with his hat on one side, whistling, and investigating the drawers, and
prying here and there for any small evidences of his being cheated,
but could find none. ‘Not his merit that he don’t cheat me,’ was Mr
Fledgeby’s commentary delivered with a wink, ‘but my precaution.’ He
then with a lazy grandeur asserted his rights as lord of Pubsey and
Co. by poking his cane at the stools and boxes, and spitting in the
fireplace, and so loitered royally to the window and looked out into the
narrow street, with his small eyes just peering over the top of Pubsey
and Co.’s blind. As a blind in more senses than one, it reminded him
that he was alone in the counting-house with the front door open. He was
moving away to shut it, lest he should be injudiciously identified with
the establishment, when he was stopped by some one coming to the door.
This some one was the dolls’ dressmaker, with a little basket on her
arm, and her crutch stick in her hand. Her keen eyes had espied Mr
Fledgeby before Mr Fledgeby had espied her, and he was paralysed in his
purpose of shutting her out, not so much by her approaching the door, as
by her favouring him with a shower of nods, the instant he saw her. This
advantage she improved by hobbling up the steps with such despatch that
before Mr Fledgeby could take measures for her finding nobody at home,
she was face to face with him in the counting-house.
‘Hope I see you well, sir,’ said Miss Wren. ‘Mr Riah in?’
Fledgeby had dropped into a chair, in the attitude of one waiting
wearily. ‘I suppose he will be back soon,’ he replied; ‘he has cut
out and left me expecting him back, in an odd way. Haven’t I seen you
before?’
‘Once before—if you had your eyesight,’ replied Miss Wren; the
conditional clause in an under-tone.
‘When you were carrying on some games up at the top of the house. I
remember. How’s your friend?’
‘I have more friends than one, sir, I hope,’ replied Miss Wren. ‘Which
friend?’
‘Never mind,’ said Mr Fledgeby, shutting up one eye, ‘any of your
friends, all your friends. Are they pretty tolerable?’
Somewhat confounded, Miss Wren parried the pleasantry, and sat down in a
corner behind the door, with her basket in her lap. By-and-by, she said,
breaking a long and patient silence:
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I am used to find Mr Riah at this time, and
so I generally come at this time. I only want to buy my poor little two
shillings’ worth of waste. Perhaps you’ll kindly let me have it, and
I’ll trot off to my work.’
‘I let you have it?’ said Fledgeby, turning his head towards her; for he
had been sitting blinking at the light, and feeling his cheek. ‘Why, you
don’t really suppose that I have anything to do with the place, or the
business; do you?’
‘Suppose?’ exclaimed Miss Wren. ‘He said, that day, you were the
master!’
‘The old cock in black said? Riah said? Why, he’d say anything.’
‘Well; but you said so too,’ returned Miss Wren. ‘Or at least you took
on like the master, and didn’t contradict him.’
‘One of his dodges,’ said Mr Fledgeby, with a cool and contemptuous
shrug. ‘He’s made of dodges. He said to me, “Come up to the top of the
house, sir, and I’ll show you a handsome girl. But I shall call you
the master.” So I went up to the top of the house and he showed me the
handsome girl (very well worth looking at she was), and I was called the
master. I don’t know why. I dare say he don’t. He loves a dodge for
its own sake; being,’ added Mr Fledgeby, after casting about for an
expressive phrase, ‘the dodgerest of all the dodgers.’
‘Oh my head!’ cried the dolls’ dressmaker, holding it with both her
hands, as if it were cracking. ‘You can’t mean what you say.’
‘I can, my little woman, retorted Fledgeby, ‘and I do, I assure you.’
This repudiation was not only an act of deliberate policy on Fledgeby’s
part, in case of his being surprised by any other caller, but was also a
retort upon Miss Wren for her over-sharpness, and a pleasant instance
of his humour as regarded the old Jew. ‘He has got a bad name as an old
Jew, and he is paid for the use of it, and I’ll have my money’s worth
out of him.’ This was Fledgeby’s habitual reflection in the way of
business, and it was sharpened just now by the old man’s presuming
to have a secret from him: though of the secret itself, as annoying
somebody else whom he disliked, he by no means disapproved.
Miss Wren with a fallen countenance sat behind the door looking
thoughtfully at the ground, and the long and patient silence had
again set in for some time, when the expression of Mr Fledgeby’s face
betokened that through the upper portion of the door, which was of
glass, he saw some one faltering on the brink of the counting-house.
Presently there was a rustle and a tap, and then some more rustling and
another tap. Fledgeby taking no notice, the door was at length softly
opened, and the dried face of a mild little elderly gentleman looked in.
‘Mr Riah?’ said this visitor, very politely.
‘I am waiting for him, sir,’ returned Mr Fledgeby. ‘He went out and left
me here. I expect him back every minute. Perhaps you had better take a
chair.’
The gentleman took a chair, and put his hand to his forehead, as if
he were in a melancholy frame of mind. Mr Fledgeby eyed him aside, and
seemed to relish his attitude.
‘A fine day, sir,’ remarked Fledgeby.
The little dried gentleman was so occupied with his own depressed
reflections that he did not notice the remark until the sound of Mr
Fledgeby’s voice had died out of the counting-house. Then he started,
and said: ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I fear you spoke to me?’
‘I said,’ remarked Fledgeby, a little louder than before, ‘it was a fine
day.’
‘I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. Yes.’
Again the little dried gentleman put his hand to his forehead, and again
Mr Fledgeby seemed to enjoy his doing it. When the gentleman changed his
attitude with a sigh, Fledgeby spake with a grin.
‘Mr Twemlow, I think?’
The dried gentleman seemed much surprised.
‘Had the pleasure of dining with you at Lammle’s,’ said Fledgeby. ‘Even
have the honour of being a connexion of yours. An unexpected sort of
place this to meet in; but one never knows, when one gets into the City,
what people one may knock up against. I hope you have your health, and
are enjoying yourself.’
There might have been a touch of impertinence in the last words; on the
other hand, it might have been but the native grace of Mr Fledgeby’s
manner. Mr Fledgeby sat on a stool with a foot on the rail of another
stool, and his hat on. Mr Twemlow had uncovered on looking in at the
door, and remained so. Now the conscientious Twemlow, knowing what he
had done to thwart the gracious Fledgeby, was particularly disconcerted
by this encounter. He was as ill at ease as a gentleman well could be.
He felt himself bound to conduct himself stiffly towards Fledgeby,
and he made him a distant bow. Fledgeby made his small eyes smaller
in taking special note of his manner. The dolls’ dressmaker sat in her
corner behind the door, with her eyes on the ground and her hands folded
on her basket, holding her crutch-stick between them, and appearing to
take no heed of anything.
‘He’s a long time,’ muttered Mr Fledgeby, looking at his watch. ‘What
time may you make it, Mr Twemlow?’
Mr Twemlow made it ten minutes past twelve, sir.
‘As near as a toucher,’ assented Fledgeby. ‘I hope, Mr Twemlow, your
business here may be of a more agreeable character than mine.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mr Twemlow.
Fledgeby again made his small eyes smaller, as he glanced with great
complacency at Twemlow, who was timorously tapping the table with a
folded letter.
‘What I know of Mr Riah,’ said Fledgeby, with a very disparaging
utterance of his name, ‘leads me to believe that this is about the shop
for disagreeable business. I have always found him the bitingest and
tightest screw in London.’
Mr Twemlow acknowledged the remark with a little distant bow. It
evidently made him nervous.
‘So much so,’ pursued Fledgeby, ‘that if it wasn’t to be true to a
friend, nobody should catch me waiting here a single minute. But if you
have friends in adversity, stand by them. That’s what I say and act up
to.’
The equitable Twemlow felt that this sentiment, irrespective of the
utterer, demanded his cordial assent. ‘You are very right, sir,’ he
rejoined with spirit. ‘You indicate the generous and manly course.’
‘Glad to have your approbation,’ returned Fledgeby. ‘It’s a coincidence,
Mr Twemlow;’ here he descended from his perch, and sauntered towards
him; ‘that the friends I am standing by to-day are the friends at whose
house I met you! The Lammles. She’s a very taking and agreeable woman?’
Conscience smote the gentle Twemlow pale. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She is.’
‘And when she appealed to me this morning, to come and try what I could
do to pacify their creditor, this Mr Riah—that I certainly have gained
some little influence with in transacting business for another friend,
but nothing like so much as she supposes—and when a woman like that
spoke to me as her dearest Mr Fledgeby, and shed tears—why what could I
do, you know?’
Twemlow gasped ‘Nothing but come.’
‘Nothing but come. And so I came. But why,’ said Fledgeby, putting
his hands in his pockets and counterfeiting deep meditation, ‘why Riah
should have started up, when I told him that the Lammles entreated him
to hold over a Bill of Sale he has on all their effects; and why he
should have cut out, saying he would be back directly; and why he should
have left me here alone so long; I cannot understand.’
The chivalrous Twemlow, Knight of the Simple Heart, was not in a
condition to offer any suggestion. He was too penitent, too remorseful.
For the first time in his life he had done an underhanded action, and he
had done wrong. He had secretly interposed against this confiding young
man, for no better real reason than because the young man’s ways were
not his ways.
But, the confiding young man proceeded to heap coals of fire on his
sensitive head.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Twemlow; you see I am acquainted with the nature
of the affairs that are transacted here. Is there anything I can do for
you here? You have always been brought up as a gentleman, and never as a
man of business;’ another touch of possible impertinence in this place;
‘and perhaps you are but a poor man of business. What else is to be
expected!’
‘I am even a poorer man of business than I am a man, sir,’ returned
Twemlow, ‘and I could hardly express my deficiency in a stronger way. I
really do not so much as clearly understand my position in the matter
on which I am brought here. But there are reasons which make me
very delicate of accepting your assistance. I am greatly, greatly,
disinclined to profit by it. I don’t deserve it.’
Good childish creature! Condemned to a passage through the world by such
narrow little dimly-lighted ways, and picking up so few specks or spots
on the road!
‘Perhaps,’ said Fledgeby, ‘you may be a little proud of entering on the
topic,—having been brought up as a gentleman.’
‘It’s not that, sir,’ returned Twemlow, ‘it’s not that. I hope I
distinguish between true pride and false pride.’
‘I have no pride at all, myself,’ said Fledgeby, ‘and perhaps I don’t
cut things so fine as to know one from t’other. But I know this is a
place where even a man of business needs his wits about him; and if mine
can be of any use to you here, you’re welcome to them.’
‘You are very good,’ said Twemlow, faltering. ‘But I am most
unwilling—’
‘I don’t, you know,’ proceeded Fledgeby with an ill-favoured glance,
‘entertain the vanity of supposing that my wits could be of any use
to you in society, but they might be here. You cultivate society and
society cultivates you, but Mr Riah’s not society. In society, Mr Riah
is kept dark; eh, Mr Twemlow?’
Twemlow, much disturbed, and with his hand fluttering about his
forehead, replied: ‘Quite true.’
The confiding young man besought him to state his case. The innocent
Twemlow, expecting Fledgeby to be astounded by what he should unfold,
and not for an instant conceiving the possibility of its happening every
day, but treating of it as a terrible phenomenon occurring in the course
of ages, related how that he had had a deceased friend, a married civil
officer with a family, who had wanted money for change of place or
change of post, and how he, Twemlow, had ‘given him his name,’ with the
usual, but in the eyes of Twemlow almost incredible result that he had
been left to repay what he had never had. How, in the course of years,
he had reduced the principal by trifling sums, ‘having,’ said Twemlow,
‘always to observe great economy, being in the enjoyment of a fixed
income limited in extent, and that depending on the munificence of
a certain nobleman,’ and had always pinched the full interest out of
himself with punctual pinches. How he had come, in course of time,
to look upon this one only debt of his life as a regular quarterly
drawback, and no worse, when ‘his name’ had some way fallen into the
possession of Mr Riah, who had sent him notice to redeem it by paying up
in full, in one plump sum, or take tremendous consequences. This, with
hazy remembrances of how he had been carried to some office to ‘confess
judgment’ (as he recollected the phrase), and how he had been carried
to another office where his life was assured for somebody not wholly
unconnected with the sherry trade whom he remembered by the remarkable
circumstance that he had a Straduarius violin to dispose of, and also a
Madonna, formed the sum and substance of Mr Twemlow’s narrative. Through
which stalked the shadow of the awful Snigsworth, eyed afar off by
money-lenders as Security in the Mist, and menacing Twemlow with his
baronial truncheon.
To all, Mr Fledgeby listened with the modest gravity becoming a
confiding young man who knew it all beforehand, and, when it was
finished, seriously shook his head. ‘I don’t like, Mr Twemlow,’ said
Fledgeby, ‘I don’t like Riah’s calling in the principal. If he’s
determined to call it in, it must come.’
‘But supposing, sir,’ said Twemlow, downcast, ‘that it can’t come?’
‘Then,’ retorted Fledgeby, ‘you must go, you know.’
‘Where?’ asked Twemlow, faintly.
