advantage,’ he replied with earnestness. ‘Forgive me; I could not help
saying that. To return to what I have digressed from, let me add that
perhaps they think I report them to you, deliver little messages, and
the like. But I forbear to trouble you, as you never ask me.’
‘I am going, sir,’ said Bella, looking at him as if he had reproved her,
‘to see them tomorrow.’
‘Is that,’ he asked, hesitating, ‘said to me, or to them?’
‘To which you please.’
‘To both? Shall I make it a message?’
‘You can if you like, Mr Rokesmith. Message or no message, I am going to
see them tomorrow.’
‘Then I will tell them so.’
He lingered a moment, as though to give her the opportunity of
prolonging the conversation if she wished. As she remained silent, he
left her. Two incidents of the little interview were felt by Miss Bella
herself, when alone again, to be very curious. The first was, that he
unquestionably left her with a penitent air upon her, and a penitent
feeling in her heart. The second was, that she had not an intention or
a thought of going home, until she had announced it to him as a settled
design.
‘What can I mean by it, or what can he mean by it?’ was her mental
inquiry: ‘He has no right to any power over me, and how do I come to
mind him when I don’t care for him?’
Mrs Boffin, insisting that Bella should make tomorrow’s expedition
in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs Wilfer and Miss
Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and improbabilities of
her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the chariot from
the window at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed
that it must be detained at the door as long as possible, for the
mortification and confusion of the neighbours. Then they repaired to
the usual family room, to receive Miss Bella with a becoming show of
indifference.
The family room looked very small and very mean, and the downward
staircase by which it was attained looked very narrow and very crooked.
The little house and all its arrangements were a poor contrast to the
eminently aristocratic dwelling. ‘I can hardly believe,’ thought Bella,
‘that I ever did endure life in this place!’
Gloomy majesty on the part of Mrs Wilfer, and native pertness on the
part of Lavvy, did not mend the matter. Bella really stood in natural
need of a little help, and she got none.
‘This,’ said Mrs Wilfer, presenting a cheek to be kissed, as sympathetic
and responsive as the back of the bowl of a spoon, ‘is quite an honour!
You will probably find your sister Lavvy grown, Bella.’
‘Ma,’ Miss Lavinia interposed, ‘there can be no objection to your being
aggravating, because Bella richly deserves it; but I really must request
that you will not drag in such ridiculous nonsense as my having grown
when I am past the growing age.’
‘I grew, myself,’ Mrs Wilfer sternly proclaimed, ‘after I was married.’
‘Very well, Ma,’ returned Lavvy, ‘then I think you had much better have
left it alone.’
The lofty glare with which the majestic woman received this answer,
might have embarrassed a less pert opponent, but it had no effect upon
Lavinia: who, leaving her parent to the enjoyment of any amount of
glaring at she might deem desirable under the circumstances, accosted
her sister, undismayed.
‘I suppose you won’t consider yourself quite disgraced, Bella, if I give
you a kiss? Well! And how do you do, Bella? And how are your Boffins?’
‘Peace!’ exclaimed Mrs Wilfer. ‘Hold! I will not suffer this tone of
levity.’
‘My goodness me! How are your Spoffins, then?’ said Lavvy, ‘since Ma so
very much objects to your Boffins.’
‘Impertinent girl! Minx!’ said Mrs Wilfer, with dread severity.
‘I don’t care whether I am a Minx, or a Sphinx,’ returned Lavinia,
coolly, tossing her head; ‘it’s exactly the same thing to me, and I’d
every bit as soon be one as the other; but I know this—I’ll not grow
after I’m married!’
‘You will not? YOU will not?’ repeated Mrs Wilfer, solemnly.
‘No, Ma, I will not. Nothing shall induce me.’
Mrs Wilfer, having waved her gloves, became loftily pathetic.
‘But it was to be expected;’ thus she spake. ‘A child of mine deserts me
for the proud and prosperous, and another child of mine despises me. It
is quite fitting.’
‘Ma,’ Bella struck in, ‘Mr and Mrs Boffin are prosperous, no doubt; but
you have no right to say they are proud. You must know very well that
they are not.’
‘In short, Ma,’ said Lavvy, bouncing over to the enemy without a word
of notice, ‘you must know very well—or if you don’t, more shame for
you!—that Mr and Mrs Boffin are just absolute perfection.’
‘Truly,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, courteously receiving the deserter, ‘it
would seem that we are required to think so. And this, Lavinia, is
my reason for objecting to a tone of levity. Mrs Boffin (of whose
physiognomy I can never speak with the composure I would desire to
preserve), and your mother, are not on terms of intimacy. It is not
for a moment to be supposed that she and her husband dare to presume to
speak of this family as the Wilfers. I cannot therefore condescend to
speak of them as the Boffins. No; for such a tone—call it familiarity,
levity, equality, or what you will—would imply those social
interchanges which do not exist. Do I render myself intelligible?’
Without taking the least notice of this inquiry, albeit delivered in an
imposing and forensic manner, Lavinia reminded her sister, ‘After all,
you know, Bella, you haven’t told us how your Whatshisnames are.’
‘I don’t want to speak of them here,’ replied Bella, suppressing
indignation, and tapping her foot on the floor. ‘They are much too kind
and too good to be drawn into these discussions.’
‘Why put it so?’ demanded Mrs Wilfer, with biting sarcasm. ‘Why adopt a
circuitous form of speech? It is polite and it is obliging; but why do
it? Why not openly say that they are much too kind and too good for US?
We understand the allusion. Why disguise the phrase?’
‘Ma,’ said Bella, with one beat of her foot, ‘you are enough to drive a
saint mad, and so is Lavvy.’
‘Unfortunate Lavvy!’ cried Mrs Wilfer, in a tone of commiseration. ‘She
always comes for it. My poor child!’ But Lavvy, with the suddenness of
her former desertion, now bounced over to the other enemy: very sharply
remarking, ‘Don’t patronize ME, Ma, because I can take care of myself.’
‘I only wonder,’ resumed Mrs Wilfer, directing her observations to her
elder daughter, as safer on the whole than her utterly unmanageable
younger, ‘that you found time and inclination to tear yourself from
Mr and Mrs Boffin, and come to see us at all. I only wonder that our
claims, contending against the superior claims of Mr and Mrs Boffin,
had any weight. I feel I ought to be thankful for gaining so much, in
competition with Mr and Mrs Boffin.’ (The good lady bitterly emphasized
the first letter of the word Boffin, as if it represented her chief
objection to the owners of that name, and as if she could have born
Doffin, Moffin, or Poffin much better.)
‘Ma,’ said Bella, angrily, ‘you force me to say that I am truly sorry I
did come home, and that I never will come home again, except when poor
dear Pa is here. For, Pa is too magnanimous to feel envy and spite
towards my generous friends, and Pa is delicate enough and gentle enough
to remember the sort of little claim they thought I had upon them and
the unusually trying position in which, through no act of my own, I had
been placed. And I always did love poor dear Pa better than all the rest
of you put together, and I always do and I always shall!’
Here Bella, deriving no comfort from her charming bonnet and her elegant
dress, burst into tears.
‘I think, R.W.,’ cried Mrs Wilfer, lifting up her eyes and
apostrophising the air, ‘that if you were present, it would be a
trial to your feelings to hear your wife and the mother of your family
depreciated in your name. But Fate has spared you this, R.W., whatever
it may have thought proper to inflict upon her!’
Here Mrs Wilfer burst into tears.
‘I hate the Boffins!’ protested Miss Lavinia. ‘I don’t care who objects
to their being called the Boffins. I WILL call ’em the Boffins. The
Boffins, the Boffins, the Boffins! And I say they are mischief-making
Boffins, and I say the Boffins have set Bella against me, and I tell the
Boffins to their faces:’ which was not strictly the fact, but the
young lady was excited: ‘that they are detestable Boffins, disreputable
Boffins, odious Boffins, beastly Boffins. There!’
Here Miss Lavinia burst into tears.
The front garden-gate clanked, and the Secretary was seen coming at a
brisk pace up the steps. ‘Leave Me to open the door to him,’ said Mrs
Wilfer, rising with stately resignation as she shook her head and dried
her eyes; ‘we have at present no stipendiary girl to do so. We have
nothing to conceal. If he sees these traces of emotion on our cheeks,
let him construe them as he may.’
With those words she stalked out. In a few moments she stalked in again,
proclaiming in her heraldic manner, ‘Mr Rokesmith is the bearer of a
packet for Miss Bella Wilfer.’
Mr Rokesmith followed close upon his name, and of course saw what was
amiss. But he discreetly affected to see nothing, and addressed Miss
Bella.
‘Mr Boffin intended to have placed this in the carriage for you
this morning. He wished you to have it, as a little keepsake he had
prepared—it is only a purse, Miss Wilfer—but as he was disappointed in
his fancy, I volunteered to come after you with it.’
Bella took it in her hand, and thanked him.
‘We have been quarrelling here a little, Mr Rokesmith, but not more than
we used; you know our agreeable ways among ourselves. You find me just
going. Good-bye, mamma. Good-bye, Lavvy!’ and with a kiss for each Miss
Bella turned to the door. The Secretary would have attended her, but
Mrs Wilfer advancing and saying with dignity, ‘Pardon me! Permit me to
assert my natural right to escort my child to the equipage which is
in waiting for her,’ he begged pardon and gave place. It was a very
magnificent spectacle indeed, to see Mrs Wilfer throw open the
house-door, and loudly demand with extended gloves, ‘The male domestic
of Mrs Boffin!’ To whom presenting himself, she delivered the brief but
majestic charge, ‘Miss Wilfer. Coming out!’ and so delivered her over,
like a female Lieutenant of the Tower relinquishing a State Prisoner.
The effect of this ceremonial was for some quarter of an hour afterwards
perfectly paralyzing on the neighbours, and was much enhanced by the
worthy lady airing herself for that term in a kind of splendidly serene
trance on the top step.
When Bella was seated in the carriage, she opened the little packet in
her hand. It contained a pretty purse, and the purse contained a bank
note for fifty pounds. ‘This shall be a joyful surprise for poor dear
Pa,’ said Bella, ‘and I’ll take it myself into the City!’
As she was uninformed respecting the exact locality of the place of
business of Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, but knew it to be near
Mincing Lane, she directed herself to be driven to the corner of that
darksome spot. Thence she despatched ‘the male domestic of Mrs Boffin,’
in search of the counting-house of Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, with
a message importing that if R. Wilfer could come out, there was a lady
waiting who would be glad to speak with him. The delivery of these
mysterious words from the mouth of a footman caused so great an
excitement in the counting-house, that a youthful scout was instantly
appointed to follow Rumty, observe the lady, and come in with his
report. Nor was the agitation by any means diminished, when the scout
rushed back with the intelligence that the lady was ‘a slap-up gal in a
bang-up chariot.’
Rumty himself, with his pen behind his ear under his rusty hat, arrived
at the carriage-door in a breathless condition, and had been fairly
lugged into the vehicle by his cravat and embraced almost unto choking,
before he recognized his daughter. ‘My dear child!’ he then panted,
incoherently. ‘Good gracious me! What a lovely woman you are! I thought
you had been unkind and forgotten your mother and sister.’
‘I have just been to see them, Pa dear.’
‘Oh! and how—how did you find your mother?’ asked R. W., dubiously.
‘Very disagreeable, Pa, and so was Lavvy.’
‘They are sometimes a little liable to it,’ observed the patient cherub;
‘but I hope you made allowances, Bella, my dear?’
‘No. I was disagreeable too, Pa; we were all of us disagreeable
together. But I want you to come and dine with me somewhere, Pa.’
‘Why, my dear, I have already partaken of a—if one might mention such
an article in this superb chariot—of a—Saveloy,’ replied R. Wilfer,
modestly dropping his voice on the word, as he eyed the canary-coloured
fittings.
‘Oh! That’s nothing, Pa!’
‘Truly, it ain’t as much as one could sometimes wish it to be, my
dear,’ he admitted, drawing his hand across his mouth. ‘Still, when
circumstances over which you have no control, interpose obstacles
between yourself and Small Germans, you can’t do better than bring a
contented mind to bear on’—again dropping his voice in deference to the
chariot—‘Saveloys!’
‘You poor good Pa! Pa, do, I beg and pray, get leave for the rest of the
day, and come and pass it with me!’
‘Well, my dear, I’ll cut back and ask for leave.’
‘But before you cut back,’ said Bella, who had already taken him by the
chin, pulled his hat off, and begun to stick up his hair in her old way,
‘do say that you are sure I am giddy and inconsiderate, but have never
really slighted you, Pa.’
