Lavinia coolly, ‘but quite the contrary. I am not going to be eyed as if
I had come from the Boffins, and sit silent under it. I am not going
to have George Sampson eyed as if HE had come from the Boffins, and sit
silent under it. If Pa thinks proper to be eyed as if HE had come from
the Boffins also, well and good. I don’t choose to. And I won’t!’
Lavinia’s engineering having made this crooked opening at Bella, Mrs
Wilfer strode into it.
‘You rebellious spirit! You mutinous child! Tell me this, Lavinia. If
in violation of your mother’s sentiments, you had condescended to allow
yourself to be patronized by the Boffins, and if you had come from those
halls of slavery—’
‘That’s mere nonsense, Ma,’ said Lavinia.
‘How!’ exclaimed Mrs Wilfer, with sublime severity.
‘Halls of slavery, Ma, is mere stuff and nonsense,’ returned the unmoved
Irrepressible.
‘I say, presumptuous child, if you had come from the neighbourhood of
Portland Place, bending under the yoke of patronage and attended by its
domestics in glittering garb to visit me, do you think my deep-seated
feelings could have been expressed in looks?’
‘All I think about it, is,’ returned Lavinia, ‘that I should wish them
expressed to the right person.’
‘And if,’ pursued her mother, ‘if making light of my warnings that the
face of Mrs Boffin alone was a face teeming with evil, you had clung to
Mrs Boffin instead of to me, and had after all come home rejected by Mrs
Boffin, trampled under foot by Mrs Boffin, and cast out by Mrs Boffin,
do you think my feelings could have been expressed in looks?’
Lavinia was about replying to her honoured parent that she might as well
have dispensed with her looks altogether then, when Bella rose and said,
‘Good night, dear Ma. I have had a tiring day, and I’ll go to bed.’ This
broke up the agreeable party. Mr George Sampson shortly afterwards took
his leave, accompanied by Miss Lavinia with a candle as far as the hall,
and without a candle as far as the garden gate; Mrs Wilfer, washing her
hands of the Boffins, went to bed after the manner of Lady Macbeth; and
R. W. was left alone among the dilapidations of the supper table, in a
melancholy attitude.
But, a light footstep roused him from his meditations, and it was
Bella’s. Her pretty hair was hanging all about her, and she had tripped
down softly, brush in hand, and barefoot, to say good-night to him.
‘My dear, you most unquestionably ARE a lovely woman,’ said the cherub,
taking up a tress in his hand.
‘Look here, sir,’ said Bella; ‘when your lovely woman marries, you shall
have that piece if you like, and she’ll make you a chain of it. Would
you prize that remembrance of the dear creature?’
‘Yes, my precious.’
‘Then you shall have it if you’re good, sir. I am very, very sorry,
dearest Pa, to have brought home all this trouble.’
‘My pet,’ returned her father, in the simplest good faith, ‘don’t make
yourself uneasy about that. It really is not worth mentioning, because
things at home would have taken pretty much the same turn any way. If
your mother and sister don’t find one subject to get at times a little
wearing on, they find another. We’re never out of a wearing subject,
my dear, I assure you. I am afraid you find your old room with Lavvy,
dreadfully inconvenient, Bella?’
‘No I don’t, Pa; I don’t mind. Why don’t I mind, do you think, Pa?’
‘Well, my child, you used to complain of it when it wasn’t such a
contrast as it must be now. Upon my word, I can only answer, because you
are so much improved.’
‘No, Pa. Because I am so thankful and so happy!’
Here she choked him until her long hair made him sneeze, and then she
laughed until she made him laugh, and then she choked him again that
they might not be overheard.
‘Listen, sir,’ said Bella. ‘Your lovely woman was told her fortune
to night on her way home. It won’t be a large fortune, because if the
lovely woman’s Intended gets a certain appointment that he hopes to get
soon, she will marry on a hundred and fifty pounds a year. But that’s at
first, and even if it should never be more, the lovely woman will make
it quite enough. But that’s not all, sir. In the fortune there’s a
certain fair man—a little man, the fortune-teller said—who, it seems,
will always find himself near the lovely woman, and will always have
kept, expressly for him, such a peaceful corner in the lovely woman’s
little house as never was. Tell me the name of that man, sir.’
‘Is he a Knave in the pack of cards?’ inquired the cherub, with a
twinkle in his eyes.
‘Yes!’ cried Bella, in high glee, choking him again. ‘He’s the Knave of
Wilfers! Dear Pa, the lovely woman means to look forward to this fortune
that has been told for her, so delightfully, and to cause it to make her
a much better lovely woman than she ever has been yet. What the little
fair man is expected to do, sir, is to look forward to it also, by
saying to himself when he is in danger of being over-worried, “I see
land at last!”
‘I see land at last!’ repeated her father.
‘There’s a dear Knave of Wilfers!’ exclaimed Bella; then putting out her
small white bare foot, ‘That’s the mark, sir. Come to the mark. Put your
boot against it. We keep to it together, mind! Now, sir, you may kiss
the lovely woman before she runs away, so thankful and so happy. O yes,
fair little man, so thankful and so happy!’
Chapter 17
A SOCIAL CHORUS
Amazement sits enthroned upon the countenances of Mr and Mrs Alfred
Lammle’s circle of acquaintance, when the disposal of their first-class
furniture and effects (including a Billiard Table in capital letters),
‘by auction, under a bill of sale,’ is publicly announced on a waving
hearthrug in Sackville Street. But, nobody is half so much amazed as
Hamilton Veneering, Esquire, M.P. for Pocket-Breaches, who instantly
begins to find out that the Lammles are the only people ever entered on
his soul’s register, who are NOT the oldest and dearest friends he has
in the world. Mrs Veneering, W.M.P. for Pocket-Breaches, like a faithful
wife shares her husband’s discovery and inexpressible astonishment.
Perhaps the Veneerings twain may deem the last unutterable feeling
particularly due to their reputation, by reason that once upon a time
some of the longer heads in the City are whispered to have shaken
themselves, when Veneering’s extensive dealings and great wealth were
mentioned. But, it is certain that neither Mr nor Mrs Veneering can
find words to wonder in, and it becomes necessary that they give to the
oldest and dearest friends they have in the world, a wondering dinner.
For, it is by this time noticeable that, whatever befals, the Veneerings
must give a dinner upon it. Lady Tippins lives in a chronic state
of invitation to dine with the Veneerings, and in a chronic state of
inflammation arising from the dinners. Boots and Brewer go about in
cabs, with no other intelligible business on earth than to beat up
people to come and dine with the Veneerings. Veneering pervades the
legislative lobbies, intent upon entrapping his fellow-legislators to
dinner. Mrs Veneering dined with five-and-twenty bran-new faces over
night; calls upon them all to day; sends them every one a dinner-card
to-morrow, for the week after next; before that dinner is digested,
calls upon their brothers and sisters, their sons and daughters, their
nephews and nieces, their aunts and uncles and cousins, and invites
them all to dinner. And still, as at first, howsoever, the dining circle
widens, it is to be observed that all the diners are consistent in
appearing to go to the Veneerings, not to dine with Mr and Mrs Veneering
(which would seem to be the last thing in their minds), but to dine with
one another.
Perhaps, after all,—who knows?—Veneering may find this dining, though
expensive, remunerative, in the sense that it makes champions.
Mr Podsnap, as a representative man, is not alone in caring very
particularly for his own dignity, if not for that of his acquaintances,
and therefore in angrily supporting the acquaintances who have taken out
his Permit, lest, in their being lessened, he should be. The gold and
silver camels, and the ice-pails, and the rest of the Veneering table
decorations, make a brilliant show, and when I, Podsnap, casually remark
elsewhere that I dined last Monday with a gorgeous caravan of camels,
I find it personally offensive to have it hinted to me that they are
broken-kneed camels, or camels labouring under suspicion of any sort. ‘I
don’t display camels myself, I am above them: I am a more solid man; but
these camels have basked in the light of my countenance, and how dare
you, sir, insinuate to me that I have irradiated any but unimpeachable
camels?’
The camels are polishing up in the Analytical’s pantry for the dinner
of wonderment on the occasion of the Lammles going to pieces, and Mr
Twemlow feels a little queer on the sofa at his lodgings over the stable
yard in Duke Street, Saint James’s, in consequence of having taken
two advertised pills at about mid-day, on the faith of the printed
representation accompanying the box (price one and a penny halfpenny,
government stamp included), that the same ‘will be found highly salutary
as a precautionary measure in connection with the pleasures of the
table.’ To whom, while sickly with the fancy of an insoluble pill
sticking in his gullet, and also with the sensation of a deposit of warm
gum languidly wandering within him a little lower down, a servant enters
with the announcement that a lady wishes to speak with him.
‘A lady!’ says Twemlow, pluming his ruffled feathers. ‘Ask the favour of
the lady’s name.’
The lady’s name is Lammle. The lady will not detain Mr Twemlow longer
than a very few minutes. The lady is sure that Mr Twemlow will do her
the kindness to see her, on being told that she particularly desires
a short interview. The lady has no doubt whatever of Mr Twemlow’s
compliance when he hears her name. Has begged the servant to be
particular not to mistake her name. Would have sent in a card, but has
none.
‘Show the lady in.’ Lady shown in, comes in.
Mr Twemlow’s little rooms are modestly furnished, in an old-fashioned
manner (rather like the housekeeper’s room at Snigsworthy Park), and
would be bare of mere ornament, were it not for a full-length engraving
of the sublime Snigsworth over the chimneypiece, snorting at a
Corinthian column, with an enormous roll of paper at his feet, and a
heavy curtain going to tumble down on his head; those accessories being
understood to represent the noble lord as somehow in the act of saving
his country.
‘Pray take a seat, Mrs Lammle.’ Mrs Lammle takes a seat and opens the
conversation.
‘I have no doubt, Mr Twemlow, that you have heard of a reverse of
fortune having befallen us. Of course you have heard of it, for no kind
of news travels so fast—among one’s friends especially.’
Mindful of the wondering dinner, Twemlow, with a little twinge, admits
the imputation.
‘Probably it will not,’ says Mrs Lammle, with a certain hardened manner
upon her, that makes Twemlow shrink, ‘have surprised you so much as some
others, after what passed between us at the house which is now turned
out at windows. I have taken the liberty of calling upon you, Mr
Twemlow, to add a sort of postscript to what I said that day.’
Mr Twemlow’s dry and hollow cheeks become more dry and hollow at the
prospect of some new complication.
‘Really,’ says the uneasy little gentleman, ‘really, Mrs Lammle, I
should take it as a favour if you could excuse me from any further
confidence. It has ever been one of the objects of my life—which,
unfortunately, has not had many objects—to be inoffensive, and to keep
out of cabals and interferences.’
Mrs Lammle, by far the more observant of the two, scarcely finds it
necessary to look at Twemlow while he speaks, so easily does she read
him.
‘My postscript—to retain the term I have used’—says Mrs Lammle, fixing
her eyes on his face, to enforce what she says herself—‘coincides
exactly with what you say, Mr Twemlow. So far from troubling you with
any new confidence, I merely wish to remind you what the old one was. So
far from asking you for interference, I merely wish to claim your strict
neutrality.’
Twemlow going on to reply, she rests her eyes again, knowing her ears to
be quite enough for the contents of so weak a vessel.
‘I can, I suppose,’ says Twemlow, nervously, ‘offer no reasonable
objection to hearing anything that you do me the honour to wish to say
to me under those heads. But if I may, with all possible delicacy and
politeness, entreat you not to range beyond them, I—I beg to do so.’
‘Sir,’ says Mrs Lammle, raising her eyes to his face again, and quite
daunting him with her hardened manner, ‘I imparted to you a certain
piece of knowledge, to be imparted again, as you thought best, to a
certain person.’
‘Which I did,’ says Twemlow.
‘And for doing which, I thank you; though, indeed, I scarcely know why
I turned traitress to my husband in the matter, for the girl is a poor
little fool. I was a poor little fool once myself; I can find no better
reason.’ Seeing the effect she produces on him by her indifferent laugh
and cold look, she keeps her eyes upon him as she proceeds. ‘Mr Twemlow,
if you should chance to see my husband, or to see me, or to see both of
us, in the favour or confidence of any one else—whether of our common
acquaintance or not, is of no consequence—you have no right to use
against us the knowledge I intrusted you with, for one special purpose
which has been accomplished. This is what I came to say. It is not a
stipulation; to a gentleman it is simply a reminder.’
Twemlow sits murmuring to himself with his hand to his forehead.
‘It is so plain a case,’ Mrs Lammle goes on, ‘as between me (from the
first relying on your honour) and you, that I will not waste another
word upon it.’ She looks steadily at Mr Twemlow, until, with a shrug,
he makes her a little one-sided bow, as though saying ‘Yes, I think you
have a right to rely upon me,’ and then she moistens her lips, and shows
a sense of relief.
‘I trust I have kept the promise I made through your servant, that I
would detain you a very few minutes. I need trouble you no longer, Mr
Twemlow.’
‘Stay!’ says Twemlow, rising as she rises. ‘Pardon me a moment. I should
never have sought you out, madam, to say what I am going to say, but
since you have sought me out and are here, I will throw it off my mind.
