‘In bygone days, when I was in service myself,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘I

couldn’t go cutting about at my will and pleasure, and you won’t expect

to go cutting about at your will and pleasure. You’ve rather got into

a habit of that, lately; but perhaps it was for want of a right

specification betwixt us. Now, let there be a right specification

betwixt us, and let it be this. If you want leave, ask for it.’

Again the Secretary bowed. His manner was uneasy and astonished, and

showed a sense of humiliation.

‘I’ll have a bell,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘hung from this room to yours,

and when I want you, I’ll touch it. I don’t call to mind that I have

anything more to say at the present moment.’

The Secretary rose, gathered up his papers, and withdrew. Bella’s eyes

followed him to the door, lighted on Mr Boffin complacently thrown back

in his easy chair, and drooped over her book.

‘I have let that chap, that young man of mine,’ said Mr Boffin, taking a

trot up and down the room, ‘get above his work. It won’t do. I must have

him down a peg. A man of property owes a duty to other men of property,

and must look sharp after his inferiors.’

Bella felt that Mrs Boffin was not comfortable, and that the eyes of

that good creature sought to discover from her face what attention she

had given to this discourse, and what impression it had made upon her.

For which reason Bella’s eyes drooped more engrossedly over her book,

and she turned the page with an air of profound absorption in it.

‘Noddy,’ said Mrs Boffin, after thoughtfully pausing in her work.

‘My dear,’ returned the Golden Dustman, stopping short in his trot.

‘Excuse my putting it to you, Noddy, but now really! Haven’t you been

a little strict with Mr Rokesmith to-night? Haven’t you been a

little—just a little little—not quite like your old self?’

‘Why, old woman, I hope so,’ returned Mr Boffin, cheerfully, if not

boastfully.

‘Hope so, deary?’

‘Our old selves wouldn’t do here, old lady. Haven’t you found that out

yet? Our old selves would be fit for nothing here but to be robbed and

imposed upon. Our old selves weren’t people of fortune; our new selves

are; it’s a great difference.’

‘Ah!’ said Mrs Boffin, pausing in her work again, softly to draw a long

breath and to look at the fire. ‘A great difference.’

‘And we must be up to the difference,’ pursued her husband; ‘we must be

equal to the change; that’s what we must be. We’ve got to hold our own

now, against everybody (for everybody’s hand is stretched out to be

dipped into our pockets), and we have got to recollect that money makes

money, as well as makes everything else.’

‘Mentioning recollecting,’ said Mrs Boffin, with her work abandoned,

her eyes upon the fire, and her chin upon her hand, ‘do you recollect,

Noddy, how you said to Mr Rokesmith when he first came to see us at the

Bower, and you engaged him—how you said to him that if it had pleased

Heaven to send John Harmon to his fortune safe, we could have been

content with the one Mound which was our legacy, and should never have

wanted the rest?’

‘Ay, I remember, old lady. But we hadn’t tried what it was to have the

rest then. Our new shoes had come home, but we hadn’t put ’em on. We’re

wearing ’em now, we’re wearing ’em, and must step out accordingly.’

Mrs Boffin took up her work again, and plied her needle in silence.

‘As to Rokesmith, that young man of mine,’ said Mr Boffin, dropping

his voice and glancing towards the door with an apprehension of being

overheard by some eavesdropper there, ‘it’s the same with him as with

the footmen. I have found out that you must either scrunch them, or let

them scrunch you. If you ain’t imperious with ’em, they won’t believe

in your being any better than themselves, if as good, after the stories

(lies mostly) that they have heard of your beginnings. There’s nothing

betwixt stiffening yourself up, and throwing yourself away; take my word

for that, old lady.’

Bella ventured for a moment to look stealthily towards him under her

eyelashes, and she saw a dark cloud of suspicion, covetousness, and

conceit, overshadowing the once open face.

‘Hows’ever,’ said he, ‘this isn’t entertaining to Miss Bella. Is it,

Bella?’

A deceiving Bella she was, to look at him with that pensively abstracted

air, as if her mind were full of her book, and she had not heard a

single word!

‘Hah! Better employed than to attend to it,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘That’s

right, that’s right. Especially as you have no call to be told how to

value yourself, my dear.’

Colouring a little under this compliment, Bella returned, ‘I hope sir,

you don’t think me vain?’

‘Not a bit, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘But I think it’s very creditable

in you, at your age, to be so well up with the pace of the world, and to

know what to go in for. You are right. Go in for money, my love. Money’s

the article. You’ll make money of your good looks, and of the money Mrs

Boffin and me will have the pleasure of settling upon you, and you’ll

live and die rich. That’s the state to live and die in!’ said Mr Boffin,

in an unctuous manner. ‘R—r—rich!’

There was an expression of distress in Mrs Boffin’s face, as, after

watching her husband’s, she turned to their adopted girl, and said:

‘Don’t mind him, Bella, my dear.’

‘Eh?’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘What! Not mind him?’

‘I don’t mean that,’ said Mrs Boffin, with a worried look, ‘but I mean,

don’t believe him to be anything but good and generous, Bella, because

he is the best of men. No, I must say that much, Noddy. You are always

the best of men.’

She made the declaration as if he were objecting to it: which assuredly

he was not in any way.

‘And as to you, my dear Bella,’ said Mrs Boffin, still with that

distressed expression, ‘he is so much attached to you, whatever he says,

that your own father has not a truer interest in you and can hardly like

you better than he does.’

‘Says too!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘Whatever he says! Why, I say so, openly.

Give me a kiss, my dear child, in saying Good Night, and let me confirm

what my old lady tells you. I am very fond of you, my dear, and I am

entirely of your mind, and you and I will take care that you shall be

rich. These good looks of yours (which you have some right to be vain

of; my dear, though you are not, you know) are worth money, and you

shall make money of ’em. The money you will have, will be worth money,

and you shall make money of that too. There’s a golden ball at your

feet. Good night, my dear.’

Somehow, Bella was not so well pleased with this assurance and this

prospect as she might have been. Somehow, when she put her arms

round Mrs Boffin’s neck and said Good Night, she derived a sense of

unworthiness from the still anxious face of that good woman and her

obvious wish to excuse her husband. ‘Why, what need to excuse him?’

thought Bella, sitting down in her own room. ‘What he said was very

sensible, I am sure, and very true, I am sure. It is only what I often

say to myself. Don’t I like it then? No, I don’t like it, and, though

he is my liberal benefactor, I disparage him for it. Then pray,’ said

Bella, sternly putting the question to herself in the looking-glass as

usual, ‘what do you mean by this, you inconsistent little Beast?’

The looking-glass preserving a discreet ministerial silence when thus

called upon for explanation, Bella went to bed with a weariness upon her

spirit which was more than the weariness of want of sleep. And again

in the morning, she looked for the cloud, and for the deepening of the

cloud, upon the Golden Dustman’s face.

She had begun by this time to be his frequent companion in his morning

strolls about the streets, and it was at this time that he made her a

party to his engaging in a curious pursuit. Having been hard at work in

one dull enclosure all his life, he had a child’s delight in looking

at shops. It had been one of the first novelties and pleasures of his

freedom, and was equally the delight of his wife. For many years their

only walks in London had been taken on Sundays when the shops were shut;

and when every day in the week became their holiday, they derived an

enjoyment from the variety and fancy and beauty of the display in the

windows, which seemed incapable of exhaustion. As if the principal

streets were a great Theatre and the play were childishly new to them,

Mr and Mrs Boffin, from the beginning of Bella’s intimacy in their

house, had been constantly in the front row, charmed with all they saw

and applauding vigorously. But now, Mr Boffin’s interest began to centre

in book-shops; and more than that—for that of itself would not have

been much—in one exceptional kind of book.

‘Look in here, my dear,’ Mr Boffin would say, checking Bella’s arm at a

bookseller’s window; ‘you can read at sight, and your eyes are as sharp

as they’re bright. Now, look well about you, my dear, and tell me if you

see any book about a Miser.’

If Bella saw such a book, Mr Boffin would instantly dart in and buy

it. And still, as if they had not found it, they would seek out another

book-shop, and Mr Boffin would say, ‘Now, look well all round, my

dear, for a Life of a Miser, or any book of that sort; any Lives of odd

characters who may have been Misers.’

Bella, thus directed, would examine the window with the greatest

attention, while Mr Boffin would examine her face. The moment she

pointed out any book as being entitled Lives of eccentric personages,

Anecdotes of strange characters, Records of remarkable individuals, or

anything to that purpose, Mr Boffin’s countenance would light up, and

he would instantly dart in and buy it. Size, price, quality, were of no

account. Any book that seemed to promise a chance of miserly biography,

Mr Boffin purchased without a moment’s delay and carried home. Happening

to be informed by a bookseller that a portion of the Annual Register was

devoted to ‘Characters’, Mr Boffin at once bought a whole set of that

ingenious compilation, and began to carry it home piecemeal, confiding

a volume to Bella, and bearing three himself. The completion of this

labour occupied them about a fortnight. When the task was done, Mr

Boffin, with his appetite for Misers whetted instead of satiated, began

to look out again.

It very soon became unnecessary to tell Bella what to look for, and an

understanding was established between her and Mr Boffin that she was

always to look for Lives of Misers. Morning after morning they roamed

about the town together, pursuing this singular research. Miserly

literature not being abundant, the proportion of failures to successes

may have been as a hundred to one; still Mr Boffin, never wearied,

remained as avaricious for misers as he had been at the first onset. It

was curious that Bella never saw the books about the house, nor did she

ever hear from Mr Boffin one word of reference to their contents. He

seemed to save up his Misers as they had saved up their money. As they

had been greedy for it, and secret about it, and had hidden it, so he

was greedy for them, and secret about them, and hid them. But beyond all

doubt it was to be noticed, and was by Bella very clearly noticed, that,

as he pursued the acquisition of those dismal records with the ardour of

Don Quixote for his books of chivalry, he began to spend his money with

a more sparing hand. And often when he came out of a shop with some new

account of one of those wretched lunatics, she would almost shrink from

the sly dry chuckle with which he would take her arm again and trot

away. It did not appear that Mrs Boffin knew of this taste. He made

no allusion to it, except in the morning walks when he and Bella were

always alone; and Bella, partly under the impression that he took her

into his confidence by implication, and partly in remembrance of Mrs

Boffin’s anxious face that night, held the same reserve.

While these occurrences were in progress, Mrs Lammle made the discovery

that Bella had a fascinating influence over her. The Lammles, originally

presented by the dear Veneerings, visited the Boffins on all grand

occasions, and Mrs Lammle had not previously found this out; but now the

knowledge came upon her all at once. It was a most extraordinary thing

(she said to Mrs Boffin); she was foolishly susceptible of the power of

beauty, but it wasn’t altogether that; she never had been able to resist

a natural grace of manner, but it wasn’t altogether that; it was more

than that, and there was no name for the indescribable extent and degree

to which she was captivated by this charming girl.

This charming girl having the words repeated to her by Mrs Boffin (who

was proud of her being admired, and would have done anything to give her

pleasure), naturally recognized in Mrs Lammle a woman of penetration

and taste. Responding to the sentiments, by being very gracious to Mrs

Lammle, she gave that lady the means of so improving her opportunity,

as that the captivation became reciprocal, though always wearing an

appearance of greater sobriety on Bella’s part than on the enthusiastic

Sophronia’s. Howbeit, they were so much together that, for a time, the

Boffin chariot held Mrs Lammle oftener than Mrs Boffin: a preference

of which the latter worthy soul was not in the least jealous, placidly

remarking, ‘Mrs Lammle is a younger companion for her than I am, and

Lor! she’s more fashionable.’

But between Bella Wilfer and Georgiana Podsnap there was this one

difference, among many others, that Bella was in no danger of being

captivated by Alfred. She distrusted and disliked him. Indeed, her

perception was so quick, and her observation so sharp, that after all

she mistrusted his wife too, though with her giddy vanity and wilfulness

she squeezed the mistrust away into a corner of her mind, and blocked it

up there.

Mrs Lammle took the friendliest interest in Bella’s making a good match.

Mrs Lammle said, in a sportive way, she really must show her beautiful

Bella what kind of wealthy creatures she and Alfred had on hand, who

would as one man fall at her feet enslaved. Fitting occasion made,

Mrs Lammle accordingly produced the most passable of those feverish,

boastful, and indefinably loose gentlemen who were always lounging in

and out of the City on questions of the Bourse and Greek and Spanish and

India and Mexican and par and premium and discount and three-quarters

and seven-eighths. Who in their agreeable manner did homage to Bella

as if she were a compound of fine girl, thorough-bred horse, well-built

drag, and remarkable pipe. But without the least effect, though even Mr

Fledgeby’s attractions were cast into the scale.

