instantly caught the boy’s attention. As the gentleman passed the boy
looked at him narrowly, and then stood still, looking after him.
‘Who is it that you stare after?’ asked Bradley.
‘Why!’ said the boy, with a confused and pondering frown upon his face,
‘It IS that Wrayburn one!’
Bradley Headstone scrutinized the boy as closely as the boy had
scrutinized the gentleman.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Headstone, but I couldn’t help wondering what in
the world brought HIM here!’
Though he said it as if his wonder were past--at the same time resuming
the walk--it was not lost upon the master that he looked over his
shoulder after speaking, and that the same perplexed and pondering frown
was heavy on his face.
‘You don’t appear to like your friend, Hexam?’
‘I DON’T like him,’ said the boy.
‘Why not?’
‘He took hold of me by the chin in a precious impertinent way, the first
time I ever saw him,’ said the boy.
‘Again, why?’
‘For nothing. Or--it’s much the same--because something I happened to
say about my sister didn’t happen to please him.’
‘Then he knows your sister?’
‘He didn’t at that time,’ said the boy, still moodily pondering.
‘Does now?’
The boy had so lost himself that he looked at Mr Bradley Headstone
as they walked on side by side, without attempting to reply until the
question had been repeated; then he nodded and answered, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Going to see her, I dare say.’
‘It can’t be!’ said the boy, quickly. ‘He doesn’t know her well enough.
I should like to catch him at it!’
When they had walked on for a time, more rapidly than before, the master
said, clasping the pupil’s arm between the elbow and the shoulder with
his hand:
‘You were going to tell me something about that person. What did you say
his name was?’
‘Wrayburn. Mr Eugene Wrayburn. He is what they call a barrister, with
nothing to do. The first time he came to our old place was when my
father was alive. He came on business; not that it was HIS business--HE
never had any business--he was brought by a friend of his.’
‘And the other times?’
‘There was only one other time that I know of. When my father was killed
by accident, he chanced to be one of the finders. He was mooning about,
I suppose, taking liberties with people’s chins; but there he was,
somehow. He brought the news home to my sister early in the morning, and
brought Miss Abbey Potterson, a neighbour, to help break it to her.
He was mooning about the house when I was fetched home in the
afternoon--they didn’t know where to find me till my sister could be
brought round sufficiently to tell them--and then he mooned away.’
‘And is that all?’
‘That’s all, sir.’
Bradley Headstone gradually released the boy’s arm, as if he were
thoughtful, and they walked on side by side as before. After a long
silence between them, Bradley resumed the talk.
‘I suppose--your sister--’ with a curious break both before and after
the words, ‘has received hardly any teaching, Hexam?’
‘Hardly any, sir.’
‘Sacrificed, no doubt, to her father’s objections. I remember them in
your case. Yet--your sister--scarcely looks or speaks like an ignorant
person.’
‘Lizzie has as much thought as the best, Mr Headstone. Too much,
perhaps, without teaching. I used to call the fire at home, her books,
for she was always full of fancies--sometimes quite wise fancies,
considering--when she sat looking at it.’
‘I don’t like that,’ said Bradley Headstone.
His pupil was a little surprised by this striking in with so sudden
and decided and emotional an objection, but took it as a proof of the
master’s interest in himself. It emboldened him to say:
‘I have never brought myself to mention it openly to you, Mr Headstone,
and you’re my witness that I couldn’t even make up my mind to take it
from you before we came out to-night; but it’s a painful thing to think
that if I get on as well as you hope, I shall be--I won’t say disgraced,
because I don’t mean disgraced-but--rather put to the blush if it was
known--by a sister who has been very good to me.’
‘Yes,’ said Bradley Headstone in a slurring way, for his mind scarcely
seemed to touch that point, so smoothly did it glide to another, ‘and
there is this possibility to consider. Some man who had worked his way
might come to admire--your sister--and might even in time bring himself
to think of marrying--your sister--and it would be a sad drawback and a
heavy penalty upon him, if; overcoming in his mind other inequalities of
condition and other considerations against it, this inequality and this
consideration remained in full force.’
‘That’s much my own meaning, sir.’
‘Ay, ay,’ said Bradley Headstone, ‘but you spoke of a mere brother.
Now, the case I have supposed would be a much stronger case; because an
admirer, a husband, would form the connexion voluntarily, besides being
obliged to proclaim it: which a brother is not. After all, you know, it
must be said of you that you couldn’t help yourself: while it would be
said of him, with equal reason, that he could.’
‘That’s true, sir. Sometimes since Lizzie was left free by father’s
death, I have thought that such a young woman might soon acquire more
than enough to pass muster. And sometimes I have even thought that
perhaps Miss Peecher--’
‘For the purpose, I would advise Not Miss Peecher,’ Bradley Headstone
struck in with a recurrence of his late decision of manner.
‘Would you be so kind as to think of it for me, Mr Headstone?’
‘Yes, Hexam, yes. I’ll think of it. I’ll think maturely of it. I’ll
think well of it.’
Their walk was almost a silent one afterwards, until it ended at the
school-house. There, one of neat Miss Peecher’s little windows, like the
eyes in needles, was illuminated, and in a corner near it sat Mary Anne
watching, while Miss Peecher at the table stitched at the neat little
body she was making up by brown paper pattern for her own wearing. N.B.
Miss Peecher and Miss Peecher’s pupils were not much encouraged in the
unscholastic art of needlework, by Government.
Mary Anne with her face to the window, held her arm up.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’
‘Mr Headstone coming home, ma’am.’
In about a minute, Mary Anne again hailed.
‘Yes, Mary Anne?’
‘Gone in and locked his door, ma’am.’
Miss Peecher repressed a sigh as she gathered her work together for bed,
and transfixed that part of her dress where her heart would have been if
she had had the dress on, with a sharp, sharp needle.
Chapter 2
STILL EDUCATIONAL
The person of the house, doll’s dressmaker and manufacturer of
ornamental pincushions and pen-wipers, sat in her quaint little low
arm-chair, singing in the dark, until Lizzie came back. The person
of the house had attained that dignity while yet of very tender years
indeed, through being the only trustworthy person IN the house.
‘Well Lizzie-Mizzie-Wizzie,’ said she, breaking off in her song, ‘what’s
the news out of doors?’
‘What’s the news in doors?’ returned Lizzie, playfully smoothing the
bright long fair hair which grew very luxuriant and beautiful on the
head of the doll’s dressmaker.
‘Let me see, said the blind man. Why the last news is, that I don’t mean
to marry your brother.’
‘No?’
‘No-o,’ shaking her head and her chin. ‘Don’t like the boy.’
‘What do you say to his master?’
‘I say that I think he’s bespoke.’
Lizzie finished putting the hair carefully back over the misshapen
shoulders, and then lighted a candle. It showed the little parlour to
be dingy, but orderly and clean. She stood it on the mantelshelf, remote
from the dressmaker’s eyes, and then put the room door open, and the
house door open, and turned the little low chair and its occupant
towards the outer air. It was a sultry night, and this was a
fine-weather arrangement when the day’s work was done. To complete
it, she seated herself in a chair by the side of the little chair, and
protectingly drew under her arm the spare hand that crept up to her.
‘This is what your loving Jenny Wren calls the best time in the day and
night,’ said the person of the house. Her real name was Fanny Cleaver;
but she had long ago chosen to bestow upon herself the appellation of
Miss Jenny Wren.
‘I have been thinking,’ Jenny went on, ‘as I sat at work to-day, what
a thing it would be, if I should be able to have your company till I am
married, or at least courted. Because when I am courted, I shall make
Him do some of the things that you do for me. He couldn’t brush my hair
like you do, or help me up and down stairs like you do, and he couldn’t
do anything like you do; but he could take my work home, and he could
call for orders in his clumsy way. And he shall too. I’LL trot him
about, I can tell him!’
Jenny Wren had her personal vanities--happily for her--and no intentions
were stronger in her breast than the various trials and torments that
were, in the fulness of time, to be inflicted upon ‘him.’
‘Wherever he may happen to be just at present, or whoever he may happen
to be,’ said Miss Wren, ‘I know his tricks and his manners, and I give
him warning to look out.’
‘Don’t you think you are rather hard upon him?’ asked her friend,
smiling, and smoothing her hair.
‘Not a bit,’ replied the sage Miss Wren, with an air of vast experience.
‘My dear, they don’t care for you, those fellows, if you’re NOT hard
upon ‘em. But I was saying If I should be able to have your company. Ah!
What a large If! Ain’t it?’
‘I have no intention of parting company, Jenny.’
‘Don’t say that, or you’ll go directly.’
‘Am I so little to be relied upon?’
‘You’re more to be relied upon than silver and gold.’ As she said it,
Miss Wren suddenly broke off, screwed up her eyes and her chin, and
looked prodigiously knowing. ‘Aha!
Who comes here?
A Grenadier.
What does he want?
A pot of beer.
And nothing else in the world, my dear!’
A man’s figure paused on the pavement at the outer door. ‘Mr Eugene
Wrayburn, ain’t it?’ said Miss Wren.
‘So I am told,’ was the answer.
‘You may come in, if you’re good.’
‘I am not good,’ said Eugene, ‘but I’ll come in.’
He gave his hand to Jenny Wren, and he gave his hand to Lizzie, and he
stood leaning by the door at Lizzie’s side. He had been strolling with
his cigar, he said, (it was smoked out and gone by this time,) and he
had strolled round to return in that direction that he might look in as
he passed. Had she not seen her brother to-night?
‘Yes,’ said Lizzie, whose manner was a little troubled.
Gracious condescension on our brother’s part! Mr Eugene Wrayburn thought
he had passed my young gentleman on the bridge yonder. Who was his
friend with him?
‘The schoolmaster.’
‘To be sure. Looked like it.’
Lizzie sat so still, that one could not have said wherein the fact of
her manner being troubled was expressed; and yet one could not have
doubted it. Eugene was as easy as ever; but perhaps, as she sat with
her eyes cast down, it might have been rather more perceptible that
his attention was concentrated upon her for certain moments, than its
concentration upon any subject for any short time ever was, elsewhere.
‘I have nothing to report, Lizzie,’ said Eugene. ‘But, having promised
you that an eye should be always kept on Mr Riderhood through my friend
Lightwood, I like occasionally to renew my assurance that I keep my
promise, and keep my friend up to the mark.’
‘I should not have doubted it, sir.’
‘Generally, I confess myself a man to be doubted,’ returned Eugene,
coolly, ‘for all that.’
‘Why are you?’ asked the sharp Miss Wren.
‘Because, my dear,’ said the airy Eugene, ‘I am a bad idle dog.’
‘Then why don’t you reform and be a good dog?’ inquired Miss Wren.
‘Because, my dear,’ returned Eugene, ‘there’s nobody who makes it worth
my while. Have you considered my suggestion, Lizzie?’ This in a lower
voice, but only as if it were a graver matter; not at all to the
exclusion of the person of the house.
‘I have thought of it, Mr Wrayburn, but I have not been able to make up
my mind to accept it.’
‘False pride!’ said Eugene.
‘I think not, Mr Wrayburn. I hope not.’
