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Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens CHAPTER 14
STRONG OF PURPOSE
The sexton-task of piling earth above John Harmon all night long, was not conducive to
sound sleep; but Rokesmith had some broken morning rest, and rose strengthened in his
purpose.
It was all over now.
No ghost should trouble Mr and Mrs Boffin's peace; invisible and voiceless, the ghost
should look on for a little while longer at the state of existence out of which it had
departed, and then should for ever cease to haunt the scenes in which it had no place.
He went over it all again.
He had lapsed into the condition in which he found himself, as many a man lapses into
many a condition, without perceiving the accumulative power of its separate
circumstances.
When in the distrust engendered by his wretched childhood and the action for evil-
-never yet for good within his knowledge then--of his father and his father's wealth
on all within their influence, he conceived
the idea of his first deception, it was meant to be harmless, it was to last but a
few hours or days, it was to involve in it only the girl so capriciously forced upon
him and upon whom he was so capriciously
forced, and it was honestly meant well towards her.
For, if he had found her unhappy in the prospect of that marriage (through her
heart inclining to another man or for any other cause), he would seriously have said:
'This is another of the old perverted uses of the misery-making money.
I will let it go to my and my sister's only protectors and friends.'
When the snare into which he fell so outstripped his first intention as that he
found himself placarded by the police authorities upon the London walls for dead,
he confusedly accepted the aid that fell
upon him, without considering how firmly it must seem to fix the Boffins in their
accession to the fortune.
When he saw them, and knew them, and even from his vantage-ground of inspection could
find no flaw in them, he asked himself, 'And shall I come to life to dispossess
such people as these?'
There was no good to set against the putting of them to that hard proof.
He had heard from Bella's own lips when he stood tapping at the door on that night of
his taking the lodgings, that the marriage would have been on her part thoroughly
mercenary.
He had since tried her, in his own unknown person and supposed station, and she not
only rejected his advances but resented them.
Was it for him to have the shame of buying her, or the meanness of punishing her?
Yet, by coming to life and accepting the condition of the inheritance, he must do
the former; and by coming to life and rejecting it, he must do the latter.
Another consequence that he had never foreshadowed, was the implication of an
innocent man in his supposed ***.
He would obtain complete retraction from the accuser, and set the wrong right; but
clearly the wrong could never have been done if he had never planned a deception.
Then, whatever inconvenience or distress of mind the deception cost him, it was manful
repentantly to accept as among its consequences, and make no complaint.
Thus John Rokesmith in the morning, and it buried John Harmon still many fathoms
deeper than he had been buried in the night.
Going out earlier than he was accustomed to do, he encountered the cherub at the door.
The cherub's way was for a certain space his way, and they walked together.
It was impossible not to notice the change in the cherub's appearance.
The cherub felt very conscious of it, and modestly remarked:
'A present from my daughter Bella, Mr Rokesmith.'
The words gave the Secretary a stroke of pleasure, for he remembered the fifty
pounds, and he still loved the girl.
No doubt it was very weak--it always IS very weak, some authorities hold--but he
loved the girl.
'I don't know whether you happen to have read many books of African Travel, Mr
Rokesmith?' said R. W. 'I have read several.'
'Well, you know, there's usually a King George, or a King Boy, or a King Sambo, or
a King Bill, or Bull, or Rum, or Junk, or whatever name the sailors may have happened
to give him.'
'Where?' asked Rokesmith. 'Anywhere.
Anywhere in Africa, I mean.
Pretty well everywhere, I may say; for black kings are cheap--and I think'--said
R. W., with an apologetic air, 'nasty'. 'I am much of your opinion, Mr Wilfer.
You were going to say--?'
'I was going to say, the king is generally dressed in a London hat only, or a
Manchester pair of braces, or one epaulette, or an uniform coat with his legs
in the sleeves, or something of that kind.'
'Just so,' said the Secretary.
'In confidence, I assure you, Mr Rokesmith,' observed the cheerful cherub,
'that when more of my family were at home and to be provided for, I used to remind
myself immensely of that king.
You have no idea, as a single man, of the difficulty I have had in wearing more than
one good article at a time.' 'I can easily believe it, Mr Wilfer.'
'I only mention it,' said R. W. in the warmth of his heart, 'as a proof of the
amiable, delicate, and considerate affection of my daughter Bella.
If she had been a little spoilt, I couldn't have thought so very much of it, under the
circumstances. But no, not a bit.
And she is so very pretty!
I hope you agree with me in finding her very pretty, Mr Rokesmith?'
'Certainly I do. Every one must.'
'I hope so,' said the cherub.
'Indeed, I have no doubt of it. This is a great advancement for her in
life, Mr Rokesmith. A great opening of her prospects?'
'Miss Wilfer could have no better friends than Mr and Mrs Boffin.'
'Impossible!' said the gratified cherub. 'Really I begin to think things are very
well as they are.
If Mr John Harmon had lived--' 'He is better dead,' said the Secretary.
'No, I won't go so far as to say that,' urged the cherub, a little remonstrant
against the very decisive and unpitying tone; 'but he mightn't have suited Bella,
or Bella mightn't have suited him, or fifty
things, whereas now I hope she can choose for herself.'
'Has she--as you place the confidence in me of speaking on the subject, you will excuse
my asking--has she--perhaps--chosen?' faltered the Secretary.
'Oh dear no!' returned R. W.
'Young ladies sometimes,' Rokesmith hinted, 'choose without mentioning their choice to
their fathers.' 'Not in this case, Mr Rokesmith.
Between my daughter Bella and me there is a regular league and covenant of confidence.
It was ratified only the other day.
The ratification dates from--these,' said the cherub, giving a little pull at the
lappels of his coat and the pockets of his trousers.
'Oh no, she has not chosen.
To be sure, young George Sampson, in the days when Mr John Harmon--'
'Who I wish had never been born!' said the Secretary, with a gloomy brow.
R. W. looked at him with surprise, as thinking he had contracted an unaccountable
spite against the poor deceased, and continued: 'In the days when Mr John Harmon
was being sought out, young George Sampson
certainly was hovering about Bella, and Bella let him hover.
But it never was seriously thought of, and it's still less than ever to be thought of
now.
For Bella is ambitious, Mr Rokesmith, and I think I may predict will marry fortune.
This time, you see, she will have the person and the property before her
together, and will be able to make her choice with her eyes open.
This is my road.
I am very sorry to part company so soon. Good morning, sir!'
The Secretary pursued his way, not very much elevated in spirits by this
conversation, and, arriving at the Boffin mansion, found Betty Higden waiting for
him.
'I should thank you kindly, sir,' said Betty, 'if I might make so bold as have a
word or two wi' you.'
She should have as many words as she liked, he told her; and took her into his room,
and made her sit down. ''Tis concerning Sloppy, sir,' said Betty.
'And that's how I come here by myself.
Not wishing him to know what I'm a-going to say to you, I got the start of him early
and walked up.' 'You have wonderful energy,' returned
Rokesmith.
'You are as young as I am.' Betty Higden gravely shook her head.
'I am strong for my time of life, sir, but not young, thank the Lord!'
'Are you thankful for not being young?'
'Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be
gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don't you see?
But never mind me; 'tis concerning Sloppy.'
'And what about him, Betty?' ''Tis just this, sir.
It can't be reasoned out of his head by any powers of mine but what that he can do
right by your kind lady and gentleman and do his work for me, both together.
Now he can't.
To give himself up to being put in the way of arning a good living and getting on, he
must give me up. Well; he won't.'
'I respect him for it,' said Rokesmith.
'DO ye, sir? I don't know but what I do myself.
Still that don't make it right to let him have his way.
So as he won't give me up, I'm a-going to give him up.'
'How, Betty?' 'I'm a-going to run away from him.'
With an astonished look at the indomitable old face and the bright eyes, the Secretary
repeated, 'Run away from him?' 'Yes, sir,' said Betty, with one nod.
And in the nod and in the firm set of her mouth, there was a vigour of purpose not to
be doubted. 'Come, come!' said the Secretary.
'We must talk about this.
Let us take our time over it, and try to get at the true sense of the case and the
true course, by degrees.'
'Now, lookee here, by dear,' returned old Betty--'asking your excuse for being so
familiar, but being of a time of life a'most to be your grandmother twice over.
Now, lookee, here.
'Tis a poor living and a hard as is to be got out of this work that I'm a doing now,
and but for Sloppy I don't know as I should have held to it this long.
But it did just keep us on, the two together.
Now that I'm alone--with even Johnny gone-- I'd far sooner be upon my feet and tiring
of myself out, than a sitting folding and folding by the fire.
And I'll tell you why.
There's a deadness steals over me at times, that the kind of life favours and I don't
like.
Now, I seem to have Johnny in my arms--now, his mother--now, his mother's mother--now,
I seem to be a child myself, a lying once again in the arms of my own mother--then I
get numbed, thought and sense, till I start
out of my seat, afeerd that I'm a growing like the poor old people that they brick up
in the Unions, as you may sometimes see when they let 'em out of the four walls to
have a warm in the sun, crawling quite scared about the streets.
I was a nimble girl, and have always been a active body, as I told your lady, first
time ever I see her good face.
I can still walk twenty mile if I am put to it.
I'd far better be a walking than a getting numbed and dreary.
I'm a good fair knitter, and can make many little things to sell.
The loan from your lady and gentleman of twenty shillings to fit out a basket with,
would be a fortune for me.
Trudging round the country and tiring of myself out, I shall keep the deadness off,
and get my own bread by my own labour. And what more can I want?'
'And this is your plan,' said the Secretary, 'for running away?'
'Show me a better! My deary, show me a better!
Why, I know very well,' said old Betty Higden, 'and you know very well, that your
lady and gentleman would set me up like a queen for the rest of my life, if so be
that we could make it right among us to have it so.
But we can't make it right among us to have it so.
I've never took charity yet, nor yet has any one belonging to me.
And it would be forsaking of myself indeed, and forsaking of my children dead and gone,
and forsaking of their children dead and gone, to set up a contradiction now at
last.'
