SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION

‘“We give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver

this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world.”’ So read the

Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled voice, for his heart misgave

him that all was not quite right between us and our sister—or say our

sister in Law—Poor Law—and that we sometimes read these words in an

awful manner, over our Sister and our Brother too.

And Sloppy—on whom the brave deceased had never turned her back until

she ran away from him, knowing that otherwise he would not be separated

from her—Sloppy could not in his conscience as yet find the hearty

thanks required of it. Selfish in Sloppy, and yet excusable, it may be

humbly hoped, because our sister had been more than his mother.

The words were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner of a

churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there was

nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single tombstone.

It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the diggers and

hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their graves at the common

charge; so that a new generation might know which was which: so that the

soldier, sailor, emigrant, coming home, should be able to identify the

resting-place of father, mother, playmate, or betrothed. For, we turn up

our eyes and say that we are all alike in death, and we might turn

them down and work the saying out in this world, so far. It would

be sentimental, perhaps? But how say ye, my lords and gentleman and

honourable boards, shall we not find good standing-room left for a

little sentiment, if we look into our crowds?

Near unto the Reverend Frank Milvey as he read, stood his little wife,

John Rokesmith the Secretary, and Bella Wilfer. These, over and above

Sloppy, were the mourners at the lowly grave. Not a penny had been

added to the money sewn in her dress: what her honest spirit had so long

projected, was fulfilled.

‘I’ve took it in my head,’ said Sloppy, laying it, inconsolable, against

the church door, when all was done: ‘I’ve took it in my wretched head

that I might have sometimes turned a little harder for her, and it cuts

me deep to think so now.’

The Reverend Frank Milvey, comforting Sloppy, expounded to him how the

best of us were more or less remiss in our turnings at our respective

Mangles—some of us very much so—and how we were all a halting,

failing, feeble, and inconstant crew.

‘SHE warn’t, sir,’ said Sloppy, taking this ghostly counsel rather ill,

in behalf of his late benefactress. ‘Let us speak for ourselves, sir.

She went through with whatever duty she had to do. She went through with

me, she went through with the Minders, she went through with herself,

she went through with everythink. O Mrs Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a

woman and a mother and a mangler in a million million!’

With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from the

church door, and took it back to the grave in the corner, and laid it

down there, and wept alone. ‘Not a very poor grave,’ said the Reverend

Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes, ‘when it has that

homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could be made by most of

the sculpture in Westminster Abbey!’

They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket-gate. The

water-wheel of the paper-mill was audible there, and seemed to have a

softening influence on the bright wintry scene. They had arrived but a

little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them the little she could

add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr Rokesmith’s letter and

had asked for their instructions. This was merely how she had heard the

groan, and what had afterwards passed, and how she had obtained leave

for the remains to be placed in that sweet, fresh, empty store-room of

the mill from which they had just accompanied them to the churchyard,

and how the last requests had been religiously observed.

‘I could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,’ said Lizzie.

‘I should not have wanted the will; but I should not have had the power,

without our managing partner.’

‘Surely not the Jew who received us?’ said Mrs Milvey.

(‘My dear,’ observed her husband in parenthesis, ‘why not?’)

‘The gentleman certainly is a Jew,’ said Lizzie, ‘and the lady, his

wife, is a Jewess, and I was first brought to their notice by a Jew. But

I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.’

‘But suppose they try to convert you!’ suggested Mrs Milvey, bristling

in her good little way, as a clergyman’s wife.

‘To do what, ma’am?’ asked Lizzie, with a modest smile.

‘To make you change your religion,’ said Mrs Milvey.

Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. ‘They have never asked me what

my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told them. They

asked me to be industrious and faithful, and I promised to be so.

They most willingly and cheerfully do their duty to all of us who are

employed here, and we try to do ours to them. Indeed they do much more

than their duty to us, for they are wonderfully mindful of us in many

ways.’

‘It is easy to see you’re a favourite, my dear,’ said little Mrs Milvey,

not quite pleased.

‘It would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,’ returned Lizzie,

‘for I have been already raised to a place of confidence here. But that

makes no difference in their following their own religion and leaving

all of us to ours. They never talk of theirs to us, and they never talk

of ours to us. If I was the last in the mill, it would be just the same.

They never asked me what religion that poor thing had followed.’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Milvey, aside to the Reverend Frank, ‘I wish you

would talk to her.’

‘My dear,’ said the Reverend Frank aside to his good little wife, ‘I

think I will leave it to somebody else. The circumstances are hardly

favourable. There are plenty of talkers going about, my love, and she

will soon find one.’

While this discourse was interchanging, both Bella and the Secretary

observed Lizzie Hexam with great attention. Brought face to face for the

first time with the daughter of his supposed murderer, it was natural

that John Harmon should have his own secret reasons for a careful

scrutiny of her countenance and manner. Bella knew that Lizzie’s

father had been falsely accused of the crime which had had so great an

influence on her own life and fortunes; and her interest, though it had

no secret springs, like that of the Secretary, was equally natural. Both

had expected to see something very different from the real Lizzie Hexam,

and thus it fell out that she became the unconscious means of bringing

them together.

For, when they had walked on with her to the little house in the clean

village by the paper-mill, where Lizzie had a lodging with an elderly

couple employed in the establishment, and when Mrs Milvey and Bella

had been up to see her room and had come down, the mill bell rang.

This called Lizzie away for the time, and left the Secretary and Bella

standing rather awkwardly in the small street; Mrs Milvey being engaged

in pursuing the village children, and her investigations whether they

were in danger of becoming children of Israel; and the Reverend Frank

being engaged—to say the truth—in evading that branch of his spiritual

functions, and getting out of sight surreptitiously.

Bella at length said:

‘Hadn’t we better talk about the commission we have undertaken, Mr

Rokesmith?’

‘By all means,’ said the Secretary.

‘I suppose,’ faltered Bella, ‘that we ARE both commissioned, or we

shouldn’t both be here?’

‘I suppose so,’ was the Secretary’s answer.

‘When I proposed to come with Mr and Mrs Milvey,’ said Bella, ‘Mrs

Boffin urged me to do so, in order that I might give her my small

report—it’s not worth anything, Mr Rokesmith, except for it’s being

a woman’s—which indeed with you may be a fresh reason for it’s being

worth nothing—of Lizzie Hexam.’

‘Mr Boffin,’ said the Secretary, ‘directed me to come for the same

purpose.’

As they spoke they were leaving the little street and emerging on the

wooded landscape by the river.

‘You think well of her, Mr Rokesmith?’ pursued Bella, conscious of

making all the advances.

‘I think highly of her.’

‘I am so glad of that! Something quite refined in her beauty, is there

not?’

‘Her appearance is very striking.’

‘There is a shade of sadness upon her that is quite touching. At least

I—I am not setting up my own poor opinion, you know, Mr Rokesmith,’

said Bella, excusing and explaining herself in a pretty shy way; ‘I am

consulting you.’

‘I noticed that sadness. I hope it may not,’ said the Secretary in

a lower voice, ‘be the result of the false accusation which has been

retracted.’

When they had passed on a little further without speaking, Bella, after

stealing a glance or two at the Secretary, suddenly said:

‘Oh, Mr Rokesmith, don’t be hard with me, don’t be stern with me; be

magnanimous! I want to talk with you on equal terms.’

The Secretary as suddenly brightened, and returned: ‘Upon my honour I

had no thought but for you. I forced myself to be constrained, lest you

might misinterpret my being more natural. There. It’s gone.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bella, holding out her little hand. ‘Forgive me.’

‘No!’ cried the Secretary, eagerly. ‘Forgive ME!’ For there were tears

in her eyes, and they were prettier in his sight (though they smote him

on the heart rather reproachfully too) than any other glitter in the

world.

When they had walked a little further:

‘You were going to speak to me,’ said the Secretary, with the shadow so

long on him quite thrown off and cast away, ‘about Lizzie Hexam. So was

I going to speak to you, if I could have begun.’

‘Now that you CAN begin, sir,’ returned Bella, with a look as if she

italicized the word by putting one of her dimples under it, ‘what were

you going to say?’

‘You remember, of course, that in her short letter to Mrs Boffin—short,

but containing everything to the purpose—she stipulated that either

her name, or else her place of residence, must be kept strictly a secret

among us.’

Bella nodded Yes.

‘It is my duty to find out why she made that stipulation. I have it in

charge from Mr Boffin to discover, and I am very desirous for myself to

discover, whether that retracted accusation still leaves any stain upon

her. I mean whether it places her at any disadvantage towards any one,

even towards herself.’

‘Yes,’ said Bella, nodding thoughtfully; ‘I understand. That seems wise,

and considerate.’

‘You may not have noticed, Miss Wilfer, that she has the same kind of

interest in you, that you have in her. Just as you are attracted by her

beaut—by her appearance and manner, she is attracted by yours.’

‘I certainly have NOT noticed it,’ returned Bella, again italicizing

with the dimple, ‘and I should have given her credit for—’

The Secretary with a smile held up his hand, so plainly interposing ‘not

for better taste’, that Bella’s colour deepened over the little piece of

coquetry she was checked in.

‘And so,’ resumed the Secretary, ‘if you would speak with her alone

before we go away from here, I feel quite sure that a natural and easy

confidence would arise between you. Of course you would not be asked to

betray it; and of course you would not, if you were. But if you do not

object to put this question to her—to ascertain for us her own feeling

in this one matter—you can do so at a far greater advantage than I or

any else could. Mr Boffin is anxious on the subject. And I am,’ added

the Secretary after a moment, ‘for a special reason, very anxious.’

‘I shall be happy, Mr Rokesmith,’ returned Bella, ‘to be of the least

use; for I feel, after the serious scene of to-day, that I am useless

enough in this world.’

‘Don’t say that,’ urged the Secretary.

‘Oh, but I mean that,’ said Bella, raising her eyebrows.

‘No one is useless in this world,’ retorted the Secretary, ‘who lightens

the burden of it for any one else.’

‘But I assure you I DON’T, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, half-crying.

‘Not for your father?’

‘Dear, loving, self-forgetting, easily-satisfied Pa! Oh, yes! He thinks

so.’

‘It is enough if he only thinks so,’ said the Secretary. ‘Excuse the

interruption: I don’t like to hear you depreciate yourself.’

‘But YOU once depreciated ME, sir,’ thought Bella, pouting, ‘and I hope

you may be satisfied with the consequences you brought upon your head!’

However, she said nothing to that purpose; she even said something to a

different purpose.

‘Mr Rokesmith, it seems so long since we spoke together naturally, that

I am embarrassed in approaching another subject. Mr Boffin. You know I

am very grateful to him; don’t you? You know I feel a true respect for

him, and am bound to him by the strong ties of his own generosity; now

don’t you?’

‘Unquestionably. And also that you are his favourite companion.’

‘That makes it,’ said Bella, ‘so very difficult to speak of him. But—.

Does he treat you well?’

‘You see how he treats me,’ the Secretary answered, with a patient and

yet proud air.

‘Yes, and I see it with pain,’ said Bella, very energetically.

The Secretary gave her such a radiant look, that if he had thanked her a

hundred times, he could not have said as much as the look said.

‘I see it with pain,’ repeated Bella, ‘and it often makes me miserable.

Miserable, because I cannot bear to be supposed to approve of it, or

have any indirect share in it. Miserable, because I cannot bear to be

forced to admit to myself that Fortune is spoiling Mr Boffin.’

‘Miss Wilfer,’ said the Secretary, with a beaming face, ‘if you could

know with what delight I make the discovery that Fortune isn’t spoiling

YOU, you would know that it more than compensates me for any slight at

any other hands.’

‘Oh, don’t speak of ME,’ said Bella, giving herself an impatient little

slap with her glove. ‘You don’t know me as well as—’

‘As you know yourself?’ suggested the Secretary, finding that she

stopped. ‘DO you know yourself?’

‘I know quite enough of myself,’ said Bella, with a charming air of

being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, ‘and I don’t improve

upon acquaintance. But Mr Boffin.’

