was--a handful of rotting log cabins set in a swamp. The wharves and
public buildings existed only on the agent's map with which he had so
cruelly cheated them. There were only a few wan men alive there--the
rest had succumbed to the sickly hot vapor that rose from the swamp and
hung in the air. At the sight of what they had come to, Martin lay down
and wept in very despair. But for his comrade's cheerfulness he would
have wholly given up hope.
Next morning Martin found himself in the grip of the deadly fever with
which the place reeked, and for many days thereafter he lay helpless and
burning, nursed like a child by the faithful Mark Tapley. When he had
begun to recover it came the other's turn to fall ill and Martin took
his place at nursing.
Through all Tapley never complained. At last he found himself in
circumstances where to be jolly was really a credit to anybody. He
always insisted that he was in great spirits, and when he was weakest
and could not speak he wrote "jolly" on a slate for Martin to see.
Watching beside his friend day by day, Martin came to know himself truly
and to see his own selfishness. As he nursed Tapley to health again he
determined to root it out of his nature and to return to England a
nobler man. He began to think not of what he had sacrificed for Mary,
but of what she would have sacrificed for him, and to wish with all his
heart that he had not parted from his grandfather in anger. And even
before Tapley was able to sit up Martin had determined to return as soon
as possible to England.
He laid aside his pride and wrote to Bevan, who had befriended them in
New York, to borrow money enough to bring them both to that city. Once
there, Tapley found a position as cook in the same ship that had brought
them from England and his wages proved sufficient to pay for Martin's
passage.
So Martin started back to the home he had parted from a year before,
poorer than he had left it, but at heart a better and a sounder man. His
false pride was gone now. He mingled with others and helped them, and by
the time they landed he was as popular a passenger as Mark Tapley was a
cook.
Almost the first man they saw on landing, curiously enough, was the oily
Pecksniff. They saw him escorted along the street, pointed out by the
crowds as "the great architect." On that day the corner stone of a
splendid public building was to be laid, and Pecksniff's design for
this structure had taken the prize. The two comrades went with the crowd
to hear Pecksniff's speech, and looking over a gentleman's shoulder at a
picture of the building as it was to look, Martin saw that it was the
very grammar school he himself had designed when he had first come to
Pecksniff's. The old rascal had stolen the plans!
Martin was angry, of course, but there was no help for it, and besides
he had other things to think of. Mary Graham, to be sure, was his first
thought, and he and Tapley set out at once for The Blue Dragon to learn
the latest news.
The rosy landlady laughed and cried together to see them and Mark Tapley
kissed her so many times that she was quite out of breath. She cooked
the finest dinner in the world for them and told them all she knew about
their friends: how Tom Pinch had been sent away, and how every one said
that Pecksniff intended to marry Mary. This news made Martin grind his
teeth, and it would have been unlucky for the architect if he had been
near at that moment.
Martin first sent Tapley with a note addressed to his grandfather, but
Pecksniff, who came to the door, tore up the letter before the bearer's
face. Mark told Martin of this, and together they forced themselves into
the house, and into the room where old Chuzzlewit sat, with Pecksniff
beside him, and Mary standing behind his chair.
Martin's grandfather hardly looked at him, keeping his eyes on
Pecksniff's face, as though he depended on him even for his thoughts.
Martin, seeing this, was almost hopeless, but he did as he had
determined, and in a few manly words begged old Chuzzlewit's pardon for
his own haste and temper, and asked him to take him back to his favor.
While he talked, Mary had hidden her face in her hands and was weeping,
for she believed his grandfather so wholly in Pecksniff's power that she
had no hope for Martin.
Pecksniff was in rare good humor, for it was this very day that he had
turned his money over to Tigg to make a fortune for him in the great
Anglo-Bengalee Company. Now, rejoicing in his opportunity, he took it
upon himself to answer. He called Martin a shameless, cowardly vagabond
and ordered him from the door. Then he gave his arm to the old man and
led him out of the room.
Martin clasped Mary for a moment in his arms as he kissed her and told
her to keep up heart. Then he left the house and set out with Mark
Tapley for London.
V
OLD CHUZZLEWIT'S PLOT SUCCEEDS
Where was the guilty Jonas meanwhile? Shivering at every sound,
listening for the news that Tigg's body had been found in the wood,
wondering if by any chance the crime might be laid on him.