‘False pride!’ repeated Eugene. ‘Why, what else is it? The thing is
worth nothing in itself. The thing is worth nothing to me. What can it
be worth to me? You know the most I make of it. I propose to be of some
use to somebody--which I never was in this world, and never shall be on
any other occasion--by paying some qualified person of your own sex and
age, so many (or rather so few) contemptible shillings, to come here,
certain nights in the week, and give you certain instruction which you
wouldn’t want if you hadn’t been a self-denying daughter and sister.
You know that it’s good to have it, or you would never have so devoted
yourself to your brother’s having it. Then why not have it: especially
when our friend Miss Jenny here would profit by it too? If I proposed to
be the teacher, or to attend the lessons--obviously incongruous!--but
as to that, I might as well be on the other side of the globe, or not
on the globe at all. False pride, Lizzie. Because true pride wouldn’t
shame, or be shamed by, your thankless brother. True pride wouldn’t have
schoolmasters brought here, like doctors, to look at a bad case. True
pride would go to work and do it. You know that, well enough, for you
know that your own true pride would do it to-morrow, if you had the ways
and means which false pride won’t let me supply. Very well. I add no
more than this. Your false pride does wrong to yourself and does wrong
to your dead father.’
‘How to my father, Mr Wrayburn?’ she asked, with an anxious face.
‘How to your father? Can you ask! By perpetuating the consequences of
his ignorant and blind obstinacy. By resolving not to set right the
wrong he did you. By determining that the deprivation to which he
condemned you, and which he forced upon you, shall always rest upon his
head.’
It chanced to be a subtle string to sound, in her who had so spoken to
her brother within the hour. It sounded far more forcibly, because of
the change in the speaker for the moment; the passing appearance of
earnestness, complete conviction, injured resentment of suspicion,
generous and unselfish interest. All these qualities, in him usually so
light and careless, she felt to be inseparable from some touch of their
opposites in her own breast. She thought, had she, so far below him
and so different, rejected this disinterestedness, because of some vain
misgiving that he sought her out, or heeded any personal attractions
that he might descry in her? The poor girl, pure of heart and purpose,
could not bear to think it. Sinking before her own eyes, as she
suspected herself of it, she drooped her head as though she had done him
some wicked and grievous injury, and broke into silent tears.
‘Don’t be distressed,’ said Eugene, very, very kindly. ‘I hope it is not
I who have distressed you. I meant no more than to put the matter in its
true light before you; though I acknowledge I did it selfishly enough,
for I am disappointed.’
Disappointed of doing her a service. How else COULD he be disappointed?
‘It won’t break my heart,’ laughed Eugene; ‘it won’t stay by me
eight-and-forty hours; but I am genuinely disappointed. I had set my
fancy on doing this little thing for you and for our friend Miss Jenny.
The novelty of my doing anything in the least useful, had its charms. I
see, now, that I might have managed it better. I might have affected to
do it wholly for our friend Miss J. I might have got myself up, morally,
as Sir Eugene Bountiful. But upon my soul I can’t make flourishes, and I
would rather be disappointed than try.’
If he meant to follow home what was in Lizzie’s thoughts, it was
skilfully done. If he followed it by mere fortuitous coincidence, it was
done by an evil chance.
‘It opened out so naturally before me,’ said Eugene. ‘The ball seemed so
thrown into my hands by accident! I happen to be originally brought into
contact with you, Lizzie, on those two occasions that you know of. I
happen to be able to promise you that a watch shall be kept upon that
false accuser, Riderhood. I happen to be able to give you some little
consolation in the darkest hour of your distress, by assuring you that I
don’t believe him. On the same occasion I tell you that I am the idlest
and least of lawyers, but that I am better than none, in a case I have
noted down with my own hand, and that you may be always sure of my best
help, and incidentally of Lightwood’s too, in your efforts to clear
your father. So, it gradually takes my fancy that I may help you--so
easily!--to clear your father of that other blame which I mentioned
a few minutes ago, and which is a just and real one. I hope I have
explained myself; for I am heartily sorry to have distressed you. I hate
to claim to mean well, but I really did mean honestly and simply well,
and I want you to know it.’
‘I have never doubted that, Mr Wrayburn,’ said Lizzie; the more
repentant, the less he claimed.
‘I am very glad to hear it. Though if you had quite understood my whole
meaning at first, I think you would not have refused. Do you think you
would?’
‘I--don’t know that I should, Mr Wrayburn.’
‘Well! Then why refuse now you do understand it?’
‘It’s not easy for me to talk to you,’ returned Lizzie, in some
confusion, ‘for you see all the consequences of what I say, as soon as I
say it.’
‘Take all the consequences,’ laughed Eugene, ‘and take away my
disappointment. Lizzie Hexam, as I truly respect you, and as I am your
friend and a poor devil of a gentleman, I protest I don’t even now
understand why you hesitate.’
There was an appearance of openness, trustfulness, unsuspecting
generosity, in his words and manner, that won the poor girl over; and
not only won her over, but again caused her to feel as though she had
been influenced by the opposite qualities, with vanity at their head.
‘I will not hesitate any longer, Mr Wrayburn. I hope you will not
think the worse of me for having hesitated at all. For myself and for
Jenny--you let me answer for you, Jenny dear?’
The little creature had been leaning back, attentive, with her elbows
resting on the elbows of her chair, and her chin upon her hands. Without
changing her attitude, she answered, ‘Yes!’ so suddenly that it rather
seemed as if she had chopped the monosyllable than spoken it.
‘For myself and for Jenny, I thankfully accept your kind offer.’
‘Agreed! Dismissed!’ said Eugene, giving Lizzie his hand before lightly
waving it, as if he waved the whole subject away. ‘I hope it may not be
often that so much is made of so little!’
Then he fell to talking playfully with Jenny Wren. ‘I think of setting
up a doll, Miss Jenny,’ he said.
‘You had better not,’ replied the dressmaker.
‘Why not?’
‘You are sure to break it. All you children do.’
‘But that makes good for trade, you know, Miss Wren,’ returned Eugene.
‘Much as people’s breaking promises and contracts and bargains of all
sorts, makes good for MY trade.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Miss Wren retorted; ‘but you had better by
half set up a pen-wiper, and turn industrious, and use it.’
‘Why, if we were all as industrious as you, little Busy-Body, we should
begin to work as soon as we could crawl, and there would be a bad
thing!’
‘Do you mean,’ returned the little creature, with a flush suffusing her
face, ‘bad for your backs and your legs?’
‘No, no, no,’ said Eugene; shocked--to do him justice--at the thought of
trifling with her infirmity. ‘Bad for business, bad for business. If we
all set to work as soon as we could use our hands, it would be all over
with the dolls’ dressmakers.’
‘There’s something in that,’ replied Miss Wren; ‘you have a sort of an
idea in your noddle sometimes.’ Then, in a changed tone; ‘Talking of
ideas, my Lizzie,’ they were sitting side by side as they had sat at
first, ‘I wonder how it happens that when I am work, work, working here,
all alone in the summer-time, I smell flowers.’
‘As a commonplace individual, I should say,’ Eugene suggested
languidly--for he was growing weary of the person of the house--‘that
you smell flowers because you DO smell flowers.’
‘No I don’t,’ said the little creature, resting one arm upon the elbow
of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly
before her; ‘this is not a flowery neighbourhood. It’s anything but
that. And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers. I smell roses,
till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the
floor. I smell fallen leaves, till I put down my hand--so--and expect to
make them rustle. I smell the white and the pink May in the hedges, and
all sorts of flowers that I never was among. For I have seen very few
flowers indeed, in my life.’
‘Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!’ said her friend: with a glance
towards Eugene as if she would have asked him whether they were given
the child in compensation for her losses.
‘So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And the birds I hear! Oh!’
cried the little creature, holding out her hand and looking upward, ‘how
they sing!’
There was something in the face and action for the moment, quite
inspired and beautiful. Then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand
again.
‘I dare say my birds sing better than other birds, and my flowers smell
better than other flowers. For when I was a little child,’ in a tone as
though it were ages ago, ‘the children that I used to see early in the
morning were very different from any others that I ever saw. They were
not like me; they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten; they
were never in pain. They were not like the children of the neighbours;
they never made me tremble all over, by setting up shrill noises, and
they never mocked me. Such numbers of them too! All in white dresses,
and with something shining on the borders, and on their heads, that I
have never been able to imitate with my work, though I know it so
well. They used to come down in long bright slanting rows, and say all
together, “Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!” When I told them
who it was, they answered, “Come and play with us!” When I said “I never
play! I can’t play!” they swept about me and took me up, and made me
light. Then it was all delicious ease and rest till they laid me
down, and said, all together, “Have patience, and we will come again.”
Whenever they came back, I used to know they were coming before I saw
the long bright rows, by hearing them ask, all together a long way off,
“Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!” And I used to cry out, “O my
blessed children, it’s poor me. Have pity on me. Take me up and make me
light!”’
By degrees, as she progressed in this remembrance, the hand was raised,
the late ecstatic look returned, and she became quite beautiful. Having
so paused for a moment, silent, with a listening smile upon her face,
she looked round and recalled herself.
‘What poor fun you think me; don’t you, Mr Wrayburn? You may well look
tired of me. But it’s Saturday night, and I won’t detain you.’
‘That is to say, Miss Wren,’ observed Eugene, quite ready to profit by
the hint, ‘you wish me to go?’
‘Well, it’s Saturday night,’ she returned, ‘and my child’s coming
home. And my child is a troublesome bad child, and costs me a world of
scolding. I would rather you didn’t see my child.’
‘A doll?’ said Eugene, not understanding, and looking for an
explanation.
But Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, ‘Her father,’ he
delayed no longer. He took his leave immediately. At the corner of the
street he stopped to light another cigar, and possibly to ask himself
what he was doing otherwise. If so, the answer was indefinite and vague.
Who knows what he is doing, who is careless what he does!
A man stumbled against him as he turned away, who mumbled some maudlin
apology. Looking after this man, Eugene saw him go in at the door by
which he himself had just come out.
On the man’s stumbling into the room, Lizzie rose to leave it.
‘Don’t go away, Miss Hexam,’ he said in a submissive manner, speaking
thickly and with difficulty. ‘Don’t fly from unfortunate man in
shattered state of health. Give poor invalid honour of your company. It
ain’t--ain’t catching.’
Lizzie murmured that she had something to do in her own room, and went
away upstairs.
‘How’s my Jenny?’ said the man, timidly. ‘How’s my Jenny Wren, best of
children, object dearest affections broken-hearted invalid?’
To which the person of the house, stretching out her arm in an attitude
of command, replied with irresponsive asperity: ‘Go along with you! Go
along into your corner! Get into your corner directly!’
The wretched spectacle made as if he would have offered some
remonstrance; but not venturing to resist the person of the house,
thought better of it, and went and sat down on a particular chair of
disgrace.
‘Oh-h-h!’ cried the person of the house, pointing her little finger,
‘You bad old boy! Oh-h-h you naughty, wicked creature! WHAT do you mean
by it?’
The shaking figure, unnerved and disjointed from head to foot, put
out its two hands a little way, as making overtures of peace and
reconciliation. Abject tears stood in its eyes, and stained the blotched
red of its cheeks. The swollen lead-coloured under lip trembled with a
shameful whine. The whole indecorous threadbare ruin, from the broken
shoes to the prematurely-grey scanty hair, grovelled. Not with any sense
worthy to be called a sense, of this dire reversal of the places of
parent and child, but in a pitiful expostulation to be let off from a
scolding.