Was it quite consistent, in candour, with our taking that resolution
against Mr Fledgeby, that you should afterwards address Mr Fledgeby as
your dear and confidential friend, and entreat a favour of Mr Fledgeby?
Always supposing that you did; I assert no knowledge of my own on the
subject; it has been represented to me that you did.’
‘Then he told you?’ retorts Mrs Lammle, who again has saved her eyes
while listening, and uses them with strong effect while speaking.
‘Yes.’
‘It is strange that he should have told you the truth,’ says Mrs
Lammle, seriously pondering. ‘Pray where did a circumstance so very
extraordinary happen?’
Twemlow hesitates. He is shorter than the lady as well as weaker, and,
as she stands above him with her hardened manner and her well-used eyes,
he finds himself at such a disadvantage that he would like to be of the
opposite sex.
‘May I ask where it happened, Mr Twemlow? In strict confidence?’
‘I must confess,’ says the mild little gentleman, coming to his answer
by degrees, ‘that I felt some compunctions when Mr Fledgeby mentioned
it. I must admit that I could not regard myself in an agreeable light.
More particularly, as Mr Fledgeby did, with great civility, which I
could not feel that I deserved from him, render me the same service that
you had entreated him to render you.’
It is a part of the true nobility of the poor gentleman’s soul to say
this last sentence. ‘Otherwise,’ he has reflected, ‘I shall assume the
superior position of having no difficulties of my own, while I know of
hers. Which would be mean, very mean.’
‘Was Mr Fledgeby’s advocacy as effectual in your case as in ours?’ Mrs
Lammle demands.
‘As ineffectual.’
‘Can you make up your mind to tell me where you saw Mr Fledgeby, Mr
Twemlow?’
‘I beg your pardon. I fully intended to have done so. The reservation
was not intentional. I encountered Mr Fledgeby, quite by accident, on
the spot.—By the expression, on the spot, I mean at Mr Riah’s in Saint
Mary Axe.’
‘Have you the misfortune to be in Mr Riah’s hands then?’
‘Unfortunately, madam,’ returns Twemlow, ‘the one money obligation to
which I stand committed, the one debt of my life (but it is a just debt;
pray observe that I don’t dispute it), has fallen into Mr Riah’s hands.’
‘Mr Twemlow,’ says Mrs Lammle, fixing his eyes with hers: which he would
prevent her doing if he could, but he can’t; ‘it has fallen into Mr
Fledgeby’s hands. Mr Riah is his mask. It has fallen into Mr Fledgeby’s
hands. Let me tell you that, for your guidance. The information may be
of use to you, if only to prevent your credulity, in judging another
man’s truthfulness by your own, from being imposed upon.’
‘Impossible!’ cries Twemlow, standing aghast. ‘How do you know it?’
‘I scarcely know how I know it. The whole train of circumstances seemed
to take fire at once, and show it to me.’
‘Oh! Then you have no proof.’
‘It is very strange,’ says Mrs Lammle, coldly and boldly, and with some
disdain, ‘how like men are to one another in some things, though their
characters are as different as can be! No two men can have less affinity
between them, one would say, than Mr Twemlow and my husband. Yet my
husband replies to me “You have no proof,” and Mr Twemlow replies to me
with the very same words!’
‘But why, madam?’ Twemlow ventures gently to argue. ‘Consider why
the very same words? Because they state the fact. Because you HAVE no
proof.’
‘Men are very wise in their way,’ quoth Mrs Lammle, glancing haughtily
at the Snigsworth portrait, and shaking out her dress before departing;
‘but they have wisdom to learn. My husband, who is not over-confiding,
ingenuous, or inexperienced, sees this plain thing no more than Mr
Twemlow does—because there is no proof! Yet I believe five women out of
six, in my place, would see it as clearly as I do. However, I will never
rest (if only in remembrance of Mr Fledgeby’s having kissed my hand)
until my husband does see it. And you will do well for yourself to see
it from this time forth, Mr Twemlow, though I CAN give you no proof.’
As she moves towards the door, Mr Twemlow, attending on her, expresses
his soothing hope that the condition of Mr Lammle’s affairs is not
irretrievable.
‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Lammle answers, stopping, and sketching out the
pattern of the paper on the wall with the point of her parasol; ‘it
depends. There may be an opening for him dawning now, or there may be
none. We shall soon find out. If none, we are bankrupt here, and must go
abroad, I suppose.’
Mr Twemlow, in his good-natured desire to make the best of it, remarks
that there are pleasant lives abroad.
‘Yes,’ returns Mrs Lammle, still sketching on the wall; ‘but I doubt
whether billiard-playing, card-playing, and so forth, for the means to
live under suspicion at a dirty table-d’hote, is one of them.’
It is much for Mr Lammle, Twemlow politely intimates (though greatly
shocked), to have one always beside him who is attached to him in all
his fortunes, and whose restraining influence will prevent him from
courses that would be discreditable and ruinous. As he says it, Mrs
Lammle leaves off sketching, and looks at him.
‘Restraining influence, Mr Twemlow? We must eat and drink, and dress,
and have a roof over our heads. Always beside him and attached in all
his fortunes? Not much to boast of in that; what can a woman at my age
do? My husband and I deceived one another when we married; we must bear
the consequences of the deception—that is to say, bear one another, and
bear the burden of scheming together for to-day’s dinner and to-morrow’s
breakfast—till death divorces us.’
With those words, she walks out into Duke Street, Saint James’s. Mr
Twemlow returning to his sofa, lays down his aching head on its slippery
little horsehair bolster, with a strong internal conviction that a
painful interview is not the kind of thing to be taken after the dinner
pills which are so highly salutary in connexion with the pleasures of
the table.
But, six o’clock in the evening finds the worthy little gentleman
getting better, and also getting himself into his obsolete little silk
stockings and pumps, for the wondering dinner at the Veneerings. And
seven o’clock in the evening finds him trotting out into Duke Street, to
trot to the corner and save a sixpence in coach-hire.
Tippins the divine has dined herself into such a condition by this time,
that a morbid mind might desire her, for a blessed change, to sup
at last, and turn into bed. Such a mind has Mr Eugene Wrayburn, whom
Twemlow finds contemplating Tippins with the moodiest of visages,
while that playful creature rallies him on being so long overdue at the
woolsack. Skittish is Tippins with Mortimer Lightwood too, and has raps
to give him with her fan for having been best man at the nuptials of
these deceiving what’s-their-names who have gone to pieces. Though,
indeed, the fan is generally lively, and taps away at the men in
all directions, with something of a grisly sound suggestive of the
clattering of Lady Tippins’s bones.
A new race of intimate friends has sprung up at Veneering’s since he
went into Parliament for the public good, to whom Mrs Veneering is very
attentive. These friends, like astronomical distances, are only to be
spoken of in the very largest figures. Boots says that one of them is a
Contractor who (it has been calculated) gives employment, directly and
indirectly, to five hundred thousand men. Brewer says that another of
them is a Chairman, in such request at so many Boards, so far apart,
that he never travels less by railway than three thousand miles a week.
Buffer says that another of them hadn’t a sixpence eighteen months ago,
and, through the brilliancy of his genius in getting those shares issued
at eighty-five, and buying them all up with no money and selling them
at par for cash, has now three hundred and seventy-five thousand
pounds—Buffer particularly insisting on the odd seventy-five, and
declining to take a farthing less. With Buffer, Boots, and Brewer, Lady
Tippins is eminently facetious on the subject of these Fathers of the
Scrip-Church: surveying them through her eyeglass, and inquiring whether
Boots and Brewer and Buffer think they will make her fortune if she
makes love to them? with other pleasantries of that nature. Veneering,
in his different way, is much occupied with the Fathers too, piously
retiring with them into the conservatory, from which retreat the word
‘Committee’ is occasionally heard, and where the Fathers instruct
Veneering how he must leave the valley of the piano on his left,
take the level of the mantelpiece, cross by an open cutting at the
candelabra, seize the carrying-traffic at the console, and cut up the
opposition root and branch at the window curtains.
Mr and Mrs Podsnap are of the company, and the Fathers descry in Mrs
Podsnap a fine woman. She is consigned to a Father—Boots’s Father,
who employs five hundred thousand men—and is brought to anchor on
Veneering’s left; thus affording opportunity to the sportive Tippins on
his right (he, as usual, being mere vacant space), to entreat to be told
something about those loves of Navvies, and whether they really do live
on raw beefsteaks, and drink porter out of their barrows. But, in spite
of such little skirmishes it is felt that this was to be a wondering
dinner, and that the wondering must not be neglected. Accordingly,
Brewer, as the man who has the greatest reputation to sustain, becomes
the interpreter of the general instinct.
‘I took,’ says Brewer in a favourable pause, ‘a cab this morning, and I
rattled off to that Sale.’
Boots (devoured by envy) says, ‘So did I.’
Buffer says, ‘So did I’; but can find nobody to care whether he did or
not.
‘And what was it like?’ inquires Veneering.
‘I assure you,’ replies Brewer, looking about for anybody else to
address his answer to, and giving the preference to Lightwood; ‘I assure
you, the things were going for a song. Handsome things enough, but
fetching nothing.’
‘So I heard this afternoon,’ says Lightwood.
Brewer begs to know now, would it be fair to ask a professional man
how—on—earth—these—people—ever—did—come—TO—such—A—total
smash? (Brewer’s divisions being for emphasis.)
Lightwood replies that he was consulted certainly, but could give no
opinion which would pay off the Bill of Sale, and therefore violates no
confidence in supposing that it came of their living beyond their means.
‘But how,’ says Veneering, ‘CAN people do that!’
Hah! That is felt on all hands to be a shot in the bull’s eye. How CAN
people do that! The Analytical Chemist going round with champagne, looks
very much as if HE could give them a pretty good idea how people did
that, if he had a mind.
‘How,’ says Mrs Veneering, laying down her fork to press her aquiline
hands together at the tips of the fingers, and addressing the Father who
travels the three thousand miles per week: ‘how a mother can look at
her baby, and know that she lives beyond her husband’s means, I cannot
imagine.’
Eugene suggests that Mrs Lammle, not being a mother, had no baby to look
at.
‘True,’ says Mrs Veneering, ‘but the principle is the same.’
Boots is clear that the principle is the same. So is Buffer. It is the
unfortunate destiny of Buffer to damage a cause by espousing it. The
rest of the company have meekly yielded to the proposition that the
principle is the same, until Buffer says it is; when instantly a general
murmur arises that the principle is not the same.
‘But I don’t understand,’ says the Father of the three hundred and
seventy-five thousand pounds, ‘—if these people spoken of, occupied the
position of being in society—they were in society?’
Veneering is bound to confess that they dined here, and were even
married from here.
‘Then I don’t understand,’ pursues the Father, ‘how even their living
beyond their means could bring them to what has been termed a total
smash. Because, there is always such a thing as an adjustment of
affairs, in the case of people of any standing at all.’
Eugene (who would seem to be in a gloomy state of suggestiveness),
suggests, ‘Suppose you have no means and live beyond them?’
This is too insolvent a state of things for the Father to entertain. It
is too insolvent a state of things for any one with any self-respect
to entertain, and is universally scouted. But, it is so amazing how any
people can have come to a total smash, that everybody feels bound to
account for it specially. One of the Fathers says, ‘Gaming table.’
Another of the Fathers says, ‘Speculated without knowing that
speculation is a science.’ Boots says ‘Horses.’ Lady Tippins says to her
fan, ‘Two establishments.’ Mr Podsnap, saying nothing, is referred
to for his opinion; which he delivers as follows; much flushed and
extremely angry:
‘Don’t ask me. I desire to take no part in the discussion of these
people’s affairs. I abhor the subject. It is an odious subject, an
offensive subject, a subject that makes me sick, and I—’ And with his
favourite right-arm flourish which sweeps away everything and settles it
for ever, Mr Podsnap sweeps these inconveniently unexplainable wretches
who have lived beyond their means and gone to total smash, off the face
of the universe.
Eugene, leaning back in his chair, is observing Mr Podsnap with an
irreverent face, and may be about to offer a new suggestion, when
the Analytical is beheld in collision with the Coachman; the Coachman
manifesting a purpose of coming at the company with a silver salver,
as though intent upon making a collection for his wife and family; the
Analytical cutting him off at the sideboard. The superior stateliness,
if not the superior generalship, of the Analytical prevails over a man
who is as nothing off the box; and the Coachman, yielding up his salver,
retires defeated.
Then, the Analytical, perusing a scrap of paper lying on the salver,
with the air of a literary Censor, adjusts it, takes his time about
going to the table with it, and presents it to Mr Eugene Wrayburn.
Whereupon the pleasant Tippins says aloud, ‘The Lord Chancellor has
resigned!’
With distracting coolness and slowness—for he knows the curiosity of
the Charmer to be always devouring—Eugene makes a pretence of getting
out an eyeglass, polishing it, and reading the paper with difficulty,
long after he has seen what is written on it. What is written on it in
wet ink, is:
‘Young Blight.’
‘Waiting?’ says Eugene over his shoulder, in confidence, with the
Analytical.
‘Waiting,’ returns the Analytical in responsive confidence.