'It might come to be justifiable and unavoidable at last,' the Secretary gently
hinted, with a slight stress on the word. 'I hope it never will!
It ain't that I mean to give offence by being anyways proud,' said the old creature
simply, 'but that I want to be of a piece like, and helpful of myself right through
to my death.'
'And to be sure,' added the Secretary, as a comfort for her, 'Sloppy will be eagerly
looking forward to his opportunity of being to you what you have been to him.'
'Trust him for that, sir!' said Betty, cheerfully.
'Though he had need to be something quick about it, for I'm a getting to be an old
one.
But I'm a strong one too, and travel and weather never hurt me yet!
Now, be so kind as speak for me to your lady and gentleman, and tell 'em what I ask
of their good friendliness to let me do, and why I ask it.'
The Secretary felt that there was no gainsaying what was urged by this brave old
heroine, and he presently repaired to Mrs Boffin and recommended her to let Betty
Higden have her way, at all events for the time.
'It would be far more satisfactory to your kind heart, I know,' he said, 'to provide
for her, but it may be a duty to respect this independent spirit.'
Mrs Boffin was not proof against the consideration set before her.
She and her husband had worked too, and had brought their simple faith and honour clean
out of dustheaps.
If they owed a duty to Betty Higden, of a surety that duty must be done.
'But, Betty,' said Mrs Boffin, when she accompanied John Rokesmith back to his
room, and shone upon her with the light of her radiant face, 'granted all else, I
think I wouldn't run away'.
''Twould come easier to Sloppy,' said Mrs Higden, shaking her head.
''Twould come easier to me too. But 'tis as you please.'
'When would you go?'
'Now,' was the bright and ready answer. 'To-day, my deary, to-morrow.
Bless ye, I am used to it. I know many parts of the country well.
When nothing else was to be done, I have worked in many a market-garden afore now,
and in many a hop-garden too.' 'If I give my consent to your going, Betty-
-which Mr Rokesmith thinks I ought to do--'
Betty thanked him with a grateful curtsey. '--We must not lose sight of you.
We must not let you pass out of our knowledge.
We must know all about you.'
'Yes, my deary, but not through letter- writing, because letter-writing--indeed,
writing of most sorts hadn't much come up for such as me when I was young.
But I shall be to and fro.
No fear of my missing a chance of giving myself a sight of your reviving face.
Besides,' said Betty, with logical good faith, 'I shall have a debt to pay off, by
littles, and naturally that would bring me back, if nothing else would.'
'MUST it be done?' asked Mrs Boffin, still reluctant, of the Secretary.
'I think it must.'
After more discussion it was agreed that it should be done, and Mrs Boffin summoned
Bella to note down the little purchases that were necessary to set Betty up in
trade.
'Don't ye be timorous for me, my dear,' said the stanch old heart, observant of
Bella's face: when I take my seat with my work, clean and busy and fresh, in a
country market-place, I shall turn a
sixpence as sure as ever a farmer's wife there.'
The Secretary took that opportunity of touching on the practical question of Mr
Sloppy's capabilities.
He would have made a wonderful cabinet- maker, said Mrs Higden, 'if there had been
the money to put him to it.'
She had seen him handle tools that he had borrowed to mend the mangle, or to knock a
broken piece of furniture together, in a surprising manner.
As to constructing toys for the Minders, out of nothing, he had done that daily.
And once as many as a dozen people had got together in the lane to see the neatness
with which he fitted the broken pieces of a foreign monkey's musical instrument.
'That's well,' said the Secretary.
'It will not be hard to find a trade for him.'
John Harmon being buried under mountains now, the Secretary that very same day set
himself to finish his affairs and have done with him.
He drew up an ample declaration, to be signed by Rogue Riderhood (knowing he could
get his signature to it, by making him another and much shorter evening call), and
then considered to whom should he give the document?
To Hexam's son, or daughter? Resolved speedily, to the daughter.
But it would be safer to avoid seeing the daughter, because the son had seen Julius
Handford, and--he could not be too careful- -there might possibly be some comparison of
notes between the son and daughter, which
would awaken slumbering suspicion, and lead to consequences.
'I might even,' he reflected, 'be apprehended as having been concerned in my
own ***!'
Therefore, best to send it to the daughter under cover by the post.
Pleasant Riderhood had undertaken to find out where she lived, and it was not
necessary that it should be attended by a single word of explanation.
So far, straight.
But, all that he knew of the daughter he derived from Mrs Boffin's accounts of what
she heard from Mr Lightwood, who seemed to have a reputation for his manner of
relating a story, and to have made this story quite his own.
It interested him, and he would like to have the means of knowing more--as, for
instance, that she received the exonerating paper, and that it satisfied her--by
opening some channel altogether independent
of Lightwood: who likewise had seen Julius Handford, who had publicly advertised for
Julius Handford, and whom of all men he, the Secretary, most avoided.
'But with whom the common course of things might bring me in a moment face to face,
any day in the week or any hour in the day.'
Now, to cast about for some likely means of opening such a channel.
The boy, Hexam, was training for and with a schoolmaster.
The Secretary knew it, because his sister's share in that disposal of him seemed to be
the best part of Lightwood's account of the family.
This young fellow, Sloppy, stood in need of some instruction.
If he, the Secretary, engaged that schoolmaster to impart it to him, the
channel might be opened.
The next point was, did Mrs Boffin know the schoolmaster's name?
No, but she knew where the school was. Quite enough.
Promptly the Secretary wrote to the master of that school, and that very evening
Bradley Headstone answered in person.
The Secretary stated to the schoolmaster how the object was, to send to him for
certain occasional evening instruction, a youth whom Mr and Mrs Boffin wished to help
to an industrious and useful place in life.
The schoolmaster was willing to undertake the charge of such a pupil.
The Secretary inquired on what terms? The schoolmaster stated on what terms.
Agreed and disposed of.
'May I ask, sir,' said Bradley Headstone, 'to whose good opinion I owe a
recommendation to you?' 'You should know that I am not the
principal here.
I am Mr Boffin's Secretary. Mr Boffin is a gentleman who inherited a
property of which you may have heard some public mention; the Harmon property.'
'Mr Harmon,' said Bradley: who would have been a great deal more at a loss than he
was, if he had known to whom he spoke: 'was murdered and found in the river.'
'Was murdered and found in the river.'
'It was not--' 'No,' interposed the Secretary, smiling,
'it was not he who recommended you. Mr Boffin heard of you through a certain Mr
Lightwood.
I think you know Mr Lightwood, or know of him?'
'I know as much of him as I wish to know, sir.
I have no acquaintance with Mr Lightwood, and I desire none.
I have no objection to Mr Lightwood, but I have a particular objection to some of Mr
Lightwood's friends--in short, to one of Mr Lightwood's friends.
His great friend.'
He could hardly get the words out, even then and there, so fierce did he grow
(though keeping himself down with infinite pains of repression), when the careless and
contemptuous bearing of Eugene Wrayburn rose before his mind.
The Secretary saw there was a strong feeling here on some sore point, and he
would have made a diversion from it, but for Bradley's holding to it in his
cumbersome way.
'I have no objection to mention the friend by name,' he said, doggedly.
'The person I object to, is Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'
The Secretary remembered him.
In his disturbed recollection of that night when he was striving against the drugged
drink, there was but a dim image of Eugene's person; but he remembered his
name, and his manner of speaking, and how
he had gone with them to view the body, and where he had stood, and what he had said.
'Pray, Mr Headstone, what is the name,' he asked, again trying to make a diversion,
'of young Hexam's sister?'
'Her name is Lizzie,' said the schoolmaster, with a strong contraction of
his whole face. 'She is a young woman of a remarkable
character; is she not?'
'She is sufficiently remarkable to be very superior to Mr Eugene Wrayburn--though an
ordinary person might be that,' said the schoolmaster; 'and I hope you will not
think it impertinent in me, sir, to ask why you put the two names together?'
'By mere accident,' returned the Secretary.
'Observing that Mr Wrayburn was a disagreeable subject with you, I tried to
get away from it: though not very successfully, it would appear.'
'Do you know Mr Wrayburn, sir?'
'No.' 'Then perhaps the names cannot be put
together on the authority of any representation of his?'
'Certainly not.'
'I took the liberty to ask,' said Bradley, after casting his eyes on the ground,
'because he is capable of making any representation, in the swaggering levity of
his insolence.
I--I hope you will not misunderstand me, sir.
I--I am much interested in this brother and sister, and the subject awakens very strong
feelings within me.
Very, very, strong feelings.' With a shaking hand, Bradley took out his
handkerchief and wiped his brow.
The Secretary thought, as he glanced at the schoolmaster's face, that he had opened a
channel here indeed, and that it was an unexpectedly dark and deep and stormy one,
and difficult to sound.
All at once, in the midst of his turbulent emotions, Bradley stopped and seemed to
challenge his look. Much as though he suddenly asked him, 'What
do you see in me?'
'The brother, young Hexam, was your real recommendation here,' said the Secretary,
quietly going back to the point; 'Mr and Mrs Boffin happening to know, through Mr
Lightwood, that he was your pupil.
Anything that I ask respecting the brother and sister, or either of them, I ask for
myself out of my own interest in the subject, and not in my official character,
or on Mr Boffin's behalf.
How I come to be interested, I need not explain.
You know the father's connection with the discovery of Mr Harmon's body.'
'Sir,' replied Bradley, very restlessly indeed, 'I know all the circumstances of
that case.' 'Pray tell me, Mr Headstone,' said the
Secretary.
'Does the sister suffer under any stigma because of the impossible accusation--
groundless would be a better word--that was made against the father, and substantially
withdrawn?'
'No, sir,' returned Bradley, with a kind of anger.
'I am very glad to hear it.'
'The sister,' said Bradley, separating his words over-carefully, and speaking as if he
were repeating them from a book, 'suffers under no reproach that repels a man of
unimpeachable character who had made for
himself every step of his way in life, from placing her in his own station.
I will not say, raising her to his own station; I say, placing her in it.
