OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

VOLUME I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
 
   
 
  
   
  
    
    
   
    
 
   
    

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

BY

CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCUS STONE.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

WON, I

 

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PATRIMOINE
DE L'UNIVERSITE
DE LIkce

remem PGS Atte mR oo ra elma

LONDON:
@HPASE MPAUN' ANID EVA 193) Pane CAs Ios Lay.
1865.

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LONDON

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THIS BOOK

IS INSCRIBED BY ITS AUTHOR

SIR JAMES EMERSON TENNENT

A MEMORIAL OF FRIENDSHIP

 

 

 

 

 

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CONTENTS

300K THE FIRST. THe Cup anp THE Lip.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
ON THE Loox Out ‘ 7 5 6 5 : 3 A ‘ 1
CHAPTER II.
THE Man From SOMEWHERE : : h . : A ‘ : 4
CHAPTER III.
ANOTHER MAN. . : 6 ; % 0 5 “ ; ‘5 13
CHAPTER IV.
Tue R. Witrer Faminy 5 : : . 6 ; ! : b 24
CHAPTER Y.
Borrin’s Bower . : n 5 5 5 F ; R ‘ 5 33
CHAPTER VI.
Cur Aprirr 9 7 : 9 “ o : . 4 r 5 46
CHAPTER VII.
Mr, Wece Looxs Arter Himse.r A ; . 4 . é : 58
CHAPTER VILL.
Mr. BorFin IN CONSULTATION : 5 7 3 : . ; ROO)
CHAPTER IX.
Mr. anp Mrs. Borrin in CoNsULTATION 75
CHAPTER X.
A Marrrace Contract

 

 

 
  
  
   
 
    
    
 
  
 
 
  
   
   
    
    
 

 

  

 

 

  

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XI,

PODSNAPPERY

CHAPTER XI.

Tue Swear or an Honest Man’s Brow

CHAPTER XIII.

TRACKING THE Brrp or Prey

CHAPTER XIV.

Tur Brrp or Prey Brovcur Down

CHAPTRHR XY.
Two New Servants

. .

CHAPTER XVI.

Mrypers anp Ru-Mryprrs

CHAPTER XVII.
A Dismat Swamp

 

300K THE SECOND. Biros or a Frauen.
CHAPTER I.
Or an Epvucarionan CHARACTER

CHAPTER II.
Srint EpucaTionaL

CHAPTER II.
A Piece or Work

CHAPTER Ly.
Curm Promprep

CHAPTER V
Mercury Promprine

CHAPTER VI.
A Rippie WirHovr an Answer

 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

109

129

145

161

203

  

 

    
   

ONTENTS,

CHAPTER VII.

in wHich A Frrenpiy Move ts OricInaTED

CHAPTER VIII.

fy wHicH AN Innocent ELopement Occurs

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH THE OrPHAN Makes nis WILL

|
|
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A Successor
Some Arrarrs oF THE Hrarr
| Morr Bros or Prey

A Soto anp a Dorrr

Strona or Purpose

| Tue WHOLE CASE sO FAR

   

AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION

 

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

246

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ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME I.

Tur Brrp or Prey

WITNESSING THE

AT THE Bar

 

 

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Tur Harpy
PODSNAPPERY
WAITING FOR

Tue Birp or P

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

os

au four Books.

 

Book THE First. Tue Cur anp THE Lip.

 

 

 

on arriving at the Ninth Chapter (page 84).

the rudder-Hnes slack 1D DIS UauUs, A2UU Wis Uauus tuus0 41 iD
waistband, kept an. eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line,
and he could not be a fisherman ; his boat had no cushion for a sitter,
no paint, no inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boathook and a
coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman ; his boat was too crazy
and too small to take in cargo for delivery, and he could not bea
lighterman or river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for,
but he looked for something, with a most intent and searching gaze.
The tide, which had turned an hour before, was running down, and
his eyes watched every little race and eddy in its broad sweep,
as the boat made slight head-way against it, or drove stern fore-
most before it, according as he directed his daughter by a move-
ment of his head. She watched his face as earnestly as. he watched
the river. But, in the intensity of her look there was a touch of
dread or horror.

Allied to the bottom of the river rather than the surface, by reason
of the slime and ooze with which it was covered, and its sodden
state, this boat and the two figures in it obviously were doing some-
thing that they often did, and were seeking what they often sought.
Half savage as the man showed, with no covering on his matted head,
with his brown arms bare to between the elbow and the shoulder,
VOL. I. B

 

 

The Reader will understand the use of the popular
phrase Our Morvan Frienp, as the title of this book,

 

 

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es

 

 

 

 

 

    
  
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Oe

au Four Books.

eve

Book THE First. Ture Cur anp THE Lip.

 

 

CHAPTER I.
ON THE LOOK OUT.

In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no
need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with
two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark Bridge
which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn
evening was closing in.

The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged
grizzled hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or
twenty, sufficiently like him to be recognizable as his daughter.
The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with
the rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his
waistband, kept an. eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line,
and he could not be a fisherman ; his boat had no cushion for a sitter,
no paint, no inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boathook and a
coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman ; his boat was too crazy
and too small to take in cargo for delivery, and he could not bea
lighterman or river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for,
but he looked for something, with a most intent and searching gaze.
The tide, which had turned an hour before, was running down, and
his eyes watched every little race and eddy in its broad sweep,
as the boat made slight head-way against it, or drove stern fore-
most before it, according as he directed his daughter by a move-
ment of his head. She watched his face as earnestly as. he watched
the river. But, in the intensity of her look there was a touch of
dread or horror.

Allied to the bottom of the river rather than the surface, by reason
of the slime and ooze with which it was covered, and its sodden
state, this boat and the two figures in it obviously were doing some-
thing that they often did, and were seeking what they often sought.
Half savageas the man showed, with no covering on his matted head,
with his brown arms bare to between the elbow and the shoulder,
VOL. I. B

 

 

 

2 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

with the loose knot of a looser kerchief lying low on his bare breast
in a wilderness of beard and whisker, with such dress as he wore
seeming to be made out of the mud that begrimed his boat, still
there was business-like usage in his steady gaze. So with every
lithe action of the girl, with every turn of her wr ist, perhaps most
of all with her look of dread or horror ; they were things of usage.

“Keep her out, Lizzie. Tide runs strong here. Keep her well
afore the sweep of it.”

Trusting to the girl’s skill and making no use of the rudder, he
eyed the coming tide with an absorbed attention, So the girl eyed
him. But, it happened now, that a slant of light from the setting
sun glanced into the bottom of the boat, and, touching a rotten stain
there which bore some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human
form, coloured it as though with diluted blood. This caught the
girl’s eye, and she shiv ered.

“What ails you?” said the man, immediately aware of it, though
so intent on the advancing waters; “I see nothing afloat.”

The red light was gone, the shudder was gone, and his gaze, which
had come back to the boat for a moment, travelled away again.
Wheresoever the strong tide met with an impediment, his gaze
paused for an instant. At every mooring-chain and rope, at every
stationary boat or barge that split the current into a broad-arrow-
head, at the offsets from the piers of Southwark Bridge, at the pad-
dles of the river steamboats as they beat the filthy water, at the float-
ing logs of timber lashed together lying off certain wharves, his
shining eyes darted a hungry “look. After a daa ‘kening hour or so,
suddenly the rudder-lines aettened in his hold, and he steered hard
towards the Surrey shore.

Always watching his face, the girl instantly answered to the
action in her seulline ; presently the boat swung round, quivered as
from a sudden jerk, and the upper half of the man was stretched out
over the stern.

The girl pulled the hood of a cloak she wore, over her head and
over her face, and, looking backward so that the front folds of this
hood were turned down the river, kept the boat in that direction
going before the tide. Until now, the boat had barely held her own,
and had hovered about one spot; but now, the banks changed swiftly,
and the deepening shadows and the kindling lichts of L ondon Bri¢ ge
were passed, and the tiers of shipping lay on either hand.

It was not until now that the upper half of the man came back
into the boat. His arms were wet and dirty, and he washed them
over the side. In his right hand he held something, and he washed
that in the river too. It was money. He chinked it once, and he
blew upon it once, and he spat upon it once-—* for luck,” he hoarsely

said—before he put it in his pocket.

“Tizzie!”

The girl turned her face towards him with a start, and rowed in
silence. Her face was very pale. He was a hook-nosed man, and
with that and his bright eyes and his ruffled head, bore a certain
likeness to a roused bird of prey.

“ake that thing off your face.”

She put it back.

 

 

 

“Ade

   

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 5

 

“Here! and give me hold of the sculls. Il take the rest of the
spell.”

“No, no, father! No! Ican’t indeed. Fathcr!—I cannot sit so
near it!”

He was moving towards her to change places, but her terrified
expostulation stopped him and he resumed his seat.

“What hurt can it do you?”

“None, none. But I cannot bear it.”

“Tt’s my belief you hate the sight of the very river.”

“T—J do not lke it, father.”

“Asif it wasn’t your living! Asif it wasn’t meat and drink to you!”

At these latter words the girl shivered again, and for a moment
paused in her rowing, seeming to turn deadly faint. I+ escaped his
attention, for he was glancing over the stern at something the boat
had in tow.

“How can you beso thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The
very fire that warmed you when you were a babby, was picked out of
the river alongside the coal barges. The very basket that you slept
in, the tide washed ashore. The very rockers that I put it upon to
make a cradle of it, I cut out of a piece of wood that drifted from
some ship or another.”

Lizzie took her right hand from the scull it held, and touched
her lips with it, and for a moment held it out lovingly towards him ;
then, without speaking, she resumed her rowing, as another boat of
similar appearance, though in rather better trim, came out from a
dark place and dropped softly alongside.

“Tn luck again, Gaffer?” said a man with a squinting leer, who
sculled her and who was alone. “I know’d you was in luck again,
by your wake as you come down.”

“Ah!” replied the other, drily. “So you’re out, are you?”

“Yes, pardner.”

There was now a tender yellow moonlight on the river, and the
new comer, keeping half his boat’s length astern of the other boat,
looked hard at its track.

“Tsays to myself,” he went on, “directly you hove in view, Yonder’s
Gaffer, and in luck again, by George if he ain’t! Scull it is,
pardner—don’t fret yourself—I didn’t touch him.” This was in answer
to a quick impatient movement on the part of Gaffer: the speaker at
the same time unshipping his scull on that side, and laying his hand
on the gunwale of Gaffer’s boat and holding to it.

“He's had touches enough not to want no more, as well as I make
him out, Gaffer! Been a knocking about with a pretty many tides,
ain’t he pardner? Such is my out-ofluck ways, you see! He must
have passed me when he went up last time, for I was on the look-
out below bridge here. J a’most think you're like the wulturs,
pardner, and scent ’em out.”

He spoke in a dropped voice, and with more than one glance at
Lizzie who had pulled on her hood again. Both men then looked
with a weird unholy interest at the wake of Gaffer’s boat.

“Hasy does it, betwixt us. Shall I take him aboard, pardner

“No,” said the other. In so surly a tone that the man, after a
blank stare, acknowledged it with the retort:

 

9

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4 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

«__Arn’t been eating nothing as has disagreed with you, have
you, pardner ?”

“Why, yes, I have,” said Gaffer. “I have been swallowing too
much of that word, Pardner. I am no pardner of yours.”

“Since when was you no pardner of mine, Gaffer Hexam
Esquire ?”

“Since you was accused of robbing a man. Accused of robbing a
live man!” said Gaffer, with great indignation.

“ And what if I had been accused of robbing a dead man, Gaffer ?”

“You couLDN’? do it.”

“Couldn’t you, Gaffer ?”

“No. Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a
dead man to have money? What world does a dead man belong to?
"Vother world. What world does money belong to? This world.
How can money be a corpse’s? Can a corpse own it, want it, spend
it, claim it, miss it? Don’t try to go confounding the rights and
wrongs of things in that way. But it’s worthy of the sneaking spirit
that robs a live man.”

“Tl tell you what it is

“No you won't. Jl tell you what it is. You've got off with a
short time of it for putting your hand in the pocket of a sailor, a live
sailor. Make the most of it and think yourself lucky, but don’t think
after that to come over me with your pardners. We have worked
together in time past, but we work together no more in time present
nor yet future. Let go. Cast off!”

“Gaffer! If you think to get rid of me this way: ate

“Tf I don’t get rid of you this way, Ill try another, and chop you
over the fingers with the stretcher, or take a pick at your head with
the boat-hook. Cast off! Pull you, Lizzie. Pull home, since you
won't let your father pull.”

Lizzie shot ahead, and the other boat fell astern. Lizzie’s father,
composing himself into the easy attitude of one who had asserted the
high moralities and taken an unassailable position, slowly lighted
a pipe, and smoked, and took a survey of what he had in tow. What
he had in tow, lunged itself at him sometimes in an awful manner
when the boat was checked, and sometimes seemed to try to wrench
itself away, though for the most part it followed submissively. A
neophyte might have fancied that the ripples passing over it were
dreadfully like faint changes of expression on a sightless face; but
Gaffer was no neophyte and had no fancies.

”

 

 

 

CHAPTER IL.
THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE.

Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new
house in a bran-new quarter of London. Lverything about the
Veneerings was spick and span new. All their furniture was new, all
their friends were new, all! their servants were new, their plate was
new, their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 5

vere new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they
were as newly married as was lawfully compatible with their having
a bran-new baby, and if they had set up a great-crandfather, he
would have come home in matting from the Pantechnicon, without a
seratch upon him, French polished to the crown of his head.

For, in the Veneering establishment, from the hall-chairs with the
new coat of arms, to the grand pianoforte with the new action, and
upstairs again to the new fire-escape, all things were in a state of
high varnish and polish. And what was observable in the furniture,
was observable in the Veneerings—the surface smelt a little too
much of the workshop and was a trifle stickey.

There was an innocent piece of dinner-furniture that went upon
easy castors and was kept over a livery stable-yard in Duke Street,
Saint James’s, when not in use, to whom the Veneerings were a
source of blind confusion. ‘he name of this article was T'wemlow.
Being first cousin to Lord Snigsworth, he was in frequent requisition,
and at many houses might be said to represent the dining-table
in its normal state. Mr. and Mrs. Vencering, for example, arranging
a dinner, habitually started with Twemlow, and then put leaves in
him, or added guests to him. Sometimes, the table consisted of
Twemlow and half a dozen leaves; sometimes, of '’wemlow and a
dozen leaves; sometimes, Twemlow was pulled out to his utmost
extent of twenty leaves. Mr. and Mrs. Veneering on occasions of
ceremony faced each other in the centre of the board, and thus the
parallel still held; for, it always happened that the more Twemlow
was pulled out, the further he found himself from the centre, and
the nearer to the sideboard at one end of the room, or the window-
curtains at the other.

But, it was not this which steeped the feeble soul of Twemlow in
confusion. This he was used to, and could take soundings of. The
abyss to which he could find no bottom, and from which started
forth the engrossing and ever-swelling difficulty of his life, was the
insoluble question whether he was Veneering’s oldest friend, or
newest friend. ‘To the excogitation of this problem, the harmless
ventleman had devoted many anxious hours, both in his lodgings over
the livery stable-yard, and in the cold gloom, favourable to medita-
tion, of Saint James's Square. Thus. ‘’wemlow had first known
Veneering at his club, where Veneering then knew nobody but the
man who made them known to one another, who seemed to be the
most intimate friend he had in the world, and whom he had known
two days—the bond of union between their souls, the nefarious con-
duct of the committee respecting the cookery of a fillet of veal, having
been accidently cemented at that date. Immediately upon this,
T'wemlow received an invitation to dine with Veneering, and dined :
the man being of the party. Immediately upon that, Twemlow
received an invitation to dine with the man, and dined: Vencering
being of the party. At the man’s were a Member, an Engineer, a
Payer-oft of the National Debt, a Poem on Shakespeare, a Grievance,
and a Public Office, who all seemed to be utter strangers to Veneering.
And yet immediately after that, Twemlow received an invitation
to dine at Veneerings, expressly to meet the Member, the Engineer,
the Payer-off of the National Debt, the Poem on Shakespeare, the

a

pagan

 

 

 

6 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Grievance, and the Public Office, and, dining, discovered that all of
them were the most intimate friends Veneering had in the world, and
that the wives of all of them (who were all there) were the objects
of Mrs. Veneering’s most devoted affection and tender confidence.

Thus it had come about, that Mr. T'wemlow had said to himself in
his lodgings, with his hand to his forehead: “I must not think of
this. This is enough to soften any man’s brain,’"—and yet was
always thinking of it, and could never form a conclusion.

This evening the Veneerings give a banquet. Hleven leaves in
the ‘l'wemlow ; fourteen in company all told. Four pigeon-breasted
retainers in plain clothes stand in line in the hall. A fifth retainer,
proceeding up the staircase with a mournful air—as who should say,
“Here is another wretched creature come to dinner; such is life!”—
announces, “ Mis-ter Twemlow!”

Mrs. Veneering welcomes her sweet Mr. Twemlow. Mr. Veneering
welcomes his dear Twemlow. Mrs. Veneering does not expect that
Mr. Twemlow can in nature care much for such insipid things as
babies, but so old a friend must please to look at baby. “Ah! You
will know the friend of your family better, Tootleums,” says Mr.
Veneering, nodding emotionally at that new article, “when you begin
to take notice.” He then begs to make his dear Twemlow known
to his two friends, Mr. Boots and Mr. Brewer—and clearly has no
distinct idea which is which.

But now a fearful circumstance occurs.

“ Mis-ter and Mis-sis Podsnap !”

“My dear,” says Mr. Veneering to Mrs. Veneering, with an air of
much friendly interest, while the door stands open, “the Podsnaps.”

A too, too smiling large man, with a fatal freshness on him, appear-
ing with his wife, instantly deserts his wife and darts at Twemlow
with:

“How do you do? So glad to know you. Charming house you
have here. J hope we are not late. So glad of this opportunity, I
am sure !”

When the first shock fell upon him, Twemlow twice skipped back
in his neat little shoes and his neat little silk stockings of a bygone
fashion, as if impelled to leap over a sofa behind him; but the large
man closed with him and proved too strong.

“Tet me,” says the large man, trying to attract the attention
of his wife im the distance, “have the pleasure of presenting Mrs.
Podsnap to her host. She will be,’ in his fatal freshness he seems
to find perpetual verdure and eternal youth in the phrase, “she
will be so glad of the opportunity, I am sure!”

In the meantime, Mrs. Podsnap, unable to originate a mistake on
her own account, because Mrs. Veneering is the only other lady there,
does her best in the way of handsomely supporting her husband’s, by
looking towards Mr. ‘l'wemlow with a plaintive countenance and
remarking to Mrs. Veneering in a feeling manner, firstly, that she
fears he has been rather bilious of late, and, secondly, that the baby
is already very like him.

Itis questionable whether any man quite relishes being mistaken for
any other man ; but, Mr. Veneering having this very evening set up the
shirt-front of the young Antinous (in new worked cambric just come

 

 

 

       
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

  

home), is not at all complimented by being supposed to be Twemlow,
who is dry and weazen and some thirty years older. Mrs. Veneering
equally resents the imputation of being the wife of ''wemlow. As
to ‘T'wemlow, he is so sensible of being a much better bred man than
Veneering, that he considers the large man an offensive ass.

In this. complicate od dilemma, Mr. Veneering approaches the la
man with extended hand and, smilinely assures that incorrigible > per-
sonage that he is delighted to see him: w ho in his fatal ereshiniéss
instantly replies:

“Thank you. Iam ashamed to say that I cannot at this moment
recall where we met, but Lam so glad of this opportunity, I am sure

Then pouncing upon T wemlow, who holds back with all his fe« ‘ble
might, he is haling him off to present him, as Vencering, to Mrs.
Podsnap, when the arrival of more guests unravels the mistake.
Whereupon, having re-shaken hands with Vene ering as Veneering,
he re-shakes hands. with Twemlow as 'T'wemlow, and winds it all up
to his own perfect satisfaction by saying to the last-named, “ Ridi-
culous oppor tunity—but so glad of it, I am sure !”

Now, ‘l'wemlow having undergone this terrific experience, haying
agewice noted the fusion of Boots in Brewer and Brewer in Boots,
and having further observed that of the remaining seven euests four
discreet characters enter with wandering eyes and wholly decline to
commit themselves as to which is Veneering, until Veneering has them
in his grasp ;—T'wemlow having profited by these studies, finds his
brain wholesomely hardening as he approaches the conclusion that he
really is Veneering’s oldest frie nd, when his brain softens again and
all is lost, through his eyes encountering Veneering and the large man
linked together as twin brothers in the back drawing-room near the
conservatory door, and through his ears informing him in the tones
of Mrs. Veneering that the same large man is to be baby’s godfather.

“Dinner is on the table!”

Thus the melancholy retainer, as who should say, “Come down and
be poisoned, ye unhappy children of men!”

Twemlow, having no lady assigned him, goes down in the rear,
with his hand to his forehead. Boots and Brewer, thinking him
indisposed, whisper, “Man faint. Had no lunch.” But he is only
stunned by the unvanquishable difficulty of his existence.

Revived by soup, I'wemlow discourses mildly of the Court Circular
with Boots and Brewer. Is appealed to, at the fish stage of the
banquet, by Veneering, on the disputed question whether his cousin
Lord Snigsworth is in or out of town? Gives it that his cousin is
out of town. “At Snigsworthy Park?” Veneering inquires. “ /
Snigsworthy,” 'T'wemlow rejois. Boots and Brewer regard this as a
man to be cultivated; and Veneering is clear that he is a Temu-
nerative article. Meantime the retainer goes round, like a gloomy
Analytical Chemist: always seeming to say, after “Chablis, sir?”
— You wouldn’t if you knew what it’s made of.”

The great looking-glass above the sideboard, reflects the table and
the company. Reflects the new Veneering crest, in gold and eke in
silver, frosted and also thawed, a camel of all work. The Heralds’
College found out a Crusading ancestor for Veneering who bore a camel
on his shield (or might have done it if he had the yught of it), and a

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

q m.
PS lh Beet Sie} 4o Gre

8 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

caravan of camels take charge of the fruits and flowers and candles,
and kneel down to be loaded with the salt. Reflects Veneering ;
forty, wavy-haired, dark, tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious,
filmy—a kind of sufficiently well-looking veiled-prophet, not prophesy-
ing. Reflects Mrs. Veneering; fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not so
much light hair as she might have, gorgeous in raiment and jewels,
enthusiastic, propitiatory, conscious that a corner of her husband’s veil
is over herself. Reflects Podsnap ; prosperously feeding, two little hght-
coloured wiry wings, one on either side of his else bald head, looking:
as like his hairbrushes as his hair, dissolving view of red beads on his
forehead, large allowance of-crumpled shirt-collar up behind. Reflects
Mrs. Podsnap ; fine woman for Professor Owen, quantity of bone, neck
and nostrils like a rocking-horse, hard features, majestic head-dress
in which Podsnap has hung golden offermgs. Reflects wemlow ;
erey, dry, polite, susceptible to east wind, First-Gentleman-in-
Europe collar and cravat, cheeks drawn in as if he had made a great
effort to retire into himself some years ago, and had got so far and
had never got any farther. Reflects mature young lady; raven
locks, and complexion that lights up well when well powdered—as it
is—carrying on considerably in the captivation of mature young
gentleman; with too much nose in his face, too much ginger in his
whiskers, too much torso in his waistcoat, too much sparkle in
his studs, his eyes, his buttons, his talk, and his teeth. Reflects
charming old Lady Tippins on Veneering’s right; with an immense
obtuse drab oblong face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long
Walk up the top of her head, as a convenient public approach to the
bunch of false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs. Veneering
opposite, who is pleased to be patronized. Reflects a certain “ Mor-
timer,” another of Veneering’s oldest friends; who never was in the
house before, and appears not to want to come again, who sits dis-
consolate on Mrs. Veneering’s left, and who was inveigled by Lady
Tippins (a friend of his boyhood) to come to these people’s and talk,
and who won't talk. Reflects Hugene, friend of Mortimer; buried
alive in the back of his chair, behind a shoulder—with a powder-
epaulette on it—of the mature young lady, and gloomily resorting to
the champagne chalice whenever proffered by the Analytical Chemist.
Lastly, the looking-glass reflects Boots and Brewer, and two other
stuffed Buffers interposed between the rest of the company and _pos-
sible accidents.

The Veneering dinners are excellent dinners—or new people
wouldn’t come—and all goes well. Notably, Lady Tippins has made
a series of experiments on her digestive functions, so extremely com-
plicated and daring, that if they could be published with their results
it might benefit the human race. Having taken in provisions from
all parts of the world, this hardy old cruiser has last touched at
the North Pole, when, as the ice-plates are being removed, the follow-
ing words fall from her :

“T assure you, my dear Veneering: ?

(Poor 'Twemlow’s hand approaches his forehead, for it would seem
now, that Lady Tippins is going to be the oldest friend.

“T assure you, my dear Veneering, that itis the oddest affair! Like
the advertising people, I don’t ask you to trust me, without offering

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 9

a respectable reference. Mortimer there, is my reference, and knows
all about it.”

Mortimer raises his drooping eyelids, and slightly opens his mouth.
But a famt smile, expressive of “ What's the use!” passes over his
face, and he drops his eyelids and shuts his mouth.

“Now, Mortimer,” says Lady Tippins, rapping the sticks of her
closed green fan upon the knuckles of her lett hand—which is par-
ticularly rich in knuckles, “I insist upon your telling all that is to
be told about the man from Jamaica.”

“Give you my honor I never heard of any man from Jamaica,
except the man who was a brother,” replies Mortimer.

“Tobago, then.”

« Nor yet from ''obago.”

“Except,” Hugene strikes in: so unexpectedly that the mature
young lady, who has forgotten all about him, with a start takes the
epaulette out of his way: “except our friend who long lived on rice-
pudding and isinglass, till at length to his something or other, his
physician said something else, and a leg of mutton somehow ended
in daygo.”

A reviving impression goes round the table that Eugene is coming
out. An unfulfilled i impression, for he goes in again.

“Now, my dear Mrs. Veneering,” quoth Lady Tippins, “I appeal
to you whether this is not the pasest conduct ever known in this
world? I carry my lovers about, two or three at a time, on condition
that they are very obedient and devoted; and here is my old lover-
in-chief, the head of all my slaves, throwing off his allegiance before
company! And here is another of my lovers, a rough Cymon at pre-
sent certainly, but of whom I had most hopeful expectations as to his
turning out w ell in course of time, pretending that he can’t remember
his nursery rhymes! On purpose to annoy me, for he knows how I
doat upon them !”

A grisly little fiction concerning her lovers is Lady 'Tippins’s
point. She is always attended by a lover or two, and she keeps a
little list of her lovers, and she is always booking a new lover, or
striking out an old lover, or putting a lover in her black list, 01
promoting a lover to her blue list, or adding up her lovers, or other-
wise posting. her book. Mrs. Veneering is charmed by the humour, and
so is Veneering. Perhaps it is enhanced by a certain yellow play in

Lady Tippins’s throat, like the legs of scratching poultr y.

“TJ banish the false wretch from this moment, and I strike him out
of my Cupidon (my name for my Ledger, my dear,) this very night.
But I am resolved to have the account of the man from Somewhere,
and I beg you to elicit it for me, my love,” to Mrs. Veneering, “as |
have lost my own influence. Oh, you perjured man!’ ‘This to
Mortimer, with a rattle of her fan.

“We are all very much interested in the man from Somewhere,”
Vencering observes.

Then the four Buffers, taking heart of grace all four at once, say:

( “ Deeply interested !”

| “ Quite excited !”

“ Dramatic !”

“ Man from Nowhere, perhaps!”

 

     
  
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
     

 

 

 

10 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

And then Mrs. Veneering—for Lady Tippins’s winning wiles are
contagious

 

folds her hands in the manner of a supplicatine child,
turns to her left neighbour, and says, “Tease! Pay! Man from
Tumwhere!” At which the four Buffers, again mysteriously moved
all four at once, exclaim, “ You can’t resist !”

“Upon my life,” says Mortimer languidly, “I find it immensely.em-
barrassing to have the eyes of Europe upon me to this extent, and my
only consolation is that you will all of you execrate Lady Tippins
in your secret hearts when you find, as you inevitably will, the man
from Somewhere a bore. Sorry to destroy romance by fixing him
with a local habitation, but he comes from the place, the name of
which escapes me, but will suggest itself to everybody else here,
where they make the wine.”

Hugene suggests “ Day and Martin’s.”

“No, not that place,” returns the unmoved Mortimer, “that’s where
they make the Port. My man comes from the country where they
make the Cape Wine. But look here, old fellow; it’s not at all sta-
tistical and it’s rather odd.”

It is always noticeable at the table of the Vencerings, that no man
troubles himself much about the Veneerings themselves, and that
any one who has anything to tell, generally tells it to anybody else
in preference.

“The man,” Mortimer goes on, addressing Hugene, “ whose name is
Harmon, was only son of a tremendous old rascal who made his
money by Dust.”

“Red velveteens and a bell?” the gloomy Eugene inquires.

“And a ladder and basket if you like. By which means, or by
others, he grew rich as a Dust Contractor, and lived in a hollow in a
hilly country entirely composed of Dust. On his own small estate
the growling old vagabond threw up his own mountain range, like
an old volcano, and its geological formation was Dust. Coal-dust,
vegetable-dust, bone-dust, crockery dust, rough dust and sifted dust,
—all manner of Dust.”

A passing remembrance of Mrs. Vencering, here induces Mortimer
to address his next half-dozen words to her; after which he wanders
away again, tries Twemlow and finds he doesn’t answer, ultimately
takes up with the Buffers who receive him enthusiastically.

“The moral being—lI believe that’s the right expression—of this
exemplary person, derived its highest gratification from anathe-
matizing his nearest relations and turning them out of doors. Having
begun (as was natural) by rendering these attentions to the wife of
his bosom, he next found himself at leisure to bestow a similar recog-
nition on the claims of his daughter. He chose a husband for her,
entirely to his own satisfaction and not in the least to hers, and pro-
ceeded to settle wpon her, as her marriage portion, I don’t know how
much Dust, but something immense. At this stage of the affair
the poor girl respectfully intimated that she was secretly engaged
to that popular character whom the novelists and versifiers call
Another, and that such a marriage would make Dust of her heart and
Dust of her life—in short, would set her up, 00 a very extensive scale,
in her father’s business. Immediately, the venerable parent—on a cold
winter’s night, it is said—anathematized and turned her out.”

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 11

Here, the Analytical Chemist (who has evidently formed a very
low opinion of Mortimer’s story) concedes a little claret to the Buffers :
who, again mysteriously moved all four at once, screw it slowly into
themselves with a peculiar twist of enjoyment, as they cry in chorus,
“Pray go on.”

“Phe pecuniary resources of Another were, as they usually are, of
a very limited nature. I believe [am not using too strong an ex-
pression when I say that Another was hard up. However, he
married the young lady, and they lived in a humble dwelling,
probably possessing a porch ornamented with honeysuckle and wood-
bine twining, until she died. I must refer you to the Registrar of
the District in which the humble dwelling was’situated, for the certi-
fied cause of death; but early sorrow and anxiety may have had to do
with it, though they may not appear in the ruled pages and printed
forms. Indisputably this was the case with Another, for he was so
cut up by the loss of his young wife that if he outlived her a year it
was as much as he did.”

There is that in the indolent Mortimer, which seems to hint that
if good society might on any account allow itself to be impressible,
he, one of good society, might have the weakness to be impressed by
what he here relates. It is hidden with great pains, but it is in him.
The gloomy Eugene too, is not without some kindred touch ; for, when
that appalling Lady Tippins declares that if Another had survived,
he should have gone down at the head of her list of lovers—and also
when the mature young lady shrugs her epaulettes, and laughs at
some private and confidential comment from the mature young
gentleman—his gloom deepens to that degree that he trifles quite
ferociously with his dessert-knitfe.

Mortimer proceeds.

“ We must now return, as the novelists say, and as we all wish
they wouldn’t, to the man from Somewhere. Being a boy of fourteen,
cheaply educating at Brussels when his sister’s expulsion befell, it
was some little time before he heard of it—probably from herself, for
the mother was dead; but that I don’t know. Instantly, he
absconded, and came over here. He must have been a boy of spirit
antl resource, to get here on a stopped allowance of five sous a week ;
but he did it somehow, and he burst in on his father, and pleaded
his sister’s cause. Venerable parent promptly resorts to anathema-
tization, and turns him out. Shocked and terrified boy takes flight,
seeks his fortune, gets aboard ship, ultimately turns up on dry land
among the Cape wine: small proprietor, farmer, grower—whatever
you like to call it.”

At this juncture, shuffling is heard in the hall, and tapping is
heard at the dining-room door. Analytical Chemist goes to the door,
confers angrily with unseen tapper, appears to become mollified by
deserying reason in the tapping, and goes out.

« So he was discovered, only the other day, after having been
expatriated about fourteen years.”

A Buffer, suddenly astounding the other three, by detaching him-
self, and asserting individuality, inquires: “ How discovered, and

922

why ?

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

    

 

12 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Ah! To be sure. Thank you for reminding me, Venerable
parent dies.”

Same Buffer, emboldened by success, says: “ When ?”

“ The other day. Ten or twelve months ago.”

Same Buffer inquires with smartness, “What of?” But herein
perishes a melancholy example; being regarded by the three other
Buffers with a stony stare, and attracting no further attention from
any mortal.

“Venerable parent,” Mortimer repeats with a passing remem-
brance that there is a Veneering at table, and for the first time
addressing him—* dies.”

The gratified Veneering repeats, gravely, “dies;” and folds his
arms, and composes his brow to hear it out in a judicial manner,
when he finds himself again deserted in the bleak world.

“ His will is found,” says Mortimer, catching Mrs. Podsnap’s rock-
ing-horse’s eye. “It is dated very soon after the son’s flight. It
leaves the lowest of the range of dust-mountains, with some sort of
a dwelling-house at its foot, to an old servant who is sole executor,
and all the rest of the property—which is very considerable—to the
son. He directs himself to be buried with certain eccentric cere-
monies and precautions against his coming to life, with which I need
not bore you, and that’s all—except—” and this ends the story.

The Analytical Chemist returning, everybody looks at him. Not
because anybody wants to see him, but because of that subtle
influence in nature which impels humanity to embrace the slightest
opportunity of looking at anything, rather than the person who
addresses it.

“—_Hxcept that the son’s inheriting is made conditional on his
marrying a gil, who at the date of the will, was a child of four
or five years old, and who is now a marriageable young woman.
Advertisement and inquiry discovered the son in the man from Some-
where, and at the present moment, he is on his way home from there
—no doubt, in a state of great astonishment—to succeed to a very
large fortune, and to take a wife.”

Mrs. Podsnap inquires whether the young person is a young per-
son of personal charms? Mortimer is unable to report.

Mr. Podsnap inquires what would become of the very large
fortune, in the event of the marriage condition not being fulfilled ?
Mortimer replies, that by special testamentary clause it would then
go to the old servant above mentioned, passing over and excluding
the son; also, that if the son had not been living, the same old
servant would have been sole residuary legatee.

Mrs. Veneering has just succeeded in waking Lady Tippins from
a snore, by dexterously shunting a train of plates and dishes at her
knuckles across the table; when everybody but Mortimer himself
becomes aware that the Analytical Chemist is, in a ghostly manner,
offering him a folded paper. Curiosity detains Mrs. Veneering a few
moments.

Mortimer, in spite of all the arts of the chemist, placidly refreshes
himself with a glass of Madeira, and remains unconscious of
the document which engrosses the general attention, until Lady

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 13

Tippims (who has a habit of waking totally insensible), having
remembered where she is, and recovered a perception of surrounding
objects, says: “Falser man than Don Juan; why don’t you take the
note from the Commendatore?” Upon which, the chemist advances
it under the nose of Mortimer, who looks round at him, and says:

« What's this ?”

Analytical Chemist bends and whispers.

“ Who?” says Mortimer.

Analytical Chemist again bends and whispers.

Mortimer stares at him, and unfolds the paper. Reads it, reads it
twice, turns it over to look at the blank outside, reads it a third time.

“This arrives in an extraordinarily opportune manner,” says
Mortimer then, looking with an altered face round the table: “this is
the conclusion of the story of the identical man.”

“ Already married ?” one guesses.

“ Declines to marry?” another guesses.

“ Codicil among the dust ?” another guesses.

“Why, no,” says Mortimer; “remarkable thing, you are all
wrong. The story is completer and rather more exciting than I sup-
posed. Man’s drowned !”

 

CHAPTER III.
ANOTHER MAN.

As the disappearing skirts of the ladies ascended the Veneering stair-
case, Mortimer, following them forth from the dining-room, turned
into a library of bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally
gilded, and requested to see the messenger who had brought the
paper. He was a boy of about fifteen. Mortimer looked at the boy,
and the boy looked at the bran-new pilgrims on the wall, going to
Canterbury in more gold frame than procession, and more carving
than country.

“ Whose writing is this?”

“ Mine, sir.”

“ Who told you to write it?”

“ My father, Jesse Hexam.”

“Ts it he who found the body ?”

@aYes, slit

“ What is your father ?”

The boy hesitated, looked reproachfully at the pilgrims as if they
had involved him in a little difficulty, then said, folding a plait in
the right leg of his trousers, “ He gets his living along-shore.”

Sasi ib tally oe

“Ts which far?” asked the boy, upon his guard, and again upon
the road to Canterbury.

“To your father’s ?”

“Tt’s a goodish stretch, sir. I come up ina cab, and ‘the cab’'s
waiting to be paid. We could go back in it before you paid it, if
you liked. I went first to your office, according to the direction

 

     
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

 

 

14 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

of the papers found in the pockets, and there I see nobody but a chap
of about my age who sent me on here.”

There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted savagery,
and uncompleted civilization. His voice was hoarse and coarse, and
his face was coarse, and his stunted figure was coarse; but he was
cleaner than other boys of his type; and his writing, though large
and round, was good; and he glanced at the backs of the books, with
an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who
can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who
cannot.

“ Were any means taken, do you know, boy, to ascertain if it was
possible to restore life?” Mortimer inquired, as he sought for his
hat.

“ You wouldn’t ask, sir, if you knew his state. Pharaoh’s»multi-
tude that were drowned in the Red Sea, ain’t more beyond restoring
to life. If Lazarus was only half as far gone, that was the greatest
of all the miracles.”

“ Halloa!” cried Mortimer, turning round with his hat wpon his
head, “ you seem to be at home in the Red Sea, my young friend ?”

“ Read of it with teacher at the school,” said the boy.

“ And Lazarus ?”

“ Yes, and him too. But don’t you tell my father! We should
have no peace in our place, if that got touched upon. It’s my
sister’s contriving.”

“ You seem to have a good sister.”

“ She ain’t half bad,” said the boy; “but if she knows her letters
it’s the most she does—and them I learned her.”

The gloomy Eugene, with his hands in his pockets, had strolled
in and assisted at the latter part of the dialogue; when the hoy
spoke these words slightingly of his sister, he took him roughly
enough by the chin, and turned up his face to look at it.

“ Well, I’m sure, sir!” said the boy, resisting; “I hope youll
know me again.”

Eugene vouchsafed no answer ; but made the proposal to Mortimer,
“TH go with you, if you like?” §o, they all three went away together
in the vehicle that had brought the boy ; the two friends (once boys
together at a public school) mside, smoking cigars; the messenger
on the box beside the driver.

“ Let me see,” said Mortimer, as they went alone; “I have been,
Eugene, upon the honourable roll of solicitors of the High Court of
Chancery, and attorneys at Common Law, five years ; and—except
gratuitously taking mstructions, on an average once a fortnight, for
the will of Lady Tippins who has nothing to leave—I have had no
scrap of business but this romantic business.”

‘ And I,” said Eugene, “have been ‘called’ seven years, and have
had no business at all, and never shall have any. And if I had, I
shouldn’t know how to do it.”
tS I am far from being clear as to the last particular,” returned
Mortimer, with great composure, “ that I have much advantage
over you.”

“ T hate,” said Engene, putting his legs up on the opposite seat, “I
hate my profession.”

 

      
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. Lo

“Shall I incommode you, if I put mine up too?’ returned
Mortimer. “ Thank you. I hate mine.”

“Tt was forced upon me,” said the gloomy Eugene, “because it
was understood that we wanted a barrister in the family. We have
got a precious one.”

“ It was forced upon me,” said Mortimer, “because it was under-
stood that we wanted a solicitor in the family. And we have got a
precious one.” ‘

“here are four of us, with our names painted on a door-post
in right of one black hole called a set of chambers,” said Eugene ;
“and each of us has the fourth of a clerk—Cassim Baba, in the rob-
ber’s cave—and Cassim is the only respectable member of the party.”

“J am one by myself, one,” said Mortimer, “high up an awful
staircase commanding a burial-ground, and I have a whole clerk to
myself, and he has nothing to do but look at the burial-ground,
and what he will turn out when arrived at maturity, I cannot con-
ceive. Whether, in that shabby rook’s nest, he is always plotting
wisdom, or plotting murder ; whother he will grow up, after so much
solitary brooding, to enlighten his fellow-creatures, or to poison them ;
is the only speck of interest that presents itself to my professional
view. Will you give mea light? Thank you.”

“Then idiots talk,” said Hugene, leaning back, folding his arms,
smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose,
“of Energy. If there isa word in the dictionary under any letter
from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conven-
tional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I to
rush out into the street, collar the first man of a wealthy appearance
that I meet, shake him, and say, ‘Go to law upon the spot, you dog,
and retain me, or I'll be the death of you’? Yet that would be
energy.”

“ Precisely my view of the case, Hugene. But show me a good
opportunity, show me something really worth being energetic about,
and Ill show you energy.”

“ And so will I,” said Eugene.

And it is likely enough that ten thousand other young men, within
the limits of the London Post-office town delivery, made the same
hopeful remark in the course of the same evening.

‘The wheels rolled on, and rolled down by the Monument and by
the Tower, and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe ;
down by where accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed
from higher grounds, like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing
until its own weight forced it over the bank and sunk it in the river.
In and out among vessels that seemed to have got ashore, and houses
that seemed to have got afloat—among bowsprits staring into
windows, and windows staring into ships—the wheels rolled on,
until they stopped at a dark corner, river-washed and otherwise not
washed at all, where the boy alighted and opened the door.

‘ You must walk the rest, sir; it’s not many yards.” He spoke in
the singular number, to the express exclusion of Eugene.

“This is a confoundedly out-of-the-way place,’ said Mortimer,
slipping over the stones and refuse on the shore, as the boy turned
the corner sharp.

 

Fa ren

Daido. a eng

 

}
}

 

16 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Here’s my father’s, sir; where the light is.”

The low building had the look of having once been a mill. There
was a rotten wart of wood upon its forehead that seemed to indicate
where the sails had been, but the whole was very indistinctly seen
in the obscurity of the night. The boy lifted the latch of the door,
and they passed at once into a low circular room, where a man stood
before a red fire, looking down into it,and a girl sat engaged in
needlework. The fire was in a rusty brazier, not fitted to the
hearth; and a common lamp, shaped like a hyacinth-root, smoked
and flared in the neck of a stone bottle on the table. There
was a wooden bunk or berth in a corner, and in another corner a
wooden stair leading above—so clumsy and steep that it was little
better than a ladder. ‘T'wo or three old sculls and oars stood
against the wall, and against another part of the wall was a small
dresser, making a spare show of the commonest articles of crockery
and cooking -vessels. The roof of the room was not plastered, but
was formed of the flooring of the room above. This, being very old,
knotted, seamed, and bee amed, gave a lowering aspect to the chainber
and roof, and walls, and floor, alike abounding in old smears of flour,
red-lead (or some such stain which it had probably acquired in ware-
housing), and damp, alike had a look of decomposition.

“ The gentleman, father.”

The fisure at the red fire turned, raised its ruffled head, and
looked like a bird of prey.

“ You're Mortimer Lightwood Esquire; are you, sir?

“ Mortimer Lightwood is my name. What you found,» said Mor-
timer, glancing rather shrinkingly towards the ‘bunk ; “is it here 2”

coat not to say here, but it’s close ‘byeueae do everything
reglar. Ive giv’ notice of the circumstarnce to the police, and the
police have took possession of it. No time ain’t been lost, on any
hand. The police have put it into print already, and here’s what the
pant says of it.”

Taking up the bottle with the lamp in it, he held it near a
paper on the wall, with the police heading, Bopy Founp. The two
friends read the handbill as it stuck against the wall, and Gaffer read
them as he held the light.

“ Only papers on the unfortunate man, I see,” said Lightwood,
glancing from the description of what was found, to the finder.

S Only papers.”

Here the girl arose with her work in her hand, and went out at
the door.

SING money,’ * pursued Mortimer; “but threepence in one of the
skirt: -pockets.”

“Three. Penny. Pieces,” said Gaffer Hexam, in as many sen-
uence

‘ The trousers pockets empty, and turned inside out.”

Galler Hlexam nodded. “ But that’s common. Whether it’s the
wash of the tide or no, I can't say. Now, here,’ moving the light
to another similar placard, “ his pockets was found empty, and
turned inside out. And here,’ moving the light to another, “her
pocket was found empty, and turned inside out. And so was this
one’s. And so was that one’s. I can’t read, nor I don’t want to

 

 

Pe

   

    

OUR MUTUAL

   

FRIEND. 17
it, for I know ’em by their places on the wall. This one was a
sailor, with two anchors and a flag and G. F. 'T. on his arm. Look
and see if he warn’t.”

“ Quite right.”

“'l’his one was the young woman in grey boots, and her linen
marked with a cross. ook and see if she warn’t.”

“ Quite right.”

“This is him as had a nasty cut over the eye. This is them
two young sisters what tied themselves together with a hand-
kecher. his is the drunken old chap, in a pair of list slippers
and a nightcap, wot had offered—it afterwards come out—to make
a hole in the water for a quartern of rum stood aforehand, and
kept to his word for the first and last time in his life. They pretty
well papers the room, you see; but I know ’em all. Im scholar
enough !”

He waved the light over the whole, as if to typify the light of his
scholarly intelligence, and then put it down on the table and stood
behind it looking intently at his visitors. He had the special pecu-
liarity of some birds of prey, that when he knitted his brow, his
ruffled crest stood highest.

“ You did not find all these yourself; did you?” asked Hugene.

To which the bird of prey slowly rejoined, “ And what might your
name be, now ?”

“This is my friend,” Mortimer Lightwood interposed ; “ Mr. Eugene
Wrayburn.”

“Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, is it? And what might Mr. Eugene
Wrayburn have asked of me ?”

“T asked you, simply, if you found all these yourself?”

“ T answer you, simply, most on ’em.”

“ Do you suppose there has been much violence and robbery, before-
hand, among these cases?”

“ T don’t suppose at all about it,” returned Gaffer. “I ain’t one of
the supposing sort. If you’d got your living to haul out of the river
every day of your life, you mightn’t be much given to supposing.
Am I to show the way ?”

As he opened the door, in pursuance of a nod from Lightwood, an
extremely pale and disturbed face appeared in the doorway—the
face of a man much agitated.

“ A body missing?” asked Gaffer Hexam, stopping short; “or a
body found? Which?”

“Tam lost!” replied the man, in a hurried and an eager manner

“Lost ?”

“ J—]—am a stranger, and don’t know the way. I—I—want to
find the place where J can see what is described here. It is possible
I may know it.” He was panting, and could hardly speak; but, he
showed a copy of the newly-printed bill that was still wet upon the
wall. Perhaps its newness, or perhaps the accuracy of his observa-
tion of its general look, guided Gaffer to a ready conclusion.

“This gentleman, Mr. Lightwood, is on that business.”

“ Mr. Lightwood ?”

During a pause, Mortimer and the stranger confronted each other.
Neither knew the other.

VOL. I.

 

c

  

     
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  

 

 

18 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“J think, sir,” said Mortimer, breaking the awkward silence with
his airy self-possession, “that you did me the honor to mention my
name ?”

« T repeated it, after this man.”

“ You said you were a stranger in London :”

“ An utter stranger.”

“ Are you seeking a Mr. Harmon

ENO as

“Then I believe I can assure you that you are on a fruitless
errand, and will not find what you fear to find. Will you come with
us ?”

A little winding through some muddy alleys that might have been
deposited by the last ill-savoured tide, brought them to the wicket-
gate and bright lamp of a Police Station; where they found the
Night-Inspector, with a pen and ink, and ruler, posting up his books
in a whitewashed office, as studiously as if he were in a monastery
on the top of a mountain, and no howling fury of a drunken woman
were banging herself against a cell-door in the back-yard at his
elbow. With the same air of a recluse much given to study, he
desisted from his books to bestow a distrustful nod of recognition
upon Gaffer, plainly importing, “Ah! we know all about you, and
youll overdo it some day ;” and to inform Mr. Mortimer Lightwood
and friends, that he would attend them immediately. Then, he
finished ruling the work he had in hand (it might have been
illuminating a missal, he was so calm), in a very neat and metho-
dical manner, showing not the slightest consciousness of the woman
who was banging herself with increased violence, and shrieking most
terrifically for some other wcman’s liver.

“ A bull’s-eye,” said the Night-Inspector, taking up his keys.
Which a deferential satellite produced. “Now, gentlemen.”

With one of his keys, he opened a cool grot at the end of the yard,
and they all went in. They quickly came out again, no one speak-
ing but Hugene: who remarked to Mortimer, in a whisper, “Not
much worse than Lady Tippins.”

So, back to the whitewashed library of the monastery—with that
liver still in shrieking requisition, as it had been loudly, while they
looked at the silent sight they came to see—and there through the
merits of the case as summed up by the Abbot. No clue to how
body came into river. Very often was no clue. Too late to know
for certain, whether injuries received before or after death; one
excellent surgical opinion said, before; other excellent surgical
opinion said, after. Steward of ship in which gentleman came home
passenger, had been round to view, and could swear to identity.
Likewise could swear to clothes. And then, you see, you had the
papers, too. How was it he had totally disappeared on leaving
ship, ’till found in river? Well! Probably had been upon some
little game. Probably thought it a harmless game, wasn’t up to
things, and it turned out a fatal game. Inquest to-morrow, and no
doubt open verdict.

“Tt appears to have knocked your friend over—knocked him com-
pletely off his legs,” Mr. Inspector remarked, when he had finished
his summing up. “It has given him a bad tum to be sure!” This

9

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 19

was said in a very low voice, and with a searching look (not the first
he had cast) at the stranger.

Mr. Lightwood explained that it was no friend of his.

“Indeed ?” said Mr. Inspector, with an attentive ear; “where did
you pick him up ?”

Mr. Lightwood explained further.

Mr. Inspector had delivered his summing up, and had added these
words, with his elbows leaning on his desk, and the fingers and
thumb of his right hand, fitting themselves to the fingers and thumb
of his left. Mr. Inspector moved nothing but his eyes, as he now
added, raising his voice:

“Turned you faint, sir! Seems you're not accustomed to this
kind of work ?”

The stranger, who was leaning against the chimneypiece with
drooping head, looked round and answered, “No. It’s a horrible
sight !”

“ You expected to identify, I am told, sir ?”

se Vies:

“ Have you identified

“No. It’s a horrible sight. O! a horrible, horrible sight!”

“ Who did you think it might have been?” asked Mr. Inspector.
“ Give us a description, sir. Perhaps we can help you.”

“No, no,” said the stranger; “it would be quite useless. Good-
night.”

