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Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens CHAPTER 9
IN WHICH THE ORPHAN MAKES HIS WILL
The Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was informed that a
youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy.
The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause before
uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his reluctance by the youth in
question, and that if the youth had had the
good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have spared the
feelings of him the bearer.
'Mrs Boffin will be very well pleased,' said the Secretary in a perfectly composed
way. 'Show him in.'
Mr Sloppy being introduced, remained close to the door: revealing in various parts of
his form many surprising, confounding, and incomprehensible buttons.
'I am glad to see you,' said John Rokesmith, in a cheerful tone of welcome.
'I have been expecting you.'
Sloppy explained that he had meant to come before, but that the Orphan (of whom he
made mention as Our Johnny) had been ailing, and he had waited to report him
well.
'Then he is well now?' said the Secretary. 'No he ain't,' said Sloppy.
Mr Sloppy having shaken his head to a considerable extent, proceeded to remark
that he thought Johnny 'must have took 'em from the Minders.'
Being asked what he meant, he answered, them that come out upon him and partickler
his chest.
Being requested to explain himself, he stated that there was some of 'em wot you
couldn't kiver with a sixpence.
Pressed to fall back upon a nominative case, he opined that they wos about as red
as ever red could be.
'But as long as they strikes out'ards, sir,' continued Sloppy, 'they ain't so
much. It's their striking in'ards that's to be
kep off.'
John Rokesmith hoped the child had had medical attendance?
Oh yes, said Sloppy, he had been took to the doctor's shop once.
And what did the doctor call it?
Rokesmith asked him. After some perplexed reflection, Sloppy
answered, brightening, 'He called it something as wos wery long for spots.'
Rokesmith suggested measles.
'No,' said Sloppy with confidence, 'ever so much longer than THEM, sir!'
(Mr Sloppy was elevated by this fact, and seemed to consider that it reflected credit
on the poor little patient.)
'Mrs Boffin will be sorry to hear this,' said Rokesmith.
'Mrs Higden said so, sir, when she kep it from her, hoping as Our Johnny would work
round.'
'But I hope he will?' said Rokesmith, with a quick turn upon the messenger.
'I hope so,' answered Sloppy. 'It all depends on their striking in'ards.'
He then went on to say that whether Johnny had 'took 'em' from the Minders, or whether
the Minders had 'took em from Johnny, the Minders had been sent home and had 'got em.
Furthermore, that Mrs Higden's days and nights being devoted to Our Johnny, who was
never out of her lap, the whole of the mangling arrangements had devolved upon
himself, and he had had 'rayther a tight time'.
The ungainly piece of honesty beamed and blushed as he said it, quite enraptured
with the remembrance of having been serviceable.
'Last night,' said Sloppy, 'when I was a- turning at the wheel pretty late, the
mangle seemed to go like Our Johnny's breathing.
It begun beautiful, then as it went out it shook a little and got unsteady, then as it
took the turn to come home it had a rattle- like and lumbered a bit, then it come
smooth, and so it went on till I scarce
know'd which was mangle and which was Our Johnny.
Nor Our Johnny, he scarce know'd either, for sometimes when the mangle lumbers he
says, "Me choking, Granny!" and Mrs Higden holds him up in her lap and says to me
"Bide a bit, Sloppy," and we all stops together.
And when Our Johnny gets his breathing again, I turns again, and we all goes on
together.'
Sloppy had gradually expanded with his description into a stare and a vacant grin.
He now contracted, being silent, into a half-repressed gush of tears, and, under
pretence of being heated, drew the under part of his sleeve across his eyes with a
singularly awkward, laborious, and roundabout smear.
'This is unfortunate,' said Rokesmith. 'I must go and break it to Mrs Boffin.
Stay you here, Sloppy.'
Sloppy stayed there, staring at the pattern of the paper on the wall, until the
Secretary and Mrs Boffin came back together.
And with Mrs Boffin was a young lady (Miss Bella Wilfer by name) who was better worth
staring at, it occurred to Sloppy, than the best of wall-papering.
'Ah, my poor dear pretty little John Harmon!' exclaimed Mrs Boffin.
'Yes mum,' said the sympathetic Sloppy.
'You don't think he is in a very, very bad way, do you?' asked the pleasant creature
with her wholesome cordiality.
Put upon his good faith, and finding it in collision with his inclinations, Sloppy
threw back his head and uttered a mellifluous howl, rounded off with a sniff.
'So bad as that!' cried Mrs Boffin.
'And Betty Higden not to tell me of it sooner!'
'I think she might have been mistrustful, mum,' answered Sloppy, hesitating.
'Of what, for Heaven's sake?'
'I think she might have been mistrustful, mum,' returned Sloppy with submission, 'of
standing in Our Johnny's light.
There's so much trouble in illness, and so much expense, and she's seen such a lot of
its being objected to.'
'But she never can have thought,' said Mrs Boffin, 'that I would grudge the dear child
anything?'
'No mum, but she might have thought (as a habit-like) of its standing in Johnny's
light, and might have tried to bring him through it unbeknownst.'
Sloppy knew his ground well.
To conceal herself in sickness, like a lower animal; to creep out of sight and
coil herself away and die; had become this woman's instinct.
To catch up in her arms the sick child who was dear to her, and hide it as if it were
a criminal, and keep off all ministration but such as her own ignorant tenderness and
patience could supply, had become this
woman's idea of maternal love, fidelity, and duty.
The shameful accounts we read, every week in the Christian year, my lords and
gentlemen and honourable boards, the infamous records of small official
inhumanity, do not pass by the people as they pass by us.
And hence these irrational, blind, and obstinate prejudices, so astonishing to our
magnificence, and having no more reason in them--God save the Queen and Confound their
politics--no, than smoke has in coming from fire!
'It's not a right place for the poor child to stay in,' said Mrs Boffin.
'Tell us, dear Mr Rokesmith, what to do for the best.'
He had already thought what to do, and the consultation was very short.
He could pave the way, he said, in half an hour, and then they would go down to
Brentford. 'Pray take me,' said Bella.
Therefore a carriage was ordered, of capacity to take them all, and in the
meantime Sloppy was regaled, feasting alone in the Secretary's room, with a complete
realization of that fairy vision--meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding.
In consequence of which his buttons became more importunate of public notice than
before, with the exception of two or three about the region of the waistband, which
modestly withdrew into a creasy retirement.
Punctual to the time, appeared the carriage and the Secretary.
He sat on the box, and Mr Sloppy graced the rumble.
So, to the Three Magpies as before: where Mrs Boffin and Miss Bella were handed out,
and whence they all went on foot to Mrs Betty Higden's.
But, on the way down, they had stopped at a toy-shop, and had bought that noble
charger, a description of whose points and trappings had on the last occasion
conciliated the then worldly-minded orphan,
and also a Noah's ark, and also a yellow bird with an artificial voice in him, and
also a military doll so well dressed that if he had only been of life-size his
brother-officers in the Guards might never have found him out.
Bearing these gifts, they raised the latch of Betty Higden's door, and saw her sitting
in the dimmest and furthest corner with poor Johnny in her lap.
'And how's my boy, Betty?' asked Mrs Boffin, sitting down beside her.
'He's bad! He's bad!' said Betty.
'I begin to be afeerd he'll not be yours any more than mine.
All others belonging to him have gone to the Power and the Glory, and I have a mind
that they're drawing him to them--leading him away.'
'No, no, no,' said Mrs Boffin.
'I don't know why else he clenches his little hand as if it had hold of a finger
that I can't see.
Look at it,' said Betty, opening the wrappers in which the flushed child lay,
and showing his small right hand lying closed upon his breast.
'It's always so.
It don't mind me.' 'Is he asleep?'
'No, I think not. You're not asleep, my Johnny?'
'No,' said Johnny, with a quiet air of pity for himself; and without opening his eyes.
'Here's the lady, Johnny. And the horse.'
Johnny could bear the lady, with complete indifference, but not the horse.
Opening his heavy eyes, he slowly broke into a smile on beholding that splendid
phenomenon, and wanted to take it in his arms.
As it was much too big, it was put upon a chair where he could hold it by the mane
and contemplate it. Which he soon forgot to do.
But, Johnny murmuring something with his eyes closed, and Mrs Boffin not knowing
what, old Betty bent her ear to listen and took pains to understand.
Being asked by her to repeat what he had said, he did so two or three times, and
then it came out that he must have seen more than they supposed when he looked up
to see the horse, for the murmur was, 'Who is the boofer lady?'
Now, the boofer, or beautiful, lady was Bella; and whereas this notice from the
poor baby would have touched her of itself; it was rendered more pathetic by the late
melting of her heart to her poor little
father, and their joke about the lovely woman.
So, Bella's behaviour was very tender and very natural when she kneeled on the brick
floor to clasp the child, and when the child, with a child's admiration of what is
young and pretty, fondled the boofer lady.
'Now, my good dear Betty,' said Mrs Boffin, hoping that she saw her opportunity, and
laying her hand persuasively on her arm; 'we have come to remove Johnny from this
cottage to where he can be taken better care of.'
Instantly, and before another word could be spoken, the old woman started up with
blazing eyes, and rushed at the door with the sick child.
'Stand away from me every one of ye!' she cried out wildly.
'I see what ye mean now. Let me go my way, all of ye.
I'd sooner kill the Pretty, and kill myself!'
'Stay, stay!' said Rokesmith, soothing her. 'You don't understand.'
'I understand too well.
I know too much about it, sir. I've run from it too many a year.
No! Never for me, nor for the child, while there's water enough in England to cover
us!'
The terror, the shame, the passion of horror and repugnance, firing the worn face
and perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite terrible sight, if embodied in one
old fellow-creature alone.
Yet it 'crops up'--as our slang goes--my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards,
in other fellow-creatures, rather frequently!
'It's been chasing me all my life, but it shall never take me nor mine alive!' cried
old Betty. 'I've done with ye.
I'd have fastened door and window and starved out, afore I'd ever have let ye in,
if I had known what ye came for!'
But, catching sight of Mrs Boffin's wholesome face, she relented, and crouching
down by the door and bending over her burden to hush it, said humbly: 'Maybe my
fears has put me wrong.
If they have so, tell me, and the good Lord forgive me!
I'm quick to take this fright, I know, and my head is summ'at light with wearying and
watching.'
'There, there, there!' returned Mrs Boffin. 'Come, come!
Say no more of it, Betty. It was a mistake, a mistake.
Any one of us might have made it in your place, and felt just as you do.'
'The Lord bless ye!' said the old woman, stretching out her hand.
'Now, see, Betty,' pursued the sweet compassionate soul, holding the hand
kindly, 'what I really did mean, and what I should have begun by saying out, if I had
only been a little wiser and handier.
We want to move Johnny to a place where there are none but children; a place set up
on purpose for sick children; where the good doctors and nurses pass their lives
with children, talk to none but children,
touch none but children, comfort and cure none but children.'
'Is there really such a place?' asked the old woman, with a gaze of wonder.
'Yes, Betty, on my word, and you shall see it.
If my home was a better place for the dear boy, I'd take him to it; but indeed indeed
it's not.'
'You shall take him,' returned Betty, fervently kissing the comforting hand,
'where you will, my deary.
I am not so hard, but that I believe your face and voice, and I will, as long as I
can see and hear.'
This victory gained, Rokesmith made haste to profit by it, for he saw how woefully
time had been lost.
He despatched Sloppy to bring the carriage to the door; caused the child to be
carefully wrapped up; bade old Betty get her bonnet on; collected the toys, enabling
the little fellow to comprehend that his
treasures were to be transported with him; and had all things prepared so easily that
they were ready for the carriage as soon as it appeared, and in a minute afterwards
were on their way.
Sloppy they left behind, relieving his overcharged breast with a paroxysm of
mangling.
At the Children's Hospital, the gallant steed, the Noah's ark, yellow bird, and the
officer in the Guards, were made as welcome as their child-owner.
But the doctor said aside to Rokesmith, 'This should have been days ago.
Too late!'
However, they were all carried up into a fresh airy room, and there Johnny came to
himself, out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever it was, to find himself lying in a
little quiet bed, with a little platform
over his breast, on which were already arranged, to give him heart and urge him to
cheer up, the Noah's ark, the noble steed, and the yellow bird; with the officer in
the Guards doing duty over the whole, quite
as much to the satisfaction of his country as if he had been upon Parade.
And at the bed's head was a coloured picture beautiful to see, representing as
it were another Johnny seated on the knee of some Angel surely who loved little
children.
And, marvellous fact, to lie and stare at: Johnny had become one of a little family,
all in little quiet beds (except two playing dominoes in little arm-chairs at a
little table on the hearth): and on all the
little beds were little platforms whereon were to be seen dolls' houses, woolly dogs
with mechanical barks in them not very dissimilar from the artificial voice
pervading the bowels of the yellow bird,
tin armies, Moorish tumblers, wooden tea things, and the riches of the earth.