‘That Mr Boffin’s manner to me, or consideration for me, is not what it

used to be,’ observed the Secretary, ‘must be admitted. It is too plain

to be denied.’

‘Are you disposed to deny it, Mr Rokesmith?’ asked Bella, with a look of

wonder.

‘Ought I not to be glad to do so, if I could: though it were only for my

own sake?’

‘Truly,’ returned Bella, ‘it must try you very much, and—you must

please promise me that you won’t take ill what I am going to add, Mr

Rokesmith?’

‘I promise it with all my heart.’

‘—And it must sometimes, I should think,’ said Bella, hesitating, ‘a

little lower you in your own estimation?’

Assenting with a movement of his head, though not at all looking as if

it did, the Secretary replied:

‘I have very strong reasons, Miss Wilfer, for bearing with the drawbacks

of my position in the house we both inhabit. Believe that they are not

all mercenary, although I have, through a series of strange fatalities,

faded out of my place in life. If what you see with such a gracious

and good sympathy is calculated to rouse my pride, there are other

considerations (and those you do not see) urging me to quiet endurance.

The latter are by far the stronger.’

‘I think I have noticed, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, looking at him with

curiosity, as not quite making him out, ‘that you repress yourself, and

force yourself, to act a passive part.’

‘You are right. I repress myself and force myself to act a part. It is

not in tameness of spirit that I submit. I have a settled purpose.’

‘And a good one, I hope,’ said Bella.

‘And a good one, I hope,’ he answered, looking steadily at her.

‘Sometimes I have fancied, sir,’ said Bella, turning away her eyes,

‘that your great regard for Mrs Boffin is a very powerful motive with

you.’

‘You are right again; it is. I would do anything for her, bear anything

for her. There are no words to express how I esteem that good, good

woman.’

‘As I do too! May I ask you one thing more, Mr Rokesmith?’

‘Anything more.’

‘Of course you see that she really suffers, when Mr Boffin shows how he

is changing?’

‘I see it, every day, as you see it, and am grieved to give her pain.’

‘To give her pain?’ said Bella, repeating the phrase quickly, with her

eyebrows raised.

‘I am generally the unfortunate cause of it.’

‘Perhaps she says to you, as she often says to me, that he is the best

of men, in spite of all.’

‘I often overhear her, in her honest and beautiful devotion to him,

saying so to you,’ returned the Secretary, with the same steady look,

‘but I cannot assert that she ever says so to me.’

Bella met the steady look for a moment with a wistful, musing little

look of her own, and then, nodding her pretty head several times, like

a dimpled philosopher (of the very best school) who was moralizing on

Life, heaved a little sigh, and gave up things in general for a bad job,

as she had previously been inclined to give up herself.

But, for all that, they had a very pleasant walk. The trees were bare of

leaves, and the river was bare of water-lilies; but the sky was not bare

of its beautiful blue, and the water reflected it, and a delicious

wind ran with the stream, touching the surface crisply. Perhaps the old

mirror was never yet made by human hands, which, if all the images it

has in its time reflected could pass across its surface again, would

fail to reveal some scene of horror or distress. But the great serene

mirror of the river seemed as if it might have reproduced all it had

ever reflected between those placid banks, and brought nothing to the

light save what was peaceful, pastoral, and blooming.

So, they walked, speaking of the newly filled-up grave, and of Johnny,

and of many things. So, on their return, they met brisk Mrs Milvey

coming to seek them, with the agreeable intelligence that there was no

fear for the village children, there being a Christian school in the

village, and no worse Judaical interference with it than to plant its

garden. So, they got back to the village as Lizzie Hexam was coming from

the paper-mill, and Bella detached herself to speak with her in her own

home.

‘I am afraid it is a poor room for you,’ said Lizzie, with a smile of

welcome, as she offered the post of honour by the fireside.

‘Not so poor as you think, my dear,’ returned Bella, ‘if you knew all.’

Indeed, though attained by some wonderful winding narrow stairs, which

seemed to have been erected in a pure white chimney, and though very low

in the ceiling, and very rugged in the floor, and rather blinking as

to the proportions of its lattice window, it was a pleasanter room than

that despised chamber once at home, in which Bella had first bemoaned

the miseries of taking lodgers.

The day was closing as the two girls looked at one another by the

fireside. The dusky room was lighted by the fire. The grate might have

been the old brazier, and the glow might have been the old hollow down

by the flare.

‘It’s quite new to me,’ said Lizzie, ‘to be visited by a lady so nearly

of my own age, and so pretty, as you. It’s a pleasure to me to look at

you.’

‘I have nothing left to begin with,’ returned Bella, blushing, ‘because

I was going to say that it was a pleasure to me to look at you, Lizzie.

But we can begin without a beginning, can’t we?’

Lizzie took the pretty little hand that was held out in as pretty a

little frankness.

‘Now, dear,’ said Bella, drawing her chair a little nearer, and taking

Lizzie’s arm as if they were going out for a walk, ‘I am commissioned

with something to say, and I dare say I shall say it wrong, but I

won’t if I can help it. It is in reference to your letter to Mr and Mrs

Boffin, and this is what it is. Let me see. Oh yes! This is what it is.’

With this exordium, Bella set forth that request of Lizzie’s touching

secrecy, and delicately spoke of that false accusation and its

retraction, and asked might she beg to be informed whether it had any

bearing, near or remote, on such request. ‘I feel, my dear,’ said Bella,

quite amazing herself by the business-like manner in which she was

getting on, ‘that the subject must be a painful one to you, but I

am mixed up in it also; for—I don’t know whether you may know it or

suspect it—I am the willed-away girl who was to have been married to

the unfortunate gentleman, if he had been pleased to approve of me. So

I was dragged into the subject without my consent, and you were dragged

into it without your consent, and there is very little to choose between

us.’

‘I had no doubt,’ said Lizzie, ‘that you were the Miss Wilfer I have

often heard named. Can you tell me who my unknown friend is?’

‘Unknown friend, my dear?’ said Bella.

‘Who caused the charge against poor father to be contradicted, and sent

me the written paper.’

Bella had never heard of him. Had no notion who he was.

‘I should have been glad to thank him,’ returned Lizzie. ‘He has done a

great deal for me. I must hope that he will let me thank him some day.

You asked me has it anything to do—’

‘It or the accusation itself,’ Bella put in.

‘Yes. Has either anything to do with my wishing to live quite secret and

retired here? No.’

As Lizzie Hexam shook her head in giving this reply and as her glance

sought the fire, there was a quiet resolution in her folded hands, not

lost on Bella’s bright eyes.

‘Have you lived much alone?’ asked Bella.

‘Yes. It’s nothing new to me. I used to be always alone many hours

together, in the day and in the night, when poor father was alive.’

‘You have a brother, I have been told?’

‘I have a brother, but he is not friendly with me. He is a very good

boy though, and has raised himself by his industry. I don’t complain of

him.’

As she said it, with her eyes upon the fire-glow, there was an

instantaneous escape of distress into her face. Bella seized the moment

to touch her hand.

‘Lizzie, I wish you would tell me whether you have any friend of your

own sex and age.’

‘I have lived that lonely kind of life, that I have never had one,’ was

the answer.

‘Nor I neither,’ said Bella. ‘Not that my life has been lonely, for I

could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going on

like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners, and Lavvy

being spiteful—though of course I am very fond of them both. I wish

you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have

no more of what they call character, my dear, than a canary-bird, but I

know I am trustworthy.’

The wayward, playful, affectionate nature, giddy for want of the

weight of some sustaining purpose, and capricious because it was always

fluttering among little things, was yet a captivating one. To Lizzie it

was so new, so pretty, at once so womanly and so childish, that it won

her completely. And when Bella said again, ‘Do you think you could,

Lizzie?’ with her eyebrows raised, her head inquiringly on one side,

and an odd doubt about it in her own bosom, Lizzie showed beyond all

question that she thought she could.

‘Tell me, my dear,’ said Bella, ‘what is the matter, and why you live

like this.’

Lizzie presently began, by way of prelude, ‘You must have many lovers—’

when Bella checked her with a little scream of astonishment.

‘My dear, I haven’t one!’

‘Not one?’

‘Well! Perhaps one,’ said Bella. ‘I am sure I don’t know. I HAD one, but

what he may think about it at the present time I can’t say. Perhaps I

have half a one (of course I don’t count that Idiot, George Sampson).

However, never mind me. I want to hear about you.’

‘There is a certain man,’ said Lizzie, ‘a passionate and angry man, who

says he loves me, and who I must believe does love me. He is the friend

of my brother. I shrank from him within myself when my brother first

brought him to me; but the last time I saw him he terrified me more than

I can say.’ There she stopped.

‘Did you come here to escape from him, Lizzie?’

‘I came here immediately after he so alarmed me.’

‘Are you afraid of him here?’

‘I am not timid generally, but I am always afraid of him. I am afraid

to see a newspaper, or to hear a word spoken of what is done in London,

lest he should have done some violence.’

‘Then you are not afraid of him for yourself, dear?’ said Bella, after

pondering on the words.

‘I should be even that, if I met him about here. I look round for him

always, as I pass to and fro at night.’

‘Are you afraid of anything he may do to himself in London, my dear?’

‘No. He might be fierce enough even to do some violence to himself, but

I don’t think of that.’

‘Then it would almost seem, dear,’ said Bella quaintly, ‘as if there

must be somebody else?’

Lizzie put her hands before her face for a moment before replying: ‘The

words are always in my ears, and the blow he struck upon a stone wall as

he said them is always before my eyes. I have tried hard to think it

not worth remembering, but I cannot make so little of it. His hand was

trickling down with blood as he said to me, “Then I hope that I may

never kill him!’

Rather startled, Bella made and clasped a girdle of her arms round

Lizzie’s waist, and then asked quietly, in a soft voice, as they both

looked at the fire:

‘Kill him! Is this man so jealous, then?’

‘Of a gentleman,’ said Lizzie. ‘—I hardly know how to tell you—of a

gentleman far above me and my way of life, who broke father’s death to

me, and has shown an interest in me since.’

‘Does he love you?’

Lizzie shook her head.

‘Does he admire you?’

Lizzie ceased to shake her head, and pressed her hand upon her living

girdle.

‘Is it through his influence that you came here?’

‘O no! And of all the world I wouldn’t have him know that I am here, or

get the least clue where to find me.’

‘Lizzie, dear! Why?’ asked Bella, in amazement at this burst. But then

quickly added, reading Lizzie’s face: ‘No. Don’t say why. That was a

foolish question of mine. I see, I see.’

There was silence between them. Lizzie, with a drooping head, glanced

down at the glow in the fire where her first fancies had been nursed,

and her first escape made from the grim life out of which she had

plucked her brother, foreseeing her reward.

‘You know all now,’ she said, raising her eyes to Bella’s. ‘There is

nothing left out. This is my reason for living secret here, with the aid

of a good old man who is my true friend. For a short part of my life

at home with father, I knew of things—don’t ask me what—that I set my

face against, and tried to better. I don’t think I could have done more,

then, without letting my hold on father go; but they sometimes lie heavy

on my mind. By doing all for the best, I hope I may wear them out.’

‘And wear out too,’ said Bella soothingly, ‘this weakness, Lizzie, in

favour of one who is not worthy of it.’

‘No. I don’t want to wear that out,’ was the flushed reply, ‘nor do I

want to believe, nor do I believe, that he is not worthy of it. What

should I gain by that, and how much should I lose!’

Bella’s expressive little eyebrows remonstrated with the fire for some

short time before she rejoined:

‘Don’t think that I press you, Lizzie; but wouldn’t you gain in peace,

and hope, and even in freedom? Wouldn’t it be better not to live a

secret life in hiding, and not to be shut out from your natural and

wholesome prospects? Forgive my asking you, would that be no gain?’

‘Does a woman’s heart that—that has that weakness in it which you have

spoken of,’ returned Lizzie, ‘seek to gain anything?’

The question was so directly at variance with Bella’s views in life, as

set forth to her father, that she said internally, ‘There, you little

mercenary wretch! Do you hear that? Ain’t you ashamed of your self?’

and unclasped the girdle of her arms, expressly to give herself a

penitential poke in the side.