The sister labours under no reproach, unless she should unfortunately make it for
herself.
When such a man is not deterred from regarding her as his equal, and when he has
convinced himself that there is no blemish on her, I think the fact must be taken to
be pretty expressive.'
'And there is such a man?' said the Secretary.
Bradley Headstone knotted his brows, and squared his large lower jaw, and fixed his
eyes on the ground with an air of determination that seemed unnecessary to
the occasion, as he replied: 'And there is such a man.'
The Secretary had no reason or excuse for prolonging the conversation, and it ended
here.
Within three hours the oakum-headed apparition once more dived into the Leaving
Shop, and that night Rogue Riderhood's recantation lay in the post office,
addressed under cover to Lizzie Hexam at her right address.
All these proceedings occupied John Rokesmith so much, that it was not until
the following day that he saw Bella again.
It seemed then to be tacitly understood between them that they were to be as
distantly easy as they could, without attracting the attention of Mr and Mrs
Boffin to any marked change in their manner.
The fitting out of old Betty Higden was favourable to this, as keeping Bella
engaged and interested, and as occupying the general attention.
'I think,' said Rokesmith, when they all stood about her, while she packed her tidy
basket--except Bella, who was busily helping on her knees at the chair on which
it stood; 'that at least you might keep a
letter in your pocket, Mrs Higden, which I would write for you and date from here,
merely stating, in the names of Mr and Mrs Boffin, that they are your friends;--I
won't say patrons, because they wouldn't like it.'
'No, no, no,' said Mr Boffin; 'no patronizing!
Let's keep out of THAT, whatever we come to.'
'There's more than enough of that about, without us; ain't there, Noddy?' said Mrs
Boffin.
'I believe you, old lady!' returned the Golden Dustman.
'Overmuch indeed!'
'But people sometimes like to be patronized; don't they, sir?' asked Bella,
looking up. 'I don't.
And if THEY do, my dear, they ought to learn better,' said Mr Boffin.
'Patrons and Patronesses, and Vice-Patrons and Vice-Patronesses, and Deceased Patrons
and Deceased Patronesses, and Ex-Vice- Patrons and Ex-Vice-Patronesses, what does
it all mean in the books of the Charities
that come pouring in on Rokesmith as he sits among 'em pretty well up to his neck!
If Mr Tom Noakes gives his five shillings ain't he a Patron, and if Mrs Jack Styles
gives her five shillings ain't she a Patroness?
What the deuce is it all about?
If it ain't stark staring impudence, what do you call it?'
'Don't be warm, Noddy,' Mrs Boffin urged. 'Warm!' cried Mr Boffin.
'It's enough to make a man smoking hot.
I can't go anywhere without being Patronized.
I don't want to be Patronized.
If I buy a ticket for a Flower Show, or a Music Show, or any sort of Show, and pay
pretty heavy for it, why am I to be Patroned and Patronessed as if the Patrons
and Patronesses treated me?
If there's a good thing to be done, can't it be done on its own merits?
If there's a bad thing to be done, can it ever be Patroned and Patronessed right?
Yet when a new Institution's going to be built, it seems to me that the bricks and
mortar ain't made of half so much consequence as the Patrons and Patronesses;
no, nor yet the objects.
I wish somebody would tell me whether other countries get Patronized to anything like
the extent of this one!
And as to the Patrons and Patronesses themselves, I wonder they're not ashamed of
themselves.
They ain't Pills, or Hair-Washes, or Invigorating Nervous Essences, to be puffed
in that way!'
Having delivered himself of these remarks, Mr Boffin took a trot, according to his
usual custom, and trotted back to the spot from which he had started.
'As to the letter, Rokesmith,' said Mr Boffin, 'you're as right as a trivet.
Give her the letter, make her take the letter, put it in her pocket by violence.
She might fall sick.
You know you might fall sick,' said Mr Boffin.
'Don't deny it, Mrs Higden, in your obstinacy; you know you might.'
Old Betty laughed, and said that she would take the letter and be thankful.
'That's right!' said Mr Boffin. 'Come!
That's sensible.
And don't be thankful to us (for we never thought of it), but to Mr Rokesmith.'
The letter was written, and read to her, and given to her.
'Now, how do you feel?' said Mr Boffin.
'Do you like it?' 'The letter, sir?' said Betty.
'Ay, it's a beautiful letter!' 'No, no, no; not the letter,' said Mr
Boffin; 'the idea.
Are you sure you're strong enough to carry out the idea?'
'I shall be stronger, and keep the deadness off better, this way, than any way left
open to me, sir.'
'Don't say than any way left open, you know,' urged Mr Boffin; 'because there are
ways without end. A housekeeper would be acceptable over
yonder at the Bower, for instance.
Wouldn't you like to see the Bower, and know a retired literary man of the name of
Wegg that lives there--WITH a wooden leg?'
Old Betty was proof even against this temptation, and fell to adjusting her black
bonnet and shawl.
'I wouldn't let you go, now it comes to this, after all,' said Mr Boffin, 'if I
didn't hope that it may make a man and a workman of Sloppy, in as short a time as
ever a man and workman was made yet.
Why, what have you got there, Betty? Not a doll?'
It was the man in the Guards who had been on duty over Johnny's bed.
The solitary old woman showed what it was, and put it up quietly in her dress.
Then, she gratefully took leave of Mrs Boffin, and of Mr Boffin, and of Rokesmith,
and then put her old withered arms round Bella's young and blooming neck, and said,
repeating Johnny's words: 'A kiss for the boofer lady.'
The Secretary looked on from a doorway at the boofer lady thus encircled, and still
looked on at the boofer lady standing alone there, when the determined old figure with
its steady bright eyes was trudging through
the streets, away from paralysis and pauperism.
>
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens CHAPTER 15
THE WHOLE CASE SO FAR
Bradley Headstone held fast by that other interview he was to have with Lizzie Hexam.
In stipulating for it, he had been impelled by a feeling little short of desperation,
and the feeling abided by him.
It was very soon after his interview with the Secretary, that he and Charley Hexam
set out one leaden evening, not unnoticed by Miss Peecher, to have this desperate
interview accomplished.
'That dolls' dressmaker,' said Bradley, 'is favourable neither to me nor to you,
Hexam.' 'A pert crooked little chit, Mr Headstone!
I knew she would put herself in the way, if she could, and would be sure to strike in
with something impertinent.
It was on that account that I proposed our going to the City to-night and meeting my
sister.' 'So I supposed,' said Bradley, getting his
gloves on his nervous hands as he walked.
'So I supposed.' 'Nobody but my sister,' pursued Charley,
'would have found out such an extraordinary companion.
She has done it in a ridiculous fancy of giving herself up to another.
She told me so, that night when we went there.'
'Why should she give herself up to the dressmaker?' asked Bradley.
'Oh!' said the boy, colouring. 'One of her romantic ideas!
I tried to convince her so, but I didn't succeed.
However, what we have got to do, is, to succeed to-night, Mr Headstone, and then
all the rest follows.'
'You are still sanguine, Hexam.' 'Certainly I am, sir.
Why, we have everything on our side.' 'Except your sister, perhaps,' thought
Bradley.
But he only gloomily thought it, and said nothing.
'Everything on our side,' repeated the boy with boyish confidence.
'Respectability, an excellent connexion for me, common sense, everything!'
'To be sure, your sister has always shown herself a devoted sister,' said Bradley,
willing to sustain himself on even that low ground of hope.
'Naturally, Mr Headstone, I have a good deal of influence with her.
And now that you have honoured me with your confidence and spoken to me first, I say
again, we have everything on our side.'
And Bradley thought again, 'Except your sister, perhaps.'
A grey dusty withered evening in London city has not a hopeful aspect.
The closed warehouses and offices have an air of death about them, and the national
dread of colour has an air of mourning.
The towers and steeples of the many house- encompassed churches, dark and dingy as the
sky that seems descending on them, are no relief to the general gloom; a sun-dial on
a church-wall has the look, in its useless
black shade, of having failed in its business enterprise and stopped payment for
ever; melancholy waifs and strays of housekeepers and porter sweep melancholy
waifs and strays of papers and pins into
the kennels, and other more melancholy waifs and strays explore them, searching
and stooping and poking for anything to sell.
The set of humanity outward from the City is as a set of prisoners departing from
gaol, and dismal Newgate seems quite as fit a stronghold for the mighty Lord Mayor as
his own state-dwelling.
On such an evening, when the city grit gets into the hair and eyes and skin, and when
the fallen leaves of the few unhappy city trees grind down in corners under wheels of
wind, the schoolmaster and the pupil
emerged upon the Leadenhall Street region, spying eastward for Lizzie.
Being something too soon in their arrival, they lurked at a corner, waiting for her to
appear.
The best-looking among us will not look very well, lurking at a corner, and Bradley
came out of that disadvantage very poorly indeed.
'Here she comes, Mr Headstone!
Let us go forward and meet her.' As they advanced, she saw them coming, and
seemed rather troubled.
But she greeted her brother with the usual warmth, and touched the extended hand of
Bradley. 'Why, where are you going, Charley, dear?'
she asked him then.
'Nowhere. We came on purpose to meet you.'
'To meet me, Charley?' 'Yes. We are going to walk with you.
But don't let us take the great leading streets where every one walks, and we can't
hear ourselves speak. Let us go by the quiet backways.
Here's a large paved court by this church, and quiet, too.
Let us go up here.' 'But it's not in the way, Charley.'
'Yes it is,' said the boy, petulantly.
'It's in my way, and my way is yours.' She had not released his hand, and, still
holding it, looked at him with a kind of appeal.
He avoided her eyes, under pretence of saying, 'Come along, Mr Headstone.'
Bradley walked at his side--not at hers-- and the brother and sister walked hand in
hand.
The court brought them to a churchyard; a paved square court, with a raised bank of
earth about breast high, in the middle, enclosed by iron rails.
Here, conveniently and healthfully elevated above the level of the living, were the
dead, and the tombstones; some of the latter droopingly inclined from the
perpendicular, as if they were ashamed of the lies they told.