Already fate was weaving a net about his feet. The man from whom he had
bought the poison to kill his father had fallen very ill, and in his
illness had repented of the part he had played. He had confessed to
Westlock, whom, before he had fallen into wicked company, he had once
known. Westlock sent for old Chuzzlewit, and he, too, was told the story
of the purchased poison. Then together the three went to Jonas's house
and brought him face to face with his accuser.
Confronted with their evidence Jonas gave himself up for lost, but old
Chuffey, whom he had so abused, escaped the watchful eye of Sairey Gamp
and entered just in time to keep his promise to his dead master and to
clear Jonas, the son. He told them how it had really happened: How Jonas
had intended to kill his father but how the latter's death had been due,
not to the poison which he had never taken, but to the knowledge of his
son's wickedness.
Jonas, in the reaction from his fear, laughed aloud, and was abusively
ordering them to leave, when the door opened and the color suddenly left
his cheeks. Policemen stood there, and at their head was Nadgett, the
spy.
In another moment there were handcuffs on his wrists and he knew not
only that the murder of Tigg had been discovered, but that every action
of his own on that fatal night had been traced and that he was surely
doomed to die on the gallows.
When he realized that he was lost he fell to the floor in pitiable fear.
They put him in a wagon to take him to jail, but when they arrived there
they found him motionless in his seat. He had swallowed some of his own
poison which he carried in his pocket, and was as dead as any hangman
could have made him.
Old Chuzzlewit had yet another purpose to carry out before he left
London, and for this purpose he asked Westlock to meet him in his rooms
at a certain time next day. He sent for Tom Pinch and his sister Ruth,
for his grandson Martin, and Mark Tapley, and last, but not least, for
Pecksniff himself, all to meet him there at the same hour.
All save Pecksniff arrived together, and greatly astonished most of them
were, you may be sure, to see old Chuzzlewit so changed. For now the
dull, bent look had vanished. His eyes were bright, his form erect and
every feature eager and full of purpose. Even Mary Graham scarcely knew
what to make of it.
As they sat wondering and waiting for old Chuzzlewit to speak, Pecksniff
came hurriedly in, to start back as if at a shock of electricity. But he
recovered himself, and clasped his hands with a look of pious joy to see
the old man safe and well. Then he looked around him and shook his
head.
"Oh, vermin! Oh, bloodsuckers!" he said. "Horde of unnatural plunderers
and robbers! Begone! Leave him and do not stay in a spot hallowed by the
gray hairs of this patriarchal gentleman!"
He advanced with outstretched arms, but he had not seen how tightly old
Chuzzlewit's hand clasped the walking-stick he held. The latter, in one
great burst of indignation, rose up, and with a single blow, stretched
him on the ground. Mark Tapley dragged him into a corner and propped him
against the wall, and in this ridiculous position, cringing, and with
his assurance all gone, Pecksniff listened, as did they all, to the old
man's story.
He told the assembled company how the curse of selfishness had seemed to
him always to rest upon his family. How he had misunderstood Martin, his
best loved grandson, and how he had seen Pecksniff doing his best to add
to this bad feeling. He beckoned Martin to him and put Mary's hand in
his, as he told how he had tested them both and had at last resolved to
see to what a length the hypocrisy of Pecksniff would lead him. How to
this end he had pretended feebleness of mind and had planned and plotted
finally to expose Pecksniff and set all right.
When he had finished the door was opened and Pecksniff, looking all
shrunken and frowsy and yellow, passed out, never to enter again into
the lives of any of them.
There was a great and joyful gathering that night, when all these, so
strangely united, took dinner together. Martin sat beside Mary, while
Westlock walked home with Ruth, and before they reached there she had
promised to be his wife.
Martin and Mary were married soon, and old Chuzzlewit made Martin his
heir. He also gave a home to poor Mercy, the wife of the dead Jonas. Tom
Pinch lived a long and happy life in the home which Westlock made for
Ruth, where he had a fine organ on which he played every day. Mark
Tapley, of course, married the rosy landlady of The Blue Dragon, and
settled down at the inn, which he renamed The Jolly Tapley.