Mr. Inspector had not moved, and had given no order; but, the
satellite slipped his back against the wicket, and laid his left arm
along the top of it, and with his right hand turned the bull’s-eye he
had taken from his chief—in quite a casual manner—towards the
stranger.

“You missed a friend, you know; or you missed a foe, you know ;
or you wouldn’t have come here, you know. Well, then; ain’t it
reasonable to ask, who was it?” ‘Thus, Mr. Inspector.

“You must excuse my telling you. No class of man can under-
stand better than you, that families may not choose to publish their
disagreements and misfortunes, except on the last necessity. I do
not dispute that you discharge your duty in asking me the question ;
you will not dispute my right to withhold the answer. Good-
night.”

Again he turned towards the wicket, where the satellite, with his
eye upon his chief, remained a dumb statue.

“ At least,” said Mr. Inspector, “you will not object to leave me
your card, sir?”

“J should not object, if I had one; but I have not.” He reddened
and was much confused as he gave the answer.

“ At least,” said Mr. Inspector, with no change of voice or manner,
“you will not object to write down your name and address?”

“Not at all.” :

Mr. Inspector dipped a pen in his inkstand, and deftly laid
it on a piece of paper close beside him; then resumed his former
attitude. The stranger stepped up to the desk, and wrote in a
rather tremulous hand—Mr. Inspector taking sidelong note of every
hair of his head when it was bent down for the purpose—
c2

a
pe

Se eens

 

 

 

 

 

20 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Mr. Julius Handford, Exchequer Coffee House, Palace Yard, West-
minster.”

“Staying there, I presume, sir ?”

“ Staying there.”

“Consequently, from the country

“Hh? Yes—from the country.”

“Good-night, sir.”

The satellite removed his arm and opened the wicket, and Mr.
Julius Handford went out.

“ Reserve!” said Mr. Inspector. . “Take care of this piece of paper,
keep him in view without giving offence, ascertain that he zs staying
there, and find out anything you can about him.”

The satellite was gone; and Mr. Inspector, becoming once again
the quiet Abbot of that Monastery, dipped his pen in his ink and
resumed his books. The two friends who had watched him,

9”

more amused by the professional manner than suspicious of

Mr. Julius Handford, inquired before taking their departure too
whether he believed there was anything that really looked bad
here?

The Abbot replied with reticence, couldn’t say. Ifa murder, any-
body might have done it. Burglary or pocket-picking wanted
’prenticeship. Not so, murder. We were all of us up to that. Had
seen scores of people come to identify, and never saw one person
struck in that particular way. Might, however, have been Stomach
and not Mind. Ifso, rum stomach. But to be sure there were rum
everythings. Pity there was not a word of truth in that superstition
about bodies bleeding when touched by the hand of the right person ;
you never got a sign out of bodies. You got row enough out of such
as her—she was good for all night now” (referring here to the bang-
ing demands for the liver), “but you got nothing out of bodies if it
Was ever so.”

There being nothing more to be done until the Inquest was held
next day, the friends went away together, and Gaffer Hexam and his
son went their separate way. But, arriving at the last corner, Gaffer
bade his boy go home while he turned into a red-curtained tavern,
that stood dropsically bulging over the causeway, “for a half-a-
pint.”

The boy lifted the latch he had lifted before, and found his sister
again seated before the fire at her work. Who raised her head upon
his coming in and asking :

“Where did you go, Liz?”

“T went out in the dark.”

“There was no necessity for that. It was all right enough.”

“One of the gentlemen, the one who didn’t speak while I was
there, looked hard at me. And I was afraid he might know what
my face meant. But there! Don’t mind me, Charley! I was all
in a tremble of another sort when you owned to father you could
write a little.” j

“Ah! But I made believe I wrote so badly, as that it was odds
if any one could read it. And when I wrote slowest and smeared
out with my finger most, father was best pleased, as he stood looking
over me.

i

 

   

      
  
   
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 

 

 

OUR

 

MUTUAL

   

FRIEND. 21

The girl put aside her work,and drawing her seat close to his seat
by the fire, laid her arm gently on his shoulder.

“Yow ll make the most of your time, Charley ; won’t you?”

“Won't 1? Come! I like that. Don’t 1?”

“Yes, Charley, yes. You work hard at your learning, I know.
And I work a little, Charley, and plan and contrive a little (wake
out of my sleep contriving sometimes), how to get together a shilling
now, and a shilling then, that shall make father believe you are
beginning to earn a stray living along shore.”

“You are father’s favourite, and can make him believe anything.”

“T wish I could, Charley! For if I could make him believe that
learning was a good thing, and that we might lead better lives, I
should be a’most content to die.”

“Don’t talk stuff about dying, Liz.”

She placed her hands in one another on his shoulder, and laying
her rich brown cheek against them as she looked down at the fire,
went on thoughtfully :

“Of an evening, Charley, when you are at the school, and
father’s 6

“ At the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters,” the boy struck in, with a
backward nod of his head towards the public-house.

“Yes. Then as I sit a-looking at the fire, I seem to see in the
burning coal—like where that glow is now i

“That's gas, that is,” said the boy, “coming out of a bit of a forest
that’s been under the mud that was under the water in the days of
Noah’s Ark. Look here! When I take the poker—so—and give it
a dig 4

“Don’t disturb it, Charley, or it'll be all in a blaze. It’s that dull
glow near it, coming and going, that Imean. When I look at it of
an evening, it comes like pictures to me, Charley.”

“Show us a picture,” said the boy. “Tell us where to look.”

“Ah! It wants my eyes, Charley.”

“Cut away then, and tell us what your eyes make of it.”

“Why, there are you and me, Charley, when you were quite a
baby that never knew a mother *

“Don’t go saying I never knew a mother,” interposed the boy,
“for I knew a little sister that was sister and mother both.”

The girl laughed delightedly, and her eyes filled with pleasant
tears, as he put both his arms round, her waist and so held her.

“There are you and me, Charley, when father was away at work
and locked us out, for fear we should set ourselves afire or fall out of
window, sitting on the door-sill, sitting on other door-steps, sitting
on the bank of the river, wandering about to get through the time.
You are rather heavy to carry, Charley, and J am often obliged to rest.
Sometimes we are sleepy and fall asleep together in a corner, some-
times we are very hungry, sometimes we are a little frightened, but
what is oftenest hard upon us is the cold. You remember, Charley?”

“J remember,” said the boy, pressing her to him twice or thrice,
“that I snuggled under a little shawl, and it was warm there.”

“Sometimes it rains, and we creep under a boat or the like of
that; sometimes it’s dark, and we get among the gaslights, sitting
watching the people as they go along the streets. At last, up comes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—

Same.

> ae eee es

{

 

22. OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

father and takes us home. And home seems such a shelter after out
of doors! And father pulls my shoes off, and dries my feet at the
fire, and has me to sit by him while he smokes his pipe long after
you are abed, and I notice that father’s is a large hand but never a
heavy one when it touches me, and that father’s is a rough voice but
never an angry one when it speaks tome. So, I grow up, and little
by little father trusts me, and makes me his companion, and, let him
be put out as he may, never once strikes me.”

The listening boy gave a grunt here, as much as to say “ But he
strikes me though |”

“Those are some of the pictures of what is past, Charley.”

“Cut away again,” said the boy, “and give us a fortune-telling
one; a future one.”

“Well! There am J, continuing with father and holding to
father, because father loves me and I love father. I can’t so much
as read a book, because, if I had learned, father would have thought
I was deserting him, and I should have lost my influence. I have
not the influence I want to have, I cannot stop some dreadful things
I try to stop, but I go on in the hope and trust that the time will
come. In the meanwhile I know that I am in some things a stay
to father, and that if I was not faithful to him he would—in
revenge-like, or in disappointment, or both—go wild and bad.”

“Give us a touch of the fortune-telling pictures about me.”

“Twas passing on to them, Charley,” said the girl, who had not
changed her attitude since she began, and who now mournfully shook
her head ; “the others were all leading up. ‘There are you @

“ Where am I, Liz?”

“Still in the hollow down by the flare.”

“There seems to be the deuce-and-all in the hollow down by the
flare,” said the boy, glancing from her eyes to the brazier, which had
a grisly skeleton look on its long thin legs.

“There are you, Charley, working your way, in secret from father,
at the school; and you get prizes; and you go on better and better;
and you come to be a—what was it you called it when you told me
about that ?”

“Ha, ha! Fortune-telling not know the name!” cried the hoy,
seeming to be rather relieved by this default on the part of the
hollow down by the flare. “ Pupil-teacher.”

“You come to be a pupil-teacher, and you still go on better and
better, and you rise to be a master full of learning and respect. But
the secret has come to father’s knowledge long before, and it has
divided You from father, and from me.”

“No it hasn’t!”

“Yes it has, Charley. I see, as plain as plain can be, that your
way is not ours, and that even if father could be got to forgive your
taking it (which he never could be), that way of yours would be
darkened by our way. But I see too, Charley. #

“ Still as plain as plain can be, Liz?’ asked the boy playfully.

“Ah! Still, That it is a great work to have cut you away from
father's life, and to have made a new and good beginning. So there
am I, Charley, left alone with father, keeping him as straight as I can,
watching for more influence than I haye, and hoping that through

 

 

 

Kin

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 23

some fortunate chance, or when he is ill, or when—I don’t Inow
what—I may turn him to wish to do better things.”

“You said you couldn’t read a book, Lizzie. Your library of books
is the hollow down by the flare, I think.”

“T should be very glad to be able to read real books. I feel my
want of learning very much, Charley. But I should feel it much
more, if I didn’t know it to be a tie between me and father.—Hark !
Father’s tread!”

It being now past midnight, the bird of prey went straight to
roost. At mid-day following he reappeared at the Six Jolly Fellow-
ship-Porters, in the character, not new to him, of a witness before a
Coroner’s Jury. ‘

Mr. Mortimer Lightwood, besides sustaining the character of one
of the witnesses, doubled the part with that of the eminent solicitor
who watched the proceedings on behalf of the representatives of the
deceased, as was duly recorded in the newspapers. Mr. Inspector
watched the proceedings foo, and kept his watching closely to him-
self. Mr. Julius Handford having given his right address, and
being reported in solvent circumstances as to his bill, though nothing
more was known of him at his hotel except that his way of life
was very retired, had no summons to appear, and was merely present
in the shades of Mr. Inspector’s mind.

The case was made interesting to the public, by Mr. Mortimer
Lightwood’s evidence touching the circumstances under which
the deceased, Mr. John Harmon, had returned to England; ex-
clusive private proprietorship in which circumstances was set up
at dinner-tables for several days, by Vencering, Twemlow, Podsnap,
and all the Buffers: who all related them irreconcilably with one
another, and contradicted themselves. It was also made interesting
by the testimony of Job Potterson, the ship’s steward, and one
Mr. Jacob Kibble, a fellow-passenger, that the deceased Mr. John
Harmon did bring over, in a hand-valise with which he did dis-
embark, the sum realized by the forced sale of his little landed
property, and that the sum exceeded, in ready money, seven hun-
dred pounds. It was further made interesting, by the remarkable
experiences of Jesse Hexam in having rescued from the Thames
so many dead bodies, and for whose behoof a rapturous admirer sub-
scribing himself “A friend to Burial” (perhaps an undertaker), sent
cighteen postage stamps, and five “Now Sir”s to the editor of the
Times.

Upon the evidence adduced before them, the Jury found, That
the body of Mr. John Harmon had been discovered floating in the
Thames, in an advanced state of decay, and much injured; and that
the said Mr. John Harmon had come by his death under highly sus-
picious circumstances, though by whose act or in what precise manner
there was no evidence before this Jury to show. And they appended
to their verdict, a recommendation to the Home Office (which Mr.
Tuspector appeared to think highly sensible), to offer a reward for
the solution of the mystery. Within eight-and-forty hours, a reward
of One Hundred Pounds was proclaimed, together with a free pardon
to any person or persons not the actual perpetrator or perpetrators,
and so forth in due form.

 

 

 

 

24 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

This Proclamation rendered Mr. Inspector additionally studious,
and caused him to stand meditating on river-stairs and causey TLYS,
and to go-lurking about in boats, putting this and that together.
But, according to the success with which you put this and that
together, you get a woman and a fish apart, or a Mermaid in com-
bination. And Mr. Inspector could turn out nothing better than
a Mermaid, which no Judge and Jury would believe in.

Thus, like the tides on which it had been borne to the knowledge
of men, the Harmon Murder—as it came to be popularly called
went up and down, and ebbed and flowed, now in the town, now in
the country, now among palaces, now among hovels, now among
lords and Jadies and gentlefolks, now among labourers and ham-
merers and ballast-heavers, until at last, after a long interval of
slack water it got out to sea and drifted away.

 

 

 

CHAPTER IY.
THE R. WILFER FAMILY.

ReetnaLp WILFER is a name with rather a grand sound, suggesting
on first acquaintance brasses in country churches, scrolls in stained-
glass windows, and generally the De Wilfers who came over with
the Conqueror. For, it is a remarkable fact in genealogy that no De
Any ones ever came over with Anybody else.

But, the Reginald Wilfer family were of such commonplace extrac-
tion and pursuits that their forefathers had for generations modest y
subsisted on the Docks, the Excise Office, and the Custom House, and
the existing R. Wilfer was a poor clerk. So poor a clerk, though
having a limited salary and an unlimited family, that he had never
yet attained the modest object of his ambition: which was, to wear
a complete new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, at one time.
His black hat was brown before he could afford a coat, his pantaloons
were white at the seams and knees before he could buy a pair of
boots, his boots had worn out before he could treat himself to new
pantaloons, and, by the time he worked round to the hat again, that
shining modern article roofed-in an ancient ruin of various periods.

If the conventional Cherub could ever grow up and be clothed,

he might be photographed as a portrait of Wilfer. His chubby,
smooth, innocent appearance was a reason for his being always
treated with condescension when he was not put down. A stranger
entering his own poor house at about ten o'clock p.m. might have
been surprised to find him sitting up to supper. So boyish was
he in his curves and proportions, that his old schoolmaster meeting
him in Cheapside, might have been unable to withstand the temp-
ation of caning him on the spot. In short, he was the conven-
tional cherub, after the supposititious shoot just mentioned, rather
grey, with signs of care on his expression, and in decidedly insolvent
circumstances.

He was shy, and unwilling to own to the name of Reginald, as
being too aspiring and self-assertive a name. In his signature he

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 25

used only the initial R., and imparted what it really stood for,
to none but chosen friends, under the seal of confidence. Out of
this, the facetious habit had arisen in the neighbourhood surround-
ing Mincing Lane of making christian names for him of adjectives
and participles beginning with R. Some of these were more or
less appropriate: as Rusty, Retiring, Ruddy, Round, Ripe, Ridiculous,
Ruminative ; others, derived their point from their want of applica-
tion: as Raging, Rattling, Roaring, Raffish. But, his popular name
was Rumty, which in a moment of inspiration had been bestowed
upon him by a gentleman of convivial habits connected with the
drug-market, as the beginning of a social chorus, his leading part in
the execution of which had led this gentleman to the Temple of
Fame, and of which the whole expressive burden ran:

“ Rumty iddity, row dow dow.
. ‘2! a >
Sing toodlely, teedlely, bow wow wow.”

Thus he was constantly addressed, even in minor notes on business,
as “Dear Rumty;” m answer to which, he sedately siened himself,
“Yours truly, R. Wilfer.”

He was clerk in the drug-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and
Stobbles. Chicksey and Stobbles, his former masters, had both
become absorbed in Veneering, once their traveller or commission
agent: who had signalized his accession to supreme power by bring-
ing into the business a quantity of plate-glass window and French-
polished mahogany partition, and a gleaming and enormous door-
plate.

R. Wilfer locked up his desk one evening, and, putting his bunch
of keys in his pocket much as if it were his peg-top, made for home.
His home was in the Holloway region north of London, and then
divided from it by fields and trees. Between Battle Bridge and
that part of the Holloway district in which he dwelt, was a tract of
suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were
boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and
dust was heaped by contractors. Skirting the border of this desert,
by the way he took, when the light of its kiln-fires made Inrid
smears on the fog, R. Wilfer sighed and shook his head.

“Ah me!” said he, “what might have been is not what is!”

With which commentary on human life, indicating an experience
of it not exclusively his own, he made the best of his way to the end
of his journey.

Mrs. Wilfer was, of course, a tall woman and an angular. Her
lord being cherubic, she was necessarily majestic, according to the
principle which matrimonially unites contrasts. She was much
given to tying up her head im a pocket-handkerchief, knotted under
the chin. ‘his head-gear, in conjunction with a pair of gloves worn
within doors, she seemed to consider as at once a kind of armour
against misfortune (invariably assuming it when in low spirits or
difficulties), and as a species of full dress. It was therefore with
some sinking of the spirit that her husband beheld her thus he-
roically attired, putting down her candle in the little hall, and
coming down the doorsteps through the little front court to open the
gate for him.

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   

 

   
 
 
     

 

26 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Something had gone wrong with the house-door, for R. Wilfer
stopped on the steps, staring at it, and cried :

“ Hal—loa ?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Wilfer, “the man came himself with a pair of
pincers, and took it off, and took it away. He said that as he had no
expectation of ever being paid.for it, and as he had an order for
another Laprrs’ Schoo. door-plate, it was better (burnished up) for
the interests of all parties.”

“Perhaps it was, my dear; what do you think?”

“You are master here, R. W.,” returned his wife. “It is as you
think; not asI do. Perhaps it might have been better if the man
had taken the door too?”

“My dear, we couldn’t have done without the door.”

“Couldn't we?”

“Why, my dear! Could we?”

“Tt is as you think, R. W.; not as I do.” With those submissive
words, the dutiful wife preceded him down a few stairs to a little
basement front room, half kitchen, half parlour, where a girl of
about nineteen, with an exceedingly pretty figure and face, but with
an impatient and petulant expression both in her face and in her
shoulders (which in her sex and at her age are very expressive of
discontent), sat playing draughts with a younger girl, who was the
youngest of the House of Wilfer. Not to encumber this page by
telling off the Wilfers in detail and casting them up in the gross, it
is enough for the present that the rest were what is called “out in
the world,” in various ways, and that they were Many. So many,
that when one of his dutiful children called in to see him, R. Wilfer
generally seemed to say to himself, after a little mental arithmetic,
“Oh! here’s another of ’em!” before adding aloud, “How de do,
John,” or Susan, as the case might be.

“ Well Piggywiggies,” said R. W., “how de do tonight? What I
was thinking of, my dear,” to Mrs. Wilfer already seated in a corner
with folded gloves, “was, that as we have let our first floor so well,
and as we have now no place in which you could teach pupils, even
if pupils

“The milkman said he knew of two young ladies of the highest
respectability who were in search of a suitable establishment, and he
took a card,” interposed Mrs. Wilfer, with severe monotony, as if she
were reading an Act of Parliament aloud. “Tell your father whether
it was last Monday, Bella.”

“But we never heard any more of it, ma,” said Bella, the elder
girl,

“Tn addition to which, my dear,” her husband urged, “if you have
no place to put two young persons into a4

“Pardon me,” Mrs. Wilfer again interposed; “they were not young
persons. ‘Two young ladies of the highest respectability. Tell your
father, Bella, whether the milkman said so.”

“My dear, it is the same thing.”

“No it is not,” said Mrs. Wilfer, with the same impressive mono-
tony. ‘ Pardon me!”

“T mean, my dear, it is the same thing as to space. As to space.
Tf you have no space in which to put two youthful fellow-creatures,

 

 

Moe

      
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 27

however eminently respectable, which I do not doubt, where are
those youthful fellow-creatures to be accommodated? I carry it no
further than that. And solely looking at it,” said her husband, making
the stipulation at once in a conciliatory, complimentary, and argu-
mentative tone—“as I am sure you will agree, my love—from a
fellow-creature point of view, my dear.”

“]T have nothing more to say,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, with a meek
renunciatory action of her gloves. “It is as you think, R. W.; not
as I do.”

Here, the huffing of Miss Bella and the loss of three of her men at
a swoop, aggravated by the coronation of an opponent, led to that
young lady’s jerking the draught-board and pieces off the table:
which her sister went down on her knees to pick up.

“Poor Bella!” said Mrs. Wilfer.

“ And poor Lavinia, perhaps, my dear?” suggested R. W.

“Pardon me,” said Mrs. Wilfer, “no!”

It was one of the worthy woman’s specialities that she had an
amazing power of gratifying her splenetic or worldly-minded humours
by extolling her own family : which she thus proceeded, in the present
case, to do.

“No, R. W. Lavinia has not known the trial that Bella has
known. ‘The trial that your daughter Bella has undergone, is,
perhaps, without a parallel, and has been borne, I will say, Nobly.
When you see your daughter Bella in her black dress, which she
alone of all the family wears, and when you remember the circum-
stances which have led to her wearing it, and when you know how
those circumstances have been sustained, then, R. W., lay your head
upon your pillow and say, ‘Poor Lavinia!”

Here, Miss Lavinia, from her kneeling situation under the table,
put in that she didn’t want to be “ poored by pa,” or anybody else.

“Tam sure you do not, my dear,” returned her mother, “for you
have a fine brave spirit. And your sister Cecilia has a fine brave
spirit of another kind, a spirit of pure devotion, a beau-tiful spirit!
The self-sacrifice of Cecilia reveals a pure and womanly character,
very seldom equalled, never surpassed. I have now in my pocket
a letter from your sister Cecilia, received this morning—received
three months after her marriage, poor child !—in which she tells
me that her husband must unexpectedly shelter under their roof
his reduced aunt. ‘But I will be true to him, mamma,’ she touch-
ingly writes, ‘I will not leave him, I must not forget that he is my
husband. Let his aunt come!’ If this is not pathetic, if this is not
woman's devotion: !? The good lady waved her gloves in a sense
of the impossibility of saying more, and tied the pocket-handkerchief
over her head in a tighter knot under her chin.

Bella, who was now seated on the rug to warm herself, with her
brown eyes on the fire and a handful of her brown curls in her
mouth, laughed at this, and then pouted and half cried.

“JT am sure,” said she, “though you have no feeling for me, pa, I
am one of the most unfortunate girls that ever lived. You know
how poor we are” (it is probable he did, having some reason to know
it!), “and what a glimpse of wealth I had, and how it melted away,
and how IL am here in this ridiculous mourning—which I hate !—a

 

 

 

 
 

     

t
i
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4
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28 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

kind of a widow who never was married. And yet you don’t feel for
me.—Yes you do, yes you do.”

This abrupt change was occasioned by her father’s face. She
stopped to pull him down from his chair in an attitude highly favour-
able to strangulation, and to give him a kiss and a pat or two on
the cheek.

“But you ought to feel for me, you know, pa.”

“My dear, I do.”

“Yes, and I say you ought to. If they had only left me alone and
told me nothing about it, it would have mattered much less. But
that nasty Mr. Lightwood feels it his duty, as he says, to write and
tell me what is in reserve for me, and then I am obliged to get rid
of George Sampson.”

Here, Lavinia, rising to the surface with the last draughtman
rescued, interposed, “ You never cared for George Sampson, Bella.”

« And did I say I did, miss?” ‘Then, pouting again, with the curls
in her mouth; “George Sampson was very fond of me, and admired
me very much, and put up with everything I did to him.”

“You were rude enough to him,” Lavinia again interposed.

“And did I say I wasn’t, miss? Jam not setting up to be senti-
mental about George Sampson. I only say George Sampson was
better than nothing.”

“You didn’t show him that you thought even that,” Lavinia again
interposed.

“You are a chit and a little idiot,” returned Bella, “or you wouldn't
make such a dolly speech. What did you expect me todo? Wait
till you are a woman, and don’t talk about what you don’t under-
stand. You only show your ignorance!” ‘Then, whimpering again,
and at intervals biting the curls, and stopping to look how much was
bitten off, “It’s a shame! ‘There never was such a hard case! I
shouldn’t care so much if it wasn’t so ridiculous. It was ridiculous
enough to have a stranger coming over to marry me, whether he
liked it or not. It was ridiculous enough to know what an embarrass-
ing meeting it would be, and how we never could pretend to have an
inclination of our own, either of us. It was ridiculous enough to
know I shouldn’t like him—how could I like him, left to him in a
will, like a dozen of spoons, with everything cut and dried beforehand,
like orange chips. ‘Talk of orange flowers indeed! TI declare again
it’s a shame! Those ridiculous points would have been smoothed
away by the money, for I love money, and want money—want it
dreadfully. I hate to be poor, and we are degradingly poor, offen-
sively poor, miserably poor, beastly poor. But here I am, left with
all the ridiculous parts of the situation remaining, and, added to them
all, this ridiculous dress! And if the truth was known, when the
Marmon murder was all over the town, and people were speculating
on it’s being suicide, I dare say those impudent wretches at the clubs
and places made jokes about the miserable creature’s having preferred
a watery grave tome. It’s likely enough they took such liberties ;
I shouldn’t wonder! TI declare it’s a very hard case indeed, and I
am a most unfortunate girl. The idea of being a kind of a widow,
and never having been married! And the idea of being as poor
as ever after all,and going into black, besides, for a man I never

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
     

:

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 2S)
saw, and should have hated—as far as he was concerned—if I
had seen !”

The young lady’s lamentations were checked at this point by a
knuckle, knocking at the halfopen door of the room. The knuckle
had knocked two or three times already, but had not been heard.

“ Who is it?” said Mrs. Wilfer, in her Act-of-Parliament manner.
“ Winter !”

A gentleman coming in, Miss Bella, with a short and sharp excla-
mation, scrambled off the hearth-rug and massed the bitten curls
together in their right place on her neck.

“The servant girl had her key in the door as I came up, and
directed me to this room, telling me I was expected. J am afraid I
should have asked her to announce me.”

“Pardon me,” returned Mrs. Wilfer. “Not at all. Two of my
daughters. R. W., this is the gentleman who has taken your first-
floor. He was so good as to make an appointment for to-night, when
you would be at home.”

A dark gentleman. Thirty at the utmost. An expressive, one
might say handsome, face. A very bad manner. In the last degree
constrained, reserved, diffident, troubled. His eyes were on Miss
Bella for an instant, and then looked at the ground as he addressed
the master of the house.

“Seeing that I am quite satisfied, Mr. Wilfer, with the rooms, and
with their situation, and with their price, I suppose a memorandum
between us of two or three lines, and a payment down, will bind the
bargain? I wish to send in furniture without delay.”

Two or three times during this short address, the cherub addressed
had made chubby motions towards a chair. The gentleman now
took it, laying a hesitating hand on a corner of the table, and with
another hesitating hand lifting the crown of his hat to his lips, and
drawing it before his mouth.

“The gentleman, R. W.,” said Mrs. Wilfer, “ proposes to take your
apartments by the quarter. A quarter’s notice on either side.”

“Shall I mention, sir,” insinuated the landlord, expecting it to be
received as a matter of course, “the form of a reference ?”

“J think,” returned the gentleman, after a pause, “that a refer-
ence is not necessary; neither, to say the truth, is it convenient, for I
am a stranger in London. I require no reference from you, and per-
haps, therefore, you will require none from me. ‘That will be fair on
both sides. Indeed, I show the greater confidence of the two, for I
will pay in advance whatever you please, and I am going to trust
my furniture here. Whereas, if you were in embarrassed circum-
stances—this is merely supposititious

Conscience causing R. Wilfer to colour, Mrs. Wilfer, from a corner
(she always got into stately corners) came to the rescue with a deep-
toned “ Per-fectly.”

« Why then I—might lose it.”

“Well!” observed R. Wilfer, cheerfully, “money and goods are
certainly the best of references.”

“Do you think they are the best, pa?” asked Miss Bella, in a low
voice, and without looking over her shoulder as she warmed her foot
on the fender.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  
 
 
 
  
 

   
 

 
 
   
  
  
  
  
 

 
 

30 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Among the best, my dear.”

“T should have thought, myself, it was so easy to add the usual
kind of one,” said Bella, with a toss of her curls.

The gentleman listened to her, with a face of marked attention,
though he neither looked up nor changed his attitude. He sat, still
and silent, until his future landlord accepted his proposals, and
brought writing materials to complete the business. He sat, still
and silent, while the landlord wrote.

When the agreement was ready in duplicate (the landlord having
worked at it like some cherubic scribe, in what is conventionally called
a doubtful, which means a not at all doubtful, Old Master), it was
signed by the contracting parties, Bella looking on as scornful witness.
The contracting parties were R. Wilfer, and John Rokesmith Esquire.

When it came to Bella’s turn to sign her name, Mr. Rokesmith,
who was standing, as he had sat, with a hesitating hand upon the
table, looked at her stealthily, but narrowly. He looked at the
pretty figure bending down over the paper and saying, “ Where am
I to go, pa? Here, in this corner?’ He looked at the beautiful
brown hair, shading the coquettish face; he looked at the free dash
of the signature, hich was a bold one for a woman’s; and then they
looked at one another.

“Much obliged to you, Miss Wilfer.”

“ Obliged ?”

“T have given you so much trouble.”

“Signing my name? Yes, certainly. But I am your landlord’s
daughter, sir.”

As there was nothing more to do but pay eight sovereigns in ear-
nest of the bargain, pocket the agreement, appoint a time for the ar-
rival of his furniture and himself, and go, Mr. Rokesmith did that
as awkwardly as it might be done, and was escorted by his landlord
to the outer air. When R. Wilfer returned, candlestick in hand, to
the bosom of his family, he found the bosom agitated.

“Pa,” said Bella, “we have got a Murderer for a tenant.”

“Pa,” said Lavinia, “we have got a Robber.”

“'To see him unable for his life to look anybody in the face!” said
Bella. “There never was such an exhibition.”

“My dears,” said their father, “he is a diffident gentleman, and I
should say particularly so in the society of girls of your age.”

“Nonsense, our age!” cried Bella, impatiently. “What's that
got to do with him?”

“Besides, we are not of the same age:—which age?” demanded
Lavinia.

“Never you mind, Lavvy,” retorted Bella; “you wait till you are
of an age to ask such questions. Pa, mark my words! Between Mr.
Rokesmith and me, there is a natural antipathy and a deep distrust ;
and something will come of it!”

“My dear, and girls,” said the cherub-patriarch, “between Mr.
Rokesmith and me, there is a matter of eight sovereigns, and some-
thing for supper shall come of it, if you'll agree upon the article.”

This was a neat and happy turn to give the subject, treats being
rare in the Wilfer household, where a monotonous appearance of
Dutch-cheese at ten o’clock in the evening had been rather frequently

  
  
 
 
  

  

f —— so

 

WITNESSING THE AGREEMENT,

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
   

 

ee

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 3l

commented on by the dimpled shoulders of Miss Bella. Indeed, the
modest Dutchman himself seemed conscious of his want of variety, and
generally came before the family in a state of apologetic perspiration.
After some discussion on the relative merits of veal-cutlet, sweet-
bread, and lobster, a decision was pronounced in favour of veal-cutict.
Mrs. Wilfer then solemnly divested herself of her handkerchief and
gloves, as a preliminary sacrifice to preparing the frying-pan, and
R. W. himself went out to purchase the viand. He soon returned,
bearing the same in a fresh cabbage-leaf, where it coyly embraced a
rasher of ham. Melodious sounds were not long in rising from
the frying-pan on the fire, or in seeming, as the firelight danced
in the mellow halls of a couple of full bottles on the table, to play
appropriate dance-music.

The cloth was laid by Lavvy. Bella, as the acknowledged orna-
ment of the family, employed both her hands in giving her hair an
additional wave while sitting in the easiest chair, and occasionally
threw in a direction touching the supper: as, “ Very brown, ma ;” or,
to her sister, “Put the saltcellar straight, miss, and don’t be a dowdy
little puss.”

Meantime her father, chinking Mr. Rokesmith’s gold as he sat
expectant between his knife and fork, remarked that six of those
sovereigns came just in time for their landlord, and stood them in a
little pile on the white tablecloth to look at.

«J hate our landlord!” said Bella.

But, observing a fall in her father’s face, she went and sat down by
him at the table, and began touching up his hair with the handle of
a fork. It was one of the girl’s spoilt ways to be always arranging
the family’s hair—perhaps because her own was so pretty, and oceu-
pied so much of her attention.

“ You deserve to have a house of your own; don’t you, poor pa ?”

«TJ don’t deserve it better than another, my dear.”

“ At any rate I, for one, want it more than another,” said Bella,
holding him by the chin, as she stuck his flaxen hair on end, “and I
grudge this money going to the Monster that swallows up so much,
when we all want—Hverything. And if you say (as you want to say ;
I know you want to say so, pa) ‘that’s neither reasonable nor honest,
Bella,’ then I answer, ‘Maybe not, pa—very likely—but it’s one of
the consequences of being poor, and of thoroughly hating and de-
testing to be poor, and that’s my case.’ Now, you look lovely, pa;
why don’t you always wear your hair like that? And here’s the
cutlet! If it isn’t very brown, ma, I can’t eat it, and must have a
bit put back to be done expressly.”

However, as it was brown, even to Bella’s taste, the young lady
graciously partook of it without reconsignment to the frying-pan, and
also, in due course, of the contents of the two bottles: whereof one
held Scotch ale and the other rum. ‘The latter perfume, with the
fostering aid of boiling water and lemon-peel, diffused itself through-
out the room, and became so highly concentrated around the warm
fireside, that the wind passing over the house roof must have rushed.
off charged with a delicious whiff of it, after buzzing like a great bee
at that particular chimneypot.

«“ Pa,” said Bella, sipping the fragrant mixture and warming her fa-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

32 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

vourite ankle; “when old Mr. Harmon made such a fool of me (not to
mention himself, as he is dead), what do you suppose he did it for?”

“Impossible to say, my dear. As I have told you times out of
number since his will was brought to light, I doubt if I ever ex-
changed a hundred words with the old gentleman. If it was his
whim to surprise us, his whim succeeded. For he certainly did it.”

“ And I was stamping my foot and screaming, when he first took
notice of me; was 1?” said Bella, contemplating the ankle before
mentioned.

“You were stamping your little foot, my dear, and screaming with
your little voice, and laying into me with your little bonnet, which
you had snatched off for the purpose,” returned her father, as if the
remembrance gave a relish to the rum; “you were doing this one
Sunday morning when I took you out, because I didn’t go the exact
way you wanted, when the old gentleman, sitting on a seat near, said,
‘That's a nice girl; that’s a very nice girl; a promising girl!’ And
so you were, my dear.”

“ And then he asked my name, did he, pa?”

“Then he asked your name, my dear, and mine ; and on other Sun-
day mornings, when we walked his way, we saw him again, and—
and really that’s all.”

As that was all the rum and water too, or, in other words, as R. W.
delicately signified that his glass was empty, by throwing back his
head and standing the glass upside down on his nose and upper lip,
it might have been charitable in Mrs. Wilfer to suggest replenish-
ment. But that heroine briefly suggesting “Bedtime ” instead, the
bottles were put away, and the family retired; she cherubically
escorted, like some severe saint in a painting, or merely human matron
allegorically treated.

«And by this time to-morrow,” said Lavinia when the two girls
were alone in their room, “we shall have Mr. Rokesmith here, and
shall be expecting to have our throats cut.”

“You needn’t stand between me and the candle for all that,”
retorted Bella. “This is another of the consequences of being poor!
The idea of a girl with a really fine head of hair, having to do it by
one flat candle and a few inches of looking-glass!”

“You caught George Sampson with it, Bella, bad as your means of
dressing it are.”

“You low little thing. Caught George Sampson with it! Don’t
talk about catching people, miss, till your own time for catching—as
you call it—comes.”

“ Perhaps it has come,” muttered Lavvy, with a toss of her head.

“What did you say?” asked Bella, very sharply. “What did you
say, miss ?”

Lavvy declining equally to repeat or to explain, Bella gradually
lapsed over her hair-dressing into a soliloquy on the miseries of being
poor, as exemplified in having nothing to put on, nothing to go out
in, nothing to dress by, only a nasty box to dress at instead of a com-
modious dressing-table, and being obliged to take in suspicious lodgers.
On the last grievance as her climax, she laid great stress—and might
have laid greater, had she known that if Mr. Julius Handford hada
twin brother upon earth, Mr. John Rokesmith was the man.

   

 

  

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER V.
BOFFIN’S BOWER.

Over against a London house, a corner house not far from Claven-
dish Square, a man with a wooden leg had sat for some years, with
his remaining foot in a basket in cold weather, picking up a living
on this wise :—Every morning at eight o’clock, he stumped to the corner,
carrying a chair, a clothes-horse, a pair of trestles, a board, a basket, and
an umbrella, all strapped together. Separating these, the board and
trestles became a counter, the basket supplied the few small lots of
fruit and sweets that he offered for sale upon it and became a foot-
warmer, the unfolded clothes-horse displayed a choice collection of
halfpenny ballads and became a screen, and the stool planted within
it became his post for the rest of the day. All weathers saw the man
at the post. This is to be accepted in a double sense, for he con-
trived a back to his wooden stool, by placing it against the lamp-post.
When the weather was wet, he put up his umbrella over his stock in
trade, not over himself; when the weather was dry, he furled that
faded article, tied it round with a piece of yarn, and laid it cross-wise
under the trestles: where it looked like an unwholesomely-forced let-
tuce that had lost in color and crispness what it had gained in size.

He had established his right to the corner, by imperceptible pre-
scription. He had never varied his ground an inch, but had in
the beginning diffidently taken the corner upon which the side
of the house gave. A howling corner in the winter time, a dusty
corner in the summer time, an undesirable corner at the best of times.
Shelterless fragments of straw and paper got up revolving storms
there, when the main street was at peace; and the water-cart, as if it
were drunk or short-sighted, came blundering and jolting round it,
making it muddy when all else was clean.

On the front of his sale-board hung a little placard, like a kettle-
holder, bearing the inscription in his own small text:

 

Errands gone

On with fi

Delity By

Ladies and Gentlemen

I remain

Your humble Serv’

Silas Wegg.

|

He had not only settled it with himself in course of time, that he

was errand-goer by appointment to the house at the corner (though

he received such commissions not half a dozen times in a year, and

then only as some servant's deputy), but also that he was one of the

house’s retainers and owed vassalage to it and was bound to leal and

loyal interest in it. For this reason, he always spoke of it as “Our

House,” and, though his knowledge of its affairs was mostly specula-
VOL. I. D

 

i itiaciomc

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
  
  
  
  

— op hver USEF a t=

 

  

 

34 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

tive and all wrong, claimed to be in its confidence. On similar grounds
he never beheld an inmate at any one of its windows but he touched
his hat. Yet, he knew 60 little about the inmates that he gave
them names of his own invention: as “ Miss Elizabeth,” “ Master
George,” “ Aunt Jane,” “Uncle Parker ”—having no authority what-
ever for any such designations, but particularly the last—to which,
as a natural consequence, he stuck with great obstinacy.

Over the house itself, he exercised the same imaginary power
as over its inhabitants and their affairs. He had never been in it,
the length of a piece of fat black water-pipe which trailed itself
over the area-door into a damp stone passage, and had rather the air
of a leech on the house that had “taken ” wonderfully; but this was
no impediment to his arranging it according to a plan of his own.
Tt was a great dingy house with a quantity of dim side window and
blank back premises, and it cost his mind a world of trouble so to
lay it out as to account for everything in its external appearance.

3ut, this once done, was quite satisfactory, and he rested persuaded,

that he knew his way about the house blindfold: from the barred
garrets in the high roof, to the two iron extinguishers before the
main door—which seemed to request all lively visitors to have the
kindness to put themselves out, before entering.

Assuredly, this stall of Silas Wegg’s was the hardest little stall of
all the sterile little stalls in London. It gave you the face-ache to
look at his apples, the stomach-ache to look at his oranges, the tooth-
ache to look at his nuts. Of the latter commodity he had always a
grim little heap, on which lay a little wooden measure which had no
discernible inside, and was considered to represent the penn’orth
appointed by Magna Charta. Whether from too much east wind
or no—it was an easterly corner—the stall, the stock, and the
keeper, were all as dry as the Desert. Wegg was a knotty man, and a
close-grained, with a face carved out of very hard material, that had
just as much play of expression as a watchman’s rattle. When he
laughed, certain jerks occurred in it, and the rattle sprung. Sooth to
say, he was so wooden a man that he seemed to have taken his
wooden leg naturally, and rather suggested to the fanciful observer,
that he might be expected—if his development received no untimely
check—to be completely set up with a pair of wooden legs in about
six months.

Mr. Wegg was an observant person, or, as he himself said, “ took
a powerful sight of notice.” He saluted all his regular passers-by
every day, as he sat on his stool backed up by the lamp-post; and on the
adaptable character of these salutes he greatly plumed himself. Thus,
to the rector, he addressed a bow, compounded of lay deference, and a
slight touch of the shady preliminary meditation at church; to the
doctor, a confidential bow, as to a gentleman whose acquaintance with
his inside he begged respectfully to acknowledge; before the Quality
he delighted to abase himself; and for Uncle Parker, who was in the
army (at least, so he had settled it), he put his open hand to the side of
his hat, in a military manner which that angry-eyed buttoned-up
inflammatory-faced old gentleman appeared but imperfectly to appre-
ciate.

  

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 3

The only article in which Silas dealt, that was not hard, was
gingerbread. On a certain day, some wretched infant having pur-
chased the damp gingerbread-horse (fearful ly out of condition), and-the
adhesive bird-cage, which had been exposed for the day’s sale, he had
taken a tin box from under his stool to produce a relay of those
dreadful specimens, and was going to look in at the lid, when he said
to himself, pausing: “Oh! Here you are again!”

The words referred to a broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow
in mourning, coming comically ambling towards the corner, dressed in
a pea over-coat, and carrying a large stick. He wore thick shoes, and
thick leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger’s. Both as to
his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build,
with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his
lips, and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly-inquiring, erey
eyes, under his ragged eyebrows, and broad-brimmed hat. A very
odd-looking old fellow altogether.

“Here you are again,” repeated Mr. Wegg, musing. “And what
are you now? Are you in the Funns, or where are you? Have
you lately come to settle in this neighbourhood, or do you own to
another neighbourhood? Are you in independent circumstances, or
is it wasting the motions of a bow on you? Come! I'll speculate !
Pll invest a bow in you.”

Which Mr. Wegg, having replaced his tin box, accordingly did, as
he rose to bait his gingerbread-trap for some other devoted infant,
The salute was acknowledged with :

“ Morning, sir! Morning! Morning!”

(“Calls me Sir!” said Mr. Wegg, to himself. “He won’t answer.
A bow gone!”

“Morning, morning, morning !”

“Appears to be rather a ’arty old cock, too,” said Mr. Wege, as
before. “Good morning to you, sir.”

“Do you remember me, then?” asked his new acquaintance, stop-
ping in his amble, one-sided, before the stall, and speaking in a
pouncing way, though with great good-humour.

“JT have noticed you go past our house, sir, several times in the
course of the last week or so.”

“Our house,” repeated the other. “Meaning

“Yes,” said Mr. Wegg, nodding, as the other pointed the clumsy
forefinger of his right glove at the corner house.

“Oh! Now, what,” pursued the old fellow, in an inquisitive
manner, carrying his knotted stick in his left arm as if it were a
baby, “what do they allow you now?”

“ It’s job work that I do for our house,” returned Silas, drily, and
with reticence; “it’s not yet brought to an exact allowance.”

“Oh! It’s not yet brought to an exact allowance? No! It’s not
yet brought to an exact allowance. Oh !—Morning, morning,
morning !”

“ Appears to be rather a cracked old cock,” thought Silas, qualify-
ing his former good opinion, as the other ambled off. But, ina
moment he was back again with the question:

“ How did you get your wooden leg ?”

929

 

Dy

    
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

36 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Mr. Wegg replied, (tartly to this personal inquiry), “In an
accident.”
“Do you like it?”

“Well! I haven't got to keep it warm,’ Mr. Wegg made
answer, in a sort of desperation occasioned by the singularity of the
question.

“ He hasn’t,” repeated the other to his knotted stick, as he gave it
a hug; “he hasn’t got—ha!—ha!—to keep it warm! Did you ever
hear of the name of Boffin ?”

“No,” said Mr. Wege, who was growing restive under this exami-
nation. “I never did hear of the name of Boffin.”

“Do you like it?”

“ Why, no,” retorted Mr. Wegg, again approaching desperation ;
“T can’t say I do.”

“ Why don’t you like it

“T don’t know why I don’t,” retorted Mr. Wegg, approaching
frenzy, “but I don’t at all.”

“Now, I'll tell you something that'll make you sorry for that,”
said the stranger, smiling. “My name's Boffin.”

“J can’t help it!” returned Mr. Wegg. Implying in his manner
the offensive addition, “ and if I could, I wouldn't.”

“But there’s another chance for you,” said Mr. Boffin, smiling
still, “Do you like the name of Nicodemus? Think it over. Nick,
or Noddy.”

“Tt is not, sir,’ Mr. Wege rejoined, as he sat down on his stool,
with an air of gentle resignation, combined with melancholy candour ;
“it is not a name as I could wish any one that I had a respect for,
to call me by; but there may be persons that would not view it
with the same objections——I don’t know why,” Mr. Wegg added,
anticipating another question.

“Noddy Boffin,” said that gentleman. “Noddy. That’s my
name. Noddy—or Nick—Boffin. What’s your name?”

“ Silas Weeg.—I don’t,” said Mr. Wegg, bestirring himself to take
the same precaution as before, “1 don’t know why Silas, and I don’t
know why Wegg.”

“Now, Wegg,” said Mr. Boffin, hugging his stick closer, “I want
to make a sort of offer to you. Do you remember when you first see
me?”

The wooden Wegg looked at him with a meditative eye, and also
with a softened air as descrying possibility of profit. “Let me
think. Iain’t quite sure, and yet I generally take a powerful sight
of notice, too. Was it on a Monday morning, when the butcher-boy
had been to our house for orders, and bought a ballad of me, which,
being unacquainted with the tune, I run it over to him?”

“Right, Wegg, right! But he bought more than one.”

“ Yes, to be sure, sir; he bought several; and wishing to lay out
his money to the best, he took my opinion to guide his choice, and
we went over the collection together. ‘To be sure we did. Here
was him as it might be, and here was myself as it might be, and
there was you, Mr. Boffin, as you identically are, with your self-same
stick under your very same arm, and your very same back towards

9?

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

us. To—be—sure!” added Mr. Wegg, looking a little round Mr.
Boffin, to take him in the rear, and identify this last extraordinary
coincidence, “ your wery self-same back !”

“ What do you think I was doing, Wegg ?”

“T should judge, sir, that you might be glancing your eye down
the street.”

“No, Wegg. I was a listening.”

“ Was you, indeed?” said Mr. Wege, dubiously.

“Not in a dishonorable way, Wegg, because you was singing to
the butcher; and you wouldn’t sing secrets to a butcher in the
street, you know.”

“Tt never happened that I did so yet, to the best of my remembrance,”
said Mr. Wegg, cautiously. “But I might doit. A man can’t say
what he might wish to do some day or another.” (This, not to re-
lease any little advantage he might derive from Mr. Boffin’s avowal.)

“ Well,” repeated Boftin, “I was a listening to you and to him.
And what do you—you haven’t got another stool, have you? I’m
rather thick in my breath.”

“JY haven't got another, but you're welcome to this,” said Wege,
resigning it. “It’s a treat to me to stand.”

“Tard!” exclaimed Mr. Boffin, in a tone of great enjoyment, as he
settled himself down, still nursing his stick like a baby, “it’s a
pleasant place, this! And then to be shut in on each side, with these
ballads, like so many book-leaf blinkers! Why, it’s delightful !”

“Tf I am not mistaken, sir,” Mr. Wegg delicately hinted, resting a
hand on his stall, and bending over the discursive Boffin, “you
alluded to some offer or another that was in your mind ?”

“Tm coming toit! Allright. I’m coming to it! I was going
to say that when I listened that morning, I listened with hadmiration
amounting to haw. I thought to myself, ‘Here’s a man with a
wooden leg—a literary man with——’”

“ N—not exactly so, sir,” said Mr. Weeg.

“ Why, you know every one of these songs by name and by ttne,
and if you want to read or to sing any one on ’em off straight, you’ve
only to whip on your spectacles and do it!” cried Mr. Boffin. “I
see you at it!”

“Well, sir,” returned Mr. Wegg, with a conscious inclination of
the head ; “ we'll say literary, then.”

“<A literary man—with a wooden leg—and all Print is open to
him? That's what I thought to myself, that morning,” pursued
Mr. Boffin, leaning forward to describe, uncramped by the clothes-
horse, as large an are as his right arm could make; “‘all Print is
open to him!’ And it is, ain’t it?”

“Why, truly, sir,” Mr. Wegg admitted, with modesty; “I believe
you couldn’t show me the piece of English print, that I wouldn’t be
equal to collaring and throwing.”

“On the spot?” said Mr. Boffin.

“On the spot.”

“T know'd it! Then consider this. Here am I, a man without a
wooden leg, and yet all print is shut to me.”

 

37

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
    
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
    

 

 

 

 

38 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Tndeed, sir?” Mr. Wegg returned with increasing self-com-
placency. _“ Education neglected ?” ie

“ Neo—lected!” repeated Boffin, with emphasis. “That ain’t no
word for it. I don’t mean to say but what if you showed me a B,
I could so far give you change for it, as to answer Boffin.”

“Come, come, sir,” said Mr. Wegg, throwing in a little encourage-
ment, “that’s something, too.”

“Tt’s something,” answered Mr. Boffin, “but Ill take my oath it
ain’t much.”

“Perhaps it’s not as much as could be wished by an inquiring
mind, sir,” Mr. Wege admitted.

“Now, look here. I’m retired from business. Me and Mrs.
Boffin—Henerietty Boffin—which her father’s name was Henery, and
her mother’s name was Hetty, and so you get.it—we live on a com-
pittance, under the will of a diseased governor.”

“Gentleman dead, sir?”

“Man alive, don’t I tell you? A diseased governor? Now, it’s too
late for me to begin shovelling and sifting at alphabeds and grammar-
books. I’m getting to be a old bird, and I want to take it easy.
But I want some reading—some fine bold reading, some splendid
book ina gorging Lord-Mayor’s-Show of wollumes” (probably mean-
ing gorgeous, but misled by association of ideas); “asl reach right
down your pint of view, and take time to go by you. How can I
get that reading, Wegg? By,” tapping him on the breast with the
head of his thick stick, “paying a man truly qualified to do it, so
much an hour (say twopence) to come and do it.”

“Hem! Flattered, sir, I am sure,” said Wege, beginning to
regard himself in quite a new light. “Hem! This is the offer
you mentioned, sir?”

“Yes. Do you like it?”

“T am considering of it, Mr. Boffin.”

“T don’t,” said Boftin, in a free-handed manner, “want to tie a
literary man—with a wooden leg—down too tight. A halfpenny an
hour shan’t part us. The hours are your own to choose, after you’ve
done for the day with your house here. I live over Maiden-Lane
way—out Holloway direction—and you've only got to go Hast-and-
by-North when you've finished here, and you're there. 'T'wopence
halfpenny an hour,” said Boffin, taking a piece of chalk from his
pocket and getting off the stool to work the sum on the top of
it in his own way; “two long’uns and a short’un—twopence half-
penny ; two short’uns is a long’un and two two long’uns is four
long’uns—making five long’uns; six nights a week at five long’uns
a night,” scoring them all down separately, “and you mount up to
thirty long’uns. A round’un! Half a crown!”