‘I fear, Bella dear,’ said Mrs Lammle one day in the chariot, ‘that you

will be very hard to please.’

‘I don’t expect to be pleased, dear,’ said Bella, with a languid turn of

her eyes.

‘Truly, my love,’ returned Sophronia, shaking her head, and smiling

her best smile, ‘it would not be very easy to find a man worthy of your

attractions.’

‘The question is not a man, my dear,’ said Bella, coolly, ‘but an

establishment.’

‘My love,’ returned Mrs Lammle, ‘your prudence amazes me—where DID you

study life so well!—you are right. In such a case as yours, the object

is a fitting establishment. You could not descend to an inadequate one

from Mr Boffin’s house, and even if your beauty alone could not command

it, it is to be assumed that Mr and Mrs Boffin will—’

‘Oh! they have already,’ Bella interposed.

‘No! Have they really?’

A little vexed by a suspicion that she had spoken precipitately, and

withal a little defiant of her own vexation, Bella determined not to

retreat.

‘That is to say,’ she explained, ‘they have told me they mean to portion

me as their adopted child, if you mean that. But don’t mention it.’

‘Mention it!’ replied Mrs Lammle, as if she were full of awakened

feeling at the suggestion of such an impossibility. ‘Men-tion it!’

‘I don’t mind telling you, Mrs Lammle—’ Bella began again.

‘My love, say Sophronia, or I must not say Bella.’

With a little short, petulant ‘Oh!’ Bella complied. ‘Oh!—Sophronia

then—I don’t mind telling you, Sophronia, that I am convinced I have

no heart, as people call it; and that I think that sort of thing is

nonsense.’

‘Brave girl!’ murmured Mrs Lammle.

‘And so,’ pursued Bella, ‘as to seeking to please myself, I don’t;

except in the one respect I have mentioned. I am indifferent otherwise.’

‘But you can’t help pleasing, Bella,’ said Mrs Lammle, rallying her with

an arch look and her best smile, ‘you can’t help making a proud and an

admiring husband. You may not care to please yourself, and you may not

care to please him, but you are not a free agent as to pleasing: you

are forced to do that, in spite of yourself, my dear; so it may be a

question whether you may not as well please yourself too, if you can.’

Now, the very grossness of this flattery put Bella upon proving that she

actually did please in spite of herself. She had a misgiving that she

was doing wrong—though she had an indistinct foreshadowing that some

harm might come of it thereafter, she little thought what consequences

it would really bring about—but she went on with her confidence.

‘Don’t talk of pleasing in spite of one’s self, dear,’ said Bella. ‘I

have had enough of that.’

‘Ay?’ cried Mrs Lammle. ‘Am I already corroborated, Bella?’

‘Never mind, Sophronia, we will not speak of it any more. Don’t ask me

about it.’

This plainly meaning Do ask me about it, Mrs Lammle did as she was

requested.

‘Tell me, Bella. Come, my dear. What provoking burr has been

inconveniently attracted to the charming skirts, and with difficulty

shaken off?’

‘Provoking indeed,’ said Bella, ‘and no burr to boast of! But don’t ask

me.’

‘Shall I guess?’

‘You would never guess. What would you say to our Secretary?’

‘My dear! The hermit Secretary, who creeps up and down the back stairs,

and is never seen!’

‘I don’t know about his creeping up and down the back stairs,’ said

Bella, rather contemptuously, ‘further than knowing that he does no such

thing; and as to his never being seen, I should be content never to have

seen him, though he is quite as visible as you are. But I pleased HIM

(for my sins) and he had the presumption to tell me so.’

‘The man never made a declaration to you, my dear Bella!’

‘Are you sure of that, Sophronia?’ said Bella. ‘I am not. In fact, I am

sure of the contrary.’

‘The man must be mad,’ said Mrs Lammle, with a kind of resignation.

‘He appeared to be in his senses,’ returned Bella, tossing her head,

‘and he had plenty to say for himself. I told him my opinion of his

declaration and his conduct, and dismissed him. Of course this has all

been very inconvenient to me, and very disagreeable. It has remained a

secret, however. That word reminds me to observe, Sophronia, that I have

glided on into telling you the secret, and that I rely upon you never to

mention it.’

‘Mention it!’ repeated Mrs Lammle with her former feeling. ‘Men-tion

it!’

This time Sophronia was so much in earnest that she found it necessary

to bend forward in the carriage and give Bella a kiss. A Judas order of

kiss; for she thought, while she yet pressed Bella’s hand after giving

it, ‘Upon your own showing, you vain heartless girl, puffed up by the

doting folly of a dustman, I need have no relenting towards YOU. If my

husband, who sends me here, should form any schemes for making YOU a

victim, I should certainly not cross him again.’ In those very same

moments, Bella was thinking, ‘Why am I always at war with myself? Why

have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to

have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in

spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?’

As usual, there was no answer in the looking-glass when she got home and

referred these questions to it. Perhaps if she had consulted some better

oracle, the result might have been more satisfactory; but she did not,

and all things consequent marched the march before them.

On one point connected with the watch she kept on Mr Boffin, she felt

very inquisitive, and that was the question whether the Secretary

watched him too, and followed the sure and steady change in him, as she

did? Her very limited intercourse with Mr Rokesmith rendered this hard

to find out. Their communication now, at no time extended beyond the

preservation of commonplace appearances before Mr and Mrs Boffin; and if

Bella and the Secretary were ever left alone together by any chance,

he immediately withdrew. She consulted his face when she could do so

covertly, as she worked or read, and could make nothing of it. He looked

subdued; but he had acquired a strong command of feature, and, whenever

Mr Boffin spoke to him in Bella’s presence, or whatever revelation of

himself Mr Boffin made, the Secretary’s face changed no more than a

wall. A slightly knitted brow, that expressed nothing but an almost

mechanical attention, and a compression of the mouth, that might have

been a guard against a scornful smile—these she saw from morning to

night, from day to day, from week to week, monotonous, unvarying, set,

as in a piece of sculpture.

The worst of the matter was, that it thus fell out insensibly—and most

provokingly, as Bella complained to herself, in her impetuous little

manner—that her observation of Mr Boffin involved a continual

observation of Mr Rokesmith. ‘Won’t THAT extract a look from him?’—‘Can

it be possible THAT makes no impression on him?’ Such questions Bella

would propose to herself, often as many times in a day as there were

hours in it. Impossible to know. Always the same fixed face.

‘Can he be so base as to sell his very nature for two hundred a year?’

Bella would think. And then, ‘But why not? It’s a mere question of price

with others besides him. I suppose I would sell mine, if I could get

enough for it.’ And so she would come round again to the war with

herself.

A kind of illegibility, though a different kind, stole over Mr

Boffin’s face. Its old simplicity of expression got masked by a certain

craftiness that assimilated even his good-humour to itself. His very

smile was cunning, as if he had been studying smiles among the portraits

of his misers. Saving an occasional burst of impatience, or coarse

assertion of his mastery, his good-humour remained to him, but it had

now a sordid alloy of distrust; and though his eyes should twinkle and

all his face should laugh, he would sit holding himself in his own

arms, as if he had an inclination to hoard himself up, and must always

grudgingly stand on the defensive.

What with taking heed of these two faces, and what with feeling

conscious that the stealthy occupation must set some mark on her own,

Bella soon began to think that there was not a candid or a natural face

among them all but Mrs Boffin’s. None the less because it was far less

radiant than of yore, faithfully reflecting in its anxiety and regret

every line of change in the Golden Dustman’s.

‘Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin one evening when they were all in his room

again, and he and the Secretary had been going over some accounts, ‘I

am spending too much money. Or leastways, you are spending too much for

me.’

‘You are rich, sir.’

‘I am not,’ said Mr Boffin.

The sharpness of the retort was next to telling the Secretary that he

lied. But it brought no change of expression into the set face.

‘I tell you I am not rich,’ repeated Mr Boffin, ‘and I won’t have it.’

‘You are not rich, sir?’ repeated the Secretary, in measured words.

‘Well,’ returned Mr Boffin, ‘if I am, that’s my business. I am not going

to spend at this rate, to please you, or anybody. You wouldn’t like it,

if it was your money.’

‘Even in that impossible case, sir, I—’

‘Hold your tongue!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘You oughtn’t to like it in any

case. There! I didn’t mean to be rude, but you put me out so, and after

all I’m master. I didn’t intend to tell you to hold your tongue. I beg

your pardon. Don’t hold your tongue. Only, don’t contradict. Did you

ever come across the life of Mr Elwes?’ referring to his favourite

subject at last.

‘The miser?’

‘Ah, people called him a miser. People are always calling other people

something. Did you ever read about him?’

‘I think so.’

‘He never owned to being rich, and yet he might have bought me twice

over. Did you ever hear of Daniel Dancer?’

‘Another miser? Yes.’

‘He was a good ’un,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and he had a sister worthy of him.

They never called themselves rich neither. If they HAD called themselves

rich, most likely they wouldn’t have been so.’

‘They lived and died very miserably. Did they not, sir?’

‘No, I don’t know that they did,’ said Mr Boffin, curtly.

‘Then they are not the Misers I mean. Those abject wretches—’

‘Don’t call names, Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin.

‘—That exemplary brother and sister—lived and died in the foulest and

filthiest degradation.’

‘They pleased themselves,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and I suppose they could

have done no more if they had spent their money. But however, I ain’t

going to fling mine away. Keep the expenses down. The fact is, you ain’t

enough here, Rokesmith. It wants constant attention in the littlest

things. Some of us will be dying in a workhouse next.’

‘As the persons you have cited,’ quietly remarked the Secretary,

‘thought they would, if I remember, sir.’

‘And very creditable in ’em too,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Very independent in

’em! But never mind them just now. Have you given notice to quit your

lodgings?’

‘Under your direction, I have, sir.’

‘Then I tell you what,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘pay the quarter’s rent—pay the

quarter’s rent, it’ll be the cheapest thing in the end—and come here at

once, so that you may be always on the spot, day and night, and keep the

expenses down. You’ll charge the quarter’s rent to me, and we must try

and save it somewhere. You’ve got some lovely furniture; haven’t you?’

‘The furniture in my rooms is my own.’

‘Then we shan’t have to buy any for you. In case you was to think it,’

said Mr Boffin, with a look of peculiar shrewdness, ‘so honourably

independent in you as to make it a relief to your mind, to make that

furniture over to me in the light of a set-off against the quarter’s

rent, why ease your mind, ease your mind. I don’t ask it, but I won’t

stand in your way if you should consider it due to yourself. As to your

room, choose any empty room at the top of the house.’

‘Any empty room will do for me,’ said the Secretary.

‘You can take your pick,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and it’ll be as good as eight

or ten shillings a week added to your income. I won’t deduct for it; I

look to you to make it up handsomely by keeping the expenses down. Now,

if you’ll show a light, I’ll come to your office-room and dispose of a

letter or two.’

On that clear, generous face of Mrs Boffin’s, Bella had seen such traces

of a pang at the heart while this dialogue was being held, that she

had not the courage to turn her eyes to it when they were left alone.

Feigning to be intent on her embroidery, she sat plying her needle until

her busy hand was stopped by Mrs Boffin’s hand being lightly laid upon

it. Yielding to the touch, she felt her hand carried to the good soul’s

lips, and felt a tear fall on it.

‘Oh, my loved husband!’ said Mrs Boffin. ‘This is hard to see and hear.

But my dear Bella, believe me that in spite of all the change in him, he

is the best of men.’

He came back, at the moment when Bella had taken the hand comfortingly

between her own.

‘Eh?’ said he, mistrustfully looking in at the door. ‘What’s she telling

you?’

‘She is only praising you, sir,’ said Bella.

‘Praising me? You are sure? Not blaming me for standing on my own

defence against a crew of plunderers, who could suck me dry by driblets?

Not blaming me for getting a little hoard together?’

He came up to them, and his wife folded her hands upon his shoulder, and

shook her head as she laid it on her hands.

‘There, there, there!’ urged Mr Boffin, not unkindly. ‘Don’t take on,

old lady.’

‘But I can’t bear to see you so, my dear.’

‘Nonsense! Recollect we are not our old selves. Recollect, we must

scrunch or be scrunched. Recollect, we must hold our own. Recollect,

money makes money. Don’t you be uneasy, Bella, my child; don’t you be

doubtful. The more I save, the more you shall have.’

Bella thought it was well for his wife that she was musing with her

affectionate face on his shoulder; for there was a cunning light in

his eyes as he said all this, which seemed to cast a disagreeable

illumination on the change in him, and make it morally uglier.