As Johnny murmured something in his placid admiration, the ministering women at his
bed's head asked him what he said.
It seemed that he wanted to know whether all these were brothers and sisters of his?
So they told him yes.
It seemed then, that he wanted to know whether God had brought them all together
there? So they told him yes again.
They made out then, that he wanted to know whether they would all get out of pain?
So they answered yes to that question likewise, and made him understand that the
reply included himself.
Johnny's powers of sustaining conversation were as yet so very imperfectly developed,
even in a state of health, that in sickness they were little more than monosyllabic.
But, he had to be washed and tended, and remedies were applied, and though those
offices were far, far more skilfully and lightly done than ever anything had been
done for him in his little life, so rough
and short, they would have hurt and tired him but for an amazing circumstance which
laid hold of his attention.
This was no less than the appearance on his own little platform in pairs, of All
Creation, on its way into his own particular ark: the elephant leading, and
the fly, with a diffident sense of his size, politely bringing up the rear.
A very little brother lying in the next bed with a broken leg, was so enchanted by this
spectacle that his delight exalted its enthralling interest; and so came rest and
sleep.
'I see you are not afraid to leave the dear child here, Betty,' whispered Mrs Boffin.
'No, ma'am. Most willingly, most thankfully, with all
my heart and soul.'
So, they kissed him, and left him there, and old Betty was to come back early in the
morning, and nobody but Rokesmith knew for certain how that the doctor had said, 'This
should have been days ago.
Too late!'
But, Rokesmith knowing it, and knowing that his bearing it in mind would be acceptable
thereafter to that good woman who had been the only light in the childhood of desolate
John Harmon dead and gone, resolved that
late at night he would go back to the bedside of John Harmon's namesake, and see
how it fared with him. The family whom God had brought together
were not all asleep, but were all quiet.
From bed to bed, a light womanly tread and a pleasant fresh face passed in the silence
of the night.
A little head would lift itself up into the softened light here and there, to be kissed
as the face went by--for these little patients are very loving--and would then
submit itself to be composed to rest again.
The mite with the broken leg was restless, and moaned; but after a while turned his
face towards Johnny's bed, to fortify himself with a view of the ark, and fell
asleep.
Over most of the beds, the toys were yet grouped as the children had left them when
they last laid themselves down, and, in their innocent grotesqueness and
incongruity, they might have stood for the children's dreams.
The doctor came in too, to see how it fared with Johnny.
And he and Rokesmith stood together, looking down with compassion on him.
'What is it, Johnny?'
Rokesmith was the questioner, and put an arm round the poor baby as he made a
struggle. 'Him!' said the little fellow.
'Those!'
The doctor was quick to understand children, and, taking the horse, the ark,
the yellow bird, and the man in the Guards, from Johnny's bed, softly placed them on
that of his next neighbour, the mite with the broken leg.
With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an action as if he stretched his
little figure out to rest, the child heaved his body on the sustaining arm, and seeking
Rokesmith's face with his lips, said:
'A kiss for the boofer lady.' Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose
of, and arranged his affairs in this world, Johnny, thus speaking, left it.
>
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens CHAPTER 10
A SUCCESSOR
Some of the Reverend Frank Milvey's brethren had found themselves exceedingly
uncomfortable in their minds, because they were required to bury the dead too
hopefully.
But, the Reverend Frank, inclining to the belief that they were required to do one or
two other things (say out of nine-and- thirty) calculated to trouble their
consciences rather more if they would think as much about them, held his peace.
Indeed, the Reverend Frank Milvey was a forbearing man, who noticed many sad warps
and blights in the vineyard wherein he worked, and did not profess that they made
him savagely wise.
He only learned that the more he himself knew, in his little limited human way, the
better he could distantly imagine what Omniscience might know.
Wherefore, if the Reverend Frank had had to read the words that troubled some of his
brethren, and profitably touched innumerable hearts, in a worse case than
Johnny's, he would have done so out of the pity and humility of his soul.
Reading them over Johnny, he thought of his own six children, but not of his poverty,
and read them with dimmed eyes.
And very seriously did he and his bright little wife, who had been listening, look
down into the small grave and walk home arm-in-arm.
There was grief in the aristocratic house, and there was joy in the Bower.
Mr Wegg argued, if an orphan were wanted, was he not an orphan himself; and could a
better be desired?
And why go beating about Brentford bushes, seeking orphans forsooth who had
established no claims upon you and made no sacrifices for you, when here was an orphan
ready to your hand who had given up in your
cause, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker?
Mr Wegg chuckled, consequently, when he heard the tidings.
Nay, it was afterwards affirmed by a witness who shall at present be nameless,
that in the seclusion of the Bower he poked out his wooden leg, in the stage-ballet
manner, and executed a taunting or
triumphant pirouette on the genuine leg remaining to him.
John Rokesmith's manner towards Mrs Boffin at this time, was more the manner of a
young man towards a mother, than that of a Secretary towards his employer's wife.
It had always been marked by a subdued affectionate deference that seemed to have
sprung up on the very day of his engagement; whatever was odd in her dress
or her ways had seemed to have no oddity
for him; he had sometimes borne a quietly- amused face in her company, but still it
had seemed as if the pleasure her genial temper and radiant nature yielded him,
could have been quite as naturally expressed in a tear as in a smile.
The completeness of his sympathy with her fancy for having a little John Harmon to
protect and rear, he had shown in every act and word, and now that the kind fancy was
disappointed, he treated it with a manly
tenderness and respect for which she could hardly thank him enough.
'But I do thank you, Mr Rokesmith,' said Mrs Boffin, 'and I thank you most kindly.
You love children.'
'I hope everybody does.' 'They ought,' said Mrs Boffin; 'but we
don't all of us do what we ought, do us?' John Rokesmith replied, 'Some among us
supply the short-comings of the rest.
You have loved children well, Mr Boffin has told me.'
Not a bit better than he has, but that's his way; he puts all the good upon me.
You speak rather sadly, Mr Rokesmith.'
'Do I?' 'It sounds to me so.
Were you one of many children?' He shook his head.
'An only child?'
'No there was another. Dead long ago.'
'Father or mother alive?' 'Dead.'--
'And the rest of your relations?'
'Dead--if I ever had any living. I never heard of any.'
At this point of the dialogue Bella came in with a light step.
She paused at the door a moment, hesitating whether to remain or retire; perplexed by
finding that she was not observed. 'Now, don't mind an old lady's talk,' said
Mrs Boffin, 'but tell me.
Are you quite sure, Mr Rokesmith, that you have never had a disappointment in love?'
'Quite sure. Why do you ask me?'
'Why, for this reason.
Sometimes you have a kind of kept-down manner with you, which is not like your
age. You can't be thirty?'
'I am not yet thirty.'
Deeming it high time to make her presence known, Bella coughed here to attract
attention, begged pardon, and said she would go, fearing that she interrupted some
matter of business.
'No, don't go,' rejoined Mrs Boffin, 'because we are coming to business, instead
of having begun it, and you belong to it as much now, my dear Bella, as I do.
But I want my Noddy to consult with us.
Would somebody be so good as find my Noddy for me?'
Rokesmith departed on that errand, and presently returned accompanied by Mr Boffin
at his jog-trot.
Bella felt a little vague trepidation as to the subject-matter of this same
consultation, until Mrs Boffin announced it.
'Now, you come and sit by me, my dear,' said that worthy soul, taking her
comfortable place on a large ottoman in the centre of the room, and drawing her arm
through Bella's; 'and Noddy, you sit here, and Mr Rokesmith you sit there.
Now, you see, what I want to talk about, is this.
Mr and Mrs Milvey have sent me the kindest note possible (which Mr Rokesmith just now
read to me out aloud, for I ain't good at handwritings), offering to find me another
little child to name and educate and bring up.
Well. This has set me thinking.'
('And she is a steam-ingein at it,' murmured Mr Boffin, in an admiring
parenthesis, 'when she once begins. It mayn't be so easy to start her; but once
started, she's a ingein.')
'--This has set me thinking, I say,' repeated Mrs Boffin, cordially beaming
under the influence of her husband's compliment, 'and I have thought two things.
First of all, that I have grown timid of reviving John Harmon's name.
It's an unfortunate name, and I fancy I should reproach myself if I gave it to
another dear child, and it proved again unlucky.'
'Now, whether,' said Mr Boffin, gravely propounding a case for his Secretary's
opinion; 'whether one might call that a superstition?'
'It is a matter of feeling with Mrs Boffin,' said Rokesmith, gently.
'The name has always been unfortunate. It has now this new unfortunate association
connected with it.
The name has died out. Why revive it?
Might I ask Miss Wilfer what she thinks?'
'It has not been a fortunate name for me,' said Bella, colouring--'or at least it was
not, until it led to my being here--but that is not the point in my thoughts.
As we had given the name to the poor child, and as the poor child took so lovingly to
me, I think I should feel jealous of calling another child by it.
I think I should feel as if the name had become endeared to me, and I had no right
to use it so.'
'And that's your opinion?' remarked Mr Boffin, observant of the Secretary's face
and again addressing him. 'I say again, it is a matter of feeling,'
returned the Secretary.
'I think Miss Wilfer's feeling very womanly and pretty.'
'Now, give us your opinion, Noddy,' said Mrs Boffin.
'My opinion, old lady,' returned the Golden Dustman, 'is your opinion.'
'Then,' said Mrs Boffin, 'we agree not to revive John Harmon's name, but to let it
rest in the grave.
It is, as Mr Rokesmith says, a matter of feeling, but Lor how many matters ARE
matters of feeling! Well; and so I come to the second thing I
have thought of.
You must know, Bella, my dear, and Mr Rokesmith, that when I first named to my
husband my thoughts of adopting a little orphan boy in remembrance of John Harmon, I
further named to my husband that it was
comforting to think that how the poor boy would be benefited by John's own money, and
protected from John's own forlornness.' 'Hear, hear!' cried Mr Boffin.
'So she did.
Ancoar!' 'No, not Ancoar, Noddy, my dear,' returned
Mrs Boffin, 'because I am going to say something else.
I meant that, I am sure, as much as I still mean it.
But this little death has made me ask myself the question, seriously, whether I
wasn't too bent upon pleasing myself.
Else why did I seek out so much for a pretty child, and a child quite to my
liking?
Wanting to do good, why not do it for its own sake, and put my tastes and likings
by?'
'Perhaps,' said Bella; and perhaps she said it with some little sensitiveness arising
out of those old curious relations of hers towards the murdered man; 'perhaps, in
reviving the name, you would not have liked
to give it to a less interesting child than the original.
He interested you very much.'
'Well, my dear,' returned Mrs Boffin, giving her a squeeze, 'it's kind of you to
find that reason out, and I hope it may have been so, and indeed to a certain
extent I believe it was so, but I am afraid not to the whole extent.
However, that don't come in question now, because we have done with the name.'
'Laid it up as a remembrance,' suggested Bella, musingly.
'Much better said, my dear; laid it up as a remembrance.
Well then; I have been thinking if I take any orphan to provide for, let it not be a
pet and a plaything for me, but a creature to be helped for its own sake.'
'Not pretty then?' said Bella.
'No,' returned Mrs Boffin, stoutly. 'Nor prepossessing then?' said Bella.
'No,' returned Mrs Boffin. 'Not necessarily so.
That's as it may happen.
A well-disposed boy comes in my way who may be even a little wanting in such advantages
for getting on in life, but is honest and industrious and requires a helping hand and
deserves it.
If I am very much in earnest and quite determined to be unselfish, let me take
care of HIM.'
Here the footman whose feelings had been hurt on the former occasion, appeared, and
crossing to Rokesmith apologetically announced the objectionable Sloppy.
The four members of Council looked at one another, and paused.
'Shall he be brought here, ma'am?' asked Rokesmith.
'Yes,' said Mrs Boffin.
Whereupon the footman disappeared, reappeared presenting Sloppy, and retired
much disgusted.
The consideration of Mrs Boffin had clothed Mr Sloppy in a suit of black, on which the
tailor had received personal directions from Rokesmith to expend the utmost cunning
of his art, with a view to the concealment of the cohering and sustaining buttons.
But, so much more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy's form than the
strongest resources of tailoring science, that he now stood before the Council, a
perfect Argus in the way of buttons:
shining and winking and gleaming and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of
bright metal, at the dazzled spectators.
The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had furnished him with a hatband of
wholesale capacity which was fluted behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, and
terminated in a black bunch, from which the
imagination shrunk discomfited and the reason revolted.
Some special powers with which his legs were endowed, had already hitched up his
glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged them at the knees; while similar gifts in
his arms had raised his coat-sleeves from
his wrists and accumulated them at his elbows.