‘But you said, Lizzie,’ observed Bella, returning to her subject when

she had administered this chastisement, ‘that you would lose, besides.

Would you mind telling me what you would lose, Lizzie?’

‘I should lose some of the best recollections, best encouragements,

and best objects, that I carry through my daily life. I should lose my

belief that if I had been his equal, and he had loved me, I should have

tried with all my might to make him better and happier, as he would have

made me. I should lose almost all the value that I put upon the little

learning I have, which is all owing to him, and which I conquered the

difficulties of, that he might not think it thrown away upon me. I

should lose a kind of picture of him—or of what he might have been,

if I had been a lady, and he had loved me—which is always with me, and

which I somehow feel that I could not do a mean or a wrong thing before.

I should leave off prizing the remembrance that he has done me nothing

but good since I have known him, and that he has made a change within

me, like—like the change in the grain of these hands, which were

coarse, and cracked, and hard, and brown when I rowed on the river with

father, and are softened and made supple by this new work as you see

them now.’

They trembled, but with no weakness, as she showed them.

‘Understand me, my dear;’ thus she went on. ‘I have never dreamed of

the possibility of his being anything to me on this earth but the

kind picture that I know I could not make you understand, if the

understanding was not in your own breast already. I have no more dreamed

of the possibility of MY being his wife, than he ever has—and words

could not be stronger than that. And yet I love him. I love him so much,

and so dearly, that when I sometimes think my life may be but a weary

one, I am proud of it and glad of it. I am proud and glad to suffer

something for him, even though it is of no service to him, and he will

never know of it or care for it.’

Bella sat enchained by the deep, unselfish passion of this girl or woman

of her own age, courageously revealing itself in the confidence of her

sympathetic perception of its truth. And yet she had never experienced

anything like it, or thought of the existence of anything like it.

‘It was late upon a wretched night,’ said Lizzie, ‘when his eyes first

looked at me in my old river-side home, very different from this. His

eyes may never look at me again. I would rather that they never did; I

hope that they never may. But I would not have the light of them taken

out of my life, for anything my life can give me. I have told you

everything now, my dear. If it comes a little strange to me to have

parted with it, I am not sorry. I had no thought of ever parting with a

single word of it, a moment before you came in; but you came in, and my

mind changed.’

Bella kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her warmly for her

confidence. ‘I only wish,’ said Bella, ‘I was more deserving of it.’

‘More deserving of it?’ repeated Lizzie, with an incredulous smile.

‘I don’t mean in respect of keeping it,’ said Bella, ‘because any

one should tear me to bits before getting at a syllable of it—though

there’s no merit in that, for I am naturally as obstinate as a Pig. What

I mean is, Lizzie, that I am a mere impertinent piece of conceit, and

you shame me.’

Lizzie put up the pretty brown hair that came tumbling down, owing to

the energy with which Bella shook her head; and she remonstrated while

thus engaged, ‘My dear!’

‘Oh, it’s all very well to call me your dear,’ said Bella, with a

pettish whimper, ‘and I am glad to be called so, though I have slight

enough claim to be. But I AM such a nasty little thing!’

‘My dear!’ urged Lizzie again.

‘Such a shallow, cold, worldly, Limited little brute!’ said Bella,

bringing out her last adjective with culminating force.

‘Do you think,’ inquired Lizzie with her quiet smile, the hair being now

secured, ‘that I don’t know better?’

‘DO you know better though?’ said Bella. ‘Do you really believe you know

better? Oh, I should be so glad if you did know better, but I am so very

much afraid that I must know best!’

Lizzie asked her, laughing outright, whether she ever saw her own face

or heard her own voice?

‘I suppose so,’ returned Bella; ‘I look in the glass often enough, and I

chatter like a Magpie.’

‘I have seen your face, and heard your voice, at any rate,’ said Lizzie,

‘and they have tempted me to say to you—with a certainty of not going

wrong—what I thought I should never say to any one. Does that look

ill?’

‘No, I hope it doesn’t,’ pouted Bella, stopping herself in something

between a humoured laugh and a humoured sob.

‘I used once to see pictures in the fire,’ said Lizzie playfully, ‘to

please my brother. Shall I tell you what I see down there where the fire

is glowing?’

They had risen, and were standing on the hearth, the time being come for

separating; each had drawn an arm around the other to take leave.

‘Shall I tell you,’ asked Lizzie, ‘what I see down there?’

‘Limited little b?’ suggested Bella with her eyebrows raised.

‘A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes

through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never

daunted.’

‘Girl’s heart?’ asked Bella, with accompanying eyebrows.

Lizzie nodded. ‘And the figure to which it belongs—’

‘Is yours,’ suggested Bella.

‘No. Most clearly and distinctly yours.’

So the interview terminated with pleasant words on both sides, and with

many reminders on the part of Bella that they were friends, and pledges

that she would soon come down into that part of the country again. There

with Lizzie returned to her occupation, and Bella ran over to the little

inn to rejoin her company.

‘You look rather serious, Miss Wilfer,’ was the Secretary’s first

remark.

‘I feel rather serious,’ returned Miss Wilfer.

She had nothing else to tell him but that Lizzie Hexam’s secret had

no reference whatever to the cruel charge, or its withdrawal. Oh yes

though! said Bella; she might as well mention one other thing; Lizzie

was very desirous to thank her unknown friend who had sent her the

written retractation. Was she, indeed? observed the Secretary. Ah! Bella

asked him, had he any notion who that unknown friend might be? He had no

notion whatever.

They were on the borders of Oxfordshire, so far had poor old Betty

Higden strayed. They were to return by the train presently, and, the

station being near at hand, the Reverend Frank and Mrs Frank, and Sloppy

and Bella and the Secretary, set out to walk to it. Few rustic paths are

wide enough for five, and Bella and the Secretary dropped behind.

‘Can you believe, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, ‘that I feel as if whole

years had passed since I went into Lizzie Hexam’s cottage?’

‘We have crowded a good deal into the day,’ he returned, ‘and you were

much affected in the churchyard. You are over-tired.’

‘No, I am not at all tired. I have not quite expressed what I mean. I

don’t mean that I feel as if a great space of time had gone by, but that

I feel as if much had happened—to myself, you know.’

‘For good, I hope?’

‘I hope so,’ said Bella.

‘You are cold; I felt you tremble. Pray let me put this wrapper of mine

about you. May I fold it over this shoulder without injuring your dress?

Now, it will be too heavy and too long. Let me carry this end over my

arm, as you have no arm to give me.’

Yes she had though. How she got it out, in her muffled state, Heaven

knows; but she got it out somehow—there it was—and slipped it through

the Secretary’s.

‘I have had a long and interesting talk with Lizzie, Mr Rokesmith, and

she gave me her full confidence.’

‘She could not withhold it,’ said the Secretary.

‘I wonder how you come,’ said Bella, stopping short as she glanced at

him, ‘to say to me just what she said about it!’

‘I infer that it must be because I feel just as she felt about it.’

‘And how was that, do you mean to say, sir?’ asked Bella, moving again.

‘That if you were inclined to win her confidence—anybody’s

confidence—you were sure to do it.’

The railway, at this point, knowingly shutting a green eye and opening

a red one, they had to run for it. As Bella could not run easily so

wrapped up, the Secretary had to help her. When she took her opposite

place in the carriage corner, the brightness in her face was so charming

to behold, that on her exclaiming, ‘What beautiful stars and what a

glorious night!’ the Secretary said ‘Yes,’ but seemed to prefer to see

the night and the stars in the light of her lovely little countenance,

to looking out of window.

O boofer lady, fascinating boofer lady! If I were but legally executor

of Johnny’s will! If I had but the right to pay your legacy and to take

your receipt!—Something to this purpose surely mingled with the blast

of the train as it cleared the stations, all knowingly shutting up their

green eyes and opening their red ones when they prepared to let the

boofer lady pass.

Chapter 10

SCOUTS OUT

‘And so, Miss Wren,’ said Mr Eugene Wrayburn, ‘I cannot persuade you to

dress me a doll?’

‘No,’ replied Miss Wren snappishly; ‘if you want one, go and buy one at

the shop.’

‘And my charming young goddaughter,’ said Mr Wrayburn plaintively, ‘down

in Hertfordshire—’

(‘Humbugshire you mean, I think,’ interposed Miss Wren.)

‘—is to be put upon the cold footing of the general public, and is

to derive no advantage from my private acquaintance with the Court

Dressmaker?’

‘If it’s any advantage to your charming godchild—and oh, a precious

godfather she has got!’—replied Miss Wren, pricking at him in the air

with her needle, ‘to be informed that the Court Dressmaker knows

your tricks and your manners, you may tell her so by post, with my

compliments.’

Miss Wren was busy at her work by candle-light, and Mr Wrayburn, half

amused and half vexed, and all idle and shiftless, stood by her bench

looking on. Miss Wren’s troublesome child was in the corner in deep

disgrace, and exhibiting great wretchedness in the shivering stage of

prostration from drink.

‘Ugh, you disgraceful boy!’ exclaimed Miss Wren, attracted by the sound

of his chattering teeth, ‘I wish they’d all drop down your throat and

play at dice in your stomach! Boh, wicked child! Bee-baa, black sheep!’

On her accompanying each of these reproaches with a threatening stamp of

the foot, the wretched creature protested with a whine.

‘Pay five shillings for you indeed!’ Miss Wren proceeded; ‘how many

hours do you suppose it costs me to earn five shillings, you infamous

boy?—Don’t cry like that, or I’ll throw a doll at you. Pay five

shillings fine for you indeed. Fine in more ways than one, I think! I’d

give the dustman five shillings, to carry you off in the dust cart.’

‘No, no,’ pleaded the absurd creature. ‘Please!’

‘He’s enough to break his mother’s heart, is this boy,’ said Miss Wren,

half appealing to Eugene. ‘I wish I had never brought him up. He’d be

sharper than a serpent’s tooth, if he wasn’t as dull as ditch water.

Look at him. There’s a pretty object for a parent’s eyes!’

Assuredly, in his worse than swinish state (for swine at least fatten on

their guzzling, and make themselves good to eat), he was a pretty object

for any eyes.

‘A muddling and a swipey old child,’ said Miss Wren, rating him with

great severity, ‘fit for nothing but to be preserved in the liquor

that destroys him, and put in a great glass bottle as a sight for other

swipey children of his own pattern,—if he has no consideration for his

liver, has he none for his mother?’

‘Yes. Deration, oh don’t!’ cried the subject of these angry remarks.

‘Oh don’t and oh don’t,’ pursued Miss Wren. ‘It’s oh do and oh do. And

why do you?’

‘Won’t do so any more. Won’t indeed. Pray!’

‘There!’ said Miss Wren, covering her eyes with her hand. ‘I can’t

bear to look at you. Go up stairs and get me my bonnet and shawl. Make

yourself useful in some way, bad boy, and let me have your room instead

of your company, for one half minute.’

Obeying her, he shambled out, and Eugene Wrayburn saw the tears exude

from between the little creature’s fingers as she kept her hand before

her eyes. He was sorry, but his sympathy did not move his carelessness

to do anything but feel sorry.

‘I’m going to the Italian Opera to try on,’ said Miss Wren, taking away

her hand after a little while, and laughing satirically to hide that she

had been crying; ‘I must see your back before I go, Mr Wrayburn. Let me

first tell you, once for all, that it’s of no use your paying visits

to me. You wouldn’t get what you want, of me, no, not if you brought

pincers with you to tear it out.’

‘Are you so obstinate on the subject of a doll’s dress for my godchild?’

‘Ah!’ returned Miss Wren with a hitch of her chin, ‘I am so

obstinate. And of course it’s on the subject of a doll’s dress—or

ADdress—whichever you like. Get along and give it up!’

Her degraded charge had come back, and was standing behind her with the

bonnet and shawl.

‘Give ’em to me and get back into your corner, you naughty old thing!’

said Miss Wren, as she turned and espied him. ‘No, no, I won’t have your

help. Go into your corner, this minute!’