‘I know your tricks and your manners,’ cried Miss Wren. ‘I know where
you’ve been to!’ (which indeed it did not require discernment to
discover). ‘Oh, you disgraceful old chap!’
The very breathing of the figure was contemptible, as it laboured and
rattled in that operation, like a blundering clock.
‘Slave, slave, slave, from morning to night,’ pursued the person of the
house, ‘and all for this! WHAT do you mean by it?’
There was something in that emphasized ‘What,’ which absurdly frightened
the figure. As often as the person of the house worked her way round to
it--even as soon as he saw that it was coming--he collapsed in an extra
degree.
‘I wish you had been taken up, and locked up,’ said the person of the
house. ‘I wish you had been poked into cells and black holes, and run
over by rats and spiders and beetles. I know their tricks and their
manners, and they’d have tickled you nicely. Ain’t you ashamed of
yourself?’
‘Yes, my dear,’ stammered the father.
‘Then,’ said the person of the house, terrifying him by a grand muster
of her spirits and forces before recurring to the emphatic word, ‘WHAT
do you mean by it?’
‘Circumstances over which had no control,’ was the miserable creature’s
plea in extenuation.
‘I’LL circumstance you and control you too,’ retorted the person of the
house, speaking with vehement sharpness, ‘if you talk in that way. I’ll
give you in charge to the police, and have you fined five shillings when
you can’t pay, and then I won’t pay the money for you, and you’ll be
transported for life. How should you like to be transported for life?’
‘Shouldn’t like it. Poor shattered invalid. Trouble nobody long,’ cried
the wretched figure.
‘Come, come!’ said the person of the house, tapping the table near her
in a business-like manner, and shaking her head and her chin; ‘you know
what you’ve got to do. Put down your money this instant.’
The obedient figure began to rummage in its pockets.
‘Spent a fortune out of your wages, I’ll be bound!’ said the person of
the house. ‘Put it here! All you’ve got left! Every farthing!’
Such a business as he made of collecting it from his dogs’-eared
pockets; of expecting it in this pocket, and not finding it; of not
expecting it in that pocket, and passing it over; of finding no pocket
where that other pocket ought to be!
‘Is this all?’ demanded the person of the house, when a confused heap of
pence and shillings lay on the table.
‘Got no more,’ was the rueful answer, with an accordant shake of the
head.
‘Let me make sure. You know what you’ve got to do. Turn all your pockets
inside out, and leave ‘em so!’ cried the person of the house.
He obeyed. And if anything could have made him look more abject or more
dismally ridiculous than before, it would have been his so displaying
himself.
‘Here’s but seven and eightpence halfpenny!’ exclaimed Miss Wren, after
reducing the heap to order. ‘Oh, you prodigal old son! Now you shall be
starved.’
‘No, don’t starve me,’ he urged, whimpering.
‘If you were treated as you ought to be,’ said Miss Wren, ‘you’d be fed
upon the skewers of cats’ meat;--only the skewers, after the cats had
had the meat. As it is, go to bed.’
When he stumbled out of the corner to comply, he again put out both his
hands, and pleaded: ‘Circumstances over which no control--’
‘Get along with you to bed!’ cried Miss Wren, snapping him up. ‘Don’t
speak to me. I’m not going to forgive you. Go to bed this moment!’
Seeing another emphatic ‘What’ upon its way, he evaded it by complying
and was heard to shuffle heavily up stairs, and shut his door, and throw
himself on his bed. Within a little while afterwards, Lizzie came down.
‘Shall we have our supper, Jenny dear?’
‘Ah! bless us and save us, we need have something to keep us going,’
returned Miss Jenny, shrugging her shoulders.
Lizzie laid a cloth upon the little bench (more handy for the person of
the house than an ordinary table), and put upon it such plain fare as
they were accustomed to have, and drew up a stool for herself.
‘Now for supper! What are you thinking of, Jenny darling?’
‘I was thinking,’ she returned, coming out of a deep study, ‘what I
would do to Him, if he should turn out a drunkard.’
‘Oh, but he won’t,’ said Lizzie. ‘You’ll take care of that, beforehand.’
‘I shall try to take care of it beforehand, but he might deceive me.
Oh, my dear, all those fellows with their tricks and their manners do
deceive!’ With the little fist in full action. ‘And if so, I tell you
what I think I’d do. When he was asleep, I’d make a spoon red hot, and
I’d have some boiling liquor bubbling in a saucepan, and I’d take it
out hissing, and I’d open his mouth with the other hand--or perhaps he’d
sleep with his mouth ready open--and I’d pour it down his throat, and
blister it and choke him.’
‘I am sure you would do no such horrible thing,’ said Lizzie.
‘Shouldn’t I? Well; perhaps I shouldn’t. But I should like to!’
‘I am equally sure you would not.’
‘Not even like to? Well, you generally know best. Only you haven’t
always lived among it as I have lived--and your back isn’t bad and your
legs are not queer.’
As they went on with their supper, Lizzie tried to bring her round to
that prettier and better state. But, the charm was broken. The person
of the house was the person of a house full of sordid shames and cares,
with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even
innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll’s
dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, worldly; of
the earth, earthy.
Poor doll’s dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should
have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the
eternal road, and asking guidance! Poor, poor little doll’s dressmaker!
Chapter 3
A PIECE OF WORK
Britannia, sitting meditating one fine day (perhaps in the attitude in
which she is presented on the copper coinage), discovers all of a sudden
that she wants Veneering in Parliament. It occurs to her that Veneering
is ‘a representative man’--which cannot in these times be doubted--and
that Her Majesty’s faithful Commons are incomplete without him. So,
Britannia mentions to a legal gentleman of her acquaintance that if
Veneering will ‘put down’ five thousand pounds, he may write a couple
of initial letters after his name at the extremely cheap rate of two
thousand five hundred per letter. It is clearly understood between
Britannia and the legal gentleman that nobody is to take up the five
thousand pounds, but that being put down they will disappear by magical
conjuration and enchantment.
The legal gentleman in Britannia’s confidence going straight from that
lady to Veneering, thus commissioned, Veneering declares himself highly
flattered, but requires breathing time to ascertain ‘whether his friends
will rally round him.’ Above all things, he says, it behoves him to be
clear, at a crisis of this importance, ‘whether his friends will rally
round him.’ The legal gentleman, in the interests of his client cannot
allow much time for this purpose, as the lady rather thinks she knows
somebody prepared to put down six thousand pounds; but he says he will
give Veneering four hours.
Veneering then says to Mrs Veneering, ‘We must work,’ and throws himself
into a Hansom cab. Mrs Veneering in the same moment relinquishes baby
to Nurse; presses her aquiline hands upon her brow, to arrange the
throbbing intellect within; orders out the carriage; and repeats in
a distracted and devoted manner, compounded of Ophelia and any
self-immolating female of antiquity you may prefer, ‘We must work.’
Veneering having instructed his driver to charge at the Public in the
streets, like the Life-Guards at Waterloo, is driven furiously to Duke
Street, Saint James’s. There, he finds Twemlow in his lodgings, fresh
from the hands of a secret artist who has been doing something to his
hair with yolks of eggs. The process requiring that Twemlow shall, for
two hours after the application, allow his hair to stick upright and dry
gradually, he is in an appropriate state for the receipt of startling
intelligence; looking equally like the Monument on Fish Street Hill, and
King Priam on a certain incendiary occasion not wholly unknown as a neat
point from the classics.
‘My dear Twemlow,’ says Veneering, grasping both his hands, ‘as the
dearest and oldest of my friends--’
[‘Then there can be no more doubt about it in future,’ thinks Twemlow,
‘and I AM!’)
‘--Are you of opinion that your cousin, Lord Snigsworth, would give his
name as a Member of my Committee? I don’t go so far as to ask for his
lordship; I only ask for his name. Do you think he would give me his
name?’
In sudden low spirits, Twemlow replies, ‘I don’t think he would.’
‘My political opinions,’ says Veneering, not previously aware of having
any, ‘are identical with those of Lord Snigsworth, and perhaps as a
matter of public feeling and public principle, Lord Snigsworth would
give me his name.’
‘It might be so,’ says Twemlow; ‘but--’ And perplexedly scratching his
head, forgetful of the yolks of eggs, is the more discomfited by being
reminded how stickey he is.
‘Between such old and intimate friends as ourselves,’ pursues Veneering,
‘there should in such a case be no reserve. Promise me that if I ask you
to do anything for me which you don’t like to do, or feel the slightest
difficulty in doing, you will freely tell me so.’
This, Twemlow is so kind as to promise, with every appearance of most
heartily intending to keep his word.
‘Would you have any objection to write down to Snigsworthy Park, and ask
this favour of Lord Snigsworth? Of course if it were granted I should
know that I owed it solely to you; while at the same time you would put
it to Lord Snigsworth entirely upon public grounds. Would you have any
objection?’
Says Twemlow, with his hand to his forehead, ‘You have exacted a promise
from me.’
‘I have, my dear Twemlow.’
‘And you expect me to keep it honourably.’
‘I do, my dear Twemlow.’
‘ON the whole, then;--observe me,’ urges Twemlow with great nicety, as
if; in the case of its having been off the whole, he would have done it
directly--‘ON the whole, I must beg you to excuse me from addressing any
communication to Lord Snigsworth.’
‘Bless you, bless you!’ says Veneering; horribly disappointed, but
grasping him by both hands again, in a particularly fervent manner.
It is not to be wondered at that poor Twemlow should decline to inflict
a letter on his noble cousin (who has gout in the temper), inasmuch
as his noble cousin, who allows him a small annuity on which he lives,
takes it out of him, as the phrase goes, in extreme severity; putting
him, when he visits at Snigsworthy Park, under a kind of martial law;
ordaining that he shall hang his hat on a particular peg, sit on a
particular chair, talk on particular subjects to particular people, and
perform particular exercises: such as sounding the praises of the Family
Varnish (not to say Pictures), and abstaining from the choicest of the
Family Wines unless expressly invited to partake.
‘One thing, however, I CAN do for you,’ says Twemlow; ‘and that is, work
for you.’
Veneering blesses him again.
‘I’ll go,’ says Twemlow, in a rising hurry of spirits, ‘to the
club;--let us see now; what o’clock is it?’
‘Twenty minutes to eleven.’
‘I’ll be,’ says Twemlow, ‘at the club by ten minutes to twelve, and I’ll
never leave it all day.’
Veneering feels that his friends are rallying round him, and says,
‘Thank you, thank you. I knew I could rely upon you. I said to Anastatia
before leaving home just now to come to you--of course the first friend
I have seen on a subject so momentous to me, my dear Twemlow--I said to
Anastatia, “We must work.”’
‘You were right, you were right,’ replies Twemlow. ‘Tell me. Is SHE
working?’
‘She is,’ says Veneering.
‘Good!’ cries Twemlow, polite little gentleman that he is. ‘A woman’s
tact is invaluable. To have the dear sex with us, is to have everything
with us.’
‘But you have not imparted to me,’ remarks Veneering, ‘what you think of
my entering the House of Commons?’
‘I think,’ rejoins Twemlow, feelingly, ‘that it is the best club in
London.’
