trials and loved Lizzie Hexam very much. Wrayburn, the young lawyer,
used to come to see them, but she did not approve of him. She saw almost
before Lizzie did herself that the latter was falling in love with
Wrayburn, and the wise little creature feared that this would only bring
pain to Lizzie, because she was an uneducated girl and Wrayburn a
gentleman, who, when he married, would be expected to marry a lady far
above Lizzie's station. Lizzie knew this, too, but she could not help
loving Wrayburn, and as for the lawyer, he thought nothing of what the
outcome might be.
Meanwhile Lizzie's brother Charley, for whom she had worked so hard,
was doing well at school, but now that he was getting up in the world he
had turned out to be a selfish boy and was afraid that his sister might
draw him down.
One day he came to visit her, bringing with him the master of his
school. The master's name was Headstone. He was a gloomy, passionate,
revengeful man who dressed always in black and had no friends.
Unfortunately enough, the first time he saw Lizzie he fell in love with
her. It was unfortunate in more ways than one, for Lizzie disliked him
greatly, and he was, as it proved, a man who would stop at nothing--not
even at the worst of crimes--to attain an object.
When Lizzie's brother found Headstone wanted to marry her, in his
selfishness he saw only what a fine thing it would be for himself, and
when she refused, he said many harsh things and finally left her in
anger, telling her she was no longer a sister of his.
This was not the worst either, for she knew Headstone had been made
almost angry by her dislike, and she was in dreadful fear lest he do
harm to Eugene Wrayburn, whom he suspected she loved.
In her anxiety Lizzie left her lodging with the dolls' dressmaker, and
found employment in a paper-mill in a village on the river, some miles
from London, letting neither Wrayburn nor Headstone know where she had
gone.
The schoolmaster imagined that the lawyer (whom he now hated with a
deadly hatred) knew where she was, and in order to discover if he
visited her he began to dog the other's footsteps. At night, after
teaching all day in school, Headstone would lie in wait outside the
lawyer's door and whenever he came out would follow him.
Wrayburn soon discovered this and delighted to fool his enemy. Every
night he would take a new direction and lead his pursuer for hours about
the city. So that in a few weeks Headstone became almost insane with
murderous anger and disappointment.
So things went on for a long while. Lizzie continued to love Eugene
Wrayburn, who kept trying in every way to find her. Headstone, the
schoolmaster, kept watching him and meditating evil. The little dolls'
dressmaker worked on cheerily every day in the city, and in their fine
house Mr. and Mrs. Boffin grew fonder and fonder of Miss Bella, whom
John Rokesmith, the secretary, thought more beautiful every day.
III
THE RISE AND FALL OF SILAS WEGG
The wooden-legged ballad seller whom Mr. Boffin had hired to read to him
was a sly, dishonest rascal named Silas Wegg, who soon made up his mind
to get all the money he could out of his employer.
There is an old story of a camel who once asked a shopkeeper to let him
put his nose in at the shop door to warm it. The shopkeeper consented,
and little by little the camel got his head, then his neck, then his
shoulders and at last his whole body into the shop, so that there was no
room for the poor shopkeeper, who had to sit outside in the cold. Wegg
soon began to act like the camel and took such advantage of easy-going
Mr. Boffin that the latter at last let him live rent-free in the house
amid the dust heaps, which he himself had occupied before he got old
Harmon's money.
Wegg imagined the mounds contained treasures hidden by the old man and
thought it would be a fine thing to cheat Mr. Boffin out of them. So
every night he spent hours prodding the heaps. Finally he persuaded a
Mr. Venus (a man who had been disappointed in love and made a melancholy
living by stringing skeletons together on wires), to become his partner
in the search.
One day Wegg really did find something. It was a parchment hidden in an
empty pump, and he soon saw that it was a second will of old Harmon's,
later than the one already known, leaving the whole fortune, not to the
son at all, but to the Crown.
When Wegg saw this his hypocritical soul swelled with joy, for he
thought, sooner than give up all the money to the Crown, Mr. Boffin
would pay him a great deal to destroy this new will. He was such a
rascal himself that it never occurred to him that maybe Mr. Boffin would
prefer to be honest. He took it for granted everybody else was as bad as
he was himself, yet all the while he tried to make himself believe that
he was upright and noble in all he did, as hypocrites generally do.