The miserable man, feebly rubbing the back of his faltering hands

downward from the wrists, shuffled on to his post of disgrace; but not

without a curious glance at Eugene in passing him, accompanied with what

seemed as if it might have been an action of his elbow, if any action of

any limb or joint he had, would have answered truly to his will. Taking

no more particular notice of him than instinctively falling away from

the disagreeable contact, Eugene, with a lazy compliment or so to Miss

Wren, begged leave to light his cigar, and departed.

‘Now you prodigal old son,’ said Jenny, shaking her head and her

emphatic little forefinger at her burden, ‘you sit there till I come

back. You dare to move out of your corner for a single instant while I’m

gone, and I’ll know the reason why.’

With this admonition, she blew her work candles out, leaving him to the

light of the fire, and, taking her big door-key in her pocket and her

crutch-stick in her hand, marched off.

Eugene lounged slowly towards the Temple, smoking his cigar, but saw

no more of the dolls’ dressmaker, through the accident of their taking

opposite sides of the street. He lounged along moodily, and stopped at

Charing Cross to look about him, with as little interest in the crowd

as any man might take, and was lounging on again, when a most unexpected

object caught his eyes. No less an object than Jenny Wren’s bad boy

trying to make up his mind to cross the road.

A more ridiculous and feeble spectacle than this tottering wretch making

unsteady sallies into the roadway, and as often staggering back again,

oppressed by terrors of vehicles that were a long way off or were

nowhere, the streets could not have shown. Over and over again, when the

course was perfectly clear, he set out, got half way, described a loop,

turned, and went back again; when he might have crossed and re-crossed

half a dozen times. Then, he would stand shivering on the edge of the

pavement, looking up the street and looking down, while scores of people

jostled him, and crossed, and went on. Stimulated in course of time

by the sight of so many successes, he would make another sally, make

another loop, would all but have his foot on the opposite pavement,

would see or imagine something coming, and would stagger back again.

There, he would stand making spasmodic preparations as if for a great

leap, and at last would decide on a start at precisely the wrong moment,

and would be roared at by drivers, and would shrink back once more, and

stand in the old spot shivering, with the whole of the proceedings to go

through again.

‘It strikes me,’ remarked Eugene coolly, after watching him for some

minutes, ‘that my friend is likely to be rather behind time if he has

any appointment on hand.’ With which remark he strolled on, and took no

further thought of him.

Lightwood was at home when he got to the Chambers, and had dined alone

there. Eugene drew a chair to the fire by which he was having his wine

and reading the evening paper, and brought a glass, and filled it for

good fellowship’s sake.

‘My dear Mortimer, you are the express picture of contented industry,

reposing (on credit) after the virtuous labours of the day.’

‘My dear Eugene, you are the express picture of discontented idleness

not reposing at all. Where have you been?’

‘I have been,’ replied Wrayburn, ‘—about town. I have turned up at the

present juncture, with the intention of consulting my highly intelligent

and respected solicitor on the position of my affairs.’

‘Your highly intelligent and respected solicitor is of opinion that your

affairs are in a bad way, Eugene.’

‘Though whether,’ said Eugene thoughtfully, ‘that can be intelligently

said, now, of the affairs of a client who has nothing to lose and who

cannot possibly be made to pay, may be open to question.’

‘You have fallen into the hands of the Jews, Eugene.’

‘My dear boy,’ returned the debtor, very composedly taking up his glass,

‘having previously fallen into the hands of some of the Christians, I

can bear it with philosophy.’

‘I have had an interview to-day, Eugene, with a Jew, who seems

determined to press us hard. Quite a Shylock, and quite a Patriarch. A

picturesque grey-headed and grey-bearded old Jew, in a shovel-hat and

gaberdine.’

‘Not,’ said Eugene, pausing in setting down his glass, ‘surely not my

worthy friend Mr Aaron?’

‘He calls himself Mr Riah.’

‘By-the-by,’ said Eugene, ‘it comes into my mind that—no doubt with an

instinctive desire to receive him into the bosom of our Church—I gave

him the name of Aaron!’

‘Eugene, Eugene,’ returned Lightwood, ‘you are more ridiculous than

usual. Say what you mean.’

‘Merely, my dear fellow, that I have the honour and pleasure of a

speaking acquaintance with such a Patriarch as you describe, and that I

address him as Mr Aaron, because it appears to me Hebraic, expressive,

appropriate, and complimentary. Notwithstanding which strong reasons for

its being his name, it may not be his name.’

‘I believe you are the absurdest man on the face of the earth,’ said

Lightwood, laughing.

‘Not at all, I assure you. Did he mention that he knew me?’

‘He did not. He only said of you that he expected to be paid by you.’

‘Which looks,’ remarked Eugene with much gravity, ‘like NOT knowing me.

I hope it may not be my worthy friend Mr Aaron, for, to tell you the

truth, Mortimer, I doubt he may have a prepossession against me. I

strongly suspect him of having had a hand in spiriting away Lizzie.’

‘Everything,’ returned Lightwood impatiently, ‘seems, by a fatality,

to bring us round to Lizzie. “About town” meant about Lizzie, just now,

Eugene.’

‘My solicitor, do you know,’ observed Eugene, turning round to the

furniture, ‘is a man of infinite discernment!’

‘Did it not, Eugene?’

‘Yes it did, Mortimer.’

‘And yet, Eugene, you know you do not really care for her.’

Eugene Wrayburn rose, and put his hands in his pockets, and stood with a

foot on the fender, indolently rocking his body and looking at the fire.

After a prolonged pause, he replied: ‘I don’t know that. I must ask you

not to say that, as if we took it for granted.’

‘But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave her to

herself.’

Having again paused as before, Eugene said: ‘I don’t know that, either.

But tell me. Did you ever see me take so much trouble about anything, as

about this disappearance of hers? I ask, for information.’

‘My dear Eugene, I wish I ever had!’

‘Then you have not? Just so. You confirm my own impression. Does that

look as if I cared for her? I ask, for information.’

‘I asked YOU for information, Eugene,’ said Mortimer reproachfully.

‘Dear boy, I know it, but I can’t give it. I thirst for information.

What do I mean? If my taking so much trouble to recover her does not

mean that I care for her, what does it mean? “If Peter Piper picked a

peck of pickled pepper, where’s the peck,” &c.?’

Though he said this gaily, he said it with a perplexed and inquisitive

face, as if he actually did not know what to make of himself. ‘Look on

to the end—’ Lightwood was beginning to remonstrate, when he caught at

the words:

‘Ah! See now! That’s exactly what I am incapable of doing. How very

acute you are, Mortimer, in finding my weak place! When we were at

school together, I got up my lessons at the last moment, day by day and

bit by bit; now we are out in life together, I get up my lessons in the

same way. In the present task I have not got beyond this:—I am bent

on finding Lizzie, and I mean to find her, and I will take any means

of finding her that offer themselves. Fair means or foul means, are all

alike to me. I ask you—for information—what does that mean? When I

have found her I may ask you—also for information—what do I mean now?

But it would be premature in this stage, and it’s not the character of

my mind.’

Lightwood was shaking his head over the air with which his friend held

forth thus—an air so whimsically open and argumentative as almost to

deprive what he said of the appearance of evasion—when a shuffling was

heard at the outer door, and then an undecided knock, as though

some hand were groping for the knocker. ‘The frolicsome youth of the

neighbourhood,’ said Eugene, ‘whom I should be delighted to pitch from

this elevation into the churchyard below, without any intermediate

ceremonies, have probably turned the lamp out. I am on duty to-night,

and will see to the door.’

His friend had barely had time to recall the unprecedented gleam of

determination with which he had spoken of finding this girl, and which

had faded out of him with the breath of the spoken words, when Eugene

came back, ushering in a most disgraceful shadow of a man, shaking from

head to foot, and clothed in shabby grease and smear.

‘This interesting gentleman,’ said Eugene, ‘is the son—the

occasionally rather trying son, for he has his failings—of a lady of my

acquaintance. My dear Mortimer—Mr Dolls.’ Eugene had no idea what his

name was, knowing the little dressmaker’s to be assumed, but presented

him with easy confidence under the first appellation that his

associations suggested.

‘I gather, my dear Mortimer,’ pursued Eugene, as Lightwood stared at

the obscene visitor, ‘from the manner of Mr Dolls—which is occasionally

complicated—that he desires to make some communication to me. I have

mentioned to Mr Dolls that you and I are on terms of confidence, and

have requested Mr Dolls to develop his views here.’

The wretched object being much embarrassed by holding what remained

of his hat, Eugene airily tossed it to the door, and put him down in a

chair.

‘It will be necessary, I think,’ he observed, ‘to wind up Mr Dolls,

before anything to any mortal purpose can be got out of him. Brandy, Mr

Dolls, or—?’

‘Threepenn’orth Rum,’ said Mr Dolls.

A judiciously small quantity of the spirit was given him in a

wine-glass, and he began to convey it to his mouth, with all kinds of

falterings and gyrations on the road.

‘The nerves of Mr Dolls,’ remarked Eugene to Lightwood, ‘are

considerably unstrung. And I deem it on the whole expedient to fumigate

Mr Dolls.’

He took the shovel from the grate, sprinkled a few live ashes on it, and

from a box on the chimney-piece took a few pastiles, which he set upon

them; then, with great composure began placidly waving the shovel in

front of Mr Dolls, to cut him off from his company.

‘Lord bless my soul, Eugene!’ cried Lightwood, laughing again, ‘what a

mad fellow you are! Why does this creature come to see you?’

‘We shall hear,’ said Wrayburn, very observant of his face withal. ‘Now

then. Speak out. Don’t be afraid. State your business, Dolls.’

‘Mist Wrayburn!’ said the visitor, thickly and huskily. ‘—’tis Mist

Wrayburn, ain’t?’ With a stupid stare.

‘Of course it is. Look at me. What do you want?’

Mr Dolls collapsed in his chair, and faintly said ‘Threepenn’orth Rum.’

‘Will you do me the favour, my dear Mortimer, to wind up Mr Dolls

again?’ said Eugene. ‘I am occupied with the fumigation.’

A similar quantity was poured into his glass, and he got it to his lips

by similar circuitous ways. Having drunk it, Mr Dolls, with an evident

fear of running down again unless he made haste, proceeded to business.

‘Mist Wrayburn. Tried to nudge you, but you wouldn’t. You want that

drection. You want t’know where she lives. _Do_ you Mist Wrayburn?’

With a glance at his friend, Eugene replied to the question sternly, ‘I

do.’

‘I am er man,’ said Mr Dolls, trying to smite himself on the breast, but

bringing his hand to bear upon the vicinity of his eye, ‘er do it. I am

er man er do it.’

‘What are you the man to do?’ demanded Eugene, still sternly.

‘Er give up that drection.’

‘Have you got it?’

With a most laborious attempt at pride and dignity, Mr Dolls rolled

his head for some time, awakening the highest expectations, and then

answered, as if it were the happiest point that could possibly be

expected of him: ‘No.’

‘What do you mean then?’

Mr Dolls, collapsing in the drowsiest manner after his late intellectual

triumph, replied: ‘Threepenn’orth Rum.’

‘Wind him up again, my dear Mortimer,’ said Wrayburn; ‘wind him up

again.’

‘Eugene, Eugene,’ urged Lightwood in a low voice, as he complied, ‘can

you stoop to the use of such an instrument as this?’

‘I said,’ was the reply, made with that former gleam of determination,

‘that I would find her out by any means, fair or foul. These are foul,

and I’ll take them—if I am not first tempted to break the head of Mr

Dolls with the fumigator. Can you get the direction? Do you mean that?

Speak! If that’s what you have come for, say how much you want.’

‘Ten shillings—Threepenn’orths Rum,’ said Mr Dolls.

‘You shall have it.’

‘Fifteen shillings—Threepenn’orths Rum,’ said Mr Dolls, making an

attempt to stiffen himself.

‘You shall have it. Stop at that. How will you get the direction you

talk of?’