‘My dear, I say it with all my heart. And might I likewise observe,’ her
father delicately hinted, with a glance out at window, ‘that perhaps
it might be calculated to attract attention, having one’s hair publicly
done by a lovely woman in an elegant turn-out in Fenchurch Street?’
Bella laughed and put on his hat again. But when his boyish figure
bobbed away, its shabbiness and cheerful patience smote the tears out
of her eyes. ‘I hate that Secretary for thinking it of me,’ she said to
herself, ‘and yet it seems half true!’
Back came her father, more like a boy than ever, in his release from
school. ‘All right, my dear. Leave given at once. Really very handsomely
done!’
‘Now where can we find some quiet place, Pa, in which I can wait for you
while you go on an errand for me, if I send the carriage away?’
It demanded cogitation. ‘You see, my dear,’ he explained, ‘you really
have become such a very lovely woman, that it ought to be a very quiet
place.’ At length he suggested, ‘Near the garden up by the Trinity House
on Tower Hill.’ So, they were driven there, and Bella dismissed the
chariot; sending a pencilled note by it to Mrs Boffin, that she was with
her father.
‘Now, Pa, attend to what I am going to say, and promise and vow to be
obedient.’
‘I promise and vow, my dear.’
‘You ask no questions. You take this purse; you go to the nearest place
where they keep everything of the very very best, ready made; you buy
and put on, the most beautiful suit of clothes, the most beautiful hat,
and the most beautiful pair of bright boots (patent leather, Pa, mind!)
that are to be got for money; and you come back to me.’
‘But, my dear Bella—’
‘Take care, Pa!’ pointing her forefinger at him, merrily. ‘You have
promised and vowed. It’s perjury, you know.’
There was water in the foolish little fellow’s eyes, but she kissed them
dry (though her own were wet), and he bobbed away again. After half an
hour, he came back, so brilliantly transformed, that Bella was obliged
to walk round him in ecstatic admiration twenty times, before she could
draw her arm through his, and delightedly squeeze it.
‘Now, Pa,’ said Bella, hugging him close, ‘take this lovely woman out to
dinner.’
‘Where shall we go, my dear?’
‘Greenwich!’ said Bella, valiantly. ‘And be sure you treat this lovely
woman with everything of the best.’
While they were going along to take boat, ‘Don’t you wish, my dear,’
said R. W., timidly, ‘that your mother was here?’
‘No, I don’t, Pa, for I like to have you all to myself to-day. I was
always your little favourite at home, and you were always mine. We have
run away together often, before now; haven’t we, Pa?’
‘Ah, to be sure we have! Many a Sunday when your mother was—was a
little liable to it,’ repeating his former delicate expression after
pausing to cough.
‘Yes, and I am afraid I was seldom or never as good as I ought to have
been, Pa. I made you carry me, over and over again, when you should
have made me walk; and I often drove you in harness, when you would much
rather have sat down and read your news-paper: didn’t I?’
‘Sometimes, sometimes. But Lor, what a child you were! What a companion
you were!’
‘Companion? That’s just what I want to be to-day, Pa.’
‘You are safe to succeed, my love. Your brothers and sisters have all
in their turns been companions to me, to a certain extent, but only to a
certain extent. Your mother has, throughout life, been a companion that
any man might—might look up to—and—and commit the sayings of, to
memory—and—form himself upon—if he—’
‘If he liked the model?’ suggested Bella.
‘We-ell, ye-es,’ he returned, thinking about it, not quite satisfied
with the phrase: ‘or perhaps I might say, if it was in him. Supposing,
for instance, that a man wanted to be always marching, he would find
your mother an inestimable companion. But if he had any taste for
walking, or should wish at any time to break into a trot, he might
sometimes find it a little difficult to keep step with your mother.
Or take it this way, Bella,’ he added, after a moment’s reflection;
‘Supposing that a man had to go through life, we won’t say with a
companion, but we’ll say to a tune. Very good. Supposing that the tune
allotted to him was the Dead March in Saul. Well. It would be a very
suitable tune for particular occasions—none better—but it would
be difficult to keep time with in the ordinary run of domestic
transactions. For instance, if he took his supper after a hard day, to
the Dead March in Saul, his food might be likely to sit heavy on him.
Or, if he was at any time inclined to relieve his mind by singing a
comic song or dancing a hornpipe, and was obliged to do it to the Dead
March in Saul, he might find himself put out in the execution of his
lively intentions.’
‘Poor Pa!’ thought Bella, as she hung upon his arm.
‘Now, what I will say for you, my dear,’ the cherub pursued mildly and
without a notion of complaining, ‘is, that you are so adaptable. So
adaptable.’
‘Indeed I am afraid I have shown a wretched temper, Pa. I am afraid
I have been very complaining, and very capricious. I seldom or never
thought of it before. But when I sat in the carriage just now and saw
you coming along the pavement, I reproached myself.’
‘Not at all, my dear. Don’t speak of such a thing.’
A happy and a chatty man was Pa in his new clothes that day. Take it
for all in all, it was perhaps the happiest day he had ever known in his
life; not even excepting that on which his heroic partner had approached
the nuptial altar to the tune of the Dead March in Saul.
The little expedition down the river was delightful, and the little
room overlooking the river into which they were shown for dinner was
delightful. Everything was delightful. The park was delightful, the
punch was delightful, the dishes of fish were delightful, the wine
was delightful. Bella was more delightful than any other item in the
festival; drawing Pa out in the gayest manner; making a point of always
mentioning herself as the lovely woman; stimulating Pa to order things,
by declaring that the lovely woman insisted on being treated with them;
and in short causing Pa to be quite enraptured with the consideration
that he WAS the Pa of such a charming daughter.
And then, as they sat looking at the ships and steamboats making their
way to the sea with the tide that was running down, the lovely woman
imagined all sorts of voyages for herself and Pa. Now, Pa, in the
character of owner of a lumbering square-sailed collier, was tacking
away to Newcastle, to fetch black diamonds to make his fortune with;
now, Pa was going to China in that handsome threemasted ship, to bring
home opium, with which he would for ever cut out Chicksey Veneering
and Stobbles, and to bring home silks and shawls without end for the
decoration of his charming daughter. Now, John Harmon’s disastrous fate
was all a dream, and he had come home and found the lovely woman just
the article for him, and the lovely woman had found him just the article
for her, and they were going away on a trip, in their gallant bark,
to look after their vines, with streamers flying at all points, a band
playing on deck and Pa established in the great cabin. Now, John Harmon
was consigned to his grave again, and a merchant of immense wealth
(name unknown) had courted and married the lovely woman, and he was
so enormously rich that everything you saw upon the river sailing or
steaming belonged to him, and he kept a perfect fleet of yachts for
pleasure, and that little impudent yacht which you saw over there, with
the great white sail, was called The Bella, in honour of his wife, and
she held her state aboard when it pleased her, like a modern Cleopatra.
Anon, there would embark in that troop-ship when she got to Gravesend, a
mighty general, of large property (name also unknown), who wouldn’t
hear of going to victory without his wife, and whose wife was the lovely
woman, and she was destined to become the idol of all the red coats and
blue jackets alow and aloft. And then again: you saw that ship being
towed out by a steam-tug? Well! where did you suppose she was going to?
She was going among the coral reefs and cocoa-nuts and all that sort of
thing, and she was chartered for a fortunate individual of the name
of Pa (himself on board, and much respected by all hands), and she
was going, for his sole profit and advantage, to fetch a cargo of
sweet-smelling woods, the most beautiful that ever were seen, and the
most profitable that ever were heard of; and her cargo would be a great
fortune, as indeed it ought to be: the lovely woman who had purchased
her and fitted her expressly for this voyage, being married to an Indian
Prince, who was a Something-or-Other, and who wore Cashmere shawls all
over himself and diamonds and emeralds blazing in his turban, and was
beautifully coffee-coloured and excessively devoted, though a little too
jealous. Thus Bella ran on merrily, in a manner perfectly enchanting to
Pa, who was as willing to put his head into the Sultan’s tub of water as
the beggar-boys below the window were to put THEIR heads in the mud.
‘I suppose, my dear,’ said Pa after dinner, ‘we may come to the
conclusion at home, that we have lost you for good?’
Bella shook her head. Didn’t know. Couldn’t say. All she was able to
report was, that she was most handsomely supplied with everything she
could possibly want, and that whenever she hinted at leaving Mr and Mrs
Boffin, they wouldn’t hear of it.
‘And now, Pa,’ pursued Bella, ‘I’ll make a confession to you. I am the
most mercenary little wretch that ever lived in the world.’
‘I should hardly have thought it of you, my dear,’ returned her father,
first glancing at himself; and then at the dessert.
‘I understand what you mean, Pa, but it’s not that. It’s not that I care
for money to keep as money, but I do care so much for what it will buy!’
‘Really I think most of us do,’ returned R. W.
‘But not to the dreadful extent that I do, Pa. O-o!’ cried Bella,
screwing the exclamation out of herself with a twist of her dimpled
chin. ‘I AM so mercenary!’
With a wistful glance R. W. said, in default of having anything better
to say: ‘About when did you begin to feel it coming on, my dear?’
‘That’s it, Pa. That’s the terrible part of it. When I was at home, and
only knew what it was to be poor, I grumbled but didn’t so much mind.
When I was at home expecting to be rich, I thought vaguely of all the
great things I would do. But when I had been disappointed of my splendid
fortune, and came to see it from day to day in other hands, and to have
before my eyes what it could really do, then I became the mercenary
little wretch I am.’
‘It’s your fancy, my dear.’
‘I can assure you it’s nothing of the sort, Pa!’ said Bella, nodding at
him, with her very pretty eyebrows raised as high as they would go, and
looking comically frightened. ‘It’s a fact. I am always avariciously
scheming.’
‘Lor! But how?’
‘I’ll tell you, Pa. I don’t mind telling YOU, because we have always
been favourites of each other’s, and because you are not like a Pa, but
more like a sort of a younger brother with a dear venerable chubbiness
on him. And besides,’ added Bella, laughing as she pointed a rallying
finger at his face, ‘because I have got you in my power. This is a
secret expedition. If ever you tell of me, I’ll tell of you. I’ll tell
Ma that you dined at Greenwich.’
‘Well; seriously, my dear,’ observed R. W., with some trepidation of
manner, ‘it might be as well not to mention it.’
‘Aha!’ laughed Bella. ‘I knew you wouldn’t like it, sir! So you keep my
confidence, and I’ll keep yours. But betray the lovely woman, and you
shall find her a serpent. Now, you may give me a kiss, Pa, and I should
like to give your hair a turn, because it has been dreadfully neglected
in my absence.’
R. W. submitted his head to the operator, and the operator went on
talking; at the same time putting separate locks of his hair through
a curious process of being smartly rolled over her two revolving
forefingers, which were then suddenly pulled out of it in opposite
lateral directions. On each of these occasions the patient winced and
winked.
‘I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can’t
beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry
it.’
R. W. cast up his eyes towards her, as well as he could under the
operating circumstances, and said in a tone of remonstrance, ‘My de-ar
Bella!’
‘Have resolved, I say, Pa, that to get money I must marry money. In
consequence of which, I am always looking out for money to captivate.’
‘My de-a-r Bella!’
‘Yes, Pa, that is the state of the case. If ever there was a mercenary
plotter whose thoughts and designs were always in her mean occupation, I
am the amiable creature. But I don’t care. I hate and detest being
poor, and I won’t be poor if I can marry money. Now you are deliciously
fluffy, Pa, and in a state to astonish the waiter and pay the bill.’
‘But, my dear Bella, this is quite alarming at your age.’
‘I told you so, Pa, but you wouldn’t believe it,’ returned Bella, with a
pleasant childish gravity. ‘Isn’t it shocking?’
‘It would be quite so, if you fully knew what you said, my dear, or
meant it.’
‘Well, Pa, I can only tell you that I mean nothing else. Talk to me of
love!’ said Bella, contemptuously: though her face and figure certainly
rendered the subject no incongruous one. ‘Talk to me of fiery dragons!
But talk to me of poverty and wealth, and there indeed we touch upon
realities.’
‘My De-ar, this is becoming Awful—’ her father was emphatically
beginning: when she stopped him.
‘Pa, tell me. Did you marry money?’
‘You know I didn’t, my dear.’
Bella hummed the Dead March in Saul, and said, after all it signified
very little! But seeing him look grave and downcast, she took him round
the neck and kissed him back to cheerfulness again.
‘I didn’t mean that last touch, Pa; it was only said in joke. Now mind!