Eugene looks ‘Excuse me,’ towards Mrs Veneering, goes out, and finds
Young Blight, Mortimer’s clerk, at the hall-door.
‘You told me to bring him, sir, to wherever you was, if he come while
you was out and I was in,’ says that discreet young gentleman, standing
on tiptoe to whisper; ‘and I’ve brought him.’
‘Sharp boy. Where is he?’ asks Eugene.
‘He’s in a cab, sir, at the door. I thought it best not to show him, you
see, if it could be helped; for he’s a-shaking all over, like—Blight’s
simile is perhaps inspired by the surrounding dishes of sweets—‘like
Glue Monge.’
‘Sharp boy again,’ returns Eugene. ‘I’ll go to him.’
Goes out straightway, and, leisurely leaning his arms on the open window
of a cab in waiting, looks in at Mr Dolls: who has brought his own
atmosphere with him, and would seem from its odour to have brought it,
for convenience of carriage, in a rum-cask.
‘Now Dolls, wake up!’
‘Mist Wrayburn? Drection! Fifteen shillings!’
After carefully reading the dingy scrap of paper handed to him, and as
carefully tucking it into his waistcoat pocket, Eugene tells out the
money; beginning incautiously by telling the first shilling into Mr
Dolls’s hand, which instantly jerks it out of window; and ending by
telling the fifteen shillings on the seat.
‘Give him a ride back to Charing Cross, sharp boy, and there get rid of
him.’
Returning to the dining-room, and pausing for an instant behind the
screen at the door, Eugene overhears, above the hum and clatter, the
fair Tippins saying: ‘I am dying to ask him what he was called out for!’
‘Are you?’ mutters Eugene, ‘then perhaps if you can’t ask him, you’ll
die. So I’ll be a benefactor to society, and go. A stroll and a cigar,
and I can think this over. Think this over.’ Thus, with a thoughtful
face, he finds his hat and cloak, unseen of the Analytical, and goes his
way.
BOOK THE FOURTH — A TURNING
Chapter 1
SETTING TRAPS
Plashwater Weir Mill Lock looked tranquil and pretty on an evening in
the summer time. A soft air stirred the leaves of the fresh green trees,
and passed like a smooth shadow over the river, and like a smoother
shadow over the yielding grass. The voice of the falling water, like
the voices of the sea and the wind, were as an outer memory to a
contemplative listener; but not particularly so to Mr Riderhood, who sat
on one of the blunt wooden levers of his lock-gates, dozing. Wine must
be got into a butt by some agency before it can be drawn out; and the
wine of sentiment never having been got into Mr Riderhood by any agency,
nothing in nature tapped him.
As the Rogue sat, ever and again nodding himself off his balance, his
recovery was always attended by an angry stare and growl, as if, in the
absence of any one else, he had aggressive inclinations towards himself.
In one of these starts the cry of ‘Lock, ho! Lock!’ prevented his
relapse into a doze. Shaking himself as he got up like the surly brute
he was, he gave his growl a responsive twist at the end, and turned his
face down-stream to see who hailed.
It was an amateur-sculler, well up to his work though taking it easily,
in so light a boat that the Rogue remarked: ‘A little less on you, and
you’d a’most ha’ been a Wagerbut’; then went to work at his windlass
handles and sluices, to let the sculler in. As the latter stood in his
boat, holding on by the boat-hook to the woodwork at the lock side,
waiting for the gates to open, Rogue Riderhood recognized his ‘T’other
governor,’ Mr Eugene Wrayburn; who was, however, too indifferent or too
much engaged to recognize him.
The creaking lock-gates opened slowly, and the light boat passed in as
soon as there was room enough, and the creaking lock-gates closed upon
it, and it floated low down in the dock between the two sets of gates,
until the water should rise and the second gates should open and let it
out. When Riderhood had run to his second windlass and turned it, and
while he leaned against the lever of that gate to help it to swing
open presently, he noticed, lying to rest under the green hedge by the
towing-path astern of the Lock, a Bargeman.
The water rose and rose as the sluice poured in, dispersing the scum
which had formed behind the lumbering gates, and sending the boat up,
so that the sculler gradually rose like an apparition against the light
from the bargeman’s point of view. Riderhood observed that the bargeman
rose too, leaning on his arm, and seemed to have his eyes fastened on
the rising figure.
But, there was the toll to be taken, as the gates were now complaining
and opening. The T’other governor tossed it ashore, twisted in a piece
of paper, and as he did so, knew his man.
‘Ay, ay? It’s you, is it, honest friend?’ said Eugene, seating himself
preparatory to resuming his sculls. ‘You got the place, then?’
‘I got the place, and no thanks to you for it, nor yet none to Lawyer
Lightwood,’ gruffly answered Riderhood.
‘We saved our recommendation, honest fellow,’ said Eugene, ‘for the next
candidate—the one who will offer himself when you are transported or
hanged. Don’t be long about it; will you be so good?’
So imperturbable was the air with which he gravely bent to his work that
Riderhood remained staring at him, without having found a retort, until
he had rowed past a line of wooden objects by the weir, which showed
like huge teetotums standing at rest in the water, and was almost hidden
by the drooping boughs on the left bank, as he rowed away, keeping
out of the opposing current. It being then too late to retort with
any effect—if that could ever have been done—the honest man confined
himself to cursing and growling in a grim under-tone. Having then
got his gates shut, he crossed back by his plank lock-bridge to the
towing-path side of the river.
If, in so doing, he took another glance at the bargeman, he did it by
stealth. He cast himself on the grass by the Lock side, in an indolent
way, with his back in that direction, and, having gathered a few blades,
fell to chewing them. The dip of Eugene Wrayburn’s sculls had become
hardly audible in his ears when the bargeman passed him, putting the
utmost width that he could between them, and keeping under the hedge.
Then, Riderhood sat up and took a long look at his figure, and then
cried: ‘Hi—I—i! Lock, ho! Lock! Plashwater Weir Mill Lock!’
The bargeman stopped, and looked back.
‘Plashwater Weir Mill Lock, T’otherest gov—er—nor—or—or—or!’ cried
Mr Riderhood, with his hands to his mouth.
The bargeman turned back. Approaching nearer and nearer, the bargeman
became Bradley Headstone, in rough water-side second-hand clothing.
‘Wish I may die,’ said Riderhood, smiting his right leg, and laughing,
as he sat on the grass, ‘if you ain’t ha’ been a imitating me,
T’otherest governor! Never thought myself so good-looking afore!’
Truly, Bradley Headstone had taken careful note of the honest man’s
dress in the course of that night-walk they had had together. He must
have committed it to memory, and slowly got it by heart. It was
exactly reproduced in the dress he now wore. And whereas, in his own
schoolmaster clothes, he usually looked as if they were the clothes of
some other man, he now looked, in the clothes of some other man or men,
as if they were his own.
‘THIS your Lock?’ said Bradley, whose surprise had a genuine air; ‘they
told me, where I last inquired, it was the third I should come to. This
is only the second.’
‘It’s my belief, governor,’ returned Riderhood, with a wink and shake of
his head, ‘that you’ve dropped one in your counting. It ain’t Locks as
YOU’VE been giving your mind to. No, no!’
As he expressively jerked his pointing finger in the direction the boat
had taken, a flush of impatience mounted into Bradley’s face, and he
looked anxiously up the river.
‘It ain’t Locks as YOU’VE been a reckoning up,’ said Riderhood, when the
schoolmaster’s eyes came back again. ‘No, no!’
‘What other calculations do you suppose I have been occupied with?
Mathematics?’
‘I never heerd it called that. It’s a long word for it. Hows’ever,
p’raps you call it so,’ said Riderhood, stubbornly chewing his grass.
‘It. What?’
‘I’ll say them, instead of it, if you like,’ was the coolly growled
reply. ‘It’s safer talk too.’
‘What do you mean that I should understand by them?’
‘Spites, affronts, offences giv’ and took, deadly aggrawations, such
like,’ answered Riderhood.
Do what Bradley Headstone would, he could not keep that former flush of
impatience out of his face, or so master his eyes as to prevent their
again looking anxiously up the river.
‘Ha ha! Don’t be afeerd, T’otherest,’ said Riderhood. ‘The T’other’s got
to make way agin the stream, and he takes it easy. You can soon come up
with him. But wot’s the good of saying that to you! YOU know how fur
you could have outwalked him betwixt anywheres about where he lost the
tide—say Richmond—and this, if you had a mind to it.’
‘You think I have been following him?’ said Bradley.
‘I KNOW you have,’ said Riderhood.
‘Well! I have, I have,’ Bradley admitted. ‘But,’ with another anxious
look up the river, ‘he may land.’
‘Easy you! He won’t be lost if he does land,’ said Riderhood. ‘He must
leave his boat behind him. He can’t make a bundle or a parcel on it, and
carry it ashore with him under his arm.’
‘He was speaking to you just now,’ said Bradley, kneeling on one knee on
the grass beside the Lock-keeper. ‘What did he say?’
‘Cheek,’ said Riderhood.
‘What?’
‘Cheek,’ repeated Riderhood, with an angry oath; ‘cheek is what he said.
He can’t say nothing but cheek. I’d ha’ liked to plump down aboard of
him, neck and crop, with a heavy jump, and sunk him.’
Bradley turned away his haggard face for a few moments, and then said,
tearing up a tuft of grass:
‘Damn him!’
‘Hooroar!’ cried Riderhood. ‘Does you credit! Hooroar! I cry chorus to
the T’otherest.’
‘What turn,’ said Bradley, with an effort at self-repression that forced
him to wipe his face, ‘did his insolence take to-day?’
‘It took the turn,’ answered Riderhood, with sullen ferocity, ‘of hoping
as I was getting ready to be hanged.’
‘Let him look to that,’ cried Bradley. ‘Let him look to that! It will
be bad for him when men he has injured, and at whom he has jeered, are
thinking of getting hanged. Let HIM get ready for HIS fate, when that
comes about. There was more meaning in what he said than he knew of, or
he wouldn’t have had brains enough to say it. Let him look to it; let
him look to it! When men he has wronged, and on whom he has bestowed
his insolence, are getting ready to be hanged, there is a death-bell
ringing. And not for them.’
Riderhood, looking fixedly at him, gradually arose from his recumbent
posture while the schoolmaster said these words with the utmost
concentration of rage and hatred. So, when the words were all spoken,
he too kneeled on one knee on the grass, and the two men looked at one
another.
‘Oh!’ said Riderhood, very deliberately spitting out the grass he had
been chewing. ‘Then, I make out, T’otherest, as he is a-going to her?’
‘He left London,’ answered Bradley, ‘yesterday. I have hardly a doubt,
this time, that at last he is going to her.’
‘You ain’t sure, then?’
‘I am as sure here,’ said Bradley, with a clutch at the breast of his
coarse shirt, ‘as if it was written there;’ with a blow or a stab at the
sky.
‘Ah! But judging from the looks on you,’ retorted Riderhood, completely
ridding himself of his grass, and drawing his sleeve across his mouth,
‘you’ve made ekally sure afore, and have got disapinted. It has told
upon you.’
‘Listen,’ said Bradley, in a low voice, bending forward to lay his hand
upon the Lock-keeper’s shoulder. ‘These are my holidays.’
‘Are they, by George!’ muttered Riderhood, with his eyes on the
passion-wasted face. ‘Your working days must be stiff ’uns, if these is
your holidays.’
‘And I have never left him,’ pursued Bradley, waving the interruption
aside with an impatient hand, ‘since they began. And I never will leave
him now, till I have seen him with her.’
‘And when you have seen him with her?’ said Riderhood.
‘—I’ll come back to you.’
Riderhood stiffened the knee on which he had been resting, got up, and
looked gloomily at his new friend. After a few moments they walked side
by side in the direction the boat had taken, as if by tacit consent;
Bradley pressing forward, and Riderhood holding back; Bradley getting
out his neat prim purse into his hand (a present made him by penny
subscription among his pupils); and Riderhood, unfolding his arms to
smear his coat-cuff across his mouth with a thoughtful air.
‘I have a pound for you,’ said Bradley.
‘You’ve two,’ said Riderhood.
Bradley held a sovereign between his fingers. Slouching at his side with
his eyes upon the towing-path, Riderhood held his left hand open, with
a certain slight drawing action towards himself. Bradley dipped in his
purse for another sovereign, and two chinked in Riderhood’s hand, the
drawing action of which, promptly strengthening, drew them home to his
pocket.
‘Now, I must follow him,’ said Bradley Headstone. ‘He takes this
river-road—the fool!—to confuse observation, or divert attention, if
not solely to baffle me. But he must have the power of making himself
invisible before he can shake Me off.’
Riderhood stopped. ‘If you don’t get disapinted agin, T’otherest, maybe
you’ll put up at the Lock-house when you come back?’
‘I will.’
Riderhood nodded, and the figure of the bargeman went its way along the
soft turf by the side of the towing-path, keeping near the hedge and
moving quickly. They had turned a point from which a long stretch of
river was visible. A stranger to the scene might have been certain that
here and there along the line of hedge a figure stood, watching the
bargeman, and waiting for him to come up. So he himself had often
believed at first, until his eyes became used to the posts, bearing the
dagger that slew Wat Tyler, in the City of London shield.