Pointing to this result as a large and satisfactory one, Mz. Boffin
smeared it out with his moistened glove, and sat down on the
remains.

“Half a crown,” said Wege, meditating. “Yes. (It ain’t much,
sir.) Half a crown.”

“Per week, you know.”

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 39

“Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain upon the intellect
now. Was you thinking at all of poetry?” Mr. Wegg inquired,
musing.

“ Would it come dearer?’ Mr. Boffin asked.

“Tt would come dearer,” Mr. Wegg returned. “For when a
person comes to grind off poetry night after night, it is but nght he
should expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.”

“To tell you the truth Wegg,” said Boffin, “I wasn’t thinking of
poetry, except in so fur as this:—If you was to happen now and then
to feel yourself in the mind to tip me and Mrs. Boffin one of your
ballads, why then we should drop into poetry.”

“J follow you, sir,” said Wegg. “But not being a regular musical
professional, [ should be loath to engage myself for that; and there-
fore when I dropped into poetry, I should ask to be considered so fur,
in the light of a friend.”

At this, Mr. Boffin’s eyes sparkled, and he shook Silas earnestly by
the hand: protesting that it was more than he could have asked, and
that he took it very kindly indeed.

“What do you think of the terms, Wegg?” Mr. Boffin then
demanded, with unconcealed anxiety.

Silas, who had stimulated this anxiety by his hard reserve of
manner, and who had begun to understand his man very well,
replied with an air; as if he were saying something extraordinarily
generous and great:

“Mr. Boffin, I never bargain.”

“So I should have thought of you!” said Mr. Boffin, admiringly.

“No, sir. I never did ’aggle and.I never will ’aggle. Conse-
quently I meet you at once, free and fair, with Done, for double
the money!”

Mr. Boffin seemed a little unprepared for this conclusion, but
assented, with the remark, “You know better what it ought to be
than I do, Wegg,” and again shook hands with him upon it.

“Could you begin to night, Wegg?” he then demanded.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Wegg, careful to leave all the eagerness to
him. “I see no difficulty if you wish it. You are provided with
the needful implement—a book, sir?”

“Bought him at a sale,” said Mr. Boffin. “Hight wollumes. Red
and gold. Purple ribbon in every wollume, to keep the place where
you leave off. Do you know him?”

“The book’s name, sir?” inquired Silas.

“JT thought you might have know’d him without it,” said Mr

30ffin slightly disappointed. “His name is Decline-And-VallOff
he-Rooshan-Hmpire.” (Mr. Boffin went over these stones slowly
and with much caution.)

“ Ay indeed!” said Mr. Wegg, nodding his head with an air ot
friendly recognition.

“You know him, Wegg?”

“JT haven’t been not to say right slap through him, very lately,”
Mr. Wegg made answer, “having been otherways employed, Mr.
Boffin. But know him? Old familiar declining and falling off the
Rooshan?. Rather, sir! Ever since I was not so high as your stick.

 

   

    
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

40 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Ever since my eldest brother left our cottage to enlist into the
army. On which occasion, as the ballad that was made about it
describes:
“ Beside that cottage door, Mr. Boffin,
A girl was on her knees;
She held aloft a snowy scarf, Sir,
Which (my eldest brother noticed) fluttered in the breeze.
She breathed a prayer for him, Mr. Boftin ;
A prayer he coold not hear.
And my eldest brother lean’d upon his sword, Mr. Boftin,
And wiped away a tear.”

Much impressed by this family circumstance, and also by the
friendly disposition of Mr. Wegg, as exemplified in his so soon drop-
ping into poetry, Mr. Boffin again shook hands with that ligneous
sharper, and besought him to name his hour. Mr. Wege named
eight.

“Where I live,” said Mr. Boffin, “is called The Bower. Boffin’s
Bower is the name Mrs. Boffin christened it when we come into it as
a property. If you should meet with anybody that don’t know it by
that name (which hardly anybody does), when you’ve got nigh upon
about a odd mile, or say and a quarter if you like, up Maiden Lane,
Battle Bridge, ask for Harmony Jail, and you'll be put right. I shall
expect you, Wegg,” said Mr. Boffin, clappig him on the shoulder
with the greatest enthusiasm, “most jyfully. I shall have no
peace or patience till you come. Print is now opening ahead of me.
This night, a literary man—with a wooden les—” he bestowed an
admiring look upon that decoration, as if it greatly enhanced the
relish of Mr. Wegg’s attainments—“will begin to lead me a new
life! My fist again, Wegg. Morning, morning, morning !”

Left alone at his stall as the other ambled off, Mr. Wege subsided
into his screen, produced a small pocket-handkerchief of a penitenti-
ally-scrubbing character, and took himself by the nose with a
thoughtful aspect. Also, while he still grasped that feature, he
directed several thoughtful looks down the street, after the retiring
figure of Mr. Boffin. But, profound gravity sat enthroned on Wege’s
countenance. For, while he considered within himself that this was
an old fellow of rare simplicity, that this was an opportunity to be
improved, and that here might be money to be got beyond present
calculation, still he compromised himself by no admission that his
new engagement was at all out of his way, or involved the least
element of the ridiculous. Mr. Wege would even have picked a
handsome quarrel with any one who should have challenged his deep
acquaintance with those aforesaid eight volumes of Decline and Fall,
His gravity was unusual, portentous, and immeasurable, not because
he admitted any doubt of himself, but because he perceived it neces-
sary to forestall any doubt of himself in others. And herein he
ranged with that very numerous class of impostors, who are quite as
determined to keep up appearances to themselves, as to their neigh-
bours.

A certain loftiness, likewise, took possession of Mr. Weg; a con-
descending sense of being in request as an official expounder of mys-

 

   

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 41

teries. It did not move him to commercial greatness, but rather
to littleness, insomuch that if it had been within the possibilities of

things for the wooden measure to hold fewer nuts than usual, it
would have done so that day. But, when night came, and with her
veiled eyes beheld him stumping towards Boffin’s Bower, he was
elated too.

The Bower was as difficult to find, as Fair Rosamond’s without
the clue. Mr. Wegg, having reached the quarter indicated, inquired
for the Bower half a dozen times without the least success, until he
remembered to ask for Harmony Jail. This occasioned a quick
change in the spirits of a hoarse gentleman and a donkey, whom he
had much perplexed.

“Why, yer mean Old Harmon’s, do yer?” said the hoarse gentle-
man, who was driving his donkey in a truck, with a carrot for a
whip. “Why did’nt yer niver say so? Eddard and me is a goin’
by him! Jump in.”

Mr. Wegg complied, and the hoarse gentleman invited his atten-
tion to the third person in company, thus ;

“Now, you look at Eddard’s ears. What was it as you named,
agin? Whisper.”

Mr. Wegg whispered, “ Boffin’s Bower.”

“Eddard! (keep yer hi on his ears) cut away to Boffin’s Bower!”

Edward, with his ears lying back, remained immoveable.

“Hiddard! (keep yer hi on his ears) cut away to Old Harmon’s.”

Edward instantly pricked up his ears to their utmost, and rattled
off at such a pace that Mr. Wegg’s conversation was jolted out of
him in a most dislocated state.

“ Was-it-Hy-verajail ?” asked Mr. Wegg, holding on.

“Not a proper jail, wot you and me would get committed to,”
returned his escort; “they giv’ it the name, on accounts of Old
Harmon living solitary there.”

“ And-why-did-they-callitharm-Ony ?” asked Wege.

“ On accounts of his never agreeing with nobody. Like a speeches
of chaff. Harmon’s Jail; Harmony Jail. Working it round like.”

“ Doyouknow-Mist-Erboff-in ?” asked Wegg.

“J should think so! Everybody do about here. Eddard knows
him. (Keep yer hi on his ears.) Noddy Boffin, Eddard!”

The effect of the name was so very alarming, in respect of causing
a temporary disappearance of Edward’s head, casting his hind hoofs
in the air, greatly accelerating the pace and increasing the jolting,
that Mr. Wegg was fain to devote his attention exclusively to hold-
ing on, and to relinquish his desire of ascertaining whether this
homage to Boftin was to be considered complimentary or the reverse.

Presently, Edward stopped at a gateway, and Wegg discreetly lost
no time in slipping out at the back of the truck. ‘lhe moment he
was landed, his late driver with a wave of the carrot, said “Supper,
Eddard!” and he, the hind hoofs, the truck, and Edward, all seemed
to fly into the air together, in a kind of apotheosis.

Pushing the gate, which stood ajar, Wegg looked into an enclosed
space where certain tall dark mounds rose high against the sky, and
where the pathway to the Bower was indicated, as the moonlight

     
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

 

 

 

  

 

42 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

showed, between two lines of broken crockery set in ashes. <A
white figure advancing along this path, proved to be nothing more
chostly than Mr. Boftin, easily attired for the pursuit of knowledge,
in an undress garment of short white smock-frock. Having received
his literary friend with great cordiality, he conducted him to the

interior of the Bower and there presented him to Mrs. Boffin :—a stout

 

lady of a rubicund and cheerful aspect, dressed (to Mr. Wegg’s con-
sternation) in a low evening-dress of sable satin, and a large black

velvet hat and feathers.

“Mrs. Boffin, Wege,” said Boffin, “is a highflyer at Fashion. And
her make is such, that she does it credit. As to myself, I ain't yet
as Fash’nable as I may come to be. Henerietty, old lady, this is
the gentleman that’s a going to decline and fall off the Rooshan
Empire.”

«And I am sure I hope it'll do you both good,” said Mrs. Boffin.

It was the queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a
luxurious amateur tap-room than anything else within the ken
of Silas Wegg. There were two wooden settles by the fire, one
on either side of it, with a corresponding table before each. On
one of these tables, the eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row,
like a galvanic battery; on the other, certain squat case-bottles of
inviting appearance seemed to stand on tiptoe to exchange glances
with Mr. Wegg over a front row of tumblers and a basin of white
sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on the hearth, a cat reposed.
Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool, and a little
table, formed a centrepiece devoted to Mrs. Boftin. They were
garish in taste and color, but were expensive articles of drawing-
room furniture that had a very odd look beside the settles and the
flaring gaslight pendent from the ceiling. There was a flowery
carpet on the floor ; but, instead of reaching to the fireside, its glowing
vegetation stopped short at Mrs. Boftin’s footstool, and gave place to
a region of sandand sawdust. Mr. Wegg also noticed, with admiring
eyes, that, while the flowery land displayed such hollow ornamenta-
tion as stuffed birds and waxen fruits under glass-shades, there were,
in the territory where vegetation ceased, compensatory shelves on
which the best- part of a large pie and likewise of a cold jomt were
plainly discernible among other solids. ‘The room itself was large,
though low; and the heavy frames of its old-fashioned windows, and
the heavy beams in its crooked ceiling, seemed to indicate that it
had once been a house of some mark standing alone in the country.

“Do you like it, Wegg?’ asked Mr. Boffin, in his pouncing
manner.

“T admire it greatly, sir,” said Wegg. “Peculiar comfort at this
fireside, sir.”

“Do you understand it, Wegg ?”

“Why, in a general way, sir,” Mr. Weg was beginning slowly and
knowingly, with his head stuck on one side, as evasive people do
begin, when the other cut him short:

“You dont understand it, Weee, and Ill explain it. These
arrangements is made by mutual consent between Mrs. Boffin and
me. Mrs. Boffin, as I’ve mentioned, is a highflyer at Fashion- at

 

 

     
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 43

present I’m not. I don’t go higher than comfort, and comfort of the
sort that I’m equal to the enjyment of. Well then. Where would
be the good of Mrs. Boffin and me quarrelling over it? We never
did quarrel, before we come into Boffin’s Bower as a property; why
quarrel when we have come into Boffin’s Bower as a property? So
Mrs. Boffin, she keeps up her part of the room, in her way; I keep
up my part of the room in mine. In consequence of which we have
at once, Sociability (I should go melancholy mad without Mrs. Boffin),
Fashion, and Comfort. If I get by degress to be a higher-flyer at
Fashion, then Mrs. Boffin will by degrees come for’arder. If Mrs.
Boffin should ever be less of a dab at Fashion than she is at the
present time, then Mrs. Boffin’s carpet would go back’arder. If we
should both continny as we are, why then here we are, and give us a
Ixiss, old lady.”

Mrs. Boffin who, perpetually smiling, had approached and drawn
her plump arm though her lord’s, most willingly complied. Fashion,
in the form of her black velvet hat and feathers, tried to prevent it;
but got deservedly crushed in the endeavour.

“So now, Wege,” said Mr. Boftin, wiping his mouth with an air of
much refreshment, “you begin to know us as weare. This is a
charming spot, is the Bower, but you must get to apprechiate it by
degrees. It’s a spot to find out the merits of, little by little, and a
newun every day. There’s a serpentining walk up each of the
mounds, that gives you the yard and neighbourhood changing every
moment. When you get to the top, there’s a view of the neighbour-
ing premises, not to be surpassed. ‘The premises of Mrs. Boftin’s late
father (Canine Provision ‘I'rade), you look down into, as if they was
your own. And the top of the High Mound is crowned with a
lattice-work Arbour, in which, if you don’t read out loud many a
book in the summer, ay, and as a friend, drop many a time into
poetry too, it shan’t be my fault. Now, what'll you read on?”

“Thank you, sir,” returned Wege, as if there were nothing new in
his reading at all. “I generally do it on gin and water.”

“Keeps the organ moist, does it, Wege?” asked Mr. Boffin, with
innocent eagerness.

“N-no, sir,” replied Wege, coolly, “I should hardly describe it so,
sir. I should say, mellers it. Mellers it, is the word I should
employ, Mr. Boffin.”

His wooden conceit and craft kept exact pace with the delighted
expectation of his victim. The visions rising before his mercenary
mind, of the many ways in which this connexion was to be turned to
account, never obscured the foremost idea natural to a dull over-
reaching man, that he must not make himself too cheap.

Mrs. Boftin’s Fashion, as a less inexorable deity than the idol
usually worshipped under that name, did not forbid her mixing for
her literary guest, or asking if he found the result to his liking. On
his returning a gracious answer and taking his place at the literary
settle, Mr. Boftin began to compose himself as a listener, at the oppo-
site settle, with exultant eyes.

“Sorry to deprive you of a pipe, Wegg,” he said, filling his own,
“but you can’t do both together. Oh! and another thing I forgot to

 

 

 

44 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

name! When you come in here of an evening, and look round you,
and notice anything on a shelf that happens to catch your fancy,
mention it.”

Weegg, who had been going to put on his spectacles, immediately
laid them down, with the sprightly observation :

“You read my thoughts, sir. Do my eyes deceive me, or is that
object up there a—a pie? It can’t be a pie.”

“Yes, it’s a pie, Wegg,” replied Mx. Boffin, with a glance of some
little discomfiture at the Decline and Fall.

“ Have I lost my smell for fruits, or is it a apple pie, sir?” asked
Wege.

“It’s a veal and ham pie,” said Mr. Boffin,

“Ts it indeed, sir? And it would be hard, six, to name the pie that
is a better pie than a weal and hammer,” said Mr. Weegg, nodding his
head emotionally.

“Have some, Wege ?”

“Thank you, Mr. Boffin, I think I will, at your invitation. I
wouldn't at any other party’s, at the present juncture; but at yours,
sir!——And meaty jelly too, especially when a little salt, which is the
case where there’s ham, is mellering to the organ, is very mellering to
the organ.” Mr. Wegg did not say what organ, but spoke with a
cheerful generality.

So, the pie was brought down, and the worthy Mr. Boffin exer-
cised his patience until Wegg, in the exercise of his knife and
fork, had finished the dish: only profiting by the opportunity to
inform Wegg that although it was not strictly Fashionable to keep
the contents of a larder thus exposed to view, he (Mx. Boffin) con-
sidered it hospitable ; for the reason, that instead of saying, in a
comparatively unmeaning manner, to a visitor, ‘There are such and
such edibles down stairs; will you have anything up” you took the
bold practical course of saying, ‘Cast your eye along the shelves, and,
if you see anything you like there, have it down.’”

And now, Mr. Wegg at length pushed away his plate and put on
his spectacles, and Mr. Boffin lighted his pipe and looked with beam-
ing eyes into the opening world before him, and Mrs. Boffin reclined
in a fashionable manner on her sofa: as one who would be part of the
audience if she found she could, and would go to sleep if she found
she couldn’t.

“Hem!” began Wegg, “This, Mr. Boffin and Lady, is the first
chapter of the first wollume of the Decline and Fall off ” here he
looked hard at the book, and stopped.

“ What's the matter, Wege ?”

“Why, it comes into my mind, do you know, sir,” said Wegg with
an air of insinuating frankness (having first again looked hard at the
book), “that you made a little mistake this morning, which I had
meant to set you right in, only something put it out of my head.
I think you said Rooshan Empire, sir ?”

“Tt is Rooshan ; ain’t it, Wege 2”

“No, sir. Roman. Roman.”

“What's the difference, Wegg ?”

“The difference, sir?” Mr. Wegg was faltering and in danger of

 

 

 

 

 

 

        
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 45

breaking down, when a bright thought flashed upon him. “The
difference, sir? ‘There you place me in a difficulty, Mr. Boffin.
Suffice it to observe, that the difference is best postponed to some
other occasion when Mrs. Boffin does not honor us with her com-
pany. In Mrs. Boffin’s presence, sir, we had better drop it.”

Mr. Wegg thus came out of his disadvantage with quite a chivalrous
air, and not only that, but by dint of repeating with a manly delicacy,
“In Mrs. Boffin’s presence, sir, we had better drop it!” turned the
disadvantage on Boffin, who felt that he had committed himself in a
very painful manner.

hen, Mr. Wegg, in a dry unflinching way, entered on his task;
going straight across country at everything that came before him ;
taking all the hard words, biographical and geographical; getting
rather shaken by Hadrian, Trajan, and the Antonines; stumbling at
Polybius (pronounced Polly Beeious, and supposed by Mr. Boffin to
be a Roman virgin, and by Mrs. Boffin to be responsible for that
necessity of dropping it); heavily unseated by Titus Antoninus Pius ;
up again and galloping smoothly with Augustus; finally, getting
over the ground well with Commodus: who, under the appellation of
Commodious, was held by Mr. Boftin to have been quite unworthy of
his English origin, and “not to have acted up to his name” in his govern-
ment of the Roman people. With the death of this personage, Mr.
Wege terminated his first reading ; long before which consummation
several total eclipses of Mrs. Boffin’s candle behind her black velvet
disc, would have been very alarming, but for being regularly
accompanied by a potent smell of burnt pens when her feathers took
fire, which acted as a restorative and woke her. Mr. Wegg, having
read on by rote and attached as few ideas as possible to the text,
came out of the encounter fresh ; but, Mr. Boffin, who had soon laid
down his unfinished pipe, and had ever since sat intently staring
with his eyes and mind at the confounding enormities of the Romans,
was so severely punished that he could hardly wish his literary
friend Good-night, and articulate “'To-morrow.”

“Commodious,” gasped Mr. Boftfin, staring at the moon, after letting
Wege out at the gate and fastening it: “ Commodious fights in that
wild-beast-show, seven hundred and thirty-five times, in one character
only! As if that wasn’t stunning enough, a hundred lions is turned
into the same wild-beast-show all at once! Asif that wasn’t stun-
ning enough, Commodious, in another character, kills ’em all off in a
hundred goes! As if that wasn’t stunning enough, Vittle-us (and
well named too) eats six millions’ worth, English money, in seven
months! Wegg takes it easy, but upon-my-soul toa old bird like
myself these are scarers. And even now that Commodious is
strangled, I don’t see a way to our bettering ourselves.” Mr. Boffin
added as he turned his pensive steps towards the Bower and shook
his head, “I didn’t thik this morning there was half so many

Scarers in Print. But I’m in for it now!”

 

 

 

   
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

  
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER VI.
CUT ADRIFT.

Tur Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, already mentioned as a tavern
of a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale
infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and
hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet
outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house.
Externally, it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent
windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling
oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water ;
indeed the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the
roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the con-
dition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink
that he will never go in at all.

This description applies to the river-frontage of the Six Jolly
Fellowship-Porters. ‘he back of the establishment, though the
chief entrance was there, so contracted that it merely represented
in its connexion with the front, the handle of a flat iron set up-
right on its broadest end. ‘This handle stood at the bottom of a
wilderness of court and alley: which wilderness pressed so hard and
close upon the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters as to leave the hostelry
not an inch of ground beyond its door. For this reason, in combina-
tion with the fact that the house was all but afloat at high water,
when the Porters had a family wash the linen subjected to that
operation might usually be seen drying on lines stretched across the
reception-rooms and bed-chambers.

The wood forming the chimney-picces, beams, partitions, floors
and doors, of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, seemed in its old age
fraught with confused memories of its youth. In many places it
had become gnarled and riven, according to the manner of old trees;
knots started out of it; and here and there it seemed to twist itself
into some likeness of boughs. In this state of second childhood, it
had an air of being in its own way garrulous about its early life.
Not without reason was it often asserted by the regular frequenters
of the Porters, that when the light shone full upon the grain of
certain panels, and particularly upon an old corner cupboard of
walnut-wood in the bar, you might trace little forests there, and tiny
trees like the parent tree, in full umbrageous leaf.

The bar of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters was a bar to soften
the human breast. The available space in it was not much larger
than a hackney-coach ; but no one could have wished the bar bigger,
that space was so girt in by corpulent little casks, and by cordial-
bottles radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and by lemons in
nets, and by biscuits in baskets, and by the polite beer-pulls that
made low bows when customers were served with beer, and by the
cheese in a snug corner, and by the landlady’s own small table in a

 

      
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 47

snugger corner near the fire, with the cloth everlastingly laid. This
haven was divided from the rough world by a glass partition and a
half-door, with a leaden sill upon it for the convenience of resting
your liquor; but, over this half-door the bar’s snugness so gushed
forth, that, albeit customers drank there standing, in a dark and
draughty passage where they were shouldered by other customers
passing in and out, they always appeared to drink under an enchant-
ing delusion that they were in the bar itself.

For the rest, both the tap and parlor of the Six Jolly Fellowship-
Porters gave upon the river, and had red curtains matching the
noses of the regular customers, and were provided with comfortable
fireside tin utensils, like models of sugar-loaf hats, made in that shape
that they might, with their pointed ends, seek out for themselves
glowing nooks in the depths of the red coals, when they mulled your
ale, or heated for you those delectable drinks, Purl, Flip, and Dog’s
Nose. ‘The first of these humming compounds was a speciality of
the Porters, which, through an inscription on its door-posts, gently
appealed to your feelings as, “The Early Purl House.” or, it would
seem that Purl must always be taken early ; though whether for any
more distinctly stomachic reason than that, as the early bird catches the
worm, so the early purl catches the customer, cannot here be resolved.
It only remains to add that in the handle of the flat iron, and oppo-
site the bar, was a very little room like a three-cornered hat, into
which no direct ray of sun, moon, or star, ever penetrated, but which
was superstitiously regarded as a sanctuary replete with comfort and
retirement by gaslight, and on the door of which was therefore
painted its alluring name: Cosy.

Miss Potterson, sole proprietor and manager of the Fellowship-
Porters, reigned supreme on her throne, the Bar, and a man must
have drunk himself mad drunk indeed if he thought he could contest
a point with her. Being known on her own authority as Miss Abbey
Potterson, some water-side heads, which (like the water) were none
of the clearest, harboured muddled notions that, because of her
dionity and firmness, she was named after, or in some sort related to,
the Abbey at Westminster. But, Abbey was only short for Abigail,
by which name Miss Potterson had been christened at Limehouse
Church, some sixty and odd years before.

“Now, you mind, you Riderhood,” said Miss Abbey Potterson, with
emphatic forefinger over the half-door, “the Fellowships don’t want
you at all, and would rather by far have your room than your company ;
but if you were as welcome here as you are not, you shouldn’t even then
have another drop of drink here this night, after this present pint of
beer. So make the most of it.”

“But you know, Miss Potterson,” this was suggested very meekly
though, “if I behave myself, you can’t help serving me, miss.”

“ Can't I!” said Abbey, with infinite expression.

“No, Miss Potterson ; because, you see, the law

“Tam the law here, my man,” returned Miss Abbey, “and Tl soon
convince you of that, if you doubt it at all.”

“TJ never said I did doubt it at all, Miss Abbey.”
“So much the better for you.”

”

 

 

 

 

 

 

48 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Abbey the supreme threw the customer’s halfpence into the till, and,
seating herself in her fireside-chair, resumed the newspaper she had
been reading. She was a tall, upright, well-favoured woman, though
severe of countenance, and had more of the air of a schoolmistress than
mistress of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters. The man on the
other side of the half-door, was a waterside-man with a squinting
leer, and he eyed her as if he were one of her pupils in disgrace.

“Yow re cruel hard upon me, Miss Potterson.”

Miss Potterson read her newspaper with contracted brows, and
took no notice until he whispered :

“ Miss Potterson! Ma’am! Might I have half a word with you ?”

Deigning then to turn her eyes sideways towards the suppliant,
Miss Potterson beheld him knuckling his low forehead, and ducking
at her with his head, as if he were asking leave to fling himself head
foremost over the half-door and alight on his feet in the bar.

“Well ?” said Miss Potterson, with a manner as short as she herself
was long, “say your half word. Bring it out.”

“Miss Potterson! Ma’am! Would you ’sxcuse me taking the
liberty of asking, is it my character that you take objections to ”

“Certainly,” said Miss Potterson.

“Ts it that you’re afraid of +

“IT am not afraid of you,” interposed Miss Potterson, “if you
mean that.”

“But I humbly don’t mean that, Miss Abbey.”

“Then what do you mean ?”

“You really are so cruel hard upon me! What I was going to
make inquiries was no more than, might you have any apprehensions
—leastways beliefs or suppositions—that the company’s property
mightn’t be altogether to be considered safe, if I used the house too
regular ?”

“What do you want to know for?”

“Well, Miss Abbey, respectfully meaning no offence to you, it
would be some satisfaction to a man’s mind, to understand why the
Fellowship-Porters is not to be free to such as me, and is to be free
to such as Gaffer.”

The face of the hostess darkened with some shadow of perplexity,
as she replied: “Gaffer has never been where you have been.”

“Signifying in Quod, Miss? Perhaps not. But he may have
merited it. He may be suspected of far worse than ever I was.”

“Who suspects him ?”

“Many, perhaps. One, beyond all doubts. I do.”

“ You are not much,” said Miss Abbey Potterson, knitting her brows
again with disdain.

“But I was his pardner. Mind you, Miss Abbey, I was his
pardner. As such I know more of the ins and outs of him than any
person living does. Notice this! I am the man that was his
pardner, and I am the man that suspects him.”

“Then,” suggested Miss Abbey, though with a deeper shade of
perplexity than before, “you criminate yourself.”

“ No I don’t, Miss Abbey. For how does it stand? It stands this
way. When I was his pardner, I couldn’t never give him satisfac-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
      

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 49

tion. Why couldn’t I never give him satisfaction? Because my luck
was bad; because I couldn’t find many enough of ’em. How was his
luck? Always good. Notice this! Always good! Ah! There’s
a many games, Miss Abbey, in which there’s chance, but there’s a
many others in which there’s skill too, mixed along with it.”

“'That Gaffer has a skill in finding what he finds, who doubts,
man?” asked Miss Abbey.

“ A skill in purwiding what he finds, perhaps,” said Riderhood,
shaking his evil head.

Miss Abbey knitted her brow at him, as he darkly leered at her.

“If yowre out upon the river pretty nigh every tide, and if
you want to find a man or woman in the river, you'll greatly help
your luck, Miss Abbey, by knocking a man or woman on the head
aforehand and pitching ’em in.”

“ Gracious Lud!” was the involuntary exclamation of Miss Potter
son.

“Mind you!” returned the other, stretching forward over the half
door to throw his words into the bar; for his voice was as if the head
of his boat's mop were down his throat; “I say so, Miss Abbey!
And mind you! Tl follow him up, Miss Abbey! And mind you! Tl
bring him to book at last, if its twenty year hence, I will! Who's he, to
be favoured along of his daughter? Ain’t I got a daughter of my own!”

With that flourish, and seeming to have talked himself rather
more drunk and much more ferocious than he had begun by being,
Mr. Riderhood took up his pint pot and swaggered off to the tap-
room.

Gaffer was not there, but a pretty strong muster of Miss
Abbey’s pupils were, who exhibited, when occasion required, the
ereatest docility. On the clock’s striking ten, and Miss Abbey's
appearing at the door, and addressing a certain person in a faded
scarlet jacket, with “George Jones, your time’s up! I told your
wife you should be punctual,” Jones submissively rose, gave the com-
pany good-night, and retired. At half-past ten, on Miss Abbey’s
looking in again, and saying, “ William Williams, Bob Glamour, and
Jonathan, you are all due,” Williams, Bob, and Jonathan with
similar meekness took their leave and evaporated. Greater wonder
than these, when a bottle-nosed person in a glazed hat had after
some considerable hesitation ordered another glass of gin and water
of the attendant potboy, and when Miss Abbey, instead of sending it,
appeared in person, saying, “Captain Joey, you have had as much as
will do you good,” not only did the captaim feebly rub his knees and.
contemplate the fire without offering a word of protest, but the rest
of the company murmured, “ Ay, ay, Captain! Miss Abbey’s right ;
you be guided by Miss Abbey, Captain.” Nor, was Miss Abbey’s
vigilance in anywise abated by this submission, but rather sharpened ;
for, looking round on the deferential faces of her school, and descry-
ing two other young persons in need of admonition, she thus bestowed
it: “Tom ootle, it’s time for a young fellow who’s going to be
married next month, to be at home and asleep. And you needn’t
nudge him, Mr. Jack Mullins, for I know your work begins early to-
morrow, and J say the same to you. So come! Good-night,

VOL. I. E

 

 

 

50 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

like good lads!” Upon which, the blushing Tootle looked to
Mullins, and the blushing Mullins looked to Tootle, on the question
who should rise first, and finally both rose together and went out
on the broad grin, followed by Miss Abbey; in whose presence the
company did not take the liberty of grinning likewise.

In such an establishment, the white-aproned pot-boy with his
shirt-sleeves arranged in a tight roll on each bare shoulder, was a
mere hint of the possibility of physical force, thrown out as a matter
of state and form. Exactly at the closing hour, all the guests who
were left, filed out in the best order: Miss Abbey standing at the
half door of the bar, to hold a ceremony of review and dismissal.
All wished Miss Abbey good-night, and Miss Abbey wished good-
night to all, except Riderhood. The sapient pot-boy, looking on
officially, then had the conviction borne in upon his soul, that the
man was evermore outcast and excommunicate from the Six Jolly
Fellowship-Porters.

“You Bob Glibbery,” said Miss Abbey to this pot-boy, “run
ee to Hexam’s and tell his daughter Lizzie that I want to speak
to her.”

With examplary swiftness Bob Glibbery departed, and returned.
Lizzie, following him, arrived as one of the two female domestics of
the Fellowship-Porters arranged on the snug little table by the
bar fire, Miss Potterson’s supper of hot sausages and mashed
potatoes.

“Come in and sit ye down, girl,” said Miss Abbey. “Can you eat
a bit ?”

“No thank you, Miss. I have had my supper.”

“T have had mine too, I think,” said Miss Abbey, pushing away
the untasted dish, “and more than enough of it. I am put out,
Lizzie.”

“T am very sorry for it, Miss.”

“Then why, in the name of Goodness,” quoth Miss Abbey, sharply,
“do you do it?”

“T do it, Miss!”

“There, there Don’t look astonished. I ought to have begun
with a word of explanation, but it’s my way to make short cuts at
things. I always was a pepperer. You Bob Glibbery there, put the
chain upon the door and get ye down to your supper.”

With an alacrity that seemed no less referable to the pepperer fact
than to the supper fact, Bob obeyed, and his boots were heard
descending towards the bed of the river.

“Tyizzie Hexam, Lizzie Hexam,” then began Miss Potterson, “ how
often have I held out to you the opportunity of getting clear of your
father, and doing well ?”

“Very often, Miss.”

“Very often? Yes! And I might as well have spoken to the
iron funnel of the strongest sea-going steamer that passes the Fellow-
ship-Porters.”

“No, Miss,” Lizzie pleaded ; “ because that would not be thankful,
and J am.”

«T yow and declare I am half ashamed of myself for taking such

see al -

 

  

 

   
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 51

an interest in you,” said Miss Abbey, pettishly, “for I don’t believe
I should do it 1f you were not good-looking. Why ain’t you ugly ?”

Lizzie merely answered this difficult question with an apologetic
glance.

“ However, you ain't,” resumed Miss Potterson, “so it’s no use
going into that. I must take you as I find you. Which indeed is
what Pve done. And you mean to say you are still obstinate?”

“Not obstinate, Miss, I hope.”

“Firm (I suppose you call it) then ?”

“Yes, Miss. Fixed like.”

“ Never was an obstinate person yet, who would own to the word!”
remarked Miss Potterson, rubbing her vexed nose; “I’m sure I would,
if Iwas obstinate; but I am a pepperer, which is different. Jizzie
Hexam, Lizzie Hexam, think again. Do you know the worst of your
father ?”

“Do I know the worst of father!” she repeated, opening her
eyes.

“ Do you know the suspicions to which your father makes himself
liable? Do you know the suspicions that are actually about, against
him ?”

The consciousness of what he habitually did, oppressed the girl
heavily, and she slowly cast down her eyes.

“Say, Lizzie. Do you know?” urged Miss Abbey.

“Please to tell me what the suspicions are, Miss,” she asked after
a silence, with her eyes upon the ground.

“It’s not an easy thing to tell a daughter, but it must be told.
It is thought by some, then, that your father helps to their death
a few of those that he finds dead.”

The relief of hearing what she felt sure was a false suspicion, in
place of the expected real and true one, so lightened Lizzie’s breast
for the moment, that Miss Abbey was amazed at her demeanour.
She raised her eyes quickly, shook her head, and, ina kind of triumph,
almost laughed.

“They little know father who talk like that!”

(“She takes it,” thought Miss Abbey, “very quietly. She takes
it with extraordinary quietness !”)

“ And perhaps,” said Lizzie, as a recollection flashed upon her, “it
is some one who has a grudge against father; some one who has
threatened father! Is it Riderhood, Miss ?”

“Well; yes it is.”

“Yes! He was father’s partner, and father broke with him, and now
herevenges himself. Father broke with him when I was by, and he
was very angry at it. And besides, Miss Abbey !—Will you never,
without strong reason, let pass your lips what I am going to say ?”

She bent forward to say it in a whisper.

“T promise,” said Miss Abbey.

“It was on the night when the Harmon murder was found
out, through father, just above bridge. And just below bridge,
as we were sculling home, Riderhood crept out of the dark in
his boat. And many and many times afterwards, when such
great pains were taken to come to the bottom of the = and it

BQ

 

 

 

 

 

   

   

52

ou

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
never could be come near, I thought in my own thoughts, could
Ziderhood himself have done the murder, and did he purposely let
father find the body? It seemed a’most wicked and cruel to so much
as think such a thing; but now that he tries to throw it upon
father, I go back to it as if it was a truth. Can it be a truth?
That was put into my mind by the dead ?”

She asked this question, rather of the fire than of the hostess of the
Fellowship-Porters, and looked round the little bar with troubled
eyes.

But, Miss Potterson, as a ready schoolmistress accustomed to bring
her pupils to book, set the matter in a light that was essentially of
this world.

“You poor deluded girl,” she said, “don’t you see that you can't
open your mind to particular suspicions of one of the two, without
opening your mind to general suspicions of the other? They had
worked together. Their goings-on had been going on for some time.
Even granting that it was as you have had in your thoughts, what
the two had done together would come familiar to the mind of one.”

“You don’t know father, Miss, when you talk like that. Indeed,
indeed, you don’t know father.”

“Tizzie, Lizzie,” said Miss Potterson. “eave him. You needn't
break with him altogether, but leave him. Do well away from him ;
not because of what I have told you to-night—we'll pass no judg-
ment upon that, and we'll hope it may not be—but because of
what I have urged on you before. No matter whether it’s owing to
your good looks or not, I like you and I wantto serve you. Lizzie,
come under my direction. Don’t fling yourself away, my gizl, but
be persuaded into being respectable and happy.”

In the sound good feeling and good sense of her entreaty, Miss
Abbey had softened into a soothing tone, and had even drawn her
arm round the girl’s waist. But, she only replied, “Thank you,
thank you! Ican’t. Iwon’t. I must not think of it. The harder
father is borne upon, the more he needs me to lean on.”

And then Miss Abbey, who, like all hard people when they do
soften, felt that there was considerable compensation owing to her,
underwent reaction and became frigid.

“T have done what I can,” she said, “and you must go your way.
You make your bed, and you must lie on it. But tell your father
one thing: he must not come here any more.”

“Oh, Miss, will you forbid him the house where I know he’s
safe?y

“The Fellowships,” returned Miss Abbey, “has itself to look to,
as well as others. It has been hard work to establish order here, and
make the Fellowships what it is, and it is daily and nightly hard
work to keep it so. The Fellowships must not have a taint upon it

that may give ita bad name. I forbid the house to Riderhood, and
{ forbid the house to Gaffer. I forbid both, equally. I find from
Riderhood and you together, that there are suspicions against both
men, and I’m not going to take upon myself to decide betwixt them.
‘They are both tarred with a dirty brush, and I can't have the
Fellowships tarred with the same brush. That’s all I know.”

   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
    

 

  

 

 

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“(Jood-night, Miss!” said Lizzie Hexam, sorrowfully.

“ Hah!—Good-night!” returned Miss Abbey with a shake of her
head.

“Believe me, Miss Abbey, I am truly grateful all the same.”

“JT can believe a good deal,” returned the stately Abbey, “so Vl
try to believe that too, Lizzie.”

No supper did Miss Potterson take that night, and only half her
usual tumbler of hot Port Negus. And the female domestics—two
robust sisters, with staring black eyes, shining flat red faces,
blunt noses, and strong black curls, like dolls—interchanged the
sentiment that Missis had had her hair combed the wrong way by
somebody. And the pot-boy afterwards remarked, that he hadn't
been “so rattled to bed,” since his late mother had systematically
accelerated his retirement to rest with a poker.

The chaining of the door behind her, as she went forth, disen-
chanted Lizzie Hexam of that first relief she had felt. ‘I'he night
was black and shrill, the river-side wilderness was melancholy, and
there was a sound of casting-out, in the rattling of the iron-links,
and the grating of the bolts and staples under Miss Abbey’s hand.
As she came beneath the lowering sky, a sense of being involved in
a murky shade of Murder dropped wpon her ; and, as the tidal swell
of the river broke at her feet without her seeing how it gathered, so,
her thoughts startled her by rushing out of an unseen void and
striking at her heart.

Of her father’s being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure.
Sure. And yet, repeat the word inwardly as often as she would, the
attempt to reason out and prove that she was sure, always came
after it and failed. Riderhood had done the deed, and entrapped
her father. Riderhood had not done the deed, but had resolved in
his malice to turn against her father, the appearances that were
ready to his hand to distort. Equally and swiftly upon either putting
of the case, followed the frightful possibility that her father, being
innocent, yet might come to be believed guilty. She had heard of
people suffering Death for bloodshed of which they were after-
wards proved pure, and those ill-fated persons were not, first, in that
dangerous wrong in which her father stood. Then at the best, the
beginning of his being set apart, whispered against, and avoided,
was a certain fact. It dated from that very night. And as the
great black river with its dreary shores was soon lost to her view in
the gloom, so, she stood on the river's brink unable to see into the
vast blank misery of a life suspected, and fallen away from by good
and bad, but knowing that it lay there dim before her, stretching
away to the great ocean, Death.

One thing only, was clear to the girl’s mind. Accustomed from
her very babyhood promptly to do the thing that could be done—-
whether to keep out weather, to ward off cold, to postpone hunger,
ot what not—she started out of her meditation, and ran home.

The room was quiet, and the lamp burnt on the table. In the
bunk in the corner, her brother lay asleep. She bent over him
softly, kissed him, and came to the table.

« By the time of Miss Abbey’s closing, and by the run of the tide,

ee

ns he taagelgaar

 

Cee

Sitinerinnts <5

aie, a

at

Sesh

 

54 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

it must be one. Tide’s running up. Father at Chiswick, wouldn’t
think of coming down, till after the turn, and that’s at half after
four. Jl call Charley at six. I shall hear the church-clocks strike,
as I sit here.”

Very quietly, she placed a chair before the scanty fire, and
down in it, drawing her shawl about her.

“Charley's hollow down by the flare is not there now. Poor
Charley !”

The clock struck two, and the clock struck three, and the clock
struck four, and she remained there, with a woman’s patience and
her own purpose. When the morning was well on between four
and five, she slipped off her shoes (that her going about, might not
wake Charley), trimmed the fire sparingly, put water on to boil, and
set the table for breakfast. Then she went up the ladder, lamp in
hand, and came down again, and glided about and about, making
a little bundle. Lastly, from her pocket, and from the chimney-
piece, and from an inverted basin on the highest shelf, she brought
halfpence, a few sixpences, fewer shillings, “and fell to laboriously
and noiselessly counting them, and setting aside one little heap.
She was still so engaged, when she was startled by :

“ Hal-loa!” From her brother, sitting up in bed.

“You made me jump, Charley.”

“Jump! Didn’t you make me jump, when I opened my eyes a
moment ago, and saw you sitting there, like the ghost of a girl-miser,
in the dead of the night.”

“It's not the dead of the night, Charley. It’s nigh six in the
morning.”

“Ts it though? But what are you up to, Liz ?”

« Still telling your fortune, Charley.”

“It seems to be a precious small one, if that’s it,” said the boy.
“What are you putting that little pile of money by itself for ?”

“For you, Charley.”

“ What do you mean?”

“Get out of bed, Charley, and get washed and dressed, and then
Tl tell you.”

Her composed ame r, and her low distinct voice, always had an
influence over him. fis head was soon in a basin of water, and out
of it again, and ae at her through a storm of towelling.

“T never, * towelling at himself as if he were his bitterest enemy,
“saw such a girl as you are. What is the move, Liz?”

« Are you almost ready for breakfast, Charley ?”

“You can pour it out. Hal-loa! Isay? And a bundle?”

“ And a-bundle, Charley.”

“ You don’t mean it’s for me, too?” ‘

“Yes, Charley; I do, indeed.”

More serious ey face, and more slow of action, than he had heen,
the boy completed his dressing, and came and sat down at the
little breakfast-table, with his eyes amazedly directed to her face.

«You see, Charley dear, I have made up my mind that this is
the right time for your going away from us. Over and above all
the blessed change of by- -and- -bye, youll be much happier, and

 

    
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 55

do much better, even so soon as next month. Even so soon as next
week.”

“ How do you know I shall?”

“JT don’t quite know how, Charley, but I do.” In spite of her
unchanged manner of speaking, and her unchanged appearance
of composure, she scarcely trusted herself to look at him, but kept
her eyes employed on the cutting and buttering of his bread, and on
the mixing of his tea, and other such little preparations. “You
must leave father to me, Charley—I will do what J can with him—
but you must go.”

«You don’t stand upon ceremony, I think,” grumbled the boy,
throwing his bread and butter about, in an ill-humour.

She made him no answer.

“J tell you what,” said the boy, then, bursting out into an angry
whimpering, “you're a selfish jade, and you think there’s not enough
for three of us, and you want to get rid of me.”

“Tf you believe so, Charley,—yes, then I believe too, that Iam a
selfish jade, and that I think there’s not enough for three of us, and
that I want to get rid of you.”

Tt was only when the boy rushed at her, and threw his arms
yound her neck, that she lost her self-restraint. But she lost it then,
and wept over him.

“Don’t ery, don’t cry! Iam satisfied to go, Liz; I am satisfied to
go. I know you send me away for my good.”

“ O, Charley, Charley, Heaven above us knows I do!”

“Yes, yes. Don’t mind what I said. Don’t remember it. Kiss
me.”

‘After a silence, she loosed him, to dry her eyes and regain her
strong quiet influence.

“ Now listen, Charley dear. We both know it must be done, and
T alone know there is good reason for its being done at once. Go
straight to the school, and say that you and I agreed upon it—that
we can’t overcome father’s opposition—that father will never trouble
them, but will never take you back. You are a credit to the school,
and you will be a greater credit to it yet, and they will help you
to get a living. Show what clothes you have brought, and what
money, and say that I will send some more money. If I can get
some in no other way, I will ask a little help of those two gentlemen
who came here that night.”

“I say!” cried her brother, quickly. “Don’t you have it of that
chap that took hold of me by the chin! Don’t you have it of that
Wrayburn one!”

Perhaps a slight additional tinge of red flashed up into her face
and brow, as with a nod she laid a hand upon his lips to keep him
silently attentive.

« And above all things mind this, Charley! Be sure you always
speak well of father. Be sure you always give father his full due.
You can’t deny that because father has no learning himself he is set
against it in you; but favour nothing else against him, and be sure
you say—as you know—that your sister is devoted to him. And if

you should ever happen to hear anything said against father that is

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

  

 

56 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

new to you, it will not be true, Remember, Charley! It will not
be true.”

The boy looked at her with some doubt and surprise, but she went
en again without heeding it.

“ Above allthings remember! Itwillnotbe true. Ihave nothing
more to say, Charley dear, except, be good, and get learning, and
only think of some things in the old life here, as if you had dreamed
them in a dream last night. Good-bye, my Darling!”

Though so young, she infused into these parting words a love that
was far more like a mother’s than a sister’s, and before which the
boy was quite bowed down. After holding her to his breast with a
passionate cry, he took up his bundle and darted out at the door,
with an arm across his eyes.

The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a
frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to
black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes
behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest
it had set on fire. Lizzie, looking for her father, saw him coming,
and stood upon the causeway that he might see her.

He had nothing with him but his boat, and came on apace. A.
knot of those amphibious human-creatures who appear to have some
mysterious power of extracting a subsistence out of tidal water by
looking at it, were gathered together about the causeway. As her
father’s boat grounded, they became contemplative of the mud, and
dispersed themselves. She saw that the mute avoidance had begun.

Gaffer saw it, too, in so far as that he was moved when he set foot
on shore, to stare around him. But, he promptly set to work to
haul up his boat, and make her fast, and take the sculls and rudder
and rope out of her. Carrying these with Lizzie’s aid, he passed up
to his dwelling.

“Sit close to the fire, father, dear, while I cook your breakfast.
It’s all ready for cooking, and only been waiting for you. You must
be frozen.”

“Well, Lizzie, I ain’t of a glow; that’s certain. And my hands
seemed nailed through to the sculls. See how dead they are!” Some-
thing suggestive in their colour, and perhaps in her face, struck him
as he held them up; he turned his shoulder and held them down to
the fire.

“You were not out in the perishing night, I hope, father ?”

“No, my dear. Lay aboard a barge, by a blazing coal-fire.—
Where’s that boy ?”

“‘There’s a drop of brandy for your tea, father, if youll put it in
while I tum this bit of meat. If the river was to get frozen, there
would be a deal of distress; wouldn’t there, father ?”

“Ah! there’s always enough of that,” said Gaffer, dropping the
liquor into his cup from a squat black bottle, and dropping it slowly
that it might seem more; “distress is for ever a going about, like
sut in the air—Ain’t that boy up yet?”

“The meat’s ready now, father. Hat it while it’s hot and

comfortable. After you have finished, we'll turn round to the fire
and talk.”

  

  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
  
  
   
  
  
   
   
  
   
  
   
  
   
   
   
    
    
  
  
   

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 57

But, he perceived that he was evaded, and, haying thrown a hasty
angry glance towards the bunk, plucked at a corner of her apron and
asked :

“ What’s gone with that boy ?”

“ Father, if you'll begin your breakfast, Il sit by and tell you.”

He looked at her, stirred his tea and took two or three gulps,
then cut at his piece of hot steak with his case-knife, and said,
eating :

“Now then. What’s gone with that boy?”

“Don’t be angry, dear. It seems, father, that he has quite a gift
of learning.”

“Unnat’ral young beggar!” said the parent, shaking his knife in
the air.

“« And that having this gift, and not being equally good at other
things, he has made shift to get some schooling.”

“ Unnat’ral young beggar!” said the parent again, with his former
action.

“ And that knowing you have nothing to spare, father, and not
wishing to be a burden on you, he gradually made up his mind to go
seek his fortune out of learning. He went away this morning,
father, and he cried very much at going, and he hoped you would
forgive him.”

“Let him neyer come a nigh me to ask me my forgiveness,” said
the father,.again emphasizing his words with the knife. “Let him
never come within sight of my eyes, nor yet within reach of my arm.
His own father ain’t good enough for him, He’s disowned his own
father. His own father therefore, disowns him for ever and ever, as
a unnat’ral young beggar.”

He had pushed away his plate. With the natural need of a
strong rough man in anger, to do something forcible, he now clutched
his knife overhand, and struck downward with it at the end of every
succeeding sentence. As he would have struck with his own clenched
fist if there had chanced to be nothing in it.

“He's welcome to go. He’s more welcome to go than to stay.

3ut let him never come back. Let him never put his head inside that
door. And let you never speak a word more in his favour, or you'll
disown your own father, likewise, and what your father says of him
he'll have to come to say of you. Now I see why them men yonder
held aloof from me. ‘They says to one another, ‘Here comes the
man as ain’t good enough for his own son!’ Lizzie Ie

But, she stopped him with a cry. Looking at her he saw her,
with a face quite strange to him, shrinking back against the wall,
with her hands before her eyes.

“Father, don’t! I can’t bear to see you striking with it. Put it
down!”

He looked at the knife; but in his astonishment still held it.

“ Father, it’s too horrible. O put it down, put it down!”

Confounded by her appearance and exclamation, he tossed it away,
and stood up with bis open hands held out before him.

“ What’s come to you, Liz? Can you think I would strike at you
with a knife ?”

 

       
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
     

 

 

 

  

 

58 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“No, father, no; you would never hurt me.”

“ What should I hurt ?”

“ Nothing, dear father. On my knees, I am certain, in my heart
and soul J am certain,nothing! But it was too dreadful to bear; for
it looked ” her hands covering her face again, “O it looked ——”

“ What did it look like ?”

The recollection of his murderous figure, combining with her trial
of last night, and her trial of the morning, caused her to drop at his
feet, without having answered.

He had never seen her so before. He raised her with the utmost
tenderness, calling her the best of daughters, and “my poor pretty
creetur,” and laid her head upon his knee, and tried to restore her.
But failing, he laid her head gently down again, got a pillow and
placed it under her dark hair, and sought on the table for a spoonful
of brandy. There being none left, he hurriedly caught up the
empty bottle, and ran out at the door.

He returned as hurriedly as he had gone, with the bottle still
empty. He kneeled down by her, took her head on his arm, and
moistened her lips with a little water into which he dipped his
fingers: saying, fiercely, as he looked around, now over this shoulder,
now over that :

“Have we got a pest in the house? Is there summ’at deadly
sticking tomy clothes? What’slet loose upon us? Who loosed it ?”

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII.
MR. WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF.

Sinas Wece, being on his road to the Roman Empire, approaches
it by way of Clerkenwell. The time is early in the evening; the
weather moist and raw. Mr. Wege finds leisure to make a little
circuit, by reason that he folds his screen early, now that he combines
another source of income with it, and also that he feels it due to
himself to be anxiously expected at the Bower. “Boffin will get all
the eagerer for waiting a bit,” says Silas, screwing up, as he stumps
along, first his right eye, and then his left. Which is something
superfluous in him, for Nature has already screwed both pretty
tight.