Thus set forth, with the additional embellishments of a very little tail to his
coat, and a yawning gulf at his waistband, Sloppy stood confessed.
'And how is Betty, my good fellow?'
Mrs Boffin asked him. 'Thankee, mum,' said Sloppy, 'she do pretty
nicely, and sending her dooty and many thanks for the tea and all faviours and
wishing to know the family's healths.'
'Have you just come, Sloppy?' 'Yes, mum.'
'Then you have not had your dinner yet?' 'No, mum.
But I mean to it.
For I ain't forgotten your handsome orders that I was never to go away without having
had a good 'un off of meat and beer and pudding--no: there was four of 'em, for I
reckoned 'em up when I had 'em; meat one,
beer two, vegetables three, and which was four?--Why, pudding, HE was four!'
Here Sloppy threw his head back, opened his mouth wide, and laughed rapturously.
'How are the two poor little Minders?' asked Mrs Boffin.
'Striking right out, mum, and coming round beautiful.'
Mrs Boffin looked on the other three members of Council, and then said,
beckoning with her finger: 'Sloppy.'
'Yes, mum.'
'Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here every day?'
'Off of all four on 'em, mum? O mum!'
Sloppy's feelings obliged him to squeeze his hat, and contract one leg at the knee.
'Yes. And should you like to be always taken care of here, if you were industrious
and deserving?'
'Oh, mum!--But there's Mrs Higden,' said Sloppy, checking himself in his raptures,
drawing back, and shaking his head with very serious meaning.
'There's Mrs Higden.
Mrs Higden goes before all. None can ever be better friends to me than
Mrs Higden's been. And she must be turned for, must Mrs
Higden.
Where would Mrs Higden be if she warn't turned for!'
At the mere thought of Mrs Higden in this inconceivable affliction, Mr Sloppy's
countenance became pale, and manifested the most distressful emotions.
'You are as right as right can be, Sloppy,' said Mrs Boffin 'and far be it from me to
tell you otherwise. It shall be seen to.
If Betty Higden can be turned for all the same, you shall come here and be taken care
of for life, and be made able to keep her in other ways than the turning.'
'Even as to that, mum,' answered the ecstatic Sloppy, 'the turning might be done
in the night, don't you see? I could be here in the day, and turn in the
night.
I don't want no sleep, I don't. Or even if I any ways should want a wink or
two,' added Sloppy, after a moment's apologetic reflection, 'I could take 'em
turning.
I've took 'em turning many a time, and enjoyed 'em wonderful!'
On the grateful impulse of the moment, Mr Sloppy kissed Mrs Boffin's hand, and then
detaching himself from that good creature that he might have room enough for his
feelings, threw back his head, opened his mouth wide, and uttered a dismal howl.
It was creditable to his tenderness of heart, but suggested that he might on
occasion give some offence to the neighbours: the rather, as the footman
looked in, and begged pardon, finding he
was not wanted, but excused himself; on the ground 'that he thought it was Cats.'
>
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens CHAPTER 11
SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
Little Miss Peecher, from her little official dwelling-house, with its little
windows like the eyes in needles, and its little doors like the covers of school-
books, was very observant indeed of the object of her quiet affections.
Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman, and Miss
Peecher kept him on double duty over Mr Bradley Headstone.
It was not that she was naturally given to playing the spy--it was not that she was at
all secret, plotting, or mean--it was simply that she loved the irresponsive
Bradley with all the primitive and homely
stock of love that had never been examined or certificated out of her.
If her faithful slate had had the latent qualities of sympathetic paper, and its
pencil those of invisible ink, many a little treatise calculated to astonish the
pupils would have come bursting through the
dry sums in school-time under the warming influence of Miss Peecher's ***.
For, oftentimes when school was not, and her calm leisure and calm little house were
her own, Miss Peecher would commit to the confidential slate an imaginary description
of how, upon a balmy evening at dusk, two
figures might have been observed in the market-garden ground round the corner, of
whom one, being a manly form, bent over the other, being a womanly form of short
stature and some compactness, and breathed
in a low voice the words, 'Emma Peecher, wilt thou be my own?' after which the
womanly form's head reposed upon the manly form's shoulder, and the nightingales tuned
up.
Though all unseen, and unsuspected by the pupils, Bradley Headstone even pervaded the
school exercises. Was Geography in question?
He would come triumphantly flying out of Vesuvius and Aetna ahead of the lava, and
would boil unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland, and would float majestically down
the Ganges and the Nile.
Did History chronicle a king of men? Behold him in pepper-and-salt pantaloons,
with his watch-guard round his neck. Were copies to be written?
In capital B's and H's most of the girls under Miss Peecher's tuition were half a
year ahead of every other letter in the alphabet.
And Mental Arithmetic, administered by Miss Peecher, often devoted itself to providing
Bradley Headstone with a wardrobe of fabulous extent: fourscore and four neck-
ties at two and ninepence-halfpenny, two
gross of silver watches at four pounds fifteen and sixpence, seventy-four black
hats at eighteen shillings; and many similar superfluities.
The vigilant watchman, using his daily opportunities of turning his eyes in
Bradley's direction, soon apprized Miss Peecher that Bradley was more preoccupied
than had been his wont, and more given to
strolling about with a downcast and reserved face, turning something difficult
in his mind that was not in the scholastic syllabus.
Putting this and that together--combining under the head 'this,' present appearances
and the intimacy with Charley Hexam, and ranging under the head 'that' the visit to
his sister, the watchman reported to Miss
Peecher his strong suspicions that the sister was at the bottom of it.
'I wonder,' said Miss Peecher, as she sat making up her weekly report on a half-
holiday afternoon, 'what they call Hexam's sister?'
Mary Anne, at her needlework, attendant and attentive, held her arm up.
'Well, Mary Anne?' 'She is named Lizzie, ma'am.'
'She can hardly be named Lizzie, I think, Mary Anne,' returned Miss Peecher, in a
tunefully instructive voice. 'Is Lizzie a Christian name, Mary Anne?'
Mary Anne laid down her work, rose, hooked herself behind, as being under
catechization, and replied: 'No, it is a corruption, Miss Peecher.'
'Who gave her that name?'
Miss Peecher was going on, from the mere force of habit, when she checked herself;
on Mary Anne's evincing theological impatience to strike in with her godfathers
and her godmothers, and said: 'I mean of what name is it a corruption?'
'Elizabeth, or Eliza, Miss Peecher.' 'Right, Mary Anne.
Whether there were any Lizzies in the early Christian Church must be considered very
doubtful, very doubtful.' Miss Peecher was exceedingly sage here.
'Speaking correctly, we say, then, that Hexam's sister is called Lizzie; not that
she is named so. Do we not, Mary Anne?'
'We do, Miss Peecher.'
'And where,' pursued Miss Peecher, complacent in her little transparent
fiction of conducting the examination in a semiofficial manner for Mary Anne's
benefit, not her own, 'where does this
young woman, who is called but not named Lizzie, live?
Think, now, before answering.' 'In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill
Bank, ma'am.'
'In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,' repeated Miss Peecher, as if
possessed beforehand of the book in which it was written.
Exactly so.
And what occupation does this young woman pursue, Mary Anne?
Take time.' 'She has a place of trust at an outfitter's
in the City, ma'am.'
'Oh!' said Miss Peecher, pondering on it; but smoothly added, in a confirmatory tone,
'At an outfitter's in the City. Ye-es?'
'And Charley--' Mary Anne was proceeding, when Miss Peecher stared.
'I mean Hexam, Miss Peecher.' 'I should think you did, Mary Anne.
I am glad to hear you do.
And Hexam--'
'Says,' Mary Anne went on, 'that he is not pleased with his sister, and that his
sister won't be guided by his advice, and persists in being guided by somebody
else's; and that--'
'Mr Headstone coming across the garden!' exclaimed Miss Peecher, with a flushed
glance at the looking-glass. 'You have answered very well, Mary Anne.
You are forming an excellent habit of arranging your thoughts clearly.
That will do.'
The discreet Mary Anne resumed her seat and her silence, and stitched, and stitched,
and was stitching when the schoolmaster's shadow came in before him, announcing that
he might be instantly expected.
'Good evening, Miss Peecher,' he said, pursuing the shadow, and taking its place.
'Good evening, Mr Headstone. Mary Anne, a chair.'
'Thank you,' said Bradley, seating himself in his constrained manner.
'This is but a flying visit. I have looked in, on my way, to ask a
kindness of you as a neighbour.'
'Did you say on your way, Mr Headstone?' asked Miss Peecher.
'On my way to--where I am going.'
'Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,' repeated Miss Peecher, in her own
thoughts.
'Charley Hexam has gone to get a book or two he wants, and will probably be back
before me.
As we leave my house empty, I took the liberty of telling him I would leave the
key here. Would you kindly allow me to do so?'
'Certainly, Mr Headstone.
Going for an evening walk, sir?' 'Partly for a walk, and partly for--on
business.'
'Business in Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,' repeated Miss Peecher to
herself.
'Having said which,' pursued Bradley, laying his door-key on the table, 'I must
be already going. There is nothing I can do for you, Miss
Peecher?'
'Thank you, Mr Headstone. In which direction?'
'In the direction of Westminster.' 'Mill Bank,' Miss Peecher repeated in her
own thoughts once again.
'No, thank you, Mr Headstone; I'll not trouble you.'
'You couldn't trouble me,' said the schoolmaster.
'Ah!' returned Miss Peecher, though not aloud; 'but you can trouble ME!'
And for all her quiet manner, and her quiet smile, she was full of trouble as he went
his way.
She was right touching his destination.
He held as straight a course for the house of the dolls' dressmaker as the wisdom of
his ancestors, exemplified in the construction of the intervening streets,
would let him, and walked with a bent head hammering at one fixed idea.
It had been an immoveable idea since he first set eyes upon her.
It seemed to him as if all that he could suppress in himself he had suppressed, as
if all that he could restrain in himself he had restrained, and the time had come--in a
rush, in a moment--when the power of self- command had departed from him.
Love at first sight is a trite expression quite sufficiently discussed; enough that
in certain smouldering natures like this man's, that passion leaps into a blaze, and
makes such head as fire does in a rage of
wind, when other passions, but for its mastery, could be held in chains.
As a multitude of weak, imitative natures are always lying by, ready to go mad upon
the next wrong idea that may be broached-- in these times, generally some form of
tribute to Somebody for something that
never was done, or, if ever done, that was done by Somebody Else--so these less
ordinary natures may lie by for years, ready on the touch of an instant to burst
into flame.
The schoolmaster went his way, brooding and brooding, and a sense of being vanquished
in a struggle might have been pieced out of his worried face.
Truly, in his breast there lingered a resentful shame to find himself defeated by
this passion for Charley Hexam's sister, though in the very self-same moments he was
concentrating himself upon the object of bringing the passion to a successful issue.
He appeared before the dolls' dressmaker, sitting alone at her work.
'Oho!' thought that sharp young personage, 'it's you, is it?
I know your tricks and your manners, my friend!'
'Hexam's sister,' said Bradley Headstone, 'is not come home yet?'
'You are quite a conjuror,' returned Miss Wren.
'I will wait, if you please, for I want to speak to her.'
'Do you?' returned Miss Wren. 'Sit down.
I hope it's mutual.'
Bradley glanced distrustfully at the shrewd face again bending over the work, and said,
trying to conquer doubt and hesitation: 'I hope you don't imply that my visit will
be unacceptable to Hexam's sister?'
'There! Don't call her that.
I can't bear you to call her that,' returned Miss Wren, snapping her fingers in
a volley of impatient snaps, 'for I don't like Hexam.'
'Indeed?'
'No.' Miss Wren wrinkled her nose, to express
dislike. 'Selfish.
Thinks only of himself.
The way with all of you.' 'The way with all of us?
Then you don't like ME?' 'So-so,' replied Miss Wren, with a shrug
and a laugh.
'Don't know much about you.' 'But I was not aware it was the way with
all of us,' said Bradley, returning to the accusation, a little injured.
'Won't you say, some of us?'
'Meaning,' returned the little creature, 'every one of you, but you.
Hah! Now look this lady in the face. This is Mrs Truth.
The Honourable.
Full-dressed.'
Bradley glanced at the doll she held up for his observation--which had been lying on
its face on her bench, while with a needle and thread she fastened the dress on at the
back--and looked from it to her.
'I stand the Honourable Mrs T. on my bench in this corner against the wall, where her
blue eyes can shine upon you,' pursued Miss Wren, doing so, and making two little dabs
at him in the air with her needle, as if
she pricked him with it in his own eyes; 'and I defy you to tell me, with Mrs T. for
a witness, what you have come here for.' 'To see Hexam's sister.'
'You don't say so!' retorted Miss Wren, hitching her chin.
'But on whose account?' 'Her own.'