Chapter 6

THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY

It had come to pass that Mr Silas Wegg now rarely attended the minion of

fortune and the worm of the hour, at his (the worm’s and minion’s) own

house, but lay under general instructions to await him within a certain

margin of hours at the Bower. Mr Wegg took this arrangement in great

dudgeon, because the appointed hours were evening hours, and those he

considered precious to the progress of the friendly move. But it was

quite in character, he bitterly remarked to Mr Venus, that the upstart

who had trampled on those eminent creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master

George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, should oppress his literary man.

The Roman Empire having worked out its destruction, Mr Boffin next

appeared in a cab with Rollin’s Ancient History, which valuable work

being found to possess lethargic properties, broke down, at about the

period when the whole of the army of Alexander the Macedonian (at that

time about forty thousand strong) burst into tears simultaneously, on

his being taken with a shivering fit after bathing. The Wars of the

Jews, likewise languishing under Mr Wegg’s generalship, Mr Boffin

arrived in another cab with Plutarch: whose Lives he found in the sequel

extremely entertaining, though he hoped Plutarch might not expect him to

believe them all. What to believe, in the course of his reading, was Mr

Boffin’s chief literary difficulty indeed; for some time he was divided

in his mind between half, all, or none; at length, when he decided, as a

moderate man, to compound with half, the question still remained, which

half? And that stumbling-block he never got over.

One evening, when Silas Wegg had grown accustomed to the arrival of

his patron in a cab, accompanied by some profane historian charged with

unutterable names of incomprehensible peoples, of impossible descent,

waging wars any number of years and syllables long, and carrying

illimitable hosts and riches about, with the greatest ease, beyond the

confines of geography—one evening the usual time passed by, and no

patron appeared. After half an hour’s grace, Mr Wegg proceeded to the

outer gate, and there executed a whistle, conveying to Mr Venus,

if perchance within hearing, the tidings of his being at home and

disengaged. Forth from the shelter of a neighbouring wall, Mr Venus then

emerged.

‘Brother in arms,’ said Mr Wegg, in excellent spirits, ‘welcome!’

In return, Mr Venus gave him a rather dry good evening.

‘Walk in, brother,’ said Silas, clapping him on the shoulder, ‘and take

your seat in my chimley corner; for what says the ballad?

“No malice to dread, sir,

And no falsehood to fear,

But truth to delight me, Mr Venus,

And I forgot what to cheer.

Li toddle de om dee.

And something to guide,

My ain fireside, sir,

My ain fireside.”’

With this quotation (depending for its neatness rather on the spirit

than the words), Mr Wegg conducted his guest to his hearth.

‘And you come, brother,’ said Mr Wegg, in a hospitable glow, ‘you come

like I don’t know what—exactly like it—I shouldn’t know you from

it—shedding a halo all around you.’

‘What kind of halo?’ asked Mr Venus.

‘’Ope sir,’ replied Silas. ‘That’s YOUR halo.’

Mr Venus appeared doubtful on the point, and looked rather

discontentedly at the fire.

‘We’ll devote the evening, brother,’ exclaimed Wegg, ‘to prosecute our

friendly move. And arterwards, crushing a flowing wine-cup—which I

allude to brewing rum and water—we’ll pledge one another. For what says

the Poet?

“And you needn’t, Mr Venus, be your black bottle,

For surely I’ll be mine,

And we’ll take a glass with a slice of lemon in it to which

you’re partial,

For auld lang syne.”’

This flow of quotation and hospitality in Wegg indicated his observation

of some little querulousness on the part of Venus.

‘Why, as to the friendly move,’ observed the last-named gentleman,

rubbing his knees peevishly, ‘one of my objections to it is, that it

DON’T move.’

‘Rome, brother,’ returned Wegg: ‘a city which (it may not be generally

known) originated in twins and a wolf; and ended in Imperial marble:

wasn’t built in a day.’

‘Did I say it was?’ asked Venus.

‘No, you did not, brother. Well-inquired.’

‘But I do say,’ proceeded Venus, ‘that I am taken from among my trophies

of anatomy, am called upon to exchange my human warious for mere

coal-ashes warious, and nothing comes of it. I think I must give up.’

‘No, sir!’ remonstrated Wegg, enthusiastically. ‘No, Sir!

“Charge, Chester, charge,

On, Mr Venus, on!”

Never say die, sir! A man of your mark!’

‘It’s not so much saying it that I object to,’ returned Mr Venus, ‘as

doing it. And having got to do it whether or no, I can’t afford to waste

my time on groping for nothing in cinders.’

‘But think how little time you have given to the move, sir, after all,’

urged Wegg. ‘Add the evenings so occupied together, and what do they

come to? And you, sir, harmonizer with myself in opinions, views, and

feelings, you with the patience to fit together on wires the whole

framework of society—I allude to the human skelinton—you to give in so

soon!’

‘I don’t like it,’ returned Mr Venus moodily, as he put his head between

his knees and stuck up his dusty hair. ‘And there’s no encouragement to

go on.’

‘Not them Mounds without,’ said Mr Wegg, extending his right hand with

an air of solemn reasoning, ‘encouragement? Not them Mounds now looking

down upon us?’

‘They’re too big,’ grumbled Venus. ‘What’s a scratch here and a scrape

there, a poke in this place and a dig in the other, to them. Besides;

what have we found?’

‘What HAVE we found?’ cried Wegg, delighted to be able to acquiesce.

‘Ah! There I grant you, comrade. Nothing. But on the contrary, comrade,

what MAY we find? There you’ll grant me. Anything.’

‘I don’t like it,’ pettishly returned Venus as before. ‘I came into

it without enough consideration. And besides again. Isn’t your own Mr

Boffin well acquainted with the Mounds? And wasn’t he well acquainted

with the deceased and his ways? And has he ever showed any expectation

of finding anything?’

At that moment wheels were heard.

‘Now, I should be loth,’ said Mr Wegg, with an air of patient injury,

‘to think so ill of him as to suppose him capable of coming at this time

of night. And yet it sounds like him.’

A ring at the yard bell.

‘It is him,’ said Mr Wegg, ‘and he is capable of it. I am sorry, because

I could have wished to keep up a little lingering fragment of respect

for him.’

Here Mr Boffin was heard lustily calling at the yard gate, ‘Halloa!

Wegg! Halloa!’

‘Keep your seat, Mr Venus,’ said Wegg. ‘He may not stop.’ And then

called out, ‘Halloa, sir! Halloa! I’m with you directly, sir! Half a

minute, Mr Boffin. Coming, sir, as fast as my leg will bring me!’ And

so with a show of much cheerful alacrity stumped out to the gate with

a light, and there, through the window of a cab, descried Mr Boffin

inside, blocked up with books.

‘Here! lend a hand, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin excitedly, ‘I can’t get out

till the way is cleared for me. This is the Annual Register, Wegg, in a

cab-full of wollumes. Do you know him?’

‘Know the Animal Register, sir?’ returned the Impostor, who had caught

the name imperfectly. ‘For a trifling wager, I think I could find any

Animal in him, blindfold, Mr Boffin.’

‘And here’s Kirby’s Wonderful Museum,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and Caulfield’s

Characters, and Wilson’s. Such Characters, Wegg, such Characters! I must

have one or two of the best of ’em to-night. It’s amazing what places

they used to put the guineas in, wrapped up in rags. Catch hold of that

pile of wollumes, Wegg, or it’ll bulge out and burst into the mud. Is

there anyone about, to help?’

‘There’s a friend of mine, sir, that had the intention of spending

the evening with me when I gave you up—much against my will—for the

night.’

‘Call him out,’ cried Mr Boffin in a bustle; ‘get him to bear a hand.

Don’t drop that one under your arm. It’s Dancer. Him and his sister made

pies of a dead sheep they found when they were out a walking. Where’s

your friend? Oh, here’s your friend. Would you be so good as help Wegg

and myself with these books? But don’t take Jemmy Taylor of Southwark,

nor yet Jemmy Wood of Gloucester. These are the two Jemmys. I’ll carry

them myself.’

Not ceasing to talk and bustle, in a state of great excitement, Mr

Boffin directed the removal and arrangement of the books, appearing

to be in some sort beside himself until they were all deposited on the

floor, and the cab was dismissed.

‘There!’ said Mr Boffin, gloating over them. ‘There they are, like the

four-and-twenty fiddlers—all of a row. Get on your spectacles, Wegg;

I know where to find the best of ’em, and we’ll have a taste at once of

what we have got before us. What’s your friend’s name?’

Mr Wegg presented his friend as Mr Venus.

‘Eh?’ cried Mr Boffin, catching at the name. ‘Of Clerkenwell?’

‘Of Clerkenwell, sir,’ said Mr Venus.

‘Why, I’ve heard of you,’ cried Mr Boffin, ‘I heard of you in the

old man’s time. You knew him. Did you ever buy anything of him?’ With

piercing eagerness.

‘No, sir,’ returned Venus.

‘But he showed you things; didn’t he?’

Mr Venus, with a glance at his friend, replied in the affirmative.

‘What did he show you?’ asked Mr Boffin, putting his hands behind him,

and eagerly advancing his head. ‘Did he show you boxes, little cabinets,

pocket-books, parcels, anything locked or sealed, anything tied up?’

Mr Venus shook his head.

‘Are you a judge of china?’

Mr Venus again shook his head.

‘Because if he had ever showed you a teapot, I should be glad to know of

it,’ said Mr Boffin. And then, with his right hand at his lips, repeated

thoughtfully, ‘a Teapot, a Teapot’, and glanced over the books on the

floor, as if he knew there was something interesting connected with a

teapot, somewhere among them.

Mr Wegg and Mr Venus looked at one another wonderingly: and Mr Wegg, in

fitting on his spectacles, opened his eyes wide, over their rims, and

tapped the side of his nose: as an admonition to Venus to keep himself

generally wide awake.

‘A Teapot,’ repeated Mr Boffin, continuing to muse and survey the books;

‘a Teapot, a Teapot. Are you ready, Wegg?’

‘I am at your service, sir,’ replied that gentleman, taking his usual

seat on the usual settle, and poking his wooden leg under the table

before it. ‘Mr Venus, would you make yourself useful, and take a seat

beside me, sir, for the conveniency of snuffing the candles?’

Venus complying with the invitation while it was yet being given, Silas

pegged at him with his wooden leg, to call his particular attention to

Mr Boffin standing musing before the fire, in the space between the two

settles.

‘Hem! Ahem!’ coughed Mr Wegg to attract his employer’s attention. ‘Would

you wish to commence with an Animal, sir—from the Register?’

‘No,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘no, Wegg.’ With that, producing a little book

from his breast-pocket, he handed it with great care to the literary

gentlemen, and inquired, ‘What do you call that, Wegg?’

‘This, sir,’ replied Silas, adjusting his spectacles, and referring to

the title-page, ‘is Merryweather’s Lives and Anecdotes of Misers. Mr

Venus, would you make yourself useful and draw the candles a little

nearer, sir?’ This to have a special opportunity of bestowing a stare

upon his comrade.

‘Which of ’em have you got in that lot?’ asked Mr Boffin. ‘Can you find

out pretty easy?’

‘Well, sir,’ replied Silas, turning to the table of contents and slowly

fluttering the leaves of the book, ‘I should say they must be pretty

well all here, sir; here’s a large assortment, sir; my eye catches John

Overs, sir, John Little, sir, Dick Jarrel, John Elwes, the Reverend Mr

Jones of Blewbury, Vulture Hopkins, Daniel Dancer—’

‘Give us Dancer, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin.

With another stare at his comrade, Silas sought and found the place.

‘Page a hundred and nine, Mr Boffin. Chapter eight. Contents of chapter,

“His birth and estate. His garments and outward appearance. Miss Dancer

and her feminine graces. The Miser’s Mansion. The finding of a treasure.

The Story of the Mutton Pies. A Miser’s Idea of Death. Bob, the Miser’s

cur. Griffiths and his Master. How to turn a penny. A substitute for a

Fire. The Advantages of keeping a Snuff-box. The Miser dies without a

Shirt. The Treasures of a Dunghill—”’

‘Eh? What’s that?’ demanded Mr Boffin.

‘“The Treasures,” sir,’ repeated Silas, reading very distinctly, ‘“of a

Dunghill.” Mr Venus, sir, would you obleege with the snuffers?’ This, to

secure attention to his adding with his lips only, ‘Mounds!’

Mr Boffin drew an arm-chair into the space where he stood, and said,

seating himself and slyly rubbing his hands:

‘Give us Dancer.’