The only point Wegg could not make up his mind about was how much he
could squeeze out of his benefactor, Mr. Boffin. At first he had thought
of asking for half, but the more he hugged his secret the lesser the
half seemed. At last he determined to demand for himself, as the price
for giving up the will, all but a very small share of the whole fortune.
Now Mr. Venus, though he had yielded at first to the rosy temptations of
Wegg, was after all quite honest at heart, and his conscience troubled
him so that at last he went and told Mr. Boffin all about Wegg's
discovery.
The Golden Dustman at first thought Mr. Venus had some underhanded plan,
so he pretended he was terribly frightened for fear of Wegg and the will
he had found.
As a matter of fact, sly old Mr. Boffin was not afraid in the least,
because he knew something that neither Wegg nor Venus, nor even John
Rokesmith, the secretary, knew. This was, that the old original dustman,
Harmon, had made still a _third_ will, later than either of the others.
The first will found was the one that had called the son back to England
to marry Bella. The second will was the one leaving all his fortune to
the Crown, which Wegg had found in the empty pump. The third and last
one gave all the money to Mr. Boffin, no matter whom the son married,
and gave none to any one else. And this third and last will, the one
that was the _true_ will, The Golden Dustman had long ago found himself,
buried in a bottle in one of the dust heaps.
Mr. Boffin had never told any one about this last will, because he had
all the fortune anyway. Now, however, seeing how Wegg had planned to
act, he was very glad he had found it. And when he was convinced that
Mr. Venus was really honest and wanted no reward whatever, Mr. Boffin
determined to fool the rascally Wegg up to the very last moment.
Wegg's plan was not to demand the money until he had fully searched all
the dust mounds. Mr. Boffin spurred Wegg on in this regard by making him
read to him in the evenings from a book called _The Lives of Famous
Misers_ which he had bought: about the famous Mr. Dancer who had warmed
his dinner by sitting on it and died naked in a sack, and yet had gold
and bank-notes hidden in the crevices of the walls and in cracked jugs
and tea-pots; of an old apple woman in whose house a fortune was found
wrapped up in little scraps of paper; of "Vulture Hopkins" and
"Blewbury Jones" and many others whose riches after their death were
found hidden in strange places. While Wegg read, Mr. Boffin would
pretend to get tremendously excited about his dust mounds, so that Wegg
grew surer and surer there must be riches hidden in them.
Finally The Golden Dustman sold the mounds and had them carted away
little by little, Wegg watching every shovelful for fear he would miss
something.
Mr. Boffin hired a foreman to manage the removal of the dust who wore
Wegg down to skin and bone. He worked by daylight and torchlight, too.
Just as Wegg, tired out by watching all day in the rain, would crawl
into bed, the foreman, like a goblin, would reappear and go to work
again. Sometimes Wegg would be waked in the middle of the night, and
sometimes kept at his post for as much as forty-eight hours at a
stretch, till he grew so gaunt and haggard that even his wooden leg
looked chubby in comparison.
At last he could not keep quiet any longer and he told Mr. Boffin what
he had found. Mr. Boffin pretended the most abject dread. Wegg bullied
and browbeat him to his heart's content, and ended by ordering him, like
a slave, to be ready to receive him on a certain morning, and to have
the money ready to pay him.
When he went to the fine Boffin house to keep this appointment he
entered insolently, whistling and with his hat on. A servant showed him
into the library where Mr. Boffin and the secretary sat waiting, and
where the secretary at once astonished him by taking off the hat and
throwing it out of the window.
In another moment Wegg found himself seized by the cravat, shaken till
his teeth rattled, and pinned in a corner of the room, where the
secretary knocked his head against the wall while he told him in a few
words what a scoundrel he was.
When he learned that the will he had discovered was worthless paper,
Wegg lost all his bullying air and cringed before them. Mr. Boffin was
disposed to be merciful and offered to make good his loss of his ballad
business, but Wegg, grasping and mean to the last, set its value at such
a ridiculously high figure that Mr. Boffin put his money back into his
pocket.
Then, at a sign from John Rokesmith, one of the servants caught Wegg by
the collar, hoisted him on his back, ran down to the street with him and
threw him into a garbage cart, where he disappeared from view with a
tremendous splash.
And that, so far as this story is concerned, was the end of Silas Wegg.