‘I am er man,’ said Mr Dolls, with majesty, ‘er get it, sir.’

‘How will you get it, I ask you?’

‘I am ill-used vidual,’ said Mr Dolls. ‘Blown up morning t’night. Called

names. She makes Mint money, sir, and never stands Threepenn’orth Rum.’

‘Get on,’ rejoined Eugene, tapping his palsied head with the

fire-shovel, as it sank on his breast. ‘What comes next?’

Making a dignified attempt to gather himself together, but, as it were,

dropping half a dozen pieces of himself while he tried in vain to pick

up one, Mr Dolls, swaying his head from side to side, regarded his

questioner with what he supposed to be a haughty smile and a scornful

glance.

‘She looks upon me as mere child, sir. I am NOT mere child, sir. Man.

Man talent. Lerrers pass betwixt ’em. Postman lerrers. Easy for man

talent er get drection, as get his own drection.’

‘Get it then,’ said Eugene; adding very heartily under his breath,

‘—You Brute! Get it, and bring it here to me, and earn the money for

sixty threepenn’orths of rum, and drink them all, one a top of another,

and drink yourself dead with all possible expedition.’ The latter

clauses of these special instructions he addressed to the fire, as he

gave it back the ashes he had taken from it, and replaced the shovel.

Mr Dolls now struck out the highly unexpected discovery that he had been

insulted by Lightwood, and stated his desire to ‘have it out with him’

on the spot, and defied him to come on, upon the liberal terms of

a sovereign to a halfpenny. Mr Dolls then fell a crying, and then

exhibited a tendency to fall asleep. This last manifestation as by far

the most alarming, by reason of its threatening his prolonged stay

on the premises, necessitated vigorous measures. Eugene picked up his

worn-out hat with the tongs, clapped it on his head, and, taking him by

the collar—all this at arm’s length—conducted him down stairs and out

of the precincts into Fleet Street. There, he turned his face westward,

and left him.

When he got back, Lightwood was standing over the fire, brooding in a

sufficiently low-spirited manner.

‘I’ll wash my hands of Mr Dolls physically—’ said Eugene, ‘and be with

you again directly, Mortimer.’

‘I would much prefer,’ retorted Mortimer, ‘your washing your hands of Mr

Dolls, morally, Eugene.’

‘So would I,’ said Eugene; ‘but you see, dear boy, I can’t do without

him.’

In a minute or two he resumed his chair, as perfectly unconcerned as

usual, and rallied his friend on having so narrowly escaped the prowess

of their muscular visitor.

‘I can’t be amused on this theme,’ said Mortimer, restlessly. ‘You can

make almost any theme amusing to me, Eugene, but not this.’

‘Well!’ cried Eugene, ‘I am a little ashamed of it myself, and therefore

let us change the subject.’

‘It is so deplorably underhanded,’ said Mortimer. ‘It is so unworthy of

you, this setting on of such a shameful scout.’

‘We have changed the subject!’ exclaimed Eugene, airily. ‘We have found

a new one in that word, scout. Don’t be like Patience on a mantelpiece

frowning at Dolls, but sit down, and I’ll tell you something that you

really will find amusing. Take a cigar. Look at this of mine. I

light it—draw one puff—breathe the smoke out—there it goes—it’s

Dolls!—it’s gone—and being gone you are a man again.’

‘Your subject,’ said Mortimer, after lighting a cigar, and comforting

himself with a whiff or two, ‘was scouts, Eugene.’

‘Exactly. Isn’t it droll that I never go out after dark, but I find

myself attended, always by one scout, and often by two?’

Lightwood took his cigar from his lips in surprise, and looked at his

friend, as if with a latent suspicion that there must be a jest or

hidden meaning in his words.

‘On my honour, no,’ said Wrayburn, answering the look and smiling

carelessly; ‘I don’t wonder at your supposing so, but on my honour, no.

I say what I mean. I never go out after dark, but I find myself in the

ludicrous situation of being followed and observed at a distance, always

by one scout, and often by two.’

‘Are you sure, Eugene?’

‘Sure? My dear boy, they are always the same.’

‘But there’s no process out against you. The Jews only threaten. They

have done nothing. Besides, they know where to find you, and I represent

you. Why take the trouble?’

‘Observe the legal mind!’ remarked Eugene, turning round to the

furniture again, with an air of indolent rapture. ‘Observe the dyer’s

hand, assimilating itself to what it works in,—or would work in, if

anybody would give it anything to do. Respected solicitor, it’s not

that. The schoolmaster’s abroad.’

‘The schoolmaster?’

‘Ay! Sometimes the schoolmaster and the pupil are both abroad. Why, how

soon you rust in my absence! You don’t understand yet? Those fellows

who were here one night. They are the scouts I speak of, as doing me the

honour to attend me after dark.’

‘How long has this been going on?’ asked Lightwood, opposing a serious

face to the laugh of his friend.

‘I apprehend it has been going on, ever since a certain person went off.

Probably, it had been going on some little time before I noticed it:

which would bring it to about that time.’

‘Do you think they suppose you to have inveigled her away?’

‘My dear Mortimer, you know the absorbing nature of my professional

occupations; I really have not had leisure to think about it.’

‘Have you asked them what they want? Have you objected?’

‘Why should I ask them what they want, dear fellow, when I am

indifferent what they want? Why should I express objection, when I don’t

object?’

‘You are in your most reckless mood. But you called the situation just

now, a ludicrous one; and most men object to that, even those who are

utterly indifferent to everything else.’

‘You charm me, Mortimer, with your reading of my weaknesses. (By-the-by,

that very word, Reading, in its critical use, always charms me. An

actress’s Reading of a chambermaid, a dancer’s Reading of a hornpipe, a

singer’s Reading of a song, a marine painter’s Reading of the sea,

the kettle-drum’s Reading of an instrumental passage, are phrases

ever youthful and delightful.) I was mentioning your perception of my

weaknesses. I own to the weakness of objecting to occupy a ludicrous

position, and therefore I transfer the position to the scouts.’

‘I wish, Eugene, you would speak a little more soberly and plainly, if

it were only out of consideration for my feeling less at ease than you

do.’

‘Then soberly and plainly, Mortimer, I goad the schoolmaster to madness.

I make the schoolmaster so ridiculous, and so aware of being made

ridiculous, that I see him chafe and fret at every pore when we cross

one another. The amiable occupation has been the solace of my life,

since I was baulked in the manner unnecessary to recall. I have derived

inexpressible comfort from it. I do it thus: I stroll out after dark,

stroll a little way, look in at a window and furtively look out for the

schoolmaster. Sooner or later, I perceive the schoolmaster on the watch;

sometimes accompanied by his hopeful pupil; oftener, pupil-less. Having

made sure of his watching me, I tempt him on, all over London. One

night I go east, another night north, in a few nights I go all round the

compass. Sometimes, I walk; sometimes, I proceed in cabs, draining the

pocket of the schoolmaster who then follows in cabs. I study and get

up abstruse No Thoroughfares in the course of the day. With Venetian

mystery I seek those No Thoroughfares at night, glide into them by means

of dark courts, tempt the schoolmaster to follow, turn suddenly, and

catch him before he can retreat. Then we face one another, and I pass

him as unaware of his existence, and he undergoes grinding torments.

Similarly, I walk at a great pace down a short street, rapidly turn the

corner, and, getting out of his view, as rapidly turn back. I catch him

coming on post, again pass him as unaware of his existence, and again

he undergoes grinding torments. Night after night his disappointment is

acute, but hope springs eternal in the scholastic breast, and he follows

me again to-morrow. Thus I enjoy the pleasures of the chase, and derive

great benefit from the healthful exercise. When I do not enjoy the

pleasures of the chase, for anything I know he watches at the Temple

Gate all night.’

‘This is an extraordinary story,’ observed Lightwood, who had heard it

out with serious attention. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘You are a little hipped, dear fellow,’ said Eugene; ‘you have been too

sedentary. Come and enjoy the pleasures of the chase.’

‘Do you mean that you believe he is watching now?’

‘I have not the slightest doubt he is.’

‘Have you seen him to-night?’

‘I forgot to look for him when I was last out,’ returned Eugene with the

calmest indifference; ‘but I dare say he was there. Come! Be a British

sportsman and enjoy the pleasures of the chase. It will do you good.’

Lightwood hesitated; but, yielding to his curiosity, rose.

‘Bravo!’ cried Eugene, rising too. ‘Or, if Yoicks would be in better

keeping, consider that I said Yoicks. Look to your feet, Mortimer, for

we shall try your boots. When you are ready, I am—need I say with a Hey

Ho Chivey, and likewise with a Hark Forward, Hark Forward, Tantivy?’

‘Will nothing make you serious?’ said Mortimer, laughing through his

gravity.

‘I am always serious, but just now I am a little excited by the glorious

fact that a southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a hunting evening.

Ready? So. We turn out the lamp and shut the door, and take the field.’

As the two friends passed out of the Temple into the public street,

Eugene demanded with a show of courteous patronage in which direction

Mortimer would you like the run to be? ‘There is a rather difficult

country about Bethnal Green,’ said Eugene, ‘and we have not taken in

that direction lately. What is your opinion of Bethnal Green?’ Mortimer

assented to Bethnal Green, and they turned eastward. ‘Now, when we come

to St Paul’s churchyard,’ pursued Eugene, ‘we’ll loiter artfully, and

I’ll show you the schoolmaster.’ But, they both saw him, before they got

there; alone, and stealing after them in the shadow of the houses, on

the opposite side of the way.

‘Get your wind,’ said Eugene, ‘for I am off directly. Does it occur

to you that the boys of Merry England will begin to deteriorate in an

educational light, if this lasts long? The schoolmaster can’t attend to

me and the boys too. Got your wind? I am off!’

At what a rate he went, to breathe the schoolmaster; and how he then

lounged and loitered, to put his patience to another kind of wear;

what preposterous ways he took, with no other object on earth than to

disappoint and punish him; and how he wore him out by every piece of

ingenuity that his eccentric humour could devise; all this Lightwood

noted, with a feeling of astonishment that so careless a man could be so

wary, and that so idle a man could take so much trouble. At last, far on

in the third hour of the pleasures of the chase, when he had brought the

poor dogging wretch round again into the City, he twisted Mortimer up

a few dark entries, twisted him into a little square court, twisted him

sharp round again, and they almost ran against Bradley Headstone.

‘And you see, as I was saying, Mortimer,’ remarked Eugene aloud with

the utmost coolness, as though there were no one within hearing

by themselves: ‘and you see, as I was saying—undergoing grinding

torments.’

It was not too strong a phrase for the occasion. Looking like the hunted

and not the hunter, baffled, worn, with the exhaustion of deferred

hope and consuming hate and anger in his face, white-lipped, wild-eyed,

draggle-haired, seamed with jealousy and anger, and torturing himself

with the conviction that he showed it all and they exulted in it, he

went by them in the dark, like a haggard head suspended in the air: so

completely did the force of his expression cancel his figure.

Mortimer Lightwood was not an extraordinarily impressible man, but this

face impressed him. He spoke of it more than once on the remainder of

the way home, and more than once when they got home.

They had been abed in their respective rooms two or three hours, when

Eugene was partly awakened by hearing a footstep going about, and was

fully awakened by seeing Lightwood standing at his bedside.

‘Nothing wrong, Mortimer?’

‘No.’

‘What fancy takes you, then, for walking about in the night?’

‘I am horribly wakeful.’

‘How comes that about, I wonder!’

‘Eugene, I cannot lose sight of that fellow’s face.’

‘Odd!’ said Eugene with a light laugh, ‘I can.’ And turned over, and

fell asleep again.

Chapter 11

IN THE DARK

There was no sleep for Bradley Headstone on that night when Eugene

Wrayburn turned so easily in his bed; there was no sleep for little

Miss Peecher. Bradley consumed the lonely hours, and consumed himself in

haunting the spot where his careless rival lay a dreaming; little Miss

Peecher wore them away in listening for the return home of the master

of her heart, and in sorrowfully presaging that much was amiss with him.