Mr Wegg pursued the biography of that eminent man through its various

phases of avarice and dirt, through Miss Dancer’s death on a sick

regimen of cold dumpling, and through Mr Dancer’s keeping his rags

together with a hayband, and warming his dinner by sitting upon it, down

to the consolatory incident of his dying naked in a sack. After which he

read on as follows:

‘“The house, or rather the heap of ruins, in which Mr Dancer lived, and

which at his death devolved to the right of Captain Holmes, was a most

miserable, decayed building, for it had not been repaired for more than

half a century.”’

(Here Mr Wegg eyes his comrade and the room in which they sat: which had

not been repaired for a long time.)

‘“But though poor in external structure, the ruinous fabric was very

rich in the interior. It took many weeks to explore its whole contents;

and Captain Holmes found it a very agreeable task to dive into the

miser’s secret hoards.”’

(Here Mr Wegg repeated ‘secret hoards’, and pegged his comrade again.)

‘“One of Mr Dancer’s richest escretoires was found to be a dungheap in

the cowhouse; a sum but little short of two thousand five hundred

pounds was contained in this rich piece of manure; and in an old jacket,

carefully tied, and strongly nailed down to the manger, in bank notes

and gold were found five hundred pounds more.”’

(Here Mr Wegg’s wooden leg started forward under the table, and slowly

elevated itself as he read on.)

‘“Several bowls were discovered filled with guineas and half-guineas;

and at different times on searching the corners of the house they found

various parcels of bank notes. Some were crammed into the crevices of

the wall”’;

(Here Mr Venus looked at the wall.)

‘“Bundles were hid under the cushions and covers of the chairs”’;

(Here Mr Venus looked under himself on the settle.)

‘“Some were reposing snugly at the back of the drawers; and notes

amounting to six hundred pounds were found neatly doubled up in the

inside of an old teapot. In the stable the Captain found jugs full of

old dollars and shillings. The chimney was not left unsearched, and paid

very well for the trouble; for in nineteen different holes, all filled

with soot, were found various sums of money, amounting together to more

than two hundred pounds.”’

On the way to this crisis Mr Wegg’s wooden leg had gradually elevated

itself more and more, and he had nudged Mr Venus with his opposite

elbow deeper and deeper, until at length the preservation of his balance

became incompatible with the two actions, and he now dropped over

sideways upon that gentleman, squeezing him against the settle’s edge.

Nor did either of the two, for some few seconds, make any effort to

recover himself; both remaining in a kind of pecuniary swoon.

But the sight of Mr Boffin sitting in the arm-chair hugging himself,

with his eyes upon the fire, acted as a restorative. Counterfeiting a

sneeze to cover their movements, Mr Wegg, with a spasmodic ‘Tish-ho!’

pulled himself and Mr Venus up in a masterly manner.

‘Let’s have some more,’ said Mr Boffin, hungrily.

‘John Elwes is the next, sir. Is it your pleasure to take John Elwes?’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Let’s hear what John did.’

He did not appear to have hidden anything, so went off rather flatly.

But an exemplary lady named Wilcocks, who had stowed away gold and

silver in a pickle-pot in a clock-case, a canister-full of treasure in

a hole under her stairs, and a quantity of money in an old rat-trap,

revived the interest. To her succeeded another lady, claiming to be a

pauper, whose wealth was found wrapped up in little scraps of paper and

old rag. To her, another lady, apple-woman by trade, who had saved a

fortune of ten thousand pounds and hidden it ‘here and there, in cracks

and corners, behind bricks and under the flooring.’ To her, a French

gentleman, who had crammed up his chimney, rather to the detriment

of its drawing powers, ‘a leather valise, containing twenty thousand

francs, gold coins, and a large quantity of precious stones,’ as

discovered by a chimneysweep after his death. By these steps Mr Wegg

arrived at a concluding instance of the human Magpie:

‘Many years ago, there lived at Cambridge a miserly old couple of the

name of Jardine: they had two sons: the father was a perfect miser, and

at his death one thousand guineas were discovered secreted in his bed.

The two sons grew up as parsimonious as their sire. When about twenty

years of age, they commenced business at Cambridge as drapers, and

they continued there until their death. The establishment of the Messrs

Jardine was the most dirty of all the shops in Cambridge. Customers

seldom went in to purchase, except perhaps out of curiosity. The

brothers were most disreputable-looking beings; for, although surrounded

with gay apparel as their staple in trade, they wore the most filthy

rags themselves. It is said that they had no bed, and, to save the

expense of one, always slept on a bundle of packing-cloths under the

counter. In their housekeeping they were penurious in the extreme. A

joint of meat did not grace their board for twenty years. Yet when the

first of the brothers died, the other, much to his surprise, found large

sums of money which had been secreted even from him.’

‘There!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘Even from him, you see! There was only two of

’em, and yet one of ’em hid from the other.’

Mr Venus, who since his introduction to the French gentleman, had been

stooping to peer up the chimney, had his attention recalled by the last

sentence, and took the liberty of repeating it.

‘Do you like it?’ asked Mr Boffin, turning suddenly.

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Do you like what Wegg’s been a-reading?’

Mr Venus answered that he found it extremely interesting.

‘Then come again,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and hear some more. Come when you

like; come the day after to-morrow, half an hour sooner. There’s plenty

more; there’s no end to it.’

Mr Venus expressed his acknowledgments and accepted the invitation.

‘It’s wonderful what’s been hid, at one time and another,’ said Mr

Boffin, ruminating; ‘truly wonderful.’

‘Meaning sir,’ observed Wegg, with a propitiatory face to draw him out,

and with another peg at his friend and brother, ‘in the way of money?’

‘Money,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Ah! And papers.’

Mr Wegg, in a languid transport, again dropped over on Mr Venus, and

again recovering himself, masked his emotions with a sneeze.

’tish-ho! Did you say papers too, sir? Been hidden, sir?’

‘Hidden and forgot,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Why the bookseller that sold me

the Wonderful Museum—where’s the Wonderful Museum?’ He was on his knees

on the floor in a moment, groping eagerly among the books.

‘Can I assist you, sir?’ asked Wegg.

‘No, I have got it; here it is,’ said Mr Boffin, dusting it with the

sleeve of his coat. ‘Wollume four. I know it was the fourth wollume,

that the bookseller read it to me out of. Look for it, Wegg.’

Silas took the book and turned the leaves.

‘Remarkable petrefaction, sir?’

‘No, that’s not it,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘It can’t have been a

petrefaction.’

‘Memoirs of General John Reid, commonly called The Walking Rushlight,

sir? With portrait?’

‘No, nor yet him,’ said Mr Boffin.

‘Remarkable case of a person who swallowed a crown-piece, sir?’

‘To hide it?’ asked Mr Boffin.

‘Why, no, sir,’ replied Wegg, consulting the text, ‘it appears to have

been done by accident. Oh! This next must be it. “Singular discovery of

a will, lost twenty-one years.”’

‘That’s it!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘Read that.’

‘“A most extraordinary case,”’ read Silas Wegg aloud, ‘“was tried at

the last Maryborough assizes in Ireland. It was briefly this. Robert

Baldwin, in March 1782, made his will, in which he devised the lands now

in question, to the children of his youngest son; soon after which his

faculties failed him, and he became altogether childish and died, above

eighty years old. The defendant, the eldest son, immediately afterwards

gave out that his father had destroyed the will; and no will being

found, he entered into possession of the lands in question, and so

matters remained for twenty-one years, the whole family during all

that time believing that the father had died without a will. But after

twenty-one years the defendant’s wife died, and he very soon afterwards,

at the age of seventy-eight, married a very young woman: which caused

some anxiety to his two sons, whose poignant expressions of this feeling

so exasperated their father, that he in his resentment executed a will

to disinherit his eldest son, and in his fit of anger showed it to his

second son, who instantly determined to get at it, and destroy it, in

order to preserve the property to his brother. With this view, he broke

open his father’s desk, where he found—not his father’s will which he

sought after, but the will of his grandfather, which was then altogether

forgotten in the family.”’

‘There!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘See what men put away and forget, or mean to

destroy, and don’t!’ He then added in a slow tone, ‘As—ton—ish—ing!’

And as he rolled his eyes all round the room, Wegg and Venus likewise

rolled their eyes all round the room. And then Wegg, singly, fixed his

eyes on Mr Boffin looking at the fire again; as if he had a mind to

spring upon him and demand his thoughts or his life.

‘However, time’s up for to-night,’ said Mr Boffin, waving his hand after

a silence. ‘More, the day after to-morrow. Range the books upon the

shelves, Wegg. I dare say Mr Venus will be so kind as help you.’

While speaking, he thrust his hand into the breast of his outer coat,

and struggled with some object there that was too large to be got out

easily. What was the stupefaction of the friendly movers when this

object at last emerging, proved to be a much-dilapidated dark lantern!

Without at all noticing the effect produced by this little instrument,

Mr Boffin stood it on his knee, and, producing a box of matches,

deliberately lighted the candle in the lantern, blew out the kindled

match, and cast the end into the fire. ‘I’m going, Wegg,’ he then

announced, ‘to take a turn about the place and round the yard. I don’t

want you. Me and this same lantern have taken hundreds—thousands—of

such turns in our time together.’

‘But I couldn’t think, sir—not on any account, I couldn’t,’—Wegg was

politely beginning, when Mr Boffin, who had risen and was going towards

the door, stopped:

‘I have told you that I don’t want you, Wegg.’

Wegg looked intelligently thoughtful, as if that had not occurred to his

mind until he now brought it to bear on the circumstance. He had nothing

for it but to let Mr Boffin go out and shut the door behind him. But,

the instant he was on the other side of it, Wegg clutched Venus

with both hands, and said in a choking whisper, as if he were being

strangled:

‘Mr Venus, he must be followed, he must be watched, he mustn’t be lost

sight of for a moment.’

‘Why mustn’t he?’ asked Venus, also strangling.

‘Comrade, you might have noticed I was a little elewated in spirits when

you come in to-night. I’ve found something.’

‘What have you found?’ asked Venus, clutching him with both hands, so

that they stood interlocked like a couple of preposterous gladiators.

‘There’s no time to tell you now. I think he must have gone to look for

it. We must have an eye upon him instantly.’

Releasing each other, they crept to the door, opened it softly, and

peeped out. It was a cloudy night, and the black shadow of the Mounds

made the dark yard darker. ‘If not a double swindler,’ whispered Wegg,

‘why a dark lantern? We could have seen what he was about, if he had

carried a light one. Softly, this way.’

Cautiously along the path that was bordered by fragments of crockery set

in ashes, the two stole after him. They could hear him at his peculiar

trot, crushing the loose cinders as he went. ‘He knows the place by

heart,’ muttered Silas, ‘and don’t need to turn his lantern on, confound

him!’ But he did turn it on, almost in that same instant, and flashed

its light upon the first of the Mounds.

‘Is that the spot?’ asked Venus in a whisper.

‘He’s warm,’ said Silas in the same tone. ‘He’s precious warm. He’s

close. I think he must be going to look for it. What’s that he’s got in

his hand?’

‘A shovel,’ answered Venus. ‘And he knows how to use it, remember, fifty

times as well as either of us.’

‘If he looks for it and misses it, partner,’ suggested Wegg, ‘what shall

we do?’

‘First of all, wait till he does,’ said Venus.

Discreet advice too, for he darkened his lantern again, and the mound

turned black. After a few seconds, he turned the light on once more, and

was seen standing at the foot of the second mound, slowly raising the

lantern little by little until he held it up at arm’s length, as if he

were examining the condition of the whole surface.

‘That can’t be the spot too?’ said Venus.

‘No,’ said Wegg, ‘he’s getting cold.’

‘It strikes me,’ whispered Venus, ‘that he wants to find out whether any

one has been groping about there.’

‘Hush!’ returned Wegg, ‘he’s getting colder and colder.—Now he’s

freezing!’

This exclamation was elicited by his having turned the lantern off

again, and on again, and being visible at the foot of the third mound.

‘Why, he’s going up it!’ said Venus.

‘Shovel and all!’ said Wegg.

At a nimbler trot, as if the shovel over his shoulder stimulated him by

reviving old associations, Mr Boffin ascended the ‘serpentining walk’,

up the Mound which he had described to Silas Wegg on the occasion of

their beginning to decline and fall. On striking into it he turned his

lantern off. The two followed him, stooping low, so that their figures

might make no mark in relief against the sky when he should turn his

lantern on again. Mr Venus took the lead, towing Mr Wegg, in order that

his refractory leg might be promptly extricated from any pitfalls it

should dig for itself. They could just make out that the Golden Dustman

stopped to breathe. Of course they stopped too, instantly.

‘This is his own Mound,’ whispered Wegg, as he recovered his wind, ‘this

one.’

‘Why all three are his own,’ returned Venus.

‘So he thinks; but he’s used to call this his own, because it’s the one

first left to him; the one that was his legacy when it was all he took

under the will.’