IV
BELLA AND THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN
It was not long before John Rokesmith, the secretary, was very much in
love with Bella indeed. Bella saw this plainly, but the fine house and
costly clothes had quite spoiled her, and, thinking him only a poor
secretary and her father's lodger, she treated him almost with contempt.
Yet he would not tell her who he was, for he did not want her to marry
him merely because of the money it would bring her. She hurt his
feelings often, but in spite of it she could not help being attracted to
him. He had a way, too, of looking at her that made her feel how proud
and unjust she was, and sometimes made her quite despise herself.
But having had a taste of the pleasures and comforts that wealth would
bring, Bella had quite determined when she married to marry nobody but a
very rich man. Mr. and Mrs. Boffin both noticed how changed she was
growing from her own sweet self and regretted it, for they liked Bella
and they liked the secretary, too, and they could easily see that the
latter was in love with her.
One day Mrs. Boffin went to the secretary's room for something. As she
entered, Rokesmith, who was sitting sadly over the fire, looked up with
a peculiar expression that told the good woman all in a flash who he
was.
"I know you now," she cried, "you're little John Harmon!"
In the joy and surprise she almost fainted, but he caught her and set
her down beside him. Just then in came Mr. Boffin, and the secretary
told them the whole story, and how he now loved Bella, but would not
declare himself because of her contempt.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Boffin were so glad to know he was really alive they
fell to crying with joy. The Golden Dustman declared that, no matter how
the last will read, John should have the fortune for his own. Rokesmith
(or Harmon) at first refused to do this, but Mr. Boffin swore that if he
did not he himself would not touch the money, and it would have to go to
the Crown anyway. So at last it was agreed that Mr. Boffin should keep a
small portion for his own, but that the other should take all the rest.
Mr. Boffin wanted to tell everybody the truth at once, but John would
not let them. You see he wouldn't marry Bella for anything unless she
loved him for himself alone. And she was growing so fond of riches that
there seemed little chance of this happening.
Nevertheless they believed that at heart Bella was good and sweet, if
they could only get to her real self, so Mr. Boffin that moment made a
plan.
He determined to show Bella how much unhappiness misused riches could
cause, and how too much money might sometimes spoil the kindest and
best people. As a lesson to her in this he was to pretend gradually to
turn into a mean, hard-hearted miser. They agreed that he should begin
to treat the secretary harshly and unjustly in Bella's presence, feeling
sure that her true self would stand up for him when he was slighted, and
be kinder to him when he seemed poorest and most friendless.
The Golden Dustman began the new plan that very night. Every day he made
himself act like a regular brown bear, and every evening he would say,
"I'll be a grislier old growler to-morrow." He made the secretary slave
from morning till night and found fault with him and sneered at his
poverty and cut down his wages.
Each afternoon, when he went walking with Bella, Mr. Boffin would make
her go into bookshops and inquire if they had any book about a miser. If
they had, he would buy it, no matter what it cost, and lug it home to
read. He began to drive hard bargains for everything he bought and all
his talk came to be about money and the fine thing it was to have it.
"Go in for money, my dear," he would say to Bella. "Money's the article!
You'll make money of your good looks, and of the money Mrs. Boffin and
me will leave you, and you'll live and die rich. That's the state to
live and die in--R-r-rich!"
Bella was greatly shocked at the sorrowful change in Mr. Boffin. Wealth
began to look less lovely when she saw him growing so miserly. She
began to wonder if she herself might ever become like that, too, and
sometimes, when she thought how kind and generous the old Mr. Boffin had
been, she fairly hated money and wished it had never been invented.
There was an old woman who peddled knitting-work through the country
whom Mr. and Mrs. Boffin had befriended, and to whom they had given a
letter to carry wherever she went. This letter asked whoever should find
her, if she fell sick, to let them know. The old woman fell and died one
day by the roadside near the spot where Lizzie Hexam was now living, and
Lizzie, finding the letter, wrote about it to Mr. and Mrs. Boffin.
They sent the secretary and Bella, to make arrangements for the poor
woman's burial, and in this way Bella met Lizzie and became her friend.
Lizzie soon told her all her story, and Bella, seeing how unselfishly
she loved, began to think her own ambition to marry for money a mean and
ignoble thing. She thought how patient and kind the secretary had always
been, and, knowing he loved her, wished heartily that her own coldness
had not forbidden him to tell her so.
