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Our Mutual Friend
Dickens, Charles
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O
UR MUTUAL FRIEND by Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend
2
Chapter 1 − ON THE LOOK OUT
I
n 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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 1 − ON THE LOOK OUT 4
'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!'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 1 − ON THE LOOK OUT 5
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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 1 − ON THE LOOK OUT 6
'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
you're 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!'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 1 − ON THE LOOK OUT 7
'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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 1 − ON THE LOOK OUT 8
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE
M
r 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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 9
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!'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 10
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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 11
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
renumerative 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,
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 12
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.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 13
'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!
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 14
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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 15
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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 16
'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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 17
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!'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE 18
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN
A
s 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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 19
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.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 20
'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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 21
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?'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 22
''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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 23
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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 24
'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 Morrimer
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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 25
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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 26
'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.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 27
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?'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 28
'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.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 29
The girl laughed delightedly, and here 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?'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 30
'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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 31
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 Lighiwood'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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN 32
Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY
R
eginald 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.'
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Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 33
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.'
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Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 34
'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.'
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Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 35
'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 wordly−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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 36
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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 37
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.
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Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 38
'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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 39
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!'
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Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 40
'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;
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 41
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.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 42
'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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY 43
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER
O
ver 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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 44
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!'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 45
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.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 46
'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.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 47
'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.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 48
'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?'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 49
'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!
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 50
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!'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 51
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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 52
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 he 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.'
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Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 53
'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.
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Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 54
'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
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Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 55
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.'
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Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 56
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?'
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Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 57
'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
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Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 58
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!'
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Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER 59
Chapter 6 − CUT ADRIFT
T
he 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
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 6 − CUT ADRIFT 60
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 – '
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Chapter 6 − CUT ADRIFT 61
'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
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Chapter 6 − CUT ADRIFT 62
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.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 6 − CUT ADRIFT 63
'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 he 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 cormpany 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.
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Chapter 6 − CUT ADRIFT 64
'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.
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'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?'
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'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,
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'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.
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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.
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'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
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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!'
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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.'
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'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.'
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Chapter 6 − CUT ADRIFT 73
'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.
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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?'
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Chapter 7 − MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF
S
ilas 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 he 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
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Chapter 7 − MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF 76
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.
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Chapter 7 − MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF 77
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
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Chapter 7 − MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF 78
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.'
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'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?'
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Chapter 7 − MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF 80
'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.'
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Mr Venus thus delivers hmself, 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».'
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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.'
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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.
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Chapter 8 − MR BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
W
hosoever 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.'
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'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, be 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.
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Chapter 8 − MR BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 86
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, and so
forth, Court of Chancery having been moved, and so forth, he, Mr Lightwood, had now the
gratification, honour, and happiness, again 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 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!'
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'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 be
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
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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
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Chapter 8 − MR BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 89
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.'
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'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?'
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'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.
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'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
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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!'
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'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.
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'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.'
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'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 it's 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.
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Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
B
etaking 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 cheerfial 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?'
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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'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).
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'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
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Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 104
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.'
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Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 105
'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.
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Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 106
'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.'
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Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 107
'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.'
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Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 108
'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.
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Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 109
'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.'
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Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 110
'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.
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Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION 111
Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT
T
here 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
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Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT 112
T., if not particularly engaged that day, to come like a charining 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.)
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Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT 113
'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
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Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT 114
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
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Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT 115
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
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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 arrn 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
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Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT 117
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
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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.
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Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT 119
'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.'
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'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
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Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT 121
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.'
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Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT 122
'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.'
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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.
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Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT 124
Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY
M
r 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. Elsewhere, 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.
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 125
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.'
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 126
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
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 127
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?'
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 128
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.'
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 129
'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.
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 130
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!'
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 131
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.'
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 132
'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
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 133
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.
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'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.
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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
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 136
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.
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 137
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 he 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
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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 beard 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.
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Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY 139
Chapter 12 − THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN'S BROW
M
r 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
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Chapter 12 − THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN'S BROW 140
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.'
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'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.'
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'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.
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'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.'
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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?'
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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.
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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.'
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'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
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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
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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 Mottimer,
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?'
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'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.'
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'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.
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'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 crnshed 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.
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'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 ahout
him, no doubt.'
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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.'
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T
he 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.
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'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.
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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,
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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.
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'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.'
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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.
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'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!
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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.'
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'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.'
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'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!'
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C
old 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.
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'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.
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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.'
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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
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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
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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
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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 he 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?
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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.'
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Chapter 15 − TWO NEW SERVANTS
M
r 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?'
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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
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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.'
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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.
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'«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.'
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'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
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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:
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'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?'
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'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.
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Chapter 15 − TWO NEW SERVANTS 182
– 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 argunyment) in the evening. Would that man's pay as a reader in the
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Chapter 15 − TWO NEW SERVANTS 183
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 he 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.'
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Chapter 15 − TWO NEW SERVANTS 184
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
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Chapter 15 − TWO NEW SERVANTS 185
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.
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Chapter 15 − TWO NEW SERVANTS 186
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.
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Chapter 15 − TWO NEW SERVANTS 187
Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS
T
he 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.
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 188
'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 he 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 decided 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.
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 189
'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
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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
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 191
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.'
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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 he 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!'
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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 themsleves 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.'
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 194
'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!'
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 195
'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
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 196
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 buccaneermg 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.'
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 197
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?'
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 198
'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
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 199
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
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 200
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.'
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 201
'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.
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Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS 202
Chapter 17 − A DISMAL SWAMP
A
nd 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
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Chapter 17 − A DISMAL SWAMP 203
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,
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Chapter 17 − A DISMAL SWAMP 204
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.
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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.
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Chapter 1 − OF AN EDUCATIONAL CHARACTER
T
he 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
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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.
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'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
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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
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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.
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'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?'
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'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.
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'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
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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?'
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'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
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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!'
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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?'
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'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.'
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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
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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
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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?'
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'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 be 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.'
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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.'
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'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.
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Chapter 2 − STILL EDUCATIONAL
T
he 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
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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?
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'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
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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
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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?'
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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.'
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'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.
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'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?'
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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.
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Chapter 2 − STILL EDUCATIONAL 235
'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?'
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'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!
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Chapter 3 − A PIECE OF WORK
B
ritannia, 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 bands, as the dearest and oldest
of my friends – '
('Then there can be no more doubt about it in future,' thinks Twemlow, 'and I AM!')
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' – 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 Snigswotth 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;
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Chapter 3 − A PIECE OF WORK 239
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.
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Chapter 3 − A PIECE OF WORK 240
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.'
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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
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Chapter 3 − A PIECE OF WORK 242
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)
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Chapter 3 − A PIECE OF WORK 243
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
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Chapter 3 − A PIECE OF WORK 244
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
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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.?'
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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!'
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Chapter 4 − CUPID PROMPTED
T
o 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
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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 he 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 – '
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'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.
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'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,
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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!'
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' – 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;
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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.'
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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.'
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'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.'
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'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.
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'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
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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.'
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F
ledgeby 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 Fledgehy 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
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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 Lammie 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
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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.'
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'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
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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
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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! This fellow, Fledgeby,
presumes to be impertinent to me, Lammle. Give me your nose sir!'
'No! Stop! I beg your pardon,' said Fledgeby, with humility.
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'What do you say, sir?' demanded Mr Lammle, seeming too furious to understand.
'I beg your pardon,' repeated Fledgeby.
'Repeat your words louder, sir. The just indignation of a gentleman has sent the blood
boiling to my head. I don't hear you.'
'I say,' repeated Fledgeby, with laborious explanatory politeness, 'I beg your pardon.'
Mr Lammle paused. 'As a man of honour,' said he, throwing himself into a chair, 'I am
disarmed.'
Mr Fledgeby also took a chair, though less demonstratively, and by slow approaches
removed his hand from his nose. Some natural diffidence assailed him as to blowing it, so
shortly after its having assumed a personal and delicate, not to say public, character; but he
overcame his scruples by degrees, and modestly took that liberty under an implied protest.
'Lammle,' he said sneakingly, when that was done, 'I hope we are friends again?'
'Mr Fledgeby,' returned Lammle, 'say no more.'
'I must have gone too far in making myself disagreeable,' said Fledgeby, 'but I never
intended it.'
'Say no more, say no more!' Mr Lammle repeated in a magnificent tone. 'Give me your'
– Fledgeby started – 'hand.'
They shook hands, and on Mr Lammle's part, in particular, there ensued great geniality.
For, he was quite as much of a dastard as the other, and had been in equal danger of falling
into the second place for good, when he took heart just in time, to act upon the information
conveyed to him by Fledgeby's eye.
The breakfast ended in a perfect understanding. Incessant machinations were to be kept
at work by Mr and Mrs Lammle; love was to be made for Fledgeby, and conquest was to be
insured to him; he on his part very humbly admitting his defects as to the softer social arts,
and entreating to be backed to the utmost by his two able coadjutors.
Little recked Mr Podsnap of the traps and toils besetting his Young Person. He regarded
her as safe within the Temple of Podsnappery, hiding the fulness of time when she,
Georgiana, should take him, Fitz−Podsnap, who with all his worldly goods should her
endow. It would call a blush into the cheek of his standard Young Person to have anything
to do with such matters save to take as directed, and with worldly goods as per settlement to
be endowed. Who giveth this woman to be married to this man? I, Podsnap. Perish the
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daring thought that any smaller creation should come between!
It was a public holiday, and Fledgeby did not recover his spirits or his usual temperature
of nose until the afternoon. Walking into the City in the holiday afternoon, he walked
against a living stream setting out of it; and thus, when he turned into the precincts of St
Mary Axe, he found a prevalent repose and quiet there. A yellow overhanging
plaster−fronted house at which be stopped was quiet too. The blinds were all drawn down,
and the inscription Pubsey and Co. seemed to doze in the counting−house window on the
ground−floor giving on the sleepy street.
Fledgeby knocked and rang, and Fledgeby rang and knocked, but no one came.
Fledgeby crossed the narrow street and looked up at the house−windows, but nobody looked
down at Fledgeby. He got out of temper, crossed the narrow street again, and pulled the
housebell as if it were the house's nose, and he were taking a hint from his late experience.
His ear at the keyhole seemed then, at last, to give him assurance that something stirred
within. His eye at the keyhole seemed to confirm his ear, for he angrily pulled the house's
nose again, and pulled and pulled and continued to pull, until a human nose appeared in the
dark doorway.
'Now you sir!' cried Fledgeby. 'These are nice games!'
He addressed an old Jewish man in an ancient coat, long of skirt, and wide of pocket. A
venerable man, bald and shining at the top of his head, and with long grey hair flowing
down at its sides and mingling with his beard. A man who with a graceful Eastern action of
homage bent his head, and stretched out his hands with the palms downward, as if to
deprecate the wrath of a superior.
'What have you been up to?' said Fledgeby, storming at him.
'Generous Christian master,' urged the Jewish man, 'it being holiday, I looked for no
one.'
'Holiday he blowed!' said Fledgeby, entering. 'What have YOU got to do with holidays?
Shut the door.'
With his former action the old man obeyed. In the entry hung his rusty large−brimmed
low−crowned hat, as long out of date as his coat; in the corner near it stood his staff – no
walking−stick but a veritable staff. Fledgeby turned into the counting−house, perched
himself on a business stool, and cocked his hat. There were light boxes on shelves in the
counting−house, and strings of mock beads hanging up. There were samples of cheap
clocks, and samples of cheap vases of flowers. Foreign toys, all.
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Perched on the stool with his hat cocked on his head and one of his legs dangling, the
youth of Fledgeby hardly contrasted to advantage with the age of the Jewish man as he stood
with his bare head bowed, and his eyes (which he only raised in speaking) on the ground.
His clothing was worn down to the rusty hue of the hat in the entry, but though he looked
shabby he did not look mean. Now, Fledgeby, though not shabby, did look mean.
'You have not told me what you were up to, you sir,' said Fledgeby, scratching his head
with the brim of his hat.
'Sir, I was breathing the air.'
'In the cellar, that you didn't hear?'
'On the house−top.'
'Upon my soul! That's a way of doing business.'
'Sir,' the old man represented with a grave and patient air, 'there must be two parties to
the transaction of business, and the holiday has left me alone.'
'Ah! Can't be buyer and seller too. That's what the Jews say; ain't it?'
'At least we say truly, if we say so,' answered the old man with a smile.
'Your people need speak the truth sometimes, for they lie enough,' remarked Fascination
Fledgeby.
'Sir, there is,' returned the old man with quiet emphasis, 'too much untruth among all
denominations of men.'
Rather dashed, Fascination Fledgeby took another scratch at his intellectual head with
his hat, to gain time for rallying.
'For instance,' he resumed, as though it were he who had spoken last, 'who but you and I
ever heard of a poor Jew?'
'The Jews,' said the old man, raising his eyes from the ground with his former smile.
'They hear of poor Jews often, and are very good to them.'
'Bother that!' returned Fledgeby. 'You know what I mean. You'd persuade me if you
could, that you are a poor Jew. I wish you'd confess how much you really did make out of
my late governor. I should have a better opinion of you.'
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The old man only bent his head, and stretched out his hands as before.
'Don't go on posturing like a Deaf and Dumb School,' said the ingenious Fledgeby, 'but
express yourself like a Christian – or as nearly as you can.'
'I had had sickness and misfortunes, and was so poor,' said the old man, 'as hopelessly to
owe the father, principal and interest. The son inheriting, was so merciful as to forgive me
both, and place me here.'
He made a little gesture as though he kissed the hem of an imaginary garment worn by
the noble youth before him. It was humbly done, but picturesquely, and was not abasing to
the doer.
'You won't say more, I see,' said Fledgeby, looking at him as if he would like to try the
effect of extracting a double−tooth or two, 'and so it's of no use my putting it to you. But
confess this, Riah; who believes you to be poor now?'
'No one,' said the old man.
'There you're right,' assented Fledgeby.
'No one,' repeated the old man with a grave slow wave of his head. 'All scout it as a
fable. Were I to say «This little fancy business is not mine»;' with a lithe sweep of his
easily−turning hand around him, to comprehend the various objects on the shelves; '«it is the
little business of a Christian young gentleman who places me, his servant, in trust and
charge here, and to whom I am accountable for every single bead,» they would laugh. When,
in the larger money−business, I tell the borrowers – '
'I say, old chap!' interposed Fledgeby, 'I hope you mind what you DO tell 'em?'
'Sir, I tell them no more than I am about to repeat. When I tell them, «I cannot promise
this, I cannot answer for the other, I must see my principal, I have not the money, I am a
poor man and it does not rest with me,» they are so unbelieving and so impatient, that they
sometimes curse me in Jehovah's name.'
'That's deuced good, that is!' said Fascination Fledgeby.
'And at other times they say, «Can it never be done without these tricks, Mr Riah?
Come, come, Mr Riah, we know the arts of your people» – my people! – «If the money is to
be lent, fetch it, fetch it; if it is not to be lent, keep it and say so.» They never believe me.'
'THAT'S all right,' said Fascination Fledgeby.
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'They say, «We know, Mr Riah, we know. We have but to look at you, and we know.»'
'Oh, a good 'un are you for the post,' thought Fledgeby, 'and a good 'un was I to mark
you out for it! I may be slow, but I am precious sure.'
Not a syllable of this reflection shaped itself in any scrap of Mr Fledgeby's breath, lest it
should tend to put his servant's price up. But looking at the old man as he stood quiet with
his bead bowed and his eyes cast down, he felt that to relinquish an inch of his baldness, an
inch of his grey hair, an inch of his coat−skirt, an inch of his hat−brim, an inch of his
walking−staff, would be to relinquish hundreds of pounds.
'Look here, Riah,' said Fledgeby, mollified by these self−approving considerations. 'I
want to go a little more into buying−up queer bills. Look out in that direction.'
'Sir, it shall be done.'
'Casting my eye over the accounts, I find that branch of business pays pretty fairly, and I
am game for extending it. I like to know people's affairs likewise. So look out.'
'Sir, I will, promptly.'
'Put it about in the right quarters, that you'll buy queer bills by the lump – by the pound
weight if that's all – supposing you see your way to a fair chance on looking over the parcel.
And there's one thing more. Come to me with the books for periodical inspection as usual, at
eight on Monday morning.'
Riah drew some folding tablets from his breast and noted it down.
'That's all I wanted to say at the present time,' continued Fledgeby in a grudging vein, as
he got off the stool, 'except that I wish you'd take the air where you can hear the bell, or the
knocker, either one of the two or both. By−the−by how DO you take the air at the top of the
house? Do you stick your head out of a chimney−pot?'
'Sir, there are leads there, and I have made a little garden there.'
'To bury your money in, you old dodger?'
'A thumbnail's space of garden would hold the treasure I bury, master,' said Riah.
'Twelve shillings a week, even when they are an old man's wages, bury themselves.'
'I should like to know what you really are worth,' returned Fledgeby, with whom his
growing rich on that stipend and gratitude was a very convenient fiction. 'But come! Let's
have a look at your garden on the tiles, before I go!'
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The old man took a step back, and hesitated.
'Truly, sir, I have company there.'
'Have you, by George!' said Fledgeby; 'I suppose you happen to know whose premises
these are?'
'Sir, they are yours, and I am your servant in them.'
'Oh! I thought you might have overlooked that,' retorted Fledgeby, with his eyes on
Riah's beard as he felt for his own; 'having company on my premises, you know!'
'Come up and see the guests, sir. I hope for your admission that they can do no harm.'
Passing him with a courteous reverence, specially unlike any action that Mr Fledgeby
could for his life have imparted to his own head and hands, the old man began to ascend the
stairs. As he toiled on before, with his palm upon the stair−rail, and his long black skirt, a
very gaberdine, overhanging each successive step, he might have been the leader in some
pilgrimage of devotional ascent to a prophet's tomb. Not troubled by any such weak
imagining, Fascination Fledgeby merely speculated on the time of life at which his beard
had begun, and thought once more what a good 'un he was for the part.
Some final wooden steps conducted them, stooping under a low penthouse roof, to the
house−top. Riah stood still, and, turning to his master, pointed out his guests.
Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren. For whom, perhaps with some old instinct of his race,
the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a
blackened chimney− stack over which some bumble creeper had been trained, they both
pored over one book; both with attentive faces; Jenny with the sharper; Lizzie with the more
perplexed. Another little book or two were lying near, and a common basket of common
fruit, and another basket full of strings of beads and tinsel scraps. A few boxes of humble
flowers and evergreens completed the garden; and the encompassing wilderness of dowager
old chimneys twirled their cowls and fluttered their smoke, rather as if they were bridling,
and fanning themselves, and looking on in a state of airy surprise.
Taking her eyes off the book, to test her memory of something in it, Lizzie was the first
to see herself observed. As she rose, Miss Wren likewise became conscious, and said,
irreverently addressing the great chief of the premises: 'Whoever you are, I can't get up,
because my back's bad and my legs are queer.'
'This is my master,' said Riah, stepping forward.
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('Don't look like anybody's master,' observed Miss Wren to herself, with a hitch of her
chin and eyes.)
'This, sir,' pursued the old man, 'is a little dressmaker for little people. Explain to the
master, Jenny.'
'Dolls; that's all,' said Jenny, shortly. 'Very difficult to fit too, because their figures are
so uncertain. You never know where to expect their waists.'
'Her friend,' resumed the old man, motioning towards Lizzie; 'and as industrious as
virtuous. But that they both are. They are busy early and late, sir, early and late; and in
bye−times, as on this holiday, they go to book−learning.'
'Not much good to be got out of that,' remarked Fledgeby.
'Depends upon the person!' quoth Miss Wren, snapping him up.
'I made acquaintance with my guests, sir,' pursued the Jew, with an evident purpose of
drawing out the dressmaker, 'through their coming here to buy of our damage and waste for
Miss Jenny's millinery. Our waste goes into the best of company, sir, on her rosy−cheeked
little customers. They wear it in their hair, and on their ball−dresses, and even (so she tells
me) are presented at Court with it.'
'Ah!' said Fledgeby, on whose intelligence this doll−fancy made rather strong demands;
'she's been buying that basketful to−day, I suppose?'
'I suppose she has,' Miss Jenny interposed; 'and paying for it too, most likely!'
'Let's have a look at it,' said the suspicious chief. Riah handed it to him. 'How much for
this now?'
'Two precious silver shillings,' said Miss Wren.
Riah confirmed her with two nods, as Fledgeby looked to him. A nod for each shilling.
'Well,' said Fledgeby, poking into the contents of the basket with his forefinger, 'the
price is not so bad. You have got good measure, Miss What−is−it.'
'Try Jenny,' suggested that young lady with great calmness.
'You have got good measure, Miss Jenny; but the price is not so bad. – And you,' said
Fledgeby, turning to the other visitor, 'do you buy anything here, miss?'
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'No, sir.'
'Nor sell anything neither, miss?'
'No, sir.'
Looking askew at the questioner, Jenny stole her hand up to her friend's, and drew her
friend down, so that she bent beside her on her knee.
'We are thankful to come here for rest, sir,' said Jenny. 'You see, you don't know what
the rest of this place is to us; does he, Lizzie? It's the quiet, and the air.'
'The quiet!' repeated Fledgeby, with a contemptuous turn of his head towards the City's
roar. 'And the air!' with a 'Poof!' at the smoke.
'Ah!' said Jenny. 'But it's so high. And you see the clouds rushing on above the narrow
streets, not minding them, and you see the golden arrows pointing at the mountains in the
sky from which the wind comes, and you feel as if you were dead.'
The little creature looked above her, holding up her slight transparent hand.
'How do you feel when you are dead?' asked Fledgeby, much perplexed.
'Oh, so tranquil!' cried the little creature, smiling. 'Oh, so peaceful and so thankful! And
you hear the people who are alive, crying, and working, and calling to one another down in
the close dark streets, and you seem to pity them so! And such a chain has fallen from you,
and such a strange good sorrowful happiness comes upon you!'
Her eyes fell on the old man, who, with his hands folded, quietly looked on.
'Why it was only just now,' said the little creature, pointing at him, 'that I fancied I saw
him come out of his grave! He toiled out at that low door so bent and worn, and then he took
his breath and stood upright, and looked all round him at the sky, and the wind blew upon
him, and his life down in the dark was over! – Till he was called back to life,' she added,
looking round at Fledgeby with that lower look of sharpness. 'Why did you call him back?'
'He was long enough coming, anyhow,' grumbled Fledgeby.
'But you are not dead, you know,' said Jenny Wren. 'Get down to life!'
Mr Fledgeby seemed to think it rather a good suggestion, and with a nod turned round.
As Riah followed to attend him down the stairs, the little creature called out to the Jew in a
silvery tone, 'Don't be long gone. Come back, and be dead!' And still as they went down they
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heard the little sweet voice, more and more faintly, half calling and half singing, 'Come back
and be dead, Come back and be dead!'
When they got down into the entry, Fledgeby, pausing under the shadow of the broad
old hat, and mechanically poising the staff, said to the old man:
'That's a handsome girl, that one in her senses.'
'And as good as handsome,' answered Riah.
'At all events,' observed Fledgeby, with a dry whistle, 'I hope she ain't bad enough to put
any chap up to the fastenings, and get the premises broken open. You look out. Keep your
weather eye awake and don't make any more acquaintances, however handsome. Of course
you always keep my name to yourself?'
'Sir, assuredly I do.'
'If they ask it, say it's Pubsey, or say it's Co, or say it's anything you like, but what it is.'
His grateful servant – in whose race gratitude is deep, strong, and enduring – bowed his
head, and actually did now put the hem of his coat to his lips: though so lightly that the
wearer knew nothing of it.
Thus, Fascination Fledgeby went his way, exulting in the artful cleverness with which
he had turned his thumb down on a Jew, and the old man went his different way up−stairs.
As he mounted, the call or song began to sound in his ears again, and, looking above, he saw
the face of the little creature looking down out of a Glory of her long bright radiant hair, and
musically repeating to him, like a vision:
'Come up and be dead! Come up and be dead!'
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Chapter 5 − MERCURY PROMPTING 274
Chapter 6 − A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER
A
gain Mr Mortimer Lightwood and Mr Eugene Wrayburn sat together in the Temple.
This evening, however, they were not together in the place of business of the eminent
solicitor, but in another dismal set of chambers facing it on the same second−floor; on
whose dungeon−like black outer−door appeared the legend:
PRIVATE
MR EUGENE WRAYBURN
MR MORTIMER LIGHTWOOD
(Mr Lightwood's Offices opposite.)
Appearances indicated that this establishment was a very recent institution. The white
letters of the inscription were extremely white and extremely strong to the sense of smell,
the complexion of the tables and chairs was (like Lady Tippins's) a little too blooming to be
believed in, and the carpets and floorcloth seemed to rush at the beholder's face in the
unusual prominency of their patterns. But the Temple, accustomed to tone down both the
still life and the human life that has much to do with it, would soon get the better of all that.
'Well!' said Eugene, on one side of the fire, 'I feel tolerably comfortable. I hope the
upholsterer may do the same.'
'Why shouldn't he?' asked Lightwood, from the other side of the fire.
'To be sure,' pursued Eugene, reflecting, 'he is not in the secret of our pecuniary affairs,
so perhaps he may be in an easy frame of mind.'
'We shall pay him,' said Mortimer.
'Shall we, really?' returned Eugene, indolently surprised. 'You don't say so!'
'I mean to pay him, Eugene, for my part,' said Mortimer, in a slightly injured tone.
'Ah! I mean to pay him too,' retorted Eugene. 'But then I mean so much that I – that I
don't mean.'
'Don't mean?'
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Chapter 6 − A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER 275
'So much that I only mean and shall always only mean and nothing more, my dear
Mortimer. It's the same thing.'
His friend, lying back in his easy chair, watched him lying back in his easy chair, as he
stretched out his legs on the hearth−rug, and said, with the amused look that Eugene
Wrayburn could always awaken in him without seeming to try or care:
'Anyhow, your vagaries have increased the bill.'
'Calls the domestic virtues vagaries!' exclaimed Eugene, raising his eyes to the ceiling.
'This very complete little kitchen of ours,' said Mortimer, 'in which nothing will ever be
cooked – '
'My dear, dear Mortimer,' returned his friend, lazily lifting his head a little to look at
him, 'how often have I pointed out to you that its moral influence is the important thing?'
'Its moral influence on this fellow!' exclaimed Lightwood, laughing.
'Do me the favour,' said Eugene, getting out of his chair with much gravity, 'to come
and inspect that feature of our establishment which you rashly disparage.' With that, taking
up a candle, he conducted his chum into the fourth room of the set of chambers – a little
narrow room – which was very completely and neatly fitted as a kitchen. 'See!' said Eugene,
'miniature flour−barrel, rolling− pin, spice−box, shelf of brown jars, chopping−board,
coffee−mill, dresser elegantly furnished with crockery, saucepans and pans, roasting jack, a
charming kettle, an armoury of dish−covers. The moral influence of these objects, in
forming the domestic virtues, may have an immense influence upon me; not upon you, for
you are a hopeless case, but upon me. In fact, I have an idea that I feel the domestic virtues
already forming. Do me the favour to step into my bedroom. Secretaire, you see, and
abstruse set of solid mahogany pigeon−holes, one for every letter of the alphabet. To what
use do I devote them? I receive a bill – say from Jones. I docket it neatly at the secretaire,
JONES, and I put it into pigeonhole J. It's the next thing to a receipt and is quite as
satisfactory to ME. And I very much wish, Mortimer,' sitting on his bed, with the air of a
philosopher lecturing a disciple, 'that my example might induce YOU to cultivate habits of
punctuality and method; and, by means of the moral influences with which I have
surrounded you, to encourage the formation of the domestic virtues.'
Mortimer laughed again, with his usual commentaries of 'How CAN you be so
ridiculous, Eugene!' and 'What an absurd fellow you are!' but when his laugh was out, there
was something serious, if not anxious, in his face. Despite that pernicious assumption of
lassitude and indifference, which had become his second nature, he was strongly attached to
his friend. He had founded himself upon Eugene when they were yet boys at school; and at
this hour imitated him no less, admired him no less, loved him no less, than in those
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Chapter 6 − A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER 276
departed days.
'Eugene,' said he, 'if I could find you in earnest for a minute, I would try to say an
earnest word to you.'
'An earnest word?' repeated Eugene. 'The moral influences are beginning to work. Say
on.'
'Well, I will,' returned the other, 'though you are not earnest yet.'
'In this desire for earnestness,' murmured Eugene, with the air of one who was
meditating deeply, 'I trace the happy influences of the little flour−barrel and the coffee−mill.
Gratifying.'
'Eugene,' resumed Mortimer, disregarding the light interruption, and laying a hand upon
Eugene's shoulder, as he, Mortimer, stood before him seated on his bed, 'you are
withholding something from me.'
Eugene looked at him, but said nothing.
'All this past summer, you have been withholding something from me. Before we
entered on our boating vacation, you were as bent upon it as I have seen you upon anything
since we first rowed together. But you cared very little for it when it came, often found it a
tie and a drag upon you, and were constantly away. Now it was well enough half−a−dozen
times, a dozen times, twenty times, to say to me in your own odd manner, which I know so
well and like so much, that your disappearances were precautions against our boring one
another; but of course after a short while I began to know that they covered something. I
don't ask what it is, as you have not told me; but the fact is so. Say, is it not?'
'I give you my word of honour, Mortimer,' returned Eugene, after a serious pause of a
few moments, 'that I don't know.'
'Don't know, Eugene?'
'Upon my soul, don't know. I know less about myself than about most people in the
world, and I don't know.'
'You have some design in your mind?'
'Have I? I don't think I have.'
'At any rate, you have some subject of interest there which used not to be there?'
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'I really can't say,' replied Eugene, shaking his head blankly, after pausing again to
reconsider. 'At times I have thought yes; at other times I have thought no. Now, I have been
inclined to pursue such a subject; now I have felt that it was absurd, and that it tired and
embarrassed me. Absolutely, I can't say. Frankly and faithfully, I would if I could.'
So replying, he clapped a hand, in his turn, on his friend's shoulder, as he rose from his
seat upon the bed, and said:
'You must take your friend as he is. You know what I am, my dear Mortimer. You know
how dreadfully susceptible I am to boredom. You know that when I became enough of a
man to find myself an embodied conundrum, I bored myself to the last degree by trying to
find out what I meant. You know that at length I gave it up, and declined to guess any more.
Then how can I possibly give you the answer that I have not discovered? The old nursery
form runs, «Riddle−me−riddle−me−ree, p'raps you can't tell me what this may be?» My
reply runs, «No. Upon my life, I can't.»'
So much of what was fantastically true to his own knowledge of this utterly careless
Eugene, mingled with the answer, that Mortimer could not receive it as a mere evasion.
Besides, it was given with an engaging air of openness, and of special exemption of the one
friend he valued, from his reckless indifference.
'Come, dear boy!' said Eugene. 'Let us try the effect of smoking. If it enlightens me at
all on this question, I will impart unreservedly.'
They returned to the room they had come from, and, finding it heated, opened a
window. Having lighted their cigars, they leaned out of this window, smoking, and looking
down at the moonlight, as it shone into the court below.
'No enlightenment,' resumed Eugene, after certain minutes of silence. 'I feel sincerely
apologetic, my dear Mortimer, but nothing comes.'
'If nothing comes,' returned Mortimer, 'nothing can come from it. So I shall hope that
this may hold good throughout, and that there may be nothing on foot. Nothing injurious to
you, Eugene, or – '
Eugene stayed him for a moment with his hand on his arm, while he took a piece of
earth from an old flowerpot on the window−sill and dexterously shot it at a little point of
light opposite; having done which to his satisfaction, he said, 'Or?'
'Or injurious to any one else.'
'How,' said Eugene, taking another little piece of earth, and shooting it with great
precision at the former mark, 'how injurious to any one else?'
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Chapter 6 − A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER 278
'I don't know.'
'And,' said Eugene, taking, as he said the word, another shot, 'to whom else?'
'I don't know.'
Checking himself with another piece of earth in his hand, Eugene looked at his friend
inquiringly and a little suspiciously. There was no concealed or half−expressed meaning in
his face.
'Two belated wanderers in the mazes of the law,' said Eugene, attracted by the sound of
footsteps, and glancing down as he spoke, 'stray into the court. They examine the door−posts
of number one, seeking the name they want. Not finding it at number one, they come to
number two. On the hat of wanderer number two, the shorter one, I drop this pellet. Hitting
him on the hat, I smoke serenely, and become absorbed in contemplation of the sky.'
Both the wanderers looked up towards the window; but, after interchanging a mutter or
two, soon applied themselves to the door−posts below. There they seemed to discover what
they wanted, for they disappeared from view by entering at the doorway. 'When they
emerge,' said Eugene, 'you shall see me bring them both down'; and so prepared two pellets
for the purpose.
He had not reckoned on their seeking his name, or Lightwood's. But either the one or
the other would seem to be in question, for now there came a knock at the door. 'I am on
duty to−night,' said Mortimer, 'stay you where you are, Eugene.' Requiring no persuasion, he
stayed there, smoking quietly, and not at all curious to know who knocked, until Mortimer
spoke to him from within the room, and touched him. Then, drawing in his head, he found
the visitors to be young Charley Hexam and the schoolmaster; both standing facing him, and
both recognized at a glance.
'You recollect this young fellow, Eugene?' said Mortimer.
'Let me look at him,' returned Wrayburn, coolly. 'Oh, yes, yes. I recollect him!'
He had not been about to repeat that former action of taking him by the chin, but the
boy had suspected him of it, and had thrown up his arm with an angry start. Laughingly,
Wrayburn looked to Lightwood for an explanation of this odd visit.
'He says he has something to say.'
'Surely it must be to you, Mortimer.'
'So I thought, but he says no. He says it is to you.'
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Chapter 6 − A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER 279
'Yes, I do say so,' interposed the boy. 'And I mean to say what I want to say, too, Mr
Eugene Wrayburn!'
Passing him with his eyes as if there were nothing where he stood, Eugene looked on to
Bradley Headstone. With consummate indolence, he turned to Mortimer, inquiring: 'And
who may this other person be?'
'I am Charles Hexam's friend,' said Bradley; 'I am Charles Hexam's schoolmaster.'
'My good sir, you should teach your pupils better manners,' returned Eugene.
Composedly smoking, he leaned an elbow on the chimneypiece, at the side of the fire,
and looked at the schoolmaster. It was a cruel look, in its cold disdain of him, as a creature
of no worth. The schoolmaster looked at him, and that, too, was a cruel look, though of the
different kind, that it had a raging jealousy and fiery wrath in it.
Very remarkably, neither Eugene Wrayburn nor Bradley Headstone looked at all at the
boy. Through the ensuing dialogue, those two, no matter who spoke, or whom was
addressed, looked at each other. There was some secret, sure perception between them,
which set them against one another in all ways.
'In some high respects, Mr Eugene Wrayburn,' said Bradley, answering him with pale
and quivering lips, 'the natural feelings of my pupils are stronger than my teaching.'
'In most respects, I dare say,' replied Eugene, enjoying his cigar, 'though whether high
or low is of no importance. You have my name very correctly. Pray what is yours?'
'It cannot concern you much to know, but – '
'True,' interposed Eugene, striking sharply and cutting him short at his mistake, 'it does
not concern me at all to know. I can say Schoolmaster, which is a most respectable title. You
are right, Schoolmaster.'
It was not the dullest part of this goad in its galling of Bradley Headstone, that he had
made it himself in a moment of incautious anger. He tried to set his lips so as to prevent
their quivering, but they quivered fast.
'Mr Eugene Wrayburn,' said the boy, 'I want a word with you. I have wanted it so much,
that we have looked out your address in the book, and we have been to your office, and we
have come from your office here.'
'You have given yourself much trouble, Schoolmaster,' observed Eugene, blowing the
feathery ash from his cigar. 'I hope it may prove remunerative.'
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'And I am glad to speak,' pursued the boy, 'in presence of Mr Lightwood, because it was
through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw my sister.'
For a mere moment, Wrayburn turned his eyes aside from the schoolmaster to note the
effect of the last word on Mortimer, who, standing on the opposite side of the fire, as soon as
the word was spoken, turned his face towards the fire and looked down into it.
'Similarly, it was through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw her again, for you were with
him on the night when my father was found, and so I found you with her on the next day.
Since then, you have seen my sister often. You have seen my sister oftener and oftener. And
I want to know why?'
'Was this worth while, Schoolmaster?' murmured Eugene, with the air of a disinterested
adviser. 'So much trouble for nothing? You should know best, but I think not.'
'I don't know, Mr Wrayburn,' answered Bradley, with his passion rising, 'why you
address me – '
'Don't you? said Eugene. 'Then I won't.'
He said it so tauntingly in his perfect placidity, that the respectable right−hand clutching
the respectable hair−guard of the respectable watch could have wound it round his throat
and strangled him with it. Not another word did Eugene deem it worth while to utter, but
stood leaning his head upon his hand, smoking, and looking imperturbably at the chafing
Bradley Headstone with his clutching right−hand, until Bradley was wellnigh mad.
'Mr Wrayburn,' proceeded the boy, 'we not only know this that I have charged upon
you, but we know more. It has not yet come to my sister's knowledge that we have found it
out, but we have. We had a plan, Mr Headstone and I, for my sister's education, and for its
being advised and overlooked by Mr Headstone, who is a much more competent authority,
whatever you may pretend to think, as you smoke, than you could produce, if you tried.
Then, what do we find? What do we find, Mr Lightwood? Why, we find that my sister is
already being taught, without our knowing it. We find that while my sister gives an
unwilling and cold ear to our schemes for her advantage – I, her brother, and Mr Headstone,
the most competent authority, as his certificates would easily prove, that could be produced
– she is wilfully and willingly profiting by other schemes. Ay, and taking pains, too, for I
know what such pains are. And so does Mr Headstone! Well! Somebody pays for this, is a
thought that naturally occurs to us; who pays? We apply ourselves to find out, Mr
Lightwood, and we find that your friend, this Mr Eugene Wrayburn, here, pays. Then I ask
him what right has he to do it, and what does he mean by it, and how comes he to be taking
such a liberty without my consent, when I am raising myself in the scale of society by my
own exertions and Mr Headstone's aid, and have no right to have any darkness cast upon my
prospects, or any imputation upon my respectability, through my sister?'
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The boyish weakness of this speech, combined with its great selfishness, made it a poor
one indeed. And yet Bradley Headstone, used to the little audience of a school, and unused
to the larger ways of men, showed a kind of exultation in it.
'Now I tell Mr Eugene Wrayburn,' pursued the boy, forced into the use of the third
person by the hopelessness of addressing him in the first, 'that I object to his having any
acquaintance at all with my sister, and that I request him to drop it altogether. He is not to
take it into his head that I am afraid of my sister's caring for HIM – '
(As the boy sneered, the Master sneered, and Eugene blew off the feathery ash again.)
– 'But I object to it, and that's enough. I am more important to to my sister than he
thinks. As I raise myself, I intend to raise her; she knows that, and she has to look to me for
her prospects. Now I understand all this very well, and so does Mr Headstone. My sister is
an excellent girl, but she has some romantic notions; not about such things as your Mr
Eugene Wrayburns, but about the death of my father and other matters of that sort. Mr
Wrayburn encourages those notions to make himself of importance, and so she thinks she
ought to be grateful to him, and perhaps even likes to be. Now I don't choose her to be
grateful to him, or to be grateful to anybody but me, except Mr Headstone. And I tell Mr
Wrayburn that if he don't take heed of what I say, it will be worse for her. Let him turn that
over in his memory, and make sure of it. Worse for her!'
A pause ensued, in which the schoolmaster looked very awkward.
'May I suggest, Schoolmaster,' said Eugene, removing his fast− waning cigar from his
lips to glance at it, 'that you can now take your pupil away.'
'And Mr Lightwood,' added the boy, with a burning face, under the flaming aggravation
of getting no sort of answer or attention, 'I hope you'll take notice of what I have said to your
friend, and of what your friend has heard me say, word by word, whatever he pretends to the
contrary. You are bound to take notice of it, Mr Lightwood, for, as I have already
mentioned, you first brought your friend into my sister's company, and but for you we never
should have seen him. Lord knows none of us ever wanted him, any more than any of us
will ever miss him. Now Mr Headstone, as Mr Eugene Wrayburn has been obliged to hear
what I had to say, and couldn't help himself, and as I have said it out to the last word, we
have done all we wanted to do, and may go.'
'Go down−stairs, and leave me a moment, Hexam,' he returned. The boy complying
with an indignant look and as much noise as he could make, swung out of the room; and
Lightwood went to the window, and leaned there, looking out.
'You think me of no more value than the dirt under your feet,' said Bradley to Eugene,
speaking in a carefully weighed and measured tone, or he could not have spoken at all.
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'I assure you, Schoolmaster,' replied Eugene, 'I don't think about you.'
'That's not true,' returned the other; 'you know better.'
'That's coarse,' Eugene retorted; 'but you DON'T know better.'
'Mr Wrayburn, at least I know very well that it would be idle to set myself against you
in insolent words or overbearing manners. That lad who has just gone out could put you to
shame in half−a− dozen branches of knowledge in half an hour, but you can throw him aside
like an inferior. You can do as much by me, I have no doubt, beforehand.'
'Possibly,' remarked Eugene.
'But I am more than a lad,' said Bradley, with his clutching hand, 'and I WILL be heard,
sir.'
'As a schoolmaster,' said Eugene, 'you are always being heard. That ought to content
you.'
'But it does not content me,' replied the other, white with passion. 'Do you suppose that
a man, in forming himself for the duties I discharge, and in watching and repressing himself
daily to discharge them well, dismisses a man's nature?'
'I suppose you,' said Eugene, 'judging from what I see as I look at you, to be rather too
passionate for a good schoolmaster.' As he spoke, he tossed away the end of his cigar.
'Passionate with you, sir, I admit I am. Passionate with you, sir, I respect myself for
being. But I have not Devils for my pupils.'
'For your Teachers, I should rather say,' replied Eugene.
'Mr Wrayburn.'
'Schoolmaster.'
'Sir, my name is Bradley Headstone.'
'As you justly said, my good sir, your name cannot concern me. Now, what more?'
'This more. Oh, what a misfortune is mine,' cried Bradley, breaking off to wipe the
starting perspiration from his face as he shook from head to foot, 'that I cannot so control
myself as to appear a stronger creature than this, when a man who has not felt in all his life
what I have felt in a day can so command himself!' He said it in a very agony, and even
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followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn himself.
Eugene Wrayburn looked on at him, as if he found him beginning to be rather an
entertaining study.
'Mr Wrayburn, I desire to say something to you on my own part.'
'Come, come, Schoolmaster,' returned Eugene, with a languid approach to impatience as
the other again struggled with himself; 'say what you have to say. And let me remind you
that the door is standing open, and your young friend waiting for you on the stairs.'
'When I accompanied that youth here, sir, I did so with the purpose of adding, as a man
whom you should not be permitted to put aside, in case you put him aside as a boy, that his
instinct is correct and right.' Thus Bradley Headstone, with great effort and difficulty.
'Is that all?' asked Eugene.
'No, sir,' said the other, flushed and fierce. 'I strongly support him in his disapproval of
your visits to his sister, and in his objection to your officiousness – and worse – in what you
have taken upon yourself to do for her.'
'Is THAT all?' asked Eugene.
'No, sir. I determined to tell you that you are not justified in these proceedings, and that
they are injurious to his sister.'
'Are you her schoolmaster as well as her brother's? – Or perhaps you would like to be?'
said Eugene.
It was a stab that the blood followed, in its rush to Bradley Headstone's face, as swiftly
as if it had been dealt with a dagger. 'What do you mean by that?' was as much as he could
utter.
'A natural ambition enough,' said Eugene, coolly. Far be it from me to say otherwise.
The sister who is something too much upon your lips, perhaps – is so very different from all
the associations to which she had been used, and from all the low obscure people about her,
that it is a very natural ambition.'
'Do you throw my obscurity in my teeth, Mr Wrayburn?'
'That can hardly be, for I know nothing concerning it, Schoolmaster, and seek to know
nothing.'
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'You reproach me with my origin,' said Bradley Headstone; 'you cast insinuations at my
bringing−up. But I tell you, sir, I have worked my way onward, out of both and in spite of
both, and have a right to be considered a better man than you, with better reasons for being
proud.'
'How I can reproach you with what is not within my knowledge, or how I can cast
stones that were never in my hand, is a problem for the ingenuity of a schoolmaster to
prove,' returned Eugene. 'Is THAT all?'
'No, sir. If you suppose that boy – '
'Who really will be tired of waiting,' said Eugene, politely.
'If you suppose that boy to be friendless, Mr Wrayburn, you deceive yourself. I am his
friend, and you shall find me so.'
'And you will find HIM on the stairs,' remarked Eugene.
'You may have promised yourself, sir, that you could do what you chose here, because
you had to deal with a mere boy, inexperienced, friendless, and unassisted. But I give you
warning that this mean calculation is wrong. You have to do with a man also. You have to
do with me. I will support him, and, if need be, require reparation for him. My hand and
heart are in this cause, and are open to him.'
'And – quite a coincidence – the door is open,' remarked Eugene.
'I scorn your shifty evasions, and I scorn you,' said the schoolmaster. 'In the meanness
of your nature you revile me with the meanness of my birth. I hold you in contempt for it.
But if you don't profit by this visit, and act accordingly, you will find me as bitterly in
earnest against you as I could be if I deemed you worth a second thought on my own
account.'
With a consciously bad grace and stiff manner, as Wrayburn looked so easily and
calmly on, he went out with these words, and the heavy door closed like a furnace−door
upon his red and white heats of rage.
'A curious monomaniac,' said Eugene. 'The man seems to believe that everybody was
acquainted with his mother!'
Mortimer Lightwood being still at the window, to which he had in delicacy withdrawn,
Eugene called to him, and he fell to slowly pacing the room.
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'My dear fellow,' said Eugene, as he lighted another cigar, 'I fear my unexpected visitors
have been troublesome. If as a set−off (excuse the legal phrase from a barrister−at−law) you
would like to ask Tippins to tea, I pledge myself to make love to her.'
'Eugene, Eugene, Eugene,' replied Mortimer, still pacing the room, 'I am sorry for this.
And to think that I have been so blind!'
'How blind, dear boy?' inquired his unmoved friend.
'What were your words that night at the river−side public−house?' said Lightwood,
stopping. 'What was it that you asked me? Did I feel like a dark combination of traitor and
pickpocket when I thought of that girl?'
'I seem to remember the expression,' said Eugene.
'How do YOU feel when you think of her just now?'
His friend made no direct reply, but observed, after a few whiffs of his cigar, 'Don't
mistake the situation. There is no better girl in all this London than Lizzie Hexam. There is
no better among my people at home; no better among your people.'
'Granted. What follows?'
'There,' said Eugene, looking after him dubiously as he paced away to the other end of
the room, 'you put me again upon guessing the riddle that I have given up.'
'Eugene, do you design to capture and desert this girl?'
'My dear fellow, no.'
'Do you design to marry her?'
'My dear fellow, no.'
'Do you design to pursue her?'
'My dear fellow, I don't design anything. I have no design whatever. I am incapable of
designs. If I conceived a design, I should speedily abandon it, exhausted by the operation.'
'Oh Eugene, Eugene!'
'My dear Mortimer, not that tone of melancholy reproach, I entreat. What can I do more
than tell you all I know, and acknowledge my ignorance of all I don't know! How does that
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little old song go, which, under pretence of being cheerful, is by far the most lugubrious I
ever heard in my life?
«Away with melancholy, Nor doleful changes ring On life and human folly, But merrily
merrily sing Fal la!»
Don't let us sing Fal la, my dear Mortimer (which is comparatively unmeaning), but let
us sing that we give up guessing the riddle altogether.'
'Are you in communication with this girl, Eugene, and is what these people say true?'
'I concede both admissions to my honourable and learned friend.'
'Then what is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?'
'My dear Mortimer, one would think the schoolmaster had left behind him a catechizing
infection. You are ruffled by the want of another cigar. Take one of these, I entreat. Light it
at mine, which is in perfect order. So! Now do me the justice to observe that I am doing all I
can towards self−improvement, and that you have a light thrown on those household
implements which, when you only saw them as in a glass darkly, you were hastily – I must
say hastily – inclined to depreciate. Sensible of my deficiencies, I have surrounded myself
with moral influences expressly meant to promote the formation of the domestic virtues. To
those influences, and to the improving society of my friend from boyhood, commend me
with your best wishes.'
'Ah, Eugene!' said Lightwood, affectionately, now standing near him, so that they both
stood in one little cloud of smoke; 'I would that you answered my three questions! What is to
come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?'
'And my dear Mortimer,' returned Eugene, lightly fanning away the smoke with his
hand for the better exposition of his frankness of face and manner, 'believe me, I would
answer them instantly if I could. But to enable me to do so, I must first have found out the
troublesome conundrum long abandoned. Here it is. Eugene Wrayburn.' Tapping his
forehead and breast. 'Riddle−me, riddle− me−ree, perhaps you can't tell me what this may
be? – No, upon my life I can't. I give it up!'
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Chapter 7 − IN WHICH A FRIENDLY MOVE IS ORIGINATED
T
he arrangement between Mr Boffin and his literary man, Mr Silas Wegg, so far
altered with the altered habits of Mr Boffin's life, as that the Roman Empire usually declined
in the morning and in the eminently aristocratic family mansion, rather than in the evening,
as of yore, and in Boffin's Bower. There were occasions, however, when Mr Boffin, seeking
a brief refuge from the blandishments of fashion, would present himself at the Bower after
dark, to anticipate the next sallying forth of Wegg, and would there, on the old settle, pursue
the downward fortunes of those enervated and corrupted masters of the world who were by
this time on their last legs. If Wegg had been worse paid for his office, or better qualified to
discharge it, he would have considered these visits complimentary and agreeable; but,
holding the position of a handsomely−remunerated humbug, he resented them. This was
quite according to rule, for the incompetent servant, by whomsoever employed, is always
against his employer. Even those born governors, noble and right honourable creatures, who
have been the most imbecile in high places, have uniformly shown themselves the most
opposed (sometimes in belying distrust, sometimes in vapid insolence) to THEIR employer.
What is in such wise true of the public master and servant, is equally true of the private
master and servant all the world over.
When Mr Silas Wegg did at last obtain free access to 'Our House', as he had been wont
to call the mansion outside which he had sat shelterless so long, and when he did at last find
it in all particulars as different from his mental plans of it as according to the nature of
things it well could be, that far−seeing and far−reaching character, by way of asserting
himself and making out a case for compensation, affected to fall into a melancholy strain of
musing over the mournful past; as if the house and he had had a fall in life together.
'And this, sir,' Silas would say to his patron, sadly nodding his head and musing, 'was
once Our House! This, sir, is the building from which I have so often seen those great
creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker' – whose very names
were of his own inventing – 'pass and repass! And has it come to this, indeed! Ah dear me,
dear me!'
So tender were his lamentations, that the kindly Mr Boffin was quite sorry for him, and
almost felt mistrustful that in buying the house he had done him an irreparable injury.
Two or three diplomatic interviews, the result of great subtlety on Mr Wegg's part, but
assuming the mask of careless yielding to a fortuitous combination of circumstances
impelling him towards Clerkenwell, had enabled him to complete his bargain with Mr
Venus.
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'Bring me round to the Bower,' said Silas, when the bargain was closed, 'next Saturday
evening, and if a sociable glass of old Jamaikey warm should meet your views, I am not the
man to begrudge it.'
'You are aware of my being poor company, sir,' replied Mr Venus, 'but be it so.'
It being so, here is Saturday evening come, and here is Mr Venus come, and ringing at
the Bower−gate.
Mr Wegg opens the gate, descries a sort of brown paper truncheon under Mr Venus's
arm, and remarks, in a dry tone: 'Oh! I thought perhaps you might have come in a cab.'
'No, Mr Wegg,' replies Venus. 'I am not above a parcel.'
'Above a parcel! No!' says Wegg, with some dissatisfaction. But does not openly growl,
'a certain sort of parcel might be above you.'
'Here is your purchase, Mr Wegg,' says Venus, politely handing it over, 'and I am glad
to restore it to the source from whence it – flowed.'
'Thankee,' says Wegg. 'Now this affair is concluded, I may mention to you in a friendly
way that I've my doubts whether, if I had consulted a lawyer, you could have kept this article
back from me. I only throw it out as a legal point.'
'Do you think so, Mr Wegg? I bought you in open contract.'
'You can't buy human flesh and blood in this country, sir; not alive, you can't,' says
Wegg, shaking his head. 'Then query, bone?'
'As a legal point?' asks Venus.
'As a legal point.'
'I am not competent to speak upon that, Mr Wegg,' says Venus, reddening and growing
something louder; 'but upon a point of fact I think myself competent to speak; and as a point
of fact I would have seen you – will you allow me to say, further?'
'I wouldn't say more than further, if I was you,' Mr Wegg suggests, pacifically.
– 'Before I'd have given that packet into your hand without being paid my price for it. I
don't pretend to know how the point of law may stand, but I'm thoroughly confident upon
the point of fact.'
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As Mr Venus is irritable (no doubt owing to his disappointment in love), and as it is not
the cue of Mr Wegg to have him out of temper, the latter gentleman soothingly remarks, 'I
only put it as a little case; I only put it ha'porthetically.'
'Then I'd rather, Mr Wegg, you put it another time, penn'orth− etically,' is Mr Venus's
retort, 'for I tell you candidly I don't like your little cases.'
Arrived by this time in Mr Wegg's sitting−room, made bright on the chilly evening by
gaslight and fire, Mr Venus softens and compliments him on his abode; profiting by the
occasion to remind Wegg that he (Venus) told him he had got into a good thing.
'Tolerable,' Wegg rejoins. 'But bear in mind, Mr Venus, that there's no gold without its
alloy. Mix for yourself and take a seat in the chimbley−corner. Will you perform upon a
pipe, sir?'
'I am but an indifferent performer, sir,' returns the other; 'but I'll accompany you with a
whiff or two at intervals.'
So, Mr Venus mixes, and Wegg mixes; and Mr Venus lights and puffs, and Wegg lights
and puffs.
'And there's alloy even in this metal of yours, Mr Wegg, you was remarking?'
'Mystery,' returns Wegg. 'I don't like it, Mr Venus. I don't like to have the life knocked
out of former inhabitants of this house, in the gloomy dark, and not know who did it.'
'Might you have any suspicions, Mr Wegg?'
'No,' returns that gentleman. 'I know who profits by it. But I've no suspicions.'
Having said which, Mr Wegg smokes and looks at the fire with a most determined
expression of Charity; as if he had caught that cardinal virtue by the skirts as she felt it her
painful duty to depart from him, and held her by main force.
'Similarly,' resumes Wegg, 'I have observations as I can offer upon certain points and
parties; but I make no objections, Mr Venus. Here is an immense fortune drops from the
clouds upon a person that shall be nameless. Here is a weekly allowance, with a certain
weight of coals, drops from the clouds upon me. Which of us is the better man? Not the
person that shall be nameless. That's an observation of mine, but I don't make it an
objection. I take my allowance and my certain weight of coals. He takes his fortune. That's
the way it works.'
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'It would be a good thing for me, if I could see things in the calm light you do, Mr
Wegg.'
'Again look here,' pursues Silas, with an oratorical flourish of his pipe and his wooden
leg: the latter having an undignified tendency to tilt him back in his chair; 'here's another
observation, Mr Venus, unaccompanied with an objection. Him that shall be nameless is
liable to be talked over. He gets talked over. Him that shall be nameless, having me at his
right hand, naturally looking to be promoted higher, and you may perhaps say meriting to be
promoted higher – '
(Mr Venus murmurs that he does say so.)
' – Him that shall be nameless, under such circumstances passes me by, and puts a
talking−over stranger above my head. Which of us two is the better man? Which of us two
can repeat most poetry? Which of us two has, in the service of him that shall be nameless,
tackled the Romans, both civil and military, till he has got as husky as if he'd been weaned
and ever since brought up on sawdust? Not the talking−over stranger. Yet the house is as
free to him as if it was his, and he has his room, and is put upon a footing, and draws about a
thousand a year. I am banished to the Bower, to be found in it like a piece of furniture
whenever wanted. Merit, therefore, don't win. That's the way it works. I observe it, because I
can't help observing it, being accustomed to take a powerful sight of notice; but I don't
object. Ever here before, Mr Venus?'
'Not inside the gate, Mr Wegg.'
'You've been as far as the gate then, Mr Venus?'
'Yes, Mr Wegg, and peeped in from curiosity.'
'Did you see anything?'
'Nothing but the dust−yard.'
Mr Wegg rolls his eyes all round the room, in that ever unsatisfied quest of his, and then
rolls his eyes all round Mr Venus; as if suspicious of his having something about him to be
found out.
'And yet, sir,' he pursues, 'being acquainted with old Mr Harmon, one would have
thought it might have been polite in you, too, to give him a call. And you're naturally of a
polite disposition, you are.' This last clause as a softening compliment to Mr Venus.
'It is true, sir,' replies Venus, winking his weak eyes, and running his fingers through his
dusty shock of hair, 'that I was so, before a certain observation soured me. You understand
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to what I allude, Mr Wegg? To a certain written statement respecting not wishing to be
regarded in a certain light. Since that, all is fled, save gall.'
'Not all,' says Mr Wegg, in a tone of sentimental condolence.
'Yes, sir,' returns Venus, 'all! The world may deem it harsh, but I'd quite as soon pitch
into my best friend as not. Indeed, I'd sooner!'
Involuntarily making a pass with his wooden leg to guard himself as Mr Venus springs
up in the emphasis of this unsociable declaration, Mr Wegg tilts over on his back, chair and
all, and is rescued by that harmless misanthrope, in a disjointed state and ruefully rubbing
his head.
'Why, you lost your balance, Mr Wegg,' says Venus, handing him his pipe.
'And about time to do it,' grumbles Silas, 'when a man's visitors, without a word of
notice, conduct themselves with the sudden wiciousness of Jacks−in−boxes! Don't come
flying out of your chair like that, Mr Venus!'
'I ask your pardon, Mr Wegg. I am so soured.'
'Yes, but hang it,' says Wegg argumentatively, 'a well−governed mind can be soured
sitting! And as to being regarded in lights, there's bumpey lights as well as bony. IN which,'
again rubbing his head, 'I object to regard myself.'
'I'll bear it in memory, sir.'
'If you'll be so good.' Mr Wegg slowly subdues his ironical tone and his lingering
irritation, and resumes his pipe. 'We were talking of old Mr Harmon being a friend of yours.'
'Not a friend, Mr Wegg. Only known to speak to, and to have a little deal with now and
then. A very inquisitive character, Mr Wegg, regarding what was found in the dust. As
inquisitive as secret.'
'Ah! You found him secret?' returns Wegg, with a greedy relish.
'He had always the look of it, and the manner of it.'
'Ah!' with another roll of his eyes. 'As to what was found in the dust now. Did you ever
hear him mention how he found it, my dear friend? Living on the mysterious premises, one
would like to know. For instance, where he found things? Or, for instance, how he set about
it? Whether he began at the top ot the mounds, or whether he began at the bottom. Whether
he prodded'; Mr Wegg's pantomime is skilful and expressive here; 'or whether he scooped?
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Should you say scooped, my dear Mr Venus; or should you as a man – say prodded?'
'I should say neither, Mr Wegg.'
'As a fellow−man, Mr Venus – mix again – why neither?'
'Because I suppose, sir, that what was found, was found in the sorting and sifting. All
the mounds are sorted and sifted?'
'You shall see 'em and pass your opinion. Mix again.'
On each occasion of his saying 'mix again', Mr Wegg, with a hop on his wooden leg,
hitches his chair a little nearer; more as if he were proposing that himself and Mr Venus
should mix again, than that they should replenish their glasses.
'Living (as I said before) on the mysterious premises,' says Wegg when the other has
acted on his hospitable entreaty, 'one likes to know. Would you be inclined to say now – as a
brother – that he ever hid things in the dust, as well as found 'em?'
'Mr Wegg, on the whole I should say he might.'
Mr Wegg claps on his spectacles, and admiringly surveys Mr Venus from head to foot.
'As a mortal equally with myself, whose hand I take in mine for the first time this day,
having unaccountably overlooked that act so full of boundless confidence binding a
fellow−creetur TO a fellow creetur,' says Wegg, holding Mr Venus's palm out, flat and
ready for smiting, and now smiting it; 'as such – and no other – for I scorn all lowlier ties
betwixt myself and the man walking with his face erect that alone I call my Twin – regarded
and regarding in this trustful bond – what do you think he might have hid?'
'It is but a supposition, Mr Wegg.'
'As a Being with his hand upon his heart,' cries Wegg; and the apostrophe is not the less
impressive for the Being's hand being actually upon his rum and water; 'put your supposition
into language, and bring it out, Mr Venus!'
'He was the species of old gentleman, sir,' slowly returns that practical anatomist, after
drinking, 'that I should judge likely to take such opportunities as this place offered, of
stowing away money, valuables, maybe papers.'
'As one that was ever an ornament to human life,' says Mr Wegg, again holding out Mr
Venus's palm as if he were going to tell his fortune by chiromancy, and holding his own up
ready for smiting it when the time should come; 'as one that the poet might have had his eye
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on, in writing the national naval words:
Helm a−weather, now lay her close, Yard arm and yard arm she lies; Again, cried I, Mr
Venus, give her t'other dose, Man shrouds and grapple, sir, or she flies!
– that is to say, regarded in the light of true British Oak, for such you are explain, Mr
Venus, the expression «papers»!'
'Seeing that the old gentleman was generally cutting off some near relation, or blocking
out some natural affection,' Mr Venus rejoins, 'he most likely made a good many wills and
codicils.'
The palm of Silas Wegg descends with a sounding smack upon the palm of Venus, and
Wegg lavishly exclaims, 'Twin in opinion equally with feeling! Mix a little more!'
Having now hitched his wooden leg and his chair close in front of Mr Venus, Mr Wegg
rapidly mixes for both, gives his visitor his glass, touches its rim with the rim of his own,
puts his own to his lips, puts it down, and spreading his hands on his visitor's knees thus
addresses him:
'Mr Venus. It ain't that I object to being passed over for a stranger, though I regard the
stranger as a more than doubtful customer. It ain't for the sake of making money, though
money is ever welcome. It ain't for myself, though I am not so haughty as to be above doing
myself a good turn. It's for the cause of the right.'
Mr Venus, passively winking his weak eyes both at once, demands: 'What is, Mr
Wegg?'
'The friendly move, sir, that I now propose. You see the move, sir?'
'Till you have pointed it out, Mr Wegg, I can't say whether I do or not.'
'If there IS anything to be found on these premises, let us find it together. Let us make
the friendly move of agreeing to look for it together. Let us make the friendly move of
agreeing to share the profits of it equally betwixt us. In the cause of the right.' Thus Silas
assuming a noble air.
'Then,' says Mr Venus, looking up, after meditating with his hair held in his hands, as if
he could only fix his attention by fixing his head; 'if anything was to be unburied from under
the dust, it would be kept a secret by you and me? Would that be it, Mr Wegg?'
'That would depend upon what it was, Mr Venus. Say it was money, or plate, or
jewellery, it would be as much ours as anybody else's.'
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Mr Venus rubs an eyebrow, interrogatively.
'In the cause of the right it would. Because it would be unknowingly sold with the
mounds else, and the buyer would get what he was never meant to have, and never bought.
And what would that be, Mr Venus, but the cause of the wrong?'
'Say it was papers,' Mr Venus propounds.
'According to what they contained we should offer to dispose of 'em to the parties most
interested,' replies Wegg, promptly.
'In the cause of the right, Mr Wegg?'
'Always so, Mr Venus. If the parties should use them in the cause of the wrong, that
would be their act and deed. Mr Venus. I have an opinion of you, sir, to which it is not easy
to give mouth. Since I called upon you that evening when you were, as I may say, floating
your powerful mind in tea, I have felt that you required to be roused with an object. In this
friendly move, sir, you will have a glorious object to rouse you.'
Mr Wegg then goes on to enlarge upon what throughout has been uppermost in his
crafty mind: – the qualifications of Mr Venus for such a search. He expatiates on Mr Venus's
patient habits and delicate manipulation; on his skill in piecing little things together; on his
knowledge of various tissues and textures; on the likelihood of small indications leading him
on to the discovery of great concealments. 'While as to myself,' says Wegg, 'I am not good at
it. Whether I gave myself up to prodding, or whether I gave myself up to scooping, I
couldn't do it with that delicate touch so as not to show that I was disturbing the mounds.
Quite different with YOU, going to work (as YOU would) in the light of a fellow− man,
holily pledged in a friendly move to his brother man.' Mr Wegg next modestly remarks on
the want of adaptation in a wooden leg to ladders and such like airy perches, and also hints
at an inherent tendency in that timber fiction, when called into action for the purposes of a
promenade on an ashey slope, to stick itself into the yielding foothold, and peg its owner to
one spot. Then, leaving this part of the subject, he remarks on the special phenomenon that
before his installation in the Bower, it was from Mr Venus that he first heard of the legend
of hidden wealth in the Mounds: 'which', he observes with a vaguely pious air, 'was surely
never meant for nothing.' Lastly, he returns to the cause of the right, gloomily
foreshadowing the possibility of something being unearthed to criminate Mr Boffin (of
whom he once more candidly admits it cannot be denied that he profits by a murder), and
anticipating his denunciation by the friendly movers to avenging justice. And this, Mr Wegg
expressly points out, not at all for the sake of the reward – though it would be a want of
principle not to take it.
To all this, Mr Venus, with his shock of dusty hair cocked after the manner of a terrier's
ears, attends profoundly. When Mr Wegg, having finished, opens his arms wide, as if to
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show Mr Venus how bare his breast is, and then folds them pending a reply, Mr Venus
winks at him with both eyes some little time before speaking.
'I see you have tried it by yourself, Mr Wegg,' he says when he does speak. 'You have
found out the difficulties by experience.'
'No, it can hardly be said that I have tried it,' replies Wegg, a little dashed by the hint. 'I
have just skimmed it. Skimmed it.'
'And found nothing besides the difficulties?'
Wegg shakes his head.
'I scarcely know what to say to this, Mr Wegg,' observes Venus, after ruminating for a
while.
'Say yes,' Wegg naturally urges.
'If I wasn't soured, my answer would be no. But being soured, Mr Wegg, and driven to
reckless madness and desperation, I suppose it's Yes.'
Wegg joyfully reproduces the two glasses, repeats the ceremony of clinking their rims,
and inwardly drinks with great heartiness to the health and success in life of the young lady
who has reduced Mr Venus to his present convenient state of mind.
The articles of the friendly move are then severally recited and agreed upon. They are
but secrecy, fidelity, and perseverance. The Bower to be always free of access to Mr Venus
for his researches, and every precaution to be taken against their attracting observation in the
neighbourhood.
'There's a footstep!' exclaims Venus.
'Where?' cries Wegg, starting.
'Outside. St!'
They are in the act of ratifying the treaty of friendly move, by shaking hands upon it.
They softly break off, light their pipes which have gone out, and lean back in their chairs.
No doubt, a footstep. It approaches the window, and a hand taps at the glass. 'Come in!' calls
Wegg; meaning come round by the door. But the heavy old−fashioned sash is slowly raised,
and a head slowly looks in out of the dark background of night.
'Pray is Mr Silas Wegg here? Oh! I see him!'
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The friendly movers might not have been quite at their ease, even though the visitor had
entered in the usual manner. But, leaning on the breast−high window, and staring in out of
the darkness, they find the visitor extremely embarrassing. Expecially Mr Venus: who
removes his pipe, draws back his head, and stares at the starer, as if it were his own Hindoo
baby come to fetch him home.
'Good evening, Mr Wegg. The yard gate−lock should be looked to, if you please; it
don't catch.'
'Is it Mr Rokesmith?' falters Wegg.
'It is Mr Rokesmith. Don't let me disturb you. I am not coming in. I have only a message
for you, which I undertook to deliver on my way home to my lodgings. I was in two minds
about coming beyond the gate without ringing: not knowing but you might have a dog
about.'
'I wish I had,' mutters Wegg, with his back turned as he rose from his chair. St! Hush!
The talking−over stranger, Mr Venus.'
'Is that any one I know?' inquires the staring Secretary.
'No, Mr Rokesmith. Friend of mine. Passing the evening with me.'
'Oh! I beg his pardon. Mr Boffin wishes you to know that he does not expect you to stay
at home any evening, on the chance of his coming. It has occurred to him that he may,
without intending it, have been a tie upon you. In future, if he should come without notice,
he will take his chance of finding you, and it will be all the same to him if he does not. I
undertook to tell you on my way. That's all.'
With that, and 'Good night,' the Secretary lowers the window, and disappears. They
listen, and hear his footsteps go back to the gate, and hear the gate close after him.
'And for that individual, Mr Venus,' remarks Wegg, when he is fully gone, 'I have been
passed over! Let me ask you what you think of him?'
Apparently, Mr Venus does not know what to think of him, for he makes sundry efforts
to reply, without delivering himself of any other articulate utterance than that he has 'a
singular look'.
'A double look, you mean, sir,' rejoins Wegg, playing bitterly upon the word. 'That's
HIS look. Any amount of singular look for me, but not a double look! That's an
under−handed mind, sir.'
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'Do you say there's something against him?' Venus asks.
'Something against him?' repeats Wegg. 'Something? What would the relief be to my
feelings – as a fellow−man – if I wasn't the slave of truth, and didn't feel myself compelled
to answer, Everything!'
See into what wonderful maudlin refuges, featherless ostriches plunge their heads! It is
such unspeakable moral compensation to Wegg, to be overcome by the consideration that
Mr Rokesmith has an underhanded mind!
'On this starlight night, Mr Venus,' he remarks, when he is showing that friendly mover
out across the yard, and both are something the worse for mixing again and again: 'on this
starlight night to think that talking−over strangers, and underhanded minds, can go walking
home under the sky, as if they was all square!'
'The spectacle of those orbs,' says Mr Venus, gazing upward with his hat tumbling off;
'brings heavy on me her crushing words that she did not wish to regard herself nor yet to be
regarded in that – '
'I know! I know! You needn't repeat 'em,' says Wegg, pressing his hand. 'But think how
those stars steady me in the cause of the right against some that shall be nameless. It isn't
that I bear malice. But see how they glisten with old remembrances! Old remembrances of
what, sir?'
Mr Venus begins drearily replying, 'Of her words, in her own handwriting, that she does
not wish to regard herself, nor yet – ' when Silas cuts him short with dignity.
'No, sir! Remembrances of Our House, of Master George, of Aunt Jane, of Uncle
Parker, all laid waste! All offered up sacrifices to the minion of fortune and the worm of the
hour!'
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Chapter 8 − IN WHICH AN INNOCENT ELOPEMENT OCCURS
T
he minion of fortune and the worm of the hour, or in less cutting language,
Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, the Golden Dustman, had become as much at home in his
eminently aristocratic family mansion as he was likely ever to be. He could not but feel that,
like an eminently aristocratic family cheese, it was much too large for his wants, and bred an
infinite amount of parasites; but he was content to regard this drawback on his property as a
sort of perpetual Legacy Duty. He felt the more resigned to it, forasmuch as Mrs Boffin
enjoyed herself completely, and Miss Bella was delighted.
That young lady was, no doubt, and acquisition to the Boffins. She was far too pretty to
be unattractive anywhere, and far too quick of perception to be below the tone of her new
career. Whether it improved her heart might be a matter of taste that was open to question;
but as touching another matter of taste, its improvement of her appearance and manner, there
could be no question whatever.
And thus it soon came about that Miss Bella began to set Mrs Boffin right; and even
further, that Miss Bella began to feel ill at ease, and as it were responsible, when she saw
Mrs Boffin going wrong. Not that so sweet a disposition and so sound a nature could ever go
very wrong even among the great visiting authorities who agreed that the Boffins were
'charmingly vulgar' (which for certain was not their own case in saying so), but that when
she made a slip on the social ice on which all the children of Podsnappery, with genteel
souls to be saved, are required to skate in circles, or to slide in long rows, she inevitably
tripped Miss Bella up (so that young lady felt), and caused her to experience great confusion
under the glances of the more skilful performers engaged in those ice−exercises.
At Miss Bella's time of life it was not to be expected that she should examine herself
very closely on the congruity or stability of her position in Mr Boffin's house. And as she
had never been sparing of complaints of her old home when she had no other to compare it
with, so there was no novelty of ingratitude or disdain in her very much preferring her new
one.
'An invaluable man is Rokesmith,' said Mr Boffin, after some two or three months. 'But
I can't quite make him out.'
Neither could Bella, so she found the subject rather interesting.
'He takes more care of my affairs, morning, noon, and night,' said Mr Boffin, 'than fifty
other men put together either could or would; and yet he has ways of his own that are like
tying a scaffolding−pole right across the road, and bringing me up short when I am almost
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a−walking arm in arm with him.'
'May I ask how so, sir?' inquired Bella.
'Well, my dear,' said Mr Boffin, 'he won't meet any company here, but you. When we
have visitors, I should wish him to have his regular place at the table like ourselves; but no,
he won't take it.'
'If he considers himself above it,' said Miss Bella, with an airy toss of her head, 'I should
leave him alone.'
'It ain't that, my dear,' replied Mr Boffin, thinking it over. 'He don't consider himself
above it.'
'Perhaps he considers himself beneath it,' suggested Bella. 'If so, he ought to know best.'
'No, my dear; nor it ain't that, neither. No,' repeated Mr Boffin, with a shake of his head,
after again thinking it over; 'Rokesmith's a modest man, but he don't consider himself
beneath it.'
'Then what does he consider, sir?' asked Bella.
'Dashed if I know!' said Mr Boffin. 'It seemed that first as if it was only Lightwood that
he objected to meet. And now it seems to be everybody, except you.'
Oho! thought Miss Bella. 'In – deed! That's it, is it!' For Mr Mortimer Lightwood had
dined there two or three times, and she had met him elsewhere, and he had shown her some
attention. 'Rather cool in a Secretary – and Pa's lodger – to make me the subject of his
jealousy!'
That Pa's daughter should be so contemptuous of Pa's lodger was odd; but there were
odder anomalies than that in the mind of the spoilt girl: spoilt first by poverty, and then by
wealth. Be it this history's part, however, to leave them to unravel themselves.
'A little too much, I think,' Miss Bella reflected scornfully, 'to have Pa's lodger laying
claim to me, and keeping eligible people off! A little too much, indeed, to have the
opportunities opened to me by Mr and Mrs Boffin, appropriated by a mere Secretary and
Pa's lodger!'
Yet it was not so very long ago that Bella had been fluttered by the discovery that this
same Secretary and lodger seem to like her. Ah! but the eminently aristocratic mansion and
Mrs Boffin's dressmaker had not come into play then.
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In spite of his seemingly retiring manners a very intrusive person, this Secretary and
lodger, in Miss Bella's opinion. Always a light in his office−room when we came home from
the play or Opera, and he always at the carriage−door to hand us out. Always a provoking
radiance too on Mrs Boffin's face, and an abominably cheerful reception of him, as if it were
possible seriously to approve what the man had in his mind!
'You never charge me, Miss Wilfer,' said the Secretary, encountering her by chance
alone in the great drawing−room, 'with commissions for home. I shall always be happy to
execute any commands you may have in that direction.'
'Pray what may you mean, Mr Rokesmith?' inquired Miss Bella, with languidly
drooping eyelids.
'By home? I mean your father's house at Holloway.'
She coloured under the retort – so skilfully thrust, that the words seemed to be merely a
plain answer, given in plain good faith – and said, rather more emphatically and sharply:
'What commissions and commands are you speaking of?'
'Only little words of remembrance as I assume you sent somehow or other,' replied the
Secretary with his former air. 'It would be a pleasure to me if you would make me the bearer
of them. As you know, I come and go between the two houses every day.'
'You needn't remind me of that, sir.'
She was too quick in this petulant sally against 'Pa's lodger'; and she felt that she had
been so when she met his quiet look.
'They don't send many – what was your expression? – words of remembrance to me,'
said Bella, making haste to take refuge in ill− usage.
'They frequently ask me about you, and I give them such slight intelligence as I can.'
'I hope it's truly given,' exclaimed Bella.
'I hope you cannot doubt it, for it would be very much against you, if you could.'
'No, I do not doubt it. I deserve the reproach, which is very just indeed. I beg your
pardon, Mr Rokesmith.'
'I should beg you not to do so, but that it shows you to such admirable advantage,' he
replied with earnestness. 'Forgive me; I could not help saying that. To return to what I have
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digressed from, let me add that perhaps they think I report them to you, deliver little
messages, and the like. But I forbear to trouble you, as you never ask me.'
'I am going, sir,' said Bella, looking at him as if he had reproved her, 'to see them
tomorrow.'
'Is that,' he asked, hesitating, 'said to me, or to them?'
'To which you please.'
'To both? Shall I make it a message?'
'You can if you like, Mr Rokesmith. Message or no message, I am going to see them
tomorrow.'
'Then I will tell them so.'
He lingered a moment, as though to give her the opportunity of prolonging the
conversation if she wished. As she remained silent, he left her. Two incidents of the little
interview were felt by Miss Bella herself, when alone again, to be very curious. The first
was, that he unquestionably left her with a penitent air upon her, and a penitent feeling in her
heart. The second was, that she had not an intention or a thought of going home, until she
had announced it to him as a settled design.
'What can I mean by it, or what can he mean by it?' was her mental inquiry: 'He has no
right to any power over me, and how do I come to mind him when I don't care for him?'
Mrs Boffin, insisting that Bella should make tomorrow's expedition in the chariot, she
went home in great grandeur. Mrs Wilfer and Miss Lavinia had speculated much on the
probabilities and improbabilities of her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the
chariot from the window at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed that it must be
detained at the door as long as possible, for the mortification and confusion of the
neighbours. Then they repaired to the usual family room, to receive Miss Bella with a
becoming show of indifference.
The family room looked very small and very mean, and the downward staircase by
which it was attained looked very narrow and very crooked. The little house and all its
arrangements were a poor contrast to the eminently aristocratic dwelling. 'I can hardly
believe, thought Bella, that I ever did endure life in this place!'
Gloomy majesty on the part of Mrs Wilfer, and native pertness on the part of Lavvy, did
not mend the matter. Bella really stood in natural need of a little help, and she got none.
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'This,' said Mrs Wilfer, presenting a cheek to be kissed, as sympathetic and responsive
as the back of the bowl of a spoon, 'is quite an honour! You will probably find your sister
Lavvy grown, Bella.'
'Ma,' Miss Lavinia interposed, 'there can be no objection to your being aggravating,
because Bella richly deserves it; but I really must request that you will not drag in such
ridiculous nonsense as my having grown when I am past the growing age.'
'I grew, myself,' Mrs Wilfer sternly proclaimed, 'after I was married.'
'Very well, Ma,' returned Lavvy, 'then I think you had much better have left it alone.'
The lofty glare with which the majestic woman received this answer, might have
embarrassed a less pert opponent, but it had no effect upon Lavinia: who, leaving her parent
to the enjoyment of any amount of glaring at she might deem desirable under the
circumstances, accosted her sister, undismayed.
'I suppose you won't consider yourself quite disgraced, Bella, if I give you a kiss? Well!
And how do you do, Bella? And how are your Boffins?'
'Peace!' exclaimed Mrs Wilfer. 'Hold! I will not suffer this tone of levity.'
'My goodness me! How are your Spoffins, then?' said Lavvy, 'since Ma so very much
objects to your Boffins.'
'Impertinent girl! Minx!' said Mrs wilfer, with dread severity.
'I don't care whether I am a Minx, or a Sphinx,' returned Lavinia, coolly, tossing her
head; 'it's exactly the same thing to me, and I'd every bit as soon be one as the other; but I
know this – I'll not grow after I'm married!'
'You will not? YOU will not?' repeated Mrs Wilfer, solemnly.
'No, Ma, I will not. Nothing shall induce me.'
Mrs Wilfer, having waved her gloves, became loftily pathetic.
'But it was to be expected;' thus she spake. 'A child of mine deserts me for the proud and
prosperous, and another child of mine despises me. It is quite fitting.'
'Ma,' Bella struck in, 'Mr and Mrs Boffin are prosperous, no doubt; but you have no
right to say they are proud. You must know very well that they are not.'
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'In short, Ma,' said Lavvy, bouncing over to the enemy without a word of notice, you
must know very well – or if you don't, more shame for you! – that Mr and Mrs Boffin are
just absolute perfection.'
'Truly,' returned Mrs Wilfer, courteously receiving the deserter, it would seem that we
are required to think so. And this, Lavinia, is my reason for objecting to a tone of levity. Mrs
Boffin (of whose physiognomy I can never speak with the composure I would desire to
preserve), and your mother, are not on terms of intimacy. It is not for a moment to be
supposed that she and her husband dare to presume to speak of this family as the Wilfers. I
cannot therefore condescend to speak of them as the Boffins. No; for such a tone – call it
familiarity, levity, equality, or what you will – would imply those social interchanges which
do not exist. Do I render myself intelligible?'
Without taking the least notice of this inquiry, albeit delivered in an imposing and
forensic manner, Lavinia reminded her sister, 'After all, you know, Bella, you haven't told us
how your Whatshisnames are.'
'I don't want to speak of them here,' replied Bella, suppressing indignation, and tapping
her foot on the floor. 'They are much too kind and too good to be drawn into these
discussions.'
'Why put it so?' demanded Mrs Wilfer, with biting sarcasm. 'Why adopt a circuitous
form of speech? It is polite and it is obliging; but why do it? Why not openly say that they
are much too kind and too good for US? We understand the allusion. Why disguise the
phrase?'
'Ma,' said Bella, with one beat of her foot, 'you are enough to drive a saint mad, and so
is Lavvy.'
'Unfortunate Lavvy!' cried Mrs Wilfer, in a tone of commiseration. 'She always comes
for it. My poor child!' But Lavvy, with the suddenness of her former desertion, now bounced
over to the other enemy: very sharply remarking, 'Don't patronize ME, Ma, because I can
take care of myself.'
'I only wonder,' resumed Mrs Wilfer, directing her observations to her elder daughter, as
safer on the whole than her utterly unmanageable younger, 'that you found time and
inclination to tear yourself from Mr and Mrs Boffin, and come to see us at all. I only wonder
that our claims, contending against the superior claims of Mr and Mrs Boffin, had any
weight. I feel I ought to be thankful for gaining so much, in competition with Mr and Mrs
Boffin.' (The good lady bitterly emphasized the first letter of the word Boffin, as if it
represented her chief objection to the owners of that name, and as if she could have born
Doffin, Moffin, or Poffin much better.)
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'Ma,' said Bella, angrily, 'you force me to say that I am truly sorry I did come home, and
that I never will come home again, except when poor dear Pa is here. For, Pa is too
magnanimous to feel envy and spite towards my generous friends, and Pa is delicate enough
and gentle enough to remember the sort of little claim they thought I had upon them and the
unusually trying position in which, through no act of my own, I had been placed. And I
always did love poor dear Pa better than all the rest of you put together, and I always do and
I always shall!'
Here Bella, deriving no comfort from her charming bonnet and her elegant dress, burst
into tears.
'I think, R.W.,' cried Mrs Wilfer, lifting up her eyes and apostrophising the air, 'that if
you were present, it would be a trial to your feelings to hear your wife and the mother of
your family depreciated in your name. But Fate has spared you this, R.W., whatever it may
have thought proper to inflict upon her!'
Here Mrs Wilfer burst into tears.
'I hate the Boffins!' protested Miss Lavinia. I don't care who objects to their being called
the Boffins. I WILL call 'em the Boffins. The Boffins, the Boffins, the Boffins! And I say
they are mischief−making Boffins, and I say the Boffins have set Bella against me, and I tell
the Boffins to their faces:' which was not strictly the fact, but the young lady was excited:
'that they are detestable Boffins, disreputable Boffins, odious Boffins, beastly Boffins.
There!'
Here Miss Lavinia burst into tears.
The front garden−gate clanked, and the Secretary was seen coming at a brisk pace up
the steps. 'Leave Me to open the door to him,' said Mrs Wilfer, rising with stately resignation
as she shook her head and dried her eyes; 'we have at present no stipendiary girl to do so.
We have nothing to conceal. If he sees these traces of emotion on our cheeks, let him
construe them as he may.'
With those words she stalked out. In a few moments she stalked in again, proclaiming
in her heraldic manner, 'Mr Rokesmith is the bearer of a packet for Miss Bella Wilfer.'
Mr Rokesmith followed close upon his name, and of course saw what was amiss. But he
discreetly affected to see nothing, and addressed Miss Bella.
'Mr Boffin intended to have placed this in the carriage for you this morning. He wished
you to have it, as a little keepsake he had prepared – it is only a purse, Miss Wilfer – but as
he was disappointed in his fancy, I volunteered to come after you with it.'
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Bella took it in her hand, and thanked him.
'We have been quarrelling here a little, Mr Rokesmith, but not more than we used; you
know our agreeable ways among ourselves. You find me just going. Good−bye, mamma.
Good− bye, Lavvy!' and with a kiss for each Miss Bella turned to the door. The Secretary
would have attended her, but Mrs Wilfer advancing and saying with dignity, 'Pardon me!
Permit me to assert my natural right to escort my child to the equipage which is in waiting
for her,' he begged pardon and gave place. It was a very magnificent spectacle indeed, too
see Mrs Wilfer throw open the house−door, and loudly demand with extended gloves, 'The
male domestic of Mrs Boffin!' To whom presenting himself, she delivered the brief but
majestic charge, 'Miss Wilfer. Coming out!' and so delivered her over, like a female
Lieutenant of the Tower relinquishing a State Prisoner. The effect of this ceremonial was for
some quarter of an hour afterwards perfectly paralyzing on the neighbours, and was much
enhanced by the worthy lady airing herself for that term in a kind of splendidly serene trance
on the top step.
When Bella was seated in the carriage, she opened the little packet in her hand. It
contained a pretty purse, and the purse contained a bank note for fifty pounds. 'This shall be
a joyful surprise for poor dear Pa,' said Bella, 'and I'll take it myself into the City!'
As she was uninformed respecting the exact locality of the place of business of
Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, but knew it to be near Mincing Lane, she directed herself
to be driven to the corner of that darksome spot. Thence she despatched 'the male domestic
of Mrs Boffin,' in search of the counting−house of Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, with a
message importing that if R. Wilfer could come out, there was a lady waiting who would be
glad to speak with him. The delivery of these mysterious words from the mouth of a
footman caused so great an excitement in the counting−house, that a youthful scout was
instantly appointed to follow Rumty, observe the lady, and come in with his report. Nor was
the agitation by any means diminished, when the scout rushed back with the intelligence that
the lady was 'a slap−up gal in a bang−up chariot.'
Rumty himself, with his pen behind his ear under his rusty hat, arrived at the
carriage−door in a breathless condition, and had been fairly lugged into the vehicle by his
cravat and embraced almost unto choking, before he recognized his daughter. 'My dear
child!' he then panted, incoherently. 'Good gracious me! What a lovely woman you are! I
thought you had been unkind and forgotten your mother and sister.'
'I have just been to see them, Pa dear.'
'Oh! and how – how did you find your mother?' asked R. W., dubiously.
'Very disagreeable, Pa, and so was Lavvy.'
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'They are sometimes a little liable to it,' observed the patient cherub; 'but I hope you
made allowances, Bella, my dear?'
'No. I was disagreeable too, Pa; we were all of us disagreeable together. But I want you
to come and dine with me somewhere, Pa.'
'Why, my dear, I have already partaken of a – if one might mention such an article in
this superb chariot – of a – Saveloy,' replied R. Wilfer, modestly dropping his voice on the
word, as he eyed the canary−coloured fittings.
'Oh! That's nothing, Pa!'
'Truly, it ain't as much as one could sometimes wish it to be, my dear,' he admitted,
drawing his hand across his mouth. 'Still, when circumstances over which you have no
control, interpose obstacles between yourself and Small Germans, you can't do better than
bring a contented mind to hear on' – again dropping his voice in deference to the chariot –
'Saveloys!'
'You poor good Pa! Pa, do, I beg and pray, get leave for the rest of the day, and come
and pass it with me!'
'Well, my dear, I'll cut back and ask for leave.'
'But before you cut back,' said Bella, who had already taken him by the chin, pulled his
hat off, and begun to stick up his hair in her old way, 'do say that you are sure I am giddy
and inconsiderate, but have never really slighted you, Pa.'
'My dear, I say it with all my heart. And might I likewise observe,' her father delicately
hinted, with a glance out at window, 'that perhaps it might he calculated to attract attention,
having one's hair publicly done by a lovely woman in an elegant turn−out in Fenchurch
Street?'
Bella laughed and put on his hat again. But when his boyish figure bobbed away, its
shabbiness and cheerful patience smote the tears out of her eyes. 'I hate that Secretary for
thinking it of me,' she said to herself, 'and yet it seems half true!'
Back came her father, more like a boy than ever, in his release from school. 'All right,
my dear. Leave given at once. Really very handsomely done!'
'Now where can we find some quiet place, Pa, in which I can wait for you while you go
on an errand for me, if I send the carriage away?'
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It demanded cogitation. 'You see, my dear,' he explained, 'you really have become such
a very lovely woman, that it ought to he a very quiet place.' At length he suggested, 'Near
the garden up by the Trinity House on Tower Hill.' So, they were driven there, and Bella
dismissed the chariot; sending a pencilled note by it to Mrs Boffin, that she was with her
father.
'Now, Pa, attend to what I am going to say, and promise and vow to be obedient.'
'I promise and vow, my dear.'
'You ask no questions. You take this purse; you go to the nearest place where they keep
everything of the very very best, ready made; you buy and put on, the most beautiful suit of
clothes, the most beautiful hat, and the most beautiful pair of bright boots (patent leather, Pa,
mind!) that are to be got for money; and you come back to me.'
'But, my dear Bella – '
'Take care, Pa!' pointing her forefinger at him, merrily. 'You have promised and vowed.
It's perjury, you know.'
There was water in the foolish little fellow's eyes, but she kissed them dry (though her
own were wet), and he bobbed away again. After half an hour, he came back, so brilliantly
transformed, that Bella was obliged to walk round him in ecstatic admiration twenty times,
before she could draw her arm through his, and delightedly squeeze it.
'Now, Pa,' said Bella, hugging him close, 'take this lovely woman out to dinner.'
'Where shall we go, my dear?'
'Greenwich!' said Bella, valiantly. 'And be sure you treat this lovely woman with
everything of the best.'
While they were going along to take boat, 'Don't you wish, my dear,' said R. W.,
timidly, 'that your mother was here?'
'No, I don't, Pa, for I like to have you all to myself to−day. I was always your little
favourite at home, and you were always mine. We have run away together often, before
now; haven't we, Pa?'
'Ah, to be sure we have! Many a Sunday when your mother was – was a little liable to
it,' repeating his former delicate expression after pausing to cough.
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'Yes, and I am afraid I was seldom or never as good as I ought to have been, Pa. I made
you carry me, over and over again, when you should have made me walk; and I often drove
you in harness, when you would much rather have sat down and read your news− paper:
didn't I?'
'Sometimes, sometimes. But Lor, what a child you were! What a companion you were!'
'Companion? That's just what I want to be to−day, Pa.'
'You are safe to succeed, my love. Your brothers and sisters have all in their turns been
companions to me, to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent. Your mother has,
throughout life, been a companion that any man might – might look up to – and – and
commit the sayings of, to memory – and – form himself upon – if he – '
'If he liked the model?' suggested Bella.
'We−ell, ye−es,' he returned, thinking about it, not quite satisfied with the phrase: 'or
perhaps I might say, if it was in him. Supposing, for instance, that a man wanted to be
always marching, he would find your mother an inestimable companion. But if he had any
taste for walking, or should wish at any time to break into a trot, he might sometimes find it
a little difficult to keep step with your mother. Or take it this way, Bella,' he added, after a
moment's reflection; 'Supposing that a man had to go through life, we won't say with a
companion, but we'll say to a tune. Very good. Supposing that the tune allotted to him was
the Dead March in Saul. Well. It would be a very suitable tune for particular occasions –
none better – but it would be difficult to keep time with in the ordinary run of domestic
transactions. For instance, if he took his supper after a hard day, to the Dead March in Saul,
his food might be likely to sit heavy on him. Or, if he was at any time inclined to relieve his
mind by singing a comic song or dancing a hornpipe, and was obliged to do it to the Dead
March in Saul, he might find himself put out in the execution of his lively intentions.'
'Poor Pa!' thought Bella, as she hung upon his arm.
'Now, what I will say for you, my dear,' the cherub pursued mildly and without a notion
of complaining, 'is, that you are so adaptable. So adaptable.'
'Indeed I am afraid I have shown a wretched temper, Pa. I am afraid I have been very
complaining, and very capricious. I seldom or never thought of it before. But when I sat in
the carriage just now and saw you coming along the pavement, I reproached myself.'
'Not at all, my dear. Don't speak of such a thing.'
A happy and a chatty man was Pa in his new clothes that day. Take it for all in all, it
was perhaps the happiest day he had ever known in his life; not even excepting that on
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which his heroic partner had approached the nuptial altar to the tune of the Dead March in
Saul.
The little expedition down the river was delightful, and the little room overlooking the
river into which they were shown for dinner was delightful. Everything was delightful. The
park was delightful, the punch was delightful, the dishes of fish were delightful, the wine
was delightful. Bella was more delightful than any other item in the festival; drawing Pa out
in the gayest manner; making a point of always mentioning herself as the lovely woman;
stimulating Pa to order things, by declaring that the lovely woman insisted on being treated
with them; and in short causing Pa to be quite enraptured with the consideration that he
WAS the Pa of such a charming daughter.
And then, as they sat looking at the ships and steamboats making their way to the sea
with the tide that was running down, the lovely woman imagined all sorts of voyages for
herself and Pa. Now, Pa, in the character of owner of a lumbering square−sailed collier, was
tacking away to Newcastle, to fetch black diamonds to make his fortune with; now, Pa was
going to China in that handsome threemasted ship, to bring home opium, with which he
would for ever cut out Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, and to bring home silks and
shawls without end for the decoration of his charming daughter. Now, John Harmon's
disastrous fate was all a dream, and he had come home and found the lovely woman just the
article for him, and the lovely woman had found him just the article for her, and they were
going away on a trip, in their gallant bark, to look after their vines, with streamers flying at
all points, a band playing on deck and Pa established in the great cabin. Now, John Harmon
was consigned to his grave again, and a merchant of immense wealth (name unknown) had
courted and married the lovely woman, and he was so enormously rich that everything you
saw upon the river sailing or steaming belonged to him, and he kept a perfect fleet of yachts
for pleasure, and that little impudent yacht which you saw over there, with the great white
sail, was called The Bella, in honour of his wife, and she held her state aboard when it
pleased her, like a modern Cleopatra. Anon, there would embark in that troop−ship when
she got to Gravesend, a mighty general, of large property (name also unknown), who
wouldn't hear of going to victory without his wife, and whose wife was the lovely woman,
and she was destined to become the idol of all the red coats and blue jackets alow and aloft.
And then again: you saw that ship being towed out by a steam−tug? Well! where did you
suppose she was going to? She was going among the coral reefs and cocoa−nuts and all that
sort of thing, and she was chartered for a fortunate individual of the name of Pa (himself on
board, and much respected by all hands), and she was going, for his sole profit and
advantage, to fetch a cargo of sweet−smelling woods, the most beautiful that ever were seen,
and the most profitable that ever were heard of; and her cargo would be a great fortune, as
indeed it ought to be: the lovely woman who had purchased her and fitted her expressly for
this voyage, being married to an Indian Prince, who was a Something−or−Other, and who
wore Cashmere shawls all over himself and diamonds and emeralds blazing in his turban,
and was beautifully coffee− coloured and excessively devoted, though a little too jealous.
Thus Bella ran on merrily, in a manner perfectly enchanting to Pa, who was as willing to put
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his head into the Sultan's tub of water as the beggar−boys below the window were to put
THEIR heads in the mud.
'I suppose, my dear,' said Pa after dinner, 'we may come to the conclusion at home, that
we have lost you for good?'
Bella shook her head. Didn't know. Couldn't say. All she was able to report was, that
she was most handsomely supplied with everything she could possibly want, and that
whenever she hinted at leaving Mr and Mrs Boffin, they wouldn't hear of it.
'And now, Pa,' pursued Bella, 'I'll make a confession to you. I am the most mercenary
little wretch that ever lived in the world.'
'I should hardly have thought it of you, my dear,' returned her father, first glancing at
himself; and then at the dessert.
'I understand what you mean, Pa, but it's not that. It's not that I care for money to keep
as money, but I do care so much for what it will buy!'
'Really I think most of us do,' returned R. W.
'But not to the dreadful extent that I do, Pa. O−o!' cried Bella, screwing the exclamation
out of herself with a twist of her dimpled chin. 'I AM so mercenary!'
With a wistful glance R. W. said, in default of having anything better to say: 'About
when did you begin to feel it coming on, my dear?'
'That's it, Pa. That's the terrible part of it. When I was at home, and only knew what it
was to be poor, I grumbled but didn't so much mind. When I was at home expecting to be
rich, I thought vaguely of all the great things I would do. But when I had been disappointed
of my splendid fortune, and came to see it from day to day in other hands, and to have
before my eyes what it could really do, then I became the mercenary little wretch I am.'
'It's your fancy, my dear.'
'I can assure you it's nothing of the sort, Pa!' said Bella, nodding at him, with her very
pretty eyebrows raised as high as they would go, and looking comically frightened. 'It's a
fact. I am always avariciously scheming.'
'Lor! But how?'
'I'll tell you, Pa. I don't mind telling YOU, because we have always been favourites of
each other's, and because you are not like a Pa, but more like a sort of a younger brother
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with a dear venerable chubbiness on him. And besides,' added Bella, laughing as she pointed
a rallying finger at his face, 'because I have got you in my power. This is a secret expedition.
If ever you tell of me, I'll tell of you. I'll tell Ma that you dined at Greenwich.'
'Well; seriously, my dear,' observed R. W., with some trepidation of manner, 'it might
be as well not to mention it.'
'Aha!' laughed Bella. 'I knew you wouldn't like it, sir! So you keep my confidence, and
I'll keep yours. But betray the lovely woman, and you shall find her a serpent. Now, you
may give me a kiss, Pa, and I should like to give your hair a turn, because it has been
dreadfully neglected in my absence.'
R. W. submitted his head to the operator, and the operator went on talking; at the same
time putting separate locks of his hair through a curious process of being smartly rolled over
her two revolving forefingers, which were then suddenly pulled out of it in opposite lateral
directions. On each of these occasions the patient winced and winked.
'I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can't beg it, borrow it,
or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.'
R. W. cast up his eyes towards her, as well as he could under the operating
circumstances, and said in a tone of remonstrance, 'My de−ar Bella!'
'Have resolved, I say, Pa, that to get money I must marry money. In consequence of
which, I am always looking out for money to captivate.'
'My de−a−r Bella!'
'Yes, Pa, that is the state of the case. If ever there was a mercenary plotter whose
thoughts and designs were always in her mean occupation, I am the amiable creature. But I
don't care. I hate and detest being poor, and I won't be poor if I can marry money. Now you
are deliciously fluffy, Pa, and in a state to astonish the waiter and pay the bill.'
'But, my dear Bella, this is quite alarming at your age.'
'I told you so, Pa, but you wouldn't believe it,' returned Bella, with a pleasant childish
gravity. 'Isn't it shocking?'
'It would be quite so, if you fully knew what you said, my dear, or meant it.'
'Well, Pa, I can only tell you that I mean nothing else. Talk to me of love!' said Bella,
contemptuously: though her face and figure certainly rendered the subject no incongruous
one. 'Talk to me of fiery dragons! But talk to me of poverty and wealth, and there indeed we
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touch upon realities.'
'My De−ar, this is becoming Awful – ' her father was emphatically beginning: when she
stopped him.
'Pa, tell me. Did you marry money?'
'You know I didn't, my dear.'
Bella hummed the Dead March in Saul, and said, after all it signified very little! But
seeing him look grave and downcast, she took him round the neck and kissed him back to
cheerfulness again.
'I didn't mean that last touch, Pa; it was only said in joke. Now mind! You are not to tell
of me, and I'll not tell of you. And more than that; I promise to have no secrets from you, Pa,
and you may make certain that, whatever mercenary things go on, I shall always tell you all
about them in strict confidence.'
Fain to be satisfied with this concession from the lovely woman, R. W. rang the bell,
and paid the bill. 'Now, all the rest of this, Pa,' said Bella, rolling up the purse when they
were alone again, hammering it small with her little fist on the table, and cramming it into
one of the pockets of his new waistcoat, 'is for you, to buy presents with for them at home,
and to pay bills with, and to divide as you like, and spend exactly as you think proper. Last
of all take notice, Pa, that it's not the fruit of any avaricious scheme. Perhaps if it was, your
little mercenary wretch of a daughter wouldn't make so free with it!'
After which, she tugged at his coat with both hands, and pulled him all askew in
buttoning that garment over the precious waistcoat pocket, and then tied her dimples into her
bonnet−strings in a very knowing way, and took him back to London. Arrived at Mr Boffin's
door, she set him with his back against it, tenderly took him by the ears as convenient
handles for her purpose, and kissed him until he knocked muffled double knocks at the door
with the back of his head. That done, she once more reminded him of their compact and
gaily parted from him.
Not so gaily, however, but that tears filled her eyes as he went away down the dark
street. Not so gaily, but that she several times said, 'Ah, poor little Pa! Ah, poor dear
struggling shabby little Pa!' before she took heart to knock at the door. Not so gaily, but that
the brilliant furniture seemed to stare her out of countenance as if it insisted on being
compared with the dingy furniture at home. Not so gaily, but that she fell into very low
spirits sitting late in her own room, and very heartily wept, as she wished, now that the
deceased old John Harmon had never made a will about her, now that the deceased young
John Harmon had lived to marry her. 'Contradictory things to wish,' said Bella, 'but my life
and fortunes are so contradictory altogether that what can I expect myself to be!'
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Chapter 9 − IN WHICH THE ORPHAN MAKES HIS WILL
T
he Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was informed that
a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy. The footman who communicated
this intelligence made a decent pause before uttering the name, to express that it was forced
on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had the good sense and
good taste to inherit some other name it would have spared the feelings of him the bearer.
'Mrs Boffin will be very well pleased,' said the Secretary in a perfectly composed way.
'Show him in.'
Mr Sloppy being introduced, remained close to the door: revealing in various parts of
his form many surprising, confounding, and incomprehensible buttons.
'I am glad to see you,' said John Rokesmith, in a cheerful tone of welcome. 'I have been
expecting you.'
Sloppy explained that he had meant to come before, but that the Orphan (of whom he
made mention as Our Johnny) had been ailing, and he had waited to report him well.
'Then he is well now?' said the Secretary.
'No he ain't,' said Sloppy.
Mr Sloppy having shaken his head to a considerable extent, proceeded to remark that he
thought Johnny 'must have took 'em from the Minders.' Being asked what he meant, he
answered, them that come out upon him and partickler his chest. Being requested to explain
himself, he stated that there was some of 'em wot you couldn't kiver with a sixpence. Pressed
to fall back upon a nominative case, he opined that they wos about as red as ever red could
be. 'But as long as they strikes out'ards, sir,' continued Sloppy, 'they ain't so much. It's their
striking in'ards that's to be kep off.'
John Rokesmith hoped the child had had medical attendance? Oh yes, said Sloppy, he
had been took to the doctor's shop once. And what did the doctor call it? Rokesmith asked
him. After some perplexed reflection, Sloppy answered, brightening, 'He called it something
as wos wery long for spots.' Rokesmith suggested measles. 'No,' said Sloppy with
confidence, 'ever so much longer than THEM, sir!' (Mr Sloppy was elevated by this fact,
and seemed to consider that it reflected credit on the poor little patient.)
'Mrs Boffin will be sorry to hear this,' said Rokesmith.
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'Mrs Higden said so, sir, when she kep it from her, hoping as Our Johnny would work
round.'
'But I hope he will?' said Rokesmith, with a quick turn upon the messenger.
'I hope so,' answered Sloppy. 'It all depends on their striking in'ards.' He then went on to
say that whether Johnny had 'took 'em' from the Minders, or whether the Minders had 'took
em from Johnny, the Minders had been sent home and had 'got em. Furthermore, that Mrs
Higden's days and nights being devoted to Our Johnny, who was never out of her lap, the
whole of the mangling arrangements had devolved upon himself, and he had had 'rayther a
tight time'. The ungainly piece of honesty beamed and blushed as he said it, quite enraptured
with the remembrance of having been serviceable.
'Last night,' said Sloppy, 'when I was a−turning at the wheel pretty late, the mangle
seemed to go like Our Johnny's breathing. It begun beautiful, then as it went out it shook a
little and got unsteady, then as it took the turn to come home it had a rattle−like and
lumbered a bit, then it come smooth, and so it went on till I scarce know'd which was
mangle and which was Our Johnny. Nor Our Johnny, he scarce know'd either, for sometimes
when the mangle lumbers he says, «Me choking, Granny!» and Mrs Higden holds him up in
her lap and says to me «Bide a bit, Sloppy,» and we all stops together. And when Our
Johnny gets his breathing again, I turns again, and we all goes on together.'
Sloppy had gradually expanded with his description into a stare and a vacant grin. He
now contracted, being silent, into a half− repressed gush of tears, and, under pretence of
being heated, drew the under part of his sleeve across his eyes with a singularly awkward,
laborious, and roundabout smear.
'This is unfortunate,' said Rokesmith. 'I must go and break it to Mrs Boffin. Stay you
here, Sloppy.'
Sloppy stayed there, staring at the pattern of the paper on the wall, until the Secretary
and Mrs Boffin came back together. And with Mrs Boffin was a young lady (Miss Bella
Wilfer by name) who was better worth staring at, it occurred to Sloppy, than the best of
wall−papering.
'Ah, my poor dear pretty little John Harmon!' exclaimed Mrs Boffin.
'Yes mum,' said the sympathetic Sloppy.
'You don't think he is in a very, very bad way, do you?' asked the pleasant creature with
her wholesome cordiality.
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Put upon his good faith, and finding it in collision with his inclinations, Sloppy threw
back his head and uttered a mellifluous howl, rounded off with a sniff.
'So bad as that!' cried Mrs Boffin. 'And Betty Higden not to tell me of it sooner!'
'I think she might have been mistrustful, mum,' answered Sloppy, hesitating.
'Of what, for Heaven's sake?'
'I think she might have been mistrustful, mum,' returned Sloppy with submission, 'of
standing in Our Johnny's light. There's so much trouble in illness, and so much expense, and
she's seen such a lot of its being objected to.'
'But she never can have thought,' said Mrs Boffin, 'that I would grudge the dear child
anything?'
'No mum, but she might have thought (as a habit−like) of its standing in Johnny's light,
and might have tried to bring him through it unbeknownst.'
Sloppy knew his ground well. To conceal herself in sickness, like a lower animal; to
creep out of sight and coil herself away and die; had become this woman's instinct. To catch
up in her arms the sick child who was dear to her, and hide it as if it were a criminal, and
keep off all ministration but such as her own ignorant tenderness and patience could supply,
had become this woman's idea of maternal love, fidelity, and duty. The shameful accounts
we read, every week in the Christian year, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards,
the infamous records of small official inhumanity, do not pass by the people as they pass by
us. And hence these irrational, blind, and obstinate prejudices, so astonishing to our
magnificence, and having no more reason in them – God save the Queen and Confound their
politics – no, than smoke has in coming from fire!
'It's not a right place for the poor child to stay in,' said Mrs Boffin. 'Tell us, dear Mr
Rokesmith, what to do for the best.'
He had already thought what to do, and the consultation was very short. He could pave
the way, he said, in half an hour, and then they would go down to Brentford. 'Pray take me,'
said Bella. Therefore a carriage was ordered, of capacity to take them all, and in the
meantime Sloppy was regaled, feasting alone in the Secretary's room, with a complete
realization of that fairy vision – meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding. In consequence of
which his buttons became more importunate of public notice than before, with the exception
of two or three about the region of the waistband, which modestly withdrew into a creasy
retirement.
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Punctual to the time, appeared the carriage and the Secretary. He sat on the box, and Mr
Sloppy graced the rumble. So, to the Three Magpies as before: where Mrs Boffin and Miss
Bella were handed out, and whence they all went on foot to Mrs Betty Higden's.
But, on the way down, they had stopped at a toy−shop, and had bought that noble
charger, a description of whose points and trappings had on the last occasion conciliated the
then worldly− minded orphan, and also a Noah's ark, and also a yellow bird with an artificial
voice in him, and also a military doll so well dressed that if he had only been of life−size his
brother−officers in the Guards might never have found him out. Bearing these gifts, they
raised the latch of Betty Higden's door, and saw her sitting in the dimmest and furthest
corner with poor Johnny in her lap.
'And how's my boy, Betty?' asked Mrs Boffin, sitting down beside her.
'He's bad! He's bad!' said Betty. 'I begin to be afeerd he'll not be yours any more than
mine. All others belonging to him have gone to the Power and the Glory, and I have a mind
that they're drawing him to them – leading him away.'
'No, no, no,' said Mrs Boffin.
'I don't know why else he clenches his little hand as if it had hold of a finger that I can't
see. Look at it,' said Betty, opening the wrappers in which the flushed child lay, and showing
his small right hand lying closed upon his breast. 'It's always so. It don't mind me.'
'Is he asleep?'
'No, I think not. You're not asleep, my Johnny?'
'No,' said Johnny, with a quiet air of pity for himself; and without opening his eyes.
'Here's the lady, Johnny. And the horse.'
Johnny could bear the lady, with complete indifference, but not the horse. Opening his
heavy eyes, he slowly broke into a smile on beholding that splendid phenomenon, and
wanted to take it in his arms. As it was much too big, it was put upon a chair where he could
hold it by the mane and contemplate it. Which he soon forgot to do.
But, Johnny murmuring something with his eyes closed, and Mrs Boffin not knowing
what, old Betty bent her ear to listen and took pains to understand. Being asked by her to
repeat what he had said, he did so two or three times, and then it came out that he must have
seen more than they supposed when he looked up to see the horse, for the murmur was,
'Who is the boofer lady?' Now, the boofer, or beautiful, lady was Bella; and whereas this
notice from the poor baby would have touched her of itself; it was rendered more pathetic by
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the late melting of her heart to her poor little father, and their joke about the lovely woman.
So, Bella's behaviour was very tender and very natural when she kneeled on the brick floor
to clasp the child, and when the child, with a child's admiration of what is young and pretty,
fondled the boofer lady.
'Now, my good dear Betty,' said Mrs Boffin, hoping that she saw her opportunity, and
laying her hand persuasively on her arm; 'we have come to remove Johnny from this cottage
to where he can be taken better care of.'
Instantly, and before another word could be spoken, the old woman started up with
blazing eyes, and rushed at the door with the sick child.
'Stand away from me every one of ye!' she cried out wildly. 'I see what ye mean now.
Let me go my way, all of ye. I'd sooner kill the Pretty, and kill myself!'
'Stay, stay!' said Rokesmith, soothing her. 'You don't understand.'
'I understand too well. I know too much about it, sir. I've run from it too many a year.
No! Never for me, nor for the child, while there's water enough in England to cover us!'
The terror, the shame, the passion of horror and repugnance, firing the worn face and
perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite terrible sight, if embodied in one old
fellow−creature alone. Yet it 'crops up' – as our slang goes – my lords and gentlemen and
honourable boards, in other fellow−creatures, rather frequently!
'It's been chasing me all my life, but it shall never take me nor mine alive!' cried old
Betty. 'I've done with ye. I'd have fastened door and window and starved out, afore I'd ever
have let ye in, if I had known what ye came for!'
But, catching sight of Mrs Boffin's wholesome face, she relented, and crouching down
by the door and bending over her burden to hush it, said humbly: 'Maybe my fears has put
me wrong. If they have so, tell me, and the good Lord forgive me! I'm quick to take this
fright, I know, and my head is summ'at light with wearying and watching.'
'There, there, there!' returned Mrs Boffin. 'Come, come! Say no more of it, Betty. It was
a mistake, a mistake. Any one of us might have made it in your place, and felt just as you
do.'
'The Lord bless ye!' said the old woman, stretching out her hand.
'Now, see, Betty,' pursued the sweet compassionate soul, holding the hand kindly, 'what
I really did mean, and what I should have begun by saying out, if I had only been a little
wiser and handier. We want to move Johnny to a place where there are none but children; a
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place set up on purpose for sick children; where the good doctors and nurses pass their lives
with children, talk to none but children, touch none but children, comfort and cure none but
children.'
'Is there really such a place?' asked the old woman, with a gaze of wonder.
'Yes, Betty, on my word, and you shall see it. If my home was a better place for the dear
boy, I'd take him to it; but indeed indeed it's not.'
'You shall take him,' returned Betty, fervently kissing the comforting hand, 'where you
will, my deary. I am not so hard, but that I believe your face and voice, and I will, as long as
I can see and hear.'
This victory gained, Rokesmith made haste to profit by it, for he saw how woefully time
had been lost. He despatched Sloppy to bring the carriage to the door; caused the child to be
carefully wrapped up; bade old Betty get her bonnet on; collected the toys, enabling the little
fellow to comprehend that his treasures were to be transported with him; and had all things
prepared so easily that they were ready for the carriage as soon as it appeared, and in a
minute afterwards were on their way. Sloppy they left behind, relieving his overcharged
breast with a paroxysm of mangling.
At the Children's Hospital, the gallant steed, the Noah's ark, yellow bird, and the officer
in the Guards, were made as welcome as their child−owner. But the doctor said aside to
Rokesmith, 'This should have been days ago. Too late!'
However, they were all carried up into a fresh airy room, and there Johnny came to
himself, out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever it was, to find himself lying in a little quiet
bed, with a little platform over his breast, on which were already arranged, to give him heart
and urge him to cheer up, the Noah's ark, the noble steed, and the yellow bird; with the
officer in the Guards doing duty over the whole, quite as much to the satisfaction of his
country as if he had been upon Parade. And at the bed's head was a coloured picture
beautiful to see, representing as it were another Johnny seated on the knee of some Angel
surely who loved little children. And, marvellous fact, to lie and stare at: Johnny had
become one of a little family, all in little quiet beds (except two playing dominoes in little
arm−chairs at a little table on the hearth): and on all the little beds were little platforms
whereon were to be seen dolls' houses, woolly dogs with mechanical barks in them not very
dissimilar from the artificial voice pervading the bowels of the yellow bird, tin armies,
Moorish tumblers, wooden tea things, and the riches of the earth.
As Johnny murmured something in his placid admiration, the ministering women at his
bed's head asked him what he said. It seemed that he wanted to know whether all these were
brothers and sisters of his? So they told him yes. It seemed then, that he wanted to know
whether God had brought them all together there? So they told him yes again. They made
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out then, that he wanted to know whether they would all get out of pain? So they answered
yes to that question likewise, and made him understand that the reply included himself.
Johnny's powers of sustaining conversation were as yet so very imperfectly developed,
even in a state of health, that in sickness they were little more than monosyllabic. But, he
had to be washed and tended, and remedies were applied, and though those offices were far,
far more skilfully and lightly done than ever anything had been done for him in his little life,
so rough and short, they would have hurt and tired him but for an amazing circumstance
which laid hold of his attention. This was no less than the appearance on his own little
platform in pairs, of All Creation, on its way into his own particular ark: the elephant
leading, and the fly, with a diffident sense of his size, politely bringing up the rear. A very
little brother lying in the next bed with a broken leg, was so enchanted by this spectacle that
his delight exalted its enthralling interest; and so came rest and sleep.
'I see you are not afraid to leave the dear child here, Betty,' whispered Mrs Boffin.
'No, ma'am. Most willingly, most thankfully, with all my heart and soul.'
So, they kissed him, and left him there, and old Betty was to come back early in the
morning, and nobody but Rokesmith knew for certain how that the doctor had said, 'This
should have been days ago. Too late!'
But, Rokesmith knowing it, and knowing that his bearing it in mind would be
acceptable thereafter to that good woman who had been the only light in the childhood of
desolate John Harmon dead and gone, resolved that late at night he would go back to the
bedside of John Harmon's namesake, and see how it fared with him.
The family whom God had brought together were not all asleep, but were all quiet.
From bed to bed, a light womanly tread and a pleasant fresh face passed in the silence of the
night. A little head would lift itself up into the softened light here and there, to be kissed as
the face went by – for these little patients are very loving – and would then submit itself to
be composed to rest again. The mite with the broken leg was restless, and moaned; but after
a while turned his face towards Johnny's bed, to fortify himself with a view of the ark, and
fell asleep. Over most of the beds, the toys were yet grouped as the children had left them
when they last laid themselves down, and, in their innocent grotesqueness and incongruity,
they might have stood for the children's dreams.
The doctor came in too, to see how it fared with Johnny. And he and Rokesmith stood
together, looking down with compassion on him.
'What is it, Johnny?' Rokesmith was the questioner, and put an arm round the poor baby
as he made a struggle.
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Chapter 9 − IN WHICH THE ORPHAN MAKES HIS WILL 320
'Him!' said the little fellow. 'Those!'
The doctor was quick to understand children, and, taking the horse, the ark, the yellow
bird, and the man in the Guards, from Johnny's bed, softly placed them on that of his next
neighbour, the mite with the broken leg.
With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an action as if he stretched his little
figure out to rest, the child heaved his body on the sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith's
face with his lips, said:
'A kiss for the boofer lady.'
Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose of, and arranged his affairs in this world,
Johnny, thus speaking, left it.
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Chapter 10 − A SUCCESSOR
S
ome of the Reverend Frank Milvey's brethren had found themselves exceedingly
uncomfortable in their minds, because they were required to bury the dead too hopefully.
But, the Reverend Frank, inclining to the belief that they were required to do one or two
other things (say out of nine−and−thirty) calculated to trouble their consciences rather more
if they would think as much about them, held his peace.
Indeed, the Reverend Frank Milvey was a forbearing man, who noticed many sad warps
and blights in the vineyard wherein he worked, and did not profess that they made him
savagely wise. He only learned that the more he himself knew, in his little limited human
way, the better he could distantly imagine what Omniscience might know.
Wherefore, if the Reverend Frank had had to read the words that troubled some of his
brethren, and profitably touched innumerable hearts, in a worse case than Johnny's, he
would have done so out of the pity and humility of his soul. Reading them over Johnny, he
thought of his own six children, but not of his poverty, and read them with dimmed eyes.
And very seriously did he and his bright little wife, who had been listening, look down into
the small grave and walk home arm−in−arm.
There was grief in the aristocratic house, and there was joy in the Bower. Mr Wegg
argued, if an orphan were wanted, was he not an orphan himself; and could a better be
desired? And why go beating about Brentford bushes, seeking orphans forsooth who had
established no claims upon you and made no sacrifices for you, when here was an orphan
ready to your hand who had given up in your cause, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt
Jane, and Uncle Parker?
Mr Wegg chuckled, consequently, when he heard the tidings. Nay, it was afterwards
affirmed by a witness who shall at present be nameless, that in the seclusion of the Bower he
poked out his wooden leg, in the stage−ballet manner, and executed a taunting or triumphant
pirouette on the genuine leg remaining to him.
John Rokesmith's manner towards Mrs Boffin at this time, was more the manner of a
young man towards a mother, than that of a Secretary towards his employer's wife. It had
always been marked by a subdued affectionate deference that seemed to have sprung up on
the very day of his engagement; whatever was odd in her dress or her ways had seemed to
have no oddity for him; he had sometimes borne a quietly−amused face in her company, but
still it had seemed as if the pleasure her genial temper and radiant nature yielded him, could
have been quite as naturally expressed in a tear as in a smile. The completeness of his
sympathy with her fancy for having a little John Harmon to protect and rear, he had shown
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in every act and word, and now that the kind fancy was disappointed, he treated it with a
manly tenderness and respect for which she could hardly thank him enough.
'But I do thank you, Mr Rokesmith,' said Mrs Boffin, 'and I thank you most kindly. You
love children.'
'I hope everybody does.'
'They ought,' said Mrs Boffin; 'but we don't all of us do what we ought, do us?'
John Rokesmith replied, 'Some among us supply the short−comings of the rest. You
have loved children well, Mr Boffin has told me.'
Not a bit better than he has, but that's his way; he puts all the good upon me. You speak
rather sadly, Mr Rokesmith.'
'Do I?'
'It sounds to me so. Were you one of many children?' He shook his head.
'An only child?'
'No there was another. Dead long ago.'
'Father or mother alive?'
'Dead.' –
'And the rest of your relations?'
'Dead – if I ever had any living. I never heard of any.'
At this point of the dialogue Bella came in with a light step. She paused at the door a
moment, hesitating whether to remain or retire; perplexed by finding that she was not
observed.
'Now, don't mind an old lady's talk,' said Mrs Boffin, 'but tell me. Are you quite sure,
Mr Rokesmith, that you have never had a disappointment in love?'
'Quite sure. Why do you ask me?'
'Why, for this reason. Sometimes you have a kind of kept−down manner with you,
which is not like your age. You can't be thirty?'
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'I am not yet thirty.'
Deeming it high time to make her presence known, Bella coughed here to attract
attention, begged pardon, and said she would go, fearing that she interrupted some matter of
business.
'No, don't go,' rejoined Mrs Boffin, 'because we are coming to business, instead of
having begun it, and you belong to it as much now, my dear Bella, as I do. But I want my
Noddy to consult with us. Would somebody be so good as find my Noddy for me?'
Rokesmith departed on that errand, and presently returned accompanied by Mr Boffin at
his jog−trot. Bella felt a little vague trepidation as to the subject−matter of this same
consultation, until Mrs Boffin announced it.
'Now, you come and sit by me, my dear,' said that worthy soul, taking her comfortable
place on a large ottoman in the centre of the room, and drawing her arm through Bella's; 'and
Noddy, you sit here, and Mr Rokesmith you sit there. Now, you see, what I want to talk
about, is this. Mr and Mrs Milvey have sent me the kindest note possible (which Mr
Rokesmith just now read to me out aloud, for I ain't good at handwritings), offering to find
me another little child to name and educate and bring up. Well. This has set me thinking.'
('And she is a steam−ingein at it,' murmured Mr Boffin, in an admiring parenthesis,
'when she once begins. It mayn't be so easy to start her; but once started, she's a ingein.')
' – This has set me thinking, I say,' repeated Mrs Boffin, cordially beaming under the
influence of her husband's compliment, 'and I have thought two things. First of all, that I
have grown timid of reviving John Harmon's name. It's an unfortunate name, and I fancy I
should reproach myself if I gave it to another dear child, and it proved again unlucky.'
'Now, whether,' said Mr Boffin, gravely propounding a case for his Secretary's opinion;
'whether one might call that a superstition?'
'It is a matter of feeling with Mrs Boffin,' said Rokesmith, gently. 'The name has always
been unfortunate. It has now this new unfortunate association connected with it. The name
has died out. Why revive it? Might I ask Miss Wilfer what she thinks?'
'It has not been a fortunate name for me,' said Bella, colouring – 'or at least it was not,
until it led to my being here – but that is not the point in my thoughts. As we had given the
name to the poor child, and as the poor child took so lovingly to me, I think I should feel
jealous of calling another child by it. I think I should feel as if the name had become
endeared to me, and I had no right to use it so.'
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'And that's your opinion?' remarked Mr Boffin, observant of the Secretary's face and
again addressing him.
'I say again, it is a matter of feeling,' returned the Secretary. 'I think Miss Wilfer's
feeling very womanly and pretty.'
'Now, give us your opinion, Noddy,' said Mrs Boffin.
'My opinion, old lady,' returned the Golden Dustman, 'is your opinion.'
'Then,' said Mrs Boffin, 'we agree not to revive John Harmon's name, but to let it rest in
the grave. It is, as Mr Rokesmith says, a matter of feeling, but Lor how many matters ARE
matters of feeling! Well; and so I come to the second thing I have thought of. You must
know, Bella, my dear, and Mr Rokesmith, that when I first named to my husband my
thoughts of adopting a little orphan boy in remembrance of John Harmon, I further named to
my husband that it was comforting to think that how the poor boy would be benefited by
John's own money, and protected from John's own forlornness.'
'Hear, hear!' cried Mr Boffin. 'So she did. Ancoar!'
'No, not Ancoar, Noddy, my dear,' returned Mrs Boffin, 'because I am going to say
something else. I meant that, I am sure, as I much as I still mean it. But this little death has
made me ask myself the question, seriously, whether I wasn't too bent upon pleasing myself.
Else why did I seek out so much for a pretty child, and a child quite to my liking? Wanting
to do good, why not do it for its own sake, and put my tastes and likings by?'
'Perhaps,' said Bella; and perhaps she said it with some little sensitiveness arising out of
those old curious relations of hers towards the murdered man; 'perhaps, in reviving the
name, you would not have liked to give it to a less interesting child than the original. He
interested you very much.'
'Well, my dear,' returned Mrs Boffin, giving her a squeeze, 'it's kind of you to find that
reason out, and I hope it may have been so, and indeed to a certain extent I believe it was so,
but I am afraid not to the whole extent. However, that don't come in question now, because
we have done with the name.'
'Laid it up as a remembrance,' suggested Bella, musingly.
'Much better said, my dear; laid it up as a remembrance. Well then; I have been thinking
if I take any orphan to provide for, let it not be a pet and a plaything for me, but a creature to
be helped for its own sake.'
'Not pretty then?' said Bella.
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'No,' returned Mrs Boffin, stoutly.
'Nor prepossessing then?' said Bella.
'No,' returned Mrs Boffin. 'Not necessarily so. That's as it may happen. A well−disposed
boy comes in my way who may be even a little wanting in such advantages for getting on in
life, but is honest and industrious and requires a helping hand and deserves it. If I am very
much in earnest and quite determined to be unselfish, let me take care of HIM.'
Here the footman whose feelings had been hurt on the former occasion, appeared, and
crossing to Rokesmith apologetically announced the objectionable Sloppy.
The four members of Council looked at one another, and paused. 'Shall he be brought
here, ma'am?' asked Rokesmith.
'Yes,' said Mrs Boffin. Whereupon the footman disappeared, reappeared presenting
Sloppy, and retired much disgusted.
The consideration of Mrs Boffin had clothed Mr Sloppy in a suit of black, on which the
tailor had received personal directions from Rokesmith to expend the utmost cunning of his
art, with a view to the concealment of the cohering and sustaining buttons. But, so much
more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy's form than the strongest resources of tailoring
science, that he now stood before the Council, a perfect Argus in the way of buttons: shining
and winking and gleaming and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of bright metal, at
the dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had furnished him with a
hatband of wholesale capacity which was fluted behind, from the crown of his hat to the
brim, and terminated in a black bunch, from which the imagination shrunk discomfited and
the reason revolted. Some special powers with which his legs were endowed, had already
hitched up his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged them at the knees; while similar gifts
in his arms had raised his coat− sleeves from his wrists and accumulated them at his elbows.
Thus set forth, with the additional embellishments of a very little tail to his coat, and a
yawning gulf at his waistband, Sloppy stood confessed.
'And how is Betty, my good fellow?' Mrs Boffin asked him.
'Thankee, mum,' said Sloppy, 'she do pretty nicely, and sending her dooty and many
thanks for the tea and all faviours and wishing to know the family's healths.'
'Have you just come, Sloppy?'
'Yes, mum.'
'Then you have not had your dinner yet?'
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'No, mum. But I mean to it. For I ain't forgotten your handsome orders that I was never
to go away without having had a good 'un off of meat and beer and pudding – no: there was
four of 'em, for I reckoned 'em up when I had 'em; meat one, beer two, vegetables three, and
which was four? – Why, pudding, HE was four!' Here Sloppy threw his head back, opened
his mouth wide, and laughed rapturously.
'How are the two poor little Minders?' asked Mrs Boffin.
'Striking right out, mum, and coming round beautiful.'
Mrs Boffin looked on the other three members of Council, and then said, beckoning
with her finger:
'Sloppy.'
'Yes, mum.'
'Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here every day?'
'Off of all four on 'em, mum? O mum!' Sloppy's feelings obliged him to squeeze his hat,
and contract one leg at the knee.
'Yes. And should you like to be always taken care of here, if you were industrious and
deserving?'
'Oh, mum! – But there's Mrs Higden,' said Sloppy, checking himself in his raptures,
drawing back, and shaking his head with very serious meaning. 'There's Mrs Higden. Mrs
Higden goes before all. None can ever be better friends to me than Mrs Higden's been. And
she must be turned for, must Mrs Higden. Where would Mrs Higden be if she warn't turned
for!' At the mere thought of Mrs Higden in this inconceivable affliction, Mr Sloppy's
countenance became pale, and manifested the most distressful emotions.
'You are as right as right can be, Sloppy,' said Mrs Boffin 'and far be it from me to tell
you otherwise. It shall be seen to. If Betty Higden can be turned for all the same, you shall
come here and be taken care of for life, and be made able to keep her in other ways than the
turning.'
'Even as to that, mum,' answered the ecstatic Sloppy, 'the turning might be done in the
night, don't you see? I could be here in the day, and turn in the night. I don't want no sleep, I
don't. Or even if I any ways should want a wink or two,' added Sloppy, after a moment's
apologetic reflection, 'I could take 'em turning. I've took 'em turning many a time, and
enjoyed 'em wonderful!'
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On the grateful impulse of the moment, Mr Sloppy kissed Mrs Boffin's hand, and then
detaching himself from that good creature that he might have room enough for his feelings,
threw back his head, opened his mouth wide, and uttered a dismal howl. It was creditable to
his tenderness of heart, but suggested that he might on occasion give some offence to the
neighbours: the rather, as the footman looked in, and begged pardon, finding he was not
wanted, but excused himself; on the ground 'that he thought it was Cats.'
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Chapter 11 − SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
L
ittle Miss Peecher, from her little official dwelling−house, with its little windows like
the eyes in needles, and its little doors like the covers of school−books, was very observant
indeed of the object of her quiet affections. Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness,
is a vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him on double duty over Mr Bradley
Headstone. It was not that she was naturally given to playing the spy – it was not that she
was at all secret, plotting, or mean – it was simply that she loved the irresponsive Bradley
with all the primitive and homely stock of love that had never been examined or certificated
out of her. If her faithful slate had had the latent qualities of sympathetic paper, and its
pencil those of invisible ink, many a little treatise calculated to astonish the pupils would
have come bursting through the dry sums in school−time under the warming influence of
Miss Peecher's bosom. For, oftentimes when school was not, and her calm leisure and calm
little house were her own, Miss Peecher would commit to the confidential slate an imaginary
description of how, upon a balmy evening at dusk, two figures might have been observed in
the market−garden ground round the corner, of whom one, being a manly form, bent over
the other, being a womanly form of short stature and some compactness, and breathed in a
low voice the words, 'Emma Peecher, wilt thou be my own?' after which the womanly form's
head reposed upon the manly form's shoulder, and the nightingales tuned up. Though all
unseen, and unsuspected by the pupils, Bradley Headstone even pervaded the school
exercises. Was Geography in question? He would come triumphantly flying out of Vesuvius
and Aetna ahead of the lava, and would boil unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland, and
would float majestically down the Ganges and the Nile. Did History chronicle a king of
men? Behold him in pepper−and−salt pantaloons, with his watch−guard round his neck.
Were copies to be written? In capital B's and H's most of the girls under Miss Peecher's
tuition were half a year ahead of every other letter in the alphabet. And Mental Arithmetic,
administered by Miss Peecher, often devoted itself to providing Bradley Headstone with a
wardrobe of fabulous extent: fourscore and four neck−ties at two and ninepence−halfpenny,
two gross of silver watches at four pounds fifteen and sixpence, seventy−four black hats at
eighteen shillings; and many similar superfluities.
The vigilant watchman, using his daily opportunities of turning his eyes in Bradley's
direction, soon apprized Miss Peecher that Bradley was more preoccupied than had been his
wont, and more given to strolling about with a downcast and reserved face, turning
something difficult in his mind that was not in the scholastic syllabus. Putting this and that
together – combining under the head 'this,' present appearances and the intimacy with
Charley Hexam, and ranging under the head 'that' the visit to his sister, the watchman
reported to Miss Peecher his strong suspicions that the sister was at the bottom of it.