'O Mrs T.!' exclaimed Miss Wren.
'You hear him!' 'To reason with her,' pursued Bradley, half
humouring what was present, and half angry with what was not present; 'for her own
sake.'
'Oh Mrs T.!' exclaimed the dressmaker. 'For her own sake,' repeated Bradley,
warming, 'and for her brother's, and as a perfectly disinterested person.'
'Really, Mrs T.,' remarked the dressmaker, 'since it comes to this, we must positively
turn you with your face to the wall.'
She had hardly done so, when Lizzie Hexam arrived, and showed some surprise on seeing
Bradley Headstone there, and Jenny shaking her little fist at him close before her
eyes, and the Honourable Mrs T. with her face to the wall.
'Here's a perfectly disinterested person, Lizzie dear,' said the knowing Miss Wren,
'come to talk with you, for your own sake and your brother's.
Think of that.
I am sure there ought to be no third party present at anything so very kind and so
very serious; and so, if you'll remove the third party upstairs, my dear, the third
party will retire.'
Lizzie took the hand which the dolls' dressmaker held out to her for the purpose
of being supported away, but only looked at her with an inquiring smile, and made no
other movement.
'The third party hobbles awfully, you know, when she's left to herself;' said Miss
Wren, 'her back being so bad, and her legs so ***; so she can't retire gracefully
unless you help her, Lizzie.'
'She can do no better than stay where she is,' returned Lizzie, releasing the hand,
and laying her own lightly on Miss Jenny's curls.
And then to Bradley: 'From Charley, sir?'
In an irresolute way, and stealing a clumsy look at her, Bradley rose to place a chair
for her, and then returned to his own.
'Strictly speaking,' said he, 'I come from Charley, because I left him only a little
while ago; but I am not commissioned by Charley.
I come of my own spontaneous act.'
With her elbows on her bench, and her chin upon her hands, Miss Jenny Wren sat looking
at him with a watchful sidelong look. Lizzie, in her different way, sat looking
at him too.
'The fact is,' began Bradley, with a mouth so dry that he had some difficulty in
articulating his words: the consciousness of which rendered his manner still more
ungainly and undecided; 'the truth is, that
Charley, having no secrets from me (to the best of my belief), has confided the whole
of this matter to me.' He came to a stop, and Lizzie asked: 'what
matter, sir?'
'I thought,' returned the schoolmaster, stealing another look at her, and seeming
to try in vain to sustain it; for the look dropped as it lighted on her eyes, 'that it
might be so superfluous as to be almost
impertinent, to enter upon a definition of it.
My allusion was to this matter of your having put aside your brother's plans for
you, and given the preference to those of Mr--I believe the name is Mr Eugene
Wrayburn.'
He made this point of not being certain of the name, with another uneasy look at her,
which dropped like the last.
Nothing being said on the other side, he had to begin again, and began with new
embarrassment. 'Your brother's plans were communicated to
me when he first had them in his thoughts.
In point of fact he spoke to me about them when I was last here--when we were walking
back together, and when I--when the impression was fresh upon me of having seen
his sister.'
There might have been no meaning in it, but the little dressmaker here removed one of
her supporting hands from her chin, and musingly turned the Honourable Mrs T. with
her face to the company.
That done, she fell into her former attitude.
'I approved of his idea,' said Bradley, with his uneasy look wandering to the doll,
and unconsciously resting there longer than it had rested on Lizzie, 'both because your
brother ought naturally to be the
originator of any such scheme, and because I hoped to be able to promote it.
I should have had inexpressible pleasure, I should have taken inexpressible interest,
in promoting it.
Therefore I must acknowledge that when your brother was disappointed, I too was
disappointed. I wish to avoid reservation or concealment,
and I fully acknowledge that.'
He appeared to have encouraged himself by having got so far.
At all events he went on with much greater firmness and force of emphasis: though with
a curious disposition to set his teeth, and with a curious tight-screwing movement of
his right hand in the clenching palm of his
left, like the action of one who was being physically hurt, and was unwilling to cry
out. 'I am a man of strong feelings, and I have
strongly felt this disappointment.
I do strongly feel it. I don't show what I feel; some of us are
obliged habitually to keep it down. To keep it down.
But to return to your brother.
He has taken the matter so much to heart that he has remonstrated (in my presence he
remonstrated) with Mr Eugene Wrayburn, if that be the name.
He did so, quite ineffectually.
As any one not blinded to the real character of Mr--Mr Eugene Wrayburn--would
readily suppose.' He looked at Lizzie again, and held the
look.
And his face turned from burning red to white, and from white back to burning red,
and so for the time to lasting deadly white.
'Finally, I resolved to come here alone, and appeal to you.
I resolved to come here alone, and entreat you to retract the course you have chosen,
and instead of confiding in a mere stranger--a person of most insolent
behaviour to your brother and others--to
prefer your brother and your brother's friend.'
Lizzie Hexam had changed colour when those changes came over him, and her face now
expressed some anger, more dislike, and even a touch of fear.
But she answered him very steadily.
'I cannot doubt, Mr Headstone, that your visit is well meant.
You have been so good a friend to Charley that I have no right to doubt it.
I have nothing to tell Charley, but that I accepted the help to which he so much
objects before he made any plans for me; or certainly before I knew of any.
It was considerately and delicately offered, and there were reasons that had
weight with me which should be as dear to Charley as to me.
I have no more to say to Charley on this subject.'
His lips trembled and stood apart, as he followed this repudiation of himself; and
limitation of her words to her brother.
'I should have told Charley, if he had come to me,' she resumed, as though it were an
after-thought, 'that Jenny and I find our teacher very able and very patient, and
that she takes great pains with us.
So much so, that we have said to her we hope in a very little while to be able to
go on by ourselves.
Charley knows about teachers, and I should also have told him, for his satisfaction,
that ours comes from an institution where teachers are regularly brought up.'
'I should like to ask you,' said Bradley Headstone, grinding his words slowly out,
as though they came from a rusty mill; 'I should like to ask you, if I may without
offence, whether you would have objected--
no; rather, I should like to say, if I may without offence, that I wish I had had the
opportunity of coming here with your brother and devoting my poor abilities and
experience to your service.'
'Thank you, Mr Headstone.'
'But I fear,' he pursued, after a pause, furtively wrenching at the seat of his
chair with one hand, as if he would have wrenched the chair to pieces, and gloomily
observing her while her eyes were cast
down, 'that my humble services would not have found much favour with you?'
She made no reply, and the poor stricken wretch sat contending with himself in a
heat of passion and torment.
After a while he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead and hands.
'There is only one thing more I had to say, but it is the most important.
There is a reason against this matter, there is a personal relation concerned in
this matter, not yet explained to you. It might--I don't say it would--it might--
induce you to think differently.
To proceed under the present circumstances is out of the question.
Will you please come to the understanding that there shall be another interview on
the subject?'
'With Charley, Mr Headstone?' 'With--well,' he answered, breaking off,
'yes! Say with him too.
Will you please come to the understanding that there must be another interview under
more favourable circumstances, before the whole case can be submitted?'
'I don't,' said Lizzie, shaking her head, 'understand your meaning, Mr Headstone.'
'Limit my meaning for the present,' he interrupted, 'to the whole case being
submitted to you in another interview.'
'What case, Mr Headstone? What is wanting to it?'
'You--you shall be informed in the other interview.'
Then he said, as if in a burst of irrepressible despair, 'I--I leave it all
incomplete! There is a spell upon me, I think!'
And then added, almost as if he asked for pity, 'Good-night!'
He held out his hand.
As she, with manifest hesitation, not to say reluctance, touched it, a strange
tremble passed over him, and his face, so deadly white, was moved as by a stroke of
pain.
Then he was gone. The dolls' dressmaker sat with her attitude
unchanged, eyeing the door by which he had departed, until Lizzie pushed her bench
aside and sat down near her.
Then, eyeing Lizzie as she had previously eyed Bradley and the door, Miss Wren
chopped that very sudden and keen chop in which her jaws sometimes indulged, leaned
back in her chair with folded arms, and thus expressed herself:
'Humph!
If he--I mean, of course, my dear, the party who is coming to court me when the
time comes--should be THAT sort of man, he may spare himself the trouble.
HE wouldn't do to be trotted about and made useful.
He'd take fire and blow up while he was about it.
'And so you would be rid of him,' said Lizzie, humouring her.
'Not so easily,' returned Miss Wren. 'He wouldn't blow up alone.
He'd carry me up with him.
I know his tricks and his manners.' 'Would he want to hurt you, do you mean?'
asked Lizzie.
'Mightn't exactly want to do it, my dear,' returned Miss Wren; 'but a lot of gunpowder
among lighted lucifer-matches in the next room might almost as well be here.'
'He is a very strange man,' said Lizzie, thoughtfully.
'I wish he was so very strange a man as to be a total stranger,' answered the sharp
little thing.
It being Lizzie's regular occupation when they were alone of an evening to brush out
and smooth the long fair hair of the dolls' dressmaker, she unfastened a ribbon that
kept it back while the little creature was
at her work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over the poor shoulders that were
much in need of such adorning rain. 'Not now, Lizzie, dear,' said Jenny; 'let
us have a talk by the fire.'
With those words, she in her turn loosened her friend's dark hair, and it dropped of
its own weight over her ***, in two rich masses.
Pretending to compare the colours and admire the contrast, Jenny so managed a
mere touch or two of her nimble hands, as that she herself laying a cheek on one of
the dark folds, seemed blinded by her own
clustering curls to all but the fire, while the fine handsome face and brow of Lizzie
were revealed without obstruction in the sombre light.
'Let us have a talk,' said Jenny, 'about Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'
Something sparkled down among the fair hair resting on the dark hair; and if it were
not a star--which it couldn't be--it was an eye; and if it were an eye, it was Jenny
Wren's eye, bright and watchful as the bird's whose name she had taken.
'Why about Mr Wrayburn?' Lizzie asked.
'For no better reason than because I'm in the humour.
I wonder whether he's rich!' 'No, not rich.'
'Poor?'
'I think so, for a gentleman.' 'Ah! To be sure!
Yes, he's a gentleman. Not of our sort; is he?'
A shake of the head, a thoughtful shake of the head, and the answer, softly spoken,
'Oh no, oh no!' The dolls' dressmaker had an arm round her
friend's waist.
Adjusting the arm, she slyly took the opportunity of blowing at her own hair
where it fell over her face; then the eye down there, under lighter shadows sparkled
more brightly and appeared more watchful.
'When He turns up, he shan't be a gentleman; I'll very soon send him packing,
if he is. However, he's not Mr Wrayburn; I haven't
captivated HIM.
I wonder whether anybody has, Lizzie!' 'It is very likely.'
'Is it very likely? I wonder who!'
'Is it not very likely that some lady has been taken by him, and that he may love her
dearly?' 'Perhaps.
I don't know.
What would you think of him, Lizzie, if you were a lady?'
'I a lady!' she repeated, laughing. 'Such a fancy!'
'Yes. But say: just as a fancy, and for instance.'
'I a lady! I, a poor girl who used to row poor father
on the river.
I, who had rowed poor father out and home on the very night when I saw him for the
first time. I, who was made so timid by his looking at
me, that I got up and went out!'
('He did look at you, even that night, though you were not a lady!' thought Miss
Wren.) 'I a lady!'
Lizzie went on in a low voice, with her eyes upon the fire.
'I, with poor father's grave not even cleared of undeserved stain and shame, and
he trying to clear it for me!
I a lady!' 'Only as a fancy, and for instance,' urged
Miss Wren. 'Too much, Jenny, dear, too much!
My fancy is not able to get that far.'
As the low fire gleamed upon her, it showed her smiling, mournfully and abstractedly.
'But I am in the humour, and I must be humoured, Lizzie, because after all I am a
poor little thing, and have had a hard day with my bad child.
Look in the fire, as I like to hear you tell how you used to do when you lived in
that dreary old house that had once been a windmill.
Look in the--what was its name when you told fortunes with your brother that I
DON'T like?' 'The hollow down by the flare?'
'Ah! That's the name!
You can find a lady there, I know.' 'More easily than I can make one of such
material as myself, Jenny.' The sparkling eye looked steadfastly up, as
the musing face looked thoughtfully down.
'Well?' said the dolls' dressmaker, 'We have found our lady?'
Lizzie nodded, and asked, 'Shall she be rich?'
'She had better be, as he's poor.'
'She is very rich. Shall she be handsome?'
'Even you can be that, Lizzie, so she ought to be.'
'She is very handsome.'
'What does she say about him?' asked Miss Jenny, in a low voice: watchful, through an
intervening silence, of the face looking down at the fire.
'She is glad, glad, to be rich, that he may have the money.
She is glad, glad, to be beautiful, that he may be proud of her.
Her poor heart--'
'Eh? Her poor 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
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.