They paced the whole of this place once, in a constrained and uncomfortable manner,
when the boy stopped and said:
'Lizzie, Mr Headstone has something to say to you.
I don't wish to be an interruption either to him or to you, and so I'll go and take a
little stroll and come back.
I know in a general way what Mr Headstone intends to say, and I very highly approve
of it, as I hope--and indeed I do not doubt--you will.
I needn't tell you, Lizzie, that I am under great obligations to Mr Headstone, and that
I am very anxious for Mr Headstone to succeed in all he undertakes.
As I hope--and as, indeed, I don't doubt-- you must be.'
'Charley,' returned his sister, detaining his hand as he withdrew it, 'I think you
had better stay.
I think Mr Headstone had better not say what he thinks of saying.'
'Why, how do you know what it is?' returned the boy.
'Perhaps I don't, but--'
'Perhaps you don't? No, Liz, I should think not.
If you knew what it was, you would give me a very different answer.
There; let go; be sensible.
I wonder you don't remember that Mr Headstone is looking on.'
She allowed him to separate himself from her, and he, after saying, 'Now Liz, be a
rational girl and a good sister,' walked away.
She remained standing alone with Bradley Headstone, and it was not until she raised
her eyes, that he spoke.
'I said,' he began, 'when I saw you last, that there was something unexplained, which
might perhaps influence you. I have come this evening to explain it.
I hope you will not judge of me by my hesitating manner when I speak to you.
You see me at my greatest disadvantage.
It is most unfortunate for me that I wish you to see me at my best, and that I know
you see me at my worst.' She moved slowly on when he paused, and he
moved slowly on beside her.
'It seems egotistical to begin by saying so much about myself,' he resumed, 'but
whatever I say to you seems, even in my own ears, below what I want to say, and
different from what I want to say.
I can't help it. So it is.
You are the ruin of me.'
She started at the passionate sound of the last words, and at the passionate action of
his hands, with which they were accompanied.
'Yes! you are the ruin--the ruin--the ruin- -of me.
I have no resources in myself, I have no confidence in myself, I have no government
of myself when you are near me or in my thoughts.
And you are always in my thoughts now.
I have never been quit of you since I first saw you.
Oh, that was a wretched day for me! That was a wretched, miserable day!'
A touch of pity for him mingled with her dislike of him, and she said: 'Mr
Headstone, I am grieved to have done you any harm, but I have never meant it.'
'There!' he cried, despairingly.
'Now, I seem to have reproached you, instead of revealing to you the state of my
own mind! Bear with me.
I am always wrong when you are in question.
It is my doom.'
Struggling with himself, and by times looking up at the deserted windows of the
houses as if there could be anything written in their grimy panes that would
help him, he paced the whole pavement at her side, before he spoke again.
'I must try to give expression to what is in my mind; it shall and must be spoken.
Though you see me so confounded--though you strike me so helpless--I ask you to believe
that there are many people who think well of me; that there are some people who
highly esteem me; that I have in my way won
a Station which is considered worth winning.'
'Surely, Mr Headstone, I do believe it. Surely I have always known it from
Charley.'
'I ask you to believe that if I were to offer my home such as it is, my station
such as it is, my affections such as they are, to any one of the best considered, and
best qualified, and most distinguished,
among the young women engaged in my calling, they would probably be accepted.
Even readily accepted.' 'I do not doubt it,' said Lizzie, with her
eyes upon the ground.
'I have sometimes had it in my thoughts to make that offer and to settle down as many
men of my class do: I on the one side of a school, my wife on the other, both of us
interested in the same work.'
'Why have you not done so?' asked Lizzie Hexam.
'Why do you not do so?' 'Far better that I never did!
The only one grain of comfort I have had these many weeks,' he said, always speaking
passionately, and, when most emphatic, repeating that former action of his hands,
which was like flinging his heart's blood
down before her in drops upon the pavement- stones; 'the only one grain of comfort I
have had these many weeks is, that I never did.
For if I had, and if the same spell had come upon me for my ruin, I know I should
have broken that tie asunder as if it had been thread.'
She glanced at him with a glance of fear, and a shrinking gesture.
He answered, as if she had spoken.
'No! It would not have been voluntary on my part, any more than it is voluntary in me
to be here now. You draw me to you.
If I were shut up in a strong prison, you would draw me out.
I should break through the wall to come to you.
If I were lying on a sick bed, you would draw me up--to stagger to your feet and
fall there.' The wild energy of the man, now quite let
loose, was absolutely terrible.
He stopped and laid his hand upon a piece of the coping of the burial-ground
enclosure, as if he would have dislodged the stone.
'No man knows till the time comes, what depths are within him.
To some men it never comes; let them rest and be thankful!
To me, you brought it; on me, you forced it; and the bottom of this raging sea,'
striking himself upon the breast, 'has been heaved up ever since.'
'Mr Headstone, I have heard enough.
Let me stop you here. It will be better for you and better for
me. Let us find my brother.'
'Not yet.
It shall and must be spoken. I have been in torments ever since I
stopped short of it before. You are alarmed.
It is another of my miseries that I cannot speak to you or speak of you without
stumbling at every syllable, unless I let the check go altogether and run mad.
Here is a man lighting the lamps.
He will be gone directly. I entreat of you let us walk round this
place again. You have no reason to look alarmed; I can
restrain myself, and I will.'
She yielded to the entreaty--how could she do otherwise!--and they paced the stones in
silence.
One by one the lights leaped up making the cold grey church tower more remote, and
they were alone again.
He said no more until they had regained the spot where he had broken off; there, he
again stood still, and again grasped the stone.
In saying what he said then, he never looked at her; but looked at it and
wrenched at it. 'You know what I am going to say.
I love you.
What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is,
that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted
in vain, and which overmasters me.
You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the
gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most
avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace.
This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean
by your being the ruin of me.
But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marriage, you
could draw me to any good--every good--with equal force.
My circumstances are quite easy, and you would want for nothing.
My reputation stands quite high, and would be a shield for yours.
If you saw me at my work, able to do it well and respected in it, you might even
come to take a sort of pride in me;--I would try hard that you should.
Whatever considerations I may have thought of against this offer, I have conquered,
and I make it with all my heart.
Your brother favours me to the utmost, and it is likely that we might live and work
together; anyhow, it is certain that he would have my best influence and support.
I don't know what I could say more if I tried.
I might only weaken what is ill enough said as it is.
I only add that if it is any claim on you to be in earnest, I am in thorough earnest,
dreadful earnest.'
The powdered mortar from under the stone at which he wrenched, rattled on the pavement
to confirm his words. 'Mr Headstone--'
'Stop!
I implore you, before you answer me, to walk round this place once more.
It will give you a minute's time to think, and me a minute's time to get some
fortitude together.'
Again she yielded to the entreaty, and again they came back to the same place, and
again he worked at the stone. 'Is it,' he said, with his attention
apparently engrossed by it, 'yes, or no?'
'Mr Headstone, I thank you sincerely, I thank you gratefully, and hope you may find
a worthy wife before long and be very happy.
But it is no.'
'Is no short time necessary for reflection; no weeks or days?' he asked, in the same
half-suffocated way. 'None whatever.'
'Are you quite decided, and is there no chance of any change in my favour?'
'I am quite decided, Mr Headstone, and I am bound to answer I am certain there is
none.'
'Then,' said he, suddenly changing his tone and turning to her, and bringing his
clenched hand down upon the stone with a force that laid the knuckles raw and
bleeding; 'then I hope that I may never kill him!'
The dark look of hatred and revenge with which the words broke from his livid lips,
and with which he stood holding out his smeared hand as if it held some weapon and
had just struck a mortal blow, made her so afraid of him that she turned to run away.
But he caught her by the arm. 'Mr Headstone, let me go.
Mr Headstone, I must call for help!'
'It is I who should call for help,' he said; 'you don't know yet how much I need
it.'
The working of his face as she shrank from it, glancing round for her brother and
uncertain what to do, might have extorted a cry from her in another instant; but all at
once he sternly stopped it and fixed it, as if Death itself had done so.
'There! You see I have recovered myself.
Hear me out.'
With much of the dignity of courage, as she recalled her self-reliant life and her
right to be free from accountability to this man, she released her arm from his
grasp and stood looking full at him.
She had never been so handsome, in his eyes.
A shade came over them while he looked back at her, as if she drew the very light out
of them to herself.
'This time, at least, I will leave nothing unsaid,' he went on, folding his hands
before him, clearly to prevent his being betrayed into any impetuous gesture; 'this
last time at least I will not be tortured with after-thoughts of a lost opportunity.
Mr Eugene Wrayburn.' 'Was it of him you spoke in your
ungovernable rage and violence?'
Lizzie Hexam demanded with spirit. He bit his lip, and looked at her, and said
never a word. 'Was it Mr Wrayburn that you threatened?'
He bit his lip again, and looked at her, and said never a word.
'You asked me to hear you out, and you will not speak.
Let me find my brother.'
'Stay! I threatened no one.'
Her look dropped for an instant to his bleeding hand.
He lifted it to his mouth, wiped it on his sleeve, and again folded it over the other.
'Mr Eugene Wrayburn,' he repeated. 'Why do you mention that name again and
again, Mr Headstone?'
'Because it is the text of the little I have left to say.
Observe! There are no threats in it.
If I utter a threat, stop me, and fasten it upon me.
Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'
A worse threat than was conveyed in his manner of uttering the name, could hardly
have escaped him. 'He haunts you.
You accept favours from him.
You are willing enough to listen to HIM. I know it, as well as he does.'
'Mr Wrayburn has been considerate and good to me, sir,' said Lizzie, proudly, 'in
connexion with the death and with the memory of my poor father.'
'No doubt.
He is of course a very considerate and a very good man, Mr Eugene Wrayburn.'
'He is nothing to you, I think,' said Lizzie, with an indignation she could not
repress.
'Oh yes, he is. There you mistake.
He is much to me.' 'What can he be to you?'
'He can be a rival to me among other things,' said Bradley.