Within Mr Riderhood’s knowledge all daggers were as one. Even to Bradley
Headstone, who could have told to the letter without book all about Wat
Tyler, Lord Mayor Walworth, and the King, that it is dutiful for youth
to know, there was but one subject living in the world for every sharp
destructive instrument that summer evening. So, Riderhood looking after
him as he went, and he with his furtive hand laid upon the dagger as he
passed it, and his eyes upon the boat, were much upon a par.
The boat went on, under the arching trees, and over their tranquil
shadows in the water. The bargeman skulking on the opposite bank of the
stream, went on after it. Sparkles of light showed Riderhood when
and where the rower dipped his blades, until, even as he stood idly
watching, the sun went down and the landscape was dyed red. And then the
red had the appearance of fading out of it and mounting up to Heaven, as
we say that blood, guiltily shed, does.
Turning back towards his Lock (he had not gone out of view of it), the
Rogue pondered as deeply as it was within the contracted power of such
a fellow to do. ‘Why did he copy my clothes? He could have looked like
what he wanted to look like, without that.’ This was the subject-matter
in his thoughts; in which, too, there came lumbering up, by times, like
any half floating and half sinking rubbish in the river, the question,
Was it done by accident? The setting of a trap for finding out whether
it was accidentally done, soon superseded, as a practical piece of
cunning, the abstruser inquiry why otherwise it was done. And he devised
a means.
Rogue Riderhood went into his Lock-house, and brought forth, into the
now sober grey light, his chest of clothes. Sitting on the grass beside
it, he turned out, one by one, the articles it contained, until he came
to a conspicuous bright red neckerchief stained black here and there by
wear. It arrested his attention, and he sat pausing over it, until he
took off the rusty colourless wisp that he wore round his throat, and
substituted the red neckerchief, leaving the long ends flowing. ‘Now,’
said the Rogue, ‘if arter he sees me in this neckhankecher, I see him in
a sim’lar neckhankecher, it won’t be accident!’ Elated by his device, he
carried his chest in again and went to supper.
‘Lock ho! Lock!’ It was a light night, and a barge coming down summoned
him out of a long doze. In due course he had let the barge through
and was alone again, looking to the closing of his gates, when Bradley
Headstone appeared before him, standing on the brink of the Lock.
‘Halloa!’ said Riderhood. ‘Back a’ ready, T’otherest?’
‘He has put up for the night, at an Angler’s Inn,’ was the fatigued and
hoarse reply. ‘He goes on, up the river, at six in the morning. I have
come back for a couple of hours’ rest.’
‘You want ’em,’ said Riderhood, making towards the schoolmaster by his
plank bridge.
‘I don’t want them,’ returned Bradley, irritably, ‘because I would
rather not have them, but would much prefer to follow him all night.
However, if he won’t lead, I can’t follow. I have been waiting about,
until I could discover, for a certainty, at what time he starts; if I
couldn’t have made sure of it, I should have stayed there.—This would
be a bad pit for a man to be flung into with his hands tied. These
slippery smooth walls would give him no chance. And I suppose those
gates would suck him down?’
‘Suck him down, or swaller him up, he wouldn’t get out,’ said Riderhood.
‘Not even, if his hands warn’t tied, he wouldn’t. Shut him in at both
ends, and I’d give him a pint o’ old ale ever to come up to me standing
here.’
Bradley looked down with a ghastly relish. ‘You run about the brink, and
run across it, in this uncertain light, on a few inches width of rotten
wood,’ said he. ‘I wonder you have no thought of being drowned.’
‘I can’t be!’ said Riderhood.
‘You can’t be drowned?’
‘No!’ said Riderhood, shaking his head with an air of thorough
conviction, ‘it’s well known. I’ve been brought out o’ drowning, and I
can’t be drowned. I wouldn’t have that there busted B’lowbridger aware
on it, or her people might make it tell agin’ the damages I mean to get.
But it’s well known to water-side characters like myself, that him as
has been brought out o drowning, can never be drowned.’
Bradley smiled sourly at the ignorance he would have corrected in one of
his pupils, and continued to look down into the water, as if the place
had a gloomy fascination for him.
‘You seem to like it,’ said Riderhood.
He took no notice, but stood looking down, as if he had not heard the
words. There was a very dark expression on his face; an expression
that the Rogue found it hard to understand. It was fierce, and full
of purpose; but the purpose might have been as much against himself as
against another. If he had stepped back for a spring, taken a leap, and
thrown himself in, it would have been no surprising sequel to the look.
Perhaps his troubled soul, set upon some violence, did hover for the
moment between that violence and another.
‘Didn’t you say,’ asked Riderhood, after watching him for a while with
a sidelong glance, ‘as you had come back for a couple o’ hours’ rest?’
But, even then he had to jog him with his elbow before he answered.
‘Eh? Yes.’
‘Hadn’t you better come in and take your couple o’ hours’ rest?’
‘Thank you. Yes.’
With the look of one just awakened, he followed Riderhood into the
Lock-house, where the latter produced from a cupboard some cold salt
beef and half a loaf, some gin in a bottle, and some water in a jug. The
last he brought in, cool and dripping, from the river.
‘There, T’otherest,’ said Riderhood, stooping over him to put it on
the table. ‘You’d better take a bite and a sup, afore you takes
your snooze.’ The draggling ends of the red neckerchief caught the
schoolmaster’s eyes. Riderhood saw him look at it.
‘Oh!’ thought that worthy. ‘You’re a-taking notice, are you? Come! You
shall have a good squint at it then.’ With which reflection he sat down
on the other side of the table, threw open his vest, and made a pretence
of re-tying the neckerchief with much deliberation.
Bradley ate and drank. As he sat at his platter and mug, Riderhood saw
him, again and yet again, steal a look at the neckerchief, as if he were
correcting his slow observation and prompting his sluggish memory.
‘When you’re ready for your snooze,’ said that honest creature, ‘chuck
yourself on my bed in the corner, T’otherest. It’ll be broad day afore
three. I’ll call you early.’
‘I shall require no calling,’ answered Bradley. And soon afterwards,
divesting himself only of his shoes and coat, laid himself down.
Riderhood, leaning back in his wooden arm-chair with his arms folded
on his breast, looked at him lying with his right hand clenched in his
sleep and his teeth set, until a film came over his own sight, and he
slept too. He awoke to find that it was daylight, and that his
visitor was already astir, and going out to the river-side to cool his
head:—‘Though I’m blest,’ muttered Riderhood at the Lock-house door,
looking after him, ‘if I think there’s water enough in all the Thames
to do THAT for you!’ Within five minutes he had taken his departure,
and was passing on into the calm distance as he had passed yesterday.
Riderhood knew when a fish leaped, by his starting and glancing round.
‘Lock ho! Lock!’ at intervals all day, and ‘Lock ho! Lock!’ thrice in
the ensuing night, but no return of Bradley. The second day was sultry
and oppressive. In the afternoon, a thunderstorm came up, and had but
newly broken into a furious sweep of rain when he rushed in at the door,
like the storm itself.
‘You’ve seen him with her!’ exclaimed Riderhood, starting up.
‘I have.’
‘Where?’
‘At his journey’s end. His boat’s hauled up for three days. I heard
him give the order. Then, I saw him wait for her and meet her. I saw
them’—he stopped as though he were suffocating, and began again—‘I saw
them walking side by side, last night.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What are you going to do?’
He dropped into a chair, and laughed. Immediately afterwards, a great
spirt of blood burst from his nose.
‘How does that happen?’ asked Riderhood.
‘I don’t know. I can’t keep it back. It has happened twice—three
times—four times—I don’t know how many times—since last night. I
taste it, smell it, see it, it chokes me, and then it breaks out like
this.’
He went into the pelting rain again with his head bare, and, bending low
over the river, and scooping up the water with his two hands, washed the
blood away. All beyond his figure, as Riderhood looked from the door,
was a vast dark curtain in solemn movement towards one quarter of the
heavens. He raised his head and came back, wet from head to foot, but
with the lower parts of his sleeves, where he had dipped into the river,
streaming water.
‘Your face is like a ghost’s,’ said Riderhood.
‘Did you ever see a ghost?’ was the sullen retort.
‘I mean to say, you’re quite wore out.’
‘That may well be. I have had no rest since I left here. I don’t
remember that I have so much as sat down since I left here.’
‘Lie down now, then,’ said Riderhood.
‘I will, if you’ll give me something to quench my thirst first.’
The bottle and jug were again produced, and he mixed a weak draught, and
another, and drank both in quick succession. ‘You asked me something,’
he said then.
‘No, I didn’t,’ replied Riderhood.
‘I tell you,’ retorted Bradley, turning upon him in a wild and desperate
manner, ‘you asked me something, before I went out to wash my face in
the river.
‘Oh! Then?’ said Riderhood, backing a little. ‘I asked you wot you wos
a-going to do.’
‘How can a man in this state know?’ he answered, protesting with both
his tremulous hands, with an action so vigorously angry that he shook
the water from his sleeves upon the floor, as if he had wrung them. ‘How
can I plan anything, if I haven’t sleep?’
‘Why, that’s what I as good as said,’ returned the other. ‘Didn’t I say
lie down?’
‘Well, perhaps you did.’
‘Well! Anyways I says it again. Sleep where you slept last; the sounder
and longer you can sleep, the better you’ll know arterwards what you’re
up to.’
His pointing to the truckle bed in the corner, seemed gradually to bring
that poor couch to Bradley’s wandering remembrance. He slipped off his
worn down-trodden shoes, and cast himself heavily, all wet as he was,
upon the bed.
Riderhood sat down in his wooden arm-chair, and looked through the
window at the lightning, and listened to the thunder. But, his thoughts
were far from being absorbed by the thunder and the lightning, for again
and again and again he looked very curiously at the exhausted man upon
the bed. The man had turned up the collar of the rough coat he wore,
to shelter himself from the storm, and had buttoned it about his neck.
Unconscious of that, and of most things, he had left the coat so, both
when he had laved his face in the river, and when he had cast himself
upon the bed; though it would have been much easier to him if he had
unloosened it.
The thunder rolled heavily, and the forked lightning seemed to make
jagged rents in every part of the vast curtain without, as Riderhood sat
by the window, glancing at the bed. Sometimes, he saw the man upon the
bed, by a red light; sometimes, by a blue; sometimes, he scarcely saw
him in the darkness of the storm; sometimes he saw nothing of him in
the blinding glare of palpitating white fire. Anon, the rain would come
again with a tremendous rush, and the river would seem to rise to meet
it, and a blast of wind, bursting upon the door, would flutter the hair
and dress of the man, as if invisible messengers were come around the
bed to carry him away. From all these phases of the storm, Riderhood
would turn, as if they were interruptions—rather striking interruptions
possibly, but interruptions still—of his scrutiny of the sleeper.
‘He sleeps sound,’ he said within himself; ‘yet he’s that up to me and
that noticing of me that my getting out of my chair may wake him, when a
rattling peal won’t; let alone my touching of him.’
He very cautiously rose to his feet. ‘T’otherest,’ he said, in a low,
calm voice, ‘are you a lying easy? There’s a chill in the air, governor.
Shall I put a coat over you?’
No answer.
‘That’s about what it is a’ready, you see,’ muttered Riderhood in a
lower and a different voice; ‘a coat over you, a coat over you!’
The sleeper moving an arm, he sat down again in his chair, and feigned
to watch the storm from the window. It was a grand spectacle, but not so
grand as to keep his eyes, for half a minute together, from stealing a
look at the man upon the bed.
It was at the concealed throat of the sleeper that Riderhood so often
looked so curiously, until the sleep seemed to deepen into the stupor
of the dead-tired in mind and body. Then, Riderhood came from the window
cautiously, and stood by the bed.
‘Poor man!’ he murmured in a low tone, with a crafty face, and a very
watchful eye and ready foot, lest he should start up; ‘this here coat
of his must make him uneasy in his sleep. Shall I loosen it for him,
and make him more comfortable? Ah! I think I ought to do it, poor man. I
think I will.’
He touched the first button with a very cautious hand, and a step
backward. But, the sleeper remaining in profound unconsciousness, he
touched the other buttons with a more assured hand, and perhaps the more
lightly on that account. Softly and slowly, he opened the coat and drew
it back.
The draggling ends of a bright-red neckerchief were then disclosed, and
he had even been at the pains of dipping parts of it in some liquid,
to give it the appearance of having become stained by wear. With a
much-perplexed face, Riderhood looked from it to the sleeper, and from
the sleeper to it, and finally crept back to his chair, and there, with
his hand to his chin, sat long in a brown study, looking at both.
Chapter 2
THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN RISES A LITTLE
Mr and Mrs Lammle had come to breakfast with Mr and Mrs Boffin. They
were not absolutely uninvited, but had pressed themselves with so much
urgency on the golden couple, that evasion of the honour and pleasure
of their company would have been difficult, if desired. They were in a
charming state of mind, were Mr and Mrs Lammle, and almost as fond of Mr
and Mrs Boffin as of one another.