>
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens CHAPTER 12
MORE BIRDS OF PREY
Rogue Riderhood dwelt deep and dark in Limehouse Hole, among the riggers, and the
mast, oar and block makers, and the boat- builders, and the sail-lofts, as in a kind
of ship's hold stored full of waterside
characters, some no better than himself, some very much better, and none much worse.
The Hole, albeit in a general way not over nice in its choice of company, was rather
shy in reference to the honour of cultivating the Rogue's acquaintance; more
frequently giving him the cold shoulder
than the warm hand, and seldom or never drinking with him unless at his own
expense.
A part of the Hole, indeed, contained so much public spirit and private virtue that
not even this strong leverage could move it to good fellowship with a tainted accuser.
But, there may have been the drawback on this magnanimous morality, that its
exponents held a true witness before Justice to be the next unneighbourly and
accursed character to a false one.
Had it not been for the daughter whom he often mentioned, Mr Riderhood might have
found the Hole a mere grave as to any means it would yield him of getting a living.
But Miss Pleasant Riderhood had some little position and connection in Limehouse Hole.
Upon the smallest of small scales, she was an unlicensed pawnbroker, keeping what was
popularly called a Leaving Shop, by lending insignificant sums on insignificant
articles of property deposited with her as security.
In her four-and-twentieth year of life, Pleasant was already in her fifth year of
this way of trade.
Her deceased mother had established the business, and on that parent's demise she
had appropriated a secret capital of fifteen shillings to establishing herself
in it; the existence of such capital in a
pillow being the last intelligible confidential communication made to her by
the departed, before succumbing to dropsical conditions of snuff and gin,
incompatible equally with coherence and existence.
Why christened Pleasant, the late Mrs Riderhood might possibly have been at some
time able to explain, and possibly not.
Her daughter had no information on that point.
Pleasant she found herself, and she couldn't help it.
She had not been consulted on the question, any more than on the question of her coming
into these terrestrial parts, to want a name.
Similarly, she found herself possessed of what is colloquially termed a swivel eye
(derived from her father), which she might perhaps have declined if her sentiments on
the subject had been taken.
She was not otherwise positively ill- looking, though anxious, meagre, of a muddy
complexion, and looking as old again as she really was.
As some dogs have it in the blood, or are trained, to worry certain creatures to a
certain point, so--not to make the comparison disrespectfully--Pleasant
Riderhood had it in the blood, or had been
trained, to regard ***, within certain limits, as her prey.
Show her a man in a blue jacket, and, figuratively speaking, she pinned him
instantly.
Yet, all things considered, she was not of an evil mind or an unkindly disposition.
For, observe how many things were to be considered according to her own unfortunate
experience.
Show Pleasant Riderhood a Wedding in the street, and she only saw two people taking
out a regular licence to quarrel and fight.
Show her a Christening, and she saw a little heathen personage having a quite
superfluous name bestowed upon it, inasmuch as it would be commonly addressed by some
abusive epithet: which little personage was
not in the least wanted by anybody, and would be shoved and banged out of
everybody's way, until it should grow big enough to shove and ***.
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 ***'S BOARDING-HOUSE.
Taking notice of Pleasant Riderhood at the door, the man crossed so quickly that she
was still winding herself up, when he stood close before her.
'Is your father at home?' said he.
'I think he is,' returned Pleasant, dropping her arms; 'come in.'
It was a tentative reply, the man having a seafaring appearance.
Her father was not at home, and Pleasant knew it.
'Take a seat by the fire,' were her hospitable words when she had got him in;
'men of your calling are always welcome here.'
'Thankee,' said the man.
His manner was the manner of a sailor, and his hands were the hands of a sailor,
except that they were smooth.
Pleasant had an eye for sailors, and she noticed the unused colour and texture of
the hands, sunburnt though they were, as sharply as she noticed their unmistakable
looseness and suppleness, as he sat himself
down with his left arm carelessly thrown across his left leg a little above the
knee, and the right arm as carelessly thrown over the elbow of the wooden chair,
with the hand curved, half open and half shut, as if it had just let go a rope.
'Might you be looking for a Boarding- House?'
Pleasant inquired, taking her observant stand on one side of the fire.
'I don't rightly know my plans yet,' returned the man.
'You ain't looking for a Leaving Shop?'
'No,' said the man. 'No,' assented Pleasant, 'you've got too
much of an outfit on you for that. But if you should want either, this is
both.'
'Ay, ay!' said the man, glancing round the place.
'I know. I've been here before.'
'Did you Leave anything when you were here before?' asked Pleasant, with a view to
principal and interest. 'No.'
The man shook his head.
'I am pretty sure you never boarded here?' 'No.'
The man again shook his head. 'What DID you do here when you were here
before?' asked Pleasant.
'For I don't remember you.' 'It's not at all likely you should.
I only stood at the door, one night--on the lower step there--while a shipmate of mine
looked in to speak to your father.
I remember the place well.' Looking very curiously round it.
'Might that have been long ago?' 'Ay, a goodish bit ago.
When I came off my last voyage.'
'Then you have not been to sea lately?' 'No. Been in the sick bay since then, and
been employed ashore.' 'Then, to be sure, that accounts for your
hands.'
The man with a keen look, a quick smile, and a change of manner, caught her up.
'You're a good observer. Yes. That accounts for my hands.'
Pleasant was somewhat disquieted by his look, and returned it suspiciously.
Not only was his change of manner, though very sudden, quite collected, but his
former manner, which he resumed, had a certain suppressed confidence and sense of
power in it that were half threatening.
'Will your father be long?' he inquired. 'I don't know.
I can't say.' 'As you supposed he was at home, it would
seem that he has just gone out?
How's that?' 'I supposed he had come home,' Pleasant
explained. 'Oh! You supposed he had come home?
Then he has been some time out?
How's that?' 'I don't want to deceive you.
Father's on the river in his boat.' 'At the old work?' asked the man.
'I don't know what you mean,' said Pleasant, shrinking a step back.
'What on earth d'ye want?' 'I don't want to hurt your father.
I don't want to say I might, if I chose.
I want to speak to him. Not much in that, is there?
There shall be no secrets from you; you shall be by.
And plainly, Miss Riderhood, there's nothing to be got out of me, or made of me.
I am not good for the Leaving Shop, I am not good for the Boarding-House, I am not
good for anything in your way to the extent of sixpenn'orth of halfpence.
Put the idea aside, and we shall get on together.'
'But you're a seafaring man?' argued Pleasant, as if that were a sufficient
reason for his being good for something in her way.
'Yes and no.
I have been, and I may be again. But I am not for you.
Won't you take my word for it?'
The conversation had arrived at a crisis to justify Miss Pleasant's hair in tumbling
down.
It tumbled down accordingly, and she twisted it up, looking from under her bent
forehead at the man.
In taking stock of his familiarly worn rough-weather nautical clothes, piece by
piece, she took stock of a formidable knife in a sheath at his waist ready to his hand,
and of a whistle hanging round his neck,
and of a short jagged knotted club with a loaded head that peeped out of a pocket of
his loose outer jacket or frock.
He sat quietly looking at her; but, with these appendages partially revealing
themselves, and with a quantity of bristling oakum-coloured head and whisker,
he had a formidable appearance.
'Won't you take my word for it?' he asked again.
Pleasant answered with a short dumb nod. He rejoined with another short dumb nod.
Then he got up and stood with his arms folded, in front of the fire, looking down
into it occasionally, as she stood with her arms folded, leaning against the side of
the chimney-piece.
'To wile away the time till your father comes,' he said,--'pray is there much
robbing and murdering of *** about the water-side now?'
'No,' said Pleasant.
'Any?' 'Complaints of that sort are sometimes
made, about Ratcliffe and Wapping and up that way.
But who knows how many are true?'
'To be sure. And it don't seem necessary.'
'That's what I say,' observed Pleasant. 'Where's the reason for it?
Bless the sailors, it ain't as if they ever could keep what they have, without it.'
'You're right. Their money may be soon got out of them,
without violence,' said the man.
'Of course it may,' said Pleasant; 'and then they ship again and get more.
And the best thing for 'em, too, to ship again as soon as ever they can be brought
to it.
They're never so well off as when they're afloat.'
'I'll tell you why I ask,' pursued the visitor, looking up from the fire.
'I was once beset that way myself, and left for dead.'
'No?' said Pleasant. 'Where did it happen?'
'It happened,' returned the man, with a ruminative air, as he drew his right hand
across his chin, and dipped the other in the pocket of his rough outer coat, 'it
happened somewhere about here as I reckon.
I don't think it can have been a mile from here.'
'Were you drunk?' asked Pleasant. 'I was muddled, but not with fair drinking.
I had not been drinking, you understand.
A mouthful did it.' Pleasant with a grave look shook her head;
importing that she understood the process, but decidedly disapproved.
'Fair trade is one thing,' said she, 'but that's another.
No one has a right to carry on with Jack in THAT way.'
'The sentiment does you credit,' returned the man, with a grim smile; and added, in a
mutter, 'the more so, as I believe it's not your father's.--Yes, I had a bad time of
it, that time.
I lost everything, and had a sharp struggle for my life, weak as I was.'
'Did you get the parties punished?' asked Pleasant.
'A tremendous punishment followed,' said the man, more seriously; 'but it was not of
my bringing about.' 'Of whose, then?' asked Pleasant.
The man pointed upward with his forefinger, and, slowly recovering that hand, settled
his chin in it again as he looked at the fire.
Bringing her inherited eye to bear upon him, Pleasant Riderhood felt more and more
uncomfortable, his manner was so mysterious, so stern, so self-possessed.
'Anyways,' said the damsel, 'I am glad punishment followed, and I say so.
Fair trade with seafaring men gets a bad name through deeds of violence.
I am as much against deeds of violence being done to seafaring men, as seafaring
men can be themselves. I am of the same opinion as my mother was,
when she was living.
Fair trade, my mother used to say, but no robbery and no blows.'
In the way of trade Miss Pleasant would have taken--and indeed did take when she
could--as much as thirty shillings a week for board that would be dear at five, and
likewise conducted the Leaving business
upon correspondingly equitable principles; yet she had that tenderness of conscience
and those feelings of humanity, that the moment her ideas of trade were overstepped,
she became the ***'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 *** in extraordinary dudgeon, and was out of humour too.
'What are you Poll Parroting at now? Ain't you got nothing to do but fold your
arms and stand a Poll Parroting all night?'
'Let her alone,' urged the man. 'She was only speaking to me.'
'Let her alone too!' retorted Mr Riderhood, eyeing him all over.
'Do you know she's my daughter?'
'Yes.' 'And don't you know that I won't have no
Poll Parroting on the part of my daughter? No, nor yet that I won't take no Poll
Parroting from no man?
And who may YOU be, and what may YOU want?' 'How can I tell you until you are silent?'
returned the other fiercely.
'Well,' said Mr Riderhood, quailing a little, 'I am willing to be silent for the
purpose of hearing. But don't Poll Parrot me.'
'Are you thirsty, you?' the man asked, in the same fierce short way, after returning
his look. 'Why nat'rally,' said Mr Riderhood, 'ain't
I always thirsty!'
(Indignant at the absurdity of the question.)
'What will you drink?' demanded the man.
'Sherry wine,' returned Mr Riderhood, in the same sharp tone, 'if you're capable of
it.'
The man put his hand in his pocket, took out half a sovereign, and begged the favour
of Miss Pleasant that she would fetch a bottle.
'With the cork undrawn,' he added, emphatically, looking at her father.
'I'll take my Alfred David,' muttered Mr Riderhood, slowly relaxing into a dark
smile, 'that you know a move.
Do I know YOU? N--n--no, I don't know you.'
The man replied, 'No, you don't know me.' And so they stood looking at one another
surlily enough, until Pleasant came back.
'There's small glasses on the shelf,' said Riderhood to his daughter.
'Give me the one without a foot. I gets my living by the sweat of my brow,
and it's good enough for ME.'
This had a modest self-denying appearance; but it soon turned out that as, by reason
of the impossibility of standing the glass upright while there was anything in it, it
required to be emptied as soon as filled,
Mr Riderhood managed to drink in the proportion of three to one.
With his Fortunatus's goblet ready in his hand, Mr Riderhood sat down on one side of
the table before the fire, and the strange man on the other: Pleasant occupying a
stool between the latter and the fireside.
The background, composed of handkerchiefs, coats, shirts, hats, and other old articles
'On Leaving,' had a general dim resemblance to human listeners; especially where a
shiny black sou'wester suit and hat hung,
looking very like a clumsy mariner with his back to the company, who was so curious to
overhear, that he paused for the purpose with his coat half pulled on, and his
shoulders up to his ears in the uncompleted action.
The visitor first held the bottle against the light of the candle, and next examined
the top of the cork.