'I wonder,' said Miss Peecher, as she sat making up her weekly report on a half−holiday
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afternoon, 'what they call Hexam's sister?'
Mary Anne, at her needlework, attendant and attentive, held her arm up.
'Well, Mary Anne?'
'She is named Lizzie, ma'am.'
'She can hardly be named Lizzie, I think, Mary Anne,' returned Miss Peecher, in a
tunefully instructive voice. 'Is Lizzie a Christian name, Mary Anne?'
Mary Anne laid down her work, rose, hooked herself behind, as being under
catechization, and replied: 'No, it is a corruption, Miss Peecher.'
'Who gave her that name?' Miss Peecher was going on, from the mere force of habit,
when she checked herself; on Mary Anne's evincing theological impatience to strike in with
her godfathers and her godmothers, and said: 'I mean of what name is it a corruption?'
'Elizabeth, or Eliza, Miss Peecher.'
'Right, Mary Anne. Whether there were any Lizzies in the early Christian Church must
be considered very doubtful, very doubtful.' Miss Peecher was exceedingly sage here.
'Speaking correctly, we say, then, that Hexam's sister is called Lizzie; not that she is named
so. Do we not, Mary Anne?'
'We do, Miss Peecher.'
'And where,' pursued Miss Peecher, complacent in her little transparent fiction of
conducting the examination in a semiofficial manner for Mary Anne's benefit, not her own,
'where does this young woman, who is called but not named Lizzie, live? Think, now, before
answering.'
'In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank, ma'am.'
'In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,' repeated Miss Peecher, as if possessed
beforehand of the book in which it was written. Exactly so. And what occupation does this
young woman pursue, Mary Anne? Take time.'
'She has a place of trust at an outfitter's in the City, ma'am.'
'Oh!' said Miss Peecher, pondering on it; but smoothly added, in a confirmatory tone,
'At an outfitter's in the City. Ye−es?'
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'And Charley – ' Mary Anne was proceeding, when Miss Peecher stared.
'I mean Hexam, Miss Peecher.'
'I should think you did, Mary Anne. I am glad to hear you do. And Hexam – '
'Says,' Mary Anne went on, 'that he is not pleased with his sister, and that his sister
won't be guided by his advice, and persists in being guided by somebody else's; and that – '
'Mr Headstone coming across the garden!' exclaimed Miss Peecher, with a flushed
glance at the looking−glass. 'You have answered very well, Mary Anne. You are forming an
excellent habit of arranging your thoughts clearly. That will do.'
The discreet Mary Anne resumed her seat and her silence, and stitched, and stitched,
and was stitching when the schoolmaster's shadow came in before him, announcing that he
might be instantly expected.
'Good evening, Miss Peecher,' he said, pursuing the shadow, and taking its place.
'Good evening, Mr Headstone. Mary Anne, a chair.'
'Thank you,' said Bradley, seating himself in his constrained manner. 'This is but a
flying visit. I have looked in, on my way, to ask a kindness of you as a neighbour.'
'Did you say on your way, Mr Headstone?' asked Miss Peecher.
'On my way to – where I am going.'
'Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,' repeated Miss Peecher, in her own
thoughts.
'Charley Hexam has gone to get a book or two he wants, and will probably be back
before me. As we leave my house empty, I took the liberty of telling him I would leave the
key here. Would you kindly allow me to do so?'
'Certainly, Mr Headstone. Going for an evening walk, sir?'
'Partly for a walk, and partly for – on business.'
'Business in Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,' repeated Miss Peecher to
herself.
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'Having said which,' pursued Bradley, laying his door−key on the table, 'I must be
already going. There is nothing I can do for you, Miss Peecher?'
'Thank you, Mr Headstone. In which direction?'
'In the direction of Westminster.'
'Mill Bank,' Miss Peecher repeated in her own thoughts once again. 'No, thank you, Mr
Headstone; I'll not trouble you.'
'You couldn't trouble me,' said the schoolmaster.
'Ah!' returned Miss Peecher, though not aloud; 'but you can trouble ME!' And for all her
quiet manner, and her quiet smile, she was full of trouble as he went his way.
She was right touching his destination. He held as straight a course for the house of the
dolls' dressmaker as the wisdom of his ancestors, exemplified in the construction of the
intervening streets, would let him, and walked with a bent head hammering at one fixed
idea. It had been an immoveable idea since he first set eyes upon her. It seemed to him as if
all that he could suppress in himself he had suppressed, as if all that he could restrain in
himself he had restrained, and the time had come – in a rush, in a moment – when the power
of self−command had departed from him. Love at first sight is a trite expression quite
sufficiently discussed; enough that in certain smouldering natures like this man's, that
passion leaps into a blaze, and makes such head as fire does in a rage of wind, when other
passions, but for its mastery, could be held in chains. As a multitude of weak, imitative
natures are always lying by, ready to go mad upon the next wrong idea that may be broached
– in these times, generally some form of tribute to Somebody for something that never was
done, or, if ever done, that was done by Somebody Else – so these less ordinary natures may
lie by for years, ready on the touch of an instant to burst into flame.
The schoolmaster went his way, brooding and brooding, and a sense of being
vanquished in a struggle might have been pieced out of his worried face. Truly, in his breast
there lingered a resentful shame to find himself defeated by this passion for Charley
Hexam's sister, though in the very self−same moments he was concentrating himself upon
the object of bringing the passion to a successful issue.
He appeared before the dolls' dressmaker, sitting alone at her work. 'Oho!' thought that
sharp young personage, 'it's you, is it? I know your tricks and your manners, my friend!'
'Hexam's sister,' said Bradley Headstone, 'is not come home yet?'
'You are quite a conjuror,' returned Miss Wren.
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'I will wait, if you please, for I want to speak to her.'
'Do you?' returned Miss Wren. 'Sit down. I hope it's mutual.' Bradley glanced
distrustfully at the shrewd face again bending over the work, and said, trying to conquer
doubt and hesitation:
'I hope you don't imply that my visit will be unacceptable to Hexam's sister?'
'There! Don't call her that. I can't bear you to call her that,' returned Miss Wren,
snapping her fingers in a volley of impatient snaps, 'for I don't like Hexam.'
'Indeed?'
'No.' Miss Wren wrinkled her nose, to express dislike. 'Selfish. Thinks only of himself.
The way with all of you.'
'The way with all of us? Then you don't like ME?'
'So−so,' replied Miss Wren, with a shrug and a laugh. 'Don't know much about you.'
'But I was not aware it was the way with all of us,' said Bradley, returning to the
accusation, a little injured. 'Won't you say, some of us?'
'Meaning,' returned the little creature, 'every one of you, but you. Hah! Now look this
lady in the face. This is Mrs Truth. The Honourable. Full−dressed.'
Bradley glanced at the doll she held up for his observation – which had been lying on its
face on her bench, while with a needle and thread she fastened the dress on at the back – and
looked from it to her.
'I stand the Honourable Mrs T. on my bench in this corner against the wall, where her
blue eyes can shine upon you,' pursued Miss Wren, doing so, and making two little dabs at
him in the air with her needle, as if she pricked him with it in his own eyes; 'and I defy you
to tell me, with Mrs T. for a witness, what you have come here for.'
'To see Hexam's sister.'
'You don't say so!' retorted Miss Wren, hitching her chin. 'But on whose account?'
'Her own.'
'O Mrs T.!' exclaimed Miss Wren. 'You hear him!'
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'To reason with her,' pursued Bradley, half humouring what was present, and half angry
with what was not present; 'for her own sake.'
'Oh Mrs T.!' exclaimed the dressmaker.
'For her own sake,' repeated Bradley, warming, 'and for her brother's, and as a perfectly
disinterested person.'
'Really, Mrs T.,' remarked the dressmaker, 'since it comes to this, we must positively
turn you with your face to the wall.' She had hardly done so, when Lizzie Hexam arrived,
and showed some surprise on seeing Bradley Headstone there, and Jenny shaking her little
fist at him close before her eyes, and the Honourable Mrs T. with her face to the wall.
'Here's a perfectly disinterested person, Lizzie dear,' said the knowing Miss Wren, 'come
to talk with you, for your own sake and your brother's. Think of that. I am sure there ought
to be no third party present at anything so very kind and so very serious; and so, if you'll
remove the third party upstairs, my dear, the third party will retire.'
Lizzie took the hand which the dolls' dressmaker held out to her for the purpose of
being supported away, but only looked at her with an inquiring smile, and made no other
movement.
'The third party hobbles awfully, you know, when she's left to herself;' said Miss Wren,
'her back being so bad, and her legs so queer; so she can't retire gracefully unless you help
her, Lizzie.'
'She can do no better than stay where she is,' returned Lizzie, releasing the hand, and
laying her own lightly on Miss Jenny's curls. And then to Bradley: 'From Charley, sir?'
In an irresolute way, and stealing a clumsy look at her, Bradley rose to place a chair for
her, and then returned to his own.
'Strictly speaking,' said he, 'I come from Charley, because I left him only a little while
ago; but I am not commissioned by Charley. I come of my own spontaneous act.'
With her elbows on her bench, and her chin upon her hands, Miss Jenny Wren sat
looking at him with a watchful sidelong look. Lizzie, in her different way, sat looking at him
too.
'The fact is,' began Bradley, with a mouth so dry that he had some difficulty in
articulating his words: the consciousness of which rendered his manner still more ungainly
and undecided; 'the truth is, that Charley, having no secrets from me (to the best of my
belief), has confided the whole of this matter to me.'
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He came to a stop, and Lizzie asked: 'what matter, sir?'
'I thought,' returned the schoolmaster, stealing another look at her, and seeming to try in
vain to sustain it; for the look dropped as it lighted on her eyes, 'that it might be so
superfluous as to be almost impertinent, to enter upon a definition of it. My allusion was to
this matter of your having put aside your brother's plans for you, and given the preference to
those of Mr – I believe the name is Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'
He made this point of not being certain of the name, with another uneasy look at her,
which dropped like the last.
Nothing being said on the other side, he had to begin again, and began with new
embarrassment.
'Your brother's plans were communicated to me when he first had them in his thoughts.
In point of fact he spoke to me about them when I was last here – when we were walking
back together, and when I – when the impression was fresh upon me of having seen his
sister.'
There might have been no meaning in it, but the little dressmaker here removed one of
her supporting hands from her chin, and musingly turned the Honourable Mrs T. with her
face to the company. That done, she fell into her former attitude.
'I approved of his idea,' said Bradley, with his uneasy look wandering to the doll, and
unconsciously resting there longer than it had rested on Lizzie, 'both because your brother
ought naturally to be the originator of any such scheme, and because I hoped to be able to
promote it. I should have had inexpressible pleasure, I should have taken inexpressible
interest, in promoting it. Therefore I must acknowledge that when your brother was
disappointed, I too was disappointed. I wish to avoid reservation or concealment, and I fully
acknowledge that.'
He appeared to have encouraged himself by having got so far. At all events he went on
with much greater firmness and force of emphasis: though with a curious disposition to set
his teeth, and with a curious tight−screwing movement of his right hand in the clenching
palm of his left, like the action of one who was being physically hurt, and was unwilling to
cry out.
'I am a man of strong feelings, and I have strongly felt this disappointment. I do strongly
feel it. I don't show what I feel; some of us are obliged habitually to keep it down. To keep it
down. But to return to your brother. He has taken the matter so much to heart that he has
remonstrated (in my presence he remonstrated) with Mr Eugene Wrayburn, if that be the
name. He did so, quite ineffectually. As any one not blinded to the real character of Mr – Mr
Eugene Wrayburn – would readily suppose.'
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He looked at Lizzie again, and held the look. And his face turned from burning red to
white, and from white back to burning red, and so for the time to lasting deadly white.
'Finally, I resolved to come here alone, and appeal to you. I resolved to come here
alone, and entreat you to retract the course you have chosen, and instead of confiding in a
mere stranger – a person of most insolent behaviour to your brother and others – to prefer
your brother and your brother's friend.'
Lizzie Hexam had changed colour when those changes came over him, and her face
now expressed some anger, more dislike, and even a touch of fear. But she answered him
very steadily.
'I cannot doubt, Mr Headstone, that your visit is well meant. You have been so good a
friend to Charley that I have no right to doubt it. I have nothing to tell Charley, but that I
accepted the help to which he so much objects before he made any plans for me; or certainly
before I knew of any. It was considerately and delicately offered, and there were reasons that
had weight with me which should be as dear to Charley as to me. I have no more to say to
Charley on this subject.'
His lips trembled and stood apart, as he followed this repudiation of himself; and
limitation of her words to her brother.
'I should have told Charley, if he had come to me,' she resumed, as though it were an
after−thought, 'that Jenny and I find our teacher very able and very patient, and that she
takes great pains with us. So much so, that we have said to her we hope in a very little while
to be able to go on by ourselves. Charley knows about teachers, and I should also have told
him, for his satisfaction, that ours comes from an institution where teachers are regularly
brought up.'
'I should like to ask you,' said Bradley Headstone, grinding his words slowly out, as
though they came from a rusty mill; 'I should like to ask you, if I may without offence,
whether you would have objected – no; rather, I should like to say, if I may without offence,
that I wish I had had the opportunity of coming here with your brother and devoting my poor
abilities and experience to your service.'
'Thank you, Mr Headstone.'
'But I fear,' he pursued, after a pause, furtively wrenching at the seat of his chair with
one hand, as if he would have wrenched the chair to pieces, and gloomily observing her
while her eyes were cast down, 'that my humble services would not have found much favour
with you?'
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She made no reply, and the poor stricken wretch sat contending with himself in a heat of
passion and torment. After a while he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead and
hands.
'There is only one thing more I had to say, but it is the most important. There is a reason
against this matter, there is a personal relation concerned in this matter, not yet explained to
you. It might – I don't say it would – it might – induce you to think differently. To proceed
under the present circumstances is out of the question. Will you please come to the
understanding that there shall be another interview on the subject?'
'With Charley, Mr Headstone?'
'With – well,' he answered, breaking off, 'yes! Say with him too. Will you please come
to the understanding that there must be another interview under more favourable
circumstances, before the whole case can be submitted?'
'I don't,' said Lizzie, shaking her head, 'understand your meaning, Mr Headstone.'
'Limit my meaning for the present,' he interrupted, 'to the whole case being submitted to
you in another interview.'
'What case, Mr Headstone? What is wanting to it?'
'You – you shall be informed in the other interview.' Then he said, as if in a burst of
irrepressible despair, 'I – I leave it all incomplete! There is a spell upon me, I think!' And
then added, almost as if he asked for pity, 'Good−night!'
He held out his hand. As she, with manifest hesitation, not to say reluctance, touched it,
a strange tremble passed over him, and his face, so deadly white, was moved as by a stroke
of pain. Then he was gone.
The dolls' dressmaker sat with her attitude unchanged, eyeing the door by which he had
departed, until Lizzie pushed her bench aside and sat down near her. Then, eyeing Lizzie as
she had previously eyed Bradley and the door, Miss Wren chopped that very sudden and
keen chop in which her jaws sometimes indulged, leaned back in her chair with folded arms,
and thus expressed herself:
'Humph! If he – I mean, of course, my dear, the party who is coming to court me when
the time comes – should be THAT sort of man, he may spare himself the trouble. HE
wouldn't do to be trotted about and made useful. He'd take fire and blow up while he was
about it.
'And so you would be rid of him,' said Lizzie, humouring her.
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'Not so easily,' returned Miss Wren. 'He wouldn't blow up alone. He'd carry me up with
him. I know his tricks and his manners.'
'Would he want to hurt you, do you mean?' asked Lizzie.
'Mightn't exactly want to do it, my dear,' returned Miss Wren; 'but a lot of gunpowder
among lighted lucifer−matches in the next room might almost as well be here.'
'He is a very strange man,' said Lizzie, thoughtfully.
'I wish he was so very strange a man as to be a total stranger,' answered the sharp little
thing.
It being Lizzie's regular occupation when they were alone of an evening to brush out
and smooth the long fair hair of the dolls' dressmaker, she unfastened a ribbon that kept it
back while the little creature was at her work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over the poor
shoulders that were much in need of such adorning rain. 'Not now, Lizzie, dear,' said Jenny;
'let us have a talk by the fire.' With those words, she in her turn loosened her friend's dark
hair, and it dropped of its own weight over her bosom, in two rich masses. Pretending to
compare the colours and admire the contrast, Jenny so managed a mere touch or two of her
nimble hands, as that she herself laying a cheek on one of the dark folds, seemed blinded by
her own clustering curls to all but the fire, while the fine handsome face and brow of Lizzie
were revealed without obstruction in the sombre light.
'Let us have a talk,' said Jenny, 'about Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'
Something sparkled down among the fair hair resting on the dark hair; and if it were not
a star – which it couldn't be – it was an eye; and if it were an eye, it was Jenny Wren's eye,
bright and watchful as the bird's whose name she had taken.
'Why about Mr Wrayburn?' Lizzie asked.
'For no better reason than because I'm in the humour. I wonder whether he's rich!'
'No, not rich.'
'Poor?'
'I think so, for a gentleman.'
'Ah! To be sure! Yes, he's a gentleman. Not of our sort; is he?' A shake of the head, a
thoughtful shake of the head, and the answer, softly spoken, 'Oh no, oh no!'
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The dolls' dressmaker had an arm round her friend's waist. Adjusting the arm, she slyly
took the opportunity of blowing at her own hair where it fell over her face; then the eye
down there, under lighter shadows sparkled more brightly and appeared more watchful.
'When He turns up, he shan't be a gentleman; I'll very soon send him packing, if he is.
However, he's not Mr Wrayburn; I haven't captivated HIM. I wonder whether anybody has,
Lizzie!'
'It is very likely.'
'Is it very likely? I wonder who!'
'Is it not very likely that some lady has been taken by him, and that he may love her
dearly?'
'Perhaps. I don't know. What would you think of him, Lizzie, if you were a lady?'
'I a lady!' she repeated, laughing. 'Such a fancy!'
'Yes. But say: just as a fancy, and for instance.'
'I a lady! I, a poor girl who used to row poor father on the river. I, who had rowed poor
father out and home on the very night when I saw him for the first time. I, who was made so
timid by his looking at me, that I got up and went out!'
('He did look at you, even that night, though you were not a lady!' thought Miss Wren.)
'I a lady!' Lizzie went on in a low voice, with her eyes upon the fire. 'I, with poor
father's grave not even cleared of undeserved stain and shame, and he trying to clear it for
me! I a lady!'
'Only as a fancy, and for instance,' urged Miss Wren.
'Too much, Jenny, dear, too much! My fancy is not able to get that far.' As the low fire
gleamed upon her, it showed her smiling, mournfully and abstractedly.
'But I am in the humour, and I must be humoured, Lizzie, because after all I am a poor
little thing, and have had a hard day with my bad child. Look in the fire, as I like to hear you
tell how you used to do when you lived in that dreary old house that had once been a
windmill. Look in the – what was its name when you told fortunes with your brother that I
DON'T like?'
'The hollow down by the flare?'
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Chapter 11 − SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART 339
'Ah! That's the name! You can find a lady there, I know.'
'More easily than I can make one of such material as myself, Jenny.'
The sparkling eye looked steadfastly up, as the musing face looked thoughtfully down.
'Well?' said the dolls' dressmaker, 'We have found our lady?'
Lizzie nodded, and asked, 'Shall she be rich?'
'She had better be, as he's poor.'
'She is very rich. Shall she be handsome?'
'Even you can be that, Lizzie, so she ought to be.'
'She is very handsome.'
'What does she say about him?' asked Miss Jenny, in a low voice: watchful, through an
intervening silence, of the face looking down at the fire.
'She is glad, glad, to be rich, that he may have the money. She is glad, glad, to be
beautiful, that he may be proud of her. Her poor heart – '
'Eh? Her poor hear?' said Miss Wren.
'Her heart – is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him,
or, better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown
up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for,
and think well of. And she says, that lady rich and beautiful that I can never come near,
«Only put me in that empty place, only try how little I mind myself, only prove what a
world of things I will do and bear for you, and I hope that you might even come to be much
better than you are, through me who am so much worse, and hardly worth the thinking of
beside you.»'
As the face looking at the fire had become exalted and forgetful in the rapture of these
words, the little creature, openly clearing away her fair hair with her disengaged hand, had
gazed at it with earnest attention and something like alarm. Now that the speaker ceased, the
little creature laid down her head again, and moaned, 'O me, O me, O me!'
'In pain, dear Jenny?' asked Lizzie, as if awakened.
'Yes, but not the old pain. Lay me down, lay me down. Don't go out of my sight
to−night. Lock the door and keep close to me. Then turning away her face, she said in a
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Chapter 11 − SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART 340
whisper to herself, 'My Lizzie, my poor Lizzie! O my blessed children, come back in the
long bright slanting rows, and come for her, not me. She wants help more than I, my blessed
children!'
She had stretched her hands up with that higher and better look, and now she turned
again, and folded them round Lizzie's neck, and rocked herself on Lizzie's breast.
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Chapter 11 − SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART 341
Chapter 12 − MORE BIRDS OF PREY
R
ogue Riderhood dwelt deep and dark in Limehouse Hole, among the riggers, and the
mast, oar and block makers, and the boat− builders, and the sail−lofts, as in a kind of ship's
hold stored full of waterside characters, some no better than himself, some very much better,
and none much worse. The Hole, albeit in a general way not over nice in its choice of
company, was rather shy in reference to the honour of cultivating the Rogue's acquaintance;
more frequently giving him the cold shoulder than the warm hand, and seldom or never
drinking with him unless at his own expense. A part of the Hole, indeed, contained so much
public spirit and private virtue that not even this strong leverage could move it to good
fellowship with a tainted accuser. But, there may have been the drawback on this
magnanimous morality, that its exponents held a true witness before Justice to be the next
unneighbourly and accursed character to a false one.
Had it not been for the daughter whom he often mentioned, Mr Riderhood might have
found the Hole a mere grave as to any means it would yield him of getting a living. But Miss
Pleasant Riderhood had some little position and connection in Limehouse Hole. Upon the
smallest of small scales, she was an unlicensed pawnbroker, keeping what was popularly
called a Leaving Shop, by lending insignificant sums on insignificant articles of property
deposited with her as security. In her four−and−twentieth year of life, Pleasant was already
in her fifth year of this way of trade. Her deceased mother had established the business, and
on that parent's demise she had appropriated a secret capital of fifteen shillings to
establishing herself in it; the existence of such capital in a pillow being the last intelligible
confidential communication made to her by the departed, before succumbing to dropsical
conditions of snuff and gin, incompatible equally with coherence and existence.
Why christened Pleasant, the late Mrs Riderhood might possibly have been at some
time able to explain, and possibly not. Her daughter had no information on that point.
Pleasant she found herself, and she couldn't help it. She had not been consulted on the
question, any more than on the question of her coming into these terrestrial parts, to want a
name. Similarly, she found herself possessed of what is colloquially termed a swivel eye
(derived from her father), which she might perhaps have declined if her sentiments on the
subject had been taken. She was not otherwise positively ill−looking, though anxious,
meagre, of a muddy complexion, and looking as old again as she really was.
As some dogs have it in the blood, or are trained, to worry certain creatures to a certain
point, so – not to make the comparison disrespectfially – Pleasant Riderhood had it in the
blood, or had been trained, to regard seamen, within certain limits, as her prey. Show her a
man in a blue jacket, and, figuratively speaking, she pinned him instantly. Yet, all things
considered, she was not of an evil mind or an unkindly disposition. For, observe how many
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things were to be considered according to her own unfortunate experience. Show Pleasant
Riderhood a Wedding in the street, and she only saw two people taking out a regular licence
to quarrel and fight. Show her a Christening, and she saw a little heathen personage having a
quite superfluous name bestowed upon it, inasmuch as it would be commonly addressed by
some abusive epithet: which little personage was not in the least wanted by anybody, and
would be shoved and banged out of everybody's way, until it should grow big enough to
shove and bang. Show her a Funeral, and she saw an unremunerative ceremony in the nature
of a black masquerade, conferring a temporary gentility on the performers, at an immense
expense, and representing the only formal party ever given by the deceased. Show her a live
father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own father, who from her infancy had been taken
with fits and starts of discharging his duty to her, which duty was always incorporated in the
form of a fist or a leathern strap, and being discharged hurt her. All things considered,
therefore, Pleasant Riderhood was not so very, very bad. There was even a touch of romance
in her – of such romance as could creep into Limehouse Hole – and maybe sometimes of a
summer evening, when she stood with folded arms at her shop− door, looking from the
reeking street to the sky where the sun was setting, she may have had some vaporous visions
of far−off islands in the southern seas or elsewhere (not being geographically particular),
where it would be good to roam with a congenial partner among groves of bread−fruit,
waiting for ships to be wafted from the hollow ports of civilization. For, sailors to be got the
better of, were essential to Miss Pleasant's Eden.
Not on a summer evening did she come to her little shop−door, when a certain man
standing over against the house on the opposite side of the street took notice of her. That
was on a cold shrewd windy evening, after dark. Pleasant Riderhood shared with most of the
lady inhabitants of the Hole, the peculiarity that her hair was a ragged knot, constantly
coming down behind, and that she never could enter upon any undertaking without first
twisting it into place. At that particular moment, being newly come to the threshold to take a
look out of doors, she was winding herself up with both hands after this fashion. And so
prevalent was the fashion, that on the occasion of a fight or other disturbance in the Hole,
the ladies would be seen flocking from all quarters universally twisting their back−hair as
they came along, and many of them, in the hurry of the moment, carrying their back−combs
in their mouths.
It was a wretched little shop, with a roof that any man standing in it could touch with
his hand; little better than a cellar or cave, down three steps. Yet in its ill−lighted window,
among a flaring handkerchief or two, an old peacoat or so, a few valueless watches and
compasses, a jar of tobacco and two crossed pipes, a bottle of walnut ketchup, and some
horrible sweets these creature discomforts serving as a blind to the main business of the
Leaving Shop – was displayed the inscription SEAMAN'S BOARDING−HOUSE.
Taking notice of Pleasant Riderhood at the door, the man crossed so quickly that she
was still winding herself up, when he stood close before her.
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'Is your father at home?' said he.
'I think he is,' returned Pleasant, dropping her arms; 'come in.'
It was a tentative reply, the man having a seafaring appearance. Her father was not at
home, and Pleasant knew it. 'Take a seat by the fire,' were her hospitable words when she
had got him in; 'men of your calling are always welcome here.'
'Thankee,' said the man.
His manner was the manner of a sailor, and his hands were the hands of a sailor, except
that they were smooth. Pleasant had an eye for sailors, and she noticed the unused colour
and texture of the hands, sunburnt though they were, as sharply as she noticed their
unmistakable loosneness and suppleness, as he sat himself down with his left arm carelessly
thrown across his left leg a little above the knee, and the right arm as carelessly thrown over
the elbow of the wooden chair, with the hand curved, half open and half shut, as if it had just
let go a rope.
'Might you be looking for a Boarding−House?' Pleasant inquired, taking her observant
stand on one side of the fire.
'I don't rightly know my plans yet,' returned the man.
'You ain't looking for a Leaving Shop?'
'No,' said the man.
'No,' assented Pleasant, 'you've got too much of an outfit on you for that. But if you
should want either, this is both.'
'Ay, ay!' said the man, glancing round the place. 'I know. I've been here before.'
'Did you Leave anything when you were here before?' asked Pleasant, with a view to
principal and interest.
'No.' The man shook his head.
'I am pretty sure you never boarded here?'
'No.' The man again shook his head.
'What DID you do here when you were here before?' asked Pleasant. 'For I don't
remember you.'
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'It's not at all likely you should. I only stood at the door, one night – on the lower step
there – while a shipmate of mine looked in to speak to your father. I remember the place
well.' Looking very curiously round it.
'Might that have been long ago?'
'Ay, a goodish bit ago. When I came off my last voyage.'
'Then you have not been to sea lately?'
'No. Been in the sick bay since then, and been employed ashore.'
'Then, to be sure, that accounts for your hands.'
The man with a keen look, a quick smile, and a change of manner, caught her up.
'You're a good observer. Yes. That accounts for my hands.'
Pleasant was somewhat disquieted by his look, and returned it suspiciously. Not only
was his change of manner, though very sudden, quite collected, but his former manner,
which he resumed, had a certain suppressed confidence and sense of power in it that were
half threatening.
'Will your father be long?' he inquired.
'I don't know. I can't say.'
'As you supposed he was at home, it would seem that he has just gone out? How's that?'
'I supposed he had come home,' Pleasant explained.
'Oh! You supposed he had come home? Then he has been some time out? How's that?'
'I don't want to deceive you. Father's on the river in his boat.'
'At the old work?' asked the man.
'I don't know what you mean,' said Pleasant, shrinking a step back. 'What on earth d'ye
want?'
'I don't want to hurt your father. I don't want to say I might, if I chose. I want to speak to
him. Not much in that, is there? There shall be no secrets from you; you shall be by. And
plainly, Miss Riderhood, there's nothing to be got out of me, or made of me. I am not good
for the Leaving Shop, I am not good for the Boarding−House, I am not good for anything in
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your way to the extent of sixpenn'orth of halfpence. Put the idea aside, and we shall get on
together.'
'But you're a seafaring man?' argued Pleasant, as if that were a sufficient reason for his
being good for something in her way.
'Yes and no. I have been, and I may be again. But I am not for you. Won't you take my
word for it?'
The conversation had arrived at a crisis to justify Miss Pleasant's hair in tumbling down.
It tumbled down accordingly, and she twisted it up, looking from under her bent forehead at
the man. In taking stock of his familiarly worn rough−weather nautical clothes, piece by
piece, she took stock of a formidable knife in a sheath at his waist ready to his hand, and of a
whistle hanging round his neck, and of a short jagged knotted club with a loaded head that
peeped out of a pocket of his loose outer jacket or frock. He sat quietly looking at her; but,
with these appendages partially revealing themselves, and with a quantity of bristling
oakum− coloured head and whisker, he had a formidable appearance.
'Won't you take my word for it?' he asked again.
Pleasant answered with a short dumb nod. He rejoined with another short dumb nod.
Then he got up and stood with his arms folded, in front of the fire, looking down into it
occasionally, as she stood with her arms folded, leaning against the side of the
chimney−piece.
'To wile away the time till your father comes,' he said, – 'pray is there much robbing and
murdering of seamen about the water−side now?'
'No,' said Pleasant.
'Any?'
'Complaints of that sort are sometimes made, about Ratcliffe and Wapping and up that
way. But who knows how many are true?'
'To be sure. And it don't seem necessary.'
'That's what I say,' observed Pleasant. 'Where's the reason for it? Bless the sailors, it
ain't as if they ever could keep what they have, without it.'
'You're right. Their money may be soon got out of them, without violence,' said the
man.
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'Of course it may,' said Pleasant; 'and then they ship again and get more. And the best
thing for 'em, too, to ship again as soon as ever they can be brought to it. They're never so
well off as when they're afloat.'
'I'll tell you why I ask,' pursued the visitor, looking up from the fire. 'I was once beset
that way myself, and left for dead.'
'No?' said Pleasant. 'Where did it happen?'
'It happened,' returned the man, with a ruminative air, as he drew his right hand across
his chin, and dipped the other in the pocket of his rough outer coat, 'it happened somewhere
about here as I reckon. I don't think it can have been a mile from here.'
'Were you drunk?' asked Pleasant.
'I was muddled, but not with fair drinking. I had not been drinking, you understand. A
mouthful did it.'
Pleasant with a grave look shook her head; importing that she understood the process,
but decidedly disapproved.
'Fair trade is one thing,' said she, 'but that's another. No one has a right to carry on with
Jack in THAT way.'
'The sentiment does you credit,' returned the man, with a grim smile; and added, in a
mutter, 'the more so, as I believe it's not your father's. – Yes, I had a bad time of it, that time.
I lost everything, and had a sharp struggle for my life, weak as I was.'
'Did you get the parties punished?' asked Pleasant.
'A tremendous punishment followed,' said the man, more seriously; 'but it was not of
my bringing about.'
'Of whose, then?' asked Pleasant.
The man pointed upward with his forefinger, and, slowly recovering that hand, settled
his chin in it again as he looked at the fire. Bringing her inherited eye to bear upon him,
Pleasant Riderhood felt more and more uncomfortable, his manner was so mysterious, so
stern, so self−possessed.
'Anyways,' said the damsel, 'I am glad punishment followed, and I say so. Fair trade
with seafaring men gets a bad name through deeds of violence. I am as much against deeds
of violence being done to seafaring men, as seafaring men can be themselves. I am of the
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same opinion as my mother was, when she was living. Fair trade, my mother used to say, but
no robbery and no blows.' In the way of trade Miss Pleasant would have taken – and indeed
did take when she could – as much as thirty shillings a week for board that would be dear at
five, and likewise conducted the Leaving business upon correspondingly equitable
principles; yet she had that tenderness of conscience and those feelings of humanity, that the
moment her ideas of trade were overstepped, she became the seaman's champion, even
against her father whom she seldom otherwise resisted.
But, she was here interrupted by her father's voice exclaiming angrily, 'Now, Poll
Parrot!' and by her father's hat being heavily flung from his hand and striking her face.
Accustomed to such occasional manifestations of his sense of parental duty, Pleasant merely
wiped her face on her hair (which of course had tumbled down) before she twisted it up.
This was another common procedure on the part of the ladies of the Hole, when heated by
verbal or fistic altercation.
'Blest if I believe such a Poll Parrot as you was ever learned to speak!' growled Mr
Riderhood, stooping to pick up his hat, and making a feint at her with his head and right
elbow; for he took the delicate subject of robbing seamen in extraordinary dudgeon, and was
out of humour too. 'What are you Poll Parroting at now? Ain't you got nothing to do but fold
your arms and stand a Poll Parroting all night?'
'Let her alone,' urged the man. 'She was only speaking to me.'
'Let her alone too!' retorted Mr Riderhood, eyeing him all over. 'Do you know she's my
daughter?'
'Yes.'
'And don't you know that I won't have no Poll Parroting on the part of my daughter? No,
nor yet that I won't take no Poll Parroting from no man? And who may YOU be, and what
may YOU want?'
'How can I tell you until you are silent?' returned the other fiercely.
'Well,' said Mr Riderhood, quailing a little, 'I am willing to be silent for the purpose of
hearing. But don't Poll Parrot me.'
'Are you thirsty, you?' the man asked, in the same fierce short way, after returning his
look.
'Why nat'rally,' said Mr Riderhood, 'ain't I always thirsty!' (Indignant at the absurdity of
the question.)
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'What will you drink?' demanded the man.
'Sherry wine,' returned Mr Riderhood, in the same sharp tone, 'if you're capable of it.'
The man put his hand in his pocket, took out half a sovereign, and begged the favour of
Miss Pleasant that she would fetch a bottle. 'With the cork undrawn,' he added, emphatically,
looking at her father.
'I'll take my Alfred David,' muttered Mr Riderhood, slowly relaxing into a dark smile,
'that you know a move. Do I know YOU? N – n – no, I don't know you.'
The man replied, 'No, you don't know me.' And so they stood looking at one another
surlily enough, until Pleasant came back.
'There's small glasses on the shelf,' said Riderhood to his daughter. 'Give me the one
without a foot. I gets my living by the sweat of my brow, and it's good enough for ME.' This
had a modest self− denying appearance; but it soon turned out that as, by reason of the
impossibility of standing the glass upright while there was anything in it, it required to be
emptied as soon as filled, Mr Riderhood managed to drink in the proportion of three to one.
With his Fortunatus's goblet ready in his hand, Mr Riderhood sat down on one side of
the table before the fire, and the strange man on the other: Pleasant occupying a stool
between the latter and the fireside. The background, composed of handkerchiefs, coats,
shirts, hats, and other old articles 'On Leaving,' had a general dim resemblance to human
listeners; especially where a shiny black sou'wester suit and hat hung, looking very like a
clumsy mariner with his back to the company, who was so curious to overhear, that he
paused for the purpose with his coat half pulled on, and his shoulders up to his ears in the
uncompleted action.
The visitor first held the bottle against the light of the candle, and next examined the top
of the cork. Satisfied that it had not been tampered with, he slowly took from his
breastpocket a rusty clasp− knife, and, with a corkscrew in the handle, opened the wine.
That done, he looked at the cork, unscrewed it from the corkscrew, laid each separately on
the table, and, with the end of the sailor's knot of his neckerchief, dusted the inside of the
neck of the bottle. All this with great deliberation.
At first Riderhood had sat with his footless glass extended at arm's length for filling,
while the very deliberate stranger seemed absorbed in his preparations. But, gradually his
arm reverted home to him, and his glass was lowered and lowered until he rested it upside
down upon the table. By the same degrees his attention became concentrated on the knife.
And now, as the man held out the bottle to fill all round, Riderhood stood up, leaned over
the table to look closer at the knife, and stared from it to him.
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'What's the matter?' asked the man.
'Why, I know that knife!' said Riderhood.
'Yes, I dare say you do.'
He motioned to him to hold up his glass, and filled it. Riderhood emptied it to the last
drop and began again.
'That there knife – '
'Stop,' said the man, composedly. 'I was going to drink to your daughter. Your health,
Miss Riderhood.'
'That knife was the knife of a seaman named George Radfoot.'
'It was.'
'That seaman was well beknown to me.'
'He was.'
'What's come to him?'
'Death has come to him. Death came to him in an ugly shape. He looked,' said the man,
'very horrible after it.'
'Arter what?' said Riderhood, with a frowning stare.
'After he was killed.'
'Killed? Who killed him?'
Only answering with a shrug, the man filled the footless glass, and Riderhood emptied
it: looking amazedly from his daughter to his visitor.
'You don't mean to tell a honest man – ' he was recommencing with his empty glass in
his hand, when his eye became fascinated by the stranger's outer coat. He leaned across the
table to see it nearer, touched the sleeve, turned the cuff to look at the sleeve− lining (the
man, in his perfect composure, offering not the least objection), and exclaimed, 'It's my
belief as this here coat was George Radfoot's too!'
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'You are right. He wore it the last time you ever saw him, and the last time you ever will
see him – in this world.'
'It's my belief you mean to tell me to my face you killed him!' exclaimed Riderhood;
but, nevertheless, allowing his glass to be filled again.
The man only answered with another shrug, and showed no symptom of confusion.
'Wish I may die if I know what to be up to with this chap!' said Riderhood, after staring
at him, and tossing his last glassful down his throat. 'Let's know what to make of you. Say
something plain.'
'I will,' returned the other, leaning forward across the table, and speaking in a low
impressive voice. 'What a liar you are!'
The honest witness rose, and made as though he would fling his glass in the man's face.
The man not wincing, and merely shaking his forefinger half knowingly, half menacingly,
the piece of honesty thought better of it and sat down again, putting the glass down too.
'And when you went to that lawyer yonder in the Temple with that invented story,' said
the stranger, in an exasperatingly comfortable sort of confidence, 'you might have had your
strong suspicions of a friend of your own, you know. I think you had, you know.'
'Me my suspicions? Of what friend?'
'Tell me again whose knife was this?' demanded the man.
'It was possessed by, and was the property of – him as I have made mention on,' said
Riderhood, stupidly evading the actual mention of the name.
'Tell me again whose coat was this?'
'That there article of clothing likeways belonged to, and was wore by – him as I have
made mention on,' was again the dull Old Bailey evasion.
'I suspect that you gave him the credit of the deed, and of keeping cleverly out of the
way. But there was small cleverness in HIS keeping out of the way. The cleverness would
have been, to have got back for one single instant to the light of the sun.'
'Things is come to a pretty pass,' growled Mr Riderhood, rising to his feet, goaded to
stand at bay, 'when bullyers as is wearing dead men's clothes, and bullyers as is armed with
dead men's knives, is to come into the houses of honest live men, getting their livings by the
sweats of their brows, and is to make these here sort of charges with no rhyme and no
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reason, neither the one nor yet the other! Why should I have had my suspicions of him?'
'Because you knew him,' replied the man; 'because you had been one with him, and
knew his real character under a fair outside; because on the night which you had afterwards
reason to believe to be the very night of the murder, he came in here, within an hour of his
having left his ship in the docks, and asked you in what lodgings he could find room. Was
there no stranger with him?'
'I'll take my world−without−end everlasting Alfred David that you warn't with him,'
answered Riderhood. 'You talk big, you do, but things look pretty black against yourself, to
my thinking. You charge again' me that George Radfoot got lost sight of, and was no more
thought of. What's that for a sailor? Why there's fifty such, out of sight and out of mind, ten
times as long as him – through entering in different names, re−shipping when the out'ard
voyage is made, and what not – a turning up to light every day about here, and no matter
made of it. Ask my daughter. You could go on Poll Parroting enough with her, when I warn't
come in: Poll Parrot a little with her on this pint. You and your suspicions of my suspicions
of him! What are my suspicions of you? You tell me George Radfoot got killed. I ask you
who done it and how you know it. You carry his knife and you wear his coat. I ask you how
you come by 'em? Hand over that there bottle!' Here Mr Riderhood appeared to labour under
a virtuous delusion that it was his own property. 'And you,' he added, turning to his
daughter, as he filled the footless glass, 'if it warn't wasting good sherry wine on you, I'd
chuck this at you, for Poll Parroting with this man. It's along of Poll Parroting that such like
as him gets their suspicions, whereas I gets mine by argueyment, and being nat'rally a honest
man, and sweating away at the brow as a honest man ought.' Here he filled the footless
goblet again, and stood chewing one half of its contents and looking down into the other as
he slowly rolled the wine about in the glass; while Pleasant, whose sympathetic hair had
come down on her being apostrophised, rearranged it, much in the style of the tail of a horse
when proceeding to market to be sold.
'Well? Have you finished?' asked the strange man.
'No,' said Riderhood, 'I ain't. Far from it. Now then! I want to know how George
Radfoot come by his death, and how you come by his kit?'
'If you ever do know, you won't know now.'
'And next I want to know,' proceeded Riderhood 'whether you mean to charge that
what−you−may−call−it−murder – '
'Harmon murder, father,' suggested Pleasant.
'No Poll Parroting!' he vociferated, in return. 'Keep your mouth shut! – I want to know,
you sir, whether you charge that there crime on George Radfoot?'
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'If you ever do know, you won't know now.'
'Perhaps you done it yourself?' said Riderhood, with a threatening action.
'I alone know,' returned the man, sternly shaking his head, 'the mysteries of that crime. I
alone know that your trumped−up story cannot possibly be true. I alone know that it must be
altogether false, and that you must know it to be altogether false. I come here to−night to tell
you so much of what I know, and no more.'
Mr Riderhood, with his crooked eye upon his visitor, meditated for some moments, and
then refilled his glass, and tipped the contents down his throat in three tips.
'Shut the shop−door!' he then said to his daughter, putting the glass suddenly down.
'And turn the key and stand by it! If you know all this, you sir,' getting, as he spoke, between
the visitor and the door, 'why han't you gone to Lawyer Lightwood?'
'That, also, is alone known to myself,' was the cool answer.
'Don't you know that, if you didn't do the deed, what you say you could tell is worth
from five to ten thousand pound?' asked Riderhood.
'I know it very well, and when I claim the money you shall share it.'
The honest man paused, and drew a little nearer to the visitor, and a little further from
the door.
'I know it,' repeated the man, quietly, 'as well as I know that you and George Radfoot
were one together in more than one dark business; and as well as I know that you, Roger
Riderhood, conspired against an innocent man for blood−money; and as well as I know that
I can – and that I swear I will! – give you up on both scores, and be the proof against you in
my own person, if you defy me!'
'Father!' cried Pleasant, from the door. 'Don't defy him! Give way to him! Don't get into
more trouble, father!'
'Will you leave off a Poll Parroting, I ask you?' cried Mr Riderhood, half beside himself
between the two. Then, propitiatingly and crawlingly: 'You sir! You han't said what you
want of me. Is it fair, is it worthy of yourself, to talk of my defying you afore ever you say
what you want of me?'
'I don't want much,' said the man. 'This accusation of yours must not be left half made
and half unmade. What was done for the blood−money must be thoroughly undone.'
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'Well; but Shipmate – '
'Don't call me Shipmate,' said the man.
'Captain, then,' urged Mr Riderhood; 'there! You won't object to Captain. It's a
honourable title, and you fully look it. Captain! Ain't the man dead? Now I ask you fair.
Ain't Gaffer dead?'
'Well,' returned the other, with impatience, 'yes, he is dead. What then?'
'Can words hurt a dead man, Captain? I only ask you fair.'
'They can hurt the memory of a dead man, and they can hurt his living children. How
many children had this man?'
'Meaning Gaffer, Captain?'
'Of whom else are we speaking?' returned the other, with a movement of his foot, as if
Rogue Riderhood were beginning to sneak before him in the body as well as the spirit, and
he spurned him off. 'I have heard of a daughter, and a son. I ask for information; I ask
YOUR daughter; I prefer to speak to her. What children did Hexam leave?'
Pleasant, looking to her father for permission to reply, that honest man exclaimed with
great bitterness:
'Why the devil don't you answer the Captain? You can Poll Parrot enough when you
ain't wanted to Poll Parrot, you perwerse jade!'
Thus encouraged, Pleasant explained that there were only Lizzie, the daughter in
question, and the youth. Both very respectable, she added.
'It is dreadful that any stigma should attach to them,' said the visitor, whom the
consideration rendered so uneasy that he rose, and paced to and fro, muttering, 'Dreadful!
Unforeseen? How could it be foreseen!' Then he stopped, and asked aloud: 'Where do they
live?'
Pleasant further explained that only the daughter had resided with the father at the time
of his accidental death, and that she had immediately afterwards quitted the neighbourhood.
'I know that,' said the man, 'for I have been to the place they dwelt in, at the time of the
inquest. Could you quietly find out for me where she lives now?'
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Pleasant had no doubt she could do that. Within what time, did she think? Within a day.
The visitor said that was well, and he would return for the information, relying on its being
obtained. To this dialogue Riderhood had attended in silence, and he now obsequiously
bespake the Captain.
'Captain! Mentioning them unfort'net words of mine respecting Gaffer, it is contrairily
to be bore in mind that Gaffer always were a precious rascal, and that his line were a
thieving line. Likeways when I went to them two Governors, Lawyer Lightwood and the
t'other Governor, with my information, I may have been a little over−eager for the cause of
justice, or (to put it another way) a little over−stimilated by them feelings which rouses a
man up, when a pot of money is going about, to get his hand into that pot of money for his
family's sake. Besides which, I think the wine of them two Governors was – I will not say a
hocussed wine, but fur from a wine as was elthy for the mind. And there's another thing to
be remembered, Captain. Did I stick to them words when Gaffer was no more, and did I say
bold to them two Governors, «Governors both, wot I informed I still inform; wot was took
down I hold to»? No. I says, frank and open – no shuffling, mind you, Captain! – "I may
have been mistook, I've been a thinking of it, it mayn't have been took down correct on this
and that, and I won't swear to thick and thin, I'd rayther forfeit your good opinions than do it.
And so far as I know,' concluded Mr Riderhood, by way of proof and evidence to character,
'I HAVE actiwally forfeited the good opinions of several persons – even your own, Captain,
if I understand your words – but I'd sooner do it than be forswore. There; if that's
conspiracy, call me conspirator.'
'You shall sign,' said the visitor, taking very little heed of this oration, 'a statement that it
was all utterly false, and the poor girl shall have it. I will bring it with me for your signature,
when I come again.'
'When might you be expected, Captain?' inquired Riderhood, again dubiously getting
between him and door.
'Quite soon enough for you. I shall not disappoint you; don't be afraid.'
'Might you be inclined to leave any name, Captain?'
'No, not at all. I have no such intention.'
'«Shall» is summ'at of a hard word, Captain,' urged Riderhood, still feebly dodging
between him and the door, as he advanced. 'When you say a man «shall» sign this and that
and t'other, Captain, you order him about in a grand sort of a way. Don't it seem so to
yourself?'
The man stood still, and angrily fixed him with his eyes.
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'Father, father!' entreated Pleasant, from the door, with her disengaged hand nervously
trembling at her lips; 'don't! Don't get into trouble any more!'
'Hear me out, Captain, hear me out! All I was wishing to mention, Captain, afore you
took your departer,' said the sneaking Mr Riderhood, falling out of his path, 'was, your
handsome words relating to the reward.'
'When I claim it,' said the man, in a tone which seemed to leave some such words as
'you dog,' very distinctly understood, 'you shall share it.'
Looking stedfastly at Riderhood, he once more said in a low voice, this time with a grim
sort of admiration of him as a perfect piece of evil, 'What a liar you are!' and, nodding his
head twice or thrice over the compliment, passed out of the shop. But, to Pleasant he said
good−night kindly.
The honest man who gained his living by the sweat of his brow remained in a state akin
to stupefaction, until the footless glass and the unfinished bottle conveyed themselves into
his mind. From his mind he conveyed them into his hands, and so conveyed the last of the
wine into his stomach. When that was done, he awoke to a clear perception that Poll
Parroting was solely chargeable with what had passed. Therefore,not to be remiss in his duty
as a father, he threw a pair of sea−boots at Pleasant, which she ducked to avoid, and then
cried, poor thing, using her hair for a pocket−handkerchief.
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Chapter 13 − A SOLO AND A DUETT
T
he wind was blowing so hard when the visitor came out at the shop−door into the
darkness and dirt of Limehouse Hole, that it almost blew him in again. Doors were
slamming violently, lamps were flickering or blown out, signs were rocking in their frames,
the water of the kennels, wind−dispersed, flew about in drops like rain. Indifferent to the
weather, and even preferring it to better weather for its clearance of the streets, the man
looked about him with a scrutinizing glance. 'Thus much I know,' he murmured. 'I have
never been here since that night, and never was here before that night, but thus much I
recognize. I wonder which way did we take when we came out of that shop. We turned to
the right as I have turned, but I can recall no more. Did we go by this alley? Or down that
little lane?'
He tried both, but both confused him equally, and he came straying back to the same
spot. 'I remember there were poles pushed out of upper windows on which clothes were
drying, and I remember a low public−house, and the sound flowing down a narrow passage
belonging to it of the scraping of a fiddle and the shuffling of feet. But here are all these
things in the lane, and here are all these things in the alley. And I have nothing else in my
mind but a wall, a dark doorway, a flight of stairs, and a room.'
He tried a new direction, but made nothing of it; walls, dark doorways, flights of stairs
and rooms, were too abundant. And, like most people so puzzled, he again and again
described a circle, and found himself at the point from which he had begun. 'This is like
what I have read in narratives of escape from prison,' said he, 'where the little track of the
fugitives in the night always seems to take the shape of the great round world, on which they
wander; as if it were a secret law.'
Here he ceased to be the oakum−headed, oakum−whiskered man on whom Miss
Pleasant Riderhood had looked, and, allowing for his being still wrapped in a nautical
overcoat, became as like that same lost wanted Mr Julius Handford, as never man was like
another in this world. In the breast of the coat he stowed the bristling hair and whisker, in a
moment, as the favouring wind went with him down a solitary place that it had swept clear
of passengers. Yet in that same moment he was the Secretary also, Mr Boffin's Secretary.
For John Rokesmith, too, was as like that same lost wanted Mr Julius Handford as never
man was like another in this world.
'I have no clue to the scene of my death,' said he. 'Not that it matters now. But having
risked discovery by venturing here at all, I should have been glad to track some part of the
way.' With which singular words he abandoned his search, came up out of Limehouse Hole,
and took the way past Limehouse Church. At the great iron gate of the churchyard he
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stopped and looked in. He looked up at the high tower spectrally resisting the wind, and he
looked round at the white tombstones, like enough to the dead in their winding−sheets, and
he counted the nine tolls of the clock− bell.
'It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals,' said he, 'to be looking into a
churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living
than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried
here. Nothing uses me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or
lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel.
'But this is the fanciful side of the situation. It has a real side, so difficult that, though I
think of it every day, I never thoroughly think it out. Now, let me determine to think it out as
I walk home. I know I evade it, as many men – perhaps most men – do evade thinking their
way through their greatest perplexity. I will try to pin myself to mine. Don't evade it, John
Harmon; don't evade it; think it out!
'When I came to England, attracted to the country with which I had none but most
miserable associations, by the accounts of my fine inheritance that found me abroad, I came
back, shrinking from my father's money, shrinking from my father's memory, mistrustful of
being forced on a mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father's intention in thrusting that
marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was
slackening in gratitude to the two dear noble honest friends who had made the only sunlight
in my childish life or that of my hearthroken sister. I came back, timid, divided in my mind,
afraid of myself and everybody here, knowing of nothing but wretchedness that my father's
wealth had ever brought about. Now, stop, and so far think it out, John Harmon. Is that so?
That is exactly so.
'On board serving as third mate was George Radfoot. I knew nothing of him. His name
first became known to me about a week before we sailed, through my being accosted by one
of the ship− agent's clerks as «Mr Radfoot.» It was one day when I had gone aboard to look
to my preparations, and the clerk, coming behind me as I stood on deck, tapped me on the
shoulder, and said, «Mr Rad−foot, look here,» referring to some papers that he had in his
hand. And my name first became known to Radfoot, through another clerk within a day or
two, and while the ship was yet in port, coming up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder
and beginning, «I beg your pardon, Mr Harmon – .» I believe we were alike in bulk and
stature but not otherwise, and that we were not strikingly alike, even in those respects, when
we were together and could be compared.
'However, a sociable word or two on these mistakes became an easy introduction
between us, and the weather was hot, and he helped me to a cool cabin on deck alongside his
own, and his first school had been at Brussels as mine had been, and he had learnt French as
I had learnt it, and he had a little history of himself to relate – God only knows how much of
it true, and how much of it false – that had its likeness to mine. I had been a seaman too. So
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we got to be confidential together, and the more easily yet, because he and every one on
board had known by general rumour what I was making the voyage to England for. By such
degrees and means, he came to the knowledge of my uneasiness of mind, and of its setting at
that time in the direction of desiring to see and form some judgment of my allotted wife,
before she could possibly know me for myself; also to try Mrs Boffin and give her a glad
surprise. So the plot was made out of our getting common sailors' dresses (as he was able to
guide me about London), and throwing ourselves in Bella Wilfer's neighbourhood, and
trying to put ourselves in her way, and doing whatever chance might favour on the spot, and
seeing what came of it. If nothing came of it, I should be no worse off, and there would
merely be a short delay in my presenting myself to Lightwood. I have all these facts right?
Yes. They are all accurately right.
'His advantage in all this was, that for a time I was to be lost. It might be for a day or for
two days, but I must be lost sight of on landing, or there would be recognition, anticipation,
and failure. Therefore, I disembarked with my valise in my hand – as Potterson the steward
and Mr Jacob Kibble my fellow−passenger afterwards remembered – and waited for him in
the dark by that very Limehouse Church which is now behind me.
'As I had always shunned the port of London, I only knew the church through his
pointing out its spire from on board. Perhaps I might recall, if it were any good to try, the
way by which I went to it alone from the river; but how we two went from it to Riderhood's
shop, I don't know – any more than I know what turns we took and doubles we made, after
we left it. The way was purposely confused, no doubt.
'But let me go on thinking the facts out, and avoid confusing them with my
speculations. Whether be took me by a straight way or a crooked way, what is that to the
purpose now? Steady, John Harmon.
'When we stopped at Riderhood's, and he asked that scoundrel a question or two,
purporting to refer only to the lodging−houses in which there was accommodation for us,
had I the least suspicion of him? None. Certainly none until afterwards when I held the clue.
I think he must have got from Riderhood in a paper, the drug, or whatever it was, that
afterwards stupefied me, but I am far from sure. All I felt safe in charging on him to−night,
was old companionship in villainy between them. Their undisguised intimacy, and the
character I now know Riderhood to bear, made that not at all adventurous. But I am not clear
about the drug. Thinking out the circumstances on which I found my suspicion, they are
only two. One: I remember his changing a small folded paper from one pocket to another,
after we came out, which he had not touched before. Two: I now know Riderhood to have
been previously taken up for being concerned in the robbery of an unlucky seaman, to whom
some such poison had been given.
'It is my conviction that we cannot have gone a mile from that shop, before we came to
the wall, the dark doorway, the flight of stairs, and the room. The night was particularly dark
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and it rained hard. As I think the circumstances back, I hear the rain splashing on the stone
pavement of the passage, whch was not under cover. The room overlooked the river, or a
dock, or a creek, and the tide was out. Being possessed of the time down to that point, I
know by the hour that it must have been about low water; but while the coffee was getting
ready, I drew back the curtain (a dark−brown curtain), and, looking out, knew by the kind of
reflection below, of the few neighbouring lights, that they were reflected in tidal mud.
'He had carried under his arm a canvas bag, containing a suit of his clothes. I had no
change of outer clothes with me, as I was to buy slops. «You are very wet, Mr Harmon,» – I
can hear him saying – «and I am quite dry under this good waterproof coat. Put on these
clothes of mine. You may find on trying them that they will answer your purpose
to−morrow, as well as the slops you mean to buy, or better. While you change, I'll hurry the
hot coffee.» When he came back, I had his clothes on, and there was a black man with him,
wearing a linen jacket, like a steward, who put the smoking coffee on the table in a tray and
never looked at me. I am so far literal and exact? Literal and exact, I am certain.
'Now, I pass to sick and deranged impressions; they are so strong, that I rely upon them;
but there are spaces between them that I know nothing about, and they are not pervaded by
any idea of time.
'I had drank some coffee, when to my sense of sight he began to swell immensely, and
something urged me to rush at him. We had a struggle near the door. He got from me,
through my not knowing where to strike, in the whirling round of the room, and the flashing
of flames of fire between us. I dropped down. Lying helpless on the ground, I was turned
over by a foot. I was dragged by the neck into a corner. I heard men speak together. I was
turned over by other feet. I saw a figure like myself lying dressed in my clothes on a bed.
What might have been, for anything I knew, a silence of days, weeks, months, years, was
broken by a violent wrestling of men all over the room. The figure like myself was assailed,
and my valise was in its hand. I was trodden upon and fallen over. I heard a noise of blows,
and thought it was a wood−cutter cutting down a tree. I could not have said that my name
was John Harmon – I could not have thought it – I didn't know it – but when I heard the
blows, I thought of the wood−cutter and his axe, and had some dead idea that I was lying in
a forest.
'This is still correct? Still correct, with the exception that I cannot possibly express it to
myself without using the word I. But it was not I. There was no such thing as I, within my
knowledge.
'It was only after a downward slide through something like a tube, and then a great
noise and a sparkling and crackling as of fires, that the consciousness came upon me, «This
is John Harmon drowning! John Harmon, struggle for your life. John Harmon, call on
Heaven and save yourself!» I think I cried it out aloud in a great agony, and then a heavy
horrid unintelligible something vanished, and it was I who was struggling there alone in the
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water.
'I was very weak and faint, frightfully oppressed with drowsiness, and driving fast with
the tide. Looking over the black water, I saw the lights racing past me on the two banks of
the river, as if they were eager to be gone and leave me dying in the dark. The tide was
running down, but I knew nothing of up or down then. When, guiding myself safely with
Heaven's assistance before the fierce set of the water, I at last caught at a boat moored, one
of a tier of boats at a causeway, I was sucked under her, and came up, only just alive, on the
other side.
'Was I long in the water? Long enough to be chilled to the heart, but I don't know how
long. Yet the cold was merciful, for it was the cold night air and the rain that restored me
from a swoon on the stones of the causeway. They naturally supposed me to have toppled in,
drunk, when I crept to the public−house it belonged to; for I had no notion where I was, and
could not articulate – through the poison that had made me insensible having affected my
speech – and I supposed the night to be the previous night, as it was still dark and raining.
But I had lost twenty−four hours.
'I have checked the calculation often, and it must have been two nights that I lay
recovering in that public−house. Let me see. Yes. I am sure it was while I lay in that bed
there, that the thought entered my head of turning the danger I had passed through, to the
account of being for some time supposed to have disappeared mysteriously, and of proving
Bella. The dread of our being forced on one another, and perpetuating the fate that seemed
to have fallen on my father's riches – the fate that they should lead to nothing but evil – was
strong upon the moral timidity that dates from my childhood with my poor sister.
'As to this hour I cannot understand that side of the river where I recovered the shore,
being the opposite side to that on which I was ensnared, I shall never understand it now.
Even at this moment, while I leave the river behind me, going home, I cannot conceive that
it rolls between me and that spot, or that the sea is where it is. But this is not thinking it out;
this is making a leap to the present time.
'I could not have done it, but for the fortune in the waterproof belt round my body. Not a
great fortune, forty and odd pounds for the inheritor of a hundred and odd thousand! But it
was enough. Without it I must have disclosed myself. Without it, I could never have gone to
that Exchequer Coffee House, or taken Mrs Wilfer's lodgings.
'Some twelve days I lived at that hotel, before the night when I saw the corpse of
Radfoot at the Police Station. The inexpressible mental horror that I laboured under, as one
of the consequences of the poison, makes the interval seem greatly longer, but I know it
cannot have been longer. That suffering has gradually weakened and weakened since, and
has only come upon me by starts, and I hope I am free from it now; but even now, I have
sometimes to think, constrain myself, and stop before speaking, or I could not say the words
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I want to say.
'Again I ramble away from thinking it out to the end. It is not so far to the end that I
need be tempted to break off. Now, on straight!
'I examined the newspapers every day for tidings that I was missing, but saw none.
Going out that night to walk (for I kept retired while it was light), I found a crowd
assembled round a placard posted at Whitehall. It described myself, John Harmon, as found
dead and mutilated in the river under circumstances of strong suspicion, described my dress,
described the papers in my pockets, and stated where I was lying for recognition. In a wild
incautious way I hurried there, and there – with the horror of the death I had escaped, before
my eyes in its most appalling shape, added to the inconceivable horror tormenting me at that
time when the poisonous stuff was strongest on me – I perceived that Radfoot had been
murdered by some unknown hands for the money for which he would have murdered me,
and that probably we had both been shot into the river from the same dark place into the
same dark tide, when the stream ran deep and strong.
'That night I almost gave up my mystery, though I suspected no one, could offer no
information, knew absolutely nothing save that the murdered man was not I, but Radfoot.
Next day while I hesitated, and next day while I hesitated, it seemed as if the whole country
were determined to have me dead. The Inquest declared me dead, the Government
proclaimed me dead; I could not listen at my fireside for five minutes to the outer noises, but
it was borne into my ears that I was dead.
'So John Harmon died, and Julius Handford disappeared, and John Rokesmith was born.
John Rokesmith's intent to−night has been to repair a wrong that he could never have
imagined possible, coming to his ears through the Lightwood talk related to him, and which
he is bound by every consideration to remedy. In that intent John Rokesmith will persevere,
as his duty is.
'Now, is it all thought out? All to this time? Nothing omitted? No, nothing. But beyond
this time? To think it out through the future, is a harder though a much shorter task than to
think it out through the past. John Harmon is dead. Should John Harmon come to life?
'If yes, why? If no, why?'
'Take yes, first. To enlighten human Justice concerning the offence of one far beyond it
who may have a living mother. To enlighten it with the lights of a stone passage, a flight of
stairs, a brown window−curtain, and a black man. To come into possession of my father's
money, and with it sordidly to buy a beautiful creature whom I love – I cannot help it;
reason has nothing to do with it; I love her against reason – but who would as soon love me
for my own sake, as she would love the beggar at the corner. What a use for the money, and
how worthy of its old misuses!
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'Now, take no. The reasons why John Harmon should not come to life. Because he has
passively allowed these dear old faithful friends to pass into possession of the property.
Because he sees them happy with it, making a good use of it, effacing the old rust and
tarnish on the money. Because they have virtually adopted Bella, and will provide for her.
Because there is affection enough in her nature, and warmth enough in her heart, to develop
into something enduringly good, under favourable conditions. Because her faults have been
intensified by her place in my father's will, and she is already growing better. Because her
marriage with John Harmon, after what I have heard from her own lips, would be a shocking
mockery, of which both she and I must always be conscious, and which would degrade her
in her mind, and me in mine, and each of us in the other's. Because if John Harmon comes to
life and does not marry her, the property falls into the very hands that hold it now.
'What would I have? Dead, I have found the true friends of my lifetime still as true as
tender and as faithful as when I was alive, and making my memory an incentive to good
actions done in my name. Dead, I have found them when they might have slighted my name,
and passed greedily over my grave to ease and wealth, lingering by the way, like
single−hearted children, to recall their love for me when I was a poor frightened child. Dead,
I have heard from the woman who would have been my wife if I had lived, the revolting
truth that I should have purchased her, caring nothing for me, as a Sultan buys a slave.
'What would I have? If the dead could know, or do know, how the living use them, who
among the hosts of dead has found a more disinterested fidelity on earth than I? Is not that
enough for me? If I had come back, these noble creatures would have welcomed me, wept
over me, given up everything to me with joy. I did not come back, and they have passed
unspoiled into my place. Let them rest in it, and let Bella rest in hers.
'What course for me then? This. To live the same quiet Secretary life, carefully avoiding
chances of recognition, until they shall have become more accustomed to their altered state,
and until the great swarm of swindlers under many names shall have found newer prey. By
that time, the method I am establishing through all the affairs, and with which I will every
day take new pains to make them both familiar, will be, I may hope, a machine in such
working order as that they can keep it going. I know I need but ask of their generosity, to
have. When the right time comes, I will ask no more than will replace me in my former path
of life, and John Rokesmith shall tread it as contentedly as he may. But John Harmon shall
come back no more.
'That I may never, in the days to come afar off, have any weak misgiving that Bella
might, in any contingency, have taken me for my own sake if I had plainly asked her, I
WILL plainly ask her: proving beyond all question what I already know too well. And now
it is all thought out, from the beginning to the end, and my mind is easier.'
So deeply engaged had the living−dead man been, in thus communing with himself, that
he had regarded neither the wind nor the way, and had resisted the former instinctively as he
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had pursued the latter. But being now come into the City, where there was a coach−stand, he
stood irresolute whether to go to his lodgings, or to go first to Mr Boffin's house. He decided
to go round by the house, arguing, as he carried his overcoat upon his arm, that it was less
likely to attract notice if left there, than if taken to Holloway: both Mrs Wilfer and Miss
Lavinia being ravenously curious touching every article of which the lodger stood
possessed.
Arriving at the house, he found that Mr and Mrs Boffin were out, but that Miss Wilfer
was in the drawing−room. Miss Wilfer had remained at home, in consequence of not feeling
very well, and had inquired in the evening if Mr Rokesmith were in his room.
'Make my compliments to Miss Wilfer, and say I am here now.'
Miss Wilfer's compliments came down in return, and, if it were not too much trouble,
would Mr Rokesmith be so kind as to come up before he went?
It was not too much trouble, and Mr Rokesmith came up.
Oh she looked very pretty, she looked very, very pretty! If the father of the late John
Harmon had but left his money unconditionally to his son, and if his son had but lighted on
this loveable girl for himself, and had the happiness to make her loving as well as loveable!
'Dear me! Are you not well, Mr Rokesmith?'
'Yes, quite well. I was sorry to hear, when I came in, that YOU were not.'
'A mere nothing. I had a headache – gone now – and was not quite fit for a hot theatre,
so I stayed at home. I asked you if you were not well, because you look so white.'
'Do I? I have had a busy evening.'
She was on a low ottoman before the fire, with a little shining jewel of a table, and her
book and her work, beside her. Ah! what a different life the late John Harmon's, if it had
been his happy privilege to take his place upon that ottoman, and draw his arm about that
waist, and say, 'I hope the time has been long without me? What a Home Goddess you look,
my darling!'
But, the present John Rokesmith, far removed from the late John Harmon, remained
standing at a distance. A little distance in respect of space, but a great distance in respect of
separation.
'Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, taking up her work, and inspecting it all round the corners, 'I
wanted to say something to you when I could have the opportunity, as an explanation why I
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was rude to you the other day. You have no right to think ill of me, sir.'
The sharp little way in which she darted a look at him, half sensitively injured, and half
pettishly, would have been very much admired by the late John Harmon.
'You don't know how well I think of you, Miss Wilfer.'
'Truly, you must have a very high opinion of me, Mr Rokesmith, when you believe that
in prosperity I neglect and forget my old home.'
'Do I believe so?'
'You DID, sir, at any rate,' returned Bella.
'I took the liberty of reminding you of a little omission into which you had fallen –
insensibly and naturally fallen. It was no more than that.'
'And I beg leave to ask you, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, 'why you took that liberty? – I
hope there is no offence in the phrase; it is your own, remember.'
'Because I am truly, deeply, profoundly interested in you, Miss Wilfer. Because I wish
to see you always at your best. Because I – shall I go on?'
'No, sir,' returned Bella, with a burning face, 'you have said more than enough. I beg
that you will NOT go on. If you have any generosity, any honour, you will say no more.'
The late John Harmon, looking at the proud face with the down− cast eyes, and at the
quick breathing as it stirred the fall of bright brown hair over the beautiful neck, would
probably have remained silent.
'I wish to speak to you, sir,' said Bella, 'once for all, and I don't know how to do it. I
have sat here all this evening, wishing to speak to you, and determining to speak to you, and
feeling that I must. I beg for a moment's time.'
He remained silent, and she remained with her face averted, sometimes making a slight
movement as if she would turn and speak. At length she did so.
'You know how I am situated here, sir, and you know how I am situated at home. I must
speak to you for myself, since there is no one about me whom I could ask to do so. It is not
generous in you, it is not honourable in you, to conduct yourself towards me as you do.'
'Is it ungenerous or dishonourable to be devoted to you; fascinated by you?'
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'Preposterous!' said Bella.
The late John Harmon might have thought it rather a contemptuous and lofty word of
repudiation.
'I now feel obliged to go on,' pursued the Secretary, 'though it were only in
self−explanation and self−defence. I hope, Miss Wilfer, that it is not unpardonable – even in
me – to make an honest declaration of an honest devotion to you.'
'An honest declaration!' repeated Bella, with emphasis.
'Is it otherwise?'
'I must request, sir,' said Bella, taking refuge in a touch of timely resentment, 'that I may
not be questioned. You must excuse me if I decline to be cross−examined.'
'Oh, Miss Wilfer, this is hardly charitable. I ask you nothing but what your own
emphasis suggests. However, I waive even that question. But what I have declared, I take
my stand by. I cannot recall the avowal of my earnest and deep attachment to you, and I do
not recall it.'
'I reject it, sir,' said Bella.
'I should be blind and deaf if I were not prepared for the reply. Forgive my offence, for
it carries its punishment with it.'
'What punishment?' asked Bella.
'Is my present endurance none? But excuse me; I did not mean to cross−examine you
again.'
'You take advantage of a hasty word of mine,' said Bella with a little sting of
self−reproach, 'to make me seem – I don't know what. I spoke without consideration when I
used it. If that was bad, I am sorry; but you repeat it after consideration, and that seems to
me to be at least no better. For the rest, I beg it may be understood, Mr Rokesmith, that there
is an end of this between us, now and for ever.'
'Now and for ever,' he repeated.
'Yes. I appeal to you, sir,' proceeded Bella with increasing spirit, 'not to pursue me. I
appeal to you not to take advantage of your position in this house to make my position in it
distressing and disagreeable. I appeal to you to discontinue your habit of making your
misplaced attentions as plain to Mrs Boffin as to me.'
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'Have I done so?'
'I should think you have,' replied Bella. 'In any case it is not your fault if you have not,
Mr Rokesmith.'
'I hope you are wrong in that impression. I should be very sorry to have justified it. I
think I have not. For the future there is no apprehension. It is all over.'
'I am much relieved to hear it,' said Bella. 'I have far other views in life, and why should
you waste your own?'
'Mine!' said the Secretary. 'My life!'
His curious tone caused Bella to glance at the curious smile with which he said it. It was
gone as he glanced back. 'Pardon me, Miss Wilfer,' he proceeded, when their eyes met; 'you
have used some hard words, for which I do not doubt you have a justification in your mind,
that I do not understand. Ungenerous and dishonourable. In what?'
'I would rather not be asked,' said Bella, haughtily looking down.
'I would rather not ask, but the question is imposed upon me. Kindly explain; or if not
kindly, justly.'
'Oh, sir!' said Bella, raising her eyes to his, after a little struggle to forbear, 'is it
generous and honourable to use the power here which your favour with Mr and Mrs Boffin
and your ability in your place give you, against me?'
'Against you?'
'Is it generous and honourable to form a plan for gradually bringing their influence to
bear upon a suit which I have shown you that I do not like, and which I tell you that I utterly
reject?'
The late John Harmon could have borne a good deal, but he would have been cut to the
heart by such a suspicion as this.
'Would it be generous and honourable to step into your place – if you did so, for I don't
know that you did, and I hope you did not – anticipating, or knowing beforehand, that I
should come here, and designing to take me at this disadvantage?'
'This mean and cruel disadvantage,' said the Secretary.
'Yes,' assented Bella.
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The Secretary kept silence for a little while; then merely said, 'You are wholly mistaken,
Miss Wilfer; wonderfully mistaken. I cannot say, however, that it is your fault. If I deserve
better things of you, you do not know it.'
'At least, sir,' retorted Bella, with her old indignation rising, 'you know the history of my
being here at all. I have heard Mr Boffin say that you are master of every line and word of
that will, as you are master of all his affairs. And was it not enough that I should have been
willed away, like a horse, or a dog, or a bird; but must you too begin to dispose of me in
your mind, and speculate in me, as soon as I had ceased to be the talk and the laugh of the
town? Am I for ever to be made the property of strangers?'
'Believe me,' returned the Secretary, 'you are wonderfully mistaken.'
'I should be glad to know it,' answered Bella.
'I doubt if you ever will. Good−night. Of course I shall be careful to conceal any traces
of this interview from Mr and Mrs Boffin, as long as I remain here. Trust me, what you have
complained of is at an end for ever.'
'I am glad I have spoken, then, Mr Rokesmith. It has been painful and difficult, but it is
done. If I have hurt you, I hope you will forgive me. I am inexperienced and impetuous, and
I have been a little spoilt; but I really am not so bad as I dare say I appear, or as you think
me.'
He quitted the room when Bella had said this, relenting in her wilful inconsistent way.
Left alone, she threw herself back on her ottoman, and said, 'I didn't know the lovely woman
was such a Dragon!' Then, she got up and looked in the glass, and said to her image, 'You
have been positively swelling your features, you little fool!' Then, she took an impatient
walk to the other end of the room and back, and said, 'I wish Pa was here to have a talk
about an avaricious marriage; but he is better away, poor dear, for I know I should pull his
hair if he WAS here.' And then she threw her work away, and threw her book after it, and sat
down and hummed a tune, and hummed it out of tune, and quarrelled with it.
And John Rokesmith, what did he?
He went down to his room, and buried John Harmon many additional fathoms deep. He
took his hat, and walked out, and, as he went to Holloway or anywhere else – not at all
minding where – heaped mounds upon mounds of earth over John Harmon's grave. His
walking did not bring him home until the dawn of day. And so busy had he been all night,
piling and piling weights upon weights of earth above John Harmon's grave, that by that
time John Harmon lay buried under a whole Alpine range; and still the Sexton Rokesmith
accumulated mountains over him, lightening his labour with the dirge, 'Cover him, crush
him, keep him down!'
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T
he sexton−task of piling earth above John Harmon all night long, was not conducive
to sound sleep; but Rokesmith had some broken morning rest, and rose strengthened in his
purpose. It was all over now. No ghost should trouble Mr and Mrs Boffin's peace; invisible
and voiceless, the ghost should look on for a little while longer at the state of existence out
of which it had departed, and then should for ever cease to haunt the scenes in which it had
no place.
He went over it all again. He had lapsed into the condition in which he found himself,
as many a man lapses into many a condition, without perceiving the accumulative power of
its separate circumstances. When in the distrust engendered by his wretched childhood and
the action for evil – never yet for good within his knowledge then – of his father and his
father's wealth on all within their influence, he conceived the idea of his first deception, it
was meant to be harmless, it was to last but a few hours or days, it was to involve in it only
the girl so capriciously forced upon him and upon whom he was so capriciously forced, and
it was honestly meant well towards her. For, if he had found her unhappy in the prospect of
that marriage (through her heart inclining to another man or for any other cause), be would
seriously have said: 'This is another of the old perverted uses of the misery−making money.
I will let it go to my and my sister's only protectors and friends.' When the snare into which
he fell so outstripped his first intention as that he found himself placarded by the police
authorities upon the London walls for dead, he confusedly accepted the aid that fell upon
him, without considering how firmly it must seem to fix the Boffins in their accession to the
fortune. When he saw them, and knew them, and even from his vantage−ground of
inspection could find no flaw in them, he asked himself, 'And shall I come to life to
dispossess such people as these?' There was no good to set against the putting of them to that
hard proof. He had heard from Bella's own lips when he stood tapping at the door on that
night of his taking the lodgings, that the marriage would have been on her part thoroughly
mercenary. He had since tried her, in his own unknown person and supposed station, and she
not only rejected his advances but resented them. Was it for him to have the shame of
buying her, or the meanness of punishing her? Yet, by coming to life and accepting the
condition of the inheritance, he must do the former; and by coming to life and rejecting it, he
must do the latter.
Another consequence that he had never foreshadowed, was the implication of an
innocent man in his supposed murder. He would obtain complete retraction from the
accuser, and set the wrong right; but clearly the wrong could never have been done if he had
never planned a deception. Then, whatever inconvenience or distress of mind the deception
cost him, it was manful repentantly to accept as among its consequences, and make no
complaint.
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Thus John Rokesmith in the morning, and it buried John Harmon still many fathoms
deeper than he had been buried in the night.
Going out earlier than he was accustomed to do, he encountered the cherub at the door.
The cherub's way was for a certain space his way, and they walked together.
It was impossible not to notice the change in the cherub's appearance. The cherub felt
very conscious of it, and modestly remarked:
'A present from my daughter Bella, Mr Rokesmith.'
The words gave the Secretary a stroke of pleasure, for he remembered the fifty pounds,
and he still loved the girl. No doubt it was very weak – it always IS very weak, some
authorities hold – but he loved the girl.
'I don't know whether you happen to have read many books of African Travel, Mr
Rokesmith?' said R. W.
'I have read several.'
'Well, you know, there's usually a King George, or a King Boy, or a King Sambo, or a
King Bill, or Bull, or Rum, or Junk, or whatever name the sailors may have happened to
give him.'
'Where?' asked Rokesmith.
'Anywhere. Anywhere in Africa, I mean. Pretty well everywhere, I may say; for black
kings are cheap – and I think' – said R. W., with an apologetic air, 'nasty'.
'I am much of your opinion, Mr Wilfer. You were going to say – ?'
'I was going to say, the king is generally dressed in a London hat only, or a Manchester
pair of braces, or one epaulette, or an uniform coat with his legs in the sleeves, or something
of that kind.'
'Just so,' said the Secretary.
'In confidence, I assure you, Mr Rokesmith,' observed the cheerful cherub, 'that when
more of my family were at home and to be provided for, I used to remind myself immensely
of that king. You have no idea, as a single man, of the difficulty I have had in wearing more
than one good article at a time.'
'I can easily believe it, Mr Wilfer.'
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'I only mention it,' said R. W. in the warmth of his heart, 'as a proof of the amiable,
delicate, and considerate affection of my daughter Bella. If she had been a little spoilt, I
couldn't have thought so very much of it, under the circumstances. But no, not a bit. And she
is so very pretty! I hope you agree with me in finding her very pretty, Mr Rokesmith?'
'Certainly I do. Every one must.'
'I hope so,' said the cherub. 'Indeed, I have no doubt of it. This is a great advancement
for her in life, Mr Rokesmith. A great opening of her prospects?'
'Miss Wilfer could have no better friends than Mr and Mrs Boffin.'
'Impossible!' said the gratified cherub. 'Really I begin to think things are very well as
they are. If Mr John Harmon had lived – '
'He is better dead,' said the Secretary.
'No, I won't go so far as to say that,' urged the cherub, a little remonstrant against the
very decisive and unpitying tone; 'but he mightn't have suited Bella, or Bella mightn't have
suited him, or fifty things, whereas now I hope she can choose for herself.'
'Has she – as you place the confidence in me of speaking on the subject, you will excuse
my asking – has she – perhaps – chosen?' faltered the Secretary.
'Oh dear no!' returned R. W.
'Young ladies sometimes,' Rokesmith hinted, 'choose without mentioning their choice to
their fathers.'
'Not in this case, Mr Rokesmith. Between my daughter Bella and me there is a regular
league and covenant of confidence. It was ratified only the other day. The ratification dates
from – these,' said the cherub, giving a little pull at the lappels of his coat and the pockets of
his trousers. 'Oh no, she has not chosen. To be sure, young George Sampson, in the days
when Mr John Harmon – '
'Who I wish had never been born!' said the Secretary, with a gloomy brow.
R. W. looked at him with surprise, as thinking he had contracted an unaccountable spite
against the poor deceased, and continued: 'In the days when Mr John Harmon was being
sought out, young George Sampson certainly was hovering about Bella, and Bella let him
hover. But it never was seriously thought of, and it's still less than ever to be thought of now.
For Bella is ambitious, Mr Rokesmith, and I think I may predict will marry fortune. This
time, you see, she will have the person and the property before her together, and will be able
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to make her choice with her eyes open. This is my road. I am very sorry to part company so
soon. Good morning, sir!'
The Secretary pursued his way, not very much elevated in spirits by this conversation,
and, arriving at the Boffin mansion, found Betty Higden waiting for him.
'I should thank you kindly, sir,' said Betty, 'if I might make so bold as have a word or
two wi' you.'
She should have as many words as she liked, he told her; and took her into his room,
and made her sit down.
''Tis concerning Sloppy, sir,' said Betty. 'And that's how I come here by myself. Not
wishing him to know what I'm a−going to say to you, I got the start of him early and walked
up.'
'You have wonderful energy,' returned Rokesmith. 'You are as young as I am.'
Betty Higden gravely shook her head. 'I am strong for my time of life, sir, but not
young, thank the Lord!'
'Are you thankful for not being young?'
'Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would
be a weary way off, don't you see? But never mind me; 'tis concerning Sloppy.'
'And what about him, Betty?'
''Tis just this, sir. It can't be reasoned out of his head by any powers of mine but what
that he can do right by your kind lady and gentleman and do his work for me, both together.
Now he can't. To give himself up to being put in the way of arning a good living and getting
on, he must give me up. Well; he won't.'
'I respect him for it,' said Rokesmith.
'DO ye, sir? I don't know but what I do myself. Still that don't make it right to let him
have his way. So as he won't give me up, I'm a−going to give him up.'
'How, Betty?'
'I'm a−going to run away from him.'
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With an astonished look at the indomitable old face and the bright eyes, the Secretary
repeated, 'Run away from him?'
'Yes, sir,' said Betty, with one nod. And in the nod and in the firm set of her mouth,
there was a vigour of purpose not to be doubted.
'Come, come!' said the Secretary. 'We must talk about this. Let us take our time over it,
and try to get at the true sense of the case and the true course, by degrees.'
'Now, lookee here, by dear,' returned old Betty – 'asking your excuse for being so
familiar, but being of a time of life a'most to be your grandmother twice over. Now, lookee,
here. 'Tis a poor living and a hard as is to be got out of this work that I'm a doing now, and
but for Sloppy I don't know as I should have held to it this long. But it did just keep us on,
the two together. Now that I'm alone – with even Johnny gone – I'd far sooner be upon my
feet and tiring of myself out, than a sitting folding and folding by the fire. And I'll tell you
why. There's a deadness steals over me at times, that the kind of life favours and I don't like.
Now, I seem to have Johnny in my arms – now, his mother – now, his mother's mother –
now, I seem to be a child myself, a lying once again in the arms of my own mother – then I
get numbed, thought and sense, till I start out of my seat, afeerd that I'm a growing like the
poor old people that they brick up in the Unions, as you may sometimes see when they let
'em out of the four walls to have a warm in the sun, crawling quite scared about the streets. I
was a nimble girl, and have always been a active body, as I told your lady, first time ever I
see her good face. I can still walk twenty mile if I am put to it. I'd far better be a walking
than a getting numbed and dreary. I'm a good fair knitter, and can make many little things to
sell. The loan from your lady and gentleman of twenty shillings to fit out a basket with,
would be a fortune for me. Trudging round the country and tiring of myself out, I shall keep
the deadness off, and get my own bread by my own labour. And what more can I want?'
'And this is your plan,' said the Secretary, 'for running away?'
'Show me a better! My deary, show me a better! Why, I know very well,' said old Betty
Higden, 'and you know very well, that your lady and gentleman would set me up like a
queen for the rest of my life, if so be that we could make it right among us to have it so. But
we can't make it right among us to have it so. I've never took charity yet, nor yet has any one
belonging to me. And it would be forsaking of myself indeed, and forsaking of my children
dead and gone, and forsaking of their children dead and gone, to set up a contradiction now
at last.'
'It might come to be justifiable and unavoidable at last,' the Secretary gently hinted,
with a slight stress on the word.
'I hope it never will! It ain't that I mean to give offence by being anyways proud,' said
the old creature simply, 'but that I want to be of a piece like, and helpful of myself right
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through to my death.'
'And to be sure,' added the Secretary, as a comfort for her, 'Sloppy will be eagerly
looking forward to his opportunity of being to you what you have been to him.'
'Trust him for that, sir!' said Betty, cheerfully. 'Though he had need to be something
quick about it, for I'm a getting to be an old one. But I'm a strong one too, and travel and
weather never hurt me yet! Now, be so kind as speak for me to your lady and gentleman,
and tell 'em what I ask of their good friendliness to let me do, and why I ask it.'
The Secretary felt that there was no gainsaying what was urged by this brave old
heroine, and he presently repaired to Mrs Boffin and recommended her to let Betty Higden
have her way, at all events for the time. 'It would be far more satisfactory to your kind heart,
I know,' he said, 'to provide for her, but it may be a duty to respect this independent spirit.'
Mrs Boffin was not proof against the consideration set before her. She and her husband had
worked too, and had brought their simple faith and honour clean out of dustheaps. If they
owed a duty to Betty Higden, of a surety that duty must be done.
'But, Betty,' said Mrs Boffin, when she accompanied John Rokesmith back to his room,
and shone upon her with the light of her radiant face, 'granted all else, I think I wouldn't run
away'.
''Twould come easier to Sloppy,' said Mrs Higden, shaking her head. ''Twould come
easier to me too. But 'tis as you please.'
'When would you go?'
'Now,' was the bright and ready answer. 'To−day, my deary, to− morrow. Bless ye, I am
used to it. I know many parts of the country well. When nothing else was to be done, I have
worked in many a market−garden afore now, and in many a hop−garden too.'
'If I give my consent to your going, Betty – which Mr Rokesmith thinks I ought to do – '
Betty thanked him with a grateful curtsey.
' – We must not lose sight of you. We must not let you pass out of our knowledge. We
must know all about you.'
'Yes, my deary, but not through letter−writing, because letter− writing – indeed, writing
of most sorts hadn't much come up for such as me when I was young. But I shall be to and
fro. No fear of my missing a chance of giving myself a sight of your reviving face. Besides,'
said Betty, with logical good faith, 'I shall have a debt to pay off, by littles, and naturally that
would bring me back, if nothing else would.'
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'MUST it be done?' asked Mrs Boffin, still reluctant, of the Secretary.
'I think it must.'
After more discussion it was agreed that it should be done, and Mrs Boffin summoned
Bella to note down the little purchases that were necessary to set Betty up in trade. 'Don't ye
be timorous for me, my dear,' said the stanch old heart, observant of Bella's face: when I
take my seat with my work, clean and busy and fresh, in a country market−place, I shall turn
a sixpence as sure as ever a farmer's wife there.'
The Secretary took that opportunity of touching on the practical question of Mr Sloppy's
capabilities. He would have made a wonderful cabinet−maker, said Mrs Higden, 'if there had
been the money to put him to it.' She had seen him handle tools that he had borrowed to
mend the mangle, or to knock a broken piece of furniture together, in a surprising manner.
As to constructing toys for the Minders, out of nothing, he had done that daily. And once as
many as a dozen people had got together in the lane to see the neatness with which he fitted
the broken pieces of a foreign monkey's musical instrument. 'That's well,' said the Secretary.
'It will not be hard to find a trade for him.'
John Harmon being buried under mountains now, the Secretary that very same day set
himself to finish his affairs and have done with him. He drew up an ample declaration, to be
signed by Rogue Riderhood (knowing he could get his signature to it, by making him
another and much shorter evening call), and then considered to whom should he give the
document? To Hexam's son, or daughter? Resolved speedily, to the daughter. But it would
be safer to avoid seeing the daughter, because the son had seen Julius Handford, and – he
could not be too careful – there might possibly be some comparison of notes between the
son and daughter, which would awaken slumbering suspicion, and lead to consequences. 'I
might even,' he reflected, 'be apprehended as having been concerned in my own murder!'
Therefore, best to send it to the daughter under cover by the post. Pleasant Riderhood had
undertaken to find out where she lived, and it was not necessary that it should be attended by
a single word of explanation. So far, straight.
But, all that he knew of the daughter he derived from Mrs Boffin's accounts of what she
heard from Mr Lightwood, who seemed to have a reputation for his manner of relating a
story, and to have made this story quite his own. It interested him, and he would like to have
the means of knowing more – as, for instance, that she received the exonerating paper, and
that it satisfied her – by opening some channel altogether independent of Lightwood: who
likewise had seen Julius Handford, who had publicly advertised for Julius Handford, and
whom of all men he, the Secretary, most avoided. 'But with whom the common course of
things might bring me in a moment face to face, any day in the week or any hour in the day.'
Now, to cast about for some likely means of opening such a channel. The boy, Hexam,
was training for and with a schoolmaster. The Secretary knew it, because his sister's share in
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that disposal of him seemed to be the best part of Lightwood's account of the family. This
young fellow, Sloppy, stood in need of some instruction. If he, the Secretary, engaged that
schoolmaster to impart it to him, the channel might be opened. The next point was, did Mrs
Boffin know the schoolmaster's name? No, but she knew where the school was. Quite
enough. Promptly the Secretary wrote to the master of that school, and that very evening
Bradley Headstone answered in person.
The Secretary stated to the schoolmaster how the object was, to send to him for certain
occasional evening instruction, a youth whom Mr and Mrs Boffin wished to help to an
industrious and useful place in life. The schoolmaster was willing to undertake the charge of
such a pupil. The Secretary inquired on what terms? The schoolmaster stated on what terms.
Agreed and disposed of.
'May I ask, sir,' said Bradley Headstone, 'to whose good opinion I owe a
recommendation to you?'
'You should know that I am not the principal here. I am Mr Boffin's Secretary. Mr
Boffin is a gentleman who inherited a property of which you may have heard some public
mention; the Harmon property.'
'Mr Harmon,' said Bradley: who would have been a great deal more at a loss than he
was, if he had known to whom he spoke: 'was murdered and found in the river.'
'Was murdered and found in the river.'
'It was not – '
'No,' interposed the Secretary, smiling, 'it was not he who recommended you. Mr Boffin
heard of you through a certain Mr Lightwood. I think you know Mr Lightwood, or know of
him?'
'I know as much of him as I wish to know, sir. I have no acquaintance with Mr
Lightwood, and I desire none. I have no objection to Mr Lightwood, but I have a particular
objection to some of Mr Lightwood's friends – in short, to one of Mr Lightwood's friends.
His great friend.'
He could hardly get the words out, even then and there, so fierce did he grow (though
keeping himself down with infinite pains of repression), when the careless and
contemptuous bearing of Eugene Wrayburn rose before his mind.
The Secretary saw there was a strong feeling here on some sore point, and he would
have made a diversion from it, but for Bradley's holding to it in his cumbersome way.
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'I have no objection to mention the friend by name,' he said, doggedly. 'The person I
object to, is Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'
The Secretary remembered him. In his disturbed recollection of that night when he was
striving against the drugged drink, there was but a dim image of Eugene's person; but he
remembered his name, and his manner of speaking, and how he had gone with them to view
the body, and where he had stood, and what he had said.
'Pray, Mr Headstone, what is the name,' he asked, again trying to make a diversion, 'of
young Hexam's sister?'
'Her name is Lizzie,' said the schoolmaster, with a strong contraction of his whole face.
'She is a young woman of a remarkable character; is she not?'
'She is sufficiently remarkable to be very superior to Mr Eugene Wrayburn – though an
ordinary person might be that,' said the schoolmaster; 'and I hope you will not think it
impertinent in me, sir, to ask why you put the two names together?'
'By mere accident,' returned the Secretary. 'Observing that Mr Wrayburn was a
disagreeable subject with you, I tried to get away from it: though not very successfully, it
would appear.'
'Do you know Mr Wrayburn, sir?'
'No.'
'Then perhaps the names cannot be put together on the authority of any representation of
his?'
'Certainly not.'
'I took the liberty to ask,' said Bradley, after casting his eyes on the ground, 'because he
is capable of making any representation, in the swaggering levity of his insolence. I – I hope
you will not misunderstand me, sir. I – I am much interested in this brother and sister, and
the subject awakens very strong feelings within me. Very, very, strong feelings.' With a
shaking hand, Bradley took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.
The Secretary thought, as he glanced at the schoolmaster's face, that he had opened a
channel here indeed, and that it was an unexpectedly dark and deep and stormy one, and
difficult to sound. All at once, in the midst of his turbulent emotions, Bradley stopped and
seemed to challenge his look. Much as though he suddenly asked him, 'What do you see in
me?'
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'The brother, young Hexam, was your real recommendation here,' said the Secretary,
quietly going back to the point; 'Mr and Mrs Boffin happening to know, through Mr
Lightwood, that he was your pupil. Anything that I ask respecting the brother and sister, or
either of them, I ask for myself out of my own interest in the subject, and not in my official
character, or on Mr Boffin's behalf. How I come to be interested, I need not explain. You
know the father's connection with the discovery of Mr Harmon's body.'
'Sir,' replied Bradley, very restlessly indeed, 'I know all the circumstances of that case.'
'Pray tell me, Mr Headstone,' said the Secretary. 'Does the sister suffer under any stigma
because of the impossible accusation – groundless would be a better word – that was made
against the father, and substantially withdrawn?'
'No, sir,' returned Bradley, with a kind of anger.
'I am very glad to hear it.'
'The sister,' said Bradley, separating his words over−carefully, and speaking as if he
were repeating them from a book, 'suffers under no reproach that repels a man of
unimpeachable character who had made for himself every step of his way in life, from
placing her in his own station. I will not say, raising her to his own station; I say, placing her
in it. The sister labours under no reproach, unless she should unfortunately make it for
herself. When such a man is not deterred from regarding her as his equal, and when he has
convinced himself that there is no blemish on her, I think the fact must be taken to be pretty
expressive.'
'And there is such a man?' said the Secretary.
Bradley Headstone knotted his brows, and squared his large lower jaw, and fixed his
eyes on the ground with an air of determination that seemed unnecessary to the occasion, as
he replied: 'And there is such a man.'
The Secretary had no reason or excuse for prolonging the conversation, and it ended
here. Within three hours the oakum− headed apparition once more dived into the Leaving
Shop, and that night Rogue Riderhood's recantation lay in the post office, addressed under
cover to Lizzie Hexam at her right address.
All these proceedings occupied John Rokesmith so much, that it was not until the
following day that he saw Bella again. It seemed then to be tacitly understood between them
that they were to be as distantly easy as they could, without attracting the attention of Mr
and Mrs Boffin to any marked change in their manner. The fitting out of old Betty Higden
was favourable to this, as keeping Bella engaged and interested, and as occupying the
general attention.
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'I think,' said Rokesmith, when they all stood about her, while she packed her tidy
basket – except Bella, who was busily helping on her knees at the chair on which it stood;
'that at least you might keep a letter in your pocket, Mrs Higden, which I would write for
you and date from here, merely stating, in the names of Mr and Mrs Boffin, that they are
your friends; – I won't say patrons, because they wouldn't like it.'
'No, no, no,' said Mr Boffin; 'no patronizing! Let's keep out of THAT, whatever we
come to.'
'There's more than enough of that about, without us; ain't there, Noddy?' said Mrs
Boffin.
'I believe you, old lady!' returned the Golden Dustman. 'Overmuch indeed!'
'But people sometimes like to be patronized; don't they, sir?' asked Bella, looking up.
'I don't. And if THEY do, my dear, they ought to learn better,' said Mr Boffin. 'Patrons
and Patronesses, and Vice−Patrons and Vice−Patronesses, and Deceased Patrons and
Deceased Patronesses, and Ex−Vice−Patrons and Ex−Vice−Patronesses, what does it all
mean in the books of the Charities that come pouring in on Rokesmith as he sits among 'em
pretty well up to his neck! If Mr Tom Noakes gives his five shillings ain't he a Patron, and if
Mrs Jack Styles gives her five shillings ain't she a Patroness? What the deuce is it all about?
If it ain't stark staring impudence, what do you call it?'
'Don't be warm, Noddy,' Mrs Boffin urged.
'Warm!' cried Mr Boffin. 'It's enough to make a man smoking hot. I can't go anywhere
without being Patronized. I don't want to be Patronized. If I buy a ticket for a Flower Show,
or a Music Show, or any sort of Show, and pay pretty heavy for it, why am I to be Patroned
and Patronessed as if the Patrons and Patronesses treated me? If there's a good thing to be
done, can't it be done on its own merits? If there's a bad thing to be done, can it ever be
Patroned and Patronessed right? Yet when a new Institution's going to be built, it seems to
me that the bricks and mortar ain't made of half so much consequence as the Patrons and
Patronesses; no, nor yet the objects. I wish somebody would tell me whether other countries
get Patronized to anything like the extent of this one! And as to the Patrons and Patronesses
themselves, I wonder they're not ashamed of themselves. They ain't Pills, or Hair−Washes,
or Invigorating Nervous Essences, to be puffed in that way!'
Having delivered himself of these remarks, Mr Boffin took a trot, according to his usual
custom, and trotted back to the spot from which he had started.
'As to the letter, Rokesmith,' said Mr Boffin, 'you're as right as a trivet. Give her the
letter, make her take the letter, put it in her pocket by violence. She might fall sick. You
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know you might fall sick,' said Mr Boffin. 'Don't deny it, Mrs Higden, in your obstinacy;
you know you might.'
Old Betty laughed, and said that she would take the letter and be thankful.
'That's right!' said Mr Boffin. 'Come! That's sensible. And don't be thankful to us (for
we never thought of it), but to Mr Rokesmith.'
The letter was written, and read to her, and given to her.
'Now, how do you feel?' said Mr Boffin. 'Do you like it?'
'The letter, sir?' said Betty. 'Ay, it's a beautiful letter!'
'No, no, no; not the letter,' said Mr Boffin; 'the idea. Are you sure you're strong enough
to carry out the idea?'
'I shall be stronger, and keep the deadness off better, this way, than any way left open to
me, sir.'
'Don't say than any way left open, you know,' urged Mr Boffin; 'because there are ways
without end. A housekeeper would be acceptable over yonder at the Bower, for instance.
Wouldn't you like to see the Bower, and know a retired literary man of the name of Wegg
that lives there – WITH a wooden leg?'
Old Betty was proof even against this temptation, and fell to adjusting her black bonnet
and shawl.
'I wouldn't let you go, now it comes to this, after all,' said Mr Boffin, 'if I didn't hope
that it may make a man and a workman of Sloppy, in as short a time as ever a man and
workman was made yet. Why, what have you got there, Betty? Not a doll?'
It was the man in the Guards who had been on duty over Johnny's bed. The solitary old
woman showed what it was, and put it up quietly in her dress. Then, she gratefully took
leave of Mrs Boffin, and of Mr Boffin, and of Rokesmith, and then put her old withered
arms round Bella's young and blooming neck, and said, repeating Johnny's words: 'A kiss for
the boofer lady.'
The Secretary looked on from a doorway at the boofer lady thus encircled, and still
looked on at the boofer lady standing alone there, when the determined old figure with its
steady bright eyes was trudging through the streets, away from paralysis and pauperism.
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Chapter 15 − THE WHOLE CASE SO FAR
B
radley Headstone held fast by that other interview he was to have with Lizzie Hexam.
In stipulating for it, he had been impelled by a feeling little short of desperation, and the
feeling abided by him. It was very soon after his interview with the Secretary, that he and
Charley Hexam set out one leaden evening, not unnoticed by Miss Peecher, to have this
desperate interview accomplished.
'That dolls' dressmaker,' said Bradley, 'is favourable neither to me nor to you, Hexam.'
'A pert crooked little chit, Mr Headstone! I knew she would put herself in the way, if
she could, and would be sure to strike in with something impertinent. It was on that account
that I proposed our going to the City to−night and meeting my sister.'
'So I supposed,' said Bradley, getting his gloves on his nervous hands as he walked. 'So
I supposed.'
'Nobody but my sister,' pursued Charley, 'would have found out such an extraordinary
companion. She has done it in a ridiculous fancy of giving herself up to another. She told me
so, that night when we went there.'
'Why should she give herself up to the dressmaker?' asked Bradley.
'Oh!' said the boy, colouring. 'One of her romantic ideas! I tried to convince her so, but I
didn't succeed. However, what we have got to do, is, to succeed to−night, Mr Headstone,
and then all the rest follows.'
'You are still sanguine, Hexam.'
'Certainly I am, sir. Why, we have everything on our side.'
'Except your sister, perhaps,' thought Bradley. But he only gloomily thought it, and said
nothing.
'Everything on our side,' repeated the boy with boyish confidence. 'Respectability, an
excellent connexion for me, common sense, everything!'
'To be sure, your sister has always shown herself a devoted sister,' said Bradley, willing
to sustain himself on even that low ground of hope.
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'Naturally, Mr Headstone, I have a good deal of influence with her. And now that you
have honoured me with your confidence and spoken to me first, I say again, we have
everything on our side.'
And Bradley thought again, 'Except your sister, perhaps.'
A grey dusty withered evening in London city has not a hopeful aspect. The closed
warehouses and offices have an air of death about them, and the national dread of colour has
an air of mourning. The towers and steeples of the many house− encompassed churches,
dark and dingy as the sky that seems descending on them, are no relief to the general gloom;
a sun−dial on a church−wall has the look, in its useless black shade, of having failed in its
business enterprise and stopped payment for ever; melancholy waifs and strays of
housekeepers and porter sweep melancholy waifs and strays of papers and pins into the
kennels, and other more melancholy waifs and strays explore them, searching and stooping
and poking for anything to sell. The set of humanity outward from the City is as a set of
prisoners departing from gaol, and dismal Newgate seems quite as fit a stronghold for the
mighty Lord Mayor as his own state−dwelling.
On such an evening, when the city grit gets into the hair and eyes and skin, and when
the fallen leaves of the few unhappy city trees grind down in corners under wheels of wind,
the schoolmaster and the pupil emerged upon the Leadenhall Street region, spying eastward
for Lizzie. Being something too soon in their arrival, they lurked at a corner, waiting for her
to appear. The best− looking among us will not look very well, lurking at a corner, and
Bradley came out of that disadvantage very poorly indeed.
'Here she comes, Mr Headstone! Let us go forward and meet her.'
As they advanced, she saw them coming, and seemed rather troubled. But she greeted
her brother with the usual warmth, and touched the extended hand of Bradley.
'Why, where are you going, Charley, dear?' she asked him then.
'Nowhere. We came on purpose to meet you.'
'To meet me, Charley?'
'Yes. We are going to walk with you. But don't let us take the great leading streets
where every one walks, and we can't hear ourselves speak. Let us go by the quiet backways.
Here's a large paved court by this church, and quiet, too. Let us go up here.'
'But it's not in the way, Charley.'
'Yes it is,' said the boy, petulantly. 'It's in my way, and my way is yours.'
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She had not released his hand, and, still holding it, looked at him with a kind of appeal.
He avoided her eyes, under pretence of saying, 'Come along, Mr Headstone.' Bradley
walked at his side – not at hers – and the brother and sister walked hand in hand. The court
brought them to a churchyard; a paved square court, with a raised bank of earth about breast
high, in the middle, enclosed by iron rails. Here, conveniently and heathfully elevated above
the level of the living, were the dead, and the tombstones; some of the latter droopingly
inclined from the perpendicular, as if they were ashamed of the lies they told.
They paced the whole of this place once, in a constrained and uncomfortable manner,
when the boy stopped and said:
'Lizzie, Mr Headstone has something to say to you. I don't wish to be an interruption
either to him or to you, and so I'll go and take a little stroll and come back. I know in a
general way what Mr Headstone intends to say, and I very highly approve of it, as I hope –
and indeed I do not doubt – you will. I needn't tell you, Lizzie, that I am under great
obligations to Mr Headstone, and that I am very anxious for Mr Headstone to succeed in all
he undertakes. As I hope – and as, indeed, I don't doubt – you must be.'
'Charley,' returned his sister, detaining his hand as he withdrew it, 'I think you had better
stay. I think Mr Headstone had better not say what he thinks of saying.'
'Why, how do you know what it is?' returned the boy.
'Perhaps I don't, but – '
'Perhaps you don't? No, Liz, I should think not. If you knew what it was, you would
give me a very different answer. There; let go; be sensible. I wonder you don't remember
that Mr Headstone is looking on.'
She allowed him to separate himself from her, and he, after saying, 'Now Liz, be a
rational girl and a good sister,' walked away. She remained standing alone with Bradley
Headstone, and it was not until she raised her eyes, that he spoke.
'I said,' he began, 'when I saw you last, that there was something unexplained, which
might perhaps influence you. I have come this evening to explain it. I hope you will not
judge of me by my hesitating manner when I speak to you. You see me at my greatest
disadvantage. It is most unfortunate for me that I wish you to see me at my best, and that I
know you see me at my worst.'
She moved slowly on when he paused, and he moved slowly on beside her.
'It seems egotistical to begin by saying so much about myself,' he resumed, 'but
whatever I say to you seems, even in my own ears, below what I want to say, and different
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from what I want to say. I can't help it. So it is. You are the ruin of me.'
She started at the passionate sound of the last words, and at the passionate action of his
hands, with which they were accompanied.
'Yes! you are the ruin – the ruin – the ruin – of me. I have no resources in myself, I have
no confidence in myself, I have no government of myself when you are near me or in my
thoughts. And you are always in my thoughts now. I have never been quit of you since I first
saw you. Oh, that was a wretched day for me! That was a wretched, miserable day!'
A touch of pity for him mingled with her dislike of him, and she said: 'Mr Headstone, I
am grieved to have done you any harm, but I have never meant it.'
'There!' he cried, despairingly. 'Now, I seem to have reproached you, instead of
revealing to you the state of my own mind! Bear with me. I am always wrong when you are
in question. It is my doom.'
Struggling with himself, and by times looking up at the deserted windows of the houses
as if there could be anything written in their grimy panes that would help him, he paced the
whole pavement at her side, before he spoke again.
'I must try to give expression to what is in my mind; it shall and must be spoken.
Though you see me so confounded – though you strike me so helpless – I ask you to believe
that there are many people who think well of me; that there are some people who highly
esteem me; that I have in my way won a Station which is considered worth winning.'
'Surely, Mr Headstone, I do believe it. Surely I have always known it from Charley.'
'I ask you to believe that if I were to offer my home such as it is, my station such as it is,
my affections such as they are, to any one of the best considered, and best qualified, and
most distinguished, among the young women engaged in my calling, they would probably
be accepted. Even readily accepted.'
'I do not doubt it,' said Lizzie, with her eyes upon the ground.
'I have sometimes had it in my thoughts to make that offer and to settle down as many
men of my class do: I on the one side of a school, my wife on the other, both of us interested
in the same work.'
'Why have you not done so?' asked Lizzie Hexam. 'Why do you not do so?'
'Far better that I never did! The only one grain of comfort I have had these many weeks,'
he said, always speaking passionately, and, when most emphatic, repeating that former
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action of his hands, which was like flinging his heart's blood down before her in drops upon
the pavement−stones; 'the only one grain of comfort I have had these many weeks is, that I
never did. For if I had, and if the same spell had come upon me for my ruin, I know I should
have broken that tie asunder as if it had been thread.'
She glanced at him with a glance of fear, and a shrinking gesture. He answered, as if she
had spoken.
'No! It would not have been voluntary on my part, any more than it is voluntary in me to
be here now. You draw me to you. If I were shut up in a strong prison, you would draw me
out. I should break through the wall to come to you. If I were lying on a sick bed, you would
draw me up – to stagger to your feet and fall there.'
The wild energy of the man, now quite let loose, was absolutely terrible. He stopped
and laid his hand upon a piece of the coping of the burial−ground enclosure, as if he would
have dislodged the stone.
'No man knows till the time comes, what depths are within him. To some men it never
comes; let them rest and be thankful! To me, you brought it; on me, you forced it; and the
bottom of this raging sea,' striking himself upon the breast, 'has been heaved up ever since.'
'Mr Headstone, I have heard enough. Let me stop you here. It will be better for you and
better for me. Let us find my brother.'
'Not yet. It shall and must be spoken. I have been in torments ever since I stopped short
of it before. You are alarmed. It is another of my miseries that I cannot speak to you or
speak of you without stumbling at every syllable, unless I let the check go altogether and run
mad. Here is a man lighting the lamps. He will be gone directly. I entreat of you let us walk
round this place again. You have no reason to look alarmed; I can restrain myself, and I
will.'
She yielded to the entreaty – how could she do otherwise! – and they paced the stones in
silence. One by one the lights leaped up making the cold grey church tower more remote,
and they were alone again. He said no more until they had regained the spot where he had
broken off; there, he again stood still, and again grasped the stone. In saying what he said
then, he never looked at her; but looked at it and wrenched at it.
'You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they
use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some
tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could
draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could
draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw
me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for
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nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable
answer to my offer of myself in marringe, you could draw me to any good – every good –
with equal force. My circumstances are quite easy, and you would want for nothing. My
reputation stands quite high, and would be a shield for yours. If you saw me at my work,
able to do it well and respected in it, you might even come to take a sort of pride in me; – I
would try hard that you should. Whatever considerations I may have thought of against this
offer, I have conquered, and I make it with all my heart. Your brother favours me to the
utmost, and it is likely that we might live and work together; anyhow, it is certain that he
would have my best influence and support. I don't know what I could say more if I tried. I
might only weaken what is ill enough said as it is. I only add that if it is any claim on you to
be in earnest, I am in thorough earnest, dreadful earnest.'
The powdered mortar from under the stone at which he wrenched, rattled on the
pavement to confirm his words.
'Mr Headstone – '
'Stop! I implore you, before you answer me, to walk round this place once more. It will
give you a minute's time to think, and me a minute's time to get some fortitude together.'
Again she yielded to the entreaty, and again they came back to the same place, and
again he worked at the stone.
'Is it,' he said, with his attention apparently engrossed by it, 'yes, or no?'
'Mr Headstone, I thank you sincerely, I thank you gratefully, and hope you may find a
worthy wife before long and be very happy. But it is no.'
'Is no short time necessary for reflection; no weeks or days?' he asked, in the same
half−suffocated way.
'None whatever.'
'Are you quite decided, and is there no chance of any change in my favour?'
'I am quite decided, Mr Headstone, and I am bound to answer I am certain there is
none.'
'Then,' said he, suddenly changing his tone and turning to her, and bringing his clenched
hand down upon the stone with a force that laid the knuckles raw and bleeding; 'then I hope
that I may never kill him!'
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The dark look of hatred and revenge with which the words broke from his livid lips, and
with which he stood holding out his smeared hand as if it held some weapon and had just
struck a mortal blow, made her so afraid of him that she turned to run away. But he caught
her by the arm.
'Mr Headstone, let me go. Mr Headstone, I must call for help!'
'It is I who should call for help,' he said; 'you don't know yet how much I need it.'
The working of his face as she shrank from it, glancing round for her brother and
uncertain what to do, might have extorted a cry from her in another instant; but all at once he
sternly stopped it and fixed it, as if Death itself had done so.
'There! You see I have recovered myself. Hear me out.'
With much of the dignity of courage, as she recalled her self− reliant life and her right
to be free from accountability to this man, she released her arm from his grasp and stood
looking full at him. She had never been so handsome, in his eyes. A shade came over them
while he looked back at her, as if she drew the very light out of them to herself.
'This time, at least, I will leave nothing unsaid,' he went on, folding his hands before
him, clearly to prevent his being betrayed into any impetuous gesture; 'this last time at least I
will not be tortured with after−thoughts of a lost opportunity. Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'
'Was it of him you spoke in your ungovernable rage and violence?' Lizzie Hexam
demanded with spirit.
He bit his lip, and looked at her, and said never a word.
'Was it Mr Wrayburn that you threatened?'
He bit his lip again, and looked at her, and said never a word.
'You asked me to hear you out, and you will not speak. Let me find my brother.'
'Stay! I threatened no one.'
Her look dropped for an instant to his bleeding hand. He lifted it to his mouth, wiped it
on his sleeve, and again folded it over the other. 'Mr Eugene Wrayburn,' he repeated.
'Why do you mention that name again and again, Mr Headstone?'
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'Because it is the text of the little I have left to say. Observe! There are no threats in it. If
I utter a threat, stop me, and fasten it upon me. Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'
A worse threat than was conveyed in his manner of uttering the name, could hardly
have escaped him.
'He haunts you. You accept favours from him. You are willing enough to listen to HIM.
I know it, as well as he does.'
'Mr Wrayburn has been considerate and good to me, sir,' said Lizzie, proudly, 'in
connexion with the death and with the memory of my poor father.'
'No doubt. He is of course a very considerate and a very good man, Mr Eugene
Wrayburn.'
'He is nothing to you, I think,' said Lizzie, with an indignation she could not repress.
'Oh yes, he is. There you mistake. He is much to me.'
'What can he be to you?'
'He can be a rival to me among other things,' said Bradley.
'Mr Headstone,' returned Lizzie, with a burning face, 'it is cowardly in you to speak to
me in this way. But it makes me able to tell you that I do not like you, and that I never have
liked you from the first, and that no other living creature has anything to do with the effect
you have produced upon me for yourself.'
His head bent for a moment, as if under a weight, and he then looked up again,
moistening his lips. 'I was going on with the little I had left to say. I knew all this about Mr
Eugene Wrayhurn, all the while you were drawing me to you. I strove against the
knowledge, but quite in vain. It made no difference in me. With Mr Eugene Wrayburn in my
mind, I went on. With Mr Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I spoke to you just now. With Mr
Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I have been set aside and I have been cast out.'
'If you give those names to my thanking you for your proposal and declining it, is it my
fault, Mr Headstone?' said Lizzie, compassionating the bitter struggle he could not conceal,
almost as much as she was repelled and alarmed by it.
'I am not complaining,' he returned, 'I am only stating the case. I had to wrestle with my
self−respect when I submitted to be drawn to you in spite of Mr Wrayburn. You may
imagine how low my self−respect lies now.'
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She was hurt and angry; but repressed herself in consideration of his suffering, and of
his being her brother's friend.
'And it lies under his feet,' said Bradley, unfolding his hands in spite of himself, and
fiercely motioning with them both towards the stones of the pavement. 'Remember that! It
lies under that fellow's feet, and he treads upon it and exults above it.'
'He does not!' said Lizzie.
'He does!' said Bradley. 'I have stood before him face to face, and he crushed me down
in the dirt of his contempt, and walked over me. Why? Because he knew with triumph what
was in store for me to−night.'
'O, Mr Headstone, you talk quite wildly.'
'Quite collectedly. I know what I say too well. Now I have said all. I have used no
threat, remember; I have done no more than show you how the case stands; – how the case
stands, so far.'
At this moment her brother sauntered into view close by. She darted to him, and caught
him by the hand. Bradley followed, and laid his heavy hand on the boy's opposite shoulder.
'Charley Hexam, I am going home. I must walk home by myself to−night, and get shut
up in my room without being spoken to. Give me half an hour's start, and let me be, till you
find me at my work in the morning. I shall be at my work in the morning just as usual.'
Clasping his hands, he uttered a short unearthly broken cry, and went his way. The
brother and sister were left looking at one another near a lamp in the solitary churchyard,
and the boy's face clouded and darkened, as he said in a rough tone: 'What is the meaning of
this? What have you done to my best friend? Out with the truth!'
'Charley!' said his sister. 'Speak a little more considerately!'
'I am not in the humour for consideration, or for nonsense of any sort,' replied the boy.
'What have you been doing? Why has Mr Headstone gone from us in that way?'
'He asked me – you know he asked me – to be his wife, Charley.'
'Well?' said the boy, impatiently.
'And I was obliged to tell him that I could not be his wife.'
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'You were obliged to tell him,' repeated the boy angrily, between his teeth, and rudely
pushing her away. 'You were obliged to tell him! Do you know that he is worth fifty of you?'
'It may easily be so, Charley, but I cannot marry him.'
'You mean that you are conscious that you can't appreciate him, and don't deserve him, I
suppose?'
'I mean that I do not like him, Charley, and that I will never marry him.'
'Upon my soul,' exclaimed the boy, 'you are a nice picture of a sister! Upon my soul,
you are a pretty piece of disinterestedness! And so all my endeavours to cancel the past and
to raise myself in the world, and to raise you with me, are to be beaten down by YOUR low
whims; are they?'
'I will not reproach you, Charley.'
'Hear her!' exclaimed the boy, looking round at the darkness. 'She won't reproach me!
She does her best to destroy my fortunes and her own, and she won't reproach me! Why,
you'll tell me, next, that you won't reproach Mr Headstone for coming out of the sphere to
which he is an ornament, and putting himself at YOUR feet, to be rejected by YOU!'
'No, Charley; I will only tell you, as I told himself, that I thank him for doing so, that I
am sorry he did so, and that I hope he will do much better, and be happy.'
Some touch of compunction smote the boy's hardening heart as he looked upon her, his
patient little nurse in infancy, his patient friend, adviser, and reclaimer in boyhood, the
self−forgetting sister who had done everything for him. His tone relented, and he drew her
arm through his.
'Now, come, Liz; don't let us quarrel: let us be reasonable and talk this over like brother
and sister. Will you listen to me?'
'Oh, Charley!' she replied through her starting tears; 'do I not listen to you, and hear
many hard things!'
'Then I am sorry. There, Liz! I am unfeignedly sorry. Only you do put me out so. Now
see. Mr Headstone is perfectly devoted to you. He has told me in the strongest manner that
he has never been his old self for one single minute since I first brought him to see you.
Miss Peecher, our schoolmistress – pretty and young, and all that – is known to be very
much attached to him, and he won't so much as look at her or hear of her. Now, his devotion
to you must be a disinterested one; mustn't it? If he married Miss Peecher, he would be a
great deal better off in all worldly respects, than in marrying you. Well then; he has nothing
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to get by it, has he?'
'Nothing, Heaven knows!'
'Very well then,' said the boy; 'that's something in his favour, and a great thing. Then I
come in. Mr Headstone has always got me on, and he has a good deal in his power, and of
course if he was my brother−in−law he wouldn't get me on less, but would get me on more.
Mr Headstone comes and confides in me, in a very delicate way, and says, «I hope my
marrying your sister would be agreeable to you, Hexam, and useful to you?» I say, «There's
nothing in the world, Mr Headstone, that I could he better pleased with.» Mr Headstone
says, «Then I may rely upon your intimate knowledge of me for your good word with your
sister, Hexam?» And I say, «Certainly, Mr Headstone, and naturally I have a good deal of
influence with her.» So I have; haven't I, Liz?'
'Yes, Charley.'
'Well said! Now, you see, we begin to get on, the moment we begin to be really talking
it over, like brother and sister. Very well. Then YOU come in. As Mr Headstone's wife you
would be occupying a most respectable station, and you would be holding a far better place
in society than you hold now, and you would at length get quit of the river−side and the old
disagreeables belonging to it, and you would be rid for good of dolls' dressmakers and their
drunken fathers, and the like of that. Not that I want to disparage Miss Jenny Wren: I dare
say she is all very well in her way; but her way is not your way as Mr Headstone's wife.
Now, you see, Liz, on all three accounts – on Mr Headstone's, on mine, on yours – nothing
could be better or more desirable.'
They were walking slowly as the boy spoke, and here he stood still, to see what effect
he had made. His sister's eyes were fixed upon him; but as they showed no yielding, and as
she remained silent, he walked her on again. There was some discomfiture in his tone as he
resumed, though he tried to conceal it.
'Having so much influence with you, Liz, as I have, perhaps I should have done better to
have had a little chat with you in the first instance, before Mr Headstone spoke for himself.
But really all this in his favour seemed so plain and undeniable, and I knew you to have
always been so reasonable and sensible, that I didn't consider it worth while. Very likely that
was a mistake of mine. However, it's soon set right. All that need be done to set it right, is
for you to tell me at once that I may go home and tell Mr Headstone that what has taken
place is not final, and that it will all come round by−and−by.'
He stopped again. The pale face looked anxiously and lovingly at him, but she shook
her head.
'Can't you speak?' said the boy sharply.
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'I am very unwilling to speak, Charley. If I must, I must. I cannot authorize you to say
any such thing to Mr Headstone: I cannot allow you to say any such thing to Mr Headstone.
Nothing remains to be said to him from me, after what I have said for good and all,
to−night.'
'And this girl,' cried the boy, contemptuously throwing her off again, 'calls herself a
sister!'
'Charley, dear, that is the second time that you have almost struck me. Don't be hurt by
my words. I don't mean – Heaven forbid! – that you intended it; but you hardly know with
what a sudden swing you removed yourself from me.'
'However!' said the boy, taking no heed of the remonstrance, and pursuing his own
mortified disappointment, 'I know what this means, and you shall not disgrace me.'
'It means what I have told you, Charley, and nothing more.'
'That's not true,' said the boy in a violent tone, 'and you know it's not. It means your
precious Mr Wrayburn; that's what it means.'
'Charley! If you remember any old days of ours together, forbear!'
'But you shall not disgrace me,' doggedly pursued the boy. 'I am determined that after I
have climbed up out of the mire, you shall not pull me down. You can't disgrace me if I have
nothing to do with you, and I will have nothing to do with you for the future.'
'Charley! On many a night like this, and many a worse night, I have sat on the stones of
the street, hushing you in my arms. Unsay those words without even saying you are sorry for
them, and my arms are open to you still, and so is my heart.'
'I'll not unsay them. I'll say them again. You are an inveterately bad girl, and a false
sister, and I have done with you. For ever, I have done with you!'
He threw up his ungrateful and ungracious hand as if it set up a barrier between them,
and flung himself upon his heel and left her. She remained impassive on the same spot,
silent and motionless, until the striking of the church clock roused her, and she turned away.
But then, with the breaking up of her immobility came the breaking up of the waters that the
cold heart of the selfish boy had frozen. And 'O that I were lying here with the dead!' and 'O
Charley, Charley, that this should be the end of our pictures in the fire!' were all the words
she said, as she laid her face in her hands on the stone coping.
A figure passed by, and passed on, but stopped and looked round at her. It was the
figure of an old man with a bowed head, wearing a large brimmed low−crowned hat, and a
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long−skirted coat. After hesitating a little, the figure turned back, and, advancing with an air
of gentleness and compassion, said:
'Pardon me, young woman, for speaking to you, but you are under some distress of
mind. I cannot pass upon my way and leave you weeping here alone, as if there was nothing
in the place. Can I help you? Can I do anything to give you comfort?'
She raised her head at the sound of these kind words, and answered gladly, 'O, Mr Riah,
is it you?'
'My daughter,' said the old man, 'I stand amazed! I spoke as to a stranger. Take my arm,
take my arm. What grieves you? Who has done this? Poor girl, poor girl!'
'My brother has quarrelled with me,' sobbed Lizzie, 'and renounced me.'
'He is a thankless dog,' said the Jew, angrily. 'Let him go.' Shake the dust from thy feet
and let him go. Come, daughter! Come home with me – it is but across the road – and take a
little time to recover your peace and to make your eyes seemly, and then I will bear you
company through the streets. For it is past your usual time, and will soon be late, and the
way is long, and there is much company out of doors to−night.'
She accepted the support he offered her, and they slowly passed out of the churchyard.
They were in the act of emerging into the main thoroughfare, when another figure loitering
discontentedly by, and looking up the street and down it, and all about, started and
exclaimed, 'Lizzie! why, where have you been? Why, what's the matter?'
As Eugene Wrayburn thus addressed her, she drew closer to the Jew, and bent her head.
The Jew having taken in the whole of Eugene at one sharp glance, cast his eyes upon the
ground, and stood mute.
'Lizzie, what is the matter?'
'Mr Wrayburn, I cannot tell you now. I cannot tell you to−night, if I ever can tell you.
Pray leave me.'
'But, Lizzie, I came expressly to join you. I came to walk home with you, having dined
at a coffee−house in this neighbourhood and knowing your hour. And I have been lingering
about,' added Eugene, 'like a bailiff; or,' with a look at Riah, 'an old clothesman.'
The Jew lifted up his eyes, and took in Eugene once more, at another glance.
'Mr Wrayburn, pray, pray, leave me with this protector. And one thing more. Pray, pray
be careful of yourself.'
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'Mysteries of Udolpho!' said Eugene, with a look of wonder. 'May I be excused for
asking, in the elderly gentleman's presence, who is this kind protector?'
'A trustworthy friend,' said Lizzie.
'I will relieve him of his trust,' returned Eugene. 'But you must tell me, Lizzie, what is
the matter?'
'Her brother is the matter,' said the old man, lifting up his eyes again.
'Our brother the matter?' returned Eugene, with airy contempt. 'Our brother is not worth
a thought, far less a tear. What has our brother done?'
The old man lifted up his eyes again, with one grave look at Wrayburn, and one grave
glance at Lizzie, as she stood looking down. Both were so full of meaning that even Eugene
was checked in his light career, and subsided into a thoughtful 'Humph!'
With an air of perfect patience the old man, remaining mute and keeping his eyes cast
down, stood, retaining Lizzie's arm, as though in his habit of passive endurance, it would be
all one to him if he had stood there motionless all night.
'If Mr Aaron,' said Eugene, who soon found this fatiguing, 'will be good enough to
relinquish his charge to me, he will be quite free for any engagement he may have at the
Synagogue. Mr Aaron, will you have the kindness?'
But the old man stood stock still.
'Good evening, Mr Aaron,' said Eugene, politely; 'we need not detain you.' Then turning
to Lizzie, 'Is our friend Mr Aaron a little deaf?'
'My hearing is very good, Christian gentleman,' replied the old man, calmly; 'but I will
hear only one voice to−night, desiring me to leave this damsel before I have conveyed her to
her home. If she requests it, I will do it. I will do it for no one else.'
'May I ask why so, Mr Aaron?' said Eugene, quite undisturbed in his ease.
'Excuse me. If she asks me, I will tell her,' replied the old man. 'I will tell no one else.'
'I do not ask you,' said Lizzie, 'and I beg you to take me home. Mr Wrayburn, I have had
a bitter trial to−night, and I hope you will not think me ungrateful, or mysterious, or
changeable. I am neither; I am wretched. Pray remember what I said to you. Pray, pray, take
care.'
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'My dear Lizzie,' he returned, in a low voice, bending over her on the other side; 'of
what? Of whom?'
'Of any one you have lately seen and made angry.'
He snapped his fingers and laughed. 'Come,' said he, 'since no better may be, Mr Aaron
and I will divide this trust, and see you home together. Mr Aaron on that side; I on this. If
perfectly agreeable to Mr Aaron, the escort will now proceed.'
He knew his power over her. He knew that she would not insist upon his leaving her. He
knew that, her fears for him being aroused, she would be uneasy if he were out of her sight.
For all his seeming levity and carelessness, he knew whatever he chose to know of the
thoughts of her heart.
And going on at her side, so gaily, regardless of all that had been urged against him; so
superior in his sallies and self−possession to the gloomy constraint of her suitor and the
selfish petulance of her brother; so faithful to her, as it seemed, when her own stock was
faithless; what an immense advantage, what an overpowering influence, were his that night!
Add to the rest, poor girl, that she had heard him vilified for her sake, and that she had
suffered for his, and where the wonder that his occasional tones of serious interest (setting
off his carelessness, as if it were assumed to calm her), that his lightest touch, his lightest
look, his very presence beside her in the dark common street, were like glimpses of an
enchanted world, which it was natural for jealousy and malice and all meanness to be unable
to bear the brightness of, and to gird at as bad spirits might.
Nothing more being said of repairing to Riah's, they went direct to Lizzie's lodging. A
little short of the house−door she parted from them, and went in alone.
'Mr Aaron,' said Eugene, when they were left together in the street, 'with many thanks
for your company, it remains for me unwillingly to say Farewell.'
'Sir,' returned the other, 'I give you good night, and I wish that you were not so
thoughtless.'
'Mr Aaron,' returned Eugene, 'I give you good night, and I wish (for you are a little dull)
that you were not so thoughtful.'
But now, that his part was played out for the evening, and when in turning his back
upon the Jew he came off the stage, he was thoughtful himself. 'How did Lightwood's
catechism run?' he murmured, as he stopped to light his cigar. 'What is to come of it? What
are you doing? Where are you going? We shall soon know now. Ah!' with a heavy sigh.
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The heavy sigh was repeated as if by an echo, an hour afterwards, when Riah, who had
been sitting on some dark steps in a corner over against the house, arose and went his patient
way; stealing through the streets in his ancient dress, like the ghost of a departed Time.
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Chapter 16 − AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION
T
he estimable Twemlow, dressing himself in his lodgings over the stable−yard in Duke
Street, Saint James's, and hearing the horses at their toilette below, finds himself on the
whole in a disadvantageous position as compared with the noble animals at livery. For
whereas, on the one hand, he has no attendant to slap him soundingly and require him in
gruff accents to come up and come over, still, on the other hand, he has no attendant at all;
and the mild gentleman's finger−joints and other joints working rustily in the morning, he
could deem it agreeable even to be tied up by the countenance at his chamber−door, so he
were there skilfully rubbed down and slushed and sluiced and polished and clothed, while
himself taking merely a passive part in these trying transactions.
How the fascinating Tippins gets on when arraying herself for the bewilderment of the
senses of men, is known only to the Graces and her maid; but perhaps even that engaging
creature, though not reduced to the self−dependence of Twemlow could dispense with a
good deal of the trouble attendant on the daily restoration of her charms, seeing that as to her
face and neck this adorable divinity is, as it were, a diurnal species of lobster – throwing off
a shell every forenoon, and needing to keep in a retired spot until the new crust hardens.
Howbeit, Twemlow doth at length invest himself with collar and cravat and wristbands
to his knuckles, and goeth forth to breakfast. And to breakfast with whom but his near
neighbours, the Lammles of Sackville Street, who have imparted to him that he will meet his
distant kinsman, Mr Fledgely. The awful Snigsworth might taboo and prohibit Fledgely, but
the peaceable Twemlow reasons, If he IS my kinsman I didn't make him so, and to meet a
man is not to know him.'
It is the first anniversary of the happy marriage of Mr and Mrs Lammle, and the
celebration is a breakfast, because a dinner on the desired scale of sumptuosity cannot be
achieved within less limits than those of the non−existent palatial residence of which so
many people are madly envious. So, Twemlow trips with not a little stiffness across
Piccadilly, sensible of having once been more upright in figure and less in danger of being
knocked down by swift vehicles. To be sure that was in the days when he hoped for leave
from the dread Snigsworth to do something, or be something, in life, and before that
magnificent Tartar issued the ukase, 'As he will never distinguish himself, he must be a poor
gentleman−pensioner of mine, and let him hereby consider himself pensioned.'
Ah! my Twemlow! Say, little feeble grey personage, what thoughts are in thy breast
to−day, of the Fancy – so still to call her who bruised thy heart when it was green and thy
head brown – and whether it be better or worse, more painful or less, to believe in the Fancy
to this hour, than to know her for a greedy armour− plated crocodile, with no more capacity
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of imagining the delicate and sensitive and tender spot behind thy waistcoat, than of going
straight at it with a knitting−needle. Say likewise, my Twemlow, whether it be the happier
lot to be a poor relation of the great, or to stand in the wintry slush giving the hack horses to
drink out of the shallow tub at the coach−stand, into which thou has so nearly set thy
uncertain foot. Twemlow says nothing, and goes on.