Yet more was amiss with him than Miss Peecher’s simply arranged little

work-box of thoughts, fitted with no gloomy and dark recesses, could

hold. For, the state of the man was murderous.

The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it. More; he irritated

it, with a kind of perverse pleasure akin to that which a sick man

sometimes has in irritating a wound upon his body. Tied up all day with

his disciplined show upon him, subdued to the performance of his routine

of educational tricks, encircled by a gabbling crowd, he broke loose at

night like an ill-tamed wild animal. Under his daily restraint, it was

his compensation, not his trouble, to give a glance towards his state at

night, and to the freedom of its being indulged. If great criminals told

the truth—which, being great criminals, they do not—they would very

rarely tell of their struggles against the crime. Their struggles are

towards it. They buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody shore,

not to recede from it. This man perfectly comprehended that he hated his

rival with his strongest and worst forces, and that if he tracked him to

Lizzie Hexam, his so doing would never serve himself with her, or serve

her. All his pains were taken, to the end that he might incense himself

with the sight of the detested figure in her company and favour, in her

place of concealment. And he knew as well what act of his would follow

if he did, as he knew that his mother had borne him. Granted, that he

may not have held it necessary to make express mention to himself of the

one familiar truth any more than of the other.

He knew equally well that he fed his wrath and hatred, and that he

accumulated provocation and self-justification, by being made the

nightly sport of the reckless and insolent Eugene. Knowing all

this,—and still always going on with infinite endurance, pains, and

perseverance, could his dark soul doubt whither he went?

Baffled, exasperated, and weary, he lingered opposite the Temple gate

when it closed on Wrayburn and Lightwood, debating with himself should

he go home for that time or should he watch longer. Possessed in his

jealousy by the fixed idea that Wrayburn was in the secret, if it were

not altogether of his contriving, Bradley was as confident of getting

the better of him at last by sullenly sticking to him, as he would have

been—and often had been—of mastering any piece of study in the way

of his vocation, by the like slow persistent process. A man of rapid

passions and sluggish intelligence, it had served him often and should

serve him again.

The suspicion crossed him as he rested in a doorway with his eyes upon

the Temple gate, that perhaps she was even concealed in that set of

Chambers. It would furnish another reason for Wrayburn’s purposeless

walks, and it might be. He thought of it and thought of it, until

he resolved to steal up the stairs, if the gatekeeper would let him

through, and listen. So, the haggard head suspended in the air flitted

across the road, like the spectre of one of the many heads erst hoisted

upon neighbouring Temple Bar, and stopped before the watchman.

The watchman looked at it, and asked: ‘Who for?’

‘Mr Wrayburn.’

‘It’s very late.’

‘He came back with Mr Lightwood, I know, near upon two hours ago. But if

he has gone to bed, I’ll put a paper in his letter-box. I am expected.’

The watchman said no more, but opened the gate, though rather

doubtfully. Seeing, however, that the visitor went straight and fast in

the right direction, he seemed satisfied.

The haggard head floated up the dark staircase, and softly descended

nearer to the floor outside the outer door of the chambers. The doors

of the rooms within, appeared to be standing open. There were rays of

candlelight from one of them, and there was the sound of a footstep

going about. There were two voices. The words they uttered were not

distinguishable, but they were both the voices of men. In a few moments

the voices were silent, and there was no sound of footstep, and the

inner light went out. If Lightwood could have seen the face which kept

him awake, staring and listening in the darkness outside the door as

he spoke of it, he might have been less disposed to sleep, through the

remainder of the night.

‘Not there,’ said Bradley; ‘but she might have been.’ The head arose to

its former height from the ground, floated down the stair-case again,

and passed on to the gate. A man was standing there, in parley with the

watchman.

‘Oh!’ said the watchman. ‘Here he is!’

Perceiving himself to be the antecedent, Bradley looked from the

watchman to the man.

‘This man is leaving a letter for Mr Lightwood,’ the watchman explained,

showing it in his hand; ‘and I was mentioning that a person had just

gone up to Mr Lightwood’s chambers. It might be the same business

perhaps?’

‘No,’ said Bradley, glancing at the man, who was a stranger to him.

‘No,’ the man assented in a surly way; ‘my letter—it’s wrote by my

daughter, but it’s mine—is about my business, and my business ain’t

nobody else’s business.’

As Bradley passed out at the gate with an undecided foot, he heard it

shut behind him, and heard the footstep of the man coming after him.

‘’Scuse me,’ said the man, who appeared to have been drinking and rather

stumbled at him than touched him, to attract his attention: ‘but might

you be acquainted with the T’other Governor?’

‘With whom?’ asked Bradley.

‘With,’ returned the man, pointing backward over his right shoulder with

his right thumb, ‘the T’other Governor?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Why look here,’ hooking his proposition on his left-hand fingers with

the forefinger of his right. ‘There’s two Governors, ain’t there? One

and one, two—Lawyer Lightwood, my first finger, he’s one, ain’t he?

Well; might you be acquainted with my middle finger, the T’other?’

‘I know quite as much of him,’ said Bradley, with a frown and a distant

look before him, ‘as I want to know.’

‘Hooroar!’ cried the man. ‘Hooroar T’other t’other Governor. Hooroar

T’otherest Governor! I am of your way of thinkin’.’

‘Don’t make such a noise at this dead hour of the night. What are you

talking about?’

‘Look here, T’otherest Governor,’ replied the man, becoming hoarsely

confidential. ‘The T’other Governor he’s always joked his jokes agin me,

owing, as I believe, to my being a honest man as gets my living by the

sweat of my brow. Which he ain’t, and he don’t.’

‘What is that to me?’

‘T’otherest Governor,’ returned the man in a tone of injured innocence,

‘if you don’t care to hear no more, don’t hear no more. You begun it.

You said, and likeways showed pretty plain, as you warn’t by no means

friendly to him. But I don’t seek to force my company nor yet my

opinions on no man. I am a honest man, that’s what I am. Put me in the

dock anywhere—I don’t care where—and I says, “My Lord, I am a honest

man.” Put me in the witness-box anywhere—I don’t care where—and I

says the same to his lordship, and I kisses the book. I don’t kiss my

coat-cuff; I kisses the book.’

It was not so much in deference to these strong testimonials to

character, as in his restless casting about for any way or help towards

the discovery on which he was concentrated, that Bradley Headstone

replied: ‘You needn’t take offence. I didn’t mean to stop you. You were

too—loud in the open street; that was all.’

‘’Totherest Governor,’ replied Mr Riderhood, mollified and mysterious,

‘I know wot it is to be loud, and I know wot it is to be soft. Nat’rally

I do. It would be a wonder if I did not, being by the Chris’en name of

Roger, which took it arter my own father, which took it from his own

father, though which of our fam’ly fust took it nat’ral I will not in

any ways mislead you by undertakin’ to say. And wishing that your elth

may be better than your looks, which your inside must be bad indeed if

it’s on the footing of your out.’

Startled by the implication that his face revealed too much of his mind,

Bradley made an effort to clear his brow. It might be worth knowing what

this strange man’s business was with Lightwood, or Wrayburn, or both, at

such an unseasonable hour. He set himself to find out, for the man might

prove to be a messenger between those two.

‘You call at the Temple late,’ he remarked, with a lumbering show of

ease.

‘Wish I may die,’ cried Mr Riderhood, with a hoarse laugh, ‘if I warn’t

a goin’ to say the self-same words to you, T’otherest Governor!’

‘It chanced so with me,’ said Bradley, looking disconcertedly about him.

‘And it chanced so with me,’ said Riderhood. ‘But I don’t mind telling

you how. Why should I mind telling you? I’m a Deputy Lock-keeper up the

river, and I was off duty yes’day, and I shall be on to-morrow.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes, and I come to London to look arter my private affairs. My private

affairs is to get appinted to the Lock as reg’lar keeper at fust hand,

and to have the law of a busted B’low-Bridge steamer which drownded of

me. I ain’t a goin’ to be drownded and not paid for it!’

Bradley looked at him, as though he were claiming to be a Ghost.

‘The steamer,’ said Mr Riderhood, obstinately, ‘run me down and drownded

of me. Interference on the part of other parties brought me round; but

I never asked ’em to bring me round, nor yet the steamer never asked ’em

to it. I mean to be paid for the life as the steamer took.’

‘Was that your business at Mr Lightwood’s chambers in the middle of the

night?’ asked Bradley, eyeing him with distrust.

‘That and to get a writing to be fust-hand Lock Keeper. A recommendation

in writing being looked for, who else ought to give it to me? As I says

in the letter in my daughter’s hand, with my mark put to it to make it

good in law, Who but you, Lawyer Lightwood, ought to hand over this here

stifficate, and who but you ought to go in for damages on my account

agin the Steamer? For (as I says under my mark) I have had trouble

enough along of you and your friend. If you, Lawyer Lightwood, had

backed me good and true, and if the T’other Governor had took me down

correct (I says under my mark), I should have been worth money at the

present time, instead of having a barge-load of bad names chucked at me,

and being forced to eat my words, which is a unsatisfying sort of food

wotever a man’s appetite! And when you mention the middle of the night,

T’otherest Governor,’ growled Mr Riderhood, winding up his monotonous

summary of his wrongs, ‘throw your eye on this here bundle under my arm,

and bear in mind that I’m a walking back to my Lock, and that the Temple

laid upon my line of road.’

Bradley Headstone’s face had changed during this latter recital, and he

had observed the speaker with a more sustained attention.

‘Do you know,’ said he, after a pause, during which they walked on side

by side, ‘that I believe I could tell you your name, if I tried?’

‘Prove your opinion,’ was the answer, accompanied with a stop and a

stare. ‘Try.’

‘Your name is Riderhood.’

‘I’m blest if it ain’t,’ returned that gentleman. ‘But I don’t know

your’n.’

‘That’s quite another thing,’ said Bradley. ‘I never supposed you did.’

As Bradley walked on meditating, the Rogue walked on at his side

muttering. The purport of the muttering was: ‘that Rogue Riderhood, by

George! seemed to be made public property on, now, and that every man

seemed to think himself free to handle his name as if it was a Street

Pump.’ The purport of the meditating was: ‘Here is an instrument. Can I

use it?’

They had walked along the Strand, and into Pall Mall, and had turned

up-hill towards Hyde Park Corner; Bradley Headstone waiting on the pace

and lead of Riderhood, and leaving him to indicate the course. So slow

were the schoolmaster’s thoughts, and so indistinct his purposes when

they were but tributary to the one absorbing purpose or rather when,

like dark trees under a stormy sky, they only lined the long vista at

the end of which he saw those two figures of Wrayburn and Lizzie on

which his eyes were fixed—that at least a good half-mile was traversed

before he spoke again. Even then, it was only to ask:

‘Where is your Lock?’

‘Twenty mile and odd—call it five-and-twenty mile and odd, if you

like—up stream,’ was the sullen reply.

‘How is it called?’

‘Plashwater Weir Mill Lock.’

‘Suppose I was to offer you five shillings; what then?’

‘Why, then, I’d take it,’ said Mr Riderhood.

The schoolmaster put his hand in his pocket, and produced two

half-crowns, and placed them in Mr Riderhood’s palm: who stopped at

a convenient doorstep to ring them both, before acknowledging their

receipt.

‘There’s one thing about you, T’otherest Governor,’ said Riderhood,

faring on again, ‘as looks well and goes fur. You’re a ready money man.

Now;’ when he had carefully pocketed the coins on that side of himself

which was furthest from his new friend; ‘what’s this for?’

‘For you.’

‘Why, o’ course I know THAT,’ said Riderhood, as arguing something that

was self-evident. ‘O’ course I know very well as no man in his right

senses would suppose as anythink would make me give it up agin when I’d

once got it. But what do you want for it?’

‘I don’t know that I want anything for it. Or if I do want anything

for it, I don’t know what it is.’ Bradley gave this answer in a stolid,

vacant, and self-communing manner, which Mr Riderhood found very

extraordinary.

‘You have no goodwill towards this Wrayburn,’ said Bradley, coming to

the name in a reluctant and forced way, as if he were dragged to it.