You are not to tell of me, and I’ll not tell of you. And more than that;
I promise to have no secrets from you, Pa, and you may make certain
that, whatever mercenary things go on, I shall always tell you all about
them in strict confidence.’
Fain to be satisfied with this concession from the lovely woman, R. W.
rang the bell, and paid the bill. ‘Now, all the rest of this, Pa,’ said
Bella, rolling up the purse when they were alone again, hammering it
small with her little fist on the table, and cramming it into one of the
pockets of his new waistcoat, ‘is for you, to buy presents with for them
at home, and to pay bills with, and to divide as you like, and spend
exactly as you think proper. Last of all take notice, Pa, that it’s
not the fruit of any avaricious scheme. Perhaps if it was, your little
mercenary wretch of a daughter wouldn’t make so free with it!’
After which, she tugged at his coat with both hands, and pulled him all
askew in buttoning that garment over the precious waistcoat pocket, and
then tied her dimples into her bonnet-strings in a very knowing way, and
took him back to London. Arrived at Mr Boffin’s door, she set him with
his back against it, tenderly took him by the ears as convenient handles
for her purpose, and kissed him until he knocked muffled double knocks
at the door with the back of his head. That done, she once more reminded
him of their compact and gaily parted from him.
Not so gaily, however, but that tears filled her eyes as he went away
down the dark street. Not so gaily, but that she several times said,
‘Ah, poor little Pa! Ah, poor dear struggling shabby little Pa!’
before she took heart to knock at the door. Not so gaily, but that the
brilliant furniture seemed to stare her out of countenance as if it
insisted on being compared with the dingy furniture at home. Not so
gaily, but that she fell into very low spirits sitting late in her own
room, and very heartily wept, as she wished, now that the deceased old
John Harmon had never made a will about her, now that the deceased young
John Harmon had lived to marry her. ‘Contradictory things to wish,’ said
Bella, ‘but my life and fortunes are so contradictory altogether that
what can I expect myself to be!’
Chapter 9
IN WHICH THE ORPHAN MAKES HIS WILL
The Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was
informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy.
The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause
before uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his
reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had
the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have
spared the feelings of him the bearer.
‘Mrs Boffin will be very well pleased,’ said the Secretary in a
perfectly composed way. ‘Show him in.’
Mr Sloppy being introduced, remained close to the door: revealing
in various parts of his form many surprising, confounding, and
incomprehensible buttons.
‘I am glad to see you,’ said John Rokesmith, in a cheerful tone of
welcome. ‘I have been expecting you.’
Sloppy explained that he had meant to come before, but that the Orphan
(of whom he made mention as Our Johnny) had been ailing, and he had
waited to report him well.
‘Then he is well now?’ said the Secretary.
‘No he ain’t,’ said Sloppy.
Mr Sloppy having shaken his head to a considerable extent, proceeded
to remark that he thought Johnny ‘must have took ’em from the Minders.’
Being asked what he meant, he answered, them that come out upon him and
partickler his chest. Being requested to explain himself, he stated that
there was some of ’em wot you couldn’t kiver with a sixpence. Pressed to
fall back upon a nominative case, he opined that they wos about as
red as ever red could be. ‘But as long as they strikes out’ards, sir,’
continued Sloppy, ‘they ain’t so much. It’s their striking in’ards
that’s to be kep off.’
John Rokesmith hoped the child had had medical attendance? Oh yes, said
Sloppy, he had been took to the doctor’s shop once. And what did the
doctor call it? Rokesmith asked him. After some perplexed reflection,
Sloppy answered, brightening, ‘He called it something as wos wery
long for spots.’ Rokesmith suggested measles. ‘No,’ said Sloppy with
confidence, ‘ever so much longer than THEM, sir!’ (Mr Sloppy was
elevated by this fact, and seemed to consider that it reflected credit
on the poor little patient.)
‘Mrs Boffin will be sorry to hear this,’ said Rokesmith.
‘Mrs Higden said so, sir, when she kep it from her, hoping as Our Johnny
would work round.’
‘But I hope he will?’ said Rokesmith, with a quick turn upon the
messenger.
‘I hope so,’ answered Sloppy. ‘It all depends on their striking
in’ards.’ He then went on to say that whether Johnny had ‘took ’em’
from the Minders, or whether the Minders had ‘took ’em’ from Johnny,
the Minders had been sent home and had ‘got ’em.’ Furthermore, that Mrs
Higden’s days and nights being devoted to Our Johnny, who was never out
of her lap, the whole of the mangling arrangements had devolved upon
himself, and he had had ‘rayther a tight time’. The ungainly piece of
honesty beamed and blushed as he said it, quite enraptured with the
remembrance of having been serviceable.
‘Last night,’ said Sloppy, ‘when I was a-turning at the wheel pretty
late, the mangle seemed to go like Our Johnny’s breathing. It begun
beautiful, then as it went out it shook a little and got unsteady, then
as it took the turn to come home it had a rattle-like and lumbered a
bit, then it come smooth, and so it went on till I scarce know’d which
was mangle and which was Our Johnny. Nor Our Johnny, he scarce know’d
either, for sometimes when the mangle lumbers he says, “Me choking,
Granny!” and Mrs Higden holds him up in her lap and says to me “Bide a
bit, Sloppy,” and we all stops together. And when Our Johnny gets his
breathing again, I turns again, and we all goes on together.’
Sloppy had gradually expanded with his description into a stare and a
vacant grin. He now contracted, being silent, into a half-repressed gush
of tears, and, under pretence of being heated, drew the under part of
his sleeve across his eyes with a singularly awkward, laborious, and
roundabout smear.
‘This is unfortunate,’ said Rokesmith. ‘I must go and break it to Mrs
Boffin. Stay you here, Sloppy.’
Sloppy stayed there, staring at the pattern of the paper on the wall,
until the Secretary and Mrs Boffin came back together. And with Mrs
Boffin was a young lady (Miss Bella Wilfer by name) who was better worth
staring at, it occurred to Sloppy, than the best of wall-papering.
‘Ah, my poor dear pretty little John Harmon!’ exclaimed Mrs Boffin.
‘Yes mum,’ said the sympathetic Sloppy.
‘You don’t think he is in a very, very bad way, do you?’ asked the
pleasant creature with her wholesome cordiality.
Put upon his good faith, and finding it in collision with his
inclinations, Sloppy threw back his head and uttered a mellifluous howl,
rounded off with a sniff.
‘So bad as that!’ cried Mrs Boffin. ‘And Betty Higden not to tell me of
it sooner!’
‘I think she might have been mistrustful, mum,’ answered Sloppy,
hesitating.
‘Of what, for Heaven’s sake?’
‘I think she might have been mistrustful, mum,’ returned Sloppy with
submission, ‘of standing in Our Johnny’s light. There’s so much trouble
in illness, and so much expense, and she’s seen such a lot of its being
objected to.’
‘But she never can have thought,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘that I would grudge
the dear child anything?’
‘No mum, but she might have thought (as a habit-like) of its standing
in Johnny’s light, and might have tried to bring him through it
unbeknownst.’
Sloppy knew his ground well. To conceal herself in sickness, like a
lower animal; to creep out of sight and coil herself away and die; had
become this woman’s instinct. To catch up in her arms the sick child who
was dear to her, and hide it as if it were a criminal, and keep off all
ministration but such as her own ignorant tenderness and patience could
supply, had become this woman’s idea of maternal love, fidelity, and
duty. The shameful accounts we read, every week in the Christian year,
my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, the infamous records of
small official inhumanity, do not pass by the people as they pass by
us. And hence these irrational, blind, and obstinate prejudices, so
astonishing to our magnificence, and having no more reason in them—God
save the Queen and Confound their politics—no, than smoke has in coming
from fire!
‘It’s not a right place for the poor child to stay in,’ said Mrs Boffin.
‘Tell us, dear Mr Rokesmith, what to do for the best.’
He had already thought what to do, and the consultation was very short.
He could pave the way, he said, in half an hour, and then they would go
down to Brentford. ‘Pray take me,’ said Bella. Therefore a carriage was
ordered, of capacity to take them all, and in the meantime Sloppy
was regaled, feasting alone in the Secretary’s room, with a complete
realization of that fairy vision—meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding.
In consequence of which his buttons became more importunate of public
notice than before, with the exception of two or three about the region
of the waistband, which modestly withdrew into a creasy retirement.
Punctual to the time, appeared the carriage and the Secretary. He sat
on the box, and Mr Sloppy graced the rumble. So, to the Three Magpies as
before: where Mrs Boffin and Miss Bella were handed out, and whence they
all went on foot to Mrs Betty Higden’s.
But, on the way down, they had stopped at a toy-shop, and had bought
that noble charger, a description of whose points and trappings had on
the last occasion conciliated the then worldly-minded orphan, and also a
Noah’s ark, and also a yellow bird with an artificial voice in him,
and also a military doll so well dressed that if he had only been of
life-size his brother-officers in the Guards might never have found him
out. Bearing these gifts, they raised the latch of Betty Higden’s door,
and saw her sitting in the dimmest and furthest corner with poor Johnny
in her lap.
‘And how’s my boy, Betty?’ asked Mrs Boffin, sitting down beside her.
‘He’s bad! He’s bad!’ said Betty. ‘I begin to be afeerd he’ll not be
yours any more than mine. All others belonging to him have gone to
the Power and the Glory, and I have a mind that they’re drawing him to
them—leading him away.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Mrs Boffin.
‘I don’t know why else he clenches his little hand as if it had hold of
a finger that I can’t see. Look at it,’ said Betty, opening the wrappers
in which the flushed child lay, and showing his small right hand lying
closed upon his breast. ‘It’s always so. It don’t mind me.’
‘Is he asleep?’
‘No, I think not. You’re not asleep, my Johnny?’
‘No,’ said Johnny, with a quiet air of pity for himself; and without
opening his eyes.
‘Here’s the lady, Johnny. And the horse.’
Johnny could bear the lady, with complete indifference, but not the
horse. Opening his heavy eyes, he slowly broke into a smile on beholding
that splendid phenomenon, and wanted to take it in his arms. As it was
much too big, it was put upon a chair where he could hold it by the mane
and contemplate it. Which he soon forgot to do.
But, Johnny murmuring something with his eyes closed, and Mrs Boffin
not knowing what, old Betty bent her ear to listen and took pains to
understand. Being asked by her to repeat what he had said, he did so two
or three times, and then it came out that he must have seen more than
they supposed when he looked up to see the horse, for the murmur was,
‘Who is the boofer lady?’ Now, the boofer, or beautiful, lady was Bella;
and whereas this notice from the poor baby would have touched her of
itself; it was rendered more pathetic by the late melting of her heart
to her poor little father, and their joke about the lovely woman. So,
Bella’s behaviour was very tender and very natural when she kneeled on
the brick floor to clasp the child, and when the child, with a child’s
admiration of what is young and pretty, fondled the boofer lady.
‘Now, my good dear Betty,’ said Mrs Boffin, hoping that she saw her
opportunity, and laying her hand persuasively on her arm; ‘we have come
to remove Johnny from this cottage to where he can be taken better care
of.’
Instantly, and before another word could be spoken, the old woman
started up with blazing eyes, and rushed at the door with the sick
child.
‘Stand away from me every one of ye!’ she cried out wildly. ‘I see what
ye mean now. Let me go my way, all of ye. I’d sooner kill the Pretty,
and kill myself!’
‘Stay, stay!’ said Rokesmith, soothing her. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘I understand too well. I know too much about it, sir. I’ve run from
it too many a year. No! Never for me, nor for the child, while there’s
water enough in England to cover us!’
The terror, the shame, the passion of horror and repugnance, firing the
worn face and perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite terrible
sight, if embodied in one old fellow-creature alone. Yet it ‘crops
up’—as our slang goes—my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, in
other fellow-creatures, rather frequently!
‘It’s been chasing me all my life, but it shall never take me nor mine
alive!’ cried old Betty. ‘I’ve done with ye. I’d have fastened door and
window and starved out, afore I’d ever have let ye in, if I had known
what ye came for!’
But, catching sight of Mrs Boffin’s wholesome face, she relented, and
crouching down by the door and bending over her burden to hush it, said
humbly: ‘Maybe my fears has put me wrong. If they have so, tell me, and
the good Lord forgive me! I’m quick to take this fright, I know, and my
head is summ’at light with wearying and watching.’
‘There, there, there!’ returned Mrs Boffin. ‘Come, come! Say no more of
it, Betty. It was a mistake, a mistake. Any one of us might have made it
in your place, and felt just as you do.’
‘The Lord bless ye!’ said the old woman, stretching out her hand.