‘My dear Mrs Boffin,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘it imparts new life to me, to
see my Alfred in confidential communication with Mr Boffin. The two
were formed to become intimate. So much simplicity combined with so much
force of character, such natural sagacity united to such amiability and
gentleness—these are the distinguishing characteristics of both.’
This being said aloud, gave Mr Lammle an opportunity, as he came with Mr
Boffin from the window to the breakfast table, of taking up his dear and
honoured wife.
‘My Sophronia,’ said that gentleman, ‘your too partial estimate of your
husband’s character—’
‘No! Not too partial, Alfred,’ urged the lady, tenderly moved; ‘never
say that.’
‘My child, your favourable opinion, then, of your husband—you don’t
object to that phrase, darling?’
‘How can I, Alfred?’
‘Your favourable opinion then, my Precious, does less than justice to Mr
Boffin, and more than justice to me.’
‘To the first charge, Alfred, I plead guilty. But to the second, oh no,
no!’
‘Less than justice to Mr Boffin, Sophronia,’ said Mr Lammle, soaring
into a tone of moral grandeur, ‘because it represents Mr Boffin as on my
lower level; more than justice to me, Sophronia, because it represents
me as on Mr Boffin’s higher level. Mr Boffin bears and forbears far more
than I could.’
‘Far more than you could for yourself, Alfred?’
‘My love, that is not the question.’
‘Not the question, Lawyer?’ said Mrs Lammle, archly.
‘No, dear Sophronia. From my lower level, I regard Mr Boffin as too
generous, as possessed of too much clemency, as being too good to
persons who are unworthy of him and ungrateful to him. To those noble
qualities I can lay no claim. On the contrary, they rouse my indignation
when I see them in action.’
‘Alfred!’
‘They rouse my indignation, my dear, against the unworthy persons,
and give me a combative desire to stand between Mr Boffin and all such
persons. Why? Because, in my lower nature I am more worldly and less
delicate. Not being so magnanimous as Mr Boffin, I feel his injuries
more than he does himself, and feel more capable of opposing his
injurers.’
It struck Mrs Lammle that it appeared rather difficult this morning
to bring Mr and Mrs Boffin into agreeable conversation. Here had been
several lures thrown out, and neither of them had uttered a word. Here
were she, Mrs Lammle, and her husband discoursing at once affectingly
and effectively, but discoursing alone. Assuming that the dear old
creatures were impressed by what they heard, still one would like to be
sure of it, the more so, as at least one of the dear old creatures
was somewhat pointedly referred to. If the dear old creatures were too
bashful or too dull to assume their required places in the discussion,
why then it would seem desirable that the dear old creatures should be
taken by their heads and shoulders and brought into it.
‘But is not my husband saying in effect,’ asked Mrs Lammle, therefore,
with an innocent air, of Mr and Mrs Boffin, ‘that he becomes unmindful
of his own temporary misfortunes in his admiration of another whom he is
burning to serve? And is not that making an admission that his nature is
a generous one? I am wretched in argument, but surely this is so, dear
Mr and Mrs Boffin?’
Still, neither Mr and Mrs Boffin said a word. He sat with his eyes on
his plate, eating his muffins and ham, and she sat shyly looking at the
teapot. Mrs Lammle’s innocent appeal was merely thrown into the air, to
mingle with the steam of the urn. Glancing towards Mr and Mrs Boffin,
she very slightly raised her eyebrows, as though inquiring of her
husband: ‘Do I notice anything wrong here?’
Mr Lammle, who had found his chest effective on a variety of occasions,
manoeuvred his capacious shirt front into the largest demonstration
possible, and then smiling retorted on his wife, thus:
‘Sophronia, darling, Mr and Mrs Boffin will remind you of the old adage,
that self-praise is no recommendation.’
‘Self-praise, Alfred? Do you mean because we are one and the same?’
‘No, my dear child. I mean that you cannot fail to remember, if you
reflect for a single moment, that what you are pleased to compliment me
upon feeling in the case of Mr Boffin, you have yourself confided to me
as your own feeling in the case of Mrs Boffin.’
(‘I shall be beaten by this Lawyer,’ Mrs Lammle gaily whispered to
Mrs Boffin. ‘I am afraid I must admit it, if he presses me, for it’s
damagingly true.’)
Several white dints began to come and go about Mr Lammle’s nose, as he
observed that Mrs Boffin merely looked up from the teapot for a moment
with an embarrassed smile, which was no smile, and then looked down
again.
‘Do you admit the charge, Sophronia?’ inquired Alfred, in a rallying
tone.
‘Really, I think,’ said Mrs Lammle, still gaily, ‘I must throw myself
on the protection of the Court. Am I bound to answer that question, my
Lord?’ To Mr Boffin.
‘You needn’t, if you don’t like, ma’am,’ was his answer. ‘It’s not of
the least consequence.’
Both husband and wife glanced at him, very doubtfully. His manner was
grave, but not coarse, and derived some dignity from a certain repressed
dislike of the tone of the conversation.
Again Mrs Lammle raised her eyebrows for instruction from her husband.
He replied in a slight nod, ‘Try ’em again.’
‘To protect myself against the suspicion of covert self-laudation, my
dear Mrs Boffin,’ said the airy Mrs Lammle therefore, ‘I must tell you
how it was.’
‘No. Pray don’t,’ Mr Boffin interposed.
Mrs Lammle turned to him laughingly. ‘The Court objects?’
‘Ma’am,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘the Court (if I am the Court) does object. The
Court objects for two reasons. First, because the Court don’t think it
fair. Secondly, because the dear old lady, Mrs Court (if I am Mr) gets
distressed by it.’
A very remarkable wavering between two bearings—between her
propitiatory bearing there, and her defiant bearing at Mr Twemlow’s—was
observable on the part of Mrs Lammle as she said:
‘What does the Court not consider fair?’
‘Letting you go on,’ replied Mr Boffin, nodding his head soothingly, as
who should say, We won’t be harder on you than we can help; we’ll make
the best of it. ‘It’s not above-board and it’s not fair. When the old
lady is uncomfortable, there’s sure to be good reason for it. I see she
is uncomfortable, and I plainly see this is the good reason wherefore.
HAVE you breakfasted, ma’am.’
Mrs Lammle, settling into her defiant manner, pushed her plate away,
looked at her husband, and laughed; but by no means gaily.
‘Have YOU breakfasted, sir?’ inquired Mr Boffin.
‘Thank you,’ replied Alfred, showing all his teeth. ‘If Mrs Boffin will
oblige me, I’ll take another cup of tea.’
He spilled a little of it over the chest which ought to have been so
effective, and which had done so little; but on the whole drank it with
something of an air, though the coming and going dints got almost as
large, the while, as if they had been made by pressure of the teaspoon.
‘A thousand thanks,’ he then observed. ‘I have breakfasted.’
‘Now, which,’ said Mr Boffin softly, taking out a pocket-book, ‘which of
you two is Cashier?’
‘Sophronia, my dear,’ remarked her husband, as he leaned back in his
chair, waving his right hand towards her, while he hung his left hand
by the thumb in the arm-hole of his waistcoat: ‘it shall be your
department.’
‘I would rather,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘that it was your husband’s, ma’am,
because—but never mind, because, I would rather have to do with him.
However, what I have to say, I will say with as little offence as
possible; if I can say it without any, I shall be heartily glad. You two
have done me a service, a very great service, in doing what you did (my
old lady knows what it was), and I have put into this envelope a bank
note for a hundred pound. I consider the service well worth a hundred
pound, and I am well pleased to pay the money. Would you do me the
favour to take it, and likewise to accept my thanks?’
With a haughty action, and without looking towards him, Mrs Lammle held
out her left hand, and into it Mr Boffin put the little packet. When she
had conveyed it to her bosom, Mr Lammle had the appearance of feeling
relieved, and breathing more freely, as not having been quite certain
that the hundred pounds were his, until the note had been safely
transferred out of Mr Boffin’s keeping into his own Sophronia’s.
‘It is not impossible,’ said Mr Boffin, addressing Alfred, ‘that you
have had some general idea, sir, of replacing Rokesmith, in course of
time?’
‘It is not,’ assented Alfred, with a glittering smile and a great deal
of nose, ‘not impossible.’
‘And perhaps, ma’am,’ pursued Mr Boffin, addressing Sophronia, ‘you have
been so kind as to take up my old lady in your own mind, and to do her
the honour of turning the question over whether you mightn’t one of
these days have her in charge, like? Whether you mightn’t be a sort of
Miss Bella Wilfer to her, and something more?’
‘I should hope,’ returned Mrs Lammle, with a scornful look and in a loud
voice, ‘that if I were anything to your wife, sir, I could hardly fail
to be something more than Miss Bella Wilfer, as you call her.’
‘What do YOU call her, ma’am?’ asked Mr Boffin.
Mrs Lammle disdained to reply, and sat defiantly beating one foot on the
ground.
‘Again I think I may say, that’s not impossible. Is it, sir?’ asked Mr
Boffin, turning to Alfred.
‘It is not,’ said Alfred, smiling assent as before, ‘not impossible.’
‘Now,’ said Mr Boffin, gently, ‘it won’t do. I don’t wish to say a
single word that might be afterwards remembered as unpleasant; but it
won’t do.’
‘Sophronia, my love,’ her husband repeated in a bantering manner, ‘you
hear? It won’t do.’
‘No,’ said Mr Boffin, with his voice still dropped, ‘it really won’t.
You positively must excuse us. If you’ll go your way, we’ll go ours, and
so I hope this affair ends to the satisfaction of all parties.’
Mrs Lammle gave him the look of a decidedly dissatisfied party demanding
exemption from the category; but said nothing.
‘The best thing we can make of the affair,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘is a matter
of business, and as a matter of business it’s brought to a conclusion.
You have done me a great service, a very great service, and I have paid
for it. Is there any objection to the price?’
Mr and Mrs Lammle looked at one another across the table, but neither
could say that there was. Mr Lammle shrugged his shoulders, and Mrs
Lammle sat rigid.
‘Very good,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘We hope (my old lady and me) that you’ll
give us credit for taking the plainest and honestest short-cut that
could be taken under the circumstances. We have talked it over with a
deal of care (my old lady and me), and we have felt that at all to lead
you on, or even at all to let you go on of your own selves, wouldn’t be
the right thing. So, I have openly given you to understand that—’
Mr Boffin sought for a new turn of speech, but could find none so
expressive as his former one, repeated in a confidential tone, ‘—that
it won’t do. If I could have put the case more pleasantly I would; but
I hope I haven’t put it very unpleasantly; at all events I haven’t meant
to. So,’ said Mr Boffin, by way of peroration, ‘wishing you well in the
way you go, we now conclude with the observation that perhaps you’ll go
it.’
Mr Lammle rose with an impudent laugh on his side of the table, and Mrs
Lammle rose with a disdainful frown on hers. At this moment a hasty foot
was heard on the staircase, and Georgiana Podsnap broke into the room,
unannounced and in tears.
‘Oh, my dear Sophronia,’ cried Georgiana, wringing her hands as she ran
up to embrace her, ‘to think that you and Alfred should be ruined! Oh,
my poor dear Sophronia, to think that you should have had a Sale at your
house after all your kindness to me! Oh, Mr and Mrs Boffin, pray forgive
me for this intrusion, but you don’t know how fond I was of Sophronia
when Pa wouldn’t let me go there any more, or what I have felt for
Sophronia since I heard from Ma of her having been brought low in the
world. You don’t, you can’t, you never can, think, how I have lain awake
at night and cried for my good Sophronia, my first and only friend!’
Mrs Lammle’s manner changed under the poor silly girl’s embraces, and
she turned extremely pale: directing one appealing look, first to Mrs
Boffin, and then to Mr Boffin. Both understood her instantly, with
a more delicate subtlety than much better educated people, whose
perception came less directly from the heart, could have brought to bear
upon the case.
‘I haven’t a minute,’ said poor little Georgiana, ‘to stay. I am out
shopping early with Ma, and I said I had a headache and got Ma to leave
me outside in the phaeton, in Piccadilly, and ran round to Sackville
Street, and heard that Sophronia was here, and then Ma came to see, oh
such a dreadful old stony woman from the country in a turban in Portland
Place, and I said I wouldn’t go up with Ma but would drive round and
leave cards for the Boffins, which is taking a liberty with the name;
but oh my goodness I am distracted, and the phaeton’s at the door, and
what would Pa say if he knew it!’
‘Don’t ye be timid, my dear,’ said Mrs Boffin. ‘You came in to see us.’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t,’ cried Georgiana. ‘It’s very impolite, I know, but
I came to see my poor Sophronia, my only friend. Oh! how I felt the
separation, my dear Sophronia, before I knew you were brought low in the
world, and how much more I feel it now!’
There were actually tears in the bold woman’s eyes, as the soft-headed
and soft-hearted girl twined her arms about her neck.
‘But I’ve come on business,’ said Georgiana, sobbing and drying her
face, and then searching in a little reticule, ‘and if I don’t despatch
it I shall have come for nothing, and oh good gracious! what would Pa
say if he knew of Sackville Street, and what would Ma say if she was
kept waiting on the doorsteps of that dreadful turban, and there never
were such pawing horses as ours unsettling my mind every moment more
and more when I want more mind than I have got, by pawing up Mr Boffin’s
street where they have no business to be. Oh! where is, where is it?