‘To prison,’ returned Fledgeby. Whereat Mr Twemlow leaned his innocent
head upon his hand, and moaned a little moan of distress and disgrace.
‘However,’ said Fledgeby, appearing to pluck up his spirits, ‘we’ll hope
it’s not so bad as that comes to. If you’ll allow me, I’ll mention to Mr
Riah when he comes in, who you are, and I’ll tell him you’re my friend,
and I’ll say my say for you, instead of your saying it for yourself; I
may be able to do it in a more business-like way. You won’t consider it
a liberty?’
‘I thank you again and again, sir,’ said Twemlow. ‘I am strong,
strongly, disinclined to avail myself of your generosity, though my
helplessness yields. For I cannot but feel that I—to put it in the
mildest form of speech—that I have done nothing to deserve it.’
‘Where CAN he be?’ muttered Fledgeby, referring to his watch again.
‘What CAN he have gone out for? Did you ever see him, Mr Twemlow?’
‘Never.’
‘He is a thorough Jew to look at, but he is a more thorough Jew to deal
with. He’s worst when he’s quiet. If he’s quiet, I shall take it as a
very bad sign. Keep your eye upon him when he comes in, and, if he’s
quiet, don’t be hopeful. Here he is!—He looks quiet.’
With these words, which had the effect of causing the harmless Twemlow
painful agitation, Mr Fledgeby withdrew to his former post, and the old
man entered the counting-house.
‘Why, Mr Riah,’ said Fledgeby, ‘I thought you were lost!’
The old man, glancing at the stranger, stood stock-still. He perceived
that his master was leading up to the orders he was to take, and he
waited to understand them.
‘I really thought,’ repeated Fledgeby slowly, ‘that you were lost, Mr
Riah. Why, now I look at you—but no, you can’t have done it; no, you
can’t have done it!’
Hat in hand, the old man lifted his head, and looked distressfully at
Fledgeby as seeking to know what new moral burden he was to bear.
‘You can’t have rushed out to get the start of everybody else, and put
in that bill of sale at Lammle’s?’ said Fledgeby. ‘Say you haven’t, Mr
Riah.’
‘Sir, I have,’ replied the old man in a low voice.
‘Oh my eye!’ cried Fledgeby. ‘Tut, tut, tut! Dear, dear, dear! Well! I
knew you were a hard customer, Mr Riah, but I never thought you were as
hard as that.’
‘Sir,’ said the old man, with great uneasiness, ‘I do as I am directed.
I am not the principal here. I am but the agent of a superior, and I
have no choice, no power.’
‘Don’t say so,’ retorted Fledgeby, secretly exultant as the old man
stretched out his hands, with a shrinking action of defending himself
against the sharp construction of the two observers. ‘Don’t play the
tune of the trade, Mr Riah. You’ve a right to get in your debts, if
you’re determined to do it, but don’t pretend what every one in your
line regularly pretends. At least, don’t do it to me. Why should you, Mr
Riah? You know I know all about you.’
The old man clasped the skirt of his long coat with his disengaged hand,
and directed a wistful look at Fledgeby.
‘And don’t,’ said Fledgeby, ‘don’t, I entreat you as a favour, Mr Riah,
be so devilish meek, for I know what’ll follow if you are. Look here, Mr
Riah. This gentleman is Mr Twemlow.’
The Jew turned to him and bowed. That poor lamb bowed in return; polite,
and terrified.
‘I have made such a failure,’ proceeded Fledgeby, ‘in trying to do
anything with you for my friend Lammle, that I’ve hardly a hope of doing
anything with you for my friend (and connexion indeed) Mr Twemlow. But
I do think that if you would do a favour for anybody, you would for me,
and I won’t fail for want of trying, and I’ve passed my promise to Mr
Twemlow besides. Now, Mr Riah, here is Mr Twemlow. Always good for his
interest, always coming up to time, always paying his little way. Now,
why should you press Mr Twemlow? You can’t have any spite against Mr
Twemlow! Why not be easy with Mr Twemlow?’
The old man looked into Fledgeby’s little eyes for any sign of leave to
be easy with Mr Twemlow; but there was no sign in them.
‘Mr Twemlow is no connexion of yours, Mr Riah,’ said Fledgeby; ‘you
can’t want to be even with him for having through life gone in for a
gentleman and hung on to his Family. If Mr Twemlow has a contempt for
business, what can it matter to you?’
‘But pardon me,’ interposed the gentle victim, ‘I have not. I should
consider it presumption.’
‘There, Mr Riah!’ said Fledgeby, ‘isn’t that handsomely said? Come! Make
terms with me for Mr Twemlow.’
The old man looked again for any sign of permission to spare the poor
little gentleman. No. Mr Fledgeby meant him to be racked.
‘I am very sorry, Mr Twemlow,’ said Riah. ‘I have my instructions. I am
invested with no authority for diverging from them. The money must be
paid.’
‘In full and slap down, do you mean, Mr Riah?’ asked Fledgeby, to make
things quite explicit.
‘In full, sir, and at once,’ was Riah’s answer.
Mr Fledgeby shook his head deploringly at Twemlow, and mutely expressed
in reference to the venerable figure standing before him with eyes upon
the ground: ‘What a Monster of an Israelite this is!’
‘Mr Riah,’ said Fledgeby.
The old man lifted up his eyes once more to the little eyes in Mr
Fledgeby’s head, with some reviving hope that the sign might be coming
yet.
‘Mr Riah, it’s of no use my holding back the fact. There’s a certain
great party in the background in Mr Twemlow’s case, and you know it.’
‘I know it,’ the old man admitted.
‘Now, I’ll put it as a plain point of business, Mr Riah. Are you fully
determined (as a plain point of business) either to have that said great
party’s security, or that said great party’s money?’
‘Fully determined,’ answered Riah, as he read his master’s face, and
learnt the book.
‘Not at all caring for, and indeed as it seems to me rather enjoying,’
said Fledgeby, with peculiar unction, ‘the precious kick-up and row that
will come off between Mr Twemlow and the said great party?’
This required no answer, and received none. Poor Mr Twemlow, who had
betrayed the keenest mental terrors since his noble kinsman loomed in
the perspective, rose with a sigh to take his departure. ‘I thank you
very much, sir,’ he said, offering Fledgeby his feverish hand. ‘You have
done me an unmerited service. Thank you, thank you!’
‘Don’t mention it,’ answered Fledgeby. ‘It’s a failure so far, but I’ll
stay behind, and take another touch at Mr Riah.’
‘Do not deceive yourself Mr Twemlow,’ said the Jew, then addressing him
directly for the first time. ‘There is no hope for you. You must expect
no leniency here. You must pay in full, and you cannot pay too promptly,
or you will be put to heavy charges. Trust nothing to me, sir. Money,
money, money.’ When he had said these words in an emphatic manner, he
acknowledged Mr Twemlow’s still polite motion of his head, and that
amiable little worthy took his departure in the lowest spirits.
Fascination Fledgeby was in such a merry vein when the counting-house
was cleared of him, that he had nothing for it but to go to the window,
and lean his arms on the frame of the blind, and have his silent laugh
out, with his back to his subordinate. When he turned round again with a
composed countenance, his subordinate still stood in the same place, and
the dolls’ dressmaker sat behind the door with a look of horror.
‘Halloa!’ cried Mr Fledgeby, ‘you’re forgetting this young lady, Mr
Riah, and she has been waiting long enough too. Sell her her waste,
please, and give her good measure if you can make up your mind to do the
liberal thing for once.’
He looked on for a time, as the Jew filled her little basket with such
scraps as she was used to buy; but, his merry vein coming on again, he
was obliged to turn round to the window once more, and lean his arms on
the blind.
‘There, my Cinderella dear,’ said the old man in a whisper, and with a
worn-out look, ‘the basket’s full now. Bless you! And get you gone!’
‘Don’t call me your Cinderella dear,’ returned Miss Wren. ‘O you cruel
godmother!’
She shook that emphatic little forefinger of hers in his face at
parting, as earnestly and reproachfully as she had ever shaken it at her
grim old child at home.
‘You are not the godmother at all!’ said she. ‘You are the Wolf in
the Forest, the wicked Wolf! And if ever my dear Lizzie is sold and
betrayed, I shall know who sold and betrayed her!’
Chapter 14
MR WEGG PREPARES A GRINDSTONE FOR MR BOFFIN’S NOSE
Having assisted at a few more expositions of the lives of Misers, Mr
Venus became almost indispensable to the evenings at the Bower. The
circumstance of having another listener to the wonders unfolded by
Wegg, or, as it were, another calculator to cast up the guineas found in
teapots, chimneys, racks and mangers, and other such banks of deposit,
seemed greatly to heighten Mr Boffin’s enjoyment; while Silas Wegg, for
his part, though of a jealous temperament which might under ordinary
circumstances have resented the anatomist’s getting into favour, was
so very anxious to keep his eye on that gentleman—lest, being too
much left to himself, he should be tempted to play any tricks with the
precious document in his keeping—that he never lost an opportunity of
commending him to Mr Boffin’s notice as a third party whose company was
much to be desired. Another friendly demonstration towards him Mr Wegg
now regularly gratified. After each sitting was over, and the patron
had departed, Mr Wegg invariably saw Mr Venus home. To be sure, he as
invariably requested to be refreshed with a sight of the paper in which
he was a joint proprietor; but he never failed to remark that it was the
great pleasure he derived from Mr Venus’s improving society which had
insensibly lured him round to Clerkenwell again, and that, finding
himself once more attracted to the spot by the social powers of Mr V.,
he would beg leave to go through that little incidental procedure, as a
matter of form. ‘For well I know, sir,’ Mr Wegg would add, ‘that a
man of your delicate mind would wish to be checked off whenever the
opportunity arises, and it is not for me to baulk your feelings.’
A certain rustiness in Mr Venus, which never became so lubricated by
the oil of Mr Wegg but that he turned under the screw in a creaking and
stiff manner, was very noticeable at about this period. While assisting
at the literary evenings, he even went so far, on two or three
occasions, as to correct Mr Wegg when he grossly mispronounced a word,
or made nonsense of a passage; insomuch that Mr Wegg took to surveying
his course in the day, and to making arrangements for getting round
rocks at night instead of running straight upon them. Of the slightest
anatomical reference he became particularly shy, and, if he saw a bone
ahead, would go any distance out of his way rather than mention it by
name.
The adverse destinies ordained that one evening Mr Wegg’s labouring
bark became beset by polysyllables, and embarrassed among a perfect
archipelago of hard words. It being necessary to take soundings every
minute, and to feel the way with the greatest caution, Mr Wegg’s
attention was fully employed. Advantage was taken of this dilemma by
Mr Venus, to pass a scrap of paper into Mr Boffin’s hand, and lay his
finger on his own lip.
When Mr Boffin got home at night he found that the paper contained Mr
Venus’s card and these words: ‘Should be glad to be honoured with a call
respecting business of your own, about dusk on an early evening.’
The very next evening saw Mr Boffin peeping in at the preserved frogs
in Mr Venus’s shop-window, and saw Mr Venus espying Mr Boffin with the
readiness of one on the alert, and beckoning that gentleman into his
interior. Responding, Mr Boffin was invited to seat himself on the box
of human miscellanies before the fire, and did so, looking round the
place with admiring eyes. The fire being low and fitful, and the dusk
gloomy, the whole stock seemed to be winking and blinking with both
eyes, as Mr Venus did. The French gentleman, though he had no eyes, was
not at all behind-hand, but appeared, as the flame rose and fell, to
open and shut his no eyes, with the regularity of the glass-eyed dogs
and ducks and birds. The big-headed babies were equally obliging in
lending their grotesque aid to the general effect.
‘You see, Mr Venus, I’ve lost no time,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Here I am.’
‘Here you are, sir,’ assented Mr Venus.
‘I don’t like secrecy,’ pursued Mr Boffin—‘at least, not in a general
way I don’t—but I dare say you’ll show me good reason for being secret
so far.’
‘I think I shall, sir,’ returned Venus.
‘Good,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘You don’t expect Wegg, I take it for granted?’
‘No, sir. I expect no one but the present company.’
Mr Boffin glanced about him, as accepting under that inclusive
denomination the French gentleman and the circle in which he didn’t
move, and repeated, ‘The present company.’
‘Sir,’ said Mr Venus, ‘before entering upon business, I shall have to
ask you for your word and honour that we are in confidence.’
‘Let’s wait a bit and understand what the expression means,’ answered Mr
Boffin. ‘In confidence for how long? In confidence for ever and a day?’
‘I take your hint, sir,’ said Venus; ‘you think you might consider the
business, when you came to know it, to be of a nature incompatible with
confidence on your part?’
‘I might,’ said Mr Boffin with a cautious look.
‘True, sir. Well, sir,’ observed Venus, after clutching at his dusty
hair, to brighten his ideas, ‘let us put it another way. I open the
business with you, relying upon your honour not to do anything in it,
and not to mention me in it, without my knowledge.’
‘That sounds fair,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘I agree to that.’
‘I have your word and honour, sir?’