‘No.’

‘Neither have I.’

Riderhood nodded, and asked: ‘Is it for that?’

‘It’s as much for that as anything else. It’s something to be agreed

with, on a subject that occupies so much of one’s thoughts.’

‘It don’t agree with YOU,’ returned Mr Riderhood, bluntly. ‘No! It

don’t, T’otherest Governor, and it’s no use a lookin’ as if you wanted

to make out that it did. I tell you it rankles in you. It rankles in

you, rusts in you, and pisons you.’

‘Say that it does so,’ returned Bradley with quivering lips; ‘is there

no cause for it?’

‘Cause enough, I’ll bet a pound!’ cried Mr Riderhood.

‘Haven’t you yourself declared that the fellow has heaped provocations,

insults, and affronts on you, or something to that effect? He has done

the same by me. He is made of venomous insults and affronts, from the

crown of his head to the sole of his foot. Are you so hopeful or so

stupid, as not to know that he and the other will treat your application

with contempt, and light their cigars with it?’

‘I shouldn’t wonder if they did, by George!’ said Riderhood, turning

angry.

‘If they did! They will. Let me ask you a question. I know something

more than your name about you; I knew something about Gaffer Hexam. When

did you last set eyes upon his daughter?’

‘When did I last set eyes upon his daughter, T’otherest Governor?’

repeated Mr Riderhood, growing intentionally slower of comprehension as

the other quickened in his speech.

‘Yes. Not to speak to her. To see her—anywhere?’

The Rogue had got the clue he wanted, though he held it with a clumsy

hand. Looking perplexedly at the passionate face, as if he were trying

to work out a sum in his mind, he slowly answered:

‘I ain’t set eyes upon her—never once—not since the day of Gaffer’s

death.’

‘You know her well, by sight?’

‘I should think I did! No one better.’

‘And you know him as well?’

‘Who’s him?’ asked Riderhood, taking off his hat and rubbing his

forehead, as he directed a dull look at his questioner.

‘Curse the name! Is it so agreeable to you that you want to hear it

again?’

‘Oh! HIM!’ said Riderhood, who had craftily worked the schoolmaster into

this corner, that he might again take note of his face under its evil

possession. ‘I’d know HIM among a thousand.’

‘Did you—’ Bradley tried to ask it quietly; but, do what he might

with his voice, he could not subdue his face;—‘did you ever see them

together?’

(The Rogue had got the clue in both hands now.)

‘I see ’em together, T’otherest Governor, on the very day when Gaffer

was towed ashore.’

Bradley could have hidden a reserved piece of information from the sharp

eyes of a whole inquisitive class, but he could not veil from the eyes

of the ignorant Riderhood the withheld question next in his breast.

‘You shall put it plain if you want it answered,’ thought the Rogue,

doggedly; ‘I ain’t a-going a wolunteering.’

‘Well! was he insolent to her too?’ asked Bradley after a struggle. ‘Or

did he make a show of being kind to her?’

‘He made a show of being most uncommon kind to her,’ said Riderhood. ‘By

George! now I—’

His flying off at a tangent was indisputably natural. Bradley looked at

him for the reason.

‘Now I think of it,’ said Mr Riderhood, evasively, for he was

substituting those words for ‘Now I see you so jealous,’ which was the

phrase really in his mind; ‘P’r’aps he went and took me down wrong, a

purpose, on account o’ being sweet upon her!’

The baseness of confirming him in this suspicion or pretence of one (for

he could not have really entertained it), was a line’s breadth beyond

the mark the schoolmaster had reached. The baseness of communing and

intriguing with the fellow who would have set that stain upon her, and

upon her brother too, was attained. The line’s breadth further, lay

beyond. He made no reply, but walked on with a lowering face.

What he might gain by this acquaintance, he could not work out in his

slow and cumbrous thoughts. The man had an injury against the object of

his hatred, and that was something; though it was less than he supposed,

for there dwelt in the man no such deadly rage and resentment as burned

in his own breast. The man knew her, and might by a fortunate chance see

her, or hear of her; that was something, as enlisting one pair of eyes

and ears the more. The man was a bad man, and willing enough to be in

his pay. That was something, for his own state and purpose were as

bad as bad could be, and he seemed to derive a vague support from the

possession of a congenial instrument, though it might never be used.

Suddenly he stood still, and asked Riderhood point-blank if he knew

where she was? Clearly, he did not know. He asked Riderhood if he would

be willing, in case any intelligence of her, or of Wrayburn as seeking

her or associating with her, should fall in his way, to communicate it

if it were paid for? He would be very willing indeed. He was ‘agin ’em

both,’ he said with an oath, and for why? ’Cause they had both stood

betwixt him and his getting his living by the sweat of his brow.

‘It will not be long then,’ said Bradley Headstone, after some more

discourse to this effect, ‘before we see one another again. Here is the

country road, and here is the day. Both have come upon me by surprise.’

‘But, T’otherest Governor,’ urged Mr Riderhood, ‘I don’t know where to

find you.’

‘It is of no consequence. I know where to find you, and I’ll come to

your Lock.’

‘But, T’otherest Governor,’ urged Mr Riderhood again, ‘no luck never

come yet of a dry acquaintance. Let’s wet it, in a mouth-fill of rum and

milk, T’otherest Governor.’

Bradley assenting, went with him into an early public-house, haunted by

unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where returning carts,

farmers’ men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed, and certain human

nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were solacing themselves after

their several manners; and where not one of the nightbirds hovering

about the sloppy bar failed to discern at a glance in the passion-wasted

nightbird with respectable feathers, the worst nightbird of all.

An inspiration of affection for a half-drunken carter going his way led

to Mr Riderhood’s being elevated on a high heap of baskets on a waggon,

and pursuing his journey recumbent on his back with his head on his

bundle. Bradley then turned to retrace his steps, and by-and-by struck

off through little-traversed ways, and by-and-by reached school and

home. Up came the sun to find him washed and brushed, methodically

dressed in decent black coat and waistcoat, decent formal black tie, and

pepper-and-salt pantaloons, with his decent silver watch in its pocket,

and its decent hair-guard round his neck: a scholastic huntsman clad for

the field, with his fresh pack yelping and barking around him.

Yet more really bewitched than the miserable creatures of the

much-lamented times, who accused themselves of impossibilities under a

contagion of horror and the strongly suggestive influences of Torture,

he had been ridden hard by Evil Spirits in the night that was newly

gone. He had been spurred and whipped and heavily sweated. If a record

of the sport had usurped the places of the peaceful texts from Scripture

on the wall, the most advanced of the scholars might have taken fright

and run away from the master.

Chapter 12

MEANING MISCHIEF

Up came the sun, streaming all over London, and in its glorious

impartiality even condescending to make prismatic sparkles in the

whiskers of Mr Alfred Lammle as he sat at breakfast. In need of some

brightening from without, was Mr Alfred Lammle, for he had the air of

being dull enough within, and looked grievously discontented.

Mrs Alfred Lammle faced her lord. The happy pair of swindlers, with

the comfortable tie between them that each had swindled the other, sat

moodily observant of the tablecloth. Things looked so gloomy in the

breakfast-room, albeit on the sunny side of Sackville Street, that any

of the family tradespeople glancing through the blinds might have taken

the hint to send in his account and press for it. But this, indeed, most

of the family tradespeople had already done, without the hint.

‘It seems to me,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘that you have had no money at all,

ever since we have been married.’

‘What seems to you,’ said Mr Lammle, ‘to have been the case, may

possibly have been the case. It doesn’t matter.’

Was it the speciality of Mr and Mrs Lammle, or does it ever obtain

with other loving couples? In these matrimonial dialogues they never

addressed each other, but always some invisible presence that appeared

to take a station about midway between them. Perhaps the skeleton in the

cupboard comes out to be talked to, on such domestic occasions?

‘I have never seen any money in the house,’ said Mrs Lammle to the

skeleton, ‘except my own annuity. That I swear.’

‘You needn’t take the trouble of swearing,’ said Mr Lammle to the

skeleton; ‘once more, it doesn’t matter. You never turned your annuity

to so good an account.’

‘Good an account! In what way?’ asked Mrs Lammle.

‘In the way of getting credit, and living well,’ said Mr Lammle. Perhaps

the skeleton laughed scornfully on being intrusted with this question

and this answer; certainly Mrs Lammle did, and Mr Lammle did.

‘And what is to happen next?’ asked Mrs Lammle of the skeleton.

‘Smash is to happen next,’ said Mr Lammle to the same authority.

After this, Mrs Lammle looked disdainfully at the skeleton—but without

carrying the look on to Mr Lammle—and drooped her eyes. After that, Mr

Lammle did exactly the same thing, and drooped HIS eyes. A servant then

entering with toast, the skeleton retired into the closet, and shut

itself up.

‘Sophronia,’ said Mr Lammle, when the servant had withdrawn. And then,

very much louder: ‘Sophronia!’

‘Well?’

‘Attend to me, if you please.’ He eyed her sternly until she did attend,

and then went on. ‘I want to take counsel with you. Come, come; no more

trifling. You know our league and covenant. We are to work together for

our joint interest, and you are as knowing a hand as I am. We shouldn’t

be together, if you were not. What’s to be done? We are hemmed into a

corner. What shall we do?’

‘Have you no scheme on foot that will bring in anything?’

Mr Lammle plunged into his whiskers for reflection, and came out

hopeless: ‘No; as adventurers we are obliged to play rash games for

chances of high winnings, and there has been a run of luck against us.’

She was resuming, ‘Have you nothing—’ when he stopped her.

‘We, Sophronia. We, we, we.’

‘Have we nothing to sell?’

‘Deuce a bit. I have given a Jew a bill of sale on this furniture, and

he could take it to-morrow, to-day, now. He would have taken it before

now, I believe, but for Fledgeby.’

‘What has Fledgeby to do with him?’

‘Knew him. Cautioned me against him before I got into his claws.

Couldn’t persuade him then, in behalf of somebody else.’

‘Do you mean that Fledgeby has at all softened him towards you?’

‘Us, Sophronia. Us, us, us.’

‘Towards us?’

‘I mean that the Jew has not yet done what he might have done, and that

Fledgeby takes the credit of having got him to hold his hand.’

‘Do you believe Fledgeby?’

‘Sophronia, I never believe anybody. I never have, my dear, since I

believed you. But it looks like it.’

Having given her this back-handed reminder of her mutinous observations

to the skeleton, Mr Lammle rose from table—perhaps, the better to

conceal a smile, and a white dint or two about his nose—and took a turn

on the carpet and came to the hearthrug.

‘If we could have packed the brute off with Georgiana;—but however;

that’s spilled milk.’

As Lammle, standing gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown with

his back to the fire, said this, looking down at his wife, she turned

pale and looked down at the ground. With a sense of disloyalty upon

her, and perhaps with a sense of personal danger—for she was afraid of

him—even afraid of his hand and afraid of his foot, though he had never

done her violence—she hastened to put herself right in his eyes.

‘If we could borrow money, Alfred—’

‘Beg money, borrow money, or steal money. It would be all one to us,

Sophronia,’ her husband struck in.

‘—Then, we could weather this?’

‘No doubt. To offer another original and undeniable remark, Sophronia,

two and two make four.’

But, seeing that she was turning something in her mind, he gathered up

the skirts of his dressing-gown again, and, tucking them under one arm,

and collecting his ample whiskers in his other hand, kept his eye upon

her, silently.

‘It is natural, Alfred,’ she said, looking up with some timidity into

his face, ‘to think in such an emergency of the richest people we know,

and the simplest.’

‘Just so, Sophronia.’

‘The Boffins.’

‘Just so, Sophronia.’

‘Is there nothing to be done with them?’

‘What is there to be done with them, Sophronia?’

She cast about in her thoughts again, and he kept his eye upon her as

before.

‘Of course I have repeatedly thought of the Boffins, Sophronia,’ he

resumed, after a fruitless silence; ‘but I have seen my way to nothing.

They are well guarded. That infernal Secretary stands between them

and—people of merit.’