Oh! I can’t find it!’ All this time sobbing, and searching in the little
reticule.
‘What do you miss, my dear?’ asked Mr Boffin, stepping forward.
‘Oh! it’s little enough,’ replied Georgiana, ‘because Ma always treats
me as if I was in the nursery (I am sure I wish I was!), but I hardly
ever spend it and it has mounted up to fifteen pounds, Sophronia, and I
hope three five-pound notes are better than nothing, though so little,
so little! And now I have found that—oh, my goodness! there’s the other
gone next! Oh no, it isn’t, here it is!’
With that, always sobbing and searching in the reticule, Georgiana
produced a necklace.
‘Ma says chits and jewels have no business together,’ pursued Georgiana,
‘and that’s the reason why I have no trinkets except this, but I suppose
my aunt Hawkinson was of a different opinion, because she left me this,
though I used to think she might just as well have buried it, for it’s
always kept in jewellers’ cotton. However, here it is, I am thankful
to say, and of use at last, and you’ll sell it, dear Sophronia, and buy
things with it.’
‘Give it to me,’ said Mr Boffin, gently taking it. ‘I’ll see that it’s
properly disposed of.’
‘Oh! are you such a friend of Sophronia’s, Mr Boffin?’ cried Georgiana.
‘Oh, how good of you! Oh, my gracious! there was something else, and
it’s gone out of my head! Oh no, it isn’t, I remember what it was. My
grandmamma’s property, that’ll come to me when I am of age, Mr Boffin,
will be all my own, and neither Pa nor Ma nor anybody else will have
any control over it, and what I wish to do is to make some of it over
somehow to Sophronia and Alfred, by signing something somewhere that’ll
prevail on somebody to advance them something. I want them to have
something handsome to bring them up in the world again. Oh, my goodness
me! Being such a friend of my dear Sophronia’s, you won’t refuse me,
will you?’
‘No, no,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘it shall be seen to.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you!’ cried Georgiana. ‘If my maid had a little
note and half a crown, I could run round to the pastrycook’s to sign
something, or I could sign something in the Square if somebody would
come and cough for me to let ’em in with the key, and would bring a pen
and ink with ’em and a bit of blotting-paper. Oh, my gracious! I must
tear myself away, or Pa and Ma will both find out! Dear, dear Sophronia,
good, good-bye!’
The credulous little creature again embraced Mrs Lammle most
affectionately, and then held out her hand to Mr Lammle.
‘Good-bye, dear Mr Lammle—I mean Alfred. You won’t think after to-day
that I have deserted you and Sophronia because you have been brought low
in the world, will you? Oh me! oh me! I have been crying my eyes out of
my head, and Ma will be sure to ask me what’s the matter. Oh, take me
down, somebody, please, please, please!’
Mr Boffin took her down, and saw her driven away, with her poor
little red eyes and weak chin peering over the great apron of the
custard-coloured phaeton, as if she had been ordered to expiate some
childish misdemeanour by going to bed in the daylight, and were peeping
over the counterpane in a miserable flutter of repentance and low
spirits. Returning to the breakfast-room, he found Mrs Lammle still
standing on her side of the table, and Mr Lammle on his.
‘I’ll take care,’ said Mr Boffin, showing the money and the necklace,
‘that these are soon given back.’
Mrs Lammle had taken up her parasol from a side table, and stood
sketching with it on the pattern of the damask cloth, as she had
sketched on the pattern of Mr Twemlow’s papered wall.
‘You will not undeceive her I hope, Mr Boffin?’ she said, turning her
head towards him, but not her eyes.
‘No,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘I mean, as to the worth and value of her friend,’ Mrs Lammle explained,
in a measured voice, and with an emphasis on her last word.
‘No,’ he returned. ‘I may try to give a hint at her home that she is in
want of kind and careful protection, but I shall say no more than that
to her parents, and I shall say nothing to the young lady herself.’
‘Mr and Mrs Boffin,’ said Mrs Lammle, still sketching, and seeming to
bestow great pains upon it, ‘there are not many people, I think, who,
under the circumstances, would have been so considerate and sparing as
you have been to me just now. Do you care to be thanked?’
‘Thanks are always worth having,’ said Mrs Boffin, in her ready good
nature.
‘Then thank you both.’
‘Sophronia,’ asked her husband, mockingly, ‘are you sentimental?’
‘Well, well, my good sir,’ Mr Boffin interposed, ‘it’s a very good
thing to think well of another person, and it’s a very good thing to be
thought well of BY another person. Mrs Lammle will be none the worse for
it, if she is.’
‘Much obliged. But I asked Mrs Lammle if she was.’
She stood sketching on the table-cloth, with her face clouded and set,
and was silent.
‘Because,’ said Alfred, ‘I am disposed to be sentimental myself, on
your appropriation of the jewels and the money, Mr Boffin. As our little
Georgiana said, three five-pound notes are better than nothing, and if
you sell a necklace you can buy things with the produce.’
‘IF you sell it,’ was Mr Boffin’s comment, as he put it in his pocket.
Alfred followed it with his looks, and also greedily pursued the notes
until they vanished into Mr Boffin’s waistcoat pocket. Then he directed
a look, half exasperated and half jeering, at his wife. She still stood
sketching; but, as she sketched, there was a struggle within her, which
found expression in the depth of the few last lines the parasol point
indented into the table-cloth, and then some tears fell from her eyes.
‘Why, confound the woman,’ exclaimed Lammle, ‘she _is_ sentimental.’
She walked to the window, flinching under his angry stare, looked out
for a moment, and turned round quite coldly.
‘You have had no former cause of complaint on the sentimental score,
Alfred, and you will have none in future. It is not worth your noticing.
We go abroad soon, with the money we have earned here?’
‘You know we do; you know we must.’
‘There is no fear of my taking any sentiment with me. I should soon be
eased of it, if I did. But it will be all left behind. It IS all left
behind. Are you ready, Alfred?’
‘What the deuce have I been waiting for but you, Sophronia?’
‘Let us go then. I am sorry I have delayed our dignified departure.’
She passed out and he followed her. Mr and Mrs Boffin had the curiosity
softly to raise a window and look after them as they went down the long
street. They walked arm-in-arm, showily enough, but without appearing
to interchange a syllable. It might have been fanciful to suppose that
under their outer bearing there was something of the shamed air of two
cheats who were linked together by concealed handcuffs; but, not so, to
suppose that they were haggardly weary of one another, of themselves,
and of all this world. In turning the street corner they might have
turned out of this world, for anything Mr and Mrs Boffin ever saw of
them to the contrary; for, they set eyes on the Lammles never more.
Chapter 3
THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN
The evening of that day being one of the reading evenings at the Bower,
Mr Boffin kissed Mrs Boffin after a five o’clock dinner, and trotted
out, nursing his big stick in both arms, so that, as of old, it seemed
to be whispering in his ear. He carried so very attentive an expression
on his countenance that it appeared as if the confidential discourse of
the big stick required to be followed closely. Mr Boffin’s face was like
the face of a thoughtful listener to an intricate communication, and, in
trotting along, he occasionally glanced at that companion with the look
of a man who was interposing the remark: ‘You don’t mean it!’
Mr Boffin and his stick went on alone together, until they arrived at
certain cross-ways where they would be likely to fall in with any one
coming, at about the same time, from Clerkenwell to the Bower. Here they
stopped, and Mr Boffin consulted his watch.
‘It wants five minutes, good, to Venus’s appointment,’ said he. ‘I’m
rather early.’
But Venus was a punctual man, and, even as Mr Boffin replaced his watch
in its pocket, was to be descried coming towards him. He quickened his
pace on seeing Mr Boffin already at the place of meeting, and was soon
at his side.
‘Thank’ee, Venus,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Thank’ee, thank’ee, thank’ee!’
It would not have been very evident why he thanked the anatomist, but
for his furnishing the explanation in what he went on to say.
‘All right, Venus, all right. Now, that you’ve been to see me, and have
consented to keep up the appearance before Wegg of remaining in it for a
time, I have got a sort of a backer. All right, Venus. Thank’ee, Venus.
Thank’ee, thank’ee, thank’ee!’
Mr Venus shook the proffered hand with a modest air, and they pursued
the direction of the Bower.
‘Do you think Wegg is likely to drop down upon me to-night, Venus?’
inquired Mr Boffin, wistfully, as they went along.
‘I think he is, sir.’
‘Have you any particular reason for thinking so, Venus?’
‘Well, sir,’ returned that personage, ‘the fact is, he has given me
another look-in, to make sure of what he calls our stock-in-trade being
correct, and he has mentioned his intention that he was not to be put
off beginning with you the very next time you should come. And this,’
hinted Mr Venus, delicately, ‘being the very next time, you know, sir—’
—‘Why, therefore you suppose he’ll turn to at the grindstone, eh,
Wegg?’ said Mr Boffin.
‘Just so, sir.’
Mr Boffin took his nose in his hand, as if it were already excoriated,
and the sparks were beginning to fly out of that feature. ‘He’s a
terrible fellow, Venus; he’s an awful fellow. I don’t know how ever I
shall go through with it. You must stand by me, Venus like a good man
and true. You’ll do all you can to stand by me, Venus; won’t you?’
Mr Venus replied with the assurance that he would; and Mr Boffin,
looking anxious and dispirited, pursued the way in silence until they
rang at the Bower gate. The stumping approach of Wegg was soon heard
behind it, and as it turned upon its hinges he became visible with his
hand on the lock.
‘Mr Boffin, sir?’ he remarked. ‘You’re quite a stranger!’
‘Yes. I’ve been otherwise occupied, Wegg.’
‘Have you indeed, sir?’ returned the literary gentleman, with a
threatening sneer. ‘Hah! I’ve been looking for you, sir, rather what I
may call specially.’
‘You don’t say so, Wegg?’
‘Yes, I do say so, sir. And if you hadn’t come round to me tonight, dash
my wig if I wouldn’t have come round to you tomorrow. Now! I tell you!’
‘Nothing wrong, I hope, Wegg?’
‘Oh no, Mr Boffin,’ was the ironical answer. ‘Nothing wrong! What should
be wrong in Boffinses Bower! Step in, sir.’
‘“If you’ll come to the Bower I’ve shaded for you,
Your bed shan’t be roses all spangled with doo:
Will you, will you, will you, will you, come to the Bower?
Oh, won’t you, won’t you, won’t you, won’t you, come to the
Bower?”’
An unholy glare of contradiction and offence shone in the eyes of Mr
Wegg, as he turned the key on his patron, after ushering him into the
yard with this vocal quotation. Mr Boffin’s air was crestfallen and
submissive. Whispered Wegg to Venus, as they crossed the yard behind
him: ‘Look at the worm and minion; he’s down in the mouth already.’
Whispered Venus to Wegg: ‘That’s because I’ve told him. I’ve prepared
the way for you.’
Mr Boffin, entering the usual chamber, laid his stick upon the settle
usually reserved for him, thrust his hands into his pockets, and,
with his shoulders raised and his hat drooping back upon them, looking
disconsolately at Wegg. ‘My friend and partner, Mr Venus, gives me to
understand,’ remarked that man of might, addressing him, ‘that you are
aware of our power over you. Now, when you have took your hat off, we’ll
go into that pint.’
Mr Boffin shook it off with one shake, so that it dropped on the floor
behind him, and remained in his former attitude with his former rueful
look upon him.
‘First of all, I’m a-going to call you Boffin, for short,’ said Wegg.
‘If you don’t like it, it’s open to you to lump it.’
‘I don’t mind it, Wegg,’ Mr Boffin replied.
‘That’s lucky for you, Boffin. Now, do you want to be read to?’
‘I don’t particularly care about it to-night, Wegg.’
‘Because if you did want to,’ pursued Mr Wegg, the brilliancy of whose
point was dimmed by his having been unexpectedly answered: ‘you wouldn’t
be. I’ve been your slave long enough. I’m not to be trampled under-foot
by a dustman any more. With the single exception of the salary, I
renounce the whole and total sitiwation.’
‘Since you say it is to be so, Wegg,’ returned Mr Boffin, with folded
hands, ‘I suppose it must be.’
‘I suppose it must be,’ Wegg retorted. ‘Next (to clear the ground before
coming to business), you’ve placed in this yard a skulking, a sneaking,
and a sniffing, menial.’
‘He hadn’t a cold in his head when I sent him here,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘Boffin!’ retorted Wegg, ‘I warn you not to attempt a joke with me!’
Here Mr Venus interposed, and remarked that he conceived Mr Boffin to
have taken the description literally; the rather, forasmuch as he, Mr
Venus, had himself supposed the menial to have contracted an affliction
or a habit of the nose, involving a serious drawback on the pleasures of
social intercourse, until he had discovered that Mr Wegg’s description
of him was to be accepted as merely figurative.
‘Anyhow, and every how,’ said Wegg, ‘he has been planted here, and he
is here. Now, I won’t have him here. So I call upon Boffin, before I say
another word, to fetch him in and send him packing to the right-about.’
The unsuspecting Sloppy was at that moment airing his many buttons
within view of the window. Mr Boffin, after a short interval of
impassive discomfiture, opened the window and beckoned him to come in.