One day Mr. Boffin's pretended harsh treatment of his secretary seemed
to come to a climax. He sent for him to come to the room where Mrs.
Boffin and Bella sat, and made a fearful scene. He said he had just
heard that he, Rokesmith, had been presuming on his position to make
love to Bella--a young lady who wanted to marry money, who had _a right_
to marry money, and who was very far from wanting to marry a poor beggar
of a private secretary! He threw the wages that were due Rokesmith on
the floor and discharged him on the spot, telling him the sooner he
could pack up and leave, the better.
Then, at last, in the face of this apparent meanness and injustice,
Bella saw herself and Mr. Boffin's money and John Rokesmith's love and
dignity, all in their true light. She burst out crying, begged
Rokesmith's forgiveness, told Mr. Boffin he was an old wretch of a
miser, and when the secretary had gone, she said Rokesmith was a
gentleman and worth a million Boffins, and she would not stay in the
house a minute longer.
Then she packed up her things and went straight to her father's office.
All the other clerks had gone home, for it was after hours, and she put
her head on his shoulder and told him all about it.
And while they were talking, in came John Rokesmith, and seeing her
there alone with her father, rushed to her and caught her in his arms.
"My dear, brave, noble, generous girl!" he said, and Bella, feeling all
at once that she had never been quite so happy in her life, laid her
head on his breast, as if that were the one place for it in all the
world.
They had a talk together and then walked home to Mr. Wilfer's poor
little house, Bella's father agreeing that she had done exactly the
proper thing, and Bella herself feeling so happy now in having John
Rokesmith's love, that she cared not a bit for the fine mansion and
clothes and money of the Boffins which she had left for ever.
A few days later John Rokesmith and Bella were married and went to live
in a little furnished cottage outside of London, where they settled down
as happy as two birds.
V
THE END OF THE STORY
While these things were happening at Mr. Boffin's house, Eugene
Wrayburn, with Headstone the schoolmaster watching him like a hawk, had
never left off trying to find where Lizzie Hexam had gone. At length,
through the "troublesome child" of the little dolls' dressmaker, he
learned the name of the village where she was living and went at once to
see her.
Headstone followed close behind him and when, from his hiding-place, he
saw how glad Lizzie was to see the lawyer, he went quite mad with
jealousy and hate, and that moment he determined to kill Wrayburn.
It happened that Rogue Riderhood was then working on the river that
flowed past the village, where he tended a lock. The schoolmaster, in
order to turn suspicion from himself in case any one should see him when
he did this wicked deed, observing carefully how Riderhood was dressed,
got himself clothes exactly like the lock tender's, even to a red
handkerchief tied around his neck.
In this guise, with murder in his heart, he lay in wait along the
riverside till Wrayburn passed one evening just after he had bade good
night to Lizzie Hexam. The schoolmaster crept up close behind the lawyer
and struck him a fearful crashing blow on the head with a club. Wrayburn
grappled with him, but Headstone struck again and again with the bloody
weapon, and still again as the other lay prostrate at his feet, and
dragging the body to the bank, threw it into the river. Then he fled.
Lizzie Hexam had not yet turned homeward from the riverside. She heard
through the night the sound of the blows, the faint moan and the splash.
She ran to the spot, saw the trampled grass, and, looking across the
water, saw a bloody face drifting away. She ran to launch a boat, and
rowed with all her strength to overtake it.
But for her dreadful life on the river with her father she could not
have found the drowning man in the darkness, but she did, and then she
saw it was the man she loved. One terrible cry she uttered, then rowed
with desperate strokes to the shore and with superhuman strength carried
him to a near-by inn.
Wrayburn was not dead, but was dreadfully disfigured. For many days he
hovered between life and death. Jennie Wren, the dolls' dressmaker,
came, and she and Lizzie nursed him. As soon as he could speak he made
them understand that before he died he wanted Lizzie to marry him. A
minister was sent for, and with him came John Rokesmith and Bella. So
the sick man was married to Lizzie, and from that hour he began to get
better, till before long they knew that he would recover.
Meanwhile, not waiting to see the result of his murderous attack,
Headstone had fled down the river bank to the hut where Riderhood lived
and there the villainous lock tender let him rest and sleep. As the
schoolmaster tossed in his guilty slumber, Riderhood noted that his
clothes were like his own. He unbuttoned the sleeping man's jacket, saw
the red handkerchief, and, having heard from a passing boatman of the
attempted murder, he guessed that Headstone had done it and saw how he
had plotted to lay the crime on him.