As he approaches the Lammles' door, drives up a little one−horse carriage, containing
Tippins the divine. Tippins, letting down the window, playfully extols the vigilance of her
cavalier in being in waiting there to hand her out. Twemlow hands her out with as much
polite gravity as if she were anything real, and they proceed upstairs. Tippins all abroad
about the legs, and seeking to express that those unsteady articles are only skipping in their
native buoyancy.
And dear Mrs Lammle and dear Mr Lammle, how do you do, and when are you going
down to what's−its−name place – Guy, Earl of Warwick, you know – what is it? – Dun Cow
– to claim the flitch of bacon? And Mortimer, whose name is for ever blotted out from my
list of lovers, by reason first of fickleness and then of base desertion, how do YOU do,
wretch? And Mr Wrayburn, YOU here! What can YOU come for, because we are all very
sure before−hand that you are not going to talk! And Veneering, M.P., how are things going
on down at the house, and when will you turn out those terrible people for us? And Mrs
Veneering, my dear, can it positively be true that you go down to that stifling place night
after night, to hear those men prose? Talking of which, Veneering, why don't you prose, for
you haven't opened your lips there yet, and we are dying to hear what you have got to say to
us! Miss Podsnap, charmed to see you. Pa, here? No! Ma, neither? Oh! Mr Boots!
Delighted. Mr Brewer! This IS a gathering of the clans. Thus Tippins, and surveys Fledgeby
and outsiders through golden glass, murmuring as she turns about and about, in her innocent
giddy way, Anybody else I know? No, I think not. Nobody there. Nobody THERE. Nobody
anywhere!
Mr Lammle, all a−glitter, produces his friend Fledgeby, as dying for the honour of
presentation to Lady Tippins. Fledgeby presented, has the air of going to say something, has
the air of going to say nothing, has an air successively of meditation, of resignation, and of
desolation, backs on Brewer, makes the tour of Boots, and fades into the extreme
background, feeling for his whisker, as if it might have turned up since he was there five
minutes ago.
But Lammle has him out again before he has so much as completely ascertained the
bareness of the land. He would seem to be in a bad way, Fledgeby; for Lammle represents
him as dying again. He is dying now, of want of presentation to Twemlow.
Twemlow offers his hand. Glad to see him. 'Your mother, sir, was a connexion of mine.'
'I believe so,' says Fledgeby, 'but my mother and her family were two.'
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Chapter 16 − AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION 398
'Are you staying in town?' asks Twemlow.
'I always am,' says Fledgeby.
'You like town,' says Twemlow. But is felled flat by Fledgeby's taking it quite ill, and
replying, No, he don't like town. Lammle tries to break the force of the fall, by remarking
that some people do not like town. Fledgeby retorting that he never heard of any such case
but his own, Twemlow goes down again heavily.
'There is nothing new this morning, I suppose?' says Twemlow, returning to the mark
with great spirit.
Fledgeby has not heard of anything.
'No, there's not a word of news,' says Lammle.
'Not a particle,' adds Boots.
'Not an atom,' chimes in Brewer.
Somehow the execution of this little concerted piece appears to raise the general spirits
as with a sense of duty done, and sets the company a going. Everybody seems more equal
than before, to the calamity of being in the society of everybody else. Even Eugene standing
in a window, moodily swinging the tassel of a blind, gives it a smarter jerk now, as if he
found himself in better case.
Breakfast announced. Everything on table showy and gaudy, but with a self−assertingly
temporary and nomadic air on the decorations, as boasting that they will be much more
showy and gaudy in the palatial residence. Mr Lammle's own particular servant behind his
chair; the Analytical behind Veneering's chair; instances in point that such servants fall into
two classes: one mistrusting the master's acquaintances, and the other mistrusting the master.
Mr Lammle's servant, of the second class. Appearing to be lost in wonder and low spirits
because the police are so long in coming to take his master up on some charge of the first
magnitude.
Veneering, M.P., on the right of Mrs Lammle; Twemlow on her left; Mrs Veneering,
W.M.P. (wife of Member of Parliament), and Lady Tippins on Mr Lammle's right and left.
But be sure that well within the fascination of Mr Lammle's eye and smile sits little
Georgiana. And be sure that close to little Georgiana, also under inspection by the same
gingerous gentleman, sits Fledgeby.
Oftener than twice or thrice while breakfast is in progress, Mr Twemlow gives a little
sudden turn towards Mrs Lammle, and then says to her, 'I beg your pardon!' This not being
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Twemlow's usual way, why is it his way to−day? Why, the truth is, Twemlow repeatedly
labours under the impression that Mrs Lammle is going to speak to him, and turning finds
that it is not so, and mostly that she has her eyes upon Veneering. Strange that this
impression so abides by Twemlow after being corrected, yet so it is.
Lady Tippins partaking plentifully of the fruits of the earth (including grape−juice in the
category) becomes livelier, and applies herself to elicit sparks from Mortimer Lightwood. It
is always understood among the initiated, that that faithless lover must be planted at table
opposite to Lady Tippins, who will then strike conversational fire out of him. In a pause of
mastication and deglutition, Lady Tippins, contemplating Mortimer, recalls that it was at our
dear Veneerings, and in the presence of a party who are surely all here, that he told them his
story of the man from somewhere, which afterwards became so horribly interesting and
vulgarly popular.
'Yes, Lady Tippins,' assents Mortimer; 'as they say on the stage, «Even so!»
'Then we expect you,' retorts the charmer, 'to sustain your reputation, and tell us
something else.'
'Lady Tippins, I exhausted myself for life that day, and there is nothing more to be got
out of me.'
Mortimer parries thus, with a sense upon him that elsewhere it is Eugene and not he
who is the jester, and that in these circles where Eugene persists in being speechless, he,
Mortimer, is but the double of the friend on whom he has founded himself.
'But,' quoth the fascinating Tippins, 'I am resolved on getting something more out of
you. Traitor! what is this I hear about another disappearance?'
'As it is you who have heard it,' returns Lightwood, 'perhaps you'll tell us.'
'Monster, away!' retorts Lady Tippins. 'Your own Golden Dustman referred me to you.'
Mr Lammle, striking in here, proclaims aloud that there is a sequel to the story of the
man from somewhere. Silence ensues upon the proclamation.
'I assure you,' says Lightwood, glancing round the table, 'I have nothing to tell.' But
Eugene adding in a low voice, 'There, tell it, tell it!' he corrects himself with the addition,
'Nothing worth mentioning.'
Boots and Brewer immediately perceive that it is immensely worth mentioning, and
become politely clamorous. Veneering is also visited by a perception to the same effect. But
it is understood that his attention is now rather used up, and difficult to hold, that being the
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tone of the House of Commons.
'Pray don't be at the trouble of composing yourselves to listen,' says Mortimer
Lightwood, 'because I shall have finished long before you have fallen into comfortable
attitudes. It's like – '
'It's like,' impatiently interrupts Eugene, 'the children's narrative:
«I'll tell you a story Of Jack a Manory, And now my story's begun; I'll tell you another
Of Jack and his brother, And now my story is done.»
– Get on, and get it over!'
Eugene says this with a sound of vexation in his voice, leaning back in his chair and
looking balefully at Lady Tippins, who nods to him as her dear Bear, and playfully
insinuates that she (a self− evident proposition) is Beauty, and he Beast.
'The reference,' proceeds Mortimer, 'which I suppose to be made by my honourable and
fair enslaver opposite, is to the following circumstance. Very lately, the young woman,
Lizzie Hexam, daughter of the late Jesse Hexam, otherwise Gaffer, who will be remembered
to have found the body of the man from somewhere, mysteriously received, she knew not
from whom, an explicit retraction of the charges made against her father, by another
water−side character of the name of Riderhood. Nobody believed them, because little Rogue
Riderhood – I am tempted into the paraphrase by remembering the charming wolf who
would have rendered society a great service if he had devoured Mr Riderhood's father and
mother in their infancy – had previously played fast and loose with the said charges, and, in
fact, abandoned them. However, the retraction I have mentioned found its way into Lizzie
Hexam's hands, with a general flavour on it of having been favoured by some anonymous
messenger in a dark cloak and slouched hat, and was by her forwarded, in her father's
vindication, to Mr Boffin, my client. You will excuse the phraseology of the shop, but as I
never had another client, and in all likelihood never shall have, I am rather proud of him as a
natural curiosity probably unique.'
Although as easy as usual on the surface, Lightwood is not quite as easy as usual below
it. With an air of not minding Eugene at all, he feels that the subject is not altogether a safe
one in that connexion.
'The natural curiosity which forms the sole ornament of my professional museum,' he
resumes, 'hereupon desires his Secretary – an individual of the hermit−crab or oyster
species, and whose name, I think, is Chokesmith – but it doesn't in the least matter – say
Artichoke – to put himself in communication with Lizzie Hexam. Artichoke professes his
readiness so to do, endeavours to do so, but fails.'
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'Why fails?' asks Boots.
'How fails?' asks Brewer.
'Pardon me,' returns Lightwood,' I must postpone the reply for one moment, or we shall
have an anti−climax. Artichoke failing signally, my client refers the task to me: his purpose
being to advance the interests of the object of his search. I proceed to put myself in
communication with her; I even happen to possess some special means,' with a glance at
Eugene, 'of putting myself in communication with her; but I fail too, because she has
vanished.'
'Vanished!' is the general echo.
'Disappeared,' says Mortimer. 'Nobody knows how, nobody knows when, nobody
knows where. And so ends the story to which my honourable and fair enslaver opposite
referred.'
Tippins, with a bewitching little scream, opines that we shall every one of us be
murdered in our beds. Eugene eyes her as if some of us would be enough for him. Mrs
Veneering, W.M.P., remarks that these social mysteries make one afraid of leaving Baby.
Veneering, M.P., wishes to be informed (with something of a second−hand air of seeing the
Right Honourable Gentleman at the head of the Home Department in his place) whether it is
intended to be conveyed that the vanished person has been spirited away or otherwise
harmed? Instead of Lightwood's answering, Eugene answers, and answers hastily and
vexedly: 'No, no, no; he doesn't mean that; he means voluntarily vanished – but utterly –
completely.'
However, the great subject of the happiness of Mr and Mrs Lammle must not be
allowed to vanish with the other vanishments – with the vanishing of the murderer, the
vanishing of Julius Handford, the vanishing of Lizzie Hexam, – and therefore Veneering
must recall the present sheep to the pen from which they have strayed. Who so fit to
discourse of the happiness of Mr and Mrs Lammle, they being the dearest and oldest friends
he has in the world; or what audience so fit for him to take into his confidence as that
audience, a noun of multitude or signifying many, who are all the oldest and dearest friends
he has in the world? So Veneering, without the formality of rising, launches into a familiar
oration, gradually toning into the Parliamentary sing−song, in which he sees at that board his
dear friend Twemlow who on that day twelvemonth bestowed on his dear friend Lammle the
fair hand of his dear friend Sophronia, and in which he also sees at that board his dear
friends Boots and Brewer whose rallying round him at a period when his dear friend Lady
Tippins likewise rallied round him – ay, and in the foremost rank – he can never forget
while memory holds her seat. But he is free to confess that he misses from that board his
dear old friend Podsnap, though he is well represented by his dear young friend Georgiana.
And he further sees at that board (this he announces with pomp, as if exulting in the powers
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of an extraordinary telescope) his friend Mr Fledgeby, if he will permit him to call him so.
For all of these reasons, and many more which he right well knows will have occurred to
persons of your exceptional acuteness, he is here to submit to you that the time has arrived
when, with our hearts in our glasses, with tears in our eyes, with blessings on our lips, and in
a general way with a profusion of gammon and spinach in our emotional larders, we should
one and all drink to our dear friends the Lammles, wishing them many years as happy as the
last, and many many friends as congenially united as themselves. And this he will add; that
Anastatia Veneering (who is instantly heard to weep) is formed on the same model as her
old and chosen friend Sophronia Lammle, in respect that she is devoted to the man who
wooed and won her, and nobly discharges the duties of a wife.
Seeing no better way out of it, Veneering here pulls up his oratorical Pegasus extremely
short, and plumps down, clean over his head, with: 'Lammle, God bless you!'
Then Lammle. Too much of him every way; pervadingly too much nose of a coarse
wrong shape, and his nose in his mind and his manners; too much smile to be real; too much
frown to be false; too many large teeth to be visible at once without suggesting a bite. He
thanks you, dear friends, for your kindly greeting, and hopes to receive you – it may be on
the next of these delightfiil occasions – in a residence better suited to your claims on the
rites of hospitality. He will never forget that at Veneering's he first saw Sophronia.
Sophronia will never forget that at Veneering's she first saw him. 'They spoke of it soon
after they were married, and agreed that they would never forget it. In fact, to Veneering
they owe their union. They hope to show their sense of this some day ('No, no, from
Veneering) – oh yes, yes, and let him rely upon it, they will if they can! His marriage with
Sophronia was not a marriage of interest on either side: she had her little fortune, he had his
little fortune: they joined their little fortunes: it was a marriage of pure inclination and
suitability. Thank you! Sophronia and he are fond of the society of young people; but he is
not sure that their house would be a good house for young people proposing to remain
single, since the contemplation of its domestic bliss might induce them to change their
minds. He will not apply this to any one present; certainly not to their darling little
Georgiana. Again thank you! Neither, by−the−by, will he apply it to his friend Fledgeby. He
thanks Veneering for the feeling manner in which he referred to their common friend
Fledgeby, for he holds that gentleman in the highest estimation. Thank you. In fact
(returning unexpectedly to Fledgeby), the better you know him, the more you find in him
that you desire to know. Again thank you! In his dear Sophronia's name and in his own,
thank you!
Mrs Lammle has sat quite still, with her eyes cast down upon the table−cloth. As Mr
Lammle's address ends, Twemlow once more turns to her involuntarily, not cured yet of that
often recurring impression that she is going to speak to him. This time she really is going to
speak to him. Veneering is talking with his other next neighbour, and she speaks in a low
voice.
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Chapter 16 − AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION 403
'Mr Twemlow.'
He answers, 'I beg your pardon? Yes?' Still a little doubtful, because of her not looking
at him.
'You have the soul of a gentleman, and I know I may trust you. Will you give me the
opportunity of saying a few words to you when you come up stairs?'
'Assuredly. I shall be honoured.'
'Don't seem to do so, if you please, and don't think it inconsistent if my manner should
be more careless than my words. I may be watched.'
Intensely astonished, Twemlow puts his hand to his forehead, and sinks back in his
chair meditating. Mrs Lammle rises. All rise. The ladies go up stairs. The gentlemen soon
saunter after them. Fledgeby has devoted the interval to taking an observation of Boots's
whiskers, Brewer's whiskers, and Lammle's whiskers, and considering which pattern of
whisker he would prefer to produce out of himself by friction, if the Genie of the cheek
would only answer to his rubbing.
In the drawing−room, groups form as usual. Lightwood, Boots, and Brewer, flutter like
moths around that yellow wax candle – guttering down, and with some hint of a
winding−sheet in it – Lady Tippins. Outsiders cultivate Veneering, M P., and Mrs
Veneering, W.M.P. Lammle stands with folded arms, Mephistophelean in a corner, with
Georgiana and Fledgeby. Mrs Lammle, on a sofa by a table, invites Mr Twemlow's attention
to a book of portraits in her hand.
Mr Twemlow takes his station on a settee before her, and Mrs Lammle shows him a
portrait.
'You have reason to be surprised,' she says softly, 'but I wish you wouldn't look so.'
Disturbed Twemlow, making an effort not to look so, looks much more so.
'I think, Mr Twemlow, you never saw that distant connexion of yours before to−day?'
'No, never.'
'Now that you do see him, you see what he is. You are not proud of him?'
'To say the truth, Mrs Lammle, no.'
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'If you knew more of him, you would be less inclined to acknowledge him. Here is
another portrait. What do you think of it?'
Twemlow has just presence of mind enough to say aloud: 'Very like! Uncommonly
like!'
'You have noticed, perhaps, whom he favours with his attentions? You notice where he
is now, and how engaged?'
'Yes. But Mr Lammle – '
She darts a look at him which he cannot comprehend, and shows him another portrait.
'Very good; is it not?'
'Charming!' says Twemlow.
'So like as to be almost a caricature? – Mr Twemlow, it is impossible to tell you what
the struggle in my mind has been, before I could bring myself to speak to you as I do now. It
is only in the conviction that I may trust you never to betray me, that I can proceed.
Sincerely promise me that you never will betray my confidence – that you will respect it,
even though you may no longer respect me, – and I shall be as satisfied as if you had sworn
it.'
'Madam, on the honour of a poor gentleman – '
'Thank you. I can desire no more. Mr Twemlow, I implore you to save that child!'
'That child?'
'Georgiana. She will be sacrificed. She will be inveigled and married to that connexion
of yours. It is a partnership affair, a money−speculation. She has no strength of will or
character to help herself and she is on the brink of being sold into wretchedness for life.'
'Amazing! But what can I do to prevent it?' demands Twemlow, shocked and
bewildered to the last degree.
'Here is another portrait. And not good, is it?'
Aghast at the light manner of her throwing her head back to look at it critically,
Twemlow still dimly perceives the expediency of throwing his own head back, and does so.
Though he no more sees the portrait than if it were in China.
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Chapter 16 − AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION 405
'Decidedly not good,' says Mrs Lammle. 'Stiff and exaggerated!'
'And ex – ' But Twemlow, in his demolished state, cannot command the word, and trails
off into ' – actly so.'
'Mr Twemlow, your word will have weight with her pompous, self−blinded father. You
know how much he makes of your family. Lose no time. Warn him.'
'But warn him against whom?'
'Against me.'
By great good fortune Twemlow receives a stimulant at this critical instant. The
stimulant is Lammle's voice.
'Sophronia, my dear, what portraits are you showing Twemlow?'
'Public characters, Alfred.'
'Show him the last of me.'
'Yes, Alfred.'
She puts the book down, takes another book up, turns the leaves, and presents the
portrait to Twemlow.
'That is the last of Mr Lammle. Do you think it good? – Warn her father against me. I
deserve it, for I have been in the scheme from the first. It is my husband's scheme, your
connexion's, and mine. I tell you this, only to show you the necessity of the poor little
foolish affectionate creature's being befriended and rescued. You will not repeat this to her
father. You will spare me so far, and spare my husband. For, though this celebration of
to−day is all a mockery, he is my husband, and we must live. – Do you think it like?'
Twemlow, in a stunned condition, feigns to compare the portrait in his hand with the
original looking towards him from his Mephistophelean corner.
'Very well indeed!' are at length the words which Twemlow with great difficulty
extracts from himself.
'I am glad you think so. On the whole, I myself consider it the best. The others are so
dark. Now here, for instance, is another of Mr Lammle – '
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Chapter 16 − AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION 406
'But I don't understand; I don't see my way,' Twemlow stammers, as he falters over the
book with his glass at his eye. 'How warn her father, and not tell him? Tell him how much?
Tell him how little? I – I – am getting lost.'
'Tell him I am a match−maker; tell him I am an artful and designing woman; tell him
you are sure his daughter is best out of my house and my company. Tell him any such things
of me; they will all be true. You know what a puffed−up man he is, and how easily you can
cause his vanity to take the alarm. Tell him as much as will give him the alarm and make
him careful of her, and spare me the rest. Mr Twemlow, I feel my sudden degradation in
your eyes; familiar as I am with my degradation in my own eyes, I keenly feel the change
that must have come upon me in yours, in these last few moments. But I trust to your good
faith with me as implicitly as when I began. If you knew how often I have tried to speak to
you to−day, you would almost pity me. I want no new promise from you on my own
account, for I am satisfied, and I always shall be satisfied, with the promise you have given
me. I can venture to say no more, for I see that I am watched. If you would set my mind at
rest with the assurance that you will interpose with the father and save this harmless girl,
close that book before you return it to me, and I shall know what you mean, and deeply
thank you in my heart. – Alfred, Mr Twemlow thinks the last one the best, and quite agrees
with you and me.'
Alfred advances. The groups break up. Lady Tippins rises to go, and Mrs Veneering
follows her leader. For the moment, Mrs Lammle does not turn to them, but remains looking
at Twemlow looking at Alfred's portrait through his eyeglass. The moment past, Twemlow
drops his eyeglass at its ribbon's length, rises, and closes the book with an emphasis which
makes that fragile nursling of the fairies, Tippins, start.
Then good−bye and good−bye, and charming occasion worthy of the Golden Age, and
more about the flitch of bacon, and the like of that; and Twemlow goes staggering across
Piccadilly with his hand to his forehead, and is nearly run down by a flushed lettercart, and
at last drops safe in his easy−chair, innocent good gentleman, with his hand to his forehead
still, and his head in a whirl.
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Chapter 16 − AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION 407
Chapter 1 − LODGERS IN QUEER STREET
I
t was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with
smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London
was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being
wholly neither. Gaslights flared in the shops with a haggard and unblest air, as knowing
themselves to be night− creatures that had no business abroad under the sun; while the sun
itself when it was for a few moments dimly indicated through circling eddies of fog, showed
as if it had gone out and were collapsing flat and cold. Even in the surrounding country it
was a foggy day, but there the fog was grey, whereas in London it was, at about the
boundary line, dark yellow, and a little within it brown, and then browner, and then browner,
until at the heart of the City – which call Saint Mary Axe – it was rusty−black. From any
point of the high ridge of land northward, it might have been discerned that the loftiest
buildings made an occasional struggle to get their heads above the foggy sea, and especially
that the great dome of Saint Paul's seemed to die hard; but this was not perceivable in the
streets at their feet, where the whole metropolis was a heap of vapour charged with muffled
sound of wheels, and enfolding a gigantic catarrh.
At nine o'clock on such a morning, the place of business of Pubsey and Co. was not the
liveliest object even in Saint Mary Axe – which is not a very lively spot – with a sobbing
gaslight in the counting− house window, and a burglarious stream of fog creeping in to
strangle it through the keyhole of the main door. But the light went out, and the main door
opened, and Riah came forth with a bag under his arm.
Almost in the act of coming out at the door, Riah went into the fog, and was lost to the
eyes of Saint Mary Axe. But the eyes of this history can follow him westward, by Cornhill,
Cheapside, Fleet Street, and the Strand, to Piccadilly and the Albany. Thither he went at his
grave and measured pace, staff in hand, skirt at heel; and more than one head, turning to
look back at his venerable figure already lost in the mist, supposed it to be some ordinary
figure indistinctly seen, which fancy and the fog had worked into that passing likeness.
Arrived at the house in which his master's chambers were on the second floor, Riah
proceeded up the stairs, and paused at Fascination Fledgeby's door. Making free with neither
bell nor knocker, he struck upon the door with the top of his staff, and, having listened, sat
down on the threshold. It was characteristic of his habitual submission, that he sat down on
the raw dark staircase, as many of his ancestors had probably sat down in dungeons, taking
what befell him as it might befall.
After a time, when he had grown so cold as to be fain to blow upon his fingers, he arose
and knocked with his staff again, and listened again, and again sat down to wait. Thrice he
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Chapter 1 − LODGERS IN QUEER STREET 409
repeated these actions before his listening ears were greeted by the voice of Fledgeby,
calling from his bed, 'Hold your row! – I'll come and open the door directly!' But, in lieu of
coming directly, he fell into a sweet sleep for some quarter of an hour more, during which
added interval Riah sat upon the stairs and waited with perfect patience.
At length the door stood open, and Mr Fledgeby's retreating drapery plunged into bed
again. Following it at a respectful distance, Riah passed into the bed−chamber, where a fire
had been sometime lighted, and was burning briskly.
'Why, what time of night do you mean to call it?' inquired Fledgeby, turning away
beneath the clothes, and presenting a comfortable rampart of shoulder to the chilled figure of
the old man.
'Sir, it is full half−past ten in the morning.'
'The deuce it is! Then it must be precious foggy?'
'Very foggy, sir.'
'And raw, then?'
'Chill and bitter,' said Riah, drawing out a handkerchief, and wiping the moisture from
his beard and long grey hair as he stood on the verge of the rug, with his eyes on the
acceptable fire.
With a plunge of enjoyment, Fledgeby settled himself afresh.
'Any snow, or sleet, or slush, or anything of that sort?' he asked.
'No, sir, no. Not quite so bad as that. The streets are pretty clean.'
'You needn't brag about it,' returned Fledgeby, disappointed in his desire to heighten the
contrast between his bed and the streets. 'But you're always bragging about something. Got
the books there?'
'They are here, sir.'
'All right. I'll turn the general subject over in my mind for a minute or two, and while
I'm about it you can empty your bag and get ready for me.'
With another comfortable plunge, Mr Fledgeby fell asleep again. The old man, having
obeyed his directions, sat down on the edge of a chair, and, folding his hands before him,
gradually yielded to the influence of the warmth, and dozed. He was roused by Mr
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Fledgeby's appearing erect at the foot of the bed, in Turkish slippers, rose−coloured Turkish
trousers (got cheap from somebody who had cheated some other somebody out of them),
and a gown and cap to correspond. In that costume he would have left nothing to be desired,
if he had been further fitted out with a bottomless chair, a lantern, and a bunch of matches.
'Now, old 'un!' cried Fascination, in his light raillery, 'what dodgery are you up to next,
sitting there with your eyes shut? You ain't asleep. Catch a weasel at it, and catch a Jew!'
'Truly, sir, I fear I nodded,' said the old man.
'Not you!' returned Fledgeby, with a cunning look. 'A telling move with a good many, I
dare say, but it won't put ME off my guard. Not a bad notion though, if you want to look
indifferent in driving a bargain. Oh, you are a dodger!'
The old man shook his head, gently repudiating the imputation, and suppresed a sigh,
and moved to the table at which Mr Fledgeby was now pouring out for himself a cup of
steaming and fragrant coffee from a pot that had stood ready on the hob. It was an edifying
spectacle, the young man in his easy chair taking his coffee, and the old man with his grey
head bent, standing awaiting his pleasure.
'Now!' said Fledgeby. 'Fork out your balance in hand, and prove by figures how you
make it out that it ain't more. First of all, light that candle.'
Riah obeyed, and then taking a bag from his breast, and referring to the sum in the
accounts for which they made him responsible, told it out upon the table. Fledgeby told it
again with great care, and rang every sovereign.
'I suppose,' he said, taking one up to eye it closely, 'you haven't been lightening any of
these; but it's a trade of your people's, you know. YOU understand what sweating a pound
means, don't you?'
'Much as you do, sir,' returned the old man, with his hands under opposite cuffs of his
loose sleeves, as he stood at the table, deferentially observant of the master's face. 'May I
take the liberty to say something?'
'You may,' Fledgeby graciously conceded.
'Do you not, sir – without intending it – of a surety without intending it – sometimes
mingle the character I fairly earn in your employment, with the character which it is your
policy that I should bear?'
'I don't find it worth my while to cut things so fine as to go into the inquiry,' Fascination
coolly answered.
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'Not in justice?'
'Bother justice!' said Fledgeby.
'Not in generosity?'
'Jews and generosity!' said Fledgeby. 'That's a good connexion! Bring out your
vouchers, and don't talk Jerusalem palaver.'
The vouchers were produced, and for the next half−hour Mr Fledgeby concentrated his
sublime attention on them. They and the accounts were all found correct, and the books and
the papers resumed their places in the bag.
'Next,' said Fledgeby, 'concerning that bill−broking branch of the business; the branch I
like best. What queer bills are to be bought, and at what prices? You have got your list of
what's in the market?'
'Sir, a long list,' replied Riah, taking out a pocket−book, and selecting from its contents
a folded paper, which, being unfolded, became a sheet of foolscap covered with close
writing.
'Whew!' whistled Fledgeby, as he took it in his hand. 'Queer Street is full of lodgers just
at present! These are to be disposed of in parcels; are they?'
'In parcels as set forth,' returned the old man, looking over his master's shoulder; 'or the
lump.'
'Half the lump will be waste−paper, one knows beforehand,' said Fledgeby. 'Can you get
it at waste−paper price? That's the question.'
Riah shook his head, and Fledgeby cast his small eyes down the list. They presently
began to twinkle, and he no sooner became conscious of their twinkling, than he looked up
over his shoulder at the grave face above him, and moved to the chimney−piece. Making a
desk of it, he stood there with his back to the old man, warming his knees, perusing the list
at his leisure, and often returning to some lines of it, as though they were particularly
interesting. At those times he glanced in the chimney−glass to see what note the old man
took of him. He took none that could be detected, but, aware of his employer's suspicions,
stood with his eyes on the ground.
Mr Fledgeby was thus amiably engaged when a step was heard at the outer door, and
the door was heard to open hastily. 'Hark! That's your doing, you Pump of Israel,' said
Fledgeby; 'you can't have shut it.' Then the step was heard within, and the voice of Mr
Alfred Lammle called aloud, 'Are you anywhere here, Fledgeby?' To which Fledgeby, after
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cautioning Riah in a low voice to take his cue as it should be given him, replied, 'Here I am!'
and opened his bedroom door.
'Come in!' said Fledgeby. 'This gentleman is only Pubsey and Co. of Saint Mary Axe,
that I am trying to make terms for an unfortunate friend with in a matter of some
dishonoured bills. But really Pubsey and Co. are so strict with their debtors, and so hard to
move, that I seem to be wasting my time. Can't I make ANY terms with you on my friend's
part, Mr Riah?'
'I am but the representative of another, sir,' returned the Jew in a low voice. 'I do as I am
bidden by my principal. It is not my capital that is invested in the business. It is not my
profit that arises therefrom.'
'Ha ha!' laughed Fledgeby. 'Lammle?'
'Ha ha!' laughed Lammle. 'Yes. Of course. We know.'
'Devilish good, ain't it, Lammle?' said Fledgeby, unspeakably amused by his hidden
joke.
'Always the same, always the same!' said Lammle. 'Mr – '
'Riah, Pubsey and Co. Saint Mary Axe,' Fledgeby put in, as he wiped away the tears that
trickled from his eyes, so rare was his enjoyment of his secret joke.
'Mr Riah is bound to observe the invaRiahle forms for such cases made and provided,'
said Lammle.
'He is only the representative of another!' cried Fledgeby. 'Does as he is told by his
principal! Not his capital that's invested in the business. Oh, that's good! Ha ha ha ha!' Mr
Lammle joined in the laugh and looked knowing; and the more he did both, the more
exquisite the secret joke became for Mr Fledgeby.
'However,' said that fascinating gentleman, wiping his eyes again, 'if we go on in this
way, we shall seem to be almost making game of Mr Riah, or of Pubsey and Co. Saint Mary
Axe, or of somebody: which is far from our intention. Mr Riah, if you would have the
kindness to step into the next room for a few moments while I speak with Mr Lammle here,
I should like to try to make terms with you once again before you go.'
The old man, who had never raised his eyes during the whole transaction of Mr
Fledgeby's joke, silently bowed and passed out by the door which Fledgeby opened for him.
Having closed it on him, Fledgeby returned to Lammle, standing with his back to the
bedroom fire, with one hand under his coat−skirts, and all his whiskers in the other.
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'Halloa!' said Fledgeby. 'There's something wrong!'
'How do you know it?' demanded Lammle.
'Because you show it,' replied Fledgeby in unintentional rhyme.
'Well then; there is,' said Lammle; 'there IS something wrong; the whole thing's wrong.'
'I say!' remonstrated Fascination very slowly, and sitting down with his hands on his
knees to stare at his glowering friend with his back to the fire.
'I tell you, Fledgeby,' repeated Lammle, with a sweep of his right arm, 'the whole thing's
wrong. The game's up.'
'What game's up?' demanded Fledgeby, as slowly as before, and more sternly.
'THE game. OUR game. Read that.'
Fledgeby took a note from his extended hand and read it aloud. 'Alfred Lammle,
Esquire. Sir: Allow Mrs Podsnap and myself to express our united sense of the polite
attentions of Mrs Alfred Lammle and yourself towards our daughter, Georgiana. Allow us
also, wholly to reject them for the future, and to communicate our final desire that the two
families may become entire strangers. I have the honour to be, Sir, your most obedient and
very humble servant, JOHN PODSNAP.' Fledgeby looked at the three blank sides of this
note, quite as long and earnestly as at the first expressive side, and then looked at Lammle,
who responded with another extensive sweep of his right arm.
'Whose doing is this?' said Fledgeby.
'Impossible to imagine,' said Lammle.
'Perhaps,' suggested Fledgeby, after reflecting with a very discontented brow,
'somebody has been giving you a bad character.'
'Or you,' said Lammle, with a deeper frown.
Mr Fledgeby appeared to be on the verge of some mutinous expressions, when his hand
happened to touch his nose. A certain remembrance connected with that feature operating as
a timely warning, he took it thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger, and pondered;
Lammle meanwhile eyeing him with furtive eyes.
'Well!' said Fledgeby. 'This won't improve with talking about. If we ever find out who
did it, we'll mark that person. There's nothing more to be said, except that you undertook to
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do what circumstances prevent your doing.'
'And that you undertook to do what you might have done by this time, if you had made
a prompter use of circumstances,' snarled Lammle.
'Hah! That,' remarked Fledgeby, with his hands in the Turkish trousers, 'is matter of
opinion.'
'Mr Fledgeby,' said Lammle, in a bullying tone, 'am I to understand that you in any way
reflect upon me, or hint dissatisfaction with me, in this affair?'
'No,' said Fledgeby; 'provided you have brought my promissory note in your pocket, and
now hand it over.'
Lammle produced it, not without reluctance. Fledgeby looked at it, identified it, twisted
it up, and threw it into the fire. They both looked at it as it blazed, went out, and flew in
feathery ash up the chimney.
'NOW, Mr Fledgeby,' said Lammle, as before; 'am I to understand that you in any way
reflect upon me, or hint dissatisfaction with me, in this affair?'
'No,' said Fledgeby.
'Finally and unreservedly no?'
'Yes.'
'Fledgeby, my hand.'
Mr Fledgeby took it, saying, 'And if we ever find out who did this, we'll mark that
person. And in the most friendly manner, let me mention one thing more. I don't know what
your circumstances are, and I don't ask. You have sustained a loss here. Many men are liable
to be involved at times, and you may be, or you may not be. But whatever you do, Lammle,
don't – don't – don't, I beg of you – ever fall into the hands of Pubsey and Co. in the next
room, for they are grinders. Regular flayers and grinders, my dear Lammle,' repeated
Fledgeby with a peculiar relish, 'and they'll skin you by the inch, from the nape of your neck
to the sole of your foot, and grind every inch of your skin to tooth−powder. You have seen
what Mr Riah is. Never fall into his hands, Lammle, I beg of you as a friend!'
Mr Lammle, disclosing some alarm at the solemnity of this affectionate adjuration,
demanded why the devil he ever should fall into the hands of Pubsey and Co.?
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'To confess the fact, I was made a little uneasy,' said the candid Fledgeby, 'by the
manner in which that Jew looked at you when he heard your name. I didn't like his eye. But
it may have been the heated fancy of a friend. Of course if you are sure that you have no
personal security out, which you may not be quite equal to meeting, and which can have got
into his hands, it must have been fancy. Still, I didn't like his eye.'
The brooding Lammle, with certain white dints coming and going in his palpitating
nose, looked as if some tormenting imp were pinching it. Fledgeby, watching him with a
twitch in his mean face which did duty there for a smile, looked very like the tormentor who
was pinching.
'But I mustn't keep him waiting too long,' said Fledgeby, 'or he'll revenge it on my
unfortunate friend. How's your very clever and agreeable wife? She knows we have broken
down?'
'I showed her the letter.'
'Very much surprised?' asked Fledgeby.
'I think she would have been more so,' answered Lammle, 'if there had been more go in
YOU?'
'Oh! – She lays it upon me, then?'
'Mr Fledgeby, I will not have my words misconstrued.'
'Don't break out, Lammle,' urged Fledgeby, in a submissive tone, 'because there's no
occasion. I only asked a question. Then she don't lay it upon me? To ask another question.'
'No, sir.'
'Very good,' said Fledgeby, plainly seeing that she did. 'My compliments to her.
Good−bye!'
They shook hands, and Lammle strode out pondering. Fledgeby saw him into the fog,
and, returning to the fire and musing with his face to it, stretched the legs of the
rose−coloured Turkish trousers wide apart, and meditatively bent his knees, as if he were
going down upon them.
'You have a pair of whiskers, Lammle, which I never liked,' murmured Fledgeby, 'and
which money can't produce; you are boastful of your manners and your conversation; you
wanted to pull my nose, and you have let me in for a failure, and your wife says I am the
cause of it. I'll bowl you down. I will, though I have no whiskers,' here he rubbed the places
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where they were due, 'and no manners, and no conversation!'
Having thus relieved his noble mind, he collected the legs of the Turkish trousers,
straightened himself on his knees, and called out to Riah in the next room, 'Halloa, you sir!'
At sight of the old man re−entering with a gentleness monstrously in contrast with the
character he had given him, Mr Fledgeby was so tickled again, that he exclaimed, laughing,
'Good! Good! Upon my soul it is uncommon good!'
'Now, old 'un,' proceeded Fledgeby, when he had had his laugh out, 'you'll buy up these
lots that I mark with my pencil – there's a tick there, and a tick there, and a tick there – and I
wager two−pence you'll afterwards go on squeezing those Christians like the Jew you are.
Now, next you'll want a cheque – or you'll say you want it, though you've capital enough
somewhere, if one only knew where, but you'd be peppered and salted and grilled on a
gridiron before you'd own to it – and that cheque I'll write.'
When he had unlocked a drawer and taken a key from it to open another drawer, in
which was another key that opened another drawer, in which was another key that opened
another drawer, in which was the cheque book; and when he had written the cheque; and
when, reversing the key and drawer process, he had placed his cheque book in safety again;
he beckoned the old man, with the folded cheque, to come and take it.
'Old 'un,' said Fledgeby, when the Jew had put it in his pocketbook, and was putting that
in the breast of his outer garment; 'so much at present for my affairs. Now a word about
affairs that are not exactly mine. Where is she?'
With his hand not yet withdrawn from the breast of his garment, Riah started and
paused.
'Oho!' said Fledgeby. 'Didn't expect it! Where have you hidden her?'
Showing that he was taken by surprise, the old man looked at his master with some
passing confusion, which the master highly enjoyed.
'Is she in the house I pay rent and taxes for in Saint Mary Axe?' demanded Fledgeby.
'No, sir.'
'Is she in your garden up atop of that house – gone up to be dead, or whatever the game
is?' asked Fledgeby.
'No, sir.'
'Where is she then?'
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Riah bent his eyes upon the ground, as if considering whether he could answer the
question without breach of faith, and then silently raised them to Fledgeby's face, as if he
could not.
'Come!' said Fledgeby. 'I won't press that just now. But I want to know this, and I will
know this, mind you. What are you up to?'
The old man, with an apologetic action of his head and hands, as not comprehending the
master's meaning, addressed to him a look of mute inquiry.
'You can't be a gallivanting dodger,' said Fledgeby. 'For you're a «regular pity the
sorrows», you know – if you DO know any Christian rhyme – «whose trembling limbs have
borne him to» – et cetrer. You're one of the Patriarchs; you're a shaky old card; and you can't
be in love with this Lizzie?'
'O, sir!' expostulated Riah. 'O, sir, sir, sir!'
'Then why,' retorted Fledgeby, with some slight tinge of a blush, 'don't you out with
your reason for having your spoon in the soup at all?'
'Sir, I will tell you the truth. But (your pardon for the stipulation) it is in sacred
confidence; it is strictly upon honour.'
'Honour too!' cried Fledgeby, with a mocking lip. 'Honour among Jews. Well. Cut
away.'
'It is upon honour, sir?' the other still stipulated, with respectful firmness.
'Oh, certainly. Honour bright,' said Fledgeby.
The old man, never bidden to sit down, stood with an earnest hand laid on the back of
the young man's easy chair. The young man sat looking at the fire with a face of listening
curiosity, ready to check him off and catch him tripping.
'Cut away,' said Fledgeby. 'Start with your motive.'
'Sir, I have no motive but to help the helpless.'
Mr Fledgeby could only express the feelings to which this incredible statement gave
rise in his breast, by a prodigiously long derisive sniff.
'How I came to know, and much to esteem and to respect, this damsel, I mentioned
when you saw her in my poor garden on the house−top,' said the Jew.
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'Did you?' said Fledgeby, distrustfully. 'Well. Perhaps you did, though.'
'The better I knew her, the more interest I felt in her fortunes. They gathered to a crisis.
I found her beset by a selfish and ungrateful brother, beset by an unacceptable wooer, beset
by the snares of a more powerful lover, beset by the wiles of her own heart.'
'She took to one of the chaps then?'
'Sir, it was only natural that she should incline towards him, for he had many and great
advantages. But he was not of her station, and to marry her was not in his mind. Perils were
closing round her, and the circle was fast darkening, when I – being as you have said, sir,
too old and broken to be suspected of any feeling for her but a father's – stepped in, and
counselled flight. I said, «My daughter, there are times of moral danger when the hardest
virtuous resolution to form is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is flight.» She
answered, she had had this in her thoughts; but whither to fly without help she knew not, and
there were none to help her. I showed her there was one to help her, and it was I. And she is
gone.'
'What did you do with her?' asked Fledgeby, feeling his cheek.
'I placed her,' said the old man, 'at a distance;' with a grave smooth outward sweep from
one another of his two open hands at arm's length; 'at a distance – among certain of our
people, where her industry would serve her, and where she could hope to exercise it,
unassailed from any quarter.'
Fledgeby's eyes had come from the fire to notice the action of his hands when he said 'at
a distance.' Fledgeby now tried (very unsuccessfully) to imitate that action, as he shook his
head and said, 'Placed her in that direction, did you? Oh you circular old dodger!'
With one hand across his breast and the other on the easy chair, Riah, without justifying
himself, waited for further questioning. But, that it was hopeless to question him on that one
reserved point, Fledgeby, with his small eyes too near together, saw full well.
'Lizzie,' said Fledgeby, looking at the fire again, and then looking up. 'Humph, Lizzie.
You didn't tell me the other name in your garden atop of the house. I'll be more
communicative with you. The other name's Hexam.'
Riah bent his head in assent.
'Look here, you sir,' said Fledgeby. 'I have a notion I know something of the inveigling
chap, the powerful one. Has he anything to do with the law?'
'Nominally, I believe it his calling.'
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'I thought so. Name anything like Lightwood?'
'Sir, not at all like.'
'Come, old 'un,' said Fledgeby, meeting his eyes with a wink, 'say the name.'
'Wrayburn.'
'By Jupiter!' cried Fledgeby. 'That one, is it? I thought it might be the other, but I never
dreamt of that one! I shouldn't object to your baulking either of the pair, dodger, for they are
both conceited enough; but that one is as cool a customer as ever I met with. Got a beard
besides, and presumes upon it. Well done, old 'un! Go on and prosper!'
Brightened by this unexpected commendation, Riah asked were there more instructions
for him?
'No,' said Fledgeby, 'you may toddle now, Judah, and grope about on the orders you
have got.' Dismissed with those pleasing words, the old man took his broad hat and staff,
and left the great presence: more as if he were some superior creature benignantly blessing
Mr Fledgeby, than the poor dependent on whom he set his foot. Left alone, Mr Fledgeby
locked his outer door, and came back to his fire.
'Well done you!' said Fascination to himself. 'Slow, you may be; sure, you are!' This he
twice or thrice repeated with much complacency, as he again dispersed the legs of the
Turkish trousers and bent the knees.
'A tidy shot that, I flatter myself,' he then soliloquised. 'And a Jew brought down with it!
Now, when I heard the story told at Lammle's, I didn't make a jump at Riah. Not a hit of it; I
got at him by degrees.' Herein he was quite accurate; it being his habit, not to jump, or leap,
or make an upward spring, at anything in life, but to crawl at everything.
'I got at him,' pursued Fledgeby, feeling for his whisker, 'by degrees. If your Lammles
or your Lightwoods had got at him anyhow, they would have asked him the question
whether he hadn't something to do with that gal's disappearance. I knew a better way of
going to work. Having got behind the hedge, and put him in the light, I took a shot at him
and brought him down plump. Oh! It don't count for much, being a Jew, in a match against
ME!'
Another dry twist in place of a smile, made his face crooked here.
'As to Christians,' proceeded Fledgeby, 'look out, fellow− Christians, particularly you
that lodge in Queer Street! I have got the run of Queer Street now, and you shall see some
games there. To work a lot of power over you and you not know it, knowing as you think
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yourselves, would be almost worth laying out money upon. But when it comes to squeezing
a profit out of you into the bargain, it's something like!'
With this apostrophe Mr Fledgeby appropriately proceeded to divest himself of his
Turkish garments, and invest himself with Christian attire. Pending which operation, and his
morning ablutions, and his anointing of himself with the last infallible preparation for the
production of luxuriant and glossy hair upon the human countenance (quacks being the only
sages he believed in besides usurers), the murky fog closed about him and shut him up in its
sooty embrace. If it had never let him out any more, the world would have had no
irreparable loss, but could have easily replaced him from its stock on hand.
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Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT
I
n the evening of this same foggy day when the yellow window− blind of Pubsey and
Co. was drawn down upon the day's work, Riah the Jew once more came forth into Saint
Mary Axe. But this time he carried no bag, and was not bound on his master's affairs. He
passed over London Bridge, and returned to the Middlesex shore by that of Westminster,
and so, ever wading through the fog, waded to the doorstep of the dolls' dressmaker.
Miss Wren expected him. He could see her through the window by the light of her low
fire – carefully banked up with damp cinders that it might last the longer and waste the less
when she was out – sitting waiting for him in her bonnet. His tap at the glass roused her
from the musing solitude in which she sat, and she came to the door to open it; aiding her
steps with a little crutch−stick.
'Good evening, godmother!' said Miss Jenny Wren.
The old man laughed, and gave her his arm to lean on.
'Won't you come in and warm yourself, godmother?' asked Miss Jenny Wren.
'Not if you are ready, Cinderella, my dear.'
'Well!' exclaimed Miss Wren, delighted. 'Now you ARE a clever old boy! If we gave
prizes at this establishment (but we only keep blanks), you should have the first silver
medal, for taking me up so quick.' As she spake thus, Miss Wren removed the key of the
house−door from the keyhole and put it in her pocket, and then bustlingly closed the door,
and tried it as they both stood on the step. Satisfied that her dwelling was safe, she drew one
hand through the old man's arm and prepared to ply her crutch−stick with the other. But the
key was an instrument of such gigantic proportions, that before they started Riah proposed
to carry it.
'No, no, no! I'll carry it myself,' returned Miss Wren. 'I'm awfully lopsided, you know,
and stowed down in my pocket it'll trim the ship. To let you into a secret, godmother, I wear
my pocket on my high side, o' purpose.'
With that they began their plodding through the fog.
'Yes, it was truly sharp of you, godmother,' resumed Miss Wren with great approbation,
'to understand me. But, you see, you ARE so like the fairy godmother in the bright little
books! You look so unlike the rest of people, and so much as if you had changed yourself
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into that shape, just this moment, with some benevolent object. Boh!' cried Miss Jenny,
putting her face close to the old man's. 'I can see your features, godmother, behind the
beard.'
'Does the fancy go to my changing other objects too, Jenny?'
'Ah! That it does! If you'd only borrow my stick and tap this piece of pavement – this
dirty stone that my foot taps – it would start up a coach and six. I say! Let's believe so!'
'With all my heart,' replied the good old man.
'And I'll tell you what I must ask you to do, godmother. I must ask you to be so kind as
give my child a tap, and change him altogether. O my child has been such a bad, bad child
of late! It worries me nearly out of my wits. Not done a stroke of work these ten days. Has
had the horrors, too, and fancied that four copper− coloured men in red wanted to throw him
into a fiery furnace.'
'But that's dangerous, Jenny.'
'Dangerous, godmother? My child is always dangerous, more or less. He might' – here
the little creature glanced back over her shoulder at the sky – 'be setting the house on fire at
this present moment. I don't know who would have a child, for my part! It's no use shaking
him. I have shaken him till I have made myself giddy. «Why don't you mind your
Commandments and honour your parent, you naughty old boy?» I said to him all the time.
But he only whimpered and stared at me.'
'What shall be changed, after him?' asked Riah in a compassionately playful voice.
'Upon my word, godmother, I am afraid I must be selfish next, and get you to set me
right in the back and the legs. It's a little thing to you with your power, godmother, but it's a
great deal to poor weak aching me.'
There was no querulous complaining in the words, but they were not the less touching
for that.
'And then?'
'Yes, and then – YOU know, godmother. We'll both jump up into the coach and six and
go to Lizzie. This reminds me, godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as
wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this: Is it better to
have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?'
'Explain, god−daughter.'
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Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT 423
'I feel so much more solitary and helpless without Lizzie now, than I used to feel before
I knew her.' (Tears were in her eyes as she said so.)
'Some beloved companionship fades out of most lives, my dear,' said the Jew, – 'that of
a wife, and a fair daughter, and a son of promise, has faded out of my own life – but the
happiness was.'
'Ah!' said Miss Wren thoughtfully, by no means convinced, and chopping the
exclamation with that sharp little hatchet of hers; 'then I tell you what change I think you had
better begin with, godmother. You had better change Is into Was and Was into Is, and keep
them so.'
'Would that suit your case? Would you not be always in pain then?' asked the old man
tenderly.
'Right!' exclaimed Miss Wren with another chop. 'You have changed me wiser,
godmother. – Not,' she added with the quaint hitch of her chin and eyes, 'that you need be a
very wonderful godmother to do that deed.'
Thus conversing, and having crossed Westminster Bridge, they traversed the ground
that Riah had lately traversed, and new ground likewise; for, when they had recrossed the
Thames by way of London Bridge, they struck down by the river and held their still foggier
course that way.
But previously, as they were going along, Jenny twisted her venerable friend aside to a
brilliantly−lighted toy−shop window, and said: 'Now look at 'em! All my work!'
This referred to a dazzling semicircle of dolls in all the colours of the rainbow, who
were dressed for presentation at court, for going to balls, for going out driving, for going out
on horseback, for going out walking, for going to get married, for going to help other dolls
to get married, for all the gay events of life.'
'Pretty, pretty, pretty!' said the old man with a clap of his hands. 'Most elegant taste!'
'Glad you like 'em,' returned Miss Wren, loftily. 'But the fun is, godmother, how I make
the great ladies try my dresses on. Though it's the hardest part of my business, and would be,
even if my back were not bad and my legs queer.'
He looked at her as not understanding what she said.
'Bless you, godmother,' said Miss Wren, 'I have to scud about town at all hours. If it was
only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing, it would be comparatively easy work; but
it's the trying−on by the great ladies that takes it out of me.'
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Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT 424
'How, the trying−on?' asked Riah.
'What a mooney godmother you are, after all!' returned Miss Wren. 'Look here. There's
a Drawing Room, or a grand day in the Park, or a Show, or a Fete, or what you like. Very
well. I squeeze among the crowd, and I look about me. When I see a great lady very suitable
for my business, I say «You'll do, my dear!' and I take particular notice of her, and run home
and cut her out and baste her. Then another day, I come scudding back again to try on, and
then I take particular notice of her again. Sometimes she plainly seems to say, 'How that
little creature is staring!' and sometimes likes it and sometimes don't, but much more often
yes than no. All the time I am only saying to myself, »I must hollow out a bit here; I must
slope away there;« and I am making a perfect slave of her, with making her try on my doll's
dress. Evening parties are severer work for me, because there's only a doorway for a full
view, and what with hobbling among the wheels of the carriages and the legs of the horses, I
fully expect to be run over some night. However, there I have 'em, just the same. When they
go bobbing into the hall from the carriage, and catch a glimpse of my little physiognomy
poked out from behind a policeman's cape in the rain, I dare say they think I am wondering
and admiring with all my eyes and heart, but they little think they're only working for my
dolls! There was Lady Belinda Whitrose. I made her do double duty in one night. I said
when she came out of the carriage, »YOU'll do, my dear!« and I ran straight home and cut
her out and basted her. Back I came again, and waited behind the men that called the
carriages. Very bad night too. At last, »Lady Belinda Whitrose's carriage! Lady Belinda
Whitrose coming down!" And I made her try on – oh! and take pains about it too – before
she got seated. That's Lady Belinda hanging up by the waist, much too near the gaslight for a
wax one, with her toes turned in.'
When they had plodded on for some time nigh the river, Riah asked the way to a certain
tavern called the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. Following the directions he received, they
arrived, after two or three puzzled stoppages for consideration, and some uncertain looking
about them, at the door of Miss Abbey Potterson's dominions. A peep through the glass
portion of the door revealed to them the glories of the bar, and Miss Abbey herself seated in
state on her snug throne, reading the newspaper. To whom, with deference, they presented
themselves.
Taking her eyes off her newspaper, and pausing with a suspended expression of
countenance, as if she must finish the paragraph in hand before undertaking any other
business whatever, Miss Abbey demanded, with some slight asperity: 'Now then, what's for
you?'
'Could we see Miss Potterson?' asked the old man, uncovering his head.
'You not only could, but you can and you do,' replied the hostess.
'Might we speak with you, madam?'
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Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT 425
By this time Miss Abbey's eyes had possessed themselves of the small figure of Miss
Jenny Wren. For the closer observation of which, Miss Abbey laid aside her newspaper,
rose, and looked over the half−door of the bar. The crutch−stick seemed to entreat for its
owner leave to come in and rest by the fire; so, Miss Abbey opened the half−door, and said,
as though replying to the crutch− stick:
'Yes, come in and rest by the fire.'
'My name is Riah,' said the old man, with courteous action, 'and my avocation is in
London city. This, my young companion – '
'Stop a bit,' interposed Miss Wren. 'I'll give the lady my card.' She produced it from her
pocket with an air, after struggling with the gigantic door−key which had got upon the top of
it and kept it down. Miss Abbey, with manifest tokens of astonishment, took the diminutive
document, and found it to run concisely thus: –
MISS JENNY WREN
DOLLS' DRESSMAKER.
Dolls attended at their own residences.
'Lud!' exclaimed Miss Potterson, staring. And dropped the card.
'We take the liberty of coming, my young companion and I, madam,' said Riah, 'on
behalf of Lizzie Hexam.'
Miss Potterson was stooping to loosen the bonnet−strings of the dolls' dressmaker. She
looked round rather angrily, and said: 'Lizzie Hexam is a very proud young woman.'
'She would be so proud,' returned Riah, dexterously, 'to stand well in your good opinion,
that before she quitted London for – '
'For where, in the name of the Cape of Good Hope?' asked Miss Potterson, as though
supposing her to have emigrated.
'For the country,' was the cautious answer, – 'she made us promise to come and show
you a paper, which she left in our hands for that special purpose. I am an unserviceable
friend of hers, who began to know her after her departure from this neighbourhood. She has
been for some time living with my young companion, and has been a helpful and a
comfortable friend to her. Much needed, madam,' he added, in a lower voice. 'Believe me; if
you knew all, much needed.'
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Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT 426
'I can believe that,' said Miss Abbey, with a softening glance at the little creature.
'And if it's proud to have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a
touch that never hurts,' Miss Jenny struck in, flushed, 'she is proud. And if it's not, she is
NOT.'
Her set purpose of contradicting Miss Abbey point blank, was so far from offending that
dread authority, as to elicit a gracious smile. 'You do right, child,' said Miss Abbey, 'to speak
well of those who deserve well of you.'
'Right or wrong,' muttered Miss Wren, inaudibly, with a visible hitch of her chin, 'I
mean to do it, and you may make up your mind to THAT, old lady.'
'Here is the paper, madam,' said the Jew, delivering into Miss Potterson's hands the
original document drawn up by Rokesmith, and signed by Riderhood. 'Will you please to
read it?'
'But first of all,' said Miss Abbey, ' – did you ever taste shrub, child?'
Miss Wren shook her head.
'Should you like to?'
'Should if it's good,' returned Miss Wren.
'You shall try. And, if you find it good, I'll mix some for you with hot water. Put your
poor little feet on the fender. It's a cold, cold night, and the fog clings so.' As Miss Abbey
helped her to turn her chair, her loosened bonnet dropped on the floor. 'Why, what lovely
hair!' cried Miss Abbey. 'And enough to make wigs for all the dolls in the world. What a
quantity!'
'Call THAT a quantity?' returned Miss Wren. 'Poof! What do you say to the rest of it?'
As she spoke, she untied a band, and the golden stream fell over herself and over the chair,
and flowed down to the ground. Miss Abbey's admiration seemed to increase her perplexity.
She beckoned the Jew towards her, as she reached down the shrub−bottle from its niche, and
whispered:
'Child, or woman?'
'Child in years,' was the answer; 'woman in self−reliance and trial.'
'You are talking about Me, good people,' thought Miss Jenny, sitting in her golden
bower, warming her feet. 'I can't hear what you say, but I know your tricks and your
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT 427
manners!'
The shrub, when tasted from a spoon, perfectly harmonizing with Miss Jenny's palate, a
judicious amount was mixed by Miss Potterson's skilful hands, whereof Riah too partook.
After this preliminary, Miss Abbey read the document; and, as often as she raised her
eyebrows in so doing, the watchful Miss Jenny accompanied the action with an expressive
and emphatic sip of the shrub and water.
'As far as this goes,' said Miss Abbey Potterson, when she had read it several times, and
thought about it, 'it proves (what didn't much need proving) that Rogue Riderhood is a
villain. I have my doubts whether he is not the villain who solely did the deed; but I have no
expectation of those doubts ever being cleared up now. I believe I did Lizzie's father wrong,
but never Lizzie's self; because when things were at the worst I trusted her, had perfect
confidence in her, and tried to persuade her to come to me for a refuge. I am very sorry to
have done a man wrong, particularly when it can't be undone. Be kind enough to let Lizzie
know what I say; not forgetting that if she will come to the Porters, after all, bygones being
bygones, she will find a home at the Porters, and a friend at the Porters. She knows Miss
Abbey of old, remind her, and she knows what−like the home, and what−like the friend, is
likely to turn out. I am generally short and sweet – or short and sour, according as it may be
and as opinions vary – ' remarked Miss Abbey, 'and that's about all I have got to say, and
enough too.'
But before the shrub and water was sipped out, Miss Abbey bethought herself that she
would like to keep a copy of the paper by her. 'It's not long, sir,' said she to Riah, 'and
perhaps you wouldn't mind just jotting it down.' The old man willingly put on his spectacles,
and, standing at the little desk in the corner where Miss Abbey filed her receipts and kept
her sample phials (customers' scores were interdicted by the strict administration of the
Porters), wrote out the copy in a fair round character. As he stood there, doing his
methodical penmanship, his ancient scribelike figure intent upon the work, and the little
dolls' dressmaker sitting in her golden bower before the fire, Miss Abbey had her doubts
whether she had not dreamed those two rare figures into the bar of the Six Jolly Fellowships,
and might not wake with a nod next moment and find them gone.
Miss Abbey had twice made the experiment of shutting her eyes and opening them
again, still finding the figures there, when, dreamlike, a confused hubbub arose in the public
room. As she started up, and they all three looked at one another, it became a noise of
clamouring voices and of the stir of feet; then all the windows were heard to be hastily
thrown up, and shouts and cries came floating into the house from the river. A moment
more, and Bob Gliddery came clattering along the passage, with the noise of all the nails in
his boots condensed into every separate nail.
'What is it?' asked Miss Abbey.
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Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT 428
'It's summut run down in the fog, ma'am,' answered Bob. 'There's ever so many people
in the river.'
'Tell 'em to put on all the kettles!' cried Miss Abbey. 'See that the boiler's full. Get a
bath out. Hang some blankets to the fire. Heat some stone bottles. Have your senses about
you, you girls down stairs, and use 'em.'
While Miss Abbey partly delivered these directions to Bob – whom she seized by the
hair, and whose head she knocked against the wall, as a general injunction to vigilance and
presence of mind – and partly hailed the kitchen with them – the company in the public
room, jostling one another, rushed out to the causeway, and the outer noise increased.
'Come and look,' said Miss Abbey to her visitors. They all three hurried to the vacated
public room, and passed by one of the windows into the wooden verandah overhanging the
river.
'Does anybody down there know what has happened?' demanded Miss Abbey, in her
voice of authority.
'It's a steamer, Miss Abbey,' cried one blurred figure in the fog.
'It always IS a steamer, Miss Abbey,' cried another.
'Them's her lights, Miss Abbey, wot you see a−blinking yonder,' cried another.
'She's a−blowing off her steam, Miss Abbey, and that's what makes the fog and the
noise worse, don't you see?' explained another.
Boats were putting off, torches were lighting up, people were rushing tumultuously to
the water's edge. Some man fell in with a splash, and was pulled out again with a roar of
laughter. The drags were called for. A cry for the life−buoy passed from mouth to mouth. It
was impossible to make out what was going on upon the river, for every boat that put off
sculled into the fog and was lost to view at a boat's length. Nothing was clear but that the
unpopular steamer was assailed with reproaches on all sides. She was the Murderer, bound
for Gallows Bay; she was the Manslaughterer, bound for Penal Settlement; her captain ought
to be tried for his life; her crew ran down men in row−boats with a relish; she mashed up
Thames lightermen with her paddles; she fired property with her funnels; she always was,
and she always would be, wreaking destruction upon somebody or something, after the
manner of all her kind. The whole bulk of the fog teemed with such taunts, uttered in tones
of universal hoarseness. All the while, the steamer's lights moved spectrally a very little, as
she lay− to, waiting the upshot of whatever accident had happened. Now, she began burning
blue−lights. These made a luminous patch about her, as if she had set the fog on fire, and in
the patch – the cries changing their note, and becoming more fitful and more excited –
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT 429
shadows of men and boats could be seen moving, while voices shouted: 'There!' 'There
again!' 'A couple more strokes a− head!' 'Hurrah!' 'Look out!' 'Hold on!' 'Haul in!' and the
like. Lastly, with a few tumbling clots of blue fire, the night closed in dark again, the wheels
of the steamer were heard revolving, and her lights glided smoothly away in the direction of
the sea.
It appeared to Miss Abbey and her two companions that a considerable time had been
thus occupied. There was now as eager a set towards the shore beneath the house as there
had been from it; and it was only on the first boat of the rush coming in that it was known
what had occurred.
'If that's Tom Tootle,' Miss Abbey made proclamation, in her most commanding tones,
'let him instantly come underneath here.'
The submissive Tom complied, attended by a crowd.
'What is it, Tootle?' demanded Miss Abbey.
'It's a foreign steamer, miss, run down a wherry.'
'How many in the wherry?'
'One man, Miss Abbey.'
'Found?'
'Yes. He's been under water a long time, Miss; but they've grappled up the body.'
'Let 'em bring it here. You, Bob Gliddery, shut the house−door and stand by it on the
inside, and don't you open till I tell you. Any police down there?'
'Here, Miss Abbey,' was official rejoinder.
'After they have brought the body in, keep the crowd out, will you? And help Bob
Gliddery to shut 'em out.'
'All right, Miss Abbey.'
The autocratic landlady withdrew into the house with Riah and Miss Jenny, and
disposed those forces, one on either side of her, within the half−door of the bar, as behind a
breastwork.
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Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT 430
'You two stand close here,' said Miss Abbey, 'and you'll come to no hurt, and see it
brought in. Bob, you stand by the door.'
That sentinel, smartly giving his rolled shirt−sleeves an extra and a final tuck on his
shoulders, obeyed.
Sound of advancing voices, sound of advancing steps. Shuffle and talk without.
Momentary pause. Two peculiarly blunt knocks or pokes at the door, as if the dead man
arriving on his back were striking at it with the soles of his motionless feet.
'That's the stretcher, or the shutter, whichever of the two they are carrying,' said Miss
Abbey, with experienced ear. 'Open, you Bob!'
Door opened. Heavy tread of laden men. A halt. A rush. Stoppage of rush. Door shut.
Baffled boots from the vexed souls of disappointed outsiders.
'Come on, men!' said Miss Abbey; for so potent was she with her subjects that even then
the bearers awaited her permission. 'First floor.'
The entry being low, and the staircase being low, they so took up the burden they had
set down, as to carry that low. The recumbent figure, in passing, lay hardly as high as the
half door.
Miss Abbey started back at sight of it. 'Why, good God!' said she, turning to her two
companions, 'that's the very man who made the declaration we have just had in our hands.
That's Riderhood!'
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Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT 431
Chapter 3 − THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN
MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE
I
n sooth, it is Riderhood and no other, or it is the outer husk and shell of Riderhood and
no other, that is borne into Miss Abbey's first−floor bedroom. Supple to twist and turn as the
Rogue has ever been, he is sufficiently rigid now; and not without much shuffling of
attendant feet, and tilting of his bier this way and that way, and peril even of his sliding off it
and being tumbled in a heap over the balustrades, can he be got up stairs.
'Fetch a doctor,' quoth Miss Abbey. And then, 'Fetch his daughter.' On both of which
errands, quick messengers depart.
The doctor−seeking messenger meets the doctor halfway, coming under convoy of
police. Doctor examines the dank carcase, and pronounces, not hopefully, that it is worth
while trying to reanimate the same. All the best means are at once in action, and everybody
present lends a hand, and a heart and soul. No one has the least regard for the man; with
them all, he has been an object of avoidance, suspicion, and aversion; but the spark of life
within him is curiously separable from himself now, and they have a deep interest in it,
probably because it IS life, and they are living and must die.
In answer to the doctor's inquiry how did it happen, and was anyone to blame, Tom
Tootle gives in his verdict, unavoidable accident and no one to blame but the sufferer. 'He
was slinking about in his boat,' says Tom, 'which slinking were, not to speak ill of the dead,
the manner of the man, when he come right athwart the steamer's bows and she cut him in
two.' Mr Tootle is so far figurative, touching the dismemberment, as that he means the boat,
and not the man. For, the man lies whole before them.
Captain Joey, the bottle−nosed regular customer in the glazed hat, is a pupil of the
much−respected old school, and (having insinuated himself into the chamber, in the
execution of the impontant service of carrying the drowned man's neck−kerchief) favours
the doctor with a sagacious old−scholastic suggestion that the body should be hung up by
the heels, 'sim'lar', says Captain Joey, 'to mutton in a butcher's shop,' and should then, as a
particularly choice manoeuvre for promoting easy respiration, be rolled upon casks. These
scraps of the wisdom of the captain's ancestors are received with such speechless indignation
by Miss Abbey, that she instantly seizes the Captain by the collar, and without a single word
ejects him, not presuming to remonstrate, from the scene.
There then remain, to assist the doctor and Tom, only those three other regular
customers, Bob Glamour, William Williams, and Jonathan (family name of the latter, if any,
unknown to man−kind), who are quite enough. Miss Abbey having looked in to make sure
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Chapter 3 − THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE 432
that nothing is wanted, descends to the bar, and there awaits the result, with the gentle Jew
and Miss Jenny Wren.
If you are not gone for good, Mr Riderhood, it would be something to know where you
are hiding at present. This flabby lump of mortality that we work so hard at with such
patient perseverance, yields no sign of you. If you are gone for good, Rogue, it is very
solemn, and if you are coming back, it is hardly less so. Nay, in the suspense and mystery of
the latter question, involving that of where you may be now, there is a solemnity even added
to that of death, making us who are in attendance alike afraid to look on you and to look off
you, and making those below start at the least sound of a creaking plank in the floor.
Stay! Did that eyelid tremble? So the doctor, breathing low, and closely watching, asks
himself.
No.
Did that nostril twitch?
No.
This artificial respiration ceasing, do I feel any faint flutter under my hand upon the
chest?
No.
Over and over again No. No. But try over and over again, nevertheless.
See! A token of life! An indubitable token of life! The spark may smoulder and go out,
or it may glow and expand, but see! The four rough fellows, seeing, shed tears. Neither
Riderhood in this world, nor Riderhood in the other, could draw tears from them; but a
striving human soul between the two can do it easily.
He is struggling to come back. Now, he is almost here, now he is far away again. Now
he is struggling harder to get back. And yet− −like us all, when we swoon – like us all, every
day of our lives when we wake – he is instinctively unwilling to be restored to the
consciousness of this existence, and would be left dormant, if he could.
Bob Gliddery returns with Pleasant Riderhood, who was out when sought for, and hard
to find. She has a shawl over her head, and her first action, when she takes it off weeping,
and curtseys to Miss Abbey, is to wind her hair up.
'Thank you, Miss Abbey, for having father here.'
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Chapter 3 − THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE 433
'I am bound to say, girl, I didn't know who it was,' returns Miss Abbey; 'but I hope it
would have been pretty much the same if I had known.'
Poor Pleasant, fortified with a sip of brandy, is ushered into the first−floor chamber. She
could not express much sentiment about her father if she were called upon to pronounce his
funeral oration, but she has a greater tenderness for him than he ever had for her, and crying
bitterly when she sees him stretched unconscious, asks the doctor, with clasped hands: 'Is
there no hope, sir? O poor father! Is poor father dead?'
To which the doctor, on one knee beside the body, busy and watchful, only rejoins
without looking round: 'Now, my girl, unless you have the self−command to be perfectly
quiet, I cannot allow you to remain in the room.'
Pleasant, consequently, wipes her eyes with her back−hair, which is in fresh need of
being wound up, and having got it out of the way, watches with terrified interest all that goes
on. Her natural woman's aptitude soon renders her able to give a little help. Anticipating the
doctor's want of this or that, she quietly has it ready for him, and so by degrees is intrusted
with the charge of supporting her father's head upon her arm.
It is something so new to Pleasant to see her father an object of sympathy and interest,
to find any one very willing to tolerate his society in this world, not to say pressingly and
soothingly entreating him to belong to it, that it gives her a sensation she never experienced
before. Some hazy idea that if affairs could remain thus for a long time it would be a
respectable change, floats in her mind. Also some vague idea that the old evil is drowned out
of him, and that if he should happily come back to resume his occupation of the empty form
that lies upon the bed, his spirit will be altered. In which state of mind she kisses the stony
lips, and quite believes that the impassive hand she chafes will revive a tender hand, if it
revive ever.
Sweet delusion for Pleasant Riderhood. But they minister to him with such
extraordinary interest, their anxiety is so keen, their vigilance is so great, their excited joy
grows so intense as the signs of life strengthen, that how can she resist it, poor thing! And
now he begins to breathe naturally, and he stirs, and the doctor declares him to have come
back from that inexplicable journey where he stopped on the dark road, and to be here.
Tom Tootle, who is nearest to the doctor when he says this, grasps the doctor fervently
by the hand. Bob Glamour, William Williams, and Jonathan of the no surname, all shake
hands with one another round, and with the doctor too. Bob Glamour blows his nose, and
Jonathan of the no surname is moved to do likewise, but lacking a pocket handkerchief
abandons that outlet for his emotion. Pleasant sheds tears deserving her own name, and her
sweet delusion is at its height.
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Chapter 3 − THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE 434
There is intelligence in his eyes. He wants to ask a question. He wonders where he is.
Tell him.
'Father, you were run down on the river, and are at Miss Abbey Potterson's.'
He stares at his daughter, stares all around him, closes his eyes, and lies slumbering on
her arm.
The short−lived delusion begins to fade. The low, bad, unimpressible face is coming up
from the depths of the river, or what other depths, to the surface again. As he grows warm,
the doctor and the four men cool. As his lineaments soften with life, their faces and their
hearts harden to him.
'He will do now,' says the doctor, washing his hands, and looking at the patient with
growing disfavour.
'Many a better man,' moralizes Tom Tootle with a gloomy shake of the head, 'ain't had
his luck.'
'It's to be hoped he'll make a better use of his life,' says Bob Glamour, 'than I expect he
will.'
'Or than he done afore,' adds William Williams.
'But no, not he!' says Jonathan of the no surname, clinching the quartette.
They speak in a low tone because of his daughter, but she sees that they have all drawn
off, and that they stand in a group at the other end of the room, shunning him. It would be
too much to suspect them of being sorry that he didn't die when he had done so much
towards it, but they clearly wish that they had had a better subject to bestow their pains on.
Intelligence is conveyed to Miss Abbey in the bar, who reappears on the scene, and
contemplates from a distance, holding whispered discourse with the doctor. The spark of life
was deeply interesting while it was in abeyance, but now that it has got established in Mr
Riderhood, there appears to be a general desire that circumstances had admitted of its being
developed in anybody else, rather than that gentleman.
'However,' says Miss Abbey, cheering them up, 'you have done your duty like good and
true men, and you had better come down and take something at the expense of the Porters.'
This they all do, leaving the daughter watching the father. To whom, in their absence,
Bob Gliddery presents himself.
'His gills looks rum; don't they?' says Bob, after inspecting the patient.
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Chapter 3 − THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE 435
Pleasant faintly nods.
'His gills'll look rummer when he wakes; won't they?' says Bob.
Pleasant hopes not. Why?
'When he finds himself here, you know,' Bob explains. 'Cause Miss Abbey forbid him
the house and ordered him out of it. But what you may call the Fates ordered him into it
again. Which is rumness; ain't it?'
'He wouldn't have come here of his own accord,' returns poor Pleasant, with an effort at
a little pride.
'No,' retorts Bob. 'Nor he wouldn't have been let in, if he had.'
The short delusion is quite dispelled now. As plainly as she sees on her arm the old
father, unimproved, Pleasant sees that everybody there will cut him when he recovers
consciousness. 'I'll take him away ever so soon as I can,' thinks Pleasant with a sigh; 'he's
best at home.'
Presently they all return, and wait for him to become conscious that they will all be glad
to get rid of him. Some clothes are got together for him to wear, his own being saturated
with water, and his present dress being composed of blankets.
Becoming more and more uncomfortable, as though the prevalent dislike were finding
him out somewhere in his sleep and expressing itself to him, the patient at last opens his
eyes wide, and is assisted by his daughter to sit up in bed.
'Well, Riderhood,' says the doctor, 'how do you feel?'
He replies gruffly, 'Nothing to boast on.' Having, in fact, returned to life in an
uncommonly sulky state.
'I don't mean to preach; but I hope,' says the doctor, gravely shaking his head, 'that this
escape may have a good effect upon you, Riderhood.'
The patient's discontented growl of a reply is not intelligible; his daughter, however,
could interpret, if she would, that what he says is, he 'don't want no Poll−Parroting'.
Mr Riderhood next demands his shirt; and draws it on over his head (with his daughter's
help) exactly as if he had just had a Fight.
'Warn't it a steamer?' he pauses to ask her.
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Chapter 3 − THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE 436
'Yes, father.'
'I'll have the law on her, bust her! and make her pay for it.'
He then buttons his linen very moodily, twice or thrice stopping to examine his arms
and hands, as if to see what punishment he has received in the Fight. He then doggedly
demands his other garments, and slowly gets them on, with an appearance of great
malevolence towards his late opponent and all the spectators. He has an impression that his
nose is bleeding, and several times draws the back of his hand across it, and looks for the
result, in a pugilistic manner, greatly strengthening that incongruous resemblance.
'Where's my fur cap?' he asks in a surly voice, when he has shuffled his clothes on.
'In the river,' somebody rejoins.
'And warn't there no honest man to pick it up? O' course there was though, and to cut off
with it arterwards. You are a rare lot, all on you!'
Thus, Mr Riderhood: taking from the hands of his daughter, with special ill−will, a lent
cap, and grumbling as he pulls it down over his ears. Then, getting on his unsteady legs,
leaning heavily upon her, and growling, 'Hold still, can't you? What! You must be a
staggering next, must you?' he takes his departure out of the ring in which he has had that
little turn−up with Death.
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Chapter 3 − THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE 437
Chapter 4 − A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY
M
r and Mrs Wilfer had seen a full quarter of a hundred more anniversaries of their
wedding day than Mr and Mrs Lammle had seen of theirs, but they still celebrated the
occasion in the bosom of their family. Not that these celebrations ever resulted in anything
particularly agreeable, or that the family was ever disappointed by that circumstance on
account of having looked forward to the return of the auspicious day with sanguine
anticipations of enjoyment. It was kept morally, rather as a Fast than a Feast, enabling Mrs
Wilfer to hold a sombre darkling state, which exhibited that impressive woman in her
choicest colours.
The noble lady's condition on these delightful occasions was one compounded of heroic
endurance and heroic forgiveness. Lurid indications of the better marriages she might have
made, shone athwart the awful gloom of her composure, and fitfully revealed the cherub as a
little monster unaccountably favoured by Heaven, who had possessed himself of a blessing
for which many of his superiors had sued and contended in vain. So firmly had this his
position towards his treasure become established, that when the anniversary arrived, it
always found him in an apologetic state. It is not impossible that his modest penitence may
have even gone the length of sometimes severely reproving him for that he ever took the
liberty of making so exalted a character his wife.
As for the children of the union, their experience of these festivals had been sufficiently
uncomfortable to lead them annually to wish, when out of their tenderest years, either that
Ma had married somebody else instead of much−teased Pa, or that Pa had married
somebody else instead of Ma. When there came to be but two sisters left at home, the daring
mind of Bella on the next of these occasions scaled the height of wondering with droll
vexation 'what on earth Pa ever could have seen in Ma, to induce him to make such a little
fool of himself as to ask her to have him.'
The revolving year now bringing the day round in its orderly sequence, Bella arrived in
the Boffin chariot to assist at the celebration. It was the family custom when the day
recurred, to sacrifice a pair of fowls on the altar of Hymen; and Bella had sent a note
beforehand, to intimate that she would bring the votive offering with her. So, Bella and the
fowls, by the united energies of two horses, two men, four wheels, and a plum−pudding
carriage dog with as uncomfortable a collar on as if he had been George the Fourth, were
deposited at the door of the parental dwelling. They were there received by Mrs Wilfer in
person, whose dignity on this, as on most special occasions, was heightened by a mysterious
toothache.
'I shall not require the carriage at night,' said Bella. 'I shall walk back.'
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Chapter 4 − A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY 438
The male domestic of Mrs Boffin touched his hat, and in the act of departure had an
awful glare bestowed upon him by Mrs Wilfer, intended to carry deep into his audacious
soul the assurance that, whatever his private suspicions might be, male domestics in livery
were no rarity there.
'Well, dear Ma,' said Bella, 'and how do you do?'
'I am as well, Bella,' replied Mrs Wilfer, 'as can be expected.'
'Dear me, Ma,' said Bella; 'you talk as if one was just born!'
'That's exactly what Ma has been doing,' interposed Lavvy, over the maternal shoulder,
'ever since we got up this morning. It's all very well to laugh, Bella, but anything more
exasperating it is impossible to conceive.'
Mrs Wilfer, with a look too full of majesty to be accompanied by any words, attended
both her daughters to the kitchen, where the sacrifice was to be prepared.
'Mr Rokesmith,' said she, resignedly, 'has been so polite as to place his sitting−room at
our disposal to−day. You will therefore, Bella, be entertained in the humble abode of your
parents, so far in accordance with your present style of living, that there will be a
drawing−room for your reception as well as a dining−room. Your papa invited Mr
Rokesmith to partake of our lowly fare. In excusing himself on account of a particular
engagement, he offered the use of his apartment.'
Bella happened to know that he had no engagement out of his own room at Mr Boffin's,
but she approved of his staying away. 'We should only have put one another out of
countenance,' she thought, 'and we do that quite often enough as it is.'
Yet she had sufficient curiosity about his room, to run up to it with the least possible
delay, and make a close inspection of its contents. It was tastefully though economically
furnished, and very neatly arranged. There were shelves and stands of books, English,
French, and Italian; and in a portfolio on the writing−table there were sheets upon sheets of
memoranda and calculations in figures, evidently referring to the Boffin property. On that
table also, carefully backed with canvas, varnished, mounted, and rolled like a map, was the
placard descriptive of the murdered man who had come from afar to be her husband. She
shrank from this ghostly surprise, and felt quite frightened as she rolled and tied it up again.
Peeping about here and there, she came upon a print, a graceful head of a pretty woman,
elegantly framed, hanging in the corner by the easy chair. 'Oh, indeed, sir!' said Bella, after
stopping to ruminate before it. 'Oh, indeed, sir! I fancy I can guess whom you think THAT'S
like. But I'll tell you what it's much more like – your impudence!' Having said which she
decamped: not solely because she was offended, but because there was nothing else to look
at.
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'Now, Ma,' said Bella, reappearing in the kitchen with some remains of a blush, 'you and
Lavvy think magnificent me fit for nothing, but I intend to prove the contrary. I mean to be
Cook today.'
'Hold!' rejoined her majestic mother. 'I cannot permit it. Cook, in that dress!'
'As for my dress, Ma,' returned Bella, merrily searching in a dresser−drawer, 'I mean to
apron it and towel it all over the front; and as to permission, I mean to do without.'
'YOU cook?' said Mrs Wilfer. 'YOU, who never cooked when you were at home?'
'Yes, Ma,' returned Bella; 'that is precisely the state of the case.'
She girded herself with a white apron, and busily with knots and pins contrived a bib to
it, coming close and tight under her chin, as if it had caught her round the neck to kiss her.
Over this bib her dimples looked delightful, and under it her pretty figure not less so. 'Now,
Ma,' said Bella, pushing back her hair from her temples with both hands, 'what's first?'
'First,' returned Mrs Wilfer solemnly, 'if you persist in what I cannot but regard as
conduct utterly incompatible with the equipage in which you arrived – '
('Which I do, Ma.')
'First, then, you put the fowls down to the fire.'
'To – be – sure!' cried Bella; 'and flour them, and twirl them round, and there they go!'
sending them spinning at a great rate. 'What's next, Ma?'
'Next,' said Mrs Wilfer with a wave of her gloves, expressive of abdication under protest
from the culinary throne, 'I would recommend examination of the bacon in the saucepan on
the fire, and also of the potatoes by the application of a fork. Preparation of the greens will
further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly demeanour.'
'As of course I do, Ma.'
Persisting, Bella gave her attention to one thing and forgot the other, and gave her
attention to the other and forgot the third, and remembering the third was distracted by the
fourth, and made amends whenever she went wrong by giving the unfortunate fowls an extra
spin, which made their chance of ever getting cooked exceedingly doubtful. But it was
pleasant cookery too. Meantime Miss Lavinia, oscillating between the kitchen and the
opposite room, prepared the dining−table in the latter chamber. This office she (always
doing her household spiriting with unwillingness) performed in a startling series of whisks
and bumps; laying the table−cloth as if she were raising the wind, putting down the glasses
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and salt−cellars as if she were knocking at the door, and clashing the knives and forks in a
skirmishing manner suggestive of hand−to−hand conflict.
'Look at Ma,' whispered Lavinia to Bella when this was done, and they stood over the
roasting fowls. 'If one was the most dutiful child in existence (of course on the whole one
hopes one is), isn't she enough to make one want to poke her with something wooden, sitting
there bolt upright in a corner?'
'Only suppose,' returned Bella, 'that poor Pa was to sit bolt upright in another corner.'
'My dear, he couldn't do it,' said Lavvy. 'Pa would loll directly. But indeed I do not
believe there ever was any human creature who could keep so bolt upright as Ma, 'or put
such an amount of aggravation into one back! What's the matter, Ma? Ain't you well, Ma?'
'Doubtless I am very well,' returned Mrs Wilfer, turning her eyes upon her youngest
born, with scornful fortitude. 'What should be the matter with Me?'
'You don't seem very brisk, Ma,' retorted Lavvy the bold.
'Brisk?' repeated her parent, 'Brisk? Whence the low expression, Lavinia? If I am
uncomplaining, if I am silently contented with my lot, let that suffice for my family.'
'Well, Ma,' returned Lavvy, 'since you will force it out of me, I must respectfully take
leave to say that your family are no doubt under the greatest obligations to you for having an
annual toothache on your wedding day, and that it's very disinterested in you, and an
immense blessing to them. Still, on the whole, it is possible to be too boastful even of that
boon.'
'You incarnation of sauciness,' said Mrs Wilfer, 'do you speak like that to me? On this
day, of all days in the year? Pray do you know what would have become of you, if I had not
bestowed my hand upon R. W., your father, on this day?'
'No, Ma,' replied Lavvy, 'I really do not; and, with the greatest respect for your abilities
and information, I very much doubt if you do either.'
Whether or no the sharp vigour of this sally on a weak point of Mrs Wilfer's
entrenchments might have routed that heroine for the time, is rendered uncertain by the
arrival of a flag of truce in the person of Mr George Sampson: bidden to the feast as a friend
of the family, whose affections were now understood to be in course of transference from
Bella to Lavinia, and whom Lavinia kept – possibly in remembrance of his bad taste in
having overlooked her in the first instance – under a course of stinging discipline.
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Chapter 4 − A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY 441
'I congratulate you, Mrs Wilfer,' said Mr George Sampson, who had meditated this neat
address while coming along, 'on the day.' Mrs Wilfer thanked him with a magnanimous sigh,
and again became an unresisting prey to that inscrutable toothache.
'I am surprised,' said Mr Sampson feebly, 'that Miss Bella condescends to cook.'
Here Miss Lavinia descended on the ill−starred young gentleman with a crushing
supposition that at all events it was no business of his. This disposed of Mr Sampson in a
melancholy retirement of spirit, until the cherub arrived, whose amazement at the lovely
woman's occupation was great.
However, she persisted in dishing the dinner as well as cooking it, and then sat down,
bibless and apronless, to partake of it as an illustrious guest: Mrs Wilfer first responding to
her husband's cheerful 'For what we are about to receive – 'with a sepulchral Amen,
calculated to cast a damp upon the stoutest appetite.
'But what,' said Bella, as she watched the carving of the fowls, 'makes them pink inside,
I wonder, Pa! Is it the breed?'
'No, I don't think it's the breed, my dear,' returned Pa. 'I rather think it is because they
are not done.'
'They ought to be,' said Bella.
'Yes, I am aware they ought to be, my dear,' rejoined her father, 'but they – ain't.'
So, the gridiron was put in requisition, and the good−tempered cherub, who was often
as un−cherubically employed in his own family as if he had been in the employment of
some of the Old Masters, undertook to grill the fowls. Indeed, except in respect of staring
about him (a branch of the public service to which the pictorial cherub is much addicted),
this domestic cherub discharged as many odd functions as his prototype; with the difference,
say, that he performed with a blacking−brush on the family's boots, instead of performing on
enormous wind instruments and double−basses, and that he conducted himself with cheerful
alacrity to much useful purpose, instead of foreshortening himself in the air with the vaguest
intentions.
Bella helped him with his supplemental cookery, and made him very happy, but put him
in mortal terror too by asking him when they sat down at table again, how he supposed they
cooked fowls at the Greenwich dinners, and whether he believed they really were such
pleasant dinners as people said? His secret winks and nods of remonstrance, in reply, made
the mischievous Bella laugh until she choked, and then Lavinia was obliged to slap her on
the back, and then she laughed the more.
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But her mother was a fine corrective at the other end of the table; to whom her father, in
the innocence of his good−fellowship, at intervals appealed with: 'My dear, I am afraid you
are not enjoying yourself?'
'Why so, R. W.?' she would sonorously reply.
'Because, my dear, you seem a little out of sorts.'
'Not at all,' would be the rejoinder, in exactly the same tone.
'Would you take a merry−thought, my dear?'
'Thank you. I will take whatever you please, R. W.'
'Well, but my dear, do you like it?'
'I like it as well as I like anything, R. W.' The stately woman would then, with a
meritorious appearance of devoting herself to the general good, pursue her dinner as if she
were feeding somebody else on high public grounds.
Bella had brought dessert and two bottles of wine, thus shedding unprecedented
splendour on the occasion. Mrs Wilfer did the honours of the first glass by proclaiming: 'R.
W. I drink to you.
'Thank you, my dear. And I to you.'
'Pa and Ma!' said Bella.
'Permit me,' Mrs Wilfer interposed, with outstretched glove. 'No. I think not. I drank to
your papa. If, however, you insist on including me, I can in gratitude offer no objection.'
'Why, Lor, Ma,' interposed Lavvy the bold, 'isn't it the day that made you and Pa one
and the same? I have no patience!'
'By whatever other circumstance the day may be marked, it is not the day, Lavinia, on
which I will allow a child of mine to pounce upon me. I beg – nay, command! – that you
will not pounce. R. W., it is appropriate to recall that it is for you to command and for me to
obey. It is your house, and you are master at your own table. Both our healths!' Drinking the
toast with tremendous stiffness.
'I really am a little afraid, my dear,' hinted the cherub meekly, 'that you are not enjoying
yourself?'
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Chapter 4 − A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY 443
'On the contrary,' returned Mrs Wilfer, 'quite so. Why should I not?'
'I thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might – '
'My face might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or who should know it, if I
smiled?'
And she did smile; manifestly freezing the blood of Mr George Sampson by so doing.
For that young gentleman, catching her smiling eye, was so very much appalled by its
expression as to cast about in his thoughts concerning what he had done to bring it down
upon himself.
'The mind naturally falls,' said Mrs Wilfer, 'shall I say into a reverie, or shall I say into a
retrospect? on a day like this.'
Lavvy, sitting with defiantly folded arms, replied (but not audibly), 'For goodness' sake
say whichever of the two you like best, Ma, and get it over.'
'The mind,' pursued Mrs Wilfer in an oratorical manner, 'naturally reverts to Papa and
Mamma – I here allude to my parents – at a period before the earliest dawn of this day. I was
considered tall; perhaps I was. Papa and Mamma were unquestionably tall. I have rarely
seen a finer women than my mother; never than my father.'
The irrepressible Lavvy remarked aloud, 'Whatever grandpapa was, he wasn't a female.'
'Your grandpapa,' retorted Mrs Wilfer, with an awful look, and in an awful tone, 'was
what I describe him to have been, and would have struck any of his grandchildren to the
earth who presumed to question it. It was one of mamma's cherished hopes that I should
become united to a tall member of society. It may have been a weakness, but if so, it was
equally the weakness, I believe, of King Frederick of Prussia.' These remarks being offered
to Mr George Sampson, who had not the courage to come out for single combat, but lurked
with his chest under the table and his eyes cast down, Mrs Wilfer proceeded, in a voice of
increasing sternness and impressiveness, until she should force that skulker to give himself
up. 'Mamma would appear to have had an indefinable foreboding of what afterwards
happened, for she would frequently urge upon me, «Not a little man. Promise me, my child,
not a little man. Never, never, never, marry a little man!» Papa also would remark to me (he
possessed extraordinary humour),«that a family of whales must not ally themselves with
sprats.» His company was eagerly sought, as may be supposed, by the wits of the day, and
our house was their continual resort. I have known as many as three copper−plate engravers
exchanging the most exquisite sallies and retorts there, at one time.' (Here Mr Sampson
delivered himself captive, and said, with an uneasy movement on his chair, that three was a
large number, and it must have been highly entertaining.) 'Among the most prominent
members of that distinguished circle, was a gentleman measuring six feet four in height. HE
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was NOT an engraver.' (Here Mr Sampson said, with no reason whatever, Of course not.)
'This gentleman was so obliging as to honour me with attentions which I could not fail to
understand.' (Here Mr Sampson murmured that when it came to that, you could always tell.)
'I immediately announced to both my parents that those attentions were misplaced, and that I
could not favour his suit. They inquired was he too tall? I replied it was not the stature, but
the intellect was too lofty. At our house, I said, the tone was too brilliant, the pressure was
too high, to be maintained by me, a mere woman, in every−day domestic life. I well
remember mamma's clasping her hands, and exclaiming «This will end in a little man!»'
(Here Mr Sampson glanced at his host and shook his head with despondency.) 'She
afterwards went so far as to predict that it would end in a little man whose mind would be
below the average, but that was in what I may denominate a paroxysm of maternal
disappointment. Within a month,' said Mrs Wilfer, deepening her voice, as if she were
relating a terrible ghost story, 'within a−month, I first saw R. W. my husband. Within a year,
I married him. It is natural for the mind to recall these dark coincidences on the present day.'
Mr Sampson at length released from the custody of Mrs Wilfer's eye, now drew a long
breath, and made the original and striking remark that there was no accounting for these sort
of presentiments. R. W. scratched his head and looked apologetically all round the table
until he came to his wife, when observing her as it were shrouded in a more sombre veil than
before, he once more hinted, 'My dear, I am really afraid you are not altogether enjoying
yourself?' To which she once more replied, 'On the contrary, R. W. Quite so.'
The wretched Mr Sampson's position at this agreeable entertainment was truly pitiable.
For, not only was he exposed defenceless to the harangues of Mrs Wilfer, but he received
the utmost contumely at the hands of Lavinia; who, partly to show Bella that she (Lavinia)
could do what she liked with him, and partly to pay him off for still obviously admiring
Bella's beauty, led him the life of a dog. Illuminated on the one hand by the stately graces of
Mrs Wilfer's oratory, and shadowed on the other by the checks and frowns of the young lady
to whom he had devoted himself in his destitution, the sufferings of this young gentleman
were distressing to witness. If his mind for the moment reeled under them, it may be urged,
in extenuation of its weakness, that it was constitutionally a knock−knee'd mind and never
very strong upon its legs.
The rosy hours were thus beguiled until it was time for Bella to have Pa's escort back.
The dimples duly tied up in the bonnet− strings and the leave−taking done, they got out into
the air, and the cherub drew a long breath as if he found it refreshing.
'Well, dear Pa,' said Bella, 'the anniversary may be considered over.'
'Yes, my dear,' returned the cherub, 'there's another of 'em gone.'
Bella drew his arm closer through hers as they walked along, and gave it a number of
consolatory pats. 'Thank you, my dear,' he said, as if she had spoken; 'I am all right, my dear.
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Chapter 4 − A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY 445
Well, and how do you get on, Bella?'
'I am not at all improved, Pa.'
'Ain't you really though?'
'No, Pa. On the contrary, I am worse.'
'Lor!' said the cherub.
'I am worse, Pa. I make so many calculations how much a year I must have when I
marry, and what is the least I can manage to do with, that I am beginning to get wrinkles
over my nose. Did you notice any wrinkles over my nose this evening, Pa?'
Pa laughing at this, Bella gave him two or three shakes.
'You won't laugh, sir, when you see your lovely woman turning haggard. You had better
be prepared in time, I can tell you. I shall not be able to keep my greediness for money out
of my eyes long, and when you see it there you'll be sorry, and serve you right for not being
warned in time. Now, sir, we entered into a bond of confidence. Have you anything to
impart?'
'I thought it was you who was to impart, my love.'
'Oh! did you indeed, sir? Then why didn't you ask me, the moment we came out? The
confidences of lovely women are not to be slighted. However, I forgive you this once, and
look here, Pa; that's' – Bella laid the little forefinger of her right glove on her lip, and then
laid it on her father's lip – 'that's a kiss for you. And now I am going seriously to tell you –
let me see how many – four secrets. Mind! Serious, grave, weighty secrets. Strictly between
ourselves.'
'Number one, my dear?' said her father, settling her arm comfortably and confidentially.
'Number one,' said Bella, 'will electrify you, Pa. Who do you think has' – she was
confused here in spite of her merry way of beginning 'has made an offer to me?'
Pa looked in her face, and looked at the ground, and looked in her face again, and
declared he could never guess.
'Mr Rokesmith.'
'You don't tell me so, my dear!'
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'Mis – ter Roke – smith, Pa,' said Bella separating the syllables for emphasis. 'What do
you say to THAT?'
Pa answered quietly with the counter−question, 'What did YOU say to that, my love?'
'I said No,' returned Bella sharply. 'Of course.'
'Yes. Of course,' said her father, meditating.
'And I told him why I thought it a betrayal of trust on his part, and an affront to me,'
said Bella.
'Yes. To be sure. I am astonished indeed. I wonder he committed himself without seeing
more of his way first. Now I think of it, I suspect he always has admired you though, my
dear.'
'A hackney coachman may admire me,' remarked Bella, with a touch of her mother's
loftiness.
'It's highly probable, my love. Number two, my dear?'
'Number two, Pa, is much to the same purpose, though not so preposterous. Mr
Lightwood would propose to me, if I would let him.'
'Then I understand, my dear, that you don't intend to let him?'
Bella again saying, with her former emphasis, 'Why, of course not!' her father felt
himself bound to echo, 'Of course not.'
'I don't care for him,' said Bella.
'That's enough,' her father interposed.
'No, Pa, it's NOT enough,' rejoined Bella, giving him another shake or two. 'Haven't I
told you what a mercenary little wretch I am? It only becomes enough when he has no
money, and no clients, and no expectations, and no anything but debts.'
'Hah!' said the cherub, a little depressed. 'Number three, my dear?'
'Number three, Pa, is a better thing. A generous thing, a noble thing, a delightful thing.
Mrs Boffin has herself told me, as a secret, with her own kind lips – and truer lips never
opened or closed in this life, I am sure – that they wish to see me well married; and that
when I marry with their consent they will portion me most handsomely.' Here the grateful
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girl burst out crying very heartily.
'Don't cry, my darling,' said her father, with his hand to his eyes; 'it's excusable in me to
be a little overcome when I find that my dear favourite child is, after all disappointments, to
be so provided for and so raised in the world; but don't YOU cry, don't YOU cry. I am very
thankful. I congratulate you with all my heart, my dear.' The good soft little fellow, drying
his eyes, here, Bella put her arms round his neck and tenderly kissed him on the high road,
passionately telling him he was the best of fathers and the best of friends, and that on her
wedding−morning she would go down on her knees to him and beg his pardon for having
ever teased him or seemed insensible to the worth of such a patient, sympathetic, genial,
fresh young heart. At every one of her adjectives she redoubled her kisses, and finally kissed
his hat off, and then laughed immoderately when the wind took it and he ran after it.
When he had recovered his hat and his breath, and they were going on again once more,
said her father then: 'Number four, my dear?'
Bella's countenance fell in the midst of her mirth. 'After all, perhaps I had better put off
number four, Pa. Let me try once more, if for never so short a time, to hope that it may not
really be so.'
The change in her, strengthened the cherub's interest in number four, and he said
quietly: 'May not be so, my dear? May not be how, my dear?'
Bella looked at him pensively, and shook her head.
'And yet I know right well it is so, Pa. I know it only too well.'
'My love,' returned her father, 'you make me quite uncomfortable. Have you said No to
anybody else, my dear?'
'No, Pa.'
'Yes to anybody?' he suggested, lifting up his eyebrows.
'No, Pa.'
'Is there anybody else who would take his chance between Yes and No, if you would let
him, my dear?'
'Not that I know of, Pa.'
'There can't be somebody who won't take his chance when you want him to?' said the
cherub, as a last resource.
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'Why, of course not, Pa, said Bella, giving him another shake or two.
'No, of course not,' he assented. 'Bella, my dear, I am afraid I must either have no sleep
to−night, or I must press for number four.'
'Oh, Pa, there is no good in number four! I am so sorry for it, I am so unwilling to
believe it, I have tried so earnestly not to see it, that it is very hard to tell, even to you. But
Mr Boffin is being spoilt by prosperity, and is changing every day.'
'My dear Bella, I hope and trust not.'
'I have hoped and trusted not too, Pa; but every day he changes for the worse, and for
the worse. Not to me – he is always much the same to me – but to others about him. Before
my eyes he grows suspicious, capricious, hard, tyrannical, unjust. If ever a good man were
ruined by good fortune, it is my benefactor. And yet, Pa, think how terrible the fascination
of money is! I see this, and hate this, and dread this, and don't know but that money might
make a much worse change in me. And yet I have money always in my thoughts and my
desires; and the whole life I place before myself is money, money, money, and what money
can make of life!'
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Chapter 5 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN
FALLS INTO BAD COMPANY
W
ere Bella Wilfer's bright and ready little wits at fault, or was the Golden Dustman
passing through the furnace of proof and coming out dross? Ill news travels fast. We shall
know full soon.
On that very night of her return from the Happy Return, something chanced which Bella
closely followed with her eyes and ears. There was an apartment at the side of the Boffin
mansion, known as Mr Boffin's room. Far less grand than the rest of the house, it was far
more comfortable, being pervaded by a certain air of homely snugness, which upholstering
despotism had banished to that spot when it inexorably set its face against Mr Boffin's
appeals for mercy in behalf of any other chamber. Thus, although a room of modest situation
– for its windows gave on Silas Wegg's old corner – and of no pretensions to velvet, satin, or
gilding, it had got itself established in a domestic position analogous to that of an easy
dressing−gown or pair of slippers; and whenever the family wanted to enjoy a particularly
pleasant fireside evening, they enjoyed it, as an institution that must be, in Mr Boffin's room.
Mr and Mrs Boffin were reported sitting in this room, when Bella got back. Entering it,
she found the Secretary there too; in official attendance it would appear, for he was standing
with some papers in his hand by a table with shaded candles on it, at which Mr Boffin was
seated thrown back in his easy chair.
'You are busy, sir,' said Bella, hesitating at the door.
'Not at all, my dear, not at all. You're one of ourselves. We never make company of you.
Come in, come in. Here's the old lady in her usual place.'
Mrs Boffin adding her nod and smile of welcome to Mr Boffin's words, Bella took her
book to a chair in the fireside corner, by Mrs Boffin's work−table. Mr Boffin's station was
on the opposite side.
'Now, Rokesmith,' said the Golden Dustman, so sharply rapping the table to bespeak his
attention as Bella turned the leaves of her book, that she started; 'where were we?'
'You were saying, sir,' returned the Secretary, with an air of some reluctance and a
glance towards those others who were present, 'that you considered the time had come for
fixing my salary.'
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'Don't be above calling it wages, man,' said Mr Boffin, testily. 'What the deuce! I never
talked of any salary when I was in service.'
'My wages,' said the Secretary, correcting himself.
'Rokesmith, you are not proud, I hope?' observed Mr Boffin, eyeing him askance.
'I hope not, sir.'
'Because I never was, when I was poor,' said Mr Boffin. 'Poverty and pride don't go at
all well together. Mind that. How can they go well together? Why it stands to reason. A
man, being poor, has nothing to be proud of. It's nonsense.'
With a slight inclination of his head, and a look of some surprise, the Secretary seemed
to assent by forming the syllables of the word 'nonsense' on his lips.
'Now, concerning these same wages,' said Mr Boffin. 'Sit down.'
The Secretary sat down.
'Why didn't you sit down before?' asked Mr Boffin, distrustfully. 'I hope that wasn't
pride? But about these wages. Now, I've gone into the matter, and I say two hundred a year.
What do you think of it? Do you think it's enough?'
'Thank you. It is a fair proposal.'
'I don't say, you know,' Mr Boffin stipulated, 'but what it may be more than enough.
And I'll tell you why, Rokesmith. A man of property, like me, is bound to consider the
market−price. At first I didn't enter into that as much as I might have done; but I've got
acquainted with other men of property since, and I've got acquainted with the duties of
property. I mustn't go putting the market−price up, because money may happen not to be an
object with me. A sheep is worth so much in the market, and I ought to give it and no more.
A secretary is worth so much in the market, and I ought to give it and no more. However, I
don't mind stretching a point with you.'
'Mr Boffin, you are very good,' replied the Secretary, with an effort.
'Then we put the figure,' said Mr Boffin, 'at two hundred a year. Then the figure's
disposed of. Now, there must be no misunderstanding regarding what I buy for two hundred
a year. If I pay for a sheep, I buy it out and out. Similarly, if I pay for a secretary, I buy HIM
out and out.'
'In other words, you purchase my whole time?'
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'Certainly I do. Look here,' said Mr Boffin, 'it ain't that I want to occupy your whole
time; you can take up a book for a minute or two when you've nothing better to do, though I
think you'll a'most always find something useful to do. But I want to keep you in attendance.
It's convenient to have you at all times ready on the premises. Therefore, betwixt your
breakfast and your supper, – on the premises I expect to find you.'
The Secretary bowed.
'In bygone days, when I was in service myself,' said Mr Boffin, 'I couldn't go cutting
about at my will and pleasure, and you won't expect to go cutting about at your will and
pleasure. You've rather got into a habit of that, lately; but perhaps it was for want of a right
specification betwixt us. Now, let there be a right specification betwixt us, and let it be this.
If you want leave, ask for it.'
Again the Secretary bowed. His manner was uneasy and astonished, and showed a sense
of humiliation.
'I'll have a bell,' said Mr Boffin, 'hung from this room to yours, and when I want you, I'll
touch it. I don't call to mind that I have anything more to say at the present moment.'
The Secretary rose, gathered up his papers, and withdrew. Bella's eyes followed him to
the door, lighted on Mr Boffin complacently thrown back in his easy chair, and drooped
over her book.
'I have let that chap, that young man of mine,' said Mr Boffin, taking a trot up and down
the room, get above his work. It won't do. I must have him down a peg. A man of property
owes a duty to other men of property, and must look sharp after his inferiors.'
Bella felt that Mrs Boffin was not comfortable, and that the eyes of that good creature
sought to discover from her face what attention she had given to this discourse, and what
impression it had made upon her. For which reason Bella's eyes drooped more engrossedly
over her book, and she turned the page with an air of profound absorption in it.
'Noddy,' said Mrs Boffin, after thoughtfully pausing in her work.
'My dear,' returned the Golden Dustman, stopping short in his trot.
'Excuse my putting it to you, Noddy, but now really! Haven't you been a little strict with
Mr Rokesmith to−night? Haven't you been a little – just a little little – not quite like your old
self?'
'Why, old woman, I hope so,' returned Mr Boffin, cheerfully, if not boastfully.
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'Hope so, deary?'
'Our old selves wouldn't do here, old lady. Haven't you found that out yet? Our old
selves would be fit for nothing here but to be robbed and imposed upon. Our old selves
weren't people of fortune; our new selves are; it's a great difference.'
'Ah!' said Mrs Boffin, pausing in her work again, softly to draw a long breath and to
look at the fire. 'A great difference.'
'And we must be up to the difference,' pursued her husband; 'we must be equal to the
change; that's what we must be. We've got to hold our own now, against everybody (for
everybody's hand is stretched out to be dipped into our pockets), and we have got to
recollect that money makes money, as well as makes everything else.'
'Mentioning recollecting,' said Mrs Boffin, with her work abandoned, her eyes upon the
fire, and her chin upon her hand, 'do you recollect, Noddy, how you said to Mr Rokesmith
when he first came to see us at the Bower, and you engaged him – how you said to him that
if it had pleased Heaven to send John Harmon to his fortune safe, we could have been
content with the one Mound which was our legacy, and should never have wanted the rest?'
'Ay, I remember, old lady. But we hadn't tried what it was to have the rest then. Our
new shoes had come home, but we hadn't put 'em on. We're wearing 'em now, we're wearing
'em, and must step out accordingly.'
Mrs Boffin took up her work again, and plied her needle in silence.
'As to Rokesmith, that young man of mine,' said Mr Boffin, dropping his voice and
glancing towards the door with an apprehension of being overheard by some eavesdropper
there, 'it's the same with him as with the footmen. I have found out that you must either
scrunch them, or let them scrunch you. If you ain't imperious with 'em, they won't believe in
your being any better than themselves, if as good, after the stories (lies mostly) that they
have heard of your beginnings. There's nothing betwixt stiffening yourself up, and throwing
yourself away; take my word for that, old lady.'
Bella ventured for a moment to look stealthily towards him under her eyelashes, and she
saw a dark cloud of suspicion, covetousness, and conceit, overshadowing the once open
face.
'Hows'ever,' said he, 'this isn't entertaining to Miss Bella. Is it, Bella?'
A deceiving Bella she was, to look at him with that pensively abstracted air, as if her
mind were full of her book, and she had not heard a single word!
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'Hah! Better employed than to attend to it,' said Mr Boffin. 'That's right, that's right.
Especially as you have no call to be told how to value yourself, my dear.'
Colouring a little under this compliment, Bella returned, 'I hope sir, you don't think me
vain?'
'Not a bit, my dear,' said Mr Boffin. 'But I think it's very creditable in you, at your age,
to be so well up with the pace of the world, and to know what to go in for. You are right. Go
in for money, my love. Money's the article. You'll make money of your good looks, and of
the money Mrs Boffin and me will have the pleasure of settling upon you, and you'll live
and die rich. That's the state to live and die in!' said Mr Boffin, in an unctuous manner. R – r
– rich!'
There was an expression of distress in Mrs Boffin's face, as, after watching her
husband's, she turned to their adopted girl, and said:
'Don't mind him, Bella, my dear.'
'Eh?' cried Mr Boffin. 'What! Not mind him?'
'I don't mean that,' said Mrs Boffin, with a worried look, 'but I mean, don't believe him
to be anything but good and generous, Bella, because he is the best of men. No, I must say
that much, Noddy. You are always the best of men.'
She made the declaration as if he were objecting to it: which assuredly he was not in
any way.
'And as to you, my dear Bella,' said Mrs Boffin, still with that distressed expression, 'he
is so much attached to you, whatever he says, that your own father has not a truer interest in
you and can hardly like you better than he does.'
'Says too!' cried Mr Boffin. 'Whatever he says! Why, I say so, openly. Give me a kiss,
my dear child, in saying Good Night, and let me confirm what my old lady tells you. I am
very fond of you, my dear, and I am entirely of your mind, and you and I will take care that
you shall be rich. These good looks of yours (which you have some right to be vain of; my
dear, though you are not, you know) are worth money, and you shall make money of 'em.
The money you will have, will be worth money, and you shall make money of that too.
There's a golden ball at your feet. Good night, my dear.'
Somehow, Bella was not so well pleased with this assurance and this prospect as she
might have been. Somehow, when she put her arms round Mrs Boffin's neck and said Good
Night, she derived a sense of unworthiness from the still anxious face of that good woman
and her obvious wish to excuse her husband. 'Why, what need to excuse him?' thought Bella,
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sitting down in her own room. 'What he said was very sensible, I am sure, and very true, I
am sure. It is only what I often say to myself. Don't I like it then? No, I don't like it, and,
though he is my liberal benefactor, I disparage him for it. Then pray,' said Bella, sternly
putting the question to herself in the looking−glass as usual, 'what do you mean by this, you
inconsistent little Beast?'
The looking−glass preserving a discreet ministerial silence when thus called upon for
explanation, Bella went to bed with a weariness upon her spirit which was more than the
weariness of want of sleep. And again in the morning, she looked for the cloud, and for the
deepening of the cloud, upon the Golden Dustman's face.
She had begun by this time to be his frequent companion in his morning strolls about
the streets, and it was at this time that he made her a party to his engaging in a curious
pursuit. Having been hard at work in one dull enclosure all his life, he had a child's delight
in looking at shops. It had been one of the first novelties and pleasures of his freedom, and
was equally the delight of his wife. For many years their only walks in London had been
taken on Sundays when the shops were shut; and when every day in the week became their
holiday, they derived an enjoyment from the variety and fancy and beauty of the display in
the windows, which seemed incapable of exhaustion. As if the principal streets were a great
Theatre and the play were childishly new to them, Mr and Mrs Boffin, from the beginning of
Bella's intimacy in their house, had been constantly in the front row, charmed with all they
saw and applauding vigorously. But now, Mr Boffin's interest began to centre in
book−shops; and more than that – for that of itself would not have been much – in one
exceptional kind of book.
'Look in here, my dear,' Mr Boffin would say, checking Bella's arm at a bookseller's
window; 'you can read at sight, and your eyes are as sharp as they're bright. Now, look well
about you, my dear, and tell me if you see any book about a Miser.'
If Bella saw such a book, Mr Boffin would instantly dart in and buy it. And still, as if
they had not found it, they would seek out another book−shop, and Mr Boffin would say,
'Now, look well all round, my dear, for a Life of a Miser, or any book of that sort; any Lives
of odd characters who may have been Misers.'
Bella, thus directed, would examine the window with the greatest attention, while Mr
Boffin would examine her face. The moment she pointed out any book as being entitled
Lives of eccentric personages, Anecdotes of strange characters, Records of remarkable
individuals, or anything to that purpose, Mr Boffin's countenance would light up, and he
would instantly dart in and buy it. Size, price, quality, were of no account. Any book that
seemed to promise a chance of miserly biography, Mr Boffin purchased without a moment's
delay and carried home. Happening to be informed by a bookseller that a portion of the
Annual Register was devoted to 'Characters', Mr Boffin at once bought a whole set of that
ingenious compilation, and began to carry it home piecemeal, confiding a volume to Bella,
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and bearing three himself. The completion of this labour occupied them about a fortnight.
When the task was done, Mr Boffin, with his appetite for Misers whetted instead of satiated,
began to look out again.
It very soon became unnecessary to tell Bella what to look for, and an understanding
was established between her and Mr Boffin that she was always to look for Lives of Misers.
Morning after morning they roamed about the town together, pursuing this singular research.
Miserly literature not being abundant, the proportion of failures to successes may have been
as a hundred to one; still Mr Boffin, never wearied, remained as avaricious for misers as he
had been at the first onset. It was curious that Bella never saw the books about the house,
nor did she ever hear from Mr Boffin one word of reference to their contents. He seemed to
save up his Misers as they had saved up their money. As they had been greedy for it, and
secret about it, and had hidden it, so he was greedy for them, and secret about them, and hid
them. But beyond all doubt it was to be noticed, and was by Bella very clearly noticed, that,
as he pursued the acquisition of those dismal records with the ardour of Don Quixote for his
books of chivalry, he began to spend his money with a more sparing hand. And often when
he came out of a shop with some new account of one of those wretched lunatics, she would
almost shrink from the sly dry chuckle with which he would take her arm again and trot
away. It did not appear that Mrs Boffin knew of this taste. He made no allusion to it, except
in the morning walks when he and Bella were always alone; and Bella, partly under the
impression that he took her into his confidence by implication, and partly in remembrance of
Mrs Boffin's anxious face that night, held the same reserve.
While these occurrences were in progress, Mrs Lammle made the discovery that Bella
had a fascinating influence over her. The Lammles, originally presented by the dear
Veneerings, visited the Boffins on all grand occasions, and Mrs Lammle had not previously
found this out; but now the knowledge came upon her all at once. It was a most
extraordinary thing (she said to Mrs Boffin); she was foolishly susceptible of the power of
beauty, but it wasn't altogether that; she never had been able to resist a natural grace of
manner, but it wasn't altogether that; it was more than that, and there was no name for the
indescribable extent and degree to which she was captivated by this charming girl.
This charming girl having the words repeated to her by Mrs Boffin (who was proud of
her being admired, and would have done anything to give her pleasure), naturally recognized
in Mrs Lammle a woman of penetration and taste. Responding to the sentiments, by being
very gracious to Mrs Lammle, she gave that lady the means of so improving her opportunity,
as that the captivation became reciprocal, though always wearing an appearance of greater
sobriety on Bella's part than on the enthusiastic Sophronia's. Howbeit, they were so much
together that, for a time, the Boffin chariot held Mrs Lammle oftener than Mrs Boffin: a
preference of which the latter worthy soul was not in the least jealous, placidly remarking,
'Mrs Lammle is a younger companion for her than I am, and Lor! she's more fashionable.'
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But between Bella Wilfer and Georgiana Podsnap there was this one difference, among
many others, that Bella was in no danger of being captivated by Alfred. She distrusted and
disliked him. Indeed, her perception was so quick, and her observation so sharp, that after all
she mistrusted his wife too, though with her giddy vanity and wilfulness she squeezed the
mistrust away into a corner of her mind, and blocked it up there.
Mrs Lammle took the friendliest interest in Bella's making a good match. Mrs Lammle
said, in a sportive way, she really must show her beautiful Bella what kind of wealthy
creatures she and Alfred had on hand, who would as one man fall at her feet enslaved.
Fitting occasion made, Mrs Lammle accordingly produced the most passable of those
feverish, boastful, and indefinably loose gentlemen who were always lounging in and out of
the City on questions of the Bourse and Greek and Spanish and India and Mexican and par
and premium and discount and three−quarters and seven−eighths. Who in their agreeable
manner did homage to Bella as if she were a compound of fine girl, thorough−bred horse,
well−built drag, and remarkable pipe. But without the least effect, though even Mr
Fledgeby's attractions were cast into the scale.
'I fear, Bella dear,' said Mrs Lammle one day in the chariot, 'that you will be very hard
to please.'
'I don't expect to be pleased, dear,' said Bella, with a languid turn of her eyes.
'Truly, my love,' returned Sophronia, shaking her head, and smiling her best smile, 'it
would not be very easy to find a man worthy of your attractions.'
'The question is not a man, my dear,' said Bella, coolly, 'but an establishment.'
'My love,' returned Mrs Lammle, 'your prudence amazes me – where DID you study life
so well! – you are right. In such a case as yours, the object is a fitting establishment. You
could not descend to an inadequate one from Mr Boffin's house, and even if your beauty
alone could not command it, it is to be assumed that Mr and Mrs Boffin will – '
'Oh! they have already,' Bella interposed.
'No! Have they really?'
A little vexed by a suspicion that she had spoken precipitately, and withal a little defiant
of her own vexation, Bella determined not to retreat.
'That is to say,' she explained, 'they have told me they mean to portion me as their
adopted child, if you mean that. But don't mention it.'
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'Mention it!' replied Mrs Lammle, as if she were full of awakened feeling at the
suggestion of such an impossibility. 'Men−tion it!'
'I don't mind telling you, Mrs Lammle – ' Bella began again.
'My love, say Sophronia, or I must not say Bella.'
With a little short, petulant 'Oh!' Bella complied. 'Oh! – Sophronia then – I don't mind
telling you, Sophronia, that I am convinced I have no heart, as people call it; and that I think
that sort of thing is nonsense.'
'Brave girl!' murmured Mrs Lammle.
'And so,' pursued Bella, 'as to seeking to please myself, I don't; except in the one respect
I have mentioned. I am indifferent otherwise.'
'But you can't help pleasing, Bella,' said Mrs Lammle, rallying her with an arch look
and her best smile, 'you can't help making a proud and an admiring husband. You may not
care to please yourself, and you may not care to please him, but you are not a free agent as
to pleasing: you are forced to do that, in spite of yourself, my dear; so it may be a question
whether you may not as well please yourself too, if you can.'
Now, the very grossness of this flattery put Bella upon proving that she actually did
please in spite of herself. She had a misgiving that she was doing wrong – though she had an
indistinct foreshadowing that some harm might come of it thereafter, she little thought what
consequences it would really bring about – but she went on with her confidence.
'Don't talk of pleasing in spite of one's self, dear,' said Bella. 'I have had enough of that.'
'Ay?' cried Mrs Lammle. 'Am I already corroborated, Bella?'
'Never mind, Sophronia, we will not speak of it any more. Don't ask me about it.'
This plainly meaning Do ask me about it, Mrs Lammle did as she was requested.
'Tell me, Bella. Come, my dear. What provoking burr has been inconveniently attracted
to the charming skirts, and with difficulty shaken off?'
'Provoking indeed,' said Bella, 'and no burr to boast of! But don't ask me.'
'Shall I guess?'
'You would never guess. What would you say to our Secretary?'
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'My dear! The hermit Secretary, who creeps up and down the back stairs, and is never
seen!'
'I don't know about his creeping up and down the back stairs,' said Bella, rather
contemptuously, 'further than knowing that he does no such thing; and as to his never being
seen, I should be content never to have seen him, though he is quite as visible as you are.
But I pleased HIM (for my sins) and he had the presumption to tell me so.'
'The man never made a declaration to you, my dear Bella!'
'Are you sure of that, Sophronia?' said Bella. 'I am not. In fact, I am sure of the
contrary.'
'The man must be mad,' said Mrs Lammle, with a kind of resignation.
'He appeared to be in his senses,' returned Bella, tossing her head, 'and he had plenty to
say for himself. I told him my opinion of his declaration and his conduct, and dismissed him.
Of course this has all been very inconvenient to me, and very disagreeable. It has remained a
secret, however. That word reminds me to observe, Sophronia, that I have glided on into
telling you the secret, and that I rely upon you never to mention it.'
'Mention it!' repeated Mrs Lammle with her former feeling. 'Men− tion it!'
This time Sophronia was so much in earnest that she found it necessary to bend forward
in the carriage and give Bella a kiss. A Judas order of kiss; for she thought, while she yet
pressed Bella's hand after giving it, 'Upon your own showing, you vain heartless girl, puffed
up by the doting folly of a dustman, I need have no relenting towards YOU. If my husband,
who sends me here, should form any schemes for making YOU a victim, I should certainly
not cross him again.' In those very same moments, Bella was thinking, 'Why am I always at
war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to
have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers
against her that I hear in my heart?'
As usual, there was no answer in the looking−glass when she got home and referred
these questions to it. Perhaps if she had consulted some better oracle, the result might have
been more satisfactory; but she did not, and all things consequent marched the march before
them.
On one point connected with the watch she kept on Mr Boffin, she felt very inquisitive,
and that was the question whether the Secretary watched him too, and followed the sure and
steady change in him, as she did? Her very limited intercourse with Mr Rokesmith rendered
this hard to find out. Their communication now, at no time extended beyond the
preservation of commonplace appearances before Mr and Mrs Boffin; and if Bella and the
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Secretary were ever left alone together by any chance, he immediately withdrew. She
consulted his face when she could do so covertly, as she worked or read, and could make
nothing of it. He looked subdued; but he had acquired a strong command of feature, and,
whenever Mr Boffin spoke to him in Bella's presence, or whatever revelation of himself Mr
Boffin made, the Secretary's face changed no more than a wall. A slightly knitted brow, that
expressed nothing but an almost mechanical attention, and a compression of the mouth, that
might have been a guard against a scornful smile – these she saw from morning to night,
from day to day, from week to week, monotonous, unvarying, set, as in a piece of sculpture.
The worst of the matter was, that it thus fell out insensibly – and most provokingly, as
Bella complained to herself, in her impetuous little manner – that her observation of Mr
Boffin involved a continual observation of Mr Rokesmith. 'Won't THAT extract a look from
him?' – 'Can it be possible THAT makes no impression on him?' Such questions Bella
would propose to herself, often as many times in a day as there were hours in it. Impossible
to know. Always the same fixed face.
'Can he be so base as to sell his very nature for two hundred a year?' Bella would think.
And then, 'But why not? It's a mere question of price with others besides him. I suppose I
would sell mine, if I could get enough for it.' And so she would come round again to the war
with herself.
A kind of illegibility, though a different kind, stole over Mr Boffin's face. Its old
simplicity of expression got masked by a certain craftiness that assimilated even his
good−humour to itself. His very smile was cunning, as if he had been studying smiles
among the portraits of his misers. Saving an occasional burst of impatience, or coarse
assertion of his mastery, his good−humour remained to him, but it had now a sordid alloy of
distrust; and though his eyes should twinkle and all his face should laugh, he would sit
holding himself in his own arms, as if he had an inclination to hoard himself up, and must
always grudgingly stand on the defensive.
What with taking heed of these two faces, and what with feeling conscious that the
stealthy occupation must set some mark on her own, Bella soon began to think that there
was not a candid or a natural face among them all but Mrs Boffin's. None the less because it
was far less radiant than of yore, faithfully reflecting in its anxiety and regret every line of
change in the Golden Dustman's.
'Rokesmith,' said Mr Boffin one evening when they were all in his room again, and he
and the Secretary had been going over some accounts, 'I am spending too much money. Or
leastways, you are spending too much for me.'
'You are rich, sir.'
'I am not,' said Mr Boffin.
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The sharpness of the retort was next to telling the Secretary that he lied. But it brought
no change of expression into the set face.
'I tell you I am not rich,' repeated Mr Boffin, 'and I won't have it.'
'You are not rich, sir?' repeated the Secretary, in measured words.
'Well,' returned Mr Boffin, 'if I am, that's my business. I am not going to spend at this
rate, to please you, or anybody. You wouldn't like it, if it was your money.'
'Even in that impossible case, sir, I – '
'Hold your tongue!' said Mr Boffin. 'You oughtn't to like it in any case. There! I didn't
mean to he rude, but you put me out so, and after all I'm master. I didn't intend to tell you to
hold your tongue. I beg your pardon. Don't hold your tongue. Only, don't contradict. Did you
ever come across the life of Mr Elwes?' referring to his favourite subject at last.
'The miser?'
'Ah, people called him a miser. People are always calling other people something. Did
you ever read about him?'
'I think so.'
'He never owned to being rich, and yet he might have bought me twice over. Did you
ever hear of Daniel Dancer?'
'Another miser? Yes.'
'He was a good 'un,' said Mr Boffin, 'and he had a sister worthy of him. They never
called themselves rich neither. If they HAD called themselves rich, most likely they
wouldn't have been so.'
'They lived and died very miserably. Did they not, sir?'
'No, I don't know that they did,' said Mr Boffin, curtly.
'Then they are not the Misers I mean. Those abject wretches – '
'Don't call names, Rokesmith,' said Mr Boffin.
' – That exemplary brother and sister – lived and died in the foulest and filthiest
degradation.'
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'They pleased themselves,' said Mr Boffin, 'and I suppose they could have done no more
if they had spent their money. But however, I ain't going to fling mine away. Keep the
expenses down. The fact is, you ain't enough here, Rokesmith. It wants constant attention in
the littlest things. Some of us will be dying in a workhouse next.'
'As the persons you have cited,' quietly remarked the Secretary, 'thought they would, if I
remember, sir.'
'And very creditable in 'em too,' said Mr Boffin. 'Very independent in 'em! But never
mind them just now. Have you given notice to quit your lodgings?'
'Under your direction, I have, sir.'
'Then I tell you what,' said Mr Boffin; 'pay the quarter's rent – pay the quarter's rent, it'll
be the cheapest thing in the end – and come here at once, so that you may be always on the
spot, day and night, and keep the expenses down. You'll charge the quarter's rent to me, and
we must try and save it somewhere. You've got some lovely furniture; haven't you?'
'The furniture in my rooms is my own.'
'Then we shan't have to buy any for you. In case you was to think it,' said Mr Boffin,
with a look of peculiar shrewdness, 'so honourably independent in you as to make it a relief
to your mind, to make that furniture over to me in the light of a set−off against the quarter's
rent, why ease your mind, ease your mind. I don't ask it, but I won't stand in your way if you
should consider it due to yourself. As to your room, choose any empty room at the top of the
house.'
'Any empty room will do for me,' said the Secretary.
'You can take your pick,' said Mr Boffin, 'and it'll be as good as eight or ten shillings a
week added to your income. I won't deduct for it; I look to you to make it up handsomely by
keeping the expenses down. Now, if you'll show a light, I'll come to your office−room and
dispose of a letter or two.'
On that clear, generous face of Mrs Boffin's, Bella had seen such traces of a pang at the
heart while this dialogue was being held, that she had not the courage to turn her eyes to it
when they were left alone. Feigning to be intent on her embroidery, she sat plying her needle
until her busy hand was stopped by Mrs Boffin's hand being lightly laid upon it. Yielding to
the touch, she felt her hand carried to the good soul's lips, and felt a tear fall on it.
'Oh, my loved husband!' said Mrs Boffin. 'This is hard to see and hear. But my dear
Bella, believe me that in spite of all the change in him, he is the best of men.'
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He came back, at the moment when Bella had taken the hand comfortingly between her
own.
'Eh?' said he, mistrustfully looking in at the door. 'What's she telling you?'
'She is only praising you, sir,' said Bella.
'Praising me? You are sure? Not blaming me for standing on my own defence against a
crew of plunderers, who could suck me dry by driblets? Not blaming me for getting a little
hoard together?'
He came up to them, and his wife folded her hands upon his shoulder, and shook her
head as she laid it on her hands.
'There, there, there!' urged Mr Boffin, not unkindly. 'Don't take on, old lady.'
'But I can't bear to see you so, my dear.'
'Nonsense! Recollect we are not our old selves. Recollect, we must scrunch or be
scrunched. Recollect, we must hold our own. Recollect, money makes money. Don't you be
uneasy, Bella, my child; don't you be doubtful. The more I save, the more you shall have.'
Bella thought it was well for his wife that she was musing with her affectionate face on
his shoulder; for there was a cunning light in his eyes as he said all this, which seemed to
cast a disagreeable illumination on the change in him, and make it morally uglier.
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Chapter 6 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN
FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY
I
t had come to pass that Mr Silas Wegg now rarely attended the minion of fortune and
the worm of the hour, at his (the worm's and minion's) own house, but lay under general
instructions to await him within a certain margin of hours at the Bower. Mr Wegg took this
arrangement in great dudgeon, because the appointed hours were evening hours, and those
he considered precious to the progress of the friendly move. But it was quite in character, he
bitterly remarked to Mr Venus, that the upstart who had trampled on those eminent
creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, should oppress his
literary man.
The Roman Empire having worked out its destruction, Mr Boffin next appeared in a cab
with Rollin's Ancient History, which valuable work being found to possess lethargic
properties, broke down, at about the period when the whole of the army of Alexander the
Macedonian (at that time about forty thousand strong) burst into tears simultaneously, on his
being taken with a shivering fit after bathing. The Wars of the Jews, likewise languishing
under Mr Wegg's generalship, Mr Boffin arrived in another cab with Plutarch: whose Lives
he found in the sequel extremely entertaining, though he hoped Plutarch might not expect
him to believe them all. What to believe, in the course of his reading, was Mr Boffin's chief
literary difficulty indeed; for some time he was divided in his mind between half, all, or
none; at length, when he decided, as a moderate man, to compound with half, the question
still remained, which half? And that stumbling− block he never got over.
One evening, when Silas Wegg had grown accustomed to the arrival of his patron in a
cab, accompanied by some profane historian charged with unutterable names of
incomprehensible peoples, of impossible descent, waging wars any number of years and
syllables long, and carrying illimitable hosts and riches about, with the greatest ease, beyond
the confines of geography – one evening the usual time passed by, and no patron appeared.
After half an hour's grace, Mr Wegg proceeded to the outer gate, and there executed a
whistle, conveying to Mr Venus, if perchance within hearing, the tidings of his being at
home and disengaged. Forth from the shelter of a neighbouring wall, Mr Venus then
emerged.
'Brother in arms,' said Mr Wegg, in excellent spirits, 'welcome!'
In return, Mr Venus gave him a rather dry good evening.
'Walk in, brother,' said Silas, clapping him on the shoulder, 'and take your seat in my
chimley corner; for what says the ballad?
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«No malice to dread, sir, And no falsehood to fear, But truth to delight me, Mr Venus,
And I forgot what to cheer. Li toddle de om dee. And something to guide, My ain fireside,
sir, My ain fireside.»'
With this quotation (depending for its neatness rather on the spirit than the words), Mr
Wegg conducted his guest to his hearth.
'And you come, brother,' said Mr Wegg, in a hospitable glow, 'you come like I don't
know what – exactly like it – I shouldn't know you from it – shedding a halo all around you.'
'What kind of halo?' asked Mr Venus.
''Ope sir,' replied Silas. 'That's YOUR halo.'
Mr Venus appeared doubtful on the point, and looked rather discontentedly at the fire.
'We'll devote the evening, brother,' exclaimed Wegg, 'to prosecute our friendly move.
And arterwards, crushing a flowing wine−cup – which I allude to brewing rum and water –
we'll pledge one another. For what says the Poet?
«And you needn't Mr Venus be your black bottle, For surely I'll be mine, And we'll take
a glass with a slice of lemon in it to which you're partial, For auld lang syne.»'
This flow of quotation and hospitality in Wegg indicated his observation of some little
querulousness on the part of Venus.
'Why, as to the friendly move,' observed the last−named gentleman, rubbing his knees
peevishly, 'one of my objections to it is, that it DON'T move.'
'Rome, brother,' returned Wegg: 'a city which (it may not be generally known)
originated in twins and a wolf; and ended in Imperial marble: wasn't built in a day.'
'Did I say it was?' asked Venus.
'No, you did not, brother. Well−inquired.'
'But I do say,' proceeded Venus, 'that I am taken from among my trophies of anatomy,
am called upon to exchange my human warious for mere coal−ashes warious, and nothing
comes of it. I think I must give up.'
'No, sir!' remonstrated Wegg, enthusiastically. 'No, Sir!
«Charge, Chester, charge, On, Mr Venus, on!»
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Never say die, sir! A man of your mark!'
'It's not so much saying it that I object to,' returned Mr Venus, 'as doing it. And having
got to do it whether or no, I can't afford to waste my time on groping for nothing in cinders.'