‘My good fellow,’ retorted Mr Boffin, ‘you have my word; and how you
can have that, without my honour too, I don’t know. I’ve sorted a lot
of dust in my time, but I never knew the two things go into separate
heaps.’
This remark seemed rather to abash Mr Venus. He hesitated, and said,
‘Very true, sir;’ and again, ‘Very true, sir,’ before resuming the
thread of his discourse.
‘Mr Boffin, if I confess to you that I fell into a proposal of which you
were the subject, and of which you oughtn’t to have been the subject,
you will allow me to mention, and will please take into favourable
consideration, that I was in a crushed state of mind at the time.’
The Golden Dustman, with his hands folded on the top of his stout
stick, with his chin resting upon them, and with something leering and
whimsical in his eyes, gave a nod, and said, ‘Quite so, Venus.’
‘That proposal, sir, was a conspiring breach of your confidence, to
such an extent, that I ought at once to have made it known to you. But I
didn’t, Mr Boffin, and I fell into it.’
Without moving eye or finger, Mr Boffin gave another nod, and placidly
repeated, ‘Quite so, Venus.’
‘Not that I was ever hearty in it, sir,’ the penitent anatomist went
on, ‘or that I ever viewed myself with anything but reproach for having
turned out of the paths of science into the paths of—’ he was going
to say ‘villany,’ but, unwilling to press too hard upon himself,
substituted with great emphasis—‘Weggery.’
Placid and whimsical of look as ever, Mr Boffin answered:
‘Quite so, Venus.’
‘And now, sir,’ said Venus, ‘having prepared your mind in the rough, I
will articulate the details.’ With which brief professional exordium, he
entered on the history of the friendly move, and truly recounted it. One
might have thought that it would have extracted some show of surprise or
anger, or other emotion, from Mr Boffin, but it extracted nothing beyond
his former comment:
‘Quite so, Venus.’
‘I have astonished you, sir, I believe?’ said Mr Venus, pausing
dubiously.
Mr Boffin simply answered as aforesaid: ‘Quite so, Venus.’
By this time the astonishment was all on the other side. It did not,
however, so continue. For, when Venus passed to Wegg’s discovery, and
from that to their having both seen Mr Boffin dig up the Dutch bottle,
that gentleman changed colour, changed his attitude, became extremely
restless, and ended (when Venus ended) by being in a state of manifest
anxiety, trepidation, and confusion.
‘Now, sir,’ said Venus, finishing off; ‘you best know what was in that
Dutch bottle, and why you dug it up, and took it away. I don’t pretend
to know anything more about it than I saw. All I know is this: I am
proud of my calling after all (though it has been attended by one
dreadful drawback which has told upon my heart, and almost equally upon
my skeleton), and I mean to live by my calling. Putting the same meaning
into other words, I do not mean to turn a single dishonest penny by this
affair. As the best amends I can make you for having ever gone into it,
I make known to you, as a warning, what Wegg has found out. My opinion
is, that Wegg is not to be silenced at a modest price, and I build that
opinion on his beginning to dispose of your property the moment he knew
his power. Whether it’s worth your while to silence him at any price,
you will decide for yourself, and take your measures accordingly. As
far as I am concerned, I have no price. If I am ever called upon for
the truth, I tell it, but I want to do no more than I have now done and
ended.’
‘Thank’ee, Venus!’ said Mr Boffin, with a hearty grip of his hand;
‘thank’ee, Venus, thank’ee, Venus!’ And then walked up and down the
little shop in great agitation. ‘But look here, Venus,’ he by-and-by
resumed, nervously sitting down again; ‘if I have to buy Wegg up, I
shan’t buy him any cheaper for your being out of it. Instead of his
having half the money—it was to have been half, I suppose? Share and
share alike?’
‘It was to have been half, sir,’ answered Venus.
‘Instead of that, he’ll now have all. I shall pay the same, if not more.
For you tell me he’s an unconscionable dog, a ravenous rascal.’
‘He is,’ said Venus.
‘Don’t you think, Venus,’ insinuated Mr Boffin, after looking at the
fire for a while—‘don’t you feel as if—you might like to pretend to be
in it till Wegg was bought up, and then ease your mind by handing over
to me what you had made believe to pocket?’
‘No I don’t, sir,’ returned Venus, very positively.
‘Not to make amends?’ insinuated Mr Boffin.
‘No, sir. It seems to me, after maturely thinking it over, that the best
amends for having got out of the square is to get back into the square.’
‘Humph!’ mused Mr Boffin. ‘When you say the square, you mean—’
‘I mean,’ said Venus, stoutly and shortly, ‘the right.’
‘It appears to me,’ said Mr Boffin, grumbling over the fire in an
injured manner, ‘that the right is with me, if it’s anywhere. I have
much more right to the old man’s money than the Crown can ever have.
What was the Crown to him except the King’s Taxes? Whereas, me and my
wife, we was all in all to him.’
Mr Venus, with his head upon his hands, rendered melancholy by the
contemplation of Mr Boffin’s avarice, only murmured to steep himself
in the luxury of that frame of mind: ‘She did not wish so to regard
herself, nor yet to be so regarded.’
‘And how am I to live,’ asked Mr Boffin, piteously, ‘if I’m to be going
buying fellows up out of the little that I’ve got? And how am I to set
about it? When am I to get my money ready? When am I to make a bid? You
haven’t told me when he threatens to drop down upon me.’
Venus explained under what conditions, and with what views, the dropping
down upon Mr Boffin was held over until the Mounds should be cleared
away. Mr Boffin listened attentively. ‘I suppose,’ said he, with a
gleam of hope, ‘there’s no doubt about the genuineness and date of this
confounded will?’
‘None whatever,’ said Mr Venus.
‘Where might it be deposited at present?’ asked Mr Boffin, in a
wheedling tone.
‘It’s in my possession, sir.’
‘Is it?’ he cried, with great eagerness. ‘Now, for any liberal sum of
money that could be agreed upon, Venus, would you put it in the fire?’
‘No, sir, I wouldn’t,’ interrupted Mr Venus.
‘Nor pass it over to me?’
‘That would be the same thing. No, sir,’ said Mr Venus.
The Golden Dustman seemed about to pursue these questions, when a
stumping noise was heard outside, coming towards the door. ‘Hush! here’s
Wegg!’ said Venus. ‘Get behind the young alligator in the corner, Mr
Boffin, and judge him for yourself. I won’t light a candle till he’s
gone; there’ll only be the glow of the fire; Wegg’s well acquainted with
the alligator, and he won’t take particular notice of him. Draw your
legs in, Mr Boffin, at present I see a pair of shoes at the end of his
tail. Get your head well behind his smile, Mr Boffin, and you’ll lie
comfortable there; you’ll find plenty of room behind his smile. He’s a
little dusty, but he’s very like you in tone. Are you right, sir?’
Mr Boffin had but whispered an affirmative response, when Wegg came
stumping in. ‘Partner,’ said that gentleman in a sprightly manner,
‘how’s yourself?’
‘Tolerable,’ returned Mr Venus. ‘Not much to boast of.’
‘In-deed!’ said Wegg: ‘sorry, partner, that you’re not picking up
faster, but your soul’s too large for your body, sir; that’s where
it is. And how’s our stock in trade, partner? Safe bind, safe find,
partner? Is that about it?’
‘Do you wish to see it?’ asked Venus.
‘If you please, partner,’ said Wegg, rubbing his hands. ‘I wish to see
it jintly with yourself. Or, in similar words to some that was set to
music some time back:
“I wish you to see it with your eyes,
And I will pledge with mine.”’
Turning his back and turning a key, Mr Venus produced the document,
holding on by his usual corner. Mr Wegg, holding on by the opposite
corner, sat down on the seat so lately vacated by Mr Boffin, and looked
it over. ‘All right, sir,’ he slowly and unwillingly admitted, in his
reluctance to loose his hold, ‘all right!’ And greedily watched his
partner as he turned his back again, and turned his key again.
‘There’s nothing new, I suppose?’ said Venus, resuming his low chair
behind the counter.
‘Yes there is, sir,’ replied Wegg; ‘there was something new this
morning. That foxey old grasper and griper—’
‘Mr Boffin?’ inquired Venus, with a glance towards the alligator’s yard
or two of smile.
‘Mister be blowed!’ cried Wegg, yielding to his honest indignation.
‘Boffin. Dusty Boffin. That foxey old grunter and grinder, sir, turns
into the yard this morning, to meddle with our property, a menial tool
of his own, a young man by the name of Sloppy. Ecod, when I say to him,
“What do you want here, young man? This is a private yard,” he pulls out
a paper from Boffin’s other blackguard, the one I was passed over for.
“This is to authorize Sloppy to overlook the carting and to watch the
work.” That’s pretty strong, I think, Mr Venus?’
‘Remember he doesn’t know yet of our claim on the property,’ suggested
Venus.
‘Then he must have a hint of it,’ said Wegg, ‘and a strong one that’ll
jog his terrors a bit. Give him an inch, and he’ll take an ell. Let him
alone this time, and what’ll he do with our property next? I tell you
what, Mr Venus; it comes to this; I must be overbearing with Boffin, or
I shall fly into several pieces. I can’t contain myself when I look
at him. Every time I see him putting his hand in his pocket, I see him
putting it into my pocket. Every time I hear him jingling his money, I
hear him taking liberties with my money. Flesh and blood can’t bear it.
No,’ said Mr Wegg, greatly exasperated, ‘and I’ll go further. A wooden
leg can’t bear it!’
‘But, Mr Wegg,’ urged Venus, ‘it was your own idea that he should not be
exploded upon, till the Mounds were carted away.’
‘But it was likewise my idea, Mr Venus,’ retorted Wegg, ‘that if he came
sneaking and sniffing about the property, he should be threatened, given
to understand that he has no right to it, and be made our slave. Wasn’t
that my idea, Mr Venus?’
‘It certainly was, Mr Wegg.’
‘It certainly was, as you say, partner,’ assented Wegg, put into
a better humour by the ready admission. ‘Very well. I consider his
planting one of his menial tools in the yard, an act of sneaking and
sniffing. And his nose shall be put to the grindstone for it.’
‘It was not your fault, Mr Wegg, I must admit,’ said Venus, ‘that he got
off with the Dutch bottle that night.’
‘As you handsomely say again, partner! No, it was not my fault. I’d have
had that bottle out of him. Was it to be borne that he should come, like
a thief in the dark, digging among stuff that was far more ours than his
(seeing that we could deprive him of every grain of it, if he didn’t buy
us at our own figure), and carrying off treasure from its bowels? No,
it was not to be borne. And for that, too, his nose shall be put to the
grindstone.’
‘How do you propose to do it, Mr Wegg?’
‘To put his nose to the grindstone? I propose,’ returned that estimable
man, ‘to insult him openly. And, if looking into this eye of mine, he
dares to offer a word in answer, to retort upon him before he can take
his breath, “Add another word to that, you dusty old dog, and you’re a
beggar.”’
‘Suppose he says nothing, Mr Wegg?’
‘Then,’ replied Wegg, ‘we shall have come to an understanding with very
little trouble, and I’ll break him and drive him, Mr Venus. I’ll put
him in harness, and I’ll bear him up tight, and I’ll break him and drive
him. The harder the old Dust is driven, sir, the higher he’ll pay. And I
mean to be paid high, Mr Venus, I promise you.’
‘You speak quite revengefully, Mr Wegg.’
‘Revengefully, sir? Is it for him that I have declined and falled,
night after night? Is it for his pleasure that I’ve waited at home of an
evening, like a set of skittles, to be set up and knocked over, set up
and knocked over, by whatever balls—or books—he chose to bring against
me? Why, I’m a hundred times the man he is, sir; five hundred times!’
Perhaps it was with the malicious intent of urging him on to his worst
that Mr Venus looked as if he doubted that.
‘What? Was it outside the house at present ockypied, to its disgrace,
by that minion of fortune and worm of the hour,’ said Wegg, falling back
upon his strongest terms of reprobation, and slapping the counter,
‘that I, Silas Wegg, five hundred times the man he ever was, sat in all
weathers, waiting for a errand or a customer? Was it outside that very
house as I first set eyes upon him, rolling in the lap of luxury, when I
was selling halfpenny ballads there for a living? And am I to grovel in
the dust for HIM to walk over? No!’
There was a grin upon the ghastly countenance of the French gentleman
under the influence of the firelight, as if he were computing how many
thousand slanderers and traitors array themselves against the fortunate,
on premises exactly answering to those of Mr Wegg. One might have
fancied that the big-headed babies were toppling over with their
hydrocephalic attempts to reckon up the children of men who transform
their benefactors into their injurers by the same process. The yard or
two of smile on the part of the alligator might have been invested with
the meaning, ‘All about this was quite familiar knowledge down in the
depths of the slime, ages ago.’
‘But,’ said Wegg, possibly with some slight perception to the foregoing
effect, ‘your speaking countenance remarks, Mr Venus, that I’m duller
and savager than usual. Perhaps I HAVE allowed myself to brood too much.