‘Now, see, Betty,’ pursued the sweet compassionate soul, holding the
hand kindly, ‘what I really did mean, and what I should have begun by
saying out, if I had only been a little wiser and handier. We want to
move Johnny to a place where there are none but children; a place set
up on purpose for sick children; where the good doctors and nurses pass
their lives with children, talk to none but children, touch none but
children, comfort and cure none but children.’
‘Is there really such a place?’ asked the old woman, with a gaze of
wonder.
‘Yes, Betty, on my word, and you shall see it. If my home was a better
place for the dear boy, I’d take him to it; but indeed indeed it’s not.’
‘You shall take him,’ returned Betty, fervently kissing the comforting
hand, ‘where you will, my deary. I am not so hard, but that I believe
your face and voice, and I will, as long as I can see and hear.’
This victory gained, Rokesmith made haste to profit by it, for he saw
how woefully time had been lost. He despatched Sloppy to bring the
carriage to the door; caused the child to be carefully wrapped up; bade
old Betty get her bonnet on; collected the toys, enabling the little
fellow to comprehend that his treasures were to be transported with
him; and had all things prepared so easily that they were ready for
the carriage as soon as it appeared, and in a minute afterwards were
on their way. Sloppy they left behind, relieving his overcharged breast
with a paroxysm of mangling.
At the Children’s Hospital, the gallant steed, the Noah’s ark, yellow
bird, and the officer in the Guards, were made as welcome as their
child-owner. But the doctor said aside to Rokesmith, ‘This should have
been days ago. Too late!’
However, they were all carried up into a fresh airy room, and there
Johnny came to himself, out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever it was,
to find himself lying in a little quiet bed, with a little platform over
his breast, on which were already arranged, to give him heart and urge
him to cheer up, the Noah’s ark, the noble steed, and the yellow bird;
with the officer in the Guards doing duty over the whole, quite as much
to the satisfaction of his country as if he had been upon Parade. And at
the bed’s head was a coloured picture beautiful to see, representing as
it were another Johnny seated on the knee of some Angel surely who loved
little children. And, marvellous fact, to lie and stare at: Johnny had
become one of a little family, all in little quiet beds (except two
playing dominoes in little arm-chairs at a little table on the hearth):
and on all the little beds were little platforms whereon were to be
seen dolls’ houses, woolly dogs with mechanical barks in them not very
dissimilar from the artificial voice pervading the bowels of the yellow
bird, tin armies, Moorish tumblers, wooden tea things, and the riches of
the earth.
As Johnny murmured something in his placid admiration, the ministering
women at his bed’s head asked him what he said. It seemed that he wanted
to know whether all these were brothers and sisters of his? So they told
him yes. It seemed then, that he wanted to know whether God had brought
them all together there? So they told him yes again. They made out then,
that he wanted to know whether they would all get out of pain? So they
answered yes to that question likewise, and made him understand that the
reply included himself.
Johnny’s powers of sustaining conversation were as yet so very
imperfectly developed, even in a state of health, that in sickness they
were little more than monosyllabic. But, he had to be washed and tended,
and remedies were applied, and though those offices were far, far more
skilfully and lightly done than ever anything had been done for him in
his little life, so rough and short, they would have hurt and tired him
but for an amazing circumstance which laid hold of his attention. This
was no less than the appearance on his own little platform in pairs,
of All Creation, on its way into his own particular ark: the elephant
leading, and the fly, with a diffident sense of his size, politely
bringing up the rear. A very little brother lying in the next bed with a
broken leg, was so enchanted by this spectacle that his delight exalted
its enthralling interest; and so came rest and sleep.
‘I see you are not afraid to leave the dear child here, Betty,’
whispered Mrs Boffin.
‘No, ma’am. Most willingly, most thankfully, with all my heart and
soul.’
So, they kissed him, and left him there, and old Betty was to come back
early in the morning, and nobody but Rokesmith knew for certain how that
the doctor had said, ‘This should have been days ago. Too late!’
But, Rokesmith knowing it, and knowing that his bearing it in mind would
be acceptable thereafter to that good woman who had been the only light
in the childhood of desolate John Harmon dead and gone, resolved that
late at night he would go back to the bedside of John Harmon’s namesake,
and see how it fared with him.
The family whom God had brought together were not all asleep, but were
all quiet. From bed to bed, a light womanly tread and a pleasant fresh
face passed in the silence of the night. A little head would lift itself
up into the softened light here and there, to be kissed as the face went
by—for these little patients are very loving—and would then submit
itself to be composed to rest again. The mite with the broken leg was
restless, and moaned; but after a while turned his face towards Johnny’s
bed, to fortify himself with a view of the ark, and fell asleep. Over
most of the beds, the toys were yet grouped as the children had left
them when they last laid themselves down, and, in their innocent
grotesqueness and incongruity, they might have stood for the children’s
dreams.
The doctor came in too, to see how it fared with Johnny. And he and
Rokesmith stood together, looking down with compassion on him.
‘What is it, Johnny?’ Rokesmith was the questioner, and put an arm round
the poor baby as he made a struggle.
‘Him!’ said the little fellow. ‘Those!’
The doctor was quick to understand children, and, taking the horse,
the ark, the yellow bird, and the man in the Guards, from Johnny’s bed,
softly placed them on that of his next neighbour, the mite with the
broken leg.
With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an action as if he
stretched his little figure out to rest, the child heaved his body on
the sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith’s face with his lips, said:
‘A kiss for the boofer lady.’
Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose of, and arranged his affairs
in this world, Johnny, thus speaking, left it.
Chapter 10
A SUCCESSOR
Some of the Reverend Frank Milvey’s brethren had found themselves
exceedingly uncomfortable in their minds, because they were required to
bury the dead too hopefully. But, the Reverend Frank, inclining to the
belief that they were required to do one or two other things (say out of
nine-and-thirty) calculated to trouble their consciences rather more if
they would think as much about them, held his peace.
Indeed, the Reverend Frank Milvey was a forbearing man, who noticed many
sad warps and blights in the vineyard wherein he worked, and did not
profess that they made him savagely wise. He only learned that the more
he himself knew, in his little limited human way, the better he could
distantly imagine what Omniscience might know.
Wherefore, if the Reverend Frank had had to read the words that troubled
some of his brethren, and profitably touched innumerable hearts, in
a worse case than Johnny’s, he would have done so out of the pity and
humility of his soul. Reading them over Johnny, he thought of his own
six children, but not of his poverty, and read them with dimmed eyes.
And very seriously did he and his bright little wife, who had been
listening, look down into the small grave and walk home arm-in-arm.
There was grief in the aristocratic house, and there was joy in the
Bower. Mr Wegg argued, if an orphan were wanted, was he not an orphan
himself; and could a better be desired? And why go beating about
Brentford bushes, seeking orphans forsooth who had established no claims
upon you and made no sacrifices for you, when here was an orphan ready
to your hand who had given up in your cause, Miss Elizabeth, Master
George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker?
Mr Wegg chuckled, consequently, when he heard the tidings. Nay, it was
afterwards affirmed by a witness who shall at present be nameless,
that in the seclusion of the Bower he poked out his wooden leg, in the
stage-ballet manner, and executed a taunting or triumphant pirouette on
the genuine leg remaining to him.
John Rokesmith’s manner towards Mrs Boffin at this time, was more the
manner of a young man towards a mother, than that of a Secretary towards
his employer’s wife. It had always been marked by a subdued affectionate
deference that seemed to have sprung up on the very day of his
engagement; whatever was odd in her dress or her ways had seemed to have
no oddity for him; he had sometimes borne a quietly-amused face in her
company, but still it had seemed as if the pleasure her genial temper
and radiant nature yielded him, could have been quite as naturally
expressed in a tear as in a smile. The completeness of his sympathy with
her fancy for having a little John Harmon to protect and rear, he
had shown in every act and word, and now that the kind fancy was
disappointed, he treated it with a manly tenderness and respect for
which she could hardly thank him enough.
‘But I do thank you, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘and I thank you
most kindly. You love children.’
‘I hope everybody does.’
‘They ought,’ said Mrs Boffin; ‘but we don’t all of us do what we ought,
do us?’
John Rokesmith replied, ‘Some among us supply the short-comings of the
rest. You have loved children well, Mr Boffin has told me.’
‘Not a bit better than he has, but that’s his way; he puts all the good
upon me. You speak rather sadly, Mr Rokesmith.’
‘Do I?’
‘It sounds to me so. Were you one of many children?’ He shook his head.
‘An only child?’
‘No there was another. Dead long ago.’
‘Father or mother alive?’
‘Dead.’—
‘And the rest of your relations?’
‘Dead—if I ever had any living. I never heard of any.’
At this point of the dialogue Bella came in with a light step. She
paused at the door a moment, hesitating whether to remain or retire;
perplexed by finding that she was not observed.
‘Now, don’t mind an old lady’s talk,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘but tell me. Are
you quite sure, Mr Rokesmith, that you have never had a disappointment
in love?’
‘Quite sure. Why do you ask me?’
‘Why, for this reason. Sometimes you have a kind of kept-down manner
with you, which is not like your age. You can’t be thirty?’
‘I am not yet thirty.’
Deeming it high time to make her presence known, Bella coughed here to
attract attention, begged pardon, and said she would go, fearing that
she interrupted some matter of business.
‘No, don’t go,’ rejoined Mrs Boffin, ‘because we are coming to business,
instead of having begun it, and you belong to it as much now, my dear
Bella, as I do. But I want my Noddy to consult with us. Would somebody
be so good as find my Noddy for me?’
Rokesmith departed on that errand, and presently returned accompanied by
Mr Boffin at his jog-trot. Bella felt a little vague trepidation as to
the subject-matter of this same consultation, until Mrs Boffin announced
it.
‘Now, you come and sit by me, my dear,’ said that worthy soul, taking
her comfortable place on a large ottoman in the centre of the room,
and drawing her arm through Bella’s; ‘and Noddy, you sit here, and Mr
Rokesmith you sit there. Now, you see, what I want to talk about, is
this. Mr and Mrs Milvey have sent me the kindest note possible (which
Mr Rokesmith just now read to me out aloud, for I ain’t good at
handwritings), offering to find me another little child to name and
educate and bring up. Well. This has set me thinking.’
(‘And she is a steam-ingein at it,’ murmured Mr Boffin, in an admiring
parenthesis, ‘when she once begins. It mayn’t be so easy to start her;
but once started, she’s a ingein.’)
‘—This has set me thinking, I say,’ repeated Mrs Boffin, cordially
beaming under the influence of her husband’s compliment, ‘and I have
thought two things. First of all, that I have grown timid of reviving
John Harmon’s name. It’s an unfortunate name, and I fancy I should
reproach myself if I gave it to another dear child, and it proved again
unlucky.’
‘Now, whether,’ said Mr Boffin, gravely propounding a case for his
Secretary’s opinion; ‘whether one might call that a superstition?’
‘It is a matter of feeling with Mrs Boffin,’ said Rokesmith, gently.
‘The name has always been unfortunate. It has now this new unfortunate
association connected with it. The name has died out. Why revive it?
Might I ask Miss Wilfer what she thinks?’
‘It has not been a fortunate name for me,’ said Bella, colouring—‘or
at least it was not, until it led to my being here—but that is not the
point in my thoughts. As we had given the name to the poor child, and as
the poor child took so lovingly to me, I think I should feel jealous of
calling another child by it. I think I should feel as if the name had
become endeared to me, and I had no right to use it so.’
‘And that’s your opinion?’ remarked Mr Boffin, observant of the
Secretary’s face and again addressing him.
‘I say again, it is a matter of feeling,’ returned the Secretary. ‘I
think Miss Wilfer’s feeling very womanly and pretty.’
‘Now, give us your opinion, Noddy,’ said Mrs Boffin.
‘My opinion, old lady,’ returned the Golden Dustman, ‘is your opinion.’
‘Then,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘we agree not to revive John Harmon’s name, but
to let it rest in the grave. It is, as Mr Rokesmith says, a matter of
feeling, but Lor how many matters ARE matters of feeling! Well; and so
I come to the second thing I have thought of. You must know, Bella,
my dear, and Mr Rokesmith, that when I first named to my husband my
thoughts of adopting a little orphan boy in remembrance of John Harmon,
I further named to my husband that it was comforting to think that how
the poor boy would be benefited by John’s own money, and protected from
John’s own forlornness.’
‘Hear, hear!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘So she did. Ancoar!’
‘No, not Ancoar, Noddy, my dear,’ returned Mrs Boffin, ‘because I am
going to say something else. I meant that, I am sure, as much as
I still mean it. But this little death has made me ask myself the
question, seriously, whether I wasn’t too bent upon pleasing myself.