Veneering again blesses him, plunges down stairs, rushes into his
Hansom, and directs the driver to be up and at the British Public, and
to charge into the City.
Meanwhile Twemlow, in an increasing hurry of spirits, gets his hair down
as well as he can--which is not very well; for, after these glutinous
applications it is restive, and has a surface on it somewhat in the
nature of pastry--and gets to the club by the appointed time. At the
club he promptly secures a large window, writing materials, and all
the newspapers, and establishes himself; immoveable, to be respectfully
contemplated by Pall Mall. Sometimes, when a man enters who nods to
him, Twemlow says, ‘Do you know Veneering?’ Man says, ‘No; member of
the club?’ Twemlow says, ‘Yes. Coming in for Pocket-Breaches.’ Man says,
‘Ah! Hope he may find it worth the money!’ yawns, and saunters out.
Towards six o’clock of the afternoon, Twemlow begins to persuade
himself that he is positively jaded with work, and thinks it much to be
regretted that he was not brought up as a Parliamentary agent.
From Twemlow’s, Veneering dashes at Podsnap’s place of business. Finds
Podsnap reading the paper, standing, and inclined to be oratorical
over the astonishing discovery he has made, that Italy is not England.
Respectfully entreats Podsnap’s pardon for stopping the flow of his
words of wisdom, and informs him what is in the wind. Tells Podsnap that
their political opinions are identical. Gives Podsnap to understand that
he, Veneering, formed his political opinions while sitting at the feet
of him, Podsnap. Seeks earnestly to know whether Podsnap ‘will rally
round him?’
Says Podsnap, something sternly, ‘Now, first of all, Veneering, do you
ask my advice?’
Veneering falters that as so old and so dear a friend--
‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well,’ says Podsnap; ‘but have you made up
your mind to take this borough of Pocket-Breaches on its own terms, or
do you ask my opinion whether you shall take it or leave it alone?’
Veneering repeats that his heart’s desire and his soul’s thirst are,
that Podsnap shall rally round him.
‘Now, I’ll be plain with you, Veneering,’ says Podsnap, knitting his
brows. ‘You will infer that I don’t care about Parliament, from the fact
of my not being there?’
Why, of course Veneering knows that! Of course Veneering knows that if
Podsnap chose to go there, he would be there, in a space of time that
might be stated by the light and thoughtless as a jiffy.
‘It is not worth my while,’ pursues Podsnap, becoming handsomely
mollified, ‘and it is the reverse of important to my position. But it
is not my wish to set myself up as law for another man, differently
situated. You think it IS worth YOUR while, and IS important to YOUR
position. Is that so?’
Always with the proviso that Podsnap will rally round him, Veneering
thinks it is so.
‘Then you don’t ask my advice,’ says Podsnap. ‘Good. Then I won’t give
it you. But you do ask my help. Good. Then I’ll work for you.’
Veneering instantly blesses him, and apprises him that Twemlow is
already working. Podsnap does not quite approve that anybody should
be already working--regarding it rather in the light of a liberty--but
tolerates Twemlow, and says he is a well-connected old female who will
do no harm.
‘I have nothing very particular to do to-day,’ adds Podsnap, ‘and I’ll
mix with some influential people. I had engaged myself to dinner, but
I’ll send Mrs Podsnap and get off going myself; and I’ll dine with you
at eight. It’s important we should report progress and compare notes.
Now, let me see. You ought to have a couple of active energetic fellows,
of gentlemanly manners, to go about.’
Veneering, after cogitation, thinks of Boots and Brewer.
‘Whom I have met at your house,’ says Podsnap. ‘Yes. They’ll do very
well. Let them each have a cab, and go about.’
Veneering immediately mentions what a blessing he feels it, to possess
a friend capable of such grand administrative suggestions, and really
is elated at this going about of Boots and Brewer, as an idea wearing
an electioneering aspect and looking desperately like business. Leaving
Podsnap, at a hand-gallop, he descends upon Boots and Brewer, who
enthusiastically rally round him by at once bolting off in cabs, taking
opposite directions. Then Veneering repairs to the legal gentleman in
Britannia’s confidence, and with him transacts some delicate affairs
of business, and issues an address to the independent electors of
Pocket-Breaches, announcing that he is coming among them for their
suffrages, as the mariner returns to the home of his early childhood: a
phrase which is none the worse for his never having been near the place
in his life, and not even now distinctly knowing where it is.
Mrs Veneering, during the same eventful hours, is not idle. No sooner
does the carriage turn out, all complete, than she turns into it, all
complete, and gives the word ‘To Lady Tippins’s.’ That charmer dwells
over a staymaker’s in the Belgravian Borders, with a life-size model
in the window on the ground floor of a distinguished beauty in a blue
petticoat, stay-lace in hand, looking over her shoulder at the town in
innocent surprise. As well she may, to find herself dressing under the
circumstances.
Lady Tippins at home? Lady Tippins at home, with the room darkened,
and her back (like the lady’s at the ground-floor window, though for a
different reason) cunningly turned towards the light. Lady Tippins is
so surprised by seeing her dear Mrs Veneering so early--in the middle of
the night, the pretty creature calls it--that her eyelids almost go up,
under the influence of that emotion.
To whom Mrs Veneering incoherently communicates, how that Veneering
has been offered Pocket-Breaches; how that it is the time for rallying
round; how that Veneering has said ‘We must work’; how that she is here,
as a wife and mother, to entreat Lady Tippins to work; how that the
carriage is at Lady Tippins’s disposal for purposes of work; how that
she, proprietress of said bran new elegant equipage, will return home on
foot--on bleeding feet if need be--to work (not specifying how), until
she drops by the side of baby’s crib.
‘My love,’ says Lady Tippins, ‘compose yourself; we’ll bring him in.’
And Lady Tippins really does work, and work the Veneering horses too;
for she clatters about town all day, calling upon everybody she knows,
and showing her entertaining powers and green fan to immense advantage,
by rattling on with, My dear soul, what do you think? What do
you suppose me to be? You’ll never guess. I’m pretending to be an
electioneering agent. And for what place of all places? Pocket-Breaches.
And why? Because the dearest friend I have in the world has bought it.
And who is the dearest friend I have in the world? A man of the name of
Veneering. Not omitting his wife, who is the other dearest friend I have
in the world; and I positively declare I forgot their baby, who is the
other. And we are carrying on this little farce to keep up appearances,
and isn’t it refreshing! Then, my precious child, the fun of it is that
nobody knows who these Veneerings are, and that they know nobody, and
that they have a house out of the Tales of the Genii, and give dinners
out of the Arabian Nights. Curious to see ‘em, my dear? Say you’ll know
‘em. Come and dine with ‘em. They shan’t bore you. Say who shall meet
you. We’ll make up a party of our own, and I’ll engage that they shall
not interfere with you for one single moment. You really ought to see
their gold and silver camels. I call their dinner-table, the Caravan.
Do come and dine with my Veneerings, my own Veneerings, my exclusive
property, the dearest friends I have in the world! And above all, my
dear, be sure you promise me your vote and interest and all sorts of
plumpers for Pocket-Breaches; for we couldn’t think of spending sixpence
on it, my love, and can only consent to be brought in by the spontaneous
thingummies of the incorruptible whatdoyoucallums.
Now, the point of view seized by the bewitching Tippins, that this same
working and rallying round is to keep up appearances, may have something
in it, but not all the truth. More is done, or considered to be
done--which does as well--by taking cabs, and ‘going about,’ than the
fair Tippins knew of. Many vast vague reputations have been made,
solely by taking cabs and going about. This particularly obtains in all
Parliamentary affairs. Whether the business in hand be to get a man in,
or get a man out, or get a man over, or promote a railway, or jockey
a railway, or what else, nothing is understood to be so effectual as
scouring nowhere in a violent hurry--in short, as taking cabs and going
about.
Probably because this reason is in the air, Twemlow, far from being
singular in his persuasion that he works like a Trojan, is capped by
Podsnap, who in his turn is capped by Boots and Brewer. At eight o’clock
when all these hard workers assemble to dine at Veneering’s, it is
understood that the cabs of Boots and Brewer mustn’t leave the door, but
that pails of water must be brought from the nearest baiting-place,
and cast over the horses’ legs on the very spot, lest Boots and Brewer
should have instant occasion to mount and away. Those fleet messengers
require the Analytical to see that their hats are deposited where they
can be laid hold of at an instant’s notice; and they dine (remarkably
well though) with the air of firemen in charge of an engine, expecting
intelligence of some tremendous conflagration.
Mrs Veneering faintly remarks, as dinner opens, that many such days
would be too much for her.
‘Many such days would be too much for all of us,’ says Podsnap; ‘but
we’ll bring him in!’
‘We’ll bring him in,’ says Lady Tippins, sportively waving her green
fan. ‘Veneering for ever!’
‘We’ll bring him in!’ says Twemlow.
‘We’ll bring him in!’ say Boots and Brewer.
Strictly speaking, it would be hard to show cause why they should not
bring him in, Pocket-Breaches having closed its little bargain, and
there being no opposition. However, it is agreed that they must ‘work’
to the last, and that if they did not work, something indefinite would
happen. It is likewise agreed that they are all so exhausted with the
work behind them, and need to be so fortified for the work before them,
as to require peculiar strengthening from Veneering’s cellar. Therefore,
the Analytical has orders to produce the cream of the cream of his
binns, and therefore it falls out that rallying becomes rather a trying
word for the occasion; Lady Tippins being observed gamely to inculcate
the necessity of rearing round their dear Veneering; Podsnap advocating
roaring round him; Boots and Brewer declaring their intention of reeling
round him; and Veneering thanking his devoted friends one and all, with
great emotion, for rarullarulling round him.
In these inspiring moments, Brewer strikes out an idea which is the
great hit of the day. He consults his watch, and says (like Guy Fawkes),
he’ll now go down to the House of Commons and see how things look.
‘I’ll keep about the lobby for an hour or so,’ says Brewer, with a
deeply mysterious countenance, ‘and if things look well, I won’t come
back, but will order my cab for nine in the morning.’
‘You couldn’t do better,’ says Podsnap.
Veneering expresses his inability ever to acknowledge this last service.
Tears stand in Mrs Veneering’s affectionate eyes. Boots shows envy,
loses ground, and is regarded as possessing a second-rate mind. They all
crowd to the door, to see Brewer off. Brewer says to his driver, ‘Now,
is your horse pretty fresh?’ eyeing the animal with critical scrutiny.
Driver says he’s as fresh as butter. ‘Put him along then,’ says Brewer;
‘House of Commons.’ Driver darts up, Brewer leaps in, they cheer him as
he departs, and Mr Podsnap says, ‘Mark my words, sir. That’s a man of
resource; that’s a man to make his way in life.’
When the time comes for Veneering to deliver a neat and appropriate
stammer to the men of Pocket-Breaches, only Podsnap and Twemlow
accompany him by railway to that sequestered spot. The legal gentleman
is at the Pocket-Breaches Branch Station, with an open carriage with a
printed bill ‘Veneering for ever’ stuck upon it, as if it were a wall;
and they gloriously proceed, amidst the grins of the populace, to a
feeble little town hall on crutches, with some onions and bootlaces
under it, which the legal gentleman says are a Market; and from the
front window of that edifice Veneering speaks to the listening earth.