‘I call upon Boffin,’ said Wegg, with one arm a-kimbo and his head on
one side, like a bullying counsel pausing for an answer from a witness,
‘to inform that menial that I am Master here!’
In humble obedience, when the button-gleaming Sloppy entered Mr Boffin
said to him: ‘Sloppy, my fine fellow, Mr Wegg is Master here. He doesn’t
want you, and you are to go from here.’
‘For good!’ Mr Wegg severely stipulated.
‘For good,’ said Mr Boffin.
Sloppy stared, with both his eyes and all his buttons, and his mouth
wide open; but was without loss of time escorted forth by Silas Wegg,
pushed out at the yard gate by the shoulders, and locked out.
‘The atomspear,’ said Wegg, stumping back into the room again, a
little reddened by his late exertion, ‘is now freer for the purposes of
respiration. Mr Venus, sir, take a chair. Boffin, you may sit down.’
Mr Boffin, still with his hands ruefully stuck in his pockets, sat on
the edge of the settle, shrunk into a small compass, and eyed the potent
Silas with conciliatory looks.
‘This gentleman,’ said Silas Wegg, pointing out Venus, ‘this gentleman,
Boffin, is more milk and watery with you than I’ll be. But he hasn’t
borne the Roman yoke as I have, nor yet he hasn’t been required to
pander to your depraved appetite for miserly characters.’
‘I never meant, my dear Wegg—’ Mr Boffin was beginning, when Silas
stopped him.
‘Hold your tongue, Boffin! Answer when you’re called upon to answer.
You’ll find you’ve got quite enough to do. Now, you’re aware—are
you—that you’re in possession of property to which you’ve no right at
all? Are you aware of that?’
‘Venus tells me so,’ said Mr Boffin, glancing towards him for any
support he could give.
‘I tell you so,’ returned Silas. ‘Now, here’s my hat, Boffin, and here’s
my walking-stick. Trifle with me, and instead of making a bargain with
you, I’ll put on my hat and take up my walking-stick, and go out, and
make a bargain with the rightful owner. Now, what do you say?’
‘I say,’ returned Mr Boffin, leaning forward in alarmed appeal, with his
hands on his knees, ‘that I am sure I don’t want to trifle, Wegg. I have
said so to Venus.’
‘You certainly have, sir,’ said Venus.
‘You’re too milk and watery with our friend, you are indeed,’
remonstrated Silas, with a disapproving shake of his wooden head. ‘Then
at once you confess yourself desirous to come to terms, do you Boffin?
Before you answer, keep this hat well in your mind and also this
walking-stick.’
‘I am willing, Wegg, to come to terms.’
‘Willing won’t do, Boffin. I won’t take willing. Are you desirous to
come to terms? Do you ask to be allowed as a favour to come to terms?’
Mr Wegg again planted his arm, and put his head on one side.
‘Yes.’
‘Yes what?’ said the inexorable Wegg: ‘I won’t take yes. I’ll have it
out of you in full, Boffin.’
‘Dear me!’ cried that unfortunate gentleman. ‘I am so worrited! I ask to
be allowed to come to terms, supposing your document is all correct.’
‘Don’t you be afraid of that,’ said Silas, poking his head at him. ‘You
shall be satisfied by seeing it. Mr Venus will show it you, and I’ll
hold you the while. Then you want to know what the terms are. Is
that about the sum and substance of it? Will you or won’t you answer,
Boffin?’ For he had paused a moment.
‘Dear me!’ cried that unfortunate gentleman again, ‘I am worrited to
that degree that I’m almost off my head. You hurry me so. Be so good as
name the terms, Wegg.’
‘Now, mark, Boffin,’ returned Silas: ‘Mark ’em well, because they’re
the lowest terms and the only terms. You’ll throw your Mound (the little
Mound as comes to you any way) into the general estate, and then you’ll
divide the whole property into three parts, and you’ll keep one and hand
over the others.’
Mr Venus’s mouth screwed itself up, as Mr Boffin’s face lengthened
itself, Mr Venus not having been prepared for such a rapacious demand.
‘Now, wait a bit, Boffin,’ Wegg proceeded, ‘there’s something more.
You’ve been a squandering this property—laying some of it out on
yourself. _That_ won’t do. You’ve bought a house. You’ll be charged for
it.’
‘I shall be ruined, Wegg!’ Mr Boffin faintly protested.
‘Now, wait a bit, Boffin; there’s something more. You’ll leave me in
sole custody of these Mounds till they’re all laid low. If any waluables
should be found in ’em, I’ll take care of such waluables. You’ll produce
your contract for the sale of the Mounds, that we may know to a penny
what they’re worth, and you’ll make out likewise an exact list of
all the other property. When the Mounds is cleared away to the last
shovel-full, the final diwision will come off.’
‘Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful! I shall die in a workhouse!’ cried the
Golden Dustman, with his hands to his head.
‘Now, wait a bit, Boffin; there’s something more. You’ve been unlawfully
ferreting about this yard. You’ve been seen in the act of ferreting
about this yard. Two pair of eyes at the present moment brought to bear
upon you, have seen you dig up a Dutch bottle.’
‘It was mine, Wegg,’ protested Mr Boffin. ‘I put it there myself.’
‘What was in it, Boffin?’ inquired Silas.
‘Not gold, not silver, not bank notes, not jewels, nothing that you
could turn into money, Wegg; upon my soul!’
‘Prepared, Mr Venus,’ said Wegg, turning to his partner with a knowing
and superior air, ‘for an ewasive answer on the part of our dusty friend
here, I have hit out a little idea which I think will meet your views.
We charge that bottle against our dusty friend at a thousand pound.’
Mr Boffin drew a deep groan.
‘Now, wait a bit, Boffin; there’s something more. In your employment
is an under-handed sneak, named Rokesmith. It won’t answer to have HIM
about, while this business of ours is about. He must be discharged.’
‘Rokesmith is already discharged,’ said Mr Boffin, speaking in a muffled
voice, with his hands before his face, as he rocked himself on the
settle.
‘Already discharged, is he?’ returned Wegg, surprised. ‘Oh! Then,
Boffin, I believe there’s nothing more at present.’
The unlucky gentleman continuing to rock himself to and fro, and to
utter an occasional moan, Mr Venus besought him to bear up against his
reverses, and to take time to accustom himself to the thought of his new
position. But, his taking time was exactly the thing of all others that
Silas Wegg could not be induced to hear of. ‘Yes or no, and no half
measures!’ was the motto which that obdurate person many times repeated;
shaking his fist at Mr Boffin, and pegging his motto into the floor with
his wooden leg, in a threatening and alarming manner.
At length, Mr Boffin entreated to be allowed a quarter of an hour’s
grace, and a cooling walk of that duration in the yard. With some
difficulty Mr Wegg granted this great favour, but only on condition
that he accompanied Mr Boffin in his walk, as not knowing what he might
fraudulently unearth if he were left to himself. A more absurd sight
than Mr Boffin in his mental irritation trotting very nimbly, and Mr
Wegg hopping after him with great exertion, eager to watch the slightest
turn of an eyelash, lest it should indicate a spot rich with some
secret, assuredly had never been seen in the shadow of the Mounds. Mr
Wegg was much distressed when the quarter of an hour expired, and came
hopping in, a very bad second.
‘I can’t help myself!’ cried Mr Boffin, flouncing on the settle in a
forlorn manner, with his hands deep in his pockets, as if his pockets
had sunk. ‘What’s the good of my pretending to stand out, when I can’t
help myself? I must give in to the terms. But I should like to see the
document.’
Wegg, who was all for clinching the nail he had so strongly driven home,
announced that Boffin should see it without an hour’s delay. Taking him
into custody for that purpose, or overshadowing him as if he really were
his Evil Genius in visible form, Mr Wegg clapped Mr Boffin’s hat
upon the back of his head, and walked him out by the arm, asserting a
proprietorship over his soul and body that was at once more grim and
more ridiculous than anything in Mr Venus’s rare collection. That
light-haired gentleman followed close upon their heels, at least backing
up Mr Boffin in a literal sense, if he had not had recent opportunities
of doing so spiritually; while Mr Boffin, trotting on as hard as he
could trot, involved Silas Wegg in frequent collisions with the public,
much as a pre-occupied blind man’s dog may be seen to involve his
master.
Thus they reached Mr Venus’s establishment, somewhat heated by the
nature of their progress thither. Mr Wegg, especially, was in a flaming
glow, and stood in the little shop, panting and mopping his head with
his pocket-handkerchief, speechless for several minutes.
Meanwhile, Mr Venus, who had left the duelling frogs to fight it out in
his absence by candlelight for the public delectation, put the shutters
up. When all was snug, and the shop-door fastened, he said to the
perspiring Silas: ‘I suppose, Mr Wegg, we may now produce the paper?’
‘Hold on a minute, sir,’ replied that discreet character; ‘hold on a
minute. Will you obligingly shove that box—which you mentioned on a
former occasion as containing miscellanies—towards me in the midst of
the shop here?’
Mr Venus did as he was asked.
‘Very good,’ said Silas, looking about: ‘ve—ry good. Will you hand me
that chair, sir, to put a-top of it?’
Venus handed him the chair.
‘Now, Boffin,’ said Wegg, ‘mount up here and take your seat, will you?’
Mr Boffin, as if he were about to have his portrait painted, or to be
electrified, or to be made a Freemason, or to be placed at any other
solitary disadvantage, ascended the rostrum prepared for him.
‘Now, Mr Venus,’ said Silas, taking off his coat, ‘when I catches our
friend here round the arms and body, and pins him tight to the back of
the chair, you may show him what he wants to see. If you’ll open it and
hold it well up in one hand, sir, and a candle in the other, he can read
it charming.’
Mr Boffin seemed rather inclined to object to these precautionary
arrangements, but, being immediately embraced by Wegg, resigned himself.
Venus then produced the document, and Mr Boffin slowly spelt it out
aloud: so very slowly, that Wegg, who was holding him in the chair
with the grip of a wrestler, became again exceedingly the worse for his
exertions. ‘Say when you’ve put it safe back, Mr Venus,’ he uttered with
difficulty, ‘for the strain of this is terrimenjious.’
At length the document was restored to its place; and Wegg, whose
uncomfortable attitude had been that of a very persevering man
unsuccessfully attempting to stand upon his head, took a seat to recover
himself. Mr Boffin, for his part, made no attempt to come down, but
remained aloft disconsolate.
‘Well, Boffin!’ said Wegg, as soon as he was in a condition to speak.
‘Now, you know.’
‘Yes, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, meekly. ‘Now, I know.’
‘You have no doubts about it, Boffin.’
‘No, Wegg. No, Wegg. None,’ was the slow and sad reply.
‘Then, take care, you,’ said Wegg, ‘that you stick to your conditions.
Mr Venus, if on this auspicious occasion, you should happen to have a
drop of anything not quite so mild as tea in the ’ouse, I think I’d take
the friendly liberty of asking you for a specimen of it.’
Mr Venus, reminded of the duties of hospitality, produced some rum.
In answer to the inquiry, ‘Will you mix it, Mr Wegg?’ that gentleman
pleasantly rejoined, ‘I think not, sir. On so auspicious an occasion, I
prefer to take it in the form of a Gum-Tickler.’
Mr Boffin, declining rum, being still elevated on his pedestal, was in
a convenient position to be addressed. Wegg having eyed him with an
impudent air at leisure, addressed him, therefore, while refreshing
himself with his dram.
‘Bof—fin!’
‘Yes, Wegg,’ he answered, coming out of a fit of abstraction, with a
sigh.
‘I haven’t mentioned one thing, because it’s a detail that comes of
course. You must be followed up, you know. You must be kept under
inspection.’
‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘Don’t you?’ sneered Wegg. ‘Where’s your wits, Boffin? Till the Mounds
is down and this business completed, you’re accountable for all the
property, recollect. Consider yourself accountable to me. Mr Venus here
being too milk and watery with you, I am the boy for you.’
‘I’ve been a-thinking,’ said Mr Boffin, in a tone of despondency, ‘that
I must keep the knowledge from my old lady.’
‘The knowledge of the diwision, d’ye mean?’ inquired Wegg, helping
himself to a third Gum-Tickler—for he had already taken a second.
‘Yes. If she was to die first of us two she might then think all her
life, poor thing, that I had got the rest of the fortune still, and was
saving it.’
‘I suspect, Boffin,’ returned Wegg, shaking his head sagaciously, and
bestowing a wooden wink upon him, ‘that you’ve found out some account
of some old chap, supposed to be a Miser, who got himself the credit of
having much more money than he had. However, I don’t mind.’
‘Don’t you see, Wegg?’ Mr Boffin feelingly represented to him: ‘don’t
you see? My old lady has got so used to the property. It would be such a
hard surprise.’
‘I don’t see it at all,’ blustered Wegg. ‘You’ll have as much as I
shall. And who are you?’
‘But then, again,’ Mr Boffin gently represented; ‘my old lady has very
upright principles.’
‘Who’s your old lady,’ returned Wegg, ‘to set herself up for having
uprighter principles than mine?’