Begone, dull Care! ’tis gone, sir. I’ve looked in upon you, and empire
resumes her sway. For, as the song says—subject to your correction,
sir—
“When the heart of a man is depressed with cares,
The mist is dispelled if Venus appears.
Like the notes of a fiddle, you sweetly, sir, sweetly,
Raises our spirits and charms our ears.”
Good-night, sir.’
‘I shall have a word or two to say to you, Mr Wegg, before long,’
remarked Venus, ‘respecting my share in the project we’ve been speaking
of.’
‘My time, sir,’ returned Wegg, ‘is yours. In the meanwhile let it be
fully understood that I shall not neglect bringing the grindstone to
bear, nor yet bringing Dusty Boffin’s nose to it. His nose once brought
to it, shall be held to it by these hands, Mr Venus, till the sparks
flies out in showers.’
With this agreeable promise Wegg stumped out, and shut the shop-door
after him. ‘Wait till I light a candle, Mr Boffin,’ said Venus, ‘and
you’ll come out more comfortable.’ So, he lighting a candle and holding
it up at arm’s length, Mr Boffin disengaged himself from behind the
alligator’s smile, with an expression of countenance so very downcast
that it not only appeared as if the alligator had the whole of the joke
to himself, but further as if it had been conceived and executed at Mr
Boffin’s expense.
‘That’s a treacherous fellow,’ said Mr Boffin, dusting his arms and legs
as he came forth, the alligator having been but musty company. ‘That’s a
dreadful fellow.’
‘The alligator, sir?’ said Venus.
‘No, Venus, no. The Serpent.’
‘You’ll have the goodness to notice, Mr Boffin,’ remarked Venus, ‘that I
said nothing to him about my going out of the affair altogether, because
I didn’t wish to take you anyways by surprise. But I can’t be too soon
out of it for my satisfaction, Mr Boffin, and I now put it to you when
it will suit your views for me to retire?’
‘Thank’ee, Venus, thank’ee, Venus; but I don’t know what to say,’
returned Mr Boffin, ‘I don’t know what to do. He’ll drop down on me any
way. He seems fully determined to drop down; don’t he?’
Mr Venus opined that such was clearly his intention.
‘You might be a sort of protection for me, if you remained in it,’ said
Mr Boffin; ‘you might stand betwixt him and me, and take the edge off
him. Don’t you feel as if you could make a show of remaining in it,
Venus, till I had time to turn myself round?’
Venus naturally inquired how long Mr Boffin thought it might take him to
turn himself round?
‘I am sure I don’t know,’ was the answer, given quite at a loss.
‘Everything is so at sixes and sevens. If I had never come into the
property, I shouldn’t have minded. But being in it, it would be very
trying to be turned out; now, don’t you acknowledge that it would,
Venus?’
Mr Venus preferred, he said, to leave Mr Boffin to arrive at his own
conclusions on that delicate question.
‘I am sure I don’t know what to do,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘If I ask advice of
any one else, it’s only letting in another person to be bought out, and
then I shall be ruined that way, and might as well have given up the
property and gone slap to the workhouse. If I was to take advice of my
young man, Rokesmith, I should have to buy HIM out. Sooner or later, of
course, he’d drop down upon me, like Wegg. I was brought into the world
to be dropped down upon, it appears to me.’
Mr Venus listened to these lamentations in silence, while Mr Boffin
jogged to and fro, holding his pockets as if he had a pain in them.
‘After all, you haven’t said what you mean to do yourself, Venus. When
you do go out of it, how do you mean to go?’
Venus replied that as Wegg had found the document and handed it to him,
it was his intention to hand it back to Wegg, with the declaration that
he himself would have nothing to say to it, or do with it, and that Wegg
must act as he chose, and take the consequences.
‘And then he drops down with his whole weight upon ME!’ cried Mr Boffin,
ruefully. ‘I’d sooner be dropped upon by you than by him, or even by you
jintly, than by him alone!’
Mr Venus could only repeat that it was his fixed intention to betake
himself to the paths of science, and to walk in the same all the days
of his life; not dropping down upon his fellow-creatures until they were
deceased, and then only to articulate them to the best of his humble
ability.
‘How long could you be persuaded to keep up the appearance of remaining
in it?’ asked Mr Boffin, retiring on his other idea. ‘Could you be got
to do so, till the Mounds are gone?’
No. That would protract the mental uneasiness of Mr Venus too long, he
said.
‘Not if I was to show you reason now?’ demanded Mr Boffin; ‘not if I was
to show you good and sufficient reason?’
If by good and sufficient reason Mr Boffin meant honest and
unimpeachable reason, that might weigh with Mr Venus against his
personal wishes and convenience. But he must add that he saw no opening
to the possibility of such reason being shown him.
‘Come and see me, Venus,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘at my house.’
‘Is the reason there, sir?’ asked Mr Venus, with an incredulous smile
and blink.
‘It may be, or may not be,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘just as you view it. But
in the meantime don’t go out of the matter. Look here. Do this. Give me
your word that you won’t take any steps with Wegg, without my knowledge,
just as I have given you my word that I won’t without yours.’
‘Done, Mr Boffin!’ said Venus, after brief consideration.
‘Thank’ee, Venus, thank’ee, Venus! Done!’
‘When shall I come to see you, Mr Boffin.’
‘When you like. The sooner the better. I must be going now. Good-night,
Venus.’
‘Good-night, sir.’
‘And good-night to the rest of the present company,’ said Mr Boffin,
glancing round the shop. ‘They make a queer show, Venus, and I should
like to be better acquainted with them some day. Good-night, Venus,
good-night! Thankee, Venus, thankee, Venus!’ With that he jogged out
into the street, and jogged upon his homeward way.
‘Now, I wonder,’ he meditated as he went along, nursing his stick,
‘whether it can be, that Venus is setting himself to get the better of
Wegg? Whether it can be, that he means, when I have bought Wegg out, to
have me all to himself and to pick me clean to the bones!’
It was a cunning and suspicious idea, quite in the way of his school
of Misers, and he looked very cunning and suspicious as he went jogging
through the streets. More than once or twice, more than twice or thrice,
say half a dozen times, he took his stick from the arm on which he
nursed it, and hit a straight sharp rap at the air with its head.
Possibly the wooden countenance of Mr Silas Wegg was incorporeally
before him at those moments, for he hit with intense satisfaction.
He was within a few streets of his own house, when a little private
carriage, coming in the contrary direction, passed him, turned round,
and passed him again. It was a little carriage of eccentric movement,
for again he heard it stop behind him and turn round, and again he saw
it pass him. Then it stopped, and then went on, out of sight. But, not
far out of sight, for, when he came to the corner of his own street,
there it stood again.
There was a lady’s face at the window as he came up with this carriage,
and he was passing it when the lady softly called to him by his name.
‘I beg your pardon, Ma’am?’ said Mr Boffin, coming to a stop.
‘It is Mrs Lammle,’ said the lady.
Mr Boffin went up to the window, and hoped Mrs Lammle was well.
‘Not very well, dear Mr Boffin; I have fluttered myself by
being—perhaps foolishly—uneasy and anxious. I have been waiting for
you some time. Can I speak to you?’
Mr Boffin proposed that Mrs Lammle should drive on to his house, a few
hundred yards further.
‘I would rather not, Mr Boffin, unless you particularly wish it. I feel
the difficulty and delicacy of the matter so much that I would rather
avoid speaking to you at your own home. You must think this very
strange?’
Mr Boffin said no, but meant yes.
‘It is because I am so grateful for the good opinion of all my
friends, and am so touched by it, that I cannot bear to run the risk of
forfeiting it in any case, even in the cause of duty. I have asked my
husband (my dear Alfred, Mr Boffin) whether it is the cause of duty,
and he has most emphatically said Yes. I wish I had asked him sooner. It
would have spared me much distress.’
(‘Can this be more dropping down upon me!’ thought Mr Boffin, quite
bewildered.)
‘It was Alfred who sent me to you, Mr Boffin. Alfred said, “Don’t
come back, Sophronia, until you have seen Mr Boffin, and told him all.
Whatever he may think of it, he ought certainly to know it.” Would you
mind coming into the carriage?’
Mr Boffin answered, ‘Not at all,’ and took his seat at Mrs Lammle’s
side.
‘Drive slowly anywhere,’ Mrs Lammle called to her coachman, ‘and don’t
let the carriage rattle.’
‘It MUST be more dropping down, I think,’ said Mr Boffin to himself.
‘What next?’
Chapter 15
THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN AT HIS WORST
The breakfast table at Mr Boffin’s was usually a very pleasant one, and
was always presided over by Bella. As though he began each new day in
his healthy natural character, and some waking hours were necessary to
his relapse into the corrupting influences of his wealth, the face and
the demeanour of the Golden Dustman were generally unclouded at that
meal. It would have been easy to believe then, that there was no change
in him. It was as the day went on that the clouds gathered, and the
brightness of the morning became obscured. One might have said that the
shadows of avarice and distrust lengthened as his own shadow lengthened,
and that the night closed around him gradually.
But, one morning long afterwards to be remembered, it was black midnight
with the Golden Dustman when he first appeared. His altered character
had never been so grossly marked. His bearing towards his Secretary was
so charged with insolent distrust and arrogance, that the latter rose
and left the table before breakfast was half done. The look he directed
at the Secretary’s retiring figure was so cunningly malignant, that
Bella would have sat astounded and indignant, even though he had not
gone the length of secretly threatening Rokesmith with his clenched
fist as he closed the door. This unlucky morning, of all mornings in the
year, was the morning next after Mr Boffin’s interview with Mrs Lammle
in her little carriage.
Bella looked to Mrs Boffin’s face for comment on, or explanation of,
this stormy humour in her husband, but none was there. An anxious and
a distressed observation of her own face was all she could read in it.
When they were left alone together—which was not until noon, for Mr
Boffin sat long in his easy-chair, by turns jogging up and down
the breakfast-room, clenching his fist and muttering—Bella, in
consternation, asked her what had happened, what was wrong? ‘I am
forbidden to speak to you about it, Bella dear; I mustn’t tell you,’
was all the answer she could get. And still, whenever, in her wonder and
dismay, she raised her eyes to Mrs Boffin’s face, she saw in it the same
anxious and distressed observation of her own.
Oppressed by her sense that trouble was impending, and lost in
speculations why Mrs Boffin should look at her as if she had any part in
it, Bella found the day long and dreary. It was far on in the afternoon
when, she being in her own room, a servant brought her a message from Mr
Boffin begging her to come to his.
Mrs Boffin was there, seated on a sofa, and Mr Boffin was jogging up and
down. On seeing Bella he stopped, beckoned her to him, and drew her arm
through his. ‘Don’t be alarmed, my dear,’ he said, gently; ‘I am not
angry with you. Why you actually tremble! Don’t be alarmed, Bella my
dear. I’ll see you righted.’
‘See me righted?’ thought Bella. And then repeated aloud in a tone of
astonishment: ‘see me righted, sir?’
‘Ay, ay!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘See you righted. Send Mr Rokesmith here, you
sir.’
Bella would have been lost in perplexity if there had been pause
enough; but the servant found Mr Rokesmith near at hand, and he almost
immediately presented himself.
‘Shut the door, sir!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘I have got something to say to
you which I fancy you’ll not be pleased to hear.’
‘I am sorry to reply, Mr Boffin,’ returned the Secretary, as, having
closed the door, he turned and faced him, ‘that I think that very
likely.’
‘What do you mean?’ blustered Mr Boffin.
‘I mean that it has become no novelty to me to hear from your lips what
I would rather not hear.’
‘Oh! Perhaps we shall change that,’ said Mr Boffin with a threatening
roll of his head.
‘I hope so,’ returned the Secretary. He was quiet and respectful; but
stood, as Bella thought (and was glad to think), on his manhood too.
‘Now, sir,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘look at this young lady on my arm.’
Bella involuntarily raising her eyes, when this sudden reference was
made to herself, met those of Mr Rokesmith. He was pale and seemed
agitated. Then her eyes passed on to Mrs Boffin’s, and she met the look
again. In a flash it enlightened her, and she began to understand what
she had done.
‘I say to you, sir,’ Mr Boffin repeated, ‘look at this young lady on my
arm.’
‘I do so,’ returned the Secretary.
As his glance rested again on Bella for a moment, she thought there was
reproach in it. But it is possible that the reproach was within herself.
‘How dare you, sir,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘tamper, unknown to me, with this
young lady? How dare you come out of your station, and your place in my
house, to pester this young lady with your impudent addresses?’
‘I must decline to answer questions,’ said the Secretary, ‘that are so
offensively asked.’
‘You decline to answer?’ retorted Mr Boffin. ‘You decline to answer,
do you? Then I’ll tell you what it is, Rokesmith; I’ll answer for you.
There are two sides to this matter, and I’ll take ’em separately. The
first side is, sheer Insolence. That’s the first side.’
The Secretary smiled with some bitterness, as though he would have said,
‘So I see and hear.’
‘It was sheer Insolence in you, I tell you,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘even to
think of this young lady. This young lady was far above YOU. This young
lady was no match for YOU. This young lady was lying in wait (as she was
qualified to do) for money, and you had no money.’