Charity Pecksniff succeeded in ensnaring her young man at last. The day
they were to be married, however, he did not come to the church, but ran
off to Van Diemen's Land, and she lived and died a vinegary, shrewish
old maid.
As for Pecksniff himself, having lost all his money in the
Anglo-Bengalee Company (which, of course, went to pieces on Tigg's
death), he sank lower and lower, till at last, a drunken, squalid old
man, he eked out a miserable existence writing whining begging letters
to the very people whom he had once labored so hard to make unhappy.
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
Published 1864-1865
_Scene_: London and Neighboring Towns
_Time_: 1860
CHARACTERS
Mr. Harmon A rich dust collector
Mr. Boffin Foreman of the dust business and
heir to the Harmon fortune
Known as "The Golden Dustman"
Mrs. Boffin His wife
John Harmon Mr. Harmon's son
Later Mr. Boffin's secretary, under the name
of "John Rokesmith"
Mr. Veneering A rich man with social and political
ambitions
Mr. Wilfer A clerk in Mr. Veneering's office
Bella His daughter
Silas Wegg A one-legged ballad seller
"Rogue" Riderhood A riverman of bad reputation
Later a lock tender
Hexam A riverman
Charley His son
Lizzie His daughter
"Jenny Wren" A crippled friend of Lizzie's, known
as "The Dolls' Dressmaker"
Eugene Wrayburn A reckless young lawyer
Headstone A schoolmaster
Mr. Venus A dismal young man with a dismal trade--the
stringing together of human skeletons on wires
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
I
WHAT HAPPENED TO JOHN HARMON
In London there once lived an old man named Harmon who had made a great
fortune by gathering the dust and ashes of the city and sorting it for
whatever it contained of value. He lived in a house surrounded by great
mounds of dust that he had collected.
He was a hard-hearted man and when his daughter would not marry as he
wished he turned her out of the house on a winter's night. The poor girl
died soon after, and her younger brother (a boy of only fourteen),
indignant at his father's cruelty, ran away to a foreign country, where
for years he was not heard of.
The old man, hard-hearted as he was, and though he never spoke of the
son save with anger and curses, felt this keenly, for in his own way he
had loved the boy.
A Mr. Boffin was foreman of Harmon's dust business, and both he and his
wife had loved the two children. Being kind and just people, they did
not hesitate to let the father know how wicked they considered his
action, and they never ceased to grieve for the poor little John who
had run away. So, though they did not guess it, the old man made up his
mind they were an honest and deserving pair.
One morning the dust collector was discovered dead in his bed, and then
it was found that he had left a very curious will. The will bequeathed
all his vast fortune to the son who had run away, on one condition: that
he marry a young lady by the name of Bella Wilfer, the daughter of a
poor London clerk.
The son had never seen Bella in his life, and in fact the old man
himself had seen her only a few times--and that was a long, long time
before, when she was a very little girl. He was sitting in the park one
Sunday morning, and the baby Bella, because her father would not go the
exact way she wanted, was screaming and stamping her little foot. Old
Mr. Harmon, having such a stubborn temper himself, admired it in the
little child, and came to watch for her. Then, for some strange reason,
which nobody ever could guess, he had put the baby's name in his will,
declaring that his son John should get his money only by marrying this
little girl. And the will declared, moreover, that if the son, John
Harmon, should die, or should refuse to marry Bella, all the fortune
should go to Mr. Boffin.
The lawyers had great trouble in finding where John Harmon was, but
finally they did so, and received word that he would return at once to
England.
The ship he sailed on reached London, but the passenger it carried did
not appear. A few days later, a riverman named Hexam found a body
floating in the River Thames, which flows through the middle of London.
In his pockets were the letters the lawyers had written to John Harmon,
and there seemed no doubt that the unfortunate young man had been
murdered and his body thrown into the river.
The night the body was found, while it lay at the police station, a
young man, very much excited, came and asked to see it. He would not
tell who he was, and his whole appearance was most wild and strange. The
police wondered, but they saw no reason to detain the stranger, so after
looking at the body, he went away again very hastily.
A great stir was made about the case, and the police tried their best to
discover the murderer, but they were unsuccessful. Then it occurred to
them that there was something suspicious in the appearance of the young
man that night. They tried to find him, but he seemed to have
disappeared.