'But think how little time you have given to the move, sir, after all,' urged Wegg. 'Add
the evenings so occupied together, and what do they come to? And you, sir, harmonizer with
myself in opinions, views, and feelings, you with the patience to fit together on wires the
whole framework of society – I allude to the human skelinton – you to give in so soon!'
'I don't like it,' returned Mr Venus moodily, as he put his head between his knees and
stuck up his dusty hair. 'And there's no encouragement to go on.'
'Not them Mounds without,' said Mr Wegg, extending his right hand with an air of
solemn reasoning, 'encouragement? Not them Mounds now looking down upon us?'
'They're too big,' grumbled Venus. 'What's a scratch here and a scrape there, a poke in
this place and a dig in the other, to them. Besides; what have we found?'
'What HAVE we found?' cried Wegg, delighted to be able to acquiesce. 'Ah! There I
grant you, comrade. Nothing. But on the contrary, comrade, what MAY we find? There
you'll grant me. Anything.'
'I don't like it,' pettishly returned Venus as before. 'I came into it without enough
consideration. And besides again. Isn't your own Mr Boffin well acquainted with the
Mounds? And wasn't he well acquainted with the deceased and his ways? And has he ever
showed any expectation of finding anything?'
At that moment wheels were heard.
'Now, I should be loth,' said Mr Wegg, with an air of patient injury, 'to think so ill of
him as to suppose him capable of coming at this time of night. And yet it sounds like him.'
A ring at the yard bell.
'It is him,' said Mr Wegg, 'and he it capable of it. I am sorry, because I could have
wished to keep up a little lingering fragment of respect for him.'
Here Mr Boffin was heard lustily calling at the yard gate, 'Halloa! Wegg! Halloa!'
'Keep your seat, Mr Venus,' said Wegg. 'He may not stop.' And then called out, 'Halloa,
sir! Halloa! I'm with you directly, sir! Half a minute, Mr Boffin. Coming, sir, as fast as my
leg will bring me!' And so with a show of much cheerful alacrity stumped out to the gate
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with a light, and there, through the window of a cab, descried Mr Boffin inside, blocked up
with books.
'Here! lend a hand, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin excitedly, 'I can't get out till the way is
cleared for me. This is the Annual Register, Wegg, in a cab−full of wollumes. Do you know
him?'
'Know the Animal Register, sir?' returned the Impostor, who had caught the name
imperfectly. 'For a trifling wager, I think I could find any Animal in him, blindfold, Mr
Boffin.'
'And here's Kirby's Wonderful Museum,' said Mr Boffin, 'and Caulfield's Characters,
and Wilson's. Such Characters, Wegg, such Characters! I must have one or two of the best of
'em to− night. It's amazing what places they used to put the guineas in, wrapped up in rags.
Catch hold of that pile of wollumes, Wegg, or it'll bulge out and burst into the mud. Is there
anyone about, to help?'
'There's a friend of mine, sir, that had the intention of spending the evening with me
when I gave you up – much against my will – for the night.'
'Call him out,' cried Mr Boffin in a bustle; 'get him to bear a hand. Don't drop that one
under your arm. It's Dancer. Him and his sister made pies of a dead sheep they found when
they were out a walking. Where's your friend? Oh, here's your friend. Would you be so good
as help Wegg and myself with these books? But don't take Jemmy Taylor of Southwark, nor
yet Jemmy Wood of Gloucester. These are the two Jemmys. I'll carry them myself.'
Not ceasing to talk and bustle, in a state of great excitement, Mr Boffin directed the
removal and arrangement of the books, appearing to be in some sort beside himself until
they were all deposited on the floor, and the cab was dismissed.
'There!' said Mr Boffin, gloating over them. 'There they are, like the four−and−twenty
fiddlers – all of a row. Get on your spectacles, Wegg; I know where to find the best of 'em,
and we'll have a taste at once of what we have got before us. What's your friend's name?'
Mr Wegg presented his friend as Mr Venus.
'Eh?' cried Mr Boffin, catching at the name. 'Of Clerkenwell?'
'Of Clerkenwell, sir,' said Mr Venus.
'Why, I've heard of you,' cried Mr Boffin, 'I heard of you in the old man's time. You
knew him. Did you ever buy anything of him?' With piercing eagerness.
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'No, sir,' returned Venus.
'But he showed you things; didn't he?'
Mr Venus, with a glance at his friend, replied in the affirmative.
'What did he show you?' asked Mr Boffin, putting his hands behind him, and eagerly
advancing his head. 'Did he show you boxes, little cabinets, pocket−books, parcels, anything
locked or sealed, anything tied up?'
Mr Venus shook his head.
'Are you a judge of china?'
Mr Venus again shook his head.
'Because if he had ever showed you a teapot, I should be glad to know of it,' said Mr
Boffin. And then, with his right hand at his lips, repeated thoughtfully, 'a Teapot, a Teapot',
and glanced over the books on the floor, as if he knew there was something interesting
connected with a teapot, somewhere among them.
Mr Wegg and Mr Venus looked at one another wonderingly: and Mr Wegg, in fitting on
his spectacles, opened his eyes wide, over their rims, and tapped the side of his nose: as an
admonition to Venus to keep himself generally wide awake.
'A Teapot,' repeated Mr Boffin, continuing to muse and survey the books; 'a Teapot, a
Teapot. Are you ready, Wegg?'
'I am at your service, sir,' replied that gentleman, taking his usual seat on the usual
settle, and poking his wooden leg under the table before it. 'Mr Venus, would you make
yourself useful, and take a seat beside me, sir, for the conveniency of snuffing the candles?'
Venus complying with the invitation while it was yet being given, Silas pegged at him
with his wooden leg, to call his particular attention to Mr Boffin standing musing before the
fire, in the space between the two settles.
'Hem! Ahem!' coughed Mr Wegg to attract his employer's attention. 'Would you wish to
commence with an Animal, sir – from the Register?'
'No,' said Mr Boffin, 'no, Wegg.' With that, producing a little book from his
breast−pocket, he handed it with great care to the literary gentlemen, and inquired, 'What do
you call that, Wegg?'
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'This, sir,' replied Silas, adjusting his spectacles, and referring to the title−page, 'is
Merryweather's Lives and Anecdotes of Misers. Mr Venus, would you make yourself useful
and draw the candles a little nearer, sir?' This to have a special opportunity of bestowing a
stare upon his comrade.
'Which of 'em have you got in that lot?' asked Mr Boffin. 'Can you find out pretty easy?'
'Well, sir,' replied Silas, turning to the table of contents and slowly fluttering the leaves
of the book, 'I should say they must be pretty well all here, sir; here's a large assortment, sir;
my eye catches John Overs, sir, John Little, sir, Dick Jarrel, John Elwes, the Reverend Mr
Jones of Blewbury, Vulture Hopkins, Daniel Dancer− −'
'Give us Dancer, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin.
With another stare at his comrade, Silas sought and found the place.
'Page a hundred and nine, Mr Boffin. Chapter eight. Contents of chapter, «His birth and
estate. His garments and outward appearance. Miss Dancer and her feminine graces. The
Miser's Mansion. The finding of a treasure. The Story of the Mutton Pies. A Miser's Idea of
Death. Bob, the Miser's cur. Griffiths and his Master. How to turn a penny. A substitute for a
Fire. The Advantages of keeping a Snuff−box. The Miser dies without a Shirt. The
Treasures of a Dunghill – »'
'Eh? What's that?' demanded Mr Boffin.
'«The Treasures,» sir,' repeated Silas, reading very distinctly, '«of a Dunghill.» Mr
Venus, sir, would you obleege with the snuffers?' This, to secure attention to his adding with
his lips only, 'Mounds!'
Mr Boffin drew an arm−chair into the space where he stood, and said, seating himself
and slyly rubbing his hands:
'Give us Dancer.'
Mr Wegg pursued the biography of that eminent man through its various phases of
avarice and dirt, through Miss Dancer's death on a sick regimen of cold dumpling, and
through Mr Dancer's keeping his rags together with a hayband, and warming his dinner by
sitting upon it, down to the consolatory incident of his dying naked in a sack. After which he
read on as follows:
'«The house, or rather the heap of ruins, in which Mr Dancer lived, and which at his
death devolved to the right of Captain Holmes, was a most miserable, decayed building, for
it had not been repaired for more than half a century.»'
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(Here Mr Wegg eyes his comrade and the room in which they sat: which had not been
repaired for a long time.)
'«But though poor in external structure, the ruinous fabric was very rich in the interior.
It took many weeks to explore its whole contents; and Captain Holmes found it a very
agreeable task to dive into the miser's secret hoards.»'
(Here Mr Wegg repeated 'secret hoards', and pegged his comrade again.)
'«One of Mr Dancer's richest escretoires was found to be a dungheap in the cowhouse; a
sum but little short of two thousand five hundred pounds was contained in this rich piece of
manure; and in an old jacket, carefully tied, and strongly nailed down to the manger, in bank
notes and gold were found five hundred pounds more.»'
(Here Mr Wegg's wooden leg started forward under the table, and slowly elevated itself
as he read on.)
'«Several bowls were discovered filled with guineas and half− guineas; and at different
times on searching the corners of the house they found various parcels of bank notes. Some
were crammed into the crevices of the wall»';
(Here Mr Venus looked at the wall.)
'«Bundles were hid under the cushions and covers of the chairs»';
(Here Mr Venus looked under himself on the settle.)
'«Some were reposing snugly at the back of the drawers; and notes amounting to six
hundred pounds were found neatly doubled up in the inside of an old teapot. In the stable the
Captain found jugs full of old dollars and shillings. The chimney was not left unsearched,
and paid very well for the trouble; for in nineteen different holes, all filled with soot, were
found various sums of money, amounting together to more than two hundred pounds.»'
On the way to this crisis Mr Wegg's wooden leg had gradually elevated itself more and
more, and he had nudged Mr Venus with his opposite elbow deeper and deeper, until at
length the preservation of his balance became incompatible with the two actions, and he now
dropped over sideways upon that gentleman, squeezing him against the settle's edge. Nor did
either of the two, for some few seconds, make any effort to recover himself; both remaining
in a kind of pecuniary swoon.
But the sight of Mr Boffin sitting in the arm−chair hugging himself, with his eyes upon
the fire, acted as a restorative. Counterfeiting a sneeze to cover their movements, Mr Wegg,
with a spasmodic 'Tish−ho!' pulled himself and Mr Venus up in a masterly manner.
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'Let's have some more,' said Mr Boffin, hungrily.
'John Elwes is the next, sir. Is it your pleasure to take John Elwes?'
'Ah!' said Mr Boffin. 'Let's hear what John did.'
He did not appear to have hidden anything, so went off rather flatly. But an exemplary
lady named Wilcocks, who had stowed away gold and silver in a pickle−pot in a clock−case,
a canister−full of treasure in a hole under her stairs, and a quantity of money in an old
rat−trap, revived the interest. To her succeeded another lady, claiming to be a pauper, whose
wealth was found wrapped up in little scraps of paper and old rag. To her, another lady,
apple− woman by trade, who had saved a fortune of ten thousand pounds and hidden it 'here
and there, in cracks and corners, behind bricks and under the flooring.' To her, a French
gentleman, who had crammed up his chimney, rather to the detriment of its drawing powers,
'a leather valise, containing twenty thousand francs, gold coins, and a large quantity of
precious stones,' as discovered by a chimneysweep after his death. By these steps Mr Wegg
arrived at a concluding instance of the human Magpie:
'"Many years ago, there lived at Cambridge a miserly old couple of the name of Jardine:
they had two sons: the father was a perfect miser, and at his death one thousand guineas
were discovered secreted in his bed. The two sons grew up as parsimonious as their sire.
When about twenty years of age, they commenced business at Cambridge as drapers, and
they continued there until their death. The establishment of the Messrs Jardine was the most
dirty of all the shops in Cambridge. Customers seldom went in to purchase, except perhaps
out of curiosity. The brothers were most disreputable−looking beings; for, although
surrounded with gay apparel as their staple in trade, they wore the most filthy rags
themselves. It is said that they had no bed, and, to save the expense of one, always slept on a
bundle of packing−cloths under the counter. In their housekeeping they were penurious in
the extreme. A joint of meat did not grace their board for twenty years. Yet when the first of
the brothers died, the other, much to his surprise, found large sums of money which had
been secreted even from him.'
'There!' cried Mr Boffin. 'Even from him, you see! There was only two of 'em, and yet
one of 'em hid from the other.'
Mr Venus, who since his introduction to the French gentleman, had been stooping to
peer up the chimney, had his attention recalled by the last sentence, and took the liberty of
repeating it.
'Do you like it?' asked Mr Boffin, turning suddenly.
'I beg your pardon, sir?'
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'Do you like what Wegg's been a−reading?'
Mr Venus answered that he found it extremely interesting.
'Then come again,' said Mr Boffin, 'and hear some more. Come when you like; come
the day after to−morrow, half an hour sooner. There's plenty more; there's no end to it.'
Mr Venus expressed his acknowledgments and accepted the invitation.
'It's wonderful what's been hid, at one time and another,' said Mr Boffin, ruminating;
'truly wonderful.'
'Meaning sir,' observed Wegg, with a propitiatory face to draw him out, and with
another peg at his friend and brother, 'in the way of money?'
'Money,' said Mr Boffin. 'Ah! And papers.'
Mr Wegg, in a languid transport, again dropped over on Mr Venus, and again
recovering himself, masked his emotions with a sneeze.
'Tish−ho! Did you say papers too, sir? Been hidden, sir?'
'Hidden and forgot,' said Mr Boffin. 'Why the bookseller that sold me the Wonderful
Museum – where's the Wonderful Museum?' He was on his knees on the floor in a moment,
groping eagerly among the books.
'Can I assist you, sir?' asked Wegg.
'No, I have got it; here it is,' said Mr Boflin, dusting it with the sleeve of his coat.
'Wollume four. I know it was the fourth wollume, that the bookseller read it to me out of.
Look for it, Wegg.'
Silas took the book and turned the leaves.
'Remarkable petrefaction, sir?'
'No, that's not it,' said Mr Boffin. 'It can't have been a petrefaction.'
'Memoirs of General John Reid, commonly called The Walking Rushlight, sir? With
portrait?'
'No, nor yet him,' said Mr Boffin.
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'Remarkable case of a person who swallowed a crown−piece, sir?'
'To hide it?' asked Mr Boffin.
'Why, no, sir,' replied Wegg, consulting the text, 'it appears to have been done by
accident. Oh! This next must be it. «Singular discovery of a will, lost twenty−one years.»'
'That's it!' cried Mr Boffin. 'Read that.'
'«A most extraordinary case,»' read Silas Wegg aloud, '«was tried at the last
Maryborough assizes in Ireland. It was briefly this. Robert Baldwin, in March 1782, made
his will, in which he devised the lands now in question, to the children of his youngest son;
soon after which his faculties failed him, and he became altogether childish and died, above
eighty years old. The defendant, the eldest son, immediately afterwards gave out that his
father had destroyed the will; and no will being found, he entered into possession of the
lands in question, and so matters remained for twenty−one years, the whole family during all
that time believing that the father had died without a will. But after twenty− one years the
defendant's wife died, and he very soon afterwards, at the age of seventy−eight, married a
very young woman: which caused some anxiety to his two sons, whose poignant expressions
of this feeling so exasperated their father, that he in his resentment executed a will to
disinherit his eldest son, and in his fit of anger showed it to his second son, who instantly
determined to get at it, and destroy it, in order to preserve the property to his brother. With
this view, he broke open his father's desk, where he found – not his father's will which he
sought after, but the will of his grandfather, which was then altogether forgotten in the
family.»'
'There!' said Mr Boffin. 'See what men put away and forget, or mean to destroy, and
don't!' He then added in a slow tone, 'As – ton – ish – ing!' And as he rolled his eyes all
round the room, Wegg and Venus likewise rolled their eyes all round the room. And then
Wegg, singly, fixed his eyes on Mr Boffin looking at the fire again; as if he had a mind to
spring upon him and demand his thoughts or his life.
'However, time's up for to−night,' said Mr Boffin, waving his hand after a silence.
'More, the day after to−morrow. Range the books upon the shelves, Wegg. I dare say Mr
Venus will be so kind as help you.'
While speaking, he thrust his hand into the breast of his outer coat, and struggled with
some object there that was too large to be got out easily. What was the stupefaction of the
friendly movers when this object at last emerging, proved to be a much−dilapidated dark
lantern!
Without at all noticing the effect produced by this little instrument, Mr Boffin stood it
on his knee, and, producing a box of matches, deliberately lighted the candle in the lantern,
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blew out the kindled match, and cast the end into the fire. 'I'm going, Wegg,' he then
announced, 'to take a turn about the place and round the yard. I don't want you. Me and this
same lantern have taken hundreds – thousands – of such turns in our time together.'
'But I couldn't think, sir – not on any account, I couldn't,' – Wegg was politely
beginning, when Mr Boffin, who had risen and was going towards the door, stopped:
'I have told you that I don't want you, Wegg.'
Wegg looked intelligently thoughtful, as if that had not occurred to his mind until he
now brought it to bear on the circumstance. He had nothing for it but to let Mr Boffin go out
and shut the door behind him. But, the instant he was on the other side of it, Wegg clutched
Venus with both hands, and said in a choking whisper, as if he were being strangled:
'Mr Venus, he must be followed, he must be watched, he mustn't be lost sight of for a
moment.'
'Why mustn't he?' asked Venus, also strangling.
'Comrade, you might have noticed I was a little elewated in spirits when you come in
to−night. I've found something.'
'What have you found?' asked Venus, clutching him with both hands, so that they stood
interlocked like a couple of preposterous gladiators.
'There's no time to tell you now. I think he must have gone to look for it. We must have
an eye upon him instantly.'
Releasing each other, they crept to the door, opened it softly, and peeped out. It was a
cloudy night, and the black shadow of the Mounds made the dark yard darker. 'If not a
double swindler,' whispered Wegg, 'why a dark lantern? We could have seen what he was
about, if he had carried a light one. Softly, this way.'
Cautiously along the path that was bordered by fragments of crockery set in ashes, the
two stole after him. They could hear him at his peculiar trot, crushing the loose cinders as he
went. 'He knows the place by heart,' muttered Silas, 'and don't need to turn his lantern on,
confound him!' But he did turn it on, almost in that same instant, and flashed its light upon
the first of the Mounds.
'Is that the spot?' asked Venus in a whisper.
'He's warm,' said Silas in the same tone. 'He's precious warm. He's close. I think he must
be going to look for it. What's that he's got in his hand?'
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'A shovel,' answered Venus. 'And he knows how to use it, remember, fifty times as well
as either of us.'
'If he looks for it and misses it, partner,' suggested Wegg, 'what shall we do?'
'First of all, wait till he does,' said Venus.
Discreet advice too, for he darkened his lantern again, and the mound turned black.
After a few seconds, he turned the light on once more, and was seen standing at the foot of
the second mound, slowly raising the lantern little by little until he held it up at arm's length,
as if he were examining the condition of the whole surface.
'That can't be the spot too?' said Venus.
'No,' said Wegg, 'he's getting cold.'
'It strikes me,' whispered Venus, 'that he wants to find out whether any one has been
groping about there.'
'Hush!' returned Wegg, 'he's getting colder and colder. – Now he's freezing!'
This exclamation was elicited by his having turned the lantern off again, and on again,
and being visible at the foot of the third mound.
'Why, he's going up it!' said Venus.
'Shovel and all!' said Wegg.
At a nimbler trot, as if the shovel over his shoulder stimulated him by reviving old
associations, Mr Boffin ascended the 'serpentining walk', up the Mound which he had
described to Silas Wegg on the occasion of their beginning to decline and fall. On striking
into it he turned his lantern off. The two followed him, stooping low, so that their figures
might make no mark in relief against the sky when he should turn his lantern on again. Mr
Venus took the lead, towing Mr Wegg, in order that his refractory leg might be promptly
extricated from any pitfalls it should dig for itself. They could just make out that the Golden
Dustman stopped to breathe. Of course they stopped too, instantly.
'This is his own Mound,' whispered Wegg, as he recovered his wind, 'this one.
'Why all three are his own,' returned Venus.
'So he thinks; but he's used to call this his own, because it's the one first left to him; the
one that was his legacy when it was all he took under the will.'
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'When he shows his light,' said Venus, keeping watch upon his dusky figure all the time,
'drop lower and keep closer.'
He went on again, and they followed again. Gaining the top of the Mound, he turned on
his light – but only partially – and stood it on the ground. A bare lopsided weatherbeaten
pole was planted in the ashes there, and had been there many a year. Hard by this pole, his
lantern stood: lighting a few feet of the lower part of it and a little of the ashy surface
around, and then casting off a purposeless little clear trail of light into the air.
'He can never be going to dig up the pole!' whispered Venus as they dropped low and
kept close.
'Perhaps it's holler and full of something,' whispered Wegg.
He was going to dig, with whatsoever object, for he tucked up his cuffs and spat on his
hands, and then went at it like an old digger as he was. He had no design upon the pole,
except that he measured a shovel's length from it before beginning, nor was it his purpose to
dig deep. Some dozen or so of expert strokes sufficed. Then, he stopped, looked down into
the cavity, bent over it, and took out what appeared to be an ordinary case−bottle: one of
those squat, high−shouldered, short−necked glass bottles which the Dutchman is said to
keep his Courage in. As soon as he had done this, he turned off his lantern, and they could
hear that he was filling up the hole in the dark. The ashes being easily moved by a skilful
hand, the spies took this as a hint to make off in good time. Accordingly, Mr Venus slipped
past Mr Wegg and towed him down. But Mr Wegg's descent was not accomplished without
some personal inconvenience, for his self−willed leg sticking into the ashes about half way
down, and time pressing, Mr Venus took the liberty of hauling him from his tether by the
collar: which occasioned him to make the rest of the journey on his back, with his head
enveloped in the skirts of his coat, and his wooden leg coming last, like a drag. So flustered
was Mr Wegg by this mode of travelling, that when he was set on the level ground with his
intellectual developments uppermost, he was quite unconscious of his bearings, and had not
the least idea where his place of residence was to be found, until Mr Venus shoved him into
it. Even then he staggered round and round, weakly staring about him, until Mr Venus with a
hard brush brushed his senses into him and the dust out of him.
Mr Boffin came down leisurely, for this brushing process had been well accomplished,
and Mr Venus had had time to take his breath, before he reappeared. That he had the bottle
somewhere about him could not be doubted; where, was not so clear. He wore a large rough
coat, buttoned over, and it might be in any one of half a dozen pockets.
'What's the matter, Wegg?' said Mr Boffin. 'You are as pale as a candle.'
Mr Wegg replied, with literal exactness, that he felt as if he had had a turn.
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'Bile,' said Mr Boffin, blowing out the light in the lantern, shutting it up, and stowing it
away in the breast of his coat as before. 'Are you subject to bile, Wegg?'
Mr Wegg again replied, with strict adherence to truth, that he didn't think he had ever
had a similar sensation in his head, to anything like the same extent.
'Physic yourself to−morrow, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin, 'to be in order for next night.
By−the−by, this neighbourhood is going to have a loss, Wegg.'
'A loss, sir?'
'Going to lose the Mounds.'
The friendly movers made such an obvious effort not to look at one another, that they
might as well have stared at one another with all their might.
'Have you parted with them, Mr Boffin?' asked Silas.
'Yes; they're going. Mine's as good as gone already.'
'You mean the little one of the three, with the pole atop, sir.'
'Yes,' said Mr Boffin, rubbing his ear in his old way, with that new touch of craftiness
added to it. 'It has fetched a penny. It'll begin to be carted off to−morrow.'
'Have you been out to take leave of your old friend, sir?' asked Silas, jocosely.
'No,' said Mr Boffin. 'What the devil put that in your head?'
He was so sudden and rough, that Wegg, who had been hovering closer and closer to his
skirts, despatching the back of his hand on exploring expeditions in search of the bottle's
surface, retired two or three paces.
'No offence, sir,' said Wegg, humbly. 'No offence.'
Mr Boffin eyed him as a dog might eye another dog who wanted his bone; and actually
retorted with a low growl, as the dog might have retorted.
'Good−night,' he said, after having sunk into a moody silence, with his hands clasped
behind him, and his eyes suspiciously wandering about Wegg. – 'No! stop there. I know the
way out, and I want no light.'
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Avarice, and the evening's legends of avarice, and the inflammatory effect of what he
had seen, and perhaps the rush of his ill−conditioned blood to his brain in his descent,
wrought Silas Wegg to such a pitch of insatiable appetite, that when the door closed he made
a swoop at it and drew Venus along with him.
'He mustn't go,' he cried. 'We mustn't let him go? He has got that bottle about him. We
must have that bottle.'
'Why, you wouldn't take it by force?' said Venus, restraining him.
'Wouldn't I? Yes I would. I'd take it by any force, I'd have it at any price! Are you so
afraid of one old man as to let him go, you coward?'
'I am so afraid of you, as not to let YOU go,' muttered Venus, sturdily, clasping him in
his arms.
'Did you hear him?' retorted Wegg. 'Did you hear him say that he was resolved to
disappoint us? Did you hear him say, you cur, that he was going to have the Mounds cleared
off, when no doubt the whole place will be rummaged? If you haven't the spirit of a mouse
to defend your rights, I have. Let me go after him.'
As in his wildness he was making a strong struggle for it, Mr Venus deemed it
expedient to lift him, throw him, and fall with him; well knowing that, once down, he would
not he up again easily with his wooden leg. So they both rolled on the floor, and, as they did
so, Mr Boffin shut the gate.
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Chapter 7 − THE FRIENDLY MOVE TAKES
UP A STRONG POSITION
T
he friendly movers sat upright on the floor, panting and eyeing one another, after Mr
Boffin had slammed the gate and gone away. In the weak eyes of Venus, and in every
reddish dust−coloured hair in his shock of hair, there was a marked distrust of Wegg and an
alertness to fly at him on perceiving the smallest occasion. In the hard−grained face of
Wegg, and in his stiff knotty figure (he looked like a German wooden toy), there was
expressed a politic conciliation, which had no spontaneity in it. Both were flushed, flustered,
and rumpled, by the late scuffle; and Wegg, in coming to the ground, had received a
humming knock on the back of his devoted head, which caused him still to rub it with an air
of having been highly – but disagreeably – astonished. Each was silent for some time,
leaving it to the other to begin.
'Brother,' said Wegg, at length breaking the silence, 'you were right, and I was wrong. I
forgot myself.'
Mr Venus knowingly cocked his shock of hair, as rather thinking Mr Wegg had
remembered himself, in respect of appearing without any disguise.
'But comrade,' pursued Wegg, 'it was never your lot to know Miss Elizabeth, Master
George, Aunt Jane, nor Uncle Parker.'
Mr Venus admitted that he had never known those distinguished persons, and added, in
effect, that he had never so much as desired the honour of their acquaintance.
'Don't say that, comrade!' retorted Wegg: 'No, don't say that! Because, without having
known them, you never can fully know what it is to be stimilated to frenzy by the sight of
the Usurper.'
Offering these excusatory words as if they reflected great credit on himself, Mr Wegg
impelled himself with his hands towards a chair in a corner of the room, and there, after a
variety of awkward gambols, attained a perpendicular position. Mr Venus also rose.
'Comrade,' said Wegg, 'take a seat. Comrade, what a speaking countenance is yours!'
Mr Venus involuntarily smoothed his countenance, and looked at his hand, as if to see
whether any of its speaking properties came off.
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'For clearly do I know, mark you,' pursued Wegg, pointing his words with his
forefinger, 'clearly do I know what question your expressive features puts to me.'
'What question?' said Venus.
'The question,' returned Wegg, with a sort of joyful affability, 'why I didn't mention
sooner, that I had found something. Says your speaking countenance to me: «Why didn't you
communicate that, when I first come in this evening? Why did you keep it back till you
thought Mr Boffin had come to look for the article?» Your speaking countenance,' said
Wegg, 'puts it plainer than language. Now, you can't read in my face what answer I give?'
'No, I can't,' said Venus.
'I knew it! And why not?' returned Wegg, with the same joyful candour. 'Because I lay
no claims to a speaking countenance. Because I am well aware of my deficiencies. All men
are not gifted alike. But I can answer in words. And in what words? These. I wanted to give
you a delightful sap – pur – IZE!'
Having thus elongated and emphasized the word Surprise, Mr Wegg shook his friend
and brother by both hands, and then clapped him on both knees, like an affectionate patron
who entreated him not to mention so small a service as that which it had been his happy
privilege to render.
'Your speaking countenance, ' said Wegg, 'being answered to its satisfaction, only asks
then, «What have you found?» Why, I hear it say the words!'
'Well?' retorted Venus snappishly, after waiting in vain. 'If you hear it say the words,
why don't you answer it?'
'Hear me out!' said Wegg. 'I'm a−going to. Hear me out! Man and brother, partner in
feelings equally with undertakings and actions, I have found a cash−box.'
'Where?'
' – Hear me out!' said Wegg. (He tried to reserve whatever he could, and, whenever
disclosure was forced upon him, broke into a radiant gush of Hear me out.) 'On a certain
day, sir – '
'When?' said Venus bluntly.
'N – no,' returned Wegg, shaking his head at once observantly, thoughtfully, and
playfully. 'No, sir! That's not your expressive countenance which asks that question. That's
your voice; merely your voice. To proceed. On a certain day, sir, I happened to be walking
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in the yard – taking my lonely round – for in the words of a friend of my own family, the
author of All's Well arranged as a duett:
«Deserted, as you will remember Mr Venus, by the waning moon, When stars, it will
occur to you before I mention it, proclaim night's cheerless noon, On tower, fort, or tented
ground, The sentry walks his lonely round, The sentry walks:»
– under those circumstances, sir, I happened to be walking in the yard early one
afternoon, and happened to have an iron rod in my hand, with which I have been sometimes
accustomed to beguile the monotony of a literary life, when I struck it against an object not
necessary to trouble you by naming – '
'It is necessary. What object?' demanded Venus, in a wrathful tone.
' – Hear me out!' said Wegg. 'The Pump. – When I struck it against the Pump, and
found, not only that the top was loose and opened with a lid, but that something in it rattled.
That something, comrade, I discovered to be a small flat oblong cash−box. Shall I say it was
disappintingly light?'
'There were papers in it,' said Venus.
'There your expressive countenance speaks indeed!' cried Wegg. 'A paper. The box was
locked, tied up, and sealed, and on the outside was a parchment label, with the writing, «MY
WILL, JOHN HARMON, TEMPORARILY DEPOSITED HERE.»'
'We must know its contents,' said Venus.
' – Hear me out!' cried Wegg. 'I said so, and I broke the box open.
'Without coming to me!' exclaimed Venus.
'Exactly so, sir!' returned Wegg, blandly and buoyantly. 'I see I take you with me! Hear,
hear, hear! Resolved, as your discriminating good sense perceives, that if you was to have a
sap− −pur – IZE, it should be a complete one! Well, sir. And so, as you have honoured me
by anticipating, I examined the document. Regularly executed, regularly witnessed, very
short. Inasmuch as he has never made friends, and has ever had a rebellious family, he, John
Harmon, gives to Nicodemus Boffin the Little Mound, which is quite enough for him, and
gives the whole rest and residue of his property to the Crown.'
'The date of the will that has been proved, must be looked to,' remarked Venus. 'It may
be later than this one.'
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' – Hear me out!' cried Wegg. 'I said so. I paid a shilling (never mind your sixpence of
it) to look up that will. Brother, that will is dated months before this will. And now, as a
fellow−man, and as a partner in a friendly move,' added Wegg, benignantly taking him by
both hands again, and clapping him on both knees again, 'say have I completed my labour of
love to your perfect satisfaction, and are you sap – pur – IZED?'
Mr Venus contemplated his fellow−man and partner with doubting eyes, and then
rejoined stiffly:
'This is great news indeed, Mr Wegg. There's no denying it. But I could have wished
you had told it me before you got your fright to− night, and I could have wished you had
ever asked me as your partner what we were to do, before you thought you were dividing a
responsibility.'
' – Hear me out!' cried Wegg. 'I knew you was a−going to say so. But alone I bore the
anxiety, and alone I'll bear the blame!' This with an air of great magnanimity.
'No,' said Venus. 'Let's see this will and this box.'
'Do I understand, brother,' returned Wegg with considerable reluctance, 'that it is your
wish to see this will and this – ?'
Mr Venus smote the table with his hand.
' – Hear me out!' said Wegg. 'Hear me out! I'll go and fetch 'em.'
After being some time absent, as if in his covetousness he could hardly make up his
mind to produce the treasure to his partner, he returned with an old leathern hat−box, into
which he had put the other box, for the better preservation of commonplace appearances,
and for the disarming of suspicion. 'But I don't half like opening it here,' said Silas in a low
voice, looking around: 'he might come back, he may not be gone; we don't know what he
may be up to, after what we've seen.'
'There's something in that,' assented Venus. 'Come to my place.'
Jealous of the custody of the box, and yet fearful of opening it under the existing
circumstances, Wegg hesitated. 'Come, I tell you,' repeated Venus, chafing, 'to my place.'
Not very well seeing his way to a refusal, Mr Wegg then rejoined in a gush, ' – Hear me out!
– Certainly.' So he locked up the Bower and they set forth: Mr Venus taking his arm, and
keeping it with remarkable tenacity.
They found the usual dim light burning in the window of Mr Venus's establishment,
imperfectly disclosing to the public the usual pair of preserved frogs, sword in hand, with
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their point of honour still unsettled. Mr Venus had closed his shop door on coming out, and
now opened it with the key and shut it again as soon as they were within; but not before he
had put up and barred the shutters of the shop window. 'No one can get in without being let
in,' said he then, 'and we couldn't be more snug than here.' So he raked together the yet warm
cinders in the rusty grate, and made a fire, and trimmed the candle on the little counter. As
the fire cast its flickering gleams here and there upon the dark greasy walls; the Hindoo
baby, the African baby, the articulated English baby, the assortment of skulls, and the rest of
the collection, came starting to their various stations as if they had all been out, like their
master and were punctual in a general rendezvous to assist at the secret. The French
gentleman had grown considerably since Mr Wegg last saw him, being now accommodated
with a pair of legs and a head, though his arms were yet in abeyance. To whomsoever the
head had originally belonged, Silas Wegg would have regarded it as a personal favour if he
had not cut quite so many teeth.
Silas took his seat in silence on the wooden box before the fire, and Venus dropping
into his low chair produced from among his skeleton hands, his tea−tray and tea−cups, and
put the kettle on. Silas inwardly approved of these preparations, trusting they might end in
Mr Venus's diluting his intellect.
'Now, sir,' said Venus, 'all is safe and quiet. Let us see this discovery.'
With still reluctant hands, and not without several glances towards the skeleton hands,
as if he mistrusted that a couple of them might spring forth and clutch the document, Wegg
opened the hat−box and revealed the cash−box, opened the cash−box and revealed the will.
He held a corner of it tight, while Venus, taking hold of another corner, searchingly and
attentively read it.
'Was I correct in my account of it, partner?' said Mr Wegg at length.
'Partner, you were,' said Mr Venus.
Mr Wegg thereupon made an easy, graceful movement, as though he would fold it up;
but Mr Venus held on by his corner.
'No, sir,' said Mr Venus, winking his weak eyes and shaking his head. 'No, partner. The
question is now brought up, who is going to take care of this. Do you know who is going to
take care of this, partner?'
'I am,' said Wegg.
'Oh dear no, partner,' retorted Venus. 'That's a mistake. I am. Now look here, Mr Wegg.
I don't want to have any words with you, and still less do I want to have any anatomical
pursuits with you.'
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'What do you mean?' said Wegg, quickly.
'I mean, partner,' replied Venus, slowly, 'that it's hardly possible for a man to feel in a
more amiable state towards another man than I do towards you at this present moment. But I
am on my own ground, I am surrounded by the trophies of my art, and my tools is very
handy.'
'What do you mean, Mr Venus?' asked Wegg again.
'I am surrounded, as I have observed,' said Mr Venus, placidly, 'by the trophies of my
art. They are numerous, my stock of human warious is large, the shop is pretty well
crammed, and I don't just now want any more trophies of my art. But I like my art, and I
know how to exercise my art.'
'No man better,' assented Mr Wegg, with a somewhat staggered air.
'There's the Miscellanies of several human specimens,' said Venus, '(though you
mightn't think it) in the box on which you're sitting. There's the Miscellanies of several
human specimens, in the lovely compo−one behind the door'; with a nod towards the French
gentleman. 'It still wants a pair of arms. I DON'T say that I'm in any hurry for 'em.'
'You must be wandering in your mind, partner,' Silas remonstrated.
'You'll excuse me if I wander,' returned Venus; 'I am sometimes rather subject to it. I
like my art, and I know how to exercise my art, and I mean to have the keeping of this
document.'
'But what has that got to do with your art, partner?' asked Wegg, in an insinuating tone.
Mr Venus winked his chronically−fatigued eyes both at once, and adjusting the kettle
on the fire, remarked to himself, in a hollow voice, 'She'll bile in a couple of minutes.'
Silas Wegg glanced at the kettle, glanced at the shelves, glanced at the French
gentleman behind the door, and shrank a little as he glanced at Mr Venus winking his red
eyes, and feeling in his waistcoat pocket – as for a lancet, say – with his unoccupied hand.
He and Venus were necessarily seated close together, as each held a corner of the document,
which was but a common sheet of paper.
'Partner,' said Wegg, even more insinuatingly than before, 'I propose that we cut it in
half, and each keep a half.'
Venus shook his shock of hair, as he replied, 'It wouldn't do to mutilate it, partner. It
might seem to be cancelled.'
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'Partner,' said Wegg, after a silence, during which they had contemplated one another,
'don't your speaking countenance say that you're a−going to suggest a middle course?'
Venus shook his shock of hair as he replied, 'Partner, you have kept this paper from me
once. You shall never keep it from me again. I offer you the box and the label to take care
of, but I'll take care of the paper.'
Silas hesitated a little longer, and then suddenly releasing his corner, and resuming his
buoyant and benignant tone, exclaimed, 'What's life without trustfulness! What's a
fellow−man without honour! You're welcome to it, partner, in a spirit of trust and
confidence.'
Continuing to wink his red eyes both together – but in a self− communing way, and
without any show of triumph – Mr Venus folded the paper now left in his hand, and locked
it in a drawer behind him, and pocketed the key. He then proposed 'A cup of tea, partner?'
To which Mr Wegg returned, 'Thank'ee, partner,' and the tea was made and poured out.
'Next,' said Venus, blowing at his tea in his saucer, and looking over it at his
confidential friend, 'comes the question, What's the course to be pursued?'
On this head, Silas Wegg had much to say. Silas had to say That, he would beg to
remind his comrade, brother, and partner, of the impressive passages they had read that
evening; of the evident parallel in Mr Boffin's mind between them and the late owner of the
Bower, and the present circumstances of the Bower; of the bottle; and of the box. That, the
fortunes of his brother and comrade, and of himself were evidently made, inasmuch as they
had but to put their price upon this document, and get that price from the minion of fortune
and the worm of the hour: who now appeared to be less of a minion and more of a worm
than had been previously supposed. That, he considered it plain that such price was stateable
in a single expressive word, and that the word was, 'Halves!' That, the question then arose
when 'Halves!' should be called. That, here he had a plan of action to recommend, with a
conditional clause. That, the plan of action was that they should lie by with patience; that,
they should allow the Mounds to be gradually levelled and cleared away, while retaining to
themselves their present opportunity of watching the process – which would be, he
conceived, to put the trouble and cost of daily digging and delving upon somebody else,
while they might nightly turn such complete disturbance of the dust to the account of their
own private investigations – and that, when the Mounds were gone, and they had worked
those chances for their own joint benefit solely, they should then, and not before, explode on
the minion and worm. But here came the conditional clause, and to this he entreated the
special attention of his comrade, brother, and partner. It was not to be borne that the minion
and worm should carry off any of that property which was now to be regarded as their own
property. When he, Mr Wegg, had seen the minion surreptitiously making off with that
bottle, and its precious contents unknown, he had looked upon him in the light of a mere
robber, and, as such, would have despoiled him of his ill−gotten gain, but for the judicious
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interference of his comrade, brother, and partner. Therefore, the conditional clause he
proposed was, that, if the minion should return in his late sneaking manner, and if, being
closely watched, he should be found to possess himself of anything, no matter what, the
sharp sword impending over his head should be instantly shown him, he should be strictly
examined as to what he knew or suspected, should be severely handled by them his masters,
and should be kept in a state of abject moral bondage and slavery until the time when they
should see fit to permit him to purchase his freedom at the price of half his possessions. If,
said Mr Wegg by way of peroration, he had erred in saying only 'Halves!' he trusted to his
comrade, brother, and partner not to hesitate to set him right, and to reprove his weakness. It
might be more according to the rights of things, to say Two−thirds; it might be more
according to the rights of things, to say Three−fourths. On those points he was ever open to
correction.
Mr Venus, having wafted his attention to this discourse over three successive saucers of
tea, signified his concurrence in the views advanced. Inspirited hereby, Mr Wegg extended
his right hand, and declared it to be a hand which never yet. Without entering into more
minute particulars. Mr Venus, sticking to his tea, briefly professed his beliet as polite forms
required of him, that it WAS a hand which never yet. But contented himself with looking at
it, and did not take it to his bosom.
'Brother,' said Wegg, when this happy understanding was established, 'I should like to
ask you something. You remember the night when I first looked in here, and found you
floating your powerful mind in tea?'
Still swilling tea, Mr Venus nodded assent.
'And there you sit, sir,' pursued Wegg with an air of thoughtful admiration, 'as if you
had never left off! There you sit, sir, as if you had an unlimited capacity of assimilating the
flagrant article! There you sit, sir, in the midst of your works, looking as if you'd been called
upon for Home, Sweet Home, and was obleeging the company!
«A exile from home splendour dazzles in vain, O give you your lowly Preparations
again, The birds stuffed so sweetly that can't be expected to come at your call, Give you
these with the peace of mind dearer than all. Home, Home, Home, sweet Home!»
– Be it ever,' added Mr Wegg in prose as he glanced about the shop, 'ever so ghastly, all
things considered there's no place like it.'
'You said you'd like to ask something; but you haven't asked it,' remarked Venus, very
unsympathetic in manner.
'Your peace of mind,' said Wegg, offering condolence, 'your peace of mind was in a
poor way that night. HOW'S it going on? IS it looking up at all?'
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'She does not wish,' replied Mr Venus with a comical mixture of indignant obstinacy
and tender melancholy, 'to regard herself, nor yet to be regarded, in that particular light.
There's no more to be said.'
'Ah, dear me, dear me!' exclaimed Wegg with a sigh, but eyeing him while pretending
to keep him company in eyeing the fire, 'such is Woman! And I remember you said that
night, sitting there as I sat here – said that night when your peace of mind was first laid low,
that you had taken an interest in these very affairs. Such is coincidence!'
'Her father,' rejoined Venus, and then stopped to swallow more tea, 'her father was
mixed up in them.'
'You didn't mention her name, sir, I think?' observed Wegg, pensively. 'No, you didn't
mention her name that night.'
'Pleasant Riderhood.'
'In – deed!' cried Wegg. 'Pleasant Riderhood. There's something moving in the name.
Pleasant. Dear me! Seems to express what she might have been, if she hadn't made that
unpleasant remark – and what she ain't, in consequence of having made it. Would it at all
pour balm into your wounds, Mr Venus, to inquire how you came acquainted with her?'
'I was down at the water−side,' said Venus, taking another gulp of tea and mournfully
winking at the fire – 'looking for parrots' – taking another gulp and stopping.
Mr Wegg hinted, to jog his attention: 'You could hardly have been out parrot−shooting,
in the British climate, sir?'
'No, no, no,' said Venus fretfully. 'I was down at the water−side, looking for parrots
brought home by sailors, to buy for stuffing.'
'Ay, ay, ay, sir!'
' – And looking for a nice pair of rattlesnakes, to articulate for a Museum – when I was
doomed to fall in with her and deal with her. It was just at the time of that discovery in the
river. Her father had seen the discovery being towed in the river. I made the popularity of
the subject a reason for going back to improve the acquaintance, and I have never since been
the man I was. My very bones is rendered flabby by brooding over it. If they could be
brought to me loose, to sort, I should hardly have the face to claim 'em as mine. To such an
extent have I fallen off under it.'
Mr Wegg, less interested than he had been, glanced at one particular shelf in the dark.
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'Why I remember, Mr Venus,' he said in a tone of friendly commiseration '(for I
remember every word that falls from you, sir), I remember that you said that night, you had
got up there – and then your words was, «Never mind.»'
' – The parrot that I bought of her,' said Venus, with a despondent rise and fall of his
eyes. 'Yes; there it lies on its side, dried up; except for its plumage, very like myself. I've
never had the heart to prepare it, and I never shall have now.'
With a disappointed face, Silas mentally consigned this parrot to regions more than
tropical, and, seeming for the time to have lost his power of assuming an interest in the woes
of Mr Venus, fell to tightening his wooden leg as a preparation for departure: its gymnastic
performances of that evening having severely tried its constitution.
After Silas had left the shop, hat−box in hand, and had left Mr Venus to lower himself
to oblivion−point with the requisite weight of tea, it greatly preyed on his ingenuous mind
that he had taken this artist into partnership at all. He bitterly felt that he had overreached
himself in the beginning, by grasping at Mr Venus's mere straws of hints, now shown to be
worthless for his purpose. Casting about for ways and means of dissolving the connexion
without loss of money, reproaching himself for having been betrayed into an avowal of his
secret, and complimenting himself beyond measure on his purely accidental good luck, he
beguiled the distance between Clerkenwell and the mansion of the Golden Dustman.
For, Silas Wegg felt it to be quite out of the question that he could lay his head upon his
pillow in peace, without first hovering over Mr Boffin's house in the superior character of its
Evil Genius. Power (unless it be the power of intellect or virtue) has ever the greatest
attraction for the lowest natures; and the mere defiance of the unconscious house−front, with
his power to strip the roof off the inhabiting family like the roof of a house of cards, was a
treat which had a charm for Silas Wegg.
As he hovered on the opposite side of the street, exulting, the carriage drove up.
'There'll shortly be an end of YOU,' said Wegg, threatening it with the hat−box. 'YOUR
varnish is fading.'
Mrs Boffin descended and went in.
'Look out for a fall, my Lady Dustwoman,' said Wegg.
Bella lightly descended, and ran in after her.
'How brisk we are!' said Wegg. 'You won't run so gaily to your old shabby home, my
girl. You'll have to go there, though.'
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A little while, and the Secretary came out.
'I was passed over for you,' said Wegg. 'But you had better provide yourself with
another situation, young man.'
Mr Boffin's shadow passed upon the blinds of three large windows as he trotted down
the room, and passed again as he went back.
'Yoop!'cried Wegg. 'You're there, are you? Where's the bottle? You would give your
bottle for my box, Dustman!'
Having now composed his mind for slumber, he turned homeward. Such was the greed
of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond halves, two−thirds, three−fourths, and gone
straight to spoliation of the whole. 'Though that wouldn't quite do,' he considered, growing
cooler as he got away. 'That's what would happen to him if he didn't buy us up. We should
get nothing by that.'
We so judge others by ourselves, that it had never come into his head before, that he
might not buy us up, and might prove honest, and prefer to be poor. It caused him a slight
tremor as it passed; but a very slight one, for the idle thought was gone directly.
'He's grown too fond of money for that,' said Wegg; 'he's grown too fond of money.' The
burden fell into a strain or tune as he stumped along the pavements. All the way home he
stumped it out of the rattling streets, PIANO with his own foot, and FORTE with his
wooden leg, 'He's GROWN too FOND of MONEY for THAT, he's GROWN too
FOND of MONEY.'
Even next day Silas soothed himself with this melodious strain, when he was called out
of bed at daybreak, to set open the yard− gate and admit the train of carts and horses that
came to carry off the little Mound. And all day long, as he kept unwinking watch on the
slow process which promised to protract itself through many days and weeks, whenever (to
save himself from being choked with dust) he patrolled a little cinderous beat he established
for the purpose, without taking his eyes from the diggers, he still stumped to the tune: He's
GROWN too FOND of MONEY for THAT, he's GROWN too FOND of MONEY.'
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Chapter 8 − THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY
T
he train of carts and horses came and went all day from dawn to nightfall, making
little or no daily impression on the heap of ashes, though, as the days passed on, the heap
was seen to be slowly melting. My lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, when you in
the course of your dust−shovelling and cinder−raking have piled up a mountain of
pretentious failure, you must off with your honourable coats for the removal of it, and fall to
the work with the power of all the queen's horses and all the queen's men, or it will come
rushing down and bury us alive.
Yes, verily, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, adapting your Catechism
to the occasion, and by God's help so you must. For when we have got things to the pass that
with an enormous treasure at disposal to relieve the poor, the best of the poor detest our
mercies, hide their heads from us, and shame us by starving to death in the midst of us, it is a
pass impossible of prosperity, impossible of continuance. It may not be so wrirten in the
Gospel according to Podsnappery; you may not 'find these words' for the text of a sermon, in
the Returns of the Board of Trade; but they have been the truth since the foundations of the
universe were laid, and they will be the truth until the foundations of the universe are shaken
by the Builder. This boastful handiwork of ours, which fails in its terrors for the professional
pauper, the sturdy breaker of windows and the rampant tearer of clothes, strikes with a cruel
and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and is a horror to the deserving and unfortunate.
We must mend it, lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, or in its own evil hour it will
mar every one of us.
Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage as many ruggedly honest creatures, women
and men, fare on their toiling way along the roads of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare
living, and quietly to die, untouched by workhouse hands – this was her highest sublunary
hope.
Nothing had been heard of her at Mr Boffin's house since she trudged off. The weather
had been hard and the roads had been bad, and her spirit was up. A less stanch spirit might
have been subdued by such adverse influences; but the loan for her little outfit was in no part
repaid, and it had gone worse with her than she had foreseen, and she was put upon proving
her case and maintaining her independence.
Faithful soul! When she had spoken to the Secretary of that 'deadness that steals over
me at times', her fortitude had made too little of it. Oftener and ever oftener, it came stealing
over her; darker and ever darker, like the shadow of advancing Death. That the shadow
should be deep as it came on, like the shadow of an actual presence, was in accordance with
the laws of the physical world, for all the Light that shone on Betty Higden lay beyond
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Death.
The poor old creature had taken the upward course of the river Thames as her general
track; it was the track in which her last home lay, and of which she had last had local love
and knowledge. She had hovered for a little while in the near neighbourhood of her
abandoned dwelling, and had sold, and knitted and sold, and gone on. In the pleasant towns
of Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and Staines, her figure came to be quite well known for
some short weeks, and then again passed on.
She would take her stand in market−places, where there were such things, on market
days; at other times, in the busiest (that was seldom very busy) portion of the little quiet
High Street; at still other times she would explore the outlying roads for great houses, and
would ask leave at the Lodge to pass in with her basket, and would not often get it. But
ladies in carriages would frequently make purchases from her trifling stock, and were
usually pleased with her bright eyes and her hopeful speech. In these and her clean dress
originated a fable that she was well to do in the world: one might say, for her station, rich.
As making a comfortable provision for its subject which costs nobody anything, this class of
fable has long been popular.
In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you may hear the fall of the water over the
weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the rushes; and from the bridge you may see the
young river, dimpled like a young child, playfully gliding away among the trees, unpolluted
by the defilements that lie in wait for it on its course, and as yet out of hearing of the deep
summons of the sea. It were too much to pretend that Betty Higden made out such thoughts;
no; but she heard the tender river whispering to many like herself, 'Come to me, come to me!
When the cruel shame and terror you have so long fled from, most beset you, come to me! I
am the Relieving Officer appointed by eternal ordinance to do my work; I am not held in
estimation according as I shirk it. My breast is softer than the pauper−nurse's; death in my
arms is peacefuller than among the pauper−wards. Come to me!'
There was abundant place for gentler fancies too, in her untutored mind. Those
gentlefolks and their children inside those fine houses, could they think, as they looked out
at her, what it was to be really hungry, really cold? Did they feel any of the wonder about
her, that she felt about them? Bless the dear laughing children! If they could have seen sick
Johnny in her arms, would they have cried for pity? If they could have seen dead Johnny on
that little bed, would they have understood it? Bless the dear children for his sake, anyhow!
So with the humbler houses in the little street, the inner firelight shining on the panes as the
outer twilight darkened. When the families gathered in−doors there, for the night, it was
only a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little hard in them to close the shutter and blacken
the flame. So with the lighted shops, and speculations whether their masters and mistresses
taking tea in a perspective of back−parlour – not so far within but that the flavour of tea and
toast came out, mingled with the glow of light, into the street – ate or drank or wore what
they sold, with the greater relish because they dealt in it. So with the churchyard on a branch
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of the solitary way to the night's sleeping− place. 'Ah me! The dead and I seem to have it
pretty much to ourselves in the dark and in this weather! But so much the better for all who
are warmly housed at home.' The poor soul envied no one in bitterness, and grudged no one
anything.
But, the old abhorrence grew stronger on her as she grew weaker, and it found more
sustaining food than she did in her wanderings. Now, she would light upon the shameful
spectacle of some desolate creature – or some wretched ragged groups of either sex, or of
both sexes, with children among them, huddled together like the smaller vermin for a little
warmth – lingering and lingering on a doorstep, while the appointed evader of the public
trust did his dirty office of trying to weary them out and so get rid of them. Now, she would
light upon some poor decent person, like herself, going afoot on a pilgrimage of many weary
miles to see some worn−out relative or friend who had been charitably clutched off to a
great blank barren Union House, as far from old home as the County Jail (the remoteness of
which is always its worst punishment for small rural offenders), and in its dietary, and in its
lodging, and in its tending of the sick, a much more penal establishment. Sometimes she
would hear a newspaper read out, and would learn how the Registrar General cast up the
units that had within the last week died of want and of exposure to the weather: for which
that Recording Angel seemed to have a regular fixed place in his sum, as if they were its
halfpence. All such things she would hear discussed, as we, my lords and gentlemen and
honourable boards, in our unapproachable magnificence never hear them, and from all such
things she would fly with the wings of raging Despair.
This is not to be received as a figure of speech. Old Betty Higden however tired,
however footsore, would start up and be driven away by her awakened horror of falling into
the hands of Charity. It is a remarkable Christian improvement, to have made a pursuing
Fury of the Good Samaritan; but it was so in this case, and it is a type of many, many, many.
Two incidents united to intensify the old unreasoning abhorrence – granted in a
previous place to be unreasoning, because the people always are unreasoning, and
invaRiahly make a point of producing all their smoke without fire.
One day she was sitting in a market−place on a bench outside an inn, with her little
wares for sale, when the deadness that she strove against came over her so heavily that the
scene departed from before her eyes; when it returned, she found herself on the ground, her
head supported by some good−natured market−women, and a little crowd about her.
'Are you better now, mother?' asked one of the women. 'Do you think you can do nicely
now?'
'Have I been ill then?' asked old Betty.
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'You have had a faint like,' was the answer, 'or a fit. It ain't that you've been
a−struggling, mother, but you've been stiff and numbed.'
'Ah!' said Betty, recovering her memory. 'It's the numbness. Yes. It comes over me at
times.'
Was it gone? the women asked her.
'It's gone now,' said Betty. 'I shall be stronger than I was afore. Many thanks to ye, my
dears, and when you come to be as old as I am, may others do as much for you!'
They assisted her to rise, but she could not stand yet, and they supported her when she
sat down again upon the bench.
'My head's a bit light, and my feet are a bit heavy,' said old Betty, leaning her face
drowsily on the breast of the woman who had spoken before. 'They'll both come nat'ral in a
minute. There's nothing more the matter.'
'Ask her,' said some farmers standing by, who had come out from their market−dinner,
'who belongs to her.'
'Are there any folks belonging to you, mother?' said the woman.
'Yes sure,' answered Betty. 'I heerd the gentleman say it, but I couldn't answer quick
enough. There's plenty belonging to me. Don't ye fear for me, my dear.'
'But are any of 'em near here? 'said the men's voices; the women's voices chiming in
when it was said, and prolonging the strain.
'Quite near enough,' said Betty, rousing herself. 'Don't ye be afeard for me, neighbours.'
'But you are not fit to travel. Where are you going?' was the next compassionate chorus
she heard.
'I'm a going to London when I've sold out all,' said Betty, rising with difficulty. 'I've
right good friends in London. I want for nothing. I shall come to no harm. Thankye. Don't ye
be afeard for me.'
A well−meaning bystander, yellow−legginged and purple−faced, said hoarsely over his
red comforter, as she rose to her feet, that she 'oughtn't to be let to go'.
'For the Lord's love don't meddle with me!' cried old Betty, all her fears crowding on
her. 'I am quite well now, and I must go this minute.'
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She caught up her basket as she spoke and was making an unsteady rush away from
them, when the same bystander checked her with his hand on her sleeve, and urged her to
come with him and see the parish−doctor. Strengthening herself by the utmost exercise of
her resolution, the poor trembling creature shook him off, almost fiercely, and took to flight.
Nor did she feel safe until she had set a mile or two of by−road between herself and the
marketplace, and had crept into a copse, like a hunted animal, to hide and recover breath.
Not until then for the first time did she venture to recall how she had looked over her
shoulder before turning out of the town, and had seen the sign of the White Lion hanging
across the road, and the fluttering market booths, and the old grey church, and the little
crowd gazing after her but not attempting to follow her.
The second frightening incident was this. She had been again as bad, and had been for
some days better, and was travelling along by a part of the road where it touched the river,
and in wet seasons was so often overflowed by it that there were tall white posts set up to
mark the way. A barge was being towed towards her, and she sat down on the bank to rest
and watch it. As the tow−rope was slackened by a turn of the stream and dipped into the
water, such a confusion stole into her mind that she thought she saw the forms of her dead
children and dead grandchildren peopling the barge, and waving their hands to her in solemn
measure; then, as the rope tightened and came up, dropping diamonds, it seemed to vibrate
into two parallel ropes and strike her, with a twang, though it was far off. When she looked
again, there was no barge, no river, no daylight, and a man whom she had never before seen
held a candle close to her face.
'Now, Missis,' said he; 'where did you come from and where are you going to?'
The poor soul confusedly asked the counter−question where she was?
'I am the Lock,' said the man.
'The Lock?'
'I am the Deputy Lock, on job, and this is the Lock−house. (Lock or Deputy Lock, it's
all one, while the t'other man's in the hospital.) What's your Parish?'
'Parish!' She was up from the truckle−bed directly, wildly feeling about her for her
basket, and gazing at him in affright.
'You'll be asked the question down town,' said the man. 'They won't let you be more
than a Casual there. They'll pass you on to your settlement, Missis, with all speed. You're
not in a state to be let come upon strange parishes 'ceptin as a Casual.'
''Twas the deadness again!' murmured Betty Higden, with her hand to her head.
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'It was the deadness, there's not a doubt about it,' returned the man. 'I should have
thought the deadness was a mild word for it, if it had been named to me when we brought
you in. Have you got any friends, Missis?'
'The best of friends, Master.'
'I should recommend your looking 'em up if you consider 'em game to do anything for
you,' said the Deputy Lock. 'Have you got any money?'
'Just a morsel of money, sir.'
'Do you want to keep it?'
'Sure I do!'
'Well, you know,' said the Deputy Lock, shrugging his shoulders with his hands in his
pockets, and shaking his head in a sulkily ominous manner, 'the parish authorities down
town will have it out of you, if you go on, you may take your Alfred David.'
'Then I'll not go on.'
'They'll make you pay, as fur as your money will go,' pursued the Deputy, 'for your
relief as a Casual and for your being passed to your Parish.'
'Thank ye kindly, Master, for your warning, thank ye for your shelter, and good night.'
'Stop a bit,' said the Deputy, striking in between her and the door. 'Why are you all of a
shake, and what's your hurry, Missis?'
'Oh, Master, Master,' returned Betty Higden, I've fought against the Parish and fled from
it, all my life, and I want to die free of it!'
'I don't know,' said the Deputy, with deliberation, 'as I ought to let you go. I'm a honest
man as gets my living by the sweat of my brow, and I may fall into trouble by letting you
go. I've fell into trouble afore now, by George, and I know what it is, and it's made me
careful. You might be took with your deadness again, half a mile off – or half of half a
quarter, for the matter of that – and then it would be asked, Why did that there honest
Deputy Lock, let her go, instead of putting her safe with the Parish? That's what a man of his
character ought to have done, it would be argueyfied,' said the Deputy Lock, cunningly
harping on the strong string of her terror; 'he ought to have handed her over safe to the
Parish. That was to be expected of a man of his merits.'
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As he stood in the doorway, the poor old careworn wayworn woman burst into tears,
and clasped her hands, as if in a very agony she prayed to him.
'As I've told you, Master, I've the best of friends. This letter will show how true I spoke,
and they will be thankful for me.'
The Deputy Lock opened the letter with a grave face, which underwent no change as he
eyed its contents. But it might have done, if he could have read them.
'What amount of small change, Missis,' he said, with an abstracted air, after a little
meditation, 'might you call a morsel of money?'
Hurriedly emptying her pocket, old Betty laid down on the table, a shilling, and two
sixpenny pieces, and a few pence.
'If I was to let you go instead of handing you over safe to the Parish,' said the Deputy,
counting the money with his eyes, 'might it be your own free wish to leave that there behind
you?'
'Take it, Master, take it, and welcome and thankful!'
'I'm a man,' said the Deputy, giving her back the letter, and pocketing the coins, one by
one, 'as earns his living by the sweat of his brow;' here he drew his sleeve across his
forehead, as if this particular portion of his humble gains were the result of sheer hard labour
and virtuous industry; 'and I won't stand in your way. Go where you like.'
She was gone out of the Lock−house as soon as he gave her this permission, and her
tottering steps were on the road again. But, afraid to go back and afraid to go forward;
seeing what she fled from, in the sky−glare of the lights of the little town before her, and
leaving a confused horror of it everywhere behind her, as if she had escaped it in every stone
of every market−place; she struck off by side ways, among which she got bewildered and
lost. That night she took refuge from the Samaritan in his latest accredited form, under a
farmer's rick; and if – worth thinking of, perhaps, my fellow−Christians – the Samaritan had
in the lonely night, 'passed by on the other side', she would have most devoutly thanked
High Heaven for her escape from him.
The morning found her afoot again, but fast declining as to the clearness of her
thoughts, though not as to the steadiness of her purpose. Comprehending that her strength
was quitting her, and that the struggle of her life was almost ended, she could neither reason
out the means of getting back to her protectors, nor even form the idea. The overmastering
dread, and the proud stubborn resolution it engendered in her to die undegraded, were the
two distinct impressions left in her failing mind. Supported only by a sense that she was bent
on conquering in her life−long fight, she went on.
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The time was come, now, when the wants of this little life were passing away from her.
She could not have swallowed food, though a table had been spread for her in the next field.
The day was cold and wet, but she scarcely knew it. She crept on, poor soul, like a criminal
afraid of being taken, and felt little beyond the terror of falling down while it was yet
daylight, and being found alive. She had no fear that she would live through another night.
Sewn in the breast of her gown, the money to pay for her burial was still intact. If she
could wear through the day, and then lie down to die under cover of the darkness, she would
die independent. If she were captured previously, the money would be taken from her as a
pauper who had no right to it, and she would be carried to the accursed workhouse. Gaining
her end, the letter would be found in her breast, along with the money, and the gentlefolks
would say when it was given back to them, 'She prized it, did old Betty Higden; she was true
to it; and while she lived, she would never let it be disgraced by falling into the hands of
those that she held in horror.' Most illogical, inconsequential, and light− headed, this; but
travellers in the valley of the shadow of death are apt to be light−headed; and worn−out old
people of low estate have a trick of reasoning as indifferently as they live, and doubtless
would appreciate our Poor Law more philosophically on an income of ten thousand a year.
So, keeping to byways, and shunning human approach, this troublesome old woman hid
herself, and fared on all through the dreary day. Yet so unlike was she to vagrant hiders in
general, that sometimes, as the day advanced, there was a bright fire in her eyes, and a
quicker beating at her feeble heart, as though she said exultingly, 'The Lord will see me
through it!'
By what visionary hands she was led along upon that journey of escape from the
Samaritan; by what voices, hushed in the grave, she seemed to be addressed; how she
fancied the dead child in her arms again, and times innumerable adjusted her shawl to keep
it warm; what infinite variety of forms of tower and roof and steeple the trees took; how
many furious horsemen rode at her, crying, 'There she goes! Stop! Stop, Betty Higden!' and
melted away as they came close; be these things left untold. Faring on and hiding, hiding
and faring on, the poor harmless creature, as though she were a Murderess and the whole
country were up after her, wore out the day, and gained the night.
'Water−meadows, or such like,' she had sometimes murmured, on the day's pilgrimage,
when she had raised her head and taken any note of the real objects about her. There now
arose in the darkness, a great building, full of lighted windows. Smoke was issuing from a
high chimney in the rear of it, and there was the sound of a water−wheel at the side.
Between her and the building, lay a piece of water, in which the lighted windows were
reflected, and on its nearest margin was a plantation of trees. 'I humbly thank the Power and
the Glory,' said Betty Higden, holding up her withered hands, 'that I have come to my
journey's end!'
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She crept among the trees to the trunk of a tree whence she could see, beyond some
intervening trees and branches, the lighted windows, both in their reality and their reflection
in the water. She placed her orderly little basket at her side, and sank upon the ground,
supporting herself against the tree. It brought to her mind the foot of the Cross, and she
committed herself to Him who died upon it. Her strength held out to enable her to arrange
the letter in her breast, so as that it could be seen that she had a paper there. It had held out
for this, and it departed when this was done.
'I am safe here,' was her last benumbed thought. 'When I am found dead at the foot of
the Cross, it will be by some of my own sort; some of the working people who work among
the lights yonder. I cannot see the lighted windows now, but they are there. I am thankful for
all!'
The darkness gone, and a face bending down.
'It cannot be the boofer lady?'
'I don't understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again with this brandy. I have
been away to fetch it. Did you think that I was long gone?'
It is as the face of a woman, shaded by a quantity of rich dark hair. It is the earnest face
of a woman who is young and handsome. But all is over with me on earth, and this must be
an Angel.
'Have I been long dead?'
'I don't understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again. I hurried all I could, and
brought no one back with me, lest you should die of the shock of strangers.'
'Am I not dead?'
'I cannot understand what you say. Your voice is so low and broken that I cannot hear
you. Do you hear me?'
'Yes.'
'Do you mean Yes?'
'Yes.'
'I was coming from my work just now, along the path outside (I was up with the
night−hands last night), and I heard a groan, and found you lying here.'
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'What work, deary?'
'Did you ask what work? At the paper−mill.'
'Where is it?'
'Your face is turned up to the sky, and you can't see it. It is close by. You can see my
face, here, between you and the sky?'
'Yes.'
'Dare I lift you?'
'Not yet.'
'Not even lift your head to get it on my arm? I will do it by very gentle degrees. You
shall hardly feel it.'
'Not yet. Paper. Letter.'
'This paper in your breast?'
'Bless ye!'
'Let me wet your lips again. Am I to open it? To read it?'
'Bless ye!'
She reads it with surprise, and looks down with a new expression and an added interest
on the motionless face she kneels beside.
'I know these names. I have heard them often.'
'Will you send it, my dear?'
'I cannot understand you. Let me wet your lips again, and your forehead. There. O poor
thing, poor thing!' These words through her fast−dropping tears. 'What was it that you asked
me? Wait till I bring my ear quite close.'
'Will you send it, my dear?'
'Will I send it to the writers? Is that your wish? Yes, certainly.'
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'You'll not give it up to any one but them?'
'No.'
'As you must grow old in time, and come to your dying hour, my dear, you'll not give it
up to any one but them?'
'No. Most solemnly.'
'Never to the Parish!' with a convulsed struggle.
'No. Most solemnly.'
'Nor let the Parish touch me, not yet so much as look at me!' with another struggle.
'No. Faithfully.'
A look of thankfulness and triumph lights the worn old face.
The eyes, which have been darkly fixed upon the sky, turn with meaning in them
towards the compassionate face from which the tears are dropping, and a smile is on the
aged lips as they ask:
'What is your name, my dear?'
'My name is Lizzie Hexam.'
'I must be sore disfigured. Are you afraid to kiss me?'
The answer is, the ready pressure of her lips upon the cold but smiling mouth.
'Bless ye! NOW lift me, my love.'
Lizzie Hexam very softly raised the weather−stained grey head, and lifted her as high as
Heaven.
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Chapter 9 − SOMEBODY BECOMES THE
SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION
'«W
e give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our sister out
of the miseries of this sinful world.»' So read the Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled
voice, for his heart misgave him that all was not quite right between us and our sister – or
say our sister in Law – Poor Law – and that we sometimes read these words in an awful
manner, over our Sister and our Brother too.
And Sloppy – on whom the brave deceased had never turned her back until she ran
away from him, knowing that otherwise he would not be separated from her – Sloppy could
not in his conscience as yet find the hearty thanks required of it. Selfish in Sloppy, and yet
excusable, it may be humbly hoped, because our sister had been more than his mother.
The words were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner of a churchyard near
the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there was nothing in it but grass−mounds, not so
much as one single tombstone. It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the
diggers and hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their graves at the common charge;
so that a new generation might know which was which: so that the soldier, sailor, emigrant,
coming home, should be able to identify the resting−place of father, mother, playmate, or
betrothed. For, we turn up our eyes and say that we are all alike in death, and we might turn
them down and work the saying out in this world, so far. It would be sentimental, perhaps?
But how say ye, my lords and gentleman and honourable boards, shall we not find good
standing−room left for a little sentiment, if we look into our crowds?
Near unto the Reverend Frank Milvey as he read, stood his little wife, John Rokesmith
the Secretary, and Bella Wilfer. These, over and above Sloppy, were the mourners at the
lowly grave. Not a penny had been added to the money sewn in her dress: what her honest
spirit had so long projected, was fulfilled.
'I've took it in my head,' said Sloppy, laying it, inconsolable, against the church door,
when all was done: I've took it in my wretched head that I might have sometimes turned a
little harder for her, and it cuts me deep to think so now.'
The Reverend Frank Milvey, comforting Sloppy, expounded to him how the best of us
were more or less remiss in our turnings at our respective Mangles – some of us very much
so – and how we were all a halting, failing, feeble, and inconstant crew.
'SHE warn't, sir,' said Sloppy, taking this ghostly counsel rather ill, in behalf of his late
benefactress. 'Let us speak for ourselves, sir. She went through with whatever duty she had
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Chapter 9 − SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION 501
to do. She went through with me, she went through with the Minders, she went through with
herself, she went through with everythink. O Mrs Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a woman
and a mother and a mangler in a million million!'
With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from the church door,
and took it back to the grave in the comer, and laid it down there, and wept alone. 'Not a
very poor grave,' said the Reverend Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes, 'when
it has that homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could be made by most of the sculpture
in Westminster Abbey!'
They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket−gate. The water−wheel of the
paper−mill was audible there, and seemed to have a softening influence on the bright wintry
scene. They had arrived but a little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them the little
she could add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr Rokesmith's letter and had asked
for their instructions. This was merely how she had heard the groan, and what had
afterwards passed, and how she had obtained leave for the remains to be placed in that
sweet, fresh, empty store−room of the mill from which they had just accompanied them to
the churchyard, and how the last requests had been religiously observed.
'I could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,' said Lizzie. 'I should not have
wanted the will; but I should not have had the power, without our managing partner.'
'Surely not the Jew who received us?' said Mrs Milvey.
('My dear,' observed her husband in parenthesis, 'why not?')
'The gentleman certainly is a Jew,' said Lizzie, 'and the lady, his wife, is a Jewess, and I
was first brought to their notice by a Jew. But I think there cannot be kinder people in the
world.'
'But suppose they try to convert you!' suggested Mrs Milvey, bristling in her good little
way, as a clergyman's wife.
'To do what, ma'am?' asked Lizzie, with a modest smile.
'To make you change your religion,' said Mrs Milvey.
Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. 'They have never asked me what my religion is.
They asked me what my story was, and I told them. They asked me to be industrious and
faithful, and I promised to be so. They most willingly and cheerfully do their duty to all of
us who are employed here, and we try to do ours to them. Indeed they do much more than
their duty to us, for they are wonderfully mindful of us in many ways.
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'It is easy to see you're a favourite, my dear,' said little Mrs Milvey, not quite pleased.
'It would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,' returned Lizzie, 'for I have been
already raised to a place of confidence here. But that makes no difference in their following
their own religion and leaving all of us to ours. They never talk of theirs to us, and they
never talk of ours to us. If I was the last in the mill, it would be just the same. They never
asked me what religion that poor thing had followed.'
'My dear,' said Mrs Milvey, aside to the Reverend Frank, 'I wish you would talk to her.'
'My dear,' said the Reverend Frank aside to his good little wife, 'I think I will leave it to
somebody else. The circumstances are hardly favourable. There are plenty of talkers going
about, my love, and she will soon find one.'
While this discourse was interchanging, both Bella and the Secretary observed Lizzie
Hexam with great attention. Brought face to face for the first time with the daughter of his
supposed murderer, it was natural that John Harmon should have his own secret reasons for
a careful scrutiny of her countenance and manner. Bella knew that Lizzie's father had been
falsely accused of the crime which had had so great an influence on her own life and
fortunes; and her interest, though it had no secret springs, like that of the Secretary, was
equally natural. Both had expected to see something very different from the real Lizzie
Hexam, and thus it fell out that she became the unconscious means of bringing them
together.
For, when they had walked on with her to the little house in the clean village by the
paper−mill, where Lizzie had a lodging with an elderly couple employed in the
establishment, and when Mrs Milvey and Bella had been up to see her room and had come
down, the mill bell rang. This called Lizzie away for the time, and left the Secretary and
Bella standing rather awkwardly in the small street; Mrs Milvey being engaged in pursuing
the village children, and her investigations whether they were in danger of becoming
children of Israel; and the Reverend Frank being engaged – to say the truth – in evading that
branch of his spiritual functions, and getting out of sight surreptitiously.
Bella at length said:
'Hadn't we better talk about the commission we have undertaken, Mr Rokesmith?'
'By all means,' said the Secretary.
'I suppose,' faltered Bella, 'that we ARE both commissioned, or we shouldn't both be
here?'
'I suppose so,' was the Secretary's answer.
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'When I proposed to come with Mr and Mrs Milvey,' said Bella, 'Mrs Boffin urged me
to do so, in order that I might give her my small report – it's not worth anything, Mr
Rokesmith, except for it's being a woman's – which indeed with you may be a fresh reason
for it's being worth nothing – of Lizzie Hexam.'
'Mr Boffin,' said the Secretary, 'directed me to come for the same purpose.'
As they spoke they were leaving the little street and emerging on the wooded landscape
by the river.
'You think well of her, Mr Rokesmith?' pursued Bella, conscious of making all the
advances.
'I think highly of her.'
'I am so glad of that! Something quite refined in her beauty, is there not?'
'Her appearance is very striking.'
'There is a shade of sadness upon her that is quite touching. At least I – I am not setting
up my own poor opinion, you know, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, excusing and explaining
herself in a pretty shy way; 'I am consulting you.'
'I noticed that sadness. I hope it may not,' said the Secretary in a lower voice, 'be the
result of the false accusation which has been retracted.'
When they had passed on a little further without speaking, Bella, after stealing a glance
or two at the Secretary, suddenly said:
'Oh, Mr Rokesmith, don't be hard with me, don't be stern with me; be magnanimous! I
want to talk with you on equal terms.'
The Secretary as suddenly brightened, and returned: 'Upon my honour I had no thought
but for you. I forced myself to be constrained, lest you might misinterpret my being more
natural. There. It's gone.'
'Thank you,' said Bella, holding out her little hand. 'Forgive me.'
'No!' cried the Secretary, eagerly. 'Forgive ME!' For there were tears in her eyes, and
they were prettier in his sight (though they smote him on the heart rather reproachfully too)
than any other glitter in the world.
When they had walked a little further:
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'You were going to speak to me,' said the Secretary, with the shadow so long on him
quite thrown off and cast away, 'about Lizzie Hexam. So was I going to speak to you, if I
could have begun.'
'Now that you CAN begin, sir,' returned Bella, with a look as if she italicized the word
by putting one of her dimples under it, 'what were you going to say?'
'You remember, of course, that in her short letter to Mrs Boffin – short, but containing
everything to the purpose – she stipulated that either her name, or else her place of
residence, must be kept strictly a secret among us.'
Bella nodded Yes.
'It is my duty to find out why she made that stipulation. I have it in charge from Mr
Boffin to discover, and I am very desirous for myself to discover, whether that retracted
accusation still leaves any stain upon her. I mean whether it places her at any disadvantage
towards any one, even towards herself.'
'Yes,' said Bella, nodding thoughtfully; 'I understand. That seems wise, and considerate.'
'You may not have noticed, Miss Wilfer, that she has the same kind of interest in you,
that you have in her. Just as you are attracted by her beaut – by her appearance and manner,
she is attracted by yours.'
'I certainly have NOT noticed it,' returned Bella, again italicizing with the dimple, 'and I
should have given her credit for – '
The Secretary with a smile held up his hand, so plainly interposing 'not for better taste',
that Bella's colour deepened over the little piece of coquetry she was checked in.
'And so,' resumed the Secretary, 'if you would speak with her alone before we go away
from here, I feel quite sure that a natural and easy confidence would arise between you. Of
course you would not be asked to betray it; and of course you would not, if you were. But if
you do not object to put this question to her – to ascertain for us her own feeling in this one
matter – you can do so at a far greater advantage than I or any else could. Mr Boffin is
anxious on the subject. And I am,' added the Secretary after a moment, 'for a special reason,
very anxious.'
'I shall be happy, Mr Rokesmith,' returned Bella, 'to be of the least use; for I feel, after
the serious scene of to−day, that I am useless enough in this world.'
'Don't say that,' urged the Secretary.
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'Oh, but I mean that,' said Bella, raising her eyebrows.
'No one is useless in this world,' retorted the Secretary, 'who lightens the burden of it for
any one else.'
'But I assure you I DON'T, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella. half−crying.
'Not for your father?'
'Dear, loving, self−forgetting, easily−satisfied Pa! Oh, yes! He thinks so.'
'It is enough if he only thinks so,' said the Secretary. 'Excuse the interruption: I don't
like to hear you depreciate yourself.'
'But YOU once depreciated ME, sir,' thought Bella, pouting, 'and I hope you may be
satisfied with the consequences you brought upon your head!' However, she said nothing to
that purpose; she even said something to a different purpose.
'Mr Rokesmith, it seems so long since we spoke together naturally, that I am
embarrassed in approaching another subject. Mr Boffin. You know I am very grateful to
him; don't you? You know I feel a true respect for him, and am bound to him by the strong
ties of his own generosity; now don't you?'
'Unquestionably. And also that you are his favourite companion.'
'That makes it,' said Bella, 'so very difficult to speak of him. But – . Does he treat you
well?'
'You see how he treats me,' the Secretary answered, with a patient and yet proud air.
'Yes, and I see it with pain,' said Bella, very energetically.
The Secretary gave her such a radiant look, that if he had thanked her a hundred times,
he could not have said as much as the look said.
'I see it with pain,' repeated Bella, 'and it often makes me miserable. Miserable, because
I cannot bear to be supposed to approve of it, or have any indirect share in it. Miserable,
because I cannot bear to be forced to admit to myself that Fortune is spoiling Mr Boffin.'
'Miss Wilfer,' said the Secretary, with a beaming face, 'if you could know with what
delight I make the discovery that Fortune isn't spoiling YOU, you would know that it more
than compensates me for any slight at any other hands.'
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'Oh, don't speak of ME,' said Bella, giving herself an impatient little slap with her glove.
'You don't know me as well as – '
'As you know yourself?' suggested the Secretary, finding that she stopped. 'DO you
know yourself?'
'I know quite enough of myself,' said Bella, with a charming air of being inclined to
give herself up as a bad job, 'and I don't improve upon acquaintance. But Mr Boffin.'
'That Mr Boffin's manner to me, or consideration for me, is not what it used to be,'
observed the Secretary, 'must be admitted. It is too plain to be denied.'
'Are you disposed to deny it, Mr Rokesmith?' asked Bella, with a look of wonder.
'Ought I not to be glad to do so, if I could: though it were only for my own sake?'
'Truly,' returned Bella, 'it must try you very much, and – you must please promise me
that you won't take ill what I am going to add, Mr Rokesmith?'
'I promise it with all my heart.'
' – And it must sometimes, I should think,' said Bella, hesitating, 'a little lower you in
your own estimation?'
Assenting with a movement of his head, though not at all looking as if it did, the
Secretary replied:
'I have very strong reasons, Miss Wilfer, for bearing with the drawbacks of my position
in the house we both inhabit. Believe that they are not all mercenary, although I have,
through a series of strange fatalities, faded out of my place in life. If what you see with such
a gracious and good sympathy is calculated to rouse my pride, there are other considerations
(and those you do not see) urging me to quiet endurance. The latter are by far the stronger.'
'I think I have noticed, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, looking at him with curiosity, as not
quite making him out, 'that you repress yourself, and force yourself, to act a passive part.'
'You are right. I repress myself and force myself to act a part. It is not in tameness of
spirit that I submit. I have a settled purpose.'
'And a good one, I hope,' said Bella.
'And a good one, I hope,' he answered, looking steadily at her.
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'Sometimes I have fancied, sir,' said Bella, turning away her eyes, 'that your great regard
for Mrs Boffin is a very powerful motive with you.'
'You are right again; it is. I would do anything for her, bear anything for her. There are
no words to express how I esteem that good, good woman.'
'As I do too! May I ask you one thing more, Mr Rokesmith?'
'Anything more.'
'Of course you see that she really suffers, when Mr Boffin shows how he is changing?'
'I see it, every day, as you see it, and am grieved to give her pain.'
'To give her pain?' said Bella, repeating the phrase quickly, with her eyebrows raised.
'I am generally the unfortunate cause of it.'
'Perhaps she says to you, as she often says to me, that he is the best of men, in spite of
all.'
'I often overhear her, in her honest and beautiful devotion to him, saying so to you,'
returned the Secretary, with the same steady look, 'but I cannot assert that she ever says so to
me.'
Bella met the steady look for a moment with a wistful, musing little look of her own,
and then, nodding her pretty head several times, like a dimpled philosopher (of the very best
school) who was moralizing on Life, heaved a little sigh, and gave up things in general for a
bad job, as she had previously been inclined to give up herself.
But, for all that, they had a very pleasant walk. The trees were bare of leaves, and the
river was bare of water−lilies; but the sky was not bare of its beautiful blue, and the water
reflected it, and a delicious wind ran with the stream, touching the surface crisply. Perhaps
the old mirror was never yet made by human hands, which, if all the images it has in its time
reflected could pass across its surface again, would fail to reveal some scene of horror or
distress. But the great serene mirror of the river seemed as if it might have reproduced all it
had ever reflected between those placid banks, and brought nothing to the light save what
was peaceful, pastoral, and blooming.
So, they walked, speaking of the newly filled−up grave, and of Johnny, and of many
things. So, on their return, they met brisk Mrs Milvey coming to seek them, with the
agreeable intelligence that there was no fear for the village children, there being a Christian
school in the village, and no worse Judaical interference with it than to plant its garden. So,
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Chapter 9 − SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION 508
they got back to the village as Lizzie Hexam was coming from the paper−mill, and Bella
detached herself to speak with her in her own home.
'I am afraid it is a poor room for you,' said Lizzie, with a smile of welcome, as she
offered the post of honour by the fireside.
'Not so poor as you think, my dear,' returned Bella, 'if you knew all.' Indeed, though
attained by some wonderful winding narrow stairs, which seemed to have been erected in a
pure white chimney, and though very low in the ceiling, and very rugged in the floor, and
rather blinking as to the proportions of its lattice window, it was a pleasanter room than that
despised chamber once at home, in which Bella had first bemoaned the miseries of taking
lodgers.
The day was closing as the two girls looked at one another by the fireside. The dusky
room was lighted by the fire. The grate might have been the old brazier, and the glow might
have been the old hollow down by the flare.
'It's quite new to me,' said Lizzie, 'to be visited by a lady so nearly of my own age, and
so pretty, as you. It's a pleasure to me to look at you.'
'I have nothing left to begin with,' returned Bella, blushing, 'because I was going to say
that it was a pleasure to me to look at you, Lizzie. But we can begin without a beginning,
can't we?'
Lizzie took the pretty little hand that was held out in as pretty a little frankness.
'Now, dear,' said Bella, drawing her chair a little nearer, and taking Lizzie's arm as if
they were going out for a walk, 'I am commissioned with something to say, and I dare say I
shall say it wrong, but I won't if I can help it. It is in reference to your letter to Mr and Mrs
Boffin, and this is what it is. Let me see. Oh yes! This is what it is.'
With this exordium, Bella set forth that request of Lizzie's touching secrecy, and
delicately spoke of that false accusation and its retraction, and asked might she beg to be
informed whether it had any bearing, near or remote, on such request. 'I feel, my dear,' said
Bella, quite amazing herself by the business−like manner in which she was getting on, 'that
the subject must be a painful one to you, but I am mixed up in it also; for – I don't know
whether you may know it or suspect it – I am the willed−away girl who was to have been
married to the unfortunate gentleman, if he had been pleased to approve of me. So I was
dragged into the subject without my consent, and you were dragged into it without your
consent, and there is very little to choose between us.'
'I had no doubt,' said Lizzie, 'that you were the Miss Wilfer I have often heard named.
Can you tell me who my unknown friend is?'
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'Unknown friend, my dear?' said Bella.
'Who caused the charge against poor father to be contradicted, and sent me the written
paper.'
Bella had never heard of him. Had no notion who he was.
'I should have been glad to thank him,' returned Lizzie. 'He has done a great deal for me.
I must hope that he will let me thank him some day. You asked me has it anything to do – '
'It or the accusation itself,' Bella put in.
'Yes. Has either anything to do with my wishing to live quite secret and retired here?
No.'
As Lizzie Hexam shook her head in giving this reply and as her glance sought the fire,
there was a quiet resolution in her folded hands, not lost on Bella's bright eyes.
'Have you lived much alone?' asked Bella.
'Yes. It's nothing new to me. I used to be always alone many hours together, in the day
and in the night, when poor father was alive.'
'You have a brother, I have been told?'
'I have a brother, but he is not friendly with me. He is a very good boy though, and has
raised himself by his industry. I don't complain of him.'
As she said it, with her eyes upon the fire−glow, there was an instantaneous escape of
distress into her face. Bella seized the moment to touch her hand.
'Lizzie, I wish you would tell me whether you have any friend of your own sex and age.'
'I have lived that lonely kind of life, that I have never had one,' was the answer.
'Nor I neither,' said Bella. 'Not that my life has been lonely, for I could have sometimes
wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going on like the Tragic Muse with a face−ache in
majestic corners, and Lavvy being spiteful – though of course I am very fond of them both. I
wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have no more of
what they call character, my dear, than a canary−bird, but I know I am trustworthy.'
The wayward, playful, affectionate nature, giddy for want of the weight of some
sustaining purpose, and capricious because it was always fluttering among little things, was
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yet a captivating one. To Lizzie it was so new, so pretty, at once so womanly and so
childish, that it won her completely. And when Bella said again, 'Do you think you could,
Lizzie?' with her eyebrows raised, her head inquiringly on one side, and an odd doubt about
it in her own bosom, Lizzie showed beyond all question that she thought she could.
'Tell me, my dear,' said Bella, 'what is the matter, and why you live like this.'
Lizzie presently began, by way of prelude, 'You must have many lovers – ' when Bella
checked her with a little scream of astonishment.
'My dear, I haven't one!'
'Not one?'
'Well! Perhaps one,' said Bella. 'I am sure I don't know. I HAD one, but what he may
think about it at the present time I can't say. Perhaps I have half a one (of course I don't
count that Idiot, George Sampson). However, never mind me. I want to hear about you.'
'There is a certain man,' said Lizzie, 'a passionate and angry man, who says he loves me,
and who I must believe does love me. He is the friend of my brother. I shrank from him
within myself when my brother first brought him to me; but the last time I saw him he
terrified me more than I can say.' There she stopped.
'Did you come here to escape from him, Lizzie?'
'I came here immediately after he so alarmed me.'
'Are you afraid of him here?'
'I am not timid generally, but I am always afraid of him. I am afraid to see a newspaper,
or to hear a word spoken of what is done in London, lest he should have done some
violence.'
'Then you are not afraid of him for yourself, dear?' said Bella, after pondering on the
words.
'I should be even that, if I met him about here. I look round for him always, as I pass to
and fro at night.'
'Are you afraid of anything he may do to himself in London, my dear?'
'No. He might be fierce enough even to do some violence to himself, but I don't think of
that.'
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'Then it would almost seem, dear,' said Bella quaintly, 'as if there must be somebody
else?'
Lizzie put her hands before her face for a moment before replying: 'The words are
always in my ears, and the blow he struck upon a stone wall as he said them is always before
my eyes. I have tried hard to think it not worth remembering, but I cannot make so little of
it. His hand was trickling down with blood as he said to me, «Then I hope that I may never
kill him!»
Rather startled, Bella made and clasped a girdle of her arms round Lizzie's waist, and
then asked quietly, in a soft voice, as they both looked at the fire:
'Kill him! Is this man so jealous, then?'
'Of a gentleman,' said Lizzie. ' – I hardly know how to tell you – of a gentleman far
above me and my way of life, who broke father's death to me, and has shown an interest in
me since.'
'Does he love you?'
Lizzie shook her head.
'Does he admire you?'
Lizzie ceased to shake her head, and pressed her hand upon her living girdle.
'Is it through his influence that you came here?'
'O no! And of all the world I wouldn't have him know that I am here, or get the least
clue where to find me.'
'Lizzie, dear! Why?' asked Bella, in amazement at this burst. But then quickly added,
reading Lizzie's face: 'No. Don't say why. That was a foolish question of mine. I see, I see.'
There was silence between them. Lizzie, with a drooping head, glanced down at the
glow in the fire where her first fancies had been nursed, and her first escape made from the
grim life out of which she had plucked her brother, foreseeing her reward.
'You know all now,' she said, raising her eyes to Bella's. 'There is nothing left out. This
is my reason for living secret here, with the aid of a good old man who is my true friend. For
a short part of my life at home with father, I knew of things – don't ask me what – that I set
my face against, and tried to better. I don't think I could have done more, then, without
letting my hold on father go; but they sometimes lie heavy on my mind. By doing all for the
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best, I hope I may wear them out.'
'And wear out too,' said Bella soothingly, 'this weakness, Lizzie, in favour of one who is
not worthy of it.'
'No. I don't want to wear that out,' was the flushed reply, 'nor do I want to believe, nor
do I believe, that he is not worthy of it. What should I gain by that, and how much should I
lose!'
Bella's expressive little eyebrows remonstrated with the fire for some short time before
she rejoined:
'Don't think that I press you, Lizzie; but wouldn't you gain in peace, and hope, and even
in freedom? Wouldn't it be better not to live a secret life in hiding, and not to be shut out
from your natural and wholesome prospects? Forgive my asking you, would that be no
gain?'
'Does a woman's heart that – that has that weakness in it which you have spoken of,'
returned Lizzie, 'seek to gain anything?'
The question was so directly at variance with Bella's views in life, as set forth to her
father, that she said internally, 'There, you little mercenary wretch! Do you hear that? Ain't
you ashamed of your self?' and unclasped the girdle of her arms, expressly to give herself a
penitential poke in the side.
'But you said, Lizzie,' observed Bella, returning to her subject when she had
administered this chastisement, 'that you would lose, besides. Would you mind telling me
what you would lose, Lizzie?'
'I should lose some of the best recollections, best encouragements, and best objects, that
I carry through my daily life. I should lose my belief that if I had been his equal, and he had
loved me, I should have tried with all my might to make him better and happier, as he would
have made me. I should lose almost all the value that I put upon the little learning I have,
which is all owing to him, and which I conquered the difficulties of, that he might not think
it thrown away upon me. I should lose a kind of picture of him – or of what he might have
been, if I had been a lady, and he had loved me – which is always with me, and which I
somehow feel that I could not do a mean or a wrong thing before. I should leave off prizing
the remembrance that he has done me nothing but good since I have known him, and that he
has made a change within me, like – like the change in the grain of these hands, which were
coarse, and cracked, and hard, and brown when I rowed on the river with father, and are
softened and made supple by this new work as you see them now.'
They trembled, but with no weakness, as she showed them.
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'Understand me, my dear;' thus she went on. I have never dreamed of the possibility of
his being anything to me on this earth but the kind picture that I know I could not make you
understand, if the understanding was not in your own breast already. I have no more
dreamed of the possibility of MY being his wife, than he ever has – and words could not be
stronger than that. And yet I love him. I love him so much, and so dearly, that when I
sometimes think my life may be but a weary one, I am proud of it and glad of it. I am proud
and glad to suffer something for him, even though it is of no service to him, and he will
never know of it or care for it.'
Bella sat enchained by the deep, unselfish passion of this girl or woman of her own age,
courageously revealing itself in the confidence of her sympathetic perception of its truth.
And yet she had never experienced anything like it, or thought of the existence of anything
like it.
'It was late upon a wretched night,' said Lizzie, 'when his eyes first looked at me in my
old river−side home, very different from this. His eyes may never look at me again. I would
rather that they never did; I hope that they never may. But I would not have the light of them
taken out of my life, for anything my life can give me. I have told you everything now, my
dear. If it comes a little strange to me to have parted with it, I am not sorry. I had no thought
of ever parting with a single word of it, a moment before you came in; but you came in, and
my mind changed.'
Bella kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her warmly for her confidence. 'I only wish,'
said Bella, 'I was more deserving of it.'
'More deserving of it?' repeated Lizzie, with an incredulous smile.
'I don't mean in respect of keeping it,' said Bella, 'because any one should tear me to bits
before getting at a syllable of it – though there's no merit in that, for I am naturally as
obstinate as a Pig. What I mean is, Lizzie, that I am a mere impertinent piece of conceit, and
you shame me.'
Lizzie put up the pretty brown hair that came tumbling down, owing to the energy with
which Bella shook her head; and she remonstrated while thus engaged, 'My dear!'
'Oh, it's all very well to call me your dear,' said Bella, with a pettish whimper, 'and I am
glad to be called so, though I have slight enough claim to be. But I AM such a nasty little
thing!'
'My dear!' urged Lizzie again.
'Such a shallow, cold, worldly, Limited little brute!' said Bella, bringing out her last
adjective with culminating force.
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'Do you think,' inquired Lizzie with her quiet smile, the hair being now secured, 'that I
don't know better?'
'DO you know better though?' said Bella. 'Do you really believe you know better? Oh, I
should be so glad if you did know better, but I am so very much afraid that I must know
best!'
Lizzie asked her, laughing outright, whether she ever saw her own face or heard her
own voice?
'I suppose so,' returned Bella; 'I look in the glass often enough, and I chatter like a
Magpie.'
'I have seen your face, and heard your voice, at any rate,' said Lizzie, 'and they have
tempted me to say to you – with a certainty of not going wrong – what I thought I should
never say to any one. Does that look ill?'
'No, I hope it doesn't,' pouted Bella, stopping herself in something between a humoured
laugh and a humoured sob.
'I used once to see pictures in the fire,' said Lizzie playfully, 'to please my brother. Shall
I tell you what I see down there where the fire is glowing?'
They had risen, and were standing on the hearth, the time being come for separating;
each had drawn an arm around the other to take leave.
'Shall I tell you,' asked Lizzie, 'what I see down there?'
'Limited little b?' suggested Bella with her eyebrows raised.
'A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire
and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.'
'Girl's heart?' asked Bella, with accompanying eyebrows. Lizzie nodded. 'And the figure
to which it belongs – '
Is yours,' suggested Bella.
'No. Most clearly and distinctly yours.'
So the interview terminated with pleasant words on both sides, and with many
reminders on the part of Bella that they were friends, and pledges that she would soon come
down into that part of the country again. There with Lizzie returned to her occupation, and
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Bella ran over to the little inn to rejoin her company.
'You look rather serious, Miss Wilfer,' was the Secretary's first remark.
'I feel rather serious,' returned Miss Wilfer.
She had nothing else to tell him but that Lizzie Hexam's secret had no reference
whatever to the cruel charge, or its withdrawal. Oh yes though! said Bella; she might as well
mention one other thing; Lizzie was very desirous to thank her unknown friend who had sent
her the written retractation. Was she, indeed? observed the Secretary. Ah! Bella asked him,
had he any notion who that unknown friend might be? He had no notion whatever.
They were on the borders of Oxfordshire, so far had poor old Betty Higden strayed.
They were to return by the train presently, and, the station being near at hand, the Reverend
Frank and Mrs Frank, and Sloppy and Bella and the Secretary, set out to walk to it. Few
rustic paths are wide enough for five, and Bella and the Secretary dropped behind.
'Can you believe, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, 'that I feel as if whole years had passed
since I went into Lizzie Hexam's cottage?'
'We have crowded a good deal into the day,' he returned, 'and you were much affected
in the churchyard. You are over−tired.'
'No, I am not at all tired. I have not quite expressed what I mean. I don't mean that I feel
as if a great space of time had gone by, but that I feel as if much had happened – to myself,
you know.'
'For good, I hope?'
'I hope so,' said Bella.
'You are cold; I felt you tremble. Pray let me put this wrapper of mine about you. May I
fold it over this shoulder without injuring your dress? Now, it will be too heavy and too
long. Let me carry this end over my arm, as you have no arm to give me.'
Yes she had though. How she got it out, in her muffled state, Heaven knows; but she got
it out somehow – there it was – and slipped it through the Secretary's.
'I have had a long and interesting talk with Lizzie, Mr Rokesmith, and she gave me her
full confidence.'
'She could not withhold it,' said the Secretary.
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'I wonder how you come,' said Bella, stopping short as she glanced at him, 'to say to me
just what she said about it!'
'I infer that it must be because I feel just as she felt about it.'
'And how was that, do you mean to say, sir?' asked Bella, moving again.
'That if you were inclined to win her confidence – anybody's confidence – you were
sure to do it.'
The railway, at this point, knowingly shutting a green eye and opening a red one, they
had to run for it. As Bella could not run easily so wrapped up, the Secretary had to help her.
When she took her opposite place in the carriage corner, the brightness in her face was so
charming to behold, that on her exclaiming, 'What beautiful stars and what a glorious night!'
the Secretary said 'Yes,' but seemed to prefer to see the night and the stars in the light of her
lovely little countenance, to looking out of window.
O boofer lady, fascinating boofer lady! If I were but legally executor of Johnny's will! If
I had but the right to pay your legacy and to take your receipt! – Something to this purpose
surely mingled with the blast of the train as it cleared the stations, all knowingly shutting up
their green eyes and opening their red ones when they prepared to let the boofer lady pass.
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Chapter 10 − SCOUTS OUT
'A
nd so, Miss Wren,' said Mr Eugene Wrayburn, 'I cannot persuade you to dress me a
doll?'
'No,' replied Miss Wren snappishly; 'if you want one, go and buy one at the shop.'
'And my charming young goddaughter,' said Mr Wrayburn plaintively, 'down in
Hertfordshire – '
('Humbugshire you mean, I think,' interposed Miss Wren.)
' – is to be put upon the cold footing of the general public, and is to derive no advantage
from my private acquaintance with the Court Dressmaker?'
'If it's any advantage to your charming godchild – and oh, a precious godfather she has
got!' – replied Miss Wren, pricking at him in the air with her needle, 'to be informed that the
Court Dressmaker knows your tricks and your manners, you may tell her so by post, with
my compliments.'
Miss Wren was busy at her work by candle−light, and Mr Wrayburn, half amused and
half vexed, and all idle and shiftless, stood by her bench looking on. Miss Wren's
troublesome child was in the corner in deep disgrace, and exhibiting great wretchedness in
the shivering stage of prostration from drink.
'Ugh, you disgraceful boy!' exclaimed Miss Wren, attracted by the sound of his
chattering teeth, 'I wish they'd all drop down your throat and play at dice in your stomach!
Boh, wicked child! Bee− baa, black sheep!'
On her accompanying each of these reproaches with a threatening stamp of the foot, the
wretched creature protested with a whine.
'Pay five shillings for you indeed!' Miss Wren proceeded; 'how many hours do you
suppose it costs me to earn five shillings, you imfamous boy? – Don't cry like that, or I'll
throw a doll at you. Pay five shillings fine for you indeed. Fine in more ways than one, I
think! I'd give the dustman five shillings, to carry you off in the dust cart.'
'No, no,' pleaded the absurd creature. 'Please!'
'He's enough to break his mother's heart, is this boy,' said Miss Wren, half appealing to
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Eugene. 'I wish I had never brought him up. He'd be sharper than a serpent's tooth, if he
wasn't as dull as ditch water. Look at him. There's a pretty object for a parent's eyes!'
Assuredly, in his worse than swinish state (for swine at least fatten on their guzzling,
and make themselves good to eat), he was a pretty object for any eyes.
'A muddling and a swipey old child,' said Miss Wren, rating him with great severity, 'fit
for nothing but to be preserved in the liquor that destroys him, and put in a great glass bottle
as a sight for other swipey children of his own pattern, – if he has no consideration for his
liver, has he none for his mother?'
'Yes. Deration, oh don't!' cried the subject of these angry remarks.
'Oh don't and oh don't,' pursued Miss Wren. 'It's oh do and oh do. And why do you?'
'Won't do so any more. Won't indeed. Pray!'
'There!' said Miss Wren, covering her eyes with her hand. 'I can't bear to look at you.
Go up stairs and get me my bonnet and shawl. Make yourself useful in some way, bad boy,
and let me have your room instead of your company, for one half minute.'
Obeying her, he shambled out, and Eugene Wrayburn saw the tears exude from between
the little creature's fingers as she kept her hand before her eyes. He was sorry, but his
sympathy did not move his carelessness to do anything but feel sorry.
'I'm going to the Italian Opera to try on,' said Miss Wren, taking away her hand after a
little while, and laughing satirically to hide that she had been crying; 'I must see your back
before I go, Mr Wrayburn. Let me first tell you, once for all, that it's of no use your paying
visits to me. You wouldn't get what you want, of me, no, not if you brought pincers with you
to tear it out.'
'Are you so obstinate on the subject of a doll's dress for my godchild?'
'Ah!' returned Miss Wren with a hitch of her chin, 'I am so obstinate. And of course it's
on the subject of a doll's dress – or ADdress – whichever you like. Get along and give it up!'
Her degraded charge had come back, and was standing behind her with the bonnet and
shawl.
'Give 'em to me and get back into your corner, you naughty old thing!' said Miss Wren,
as she turned and espied him. 'No, no, I won't have your help. Go into your corner, this
minute!'
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The miserable man, feebly rubbing the back of his faltering hands downward from the
wrists, shuffled on to his post of disgrace; but not without a curious glance at Eugene in
passing him, accompanied with what seemed as if it might have been an action of his elbow,
if any action of any limb or joint he had, would have answered truly to his will. Taking no
more particular notice of him than instinctively falling away from the disagreeable contact,
Eugene, with a lazy compliment or so to Miss Wren, begged leave to light his cigar, and
departed.
'Now you prodigal old son,' said Jenny, shaking her head and her emphatic little
forefinger at her burden, 'you sit there till I come back. You dare to move out of your corner
for a single instant while I'm gone, and I'll know the reason why.'
With this admonition, she blew her work candles out, leaving him to the light of the
fire, and, taking her big door−key in her pocket and her crutch−stick in her hand, marched
off.
Eugene lounged slowly towards the Temple, smoking his cigar, but saw no more of the
dolls' dressmaker, through the accident of their taking opposite sides of the street. He
lounged along moodily, and stopped at Charing Cross to look about him, with as little
interest in the crowd as any man might take, and was lounging on again, when a most
unexpected object caught his eyes. No less an object than Jenny Wren's bad boy trying to
make up his mind to cross the road.
A more ridiculous and feeble spectacle than this tottering wretch making unsteady
sallies into the roadway, and as often staggering back again, oppressed by terrors of vehicles
that were a long way off or were nowhere, the streets could not have shown. Over and over
again, when the course was perfectly clear, he set out, got half way, described a loop, turned,
and went back again; when he might have crossed and re−crossed half a dozen times. Then,
he would stand shivering on the edge of the pavement, looking up the street and looking
down, while scores of people jostled him, and crossed, and went on. Stimulated in course of
time by the sight of so many successes, he would make another sally, make another loop,
would all but have his foot on the opposite pavement, would see or imagine something
coming, and would stagger back again. There, he would stand making spasmodic
preparations as if for a great leap, and at last would decide on a start at precisely the wrong
moment, and would be roared at by drivers, and would shrink back once more, and stand in
the old spot shivering, with the whole of the proceedings to go through again.
'It strikes me,' remarked Eugene coolly, after watching him for some minutes, 'that my
friend is likely to be rather behind time if he has any appointment on hand.' With which
remark he strolled on, and took no further thought of him.
Lightwood was at home when he got to the Chambers, and had dined alone there.
Eugene drew a chair to the fire by which he was having his wine and reading the evening
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paper, and brought a glass, and filled it for good fellowship's sake.
'My dear Mortimer, you are the express picture of contented industry, reposing (on
credit) after the virtuous labours of the day.'
'My dear Eugene, you are the express picture of discontented idleness not reposing at
all. Where have you been?'
'I have been,' replied Wrayburn, ' – about town. I have turned up at the present juncture,
with the intention of consulting my highly intelligent and respected solicitor on the position
of my affairs.'
'Your highly intelligent and respect solicitor is of opinion that your affairs are in a bad
way, Eugene.'
'Though whether,' said Eugene thoughtfully, 'that can be intelligently said, now, of the
affairs of a client who has nothing to lose and who cannot possibly be made to pay, may be
open to question.'
'You have fallen into the hands of the Jews, Eugene.'
'My dear boy,' returned the debtor, very composedly taking up his glass, 'having
previously fallen into the hands of some of the Christians, I can bear it with philosophy.'
'I have had an interview to−day, Eugene, with a Jew, who seems determined to press us
hard. Quite a Shylock, and quite a Patriarch. A picturesque grey−headed and grey−bearded
old Jew, in a shovel−hat and gaberdine.'
'Not,' said Eugene, pausing in setting down his glass, 'surely not my worthy friend Mr
Aaron?'
'He calls himself Mr Riah.'
'By−the−by,' said Eugene, 'it comes into my mind that – no doubt with an instinctive
desire to receive him into the bosom of our Church – I gave him the name of Aaron!'
'Eugene, Eugene,' returned Lightwood, 'you are more ridiculous than usual. Say what
you mean.'
'Merely, my dear fellow, that I have the honour and pleasure of a speaking acquaintance
with such a Patriarch as you describe, and that I address him as Mr Aaron, because it
appears to me Hebraic, expressive, appropriate, and complimentary. Notwithstanding which
strong reasons for its being his name, it may not be his name.'
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'I believe you are the absurdest man on the face of the earth,' said Lightwood, laughing.
'Not at all, I assure you. Did he mention that he knew me?'
'He did not. He only said of you that he expected to be paid by you.'
'Which looks,' remarked Eugene with much gravity, 'like NOT knowing me. I hope it
may not be my worthy friend Mr Aaron, for, to tell you the truth, Mortimer, I doubt he may
have a prepossession against me. I strongly suspect him of having had a hand in spiriting
away Lizzie.'
'Everything,' returned Lightwood impatiently, 'seems, by a fatality, to bring us round to
Lizzie. «About town» meant about Lizzie, just now, Eugene.'
'My solicitor, do you know,' observed Eugene, turning round to the furniture, 'is a man
of infinite discernment!'
'Did it not, Eugene?'
'Yes it did, Mortimer.'
'And yet, Eugene, you know you do not really care for her.'
Eugene Wrayburn rose, and put his hands in his pockets, and stood with a foot on the
fender, indolently rocking his body and looking at the fire. After a prolonged pause, he
replied: 'I don't know that. I must ask you not to say that, as if we took it for granted.'
'But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave her to herself.'
Having again paused as before, Eugene said: 'I don't know that, either. But tell me. Did
you ever see me take so much trouble about anything, as about this disappearance of hers? I
ask, for information.'
'My dear Eugene, I wish I ever had!'
'Then you have not? Just so. You confirm my own impression. Does that look as if I
cared for her? I ask, for information.'
'I asked YOU for information, Eugene,' said Mortimer reproachfully.
'Dear boy, I know it, but I can't give it. I thirst for information. What do I mean? If my
taking so much trouble to recover her does not mean that I care for her, what does it mean?
«If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, where's the peck,»
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Though he said this gaily, he said it with a perplexed and inquisitive face, as if he
actually did not know what to make of himself. 'Look on to the end – ' Lightwood was
beginning to remonstrate, when he caught at the words:
'Ah! See now! That's exactly what I am incapable of doing. How very acute you are,
Mortimer, in finding my weak place! When we were at school together, I got up my lessons
at the last moment, day by day and bit by bit; now we are out in life together, I get up my
lessons in the same way. In the present task I have not got beyond this: – I am bent on
finding Lizzie, and I mean to find her, and I will take any means of finding her that offer
themselves. Fair means or foul means, are all alike to me. I ask you – for information – what
does that mean? When I have found her I may ask you – also for information – what do I
mean now? But it would be premature in this stage, and it's not the character of my mind.'
Lightwood was shaking his head over the air with which his friend held forth thus – an
air so whimsically open and argumentative as almost to deprive what he said of the
appearance of evasion – when a shuffling was heard at the outer door, and then an undecided
knock, as though some hand were groping for the knocker. 'The frolicsome youth of the
neighbourhood,' said Eugene, 'whom I should be delighted to pitch from this elevation into
the churchyard below, without any intermediate ceremonies, have probably turned the lamp
out. I am on duty to−night, and will see to the door.'
His friend had barely had time to recall the unprecedented gleam of determination with
which he had spoken of finding this girl, and which had faded out of him with the breath of
the spoken words, when Eugene came back, ushering in a most disgraceful shadow of a
man, shaking from head to foot, and clothed in shabby grease and smear.
'This interesting gentleman,' said Eugene, 'is the son – the occasionally rather trying
son, for he has his failings – of a lady of my acquaintance. My dear Mortimer – Mr Dolls.'
Eugene had no idea what his name was, knowing the little dressmaker's to be assumed, but
presented him with easy confidence under the first appellation that his associations
suggested.
'I gather, my dear Mortimer,' pursued Eugene, as Lightwood stared at the obscene
visitor, 'from the manner of Mr Dolls – which is occasionally complicated – that he desires
to make some communication to me. I have mentioned to Mr Dolls that you and I are on
terms of confidence, and have requested Mr Dolls to develop his views here.'
The wretched object being much embarrassed by holding what remained of his hat,
Eugene airily tossed it to the door, and put him down in a chair.
'It will be necessary, I think,' he observed, 'to wind up Mr Dolls, before anything to any
mortal purpose can be got out of him. Brandy, Mr Dolls, or – ?'
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'Threepenn'orth Rum,' said Mr Dolls.
A judiciously small quantity of the spirit was given him in a wine− glass, and he began
to convey it to his mouth, with all kinds of falterings and gyrations on the road.
'The nerves of Mr Dolls,' remarked Eugene to Lightwood, 'are considerably unstrung.
And I deem it on the whole expedient to fumigate Mr Dolls.'
He took the shovel from the grate, sprinkled a few live ashes on it, and from a box on
the chimney−piece took a few pastiles, which he set upon them; then, with great composure
began placidly waving the shovel in front of Mr Dolls, to cut him off from his company.
'Lord bless my soul, Eugene!' cried Lightwood, laughing again, 'what a mad fellow you
are! Why does this creature come to see you?'
'We shall hear,' said Wrayburn, very observant of his face withal. 'Now then. Speak out.
Don't be afraid. State your business, Dolls.'
'Mist Wrayburn!' said the visitor, thickly and huskily. ' – 'TIS Mist Wrayburn, ain't?'
With a stupid stare.
'Of course it is. Look at me. What do you want?'
Mr Dolls collapsed in his chair, and faintly said 'Threepenn'orth Rum.'
'Will you do me the favour, my dear Mortimer, to wind up Mr Dolls again?' said
Eugene. 'I am occupied with the fumigation.'
A similar quantity was poured into his glass, and he got it to his lips by similar
circuitous ways. Having drunk it, Mr Dolls, with an evident fear of running down again
unless he made haste, proceeded to business.
'Mist Wrayburn. Tried to nudge you, but you wouldn't. You want that drection. You
want t'know where she lives. DO you Mist Wrayburn?'
With a glance at his friend, Eugene replied to the question sternly, 'I do.'
'I am er man,' said Mr Dolls, trying to smite himself on the breast, but bringing his hand
to bear upon the vicinity of his eye, 'er do it. I am er man er do it.'
'What are you the man to do?' demanded Eugene, still sternly.
'Er give up that drection.'
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'Have you got it?'
With a most laborious attempt at pride and dignity, Mr Dolls rolled his head for some
time, awakening the highest expectations, and then answered, as if it were the happiest point
that could possibly be expected of him: 'No.'
'What do you mean then?'
Mr Dolls, collapsing in the drowsiest manner after his late intellectual triumph, replied:
'Threepenn'orth Rum.'
'Wind him up again, my dear Mortimer,' said Wrayburn; 'wind him up again.'
'Eugene, Eugene,' urged Lightwood in a low voice, as he complied, 'can you stoop to the
use of such an instrument as this?'
'I said,' was the reply, made with that former gleam of determination, 'that I would find
her out by any means, fair or foul. These are foul, and I'll take them – if I am not first
tempted to break the head of Mr Dolls with the fumigator. Can you get the direction? Do
you mean that? Speak! If that's what you have come for, say how much you want.'
'Ten shillings – Threepenn'orths Rum,' said Mr Dolls.
'You shall have it.'
'Fifteen shillings – Threepenn'orths Rum,' said Mr Dolls, making an attempt to stiffen
himself.
'You shall have it. Stop at that. How will you get the direction you talk of?'
'I am er man,' said Mr Dolls, with majesty, 'er get it, sir.'
'How will you get it, I ask you?'
'I am ill−used vidual,' said Mr Dolls. 'Blown up morning t'night. Called names. She
makes Mint money, sir, and never stands Threepenn'orth Rum.'
'Get on,' rejoined Eugene, tapping his palsied head with the fire− shovel, as it sank on
his breast. 'What comes next?'
Making a dignified attempt to gather himself together, but, as it were, dropping half a
dozen pieces of himself while he tried in vain to pick up one, Mr Dolls, swaying his head
from side to side, regarded his questioner with what he supposed to be a haughty smile and a
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scornful glance.
'She looks upon me as mere child, sir. I am NOT mere child, sir. Man. Man talent.
Lerrers pass betwixt 'em. Postman lerrers. Easy for man talent er get drection, as get his own
drection.'
'Get it then,' said Eugene; adding very heartily under his breath, ' – You Brute! Get it,
and bring it here to me, and earn the money for sixty threepenn'orths of rum, and drink them
all, one a top of another, and drink yourself dead with all possible expedition.' The latter
clauses of these special instructions he addressed to the fire, as he gave it back the ashes he
had taken from it, and replaced the shovel.
Mr Dolls now struck out the highly unexpected discovery that he had been insulted by
Lightwood, and stated his desire to 'have it out with him' on the spot, and defied him to
come on, upon the liberal terms of a sovereign to a halfpenny. Mr Dolls then fell a crying,
and then exhibited a tendency to fall asleep. This last manifestation as by far the most
alarming, by reason of its threatening his prolonged stay on the premises, necessitated
vigorous measures. Eugene picked up his worn−out hat with the tongs, clapped it on his
head, and, taking him by the collar – all this at arm's length – conducted him down stairs and
out of the precincts into Fleet Street. There, he turned his face westward, and left him.
When he got back, Lightwood was standing over the fire, brooding in a sufficiently
low−spirited manner.
'I'll wash my hands of Mr Dolls physically – ' said Eugene, 'and be with you again
directly, Mortimer.'
'I would much prefer,' retorted Mortimer, 'your washing your hands of Mr Dolls,
morally, Eugene.'
'So would I,' said Eugene; 'but you see, dear boy, I can't do without him.'
In a minute or two he resumed his chair, as perfectly unconcerned as usual, and rallied
his friend on having so narrowly escaped the prowess of their muscular visitor.
'I can't be amused on this theme,' said Mortimer, restlessly. 'You can make almost any
theme amusing to me, Eugene, but not this.'
'Well!' cried Eugene, 'I am a little ashamed of it myself, and therefore let us change the
subject.'
'It is so deplorably underhanded,' said Mortimer. 'It is so unworthy of you, this setting
on of such a shameful scout.'
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'We have changed the subject!' exclaimed Eugene, airily. 'We have found a new one in
that word, scout. Don't be like Patience on a mantelpiece frowning at Dolls, but sit down,
and I'll tell you something that you really will find amusing. Take a cigar. Look at this of
mine. I light it – draw one puff – breathe the smoke out – there it goes – it's Dolls! – it's
gone – and being gone you are a man again.'
'Your subject,' said Mortimer, after lighting a cigar, and comforting himself with a whiff
or two, 'was scouts, Eugene.'
'Exactly. Isn't it droll that I never go out after dark, but I find myself attended, always by
one scout, and often by two?'
Lightwood took his cigar from his lips in surprise, and looked at his friend, as if with a
latent suspicion that there must be a jest or hidden meaning in his words.
'On my honour, no,' said Wrayburn, answering the look and smiling carelessly; 'I don't
wonder at your supposing so, but on my honour, no. I say what I mean. I never go out after
dark, but I find myself in the ludicrous situation of being followed and observed at a
distance, always by one scout, and often by two.'
'Are you sure, Eugene?'
'Sure? My dear boy, they are always the same.'
'But there's no process out against you. The Jews only threaten. They have done
nothing. Besides, they know where to find you, and I represent you. Why take the trouble?'
'Observe the legal mind!' remarked Eugene, turning round to the furniture again, with an
air of indolent rapture. 'Observe the dyer's hand, assimilating itself to what it works in, – or
would work in, if anybody would give it anything to do. Respected solicitor, it's not that.
The schoolmaster's abroad.'
'The schoolmaster?'
'Ay! Sometimes the schoolmaster and the pupil are both abroad. Why, how soon you
rust in my absence! You don't understand yet? Those fellows who were here one night. They
are the scouts I speak of, as doing me the honour to attend me after dark.'
'How long has this been going on?' asked Lightwood, opposing a serious face to the
laugh of his friend.
'I apprehend it has been going on, ever since a certain person went off. Probably, it had
been going on some little time before I noticed it: which would bring it to about that time.'
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'Do you think they suppose you to have inveigled her away?'
'My dear Mortimer, you know the absorbing nature of my professional occupations; I
really have not had leisure to think about it.'
'Have you asked them what they want? Have you objected?'
'Why should I ask them what they want, dear fellow, when I am indifferent what they
want? Why should I express objection, when I don't object?'
'You are in your most reckless mood. But you called the situation just now, a ludicrous
one; and most men object to that, even those who are utterly indifferent to everything else.'
'You charm me, Mortimer, with your reading of my weaknesses. (By−the−by, that very
word, Reading, in its critical use, always charms me. An actress's Reading of a
chambermaid, a dancer's Reading of a hornpipe, a singer's Reading of a song, a marine
painter's Reading of the sea, the kettle−drum's Reading of an instrumental passage, are
phrases ever youthful and delightful.) I was mentioning your perception of my weaknesses. I
own to the weakness of objecting to occupy a ludicrous position, and therefore I transfer the
position to the scouts.'
'I wish, Eugene, you would speak a little more soberly and plainly, if it were only out of
consideration for my feeling less at ease than you do.'
'Then soberly and plainly, Mortimer, I goad the schoolmaster to madness. I make the
schoolmaster so ridiculous, and so aware of being made ridiculous, that I see him chafe and
fret at every pore when we cross one another. The amiable occupation has been the solace of
my life, since I was baulked in the manner unnecessary to recall. I have derived
inexpressible comfort from it. I do it thus: I stroll out after dark, stroll a little way, look in at
a window and furtively look out for the schoolmaster. Sooner or later, I perceive the
schoolmaster on the watch; sometimes accompanied by his hopeful pupil; oftener,
pupil−less. Having made sure of his watching me, I tempt him on, all over London. One
night I go east, another night north, in a few nights I go all round the compass. Sometimes, I
walk; sometimes, I proceed in cabs, draining the pocket of the schoolmaster who then
follows in cabs. I study and get up abstruse No Thoroughfares in the course of the day. With
Venetian mystery I seek those No Thoroughfares at night, glide into them by means of dark
courts, tempt the schoolmaster to follow, turn suddenly, and catch him before he can retreat.
Then we face one another, and I pass him as unaware of his existence, and he undergoes
grinding torments. Similarly, I walk at a great pace down a short street, rapidly turn the
corner, and, getting out of his view, as rapidly turn back. I catch him coming on post, again
pass him as unaware of his existence, and again he undergoes grinding torments. Night after
night his disappointment is acute, but hope springs eternal in the scholastic breast, and he
follows me again to−morrow. Thus I enjoy the pleasures of the chase, and derive great
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benefit from the healthful exercise. When I do not enjoy the pleasures of the chase, for
anything I know he watches at the Temple Gate all night.'
'This is an extraordinary story,' observed Lightwood, who had heard it out with serious
attention. 'I don't like it.'
'You are a little hipped, dear fellow,' said Eugene; 'you have been too sedentary. Come
and enjoy the pleasures of the chase.'
'Do you mean that you believe he is watching now?'
'I have not the slightest doubt he is.'
'Have you seen him to−night?'
'I forgot to look for him when I was last out,' returned Eugene with the calmest
indifference; 'but I dare say he was there. Come! Be a British sportsman and enjoy the
pleasures of the chase. It will do you good.'
Lightwood hesitated; but, yielding to his curiosity, rose.
'Bravo!' cried Eugene, rising too. 'Or, if Yoicks would be in better keeping, consider
that I said Yoicks. Look to your feet, Mortimer, for we shall try your boots. When you are
ready, I am – need I say with a Hey Ho Chivey, and likewise with a Hark Forward, Hark
Forward, Tantivy?'
'Will nothing make you serious?' said Mortimer, laughing through his gravity.
'I am always serious, but just now I am a little excited by the glorious fact that a
southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a hunting evening. Ready? So. We turn out the
lamp and shut the door, and take the field.'
As the two friends passed out of the Temple into the public street, Eugene demanded
with a show of courteous patronage in which direction Mortimer would you like the run to
be? 'There is a rather difficult country about Bethnal Green,' said Eugene, 'and we have not
taken in that direction lately. What is your opinion of Bethnal Green?' Mortimer assented to
Bethnal Green, and they turned eastward. 'Now, when we come to St Paul's churchyard,'
pursued Eugene, 'we'll loiter artfully, and I'll show you the schoolmaster.' But, they both saw
him, before they got there; alone, and stealing after them in the shadow of the houses, on the
opposite side of the way.
'Get your wind,' said Eugene, 'for I am off directly. Does it occur to you that the boys of
Merry England will begin to deteriorate in an educational light, if this lasts long? The
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schoolmaster can't attend to me and the boys too. Got your wind? I am off!'
At what a rate he went, to breathe the schoolmaster; and how he then lounged and
loitered, to put his patience to another kind of wear; what preposterous ways he took, with
no other object on earth than to disappoint and punish him; and how he wore him out by
every piece of ingenuity that his eccentric humour could devise; all this Lightwood noted,
with a feeling of astonishment that so careless a man could be so wary, and that so idle a
man could take so much trouble. At last, far on in the third hour of the pleasures of the
chase, when he had brought the poor dogging wretch round again into the City, he twisted
Mortimer up a few dark entries, twisted him into a little square court, twisted him sharp
round again, and they almost ran against Bradley Headstone.
'And you see, as I was saying, Mortimer,' remarked Eugene aloud with the utmost
coolness, as though there were no one within hearing by themselves: 'and you see, as I was
saying – undergoing grinding torments.'
It was not too strong a phrase for the occasion. Looking like the hunted and not the
hunter, baffled, worn, with the exhaustion of deferred hope and consuming hate and anger in
his face, white− lipped, wild−eyed, draggle−haired, seamed with jealousy and anger, and
torturing himself with the conviction that he showed it all and they exulted in it, he went by
them in the dark, like a haggard head suspended in the air: so completely did the force of his
expression cancel his figure.
Mortimer Lightwood was not an extraordinarily impressible man, but this face
impressed him. He spoke of it more than once on the remainder of the way home, and more
than once when they got home.
They had been abed in their respective rooms two or three hours, when Eugene was
partly awakened by hearing a footstep going about, and was fully awakened by seeing
Lightwood standing at his bedside.
'Nothing wrong, Mortimer?'
'No.'
'What fancy takes you, then, for walking about in the night?'
'I am horribly wakeful.'
'How comes that about, I wonder!'
'Eugene, I cannot lose sight of that fellow's face.'
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'Odd!' said Eugene with a light laugh, 'I can.' And turned over, and fell asleep again.
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Chapter 11 − IN THE DARK
T
here was no sleep for Bradley Headstone on that night when Eugene Wrayburn turned
so easily in his bed; there was no sleep for little Miss Peecher. Bradley consumed the lonely
hours, and consumed himself in haunting the spot where his careless rival lay a dreaming;
little Miss Peecher wore them away in listening for the return home of the master of her
heart, and in sorrowfully presaging that much was amiss with him. Yet more was amiss with
him than Miss Peecher's simply arranged little work−box of thoughts, fitted with no gloomy
and dark recesses, could hold. For, the state of the man was murderous.
The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it. More; he irritated it, with a kind of
perverse pleasure akin to that which a sick man sometimes has in irritating a wound upon his
body. Tied up all day with his disciplined show upon him, subdued to the performance of his
routine of educational tricks, encircled by a gabbling crowd, he broke loose at night like an
ill−tamed wild animal. Under his daily restraint, it was his compensation, not his trouble, to
give a glance towards his state at night, and to the freedom of its being indulged. If great
criminals told the truth – which, being great criminals, they do not – they would very rarely
tell of their struggles against the crime. Their struggles are towards it. They buffet with
opposing waves, to gain the bloody shore, not to recede from it. This man perfectly
comprehended that he hated his rival with his strongest and worst forces, and that if he
tracked him to Lizzie Hexam, his so doing would never serve himself with her, or serve her.
All his pains were taken, to the end that he might incense himself with the sight of the
detested figure in her company and favour, in her place of concealment. And he knew as
well what act of his would follow if he did, as he knew that his mother had borne him.
Granted, that he may not have held it necessary to make express mention to himself of the
one familiar truth any more than of the other.
He knew equally well that he fed his wrath and hatred, and that he accumulated
provocation and self−justification, by being made the nightly sport of the reckless and
insolent Eugene. Knowing all this, – and still always going on with infinite endurance,
pains, and perseverance, could his dark soul doubt whither he went?
Baffled, exasperated, and weary, he lingered opposite the Temple gate when it closed
on Wrayburn and Lightwood, debating with himself should he go home for that time or
should he watch longer. Possessed in his jealousy by the fixed idea that Wrayburn was in the
secret, if it were not altogether of his contriving, Bradley was as confident of getting the
better of him at last by sullenly sticking to him, as he would have been – and often had been
– of mastering any piece of study in the way of his vocation, by the like slow persistent
process. A man of rapid passions and sluggish intelligence, it had served him often and
should serve him again.
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The suspicion crossed him as he rested in a doorway with his eyes upon the Temple
gate, that perhaps she was even concealed in that set of Chambers. It would furnish another
reason for Wrayburn's purposeless walks, and it might be. He thought of it and thought of it,
until he resolved to steal up the stairs, if the gatekeeper would let him through, and listen.
So, the haggard head suspended in the air flitted across the road, like the spectre of one of
the many heads erst hoisted upon neighbouring Temple Bar, and stopped before the
watchman.
The watchman looked at it, and asked: 'Who for?'
'Mr Wrayburn.'
'It's very late.'
'He came back with Mr Lightwood, I know, near upon two hours ago. But if he has
gone to bed, I'll put a paper in his letter−box. I am expected.'
The watchman said no more, but opened the gate, though rather doubtfully. Seeing,
however, that the visitor went straight and fast in the right direction, he seemed satisfied.
The haggard head floated up the dark staircase, and softly descended nearer to the floor
outside the outer door of the chambers. The doors of the rooms within, appeared to be
standing open. There were rays of candlelight from one of them, and there was the sound of
a footstep going about. There were two voices. The words they uttered were not
distinguishable, but they were both the voices of men. In a few moments the voices were
silent, and there was no sound of footstep, and the inner light went out. If Lightwood could
have seen the face which kept him awake, staring and listening in the darkness outside the
door as he spoke of it, he might have been less disposed to sleep, through the remainder of
the night.
'Not there,' said Bradley; 'but she might have been.' The head arose to its former height
from the ground, floated down the stair− case again, and passed on to the gate. A man was
standing there, in parley with the watchman.
'Oh!' said the watchman. 'Here he is!'
Perceiving himself to be the antecedent, Bradley looked from the watchman to the man.
'This man is leaving a letter for Mr Lightwood,' the watchman explained, showing it in
his hand; 'and I was mentioning that a person had just gone up to Mr Lightwood's chambers.
It might be the same business perhaps?'
'No,' said Bradley, glancing at the man, who was a stranger to him.
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'No,' the man assented in a surly way; 'my letter – it's wrote by my daughter, but it's
mine – is about my business, and my business ain't nobody else's business.'
As Bradley passed out at the gate with an undecided foot, he heard it shut behind him,
and heard the footstep of the man coming after him.
''Scuse me,' said the man, who appeared to have been drinking and rather stumbled at
him than touched him, to attract his attention: 'but might you be acquainted with the T'other
Governor?'
'With whom?' asked Bradley.
'With,' returned the man, pointing backward over his right shoulder with his right
thumb, 'the T'other Governor?'
'I don't know what you mean.'
'Why look here,' hooking his proposition on his left−hand fingers with the forefinger of
his right. 'There's two Governors, ain't there? One and one, two – Lawyer Lightwood, my
first finger, he's one, ain't he? Well; might you be acquainted with my middle finger, the
T'other?'
'I know quite as much of him,' said Bradley, with a frown and a distant look before him,
'as I want to know.'
'Hooroar!' cried the man. 'Hooroar T'other t'other Governor. Hooroar T'otherest
Governor! I am of your way of thinkin'.'
'Don't make such a noise at this dead hour of the night. What are you talking about?'
'Look here, T'otherest Governor,' replied the man, becoming hoarsely confidential. 'The
T'other Governor he's always joked his jokes agin me, owing, as I believe, to my being a
honest man as gets my living by the sweat of my brow. Which he ain't, and he don't.'
'What is that to me?'
'T'otherest Governor,' returned the man in a tone of injured innocence, 'if you don't care
to hear no more, don't hear no more. You begun it. You said, and likeways showed pretty
plain, as you warn't by no means friendly to him. But I don't seek to force my company nor
yet my opinions on no man. I am a honest man, that's what I am. Put me in the dock
anywhere – I don't care where – and I says, «My Lord, I am a honest man.» Put me in the
witness− box anywhere – I don't care where – and I says the same to his lordship, and I
kisses the book. I don't kiss my coat−cuff; I kisses the book.'
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It was not so much in deference to these strong testimonials to character, as in his
restless casting about for any way or help towards the discovery on which he was
concentrated, that Bradley Headstone replied: 'You needn't take offence. I didn't mean to
stop you. You were too – loud in the open street; that was all.'
''Totherest Governor,' replied Mr Riderhood, mollified and mysterious, 'I know wot it is
to be loud, and I know wot it is to be soft. Nat'rally I do. It would be a wonder if I did not,
being by the Chris'en name of Roger, which took it arter my own father, which took it from
his own father, though which of our fam'ly fust took it nat'ral I will not in any ways mislead
you by undertakin' to say. And wishing that your elth may be better than your looks, which
your inside must be bad indeed if it's on the footing of your out.'
Startled by the implication that his face revealed too much of his mind, Bradley made
an effort to clear his brow. It might be worth knowing what this strange man's business was
with Lightwood, or Wrayburn, or both, at such an unseasonable hour. He set himself to find
out, for the man might prove to be a messenger between those two.