Else why did I seek out so much for a pretty child, and a child quite to
my liking? Wanting to do good, why not do it for its own sake, and put
my tastes and likings by?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Bella; and perhaps she said it with some little
sensitiveness arising out of those old curious relations of hers towards
the murdered man; ‘perhaps, in reviving the name, you would not have
liked to give it to a less interesting child than the original. He
interested you very much.’
‘Well, my dear,’ returned Mrs Boffin, giving her a squeeze, ‘it’s kind
of you to find that reason out, and I hope it may have been so, and
indeed to a certain extent I believe it was so, but I am afraid not to
the whole extent. However, that don’t come in question now, because we
have done with the name.’
‘Laid it up as a remembrance,’ suggested Bella, musingly.
‘Much better said, my dear; laid it up as a remembrance. Well then; I
have been thinking if I take any orphan to provide for, let it not be
a pet and a plaything for me, but a creature to be helped for its own
sake.’
‘Not pretty then?’ said Bella.
‘No,’ returned Mrs Boffin, stoutly.
‘Nor prepossessing then?’ said Bella.
‘No,’ returned Mrs Boffin. ‘Not necessarily so. That’s as it may happen.
A well-disposed boy comes in my way who may be even a little wanting in
such advantages for getting on in life, but is honest and industrious
and requires a helping hand and deserves it. If I am very much in
earnest and quite determined to be unselfish, let me take care of HIM.’
Here the footman whose feelings had been hurt on the former occasion,
appeared, and crossing to Rokesmith apologetically announced the
objectionable Sloppy.
The four members of Council looked at one another, and paused. ‘Shall he
be brought here, ma’am?’ asked Rokesmith.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Boffin. Whereupon the footman disappeared, reappeared
presenting Sloppy, and retired much disgusted.
The consideration of Mrs Boffin had clothed Mr Sloppy in a suit of
black, on which the tailor had received personal directions from
Rokesmith to expend the utmost cunning of his art, with a view to the
concealment of the cohering and sustaining buttons. But, so much
more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy’s form than the strongest
resources of tailoring science, that he now stood before the Council,
a perfect Argus in the way of buttons: shining and winking and gleaming
and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of bright metal, at the
dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had
furnished him with a hatband of wholesale capacity which was fluted
behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, and terminated in a black
bunch, from which the imagination shrunk discomfited and the reason
revolted. Some special powers with which his legs were endowed, had
already hitched up his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged them at
the knees; while similar gifts in his arms had raised his coat-sleeves
from his wrists and accumulated them at his elbows. Thus set forth, with
the additional embellishments of a very little tail to his coat, and a
yawning gulf at his waistband, Sloppy stood confessed.
‘And how is Betty, my good fellow?’ Mrs Boffin asked him.
‘Thankee, mum,’ said Sloppy, ‘she do pretty nicely, and sending her
dooty and many thanks for the tea and all faviours and wishing to know
the family’s healths.’
‘Have you just come, Sloppy?’
‘Yes, mum.’
‘Then you have not had your dinner yet?’
‘No, mum. But I mean to it. For I ain’t forgotten your handsome orders
that I was never to go away without having had a good ’un off of meat
and beer and pudding—no: there was four of ’em, for I reckoned ’em
up when I had ’em; meat one, beer two, vegetables three, and which was
four?—Why, pudding, HE was four!’ Here Sloppy threw his head back,
opened his mouth wide, and laughed rapturously.
‘How are the two poor little Minders?’ asked Mrs Boffin.
‘Striking right out, mum, and coming round beautiful.’
Mrs Boffin looked on the other three members of Council, and then said,
beckoning with her finger:
‘Sloppy.’
‘Yes, mum.’
‘Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here every day?’
‘Off of all four on ’em, mum? O mum!’ Sloppy’s feelings obliged him to
squeeze his hat, and contract one leg at the knee.
‘Yes. And should you like to be always taken care of here, if you were
industrious and deserving?’
‘Oh, mum!—But there’s Mrs Higden,’ said Sloppy, checking himself in his
raptures, drawing back, and shaking his head with very serious meaning.
‘There’s Mrs Higden. Mrs Higden goes before all. None can ever be better
friends to me than Mrs Higden’s been. And she must be turned for, must
Mrs Higden. Where would Mrs Higden be if she warn’t turned for!’ At the
mere thought of Mrs Higden in this inconceivable affliction, Mr Sloppy’s
countenance became pale, and manifested the most distressful emotions.
‘You are as right as right can be, Sloppy,’ said Mrs Boffin ‘and far be
it from me to tell you otherwise. It shall be seen to. If Betty Higden
can be turned for all the same, you shall come here and be taken care of
for life, and be made able to keep her in other ways than the turning.’
‘Even as to that, mum,’ answered the ecstatic Sloppy, ‘the turning might
be done in the night, don’t you see? I could be here in the day, and
turn in the night. I don’t want no sleep, I don’t. Or even if I any ways
should want a wink or two,’ added Sloppy, after a moment’s apologetic
reflection, ‘I could take ’em turning. I’ve took ’em turning many a
time, and enjoyed ’em wonderful!’
On the grateful impulse of the moment, Mr Sloppy kissed Mrs Boffin’s
hand, and then detaching himself from that good creature that he might
have room enough for his feelings, threw back his head, opened his mouth
wide, and uttered a dismal howl. It was creditable to his tenderness of
heart, but suggested that he might on occasion give some offence to the
neighbours: the rather, as the footman looked in, and begged pardon,
finding he was not wanted, but excused himself; on the ground ‘that he
thought it was Cats.’
Chapter 11
SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
Little Miss Peecher, from her little official dwelling-house, with its
little windows like the eyes in needles, and its little doors like the
covers of school-books, was very observant indeed of the object of her
quiet affections. Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is
a vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him on double duty over Mr
Bradley Headstone. It was not that she was naturally given to playing
the spy—it was not that she was at all secret, plotting, or mean—it
was simply that she loved the irresponsive Bradley with all the
primitive and homely stock of love that had never been examined or
certificated out of her. If her faithful slate had had the latent
qualities of sympathetic paper, and its pencil those of invisible ink,
many a little treatise calculated to astonish the pupils would have come
bursting through the dry sums in school-time under the warming influence
of Miss Peecher’s bosom. For, oftentimes when school was not, and her
calm leisure and calm little house were her own, Miss Peecher would
commit to the confidential slate an imaginary description of how, upon
a balmy evening at dusk, two figures might have been observed in the
market-garden ground round the corner, of whom one, being a manly form,
bent over the other, being a womanly form of short stature and some
compactness, and breathed in a low voice the words, ‘Emma Peecher, wilt
thou be my own?’ after which the womanly form’s head reposed upon the
manly form’s shoulder, and the nightingales tuned up. Though all unseen,
and unsuspected by the pupils, Bradley Headstone even pervaded the
school exercises. Was Geography in question? He would come triumphantly
flying out of Vesuvius and Aetna ahead of the lava, and would boil
unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland, and would float majestically
down the Ganges and the Nile. Did History chronicle a king of men?
Behold him in pepper-and-salt pantaloons, with his watch-guard round
his neck. Were copies to be written? In capital B’s and H’s most of the
girls under Miss Peecher’s tuition were half a year ahead of every other
letter in the alphabet. And Mental Arithmetic, administered by Miss
Peecher, often devoted itself to providing Bradley Headstone with a
wardrobe of fabulous extent: fourscore and four neck-ties at two and
ninepence-halfpenny, two gross of silver watches at four pounds fifteen
and sixpence, seventy-four black hats at eighteen shillings; and many
similar superfluities.
The vigilant watchman, using his daily opportunities of turning his eyes
in Bradley’s direction, soon apprized Miss Peecher that Bradley was more
preoccupied than had been his wont, and more given to strolling about
with a downcast and reserved face, turning something difficult in his
mind that was not in the scholastic syllabus. Putting this and that
together—combining under the head ‘this,’ present appearances and the
intimacy with Charley Hexam, and ranging under the head ‘that’ the
visit to his sister, the watchman reported to Miss Peecher his strong
suspicions that the sister was at the bottom of it.
‘I wonder,’ said Miss Peecher, as she sat making up her weekly report on
a half-holiday afternoon, ‘what they call Hexam’s sister?’
Mary Anne, at her needlework, attendant and attentive, held her arm up.
‘Well, Mary Anne?’
‘She is named Lizzie, ma’am.’
‘She can hardly be named Lizzie, I think, Mary Anne,’ returned Miss
Peecher, in a tunefully instructive voice. ‘Is Lizzie a Christian name,
Mary Anne?’
Mary Anne laid down her work, rose, hooked herself behind, as being
under catechization, and replied: ‘No, it is a corruption, Miss
Peecher.’
‘Who gave her that name?’ Miss Peecher was going on, from the mere force
of habit, when she checked herself; on Mary Anne’s evincing theological
impatience to strike in with her godfathers and her godmothers, and
said: ‘I mean of what name is it a corruption?’
‘Elizabeth, or Eliza, Miss Peecher.’
‘Right, Mary Anne. Whether there were any Lizzies in the early Christian
Church must be considered very doubtful, very doubtful.’ Miss Peecher
was exceedingly sage here. ‘Speaking correctly, we say, then, that
Hexam’s sister is called Lizzie; not that she is named so. Do we not,
Mary Anne?’
‘We do, Miss Peecher.’
‘And where,’ pursued Miss Peecher, complacent in her little transparent
fiction of conducting the examination in a semiofficial manner for Mary
Anne’s benefit, not her own, ‘where does this young woman, who is called
but not named Lizzie, live? Think, now, before answering.’
‘In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank, ma’am.’
‘In Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,’ repeated Miss Peecher,
as if possessed beforehand of the book in which it was written. Exactly
so. And what occupation does this young woman pursue, Mary Anne? Take
time.’
‘She has a place of trust at an outfitter’s in the City, ma’am.’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Peecher, pondering on it; but smoothly added, in a
confirmatory tone, ‘At an outfitter’s in the City. Ye-es?’
‘And Charley—’ Mary Anne was proceeding, when Miss Peecher stared.
‘I mean Hexam, Miss Peecher.’
‘I should think you did, Mary Anne. I am glad to hear you do. And
Hexam—’
‘Says,’ Mary Anne went on, ‘that he is not pleased with his sister, and
that his sister won’t be guided by his advice, and persists in being
guided by somebody else’s; and that—’
‘Mr Headstone coming across the garden!’ exclaimed Miss Peecher, with a
flushed glance at the looking-glass. ‘You have answered very well, Mary
Anne. You are forming an excellent habit of arranging your thoughts
clearly. That will do.’
The discreet Mary Anne resumed her seat and her silence, and stitched,
and stitched, and was stitching when the schoolmaster’s shadow came in
before him, announcing that he might be instantly expected.
‘Good evening, Miss Peecher,’ he said, pursuing the shadow, and taking
its place.
‘Good evening, Mr Headstone. Mary Anne, a chair.’
‘Thank you,’ said Bradley, seating himself in his constrained manner.
‘This is but a flying visit. I have looked in, on my way, to ask a
kindness of you as a neighbour.’
‘Did you say on your way, Mr Headstone?’ asked Miss Peecher.
‘On my way to—where I am going.’
‘Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,’ repeated Miss Peecher, in
her own thoughts.
‘Charley Hexam has gone to get a book or two he wants, and will probably
be back before me. As we leave my house empty, I took the liberty of
telling him I would leave the key here. Would you kindly allow me to do
so?’
‘Certainly, Mr Headstone. Going for an evening walk, sir?’
‘Partly for a walk, and partly for—on business.’
‘Business in Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,’ repeated Miss
Peecher to herself.
‘Having said which,’ pursued Bradley, laying his door-key on the table,
‘I must be already going. There is nothing I can do for you, Miss
Peecher?’
‘Thank you, Mr Headstone. In which direction?’
‘In the direction of Westminster.’
‘Mill Bank,’ Miss Peecher repeated in her own thoughts once again. ‘No,
thank you, Mr Headstone; I’ll not trouble you.’
‘You couldn’t trouble me,’ said the schoolmaster.
‘Ah!’ returned Miss Peecher, though not aloud; ‘but you can trouble
ME!’ And for all her quiet manner, and her quiet smile, she was full of
trouble as he went his way.