At last the fortune was turned over to Mr. Boffin, and all but a few
people thought no more about the murder.
Now, it was not really true that John Harmon had been drowned. This is
what had happened:
The young man had come back to England unwillingly, though he was coming
to such wealth. Having left his father so long before in anger, he
hardly liked to touch the money. And he dreaded having to marry a young
lady he had never seen, with whom all his life he might be most unhappy.
On the ship was a seaman about his own age whose face somewhat resembled
his own. With this man Harmon became friendly and before the ship
reached England he had told him his trouble and his dread. The other
proposed that Harmon disguise himself in sailor's clothes, go into the
neighborhood where Miss Bella Wilfer lived, and see if she was one whom
he could love.
Now the man whom Harmon was thus trusting was a villain, who, while he
had been listening to the other's story, had been planning a crime
against him. He had made up his mind to kill Harmon, and, as he looked
so much like him, to marry Bella himself and claim the fortune.
Near the docks where the ship came in was a sailors' boarding-house
owned by a riverman of bad reputation named "Rogue" Riderhood. Riderhood
had once been the partner of Hexam, the man who found the floating body,
but one day he was caught trying to rob a live man and Hexam had cast
him off. The seaman took Harmon to this house and there he secretly got
from Riderhood some poison. Last he persuaded Harmon to change clothes
with him.
All that remained now was to get rid of the real Harmon. To do this he
put the poison in a cup of coffee, and Harmon, drinking this, became
insensible.
The lodging-house hung out over the river and the wicked man had
intended throwing the other's body, dressed now in seaman's clothing,
into the water. But fate was quickly to spoil his plan. He and some
others fell to quarreling over the money found in the clothing of the
unconscious man. The result was a desperate fight, and when it was over
there were _two_ bodies thrown from the window into the black river--the
drugged man and the seaman who had planned his murder.
The shock of the cold water brought the drugged Harmon to his senses. He
struck out, and after a terrible struggle succeeded in reaching shore.
The exposure and the poison made him very ill and he lay abed in an inn
for some days. While he was lying helpless there the drowned body of the
seaman was found by Hexam, the riverman. As it wore the clothes of John
Harmon, and had his papers in its pockets, every one supposed, of
course, that it was the body of the missing heir.
The first thing John Harmon saw after he was well enough to walk was a
printed notice announcing the finding of his own dead body--which gave
him a very queer sensation. Lying there he had had time to think over
the adventure and he had guessed pretty nearly how it all had happened.
He went at once to the police station to look at the corpse and saw it
was that of his false friend, who had tried to lure him to his death. So
it was the real John Harmon who had so excitedly appeared that night to
the police inspectors, and had vanished immediately, and whom they had
searched for so long in vain, under the suspicion that he himself was
the murderer.
He had a very good reason for not letting the police find him, too. Now
that the world considered him dead, he had determined, before he came to
life, to carry out his first plan, and to find out for himself just what
kind of person the Bella Wilfer he was expected to marry was, and
whether Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, who had been so kind to him in his
childhood, would still be as true to his memory in their wealth. For
this reason he did not correct the error that had been made. He took the
name of John Rokesmith, and, to get acquainted with Bella, hired
lodgings in her own father's house.
Mr. Wilfer was a clerk for a Mr. Veneering, a man who had made a big
fortune in the drug business and wanted now to get into Parliament.
Everything the Veneerings had was brand new. They spent a great deal of
money entertaining society people at dinners, but Mr. Veneering spent
very little on his clerks. Bella's father, though he was always as happy
as a cherub, was so poor that he never had been able to buy a whole new
suit at once. His hat was shabby before he could afford a coat, and his
trousers were worn before he got to new shoes. So he was glad enough
indeed to get a lodger.
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, to be sure, now had the great fortune. They bought
a fine house, and everybody called Mr. Boffin "The Golden Dustman,"
because he was so rich. Mrs. Boffin wore velvet dresses, and Mr. Boffin,
thinking that now he was rich he ought to know a great deal about books,
bought a big volume of the _History of the Roman Empire_ and hired a man
with a wooden leg who kept a ballad shop near by to come and read to him
in the evenings.