'You call at the Temple late,' he remarked, with a lumbering show of ease.
'Wish I may die,' cried Mr Riderhood, with a hoarse laugh, 'if I warn't a goin' to say the
self−same words to you, T'otherest Governor!'
'It chanced so with me,' said Bradley, looking disconcertedly about him.
'And it chanced so with me,' said Riderhood. 'But I don't mind telling you how. Why
should I mind telling you? I'm a Deputy Lock−keeper up the river, and I was off duty
yes'day, and I shall be on to−morrow.'
'Yes?'
'Yes, and I come to London to look arter my private affairs. My private affairs is to get
appinted to the Lock as reg'lar keeper at fust hand, and to have the law of a busted
B'low−Bridge steamer which drownded of me. I ain't a goin' to be drownded and not paid
for it!'
Bradley looked at him, as though he were claiming to be a Ghost.
'The steamer,' said Mr Riderhood, obstinately, 'run me down and drownded of me.
Interference on the part of other parties brought me round; but I never asked 'em to bring me
round, nor yet the steamer never asked 'em to it. I mean to be paid for the life as the steamer
took.'
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'Was that your business at Mr Lightwood's chambers in the middle of the night?' asked
Bradley, eyeing him with distrust.
'That and to get a writing to be fust−hand Lock Keeper. A recommendation in writing
being looked for, who else ought to give it to me? As I says in the letter in my daughter's
hand, with my mark put to it to make it good in law, Who but you, Lawyer Lightwood,
ought to hand over this here stifficate, and who but you ought to go in for damages on my
account agin the Steamer? For (as I says under my mark) I have had trouble enough along of
you and your friend. If you, Lawyer Lightwood, had backed me good and true, and if the
T'other Governor had took me down correct (I says under my mark), I should have been
worth money at the present time, instead of having a barge−load of bad names chucked at
me, and being forced to eat my words, which is a unsatisfying sort of food wotever a man's
appetite! And when you mention the middle of the night, T'otherest Governor,' growled Mr
Riderhood, winding up his monotonous summary of his wrongs, 'throw your eye on this here
bundle under my arm, and bear in mind that I'm a walking back to my Lock, and that the
Temple laid upon my line of road.'
Bradley Headstone's face had changed during this latter recital, and he had observed the
speaker with a more sustained attention.
'Do you know,' said he, after a pause, during which they walked on side by side, 'that I
believe I could tell you your name, if I tried?'
'Prove your opinion,' was the answer, accompanied with a stop and a stare. 'Try.'
'Your name is Riderhood.'
'I'm blest if it ain't,' returned that gentleman. 'But I don't know your'n.'
'That's quite another thing,' said Bradley. 'I never supposed you did.'
As Bradley walked on meditating, the Rogue walked on at his side muttering. The
purport of the muttering was: 'that Rogue Riderhood, by George! seemed to be made public
property on, now, and that every man seemed to think himself free to handle his name as if it
was a Street Pump.' The purport of the meditating was: 'Here is an instrument. Can I use it?'
They had walked along the Strand, and into Pall Mall, and had turned up−hill towards
Hyde Park Corner; Bradley Headstone waiting on the pace and lead of Riderhood, and
leaving him to indicate the course. So slow were the schoolmaster's thoughts, and so
indistinct his purposes when they were but tributary to the one absorbing purpose or rather
when, like dark trees under a stormy sky, they only lined the long vista at the end of which
he saw those two figures of Wrayburn and Lizzie on which his eyes were fixed – that at least
a good half−mile was traversed before he spoke again. Even then, it was only to ask:
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'Where is your Lock?'
'Twenty mile and odd – call it five−and−twenty mile and odd, if you like – up stream,'
was the sullen reply.
'How is it called?'
'Plashwater Weir Mill Lock.'
'Suppose I was to offer you five shillings; what then?'
'Why, then, I'd take it,' said Mr Riderhood.
The schoolmaster put his hand in his pocket, and produced two half−crowns, and placed
them in Mr Riderhood's palm: who stopped at a convenient doorstep to ring them both,
before acknowledging their receipt.
'There's one thing about you, T'otherest Governor,' said Riderhood, faring on again, 'as
looks well and goes fur. You're a ready money man. Now;' when he had carefully pocketed
the coins on that side of himself which was furthest from his new friend; 'what's this for?'
'For you.'
'Why, o' course I know THAT,' said Riderhood, as arguing something that was
self−evident. 'O' course I know very well as no man in his right senses would suppose as
anythink would make me give it up agin when I'd once got it. But what do you want for it?'
'I don't know that I want anything for it. Or if I do want anything for it, I don't know
what it is.' Bradley gave this answer in a stolid, vacant, and self−communing manner, which
Mr Riderhood found very extraordinary.
'You have no goodwill towards this Wrayburn,' said Bradley, coming to the name in a
reluctant and forced way, as if he were dragged to it.
'No.'
'Neither have I.'
Riderhood nodded, and asked: 'Is it for that?'
'It's as much for that as anything else. It's something to be agreed with, on a subject that
occupies so much of one's thoughts.'
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'It don't agree with YOU,' returned Mr Riderhood, bluntly. 'No! It don't, T'otherest
Governor, and it's no use a lookin' as if you wanted to make out that it did. I tell you it
rankles in you. It rankles in you, rusts in you, and pisons you.'
'Say that it does so,' returned Bradley with quivering lips; 'is there no cause for it?'
'Cause enough, I'll bet a pound!' cried Mr Riderhood.
'Haven't you yourself declared that the fellow has heaped provocations, insults, and
affronts on you, or something to that effect? He has done the same by me. He is made of
venomous insults and affronts, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. Are you so
hopeful or so stupid, as not to know that he and the other will treat your application with
contempt, and light their cigars with it?'
'I shouldn't wonder if they did, by George!' said Riderhood, turning angry.
'If they did! They will. Let me ask you a question. I know something more than your
name about you; I knew something about Gaffer Hexam. When did you last set eyes upon
his daughter?'
'When did I last set eyes upon his daughter, T'otherest Governor?' repeated Mr
Riderhood, growing intentionally slower of comprehension as the other quickened in his
speech.
'Yes. Not to speak to her. To see her – anywhere?'
The Rogue had got the clue he wanted, though he held it with a clumsy hand. Looking
perplexedly at the passionate face, as if he were trying to work out a sum in his mind, he
slowly answered:
'I ain't set eyes upon her – never once – not since the day of Gaffer's death.'
'You know her well, by sight?'
'I should think I did! No one better.'
'And you know him as well?'
'Who's him?' asked Riderhood, taking off his hat and rubbing his forehead, as he
directed a dull look at his questioner.
'Curse the name! Is it so agreeable to you that you want to hear it again?'
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'Oh! HIM!' said Riderhood, who had craftily worked the schoolmaster into this corner,
that he might again take note of his face under its evil possession. 'I'd know HIM among a
thousand.'
'Did you – ' Bradley tried to ask it quietly; but, do what he might with his voice, he
could not subdue his face; – 'did you ever see them together?'
(The Rogue had got the clue in both hands now.)
'I see 'em together, T'otherest Governor, on the very day when Gaffer was towed
ashore.'
Bradley could have hidden a reserved piece of information from the sharp eyes of a
whole inquisitive class, but he could not veil from the eyes of the ignorant Riderhood the
withheld question next in his breast. 'You shall put it plain if you want it answered,' thought
the Rogue, doggedly; 'I ain't a−going a wolunteering.'
'Well! was he insolent to her too?' asked Bradley after a struggle. 'Or did he make a
show of being kind to her?'
'He made a show of being most uncommon kind to her,' said Riderhood. 'By George!
now I – '
His flying off at a tangent was indisputably natural. Bradley looked at him for the
reason.
'Now I think of it,' said Mr Riderhood, evasively, for he was substituting those words
for 'Now I see you so jealous,' which was the phrase really in his mind; 'P'r'aps he went and
took me down wrong, a purpose, on account o' being sweet upon her!'
The baseness of confirming him in this suspicion or pretence of one (for he could not
have really entertained it), was a line's breadth beyond the mark the schoolmaster had
reached. The baseness of communing and intriguing with the fellow who would have set that
stain upon her, and upon her brother too, was attained. The line's breadth further, lay
beyond. He made no reply, but walked on with a lowering face.
What he might gain by this acquaintance, he could not work out in his slow and
cumbrous thoughts. The man had an injury against the object of his hatred, and that was
something; though it was less than he supposed, for there dwelt in the man no such deadly
rage and resentment as burned in his own breast. The man knew her, and might by a
fortunate chance see her, or hear of her; that was something, as enlisting one pair of eyes and
ears the more. The man was a bad man, and willing enough to be in his pay. That was
something, for his own state and purpose were as bad as bad could be, and he seemed to
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derive a vague support from the possession of a congenial instrument, though it might never
be used.
Suddenly he stood still, and asked Riderhood point−blank if he knew where she was?
Clearly, he did not know. He asked Riderhood if he would be willing, in case any
intelligence of her, or of Wrayburn as seeking her or associating with her, should fall in his
way, to communicate it if it were paid for? He would be very willing indeed. He was 'agin
'em both,' he said with an oath, and for why? 'Cause they had both stood betwixt him and his
getting his living by the sweat of his brow.
'It will not be long then,' said Bradley Headstone, after some more discourse to this
effect, 'before we see one another again. Here is the country road, and here is the day. Both
have come upon me by surprise.'
'But, T'otherest Governor,' urged Mr Riderhood, 'I don't know where to find you.'
'It is of no consequence. I know where to find you, and I'll come to your Lock.'
'But, T'otherest Governor,' urged Mr Riderhood again, 'no luck never come yet of a dry
acquaintance. Let's wet it, in a mouth−fill of rum and milk, T'otherest Governon'
Bradley assenting, went with him into an early public−house, haunted by unsavoury
smells of musty hay and stale straw, where returning carts, farmers' men, gaunt dogs, fowls
of a beery breed, and certain human nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were solacing
themselves after their several manners; and where not one of the nightbirds hovering about
the sloppy bar failed to discern at a glance in the passion−wasted nightbird with respectable
feathers, the worst nightbird of all.
An inspiration of affection for a half−drunken carter going his way led to Mr
Riderhood's being elevated on a high heap of baskets on a waggon, and pursuing his journey
recumbent on his back with his head on his bundle. Bradley then turned to retrace his steps,
and by−and−by struck off through little−traversed ways, and by−and− by reached school
and home. Up came the sun to find him washed and brushed, methodically dressed in decent
black coat and waistcoat, decent formal black tie, and pepper−and−salt pantaloons, with his
decent silver watch in its pocket, and its decent hair−guard round his neck: a scholastic
huntsman clad for the field, with his fresh pack yelping and barking around him.
Yet more really bewitched than the miserable creatures of the much−lamented times,
who accused themselves of impossibilities under a contagion of horror and the strongly
suggestive influences of Torture, he had been ridden hard by Evil Spirits in the night that
was newly gone. He had been spurred and whipped and heavily sweated. If a record of the
sport had usurped the places of the peaceful texts from Scripture on the wall, the most
advanced of the scholars might have taken fright and run away from the master.
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Chapter 11 − IN THE DARK 540
Chapter 12 − MEANING MISCHIEF
U
p came the sun, steaming all over London, and in its glorious impartiality even
condescending to make prismatic sparkles in the whiskers of Mr Alfred Lammle as he sat at
breakfast. In need of some brightening from without, was Mr Alfred Lammle, for he had the
air of being dull enough within, and looked grievously discontented.
Mrs Alfred Lammle faced her lord. The happy pair of swindlers, with the comfortable
tie between them that each had swindled the other, sat moodily observant of the tablecloth.
Things looked so gloomy in the breakfast−room, albeit on the sunny side of Sackville Street,
that any of the family tradespeople glancing through the blinds might have taken the hint to
send in his account and press for it. But this, indeed, most of the family tradespeople had
already done, without the hint.
'It seems to me,' said Mrs Lammle, 'that you have had no money at all, ever since we
have been married.'
'What seems to you,' said Mr Lammle, 'to have been the case, may possibly have been
the case. It doesn't matter.'
Was it the speciality of Mr and Mrs Lammle, or does it ever obtain with other loving
couples? In these matrimonial dialogues they never addressed each other, but always some
invisible presence that appeared to take a station about midway between them. Perhaps the
skeleton in the cupboard comes out to be talked to, on such domestic occasions?
'I have never seen any money in the house,' said Mrs Lammle to the skeleton, 'except
my own annuity. That I swear.'
'You needn't take the trouble of swearing,' said Mr Lammle to the skeleton; 'once more,
it doesn't matter. You never turned your annuity to so good an account.'
'Good an account! In what way?' asked Mrs Lammle.
'In the way of getting credit, and living well,' said Mr Lammle. Perhaps the skeleton
laughed scornfully on being intrusted with this question and this answer; certainly Mrs
Lammle did, and Mr Lammle did.
'And what is to happen next?' asked Mrs Lammle of the skeleton.
'Smash is to happen next,' said Mr Lammle to the same authority.
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Chapter 12 − MEANING MISCHIEF 541
After this, Mrs Lammle looked disdainfully at the skeleton – but without carrying the
look on to Mr Lammle – and drooped her eyes. After that, Mr Lammle did exactly the same
thing, and drooped HIS eyes. A servant then entering with toast, the skeleton retired into the
closet, and shut itself up.
'Sophronia,' said Mr Lammle, when the servant had withdrawn. And then, very much
louder: 'Sophronia!'
'Well?'
'Attend to me, if you please.' He eyed her sternly until she did attend, and then went on.
'I want to take counsel with you. Come, come; no more trifling. You know our league and
covenant. We are to work together for our joint interest, and you are as knowing a hand as I
am. We shouldn't be together, if you were not. What's to be done? We are hemmed into a
corner. What shall we do?'
'Have you no scheme on foot that will bring in anything?'
Mr Lammle plunged into his whiskers for reflection, and came out hopeless: 'No; as
adventurers we are obliged to play rash games for chances of high winnings, and there has
been a run of luck against us.'
She was resuming, 'Have you nothing – ' when he stopped her.
'We, Sophronia. We, we, we.'
'Have we nothing to sell ?'
'Deuce a bit. I have given a Jew a bill of sale on this furniture, and he could take it
to−morrow, to−day, now. He would have taken it before now, I believe, but for Fledgeby.'
'What has Fledgeby to do with him?'
'Knew him. Cautioned me against him before I got into his claws. Couldn't persuade
him then, in behalf of somebody else.'
'Do you mean that Fledgeby has at all softened him towards you?'
'Us, Sophronia. Us, us, us.'
'Towards us?'
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'I mean that the Jew has not yet done what he might have done, and that Fledgeby takes
the credit of having got him to hold his hand.'
'Do you believe Fledgeby?'
'Sophronia, I never believe anybody. I never have, my dear, since I believed you. But it
looks like it.'
Having given her this back−handed reminder of her mutinous observations to the
skeleton, Mr Lammle rose from table – perhaps, the better to conceal a smile, and a white
dint or two about his nose – and took a turn on the carpet and came to the hearthrug.
'If we could have packed the brute off with Georgiana; – but however; that's spilled
milk.'
As Lammle, standing gathering up the skirts of his dressing−gown with his back to the
fire, said this, looking down at his wife, she turned pale and looked down at the ground.
With a sense of disloyalty upon her, and perhaps with a sense of personal danger – for she
was afraid of him – even afraid of his hand and afraid of his foot, though he had never done
her violence – she hastened to put herself right in his eyes.
'If we could borrow money, Alfred – '
'Beg money, borrow money, or steal money. It would be all one to us, Sophronia,' her
husband struck in.
' – Then, we could weather this?'
'No doubt. To offer another original and undeniable remark, Sophronia, two and two
make four.'
But, seeing that she was turning something in her mind, he gathered up the skirts of his
dressing−gown again, and, tucking them under one arm, and collecting his ample whiskers
in his other hand, kept his eye upon her, silently.
'It is natural, Alfred,' she said, looking up with some timidity into his face, 'to think in
such an emergency of the richest people we know, and the simplest.'
'Just so, Sophronia.'
'The Boffins.'
'Just so, Sophronia.'
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Chapter 12 − MEANING MISCHIEF 543
'Is there nothing to be done with them?'
'What is there to be done with them, Sophronia?'
She cast about in her thoughts again, and he kept his eye upon her as before.
'Of course I have repeatedly thought of the Boffins, Sophronia,' he resumed, after a
fruitless silence; 'but I have seen my way to nothing. They are well guarded. That infernal
Secretary stands between them and – people of merit.'
'If he could be got rid of?' said she, brightening a little, after more casting about.
'Take time, Sophronia,' observed her watchful husband, in a patronizing manner.
'If working him out of the way could be presented in the light of a service to Mr Boffin?'
'Take time, Sophronia.'
'We have remarked lately, Alfred, that the old man is turning very suspicious and
distrustful.'
'Miserly too, my dear; which is far the most unpromising for us. Nevertheless, take
time, Sophronia, take time.'
She took time and then said:
'Suppose we should address ourselves to that tendency in him of which we have made
ourselves quite sure. Suppose my conscience – '
'And we know what a conscience it is, my soul. Yes?'
'Suppose my conscience should not allow me to keep to myself any longer what that
upstart girl told me of the Secretary's having made a declaration to her. Suppose my
conscience should oblige me to repeat it to Mr Boffin.'
'I rather like that,' said Lammle.
'Suppose I so repeated it to Mr Boffin, as to insinuate that my sensitive delicacy and
honour – '
'Very good words, Sophronia.'
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Chapter 12 − MEANING MISCHIEF 544
' – As to insinuate that OUR sensitive delicacy and honour,' she resumed, with a bitter
stress upon the phrase, 'would not allow us to be silent parties to so mercenary and designing
a speculation on the Secretary's part, and so gross a breach of faith towards his confiding
employer. Suppose I had imparted my virtuous uneasiness to my excellent husband, and he
had said, in his integrity, «Sophronia, you must immediately disclose this to Mr Boffin.»'
'Once more, Sophronia,' observed Lammle, changing the leg on which he stood, 'I rather
like that.'
'You remark that he is well guarded,' she pursued. 'I think so too. But if this should lead
to his discharging his Secretary, there would be a weak place made.'
'Go on expounding, Sophronia. I begin to like this very much.'
'Having, in our unimpeachable rectitude, done him the service of opening his eyes to the
treachery of the person he trusted, we shall have established a claim upon him and a
confidence with him. Whether it can be made much of, or little of, we must wait – because
we can't help it – to see. Probably we shall make the most of it that is to be made.'
'Probably,' said LammIe.
'Do you think it impossible,' she asked, in the same cold plotting way, 'that you might
replace the Secretary?'
'Not impossible, Sophronia. It might be brought about. At any rate it might be skilfully
led up to.'
She nodded her understanding of the hint, as she looked at the fire. 'Mr Lammle,' she
said, musingly: not without a slight ironical touch: 'Mr Lammle would be so delighted to do
anything in his power. Mr Lammle, himself a man of business as well as a capitalist. Mr
Lammle, accustomed to be intrusted with the most delicate affairs. Mr Lammle, who has
managed my own little fortune so admirably, but who, to be sure, began to make his
reputation with the advantage of being a man of property, above temptation, and beyond
suspicion.'
Mr Lammle smiled, and even patted her on the head. In his sinister relish of the scheme,
as he stood above her, making it the subject of his cogitations, he seemed to have twice as
much nose on his face as he had ever had in his life.
He stood pondering, and she sat looking at the dusty fire without moving, for some
time. But, the moment he began to speak again she looked up with a wince and attended to
him, as if that double− dealing of hers had been in her mind, and the fear were revived in her
of his hand or his foot.
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Chapter 12 − MEANING MISCHIEF 545
'It appears to me, Sophronia, that you have omitted one branch of the subject. Perhaps
not, for women understand women. We might oust the girl herself?'
Mrs Lammle shook her head. 'She has an immensely strong hold upon them both,
Alfred. Not to be compared with that of a paid secretary.
'But the dear child,' said Lammle, with a crooked smile, 'ought to have been open with
her benefactor and benefactress. The darling love ought to have reposed unbounded
confidence in her benefactor and benefactress.'
Sophronia shook her head again.
'Well! Women understand women,' said her husband, rather disappointed. 'I don't press
it. It might be the making of our fortune to make a clean sweep of them both. With me to
manage the property, and my wife to manage the people – Whew!'
Again shaking her head, she returned: 'They will never quarrel with the girl. They will
never punish the girl. We must accept the girl, rely upon it.'
'Well!' cried Lammle, shrugging his shoulders, 'so be it: only always remember that we
don't want her.'
'Now, the sole remaining question is,' said Mrs Lammle, 'when shall I begin?'
'You cannot begin too soon, Sophronia. As I have told you, the condition of our affairs
is desperate, and may be blown upon at any moment.'
'I must secure Mr Boffin alone, Alfred. If his wife was present, she would throw oil
upon the waters. I know I should fail to move him to an angry outburst, if his wife was there.
And as to the girl herself – as I am going to betray her confidence, she is equally out of the
question.'
'It wouldn't do to write for an appointment?' said Lammle.
'No, certainly not. They would wonder among themselves why I wrote, and I want to
have him wholly unprepared.'
'Call, and ask to see him alone?' suggested Lammle.
'I would rather not do that either. Leave it to me. Spare me the little carriage for to−day,
and for to−morrow (if I don't succeed to− day), and I'll lie in wait for him.'
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It was barely settled when a manly form was seen to pass the windows and heard to
knock and ring. 'Here's Fledgeby,' said Lammle. 'He admires you, and has a high opinion of
you. I'll be out. Coax him to use his influence with the Jew. His name is Riah, of the House
of Pubsey and Co.' Adding these words under his breath, lest he should be audible in the
erect ears of Mr Fledgeby, through two keyholes and the hall, Lammle, making signals of
discretion to his servant, went softly up stairs.
'Mr Fledgeby,' said Mrs Lammle, giving him a very gracious reception, 'so glad to see
you! My poor dear Alfred, who is greatly worried just now about his affairs, went out rather
early. Dear Mr Fledgeby, do sit down.'
Dear Mr Fledgeby did sit down, and satisfied himself (or, judging from the expression
of his countenance, DISsatisfied himself) that nothing new had occurred in the way of
whisker−sprout since he came round the corner from the Albany.
'Dear Mr Fledgeby, it was needless to mention to you that my poor dear Alfred is much
worried about his affairs at present, for he has told me what a comfort you are to him in his
temporary difficulties, and what a great service you have rendered him.'
'Oh!' said Mr Fledgeby.
'Yes,' said Mrs Lammle.
'I didn't know,' remarked Mr Fledgeby, trying a new part of his chair, 'but that Lammle
might be reserved about his affairs.'
'Not to me,' said Mrs Lammle, with deep feeling.
'Oh, indeed?' said Fledgeby.
'Not to me, dear Mr Fledgeby. I am his wife.'
'Yes. I – I always understood so,' said Mr Fledgeby.
'And as the wife of Alfred, may I, dear Mr Fledgeby, wholly without his authority or
knowledge, as I am sure your discernment will perceive, entreat you to continue that great
service, and once more use your well−earned influence with Mr Riah for a little more
indulgence? The name I have heard Alfred mention, tossing in his dreams, IS Riah; is it
not?'
'The name of the Creditor is Riah,' said Mr Fledgehy, with a rather uncompromising
accent on his noun−substantive. 'Saint Mary Axe. Pubsey and Co.'
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'Oh yes!' exclaimed Mrs Lammle, clasping her hands with a certain gushing wildness.
'Pubsey and Co.!'
'The pleading of the feminine – ' Mr Fledgeby began, and there stuck so long for a word
to get on with, that Mrs Lammle offered him sweetly, 'Heart?'
'No,' said Mr Fledgeby, 'Gender – is ever what a man is bound to listen to, and I wish it
rested with myself. But this Riah is a nasty one, Mrs Lammle; he really is.'
'Not if YOU speak to him, dear Mr Fledgeby.'
'Upon my soul and body he is!' said Fledgeby.
'Try. Try once more, dearest Mr Fledgeby. What is there you cannot do, if you will!'
'Thank you,' said Fledgeby, 'you're very complimentary to say so. I don't mind trying
him again, at your request. But of course I can't answer for the consequences. Riah is a
tough subject, and when he says he'll do a thing, he'll do it.'
'Exactly so,' cried Mrs Lammle, 'and when he says to you he'll wait, he'll wait.'
('She is a devilish clever woman,' thought Fledgeby. 'I didn't see that opening, but she
spies it out and cuts into it as soon as it's made. ')
'In point of fact, dear Mr Fledgeby,' Mrs Lammle went on in a very interesting manner,
'not to affect concealment of Alfred's hopes, to you who are so much his friend, there is a
distant break in his horizon.'
This figure of speech seemed rather mysterious to Fascination Fledgeby, who said,
'There's a what in his – eh?'
'Alfred, dear Mr Fledgeby, discussed with me this very morning before he went out,
some prospects he has, which might entirely change the aspect of his present troubles.'
'Really?' said Fledgeby.
'O yes!' Here Mrs Lammle brought her handkerchief into play. 'And you know, dear Mr
Fledgeby – you who study the human heart, and study the world – what an affliction it
would be to lose position and to lose credit, when ability to tide over a very short time might
save all appearances.'
'Oh!' said Fledgeby. 'Then you think, Mrs Lammle, that if Lammle got time, he wouldn't
burst up? – To use an expression,' Mr Fledgeby apologetically explained, 'which is adopted
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Chapter 12 − MEANING MISCHIEF 548
in the Money Market.'
'Indeed yes. Truly, truly, yes!'
'That makes all the difference,' said Fledgeby. 'I'll make a point of seeing Riah at once.'
'Blessings on you, dearest Mr Fledgeby!'
'Not at all,' said Fledgeby. She gave him her hand. 'The hand,' said Mr Fledgeby, 'of a
lovely and superior−minded female is ever the repayment of a – '
'Noble action!' said Mrs Lammle, extremely anxious to get rid of him.
'It wasn't what I was going to say,' returned Fledgeby, who never would, under any
circumstances, accept a suggested expression, 'but you're very complimentary. May I
imprint a – a one – upon it? Good morning!'
'I may depend upon your promptitude, dearest Mr Fledgeby?'
Said Fledgeby, looking back at the door and respectfully kissing his hand, 'You may
depend upon it.'
In fact, Mr Fledgeby sped on his errand of mercy through the streets, at so brisk a rate
that his feet might have been winged by all the good spirits that wait on Generosity. They
might have taken up their station in his breast, too, for he was blithe and merry. There was
quite a fresh trill in his voice, when, arriving at the counting−house in St Mary Axe, and
finding it for the moment empty, he trolled forth at the foot of the staircase: 'Now, Judah,
what are you up to there?'
The old man appeared, with his accustomed deference.
'Halloa!' said Fledgeby, falling back, with a wink. 'You mean mischief, Jerusalem!'
The old man raised his eyes inquiringly.
'Yes you do,' said Fledgeby. 'Oh, you sinner! Oh, you dodger! What! You're going to act
upon that bill of sale at Lammle's, are you? Nothing will turn you, won't it? You won't be
put off for another single minute, won't you?'
Ordered to immediate action by the master's tone and look, the old man took up his hat
from the little counter where it lay.
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'You have been told that he might pull through it, if you didn't go in to win,
Wide−Awake; have you?' said Fledgeby. 'And it's not your game that he should pull through
it; ain't it? You having got security, and there being enough to pay you? Oh, you Jew!'
The old man stood irresolute and uncertain for a moment, as if there might be further
instructions for him in reserve.
'Do I go, sir?' he at length asked in a low voice.
'Asks me if he is going!' exclaimed Fledgeby. 'Asks me, as if he didn't know his own
purpose! Asks me, as if he hadn't got his hat on ready! Asks me, as if his sharp old eye –
why, it cuts like a knife – wasn't looking at his walking−stick by the door!'
'Do I go, sir?'
'Do you go?' sneered Fledgeby. 'Yes, you do go. Toddle, Judah!'
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Chapter 13 − GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME, AND HANG HIM
F
ascination Fledgeby, left alone in the counting−house, strolled about with his hat on
one side, whistling, and investigating the drawers, and prying here and there for any small
evidences of his being cheated, but could find none. 'Not his merit that he don't cheat me,'
was Mr Fledgeby's commentary delivered with a wink, 'but my precaution.' He then with a
lazy grandeur asserted his rights as lord of Pubsey and Co. by poking his cane at the stools
and boxes, and spitting in the fireplace, and so loitered royally to the window and looked out
into the narrow street, with his small eyes just peering over the top of Pubsey and Co.'s
blind. As a blind in more senses than one, it reminded him that he was alone in the
counting−house with the front door open. He was moving away to shut it, lest he should be
injudiciously identified with the establishment, when he was stopped by some one coming to
the door.
This some one was the dolls' dressmaker, with a little basket on her arm, and her crutch
stick in her hand. Her keen eyes had espied Mr Fledgeby before Mr Fledgeby had espied
her, and he was paralysed in his purpose of shutting her out, not so much by her approaching
the door, as by her favouring him with a shower of nods, the instant he saw her. This
advantage she improved by hobbling up the steps with such despatch that before Mr
Fledgeby could take measures for her finding nobody at home, she was face to face with him
in the counting−house.
'Hope I see you well, sir,' said Miss Wren. 'Mr Riah in?'
Fledgeby had dropped into a chair, in the attitude of one waiting wearily. 'I suppose he
will be back soon,' he replied; 'he has cut out and left me expecting him back, in an odd way.
Haven't I seen you before?'
'Once before – if you had your eyesight,' replied Miss Wren; the conditional clause in an
under−tone.
'When you were carrying on some games up at the top of the house. I remember. How's
your friend?'
'I have more friends than one, sir, I hope,' replied Miss Wren. 'Which friend?'
'Never mind,' said Mr Fledgeby, shutting up one eye, 'any of your friends, all your
friends. Are they pretty tolerable?'
Somewhat confounded, Miss Wren parried the pleasantry, and sat down in a corner
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behind the door, with her basket in her lap. By− and−by, she said, breaking a long and
patient silence:
'I beg your pardon, sir, but I am used to find Mr Riah at this time, and so I generally
come at this time. I only want to buy my poor little two shillings' worth of waste. Perhaps
you'll kindly let me have it, and I'll trot off to my work.'
'I let you have it?' said Fledgeby, turning his head towards her; for he had been sitting
blinking at the light, and feeling his cheek. 'Why, you don't really suppose that I have
anything to do with the place, or the business; do you?'
'Suppose?' exclaimed Miss Wren. 'He said, that day, you were the master!'
'The old cock in black said? Riah said? Why, he'd say anything.'
'Well; but you said so too,' returned Miss Wren. 'Or at least you took on like the master,
and didn't contradict him.'
'One of his dodges,' said Mr Fledgeby, with a cool and contemptuous shrug. 'He's made
of dodges. He said to me, «Come up to the top of the house, sir, and I'll show you a
handsome girl. But I shall call you the master.» So I went up to the top of the house and he
showed me the handsome girl (very well worth looking at she was), and I was called the
master. I don't know why. I dare say he don't. He loves a dodge for its own sake; being,'
added Mr Fledgeby, after casting about for an expressive phrase, 'the dodgerest of all the
dodgers.'
'Oh my head!' cried the dolls' dressmaker, holding it with both her hands, as if it were
cracking. 'You can't mean what you say.'
'I can, my little woman, retorted Fledgeby, 'and I do, I assure you.
This repudiation was not only an act of deliberate policy on Fledgeby's part, in case of
his being surprised by any other caller, but was also a retort upon Miss Wren for her
over−sharpness, and a pleasant instance of his humour as regarded the old Jew. 'He has got a
bad name as an old Jew, and he is paid for the use of it, and I'll have my money's worth out
of him.' This was Fledgeby's habitual reflection in the way of business, and it was sharpened
just now by the old man's presuming to have a secret from him: though of the secret itself, as
annoying somebody else whom he disliked, he by no means disapproved.
Miss Wren with a fallen countenance sat behind the door looking thoughtfully at the
ground, and the long and patient silence had again set in for some time, when the expression
of Mr Fledgeby's face betokened that through the upper portion of the door, which was of
glass, he saw some one faltering on the brink of the counting−house. Presently there was a
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rustle and a tap, and then some more rustling and another tap. Fledgeby taking no notice, the
door was at length softly opened, and the dried face of a mild little elderly gentleman looked
in.
'Mr Riah?' said this visitor, very politely.
'I am waiting for him, sir,' returned Mr Fledgeby. 'He went out and left me here. I expect
him back every minute. Perhaps you had better take a chair.'
The gentleman took a chair, and put his hand to his forehead, as if he were in a
melancholy frame of mind. Mr Fledgeby eyed him aside, and seemed to relish his attitude.
'A fine day, sir,' remarked Fledgeby.
The little dried gentleman was so occupied with his own depressed reflections that he
did not notice the remark until the sound of Mr Fledgeby's voice had died out of the
counting−house. Then he started, and said: 'I beg your pardon, sir. I fear you spoke to me?'
'I said,' remarked Fledgeby, a little louder than before, 'it was a fine day.'
'I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. Yes.'
Again the little dried gentleman put his hand to his forehead, and again Mr Fledgeby
seemed to enjoy his doing it. When the gentleman changed his attitude with a sigh, Fledgeby
spake with a grin.
'Mr Twemlow, I think?'
The dried gentleman seemed much surprised.
'Had the pleasure of dining with you at Lammle's,' said Fledgeby. 'Even have the honour
of being a connexion of yours. An unexpected sort of place this to meet in; but one never
knows, when one gets into the City, what people one may knock up against. I hope you have
your health, and are enjoying yourself.'
There might have been a touch of impertinence in the last words; on the other hand, it
might have been but the native grace of Mr Fledgeby's manner. Mr Fledgeby sat on a stool
with a foot on the rail of another stool, and his hat on. Mr Twemlow had uncovered on
looking in at the door, and remained so. Now the conscientious Twemlow, knowing what he
had done to thwart the gracious Fledgeby, was particularly disconcerted by this encounter.
He was as ill at ease as a gentleman well could be. He felt himself bound to conduct himself
stiffly towards Fledgeby, and he made him a distant bow. Fledgeby made his small eyes
smaller in taking special note of his manner. The dolls' dressmaker sat in her corner behind
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the door, with her eyes on the ground and her hands folded on her basket, holding her
crutch−stick between them, and appearing to take no heed of anything.
'He's a long time,' muttered Mr Fledgeby, looking at his watch. 'What time may you
make it, Mr Twemlow?'
Mr Twemlow made it ten minutes past twelve, sir.
'As near as a toucher,' assented Fledgeby. 'I hope, Mr Twemlow, your business here
may be of a more agreeable character than mine.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Mr Twemlow.
Fledgeby again made his small eyes smaller, as he glanced with great complacency at
Twemlow, who was timorously tapping the table with a folded letter.
'What I know of Mr Riah,' said Fledgeby, with a very disparaging utterance of his name,
'leads me to believe that this is about the shop for disagreeable business. I have always found
him the bitingest and tightest screw in London.'
Mr Twemlow acknowledged the remark with a little distant bow. It evidently made him
nervous.
'So much so,' pursued Fledgeby, 'that if it wasn't to be true to a friend, nobody should
catch me waiting here a single minute. But if you have friends in adversity, stand by them.
That's what I say and act up to.'
The equitable Twemlow felt that this sentiment, irrespective of the utterer, demanded
his cordial assent. 'You are very right, sir,' he rejoined with spirit. 'You indicate the generous
and manly course.
'Glad to have your approbation,' returned Fledgeby. 'It's a coincidence, Mr Twemlow;'
here he descended from his perch, and sauntered towards him; 'that the friends I am standing
by to−day are the friends at whose house I met you! The Lammles. She's a very taking and
agreeable woman?'
Conscience smote the gentle Twemlow pale. 'Yes,' he said. 'She is.'
'And when she appealed to me this morning, to come and try what I could do to pacify
their creditor, this Mr Riah – that I certainly have gained some little influence with in
transacting business for another friend, but nothing like so much as she supposes – and when
a woman like that spoke to me as her dearest Mr Fledgeby, and shed tears – why what could
I do, you know?'
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Twemlow gasped 'Nothing but come.'
'Nothing but come. And so I came. But why,' said Fledgeby, putting his hands in his
pockets and counterfeiting deep meditation, 'why Riah should have started up, when I told
him that the Lammles entreated him to hold over a Bill of Sale he has on all their effects;
and why he should have cut out, saying he would be back directly; and why he should have
left me here alone so long; I cannot understand.'
The chivalrous Twemlow, Knight of the Simple Heart, was not in a condition to offer
any suggestion. He was too penitent, too remorseful. For the first time in his life he had done
an underhanded action, and he had done wrong. He had secretly interposed against this
confiding young man, for no better real reason than because the young man's ways were not
his ways.
But, the confiding young man proceeded to heap coals of fire on his sensitive head.
'I beg your pardon, Mr Twemlow; you see I am acquainted with the nature of the affairs
that are transacted here. Is there anything I can do for you here? You have always been
brought up as a gentleman, and never as a man of business;' another touch of possible
impertinence in this place; 'and perhaps you are but a poor man of business. What else is to
be expected!'
'I am even a poorer man of business than I am a man, sir,' returned Twemlow, 'and I
could hardly express my deficiency in a stronger way. I really do not so much as clearly
understand my position in the matter on which I am brought here. But there are reasons
which make me very delicate of accepting your assistance. I am greatly, greatly, disinclined
to profit by it. I don't deserve it.'
Good childish creature! Condemned to a passage through the world by such narrow
little dimly−lighted ways, and picking up so few specks or spots on the road!
'Perhaps,' said Fledgeby, 'you may be a little proud of entering on the topic, – having
been brought up as a gentleman.'
'It's not that, sir,' returned Twemlow, 'it's not that. I hope I distinguish between true
pride and false pride.'
'I have no pride at all, myself,' said Fledgeby, 'and perhaps I don't cut things so fine as to
know one from t'other. But I know this is a place where even a man of business needs his
wits about him; and if mine can be of any use to you here, you're welcome to them.'
'You are very good,' said Twemlow, faltering. 'But I am most unwilling – '
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'I don't, you know,' proceeded Fledgeby with an ill−favoured glance, 'entertain the
vanity of supposing that my wits could be of any use to you in society, but they might be
here. You cultivate society and society cultivates you, but Mr Riah's not society. In society,
Mr Riah is kept dark; eh, Mr Twemlow?'
Twemlow, much disturbed, and with his hand fluttering about his forehead, replied:
'Quite true.'
The confiding young man besought him to state his case. The innocent Twemlow,
expecting Fledgeby to be astounded by what he should unfold, and not for an instant
conceiving the possibility of its happening every day, but treating of it as a terrible
phenomenon occurring in the course of ages, related how that he had had a deceased friend,
a married civil officer with a family, who had wanted money for change of place on change
of post, and how he, Twemlow, had 'given him his name,' with the usual, but in the eyes of
Twemlow almost incredible result that he had been left to repay what he had never had.
How, in the course of years, he had reduced the principal by trifling sums, 'having,' said
Twemlow, 'always to observe great economy, being in the enjoyment of a fixed income
limited in extent, and that depending on the munificence of a certain nobleman,' and had
always pinched the full interest out of himself with punctual pinches. How he had come, in
course of time, to look upon this one only debt of his life as a regular quarterly drawback,
and no worse, when 'his name' had some way fallen into the possession of Mr Riah, who had
sent him notice to redeem it by paying up in full, in one plump sum, or take tremendous
consequences. This, with hazy remembrances of how he had been carried to some office to
'confess judgment' (as he recollected the phrase), and how he had been carried to another
office where his life was assured for somebody not wholly unconnected with the sherry
trade whom he remembered by the remarkable circumstance that he had a Straduarius violin
to dispose of, and also a Madonna, formed the sum and substance of Mr Twemlow's
narrative. Through which stalked the shadow of the awful Snigsworth, eyed afar off by
money−lenders as Security in the Mist, and menacing Twemlow with his baronial
truncheon.
To all, Mr Fledgeby listened with the modest gravity becoming a confiding young man
who knew it all beforehand, and, when it was finished, seriously shook his head. 'I don't like,
Mr Twemlow,' said Fledgeby, 'I don't like Riah's calling in the principal. If he's determined
to call it in, it must come.'
'But supposing, sir,' said Twemlow, downcast, 'that it can't come?'
'Then,' retorted Fledgeby, 'you must go, you know.'
'Where?' asked Twemlow, faintly.
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'To prison,' returned Fledgeby. Whereat Mr Twemlow leaned his innocent head upon
his hand, and moaned a little moan of distress and disgrace.
'However,' said Fledgeby, appearing to pluck up his spirits, 'we'll hope it's not so bad as
that comes to. If you'll allow me, I'll mention to Mr Riah when he comes in, who you are,
and I'll tell him you're my friend, and I'll say my say for you, instead of your saying it for
yourself; I may be able to do it in a more business−like way. You won't consider it a
liberty?'
'I thank you again and again, sir,' said Twemlow. 'I am strong, strongly, disinclined to
avail myself of your generosity, though my helplessness yields. For I cannot but feel that I –
to put it in the mildest form of speech – that I have done nothing to deserve it.'
'Where CAN he be?' muttered Fledgeby, referring to his watch again. 'What CAN he
have gone out for? Did you ever see him, Mr Twemlow?'
'Never.'
'He is a thorough Jew to look at, but he is a more thorough Jew to deal with. He's worst
when he's quiet. If he's quiet, I shall take it as a very bad sign. Keep your eye upon him
when he comes in, and, if he's quiet, don't be hopeful. Here he is! – He looks quiet.'
With these words, which had the effect of causing the harmless Twemlow painful
agitation, Mr Fledgeby withdrew to his former post, and the old man entered the
counting−house.
'Why, Mr Riah,' said Fledgeby, 'I thought you were lost!'
The old man, glancing at the stranger, stood stock−still. He perceived that his master
was leading up to the orders he was to take, and he waited to understand them.
'I really thought,' repeated Fledgeby slowly, 'that you were lost, Mr Riah. Why, now I
look at you – but no, you can't have done it; no, you can't have done it!'
Hat in hand, the old man lifted his head, and looked distressfully at Fledgeby as seeking
to know what new moral burden he was to bear.
'You can't have rushed out to get the start of everybody else, and put in that bill of sale
at Lammle's?' said Fledgeby. 'Say you haven't, Mr Riah.'
'Sir, I have,' replied the old man in a low voice.
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'Oh my eye!' cried Fledgeby. 'Tut, tut, tut! Dear, dear, dear! Well! I knew you were a
hard customer, Mr Riah, but I never thought you were as hard as that.'
'Sir,' said the old man, with great uneasiness, 'I do as I am directed. I am not the
principal here. I am but the agent of a superior, and I have no choice, no power.'
'Don't say so,' retorted Fledgeby, secretly exultant as the old man stretched out his
hands, with a shrinking action of defending himself against the sharp construction of the two
observers. 'Don't play the tune of the trade, Mr Riah. You've a right to get in your debts, if
you're determined to do it, but don't pretend what every one in your line regularly pretends.
At least, don't do it to me. Why should you, Mr Riah? You know I know all about you.'
The old man clasped the skirt of his long coat with his disengaged hand, and directed a
wistful look at Fledgeby.
'And don't,' said Fledgeby, 'don't, I entreat you as a favour, Mr Riah, be so devilish
meek, for I know what'll follow if you are. Look here, Mr Riah. This gentleman is Mr
Twemlow.'
The Jew turned to him and bowed. That poor lamb bowed in return; polite, and terrified.
'I have made such a failure,' proceeded Fledgeby, 'in trying to do anything with you for
my friend Lammle, that I've hardly a hope of doing anything with you for my friend (and
connexion indeed) Mr Twemlow. But I do think that if you would do a favour for anybody,
you would for me, and I won't fail for want of trying, and I've passed my promise to Mr
Twemlow besides. Now, Mr Riah, here is Mr Twemlow. Always good for his interest,
always coming up to time, always paying his little way. Now, why should you press Mr
Twemlow? You can't have any spite against Mr Twemlow! Why not be easy with Mr
Twemlow?'
The old man looked into Fledgeby's little eyes for any sign of leave to be easy with Mr
Twemlow; but there was no sign in them.
'Mr Twemlow is no connexion of yours, Mr Riah,' said Fledgeby; 'you can't want to be
even with him for having through life gone in for a gentleman and hung on to his Family. If
Mr Twemlow has a contempt for business, what can it matter to you?'
'But pardon me,' interposed the gentle victim, 'I have not. I should consider it
presumption.'
'There, Mr Riah!' said Fledgeby, 'isn't that handsomely said? Come! Make terms with
me for Mr Twemlow.'
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The old man looked again for any sign of permission to spare the poor little gentleman.
No. Mr Fledgeby meant him to be racked.
'I am very sorry, Mr Twemlow,' said Riah. 'I have my instructions. I am invested with
no authority for diverging from them. The money must be paid.'
'In full and slap down, do you mean, Mr Riah?' asked Fledgeby, to make things quite
explicit.
'In full, sir, and at once,' was Riah's answer.
Mr Fledgeby shook his head deploringly at Twemlow, and mutely expressed in
reference to the venerable figure standing before him with eyes upon the ground: 'What a
Monster of an Israelite this is!'
'Mr Riah,' said Fledgeby.
The old man lifted up his eyes once more to the little eyes in Mr Fledgeby's head, with
some reviving hope that the sign might be coming yet.
'Mr Riah, it's of no use my holding back the fact. There's a certain great party in the
background in Mr Twemlow's case, and you know it.
'I know it,' the old man admitted.
'Now, I'll put it as a plain point of business, Mr Riah. Are you fully determined (as a
plain point of business) either to have that said great party's security, or that said great
party's money?'
'Fully determined,' answered Riah, as he read his master's face, and learnt the book.
'Not at all caring for, and indeed as it seems to me rather enjoying,' said Fledgeby, with
peculiar unction, 'the precious kick−up and row that will come off between Mr Twemlow
and the said great party?'
This required no answer, and received none. Poor Mr Twemlow, who had betrayed the
keenest mental terrors since his noble kinsman loomed in the perspective, rose with a sigh to
take his departure. 'I thank you very much, sir,' he said, offering Fledgeby his feverish hand.
'You have done me an unmerited service. Thank you, thank you!'
'Don't mention it,' answered Fledgeby. 'It's a failure so far, but I'll stay behind, and take
another touch at Mr Riah.'
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'Do not deceive yourself Mr Twemlow,' said the Jew, then addressing him directly for
the first time. 'There is no hope for you. You must expect no leniency here. You must pay in
full, and you cannot pay too promptly, or you will be put to heavy charges. Trust nothing to
me, sir. Money, money, money.' When he had said these words in an emphatic manner, he
acknowledged Mr Twemlow's still polite motion of his head, and that amiable little worthy
took his departure in the lowest spirits.
Fascination Fledgeby was in such a merry vein when the counting− house was cleared
of him, that he had nothing for it but to go to the window, and lean his arms on the frame of
the blind, and have his silent laugh out, with his back to his subordinate. When he turned
round again with a composed countenance, his subordinate still stood in the same place, and
the dolls' dressmaker sat behind the door with a look of horror.
'Halloa!' cried Mr Fledgeby, 'you're forgetting this young lady, Mr Riah, and she has
been waiting long enough too. Sell her her waste, please, and give her good measure if you
can make up your mind to do the liberal thing for once.'
He looked on for a time, as the Jew filled her little basket with such scraps as she was
used to buy; but, his merry vein coming on again, he was obliged to turn round to the
window once more, and lean his arms on the blind.
'There, my Cinderella dear,' said the old man in a whisper, and with a worn−out look,
'the basket's full now. Bless you! And get you gone!'
'Don't call me your Cinderella dear,' returned Miss Wren. 'O you cruel godmother!'
She shook that emphatic little forefinger of hers in his face at parting, as earnestly and
reproachfully as she had ever shaken it at her grim old child at home.
'You are not the godmother at all!' said she. 'You are the Wolf in the Forest, the wicked
Wolf! And if ever my dear Lizzie is sold and betrayed, I shall know who sold and betrayed
her!'
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Chapter 14 − MR WEGG PREPARES A
GRINDSTONE FOR MR BOFFIN'S NOSE
H
aving assisted at a few more expositions of the lives of Misers, Mr Venus became
almost indispensable to the evenings at the Bower. The circumstance of having another
listener to the wonders unfolded by Wegg, or, as it were, another calculator to cast up the
guineas found in teapots, chimneys, racks and mangers, and other such banks of deposit,
seemed greatly to heighten Mr Boffin's enjoyment; while Silas Wegg, for his part, though of
a jealous temperament which might under ordinary circumstances have resented the
anatomist's getting into favour, was so very anxious to keep his eye on that gentleman – lest,
being too much left to himself, he should be tempted to play any tricks with the precious
document in his keeping – that he never lost an opportunity of commending him to Mr
Boffin's notice as a third party whose company was much to be desired. Another friendly
demonstration towards him Mr Wegg now regularly gratified. After each sitting was over,
and the patron had departed, Mr Wegg invariably saw Mr Venus home. To be sure, he as
invariably requested to be refreshed with a sight of the paper in which he was a joint
proprietor; but he never failed to remark that it was the great pleasure he derived from Mr
Venus's improving society which had insensibly lured him round to Clerkenwell again, and
that, finding himself once more attracted to the spot by the social powers of Mr V., he would
beg leave to go through that little incidental procedure, as a matter of form. 'For well I know,
sir,' Mr Wegg would add, 'that a man of your delicate mind would wish to be checked off
whenever the opportunity arises, and it is not for me to baulk your feelings.'
A certain rustiness in Mr Venus, which never became so lubricated by the oil of Mr
Wegg but that he turned under the screw in a creaking and stiff manner, was very noticeable
at about this period. While assisting at the literary evenings, he even went so far, on two or
three occasions, as to correct Mr Wegg when he grossly mispronounced a word, or made
nonsense of a passage; insomuch that Mr Wegg took to surveying his course in the day, and
to making arrangements for getting round rocks at night instead of running straight upon
them. Of the slightest anatomical reference he became particularly shy, and, if he saw a bone
ahead, would go any distance out of his way rather than mention it by name.
The adverse destinies ordained that one evening Mr Wegg's labouring bark became
beset by polysyllables, and embarrassed among a perfect archipelago of hard words. It being
necessary to take soundings every minute, and to feel the way with the greatest caution, Mr
Wegg's attention was fully employed. Advantage was taken of this dilemma by Mr Venus,
to pass a scrap of paper into Mr Boffin's hand, and lay his finger on his own lip.
When Mr Boffin got home at night he found that the paper contained Mr Venus's card
and these words: 'Should be glad to be honoured with a call respecting business of your own,
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Chapter 14 − MR WEGG PREPARES A GRINDSTONE FOR MR BOFFIN'S NOSE 561
about dusk on an early evening.'
The very next evening saw Mr Boffin peeping in at the preserved frogs in Mr Venus's
shop−window, and saw Mr Venus espying Mr Boffin with the readiness of one on the alert,
and beckoning that gentleman into his interior. Responding, Mr Boffin was invited to seat
himself on the box of human miscellanies before the fire, and did so, looking round the
place with admiring eyes. The fire being low and fitful, and the dusk gloomy, the whole
stock seemed to be winking and blinking with both eyes, as Mr Venus did. The French
gentleman, though he had no eyes, was not at all behind− hand, but appeared, as the flame
rose and fell, to open and shut his no eyes, with the regularity of the glass−eyed dogs and
ducks and birds. The big−headed babies were equally obliging in lending their grotesque aid
to the general effect.
'You see, Mr Venus, I've lost no time,' said Mr Boffin. 'Here I am.'
'Here you are, sir,' assented Mr Venus.
'I don't like secrecy,' pursued Mr Boffin – 'at least, not in a general way I don't – but I
dare say you'll show me good reason for being secret so far.'
'I think I shall, sir,' returned Venus.
'Good,' said Mr Boffin. 'You don't expect Wegg, I take it for granted?'
'No, sir. I expect no one but the present company.'
Mr Boffin glanced about him, as accepting under that inclusive denomination the
French gentleman and the circle in which he didn't move, and repeated, 'The present
company.'
'Sir,' said Mr Venus, 'before entering upon business, I shall have to ask you for your
word and honour that we are in confidence.'
'Let's wait a bit and understand what the expression means,' answered Mr Boffin. 'In
confidence for how long? In confidence for ever and a day?'
'I take your hint, sir,' said Venus; 'you think you might consider the business, when you
came to know it, to be of a nature incompatible with confidence on your part?'
'I might,' said Mr Boffin with a cautious look.
'True, sir. Well, sir,' observed Venus, after clutching at his dusty hair, to brighten his
ideas, 'let us put it another way. I open the business with you, relying upon your honour not
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to do anything in it, and not to mention me in it, without my knowledge.'
'That sounds fair,' said Mr Boffin. 'I agree to that.'
'I have your word and honour, sir?'
'My good fellow,' retorted Mr Boffin, 'you have my word; and how you can have that,
without my honour too, I don't know. I've sorted a lot of dust in my time, but I never knew
the two things go into separate heaps.'
This remark seemed rather to abash Mr Venus. He hesitated, and said, 'Very true, sir;'
and again, 'Very true, sir,' before resuming the thread of his discourse.
'Mr Boffin, if I confess to you that I fell into a proposal of which you were the subject,
and of which you oughtn't to have been the subject, you will allow me to mention, and will
please take into favourable consideration, that I was in a crushed state of mind at the time.'
The Golden Dustman, with his hands folded on the top of his stout stick, with his chin
resting upon them, and with something leering and whimsical in his eyes, gave a nod, and
said, 'Quite so, Venus.'
'That proposal, sir, was a conspiring breach of your confidence, to such an extent, that I
ought at once to have made it known to you. But I didn't, Mr Boffin, and I fell into it.'
Without moving eye or finger, Mr Boffin gave another nod, and placidly repeated,
'Quite so, Venus.'
'Not that I was ever hearty in it, sir,' the penitent anatomist went on, 'or that I ever
viewed myself with anything but reproach for having turned out of the paths of science into
the paths of – ' he was going to say 'villany,' but, unwilling to press too hard upon himself,
substituted with great emphasis – 'Weggery.'
Placid and whimsical of look as ever, Mr Boffin answered:
'Quite so, Venus.'
'And now, sir,' said Venus, 'having prepared your mind in the rough, I will articulate the
details.' With which brief professional exordium, he entered on the history of the friendly
move, and truly recounted it. One might have thought that it would have extracted some
show of surprise or anger, or other emotion, from Mr Boffin, but it extracted nothing beyond
his former comment:
'Quite so, Venus.'
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'I have astonished you, sir, I believe?' said Mr Venus, pausing dubiously.
Mr Boffin simply answered as aforesaid: 'Quite so, Venus.'
By this time the astonishment was all on the other side. It did not, however, so continue.
For, when Venus passed to Wegg's discovery, and from that to their having both seen Mr
Boffin dig up the Dutch bottle, that gentleman changed colour, changed his attitude, became
extremely restless, and ended (when Venus ended) by being in a state of manifest anxiety,
trepidation, and confusion.
'Now, sir,' said Venus, finishing off; 'you best know what was in that Dutch bottle, and
why you dug it up, and took it away. I don't pretend to know anything more about it than I
saw. All I know is this: I am proud of my calling after all (though it has been attended by
one dreadful drawback which has told upon my heart, and almost equally upon my
skeleton), and I mean to live by my calling. Putting the same meaning into other words, I do
not mean to turn a single dishonest penny by this affair. As the best amends I can make you
for having ever gone into it, I make known to you, as a warning, what Wegg has found out.
My opinion is, that Wegg is not to be silenced at a modest price, and I build that opinion on
his beginning to dispose of your property the moment he knew his power. Whether it's worth
your while to silence him at any price, you will decide for yourself, and take your measures
accordingly. As far as I am concerned, I have no price. If I am ever called upon for the truth,
I tell it, but I want to do no more than I have now done and ended.'
'Thank'ee, Venus!' said Mr Boffin, with a hearty grip of his hand; 'thank'ee, Venus,
thank'ee, Venus!' And then walked up and down the little shop in great agitation. 'But look
here, Venus,' he by− and−by resumed, nervously sitting down again; 'if I have to buy Wegg
up, I shan't buy him any cheaper for your being out of it. Instead of his having half the
money – it was to have been half, I suppose? Share and share alike?'
'It was to have been half, sir,' answered Venus.
'Instead of that, he'll now have all. I shall pay the same, if not more. For you tell me he's
an unconscionable dog, a ravenous rascal.'
'He is,' said Venus.
'Don't you think, Venus,' insinuated Mr Boffin, after looking at the fire for a while –
'don't you feel as if – you might like to pretend to be in it till Wegg was bought up, and then
ease your mind by handing over to me what you had made believe to pocket?'
'No I don't, sir,' returned Venus, very positively.
'Not to make amends?' insinuated Mr Boffin.
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'No, sir. It seems to me, after maturely thinking it over, that the best amends for having
got out of the square is to get back into the square.'
'Humph!' mused Mr Boffin. 'When you say the square, you mean – '
'I mean,' said Venus, stoutly and shortly, 'the right.'
'It appears to me,' said Mr Boffin, grumbling over the fire in an injured manner, 'that the
right is with me, if it's anywhere. I have much more right to the old man's money than the
Crown can ever have. What was the Crown to him except the King's Taxes? Whereas, me
and my wife, we was all in all to him.'
Mr Venus, with his head upon his hands, rendered melancholy by the contemplation of
Mr Boffin's avarice, only murmured to steep himself in the luxury of that frame of mind:
'She did not wish so to regard herself, nor yet to be so regarded.'
'And how am I to live,' asked Mr Boffin, piteously, 'if I'm to be going buying fellows up
out of the little that I've got? And how am I to set about it? When am I to get my money
ready? When am I to make a bid? You haven't told me when he threatens to drop down upon
me.'
Venus explained under what conditions, and with what views, the dropping down upon
Mr Boffin was held over until the Mounds should be cleared away. Mr Boffin listened
attentively. 'I suppose,' said he, with a gleam of hope, 'there's no doubt about the
genuineness and date of this confounded will?'
'None whatever,' said Mr Venus.
'Where might it be deposited at present?' asked Mr Boffin, in a wheedling tone.
'It's in my possession, sir.'
'Is it?' he cried, with great eagerness. 'Now, for any liberal sum of money that could be
agreed upon, Venus, would you put it in the fire?'
'No, sir, I wouldn't,' interrupted Mr Venus.
'Nor pass it over to me?'
'That would be the same thing. No, sir,' said Mr Venus.
The Golden Dustman seemed about to pursue these questions, when a stumping noise
was heard outside, coming towards the door. 'Hush! here's Wegg!' said Venus. 'Get behind
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the young alligator in the corner, Mr Boffin, and judge him for yourself. I won't light a
candle till he's gone; there'll only be the glow of the fire; Wegg's well acquainted with the
alligator, and he won't take particular notice of him. Draw your legs in, Mr Boffin, at present
I see a pair of shoes at the end of his tail. Get your head well behind his smile, Mr Boffin,
and you'll lie comfortable there; you'll find plenty of room behind his smile. He's a little
dusty, but he's very like you in tone. Are you right, sir?'
Mr Boffin had but whispered an affirmative response, when Wegg came stumping in.
'Partner,' said that gentleman in a sprightly manner, 'how's yourself?'
'Tolerable,' returned Mr Venus. 'Not much to boast of.'
'In−deed!' said Wegg: 'sorry, partner, that you're not picking up faster, but your soul's
too large for your body, sir; that's where it is. And how's our stock in trade, partner? Safe
bind, safe find, partner? Is that about it?'
'Do you wish to see it?' asked Venus.
'If you please, partner,' said Wegg, rubbing his hands. 'I wish to see it jintly with
yourself. Or, in similar words to some that was set to music some time back:
«I wish you to see it with your eyes, And I will pledge with mine.»'
Turning his back and turning a key, Mr Venus produced the document, holding on by
his usual corner. Mr Wegg, holding on by the opposite corner, sat down on the seat so lately
vacated by Mr Boffin, and looked it over. 'All right, sir,' he slowly and unwillingly admitted,
in his reluctance to loose his hold, 'all right!' And greedily watched his partner as he turned
his back again, and turned his key again.
'There's nothing new, I suppose?' said Venus, resuming his low chair behind the
counter.
'Yes there is, sir,' replied Wegg; 'there was something new this morning. That foxey old
grasper and griper – '
'Mr Boffin?' inquired Venus, with a glance towards the alligator's yard or two of smile.
'Mister be blowed!' cried Wegg, yielding to his honest indignation. 'Boffin. Dusty
Boffin. That foxey old grunter and grinder, sir, turns into the yard this morning, to meddle
with our property, a menial tool of his own, a young man by the name of Sloppy. Ecod,
when I say to him, «What do you want here, young man? This is a private yard,» he pulls
out a paper from Boffin's other blackguard, the one I was passed over for. «This is to
authorize Sloppy to overlook the carting and to watch the work.» That's pretty strong, I
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think, Mr Venus?'
'Remember he doesn't know yet of our claim on the property,' suggested Venus.
'Then he must have a hint of it,' said Wegg, 'and a strong one that'll jog his terrors a bit.
Give him an inch, and he'll take an ell. Let him alone this time, and what'll he do with our
property next? I tell you what, Mr Venus; it comes to this; I must be overbearing with
Boffin, or I shall fly into several pieces. I can't contain myself when I look at him. Every
time I see him putting his hand in his pocket, I see him putting it into my pocket. Every time
I hear him jingling his money, I hear him taking liberties with my money. Flesh and blood
can't bear it. No,' said Mr Wegg, greatly exasperated, 'and I'll go further. A wooden leg can't
bear it!'
'But, Mr Wegg,' urged Venus, 'it was your own idea that he should not be exploded
upon, till the Mounds were carted away.'
'But it was likewise my idea, Mr Venus,' retorted Wegg, 'that if he came sneaking and
sniffing about the property, he should be threatened, given to understand that he has no right
to it, and be made our slave. Wasn't that my idea, Mr Venus?'
'It certainly was, Mr Wegg.'
'It certainly was, as you say, partner,' assented Wegg, put into a better humour by the
ready admission. 'Very well. I consider his planting one of his menial tools in the yard, an
act of sneaking and sniffing. And his nose shall be put to the grindstone for it.'
'It was not your fault, Mr Wegg, I must admit,' said Venus, 'that he got off with the
Dutch bottle that night.'
'As you handsomely say again, partner! No, it was not my fault. I'd have had that bottle
out of him. Was it to be borne that he should come, like a thief in the dark, digging among
stuff that was far more ours than his (seeing that we could deprive him of every grain of it, if
he didn't buy us at our own figure), and carrying off treasure from its bowels? No, it was not
to be borne. And for that, too, his nose shall be put to the grindstone.'
'How do you propose to do it, Mr Wegg?'
'To put his nose to the grindstone? I propose,' returned that estimable man, 'to insult him
openly. And, if looking into this eye of mine, he dares to offer a word in answer, to retort
upon him before he can take his breath, «Add another word to that, you dusty old dog, and
you're a beggar.»'
'Suppose he says nothing, Mr Wegg?'
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'Then,' replied Wegg, 'we shall have come to an understanding with very little trouble,
and I'll break him and drive him, Mr Venus. I'll put him in harness, and I'll bear him up tight,
and I'll break him and drive him. The harder the old Dust is driven, sir, the higher he'll pay.
And I mean to be paid high, Mr Venus, I promise you.'
'You speak quite revengefully, Mr Wegg.'
'Revengefully, sir? Is it for him that I have declined and falled, night after night? Is it
for his pleasure that I've waited at home of an evening, like a set of skittles, to be set up and
knocked over, set up and knocked over, by whatever balls – or books – he chose to bring
against me? Why, I'm a hundred times the man he is, sir; five hundred times!'
Perhaps it was with the malicious intent of urging him on to his worst that Mr Venus
looked as if he doubted that.
'What? Was it outside the house at present ockypied, to its disgrace, by that minion of
fortune and worm of the hour,' said Wegg, falling back upon his strongest terms of
reprobation, and slapping the counter, 'that I, Silas Wegg, five hundred times the man he
ever was, sat in all weathers, waiting for a errand or a customer? Was it outside that very
house as I first set eyes upon him, rolling in the lap of luxury, when I was selling halfpenny
ballads there for a living? And am I to grovel in the dust for HIM to walk over? No!'
There was a grin upon the ghastly countenance of the French gentleman under the
influence of the firelight, as if he were computing how many thousand slanderers and
traitors array themselves against the fortunate, on premises exactly answering to those of Mr
Wegg. One might have fancied that the big−headed babies were toppling over with their
hydrocephalic attempts to reckon up the children of men who transform their benefactors
into their injurers by the same process. The yard or two of smile on the part of the alligator
might have been invested with the meaning, 'All about this was quite familiar knowledge
down in the depths of the slime, ages ago.'
'But,' said Wegg, possibly with some slight perception to the foregoing effect, 'your
speaking countenance remarks, Mr Venus, that I'm duller and savager than usual. Perhaps I
HAVE allowed myself to brood too much. Begone, dull Care! 'Tis gone, sir. I've looked in
upon you, and empire resumes her sway. For, as the song says – subject to your correction,
sir –
«When the heart of a man is depressed with cares, The mist is dispelled if Venus
appears. Like the notes of a fiddle, you sweetly, sir, sweetly, Raises our spirits and charms
our ears.»
Good−night, sir.'
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'I shall have a word or two to say to you, Mr Wegg, before long,' remarked Venus,
'respecting my share in the project we've been speaking of.'
'My time, sir,' returned Wegg, 'is yours. In the meanwhile let it be fully understood that
I shall not neglect bringing the grindstone to bear, nor yet bringing Dusty Boffin's nose to it.
His nose once brought to it, shall be held to it by these hands, Mr Venus, till the sparks flies
out in showers.'
With this agreeable promise Wegg stumped out, and shut the shop−door after him.
'Wait till I light a candle, Mr Boffin,' said Venus, 'and you'll come out more comfortable.'
So, he lighting a candle and holding it up at arm's length, Mr Boffin disengaged himself
from behind the alligator's smile, with an expression of countenance so very downcast that it
not only appeared as if the alligator had the whole of the joke to himself, but further as if it
had been conceived and executed at Mr Boffin's expense.
'That's a treacherous fellow,' said Mr Boffin, dusting his arms and legs as he came forth,
the alligator having been but musty company. 'That's a dreadful fellow.'
'The alligator, sir?' said Venus.
'No, Venus, no. The Serpent.'
'You'll have the goodness to notice, Mr Boffin,' remarked Venus, 'that I said nothing to
him about my going out of the affair altogether, because I didn't wish to take you anyways
by surprise. But I can't be too soon out of it for my satisfaction, Mr Boffin, and I now put it
to you when it will suit your views for me to retire?'
'Thank'ee, Venus, thank'ee, Venus; but I don't know what to say,' returned Mr Boflin, 'I
don't know what to do. He'll drop down on me any way. He seems fully determined to drop
down; don't he?'
Mr Venus opined that such was clearly his intention.
'You might be a sort of protection for me, if you remained in it,' said Mr Boffin; 'you
might stand betwixt him and me, and take the edge off him. Don't you feel as if you could
make a show of remaining in it, Venus, till I had time to turn myself round?'
Venus naturally inquired how long Mr Boffin thought it might take him to turn himself
round?
'I am sure I don't know,' was the answer, given quite at a loss. 'Everything is so at sixes
and sevens. If I had never come into the property, I shouldn't have minded. But being in it, it
would be very trying to be turned out; now, don't you acknowledge that it would, Venus?'
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Mr Venus preferred, he said, to leave Mr Boffin to arrive at his own conclusions on that
delicate question.
'I am sure I don't know what to do,' said Mr Boffin. 'If I ask advice of any one else, it's
only letting in another person to be bought out, and then I shall be ruined that way, and
might as well have given up the property and gone slap to the workhouse. If I was to take
advice of my young man, Rokesmith, I should have to buy HIM out. Sooner or later, of
course, he'd drop down upon me, like Wegg. I was brought into the world to be dropped
down upon, it appears to me.'
Mr Venus listened to these lamentations in silence, while Mr Boffin jogged to and fro,
holding his pockets as if he had a pain in them.
'After all, you haven't said what you mean to do yourself, Venus. When you do go out
of it, how do you mean to go?'
Venus replied that as Wegg had found the document and handed it to him, it was his
intention to hand it back to Wegg, with the declaration that he himself would have nothing
to say to it, or do with it, and that Wegg must act as he chose, and take the consequences.
'And then he drops down with his whole weight upon ME!' cried Mr Boffin, ruefully.
'I'd sooner be dropped upon by you than by him, or even by you jintly, than by him alone!'
Mr Venus could only repeat that it was his fixed intention to betake himself to the paths
of science, and to walk in the same all the days of his life; not dropping down upon his
fellow−creatures until they were deceased, and then only to articulate them to the best of his
humble ability.
'How long could you be persuaded to keep up the appearance of remaining in it?' asked
Mr Boffin, retiring on his other idea. 'Could you be got to do so, till the Mounds are gone?'
No. That would protract themental uneasiness of Mr Venus too long, he said.
'Not if I was to show you reason now?' demanded Mr Boffin; 'not if I was to show you
good and sufficient reason?'
If by good and sufficient reason Mr Boffin meant honest and unimpeachable reason,
that might weigh with Mr Venus against his personal wishes and convenience. But he must
add that he saw no opening to the possibility of such reason being shown him.
'Come and see me, Venus,' said Mr Boffin, 'at my house.'
'Is the reason there, sir?' asked Mr Venus, with an incredulous smile and blink.
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'It may be, or may not be,' said Mr Boffin, 'just as you view it. But in the meantime
don't go out of the matter. Look here. Do this. Give me your word that you won't take any
steps with Wegg, without my knowledge, just as I have given you my word that I won't
without yours.'
'Done, Mr Boffin!' said Venus, after brief consideration.
'Thank'ee, Venus, thank'ee, Venus! Done!'
'When shall I come to see you, Mr Boffin.'
'When you like. The sooner the better. I must be going now. Good−night, Venus.'
'Good−night, sir.'
'And good−night to the rest of the present company,' said Mr Boffin, glancing round the
shop. 'They make a queer show, Venus, and I should like to be better acquainted with them
some day. Good−night, Venus, good−night! Thankee, Venus, thankee, Venus!' With that he
jogged out into the street, and jogged upon his homeward way.
'Now, I wonder,' he meditated as he went along, nursing his stick, 'whether it can be,
that Venus is setting himself to get the better of Wegg? Whether it can be, that he means,
when I have bought Wegg out, to have me all to himself and to pick me clean to the bones!'
It was a cunning and suspicious idea, quite in the way of his school of Misers, and he
looked very cunning and suspicious as he went jogging through the streets. More than once
or twice, more than twice or thrice, say half a dozen times, he took his stick from the arm on
which he nursed it, and hit a straight sharp rap at the air with its head. Possibly the wooden
countenance of Mr Silas Wegg was incorporeally before him at those moments, for he hit
with intense satisfaction.
He was within a few streets of his own house, when a little private carriage, coming in
the contrary direction, passed him, turned round, and passed him again. It was a little
carriage of eccentric movement, for again he heard it stop behind him and turn round, and
again he saw it pass him. Then it stopped, and then went on, out of sight. But, not far out of
sight, for, when he came to the corner of his own street, there it stood again.
There was a lady's face at the window as he came up with this carriage, and he was
passing it when the lady softly called to him by his name.
'I beg your pardon, Ma'am?' said Mr Boffin, coming to a stop.
'It is Mrs Lammle,' said the lady.
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Mr Boffin went up to the window, and hoped Mrs Lammle was well.
'Not very well, dear Mr Boffin; I have fluttered myself by being – perhaps foolishly –
uneasy and anxious. I have been waiting for you some time. Can I speak to you?'
Mr Boffin proposed that Mrs Lammle should drive on to his house, a few hundred yards
further.
'I would rather not, Mr Boffin, unless you particularly wish it. I feel the difficulty and
delicacy of the matter so much that I would rather avoid speaking to you at your own home.
You must think this very strange?'
Mr Boffin said no, but meant yes.
'It is because I am so grateful for the good opinion of all my friends, and am so touched
by it, that I cannot bear to run the risk of forfeiting it in any case, even in the cause of duty. I
have asked my husband (my dear Alfred, Mr Boffin) whether it is the cause of duty, and he
has most emphatically said Yes. I wish I had asked him sooner. It would have spared me
much distress.'
('Can this be more dropping down upon me!' thought Mr Boffin, quite bewildered.)
'It was Alfred who sent me to you, Mr Boffin. Alfred said, «Don't come back,
Sophronia, until you have seen Mr Boffin, and told him all. Whatever he may think of it, he
ought certainly to know it.» Would you mind coming into the carriage?'
Mr Boffin answered, 'Not at all,' and took his seat at Mrs Lammle's side.
'Drive slowly anywhere,' Mrs Lammle called to her coachman, 'and don't let the carriage
rattle.'
'It MUST he more dropping down, I think,' said Mr Boffin to himself. 'What next?'
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Chapter 15 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN AT HIS WORST
T
he breakfast table at Mr Boffin's was usually a very pleasant one, and was always
presided over by Bella. As though he began each new day in his healthy natural character,
and some waking hours were necessary to his relapse into the corrupting influences of his
wealth, the face and the demeanour of the Golden Dustman were generally unclouded at that
meal. It would have been easy to believe then, that there was no change in him. It was as the
day went on that the clouds gathered, and the brightness of the mornmg became obscured.
One might have said that the shadows of avarice and distrust lengthened as his own shadow
lengthened, and that the night closed around him gradually.
But, one morning long afterwards to be remembered, it was black midnight with the
Golden Dustman when he first appeared. His altered character had never been so grossly
marked. His bearing towards his Secretary was so charged with insolent distrust and
arrogance, that the latter rose and left the table before breakfast was half done. The look he
directed at the Secretary's retiring figure was so cunningly malignant, that Bella would have
sat astounded and indignant, even though he had not gone the length of secretly threatening
Rokesmith with his clenched fist as he closed the door. This unlucky morning, of all
mornings in the year, was the morning next after Mr Boffin's interview with Mrs Lammle in
her little carriage.
Bella looked to Mrs Boffin's face for comment on, or explanation of, this stormy
humour in her husband, but none was there. An anxious and a distressed observation of her
own face was all she could read in it. When they were left alone together – which was not
until noon, for Mr Boffin sat long in his easy−chair, by turns jogging up and down the
breakfast−room, clenching his fist and muttering – Bella, in consternation, asked her what
had happened, what was wrong? 'I am forbidden to speak to you about it, Bella dear; I
mustn't tell you,' was all the answer she could get. And still, whenever, in her wonder and
dismay, she raised her eyes to Mrs Boffin's face, she saw in it the same anxious and
distressed observation of her own.
Oppressed by her sense that trouble was impending, and lost in speculations why Mrs
Boffin should look at her as if she had any part in it, Bella found the day long and dreary. It
was far on in the afternoon when, she being in her own room, a servant brought her a
message from Mr Boffin begging her to come to his.
Mrs Boffin was there, seated on a sofa, and Mr Boffin was jogging up and down. On
seeing Bella he stopped, beckoned her to him, and drew her arm through his. 'Don't be
alarmed, my dear,' he said, gently; 'I am not angry with you. Why you actually tremble!
Don't be alarmed, Bella my dear. I'll see you righted.'
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'See me righted?' thought Bella. And then repeated aloud in a tone of astonishment: 'see
me righted, sir?'
'Ay, ay!' said Mr Boffin. 'See you righted. Send Mr Rokesmith here, you sir.'
Bella would have been lost in perplexity if there had been pause enough; but the servant
found Mr Rokesmith near at hand, and he almost immediately presented himself.
'Shut the door, sir!' said Mr Boffin. 'I have got something to say to you which I fancy
you'll not be pleased to hear.'
'I am sorry to reply, Mr Boffin,' returned the Secretary, as, having closed the door, he
turned and faced him, 'that I think that very likely.'
'What do you mean?' blustered Mr Boffin.
'I mean that it has become no novelty to me to hear from your lips what I would rather
not hear.'
'Oh! Perhaps we shall change that,' said Mr Boffin with a threatening roll of his head.
'I hope so,' returned the Secretary. He was quiet and respectful; but stood, as Bella
thought (and was glad to think), on his manhood too.
'Now, sir,' said Mr Boffin, 'look at this young lady on my arm.
Bella involuntarily raising her eyes, when this sudden reference was made to herself,
met those of Mr Rokesmith. He was pale and seemed agitated. Then her eyes passed on to
Mrs Boffin's, and she met the look again. In a flash it enlightened her, and she began to
understand what she had done.
'I say to you, sir,' Mr Boffin repeated, 'look at this young lady on my arm.
'I do so,' returned the Secretary.
As his glance rested again on Bella for a moment, she thought there was reproach in it.
But it is possible that the reproach was within herself.
'How dare you, sir,' said Mr Boffin, 'tamper, unknown to me, with this young lady?
How dare you come out of your station, and your place in my house, to pester this young
lady with your impudent addresses?'
'I must decline to answer questions,' said the Secretary, 'that are so offensively asked.'
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'You decline to answer?' retorted Mr Boffin. 'You decline to answer, do you? Then I'll
tell you what it is, Rokesmith; I'll answer for you. There are two sides to this matter, and I'll
take 'em separately. The first side is, sheer Insolence. That's the first side.'
The Secretary smiled with some bitterness, as though he would have said, 'So I see and
hear.'
'It was sheer Insolence in you, I tell you,' said Mr Boffin, 'even to think of this young
lady. This young lady was far above YOU. This young lady was no match for YOU. This
young lady was lying in wait (as she was qualified to do) for money, and you had no
money.'
Bella hung her head and seemed to shrink a little from Mr Boffin's protecting arm.
'What are you, I should like to know,' pursued Mr Boffin, 'that you were to have the
audacity to follow up this young lady? This young lady was looking about the market for a
good bid; she wasn't in it to be snapped up by fellows that had no money to lay out; nothing
to buy with.'
'Oh, Mr Boffin! Mrs Boffin, pray say something for me!' murmured Bella, disengaging
her arm, and covering her face with her hands.
'Old lady,' said Mr Boflin, anticipating his wife, 'you hold your tongue. Bella, my dear,
don't you let yourself be put out. I'll right you.'
'But you don't, you don't right me!' exclaimed Bella, with great emphasis. 'You wrong
me, wrong me!'
'Don't you be put out, my dear,' complacently retorted Mr Boffin. 'I'll bring this young
man to book. Now, you Rokesmith! You can't decline to hear, you know, as well as to
answer. You hear me tell you that the first side of your conduct was Insolence – Insolence
and Presumption. Answer me one thing, if you can. Didn't this young lady tell you so
herself?'
'Did I, Mr Rokesmith?' asked Bella with her face still covered. 'O say, Mr Rokesmith!
Did I?'
'Don't be distressed, Miss Wilfer; it matters very little now.'
'Ah! You can't deny it, though!' said Mr Boffin, with a knowing shake of his head.
'But I have asked him to forgive me since,' cried Bella; 'and I would ask him to forgive
me now again, upon my knees, if it would spare him!'
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Here Mrs Boffin broke out a−crying.
'Old lady,' said Mr Boffin, 'stop that noise! Tender−hearted in you, Miss Bella; but I
mean to have it out right through with this young man, having got him into a corner. Now,
you Rokesmith. I tell you that's one side of your conduct – Insolence and Presumption. Now,
I'm a−coming to the other, which is much worse. This was a speculation of yours.'
'I indignantly deny it.'
'It's of no use your denying it; it doesn't signify a bit whether you deny it or not; I've got
a head upon my shoulders, and it ain't a baby's. What!' said Mr Boffin, gathering himself
together in his most suspicious attitude, and wrinkling his face into a very map of curves and
corners. 'Don't I know what grabs are made at a man with money? If I didn't keep my eyes
open, and my pockets buttoned, shouldn't I be brought to the workhouse before I knew
where I was? Wasn't the experience of Dancer, and Elwes, and Hopkins, and Blewbury
Jones, and ever so many more of 'em, similar to mine? Didn't everybody want to make grabs
at what they'd got, and bring 'em to poverty and ruin? Weren't they forced to hide everything
belonging to 'em, for fear it should be snatched from 'em? Of course they was. I shall be told
next that they didn't know human natur!'
'They! Poor creatures,' murmured the Secretary.
'What do you say?' asked Mr Boffin, snapping at him. 'However, you needn't be at the
trouble of repeating it, for it ain't worth hearing, and won't go down with ME. I'm a−going to
unfold your plan, before this young lady; I'm a−going to show this young lady the second
view of you; and nothing you can say will stave it off. (Now, attend here, Bella, my dear.)
Rokesmith, you're a needy chap. You're a chap that I pick up in the street. Are you, or ain't
you?'
'Go on, Mr Boflin; don't appeal to me.'
'Not appeal to YOU,' retorted Mr Boffin as if he hadn't done so. 'No, I should hope not!
Appealing to YOU, would be rather a rum course. As I was saying, you're a needy chap that
I pick up in the street. You come and ask me in the street to take you for a Secretary, and I
take you. Very good.'
'Very bad,' murmured the Secretary.
'What do you say?' asked Mr Boffin, snapping at him again.
He returned no answer. Mr Boffin, after eyeing him with a comical look of discomfited
curiosity, was fain to begin afresh.
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'This Rokesmith is a needy young man that I take for my Secretary out of the open
street. This Rokesmith gets acquainted with my affairs, and gets to know that I mean to
settle a sum of money on this young lady. «Oho!» says this Rokesmith;' here Mr Boffin
clapped a finger against his nose, and tapped it several times with a sneaking air, as
embodying Rokesmith confidentially confabulating with his own nose; '«This will be a good
haul; I'll go in for this!» And so this Rokesmith, greedy and hungering, begins a−creeping
on his hands and knees towards the money. Not so bad a speculation either: for if this young
lady had had less spirit, or had had less sense, through being at all in the romantic line, by
George he might have worked it out and made it pay! But fortunately she was too many for
him, and a pretty figure he cuts now he is exposed. There he stands!' said Mr Boffin,
addressing Rokesmith himself with ridiculous inconsistency. 'Look at him!'
'Your unfortunate suspicions, Mr Boffin – ' began the Secretary.
'Precious unfortunate for you, I can tell you,' said Mr Boffin.
' – are not to be combated by any one, and I address myself to no such hopeless task.
But I will say a word upon the truth.'
'Yah! Much you care about the truth,' said Mr Boffin, with a snap of his fingers.
'Noddy! My dear love!' expostulated his wife.
'Old lady,' returned Mr Boffin, 'you keep still. I say to this Rokesmith here, much he
cares about the truth. I tell him again, much he cares about the truth.'
'Our connexion being at an end, Mr Boffin,' said the Secretary, 'it can be of very little
moment to me what you say.'
'Oh! You are knowing enough,' retorted Mr Boffin, with a sly look, 'to have found out
that our connexion's at an end, eh? But you can't get beforehand with me. Look at this in my
hand. This is your pay, on your discharge. You can only follow suit. You can't deprive me of
the lead. Let's have no pretending that you discharge yourself. I discharge you.'
'So that I go,' remarked the Secretary, waving the point aside with his hand, 'it is all one
to me.'
'Is it?' said Mr Boffin. 'But it's two to me, let me tell you. Allowing a fellow that's found
out, to discharge himself, is one thing; discharging him for insolence and presumption, and
likewise for designs upon his master's money, is another. One and one's two; not one. (Old
lady, don't you cut in. You keep still.)'
'Have you said all you wish to say to me?' demanded the Secretary.
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'I don't know whether I have or not,' answered Mr Boffin. 'It depends.'
'Perhaps you will consider whether there are any other strong expressions that you
would like to bestow upon me?'
'I'll consider that,' said Mr Boffin, obstinately, 'at my convenience, and not at yours.
You want the last word. It may not be suitable to let you have it.'
'Noddy! My dear, dear Noddy! You sound so hard!' cried poor Mrs Boffin, not to be
quite repressed.
'Old lady,' said her husband, but without harshness, 'if you cut in when requested not, I'll
get a pillow and carry you out of the room upon it. What do you want to say, you
Rokesmith?'
'To you, Mr Boffin, nothing. But to Miss Wilfer and to your good kind wife, a word.'
'Out with it then,' replied Mr Boffin, 'and cut it short, for we've had enough of you.'
'I have borne,' said the Secretary, in a low voice, 'with my false position here, that I
might not be separated from Miss Wilfer. To be near her, has been a recompense to me from
day to day, even for the undeserved treatment I have had here, and for the degraded aspect in
which she has often seen me. Since Miss Wilfer rejected me, I have never again urged my
suit, to the best of my belief, with a spoken syllable or a look. But I have never changed in
my devotion to her, except – if she will forgive my saying so – that it is deeper than it was,
and better founded.'
'Now, mark this chap's saying Miss Wilfer, when he means L.s.d.!' cried Mr Boffin,
with a cunning wink. 'Now, mark this chap's making Miss Wilfer stand for Pounds,
Shillings, and Pence!'
'My feeling for Miss Wilfer,' pursued the Secretary, without deigning to notice him, 'is
not one to be ashamed of. I avow it. I love her. Let me go where I may when I presently
leave this house, I shall go into a blank life, leaving her.'
'Leaving L.s.d. behind me,' said Mr Boffin, by way of commentary, with another wink.
'That I am incapable,' the Secretary went on, still without heeding him, 'of a mercenary
project, or a mercenary thought, in connexion with Miss Wilfer, is nothing meritorious in
me, because any prize that I could put before my fancy would sink into insignificance beside
her. If the greatest wealth or the highest rank were hers, it would only be important in my
sight as removing her still farther from me, and making me more hopeless, if that could be.
Say,' remarked the Secretary, looking full at his late master, 'say that with a word she could
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strip Mr Boffin of his fortune and take possession of it, she would be of no greater worth in
my eyes than she is.'
'What do you think by this time, old lady,' asked Mr Boffin, turning to his wife in a
bantering tone, 'about this Rokesmith here, and his caring for the truth? You needn't say
what you think, my dear, because I don't want you to cut in, but you can think it all the
same. As to taking possession of my property, I warrant you he wouldn't do that himself if
he could.'
'No,' returned the Secretary, with another full look.
'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Mr Boffin. 'There's nothing like a good 'un while you ARE about
it.'
'I have been for a moment,' said the Secretary, turning from him and falling into his
former manner, 'diverted from the little I have to say. My interest in Miss Wilfer began
when I first saw her; even began when I had only heard of her. It was, in fact, the cause of
my throwing myself in Mr Boffin's way, and entering his service. Miss Wilfer has never
known this until now. I mention it now, only as a corroboration (though I hope it may be
needless) of my being free from the sordid design attributed to me.'
'Now, this is a very artful dog,' said Mr Boffin, with a deep look. 'This is a
longer−headed schemer than I thought him. See how patiently and methodically he goes to
work. He gets to know about me and my property, and about this young lady, and her share
in poor young John's story, and he puts this and that together, and he says to himself, «I'll
get in with Boffin, and I'll get in with this young lady, and I'll work 'em both at the same
time, and I'll bring my pigs to market somewhere.» I hear him say it, bless you! I look at
him, now, and I see him say it!'
Mr Boffin pointed at the culprit, as it were in the act, and hugged himself in his great
penetration.
'But luckily he hadn't to deal with the people he supposed, Bella, my dear!' said Mr
Boffin. 'No! Luckily he had to deal with you, and with me, and with Daniel and Miss
Dancer, and with Elwes, and with Vulture Hopkins, and with Blewbury Jones and all the
rest of us, one down t'other come on. And he's beat; that's what he is; regularly beat. He
thought to squeeze money out of us, and he has done for himself instead, Bella my dear!'
Bella my dear made no response, gave no sign of acquiescence. When she had first
covered her face she had sunk upon a chair with her hands resting on the back of it, and had
never moved since. There was a short silence at this point, and Mrs Boffin softly rose as if to
go to her. But, Mr Boffin stopped her with a gesture, and she obediently sat down again and
stayed where she was.
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'There's your pay, Mister Rokesmith,' said the Golden Dustman, jerking the folded scrap
of paper he had in his hand, towards his late Secretary. 'I dare say you can stoop to pick it
up, after what you have stooped to here.'
'I have stooped to nothing but this,' Rokesmith answered as he took it from the ground;
'and this is mine, for I have earned it by the hardest of hard labour.'
'You're a pretty quick packer, I hope,' said Mr Boffin; 'because the sooner you are gone,
bag and baggage, the better for all parties.'
'You need have no fear of my lingering.'
'There's just one thing though,' said Mr Boffin, 'that I should like to ask you before we
come to a good riddance, if it was only to show this young lady how conceited you schemers
are, in thinking that nobody finds out how you contradict yourselves.'
'Ask me anything you wish to ask,' returned Rokesmith, 'but use the expedition that you
recommend.'
'You pretend to have a mighty admiration for this young lady?' said Mr Boffin, laying
his hand protectingly on Bella's head without looking down at her.
'I do not pretend.'
'Oh! Well. You HAVE a mighty admiration for this young lady – since you are so
particular?'
'Yes.'
'How do you reconcile that, with this young lady's being a weak− spirited, improvident
idiot, not knowing what was due to herself, flinging up her money to the
church−weathercocks, and racing off at a splitting pace for the workhouse?'
'I don't understand you.'
'Don't you? Or won't you? What else could you have made this young lady out to be, if
she had listened to such addresses as yours?'
'What else, if I had been so happy as to win her affections and possess her heart?'
'Win her affections,' retorted Mr Boffin, with ineffable contempt, 'and possess her heart!
Mew says the cat, Quack−quack says the duck, Bow−wow−wow says the dog! Win her
affections and possess her heart! Mew, Quack−quack, Bow−wow!'
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John Rokesmith stared at him in his outburst, as if with some faint idea that he had gone
mad.
'What is due to this young lady,' said Mr Boffin, 'is Money, and this young lady right
well knows it.'
'You slander the young lady.'
'YOU slander the young lady; you with your affections and hearts and trumpery,'
returned Mr Boffin. 'It's of a piece with the rest of your behaviour. I heard of these doings of
yours only last night, or you should have heard of 'em from me, sooner, take your oath of it.
I heard of 'em from a lady with as good a headpiece as the best, and she knows this young
lady, and I know this young lady, and we all three know that it's Money she makes a stand
for – money, money, money – and that you and your affections and hearts are a Lie, sir!'
'Mrs Boffin,' said Rokesmith, quietly turning to her, 'for your delicate and unvarying
kindness I thank you with the warmest gratitude. Good−bye! Miss Wilfer, good−bye!'
'And now, my dear,' said Mr Boffin, laying his hand on Bella's head again, 'you may
begin to make yourself quite comfortable, and I hope you feel that you've been righted.'
But, Bella was so far from appearing to feel it, that she shrank from his hand and from
the chair, and, starting up in an incoherent passion of tears, and stretching out her arms,
cried, 'O Mr Rokesmith, before you go, if you could but make me poor again! O! Make me
poor again, Somebody, I beg and pray, or my heart will break if this goes on! Pa, dear, make
me poor again and take me home! I was bad enough there, but I have been so much worse
here. Don't give me money, Mr Boffin, I won't have money. Keep it away from me, and only
let me speak to good little Pa, and lay my head upon his shoulder, and tell him all my griefs.
Nobody else can understand me, nobody else can comfort me, nobody else knows how
unworthy I am, and yet can love me like a little child. I am better with Pa than any one –
more innocent, more sorry, more glad!' So, crying out in a wild way that she could not bear
this, Bella drooped her head on Mrs Boffin's ready breast.
John Rokesmith from his place in the room, and Mr Boffin from his, looked on at her in
silence until she was silent herself. Then Mr Boffin observed in a soothing and comfortable
tone, 'There, my dear, there; you are righted now, and it's ALL right. I don't wonder, I'm
sure, at your being a little flurried by having a scene with this fellow, but it's all over, my
dear, and you're righted, and it's – and it's ALL right!' Which Mr Boffin repeated with a
highly satisfied air of completeness and finality.
'I hate you!' cried Bella, turning suddenly upon him, with a stamp of her little foot – 'at
least, I can't hate you, but I don't like you!'
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'HUL – LO!' exclaimed Mr Boffin in an amazed under−tone.
'You're a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old creature!' cried Bella. 'I am
angry with my ungrateful self for calling you names; but you are, you are; you know you
are!'
Mr Boffin stared here, and stared there, as misdoubting that he must be in some sort of
fit.
'I have heard you with shame,' said Bella. 'With shame for myself, and with shame for
you. You ought to be above the base tale− bearing of a time−serving woman; but you are
above nothing now.'
Mr Boffin, seeming to become convinced that this was a fit, rolled his eyes and
loosened his neckcloth.
'When I came here, I respected you and honoured you, and I soon loved you,' cried
Bella. 'And now I can't bear the sight of you. At least, I don't know that I ought to go so far
as that – only you're a – you're a Monster!' Having shot this bolt out with a great expenditure
of force, Bella hysterically laughed and cried together.
'The best wish I can wish you is,' said Bella, returning to the charge, 'that you had not
one single farthing in the world. If any true friend and well−wisher could make you a
bankrupt, you would be a Duck; but as a man of property you are a Demon!'
After despatching this second bolt with a still greater expenditure of force, Bella
laughed and cried still more.
'Mr Rokesmith, pray stay one moment. Pray hear one word from me before you go! I
am deeply sorry for the reproaches you have borne on my account. Out of the depths of my
heart I earnestly and truly beg your pardon.'
As she stepped towards him, he met her. As she gave him her hand, he put it to his lips,
and said, 'God bless you!' No laughing was mixed with Bella's crying then; her tears were
pure and fervent.
'There is not an ungenerous word that I have heard addressed to you – heard with scorn
and indignation, Mr Rokesmith – but it has wounded me far more than you, for I have
deserved it, and you never have. Mr Rokesmith, it is to me you owe this perverted account
of what passed between us that night. I parted with the secret, even while I was angry with
myself for doing so. It was very bad in me, but indeed it was not wicked. I did it in a
moment of conceit and folly – one of my many such moments – one of my many such hours
– years. As I am punished for it severely, try to forgive it!'
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'I do with all my soul.'
'Thank you. O thank you! Don't part from me till I have said one other word, to do you
justice. The only fault you can be truly charged with, in having spoken to me as you did that
night – with how much delicacy and how much forbearance no one but I can know or be
grateful to you for – is, that you laid yourself open to be slighted by a worldly shallow girl
whose head was turned, and who was quite unable to rise to the worth of what you offered
her. Mr Rokesmith, that girl has often seen herself in a pitiful and poor light since, but never
in so pitiful and poor a light as now, when the mean tone in which she answered you –
sordid and vain girl that she was – has been echoed in her ears by Mr Boffin.'
He kissed her hand again.
'Mr Boffin's speeches were detestable to me, shocking to me,' said Bella, startling that
gentleman with another stamp of her little foot. 'It is quite true that there was a time, and
very lately, when I deserved to be so «righted,» Mr Rokesmith; but I hope that I shall never
deserve it again!'
He once more put her hand to his lips, and then relinquished it, and left the room. Bella
was hurrying back to the chair in which she had hidden her face so long, when, catching
sight of Mrs Boffin by the way, she stopped at her. 'He is gone,' sobbed Bella indignantly,
despairingly, in fifty ways at once, with her arms round Mrs Boffin's neck. 'He has been
most shamefully abused, and most unjustly and most basely driven away, and I am the cause
of it!'
All this time, Mr Boffin had been rolling his eyes over his loosened neckerchief, as if
his fit were still upon him. Appearing now to think that he was coming to, he stared straight
before him for a while, tied his neckerchief again, took several long inspirations, swallowed
several times, and ultimately exclaimed with a deep sigh, as if he felt himself on the whole
better: 'Well!'
No word, good or bad, did Mrs Boffin say; but she tenderly took care of Bella, and
glanced at her husband as if for orders. Mr Boffin, without imparting any, took his seat on a
chair over against them, and there sat leaning forward, with a fixed countenance, his legs
apart, a hand on each knee, and his elbows squared, until Bella should dry her eyes and raise
her head, which in the fulness of time she did.
'I must go home,' said Bella, rising hurriedly. 'I am very grateful to you for all you have
done for me, but I can't stay here.'
'My darling girl!' remonstrated Mrs Boffin.
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'No, I can't stay here,' said Bella; 'I can't indeed. – Ugh! you vicious old thing!' (This to
Mr Boffin.)
'Don't be rash, my love,' urged Mrs Boffin. 'Think well of what you do.'
'Yes, you had better think well,' said Mr Boffin.
'I shall never more think well of YOU,' cried Bella, cutting him short, with intense
defiance in her expressive little eyebrows, and championship of the late Secretary in every
dimple. 'No! Never again! Your money has changed you to marble. You are a hard− hearted
Miser. You are worse than Dancer, worse than Hopkins, worse than Blackberry Jones, worse
than any of the wretches. And more!' proceeded Bella, breaking into tears again, 'you were
wholly undeserving of the Gentleman you have lost.'
'Why, you don't mean to say, Miss Bella,' the Golden Dustman slowly remonstrated,
'that you set up Rokesmith against me?'
'I do!' said Bella. 'He is worth a Million of you.'
Very pretty she looked, though very angry, as she made herself as tall as she possibly
could (which was not extremely tall), and utterly renounced her patron with a lofty toss of
her rich brown head.
'I would rather he thought well of me,' said Bella, 'though he swept the street for bread,
than that you did, though you splashed the mud upon him from the wheels of a chariot of
pure gold. – There!'
'Well I'm sure!' cried Mr Boffin, staring.
'And for a long time past, when you have thought you set yourself above him, I have
only seen you under his feet,' said Bella – 'There! And throughout I saw in him the master,
and I saw in you the man – There! And when you used him shamefully, I took his part and
loved him – There! I boast of it!'
After which strong avowal Bella underwent reaction, and cried to any extent, with her
face on the back of her chair.
'Now, look here,' said Mr Boffin, as soon as he could find an opening for breaking the
silence and striking in. 'Give me your attention, Bella. I am not angry.'
'I AM!' said Bella.
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'I say,' resumed the Golden Dustman, 'I am not angry, and I mean kindly to you, and I
want to overlook this. So you'll stay where you are, and we'll agree to say no more about it.'
'No, I can't stay here,' cried Bella, rising hurriedly again; 'I can't think of staying here. I
must go home for good.'
'Now, don't be silly,' Mr Boffin reasoned. 'Don't do what you can't undo; don't do what
you're sure to be sorry for.'
'I shall never be sorry for it,' said Bella; 'and I should always be sorry, and should every
minute of my life despise myself if I remained here after what has happened.'
'At least, Bella,' argued Mr Boffin, 'let there be no mistake about it. Look before you
leap, you know. Stay where you are, and all's well, and all's as it was to be. Go away, and
you can never come back.'
'I know that I can never come back, and that's what I mean,' said Bella.
'You mustn't expect,' Mr Boffin pursued, 'that I'm a−going to settle money on you, if
you leave us like this, because I am not. No, Bella! Be careful! Not one brass farthing.'
'Expect!' said Bella, haughtily. 'Do you think that any power on earth could make me
take it, if you did, sir?'
But there was Mrs Boffin to part from, and, in the full flush of her dignity, the
impressible little soul collapsed again. Down upon her knees before that good woman, she
rocked herself upon her breast, and cried, and sobbed, and folded her in her arms with all her
might.
'You're a dear, a dear, the best of dears!' cried Bella. 'You're the best of human
creatures. I can never be thankful enough to you, and I can never forget you. If I should live
to be blind and deaf I know I shall see and hear you, in my fancy, to the last of my dim old
days!'
Mrs Boffin wept most heartily, and embraced her with all fondness; but said not one
single word except that she was her dear girl. She said that often enough, to be sure, for she
said it over and over again; but not one word else.
Bella broke from her at length, and was going weeping out of the room, when in her
own little queer affectionate way, she half relented towards Mr Boffin.
'I am very glad,' sobbed Bella, 'that I called you names, sir, because you richly deserved
it. But I am very sorry that I called you names, because you used to be so different. Say
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Chapter 15 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN AT HIS WORST 585
good−bye!'
'Good−bye,' said Mr Boffin, shortly.
'If I knew which of your hands was the least spoilt, I would ask you to let me touch it,'
said Bella, 'for the last time. But not because I repent of what I have said to you. For I don't.
It's true!'
'Try the left hand,' said Mr Boffin, holding it out in a stolid manner; 'it's the least used.'
'You have been wonderfully good and kind to me,' said Bella, 'and I kiss it for that. You
have been as bad as bad could be to Mr Rokesmith, and I throw it away for that. Thank you
for myself, and good−bye!'
'Good−bye,' said Mr Boffin as before.
Bella caught him round the neck and kissed him, and ran out for ever.
She ran up−stairs, and sat down on the floor in her own room, and cried abundantly. But
the day was declining and she had no time to lose. She opened all the places where she kept
her dresses; selected only those she had brought with her, leaving all the rest; and made a
great misshapen bundle of them, to be sent for afterwards.
'I won't take one of the others,' said Bella, tying the knots of the bundle very tight, in the
severity of her resolution. 'I'll leave all the presents behind, and begin again entirely on my
own account.' That the resolution might be thoroughly carried into practice, she even
changed the dress she wore, for that in which she had come to the grand mansion. Even the
bonnet she put on, was the bonnet that had mounted into the Boffin chariot at Holloway.
'Now, I am complete,' said Bella. 'It's a little trying, but I have steeped my eyes in cold
water, and I won't cry any more. You have been a pleasant room to me, dear room. Adieu!
We shall never see each other again.'
With a parting kiss of her fingers to it, she softly closed the door and went with a light
foot down the great staircase, pausing and listening as she went, that she might meet none of
the household. No one chanced to be about, and she got down to the hall in quiet. The door
of the late Secretary's room stood open. She peeped in as she passed, and divined from the
emptiness of his table, and the general appearance of things, that he was already gone. Softly
opening the great hall door, and softly closing it upon herself, she turned and kissed it on the
outside – insensible old combination of wood and iron that it was! – before she ran away
from the house at a swift pace.
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'That was well done!' panted Bella, slackening in the next street, and subsiding into a
walk. 'If I had left myself any breath to cry with, I should have cried again. Now poor dear
darling little Pa, you are going to see your lovely woman unexpectedly.'
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Chapter 15 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN AT HIS WORST 587
Chapter 16 − THE FEAST OF THE THREE HOBGOBLINS
T
he City looked unpromising enough, as Bella made her way along its gritty streets.
Most of its money−mills were slackening sail, or had left off grinding for the day. The
master−millers had already departed, and the journeymen were departing. There was a jaded
aspect on the business lanes and courts, and the very pavements had a weary appearance,
confused by the tread of a million of feet. There must be hours of night to temper down the
day's distraction of so feverish a place. As yet the worry of the newly−stopped whirling and
grinding on the part of the money− mills seemed to linger in the air, and the quiet was more
like the prostration of a spent giant than the repose of one who was renewing his strength.
If Bella thought, as she glanced at the mighty Bank, how agreeable it would be to have
an hour's gardening there, with a bright copper shovel, among the money, still she was not in
an avaricious vein. Much improved in that respect, and with certain half−formed images
which had little gold in their composition, dancing before her bright eyes, she arrived in the
drug−flavoured region of Mincing Lane, with the sensation of having just opened a drawer
in a chemist's shop.
The counting−house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles was pointed out by an
elderly female accustomed to the care of offices, who dropped upon Bella out of a
public−house, wiping her mouth, and accounted for its humidity on natural principles well
known to the physical sciences, by explaining that she had looked in at the door to see what
o'clock it was. The counting−house was a wall− eyed ground floor by a dark gateway, and
Bella was considering, as she approached it, could there be any precedent in the City for her
going in and asking for R. Wilfer, when whom should she see, sitting at one of the windows
with the plate−glass sash raised, but R. Wilfer himself, preparing to take a slight refection.
On approaching nearer, Bella discerned that the refection had the appearance of a small
cottage−loaf and a pennyworth of milk. Simultaneously with this discovery on her part, her
father discovered her, and invoked the echoes of Mincing Lane to exclaim 'My gracious me!'
He then came cherubically flying out without a hat, and embraced her, and handed her
in. 'For it's after hours and I am all alone, my dear,' he explained, 'and am having – as I
sometimes do when they are all gone – a quiet tea.'
Looking round the office, as if her father were a captive and this his cell, Bella hugged
him and choked him to her heart's content.
'I never was so surprised, my dear!' said her father. 'I couldn't believe my eyes. Upon
my life, I thought they had taken to lying! The idea of your coming down the Lane yourself!
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Why didn't you send the footman down the Lane, my dear?'
'I have brought no footman with me, Pa.'
'Oh indeed! But you have brought the elegant turn−out, my love?'
'No, Pa.'
'You never can have walked, my dear?'
'Yes, I have, Pa.'
He looked so very much astonished, that Bella could not make up her mind to break it
to him just yet.
'The consequence is, Pa, that your lovely woman feels a little faint, and would very
much like to share your tea.'
The cottage loaf and the pennyworth of milk had been set forth on a sheet of paper on
the window−seat. The cherubic pocket−knife, with the first bit of the loaf still on its point,
lay beside them where it had been hastily thrown down. Bella took the bit off, and put it in
her mouth. 'My dear child,' said her father, 'the idea of your partaking of such lowly fare!
But at least you must have your own loaf and your own penn'orth. One moment, my dear.
The Dairy is just over the way and round the corner.'
Regardless of Bella's dissuasions he ran out, and quickly returned with the new supply.
'My dear child,' he said, as he spread it on another piece of paper before her, 'the idea of a
splendid – !' and then looked at her figure, and stopped short.
'What's the matter, Pa?'
' – of a splendid female,' he resumed more slowly, 'putting up with such accommodation
as the present! – Is that a new dress you have on, my dear?'
'No, Pa, an old one. Don't you remember it?'
'Why, I THOUGHT I remembered it, my dear!'
'You should, for you bought it, Pa.'
'Yes, I THOUGHT I bought it my dear!' said the cherub, giving himself a little shake,
as if to rouse his faculties.
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'And have you grown so fickle that you don't like your own taste, Pa dear?'
'Well, my love,' he returned, swallowing a bit of the cottage loaf with considerable
effort, for it seemed to stick by the way: 'I should have thought it was hardly sufficiently
splendid for existing circumstances.'
'And so, Pa,' said Bella, moving coaxingly to his side instead of remaining opposite,
'you sometimes have a quiet tea here all alone? I am not in the tea's way, if I draw my arm
over your shoulder like this, Pa?'
'Yes, my dear, and no, my dear. Yes to the first question, and Certainly Not to the
second. Respecting the quiet tea, my dear, why you see the occupations of the day are
sometimes a little wearing; and if there's nothing interposed between the day and your
mother, why SHE is sometimes a little wearing, too.'
'I know, Pa.'
'Yes, my dear. So sometimes I put a quiet tea at the window here, with a little quiet
contemplation of the Lane (which comes soothing), between the day, and domestic – '
'Bliss,' suggested Bella, sorrowfully.
'And domestic Bliss,' said her father, quite contented to accept the phrase.
Bella kissed him. 'And it is in this dark dingy place of captivity, poor dear, that you pass
all the hours of your life when you are not at home?'
'Not at home, or not on the road there, or on the road here, my love. Yes. You see that
little desk in the corner?'
'In the dark corner, furthest both from the light and from the fireplace? The shabbiest
desk of all the desks?'
'Now, does it really strike you in that point of view, my dear?' said her father, surveying
it artistically with his head on one side: 'that's mine. That's called Rumty's Perch.'
'Whose Perch?' asked Bella with great indignation.
'Rumty's. You see, being rather high and up two steps they call it a Perch. And they call
ME Rumty.'
'How dare they!' exclaimed Bella.
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'They're playful, Bella my dear; they're playful. They're more or less younger than I am,
and they're playful. What does it matter? It might be Surly, or Sulky, or fifty disagreeable
things that I really shouldn't like to be considered. But Rumty! Lor, why not Rumty?'
To inflict a heavy disappointment on this sweet nature, which had been, through all her
caprices, the object of her recognition, love, and admiration from infancy, Bella felt to be the
hardest task of her hard day. 'I should have done better,' she thought, 'to tell him at first; I
should have done better to tell him just now, when he had some slight misgiving; he is quite
happy again, and I shall make him wretched.'
He was falling back on his loaf and milk, with the pleasantest composure, and Bella
stealing her arm a little closer about him, and at the same time sticking up his hair with an
irresistible propensity to play with him founded on the habit of her whole life, had prepared
herself to say: 'Pa dear, don't be cast down, but I must tell you something disagreeable!'
when he interrupted her in an unlooked−for manner.
'My gracious me!' he exclaimed, invoking the Mincing Lane echoes as before. 'This is
very extraordinary!'
'What is, Pa?'
'Why here's Mr Rokesmith now!'
'No, no, Pa, no,' cried Bella, greatly flurried. 'Surely not.'
'Yes there is! Look here!'
Sooth to say, Mr Rokesmith not only passed the window, but came into the
counting−house. And not only came into the counting− house, but, finding himself alone
there with Bella and her father, rushed at Bella and caught her in his arms, with the
rapturous words 'My dear, dear girl; my gallant, generous, disinterested, courageous, noble
girl!' And not only that even, (which one might have thought astonishment enough for one
dose), but Bella, after hanging her head for a moment, lifted it up and laid it on his breast, as
if that were her head's chosen and lasting resting−place!
'I knew you would come to him, and I followed you,' said Rokesmith. 'My love, my life!
You ARE mine?'
To which Bella responded, 'Yes, I AM yours if you think me worth taking!' And after
that, seemed to shrink to next to nothing in the clasp of his arms, partly because it was such
a strong one on his part, and partly because there was such a yielding to it on hers.
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The cherub, whose hair would have done for itself under the influence of this amazing
spectacle, what Bella had just now done for it, staggered back into the window−seat from
which he had risen, and surveyed the pair with his eyes dilated to their utmost.
'But we must think of dear Pa,' said Bella; 'I haven't told dear Pa; let us speak to Pa.'
Upon which they turned to do so.
'I wish first, my dear,' remarked the cherub faintly, 'that you'd have the kindness to
sprinkle me with a little milk, for I feel as if I was – Going.'
In fact, the good little fellow had become alarmingly limp, and his senses seemed to be
rapidly escaping, from the knees upward. Bella sprinkled him with kisses instead of milk,
but gave him a little of that article to drink; and he gradually revived under her caressing
care.
'We'll break it to you gently, dearest Pa,' said Bella.
'My dear,' returned the cherub, looking at them both, 'you broke so much in the first –
Gush, if I may so express myself – that I think I am equal to a good large breakage now.'
'Mr Wilfer,' said John Rokesmith, excitedly and joyfully, 'Bella takes me, though I have
no fortune, even no present occupation; nothing but what I can get in the life before us. Bella
takes me!'
'Yes, I should rather have inferred, my dear sir,' returned the cherub feebly, 'that Bella
took you, from what I have within these few minutes remarked.'
'You don't know, Pa,' said Bella, 'how ill I have used him!'
'You don't know, sir,' said Rokesmith, 'what a heart she has!'
'You don't know, Pa,' said Bella, 'what a shocking creature I was growing, when he
saved me from myself!'
'You don't know, sir,' said Rokesmith, 'what a sacrifice she has made for me!'
'My dear Bella,' replied the cherub, still pathetically scared, 'and my dear John
Rokesmith, if you will allow me so to call you – '
'Yes do, Pa, do!' urged Bella. 'I allow you, and my will is his law. Isn't it – dear John
Rokesmith?'
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There was an engaging shyness in Bella, coupled with an engaging tenderness of love
and confidence and pride, in thus first calling him by name, which made it quite excusable
in John Rokesmith to do what he did. What he did was, once more to give her the
appearance of vanishing as aforesaid.
'I think, my dears,' observed the cherub, 'that if you could make it convenient to sit one
on one side of me, and the other on the other, we should get on rather more consecutively,
and make things rather plainer. John Rokesmith mentioned, a while ago, that he had no
present occupation.'
'None,' said Rokesmith.
'No, Pa, none,' said Bella.
'From which I argue,' proceeded the cherub, 'that he has left Mr Boffin?'
'Yes, Pa. And so – '
'Stop a bit, my dear. I wish to lead up to it by degrees. And that Mr Boffin has not
treated him well?'
'Has treated him most shamefully, dear Pa!' cried Bella with a flashing face.
'Of which,' pursued the cherub, enjoining patience with his hand, 'a certain mercenary
young person distantly related to myself, could not approve? Am I leading up to it right?'
'Could not approve, sweet Pa,' said Bella, with a tearful laugh and a joyful kiss.
'Upon which,' pursued the cherub, 'the certain mercenary young person distantly related
to myself, having previously observed and mentioned to myself that prosperity was spoiling
Mr Boffin, felt that she must not sell her sense of what was right and what was wrong, and
what was true and what was false, and what was just and what was unjust, for any price that
could be paid to her by any one alive? Am I leading up to it right?'
With another tearful laugh Bella joyfully kissed him again.
'And therefore – and therefore,' the cherub went on in a glowing voice, as Bella's hand
stole gradually up his waistcoat to his neck, 'this mercenary young person distantly related to
myself, refused the price, took off the splendid fashions that were part of it, put on the
comparatively poor dress that I had last given her, and trusting to my supporting her in what
was right, came straight to me. Have I led up to it?'
Bella's hand was round his neck by this time, and her face was on it.
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'The mercenary young person distantly related to myself,' said her good father, 'did
well! The mercenary young person distantly related to myself, did not trust to me in vain! I
admire this mercenary young person distantly related to myself, more in this dress than if
she had come to me in China silks, Cashmere shawls, and Golconda diamonds. I love this
young person dearly. I say to the man of this young person's heart, out of my heart and with
all of it, «My blessing on this engagement betwixt you, and she brings you a good fortune
when she brings you the poverty she has accepted for your sake and the honest truth's!»'
The stanch little man's voice failed him as he gave John Rokesmith his hand, and he
was silent, bending his face low over his daughter. But, not for long. He soon looked up,
saying in a sprightly tone:
'And now, my dear child, if you think you can entertain John Rokesmith for a minute
and a half, I'll run over to the Dairy, and fetch HIM a cottage loaf and a drink of milk, that
we may all have tea together.'
It was, as Bella gaily said, like the supper provided for the three nursery hobgoblins at
their house in the forest, without their thunderous low growlings of the alarming discovery,
'Somebody's been drinking MY milk!' It was a delicious repast; by far the most delicious
that Bella, or John Rokesmith, or even R. Wilfer had ever made. The uncongenial oddity of
its surroundings, with the two brass knobs of the iron safe of Chicksey, Veneering, and
Stobbles staring from a corner, like the eyes of some dull dragon, only made it the more
delightful.
'To think,' said the cherub, looking round the office with unspeakable enjoyment, 'that
anything of a tender nature should come off here, is what tickles me. To think that ever I
should have seen my Bella folded in the arms of her future husband, HERE, you know!'
It was not until the cottage loaves and the milk had for some time disappeared, and the
foreshadowings of night were creeping over Mincing Lane, that the cherub by degrees
became a little nervous, and said to Bella, as he cleared his throat:
'Hem! – Have you thought at all about your mother, my dear?'
'Yes, Pa.'
'And your sister Lavvy, for instance, my dear?'
'Yes, Pa. I think we had better not enter into particulars at home. I think it will be quite
enough to say that I had a difference with Mr Boffin, and have left for good.'
'John Rokesmith being acquainted with your Ma, my love,' said her father, after some
slight hesitation, 'I need have no delicacy in hinting before him that you may perhaps find
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your Ma a little wearing.'
'A little, patient Pa?' said Bella with a tuneful laugh: the tunefuller for being so loving in
its tone.
'Well! We'll say, strictly in confidence among ourselves, wearing; we won't qualify it,'
the cherub stoutly admitted. 'And your sister's temper is wearing.'
'I don't mind, Pa.'
'And you must prepare yourself you know, my precious,' said her father, with much
gentleness, 'for our looking very poor and meagre at home, and being at the best but very
uncomfortable, after Mr Boffin's house.'
'I don't mind, Pa. I could bear much harder trials – for John.'
The closing words were not so softly and blushingly said but that John heard them, and
showed that he heard them by again assisting Bella to another of those mysterious
disappearances.
'Well!' said the cherub gaily, and not expressing disapproval, 'when you – when you
come back from retirement, my love, and reappear on the surface, I think it will be time to
lock up and go.'
If the counting−house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles had ever been shut up by
three happier people, glad as most people were to shut it up, they must have been
superlatively happy indeed. But first Bella mounted upon Rumty's Perch, and said, 'Show
me what you do here all day long, dear Pa. Do you write like this?' laying her round cheek
upon her plump left arm, and losing sight of her pen in waves of hair, in a highly
unbusiness−like manner. Though John Rokesmith seemed to like it.
So, the three hobgoblins, having effaced all traces of their feast, and swept up the
crumbs, came out of Mincing Lane to walk to Holloway; and if two of the hobgoblins didn't
wish the distance twice as long as it was, the third hobgoblin was much mistaken. Indeed,
that modest spirit deemed himself so much in the way of their deep enjoyment of the
journey, that he apologetically remarked: 'I think, my dears, I'll take the lead on the other
side of the road, and seem not to belong to you.' Which he did, cherubically strewing the
path with smiles, in the absence of flowers.
It was almost ten o'clock when they stopped within view of Wilfer Castle; and then, the
spot being quiet and deserted, Bella began a series of disappearances which threatened to
last all night.
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'I think, John,' the cherub hinted at last, 'that if you can spare me the young person
distantly related to myself, I'll take her in.'
'I can't spare her,' answered John, 'but I must lend her to you.' – My Darling!' A word of
magic which caused Bella instantly to disappear again.
'Now, dearest Pa,' said Bella, when she became visible, 'put your hand in mine, and
we'll run home as fast as ever we can run, and get it over. Now, Pa. Once! – '
'My dear,' the cherub faltered, with something of a craven air, 'I was going to observe
that if your mother – '
'You mustn't hang back, sir, to gain time,' cried Bella, putting out her right foot; 'do you
see that, sir? That's the mark; come up to the mark, sir. Once! Twice! Three times and away,
Pa!' Off she skimmed, bearing the cherub along, nor ever stopped, nor suffered him to stop,
until she had pulled at the bell. 'Now, dear Pa,' said Bella, taking him by both ears as if he
were a pitcher, and conveying his face to her rosy lips, 'we are in for it!'
Miss Lavvy came out to open the gate, waited on by that attentive cavalier and friend of
the family, Mr George Sampson. 'Why, it's never Bella!' exclaimed Miss Lavvy starting
back at the sight. And then bawled, 'Ma! Here's Bella!'
This produced, before they could get into the house, Mrs Wilfer. Who, standing in the
portal, received them with ghostly gloom, and all her other appliances of ceremony.
'My child is welcome, though unlooked for,' said she, at the time presenting her cheek
as if it were a cool slate for visitors to enrol themselves upon. 'You too, R. W., are welcome,
though late. Does the male domestic of Mrs Boffin hear me there?' This deep− toned inquiry
was cast forth into the night, for response from the menial in question.
'There is no one waiting, Ma, dear,' said Bella.
'There is no one waiting?' repeated MrsWilfer in majestic accents.
'No, Ma, dear.'
A dignified shiver pervaded Mrs Wilfer's shoulders and gloves, as who should say, 'An
Enigma!' and then she marched at the head of the procession to the family keeping−room,
where she observed:
'Unless, R. W.': who started on being solemnly turned upon: 'you have taken the
precaution of making some addition to our frugal supper on your way home, it will prove
but a distasteful one to Bella. Cold neck of mutton and a lettuce can ill compete with the
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luxuries of Mr Boffin's board.'
'Pray don't talk like that, Ma dear,' said Bella; 'Mr Boffin's board is nothing to me.'
But, here Miss Lavinia, who had been intently eyeing Bella's bonnet, struck in with
'Why, Bella!'
'Yes, Lavvy, I know.'
The Irrepressible lowered her eyes to Bella's dress, and stooped to look at it, exclaiming
again: 'Why, Bella!'
'Yes, Lavvy, I know what I have got on. I was going to tell Ma when you interrupted. I
have left Mr Boffin's house for good, Ma, and I have come home again.'
Mrs Wilfer spake no word, but, having glared at her offspring for a minute or two in an
awful silence, retired into her corner of state backward, and sat down: like a frozen article on
sale in a Russian market.
'In short, dear Ma,' said Bella, taking off the depreciated bonnet and shaking out her
hair, 'I have had a very serious difference with Mr Boffin on the subject of his treatment of a
member of his household, and it's a final difference, and there's an end of all.'
'And I am bound to tell you, my dear,' added R. W., submissively, 'that Bella has acted
in a truly brave spirit, and with a truly right feeling. And therefore I hope, my dear, you'll
not allow yourself to be greatly disappointed.'
'George!' said Miss Lavvy, in a sepulchral, warning voice, founded on her mother's;
'George Sampson, speak! What did I tell you about those Boffins?'
Mr Sampson perceiving his frail bark to be labouring among shoals and breakers,
thought it safest not to refer back to any particular thing that he had been told, lest he should
refer back to the wrong thing. With admirable seamanship he got his bark into deep water by
murmuring 'Yes indeed.'
'Yes! I told George Sampson, as George Sampson tells you, said Miss Lavvy, 'that those
hateful Boffins would pick a quarrel with Bella, as soon as her novelty had worn off. Have
they done it, or have they not? Was I right, or was I wrong? And what do you say to us,
Bella, of your Boffins now?'
'Lavvy and Ma,' said Bella, 'I say of Mr and Mrs Boffin what I always have said; and I
always shall say of them what I always have said. But nothing will induce me to quarrel
with any one to− night. I hope you are not sorry to see me, Ma dear,' kissing her; 'and I hope
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you are not sorry to see me, Lavvy,' kissing her too; 'and as I notice the lettuce Ma
mentioned, on the table, I'll make the salad.'
Bella playfully setting herself about the task, Mrs Wilfer's impressive countenance
followed her with glaring eyes, presenting a combination of the once popular sign of the
Saracen's Head, with a piece of Dutch clock−work, and suggesting to an imaginative mind
that from the composition of the salad, her daughter might prudently omit the vinegar. But
no word issued from the majestic matron's lips. And this was more terrific to her husband (as
perhaps she knew) than any flow of eloquence with which she could have edified the
company.
'Now, Ma dear,' said Bella in due course, 'the salad's ready, and it's past supper−time.'
Mrs Wilfer rose, but remained speechless. 'George!' said Miss Lavinia in her voice of
warning, 'Ma's chair!' Mr Sampson flew to the excellent lady's back, and followed her up
close chair in hand, as she stalked to the banquet. Arrived at the table, she took her rigid
seat, after favouring Mr Sampson with a glare for himself, which caused the young
gentleman to retire to his place in much confusion.
The cherub not presuming to address so tremendous an object, transacted her supper
through the agency of a third person, as 'Mutton to your Ma, Bella, my dear'; and 'Lavvy, I
dare say your Ma would take some lettuce if you were to put it on her plate.' Mrs Wilfer's
manner of receiving those viands was marked by petrified absence of mind; in which state,
likewise, she partook of them, occasionally laying down her knife and fork, as saying within
her own spirit, 'What is this I am doing?' and glaring at one or other of the party, as if in
indignant search of information. A magnetic result of such glaring was, that the person
glared at could not by any means successfully pretend to he ignorant of the fact: so that a
bystander, without beholding Mrs Wilfer at all, must have known at whom she was glaring,
by seeing her refracted from the countenance of the beglared one.
Miss Lavinia was extremely affable to Mr Sampson on this special occasion, and took
the opportunity of informing her sister why.
'It was not worth troubling you about, Bella, when you were in a sphere so far removed
from your family as to make it a matter in which you could be expected to take very little
interest,' said Lavinia with a toss of her chin; 'but George Sampson is paying his addresses to
me.'
Bella was glad to hear it. Mr Sampson became thoughtfully red, and felt called upon to
encircle Miss Lavinia's waist with his arm; but, encountering a large pin in the young lady's
belt, scarified a finger, uttered a sharp exclamation, and attracted the lightning of Mrs
Wilfer's glare.
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'George is getting on very well,' said Miss Lavinia which might not have been supposed
at the moment – 'and I dare say we shall be married, one of these days. I didn't care to
mention it when you were with your Bof – ' here Miss Lavinia checked herself in a bounce,
and added more placidly, 'when you were with Mr and Mrs Boffin; but now I think it sisterly
to name the circumstance.'
'Thank you, Lavvy dear. I congratulate you.'
'Thank you, Bella. The truth is, George and I did discuss whether I should tell you; but I
said to George that you wouldn't be much interested in so paltry an affair, and that it was far
more likely you would rather detach yourself from us altogether, than have him added to the
rest of us.'
'That was a mistake, dear Lavvy,' said Bella.
'It turns out to be,' replied Miss Lavinia; 'but circumstances have changed, you know,
my dear. George is in a new situation, and his prospects are very good indeed. I shouldn't
have had the courage to tell you so yesterday, when you would have thought his prospects
poor, and not worth notice; but I feel quite bold tonight.'
'When did you begin to feel timid, Lavvy? inquired Bella, with a smile.
'I didn't say that I ever felt timid, Bella,' replied the Irrepressible. 'But perhaps I might
have said, if I had not been restrained by delicacy towards a sister's feelings, that I have for
some time felt independent; too independent, my dear, to subject myself to have my
intended match (you'll prick yourself again, George) looked down upon. It is not that I could
have blamed you for looking down upon it, when you were looking up to a rich and great
match, Bella; it is only that I was independent.'
Whether the Irrepressible felt slighted by Bella's declaration that she would not quarrel,
or whether her spitefulness was evoked by Bella's return to the sphere of Mr George
Sampson's courtship, or whether it was a necessary fillip to her spirits that she should come
into collision with somebody on the present occasion, – anyhow she made a dash at her
stately parent now, with the greatest impetuosity.
'Ma, pray don't sit staring at me in that intensely aggravating manner! If you see a black
on my nose, tell me so; if you don't, leave me alone.'
'Do you address Me in those words?' said Mrs Wilfer. 'Do you presume?'
'Don't talk about presuming, Ma, for goodness' sake. A girl who is old enough to be
engaged, is quite old enough to object to be stared at as if she was a Clock.'
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'Audacious one!' said Mrs Wilfer. 'Your grandmamma, if so addressed by one of her
daughters, at any age, would have insisted on her retiring to a dark apartment.'
'My grandmamma,' returned Lavvy, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair,
'wouldn't have sat staring people out of countenance, I think.'
'She would!' said Mrs Wilfer.
'Then it's a pity she didn't know better,' said Lavvy. 'And if my grandmamma wasn't in
her dotage when she took to insisting on people's retiring to dark apartments, she ought to
have been. A pretty exhibition my grandmamma must have made of herself! I wonder
whether she ever insisted on people's retiring into the ball of St Paul's; and if she did, how
she got them there!'
'Silence!' proclaimed Mrs Wilfer. 'I command silence!'
'I have not the slightest intention of being silent, Ma,' returned Lavinia coolly, 'but quite
the contrary. I am not going to be eyed as if I had come from the Boffins, and sit silent under
it. I am not going to have George Sampson eyed as if HE had come from the Boffins, and sit
silent under it. If Pa thinks proper to be eyed as if HE had come from the Boffins also, well
and good. I don't choose to. And I won't!'
Lavinia's engineering having made this crooked opening at Bella, Mrs Wilfer strode
into it.
'You rebellious spirit! You mutinous child! Tell me this, Lavinia. If in violation of your
mother's sentiments, you had condescended to allow yourself to be patronized by the
Boffins, and if you had come from those halls of slavery – '
'That's mere nonsense, Ma,' said Lavinia.
'How!' exclaimed Mrs Wilfer, with sublime severity.
'Halls of slavery, Ma, is mere stuff and nonsense,' returned the unmoved Irrepressible.
'I say, presumptuous child, if you had come from the neighbourhood of Portland Place,
bending under the yoke of patronage and attended by its domestics in glittering garb to visit
me, do you think my deep−seated feelings could have been expressed in looks?'
'All I think about it, is,' returned Lavinia, 'that I should wish them expressed to the right
person.'
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'And if,' pursued her mother, 'if making light of my warnings that the face of Mrs Boffin
alone was a face teeming with evil, you had clung to Mrs Boffin instead of to me, and had
after all come home rejected by Mrs Boffin, trampled under foot by Mrs Boffin, and cast out
by Mrs Boffin, do you think my feelings could have been expressed in looks?'
Lavinia was about replying to her honoured parent that she might as well have
dispensed with her looks altogether then, when Bella rose and said, 'Good night, dear Ma. I
have had a tiring day, and I'll go to bed.' This broke up the agreeable party. Mr George
Sampson shortly afterwards took his leave, accompanied by Miss Lavinia with a candle as
far as the hall, and without a candle as far as the garden gate; Mrs Wilfer, washing her hands
of the Boffins, went to bed after the manner of Lady Macbeth; and R. W. was left alone
among the dilapidations of the supper table, in a melancholy attitude.
But, a light footstep roused him from his meditations, and it was Bella's. Her pretty hair
was hanging all about her, and she had tripped down softly, brush in hand, and barefoot, to
say good−night to him.
'My dear, you most unquestionably ARE a lovely woman,' said the cherub, taking up a
tress in his hand.
'Look here, sir,' said Bella; 'when your lovely woman marries, you shall have that piece
if you like, and she'll make you a chain of it. Would you prize that remembrance of the dear
creature?'
'Yes, my precious.'
'Then you shall have it if you're good, sir. I am very, very sorry, dearest Pa, to have
brought home all this trouble.'
'My pet,' returned her father, in the simplest good faith, 'don't make yourself uneasy
about that. It really is not worth mentioning, because things at home would have taken pretty
much the same turn any way. If your mother and sister don't find one subject to get at times
a little wearing on, they find another. We're never out of a wearing subject, my dear, I assure
you. I am afraid you find your old room with Lavvy, dreadfully inconvenient, Bella?'
'No I don't, Pa; I don't mind. Why don't I mind, do you think, Pa?'
'Well, my child, you used to complain of it when it wasn't such a contrast as it must be
now. Upon my word, I can only answer, because you are so much improved.'
'No, Pa. Because I am so thankful and so happy!'
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Here she choked him until her long hair made him sneeze, and then she laughed until
she made him laugh, and then she choked him again that they might not be overheard.
'Listen, sir,' said Bella. 'Your lovely woman was told her fortune to night on her way
home. It won't be a large fortune, because if the lovely woman's Intended gets a certain
appointment that he hopes to get soon, she will marry on a hundred and fifty pounds a year.
But that's at first, and even if it should never be more, the lovely woman will make it quite
enough. But that's not all, sir. In the fortune there's a certain fair man – a little man, the
fortune−teller said – who, it seems, will always find himself near the lovely woman, and will
always have kept, expressly for him, such a peaceful corner in the lovely woman's little
house as never was. Tell me the name of that man, sir.'
'Is he a Knave in the pack of cards?' inquired the cherub, with a twinkle in his eyes.
'Yes!' cried Bella, in high glee, choking him again. 'He's the Knave of Wilfers! Dear Pa,
the lovely woman means to look forward to this fortune that has been told for her, so
delightfully, and to cause it to make her a much better lovely woman than she ever has been
yet. What the little fair man is expected to do, sir, is to look forward to it also, by saying to
himself when he is in danger of being over−worried, «I see land at last!»
'I see land at last!' repeated her father.
'There's a dear Knave of Wilfers!' exclaimed Bella; then putting out her small white
bare foot, 'That's the mark, sir. Come to the mark. Put your boot against it. We keep to it
together, mind! Now, sir, you may kiss the lovely woman before she runs away, so thankful
and so happy. O yes, fair little man, so thankful and so happy!'