“If I get on with him as I expect to get on,” Silas pursues, stump-
ing and meditating, “it wouldn’t become me to leave it here. It
wouldn’t be respectable.” Animated by this reflection, he stumps
faster, and looks a long way before him, as a man with an ambitious
project in abeyance often will do.

Aware of a working-jeweller population taking sanctuary about
the church in Clerkenwell, Mr. Wee is conscious of an interest in,
and a respect for, the neighbourhood. But, his sensations in this
regard halt as to their strict morality, as he halts in his gait; for,
they suggest the delights of a coat of invisibility in which to walk
off safely with the precious stones and watch-cases, but stop short of
any compunction for the people who would lose the same,

  
  
   
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
    

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 59

Not, however, towards the “shops” where cunning artificers
work in pearls and diamonds and gold and silver, making their
hands so rich, that the enriched water in which they wash them
is bought for the refiners;—not towards these does Mr. Wegg;
stump, but towards the poorer shops of small retail traders in
commodities to eat and drink and keep folks warm, and of Italian
frame-makers, and of barbers, and of brokers, and of dealers im dogs
and singing-birds. From these, in a narrow and a dirty street
devoted to such callings, Mr. Wegg selects one dark shop-window
with a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a muddle
of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick, but
among which nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save the
candle itself in its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs fight-
ing asmall-sword duel. Stumping with fresh vigour, he goes in at the
dark greasy entry, pushes a little greasy dark reluctant side-door, and
follows the door into the little dark greasy shop. It is so dark that
nothing can be made out in it, over a little counter, but another
tallow candle in another old tin candlestick, close to the face of a
man stooping low in a chair.

Mr. Wegg nods to the face, “ Good evening.”

The face looking up is a sallow face with weak eyes, sur-
mounted by a tangle of reddish-dusty hair. ‘The owner of the face
has no cravat on, and has opened his tumbled shirt-collar to work

svith the more ease. For the same reason he has no coat on: only a
loose waistcoat over his yellow linen. His eyes are like the over-
tried eyes of an engraver, but he is not that; his expression and
stoop are like those of a shoemaker, but he is not that.

“Good evening, Mr. Venus. Don’t you remember?”

With slowly dawning remembrance, Mr. Venus rises, and holds
his candle over the little counter, and holds it down towards the
legs, natural and artificial, of Mr. Wegg.

“To be sure!” he says, then. “ How do you do?”

« Wee, you know,” that gentleman explains.

“ Yes, yes,” says the other. ‘“ Hospital amputation ”

“ Just so,” says Mr. Wegg.

“Yes, yes,” quoth Venus. “How do you do? Sit down by the
fire, and warm your—your other one.”

The little counter being so short a counter that it leaves the
fireplace, which would have been behind it if it had been longer,
accessible, Mr. Wege sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales
a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop.
“For that,” Mr. Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes. a corrective
sniff or two, “is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy,

| and,” with another sniff, “as it might be, strong of old pairs of
bellows.”

“My tea is drawing, and my muffin is on the hob, Mr. Wegg ;
will you partake ?”

It being one of Mr. Wegg’s guiding rules in life always to partake,
he says he will. But, the little shop is so excessively dark, is stuck
<o full of black shelves and brackets and nooks and corners,
that he sees Mr. Venus’s cup and saucer only because it is close

 

Pee ET’ 7

 

 

~>

 

 

60 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

under the candle, and does not see from what mysterious recess
Mr. Venus produces another for himself, until it is under his nose.
Concurrently, Weg perceives a pretty little dead bird lying on the
counter, with its head drooping on one side against the rim of Mr.
Venus’s saucer, and a long stiff wire piercing its breast. As if it were
Cock Robin, the hero of the ballad, and Mr. Venus were the sparrow
with his bow and arrow, and Mr. Wegg were the fly with his little
eye.

Mr. Venus dives, and produces another muffin, yet untoasted ;
taking the arrow out of the breast of Cock Robin, he proceeds to
toast it on the end of that cruel instrument. When it is brown, he
dives again and produces butter, with which he completes his work.

Mr. Wegg, as an artful man who is sure of his supper by-and-bye,
presses muffin on his host to soothe him into a compliant state of
mind, or, as one might say, to grease his works. As the muffins
disappear, little by little, the black shelves and nooks and corners
begin to appear, and Mr. Wegg gradually acquires an imperfect
notion that over against him on the chimney-piece is a Hindoo baby
ina bottle, curved up with his big head tucked under him, as though
he would instantly throw a summersault if the bottle were large
enouch.

When he deems Mr. Venus’s wheels sufficiently lubricated, Mr.
Wegg approaches his object by asking, as he lightly taps his hands
together, to express an undesigning frame of mind :

“ And how have I been going on, this long time, Mr. Venus ?”

“Very bad,” says Mr. Venus, uncompromising |y.

“What? Am I still at home?” asks Wege, with an air of surprise.

“ Always at home.”

This would seem to be secretly agreeable to Weee, but he veils
his feelings, and observes, “ Strange. To what do you attribute it 2”

“T don’t know,” replies Venus, who is a haggard melancholy man,
speaking in a weak voice of querulous complaint, “to what to
attribute it, Mr. Wegg. I can’t work you into a miscellaneous one,
nohow. Do what I] will, you can’t be got to fit. Anybody with
a passable knowledge would pick you out at a look, and say,—‘ No
go! Don’t match!”

“Well, but hang it, Mr. Venus,” Wegg expostulates with some
little irritation, “that can’t be personal and peculiar in me. It must
often happen with miscellaneous ones.”

“ With ribs (I grant you) always. But not else. When I prepare
a miscellaneous one, I know beforehand that I can’t keep to nature,
and be miscellaneous with ribs, because every man has his own ribs,
and no other man’s will go with them; but elseways I can be mis-
cellaneous. I have just sent home a Beauty—a perfect Beauty—to a
school of art. One leg Belgian, one leg Hnglish, and the pickings
of eight other people in it. Talk of not being qualified to be mis-
cellaneous! By rights you ought to be, Mr. Weee.”

Silas looks as hard at his one leg as he can in the dim light, and
after a pause sulkily opines “that it must be the fault of the other

people. Or how do you mean to say it comes about?” he demands
impatiently.

.

 

 

 

 

SIH JO SHIHdOUL AHL AG GAANOOWYOS §S

WELLE Yio9

= a

Can

 

 

 

     
  

“T don’t know how it comes about.

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

61

Stand up a minute. Hold

the light.” Mr. Venus takes from a corner by his chair, the bones of
a lee and foot, beautifully pure, and put together with exquisite
neatness. ‘These he compares with Mr. Wege’s leg ; that gentleman
looking on, as if he were being measured for a riding-boot. “No, I

don’t know how it is, but so it is.
bone, to the best of my belief.

You have got a twist in that
I never saw the likes of you.”

Mr. Wege having looked distrustfully at his own limb, and sus-
piciously at the pattern with which it has been compared, makes

the point :

“Tl bet a pound that ain’t an English one!”
“An easy wager, when we run so much into foreign! No, it
belongs to that French gentleman.”
As he nods towards a point of darkness behind Mr. Wegg, the

oo?

latter, with a slight start, looks round for “that French gentleman,”
whom heat length descries to be represented (in a very workmanlike
manner) by his ribs only, standing on a shelf in another corner, like
a piece of armour or a pair of stays.

“Oh!” says Mr. Wegg, with a sort of sense of being introduced ;
“TJ dare say you were all right enough in your own country, but I
hope no objections will be taken to my saying that the Frenchman
was never yet born as I should wish to match.”

At this moment the greasy door is violently pushed inward, and a

boy follows it, who says, after having let it slam:

“Come for the stuffed canary.”
“It’s three and ninepence,” returns Venus; “have you got the

money ?”

The boy produces four shillings.

Mr. Venus, always in exceed-

ingly low spirits and making whimpering sounds, peers about for
the stuffed canary. On his taking the candle to assist his search,
Mr. Wegg observes that he has a convenient little shelf near his
knees, exclusively appropriated to skeleton hands, which have very
much the appearance of wanting to lay hold of him. From these
Mr. Venus rescues the canary in a glass case, and shows it to the boy.

“There!” he whimpers.
Take care of him; he’s a lovely specimen.—

up his mind to hop!
And three is four.”

“ 'There’s animation !

On a twig, making

The boy gathers up his change and has pulled the door open by
a leather strap nailed to it for the purpose, when Venus cries out:
“Stop him! Come back, you young villain!

among them halfpence.”
“ How was I to know Id got it?
none of your teeth; I’ve got enough of my own.”

You've got a tooth

You giv it me. I don’t want

So the boy pipes,

as he selects it from his change, and throws it on the counter.
“Don’t sauce me, in the wicious pride of your youth,” Mr. Venus

retorts pathetically.

low enough without that.
There was two in the coffee-pot at breakfast

drop into everything.
time. Molars.”

“Don’t hit me because you see ’m down. Tm

It dropped into the till, I suppose. They

“Very well, then,” argues the boy, “what do you call names for”
To which Mr. Venus only replies, shaking his shock of dusty hair,

and winking his weak eyes, “ Don’t sauce me, in the wicious pride of

 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ite santa ee SS

 

 

 

  

62 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

your youth; don’t hit me, because you see I’m down. You've no
idea how small you'd come out, if I had the articulating of you.”

This consideration seems to have its effect on the boy, for he goes
out grumbling.

“Oh dear me, dear me!” sighs Mr. Venus, heavily, snuffing the
candle, “the world that appeared so flowery has ceased to blow!
You're casting your eye round the shop, Mr. Wegg. Let me show
you a light. My working bench. My young man’s bench. A
Wice. ‘Tools. Bones, warious. Skulls, warious. Preserved Indian
baby. African ditto. Bottled preparations, warious. Hiverything
within reach of your hand, in good preservation. The mouldy ones
a-top. What's in those hampers over them again, I don’t quite
remember. Say, human warious. Cats. Articulated English baby.
Dogs. Ducks. Glass eyes, warious. Mummied bird. Dried cuticle,
warious. Oh, dear me! That's the general pfnoramic view.”

Having so held and waved the candle as that all these hetero-
geneous objects seemed to come forward obediently when they were
named, and then retire again, Mr. Venus despondently repeats, “Oh
dear me, dear me!” resumes his seat, and with drooping despondency
upon him, falls to pouring himself out more tea.

“ Where am I?” asks Mr. Wege.

“Youre somewhere in the back shop across the yard, sir; and
speaking quite candidly, I wish I'd never bought you of the Hospital
Porter.”

“Now, look here, what did you give for me?”

“Well, replies Venus, blowing his tea: his head and face peering
out of the darkness, over the smoke of it, as if he were modernizine
the old original rise in his family : “you were one of a warious lot, and
I don’t know.”

Silas puts his point in the improved form of “ What will you take
for me?”

“Well,” replies Venus, still blowing his tea, “I’m not prepared, at
® Moment’s notice, to tell you, Mr. Weee.”

“Come! According to your own account I’m not worth much,”
Wegg reasons persuasively.

“Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant you, Mr. Wege; but
you might turn out valuable yet, as a

 

” here Mr. Venus takes a
gulp of tea, so hot that it makes him choke, and sets his weak eyes
watering ; “as a Monstrosity, if you’ll excuse me.”

Repressing an indignant look, indicative of anything but a dispo-
sition to excuse him, Silas pursues his point.

“I think you know me, Mr. Venus, and I think you know I never
bargain.”

Mr. Venus takes gulps of hot tea, shutting his eyes at every gulp,
and opening them again in a spasmodic manner; but does not commit
himself to assent.

“T have a prospect of getting on in life and elevating myself by
my own independent exertions,” says Wege, feeling ly, “and I shouldn’t
like—I tell you openly I should not like—under such circumstances,
to be what I may call dispersed, a part of me here, and a part of me
there, but should wish to collect myself like a genteel person.”

“Tt’s a prospect at present, is it, Mr. Wegg? Then you haven’t

  
 
 
 
     
      
    
    
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
    
  
    

  

>

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 63

vot the money for'a deal about you? Then I'll tell you what Tl
do with you; Pll hold you over. Iam aman of my word, and you
needn’t be afraid of my disposing of you. Tl hold you over. That's
a promise. Oh dear me, dear me!”

Fain to accept his promise, and wishing to propitiate him, Mr.
Wege looks on as he sighs and pours himself out more tea, and
then says, trying to get a sympathetic tone into his voice:

“You seem very low, Mr. Venus. Is business bad ?”

“Never was so good.”

“Ts your hand out at all?”

“Never was so well in. Mr. Wegg, I’m not only first in the
trade, but I’m thetrade. You may go and buy a skeleton at the West
Hind if you like, and pay the West End price, but itll be my put-
ting together. I’ve as much to do as I can possibly do, with the
assistance of my young man, and I take a pride and a pleasure in it.”

Mr. Venus thus delivers himself, his right hand extended, his
smoking saucer in his left hand, protesting as though he were going
to burst into a flood of tears.

«That ain’t a state of things to make you low, Mr. Venus.”

“Mr. Wegg, I know it ain't. Mr. Wegg, not to name myself as a
workman without an equal, ’ve gone on improving myself im my
Imowledge of Anatomy, till both by sight and by name I’m perfect.
Mr. Wegg, if you was brought here loose in a bag to be articulated,
T’d name your smallest bones blindfold equally with your largest, as
fast as I could pick ’em out, and I'd sort ’em all, and sort your wer-
tebre, in a manner that would equally surprise and charm you.”

“ Well,” remarks Silas (though not.quite so readily as last time),
“that ain’ta state of things to be low about.—Not for you to be low
about, leastways.”

“Mr. Wegg, I know it ain’t; Mr. Wegg, I know it ain’t. But it’s
the heart that lowers me, it is the heart! Beso good as take and
read that card out loud.”

Silas receives one from his hand, which Venus takes from a
syonderful litter in a drawer, and putting on his spectacles, reads:

“¢Myr. Venus,”

ViesH | Golonsd

«¢ Preserver of Animals and Birds, ”

“Yes. Go on.”

«« Articulator of human bones.’ ”

“That's it,” with a groan. “That's it! Mr. Wegg, Tm thirty-
two, and a bachelor. Mr. Wegg, I love her. Mr. Wegg, she is
worthy of being loved by a Potentate!” Here Silas is rather
alarmed by Mr. Venus’s springing to his feet in the hurry of his
spirits, and haggardly confronting him with his hand on his coat
collar; but Mr. Venus, begging pardon, sits down again, saying, with
the calmness of despair, “ She objects to the business.”

« Does she know the profits of 1t?”

“ She knows the profits of it, but she don’t appreciate the art of it,
and she objects to it. ‘1 do not wish,’ she writes in her own hand
writing, ‘to regard myself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney light.’”

Mr. Venus pours himself out more tea, with a look and in an
attitude of the deepest desolation.

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
    

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64 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ And soa man climbs to the top of the tree, Mr. Wegg, only to
see that there’s no look-out when he’s up there! I sit here of a night
surrounded by the lovely trophies of my art, and what have they
done for me? Ruined me. Brought me tothe pass of being informed
that ‘she does not wish to regard herself, nor yet to be regarded, ir.
that boney light!” Having repeated the fatal expressions, Mr. Venus
drinks more tea by gulps, and offers an explanation of his doing so.

“It lowers me. When I’m equally lowered all over, lethargy sets
in. By sticking to it till one or two in the morning, I get oblivion.
Don’t let me detain you, Mr. Wege. I’m not company for any one.”

“Tt is not on that account,” says Silas, rising, “but because I’ve
got an appointment. It’s time I was at Harmon’s.”

“Eh ?” said Mr. Venus. “ Harmon’s, up Battle Bridge way ?”

Mr. Wegg admits that he is bound for that port.

“You ought to be in a good thing, if you’ve worked yourself in
there. ‘There’s lots of money going, there.”

“To think,” says Silas, “that you stould catch it up so quick,
and know about it. Wonderful!”

“ Not at all, Mr. Wegg. The old gentleman wanted to know the
nature and worth of everything that was found in the dust: and
many’s the bone, and feather, and what not, that he’s brought to
ame
“ Really, now !”

“Yes. (Oh dear me, dear me!) And he’s buried quite in this
neighbourhood, you know. Over yonder.”

Mr. Wegg does not know, but he makes as if he did, by respon-
sively nodding his head. He also follows with his eyes, the toss of
Venus’s head : as if to seek a direction to over yonder.

“T took an interest in that discovery in the river,” says Venus.
“(She hadn’t written her cutting refusal at that time.) Ive got up
there never mind, though.”

He had raised the candle at arm’s length towards one of the dark
shelves, and Mr. Wegg had turned to look, when he broke off.

“The old gentleman was well known all round here. ‘There used
to be stories about his having hidden all kinds of property in those
dust mounds. I suppose there was nothing in ’em. Probably you
Inow, Mr. Wege ?” ’

“ Nothing im ’em,” says Wegg, who has never heard a word of this
before.

“Don’t let me detain you. Good night!”

The unfortunate Mr. Venus gives him a shake of the hand with a
shake of his own head, and drooping down in his chair, proceeds to
pour himself out more tea. Mr. Wege, looking back over his
shoulder as he pulls the door open by the strap, notices that the
movement so shakes the crazy shop, and so shakes a momentary flare
out of the candle, as that the babies—Hindoo, African, and British
—the “human warious,” the French gentleman, the green elass-
eyed cats, the dogs, the ducks, and all the rest of the collection,
show for an instant as if paralytically animated; while even poor
little Cock Robin at Mr. Venus’s elbow turns over on his innocent
side. Next moment, Mr. Wegg is stumping under the gaslights and
through the mud.

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER VIII.

MR. BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION.

Wuosorver had gone out of Fleet Street into the Temple at the
date of this history, and had wandered disconsolate about the
Temple until he stumbled on a dismal churchyard, and had looked
up at the dismal windows commanding that churchyard until at
the most dismal window of them all he saw a dismal boy,
would in him have beheld, at one grand comprehensive swoop of the
eye, the managing clerk, junior clerk, common-law clerk, convey-
ancing clerk, chancery clerk, every refinement and department of
clerk, of Mr. Mortimer Lightwood, erewhile called in the news-
papers eminent solicitor.

Mr. Boffin having been several times in communication with this
clerkly essence, both on its own ground and at the Bower, had no
difficulty in identifying it when he saw it up in its dusty eyrie. To
the second floor on which the window was situated, he ascended,
much pre-occupied in mind by the uncertainties besetting the
Roman Empire, and much regretting the death of the amiable
Pertinax : who only last night had left the Imperial affairs in a state
of great confusion, by falling a victim to the fury of the pretorian
guards.

“Morning, morning, morning!” said Mr. Boffin, with a wave of
his hand, as the office door was opened by the dismal boy, whose
appropriate name was Blight. “Governor in?”

“Mr. Lightwood gave you an appointment, sir, I think?”

“J don’t want him to give it, you know,” returned Mr. Boffin;
“Tl pay my way, my boy.”

“No doubt, sir. Would you walk in? Mr. Lightwood ain’t in
at the present moment, but I expect him back very shortly. Would
you take a seat in Mr. Lightwood’s room, sir, while I look over our
Appointment Book?” Young Blight made a great show of fetching
from his desk a long thin manuscript volume with a brown paper
cover, and running his finger down the day’s appointments, mur-
muring, “Mr. Ages, Mr. Baggs, Mr. Caggs, Mr. Daggs, Mr. Faggs,
Mr. Gaggs, Mr. Boffin. Yes, sir; quite right. You are a little
before your time, sir. Mr. Lightwood will be in directly.”

“Tm not in a hurry,” said Mr. Boffin.

“Thank you, sir. Ill take the opportunity, if you please, of
entering your name in our Callers’ Book for the day.” Young Blight
made another great show of changing the volume, taking up a pen,
sucking it, dipping it, and running over previous entries before he
wrote. As,“ Mr. Alley, Mr. Balley, Mr. Calley, Mr. Dalley, Mr. Falley,
Mr. Galley, Mr. Halley, Mr. Lalley, Mr. Malley. And Mr. Boffin.”

“Strict system here; eh, my lad?” said Mr. Boffin, as he was
booked.

“Yes, sir,” returned the boy. “I couldn’t get on without it.”

By which he probably meant that his mind would have been
F

  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    
    
  
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
  
   

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

66 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

shattered to pieces without this fiction of an occupation. Wearing
in his solitary confinement no fetters that he could polish, and being
provided with no drinking-cup that he could carve, he had fallen on
the device of ringing alphabetical changes into the two volumes in
question, or of entering vast numbers of persons out of the Directory
as transacting business with Mr. Lightwood. It was the more
necessary for his spirits, because, being of a sensitive temperament,
he was apt to consider it personally disgraceful to himself that
his master had no clients.

“ How long have you been in the law, now?” asked Mr. Boffin,
with a pounce, in his usual inquisitive way.

“T-ve been in the law, now, sir, about three years.”

“Must have been as good as born in it!” said Mr. Boffin, with
admiration. “ Do you like it?”

“J don’t mind it much,” returned Young Blight, heaving a sigh,
as if its bitterness were past.

“What wages do you get?”

“Half what | could wish,” replied young Blight.

“What's the whole that you could wish ?”

“Fifteen shillings a week,” said the boy.

“ About how long might it take you now, at a average rate of
going, to be a Judge?” asked Mr. Boffin, after surveying his small
stature in silence.

The boy answered that he had not yet quite worked out that little
calculation.

“JT suppose there’s nothing to prevent your going in for it?” said
Mr. Boftin.

The boy virtually replied that as he had the honour to be a
Briton who never never never, there was nothing to prevent his
going in for it. Yet he seemed inclined to suspect that there might
be something to prevent his coming out with it.

“ Would a couple of pound help you up at all?’ asked Mr. Boffin.

On this head, young Blight had no doubt whatever, so Mr. Boffin
made him a present of that sum of money, and thanked him for his
attention to his (Mr. Boffin’s) affairs; which, he added, were now, he
believed, as good as settled.

Then Mr. Boffin, with his stick at his ear, like a Familiar Spirit
explaining the office to him, sat staring at a little bookcase of Law
Practice and Law Reports, and at a window, and at an empty
blue bag, and at a stick of sealing-wax, and a pen, and a box of
wafers, and an apple, and a writing-pad—all very dusty—and at
a number of inky smears and blots, and at an imperfectly-disguised
gun-case pretending to be something legal, and at an iron box labelled
Harmon Esrare, until Mr. Lightwood appeared.

Mr. Lightwood explained that he came from the proctor’s, with
whom he had been engaged in transacting Mr. Boftin’s affairs.

“ And they seem to have taken a deal out of you!” said Mr. Boffin,
with commiseration.

Mr. Lightwood, without explaining that his weariness was chronic,
proceeded with his exposition that, all forms of law having been at
length complied with, will of Harmon deceased having been proved,

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 67

death of Harmon next inheriting having been proved, &c., and so
forth, Court of Chancery having been moved, &c. and so forth, he,
Mr. Lightwood, had now the great gratification, honor, and happi-
ness, again &¢. and so forth, of congratulating Mr. Boffin on coming
into possession, as residuary legatee, of upwards of one hundred
thousand pounds, standing in the books of the Governor and
Company of the Bank of England, again &c. and so forth.

“ And what is particularly eligible in the property Mr. Boffin, is,
that it involves no trouble. ‘There are no estates to manage, no rents
to return so much per cent. upon in bad times (which is an extremely
dear way of getting your name into the newspapers), no voters to
become parboiled in hot water with, no agents to take the cream
off the milk before it comes to table. You could put the whole in
a cash-box to-morrow morning, and take it with you to—say, to the
Rocky Mountains. Inasmuch as every man,” concluded Mr. Light-
wood, with an indolent smile, “appears to be under a fatal spell
which obliges him, sooner or later, to mention the Rocky Mountains
in a tone of extreme familiarity to some other man, I hope you'll
excuse my pressing you into the service of that gigantic range of
geographical bores.”

Without following this last remark very closely, Mr. Boffin cast
his perplexed gaze first at the ceiling, and then at the carpet.

“Well,” he remarked, “I don’t know what to say about it, I am sure.
Iwas a’most as well as Iwas. It’s a great lot to take care of.”

“My dear Mr. Boffin, then don’t take care of it!”

“Eh?” said that gentleman.

“Speaking now,” returned Mortimer, “with the irresponsible im-
becility of a private individual, and not with the profundity of a
professional adviser, I should say that if the circumstance of its being
too much, weighs upon your mind, you have the haven of consolation
open to you that you can easily make it less. And if you should be
apprehensive of the trouble of doing so, there is the further haven
of consolation that any number of people will take the trouble off
your hands.”

«Well! I don’t quite see it,” retorted Mr. Boffin, still perplexed.
“That’s not satisfactory, you know, what you're a-saying.”

“Ts Anything satisfactory, Mr. Boffin?” asked Mortimer, raising
his eyebrows.

“JT used to find it so,” answered Mr. Boffin, with a wistful look.
“While I was foreman at the Bower—afore it was the Bower—I
considered the business very satisfactory. The old man was a
awful Tartar (saying it, I’m sure, without disrespect to his memory)
but the business was a pleasant one to look after, from before day-
light to past dark. It’s a’most a pity,” said Mr. Boffin, rubbing his
ear, “that he ever-went and made so much money. It would have
been better for him if he hadn't so given himself up to it. You may
depend upon it,” making the discovery all of a sudden, “that he
found it a great lot to take care of!”

Mr. Lightwood coughed, not convinced.

“And speaking of satisfactory,’ pursued Mr. Boffin, “ why, Lord
save us! when we come to take it to pieces, bit by bit, where’s the
FR 2

a

 

 

 

 

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68 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

satisfactoriness of the money as yet? When the old man does right
the poor boy after all, the poor boy gets no good of it. He gets
made away with, at the moment when he’s lifting (as one may say)
the cup and sarser to his lips. Mr. Lightwood, | will now name to
you, that on behalf of the poor dear boy, me and Mrs. Boffin have
stood out against the old man times out of number, till he has called
us every name he could lay his tongue to. I have seen him, after
Mrs. Boffin has given him her mind respecting the claims of the
nat’ral affections, catch off Mrs. Boffin’s bonnet (she wore, in general,
a black straw, perched as a matter of convenience on the top of her
head), and send it spinning across the yard. Ihave indeed. And.
once, when he did this in a manner that amounted to personal,
T should have given him a rattler for himself, if Mrs. Boffin hadn’t
thrown herself betwixt us, and received flush on the temple. Which
dropped her, Mr. Lightwood. Dropped her.”

Mr. Lightwood murmured “ Equal honor—Mrs. Boffin’s head and
heart.”

“You understand; I name this,” pursued Mr. Boftin, “to show
you, now the affairs are wound up, that me and Mrs. Boffin have
ever stood, as we were in Christian honor bound, the children’s friend.
Me and Mrs. Boffin stood the poor girl’s friend; me and Mrs. Boffin
stood the poor boy’s friend; me and Mrs. Boffin up and faced the old
man when we momently expected to be turned out for our pains.
As to Mrs. Boffin,” said Mr. Boffin, lowering his voice, “she mightn’t
wish it mentioned now she’s Fashionable, but she went so far as to
tell him, in my presence, he was a flinty-hearted rascal.”

Mr. Lightwood murmured “ Vigorous Saxon spirit—Mrs. Boffin’s
ancestors—bowmen—Agincourt and Cressy.”

“The last time me and Mrs. Boffin saw the poor boy,” said Mr.
Boffin, warming (as fat usually does) with a tendency to melt, “ he
was a child of seven year old. For when he come back to make
intercession for his sister, me and Mrs. Boffin were away overlooking
a country contract which was to be sifted before carted, and he was
come and gone in a single hour. I say he was a child of seven year
old. He was going away, all alone and forlorn, to that foreign
school, and he come into our place, situate up the yard of the present
Bower, to have a warm at our fire. There was his little scanty
travelling clothes upon him. There was his little scanty box
outside in the shivering wind, which I was going to carry for him
down to the steamboat, as the-old man wouldn’t hear of allowing
a sixpence coach-money. Mrs. Boffin, then quite a young woman
and a pictur of a full-blown rose, stands him by her, kneels down at
the fire, warms her two open hands, and falls to rubbing his cheeks ;
but seeing the tears come into the child’s eyes, the tears come fast
into her own, and she holds him round the neck, like as if she was
protecting him, and cries to me, ‘I'd give the wide wide world, I
would, to run away with him!’ I don’t say but what it cut me, and
but what it at the same time heightened my feelings of admiration
for Mrs. Boffin. The poor child clings to her for awhile, as she
clings to him, and then, when the old man calls, he says ‘I must go!
God bless you!’ and for a moment rests his heart against her bosom,

 

    
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 69

and looks up at both of us, as if it was in pain—in agony. Such a
look! I went aboard with him (I gave him first what little treat I
thought he’d like), and I left him when he had fallen asleep in his
berth, and I came back to Mrs. Boffin. But tell her what I would of
how I had left him, it all went for nothing, for, according to her
thoughts, he never changed that look that he had looked up at us
two. But it did one piece of good. Mrs. Boffin and me had no
child of our own, and had sometimes wished that how we had one.
But not now. ‘We might both of us die,’ says Mrs. Boffin, ‘and
other eyes might see that lonely look in our child.’ So of a night,
when it was very cold, or when the wind roared, or the rain
dripped heavy, she would wake sobbing, and call out in a fluster,
‘Don’t you see the poor child’s face? O shelter the poor child !—
till in course of years it gently wore out, as many things do.”

“My dear Mr. Boffin, everything wears to rags,” said Mortimer,
with a light laugh.

“TI won't go so far as to say everything,” returned Mr. Boffin, on
whom his manner seemed to grate, “ because there’s some things that
I never found among the dust. Well, sir. So Mrs. Boffin and me
grow older and older in the old man’s service, living and working

pretty hard in it, till the old man is discovered dead in his bed.
Then Mrs. Boffin and me seal up his box, always standing on the
table at the side of his bed, and having frequently heerd tell of the
Temple as a spot where lawyers’ dust is contracted for, I come down
here in search of a lawyer to advise, and I see your young man
up at this present elevation, chopping at the flies on the window-sill
with his penknife, and I give him a Hoy! not then having the
pleasure of your acquaintance, and by that means come to gain the
honor. Then you, and the gentleman in the uncomfortable neck-
cloth under the little archway in Saint Paul’s Churchyard 2

“ Doctors’ Commons,” observed Lightwood.

“JT understood it was another name,” said Mr. Boffin, pausing,
“ut you know best. Then you and Doctor Scommons, you go to
work, and you do the thing that’s proper, and you and Doctor S.
take steps for finding out the poor boy, and at last you do find out
the poor boy, and me and Mrs. Boffin often exchange the observa-
tion, ‘We shall sce him again, under happy circumstances.’ But
it was never to be; and the want of satisfactoriness is, that after all
the money never gets to him.”

“ But it gets,” remarked Lightwood, with a languid inclination of
the head, “ into excellent hands.”

«It gets into the hands of me and Mrs. Boffin only this very day
and hour, and that’s what I am working round to, having waited for
this day and hour a’ purpose. Mr. Lightwood, here has been
a wicked cruel murder. By that murder me and Mrs. Boffin mys-
teriously profit. For the apprehension and conviction of the mur-
derer, we offer a reward of one tithe of the property—a reward of Ten
Thousand Pound.”

“Mr. Boffin, it’s too much.”

“Mr. Lightwood, me and Mrs. Boffin have fixed the sum together,
and we stand to it.”

 

 

 

  

 

 

  
 
   
  
   
  
   
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
    
 
 
 
  
   

 

70 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“But let me represent to you,” returned Lightwood, “speaking
now with professional profundity, and not with individual imbecility,
that the offer of such an immense reward is a temptation to forced
suspicion, forced construction of circumstances, strained accusation,
a whole tool-box of edged tools.”

“ Well,” said Mr. Boftin, a little staggered, “that’s the sum we put
o’ one side for the purpose. Whether it shall be openly declared in
the new notices that must now be put about in our names 3

“In your name, Mr. Boffin; in your name.”

“Very well; in my name, which is the same as Mrs. Boffin’s, and
means both of us, is to be considered in drawing ’em up. But this
is the first instruction that I, as the owner of the property, give to
my lawyer on coming into it.”

“Your lawyer, Mr. Boffin,” returned Lightwood, making a very
short note of it with a very rusty pen, “has the gratification of
taking the instruction. There is another ?”

“ There is just one other, and no more. Make me as compact a
little will as can be reconciled with tightness, leaving the whole
of the property to ‘my beloved wife, Henerietty Boffin, sole execu-
trix.’ Make it as short as you can, using those words; but make it
tight.”

At some loss to fathom Mr. Boffin’s notions of a tight will, Light-
wood felt his way.

“I beg your pardon, but professional profundity must be exact.
When you say tight "

“J mean tight,” Mr. Boffin explained.

“Exactly so. And nothing can be more laudable. But is the
tightness to bind Mrs. Boffin to any and what conditions 2”

“Bind Mrs. Boffin?” interposed her husband. “No! What are you
thinking of! What I want is, to make it all hers so tight as that her
hold of it can’t be loosed.”

“Hers freely, to do what she likes with? Hers absolutely ?”

“Absolutely?” repeated Mr. Boffin, with a short sturdy laugh.
“Hah! Ishould think so! It would be handsome in me to begin to
bind Mrs. Boffin at this time of day!”

So that instruction, too, was taken by Mr. Lightwood; and Mr.
Lightwood, having taken it, was in the act of showing Mr. Boffin out,
when Mr. Eugene Wrayburn almost jostled him in the doorway.
Consequently Mr. Lightwood said, in his cool manner, “ Let me make
you two known to one another,” and further signified that Mr.
Wrayburn was counsel learned in the law, and that, partly in the
way of business and partly in the way of pleasure, he had imparted to
Mr. Wrayburn some of the interesting facts of Mr. Boftin’s biography.

“Delighted,” said Hugene—though he didn’t look so— to know
My. Boftin.”

“Thankee, sir, thankee,” returned that gentleman. “And how do
you like the law ?”

aAN not particularly,” returned Eugene.

“Too dry for you, eh? W ell, I suppose it wants some years of
sticking to, before you master it. But there’s nothing like work.
Look at the bees.”

 

 

 

  

  
    
  
  
 
 
   
   
   
  
 
  
    
 
 
  
 

       
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 7

“I beg your pardon,” returned Eugene, with a reluctant smile,
“put will you excuse my mentioning that I always protest against
being referred to the bees?”

“Do you!” said Mr. Boffin.

“JT object on principle,” said Eugene, “as a biped

“As a what?” asked Mr. Boffin.

“ As a two-footed creature ;—I object on principle, as a two-footed
creature, to being constantly referred to insects and four-footed
creatures. I object to being required to model my proceedings
according to the proceedings of the bee, or the dog, or the spider, or
the camel. I fully admit that the camel, for instance, is an exces-
sively temperate person; but he has several stomachs to entertain
himself with, and I have only one. Besides, | am not fitted up with
a convenient cool cellar to keep my drink in.”

“But I said, you know,” urged Mr. Boffin, rather at a loss for an
answer, “the bee.”

“Exactly. And may I represent to you that it’s injudicious to say
the bee? For the whole case is assumed. Conceding for a moment
that there is any analogy between a bee, and a man in a shirt and
pantaloons (which I deny), and that it is settled that the man is to
learn from the bee (which I also deny), the question still remains,
what is he to learn? To imitate? Or to avoid? When your friends
the bees worry themselves to that highly fluttered extent about their
sovereign, and become perfectly distracted touching the slightest
monarchical movement, are we men to learn the greatness of Tuft-
hunting, or the littleness of the Court Circular? I am not clear,
Mr. Boffin, but that the hive may be satirical.”

“ At all events, they work,” said Mr. Boffin.

«“ Ye-es,” returned Eugene, disparagingly, “they work; but don’t
you think they overdo it? They work so much more than they
need — they make so much more than they can eat— they are so
incessantly boring and buzzing at their one idea till Death comes
upon them—that don’t you think they overdo it? And are human
labourers to have no holidays, because of the bees? And am I never to
have change of air, because the bees don’t? Mr. Boffin, I think honey
excellent at breakfast; but, regarded in the light of my conventional
schoolmaster and moralist, I protest against the tyrannical humbug
of your friend the bee. With the highest respect for you.”

“Thankee,” said Mr. Boffin. “Morning, morning 12

But, the worthy Mr. Boffin jogged away with a comfortless impres-
sion he could have dispensed with, that there was a deal of unsatis-
factoriness in the world, besides what he had recalled as appertaining
to the Harmon property. And he was still jogging along Fleet
Street in this condition of mind, when he became aware that he was
closely tracked and observed by a man of genteel appearance.

“Now then?” said Mr. Boffin, stopping short, with his meditations
brought to an abrupt-check, “what's the next article?”

“JT beg your pardon, Mr. Boffin.”

“My name too, eh? How did you come by it? I don’t know you.”
“No, sir, you don’t. know me.”

Mr. Boffin looked full at the man, and the man looked full at him.

”?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“No,” said Mr. Boffin, after a glance at the pavement, as if it were
made of faces and he were trying to match the man’s, “I don’t
know you.”

“Jam nobody,” said the stranger, “and not likely to be known;
but Mr. Boffin’s wealth "A

“Oh! that’s got about already, has it?” muttered Mr. Boffin.

“—And his romantic manner of acquiring it, make him con-
Spicuous. “You were pointed out to me the other day.”

“Well,” said Mr. Boffin, “I should say I was a disappintment to
you when I was pinted out, if your politeness would allow you to
confess it, for I am well aware I am not much to look at. What
might you want with me? Not in the law, are you ?”

co NOMSIucay

“No information to give, for a reward?”

“No, sir.”

There may have been a momentary mantling in the face of the
man as he made the last answer, but it passed directly.

“IfI don’t mistake, you have followed me from my lawyer’s and
tried to fix my attention. Say out! Have you? Or haven't you ?”
demanded Mr. Boffin, rather angry.

soe.

“Why have you?”

“Tf you will allow me to walk beside you, Mr. Boffin, I will tell
you. Would you object to turn aside into this place—I think it is
called Clifford’s Inn—where we can hear one another better than in
the roaring street ?”

(“ Now,” thought Mr. Boffin, “if he proposes a game at skittles, or
meets a country gentleman just come into property, or produces any
article of jewellery he has found, I'll knock him down!” With this
discreet reflection, and carrying his stick in his arms much as Punch
carries his, Mr. Boffin turned into Clifford’s Inn aforesaid.)

“Mr. Boffin, I happened to be in Chancery Lane this morning,
when I saw you going along before me. I took the liberty of follow-
ing you, trying to make up my mind to speak to you, till you went
into your lawyer's. Then I waited outside till you came out.”

(“Don’t quite sound like skittles, nor yet country gentleman, nor
yet jewellery,” thought Mr. Boffin, “ but there’s no knowing.”

“Tam afraid my object is a bold one, I am afraid it has fittle of
the usual practical world about it, but I venture it. If you ask me,
or if you ask yourself—which is more likely—what emboldens me, I
answer, I have been strongly assured, that you are a man of rectitude
and plain dealing, with the soundest of sound hearts, and that you
are blessed in a wife distinguished by the same qualities.”

“ Your information is true of Mrs. Boffin, anyhow,” was Mr. Boffin’s
answer, as he surveyed his new friend again. There was something
repressed in the strange man’s manner, and he walked with his
eyes on the ground—though conscious, for all that, of Mr. Boffin’s
observation—and he spoke in a subdued voice. But his words came
easily, and his voice was agreeable in tone, albeit constrained.

“When I add, I can discern for myself what the general tongue
says of you—that you are quite unspoiled by Fortune, and not up-

 

      
  
 
    
   
  
   
 
 
   
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 73

lifted—I trust you will not, as a man of an open nature, suspect
that I mean to flatter you, but will believe that all I mean is to ex-
cuse myself, these being my only excuses for my present intrusion.”

(“How much?” thought Mr. Boffin. “It must be coming to
money. How much?”)

“You will probably change your manner of living, Mr. Boffin, in
your changed circumstances. You will probably keep a larger house,
have many matters to arrange, and be beset by numbers of corre-
spondents. If you would try me as your Secretary i

“ As what?” cried Mr. Boffin, with his eyes wide open.

“ Your Secretary.”

“ Well,” said Mr. Boffin, under his breath, “that’s a queer thing!”

“Or,” pursued the stranger, wondering at Mr. Boffin’s wonder, “if
you would try me as your man of business under any name, I know
you would find me, faithful and grateful, and I hope you would find
me useful. You may naturally think that my immediate object is
money.. Not so, for 1 would willingly serve you a year—two years
—any term you might appoint—before that should begin to be a
consideration between us.”

“Where do you come from?” asked Mr. Boffin.

“J come,” returned the other, meeting his eye, “from many
countries.”

Mr. Boffin’s acquaintance with the names and situations of foreign
lands being limited in extent and somewhat confused in quality, he
shaped his next question on an elastic model.

“ From—any particular place ?”

“J have been in many places.”

“What have you been?” asked Mr. Boffin.

Here again he made no great advance, for the reply was, “I have
been a student and a traveller.”

“But if it ain’t a liberty to plump it out,” said Mr. Boffin, “ what
do you do for your living ?”

“JT have mentioned,” returned the other, with another look at him,
and a smile, “what I aspire todo. J have been superseded as to
some slight intentions I had, and I may say that 1 have now to
begin life.”

Not very well knowing how to get rid of this applicant, and feel-
ing the more embarrassed because his manner and appearance
claimed a delicacy in which the worthy Mr. Boftin feared he himself
might be deficient, that gentleman glanced into the mouldy little plan-
tation or cat-preserve, of Clifford’s Inn, as it was that day, in search
of a suggestion. Sparrows were there, cats were there, dry-rot and
wet-rot were there, but it was not otherwise a suggestive spot.

« All this time,” said the stranger, producing a little pocket-book
and taking out a card, “I have not mentioned my name. My name
is Rokesmith. I lodge at one Mr. Wilfer’s, at Holloway.”

Mr. Boffin stared again.

“Father of Miss Bella Wilfer?” said he.

“My landlord has a daughter named Bella. Yes; no doubt.”

Now, this name had been more or less in Mr. Boffin’s thoughts all
the morning, and for days before ; therefore he said:

“That's singular, too!” unconsciously staring again, past all

 

 

 

 

 

  

74 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

bounds of good manners, with the card in his hand. “Though, by-
the-bye, I suppose it was one of that family that pinted me out?”

“No. Ihave never been in the streets with one of them.”

“Heard me talked of among ’em, though ?”

“No. I occupy my own rooms, and have held scarcely any com-
munication with them.”

“Odder and odder!” said Mr. Boffin. “Well, sir, to tell you the
truth, I don’t know what to say to you.”

“Say nothing,” returned Mr. Rokesmith ; “allow me to call on you in
a few days. I am not so unconscionable as to think it likely that you
would accept me on trust at first sight, and take me out of the very
street. Let me come to you for your further opinion, at your leisure.”

“That's fair, and I don’t object,” said Mr. Boffin; “ but it must be
on condition that it’s fully understood that I no more know that I
shall ever be in want of any gentleman as Secretary—it was Secre-
tary you said; wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Again Mr. Boffin’s eyes opened wide, and he stared at the appli-
cant from head to foot, repeating “Queer !—You're sure it was Secre-
tary? Are you?”

“JT am sure I said so.”

—‘ As Secretary,” repeated Mr. Boffin, meditating upon the word ;
“T no more know that I may ever want a Secretary, or what not, than
I do that I shall ever be in want of the man in the moon. Me and
Mrs. Boffin have not even settled that we shall make any change m
our way of life. Mrs. Boffin’s inclinations certainly do tend towards
Fashion; but, bemg already set up in a fashionable way at the
Bower, she may not make further alterations. However, sir, as you
don’t press yourself, I wish to meet you so far as saying, by all means
call at the Bower if you like. Call in the course of a week or two.
At the same time, I consider that I ought to name, in addition to
what Ihave already named, that I have in my employment a literary
man—with a wooden leg—as I have no thoughts of parting from.”

“T regret to hear Jam in some sort anticipated,” Mr. Rokesmith
answered, evidently having heard it with surprise; “but perhaps
other duties might arise ?”

“You see,” returned Mr. Boffin, with a confidential sense of dignity,
“as to my literary man’s duties, they're clear. Professionally he
declines and he falls, and as a friend he drops into poetry.”

Without observing that these duties seemed by no means clear to
Mr. Rokesmith’s percniened comprehension, Mr. Boffin went on :

“And now, sir, Pll wish you good-day. You can call at the
Bower any time in a week or two. It’s not above a mile or so from
you, and your landlord can direct you to it. But as he may not
know it by its new name of Boffin’s Bower, say, when you inquire
of him, its Harmon’s; will you ?”

“ Harmoon’s,” repeated Mr. Rokesmith, seeming to have caught the
sound imperfectly, “ Harmarn’s. How do you spell it?”

“Why, as to the spelling of it,” returned Mr. Boffin, with great
presence of mind, “that’s your look out. Harmon’s is all you’ve got
to say to him. Morning, morning, morning!” And so departed,
without looking back.

 

    
  
  
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
   
  
   
    
   
  
   
    
   
   
   
  
 
  
     

   
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER IX.
MR. AND MRS. BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION.

Brraxine himself straight homeward, Mr. Boftin, without further
let or hindrance, arrived at the Bower, and gave Mrs. Boffin (Gin a
walking dress of black velvet and feathers, like a mourning coach-
horse) an account of all he had said and done since breakfast.

“This brings us round, my dear,” he then pursued, “to the ques-
tion we left unfinished: namely, whether there’s to be any new go-in
for Fashion.”

“Now, PU tell you what I want, Noddy,” said Mrs. Boffin, AA
smoothing her dress with an air of immense enjoyment, “I wan’t i
Society.”

“Fashionable Society, my dear

“Yes!” cried Mrs. Boffin, laughing with the glee of a child. tH]
“Yes! Its no good my being kept here lke Wax-Work; is it |
now ?” Hi

“People have to pay to see Wax-Work, my dear,” returned her
husband, “whereas (though you’d be cheap at the same money) the |
neighbours is welcome to see you for nothing.” i

“But it don’t answer,” said the cheerful Mrs. Boffin. “When we
worked like the neighbours, we suited one another. Now we have
left work off, we have left off suiting one another.”

“What, do you think of beginning work again ?” Mr. Boffin hinted.

“Out of the question! . We have come into a great fortune, and we
must do what's right by our fortune; we must ast up to it.”

Mr. Boffin, who had a deep respect for his wife’s intuitive wisdom,
replied, though rather pensively: “I suppose we must.” ii

“Ts never been acted up to yet, and, consequently, no good has it
come of it,” said Mrs. Boffin.

“True, to the present time,” Mr. Boffin assented, with his former
pensiveness, as he took his seat upon his settle. “I hope good may
be coming of it in the future time. Towards which, what’s your
views, old lady ?”

Mrs. Boffin, a smiling creature, broad of figure and simple of
nature, with her hands folded in her lap, and with buxom creases in
her throat, proceeded to expound her views.

“Tsay, a good house in a good neighbourhood, good things about
us, good living, and good society. J say, live like our means, without
extravagance, and be happy.”

“Yes. I say be happy, too,” assented the still pensive Mr. Boffin.

“Tor-a-mussy!” exclaimed Mrs. Boffin, laughing and clapping her
hands, and gaily rocking herself to and fro, “when | think of me in
a light yellow chariot and pair, with silver boxes to the wheels ——”

“Oh! you was thinking of that, was you, my dear?”

“Yes!” cried the delighted creature. “And with a footman up
behind, with a bar across, to keep his legs from being poled! And i

9” |

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

with a coachman up in front, sinking down into a seat big enough
for three of him, all covered with upholstery in green and white!
And with two bay horses tossing their heads and stepping higher
than they trot long-ways! And with you and me leaning back
inside, as grand as ninepence! Oh-h-h-h My! Ha ha ha ha ha!”

Mrs. Boffin clapped her hands again, rocked herself again, beat her
feet upon the floor, and wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes.

“And what, my old Jady,” inquired Mr. Boffin, when he also had
sympathetically laughed : “ what’s your views on the subject of the
Bower ?”

“Shut it up. Don’t part with it, but put somebody in it, to
keep it.”

“ Any other views ?”

“Noddy,” said Mrs. Boffin, coming from her fashionable sofa to his
side on the plain settle, and hooking her comfortable arm through
his, “ Next 1 think—and I really have been thinking early and late
of the disappointed girl; her that was so cruelly disappointed,
you know, both of her husband and his riches. Don’t you think we
might do something for her? Have her to live with us? Or
something of that sort ?”

“Ne-ver once thought of the way of doing it!” cried Mr. Boffin,
smiting the table in his admiration. “What a thinking steam-
ingein this old lady is. And she don’t know how she does it.
Neither does the ingein !”

Mrs. Boffin pulled his nearest ear, in acknowledgment of this
piece of philosophy, and then said, gradually toning down to a
motherly strain: “ Last, and not least, I have taken a fancy. You
remember dear little John Harmon, before he went to school?
Over yonder across the yard, at our fire? Now that he is past all
benefit of the money, and it’s come to us, I should like to find some
orphan child, and take the boy and adopt him and give him John’s
name, and provide for him. Somehow, it would make me easier, I
fancy. Say it’s only a whim——”

“But I don’t say so,” interposed her husband.

“No, but deary, if you did——”

“I should be a Beast if I did,” her husband interposed again.

“ That’s as much as to say you agree? Good and kind of you, and
like you, deary! And don’t you begin to find it pleasant now,” said
Mrs. Boffin, once more radiant in her comely way from head to foot,
and once more smoothing her dress with immense enjoyment, “don’t
you begin to find it pleasant already, to think that a child will be
made brighter, and better, and happier, because of that poor sad child
that day? And isn’t it pleasant to know that the good will be done
with the poor sad child’s own money ””

“Yes; and it’s pleasant to know that you are Mrs. Boffin,” said
her husband, “and it’s been a pleasant thing to know this many and
many a year!” It wasruinto Mrs. Boffin’s aspirations, but, having so
spoken, they sat side by side, a hopelessly Unfashionable pair.

These two ignorant and unpolished people had guided themselves
so far on in their journey of life, by a religious sense of duty and
desire to do right. ‘I'en thousand weaknesses and absurdities might

 

 
  
    
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
  
   
  
   
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
     

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 17

have been detected in the breasts of both; ten thousand vanities
additional, possibly, in the breast of the woman. But the hard
wrathful and sordid nature that had wrung as much work out of
them as could be got in their best days, for as little money as could
be paid to hurry on their worst, had never been so warped but
that it knew their moral straightness and respected it. In its own
despite, in a constant conflict with itself and them, it had done so.
And this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short at itself
and dies with the doer of it; but Good, never.

Through his most inveterate purposes, the dead Jailer of Harmony
Jail had known these two faithful servants to be honest and true.
While he raged at them and reviled them for opposing him with the
speech of the honest and true, it had scratched his stony heart, and he
had perceived the powerlessness of all his wealth to buy them if he
had addressed himself to the attempt. So, even while he was their
griping taskmaster and never gave them a good word, he had
written their names down in his will. So, even while it was his
daily declaration that he mistrusted all mankind — and sorely
indeed he did mistrust all who bore any resemblance to himself—
he was as certain that these two people, surviving him, would be
trustworthy in all things from the greatest to the least, as he was
that he must surely die.

Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, sitting side by side, with Fashion withdrawn
to an immeasurable distance, fell to discussing how they could best
find their orphan. Mrs. Boffin suggested advertisement in the news-
papers, requesting orphans answering annexed description to apply
at the Bower on a certain day; but Mr. Boffin wisely apprehending
obstruction of the neighbouring thoroughfares by orphan swarms,
this course was negatived. Mrs. Boffin next suggested application
to their clergyman for a likely orphan. Mr. Boffin thinking better
of this scheme, they resolved to call upon the reverend gentleman at
once, and to take the same opportunity of making acquaintance with
Miss Bella Wilfer. In order that these visits might be visits of
state, Mrs. Boffin’s equipage was ordered out.

This consisted of a long hammer-headed old horse, formerly used
in the business, attached to a four-wheeled chaise of the same period,
which had long been exclusively used by the Harmony Jail poultry
as the favourite laying-place of several discreet hens. An unwonted
application of corn to the horse, and of paint and varnish to the
carriage, when both fell in as a part of the Boffin legacy, had made
what Mr. Boffin considered a neat turn-out of the whole; and a
driver being added, in the person of a long hammer-headed young
man who was a very good match for the horse, left nothing to be
desired. He, too, had been formerly used in the business, but was
now entombed by an honest jobbing tailor of the district in a perfect
Sepulchre of coat and gaiters, sealed with ponderous buttons.

Behind this domestic, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin took their seats in the
back compartment of the vehicle: which was sufficiently commodious,
but had an undignified and alarming tendency, in getting over a
rough crossing, to hiccup itself away from the front compartment.
On their being descried emerging from the gates of the Bower, the

 

 

 

 

  

78 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

neighbourhood turned out at door and window to salute the Boffins.
Among those who were ever and again left behind, staring after the
equipage, were many youthful spirits, who hailed it in stentorian
tones with such congratulations as “Nod-dy Bof-fin!” “Bof-fin’s
mon-ey!” “Down with the dust, Bof-fin!” and other similar com-
pliments. These, the hammer-headed young man took in such ill
part that he often impaired the majesty of the progress by pulling
up short, and making as though he would alight to exterminate the
offenders ; a purpose from which he only allowed himself to be
dissuaded after long and lively arguments with his employers.

At length the Bower district was left behind, and the peaceful
dwelling of the Reverend Frank Milvey was gained. The Reverend
Frank Milvey’s abode was a very modest abode, because his income
was a very modest income. He was officially accessible to every
blundering old woman who had incoherence to bestow upon him,
and readily received the Boffins. He was quite a young man, ex-
pensively educated and wretchedly paid, with quite a young wife
and half a dozen quite young children. He was under the neces-
sity of teaching and translating from the classics, to eke out his
scanty means, yet was generally expected to have more time to
spare than the idlest person in the parish, and more money than
the richest. He accepted the needless inequalities and inconsistencies
of his life, with a kind of conventional submission that was almost
slavish ; and any daring layman who would have adjusted such
burdens as his, more decently and graciously, would have had small
help from him.

With a ready patient face and manner, and yet with a latent
smile that showed a quick enough observation of Mrs. Boffin’s dress,
Mr. Milvey, in his little book-room—charged with sounds and cries
as though the six children above were coming down through the
ceiling, and the roasting leg of mutton below were coming up
through the floor—listened to Mrs. Boffin’s statement of her want of
an orphan.

“J think,” said Mr. Milvey, “that you have never had a child of
your own, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin ?”

Never.

“But, like the Kings and Queens in the Fairy Tales, I suppose you
have wished for one ?”

In a general way, yes.

Mr. Milvey smiled again, as he remarked to himself, “'Those kings
and queens were always wishing for children.” It occurring to him,
perhaps, that if they had been Curates, their wishes might have
tended in the opposite direction.

“I think,” he pursued, “we had better take Mrs. Milvey into our
Council, She is indispensable to me. If you please, |’ll call her.”

So, Mr. Milvey called, « Margaretta, my dear!” and Mrs. Milvey
came down. A pretty, bright little woman, something worn by
anxiety, who had repressed many pretty tastes and bright fancies,
and substituted in their stead, schools, soup, flannel, coals, and all the
week-day cares and Sunday coughs of a large population, young and
old. As gallantly had Mr. Milvey repressed much in himself that

      
  
 
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
   
   
  
   
      

 

 

 

 

THE BOFFIN PROGRESS,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

a

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 79

naturally belonged to his old studies and old fellow-students, and
taken up among the poor and their children with the hard crumbs of life.

“Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, my dear, whose good fortune you have
heard of.”

Mrs. Milvey, with the most unaffected grace in the world, con-
gratulated them, and was glad to see them. Yet her engaging face,
being an open as well as a perceptive one, was not without her
husband’s latent smile.

“Mrs. Boffin wishes to adopt a little boy, my dear.”

Mrs. Milvey, looking rather alarmed, her husband added :

“ An orphan, my dear.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Milvey, reassured for her own little boys.

“And I was thinking, Margaretta, that perhaps old Mrs. Goody’s
grandchild might answer the purpose.”

“Oh my dear Frank! I don’t think that would do!”

Noi?

“Oh no !”

The smiling Mrs. Boffin, feeling it incumbent on her to take part
in the conversation, and being charmed with the emphatic little wife
and her ready interest, here offered her acknowledgments and
inquired what there was against him?

“J don’t think,” said Mrs. Milvey, glancing at the Reverend Frank
«and I believe my husband will agree with me when he considers
it again—that you could possibly keep that orphan clean from snuff.
Because his grandmother takes so many ounces, and drops it
over him.”

“But he would not be living with his grandmother then, Marga-
retta,” said Mr. Milvey.

“No, Frank, but it would be impossible to keep her from Mrs.
Boffin’s house; and the more there was to eat and drink there, the
oftener she would go. And she is an inconvenient woman. I hope
it’s not uncharitable to remember that last Christmas Eve she drank
eleven cups of tea, and grumbled all the time. And she is nof a
grateful woman, Frank. You recollect her addressing a crowd out-
side this house, about her wrongs, when, one night after we had gone
to bed, she brought back the petticoat of new flannel that had been
given her, because it was too short.”

“That's true,” said Mr. Milvey. “I don’t think that would do.
Would little Harrison——”

“Oh, Frank !” remonstrated his emphatic wife.

“He has no grandmother, my dear.”

“No, but I don’t think Mrs. Boffin would like an orphan who
squints so much.”

“That's true again,” said Mr. Milvey, becoming haggard with
perplexity. “Ifa little girl would do——”

“But, my dear Frank, Mrs. Boffin wants a boy.”

“That's true again,” said Mr. Milvey. “Tom Bocker is a nice
boy” (thoughtfully).

“But I doubt, Frank,” Mrs. Milvey hinted, after a little hesitation,
“if Mrs. Boffin wants an orphan quite nineteen, who drives a cart
and waters the roads.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
  
   
 
  
   
  
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Mr. Milvey referred the point to Mrs. Boffin in a look; on that
smiling lady’s shaking her black velvet bonnet and bows, he
remarked, in lower spirits, “that’s true again.”

“J am sure,” said Mrs. Boffin, concerned at giving so much trouble,
“that if I had known you would have taken so much pains, sir—and
you too, ma’am—lI don’t think I would have come.”

“ Pray don’t say that!” urged Mrs. Milvey.

“No, don’t say that,” assented Mr. Milvey, “because we are so
much obliged to you for giving us the preference.” Which Mrs.
Milvey confirmed ; and really the’kind, conscientious couple spoke, as
if they kept some profitable orphan warehouse and were personally
patronized. ‘“ But it is a responsible trust,” added Mr. Milvey, “and
difficult to discharge. At the same time, we are naturally very
unwilling to lose the chance you so kindly give us, and if you could
afford us a day or two to look about us,—you know, Margaretta, we
might carefully examine the workhouse, and the Infant School, and
your District.”

“To be sure /” said the emphatic little wife.

“We have orphans, I know,” pursued Mr. Milvey, quite with the
air as if he might have added, “in stock,” and quite as anxiously as
if there were great competition in the business and he were afraid of
losing an order, “over at the clay-pits; but they are employed by
relations or friends, and I am afraid it would come at last to a trams-
action im the way of barter. And even if you exchanged blankets
for the child—or books and firing —it would be impossible to prevent
their being turned into liquor.”

Accordingly, it was resolved that Mr. and Mrs. Milvey should
search for an orphan likely to suit, and as free as possible from the
foregoing objections, and should communicate again with Mrs. Boffin.
Then, Mr. Boffin took the liberty of mentioning to Mr. Milvey that
if Mr. Milvey would do him the kindness to be perpetually his
banker to the extent of ‘a twenty-pound note or so,” to be expended
without any reference to him, he would be heartily obliged. At this,
both Mr. Milvey and Mrs. Milvey were quite as much pleased as if
they had no wants of their own, but only knew what poverty was, in
the persons of other people; and so the interview terminated with
satisfaction and good opinion on all sides.

“Now, old lady,” said Mr. Boffin, as they resumed their seats
behind the hammer-headed horse and man: “ having made a very
agreeable visit there, we'll try Wilfer’s.”

It appeared, on their drawing up at the family gate, that to try
Wilfer’s was a thing more easily projected than done, on account of
the extreme difficulty of getting into that establishment; three pulls
at the bell producing no external result, though each was attended
by audible sounds of scampering and rushing w vithin. At the fourth
tug—vindictively administered by the hammer-headed young man
—Miss Lavinia appeared, emerging from the house in an accidental
manner, with a bonnet and parasol, as designing to take a contem-
plative walk. The young lady was astonished to find visitors at the
gate, and expressed her feelings i in appropr iate action.

« Here's Mr. and Mrs. Boffin!” growled the hammer-headed young

 

       
   
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 

 

 

OUR

 

MUTUAL FRIEND. 81

man through the bars of the gate, and at the same time shaking it,
as if he were on view in a Menagerie; “they’ve been here half
an hour.”

“Who did you say?” asked Miss Lavinia.

“Mr. and Mrs. Borrin!” returned the young man, rising into a roar.

Miss Lavinia tripped up the steps to the house-door, tripped down
the steps with the key, tripped across the little garden, and opened
the gate. “ Please to walk in,” said Miss Lavinia, haughtily. “Our
servant is out.”

Mr. and Mrs. Boffin complying, and pausing in the little hall until
Miss Lavinia came up to show them where to go next, perceived
three pairs of listening legs upon the stairs above. Mrs. Wilfer’s
legs, Miss Bella’s legs, Mr. George Sampson’s legs.

“Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, I think ?” said Lavinia, in a warning’ voice.

Strained attention on the part of Mrs. Wilfer’s legs, of Miss Bella’s
legs, of Mr. George Sampson’s legs.

“Yes, Miss.”

“Tf youll step this way—down these stairs—I’ll let Ma know.”

Excited flight of Mrs. Wilfer’s legs, of Miss Bella’s legs, of Mr.
George Sampson’s legs.

After waiting some quarter of an hour alone in the family sitting-
room, which presented traces of having been so hastily arranged
after a meal, that one might have doubted whether it was made
tidy for visitors, or cleared for blindman’s buff, Mr. and Mrs.
Boffin became aware of the entrance of Mrs. Wilfer, majestically
faint, and with a condescending stitch in her side: which was her
company manner.

“Pardon me,” said Mrs. Wilfer, after the first salutations, and as
soon as she had adjusted the handkerchief under her chin, and waved
her gloved hands, “to what am I indebted for this honour ?”

“To make short of it, ma’am,” returned Mr. Boffin, “perhaps you
may be acquainted with the names of me and Mrs. Boffin, as having
come into a certain property.”

“I have heard, sir,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, with a dignified bend
of her head, “ of such being the case.”

“ And I dare say, ma'am,” pursued Mr. Boffin, while Mrs. Boffin
added confirmatory nods and smiles, “ you are not very much inclined
to take kindly to us?”

“Pardon me,” said Mrs. Wilfer. “’T'were unjust to visit upon Mr.
and Mrs. Boffin, a calamity which was doubtless a dispensation.”
These words were rendered the more effective by a serenely heroic
expression of suffering.

“Vhat’s fairly meant, I am sure,” remarked the honest Mr. Boffin ;
“Mrs. Boffin and me, ma’am, are plain people, and we don’t want to
pretend to anything, nor yet to go round and round at anything :
because there’s always a straight way to everything. Consequently,
we make this call to say, that we shall be glad to have the honor
and pleasure of your daughter’s acquaintance, and that we shall be
rejiced if your daughter will come to consider our house in the light
of her home equally with this. In short, we want to chcer your
daughter, and to give her the opportunity of sharing such pleasures
G

9”

 

 

 

 

  

ao

Sig atta

 

 

 

82 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
as we are a going to take ourselves. "We want to brisk her up, and
brisk her about, ‘and give her a change.”

“That's it!” said the open- -hearted Mrs. Boffin. “Lor! ILet’s be
comfortable.”

Mrs. Wilfer bent her head in a distant manner to her lady visitor,
and with majestic monotony Tepueds to the gentleman :

“Pardon me. I have several daughters. Which of my daughters
am ‘I to understand is thus fayoured by the kind intentions of Mr.
Boffin and his lady ?”

“Don’t you see ? ” the ever-smiling Mrs. Boffin put in. “ Naturally,
Miss Bella, you know.”

“ Oh-h!” said Mrs. Wilfer, with a enone unconyinced look.
“My daughter Bella is accessible and shall speak for herself.” ‘hen
opening the door a little way, simultaneously with a sound of

scuttling outside it, the good lady made the proclamation, “Send
Miss Bella to me!” Which proc Jamation, though grandly formal, and
one might almost say heraldic, to hear, was in fact enunciated
with her maternal eyes reproachfully g olaring on that young lady in
the flesh—and in so much of it that “she was retirmg with diffi-
culty into the small closet under the stairs, apprehensive of the
emergence of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin.

«The avocations of R. W., my husband,” Mrs. Wilfer explained, on
resuming her seat, “ keep him fully eng: aged i in the City at this time
of the day , or he would have had the honor of participating in your
reception beneath our humble roof.”

“ Very pleasant premises! ” said Mr. Boffin, cheerfully.

“Pardon me, sir,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, correcting him, “it is the
abode of conscious though inde spendent Pover ty.”

Finding it rather difficult to pursue the conversation down this
road, Mr. “and Mrs. Boffin sat staring at mid-air, and Mrs. Wilfer sat
silently giving them to under: stand that every breath she drew
required to be drawn with a self-denial r. arely paralleled in history,
until Miss Bella appeared: whom Mrs. W filfer presented, and’ to
whom she explained the purpose of the visitors.

“Tam much obliged to you, | am sure,” said Miss Bella, coldly shak- -
ing her curls, “ but I doubt if i have the inclination to go out at all.

% Bella!” Mrs. Wilfer admonished her; “Bella, you must conquer
this.”

“Yes, do what your Ma says, and conquer it, my dear,’ urged Mrs.
Boffin, “ because we shall be so glad to have you, and because you

are much too pretty to keep yourself shut up.” With that, the
pleasant creature gave her a kiss, and patted her on her dimpled
shoulders; Mrs. W ilfer sitting stiffly by, like a functionary presiding
over an interview previous to an execution.

“We are going to move into a nice house,” said Mrs. Boffin, who
was woman “enough to compromise Mr. Boffin on that point, when
he couldn’t very well contest it; “and we are going to set up a nice
carriage, and we'll go everywhere and see everything. And you
mustn't,” seating Bella beside her, and patting her hand, “you
mustn’t feel a dislike to us to begin ‘with, because we couldn’t help
it, you know, my dear.”

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 83

With the natural tendency of youth to yield to candour and sweet
temper, Miss Bella was so touched by the simplicity of this address
that she frankly returned Mrs. Boffin’s kiss. Not at all to the satis-
faction of that good woman of the world, her mother, who sought to
hold the advantageous ground of obliging the Boftfins instead of being
obliged.

“ My youngest daughter, Lavinia,” said Mrs. Wilfer, glad to make
a diversion, as that young lady reappeared. “Mr. George Sampson,
a friend of the family.”

The friend of the family was in that stage of the tender passion
which bound him to regard everybody else as the foe of the family.
He put the round head of his cane in his mouth, like a stopper, when
he sat down. As if he felt himself full to the throat with affronting
sentiments. And he eyed the Boffins with implacable eyes. ;

“Tf you like to bring your sister with you when you come to stay
with us,” said Mrs. Boffin, “of course we shall be glad. ‘The better
you please yourself, Miss Bella, the better you'll please us.”

“Oh, my consent is of no consequence at all, I suppose?’ cried
Miss Lavinia.

“ Lavvy,” said her sister, in a low voice, “have the goodness to be
seen and not heard.”

“No, I won't,” replied the sharp Lavinia. “I’m not a child, to be
taken notice of by strangers.”

“ You are a child.”

“Tm not a child, and I won't be taken notice of. ‘Bring your
sister,’ indeed !”

“Lavinia!” said Mrs. Wilfer. “Hold! I will not allow you to
utter in my presence the absurd suspicion that any strangers—I care
not what their names—can patronize my child. Do you dare to
suppose, you ridiculous girl, that Mr. and Mrs. Boffin would enter
these doors upon a patronizing errand ; or, if they did, would remain
within them, only for one single instant, while your mother had the
strength yet remaining in her vital frame to request them to depart ?
You little know your mother if you presume to think so.”

“ Tt’s all very fine,” Lavinia began to grumble, when Mrs. Wilfer
repeated :

“Hold! I will not allow this. Do you not know what is due to
guests? Do you not comprehend that in presuming to hint that
this lady and gentleman could have any idea of patronizing any
member of your family—I care not which-you accuse them of an
impertinence little less than insane ?”

“ Never mind me and Mrs. Boffin, ma’am,” said Mr. Boftin, smilingly :
“we don’t care.”

“ Pardon me, but I do,” returned Mrs. Wilfer.

Miss Lavinia laughed a short laugh as she muttered, “ Yes, to be
sure.”

“ And I require my audacious child,” proceeded Mrs. Wilfer, with
a withering look at her youngest, on whom it had not the slightest
effect, “to please to be just to her sister Bella; to remember that her
sister Bella is much sought after; and that when her sister Bella
accepts an attention, she considers herself to be conferring qui-i-ite
Ga 2

 

       
  
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
    
  
    
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
    

 

 

 

   

ail
AH

i |

84 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

as much honour,’—this with an indignant shiver,—‘“as she re-
ceives.”

But, here Miss Bella repudiated, and said quietly, “I can speak
for myself, you know, ma. You needn’t bring me in, please.”

“ And it’s all very well aiming at others through convenient me,”
said the irrepressible Lavinia, spitefully ; “but 1 should like to ask
George Sampson what he says to it.”

“Mr. Sampson,” proclaimed Mrs. Wilfer, seeing that young gentle-
man take his stopper out, and so darkly fixing him with her eyes as
that he put it in again: “Mr. Sampson, as a friend of this family
and a frequenter of “this house, is, I am persuaded, far too well-bred
to interpose on such an invitation.”

This exaltation of the young gentleman moved the conscientious
Mrs. Boffin to repentance for having done him an injustice in her
mind, and consequently to saying that she and Mr. Boffin would at
any time be glad to see him; an attention which he handsomely
acknowledged by replying, with his stopper unremoved, “Much
obliged to you, but I’m always engaged, day and night.”

Howe ever, Bella compensating for “all drawbacks “by responding to
the advances of the Boffins in an engaging way, that easy pair were
on the whole well satisfied, and proposed to the said Bella that
as soon as they should be in a condition to receive her in a manner
suitable%o their desires, Mrs. Boffin should return with notice of the
fact. This arrangement Mrs. Wilfer sanctioned with a stately in-
clination of her head and wave of her gloves, as who should say,
“Your demerits shall be overlooked, and you shall be mercifully
gratified, poor people.”

_ “ By-the-bye, ma’am,” said Mr. Boffin, turning back as he was
going, “you have a lodger ?

“ A gentleman,” Mrs. Wilfer answered, qualify: ing the low expres-
sion, “undoubtedly occupies our first floor.”

“T may éall him Our Mutual Friend,” said Mr. Boffin. “ What
sort of a fellow 7s Our Mutual Friend, now? Do you like him ?”

“Mr. Rokesmith is very punctual, very quiet, a very eligible
inmate.”

“ Because,” Mr. Boffin explained, “you must know that I’m not
particularly well acquainted with Our Mutual Friend, for I have only
seen him once. You give a good account of him. Is he at home?”

“My. Rokesmith is at home, ” said Mis. Wilfer ; “indeed,” pointing
through the window, “ there he stands at the garden gate. Waiting
for you, perhaps ?”

“ Perhaps so,” replied Mr. Boffin. “Saw me come in, maybe.”

Bella had closely attended to this short dialogue. Accompanying
Mrs. Boffin to the gate, she as closely watched what followed.

“How are you, sir, how are you?” said Mr. Boffin. “This is
Mrs. Boftin. Mr. Rokesmith, that I told you of, my dear.”

She gave him good day, and he bestirred himself and helped her to
her seat, and the like, with a ready hand.

“Good-bye for the present, Miss Bella,” said Mrs. Boffin, calling
out a hearty parting. “We shall meet again soon! And then I hope
I shall have my little John Harmon to show you.”

  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. ; 8d

Mr. Rokesmith, who was at the wheel adjusting the skirts of her
dress, suddenly looked behind him, and around him, and then looked
up at her, with a face so pale that Mrs. Boffin cried:

“Gracious!” And after a moment, “ What's the matter, sir?”

“ How can you show her the Dead?” returned Mr. Rokesmith.

“T#s only an adopted child. One I have told her of One I’m
going to give the name to!”

“You took me by surprise,” said Mr. Rokesmith, “and it sounded
like an omen, that you should speak of showing the Dead to one so
young and blooming.”

Now, Bella suspected by this time that Mr. Rokesmith admired
her. Whether the knowledge (for it was rather that than suspicion)
caused her to incline to him a little more, or a little less, than she
had done at first; whether it rendered her eager to find out more
about him, because she sought to establish reason for her distrust,
or because she sought to free him from it; was as yet dark to her
own heart. But at most times he occupied a great amount of her
attention, and she had set her attention closely on this incident.

That he knew it as well as she, she knew as well as he, when they
were left together standing on the path by the garden gate.

“ Those are worthy people, Miss Wilfer.”

«Do you know them well?” asked Bella.

He smiled, reproaching her, and she coloured, reproaching herself
—hboth, with the knowledge that she had meant to entrap” him into
an answer not true—when he said “ I know of them.”

« Truly, he told us he had seen you but once.”

“Truly, I supposed he did.”

Bella was nervous now, and would have been glad to recall her
question.

“You thought it strange that, feeling much interested in you, I
should start at what sounded like a proposal to bring you into contact
with the murdered man who lies in his grave. I might have known
—of course in a moment should have known—that it could not have
that meaning. But my interest remains.”

Re-entering the family-room in a meditative state, Miss Bella was
received by the irrepressible Lavinia with :

“There, Bella! At last I hope you have got your wishes realized
—by your Boffins. You'll be rich enough now—with your Boffins.
You can have as much flirting as you like—at your EBoffins. But
you won't take me to your Boffins, I can tell you—you and your
30ffins too!”

“Tf” quoth Mr. George Sampson, moodily pulling his stopper out,
“Miss Bella’s Mr. Boffin comes any more of his nonsense to me, I only
wish him to understand, as betwixt man and man, that he does it
at his per ” and was going to say peril; but Miss Lavinia, having
no confidence in his mental powers, and feeling his oration to have
no definite application to any circumstances, jerked his stopper in
again, with a sharpness that made his eyes water.

And now the worthy Mrs. Wilfer, having used her youngest
daughter as a lay-figure for the edification of these Boffins, became
bland to her, and proceeded to develop her last instance of force of

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2)
cor)

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

character, which was still in reserve. This was, to illuminate the
family with her remarkable powers as a physiognomist ; powers that
terrified R. W. whenever let loose, as being always fraught with
gloom and evil which no inferior prescience was aware of. And this
Mrs. Wilfer now did, be it observed, in jealousy of these Boffins, in the
very same moments when she was already reflecting how she would
flourish these very same Boffins and the state they kept, over the
heads of her Boffinless friends.

“Of their manners,” said Mrs. Wilfer, “I say nothing. Of their
appearance, I say nothing. Of the disinterestedness of their inten-
tions towards Bella, I say nothing. But the craft, the secresy, the
dark deep underhanded plotting, written in Mrs. Boffin’s countenance,
make me shudder.”

As an incontrovertible proof that those baleful attributes were all
there, Mrs. Wilfer shuddered on the spot.

 

CHAPTER X.
A MARRIAGE CONTRACT.

‘THERE is excitement in the Veneering mansion. The mature
young lady is going to be married (powder and all) to the mature
young gentleman, and she is to be married from the Vencering
house, and the Veneerings are to give the breakfast. The Ana-
lytical, who objects as a matter of principle to everything that occurs
on the premises, necessarily objects to the match; but his consent
has been dispensed with, and a spring-van is delivering its load of
greenhouse plants at the door, in order that to-morrow’s feast may be
crowned with flowers.

The mature young lady is a lady of property. ‘The mature young
gentleman is a gentleman of property. He invests his property.
He goes, in a condescending amateurish way, into the City, attends
meetings of Directors, and has to do with traffic in Shares. As is
well known to the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the
one thing to have to do with in this world. Have no antecedents,
no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have
Shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards of Direction in capital
letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris,
and be great. Where does he come from? Shares. Where is he
goimg to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares. Has he any
principles? Shares. What squeezes him into Parliament? Shares.
Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never
originated anything, never produced anything? Sufficient answer
to all; Shares. O mighty Shares! To set those blaring images so
high, and to cause us smaller vermin, as under the influence of
henbane or opium, to cry out, night and day, “Relieve us of our
money, scatter it for us, buy us and sell us, ruin us, only we beseech
ye take rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten on us”!

While the Loves and Graces have been preparing this torch for
Hymen, which is to be kindled to-morrow, Mr. l'wemlow has suffered

  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 87

much in his mind. It would seem that both the mature young lady
and the mature young gentleman must indubitably be Veneering’s
oldest friends. Wards of his, perhaps? Yet that can scarcely be, for
they are older than himself. Veneering has been in their confidence
throughout, and has done much to lure them to the altar. He has
mentioned to T'wemlow how he said to Mrs. Veneering, “ Anastatia,
this must be a match.” He has mentioned to T'wemlow how he
regards Sophronia Akershem (the mature young lady) in the light
of a sister, and Alfred Lammle (the mature young gentleman) in the
light of a brother. ‘Twemlow has asked him whether he went to
school as a junior with Alfred? He has answered, “Not exactly.”
Whether Sophronia was adopted by his mother? He has answered,
“Not precisely so.” Twemlow’s hand has gone to his forehead with
a lost air.

But, two or three weeks ago, T'wemlow, sitting over his newspaper,
and over his dry-toast and weak tea, and over the stable-yard in
Duke Street, St. James’s, received a highly-perfumed cocked-hat and
monogram from Mrs. Veneering, entreating her dearest Mr. T., if not
particularly engaged that day, to come like a charming soul and
make a fourth at dinner with dear Mr. Podsnap, for the discussion of
an interesting family topic; the last three words doubly underlined

 

 

 

 

and pointed with a note of admiration. And 'Twemlow, replying,
“Not engaged, and more than delighted,” goes, and this takes
place :

“My dear Twemlow,” says Veneering, “your ready response to
Anastatia’s unceremonious invitation is truly kind, and like an old,

>

 

old friend. You know our dear friend Podsnap ?”

Twemlow ought to know the dear friend Podsnap who covered
him with so much confusion, and he says he does know him, and
Podsnap reciprocates. Apparently, Podsnap has been so wrought
upon in a short time, as to believe that he has been intimate in the

house many, many, many years. In the friendliest manner he is *
J? a a

making himself quite at home with his back to the fire, executing a
statuette of the Colossus at Rhodes. ‘T'wemlow has before noticed in
his feeble way how soon the Vencering guests become infected with
the Veneering fiction. Not, however, that he has the least notion of
its being his own case.

“Our friends, Alfred and Sophronia,” pursues Veneering the veiled
prophet : “our friends Alfred and Sophronia, you will be glad to hear,
my dear fellows, are going to be married. As my wife and I make
it a family affair the entire direction of which we take upon our-
selves, of course our first step is to communicate the fact to our
family friends.

(«Oh!” thinks Twemlow, with his eyes on Podsnap, “then there
are only two of us, and he’s the other.” i

“JT did hope,” Veneering goes on, “to have had Lady Tippins to
meet you; but sheis always in request, and is unfortunately engaged.”

G Oh!” thinks Twemlow, with his eyes wandering, “then there
are three of us, and she’s the other.”)

“Mortimer Lightwood,” resumes Veneering, “whom you both
know, is out of town; but he writes, in his whimsical manner, that

 

 

 

 

 

 

88 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

as we ask him to be bridegroom’s best man when the ceremony takes
place, he will not refuse, though he doesn’t see what he has to do
with it.”

(“Oh!” thinks Twemlow, with his eyes rolling, “then there are
four of us, and he’s the other.”)

“Boots and Brewer,’ observes Veneering, “whom you also
know, I have not asked to-day; but I reserve them for the oc-
casion.”

(“ Then,” thinks Twemlow, with his eyes shut, “there are si
But here collapses and does not completely recover until dinner is
over and the Analytical has been requested to withdraw. )

“We now come,” says Veneering, “to the point, the real point, of
our little family consultation. Sophronia, haying lost both father
and mother, has no one to give her away.”

“Give her away yourself,” says Podsnap.

“My dear Podsnap, no. For three reasons. Firstly, because I
couldn’t take so much upon myself when I have respected family
friends to remember. Secondly, because I am not so vain as to
think that I look the part. Thirdly, because Anastatia is a little
superstitious on the subject and feels averse to my giving away any-
body until baby is old enough to be married.”

“What would happen if he did?” Podsnap inquires of Mrs,
Veneering.

“My dear Mr. Podsnap, it’s very foolish I know, bat I have an
instinctive presentiment that if Hamilton gave away anybody else
first, he would never give away baby.” Thus Mrs. Veneering; with
her open hands pressed together, and each of her eight aquiline
fingers looking so very like her one aquiline nose that the bran-new
jewels on them seem necessary for distinction’s sake.

“But, my dear Podsnap,” quoth Veneering, “there is a tried friend
of our family who, I think and hope you will agree with me, Podsnap,
is the friend on whom this agreeable duty almost naturally devolves.
That friend,” saying the words as if the company were about a
hundred and fifty in number, “is now among us. That friend is
Twemlow.”

“ Certainly From Podsnap.

“That friend,” Veneering repeats with greater firmness, “is our
dear good Twemlow. And I cannot sufficiently express to you, my
dear Podsnap, the pleasure I feel in having this opinion of mine and
Anastatia’s so readily confirmed by you, that other equally familiar
and tried friend who stands in the proud position—I mean who
proudly stands in the position—or I ought rather to say, who places
Anastatia and myself in the proud position of himself standing in the
simple position—of babys godfather.” And, indeed, Veneering is
much relieved in mind to find that Podsnap betrays no jealousy of
Twemlow’s elevation.

So, it has come to pass that the spring-van is strewing flowers on
the rosy hours and on the staircase, and that Twemlow is surveying
the ground on which he is to play his distinguished part to-morrow.
He has already been to the church, and taken note of the various
impediments in the aisle, under the auspices of an extremely dreary

9

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 89

widow who opens the pews, and whose left hand appears to be in a
state of acute rheumatism, but is in fact voluntarily doubled up to
act as a money-box.

And now Vencering shoots out of the Study wherein he is accus-
tomed, when contemplative, to give his mind to the carving and gild-
ing of the Pilgrims going to Canterbury, in order to show ‘lwemlow
the little flourish he has prepared for the trumpets of fashion, describ-
ing how that on the seventeenth instant, at St. James’s Church, the
Reverend Blank Blank, assisted by the Reverend Dash Dash, united
in the bonds of matrimony, Alfred Lammle Esquire, of Sackville
Street, Piccadilly, to Sophronia, only daughter of the late Horatio
Akershem, Esquire, of Yorkshire. Also how the fair bride was
married from the house of Hamilton Veneering, Esquire, of Stucconia,
and was given away by Melvin T'wemlow, Hsquire, of Duke Street,
St. James’s, second cousin to Lord Snigsworth, of Snigsworthy Park.
While perusing which composition, ‘l'wemlow makes some opaque
approach to perceiving that if the Reverend Blank Blank and the

Reverend Dash Dash fail, after this introduction, to become enrolled
in the list of Veneerine’s dearest and oldest friends, they will have
none but themselves to thank for it.

After which, appears Sophronia (whom T’wemlow has seen twice
in his lifetime), to thank T'wemlow for counterfeiting the late Horatio
Akershem Esquire, broadly of Yorkshire. And after her, appears
Alfred (whom 'T'wemlow has seen once in his lifetime), to do the same
and to make a pasty sort of glitter, as if he were constructed for
candle-light only, and had been let out into daylight by some grand
mistake. And after that, comes Mrs.-Veneering, in a pervadingly
aquiline state of figure, and with transparent little knobs on
her temper, like the little transparent knob on the bridge of her
nose, “ Worn out by worry and excitement,” as she tells her dear
Mr. Twemlow, and reluctantly revived with curagoa by the Ana-
lytical. And after that, the bridesmaids begin to come by rail-
road from various parts of the country, and to come like adorable
recruits enlisted by a sergeant not present; for, on arriving at the
Veneering depot, they are in a barrack of strangers.

So, Twemlow goes home to Duke Street, St. James’s, to take a plate
of mutton broth with a chop in it, and a look at the marriage-service,
in order that he may cut in at the right place to-morrow; and he is
low, and feels it dull over the livery stable-yard, and is distinctly
aware of a dint in his heart, made by the most adorable of the
adorable bridesmaids. Jor, the poor little harmless gentleman once
had his fancy, like the rest of us, and she didn’t answer (as she often
does not), and ‘he thinks the adorable bridesmaid is like the fancy as
she was then (which she is not at all), and that if the fancy had not
married some one else for money, but had married him for love, he
and she would have been happy (which they wouldn’t have been),
and that she has a tenderness for him still (whereas her toughness
is a proverb). Brooding over the fire, with his dried little head
in his dried little hands, and his dried little elbows on his dried
little knees, T'wemlow is melancholy. “No Adorable to bear me
company here!” thinks he. “No Adorable at the club! <A waste,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

90 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

a waste, a waste, my ‘’wemlow!” And so drops asleep, and has
gaivanic starts all over him.

Betimes next morning, that horrible old Lady Tippins (relict of
the late Sir Thomas Tippins, knighted in mistake for somebody else
His Majesty King George the Third, who, while performing the
remony, was graciously pleased to observe, “ What, what, what?
Who, who, who? Why, why, why ?”) begins to be dyed and varnished
for the interesting occasion. She has a reputation for giving smart
counts of things, and she must be at these people’s early, my
dear, to lose nothing of the fun. Whereabout in the bonnet and
drapery announced by her name, any fragment of the real woman
may be concealed, is perhaps known to her maid; but you could
easily buy all you sce of her, in Bond Street; or you might scalp her,
and peel her, and scrape her, and make two Lady Tippinses out of her,
and yet not penetrate to the genuine article. She has a large gold
eye-glass, has Lady Tippins, to survey the proceedings with. If she
had one in each eye, it might keep that other drooping lid up, and
look more uniform. But perennial youth is in her artificial flowers,
and her list of lovers is full.

“Mortimer, you wretch,” says Lady Tippins, turning the eye-glass
about and about, “ where is your charge, the bridegroom ?”

“Give you my honor,” returns Mortimer, “I don’t know, and I
don’t care.”

“Miserable! Is that the way you do your duty ?”

“Beyond an impression that he is to sit upon my knee and be seconded
at some point of the solemnities, like a principal at a prize-fight, I
assure you I have no notion what my duty is,” returns Mortimer.

Eugene is also in attendance, with a pervading air upon him of
having presupposed the ceremony to be a funeral, and of being
disappointed. ‘I'he scene is the Vestry-room of St. James’s Church,
with a number of leathery old registers on shelves, that might be
bound in Lady 'Tippinses.

But, hark! A carriage at the gate, and Mortimer’s man arrives,

looking rather like a spurious Mephistophiles and an unacknow-
ledged member of that gentleman’s family. Whom Lady Tippins,
surveying through her eye-glass, considers a fine man, and quite a
catch; and of whom Mortimer remarks, in the lowest spirits, as he
approaches, “I believe this is my fellow, confound him!” More
carriages at the gate, and lo the rest of the characters. Whom
luady Tippins, standing on a cushion, surveying through the eye-
glass, thus checks off: “Bride; five-and-forty if a day, thirty
shillings a yard, veil fifteen pound, pocket-handkerchief a present.
Bridesmaids; kept down for fear of outshining bride, consequently
not girls, twelve and sixpence a yard, Veneering’s flowers, snub-
nosed one rather pretty but too conscious of her stockings, bonnets
three pound ten. ‘T'wemlow; blessed release for the dear man if she
really was his daughter, nervous even under the pretence that she
well he may be. Mrs. Vencering; never saw such velvet, say
two thousand pounds as she stands, absolute jeweller’s window, father
must have been a pawnbroker, or how could these people do it?
Attendant unknowns; pokey.”

 

  

      

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 91

Ceremony performed, register signed, Lady Tippins escorted out of
sacred edifice by Veneering, carriages rolling back to Stucconia,
servants with favours and flowers, Veneering’s house reached, draw-
ing-rooms most magnificent. Here, the Podsnaps await the happy
party ; Mr. Podsnap, with his bair-brushes made the most of; that
imperial rocking-horse, Mrs. Podsnap, majestically skittish. Here,
too, are Boots and Brewer, and the two other Buffers; each Buffer
with a flower in his button-hole, his hair curled, and his gloves but-
toned on tight, apparently come prepared, if anything had happened
to the bridegroom, to be married instantly. Here, too, the bride’s aunt
and next relation ; a widowed female of a Medusa sort, in a stoney cap,
glaring petrifaction at her fellow-creatures. Here, too, the bride’s
trustee; an oilcake-fed style of business-gentleman with mooney
spectacles, and an object of much interest. Veneering launching
himself upon this trustee as his oldest friend (which makes seven,
Twemlow thought), and confidentially retiring with him into the con-
servatory, it is understood that Veneering is his co-trustee, and that
they are arranging about the fortune. Buffers are even overheard to
whisper Thir-ty Thou-sand Pou-nds! with a smack and a relish sug-
sestive of the very finest oysters. Pokey unknowns, amazed to find
how intimately they know Veneering, pluck up spirit, fold their
arms, and begin to contradict him before breakfast. What time Mrs.
Veneering, carrying baby dressed as a bridesmaid, flits about among
the company, emitting flashes of many-coloured lightning from
diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.

The Analytical, in course of time achieving what he feels to be
due to himself in bringing to a dignified conclusion several quarrels
he has on hand with the pastrycook’s men, announces brealkfast.
Dining-room no less magnificent than drawing-room ; tables superb;
all the camels out, and all laden. Splendid cake, covered with
Cupids, silver, and true-lovers’ knots. Splendid bracelet, produced
by Veneering before going down, and clasped upon the arm of
bride. Yet nobody seems to think much more of the Veneerings
than if they were a tolerable landlord and landlady doing the thing
in the way of business at so much a head. The bride and bride-
groom talk and laugh apart, as has always been their manner; and
the Buffers work their way through the dishes with systematic per-
severance, as has always been their manner ; and the pokey unknowns
are exceedingly benevolent to one another in invitations to take glasses
of champagne; but Mrs. Podsnap, arching her mane and rocking her
grandest, has a far more deferential audience than Mrs. Veneering ;
and Podsnap all but does the honours.

Another dismal circumstance is, that Veneering, having the capti-
vating ‘Tippins on one side of him and the bride’s aunt on the other,
finds it immensely difficult to keep the peace. For, Medusa, besides
unmistakingly glaring petrifaction at the fascinating Tippins, follows
every lively remark made b that dear creature, with an audible
snort: which may be referable to a chronic cold in the head, but
may also be referable to indignation and contempt. And this snort
being regular in its reproduction, at, length comes to be expected by
the company, who make embarrassing pauses when it is falling due,

 

 

 

92 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

and by waiting for it, render it more emphatic when it comes.
The stoney aunt has likewise an injurious way of rejecting all
dishes whereof Lady Tippins partakes: saying aloud when they are
proffered to her,“ No, no, no, not for me. Take it away!” As with a
set purpose of implying a misgiving that if nourished upon similar
meats, she might come to be like that charmer, which would be a fatal
consummation, Aware of her enemy, Lady Tippins tries a youthful
sally or two, and tries the eye-glass; but, from the impenetrable
cap and snorting armour of the stoney aunt all weapons rebound
powerless.

Another objectionable circumstance is, that the pokey unknowns
support each other in being unimpressible. ‘They persist in not being
frightened by the gold and silver camels, and they are banded together
to defy the elaborately chased ice-pails. ‘They even seem to unite in
some vague utterance of the sentiment that the landlord and landlady
will make a pretty good profit out of this, and they almost carry them-
selves like customers. Nor is there compensating influence in the
adorable bridesmaids ; for, having very little interest in the bride, and
none at all in one another, those lovely beings become, each one
on her own account, depreciatingly contemplative of the millinery
present; while the bridegroom’s man, exhausted, in the back of his
chair, appears to be improving the occasion by penitentially contem-
plating all the wrong he has ever done > the difference between him
and his friend Eugene, being, that the latter, in the back of his chair,
appears to be contemplating all the wrong he would like to do—
particularly to the present company.

Jn which state of affairs, the usual ceremonies rather droop and
flag, and the splendid cake when cut by the fair hand of the bride
has but an indigestible appearance. However, all the things indis-
pensable to be said are said, and all the things indispensable to be
done are done (including Lady Tippins’s yawning, falling asleep,
and waking insensible), and there is hurried preparation for the
nuptial journey to the Isle of Wight, and the outer air teems with
brass bands and spectators. In full sight of whom, the malignant
star of the Analytical has pre-ordained that pain and ridicule shall
befall him. For he, standing on the doorsteps to grace the departure,
is suddenly caught a most prodigious thump on the side of his head
with a heavy shoe, which a Buffer in the hall, champagne-flushed and
wild of aim, has borrowed.on the spur of the moment from the pastry-
cook’s porter, to cast after the departing pair as an auspicious omen.

So they all go up again into the gorgeous drawing-rooms—all
of them flushed with breakfast, as having taken scarlatina sociably
—and there the combined unknowns do malignant things with
their legs to ottomans, and take as much as possible out of the
splendid furniture. And so, Lady Tippins, quite undetermined
whether to-day is the day before yesterday, or the day after to-
morrow, or the week after next, fades away; and Mortimer Light-
wood and Eugene fade away, and Twemlow fades away, and the
stoney aunt goes away—she declines to fade, proving rock to the
last—and even the unknowns are slowly strained off, and it is all
over.

 

 

 

 

‘M1Vd AddVH AHL

 

 

  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
  
 
     

2

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 93

All over, that is to say, for the time being. But, there is another
time to come, and it comes in about a fortnight, and it comes to Mr.
and Mrs. Lammle on the sands at Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight.

Mr. and Mrs. Lammle have walked for some time on the Shanklin
sands, and one may see by their footprints that they have not walked
arm in arm, and that they have not walked in a straight track, and
that they have walked in a moody humour ; for, the lady has prodded
little spirting holes in the damp sand before her with her parasol,
and the gentleman has trailed his stick after him. As if he were of
the Mephistopheles family indeed, and had walked with a drooping
tail.

“Do you mean to tell me, then, Sophronia

Thus he begins after a long silence, when Sophronia flashes fiercely,
and turns upon him.

“Don’t put it upon me, sir. I ask you, do you mean to tell
me?”

Mx. Lammle falls silent again, and they walk as before. Mrs.
Lammle opens her nostrils and bites her under-lip; Mr. Lammle
takes his gingerous whiskers in his left hand, and, bringing them
together, frowns furtively at his beloved, out of a thick gingerous
bush.

“Do I mean to say!” Mrs. Lammle after a time repeats, with
indignation. “Putting iton me! The unmanly disingenuousness !”

Mr. Lammle stops, releases his whiskers, and looks at her. “The
what?”

Mrs. Lammle haughtily replies, without stopping, and without
looking back. “The meanness.”

He is at her side again in a pace or two, and he retorts, “That is
not what you said. You said disingenuousness.”

“ What if I did ””

“ There is no ‘if’ in the case. You did.”

“T did, then. And what of it?”

“ What of it?” says Mr. Lammle. “Have you the face to utter
the word to me?”

“The face, too!” replied Mrs. Lammle, staring at him with cold
scom. “Pray, how dare you, sir, utter the word to me oy

“J never did.”

As this happens to be true, Mrs. Lammle is thrown on the fe-
minine resource of saying, “I don’t care what you uttered or did not
utter.”

‘After a little more walking and a little more silence, Mr. Lammle
breaks the latter.

“You shall proceed in your own way. You claim a right to ask
me do I mean to tell you. Do I mean to tell you what?”

«That you are a man of property ee

CIN”

‘Then you married me on false pretences ee

‘So be it. Next comes what you mean to say; Do you mean to
say you are a woman of property is

oN Ow

“Then you married me on false pretences.”

Ey)

 

 

  

 

  
  
 
 
 
   
   
   
  
 
 
 
   
    
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     
  
 
 

94 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Tf you were so dull a fortune-hunter that you deceived yourself,
or if you were so greedy and grasping that you were over-willing to
be deceived by appearances, is it my fault, you adventurer?” “the
lady demands, with great asperity.

“T asked Veneering, and. he told me you were rich.”

“ Veneering !” with great contempt. “And what does Veneering
know about me!”

“ Was he not your trustee ?

“No. I have no trustee, but the one you saw on the day
when you fraudulently married me. And his trust is not a very
difficult one, for it is only an annuity of a hundred and fifteen
pounds. I think there are some odd shillings or pence, if you are
very particular.”

Mr. Lammle bestows a by no means loving look upon the partner
of his joys and SOLTOWS, and he mutters something ; but checks
himself.

“ Question for question. It is my turn again, Mrs. Lammle. What
made you suppose me a man of property ?”

“You made me suppose you so. Perhaps you will deny that you
always presented yourself to me in that character ?”

“But you asked somebody, too. Come, Mrs. Lammle, admission
for admission. You asked somebody ?”

“J asked Veneering.”

“ And Veneering knew as much of me as he knew of you, or as
anybody knows of him.”

After more silent walking, the bride stops short, to say in a pas-
sionate manner : 4

“T never will forgive the Veneerings for this !”

“ Neither will I,” returns the bridegroom.

With that, they walk again; she, mnaking those angry spirts in
the sand ; he, dragging that dejected tail. The tide is low, and
seems to have thrown them together high on the bare shore. <A
gull comes sweeping by their heads, and flouts them. There was a
eolden surface on the brown cliffs but now, and behold they are
only damp earth. A taunting roar comes from the sea, and the far-
out rollers mount upon one ‘another, to look at the entrapped im-
postors, and to join in impish and exultant gambols.

“Do you pretend to believe,” Mrs. Lammle resumes, sternly,
“when you talk of my marrying you for worldly advantages, that it
was within the bounds of reasonable probability that I would have
married you for yourself?”

“ Again there are two sides to the question, Mrs. Lammle. What
do you pretend to believe ?”

“So you first deceive me and then insult me!” cries the lady, with
a heaving bosom.

“Not at all. I have originated nothing. The double-edged
question was yours.”

“Was mine!” the bride repeats, and her parasol breaks in her
angry hand.

His colour has turned to a livid white, and ominous marks have
come to light about his nose, as if the finger of the very devil him-

2

  

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 95

self had, within the last few moments, touched it here and there.
But he has repressive power, and she has none.

«Throw it away,” he coolly recommends as to the parasol; “you
have made it useless; you look ridiculous with it.”

Whereupon she calls him in her rage, “A deliberate villain,” and
so casts the broken thing from her as that it strikes him in falling.
The finger-marks are something whiter for the instant, but he walks
on. at her side.

She bursts into tears, declaring herself the wretchedest, the most
deceived, the worst-used, of women. ‘I'hen she says that if she had
the courage to kill herself, she would do it. ‘Phen she calls him vile
impostor. Then she asks him, why, in the disappointment of his base
speculation, he does not take her life with his own hand, under the
present favourable circumstances. ‘Then she cries again. ‘Then she
is enraged again, and makes some mention of swindlers. Tinally,
she sits down erying on a block of stone, and is in all the known and
unknown humours of her : I

 

at once. Pending her changes, those
aforesaid marks in his face have come and gone, now here now there,
like white stops of a pipe on which the diabolical performer has
played a tune. Also his livid lips are parted at last, as if he were
breathless with running. Yet he is not.

“ Now, get up, Mrs. Lammile, and let us speak reasonably.”

She sits upon her stone, and takes no heed of him.

“Get up, I tell you.”

Raising her head, she looks contemptuously in his face, and re-
peats, “ You tell me! ‘Tell me, forsooth!”

She affects not to know that his eyes are fastened on her as she
droops her head again ; but her whole figure reveals that she knows
it uneasily.

“Hnough of this. Come! Do you hear? Get up.”

Yielding to his hand, she rises, and they walk again; but this
time with their faces turned towards their place of residence.

“Mrs. Lammle, we have both been deceiving, and we have both
been deceived. We have both been biting, and we have both been
bitten. In a nut-shell, there’s the state of the case.”

“You sought me out——”

“Tut! Let us have done with that. We know very well how it
was. Why should you and I talk about it, when you and Ii can’t
disguise it? ‘To proceed. I am disappointed and cut a poor figure.”

“Am I no one?”

«Some one—and I was coming to you, if you had waited a
moment. You, too, are disappointed and cut a poor figure.”

« An injured figure!”

“You are now cool enough, Sophronia, to see that you can’t be
injured without my being equally injured; and that therefore the
mere word is not to the purpose. When I look back, I wonder how
I can have been such a fool as to take you to so great an extent
upon trust.”

“ And when I look back——” the bride cries, interrupting.

“ And when you look back, you wonder how you can have been
—you'll excuse the word ?”

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
    

= ees

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<5 2S = = = =
= pe ae SS SSS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

96 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Most certainly, with so much reason.”

“—Such a fool as to take me to so great an extent upon trust.
But the folly is committed on both sides. cannot get rid of you;
you cannot get rid of me. What follows 2”

“Shame and misery,” the bride bitterly replies.

“I don’t know. A mutual understanding follows, and I think
it may carry us through. Here I split my discourse (give me your
arm, Sophronia), into three heads, to make it shorter and plainer.
Firstly, it’s enough to have been done, without the mortification of
being known to have been done. So we agree to keep the fact to our-
selves. You agree?”

“Tf it is possible, I do.”

“Possible! We have pretended well enough to one another.
Can’t we, united, pretend to the world ? Agreed. Secondly, we owe
the Veneerings a grudge, and we owe all other people the grudge of
wishing them to be taken in, a8 we ourselves have been taken in.
Agreed ?”

“Yes. Agreed.”

“We come smoothly to thirdly. You have called me an adven-
turer, Sophronia. So I am. In plain uncomplimentary English, so
Tam. So are you, my dear. So are many people. We agree to
keep our own secret, and to work together in furtherance of our own
schemes.”