'Mr Headstone,' returned Lizzie, with a burning face, 'it is cowardly in you to
speak to me in this way.
But it makes me able to tell you that I do not like you, and that I never have liked
you from the first, and that no other living creature has anything to do with the
effect you have produced upon me for yourself.'
His head bent for a moment, as if under a weight, and he then looked up again,
moistening his lips.
'I was going on with the little I had left to say.
I knew all this about Mr Eugene Wrayburn, all the while you were drawing me to you.
I strove against the knowledge, but quite in vain.
It made no difference in me. With Mr Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I went
on.
With Mr Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I spoke to you just now.
With Mr Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I have been set aside and I have been cast out.'
'If you give those names to my thanking you for your proposal and declining it, is it
my fault, Mr Headstone?' said Lizzie, compassionating the bitter struggle he
could not conceal, almost as much as she was repelled and alarmed by it.
'I am not complaining,' he returned, 'I am only stating the case.
I had to wrestle with my self-respect when I submitted to be drawn to you in spite of
Mr Wrayburn. You may imagine how low my self-respect
lies now.'
She was hurt and angry; but repressed herself in consideration of his suffering,
and of his being her brother's friend.
'And it lies under his feet,' said Bradley, unfolding his hands in spite of himself,
and fiercely motioning with them both towards the stones of the pavement.
'Remember that!
It lies under that fellow's feet, and he treads upon it and exults above it.'
'He does not!' said Lizzie. 'He does!' said Bradley.
'I have stood before him face to face, and he crushed me down in the dirt of his
contempt, and walked over me. Why? Because he knew with triumph what was
in store for me to-night.'
'O, Mr Headstone, you talk quite wildly.' 'Quite collectedly.
I know what I say too well. Now I have said all.
I have used no threat, remember; I have done no more than show you how the case
stands;--how the case stands, so far.' At this moment her brother sauntered into
view close by.
She darted to him, and caught him by the hand.
Bradley followed, and laid his heavy hand on the boy's opposite shoulder.
'Charley Hexam, I am going home.
I must walk home by myself to-night, and get shut up in my room without being spoken
to.
Give me half an hour's start, and let me be, till you find me at my work in the
morning. I shall be at my work in the morning just
as usual.'
Clasping his hands, he uttered a short unearthly broken cry, and went his way.
The brother and sister were left looking at one another near a lamp in the solitary
churchyard, and the boy's face clouded and darkened, as he said in a rough tone: 'What
is the meaning of this?
What have you done to my best friend? Out with the truth!'
'Charley!' said his sister. 'Speak a little more considerately!'
'I am not in the humour for consideration, or for nonsense of any sort,' replied the
boy. 'What have you been doing?
Why has Mr Headstone gone from us in that way?'
'He asked me--you know he asked me--to be his wife, Charley.'
'Well?' said the boy, impatiently.
'And I was obliged to tell him that I could not be his wife.'
'You were obliged to tell him,' repeated the boy angrily, between his teeth, and
rudely pushing her away.
'You were obliged to tell him! Do you know that he is worth fifty of you?'
'It may easily be so, Charley, but I cannot marry him.'
'You mean that you are conscious that you can't appreciate him, and don't deserve
him, I suppose?' 'I mean that I do not like him, Charley,
and that I will never marry him.'
'Upon my soul,' exclaimed the boy, 'you are a nice picture of a sister!
Upon my soul, you are a pretty piece of disinterestedness!
And so all my endeavours to cancel the past and to raise myself in the world, and to
raise you with me, are to be beaten down by YOUR low whims; are they?'
'I will not reproach you, Charley.'
'Hear her!' exclaimed the boy, looking round at the darkness.
'She won't reproach me! She does her best to destroy my fortunes
and her own, and she won't reproach me!
Why, you'll tell me, next, that you won't reproach Mr Headstone for coming out of the
sphere to which he is an ornament, and putting himself at YOUR feet, to be
rejected by YOU!'
'No, Charley; I will only tell you, as I told himself, that I thank him for doing
so, that I am sorry he did so, and that I hope he will do much better, and be happy.'
Some touch of compunction smote the boy's hardening heart as he looked upon her, his
patient little nurse in infancy, his patient friend, adviser, and reclaimer in
boyhood, the self-forgetting sister who had done everything for him.
His tone relented, and he drew her arm through his.
'Now, come, Liz; don't let us quarrel: let us be reasonable and talk this over like
brother and sister. Will you listen to me?'
'Oh, Charley!' she replied through her starting tears; 'do I not listen to you,
and hear many hard things!' 'Then I am sorry.
There, Liz!
I am unfeignedly sorry. Only you do put me out so.
Now see. Mr Headstone is perfectly devoted to you.
He has told me in the strongest manner that he has never been his old self for one
single minute since I first brought him to see you.
Miss Peecher, our schoolmistress--pretty and young, and all that--is known to be
very much attached to him, and he won't so much as look at her or hear of her.
Now, his devotion to you must be a disinterested one; mustn't it?
If he married Miss Peecher, he would be a great deal better off in all worldly
respects, than in marrying you.
Well then; he has nothing to get by it, has he?'
'Nothing, Heaven knows!' 'Very well then,' said the boy; 'that's
something in his favour, and a great thing.
Then I come in. Mr Headstone has always got me on, and he
has a good deal in his power, and of course if he was my brother-in-law he wouldn't get
me on less, but would get me on more.
Mr Headstone comes and confides in me, in a very delicate way, and says, "I hope my
marrying your sister would be agreeable to you, Hexam, and useful to you?"
I say, "There's nothing in the world, Mr Headstone, that I could be better pleased
with."
Mr Headstone says, "Then I may rely upon your intimate knowledge of me for your good
word with your sister, Hexam?"
And I say, "Certainly, Mr Headstone, and naturally I have a good deal of influence
with her." So I have; haven't I, Liz?'
'Yes, Charley.'
'Well said! Now, you see, we begin to get on, the
moment we begin to be really talking it over, like brother and sister.
Very well.
Then YOU come in.
As Mr Headstone's wife you would be occupying a most respectable station, and
you would be holding a far better place in society than you hold now, and you would at
length get quit of the river-side and the
old disagreeables belonging to it, and you would be rid for good of dolls' dressmakers
and their drunken fathers, and the like of that.
Not that I want to disparage Miss Jenny Wren: I dare say she is all very well in
her way; but her way is not your way as Mr Headstone's wife.
Now, you see, Liz, on all three accounts-- on Mr Headstone's, on mine, on yours--
nothing could be better or more desirable.'
They were walking slowly as the boy spoke, and here he stood still, to see what effect
he had made.
His sister's eyes were fixed upon him; but as they showed no yielding, and as she
remained silent, he walked her on again. There was some discomfiture in his tone as
he resumed, though he tried to conceal it.
'Having so much influence with you, Liz, as I have, perhaps I should have done better
to have had a little chat with you in the first instance, before Mr Headstone spoke
for himself.
But really all this in his favour seemed so plain and undeniable, and I knew you to
have always been so reasonable and sensible, that I didn't consider it worth
while.
Very likely that was a mistake of mine. However, it's soon set right.
All that need be done to set it right, is for you to tell me at once that I may go
home and tell Mr Headstone that what has taken place is not final, and that it will
all come round by-and-by.'
He stopped again. The pale face looked anxiously and lovingly
at him, but she shook her head. 'Can't you speak?' said the boy sharply.
'I am very unwilling to speak, Charley.
If I must, I must. I cannot authorize you to say any such
thing to Mr Headstone: I cannot allow you to say any such thing to Mr Headstone.
Nothing remains to be said to him from me, after what I have said for good and all,
to-night.'
'And this girl,' cried the boy, contemptuously throwing her off again,
'calls herself a sister!' 'Charley, dear, that is the second time
that you have almost struck me.
Don't be hurt by my words. I don't mean--Heaven forbid!--that you
intended it; but you hardly know with what a sudden swing you removed yourself from
me.'
'However!' said the boy, taking no heed of the remonstrance, and pursuing his own
mortified disappointment, 'I know what this means, and you shall not disgrace me.'
'It means what I have told you, Charley, and nothing more.'
'That's not true,' said the boy in a violent tone, 'and you know it's not.
It means your precious Mr Wrayburn; that's what it means.'
'Charley! If you remember any old days of ours
together, forbear!'
'But you shall not disgrace me,' doggedly pursued the boy.
'I am determined that after I have climbed up out of the mire, you shall not pull me
down.
You can't disgrace me if I have nothing to do with you, and I will have nothing to do
with you for the future.' 'Charley!
On many a night like this, and many a worse night, I have sat on the stones of the
street, hushing you in my arms.
Unsay those words without even saying you are sorry for them, and my arms are open to
you still, and so is my heart.' 'I'll not unsay them.
I'll say them again.
You are an inveterately bad girl, and a false sister, and I have done with you.
For ever, I have done with you!'
He threw up his ungrateful and ungracious hand as if it set up a barrier between
them, and flung himself upon his heel and left her.
She remained impassive on the same spot, silent and motionless, until the striking
of the church clock roused her, and she turned away.
But then, with the breaking up of her immobility came the breaking up of the
waters that the cold heart of the selfish boy had frozen.
And 'O that I were lying here with the dead!' and 'O Charley, Charley, that this
should be the end of our pictures in the fire!' were all the words she said, as she
laid her face in her hands on the stone coping.
A figure passed by, and passed on, but stopped and looked round at her.
It was the figure of an old man with a bowed head, wearing a large brimmed low-
crowned hat, and a long-skirted coat.
After hesitating a little, the figure turned back, and, advancing with an air of
gentleness and compassion, said:
'Pardon me, young woman, for speaking to you, but you are under some distress of
mind.
I cannot pass upon my way and leave you weeping here alone, as if there was nothing
in the place. Can I help you?
Can I do anything to give you comfort?'
She raised her head at the sound of these kind words, and answered gladly, 'O, Mr
Riah, is it you?' 'My daughter,' said the old man, 'I stand
amazed!
I spoke as to a stranger. Take my arm, take my arm.