She was right touching his destination. He held as straight a course
for the house of the dolls’ dressmaker as the wisdom of his ancestors,
exemplified in the construction of the intervening streets, would let
him, and walked with a bent head hammering at one fixed idea. It had
been an immoveable idea since he first set eyes upon her. It seemed to
him as if all that he could suppress in himself he had suppressed, as
if all that he could restrain in himself he had restrained, and the time
had come—in a rush, in a moment—when the power of self-command had
departed from him. Love at first sight is a trite expression quite
sufficiently discussed; enough that in certain smouldering natures like
this man’s, that passion leaps into a blaze, and makes such head as fire
does in a rage of wind, when other passions, but for its mastery, could
be held in chains. As a multitude of weak, imitative natures are
always lying by, ready to go mad upon the next wrong idea that may be
broached—in these times, generally some form of tribute to Somebody
for something that never was done, or, if ever done, that was done by
Somebody Else—so these less ordinary natures may lie by for years,
ready on the touch of an instant to burst into flame.
The schoolmaster went his way, brooding and brooding, and a sense of
being vanquished in a struggle might have been pieced out of his worried
face. Truly, in his breast there lingered a resentful shame to find
himself defeated by this passion for Charley Hexam’s sister, though in
the very self-same moments he was concentrating himself upon the object
of bringing the passion to a successful issue.
He appeared before the dolls’ dressmaker, sitting alone at her work.
‘Oho!’ thought that sharp young personage, ‘it’s you, is it? I know your
tricks and your manners, my friend!’
‘Hexam’s sister,’ said Bradley Headstone, ‘is not come home yet?’
‘You are quite a conjuror,’ returned Miss Wren.
‘I will wait, if you please, for I want to speak to her.’
‘Do you?’ returned Miss Wren. ‘Sit down. I hope it’s mutual.’ Bradley
glanced distrustfully at the shrewd face again bending over the work,
and said, trying to conquer doubt and hesitation:
‘I hope you don’t imply that my visit will be unacceptable to Hexam’s
sister?’
‘There! Don’t call her that. I can’t bear you to call her that,’
returned Miss Wren, snapping her fingers in a volley of impatient snaps,
‘for I don’t like Hexam.’
‘Indeed?’
‘No.’ Miss Wren wrinkled her nose, to express dislike. ‘Selfish. Thinks
only of himself. The way with all of you.’
‘The way with all of us? Then you don’t like ME?’
‘So-so,’ replied Miss Wren, with a shrug and a laugh. ‘Don’t know much
about you.’
‘But I was not aware it was the way with all of us,’ said Bradley,
returning to the accusation, a little injured. ‘Won’t you say, some of
us?’
‘Meaning,’ returned the little creature, ‘every one of you, but you.
Hah! Now look this lady in the face. This is Mrs Truth. The Honourable.
Full-dressed.’
Bradley glanced at the doll she held up for his observation—which had
been lying on its face on her bench, while with a needle and thread she
fastened the dress on at the back—and looked from it to her.
‘I stand the Honourable Mrs T. on my bench in this corner against the
wall, where her blue eyes can shine upon you,’ pursued Miss Wren, doing
so, and making two little dabs at him in the air with her needle, as
if she pricked him with it in his own eyes; ‘and I defy you to tell me,
with Mrs T. for a witness, what you have come here for.’
‘To see Hexam’s sister.’
‘You don’t say so!’ retorted Miss Wren, hitching her chin. ‘But on whose
account?’
‘Her own.’
‘O Mrs T.!’ exclaimed Miss Wren. ‘You hear him!’
‘To reason with her,’ pursued Bradley, half humouring what was present,
and half angry with what was not present; ‘for her own sake.’
‘Oh Mrs T.!’ exclaimed the dressmaker.
‘For her own sake,’ repeated Bradley, warming, ‘and for her brother’s,
and as a perfectly disinterested person.’
‘Really, Mrs T.,’ remarked the dressmaker, ‘since it comes to this, we
must positively turn you with your face to the wall.’ She had hardly
done so, when Lizzie Hexam arrived, and showed some surprise on seeing
Bradley Headstone there, and Jenny shaking her little fist at him close
before her eyes, and the Honourable Mrs T. with her face to the wall.
‘Here’s a perfectly disinterested person, Lizzie dear,’ said the knowing
Miss Wren, ‘come to talk with you, for your own sake and your brother’s.
Think of that. I am sure there ought to be no third party present at
anything so very kind and so very serious; and so, if you’ll remove the
third party upstairs, my dear, the third party will retire.’
Lizzie took the hand which the dolls’ dressmaker held out to her for
the purpose of being supported away, but only looked at her with an
inquiring smile, and made no other movement.
‘The third party hobbles awfully, you know, when she’s left to herself;’
said Miss Wren, ‘her back being so bad, and her legs so queer; so she
can’t retire gracefully unless you help her, Lizzie.’
‘She can do no better than stay where she is,’ returned Lizzie,
releasing the hand, and laying her own lightly on Miss Jenny’s curls.
And then to Bradley: ‘From Charley, sir?’
In an irresolute way, and stealing a clumsy look at her, Bradley rose to
place a chair for her, and then returned to his own.
‘Strictly speaking,’ said he, ‘I come from Charley, because I left him
only a little while ago; but I am not commissioned by Charley. I come of
my own spontaneous act.’
With her elbows on her bench, and her chin upon her hands, Miss Jenny
Wren sat looking at him with a watchful sidelong look. Lizzie, in her
different way, sat looking at him too.
‘The fact is,’ began Bradley, with a mouth so dry that he had some
difficulty in articulating his words: the consciousness of which
rendered his manner still more ungainly and undecided; ‘the truth is,
that Charley, having no secrets from me (to the best of my belief), has
confided the whole of this matter to me.’
He came to a stop, and Lizzie asked: ‘what matter, sir?’
‘I thought,’ returned the schoolmaster, stealing another look at her,
and seeming to try in vain to sustain it; for the look dropped as it
lighted on her eyes, ‘that it might be so superfluous as to be almost
impertinent, to enter upon a definition of it. My allusion was to this
matter of your having put aside your brother’s plans for you, and
given the preference to those of Mr—I believe the name is Mr Eugene
Wrayburn.’
He made this point of not being certain of the name, with another uneasy
look at her, which dropped like the last.
Nothing being said on the other side, he had to begin again, and began
with new embarrassment.
‘Your brother’s plans were communicated to me when he first had them in
his thoughts. In point of fact he spoke to me about them when I was
last here—when we were walking back together, and when I—when the
impression was fresh upon me of having seen his sister.’
There might have been no meaning in it, but the little dressmaker here
removed one of her supporting hands from her chin, and musingly turned
the Honourable Mrs T. with her face to the company. That done, she fell
into her former attitude.
‘I approved of his idea,’ said Bradley, with his uneasy look wandering
to the doll, and unconsciously resting there longer than it had
rested on Lizzie, ‘both because your brother ought naturally to be the
originator of any such scheme, and because I hoped to be able to promote
it. I should have had inexpressible pleasure, I should have taken
inexpressible interest, in promoting it. Therefore I must acknowledge
that when your brother was disappointed, I too was disappointed. I wish
to avoid reservation or concealment, and I fully acknowledge that.’
He appeared to have encouraged himself by having got so far. At all
events he went on with much greater firmness and force of emphasis:
though with a curious disposition to set his teeth, and with a curious
tight-screwing movement of his right hand in the clenching palm of his
left, like the action of one who was being physically hurt, and was
unwilling to cry out.
‘I am a man of strong feelings, and I have strongly felt this
disappointment. I do strongly feel it. I don’t show what I feel; some
of us are obliged habitually to keep it down. To keep it down. But to
return to your brother. He has taken the matter so much to heart that
he has remonstrated (in my presence he remonstrated) with Mr Eugene
Wrayburn, if that be the name. He did so, quite ineffectually. As any
one not blinded to the real character of Mr—Mr Eugene Wrayburn—would
readily suppose.’
He looked at Lizzie again, and held the look. And his face turned from
burning red to white, and from white back to burning red, and so for the
time to lasting deadly white.
‘Finally, I resolved to come here alone, and appeal to you. I resolved
to come here alone, and entreat you to retract the course you have
chosen, and instead of confiding in a mere stranger—a person of most
insolent behaviour to your brother and others—to prefer your brother
and your brother’s friend.’
Lizzie Hexam had changed colour when those changes came over him, and
her face now expressed some anger, more dislike, and even a touch of
fear. But she answered him very steadily.
‘I cannot doubt, Mr Headstone, that your visit is well meant. You have
been so good a friend to Charley that I have no right to doubt it. I
have nothing to tell Charley, but that I accepted the help to which he
so much objects before he made any plans for me; or certainly before I
knew of any. It was considerately and delicately offered, and there were
reasons that had weight with me which should be as dear to Charley as to
me. I have no more to say to Charley on this subject.’
His lips trembled and stood apart, as he followed this repudiation of
himself; and limitation of her words to her brother.
‘I should have told Charley, if he had come to me,’ she resumed, as
though it were an after-thought, ‘that Jenny and I find our teacher very
able and very patient, and that she takes great pains with us. So much
so, that we have said to her we hope in a very little while to be able
to go on by ourselves. Charley knows about teachers, and I should also
have told him, for his satisfaction, that ours comes from an institution
where teachers are regularly brought up.’
‘I should like to ask you,’ said Bradley Headstone, grinding his words
slowly out, as though they came from a rusty mill; ‘I should like to
ask you, if I may without offence, whether you would have objected—no;
rather, I should like to say, if I may without offence, that I wish I
had had the opportunity of coming here with your brother and devoting my
poor abilities and experience to your service.’
‘Thank you, Mr Headstone.’
‘But I fear,’ he pursued, after a pause, furtively wrenching at the seat
of his chair with one hand, as if he would have wrenched the chair to
pieces, and gloomily observing her while her eyes were cast down, ‘that
my humble services would not have found much favour with you?’
She made no reply, and the poor stricken wretch sat contending with
himself in a heat of passion and torment. After a while he took out his
handkerchief and wiped his forehead and hands.
‘There is only one thing more I had to say, but it is the most
important. There is a reason against this matter, there is a personal
relation concerned in this matter, not yet explained to you. It might—I
don’t say it would—it might—induce you to think differently. To
proceed under the present circumstances is out of the question. Will you
please come to the understanding that there shall be another interview
on the subject?’
‘With Charley, Mr Headstone?’
‘With—well,’ he answered, breaking off, ‘yes! Say with him too.
Will you please come to the understanding that there must be another
interview under more favourable circumstances, before the whole case can
be submitted?’
‘I don’t,’ said Lizzie, shaking her head, ‘Understand your meaning, Mr
Headstone.’
‘Limit my meaning for the present,’ he interrupted, ‘to the whole case
being submitted to you in another interview.’
‘What case, Mr Headstone? What is wanting to it?’
‘You—you shall be informed in the other interview.’ Then he said, as
if in a burst of irrepressible despair, ‘I—I leave it all incomplete!
There is a spell upon me, I think!’ And then added, almost as if he
asked for pity, ‘Good-night!’
He held out his hand. As she, with manifest hesitation, not to say
reluctance, touched it, a strange tremble passed over him, and his face,
so deadly white, was moved as by a stroke of pain. Then he was gone.
The dolls’ dressmaker sat with her attitude unchanged, eyeing the door
by which he had departed, until Lizzie pushed her bench aside and sat
down near her. Then, eyeing Lizzie as she had previously eyed Bradley
and the door, Miss Wren chopped that very sudden and keen chop in which
her jaws sometimes indulged, leaned back in her chair with folded arms,
and thus expressed herself:
‘Humph! If he—I mean, of course, my dear, the party who is coming to
court me when the time comes—should be THAT sort of man, he may spare
himself the trouble. _He_ wouldn’t do to be trotted about and made
useful. He’d take fire and blow up while he was about it.’
‘And so you would be rid of him,’ said Lizzie, humouring her.
‘Not so easily,’ returned Miss Wren. ‘He wouldn’t blow up alone. He’d
carry me up with him. I know his tricks and his manners.’
‘Would he want to hurt you, do you mean?’ asked Lizzie.
‘Mightn’t exactly want to do it, my dear,’ returned Miss Wren; ‘but a
lot of gunpowder among lighted lucifer-matches in the next room might
almost as well be here.’
‘He is a very strange man,’ said Lizzie, thoughtfully.
‘I wish he was so very strange a man as to be a total stranger,’
answered the sharp little thing.
It being Lizzie’s regular occupation when they were alone of an evening
to brush out and smooth the long fair hair of the dolls’ dressmaker, she
unfastened a ribbon that kept it back while the little creature was at
her work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over the poor shoulders that
were much in need of such adorning rain. ‘Not now, Lizzie, dear,’ said
Jenny; ‘let us have a talk by the fire.’ With those words, she in her
turn loosened her friend’s dark hair, and it dropped of its own weight
over her bosom, in two rich masses. Pretending to compare the colours
and admire the contrast, Jenny so managed a mere touch or two of her
nimble hands, as that she herself laying a cheek on one of the dark
folds, seemed blinded by her own clustering curls to all but the fire,
while the fine handsome face and brow of Lizzie were revealed without
obstruction in the sombre light.