“ What schemes ?”

“Any scheme that will bring us money. By our own schemes, I
mean our joint interest. Agreed ?”

She answers, after a little hesitation, “ T Suppose so. Agreed.”

“Carried at once, you sce! Now, Sophronia, only half a dozen
words more. We know one another perfectly. Don’t be tempted
into twittins me with the past knowledge that you have of me,
because it is identical with the past knowledge that I have of you,
and in twitting me, you twit yourself, and I don’t want to hear you
do it. With this good understanding established between us, it is
better never done. ‘To wind up all:—You have shown temper to-
day, Sophronia. Don’t be betrayed into doing so again, because [
have a Devil of a temper myself.”

So, the happy pair, with this hopeful marriage contract thus signed,
sealed, and delivered, repair homeward. If when those infernal
finger-marks were on the white and breathless countenance of Alfred
Lammle, Esquire, they denoted that he conceived the purpose of
subduing his dear wife Mrs. Alfred Lammle, by at once divesting
her of any lingering reality or pretence of self-respect, the purpose
would seem to have been presently executed. The mature young
lady has mighty little need of powder, now, for her downcast face, as
he escorts her in the light of the setting sun to their abode of bliss.

 

 

 

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER XI.
PODSNAPPERY.

Mr. Popsnap was well to do, and stood very high in Mr. Podsnap’s
opinion. Beginning with a good inheritance, he had married a good
inheritance, and had thriven exceedingly in the Marine Insurance
way, and was quite satisfied. He never could make out why every-
body was not quite satisfied, and he felt conscious that he set a
brilliant social example in being particularly well satisfied with
most things, and, above all other things, with himself.

Thus happily acquainted with his own merit and importance,
Mr. Podsnap settled that whatever he put behind him he put out
of existence. There was a dignified conclusiveness—not to add a
grand conyenience—in this way of getting rid of disagreeables
which had done much towards establishing Mr. Podsnap in his lofty
place in Mr. Podsnap’s satisfaction. “I don’t want to know about
it; I don’t choose to discuss it; I don’t admit it!’ Mr. Podsnap
had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often
clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them
behind him (and consequently sheer away) with those words and
a flushed face. For they affronted him.

Mr. Podsnap’s world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor
even geographically: seeing that although his business was sustained
upon commerce with other countries, he considered other countries,
with that important reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and
customs would conclusively observe, “ Not English!” when, Prrsto!
with a flourish of the arm, and a flush of the face, they were swept
away. Elsewise, the world got up at eight, shaved close at a quarter-
past, breakfasted at nine, went to the City at ten, came home at
half-past five, and dined at seven. Mr. Podsnap’s notions of the
Arts in their integrity might have been stated thus. Literature ;
large print, respectfully descriptive of getting up at eight, shaving
close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at
ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven. Painting
and Sculpture; models and portraits representing Professors of
getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at
nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and
dining at seven. Music; a respectable performance (without varia-
tions) on stringed and wind instruments, sedately expressive of getting
up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going
to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and diming at seven.
Nothing else to be permitted to those same vagrants the Arts, on pain
of excommunication. Nothing else To Be—anywhere!

As a so eminently respectable man, Mr. Podsnap was sensible of
its being required of him to take Providence under his protection.
Consequently he always knew exactly what Providence meant. In-
ferior and less respectable men might fall short of that mark, but
Mr. Podsnap was always up to it. And it was very remarkable (and
VOL. I. H

 

  
 
   
    
   
  
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
  

Btoda ca. cael meee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

98 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

must have been very comfortable) that what Providence meant, was
invariably what Mr. Podsnap meant.

These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school
which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling, after its re-
presentative man, Podsnappery. ‘They were confined within close
bounds, as Mr. Podsnap’s own head was confined by his shirt-collar ;
and they were enunciated with a sounding pomp that smacked of
the creaking of Mr. Podsnap’s own boots.

There was a Miss Podsnap. And this young rocking-horse was being
trained in her mother’s art of prancing in a stately manner without
ever getting on. But the high parental action was not yet imparted
to her, and in truth she was but an undersized damsel, with high
shoulders, low spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of nose,
who seemed to take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood into
womanhood, and to shrink back again, overcome by her mother’s
head-dress and her father from head to foot—crushed by the mere
dead-weight of Podsnappery.

A certain institution in Mr. Podsnap’s mind which he called “the
young person” may be considered to have been embodied in Miss
Podsnap, his daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting insti-
tution, as requiring everything in the universe to be filed dowr
and fitted to it. The question about everything was, would it bring
a blush into the cheek of the young person? And the inconvenience
of the young person was, that, according to Mr. Podsnap, she seemed
always liable to burst into blushes when there was no need at all.
There appeared to be no line of demarcation between the young
person’s excessive innocence, and‘another person’s guiltiest know-
ledge. ‘Take Mr. Podsnap’s word for it, and the soberest tints of
drab, white, lilac, and grey, were all flaming red to this troublesome
Bull of a young person.

The Podsnaps lived in a shady angle adjoining Portman Square.
They were a kind of people certain to dwell in the shade, wherever
they dwelt. Miss Podsnap’s life had been, from her first appearance
on this planet, altogether of a shady order; for, Mr. Podsnap’s young
person was likely to get little good out of association with other
young persons, and had therefore been restricted to companionship
with not very congenial older persons, and with massive furniture.
Miss Podsnap’s early views of life being principally derived from the
reflections of it in her father’s boots, and in the walnut and rosewood
tables of the dim dirawing-rooms, and in their swarthy giants of
looking-glasses, were of a sombre cast; and it was not wonderful
that now, when she was on most days solemnly tooled through the
Park by the side of her mother in a great tall custard-coloured
phaeton, she showed above the apron of that vehicle like a dejected
young person sitting up in bed to take a startled look at things in
general, and~very strongly desiring to get her head under the
counterpane again. ‘

Said Mr. Podsnap to Mrs. Podsnap, “ Georgiana is almost eighteen.”

Said Mrs. Podsnap to Mr. Podsnap, assenting, “ Almost eighteen.”

Said Mr. Podsnap then to Mrs. Podsnap, “Really I think we
should have some people on Georgiana’s birthday.”

4

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 99

Said Mrs. Podsnap then to Mr. Podsnap, “ Which will enable us
to clear off all those people who are due.”

So it came to pass that Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap requested the honor
of the company of seventeen friends of their souls at dinner ; and that
they substituted other friends of their souls for such of the seventeen
original friends of their souls as deeply regretted that a prior en-
eagement prevented their having the honor of dining with Mr. and
Mrs. Podsnap, in pursuance of their kind invitation; and that Mrs.
Podsnap said of all these inconsolable personages, as she checked
them off with a pencil in her list, “ Asked, at any rate, and got rid
of;” and that they successfully disposed of a good many friends of
their souls in this way, and felt their consciences much lightened.

There were still other friends of their souls who were not entitled
to be asked to dinner, but had a claim to be invited to come and take
a haunch of mutton vapour-bath at halfpast nine. For the clearing
off of these worthies, Mrs. Podsnap added a small and early evening
to the dinner, and looked in at the music-shop to bespeak a well-
conducted automaton to come and play quadrilles for a carpet dance.

Mr. and Mrs. Vencering, and Mr. and Mrs. Veneering’s bran-new
bride and bridegroom, were of the dinner company ; but the Podsnap
establishment had nothing else in common with the Veneerings. Mr.
Podsnap could tolerate taste in a mushroom man who stood in need
of that sort of thing, but was far above it himself. Hideous solidity
was the characteristic of the Podsnap plate. Everything was made to
look as heavy as it could, and to take up as much room as possible.
Everything said boastfully, “Here you have as much of me in my
ugliness as if I were only lead; but I am so many ounces of precious
metal worth so much an ounce;—wouldn’t you like to melt me
down?” A corpulent straddling epergne, blotched all over as if it
had broken out in an eruption rather than been ornamented, de-
livered this address from an unsightly silver platform in the centre of
the table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished with four staring
heads, each head obtrusively carrying a big silver ring in each of its
ears, conveyed the sentiment up and down the table, and handed
it on to the pot-bellied silver salt-cellars. All the big silver spoons
and forks widened the mouths of the company expressly for the pur-
pose of thrusting the sentiment down their throats with every morsel
they ate.

The majority of the guests were like the plate, and included
several heavy articles weighing ever so much. But there was a
foreign gentleman among them : whom Mr. Podsnap had invited after
much debate with himself—believing the whole European continent
to be in mortal alliance against the young person—and there was a
droll disposition, not only on the part of Mr. Podsnap but of every-
body else, to treat him as if he were a child who was hard of
hearing.

As a delicate concession to this unfortunately-born foreigner,
Mr. Podsnap, in receiving him, had presented his wife as “Madame
Podsnap ;” also his daughter as “ Mademoiselle Podsnap,’ with some
inclination to add “ma, fille,” in which bold venture, however, he
checked himself, The Veneerings being at that time the only other

H 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

100 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

arrivals, he had added Gn a condescendingly explanatory manner),
“ Monsieur Vey-nair-reeng,” and had then subsided into English.

“How Do You Like London?’ Mr. Podsnap now inquired from
his station of host, as if he were administering something in the
nature of a powder or potion to the deaf child; “ London, Londres,
London ?”

The foreign gentleman admired it.

“ You find it Very Large?” said Mr. Podsnap, spaciously.

The foreign gentleman found it very large.

“ And Very Rich?”

The foreign gentleman found it, without doubt, enormément
riche.

“Enormously Rich, We say,” returned Mr. Podsnap, in a con-
descending manner. “Our English adverbs do Not terminate in
Mong, and We Pronounce the ‘ch’ as if there were a ‘t’ before it.
We Say Ritch.”

“Reetch,” remarked the foreion gentleman.

“And Do You Find, Sir,” pursued Mr. Podsnap, with dignity,
“Many Evidences that Strike You, of our British Constitution in the
Streets Of The World’s Metropolis, London, Londres, London ?”

The foreign gentleman begged to be pardoned, but did not alto-
gether understand.

“The Constitution Britannique,” Mr. Podsnap explained, as if he
were teaching in an infant school. “We Say British, But You Say
Britannique, You Know” (forgivingly, as if that were not his fault).
“The Constitution, Sir.”

The foreign gentleman said, “Mais, yees; I know eem.”

A youngish sallowish gentleman in spectacles, with a lumpy fore-
head, seated in a supplementary chair at a corner of the table, here
caused a profound sensation by saying, in a raised yoice, “ Hskrr,”
and then stopping dead.

“Mais oui,” said the foreign gentleman, turning towards him.
“ Est-ce que? Quoi donc?”

But the gentleman with the lumpy forehead having for the time
delivered himself of all that he found behind his lumps, spake for
the time no more.

“T Was Inquiring,” said Mr. Podsnap, resuming the thread of his
discourse, “ Whether You Have Observed in our Streets as We should
say, Upon our Pavvy as You would say, any Tokens

The foreign gentleman, with patient courtesy entreated pardon;

3ut what was tokenz ?”

“Marks,” said Mr. Podsnap; “Signs, you know, Appearances—
Traces.”

“Ah! Ofa Orse?” inquired the foreign gentleman.

“We call it Horse,” said Mr. Podsnap, with forbearance. “In
England, Angleterre, England, We Aspirate the ‘H,’ and We Say
‘ Horse.’ Only our Lower Classes Say ‘ Orse!’”

“ Pardon,” said the foreien gentleman; “I am alwiz wrong!”

“Our Language,” said Mr. Podsnap, with a gracious consciousness
of being always right, “is Difficult. Ours is a Copious Language,
and Trying to Strangers. I will not Pursue my Question.”

 

   

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 101

3ut the lumpy gentleman, unwilling to give it up, again madly
said, “Esker,” and again spake no more.

“It merely referred,” Mr. Podsnap explained, with a sense of meri-
torious proprietorship, “to Our Constitution, Sir. We Englishmen
are Very Proud of our Constitution, Sir. It Was Bestowed Upon Us
By Providence. No Other Country is so Favored as This Country.”

“ And ozer countries?—” the foreign gentleman was* beginning,
when Mr. Podsnap put him right again.

“We do not say Ozer; we say Other: the letters are ‘T’ and ‘H;’
You say Tay and Aish, You Know; (still with clemency). The
sound is ‘th ’—‘ th!”

“ And other countries,” said the foreign gentleman. “They do how?”

“They do, Sir,” returned Mr. Podsnap, gravely shaking his head ;
“they do—I am sorry to be obliged to say it—as they do.”

“It was a little particular of Providence,” said the foreign gentle-
man, laughing; “for the frontier is not large.”

“ Undoubtedly,” assented Mr. Podsnap; “ But So it is. It was the
Charter of the Land. This Island was Blest, Sir, to the Direct Ex-
clusion of such Other Countries as—as there may happen to be. And
if we were all Enelishmen present, I would say,” added Mr. Podsnap,
looking round upon his compatriots, and sounding solemnly with
his theme, “that there is in the Englishman a combination of quali-
ties, a modesty, an independence, a responsibility, a repose, com-
bined with an absence of everything calculated to call a blush into
the cheek of a young person, which one would seek im vain among
the Nations of the Earth.”

Having delivered this little summary, Mr. Podsnap’s face flushed,
as he thought of the remote possibility of its bemg at all qualified
by any prejudiced citizen of any other country; and, with his favo-
rite right-arm flourish, he put the rest of Europe and the whole of
Asia, Africa, and America nowhere.

The audience were much edified by this passage of words; and
Mr. Podsnap, feeling that he was in rather remarkable force to-day,
became smiling and conversational.

“Has anything more been heard, Veneering,” he inquired, “of the
lucky legatee ?”

“Nothing more,” returned Veneering, “than that he has come into
possession of the property. I am told people now call him The
Golden Dustman. I mentioned to you some time ago, I think, that
the young lady whose intended husband was murdered is daughter
to a clerk of mine ?”

“Yes, you told me that,” said Podsnap; “and by-the-bye, I wish
you would tell it again here, for it’s a curious coincidence—curious
that the first news of the discovery should have been brought
straight to your table (when I was there), and curious that one of
your people should have been so nearly interested init. Just relate
that, will you ?”

Veneering was more than ready to do it, for he had prospered
exceedingly upon the Harmon Murder, and had turned the social
distinction it conferred upon him to the account of making
several dozen of bran-new bosom-friends. Indeed, such another

3

 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

102 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

lucky hit would almost have set him up in that way to his satis-
faction. So, addressing himself to the most desirable of his neigh-
bours, while Mrs. Veneering secured the next most desirable, “he
plunged into the case, and emerged from it twenty minutes afterwards
with a Bank Director in his arms. In the mean time, Mrs. Veneering
had dived into the same waters for a wealthy Ship-Broker, and had
brought him up, safe and sound, by the hair. Then Mrs. Veneering;
had to relate, to a larger circle, how she had been to see the girl, and
how she was really pretty, and (considering her station) presentable.
And this she did with such a successful display of her eight aquiline
fingers and their encircling jewels, that she happily laid hold of a
drifting General Officer, his wife and daughter, and not only restored
their animation which had become suspended, but made them lively
friends within an hour.

Although Mr. Podsnap would in a general way have highly
disapproved of Bodies in rivers as ineligible topics with reference to
the cheek of the young person, he had, as one may say, a share in
this affair which made him a part proprictor. As its returns were
immediate, too, in the way of restraining the company from speech-
less contemplation of the wine-coolers, it paid, and he was satisfied.

And now the haunch of mutton vapour-bath having received
a gamey infusion, and a few last touches of sweets and coffee, was
quite ready, and the bathers came; but not before the discreet
automaton had got behind the bars of the piano music-desk, and there
presented the appearance of a captive languishing in a rosewood jail.
And who now so pleasant or so well assor ted as Mr. and Mrs. Alfred
Lammile, he all sparkle, she all gracious contentment, both at
occasional intervals exchanging looks like partners at cards who
played a game against All England.

There was not much youth among the bathers, but there was no
youth (the young person always excepted) in the articles of Pod-
snappery. Bald bathers folded their arms and talked to Mr. Podsnap
on the hearthrug; sleek-whiskered bathers, with hats in their
hands, lunged at Mrs. Podsnap and retreated; prowling bathers,
went about looking into ornamental boxes and bowls as if they
had suspicions of larceny on the part of the Podsnaps, and expected.
to find something they had lost at the bottom ; bathers of the gentler
sex sat silently ~ comparing ivory shoulders. All this time and al-
ways, poor little Miss Podsnap, whose tiny efforts (if she had made any)
were swallowed up in the magnificence of her mother’s rocking, kept
herself as much out of sight and mind as she could, and appeared to
be counting on many dismal returns of the day. It was somehow
anderstood, : as a secret article in the state proprieties of Podsnappery
that nothing must be said about the day. Consequently this young
damsel’s nativity was hushed up and looked over, as if it were agreed
on all hands that it would have been better that she had never been
born.

The Lammles were so fond of the dear Vencerings that they
could not for some time detach themselves from those excellent
friends; but at length, either a very open smile on Mr. Lammle’s
part, or a very secret elevation of one of his gmgerous eyebrows—

   
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
   

 

 

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 103

certainly the one or the other—seemed to say to Mrs. Lammle,
“Why don’t you play?” And so, looking about her, she saw Miss
Podsnap, and seeming to say responsively, “ That card?” and to be
answered, “ Yes,” went and sat beside Miss Podsnap.

Mrs. Lammle was overjoyed to escape into a corner for a little
quiet tall.

It promised to be a very quiet talk, for Miss Podsnap replied in a
flutter, “Oh! Indeed, it’s very kind of you, but I am afraid I dont
talk.”

“Let us make a beginning,” said the insinuating Mrs. Lammle,
with her best smile.

“Oh! Iam afraid you'll find.me very dull. But Ma talks!”

That was plainly to be seen, for Ma was talking then at her usual
canter, with arched head and mane, opened eyes and nostrils.

“Fond of reading perhaps?”

“Yes, Atleast I—don’t mind that so much,” returned Miss Podsnap.

«M—m—m—m—umusic.” §o insinuating was Mrs. Lammle that
she got half a dozen ms into the word before she got it out.

“TJ haven’t nerve to play even if I could. Ma plays.”

(At exactly the same canter, and with a certain flourishing appear-
ance of doing something, Ma did, in fact, occasionally take a rock
upon the instrument.)

“Of course you like dancing ?”

“Oh no, I don’t,” said Miss Podsnap.

“No? With your youth and attractions? Truly, my dear, you
surprise me!”

“TJ can’t say,” observed Miss Podsnap, after hesitating considerably,
and stealing several timid looks at Mrs. Lammle’s carefully arranged
face, “how I might have liked it if I had been a—you won't
mention it, will you?”

“My dear! Never!”

“No, Lam sure you won't. I can’t say then how I should have
liked it, if I had been a chimney-sweep on May-day.”

“ Gracious!” was the exclamation which amazement elicited from
Mrs. Lammle.

“There! I knew you'd wonder. But you won't mention it, will
you?”

“Upon my word, my love,” said Mrs. Lammle, “you make me ten
times more desirous, now I talk to you, to know you well than I was

when I sat over yonder looking at you. How I wish we could be
real friends! Try me asa real friend. Come! Don’t fancy me a
frumpy old married woman, my dear; I was married but the other
day, you know ; T am dressed as a bride now, you see. About the
chimney-sweeps ?”

“ Hush! Ma’ll hear.”

“She can’t hear from where she sits.”

“Don’t you be too sure of that,” said Miss Podsnap, in a lower
voice. “Well, what I mean is, that they seem to enjoy it.”

“And that perhaps you would have enjoyed it, if you had been
one of them ?”

Miss Podsnap nodded significantly.

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
   
    

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104 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Then you don’t enjoy it now?”

“How is it possible?” said Miss Podsnap. “Oh it is such a
dreadful thing! If I was wicked enough—and strong enough—to
lnll anybody, it should be my partner.”

This was such an entirely new view of the Terpsichorean art as
socially practised, that Mrs. Lammle looked at her young friend in
some astonishment. Her young friend sat nervously twiddling her
fingers in a pinioned attitude, as if she were trying to hide her
elbows. But this latter Utopian object (in short sleeves) always ap-
peared to be the great inoffensive aim of her existence.

“Tt sounds horrid, don’t it ?” said Miss Podsnap, with a penitential
face.

Mrs. Lammle, not very well knowing what to answer, resolved
herself into a look of smiling encouragement.

3ut it is, and it always has been,” pursued Miss Podsnap, “such
atrialtome! Iso dread being awful. And it is so awful! No
one knows what I suffered at Madame Sauteuse’s, where I learnt to
dance and make presentation-curtseys, and other dreadful things—
or at least where they tried to teach me. Ma can do it.”

“ At any rate, my love,” said Mrs. Lammle, soothingly, “that’s over.”

“Yes, it’s over,’ returned Miss Podsnap, “but there’s nothing
gained by that. It’s worse here, than at Madame Sauteuse’s. Ma
was there, and Ma’s here; but Pa wasn’t there, and company wasn’t
there, and there were not real partners there. Oh there’s Ma speak-
ing to the man at the piano! Oh there’s Ma going up to somebody !
Oh I know she’s going to bring him to me! Oh please don’t, please
don’t, please don’t! Oh keep away, keep away, keep away!” ‘These
pious ejaculations Miss Podsnap uttered with her eyes closed, and
her head leaning back against the wall.

But the Ogre advanced under the pilotage of Ma, and Ma. said,
“Georgiana, Mr. Grompus,” and the Ogre clutched his victim and bore
her off to his castle in the top couple. Then the discreet automaton
who had surveyed his ground, played a blossomless tuneless “set,”
and sixteen disciples of. Podsnappery went through the figures of—
1, Getting up at eight and shaving close at a quarter past—2, Break-
fasting at nine—3, Going to the City at ten—4, Coming home at
half-past five—5, Dining at seven, and the grand chain.

While these solemnities were in progress, Mr. Alfred Lammle
Gnost loving of husbands) approached the chair of Mrs. Alfred
Lammle (most loving of wives), and bending over the back of it,
trifled for some few seconds with Mrs. Lammle’s bracelet. Slightly
in contrast with this brief airy toying, one might have noticed a
certain dark attention in Mrs. Lammle’s face as she said some words
with her eyes on Mr. Lammle’s waistcoat, and seemed in return to
receive some lesson. But it was all done as a breath passes from a
mirror.

And now, the grand chain riveted to the last link, the discreet
automaton ceased, and the sixteen, two and two, took a walk among:
the furniture. And herein the tinconsciousness of the Ogre Grompus
was pleasantly conspicuous; for, that complacent monster, believing
that he was giving Miss Podsnap a treat, prolonged to the utmost

 

  

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
   
  
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

 

    

 

OUR

 

 

MUTUAL FRIEND. 105
stretch of possibility a peripatetic account of an archery meeting;
while his victim, heading the procession of sixteen as it slowly
circled about, like a revolving funeral, never raised her eyes except
once to steal a glance at Mrs. Lammle, expressive of intense de-
spair.

At length the procession was dissolved by the violent arrival of
a nutmeg, before which the drawing-room door bounced open as

  

g,
if it were a cannon-ball; and while that fragrant article, dispersed
through several glasses of coloured warm water, was going the
round of society, Miss Podsnap returned to her seat by her new
friend.

“Oh my goodness,” said Miss Podsnap. “That’s over! I hope
you didn’t look at me.”

“My dear, why not?”

“Oh I know all about myself,” said Miss Podsnap.

“Tl tell you something Z know about you, my dear,” returned
Mrs. Lammle in her winning way, “and that is, you are most un-
necessarily shy.”

“Ma ain't,” said Miss Podsnap. “—I detest you! Go along!”
This shot was levelled under her breath at the gallant Grompus for
bestowing an insinuating smile upon her in passing.

“Pardon me if I scarcely see, my dear Miss Podsnap,” Mrs.
Lammle was beginning when the young lady interposed.

“If we are going to be real friends (and 1 suppose we are, for you
are the only person who ever proposed it) don’t let us be awful. It’s
awful enough to be Miss Podsnap, without being called so. Call me
Georgiana.”

“Dearest Georgiana,” Mrs. Lammle began again.

“Thank you,” said Miss Podsnap.

“Dearest Georgiana, pardon me if I scarcely see, my love, why
your mamma’s not being shy, is a reason why you should be.”

“Don’t you really see that?” asked Miss Podsnap, plucking at her
fingers in a troubled manner, and furtively casting her eyes now on
Mrs. Lammle, now on the ground. “Then perhaps it isn’t ?”

“My dearest Georgiana, you defer much too readily to my poor
opinion. Indeed it is not even an opinion, darling, for it is only a
confession of my dulness.”

“Oh you are not dull,” returned Miss Podsnap. “JZ am dull, but
you couldn’t have made me talk if you were.”

Some little touch of conscience answering this perception of her
having gained a purpose, called bloom enough into Mrs. Lammile’s
face to make it look brighter as she sat smiling her best smile on her
dear Georgiana, and shaking her head with an affectionate play-
fulness. Not that it meant anything, but that Georgiana seemed to
like it.

“What I mean is,” pursued Georgiana, “that Ma being so endowed
with awfulness, and Pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there
being so much awfulness everywhere—I mean, at least, everywhere
where I am—perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness,
and frightened at it—I say it very badly—I don’t know whether
you can understand what I mean?”

     
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

106 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Perfectly, dearest Georgiana!” Mrs. Lammle was proceeding
with every reassuring wile, when the head of that young lady
suddenly went back against the wall again and her eyes closed.

“Oh there’s Ma being awful with somebody with a glass in his
eye! Oh I know she’s going to bring him here! Oh don’t bring
him, don’t bring him! Oh hell be my partner with his glass in
his eye! Oh what shall Ido!” This time Georgiana accompanied
her ejaculations with taps of her feet upon the floor, and was alto-
gether in quite a desperate condition. But, there was no escape
from the majestic Mrs. Podsnap’s production of an ambling stranger,
with one eye screwed up into extinction and the other framed and
glazed, who, having looked down out of that organ, as if he des-
cried Miss Podsnap at the bottom of some perpendicular shaft,
brought her to the surface, and ambled off with her. And then
the captive at the piano played another “set,” expressive of his
mournful aspirations after freedom, and other sixteen went through
the former melancholy motions, and the ambler took Miss Podsnap
for a furniture wall, as if he had struck out an entirely original
conception. i

In the mean time a stray personage of a meek demeanour, who
had wandered to the hearthrug and got among the heads of tribes
assembled there in conference with, Mr. Podsnap, eliminated Myr.
Podsnap’s flush and flourish by a highly unpolite remark; no less
than a reference to the circumstance that some half-dozen people
had lately died in the streets, of starvation. It was clearly ill-timed
after dinner. It was not adapted to the cheek of the young person.
Jt was not in good taste.

“T don’t believe it,” said Ma. Podsnap, putting it behind him.

The meek man was afraid we must take it as proved, because
there were the Inquests and the Registrar’s returns.

“Then it was their own fault,” said Mx. Podsnap.

Veneering and other elders of tribes commended this way out of
it. At once a short cut and a broad road.

The man of meek demeanour intimated that truly it would seem
from the facts, as if starvation had been forced upon the culprits in
question—as if, in their wretched manner, they had made their
weak protests against it—as if they would have taken the liberty
of staving it off if they could—as if they would rather not
have been starved upon the whole, if perfectly agreeable to all
parties.

“There is not,” said Mr. Podsnap, flushing angrily, “there is not
a country in the world, sir, where so noble a provision is made for
the poor as in this country.”

The meek man was quite willing to concede that, but perhaps it
rendered the matter even worse, as showing that there must be
something appallingly wrong somewhere.

“ Where ?” said Mr. Podsnap.

The meek man hinted Wouldn’t it be well to try, very seriously,
to find out where ?

“Ah!” said Mr. Podsnap. “ Hasy to say somewhere; not so easy
to say where! But I see what you are driving at. I knew it from

 

  
   
  
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
      

 

 

 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 107

 

the firs
English.’

An approving murmur arose from the heads of tribes; as saying,
«There you have him! Hold him!”

He was not aware (the meek man submitted of himself) that he was
driving at anyization. He had no favourite ization that he knew of.
But he certainly was more staggered by these terrible occurrences
than he was by names, of howsoever somany syllables. Might he ask,
was dying of destitution and neglect necessarily English ?

“You know what the population of London is, I suppose,” said
Mr. Podsnap.

The meek man supposed he did, but supposed that had absolutely,
nothing to do with it, if its laws were well administered.

« And you know; at least I hope you know;” said Mr. Podsnap,
with severity, “that Providence has declared that you shall have the
poor always with you?”

The meek man also hoped he knew that.

“T am glad to hear it,” said Mr. Podsnap with a portentous air.
“T am glad to hear it. It will render you cautious how you fly in
the face of Providence.”

Tn reference to that absurd and irreverent conventional phrase,
the meek man said, for which Mr. Podsnap was not responsible, he the
meek man had no fear of doing anything so impossible ; but——

But Mr. Podsnap felt that the time had come for flushing and
flourishing this meek man down for good. So he said:

“I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. +It is not
pleasant to my feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings. I have
said that I do not admit these things. I have also said that if they
do occur (not that I admit it), the fault lies with the sufferers
themselves. It is not for me ”—Mr. Podsnap pointed “me” forcibly,
as adding by implication though it may be all very well for you—* it
is not for me to impugn the workings of Providence. I know better
than that, I trust, and I have mentioned what the intentions of Provi-
dence are. Besides,” said Mr. Podsnap, flushing high up among his
hair-brushes, with a strong consciousness of personal affront, “the
subject is a very disagreeable one. I will go so far as to say it is
an odious one. It is not one to be introduced among our wives and
young persons, and [—_—” He finished with that flourish of his arm
svhich added more expressively than any words, And I remove it
from the face of‘the earth.

Simultaneously with this quenching of the meek man’s ineffectual
fire, Georgiana having left the ambler up a lane of sofa, in a No
Thoroughfare of back drawing-room, to find his own way out, came
back to Mrs. Lammle. And who should be with Mrs. Lammle, but
Mr. Lammle. So fond of her!

“ Alfred, my love, here is my friend. Georgiana, dearest girl, you
must like my husband next to me.”

Mr. Lammle was proud to be so soon distinguished by this special
commendation to Miss Podsnap’s favour. But if Mr. Lammle were
prone to be jealous of his dear Sophronia’s friendships, he would. be
jealous of her feeling towards Miss Podsnap.

 

Centralization. No. Never with my consent. Not

?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

108 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Say Georgiana, darling,” interposed his wife.

“'Towards—shall I ?—Georgiana.” Mr. Lammle uttered the name,
with a delicate curve of his right hand, from his lips outward. “ For
never have I known Sophronia (who is not apt to take sudden
likings) so attracted and so captivated as she is by shall I once
more ?—Georgiana.”

The object of this homage sat uneasily enough in receipt of it, and
then said, turning to Mrs. Lammle, much embarrassed :

“T wonder what you like me for! I am sure I can’t think.”

“Dearest Georgiana, for yourself. For your difference from all
around you.”

“Well! That may be. For I think I like you for your difference
from all around me,” said Georgiana with a smile of relief.

“We must be going with the rest,’ observed Mrs. Lammle, rising
with a show of unwillingness, amidst a general dispersal. “ We are
real friends, Georgiana dear ?”

“ Real.”

“Good night, dear girl!”

She had established an attraction over the shrinking nature upon
which her smiling eyes were fixed, for Georgiana held her hand
while she answered in a secret and half-frightened tone :

“Don’t forget me when you are gone away. And come again
soon. Good night!”

Charming to see Mr. and Mrs. Lammle taking leave so gracefully,
and going down the stairs so lovingly and sweetly. Not quite so
charming to see their smiling faces fall and brood as they dropped
moodily into separate corners of their little carriage. But to be sure
that was a sight behind the scenes, which nobody saw, and which
nobody was meant to see.

Certain big, heavy vehicles, built on the model of the Podsnap
plate, took away the heavy articles of guests weighing ever so
much; and the less valuable articles got away after their various
manners; and the Podsnap plate was put to bed. As Mx. Podsnap
stood with his back to the drawing-room fire, pulling up his shirt-
collar, like a veritable cock of the walk literally pluming himself in
the midst of his possessions, nothing would have astonished him
more than an intimation that Miss Podsnap, or any other young
person properly born and bred, could not be exactly put away
like the plate, brought out like the plate, polished like the plate,
counted, weighed, and valued like the plate. That such a young
person could possibly have a morbid vacancy in the heart for any-
thing younger than the plate, or less monotonous than the plate; or
that such a young person’s thoughts could try to scale the region
bounded on the north, south, east, and west, by the plate; was a
monstrous imagination which he would on the spot have flourished
into space. ‘Ihis perhaps in some sort arose from Mr. Podsnap’s
blushing: young person being, so to speak, all cheek: whereas
there is a possibility that there may be young persons of a rather
more complex organization.

If Mr. Podsnap, pulling up his shirt-collar, could only have heard
himself called “that fellow” in a certain short dialogue, which

 

 

  

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
 
  
  

 

 

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
    
   
 
    
   
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 109
passed between Mr. and Mrs. Lammle in their opposite corners of
their little carriage, rolling home!

“ Sophronia, are you awake ?”

“Am I likely to be asleep, sir?”

“ Very likely, I should think, after that fellow’s company. Attend
to what I am going to say.”

“I have attended to what you have already said, have I not?
What else have I been doing all to-night.”

“Attend, I tell you,” (in a raised voice) “to what I am going
to say. Keep close to that idiot girl, Keep her under your
thumb. You have her fast, and you are not to let her go. Do you
hear ?”

“T hear you.”

“I foresee there is money to be made out of this, besides taking
that fellow down a peg. We owe each other money, you know.”

Mrs. Lammle winced a little at the reminder, but only enough to
shake her scents and essences anew into the atmosphere of the little
carriage, as she settled herself afresh in her own dark corner.

 

CHAPTER XII.
THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN’S BROW.

Mr. Mortimer Licurwoop and Mr. Eugene Wrayburn took a coffee-
house dinner together in Mr. Lightwood’s office. They had newly
agreed to set up a joint establishment together. They had taken a
bachelor cottage near Hampton, on the brink of the Thames, with a
lawn, and a boat-house, and all things fitting, and were to float
with the stream through the summer and the Long Vacation.

It was not summer yet, but spring ; and it was not gentle spring
ethereally mild, as in homson’s Seasons, but nipping spring with an
easterly wind, as in Johnson's, Jackson’s, Dickson’s, Smith’s, and
Jones's Seasons. ‘The grating wind sawed rather than blew; and as
it sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit. Every street was
a sawpit, and there were no top-sawyers; every passenger was an
under-sawyer, with the sawdust blinding him and choking him.

That mysterious paper currency which circulates in London when
the wind blows, gyrated here and there and everywhere. Whence
can it come, whither can it go? It hangs on every bush, flutters in
every tree, is caught flying by the electric wires, haunts every en-
closure, drinks at every pump, cowers at every grating, shudders upon
every plot of grass, seeks rest in vain behind the legions of iron rails.
In Parig, where nothing is wasted, costly and luxurious city though it
be, but where wonderful human ants creep out of holes and pick up
every scrap, there isnosuch thing. There, it blows nothing but dust.
There, sharp eyes and sharp stomachs reap even the east wind, and
get something out of it.

The wind sawed, and the sawdust whirled. The shrubs wrung
their many hands, bemoaning that they had been over-persuaded
by the sun to bud; the young leaves pined; the Sparrows repented

ib ip ao he Sng ane r

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

110 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

of their early marriages, like men and women; the colours of the

rainbow were discernible, not in floral spring, but in the faces of the
nls whom it nibbled and pinched. And ever the wind sawed, and
the s sawdust whirled.

When the spring evenings are too long and light to shut out, and
cr weather is rife, the city which Mr. Podsnap so explanatorily called
London, Londres, London, is at its worst. Such a black shrill city,
combining the qualities of a smoky house and a scolding wife; such
a gritty city ; such a hopeless city, with no rent in the leaden canopy
of its sky; such a beleaguered city, invested by the great Marsh Forces
of Hssex and Kent. So the two Gld schoolfellows felt it to be, as, their
dinner done, they turned towards the fire to smoke. Young Blight
was gone, the coffee-house waiter was gone, the plates and dishes were

gone, . the wine was goinge—but not in the same direction.

«The wind sounds up here,” quoth Eugene, stirring the fire, “ as if
we were keeping a lighthouse. I wish we were.’

“Don’t you think it would bore us? > Lightwood asked.

“Not more than any other place. And there would be no Circuit
to So. But’ that’s a selfish consideration, personal to me.”

“ And no clients to come,” added - Lightw ood. “Not that that’s a
selfish consideration at all personal to me.’

“Tf we were on an isolated rock in a Leben sea,” said Hugene,
smoking with his eyes on the fire, “ Lady Tippims couldn't put off to
visit us, or, better still, might put off and get swamped. | -eople
couldn’t ask one to wedding “breakfasts. There would be no Prece-
dents to hammer at, except the plain-sailing Precedent of keeping
the light wp. It would be exciting to look out for wrecks.”

“But otherwise,” suggested Lightw ood, “there might be a degree
of sameness in the life.”

“T have thought of that also,” said Hugene, as if he really had
been conside ring the subject in its various be arings with an eye to
the business: “but it would be a defined and Timited monotony.
It would not extend beyond. two people. Now, it’s a questi ion with
me, Mortimer, whether a monotony defined with that precision and
limited to that extent, might not be more endurable than the un-
limited monotony of one’s fellow- creatures.’

As Lightwood Jaughed and passed the wine, he remarked, “ We
shall have an oppor tunity, in our boating summer, of trying the
one stion.”

“An imperfect one,” Eugene acquiesced, with a sigh, “ but so we
shall. I hope we may not prove too much for one another. 2

“Now, regarding your respected father,” said Lightwood, bringing
him to a subject ‘they had expressly appointed to discuss : always
the most slippery eel of eels of subjects to lay hold of. ”

“Yes, regardine my respected father,” assented Eugene, settling
himself in his arm-chair. “I would rather have approached my
respected father by candlelight, as a theme requiring a little artificial
brilliancy ; but we will take him by twilight, enlivened with a glow
of Wallsend.”

He stirred the fire again as he spoke, and having made it blaze,
resumed.

 

 

  
   
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
    

 

 

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 111

“My respected father has found, down in the parental neighbour-
hood, a wife for his not-generally-respected son.”

“ With some money, of course ?”

“With some money, of course, or he would not have found her.
My respected father—let me shorten the dutiful tautology by sub-
stituting in future M. R. F., which sounds military, and rather like
the Duke of Wellington.”

“What an absurd fellow you are, Eugene!”

“Not at all, Tassure you. M. R. F. having always in the clearest
manner provided (as he calls it) for his children by pre-arranging
from the hour of the birth of each, and sometimes from an earlier
period, what the devoted little victim’s calling and course in life
should be, M. R. F. pre-arranged for myself that I was to be the
barrister I am (with the slight addition of an enormous practice,
which has not accrued), and also the married man I am not.”

“ The first you have often told me.”

“The first [ have often told you. Considering myself sufficiently
incongruous on my legal eminence, I have until now suppressed my
domestic destiny. You know M. R. F., but not as wellasI do. If
you knew him as well as I do, he would amuse you.”

“ Wilially spoken, Eugene!”

“ Perfectly so, believe me; and with every sentiment of affectionate
deference towards M. R. F. But if he amuses me, I can’t help it.
When my eldest brother was born, of course the rest of us knew
(Lmean the rest of us would have known, if we had been in existence)
that he was heir to the Family Embarrassments—we call it before
company the Family Hstate. But when my second brother was

going to be born by-and-by, ‘this, says M. R. E,, ‘is a little pillar of

the church.’ Was born, and became a pillar of the church ; a very

shaky one. My third brother appeared, considerably in advance of

his engagement to my mother; but M. R. I’., not at all put out by
surprise, instantly declared him a Circumnavigator. Was pitch-
forked into the Navy, but has not circumnavigated. I announced
myself, and was disposed of with the highly satisfactory results
embodied before you. When my younger brother was half an hour
old, it was settled by M. R. F. that he should have a mechanical
genius. Andsoon. ‘Therefore I say that M. kh, F. amuses me.”

“Touching the lady, Eugene.”

“There M. R. F. ceases to be amusing, because my intentions are
opposed to touching the lady.”

“Do you know her ?”

“ Not in the least.”

“Hadn’t you better see her?”

“My dear Mortimer, you have studied my character. Could I
possibly go down there, labelled ‘Huieriy. ON view,’ and meet the
lady, similarly labelled? Anything’ to carry out M. R. Fs arrange-
ments, I am sure, with the greatest pleasure—except matrimony.
Could I-possibly support it? I, so soon bored, so constantly, so fatally ?”

“But you are not a consistent fellow, Eugene.”

“Tn susceptibility to boredom,” returned that worthy, “T assure
you I am the most consistent of mankind.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

112 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Why, it was but now that you were dwelling on the advantages
of a monotony of two.”

“In a lighthouse. Do me the justice to remember the condition,
In a lighthouse.”

Mortimer langhed again, and Eugene, having laughed too for the
first time, as if he found himself on reflection rather entertaining,
relapsed mto his usual gloom, and drowsily said, as he enjoyed his
cigar, “No, ther> is no help for it; one of the prophetic deliveries of
M. R. F. must for ever remain unfulfilled. With every disposition
to oblige him, he must submit to a failure.”

It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing and
the sawdust was wiirling outside paler windows. ‘The underlying
churchyard was already settling into deep dim shade, and the shade
was creeping up to the housetops among which they sat. “ As if,”
said Hugene, “as if the churchyard ghosts were rising.”

He had walked to the window with his cigar in his mouth, to exalt
its flavour by comparing the fireside with the outside, when he
stopped midway on his return to his arm-chair, and said:

“ Apparently one of the ghosts has lost its way, and dropped in to
be directed. Look at this phantom !”

Lightwood, whose back was towards the door, turned his head, and
there, in the darkness of the entry, stood a something in the likeness
of a man: to whom he addressed the not irrelevant inquiry, “ Who
the devil are you?”

“T ask your pardons, Governors,” replied the ghost, in a hoarse
double-barrelled whisper, “but might either on you be Lawyer
Lightwood ?”

“What do you mean by not knocking at the door?’ demanded
Mortimer.

“ I ask your pardons, Governors,” replied the ghost, as before, “ but
probable you was not aware your door stood open.”

“What do you want ?”

Hereunto the ghost again hoarsely replied, in its double-barrelled
manner, “I ask your pardons, Governors, but might one on you be
Lawyer Lightwood ?”

“One of us is,” said the owner of that name.

“ All right, Governors Both,” returned the ghost, carefully closing
the room door; “’tickler business.”

Mortimer lighted the candles. They showed the visitor to be an
ill-looking visitor with a squinting leer, who, as he spoke, fumbled
at an old sodden fur cap, formless and mangey, that looked like a
furry animal, dog or cat, puppy or kitten, drowned and decaying.

“ Now,” said Mortimer, “ what is it ?”

“Governors Both,” returned the man, in what he meant to be a
wheedling tone, “ which on you might be Lawyer Lightwood ?”

“T am.”

“Lawyer Lightwood,” ducking at him with a servile air, “I ama
man as gets my living, and as seeks to get my living, by the sweat
of my brow. Not to risk being done out of the sweat of my brow,
by any chances, I should wish afore going further to be swore in.”

“JT am not a swearer in of people, man.”

    
 
 
 
   
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 

 

  

 

 

 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
    
   
 
 
 
 
   
    
  
 
 
   
   
 
  
   
   
 
 
  
  
   
  
 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 113

The visitor, clearly anythine but reliant on this assurance,
doggedly muttered “ Alfred David.”

“Is that your name?” asked Lightwood.

“My name?” returned the man. “No; I want to take a Alfred
David.”

(Which Eugene, smoking and contemplating him, interpreted as
meaning Affidavit. )

“J tell you, my good fellow,” said Lightwood, with his indolent
laugh, “that I have nothing to do with swearing.”

“ He can swear aé you,” Eugene explained; “and so can I. But
we can’t do more for you.”

Much discomiited by this information, the visitor turned the
drowned dog or cat, puppy or kitten, about and about, and looked
from one of the Governors Both to the other of the Governors Both,
while he deeply considered within himself. At length he decided:

“'Then I must be took down.”

“Where?” asked Lightwood.

“Here,” said the man. “In pen and ink.”

“ First, let us know what your business is about.”

“It’s about,” said the man, taking a step forward, dropping his
hoarse voice, and shading it with his hand, “it’s about from five to
ten thousand pound reward. That’s what it’s about. It’s about
Murder. That’s what it’s about.”

“Come nearer the table. Sit down. Will you have a glass of
wine ?”

“Yes, I will,” said the man ; “and I don’t deceive you, Governors.”

it was given him. Making: a stiff arm to the elbow, he poured the
wine into his mouth, tilted it into his right cheek, as saying, “ What
do you think of it?” tilted it into his left cheek, as saying, “ What do
you think of it?” jerked it into his stomach, as saying, “ What do you
think of it?” To conclude, smacked his lips, as if all three replied,
“We think well of it.”

“ Will you have another ?”

“Yes, 1 will,” he repeated, “and I don’t deceive you, Governors.”
And also repeated the other proceedings.

“Now,” began Lightwood, “ what’s your name?”

“Why, there youre rather fast, Lawyer Lightwood,” he replied,
in a remonstrant manner. “Don’t you see, Lawyer Lightwood ?
There you're a little bit fast. I’m goimge to earn from five to ten
thousand pound by the sweat of my brow; and as a poor man doing
justice to the sweat of my brow, is it likely I can afford to part with
so much as my name without its being took down ?”

Deferring to the man’s sense of the binding powers of pen and ink
and paper, Lightwood nodded acceptance of Hugene’s nodded proposal
to take those spells in hand. Hugene, bringing them to the tabl
sat down as clerk or notary.

“Now,” said Lightwood, “what's your name

But further precaution was still due to the sweat of this honest
fellow’s brow.

“T should wish, Lawyer Lightwood,” he stipulated, “to have that
T’other Governor as my witness that what I said I said. Conse-

VOL, I. I

 

 

 

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FRIEND.

   

114 OUR MUTUAL

quent, will the T’other Governor be so good as chuek me his name
and where he lives?”

Eugene, cigar in mouth and pen in hand, tossed him his card.
After spelling it out slowly, the man made it into a little roll, and
tied it up in an end of his neckerchief still more slowly.

“Now,” said Lightwood, for the third time, “if you have quite
completed your various preparations, my friend, and have fully
ascertained that your spirits are cool and not in any way hurried,
what’s your name?”

“Roger Riderhood.”

“ Dwelling-place ?”

“TLime’us Hole.”

“ Calling or occupation ?”

Not quite so glib with this answer as with the previous two, Mr.
Riderhood gave in the definition, “ Waterside character.”

“ Anything against you?” Eugene quietly put in, as he wrote.

Rather baulked, Mr. Riderhood evasively remarked, with an inno-
cent air, that he believed the T’other Governor had asked him
summa t.

“ Hiver in trouble?” said Hugene.

“Once.” (Might happen to any man, Mr. Riderhood added inci-
dentally.)

“On suspicion of ——?”

“Of seaman’s pocket,” said Mr. Riderhood. “ Whereby I was in
reality the man’s best friend, and tried to take care of him.”

“ With the sweat of your brow?” asked Eugene.

«Till it poured down like rain,” said Roger Riderhood.

Eugene leaned back in his chair, and smoked with his eyes negli-
gently turned on the informer, and his pen ready to reduce him to
more writing. Lightwood also smoked, with his eyes negligently
turned on the informer.

“ Now let me be took down again,” said Riderhood, when he had
turned the drowned cap over and under, and had brushed it the
wrong way (if it had a right way) jwith his sleeve. “ I give informa-
tion that the man that done the Harmon Murder is Gaffer Hexam,
the man that found the body. The hand of Jesse Hexam, commonly
called Gaffer on the river and along shore, is the hand that done that
deed. His hand and no other.”

The two friends glanced at one another with more serious faces
than they had shown yet.

“Tell us on what grounds you make this accusation,” said
Mortimer Lightwood.

“Qn the grounds,” answered Riderhood, wiping his face with his
sleeve, “that I was Gafier’s pardner, and suspected of him many a
long day and many a dark mght. On the grounds that 1 knowed
his ways. On the grounds that I broke the pardnership because I
see the danger; which I warn you his daughter may tell you
another story about that, for anythink I can say, but you know what
it'll be worth, for she’d tell you ‘Ties, the world round and the heavens
broad, to save her father. On the grounds that it’s well understood
along the cause’ays and the stairs that he done it. On the grounds

?

  

 

 

   

       
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  

  

OUR,

 

MUTUAL FRIEND. 115

5

ea

that he’s fell off from, because he done it. On the grounds that I will i
swear he done it. On the grounds that you may take me where ail
you will, and get me sworn toit. J don’t want to back out of the i i
consequences. I have made up my mind. ‘Take me anywheres.” !

“ All this is nothing,” said Lightwood.

“ Nothing ?” repeated Riderhood, indignantly and amazedly.

“Merely nothing. It goes to no more than that you suspect this
man of the crime. You may do so with some reason, or you may do
so with no reason, but he cannot be convicted on your suspicion.”

“ Haven't I said—I appeal to the T’other Governor as my witness Hi
—haven’t I said from the first minute that I opened my mouth in vi |
this here world-without-end-everlasting chair” (he evidently used
that form of words as next in force to an affidavit), “that 1 was
willing to swear that he done it? Haven't I said, Take me and
get me sworn to it? Don’t I say so now? You won’t deny it, i
Lawyer Lightwood ?”

“Surely not; but you only offer to swear to your suspicion, and I
tell you it is not enough to swear to your suspicion.” i

“Not enough, ain’t it, Lawyer Lightwood?” he cautiously de-
manded.

“ Positively not.”

“And did I say it was enough? Now, I appeal to the T’other
Governor. Now, fair! Did I say so?”

“He certainly has not said that he had no more to tell,” Hugene
observed in a low voice without looking at him, “whatever he
seemed to imply.”

“Hah!” cried the informer, triumphantly perceiving that the
remark was generally in his favor, though apparently not closely Pai
understanding it. “ort’nate for me I had a witness!” i

“Go on, then,” said Lightwood. “Say out what you have to say.
No after-thought.”

“Let me be took down then!” cried the informer, eagerly and
anxiously. “et me be took down, for by George and the Draggin
T’m a coming to it now! Don’t do nothing to keep back from a
honest man the fruits of the sweat of his brow! I give information,
then, that he told me that he done it. Is that enough?”

“Take care what you say, my friend,” returned Mortimer.

“Lawyer Lightwood, take care, you, what I say; for I judge you'll
be answerable for follering it up!” Then, slowly and emphati-
cally beating it all out with his open right hand on the palm of his
left; “J, Roger Riderhood, Lime’us Hole, Waterside character, tell \
you, Lawyer Lightwood, that the man Jesse Hexam, commonly called |
upon the river and along-shore Gaffer, told me that he done the deed. |
What’s more, he told me with his own lips that he done the deed.

What’s more, he said that he done the deed. And Ill swear it!”

“ Where did he tell you so?”

“Outside,” replied Riderhood, always beating it out, with his head |
determinedly set askew, and his eyes watchfully dividing their at-
tention between his two auditors, “outside the door of the Six Jolly HT
Fellowships, towards a quarter arter twelve o'clock at midnight—but
I will not in my conscience undertake to swear to so fine a matter

6)
Ia

Bei en. pine Serena

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1i6 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

as five minutes—on the night when he picked up the body. The
Six Jolly Fellowships stands on the spot still. he Six Jolly
Fellowships won't run away. If it turns out that he warn’t at the
Six Jolly Fellowships that night at midnight, ’m a liar.”