What grieves you? Who has done this?
Poor girl, poor girl!'
'My brother has quarrelled with me,' sobbed Lizzie, 'and renounced me.'
'He is a thankless dog,' said the Jew, angrily.
'Let him go.'
Shake the dust from thy feet and let him go.
Come, daughter!
Come home with me--it is but across the road--and take a little time to recover
your peace and to make your eyes seemly, and then I will bear you company through
the streets.
For it is past your usual time, and will soon be late, and the way is long, and
there is much company out of doors to- night.'
She accepted the support he offered her, and they slowly passed out of the
churchyard.
They were in the act of emerging into the main thoroughfare, when another figure
loitering discontentedly by, and looking up the street and down it, and all about,
started and exclaimed, 'Lizzie! why, where have you been?
Why, what's the matter?' As Eugene Wrayburn thus addressed her, she
drew closer to the Jew, and bent her head.
The Jew having taken in the whole of Eugene at one sharp glance, cast his eyes upon the
ground, and stood mute. 'Lizzie, what is the matter?'
'Mr Wrayburn, I cannot tell you now.
I cannot tell you to-night, if I ever can tell you.
Pray leave me.' 'But, Lizzie, I came expressly to join you.
I came to walk home with you, having dined at a coffee-house in this neighbourhood and
knowing your hour.
And I have been lingering about,' added Eugene, 'like a bailiff; or,' with a look
at Riah, 'an old clothesman.' The Jew lifted up his eyes, and took in
Eugene once more, at another glance.
'Mr Wrayburn, pray, pray, leave me with this protector.
And one thing more. Pray, pray be careful of yourself.'
'Mysteries of Udolpho!' said Eugene, with a look of wonder.
'May I be excused for asking, in the elderly gentleman's presence, who is this
kind protector?'
'A trustworthy friend,' said Lizzie. 'I will relieve him of his trust,' returned
Eugene. 'But you must tell me, Lizzie, what is the
matter?'
'Her brother is the matter,' said the old man, lifting up his eyes again.
'Our brother the matter?' returned Eugene, with airy contempt.
'Our brother is not worth a thought, far less a tear.
What has our brother done?'
The old man lifted up his eyes again, with one grave look at Wrayburn, and one grave
glance at Lizzie, as she stood looking down.
Both were so full of meaning that even Eugene was checked in his light career, and
subsided into a thoughtful 'Humph!'
With an air of perfect patience the old man, remaining mute and keeping his eyes
cast down, stood, retaining Lizzie's arm, as though in his habit of passive
endurance, it would be all one to him if he had stood there motionless all night.
'If Mr Aaron,' said Eugene, who soon found this fatiguing, 'will be good enough to
relinquish his charge to me, he will be quite free for any engagement he may have
at the Synagogue.
Mr Aaron, will you have the kindness?' But the old man stood stock still.
'Good evening, Mr Aaron,' said Eugene, politely; 'we need not detain you.'
Then turning to Lizzie, 'Is our friend Mr Aaron a little deaf?'
'My hearing is very good, Christian gentleman,' replied the old man, calmly;
'but I will hear only one voice to-night, desiring me to leave this damsel before I
have conveyed her to her home.
If she requests it, I will do it. I will do it for no one else.'
'May I ask why so, Mr Aaron?' said Eugene, quite undisturbed in his ease.
'Excuse me.
If she asks me, I will tell her,' replied the old man.
'I will tell no one else.' 'I do not ask you,' said Lizzie, 'and I beg
you to take me home.
Mr Wrayburn, I have had a bitter trial to- night, and I hope you will not think me
ungrateful, or mysterious, or changeable. I am neither; I am wretched.
Pray remember what I said to you.
Pray, pray, take care.' 'My dear Lizzie,' he returned, in a low
voice, bending over her on the other side; 'of what?
Of whom?'
'Of any one you have lately seen and made angry.'
He snapped his fingers and laughed.
'Come,' said he, 'since no better may be, Mr Aaron and I will divide this trust, and
see you home together. Mr Aaron on that side; I on this.
If perfectly agreeable to Mr Aaron, the escort will now proceed.'
He knew his power over her. He knew that she would not insist upon his
leaving her.
He knew that, her fears for him being aroused, she would be uneasy if he were out
of her sight.
For all his seeming levity and carelessness, he knew whatever he chose to
know of the thoughts of her heart.
And going on at her side, so gaily, regardless of all that had been urged
against him; so superior in his sallies and self-possession to the gloomy constraint of
her suitor and the selfish petulance of her
brother; so faithful to her, as it seemed, when her own stock was faithless; what an
immense advantage, what an overpowering influence, were his that night!
Add to the rest, poor girl, that she had heard him vilified for her sake, and that
she had suffered for his, and where the wonder that his occasional tones of serious
interest (setting off his carelessness, as
if it were assumed to calm her), that his lightest touch, his lightest look, his very
presence beside her in the dark common street, were like glimpses of an enchanted
world, which it was natural for jealousy
and malice and all meanness to be unable to bear the brightness of, and to gird at as
bad spirits might.
Nothing more being said of repairing to Riah's, they went direct to Lizzie's
lodging. A little short of the house-door she parted
from them, and went in alone.
'Mr Aaron,' said Eugene, when they were left together in the street, 'with many
thanks for your company, it remains for me unwillingly to say Farewell.'
'Sir,' returned the other, 'I give you good night, and I wish that you were not so
thoughtless.'
'Mr Aaron,' returned Eugene, 'I give you good night, and I wish (for you are a
little dull) that you were not so thoughtful.'
But now, that his part was played out for the evening, and when in turning his back
upon the Jew he came off the stage, he was thoughtful himself.
'How did Lightwood's catechism run?' he murmured, as he stopped to light his cigar.
'What is to come of it? What are you doing?
Where are you going?
We shall soon know now. Ah!' with a heavy sigh.
The heavy sigh was repeated as if by an echo, an hour afterwards, when Riah, who
had been sitting on some dark steps in a corner over against the house, arose and
went his patient way; stealing through the
streets in his ancient dress, like the ghost of a departed Time.
>
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens CHAPTER 16
AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION
The estimable Twemlow, dressing himself in his lodgings over the stable-yard in Duke
Street, Saint James's, and hearing the horses at their toilette below, finds
himself on the whole in a disadvantageous
position as compared with the noble animals at livery.
For whereas, on the one hand, he has no attendant to slap him soundingly and
require him in gruff accents to come up and come over, still, on the other hand, he has
no attendant at all; and the mild
gentleman's finger-joints and other joints working rustily in the morning, he could
deem it agreeable even to be tied up by the countenance at his chamber-door, so he were
there skilfully rubbed down and slushed and
sluiced and polished and clothed, while himself taking merely a passive part in
these trying transactions.
How the fascinating Tippins gets on when arraying herself for the bewilderment of
the senses of men, is known only to the Graces and her maid; but perhaps even that
engaging creature, though not reduced to
the self-dependence of Twemlow could dispense with a good deal of the trouble
attendant on the daily restoration of her charms, seeing that as to her face and neck
this adorable divinity is, as it were, a
diurnal species of lobster--throwing off a shell every forenoon, and needing to keep
in a retired spot until the new crust hardens.
Howbeit, Twemlow doth at length invest himself with collar and cravat and
wristbands to his knuckles, and goeth forth to breakfast.
And to breakfast with whom but his near neighbours, the Lammles of Sackville
Street, who have imparted to him that he will meet his distant kinsman, Mr Fledgely.
The awful Snigsworth might taboo and prohibit Fledgely, but the peaceable
Twemlow reasons, If he IS my kinsman I didn't make him so, and to meet a man is
not to know him.'
It is the first anniversary of the happy marriage of Mr and Mrs Lammle, and the
celebration is a breakfast, because a dinner on the desired scale of sumptuosity
cannot be achieved within less limits than
those of the non-existent palatial residence of which so many people are madly
envious.
So, Twemlow trips with not a little stiffness across Piccadilly, sensible of
having once been more upright in figure and less in danger of being knocked down by
swift vehicles.
To be sure that was in the days when he hoped for leave from the dread Snigsworth
to do something, or be something, in life, and before that magnificent Tartar issued
the ukase, 'As he will never distinguish
himself, he must be a poor gentleman- pensioner of mine, and let him hereby
consider himself pensioned.' Ah! my Twemlow!
Say, little feeble grey personage, what thoughts are in thy breast to-day, of the
Fancy--so still to call her who bruised thy heart when it was green and thy head brown-
-and whether it be better or worse, more
painful or less, to believe in the Fancy to this hour, than to know her for a greedy
armour-plated crocodile, with no more capacity of imagining the delicate and
sensitive and tender spot behind thy
waistcoat, than of going straight at it with a knitting-needle.
Say likewise, my Twemlow, whether it be the happier lot to be a poor relation of the
great, or to stand in the wintry slush giving the hack horses to drink out of the
shallow tub at the coach-stand, into which thou has so nearly set thy uncertain foot.
Twemlow says nothing, and goes on.
As he approaches the Lammles' door, drives up a little one-horse carriage, containing
Tippins the divine.
Tippins, letting down the window, playfully extols the vigilance of her cavalier in
being in waiting there to hand her out.
Twemlow hands her out with as much polite gravity as if she were anything real, and
they proceed upstairs.
Tippins all abroad about the legs, and seeking to express that those unsteady
articles are only skipping in their native buoyancy.
And dear Mrs Lammle and dear Mr Lammle, how do you do, and when are you going down to
what's-its-name place--Guy, Earl of Warwick, you know--what is it?--Dun Cow--to
claim the flitch of bacon?
And Mortimer, whose name is for ever blotted out from my list of lovers, by
reason first of fickleness and then of base desertion, how do YOU do, wretch?
And Mr Wrayburn, YOU here!
What can YOU come for, because we are all very sure before-hand that you are not
going to talk!
And Veneering, M.P., how are things going on down at the house, and when will you
turn out those terrible people for us?
And Mrs Veneering, my dear, can it positively be true that you go down to that
stifling place night after night, to hear those men prose?