‘Let us have a talk,’ said Jenny, ‘about Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’
Something sparkled down among the fair hair resting on the dark hair;
and if it were not a star—which it couldn’t be—it was an eye; and
if it were an eye, it was Jenny Wren’s eye, bright and watchful as the
bird’s whose name she had taken.
‘Why about Mr Wrayburn?’ Lizzie asked.
‘For no better reason than because I’m in the humour. I wonder whether
he’s rich!’
‘No, not rich.’
‘Poor?’
‘I think so, for a gentleman.’
‘Ah! To be sure! Yes, he’s a gentleman. Not of our sort; is he?’ A shake
of the head, a thoughtful shake of the head, and the answer, softly
spoken, ‘Oh no, oh no!’
The dolls’ dressmaker had an arm round her friend’s waist. Adjusting the
arm, she slyly took the opportunity of blowing at her own hair where
it fell over her face; then the eye down there, under lighter shadows
sparkled more brightly and appeared more watchful.
‘When He turns up, he shan’t be a gentleman; I’ll very soon send him
packing, if he is. However, he’s not Mr Wrayburn; I haven’t captivated
HIM. I wonder whether anybody has, Lizzie!’
‘It is very likely.’
‘Is it very likely? I wonder who!’
‘Is it not very likely that some lady has been taken by him, and that he
may love her dearly?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t know. What would you think of him, Lizzie, if you were
a lady?’
‘I a lady!’ she repeated, laughing. ‘Such a fancy!’
‘Yes. But say: just as a fancy, and for instance.’
‘I a lady! I, a poor girl who used to row poor father on the river. I,
who had rowed poor father out and home on the very night when I saw him
for the first time. I, who was made so timid by his looking at me, that
I got up and went out!’
(‘He did look at you, even that night, though you were not a lady!’
thought Miss Wren.)
‘I a lady!’ Lizzie went on in a low voice, with her eyes upon the fire.
‘I, with poor father’s grave not even cleared of undeserved stain and
shame, and he trying to clear it for me! I a lady!’
‘Only as a fancy, and for instance,’ urged Miss Wren.
‘Too much, Jenny, dear, too much! My fancy is not able to get that far.’
As the low fire gleamed upon her, it showed her smiling, mournfully and
abstractedly.
‘But I am in the humour, and I must be humoured, Lizzie, because after
all I am a poor little thing, and have had a hard day with my bad child.
Look in the fire, as I like to hear you tell how you used to do when you
lived in that dreary old house that had once been a windmill. Look in
the—what was its name when you told fortunes with your brother that I
DON’T like?’
‘The hollow down by the flare?’
‘Ah! That’s the name! You can find a lady there, I know.’
‘More easily than I can make one of such material as myself, Jenny.’
The sparkling eye looked steadfastly up, as the musing face looked
thoughtfully down. ‘Well?’ said the dolls’ dressmaker, ‘We have found
our lady?’
Lizzie nodded, and asked, ‘Shall she be rich?’
‘She had better be, as he’s poor.’
‘She is very rich. Shall she be handsome?’
‘Even you can be that, Lizzie, so she ought to be.’
‘She is very handsome.’
‘What does she say about him?’ asked Miss Jenny, in a low voice:
watchful, through an intervening silence, of the face looking down at
the fire.
‘She is glad, glad, to be rich, that he may have the money. She is glad,
glad, to be beautiful, that he may be proud of her. Her poor heart—’
‘Eh? Her poor heart?’ said Miss Wren.
‘Her heart—is given him, with all its love and truth. She would
joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows he
has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like
one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and
think well of. And she says, that lady rich and beautiful that I can
never come near, “Only put me in that empty place, only try how little
I mind myself, only prove what a world of things I will do and bear for
you, and I hope that you might even come to be much better than you are,
through me who am so much worse, and hardly worth the thinking of beside
you.”’
As the face looking at the fire had become exalted and forgetful in the
rapture of these words, the little creature, openly clearing away
her fair hair with her disengaged hand, had gazed at it with earnest
attention and something like alarm. Now that the speaker ceased, the
little creature laid down her head again, and moaned, ‘O me, O me, O
me!’
‘In pain, dear Jenny?’ asked Lizzie, as if awakened.
‘Yes, but not the old pain. Lay me down, lay me down. Don’t go out of
my sight to-night. Lock the door and keep close to me.’ Then turning away
her face, she said in a whisper to herself, ‘My Lizzie, my poor Lizzie!
O my blessed children, come back in the long bright slanting rows, and
come for her, not me. She wants help more than I, my blessed children!’
She had stretched her hands up with that higher and better look, and
now she turned again, and folded them round Lizzie’s neck, and rocked
herself on Lizzie’s breast.
Chapter 12
MORE BIRDS OF PREY
Rogue Riderhood dwelt deep and dark in Limehouse Hole, among the
riggers, and the mast, oar and block makers, and the boat-builders, and
the sail-lofts, as in a kind of ship’s hold stored full of waterside
characters, some no better than himself, some very much better, and
none much worse. The Hole, albeit in a general way not over nice in
its choice of company, was rather shy in reference to the honour of
cultivating the Rogue’s acquaintance; more frequently giving him the
cold shoulder than the warm hand, and seldom or never drinking with him
unless at his own expense. A part of the Hole, indeed, contained so
much public spirit and private virtue that not even this strong leverage
could move it to good fellowship with a tainted accuser. But, there may
have been the drawback on this magnanimous morality, that its exponents
held a true witness before Justice to be the next unneighbourly and
accursed character to a false one.
Had it not been for the daughter whom he often mentioned, Mr Riderhood
might have found the Hole a mere grave as to any means it would yield
him of getting a living. But Miss Pleasant Riderhood had some little
position and connection in Limehouse Hole. Upon the smallest of small
scales, she was an unlicensed pawnbroker, keeping what was popularly
called a Leaving Shop, by lending insignificant sums on insignificant
articles of property deposited with her as security. In her
four-and-twentieth year of life, Pleasant was already in her fifth year
of this way of trade. Her deceased mother had established the business,
and on that parent’s demise she had appropriated a secret capital of
fifteen shillings to establishing herself in it; the existence of
such capital in a pillow being the last intelligible confidential
communication made to her by the departed, before succumbing to
dropsical conditions of snuff and gin, incompatible equally with
coherence and existence.
Why christened Pleasant, the late Mrs Riderhood might possibly have
been at some time able to explain, and possibly not. Her daughter had no
information on that point. Pleasant she found herself, and she couldn’t
help it. She had not been consulted on the question, any more than on
the question of her coming into these terrestrial parts, to want a name.
Similarly, she found herself possessed of what is colloquially termed
a swivel eye (derived from her father), which she might perhaps have
declined if her sentiments on the subject had been taken. She was not
otherwise positively ill-looking, though anxious, meagre, of a muddy
complexion, and looking as old again as she really was.
As some dogs have it in the blood, or are trained, to worry certain
creatures to a certain point, so—not to make the comparison
disrespectfully—Pleasant Riderhood had it in the blood, or had been
trained, to regard seamen, within certain limits, as her prey. Show
her a man in a blue jacket, and, figuratively speaking, she pinned him
instantly. Yet, all things considered, she was not of an evil mind or an
unkindly disposition. For, observe how many things were to be considered
according to her own unfortunate experience. Show Pleasant Riderhood a
Wedding in the street, and she only saw two people taking out a regular
licence to quarrel and fight. Show her a Christening, and she saw a
little heathen personage having a quite superfluous name bestowed upon
it, inasmuch as it would be commonly addressed by some abusive epithet:
which little personage was not in the least wanted by anybody, and would
be shoved and banged out of everybody’s way, until it should grow
big enough to shove and bang. Show her a Funeral, and she saw an
unremunerative ceremony in the nature of a black masquerade, conferring
a temporary gentility on the performers, at an immense expense, and
representing the only formal party ever given by the deceased. Show her
a live father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own father, who from
her infancy had been taken with fits and starts of discharging his duty
to her, which duty was always incorporated in the form of a fist or a
leathern strap, and being discharged hurt her. All things considered,
therefore, Pleasant Riderhood was not so very, very bad. There was even
a touch of romance in her—of such romance as could creep into Limehouse
Hole—and maybe sometimes of a summer evening, when she stood with
folded arms at her shop-door, looking from the reeking street to the
sky where the sun was setting, she may have had some vaporous visions
of far-off islands in the southern seas or elsewhere (not being
geographically particular), where it would be good to roam with a
congenial partner among groves of bread-fruit, waiting for ships to be
wafted from the hollow ports of civilization. For, sailors to be got the
better of, were essential to Miss Pleasant’s Eden.
Not on a summer evening did she come to her little shop-door, when a
certain man standing over against the house on the opposite side of
the street took notice of her. That was on a cold shrewd windy evening,
after dark. Pleasant Riderhood shared with most of the lady inhabitants
of the Hole, the peculiarity that her hair was a ragged knot, constantly
coming down behind, and that she never could enter upon any undertaking
without first twisting it into place. At that particular moment, being
newly come to the threshold to take a look out of doors, she was winding
herself up with both hands after this fashion. And so prevalent was the
fashion, that on the occasion of a fight or other disturbance in the
Hole, the ladies would be seen flocking from all quarters universally
twisting their back-hair as they came along, and many of them, in the
hurry of the moment, carrying their back-combs in their mouths.
It was a wretched little shop, with a roof that any man standing in it
could touch with his hand; little better than a cellar or cave, down
three steps. Yet in its ill-lighted window, among a flaring handkerchief
or two, an old peacoat or so, a few valueless watches and compasses, a
jar of tobacco and two crossed pipes, a bottle of walnut ketchup, and
some horrible sweets these—creature discomforts serving as a blind to
the main business of the Leaving Shop—was displayed the inscription
SEAMAN’S BOARDING-HOUSE.
Taking notice of Pleasant Riderhood at the door, the man crossed so
quickly that she was still winding herself up, when he stood close
before her.
‘Is your father at home?’ said he.
‘I think he is,’ returned Pleasant, dropping her arms; ‘come in.’
It was a tentative reply, the man having a seafaring appearance. Her
father was not at home, and Pleasant knew it. ‘Take a seat by the fire,’
were her hospitable words when she had got him in; ‘men of your calling
are always welcome here.’
‘Thankee,’ said the man.
His manner was the manner of a sailor, and his hands were the hands of
a sailor, except that they were smooth. Pleasant had an eye for sailors,
and she noticed the unused colour and texture of the hands, sunburnt
though they were, as sharply as she noticed their unmistakable looseness
and suppleness, as he sat himself down with his left arm carelessly
thrown across his left leg a little above the knee, and the right arm
as carelessly thrown over the elbow of the wooden chair, with the hand
curved, half open and half shut, as if it had just let go a rope.
‘Might you be looking for a Boarding-House?’ Pleasant inquired, taking
her observant stand on one side of the fire.
‘I don’t rightly know my plans yet,’ returned the man.
‘You ain’t looking for a Leaving Shop?’
‘No,’ said the man.
‘No,’ assented Pleasant, ‘you’ve got too much of an outfit on you for
that. But if you should want either, this is both.’
‘Ay, ay!’ said the man, glancing round the place. ‘I know. I’ve been
here before.’
‘Did you Leave anything when you were here before?’ asked Pleasant, with
a view to principal and interest.
‘No.’ The man shook his head.
‘I am pretty sure you never boarded here?’
‘No.’ The man again shook his head.
‘What DID you do here when you were here before?’ asked Pleasant. ‘For I
don’t remember you.’
‘It’s not at all likely you should. I only stood at the door, one
night—on the lower step there—while a shipmate of mine looked in to
speak to your father. I remember the place well.’ Looking very curiously
round it.
‘Might that have been long ago?’
‘Ay, a goodish bit ago. When I came off my last voyage.’
‘Then you have not been to sea lately?’
‘No. Been in the sick bay since then, and been employed ashore.’
‘Then, to be sure, that accounts for your hands.’
The man with a keen look, a quick smile, and a change of manner, caught
her up. ‘You’re a good observer. Yes. That accounts for my hands.’
Pleasant was somewhat disquieted by his look, and returned it
suspiciously. Not only was his change of manner, though very sudden,
quite collected, but his former manner, which he resumed, had a
certain suppressed confidence and sense of power in it that were half
threatening.
‘Will your father be long?’ he inquired.