Bella hung her head and seemed to shrink a little from Mr Boffin’s
protecting arm.
‘What are you, I should like to know,’ pursued Mr Boffin, ‘that you were
to have the audacity to follow up this young lady? This young lady was
looking about the market for a good bid; she wasn’t in it to be snapped
up by fellows that had no money to lay out; nothing to buy with.’
‘Oh, Mr Boffin! Mrs Boffin, pray say something for me!’ murmured Bella,
disengaging her arm, and covering her face with her hands.
‘Old lady,’ said Mr Boffin, anticipating his wife, ‘you hold your
tongue. Bella, my dear, don’t you let yourself be put out. I’ll right
you.’
‘But you don’t, you don’t right me!’ exclaimed Bella, with great
emphasis. ‘You wrong me, wrong me!’
‘Don’t you be put out, my dear,’ complacently retorted Mr Boffin. ‘I’ll
bring this young man to book. Now, you Rokesmith! You can’t decline
to hear, you know, as well as to answer. You hear me tell you that the
first side of your conduct was Insolence—Insolence and Presumption.
Answer me one thing, if you can. Didn’t this young lady tell you so
herself?’
‘Did I, Mr Rokesmith?’ asked Bella with her face still covered. ‘O say,
Mr Rokesmith! Did I?’
‘Don’t be distressed, Miss Wilfer; it matters very little now.’
‘Ah! You can’t deny it, though!’ said Mr Boffin, with a knowing shake of
his head.
‘But I have asked him to forgive me since,’ cried Bella; ‘and I would
ask him to forgive me now again, upon my knees, if it would spare him!’
Here Mrs Boffin broke out a-crying.
‘Old lady,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘stop that noise! Tender-hearted in you,
Miss Bella; but I mean to have it out right through with this young man,
having got him into a corner. Now, you Rokesmith. I tell you that’s one
side of your conduct—Insolence and Presumption. Now, I’m a-coming to
the other, which is much worse. This was a speculation of yours.’
‘I indignantly deny it.’
‘It’s of no use your denying it; it doesn’t signify a bit whether
you deny it or not; I’ve got a head upon my shoulders, and it ain’t a
baby’s. What!’ said Mr Boffin, gathering himself together in his most
suspicious attitude, and wrinkling his face into a very map of curves
and corners. ‘Don’t I know what grabs are made at a man with money? If
I didn’t keep my eyes open, and my pockets buttoned, shouldn’t I
be brought to the workhouse before I knew where I was? Wasn’t the
experience of Dancer, and Elwes, and Hopkins, and Blewbury Jones, and
ever so many more of ’em, similar to mine? Didn’t everybody want to make
grabs at what they’d got, and bring ’em to poverty and ruin? Weren’t
they forced to hide everything belonging to ’em, for fear it should be
snatched from ’em? Of course they was. I shall be told next that they
didn’t know human natur!’
‘They! Poor creatures,’ murmured the Secretary.
‘What do you say?’ asked Mr Boffin, snapping at him. ‘However, you
needn’t be at the trouble of repeating it, for it ain’t worth hearing,
and won’t go down with ME. I’m a-going to unfold your plan, before this
young lady; I’m a-going to show this young lady the second view of you;
and nothing you can say will stave it off. (Now, attend here, Bella, my
dear.) Rokesmith, you’re a needy chap. You’re a chap that I pick up in
the street. Are you, or ain’t you?’
‘Go on, Mr Boffin; don’t appeal to me.’
‘Not appeal to YOU,’ retorted Mr Boffin as if he hadn’t done so. ‘No,
I should hope not! Appealing to YOU, would be rather a rum course. As I
was saying, you’re a needy chap that I pick up in the street. You come
and ask me in the street to take you for a Secretary, and I take you.
Very good.’
‘Very bad,’ murmured the Secretary.
‘What do you say?’ asked Mr Boffin, snapping at him again.
He returned no answer. Mr Boffin, after eyeing him with a comical look
of discomfited curiosity, was fain to begin afresh.
‘This Rokesmith is a needy young man that I take for my Secretary out
of the open street. This Rokesmith gets acquainted with my affairs, and
gets to know that I mean to settle a sum of money on this young lady.
“Oho!” says this Rokesmith;’ here Mr Boffin clapped a finger against
his nose, and tapped it several times with a sneaking air, as embodying
Rokesmith confidentially confabulating with his own nose; ‘“This will
be a good haul; I’ll go in for this!” And so this Rokesmith, greedy and
hungering, begins a-creeping on his hands and knees towards the money.
Not so bad a speculation either: for if this young lady had had less
spirit, or had had less sense, through being at all in the romantic
line, by George he might have worked it out and made it pay! But
fortunately she was too many for him, and a pretty figure he cuts now
he is exposed. There he stands!’ said Mr Boffin, addressing Rokesmith
himself with ridiculous inconsistency. ‘Look at him!’
‘Your unfortunate suspicions, Mr Boffin—’ began the Secretary.
‘Precious unfortunate for you, I can tell you,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘—are not to be combated by any one, and I address myself to no such
hopeless task. But I will say a word upon the truth.’
‘Yah! Much you care about the truth,’ said Mr Boffin, with a snap of his
fingers.
‘Noddy! My dear love!’ expostulated his wife.
‘Old lady,’ returned Mr Boffin, ‘you keep still. I say to this Rokesmith
here, much he cares about the truth. I tell him again, much he cares
about the truth.’
‘Our connexion being at an end, Mr Boffin,’ said the Secretary, ‘it can
be of very little moment to me what you say.’
‘Oh! You are knowing enough,’ retorted Mr Boffin, with a sly look, ‘to
have found out that our connexion’s at an end, eh? But you can’t get
beforehand with me. Look at this in my hand. This is your pay, on your
discharge. You can only follow suit. You can’t deprive me of the lead.
Let’s have no pretending that you discharge yourself. I discharge you.’
‘So that I go,’ remarked the Secretary, waving the point aside with his
hand, ‘it is all one to me.’
‘Is it?’ said Mr Boffin. ‘But it’s two to me, let me tell you.
Allowing a fellow that’s found out, to discharge himself, is one thing;
discharging him for insolence and presumption, and likewise for designs
upon his master’s money, is another. One and one’s two; not one. (Old
lady, don’t you cut in. You keep still.)’
‘Have you said all you wish to say to me?’ demanded the Secretary.
‘I don’t know whether I have or not,’ answered Mr Boffin. ‘It depends.’
‘Perhaps you will consider whether there are any other strong
expressions that you would like to bestow upon me?’
‘I’ll consider that,’ said Mr Boffin, obstinately, ‘at my convenience,
and not at yours. You want the last word. It may not be suitable to let
you have it.’
‘Noddy! My dear, dear Noddy! You sound so hard!’ cried poor Mrs Boffin,
not to be quite repressed.
‘Old lady,’ said her husband, but without harshness, ‘if you cut in when
requested not, I’ll get a pillow and carry you out of the room upon it.
What do you want to say, you Rokesmith?’
‘To you, Mr Boffin, nothing. But to Miss Wilfer and to your good kind
wife, a word.’
‘Out with it then,’ replied Mr Boffin, ‘and cut it short, for we’ve had
enough of you.’
‘I have borne,’ said the Secretary, in a low voice, ‘with my false
position here, that I might not be separated from Miss Wilfer. To be
near her, has been a recompense to me from day to day, even for the
undeserved treatment I have had here, and for the degraded aspect in
which she has often seen me. Since Miss Wilfer rejected me, I have never
again urged my suit, to the best of my belief, with a spoken syllable or
a look. But I have never changed in my devotion to her, except—if she
will forgive my saying so—that it is deeper than it was, and better
founded.’
‘Now, mark this chap’s saying Miss Wilfer, when he means L.s.d.!’ cried
Mr Boffin, with a cunning wink. ‘Now, mark this chap’s making Miss
Wilfer stand for Pounds, Shillings, and Pence!’
‘My feeling for Miss Wilfer,’ pursued the Secretary, without deigning to
notice him, ‘is not one to be ashamed of. I avow it. I love her. Let
me go where I may when I presently leave this house, I shall go into a
blank life, leaving her.’
‘Leaving L.s.d. behind me,’ said Mr Boffin, by way of commentary, with
another wink.
‘That I am incapable,’ the Secretary went on, still without heeding him,
‘of a mercenary project, or a mercenary thought, in connexion with Miss
Wilfer, is nothing meritorious in me, because any prize that I could
put before my fancy would sink into insignificance beside her. If
the greatest wealth or the highest rank were hers, it would only be
important in my sight as removing her still farther from me, and making
me more hopeless, if that could be. Say,’ remarked the Secretary,
looking full at his late master, ‘say that with a word she could strip
Mr Boffin of his fortune and take possession of it, she would be of no
greater worth in my eyes than she is.’
‘What do you think by this time, old lady,’ asked Mr Boffin, turning to
his wife in a bantering tone, ‘about this Rokesmith here, and his caring
for the truth? You needn’t say what you think, my dear, because I don’t
want you to cut in, but you can think it all the same. As to taking
possession of my property, I warrant you he wouldn’t do that himself if
he could.’
‘No,’ returned the Secretary, with another full look.
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ laughed Mr Boffin. ‘There’s nothing like a good ’un while
you ARE about it.’
‘I have been for a moment,’ said the Secretary, turning from him and
falling into his former manner, ‘diverted from the little I have to say.
My interest in Miss Wilfer began when I first saw her; even began when I
had only heard of her. It was, in fact, the cause of my throwing myself
in Mr Boffin’s way, and entering his service. Miss Wilfer has never
known this until now. I mention it now, only as a corroboration (though
I hope it may be needless) of my being free from the sordid design
attributed to me.’
‘Now, this is a very artful dog,’ said Mr Boffin, with a deep look.
‘This is a longer-headed schemer than I thought him. See how patiently
and methodically he goes to work. He gets to know about me and my
property, and about this young lady, and her share in poor young John’s
story, and he puts this and that together, and he says to himself, “I’ll
get in with Boffin, and I’ll get in with this young lady, and I’ll work
’em both at the same time, and I’ll bring my pigs to market somewhere.”
I hear him say it, bless you! I look at him, now, and I see him say it!’
Mr Boffin pointed at the culprit, as it were in the act, and hugged
himself in his great penetration.
‘But luckily he hadn’t to deal with the people he supposed, Bella, my
dear!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘No! Luckily he had to deal with you, and with
me, and with Daniel and Miss Dancer, and with Elwes, and with Vulture
Hopkins, and with Blewbury Jones and all the rest of us, one down
t’other come on. And he’s beat; that’s what he is; regularly beat. He
thought to squeeze money out of us, and he has done for himself instead,
Bella my dear!’
Bella my dear made no response, gave no sign of acquiescence. When she
had first covered her face she had sunk upon a chair with her hands
resting on the back of it, and had never moved since. There was a short
silence at this point, and Mrs Boffin softly rose as if to go to her.
But, Mr Boffin stopped her with a gesture, and she obediently sat down
again and stayed where she was.
‘There’s your pay, Mister Rokesmith,’ said the Golden Dustman,
jerking the folded scrap of paper he had in his hand, towards his late
Secretary. ‘I dare say you can stoop to pick it up, after what you have
stooped to here.’
‘I have stooped to nothing but this,’ Rokesmith answered as he took it
from the ground; ‘and this is mine, for I have earned it by the hardest
of hard labour.’
‘You’re a pretty quick packer, I hope,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘because the
sooner you are gone, bag and baggage, the better for all parties.’
‘You need have no fear of my lingering.’
‘There’s just one thing though,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘that I should like to
ask you before we come to a good riddance, if it was only to show this
young lady how conceited you schemers are, in thinking that nobody finds
out how you contradict yourselves.’
‘Ask me anything you wish to ask,’ returned Rokesmith, ‘but use the
expedition that you recommend.’
‘You pretend to have a mighty admiration for this young lady?’ said Mr
Boffin, laying his hand protectingly on Bella’s head without looking
down at her.
‘I do not pretend.’
‘Oh! Well. You HAVE a mighty admiration for this young lady—since you
are so particular?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you reconcile that, with this young lady’s being a
weak-spirited, improvident idiot, not knowing what was due to herself,
flinging up her money to the church-weathercocks, and racing off at a
splitting pace for the workhouse?’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Don’t you? Or won’t you? What else could you have made this young lady
out to be, if she had listened to such addresses as yours?’
‘What else, if I had been so happy as to win her affections and possess
her heart?’
‘Win her affections,’ retorted Mr Boffin, with ineffable contempt,
‘and possess her heart! Mew says the cat, Quack-quack says the duck,
Bow-wow-wow says the dog! Win her affections and possess her heart! Mew,
Quack-quack, Bow-wow!’
John Rokesmith stared at him in his outburst, as if with some faint idea
that he had gone mad.
‘What is due to this young lady,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘is Money, and this
young lady right well knows it.’
‘You slander the young lady.’