Talking of which, Veneering, why don't you prose, for you haven't opened your lips
there yet, and we are dying to hear what you have got to say to us!
Miss Podsnap, charmed to see you.
Pa, here? No!
Ma, neither? Oh!
Mr Boots!
Delighted. Mr Brewer!
This IS a gathering of the clans.
Thus Tippins, and surveys Fledgeby and outsiders through golden glass, murmuring
as she turns about and about, in her innocent giddy way, Anybody else I know?
No, I think not.
Nobody there. Nobody THERE.
Nobody anywhere!
Mr Lammle, all a-glitter, produces his friend Fledgeby, as dying for the honour of
presentation to Lady Tippins.
Fledgeby presented, has the air of going to say something, has the air of going to say
nothing, has an air successively of meditation, of resignation, and of
desolation, backs on Brewer, makes the tour
of Boots, and fades into the extreme background, feeling for his whisker, as if
it might have turned up since he was there five minutes ago.
But Lammle has him out again before he has so much as completely ascertained the
bareness of the land. He would seem to be in a bad way, Fledgeby;
for Lammle represents him as dying again.
He is dying now, of want of presentation to Twemlow.
Twemlow offers his hand. Glad to see him.
'Your mother, sir, was a connexion of mine.'
'I believe so,' says Fledgeby, 'but my mother and her family were two.'
'Are you staying in town?' asks Twemlow.
'I always am,' says Fledgeby. 'You like town,' says Twemlow.
But is felled flat by Fledgeby's taking it quite ill, and replying, No, he don't like
town.
Lammle tries to break the force of the fall, by remarking that some people do not
like town.
Fledgeby retorting that he never heard of any such case but his own, Twemlow goes
down again heavily.
'There is nothing new this morning, I suppose?' says Twemlow, returning to the
mark with great spirit. Fledgeby has not heard of anything.
'No, there's not a word of news,' says Lammle.
'Not a particle,' adds Boots. 'Not an atom,' chimes in Brewer.
Somehow the execution of this little concerted piece appears to raise the
general spirits as with a sense of duty done, and sets the company a going.
Everybody seems more equal than before, to the calamity of being in the society of
everybody else.
Even Eugene standing in a window, moodily swinging the tassel of a blind, gives it a
smarter jerk now, as if he found himself in better case.
Breakfast announced.
Everything on table showy and gaudy, but with a self-assertingly temporary and
nomadic air on the decorations, as boasting that they will be much more showy and gaudy
in the palatial residence.
Mr Lammle's own particular servant behind his chair; the Analytical behind
Veneering's chair; instances in point that such servants fall into two classes: one
mistrusting the master's acquaintances, and the other mistrusting the master.
Mr Lammle's servant, of the second class.
Appearing to be lost in wonder and low spirits because the police are so long in
coming to take his master up on some charge of the first magnitude.
Veneering, M.P., on the right of Mrs Lammle; Twemlow on her left; Mrs Veneering,
W.M.P. (wife of Member of Parliament), and Lady
Tippins on Mr Lammle's right and left.
But be sure that well within the fascination of Mr Lammle's eye and smile
sits little Georgiana.
And be sure that close to little Georgiana, also under inspection by the same gingerous
gentleman, sits Fledgeby.
Oftener than twice or thrice while breakfast is in progress, Mr Twemlow gives
a little sudden turn towards Mrs Lammle, and then says to her, 'I beg your pardon!'
This not being Twemlow's usual way, why is it his way to-day?
Why, the truth is, Twemlow repeatedly labours under the impression that Mrs
Lammle is going to speak to him, and turning finds that it is not so, and mostly
that she has her eyes upon Veneering.
Strange that this impression so abides by Twemlow after being corrected, yet so it
is.
Lady Tippins partaking plentifully of the fruits of the earth (including grape-juice
in the category) becomes livelier, and applies herself to elicit sparks from
Mortimer Lightwood.
It is always understood among the initiated, that that faithless lover must
be planted at table opposite to Lady Tippins, who will then strike
conversational fire out of him.
In a pause of mastication and deglutition, Lady Tippins, contemplating Mortimer,
recalls that it was at our dear Veneerings, and in the presence of a party who are
surely all here, that he told them his
story of the man from somewhere, which afterwards became so horribly interesting
and vulgarly popular. 'Yes, Lady Tippins,' assents Mortimer; 'as
they say on the stage, "Even so!"
'Then we expect you,' retorts the charmer, 'to sustain your reputation, and tell us
something else.'
'Lady Tippins, I exhausted myself for life that day, and there is nothing more to be
got out of me.'
Mortimer parries thus, with a sense upon him that elsewhere it is Eugene and not he
who is the jester, and that in these circles where Eugene persists in being
speechless, he, Mortimer, is but the double
of the friend on whom he has founded himself.
'But,' quoth the fascinating Tippins, 'I am resolved on getting something more out of
you.
Traitor! what is this I hear about another disappearance?'
'As it is you who have heard it,' returns Lightwood, 'perhaps you'll tell us.'
'Monster, away!' retorts Lady Tippins.
'Your own Golden Dustman referred me to you.'
Mr Lammle, striking in here, proclaims aloud that there is a sequel to the story
of the man from somewhere.
Silence ensues upon the proclamation. 'I assure you,' says Lightwood, glancing
round the table, 'I have nothing to tell.'
But Eugene adding in a low voice, 'There, tell it, tell it!' he corrects himself with
the addition, 'Nothing worth mentioning.'
Boots and Brewer immediately perceive that it is immensely worth mentioning, and
become politely clamorous. Veneering is also visited by a perception
to the same effect.
But it is understood that his attention is now rather used up, and difficult to hold,
that being the tone of the House of Commons.
'Pray don't be at the trouble of composing yourselves to listen,' says Mortimer
Lightwood, 'because I shall have finished long before you have fallen into
comfortable attitudes.
It's like--' 'It's like,' impatiently interrupts Eugene,
'the children's narrative:
"I'll tell you a story Of Jack a Manory, And now my story's begun;
I'll tell you another Of Jack and his brother, And now my story is
done."--Get on, and get it over!'
Eugene says this with a sound of vexation in his voice, leaning back in his chair and
looking balefully at Lady Tippins, who nods to him as her dear Bear, and playfully
insinuates that she (a self-evident proposition) is Beauty, and he Beast.
'The reference,' proceeds Mortimer, 'which I suppose to be made by my honourable and
fair enslaver opposite, is to the following circumstance.
Very lately, the young woman, Lizzie Hexam, daughter of the late Jesse Hexam, otherwise
Gaffer, who will be remembered to have found the body of the man from somewhere,
mysteriously received, she knew not from
whom, an explicit retraction of the charges made against her father, by another water-
side character of the name of Riderhood.
Nobody believed them, because little Rogue Riderhood--I am tempted into the paraphrase
by remembering the charming wolf who would have rendered society a great service if he
had devoured Mr Riderhood's father and
mother in their infancy--had previously played fast and loose with the said
charges, and, in fact, abandoned them.
However, the retraction I have mentioned found its way into Lizzie Hexam's hands,
with a general flavour on it of having been favoured by some anonymous messenger in a
dark cloak and slouched hat, and was by her
forwarded, in her father's vindication, to Mr Boffin, my client.
You will excuse the phraseology of the shop, but as I never had another client,
and in all likelihood never shall have, I am rather proud of him as a natural
curiosity probably unique.'
Although as easy as usual on the surface, Lightwood is not quite as easy as usual
below it.
With an air of not minding Eugene at all, he feels that the subject is not altogether
a safe one in that connexion.
'The natural curiosity which forms the sole ornament of my professional museum,' he
resumes, 'hereupon desires his Secretary-- an individual of the hermit-crab or oyster
species, and whose name, I think, is
Chokesmith--but it doesn't in the least matter--say Artichoke--to put himself in
communication with Lizzie Hexam. Artichoke professes his readiness so to do,
endeavours to do so, but fails.'
'Why fails?' asks Boots. 'How fails?' asks Brewer.
'Pardon me,' returns Lightwood,' I must postpone the reply for one moment, or we
shall have an anti-climax.
Artichoke failing signally, my client refers the task to me: his purpose being to
advance the interests of the object of his search.
I proceed to put myself in communication with her; I even happen to possess some
special means,' with a glance at Eugene, 'of putting myself in communication with
her; but I fail too, because she has vanished.'
'Vanished!' is the general echo. 'Disappeared,' says Mortimer.
'Nobody knows how, nobody knows when, nobody knows where.
And so ends the story to which my honourable and fair enslaver opposite
referred.'
Tippins, with a bewitching little scream, opines that we shall every one of us be
murdered in our beds. Eugene eyes her as if some of us would be
enough for him.
Mrs Veneering, W.M.P., remarks that these social mysteries make one afraid of leaving
Baby.
Veneering, M.P., wishes to be informed (with something of a second-hand air of
seeing the Right Honourable Gentleman at the head of the Home Department in his
place) whether it is intended to be
conveyed that the vanished person has been spirited away or otherwise harmed?
Instead of Lightwood's answering, Eugene answers, and answers hastily and vexedly:
'No, no, no; he doesn't mean that; he means voluntarily vanished--but utterly--
completely.'
However, the great subject of the happiness of Mr and Mrs Lammle must not be allowed to
vanish with the other vanishments--with the vanishing of the murderer, the vanishing of
Julius Handford, the vanishing of Lizzie
Hexam,--and therefore Veneering must recall the present sheep to the pen from which
they have strayed.
Who so fit to discourse of the happiness of Mr and Mrs Lammle, they being the dearest
and oldest friends he has in the world; or what audience so fit for him to take into
his confidence as that audience, a noun of
multitude or signifying many, who are all the oldest and dearest friends he has in
the world?
So Veneering, without the formality of rising, launches into a familiar oration,
gradually toning into the Parliamentary sing-song, in which he sees at that board
his dear friend Twemlow who on that day
twelvemonth bestowed on his dear friend Lammle the fair hand of his dear friend
Sophronia, and in which he also sees at that board his dear friends Boots and
Brewer whose rallying round him at a period
when his dear friend Lady Tippins likewise rallied round him--ay, and in the foremost
rank--he can never forget while memory holds her seat.