But in spite of all their fine things, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin remained the
same good, kind-hearted couple they had always been. John Harmon (or
John Rokesmith, as he now called himself), soon found this out, for he
cleverly got a position as Mr. Boffin's secretary, taking charge of all
his papers and preventing many dishonest people from cheating him. And
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, never suspecting who he really was, instead of
"secretary," called him "Our Mutual Friend," and soon grew fond of him.
Nor did they forget Bella Wilfer (for whose disappointment, at not
getting the rich husband she had expected, they felt very sorry), and
soon invited her to live with them. Bella was a good-tempered, pretty
girl, though inclined to be somewhat selfish and spoiled, and she was
not sure, after all, that she would have liked a husband who had been
willed to her like a dozen silver spoons; so she did not grieve greatly,
and accepted Mr. and Mrs. Boffin's offer gratefully.
So now the secretary, John Rokesmith, beside being constantly with Mr.
and Mrs. Boffin, whom he had always loved, had a chance to see Bella
every day, and he was not long in finding out that it would be very
easy, indeed, for him to fall in love with her.
II
LIZZIE HEXAM AND THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER
Hexam, the riverman who had found the body floating in the Thames, made
a living by watching in his boat for drowned bodies, and getting any
rewards that might be offered for finding them. He had two children--a
daughter, Lizzie, who used to row the boat for him, and a younger son,
Charley.
Lizzie was a beautiful girl and a good daughter, and she never ceased to
beseech her father to quit this ghastly business. She saved every cent
she could get to give her brother some schooling, and kept urging the
boy until he left home and became a teacher in a respectable school. For
her own part she chose to stay by her father, hoping, in spite of her
hatred of his calling, to make him sometime something better.
The night Hexam found the body the lawyers who had the Harmon will in
charge came to his house to see about it. One of them, a careless young
man by the name of Eugene Wrayburn, was greatly struck with the beauty
of Lizzie, and pitied her because of the life she was obliged to live,
and this interest in her made him even more deeply interested in the
case of the odd will and the strange murder.
Now Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, since they were rich, had offered a great
reward for the arrest of the murderer of John Harmon. To get this reward
and at the same time to avenge himself on his old partner Hexam for
casting him off, Rogue Riderhood went to the lawyers and declared that
it was Hexam himself who had really killed the man whose body he had
found. Riderhood swore that Hexam had confessed the crime to him.
Wrayburn, knowing what a shock this charge against her father would be
for Lizzie, went with the officers sent to seize him. But they made no
arrest, for that night Hexam himself was drowned by accidentally falling
from his own boat.
But the false charge against him lay heavy on Lizzie's mind. She hated
the river and all that was connected with it, and soon found herself a
decent lodging in another part of London.
Here she lived with a weird little dwarf of a girl, so deformed that
she could scarcely walk at all.
"I can't get up," she used to say to strangers, "because my back's bad
and my legs are queer."
She had an odd face, with sharp gray eyes, and her wits were sharper
yet. She worked at the strangest trade in the world. She had visiting
cards on which was printed:
________________________________________
| |
| MISS JENNIE WREN |
| DOLLS' DRESSMAKER |
| |
| Dolls Attended at Their Own Residence |
|________________________________________|
She was really and truly a dolls' dressmaker and sat all day long making
tiny frocks out of silk and ribbon. Every evening she would hobble out
to the door of the theater or of a house where a ball was going on and
wait until a lady came out in a beautiful costume; then she would take
careful note of it and go home and dress a doll just like it. She even
made a minister doll, in clerical collar and surplice, and used to rent
him out for doll weddings.
But in spite of her trade she disliked children, because the rude ones
of the neighborhood called her names through her keyhole and mimicked
her bent back and crooked legs.
"Don't talk to _me_ of children," she often said; "_I_ know their tricks
and their manners!" and when she said this she would make a fierce
little jab in the air with her needle, as if she were putting out
somebody's eyes.
Jennie Wren had a miserable drunkard of a father, whom she called her
"troublesome child."
"He is enough to break his mother's heart," she would say when he
staggered in. "I wish I had never brought him up. Ugh! You muddling,
disgraceful, prodigal old son! I can't bear to look at you. Go into your
corner this minute." And the wretched creature, whining and maudlin,
would shuffle into his corner in disgrace, not daring to disobey her.