‘YOU slander the young lady; you with your affections and hearts and
trumpery,’ returned Mr Boffin. ‘It’s of a piece with the rest of your
behaviour. I heard of these doings of yours only last night, or you
should have heard of ’em from me, sooner, take your oath of it. I heard
of ’em from a lady with as good a headpiece as the best, and she knows
this young lady, and I know this young lady, and we all three know that
it’s Money she makes a stand for—money, money, money—and that you and
your affections and hearts are a Lie, sir!’
‘Mrs Boffin,’ said Rokesmith, quietly turning to her, ‘for your delicate
and unvarying kindness I thank you with the warmest gratitude. Good-bye!
Miss Wilfer, good-bye!’
‘And now, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin, laying his hand on Bella’s head
again, ‘you may begin to make yourself quite comfortable, and I hope you
feel that you’ve been righted.’
But, Bella was so far from appearing to feel it, that she shrank from
his hand and from the chair, and, starting up in an incoherent passion
of tears, and stretching out her arms, cried, ‘O Mr Rokesmith, before
you go, if you could but make me poor again! O! Make me poor again,
Somebody, I beg and pray, or my heart will break if this goes on! Pa,
dear, make me poor again and take me home! I was bad enough there, but
I have been so much worse here. Don’t give me money, Mr Boffin, I won’t
have money. Keep it away from me, and only let me speak to good little
Pa, and lay my head upon his shoulder, and tell him all my griefs.
Nobody else can understand me, nobody else can comfort me, nobody else
knows how unworthy I am, and yet can love me like a little child. I am
better with Pa than any one—more innocent, more sorry, more glad!’ So,
crying out in a wild way that she could not bear this, Bella drooped her
head on Mrs Boffin’s ready breast.
John Rokesmith from his place in the room, and Mr Boffin from his,
looked on at her in silence until she was silent herself. Then Mr Boffin
observed in a soothing and comfortable tone, ‘There, my dear, there; you
are righted now, and it’s ALL right. I don’t wonder, I’m sure, at your
being a little flurried by having a scene with this fellow, but it’s all
over, my dear, and you’re righted, and it’s—and it’s ALL right!’ Which
Mr Boffin repeated with a highly satisfied air of completeness and
finality.
‘I hate you!’ cried Bella, turning suddenly upon him, with a stamp of
her little foot—‘at least, I can’t hate you, but I don’t like you!’
‘HUL—LO!’ exclaimed Mr Boffin in an amazed under-tone.
‘You’re a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old creature!’
cried Bella. ‘I am angry with my ungrateful self for calling you names;
but you are, you are; you know you are!’
Mr Boffin stared here, and stared there, as misdoubting that he must be
in some sort of fit.
‘I have heard you with shame,’ said Bella. ‘With shame for myself, and
with shame for you. You ought to be above the base tale-bearing of a
time-serving woman; but you are above nothing now.’
Mr Boffin, seeming to become convinced that this was a fit, rolled his
eyes and loosened his neckcloth.
‘When I came here, I respected you and honoured you, and I soon loved
you,’ cried Bella. ‘And now I can’t bear the sight of you. At least, I
don’t know that I ought to go so far as that—only you’re a—you’re a
Monster!’ Having shot this bolt out with a great expenditure of force,
Bella hysterically laughed and cried together.
‘The best wish I can wish you is,’ said Bella, returning to the charge,
‘that you had not one single farthing in the world. If any true friend
and well-wisher could make you a bankrupt, you would be a Duck; but as a
man of property you are a Demon!’
After despatching this second bolt with a still greater expenditure of
force, Bella laughed and cried still more.
‘Mr Rokesmith, pray stay one moment. Pray hear one word from me before
you go! I am deeply sorry for the reproaches you have borne on my
account. Out of the depths of my heart I earnestly and truly beg your
pardon.’
As she stepped towards him, he met her. As she gave him her hand, he put
it to his lips, and said, ‘God bless you!’ No laughing was mixed with
Bella’s crying then; her tears were pure and fervent.
‘There is not an ungenerous word that I have heard addressed to
you—heard with scorn and indignation, Mr Rokesmith—but it has wounded
me far more than you, for I have deserved it, and you never have. Mr
Rokesmith, it is to me you owe this perverted account of what passed
between us that night. I parted with the secret, even while I was angry
with myself for doing so. It was very bad in me, but indeed it was not
wicked. I did it in a moment of conceit and folly—one of my many such
moments—one of my many such hours—years. As I am punished for it
severely, try to forgive it!’
‘I do with all my soul.’
‘Thank you. O thank you! Don’t part from me till I have said one other
word, to do you justice. The only fault you can be truly charged with,
in having spoken to me as you did that night—with how much delicacy
and how much forbearance no one but I can know or be grateful to you
for—is, that you laid yourself open to be slighted by a worldly shallow
girl whose head was turned, and who was quite unable to rise to the
worth of what you offered her. Mr Rokesmith, that girl has often seen
herself in a pitiful and poor light since, but never in so pitiful
and poor a light as now, when the mean tone in which she answered
you—sordid and vain girl that she was—has been echoed in her ears by
Mr Boffin.’
He kissed her hand again.
‘Mr Boffin’s speeches were detestable to me, shocking to me,’ said
Bella, startling that gentleman with another stamp of her little
foot. ‘It is quite true that there was a time, and very lately, when I
deserved to be so “righted,” Mr Rokesmith; but I hope that I shall never
deserve it again!’
He once more put her hand to his lips, and then relinquished it, and
left the room. Bella was hurrying back to the chair in which she had
hidden her face so long, when, catching sight of Mrs Boffin by the
way, she stopped at her. ‘He is gone,’ sobbed Bella indignantly,
despairingly, in fifty ways at once, with her arms round Mrs Boffin’s
neck. ‘He has been most shamefully abused, and most unjustly and most
basely driven away, and I am the cause of it!’
All this time, Mr Boffin had been rolling his eyes over his loosened
neckerchief, as if his fit were still upon him. Appearing now to think
that he was coming to, he stared straight before him for a while, tied
his neckerchief again, took several long inspirations, swallowed several
times, and ultimately exclaimed with a deep sigh, as if he felt himself
on the whole better: ‘Well!’
No word, good or bad, did Mrs Boffin say; but she tenderly took care of
Bella, and glanced at her husband as if for orders. Mr Boffin, without
imparting any, took his seat on a chair over against them, and there
sat leaning forward, with a fixed countenance, his legs apart, a hand on
each knee, and his elbows squared, until Bella should dry her eyes and
raise her head, which in the fulness of time she did.
‘I must go home,’ said Bella, rising hurriedly. ‘I am very grateful to
you for all you have done for me, but I can’t stay here.’
‘My darling girl!’ remonstrated Mrs Boffin.
‘No, I can’t stay here,’ said Bella; ‘I can’t indeed.—Ugh! you vicious
old thing!’ (This to Mr Boffin.)
‘Don’t be rash, my love,’ urged Mrs Boffin. ‘Think well of what you do.’
‘Yes, you had better think well,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘I shall never more think well of YOU,’ cried Bella, cutting him
short, with intense defiance in her expressive little eyebrows, and
championship of the late Secretary in every dimple. ‘No! Never again!
Your money has changed you to marble. You are a hard-hearted Miser. You
are worse than Dancer, worse than Hopkins, worse than Blackberry Jones,
worse than any of the wretches. And more!’ proceeded Bella, breaking
into tears again, ‘you were wholly undeserving of the Gentleman you have
lost.’
‘Why, you don’t mean to say, Miss Bella,’ the Golden Dustman slowly
remonstrated, ‘that you set up Rokesmith against me?’
‘I do!’ said Bella. ‘He is worth a Million of you.’
Very pretty she looked, though very angry, as she made herself as
tall as she possibly could (which was not extremely tall), and utterly
renounced her patron with a lofty toss of her rich brown head.
‘I would rather he thought well of me,’ said Bella, ‘though he swept the
street for bread, than that you did, though you splashed the mud upon
him from the wheels of a chariot of pure gold.—There!’
‘Well I’m sure!’ cried Mr Boffin, staring.
‘And for a long time past, when you have thought you set yourself above
him, I have only seen you under his feet,’ said Bella—‘There! And
throughout I saw in him the master, and I saw in you the man—There! And
when you used him shamefully, I took his part and loved him—There! I
boast of it!’
After which strong avowal Bella underwent reaction, and cried to any
extent, with her face on the back of her chair.
‘Now, look here,’ said Mr Boffin, as soon as he could find an opening
for breaking the silence and striking in. ‘Give me your attention,
Bella. I am not angry.’
‘I AM!’ said Bella.
‘I say,’ resumed the Golden Dustman, ‘I am not angry, and I mean kindly
to you, and I want to overlook this. So you’ll stay where you are, and
we’ll agree to say no more about it.’
‘No, I can’t stay here,’ cried Bella, rising hurriedly again; ‘I can’t
think of staying here. I must go home for good.’
‘Now, don’t be silly,’ Mr Boffin reasoned. ‘Don’t do what you can’t
undo; don’t do what you’re sure to be sorry for.’
‘I shall never be sorry for it,’ said Bella; ‘and I should always be
sorry, and should every minute of my life despise myself if I remained
here after what has happened.’
‘At least, Bella,’ argued Mr Boffin, ‘let there be no mistake about it.
Look before you leap, you know. Stay where you are, and all’s well, and
all’s as it was to be. Go away, and you can never come back.’
‘I know that I can never come back, and that’s what I mean,’ said Bella.
‘You mustn’t expect,’ Mr Boffin pursued, ‘that I’m a-going to settle
money on you, if you leave us like this, because I am not. No, Bella! Be
careful! Not one brass farthing.’
‘Expect!’ said Bella, haughtily. ‘Do you think that any power on earth
could make me take it, if you did, sir?’
But there was Mrs Boffin to part from, and, in the full flush of her
dignity, the impressible little soul collapsed again. Down upon her
knees before that good woman, she rocked herself upon her breast, and
cried, and sobbed, and folded her in her arms with all her might.
‘You’re a dear, a dear, the best of dears!’ cried Bella. ‘You’re the
best of human creatures. I can never be thankful enough to you, and I
can never forget you. If I should live to be blind and deaf I know I
shall see and hear you, in my fancy, to the last of my dim old days!’
Mrs Boffin wept most heartily, and embraced her with all fondness; but
said not one single word except that she was her dear girl. She said
that often enough, to be sure, for she said it over and over again; but
not one word else.
Bella broke from her at length, and was going weeping out of the room,
when in her own little queer affectionate way, she half relented towards
Mr Boffin.
‘I am very glad,’ sobbed Bella, ‘that I called you names, sir, because
you richly deserved it. But I am very sorry that I called you names,
because you used to be so different. Say good-bye!’
‘Good-bye,’ said Mr Boffin, shortly.
‘If I knew which of your hands was the least spoilt, I would ask you
to let me touch it,’ said Bella, ‘for the last time. But not because I
repent of what I have said to you. For I don’t. It’s true!’
‘Try the left hand,’ said Mr Boffin, holding it out in a stolid manner;
‘it’s the least used.’
‘You have been wonderfully good and kind to me,’ said Bella, ‘and I kiss
it for that. You have been as bad as bad could be to Mr Rokesmith, and I
throw it away for that. Thank you for myself, and good-bye!’
‘Good-bye,’ said Mr Boffin as before.
Bella caught him round the neck and kissed him, and ran out for ever.
She ran up-stairs, and sat down on the floor in her own room, and cried
abundantly. But the day was declining and she had no time to lose. She
opened all the places where she kept her dresses; selected only those
she had brought with her, leaving all the rest; and made a great
misshapen bundle of them, to be sent for afterwards.
‘I won’t take one of the others,’ said Bella, tying the knots of the
bundle very tight, in the severity of her resolution. ‘I’ll leave all
the presents behind, and begin again entirely on my own account.’ That
the resolution might be thoroughly carried into practice, she even
changed the dress she wore, for that in which she had come to the grand
mansion. Even the bonnet she put on, was the bonnet that had mounted
into the Boffin chariot at Holloway.
‘Now, I am complete,’ said Bella. ‘It’s a little trying, but I have
steeped my eyes in cold water, and I won’t cry any more. You have been
a pleasant room to me, dear room. Adieu! We shall never see each other
again.’
With a parting kiss of her fingers to it, she softly closed the door and
went with a light foot down the great staircase, pausing and listening
as she went, that she might meet none of the household. No one chanced
to be about, and she got down to the hall in quiet. The door of the late
Secretary’s room stood open. She peeped in as she passed, and divined
from the emptiness of his table, and the general appearance of things,
that he was already gone. Softly opening the great hall door, and
softly closing it upon herself, she turned and kissed it on the
outside—insensible old combination of wood and iron that it
was!—before she ran away from the house at a swift pace.
‘That was well done!’ panted Bella, slackening in the next street, and
subsiding into a walk. ‘If I had left myself any breath to cry with, I
should have cried again. Now poor dear darling little Pa, you are going
to see your lovely woman unexpectedly.’