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Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS
A
mazement sits enthroned upon the countenances of Mr and Mrs Alfred Lammle's
circle of acquaintance, when the disposal of their first−class furniture and effects (including
a Billiard Table in capital letters), 'by auction, under a bill of sale,' is publicly announced on
a waving hearthrug in Sackville Street. But, nobody is half so much amazed as Hamilton
Veneering, Esquire, M.P. for Pocket−Breaches, who instantly begins to find out that the
Lammles are the only people ever entered on his soul's register, who are NOT the oldest and
dearest friends he has in the world. Mrs Veneering, W.M.P. for Pocket−Breaches, like a
faithful wife shares her husband's discovery and inexpressible astonishment. Perhaps the
Veneerings twain may deem the last unutterable feeling particularly due to their reputation,
by reason that once upon a time some of the longer heads in the City are whispered to have
shaken themselves, when Veneering's extensive dealings and great wealth were mentioned.
But, it is certain that neither Mr nor Mrs Veneering can find words to wonder in, and it
becomes necessary that they give to the oldest and dearest friends they have in the world, a
wondering dinner.
For, it is by this time noticeable that, whatever befals, the Veneerings must give a
dinner upon it. Lady Tippins lives in a chronic state of invitation to dine with the
Veneerings, and in a chronic state of inflammation arising from the dinners. Boots and
Brewer go about in cabs, with no other intelligible business on earth than to beat up people
to come and dine with the Veneerings. Veneering pervades the legislative lobbies, intent
upon entrapping his fellow−legislators to dinner. Mrs Veneering dined with five−
and−twenty bran−new faces over night; calls upon them all to day; sends them every one a
dinner−card to−morrow, for the week after next; before that dinner is digested, calls upon
their brothers and sisters, their sons and daughters, their nephews and nieces, their aunts and
uncles and cousins, and invites them all to dinner. And still, as at first, howsoever, the dining
circle widens, it is to be observed that all the diners are consistent in appearing to go to the
Veneerings, not to dine with Mr and Mrs Veneering (which would seem to be the last thing
in their minds), but to dine with one another.
Perhaps, after all, – who knows? – Veneering may find this dining, though expensive,
remunerative, in the sense that it makes champions. Mr Podsnap, as a representative man, is
not alone in caring very particularly for his own dignity, if not for that of his acquaintances,
and therefore in angrily supporting the acquaintances who have taken out his Permit, lest, in
their being lessened, he should be. The gold and silver camels, and the ice− pails, and the
rest of the Veneering table decorations, make a brilliant show, and when I, Podsnap,
casually remark elsewhere that I dined last Monday with a gorgeous caravan of camels, I
find it personally offensive to have it hinted to me that they are broken− kneed camels, or
camels labouring under suspicion of any sort. 'I don't display camels myself, I am above
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 603
them: I am a more solid man; but these camels have basked in the light of my countenance,
and how dare you, sir, insinuate to me that I have irradiated any but unimpeachable camels?'
The camels are polishing up in the Analytical's pantry for the dinner of wonderment on
the occasion of the Lammles going to pieces, and Mr Twemlow feels a little queer on the
sofa at his lodgings over the stable yard in Duke Street, Saint James's, in consequence of
having taken two advertised pills at about mid−day, on the faith of the printed representation
accompanying the box (price one and a penny halfpenny, government stamp included), that
the same 'will be found highly salutary as a precautionary measure in connection with the
pleasures of the table.' To whom, while sickly with the fancy of an insoluble pill sticking in
his gullet, and also with the sensation of a deposit of warm gum languidly wandering within
him a little lower down, a servant enters with the announcement that a lady wishes to speak
with him.
'A lady!' says Twemlow, pluming his ruffled feathers. 'Ask the favour of the lady's
name.'
The lady's name is Lammle. The lady will not detain Mr Twemlow longer than a very
few minutes. The lady is sure that Mr Twemlow will do her the kindness to see her, on being
told that she particularly desires a short interview. The lady has no doubt whatever of Mr
Twemlow's compliance when he hears her name. Has begged the servant to be particular not
to mistake her name. Would have sent in a card, but has none.
'Show the lady in.' Lady shown in, comes in.
Mr Twemlow's little rooms are modestly furnished, in an old− fashioned manner (rather
like the housekeeper's room at Snigsworthy Park), and would be bare of mere ornament,
were it not for a full−length engraving of the sublime Snigsworth over the chimneypiece,
snorting at a Corinthian column, with an enormous roll of paper at his feet, and a heavy
curtain going to tumble down on his head; those accessories being understood to represent
the noble lord as somehow in the act of saving his country.
'Pray take a seat, Mrs Lammle.' Mrs Lammle takes a seat and opens the conversation.
'I have no doubt, Mr Twemlow, that you have heard of a reverse of fortune having
befallen us. Of course you have heard of it, for no kind of news travels so fast – among one's
friends especially.'
Mindful of the wondering dinner, Twemlow, with a little twinge, admits the imputation.
'Probably it will not,' says Mrs Lammle, with a certain hardened manner upon her, that
makes Twemlow shrink, 'have surprised you so much as some others, after what passed
between us at the house which is now turned out at windows. I have taken the liberty of
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 604
calling upon you, Mr Twemlow, to add a sort of postscript to what I said that day.'
Mr Twemlow's dry and hollow cheeks become more dry and hollow at the prospect of
some new complication.
'Really,' says the uneasy little gentleman, 'really, Mrs Lammle, I should take it as a
favour if you could excuse me from any further confidence. It has ever been one of the
objects of my life – which, unfortunately, has not had many objects – to be inoffensive, and
to keep out of cabals and interferences.'
Mrs Lammle, by far the more observant of the two, scarcely finds it necessary to look at
Twemlow while he speaks, so easily does she read him.
'My postscript – to retain the term I have used' – says Mrs Lammle, fixing her eyes on
his face, to enforce what she says herself – 'coincides exactly with what you say, Mr
Twemlow. So far from troubling you with any new confidence, I merely wish to remind you
what the old one was. So far from asking you for interference, I merely wish to claim your
strict neutrality.'
Twemlow going on to reply, she rests her eyes again, knowing her ears to be quite
enough for the contents of so weak a vessel.
'I can, I suppose,' says Twemlow, nervously, 'offer no reasonable objection to hearing
anything that you do me the honour to wish to say to me under those heads. But if I may,
with all possible delicacy and politeness, entreat you not to range beyond them, I – I beg to
do so.'
'Sir,' says Mrs Lammle, raising her eyes to his face again, and quite daunting him with
her hardened manner, 'I imparted to you a certain piece of knowledge, to be imparted again,
as you thought best, to a certain person.'
'Which I did,' says Twemlow.
'And for doing which, I thank you; though, indeed, I scarcely know why I turned
traitress to my husband in the matter, for the girl is a poor little fool. I was a poor little fool
once myself; I can find no better reason.' Seeing the effect she produces on him by her
indifferent laugh and cold look, she keeps her eyes upon him as she proceeds. 'Mr
Twemlow, if you should chance to see my husband, or to see me, or to see both of us, in the
favour or confidence of any one else – whether of our common acquaintance or not, is of no
consequence – you have no right to use against us the knowledge I intrusted you with, for
one special purpose which has been accomplished. This is what I came to say. It is not a
stipulation; to a gentleman it is simply a reminder.'
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Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 605
Twemlow sits murmuring to himself with his hand to his forehead.
'It is so plain a case,' Mrs Lammle goes on, 'as between me (from the first relying on
your honour) and you, that I will not waste another word upon it.' She looks steadily at Mr
Twemlow, until, with a shrug, he makes her a little one−sided bow, as though saying 'Yes, I
think you have a right to rely upon me,' and then she moistens her lips, and shows a sense of
relief.
'I trust I have kept the promise I made through your servant, that I would detain you a
very few minutes. I need trouble you no longer, Mr Twemlow.'
'Stay!' says Twemlow, rising as she rises. 'Pardon me a moment. I should never have
sought you out, madam, to say what I am going to say, but since you have sought me out
and are here, I will throw it off my mind. Was it quite consistent, in candour, with our taking
that resolution against Mr Fledgeby, that you should afterwards address Mr Fledgeby as
your dear and confidential friend, and entreat a favour of Mr Fledgeby? Always supposing
that you did; I assert no knowledge of my own on the subject; it has been represented to me
that you did.'
'Then he told you?' retorts Mrs Lammle, who again has saved her eyes while listening,
and uses them with strong effect while speaking.
'Yes.'
'It is strange that he should have told you the truth,' says Mrs Lammle, seriously
pondering. 'Pray where did a circumstance so very extraordinary happen?'
Twemlow hesitates. He is shorter than the lady as well as weaker, and, as she stands
above him with her hardened manner and her well−used eyes, he finds himself at such a
disadvantage that he would like to be of the opposite sex.
'May I ask where it happened, Mr Twemlow? In strict confidence?'
'I must confess,' says the mild little gentleman, coming to his answer by degrees, 'that I
felt some compunctions when Mr Fledgeby mentioned it. I must admit that I could not
regard myself in an agreeable light. More particularly, as Mr Fledgeby did, with great
civility, which I could not feel that I deserved from him, render me the same service that you
had entreated him to render you.
It is a part of the true nobility of the poor gentleman's soul to say this last sentence.
'Otherwise,' he has reffected, 'I shall assume the superior position of having no difficulties of
my own, while I know of hers. Which would be mean, very mean.
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Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 606
'Was Mr Fledgeby's advocacy as effectual in your case as in ours?' Mrs Lammle
demands.
'As ineffectual.'
'Can you make up your mind to tell me where you saw Mr Fledgeby, Mr Twemlow?'
'I beg your pardon. I fully intended to have done so. The reservation was not intentional.
I encountered Mr Fledgeby, quite by accident, on the spot. – By the expression, on the spot,
I mean at Mr Riah's in Saint Mary Axe.'
'Have you the misfortune to be in Mr Riah's hands then?'
'Unfortunately, madam,' returns Twemlow, 'the one money obligation to which I stand
committed, the one debt of my life (but it is a just debt; pray observe that I don't dispute it),
has fallen into Mr Riah's hands.'
'Mr Twemlow,' says Mrs Lammle, fixing his eyes with hers: which he would prevent
her doing if he could, but he can't; 'it has fallen into Mr Fledgeby's hands. Mr Riah is his
mask. It has fallen into Mr Fledgeby's hands. Let me tell you that, for your guidance. The
information may be of use to you, if only to prevent your credulity, in judging another man's
truthfulness by your own, from being imposed upon.'
'Impossible!' cries Twemlow, standing aghast. 'How do you know it?'
'I scarcely know how I know it. The whole train of circumstances seemed to take fire at
once, and show it to me.'
'Oh! Then you have no proof.'
'It is very strange,' says Mrs Lammle, coldly and boldly, and with some disdain, 'how
like men are to one another in some things, though their characters are as different as can be!
No two men can have less affinity between them, one would say, than Mr Twemlow and my
husband. Yet my husband replies to me «You have no proof,» and Mr Twemlow replies to
me with the very same words!'
'But why, madam?' Twemlow ventures gently to argue. 'Consider why the very same
words? Because they state the fact. Because you HAVE no proof.'
'Men are very wise in their way,' quoth Mrs Lammle, glancing haughtily at the
Snigsworth portrait, and shaking out her dress before departing; 'but they have wisdom to
learn. My husband, who is not over−confiding, ingenuous, or inexperienced, sees this plain
thing no more than Mr Twemlow does – because there is no proof! Yet I believe five women
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Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 607
out of six, in my place, would see it as clearly as I do. However, I will never rest (if only in
remembrance of Mr Fledgeby's having kissed my hand) until my husband does see it. And
you will do well for yourself to see it from this time forth, Mr Twemlow, though I
CAN give you no proof.'
As she moves towards the door, Mr Twemlow, attending on her, expresses his soothing
hope that the condition of Mr Lammle's affairs is not irretrievable.
'I don't know,' Mrs Lammle answers, stopping, and sketching out the pattern of the
paper on the wall with the point of her parasol; 'it depends. There may be an opening for him
dawning now, or there may be none. We shall soon find out. If none, we are bankrupt here,
and must go abroad, I suppose.'
Mr Twemlow, in his good−natured desire to make the best of it, remarks that there are
pleasant lives abroad.
'Yes,' returns Mrs Lammle, still sketching on the wall; 'but I doubt whether
billiard−playing, card−playing, and so forth, for the means to live under suspicion at a dirty
table−d'hote, is one of them.'
It is much for Mr Lammle, Twemlow politely intimates (though greatly shocked), to
have one always beside him who is attached to him in all his fortunes, and whose restraining
influence will prevent him from courses that would be discreditable and ruinous. As he says
it, Mrs Lammle leaves off sketching, and looks at him.
'Restraining influence, Mr Twemlow? We must eat and drink, and dress, and have a
roof over our heads. Always beside him and attached in all his fortunes? Not much to boast
of in that; what can a woman at my age do? My husband and I deceived one another when
we married; we must bear the consequences of the deception – that is to say, bear one
another, and bear the burden of scheming together for to−day's dinner and to−morrow's
breakfast – till death divorces us.'
With those words, she walks out into Duke Street, Saint James's. Mr Twemlow
returning to his sofa, lays down his aching head on its slippery little horsehair bolster, with a
strong internal conviction that a painful interview is not the kind of thing to be taken after
the dinner pills which are so highly salutary in connexion with the pleasures of the table.
But, six o'clock in the evening finds the worthy little gentleman getting better, and also
getting himself into his obsolete little silk stockings and pumps, for the wondering dinner at
the Veneerings. And seven o'clock in the evening finds him trotting out into Duke Street, to
trot to the corner and save a sixpence in coach−hire.
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Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 608
Tippins the divine has dined herself into such a condition by this time, that a morbid
mind might desire her, for a blessed change, to sup at last, and turn into bed. Such a mind
has Mr Eugene Wrayburn, whom Twemlow finds contemplating Tippins with the moodiest
of visages, while that playful creature rallies him on being so long overdue at the woolsack.
Skittish is Tippins with Mortimer Lightwood too, and has raps to give him with her fan for
having been best man at the nuptials of these deceiving what's− their−names who have gone
to pieces. Though, indeed, the fan is generally lively, and taps away at the men in all
directions, with something of a grisly sound suggestive of the clattering of Lady Tippins's
bones.
A new race of intimate friends has sprung up at Veneering's since he went into
Parliament for the public good, to whom Mrs Veneering is very attentive. These friends, like
astronomical distances, are only to be spoken of in the very largest figures. Boots says that
one of them is a Contractor who (it has been calculated) gives employment, directly and
indirectly, to five hundred thousand men. Brewer says that another of them is a Chairman, in
such request at so many Boards, so far apart, that he never travels less by railway than three
thousand miles a week. Buffer says that another of them hadn't a sixpence eighteen months
ago, and, through the brilliancy of his genius in getting those shares issued at eighty−five,
and buying them all up with no money and selling them at par for cash, has now three
hundred and seventy−five thousand pounds – Buffer particularly insisting on the odd
seventy−five, and declining to take a farthing less. With Buffer, Boots, and Brewer, Lady
Tippins is eminently facetious on the subject of these Fathers of the Scrip−Church:
surveying them through her eyeglass, and inquiring whether Boots and Brewer and Buffer
think they will make her fortune if she makes love to them? with other pleasantries of that
nature. Veneering, in his different way, is much occupied with the Fathers too, piously
retiring with them into the conservatory, from which retreat the word 'Committee' is
occasionally heard, and where the Fathers instruct Veneering how he must leave the valley
of the piano on his left, take the level of the mantelpiece, cross by an open cutting at the
candelabra, seize the carrying−traffic at the console, and cut up the opposition root and
branch at the window curtains.
Mr and Mrs Podsnap are of the company, and the Fathers descry in Mrs Podsnap a fine
woman. She is consigned to a Father – Boots's Father, who employs five hundred thousand
men – and is brought to anchor on Veneering's left; thus affording opportunity to the
sportive Tippins on his right (he, as usual, being mere vacant space), to entreat to be told
something about those loves of Navvies, and whether they really do live on raw beefsteaks,
and drink porter out of their barrows. But, in spite of such little skirmishes it is felt that this
was to be a wondering dinner, and that the wondering must not be neglected. Accordingly,
Brewer, as the man who has the greatest reputation to sustain, becomes the interpreter of the
general instinct.
'I took,' says Brewer in a favourable pause, 'a cab this morning, and I rattled off to that
Sale.'
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Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 609
Boots (devoured by envy) says, 'So did I.'
Buffer says, 'So did I'; but can find nobody to care whether he did or not.
'And what was it like?' inquires Veneering.
'I assure you,' replies Brewer, looking about for anybody else to address his answer to,
and giving the preference to Lightwood; 'I assure you, the things were going for a song.
Handsome things enough, but fetching nothing.'
'So I heard this afternoon,' says Lightwood.
Brewer begs to know now, would it be fair to ask a professional man how – on – earth –
these – people – ever – did – come – TO – such – A – total smash? (Brewer's divisions being
for emphasis.)
Lightwood replies that he was consulted certainly, but could give no opinion which
would pay off the Bill of Sale, and therefore violates no confidence in supposing that it came
of their living beyond their means.
'But how,' says Veneering, 'CAN people do that!'
Hah! That is felt on all hands to be a shot in the bull's eye. How CAN people do that!
The Analytical Chemist going round with champagne, looks very much as if HE could give
them a pretty good idea how people did that, if he had a mind.
'How,' says Mrs Veneering, laying down her fork to press her aquiline hands together at
the tips of the fingers, and addressing the Father who travels the three thousand miles per
week: 'how a mother can look at her baby, and know that she lives beyond her husband's
means, I cannot imagine.'
Eugene suggests that Mrs Lammle, not being a mother, had no baby to look at.
'True,' says Mrs Veneering, 'but the principle is the same.'
Boots is clear that the principle is the same. So is Buffer. It is the unfortunate destiny of
Buffer to damage a cause by espousing it. The rest of the company have meekly yielded to
the proposition that the principle is the same, until Buffer says it is; when instantly a general
murmur arises that the principle is not the same.
'But I don't understand,' says the Father of the three hundred and seventy−five thousand
pounds, ' – if these people spoken of, occupied the position of being in society – they were
in society?'
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Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 610
Veneering is bound to confess that they dined here, and were even married from here.
'Then I don't understand,' pursues the Father, 'how even their living beyond their means
could bring them to what has been termed a total smash. Because, there is always such a
thing as an adjustment of affairs, in the case of people of any standing at all.'
Eugene (who would seem to be in a gloomy state of suggestiveness), suggests, 'Suppose
you have no means and live beyond them?'
This is too insolvent a state of things for the Father to entertain. It is too insolvent a
state of things for any one with any self−respect to entertain, and is universally scouted. But,
it is so amazing how any people can have come to a total smash, that everybody feels bound
to account for it specially. One of the Fathers says, 'Gaming table.' Another of the Fathers
says, 'Speculated without knowing that speculation is a science.' Boots says 'Horses.' Lady
Tippins says to her fan, 'Two establishments.' Mr Podsnap, saying nothing, is referred to for
his opinion; which he delivers as follows; much flushed and extremely angry:
'Don't ask me. I desire to take no part in the discussion of these people's affairs. I abhor
the subject. It is an odious subject, an offensive subject, a subject that makes me sick, and I
– ' And with his favourite right−arm flourish which sweeps away everything and settles it for
ever, Mr Podsnap sweeps these inconveniently unexplainable wretches who have lived
beyond their means and gone to total smash, off the face of the universe.
Eugene, leaning back in his chair, is observing Mr Podsnap with an irreverent face, and
may be about to offer a new suggestion, when the Analytical is beheld in collision with the
Coachman; the Coachman manifesting a purpose of coming at the company with a silver
salver, as though intent upon making a collection for his wife and family; the Analytical
cutting him off at the sideboard. The superior stateliness, if not the superior generalship, of
the Analytical prevails over a man who is as nothing off the box; and the Coachman,
yielding up his salver, retires defeated.
Then, the Analytical, perusing a scrap of paper lying on the salver, with the air of a
literary Censor, adjusts it, takes his time about going to the table with it, and presents it to
Mr Eugene Wrayburn. Whereupon the pleasant Tippins says aloud, 'The Lord Chancellor
has resigned!'
With distracting coolness and slowness – for he knows the curiosity of the Charmer to
be always devouring – Eugene makes a pretence of getting out an eyeglass, polishing it, and
reading the paper with difficulty, long after he has seen what is written on it. What is written
on it in wet ink, is:
'Young Blight.'
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Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 611
'Waiting?' says Eugene over his shoulder, in confidence, with the Analytical.
'Waiting,' returns the Analytical in responsive confidence.
Eugene looks 'Excuse me,' towards Mrs Veneering, goes out, and finds Young Blight,
Mortimer's clerk, at the hall−door.
'You told me to bring him, sir, to wherever you was, if he come while you was out and I
was in,' says that discreet young gentleman, standing on tiptoe to whisper; 'and I've brought
him.'
'Sharp boy. Where is he?' asks Eugene.
'He's in a cab, sir, at the door. I thought it best not to show him, you see, if it could be
helped; for he's a−shaking all over, like – Blight's simile is perhaps inspired by the
surrounding dishes of sweets – 'like Glue Monge.'
'Sharp boy again,' returns Eugene. 'I'll go to him.'
Goes out straightway, and, leisurely leaning his arms on the open window of a cab in
waiting, looks in at Mr Dolls: who has brought his own atmosphere with him, and would
seem from its odour to have brought it, for convenience of carriage, in a rum−cask.
'Now Dolls, wake up!'
'Mist Wrayburn? Drection! Fifteen shillings!'
After carefully reading the dingy scrap of paper handed to him, and as carefully tucking
it into his waistcoat pocket, Eugene tells out the money; beginning incautiously by telling
the first shilling into Mr Dolls's hand, which instantly jerks it out of window; and ending by
telling the fifteen shillings on the seat.
'Give him a ride back to Charing Cross, sharp boy, and there get rid of him.'
Returning to the dining−room, and pausing for an instant behind the screen at the door,
Eugene overhears, above the hum and clatter, the fair Tippins saying: 'I am dying to ask him
what he was called out for!'
'Are you?' mutters Eugene, 'then perhaps if you can't ask him, you'll die. So I'll be a
benefactor to society, and go. A stroll and a cigar, and I can think this over. Think this over.'
Thus, with a thoughtful face, he finds his hat and cloak, unseen of the Analytical, and goes
his way.
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Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS 612
Chapter 1 − SETTING TRAPS
P
lashwater Weir Mill Lock looked tranquil and pretty on an evening in the summer
time. A soft air stirred the leaves of the fresh green trees, and passed like a smooth shadow
over the river, and like a smoother shadow over the yielding grass. The voice of the falling
water, like the voices of the sea and the wind, were as an outer memory to a contemplative
listener; but not particularly so to Mr Riderhood, who sat on one of the blunt wooden levers
of his lock−gates, dozing. Wine must be got into a butt by some agency before it can be
drawn out; and the wine of sentiment never having been got into Mr Riderhood by any
agency, nothing in nature tapped him.
As the Rogue sat, ever and again nodding himself off his balance, his recovery was
always attended by an angry stare and growl, as if, in the absence of any one else, he had
aggressive inclinations towards himself. In one of these starts the cry of 'Lock, ho! Lock!'
prevented his relapse into a doze. Shaking himself as he got up like the surly brute he was,
he gave his growl a responsive twist at the end, and turned his face down−stream to see who
hailed.
It was an amateur−sculler, well up to his work though taking it easily, in so light a boat
that the Rogue remarked: 'A little less on you, and you'd a'most ha' been a Wagerbut'; then
went to work at his windlass handles and sluices, to let the sculler in. As the latter stood in
his boat, holding on by the boat−hook to the woodwork at the lock side, waiting for the gates
to open, Rogue Riderhood recognized his 'T'other governor,' Mr Eugene Wrayburn; who
was, however, too indifferent or too much engaged to recognize him.
The creaking lock−gates opened slowly, and the light boat passed in as soon as there
was room enough, and the creaking lock−gates closed upon it, and it floated low down in the
dock between the two sets of gates, until the water should rise and the second gates should
open and let it out. When Riderhood had run to his second windlass and turned it, and while
he leaned against the lever of that gate to help it to swing open presently, he noticed, lying to
rest under the green hedge by the towing−path astern of the Lock, a Bargeman.
The water rose and rose as the sluice poured in, dispersing the scum which had formed
behind the lumbering gates, and sending the boat up, so that the sculler gradually rose like
an apparition against the light from the bargeman's point of view. Riderhood observed that
the bargeman rose too, leaning on his arm, and seemed to have his eyes fastened on the
rising figure.
But, there was the toll to be taken, as the gates were now complaining and opening. The
T'other governor tossed it ashore, twisted in a piece of paper, and as he did so, knew his
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Chapter 1 − SETTING TRAPS 614
man.
'Ay, ay? It's you, is it, honest friend?' said Eugene, seating himself preparatory to
resuming his sculls. 'You got the place, then?'
'I got the place, and no thanks to you for it, nor yet none to Lawyer Lightwood,' gruffly
answered Riderhood.
'We saved our recommendation, honest fellow,' said Eugene, 'for the next candidate –
the one who will offer himself when you are transported or hanged. Don't be long about it;
will you be so good?'
So imperturbable was the air with which he gravely bent to his work that Riderhood
remained staring at him, without having found a retort, until he had rowed past a line of
wooden objects by the weir, which showed like huge teetotums standing at rest in the water,
and was almost hidden by the drooping boughs on the left bank, as he rowed away, keeping
out of the opposing current. It being then too late to retort with any effect – if that could ever
have been done – the honest man confined himself to cursing and growling in a grim
under−tone. Having then got his gates shut, he crossed back by his plank lock−bridge to the
towing−path side of the river.
If, in so doing, he took another glance at the bargeman, he did it by stealth. He cast
himself on the grass by the Lock side, in an indolent way, with his back in that direction,
and, having gathered a few blades, fell to chewing them. The dip of Eugene Wrayburn's
sculls had become hardly audible in his ears when the bargeman passed him, putting the
utmost width that he could between them, and keeping under the hedge. Then, Riderhood sat
up and took a long look at his figure, and then cried: 'Hi – I – i! Lock, ho! Lock! Plashwater
Weir Mill Lock!'
The bargeman stopped, and looked back.
'Plashwater Weir Mill Lock, T'otherest gov – er – nor – or – or – or!' cried Mr
Riderhood, with his hands to his mouth.
The bargeman turned back. Approaching nearer and nearer, the bargeman became
Bradley Headstone, in rough water−side second− hand clothing.
'Wish I may die,' said Riderhood, smiting his right leg, and laughing, as he sat on the
grass, 'if you ain't ha' been a imitating me, T'otherest governor! Never thought myself so
good−looking afore!'
Truly, Bradley Headstone had taken careful note of the honest man's dress in the course
of that night−walk they had had together. He must have committed it to memory, and slowly
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Chapter 1 − SETTING TRAPS 615
got it by heart. It was exactly reproduced in the dress he now wore. And whereas, in his own
schoolmaster clothes, he usually looked as if they were the clothes of some other man, he
now looked, in the clothes of some other man or men, as if they were his own.
'THIS your Lock?' said Bradley, whose surprise had a genuine air; 'they told me, where
I last inquired, it was the third I should come to. This is only the second.'
'It's my belief, governor,' returned Riderhood, with a wink and shake of his head, 'that
you've dropped one in your counting. It ain't Locks as YOU'VE been giving your mind to.
No, no!'
As he expressively jerked his pointing finger in the direction the boat had taken, a flush
of impatience mounted into Bradley's face, and he looked anxiously up the river.
'It ain't Locks as YOU'VE been a reckoning up,' said Riderhood, when the
schoolmaster's eyes came back again. 'No, no!'
'What other calculations do you suppose I have been occupied with? Mathematics?'
'I never heerd it called that. It's a long word for it. Hows'ever, p'raps you call it so,' said
Riderhood, stubbornly chewing his grass.
'It. What?'
'I'll say them, instead of it, if you like,' was the coolly growled reply. 'It's safer talk too.'
'What do you mean that I should understand by them?'
'Spites, affronts, offences giv' and took, deadly aggrawations, such like,' answered
Riderhood.
Do what Bradley Headstone would, he could not keep that former flush of impatience
out of his face, or so master his eyes as to prevent their again looking anxiously up the river.
'Ha ha! Don't be afeerd, T'otherest,' said Riderhood. 'The T'other's got to make way agin
the stream, and he takes it easy. You can soon come up with him. But wot's the good of
saying that to you! YOU know how fur you could have outwalked him betwixt anywheres
about where he lost the tide – say Richmond – and this, if you had a mind to it.'
'You think I have been following him?' said Bradley.
'I KNOW you have,' said Riderhood.
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'Well! I have, I have,' Bradley admitted. 'But,' with another anxious look up the river,
'he may land.'
'Easy you! He won't be lost if he does land,' said Riderhood. 'He must leave his boat
behind him. He can't make a bundle or a parcel on it, and carry it ashore with him under his
arm.'
'He was speaking to you just now,' said Bradley, kneeling on one knee on the grass
beside the Lock−keeper. 'What did he say?'
'Cheek,' said Riderhood.
'What?'
'Cheek,' repeated Riderhood, with an angry oath; 'cheek is what he said. He can't say
nothing but cheek. I'd ha' liked to plump down aboard of him, neck and crop, with a heavy
jump, and sunk him.'
Bradley turned away his haggard face for a few moments, and then said, tearing up a
tuft of grass:
'Damn him!'
'Hooroar!' cried Riderhood. 'Does you credit! Hooroar! I cry chorus to the T'otherest.'
'What turn,' said Bradley, with an effort at self−repression that forced him to wipe his
face, 'did his insolence take to−day?'
'It took the turn,' answered Riderhood, with sullen ferocity, 'of hoping as I was getting
ready to be hanged.'
'Let him look to that,' cried Bradley. 'Let him look to that! It will be bad for him when
men he has injured, and at whom he has jeered, are thinking of getting hanged. Let HIM get
ready for HIS fate, when that comes about. There was more meaning in what he said than he
knew of, or he wouldn't have had brains enough to say it. Let him look to it; let him look to
it! When men he has wronged, and on whom he has bestowed his insolence, are getting
ready to be hanged, there is a death−bell ringing. And not for them.'
Riderhood, looking fixedly at him, gradually arose from his recumbent posture while
the schoolmaster said these words with the utmost concentration of rage and hatred. So,
when the words were all spoken, he too kneeled on one knee on the grass, and the two men
looked at one another.
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'Oh!' said Riderhood, very deliberately spitting out the grass he had been chewing.
'Then, I make out, T'otherest, as he is a−going to her?'
'He left London,' answered Bradley, 'yesterday. I have hardly a doubt, this time, that at
last he is going to her.'
'You ain't sure, then?'
'I am as sure here,' said Bradley, with a clutch at the breast of his coarse shirt, 'as if it
was written there;' with a blow or a stab at the sky.
'Ah! But judging from the looks on you,' retorted Riderhood, completely ridding
himself of his grass, and drawing his sleeve across his mouth, 'you've made ekally sure
afore, and have got disapinted. It has told upon you.'
'Listen,' said Bradley, in a low voice, bending forward to lay his hand upon the
Lock−keeper's shoulder. 'These are my holidays.'
'Are they, by George!' muttered Riderhood, with his eyes on the passion−wasted face.
'Your working days must be stiff 'uns, if these is your holidays.'
'And I have never left him,' pursued Bradley, waving the interruption aside with an
impatient hand, 'since they began. And I never will leave him now, till I have seen him with
her.'
'And when you have seen him with her?' said Riderhood.
' – I'll come back to you.'
Riderhood stiffened the knee on which he had been resting, got up, and looked gloomily
at his new friend. After a few moments they walked side by side in the direction the boat had
taken, as if by tacit consent; Bradley pressing forward, and Riderhood holding back; Bradley
getting out his neat prim purse into his hand (a present made him by penny subscription
among his pupils); and Riderhood, unfolding his arms to smear his coat−cuff across his
mouth with a thoughtful air.
'I have a pound for you,' said Bradley.
'You've two,' said Riderhood.
Bradley held a sovereign between his fingers. Slouching at his side with his eyes upon
the towing−path, Riderhood held his left hand open, with a certain slight drawing action
towards himself. Bradley dipped in his purse for another sovereign, and two chinked in
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Riderhood's hand, the drawing action of which, promptly strengthening, drew them home to
his pocket.
'Now, I must follow him,' said Bradley Headstone. 'He takes this river−road – the fool!
– to confuse observation, or divert attention, if not solely to baffle me. But he must have the
power of making himself invisible before he can shake Me off.'
Riderhood stopped. 'If you don't get disapinted agin, T'otherest, maybe you'll put up at
the Lock−house when you come back?'
'I will.'
Riderhood nodded, and the figure of the bargeman went its way along the soft turf by
the side of the towing−path, keeping near the hedge and moving quickly. They had turned a
point from which a long stretch of river was visible. A stranger to the scene might have been
certain that here and there along the line of hedge a figure stood, watching the bargeman,
and waiting for him to come up. So he himself had often believed at first, until his eyes
became used to the posts, bearing the dagger that slew Wat Tyler, in the City of London
shield.
Within Mr Riderhood's knowledge all daggers were as one. Even to Bradley Headstone,
who could have told to the letter without book all about Wat Tyler, Lord Mayor Walworth,
and the King, that it is dutiful for youth to know, there was but one subject living in the
world for every sharp destructive instrument that summer evening. So, Riderhood looking
after him as he went, and he with his furtive hand laid upon the dagger as he passed it, and
his eyes upon the boat, were much upon a par.
The boat went on, under the arching trees, and over their tranquil shadows in the water.
The bargeman skulking on the opposite bank of the stream, went on after it. Sparkles of light
showed Riderhood when and where the rower dipped his blades, until, even as he stood idly
watching, the sun went down and the landscape was dyed red. And then the red had the
appearance of fading out of it and mounting up to Heaven, as we say that blood, guiltily
shed, does.
Turning back towards his Lock (he had not gone out of view of it), the Rogue pondered
as deeply as it was within the contracted power of such a fellow to do. 'Why did he copy my
clothes? He could have looked like what he wanted to look like, without that.' This was the
subject−matter in his thoughts; in which, too, there came lumbering up, by times, like any
half floating and half sinking rubbish in the river, the question, Was it done by accident?
The setting of a trap for finding out whether it was accidentally done, soon superseded, as a
practical piece of cunning, the abstruser inquiry why otherwise it was done. And he devised
a means.
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Rogue Riderhood went into his Lock−house, and brought forth, into the now sober grey
light, his chest of clothes. Sitting on the grass beside it, he turned out, one by one, the
articles it contained, until he came to a conspicuous bright red neckerchief stained black here
and there by wear. It arrested his attention, and he sat pausing over it, until he took off the
rusty colourless wisp that he wore round his throat, and substituted the red neckerchief,
leaving the long ends flowing. 'Now,' said the Rogue, 'if arter he sees me in this
neckhankecher, I see him in a sim'lar neckhankecher, it won't be accident!' Elated by his
device, he carried his chest in again and went to supper.
'Lock ho! Lock!' It was a light night, and a barge coming down summoned him out of a
long doze. In due course he had let the barge through and was alone again, looking to the
closing of his gates, when Bradley Headstone appeared before him, standing on the brink of
the Lock.
'Halloa!' said Riderhood. 'Back a' ready, T'otherest?'
'He has put up for the night, at an Angler's Inn,' was the fatigued and hoarse reply. 'He
goes on, up the river, at six in the morning. I have come back for a couple of hours' rest.'
'You want 'em,' said Riderhood, making towards the schoolmaster by his plank bridge.
'I don't want them,' returned Bradley, irritably, 'because I would rather not have them,
but would much prefer to follow him all night. However, if he won't lead, I can't follow. I
have been waiting about, until I could discover, for a certainty, at what time he starts; if I
couldn't have made sure of it, I should have stayed there. – This would be a bad pit for a
man to be flung into with his hands tied. These slippery smooth walls would give him no
chance. And I suppose those gates would suck him down?'
'Suck him down, or swaller him up, he wouldn't get out,' said Riderhood. 'Not even, if
his hands warn't tied, he wouldn't. Shut him in at both ends, and I'd give him a pint o' old ale
ever to come up to me standing here.'
Bradley looked down with a ghastly relish. 'You run about the brink, and run across it,
in this uncertain light, on a few inches width of rotten wood,' said he. 'I wonder you have no
thought of being drowned.'
'I can't be!' said Riderhood.
'You can't be drowned?'
'No!' said Riderhood, shaking his head with an air of thorough conviction, 'it's well
known. I've been brought out o' drowning, and I can't be drowned. I wouldn't have that there
busted B'lowbridger aware on it, or her people might make it tell agin' the damages I mean
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to get. But it's well known to water−side characters like myself, that him as has been brought
out o drowning, can never be drowned.'
Bradley smiled sourly at the ignorance he would have corrected in one of his pupils, and
continued to look down into the water, as if the place had a gloomy fascination for him.
'You seem to like it,' said Riderhood.
He took no notice, but stood looking down, as if he had not heard the words. There was
a very dark expression on his face; an expression that the Rogue found it hard to understand.
It was fierce, and full of purpose; but the purpose might have been as much against himself
as against another. If he had stepped back for a spring, taken a leap, and thrown himself in, it
would have been no surprising sequel to the look. Perhaps his troubled soul, set upon some
violence, did hover for the moment between that violence and another.
'Didn't you say,' asked Riderhood, after watching him for a while with a sidelong
glance, 'as you had come back for a couple o' hours' rest?' But, even then he had to jog him
with his elbow before he answered.
'Eh? Yes.'
'Hadn't you better come in and take your couple o' hours' rest?'
'Thank you. Yes.'
With the look of one just awakened, he followed Riderhood into the Lock−house, where
the latter produced from a cupboard some cold salt beef and half a loaf, some gin in a bottle,
and some water in a jug. The last he brought in, cool and dripping, from the river.
'There, T'otherest,' said Riderhood, stooping over him to put it on the table. 'You'd better
take a bite and a sup, afore you takes your snooze.' The draggling ends of the red
neckerchief caught the schoolmaster's eyes. Riderhood saw him look at it.
'Oh!' thought that worthy. 'You're a−taking notice, are you? Come! You shall have a
good squint at it then.' With which reflection he sat down on the other side of the table,
threw open his vest, and made a pretence of re−tying the neckerchief with much
deliberation.
Bradley ate and drank. As he sat at his platter and mug, Riderhood saw him, again and
yet again, steal a look at the neckerchief, as if he were correcting his slow observation and
prompting his sluggish memory. 'When you're ready for your snooze,' said that honest
creature, 'chuck yourself on my bed in the corner, T'otherest. It'll be broad day afore three.
I'll call you early.'
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'I shall require no calling,' answered Bradley. And soon afterwards, divesting himself
only of his shoes and coat, laid himself down.
Riderhood, leaning back in his wooden arm−chair with his arms folded on his breast,
looked at him lying with his right hand clenched in his sleep and his teeth set, until a film
came over his own sight, and he slept too. He awoke to find that it was daylight, and that his
visitor was already astir, and going out to the river− side to cool his head: – 'Though I'm
blest,' muttered Riderhood at the Lock−house door, looking after him, 'if I think there's
water enough in all the Thames to do THAT for you!' Within five minutes he had taken his
departure, and was passing on into the calm distance as he had passed yesterday. Riderhood
knew when a fish leaped, by his starting and glancing round.
'Lock ho! Lock!' at intervals all day, and 'Lock ho! Lock!' thrice in the ensuing night,
but no return of Bradley. The second day was sultry and oppressive. In the afternoon, a
thunderstorm came up, and had but newly broken into a furious sweep of rain when he
rushed in at the door, like the storm itself.
'You've seen him with her!' exclaimed Riderhood, starting up.
'I have.'
'Where?'
'At his journey's end. His boat's hauled up for three days. I heard him give the order.
Then, I saw him wait for her and meet her. I saw them' – he stopped as though he were
suffocating, and began again – 'I saw them walking side by side, last night.'
'What did you do?'
'Nothing.'
'What are you going to do?'
He dropped into a chair, and laughed. Immediately afterwards, a great spirt of blood
burst from his nose.
'How does that happen?' asked Riderhood.
'I don't know. I can't keep it back. It has happened twice – three times – four times – I
don't know how many times – since last night. I taste it, smell it, see it, it chokes me, and
then it breaks out like this.'
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He went into the pelting rain again with his head bare, and, bending low over the river,
and scooping up the water with his two hands, washed the blood away. All beyond his
figure, as Riderhood looked from the door, was a vast dark curtain in solemn movement
towards one quarter of the heavens. He raised his head and came back, wet from head to
foot, but with the lower parts of his sleeves, where he had dipped into the river, streaming
water.
'Your face is like a ghost's,' said Riderhood.
'Did you ever see a ghost?' was the sullen retort.
'I mean to say, you're quite wore out.'
'That may well be. I have had no rest since I left here. I don't remember that I have so
much as sat down since I left here.'
'Lie down now, then,' said Riderhood.
'I will, if you'll give me something to quench my thirst first.'
The bottle and jug were again produced, and he mixed a weak draught, and another, and
drank both in quick succession. 'You asked me something,' he said then.
'No, I didn't,' replied Riderhood.
'I tell you,' retorted Bradley, turning upon him in a wild and desperate manner, 'you
asked me something, before I went out to wash my face in the river.
'Oh! Then?' said Riderhood, backing a little. 'I asked you wot you wos a−going to do.'
'How can a man in this state know?' he answered, protesting with both his tremulous
hands, with an action so vigorously angry that he shook the water from his sleeves upon the
floor, as if he had wrung them. 'How can I plan anything, if I haven't sleep?'
'Why, that's what I as good as said,' returned the other. 'Didn't I say lie down?'
'Well, perhaps you did.'
'Well! Anyways I says it again. Sleep where you slept last; the sounder and longer you
can sleep, the better you'll know arterwards what you're up to.'
His pointing to the truckle bed in the corner, seemed gradually to bring that poor couch
to Bradley's wandering remembrance. He slipped off his worn down−trodden shoes, and cast
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himself heavily, all wet as he was, upon the bed.
Riderhood sat down in his wooden arm−chair, and looked through the window at the
lightning, and listened to the thunder. But, his thoughts were far from being absorbed by the
thunder and the lightning, for again and again and again he looked very curiously at the
exhausted man upon the bed. The man had turned up the collar of the rough coat he wore, to
shelter himself from the storm, and had buttoned it about his neck. Unconscious of that, and
of most things, he had left the coat so, both when he had laved his face in the river, and
when he had cast himself upon the bed; though it would have been much easier to him if he
had unloosened it.
The thunder rolled heavily, and the forked lightning seemed to make jagged rents in
every part of the vast curtain without, as Riderhood sat by the window, glancing at the bed.
Sometimes, he saw the man upon the bed, by a red light; sometimes, by a blue; sometimes,
he scarcely saw him in the darkness of the storm; sometimes he saw nothing of him in the
blinding glare of palpitating white fire. Anon, the rain would come again with a tremendous
rush, and the river would seem to rise to meet it, and a blast of wind, bursting upon the door,
would flutter the hair and dress of the man, as if invisible messengers were come around the
bed to carry him away. From all these phases of the storm, Riderhood would turn, as if they
were interruptions – rather striking interruptions possibly, but interruptions still – of his
scrutiny of the sleeper.
'He sleeps sound,' he said within himself; 'yet he's that up to me and that noticing of me
that my getting out of my chair may wake him, when a rattling peal won't; let alone my
touching of him.'
He very cautiously rose to his feet. 'T'otherest,' he said, in a low, calm voice, 'are you a
lying easy? There's a chill in the air, governor. Shall I put a coat over you?'
No answer.
'That's about what it is a'ready, you see,' muttered Riderhood in a lower and a different
voice; 'a coat over you, a coat over you!'
The sleeper moving an arm, he sat down again in his chair, and feigned to watch the
storm from the window. It was a grand spectacle, but not so grand as to keep his eyes, for
half a minute together, from stealing a look at the man upon the bed.
It was at the concealed throat of the sleeper that Riderhood so often looked so curiously,
until the sleep seemed to deepen into the stupor of the dead−tired in mind and body. Then,
Riderhood came from the window cautiously, and stood by the bed.
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'Poor man!' he murmured in a low tone, with a crafty face, and a very watchful eye and
ready foot, lest he should start up; 'this here coat of his must make him uneasy in his sleep.
Shall I loosen it for him, and make him more comfortable? Ah! I think I ought to do it, poor
man. I think I will.'
He touched the first button with a very cautious hand, and a step backward. But, the
sleeper remaining in profound unconsciousness, he touched the other buttons with a more
assured hand, and perhaps the more lightly on that account. Softly and slowly, he opened the
coat and drew it back.
The draggling ends of a bright−red neckerchief were then disclosed, and he had even
been at the pains of dipping parts of it in some liquid, to give it the appearance of having
become stained by wear. With a much−perplexed face, Riderhood looked from it to the
sleeper, and from the sleeper to it, and finally crept back to his chair, and there, with his
hand to his chin, sat long in a brown study, looking at both.
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Chapter 2 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN RISES A LITTLE
M
r and Mrs Lammle had come to breakfast with Mr and Mrs Boffin. They were not
absolutely uninvited, but had pressed themselves with so much urgency on the golden
couple, that evasion of the honour and pleasure of their company would have been difficult,
if desired. They were in a charming state of mind, were Mr and Mrs Lammle, and almost as
fond of Mr and Mrs Boffin as of one another.
'My dear Mrs Boffin,' said Mrs Lammle, 'it imparts new life to me, to see my Alfred in
confidential communication with Mr Boffin. The two were formed to become intimate. So
much simplicity combined with so much force of character, such natural sagacity united to
such amiability and gentleness – these are the distinguishing characteristics of both.'
This being said aloud, gave Mr Lammle an opportunity, as he came with Mr Boffin
from the window to the breakfast table, of taking up his dear and honoured wife.
'My Sophronia,' said that gentleman, 'your too partial estimate of your husband's
character – '
'No! Not too partial, Alfred,' urged the lady, tenderly moved; 'never say that.'
'My child, your favourable opinion, then, of your husband – you don't object to that
phrase, darling?'
'How can I, Alfred?'
'Your favourable opinion then, my Precious, does less than justice to Mr Boffin, and
more than justice to me.'
'To the first charge, Alfred, I plead guilty. But to the second, oh no, no!'
'Less than justice to Mr Boffin, Sophronia,' said Mr Lammle, soaring into a tone of
moral grandeur, 'because it represents Mr Boffin as on my lower level; more than justice to
me, Sophronia, because it represents me as on Mr Boffin's higher level. Mr Boffin bears and
forbears far more than I could.'
'Far more than you could for yourself, Alfred?'
'My love, that is not the question.'
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'Not the question, Lawyer?' said Mrs Lammle, archly.
'No, dear Sophronia. From my lower level, I regard Mr Boffin as too generous, as
possessed of too much clemency, as being too good to persons who are unworthy of him and
ungrateful to him. To those noble qualities I can lay no claim. On the contrary, they rouse
my indignation when I see them in action.'
'Alfred!'
'They rouse my indignation, my dear, against the unworthy persons, and give me a
combative desire to stand between Mr Boffin and all such persons. Why? Because, in my
lower nature I am more worldly and less delicate. Not being so magnanimous as Mr Boffin,
I feel his injuries more than he does himself, and feel more capable of opposing his injurers.'
It struck Mrs Lammle that it appeared rather difficult this morning to bring Mr and Mrs
Boffin into agreeable conversation. Here had been several lures thrown out, and neither of
them had uttered a word. Here were she, Mrs Lammle, and her husband discoursing at once
affectingly and effectively, but discoursing alone. Assuming that the dear old creatures were
impressed by what they heard, still one would like to be sure of it, the more so, as at least
one of the dear old creatures was somewhat pointedly referred to. If the dear old creatures
were too bashful or too dull to assume their required places in the discussion, why then it
would seem desirable that the dear old creatures should be taken by their heads and
shoulders and brought into it.
'But is not my husband saying in effect,' asked Mrs Lammie, therefore, with an innocent
air, of Mr and Mrs Boffin, 'that he becomes unmindful of his own temporary misfortunes in
his admiration of another whom he is burning to serve? And is not that making an admission
that his nature is a generous one? I am wretched in argument, but surely this is so, dear Mr
and Mrs Boffin?'
Still, neither Mr and Mrs Boffin said a word. He sat with his eyes on his plate, eating
his muffins and ham, and she sat shyly looking at the teapot. Mrs Lammle's innocent appeal
was merely thrown into the air, to mingle with the steam of the urn. Glancing towards Mr
and Mrs Boffin, she very slightly raised her eyebrows, as though inquiring of her husband:
'Do I notice anything wrong here?'
Mr Lammle, who had found his chest effective on a variety of occasions, manoeuvred
his capacious shirt front into the largest demonstration possible, and then smiling retorted on
his wife, thus:
'Sophronia, darling, Mr and Mrs Boffin will remind you of the old adage, that
self−praise is no recommendation.'
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Chapter 2 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN RISES A LITTLE 627
'Self−praise, Alfred? Do you mean because we are one and the same?'
'No, my dear child. I mean that you cannot fail to remember, if you reflect for a single
moment, that what you are pleased to compliment me upon feeling in the case of Mr Boffin,
you have yourself confided to me as your own feeling in the case of Mrs Boffin.'
('I shall be beaten by this Lawyer,' Mrs Lammle gaily whispered to Mrs Boffin. 'I am
afraid I must admit it, if he presses me, for it's damagingly true.')
Several white dints began to come and go about Mr Lammle's nose, as he observed that
Mrs Boffin merely looked up from the teapot for a moment with an embarrassed smile,
which was no smile, and then looked down again.
'Do you admit the charge, Sophronia?' inquired Alfred, in a rallying tone.
'Really, I think,' said Mrs Lammle, still gaily, 'I must throw myself on the protection of
the Court. Am I bound to answer that question, my Lord?' To Mr Boffin.
'You needn't, if you don't like, ma'am,' was his answer. 'It's not of the least
consequence.'
Both husband and wife glanced at him, very doubtfully. His manner was grave, but not
coarse, and derived some dignity from a certain repressed dislike of the tone of the
conversation.
Again Mrs Lammle raised her eyebrows for instruction from her husband. He replied in
a slight nod, 'Try 'em again.'
'To protect myself against the suspicion of covert self−laudation, my dear Mrs Boffin,'
said the airy Mrs Lammle therefore, 'I must tell you how it was.'
'No. Pray don't,' Mr Boffin interposed.
Mrs Lammie turned to him laughingly. 'The Court objects?'
'Ma'am,' said Mr Boffin, 'the Court (if I am the Court) does object. The Court objects for
two reasons. First, because the Court don't think it fair. Secondly, because the dear old lady,
Mrs Court (if I am Mr) gets distressed by it.'
A very remarkable wavering between two bearings – between her propitiatory bearing
there, and her defiant bearing at Mr Twemlow's – was observable on the part of Mrs
Lammle as she said:
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'What does the Court not consider fair?'
'Letting you go on,' replied Mr Boffin, nodding his head soothingly, as who should say,
We won't be harder on you than we can help; we'll make the best of it. 'It's not above−board
and it's not fair. When the old lady is uncomfortable, there's sure to be good reason for it. I
see she is uncomfortable, and I plainly see this is the good reason wherefore. HAVE you
breakfasted, ma'am.'
Mrs Lammle, settling into her defiant manner, pushed her plate away, looked at her
husband, and laughed; but by no means gaily.
'Have YOU breakfasted, sir?' inquired Mr Boffin.
'Thank you,' replied Alfred, showing all his teeth. 'If Mrs Boffin will oblige me, I'll take
another cup of tea.'
He spilled a little of it over the chest which ought to have been so effective, and which
had done so little; but on the whole drank it with something of an air, though the coming and
going dints got almost as large, the while, as if they had been made by pressure of the
teaspoon. 'A thousand thanks,' he then observed. 'I have breakfasted.'
'Now, which,' said Mr Boffin softly, taking out a pocket−book, 'which of you two is
Cashier?'
'Sophronia, my dear,' remarked her husband, as he leaned back in his chair, waving his
right hand towards her, while he hung his left hand by the thumb in the arm−hole of his
waistcoat: 'it shall be your department.'
'I would rather,' said Mr Boffin, 'that it was your husband's, ma'am, because – but never
mind, because. I would rather have to do with him. However, what I have to say, I will say
with as little offence as possible; if I can say it without any, I shall be heartily glad. You two
have done me a service, a very great service, in doing what you did (my old lady knows
what it was), and I have put into this envelope a bank note for a hundred pound. I consider
the service well worth a hundred pound, and I am well pleased to pay the money. Would you
do me the favour to take it, and likewise to accept my thanks?'
With a haughty action, and without looking towards him, Mrs Lammle held out her left
hand, and into it Mr Boffin put the little packet. When she had conveyed it to her bosom, Mr
Lammle had the appearance of feeling relieved, and breathing more freely, as not having
been quite certain that the hundred pounds were his, until the note had been safely
transferred out of Mr Boffin's keeping into his own Sophronia's.
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'It is not impossible,' said Mr Boffin, addressing Alfred, 'that you have had some general
idea, sir, of replacing Rokesmith, in course of time?'
'It is not,' assented Alfred, with a glittering smile and a great deal of nose, 'not
impossible.'
'And perhaps, ma'am,' pursued Mr Boffin, addressing Sophronia, 'you have been so kind
as to take up my old lady in your own mind, and to do her the honour of turning the question
over whether you mightn't one of these days have her in charge, like? Whether you mightn't
be a sort of Miss Bella Wilfer to her, and something more?'
'I should hope,' returned Mrs Lammle, with a scornful look and in a loud voice, 'that if I
were anything to your wife, sir, I could hardly fail to be something more than Miss Bella
Wilfer, as you call her.'
'What do YOU call her, ma'am?' asked Mr Boffin.
Mrs Lammle disdained to reply, and sat defiantly beating one foot on the ground.
'Again I think I may say, that's not impossible. Is it, sir?' asked Mr Boffin, turning to
Alfred.
'It is not,' said Alfred, smiling assent as before, 'not impossible.'
'Now,' said Mr Boffin, gently, 'it won't do. I don't wish to say a single word that might
be afrerwards remembered as unpleasant; but it won't do.'
'Sophronia, my love,' her husband repeated in a bantering manner, 'you hear? It won't
do.'
'No,' said Mr Boffin, with his voice still dropped, 'it really won't. You positively must
excuse us. If you'll go your way, we'll go ours, and so I hope this affair ends to the
satisfaction of all parties.'
Mrs Lammle gave him the look of a decidedly dissatisfied party demanding exemption
from the category; but said nothing.
'The best thing we can make of the affair,' said Mr Boffin, 'is a matter of business, and
as a matter of business it's brought to a conclusion. You have done me a great service, a very
great service, and I have paid for it. Is there any objection to the price?'
Mr and Mrs Lammle looked at one another across the table, but neither could say that
there was. Mr Lammle shrugged his shoulders, and Mrs Lammle sat rigid.
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'Very good,' said Mr Boffin. 'We hope (my old lady and me) that you'll give us credit
for taking the plainest and honestest short−cut that could be taken under the circumstances.
We have talked it over with a deal of care (my old lady and me), and we have felt that at all
to lead you on, or even at all to let you go on of your own selves, wouldn't be the right thing.
So, I have openly given you to understand that – ' Mr Boffin sought for a new turn of
speech, but could find none so expressive as his former one, repeated in a confidential tone, '
– that it won't do. If I could have put the case more pleasantly I would; but I hope I haven't
put it very unpleasantly; at all events I haven't meant to. So,' said Mr Boffin, by way of
peroration, 'wishing you well in the way you go, we now conclude with the observation that
perhaps you'll go it.'
Mr Lammle rose with an impudent laugh on his side of the table, and Mrs Lammle rose
with a disdainful frown on hers. At this moment a hasty foot was heard on the staircase, and
Georgiana Podsnap broke into the room, unannounced and in tears.
'Oh, my dear Sophronia,' cried Georgiana, wringing her hands as she ran up to embrace
her, 'to think that you and Alfred should be ruined! Oh, my poor dear Sophronia, to think
that you should have had a Sale at your house after all your kindness to me! Oh, Mr and Mrs
Boffin, pray forgive me for this intrusion, but you don't know how fond I was of Sophronia
when Pa wouldn't let me go there any more, or what I have felt for Sophronia since I heard
from Ma of her having been brought low in the world. You don't, you can't, you never can,
think, how I have lain awake at night and cried for my good Sophronia, my first and only
friend!'
Mrs Lammle's manner changed under the poor silly girl's embraces, and she turned
extremely pale: directing one appealing look, first to Mrs Boffin, and then to Mr Boffin.
Both understood her instantly, with a more delicate subtlety than much better educated
people, whose perception came less directly from the heart, could have brought to bear upon
the case.
'I haven't a minute,' said poor little Georgiana, 'to stay. I am out shopping early with Ma,
and I said I had a headache and got Ma to leave me outside in the phaeton, in Piccadilly, and
ran round to Sackville Street, and heard that Sophronia was here, and then Ma came to see,
oh such a dreadful old stony woman from the country in a turban in Portland Place, and I
said I wouldn't go up with Ma but would drive round and leave cards for the Boffins, which
is taking a liberty with the name; but oh my goodness I am distracted, and the phaeton's at
the door, and what would Pa say if he knew it!'
'Don't ye be timid, my dear,' said Mrs Boffin. 'You came in to see us.'
'Oh, no, I didn't,' cried Georgiana. 'It's very impolite, I know, but I came to see my poor
Sophronia, my only friend. Oh! how I felt the separation, my dear Sophronia, before I knew
you were brought low in the world, and how much more I feel it now!'
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There were actually tears in the bold woman's eyes, as the soft− headed and
soft−hearted girl twined her arms about her neck.
'But I've come on business,' said Georgiana, sobbing and drying her face, and then
searching in a little reticule, 'and if I don't despatch it I shall have come for nothing, and oh
good gracious! what would Pa say if he knew of Sackville Street, and what would Ma say if
she was kept waiting on the doorsteps of that dreadful turban, and there never were such
pawing horses as ours unsettling my mind every moment more and more when I want more
mind than I have got, by pawing up Mr Boffin's street where they have no business to be.
Oh! where is, where is it? Oh! I can't find it!' All this time sobbing, and searching in the
little reticule.
'What do you miss, my dear?' asked Mr Boffin, stepping forward.
'Oh! it's little enough,' replied Georgiana, 'because Ma always treats me as if I was in
the nursery (I am sure I wish I was!), but I hardly ever spend it and it has mounted up to
fifteen pounds, Sophronia, and I hope three five−pound notes are better than nothing, though
so little, so little! And now I have found that – oh, my goodness! there's the other gone next!
Oh no, it isn't, here it is!'
With that, always sobbing and searching in the reticule, Georgiana produced a necklace.
'Ma says chits and jewels have no business together,' pursued Georgiana, 'and that's the
reason why I have no trinkets except this, but I suppose my aunt Hawkinson was of a
different opinion, because she left me this, though I used to think she might just as well have
buried it, for it's always kept in jewellers' cotton. However, here it is, I am thankful to say,
and of use at last, and you'll sell it, dear Sophronia, and buy things with it.'
'Give it to me,' said Mr Boffin, gently taking it. 'I'll see that it's properly disposed of.'
'Oh! are you such a friend of Sophronia's, Mr Boffin?' cried Georgiana. 'Oh, how good
of you! Oh, my gracious! there was something else, and it's gone out of my head! Oh no, it
isn't, I remember what it was. My grandmamma's property, that'll come to me when I am of
age, Mr Boffin, will be all my own, and neither Pa nor Ma nor anybody else will have any
control over it, and what I wish to do it so make some of it over somehow to Sophronia and
Alfred, by signing something somewhere that'll prevail on somebody to advance them
something. I want them to have something handsome to bring them up in the world again.
Oh, my goodness me! Being such a friend of my dear Sophronia's, you won't refuse me, will
you?'
'No, no,' said Mr Boffin, 'it shall be seen to.'
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'Oh, thank you, thank you!' cried Georgiana. 'If my maid had a little note and half a
crown, I could run round to the pastrycook's to sign something, or I could sign something in
the Square if somebody would come and cough for me to let 'em in with the key, and would
bring a pen and ink with 'em and a bit of blotting−paper. Oh, my gracious! I must tear
myself away, or Pa and Ma will both find out! Dear, dear Sophronia, good, good−bye!'
The credulous little creature again embraced Mrs Lammle most affectionately, and then
held out her hand to Mr Lammle.
'Good−bye, dear Mr Lammle – I mean Alfred. You won't think after to−day that I have
deserted you and Sophronia because you have been brought low in the world, will you? Oh
me! oh me! I have been crying my eyes out of my head, and Ma will he sure to ask me
what's the matter. Oh, take me down, somebody, please, please, please!'
Mr Boffin took her down, and saw her driven away, with her poor little red eyes and
weak chin peering over the great apron of the custard−coloured phaeton, as if she had been
ordered to expiate some childish misdemeanour by going to bed in the daylight, and were
peeping over the counterpane in a miserable flutter of repentance and low spirits. Returning
to the breakfast−room, he found Mrs Lammle still standing on her side of the table, and Mr
Lammle on his.
'I'll take care,' said Mr Boffin, showing the money and the necklace, 'that these are soon
given back.'
Mrs Lammle had taken up her parasol from a side table, and stood sketching with it on
the pattern of the damask cloth, as she had sketched on the pattern of Mr Twemlow's
papered wall.
'You will not undeceive her I hope, Mr Boffin?' she said, turning her head towards him,
but not her eyes.
'No,' said Mr Boffin.
'I mean, as to the worth and value of her friend,' Mrs Lammle explained, in a measured
voice, and with an emphasis on her last word.
'No,' he returned. 'I may try to give a hint at her home that she is in want of kind and
careful protection, but I shall say no more than that to her parents, and I shall say nothing to
the young lady herself.'
'Mr and Mrs Boffin,' said Mrs Lammle, still sketching, and seeming to bestow great
pains upon it, 'there are not many people, I think, who, under the circumstances, would have
been so considerate and sparing as you have been to me just now. Do you care to be
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thanked?'
'Thanks are always worth having,' said Mrs Boffin, in her ready good nature.
'Then thank you both.'
'Sophronia,' asked her husband, mockingly, 'are you sentimental?'
'Well, well, my good sir,' Mr Boffin interposed, 'it's a very good thing to think well of
another person, and it's a very good thing to be thought well of BY another person. Mrs
Lammle will be none the worse for it, if she is.'
'Much obliged. But I asked Mrs Lammle if she was.'
She stood sketching on the table−cloth, with her face clouded and set, and was silent.
'Because,' said Alfred, 'I am disposed to be sentimental myself, on your appropriation of
the jewels and the money, Mr Boffin. As our little Georgiana said, three five−pound notes
are better than nothing, and if you sell a necklace you can buy things with the produce.'
'IF you sell it,' was Mr Boffin's comment, as he put it in his pocket.
Alfred followed it with his looks, and also greedily pursued the notes until they
vanished into Mr Boffin's waistcoat pocket. Then he directed a look, half exasperated and
half jeering, at his wife. She still stood sketching; but, as she sketched, there was a struggle
within her, which found expression in the depth of the few last lines the parasol point
indented into the table−cloth, and then some tears fell from her eyes.
'Why, confound the woman,' exclaimed Lammle, 'she IS sentimental!
She walked to the window, flinching under his angry stare, looked out for a moment,
and turned round quite coldly.
'You have had no former cause of complaint on the sentimental score, Alfred, and you
will have none in future. It is not worth your noticing. We go abroad soon, with the money
we have earned here?'
'You know we do; you know we must.'
'There is no fear of my taking any sentiment with me. I should soon be eased of it, if I
did. But it will be all left behind. It IS all left behind. Are you ready, Alfred?'
'What the deuce have I been waiting for but you, Sophronia?'
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'Let us go then. I am sorry I have delayed our dignified departure.'
She passed out and he followed her. Mr and Mrs Boffin had the curiosity softly to raise
a window and look after them as they went down the long street. They walked arm−in−arm,
showily enough, but without appearing to interchange a syllable. It might have been fanciful
to suppose that under their outer bearing there was something of the shamed air of two
cheats who were linked together by concealed handcuffs; but, not so, to suppose that they
were haggardly weary of one another, of themselves, and of all this world. In turning the
street corner they might have turned out of this world, for anything Mr and Mrs Boffin ever
saw of them to the contrary; for, they set eyes on the Lammles never more.
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Chapter 2 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN RISES A LITTLE 635
Chapter 3 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN
T
he evening of that day being one of the reading evenings at the Bower, Mr Boffin
kissed Mrs Boffin after a five o'clock dinner, and trotted out, nursing his big stick in both
arms, so that, as of old, it seemed to be whispering in his ear. He carried so very attentive an
expression on his countenance that it appeared as if the confidential discourse of the big
stick required to be followed closely. Mr Boffin's face was like the face of a thoughtful
listener to an intricate communication, and, in trotting along, he occasionally glanced at that
companion with the look of a man who was interposing the remark: 'You don't mean it!'
Mr Boffin and his stick went on alone together, until they arrived at certain cross−ways
where they would be likely to fall in with any one coming, at about the same time, from
Clerkenwell to the Bower. Here they stopped, and Mr Boffin consulted his watch.
'It wants five minutes, good, to Venus's appointment,' said he. 'I'm rather early.'
But Venus was a punctual man, and, even as Mr Boffin replaced his watch in its pocket,
was to be descried coming towards him. He quickened his pace on seeing Mr Boffin already
at the place of meeting, and was soon at his side.
'Thank'ee, Venus,' said Mr Boffin. 'Thank'ee, thank'ee, thank'ee!'
It would not have been very evident why he thanked the anatomist, but for his
furnishing the explanation in what he went on to say.
'All right, Venus, all right. Now, that you've been to see me, and have consented to keep
up the appearance before Wegg of remaining in it for a time, I have got a sort of a backer.
All right, Venus. Thank'ee, Venus. Thank'ee, thank'ee, thank'ee!'
Mr Venus shook the proffered hand with a modest air, and they pursued the direction of
the Bower.
'Do you think Wegg is likely to drop down upon me to−night, Venus?' inquired Mr
Boffin, wistfully, as they went along.
'I think he is, sir.'
'Have you any particular reason for thinking so, Venus?'
'Well, sir,' returned that personage, 'the fact is, he has given me another look−in, to
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make sure of what he calls our stock−in−trade being correct, and he has mentioned his
intention that he was not to be put off beginning with you the very next time you should
come. And this,' hinted Mr Venus, delicately, 'being the very next time, you know, sir – '
– 'Why, therefore you suppose he'll turn to at the grindstone, eh, Wegg?' said Mr
Boffin.
'Just so, sir.'
Mr Boffin took his nose in his hand, as if it were already excoriated, and the sparks
were beginning to fly out of that feature. 'He's a terrible fellow, Venus; he's an awful fellow.
I don't know how ever I shall go through with it. You must stand by me, Venus like a good
man and true. You'll do all you can to stand by me, Venus; won't you?'
Mr Venus replied with the assurance that he would; and Mr Boffin, looking anxious and
dispirited, pursued the way in silence until they rang at the Bower gate. The stumping
approach of Wegg was soon heard behind it, and as it turned upon its hinges he became
visible with his hand on the lock.
'Mr Boffin, sir?' he remarked. 'You're quite a stranger!'
'Yes. I've been otherwise occupied, Wegg.'
'Have you indeed, sir?' returned the literary gentleman, with a threatening sneer. 'Hah!
I've been looking for you, sir, rather what I may call specially.'
'You don't say so, Wegg?'
'Yes, I do say so, sir. And if you hadn't come round to me tonight, dash my wig if I
wouldn't have come round to you tomorrow. Now! I tell you!'
'Nothing wrong, I hope, Wegg?'
'Oh no, Mr Boffin,' was the ironical answer. 'Nothing wrong! What should be wrong in
Boffinses Bower! Step in, sir.'
'«If you'll come to the Bower I've shaded for you, Your bed shan't be roses all spangled
with doo: Will you, will you, will you, will you, come to the Bower? Oh, won't you, won't
you, won't you, won't you, come to the Bower?»'
An unholy glare of contradiction and offence shone in the eyes of Mr Wegg, as he
turned the key on his patron, after ushering him into the yard with this vocal quotation. Mr
Boffin's air was crestfallen and submissive. Whispered Wegg to Venus, as they crossed the
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Chapter 3 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN 637
yard behind him: 'Look at the worm and minion; he's down in the mouth already.' Whispered
Venus to Wegg: 'That's because I've told him. I've prepared the way for you.'
Mr Boffin, entering the usual chamber, laid his stick upon the settle usually reserved for
him, thrust his hands into his pockets, and, with his shoulders raised and his hat drooping
back upon them, looking disconsolately at Wegg. 'My friend and partner, Mr Venus, gives
me to understand,' remarked that man of might, addressing him, 'that you are aware of our
power over you. Now, when you have took your hat off, we'll go into that pint.'
Mr Boffin shook it off with one shake, so that it dropped on the floor behind him, and
remained in his former attitude with his former rueful look upon him.
'First of all, I'm a−going to call you Boffin, for short,' said Wegg. 'If you don't like it, it's
open to you to lump it.'
'I don't mind it, Wegg,' Mr Boffin replied.
'That's lucky for you, Boffin. Now, do you want to be read to?'
'I don't particularly care about it to−night, Wegg.'
'Because if you did want to,' pursued Mr Wegg, the brilliancy of whose point was
dimmed by his having been unexpectedly answered: 'you wouldn't be. I've been your slave
long enough. I'm not to be trampled under−foot by a dustman any more. With the single
exception of the salary, I renounce the whole and total sitiwation.'
'Since you say it is to be so, Wegg,' returned Mr Boffin, with folded hands, 'I suppose it
must be.'
'I suppose it must be,' Wegg retorted. 'Next (to clear the ground before coming to
business), you've placed in this yard a skulking, a sneaking, and a sniffing, menial.'
'He hadn't a cold in his head when I sent him here,' said Mr Boffin.
'Boffin!' retorted Wegg, 'I warn you not to attempt a joke with me!'
Here Mr Venus interposed, and remarked that he conceived Mr Boffin to have taken the
description literally; the rather, forasmuch as he, Mr Venus, had himself supposed the
menial to have contracted an affliction or a habit of the nose, involving a serious drawback
on the pleasures of social intercourse, until he had discovered that Mr Wegg's description of
him was to be accepted as merely figurative.
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'Anyhow, and every how,' said Wegg, 'he has been planted here, and he is here. Now, I
won't have him here. So I call upon Boffin, before I say another word, to fetch him in and
send him packing to the right−about.'
The unsuspecting Sloppy was at that moment airing his many buttons within view of the
window. Mr Boffin, after a short interval of impassive discomfiture, opened the window and
beckoned him to come in.
'I call upon Boffin,' said Wegg, with one arm a−kimbo and his head on one side, like a
bullying counsel pausing for an answer from a witness, 'to inform that menial that I am
Master here!'
In humble obedience, when the button−gleaming Sloppy entered Mr Boffin said to him:
'Sloppy, my fine fellow, Mr Wegg is Master here. He doesn't want you, and you are to go
from here.'
'For good!' Mr Wegg severely stipulated.
'For good,' said Mr Boffin.
Sloppy stared, with both his eyes and all his buttons, and his mouth wide open; but was
without loss of time escorted forth by Silas Wegg, pushed out at the yard gate by the
shoulders, and locked out.
'The atomspear,' said Wegg, stumping back into the room again, a little reddened by his
late exertion, 'is now freer for the purposes of respiration. Mr Venus, sir, take a chair.
Boffin, you may sit down.'
Mr Boffin, still with his hands ruefully stuck in his pockets, sat on the edge of the settle,
shrunk into a small compass, and eyed the potent Silas with conciliatory looks.
'This gentleman,' said Silas Wegg, pointing out Venus, 'this gentleman, Boffin, is more
milk and watery with you than I'll be. But he hasn't borne the Roman yoke as I have, nor yet
he hasn't been required to pander to your depraved appetite for miserly characters.'
'I never meant, my dear Wegg – ' Mr Boffin was beginning, when Silas stopped him.
'Hold your tongue, Boffin! Answer when you're called upon to answer. You'll find
you've got quite enough to do. Now, you're aware – are you – that you're in possession of
property to which you've no right at all? Are you aware of that?'
'Venus tells me so,' said Mr Boffin, glancing towards him for any support he could give.
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Chapter 3 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN 639
'I tell you so,' returned Silas. 'Now, here's my hat, Boffin, and here's my walking−stick.
Trifle with me, and instead of making a bargain with you, I'll put on my hat and take up my
walking−stick, and go out, and make a bargain with the rightful owner. Now, what do you
say?'
'I say,' returned Mr Boffin, leaning forward in alarmed appeal, with his hands on his
knees, 'that I am sure I don't want to trifle. Wegg. I have said so to Venus.'
'You certainly have, sir,' said Venus.
'You're too milk and watery with our friend, you are indeed,' remonstrated Silas, with a
disapproving shake of his wooden head. Then at once you confess yourself desirous to come
to terms, do you Boffin? Before you answer, keep this hat well in your mind and also this
walking−stick.'
'I am willing, Wegg, to come to terms.'
'Willing won't do, Boffin. I won't take willing. Are you desirous to come to terms? Do
you ask to be allowed as a favour to come to terms?' Mr Wegg again planted his arm, and
put his head on one side.
'Yes.'
'Yes what?' said the inexorable Wegg: 'I won't take yes. I'll have it out of you in full,
Boffin.'
'Dear me!' cried that unfortunate gentleman. 'I am so worrited! I ask to be allowed to
come to terms, supposing your document is all correct.'
'Don't you be afraid of that,' said Silas, poking his head at him. 'You shall be satisfied by
seeing it. Mr Venus will show it you, and I'll hold you the while. Then you want to know
what the terms are. Is that about the sum and substance of it? Will you or won't you answer,
Boffin?' For he had paused a moment.
'Dear me!' cried that unfortunate gentleman again, 'I am worrited to that degree that I'm
almost off my head. You hurry me so. Be so good as name the terms, Wegg.'
'Now, mark, Boffin,' returned Silas: 'Mark 'em well, because they're the lowest terms
and the only terms. You'll throw your Mound (the little Mound as comes to you any way)
into the general estate, and then you'll divide the whole property into three parts, and you'll
keep one and hand over the others.'
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Mr Venus's mouth screwed itself up, as Mr Boffin's face lengthened itself, Mr Venus
not having been prepared for such a rapacious demand.
'Now, wait a bit, Boffin,' Wegg proceeded, 'there's something more. You've been a
squandering this property – laying some of it out on yourself. THAT won't do. You've
bought a house. You'll be charged for it.'
'I shall be ruined, Wegg!' Mr Boffin faintly protested.
'Now, wait a bit, Boffin; there's something more. You'll leave me in sole custody of
these Mounds till they're all laid low. If any waluables should be found in 'em, I'll take care
of such waluables. You'll produce your contract for the sale of the Mounds, that we may
know to a penny what they're worth, and you'll make out likewise an exact list of all the
other property. When the Mounds is cleared away to the last shovel−full, the final diwision
will come off.'
'Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful! I shall die in a workhouse!' cried the Golden Dustman,
with his hands to his head.
'Now, wait a bit, Boffin; there's something more. You've been unlawfully ferreting
about this yard. You've been seen in the act of ferreting about this yard. Two pair of eyes at
the present moment brought to bear upon you, have seen you dig up a Dutch bottle.'
'It was mine, Wegg,' protested Mr Boffin. 'I put it there myself.'
'What was in it, Boffin?' inquired Silas.
'Not gold, not silver, not bank notes, not jewels, nothing that you could turn into money,
Wegg; upon my soul!'
'Prepared, Mr Venus,' said Wegg, turning to his partner with a knowing and superior air,
'for an ewasive answer on the part of our dusty friend here, I have hit out a little idea which I
think will meet your views. We charge that bottle against our dusty friend at a thousand
pound.'
Mr Boffin drew a deep groan.
'Now, wait a bit, Boffin; there's something more. In your employment is an
under−handed sneak, named Rokesmith. It won't answer to have HIM about, while this
business of ours is about. He must be discharged.'
'Rokesmith is already discharged,' said Mr Boffin, speaking in a muffled voice, with his
hands before his face, as he rocked himself on the settle.
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'Already discharged, is he?' returned Wegg, surprised. 'Oh! Then, Boffin, I believe
there's nothing more at present.'
The unlucky gentleman continuing to rock himself to and fro, and to utter an occasional
moan, Mr Venus besought him to bear up against his reverses, and to take time to accustom
himself to the thought of his new position. But, his taking time was exactly the thing of all
others that Silas Wegg could not be induced to hear of. 'Yes or no, and no half measures!'
was the motto which that obdurate person many times repeated; shaking his fist at Mr
Boffin, and pegging his motto into the floor with his wooden leg, in a threatening and
alarming manner.
At length, Mr Boffin entreated to be allowed a quarter of an hour's grace, and a cooling
walk of that duration in the yard. With some difficulty Mr Wegg granted this great favour,
but only on condition that he accompanied Mr Boffin in his walk, as not knowing what he
might fraudulently unearth if he were left to himself. A more absurd sight than Mr Boffin in
his mental irritation trotting very nimbly, and Mr Wegg hopping after him with great
exertion, eager to watch the slightest turn of an eyelash, lest it should indicate a spot rich
with some secret, assuredly had never been seen in the shadow of the Mounds. Mr Wegg
was much distressed when the quarter of an hour expired, and came hopping in, a very bad
second.
'I can't help myself!' cried Mr Boffin, flouncing on the settle in a forlorn manner, with
his hands deep in his pockets, as if his pockets had sunk. 'What's the good of my pretending
to stand out, when I can't help myself? I must give in to the terms. But I should like to see
the document.'
Wegg, who was all for clinching the nail he had so strongly driven home, announced
that Boffin should see it without an hour's delay. Taking him into custody for that purpose,
or overshadowing him as if he really were his Evil Genius in visible form, Mr Wegg clapped
Mr Boffin's hat upon the back of his head, and walked him out by the arm, asserting a
proprietorship over his soul and body that was at once more grim and more ridiculous than
anything in Mr Venus's rare collection. That light−haired gentleman followed close upon
their heels, at least backing up Mr Boffin in a literal sense, if he had not had recent
opportunities of doing so spiritually; while Mr Boffin, trotting on as hard as he could trot,
involved Silas Wegg in frequent collisions with the public, much as a pre− occupied blind
man's dog may be seen to involve his master.
Thus they reached Mr Venus's establishment, somewhat heated by the nature of their
progress thither. Mr Wegg, especially, was in a flaming glow, and stood in the little shop,
panting and mopping his head with his pocket−handkerchief, speechless for several minutes.
Meanwhile, Mr Venus, who had left the duelling frogs to fight it out in his absence by
candlelight for the public delectation, put the shutters up. When all was snug, and the
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Chapter 3 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN 642
shop−door fastened, he said to the perspiring Silas: 'I suppose, Mr Wegg, we may now
produce the paper?'
'Hold on a minute, sir,' replied that discreet character; 'hold on a minute. Will you
obligingly shove that box – which you mentioned on a former occasion as containing
miscellanies – towards me in the midst of the shop here?'
Mr Venus did as he was asked.
'Very good,' said Silas, looking about: 've – ry good. Will you hand me that chair, sir, to
put a−top of it?'
Venus handed him the chair.
'Now, Boffin,' said Wegg, 'mount up here and take your seat, will you?'
Mr Boffin, as if he were about to have his portrait painted, or to be electrified, or to be
made a Freemason, or to be placed at any other solitary disadvantage, ascended the rostrum
prepared for him.
'Now, Mr Venus,' said Silas, taking off his coat, 'when I catches our friend here round
the arms and body, and pins him tight to the back of the chair, you may show him what he
wants to see. If you'll open it and hold it well up in one hand, sir, and a candle in the other,
he can read it charming.'
Mr Boffin seemed rather inclined to object to these precautionary arrangements, but,
being immediately embraced by Wegg, resigned himself. Venus then produced the
document, and Mr Boffin slowly spelt it out aloud: so very slowly, that Wegg, who was
holding him in the chair with the grip of a wrestler, became again exceedingly the worse for
his exertions. 'Say when you've put it safe back, Mr Venus,' he uttered with difficulty, 'for
the strain of this is terrimenjious.'
At length the document was restored to its place; and Wegg, whose uncomfortable
attitude had been that of a very persevering man unsuccessfully attempting to stand upon his
head, took a seat to recover himself. Mr Boffin, for his part, made no attempt to come down,
but remained aloft disconsolate.
'Well, Boffin!' said Wegg, as soon as he was in a condidon to speak. 'Now, you know.'
'Yes, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin, meekly. 'Now, I know.'
'You have no doubts about it, Boffin.'
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Chapter 3 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN 643
'No, Wegg. No, Wegg. None,' was the slow and sad reply.
'Then, take care, you,' said Wegg, 'that you stick to your conditions. Mr Venus, if on
this auspicious occasion, you should happen to have a drop of anything not quite so mild as
tea in the 'ouse, I think I'd take the friendly liberty of asking you for a specimen of it.'
Mr Venus, reminded of the duties of hospitality, produced some rum. In answer to the
inquiry, 'Will you mix it, Mr Wegg?' that gentleman pleasantly rejoined, 'I think not, sir. On
so auspicious an occasion, I prefer to take it in the form of a Gum−Tickler.'
Mr Boffin, declining rum, being still elevated on his pedestal, was in a convenient
position to be addressed. Wegg having eyed him with an impudent air at leisure, addressed
him, therefore, while refreshing himself with his dram.
'Bof – fin!'
'Yes, Wegg,' he answered, coming out of a fit of abstraction, with a sigh.
'I haven't mentioned one thing, because it's a detail that comes of course. You must be
followed up, you know. You must be kept under inspection.'
'I don't quite understand,' said Mr Boffin.
'Don't you?' sneered Wegg. 'Where's your wits, Boffin? Till the Mounds is down and
this business completed, you're accountable for all the property, recollect. Consider yourself
accountable to me. Mr Venus here being too milk and watery with you, I am the boy for
you.'
'I've been a−thinking,' said Mr Boffin, in a tone of despondency, 'that I must keep the
knowledge from my old lady.'
'The knowledge of the diwision, d'ye mean?' inquired Wegg, helping himself to a third
Gum−Tickler – for he had already taken a second.
'Yes. If she was to die first of us two she might then think all her life, poor thing, that I
had got the rest of the fortune still, and was saving it.'
'I suspect, Boffin,' returned Wegg, shaking his head sagaciously, and bestowing a
wooden wink upon him, 'that you've found out some account of some old chap, supposed to
be a Miser, who got himself the credit of having much more money than he had. However, I
don't mind.'
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Chapter 3 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN 644
'Don't you see, Wegg?' Mr Boffin feelingly represented to him: 'don't you see? My old
lady has got so used to the property. It would be such a hard surprise.'
'I don't see it at all,' blustered Wegg. 'You'll have as much as I shall. And who are you?'
'But then, again,' Mr Boffin gently represented; 'my old lady has very upright
principles.'
'Who's your old lady,' returned Wegg, 'to set herself up for having uprighter principles
than mine?'
Mr Boffin seemed a little less patient at this point than at any other of the negotiations.
But he commanded himself, and said tamely enough: 'I think it must be kept from my old
lady, Wegg.'
'Well,' said Wegg, contemptuously, though, perhaps, perceiving some hint of danger
otherwise, 'keep it from your old lady. I ain't going to tell her. I can have you under close
inspection without that. I'm as good a man as you, and better. Ask me to dinner. Give me the
run of your 'ouse. I was good enough for you and your old lady once, when I helped you out
with your weal and hammers. Was there no Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and
Uncle Parker, before YOU two?'
'Gently, Mr Wegg, gently,' Venus urged.
'Milk and water−erily you mean, sir,' he returned, with some little thickness of speech,
in consequence of the Gum−Ticklers having tickled it. 'I've got him under inspection, and I'll
inspect him.
«Along the line the signal ran England expects as this present man Will keep Boffin to
his duty.»
– Boffin, I'll see you home.'
Mr Boffin descended with an air of resignation, and gave himself up, after taking
friendly leave of Mr Venus. Once more, Inspector and Inspected went through the streets
together, and so arrived at Mr Boffin's door.
But even there, when Mr Boffin had given his keeper good−night, and had let himself in
with his key, and had softly closed the door, even there and then, the all−powerful Silas
must needs claim another assertion of his newly−asserted power.
'Bof – fin!' he called through the keyhole.
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Chapter 3 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN 645
'Yes, Wegg,' was the reply through the same channel.
'Come out. Show yourself again. Let's have another look at you!' Mr Boffin – ah, how
fallen from the high estate of his honest simplicity! – opened the door and obeyed.
'Go in. You may get to bed now,' said Wegg, with a grin.
The door was hardly closed, when he again called through the keyhole: 'Bof – fin!'
'Yes, Wegg.'
This time Silas made no reply, but laboured with a will at turning an imaginary
grindstone outside the keyhole, while Mr Boffin stooped at it within; he then laughed
silently, and stumped home.
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Chapter 3 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN 646
Chapter 4 − A RUNAWAY MATCH
C
herubic Pa arose with as little noise as possible from beside majestic Ma, one
morning early, having a holiday before him. Pa and the lovely woman had a rather particular
appointment to keep.
Yet Pa and the lovely woman were not going out together. Bella was up before four, but
had no bonnet on. She was waiting at the foot of the stairs – was sitting on the bottom stair,
in fact – to receive Pa when he came down, but her only object seemed to be to get Pa well
out of the house.
'Your breakfast is ready, sir,' whispered Bella, after greeting him with a hug, 'and all
you have to do, is, to eat it up and drink it up, and escape. How do you feel, Pa?'
'To the best of my judgement, like a housebreaker new to the business, my dear, who
can't make himself quite comfortable till he is off the premises.'
Bella tucked her arm in his with a merry noiseless laugh, and they went down to the
kitchen on tiptoe; she stopping on every separate stair to put the tip of her forefinger on her
rosy lips, and then lay it on his lips, according to her favourite petting way of kissing Pa.
'How do YOU feel, my love?' asked R. W., as she gave him his breakfast.
'I feel as if the Fortune−teller was coming true, dear Pa, and the fair little man was
turning out as was predicted.'
'Ho! Only the fair little man?' said her father.
Bella put another of those finger−seals upon his lips, and then said, kneeling down by
him as he sat at table: 'Now, look here, sir. If you keep well up to the mark this day, what do
you think you deserve? What did I promise you should have, if you were good, upon a
certain occasion?'
'Upon my word I don't remember, Precious. Yes, I do, though. Wasn't it one of these
beau – tiful tresses?' with his caressing hand upon her hair.
'Wasn't it, too!' returned Bella, pretending to pout. 'Upon my word! Do you know, sir,
that the Fortune−teller would give five thousand guineas (if it was quite convenient to him,
which it isn't) for the lovely piece I have cut off for you? You can form no idea, sir, of the
number of times he kissed quite a scrubby little piece – in comparison – that I cut off for
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Chapter 4 − A RUNAWAY MATCH 647
HIM. And he wears it, too, round his neck, I can tell you! Near his heart!' said Bella,
nodding. 'Ah! very near his heart! However, you have been a good, good boy, and you are
the best of all the dearest boys that ever were, this morning, and here's the chain I have made
of it, Pa, and you must let me put it round your neck with my own loving hands.'
As Pa bent his head, she cried over him a little, and then said (after having stopped to
dry her eyes on his white waistcoat, the discovery of which incongruous circumstance made
her laugh): 'Now, darling Pa, give me your hands that I may fold them together, and do you
say after me: – My little Bella.'
'My little Bella,' repeated Pa.
'I am very fond of you.'
'I am very fond of you, my darling,' said Pa.
'You mustn't say anything not dictated to you, sir. You daren't do it in your responses at
Church, and you mustn't do it in your responses out of Church.'
'I withdraw the darling,' said Pa.
'That's a pious boy! Now again: – You were always – '
'You were always,' repeated Pa.
'A vexatious – '
'No you weren't,' said Pa.
'A vexatious (do you hear, sir?), a vexatious, capricious, thankless, troublesome,
Animal; but I hope you'll do better in the time to come, and I bless you and forgive you!'
Here, she quite forgot that it was Pa's turn to make the responses, and clung to his neck.
'Dear Pa, if you knew how much I think this morning of what you told me once, about the
first time of our seeing old Mr Harmon, when I stamped and screamed and beat you with my
detestable little bonnet! I feel as if I had been stamping and screaming and beating you with
my hateful little bonnet, ever since I was born, darling!'
'Nonsense, my love. And as to your bonnets, they have always been nice bonnets, for
they have always become you – or you have become them; perhaps it was that – at every
age.'
'Did I hurt you much, poor little Pa?' asked Bella, laughing (notwithstanding her
repentance), with fantastic pleasure in the picture, 'when I beat you with my bonnet?'
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Chapter 4 − A RUNAWAY MATCH 648
'No, my child. Wouldn't have hurt a fly!'
'Ay, but I am afraid I shouldn't have beat you at all, unless I had meant to hurt you,' said
Bella. 'Did I pinch your legs, Pa?'
'Not much, my dear; but I think it's almost time I – '
'Oh, yes!' cried Bella. 'If I go on chattering, you'll be taken alive. Fly, Pa, fly!'
So, they went softly up the kitchen stairs on tiptoe, and Bella with her light hand softly
removed the fastenings of the house door, and Pa, having received a parting hug, made off.
When he had gone a little way, he looked back. Upon which, Bella set another of those
finger seals upon the air, and thrust out her little foot expressive of the mark. Pa, in
appropriate action, expressed fidelity to the mark, and made off as fast as he could go.
Bella walked thoughtfully in the garden for an hour and more, and then, returning to the
bedroom where Lavvy the Irrepressible still slumbered, put on a little bonnet of quiet, but on
the whole of sly appearance, which she had yesterday made. 'I am going for a walk, Lavvy,'
she said, as she stooped down and kissed her. The Irrepressible, with a bounce in the bed,
and a remark that it wasn't time to get up yet, relapsed into unconsciousness, if she had come
out of it.
Behold Bella tripping along the streets, the dearest girl afoot under the summer sun!
Behold Pa waiting for Bella behind a pump, at least three miles from the parental roof−tree.
Behold Bella and Pa aboard an early steamboat for Greenwich.
Were they expected at Greenwich? Probably. At least, Mr John Rokesmith was on the
pier looking out, about a couple of hours before the coaly (but to him gold−dusty) little
steamboat got her steam up in London. Probably. At least, Mr John Rokesmith seemed
perfectly satisfied when he descried them on board. Probably. At least, Bella no sooner
stepped ashore than she took Mr John Rokesmith's arm, without evincing surprise, and the
two walked away together with an ethereal air of happiness which, as it were, wafted up
from the earth and drew after them a gruff and glum old pensioner to see it out. Two wooden
legs had this gruff and glum old pensioner, and, a minute before Bella stepped out of the
boat, and drew that confiding little arm of hers through Rokesmith's, he had had no object in
life but tobacco, and not enough of that. Stranded was Gruff and Glum in a harbour of
everlasting mud, when all in an instant Bella floated him, and away he went.
Say, cherubic parent taking the lead, in what direction do we steer first? With some such
inquiry in his thoughts, Gruff and Glum, stricken by so sudden an interest that he perked his
neck and looked over the intervening people, as if he were trying to stand on tiptoe with his
two wooden legs, took an observation of R. W. There was no 'first' in the case, Gruff and
Glum made out; the cherubic parent was bearing down and crowding on direct for
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Chapter 4 − A RUNAWAY MATCH 649
Greenwich church, to see his relations.
For, Gruff and Glum, though most events acted on him simply as tobacco−stoppers,
pressing down and condensing the quids within him, might be imagined to trace a family
resemblance between the cherubs in the church architecture, and the cherub in the white
waistcoat. Some remembrance of old Valentines, wherein a cherub, less appropriately attired
for a proverbially uncertain climate, had been seen conducting lovers to the altar, might have
been fancied to inflame the ardour of his timber toes. Be it as it might, he gave his moorings
the slip, and followed in chase.
The cherub went before, all beaming smiles; Bella and John Rokesmith followed; Gruff
and Glum stuck to them like wax. For years, the wings of his mind had gone to look after the
legs of his body; but Bella had brought them back for him per steamer, and they were spread
again.
He was a slow sailer on a wind of happiness, but he took a cross cut for the rendezvous,
and pegged away as if he were scoring furiously at cribbage. When the shadow of the
church−porch swallowed them up, victorious Gruff and Glum likewise presented himself to
be swallowed up. And by this time the cherubic parent was so fearful of surprise, that, but
for the two wooden legs on which Gruff and Glum was reassuringly mounted, his
conscience might have introduced, in the person of that pensioner, his own stately lady
disguised, arrived at Greenwich in a car and griffins, like the spiteful Fairy at the
christenings of the Princesses, to do something dreadful to the marriage service. And truly
he had a momentary reason to be pale of face, and to whisper to Bella, 'You don't think that
can be your Ma; do you, my dear?' on account of a mysterious rustling and a stealthy
movement somewhere in the remote neighbourhood of the organ, though it was gone
directly and was heard no more. Albeit it was heard of afterwards, as will afterwards be read
in this veracious register of marriage.
Who taketh? I, John, and so do I, Bella. Who giveth? I, R. W. Forasmuch, Gruff and
Glum, as John and Bella have consented together in holy wedlock, you may (in short)
consider it done, and withdraw your two wooden legs from this temple. To the foregoing
purport, the Minister speaking, as directed by the Rubric, to the People, selectly represented
in the present instance by G. and G. above mentioned.
And now, the church−porch having swallowed up Bella Wilfer for ever and ever, had it
not in its power to relinquish that young woman, but slid into the happy sunlight, Mrs John
Rokesmith instead. And long on the bright steps stood Gruff and Glum, looking after the
pretty bride, with a narcotic consciousness of having dreamed a dream.
After which, Bella took out from her pocket a little letter, and read it aloud to Pa and
John; this being a true copy of the same.
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Chapter 4 − A RUNAWAY MATCH 650
'DEAREST MA,
I hope you won't be angry, but I am most happily married to Mr John Rokesmith, who
loves me better than I can ever deserve, except by loving him with all my heart. I thought it
best not to mention it beforehand, in case it should cause any little difference at home.
Please tell darling Pa. With love to Lavvy,
Ever dearest Ma, Your affectionate daughter, BELLA (P.S. – Rokesmith).'
Then, John Rokesmith put the queen's countenance on the letter – when had Her
Gracious Majesty looked so benign as on that blessed morning! – and then Bella popped it
into the post−office, and said merrily, 'Now, dearest Pa, you are safe, and will never be taken
alive!'
Pa was, at first, in the stirred depths of his conscience, so far from sure of being safe
yet, that he made out majestic matrons lurking in ambush among the harmless trees of
Greenwich Park, and seemed to see a stately countenance tied up in a well−known pocket−
handkerchief glooming down at him from a window of the Observatory, where the Familiars
of the Astronomer Royal nightly outwatch the winking stars. But, the minutes passing on
and no Mrs Wilfer in the flesh appearing, he became more confident, and so repaired with
good heart and appetite to Mr and Mrs John Rokesmith's cottage on Blackheath, where
breakfast was ready.
A modest little cottage but a bright and a fresh, and on the snowy tablecloth the prettiest
of little breakfasts. In waiting, too, like an attendant summer breeze, a fluttering young
damsel, all pink and ribbons, blushing as if she had been married instead of Bella, and yet
asserting the triumph of her sex over both John and Pa, in an exulting and exalted flurry: as
who should say, 'This is what you must all come to, gentlemen, when we choose to bring
you to book.' This same young damsel was Bella's serving−maid, and unto her did deliver a
bunch of keys, commanding treasures in the way of dry−saltery, groceries, jams and pickles,
the investigation of which made pastime after breakfast, when Bella declared that 'Pa must
taste everything, John dear, or it will never be lucky,' and when Pa had all sorts of things
poked into his mouth, and didn't quite know what to do with them when they were put there.
Then they, all three, out for a charming ride, and for a charming stroll among heath in
bloom, and there behold the identical Gruff and Glum with his wooden legs horizontally
disposed before him, apparently sitting meditating on the vicissitudes of life! To whom said
Bella, in her light−hearted surprise: 'Oh! How do you do again? What a dear old pensioner
you are!' To which Gruff and Glum responded that he see her married this morning, my
Beauty, and that if it warn't a liberty he wished her ji and the fairest of fair wind and
weather; further, in a general way requesting to know what cheer? and scrambling up on his
two wooden legs to salute, hat in hand, ship−shape, with the gallantry of a
man−of−warsman and a heart of oak.
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It was a pleasant sight, in the midst of the golden bloom, to see this salt old Gruff and
Glum, waving his shovel hat at Bella, while his thin white hair flowed free, as if she had
once more launched him into blue water again. 'You are a charming old pensioner,' said
Bella, 'and I am so happy that I wish I could make you happy, too.' Answered Gruff and
Glum, 'Give me leave to kiss your hand, my Lovely, and it's done!' So it was done to the
general contentment; and if Gruff and Glum didn't in the course of the afternoon splice the
main brace, it was not for want of the means of inflicting that outrage on the feelings of the
Infant Bands of Hope.
But, the marriage dinner was the crowning success, for what had bride and bridegroom
plotted to do, but to have and to hold that dinner in the very room of the very hotel where Pa
and the lovely woman had once dined together! Bella sat between Pa and John, and divided
her attentions pretty equally, but felt it necessary (in the waiter's absence before dinner) to
remind Pa that she was HIS lovely woman no longer.
'I am well aware of it, my dear,' returned the cherub, 'and I resign you willingly.'
'Willingly, sir? You ought to be brokenhearted.'
'So I should be, my dear, if I thought that I was going to lose you.'
'But you know you are not; don't you, poor dear Pa? You know that you have only made
a new relation who will be as fond of you and as thankful to you – for my sake and your
own sake both – as I am; don't you, dear little Pa? Look here, Pa!' Bella put her finger on her
own lip, and then on Pa's, and then on her own lip again, and then on her husband's. 'Now,
we are a partnership of three, dear Pa.'
The appearance of dinner here cut Bella short in one of her disappearances: the more
effectually, because it was put on under the auspices of a solemn gentleman in black clothes
and a white cravat, who looked much more like a clergyman than THE clergyman, and
seemed to have mounted a great deal higher in the church: not to say, scaled the steeple.
This dignitary, conferring in secrecy with John Rokesmith on the subject of punch and
wines, bent his head as though stooping to the Papistical practice of receiving auricular
confession. Likewise, on John's offering a suggestion which didn't meet his views, his face
became overcast and reproachful, as enjoining penance.
What a dinner! Specimens of all the fishes that swim in the sea, surely had swum their
way to it, and if samples of the fishes of divers colours that made a speech in the Arabian
Nights (quite a ministerial explanation in respect of cloudiness), and then jumped out of the
frying−pan, were not to be recognized, it was only because they had all become of one hue
by being cooked in batter among the whitebait. And the dishes being seasoned with Bliss –
an article which they are sometimes out of, at Greenwich – were of perfect flavour, and the
golden drinks had been bottled in the golden age and hoarding up their sparkles ever since.
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Chapter 4 − A RUNAWAY MATCH 652
The best of it was, that Bella and John and the cherub had made a covenant that they
would not reveal to mortal eyes any appearance whatever of being a wedding party. Now,
the supervising dignitary, the Archbishop of Greenwich, knew this as well as if he had
performed the nuptial ceremony. And the loftiness with which his Grace entered into their
confidence without being invited, and insisted on a show of keeping the waiters out of it,
was the crowning glory of the entertainment.
There was an innocent young waiter of a slender form and with weakish legs, as yet
unversed in the wiles of waiterhood, and but too evidently of a romantic temperament, and
deeply (it were not too much to add hopelessly) in love with some young female not aware
of his merit. This guileless youth, descrying the position of affairs, which even his innocence
could not mistake, limited his waiting to languishing admiringly against the sideboard when
Bella didn't want anything, and swooping at her when she did. Him, his Grace the
Archbishop perpetually obstructed, cutting him out with his elbow in the moment of success,
despatching him in degrading quest of melted butter, and, when by any chance he got hold
of any dish worth having, bereaving him of it, and ordering him to stand back.
'Pray excuse him, madam,' said the Archbishop in a low stately voice; 'he is a very
young man on liking, and we DON'T like him.'
This induced John Rokesmith to observe – by way of making the thing more natural –
'Bella, my love, this is so much more successful than any of our past anniversaries, that I
think we must keep our future anniversaries here.'
Whereunto Bella replied, with probably the least successful attempt at looking matronly
that ever was seen: 'Indeed, I think so, John, dear.'
Here the Archbishop of Greenwich coughed a stately cough to attract the attention of
three of his ministers present, and staring at them, seemed to say: 'I call upon you by your
fealty to believe this!'
With his own hands he afterwards put on the dessert, as remarking to the three guests,
'The period has now arrived at which we can dispense with the assistance of those fellows
who are not in our confidence,' and would have retired with complete dignity but for a
daring action issuing from the misguided brain of the young man on liking. He finding, by
ill−fortune, a piece of orange flower somewhere in the lobbies now approached undetected
with the same in a finger−glass, and placed it on Bella's right hand. The Archbishop
instantly ejected and excommunicated him; but the thing was done.
'I trust, madam,' said his Grace, returning alone, 'that you will have the kindness to
overlook it, in consideration of its being the act of a very young man who is merely here on
liking, and who will never answer.'
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With that, he solemnly bowed and retired, and they all burst into laughter, long and
merry. 'Disguise is of no use,' said Bella; 'they all find me out; I think it must be, Pa and
John dear, because I look so happy!'
Her husband feeling it necessary at this point to demand one of those mysterious
disappearances on Bella's part, she dutifully obeyed; saying in a softened voice from her
place of concealment:
'You remember how we talked about the ships that day, Pa?'
'Yes, my dear.'
'Isn't it strange, now, to think that there was no John in all the ships, Pa?'
'Not at all, my dear.'
'Oh, Pa! Not at all?'
'No, my dear. How can we tell what coming people are aboard the ships that may be
sailing to us now from the unknown seas!'
Bella remaining invisible and silent, her father remained at his dessert and wine, until he
remembered it was time for him to get home to Holloway. 'Though I positively cannot tear
myself away,' he cherubically added, ' – it would be a sin – without drinking to many, many
happy returns of this most happy day.'
'Here! ten thousand times!' cried John. 'I fill my glass and my precious wife's.'
'Gentlemen,' said the cherub, inaudibly addressing, in his Anglo− Saxon tendency to
throw his feelings into the form of a speech, the boys down below, who were bidding
against each other to put their heads in the mud for sixpence: 'Gentlemen – and Bella and
John – you will readily suppose that it is not my intention to trouble you with many
observations on the present occasion. You will also at once infer the nature and even the
terms of the toast I am about to propose on the present occasion. Gentlemen – and Bella and
John – the present occasion is an occasion fraught with feelings that I cannot trust myself to
express. But gentlemen – and Bella and John – for the part I have had in it, for the
confidence you have placed in me, and for the affectionate good−nature and kindness with
which you have determined not to find me in the way, when I am well aware that I cannot be
otherwise than in it more or less, I do most heartily thank you. Gentlemen – and Bella and
John – my love to you, and may we meet, as on the present occasion, on many future
occasions; that is to say, gentlemen – and Bella and John – on many happy returns of the
present happy occasion.'
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Having thus concluded his address, the amiable cherub embraced his daughter, and took
his flight to the steamboat which was to convey him to London, and was then lying at the
floating pier, doing its best to bump the same to bits. But, the happy couple were not going
to part with him in that way, and before he had been on board two minutes, there they were,
looking down at him from the wharf above.
'Pa, dear!' cried Bella, beckoning him with her parasol to approach the side, and bending
gracefully to whisper.
'Yes, my darling.'
'Did I beat you much with that horrid little bonnet, Pa?'
'Nothing to speak of; my dear.'
'Did I pinch your legs, Pa?'
'Only nicely, my pet.'
'You are sure you quite forgive me, Pa? Please, Pa, please, forgive me quite!' Half
laughing at him and half crying to him, Bella besought him in the prettiest manner; in a
manner so engaging and so playful and so natural, that her cherubic parent made a coaxing
face as if she had never grown up, and said, 'What a silly little Mouse it is!'
'But you do forgive me that, and everything else; don't you, Pa?'
'Yes, my dearest.'
'And you don't feel solitary or neglected, going away by yourself; do you, Pa?'
'Lord bless you! No, my Life!'
'Good−bye, dearest Pa. Good−bye!'
'Good−bye, my darling! Take her away, my dear John. Take her home!'
So, she leaning on her husband's arm, they turned homeward by a rosy path which the
gracious sun struck out for them in its setting. And O there are days in this life, worth life
and worth death. And O what a bright old song it is, that O 'tis love, 'tis love, 'tis love that
makes the world go round!
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Chapter 5 − CONCERNING THE MENDICANT'S BRIDE
T
he impressive gloom with which Mrs Wilfer received her husband on his return from
the wedding, knocked so hard at the door of the cherubic conscience, and likewise so
impaired the firmness of the cherubic legs, that the culprit's tottering condition of mind and
body might have roused suspicion in less occupied persons that the grimly heroic lady, Miss
Lavinia, and that esteemed friend of the family, Mr George Sampson. But, the attention of
all three being fully possessed by the main fact of the marriage, they had happily none to
bestow on the guilty conspirator; to which fortunate circumstance he owed the escape for
which he was in nowise indebted to himself.
'You do not, R. W.' said Mrs Wilfer from her stately corner, 'inquire for your daughter
Bella.'
'To be sure, my dear,' he returned, with a most flagrant assumption of unconsciousness,
'I did omit it. How – or perhaps I should rather say where – IS Bella?'
'Not here,' Mrs Wilfer proclaimed, with folded arms.
The cherub faintly muttered something to the abortive effect of 'Oh, indeed, my dear!'
'Not here,' repeated Mrs Wilfer, in a stern sonorous voice. 'In a word, R. W., you have
no daughter Bella.'
'No daughter Bella, my dear?'
'No. Your daughter Bella,' said Mrs Wilfer, with a lofty air of never having had the least
copartnership in that young lady: of whom she now made reproachful mention as an article
of luxury which her husband had set up entirely on his own account, and in direct opposition
to her advice: ' – your daughter Bella has bestowed herself upon a Mendicant.'
'Good gracious, my dear!'
'Show your father his daughter Bella's letter, Lavinia,' said Mrs Wilfer, in her
monotonous Act of Parliament tone, and waving her hand. 'I think your father will admit it
to be documentary proof of what I tell him. I believe your father is acquainted with his
daughter Bella's writing. But I do not know. He may tell you he is not. Nothing will surprise
me.'
'Posted at Greenwich, and dated this morning,' said the Irrepressible, flouncing at her
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father in handing him the evidence. 'Hopes Ma won't be angry, but is happily married to Mr
John Rokesmith, and didn't mention it beforehand to avoid words, and please tell darling
you, and love to me, and I should like to know what you'd have said if any other unmarried
member of the family had done it!'
He read the letter, and faintly exclaimed 'Dear me!'
'You may well say Dear me!' rejoined Mrs Wilfer, in a deep tone. Upon which
encouragement he said it again, though scarcely with the success he had expected; for the
scornful lady then remarked, with extreme bitterness: 'You said that before.'
'It's very surprising. But I suppose, my dear,' hinted the cherub, as he folded the letter
after a disconcerting silence, 'that we must make the best of it? Would you object to my
pointing out, my dear, that Mr John Rokesmith is not (so far as I am acquainted with him),
strictly speaking, a Mendicant.'
'Indeed?' returned Mrs Wilfer, with an awful air of politeness. 'Truly so? I was not
aware that Mr John Rokesmith was a gentleman of landed property. But I am much relieved
to hear it.'
'I doubt if you HAVE heard it, my dear,' the cherub submitted with hesitation.
'Thank you,' said Mrs Wilfer. 'I make false statements, it appears? So be it. If my
daughter flies in my face, surely my husband may. The one thing is not more unnatural than
the other. There seems a fitness in the arrangement. By all means!' Assuming, with a shiver
of resignation, a deadly cheerfulness.
But, here the Irrepressible skirmished into the conflict, dragging the reluctant form of
Mr Sampson after her.
'Ma,' interposed the young lady, 'I must say I think it would be much better if you would
keep to the point, and not hold forth about people's flying into people's faces, which is
nothing more nor less than impossible nonsense.'
'How!' exclaimed Mrs Wilfer, knitting her dark brows.
'Just im−possible nonsense, Ma,' returned Lavvy, 'and George Sampson knows it is, as
well as I do.'
Mrs Wilfer suddenly becoming petrified, fixed her indignant eyes upon the wretched
George: who, divided between the support due from him to his love, and the support due
from him to his love's mamma, supported nobody, not even himself.
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'The true point is,' pursued Lavinia, 'that Bella has behaved in a most unsisterly way to
me, and might have severely compromised me with George and with George's family, by
making off and getting married in this very low and disreputable manner – with some
pew−opener or other, I suppose, for a bridesmaid – when she ought to have confided in me,
and ought to have said, «If, Lavvy, you consider it due to your engagement with George,
that you should countenance the occasion by being present, then Lavvy, I beg you to BE
present, keeping my secret from Ma and Pa.» As of course I should have done.'
'As of course you would have done? Ingrate!' exclaimed Mrs Wilfer. 'Viper!'
'I say! You know ma'am. Upon my honour you mustn't,' Mr Sampson remonstrated,
shaking his head seriously, 'With the highest respect for you, ma'am, upon my life you
mustn't. No really, you know. When a man with the feelings of a gentleman finds himself
engaged to a young lady, and it comes (even on the part of a member of the family) to
vipers, you know! – I would merely put it to your own good feeling, you know,' said Mr
Sampson, in rather lame conclusion.
Mrs Wilfer's baleful stare at the young gentleman in acknowledgment of his obliging
interference was of such a nature that Miss Lavinia burst into tears, and caught him round
the neck for his protection.
'My own unnatural mother,' screamed the young lady, 'wants to annihilate George! But
you shan't be annihilated, George. I'll die first!'
Mr Sampson, in the arms of his mistress, still struggled to shake his head at Mrs Wilfer,
and to remark: 'With every sentiment of respect for you, you know, ma'am – vipers really
doesn't do you credit.'
'You shall not be annihilated, George!' cried Miss Lavinia. 'Ma shall destroy me first,
and then she'll be contented. Oh, oh, oh! Have I lured George from his happy home to
expose him to this! George, dear, be free! Leave me, ever dearest George, to Ma and to my
fate. Give my love to your aunt, George dear, and implore her not to curse the viper that has
crossed your path and blighted your existence. Oh, oh, oh!' The young lady who,
hysterically speaking, was only just come of age, and had never gone off yet, here fell into a
highly creditable crisis, which, regarded as a first performance, was very successful; Mr
Sampson, bending over the body meanwhile, in a state of distraction, which induced him to
address Mrs Wilfer in the inconsistent expressions: 'Demon – with the highest respect for
you – behold your work!'
The cherub stood helplessly rubbing his chin and looking on, but on the whole was
inclined to welcome this diversion as one in which, by reason of the absorbent properties of
hysterics, the previous question would become absorbed. And so, indeed, it proved, for the
Irrepressible gradually coming to herself; and asking with wild emotion, 'George dear, are
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you safe?' and further, 'George love, what has happened? Where is Ma?' Mr Sampson, with
words of comfort, raised her prostrate form, and handed her to Mrs Wilfer as if the young
lady were something in the nature of refreshments. Mrs Wilfer with dignity partaking of the
refreshments, by kissing her once on the brow (as if accepting an oyster), Miss Lavvy,
tottering, returned to the protection of Mr Sampson; to whom she said, 'George dear, I am
afraid I have been foolish; but I am still a little weak and giddy; don't let go my hand,
George!' And whom she afterwards greatly agitated at intervals, by giving utterance, when
least expected, to a sound between a sob and a bottle of soda water, that seemed to rend the
bosom of her frock.
Among the most remarkable effects of this crisis may be mentioned its having, when
peace was restored, an inexplicable moral influence, of an elevating kind, on Miss Lavinia,
Mrs Wilfer, and Mr George Sampson, from which R. W. was altogether excluded, as an
outsider and non−sympathizer. Miss Lavinia assumed a modest air of having distinguished
herself; Mrs Wilfer, a serene air of forgiveness and resignation; Mr Sampson, an air of
having been improved and chastened. The influence pervaded the spirit in which they
returned to the previous question.
'George dear,' said Lavvy, with a melancholy smile, 'after what has passed, I am sure
Ma will tell Pa that he may tell Bella we shall all be glad to see her and her husband.'
Mr Sampson said he was sure of it too; murmuring how eminently he respected Mrs
Wilfer, and ever must, and ever would. Never more eminently, he added, than after what had
passed.
'Far be it from me,' said Mrs Wilfer, making deep proclamation from her corner, 'to run
counter to the feelings of a child of mine, and of a Youth,' Mr Sampson hardly seemed to
like that word, 'who is the object of her maiden preference. I may feel – nay, know – that I
have been deluded and deceived. I may feel – nay, know – that I have been set aside and
passed over. I may feel – nay, know – that after having so far overcome my repugnance
towards Mr and Mrs Boffin as to receive them under this roof, and to consent to your
daughter Bella's,' here turning to her husband, 'residing under theirs, it were well if your
daughter Bella,' again turning to her husband, 'had profited in a worldly point of view by a
connection so distasteful, so disreputable. I may feel – nay, know – that in uniting herself to
Mr Rokesmith she has united herself to one who is, in spite of shallow sophistry, a
Mendicant. And I may feel well assured that your daughter Bella,' again turning to her
husband, 'does not exalt her family by becoming a Mendicant's bride. But I suppress what I
feel, and say nothing of it.'
Mr Sampson murmured that this was the sort of thing you might expect from one who
had ever in her own family been an example and never an outrage. And ever more so (Mr
Sampson added, with some degree of obscurity,) and never more so, than in and through
what had passed. He must take the liberty of adding, that what was true of the mother was
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true of the youngest daughter, and that he could never forget the touching feelings that the
conduct of both had awakened within him. In conclusion, he did hope that there wasn't a
man with a beating heart who was capable of something that remained undescribed, in
consequence of Miss Lavinia's stopping him as he reeled in his speech.
'Therefore, R. W.' said Mrs Wilfer, resuming her discourse and turning to her lord
again, 'let your daughter Bella come when she will, and she will be received. So,' after a
short pause, and an air of having taken medicine in it, 'so will her husband.'
'And I beg, Pa,' said Lavinia, 'that you will not tell Bella what I have undergone. It can
do no good, and it might cause her to reproach herself.'
'My dearest girl,' urged Mr Sampson, 'she ought to know it.'
'No, George,' said Lavinia, in a tone of resolute self−denial. 'No, dearest George, let it
be buried in oblivion.'
Mr Sampson considered that, 'too noble.'
'Nothing is too noble, dearest George,' returned Lavinia. 'And Pa, I hope you will be
careful not to refer before Bella, if you can help it, to my engagement to George. It might
seem like reminding her of her having cast herself away. And I hope, Pa, that you will think
it equally right to avoid mentioning George's rising prospects, when Bella is present. It
might seem like taunting her with her own poor fortunes. Let me ever remember that I am
her younger sister, and ever spare her painful contrasts, which could not but wound her
sharply.'
Mr Sampson expressed his belief that such was the demeanour of Angels. Miss Lavvy
replied with solemnity, 'No, dearest George, I am but too well aware that I am merely
human.'
Mrs Wilfer, for her part, still further improved the occasion by sitting with her eyes
fastened on her husband, like two great black notes of interrogation, severely inquiring, Are
you looking into your breast? Do you deserve your blessings? Can you lay your hand upon
your heart and say that you are worthy of so hysterical a daughter? I do not ask you if you
are worthy of such a wife – put Me out of the question – but are you sufficiently conscious
of, and thankful for, the pervading moral grandeur of the family spectacle on which you are
gazing? These inquiries proved very harassing to R. W. who, besides being a little disturbed
by wine, was in perpetual terror of committing himself by the utterance of stray words that
would betray his guilty foreknowledge. However, the scene being over, and – all things
considered – well over, he sought refuge in a doze; which gave his lady immense offence.
'Can you think of your daughter Bella, and sleep?' she disdainfully inquired.
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To which he mildly answered, 'Yes, I think I can, my dear.'
'Then,' said Mrs Wilfer, with solemn indignation, 'I would recommend you, if you have
a human feeling, to retire to bed.'
'Thank you, my dear,' he replied; 'I think it IS the best place for me.' And with these
unsympathetic words very gladly withdrew.
Within a few weeks afterwards, the Mendicant's bride (arm−in−arm with the
Mendicant) came to tea, in fulfilment of an engagement made through her father. And the
way in which the Mendicant's bride dashed at the unassailable position so considerately to
be held by Miss Lavy, and scattered the whole of the works in all directions in a moment,
was triumphant.
'Dearest Ma,' cried Bella, running into the room with a radiant face, 'how do you do,
dearest Ma?' And then embraced her, joyously. 'And Lavvy darling, how do YOU do, and
how's George Sampson, and how is he getting on, and when are you going to be married,
and how rich are you going to grow? You must tell me all about it, Lavvy dear,
immediately. John, love, kiss Ma and Lavvy, and then we shall all be at home and
comfortable.'
Mrs Wilfer stared, but was helpless. Miss Lavinia stared, but was helpless. Apparently
with no compunction, and assuredly with no ceremony, Bella tossed her bonnet away, and
sat down to make the tea.
'Dearest Ma and Lavvy, you both take sugar, I know. And Pa (you good little Pa), you
don't take milk. John does. I didn't before I was married; but I do now, because John does.
John dear, did you kiss Ma and Lavvy? Oh, you did! Quite correct, John dear; but I didn't
see you do it, so I asked. Cut some bread and butter, John; that's a love. Ma likes it doubled.
And now you must tell me, dearest Ma and Lavvy, upon your words and honours! Didn't
you for a moment – just a moment – think I was a dreadful little wretch when I wrote to say
I had run away?'
Before Mrs Wilfer could wave her gloves, the Mendicant's bride in her merriest
affectionate manner went on again.
'I think it must have made you rather cross, dear Ma and Lavvy, and I know I deserved
that you should be very cross. But you see I had been such a heedless, heartless creature, and
had led you so to expect that I should marry for money, and so to make sure that I was
incapable of marrying for love, that I thought you couldn't believe me. Because, you see,
you didn't know how much of Good, Good, Good, I had learnt from John. Well! So I was sly
about it, and ashamed of what you supposed me to be, and fearful that we couldn't
understand one another and might come to words, which we should all be sorry for
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afterwards, and so I said to John that if he liked to take me without any fuss, he might. And
as he did like, I let him. And we were married at Greenwich church in the presence of
nobody – except an unknown individual who dropped in,' here her eyes sparkled more
brightly, 'and half a pensioner. And now, isn't it nice, dearest Ma and Lavvy, to know that no
words have been said which any of us can be sorry for, and that we are all the best of friends
at the pleasantest of teas!'
Having got up and kissed them again, she slipped back to her chair (after a loop on the
road to squeeze her husband round the neck) and again went on.
'And now you will naturally want to know, dearest Ma and Lavvy, how we live, and
what we have got to live upon. Well! And so we live on Blackheath, in the charm – ingest of
dolls' houses, de – lightfully furnished, and we have a clever little servant who is de –
cidedly pretty, and we are economical and orderly, and do everything by clockwork, and we
have a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and we have all we want, and more. And lastly, if
you would like to know in confidence, as perhaps you may, what is my opinion of my
husband, my opinion is – that I almost love him!'
'And if you would like to know in confidence, as perhaps you may,' said her husband,
smiling, as he stood by her side, without her having detected his approach, 'my opinion of
my wife, my opinion is – .' But Bella started up, and put her hand upon his lips.
'Stop, Sir! No, John, dear! Seriously! Please not yet a while! I want to be something so
much worthier than the doll in the doll's house.'
'My darling, are you not?'
'Not half, not a quarter, so much worthier as I hope you may some day find me! Try me
through some reverse, John – try me through some trial – and tell them after THAT, what
you think of me.'
'I will, my Life,' said John. 'I promise it.'
'That's my dear John. And you won't speak a word now; will you?'
'And I won't,' said John, with a very expressive look of admiration around him, 'speak a
word now!'
She laid her laughing cheek upon his breast to thank him, and said, looking at the rest of
them sideways out of her bright eyes: 'I'll go further, Pa and Ma and Lavvy. John don't
suspect it – he has no idea of it – but I quite love him!'
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Even Mrs Wilfer relaxed under the influence of her married daughter, and seemed in a
majestic manner to imply remotely that if R. W. had been a more deserving object, she too
might have condescended to come down from her pedestal for his beguilement. Miss
Lavinia, on the other hand, had strong doubts of the policy of the course of treatment, and
whether it might not spoil Mr Sampson, if experimented on in the case of that young
gentleman. R. W. himself was for his part convinced that he was father of one of the most
charming of girls, and that Rokesmith was the most favoured of men; which opinion, if
propounded to him, Rokesmith would probably not have contested.
The newly−married pair left early, so that they might walk at leisure to their
starting−place from London, for Greenwich. At first they were very cheerful and talked
much; but after a while, Bella fancied that her husband was turning somewhat thoughtful. So
she asked him:
'John dear, what's the matter?'
'Matter, my love?'
'Won't you tell me,' said Bella, looking up into his face, 'what you are thinking of?'
'There's not much in the thought, my soul. I was thinking whether you wouldn't like me
to be rich?'
'You rich, John?' repeated Bella, shrinking a little.
'I mean, really rich. Say, as rich as Mr Boffin. You would like that?'
'I should be almost afraid to try, John dear. Was he much the better for his wealth? Was
I much the better for the little part I once had in it?'
'But all people are not the worse for riches, my own.'
'Most people?' Bella musingly suggested with raised eyebrows.
'Nor even most people, it may be hoped. If you were rich, for instance, you would have
a great power of doing good to others.'
'Yes, sir, for instance,' Bella playfully rejoined; 'but should I exercise the power, for
instance? And again, sir, for instance; should I, at the same time, have a great power of
doing harm to myself?'
Laughing and pressing her arm, he retorted: 'But still, again for instance; would you
exercise that power?'
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'I don't know,' said Bella, thoughtfully shaking her head. 'I hope not. I think not. But it's
so easy to hope not and think not, without the riches.'
'Why don't you say, my darling – instead of that phrase – being poor?' he asked, looking
earnestly at her.
'Why don't I say, being poor! Because I am not poor. Dear John, it's not possible that
you suppose I think we are poor?'
'I do, my love.'
'Oh John!'
'Understand me, sweetheart. I know that I am rich beyond all wealth in having you; but
I think OF you, and think FOR you. In such a dress as you are wearing now, you first
charmed me, and in no dress could you ever look, to my thinking, more graceful or more
beautiful. But you have admired many finer dresses this very day; and is it not natural that I
wish I could give them to you?'
'It's very nice that you should wish it, John. It brings these tears of grateful pleasure into
my eyes, to hear you say so with such tenderness. But I don't want them.'
'Again,' he pursued, 'we are now walking through the muddy streets. I love those pretty
feet so dearly, that I feel as if I could not bear the dirt to soil the sole of your shoe. Is it not
natural that I wish you could ride in a carriage?'
'It's very nice,' said Bella, glancing downward at the feet in question, 'to know that you
admire them so much, John dear, and since you do, I am sorry that these shoes are a full size
too large. But I don't want a carriage, believe me.'
'You would like one if you could have one, Bella?'
'I shouldn't like it for its own sake, half so well as such a wish for it. Dear John, your
wishes are as real to me as the wishes in the Fairy story, that were all fulfilled as soon as
spoken. Wish me everything that you can wish for the woman you dearly love, and I have as
good as got it, John. I have better than got it, John!'
They were not the less happy for such talk, and home was not the less home for coming
after it. Bella was fast developing a perfect genius for home. All the loves and graces
seemed (her husband thought) to have taken domestic service with her, and to help her to
make home engaging.
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Her married life glided happily on. She was alone all day, for, after an early breakfast
her husband repaired every morning to the City, and did not return until their late dinner
hour. He was 'in a China house,' he explained to Bella: which she found quite satisfactory,
without pursuing the China house into minuter details than a wholesale vision of tea, rice,
odd−smelling silks, carved boxes, and tight−eyed people in more than double−soled shoes,
with their pigtails pulling their heads of hair off, painted on transparent porcelain. She
always walked with her husband to the railroad, and was always there again to meet him; her
old coquettish ways a little sobered down (but not much), and her dress as daintily managed
as if she managed nothing else. But, John gone to business and Bella returned home, the
dress would be laid aside, trim little wrappers and aprons would be substituted, and Bella,
putting back her hair with both hands, as if she were making the most business−like
arrangements for going dramatically distracted, would enter on the household affairs of the
day. Such weighing and mixing and chopping and grating, such dusting and washing and
polishing, such snipping and weeding and trowelling and other small gardening, such
making and mending and folding and airing, such diverse arrangements, and above all such
severe study! For Mrs J. R., who had never been wont to do too much at home as Miss B.
W., was under the constant necessity of referring for advice and support to a sage volume
entitled The Complete British Family Housewife, which she would sit consulting, with her
elbows on the table and her temples on her hands, like some perplexed enchantress poring
over the Black Art. This, principally because the Complete British Housewife, however
sound a Briton at heart, was by no means an expert Briton at expressing herself with
clearness in the British tongue, and sometimes might have issued her directions to equal
purpose in the Kamskatchan language. In any crisis of this nature, Bella would suddenly
exclaim aloud, 'Oh you ridiculous old thing, what do you mean by that? You must have been
drinking!' And having made this marginal note, would try the Housewife again, with all her
dimples screwed into an expression of profound research.
There was likewise a coolness on the part of the British Housewife, which Mrs John
Rokesmith found highly exasperating. She would say, 'Take a salamander,' as if a general
should command a private to catch a Tartar. Or, she would casually issue the order, 'Throw
in a handful – ' of something entirely unattainable. In these, the Housewife's most glaring
moments of unreason, Bella would shut her up and knock her on the table, apostrophising
her with the compliment, 'O you ARE a stupid old Donkey! Where am I to get it, do you
think?'
Another branch of study claimed the attention of Mrs John Rokesmith for a regular
period every day. This was the mastering of the newspaper, so that she might be close up
with John on general topics when John came home. In her desire to be in all things his
companion, she would have set herself with equal zeal to master Algebra, or Euclid, if he
had divided his soul between her and either. Wonderful was the way in which she would
store up the City Intelligence, and beamingly shed it upon John in the course of the evening;
incidentally mentioning the commodities that were looking up in the markets, and how
much gold had been taken to the Bank, and trying to look wise and serious over it until she
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would laugh at herself most charmingly and would say, kissing him: 'It all comes of my
love, John dear.'
For a City man, John certainly did appear to care as little as might be for the looking up
or looking down of things, as well as for the gold that got taken to the Bank. But he cared,
beyond all expression, for his wife, as a most precious and sweet commodity that was
always looking up, and that never was worth less than all the gold in the world. And she,
being inspired by her affection, and having a quick wit and a fine ready instinct, made
amazing progress in her domestic efficiency, though, as an endearing creature, she made no
progress at all. This was her husband's verdict, and he justified it by telling her that she had
begun her married life as the most endearing creature that could possibly be.
'And you have such a cheerful spirit!' he said, fondly. 'You are like a bright light in the
house.'
'Am I truly, John?'
'Are you truly? Yes, indeed. Only much more, and much better.'
'Do you know, John dear,' said Bella, taking him by a button of his coat, 'that I
sometimes, at odd moments – don't laugh, John, please.'
Nothing should induce John to do it, when she asked him not to do it.
' – That I sometimes think, John, I feel a little serious.'
'Are you too much alone, my darling?'
'O dear, no, John! The time is so short that I have not a moment too much in the week.'
'Why serious, my life, then? When serious?'
'When I laugh, I think,' said Bella, laughing as she laid her head upon his shoulder. 'You
wouldn't believe, sir, that I feel serious now? But I do.' And she laughed again, and
something glistened in her eyes.
'Would you like to be rich, pet?' he asked her coaxingly.
'Rich, John! How CAN you ask such goose's questions?'
'Do you regret anything, my love?'
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'Regret anything? No!' Bella confidently answered. But then, suddenly changing, she
said, between laughing and glistening: 'Oh yes, I do though. I regret Mrs Boffin.'
'I, too, regret that separation very much. But perhaps it is only temporary. Perhaps
things may so fall out, as that you may sometimes see her again – as that we may sometimes
see her again.' Bella might be very anxious on the subject, but she scarcely seemed so at the
moment. With an absent air, she was investigating that button on her husband's coat, when
Pa came in to spend the evening.
Pa had his special chair and his special corner reserved for him on all occasions, and –
without disparagement of his domestic joys – was far happier there, than anywhere. It was
always pleasantly droll to see Pa and Bella together; but on this present evening her husband
thought her more than usually fantastic with him.
'You are a very good little boy,' said Bella, 'to come unexpectedly, as soon as you could
get out of school. And how have they used you at school to−day, you dear?'
'Well, my pet,' replied the cherub, smiling and rubbing his hands as she sat him down in
his chair, 'I attend two schools. There's the Mincing Lane establishment, and there's your
mother's Academy. Which might you mean, my dear?'
'Both,' said Bella.
'Both, eh? Why, to say the truth, both have taken a little out of me to−day, my dear, but
that was to be expected. There's no royal road to learning; and what is life but learning!'
'And what do you do with yourself when you have got your learning by heart, you silly
child?'
'Why then, my dear,' said the cherub, after a little consideration, 'I suppose I die.'
'You are a very bad boy,' retorted Bella, 'to talk about dismal things and be out of
spirits.'
'My Bella,' rejoined her father, 'I am not out of spirits. I am as gay as a lark.' Which his
face confirmed.
'Then if you are sure and certain it's not you, I suppose it must be I,' said Bella; 'so I
won't do so any more. John dear, we must give this little fellow his supper, you know.'
'Of course we must, my darling.'
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'He has been grubbing and grubbing at school,' said Bella, looking at her father's hand
and lightly slapping it, 'till he's not fit to be seen. O what a grubby child!'
'Indeed, my dear,' said her father, 'I was going to ask to be allowed to wash my hands,
only you find me out so soon.'
'Come here, sir!' cried Bella, taking him by the front of his coat, 'come here and be
washed directly. You are not to be trusted to do it for yourself. Come here, sir!'
The cherub, to his genial amusement, was accordingly conducted to a little
washing−room, where Bella soaped his face and rubbed his face, and soaped his hands and
rubbed his hands, and splashed him and rinsed him and towelled him, until he was as red as
beet− root, even to his very ears: 'Now you must be brushed and combed, sir,' said Bella,
busily. 'Hold the light, John. Shut your eyes, sir, and let me take hold of your chin. Be good
directly, and do as you are told!'
Her father being more than willing to obey, she dressed his hair in her most elaborate
manner, brushing it out straight, parting it, winding it over her fingers, sticking it up on end,
and constantly falling back on John to get a good look at the effect of it. Who always
received her on his disengaged arm, and detained her, while the patient cherub stood waiting
to be finished.
'There!' said Bella, when she had at last completed the final touches. 'Now, you are
something like a genteel boy! Put your jacket on, and come and have your supper.'
The cherub investing himself with his coat was led back to his corner – where, but for
having no egotism in his pleasant nature, he would have answered well enough for that
radiant though self− sufficient boy, Jack Horner – Bella with her own hands laid a cloth for
him, and brought him his supper on a tray. 'Stop a moment,' said she, 'we must keep his little
clothes clean;' and tied a napkin under his chin, in a very methodical manner.
While he took his supper, Bella sat by him, sometimes admonishing him to hold his
fork by the handle, like a polite child, and at other times carving for him, or pouring out his
drink. Fantastic as it all was, and accustomed as she ever had been to make a plaything of
her good father, ever delighted that she should put him to that account, still there was an
occasional something on Bella's part that was new. It could not be said that she was less
playful, whimsical, or natural, than she always had been; but it seemed, her husband
thought, as if there were some rather graver reason than he had supposed for what she had so
lately said, and as if throughout all this, there were glimpses of an underlying seriousness.
It was a circumstance in support of this view of the case, that when she had lighted her
father's pipe, and mixed him his glass of grog, she sat down on a stool between her father
and her husband, leaning her arm upon the latter, and was very quiet. So quiet, that when her
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father rose to take his leave, she looked round with a start, as if she had forgotten his being
there.