Mr Boffin seemed a little less patient at this point than at any other
of the negotiations. But he commanded himself, and said tamely enough:
‘I think it must be kept from my old lady, Wegg.’
‘Well,’ said Wegg, contemptuously, though, perhaps, perceiving some hint
of danger otherwise, ‘keep it from your old lady. I ain’t going to tell
her. I can have you under close inspection without that. I’m as good a
man as you, and better. Ask me to dinner. Give me the run of your ’ouse.
I was good enough for you and your old lady once, when I helped you out
with your weal and hammers. Was there no Miss Elizabeth, Master George,
Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, before YOU two?’
‘Gently, Mr Wegg, gently,’ Venus urged.
‘Milk and water-erily you mean, sir,’ he returned, with some little
thickness of speech, in consequence of the Gum-Ticklers having tickled
it. ‘I’ve got him under inspection, and I’ll inspect him.
“Along the line the signal ran,
England expects as this present man
Will keep Boffin to his duty.”
—Boffin, I’ll see you home.’
Mr Boffin descended with an air of resignation, and gave himself up,
after taking friendly leave of Mr Venus. Once more, Inspector and
Inspected went through the streets together, and so arrived at Mr
Boffin’s door.
But even there, when Mr Boffin had given his keeper good-night, and had
let himself in with his key, and had softly closed the door, even there
and then, the all-powerful Silas must needs claim another assertion of
his newly-asserted power.
‘Bof—fin!’ he called through the keyhole.
‘Yes, Wegg,’ was the reply through the same channel.
‘Come out. Show yourself again. Let’s have another look at you!’
Mr Boffin—ah, how fallen from the high estate of his honest
simplicity!—opened the door and obeyed.
‘Go in. You may get to bed now,’ said Wegg, with a grin.
The door was hardly closed, when he again called through the keyhole:
‘Bof—fin!’
‘Yes, Wegg.’
This time Silas made no reply, but laboured with a will at turning an
imaginary grindstone outside the keyhole, while Mr Boffin stooped at it
within; he then laughed silently, and stumped home.
Chapter 4
A RUNAWAY MATCH
Cherubic Pa arose with as little noise as possible from beside majestic
Ma, one morning early, having a holiday before him. Pa and the lovely
woman had a rather particular appointment to keep.
Yet Pa and the lovely woman were not going out together. Bella was up
before four, but had no bonnet on. She was waiting at the foot of the
stairs—was sitting on the bottom stair, in fact—to receive Pa when he
came down, but her only object seemed to be to get Pa well out of the
house.
‘Your breakfast is ready, sir,’ whispered Bella, after greeting him with
a hug, ‘and all you have to do, is, to eat it up and drink it up, and
escape. How do you feel, Pa?’
‘To the best of my judgement, like a housebreaker new to the business,
my dear, who can’t make himself quite comfortable till he is off the
premises.’
Bella tucked her arm in his with a merry noiseless laugh, and they went
down to the kitchen on tiptoe; she stopping on every separate stair to
put the tip of her forefinger on her rosy lips, and then lay it on his
lips, according to her favourite petting way of kissing Pa.
‘How do YOU feel, my love?’ asked R. W., as she gave him his breakfast.
‘I feel as if the Fortune-teller was coming true, dear Pa, and the fair
little man was turning out as was predicted.’
‘Ho! Only the fair little man?’ said her father.
Bella put another of those finger-seals upon his lips, and then said,
kneeling down by him as he sat at table: ‘Now, look here, sir. If you
keep well up to the mark this day, what do you think you deserve?
What did I promise you should have, if you were good, upon a certain
occasion?’
‘Upon my word I don’t remember, Precious. Yes, I do, though. Wasn’t
it one of these beau—tiful tresses?’ with his caressing hand upon her
hair.
‘Wasn’t it, too!’ returned Bella, pretending to pout. ‘Upon my word! Do
you know, sir, that the Fortune-teller would give five thousand guineas
(if it was quite convenient to him, which it isn’t) for the lovely piece
I have cut off for you? You can form no idea, sir, of the number of
times he kissed quite a scrubby little piece—in comparison—that I cut
off for HIM. And he wears it, too, round his neck, I can tell you! Near
his heart!’ said Bella, nodding. ‘Ah! very near his heart! However, you
have been a good, good boy, and you are the best of all the dearest boys
that ever were, this morning, and here’s the chain I have made of
it, Pa, and you must let me put it round your neck with my own loving
hands.’
As Pa bent his head, she cried over him a little, and then said (after
having stopped to dry her eyes on his white waistcoat, the discovery of
which incongruous circumstance made her laugh): ‘Now, darling Pa,
give me your hands that I may fold them together, and do you say after
me:—My little Bella.’
‘My little Bella,’ repeated Pa.
‘I am very fond of you.’
‘I am very fond of you, my darling,’ said Pa.
‘You mustn’t say anything not dictated to you, sir. You daren’t do it in
your responses at Church, and you mustn’t do it in your responses out of
Church.’
‘I withdraw the darling,’ said Pa.
‘That’s a pious boy! Now again:—You were always—’
‘You were always,’ repeated Pa.
‘A vexatious—’
‘No you weren’t,’ said Pa.
‘A vexatious (do you hear, sir?), a vexatious, capricious, thankless,
troublesome, Animal; but I hope you’ll do better in the time to come,
and I bless you and forgive you!’ Here, she quite forgot that it was
Pa’s turn to make the responses, and clung to his neck. ‘Dear Pa, if you
knew how much I think this morning of what you told me once, about the
first time of our seeing old Mr Harmon, when I stamped and screamed
and beat you with my detestable little bonnet! I feel as if I had been
stamping and screaming and beating you with my hateful little bonnet,
ever since I was born, darling!’
‘Nonsense, my love. And as to your bonnets, they have always been nice
bonnets, for they have always become you—or you have become them;
perhaps it was that—at every age.’
‘Did I hurt you much, poor little Pa?’ asked Bella, laughing
(notwithstanding her repentance), with fantastic pleasure in the
picture, ‘when I beat you with my bonnet?’
‘No, my child. Wouldn’t have hurt a fly!’
‘Ay, but I am afraid I shouldn’t have beat you at all, unless I had
meant to hurt you,’ said Bella. ‘Did I pinch your legs, Pa?’
‘Not much, my dear; but I think it’s almost time I—’
‘Oh, yes!’ cried Bella. ‘If I go on chattering, you’ll be taken alive.
Fly, Pa, fly!’
So, they went softly up the kitchen stairs on tiptoe, and Bella with
her light hand softly removed the fastenings of the house door, and Pa,
having received a parting hug, made off. When he had gone a little way,
he looked back. Upon which, Bella set another of those finger seals upon
the air, and thrust out her little foot expressive of the mark. Pa, in
appropriate action, expressed fidelity to the mark, and made off as fast
as he could go.
Bella walked thoughtfully in the garden for an hour and more, and then,
returning to the bedroom where Lavvy the Irrepressible still slumbered,
put on a little bonnet of quiet, but on the whole of sly appearance,
which she had yesterday made. ‘I am going for a walk, Lavvy,’ she said,
as she stooped down and kissed her. The Irrepressible, with a bounce in
the bed, and a remark that it wasn’t time to get up yet, relapsed into
unconsciousness, if she had come out of it.
Behold Bella tripping along the streets, the dearest girl afoot under
the summer sun! Behold Pa waiting for Bella behind a pump, at least
three miles from the parental roof-tree. Behold Bella and Pa aboard an
early steamboat for Greenwich.
Were they expected at Greenwich? Probably. At least, Mr John Rokesmith
was on the pier looking out, about a couple of hours before the coaly
(but to him gold-dusty) little steamboat got her steam up in London.
Probably. At least, Mr John Rokesmith seemed perfectly satisfied when
he descried them on board. Probably. At least, Bella no sooner stepped
ashore than she took Mr John Rokesmith’s arm, without evincing surprise,
and the two walked away together with an ethereal air of happiness
which, as it were, wafted up from the earth and drew after them a gruff
and glum old pensioner to see it out. Two wooden legs had this gruff and
glum old pensioner, and, a minute before Bella stepped out of the boat,
and drew that confiding little arm of hers through Rokesmith’s, he had
had no object in life but tobacco, and not enough of that. Stranded was
Gruff and Glum in a harbour of everlasting mud, when all in an instant
Bella floated him, and away he went.
Say, cherubic parent taking the lead, in what direction do we steer
first? With some such inquiry in his thoughts, Gruff and Glum, stricken
by so sudden an interest that he perked his neck and looked over the
intervening people, as if he were trying to stand on tiptoe with his two
wooden legs, took an observation of R. W. There was no ‘first’ in the
case, Gruff and Glum made out; the cherubic parent was bearing down and
crowding on direct for Greenwich church, to see his relations.
For, Gruff and Glum, though most events acted on him simply as
tobacco-stoppers, pressing down and condensing the quids within him,
might be imagined to trace a family resemblance between the cherubs in
the church architecture, and the cherub in the white waistcoat. Some
remembrance of old Valentines, wherein a cherub, less appropriately
attired for a proverbially uncertain climate, had been seen conducting
lovers to the altar, might have been fancied to inflame the ardour of
his timber toes. Be it as it might, he gave his moorings the slip, and
followed in chase.
The cherub went before, all beaming smiles; Bella and John Rokesmith
followed; Gruff and Glum stuck to them like wax. For years, the wings
of his mind had gone to look after the legs of his body; but Bella had
brought them back for him per steamer, and they were spread again.
He was a slow sailer on a wind of happiness, but he took a cross cut
for the rendezvous, and pegged away as if he were scoring furiously
at cribbage. When the shadow of the church-porch swallowed them up,
victorious Gruff and Glum likewise presented himself to be swallowed up.
And by this time the cherubic parent was so fearful of surprise, that,
but for the two wooden legs on which Gruff and Glum was reassuringly
mounted, his conscience might have introduced, in the person of that
pensioner, his own stately lady disguised, arrived at Greenwich in a
car and griffins, like the spiteful Fairy at the christenings of the
Princesses, to do something dreadful to the marriage service. And truly
he had a momentary reason to be pale of face, and to whisper to Bella,
‘You don’t think that can be your Ma; do you, my dear?’ on account of
a mysterious rustling and a stealthy movement somewhere in the remote
neighbourhood of the organ, though it was gone directly and was heard no
more. Albeit it was heard of afterwards, as will afterwards be read in
this veracious register of marriage.
Who taketh? I, John, and so do I, Bella. Who giveth? I, R. W. Forasmuch,
Gruff and Glum, as John and Bella have consented together in holy
wedlock, you may (in short) consider it done, and withdraw your two
wooden legs from this temple. To the foregoing purport, the Minister
speaking, as directed by the Rubric, to the People, selectly represented
in the present instance by G. and G. above mentioned.
And now, the church-porch having swallowed up Bella Wilfer for ever and
ever, had it not in its power to relinquish that young woman, but slid
into the happy sunlight, Mrs John Rokesmith instead. And long on the
bright steps stood Gruff and Glum, looking after the pretty bride, with
a narcotic consciousness of having dreamed a dream.
After which, Bella took out from her pocket a little letter, and read it
aloud to Pa and John; this being a true copy of the same.
‘DEAREST MA,
I hope you won’t be angry, but I am most happily married to Mr John
Rokesmith, who loves me better than I can ever deserve, except by loving
him with all my heart. I thought it best not to mention it beforehand,
in case it should cause any little difference at home. Please tell
darling Pa. With love to Lavvy,
Ever dearest Ma, Your affectionate daughter, BELLA (P.S.—Rokesmith).’
Then, John Rokesmith put the queen’s countenance on the letter—when had
Her Gracious Majesty looked so benign as on that blessed morning!—and
then Bella popped it into the post-office, and said merrily, ‘Now,
dearest Pa, you are safe, and will never be taken alive!’
Pa was, at first, in the stirred depths of his conscience, so far from
sure of being safe yet, that he made out majestic matrons lurking in
ambush among the harmless trees of Greenwich Park, and seemed to see a
stately countenance tied up in a well-known pocket-handkerchief glooming
down at him from a window of the Observatory, where the Familiars of the
Astronomer Royal nightly outwatch the winking stars. But, the minutes
passing on and no Mrs Wilfer in the flesh appearing, he became more
confident, and so repaired with good heart and appetite to Mr and Mrs
John Rokesmith’s cottage on Blackheath, where breakfast was ready.
A modest little cottage but a bright and a fresh, and on the snowy
tablecloth the prettiest of little breakfasts. In waiting, too, like
an attendant summer breeze, a fluttering young damsel, all pink and
ribbons, blushing as if she had been married instead of Bella, and yet
asserting the triumph of her sex over both John and Pa, in an exulting
and exalted flurry: as who should say, ‘This is what you must all come
to, gentlemen, when we choose to bring you to book.’ This same young
damsel was Bella’s serving-maid, and unto her did deliver a bunch of
keys, commanding treasures in the way of dry-saltery, groceries, jams
and pickles, the investigation of which made pastime after breakfast,
when Bella declared that ‘Pa must taste everything, John dear, or it
will never be lucky,’ and when Pa had all sorts of things poked into
his mouth, and didn’t quite know what to do with them when they were put
there.