Chapter 16
THE FEAST OF THE THREE HOBGOBLINS
The City looked unpromising enough, as Bella made her way along its
gritty streets. Most of its money-mills were slackening sail, or had
left off grinding for the day. The master-millers had already departed,
and the journeymen were departing. There was a jaded aspect on
the business lanes and courts, and the very pavements had a weary
appearance, confused by the tread of a million of feet. There must be
hours of night to temper down the day’s distraction of so feverish a
place. As yet the worry of the newly-stopped whirling and grinding on
the part of the money-mills seemed to linger in the air, and the quiet
was more like the prostration of a spent giant than the repose of one
who was renewing his strength.
If Bella thought, as she glanced at the mighty Bank, how agreeable it
would be to have an hour’s gardening there, with a bright copper shovel,
among the money, still she was not in an avaricious vein. Much improved
in that respect, and with certain half-formed images which had little
gold in their composition, dancing before her bright eyes, she arrived
in the drug-flavoured region of Mincing Lane, with the sensation of
having just opened a drawer in a chemist’s shop.
The counting-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles was pointed out
by an elderly female accustomed to the care of offices, who dropped upon
Bella out of a public-house, wiping her mouth, and accounted for its
humidity on natural principles well known to the physical sciences, by
explaining that she had looked in at the door to see what o’clock it
was. The counting-house was a wall-eyed ground floor by a dark gateway,
and Bella was considering, as she approached it, could there be any
precedent in the City for her going in and asking for R. Wilfer, when
whom should she see, sitting at one of the windows with the plate-glass
sash raised, but R. Wilfer himself, preparing to take a slight
refection.
On approaching nearer, Bella discerned that the refection had
the appearance of a small cottage-loaf and a pennyworth of milk.
Simultaneously with this discovery on her part, her father discovered
her, and invoked the echoes of Mincing Lane to exclaim ‘My gracious me!’
He then came cherubically flying out without a hat, and embraced her,
and handed her in. ‘For it’s after hours and I am all alone, my dear,’
he explained, ‘and am having—as I sometimes do when they are all
gone—a quiet tea.’
Looking round the office, as if her father were a captive and this his
cell, Bella hugged him and choked him to her heart’s content.
‘I never was so surprised, my dear!’ said her father. ‘I couldn’t
believe my eyes. Upon my life, I thought they had taken to lying! The
idea of your coming down the Lane yourself! Why didn’t you send the
footman down the Lane, my dear?’
‘I have brought no footman with me, Pa.’
‘Oh indeed! But you have brought the elegant turn-out, my love?’
‘No, Pa.’
‘You never can have walked, my dear?’
‘Yes, I have, Pa.’
He looked so very much astonished, that Bella could not make up her mind
to break it to him just yet.
‘The consequence is, Pa, that your lovely woman feels a little faint,
and would very much like to share your tea.’
The cottage loaf and the pennyworth of milk had been set forth on a
sheet of paper on the window-seat. The cherubic pocket-knife, with the
first bit of the loaf still on its point, lay beside them where it had
been hastily thrown down. Bella took the bit off, and put it in her
mouth. ‘My dear child,’ said her father, ‘the idea of your partaking of
such lowly fare! But at least you must have your own loaf and your own
penn’orth. One moment, my dear. The Dairy is just over the way and round
the corner.’
Regardless of Bella’s dissuasions he ran out, and quickly returned with
the new supply. ‘My dear child,’ he said, as he spread it on another
piece of paper before her, ‘the idea of a splendid—!’ and then looked
at her figure, and stopped short.
‘What’s the matter, Pa?’
‘—of a splendid female,’ he resumed more slowly, ‘putting up with
such accommodation as the present!—Is that a new dress you have on, my
dear?’
‘No, Pa, an old one. Don’t you remember it?’
‘Why, I THOUGHT I remembered it, my dear!’
‘You should, for you bought it, Pa.’
‘Yes, I THOUGHT I bought it my dear!’ said the cherub, giving himself a
little shake, as if to rouse his faculties.
‘And have you grown so fickle that you don’t like your own taste, Pa
dear?’
‘Well, my love,’ he returned, swallowing a bit of the cottage loaf with
considerable effort, for it seemed to stick by the way: ‘I should have
thought it was hardly sufficiently splendid for existing circumstances.’
‘And so, Pa,’ said Bella, moving coaxingly to his side instead of
remaining opposite, ‘you sometimes have a quiet tea here all alone? I
am not in the tea’s way, if I draw my arm over your shoulder like this,
Pa?’
‘Yes, my dear, and no, my dear. Yes to the first question, and Certainly
Not to the second. Respecting the quiet tea, my dear, why you see the
occupations of the day are sometimes a little wearing; and if there’s
nothing interposed between the day and your mother, why SHE is sometimes
a little wearing, too.’
‘I know, Pa.’
‘Yes, my dear. So sometimes I put a quiet tea at the window here, with
a little quiet contemplation of the Lane (which comes soothing), between
the day, and domestic—’
‘Bliss,’ suggested Bella, sorrowfully.
‘And domestic Bliss,’ said her father, quite contented to accept the
phrase.
Bella kissed him. ‘And it is in this dark dingy place of captivity,
poor dear, that you pass all the hours of your life when you are not at
home?’
‘Not at home, or not on the road there, or on the road here, my love.
Yes. You see that little desk in the corner?’
‘In the dark corner, furthest both from the light and from the
fireplace? The shabbiest desk of all the desks?’
‘Now, does it really strike you in that point of view, my dear?’ said
her father, surveying it artistically with his head on one side: ‘that’s
mine. That’s called Rumty’s Perch.’
‘Whose Perch?’ asked Bella with great indignation.
‘Rumty’s. You see, being rather high and up two steps they call it a
Perch. And they call ME Rumty.’
‘How dare they!’ exclaimed Bella.
‘They’re playful, Bella my dear; they’re playful. They’re more or less
younger than I am, and they’re playful. What does it matter? It might
be Surly, or Sulky, or fifty disagreeable things that I really shouldn’t
like to be considered. But Rumty! Lor, why not Rumty?’
To inflict a heavy disappointment on this sweet nature, which had been,
through all her caprices, the object of her recognition, love, and
admiration from infancy, Bella felt to be the hardest task of her hard
day. ‘I should have done better,’ she thought, ‘to tell him at first;
I should have done better to tell him just now, when he had some slight
misgiving; he is quite happy again, and I shall make him wretched.’
He was falling back on his loaf and milk, with the pleasantest
composure, and Bella stealing her arm a little closer about him, and at
the same time sticking up his hair with an irresistible propensity
to play with him founded on the habit of her whole life, had prepared
herself to say: ‘Pa dear, don’t be cast down, but I must tell you
something disagreeable!’ when he interrupted her in an unlooked-for
manner.
‘My gracious me!’ he exclaimed, invoking the Mincing Lane echoes as
before. ‘This is very extraordinary!’
‘What is, Pa?’
‘Why here’s Mr Rokesmith now!’
‘No, no, Pa, no,’ cried Bella, greatly flurried. ‘Surely not.’
‘Yes there is! Look here!’
Sooth to say, Mr Rokesmith not only passed the window, but came into the
counting-house. And not only came into the counting-house, but, finding
himself alone there with Bella and her father, rushed at Bella and
caught her in his arms, with the rapturous words ‘My dear, dear girl; my
gallant, generous, disinterested, courageous, noble girl!’ And not only
that even, (which one might have thought astonishment enough for one
dose), but Bella, after hanging her head for a moment, lifted it up and
laid it on his breast, as if that were her head’s chosen and lasting
resting-place!
‘I knew you would come to him, and I followed you,’ said Rokesmith. ‘My
love, my life! You ARE mine?’
To which Bella responded, ‘Yes, I AM yours if you think me worth
taking!’ And after that, seemed to shrink to next to nothing in the
clasp of his arms, partly because it was such a strong one on his part,
and partly because there was such a yielding to it on hers.
The cherub, whose hair would have done for itself under the influence of
this amazing spectacle, what Bella had just now done for it, staggered
back into the window-seat from which he had risen, and surveyed the pair
with his eyes dilated to their utmost.
‘But we must think of dear Pa,’ said Bella; ‘I haven’t told dear Pa; let
us speak to Pa.’ Upon which they turned to do so.
‘I wish first, my dear,’ remarked the cherub faintly, ‘that you’d have
the kindness to sprinkle me with a little milk, for I feel as if I
was—Going.’
In fact, the good little fellow had become alarmingly limp, and his
senses seemed to be rapidly escaping, from the knees upward. Bella
sprinkled him with kisses instead of milk, but gave him a little of that
article to drink; and he gradually revived under her caressing care.
‘We’ll break it to you gently, dearest Pa,’ said Bella.
‘My dear,’ returned the cherub, looking at them both, ‘you broke so much
in the first—Gush, if I may so express myself—that I think I am equal
to a good large breakage now.’
‘Mr Wilfer,’ said John Rokesmith, excitedly and joyfully, ‘Bella takes
me, though I have no fortune, even no present occupation; nothing but
what I can get in the life before us. Bella takes me!’
‘Yes, I should rather have inferred, my dear sir,’ returned the cherub
feebly, ‘that Bella took you, from what I have within these few minutes
remarked.’
‘You don’t know, Pa,’ said Bella, ‘how ill I have used him!’
‘You don’t know, sir,’ said Rokesmith, ‘what a heart she has!’
‘You don’t know, Pa,’ said Bella, ‘what a shocking creature I was
growing, when he saved me from myself!’
‘You don’t know, sir,’ said Rokesmith, ‘what a sacrifice she has made
for me!’
‘My dear Bella,’ replied the cherub, still pathetically scared, ‘and my
dear John Rokesmith, if you will allow me so to call you—’
‘Yes do, Pa, do!’ urged Bella. ‘I allow you, and my will is his law.
Isn’t it—dear John Rokesmith?’
There was an engaging shyness in Bella, coupled with an engaging
tenderness of love and confidence and pride, in thus first calling him
by name, which made it quite excusable in John Rokesmith to do what he
did. What he did was, once more to give her the appearance of vanishing
as aforesaid.
‘I think, my dears,’ observed the cherub, ‘that if you could make it
convenient to sit one on one side of me, and the other on the other, we
should get on rather more consecutively, and make things rather
plainer. John Rokesmith mentioned, a while ago, that he had no present
occupation.’
‘None,’ said Rokesmith.
‘No, Pa, none,’ said Bella.
‘From which I argue,’ proceeded the cherub, ‘that he has left Mr
Boffin?’
‘Yes, Pa. And so—’
‘Stop a bit, my dear. I wish to lead up to it by degrees. And that Mr
Boffin has not treated him well?’
‘Has treated him most shamefully, dear Pa!’ cried Bella with a flashing
face.
‘Of which,’ pursued the cherub, enjoining patience with his hand, ‘a
certain mercenary young person distantly related to myself, could not
approve? Am I leading up to it right?’
‘Could not approve, sweet Pa,’ said Bella, with a tearful laugh and a
joyful kiss.
‘Upon which,’ pursued the cherub, ‘the certain mercenary young person
distantly related to myself, having previously observed and mentioned
to myself that prosperity was spoiling Mr Boffin, felt that she must not
sell her sense of what was right and what was wrong, and what was true
and what was false, and what was just and what was unjust, for any
price that could be paid to her by any one alive? Am I leading up to it
right?’
With another tearful laugh Bella joyfully kissed him again.
‘And therefore—and therefore,’ the cherub went on in a glowing voice,
as Bella’s hand stole gradually up his waistcoat to his neck, ‘this
mercenary young person distantly related to myself, refused the
price, took off the splendid fashions that were part of it, put on the
comparatively poor dress that I had last given her, and trusting to my
supporting her in what was right, came straight to me. Have I led up to
it?’
Bella’s hand was round his neck by this time, and her face was on it.
‘The mercenary young person distantly related to myself,’ said her
good father, ‘did well! The mercenary young person distantly related
to myself, did not trust to me in vain! I admire this mercenary young
person distantly related to myself, more in this dress than if she had
come to me in China silks, Cashmere shawls, and Golconda diamonds. I
love this young person dearly. I say to the man of this young person’s
heart, out of my heart and with all of it, “My blessing on this
engagement betwixt you, and she brings you a good fortune when she
brings you the poverty she has accepted for your sake and the honest
truth’s!”’
The stanch little man’s voice failed him as he gave John Rokesmith his
hand, and he was silent, bending his face low over his daughter. But,
not for long. He soon looked up, saying in a sprightly tone:
‘And now, my dear child, if you think you can entertain John Rokesmith
for a minute and a half, I’ll run over to the Dairy, and fetch HIM a
cottage loaf and a drink of milk, that we may all have tea together.’
It was, as Bella gaily said, like the supper provided for the three
nursery hobgoblins at their house in the forest, without their
thunderous low growlings of the alarming discovery, ‘Somebody’s been
drinking MY milk!’ It was a delicious repast; by far the most delicious
that Bella, or John Rokesmith, or even R. Wilfer had ever made. The
uncongenial oddity of its surroundings, with the two brass knobs of the
iron safe of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles staring from a corner,
like the eyes of some dull dragon, only made it the more delightful.