In the moment of his taking his hat off, Podsnap, as per agreement made
with Mrs Veneering, telegraphs to that wife and mother, ‘He’s up.’
Veneering loses his way in the usual No Thoroughfares of speech, and
Podsnap and Twemlow say Hear hear! and sometimes, when he can’t by any
means back himself out of some very unlucky No Thoroughfare, ‘He-a-a-r
He-a-a-r!’ with an air of facetious conviction, as if the ingenuity of
the thing gave them a sensation of exquisite pleasure. But Veneering
makes two remarkably good points; so good, that they are supposed
to have been suggested to him by the legal gentleman in Britannia’s
confidence, while briefly conferring on the stairs.
Point the first is this. Veneering institutes an original comparison
between the country, and a ship; pointedly calling the ship, the Vessel
of the State, and the Minister the Man at the Helm. Veneering’s object
is to let Pocket-Breaches know that his friend on his right (Podsnap) is
a man of wealth. Consequently says he, ‘And, gentlemen, when the timbers
of the Vessel of the State are unsound and the Man at the Helm is
unskilful, would those great Marine Insurers, who rank among our
world-famed merchant-princes--would they insure her, gentlemen? Would
they underwrite her? Would they incur a risk in her? Would they have
confidence in her? Why, gentlemen, if I appealed to my honourable friend
upon my right, himself among the greatest and most respected of that
great and much respected class, he would answer No!’
Point the second is this. The telling fact that Twemlow is related to
Lord Snigsworth, must be let off. Veneering supposes a state of public
affairs that probably never could by any possibility exist (though this
is not quite certain, in consequence of his picture being unintelligible
to himself and everybody else), and thus proceeds. ‘Why, gentlemen, if
I were to indicate such a programme to any class of society, I say it
would be received with derision, would be pointed at by the finger of
scorn. If I indicated such a programme to any worthy and intelligent
tradesman of your town--nay, I will here be personal, and say Our
town--what would he reply? He would reply, “Away with it!” That’s what
HE would reply, gentlemen. In his honest indignation he would reply,
“Away with it!” But suppose I mounted higher in the social scale.
Suppose I drew my arm through the arm of my respected friend upon my
left, and, walking with him through the ancestral woods of his family,
and under the spreading beeches of Snigsworthy Park, approached the
noble hall, crossed the courtyard, entered by the door, went up the
staircase, and, passing from room to room, found myself at last in
the august presence of my friend’s near kinsman, Lord Snigsworth. And
suppose I said to that venerable earl, “My Lord, I am here before your
lordship, presented by your lordship’s near kinsman, my friend upon my
left, to indicate that programme;” what would his lordship answer? Why,
he would answer, “Away with it!” That’s what he would answer, gentlemen.
“Away with it!” Unconsciously using, in his exalted sphere, the exact
language of the worthy and intelligent tradesman of our town, the near
and dear kinsman of my friend upon my left would answer in his wrath,
“Away with it!”’
Veneering finishes with this last success, and Mr Podsnap telegraphs to
Mrs Veneering, ‘He’s down.’
Then, dinner is had at the Hotel with the legal gentleman, and then
there are in due succession, nomination, and declaration. Finally Mr
Podsnap telegraphs to Mrs Veneering, ‘We have brought him in.’
Another gorgeous dinner awaits them on their return to the Veneering
halls, and Lady Tippins awaits them, and Boots and Brewer await
them. There is a modest assertion on everybody’s part that everybody
single-handed ‘brought him in’; but in the main it is conceded by all,
that that stroke of business on Brewer’s part, in going down to the
house that night to see how things looked, was the master-stroke.
A touching little incident is related by Mrs Veneering, in the course of
the evening. Mrs Veneering is habitually disposed to be tearful, and
has an extra disposition that way after her late excitement. Previous
to withdrawing from the dinner-table with Lady Tippins, she says, in a
pathetic and physically weak manner:
‘You will all think it foolish of me, I know, but I must mention it. As
I sat by Baby’s crib, on the night before the election, Baby was very
uneasy in her sleep.’
The Analytical chemist, who is gloomily looking on, has diabolical
impulses to suggest ‘Wind’ and throw up his situation; but represses
them.
‘After an interval almost convulsive, Baby curled her little hands in
one another and smiled.’
Mrs Veneering stopping here, Mr Podsnap deems it incumbent on him to
say: ‘I wonder why!’
‘Could it be, I asked myself,’ says Mrs Veneering, looking about her for
her pocket-handkerchief, ‘that the Fairies were telling Baby that her
papa would shortly be an M. P.?’
So overcome by the sentiment is Mrs Veneering, that they all get up
to make a clear stage for Veneering, who goes round the table to the
rescue, and bears her out backward, with her feet impressively scraping
the carpet: after remarking that her work has been too much for her
strength. Whether the fairies made any mention of the five thousand
pounds, and it disagreed with Baby, is not speculated upon.
Poor little Twemlow, quite done up, is touched, and still continues
touched after he is safely housed over the livery-stable yard in
Duke Street, Saint James’s. But there, upon his sofa, a tremendous
consideration breaks in upon the mild gentleman, putting all softer
considerations to the rout.
‘Gracious heavens! Now I have time to think of it, he never saw one of
his constituents in all his days, until we saw them together!’
After having paced the room in distress of mind, with his hand to his
forehead, the innocent Twemlow returns to his sofa and moans:
‘I shall either go distracted, or die, of this man. He comes upon me too
late in life. I am not strong enough to bear him!’
Chapter 4
CUPID PROMPTED
To use the cold language of the world, Mrs Alfred Lammle rapidly
improved the acquaintance of Miss Podsnap. To use the warm language of
Mrs Lammle, she and her sweet Georgiana soon became one: in heart, in
mind, in sentiment, in soul.
Whenever Georgiana could escape from the thraldom of Podsnappery; could
throw off the bedclothes of the custard-coloured phaeton, and get up;
could shrink out of the range of her mother’s rocking, and (so to speak)
rescue her poor little frosty toes from being rocked over; she repaired
to her friend, Mrs Alfred Lammle. Mrs Podsnap by no means objected. As
a consciously ‘splendid woman,’ accustomed to overhear herself so
denominated by elderly osteologists pursuing their studies in dinner
society, Mrs Podsnap could dispense with her daughter. Mr Podsnap, for
his part, on being informed where Georgiana was, swelled with patronage
of the Lammles. That they, when unable to lay hold of him, should
respectfully grasp at the hem of his mantle; that they, when they could
not bask in the glory of him the sun, should take up with the pale
reflected light of the watery young moon his daughter; appeared quite
natural, becoming, and proper. It gave him a better opinion of the
discretion of the Lammles than he had heretofore held, as showing that
they appreciated the value of the connexion. So, Georgiana repairing
to her friend, Mr Podsnap went out to dinner, and to dinner, and yet to
dinner, arm in arm with Mrs Podsnap: settling his obstinate head in his
cravat and shirt-collar, much as if he were performing on the Pandean
pipes, in his own honour, the triumphal march, See the conquering
Podsnap comes, Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!
It was a trait in Mr Podsnap’s character (and in one form or other
it will be generally seen to pervade the depths and shallows of
Podsnappery), that he could not endure a hint of disparagement of any
friend or acquaintance of his. ‘How dare you?’ he would seem to say, in
such a case. ‘What do you mean? I have licensed this person. This person
has taken out MY certificate. Through this person you strike at me,
Podsnap the Great. And it is not that I particularly care for the
person’s dignity, but that I do most particularly care for Podsnap’s.’
Hence, if any one in his presence had presumed to doubt the
responsibility of the Lammles, he would have been mightily huffed. Not
that any one did, for Veneering, M.P., was always the authority for
their being very rich, and perhaps believed it. As indeed he might, if
he chose, for anything he knew of the matter.
Mr and Mrs Lammle’s house in Sackville Street, Piccadilly, was but
a temporary residence. It has done well enough, they informed their
friends, for Mr Lammle when a bachelor, but it would not do now. So,
they were always looking at palatial residences in the best situations,
and always very nearly taking or buying one, but never quite concluding
the bargain. Hereby they made for themselves a shining little reputation
apart. People said, on seeing a vacant palatial residence, ‘The very
thing for the Lammles!’ and wrote to the Lammles about it, and the
Lammles always went to look at it, but unfortunately it never exactly
answered. In short, they suffered so many disappointments, that they
began to think it would be necessary to build a palatial residence.
And hereby they made another shining reputation; many persons of their
acquaintance becoming by anticipation dissatisfied with their own
houses, and envious of the non-existent Lammle structure.
The handsome fittings and furnishings of the house in Sackville Street
were piled thick and high over the skeleton up-stairs, and if it ever
whispered from under its load of upholstery, ‘Here I am in the closet!’
it was to very few ears, and certainly never to Miss Podsnap’s. What
Miss Podsnap was particularly charmed with, next to the graces of
her friend, was the happiness of her friend’s married life. This was
frequently their theme of conversation.
‘I am sure,’ said Miss Podsnap, ‘Mr Lammle is like a lover. At least
I--I should think he was.’
‘Georgiana, darling!’ said Mrs Lammle, holding up a forefinger, ‘Take
care!’
‘Oh my goodness me!’ exclaimed Miss Podsnap, reddening. ‘What have I
said now?’
‘Alfred, you know,’ hinted Mrs Lammle, playfully shaking her head. ‘You
were never to say Mr Lammle any more, Georgiana.’
‘Oh! Alfred, then. I am glad it’s no worse. I was afraid I had said
something shocking. I am always saying something wrong to ma.’
‘To me, Georgiana dearest?’
‘No, not to you; you are not ma. I wish you were.’
Mrs Lammle bestowed a sweet and loving smile upon her friend, which Miss
Podsnap returned as she best could. They sat at lunch in Mrs Lammle’s
own boudoir.
‘And so, dearest Georgiana, Alfred is like your notion of a lover?’
‘I don’t say that, Sophronia,’ Georgiana replied, beginning to conceal
her elbows. ‘I haven’t any notion of a lover. The dreadful wretches that
ma brings up at places to torment me, are not lovers. I only mean that
Mr--’
‘Again, dearest Georgiana?’
‘That Alfred--’
‘Sounds much better, darling.’
‘--Loves you so. He always treats you with such delicate gallantry and
attention. Now, don’t he?’
‘Truly, my dear,’ said Mrs Lammle, with a rather singular expression
crossing her face. ‘I believe that he loves me, fully as much as I love
him.’
‘Oh, what happiness!’ exclaimed Miss Podsnap.
‘But do you know, my Georgiana,’ Mrs Lammle resumed presently, ‘that
there is something suspicious in your enthusiastic sympathy with
Alfred’s tenderness?’
‘Good gracious no, I hope not!’
‘Doesn’t it rather suggest,’ said Mrs Lammle archly, ‘that my
Georgiana’s little heart is--’
‘Oh don’t!’ Miss Podsnap blushingly besought her. ‘Please don’t! I
assure you, Sophronia, that I only praise Alfred, because he is your
husband and so fond of you.’
Sophronia’s glance was as if a rather new light broke in upon her. It
shaded off into a cool smile, as she said, with her eyes upon her lunch,
and her eyebrows raised:
‘You are quite wrong, my love, in your guess at my meaning. What I
insinuated was, that my Georgiana’s little heart was growing conscious
of a vacancy.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Georgiana. ‘I wouldn’t have anybody say anything to
me in that way for I don’t know how many thousand pounds.’