‘When he shows his light,’ said Venus, keeping watch upon his dusky

figure all the time, ‘drop lower and keep closer.’

He went on again, and they followed again. Gaining the top of the Mound,

he turned on his light—but only partially—and stood it on the ground.

A bare lopsided weatherbeaten pole was planted in the ashes there,

and had been there many a year. Hard by this pole, his lantern stood:

lighting a few feet of the lower part of it and a little of the ashy

surface around, and then casting off a purposeless little clear trail of

light into the air.

‘He can never be going to dig up the pole!’ whispered Venus as they

dropped low and kept close.

‘Perhaps it’s holler and full of something,’ whispered Wegg.

He was going to dig, with whatsoever object, for he tucked up his cuffs

and spat on his hands, and then went at it like an old digger as he

was. He had no design upon the pole, except that he measured a shovel’s

length from it before beginning, nor was it his purpose to dig deep.

Some dozen or so of expert strokes sufficed. Then, he stopped, looked

down into the cavity, bent over it, and took out what appeared to be an

ordinary case-bottle: one of those squat, high-shouldered, short-necked

glass bottles which the Dutchman is said to keep his Courage in. As soon

as he had done this, he turned off his lantern, and they could hear that

he was filling up the hole in the dark. The ashes being easily moved by

a skilful hand, the spies took this as a hint to make off in good time.

Accordingly, Mr Venus slipped past Mr Wegg and towed him down. But Mr

Wegg’s descent was not accomplished without some personal inconvenience,

for his self-willed leg sticking into the ashes about half way down, and

time pressing, Mr Venus took the liberty of hauling him from his tether

by the collar: which occasioned him to make the rest of the journey on

his back, with his head enveloped in the skirts of his coat, and his

wooden leg coming last, like a drag. So flustered was Mr Wegg by this

mode of travelling, that when he was set on the level ground with his

intellectual developments uppermost, he was quite unconscious of his

bearings, and had not the least idea where his place of residence was

to be found, until Mr Venus shoved him into it. Even then he staggered

round and round, weakly staring about him, until Mr Venus with a hard

brush brushed his senses into him and the dust out of him.

Mr Boffin came down leisurely, for this brushing process had been well

accomplished, and Mr Venus had had time to take his breath, before he

reappeared. That he had the bottle somewhere about him could not be

doubted; where, was not so clear. He wore a large rough coat, buttoned

over, and it might be in any one of half a dozen pockets.

‘What’s the matter, Wegg?’ said Mr Boffin. ‘You are as pale as a

candle.’

Mr Wegg replied, with literal exactness, that he felt as if he had had a

turn.

‘Bile,’ said Mr Boffin, blowing out the light in the lantern, shutting

it up, and stowing it away in the breast of his coat as before. ‘Are you

subject to bile, Wegg?’

Mr Wegg again replied, with strict adherence to truth, that he didn’t

think he had ever had a similar sensation in his head, to anything like

the same extent.

‘Physic yourself to-morrow, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘to be in order

for next night. By-the-by, this neighbourhood is going to have a loss,

Wegg.’

‘A loss, sir?’

‘Going to lose the Mounds.’

The friendly movers made such an obvious effort not to look at one

another, that they might as well have stared at one another with all

their might.

‘Have you parted with them, Mr Boffin?’ asked Silas.

‘Yes; they’re going. Mine’s as good as gone already.’

‘You mean the little one of the three, with the pole atop, sir.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Boffin, rubbing his ear in his old way, with that new

touch of craftiness added to it. ‘It has fetched a penny. It’ll begin to

be carted off to-morrow.’

‘Have you been out to take leave of your old friend, sir?’ asked Silas,

jocosely.

‘No,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘What the devil put that in your head?’

He was so sudden and rough, that Wegg, who had been hovering closer

and closer to his skirts, despatching the back of his hand on exploring

expeditions in search of the bottle’s surface, retired two or three

paces.

‘No offence, sir,’ said Wegg, humbly. ‘No offence.’

Mr Boffin eyed him as a dog might eye another dog who wanted his bone;

and actually retorted with a low growl, as the dog might have retorted.

‘Good-night,’ he said, after having sunk into a moody silence, with

his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes suspiciously wandering about

Wegg.—‘No! stop there. I know the way out, and I want no light.’

Avarice, and the evening’s legends of avarice, and the inflammatory

effect of what he had seen, and perhaps the rush of his ill-conditioned

blood to his brain in his descent, wrought Silas Wegg to such a pitch of

insatiable appetite, that when the door closed he made a swoop at it and

drew Venus along with him.

‘He mustn’t go,’ he cried. ‘We mustn’t let him go? He has got that

bottle about him. We must have that bottle.’

‘Why, you wouldn’t take it by force?’ said Venus, restraining him.

‘Wouldn’t I? Yes I would. I’d take it by any force, I’d have it at any

price! Are you so afraid of one old man as to let him go, you coward?’

‘I am so afraid of you, as not to let YOU go,’ muttered Venus, sturdily,

clasping him in his arms.

‘Did you hear him?’ retorted Wegg. ‘Did you hear him say that he was

resolved to disappoint us? Did you hear him say, you cur, that he was

going to have the Mounds cleared off, when no doubt the whole place will

be rummaged? If you haven’t the spirit of a mouse to defend your rights,

I have. Let me go after him.’

As in his wildness he was making a strong struggle for it, Mr Venus

deemed it expedient to lift him, throw him, and fall with him; well

knowing that, once down, he would not be up again easily with his wooden

leg. So they both rolled on the floor, and, as they did so, Mr Boffin

shut the gate.

Chapter 7

THE FRIENDLY MOVE TAKES UP A STRONG POSITION

The friendly movers sat upright on the floor, panting and eyeing one

another, after Mr Boffin had slammed the gate and gone away. In the weak

eyes of Venus, and in every reddish dust-coloured hair in his shock of

hair, there was a marked distrust of Wegg and an alertness to fly at him

on perceiving the smallest occasion. In the hard-grained face of Wegg,

and in his stiff knotty figure (he looked like a German wooden toy),

there was expressed a politic conciliation, which had no spontaneity in

it. Both were flushed, flustered, and rumpled, by the late scuffle; and

Wegg, in coming to the ground, had received a humming knock on the back

of his devoted head, which caused him still to rub it with an air of

having been highly—but disagreeably—astonished. Each was silent for

some time, leaving it to the other to begin.

‘Brother,’ said Wegg, at length breaking the silence, ‘you were right,

and I was wrong. I forgot myself.’

Mr Venus knowingly cocked his shock of hair, as rather thinking Mr Wegg

had remembered himself, in respect of appearing without any disguise.

‘But comrade,’ pursued Wegg, ‘it was never your lot to know Miss

Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, nor Uncle Parker.’

Mr Venus admitted that he had never known those distinguished persons,

and added, in effect, that he had never so much as desired the honour of

their acquaintance.

‘Don’t say that, comrade!’ retorted Wegg: ‘No, don’t say that! Because,

without having known them, you never can fully know what it is to be

stimilated to frenzy by the sight of the Usurper.’

Offering these excusatory words as if they reflected great credit on

himself, Mr Wegg impelled himself with his hands towards a chair in

a corner of the room, and there, after a variety of awkward gambols,

attained a perpendicular position. Mr Venus also rose.

‘Comrade,’ said Wegg, ‘take a seat. Comrade, what a speaking countenance

is yours!’

Mr Venus involuntarily smoothed his countenance, and looked at his hand,

as if to see whether any of its speaking properties came off.

‘For clearly do I know, mark you,’ pursued Wegg, pointing his words

with his forefinger, ‘clearly do I know what question your expressive

features puts to me.’

‘What question?’ said Venus.

‘The question,’ returned Wegg, with a sort of joyful affability, ‘why

I didn’t mention sooner, that I had found something. Says your speaking

countenance to me: “Why didn’t you communicate that, when I first come

in this evening? Why did you keep it back till you thought Mr Boffin had

come to look for the article?” Your speaking countenance,’ said Wegg,

‘puts it plainer than language. Now, you can’t read in my face what

answer I give?’

‘No, I can’t,’ said Venus.

‘I knew it! And why not?’ returned Wegg, with the same joyful candour.

‘Because I lay no claims to a speaking countenance. Because I am well

aware of my deficiencies. All men are not gifted alike. But I can answer

in words. And in what words? These. I wanted to give you a delightful

sap—pur—IZE!’

Having thus elongated and emphasized the word Surprise, Mr Wegg shook

his friend and brother by both hands, and then clapped him on both

knees, like an affectionate patron who entreated him not to mention so

small a service as that which it had been his happy privilege to render.

‘Your speaking countenance,’ said Wegg, ‘being answered to its

satisfaction, only asks then, “What have you found?” Why, I hear it say

the words!’

‘Well?’ retorted Venus snappishly, after waiting in vain. ‘If you hear

it say the words, why don’t you answer it?’

‘Hear me out!’ said Wegg. ‘I’m a-going to. Hear me out! Man and brother,

partner in feelings equally with undertakings and actions, I have found

a cash-box.’

‘Where?’

‘—Hear me out!’ said Wegg. (He tried to reserve whatever he could, and,

whenever disclosure was forced upon him, broke into a radiant gush of

Hear me out.) ‘On a certain day, sir—’

‘When?’ said Venus bluntly.

‘N—no,’ returned Wegg, shaking his head at once observantly,

thoughtfully, and playfully. ‘No, sir! That’s not your expressive

countenance which asks that question. That’s your voice; merely your

voice. To proceed. On a certain day, sir, I happened to be walking in

the yard—taking my lonely round—for in the words of a friend of my own

family, the author of All’s Well arranged as a duett:

“Deserted, as you will remember, Mr Venus, by the waning

moon,

When stars, it will occur to you before I mention it, proclaim

night’s cheerless noon,

On tower, fort, or tented ground,

The sentry walks his lonely round,

The sentry walks;”

—under those circumstances, sir, I happened to be walking in the yard

early one afternoon, and happened to have an iron rod in my hand, with

which I have been sometimes accustomed to beguile the monotony of a

literary life, when I struck it against an object not necessary to

trouble you by naming—’

‘It is necessary. What object?’ demanded Venus, in a wrathful tone.

‘—Hear me out!’ said Wegg. ‘The Pump.—When I struck it against the

Pump, and found, not only that the top was loose and opened with a lid,

but that something in it rattled. That something, comrade, I discovered

to be a small flat oblong cash-box. Shall I say it was disappointingly

light?’

‘There were papers in it,’ said Venus.

‘There your expressive countenance speaks indeed!’ cried Wegg. ‘A

paper. The box was locked, tied up, and sealed, and on the outside was

a parchment label, with the writing, “MY WILL, JOHN HARMON, TEMPORARILY

DEPOSITED HERE.”’

‘We must know its contents,’ said Venus.

‘—Hear me out!’ cried Wegg. ‘I said so, and I broke the box open.’

‘Without coming to me!’ exclaimed Venus.

‘Exactly so, sir!’ returned Wegg, blandly and buoyantly. ‘I see I take

you with me! Hear, hear, hear! Resolved, as your discriminating good

sense perceives, that if you was to have a sap—pur—IZE, it should be

a complete one! Well, sir. And so, as you have honoured me by

anticipating, I examined the document. Regularly executed, regularly

witnessed, very short. Inasmuch as he has never made friends, and has

ever had a rebellious family, he, John Harmon, gives to Nicodemus Boffin

the Little Mound, which is quite enough for him, and gives the whole

rest and residue of his property to the Crown.’

‘The date of the will that has been proved, must be looked to,’ remarked

Venus. ‘It may be later than this one.’

‘—Hear me out!’ cried Wegg. ‘I said so. I paid a shilling (never mind

your sixpence of it) to look up that will. Brother, that will is dated

months before this will. And now, as a fellow-man, and as a partner in a

friendly move,’ added Wegg, benignantly taking him by both hands again,

and clapping him on both knees again, ‘say have I completed my labour of

love to your perfect satisfaction, and are you sap—pur—IZED?’

Mr Venus contemplated his fellow-man and partner with doubting eyes, and

then rejoined stiffly:

‘This is great news indeed, Mr Wegg. There’s no denying it. But I could

have wished you had told it me before you got your fright to-night, and

I could have wished you had ever asked me as your partner what we were

to do, before you thought you were dividing a responsibility.’

‘—Hear me out!’ cried Wegg. ‘I knew you was a-going to say so. But

alone I bore the anxiety, and alone I’ll bear the blame!’ This with an

air of great magnanimity.

‘No,’ said Venus. ‘Let’s see this will and this box.’

‘Do I understand, brother,’ returned Wegg with considerable reluctance,

‘that it is your wish to see this will and this—?’