Satisfied that it had not been tampered with, he slowly took from his breastpocket
a rusty clasp-knife, and, with a corkscrew in the handle, opened the wine.
That done, he looked at the cork, unscrewed it from the corkscrew, laid each separately
on the table, and, with the end of the sailor's knot of his neckerchief, dusted
the inside of the neck of the bottle.
All this with great deliberation. At first Riderhood had sat with his
footless glass extended at arm's length for filling, while the very deliberate stranger
seemed absorbed in his preparations.
But, gradually his arm reverted home to him, and his glass was lowered and lowered
until he rested it upside down upon the table.
By the same degrees his attention became concentrated on the knife.
And now, as the man held out the bottle to fill all round, Riderhood stood up, leaned
over the table to look closer at the knife, and stared from it to him.
'What's the matter?' asked the man.
'Why, I know that knife!' said Riderhood. 'Yes, I dare say you do.'
He motioned to him to hold up his glass, and filled it.
Riderhood emptied it to the last drop and began again.
'That there knife--' 'Stop,' said the man, composedly.
'I was going to drink to your daughter.
Your health, Miss Riderhood.' 'That knife was the knife of a *** named
George Radfoot.' 'It was.'
'That *** was well beknown to me.'
'He was.' 'What's come to him?'
'Death has come to him. Death came to him in an ugly shape.
He looked,' said the man, 'very horrible after it.'
'Arter what?' said Riderhood, with a frowning stare.
'After he was killed.'
'Killed? Who killed him?'
Only answering with a shrug, the man filled the footless glass, and Riderhood emptied
it: looking amazedly from his daughter to his visitor.
'You don't mean to tell a honest man--' he was recommencing with his empty glass in
his hand, when his eye became fascinated by the stranger's outer coat.
He leaned across the table to see it nearer, touched the sleeve, turned the cuff
to look at the sleeve-lining (the man, in his perfect composure, offering not the
least objection), and exclaimed, 'It's my
belief as this here coat was George Radfoot's too!'
'You are right.
He wore it the last time you ever saw him, and the last time you ever will see him--in
this world.'
'It's my belief you mean to tell me to my face you killed him!' exclaimed Riderhood;
but, nevertheless, allowing his glass to be filled again.
The man only answered with another shrug, and showed no symptom of confusion.
'Wish I may die if I know what to be up to with this chap!' said Riderhood, after
staring at him, and tossing his last glassful down his throat.
'Let's know what to make of you.
Say something plain.' 'I will,' returned the other, leaning
forward across the table, and speaking in a low impressive voice.
'What a liar you are!'
The honest witness rose, and made as though he would fling his glass in the man's face.
The man not wincing, and merely shaking his forefinger half knowingly, half menacingly,
the piece of honesty thought better of it and sat down again, putting the glass down
too.
'And when you went to that lawyer yonder in the Temple with that invented story,' said
the stranger, in an exasperatingly comfortable sort of confidence, 'you might
have had your strong suspicions of a friend of your own, you know.
I think you had, you know.' 'Me my suspicions?
Of what friend?'
'Tell me again whose knife was this?' demanded the man.
'It was possessed by, and was the property of--him as I have made mention on,' said
Riderhood, stupidly evading the actual mention of the name.
'Tell me again whose coat was this?'
'That there article of clothing likeways belonged to, and was wore by--him as I have
made mention on,' was again the dull Old Bailey evasion.
'I suspect that you gave him the credit of the deed, and of keeping cleverly out of
the way. But there was small cleverness in HIS
keeping out of the way.
The cleverness would have been, to have got back for one single instant to the light of
the sun.'
'Things is come to a pretty pass,' growled Mr Riderhood, rising to his feet, goaded to
stand at bay, 'when bullyers as is wearing dead men's clothes, and bullyers as is
armed with dead men's knives, is to come
into the houses of honest live men, getting their livings by the sweats of their brows,
and is to make these here sort of charges with no rhyme and no reason, neither the
one nor yet the other!
Why should I have had my suspicions of him?'
'Because you knew him,' replied the man; 'because you had been one with him, and
knew his real character under a fair outside; because on the night which you had
afterwards reason to believe to be the very
night of the ***, 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-***--' 'Harmon ***, father,' suggested
Pleasant.
'No Poll Parroting!' he vociferated, in return.
'Keep your mouth shut!--I want to know, you sir, whether you charge that there crime on
George Radfoot?'
'If you ever do know, you won't know now.' 'Perhaps you done it yourself?' said
Riderhood, with a threatening action.
'I alone know,' returned the man, sternly shaking his head, 'the mysteries of that
crime. I alone know that your trumped-up story
cannot possibly be true.
I alone know that it must be altogether false, and that you must know it to be
altogether false. I come here to-night to tell you so much of
what I know, and no more.'
Mr Riderhood, with his crooked eye upon his visitor, meditated for some moments, and
then refilled his glass, and tipped the contents down his throat in three tips.
'Shut the shop-door!' he then said to his daughter, putting the glass suddenly down.
'And turn the key and stand by it!
If you know all this, you sir,' getting, as he spoke, between the visitor and the door,
'why han't you gone to Lawyer Lightwood?' 'That, also, is alone known to myself,' was
the cool answer.
'Don't you know that, if you didn't do the deed, what you say you could tell is worth
from five to ten thousand pound?' asked Riderhood.
'I know it very well, and when I claim the money you shall share it.'
The honest man paused, and drew a little nearer to the visitor, and a little further
from the door.
'I know it,' repeated the man, quietly, 'as well as I know that you and George Radfoot
were one together in more than one dark business; and as well as I know that you,
Roger Riderhood, conspired against an
innocent man for blood-money; and as well as I know that I can--and that I swear I
will!--give you up on both scores, and be the proof against you in my own person, if
you defy me!'
'Father!' cried Pleasant, from the door. 'Don't defy him!
Give way to him! Don't get into more trouble, father!'
'Will you leave off a Poll Parroting, I ask you?' cried Mr Riderhood, half beside
himself between the two. Then, propitiatingly and crawlingly: 'You
sir!
You han't said what you want of me. Is it fair, is it worthy of yourself, to
talk of my defying you afore ever you say what you want of me?'
'I don't want much,' said the man.
'This accusation of yours must not be left half made and half unmade.
What was done for the blood-money must be thoroughly undone.'
'Well; but Shipmate--'
'Don't call me Shipmate,' said the man. 'Captain, then,' urged Mr Riderhood;
'there! You won't object to Captain.
It's a honourable title, and you fully look it.
Captain! Ain't the man dead?
Now I ask you fair.
Ain't Gaffer dead?' 'Well,' returned the other, with
impatience, 'yes, he is dead. What then?'
'Can words hurt a dead man, Captain?
I only ask you fair.' 'They can hurt the memory of a dead man,
and they can hurt his living children. How many children had this man?'
'Meaning Gaffer, Captain?'
'Of whom else are we speaking?' returned the other, with a movement of his foot, as
if Rogue Riderhood were beginning to sneak before him in the body as well as the
spirit, and he spurned him off.
'I have heard of a daughter, and a son. I ask for information; I ask YOUR daughter;
I prefer to speak to her. What children did Hexam leave?'
Pleasant, looking to her father for permission to reply, that honest man
exclaimed with great bitterness: 'Why the devil don't you answer the
Captain?
You can Poll Parrot enough when you ain't wanted to Poll Parrot, you perwerse jade!'
Thus encouraged, Pleasant explained that there were only Lizzie, the daughter in
question, and the youth.
Both very respectable, she added.
'It is dreadful that any stigma should attach to them,' said the visitor, whom the
consideration rendered so uneasy that he rose, and paced to and fro, muttering,
'Dreadful!
Unforeseen? How could it be foreseen!'
Then he stopped, and asked aloud: 'Where do they live?'
Pleasant further explained that only the daughter had resided with the father at the
time of his accidental death, and that she had immediately afterwards quitted the
neighbourhood.
'I know that,' said the man, 'for I have been to the place they dwelt in, at the
time of the inquest. Could you quietly find out for me where she
lives now?'
Pleasant had no doubt she could do that. Within what time, did she think?
Within a day.
The visitor said that was well, and he would return for the information, relying
on its being obtained.
To this dialogue Riderhood had attended in silence, and he now obsequiously bespake
the Captain. 'Captain!
Mentioning them unfort'net words of mine respecting Gaffer, it is contrairily to be
bore in mind that Gaffer always were a precious rascal, and that his line were a
thieving line.
Likeways when I went to them two Governors, Lawyer Lightwood and the t'other Governor,
with my information, I may have been a little over-eager for the cause of justice,
or (to put it another way) a little over-
stimilated by them feelings which rouses a man up, when a pot of money is going about,
to get his hand into that pot of money for his family's sake.
Besides which, I think the wine of them two Governors was--I will not say a hocussed
wine, but fur from a wine as was elthy for the mind.
And there's another thing to be remembered, Captain.
Did I stick to them words when Gaffer was no more, and did I say bold to them two
Governors, "Governors both, wot I informed I still inform; wot was took down I hold
to"?
No. I says, frank and open--no shuffling, mind you, Captain!--"I may have been
mistook, I've been a thinking of it, it mayn't have been took down correct on this
and that, and I won't swear to thick and
thin, I'd rayther forfeit your good opinions than do it."
And so far as I know,' concluded Mr Riderhood, by way of proof and evidence to
character, 'I HAVE actiwally forfeited the good opinions of several persons--even your
own, Captain, if I understand your words-- but I'd sooner do it than be forswore.
There; if that's conspiracy, call me conspirator.'
'You shall sign,' said the visitor, taking very little heed of this oration, 'a
statement that it was all utterly false, and the poor girl shall have it.
I will bring it with me for your signature, when I come again.'
'When might you be expected, Captain?' inquired Riderhood, again dubiously getting
between him and door.
'Quite soon enough for you. I shall not disappoint you; don't be
afraid.' 'Might you be inclined to leave any name,
Captain?'
'No, not at all. I have no such intention.'
'"Shall" is summ'at of a hard word, Captain,' urged Riderhood, still feebly
dodging between him and the door, as he advanced.
'When you say a man "shall" sign this and that and t'other, Captain, you order him
about in a grand sort of a way. Don't it seem so to yourself?'
The man stood still, and angrily fixed him with his eyes.
'Father, father!' entreated Pleasant, from the door, with her disengaged hand
nervously trembling at her lips; 'don't!
Don't get into trouble any more!' 'Hear me out, Captain, hear me out!
All I was wishing to mention, Captain, afore you took your departer,' said the
sneaking Mr Riderhood, falling out of his path, 'was, your handsome words relating to
the reward.'
'When I claim it,' said the man, in a tone which seemed to leave some such words as
'you dog,' very distinctly understood, 'you shall share it.'
Looking stedfastly at Riderhood, he once more said in a low voice, this time with a
grim sort of admiration of him as a perfect piece of evil, 'What a liar you are!' and,
nodding his head twice or thrice over the compliment, passed out of the shop.
But, to Pleasant he said good-night kindly.
The honest man who gained his living by the sweat of his brow remained in a state akin
to stupefaction, until the footless glass and the unfinished bottle conveyed
themselves into his mind.
From his mind he conveyed them into his hands, and so conveyed the last of the wine
into his stomach.
When that was done, he awoke to a clear perception that Poll Parroting was solely
chargeable with what had passed.
Therefore, not to be remiss in his duty as a father, he threw a pair of sea-boots at
Pleasant, which she ducked to avoid, and then cried, poor thing, using her hair for
a pocket-handkerchief.
>
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens CHAPTER 13
A SOLO AND A DUETT
The wind was blowing so hard when the visitor came out at the shop-door into the
darkness and dirt of Limehouse Hole, that it almost blew him in again.
Doors were slamming violently, lamps were flickering or blown out, signs were rocking
in their frames, the water of the kennels, wind-dispersed, flew about in drops like
rain.
Indifferent to the weather, and even preferring it to better weather for its
clearance of the streets, the man looked about him with a scrutinizing glance.
'Thus much I know,' he murmured.
'I have never been here since that night, and never was here before that night, but
thus much I recognize. I wonder which way did we take when we came
out of that shop.
We turned to the right as I have turned, but I can recall no more.
Did we go by this alley? Or down that little lane?'
He tried both, but both confused him equally, and he came straying back to the
same spot.
'I remember there were poles pushed out of upper windows on which clothes were drying,
and I remember a low public-house, and the sound flowing down a narrow passage
belonging to it of the scraping of a fiddle and the shuffling of feet.
But here are all these things in the lane, and here are all these things in the alley.
And I have nothing else in my mind but a wall, a dark doorway, a flight of stairs,
and a room.'
He tried a new direction, but made nothing of it; walls, dark doorways, flights of
stairs and rooms, were too abundant.
And, like most people so puzzled, he again and again described a circle, and found
himself at the point from which he had begun.