“What did he say?”

“Pll tell you (take me down, 'T’other Governor, I ask no better).
He come out first ; I come out last. [might be a minute arter him; I
might be half a minute, I might be a quarter of a minute; I cannot
swear to that, and therefore I won’t. That’s knowing the obligations
of a Alfred David, ain’t it?”

“ Go on.”

“JT found him a waiting to speak to me. He says to me, ‘ Rogue
Riderhood ’—for that’s the name I’m mostly called by—not for any
meaning in it, for meaning it has none, but because of its being
similar to Roger.”

“Never mind that.”

“*Scuse me, Lawyer Lightwood, it’s a part of the truth, and as such
I do mind it, and 1 must mind it and I will mind it. ‘Rogue Rider-
hood,’ he says, ‘ words passed betwixt us on the river to-night.’ Which
they had; ask his daughter! ‘I threatened you,’ he says, ‘ to chop
you over the fingers with my boat’s stretcher, or take a aim at your
brains with my boathook. I did so on accounts of your looking too
hard at what I had in tow, as if you was suspicious, and on accounts
of your holding on to the gunwale of my boat.’ I says to hin,
‘Gaffer, I know it.’ He says to me, ‘Rogue Riderhood, you are a
man in a dozen’—I think he said in a score, but of that I am not
positive, so take the lowest figure, for precious be the obligations of a
Alfred David. ‘And, he says, ‘when your fellow-men is up, be it
their lives or be it their watches, sharp is ever the word with you.
Had you suspicions? I says, ‘Gaffer, I had; and what’s more, I
have.’ He falls a shaking, and he says, ‘Of what? I says, ‘Of
foul play.’ He falls a shaking worse, and he says, ‘There was foul
play then. I done it for his money. Don’t betray me!’ Those
were the words as ever he used.”

There was a silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the
grate. An opportunity which the informer improved by smearing
himself all over the head and neck and face with his drowned cap,
and not at all improving his own appearance.

“What more?” asked Lightwood.

“Of him, d’ye mean, Lawyer Lightwood

“Of anything to the purpose.”

“Now, I’m blest if I understand you, Governors Both,” said the
informer, in a creeping manner: propitiating both, though only one
had spoken. “What? Ain’t that enough ?”

“Did you ask him how he did it, where he did it, when he did it 2”

“Far be it from me, Lawyer Lightwood! I was so troubled in
my mind, that I wouldn’t have knowed more, no, not for the sum
as I expect to earn from you by the sweat of my brow, twice told!
I had put an end to the pardnership. I had cut the connexion. I
couldn't undo what was done; and when he begs and prays, ‘Old
pardner, on my knees, don’t split upon me?’ I only makes answer

 

9”

  

     
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
    
   
   
  
   
   
 
    
    
    
  
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 117

‘Never speak another word to Roger Riderhood, nor look him in the

face!’ and I shuns that man.”

Having given these words a swing to make them mount the
higher and go the further, Rogue Riderhood poured himself out
another glass of wine unbidden, and scemed to chew it, as, with the
halfemptied glass in his hand, he stared at the candles.

Mortimer glanced at Eugene, but Eugene sat glowering at his
paper, and would give him no responsive glance. Mortimer again
turned to the informer, to whom he said:

“You have been troubled in your mind a long time, man ?”

Giving his wine a final chew, and swallowing it, the informer
answered in a single word :

“ Hages |”

“ When all that stir was made, when the Government reward was
offered, when the police were on the alert, when the whole country
rang with the crime!” said Mortimer, impatiently.

“Hah!” Mr. Riderhood very slowly and hoarsely chimed in, with
several retrospective nods of his head. “ Warn’t I troubled in my
mind then !”

“ When conjecture ran wild, when the most extravagant suspicions
were afloat, when half a dozen innocent people might have been laid
by the heels any hour in the day!” said Mortimer, almost warming.

“Hah!” Mr. Riderhood chimed in, as before. “Warn’t I troubled
in my mind through it all!”

“But he hadn't,” said Eugene, drawing a lady’s head upon his
writing-paper, and touching it at intervals, “the opportunity then of
earning so much money, you see.”

“The T’other Governor hits the nail, Lawyer Lightwood! It was
that as turned me. I had many times and again struggled to
relieve myself of the trouble on my mind, but I couldn’t get it off.
[ had once very nigh got it off to Miss Abbey Potterson which
keeps the Six Jolly HFellowships—there is the ’ouse, it won’t run away,
—there lives the lady, she ain’t likely to be struck dead afore you
get there—ask her!—but I couldn’t do it. At last, out comes the
new bill with your own lawful name, Lawyer Lightwood, printed
to it, and then I asks the question of my own intellects, Am I to
have this trouble on my mind for ever? Am I never to throw it
off? Am I always to think more of Gaffer than of my own self? If
he’s got a daughter, ain’t I got a daughter ?”

“ And echo answered ?” Kugene sucgested.

“<You have,’” said Mr. Riderhood, in a firm tone.

“Incidentally mentioning, at the same time, her age ?” inquired
Hugene.

“Yes, governor. ‘T'wo-and-twenty last October. And then I put
it to myself, ‘Regarding the money. It is a pot of money. For
it 7s a pot,” said Mr. Riderhood, with candour, “and why deny it ?”

“Hear!” from Eugene as he touched his drawing.

“«Tt is a pot of money; but is it a sin for a labouring man that
moistens every crust of bread he earns, with his tears—or if not with
them, with the colds he catches in his head—is it a sin for that
man to earn it? Say there is anything again earning it’ This I

 

 

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118 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

put to myself strong, as in duty bound ; ‘how can it be said without
blaming Lawyer Lightwood for offering it to be earned? And was
it for me to blame Lawyer Lightwood ? No.”

“No,” said Hugene.

“(Certainly not, Governor,” Mr. Riderhood acquiesced. “So if
made up my mind to get my trouble off my mind, and to earn by
the sweat of my brow what was held out to me. And what’s more,”
he added, suddenly turning bloodthirsty, “ I mean to have it! And
now I tell you, once and away, Lawyer Lightwood, that Jesse Hexam,
commonly called Gaffer, his hand and no other, done the deed, on his
own confession tome. And I give him up to you, and I want him
took. This night !”

After another silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the
grate, which attracted the informer’s attention as if it were the
chinking of money, Mortimer Lightwood leaned over his friend, and
sald im a whisper :

“T suppose | must go with this fellow to our imperturbable friend
at the police-station.”

“I suppose,” said Eugene, “ there is no help for it.

“Do you believe him ?”

“J believe him to be a thorough rascal. But he may tell the
truth, for his own purpose, and for this occasion only.”

“Tt doesn’t look like it.”

“ He doesn’t,” said Eugene. “But neither is his late partner,
whom he denounces, a prepossessing person. The firm are cut-throat
Shepherds both, in appearance. I should like to ask him one thing.”

The subject of this conference sat leering at the ashes, trying with
all his might to overhear what was said, but feigning abstraction as
the “Governors Both” glanced at him.

“You mentioned (twice, I think) a daughter of this Hexam’s,’
said Eugene, aloud. “You don’t mean to imply that she had any
euilty knowledge of the crime?”

Tho honest man, after considering—perhaps considering how his
answer might affect the fruits of the sweat of his brow—yreplied,
unreservedly, “No, I don’t.”

“ And you implicate no other person oe

“14 ain’t what I implicate, it’s what Gaffer implicated,” was the
dogged and determined answer. “1 don’t pretend to know more than
that his words to me was, ‘1 done it. ‘Those was his words.”

“I must sec this out, Mortimer,” whispered Eugene, rising. “How
shalk we go?”

“Tet us walk,’ whispered Lightwood, “ and give this fellow time
to think of it.”

Having exchanged the question and answer, they prepared them-
selves for going out, and Mr. Riderhood rose. While extinguishing
the candles, Lightwood, quite as a matter of course took up the glass
from which that honest gentleman had drunk, and coolly tossed it
under the grate, where it fell shivering into fragments.

“ Now, if you will take the lead,” said Lightwood, “ Mr. Wray-
? s » xT 9?
burn and I will follow. You know where to go, I suppose

“T suppose I do, Lawyer Lightwood.”

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Take the lead, then.”

The waterside character pulled his drowned cap over his ears with
both hands, and making himself more round-shouldered than nature
had made him, by the sullen and persistent slouch with which he
went, went down the stairs, round by the Temple Church, across
the ‘Temple into Whitefriars, and so on by the waterside streets.

“ Look at his hang-dog air,” said Lightwood, following.

“Tt strikes me rather as a hang-man air,” returned Eugene. “He
has undeniable intentions that way.”

They said little else as they followed. He went on before them
as an ugly Fate might have done, and they kept him in view, and
would have been glad enough to lose sight of him. But on he
went before them, always at the same distance, and the same rate.
Aslant against the hard implacable weather and the rough wind, he
was no more to be driven back than hurried forward, but held on
like an advancing Destiny. There came, when they were about
midway on their journey, a heavy rush of hail, which in a few
minutes pelted the streets clear, and whitened them. It made no
difference to him. A man’s life being to be taken and the price of it
got, the hailstones to arrest the purpose must lie larger and deeper
than those. He crushed through them, leaving marks in the fast-
melting slush that were mere shapeless holes; one might have
fancied, following, that the very fashion of humanity had departed
from his feet.

The blast went by, and the moon contended with the fast-flying
clouds, and the wild disorder reigning up there made the pitiful little
tumults in the streets of no account. It was not that the wind
swept all the brawlers into places of shelter, as it had swept the hail
still lingering in heaps wherever there was refuge for it; but that it
seemed as if the streets were absorbed by the sky, and the night
were all in the air.

“Tf he has had time to think of it,” said Eugene, “he has not had
time to think better of it—or differently of it, if that’s better. There
is no sign of drawing back in him; and as I recollect this place, we
must be close upon the corner where we alighted that night.”

In fact, a few abrupt turns brought them to the river side, where
they had slipped about among the stones, and where they now
slipped more; the wind coming against them in slants and flaws,
across the tide and the windings of the river, in a furious way.
With that habit of getting under the lee of any shelter which
waterside characters acquire, the waterside character at present in
question led the way to the leeside of the Six Jolly Fellowship
Porters before he spoke.

“ Look round here, Lawyer Lightwood, at them red curtains. It’s
the Fellowships, the ’ouse as I told you wouldn’t run away. And
has it run away ?”

Not showing himself much impressed by this remarkable confirma-
tion of the informer’s evidence, Lightwood inquired what other
business they had there?

“ T wished you to see the Fellowships for yourself, Lawyer Light-
wood, that you might judge whether I’m a liar; and now I'll see

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

120 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Gaffer’s window for myself, that we may know whether he’s at
home.”

With that, he crept away.

“ He'll come back, I suppose?” murmured Lightwood.

« Ay! and go through with it,’ murmured Hugene.

He came back after a very short interval indeed.

“ Gaffer’s out, and his boat’s out. His daughter’s at home, sitting
a-looking at the fire. But there’s some supper getting ready, so
Gaffer’s expected. I can find what move he’s upon, easy enough,
presently.”

Then he beckoned and led the way again, and they came to the
police-station, still as clean and cool and steady as before, saving that
the flame of its lamp—being but a lamp-flame, and only attached to
the Force as an outsider—flickered in the wind.

Also, within doors, Mr. Inspector was at his studies as of yore. He
recognized the friends the instant they reappeared, but their reappear-
ance had no effect on his composure. Not even the circumstance that
Riderhood was their conductor moved him, otherwise than that as he
took a dip of ink he seemed, by a settlement of his chin in his stock,
to propound to that personage, without looking at him, the question,
“What have you been up to, last ?”

Mortimer Lightwood asked him, would he be so good as look at
those notes? Handing him Eugene’s.

Having read the first few lines, Mr. Inspector mounted to that (for
him) extraordinary pitch of emotion that he said, “Does either of you
two gentlemen happen tohave a pinch of snuff about him?” Finding
that neither had, he did quite as well without it, and read on.

“Have you heard these read?” he then demanded of the honest
man.

“No,” said Riderhood.

“Then you had better hear them.” And so read them aloud, in an
official manner.

“Are these notes correct, now, as to the information you bring
here and the evidence you mean to give?” he asked, when he had
finished reading.

“They are. They are as correct,” returned Mr. Riderhood, “as I
am. I can’t say more than that for em.”

“Tl take this man myself, sir,” said Mr. Inspector to Lightwood.
Then to Riderhood, “Is he at home? Where is he? What’s he doing?
You have made it your business to know all about him, no doubt.”

Riderhood said what he did know, and promised to find out in a
few minutes what he didn’t know.

“Stop,” said Mr. Inspector ; “not till I tell you. We mustn’t look
like business. Would you two gentlemen object to making a pre-
tence of taking a class of something in my company at the Fellow-
ships? Well-conducted house, and highly respectable landlady.”

‘hey replied that they would be happy to substitute a reality for
the pretence, which, in the main, appeared to be as one with Mr.
Inspector’s meaning.

“Very good,” said he, taking his hat from its peg, and putting a
pair of handcuffs in his pocket as if they were his gloves. “Reserve!”

  
  
 
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
    
  
 
   

 

 

 

     
  
  
    
  
   
  
 
    
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
     
   
   
 
 
    
  
 
     
     

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 121
| Reserve saluted. “You know where to find me?’ Reserve again
saluted. tiderhood, when you have found out concerning his ii

coming: ieee come round to tne window of Cosy, tap twice at it, and Heel
wait for me. Now, gentlemen.” Haan

As the three went out together, and Riderhood slouched off from
under the trembling lamp his separate way, Lightwood asked the
officer what he thought of this?

Mr. Inspector re plie d, with due generality and reticence, that it
was always more likely that a man had done a bad thing than that
he hadn’t. ‘That he himself had several times “ reckoned t up” Gatter,
but had never been able to bring him to a satisfactory criminal
total. That if this story was true, it was only in part true. That
the two men, very shy characters, would have been jointly and
pretty equally “in it;” but that this man had “spotted” the other,
to save himself and get the money.

“ And I think,” added Mr. Inspector, in conclusion, “ that if all goes dl
well with him, he’s in a tolerable way of getting it. But as this is “the
Fellowships, gentlemen, where the lights are, T recommend dr opping
the subject. You can’t do better than be interested in some lime works
anywhere down about Northfleet, and doubtful whether some of your
lime don’t get into bad company as it comes up in barges.”

“You hear Eugene?” said Lightwood, over his shoulder. “ You are
deeply interested in lime.”

“Without lime,” returned that unmoved barrister-at-law, “my
existence would be unilluminated by a ray of hope.”

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIII.

TRACKING THE BIRD OF PREY. Hi

 

 

Tue two lime merchants, with their escort, entered the dominions of
Miss Abbey Potterson, to whom their escort (presenting them and
their pretended business over the halfdoor of the bar, in a confi-
dential way) preferred his figurative request that “a mouthful of
fire” might be lighted in Cosy. Always well disposed to assist the
constituted authorities, Miss Abbey bade Bob Gliddery attend the
gentlemen to that retreat, and promptly enliven it with fire and i
easlight. Of this commission the bare-armed Bob, leading the way ]
with a flaming wisp of paper, so speedily acquitted himself, that i
Cosy seemed to leap out of a dark sleep and embrace them warmly, ° eit
| the moment they passed the lintels of its hospitable door. Hi
“They burn sherry very well here,” said Mr. Inspector, as a piece
| of local intelligence. “Perhaps you gentlemen might like a bottle?”
The answer being By all means, Bob Gliddery received his instruc- |
tions from Mr. Inspector, and departed in a becoming state of alacrity Hl
engendered by reverence for the majesty of the law.
“Tt’s a certain fact,” said Mr. Inspector, “that this man we have {
received our information from,” indicating Riderhood with his thumb
over his shoulder, “ has for some time past given the other man a bad

 

 

 

 

   
     
    
   
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
     
   
     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

122 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

name arising out of your lime barges, and that the other man has
been avoided in consequence. I don’t say what it means or proves,
but it’s a certain fact. IJ had it first from one of the opposite sex of
my acquaintance,” vaguely indicating Miss Abbey with his thumb
over his shoulder, “ down away at a distance, over yonder.”

Then probably Mr. Inspector was not quite unprepared for their
visit that evening ? Lightwood hinted.

“Well you see,” said Mr. Inspector, “it was a question of making
amove. It’s of no use moving if you don’t know what your move is.
You had better by far keep still. In the matter of this lime, I cer-
tainly had an idea that it might lie betwixt the two men ; I always had
that idea. Still I was forced to wait for a start, and I wasn’t so
lucky as to get a start. This man that we have received our informa-
tion from, has got a start,and if he don’t meet with a check he may
make the running and come in first. There may turn out to be
something considerable for him that comes in second, and I don’t
mention who may or who may not try for that place. ‘There’s duty
to do, and I shall do it, under any circumstances, to the best of my
judgment and ability.”

“Speaking as a shipper of lime ” began Hugene.

“ Which no man has a better right to do than yourself, you know,”
said Mr. Inspector.

“T hope not,” said Eugene; “my father having been a shipper of
lime before me, and my grandfather before him—in fact we having
been a family immersed to the crowns of our heads in lime during
several generations—I beg to observe that if this missing lime could
be got hold of without any young female relative of any distinguished
gentleman engaged in the lime trade (which I cherish next to my
life) being present, I think it might be a more agreeable proceeding
to the assisting bystanders, that is to say, lime-burners.”

“T also,” said Lightwood, pushing his friend aside with a laugh,
“should much prefer that.”

“Tt shall be done, gentlemen, if it can be done conveniently,” said
Mr. Inspector, with coolness. ‘There is no wish on. my part to cause
any distress in that quarter. Indeed, I am sorry for that quarter.”

“There was a boy in that quarter,” remarked Eugene. “He is
still there ?”

“No,” said Mr. Inspector. “He has quitted those works. He is
otherwise disposed of.”

“Will she be left alone then ?” asked Hugene.

“She will be left,” said Mr. Inspector, “alone.”

Bob’s reappearance with a steaming jug broke off the conversa-
tion. But although the jug steamed forth a delicious perfume, its
contents had not received that last happy touch which the surpassing
finish of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters imparted on such momentous
occasions. Bob carried in his left hand one of those iron models of
sugar-loaf hats, before mentioned, into which he emptied the jug, and
the pointed end of which he thrust deep down into the fire, so leaving
it for a few moments while he disappeared and reappeared with three
bright drinking-classes. Placing these on the table and bending over
the fire, meritoriously sensible of the trying nature of his duty, he

 

     
     
  

 

 

 

  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 123

watched the wreaths of steam, until at the special instant of pro-
jection he caught up the iron vessel and gave it one delicate twirl,
causing it to send forth one gentle hiss. Then he restored the con-
tents to the jug; held over the steam of the jug, each of the three
bright glasses in succession ; finally filled them all, and with a clear
conscience awaited the applause of his fellow-creatures.

It was bestowed (Mr. Inspector having proposed as an appropriate
sentiment “The lime trade!”) and Bob withdrew to report the com-
mendations of the guests to Miss Abbey in the bar. It may be here
in confidence admitted that, the room being close shut in his absence,
there had not appeared to be the slightest reason for the elaborate
maintenance of this same lime fiction. Only it had been regarded
by Mr. Inspector as so uncommonly satisfactory, and so fraught
with mysterious virtues, that neither of his clients had presumed to
question it.

Two taps were now heard on the outside of the window. Mr.
Inspector, hastily fortifying himself with another glass, strolled out
with a noiseless foot and an unoccupied countenance. Asone might go
+o survey the weather and the general aspect of the heavenly bodies.

“This is becoming grim, Mortimer,” said Eugene, in a low voice.
“TJ don’t like this.”

“Nor 1,” said Lightwood. “Shall we go?”

“Being here, let us stay. You ought to see it out, and I won't
leave you. Besides, that lonely girl with the dark hair runs in my
head. It was little more than a glimpse wo had of her that last
time, and yet I almost see her waitmg by the fire to-night. Do you
feel like a dark combination of traitor and pickpocket when you
think of that girl ?”

“ Rather,” returned Lightwood. “Do you

“Very much so.”

Their escort strolled back again, and reported. Divested of its
various lime-lights and shadows, his report went to the effect that
Gaffer was away in his boat, supposed to be on his old look-out; that
he had been expected last high-water; that having missed

it for some reason or other, he was not, according to his usual
habits at night, to be counted on before next high-water, or it might
be an hour or so later; that his daughter, surveyed through the
window, would seem to be so expecting him, for the supper was not
cooking, but set out ready to be cooked; that it would be high-
water at about one, and that it was now barely ten ; that there
was nothing to be done but watch and wait; that the informer
was keeping watch at the instant of that present reporting, but
that two heads were better than one (especially when the second
was Mr. Inspector’s); and that the reporter meant to share the

watch. And forasmuch as crouching under the lee of a hauled-up
boat on a night when it blew cold and strong, and when the
weather was varied with blasts of hail at times, might be wearisome
to amateurs, the reporter closed with the recommendation that the
two gentlemen should remain, for a while at any rate, in their
present quarters, which were weather-tight and warm.

They were not inclined to dispute this recommendation, but they

92?

et ae nee ee manent

 

 

 

 

 

      

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

124 OUR MUTUAL I'RIEND.

wanted to know where they could join the watchers when so disposed.
Rather than trust to a verbal description of the place, which might
mislead, Hugene (with a less weighty sense of personal trouble on
him than he usually had) would go out with Mr. Inspector, note the
spot, and come back.

On the shelving bank of the river, among the slimy stones of a
causeway—not the special causeway of the Six Jolly Fellowships,
which had a landing-place of its own, but another, a little removed,
and very near to the old windmill which was the denounced man’s
dwelling-place—were a few boats; some, moored and already beginning
to float; others, hauled up above the reach of the tide. Under one
of these latter, Eugene’s companion disappeared. And when Eugene
had observed its position with reference to the other boats, and had
made sure that he could not miss it, he turned his eyes upon the
building where, as he had been told, the lonely girl with the dark
hair sat by the fire.

He could see the light of the fire shining through the window.
Perhaps it drew him on to look in. Perhaps he had come out with
the express intention. ‘That part of the bank having rank grass
growing on it, there was no difficulty in getting close, without any
noise of footsteps: it was but to scramble up a ragged face of pretty
hard mud some three or four feet high and come upon the 2rass
and to the window. He came to the window by that means.

She had no other light than the light of the fire. ‘The unkindled
lamp stood on the table. She sat on the ground, looking at the brazier,
with her face leaning on her hand. ‘There was a kind of film or
flicker on her face, which at first he took to be the fitful firelight ;
but, on a second look, he saw that she was weeping. A sad and soli-
tary spectacle, as shown him by the rising and the falling of the fire.

It was a little window of but four pieces of glass, and was not
curtained; he chose it because the larger window near it was. It
showed him the room, and the bills upon the wall respecting the
drowned people starting out and receding by turns. But he glanced
slightly at them, though he looked long and steadily at her. A deep
rich piece of color, with the brown flush of her cheek and the
shining lustre of her hair, though sad and solitary, weeping by the
rising and the falling of the fire.

She started up. He had been so very still, that he felt sure it was
not he who had disturbed her, so merely withdrew from the window
and stood near it in the shadow of the wall. She opened the door,
and said in an alarmed tone, “Father, was that you calling me?”
And again, “Father!” And once again, after listening, “ Father! I
thought I heard you call me twice before!”

No response. “As she re-entered at the door, he dropped over the
bank and made his way back, among the ooze and near the hidinge-
place, to Mortimer Lightwood: to whom he told what he had seen of
the girl, and how this was becoming very grim indeed.

“Tf the real man feels as euilty as I do,” said Eugene, “he is
remarkably uncomfortable.” :

“Influence of secresy,’ suggested Lightwood.
“Tam notat all obliged to it for making me Guy Fawkes in the vault

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
   
  
   
  
 

 

 

 

  

 

 

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WAITING FOR FATHER.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 125

and a Sneak in the area both at once,” said Eugene. “Give me some
more of that stuff.”

Lightwood helped him to some more of that stuff, but it had been
cooling, and didn’t answer now.

“Pooh,” said Eugene, spitting it outamong the ashes. “Tastes like
the wash of the river.”

Are you so familiar with the flavor of the wash of the river ?”

“T seem to be tonight. I feel as if I had been half drowned, and
swallowing a gallon opine

« Influence of locality,” suggested Lightwood.

“You are mighty le: amed. to- night, you and your influences,”
returned Eugene. “ How long shall we stay here?”

“ How long do you think?”

“Tf I could choose, I should say a minute,” replied Eugene, “for the
Jolly Fellowship Porters are not the jolliest dogs I have known.
But I suppose we are e best here until they turn us out with the other
suspicious characters, at midnight.”

Thereupon he stirred the fire, and sat down on one side of it. It
struck eleven, and he made believe to compose himself patiently. But
eradually he took the fidgets in one leg, and then in the other lee
and then in one arm, and then in the other arm, and then in hie
chin, and then in his back, and then in his forehead, and then in his
hair, and then in his nose; and then he stretched himself recumbent
on two chairs, and groaned; and then he started up.

“Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am
tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a
burglary under the meanest circumstances, and the myrmidons of
justice are at my heels.”

“JT am quite as bad,” said Lightwood, sitting up facing him, with
a tumbled head, after gomg through some wonderful evolutions, in
which his head had bee m the lowest part of him. “This restless-
ness began, with me, long ago. All the time you were out, I felt
like Gulliver with the Lilliputians firing upon him.”

“Tt won't do, Mortimer. We must get into the air; we must join our
dear friend and brother, Riderhood. “And let us tranquillize ourselves
by making a compact. Next time (with a view to our peace of
mind) we'll commit the crime, instead of taking the criminal. You
swear it?”

“ Certainly.”

“Sworn! Let Tippins look to it. Her life’s in danger.”

Mortimer rang the bell to pay the score, and B 30b appeared to
transact that pueinecs with him: whom Eugene, in his careless ex-
travagance, asked if he would like a situation in the lime-trade ?

“Thankee sir, no sir,’ said Bob. “Ive a good sitiwation here, sir.”

“Tf you change your mind at any time,” returned Eugene, “come
to me at my works, and you'll always find an opening in the lime-
kiln.”

“ Thankee sir,” said Bob.

“This is my partner,” said Eugene, “who keeps the books and
attends to the wages. A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work is ever
my partner’s 3 motto.”

   

     
 
  
 
   
 
    
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  

126 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

« And a very good ’un it is, gentlemen,” said Bob, receiving his fee,
and drawing a bow out of his head with his right hand, very much
as he would have drawn a pint of beer out of the beer engine.

« Hugene,” Mortimer apostrophized him, laughing quite heartily
when they were alone again, “ how can you be so ridiculous?”

“Tam in a ridiculous humour,” quoth Eugene; “Iam a ridiculous
fellow. Everything is ridiculous. Come along!”

It passed into Mortimer Lightwood’s mind that a change of some
sort, best expressed perhaps as an intensification of all that was
wildest and most negligent and reckless in his friend, had come
upon him in the last half-hour or so. Thoroughly used to him as
he was, he found something new and strained in him that was for
the moment perplexing. ‘This passed into his mind, and passed out
again; but he remembered it afterwards.

“ There’s where she sits, you see,” said Eugene, when they were
standing under the bank, roared and riven at by the wind. “‘Ihere’s
the light of her fire.”

“Tl take a peep through the window,” said Mortimer.

“No, don’t!” Hugene caught him by the arm. “ Best not make a
show of her. Come to our honest friend.”

He led him to the post of watch, and they both dropped down and
crept under the lee of the boat; a better shelter than it had seemed.
before, being directly contrasted with the blowing wind and the bare
nieht.

“Mr. Inspector at home ?” whispered Hugene.

“ Here I am, sir.”

«And our friend of the perspiring brow is at the far corner there?
Good. Anything happened ?”

“His daughter has been out, thinking she heard him calling,
unless it was a sion to him to keep out of the way. It might
have been.”

“Tt might have been Rule Britannia,” muttered Eugene, “ but it
wasn’t. Mortimer!”

“Here!” (On the other side of Mr. Inspector.)

“Two burglaries now, and a forgery!”

With this indication of his depressed state of mind, Eugene fell

silent.

They were all silent for a long while. As it got to be flood-tide,
and the water came nearer to them, noises on the river became more
frequent, and they listened more. To the turning of steam-paddles
to the clinking of iron chain, to the creaking of blocks, to the mea-
sured working of oars, to the occasional violent barking of some passing
dog on shipboard, who seemed to scent them lying in their hiding-
place. The night was not so dark but that, besides the lights at
bows and mastheads gliding to and fro, they could discern some
shadowy bulk attached; and now and then a ghostly lighter with a
large dark sail, like a warning arm, would start up very near them,
pass on, and vanish. At this time of their watch, the water close to

them would be often agitated by some impulsion given it from a
distance. Often they believed this beat and plash to be the boat
they lay in wait for, running in ashore; and again and again they

 

         
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 127

would have started up, but for the immobility with which the in-
former, well used to the river, kept quiet in his plac e.

The wind carried away the striking of the great multitude of city
church clocks, for those lay to leeward of them; but there were bells
to windward that told them of its being One—T'wo—Three. With-
out that aid they would have known “how the night wore, by the
falling of the tide, recorded in the appearance of an eyer-widening
black wet st rip of shore, and the emergence of the paved causeway
from the river, foot by foot.

As the time so passed, this slinking business became a more and
more precarious one. Jt would seem as if the man had had some
intimation of what was in hand against him, or had taken fright?
His movements might have been planned to gain for him, in g getting
beyond their reac hy twelve hours’ advantage? The honest man w ho
had expended the sweat of his brow became uneasy, and began to
complain with bitterness of the proneness of mankind to cheat him
—him invested with the dignity of Labour!

Their retreat was so chosen that while they could watch the river,
they could watch the house. No one had passed in or out, since the
daughter thought she heard the father calling, No one could pass
in or out without being seen.

CSieun aU will be light at five,” said Mr. Inspector, “and then we

 

«Look here,” said I tiderhood, “what do you say to this? He may
have been lurking in and out, and just holding his own betwixt two
or three bridges, for hours back.”

“What do you make of that?” said Mr. Inspector. Stoical, but
contradictory.

“He may be doing so at this present time.”

“What do you make of that?” said Mr. Inspector.

“My boat’s among them boats ee e at the cause’ay.”

“ And what do you make of your boat?” said Mr. Inspector.

“What if I put off in her and take a look round? I know ms
ways, and the likely nooks he favours. I know where he'd be a
such a time of the tide, and where he’d be at such another eae
Ain’t I been his pardner? None of you need show. None of you
need stir. JI can shove her off without help; and as to me being
seek I’m about at all times.

“You might have given a worse opinion,” said Mr. Inspector, after
brief consideration. “Try it.”

“Stop a bit. Let's work it out. IfI want you, Pll drop round
under the Fellowships and tip you a whistle.”

“Tf I might so far presume as to offer a suggestion to my honorable
and gallant friend, whose knowledge of naval matters far be it from
me to impeach,” Hugene struck in with great deliberation, “it would
be, that to tip a whistle is to advertise mystery and invite specula-
tion. My honorable and gallant friend will, I trust, excuse me, as
an independent member, for throwing out a remark whic sh I feel to
be due to this house and the country.”

“Was that the T’other Governor, or Lawyer Lightwood?” asked
Riderhood. For, they spoke as they crouched or lay, without seeing
one another’s faces.

 

 

 

 
  

 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

128 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ In reply to the question put by my honorable and gallant friend,”
said Eugene, who was lying on his back with his hat on his face, as
an attitude highly expressive of watchfulness, “I can have no hesita-
tion in replyimg (it not being inconsistent with the public service)
that those accents were the accents of the 'T’other Governor.”

“You've tolerable good eyes, ain’t you, Governor? You've all
tolerable good eyes, ain’t you?” demanded the informer.

All.

“Then if I row up under the Fellowships and lay there, no need
to whistle. You'll make out that there’s a speck of something or
another there, and you'll know it’s me, and you'll come down that
cause’ay tome. Understood all ?”

Understood all.

“ Off she goes then !”

In a moment, with the wind cutting keenly at him sideways, he
was staggering down to his boat; in a few moments he was clear,
and creeping up the river under their own shore.

Eugene had raised himself on his elbow to look into the darkness
after him. “I wish the boat of my honorable and gallant friend,” he
murmured, lying down again and speaking into his hat, “may be
endowed with philanthropy enough to tum bottom-upward and
extinguish him !—Mortimer.”

“My honorable friend.”

“Three burglaries, two forgeries, and a midnight assassination.”

Yet in spite of haying those weights on his conscience, Eugene
was somewhat enlivened by the late slight change in the circum-
stances of affairs. So were his two companions. Its being a change
was everything. ‘The suspense seemed to have taken a new lease,
and to have begun afresh from a recent date. There was something
additional to look for. ‘They were all three more sharply on the
alert, and less deadened by the miserable influences of the place and
time.

More than an hour had passed, and they were even dozing, when
one of the three—each said it was he, and he had not dozed—made
out Riderhood in his boat at the spot agreed on. They sprang up,
came out from their shelter, and went down to him. When he
saw them coming, he dropped alongside the causeway ; so that they,
standing on the causeway, could speak with him in whispers, under
the shadowy mass of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters fast asleep.

“ Blest if I can make it out!” said he, staring at them.

“Make what out? Have you seen him ?”

NOs

“What have you seen?” asked Lightwood. For, he was staring at
them in the strangest way.

“T-ve seen his boat.”

“Not empty ?”

“Yes, empty. And what’s more—adrift. And what’s more,
with one scull gone. And what’s more,—with t’other scull jammed
in the thowels and broke short off. And what’s more,—the boat's
drove tight by the tide ’atwixt two tiers of barges. And what’s
more,—he’s in luck again, by George if he ain’t!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 129

CHAPTER XIV.
THE BIRD OF PREY BROUGHT DOWN.

Cotp on the shore, in the raw cold of that leaden crisis in the four-
and-twenty hours when the vital force of all the noblest and
prettiest things that live is at its lowest, the three watchers looked
each at the blank faces of the other two, and all at the blank face of
Riderhood in his boat.

“Gaffer’s boat, Gaffer in luck again, and yet no Gaffer!” So spake
Riderhood, staring disconsolate.

As if with one accord, they all turned their eyes towards the light
of the fire shining through the window. It was fainter and duller.
Perhaps fire, like the higher animal and vegetable life it helps to
sustain, has its greatest tendency towards death, when the night is
dying and the day is not yet born.

“Tf it was me that had the law of this here job in hand,” growled
Riderhood with a threatening shake of his head, “blest if I wouldn’t
lay hold of her, at any rate!”

“Ay, but itis not you,” said Eugene. With something so sud-
denly fierce in him that the informer returned submissively ; “ Well,
well, well, *tother governor, I didn’t say it was. A man may speak.”

“And vermin may be silent,” said Hugene. “Hold your tongue,
you water-rat !”

Astonished by his friend’s unusual heat, Lightwood stared too, and
then said: “ What can have become of this man ?”

“(Can’t imagine. Unless he dived overboard.” The informer wiped
his brow ruefully as he said it, sitting in his boat and always
staring disconsolate.

“Did you make his boat fast

“She’s fast enough till the tide runs back. J couldn’t make her
faster than she is. Come aboard of mine, and see for your ownselves.”

There was a little backwardness in complying, for the freight
looked too much for the boat; but on Riderhood’s protesting “that
he had had half a dozen, dead and alive, in her afore now, and she
was nothing deep in the water nox down in the stern even then, to
speak of,” they carefully took their places, and trimmed the crazy
thing. While they were doing so, Riderhood still sat staring discon-
solate.

“Allright. Give way!” said Lightwood.

“Give way, by George!” repeated Riderhood, before shoving off,
“Tf he’s gone and made off any how Lawyer Lightwood, it’s
enough to make me give way in a different manner. But he always
was a cheat, con-found him! He always was a infernal cheat,
was Gaffer. Nothing straichtfor’ard, nothing on the square. So
mean, so underhanded. Never going through with a thing, nor
carrying it out like a man!”

“Hallo! Steady!” cried Hugene (he had recovered immediately
on embarking), as they bumped heavily against a pile; and then in
a lower voice reversed his late apostrophe by remarking (“I wish
the boat of my honorable and gallant friend may be endowed with.

VOL. I. K

9

  
 
    
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
    
  
 
 
    
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     
  
   
   
  
   

 

 

 

 

OUR

   

MUTUAL FRIEND.

philanthropy enough not to turn bottom-upward and extinguish
us!) Steady, steady! Sit close, Mortimer. Here’s the hail again.
See how it flies, like a troop of wild cats, at Mr. Riderhood’s eyes!”

Indeed he had the full benefit of it, and it so mauled him, though
he bent his head low and tried to present nothing but the mangy
cap to it, that he dropped under the lee of a tier of shipping, and they
lay there until it was over. The squi all had come up, like a spiteful
messenger before the morning; there followed in its wake a ragged.
tear of light which ripped the dark clouds until they showed a great
grey hole of day.

They were all shivering, and everything about them seemed to be
shivering ; the river itself, craft, rigging, s “sails, such early smoke as
there yet was on the shore. Black with wet , and altered to the eye
by white patches of hail and sleet, the huddled buildings looked lower
than usual, as if they were cowering, and had shrunk with the cold.
Very little life was to be seen on either bank, windows and doors were
shut, and the staring black and white letters upon wharves and ware-
houses “ looked,” said Hugene to Mortimer, “like inscriptions over the
graves of dead businesses.’

As they glided slowly on, keeping under the shore and sneaking
in and out among the shipping by back-alleys of water, in a pilfermg
way that seemed to be their boatman’s normal manner of progression,
all the objects among which they crept were so huge in contrast with
their wretched boat, as to threaten to crush it. Not a ship’s
hull, with its rusty iron links of cable run out of hawse-holes long
discolored with the iron’s rusty tears, but seemed to be there w ith
a fell intention. Not a figure-head but had the menacing look of
bursting forward to run them down. Not a sluice gate, or a painted
scale upon a post er wall, showing the depth of water, but seemed to
hint, like the dreadfully facetious Wolf in bed in Grandmamma’s
cottage, “That's to drown you in, my dears!” Not a lumbering black
barge, with its cracked and blistered side impending over them, but
seemed to suck at the river with a thirst for suc king them under.
And everything so vaunted the spoiling influences of w ater—discolored
copper, rotten ~wood, honey-combed stone, green dank deposit—that
the after-consequences of being crushed, sucked under, and drawn
down, looked as ugly to the imagination as the main event.

Some half-hour of this w ork, antl Riderhood unshipped his sculls,
stood holding on to a barge, and hand over hand long-wise along the
barge’s side gradually worked his boat under her head into a secret
little nook of scummy water. And driven into that nook, and
wedged as he had described, was Gaffer’s boat; that boat with the
stain still 3 in it, bearing some resemblance to a niuffled human form.

“Now tell me I’m a liar!” said the honest man.

(“ With a morbid bl, murmured Eugene to Lightwood,
“that somebody is alw ays g going to tell him the truth? )

“This is Hexam’s boat,” said Mr. Inspector. “I know her well.”

“Look at the broken scull. Look at the tother scull gone. Now
tell me I am a liar!” said the honest man.

Mr. Inspector stepped into the boat. Hugene and Mortimer
looked on.

“And see now!” added Riderhood, creeping aft, and showing a

 

 

 

  

 

   
  
   
  

 

  

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

stretched rope made fast there and towing overboard. “Didn’tI tell
you he was in luck again ?”

“Haul in,” said Mr. Inspector.

“Hasy to say haul in,’ answered Riderhood. “Not so easy done.
His luck’s got fouled under the keels of the barges. I tried to haul in
last time, but I couldn’t. See how taut the line is!”

“T must have it up,” said Mr. Inspector. “I am going to take
is boat ashore, and his luck along with it. Try easy now.”

e tried easy now; but the luck resisted ; wouldn’t come.
‘I mean to have it, and the boat too,” said Mr. Inspector, playin
the line.

But still the luck resisted ; wouldn’t come.

“Take care,” said Riderhood. “You'll disfigure. Or pull asunder
perhaps.”

“JT am not going to do either, not even to your Grandmother,” said
Mr. Inspector; “but I mean to have it. Come!” he added, at once
persuasively and with authority to the hidden object in the water, as
he played the line again; “it’s no good this sort of game, you know.
You must come up. 1 mean to have you.”

There was so much virtue in this distinctly and decidedly meaning
to have it, that it yielded a little, even while the line was played.

“TY told you so,” quoth Mr. Inspector, pulling off his outer coat, and
leaning: 400)

 

 

   

 

well over the stern with a will. Come !”

It was an awful sort of fishing, but it no more disconcerted Mr.
Inspector than if he had been fishing in a punt on a summer evening
by some soothing weir high up the peaceful river. After certain
minutes, and a few directions to the rest to “ease her a little for’ard,”
and “now ease her a trifle aft,” and the 1] he said composedly,
“ All clear!” and the line and the boat came free together.

Accepting Lightwood’s proffered hand to help him up, he then put
on his coat, and said to Riderhood, “ Hand me over those spare sculls
of yours, and [ll pull this in to the nearest stairs. Go ahead you,
and keep out in pretty open water, that 1 mayn’t vet fouled again.”

His directions were obeyed, and they pulled ashore directly; two
in one boat, two in the other.

“Now,” said Mr. Inspector, again to Riderhood, when they were
all on the slushy stones; “you have had more practice in this than I
have had, and ought to be a better workman at it. Undo the tow-
rope, and we'll help you haul in.”

Riderhood got into the boat accordingly. It appeared as if he had
scarcely had a moment’s time to touch the rope or look over the
stern, when he came scrambling back, as pale as the morning, and
gasped out:

“By the Lord, he’s done me!”

“What do you mean?” they all demanded.

He pointed behind him at the boat, and gasped to that degree that
he dropped upon the stones to get his breath,

“Gaffer’s done me. It’s Gaffer!”

They ran to the rope, leaving him gasping there. Soon, the form
of the bird of prey, dead some hours, lay stretched upon the shore,
with a new blast storming at it and clotting the wet hair with hail-
stones,

 

 

     

 

 

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132 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Father, was that you calling me? Father! I thought I heard
you call me twice before! Words never to be answered, those, upon
the earth-side of the grave. The wind sweeps jeeringly over Father,
whips him with the frayed ends of his dress and his jagged hair, tries
to turn him where he lies stark on his back, and force his face
towards the rising sun, that he may be shamed the more. A lull,
and the wind is secret and prying with him; lifts and lets falls a
rag; hides palpitating under another rag; runs nimbly through his
hair and beard. hen, in a rush, it cruelly taunts him. Father, was
that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless and the dead? Was
it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was it you, thus
baptized unto Death, with these flying impurities now flung upon
your face? Why notspeak, Father? Soaking into this filthy ground
as you lie here, is your own shape. Did you never see such a shape
soaked into your boat? Speak, Father. Speak to us, the winds, the
only listeners left you!

“ Now see,” said Mr. Inspector, after mature deliberation : knecling
on one knee beside the body, when they had stood looking down on
the drowned man, as he had many a time looked down on many
another man: “the way of it was this. Of course you gentlemen
hardly failed to observe that he was towing by the neck and arms.”

They had helped to release the rope, and of course not.

“ And you will have observed before, and you will observe now,
that this knot, which was drawn chock-tight round his neck by the
strain of bis own arms, is a slip-knot:” holding it up for demon-
stration.

Plain enough.

“Likewise you will have observed how he had run the other end
of this rope to his boat.”

It had the curves and indentations in it still, where it had been
twined and bound.

“Now see,” said Mr. Inspector, “see how it works round upon
him. It’s a wild tempestuous evening when this man that was,”
stooping to wipe some hailstones out of his hair with an end of his
own drowned jacket, “—there! Now he’s more like himself, though
he’s badly bruised,—when this man that was, rows out upon the
river on his usual lay. He carries with him this coil of rope. He
always carries with him this coil of rope. It’s as well known to me
as he was himself. Sometimes it lay in the bottom of his boat.
Sometimes he hung it loose round his neck. He was a light-dresser
was this man;—you see?” lifting the loose neckerchief over his
breast, and taking the opportunity of wiping the dead lips with it—
“and when it was wet, or freezing, or blew cold, he would hang this
coil of line round his neck. Last evening he does this. Worse for
him! He dodges about in his boat, does this man, till he gets chilled.
Ilis hands,” taking up one of them, which dropped like a leaden
weight, “get numbed. He sees some object that’s in his way of
business, floating. He makes ready to secure that object. He
unwinds the end of his coil that he wants to take some turns on in
his boat, and he takes turns enough on it to secure that it shan't
run out. He makes it too secure, as it happens. He is a little longer
about this than usual, his hands beng numbed. His object drifts

  

   

    
  
   
  
   
    
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
    
  
   
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
up, before he is quite ready for it. He catches at it, thinks he’ll make
sure of the contents of the pockets anyhow, in case he should be
parted from it, bends right over the stern, and in one of these heavy
:qualls, or in the cross-swell of two steamers, or in not being quite
prepared, or through all or most or some, gets a lurch, overbalances
and goes head-foremost overboard. Now see! He can swim, can
this man, and instantly he strikes out. But in such striking-ont he
tangles his arms, pulls strong on the slip-knot, and it runs home.
‘The object he had expected to take in tow, floats by, and his own
boat tows him dead, to where we found him, all entangled in his own
line. You'll ask me how I make out about the pockets? First, I]
tell you more; there was silver in ’em. How do I make that out?
Simple and satisfactory. Because he’s got it here.” The lecturer
held up the tightly clenched right hand.

“ What is to be done with the remains?” asked Lightwood.

“Tf you wouldn’t object to standing by him half a minute, sir,”
was the reply, “Ill find the nearest of our men to come and take
charge of him ;—I still call it him, you see,” said Mr. Inspector,
looking back as he went, with a philosophical smile upon the force of
habit.

“Eugene,” said Lightwood—and was about to add “we may wait
at a little distance,” when turning his head he found that no Eugene
was there.

He raised his voice and called “ Eugene! Holloa!” But no Eugene
replied.

It was broad daylight now, and he looked about. But no Eugene
was in all the view.

Mr. Inspector speedily returning down the wooden stairs, with a
police constable, Lightwood asked him if he had seen his friend leave
them? Mr. Inspector could not exactly say that he had seen him go,
but had noticed that he was restless.

“Singular and entertaining combination, sir, your friend.”

“J wish it had not been a part of his singular and entertaining
combination to give me the slip under these dreary circumstances at
this time of the morning,” said Lightwood. “Can we get anything
hot to drink?”

We could, and we did. In a public-house kitchen with a large
fire. We got hot brandy and water, and it revived us wonderfully.
Mr. Inspector having to Mr. Riderhood announced his official
intention of “keeping his eye upon him,” stood him in a corer
of the fireplace, like a wet umbrella, and took no further outward
and visible notice of that honest man, except ordering a separate
service of brandy and water for him: apparently out of the public funds.

As Mortimer Lightwood sat before the blazing fire, conscious of
drinking brandy and water then and there in his sleep, and yet at one
and ANGST oat Go then ae at the Six Jolly Fellowships,
Riderhood rowed cael ieee oe : Pe ce situng in the boat that
and having to ‘dine in th i Te iy a ee
ee Hes ae a‘ e Temple with an unknown man,

SC ase Ree Eugene Gaffer Harmon, and
2,—as he passed through these curious vicissi-

said he lived at Hailstorn
tudes! of tations ae
tes of fatigue and slumber, arranged upon the scale of a dozen

  

 

 

 

 

 
     

 

 

 

 

 

138 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

hours to the second, he became aware of answering aloud a commu-
nication of pressing importance that had never been made to him,
and then turned it into a cough on beholding Mr. Inspector. For, he
felt, with some natural indignation, that that functionary might
otherwise suspect him of having closed his eyes, or wandered in his
attention.

“ Here just before us, you see,” said Mr, Inspector.

“T see,” said Lightwood, with dignity.

“ And had hot brandy and water too, you see,” said Mr. Inspector,
“and then cut off at a ereat rate.”

“ Who ?” said Lightwood.

“Your friend, you know.”

“ T know,” he replied, again with dienity.

After hearing, in a mist through which Mr. Inspector loomed
vague and large, that the officer took upon himself to prepare the
dead man’s daughter for what had befallen in the night, and

t
eo

generally that he took eve ything upon himself, Mortimer Lichtwood
stumbled in his sleep to a cab-stand, called a cab, and had entered
the army and committed a capital military offence and been tried by
court martial and found guilty and had arranged his affairs and been
marched out to be shot, before the door banged.

Hard work rowing the cab through the City to the Tx mple, for a
cup of from five to ten thousand pounds value, given by Mr. Boffin:
and hard work holding forth at that immeasurable length to Eugene
he had been rescued with a x ype from the running pavement )

king off in that extraordinary manner! But he offered such
ample apologies, and was so very penitent, that when Lightwood got
ut of the cab, he gave the driver a particular charge to be careful
of him. Which the driver (knowing there was no other fare left in-
side) stared at prodigiously.

In short, the night’s work had so exhausted and worn out this actor
in it, that he had become a mere somnambulist, He was too tired to
rest in his sleep, until he was even tired out of being too tired, and
dropped into oblivion. Late in the afternoon he awoke, and in
some anxiety sent round to Hugene’s lodging hard by, to inquire if
he were up yet?

Oh yes, he was up. In fact, he had not been to bed. He had
just come home. And here he was, close following on the heels of
the message.

“Why what bloodshot, draggled, dishevelled spectacle is
cried Mortimer,

“Are my feathers so very much rumpled ?” said Eugene,
goine up to the lookinc-olass, « They are rather out of sorts.
consider. Such a nicht for plumage!”

“Such a night ” repeated Mortimer. “ What became of you in
the morning ?” rae : tHe

“My dear fellow,” said Eugene, sitting on his bed, “4 sat ae
we had bored one another so long, that an unbroken continuance 0
those relations must inevitably terminate in our flying; to opposite
points of the earth. J also felt that I had committed over ah ms
the Newgate Calendar. So, for mingled considerations of friendshiy
and felony, I took a walk.”

 

 

 

 

  

——E——E————E————

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER XV.
TWO NEW SERVANTS.

Mr. and Mrs. Boffin sat after breakfast, in the Bower, a prey t
prosperity. My. Boffin’s face denoted Care and Complication. Many
disordered papers were before him, and he looked at them about as
hopefully as an innocent civilian might look at a crowd of troops
whom he was required at five minutes’ notice to manceuvre and
review. He had been engaged in some attempts to make notes of
these papers ; but being troubled (as men of his stamp often are) with
an exceedingly distrustful and corrective thumb, that busy member
had so often interposed to smear his notes, that they were little more
legible than the various impressions of itself, which blurred his nose
and forehead. It is curious to consider, in such a case as Mr.
Boffin’s, what a cheap article ink is, and how far it may be made to
go. Asa grain of musk will scent a drawer for many years, and still
lose nothing appreciable of its original weight, so a halfpenny-worth
of ink would blot Mr. Boffin to the roots of his hair and the calves of
his legs, without inscribing a line on the paper before him, or ap-
pearing to diminish in the inkstand.

Mr. Boffin was in such severe literary difficulties that his eyes were
prominent and fixed, and his breathing was stertorous, when, to the
great relief of Mrs. Boffin, who observed these symptoms with alarm,
the yard bell rang.