When the schoolmaster went away Riderhood followed him, watched him
change clothes in the bushes and rescued the bloody garments the other
threw away.
With these in his hands he faced the schoolmaster one day in his class
room and made him promise, under threat of exposure, to come that night
to the hut by the lock. Headstone was afraid to disobey. When he came,
Riderhood told him he must give him money at once or he would follow
him till he did.
Headstone refused and, as the other had threatened, when he started back
to London, he found the lock tender by his side. He returned to the hut
and the other did the same.
He started again, and again the other walked beside him. Then Headstone,
turning suddenly, caught Riderhood around the waist and dragged him to
the edge of the lock.
"Let go!" said Riderhood. "You can't drown me!"
"I can," panted Headstone. "And I can drown myself. I'll hold you living
and I'll hold you dead. Come down!"
Riderhood went over backward into the water, and the schoolmaster upon
him. When they found them, long afterward, Riderhood's body was girdled
still with the schoolmaster's arms and they held him tight.
This was the awful end of the two wicked men whom fate had brought into
Lizzie's life.
All this time, of course, Bella had been believing her husband to be
very poor. At first he had intended to tell her who he was on the day
they were married, but he said to himself: "No, she's so unselfish and
contented I can't afford to be rich yet." So he pretended to get a
position in the city at small wages. Then after a few months he thought
it over again, and he said to himself, "She's such a cheerful little
housewife that I can't afford to be rich yet." And at last a little baby
was born to Bella, and then they were so happy that he said, "She's so
much sweeter than she ever was that I can't afford to be rich just yet!"
But meantime Bella was imagining that Mr. Boffin was a cruel old miser,
and Mr. Boffin didn't like this, so John agreed that he would tell her
all about it.
But first he got Bella to describe exactly the kind of house she would
like if they were very, very rich, and when she told him, he and Mr.
Boffin had the Boffin mansion fixed over in just the way she had
said--with a nursery with rainbow-colored walls and flowers on the
staircase, and even a little room full of live birds, and a jewel box
full of jewels on the dressing-table.
Fate, however, had arranged even a greater trial of Bella's love for him
than all the others. As they walked together on the street one day, they
came face to face with a man who had been in the police office on the
night the body which every one believed to be John Harmon's had lain
there. He had seen the entrance of the agitated stranger, and had helped
the police in their later vain search for Rokesmith. Now he at once
recognized Bella's husband as that man, who the police believed had
probably committed the murder.
Rokesmith knew the man had recognized him, and when they got home he
told Bella that he was accused of killing the man the Harmon will had
bidden her marry.
[Illustration: Jennie Wren and her "troublesome child"
_See page 335_]
But nothing now could shake her faith in him. "How dare they!" she cried
indignantly. "My beloved husband." He caught her in his arms at that,
and while he held her thus the officers entered to arrest him.
Rokesmith found the matter very easy to explain to the satisfaction of
the police, but he told Bella nothing as yet, and, trusting and
believing in him absolutely, she waited in great wonder. Next day he
told her he had a new position and that now they must live in the city
where he had taken a furnished house for them.
They drove together to see it. Strangely enough it seemed to be in the
same street as Mr. Boffin's house, and stranger yet, the coach stopped
at Mr. Boffin's own door. Her husband put his arm around her and drew
her in, and she saw that everything was covered with flowers. As he led
her on she exclaimed in astonishment to see the little room full of
birds just as she had wished.
Suddenly her husband opened a door and there was Mr. Boffin beaming and
Mrs. Boffin shedding tears of joy, and folding her to her breast as she
said: "My deary, deary, deary, wife of John and mother of his little
child! My loving loving, bright bright, pretty pretty! Welcome to your
house and home, my deary!"
Then of course the whole story came out. The mystery was solved and she
knew that John Rokesmith was the true John Harmon and that her husband
was really the man the Harmon will had picked out for her to marry.
In the splendid Boffin house they lived happily for many years,
surrounded by Bella's children. And they were never so happy as when
they welcomed Eugene Wrayburn with Lizzie his wife, or Jennie Wren, the
little dolls' dressmaker.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
PUBLISHED 1859