Mr Venus smote the table with his hand.

‘—Hear me out!’ said Wegg. ‘Hear me out! I’ll go and fetch ’em.’

After being some time absent, as if in his covetousness he could hardly

make up his mind to produce the treasure to his partner, he returned

with an old leathern hat-box, into which he had put the other box,

for the better preservation of commonplace appearances, and for the

disarming of suspicion. ‘But I don’t half like opening it here,’ said

Silas in a low voice, looking around: ‘he might come back, he may not be

gone; we don’t know what he may be up to, after what we’ve seen.’

‘There’s something in that,’ assented Venus. ‘Come to my place.’

Jealous of the custody of the box, and yet fearful of opening it under

the existing circumstances, Wegg hesitated. ‘Come, I tell you,’ repeated

Venus, chafing, ‘to my place.’ Not very well seeing his way to a

refusal, Mr Wegg then rejoined in a gush, ‘—Hear me out!—Certainly.’

So he locked up the Bower and they set forth: Mr Venus taking his arm,

and keeping it with remarkable tenacity.

They found the usual dim light burning in the window of Mr Venus’s

establishment, imperfectly disclosing to the public the usual pair

of preserved frogs, sword in hand, with their point of honour still

unsettled. Mr Venus had closed his shop door on coming out, and now

opened it with the key and shut it again as soon as they were within;

but not before he had put up and barred the shutters of the shop window.

‘No one can get in without being let in,’ said he then, ‘and we couldn’t

be more snug than here.’ So he raked together the yet warm cinders in

the rusty grate, and made a fire, and trimmed the candle on the little

counter. As the fire cast its flickering gleams here and there upon the

dark greasy walls; the Hindoo baby, the African baby, the articulated

English baby, the assortment of skulls, and the rest of the collection,

came starting to their various stations as if they had all been out,

like their master and were punctual in a general rendezvous to assist

at the secret. The French gentleman had grown considerably since Mr Wegg

last saw him, being now accommodated with a pair of legs and a head,

though his arms were yet in abeyance. To whomsoever the head had

originally belonged, Silas Wegg would have regarded it as a personal

favour if he had not cut quite so many teeth.

Silas took his seat in silence on the wooden box before the fire, and

Venus dropping into his low chair produced from among his skeleton

hands, his tea-tray and tea-cups, and put the kettle on. Silas inwardly

approved of these preparations, trusting they might end in Mr Venus’s

diluting his intellect.

‘Now, sir,’ said Venus, ‘all is safe and quiet. Let us see this

discovery.’

With still reluctant hands, and not without several glances towards the

skeleton hands, as if he mistrusted that a couple of them might spring

forth and clutch the document, Wegg opened the hat-box and revealed the

cash-box, opened the cash-box and revealed the will. He held a corner

of it tight, while Venus, taking hold of another corner, searchingly and

attentively read it.

‘Was I correct in my account of it, partner?’ said Mr Wegg at length.

‘Partner, you were,’ said Mr Venus.

Mr Wegg thereupon made an easy, graceful movement, as though he would

fold it up; but Mr Venus held on by his corner.

‘No, sir,’ said Mr Venus, winking his weak eyes and shaking his head.

‘No, partner. The question is now brought up, who is going to take care

of this. Do you know who is going to take care of this, partner?’

‘I am,’ said Wegg.

‘Oh dear no, partner,’ retorted Venus. ‘That’s a mistake. I am. Now look

here, Mr Wegg. I don’t want to have any words with you, and still less

do I want to have any anatomical pursuits with you.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Wegg, quickly.

‘I mean, partner,’ replied Venus, slowly, ‘that it’s hardly possible

for a man to feel in a more amiable state towards another man than I

do towards you at this present moment. But I am on my own ground, I am

surrounded by the trophies of my art, and my tools is very handy.’

‘What do you mean, Mr Venus?’ asked Wegg again.

‘I am surrounded, as I have observed,’ said Mr Venus, placidly, ‘by

the trophies of my art. They are numerous, my stock of human warious is

large, the shop is pretty well crammed, and I don’t just now want any

more trophies of my art. But I like my art, and I know how to exercise

my art.’

‘No man better,’ assented Mr Wegg, with a somewhat staggered air.

‘There’s the Miscellanies of several human specimens,’ said Venus,

‘(though you mightn’t think it) in the box on which you’re sitting.

There’s the Miscellanies of several human specimens, in the lovely

compo-one behind the door’; with a nod towards the French gentleman. ‘It

still wants a pair of arms. I DON’T say that I’m in any hurry for ’em.’

‘You must be wandering in your mind, partner,’ Silas remonstrated.

‘You’ll excuse me if I wander,’ returned Venus; ‘I am sometimes rather

subject to it. I like my art, and I know how to exercise my art, and I

mean to have the keeping of this document.’

‘But what has that got to do with your art, partner?’ asked Wegg, in an

insinuating tone.

Mr Venus winked his chronically-fatigued eyes both at once, and

adjusting the kettle on the fire, remarked to himself, in a hollow

voice, ‘She’ll bile in a couple of minutes.’

Silas Wegg glanced at the kettle, glanced at the shelves, glanced at the

French gentleman behind the door, and shrank a little as he glanced at

Mr Venus winking his red eyes, and feeling in his waistcoat pocket—as

for a lancet, say—with his unoccupied hand. He and Venus were

necessarily seated close together, as each held a corner of the

document, which was but a common sheet of paper.

‘Partner,’ said Wegg, even more insinuatingly than before, ‘I propose

that we cut it in half, and each keep a half.’

Venus shook his shock of hair, as he replied, ‘It wouldn’t do to

mutilate it, partner. It might seem to be cancelled.’

‘Partner,’ said Wegg, after a silence, during which they had

contemplated one another, ‘don’t your speaking countenance say that

you’re a-going to suggest a middle course?’

Venus shook his shock of hair as he replied, ‘Partner, you have kept

this paper from me once. You shall never keep it from me again. I offer

you the box and the label to take care of, but I’ll take care of the

paper.’

Silas hesitated a little longer, and then suddenly releasing his corner,

and resuming his buoyant and benignant tone, exclaimed, ‘What’s life

without trustfulness! What’s a fellow-man without honour! You’re welcome

to it, partner, in a spirit of trust and confidence.’

Continuing to wink his red eyes both together—but in a self-communing

way, and without any show of triumph—Mr Venus folded the paper now left

in his hand, and locked it in a drawer behind him, and pocketed the key.

He then proposed ‘A cup of tea, partner?’ To which Mr Wegg returned,

‘Thank’ee, partner,’ and the tea was made and poured out.

‘Next,’ said Venus, blowing at his tea in his saucer, and looking over

it at his confidential friend, ‘comes the question, What’s the course to

be pursued?’

On this head, Silas Wegg had much to say. Silas had to say That, he

would beg to remind his comrade, brother, and partner, of the impressive

passages they had read that evening; of the evident parallel in Mr

Boffin’s mind between them and the late owner of the Bower, and the

present circumstances of the Bower; of the bottle; and of the box. That,

the fortunes of his brother and comrade, and of himself were evidently

made, inasmuch as they had but to put their price upon this document,

and get that price from the minion of fortune and the worm of the hour:

who now appeared to be less of a minion and more of a worm than had been

previously supposed. That, he considered it plain that such price was

stateable in a single expressive word, and that the word was, ‘Halves!’

That, the question then arose when ‘Halves!’ should be called. That,

here he had a plan of action to recommend, with a conditional clause.

That, the plan of action was that they should lie by with patience;

that, they should allow the Mounds to be gradually levelled and cleared

away, while retaining to themselves their present opportunity of

watching the process—which would be, he conceived, to put the trouble

and cost of daily digging and delving upon somebody else, while they

might nightly turn such complete disturbance of the dust to the account

of their own private investigations—and that, when the Mounds were

gone, and they had worked those chances for their own joint benefit

solely, they should then, and not before, explode on the minion and

worm. But here came the conditional clause, and to this he entreated the

special attention of his comrade, brother, and partner. It was not to

be borne that the minion and worm should carry off any of that property

which was now to be regarded as their own property. When he, Mr Wegg,

had seen the minion surreptitiously making off with that bottle, and its

precious contents unknown, he had looked upon him in the light of a mere

robber, and, as such, would have despoiled him of his ill-gotten gain,

but for the judicious interference of his comrade, brother, and partner.

Therefore, the conditional clause he proposed was, that, if the minion

should return in his late sneaking manner, and if, being closely

watched, he should be found to possess himself of anything, no matter

what, the sharp sword impending over his head should be instantly shown

him, he should be strictly examined as to what he knew or suspected,

should be severely handled by them his masters, and should be kept in

a state of abject moral bondage and slavery until the time when they

should see fit to permit him to purchase his freedom at the price of

half his possessions. If, said Mr Wegg by way of peroration, he had

erred in saying only ‘Halves!’ he trusted to his comrade, brother, and

partner not to hesitate to set him right, and to reprove his weakness.

It might be more according to the rights of things, to say

Two-thirds; it might be more according to the rights of things, to say

Three-fourths. On those points he was ever open to correction.

Mr Venus, having wafted his attention to this discourse over three

successive saucers of tea, signified his concurrence in the views

advanced. Inspirited hereby, Mr Wegg extended his right hand, and

declared it to be a hand which never yet. Without entering into more

minute particulars. Mr Venus, sticking to his tea, briefly professed his

belief as polite forms required of him, that it WAS a hand which never

yet. But contented himself with looking at it, and did not take it to

his bosom.

‘Brother,’ said Wegg, when this happy understanding was established, ‘I

should like to ask you something. You remember the night when I first

looked in here, and found you floating your powerful mind in tea?’

Still swilling tea, Mr Venus nodded assent.

‘And there you sit, sir,’ pursued Wegg with an air of thoughtful

admiration, ‘as if you had never left off! There you sit, sir, as if you

had an unlimited capacity of assimilating the flagrant article! There

you sit, sir, in the midst of your works, looking as if you’d been

called upon for Home, Sweet Home, and was obleeging the company!

“A exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,

O give you your lowly Preparations again,

The birds stuffed so sweetly that can’t be expected to come at

your call,

Give you these with the peace of mind dearer than all.

Home, Home, Home, sweet Home!”

—Be it ever,’ added Mr Wegg in prose as he glanced about the shop,

‘ever so ghastly, all things considered there’s no place like it.’

‘You said you’d like to ask something; but you haven’t asked it,’

remarked Venus, very unsympathetic in manner.

‘Your peace of mind,’ said Wegg, offering condolence, ‘your peace of

mind was in a poor way that night. HOW’S it going on? IS it looking up

at all?’

‘She does not wish,’ replied Mr Venus with a comical mixture of

indignant obstinacy and tender melancholy, ‘to regard herself, nor yet

to be regarded, in that particular light. There’s no more to be said.’

‘Ah, dear me, dear me!’ exclaimed Wegg with a sigh, but eyeing him while

pretending to keep him company in eyeing the fire, ‘such is Woman! And

I remember you said that night, sitting there as I sat here—said that

night when your peace of mind was first laid low, that you had taken an

interest in these very affairs. Such is coincidence!’

‘Her father,’ rejoined Venus, and then stopped to swallow more tea, ‘her

father was mixed up in them.’

‘You didn’t mention her name, sir, I think?’ observed Wegg, pensively.

‘No, you didn’t mention her name that night.’

‘Pleasant Riderhood.’

‘In—deed!’ cried Wegg. ‘Pleasant Riderhood. There’s something moving in

the name. Pleasant. Dear me! Seems to express what she might have

been, if she hadn’t made that unpleasant remark—and what she ain’t,

in consequence of having made it. Would it at all pour balm into your

wounds, Mr Venus, to inquire how you came acquainted with her?’

‘I was down at the water-side,’ said Venus, taking another gulp of

tea and mournfully winking at the fire—‘looking for parrots’—taking

another gulp and stopping.

Mr Wegg hinted, to jog his attention: ‘You could hardly have been out

parrot-shooting, in the British climate, sir?’

‘No, no, no,’ said Venus fretfully. ‘I was down at the water-side,

looking for parrots brought home by sailors, to buy for stuffing.’

‘Ay, ay, ay, sir!’

‘—And looking for a nice pair of rattlesnakes, to articulate for a

Museum—when I was doomed to fall in with her and deal with her. It was

just at the time of that discovery in the river. Her father had seen the

discovery being towed in the river. I made the popularity of the subject

a reason for going back to improve the acquaintance, and I have never

since been the man I was. My very bones is rendered flabby by brooding

over it. If they could be brought to me loose, to sort, I should hardly

have the face to claim ’em as mine. To such an extent have I fallen off

under it.’