'You go a little way with Pa, John?'
'Yes, my dear. Do you?'
'I have not written to Lizzie Hexam since I wrote and told her that I really had a lover –
a whole one. I have often thought I would like to tell her how right she was when she
pretended to read in the live coals that I would go through fire and water for him. I am in the
humour to tell her so to−night, John, and I'll stay at home and do it.'
'You are tired.'
'Not at all tired, John dear, but in the humour to write to Lizzie. Good night, dear Pa.
Good night, you dear, good, gentle Pa!'
Left to herself she sat down to write, and wrote Lizzie a long letter. She had but
completed it and read it over, when her husband came back. 'You are just in time, sir,' said
Bella; 'I am going to give you your first curtain lecture. It shall be a parlour−curtain lecture.
You shall take this chair of mine when I have folded my letter, and I will take the stool
(though you ought to take it, I can tell you, sir, if it's the stool of repentance), and you'll soon
find yourself taken to task soundly.'
Her letter folded, sealed, and directed, and her pen wiped, and her middle finger wiped,
and her desk locked up and put away, and these transactions performed with an air of severe
business sedateness, which the Complete British Housewife might have assumed, and
certainly would not have rounded off and broken down in with a musical laugh, as Bella did:
she placed her husband in his chair, and placed herself upon her stool.
'Now, sir! To begin at the beginning. What is your name?'
A question more decidedly rushing at the secret he was keeping from her, could not
have astounded him. But he kept his countenance and his secret, and answered, 'John
Rokesmith, my dear.'
'Good boy! Who gave you that name?'
With a returning suspicion that something might have betrayed him to her, he answered,
interrogatively, 'My godfathers and my godmothers, dear love?'
'Pretty good!' said Bella. 'Not goodest good, because you hesitate about it. However, as
you know your Catechism fairly, so far, I'll let you off the rest. Now, I am going to examine
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you out of my own head. John dear, why did you go back, this evening, to the question you
once asked me before – would I like to be rich?'
Again, his secret! He looked down at her as she looked up at him, with her hands folded
on his knee, and it was as nearly told as ever secret was.
Having no reply ready, he could do no better than embrace her.
'In short, dear John,' said Bella, 'this is the topic of my lecture: I want nothing on earth,
and I want you to believe it.'
'If that's all, the lecture may be considered over, for I do.'
'It's not all, John dear,' Bella hesitated. 'It's only Firstly. There's a dreadful Secondly,
and a dreadful Thirdly to come – as I used to say to myself in sermon−time when I was a
very small−sized sinner at church.'
'Let them come, my dearest.'
'Are you sure, John dear; are you absolutely certain in your innermost heart of hearts –
?'
'Which is not in my keeping,' he rejoined.
'No, John, but the key is. – Are you absolutely certain that down at the bottom of that
heart of hearts, which you have given to me as I have given mine to you, there is no
remembrance that I was once very mercenary?'
'Why, if there were no remembrance in me of the time you speak of,' he softly asked her
with his lips to hers, 'could I love you quite as well as I do; could I have in the Calendar of
my life the brightest of its days; could I whenever I look at your dear face, or hear your dear
voice, see and hear my noble champion? It can never have been that which made you
serious, darling?'
'No John, it wasn't that, and still less was it Mrs Boffin, though I love her. Wait a
moment, and I'll go on with the lecture. Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's
so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.'
She did so on his neck, and, still clinging there, laughed a little when she said, 'I think I
am ready now for Thirdly, John.'
'I am ready for Thirdly,' said John, 'whatever it is.'
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'I believe, John,' pursued Bella, 'that you believe that I believe – '
'My dear child,' cried her husband gaily, 'what a quantity of believing!'
'Isn't there?' said Bella, with another laugh. 'I never knew such a quantity! It's like verbs
in an exercise. But I can't get on with less believing. I'll try again. I believe, dear John, that
you believe that I believe that we have as much money as we require, and that we want for
nothing.'
'It is strictly true, Bella.'
'But if our money should by any means be rendered not so much – if we had to stint
ourselves a little in purchases that we can afford to make now – would you still have the
same confidence in my being quite contented, John?'
'Precisely the same confidence, my soul.'
'Thank you, John dear, thousands upon thousands of times. And I may take it for
granted, no doubt,' with a little faltering, 'that you would be quite as contented yourself
John? But, yes, I know I may. For, knowing that I should be so, how surely I may know that
you would be so; you who are so much stronger, and firmer, and more reasonable and more
generous, than I am.'
'Hush!' said her husband, 'I must not hear that. You are all wrong there, though
otherwise as right as can be. And now I am brought to a little piece of news, my dearest, that
I might have told you earlier in the evening. I have strong reason for confidently believing
that we shall never be in the receipt of a smaller income than our present income.'
She might have shown herself more interested in the intelligence; but she had returned
to the investigation of the coat−button that had engaged her attention a few hours before,
and scarcely seemed to heed what he said.
'And now we have got to the bottom of it at last,' cried her husband, rallying her, 'and
this is the thing that made you serious?'
'No dear,' said Bella, twisting the button and shaking her head, 'it wasn't this.'
'Why then, Lord bless this little wife of mine, there's a Fourthly!' exclaimed John.
'This worried me a little, and so did Secondly,' said Bella, occupied with the button, 'but
it was quite another sort of seriousness – a much deeper and quieter sort of seriousness – that
I spoke of John dear.'
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As he bent his face to hers, she raised hers to meet it, and laid her little right hand on his
eyes, and kept it there.
'Do you remember, John, on the day we were married, Pa's speaking of the ships that
might be sailing towards us from the unknown seas?'
'Perfectly, my darling!'
'I think...among them...there is a ship upon the ocean...bringing...to you and me...a little
baby, John.'
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Chapter 6 − A CRY FOR HELP
T
he Paper Mill had stopped work for the night, and the paths and roads in its
neighbourhood were sprinkled with clusters of people going home from their day's labour in
it. There were men, women, and children in the groups, and there was no want of lively
colour to flutter in the gentle evening wind. The mingling of various voices and the sound of
laughter made a cheerful impression upon the ear, analogous to that of the fluttering colours
upon the eye. Into the sheet of water reflecting the flushed sky in the foreground of the
living picture, a knot of urchins were casting stones, and watching the expansion of the
rippling circles. So, in the rosy evening, one might watch the ever−widening beauty of the
landscape – beyond the newly−released workers wending home – beyond the silver river –
beyond the deep green fields of corn, so prospering, that the loiterers in their narrow threads
of pathway seemed to float immersed breast−high – beyond the hedgerows and the clumps
of trees – beyond the windmills on the ridge – away to where the sky appeared to meet the
earth, as if there were no immensity of space between mankind and Heaven.
It was a Saturday evening, and at such a time the village dogs, always much more
interested in the doings of humanity than in the affairs of their own species, were
particularly active. At the general shop, at the butcher's and at the public−house, they
evinced an inquiring spirit never to he satiated. Their especial interest in the public−house
would seem to imply some latent rakishness in the canine character; for little was eaten
there, and they, having no taste for beer or tobacco (Mrs Hubbard's dog is said to have
smoked, but proof is wanting), could only have been attracted by sympathy with loose
convivial habits. Moreover, a most wretched fiddle played within; a fiddle so unutterably
vile, that one lean long−bodied cur, with a better ear than the rest, found himself under
compulsion at intervals to go round the corner and howl. Yet, even he returned to the
public−house on each occasion with the tenacity of a confirmed drunkard.
Fearful to relate, there was even a sort of little Fair in the village. Some despairing
gingerbread that had been vainly trying to dispose of itself all over the country, and had cast
a quantity of dust upon its head in its mortification, again appealed to the public from an
infirm booth. So did a heap of nuts, long, long exiled from Barcelona, and yet speaking
English so indifferently as to call fourteen of themselves a pint. A Peep−show which had
originally started with the Battle of Waterloo, and had since made it every other battle of
later date by altering the Duke of Wellington's nose, tempted the student of illustrated
history. A Fat Lady, perhaps in part sustained upon postponed pork, her professional
associate being a Learned Pig, displayed her life−size picture in a low dress as she appeared
when presented at Court, several yards round. All this was a vicious spectacle as any poor
idea of amusement on the part of the rougher hewers of wood and drawers of water in this
land of England ever is and shall be. They MUST NOT vary the rheumatism with
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amusement. They may vary it with fever and ague, or with as many rheumatic variations as
they have joints; but positively not with entertainment after their own manner.
The various sounds arising from this scene of depravity, and floating away into the still
evening air, made the evening, at any point which they just reached fitfully, mellowed by the
distance, more still by contrast. Such was the stillness of the evening to Eugene Wrayburn,
as he walked by the river with his hands behind him.
He walked slowly, and with the measured step and preoccupied air of one who was
waiting. He walked between the two points, an osier−bed at this end and some floating lilies
at that, and at each point stopped and looked expectantly in one direction.
'It is very quiet,' said he.
It was very quiet. Some sheep were grazing on the grass by the river−side, and it
seemed to him that he had never before heard the crisp tearing sound with which they
cropped it. He stopped idly, and looked at them.
'You are stupid enough, I suppose. But if you are clever enough to get through life
tolerably to your satisfaction, you have got the better of me, Man as I am, and Mutton as you
are!'
A rustle in a field beyond the hedge attracted his attention. 'What's here to do?' he asked
himself leisurely going towards the gate and looking over. 'No jealous paper−miller? No
pleasures of the chase in this part of the country? Mostly fishing hereabouts!'
The field had been newly mown, and there were yet the marks of the scythe on the
yellow−green ground, and the track of wheels where the hay had been carried. Following the
tracks with his eyes, the view closed with the new hayrick in a corner.
Now, if he had gone on to the hayrick, and gone round it? But, say that the event was to
be, as the event fell out, and how idle are such suppositions! Besides, if he had gone; what is
there of warning in a Bargeman lying on his face?
'A bird flying to the hedge,' was all he thought about it; and came back, and resumed his
walk.
'If I had not a reliance on her being truthful,' said Eugene, after taking some half−dozen
turns, 'I should begin to think she had given me the slip for the second time. But she
promised, and she is a girl of her word.'
Turning again at the water−lilies, he saw her coming, and advanced to meet her.
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'I was saying to myself, Lizzie, that you were sure to come, though you were late.'
'I had to linger through the village as if I had no object before me, and I had to speak to
several people in passing along, Mr Wrayburn.'
'Are the lads of the village – and the ladies – such scandal−mongers?' he asked, as he
took her hand and drew it through his arm.
She submitted to walk slowly on, with downcast eyes. He put her hand to his lips, and
she quietly drew it away.
'Will you walk beside me, Mr Wrayburn, and not touch me?' For, his arm was already
stealing round her waist.
She stopped again, and gave him an earnest supplicating look. 'Well, Lizzie, well!' said
he, in an easy way though ill at ease with himself 'don't be unhappy, don't be reproachful.'
'I cannot help being unhappy, but I do not mean to be reproachful. Mr Wrayburn, I
implore you to go away from this neighbourhood, to−morrow morning.'
'Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie!' he remonstrated. 'As well be reproachful as wholly
unreasonable. I can't go away.'
'Why not?'
'Faith!' said Eugene in his airily candid manner. 'Because you won't let me. Mind! I
don't mean to be reproachful either. I don't complain that you design to keep me here. But
you do it, you do it.'
'Will you walk beside me, and not touch me;' for, his arm was coming about her again;
'while I speak to you very seriously, Mr Wrayburn?'
'I will do anything within the limits of possibility, for you, Lizzie,' he answered with
pleasant gaiety as he folded his arms. 'See here! Napoleon Buonaparte at St Helena.'
'When you spoke to me as I came from the Mill the night before last,' said Lizzie, fixing
her eyes upon him with the look of supplication which troubled his better nature, 'you told
me that you were much surprised to see me, and that you were on a solitary fishing
excursion. Was it true?'
'It was not,' replied Eugene composedly, 'in the least true. I came here, because I had
information that I should find you here.'
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'Can you imagine why I left London, Mr Wrayburn?'
'I am afraid, Lizzie,' he openly answered, 'that you left London to get rid of me. It is not
flattering to my self−love, but I am afraid you did.'
'I did.'
'How could you be so cruel?'
'O Mr Wrayburn,' she answered, suddenly breaking into tears, 'is the cruelty on my side!
O Mr Wrayburn, Mr Wrayburn, is there no cruelty in your being here to−night!'
'In the name of all that's good – and that is not conjuring you in my own name, for
Heaven knows I am not good' – said Eugene, 'don't be distressed!'
'What else can I be, when I know the distance and the difference between us? What else
can I be, when to tell me why you came here, is to put me to shame!' said Lizzie, covering
her face.
He looked at her with a real sentiment of remorseful tenderness and pity. It was not
strong enough to impell him to sacrifice himself and spare her, but it was a strong emotion.
'Lizzie! I never thought before, that there was a woman in the world who could affect
me so much by saying so little. But don't be hard in your construction of me. You don't
know what my state of mind towards you is. You don't know how you haunt me and
bewilder me. You don't know how the cursed carelessness that is over−officious in helping
me at every other turning of my life, WON'T help me here. You have struck it dead, I think,
and I sometimes almost wish you had struck me dead along with it.'
She had not been prepared for such passionate expressions, and they awakened some
natural sparks of feminine pride and joy in her breast. To consider, wrong as he was, that he
could care so much for her, and that she had the power to move him so!
'It grieves you to see me distressed, Mr Wrayburn; it grieves me to see you distressed. I
don't reproach you. Indeed I don't reproach you. You have not felt this as I feel it, being so
different from me, and beginning from another point of view. You have not thought. But I
entreat you to think now, think now!'
'What am I to think of?' asked Eugene, bitterly.
'Think of me.'
'Tell me how NOT to think of you, Lizzie, and you'll change me altogether.'
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'I don't mean in that way. Think of me, as belonging to another station, and quite cut off
from you in honour. Remember that I have no protector near me, unless I have one in your
noble heart. Respect my good name. If you feel towards me, in one particular, as you might
if I was a lady, give me the full claims of a lady upon your generous behaviour. I am
removed from you and your family by being a working girl. How true a gentleman to be as
considerate of me as if I was removed by being a Queen!'
He would have been base indeed to have stood untouched by her appeal. His face
expressed contrition and indecision as he asked:
'Have I injured you so much, Lizzie?'
'No, no. You may set me quite right. I don't speak of the past, Mr Wrayburn, but of the
present and the future. Are we not here now, because through two days you have followed
me so closely where there are so many eyes to see you, that I consented to this appointment
as an escape?'
'Again, not very flattering to my self−love,' said Eugene, moodily; 'but yes. Yes. Yes.'
'Then I beseech you, Mr Wrayburn, I beg and pray you, leave this neighbourhood. If
you do not, consider to what you will drive me.'
He did consider within himself for a moment or two, and then retorted, 'Drive you? To
what shall I drive you, Lizzie?'
'You will drive me away. I live here peacefully and respected, and I am well employed
here. You will force me to quit this place as I quitted London, and – by following me again –
will force me to quit the next place in which I may find refuge, as I quitted this.'
'Are you so determined, Lizzie – forgive the word I am going to use, for its literal truth
– to fly from a lover?'
'I am so determined,' she answered resolutely, though trembling, 'to fly from such a
lover. There was a poor woman died here but a little while ago, scores of years older than I
am, whom I found by chance, lying on the wet earth. You may have heard some account of
her?'
'I think I have,' he answered, 'if her name was Higden.'
'Her name was Higden. Though she was so weak and old, she kept true to one purpose
to the very last. Even at the very last, she made me promise that her purpose should be kept
to, after she was dead, so settled was her determination. What she did, I can do. Mr
Wrayburn, if I believed – but I do not believe – that you could be so cruel to me as to drive
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me from place to place to wear me out, you should drive me to death and not do it.'
He looked full at her handsome face, and in his own handsome face there was a light of
blended admiration, anger, and reproach, which she – who loved him so in secret whose
heart had long been so full, and he the cause of its overflowing – drooped before. She tried
hard to retain her firmness, but he saw it melting away under his eyes. In the moment of its
dissolution, and of his first full knowledge of his influence upon her, she dropped, and he
caught her on his arm.
'Lizzie! Rest so a moment. Answer what I ask you. If I had not been what you call
removed from you and cut off from you, would you have made this appeal to me to leave
you?'
'I don't know, I don't know. Don't ask me, Mr Wrayburn. Let me go back.'
'I swear to you, Lizzie, you shall go directly. I swear to you, you shall go alone. I'll not
accompany you, I'll not follow you, if you will reply.'
'How can I, Mr Wrayburn? How can I tell you what I should have done, if you had not
been what you are?'
'If I had not been what you make me out to be,' he struck in, skilfully changing the form
of words, 'would you still have hated me?'
'O Mr Wrayburn,' she replied appealingly, and weeping, 'you know me better than to
think I do!'
'If I had not been what you make me out to be, Lizzie, would you still have been
indifferent to me?'
'O Mr Wrayburn,' she answered as before, 'you know me better than that too!'
There was something in the attitude of her whole figure as he supported it, and she hung
her head, which besought him to be merciful and not force her to disclose her heart. He was
not merciful with her, and he made her do it.
'If I know you better than quite to believe (unfortunate dog though I am!) that you hate
me, or even that you are wholly indifferent to me, Lizzie, let me know so much more from
yourself before we separate. Let me know how you would have dealt with me if you had
regarded me as being what you would have considered on equal terms with you.'
'It is impossible, Mr Wrayburn. How can I think of you as being on equal terms with
me? If my mind could put you on equal terms with me, you could not be yourself. How
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could I remember, then, the night when I first saw you, and when I went out of the room
because you looked at me so attentively? Or, the night that passed into the morning when
you broke to me that my father was dead? Or, the nights when you used to come to see me at
my next home? Or, your having known how uninstructed I was, and having caused me to be
taught better? Or, my having so looked up to you and wondered at you, and at first thought
you so good to be at all mindful of me?'
'Only «at first» thought me so good, Lizzie? What did you think me after «at first»? So
bad?'
'I don't say that. I don't mean that. But after the first wonder and pleasure of being
noticed by one so different from any one who had ever spoken to me, I began to feel that it
might have been better if I had never seen you.'
'Why?'
'Because you WERE so different,' she answered in a lower voice. 'Because it was so
endless, so hopeless. Spare me!'
'Did you think for me at all, Lizzie?' he asked, as if he were a little stung.
'Not much, Mr Wrayburn. Not much until to−night.'
'Will you tell me why?'
'I never supposed until to−night that you needed to be thought for. But if you do need to
be; if you do truly feel at heart that you have indeed been towards me what you have called
yourself to−night, and that there is nothing for us in this life but separation; then Heaven
help you, and Heaven bless you!'
The purity with which in these words she expressed something of her own love and her
own suffering, made a deep impression on him for the passing time. He held her, almost as
if she were sanctified to him by death, and kissed her, once, almost as he might have kissed
the dead.
'I promised that I would not accompany you, nor follow you. Shall I keep you in view?
You have been agitated, and it's growing dark.'
'I am used to be out alone at this hour, and I entreat you not to do so.'
'I promise. I can bring myself to promise nothing more tonight, Lizzie, except that I will
try what I can do.'
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'There is but one means, Mr Wrayburn, of sparing yourself and of sparing me, every
way. Leave this neighbourhood to−morrow morning.'
'I will try.'
As he spoke the words in a grave voice, she put her hand in his, removed it, and went
away by the river−side.
'Now, could Mortimer believe this?' murmured Eugene, still remaining, after a while,
where she had left him. 'Can I even believe it myself?'
He referred to the circumstance that there were tears upon his hand, as he stood
covering his eyes. 'A most ridiculous position this, to be found out in!' was his next thought.
And his next struck its root in a little rising resentment against the cause of the tears.
'Yet I have gained a wonderful power over her, too, let her be as much in earnest as she
will!'
The reflection brought back the yielding of her face and form as she had drooped under
his gaze. Contemplating the reproduction, he seemed to see, for the second time, in the
appeal and in the confession of weakness, a little fear.
'And she loves me. And so earnest a character must be very earnest in that passion. She
cannot choose for herself to be strong in this fancy, wavering in that, and weak in the other.
She must go through with her nature, as I must go through with mine. If mine exacts its
pains and penalties all round, so must hers, I suppose.'
Pursuing the inquiry into his own nature, he thought, 'Now, if I married her. If,
outfacing the absurdity of the situation in correspondence with M. R. F., I astonished M. R.
F. to the utmost extent of his respected powers, by informing him that I had married her,
how would M. R. F. reason with the legal mind? «You wouldn't marry for some money and
some station, because you were frightfully likely to become bored. Are you less frightfully
likely to become bored, marrying for no money and no station? Are you sure of yourself?»
Legal mind, in spite of forensic protestations, must secretly admit, «Good reasoning on the
part of M. R. F. NOT sure of myself.»'
In the very act of calling this tone of levity to his aid, he felt it to be profligate and
worthless, and asserted her against it.
'And yet,' said Eugene, 'I should like to see the fellow (Mortimer excepted) who would
undertake to tell me that this was not a real sentiment on my part, won out of me by her
beauty and her worth, in spite of myself, and that I would not be true to her. I should
particularly like to see the fellow to−night who would tell me so, or who would tell me
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anything that could he construed to her disadvantage; for I am wearily out of sorts with one
Wrayburn who cuts a sorry figure, and I would far rather be out of sorts with somebody else.
«Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, this is a bad business.» Ah! So go the Mortimer Lightwood bells,
and they sound melancholy to−night.'
Strolling on, he thought of something else to take himself to task for. 'Where is the
analogy, Brute Beast,' he said impatiently, 'between a woman whom your father coolly finds
out for you and a woman whom you have found out for yourself, and have ever drifted after
with more and more of constancy since you first set eyes upon her? Ass! Can you reason no
better than that?'
But, again he subsided into a reminiscence of his first full knowledge of his power just
now, and of her disclosure of her heart. To try no more to go away, and to try her again, was
the reckless conclusion it turned uppermost. And yet again, 'Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, this is
a bad business!' And, 'I wish I could stop the Lightwood peal, for it sounds like a knell.'
Looking above, he found that the young moon was up, and that the stars were beginning
to shine in the sky from which the tones of red and yellow were flickering out, in favour of
the calm blue of a summer night. He was still by the river−side. Turning suddenly, he met a
man, so close upon him that Eugene, surprised, stepped back, to avoid a collision. The man
carried something over his shoulder which might have been a broken oar, or spar, or bar, and
took no notice of him, but passed on.
'Halloa, friend!' said Eugene, calling after him, 'are you blind?'
The man made no reply, but went his way.
Eugene Wrayburn went the opposite way, with his hands behind him and his purpose in
his thoughts. He passed the sheep, and passed the gate, and came within hearing of the
village sounds, and came to the bridge. The inn where he stayed, like the village and the
mill, was not across the river, but on that side of the stream on which he walked. However,
knowing the rushy bank and the backwater on the other side to be a retired place, and feeling
out of humour for noise or company, he crossed the bridge, and sauntered on: looking up at
the stars as they seemed one by one to be kindled in the sky, and looking down at the river
as the same stars seemed to be kindled deep in the water. A landing−place overshadowed by
a willow, and a pleasure−boat lying moored there among some stakes, caught his eye as he
passed along. The spot was in such dark shadow, that he paused to make out what was there,
and then passed on again.
The rippling of the river seemed to cause a correspondent stir in his uneasy reflections.
He would have laid them asleep if he could, but they were in movement, like the stream, and
all tending one way with a strong current. As the ripple under the moon broke unexpectedly
now and then, and palely flashed in a new shape and with a new sound, so parts of his
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thoughts started, unbidden, from the rest, and revealed their wickedness. 'Out of the question
to marry her,' said Eugene, 'and out of the question to leave her. The crisis!'
He had sauntered far enough. Before turning to retrace his steps, he stopped upon the
margin, to look down at the reflected night. In an instant, with a dreadful crash, the reflected
night turned crooked, flames shot jaggedly across the air, and the moon and stars came
bursting from the sky.
Was he struck by lightning? With some incoherent half−formed thought to that effect,
he turned under the blows that were blinding him and mashing his life, and closed with a
murderer, whom he caught by a red neckerchief – unless the raining down of his own blood
gave it that hue.
Eugene was light, active, and expert; but his arms were broken, or he was paralysed,
and could do no more than hang on to the man, with his head swung back, so that he could
see nothing but the heaving sky. After dragging at the assailant, he fell on the bank with
him, and then there was another great crash, and then a splash, and all was done.
Lizzie Hexam, too, had avoided the noise, and the Saturday movement of people in the
straggling street, and chose to walk alone by the water until her tears should be dry, and she
could so compose herself as to escape remark upon her looking ill or unhappy on going
home. The peaceful serenity of the hour and place, having no reproaches or evil intentions
within her breast to contend against, sank healingly into its depths. She had meditated and
taken comfort. She, too, was turning homeward, when she heard a strange sound.
It startled her, for it was like a sound of blows. She stood still, and listened. It sickened
her, for blows fell heavily and cruelly on the quiet of the night. As she listened, undecided,
all was silent. As she yet listened, she heard a faint groan, and a fall into the river.
Her old bold life and habit instantly inspired her. Without vain waste of breath in crying
for help where there were none to hear, she ran towards the spot from which the sounds had
come. It lay between her and the bridge, but it was more removed from her than she had
thought; the night being so very quiet, and sound travelling far with the help of water.
At length, she reached a part of the green bank, much and newly trodden, where there
lay some broken splintered pieces of wood and some torn fragments of clothes. Stooping,
she saw that the grass was bloody. Following the drops and smears, she saw that the watery
margin of the bank was bloody. Following the current with her eyes, she saw a bloody face
turned up towards the moon, and drifting away.
Now, merciful Heaven be thanked for that old time, and grant, O Blessed Lord, that
through thy wonderful workings it may turn to good at last! To whomsoever the drifting face
belongs, be it man's or woman's, help my humble hands, Lord God, to raise it from death
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and restore it to some one to whom it must be dear!
It was thought, fervently thought, but not for a moment did the prayer check her. She
was away before it welled up in her mind, away, swift and true, yet steady above all – for
without steadiness it could never be done – to the landing−place under the willow−tree,
where she also had seen the boat lying moored among the stakes.
A sure touch of her old practised hand, a sure step of her old practised foot, a sure light
balance of her body, and she was in the boat. A quick glance of her practised eye showed
her, even through the deep dark shadow, the sculls in a rack against the red− brick
garden−wall. Another moment, and she had cast off (taking the line with her), and the boat
had shot out into the moonlight, and she was rowing down the stream as never other woman
rowed on English water.
Intently over her shoulder, without slackening speed, she looked ahead for the driving
face. She passed the scene of the struggle – yonder it was, on her left, well over the boat's
stern – she passed on her right, the end of the village street, a hilly street that almost dipped
into the river; its sounds were growing faint again, and she slackened; looking as the boat
drove, everywhere, everywhere, for the floating face.
She merely kept the boat before the stream now, and rested on her oars, knowing well
that if the face were not soon visible, it had gone down, and she would overshoot it. An
untrained sight would never have seen by the moonlight what she saw at the length of a few
strokes astern. She saw the drowning figure rise to the surface, slightly struggle, and as if by
instinct turn over on its back to float. Just so had she first dimly seen the face which she now
dimly saw again.
Firm of look and firm of purpose, she intently watched its coming on, until it was very
near; then, with a touch unshipped her sculls, and crept aft in the boat, between kneeling and
crouching. Once, she let the body evade her, not being sure of her grasp. Twice, and she had
seized it by its bloody hair.
It was insensible, if not virtually dead; it was mutilated, and streaked the water all about
it with dark red streaks. As it could not help itself, it was impossible for her to get it on
board. She bent over the stern to secure it with the line, and then the river and its shores rang
to the terrible cry she uttered.
But, as if possessed by supernatural spirit and strength, she lashed it safe, resumed her
seat, and rowed in, desperately, for the nearest shallow water where she might run the boat
aground. Desperately, but not wildly, for she knew that if she lost distinctness of intention,
all was lost and gone.
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She ran the boat ashore, went into the water, released him from the line, and by main
strength lifted him in her arms and laid him in the bottom of the boat. He had fearful wounds
upon him, and she bound them up with her dress torn into strips. Else, supposing him to be
still alive, she foresaw that he must bleed to death before he could be landed at his inn,
which was the nearest place for succour.
This done very rapidly, she kissed his disfigured forehead, looked up in anguish to the
stars, and blessed him and forgave him, 'if she had anything to forgive.' It was only in that
instant that she thought of herself, and then she thought of herself only for him.
Now, merciful Heaven be thanked for that old time, enabling me, without a wasted
moment, to have got the boat afloat again, and to row back against the stream! And grant, O
Blessed Lord God, that through poor me he may be raised from death, and preserved to
some one else to whom he may be dear one day, though never dearer than to me!
She rowed hard – rowed desperately, but never wildly – and seldom removed her eyes
from him in the bottom of the boat. She had so laid him there, as that she might see his
disfigured face; it was so much disfigured that his mother might have covered it, but it was
above and beyond disfigurement in her eyes.
The boat touched the edge of the patch of inn lawn, sloping gently to the water. There
were lights in the windows, but there chanced to be no one out of doors. She made the boat
fast, and again by main strength took him up, and never laid him down until she laid him
down in the house.
Surgeons were sent for, and she sat supporting his head. She had oftentimes heard in
days that were gone, how doctors would lift the hand of an insensible wounded person, and
would drop it if the person were dead. She waited for the awful moment when the doctors
might lift this hand, all broken and bruised, and let it fall.
The first of the surgeons came, and asked, before proceeding to his examination, 'Who
brought him in?'
'I brought him in, sir,' answered Lizzie, at whom all present looked.
'You, my dear? You could not lift, far less carry, this weight.'
'I think I could not, at another time, sir; but I am sure I did.'
The surgeon looked at her with great attention, and with some compassion. Having with
a grave face touched the wounds upon the head, and the broken arms, he took the hand.
O! would he let it drop?
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He appeared irresolute. He did not retain it, but laid it gently down, took a candle,
looked more closely at the injuries on the head, and at the pupils of the eyes. That done, he
replaced the candle and took the hand again. Another surgeon then coming in, the two
exchanged a whisper, and the second took the hand. Neither did he let it fall at once, but
kept it for a while and laid it gently down.
'Attend to the poor girl,' said the first surgeon then. 'She is quite unconscious. She sees
nothing and hears nothing. All the better for her! Don't rouse her, if you can help it; only
move her. Poor girl, poor girl! She must be amazingly strong of heart, but it is much to be
feared that she has set her heart upon the dead. Be gentle with her.'
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Chapter 7 − BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN
D
ay was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was
dull light in the east that was not the light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist
crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and
the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars: while
the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament
quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead.
Perhaps it was so likened by the lonely Bargeman, standing on the brink of the lock. For
certain, Bradley Headstone looked that way, when a chill air came up, and when it passed on
murmuring, as if it whispered something that made the phantom trees and water tremble – or
threaten – for fancy might have made it either.
He turned away, and tried the Lock−house door. It was fastened on the inside.
'Is he afraid of me?' he muttered, knocking.
Rogue Riderhood was soon roused, and soon undrew the bolt and let him in.
'Why, T'otherest, I thought you had been and got lost! Two nights away! I a'most
believed as you'd giv' me the slip, and I had as good as half a mind for to advertise you in
the newspapers to come for'ard.'
Bradley's face turned so dark on this hint, that Riderhood deemed it expedient to soften
it into a compliment.
'But not you, governor, not you,' he went on, stolidly shaking his head. 'For what did I
say to myself arter having amused myself with that there stretch of a comic idea, as a sort of
a playful game? Why, I says to myself; «He's a man o' honour.» That's what I says to
myself. «He's a man o' double honour.»'
Very remarkably, Riderhood put no question to him. He had looked at him on opening
the door, and he now looked at him again (stealthily this time), and the result of his looking
was, that he asked him no question.
'You'll be for another forty on 'em, governor, as I judges, afore you turns your mind to
breakfast,' said Riderhood, when his visitor sat down, resting his chin on his hand, with his
eyes on the ground. And very remarkably again: Riderhood feigned to set the scanty
furniture in order, while he spoke, to have a show of reason for not looking at him.
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'Yes. I had better sleep, I think,' said Bradley, without changing his position.
'I myself should recommend it, governor,' assented Riderhood. 'Might you be anyways
dry?'
'Yes. I should like a drink,' said Bradley; but without appearing to attend much.
Mr Riderhood got out his bottle, and fetched his jug−full of water, and administered a
potation. Then, he shook the coverlet of his bed and spread it smooth, and Bradley stretched
himself upon it in the clothes he wore. Mr Riderhood poetically remarking that he would
pick the bones of his night's rest, in his wooden chair, sat in the window as before; but, as
before, watched the sleeper narrowly until he was very sound asleep. Then, he rose and
looked at him close, in the bright daylight, on every side, with great minuteness. He went
out to his Lock to sum up what he had seen.
'One of his sleeves is tore right away below the elber, and the t'other's had a good rip at
the shoulder. He's been hung on to, pretty tight, for his shirt's all tore out of the
neck−gathers. He's been in the grass and he's been in the water. And he's spotted, and I know
with what, and with whose. Hooroar!'
Bradley slept long. Early in the afternoon a barge came down. Other barges had passed
through, both ways, before it; but the Lock−keeper hailed only this particular barge, for
news, as if he had made a time calculation with some nicety. The men on board told him a
piece of news, and there was a lingering on their part to enlarge upon it.
Twelve hours had intervened since Bradley's lying down, when he got up. 'Not that I
swaller it,' said Riderhood, squinting at his Lock, when he saw Bradley coming out of the
house, 'as you've been a sleeping all the time, old boy!'
Bradley came to him, sitting on his wooden lever, and asked what o'clock it was?
Riderhood told him it was between two and three.
'When are you relieved?' asked Bradley.
'Day arter to−morrow, governor.'
'Not sooner?'
'Not a inch sooner, governor.'
On both sides, importance seemed attached to this question of relief. Riderhood quite
petted his reply; saying a second time, and prolonging a negative roll of his head, 'n – n – not
a inch sooner, governor.'
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'Did I tell you I was going on to−night?' asked Bradley.
'No, governor,' returned Riderhood, in a cheerful, affable, and conversational manner,
'you did not tell me so. But most like you meant to it and forgot to it. How, otherways, could
a doubt have come into your head about it, governor?'
'As the sun goes down, I intend to go on,' said Bradley.
'So much the more necessairy is a Peck,' returned Riderhood. 'Come in and have it,
T'otherest.'
The formality of spreading a tablecloth not being observed in Mr Riderhood's
establishment, the serving of the 'peck' was the affair of a moment; it merely consisting in
the handing down of a capacious baking dish with three−fourths of an immense meat pie in
it, and the production of two pocket−knives, an earthenware mug, and a large brown bottle
of beer.
Both ate and drank, but Riderhood much the more abundantly. In lieu of plates, that
honest man cut two triangular pieces from the thick crust of the pie, and laid them, inside
uppermost, upon the table: the one before himself, and the other before his guest. Upon
these platters he placed two goodly portions of the contents of the pie, thus imparting the
unusual interest to the entertainment that each partaker scooped out the inside of his plate,
and consumed it with his other fare, besides having the sport of pursuing the clots of
congealed gravy over the plain of the table, and successfully taking them into his mouth at
last from the blade of his knife, in case of their not first sliding off it.
Bradley Headstone was so remarkably awkward at these exercises, that the Rogue
observed it.
'Look out, T'otherest!' he cried, 'you'll cut your hand!'
But, the caution came too late, for Bradley gashed it at the instant. And, what was more
unlucky, in asking Riderhood to tie it up, and in standing close to him for the purpose, he
shook his hand under the smart of the wound, and shook blood over Riderhood's dress.
When dinner was done, and when what remained of the platters and what remained of
the congealed gravy had been put back into what remained of the pie, which served as an
economical investment for all miscellaneous savings, Riderhood filled the mug with beer
and took a long drink. And now he did look at Bradley, and with an evil eye.
'T'otherest!' he said, hoarsely, as he bent across the table to touch his arm. 'The news has
gone down the river afore you.'
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Chapter 7 − BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN 688
'What news?'
'Who do you think,' said Riderhood, with a hitch of his head, as if he disdainfully jerked
the feint away, 'picked up the body? Guess.'
'I am not good at guessing anything.'
'She did. Hooroar! You had him there agin. She did.'
The convulsive twitching of Bradley Headstone's face, and the sudden hot humour that
broke out upon it, showed how grimly the intelligence touched him. But he said not a single
word, good or bad. He only smiled in a lowering manner, and got up and stood leaning at the
window, looking through it. Riderhood followed him with his eyes. Riderhood cast down his
eyes on his own besprinkled clothes. Riderhood began to have an air of being better at a
guess than Bradley owned to being.
'I have been so long in want of rest,' said the schoolmaster, 'that with your leave I'll lie
down again.'
'And welcome, T'otherest!' was the hospitable answer of his host. He had laid himself
down without waiting for it, and he remained upon the bed until the sun was low. When he
arose and came out to resume his journey, he found his host waiting for him on the grass by
the towing−path outside the door.
'Whenever it may be necessary that you and I should have any further communication
together,' said Bradley, 'I will come back. Good−night!'
'Well, since no better can be,' said Riderhood, turning on his heel, 'Good−night!' But he
turned again as the other set forth, and added under his breath, looking after him with a leer:
'You wouldn't be let to go like that, if my Relief warn't as good as come. I'll catch you up in
a mile.'
In a word, his real time of relief being that evening at sunset, his mate came lounging in,
within a quarter of an hour. Not staying to fill up the utmost margin of his time, but
borrowing an hour or so, to be repaid again when he should relieve his reliever, Riderhood
straightway followed on the track of Bradley Headstone.
He was a better follower than Bradley. It had been the calling of his life to slink and
skulk and dog and waylay, and he knew his calling well. He effected such a forced march on
leaving the Lock House that he was close up with him – that is to say, as close up with him
as he deemed it convenient to be – before another Lock was passed. His man looked back
pretty often as he went, but got no hint of him. HE knew how to take advantage of the
ground, and where to put the hedge between them, and where the wall, and when to duck,
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and when to drop, and had a thousand arts beyond the doomed Bradley's slow conception.
But, all his arts were brought to a standstill, like himself when Bradley, turning into a
green lane or riding by the river−side – a solitary spot run wild in nettles, briars, and
brambles, and encumbered with the scathed trunks of a whole hedgerow of felled trees, on
the outskirts of a little wood – began stepping on these trunks and dropping down among
them and stepping on them again, apparently as a schoolboy might have done, but assuredly
with no schoolboy purpose, or want of purpose.
'What are you up to?' muttered Riderhood, down in the ditch, and holding the hedge a
little open with both hands. And soon his actions made a most extraordinary reply. 'By
George and the Draggin!' cried Riderhood, 'if he ain't a going to bathe!'
He had passed back, on and among the trunks of trees again, and has passed on to the
water−side and had begun undressing on the grass. For a moment it had a suspicious look of
suicide, arranged to counterfeit accident. 'But you wouldn't have fetched a bundle under
your arm, from among that timber, if such was your game!' said Riderhood. Nevertheless it
was a relief to him when the bather after a plunge and a few strokes came out. 'For I
shouldn't,' he said in a feeling manner, 'have liked to lose you till I had made more money
out of you neither.'
Prone in another ditch (he had changed his ditch as his man had changed his position),
and holding apart so small a patch of the hedge that the sharpest eyes could not have
detected him, Rogue Riderhood watched the bather dressing. And now gradually came the
wonder that he stood up, completely clothed, another man, and not the Bargeman.
'Aha!' said Riderhood. 'Much as you was dressed that night. I see. You're a taking me
with you, now. You're deep. But I knows a deeper.'
When the bather had finished dressing, he kneeled on the grass, doing something with
his hands, and again stood up with his bundle under his arm. Looking all around him with
great attention, he then went to the river's edge, and flung it in as far, and yet as lightly as he
could. It was not until he was so decidedly upon his way again as to be beyond a bend of the
river and for the time out of view, that Riderhood scrambled from the ditch.
'Now,' was his debate with himself 'shall I foller you on, or shall I let you loose for this
once, and go a fishing?' The debate continuing, he followed, as a precautionary measure in
any case, and got him again in sight. 'If I was to let you loose this once,' said Riderhood
then, still following, 'I could make you come to me agin, or I could find you out in one way
or another. If I wasn't to go a fishing, others might. – I'll let you loose this once, and go a
fishing!' With that, he suddenly dropped the pursuit and turned.
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The miserable man whom he had released for the time, but not for long, went on
towards London. Bradley was suspicious of every sound he heard, and of every face he saw,
but was under a spell which very commonly falls upon the shedder of blood, and had no
suspicion of the real danger that lurked in his life, and would have it yet. Riderhood was
much in his thoughts – had never been out of his thoughts since the night−adventure of their
first meeting; but Riderhood occupied a very different place there, from the place of pursuer;
and Bradley had been at the pains of devising so many means of fitting that place to him,
and of wedging him into it, that his mind could not compass the possibility of his occupying
any other. And this is another spell against which the shedder of blood for ever strives in
vain. There are fifty doors by which discovery may enter. With infinite pains and cunning,
he double locks and bars forty−nine of them, and cannot see the fiftieth standing wide open.
Now, too, was he cursed with a state of mind more wearing and more wearisome than
remorse. He had no remorse; but the evildoer who can hold that avenger at bay, cannot
escape the slower torture of incessantly doing the evil deed again and doing it more
efficiently. In the defensive declarations and pretended confessions of murderers, the
pursuing shadow of this torture may be traced through every lie they tell. If I had done it as
alleged, is it conceivable that I would have made this and this mistake? If I had done it as
alleged, should I have left that unguarded place which that false and wicked witness against
me so infamously deposed to? The state of that wretch who continually finds the weak spots
in his own crime, and strives to strengthen them when it is unchangeable, is a state that
aggravates the offence by doing the deed a thousand times instead of once; but it is a state,
too, that tauntingly visits the offence upon a sullen unrepentant nature with its heaviest
punishment every time.
Bradley toiled on, chained heavily to the idea of his hatred and his vengeance, and
thinking how he might have satiated both in many better ways than the way he had taken.
The instrument might have been better, the spot and the hour might have been better chosen.
To batter a man down from behind in the dark, on the brink of a river, was well enough, but
he ought to have been instantly disabled, whereas he had turned and seized his assailant; and
so, to end it before chance−help came, and to be rid of him, he had been hurriedly thrown
backward into the river before the life was fully beaten out of him. Now if it could be done
again, it must not be so done. Supposing his head had been held down under water for a
while. Supposing the first blow had been truer. Supposing he had been shot. Supposing he
had been strangled. Suppose this way, that way, the other way. Suppose anything but getting
unchained from the one idea, for that was inexorably impossible.
The school reopened next day. The scholars saw little or no change in their master's
face, for it always wore its slowly labouring expression. But, as he heard his classes, he was
always doing the deed and doing it better. As he paused with his piece of chalk at the black
board before writing on it, he was thinking of the spot, and whether the water was not deeper
and the fall straighter, a little higher up, or a little lower down. He had half a mind to draw a
line or two upon the board, and show himself what he meant. He was doing it again and
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improving on the manner, at prayers, in his mental arithmetic, all through his questioning,
all through the day.
Charley Hexam was a master now, in another school, under another head. It was
evening, and Bradley was walking in his garden observed from behind a blind by gentle
little Miss Peecher, who contemplated offering him a loan of her smelling salts for
headache, when Mary Anne, in faithful attendance, held up her arm.
'Yes, Mary Anne?'
'Young Mr Hexam, if you please, ma'am, coming to see Mr Headstone.'
'Very good, Mary Anne.'
Again Mary Anne held up her arm.
'You may speak, Mary Anne?'
'Mr Headstone has beckoned young Mr Hexam into his house, ma'am, and he has gone
in himself without waiting for young Mr Hexam to come up, and now HE has gone in too,
ma'am, and has shut the door.'
'With all my heart, Mary Anne.'
Again Mary Anne's telegraphic arm worked.
'What more, Mary Anne?'
'They must find it rather dull and dark, Miss Peecher, for the parlour blind's down, and
neither of them pulls it up.'
'There is no accounting,' said good Miss Peecher with a little sad sigh which she
repressed by laying her hand on her neat methodical boddice, 'there is no accounting for
tastes, Mary Anne.'
Charley, entering the dark room, stopped short when he saw his old friend in its yellow
shade.
'Come in, Hexam, come in.'
Charley advanced to take the hand that was held out to him; but stopped again, short of
it. The heavy, bloodshot eyes of the schoolmaster, rising to his face with an effort, met his
look of scrutiny.
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Chapter 7 − BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN 692
'Mr Headstone, what's the matter?'
'Matter? Where?'
'Mr Headstone, have you heard the news? This news about the fellow, Mr Eugene
Wrayburn? That he is killed?'
'He is dead, then!' exclaimed Bradley.
Young Hexam standing looking at him, he moistened his lips with his tongue, looked
about the room, glanced at his former pupil, and looked down. 'I heard of the outrage,' said
Bradley, trying to constrain his working mouth, 'but I had not heard the end of it.'
'Where were you,' said the boy, advancing a step as he lowered his voice, 'when it was
done? Stop! I don't ask that. Don't tell me. If you force your confidence upon me, Mr
Headstone, I'll give up every word of it. Mind! Take notice. I'll give up it, and I'll give up
you. I will!'
The wretched creature seemed to suffer acutely under this renunciation. A desolate air
of utter and complete loneliness fell upon him, like a visible shade.
'It's for me to speak, not you,' said the boy. 'If you do, you'll do it at your peril. I am
going to put your selfishness before you, Mr Headstone – your passionate, violent, and
ungovernable selfishness – to show you why I can, and why I will, have nothing more to do
with you.'
He looked at young Hexam as if he were waiting for a scholar to go on with a lesson
that he knew by heart and was deadly tired of. But he had said his last word to him.
'If you had any part – I don't say what – in this attack,' pursued the boy; 'or if you know
anything about it – I don't say how much – or if you know who did it – I go no closer – you
did an injury to me that's never to be forgiven. You know that I took you with me to his
chambers in the Temple when I told him my opinion of him, and made myself responsible
for my opinion of you. You know that I took you with me when I was watching him with a
view to recovering my sister and bringing her to her senses; you know that I have allowed
myself to be mixed up with you, all through this business, in favouring your desire to marry
my sister. And how do you know that, pursuing the ends of your own violent temper, you
have not laid me open to suspicion? Is that your gratitude to me, Mr Headstone?'
Bradley sat looking steadily before him at the vacant air. As often as young Hexam
stopped, he turned his eyes towards him, as if he were waiting for him to go on with the
lesson, and get it done. As often as the boy resumed, Bradley resumed his fixed face.
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'I am going to be plain with you, Mr Headstone,' said young Hexam, shaking his head in
a half−threatening manner, 'because this is no time for affecting not to know things that I do
know – except certain things at which it might not be very safe for you, to hint again. What I
mean is this: if you were a good master, I was a good pupil. I have done you plenty of credit,
and in improving my own reputation I have improved yours quite as much. Very well then.
Starting on equal terms, I want to put before you how you have shown your gratitude to me,
for doing all I could to further your wishes with reference to my sister. You have
compromised me by being seen about with me, endeavouring to counteract this Mr Eugene
Wrayburn. That's the first thing you have done. If my character, and my now dropping you,
help me out of that, Mr Headstone, the deliverance is to be attributed to me, and not to you.
No thanks to you for it!'
The boy stopping again, he moved his eyes again.
'I am going on, Mr Headstone, don't you be afraid. I am going on to the end, and I have
told you beforehand what the end is. Now, you know my story. You are as well aware as I
am, that I have had many disadvantages to leave behind me in life. You have heard me
mention my father, and you are sufficiently acquainted with the fact that the home from
which I, as I may say, escaped, might have been a more creditable one than it was. My
father died, and then it might have been supposed that my way to respectability was pretty
clear. No. For then my sister begins.'
He spoke as confidently, and with as entire an absence of any tell− tale colour in his
cheek, as if there were no softening old time behind him. Not wonderful, for there WAS
none in his hollow empty heart. What is there but self, for selfishness to see behind it?
'When I speak of my sister, I devoutly wish that you had never seen her, Mr Headstone.
However, you did see her, and that's useless now. I confided in you about her. I explained
her character to you, and how she interposed some ridiculous fanciful notions in the way of
our being as respectable as I tried for. You fell in love with her, and I favoured you with all
my might. She could not be induced to favour you, and so we came into collision with this
Mr Eugene Wrayburn. Now, what have you done? Why, you have justified my sister in
being firmly set against you from first to last, and you have put me in the wrong again! And
why have you done it? Because, Mr Headstone, you are in all your passions so selfish, and
so concentrated upon yourself that you have not bestowed one proper thought on me.'
The cool conviction with which the boy took up and held his position, could have been
derived from no other vice in human nature.
'It is,' he went on, actually with tears, 'an extraordinary circumstance attendant on my
life, that every effort I make towards perfect respectability, is impeded by somebody else
through no fault of mine! Not content with doing what I have put before you, you will drag
my name into notoriety through dragging my sister's – which you are pretty sure to do, if my
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suspicions have any foundation at all – and the worse you prove to be, the harder it will be
for me to detach myself from being associated with you in people's minds.'
When he had dried his eyes and heaved a sob over his injuries, he began moving
towards the door.
'However, I have made up my mind that I will become respectable in the scale of
society, and that I will not be dragged down by others. I have done with my sister as well as
with you. Since she cares so little for me as to care nothing for undermining my
respectability, she shall go her way and I will go mine. My prospects are very good, and I
mean to follow them alone. Mr Headstone, I don't say what you have got upon your
conscience, for I don't know. Whatever lies upon it, I hope you will see the justice of
keeping wide and clear of me, and will find a consolation in completely exonerating all but
yourself. I hope, before many years are out, to succeed the master in my present school, and
the mistress being a single woman, though some years older than I am, I might even marry
her. If it is any comfort to you to know what plans I may work out by keeping myself strictly
respectable in the scale of society, these are the plans at present occurring to me. In
conclusion, if you feel a sense of having injured me, and a desire to make some small
reparation, I hope you will think how respectable you might have been yourself and will
contemplate your blighted existence.'
Was it strange that the wretched man should take this heavily to heart? Perhaps he had
taken the boy to heart, first, through some long laborious years; perhaps through the same
years he had found his drudgery lightened by communication with a brighter and more
apprehensive spirit than his own; perhaps a family resemblance of face and voice between
the boy and his sister, smote him hard in the gloom of his fallen state. For whichsoever
reason, or for all, he drooped his devoted head when the boy was gone, and shrank together
on the floor, and grovelled there, with the palms of his hands tight−clasping his hot temples,
in unutterable misery, and unrelieved by a single tear.
Rogue Riderhood had been busy with the river that day. He had fished with assiduity on
the previous evening, but the light was short, and he had fished unsuccessfully. He had
fished again that day with better luck, and had carried his fish home to Plashwater Weir Mill
Lock−house, in a bundle.
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Chapter 7 − BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN 695
Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER
T
he dolls' dressmaker went no more to the business−premises of Pubsey and Co. in St
Mary Axe, after chance had disclosed to her (as she supposed) the flinty and hypocritical
character of Mr Riah. She often moralized over her work on the tricks and the manners of
that venerable cheat, but made her little purchases elsewhere, and lived a secluded life. After
much consultation with herself, she decided not to put Lizzie Hexam on her guard against
the old man, arguing that the disappointment of finding him out would come upon her quite
soon enough. Therefore, in her communication with her friend by letter, she was silent on
this theme, and principally dilated on the backslidings of her bad child, who every day grew
worse and worse.
'You wicked old boy,' Miss Wren would say to him, with a menacing forefinger, 'you'll
force me to run away from you, after all, you will; and then you'll shake to bits, and there'll
be nobody to pick up the pieces!'
At this foreshadowing of a desolate decease, the wicked old boy would whine and
whimper, and would sit shaking himself into the lowest of low spirits, until such time as he
could shake himself out of the house and shake another threepennyworth into himself. But
dead drunk or dead sober (he had come to such a pass that he was least alive in the latter
state), it was always on the conscience of the paralytic scarecrow that he had betrayed his
sharp parent for sixty threepennyworths of rum, which were all gone, and that her sharpness
would infallibly detect his having done it, sooner or later. All things considered therefore,
and addition made of the state of his body to the state of his mind, the bed on which Mr
Dolls reposed was a bed of roses from which the flowers and leaves had entirely faded,
leaving him to lie upon the thorns and stalks.
On a certain day, Miss Wren was alone at her work, with the house−door set open for
coolness, and was trolling in a small sweet voice a mournful little song which might have
been the song of the doll she was dressing, bemoaning the brittleness and meltability of wax,
when whom should she descry standing on the pavement, looking in at her, but Mr
Fledgeby.
'I thought it was you?' said Fledgeby, coming up the two steps.
'Did you?' Miss Wren retorted. 'And I thought it was you, young man. Quite a
coincidence. You're not mistaken, and I'm not mistaken. How clever we are!'
'Well, and how are you?' said Fledgeby.
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'I am pretty much as usual, sir,' replied Miss Wren. 'A very unfortunate parent, worried
out of my life and senses by a very bad child.'
Fledgeby's small eyes opened so wide that they might have passed for ordinary−sized
eyes, as he stared about him for the very young person whom he supposed to be in question.
'But you're not a parent,' said Miss Wren, 'and consequently it's of no use talking to you
upon a family subject. – To what am I to attribute the honour and favour?'
'To a wish to improve your acquaintance,' Mr Fledgeby replied.
Miss Wren, stopping to bite her thread, looked at him very knowingly.
'We never meet now,' said Fledgeby; 'do we?'
'No,' said Miss Wren, chopping off the word.
'So I had a mind,' pursued Fledgeby, 'to come and have a talk with you about our
dodging friend, the child of Israel.'
'So HE gave you my address; did he?' asked Miss Wren.
'I got it out of him,' said Fledgeby, with a stammer.
'You seem to see a good deal of him,' remarked Miss Wren, with shrewd distrust. 'A
good deal of him you seem to see, considering.'
'Yes, I do,' said Fledgeby. 'Considering.'
'Haven't you,' inquired the dressmaker, bending over the doll on which her art was being
exercised, 'done interceding with him yet?'
'No,' said Fledgeby, shaking his head.
'La! Been interceding with him all this time, and sticking to him still?' said Miss Wren,
busy with her work.
'Sticking to him is the word,' said Fledgeby.
Miss Wren pursued her occupation with a concentrated air, and asked, after an interval
of silent industry:
'Are you in the army?'
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Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER 697
'Not exactly,' said Fledgeby, rather flattered by the question.
'Navy?' asked Miss Wren.
'N – no,' said Fledgeby. He qualified these two negatives, as if he were not absolutely in
either service, but was almost in both.
'What are you then?' demanded Miss Wren.
'I am a gentleman, I am,' said Fledgeby.
'Oh!' assented Jenny, screwing up her mouth with an appearance of conviction. 'Yes, to
be sure! That accounts for your having so much time to give to interceding. But only to
think how kind and friendly a gentleman you must be!'
Mr Fledgeby found that he was skating round a board marked Dangerous, and had
better cut out a fresh track. 'Let's get back to the dodgerest of the dodgers,' said he. 'What's
he up to in the case of your friend the handsome gal? He must have some object. What's his
object?'
'Cannot undertake to say, sir, I am sure!' returned Miss Wren, composedly.
'He won't acknowledge where she's gone,' said Fledgeby; 'and I have a fancy that I
should like to have another look at her. Now I know he knows where she is gone.'
'Cannot undertake to say, sir, I am sure!' Miss Wren again rejoined.
'And you know where she is gone,' hazarded Fledgeby.
'Cannot undertake to say, sir, really,' replied Miss Wren.
The quaint little chin met Mr Fledgeby's gaze with such a baffling hitch, that that
agreeable gentleman was for some time at a loss how to resume his fascinating part in the
dialogue. At length he said:
'Miss Jenny! – That's your name, if I don't mistake?'
'Probably you don't mistake, sir,' was Miss Wren's cool answer; 'because you had it on
the best authority. Mine, you know.'
'Miss Jenny! Instead of coming up and being dead, let's come out and look alive. It'll
pay better, I assure you,' said Fledgeby, bestowing an inveigling twinkle or two upon the
dressmaker. 'You'll find it pay better.'
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'Perhaps,' said Miss Jenny, holding out her doll at arm's length, and critically
contemplating the effect of her art with her scissors on her lips and her head thrown back, as
if her interest lay there, and not in the conversation; 'perhaps you'll explain your meaning,
young man, which is Greek to me. – You must have another touch of blue in your trimming,
my dear.' Having addressed the last remark to her fair client, Miss Wren proceeded to snip at
some blue fragments that lay before her, among fragments of all colours, and to thread a
needle from a skein of blue silk.
'Look here,' said Fledgeby. – 'Are you attending?'
'I am attending, sir,' replied Miss Wren, without the slightest appearance of so doing.
'Another touch of blue in your trimming, my dear.'
'Well, look here,' said Fledgeby, rather discouraged by the circumstances under which
he found himself pursuing the conversation. 'If you're attending – '
('Light blue, my sweet young lady,' remarked Miss Wren, in a sprightly tone, 'being best
suited to your fair complexion and your flaxen curls.')
'I say, if you're attending,' proceeded Fledgeby, 'it'll pay better in this way. It'll lead in a
roundabout manner to your buying damage and waste of Pubsey and Co. at a nominal price,
or even getting it for nothing.'
'Aha!' thought the dressmaker. 'But you are not so roundabout, Little Eyes, that I don't
notice your answering for Pubsey and Co. after all! Little Eyes, Little Eyes, you're too
cunning by half.'
'And I take it for granted,' pursued Fledgeby, 'that to get the most of your materials for
nothing would be well worth your while, Miss Jenny?'
'You may take it for granted,' returned the dressmaker with many knowing nods, 'that
it's always well worth my while to make money.'
'Now,' said Fledgeby approvingly, 'you're answering to a sensible purpose. Now, you're
coming out and looking alive! So I make so free, Miss Jenny, as to offer the remark, that you
and Judah were too thick together to last. You can't come to be intimate with such a deep file
as Judah without beginning to see a little way into him, you know,' said Fledgeby with a
wink.
'I must own,' returned the dressmaker, with her eyes upon her work, 'that we are not
good friends at present.'
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Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER 699
'I know you're not good friends at present,' said Fledgeby. 'I know all about it. I should
like to pay off Judah, by not letting him have his own deep way in everything. In most
things he'll get it by hook or by crook, but – hang it all! – don't let him have his own deep
way in everything. That's too much.' Mr Fledgeby said this with some display of indignant
warmth, as if he was counsel in the cause for Virtue.
'How can I prevent his having his own way?' began the dressmaker.
'Deep way, I called it,' said Fledgeby.
' – His own deep way, in anything?'
'I'll tell you,' said Fledgeby. 'I like to hear you ask it, because it's looking alive. It's what
I should expect to find in one of your sagacious understanding. Now, candidly.'
'Eh?' cried Miss Jenny.
'I said, now candidly,' Mr Fledgeby explained, a little put out.
'Oh−h!'
'I should be glad to countermine him, respecting the handsome gal, your friend. He
means something there. You may depend upon it, Judah means something there. He has a
motive, and of course his motive is a dark motive. Now, whatever his motive is, it's
necessary to his motive' – Mr Fledgeby's constructive powers were not equal to the
avoidance of some tautology here – 'that it should be kept from me, what he has done with
her. So I put it to you, who know: What HAS he done with her? I ask no more. And is that
asking much, when you understand that it will pay?'
Miss Jenny Wren, who had cast her eyes upon the bench again after her last
interruption, sat looking at it, needle in hand but not working, for some moments. She then
briskly resumed her work, and said with a sidelong glance of her eyes and chin at Mr
Fledgeby:
'Where d'ye live?'
'Albany, Piccadilly,' replied Fledgeby.
'When are you at home?'
'When you like.'
'Breakfast−time?' said Jenny, in her abruptest and shortest manner.
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Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER 700
'No better time in the day,' said Fledgeby.
'I'll look in upon you to−morrow, young man. Those two ladies,' pointing to dolls, 'have
an appointment in Bond Street at ten precisely. When I've dropped 'em there, I'll drive round
to you. With a weird little laugh, Miss Jenny pointed to her crutch−stick as her equipage.
'This is looking alive indeed!' cried Fledgeby, rising.
'Mark you! I promise you nothing,' said the dolls' dressmaker, dabbing two dabs at him
with her needle, as if she put out both his eyes.
'No no. I understand,' returned Fledgeby. 'The damage and waste question shall be
settled first. It shall be made to pay; don't you be afraid. Good−day, Miss Jenny.'
'Good−day, young man.'
Mr Fledgeby's prepossessing form withdrew itself; and the little dressmaker, clipping
and snipping and stitching, and stitching and snipping and clipping, fell to work at a great
rate; musing and muttering all the time.
'Misty, misty, misty. Can't make it out. Little Eyes and the wolf in a conspiracy? Or
Little Eyes and the wolf against one another? Can't make it out. My poor Lizzie, have they
both designs against you, either way? Can't make it out. Is Little Eyes Pubsey, and the wolf
Co? Can't make it out. Pubsey true to Co, and Co to Pubsey? Pubsey false to Co, and Co to
Pubsey? Can't make it out. What said Little Eyes? «Now, candidly?» Ah! However the cat
jumps, HE'S a liar. That's all I can make out at present; but you may go to bed in the Albany,
Piccadilly, with THAT for your pillow, young man!' Thereupon, the little dressmaker again
dabbed out his eyes separately, and making a loop in the air of her thread and deftly catching
it into a knot with her needle, seemed to bowstring him into the bargain.
For the terrors undergone by Mr Dolls that evening when his little parent sat profoundly
meditating over her work, and when he imagined himself found out, as often as she changed
her attitude, or turned her eyes towards him, there is no adequate name. Moreover it was her
habit to shake her head at that wretched old boy whenever she caught his eye as he shivered
and shook. What are popularly called 'the trembles' being in full force upon him that
evening, and likewise what are popularly called 'the horrors,' he had a very bad time of it;
which was not made better by his being so remorseful as frequently to moan 'Sixty
threepennorths.' This imperfect sentence not being at all intelligible as a confession, but
sounding like a Gargantuan order for a dram, brought him into new difficulties by
occasioning his parent to pounce at him in a more than usually snappish manner, and to
overwhelm him with bitter reproaches.
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Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER 701
What was a bad time for Mr Dolls, could not fail to be a bad time for the dolls'
dressmaker. However, she was on the alert next morning, and drove to Bond Street, and set
down the two ladies punctually, and then directed her equipage to conduct her to the Albany.
Arrived at the doorway of the house in which Mr Fledgeby's chambers were, she found a
lady standing there in a travelling dress, holding in her hand – of all things in the world – a
gentleman's hat.
'You want some one?' said the lady in a stern manner.
'I am going up stairs to Mr Fledgeby's.'
'You cannot do that at this moment. There is a gentleman with him. I am waiting for the
gentleman. His business with Mr Fledgeby will very soon be transacted, and then you can go
up. Until the gentleman comes down, you must wait here.'
While speaking, and afterwards, the lady kept watchfully between her and the staircase,
as if prepared to oppose her going up, by force. The lady being of a stature to stop her with a
hand, and looking mightily determined, the dressmaker stood still.
'Well? Why do you listen?' asked the lady.
'I am not listening,' said the dressmaker.
'What do you hear?' asked the lady, altering her phrase.
'Is it a kind of a spluttering somewhere?' said the dressmaker, with an inquiring look.
'Mr Fledgeby in his shower−bath, perhaps,' remarked the lady, smiling.
'And somebody's beating a carpet, I think?'
'Mr Fledgeby's carpet, I dare say,' replied the smiling lady.
Miss Wren had a reasonably good eye for smiles, being well accustomed to them on the
part of her young friends, though their smiles mostly ran smaller than in nature. But she had
never seen so singular a smile as that upon this lady's face. It twitched her nostrils open in a
remarkable manner, and contracted her lips and eyebrows. It was a smile of enjoyment too,
though of such a fierce kind that Miss Wren thought she would rather not enjoy herself than
do it in that way.
'Well!' said the lady, watching her. 'What now?'
'I hope there's nothing the matter!' said the dressmaker.
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'Where?' inquired the lady.
'I don't know where,' said Miss Wren, staring about her. 'But I never heard such odd
noises. Don't you think I had better call somebody?'
'I think you had better not,' returned the lady with a significant frown, and drawing
closer.
On this hint, the dressmaker relinquished the idea, and stood looking at the lady as hard
as the lady looked at her. Meanwhile the dressmaker listened with amazement to the odd
noises which still continued, and the lady listened too, but with a coolness in which there
was no trace of amazement.
Soon afterwards, came a slamming and banging of doors; and then came running down
stairs, a gentleman with whiskers, and out of breath, who seemed to be red−hot.
'Is your business done, Alfred?' inquired the lady.
'Very thoroughly done,' replied the gentleman, as he took his hat from her.
'You can go up to Mr Fledgeby as soon as you like,' said the lady, moving haughtily
away.
'Oh! And you can take these three pieces of stick with you,' added the gentleman
politely, 'and say, if you please, that they come from Mr Alfred Lammle, with his
compliments on leaving England. Mr Alfred Lammle. Be so good as not to forget the name.'
The three pieces of stick were three broken and frayed fragments of a stout lithe cane.
Miss Jenny taking them wonderingly, and the gentleman repeating with a grin, 'Mr Alfred
Lammle, if you'll be so good. Compliments, on leaving England,' the lady and gentleman
walked away quite deliberately, and Miss Jenny and her crutch−stick went up stairs.
'Lammle, Lammle, Lammle?' Miss Jenny repeated as she panted from stair to stair, 'where
have I heard that name? Lammle, Lammle? I know! Saint Mary Axe!'
With a gleam of new intelligence in her sharp face, the dolls' dressmaker pulled at
Fledgeby's bell. No one answered; but, from within the chambers, there proceeded a
continuous spluttering sound of a highly singular and unintelligible nature.
'Good gracious! Is Little Eyes choking?' cried Miss Jenny.
Pulling at the bell again and getting no reply, she pushed the outer door, and found it
standing ajar. No one being visible on her opening it wider, and the spluttering continuing,
she took the liberry of opening an inner door, and then beheld the extraordinary spectacle of
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Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER 703
Mr Fledgeby in a shirt, a pair of Turkish trousers, and a Turkish cap, rolling over and over
on his own carpet, and spluttering wonderfully.
'Oh Lord!' gasped Mr Fledgeby. 'Oh my eye! Stop thief! I am strangling. Fire! Oh my
eye! A glass of water. Give me a glass of water. Shut the door. Murder! Oh Lord!' And then
rolled and spluttered more than ever.
Hurrying into another room, Miss Jenny got a glass of water, and brought it for
Fledgeby's relief: who, gasping, spluttering, and rattling in his throat betweenwhiles, drank
some water, and laid his head faintly on her arm.
'Oh my eye!' cried Fledgehy, struggling anew. 'It's salt and snuff. It's up my nose, and
down my throat, and in my wind−pipe. Ugh! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ah – h – h – h!' And here,
crowing fearfully, with his eyes starting out of his head, appeared to be contending with
every mortal disease incidental to poultry.
'And Oh my Eye, I'm so sore!' cried Fledgeby, starting, over on his back, in a spasmodic
way that caused the dressmaker to retreat to the wall. 'Oh I smart so! Do put something to
my back and arms, and legs and shoulders. Ugh! It's down my throat again and can't come
up. Ow! Ow! Ow! Ah – h – h – h! Oh I smart so!' Here Mr Fledgeby bounded up, and
bounded down, and went rolling over and over again.
The dolls' dressmaker looked on until he rolled himself into a corner with his Turkish
slippers uppermost, and then, resolving in the first place to address her ministration to the
salt and snuff, gave him more water and slapped his back. But, the latter application was by
no means a success, causing Mr Fledgeby to scream, and to cry out, 'Oh my eye! don't slap
me! I'm covered with weales and I smart so!'
However, he gradually ceased to choke and crow, saving at intervals, and Miss Jenny
got him into an easy−chair: where, with his eyes red and watery, with his features swollen,
and with some half−dozen livid bars across his face, he presented a most rueful sight.
'What ever possessed you to take salt and snuff, young man?' inquired Miss Jenny.
'I didn't take it,' the dismal youth replied. 'It was crammed into my mouth.'
'Who crammed it?' asked Miss Jenny.
'He did,' answered Fledgeby. 'The assassin. Lammle. He rubbed it into my mouth and
up my nose and down my throat – Ow! Ow! Ow! Ah – h – h – h! Ugh! – to prevent my
crying out, and then cruelly assaulted me.'
'With this?' asked Miss Jenny, showing the pieces of cane.
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Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER 704
'That's the weapon,' said Fledgeby, eyeing it with the air of an acquaintance. 'He broke it
over me. Oh I smart so! How did you come by it?'
'When he ran down stairs and joined the lady he had left in the hall with his hat' – Miss
Jenny began.
'Oh!' groaned Mr Fledgeby, writhing, 'she was holding his hat, was she? I might have
known she was in it.'
'When he came down stairs and joined the lady who wouldn't let me come up, he gave
me the pieces for you, and I was to say, «With Mr Alfred Lammle's compliments on his
leaving England.»' Miss Jenny said it with such spiteful satisfaction, and such a hitch of her
chin and eyes as might have added to Mr Fledgehy's miseries, if he could have noticed
either, in his bodily pain with his hand to his head.
'Shall I go for the police?' inquired Miss Jenny, with a nimble start towards the door.
'Stop! No, don't!' cried Fledgeby. 'Don't, please. We had better keep it quiet. Will you be
so good as shut the door? Oh I do smart so!'
In testimony of the extent to which he smarted, Mr Fledgeby came wallowing out of the
easy−chair, and took another roll on the carpet.
Now the door's shut,' said Mr Fledgeby, sitting up in anguish, with his Turkish cap half
on and half off, and the bars on his face getting bluer, 'do me the kindness to look at my
back and shoulders. They must be in an awful state, for I hadn't got my dressing−gown on,
when the brute came rushing in. Cut my shirt away from the collar; there's a pair of scissors
on that table. Oh!' groaned Mr Fledgeby, with his hand to his head again. 'How I do smart, to
be sure!'
'There?' inquired Miss Jenny, alluding to the back and shoulders.
'Oh Lord, yes!' moaned Fledgeby, rocking himself. 'And all over! Everywhere!'
The busy little dressmaker quickly snipped the shirt away, and laid bare the results of as
furious and sound a thrashing as even Mr Fledgeby merited. 'You may well smart, young
man!' exclaimed Miss Jenny. And stealthily rubbed her little hands behind him, and poked a
few exultant pokes with her two forefingers over the crown of his head.
'What do you think of vinegar and brown paper?' inquired the suffering Fledgeby, still
rocking and moaning. 'Does it look as if vinegar and brown paper was the sort of
application?'
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Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER 705
'Yes,' said Miss Jenny, with a silent chuckle. 'It looks as if it ought to be Pickled.'
Mr Fledgeby collapsed under the word 'Pickled,' and groaned again. 'My kitchen is on
this floor,' he said; 'you'll find brown paper in a dresser−drawer there, and a bottle of vinegar
on a shelf. Would you have the kindness to make a few plasters and put 'em on? It can't be
kept too quiet.'
'One, two – hum – five, six. You'll want six,' said the dress−maker.
'There's smart enough,' whimpered Mr Fledgeby, groaning and writhing again, 'for
sixty.'
Miss Jenny repaired to the kitchen, scissors in hand, found the brown paper and found
the vinegar, and skilfully cut out and steeped six large plasters. When they were all lying
ready on the dresser, an idea occurred to her as she was about to gather them up.
'I think,' said Miss Jenny with a silent laugh, 'he ought to have a little pepper? Just a few
grains? I think the young man's tricks and manners make a claim upon his friends for a little
pepper?'
Mr Fledgeby's evil star showing her the pepper−box on the chimneypiece, she climbed
upon a chair, and got it down, and sprinkled all the plasters with a judicious hand. She then
went back to Mr Fledgeby, and stuck them all on him: Mr Fledgeby uttering a sharp howl as
each was put in its place.
'There, young man!' said the dolls' dressmaker. 'Now I hope you feel pretty
comfortable?'
Apparently, Mr Fledgeby did not, for he cried by way of answer, 'Oh – h how I do
smart!'
Miss Jenny got his Persian gown upon him, extinguished his eyes crookedly with his
Persian cap, and helped him to his bed: upon which he climbed groaning. 'Business between
you and me being out of the question to−day, young man, and my time being precious,' said
Miss Jenny then, 'I'll make myself scarce. Are you comfortable now?'
'Oh my eye!' cried Mr Fledgeby. 'No, I ain't. Oh – h – h! how I do smart!'
The last thing Miss Jenny saw, as she looked back before closing the room door, was
Mr Fledgeby in the act of plunging and gambolling all over his bed, like a porpoise or
dolphin in its native element. She then shut the bedroom door, and all the other doors, and
going down stairs and emerging from the Albany into the busy streets, took omnibus for
Saint Mary Axe: pressing on the road all the gaily−dressed ladies whom she could see from
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Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER 706
the window, and making them unconscious lay−figures for dolls, while she mentally cut
them out and basted them.
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Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER 707
Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED
S
et down by the omnibus at the corner of Saint Mary Axe, and trusting to her feet and
her crutch−stick within its precincts, the dolls' dressmaker proceeded to the place of business
of Pubsey and Co. All there was sunny and quiet externally, and shady and quiet internally.
Hiding herself in the entry outside the glass door, she could see from that post of observation
the old man in his spectacles sitting writing at his desk.
'Boh!' cried the dressmaker, popping in her head at the glass−door. 'Mr Wolf at home?'
The old man took his glasses off, and mildly laid them down beside him. 'Ah Jenny, is it
you? I thought you had given me up.'
'And so I had given up the treacherous wolf of the forest,' she replied; 'but, godmother,
it strikes me you have come back. I am not quite sure, because the wolf and you change
forms. I want to ask you a question or two, to find out whether you are really godmother or
really wolf. May I?'
'Yes, Jenny, yes.' But Riah glanced towards the door, as if he thought his principal
might appear there, unseasonably.
'If you're afraid of the fox,' said Miss Jenny, 'you may dismiss all present expectations
of seeing that animal. HE won't show himself abroad, for many a day.'
'What do you mean, my child?'
'I mean, godmother,' replied Miss Wren, sitting down beside the Jew, 'that the fox has
caught a famous flogging, and that if his skin and bones are not tingling, aching, and
smarting at this present instant, no fox did ever tingle, ache, and smart.' Therewith Miss
Jenny related what had come to pass in the Albany, omitting the few grains of pepper.
'Now, godmother,' she went on, 'I particularly wish to ask you what has taken place
here, since I left the wolf here? Because I have an idea about the size of a marble, rolling
about in my little noddle. First and foremost, are you Pubsey and Co., or are you either?
Upon your solemn word and honour.'
The old man shook his head.
'Secondly, isn't Fledgeby both Pubsey and Co.?'
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 708
The old man answered with a reluctant nod.
'My idea,' exclaimed Miss Wren, 'is now about the size of an orange. But before it gets
any bigger, welcome back, dear godmother!'
The little creature folded her arms about the old man's neck with great earnestness, and
kissed him. 'I humbly beg your forgiveness, godmother. I am truly sorry. I ought to have had
more faith in you. But what could I suppose when you said nothing for yourself, you know?
I don't mean to offer that as a justification, but what could I suppose, when you were a silent
party to all he said? It did look bad; now didn't it?'
'It looked so bad, Jenny,' responded the old man, with gravity, 'that I will straightway
tell you what an impression it wrought upon me. I was hateful in mine own eyes. I was
hateful to myself, in being so hateful to the debtor and to you. But more than that, and worse
than that, and to pass out far and broad beyond myself – I reflected that evening, sitting
alone in my garden on the housetop, that I was doing dishonour to my ancient faith and race.
I reflected – clearly reflected for the first time – that in bending my neck to the yoke I was
willing to wear, I bent the unwilling necks of the whole Jewish people. For it is not, in
Christian countries, with the Jews as with other peoples. Men say, 'This is a bad Greek, but
there are good Greeks. This is a bad Turk, but there are good Turks.' Not so with the Jews.
Men find the bad among us easily enough – among what peoples are the bad not easily
found? – but they take the worst of us as samples of the best; they take the lowest of us as
presentations of the highest; and they say «All Jews are alike.» If, doing what I was content
to do here, because I was grateful for the past and have small need of money now, I had
been a Christian, I could have done it, compromising no one but my individual self. But
doing it as a Jew, I could not choose but compromise the Jews of all conditions and all
countries. It is a little hard upon us, but it is the truth. I would that all our people
remembered it! Though I have little right to say so, seeing that it came home so late to me.'
The dolls' dressmaker sat holding the old man by the hand, and looking thoughtfully in
his face.
'Thus I reflected, I say, sitting that evening in my garden on the housetop. And passing
the painful scene of that day in review before me many times, I always saw that the poor
gentleman believed the story readily, because I was one of the Jews – that you believed the
story readily, my child, because I was one of the Jews− −that the story itself first came into
the invention of the originator thereof, because I was one of the Jews. This was the result of
my having had you three before me, face to face, and seeing the thing visibly presented as
upon a theatre. Wherefore I perceived that the obligation was upon me to leave this service.
But Jenny, my dear,' said Riah, breaking off, 'I promised that you should pursue your
questions, and I obstruct them.'
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 709
'On the contrary, godmother; my idea is as large now as a pumpkin – and YOU know
what a pumpkin is, don't you? So you gave notice that you were going? Does that come
next?' asked Miss Jenny with a look of close attention.
'I indited a letter to my master. Yes. To that effect.'
'And what said Tingling−Tossing−Aching−Screaming− Scratching−Smarter?' asked
Miss Wren with an unspeakable enjoyment in the utterance of those honourable titles and in
the recollection of the pepper.
'He held me to certain months of servitude, which were his lawful term of notice. They
expire to−morrow. Upon their expiration – not before – I had meant to set myself right with
my Cinderella.'
'My idea is getting so immense now,' cried Miss Wren, clasping her temples, 'that my
head won't hold it! Listen, godmother; I am going to expound. Little Eyes (that's
Screaming−Scratching− Smarter) owes you a heavy grudge for going. Little Eyes casts
about how best to pay you off. Little Eyes thinks of Lizzie. Little Eyes says to himself, 'I'll
find out where he has placed that girl, and I'll betray his secret because it's dear to him.'
Perhaps Little Eyes thinks, «I'll make love to her myself too;» but that I can't swear – all the
rest I can. So, Little Eyes comes to me, and I go to Little Eyes. That's the way of it. And now
the murder's all out, I'm sorry,' added the dolls' dressmaker, rigid from head to foot with
energy as she shook her little fist before her eyes, 'that I didn't give him Cayenne pepper and
chopped pickled Capsicum!'
This expression of regret being but partially intelligible to Mr Riah, the old man
reverted to the injuries Fledgeby had received, and hinted at the necessity of his at once
going to tend that beaten cur.
'Godmother, godmother, godmother!' cried Miss Wren irritably, 'I really lose all
patience with you. One would think you believed in the Good Samaritan. How can you be so
inconsistent?'
'Jenny dear,' began the old man gently, 'it is the custom of our people to help – '
'Oh! Bother your people!' interposed Miss Wren, with a toss of her head. 'If your people
don't know better than to go and help Little Eyes, it's a pity they ever got out of Egypt. Over
and above that,' she added, 'he wouldn't take your help if you offered it. Too much ashamed.
Wants to keep it close and quiet, and to keep you out of the way.'
They were still debating this point when a shadow darkened the entry, and the glass
door was opened by a messenger who brought a letter unceremoniously addressed, 'Riah.'
To which he said there was an answer wanted.
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 710
The letter, which was scrawled in pencil uphill and downhill and round crooked corners,
ran thus:
'OLD RIAH,
Your accounts being all squared, go. Shut up the place, turn out directly, and send me
the key by bearer. Go. You are an unthankful dog of a Jew. Get out.
F.'
The dolls' dressmaker found it delicious to trace the screaming and smarting of Little
Eyes in the distorted writing of this epistle. She laughed over it and jeered at it in a
convenient corner (to the great astonishment of the messenger) while the old man got his
few goods together in a black bag. That done, the shutters of the upper windows closed, and
the office blind pulled down, they issued forth upon the steps with the attendant messenger.
There, while Miss Jenny held the bag, the old man locked the house door, and handed over
the key to him; who at once retired with the same.
'Well, godmother,' said Miss Wren, as they remained upon the steps together, looking at
one another. 'And so you're thrown upon the world!'
'It would appear so, Jenny, and somewhat suddenly.'
'Where are you going to seek your fortune?' asked Miss Wren.
The old man smiled, but looked about him with a look of having lost his way in life,
which did not escape the dolls' dressmaker.
'Verily, Jenny,' said he, 'the question is to the purpose, and more easily asked than
answered. But as I have experience of the ready goodwill and good help of those who have
given occupation to Lizzie, I think I will seek them out for myself.'
'On foot?' asked Miss Wren, with a chop.
'Ay!' said the old man. 'Have I not my staff?'
It was exactly because he had his staff, and presented so quaint an aspect, that she
mistrusted his making the journey.
'The best thing you can do,' said Jenny, 'for the time being, at all events, is to come
home with me, godmother. Nobody's there but my bad child, and Lizzie's lodging stands
empty.' The old man when satisfied that no inconvenience could be entailed on any one by
his compliance, readily complied; and the singularly−assorted couple once more went
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 711
through the streets together.
Now, the bad child having been strictly charged by his parent to remain at home in her
absence, of course went out; and, being in the very last stage of mental decrepitude, went out
with two objects; firstly, to establish a claim he conceived himself to have upon any licensed
victualler living, to be supplied with threepennyworth of rum for nothing; and secondly, to
bestow some maudlin remorse on Mr Eugene Wrayburn, and see what profit came of it.
Stumblingly pursuing these two designs – they both meant rum, the only meaning of which
he was capable – the degraded creature staggered into Covent Garden Market and there
bivouacked, to have an attack of the trembles succeeded by an attack of the horrors, in a
doorway.
This market of Covent Garden was quite out of the creature's line of road, but it had the
attraction for him which it has for the worst of the solitary members of the drunken tribe. It
may be the companionship of the nightly stir, or it may be the companionship of the gin and
beer that slop about among carters and hucksters, or it may be the companionship of the
trodden vegetable refuse which is so like their own dress that perhaps they take the Market
for a great wardrobe; but be it what it may, you shall see no such individual drunkards on
doorsteps anywhere, as there. Of dozing women−drunkards especially, you shall come upon
such specimens there, in the morning sunlight, as you might seek out of doors in vain
through London. Such stale vapid rejected cabbage−leaf and cabbage−stalk dress, such
damaged−orange countenance, such squashed pulp of humanity, are open to the day
nowhere else. So, the attraction of the Market drew Mr Dolls to it, and he had out his two
fits of trembles and horrors in a doorway on which a woman had had out her sodden nap a
few hours before.
There is a swarm of young savages always flitting about this same place, creeping off
with fragments of orange−chests, and mouldy litter – Heaven knows into what holes they
can convey them, having no home! – whose bare feet fall with a blunt dull softness on the
pavement as the policeman hunts them, and who are (perhaps for that reason) little heard by
the Powers that be, whereas in top−boots they would make a deafening clatter. These,
delighting in the trembles and the horrors of Mr Dolls, as in a gratuitous drama, flocked
about him in his doorway, butted at him, leaped at him, and pelted him. Hence, when he
came out of his invalid retirement and shook off that ragged train, he was much bespattered,
and in worse case than ever. But, not yet at his worst; for, going into a public−house, and
being supplied in stress of business with his rum, and seeking to vanish without payment, he
was collared, searched, found penniless, and admonished not to try that again, by having a
pail of dirty water cast over him. This application superinduced another fit of the trembles;
after which Mr Dolls, as finding himself in good cue for making a call on a professional
friend, addressed himself to the Temple.
There was nobody at the chambers but Young Blight. That discreet youth, sensible of a
certain incongruity in the association of such a client with the business that might be coming
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 712
some day, with the best intentions temporized with Dolls, and offered a shilling for
coach−hire home. Mr Dolls, accepting the shilling, promptly laid it out in two
threepennyworths of conspiracy against his life, and two threepennyworths of raging
repentance. Returning to the Chambers with which burden, he was descried coming round
into the court, by the wary young Blight watching from the window: who instantly closed
the outer door, and left the miserable object to expend his fury on the panels.
The more the door resisted him, the more dangerous and imminent became that bloody
conspiracy against his life. Force of police arriving, he recognized in them the conspirators,
and laid about him hoarsely, fiercely, staringly, convulsively, foamingly. A humble
machine, familiar to the conspirators and called by the expressive name of Stretcher, being
unavoidably sent for, he was rendered a harmless bundle of torn rags by being strapped
down upon it, with voice and consciousness gone out of him, and life fast going. As this
machine was borne out at the Temple gate by four men, the poor little dolls' dressmaker and
her Jewish friend were coming up the street.
'Let us see what it is,' cried the dressmaker. 'Let us make haste and look, godmother.'
The brisk little crutch−stick was but too brisk. 'O gentlemen, gentlemen, he belongs to
me!'
'Belongs to you?' said the head of the party, stopping it.
'O yes, dear gentlemen, he's my child, out without leave. My poor bad, bad boy! and he
don't know me, he don't know me! O what shall I do,' cried the little creature, wildly beating
her hands together, 'when my own child don't know me!'
The head of the party looked (as well he might) to the old man for explanation. He
whispered, as the dolls' dressmaker bent over the exhausted form and vainly tried to extract
some sign of recognition from it: 'It's her drunken father.'
As the load was put down in the street, Riah drew the head of the party aside, and
whispered that he thought the man was dying. 'No, surely not?' returned the other. But he
became less confident, on looking, and directed the bearers to 'bring him to the nearest
doctor's shop.'
Thither he was brought; the window becoming from within, a wall of faces, deformed
into all kinds of shapes through the agency of globular red bottles, green bottles, blue
bottles, and other coloured bottles. A ghastly light shining upon him that he didn't need, the
beast so furious but a few minutes gone, was quiet enough now, with a strange mysterious
writing on his face, reflected from one of the great bottles, as if Death had marked him:
'Mine.'
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 713
The medical testimony was more precise and more to the purpose than it sometimes is
in a Court of Justice. 'You had better send for something to cover it. All's over.'
Therefore, the police sent for something to cover it, and it was covered and borne
through the streets, the people falling away. After it, went the dolls' dressmaker, hiding her
face in the Jewish skirts, and clinging to them with one hand, while with the other she plied
her stick. It was carried home, and, by reason that the staircase was very narrow, it was put
down in the parlour – the little working−bench being set aside to make room for it – and
there, in the midst of the dolls with no speculation in their eyes, lay Mr Dolls with no
speculation in his.
Many flaunting dolls had to be gaily dressed, before the money was in the dressmaker's
pocket to get mourning for Mr Dolls. As the old man, Riah, sat by, helping her in such small
ways as he could, he found it difficult to make out whether she really did realize that the
deceased had been her father.
'If my poor boy,' she would say, 'had been brought up better, he might have done better.
Not that I reproach myself. I hope I have no cause for that.'
'None indeed, Jenny, I am very certain.'
'Thank you, godmother. It cheers me to hear you say so. But you see it is so hard to
bring up a child well, when you work, work, work, all day. When he was out of
employment, I couldn't always keep him near me. He got fractious and nervous, and I was
obliged to let him go into the streets. And he never did well in the streets, he never did well
out of sight. How often it happens with children!'
'Too often, even in this sad sense!' thought the old man.
'How can I say what I might have turned out myself, but for my back having been so
bad and my legs so queer, when I was young!' the dressmaker would go on. 'I had nothing to
do but work, and so I worked. I couldn't play. But my poor unfortunate child could play, and
it turned out the worse for him.'
'And not for him alone, Jenny.'
'Well! I don't know, godmother. He suffered heavily, did my unfortunate boy. He was
very, very ill sometimes. And I called him a quantity of names;' shaking her head over her
work, and dropping tears. 'I don't know that his going wrong was much the worse for me. If
it ever was, let us forget it.'
'You are a good girl, you are a patient girl.'
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 714
'As for patience,' she would reply with a shrug, 'not much of that, godmother. If I had
been patient, I should never have called him names. But I hope I did it for his good. And
besides, I felt my responsibility as a mother, so much. I tried reasoning, and reasoning
failed. I tried coaxing, and coaxing failed. I tried scolding and scolding failed. But I was
bound to try everything, you know, with such a charge upon my hands. Where would have
been my duty to my poor lost boy, if I had not tried everything!'
With such talk, mostly in a cheerful tone on the part of the industrious little creature, the
day−work and the night−work were beguiled until enough of smart dolls had gone forth to
bring into the kitchen, where the working−bench now stood, the sombre stuff that the
occasion required, and to bring into the house the other sombre preparations. 'And now,' said
Miss Jenny, 'having knocked off my rosy−cheeked young friends, I'll knock off my
white−cheeked self.' This referred to her making her own dress, which at last was done. 'The
disadvantage of making for yourself,' said Miss Jenny, as she stood upon a chair to look at
the result in the glass, 'is, that you can't charge anybody else for the job, and the advantage
is, that you haven't to go out to try on. Humph! Very fair indeed! If He could see me now
(whoever he is) I hope he wouldn't repent of his bargain!'
The simple arrangements were of her own making, and were stated to Riah thus:
'I mean to go alone, godmother, in my usual carriage, and you'll be so kind as keep
house while I am gone. It's not far off. And when I return, we'll have a cup of tea, and a chat
over future arrangements. It's a very plain last house that I have been able to give my poor
unfortunate boy; but he'll accept the will for the deed if he knows anything about it; and if he
doesn't know anything about it,' with a sob, and wiping her eyes, 'why, it won't matter to
him. I see the service in the Prayer−book says, that we brought nothing into this world and it
is certain we can take nothing out. It comforts me for not being able to hire a lot of stupid
undertaker's things for my poor child, and seeming as if I was trying to smuggle 'em out of
this world with him, when of course I must break down in the attempt, and bring 'em all
back again. As it is, there'll be nothing to bring back but me, and that's quite consistent, for I
shan't be brought back, some day!'
After that previous carrying of him in the streets, the wretched old fellow seemed to he
twice buried. He was taken on the shoulders of half a dozen blossom−faced men, who
shuffled with him to the churchyard, and who were preceded by another blossom−faced
man, affecting a stately stalk, as if he were a Policeman of the D(eath) Division, and
ceremoniously pretending not to know his intimate acquaintances, as he led the pageant.
Yet, the spectacle of only one little mourner hobbling after, caused many people to turn their
heads with a look of interest.
At last the troublesome deceased was got into the ground, to be buried no more, and the
stately stalker stalked back before the solitary dressmaker, as if she were bound in honour to
have no notion of the way home. Those Furies, the conventionalities, being thus appeased,
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 715
he left her.
'I must have a very short cry, godmother, before I cheer up for good,' said the little
creature, coming in. 'Because after all a child is a child, you know.'
It was a longer cry than might have been expected. Howbeit, it wore itself out in a
shadowy corner, and then the dressmaker came forth, and washed her face, and made the
tea. 'You wouldn't mind my cutting out something while we are at tea, would you?' she
asked her Jewish friend, with a coaxing air.
'Cinderella, dear child,' the old man expostulated, 'will you never rest?'
'Oh! It's not work, cutting out a pattern isn't,' said Miss Jenny, with her busy little
scissors already snipping at some paper. 'The truth is, godmother, I want to fix it while I
have it correct in my mind.'
'Have you seen it to−day then?' asked Riah.
'Yes, godmother. Saw it just now. It's a surplice, that's what it is. Thing our clergymen
wear, you know,' explained Miss Jenny, in consideration of his professing another faith.
'And what have you to do with that, Jenny?'
'Why, godmother,' replied the dressmaker, 'you must know that we Professors who live
upon our taste and invention, are obliged to keep our eyes always open. And you know
already that I have many extra expenses to meet just now. So, it came into my head while I
was weeping at my poor boy's grave, that something in my way might be done with a
clergyman.'
'What can be done?' asked the old man.
'Not a funeral, never fear!' returned Miss Jenny, anticipating his objection with a nod.
'The public don't like to be made melancholy, I know very well. I am seldom called upon to
put my young friends into mourning; not into real mourning, that is; Court mourning they
are rather proud of. But a doll clergyman, my dear, – glossy black curls and whiskers –
uniting two of my young friends in matrimony,' said Miss Jenny, shaking her forefinger, 'is
quite another affair. If you don't see those three at the altar in Bond Street, in a jiffy, my
name's Jack Robinson!'
With her expert little ways in sharp action, she had got a doll into whitey−brown paper
orders, before the meal was over, and was displaying it for the edification of the Jewish
mind, when a knock was heard at the street−door. Riah went to open it, and presently came
back, ushering in, with the grave and courteous air that sat so well upon him, a gentleman.
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 716
The gentleman was a stranger to the dressmaker; but even in the moment of his casting
his eyes upon her, there was something in his manner which brought to her remembrance Mr
Eugene Wrayburn.
'Pardon me,' said the gentleman. 'You are the dolls' dressmaker?'
'I am the dolls' dressmaker, sir.'
'Lizzie Hexam's friend?'
'Yes, sir,' replied Miss Jenny, instantly on the defensive. 'And Lizzie Hexam's friend.'
'Here is a note from her, entreating you to accede to the request of Mr Mortimer
Lightwood, the bearer. Mr Riah chances to know that I am Mr Mortimer Lightwood, and
will tell you so.'
Riah bent his head in corroboration.
'Will you read the note?'
'It's very short,' said Jenny, with a look of wonder, when she had read it.
'There was no time to make it longer. Time was so very precious. My dear friend Mr
Eugene Wrayburn is dying.'
The dressmaker clasped her hands, and uttered a little piteous cry.
'Is dying,' repeated Lightwood, with emotion, 'at some distance from here. He is sinking
under injuries received at the hands of a villain who attacked him in the dark. I come straight
from his bedside. He is almost always insensible. In a short restless interval of sensibility, or
partial sensibility, I made out that he asked for you to be brought to sit by him. Hardly
relying on my own interpretation of the indistinct sounds he made, I caused Lizzie to hear
them. We were both sure that he asked for you.'
The dressmaker, with her hands still clasped, looked affrightedly from the one to the
other of her two companions.
'If you delay, he may die with his request ungratified, with his last wish – intrusted to
me – we have long been much more than brothers – unfulfilled. I shall break down, if I try to
say more.
In a few moments the black bonnet and the crutch−stick were on duty, the good Jew
was left in possession of the house, and the dolls' dressmaker, side by side in a chaise with
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 717
Mortimer Lightwood, was posting out of town.
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Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED 718
Chapter 10 − THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD
A
darkened and hushed room; the river outside the windows flowing on to the vast
ocean; a figure on the bed, swathed and bandaged and bound, lying helpless on its back,
with its two useless arms in splints at its sides. Only two days of usage so familiarized the
little dressmaker with this scene, that it held the place occupied two days ago by the
recollections of years.
He had scarcely moved since her arrival. Sometimes his eyes were open, sometimes
closed. When they were open, there was no meaning in their unwinking stare at one spot
straight before them, unless for a moment the brow knitted into a faint expression of anger,
or surprise. Then, Mortimer Lightwood would speak to him, and on occasions he would be
so far roused as to make an attempt to pronounce his friend's name. But, in an instant
consciousness was gone again, and no spirit of Eugene was in Eugene's crushed outer form.
They provided Jenny with materials for plying her work, and she had a little table
placed at the foot of his bed. Sitting there, with her rich shower of hair falling over the
chair−back, they hoped she might attract his notice. With the same object, she would sing,
just above her breath, when he opened his eyes, or she saw his brow knit into that faint
expression, so evanescent that it was like a shape made in water. But as yet he had not
heeded. The 'they' here mentioned were the medical attendant; Lizzie, who was there in all
her intervals of rest; and Lightwood, who never left him.
The two days became three, and the three days became four. At length, quite
unexpectedly, he said something in a whisper.
'What was it, my dear Eugene?'
'Will you, Mortimer – '
'Will I – ?
– 'Send for her?'
'My dear fellow, she is here.'
Quite unconscious of the long blank, he supposed that they were still speaking together.
The little dressmaker stood up at the foot of the bed, humming her song, and nodded to
him brightly. 'I can't shake hands, Jenny,' said Eugene, with something of his old look; 'but I
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Chapter 10 − THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD 719
am very glad to see you.'
Mortimer repeated this to her, for it could only be made out by bending over him and
closely watching his attempts to say it. In a little while, he added:
'Ask her if she has seen the children.'
Mortimer could not understand this, neither could Jenny herself, until he added:
'Ask her if she has smelt the flowers.'
'Oh! I know!' cried Jenny. 'I understand him now!' Then, Lightwood yielded his place to
her quick approach, and she said, bending over the bed, with that better look: 'You mean my
long bright slanting rows of children, who used to bring me ease and rest? You mean the
children who used to take me up, and make me light?'
Eugene smiled, 'Yes.'
'I have not seen them since I saw you. I never see them now, but I am hardly ever in
pain now.'
'It was a pretty fancy,' said Eugene.
'But I have heard my birds sing,' cried the little creature, 'and I have smelt my flowers.
Yes, indeed I have! And both were most beautiful and most Divine!'
'Stay and help to nurse me,' said Eugene, quietly. 'I should like you to have the fancy
here, before I die.'
She touched his lips with her hand, and shaded her eyes with that same hand as she
went back to her work and her little low song. He heard the song with evident pleasure, until
she allowed it gradually to sink away into silence.
'Mortimer.'
'My dear Eugene.'
'If you can give me anything to keep me here for only a few minutes – '
To keep you here, Eugene?'
'To prevent my wandering away I don't know where – for I begin to be sensible that I
have just come back, and that I shall lose myself again – do so, dear boy!'
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Mortimer gave him such stimulants as could be given him with safety (they were
always at hand, ready), and bending over him once more, was about to caution him, when he
said:
'Don't tell me not to speak, for I must speak. If you knew the harassing anxiety that
gnaws and wears me when I am wandering in those places – where are those endless places,
Mortimer? They must be at an immense distance!'
He saw in his friend's face that he was losing himself; for he added after a moment:
'Don't be afraid – I am not gone yet. What was it?'
'You wanted to tell me something, Eugene. My poor dear fellow, you wanted to say
something to your old friend – to the friend who has always loved you, admired you,
imitated you, founded himself upon you, been nothing without you, and who, God knows,
would be here in your place if he could!'
'Tut, tut!' said Eugene with a tender glance as the other put his hand before his face. 'I
am not worth it. I acknowledge that I like it, dear boy, but I am not worth it. This attack, my
dear Mortimer; this murder – '
His friend leaned over him with renewed attention, saying: 'You and I suspect some
one.'
'More than suspect. But, Mortimer, while I lie here, and when I lie here no longer, I trust
to you that the perpetrator is never brought to justice.'
'Eugene?'
'Her innocent reputation would be ruined, my friend. She would be punished, not he. I
have wronged her enough in fact; I have wronged her still more in intention. You recollect
what pavement is said to be made of good intentions. It is made of bad intentions too.
Mortimer, I am lying on it, and I know!'
'Be comforted, my dear Eugene.'
'I will, when you have promised me. Dear Mortimer, the man must never be pursued. If
he should be accused, you must keep him silent and save him. Don't think of avenging me;
think only of hushing the story and protecting her. You can confuse the case, and turn aside
the circumstances. Listen to what I say to you. It was not the schoolmaster, Bradley
Headstone. Do you hear me? Twice; it was not the schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone. Do
you hear me? Three times; it was not the schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone.'
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He stopped, exhausted. His speech had been whispered, broken, and indistinct; but by a
great effort he had made it plain enough to be unmistakeable.
'Dear fellow, I am wandering away. Stay me for another moment, if you can.'
Lightwood lifted his head at the neck, and put a wine−glass to his lips. He rallied.
'I don't know how long ago it was done, whether weeks, days, or hours. No matter.
There is inquiry on foot, and pursuit. Say! Is there not?'
'Yes.'
'Check it; divert it! Don't let her be brought in question. Shield her. The guilty man,
brought to justice, would poison her name. Let the guilty man go unpunished. Lizzie and my
reparation before all! Promise me!'
'Eugene, I do. I promise you!'
In the act of turning his eyes gratefully towards his friend, he wandered away. His eyes
stood still, and settled into that former intent unmeaning stare.
Hours and hours, days and nights, he remained in this same condition. There were times
when he would calmly speak to his friend after a long period of unconsciousness, and would
say he was better, and would ask for something. Before it could he given him, he would be
gone again.
The dolls' dressmaker, all softened compassion now, watched him with an earnestness
that never relaxed. She would regularly change the ice, or the cooling spirit, on his head, and
would keep her ear at the pillow betweenwhiles, listening for any faint words that fell from
him in his wanderings. It was amazing through how many hours at a time she would remain
beside him, in a crouching attitude, attentive to his slightest moan. As he could not move a
hand, he could make no sign of distress; but, through this close watching (if through no
secret sympathy or power) the little creature attained an understanding of him that
Lightwood did not possess. Mortimer would often turn to her, as if she were an interpreter
between this sentient world and the insensible man; and she would change the dressing of a
wound, or ease a ligature, or turn his face, or alter the pressure of the bedclothes on him,
with an absolute certainty of doing right. The natural lightness and delicacy of touch which
had become very refined by practice in her miniature work, no doubt was involved in this;
but her perception was at least as fine.
The one word, Lizzie, he muttered millions of times. In a certain phase of his distressful
state, which was the worst to those who tended him, he would roll his head upon the pillow,
incessantly repeating the name in a hurried and impatient manner, with the misery of a
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Chapter 10 − THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD 722
disturbed mind, and the monotony of a machine. Equally, when he lay still and staring, he
would repeat it for hours without cessation, but then, always in a tone of subdued warning
and horror. Her presence and her touch upon his breast or face would often stop this, and
then they learned to expect that he would for some time remain still, with his eyes closed,
and that he would be conscious on opening them. But, the heavy disappointment of their
hope – revived by the welcome silence of the room – was, that his spirit would glide away
again and be lost, in the moment of their joy that it was there.
This frequent rising of a drowning man from the deep, to sink again, was dreadful to the
beholders. But, gradually the change stole upon him that it became dreadful to himself. His
desire to impart something that was on his mind, his unspeakable yearning to have speech
with his friend and make a communication to him, so troubled him when he recovered
consciousness, that its term was thereby shortened. As the man rising from the deep would
disappear the sooner for fighting with the water, so he in his desperate struggle went down
again.
One afternoon when he had been lying still, and Lizzie, unrecognized, had just stolen
out of the room to pursue her occupation, he uttered Lightwood's name.
'My dear Eugene, I am here.'
'How long is this to last, Mortimer?'
Lightwood shook his head. 'Still, Eugene, you are no worse than you were.'
'But I know there's no hope. Yet I pray it may last long enough for you to do me one last
service, and for me to do one last action. Keep me here a few moments, Mortimer. Try, try!'
His friend gave him what aid he could, and encouraged him to believe that he was more
composed, though even then his eyes were losing the expression they so rarely recovered.
'Hold me here, dear fellow, if you can. Stop my wandering away. I am going!'
'Not yet, not yet. Tell me, dear Eugene, what is it I shall do?'
'Keep me here for only a single minute. I am going away again. Don't let me go. Hear
me speak first. Stop me – stop me!'
'My poor Eugene, try to be calm.'
'I do try. I try so hard. If you only knew how hard! Don't let me wander till I have
spoken. Give me a little more wine.'
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Chapter 10 − THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD 723
Lightwood complied. Eugene, with a most pathetic struggle against the unconsciousness
that was coming over him, and with a look of appeal that affected his friend profoundly,
said:
'You can leave me with Jenny, while you speak to her and tell her what I beseech of her.
You can leave me with Jenny, while you are gone. There's not much for you to do. You
won't be long away.'
'No, no, no. But tell me what it is that I shall do, Eugene!'
'I am going! You can't hold me.'
'Tell me in a word, Eugene!'
His eyes were fixed again, and the only word that came from his lips was the word
millions of times repeated. Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie.
But, the watchful little dressmaker had been vigilant as ever in her watch, and she now
came up and touched Lightwood's arm as he looked down at his friend, despairingly.
'Hush!' she said, with her finger on her lips. 'His eyes are closing. He'll be conscious
when he next opens them. Shall I give you a leading word to say to him?'
'O Jenny, if you could only give me the right word!'
'I can. Stoop down.'
He stooped, and she whispered in his ear. She whispered in his ear one short word of a
single syllable. Lightwood started, and looked at her.
'Try it,' said the little creature, with an excited and exultant face. She then bent over the
unconscious man, and, for the first time, kissed him on the cheek, and kissed the poor
maimed hand that was nearest to her. Then, she withdrew to the foot of the bed.
Some two hours afterwards, Mortimer Lightwood saw his consciousness come back,
and instantly, but very tranquilly, bent over him.
'Don't speak, Eugene. Do no more than look at me, and listen to me. You follow what I
say.'
He moved his head in assent.
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Chapter 10 − THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD 724
'I am going on from the point where we broke off. Is the word we should soon have
come to – is it – Wife?'
'O God bless you, Mortimer!'
'Hush! Don't be agitated. Don't speak. Hear me, dear Eugene. Your mind will be more at
peace, lying here, if you make Lizzie your wife. You wish me to speak to her, and tell her
so, and entreat her to be your wife. You ask her to kneel at this bedside and be married to
you, that your reparation may be complete. Is that so?'
'Yes. God bless you! Yes.'
'It shall be done, Eugene. Trust it to me. I shall have to go away for some few hours, to
give effect to your wishes. You see this is unavoidable?'
'Dear friend, I said so.'
'True. But I had not the clue then. How do you think I got it?'
Glancing wistfully around, Eugene saw Miss Jenny at the foot of the bed, looking at
him with her elbows on the bed, and her head upon her hands. There was a trace of his
whimsical air upon him, as he tried to smile at her.
'Yes indeed,' said Lightwood, 'the discovery was hers. Observe my dear Eugene; while I
am away you will know that I have discharged my trust with Lizzie, by finding her here, in
my present place at your bedside, to leave you no more. A final word before I go. This is the
right course of a true man, Eugene. And I solemnly believe, with all my soul, that if
Providence should mercifully restore you to us, you will be blessed with a noble wife in the
preserver of your life, whom you will dearly love.'
'Amen. I am sure of that. But I shall not come through it, Mortimer.'
'You will not be the less hopeful or less strong, for this, Eugene.'
'No. Touch my face with yours, in case I should not hold out till you come back. I love
you, Mortimer. Don't be uneasy for me while you are gone. If my dear brave girl will take
me, I feel persuaded that I shall live long enough to be married, dear fellow.'
Miss Jenny gave up altogether on this parting taking place between the friends, and
sitting with her back towards the bed in the bower made by her bright hair, wept heartily,
though noiselessly. Mortimer Lightwood was soon gone. As the evening light lengthened
the heavy reflections of the trees in the river, another figure came with a soft step into the
sick room.
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Chapter 10 − THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD 725
'Is he conscious?' asked the little dressmaker, as the figure took its station by the pillow.
For, Jenny had given place to it immediately, and could not see the sufferer's face, in the
dark room, from her new and removed position.
'He is conscious, Jenny,' murmured Eugene for himself. 'He knows his wife.'
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Chapter 10 − THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD 726
Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO
THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY
M
rs John Rokesmith sat at needlework in her neat little room, beside a basket of neat
little articles of clothing, which presented so much of the appearance of being in the dolls'
dressmaker's way of business, that one might have supposed she was going to set up in
opposition to Miss Wren. Whether the Complete British Family Housewife had imparted
sage counsel anent them, did not appear, but probably not, as that cloudy oracle was
nowhere visible. For certain, however, Mrs John Rokesmith stitched at them with so
dexterous a hand, that she must have taken lessons of somebody. Love is in all things a most
wonderful teacher, and perhaps love (from a pictorial point of view, with nothing on but a
thimble), had been teaching this branch of needlework to Mrs John Rokesmith.
It was near John's time for coming home, but as Mrs John was desirous to finish a
special triumph of her skill before dinner, she did not go out to meet him. Placidly, though
rather consequentially smiling, she sat stitching away with a regular sound, like a sort of
dimpled little charming Dresden−china clock by the very best maker.
A knock at the door, and a ring at the bell. Not John; or Bella would have flown out to
meet him. Then who, if not John? Bella was asking herself the question, when that fluttering
little fool of a servant fluttered in, saying, 'Mr Lightwood!'
Oh good gracious!
Bella had but time to throw a handkerchief over the basket, when Mr Lightwood made
his bow. There was something amiss with Mr Lightwood, for he was strangely grave and
looked ill.
With a brief reference to the happy time when it had been his privilege to know Mrs
Rokesmith as Miss Wilfer, Mr Lightwood explained what was amiss with him and why he
came. He came bearing Lizzie Hexam's earnest hope that Mrs John Rokesmith would see
her married.
Bella was so fluttered by the request, and by the short narrative he had feelingly given
her, that there never was a more timely smelling−bottle than John's knock. 'My husband,'
said Bella; 'I'll bring him in.'
But, that turned out to be more easily said than done; for, the instant she mentioned Mr
Lightwood's name, John stopped, with his hand upon the lock of the room door.
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'Come up stairs, my darling.'
Bella was amazed by the flush in his face, and by his sudden turning away. 'What can it
mean?' she thought, as she accompanied him up stairs.
'Now, my life,' said John, taking her on his knee, 'tell me all about it.'
All very well to say, 'Tell me all about it;' but John was very much confused. His
attention evidently trailed off, now and then, even while Bella told him all about it. Yet she
knew that he took a great interest in Lizzie and her fortunes. What could it mean?
'You will come to this marriage with me, John dear?'
'N – no, my love; I can't do that.'
'You can't do that, John?'
'No, my dear, it's quite out of the question. Not to be thought of.'
'Am I to go alone, John?'
'No, my dear, you will go with Mr Lightwood.'
'Don't you think it's time we went down to Mr Lightwood, John dear?' Bella insinuated.
'My darling, it's almost time you went, but I must ask you to excuse me to him
altogether.'
'You never mean, John dear, that you are not going to see him? Why, he knows you
have come home. I told him so.'
'That's a little unfortunate, but it can't be helped. Unfortunate or fortunate, I positively
cannot see him, my love.'
Bella cast about in her mind what could be his reason for this unaccountable behaviour;
as she sat on his knee looking at him in astonishment and pouting a little. A weak reason
presented itself.
'John dear, you never can be jealous of Mr Lightwood?'
'Why, my precious child,' returned her husband, laughing outright: 'how could I be
jealous of him? Why should I be jealous of him?'
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Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY 728
'Because, you know, John,' pursued Bella, pouting a little more, 'though he did rather
admire me once, it was not my fault.'
'It was your fault that I admired you,' returned her husband, with a look of pride in her,
'and why not your fault that he admired you? But, I jealous on that account? Why, I must go
distracted for life, if I turned jealous of every one who used to find my wife beautiful and
winning!'
'I am half angry with you, John dear,' said Bella, laughing a little, 'and half pleased with
you; because you are such a stupid old fellow, and yet you say nice things, as if you meant
them. Don't be mysterious, sir. What harm do you know of Mr Lightwood?'
'None, my love.'
'What has he ever done to you, John?'
'He has never done anything to me, my dear. I know no more against him than I know
against Mr Wrayburn; he has never done anything to me; neither has Mr Wrayburn. And yet
I have exactly the same objection to both of them.'
'Oh, John!' retorted Bella, as if she were giving him up for a bad job, as she used to give
up herself. 'You are nothing better than a sphinx! And a married sphinx isn't a – isn't a nice
confidential husband,' said Bella, in a tone of injury.
'Bella, my life,' said John Rokesmith, touching her cheek, with a grave smile, as she cast
down her eyes and pouted again; 'look at me. I want to speak to you.'
'In earnest, Blue Beard of the secret chamber?' asked Bella, clearing her pretty face.
'In earnest. And I confess to the secret chamber. Don't you remember that you asked me
not to declare what I thought of your higher qualities until you had been tried?'
'Yes, John dear. And I fully meant it, and I fully mean it.'
'The time will come, my darling – I am no prophet, but I say so, – when you WILL be
tried. The time will come, I think, when you will undergo a trial through which you will
never pass quite triumphantly for me, unless you can put perfect faith in me.'
'Then you may be sure of me, John dear, for I can put perfect faith in you, and I do, and
I always, always will. Don't judge me by a little thing like this, John. In little things, I am a
little thing myself – I always was. But in great things, I hope not; I don't mean to boast, John
dear, but I hope not!'
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Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY 729
He was even better convinced of the truth of what she said than she was, as he felt her
loving arms about him. If the Golden Dustman's riches had been his to stake, he would have
staked them to the last farthing on the fidelity through good and evil of her affectionate and
trusting heart.
'Now, I'll go down to, and go away with, Mr Lightwood,' said Bella, springing up. 'You
are the most creasing and tumbling Clumsy−Boots of a packer, John, that ever was; but if
you're quite good, and will promise never to do so any more (though I don't know what you
have done!) you may pack me a little bag for a night, while I get my bonnet on.'
He gaily complied, and she tied her dimpled chin up, and shook her head into her
bonnet, and pulled out the bows of her bonnet− strings, and got her gloves on, finger by
finger, and finally got them on her little plump hands, and bade him good−bye and went
down. Mr Lightwood's impatience was much relieved when he found her dressed for
departure.
'Mr Rokesmith goes with us?' he said, hesitating, with a look towards the door.
'Oh, I forgot!' replied Bella. 'His best compliments. His face is swollen to the size of two
faces, and he is to go to bed directly, poor fellow, to wait for the doctor, who is coming to
lance him.'
'It is curious,' observed Lightwood, 'that I have never yet seen Mr Rokesmith, though
we have been engaged in the same affairs.'
'Really?' said the unblushing Bella.
'I begin to think,' observed Lightwood, 'that I never shall see him.'
'These things happen so oddly sometimes,' said Bella with a steady countenance, 'that
there seems a kind of fatality in them. But I am quite ready, Mr Lightwood.'
They started directly, in a little carriage that Lightwood had brought with him from
never−to−be−forgotten Greenwich; and from Greenwich they started directly for London;
and in London they waited at a railway station until such time as the Reverend Frank
Milvey, and Margaretta his wife, with whom Mortimer Lightwood had been already in
conference, should come and join them.
That worthy couple were delayed by a portentous old parishioner of the female gender,
who was one of the plagues of their lives, and with whom they bore with most exemplary
sweetness and good− humour, notwithstanding her having an infection of absurdity about
her, that communicated itself to everything with which, and everybody with whom, she
came in contact. She was a member of the Reverend Frank's congregation, and made a point
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Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY 730
of distinguishing herself in that body, by conspicuously weeping at everything, however
cheering, said by the Reverend Frank in his public ministration; also by applying to herself
the various lamentations of David, and complaining in a personally injured manner (much in
arrear of the clerk and the rest of the respondents) that her enemies were digging pit−falls
about her, and breaking her with rods of iron. Indeed, this old widow discharged herself of
that portion of the Morning and Evening Service as if she were lodging a complaint on oath
and applying for a warrant before a magistrate. But this was not her most inconvenient
characteristic, for that took the form of an impression, usually recurring in inclement
weather and at about daybreak, that she had something on her mind and stood in immediate
need of the Reverend Frank to come and take it off. Many a time had that kind creature got
up, and gone out to Mrs Sprodgkin (such was the disciple's name), suppressing a strong
sense of her comicality by his strong sense of duty, and perfectly knowing that nothing but a
cold would come of it. However, beyond themselves, the Reverend Frank Milvey and Mrs
Milvey seldom hinted that Mrs Sprodgkin was hardly worth the trouble she gave; but both
made the best of her, as they did of all their troubles.
This very exacting member of the fold appeared to be endowed with a sixth sense, in
regard of knowing when the Reverend Frank Milvey least desired her company, and with
promptitude appearing in his little hall. Consequently, when the Reverend Frank had
willingly engaged that he and his wife would accompany Lightwood back, he said, as a
matter of course: 'We must make haste to get out, Margaretta, my dear, or we shall be
descended on by Mrs Sprodgkin.' To which Mrs Milvey replied, in her pleasantly emphatic
way, 'Oh YES, for she IS such a marplot, Frank, and DOES worry so!' Words that were
scarcely uttered when their theme was announced as in faithful attendance below, desiring
counsel on a spiritual matter. The points on which Mrs Sprodkgin sought elucidation being
seldom of a pressing nature (as Who begat Whom, or some information concerning the
Amorites), Mrs Milvey on this special occasion resorted to the device of buying her off with
a present of tea and sugar, and a loaf and butter. These gifts Mrs Sprodgkin accepted, but
still insisted on dutifully remaining in the hall, to curtsey to the Reverend Frank as he came
forth. Who, incautiously saying in his genial manner, 'Well, Sally, there you are!' involved
himself in a discursive address from Mrs Sprodgkin, revolving around the result that she
regarded tea and sugar in the light of myrrh and frankincense, and considered bread and
butter identical with locusts and wild honey. Having communicated this edifying piece of
information, Mrs Sprodgkin was left still unadjourned in the hall, and Mr and Mrs Milvey
hurried in a heated condition to the railway station. All of which is here recorded to the
honour of that good Christian pair, representatives of hundreds of other good Christian pairs
as conscientious and as useful, who merge the smallness of their work in its greatness, and
feel in no danger of losing dignity when they adapt themselves to incomprehensible
humbugs.
'Detained at the last moment by one who had a claim upon me,' was the Reverend
Frank's apology to Lightwood, taking no thought of himself. To which Mrs Milvey added,
taking thought for him, like the championing little wife she was; 'Oh yes, detained at the last
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Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY 731
moment. But AS to the claim, Frank, I MUST say that I DO think you are
OVER−considerate sometimes, and allow THAT to be a LITTLE abused.'
Bella felt conscious, in spite of her late pledge for herself, that her husband's absence
would give disagreeable occasion for surprise to the Milveys. Nor could she appear quite at
her ease when Mrs Milvey asked:
'HOW is Mr Rokesmith, and IS he gone before us, or DOES he follow us?'
It becoming necessary, upon this, to send him to bed again and hold him in waiting to
be lanced again, Bella did it. But not half as well on the second occasion as on the first; for,
a twice−told white one seems almost to become a black one, when you are not used to it
'Oh DEAR!' said Mrs Milvey, 'I am SO sorry! Mr Rokesmith took SUCH an interest in
Lizzie Hexam, when we were there before. And if we had ONLY known of his face, we
COULD have given him something that would have kept it down long enough for so
SHORT a purpose.'
By way of making the white one whiter, Bella hastened to stipulate that he was not in
pain. Mrs Milvey was SO glad of it.
'I don't know HOW it is,' said Mrs Milvey, 'and I am SURE you don't, Frank, but the
clergy and their wives seem to CAUSE swelled faces. Whenever I take notice of a child in
the school, it seems to me as if its face swelled INSTANTLY. Frank NEVER makes
acquaintance with a new old woman, but she gets the face− ache. And another thing is, we
DO make the poor children sniff so. I don't know HOW we do it, and I should be so glad not
to; but the MORE we take notice of them, the MORE they sniff. Just as they do when the
text is given out. – Frank, that's a schoolmaster. I have seen him somewhere.'
The reference was to a young man of reserved appearance, in a coat and waistcoat of
black, and pantaloons of pepper and salt. He had come into the office of the station, from its
interior, in an unsettled way, immediately after Lightwood had gone out to the train; and he
had been hurriedly reading the printed hills and notices on the wall. He had had a wandering
interest in what was said among the people waiting there and passing to and fro. He had
drawn nearer, at about the time when Mrs Milvey mentioned Lizzie Hexam, and had
remained near, since: though always glancing towards the door by which Lightwood had
gone out. He stood with his back towards them, and his gloved hands clasped behind him.
There was now so evident a faltering upon him, expressive of indecision whether or no he
should express his having heard himself referred to, that Mr Milvey spoke to him.
'I cannot recall your name,' he said, 'but I remember to have seen you in your school.'
'My name is Bradley Headstone, sir,' he replied, backing into a more retired place.
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Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY 732
'I ought to have remembered it,' said Mr Milvey, giving him his hand. 'I hope you are
well? A little overworked, I am afraid?'
'Yes, I am overworked just at present, sir.'
'Had no play in your last holiday time?'
'No, sir.'
'All work and no play, Mr Headstone, will not make dulness, in your case, I dare say;
but it will make dyspepsia, if you don't take care.'
'I will endeavour to take care, sir. Might I beg leave to speak to you, outside, a
moment?'
'By all means.'
It was evening, and the office was well lighted. The schoolmaster, who had never
remitted his watch on Lightwood's door, now moved by another door to a corner without,
where there was more shadow than light; and said, plucking at his gloves:
'One of your ladies, sir, mentioned within my hearing a name that I am acquainted with;
I may say, well acquainted with. The name of the sister of an old pupil of mine. He was my
pupil for a long time, and has got on and gone upward rapidly. The name of Hexam. The
name of Lizzie Hexam.' He seemed to be a shy man, struggling against nervousness, and
spoke in a very constrained way. The break he set between his last two sentences was quite
embarrassing to his hearer.
'Yes,' replied Mr Milvey. 'We are going down to see her.'
'I gathered as much, sir. I hope there is nothing amiss with the sister of my old pupil? I
hope no bereavement has befallen her. I hope she is in no affliction? Has lost no – relation?'
Mr Milvey thought this a man with a very odd manner, and a dark downward look; but
he answered in his usual open way.
'I am glad to tell you, Mr Headstone, that the sister of your old pupil has not sustained
any such loss. You thought I might be going down to bury some one?'
'That may have been the connexion of ideas, sir, with your clerical character, but I was
not conscious of it. – Then you are not, sir?'
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Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY 733
A man with a very odd manner indeed, and with a lurking look that was quite
oppressive.
'No. In fact,' said Mr Milvey, 'since you are so interested in the sister of your old pupil, I
may as well tell you that I am going down to marry her.'
The schoolmaster started back.
'Not to marry her, myself,' said Mr Milvey, with a smile, 'because I have a wife already.
To perform the marriage service at her wedding.'
Bradley Headstone caught hold of a pillar behind him. If Mr Milvey knew an ashy face
when he saw it, he saw it then.
'You are quite ill, Mr Headstone!'
'It is not much, sir. It will pass over very soon. I am accustomed to be seized with
giddiness. Don't let me detain you, sir; I stand in need of no assistance, I thank you. Much
obliged by your sparing me these minutes of your time.'
As Mr Milvey, who had no more minutes to spare, made a suitable reply and turned
back into the office, he observed the schoolmaster to lean against the pillar with his hat in
his hand, and to pull at his neckcloth as if he were trying to tear it off. The Reverend Frank
accordingly directed the notice of one of the attendants to him, by saying: 'There is a person
outside who seems to be really ill, and to require some help, though he says he does not.'
Lightwood had by this time secured their places, and the departure− bell was about to
be rung. They took their seats, and were beginning to move out of the station, when the
same attendant came running along the platform, looking into all the carriages.
'Oh! You are here, sir!' he said, springing on the step, and holding the window−frame
by his elbow, as the carriage moved. 'That person you pointed out to me is in a fit.'
'I infer from what he told me that he is subject to such attacks. He will come to, in the
air, in a little while.'
He was took very bad to be sure, and was biting and knocking about him (the man said)
furiously. Would the gentleman give him his card, as he had seen him first? The gentleman
did so, with the explanation that he knew no more of the man attacked than that he was a
man of a very respectable occupation, who had said he was out of health, as his appearance
would of itself have indicated. The attendant received the card, watched his opportunity for
sliding down, slid down, and so it ended.
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Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY 734
Then, the train rattled among the house−tops, and among the ragged sides of houses
torn down to make way for it, and over the swarming streets, and under the fruitful earth,
until it shot across the river: bursting over the quiet surface like a bomb−shell, and gone
again as if it had exploded in the rush of smoke and steam and glare. A little more, and again
it roared across the river, a great rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings with
ineffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father Time goes to his. To whom it is
no matter what living waters run high or low, reflect the heavenly lights and darknesses,
produce their little growth of weeds and flowers, turn here, turn there, are noisy or still, are
troubled or at rest, for their course has one sure termination, though their sources and
devices are many.
Then, a carriage ride succeeded, near the solemn river, stealing away by night, as all
things steal away, by night and by day, so quietly yielding to the attraction of the loadstone
rock of Eternity; and the nearer they drew to the chamber where Eugene lay, the more they
feared that they might find his wanderings done. At last they saw its dim light shining out,
and it gave them hope: though Lightwood faltered as he thought: 'If he were gone, she would
still be sitting by him.'
But he lay quiet, half in stupor, half in sleep. Bella, entering with a raised admonitory
finger, kissed Lizzie softly, but said not a word. Neither did any of them speak, but all sat
down at the foot of the bed, silently waiting. And now, in this night−watch, mingling with
the flow of the river and with the rush of the train, came the questions into Bella's mind
again: What could be in the depths of that mystery of John's? Why was it that he had never
been seen by Mr Lightwood, whom he still avoided? When would that trial come, through
which her faith in, and her duty to, her dear husband, was to carry her, rendering him
triumphant? For, that had been his term. Her passing through the trial was to make the man
she loved with all her heart, triumphant. Term not to sink out of sight in Bella's breast.
Far on in the night, Eugene opened his eyes. He was sensible, and said at once: 'How
does the time go? Has our Mortimer come back?'
Lightwood was there immediately, to answer for himself. 'Yes, Eugene, and all is
ready.'
'Dear boy!' returned Eugene with a smile, 'we both thank you heartily. Lizzie, tell them
how welcome they are, and that I would be eloquent if I could.'
'There is no need,' said Mr Milvey. 'We know it. Are you better, Mr Wrayburn?'
'I am much happier,' said Eugene.
'Much better too, I hope?'
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Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY 735
Eugene turned his eyes towards Lizzie, as if to spare her, and answered nothing
Then, they all stood around the bed, and Mr Milvey, opening his book, began the
service; so rarely associated with the shadow of death; so inseparable in the mind from a
flush of life and gaiety and hope and health and joy. Bella thought how different from her
own sunny little wedding, and wept. Mrs Milvey overflowed with pity, and wept too. The
dolls' dressmaker, with her hands before her face, wept in her golden bower. Reading in a
low clear voice, and bending over Eugene, who kept his eyes upon him, Mr Milvey did his
office with suitable simplicity. As the bridegroom could not move his hand, they touched his
fingers with the ring, and so put it on the bride. When the two plighted their troth, she laid
her hand on his and kept it there. When the ceremony was done, and all the rest departed
from the room, she drew her arm under his head, and laid her own head down upon the
pillow by his side.
'Undraw the curtains, my dear girl,' said Eugene, after a while, 'and let us see our
wedding−day.'
The sun was rising, and his first rays struck into the room, as she came back, and put her
lips to his. 'I bless the day!' said Eugene. 'I bless the day!' said Lizzie.
'You have made a poor marriage of it, my sweet wife,' said Eugene. 'A shattered
graceless fellow, stretched at his length here, and next to nothing for you when you are a
young widow.'
'I have made the marriage that I would have given all the world to dare to hope for,' she
replied.
'You have thrown yourself away,' said Eugene, shaking his head. 'But you have
followed the treasure of your heart. My justification is, that you had thrown that away first,
dear girl!'
'No. I had given it to you.'
'The same thing, my poor Lizzie!'
'Hush! hush! A very different thing.'
There were tears in his eyes, and she besought him to close them. 'No,' said Eugene,
again shaking his head; 'let me look at you, Lizzie, while I can. You brave devoted girl! You
heroine!'
Her own eyes filled under his praises. And when he mustered strength to move his
wounded head a very little way, and lay it on her bosom, the tears of both fell.
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'Lizzie,' said Eugene, after a silence: 'when you see me wandering away from this
refuge that I have so ill deserved, speak to me by my name, and I think I shall come back.'
'Yes, dear Eugene.'
'There!' he exclaimed, smiling. 'I should have gone then, but for that!'
A little while afterwards, when he appeared to be sinking into insensibility, she said, in
a calm loving voice: 'Eugene, my dear husband!' He immediately answered: 'There again!
You see how you can recall me!' And afterwards, when he could not speak, he still answered
by a slight movement of his head upon her bosom.
The sun was high in the sky, when she gently disengaged herself to give him the
stimulants and nourishment he required. The utter helplessness of the wreck of him that lay
cast ashore there, now alarmed her, but he himself appeared a little more hopeful.
'Ah, my beloved Lizzie!' he said, faintly. 'How shall I ever pay all I owe you, if I
recover!'
'Don't be ashamed of me,' she replied, 'and you will have more than paid all.'
'It would require a life, Lizzie, to pay all; more than a life.'
'Live for that, then; live for me, Eugene; live to see how hard I will try to improve
myself, and never to discredit you.'
'My darling girl,' he replied, rallying more of his old manner than he had ever yet got
together. 'On the contrary, I have been thinking whether it is not the best thing I can do, to
die.'
'The best thing you can do, to leave me with a broken heart?'
'I don't mean that, my dear girl. I was not thinking of that. What I was thinking of was
this. Out of your compassion for me, in this maimed and broken state, you make so much of
me – you think so well of me – you love me so dearly.'
'Heaven knows I love you dearly!'
'And Heaven knows I prize it! Well. If I live, you'll find me out.'
'I shall find out that my husband has a mine of purpose and energy, and will turn it to
the best account?'
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'I hope so, dearest Lizzie,' said Eugene, wistfully, and yet somewhat whimsically. 'I
hope so. But I can't summon the vanity to think so. How can I think so, looking back on
such a trifiling wasted youth as mine! I humbly hope it; but I daren't believe it. There is a
sharp misgiving in my conscience that if I were to live, I should disappoint your good
opinion and my own – and that I ought to die, my dear!'
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Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY 738
Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW
T
he winds and tides rose and fell a certain number of times, the earth moved round the
sun a certain number of times, the ship upon the ocean made her voyage safely, and brought
a baby−Bella home. Then who so blest and happy as Mrs John Rokesmith, saving and
excepting Mr John Rokesmith!
'Would you not like to be rich NOW, my darling?'
'How can you ask me such a question, John dear? Am I not rich?'
These were among the first words spoken near the baby Bella as she lay asleep. She
soon proved to be a baby of wonderful intelligence, evincing the strongest objection to her
grandmother's society, and being invariably seized with a painful acidity of the stomach
when that dignified lady honoured her with any attention.
It was charming to see Bella contemplating this baby, and finding out her own dimples
in that tiny reflection, as if she were looking in the glass without personal vanity. Her
cherubic father justly remarked to her husband that the baby seemed to make her younger
than before, reminding him of the days when she had a pet doll and used to talk to it as she
carried it about. The world might have been challenged to produce another baby who had
such a store of pleasant nonsense said and sung to it, as Bella said and sung to this baby; or
who was dressed and undressed as often in four−and−twenty hours as Bella dressed and
undressed this baby; or who was held behind doors and poked out to stop its father's way
when he came home, as this baby was; or, in a word, who did half the number of baby
things, through the lively invention of a gay and proud young mother, that this inexhaustible
baby did.
The inexhaustible baby was two or three months old, when Bella began to notice a
cloud upon her husband's brow. Watching it, she saw a gathering and deepening anxiety
there, which caused her great disquiet. More than once, she awoke him muttering in his
sleep; and, though he muttered nothing worse than her own name, it was plain to her that his
restlessness originated in some load of care. Therefore, Bella at length put in her claim to
divide this load, and hear her half of it.
'You know, John dear,' she said, cheerily reverting to their former conversation, 'that I
hope I may safely be trusted in great things. And it surely cannot be a little thing that causes
you so much uneasiness. It's very considerate of you to try to hide from me that you are
uncomfortable about something, but it's quite impossible to be done, John love.'
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Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW 739
'I admit that I am rather uneasy, my own.'
'Then please to tell me what about, sir.'