‘To think,’ said the cherub, looking round the office with unspeakable
enjoyment, ‘that anything of a tender nature should come off here, is
what tickles me. To think that ever I should have seen my Bella folded
in the arms of her future husband, HERE, you know!’
It was not until the cottage loaves and the milk had for some time
disappeared, and the foreshadowings of night were creeping over Mincing
Lane, that the cherub by degrees became a little nervous, and said to
Bella, as he cleared his throat:
‘Hem!—Have you thought at all about your mother, my dear?’
‘Yes, Pa.’
‘And your sister Lavvy, for instance, my dear?’
‘Yes, Pa. I think we had better not enter into particulars at home. I
think it will be quite enough to say that I had a difference with Mr
Boffin, and have left for good.’
‘John Rokesmith being acquainted with your Ma, my love,’ said her
father, after some slight hesitation, ‘I need have no delicacy in
hinting before him that you may perhaps find your Ma a little wearing.’
‘A little, patient Pa?’ said Bella with a tuneful laugh: the tune fuller
for being so loving in its tone.
‘Well! We’ll say, strictly in confidence among ourselves, wearing;
we won’t qualify it,’ the cherub stoutly admitted. ‘And your sister’s
temper is wearing.’
‘I don’t mind, Pa.’
‘And you must prepare yourself you know, my precious,’ said her father,
with much gentleness, ‘for our looking very poor and meagre at home, and
being at the best but very uncomfortable, after Mr Boffin’s house.’
‘I don’t mind, Pa. I could bear much harder trials—for John.’
The closing words were not so softly and blushingly said but that John
heard them, and showed that he heard them by again assisting Bella to
another of those mysterious disappearances.
‘Well!’ said the cherub gaily, and not expressing disapproval, ‘when
you—when you come back from retirement, my love, and reappear on the
surface, I think it will be time to lock up and go.’
If the counting-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles had ever been
shut up by three happier people, glad as most people were to shut it up,
they must have been superlatively happy indeed. But first Bella mounted
upon Rumty’s Perch, and said, ‘Show me what you do here all day long,
dear Pa. Do you write like this?’ laying her round cheek upon her plump
left arm, and losing sight of her pen in waves of hair, in a highly
unbusiness-like manner. Though John Rokesmith seemed to like it.
So, the three hobgoblins, having effaced all traces of their feast, and
swept up the crumbs, came out of Mincing Lane to walk to Holloway; and
if two of the hobgoblins didn’t wish the distance twice as long as it
was, the third hobgoblin was much mistaken. Indeed, that modest spirit
deemed himself so much in the way of their deep enjoyment of the
journey, that he apologetically remarked: ‘I think, my dears, I’ll take
the lead on the other side of the road, and seem not to belong to you.’
Which he did, cherubically strewing the path with smiles, in the absence
of flowers.
It was almost ten o’clock when they stopped within view of Wilfer
Castle; and then, the spot being quiet and deserted, Bella began a
series of disappearances which threatened to last all night.
‘I think, John,’ the cherub hinted at last, ‘that if you can spare me
the young person distantly related to myself, I’ll take her in.’
‘I can’t spare her,’ answered John, ‘but I must lend her to you.—My
Darling!’ A word of magic which caused Bella instantly to disappear
again.
‘Now, dearest Pa,’ said Bella, when she became visible, ‘put your hand
in mine, and we’ll run home as fast as ever we can run, and get it over.
Now, Pa. Once!—’
‘My dear,’ the cherub faltered, with something of a craven air, ‘I was
going to observe that if your mother—’
‘You mustn’t hang back, sir, to gain time,’ cried Bella, putting out her
right foot; ‘do you see that, sir? That’s the mark; come up to the mark,
sir. Once! Twice! Three times and away, Pa!’ Off she skimmed, bearing
the cherub along, nor ever stopped, nor suffered him to stop, until she
had pulled at the bell. ‘Now, dear Pa,’ said Bella, taking him by both
ears as if he were a pitcher, and conveying his face to her rosy lips,
‘we are in for it!’
Miss Lavvy came out to open the gate, waited on by that attentive
cavalier and friend of the family, Mr George Sampson. ‘Why, it’s never
Bella!’ exclaimed Miss Lavvy starting back at the sight. And then
bawled, ‘Ma! Here’s Bella!’
This produced, before they could get into the house, Mrs Wilfer. Who,
standing in the portal, received them with ghostly gloom, and all her
other appliances of ceremony.
‘My child is welcome, though unlooked for,’ said she, at the time
presenting her cheek as if it were a cool slate for visitors to enrol
themselves upon. ‘You too, R. W., are welcome, though late. Does the
male domestic of Mrs Boffin hear me there?’ This deep-toned inquiry was
cast forth into the night, for response from the menial in question.
‘There is no one waiting, Ma, dear,’ said Bella.
‘There is no one waiting?’ repeated Mrs Wilfer in majestic accents.
‘No, Ma, dear.’
A dignified shiver pervaded Mrs Wilfer’s shoulders and gloves, as
who should say, ‘An Enigma!’ and then she marched at the head of the
procession to the family keeping-room, where she observed:
‘Unless, R. W.:’ who started on being solemnly turned upon: ‘you have
taken the precaution of making some addition to our frugal supper on
your way home, it will prove but a distasteful one to Bella. Cold neck
of mutton and a lettuce can ill compete with the luxuries of Mr Boffin’s
board.’
‘Pray don’t talk like that, Ma dear,’ said Bella; ‘Mr Boffin’s board is
nothing to me.’
But, here Miss Lavinia, who had been intently eyeing Bella’s bonnet,
struck in with ‘Why, Bella!’
‘Yes, Lavvy, I know.’
The Irrepressible lowered her eyes to Bella’s dress, and stooped to look
at it, exclaiming again: ‘Why, Bella!’
‘Yes, Lavvy, I know what I have got on. I was going to tell Ma when you
interrupted. I have left Mr Boffin’s house for good, Ma, and I have come
home again.’
Mrs Wilfer spake no word, but, having glared at her offspring for a
minute or two in an awful silence, retired into her corner of state
backward, and sat down: like a frozen article on sale in a Russian
market.
‘In short, dear Ma,’ said Bella, taking off the depreciated bonnet and
shaking out her hair, ‘I have had a very serious difference with Mr
Boffin on the subject of his treatment of a member of his household, and
it’s a final difference, and there’s an end of all.’
‘And I am bound to tell you, my dear,’ added R. W., submissively, ‘that
Bella has acted in a truly brave spirit, and with a truly right feeling.
And therefore I hope, my dear, you’ll not allow yourself to be greatly
disappointed.’
‘George!’ said Miss Lavvy, in a sepulchral, warning voice, founded on
her mother’s; ‘George Sampson, speak! What did I tell you about those
Boffins?’
Mr Sampson perceiving his frail bark to be labouring among shoals and
breakers, thought it safest not to refer back to any particular thing
that he had been told, lest he should refer back to the wrong thing.
With admirable seamanship he got his bark into deep water by murmuring
‘Yes indeed.’
‘Yes! I told George Sampson, as George Sampson tells you,’ said Miss
Lavvy, ‘that those hateful Boffins would pick a quarrel with Bella, as
soon as her novelty had worn off. Have they done it, or have they not?
Was I right, or was I wrong? And what do you say to us, Bella, of your
Boffins now?’
‘Lavvy and Ma,’ said Bella, ‘I say of Mr and Mrs Boffin what I always
have said; and I always shall say of them what I always have said. But
nothing will induce me to quarrel with any one to-night. I hope you
are not sorry to see me, Ma dear,’ kissing her; ‘and I hope you are not
sorry to see me, Lavvy,’ kissing her too; ‘and as I notice the lettuce
Ma mentioned, on the table, I’ll make the salad.’
Bella playfully setting herself about the task, Mrs Wilfer’s impressive
countenance followed her with glaring eyes, presenting a combination
of the once popular sign of the Saracen’s Head, with a piece of
Dutch clock-work, and suggesting to an imaginative mind that from the
composition of the salad, her daughter might prudently omit the vinegar.
But no word issued from the majestic matron’s lips. And this was more
terrific to her husband (as perhaps she knew) than any flow of eloquence
with which she could have edified the company.
‘Now, Ma dear,’ said Bella in due course, ‘the salad’s ready, and it’s
past supper-time.’
Mrs Wilfer rose, but remained speechless. ‘George!’ said Miss Lavinia
in her voice of warning, ‘Ma’s chair!’ Mr Sampson flew to the excellent
lady’s back, and followed her up close chair in hand, as she stalked
to the banquet. Arrived at the table, she took her rigid seat, after
favouring Mr Sampson with a glare for himself, which caused the young
gentleman to retire to his place in much confusion.
The cherub not presuming to address so tremendous an object, transacted
her supper through the agency of a third person, as ‘Mutton to your Ma,
Bella, my dear’; and ‘Lavvy, I dare say your Ma would take some lettuce
if you were to put it on her plate.’ Mrs Wilfer’s manner of receiving
those viands was marked by petrified absence of mind; in which state,
likewise, she partook of them, occasionally laying down her knife and
fork, as saying within her own spirit, ‘What is this I am doing?’ and
glaring at one or other of the party, as if in indignant search of
information. A magnetic result of such glaring was, that the person
glared at could not by any means successfully pretend to be ignorant of
the fact: so that a bystander, without beholding Mrs Wilfer at all, must
have known at whom she was glaring, by seeing her refracted from the
countenance of the beglared one.
Miss Lavinia was extremely affable to Mr Sampson on this special
occasion, and took the opportunity of informing her sister why.
‘It was not worth troubling you about, Bella, when you were in a sphere
so far removed from your family as to make it a matter in which you
could be expected to take very little interest,’ said Lavinia with a
toss of her chin; ‘but George Sampson is paying his addresses to me.’
Bella was glad to hear it. Mr Sampson became thoughtfully red, and
felt called upon to encircle Miss Lavinia’s waist with his arm; but,
encountering a large pin in the young lady’s belt, scarified a finger,
uttered a sharp exclamation, and attracted the lightning of Mrs Wilfer’s
glare.
‘George is getting on very well,’ said Miss Lavinia which might not have
been supposed at the moment—‘and I dare say we shall be married, one of
these days. I didn’t care to mention it when you were with your Bof—’
here Miss Lavinia checked herself in a bounce, and added more placidly,
‘when you were with Mr and Mrs Boffin; but now I think it sisterly to
name the circumstance.’
‘Thank you, Lavvy dear. I congratulate you.’
‘Thank you, Bella. The truth is, George and I did discuss whether
I should tell you; but I said to George that you wouldn’t be much
interested in so paltry an affair, and that it was far more likely you
would rather detach yourself from us altogether, than have him added to
the rest of us.’
‘That was a mistake, dear Lavvy,’ said Bella.
‘It turns out to be,’ replied Miss Lavinia; ‘but circumstances have
changed, you know, my dear. George is in a new situation, and his
prospects are very good indeed. I shouldn’t have had the courage to tell
you so yesterday, when you would have thought his prospects poor, and
not worth notice; but I feel quite bold tonight.’
‘When did you begin to feel timid, Lavvy?’ inquired Bella, with a smile.
‘I didn’t say that I ever felt timid, Bella,’ replied the Irrepressible.
‘But perhaps I might have said, if I had not been restrained by delicacy
towards a sister’s feelings, that I have for some time felt independent;
too independent, my dear, to subject myself to have my intended match
(you’ll prick yourself again, George) looked down upon. It is not that I
could have blamed you for looking down upon it, when you were looking up
to a rich and great match, Bella; it is only that I was independent.’
Whether the Irrepressible felt slighted by Bella’s declaration that she
would not quarrel, or whether her spitefulness was evoked by Bella’s
return to the sphere of Mr George Sampson’s courtship, or whether it was
a necessary fillip to her spirits that she should come into collision
with somebody on the present occasion,—anyhow she made a dash at her
stately parent now, with the greatest impetuosity.
‘Ma, pray don’t sit staring at me in that intensely aggravating manner!
If you see a black on my nose, tell me so; if you don’t, leave me
alone.’
‘Do you address Me in those words?’ said Mrs Wilfer. ‘Do you presume?’
‘Don’t talk about presuming, Ma, for goodness’ sake. A girl who is old
enough to be engaged, is quite old enough to object to be stared at as
if she was a Clock.’
‘Audacious one!’ said Mrs Wilfer. ‘Your grandmamma, if so addressed by
one of her daughters, at any age, would have insisted on her retiring to
a dark apartment.’
‘My grandmamma,’ returned Lavvy, folding her arms and leaning back
in her chair, ‘wouldn’t have sat staring people out of countenance, I
think.’
‘She would!’ said Mrs Wilfer.
‘Then it’s a pity she didn’t know better,’ said Lavvy. ‘And if my
grandmamma wasn’t in her dotage when she took to insisting on people’s
retiring to dark apartments, she ought to have been. A pretty exhibition
my grandmamma must have made of herself! I wonder whether she ever
insisted on people’s retiring into the ball of St Paul’s; and if she
did, how she got them there!’
‘Silence!’ proclaimed Mrs Wilfer. ‘I command silence!’