‘In what way, my Georgiana?’ inquired Mrs Lammle, still smiling coolly
with her eyes upon her lunch, and her eyebrows raised.
‘YOU know,’ returned poor little Miss Podsnap. ‘I think I should go out
of my mind, Sophronia, with vexation and shyness and detestation, if
anybody did. It’s enough for me to see how loving you and your husband
are. That’s a different thing. I couldn’t bear to have anything of that
sort going on with myself. I should beg and pray to--to have the person
taken away and trampled upon.’
Ah! here was Alfred. Having stolen in unobserved, he playfully leaned on
the back of Sophronia’s chair, and, as Miss Podsnap saw him, put one
of Sophronia’s wandering locks to his lips, and waved a kiss from it
towards Miss Podsnap.
‘What is this about husbands and detestations?’ inquired the captivating
Alfred.
‘Why, they say,’ returned his wife, ‘that listeners never hear any good
of themselves; though you--but pray how long have you been here, sir?’
‘This instant arrived, my own.’
‘Then I may go on--though if you had been here but a moment or two
sooner, you would have heard your praises sounded by Georgiana.’
‘Only, if they were to be called praises at all which I really don’t
think they were,’ explained Miss Podsnap in a flutter, ‘for being so
devoted to Sophronia.’
‘Sophronia!’ murmured Alfred. ‘My life!’ and kissed her hand. In return
for which she kissed his watch-chain.
‘But it was not I who was to be taken away and trampled upon, I hope?’
said Alfred, drawing a seat between them.
‘Ask Georgiana, my soul,’ replied his wife.
Alfred touchingly appealed to Georgiana.
‘Oh, it was nobody,’ replied Miss Podsnap. ‘It was nonsense.’
‘But if you are determined to know, Mr Inquisitive Pet, as I suppose you
are,’ said the happy and fond Sophronia, smiling, ‘it was any one who
should venture to aspire to Georgiana.’
‘Sophronia, my love,’ remonstrated Mr Lammle, becoming graver, ‘you are
not serious?’
‘Alfred, my love,’ returned his wife, ‘I dare say Georgiana was not, but
I am.’
‘Now this,’ said Mr Lammle, ‘shows the accidental combinations that
there are in things! Could you believe, my Ownest, that I came in here
with the name of an aspirant to our Georgiana on my lips?’
‘Of course I could believe, Alfred,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘anything that YOU
told me.’
‘You dear one! And I anything that YOU told me.’
How delightful those interchanges, and the looks accompanying them! Now,
if the skeleton up-stairs had taken that opportunity, for instance, of
calling out ‘Here I am, suffocating in the closet!’
‘I give you my honour, my dear Sophronia--’
‘And I know what that is, love,’ said she.
‘You do, my darling--that I came into the room all but uttering young
Fledgeby’s name. Tell Georgiana, dearest, about young Fledgeby.’
‘Oh no, don’t! Please don’t!’ cried Miss Podsnap, putting her fingers in
her ears. ‘I’d rather not.’
Mrs Lammle laughed in her gayest manner, and, removing her Georgiana’s
unresisting hands, and playfully holding them in her own at arms’
length, sometimes near together and sometimes wide apart, went on:
‘You must know, you dearly beloved little goose, that once upon a
time there was a certain person called young Fledgeby. And this young
Fledgeby, who was of an excellent family and rich, was known to two
other certain persons, dearly attached to one another and called Mr and
Mrs Alfred Lammle. So this young Fledgeby, being one night at the play,
there sees with Mr and Mrs Alfred Lammle, a certain heroine called--’
‘No, don’t say Georgiana Podsnap!’ pleaded that young lady almost in
tears. ‘Please don’t. Oh do do do say somebody else! Not Georgiana
Podsnap. Oh don’t, don’t, don’t!’
‘No other,’ said Mrs Lammle, laughing airily, and, full of affectionate
blandishments, opening and closing Georgiana’s arms like a pair of
compasses, ‘than my little Georgiana Podsnap. So this young Fledgeby goes
to that Alfred Lammle and says--’
‘Oh ple-e-e-ease don’t!’ Georgiana, as if the supplication were being
squeezed out of her by powerful compression. ‘I so hate him for saying
it!’
‘For saying what, my dear?’ laughed Mrs Lammle.
‘Oh, I don’t know what he said,’ cried Georgiana wildly, ‘but I hate him
all the same for saying it.’
‘My dear,’ said Mrs Lammle, always laughing in her most captivating way,
‘the poor young fellow only says that he is stricken all of a heap.’
‘Oh, what shall I ever do!’ interposed Georgiana. ‘Oh my goodness what a
Fool he must be!’
‘--And implores to be asked to dinner, and to make a fourth at the play
another time. And so he dines to-morrow and goes to the Opera with
us. That’s all. Except, my dear Georgiana--and what will you think of
this!--that he is infinitely shyer than you, and far more afraid of you
than you ever were of any one in all your days!’
In perturbation of mind Miss Podsnap still fumed and plucked at her
hands a little, but could not help laughing at the notion of anybody’s
being afraid of her. With that advantage, Sophronia flattered her and
rallied her more successfully, and then the insinuating Alfred flattered
her and rallied her, and promised that at any moment when she might
require that service at his hands, he would take young Fledgeby out and
trample on him. Thus it remained amicably understood that young Fledgeby
was to come to admire, and that Georgiana was to come to be admired; and
Georgiana with the entirely new sensation in her breast of having that
prospect before her, and with many kisses from her dear Sophronia in
present possession, preceded six feet one of discontented footman (an
amount of the article that always came for her when she walked home) to
her father’s dwelling.
The happy pair being left together, Mrs Lammle said to her husband:
‘If I understand this girl, sir, your dangerous fascinations have
produced some effect upon her. I mention the conquest in good time
because I apprehend your scheme to be more important to you than your
vanity.’
There was a mirror on the wall before them, and her eyes just caught
him smirking in it. She gave the reflected image a look of the deepest
disdain, and the image received it in the glass. Next moment they
quietly eyed each other, as if they, the principals, had had no part in
that expressive transaction.
It may have been that Mrs Lammle tried in some manner to excuse her
conduct to herself by depreciating the poor little victim of whom she
spoke with acrimonious contempt. It may have been too that in this she
did not quite succeed, for it is very difficult to resist confidence,
and she knew she had Georgiana’s.
Nothing more was said between the happy pair. Perhaps conspirators
who have once established an understanding, may not be over-fond of
repeating the terms and objects of their conspiracy. Next day came; came
Georgiana; and came Fledgeby.
Georgiana had by this time seen a good deal of the house and its
frequenters. As there was a certain handsome room with a billiard table
in it--on the ground floor, eating out a backyard--which might have
been Mr Lammle’s office, or library, but was called by neither name, but
simply Mr Lammle’s room, so it would have been hard for stronger female
heads than Georgiana’s to determine whether its frequenters were men
of pleasure or men of business. Between the room and the men there were
strong points of general resemblance. Both were too gaudy, too slangey,
too odorous of cigars, and too much given to horseflesh; the latter
characteristic being exemplified in the room by its decorations, and in
the men by their conversation. High-stepping horses seemed necessary to
all Mr Lammle’s friends--as necessary as their transaction of business
together in a gipsy way at untimely hours of the morning and evening,
and in rushes and snatches. There were friends who seemed to be always
coming and going across the Channel, on errands about the Bourse, and
Greek and Spanish and India and Mexican and par and premium and discount
and three quarters and seven eighths. There were other friends who
seemed to be always lolling and 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. They
were all feverish, boastful, and indefinably loose; and they all ate and
drank a great deal; and made bets in eating and drinking. They all spoke
of sums of money, and only mentioned the sums and left the money to
be understood; as ‘five and forty thousand Tom,’ or ‘Two hundred and
twenty-two on every individual share in the lot Joe.’ They seemed to
divide the world into two classes of people; people who were making
enormous fortunes, and people who were being enormously ruined. They
were always in a hurry, and yet seemed to have nothing tangible to do;
except a few of them (these, mostly asthmatic and thick-lipped) who were
for ever demonstrating to the rest, with gold pencil-cases which they
could hardly hold because of the big rings on their forefingers, how
money was to be made. Lastly, they all swore at their grooms, and the
grooms were not quite as respectful or complete as other men’s grooms;
seeming somehow to fall short of the groom point as their masters fell
short of the gentleman point.
Young Fledgeby was none of these. Young Fledgeby had a peachy cheek,
or a cheek compounded of the peach and the red red red wall on which
it grows, and was an awkward, sandy-haired, small-eyed youth, exceeding
slim (his enemies would have said lanky), and prone to self-examination
in the articles of whisker and moustache. While feeling for the whisker
that he anxiously expected, Fledgeby underwent remarkable fluctuations
of spirits, ranging along the whole scale from confidence to despair.
There were times when he started, as exclaiming ‘By Jupiter here it is
at last!’ There were other times when, being equally depressed, he would
be seen to shake his head, and give up hope. To see him at those periods
leaning on a chimneypiece, like as on an urn containing the ashes of his
ambition, with the cheek that would not sprout, upon the hand on which
that cheek had forced conviction, was a distressing sight.
Not so was Fledgeby seen on this occasion. Arrayed in superb raiment,
with his opera hat under his arm, he concluded his self-examination
hopefully, awaited the arrival of Miss Podsnap, and talked small-talk
with Mrs Lammle. In facetious homage to the smallness of his talk, and
the jerky nature of his manners, Fledgeby’s familiars had agreed to
confer upon him (behind his back) the honorary title of Fascination
Fledgeby.
‘Warm weather, Mrs Lammle,’ said Fascination Fledgeby. Mrs Lammle
thought it scarcely as warm as it had been yesterday. ‘Perhaps not,’
said Fascination Fledgeby, with great quickness of repartee; ‘but I
expect it will be devilish warm to-morrow.’
He threw off another little scintillation. ‘Been out to-day, Mrs
Lammle?’
Mrs Lammle answered, for a short drive.
‘Some people,’ said Fascination Fledgeby, ‘are accustomed to take long
drives; but it generally appears to me that if they make ‘em too long,
they overdo it.’
Being in such feather, he might have surpassed himself in his next
sally, had not Miss Podsnap been announced. Mrs Lammle flew to embrace
her darling little Georgy, and when the first transports were over,
presented Mr Fledgeby. Mr Lammle came on the scene last, for he was
always late, and so were the frequenters always late; all hands being
bound to be made late, by private information about the Bourse, and
Greek and Spanish and India and Mexican and par and premium and discount
and three quarters and seven eighths.
A handsome little dinner was served immediately, and Mr Lammle sat
sparkling at his end of the table, with his servant behind his chair,
and HIS ever-lingering doubts upon the subject of his wages behind
himself. Mr Lammle’s utmost powers of sparkling were in requisition
to-day, for Fascination Fledgeby and Georgiana not only struck each
other speechless, but struck each other into astonishing attitudes;
Georgiana, as she sat facing Fledgeby, making such efforts to conceal
her elbows as were totally incompatible with the use of a knife and
fork; and Fledgeby, as he sat facing Georgiana, avoiding her countenance
by every possible device, and betraying the discomposure of his mind in
feeling for his whiskers with his spoon, his wine glass, and his bread.