Mr Wegg, less interested than he had been, glanced at one particular

shelf in the dark.

‘Why I remember, Mr Venus,’ he said in a tone of friendly commiseration

‘(for I remember every word that falls from you, sir), I remember that

you said that night, you had got up there—and then your words was,

“Never mind.”’

‘—The parrot that I bought of her,’ said Venus, with a despondent rise

and fall of his eyes. ‘Yes; there it lies on its side, dried up; except

for its plumage, very like myself. I’ve never had the heart to prepare

it, and I never shall have now.’

With a disappointed face, Silas mentally consigned this parrot to

regions more than tropical, and, seeming for the time to have lost

his power of assuming an interest in the woes of Mr Venus, fell to

tightening his wooden leg as a preparation for departure: its gymnastic

performances of that evening having severely tried its constitution.

After Silas had left the shop, hat-box in hand, and had left Mr Venus

to lower himself to oblivion-point with the requisite weight of tea, it

greatly preyed on his ingenuous mind that he had taken this artist into

partnership at all. He bitterly felt that he had overreached himself in

the beginning, by grasping at Mr Venus’s mere straws of hints, now shown

to be worthless for his purpose. Casting about for ways and means of

dissolving the connexion without loss of money, reproaching himself for

having been betrayed into an avowal of his secret, and complimenting

himself beyond measure on his purely accidental good luck, he beguiled

the distance between Clerkenwell and the mansion of the Golden Dustman.

For, Silas Wegg felt it to be quite out of the question that he could

lay his head upon his pillow in peace, without first hovering over

Mr Boffin’s house in the superior character of its Evil Genius. Power

(unless it be the power of intellect or virtue) has ever the greatest

attraction for the lowest natures; and the mere defiance of the

unconscious house-front, with his power to strip the roof off the

inhabiting family like the roof of a house of cards, was a treat which

had a charm for Silas Wegg.

As he hovered on the opposite side of the street, exulting, the carriage

drove up.

‘There’ll shortly be an end of YOU,’ said Wegg, threatening it with the

hat-box. ‘YOUR varnish is fading.’

Mrs Boffin descended and went in.

‘Look out for a fall, my Lady Dustwoman,’ said Wegg.

Bella lightly descended, and ran in after her.

‘How brisk we are!’ said Wegg. ‘You won’t run so gaily to your old

shabby home, my girl. You’ll have to go there, though.’

A little while, and the Secretary came out.

‘I was passed over for you,’ said Wegg. ‘But you had better provide

yourself with another situation, young man.’

Mr Boffin’s shadow passed upon the blinds of three large windows as he

trotted down the room, and passed again as he went back.

‘Yoop!’ cried Wegg. ‘You’re there, are you? Where’s the bottle? You

would give your bottle for my box, Dustman!’

Having now composed his mind for slumber, he turned homeward. Such

was the greed of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond halves,

two-thirds, three-fourths, and gone straight to spoliation of the whole.

‘Though that wouldn’t quite do,’ he considered, growing cooler as he got

away. ‘That’s what would happen to him if he didn’t buy us up. We should

get nothing by that.’

We so judge others by ourselves, that it had never come into his head

before, that he might not buy us up, and might prove honest, and prefer

to be poor. It caused him a slight tremor as it passed; but a very

slight one, for the idle thought was gone directly.

‘He’s grown too fond of money for that,’ said Wegg; ‘he’s grown too fond

of money.’ The burden fell into a strain or tune as he stumped along the

pavements. All the way home he stumped it out of the rattling streets,

PIANO with his own foot, and FORTE with his wooden leg, ‘He’s GROWN too

FOND of MONEY for THAT, he’s GROWN too FOND of MONEY.’

Even next day Silas soothed himself with this melodious strain, when he

was called out of bed at daybreak, to set open the yard-gate and admit

the train of carts and horses that came to carry off the little Mound.

And all day long, as he kept unwinking watch on the slow process which

promised to protract itself through many days and weeks, whenever

(to save himself from being choked with dust) he patrolled a little

cinderous beat he established for the purpose, without taking his eyes

from the diggers, he still stumped to the tune: He’s GROWN too FOND of

MONEY for THAT, he’s GROWN too FOND of MONEY.’

Chapter 8

THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY

The train of carts and horses came and went all day from dawn to

nightfall, making little or no daily impression on the heap of ashes,

though, as the days passed on, the heap was seen to be slowly melting.

My lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, when you in the course

of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking have piled up a mountain of

pretentious failure, you must off with your honourable coats for the

removal of it, and fall to the work with the power of all the queen’s

horses and all the queen’s men, or it will come rushing down and bury us

alive.

Yes, verily, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, adapting your

Catechism to the occasion, and by God’s help so you must. For when we

have got things to the pass that with an enormous treasure at disposal

to relieve the poor, the best of the poor detest our mercies, hide their

heads from us, and shame us by starving to death in the midst of us, it

is a pass impossible of prosperity, impossible of continuance. It may

not be so written in the Gospel according to Podsnappery; you may not

‘find these words’ for the text of a sermon, in the Returns of the Board

of Trade; but they have been the truth since the foundations of the

universe were laid, and they will be the truth until the foundations of

the universe are shaken by the Builder. This boastful handiwork of

ours, which fails in its terrors for the professional pauper, the sturdy

breaker of windows and the rampant tearer of clothes, strikes with a

cruel and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and is a horror to

the deserving and unfortunate. We must mend it, lords and gentlemen and

honourable boards, or in its own evil hour it will mar every one of us.

Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage as many ruggedly honest

creatures, women and men, fare on their toiling way along the roads

of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare living, and quietly to die,

untouched by workhouse hands—this was her highest sublunary hope.

Nothing had been heard of her at Mr Boffin’s house since she trudged

off. The weather had been hard and the roads had been bad, and her

spirit was up. A less stanch spirit might have been subdued by such

adverse influences; but the loan for her little outfit was in no part

repaid, and it had gone worse with her than she had foreseen, and she

was put upon proving her case and maintaining her independence.

Faithful soul! When she had spoken to the Secretary of that ‘deadness

that steals over me at times’, her fortitude had made too little of it.

Oftener and ever oftener, it came stealing over her; darker and ever

darker, like the shadow of advancing Death. That the shadow should

be deep as it came on, like the shadow of an actual presence, was in

accordance with the laws of the physical world, for all the Light that

shone on Betty Higden lay beyond Death.

The poor old creature had taken the upward course of the river Thames as

her general track; it was the track in which her last home lay, and of

which she had last had local love and knowledge. She had hovered for a

little while in the near neighbourhood of her abandoned dwelling, and

had sold, and knitted and sold, and gone on. In the pleasant towns of

Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and Staines, her figure came to be quite

well known for some short weeks, and then again passed on.

She would take her stand in market-places, where there were such things,

on market days; at other times, in the busiest (that was seldom very

busy) portion of the little quiet High Street; at still other times she

would explore the outlying roads for great houses, and would ask leave

at the Lodge to pass in with her basket, and would not often get it. But

ladies in carriages would frequently make purchases from her trifling

stock, and were usually pleased with her bright eyes and her hopeful

speech. In these and her clean dress originated a fable that she was

well to do in the world: one might say, for her station, rich. As making

a comfortable provision for its subject which costs nobody anything,

this class of fable has long been popular.

In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you may hear the fall of

the water over the weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the

rushes; and from the bridge you may see the young river, dimpled like a

young child, playfully gliding away among the trees, unpolluted by the

defilements that lie in wait for it on its course, and as yet out of

hearing of the deep summons of the sea. It were too much to pretend that

Betty Higden made out such thoughts; no; but she heard the tender river

whispering to many like herself, ‘Come to me, come to me! When the cruel

shame and terror you have so long fled from, most beset you, come to me!

I am the Relieving Officer appointed by eternal ordinance to do my work;

I am not held in estimation according as I shirk it. My breast is softer

than the pauper-nurse’s; death in my arms is peacefuller than among the

pauper-wards. Come to me!’

There was abundant place for gentler fancies too, in her untutored mind.

Those gentlefolks and their children inside those fine houses, could

they think, as they looked out at her, what it was to be really hungry,

really cold? Did they feel any of the wonder about her, that she felt

about them? Bless the dear laughing children! If they could have seen

sick Johnny in her arms, would they have cried for pity? If they could

have seen dead Johnny on that little bed, would they have understood it?

Bless the dear children for his sake, anyhow! So with the humbler houses

in the little street, the inner firelight shining on the panes as the

outer twilight darkened. When the families gathered in-doors there, for

the night, it was only a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little

hard in them to close the shutter and blacken the flame. So with the

lighted shops, and speculations whether their masters and mistresses

taking tea in a perspective of back-parlour—not so far within but that

the flavour of tea and toast came out, mingled with the glow of light,

into the street—ate or drank or wore what they sold, with the greater

relish because they dealt in it. So with the churchyard on a branch of

the solitary way to the night’s sleeping-place. ‘Ah me! The dead and

I seem to have it pretty much to ourselves in the dark and in this

weather! But so much the better for all who are warmly housed at home.’

The poor soul envied no one in bitterness, and grudged no one anything.

But, the old abhorrence grew stronger on her as she grew weaker, and

it found more sustaining food than she did in her wanderings. Now, she

would light upon the shameful spectacle of some desolate creature—or

some wretched ragged groups of either sex, or of both sexes, with

children among them, huddled together like the smaller vermin for

a little warmth—lingering and lingering on a doorstep, while the

appointed evader of the public trust did his dirty office of trying to

weary them out and so get rid of them. Now, she would light upon some

poor decent person, like herself, going afoot on a pilgrimage of

many weary miles to see some worn-out relative or friend who had been

charitably clutched off to a great blank barren Union House, as far from

old home as the County Jail (the remoteness of which is always its worst

punishment for small rural offenders), and in its dietary, and in

its lodging, and in its tending of the sick, a much more penal

establishment. Sometimes she would hear a newspaper read out, and would

learn how the Registrar General cast up the units that had within the

last week died of want and of exposure to the weather: for which that

Recording Angel seemed to have a regular fixed place in his sum, as if

they were its halfpence. All such things she would hear discussed, as

we, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, in our unapproachable

magnificence never hear them, and from all such things she would fly

with the wings of raging Despair.

This is not to be received as a figure of speech. Old Betty Higden

however tired, however footsore, would start up and be driven away

by her awakened horror of falling into the hands of Charity. It is a

remarkable Christian improvement, to have made a pursuing Fury of the

Good Samaritan; but it was so in this case, and it is a type of many,

many, many.

Two incidents united to intensify the old unreasoning

abhorrence—granted in a previous place to be unreasoning, because the

people always are unreasoning, and invariably make a point of producing

all their smoke without fire.

One day she was sitting in a market-place on a bench outside an inn,

with her little wares for sale, when the deadness that she strove

against came over her so heavily that the scene departed from before

her eyes; when it returned, she found herself on the ground, her head

supported by some good-natured market-women, and a little crowd about

her.

‘Are you better now, mother?’ asked one of the women. ‘Do you think you

can do nicely now?’

‘Have I been ill then?’ asked old Betty.

‘You have had a faint like,’ was the answer, ‘or a fit. It ain’t that

you’ve been a-struggling, mother, but you’ve been stiff and numbed.’

‘Ah!’ said Betty, recovering her memory. ‘It’s the numbness. Yes. It

comes over me at times.’

Was it gone? the women asked her.

‘It’s gone now,’ said Betty. ‘I shall be stronger than I was afore.

Many thanks to ye, my dears, and when you come to be as old as I am, may

others do as much for you!’

They assisted her to rise, but she could not stand yet, and they

supported her when she sat down again upon the bench.

‘My head’s a bit light, and my feet are a bit heavy,’ said old Betty,

leaning her face drowsily on the breast of the woman who had spoken

before. ‘They’ll both come nat’ral in a minute. There’s nothing more the

matter.’

‘Ask her,’ said some farmers standing by, who had come out from their

market-dinner, ‘who belongs to her.’

‘Are there any folks belonging to you, mother?’ said the woman.

‘Yes sure,’ answered Betty. ‘I heerd the gentleman say it, but I

couldn’t answer quick enough. There’s plenty belonging to me. Don’t ye

fear for me, my dear.’

‘But are any of ’em near here?’ said the men’s voices; the women’s

voices chiming in when it was said, and prolonging the strain.

‘Quite near enough,’ said Betty, rousing herself. ‘Don’t ye be afeard

for me, neighbours.’

‘But you are not fit to travel. Where are you going?’ was the next

compassionate chorus she heard.

‘I’m a going to London when I’ve sold out all,’ said Betty, rising with

difficulty. ‘I’ve right good friends in London. I want for nothing. I

shall come to no harm. Thankye. Don’t ye be afeard for me.’