But he is free to confess that he misses from that board his dear old friend
Podsnap, though he is well represented by his dear young friend Georgiana.
And he further sees at that board (this he announces with pomp, as if exulting in the
powers of an extraordinary telescope) his friend Mr Fledgeby, if he will permit him
to call him so.
For all of these reasons, and many more which he right well knows will have
occurred to persons of your exceptional acuteness, he is here to submit to you that
the time has arrived when, with our hearts
in our glasses, with tears in our eyes, with blessings on our lips, and in a
general way with a profusion of gammon and spinach in our emotional larders, we should
one and all drink to our dear friends the
Lammles, wishing them many years as happy as the last, and many many friends as
congenially united as themselves.
And this he will add; that Anastatia Veneering (who is instantly heard to weep)
is formed on the same model as her old and chosen friend Sophronia Lammle, in respect
that she is devoted to the man who wooed
and won her, and nobly discharges the duties of a wife.
Seeing no better way out of it, Veneering here pulls up his oratorical Pegasus
extremely short, and plumps down, clean over his head, with: 'Lammle, God bless
you!'
Then Lammle.
Too much of him every way; pervadingly too much nose of a coarse wrong shape, and his
nose in his mind and his manners; too much smile to be real; too much frown to be
false; too many large teeth to be visible at once without suggesting a bite.
He thanks you, dear friends, for your kindly greeting, and hopes to receive you--
it may be on the next of these delightful occasions--in a residence better suited to
your claims on the rites of hospitality.
He will never forget that at Veneering's he first saw Sophronia.
Sophronia will never forget that at Veneering's she first saw him.
'They spoke of it soon after they were married, and agreed that they would never
forget it. In fact, to Veneering they owe their union.
They hope to show their sense of this some day ('No, no, from Veneering)--oh yes, yes,
and let him rely upon it, they will if they can!
His marriage with Sophronia was not a marriage of interest on either side: she
had her little fortune, he had his little fortune: they joined their little fortunes:
it was a marriage of pure inclination and suitability.
Thank you!
Sophronia and he are fond of the society of young people; but he is not sure that their
house would be a good house for young people proposing to remain single, since
the contemplation of its domestic bliss might induce them to change their minds.
He will not apply this to any one present; certainly not to their darling little
Georgiana.
Again thank you! Neither, by-the-by, will he apply it to his
friend Fledgeby.
He thanks Veneering for the feeling manner in which he referred to their common friend
Fledgeby, for he holds that gentleman in the highest estimation.
Thank you.
In fact (returning unexpectedly to Fledgeby), the better you know him, the
more you find in him that you desire to know.
Again thank you!
In his dear Sophronia's name and in his own, thank you!
Mrs Lammle has sat quite still, with her eyes cast down upon the table-cloth.
As Mr Lammle's address ends, Twemlow once more turns to her involuntarily, not cured
yet of that often recurring impression that she is going to speak to him.
This time she really is going to speak to him.
Veneering is talking with his other next neighbour, and she speaks in a low voice.
'Mr Twemlow.'
He answers, 'I beg your pardon? Yes?' Still a little doubtful, because of her not
looking at him. 'You have the soul of a gentleman, and I
know I may trust you.
Will you give me the opportunity of saying a few words to you when you come up
stairs?' 'Assuredly.
I shall be honoured.'
'Don't seem to do so, if you please, and don't think it inconsistent if my manner
should be more careless than my words. I may be watched.'
Intensely astonished, Twemlow puts his hand to his forehead, and sinks back in his
chair meditating. Mrs Lammle rises.
All rise.
The ladies go up stairs. The gentlemen soon saunter after them.
Fledgeby has devoted the interval to taking an observation of Boots's whiskers,
Brewer's whiskers, and Lammle's whiskers, and considering which pattern of whisker he
would prefer to produce out of himself by
friction, if the Genie of the cheek would only answer to his rubbing.
In the drawing-room, groups form as usual.
Lightwood, Boots, and Brewer, flutter like moths around that yellow wax candle--
guttering down, and with some hint of a winding-sheet in it--Lady Tippins.
Outsiders cultivate Veneering, M P., and Mrs Veneering, W.M.P.
Lammle stands with folded arms, Mephistophelean in a corner, with Georgiana
and Fledgeby.
Mrs Lammle, on a sofa by a table, invites Mr Twemlow's attention to a book of
portraits in her hand.
Mr Twemlow takes his station on a settee before her, and Mrs Lammle shows him a
portrait. 'You have reason to be surprised,' she says
softly, 'but I wish you wouldn't look so.'
Disturbed Twemlow, making an effort not to look so, looks much more so.
'I think, Mr Twemlow, you never saw that distant connexion of yours before to-day?'
'No, never.'
'Now that you do see him, you see what he is.
You are not proud of him?' 'To say the truth, Mrs Lammle, no.'
'If you knew more of him, you would be less inclined to acknowledge him.
Here is another portrait. What do you think of it?'
Twemlow has just presence of mind enough to say aloud: 'Very like!
Uncommonly like!' 'You have noticed, perhaps, whom he favours
with his attentions?
You notice where he is now, and how engaged?'
'Yes. But Mr Lammle--' She darts a look at him which he cannot
comprehend, and shows him another portrait.
'Very good; is it not?' 'Charming!' says Twemlow.
'So like as to be almost a caricature?--Mr Twemlow, it is impossible to tell you what
the struggle in my mind has been, before I could bring myself to speak to you as I do
It is only in the conviction that I may trust you never to betray me, that I can
proceed.
Sincerely promise me that you never will betray my confidence--that you will respect
it, even though you may no longer respect me,--and I shall be as satisfied as if you
had sworn it.'
'Madam, on the honour of a poor gentleman-- '
'Thank you. I can desire no more.
Mr Twemlow, I implore you to save that child!'
'That child?' 'Georgiana.
She will be sacrificed.
She will be inveigled and married to that connexion of yours.
It is a partnership affair, a money- speculation.
She has no strength of will or character to help herself and she is on the brink of
being sold into wretchedness for life.' 'Amazing!
But what can I do to prevent it?' demands Twemlow, shocked and bewildered to the last
degree. 'Here is another portrait.
And not good, is it?'
Aghast at the light manner of her throwing her head back to look at it critically,
Twemlow still dimly perceives the expediency of throwing his own head back,
and does so.
Though he no more sees the portrait than if it were in China.
'Decidedly not good,' says Mrs Lammle. 'Stiff and exaggerated!'
'And ex--' But Twemlow, in his demolished state, cannot command the word, and trails
off into '--actly so.' 'Mr Twemlow, your word will have weight
with her pompous, self-blinded father.
You know how much he makes of your family. Lose no time.
Warn him.' 'But warn him against whom?'
'Against me.'
By great good fortune Twemlow receives a stimulant at this critical instant.
The stimulant is Lammle's voice. 'Sophronia, my dear, what portraits are you
showing Twemlow?'
'Public characters, Alfred.' 'Show him the last of me.'
'Yes, Alfred.'
She puts the book down, takes another book up, turns the leaves, and presents the
portrait to Twemlow. 'That is the last of Mr Lammle.
Do you think it good?--Warn her father against me.
I deserve it, for I have been in the scheme from the first.
It is my husband's scheme, your connexion's, and mine.
I tell you this, only to show you the necessity of the poor little foolish
affectionate creature's being befriended and rescued.
You will not repeat this to her father.
You will spare me so far, and spare my husband.
For, though this celebration of to-day is all a mockery, he is my husband, and we
must live.--Do you think it like?'
Twemlow, in a stunned condition, feigns to compare the portrait in his hand with the
original looking towards him from his Mephistophelean corner.
'Very well indeed!' are at length the words which Twemlow with great difficulty
extracts from himself. 'I am glad you think so.
On the whole, I myself consider it the best.
The others are so dark. Now here, for instance, is another of Mr
Lammle--'
'But I don't understand; I don't see my way,' Twemlow stammers, as he falters over
the book with his glass at his eye. 'How warn her father, and not tell him?
Tell him how much?
Tell him how little? I--I--am getting lost.'
'Tell him I am a match-maker; tell him I am an artful and designing woman; tell him you
are sure his daughter is best out of my house and my company.
Tell him any such things of me; they will all be true.
You know what a puffed-up man he is, and how easily you can cause his vanity to take
the alarm.
Tell him as much as will give him the alarm and make him careful of her, and spare me
the rest.
Mr Twemlow, I feel my sudden degradation in your eyes; familiar as I am with my
degradation in my own eyes, I keenly feel the change that must have come upon me in
yours, in these last few moments.
But I trust to your good faith with me as implicitly as when I began.
If you knew how often I have tried to speak to you to-day, you would almost pity me.
I want no new promise from you on my own account, for I am satisfied, and I always
shall be satisfied, with the promise you have given me.
I can venture to say no more, for I see that I am watched.
If you would set my mind at rest with the assurance that you will interpose with the
father and save this harmless girl, close that book before you return it to me, and I
shall know what you mean, and deeply thank
you in my heart.--Alfred, Mr Twemlow thinks the last one the best, and quite agrees
with you and me.' Alfred advances.
The groups break up.
Lady Tippins rises to go, and Mrs Veneering follows her leader.
For the moment, Mrs Lammle does not turn to them, but remains looking at Twemlow
looking at Alfred's portrait through his eyeglass.
The moment past, Twemlow drops his eyeglass at its ribbon's length, rises, and closes
the book with an emphasis which makes that fragile nursling of the fairies, Tippins,
start.
Then good-bye and good-bye, and charming occasion worthy of the Golden Age, and more
about the flitch of bacon, and the like of that; and Twemlow goes staggering across
Piccadilly with his hand to his forehead,
and is nearly run down by a flushed lettercart, and at last drops safe in his
easy-chair, innocent good gentleman, with his hand to his forehead still, and his
head in a whirl.
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