'This is like what I have read in narratives of escape from prison,' said he,
'where the little track of the fugitives in the night always seems to take the shape of
the great round world, on which they wander; as if it were a secret law.'
Here he ceased to be the oakum-headed, oakum-whiskered man on whom Miss Pleasant
Riderhood had looked, and, allowing for his being still wrapped in a nautical overcoat,
became as like that same lost wanted Mr
Julius Handford, as never man was like another in this world.
In the breast of the coat he stowed the bristling hair and whisker, in a moment, as
the favouring wind went with him down a solitary place that it had swept clear of
passengers.
Yet in that same moment he was the Secretary also, Mr Boffin's Secretary.
For John Rokesmith, too, was as like that same lost wanted Mr Julius Handford as
never man was like another in this world.
'I have no clue to the scene of my death,' said he.
'Not that it matters now.
But having risked discovery by venturing here at all, I should have been glad to
track some part of the way.'
With which singular words he abandoned his search, came up out of Limehouse Hole, and
took the way past Limehouse Church. At the great iron gate of the churchyard he
stopped and looked in.
He looked up at the high tower spectrally resisting the wind, and he looked round at
the white tombstones, like enough to the dead in their winding-sheets, and he
counted the nine tolls of the clock-bell.
'It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals,' said he, 'to be looking into a
churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the
living than these dead do, and even to know
that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here.
Nothing uses me to it.
A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going
unrecognized among mankind, than I feel. 'But this is the fanciful side of the
situation.
It has a real side, so difficult that, though I think of it every day, I never
thoroughly think it out. Now, let me determine to think it out as I
walk home.
I know I evade it, as many men--perhaps most men--do evade thinking their way
through their greatest perplexity. I will try to pin myself to mine.
Don't evade it, John Harmon; don't evade it; think it out!
'When I came to England, attracted to the country with which I had none but most
miserable associations, by the accounts of my fine inheritance that found me abroad, I
came back, shrinking from my father's
money, shrinking from my father's memory, mistrustful of being forced on a mercenary
wife, mistrustful of my father's intention in thrusting that marriage on me,
mistrustful that I was already growing
avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the two dear
noble honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life or that of my
heartbroken sister.
I came back, timid, divided in my mind, afraid of myself and everybody here,
knowing of nothing but wretchedness that my father's wealth had ever brought about.
Now, stop, and so far think it out, John Harmon.
Is that so? That is exactly so.
'On board serving as third mate was George Radfoot.
I knew nothing of him.
His name first became known to me about a week before we sailed, through my being
accosted by one of the ship-agent's clerks as "Mr Radfoot."
It was one day when I had gone aboard to look to my preparations, and the clerk,
coming behind me as I stood on deck, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "Mr Rad-foot,
look here," referring to some papers that he had in his hand.
And my name first became known to Radfoot, through another clerk within a day or two,
and while the ship was yet in port, coming up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder
and beginning, "I beg your pardon, Mr Harmon--."
I believe we were alike in bulk and stature but not otherwise, and that we were not
strikingly alike, even in those respects, when we were together and could be
compared.
'However, a sociable word or two on these mistakes became an easy introduction
between us, and the weather was hot, and he helped me to a cool cabin on deck alongside
his own, and his first school had been at
Brussels as mine had been, and he had learnt French as I had learnt it, and he
had a little history of himself to relate-- God only knows how much of it true, and how
much of it false--that had its likeness to mine.
I had been a *** too.
So we got to be confidential together, and the more easily yet, because he and every
one on board had known by general rumour what I was making the voyage to England
for.
By such degrees and means, he came to the knowledge of my uneasiness of mind, and of
its setting at that time in the direction of desiring to see and form some judgment
of my allotted wife, before she could
possibly know me for myself; also to try Mrs Boffin and give her a glad surprise.
So the plot was made out of our getting common sailors' dresses (as he was able to
guide me about London), and throwing ourselves in Bella Wilfer's neighbourhood,
and trying to put ourselves in her way, and
doing whatever chance might favour on the spot, and seeing what came of it.
If nothing came of it, I should be no worse off, and there would merely be a short
delay in my presenting myself to Lightwood.
I have all these facts right? Yes.
They are all accurately right. 'His advantage in all this was, that for a
time I was to be lost.
It might be for a day or for two days, but I must be lost sight of on landing, or
there would be recognition, anticipation, and failure.
Therefore, I disembarked with my valise in my hand--as Potterson the steward and Mr
Jacob Kibble my fellow-passenger afterwards remembered--and waited for him in the dark
by that very Limehouse Church which is now behind me.
'As I had always shunned the port of London, I only knew the church through his
pointing out its spire from on board.
Perhaps I might recall, if it were any good to try, the way by which I went to it alone
from the river; but how we two went from it to Riderhood's shop, I don't know--any more
than I know what turns we took and doubles we made, after we left it.
The way was purposely confused, no doubt.
'But let me go on thinking the facts out, and avoid confusing them with my
speculations.
Whether he took me by a straight way or a crooked way, what is that to the purpose
now? Steady, John Harmon.
'When we stopped at Riderhood's, and he asked that scoundrel a question or two,
purporting to refer only to the lodging- houses in which there was accommodation for
us, had I the least suspicion of him?
None. Certainly none until afterwards when I held
the clue.
I think he must have got from Riderhood in a paper, the drug, or whatever it was, that
afterwards stupefied me, but I am far from sure.
All I felt safe in charging on him to- night, was old companionship in villainy
between them.
Their undisguised intimacy, and the character I now know Riderhood to bear,
made that not at all adventurous. But I am not clear about the drug.
Thinking out the circumstances on which I found my suspicion, they are only two.
One: I remember his changing a small folded paper from one pocket to another, after we
came out, which he had not touched before.
Two: I now know Riderhood to have been previously taken up for being concerned in
the robbery of an unlucky ***, to whom some such poison had been given.
'It is my conviction that we cannot have gone a mile from that shop, before we came
to the wall, the dark doorway, the flight of stairs, and the room.
The night was particularly dark and it rained hard.
As I think the circumstances back, I hear the rain splashing on the stone pavement of
the passage, which was not under cover.
The room overlooked the river, or a dock, or a creek, and the tide was out.
Being possessed of the time down to that point, I know by the hour that it must have
been about low water; but while the coffee was getting ready, I drew back the curtain
(a dark-brown curtain), and, looking out,
knew by the kind of reflection below, of the few neighbouring lights, that they were
reflected in tidal mud. 'He had carried under his arm a canvas bag,
containing a suit of his clothes.
I had no change of outer clothes with me, as I was to buy slops.
"You are very wet, Mr Harmon,"--I can hear him saying--"and I am quite dry under this
good waterproof coat.
Put on these clothes of mine. You may find on trying them that they will
answer your purpose to-morrow, as well as the slops you mean to buy, or better.
While you change, I'll hurry the hot coffee."
When he came back, I had his clothes on, and there was a black man with him, wearing
a linen jacket, like a steward, who put the smoking coffee on the table in a tray and
never looked at me.
I am so far literal and exact? Literal and exact, I am certain.
'Now, I pass to sick and deranged impressions; they are so strong, that I
rely upon them; but there are spaces between them that I know nothing about, and
they are not pervaded by any idea of time.
'I had drank some coffee, when to my sense of sight he began to swell immensely, and
something urged me to rush at him. We had a struggle near the door.
He got from me, through my not knowing where to strike, in the whirling round of
the room, and the flashing of flames of fire between us.
I dropped down.
Lying helpless on the ground, I was turned over by a foot.
I was dragged by the neck into a corner. I heard men speak together.
I was turned over by other feet.
I saw a figure like myself lying dressed in my clothes on a bed.
What might have been, for anything I knew, a silence of days, weeks, months, years,
was broken by a violent wrestling of men all over the room.
The figure like myself was assailed, and my valise was in its hand.
I was trodden upon and fallen over. I heard a noise of blows, and thought it
was a wood-cutter cutting down a tree.
I could not have said that my name was John Harmon--I could not have thought it--I
didn't know it--but when I heard the blows, I thought of the wood-cutter and his axe,
and had some dead idea that I was lying in a forest.
'This is still correct?
Still correct, with the exception that I cannot possibly express it to myself
without using the word I. But it was not I.
There was no such thing as I, within my knowledge.
'It was only after a downward slide through something like a tube, and then a great
noise and a sparkling and crackling as of fires, that the consciousness came upon me,
"This is John Harmon drowning!
John Harmon, struggle for your life. John Harmon, call on Heaven and save
yourself!"
I think I cried it out aloud in a great agony, and then a heavy horrid
unintelligible something vanished, and it was I who was struggling there alone in the
water.
'I was very weak and faint, frightfully oppressed with drowsiness, and driving fast
with the tide.
Looking over the black water, I saw the lights racing past me on the two banks of
the river, as if they were eager to be gone and leave me dying in the dark.
The tide was running down, but I knew nothing of up or down then.
When, guiding myself safely with Heaven's assistance before the fierce set of the
water, I at last caught at a boat moored, one of a tier of boats at a causeway, I was
sucked under her, and came up, only just alive, on the other side.
'Was I long in the water? Long enough to be chilled to the heart, but
I don't know how long.
Yet the cold was merciful, for it was the cold night air and the rain that restored
me from a swoon on the stones of the causeway.
They naturally supposed me to have toppled in, drunk, when I crept to the public-house
it belonged to; for I had no notion where I was, and could not articulate--through the
poison that had made me insensible having
affected my speech--and I supposed the night to be the previous night, as it was
still dark and raining. But I had lost twenty-four hours.
'I have checked the calculation often, and it must have been two nights that I lay
recovering in that public-house. Let me see.
Yes.
I am sure it was while I lay in that bed there, that the thought entered my head of
turning the danger I had passed through, to the account of being for some time supposed
to have disappeared mysteriously, and of proving Bella.
The dread of our being forced on one another, and perpetuating the fate that
seemed to have fallen on my father's riches--the fate that they should lead to
nothing but evil--was strong upon the moral
timidity that dates from my childhood with my poor sister.
'As to this hour I cannot understand that side of the river where I recovered the
shore, being the opposite side to that on which I was ensnared, I shall never
understand it now.
Even at this moment, while I leave the river behind me, going home, I cannot
conceive that it rolls between me and that spot, or that the sea is where it is.
But this is not thinking it out; this is making a leap to the present time.
'I could not have done it, but for the fortune in the waterproof belt round my
body.
Not a great fortune, forty and odd pounds for the inheritor of a hundred and odd
thousand! But it was enough.
Without it I must have disclosed myself.
Without it, I could never have gone to that Exchequer Coffee House, or taken Mrs
Wilfer's lodgings.
'Some twelve days I lived at that hotel, before the night when I saw the corpse of
Radfoot at the Police Station.
The inexpressible mental horror that I laboured under, as one of the consequences
of the poison, makes the interval seem greatly longer, but I know it cannot have
been longer.
That suffering has gradually weakened and weakened since, and has only come upon me
by starts, and I hope I am free from it now; but even now, I have sometimes to
think, constrain myself, and stop before
speaking, or I could not say the words I want to say.
'Again I ramble away from thinking it out to the end.
It is not so far to the end that I need be tempted to break off.
Now, on straight! 'I examined the newspapers every day for
tidings that I was missing, but saw none.
Going out that night to walk (for I kept retired while it was light), I found a
crowd assembled round a placard posted at Whitehall.
It described myself, John Harmon, as found dead and mutilated in the river under
circumstances of strong suspicion, described my dress, described the papers in
my pockets, and stated where I was lying for recognition.
In a wild incautious way I hurried there, and there--with the horror of the death I
had escaped, before my eyes in its most appalling shape, added to the inconceivable
horror tormenting me at that time when the
poisonous stuff was strongest on me--I perceived that Radfoot had been murdered by
some unknown hands for the money for which he would have murdered me, and that
probably we had both been shot into the
river from the same dark place into the same dark tide, when the stream ran deep
and strong.
'That night I almost gave up my mystery, though I suspected no one, could offer no
information, knew absolutely nothing save that the murdered man was not I, but
Radfoot.
Next day while I hesitated, and next day while I hesitated, it seemed as if the
whole country were determined to have me dead.
The Inquest declared me dead, the Government proclaimed me dead; I could not
listen at my fireside for five minutes to the outer noises, but it was borne into my
ears that I was dead.
'So John Harmon died, and Julius Handford disappeared, and John Rokesmith was born.
John Rokesmith's intent to-night has been to repair a wrong that he could never have
imagined possible, coming to his ears through the Lightwood talk related to him,
and which he is bound by every consideration to remedy.
In that intent John Rokesmith will persevere, as his duty is.
'Now, is it all thought out?
All to this time? Nothing omitted?
No, nothing. But beyond this time?