‘If he could be got rid of?’ said she, brightening a little, after more

casting about.

‘Take time, Sophronia,’ observed her watchful husband, in a patronizing

manner.

‘If working him out of the way could be presented in the light of a

service to Mr Boffin?’

‘Take time, Sophronia.’

‘We have remarked lately, Alfred, that the old man is turning very

suspicious and distrustful.’

‘Miserly too, my dear; which is far the most unpromising for us.

Nevertheless, take time, Sophronia, take time.’

She took time and then said:

‘Suppose we should address ourselves to that tendency in him of which we

have made ourselves quite sure. Suppose my conscience—’

‘And we know what a conscience it is, my soul. Yes?’

‘Suppose my conscience should not allow me to keep to myself any

longer what that upstart girl told me of the Secretary’s having made a

declaration to her. Suppose my conscience should oblige me to repeat it

to Mr Boffin.’

‘I rather like that,’ said Lammle.

‘Suppose I so repeated it to Mr Boffin, as to insinuate that my

sensitive delicacy and honour—’

‘Very good words, Sophronia.’

‘—As to insinuate that OUR sensitive delicacy and honour,’ she resumed,

with a bitter stress upon the phrase, ‘would not allow us to be silent

parties to so mercenary and designing a speculation on the Secretary’s

part, and so gross a breach of faith towards his confiding employer.

Suppose I had imparted my virtuous uneasiness to my excellent husband,

and he had said, in his integrity, “Sophronia, you must immediately

disclose this to Mr Boffin.”’

‘Once more, Sophronia,’ observed Lammle, changing the leg on which he

stood, ‘I rather like that.’

‘You remark that he is well guarded,’ she pursued. ‘I think so too. But

if this should lead to his discharging his Secretary, there would be a

weak place made.’

‘Go on expounding, Sophronia. I begin to like this very much.’

‘Having, in our unimpeachable rectitude, done him the service of opening

his eyes to the treachery of the person he trusted, we shall have

established a claim upon him and a confidence with him. Whether it

can be made much of, or little of, we must wait—because we can’t help

it—to see. Probably we shall make the most of it that is to be made.’

‘Probably,’ said Lammle.

‘Do you think it impossible,’ she asked, in the same cold plotting way,

‘that you might replace the Secretary?’

‘Not impossible, Sophronia. It might be brought about. At any rate it

might be skilfully led up to.’

She nodded her understanding of the hint, as she looked at the fire. ‘Mr

Lammle,’ she said, musingly: not without a slight ironical touch: ‘Mr

Lammle would be so delighted to do anything in his power. Mr Lammle,

himself a man of business as well as a capitalist. Mr Lammle, accustomed

to be intrusted with the most delicate affairs. Mr Lammle, who has

managed my own little fortune so admirably, but who, to be sure, began

to make his reputation with the advantage of being a man of property,

above temptation, and beyond suspicion.’

Mr Lammle smiled, and even patted her on the head. In his sinister

relish of the scheme, as he stood above her, making it the subject of

his cogitations, he seemed to have twice as much nose on his face as he

had ever had in his life.

He stood pondering, and she sat looking at the dusty fire without

moving, for some time. But, the moment he began to speak again she

looked up with a wince and attended to him, as if that double-dealing of

hers had been in her mind, and the fear were revived in her of his hand

or his foot.

‘It appears to me, Sophronia, that you have omitted one branch of the

subject. Perhaps not, for women understand women. We might oust the girl

herself?’

Mrs Lammle shook her head. ‘She has an immensely strong hold upon them

both, Alfred. Not to be compared with that of a paid secretary.’

‘But the dear child,’ said Lammle, with a crooked smile, ‘ought to have

been open with her benefactor and benefactress. The darling love

ought to have reposed unbounded confidence in her benefactor and

benefactress.’

Sophronia shook her head again.

‘Well! Women understand women,’ said her husband, rather disappointed.

‘I don’t press it. It might be the making of our fortune to make a

clean sweep of them both. With me to manage the property, and my wife to

manage the people—Whew!’

Again shaking her head, she returned: ‘They will never quarrel with the

girl. They will never punish the girl. We must accept the girl, rely

upon it.’

‘Well!’ cried Lammle, shrugging his shoulders, ‘so be it: only always

remember that we don’t want her.’

‘Now, the sole remaining question is,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘when shall I

begin?’

‘You cannot begin too soon, Sophronia. As I have told you, the condition

of our affairs is desperate, and may be blown upon at any moment.’

‘I must secure Mr Boffin alone, Alfred. If his wife was present, she

would throw oil upon the waters. I know I should fail to move him to an

angry outburst, if his wife was there. And as to the girl herself—as I

am going to betray her confidence, she is equally out of the question.’

‘It wouldn’t do to write for an appointment?’ said Lammle.

‘No, certainly not. They would wonder among themselves why I wrote, and

I want to have him wholly unprepared.’

‘Call, and ask to see him alone?’ suggested Lammle.

‘I would rather not do that either. Leave it to me. Spare me the little

carriage for to-day, and for to-morrow (if I don’t succeed to-day), and

I’ll lie in wait for him.’

It was barely settled when a manly form was seen to pass the windows

and heard to knock and ring. ‘Here’s Fledgeby,’ said Lammle. ‘He admires

you, and has a high opinion of you. I’ll be out. Coax him to use his

influence with the Jew. His name is Riah, of the House of Pubsey and

Co.’ Adding these words under his breath, lest he should be audible

in the erect ears of Mr Fledgeby, through two keyholes and the hall,

Lammle, making signals of discretion to his servant, went softly up

stairs.

‘Mr Fledgeby,’ said Mrs Lammle, giving him a very gracious reception,

‘so glad to see you! My poor dear Alfred, who is greatly worried just

now about his affairs, went out rather early. Dear Mr Fledgeby, do sit

down.’

Dear Mr Fledgeby did sit down, and satisfied himself (or, judging from

the expression of his countenance, DISsatisfied himself) that nothing

new had occurred in the way of whisker-sprout since he came round the

corner from the Albany.

‘Dear Mr Fledgeby, it was needless to mention to you that my poor dear

Alfred is much worried about his affairs at present, for he has told me

what a comfort you are to him in his temporary difficulties, and what a

great service you have rendered him.’

‘Oh!’ said Mr Fledgeby.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Lammle.

‘I didn’t know,’ remarked Mr Fledgeby, trying a new part of his chair,

‘but that Lammle might be reserved about his affairs.’

‘Not to me,’ said Mrs Lammle, with deep feeling.

‘Oh, indeed?’ said Fledgeby.

‘Not to me, dear Mr Fledgeby. I am his wife.’

‘Yes. I—I always understood so,’ said Mr Fledgeby.

‘And as the wife of Alfred, may I, dear Mr Fledgeby, wholly without his

authority or knowledge, as I am sure your discernment will perceive,

entreat you to continue that great service, and once more use your

well-earned influence with Mr Riah for a little more indulgence? The

name I have heard Alfred mention, tossing in his dreams, IS Riah; is it

not?’

‘The name of the Creditor is Riah,’ said Mr Fledgeby, with a rather

uncompromising accent on his noun-substantive. ‘Saint Mary Axe. Pubsey

and Co.’

‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Mrs Lammle, clasping her hands with a certain

gushing wildness. ‘Pubsey and Co.!’

‘The pleading of the feminine—’ Mr Fledgeby began, and there stuck so

long for a word to get on with, that Mrs Lammle offered him sweetly,

‘Heart?’

‘No,’ said Mr Fledgeby, ‘Gender—is ever what a man is bound to listen

to, and I wish it rested with myself. But this Riah is a nasty one, Mrs

Lammle; he really is.’

‘Not if YOU speak to him, dear Mr Fledgeby.’

‘Upon my soul and body he is!’ said Fledgeby.

‘Try. Try once more, dearest Mr Fledgeby. What is there you cannot do,

if you will!’

‘Thank you,’ said Fledgeby, ‘you’re very complimentary to say so. I

don’t mind trying him again, at your request. But of course I can’t

answer for the consequences. Riah is a tough subject, and when he says

he’ll do a thing, he’ll do it.’

‘Exactly so,’ cried Mrs Lammle, ‘and when he says to you he’ll wait,

he’ll wait.’

(‘She is a devilish clever woman,’ thought Fledgeby. ‘I didn’t see that

opening, but she spies it out and cuts into it as soon as it’s made.’)

‘In point of fact, dear Mr Fledgeby,’ Mrs Lammle went on in a very

interesting manner, ‘not to affect concealment of Alfred’s hopes, to you

who are so much his friend, there is a distant break in his horizon.’

This figure of speech seemed rather mysterious to Fascination Fledgeby,

who said, ‘There’s a what in his—eh?’

‘Alfred, dear Mr Fledgeby, discussed with me this very morning before he

went out, some prospects he has, which might entirely change the aspect

of his present troubles.’

‘Really?’ said Fledgeby.

‘O yes!’ Here Mrs Lammle brought her handkerchief into play. ‘And you

know, dear Mr Fledgeby—you who study the human heart, and study the

world—what an affliction it would be to lose position and to lose

credit, when ability to tide over a very short time might save all

appearances.’

‘Oh!’ said Fledgeby. ‘Then you think, Mrs Lammle, that if Lammle

got time, he wouldn’t burst up?—To use an expression,’ Mr Fledgeby

apologetically explained, ‘which is adopted in the Money Market.’

‘Indeed yes. Truly, truly, yes!’

‘That makes all the difference,’ said Fledgeby. ‘I’ll make a point of

seeing Riah at once.’

‘Blessings on you, dearest Mr Fledgeby!’

‘Not at all,’ said Fledgeby. She gave him her hand. ‘The hand,’ said Mr

Fledgeby, ‘of a lovely and superior-minded female is ever the repayment

of a—’

‘Noble action!’ said Mrs Lammle, extremely anxious to get rid of him.

‘It wasn’t what I was going to say,’ returned Fledgeby, who never would,

under any circumstances, accept a suggested expression, ‘but you’re very

complimentary. May I imprint a—a one—upon it? Good morning!’

‘I may depend upon your promptitude, dearest Mr Fledgeby?’

Said Fledgeby, looking back at the door and respectfully kissing his

hand, ‘You may depend upon it.’

In fact, Mr Fledgeby sped on his errand of mercy through the streets,

at so brisk a rate that his feet might have been winged by all the good

spirits that wait on Generosity. They might have taken up their station

in his breast, too, for he was blithe and merry. There was quite a fresh

trill in his voice, when, arriving at the counting-house in St Mary Axe,

and finding it for the moment empty, he trolled forth at the foot of the

staircase: ‘Now, Judah, what are you up to there?’

The old man appeared, with his accustomed deference.

‘Halloa!’ said Fledgeby, falling back, with a wink. ‘You mean mischief,

Jerusalem!’

The old man raised his eyes inquiringly.

‘Yes you do,’ said Fledgeby. ‘Oh, you sinner! Oh, you dodger! What!

You’re going to act upon that bill of sale at Lammle’s, are you? Nothing

will turn you, won’t it? You won’t be put off for another single minute,

won’t you?’

Ordered to immediate action by the master’s tone and look, the old man

took up his hat from the little counter where it lay.

‘You have been told that he might pull through it, if you didn’t go in

to win, Wide-Awake; have you?’ said Fledgeby. ‘And it’s not your game

that he should pull through it; ain’t it? You having got security, and

there being enough to pay you? Oh, you Jew!’

The old man stood irresolute and uncertain for a moment, as if there

might be further instructions for him in reserve.

‘Do I go, sir?’ he at length asked in a low voice.

‘Asks me if he is going!’ exclaimed Fledgeby. ‘Asks me, as if he didn’t

know his own purpose! Asks me, as if he hadn’t got his hat on ready!

Asks me, as if his sharp old eye—why, it cuts like a knife—wasn’t

looking at his walking-stick by the door!’

‘Do I go, sir?’

‘Do you go?’ sneered Fledgeby. ‘Yes, you do go. Toddle, Judah!’

Chapter 13

GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME, AND HANG HIM