So, Mr and Mrs Alfred Lammle had to prompt, and this is how they
prompted.
‘Georgiana,’ said Mr Lammle, low and smiling, and sparkling all over,
like a harlequin; ‘you are not in your usual spirits. Why are you not in
your usual spirits, Georgiana?’
Georgiana faltered that she was much the same as she was in general; she
was not aware of being different.
‘Not aware of being different!’ retorted Mr Alfred Lammle. ‘You, my dear
Georgiana! Who are always so natural and unconstrained with us! Who are
such a relief from the crowd that are all alike! Who are the embodiment
of gentleness, simplicity, and reality!’
Miss Podsnap looked at the door, as if she entertained confused thoughts
of taking refuge from these compliments in flight.
‘Now, I will be judged,’ said Mr Lammle, raising his voice a little, ‘by
my friend Fledgeby.’
‘Oh DON’T!’ Miss Podsnap faintly ejaculated: when Mrs Lammle took the
prompt-book.
‘I beg your pardon, Alfred, my dear, but I cannot part with Mr Fledgeby
quite yet; you must wait for him a moment. Mr Fledgeby and I are engaged
in a personal discussion.’
Fledgeby must have conducted it on his side with immense art, for no
appearance of uttering one syllable had escaped him.
‘A personal discussion, Sophronia, my love? What discussion? Fledgeby, I
am jealous. What discussion, Fledgeby?’
‘Shall I tell him, Mr Fledgeby?’ asked Mrs Lammle.
Trying to look as if he knew anything about it, Fascination replied,
‘Yes, tell him.’
‘We were discussing then,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘if you MUST know, Alfred,
whether Mr Fledgeby was in his usual flow of spirits.’
‘Why, that is the very point, Sophronia, that Georgiana and I were
discussing as to herself! What did Fledgeby say?’
‘Oh, a likely thing, sir, that I am going to tell you everything, and be
told nothing! What did Georgiana say?’
‘Georgiana said she was doing her usual justice to herself to-day, and I
said she was not.’
‘Precisely,’ exclaimed Mrs Lammle, ‘what I said to Mr Fledgeby.’ Still,
it wouldn’t do. They would not look at one another. No, not even
when the sparkling host proposed that the quartette should take an
appropriately sparkling glass of wine. Georgiana looked from her wine
glass at Mr Lammle and at Mrs Lammle; but mightn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t,
wouldn’t, look at Mr Fledgeby. Fascination looked from his wine glass
at Mrs Lammle and at Mr Lammle; but mightn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t,
wouldn’t, look at Georgiana.
More prompting was necessary. Cupid must be brought up to the mark. The
manager had put him down in the bill for the part, and he must play it.
‘Sophronia, my dear,’ said Mr Lammle, ‘I don’t like the colour of your
dress.’
‘I appeal,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘to Mr Fledgeby.’
‘And I,’ said Mr Lammle, ‘to Georgiana.’
‘Georgy, my love,’ remarked Mrs Lammle aside to her dear girl, ‘I rely
upon you not to go over to the opposition. Now, Mr Fledgeby.’
Fascination wished to know if the colour were not called rose-colour?
Yes, said Mr Lammle; actually he knew everything; it was really
rose-colour. Fascination took rose-colour to mean the colour of roses.
(In this he was very warmly supported by Mr and Mrs Lammle.) Fascination
had heard the term Queen of Flowers applied to the Rose. Similarly, it
might be said that the dress was the Queen of Dresses. [‘Very happy,
Fledgeby!’ from Mr Lammle.) Notwithstanding, Fascination’s opinion
was that we all had our eyes--or at least a large majority of us--and
that--and--and his farther opinion was several ands, with nothing beyond
them.
‘Oh, Mr Fledgeby,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘to desert me in that way! Oh, Mr
Fledgeby, to abandon my poor dear injured rose and declare for blue!’
‘Victory, victory!’ cried Mr Lammle; ‘your dress is condemned, my dear.’
‘But what,’ said Mrs Lammle, stealing her affectionate hand towards her
dear girl’s, ‘what does Georgy say?’
‘She says,’ replied Mr Lammle, interpreting for her, ‘that in her eyes
you look well in any colour, Sophronia, and that if she had expected to
be embarrassed by so pretty a compliment as she has received, she would
have worn another colour herself. Though I tell her, in reply, that it
would not have saved her, for whatever colour she had worn would have
been Fledgeby’s colour. But what does Fledgeby say?’
‘He says,’ replied Mrs Lammle, interpreting for him, and patting the
back of her dear girl’s hand, as if it were Fledgeby who was patting it,
‘that it was no compliment, but a little natural act of homage that
he couldn’t resist. And,’ expressing more feeling as if it were more
feeling on the part of Fledgeby, ‘he is right, he is right!’
Still, no not even now, would they look at one another. Seeming to gnash
his sparkling teeth, studs, eyes, and buttons, all at once, Mr Lammle
secretly bent a dark frown on the two, expressive of an intense desire
to bring them together by knocking their heads together.
‘Have you heard this opera of to-night, Fledgeby?’ he asked, stopping
very short, to prevent himself from running on into ‘confound you.’
‘Why no, not exactly,’ said Fledgeby. ‘In fact I don’t know a note of
it.’
‘Neither do you know it, Georgy?’ said Mrs Lammle. ‘N-no,’ replied
Georgiana, faintly, under the sympathetic coincidence.
‘Why, then,’ said Mrs Lammle, charmed by the discovery which flowed from
the premises, ‘you neither of you know it! How charming!’
Even the craven Fledgeby felt that the time was now come when he must
strike a blow. He struck it by saying, partly to Mrs Lammle and partly
to the circumambient air, ‘I consider myself very fortunate in being
reserved by--’
As he stopped dead, Mr Lammle, making that gingerous bush of his
whiskers to look out of, offered him the word ‘Destiny.’
‘No, I wasn’t going to say that,’ said Fledgeby. ‘I was going to say
Fate. I consider it very fortunate that Fate has written in the book
of--in the book which is its own property--that I should go to that
opera for the first time under the memorable circumstances of going with
Miss Podsnap.’
To which Georgiana replied, hooking her two little fingers in one
another, and addressing the tablecloth, ‘Thank you, but I generally go
with no one but you, Sophronia, and I like that very much.’
Content perforce with this success for the time, Mr Lammle let Miss
Podsnap out of the room, as if he were opening her cage door, and Mrs
Lammle followed. Coffee being presently served up stairs, he kept a
watch on Fledgeby until Miss Podsnap’s cup was empty, and then directed
him with his finger (as if that young gentleman were a slow Retriever)
to go and fetch it. This feat he performed, not only without failure,
but even with the original embellishment of informing Miss Podsnap that
green tea was considered bad for the nerves. Though there Miss Podsnap
unintentionally threw him out by faltering, ‘Oh, is it indeed? How does
it act?’ Which he was not prepared to elucidate.
The carriage announced, Mrs Lammle said; ‘Don’t mind me, Mr Fledgeby, my
skirts and cloak occupy both my hands, take Miss Podsnap.’ And he
took her, and Mrs Lammle went next, and Mr Lammle went last, savagely
following his little flock, like a drover.
But he was all sparkle and glitter in the box at the Opera, and there he
and his dear wife made a conversation between Fledgeby and Georgiana in
the following ingenious and skilful manner. They sat in this order:
Mrs Lammle, Fascination Fledgeby, Georgiana, Mr Lammle. Mrs Lammle made
leading remarks to Fledgeby, only requiring monosyllabic replies. Mr
Lammle did the like with Georgiana. At times Mrs Lammle would lean
forward to address Mr Lammle to this purpose.
‘Alfred, my dear, Mr Fledgeby very justly says, apropos of the last
scene, that true constancy would not require any such stimulant as the
stage deems necessary.’ To which Mr Lammle would reply, ‘Ay, Sophronia,
my love, but as Georgiana has observed to me, the lady had no sufficient
reason to know the state of the gentleman’s affections.’ To which Mrs
Lammle would rejoin, ‘Very true, Alfred; but Mr Fledgeby points
out,’ this. To which Alfred would demur: ‘Undoubtedly, Sophronia, but
Georgiana acutely remarks,’ that. Through this device the two young
people conversed at great length and committed themselves to a variety
of delicate sentiments, without having once opened their lips, save to
say yes or no, and even that not to one another.
Fledgeby took his leave of Miss Podsnap at the carriage door, and the
Lammles dropped her at her own home, and on the way Mrs Lammle archly
rallied her, in her fond and protecting manner, by saying at intervals,
‘Oh little Georgiana, little Georgiana!’ Which was not much; but the
tone added, ‘You have enslaved your Fledgeby.’
And thus the Lammles got home at last, and the lady sat down moody and
weary, looking at her dark lord engaged in a deed of violence with a
bottle of soda-water as though he were wringing the neck of some unlucky
creature and pouring its blood down his throat. As he wiped his dripping
whiskers in an ogreish way, he met her eyes, and pausing, said, with no
very gentle voice:
‘Well?’
‘Was such an absolute Booby necessary to the purpose?’
‘I know what I am doing. He is no such dolt as you suppose.’
‘A genius, perhaps?’
‘You sneer, perhaps; and you take a lofty air upon yourself perhaps!
But I tell you this:--when that young fellow’s interest is concerned,
he holds as tight as a horse-leech. When money is in question with that
young fellow, he is a match for the Devil.’
‘Is he a match for you?’
‘He is. Almost as good a one as you thought me for you. He has no
quality of youth in him, but such as you have seen to-day. Touch him
upon money, and you touch no booby then. He really is a dolt, I suppose,
in other things; but it answers his one purpose very well.’
‘Has she money in her own right in any case?’
‘Ay! she has money in her own right in any case. You have done so well
to-day, Sophronia, that I answer the question, though you know I object
to any such questions. You have done so well to-day, Sophronia, that you
must be tired. Get to bed.’
Chapter 5
MERCURY PROMPTING
Fledgeby deserved Mr Alfred Lammle’s eulogium. He was the meanest
cur existing, with a single pair of legs. And instinct (a word we all
clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason always on
two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on
two.
The father of this young gentleman had been a money-lender, who
had transacted professional business with the mother of this
young gentleman, when he, the latter, was waiting in the vast dark
ante-chambers of the present world to be born. The lady, a widow, being
unable to pay the money-lender, married him; and in due course, Fledgeby
was summoned out of the vast dark ante-chambers to come and be presented
to the Registrar-General. Rather a curious speculation how Fledgeby
would otherwise have disposed of his leisure until Doomsday.
Fledgeby’s mother offended her family by marrying Fledgeby’s father. It
is one of the easiest achievements in life to offend your family when
your family want to get rid of you. Fledgeby’s mother’s family had
been very much offended with her for being poor, and broke with her
for becoming comparatively rich. Fledgeby’s mother’s family was the
Snigsworth family. She had even the high honour to be cousin to Lord
Snigsworth--so many times removed that the noble Earl would have had no
compunction in removing her one time more and dropping her clean outside
the cousinly pale; but cousin for all that.