To think it out through the future, is a harder though a much shorter task than to
think it out through the past. John Harmon is dead.
Should John Harmon come to life?
'If yes, why? If no, why?'
'Take yes, first.
To enlighten human Justice concerning the offence of one far beyond it who may have a
living mother.
To enlighten it with the lights of a stone passage, a flight of stairs, a brown
window-curtain, and a black man.
To come into possession of my father's money, and with it sordidly to buy a
beautiful creature whom I love--I cannot help it; reason has nothing to do with it;
I love her against reason--but who would as
soon love me for my own sake, as she would love the beggar at the corner.
What a use for the money, and how worthy of its old misuses!
'Now, take no.
The reasons why John Harmon should not come to life.
Because he has passively allowed these dear old faithful friends to pass into
possession of the property.
Because he sees them happy with it, making a good use of it, effacing the old rust and
tarnish on the money. Because they have virtually adopted Bella,
and will provide for her.
Because there is affection enough in her nature, and warmth enough in her heart, to
develop into something enduringly good, under favourable conditions.
Because her faults have been intensified by her place in my father's will, and she is
already growing better.
Because her marriage with John Harmon, after what I have heard from her own lips,
would be a shocking mockery, of which both she and I must always be conscious, and
which would degrade her in her mind, and me in mine, and each of us in the other's.
Because if John Harmon comes to life and does not marry her, the property falls into
the very hands that hold it now.
'What would I have?
Dead, I have found the true friends of my lifetime still as true as tender and as
faithful as when I was alive, and making my memory an incentive to good actions done in
my name.
Dead, I have found them when they might have slighted my name, and passed greedily
over my grave to ease and wealth, lingering by the way, like single-hearted children,
to recall their love for me when I was a poor frightened child.
Dead, I have heard from the woman who would have been my wife if I had lived, the
revolting truth that I should have purchased her, caring nothing for me, as a
Sultan buys a slave.
'What would I have? If the dead could know, or do know, how the
living use them, who among the hosts of dead has found a more disinterested
fidelity on earth than I?
Is not that enough for me? If I had come back, these noble creatures
would have welcomed me, wept over me, given up everything to me with joy.
I did not come back, and they have passed unspoiled into my place.
Let them rest in it, and let Bella rest in hers.
'What course for me then?
This.
To live the same quiet Secretary life, carefully avoiding chances of recognition,
until they shall have become more accustomed to their altered state, and
until the great swarm of swindlers under many names shall have found newer prey.
By that time, the method I am establishing through all the affairs, and with which I
will every day take new pains to make them both familiar, will be, I may hope, a
machine in such working order as that they can keep it going.
I know I need but ask of their generosity, to have.
When the right time comes, I will ask no more than will replace me in my former path
of life, and John Rokesmith shall tread it as contentedly as he may.
But John Harmon shall come back no more.
'That I may never, in the days to come afar off, have any weak misgiving that Bella
might, in any contingency, have taken me for my own sake if I had plainly asked her,
I WILL plainly ask her: proving beyond all question what I already know too well.
And now it is all thought out, from the beginning to the end, and my mind is
easier.'
So deeply engaged had the living-dead man been, in thus communing with himself, that
he had regarded neither the wind nor the way, and had resisted the former
instinctively as he had pursued the latter.
But being now come into the City, where there was a coach-stand, he stood
irresolute whether to go to his lodgings, or to go first to Mr Boffin's house.
He decided to go round by the house, arguing, as he carried his overcoat upon
his arm, that it was less likely to attract notice if left there, than if taken to
Holloway: both Mrs Wilfer and Miss Lavinia
being ravenously curious touching every article of which the lodger stood
possessed.
Arriving at the house, he found that Mr and Mrs Boffin were out, but that Miss Wilfer
was in the drawing-room.
Miss Wilfer had remained at home, in consequence of not feeling very well, and
had inquired in the evening if Mr Rokesmith were in his room.
'Make my compliments to Miss Wilfer, and say I am here now.'
Miss Wilfer's compliments came down in return, and, if it were not too much
trouble, would Mr Rokesmith be so kind as to come up before he went?
It was not too much trouble, and Mr Rokesmith came up.
Oh she looked very pretty, she looked very, very pretty!
If the father of the late John Harmon had but left his money unconditionally to his
son, and if his son had but lighted on this loveable girl for himself, and had the
happiness to make her loving as well as loveable!
'Dear me! Are you not well, Mr Rokesmith?'
'Yes, quite well.
I was sorry to hear, when I came in, that YOU were not.'
'A mere nothing.
I had a headache--gone now--and was not quite fit for a hot theatre, so I stayed at
home. I asked you if you were not well, because
you look so white.'
'Do I? I have had a busy evening.'
She was on a low ottoman before the fire, with a little shining jewel of a table, and
her book and her work, beside her.
Ah! what a different life the late John Harmon's, if it had been his happy
privilege to take his place upon that ottoman, and draw his arm about that waist,
and say, 'I hope the time has been long without me?
What a Home Goddess you look, my darling!'
But, the present John Rokesmith, far removed from the late John Harmon, remained
standing at a distance. A little distance in respect of space, but
a great distance in respect of separation.
'Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, taking up her work, and inspecting it all round the
corners, 'I wanted to say something to you when I could have the opportunity, as an
explanation why I was rude to you the other day.
You have no right to think ill of me, sir.'
The sharp little way in which she darted a look at him, half sensitively injured, and
half pettishly, would have been very much admired by the late John Harmon.
'You don't know how well I think of you, Miss Wilfer.'
'Truly, you must have a very high opinion of me, Mr Rokesmith, when you believe that
in prosperity I neglect and forget my old home.'
'Do I believe so?'
'You DID, sir, at any rate,' returned Bella.
'I took the liberty of reminding you of a little omission into which you had fallen--
insensibly and naturally fallen.
It was no more than that.' 'And I beg leave to ask you, Mr Rokesmith,'
said Bella, 'why you took that liberty?--I hope there is no offence in the phrase; it
is your own, remember.'
'Because I am truly, deeply, profoundly interested in you, Miss Wilfer.
Because I wish to see you always at your best.
Because I--shall I go on?'
'No, sir,' returned Bella, with a burning face, 'you have said more than enough.
I beg that you will NOT go on. If you have any generosity, any honour, you
will say no more.'
The late John Harmon, looking at the proud face with the down-cast eyes, and at the
quick breathing as it stirred the fall of bright brown hair over the beautiful neck,
would probably have remained silent.
'I wish to speak to you, sir,' said Bella, 'once for all, and I don't know how to do
it.
I have sat here all this evening, wishing to speak to you, and determining to speak
to you, and feeling that I must. I beg for a moment's time.'
He remained silent, and she remained with her face averted, sometimes making a slight
movement as if she would turn and speak. At length she did so.
'You know how I am situated here, sir, and you know how I am situated at home.
I must speak to you for myself, since there is no one about me whom I could ask to do
so.
It is not generous in you, it is not honourable in you, to conduct yourself
towards me as you do.' 'Is it ungenerous or dishonourable to be
devoted to you; fascinated by you?'
'Preposterous!' said Bella. The late John Harmon might have thought it
rather a contemptuous and lofty word of repudiation.
'I now feel obliged to go on,' pursued the Secretary, 'though it were only in self-
explanation and self-defence.
I hope, Miss Wilfer, that it is not unpardonable--even in me--to make an honest
declaration of an honest devotion to you.' 'An honest declaration!' repeated Bella,
with emphasis.
'Is it otherwise?' 'I must request, sir,' said Bella, taking
refuge in a touch of timely resentment, 'that I may not be questioned.
You must excuse me if I decline to be cross-examined.'
'Oh, Miss Wilfer, this is hardly charitable.
I ask you nothing but what your own emphasis suggests.
However, I waive even that question. But what I have declared, I take my stand
by.
I cannot recall the avowal of my earnest and deep attachment to you, and I do not
recall it.' 'I reject it, sir,' said Bella.
'I should be blind and deaf if I were not prepared for the reply.
Forgive my offence, for it carries its punishment with it.'
'What punishment?' asked Bella.
'Is my present endurance none? But excuse me; I did not mean to cross-
examine you again.'
'You take advantage of a hasty word of mine,' said Bella with a little sting of
self-reproach, 'to make me seem--I don't know what.
I spoke without consideration when I used it.
If that was bad, I am sorry; but you repeat it after consideration, and that seems to
me to be at least no better.
For the rest, I beg it may be understood, Mr Rokesmith, that there is an end of this
between us, now and for ever.' 'Now and for ever,' he repeated.
'Yes. I appeal to you, sir,' proceeded Bella with increasing spirit, 'not to
pursue me.
I appeal to you not to take advantage of your position in this house to make my
position in it distressing and disagreeable.
I appeal to you to discontinue your habit of making your misplaced attentions as
plain to Mrs Boffin as to me.' 'Have I done so?'
'I should think you have,' replied Bella.
'In any case it is not your fault if you have not, Mr Rokesmith.'
'I hope you are wrong in that impression. I should be very sorry to have justified
it.
I think I have not. For the future there is no apprehension.
It is all over.' 'I am much relieved to hear it,' said
Bella.
'I have far other views in life, and why should you waste your own?'
'Mine!' said the Secretary. 'My life!'
His curious tone caused Bella to glance at the curious smile with which he said it.
It was gone as he glanced back.
'Pardon me, Miss Wilfer,' he proceeded, when their eyes met; 'you have used some
hard words, for which I do not doubt you have a justification in your mind, that I
do not understand.
Ungenerous and dishonourable. In what?'
'I would rather not be asked,' said Bella, haughtily looking down.
'I would rather not ask, but the question is imposed upon me.
Kindly explain; or if not kindly, justly.'
'Oh, sir!' said Bella, raising her eyes to his, after a little struggle to forbear,
'is it generous and honourable to use the power here which your favour with Mr and
Mrs Boffin and your ability in your place give you, against me?'
'Against you?'
'Is it generous and honourable to form a plan for gradually bringing their influence
to bear upon a suit which I have shown you that I do not like, and which I tell you
that I utterly reject?'
The late John Harmon could have borne a good deal, but he would have been cut to
the heart by such a suspicion as this.
'Would it be generous and honourable to step into your place--if you did so, for I
don't know that you did, and I hope you did not--anticipating, or knowing beforehand,
that I should come here, and designing to take me at this disadvantage?'
'This mean and cruel disadvantage,' said the Secretary.
'Yes,' assented Bella.
The Secretary kept silence for a little while; then merely said, 'You are wholly
mistaken, Miss Wilfer; wonderfully mistaken.
I cannot say, however, that it is your fault.
If I deserve better things of you, you do not know it.'
'At least, sir,' retorted Bella, with her old indignation rising, 'you know the
history of my being here at all.
I have heard Mr Boffin say that you are master of every line and word of that will,
as you are master of all his affairs.
And was it not enough that I should have been willed away, like a horse, or a dog,
or a bird; but must you too begin to dispose of me in your mind, and speculate
in me, as soon as I had ceased to be the talk and the laugh of the town?
Am I for ever to be made the property of strangers?'
'Believe me,' returned the Secretary, 'you are wonderfully mistaken.'
'I should be glad to know it,' answered Bella.
'I doubt if you ever will.
Good-night. Of course I shall be careful to conceal any
traces of this interview from Mr and Mrs Boffin, as long as I remain here.
Trust me, what you have complained of is at an end for ever.'
'I am glad I have spoken, then, Mr Rokesmith.
It has been painful and difficult, but it is done.
If I have hurt you, I hope you will forgive me.
I am inexperienced and impetuous, and I have been a little spoilt; but I really am
not so bad as I dare say I appear, or as you think me.'
He quitted the room when Bella had said this, relenting in her wilful inconsistent
way.
Left alone, she threw herself back on her ottoman, and said, 'I didn't know the
lovely woman was such a Dragon!'
Then, she got up and looked in the glass, and said to her image, 'You have been
positively swelling your features, you little fool!'
Then, she took an impatient walk to the other end of the room and back, and said,
'I wish Pa was here to have a talk about an avaricious marriage; but he is better away,
poor dear, for I know I should pull his hair if he WAS here.'
And then she threw her work away, and threw her book after it, and sat down and hummed
a tune, and hummed it out of tune, and quarrelled with it.
And John Rokesmith, what did he?
He went down to his room, and buried John Harmon many additional fathoms deep.
He took his hat, and walked out, and, as he went to Holloway or anywhere else--not at
all minding where--heaped mounds upon mounds of earth over John Harmon's grave.
His walking did not bring him home until the dawn of day.
And so busy had he been all night, piling and piling weights upon weights of earth
above John Harmon's grave, that by that time John Harmon lay buried under a whole
Alpine range; and still the Sexton
Rokesmith accumulated mountains over him, lightening his labour with the dirge,
'Cover him, crush him, keep him down!'
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