‘I don’t know. I can’t say.’
‘As you supposed he was at home, it would seem that he has just gone
out? How’s that?’
‘I supposed he had come home,’ Pleasant explained.
‘Oh! You supposed he had come home? Then he has been some time out?
How’s that?’
‘I don’t want to deceive you. Father’s on the river in his boat.’
‘At the old work?’ asked the man.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Pleasant, shrinking a step back.
‘What on earth d’ye want?’
‘I don’t want to hurt your father. I don’t want to say I might, if I
chose. I want to speak to him. Not much in that, is there? There shall
be no secrets from you; you shall be by. And plainly, Miss Riderhood,
there’s nothing to be got out of me, or made of me. I am not good for
the Leaving Shop, I am not good for the Boarding-House, I am not good
for anything in your way to the extent of sixpenn’orth of halfpence. Put
the idea aside, and we shall get on together.’
‘But you’re a seafaring man?’ argued Pleasant, as if that were a
sufficient reason for his being good for something in her way.
‘Yes and no. I have been, and I may be again. But I am not for you.
Won’t you take my word for it?’
The conversation had arrived at a crisis to justify Miss Pleasant’s hair
in tumbling down. It tumbled down accordingly, and she twisted it up,
looking from under her bent forehead at the man. In taking stock of his
familiarly worn rough-weather nautical clothes, piece by piece, she took
stock of a formidable knife in a sheath at his waist ready to his hand,
and of a whistle hanging round his neck, and of a short jagged knotted
club with a loaded head that peeped out of a pocket of his loose
outer jacket or frock. He sat quietly looking at her; but, with these
appendages partially revealing themselves, and with a quantity
of bristling oakum-coloured head and whisker, he had a formidable
appearance.
‘Won’t you take my word for it?’ he asked again.
Pleasant answered with a short dumb nod. He rejoined with another short
dumb nod. Then he got up and stood with his arms folded, in front of
the fire, looking down into it occasionally, as she stood with her arms
folded, leaning against the side of the chimney-piece.
‘To wile away the time till your father comes,’ he said,—‘pray is there
much robbing and murdering of seamen about the water-side now?’
‘No,’ said Pleasant.
‘Any?’
‘Complaints of that sort are sometimes made, about Ratcliffe and Wapping
and up that way. But who knows how many are true?’
‘To be sure. And it don’t seem necessary.’
‘That’s what I say,’ observed Pleasant. ‘Where’s the reason for it?
Bless the sailors, it ain’t as if they ever could keep what they have,
without it.’
‘You’re right. Their money may be soon got out of them, without
violence,’ said the man.
‘Of course it may,’ said Pleasant; ‘and then they ship again and get
more. And the best thing for ’em, too, to ship again as soon as ever
they can be brought to it. They’re never so well off as when they’re
afloat.’
‘I’ll tell you why I ask,’ pursued the visitor, looking up from the
fire. ‘I was once beset that way myself, and left for dead.’
‘No?’ said Pleasant. ‘Where did it happen?’
‘It happened,’ returned the man, with a ruminative air, as he drew his
right hand across his chin, and dipped the other in the pocket of his
rough outer coat, ‘it happened somewhere about here as I reckon. I don’t
think it can have been a mile from here.’
‘Were you drunk?’ asked Pleasant.
‘I was muddled, but not with fair drinking. I had not been drinking, you
understand. A mouthful did it.’
Pleasant with a grave look shook her head; importing that she understood
the process, but decidedly disapproved.
‘Fair trade is one thing,’ said she, ‘but that’s another. No one has a
right to carry on with Jack in THAT way.’
‘The sentiment does you credit,’ returned the man, with a grim smile;
and added, in a mutter, ‘the more so, as I believe it’s not your
father’s.—Yes, I had a bad time of it, that time. I lost everything,
and had a sharp struggle for my life, weak as I was.’
‘Did you get the parties punished?’ asked Pleasant.
‘A tremendous punishment followed,’ said the man, more seriously; ‘but
it was not of my bringing about.’
‘Of whose, then?’ asked Pleasant.
The man pointed upward with his forefinger, and, slowly recovering that
hand, settled his chin in it again as he looked at the fire. Bringing
her inherited eye to bear upon him, Pleasant Riderhood felt more
and more uncomfortable, his manner was so mysterious, so stern, so
self-possessed.
‘Anyways,’ said the damsel, ‘I am glad punishment followed, and I say
so. Fair trade with seafaring men gets a bad name through deeds of
violence. I am as much against deeds of violence being done to seafaring
men, as seafaring men can be themselves. I am of the same opinion as my
mother was, when she was living. Fair trade, my mother used to say, but
no robbery and no blows.’ In the way of trade Miss Pleasant would have
taken—and indeed did take when she could—as much as thirty shillings
a week for board that would be dear at five, and likewise conducted the
Leaving business upon correspondingly equitable principles; yet she had
that tenderness of conscience and those feelings of humanity, that the
moment her ideas of trade were overstepped, she became the seaman’s
champion, even against her father whom she seldom otherwise resisted.
But, she was here interrupted by her father’s voice exclaiming angrily,
‘Now, Poll Parrot!’ and by her father’s hat being heavily flung from his
hand and striking her face. Accustomed to such occasional manifestations
of his sense of parental duty, Pleasant merely wiped her face on her
hair (which of course had tumbled down) before she twisted it up. This
was another common procedure on the part of the ladies of the Hole, when
heated by verbal or fistic altercation.
‘Blest if I believe such a Poll Parrot as you was ever learned to
speak!’ growled Mr Riderhood, stooping to pick up his hat, and making
a feint at her with his head and right elbow; for he took the delicate
subject of robbing seamen in extraordinary dudgeon, and was out of
humour too. ‘What are you Poll Parroting at now? Ain’t you got nothing
to do but fold your arms and stand a Poll Parroting all night?’
‘Let her alone,’ urged the man. ‘She was only speaking to me.’
‘Let her alone too!’ retorted Mr Riderhood, eyeing him all over. ‘Do you
know she’s my daughter?’
‘Yes.’
‘And don’t you know that I won’t have no Poll Parroting on the part of
my daughter? No, nor yet that I won’t take no Poll Parroting from no
man? And who may YOU be, and what may YOU want?’
‘How can I tell you until you are silent?’ returned the other fiercely.
‘Well,’ said Mr Riderhood, quailing a little, ‘I am willing to be silent
for the purpose of hearing. But don’t Poll Parrot me.’
‘Are you thirsty, you?’ the man asked, in the same fierce short way,
after returning his look.
‘Why nat’rally,’ said Mr Riderhood, ‘ain’t I always thirsty!’ (Indignant
at the absurdity of the question.)
‘What will you drink?’ demanded the man.
‘Sherry wine,’ returned Mr Riderhood, in the same sharp tone, ‘if you’re
capable of it.’
The man put his hand in his pocket, took out half a sovereign, and
begged the favour of Miss Pleasant that she would fetch a bottle. ‘With
the cork undrawn,’ he added, emphatically, looking at her father.
‘I’ll take my Alfred David,’ muttered Mr Riderhood, slowly relaxing into
a dark smile, ‘that you know a move. Do I know YOU? N—n—no, I don’t
know you.’
The man replied, ‘No, you don’t know me.’ And so they stood looking at
one another surlily enough, until Pleasant came back.
‘There’s small glasses on the shelf,’ said Riderhood to his daughter.
‘Give me the one without a foot. I gets my living by the sweat of my
brow, and it’s good enough for ME.’ This had a modest self-denying
appearance; but it soon turned out that as, by reason of the
impossibility of standing the glass upright while there was anything in
it, it required to be emptied as soon as filled, Mr Riderhood managed to
drink in the proportion of three to one.
With his Fortunatus’s goblet ready in his hand, Mr Riderhood sat down on
one side of the table before the fire, and the strange man on the other:
Pleasant occupying a stool between the latter and the fireside. The
background, composed of handkerchiefs, coats, shirts, hats, and other
old articles ‘On Leaving,’ had a general dim resemblance to human
listeners; especially where a shiny black sou’wester suit and hat hung,
looking very like a clumsy mariner with his back to the company, who
was so curious to overhear, that he paused for the purpose with his
coat half pulled on, and his shoulders up to his ears in the uncompleted
action.
The visitor first held the bottle against the light of the candle,
and next examined the top of the cork. Satisfied that it had not been
tampered with, he slowly took from his breastpocket a rusty clasp-knife,
and, with a corkscrew in the handle, opened the wine. That done,
he looked at the cork, unscrewed it from the corkscrew, laid each
separately on the table, and, with the end of the sailor’s knot of his
neckerchief, dusted the inside of the neck of the bottle. All this with
great deliberation.
At first Riderhood had sat with his footless glass extended at arm’s
length for filling, while the very deliberate stranger seemed absorbed
in his preparations. But, gradually his arm reverted home to him, and
his glass was lowered and lowered until he rested it upside down upon
the table. By the same degrees his attention became concentrated on
the knife. And now, as the man held out the bottle to fill all round,
Riderhood stood up, leaned over the table to look closer at the knife,
and stared from it to him.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked the man.
‘Why, I know that knife!’ said Riderhood.
‘Yes, I dare say you do.’
He motioned to him to hold up his glass, and filled it. Riderhood
emptied it to the last drop and began again.
‘That there knife—’
‘Stop,’ said the man, composedly. ‘I was going to drink to your
daughter. Your health, Miss Riderhood.’
‘That knife was the knife of a seaman named George Radfoot.’
‘It was.’
‘That seaman was well beknown to me.’
‘He was.’
‘What’s come to him?’
‘Death has come to him. Death came to him in an ugly shape. He looked,’
said the man, ‘very horrible after it.’
‘Arter what?’ said Riderhood, with a frowning stare.
‘After he was killed.’
‘Killed? Who killed him?’
Only answering with a shrug, the man filled the footless glass, and
Riderhood emptied it: looking amazedly from his daughter to his visitor.
‘You don’t mean to tell a honest man—’ he was recommencing with
his empty glass in his hand, when his eye became fascinated by the
stranger’s outer coat. He leaned across the table to see it nearer,
touched the sleeve, turned the cuff to look at the sleeve-lining (the
man, in his perfect composure, offering not the least objection), and
exclaimed, ‘It’s my belief as this here coat was George Radfoot’s too!’
‘You are right. He wore it the last time you ever saw him, and the last
time you ever will see him—in this world.’
‘It’s my belief you mean to tell me to my face you killed him!’
exclaimed Riderhood; but, nevertheless, allowing his glass to be filled
again.
The man only answered with another shrug, and showed no symptom of
confusion.
‘Wish I may die if I know what to be up to with this chap!’ said
Riderhood, after staring at him, and tossing his last glassful down his
throat. ‘Let’s know what to make of you. Say something plain.’
‘I will,’ returned the other, leaning forward across the table, and
speaking in a low impressive voice. ‘What a liar you are!’
The honest witness rose, and made as though he would fling his glass in
the man’s face. The man not wincing, and merely shaking his forefinger
half knowingly, half menacingly, the piece of honesty thought better of
it and sat down again, putting the glass down too.
‘And when you went to that lawyer yonder in the Temple with that
invented story,’ said the stranger, in an exasperatingly comfortable
sort of confidence, ‘you might have had your strong suspicions of a
friend of your own, you know. I think you had, you know.’
‘Me my suspicions? Of what friend?’
‘Tell me again whose knife was this?’ demanded the man.
‘It was possessed by, and was the property of—him as I have made
mention on,’ said Riderhood, stupidly evading the actual mention of the
name.
‘Tell me again whose coat was this?’
‘That there article of clothing likeways belonged to, and was wore
by—him as I have made mention on,’ was again the dull Old Bailey
evasion.
‘I suspect that you gave him the credit of the deed, and of keeping
cleverly out of the way. But there was small cleverness in HIS keeping
out of the way. The cleverness would have been, to have got back for one
single instant to the light of the sun.’
‘Things is come to a pretty pass,’ growled Mr Riderhood, rising to his
feet, goaded to stand at bay, ‘when bullyers as is wearing dead men’s
clothes, and bullyers as is armed with dead men’s knives, is to come
into the houses of honest live men, getting their livings by the sweats
of their brows, and is to make these here sort of charges with no rhyme
and no reason, neither the one nor yet the other! Why should I have had
my suspicions of him?’
‘Because you knew him,’ replied the man; ‘because you had been one with
him, and knew his real character under a fair outside; because on the
night which you had afterwards reason to believe to be the very night of
the murder, he came in here, within an hour of his having left his ship
in the docks, and asked you in what lodgings he could find room. Was
there no stranger with him?’