Among her pre-matrimonial transactions with Fledgeby’s father,
Fledgeby’s mother had raised money of him at a great disadvantage on a
certain reversionary interest. The reversion falling in soon after they
were married, Fledgeby’s father laid hold of the cash for his separate
use and benefit. This led to subjective differences of opinion, not to
say objective interchanges of boot-jacks, backgammon boards, and other
such domestic missiles, between Fledgeby’s father and Fledgeby’s mother,
and those led to Fledgeby’s mother spending as much money as she
could, and to Fledgeby’s father doing all he couldn’t to restrain her.
Fledgeby’s childhood had been, in consequence, a stormy one; but the
winds and the waves had gone down in the grave, and Fledgeby flourished
alone.
He lived in chambers in the Albany, did Fledgeby, and maintained a
spruce appearance. But his youthful fire was all composed of sparks from
the grindstone; and as the sparks flew off, went out, and never warmed
anything, be sure that Fledgeby had his tools at the grindstone, and
turned it with a wary eye.
Mr Alfred Lammle came round to the Albany to breakfast with Fledgeby.
Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf, two scanty
pats of butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an
abundance of handsome china bought a secondhand bargain.
‘What did you think of Georgiana?’ asked Mr Lammle.
‘Why, I’ll tell you,’ said Fledgeby, very deliberately.
‘Do, my boy.’
‘You misunderstand me,’ said Fledgeby. ‘I don’t mean I’ll tell you that.
I mean I’ll tell you something else.’
‘Tell me anything, old fellow!’
‘Ah, but there you misunderstand me again,’ said Fledgeby. ‘I mean I’ll
tell you nothing.’
Mr Lammle sparkled at him, but frowned at him too.
‘Look here,’ said Fledgeby. ‘You’re deep and you’re ready. Whether I am
deep or not, never mind. I am not ready. But I can do one thing, Lammle,
I can hold my tongue. And I intend always doing it.’
‘You are a long-headed fellow, Fledgeby.’
‘May be, or may not be. If I am a short-tongued fellow, it may amount to
the same thing. Now, Lammle, I am never going to answer questions.’
‘My dear fellow, it was the simplest question in the world.’
‘Never mind. It seemed so, but things are not always what they seem. I
saw a man examined as a witness in Westminster Hall. Questions put to
him seemed the simplest in the world, but turned out to be anything
rather than that, after he had answered ‘em. Very well. Then he should
have held his tongue. If he had held his tongue he would have kept out
of scrapes that he got into.’
‘If I had held my tongue, you would never have seen the subject of my
question,’ remarked Lammle, darkening.
‘Now, Lammle,’ said Fascination Fledgeby, calmly feeling for his
whisker, ‘it won’t do. I won’t be led on into a discussion. I can’t
manage a discussion. But I can manage to hold my tongue.’
‘Can?’ Mr Lammle fell back upon propitiation. ‘I should think you could!
Why, when these fellows of our acquaintance drink and you drink with
them, the more talkative they get, the more silent you get. The more
they let out, the more you keep in.’
‘I don’t object, Lammle,’ returned Fledgeby, with an internal chuckle,
‘to being understood, though I object to being questioned. That
certainly IS the way I do it.’
‘And when all the rest of us are discussing our ventures, none of us
ever know what a single venture of yours is!’
‘And none of you ever will from me, Lammle,’ replied Fledgeby, with
another internal chuckle; ‘that certainly IS the way I do it.’
‘Why of course it is, I know!’ rejoined Lammle, with a flourish of
frankness, and a laugh, and stretching out his hands as if to show
the universe a remarkable man in Fledgeby. ‘If I hadn’t known it of my
Fledgeby, should I have proposed our little compact of advantage, to my
Fledgeby?’
‘Ah!’ remarked Fascination, shaking his head slyly. ‘But I am not to
be got at in that way. I am not vain. That sort of vanity don’t pay,
Lammle. No, no, no. Compliments only make me hold my tongue the more.’
Alfred Lammle pushed his plate away (no great sacrifice under the
circumstances of there being so little in it), thrust his hands in his
pockets, leaned back in his chair, and contemplated Fledgeby in silence.
Then he slowly released his left hand from its pocket, and made that
bush of his whiskers, still contemplating him in silence. Then he slowly
broke silence, and slowly said: ‘What--the--Dev-il is this fellow about
this morning?’
‘Now, look here, Lammle,’ said Fascination Fledgeby, with the meanest
of twinkles in his meanest of eyes: which were too near together, by
the way: ‘look here, Lammle; I am very well aware that I didn’t show to
advantage last night, and that you and your wife--who, I consider, is
a very clever woman and an agreeable woman--did. I am not calculated to
show to advantage under that sort of circumstances. I know very well you
two did show to advantage, and managed capitally. But don’t you on that
account come talking to me as if I was your doll and puppet, because I
am not.
‘And all this,’ cried Alfred, after studying with a look the meanness
that was fain to have the meanest help, and yet was so mean as to turn
upon it: ‘all this because of one simple natural question!’
‘You should have waited till I thought proper to say something about it
of myself. I don’t like your coming over me with your Georgianas, as if
you was her proprietor and mine too.’
‘Well, when you are in the gracious mind to say anything about it of
yourself,’ retorted Lammle, ‘pray do.’
‘I have done it. I have said you managed capitally. You and your wife
both. If you’ll go on managing capitally, I’ll go on doing my part. Only
don’t crow.’
‘I crow!’ exclaimed Lammle, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Or,’ pursued the other--‘or take it in your head that people are your
puppets because they don’t come out to advantage at the particular
moments when you do, with the assistance of a very clever and agreeable
wife. All the rest keep on doing, and let Mrs Lammle keep on doing. Now,
I have held my tongue when I thought proper, and I have spoken when I
thought proper, and there’s an end of that. And now the question is,’
proceeded Fledgeby, with the greatest reluctance, ‘will you have another
egg?’
‘No, I won’t,’ said Lammle, shortly.
‘Perhaps you’re right and will find yourself better without it,’ replied
Fascination, in greatly improved spirits. ‘To ask you if you’ll have
another rasher would be unmeaning flattery, for it would make you
thirsty all day. Will you have some more bread and butter?’
‘No, I won’t,’ repeated Lammle.
‘Then I will,’ said Fascination. And it was not a mere retort for the
sound’s sake, but was a cheerful cogent consequence of the refusal; for
if Lammle had applied himself again to the loaf, it would have been so
heavily visited, in Fledgeby’s opinion, as to demand abstinence from
bread, on his part, for the remainder of that meal at least, if not for
the whole of the next.
Whether this young gentleman (for he was but three-and-twenty) combined
with the miserly vice of an old man, any of the open-handed vices of
a young one, was a moot point; so very honourably did he keep his own
counsel. He was sensible of the value of appearances as an investment,
and liked to dress well; but he drove a bargain for every moveable about
him, from the coat on his back to the china on his breakfast-table;
and every bargain by representing somebody’s ruin or somebody’s loss,
acquired a peculiar charm for him. It was a part of his avarice to take,
within narrow bounds, long odds at races; if he won, he drove harder
bargains; if he lost, he half starved himself until next time. Why money
should be so precious to an Ass too dull and mean to exchange it for any
other satisfaction, is strange; but there is no animal so sure to get
laden with it, as the Ass who sees nothing written on the face of the
earth and sky but the three letters L. S. D.--not Luxury, Sensuality,
Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but the three dry letters.
Your concentrated Fox is seldom comparable to your concentrated Ass in
money-breeding.
Fascination Fledgeby feigned to be a young gentleman living on his
means, but was known secretly to be a kind of outlaw in the bill-broking
line, and to put money out at high interest in various ways. His circle
of familiar acquaintance, from Mr Lammle round, all had a touch of the
outlaw, as to their rovings in the merry greenwood of Jobbery Forest,
lying on the outskirts of the Share-Market and the Stock Exchange.
‘I suppose you, Lammle,’ said Fledgeby, eating his bread and butter,
‘always did go in for female society?’
‘Always,’ replied Lammle, glooming considerably under his late
treatment.
‘Came natural to you, eh?’ said Fledgeby.
‘The sex were pleased to like me, sir,’ said Lammle sulkily, but with
the air of a man who had not been able to help himself.
‘Made a pretty good thing of marrying, didn’t you?’ asked Fledgeby.
The other smiled (an ugly smile), and tapped one tap upon his nose.
‘My late governor made a mess of it,’ said Fledgeby. ‘But Geor--is the
right name Georgina or Georgiana?’
‘Georgiana.’
‘I was thinking yesterday, I didn’t know there was such a name. I
thought it must end in ina.’
‘Why?’
‘Why, you play--if you can--the Concertina, you know,’ replied
Fledgeby, meditating very slowly. ‘And you have--when you catch it--the
Scarlatina. And you can come down from a balloon in a parach--no you
can’t though. Well, say Georgeute--I mean Georgiana.’
‘You were going to remark of Georgiana--?’ Lammle moodily hinted, after
waiting in vain.
‘I was going to remark of Georgiana, sir,’ said Fledgeby, not at all
pleased to be reminded of his having forgotten it, ‘that she don’t seem
to be violent. Don’t seem to be of the pitching-in order.’
‘She has the gentleness of the dove, Mr Fledgeby.’
‘Of course you’ll say so,’ replied Fledgeby, sharpening, the moment his
interest was touched by another. ‘But you know, the real look-out is
this:--what I say, not what you say. I say having my late governor
and my late mother in my eye--that Georgiana don’t seem to be of the
pitching-in order.’
The respected Mr Lammle was a bully, by nature and by usual practice.
Perceiving, as Fledgeby’s affronts cumulated, that conciliation by no
means answered the purpose here, he now directed a scowling look
into Fledgeby’s small eyes for the effect of the opposite treatment.
Satisfied by what he saw there, he burst into a violent passion and
struck his hand upon the table, making the china ring and dance.
‘You are a very offensive fellow, sir,’ cried Mr Lammle, rising. ‘You
are a highly offensive scoundrel. What do you mean by this behaviour?’
‘I say!’ remonstrated Fledgeby. ‘Don’t break out.’
‘You are a very offensive fellow sir,’ repeated Mr Lammle. ‘You are a
highly offensive scoundrel!’
‘I SAY, you know!’ urged Fledgeby, quailing.
‘Why, you coarse and vulgar vagabond!’ said Mr Lammle, looking fiercely
about him, ‘if your servant was here to give me sixpence of your
money to get my boots cleaned afterwards--for you are not worth the
expenditure--I’d kick you.’
‘No you wouldn’t,’ pleaded Fledgeby. ‘I am sure you’d think better of
it.’
‘I tell you what, Mr Fledgeby,’ said Lammle advancing on him. ‘Since
you presume to contradict me, I’ll assert myself a little. Give me your
nose!’
Fledgeby covered it with his hand instead, and said, retreating, ‘I beg
you won’t!’
‘Give me your nose, sir,’ repeated Lammle.
Still covering that feature and backing, Mr Fledgeby reiterated
(apparently with a severe cold in his head), ‘I beg, I beg, you won’t.’
‘And this fellow,’ exclaimed Lammle, stopping and making the most of his
chest--‘This fellow presumes on my having selected him out of all the
young fellows I know, for an advantageous opportunity! This fellow
presumes on my having in my desk round the corner, his dirty note of
hand for a wretched sum payable on the occurrence of a certain event,
which event can only be of my and my wife’s bringing about!