But no, he evaded that. 'Never mind!' thought Bella, resolutely. 'John requires me to put
perfect faith in him, and he shall not be disappointed.'
She went up to London one day, to meet him, in order that they might make some
purchases. She found him waiting for her at her journey's end, and they walked away
together through the streets. He was in gay spirits, though still harping on that notion of their
being rich; and he said, now let them make believe that yonder fine carriage was theirs, and
that it was waiting to take them home to a fine house they had; what would Bella, in that
case, best like to find in the house? Well! Bella didn't know: already having everything she
wanted, she couldn't say. But, by degrees she was led on to confess that she would like to
have for the inexhaustible baby such a nursery as never was seen. It was to be 'a very
rainbow for colours', as she was quite sure baby noticed colours; and the staircase was to be
adorned with the most exquisite flowers, as she was absolutely certain baby noticed flowers;
and there was to be an aviary somewhere, of the loveliest little birds, as there was not the
smallest doubt in the world that baby noticed birds. Was there nothing else? No, John dear.
The predilections of the inexhaustible baby being provided for, Bella could think of nothing
else.
They were chatting on in this way, and John had suggested, 'No jewels for your own
wear, for instance?' and Bella had replied laughing. O! if he came to that, yes, there might be
a beautiful ivory case of jewels on her dressing−table; when these pictures were in a moment
darkened and blotted out.
They turned a corner, and met Mr Lightwood.
He stopped as if he were petrified by the sight of Bella's husband, who in the same
moment had changed colour.
'Mr Lightwood and I have met before,' he said.
'Met before, John?' Bella repeated in a tone of wonder. 'Mr Lightwood told me he had
never seen you.'
'I did not then know that I had,' said Lightwood, discomposed on her account. I believed
that I had only heard of – Mr Rokesmith.' With an emphasis on the name.
'When Mr Lightwood saw me, my love,' observed her husband, not avoiding his eye,
but looking at him, 'my name was Julius Handford.'
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Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW 740
Julius Handford! The name that Bella had so often seen in old newspapers, when she
was an inmate of Mr Boffin's house! Julius Handford, who had been publicly entreated to
appear, and for intelligence of whom a reward had been publicly offered!
'I would have avoided mentioning it in your presence,' said Lightwood to Bella,
delicately; 'but since your husband mentions it himself, I must confirm his strange
admission. I saw him as Mr Julius Handford, and I afterwards (unquestionably to his
knowledge) took great pains to trace him out.'
'Quite true. But it was not my object or my interest,' said Rokesmith, quietly, 'to be
traced out.'
Bella looked from the one to the other, in amazement.
'Mr Lightwood,' pursued her husband, 'as chance has brought us face to face at last –
which is not to be wondered at, for the wonder is, that, in spite of all my pains to the
contrary, chance has not confronted us together sooner – I have only to remind you that you
have been at my house, and to add that I have not changed my residence.'
'Sir' returned Lightwood, with a meaning glance towards Bella, 'my position is a truly
painful one. I hope that no complicity in a very dark transaction may attach to you, but you
cannot fail to know that your own extraordinary conduct has laid you under suspicion.'
'I know it has,' was all the reply.
'My professional duty,' said Lightwood hesitating, with another glance towards Bella, 'is
greatly at variance with my personal inclination; but I doubt, Mr Handford, or Mr
Rokesmith, whether I am justified in taking leave of you here, with your whole course
unexplained.'
Bella caught her husband by the hand.
'Don't be alarmed, my darling. Mr Lightwood will find that he is quite justified in taking
leave of me here. At all events,' added Rokesmith, 'he will find that I mean to take leave of
him here.'
'I think, sir,' said Lightwood, 'you can scarcely deny that when I came to your house on
the occasion to which you have referred, you avoided me of a set purpose.'
'Mr Lightwood, I assure you I have no disposition to deny it, or intention to deny it. I
should have continued to avoid you, in pursuance of the same set purpose, for a short time
longer, if we had not met now. I am going straight home, and shall remain at home
to−morrow until noon. Hereafter, I hope we may be better acquainted. Good−day.'
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Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW 741
Lightwood stood irresolute, but Bella's husband passed him in the steadiest manner,
with Bella on his arm; and they went home without encountering any further remonstrance
or molestation from any one.
When they had dined and were alone, John Rokesmith said to his wife, who had
preserved her cheerfulness: 'And you don't ask me, my dear, why I bore that name?'
'No, John love. I should dearly like to know, of course;' (which her anxious face
confirmed;) 'but I wait until you can tell me of your own free will. You asked me if I could
have perfect faith in you, and I said yes, and I meant it.'
It did not escape Bella's notice that he began to look triumphant. She wanted no
strengthening in her firmness; but if she had had need of any, she would have derived it
from his kindling face.
'You cannot have been prepared, my dearest, for such a discovery as that this
mysterious Mr Handford was identical with your husband?'
'No, John dear, of course not. But you told me to prepare to be tried, and I prepared
myself.'
He drew her to nestle closer to him, and told her it would soon be over, and the truth
would soon appear. 'And now,' he went on, 'lay stress, my dear, on these words that I am
going to add. I stand in no kind of peril, and I can by possibility be hurt at no one's hand.'
'You are quite, quite sure of that, John dear?'
'Not a hair of my head! Moreover, I have done no wrong, and have injured no man.
Shall I swear it?'
'No, John!' cried Bella, laying her hand upon his lips, with a proud look. 'Never to me!'
'But circumstances,' he went on ' – I can, and I will, disperse them in a moment – have
surrounded me with one of the strangest suspicions ever known. You heard Mr Lightwood
speak of a dark transaction?'
'Yes, John.'
'You are prepared to hear explicitly what he meant?'
'Yes, John.'
'My life, he meant the murder of John Harmon, your allotted husband.'
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Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW 742
With a fast palpitating heart, Bella grasped him by the arm. 'You cannot be suspected,
John?'
'Dear love, I can be – for I am!'
There was silence between them, as she sat looking in his face, with the colour quite
gone from her own face and lips. 'How dare they!' she cried at length, in a burst of generous
indignation. 'My beloved husband, how dare they!'
He caught her in his arms as she opened hers, and held her to his heart. 'Even knowing
this, you can trust me, Bella?'
'I can trust you, John dear, with all my soul. If I could not trust you, I should fall dead at
your feet.'
The kindling triumph in his face was bright indeed, as he looked up and rapturously
exclaimed, what had he done to deserve the blessing of this dear confiding creature's heart!
Again she put her hand upon his lips, saying, 'Hush!' and then told him, in her own little
natural pathetic way, that if all the world were against him, she would be for him; that if all
the world repudiated him, she would believe him; that if he were infamous in other eyes, he
would be honoured in hers; and that, under the worst unmerited suspicion, she could devote
her life to consoling him, and imparting her own faith in him to their little child.
A twilight calm of happiness then succeeding to their radiant noon, they remained at
peace, until a strange voice in the room startled them both. The room being by that time
dark, the voice said, 'Don't let the lady be alarmed by my striking a light,' and immediately a
match rattled, and glimmered in a hand. The hand and the match and the voice were then
seen by John Rokesmith to belong to Mr Inspector, once meditatively active in this
chronicle.
'I take the liberty,' said Mr Inspector, in a business−like manner, 'to bring myself to the
recollection of Mr Julius Handford, who gave me his name and address down at our place a
considerable time ago. Would the lady object to my lighting the pair of candles on the
chimneypiece, to throw a further light upon the subject? No? Thank you, ma'am. Now, we
look cheerful.'
Mr Inspector, in a dark−blue buttoned−up frock coat and pantaloons, presented a
serviceable, half−pay, Royal Arms kind of appearance, as he applied his pocket
handkerchief to his nose and bowed to the lady.
'You favoured me, Mr Handford,' said Mr Inspector, 'by writing down your name and
address, and I produce the piece of paper on which you wrote it. Comparing the same with
the writing on the fly−leaf of this book on the table – and a sweet pretty volume it is – I find
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Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW 743
the writing of the entry, 'Mrs John Rokesmith. From her husband on her birthday" – and
very gratifying to the feelings such memorials are – to correspond exactly. Can I have a
word with you?'
'Certainly. Here, if you please,' was the reply.
'Why,' retorted Mr Inspector, again using his pocket handkerchief, 'though there's
nothing for the lady to be at all alarmed at, still, ladies are apt to take alarm at matters of
business – being of that fragile sex that they're not accustomed to them when not of a strictly
domestic character – and I do generally make it a rule to propose retirement from the
presence of ladies, before entering upon business topics. Or perhaps,' Mr Inspector hinted, 'if
the lady was to step up−stairs, and take a look at baby now!'
'Mrs Rokesmith,' – her husband was beginning; when Mr Inspector, regarding the words
as an introduction, said, 'Happy I am sure, to have the honour.' And bowed, with gallantry.
'Mrs Rokesmith,' resumed her husband, 'is satisfied that she can have no reason for
being alarmed, whatever the business is.'
'Really? Is that so?' said Mr Inspector. 'But it's a sex to live and learn from, and there's
nothing a lady can't accomplish when she once fully gives her mind to it. It's the case with
my own wife. Well, ma'am, this good gentleman of yours has given rise to a rather large
amount of trouble which might have been avoided if he had come forward and explained
himself. Well you see! He DIDN'T come forward and explain himself. Consequently, now
that we meet, him and me, you'll say – and say right – that there's nothing to be alarmed at,
in my proposing to him TO come forward – or, putting the same meaning in another form, to
come along with me – and explain himself.'
When Mr Inspector put it in that other form, 'to come along with me,' there was a
relishing roll in his voice, and his eye beamed with an official lustre.
'Do you propose to take me into custody?' inquired John Rokesmith, very coolly.
'Why argue?' returned Mr Inspector in a comfortable sort of remonstrance; 'ain't it
enough that I propose that you shall come along with me?'
'For what reason?'
Lord bless my soul and body!' returned Mr Inspector, 'I wonder at it in a man of your
education. Why argue?'
'What do you charge against me?'
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Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW 744
'I wonder at you before a lady,' said Mr Inspector, shaking his head reproachfully: 'I
wonder, brought up as you have been, you haven't a more delicate mind! I charge you, then,
with being some way concerned in the Harmon Murder. I don't say whether before, or in, or
after, the fact. I don't say whether with having some knowledge of it that hasn't come out.'
'You don't surprise me. I foresaw your visit this afternoon.'
'Don't!' said Mr Inspector. 'Why, why argue? It's my duty to inform you that whatever
you say, will be used against you.'
'I don't think it will.'
'But I tell you it will,' said Mr Inspector. 'Now, having received the caution, do you still
say that you foresaw my visit this afternoon?'
'Yes. And I will say something more, if you will step with me into the next room.'
With a reassuring kiss on the lips of the frightened Bella, her husband (to whom Mr
Inspector obligingly offered his arm), took up a candle, and withdrew with that gentleman.
They were a full half−hour in conference. When they returned, Mr Inspector looked
considerably astonished.
'I have invited this worthy officer, my dear,' said John, 'to make a short excursion with
me in which you shall be a sharer. He will take something to eat and drink, I dare say, on
your invitation, while you are getting your bonnet on.'
Mr Inspector declined eating, but assented to the proposal of a glass of brandy and
water. Mixing this cold, and pensively consuming it, he broke at intervals into such
soliloquies as that he never did know such a move, that he never had been so gravelled, and
that what a game was this to try the sort of stuff a man's opinion of himself was made of!
Concurrently with these comments, he more than once burst out a laughing, with the half−
enjoying and half−piqued air of a man, who had given up a good conundrum, after much
guessing, and been told the answer. Bella was so timid of him, that she noted these things in
a half− shrinking, half−perceptive way, and similarly noted that there was a great change in
his manner towards John. That coming−along− with−him deportment was now lost in long
musing looks at John and at herself and sometimes in slow heavy rubs of his hand across his
forehead, as if he were ironing cut the creases which his deep pondering made there. He had
had some coughing and whistling satellites secretly gravitating towards him about the
premises, but they were now dismissed, and he eyed John as if he had meant to do him a
public service, but had unfortunately been anticipated. Whether Bella might have noted
anything more, if she had been less afraid of him, she could not determine; but it was all
inexplicable to her, and not the faintest flash of the real state of the case broke in upon her
mind. Mr Inspector's increased notice of herself and knowing way of raising his eyebrows
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when their eyes by any chance met, as if he put the question 'Don't you see?' augmented her
timidity, and, consequently, her perplexity. For all these reasons, when he and she and John,
at towards nine o'clock of a winter evening went to London, and began driving from London
Bridge, among low−lying water−side wharves and docks and strange places, Bella was in
the state of a dreamer; perfectly unable to account for her being there, perfectly unable to
forecast what would happen next, or whither she was going, or why; certain of nothing in
the immediate present, but that she confided in John, and that John seemed somehow to be
getting more triumphant. But what a certainty was that!
They alighted at last at the corner of a court, where there was a building with a bright
lamp and wicket gate. Its orderly appearance was very unlike that of the surrounding
neighbourhood, and was explained by the inscription POLICE STATION.
'We are not going in here, John?' said Bella, clinging to him.
'Yes, my dear; but of our own accord. We shall come out again as easily, never fear.'
The whitewashed room was pure white as of old, the methodical book−keeping was in
peaceful progress as of old, and some distant howler was banging against a cell door as of
old. The sanctuary was not a permanent abiding−place, but a kind of criminal Pickford's.
The lower passions and vices were regularly ticked off in the books, warehoused in the cells,
carted away as per accompanying invoice, and left little mark upon it.
Mr Inspector placed two chairs for his visitors, before the fire, and communed in a low
voice with a brother of his order (also of a half−pay, and Royal Arms aspect), who, judged
only by his occupation at the moment, might have been a writing−master, setting copies.
Their conference done, Mr Inspector returned to the fireplace, and, having observed that he
would step round to the Fellowships and see how matters stood, went out. He soon came
back again, saying, 'Nothing could be better, for they're at supper with Miss Abbey in the
bar;' and then they all three went out together.
Still, as in a dream, Bella found herself entering a snug old− fashioned public−house,
and found herself smuggled into a little three−cornered room nearly opposite the bar of that
establishment. Mr Inspector achieved the smuggling of herself and John into this queer
room, called Cosy in an inscription on the door, by entering in the narrow passage first in
order, and suddenly turning round upon them with extended arms, as if they had been two
sheep. The room was lighted for their reception.
'Now,' said Mr Inspector to John, turning the gas lower; 'I'll mix with 'em in a casual
way, and when I say Identification, perhaps you'll show yourself.'
John nodded, and Mr Inspector went alone to the half−door of the bar. From the dim
doorway of Cosy, within which Bella and her husband stood, they could see a comfortable
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little party of three persons sitting at supper in the bar, and could hear everything that was
said.
The three persons were Miss Abbey and two male guests. To whom collectively, Mr
Inspector remarked that the weather was getting sharp for the time of year.
'It need be sharp to suit your wits, sir,' said Miss Abbey. 'What have you got in hand
now?'
'Thanking you for your compliment: not much, Miss Abbey,' was Mr Inspector's
rejoinder.
'Who have you got in Cosy?' asked Miss Abbey.
'Only a gentleman and his wife, Miss.'
'And who are they? If one may ask it without detriment to your deep plans in the
interests of the honest public?' said Miss Abbey, proud of Mr Inspector as an administrative
genius.
'They are strangers in this part of the town, Miss Abbey. They are waiting till I shall
want the gentleman to show himself somewhere, for half a moment.'
'While they're waiting,' said Miss Abbey, 'couldn't you join us?'
Mr Inspector immediately slipped into the bar, and sat down at the side of the
half−door, with his back towards the passage, and directly facing the two guests. 'I don't take
my supper till later in the night,' said he, 'and therefore I won't disturb the compactness of
the table. But I'll take a glass of flip, if that's flip in the jug in the fender.'
'That's flip,' replied Miss Abbey, 'and it's my making, and if even you can find out
better, I shall be glad to know where.' Filling him, with hospitable hands, a steaming
tumbler, Miss Abbey replaced the jug by the fire; the company not having yet arrived at the
flip−stage of their supper, but being as yet skirmishing with strong ale.
'Ah – h!' cried Mr Inspector. 'That's the smack! There's not a Detective in the Force,
Miss Abbey, that could find out better stuff than that.'
'Glad to hear you say so,' rejoined Miss Abbey. 'You ought to know, if anybody does.'
'Mr Job Potterson,' Mr Inspector continued, 'I drink your health. Mr Jacob Kibble, I
drink yours. Hope you have made a prosperous voyage home, gentlemen both.'
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Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW 747
Mr Kibble, an unctuous broad man of few words and many mouthfuls, said, more
briefly than pointedly, raising his ale to his lips: 'Same to you.' Mr Job Potterson, a
semi−seafaring man of obliging demeanour, said, 'Thank you, sir.'
'Lord bless my soul and body!' cried Mr Inspector. 'Talk of trades, Miss Abbey, and the
way they set their marks on men' (a subject which nobody had approached); 'who wouldn't
know your brother to be a Steward! There's a bright and ready twinkle in his eye, there's a
neatness in his action, there's a smartness in his figure, there's an air of reliability about him
in case you wanted a basin, which points out the steward! And Mr Kibble; ain't he
Passenger, all over? While there's that mercantile cut upon him which would make you
happy to give him credit for five hundred pound, don't you see the salt sea shining on him
too?'
'YOU do, I dare say,' returned Miss Abbey, 'but I don't. And as for stewarding, I think
it's time my brother gave that up, and took his House in hand on his sister's retiring. The
House will go to pieces if he don't. I wouldn't sell it for any money that could be told out, to
a person that I couldn't depend upon to be a Law to the Porters, as I have been.'
'There you're right, Miss,' said Mr Inspector. 'A better kept house is not known to our
men. What do I say? Half so well a kept house is not known to our men. Show the Force the
Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, and the Force – to a constable – will show you a piece of
perfection, Mr Kibble.'
That gentleman, with a very serious shake of his head, subscribed the article.
'And talk of Time slipping by you, as if it was an animal at rustic sports with its tail
soaped,' said Mr Inspector (again, a subject which nobody had approached); 'why, well you
may. Well you may. How has it slipped by us, since the time when Mr Job Potterson here
present, Mr Jacob Kibble here present, and an Officer of the Force here present, first came
together on a matter of Identification!'
Bella's husband stepped softly to the half−door of the bar, and stood there.
'How has Time slipped by us,' Mr Inspector went on slowly, with his eyes narrowly
observant of the two guests, 'since we three very men, at an Inquest in this very house – Mr
Kibble? Taken ill, sir?'
Mr Kibble had staggered up, with his lower jaw dropped, catching Potterson by the
shoulder, and pointing to the half−door. He now cried out: 'Potterson! Look! Look there!'
Potterson started up, started back, and exclaimed: 'Heaven defend us, what's that!' Bella's
husband stepped back to Bella, took her in his arms (for she was terrified by the
unintelligible terror of the two men), and shut the door of the little room. A hurry of voices
succeeded, in which Mr Inspector's voice was busiest; it gradually slackened and sank; and
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Mr Inspector reappeared. 'Sharp's the word, sir!' he said, looking in with a knowing wink.
'We'll get your lady out at once.' Immediately, Bella and her husband were under the stars,
making their way back, alone, to the vehicle they had kept in waiting.
All this was most extraordinary, and Bella could make nothing of it but that John was in
the right. How in the right, and how suspected of being in the wrong, she could not divine.
Some vague idea that he had never really assumed the name of Handford, and that there was
a remarkable likeness between him and that mysterious person, was her nearest approach to
any definite explanation. But John was triumphant; that much was made apparent; and she
could wait for the rest.
When John came home to dinner next day, he said, sitting down on the sofa by Bella
and baby−Bella: 'My dear, I have a piece of news to tell you. I have left the China House.'
As he seemed to like having left it, Bella took it for granted that there was no
misfortune in the case.
'In a word, my love,' said John, 'the China House is broken up and abolished. There is
no such thing any more.'
'Then, are you already in another House, John?'
'Yes, my darling. I am in another way of business. And I am rather better off.'
The inexhaustible baby was instantly made to congratulate him, and to say, with
appropriate action on the part of a very limp arm and a speckled fist: 'Three cheers, ladies
and gemplemorums. Hoo – ray!'
'I am afraid, my life,' said John, 'that you have become very much attached to this
cottage?'
'Afraid I have, John? Of course I have.'
'The reason why I said afraid,' returned John, 'is, because we must move.'
'O John!'
'Yes, my dear, we must move. We must have our head−quarters in London now. In
short, there's a dwelling−house rent−free, attached to my new position, and we must occupy
it.'
'That's a gain, John.'
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Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW 749
'Yes, my dear, it is undoubtedly a gain.'
He gave her a very blithe look, and a very sly look. Which occasioned the inexhaustible
baby to square at him with the speckled fists, and demand in a threatening manner what he
meant?
'My love, you said it was a gain, and I said it was a gain. A very innocent remark,
surely.'
'I won't,' said the inexhaustible baby, ' – allow – you – to – make – game – of – my –
venerable – Ma.' At each division administering a soft facer with one of the speckled fists.
John having stooped down to receive these punishing visitations, Bella asked him,
would it be necessary to move soon? Why yes, indeed (said John), he did propose that they
should move very soon. Taking the furniture with them, of course? (said Bella). Why, no
(said John), the fact was, that the house was – in a sort of a kind of a way – furnished
already.
The inexhaustible baby, hearing this, resumed the offensive, and said: 'But there's no
nursery for me, sir. What do you mean, marble−hearted parent?' To which the
marble−hearted parent rejoined that there was a – sort of a kind of a – nursery, and it might
be 'made to do'. 'Made to do?' returned the Inexhaustible, administering more punishment,
'what do you take me for?' And was then turned over on its back in Bella's lap, and
smothered with kisses.
'But really, John dear,' said Bella, flushed in quite a lovely manner by these exercises,
'will the new house, just as it stands, do for baby? That's the question.'
'I felt that to be the question,' he returned, 'and therefore I arranged that you should
come with me and look at it, to−morrow morning.' Appointment made, accordingly, for
Bella to go up with him to− morrow morning; John kissed; and Bella delighted.
When they reached London in pursuance of their little plan, they took coach and drove
westward. Not only drove westward, but drove into that particular westward division, which
Bella had seen last when she turned her face from Mr Boffin's door. Not only drove into that
particular division, but drove at last into that very street. Not only drove into that very street,
but stopped at last at that very house.
'John dear!' cried Bella, looking out of window in a flutter. 'Do you see where we are?'
'Yes, my love. The coachman's quite right.'
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Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW 750
The house−door was opened without any knocking or ringing, and John promptly
helped her out. The servant who stood holding the door, asked no question of John, neither
did he go before them or follow them as they went straight up−stairs. It was only her
husband's encircling arm, urging her on, that prevented Bella from stopping at the foot of the
staircase. As they ascended, it was seen to be tastefully ornamented with most beautiful
flowers.
'O John!' said Bella, faintly. 'What does this mean?'
'Nothing, my darling, nothing. Let us go on.'
Going on a little higher, they came to a charming aviary, in which a number of tropical
birds, more gorgeous in colour than the flowers, were flying about; and among those birds
were gold and silver fish, and mosses, and water−lilies, and a fountain, and all manner of
wonders.
'O my dear John!' said Bella. 'What does this mean?'
'Nothing, my darling, nothing. Let us go on.'
They went on, until they came to a door. As John put out his hand to open it, Bella
caught his hand.
'I don't know what it means, but it's too much for me. Hold me, John, love.'
John caught her up in his arm, and lightly dashed into the room with her.
Behold Mr and Mrs Boffin, beaming! Behold Mrs Boffin clapping her hands in an
ecstacy, running to Bella with tears of joy pouring down her comely face, and folding her to
her breast, with the words: 'My deary deary, deary girl, that Noddy and me saw married and
couldn't wish joy to, or so much as speak to! My deary, deary, deary, wife of John and
mother of his little child! My loving loving, bright bright, Pretty Pretty! Welcome to your
house and home, my deary!'
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Chapter 13 − SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN
HELPED TO SCATTER DUST
I
n all the first bewilderment of her wonder, the most bewilderingly wonderful thing to
Bella was the shining countenance of Mr Boffin. That his wife should be joyous,
open−hearted, and genial, or that her face should express every quality that was large and
trusting, and no quality that was little or mean, was accordant with Bella's experience. But,
that he, with a perfectly beneficent air and a plump rosy face, should be standing there,
looking at her and John, like some jovial good spirit, was marvellous. For, how had he
looked when she last saw him in that very room (it was the room in which she had given him
that piece of her mind at parting), and what had become of all those crooked lines of
suspicion, avarice, and distrust, that twisted his visage then?
Mrs Boffin seated Bella on the large ottoman, and seated herself beside her, and John
her husband seated himself on the other side of her, and Mr Boffin stood beaming at every
one and everything he could see, with surpassing jollity and enjoyment. Mrs Boffin was then
taken with a laughing fit of clapping her hands, and clapping her knees, and rocking herself
to and fro, and then with another laughing fit of embracing Bella, and rocking her to and fro
– both fits, of considerable duration.
'Old lady, old lady,' said Mr Boffin, at length; 'if you don't begin somebody else must.'
'I'm a going to begin, Noddy, my dear,' returned Mrs Boffin. 'Only it isn't easy for a
person to know where to begin, when a person is in this state of delight and happiness.
Bella, my dear. Tell me, who's this?'
'Who is this?' repeated Bella. 'My husband.'
'Ah! But tell me his name, deary!' cried Mrs Boffin.
'Rokesmith.'
'No, it ain't!' cried Mrs Boffin, clapping her hands, and shaking her head. 'Not a bit of it.'
'Handford then,' suggested Bella.
'No, it ain't!' cried Mrs Boffin, again clapping her hands and shaking her head. 'Not a bit
of it.'
'At least, his name is John, I suppose?' said Bella.
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'Ah! I should think so, deary!' cried Mrs Boffin. 'I should hope so! Many and many is
the time I have called him by his name of John. But what's his other name, his true other
name? Give a guess, my pretty!'
'I can't guess,' said Bella, turning her pale face from one to another.
'I could,' cried Mrs Boffin, 'and what's more, I did! I found him out, all in a flash as I
may say, one night. Didn't I, Noddy?'
'Ay! That the old lady did!' said Mr Boffin, with stout pride in the circumstance.
'Harkee to me, deary,' pursued Mrs Boffin, taking Bella's hands between her own, and
gently beating on them from time to time. 'It was after a particular night when John had been
disappointed – as he thought – in his affections. It was after a night when John had made an
offer to a certain young lady, and the certain young lady had refused it. It was after a
particular night, when he felt himself cast−away−like, and had made up his mind to go seek
his fortune. It was the very next night. My Noddy wanted a paper out of his Secretary's
room, and I says to Noddy, «I am going by the door, and I'll ask him for it.» I tapped at his
door, and he didn't hear me. I looked in, and saw him a sitting lonely by his fire, brooding
over it. He chanced to look up with a pleased kind of smile in my company when he saw me,
and then in a single moment every grain of the gunpowder that had been lying sprinkled
thick about him ever since I first set eyes upon him as a man at the Bower, took fire! Too
many a time had I seen him sitting lonely, when he was a poor child, to be pitied, heart and
hand! Too many a time had I seen him in need of being brightened up with a comforting
word! Too many and too many a time to be mistaken, when that glimpse of him come at
last! No, no! I just makes out to cry, «I know you now! You're John!» And he catches me as
I drops. – So what,' says Mrs Boffin, breaking off in the rush of her speech to smile most
radiantly, 'might you think by this time that your husband's name was, dear?'
'Not,' returned Bella, with quivering lips; 'not Harmon? That's not possible?'
'Don't tremble. Why not possible, deary, when so many things are possible?' demanded
Mrs Boffin, in a soothing tone.
'He was killed,' gasped Bella.
'Thought to be,' said Mrs Boffin. 'But if ever John Harmon drew the breath of life on
earth, that is certainly John Harmon's arm round your waist now, my pretty. If ever John
Harmon had a wife on earth, that wife is certainly you. If ever John Harmon and his wife
had a child on earth, that child is certainly this.'
By a master−stroke of secret arrangement, the inexhaustible baby here appeared at the
door, suspended in mid−air by invisible agency. Mrs Boffin, plunging at it, brought it to
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Bella's lap, where both Mrs and Mr Boffin (as the saying is) 'took it out of' the Inexhaustible
in a shower of caresses. It was only this timely appearance that kept Bella from swooning.
This, and her husband's earnestness in explaining further to her how it had come to pass that
he had been supposed to be slain, and had even been suspected of his own murder; also, how
he had put a pious fraud upon her which had preyed upon his mind, as the time for its
disclosure approached, lest she might not make full allowance for the object with which it
had originated, and in which it had fully developed.
'But bless ye, my beauty!' cried Mrs Boflin, taking him up short at this point, with
another hearty clap of her hands. 'It wasn't John only that was in it. We was all of us in it.'
'I don't,' said Bella, looking vacantly from one to another, 'yet understand – '
'Of course you don't, my deary,' exclaimed Mrs Boffin. 'How can you till you're told! So
now I am a going to tell you. So you put your two hands between my two hands again,' cried
the comfortable creature, embracing her, 'with that blessed little picter lying on your lap, and
you shall be told all the story. Now, I'm a going to tell the story. Once, twice, three times,
and the horses is off. Here they go! When I cries out that night, «I know you now, you're
John! » – which was my exact words; wasn't they, John?'
'Your exact words,' said John, laying his hand on hers.
'That's a very good arrangement,' cried Mrs Boffin. 'Keep it there, John. And as we was
all of us in it, Noddy you come and lay yours a top of his, and we won't break the pile till the
story's done.'
Mr Boffin hitched up a chair, and added his broad brown right hand to the heap.
'That's capital!' said Mrs Boffin, giving it a kiss. 'Seems quite a family building; don't it?
But the horses is off. Well! When I cries out that night, «I know you now! you're John!»
John catches of me, it is true; but I ain't a light weight, bless ye, and he's forced to let me
down. Noddy, he hears a noise, and in he trots, and as soon as I anyways comes to myself I
calls to him, «Noddy, well I might say as I did say, that night at the Bower, for the Lord be
thankful this is John!» On which he gives a heave, and down he goes likewise, with his head
under the writing−table. This brings me round comfortable, and that brings him round
comfortable, and then John and him and me we all fall a crying for joy.'
'Yes! They cry for joy, my darling,' her husband struck in. 'You understand? These two,
whom I come to life to disappoint and dispossess, cry for joy!'
Bella looked at him confusedly, and looked again at Mrs Boffin's radiant face.
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'That's right, my dear, don't you mind him,' said Mrs Boffin, 'stick to me. Well! Then we
sits down, gradually gets cool, and holds a confabulation. John, he tells us how he is
despairing in his mind on accounts of a certain fair young person, and how, if I hadn't found
him out, he was going away to seek his fortune far and wide, and had fully meant never to
come to life, but to leave the property as our wrongful inheritance for ever and a day. At
which you never see a man so frightened as my Noddy was. For to think that he should have
come into the property wrongful, however innocent, and – more than that – might have gone
on keeping it to his dying day, turned him whiter than chalk.'
'And you too,' said Mr Boffin.
'Don't you mind him, neither, my deary,' resumed Mrs Boffin; 'stick to me. This brings
up a confabulation regarding the certain fair young person; when Noddy he gives it as his
opinion that she is a deary creetur. «She may be a leetle spoilt, and nat'rally spoilt,» he says,
«by circumstances, but that's only the surface, and I lay my life,» he says, «that she's the true
golden gold at heart.»
'So did you,' said Mr Boffin.
'Don't you mind him a single morsel, my dear,' proceeded Mrs Boffin, 'but stick to me.
Then says John, O, if he could but prove so! Then we both of us ups and says, that minute,
«Prove so!»'
With a start, Bella directed a hurried glance towards Mr Boffin. But, he was sitting
thoughtfully smiling at that broad brown hand of his, and either didn't see it, or would take
no notice of it.
'«Prove it, John!» we says,' repeated Mrs Boffin. '«Prove it and overcome your doubts
with triumph, and be happy for the first time in your life, and for the rest of your life.» This
puts John in a state, to be sure. Then we says, «What will content you? If she was to stand
up for you when you was slighted, if she was to show herself of a generous mind when you
was oppressed, if she was to be truest to you when you was poorest and friendliest, and all
this against her own seeming interest, how would that do?» «Do?» says John, «it would raise
me to the skies.» «Then,» says my Noddy, «make your preparations for the ascent, John, it
being my firm belief that up you go!»'
Bella caught Mr Boffin's twinkling eye for half an instant; but he got it away from her,
and restored it to his broad brown hand.
'From the first, you was always a special favourite of Noddy's,' said Mrs Boffin, shaking
her head. 'O you were! And if I had been inclined to be jealous, I don't know what I mightn't
have done to you. But as I wasn't – why, my beauty,' with a hearty laugh and an embrace, 'I
made you a special favourite of my own too. But the horses is coming round the corner.
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Chapter 13 − SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER DUST 755
Well! Then says my Noddy, shaking his sides till he was fit to make 'em ache again: "Look
out for being slighted and oppressed, John, for if ever a man had a hard master, you shall
find me from this present time to be such to you. And then he began!' cried Mrs Boffin, in an
ecstacy of admiration. 'Lord bless you, then he began! And how he DID begin; didn't he!'
Bella looked half frightened, and yet half laughed.
'But, bless you,' pursued Mrs Boffin, 'if you could have seen him of a night, at that time
of it! The way he'd sit and chuckle over himself! The way he'd say «I've been a regular
brown bear to−day,» and take himself in his arms and hug himself at the thoughts of the
brute he had pretended. But every night he says to me: «Better and better, old lady. What did
we say of her? She'll come through it, the true golden gold. This'll be the happiest piece of
work we ever done.» And then he'd say, «I'll be a grislier old growler to− morrow!» and
laugh, he would, till John and me was often forced to slap his back, and bring it out of his
windpipes with a little water.'
Mr Boffin, with his face bent over his heavy hand, made no sound, but rolled his
shoulders when thus referred to, as if he were vastly enjoying himself.
'And so, my good and pretty,' pursued Mrs Boffin, 'you was married, and there was we
hid up in the church−organ by this husband of yours; for he wouldn't let us out with it then,
as was first meant. «No,» he says, «she's so unselfish and contented, that I can't afford to be
rich yet. I must wait a little longer.» Then, when baby was expected, he says, «She is such a
cheerful, glorious housewife that I can't afford to be rich yet. I must wait a little longer.»
Then when baby was born, he says, «She is so much better than she ever was, that I can't
afford to be rich yet. I must wait a little longer.» And so he goes on and on, till I says
outright, «Now, John, if you don't fix a time for setting her up in her own house and home,
and letting us walk out of it, I'll turn Informer.» Then he says he'll only wait to triumph
beyond what we ever thought possible, and to show her to us better than even we ever
supposed; and he says, «She shall see me under suspicion of having murdered myself, and
YOU shall see how trusting and how true she'll be.» Well! Noddy and me agreed to that, and
he was right, and here you are, and the horses is in, and the story is done, and God bless you
my Beauty, and God bless us all!'
The pile of hands dispersed, and Bella and Mrs Boffin took a good long hug of one
another: to the apparent peril of the inexhaustible baby, lying staring in Bella's lap.
'But IS the story done?' said Bella, pondering. 'Is there no more of it?'
'What more of it should there be, deary?' returned Mrs Boffin, full of glee.
'Are you sure you have left nothing out of it?' asked Bella.
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Chapter 13 − SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER DUST 756
'I don't think I have,' said Mrs Boffin, archly.
'John dear,' said Bella, 'you're a good nurse; will you please hold baby?' Having
deposited the Inexhaustible in his arms with those words, Bella looked hard at Mr Boffin,
who had moved to a table where he was leaning his head upon his hand with his face turned
away, and, quietly settling herself on her knees at his side, and drawing one arm over his
shoulder, said: 'Please I beg your pardon, and I made a small mistake of a word when I took
leave of you last. Please I think you are better (not worse) than Hopkins, better (not worse)
than Dancer, better (not worse) than Blackberry Jones, better (not worse) than any of them!
Please something more!' cried Bella, with an exultant ringing laugh as she struggled with
him and forced him to turn his delighted face to hers. 'Please I have found out something not
yet mentioned. Please I don't believe you are a hard−hearted miser at all, and please I don't
believe you ever for one single minute were!'
At this, Mrs Boffin fairly screamed with rapture, and sat beating her feet upon the floor,
clapping her hands, and bobbing herself backwards and forwards, like a demented member
of some Mandarin's family.
'O, I understand you now, sir!' cried Bella. 'I want neither you nor any one else to tell
me the rest of the story. I can tell it to YOU, now, if you would like to hear it.'
'Can you, my dear?' said Mr Boffin. 'Tell it then.'
'What?' cried Bella, holding him prisoner by the coat with both hands. 'When you saw
what a greedy little wretch you were the patron of, you determined to show her how much
misused and misprized riches could do, and often had done, to spoil people; did you? Not
caring what she thought of you (and Goodness knows THAT was of no consequence!) you
showed her, in yourself, the most detestable sides of wealth, saying in your own mind, «This
shallow creature would never work the truth out of her own weak soul, if she had a hundred
years to do it in; but a glaring instance kept before her may open even her eyes and set her
thinking.» That was what you said to yourself, was it, sir?'
'I never said anything of the sort,' Mr Boffin declared in a state of the highest
enjoyment.
'Then you ought to have said it, sir,' returned Bella, giving him two pulls and one kiss,
'for you must have thought and meant it. You saw that good fortune was turning my stupid
head and hardening my silly heart – was making me grasping, calculating, insolent,
insufferable – and you took the pains to be the dearest and kindest fingerpost that ever was
set up anywhere, pointing out the road that I was taking and the end it led to. Confess
instantly!'
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Chapter 13 − SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER DUST 757
'John,' said Mr Boffin, one broad piece of sunshine from head to foot, 'I wish you'd help
me out of this.'
'You can't be heard by counsel, sir,' returned Bella. 'You must speak for yourself.
Confess instantly!'
'Well, my dear,' said Mr Boffin, 'the truth is, that when we did go in for the little scheme
that my old lady has pinted out, I did put it to John, what did he think of going in for some
such general scheme as YOU have pinted out? But I didn't in any way so word it, because I
didn't in any way so mean it. I only said to John, wouldn't it be more consistent, me going in
for being a reg'lar brown bear respecting him, to go in as a reg'lar brown bear all round?'
'Confess this minute, sir,' said Bella, 'that you did it to correct and amend me!'
'Certainly, my dear child,' said Mr Boffin, 'I didn't do it to harm you; you may be sure of
that. And I did hope it might just hint a caution. Still, it ought to be mentioned that no sooner
had my old lady found out John, than John made known to her and me that he had had his
eye upon a thankless person by the name of Silas Wegg. Partly for the punishment of which
Wegg, by leading him on in a very unhandsome and underhanded game that he was playing,
them books that you and me bought so many of together (and, by−the−by, my dear, he
wasn't Blackberry Jones, but Blewberry) was read aloud to me by that person of the name of
Silas Wegg aforesaid.'
Bella, who was still on her knees at Mr Boffin's feet, gradually sank down into a sitting
posture on the ground, as she meditated more and more thoughtfully, with her eyes upon his
beaming face.
'Still,' said Bella, after this meditative pause, 'there remain two things that I cannot
understand. Mrs Boffin never supposed any part of the change in Mr Boffin to be real; did
she? – You never did; did you?' asked Bella, turning to her.
'No!' returned Mrs Boffin, with a most rotund and glowing negative.
'And yet you took it very much to heart,' said Bella. 'I remember its making you very
uneasy, indeed.'
'Ecod, you see Mrs John has a sharp eye, John!' cried Mr Boffin, shaking his head with
an admiring air. 'You're right, my dear. The old lady nearly blowed us into shivers and
smithers, many times.'
'Why?' asked Bella. 'How did that happen, when she was in your secret?'
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Chapter 13 − SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER DUST 758
'Why, it was a weakness in the old lady,' said Mr Boffin; 'and yet, to tell you the whole
truth and nothing but the truth, I'm rather proud of it. My dear, the old lady thinks so high of
me that she couldn't abear to see and hear me coming out as a reg'lar brown one. Couldn't
abear to make−believe as I meant it! In consequence of which, we was everlastingly in
danger with her.'
Mrs Boffin laughed heartily at herself; but a certain glistening in her honest eyes
revealed that she was by no means cured of that dangerous propensity.
'I assure you, my dear,' said Mr Boffin, 'that on the celebrated day when I made what
has since been agreed upon to be my grandest demonstration – I allude to Mew says the cat,
Quack quack says the duck, and Bow−wow−wow says the dog – I assure you, my dear, that
on that celebrated day, them flinty and unbeliving words hit my old lady so hard on my
account, that I had to hold her, to prevent her running out after you, and defending me by
saying I was playing a part.'
Mrs Boffin laughed heartily again, and her eyes glistened again, and it then appeared,
not only that in that burst of sarcastic eloquence Mr Boffin was considered by his two
fellow− conspirators to have outdone himself, but that in his own opinion it was a
remarkable achievement. 'Never thought of it afore the moment, my dear!' he observed to
Bella. 'When John said, if he had been so happy as to win your affections and possess your
heart, it come into my head to turn round upon him with «Win her affections and possess her
heart! Mew says the cat, Quack quack says the duck, and Bow−wow−wow says the dog.» I
couldn't tell you how it come into my head or where from, but it had so much the sound of a
rasper that I own to you it astonished myself. I was awful nigh bursting out a laughing
though, when it made John stare!'
'You said, my pretty,' Mrs Boffin reminded Bella, 'that there was one other thing you
couldn't understand.'
'O yes!' cried Bella, covering her face with her hands; 'but that I never shall be able to
understand as long as I live. It is, how John could love me so when I so little deserved it, and
how you, Mr and Mrs Boffin, could be so forgetful of yourselves, and take such pains and
trouble, to make me a little better, and after all to help him to so unworthy a wife. But I am
very very grateful.'
It was John Harmon's turn then – John Harmon now for good, and John Rokesmith for
nevermore – to plead with her (quite unnecessarily) in behalf of his deception, and to tell
her, over and over again, that it had been prolonged by her own winning graces in her
supposed station of life. This led on to many interchanges of endearment and enjoyment on
all sides, in the midst of which the Inexhaustible being observed staring, in a most imbecile
manner, on Mrs Boffin's breast, was pronounced to be supernaturally intelligent as to the
whole transaction, and was made to declare to the ladies and gemplemorums, with a wave of
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Chapter 13 − SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER DUST 759
the speckled fist (with difficulty detached from an exceedingly short waist), 'I have already
informed my venerable Ma that I know all about it!'
Then, said John Harmon, would Mrs John Harmon come and see her house? And a
dainty house it was, and a tastefully beautiful; and they went through it in procession; the
Inexhaustible on Mrs Boffin's bosom (still staring) occupying the middle station, and Mr
Boffin bringing up the rear. And on Bella's exquisite toilette table was an ivory casket, and
in the casket were jewels the like of which she had never dreamed of, and aloft on an upper
floor was a nursery garnished as with rainbows; 'though we were hard put to it,' said John
Harmon, 'to get it done in so short a time.
The house inspected, emissaries removed the Inexhaustible, who was shortly afterwards
heard screaming among the rainbows; whereupon Bella withdrew herself from the presence
and knowledge of gemplemorums, and the screaming ceased, and smiling Peace associated
herself with that young olive branch.
'Come and look in, Noddy!' said Mrs Boffin to Mr Boffin.
Mr Boffin, submitting to be led on tiptoe to the nursery door, looked in with immense
satisfaction, although there was nothing to see but Bella in a musing state of happiness,
seated in a little low chair upon the hearth, with her child in her fair young arms, and her soft
eyelashes shading her eyes from the fire.
'It looks as if the old man's spirit had found rest at last; don't it?' said Mrs Boffin.
'Yes, old lady.'
'And as if his money had turned bright again, after a long long rust in the dark, and was
at last a beginning to sparkle in the sunlight?'
'Yes, old lady.'
'And it makes a pretty and a promising picter; don't it?'
'Yes, old lady.'
But, aware at the instant of a fine opening for a point, Mr Boffin quenched that
observation in this – delivered in the grisliest growling of the regular brown bear. 'A pretty
and a hopeful picter? Mew, Quack quack, Bow−wow!' And then trotted silently downstairs,
with his shoulders in a state of the liveliest commotion.
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Chapter 13 − SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER DUST 760
Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE
M
r and Mrs John Harmon had so timed their taking possession of their rightful name
and their London house, that the event befel on the very day when the last waggon−load of
the last Mound was driven out at the gates of Boffin's Bower. As it jolted away, Mr Wegg
felt that the last load was correspondingly removed from his mind, and hailed the auspicious
season when that black sheep, Boffin, was to be closely sheared.
Over the whole slow process of levelling the Mounds, Silas had kept watch with
rapacious eyes. But, eyes no less rapacious had watched the growth of the Mounds in years
bygone, and had vigilantly sifted the dust of which they were composed. No valuables
turned up. How should there be any, seeing that the old hard jailer of Harmony Jail had
coined every waif and stray into money, long before?
Though disappointed by this bare result, Mr Wegg felt too sensibly relieved by the close
of the labour, to grumble to any great extent. A foreman−representative of the dust
contractors, purchasers of the Mounds, had worn Mr Wegg down to skin and bone. This
supervisor of the proceedings, asserting his employers' rights to cart off by daylight,
nightlight, torchlight, when they would, must have been the death of Silas if the work had
lasted much longer. Seeming never to need sleep himself, he would reappear, with a tied−up
broken head, in fantail hat and velveteen smalls, like an accursed goblin, at the most unholy
and untimely hours. Tired out by keeping close ward over a long day's work in fog and rain,
Silas would have just crawled to bed and be dozing, when a horrid shake and rumble under
his pillow would announce an approaching train of carts, escorted by this Demon of Unrest,
to fall to work again. At another time, he would be rumbled up out of his soundest sleep, in
the dead of the night; at another, would be kept at his post eight−and−forty hours on end.
The more his persecutor besought him not to trouble himself to turn out, the more suspicious
was the crafty Wegg that indications had been observed of something hidden somewhere,
and that attempts were on foot to circumvent him. So continually broken was his rest
through these means, that he led the life of having wagered to keep ten thousand
dog−watches in ten thousand hours, and looked piteously upon himself as always getting up
and yet never going to bed. So gaunt and haggard had he grown at last, that his wooden leg
showed disproportionate, and presented a thriving appearance in contrast with the rest of his
plagued body, which might almost have been termed chubby.
However, Wegg's comfort was, that all his disagreeables were now over, and that he
was immediately coming into his property. Of late, the grindstone did undoubtedly appear to
have been whirling at his own nose rather than Boffin's, but Boffin's nose was now to be
sharpened fine. Thus far, Mr Wegg had let his dusty friend off lightly, having been baulked
in that amiable design of frequently dining with him, by the machinations of the sleepless
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 761
dustman. He had been constrained to depute Mr Venus to keep their dusty friend, Boffin,
under inspection, while he himself turned lank and lean at the Bower.
To Mr Venus's museum Mr Wegg repaired when at length the Mounds were down and
gone. It being evening, he found that gentleman, as he expected, seated over his fire; but did
not find him, as he expected, floating his powerful mind in tea.
'Why, you smell rather comfortable here!' said Wegg, seeming to take it ill, and
stopping and sniffing as he entered.
'I AM rather comfortable, sir,' said Venus.
'You don't use lemon in your business, do you?' asked Wegg, sniffing again.
'No, Mr Wegg,' said Venus. 'When I use it at all, I mostly use it in cobblers' punch.'
'What do you call cobblers' punch?' demanded Wegg, in a worse humour than before.
'It's difficult to impart the receipt for it, sir,' returned Venus, 'because, however
particular you may be in allotting your materials, so much will still depend upon the
individual gifts, and there being a feeling thrown into it. But the groundwork is gin.'
'In a Dutch bottle?' said Wegg gloomily, as he sat himself down.
'Very good, sir, very good!' cried Venus. 'Will you partake, sir?'
'Will I partake?' returned Wegg very surlily. 'Why, of course I will! WILL a man
partake, as has been tormented out of his five senses by an everlasting dustman with his
head tied up! WILL he, too! As if he wouldn't!'
'Don't let it put you out, Mr Wegg. You don't seem in your usual spirits.'
'If you come to that, you don't seem in your usual spirits,' growled Wegg. 'You seem to
be setting up for lively.'
This circumstance appeared, in his then state of mind, to give Mr Wegg uncommon
offence.
'And you've been having your hair cut!' said Wegg, missing the usual dusty shock.
'Yes, Mr Wegg. But don't let that put you out, either.'
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 762
'And I am blest if you ain't getting fat!' said Wegg, with culminating discontent. 'What
are you going to do next?'
'Well, Mr Wegg,' said Venus, smiling in a sprightly manner, 'I suspect you could hardly
guess what I am going to do next.'
'I don't want to guess,' retorted Wegg. 'All I've got to say is, that it's well for you that the
diwision of labour has been what it has been. It's well for you to have had so light a part in
this business, when mine has been so heavy. You haven't had YOUR rest broke, I'll be
bound.'
'Not at all, sir,' said Venus. 'Never rested so well in all my life, I thank you.'
'Ah!' grumbled Wegg, 'you should have been me. If you had been me, and had been
fretted out of your bed, and your sleep, and your meals, and your mind, for a stretch of
months together, you'd have been out of condition and out of sorts.'
'Certainly, it has trained you down, Mr Wegg,' said Venus, contemplating his figure
with an artist's eye. 'Trained you down very low, it has! So weazen and yellow is the
kivering upon your bones, that one might almost fancy you had come to give a look−in upon
the French gentleman in the corner, instead of me.'
Mr Wegg, glancing in great dudgeon towards the French gentleman's corner, seemed to
notice something new there, which induced him to glance at the opposite corner, and then to
put on his glasses and stare at all the nooks and corners of the dim shop in succession.
'Why, you've been having the place cleaned up!' he exclaimed.
'Yes, Mr Wegg. By the hand of adorable woman.'
'Then what you're going to do next, I suppose, is to get married?'
'That's it, sir.'
Silas took off his glasses again – finding himself too intensely disgusted by the sprightly
appearance of his friend and partner to bear a magnified view of him and made the inquiry:
'To the old party?'
'Mr Wegg!' said Venus, with a sudden flush of wrath. 'The lady in question is not a old
party.'
'I meant,' exclaimed Wegg, testily, 'to the party as formerly objected?'
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 763
'Mr Wegg,' said Venus, 'in a case of so much delicacy, I must trouble you to say what
you mean. There are strings that must not be played upon. No sir! Not sounded, unless in the
most respectful and tuneful manner. Of such melodious strings is Miss Pleasant Riderhood
formed.'
'Then it IS the lady as formerly objected?' said Wegg.
'Sir,' returned Venus with dignity, 'I accept the altered phrase. It is the lady as formerly
objected.'
'When is it to come off?' asked Silas.
'Mr Wegg,' said Venus, with another flush. 'I cannot permit it to be put in the form of a
Fight. I must temperately but firmly call upon you, sir, to amend that question.'
'When is the lady,' Wegg reluctantly demanded, constraining his ill temper in
remembrance of the partnership and its stock in trade, 'a going to give her 'and where she has
already given her 'art?'
'Sir,' returned Venus, 'I again accept the altered phrase, and with pleasure. The lady is a
going to give her 'and where she has already given her 'art, next Monday.'
'Then the lady's objection has been met?' said Silas.
'Mr Wegg,' said Venus, 'as I did name to you, I think, on a former occasion, if not on
former occasions – '
'On former occasions,' interrupted Wegg.
' – What,' pursued Venus, 'what the nature of the lady's objection was, I may impart,
without violating any of the tender confidences since sprung up between the lady and
myself, how it has been met, through the kind interference of two good friends of mine: one,
previously acquainted with the lady: and one, not. The pint was thrown out, sir, by those two
friends when they did me the great service of waiting on the lady to try if a union betwixt the
lady and me could not be brought to bear – the pint, I say, was thrown out by them, sir,
whether if, after marriage, I confined myself to the articulation of men, children, and the
lower animals, it might not relieve the lady's mind of her feeling respecting being as a lady –
regarded in a bony light. It was a happy thought, sir, and it took root.'
'It would seem, Mr Venus,' observed Wegg, with a touch of distrust, 'that you are flush
of friends?'
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 764
'Pretty well, sir,' that gentleman answered, in a tone of placid mystery. 'So−so, sir.
Pretty well.'
'However,' said Wegg, after eyeing him with another touch of distrust, 'I wish you joy.
One man spends his fortune in one way, and another in another. You are going to try
matrimony. I mean to try travelling.'
'Indeed, Mr Wegg?'
'Change of air, sea−scenery, and my natural rest, I hope may bring me round after the
persecutions I have undergone from the dustman with his head tied up, which I just now
mentioned. The tough job being ended and the Mounds laid low, the hour is come for Boffin
to stump up. Would ten to−morrow morning suit you, partner, for finally bringing Boffin's
nose to the grindstone?'
Ten to−morrow morning would quite suit Mr Venus for that excellent purpose.
'You have had him well under inspection, I hope?' said Silas.
Mr Venus had had him under inspection pretty well every day.
'Suppose you was just to step round to−night then, and give him orders from me – I say
from me, because he knows I won't be played with – to be ready with his papers, his
accounts, and his cash, at that time in the morning?' said Wegg. 'And as a matter of form,
which will be agreeable to your own feelings, before we go out (for I'll walk with you part of
the way, though my leg gives under me with weariness), let's have a look at the stock in
trade.'
Mr Venus produced it, and it was perfectly correct; Mr Venus undertook to produce it
again in the morning, and to keep tryst with Mr Wegg on Boffin's doorstep as the clock
struck ten. At a certain point of the road between Clerkenwell and Boffin's house (Mr Wegg
expressly insisted that there should be no prefix to the Golden Dustman's name) the partners
separated for the night.
It was a very bad night; to which succeeded a very bad morning. The streets were so
unusually slushy, muddy, and miserable, in the morning, that Wegg rode to the scene of
action; arguing that a man who was, as it were, going to the Bank to draw out a handsome
property, could well afford that trifling expense.
Venus was punctual, and Wegg undertook to knock at the door, and conduct the
conference. Door knocked at. Door opened.
'Boffin at home?'
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 765
The servant replied that MR Boffin was at home.
'He'll do,' said Wegg, 'though it ain't what I call him.'
The servant inquired if they had any appointment?
'Now, I tell you what, young fellow,' said Wegg, 'I won't have it. This won't do for me. I
don't want menials. I want Boffin.'
They were shown into a waiting−room, where the all−powerful Wegg wore his hat, and
whistled, and with his forefinger stirred up a clock that stood upon the chimneypiece, until
he made it strike. In a few minutes they were shown upstairs into what used to be Boffin's
room; which, besides the door of entrance, had folding− doors in it, to make it one of a suite
of rooms when occasion required. Here, Boffin was seated at a library−table, and here Mr
Wegg, having imperiously motioned the servant to withdraw, drew up a chair and seated
himself, in his hat, close beside him. Here, also, Mr Wegg instantly underwent the
remarkable experience of having his hat twitched off his head and thrown out of a window,
which was opened and shut for the purpose.
'Be careful what insolent liberties you take in that gentleman's presence,' said the owner
of the hand which had done this, 'or I will throw you after it.'
Wegg involuntarily clapped his hand to his bare head, and stared at the Secretary. For, it
was he addressed him with a severe countenance, and who had come in quietly by the
folding−doors.
'Oh!' said Wegg, as soon as he recovered his suspended power of speech. 'Very good! I
gave directions for YOU to be dismissed. And you ain't gone, ain't you? Oh! We'll look into
this presently. Very good!'
'No, nor I ain't gone,' said another voice.
Somebody else had come in quietly by the folding−doors. Turning his head, Wegg
beheld his persecutor, the ever−wakeful dustman, accoutred with fantail hat and velveteen
smalls complete. Who, untying his tied−up broken head, revealed a head that was whole,
and a face that was Sloppy's.
'Ha, ha, ha, gentlemen!' roared Sloppy in a peal of laughter, and with immeasureable
relish. 'He never thought as I could sleep standing, and often done it when I turned for Mrs
Higden! He never thought as I used to give Mrs Higden the Police−news in different voices!
But I did lead him a life all through it, gentlemen, I hope I really and truly DID!' Here, Mr
Sloppy opening his mouth to a quite alarming extent, and throwing back his head to peal
again, revealed incalculable buttons.
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 766
'Oh!' said Wegg, slightly discomfited, but not much as yet: 'one and one is two not
dismissed, is it? Bof – fin! Just let me ask a question. Who set this chap on, in this dress,
when the carting began? Who employed this fellow?'
'I say!' remonstrated Sloppy, jerking his head forward. 'No fellows, or I'll throw you out
of winder!'
Mr Boffin appeased him with a wave of his hand, and said: 'I employed him, Wegg.'
'Oh! You employed him, Boffin? Very good. Mr Venus, we raise our terms, and we
can't do better than proceed to business. Bof – fin! I want the room cleared of these two
scum.'
'That's not going to be done, Wegg,' replied Mr Boffin, sitting composedly on the
library−table, at one end, while the Secretary sat composedly on it at the other.
'Bof – fin! Not going to be done?' repeated Wegg. 'Not at your peril?'
'No, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin, shaking his head good−humouredly. 'Not at my peril, and
not on any other terms.'
Wegg reflected a moment, and then said: 'Mr Venus, will you be so good as hand me
over that same dockyment?'
'Certainly, sir,' replied Venus, handing it to him with much politeness. 'There it is.
Having now, sir, parted with it, I wish to make a small observation: not so much because it
is anyways necessary, or expresses any new doctrine or discovery, as because it is a comfort
to my mind. Silas Wegg, you are a precious old rascal.'
Mr Wegg, who, as if anticipating a compliment, had been beating time with the paper to
the other's politeness until this unexpected conclusion came upon him, stopped rather
abruptly.
'Silas Wegg,' said Venus, 'know that I took the liberty of taking Mr Boffin into our
concern as a sleeping partner, at a very early period of our firm's existence.
'Quite true,' added Mr Boffin; 'and I tested Venus by making him a pretended proposal
or two; and I found him on the whole a very honest man, Wegg.'
'So Mr Boffin, in his indulgence, is pleased to say,' Venus remarked: 'though in the
beginning of this dirt, my hands were not, for a few hours, quite as clean as I could wish.
But I hope I made early and full amends.'
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 767
'Venus, you did,' said Mr Boffin. 'Certainly, certainly, certainly.'
Venus inclined his head with respect and gratitude. 'Thank you, sir. I am much obliged
to you, sir, for all. For your good opinion now, for your way of receiving and encouraging
me when I first put myself in communication with you, and for the influence since so kindly
brought to bear upon a certain lady, both by yourself and by Mr John Harmon.' To whom,
when thus making mention of him, he also bowed.
Wegg followed the name with sharp ears, and the action with sharp eyes, and a certain
cringing air was infusing itself into his bullying air, when his attention was re−claimed by
Venus.
'Everything else between you and me, Mr Wegg,' said Venus, 'now explains itself, and
you can now make out, sir, without further words from me. But totally to prevent any
unpleasantness or mistake that might arise on what I consider an important point, to be made
quite clear at the close of our acquaintance, I beg the leave of Mr Boffin and Mr John
Harmon to repeat an observation which I have already had the pleasure of bringing under
your notice. You are a precious old rascal!'
'You are a fool,' said Wegg, with a snap of his fingers, 'and I'd have got rid of you
before now, if I could have struck out any way of doing it. I have thought it over, I can tell
you. You may go, and welcome. You leave the more for me. Because, you know,' said
Wegg, dividing his next observation between Mr Boffin and Mr Harmon, 'I am worth my
price, and I mean to have it. This getting off is all very well in its way, and it tells with such
an anatomical Pump as this one,' pointing out Mr Venus, 'but it won't do with a Man. I am
here to be bought off, and I have named my figure. Now, buy me, or leave me.'
'I'll leave you, Wegg, said Mr Boffin, laughing, 'as far as I am concerned.'
'Bof – fin!' replied Wegg, turning upon him with a severe air, 'I understand
YOUR new−born boldness. I see the brass underneath YOUR silver plating. YOU have got
YOUR nose out of joint. Knowing that you've nothing at stake, you can afford to come the
independent game. Why, you're just so much smeary glass to see through, you know! But
Mr Harmon is in another sitiwation. What Mr Harmon risks, is quite another pair of shoes.
Now, I've heerd something lately about this being Mr Harmon – I make out now, some hints
that I've met on that subject in the newspaper – and I drop you, Bof – fin, as beneath my
notice. I ask Mr Harmon whether he has any idea of the contents of this present paper?'
'It is a will of my late father's, of more recent date than the will proved by Mr Boffin
(address whom again, as you have addressed him already, and I'll knock you down), leaving
the whole of his property to the Crown,' said John Harmon, with as much indifference as
was compatible with extreme sternness.
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 768
'Bight you are!' cried Wegg. 'Then,' screwing the weight of his body upon his wooden
leg, and screwing his wooden head very much on one side, and screwing up one eye: 'then, I
put the question to you, what's this paper worth?'
'Nothing,' said John Harmon.
Wegg had repeated the word with a sneer, and was entering on some sarcastic retort,
when, to his boundless amazement, he found himself gripped by the cravat; shaken until his
teeth chattered; shoved back, staggering, into a corner of the room; and pinned there.
'You scoundrel!' said John Harmon, whose seafaring hold was like that of a vice.
'You're knocking my head against the wall,' urged Silas faintly.
'I mean to knock your head against the wall,' neturned John Harmon, suiting his action
to his words, with the heartiest good will; 'and I'd give a thousand pounds for leave to knock
your brains out. Listen, you scoundrel, and look at that Dutch bottle.'
Sloppy held it up, for his edification.
'That Dutch bottle, scoundrel, contained the latest will of the many wills made by my
unhappy self−tormenting father. That will gives everything absolutely to my noble
benefactor and yours, Mr Boffin, excluding and reviling me, and my sister (then already
dead of a broken heart), by name. That Dutch bottle was found by my noble benefactor and
yours, after he entered on possession of the estate. That Dutch bottle distressed him beyond
measure, because, though I and my sister were both no more, it cast a slur upon our memory
which he knew we had done nothing in our miserable youth, to deserve. That Dutch bottle,
therefore, he buried in the Mound belonging to him, and there it lay while you, you
thankless wretch, were prodding and poking – often very near it, I dare say. His intention
was, that it should never see the light; but he was afraid to destroy it, lest to destroy such a
document, even with his great generous motive, might be an offence at law. After the
discovery was made here who I was, Mr Boffin, still restless on the subject, told me, upon
certain conditions impossible for such a hound as you to appreciate, the secret of that Dutch
bottle. I urged upon him the necessity of its being dug up, and the paper being legally
produced and established. The first thing you saw him do, and the second thing has been
done without your knowledge. Consequently, the paper now rattling in your hand as I shake
you – and I should like to shake the life out of you – is worth less than the rotten cork of the
Dutch bottle, do you understand?'
Judging from the fallen countenance of Silas as his head wagged backwards and
forwards in a most uncomfortable manner, he did understand.
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 769
Now, scoundrel,' said John Harmon, taking another sailor−like turn on his cravat and
holding him in his corner at arms' length, 'I shall make two more short speeches to you,
because I hope they will torment you. Your discovery was a genuine discovery (such as it
was), for nobody had thought of looking into that place. Neither did we know you had made
it, until Venus spoke to Mr Boffin, though I kept you under good observation from my first
appearance here, and though Sloppy has long made it the chief occupation and delight of his
life, to attend you like your shadow. I tell you this, that you may know we knew enough of
you to persuade Mr Boffin to let us lead you on, deluded, to the last possible moment, in
order that your disappointment might be the heaviest possible disappointment. That's the
first short speech, do you understand?'
Here, John Harmon assisted his comprehension with another shake.
'Now, scoundrel,' he pursued, 'I am going to finish. You supposed me just now, to be the
possessor of my father's property. – So I am. But through any act of my father's, or by any
right I have? No. Through the munificence of Mr Boffin. The conditions that he made with
me, before parting with the secret of the Dutch bottle, were, that I should take the fortune,
and that he should take his Mound and no more. I owe everything I possess, solely to the
disinterestedness, uprightness, tenderness, goodness (there are no words to satisfy me) of Mr
and Mrs Boffin. And when, knowing what I knew, I saw such a mud−worm as you presume
to rise in this house against this noble soul, the wonder is,' added John Harmon through his
clenched teeth, and with a very ugly turn indeed on Wegg's cravat, 'that I didn't try to twist
your head off, and fling THAT out of window! So. That's the last short speech, do you
understand?'
Silas, released, put his hand to his throat, cleared it, and looked as if he had a rather
large fishbone in that region. Simultaneously with this action on his part in his corner, a
singular, and on the surface an incomprehensible, movement was made by Mr Sloppy: who
began backing towards Mr Wegg along the wall, in the manner of a porter or heaver who is
about to lift a sack of flour or coals.
'I am sorry, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin, in his clemency, 'that my old lady and I can't have a
better opinion of you than the bad one we are forced to entertain. But I shouldn't like to
leave you, after all said and done, worse off in life than I found you. Therefore say in a
word, before we part, what it'll cost to set you up in another stall.'
'And in another place,' John Harmon struck in. 'You don't come outside these windows.'
'Mr Boffin,' returned Wegg in avaricious humiliation: 'when I first had the honour of
making your acquaintance, I had got together a collection of ballads which was, I may say,
above price.'
'Then they can't be paid for,' said John Harmon, 'and you had better not try, my dear sir.'
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 770
'Pardon me, Mr Boffin,' resumed Wegg, with a malignant glance in the last speaker's
direction, 'I was putting the case to you, who, if my senses did not deceive me, put the case
to me. I had a very choice collection of ballads, and there was a new stock of gingerbread in
the tin box. I say no more, but would rather leave it to you.'
'But it's difficult to name what's right,' said Mr Boffin uneasily, with his hand in his
pocket, 'and I don't want to go beyond what's right, because you really have turned out such
a very bad fellow. So artful, and so ungrateful you have been, Wegg; for when did I ever
injure you?'
'There was also,' Mr Wegg went on, in a meditative manner, 'a errand connection, in
which I was much respected. But I would not wish to be deemed covetous, and I would
rather leave it to you, Mr Boffin.'
'Upon my word, I don't know what to put it at,' the Golden Dustman muttered.
'There was likewise,' resumed Wegg, 'a pair of trestles, for which alone a Irish person,
who was deemed a judge of trestles, offered five and six – a sum I would not hear of, for I
should have lost by it− −and there was a stool, a umbrella, a clothes−horse, and a tray. But I
leave it to you, Mr Boffin.'
The Golden Dustman seeming to be engaged in some abstruse calculation, Mr Wegg
assisted him with the following additional items.
'There was, further, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker. Ah!
When a man thinks of the loss of such patronage as that; when a man finds so fair a garden
rooted up by pigs; he finds it hard indeed, without going high, to work it into money. But I
leave it wholly to you, sir.'
Mr Sloppy still continued his singular, and on the surface his incomprehensible,
movement.
'Leading on has been mentioned,' said Wegg with a melancholy air, 'and it's not easy to
say how far the tone of my mind may have been lowered by unwholesome reading on the
subject of Misers, when you was leading me and others on to think you one yourself, sir. All
I can say is, that I felt my tone of mind a lowering at the time. And how can a man put a
price upon his mind! There was likewise a hat just now. But I leave the ole to you, Mr
Boffin.'
'Come!' said Mr Boffin. 'Here's a couple of pound.'
'In justice to myself, I couldn't take it, sir.'
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 771
The words were but out of his mouth when John Harmon lifted his finger, and Sloppy,
who was now close to Wegg, backed to Wegg's back, stooped, grasped his coat collar
behind with both hands, and deftly swung him up like the sack of flour or coals before
mentioned. A countenance of special discontent and amazement Mr Wegg exhibited in this
position, with his buttons almost as prominently on view as Sloppy's own, and with his
wooden leg in a highly unaccommodating state. But, not for many seconds was his
countenance visible in the room; for, Sloppy lightly trotted out with him and trotted down
the staircase, Mr Venus attending to open the street door. Mr Sloppy's instructions had been
to deposit his burden in the road; but, a scavenger's cart happening to stand unattended at the
corner, with its little ladder planted against the wheel, Mr S. found it impossible to resist the
temptation of shooting Mr Silas Wegg into the cart's contents. A somewhat difficult feat,
achieved with great dexterity, and with a prodigious splash.
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Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE 772
Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE
TRAPS THAT WERE SET
H
ow Bradley Headstone had been racked and riven in his mind since the quiet evening
when by the river−side he had risen, as it were, out of the ashes of the Bargeman, none but
he could have told. Not even he could have told, for such misery can only be felt.
First, he had to bear the combined weight of the knowledge of what he had done, of that
haunting reproach that he might have done it so much better, and of the dread of discovery.
This was load enough to crush him, and he laboured under it day and night. It was as heavy
on him in his scanty sleep, as in his red−eyed waking hours. It bore him down with a dread
unchanging monotony, in which there was not a moment's variety. The overweighted beast
of burden, or the overweighted slave, can for certain instants shift the physical load, and find
some slight respite even in enforcing additional pain upon such a set of muscles or such a
limb. Not even that poor mockery of relief could the wretched man obtain, under the steady
pressure of the infernal atmosphere into which he had entered.
Time went by, and no visible suspicion dogged him; time went by, and in such public
accounts of the attack as were renewed at intervals, he began to see Mr Lightwood (who
acted as lawyer for the injured man) straying further from the fact, going wider of the issue,
and evidently slackening in his zeal. By degrees, a glimmering of the cause of this began to
break on Bradley's sight. Then came the chance meeting with Mr Milvey at the railway
station (where he often lingered in his leisure hours, as a place where any fresh news of his
deed would be circulated, or any placard referring to it would be posted), and then he saw in
the light what he had brought about.
For, then he saw that through his desperate attempt to separate those two for ever, he
had been made the means of uniting them. That he had dipped his hands in blood, to mark
himself a miserable fool and tool. That Eugene Wrayburn, for his wife's sake, set him aside
and left him to crawl along his blasted course. He thought of Fate, or Providence, or be the
directing Power what it might, as having put a fraud upon him – overreached him – and in
his impotent mad rage bit, and tore, and had his fit.
New assurance of the truth came upon him in the next few following days, when it was
put forth how the wounded man had been married on his bed, and to whom, and how,
though always in a dangerous condition, he was a shade better. Bradley would far rather
have been seized for his murder, than he would have read that passage, knowing himself
spared, and knowing why.
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But, not to be still further defrauded and overreached – which he would be, if implicated
by Riderhood, and punished by the law for his abject failure, as though it had been a success
– he kept close in his school during the day, ventured out warily at night, and went no more
to the railway station. He examined the advertisements in the newspapers for any sign that
Riderhood acted on his hinted threat of so summoning him to renew their acquaintance, but
found none. Having paid him handsomely for the support and accommodation he had had at
the Lock House, and knowing him to be a very ignorant man who could not write, he began
to doubt whether he was to be feared at all, or whether they need ever meet again.
All this time, his mind was never off the rack, and his raging sense of having been made
to fling himself across the chasm which divided those two, and bridge it over for their
coming together, never cooled down. This horrible condition brought on other fits. He could
not have said how many, or when; but he saw in the faces of his pupils that they had seen
him in that state, and that they were possessed by a dread of his relapsing.
One winter day when a slight fall of snow was feathering the sills and frames of the
schoolroom windows, he stood at his black board, crayon in hand, about to commence with
a class; when, reading in the countenances of those boys that there was something wrong,
and that they seemed in alarm for him, he turned his eyes to the door towards which they
faced. He then saw a slouching man of forbidding appearance standing in the midst of the
school, with a bundle under his arm; and saw that it was Riderhood.
He sat down on a stool which one of his boys put for him, and he had a passing
knowledge that he was in danger of falling, and that his face was becoming distorted. But,
the fit went off for that time, and he wiped his mouth, and stood up again.
'Beg your pardon, governor! By your leave!' said Riderhood, knuckling his forehead,
with a chuckle and a leer. 'What place may this be?'
'This is a school.'
'Where young folks learns wot's right?' said Riderhood, gravely nodding. 'Beg your
pardon, governor! By your leave! But who teaches this school?'
'I do.'
'You're the master, are you, learned governor?'
'Yes. I am the master.'
'And a lovely thing it must be,' said Riderhood, 'fur to learn young folks wot's right, and
fur to know wot THEY know wot you do it. Beg your pardon, learned governor! By your
leave! – That there black board; wot's it for?'
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Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET 774
'It is for drawing on, or writing on.'
'Is it though!' said Riderhood. 'Who'd have thought it, from the looks on it!
WOULD you be so kind as write your name upon it, learned governor?' (In a wheedling
tone.)
Bradley hesitated for a moment; but placed his usual signature, enlarged, upon the
board.
'I ain't a learned character myself,' said Riderhood, surveying the class, 'but I do admire
learning in others. I should dearly like to hear these here young folks read that there name
off, from the writing.'
The arms of the class went up. At the miserable master's nod, the shrill chorus arose:
'Bradley Headstone!'
'No?' cried Riderhood. 'You don't mean it? Headstone! Why, that's in a churchyard.
Hooroar for another turn!'
Another tossing of arms, another nod, and another shrill chorus:
'Bradley Headstone!'
'I've got it now!' said Riderhood, after attentively listening, and internally repeating:
'Bradley. I see. Chris'en name, Bradley sim'lar to Roger which is my own. Eh? Fam'ly name,
Headstone, sim'lar to Riderhood which is my own. Eh?'
Shrill chorus. 'Yes!'
'Might you be acquainted, learned governor,' said Riderhood, 'with a person of about
your own heighth and breadth, and wot 'ud pull down in a scale about your own weight,
answering to a name sounding summat like Totherest?'
With a desperation in him that made him perfectly quiet, though his jaw was heavily
squared; with his eyes upon Riderhood; and with traces of quickened breathing in his
nostrils; the schoolmaster replied, in a suppressed voice, after a pause: 'I think I know the
man you mean.'
'I thought you knowed the man I mean, learned governor. I want the man.'
With a half glance around him at his pupils, Bradley returned:
'Do you suppose he is here?'
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Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET 775
'Begging your pardon, learned governor, and by your leave,' said Riderhood, with a
laugh, 'how could I suppose he's here, when there's nobody here but you, and me, and these
young lambs wot you're a learning on? But he is most excellent company, that man, and I
want him to come and see me at my Lock, up the river.'
'I'll tell him so.'
'D'ye think he'll come?' asked Riderhood.
'I am sure he will.'
'Having got your word for him,' said Riderhood, 'I shall count upon him. P'raps you'd so
fur obleege me, learned governor, as tell him that if he don't come precious soon, I'll look
him up.'
'He shall know it.'
'Thankee. As I says a while ago,' pursued Riderhood, changing his hoarse tone and
leering round upon the class again, 'though not a learned character my own self, I do admire
learning in others, to be sure! Being here and having met with your kind attention, Master,
might I, afore I go, ask a question of these here young lambs of yourn?'
'If it is in the way of school,' said Bradley, always sustaining his dark look at the other,
and speaking in his suppressed voice, 'you may.'
'Oh! It's in the way of school!' cried Riderhood. 'I'll pound it, Master, to be in the way of
school. Wot's the diwisions of water, my lambs? Wot sorts of water is there on the land?'
Shrill chorus: 'Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds.'
'Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds,' said Riderhood. 'They've got all the lot, Master! Blowed
if I shouldn't have left out lakes, never having clapped eyes upon one, to my knowledge.
Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Wot is it, lambs, as they ketches in seas, rivers, lakes, and
ponds?'
Shrill chorus (with some contempt for the ease of the question):
'Fish!'
'Good a−gin!' said Riderhood. 'But wot else is it, my lambs, as they sometimes ketches
in rivers?'
Chorus at a loss. One shrill voice: 'Weed!'
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Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET 776
'Good agin!' cried Riderhood. 'But it ain't weed neither. You'll never guess, my dears.
Wot is it, besides fish, as they sometimes ketches in rivers? Well! I'll tell you. It's suits o'
clothes.'
Bradley's face changed.
'Leastways, lambs,' said Riderhood, observing him out of the corners of his eyes, 'that's
wot I my own self sometimes ketches in rivers. For strike me blind, my lambs, if I didn't
ketch in a river the wery bundle under my arm!'
The class looked at the master, as if appealing from the irregular entrapment of this
mode of examination. The master looked at the examiner, as if he would have torn him to
pieces.
'I ask your pardon, learned governor,' said Riderhood, smearing his sleeve across his
mouth as he laughed with a relish, 'tain't fair to the lambs, I know. It wos a bit of fun of
mine. But upon my soul I drawed this here bundle out of a river! It's a Bargeman's suit of
clothes. You see, it had been sunk there by the man as wore it, and I got it up.'
'How do you know it was sunk by the man who wore it?' asked Bradley.
'Cause I see him do it,' said Riderhood.
They looked at each other. Bradley, slowly withdrawing his eyes, turned his face to the
black board and slowly wiped his name out.
'A heap of thanks, Master,' said Riderhood, 'for bestowing so much of your time, and of
the lambses' time, upon a man as hasn't got no other recommendation to you than being a
honest man. Wishing to see at my Lock up the river, the person as we've spoke of, and as
you've answered for, I takes my leave of the lambs and of their learned governor both.'
With those words, he slouched out of the school, leaving the master to get through his
weary work as he might, and leaving the whispering pupils to observe the master's face until
he fell into the fit which had been long impending.
The next day but one was Saturday, and a holiday. Bradley rose early, and set out on
foot for Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. He rose so early that it was not yet light when he began
his journey. Before extinguishing the candle by which he had dressed himself, he made a
little parcel of his decent silver watch and its decent guard, and wrote inside the paper:
'Kindly take care of these for me.' He then addressed the parcel to Miss Peecher, and left it
on the most protected corner of the little seat in her little porch.
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Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET 777
It was a cold hard easterly morning when he latched the garden gate and turned away.
The light snowfall which had feathered his schoolroom windows on the Thursday, still
lingered in the air, and was falling white, while the wind blew black. The tardy day did not
appear until he had been on foot two hours, and had traversed a greater part of London from
east to west. Such breakfast as he had, he took at the comfortless public−house where he had
parted from Riderhood on the occasion of their night−walk. He took it, standing at the
littered bar, and looked loweringly at a man who stood where Riderhood had stood that early
morning.
He outwalked the short day, and was on the towing−path by the river, somewhat
footsore, when the night closed in. Still two or three miles short of the Lock, he slackened
his pace then, but went steadily on. The ground was now covered with snow, though thinly,
and there were floating lumps of ice in the more exposed parts of the river, and broken
sheets of ice under the shelter of the banks. He took heed of nothing but the ice, the snow,
and the distance, until he saw a light ahead, which he knew gleamed from the Lock House
window. It arrested his steps, and he looked all around. The ice, and the snow, and he, and
the one light, had absolute possession of the dreary scene. In the distance before him, lay the
place where he had struck the worse than useless blows that mocked him with Lizzie's
presence there as Eugene's wife. In the distance behind him, lay the place where the children
with pointing arms had seemed to devote him to the demons in crying out his name. Within
there, where the light was, was the man who as to both distances could give him up to ruin.
To these limits had his world shrunk.
He mended his pace, keeping his eyes upon the light with a strange intensity, as if he
were taking aim at it. When he approached it so nearly as that it parted into rays, they
seemed to fasten themselves to him and draw him on. When he struck the door with his
hand, his foot followed so quickly on his hand, that he was in the room before he was bidden
to enter.
The light was the joint product of a fire and a candle. Between the two, with his feet on
the iron fender, sat Riderhood, pipe in mouth.
He looked up with a surly nod when his visitor came in. His visitor looked down with a
surly nod. His outer clothing removed, the visitor then took a seat on the opposite side of the
fire.
'Not a smoker, I think?' said Riderhood, pushing a bottle to him across the table.
'No.'
They both lapsed into silence, with their eyes upon the fire.
'You don't need to be told I am here,' said Bradley at length. 'Who is to begin?'
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Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET 778
'I'll begin,' said Riderhood, 'when I've smoked this here pipe out.'
He finished it with great deliberation, knocked out the ashes on the hob, and put it by.
'I'll begin,' he then repeated, 'Bradley Headstone, Master, if you wish it.'
'Wish it? I wish to know what you want with me.'
'And so you shall.' Riderhood had looked hard at his hands and his pockets, apparently
as a precautionary measure lest he should have any weapon about him. But, he now leaned
forward, turning the collar of his waistcoat with an inquisitive finger, and asked, 'Why,
where's your watch?'
'I have left it behind.'
'I want it. But it can be fetched. I've took a fancy to it.'
Bradley answered with a contemptuous laugh.
'I want it,' repeated Riderhood, in a louder voice, 'and I mean to have it.'
'That is what you want of me, is it?'
'No,' said Riderhood, still louder; 'it's on'y part of what I want of you. I want money of
you.'
'Anything else?'
'Everythink else!' roared Riderhood, in a very loud and furious way. 'Answer me like
that, and I won't talk to you at all.'
Bradley looked at him.
'Don't so much as look at me like that, or I won't talk to you at all,' vociferated
Riderhood. 'But, instead of talking, I'll bring my hand down upon you with all its weight,'
heavily smiting the table with great force, 'and smash you!'
'Go on,' said Bradley, after moistening his lips.
'O! I'm a going on. Don't you fear but I'll go on full−fast enough for you, and fur enough
for you, without your telling. Look here, Bradley Headstone, Master. You might have split
the T'other governor to chips and wedges, without my caring, except that I might have come
upon you for a glass or so now and then. Else why have to do with you at all? But when you
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Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET 779
copied my clothes, and when you copied my neckhankercher, and when you shook blood
upon me after you had done the trick, you did wot I'll be paid for and paid heavy for. If it
come to be throw'd upon you, you was to be ready to throw it upon me, was you? Where
else but in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock was there a man dressed according as described?
Where else but in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock was there a man as had had words with him
coming through in his boat? Look at the Lock−keeper in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock, in
them same answering clothes and with that same answering red neckhankercher, and see
whether his clothes happens to be bloody or not. Yes, they do happen to be bloody. Ah, you
sly devil!'
Bradley, very white, sat looking at him in silence.
'But two could play at your game,' said Riderhood, snapping his fingers at him half a
dozen times, 'and I played it long ago; long afore you tried your clumsy hand at it; in days
when you hadn't begun croaking your lecters or what not in your school. I know to a figure
how you done it. Where you stole away, I could steal away arter you, and do it knowinger
than you. I know how you come away from London in your own clothes, and where you
changed your clothes, and hid your clothes. I see you with my own eyes take your own
clothes from their hiding−place among them felled trees, and take a dip in the river to
account for your dressing yourself, to any one as might come by. I see you rise up Bradley
Headstone, Master, where you sat down Bargeman. I see you pitch your Bargeman's bundle
into the river. I hooked your Bargeman's bundle out of the river. I've got your Bargeman's
clothes, tore this way and that way with the scuffle, stained green with the grass, and
spattered all over with what bust from the blows. I've got them, and I've got you. I don't care
a curse for the T'other governor, alive or dead, but I care a many curses for my own self.
And as you laid your plots agin me and was a sly devil agin me, I'll be paid for it – I'll be
paid for it – I'll be paid for it – till I've drained you dry!'
Bradley looked at the fire, with a working face, and was silent for a while. At last he
said, with what seemed an inconsistent composure of voice and feature:
'You can't get blood out of a stone, Riderhood.'
'I can get money out of a schoolmaster though.'
'You can't get out of me what is not in me. You can't wrest from me what I have not got.
Mine is but a poor calling. You have had more than two guineas from me, already. Do you
know how long it has taken me (allowing for a long and arduous training) to earn such a
sum?'
'I don't know, nor I don't care. Yours is a 'spectable calling. To save your 'spectability,
it's worth your while to pawn every article of clothes you've got, sell every stick in your
house, and beg and borrow every penny you can get trusted with. When you've done that
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Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET 780
and handed over, I'll leave you. Not afore.'
'How do you mean, you'll leave me?'
'I mean as I'll keep you company, wherever you go, when you go away from here. Let
the Lock take care of itself. I'll take care of you, once I've got you.'
Bradley again looked at the fire. Eyeing him aside, Riderhood took up his pipe, refilled
it, lighted it, and sat smoking. Bradley leaned his elbows on his knees, and his head upon his
hands, and looked at the fire with a most intent abstraction.
'Riderhood,' he said, raising himself in his chair, after a long silence, and drawing out
his purse and putting it on the table. 'Say I part with this, which is all the money I have; say I
let you have my watch; say that every quarter, when I draw my salary, I pay you a certain
portion of it.'
'Say nothink of the sort,' retorted Riderhood, shaking his head as he smoked. 'You've got
away once, and I won't run the chance agin. I've had trouble enough to find you, and
shouldn't have found you, if I hadn't seen you slipping along the street overnight, and
watched you till you was safe housed. I'll have one settlement with you for good and all.'
'Riderhood, I am a man who has lived a retired life. I have no resources beyond myself.
I have absolutely no friends.'
'That's a lie,' said Riderhood. 'You've got one friend as I knows of; one as is good for a
Savings−Bank book, or I'm a blue monkey!'
Bradley's face darkened, and his hand slowly closed on the purse and drew it back, as he
sat listening for what the other should go on to say.
'I went into the wrong shop, fust, last Thursday,' said Riderhood. 'Found myself among
the young ladies, by George! Over the young ladies, I see a Missis. That Missis is sweet
enough upon you, Master, to sell herself up, slap, to get you out of trouble. Make her do it
then.'
Bradley stared at him so very suddenly that Riderhood, not quite knowing how to take
it, affected to be occupied with the encircling smoke from his pipe; fanning it away with his
hand, and blowing it off.
'You spoke to the mistress, did you?' inquired Bradley, with that former composure of
voice and feature that seemed inconsistent, and with averted eyes.
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Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET 781
'Poof! Yes,' said Riderhood, withdrawing his attention from the smoke. 'I spoke to her. I
didn't say much to her. She was put in a fluster by my dropping in among the young ladies (I
never did set up for a lady's man), and she took me into her parlour to hope as there was
nothink wrong. I tells her, «O no, nothink wrong. The master's my wery good friend.» But I
see how the land laid, and that she was comfortable off.'
Bradley put the purse in his pocket, grasped his left wrist with his right hand, and sat
rigidly contemplating the fire.
'She couldn't live more handy to you than she does,' said Riderhood, 'and when I goes
home with you (as of course I am a going), I recommend you to clean her out without loss of
time. You can marry her, arter you and me have come to a settlement. She's nice−looking,
and I know you can't be keeping company with no one else, having been so lately disapinted
in another quarter.'
Not one other word did Bradley utter all that night. Not once did he change his attitude,
or loosen his hold upon his wrist. Rigid before the fire, as if it were a charmed flame that
was turning him old, he sat, with the dark lines deepening in his face, its stare becoming
more and more haggard, its surface turning whiter and whiter as if it were being overspread
with ashes, and the very texture and colour of his hair degenerating.
Not until the late daylight made the window transparent, did this decaying statue move.
Then it slowly arose, and sat in the window looking out.
Riderhood had kept his chair all night. In the earlier part of the night he had muttered
twice or thrice that it was bitter cold; or that the fire burnt fast, when he got up to mend it;
but, as he could elicit from his companion neither sound nor movement, he had afterwards
held his peace. He was making some disorderly preparations for coffee, when Bradley came
from the window and put on his outer coat and hat.
'Hadn't us better have a bit o' breakfast afore we start?' said Riderhood. 'It ain't good to
freeze a empty stomach, Master.'
Without a sign to show that he heard, Bradley walked out of the Lock House. Catching
up from the table a piece of bread, and taking his Bargeman's bundle under his arm,
Riderhood immediately followed him. Bradley turned towards London. Riderhood caught
him up, and walked at his side.
The two men trudged on, side by side, in silence, full three miles. Suddenly, Bradley
turned to retrace his course. Instantly, Riderhood turned likewise, and they went back side
by side.
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Bradley re−entered the Lock House. So did Riderhood. Bradley sat down in the
window. Riderhood warmed himself at the fire. After an hour or more, Bradley abruptly got
up again, and again went out, but this time turned the other way. Riderhood was close after
him, caught him up in a few paces, and walked at his side.
This time, as before, when he found his attendant not to be shaken off, Bradley
suddenly turned back. This time, as before, Riderhood turned back along with him. But, not
this time, as before, did they go into the Lock House, for Bradley came to a stand on the
snow− covered turf by the Lock, looking up the river and down the river. Navigation was
impeded by the frost, and the scene was a mere white and yellow desert.
'Come, come, Master,' urged Riderhood, at his side. 'This is a dry game. And where's
the good of it? You can't get rid of me, except by coming to a settlement. I am a going along
with you wherever you go.'
Without a word of reply, Bradley passed quickly from him over the wooden bridge on
the lock gates. 'Why, there's even less sense in this move than t'other,' said Riderhood,
following. 'The Weir's there, and you'll have to come back, you know.'
Without taking the least notice, Bradley leaned his body against a post, in a resting
attitude, and there rested with his eyes cast down. 'Being brought here,' said Riderhood,
gruffly, 'I'll turn it to some use by changing my gates.' With a rattle and a rush of water, he
then swung−to the lock gates that were standing open, before opening the others. So, both
sets of gates were, for the moment, closed.
'You'd better by far be reasonable, Bradley Headstone, Master,' said Riderhood, passing
him, 'or I'll drain you all the dryer for it, when we do settle. – Ah! Would you!'
Bradley had caught him round the body. He seemed to be girdled with an iron ring.
They were on the brink of the Lock, about midway between the two sets of gates.
'Let go!' said Riderhood, 'or I'll get my knife out and slash you wherever I can cut you.
Let go!'
Bradley was drawing to the Lock−edge. Riderhood was drawing away from it. It was a
strong grapple, and a fierce struggle, arm and leg. Bradley got him round, with his back to
the Lock, and still worked him backward.
'Let go!' said Riderhood. 'Stop! What are you trying at? You can't drown Me. Ain't I
told you that the man as has come through drowning can never be drowned? I can't be
drowned.'
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'I can be!' returned Bradley, in a desperate, clenched voice. 'I am resolved to be. I'll hold
you living, and I'll hold you dead. Come down!'
Riderhood went over into the smooth pit, backward, and Bradley Headstone upon him.
When the two were found, lying under the ooze and scum behind one of the rotting gates,
Riderhood's hold had relaxed, probably in falling, and his eyes were staring upward. But, he
was girdled still with Bradley's iron ring, and the rivets of the iron ring held tight.
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Chapter 16 − PERSONS AND THINGS IN GENERAL
M
r and Mrs John Harmon's first delightful occupation was, to set all matters right that
had strayed in any way wrong, or that might, could, would, or should, have strayed in any
way wrong, while their name was in abeyance. In tracing out affairs for which John's
fictitious death was to be considered in any way responsible, they used a very broad and free
construction; regarding, for instance, the dolls' dressmaker as having a claim on their
protection, because of her association with Mrs Eugene Wrayburn, and because of Mrs
Eugene's old association, in her turn, with the dark side of the story. It followed that the old
man, Riah, as a good and serviceable friend to both, was not to be disclaimed. Nor even Mr
Inspector, as having been trepanned into an industrious hunt on a false scent. It may be
remarked, in connexion with that worthy officer, that a rumour shortly afterwards pervaded
the Force, to the effect that he had confided to Miss Abbey Potterson, over a jug of mellow
flip in the bar of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, that he 'didn't stand to lose a farthing'
through Mr Harmon's coming to life, but was quite as well satisfied as if that gentleman had
been barbarously murdered, and he (Mr Inspector) had pocketed the government reward.
In all their arrangements of such nature, Mr and Mrs John Harmon derived much
assistance from their eminent solicitor, Mr Mortimer Lightwood; who laid about him
professionally with such unwonted despatch and intention, that a piece of work was
vigorously pursued as soon as cut out; whereby Young Blight was acted on as by that
transatlantic dram which is poetically named An Eye− Opener, and found himself staring at
real clients instead of out of window. The accessibility of Riah proving very useful as to a
few hints towards the disentanglement of Eugene's affairs, Lightwood applied himself with
infinite zest to attacking and harassing Mr Fledgeby: who, discovering himself in danger of
being blown into the air by certain explosive transactions in which he had been engaged, and
having been sufficiently flayed under his beating, came to a parley and asked for quarter.
The harmless Twemlow profited by the conditions entered into, though he little thought it.
Mr Riah unaccountably melted; waited in person on him over the stable yard in Duke Street,
St James's, no longer ravening but mild, to inform him that payment of interest as
heretofore, but henceforth at Mr Lightwood's offices, would appease his Jewish rancour; and
departed with the secret that Mr John Harmon had advanced the money and become the
creditor. Thus, was the sublime Snigsworth's wrath averted, and thus did he snort no larger
amount of moral grandeur at the Corinthian column in the print over the fireplace, than was
normally in his (and the British) constitution.
Mrs Wilfer's first visit to the Mendicant's bride at the new abode of Mendicancy, was a
grand event. Pa had been sent for into the City, on the very day of taking possession, and
had been stunned with astonishment, and brought−to, and led about the house by one ear, to
behold its various treasures, and had been enraptured and enchanted. Pa had also been
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appointed Secretary, and had been enjoined to give instant notice of resignation to Chicksey,
Veneering, and Stobbles, for ever and ever. But Ma came later, and came, as was her due, in
state.
The carriage was sent for Ma, who entered it with a bearing worthy of the occasion,
accompanied, rather than supported, by Miss Lavinia, who altogether declined to recognize
the maternal majesty. Mr George Sampson meekly followed. He was received in the vehicle,
by Mrs Wilfer, as if admitted to the honour of assisting at a funeral in the family, and she
then issued the order, 'Onward!' to the Mendicant's menial.
'I wish to goodness, Ma,' said Lavvy, throwing herself back among the cushions, with
her arms crossed, 'that you'd loll a little.'
'How!' repeated Mrs Wilfer. 'Loll!'
'Yes, Ma.'
'I hope,' said the impressive lady, 'I am incapable of it.'
'I am sure you look so, Ma. But why one should go out to dine with one's own daughter
or sister, as if one's under−petticoat was a blackboard, I do NOT understand.'
'Neither do I understand,' retorted Mrs Wilfer, with deep scorn, 'how a young lady can
mention the garment in the name of which you have indulged. I blush for you.'
'Thank you, Ma,' said Lavvy, yawning, 'but I can do it for myself, I am obliged to you,
when there's any occasion.'
Here, Mr Sampson, with the view of establishing harmony, which he never under any
circumstances succeeded in doing, said with an agreeable smile: 'After all, you know,
ma'am, we know it's there.' And immediately felt that he had committed himself.
'We know it's there!' said Mrs Wilfer, glaring.
'Really, George,' remonstrated Miss Lavinia, 'I must say that I don't understand your
allusions, and that I think you might be more delicate and less personal.'
'Go it!' cried Mr Sampson, becoming, on the shortest notice, a prey to despair. 'Oh yes!
Go it, Miss Lavinia Wilfer!'
'What you may mean, George Sampson, by your omnibus−driving expressions, I cannot
pretend to imagine. Neither,' said Miss Lavinia, 'Mr George Sampson, do I wish to imagine.
It is enough for me to know in my own heart that I am not going to – ' having imprudently
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got into a sentence without providing a way out of it, Miss Lavinia was constrained to close
with 'going to it'. A weak conclusion which, however, derived some appearance of strength
from disdain.
'Oh yes!' cried Mr Sampson, with bitterness. 'Thus it ever is. I never – '
'If you mean to say,' Miss Lavvy cut him short, that you never brought up a young
gazelle, you may save yourself the trouble, because nobody in this carriage supposes that
you ever did. We know you better.' (As if this were a home−thrust.)
'Lavinia,' returned Mr Sampson, in a dismal vein, I did not mean to say so. What I did
mean to say,was, that I never expected to retain my favoured place in this family, after
Fortune shed her beams upon it. Why do you take me,' said Mr Sampson, 'to the glittering
halls with which I can never compete, and then taunt me with my moderate salary? Is it
generous? Is it kind?'
The stately lady, Mrs Wilfer, perceiving her opportunity of delivering a few remarks
from the throne, here took up the altercation.
'Mr Sampson,' she began, 'I cannot permit you to misrepresent the intentions of a child
of mine.'
'Let him alone, Ma,' Miss Lavvy interposed with haughtiness. 'It is indifferent to me
what he says or does.'
'Nay, Lavinia,' quoth Mrs Wilfer, 'this touches the blood of the family. If Mr George
Sampson attributes, even to my youngest daughter – '
('I don't see why you should use the word «even», Ma,' Miss Lavvy interposed, 'because
I am quite as important as any of the others.')
'Peace!' said Mrs Wilfer, solemnly. 'I repeat, if Mr George Sampson attributes, to my
youngest daughter, grovelling motives, he attributes them equally to the mother of my
youngest daughter. That mother repudiates them, and demands of Mr George Sampson, as a
youth of honour, what he WOULD have? I may be mistaken – nothing is more likely – but
Mr George Sampson,' proceeded Mrs Wilfer, majestically waving her gloves, 'appears to me
to be seated in a first−class equipage. Mr George Sampson appears to me to be on his way,
by his own admission, to a residence that may be termed Palatial. Mr George Sampson
appears to me to be invited to participate in the – shall I say the – Elevation which has
descended on the family with which he is ambitious, shall I say to Mingle? Whence, then,
this tone on Mr Sampson's part?'
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'It is only, ma'am,' Mr Sampson explained, in exceedingly low spirits, 'because, in a
pecuniary sense, I am painfully conscious of my unworthiness. Lavinia is now highly
connected. Can I hope that she will still remain the same Lavinia as of old? And is it not
pardonable if I feel sensitive, when I see a disposition on her part to take me up short?'
'If you are not satisfied with your position, sir,' observed Miss Lavinia, with much
politeness, 'we can set you down at any turning you may please to indicate to my sister's
coachman.'
'Dearest Lavinia,' urged Mr Sampson, pathetically, 'I adore you.'
'Then if you can't do it in a more agreeable manner,' returned the young lady, 'I wish
you wouldn't.'
'I also,' pursued Mr Sampson, 'respect you, ma'am, to an extent which must ever be
below your merits, I am well aware, but still up to an uncommon mark. Bear with a wretch,
Lavinia, bear with a wretch, ma'am, who feels the noble sacrifices you make for him, but is
goaded almost to madness,' Mr Sampson slapped his forehead, 'when he thinks of competing
with the rich and influential.'
'When you have to compete with the rich and influential, it will probably be mentioned
to you,' said Miss Lavvy, 'in good time. At least, it will if the case is MY case.'
Mr Sampson immediately expressed his fervent Opinion that this was 'more than
human', and was brought upon his knees at Miss Lavinia's feet.
It was the crowning addition indispensable to the full enjoyment of both mother and
daughter, to bear Mr Sampson, a grateful captive, into the glittering halls he had mentioned,
and to parade him through the same, at once a living witness of their glory, and a bright
instance of their condescension. Ascending the staircase, Miss Lavinia permitted him to
walk at her side, with the air of saying: 'Notwithstanding all these surroundings, I am yours
as yet, George. How long it may last is another question, but I am yours as yet.' She also
benignantly intimated to him, aloud, the nature of the objects upon which he looked, and to
which he was unaccustomed: as, 'Exotics, George,' 'An aviary, George,' 'An ormolu clock,
George,' and the like. While, through the whole of the decorations, Mrs Wilfer led the way
with the bearing of a Savage Chief, who would feel himself compromised by manifesting
the slightest token of surprise or admiration.
Indeed, the bearing of this impressive woman, throughout the day, was a pattern to all
impressive women under similar circumstances. She renewed the acquaintance of Mr and
Mrs Boffin, as if Mr and Mrs Boffin had said of her what she had said of them, and as if
Time alone could quite wear her injury out. She regarded every servant who approached her,
as her sworn enemy, expressly intending to offer her affronts with the dishes, and to pour
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forth outrages on her moral feelings from the decanters. She sat erect at table, on the right
hand of her son−in−law, as half suspecting poison in the viands, and as bearing up with
native force of character against other deadly ambushes. Her carriage towards Bella was as a
carriage towards a young lady of good position, whom she had met in society a few years
ago. Even when, slightly thawing under the influence of sparkling champagne, she related to
her son−in−law some passages of domestic interest concerning her papa, she infused into the
narrative such Arctic suggestions of her having been an unappreciated blessing to mankind,
since her papa's days, and also of that gentleman's having been a frosty impersonation of a
frosty race, as struck cold to the very soles of the feet of the hearers. The Inexhaustible being
produced, staring, and evidently intending a weak and washy smile shortly, no sooner
beheld her, than it was stricken spasmodic and inconsolable. When she took her leave at last,
it would have been hard to say whether it was with the air of going to the scaffold herself, or
of leaving the inmates of the house for immediate execution. Yet, John Harmon enjoyed it
all merrily, and told his wife, when he and she were alone, that her natural ways had never
seemed so dearly natural as beside this foil, and that although he did not dispute her being
her father's daughter, he should ever remain stedfast in the faith that she could not be her
mother's.
This visit was, as has been said, a grand event. Another event, not grand but deemed in
the house a special one, occurred at about the same period; and this was, the first interview
between Mr Sloppy and Miss Wren.
The dolls' dressmaker, being at work for the Inexhaustible upon a full−dressed doll
some two sizes larger than that young person, Mr Sloppy undertook to call for it, and did so.
'Come in, sir,' said Miss Wren, who was working at her bench. 'And who may you be?'
Mr Sloppy introduced himself by name and buttons.
'Oh indeed!' cried Jenny. 'Ah! I have been looking forward to knowing you. I heard of
your distinguishing yourself.'
'Did you, Miss?' grinned Sloppy. 'I am sure I am glad to hear it, but I don't know how.'
'Pitching somebody into a mud−cart,' said Miss Wren.
'Oh! That way!' cried Sloppy. 'Yes, Miss.' And threw back his head and laughed.
'Bless us!' exclaimed Miss Wren, with a start. 'Don't open your mouth as wide as that,
young man, or it'll catch so, and not shut again some day.'
Mr Sloppy opened it, if possible, wider, and kept it open until his laugh was out.
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'Why, you're like the giant,' said Miss Wren, 'when he came home in the land of
Beanstalk, and wanted Jack for supper.'
'Was he good−looking, Miss?' asked Sloppy.
'No,' said Miss Wren. 'Ugly.'
Her visitor glanced round the room – which had many comforts in it now, that had not
been in it before – and said: 'This is a pretty place, Miss.'
'Glad you think so, sir,' returned Miss Wren. 'And what do you think of Me?'
The honesty of Mr Sloppy being severely taxed by the question, he twisted a button,
grinned, and faltered.
'Out with it!' said Miss Wren, with an arch look. 'Don't you think me a queer little
comicality?' In shaking her head at him after asking the question, she shook her hair down.
'Oh!' cried Sloppy, in a burst of admiration. 'What a lot, and what a colour!'
Miss Wren, with her usual expressive hitch, went on with her work. But, left her hair as
it was; not displeased by the effect it had made.
'You don't live here alone; do you, Miss?' asked Sloppy.
'No,' said Miss Wren, with a chop. 'Live here with my fairy godmother.'
'With;' Mr Sloppy couldn't make it out; 'with who did you say, Miss?'
'Well!' replied Miss Wren, more seriously. 'With my second father. Or with my first, for
that matter.' And she shook her head, and drew a sigh. 'If you had known a poor child I used
to have here,' she added, 'you'd have understood me. But you didn't, and you can't. All the
better!'
'You must have been taught a long time,' said Sloppy, glancing at the array of dolls in
hand, 'before you came to work so neatly, Miss, and with such a pretty taste.'
'Never was taught a stitch, young man!' returned the dress−maker, tossing her head.
'Just gobbled and gobbled, till I found out how to do it. Badly enough at first, but better
now.'
'And here have I,' said Sloppy, in something of a self−reproachful tone, 'been a learning
and a learning, and here has Mr Boffin been a paying and a paying, ever so long!'
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'I have heard what your trade is,' observed Miss Wren; 'it's cabinet−making.'
Mr Sloppy nodded. 'Now that the Mounds is done with, it is. I'll tell you what, Miss. I
should like to make you something.'
'Much obliged. But what?'
'I could make you,' said Sloppy, surveying the room, 'I could make you a handy set of
nests to lay the dolls in. Or I could make you a handy little set of drawers, to keep your silks
and threads and scraps in. Or I could turn you a rare handle for that crutch−stick, if it
belongs to him you call your father.'
'It belongs to me,' returned the little creature, with a quick flush of her face and neck. 'I
am lame.'
Poor Sloppy flushed too, for there was an instinctive delicacy behind his buttons, and
his own hand had struck it. He said, perhaps, the best thing in the way of amends that could
be said. 'I am very glad it's yours, because I'd rather ornament it for you than for any one
else. Please may I look at it?'
Miss Wren was in the act of handing it to him over her bench, when she paused. 'But
you had better see me use it,' she said, sharply. 'This is the way. Hoppetty, Kicketty,
Pep−peg−peg. Not pretty; is it?'
'It seems to me that you hardly want it at all,' said Sloppy.
The little dressmaker sat down again, and gave it into his hand, saying, with that better
look upon her, and with a smile: 'Thank you!'
'And as concerning the nests and the drawers,' said Sloppy, after measuring the handle
on his sleeve, and softly standing the stick aside against the wall, 'why, it would be a real
pleasure to me. I've heerd tell that you can sing most beautiful; and I should be better paid
with a song than with any money, for I always loved the likes of that, and often giv' Mrs
Higden and Johnny a comic song myself, with «Spoken» in it. Though that's not your sort,
I'll wager.'
'You are a very kind young man,' returned the dressmaker; 'a really kind young man. I
accept your offer. – I suppose He won't mind,' she added as an afterthought, shrugging her
shoulders; 'and if he does, he may!'
'Meaning him that you call your father, Miss,' asked Sloppy.
'No, no,' replied Miss Wren. 'Him, Him, Him!'
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'Him, him, him?' repeated Sloppy; staring about, as if for Him.
'Him who is coming to court and marry me,' returned Miss Wren. 'Dear me, how slow
you are!'
'Oh! HIM!' said Sloppy. And seemed to turn thoughtful and a little troubled. 'I never
thought of him. When is he coming, Miss?'
'What a question!' cried Miss Wren. 'How should I know!'
'Where is he coming from, Miss?'
'Why, good gracious, how can I tell! He is coming from somewhere or other, I suppose,
and he is coming some day or other, I suppose. I don't know any more about him, at present.'
This tickled Mr Sloppy as an extraordinarily good joke, and he threw back his head and
laughed with measureless enjoyment. At the sight of him laughing in that absurd way, the
dolls' dressmaker laughed very heartily indeed. So they both laughed, till they were tired.
'There, there, there!' said Miss Wren. 'For goodness' sake, stop, Giant, or I shall be
swallowed up alive, before I know it. And to this minute you haven't said what you've come
for.'
'I have come for little Miss Harmonses doll,' said Sloppy.
'I thought as much,' remarked Miss Wren, 'and here is little Miss Harmonses doll
waiting for you. She's folded up in silver paper, you see, as if she was wrapped from head to
foot in new Bank notes. Take care of her, and there's my hand, and thank you again.'
'I'll take more care of her than if she was a gold image,' said Sloppy, 'and there's both
MY hands, Miss, and I'll soon come back again.'
But, the greatest event of all, in the new life of Mr and Mrs John Harmon, was a visit
from Mr and Mrs Eugene Wrayburn. Sadly wan and worn was the once gallant Eugene, and
walked resting on his wife's arm, and leaning heavily upon a stick. But, he was daily
growing stronger and better, and it was declared by the medical attendants that he might not
be much disfigured by−and−by. It was a grand event, indeed, when Mr and Mrs Eugene
Wrayburn came to stay at Mr and Mrs John Harmon's house: where, by the way, Mr and
Mrs Boffin (exquisitely happy, and daily cruising about, to look at shops,) were likewise
staying indefinitely.
To Mr Eugene Wrayburn, in confidence, did Mrs John Harmon impart what she had
known of the state of his wife's affections, in his reckless time. And to Mrs John Harmon, in
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confidence, did Mr Eugene Wrayburn impart that, please God, she should see how his wife
had changed him!
'I make no protestations,' said Eugene; ' – who does, who means them! – I have made a
resolution.'
'But would you believe, Bella,' interposed his wife, coming to resume her nurse's place
at his side, for he never got on well without her: 'that on our wedding day he told me he
almost thought the best thing he could do, was to die?'
'As I didn't do it, Lizzie,' said Eugene, 'I'll do that better thing you suggested – for your
sake.'
That same afternoon, Eugene lying on his couch in his own room upstairs, Lightwood
came to chat with him, while Bella took his wife out for a ride. 'Nothing short of force will
make her go, Eugene had said; so, Bella had playfully forced her.
'Dear old fellow,' Eugene began with Lightwood, reaching up his hand, 'you couldn't
have come at a better time, for my mind is full, and I want to empty it. First, of my present,
before I touch upon my future. M. R. F., who is a much younger cavalier than I, and a
professed admirer of beauty, was so affable as to remark the other day (he paid us a visit of
two days up the river there, and much objected to the accommodation of the hotel), that
Lizzie ought to have her portrait painted. Which, coming from M. R. F., may be considered
equivalent to a melodramatic blessing.'
'You are getting well,' said Mortimer, with a smile.
'Really,' said Eugene, 'I mean it. When M. R. F. said that, and followed it up by rolling
the claret (for which he called, and I paid), in his mouth, and saying, «My dear son, why do
you drink this trash?» it was tantamount in him – to a paternal benediction on our union,
accompanied with a gush of tears. The coolness of M. R. F. is not to be measured by
ordinary standards.'
'True enough,' said Lightwood.
'That's all,' pursued Eugene, 'that I shall ever hear from M. R. F. on the subject, and he
will continue to saunter through the world with his hat on one side. My marriage being thus
solemnly recognized at the family altar, I have no further trouble on that score. Next, you
really have done wonders for me, Mortimer, in easing my money−perplexities, and with
such a guardian and steward beside me, as the preserver of my life (I am hardly strong yet,
you see, for I am not man enough to refer to her without a trembling voice – she is so
inexpressibly dear to me, Mortimer!), the little that I can call my own will be more than it
ever has been. It need be more, for you know what it always has been in my hands. Nothing.'
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'Worse than nothing, I fancy, Eugene. My own small income (I devoutly wish that my
grandfather had left it to the Ocean rather than to me!) has been an effective Something, in
the way of preventing me from turning to at Anything. And I think yours has been much the
same.'
'There spake the voice of wisdom,' said Eugene. 'We are shepherds both. In turning to at
last, we turn to in earnest. Let us say no more of that, for a few years to come. Now, I have
had an idea, Mortimer, of taking myself and my wife to one of the colonies, and working at
my vocation there.'
'I should be lost without you, Eugene; but you may be right.'
'No,' said Eugene, emphatically. 'Not right. Wrong!'
He said it with such a lively – almost angry – flash, that Mortimer showed himself
greatly surprised.
'You think this thumped head of mine is excited?' Eugene went on, with a high look;
'not so, believe me. I can say to you of the healthful music of my pulse what Hamlet said of
his. My blood is up, but wholesomely up, when I think of it. Tell me! Shall I turn coward to
Lizzie, and sneak away with her, as if I were ashamed of her! Where would your friend's
part in this world be, Mortimer, if she had turned coward to him, and on immeasurably
better occasion?'
'Honourable and stanch,' said Lightwood. 'And yet, Eugene – '
'And yet what, Mortimer?'
'And yet, are you sure that you might not feel (for her sake, I say for her sake) any slight
coldness towards her on the part of – Society?'
'O! You and I may well stumble at the word,' returned Eugene, laughing. 'Do we mean
our Tippins?'
'Perhaps we do,' said Mortimer, laughing also.
'Faith, we DO!' returned Eugene, with great animation. 'We may hide behind the bush
and beat about it, but we DO! Now, my wife is something nearer to my heart, Mortimer,
than Tippins is, and I owe her a little more than I owe to Tippins, and I am rather prouder of
her than I ever was of Tippins. Therefore, I will fight it out to the last gasp, with her and for
her, here, in the open field. When I hide her, or strike for her, faint−heartedly, in a hole or a
corner, do you whom I love next best upon earth, tell me what I shall most righteously
deserve to be told: – that she would have done well to turn me over with her foot that night
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 16 − PERSONS AND THINGS IN GENERAL 794
when I lay bleeding to death, and spat in my dastard face.'
The glow that shone upon him as he spoke the words, so irradiated his features that he
looked, for the time, as though he had never been mutilated. His friend responded as Eugene
would have had him respond, and they discoursed of the future until Lizzie came back. After
resuming her place at his side, and tenderly touching his hands and his head, she said:
'Eugene, dear, you made me go out, but I ought to have stayed with you. You are more
flushed than you have been for many days. What have you been doing?'
'Nothing,' replied Eugene, 'but looking forward to your coming back.'
'And talking to Mr Lightwood,' said Lizzie, turning to him with a smile. 'But it cannot
have been Society that disturbed you.'
'Faith, my dear love!' retorted Eugene, in his old airy manner, as he laughed and kissed
her, 'I rather think it WAS Society though!'
The word ran so much in Mortimer Lightwood's thoughts as he went home to the
Temple that night, that he resolved to take a look at Society, which he had not seen for a
considerable period.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 16 − PERSONS AND THINGS IN GENERAL 795
Chapter 17 − THE VOICE OF SOCIETY
B
ehoves Mortimer Lightwood, therefore, to answer a dinner card from Mr and Mrs
Veneering requesting the honour, and to signify that Mr Mortimer Lightwood will be happy
to have the other honour. The Veneerings have been, as usual, indefatigably dealing dinner
cards to Society, and whoever desires to take a hand had best be quick about it, for it is
written in the Books of the Insolvent Fates that Veneering shall make a resounding smash
next week. Yes. Having found out the clue to that great mystery how people can contrive to
live beyond their means, and having over−jobbed his jobberies as legislator deputed to the
Universe by the pure electors of Pocket−Breaches, it shall come to pass next week that
Veneering will accept the Chiltern Hundreds, that the legal gentleman in Britannia's
confidence will again accept the Pocket− Breaches Thousands, and that the Veneerings will
retire to Calais, there to live on Mrs Veneering's diamonds (in which Mr Veneering, as a
good husband, has from time to time invested considerable sums), and to relate to Neptune
and others, how that, before Veneering retired from Parliament, the House of Commons was
composed of himself and the six hundred and fifty−seven dearest and oldest friends he had
in the world. It shall likewise come to pass, at as nearly as possible the same period, that
Society will discover that it always did despise Veneering, and distrust Veneering, and that
when it went to Veneering's to dinner it always had misgivings – though very secretly at the
time, it would seem, and in a perfectly private and confidential manner.
The next week's books of the Insolvent Fates, however, being not yet opened, there is
the usual rush to the Veneerings, of the people who go to their house to dine with one
another and not with them. There is Lady Tippins. There are Podsnap the Great, and Mrs
Podsnap. There is Twemlow. There are Buffer, Boots, and Brewer. There is the Contractor,
who is Providence to five hundred thousand men. There is the Chairman, travelling three
thousand miles per week. There is the brilliant genius who turned the shares into that
remarkably exact sum of three hundred and seventy five thousand pounds, no shillings, and
nopence.
To whom, add Mortimer Lightwood, coming in among them with a reassumption of his
old languid air, founded on Eugene, and belonging to the days when he told the story of the
man from Somewhere.
That fresh fairy, Tippins, all but screams at sight of her false swain. She summons the
deserter to her with her fan; but the deserter, predetermined not to come, talks Britain with
Podsnap. Podsnap always talks Britain, and talks as if he were a sort of Private Watchman
employed, in the British interests, against the rest of the world. 'We know what Russia
means, sir,' says Podsnap; 'we know what France wants; we see what America is up to; but
we know what England is. That's enough for us.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 17 − THE VOICE OF SOCIETY 796
However, when dinner is served, and Lightwood drops into his old place over against
Lady Tippins, she can be fended off no longer. 'Long banished Robinson Crusoe,' says the
charmer, exchanging salutations, 'how did you leave the Island?'
'Thank you,' says Lightwood. 'It made no complaint of being in pain anywhere.'
'Say, how did you leave the savages?' asks Lady Tippins.
'They were becoming civilized when I left Juan Fernandez,' says Lightwood. 'At least
they were eating one another, which looked like it.'
'Tormentor!' returns the dear young creature. 'You know what I mean, and you trifle
with my impatience. Tell me something, immediately, about the married pair. You were at
the wedding.'
'Was I, by−the−by?' Mortimer pretends, at great leisure, to consider. 'So I was!'
'How was the bride dressed? In rowing costume?'
Mortimer looks gloomy, and declines to answer.
'I hope she steered herself, skiffed herself, paddled herself, larboarded and starboarded
herself, or whatever the technical term may be, to the ceremony?' proceeds the playful
Tippins.
'However she got to it, she graced it,' says Mortimer.
Lady Tippins with a skittish little scream, attracts the general attention. 'Graced it! Take
care of me if I faint, Veneering. He means to tell us, that a horrid female waterman is
graceful!'
'Pardon me. I mean to tell you nothing, Lady Tippins,' replies Lightwood. And keeps his
word by eating his dinner with a show of the utmost indifference.
'You shall not escape me in this way, you morose backwoodsman,' retorts Lady Tippins.
'You shall not evade the question, to screen your friend Eugene, who has made this
exhibition of himself. The knowledge shall be brought home to you that such a ridiculous
affair is condemned by the voice of Society. My dear Mrs Veneering, do let us resolve
ourselves into a Committee of the whole House on the subject.'
Mrs Veneering, always charmed by this rattling sylph, cries. 'Oh yes! Do let us resolve
ourselves into a Committee of the whole House! So delicious!' Veneering says, 'As many as
are of that opinion, say Aye, – contrary, No – the Ayes have it.' But nobody takes the
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 17 − THE VOICE OF SOCIETY 797
slightest notice of his joke.
'Now, I am Chairwoman of Committees!' cries Lady Tippins.
('What spirits she has!' exclaims Mrs Veneering; to whom likewise nobody attends.)
'And this,' pursues the sprightly one, 'is a Committee of the whole House to
what−you−may−call−it – elicit, I suppose – the voice of Society. The question before the
Committee is, whether a young man of very fair family, good appearance, and some talent,
makes a fool or a wise man of himself in marrying a female waterman, turned factory girl.'
'Hardly so, I think,' the stubborn Mortimer strikes in. 'I take the question to be, whether
such a man as you describe, Lady Tippins, does right or wrong in marrying a brave woman
(I say nothing of her beauty), who has saved his life, with a wonderful energy and address;
whom he knows to be virtuous, and possessed of remarkable qualities; whom he has long
admired, and who is deeply attached to him.'
'But, excuse me,' says Podsnap, with his temper and his shirt−collar about equally
rumpled; 'was this young woman ever a female waterman?'
'Never. But she sometimes rowed in a boat with her father, I believe.'
General sensation against the young woman. Brewer shakes his head. Boots shakes his
head. Buffer shakes his head.
'And now, Mr Lightwood, was she ever,' pursues Podsnap, with his indignation rising
high into those hair−brushes of his, 'a factory girl?'
'Never. But she had some employment in a paper mill, I believe.'
General sensation repeated. Brewer says, 'Oh dear!' Boots says, 'Oh dear!' Buffer says,
'Oh dear!' All, in a rumbling tone of protest.
'Then all I have to say is,' returns Podsnap, putting the thing away with his right arm,
'that my gorge rises against such a marriage – that it offends and disgusts me – that it makes
me sick – and that I desire to know no more about it.'
('Now I wonder,' thinks Mortimer, amused, 'whether YOU are the Voice of Society!')
'Hear, hear, hear!' cries Lady Tippins. 'Your opinion of this
MESALLIANCE, honourable colleagues of the honourable member who has just sat
down?'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 17 − THE VOICE OF SOCIETY 798
Mrs Podsnap is of opinion that in these matters there should be an equality of station
and fortune, and that a man accustomed to Society should look out for a woman accustomed
to Society and capable of bearing her part in it with – an ease and elegance of carriage –
that.' Mrs Podsnap stops there, delicately intimating that every such man should look out for
a fine woman as nearly resembling herself as he may hope to discover.
('Now I wonder,' thinks Mortimer, 'whether you are the Voice!')
Lady Tippins next canvasses the Contractor, of five hundred thousand power. It appears
to this potentate, that what the man in question should have done, would have been, to buy
the young woman a boat and a small annuity, and set her up for herself. These things are a
question of beefsteaks and porter. You buy the young woman a boat. Very good. You buy
her, at the same time, a small annuity. You speak of that annuity in pounds sterling, but it is
in reality so many pounds of beefsteaks and so many pints of porter. On the one hand, the
young woman has the boat. On the other hand, she consumes so many pounds of beefsteaks
and so many pints of porter. Those beefsteaks and that porter are the fuel to that young
woman's engine. She derives therefrom a certain amount of power to row the boat; that
power will produce so much money; you add that to the small annuity; and thus you get at
the young woman's income. That (it seems to the Contractor) is the way of looking at it.
The fair enslaver having fallen into one of her gentle sleeps during the last exposition,
nobody likes to wake her. Fortunately, she comes awake of herself, and puts the question to
the Wandering Chairman. The Wanderer can only speak of the case as if it were his own. If
such a young woman as the young woman described, had saved his own life, he would have
been very much obliged to her, wouldn't have married her, and would have got her a berth in
an Electric Telegraph Office, where young women answer very well.
What does the Genius of the three hundred and seventy−five thousand pounds, no
shillings, and nopence, think? He can't say what he thinks, without asking: Had the young
woman any money?
'No,' says Lightwood, in an uncompromising voice; 'no money.'
'Madness and moonshine,' is then the compressed verdict of the Genius. 'A man may do
anything lawful, for money. But for no money! – Bosh!'
What does Boots say?
Boots says he wouldn't have done it under twenty thousand pound.
What does Brewer say?
Brewer says what Boots says.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 17 − THE VOICE OF SOCIETY 799
What does Buffer say?
Buffer says he knows a man who married a bathing−woman, and bolted.
Lady Tippins fancies she has collected the suffrages of the whole Committee (nobody
dreaming of asking the Veneerings for their opinion), when, looking round the table through
her eyeglass, she perceives Mr Twemlow with his hand to his forehead.
Good gracious! My Twemlow forgotten! My dearest! My own! What is his vote?
Twemlow has the air of being ill at ease, as he takes his hand from his forehead and
replies.
'I am disposed to think,' says he, 'that this is a question of the feelings of a gentleman.'
'A gentleman can have no feelings who contracts such a marriage,' flushes Podsnap.
'Pardon me, sir,' says Twemlow, rather less mildly than usual, 'I don't agree with you. If
this gentleman's feelings of gratitude, of respect, of admiration, and affection, induced him
(as I presume they did) to marry this lady – '
'This lady!' echoes Podsnap.
'Sir,' returns Twemlow, with his wristbands bristling a little, 'YOU repeat the word; I
repeat the word. This lady. What else would you call her, if the gentleman were present?'
This being something in the nature of a poser for Podsnap, he merely waves it away
with a speechless wave.
'I say,' resumes Twemlow, 'if such feelings on the part of this gentleman, induced this
gentleman to marry this lady, I think he is the greater gentleman for the action, and makes
her the greater lady. I beg to say, that when I use the word, gentleman, I use it in the sense in
which the degree may be attained by any man. The feelings of a gentleman I hold sacred,
and I confess I am not comfortable when they are made the subject of sport or general
discussion.'
'I should like to know,' sneers Podsnap, 'whether your noble relation would be of your
opinion.'
'Mr Podsnap,' retorts Twemlow, 'permit me. He might be, or he might not be. I cannot
say. But, I could not allow even him to dictate to me on a point of great delicacy, on which I
feel very strongly.'
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 17 − THE VOICE OF SOCIETY 800
Somehow, a canopy of wet blanket seems to descend upon the company, and Lady
Tippins was never known to turn so very greedy or so very cross. Mortimer Lightwood
alone brightens. He has been asking himself, as to every other member of the Committee in
turn, 'I wonder whether you are the Voice!' But he does not ask himself the question after
Twemlow has spoken, and he glances in Twemlow's direction as if he were grateful. When
the company disperse – by which time Mr and Mrs Veneering have had quite as much as
they want of the honour, and the guests have had quite as much as THEY want of the other
honour – Mortimer sees Twemlow home, shakes hands with him cordially at parting, and
fares to the Temple, gaily.
Our Mutual Friend
Chapter 17 − THE VOICE OF SOCIETY 801
POSTSCRIPT − IN LIEU OF PREFACE
W
hen I devised this story, I foresaw the likelihood that a class of readers and
commentators would suppose that I was at great pains to conceal exactly what I was at great
pains to suggest: namely, that Mr John Harmon was not slain, and that Mr John Rokesmith
was he. Pleasing myself with the idea that the supposition might in part arise out of some
ingenuity in the story, and thinking it worth while, in the interests of art, to hint to an
audience that an artist (of whatever denomination) may perhaps be trusted to know what he
is about in his vocation, if they will concede him a little patience, I was not alarmed by the
anticipation.
To keep for a long time unsuspected, yet always working itself out, another purpose
originating in that leading incident, and turning it to a pleasant and useful account at last,
was at once the most interesting and the most difficult part of my design. Its difficulty was
much enhanced by the mode of publication; for, it would be very unreasonable to expect that
many readers, pursuing a story in portions from month to month through nineteen months,
will, until they have it before them complete, perceive the relations of its finer threads to the
whole pattern which is always before the eyes of the story−weaver at his loom. Yet, that I
hold the advantages of the mode of publication to outweigh its disadvantages, may be easily
believed of one who revived it in the Pickwick Papers after long disuse, and has pursued it
ever since.
There is sometimes an odd disposition in this country to dispute as improbable in
fiction, what are the commonest experiences in fact. Therefore, I note here, though it may
not be at all necessary, that there are hundreds of Will Cases (as they are called), far more
remarkable than that fancied in this book; and that the stores of the Prerogative Office teem
with instances of testators who have made, changed, contradicted, hidden, forgotten, left
cancelled, and left uncancelled, each many more wills than were ever made by the elder Mr
Harmon of Harmony Jail.
In my social experiences since Mrs Betty Higden came upon the scene and left it, I have
found Circumlocutional champions disposed to be warm with me on the subject of my view
of the Poor Law. Mr friend Mr Bounderby could never see any difference between leaving
the Coketown 'hands' exactly as they were, and requiring them to be fed with turtle soup and
venison out of gold spoons. Idiotic propositions of a parallel nature have been freely offered
for my acceptance, and I have been called upon to admit that I would give Poor Law relief to
anybody, anywhere, anyhow. Putting this nonsense aside, I have observed a suspicious
tendency in the champions to divide into two parties; the one, contending that there are no
deserving Poor who prefer death by slow starvation and bitter weather, to the mercies of
some Relieving Officers and some Union Houses; the other, admitting that there are such
Our Mutual Friend
POSTSCRIPT − IN LIEU OF PREFACE 802
Poor, but denying that they have any cause or reason for what they do. The records in our
newspapers, the late exposure by THE LANCET, and the common sense and senses of
common people, furnish too abundant evidence against both defences. But, that my view of
the Poor Law may not be mistaken or misrepresented, I will state it. I believe there has been
in England, since the days of the STUARTS, no law so often infamously administered, no
law so often openly violated, no law habitually so ill−supervised. In the majority of the
shameful cases of disease and death from destitution, that shock the Public and disgrace the
country, the illegality is quite equal to the inhumanity – and known language could say no
more of their lawlessness.
On Friday the Ninth of June in the present year, Mr and Mrs Boffin (in their manuscript
dress of receiving Mr and Mrs Lammle at breakfast) were on the South Eastern Railway
with me, in a terribly destructive accident. When I had done what I could to help others, I
climbed back into my carriage – nearly turned over a viaduct, and caught aslant upon the
turn – to extricate the worthy couple. They were much soiled, but otherwise unhurt. The
same happy result attended Miss Bella Wilfer on her wedding day, and Mr Riderhood
inspecting Bradley Headstone's red neckerchief as he lay asleep. I remember with devout
thankfulness that I can never be much nearer parting company with my readers for ever,
than I was then, until there shall be written against my life, the two words with which I have
this day closed this book: – THE END.
September 2nd, 1865.
Our Mutual Friend
POSTSCRIPT − IN LIEU OF PREFACE 803
Table of Content
BOOK THE FIRST − THE CUP AND THE LIP
Chapter 1 − ON THE LOOK OUT
Chapter 2 − THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE
Chapter 3 − ANOTHER MAN
Chapter 4 − THE R. WILFER FAMILY
Chapter 5 − BOFFIN'S BOWER
Chapter 6 − CUT ADRIFT
Chapter 7 − MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF
Chapter 8 − MR BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
Chapter 9 − MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
Chapter 10 − A MARRIAGE CONTRACT
Chapter 11 − PODSNAPPERY
Chapter 12 − THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN'S BROW
Chapter 13 − TRACKING THE BIRD OF PREY
Chapter 14 − THE BIRD OF PREY BROUGHT DOWN
Chapter 15 − TWO NEW SERVANTS
Chapter 16 − MINDERS AND RE−MINDERS
Chapter 17 − A DISMAL SWAMP
BOOK THE SECOND − BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Chapter 1 − OF AN EDUCATIONAL CHARACTER
Our Mutual Friend
Table of Content 804
Chapter 2 − STILL EDUCATIONAL
Chapter 3 − A PIECE OF WORK
Chapter 4 − CUPID PROMPTED
Chapter 5 − MERCURY PROMPTING
Chapter 6 − A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER
Chapter 7 − IN WHICH A FRIENDLY MOVE IS ORIGINATED
Chapter 8 − IN WHICH AN INNOCENT ELOPEMENT OCCURS
Chapter 9 − IN WHICH THE ORPHAN MAKES HIS WILL
Chapter 10 − A SUCCESSOR
Chapter 11 − SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
Chapter 12 − MORE BIRDS OF PREY
Chapter 13 − A SOLO AND A DUETT
Chapter 14 − STRONG OF PURPOSE
Chapter 15 − THE WHOLE CASE SO FAR
Chapter 16 − AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION
BOOK THE THIRD − A LONG LANE
Chapter 1 − LODGERS IN QUEER STREET
Chapter 2 − A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT
Chapter 3 − THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE
Chapter 4 − A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY
Chapter 5 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO BAD COMPANY
Chapter 6 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY
Our Mutual Friend
Table of Content 805
Chapter 7 − THE FRIENDLY MOVE TAKES UP A STRONG POSITION
Chapter 8 − THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY
Chapter 9 − SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION
Chapter 10 − SCOUTS OUT
Chapter 11 − IN THE DARK
Chapter 12 − MEANING MISCHIEF
Chapter 13 − GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME, AND HANG HIM
Chapter 14 − MR WEGG PREPARES A GRINDSTONE FOR MR BOFFIN'S NOSE
Chapter 15 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN AT HIS WORST
Chapter 16 − THE FEAST OF THE THREE HOBGOBLINS
Chapter 17 − A SOCIAL CHORUS
BOOK THE FOURTH − A TURNING
Chapter 1 − SETTING TRAPS
Chapter 2 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN RISES A LITTLE
Chapter 3 − THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN
Chapter 4 − A RUNAWAY MATCH
Chapter 5 − CONCERNING THE MENDICANT'S BRIDE
Chapter 6 − A CRY FOR HELP
Chapter 7 − BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN
Chapter 8 − A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER
Chapter 9 − TWO PLACES VACATED
Chapter 10 − THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD
Our Mutual Friend
Table of Content 806
Chapter 11 − EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY
Chapter 12 − THE PASSING SHADOW
Chapter 13 − SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER
DUST
Chapter 14 − CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE
Chapter 15 − WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET
Chapter 16 − PERSONS AND THINGS IN GENERAL
Chapter 17 − THE VOICE OF SOCIETY
POSTSCRIPT − IN LIEU OF PREFACE
Our Mutual Friend
Table of Content 807
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