A well-meaning bystander, yellow-legginged and purple-faced, said

hoarsely over his red comforter, as she rose to her feet, that she

‘oughtn’t to be let to go’.

‘For the Lord’s love don’t meddle with me!’ cried old Betty, all her

fears crowding on her. ‘I am quite well now, and I must go this minute.’

She caught up her basket as she spoke and was making an unsteady rush

away from them, when the same bystander checked her with his hand on

her sleeve, and urged her to come with him and see the parish-doctor.

Strengthening herself by the utmost exercise of her resolution, the poor

trembling creature shook him off, almost fiercely, and took to flight.

Nor did she feel safe until she had set a mile or two of by-road between

herself and the marketplace, and had crept into a copse, like a hunted

animal, to hide and recover breath. Not until then for the first time

did she venture to recall how she had looked over her shoulder before

turning out of the town, and had seen the sign of the White Lion hanging

across the road, and the fluttering market booths, and the old grey

church, and the little crowd gazing after her but not attempting to

follow her.

The second frightening incident was this. She had been again as bad, and

had been for some days better, and was travelling along by a part of

the road where it touched the river, and in wet seasons was so often

overflowed by it that there were tall white posts set up to mark the

way. A barge was being towed towards her, and she sat down on the bank

to rest and watch it. As the tow-rope was slackened by a turn of the

stream and dipped into the water, such a confusion stole into her

mind that she thought she saw the forms of her dead children and dead

grandchildren peopling the barge, and waving their hands to her in

solemn measure; then, as the rope tightened and came up, dropping

diamonds, it seemed to vibrate into two parallel ropes and strike her,

with a twang, though it was far off. When she looked again, there was no

barge, no river, no daylight, and a man whom she had never before seen

held a candle close to her face.

‘Now, Missis,’ said he; ‘where did you come from and where are you going

to?’

The poor soul confusedly asked the counter-question where she was?

‘I am the Lock,’ said the man.

‘The Lock?’

‘I am the Deputy Lock, on job, and this is the Lock-house. (Lock or

Deputy Lock, it’s all one, while the t’other man’s in the hospital.)

What’s your Parish?’

‘Parish!’ She was up from the truckle-bed directly, wildly feeling about

her for her basket, and gazing at him in affright.

‘You’ll be asked the question down town,’ said the man. ‘They won’t let

you be more than a Casual there. They’ll pass you on to your settlement,

Missis, with all speed. You’re not in a state to be let come upon

strange parishes ’ceptin as a Casual.’

‘’Twas the deadness again!’ murmured Betty Higden, with her hand to her

head.

‘It was the deadness, there’s not a doubt about it,’ returned the man.

‘I should have thought the deadness was a mild word for it, if it had

been named to me when we brought you in. Have you got any friends,

Missis?’

‘The best of friends, Master.’

‘I should recommend your looking ’em up if you consider ’em game to do

anything for you,’ said the Deputy Lock. ‘Have you got any money?’

‘Just a morsel of money, sir.’

‘Do you want to keep it?’

‘Sure I do!’

‘Well, you know,’ said the Deputy Lock, shrugging his shoulders with his

hands in his pockets, and shaking his head in a sulkily ominous manner,

‘the parish authorities down town will have it out of you, if you go on,

you may take your Alfred David.’

‘Then I’ll not go on.’

‘They’ll make you pay, as fur as your money will go,’ pursued the

Deputy, ‘for your relief as a Casual and for your being passed to your

Parish.’

‘Thank ye kindly, Master, for your warning, thank ye for your shelter,

and good night.’

‘Stop a bit,’ said the Deputy, striking in between her and the door.

‘Why are you all of a shake, and what’s your hurry, Missis?’

‘Oh, Master, Master,’ returned Betty Higden, ‘I’ve fought against the

Parish and fled from it, all my life, and I want to die free of it!’

‘I don’t know,’ said the Deputy, with deliberation, ‘as I ought to let

you go. I’m a honest man as gets my living by the sweat of my brow, and

I may fall into trouble by letting you go. I’ve fell into trouble afore

now, by George, and I know what it is, and it’s made me careful. You

might be took with your deadness again, half a mile off—or half of half

a quarter, for the matter of that—and then it would be asked, Why did

that there honest Deputy Lock, let her go, instead of putting her safe

with the Parish? That’s what a man of his character ought to have done,

it would be argueyfied,’ said the Deputy Lock, cunningly harping on the

strong string of her terror; ‘he ought to have handed her over safe to

the Parish. That was to be expected of a man of his merits.’

As he stood in the doorway, the poor old careworn wayworn woman burst

into tears, and clasped her hands, as if in a very agony she prayed to

him.

‘As I’ve told you, Master, I’ve the best of friends. This letter will

show how true I spoke, and they will be thankful for me.’

The Deputy Lock opened the letter with a grave face, which underwent no

change as he eyed its contents. But it might have done, if he could have

read them.

‘What amount of small change, Missis,’ he said, with an abstracted air,

after a little meditation, ‘might you call a morsel of money?’

Hurriedly emptying her pocket, old Betty laid down on the table, a

shilling, and two sixpenny pieces, and a few pence.

‘If I was to let you go instead of handing you over safe to the Parish,’

said the Deputy, counting the money with his eyes, ‘might it be your own

free wish to leave that there behind you?’

‘Take it, Master, take it, and welcome and thankful!’

‘I’m a man,’ said the Deputy, giving her back the letter, and pocketing

the coins, one by one, ‘as earns his living by the sweat of his brow;’

here he drew his sleeve across his forehead, as if this particular

portion of his humble gains were the result of sheer hard labour and

virtuous industry; ‘and I won’t stand in your way. Go where you like.’

She was gone out of the Lock-house as soon as he gave her this

permission, and her tottering steps were on the road again. But, afraid

to go back and afraid to go forward; seeing what she fled from, in the

sky-glare of the lights of the little town before her, and leaving a

confused horror of it everywhere behind her, as if she had escaped it

in every stone of every market-place; she struck off by side ways, among

which she got bewildered and lost. That night she took refuge from the

Samaritan in his latest accredited form, under a farmer’s rick; and

if—worth thinking of, perhaps, my fellow-Christians—the Samaritan had

in the lonely night, ‘passed by on the other side’, she would have most

devoutly thanked High Heaven for her escape from him.

The morning found her afoot again, but fast declining as to the

clearness of her thoughts, though not as to the steadiness of her

purpose. Comprehending that her strength was quitting her, and that the

struggle of her life was almost ended, she could neither reason out the

means of getting back to her protectors, nor even form the idea. The

overmastering dread, and the proud stubborn resolution it engendered

in her to die undegraded, were the two distinct impressions left in her

failing mind. Supported only by a sense that she was bent on conquering

in her life-long fight, she went on.

The time was come, now, when the wants of this little life were passing

away from her. She could not have swallowed food, though a table had

been spread for her in the next field. The day was cold and wet, but

she scarcely knew it. She crept on, poor soul, like a criminal afraid of

being taken, and felt little beyond the terror of falling down while it

was yet daylight, and being found alive. She had no fear that she would

live through another night.

Sewn in the breast of her gown, the money to pay for her burial was

still intact. If she could wear through the day, and then lie down to

die under cover of the darkness, she would die independent. If she were

captured previously, the money would be taken from her as a pauper who

had no right to it, and she would be carried to the accursed workhouse.

Gaining her end, the letter would be found in her breast, along with

the money, and the gentlefolks would say when it was given back to them,

‘She prized it, did old Betty Higden; she was true to it; and while she

lived, she would never let it be disgraced by falling into the hands

of those that she held in horror.’ Most illogical, inconsequential, and

light-headed, this; but travellers in the valley of the shadow of death

are apt to be light-headed; and worn-out old people of low estate have

a trick of reasoning as indifferently as they live, and doubtless

would appreciate our Poor Law more philosophically on an income of ten

thousand a year.

So, keeping to byways, and shunning human approach, this troublesome

old woman hid herself, and fared on all through the dreary day. Yet so

unlike was she to vagrant hiders in general, that sometimes, as the day

advanced, there was a bright fire in her eyes, and a quicker beating at

her feeble heart, as though she said exultingly, ‘The Lord will see me

through it!’

By what visionary hands she was led along upon that journey of escape

from the Samaritan; by what voices, hushed in the grave, she seemed

to be addressed; how she fancied the dead child in her arms again, and

times innumerable adjusted her shawl to keep it warm; what infinite

variety of forms of tower and roof and steeple the trees took; how many

furious horsemen rode at her, crying, ‘There she goes! Stop! Stop,

Betty Higden!’ and melted away as they came close; be these things left

untold. Faring on and hiding, hiding and faring on, the poor harmless

creature, as though she were a Murderess and the whole country were up

after her, wore out the day, and gained the night.

‘Water-meadows, or such like,’ she had sometimes murmured, on the day’s

pilgrimage, when she had raised her head and taken any note of the real

objects about her. There now arose in the darkness, a great building,

full of lighted windows. Smoke was issuing from a high chimney in

the rear of it, and there was the sound of a water-wheel at the side.

Between her and the building, lay a piece of water, in which the lighted

windows were reflected, and on its nearest margin was a plantation of

trees. ‘I humbly thank the Power and the Glory,’ said Betty Higden,

holding up her withered hands, ‘that I have come to my journey’s end!’

She crept among the trees to the trunk of a tree whence she could see,

beyond some intervening trees and branches, the lighted windows, both in

their reality and their reflection in the water. She placed her orderly

little basket at her side, and sank upon the ground, supporting herself

against the tree. It brought to her mind the foot of the Cross, and

she committed herself to Him who died upon it. Her strength held out to

enable her to arrange the letter in her breast, so as that it could

be seen that she had a paper there. It had held out for this, and it

departed when this was done.

‘I am safe here,’ was her last benumbed thought. ‘When I am found dead

at the foot of the Cross, it will be by some of my own sort; some of

the working people who work among the lights yonder. I cannot see the

lighted windows now, but they are there. I am thankful for all!’

The darkness gone, and a face bending down.

‘It cannot be the boofer lady?’

‘I don’t understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again with this

brandy. I have been away to fetch it. Did you think that I was long

gone?’

It is as the face of a woman, shaded by a quantity of rich dark hair.

It is the earnest face of a woman who is young and handsome. But all is

over with me on earth, and this must be an Angel.

‘Have I been long dead?’

‘I don’t understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again. I hurried

all I could, and brought no one back with me, lest you should die of the

shock of strangers.’

‘Am I not dead?’

‘I cannot understand what you say. Your voice is so low and broken that

I cannot hear you. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you mean Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was coming from my work just now, along the path outside (I was up

with the night-hands last night), and I heard a groan, and found you

lying here.’

‘What work, deary?’

‘Did you ask what work? At the paper-mill.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Your face is turned up to the sky, and you can’t see it. It is close

by. You can see my face, here, between you and the sky?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dare I lift you?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Not even lift your head to get it on my arm? I will do it by very

gentle degrees. You shall hardly feel it.’

‘Not yet. Paper. Letter.’

‘This paper in your breast?’

‘Bless ye!’

‘Let me wet your lips again. Am I to open it? To read it?’

‘Bless ye!’

She reads it with surprise, and looks down with a new expression and an

added interest on the motionless face she kneels beside.

‘I know these names. I have heard them often.’

‘Will you send it, my dear?’

‘I cannot understand you. Let me wet your lips again, and your forehead.

There. O poor thing, poor thing!’ These words through her fast-dropping

tears. ‘What was it that you asked me? Wait till I bring my ear quite

close.’

‘Will you send it, my dear?’

‘Will I send it to the writers? Is that your wish? Yes, certainly.’

‘You’ll not give it up to any one but them?’

‘No.’

‘As you must grow old in time, and come to your dying hour, my dear,

you’ll not give it up to any one but them?’

‘No. Most solemnly.’

‘Never to the Parish!’ with a convulsed struggle.

‘No. Most solemnly.’

‘Nor let the Parish touch me, not yet so much as look at me!’ with

another struggle.

‘No. Faithfully.’

A look of thankfulness and triumph lights the worn old face.

The eyes, which have been darkly fixed upon the sky, turn with meaning

in them towards the compassionate face from which the tears are

dropping, and a smile is on the aged lips as they ask:

‘What is your name, my dear?’

‘My name is Lizzie Hexam.’

‘I must be sore disfigured. Are you afraid to kiss me?’

The answer is, the ready pressure of her lips upon the cold but smiling

mouth.

‘Bless ye! NOW lift me, my love.’

Lizzie Hexam very softly raised the weather-stained grey head, and

lifted her as high as Heaven.

Chapter 9