“ Who’s that, I wonder!” said Mrs. Boffin.

q laid down hi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Mr. Boffin drew a long breath, pen, looked at his
notes as doubting whether he had the pleasure of their acquaintance,
and appeared, on a second perusal of their countenances, to be con-
firmed in his impression that he had not, when there was announced
by the hammer-headed young man :

“Myr. Rokesmith.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Boffin. “Oh indeed! Our and the Wilfers’ Mutual
Friend, my dear. Yes. Ask him to come in.”

Mr. Rokesmith appeared.

«Sit down, sir,” said Mr. Boffin, shaking hands with him, “ Mrs.
Boffin you’re already acquainted with. Well, sir, I am rather unpre-
pared to see you, for, to tell you the truth, I’ve been so busy with one
thing and another, that I’ve not had time to turn your offer over.”

«That's apology for both of us: for Mr. Boffin, and for me as well,”
said the smiling Mrs. Boffin.. “But Lor! we can talk it over now ;
can’t us

Mr. Rokesmith bowed, thanked her, and said he hoped so.

“Tet me see then,” resumed Mr. Boffin, with his hand to his
chin. “It was Secretary that you named ; wasn’t it?”

“J said Secretary,” assented Mr. Rokesmith.

“Tt rather puzzled me at the time,” said Mr. Boffin, “and it rather
puzzled me and Mrs. Boffin when we spoke of it afterwards, because
(not to make a mystery of our belief) we have always believed a Secre-
tary to be a piece of furniture, mostly of mahogany, lined with green

   

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136 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

baize or leather, with a lot of little drawers in it. Now, you won’t
think I take a liberty when I mention that you certainly ain’t that.”

Certainly not, said Mr. Rokesmith. But he had used the word in
the sense of Steward.

“Why, as to Steward, you see,” returned Mr. Boffin, with his hand
still to his chin, “the odds are that Mrs. Boffin and me may never go
upon the water. Being both bad sailors, we should want a Steward
if we did ; but there’s generally one provided.”

Mr. Rokesmith again explained ; defining the duties he sought to
undertake, as those of general superintendent, or manager, or over-
looker, or man of business.

“ Now, for instance—come!” said Mr. Boffin, in his pouncing way.
“Tf you entered my employment, what would you do?”

“1 would keep exact accounts of all the expenditure you sanctioned,
Mr. Boffin. I would write your letters, under your direction. Iwould
transact your business with people in your pay or employment. I
would,” with a glance and a half-smile at the table, “arrange your
papers—”

Mr. Boffin rubbed his inky ear, and looked at his wife.

“—_And so arrange them as to have them always in order for im-
mediate reference, with a note of the contents of each outside it.”

“YT tell you what,” said Mr. Boffin, slowly crumpling his own
blotted note in his hand; “if you'll turn to at these present papers,
and see what you can make of ’em, I shall know better what J can
make of you.”

No sooner said than done. Relinquishing his hat and gloves, Mr.
Rokesmith sat down quietly at the table, arranged the open papers
into an orderly heap, cast his eyes over each in succession, folded it,
docketed it on the outside, laid it in a second heap, and, when that
second heap was complete and the first gone, took from his pocket a
piece of string and tied it together with a remarkably dexterous hand
at a running curve and a loop.

“Good!” said Mr. Boffin. “ Very good! Now let us hear what
they're all about; will you be so good ?”

John Rokesmith read his abstractsaloud. ‘They were all about the
new house. Decorator’s estimate, so much. Furniture estimate, so
much. Estimate for furniture of offices,somuch. Coach-maker’s esti-
mate, so much. Horse-dealer’s estimate, somuch. Harness-maker’s
estimate so much, Goldsmith’s estimate, so much. ‘Total, so very
much. Then came correspondence. Acceptance of Mr. Boffin’s offer
of such a date, and to such an éffect. Rejection of Mr. Boffin’s pro-
posal of such a date and to such an effect. Concerning Mr. Boftin’s
scheme of such another date to such another effect. All compact and
methodical.

“ Apple-pie order !” said Mr. Boffin, after checking off each inscrip-
tion with his hand, like a man beating time. “And whatever you
do with your ink, J can’t think, for you're as clean as a whistle after
it. Now, astoa letter. Let’s,” said Mr. Boffin, rubbing his hands in
his pleasantly childish admiration, “let’s try a letter next.”

“To whom shall it be addressed, Mr. Boffin 2”
“ Anyone. Yourself.”
Mr. Rokesmith quickly wrote, and then read aloud:

 

  

  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
   
   
   
   
  
   
  
  
 
  
   
  
  
 

 

 

 

     
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 137

“«Mr. Boffin presents his compliments to Mr. John Rokesmith, and
begs to say that he has decided on giving Mr. John Rokesmith a trial
in the capacity he desires to fill, Mr. Boffin takes Mr. John Roke-
smith at his word, in postponing to some indefinite period, the con-
sideration of salary. 1% is quite understood that Mr. Boffin is in no
way committed on that point. Mr. Boffin has merely to add, that he
relies on Mr. John Rokesmith’s assurance that he will be faithful and
serviceable. Mr. John Rokesmith will please enter on his duties im-
mediately.’ ”

“Well! Now, Noddy!” cried Mrs. Boffin, clapping her hands,
“That is a good one!”

My. Boffin was no less delighted; indeed, in his own bosom, he
regarded both the composition itself and the device that had given
birth to it, as a very remarkable monument of human ingenuity.

“And I tell you, my deary,” said Mrs. Boffin, “that if you don’t
close with Mr. Rokesmith now at once, and if you ever go a muddling
yourself again with things never meant nor made for you, you'll have an
apoplexy—besides iron-moulding your linen—and youwll break my
heart.”

Mr. Boffin embraced his spouse for these words of wisdom, and
then, congratulating John Rokesmith on the brilliancy of his
achievements, gave him his hand in pledge of their new relations.
So did Mrs. Boffin.

“Now,” said Mr. Boffin, who, in his frankness, felt that it did not
become him to have a gentleman in his employment five minutes,
without reposing some confidence in him, “you must be let a little
more into our affairs, Rokesmith. I mentioned to you, when I made
your acquaintance, or I might better say when you made mine, that
Mrs. Boffin’s inclinations was setting in the way of Fashion, but
that I didn’t know how fashionable we might or might not grow.
Well! Mrs. Boffin has carried the day, and we're going in neck and
crop for Fashion.”

“I rather inferred that, sir,’ replied John Rokesmith, “from the
scale on which your new establishment is to be maintained.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Boffin, “it’s to be a Spanker. The fact is, my
literary man named to me that a house with which he is, as I may
say, connected—in which he has an interest 7

“ As property?” inquired John Rokesmith.

“ Why no,” said Mr. Boffin, “ not exactly that; asort of a family tie.”

“ Association ?” the Secretary suggested.

“Ah!” said Mr. Boffin. “Perhaps. Anyhow, he named to me that
the house had a board up, ‘This Eminently Aristocratic Mansion to
be let or sold.’ Me and Mrs. Boffin went to look at it, and finding it
beyond a doubt Eminently Aristocratic (though a trifle high and dull,
which after all may be part of the same thing) took it. My literary
man was so friendly as to drop into a charming piece of poetry on
that occasion, in which he complimented Mrs. Boffin on coming into
possession of —how did it go, my dear?”

Mrs. Boffin replied :
«“«The gay, the gay and festive scene,
The halls, the halls of dazzling light,’ ”
“That's it! And it was made neater by there really being two halls

 

Pei ov i er

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

  

in the house, a front ’un and a back ’un, besides the servants’. He like-
wise dropped into a very pretty piece of poetry to be sure, respecting
the extent to which he would be willing to put himself out of the
y to bring Mrs. Boffin round, in case she should ever get low in
her spirits in the house. Mrs. Boffin has a wonderful memory.
Will you repeat it, my dear?”

Mrs. Boffin complied, by reciting the verses in which this obliging
offer had been made, exactly as she had received them.

 

“*T'll tell thee how the maiden wept, Mrs. Boftin,

“When her true love was slain ma’am,

“ And how her broken spirit slept, Mrs, Boffin,

“ And never woke again ma’am.

“T'll tell thee (if agreeable to Mr. Boffin) how the steed drew nigh,

“ And left his lord afar;

“ And if my tale (which I hope Mr. Boffin might excuse) should make
you sigh,

“Tl strike the light guitar.’ ”

“Correct to the letter!” said Mr. Boffin. “And I consider that
the poetry brings us both in, in a beautiful manner.”

The eftect of the poem on the Secretary being evidently to astonish
him, Mr. Boffin was confirmed in his high opimion of it, and was
greatly pleased.

“Now, you see, Rokesmith,” he went on, “a literary man—with
4 wooden leg—is liable to jealousy. I shall therefore cast about for
omfortable ways and means of not calling up Wege’s jealousy, but of
keeping you in your department, and keeping him in his.”

“Lor!” cried Mrs. Boftin, “ What I say is, the world’s wide enough
for all of us!”

“So it is, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin, “when not literary. But
when so, not so. And I am bound to bear in mind that I took Wege
on, at a time when I had no thought of being fashionable or of
leaving the Bower. ‘To let him feel himself anyways slighted now,
would be to be guilty of a meanness, and to act like having one’s
head turned by the halls of dazzling light. Which Lord forbid!
Rokesmith, what shall we say about your living in the house ?”

“Tn this house?”

“No,no. Ihave got other plans for this house. In the new house ?”
“That will be as you please, Mr. Boffin. I hold myself quite at
your disposal. You know where I live at present.”

“Well!” said Mr. Boffin, after considering the point; “suppose
you keep as you are for the present, and we'll decide by-and-by.
Yow ll begin to take charge at once, of all that’s going on in the new
house, will you ?”

“Most willingly. I will begin this very day. Will you give me
the address ?”

Mr. Boffin repeated it, and the Secretary wrote it down in his pocket-
book. Mrs. Boffin took the opportunity of his being so engaged, to
get a better observation of his face than she had yet taken. It im-
pressed her in his favour, for she nodded aside to Mr. Boffin, “I like
him.”

E - will see directly that everything is in train, Mr. Boffin.”
Bowen” ee. Being here, would you care at all to look round the

  

   

 

 

  
 

 

    

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

   

 

 

     
   
   
   
 
 
  
   
 
    
  
     
   
   
    
  
 
 
  
   
 
   
   
     
  
   
  
 
  
  
   
    

 

 

 

   

 

 

OUR

 

MUTUAL FRIEND.
“TI should greatly like it. I have heard so much of its story.”
“Come!” said Mr. ON And he and Mrs. Boffin led the way.
A gloomy house the Bower, with sordid signs on it of haying been,

through its long existence as Harmony Jail, in ne holding

Bare of paint, bare of paper on the walls, bare of furniture, bar

experience of human life. Whatever is built by man for m

  

 

occupation, must, like natural creations, fulfil the intention of its
existence, or soon perish. This old house had wasted more from
desuetude than it would have wasted from use, twenty years for one

  

A certain leanness falls upon houses not sult e nly 7 imbued w ith
life (as if they were nourished upon it), which was very noticeable
here. The staircase, balustrades, and rails, had a spare look—an air of
being denuded to the bone—which the panels of the walls and the
jambs of the doors and windows also bore. ‘The scanty moveables
partook of it; save for the cleanliness of the place, the dust into
vhich they were all resolving would have lain thick on the floors;
and those, both in colour and in grain, were worn like old faces that
had kept much alone.

The bedroom een the clutching old man had lost erip on life,
was left as he had left it. There was the old grisly four- =post é bed-
stead, haat hangings, and with a jail-like upper rim of iron and
spikes; and there was the old patch-work counterpane. ‘There was
the tight-clenched old bureau, receding atop like a bad and secret

forehes ad; there was the cumbersome old fables with twisted legs, at the
yed-side ; and thore was the box upon it, in which the will had lain.
A fo sw old chairs with patch-work covers, under which the more pre-
cious stuff to be preserved had slowly lost its ay of colour with-
out imparting pleasure to any eye, stood against the wall. A hard
family likeness was on all these things,
“The room was ke 7 like this, Rokesmith,” said Mr. Boffin, “against
In short, everything in the house was kept exac tly
as s, for in to see and pups Even now, nothing is
chanecd but our own room below-stairs that you have just left.
When the son came home for the last fade in his life, ne for the last
time in his life saw his father, it was most likely in this room that
they met.”

As the Secretary looked all round it, his eyes rested on a side door
in a corner.

“ Another staircase,” said Mr. Boffin, un ing the door, “leading
down into the yard. We'll go down this way, as you may like to
see the yard, and it’s all in the road. When the son was a little
child, it was up and down these stairs that he mostly came and went to
his father. He was very timid of his father. Ive seen him sit on these
stairs, in his shy way, poor child, many a time. Me and Mrs. Boffin
have comforted hi n, sitting w ith his little book on these stairs, often.”

“Ah! And his poor sister too,” said Mrs. Boffin. “And here’s
the sunny place on the white wall where the y one day measured one
a a Olek al Gea wah al
with a pencil; but the names are here Fil he ey ie ne
gone for ever.” P 5
: mee ae ake aa the names, old lady,” said Mr. Boffin.

mus xe care of the names. They shan’t be rubbed out in

 

 
 
 
 

 

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Pirie aes cena

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140 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

our time, nor yet, if we can help it, in the time after us. Poor little
children !”

“ Ah, poor little children!” said Mrs. Boffin.

They had opened the door at the bottom of the staircase giving on
the yard, and they stood in the sunlight, looking at the scrawl of the
two unsteady childish hands two or three steps up the staircase.
‘There was something in this simple memento of a blighted childhood,
and in the tenderness of Mrs. Boffin, that touched the Secretary.

Mr. Boffin then showed his new man of business the Mounds, and
his own particular Mound which had been left him as his legacy
under the will before he acquired the whole estate.

“It would have been enough for us,” said Mr. Boffin, “in case it
had pleased God to spare the last of those two young lives and sorrow-
ul deaths. We didn’t want the rest.”

At the treasures of the yard, and at the outside of the house, and at
the detached building which Mr. Boffin pointed out as the residence
of himself and his wife during the many years of their service, the
Secretary looked with interest. It was not until Mr. Boffin had
shown him every wonder of the Bower twice over, that he remem-
bered his having duties to discharge elsewhere.

“You have no instructions to give me, Mr. Boffin, in reference to
this place ?”

“Not any, Rokesmith. No.”

“Might f ask, without seeming impertinent, whether you have any
intention of selling it ?”

“Certainly not. In remembrance of our old master, our old
master’s children, and our old service, me and Mrs. Boffin mean to
keep it up as it stands.”

The Secretary’s eyes glanced with so much meaning in them at
the Mounds, that Mx. Boffin said, as if in answer to a remark:

“ Ay, ay, that’s another thing. I may sell them, though I should
be sorry to see the neighbourhood deprived of ’em too. Ill look
but a poor dead flat without the Mounds. Still I don’t say that I’m
going to keep’em always there, for the sake of the beauty of the land-
scape. ‘There’s no hurry about it; that’s all I say at present. I
ain't a scholar in much, Rokesmith, but I’m a pretty fair scholar in
dust. I can price the Mounds to a fraction, and I know how they can
be best disposed of, and likewise that they take no harm by standing
where they do. You'll look in to-morrow, will you be so kind?”

“Hivery day. And the sooner I can get you into your new house,
complete, the better you will be pleased, sir?”

“Well, it ain’t that I’m in a mortal hurry,” said Mr. Boffin;
“only when you do pay people for looking alive, it’s as well to know
that they are looking alive. Ain’t that your opinion ?”

“Quite!” replied the Secretary ; and so withdrew.

“ Now,” said Mr. Boffin to himself, subsiding into his regular
series of turns in the yard, “if I can make it comfortable with Weoe
my affairs will ha gaing amet?

“The man of low cunning had, of course, aoe
the man of high simplicity. The mean man had, of a OU
better of the generous man. How long such conques:s oN iS a
other matter; that they are achieved, is every-day experience, 10

acquired a mastery over
e, got the

 

oF LEY

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 141

even to be flourished away by Podsnappery itself. The undesigning

30ffin had become so far immeshed by the wily Wegg that his
mind misgave him he was a very designing man indeed in purposing
to do more for Wegg. It seemed to him (0 skilful was Wege) that
he was plotting darkly, when he was contriving to do the yery thing
that Wegg was plotting to get him to do. ” And thus, while he
was mentally turning the kindest of kind faces on W. ege this morn-
ing, he was not absolutely sure but that he might somehow deserve
the charge of turning his back on him.

For these reasons Mr. Boffin passed but anxious hours until even-
ing came, and with it Mr. Wegg, stumping leisurely to the Roman
Empire. At about this period Mr. Boffin had become profoundly
interested in the fortunes of a great military leader known to him as
Bully Sawyers, but perhaps better known to fame and easier of
identification by the classical student, under the less Britannic name
of Belisarius. Even this general’s career paled in interest for
Mr. Boffin before the clearing of his conscience with Wegg; and
hence, when that literary gentleman had according to custom eaten
and drunk until he was all a-glow, and when he took up his book
with the usual chirping introduction, “And now, Mr. Boffin, sir
well decline and we'll fall!” Mr. Boffin stopped him.

“You remember, Wegg, when I first told you that I wanted to
make a sort of offer to you?”

“Tet me get on my considering cap, sir,” replied that gentleman,
turning the open book face downward. “When you first told me
that you wanted to make a sort of offer to me? Now let me think.”
(as if there were the least necessity) “Yes, to be sure I do, Mr.
Boffin. It was at my corner. To be sure it was! You had first
asked me whether I liked your name, and Candour had compelled a
reply in the negative case. I little thought then, sir, how familiar
that name would come to be!”

“T hope it will be more familiar still, Wegg.”

“Do you, Mr. Boffin? Much obliged to you, I’m sure. Is it your
pleasure, sir, that we decline and we fall?” with a feint of taking
up the book.

“Not just yet awhile, Wege. In fact, I have got another offer to
make you.”

Mr. Wegg (who had had nothing else in his mind for several
nights) took off his spectacles with an air of bland surprise.

“ And I hope youll like it, Wege.”

“Thank you, sir,” returned that reticent individual. “T hope it
may prove so. On all accounts, I am sure.” (This, as a philan-
thropic Espira aor )

“ What do y ou think,” said Mr. Boffin, “of not keeping a stall, Wege ?”

“J think, sir, ” replied Weeg, “that I should like to be show n the
gentleman prepared to make it worth my while!”

“ Here he is,” said Mr. Boffin.

Mr. Wegs was going to say, My Benefac tor, and had said My
Bene, when a grandiloque nt change came over him.

“No, Mr. Boffin, not you, sir. “Any body but you. Do not fear,
Mr. Boftin, that I shall contaminate the premises which your gold
has bought, with my lowly pursuits. I am aware, sir, that it would

>

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

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142 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

not become me to carry on my little traffie under the windows of
your mansion. I have already thought of that, and taken my
measures. No need to be bought out, sir. Would Stepney Fields
be considered intrusive? If not remote enough, I can go remoter.
In the words of the poet’s song, which I do not quite remember :

Thrown on the wide world, doom’d to wander and roam,

Bereft of my parents, bereft of a home,

A stranger to something and what’s his name joy,

Behold little Edmund the poor Peasant boy.
—And equally,” said Mr. Wegg, repairing the want of direct applica-
tion in the last line, “ behold myself on a similar footing !”

“Now, Wegg, Wegg, Wegg,” remonstrated the excellent Boffin.
“You are too sensitive.”

“J know Lam, sir,” returned Wegg, with obstinate magnanimity.
“T am acquainted with my faults. L always was, from a child, too
sensitive.”

“But listen,” pursued the Golden Dustman; “hear me out, Wegg.
You have taken it into your head that I mean to pension you off.”

«True, sir,” returned Wee, still with an obstinate magnanimity.
“T am acquainted with my faults. Far be it from me to deny them.
T have taken it into my head.”

“ But I don’t mean it.”

The assurance seemed hardly as comforting to Mr. Wegg, as Mr.
Boffin intended it to be. Indeed, an appreciable elongation of his
isage might have been observed as he replied :

“Don’t you, indeed, sir Be

“No,” pursued Mr. Boffin; “because that would express, as I
understand it, that you were not going to do anything to deserve
your money. But you are; you are.”

“That, sir,” replied Mr. Wegg, cheering up bravely, “is quite
another pair of shoes. Now, my independence as a man is again
elevated. Now, I no longer

Weep for the hour,

When to Boffinses bower,

The Lord of the valley with offers came;
Neither does the moon hide her light

From the heavens to-night,
And weep behind her clouds o’er any individual in the present

Company’s shame.”
—Please to proceed, Mr. Boffin.”

«“Thank’ee, Wegg, both for your confidence in me and for your
frequent dropping into poetry; both of which is friendly. Well,
then; my idea is, that you should give up your stall, and that I
should put you into the Bower here, to keep it for us. It’s a plea-
sant spot; and a man with coals and candles and a pound a week
might be in clover here.”

“Hem! Would that man, sir—we will say that man, for the
purposes of areueyment ;” Mr. Wegg made a smiling demonstration of
great perspicuity here; “would that man, sir, be expected to throw any
other capacity in, or would any other capacity be considered extra?
Now let us (for the purposes of argueyment) suppose that man to be
engaged as a reader: say (for the purposes of argueyment) in the
evening, Would that man’s pay as a reader in the evening, be added

 

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 143

to the other amount, which, adopting your language, we will call
clover ; or would it merge into that amount, or clover ?”

“Well,” said Mr. Boffin, “I suppose it would be added.”

“TI suppose it would, sir. You are right, sir. Exactly my own
views, Mr. Boffin.”. Here Wegg rose, and balancing himself on his
wooden leg, fluttered over his prey with extended hand. “ Mr.’
consider it done. Say no more, sir, not a word more.
I are for ever parted. The collection of ballads will in
served for private study, with the object of making poetry tributary
—Wegg was so proud of having found this word, that he said it again,
with a capital letter—“ Tributary, to friendship. Mr. Boffin, don’t
allow yourself to be made uncomfortable by the pang it gives me to
part from my stock and stall. Similar emotion was undergone by
my own father when promoted for his merits from his occupation as a
waterman to a situation under Government. His Christian name
was Thomas. His words at the time (1 was then an infant, but so deep
vas their impression on me, that I committed them to memory) were :

 
   

 

HH
a
fey)
jer}
Tl
Ww

 

 

Then farewell my trim-built wherry,
farewell !

  
 

Neyer y>
Shall your Thomas take a spell!
—My father got over it, Mr. Boffin, and so shall I.”

While delivering these valedictory observations, Wee continually
disappointed Mr. Boffin of his hand by flourishing it in the air. He
now darted it at his patron, who took it, and felt his mind relieved of
a great weight: observing that as they had arranged their joint
affairs so satisfactorily, he would now be glad to look into those of
Bully Sawyers. Which, indeed, had been left over-night in a very wn-
promising posture, and for whose impending expedition against the
Persians the weather had been by no means favourable all day.

Mr. Wegg resumed his spectacles therefore. But Sawyers was not
to be of the party that night ; for, before Wegg had found his place,
Mrs. Boffin’s tread was heard upon the stairs, so unusually heavy and
hurried, that Mr. Boffin would have started up at the sound, antici-
pating some occurrence much out of the common course, even though
she had not also called to him in an agitated tone.

Mr. Boffin hurried out, and found her on the dark staircase, pant-
ing, with a lighted candle in her hand.

“ What's the matter, my dear?”

“1 don’t know; I don’t know; but I wish you’d come up-stairs.”

Much surprised, Mr. Boffin went up stairs and accompanied Mrs.
Boffin into their own room: a second large room on the same floor ag
the room in which the late proprietor had died. Mr. Boffin looked
all round him, and saw nothing more unusual than various articles ot
folded linen on a large chest, which Mrs. Boffin had been sorting.

“ What is it, my dear? Why, you're frightened! You frightened 2”

“Tam not one of that sort certainly,” said Mrs. Boffin, as she sat
down in a chair to recover herself, and took her husband’s arm; “ but it’s
very strange !”

“ What is, my dear ?”

“Noddy, the faces of the old man and the two children are all
over the house to-night.”

 

 
 

      
  
 
  
   
    
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
   
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

   

144 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“My dear ?” exclaimed Mr. Boffin. But not without a certain wn-
comfortable sensation gliding down his back.

« T know it must sound foolish, and yet it is so.”

“Where did you think you saw them ?”

“J don’t know that I think J saw them anywhere. I felt them.”

“Touched them ?”

“No. Felt them in the air. I was sorting those things on the
chest, and not thinking of the old man or the children, but singing to
myself, when all in a moment I felt there was a face growing out of
the dark.”

“ What face 2” asked her husband, looking about him. j

“For a moment it was the old man’s, and then it got younger.
For a moment it was both the children’s, and then it got older. Jor
amoment it was a strange face, and then it was all the faces.”

“ And then it was gone ?”

“Yes; and then it was gone.”

“Where were you then, old lady

« Here, at the chest. Well; I got the better of it, and went on
sorting, and went on singing to myself. ‘Lor!’ I says, ‘VU think of
something else—something comfortable—and put it out of my head.’
So I thought of the new house and Miss Bella Wilfer, and was
thinking at a great rate with that sheet there in my hand, when, all
of a sudden, the faces seemed to be hidden in among the folds of it
and I let it drop.”

As it still lay on the floor where it had fallen, Mr. Boffin picked it
up and laid it on the chest.

“ And then you ran down stairs?”

“No. I thought I’d try another room, and shake it off. I says to
myself, ‘Il go and walk slowly up and down the old man’s room
three times, from end to end, and then I shall have conquered it.’
T went in with the candle in my hand: but the moment I came near
the bed, the air got thick with them.”

“ With the faces ?”

“Yes, and I even felt that they were in the dark behind the side-
door, and on the little staircase, floating away into the yard. Then,
I called you.”

Mr. Boffin, lost in amazement, looked at Mrs. Boffin. Mrs. Boffin,
lost in her own fluttered inability to make this out, looked at Mr.
Boffin.

“T think, my dear,” said the Golden Dustman, “Tl at once get
rid of Wegg for the night, because he’s coming to inhabit the Bower,
and it might be put into his head or somebody else’s, if he heard this
and it got about, that the house is haunted. Whereas we know
better. Don’t we?”

“T never had the feeling in the house before,” said Mrs. Boffin ;
“and I have been about it alone at all hours of the night. I have
been in the house when Death was in it, and I have been in the
house when Murder was a new part of its adventures, and I never
had a fright in it yet.”

“ And won't again, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin. “ Depend upon it,
it comes of thinking and dwelling on that dark spot.”

“Yes; but why didn’t it come before?” asked Mrs. Boffin.

oy ?

 

 

 

  

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 145

This draft on Mr. Boffin’s philosophy could only be met by that
gentleman with the remark that everything that is at all, must
begin at some time. Then, tucking his wife’s arm under his own,
that she might not be left by herself to be troubled again, he de-
scended to release Wegg. Who, being something drowsy after his
plentiful repast, and constitutionally of a shirking temperament,
was well enough pleased to stump away, without domg what he had
come to do, and was paid for doing.

Mr. Boffin then put on his hat, and Mrs. Boffin her shawl; and
the pair, further provided with a bunch of keys and a lighted lantern,
went all over the dismal house—dismal everywhere, but in their own
two rooms—from cellar to cock-loft. Not resting satisfied with giving
that much chace to Mrs. Boffin’s fancies, they pursued them into the
yard and outbuildmgs, and under the Mounds. And setting the
lantern, when all was done, at the foot of one of the Mounds, they
comfortably trotted to and fro for an evening walk, to the end that
the murky cobwebs in Mrs. Boffin’s brain might be blown away.

“There, my dear!” said Mr. Boffin when they came in to supper.
“That was the treatment, you see. Completely worked round,
haven't you?”

“Yes, deary,” said Mrs. Boffin, laying aside her shawl. “Tm not
nervous any more. I’m not a bit troubled now. I’d go anywhere
about the house the same as ever. But 2

“Hh!” said Mr. Boffin.

“But P’ve only to shut my eyes.”

«“ And what then?”

“Why then,” said Mrs. Boffin, speaking with her eyes closed, and
her left hand thoughtfully touching her brow, “then, there they
are! ‘The old man’s face, and it gets younger. The two children’s
faces, and they get older. A face that I don’t know. And then all
the faces!”

Opening her eyes again, and seeing her husband’s face across the
table, she leaned forward to give it a pat on the cheek, and sat down
to supper, declaring it to be the best face in the world.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVI.
MINDERS AND RE-MINDERS.

Tue Secretary lost no time in getting to work, and his vigilance and
method soon set their mark on the Golden Dustman’s affairs. His
earnestness in determining to understand the length and breadth
and depth of every piece of work submitted to him by his employer,
was as special as his despatch in transacting it. He accepted no
information or explanation at second hand, but made himself the
master of everything confided to him.

One part of the Secretary’s conduct, underlying all the rest, might
have been mistrusted by a man with a better knowledge of men than
the Golden Dustman had. The Secretary was as far from being
inquisitive or intrusive as Secretary could be, but nothing less than
a complete understanding of the whole of the affairs would con-
VOL. i. L

 

   

pital acc i" Mesuea tg fe

 

 

 

 

   
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

146 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

tent him. It soon became apparent (from the knowledge with
which he set out) that he must have been to the office where the
Harmon will was registered, and must have read the will. He
anticipated Mr. Boffin’s consideration whether he should be advised
with on this or that topic, by showing that he already knew of it
and understood it. He did this with no attempt at concealment,
seeming to be satisfied that it was part of his duty to have pre-
pared himself at all attamable poimts for its utmost discharge.

This might—let it be repeated—have awakened some little vague
mistrust In a man more worldly-wise than the Golden Dustman.
On the other hand, the Secretary was discerning, discreet, and
silent, though as zealous as if the affairs had been his own. He
showed no love of patronage or the command of money, but distinctly
preferred resigning both to Mr. Boffin. If, in his limited sphere,
he sought power, it was the power of knowledge; the power de-
rivable from a perfect comprehension of his business.

As on the Secretary's face there was a nameless cloud, so on his
manner there was a shadow equally indefinable. It was not that
he was embarrassed, as on that first night with the Wilfer family ;
he was habitually unembarrassed now, and yet the something
remained. It was not that his manner was bad, as on that occasion ;
it was now very good, as being modest, gracious, and ready. Yet the
something never left it. It has been written of men who have
undergone a cruel captivity, or who have passed through a terrible
strait, or who in self-preservation have Ialled a defenceless fellow-
creature, that the record thereof has never faded from their coun-
tenances until they died. Was there any such record here?

He established a temporary office for himself in the new house, and
all went well under his hand, with one singular exception. He
manifestly objected to communicate with Mr. Boftin’s solicitor. Two
or three times, when there was some shght occasion for his doing s0,
he transferred the task to Mr. Boffin; and his evasion of it soon
became so curiously apparent, that Mr. Boffin spoke to him on the
subject of his reluctance.

“Tt is so,” the Secretary admitted. “I would ratl

Had he any personal objection to Mr. Lightwood ?

“JT don’t know him.”

Had he suffered from law-suits ?
Not more than other men,” was his short answer.
s he prejudiced against the race of lawyers?

“No. But while I am in your employment, sir, I would rather be
excused from gome between the lawyer and the client. Of course if
you press it, Mr. Boffin, lam ready to comply. But I should take it
as a great favour if you would not press it without urgent occasion.”

Now, it could not be said that there was urgent occasion, for
Lightwood retained no other affairs in his hands than such as still
lingered and languished about the undiscovered criminal, and such
as arose out of the purchase of the house. Many other matters that
might have travelled to him, now stopped short at the Secretary,
under -whose administration they were far more expeditiously and
satisfactorily disposed of than they would have been if they had got
into Young Blight’s domain. ‘This the Golden Dustman quite

 

ENObs

  

 

    

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 147

understood. Hven the matter immediately in hand was of very little
moment as requiring personal appearance on the Secretary’s part,
for it amounted to no more than this:—The death of Hexam render-
ing the sweat of the honest man’s brow unprofitable, the honest man
had shufflingly declined to moisten his brow for nothing, with that
severe exertion which is known in legal circles as swearing your
way through a stone wall. Consequently, that new light had gone
sputtering out. But, the airing of the old facts had led some one
concerned to suggest that it would be well before they were re-
consigned to their gloomy shelf—now probably for ever—to induce or
compel that Mr. Julius Handford to reappear and be questioned.
And all traces of Mr. Julius Handford being lost, Lightwood now
referred to his client for authority to seek him through public
advertisement.

“ Does your objection go to writing to Lightwood, Rokesmith ?”

“ Not in the least, sir.”

“Then perhaps you'll write him a line, and say he is free to do
what he likes. I don’t think it promises.”

“I don’t think it promises,” said the Secretary.

“ Still, he may do what he likes.”

“J will write immediately. Let me thank you for so considerately
yielding to my disinclination. It may seem less unreasonable, if [
avow to you that although I don’t know Mr. Lightwood, I have a
disagreeable association connected with him. It is not his fault; he
is not at all to blame for it, and does not even know my name.”

Mr. Boffin dismissed the matter with a nod or two. The letter

, was written, and next day Mr. Julius Handford was advertised for.
He was requested to place himself in communication with Mr.
Mortimer Lightwood, as a possible means of furth« ring the ends of
justice, and a reward was offered to any one acquainted with his
whereabout who would communicate the same to the said M
Mortimer Lightwood at his office in the Temple. Hvyery day for
six weeks this advertisement appeared at the head of all the news-
papers, and every day for six weeks the Secretary, when he saw it,
said to himself, in the tone in which he had said to his employer,—
“T don’t think it promises!”

Among his first occupations the pursuit of that orphan wanted by
Mrs. Boftin held a conspicuous place. From the carliest moment of
his eng ment he showed a particular desire to please her, and,
knowing her to have this object at heart, he followed it up with
unwearying alacrity and interest.

Mr. and Mrs. Milvey had found their search a difficult one. Hither
an eligible orphan was of the wrong sex (which almost always
happened) or was too old, or too young, or too sickly, or too dirty, or
too much accustomed to the streets, or too likely to run away; or, it
was found impossible to complete the philanthropic transaction with-
out buying the orphan. For, the instant it became known that amy-
body wanted the orphan, up started some affectionate relative of the
orphan who put a price upon the orphan’s head. The suddenness
of an orphan’s rise in the market was not to be paralleled by the
maddest records of the Stock Exchange. He would be at five thou-
sand per cent. discount out at nurse making a mud pie at nine in

L 2

 

    

 

 

 

 

   

   
  
   
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
  
 
   
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 

 

pill 5 cs ase asa be

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

148 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

the morning, and (being inquired for) would go up to five thousand
per cent. premium before noon. The market was “rigged ” in various
artful ways. Counterfeit stock got into circulation. Parents boldly
represented themselves as dead, and brought their orphans with
them. Genuine orphan-stock was surreptitiously withdrawn from
the market. It being announced, by emissaries posted for the
purpose, that Mr. and Mrs. Milvey were coming down the court,
orphan scrip would be instantly concealed, and production refused,
save on a condition usually stated by the brokers as a “a gallon of
beer.” Likewise, fluctuations of a wild and South-Sea nature were
occasioned, by orphan-holders keeping back, and then rushing into
the market a dozen together. But, the uniform principle at the root
of all these various operations was bargain and sale; and that prin-
ciple could not be recognized by Mr. and Mrs. Milvey.

At length, tidings were received by the Reverend Frank of a
charming orphan to be found at Brentford. One of the deceased
parents (late his parishioners) had a poor widowed grandmother in
that agreeable town, and she, Mrs. Betty’ Higden, had carried off the
orphan with maternal care, but could not afford to keep*him.

The Secretary proposed to Mrs. Boffin, either to go down himself
and take a preliminary survey of this orphan, or to drive her down,
that she might at once form her own opinion. Mrs. Boftin preferring
the latter course, they set off one morning in a hired phaeton, con-
veying the hammer-headed young man behind them.

The abode of Mrs. Betty Higden was not easy to find, lying in
such complicated back settlements of muddy Brentford that
they left their equipage at the sign of the Three Magpies, and
went in search of it on foot. After many inquiries and defeats, there
was pointed out to them in a lane, a very small cottage residence,
with a board across the open doorway, hooked on to which board by
the armpits was a young gentleman of tender years, angling for mud
with a headless wooden horse and line. In this young sportsman,
distinguished by a crisply curling auburn head and a_ bluff
countenance, the Secretary descried the orphan.

It unfortunately happened as they quickened their pace, that the
orphan, lost to considerations of personal safety in the ardour of the
moment, overbalanced himself and toppled into the street. Bemg
an orphan of a chubby conformation, he then took to rolling, and
had rolled into the gutter before they could come up. From the
eutter he was rescued by John Rokesmith, and thus the first meet-
ing with Mrs. Higden was inaugurated by the awkward circum-
stance of their beg in possession—one would say at first sight
unlawful possession — of the orphan, upside down and purple in the
countenance. The board across the doorway too, acting as a trap,
equally for the feet of Mrs. Higden coming out, and the feet of
Mrs. Boffin and John Rokesmith going in, greatly increased the
difficulty of the situation: to which the cries of the orphan imparted
a lugubrious and inhuman character.

At first, it was impossible to explaim, on account of the
orphan’s “holding his breath:” a most terrific proceeding, super-
inducing in the orphan, lead-colour rigidity and a deadly silence,
compared with which his cries were music yielding the height of

 

   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MRS. BOFFIN DISCOVERS AN ORPHAN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
   
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 149

enjoyment. But as he gradually recovered, Mrs. Boffin oradually
jntroduced herself, and smiling peace was gradually wooed back to
Mrs. Betty Higden’s home.

[t was then perceived to be a small home with a large mangle in it,
at the handle of which machine stood a very long boy, with a very little
head, and an open mouth of disproportionate capacity that seemed
to assist his eyes in staring at the visitors. In a corner below the
manele, on a couple of stools, sat two very little children: a boy and
a girl; and when the very long boy, in an interval of staring, took a
turn at the mangle, it was alarming to see how it lunged itself at
those two innocents, like a catapult designed for their destruction,
harmlessly retiring when within an inch of their heads. The room
was clean and neat. Ithad a brick floor, and a window of diamond
panes, and a flounce hanging below the chimney- piece, and strings
nailed from bottom to top outside the window on which scarlet-
beans were to grow in the coming season if the Fates were pro-
pitious. However propitious they might have been in the seasons
that were gone, to Betty Higden in the matter of beans, they had
not been very favourable im the matter of ceins; for it was easy to
see that she was poor.

She was one of those old women, was Mrs. Betty Higden, who by
dint of an indomitable purpose and a strong constitution fight out
many years, though each year has come with its new knock-down.
blows fresh to the fight against her, wearied by it; an active old
woman, witha bright dark eye and a resolute face, yet quite a tender
creature too; not a logically-reasoning woman, but God is good, and
hearts may count in Heaven as high as heads.

“Yes sure!” said she, when the business was opened, ‘‘ Mrs. Milvey
had the kindness to write to me, ma’am, and I got Sloppy to read it.
It was a pretty letter. But she’s an affable lady.”

The visitors glanced at the long boy, who seemed to indicate by a
broader stare of his mouth and eyes that in him Sloppy stood
confessed.

“For Laint, you must know,” said Betty, “ much of a hand at read-
ing writing-hand, though I can read my Bible and most print. And
Ido love a newspaper. You mightn’t think it, but Sloppy is a beau-
tiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.”

The visitors again considered it a point of politeness to look at.
Sloppy, who, looking at them, suddenly threw back his head, extended
his mouth to its utmost width, and laughed loud and long. At this the
two innocents, with their brains in that apparent danger, laughed,
and Mrs. Higden laughed, and the orphan laughed, and then the
visitors laughed. Which was more cheerful than intelligible.

Then Sloppy seeming to be seized with an industrious mania
or fury, turned to at the mangle, and impelled it at the heads
of the imnocents with such a creaking and rumbling, that Mrs.
Higden stopped him.

“The gentlefolks can’t hear themselves speak, Sloppy. Bide a
bit, bide a bit !”

“Ts that the dear child in your lap?’ said Mrs. Boffin.
“Yes, ma’am, this is Johnny.”
“Johnny, too!” cried Mrs. Boffin, turning to the Secretary;

 

eee

 

 

oF HEE

    
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
    
  
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
   
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
 
  
   
  
 
 

150 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. |

He’s a pretty boy.”

With his chin tucked down in his shy childish manner, he was look-
ing furtively at Mrs. Boffin out of his blue eyes, and reaching his fat
dimpled hand up to the lips of the old woman, who was Kissing it
by times.

“Yes, ma'am, he’s a pretty boy, he’s a dear darling boy, he’s the
child ofmy own last left daughter’s daughter. But she’s gone the
way of all the rest.”

“Those are not his brother and sister ?” said Mrs. Boffin.
tal *‘Oh, dear no, ma’am. Those are Minders.”
| “ Minders ?” the Secretary repeated,

\ Wy “Left to be Minded, sir. I keep a Minding-School. I can take

|
| “already Johnny! Only one of the two names left to give him!
aT
|
|
|

 

only three, on account of the Mangle. But I love children, and Four-
a i pence a week is Four-pence. Come here, Toddles and Poddles.”

 

(ant | Toddles was the pet-name of the boy; Poddles of the girl. At
| their little unsteady pace, they came across the floor, hand-i n-hand, as if
|

 

 

 

they were traversing an extremely difficult road intersected by brooks,
and, when they had had their heads patted by Mrst Betty Higden,
Wat made lunges at the orphan, dramatically representing an attempt to

| bear him, crowing, into captivity and slavery. All the three children
| enjoyed this to a delightful extent, and the sympathetic Sloppy again
laughed long and loud. When it was discreet to stop the play, Betty
| Higden said “Go to your seats Toddles and Poddles,” and they re-
|
{

 

 

 

  

 

turned hand-in-hand across country, seeming to find the brooks rather
swollen by late rains.
“And Master—or Mister—Sloppy?” said the Secretary, in doubt
i whether he was man, boy, or what.

“A love-child,’” returned Betty Higden, dropping her voice:
“parents never known; found in the street. He was brought up in
the * with a shiver of repugnance, “ the House.”

“The Poor-house?” said the Secretary.
Mrs. Higden set that resolute old face of hers, and darkly nodded yes.
wal “You dislike the mention of it.”
‘a “ Dislike the mention of it?’ answered the old woman. “Kill me
i sooner than take me there. Throw this pretty child under cart-
i horses’ feet and a loaded wagegon, sooner than take him there. Come
to us and find us all a-dying, and set a light to us all where we lie,
and let us all blaze away with the house into a heap of cinders,
sooner than move a corpse of us there !”
A surprising spirit in this lonely woman after so many years of
hard working, and hard living, my Lords and Gentlemen and Honor-
able Boards! What is it that we call it in our grandiose speeches ?
th British independence, rather perverted? Is that, or something like

 

 

 

 

 

|
|
|
;
i

 

Vi it, the ring of the cant? |
| rn res 3 : 3
Wil “Do I never read in the newspapers,” said the dame, fondling the
WL child—* God help me and the like of me!—how the worn-out people

sat that do come down to that, get driven from post to pillar and pillar
Hay to post, a-purpose to tire them out! Do I never read how they
are put off, put off, put off—how they are grudged, grudged,
grudged, the shelter, or the doctor, or the drop of physic, or the bit of

|" bread? Do I never read how they grow heartsick of it and give it

 

  

 

 

   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 151

up, after having let themselves drop so low, and how they after all
die out for want of help? Then Is say, I hope I can die as well as
another, and I'll die without that dis

Absolute ly impossible my Lords and ies ntlemen and Honorable
Boards, by any stretch of legislative wisdom to set these perverse
people right in their logic?

‘Johnny, my pretty,” continued old Betty, caressing the child, and
rather mour over it than speaking to it, “your old Granny
Betty is nigher fourscore year than threescore and ten. She never
begged nor had a penny of the Union money in all her life. She
paid scot and she paid lot when she had money to pay; she worked
when she could, and she starved when she must. You pray that your
Granny may have strength enough left her at the last (she’s strong
for an old one, Johnny), to get uy » from her bed and run and hide her-
self, and swown to death in a Hols sooner than fall into the hands of
those Cruel Jacks we read of, that dodge and drive, and worry and.
weary, and scorn and shame, the decent poor.”

A brilliant success, my Lords and Gentlemen and Honorable Boards
to have brought it to this im the minds of the best of the poor! Undei
submission, might i it be worth thinking of, at any « odd time?

The fright and abhorrence that Mrs. Betty Higden smoothed out
of. her strong face as she ended this diversion, showed how seriously
she had meant it.

“ And does he work for you?” asked the Secretary, gently bringing
the discourse back to Master or Mister Sloppy.

“Yes,” said Betty with a good-humoured smile and nod of the
head. “And well too.’

“ Does he live here ?”

“He lives more here than anywhere. He was thought to be ne
better than a Natural, and first come to me asa Minder. I made
interest with Mr. Bloge the Beadle. to have him as a Minder, seeing
him by chance up at church, and thinking I ne do something with
him. For he was a weak ricke tty cre etur then.”

“Ts he called by his right name

“Why, you see, speaking quite correctly, he has no right name.
I always understood he took his name from being found on a Sloppy
night.”

“He seems an amiable fellow.”

“Bless you, sir, there’s not a bit of him,” returned Betty, “that’s not
amiable. So you may judge how amiable he is, by running your

eye along his heie ohth.”

Of an un; rinly make was Sloppy. Too much of him longwise, too
little of him broadwi 18e, ie too many sharp angles of him angle-wise.
One of those shambling male human creatures, born to’ be indis-
creetly candid in the revelation of buttons; every button he had
about him glaring at the public to a quite preternatural extent. A
GOnmdcrablos capital of knee and elbow and wrist and ankle, had
Sloppy, and he didn’t know how to dispose of it to the best advant Ze,
but was always investing it in wrong securities, and so getting him-
self into embarrassed circumstances. Full-Private Niemi ber One in
the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life, was Sloppy, and yet
had his glimmering notions of standing true to the Colours.

 

 

 

  

  

 

   

  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
    
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

  
 
   
  
     
  
 
 
   
  
 
   
 
   
  
   
  
 
 
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
   
    
 
 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

152 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

“And now,” said Mrs. Boffin, “concerning J ohnny.”

As Johnny, with his chin tucked in and his lips pouting, reclined
in Betty’s lap, concentrating his blue eyes on the visitors and shading

them from observation with a dimpled arm, old Betty took one of

his fresh fat hands in her withered right, and fell to gently beating
it on her withered left.

“Yes,maam. Concerning Johnny.”

“Tf you trust the dear child to me,” said Mrs. Boffin, with a face
inviting trust, “he shall have the best of homes, the best of care, the
best of education, the best of friends. Please God I will be a true
good mother to him!”

“Yam thankful to you, ma’am, and the dear child would be thank-
ful if he was old enough to understand.” Still lightly beating the
little hand upon her own. “I wouldn’t stand im the dear child’s
light, not if I had all my life before me instead of a very little of it.
But I hope you won't take it ill that I cleave to the child closer than
words can tell, for he’s the last living thing left me.”

“Take it ill, my dear soul? Is it likely? And you so tender of
him as to bring him home here!”

“T have seen,” said Betty, still with that light beat upon her hard
rough hand, “so many of them on my lap. And they are all gone
but this one! JI am ashamed to seem so selfish, but I don’t really
mean it. It'll be the making of his fortune, and he'll be a gentle-
man when I am dead. J — I — don’t know what comes over me.
I — try against it. Don’t notice me!” The light beat stopped, the
resolute mouth gave way, and the fine strong old face broke up into
weakness and tears.

Now, greatly to the relief of the visitors, the emotional Sloppy no
sooner beheld his patroness in this condition, than, throwing back his
head and throwing open his mouth, he lifted up his voice and bel-
lowed. This alarming note of something wrong instantly terrified
Toddles and Poddles, who were no sooner heard to roar surprisingly,
than Johnny, curving himself the wrong way and striking out at
Mrs. Boftin with a pair of indifferent shoes, became a prey to despair.
The absurdity of the situation put its pathos to the rout. Mrs,
Betty Higden was herself in a moment, and brought them all to
order with that speed, that Sloppy, stopping short in a polysyllabic
bellow, transferred his energy to the mangle, and had taken several
penitential turns before he could be stopped.

“There, there, there!” said Mrs. Boffin, almost regarding her kind
self as the most ruthless of women. “Nothing is going to be done.
Nobody need be frightened. We're all comfortable; ain’t we, Mrs.
Higden ?”

“Sure and certain we are,” returned Betty.

“And there really is no hurry, you know,” said Mrs. Boffin in a
lower voice. “'T'ake time to think of it, my good creature !”

“ Don’t you fear me no more, ma’am,” said Betty; “I thought of it
for good yesterday. I don’t know what come over me just now, but
itll never come again.”

“Well, then, Johnny shall have more time to think of it,” returned
Mrs. Boffin ; “the pretty child shall have time to get used to it. And
youll get him more used to it, if you think well of it; won't you ?”

    

 

 

  

      

OUR

MUTUAL FRIEND.

Betty undertook that, cheerfully and readily.
“Lor,” cried Mrs. Boffin, looking radiantly about her, “we want to
make everybody happy, not dismal!—And perhaps you wouldn't
mind letting me know how used to it you begin to get, and

how it all goes on?”

“T’ll send Sloppy,” said Mrs. Higden.

« And this gentleman who has come with me will pay him for his
trouble,” said Mrs. Boffin. “And Mr. Sloppy, whenever you come to
my house, be sure you never go away without haying had a good
dinner of meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding.”

This still further brightened the face of affairs: for, the highly sympa-
thetic Sloppy, first broadly staring and grinning, and then roaring with
laughter, Toddles and Poddles followed suit, and Johnny trumped
the trick. 'T and P considering these favorable circumstances for
the resumption of that dramatic descent upon Johnny, again came
across-country hand-in-hand upon a buccaneering expedition ; and this
having been fought out in the chimney corner behind Mrs. Higden’s
chair, with great valour on both sides, those desperate pirates returned
hand-in-hand to their stools, across the dry bed of a mountain torrent.

“You must tell me what I can do for you, Betty my friend,” said

Mrs. Boffin confidentially, “if not to-day, next time.”

“Thank you all the same, ma’am, but I want nothing for myself.

T can walk twenty mile if I’m put to it.”

Old Betty was proud, and said it with a sparkle in her bright eyes.
“Yes, but there are some little comforts that you wouldn’t be the

Ican work. Vm strong.

worse for,” returned Mrs. Boffin.

any more than you.”

“Bless ye, 1 wasn’t born a lady

“Tt seems to me,” said Betty, smiling, “that you were born a lad
? ? oO d J?

and a true one, or there never was a lady born.
anything from you, my dear.

‘But I couldn't take
I never did take anything from any

one. It ain’t that I’m not grateful, but I love to earn it better.”
“Well, well!” returned Mrs. Boffin. “I only spoke of little things,
or I wouldn’t have taken the liberty.”
Betty put her visitor’s hand to her lips, in acknowledgment of the
delicate answer. Wonderfully upright her figure was, and wonder-
fully self-reliant her look, as, standing facing her visitor, she explained

herself further.

“Tf I could have kept the dear child, without the dread that’s
always upon me of his coming to that fate I have spoken of, 1

could never have parted with him, even to you.

For I love him,

T love him, Llove him! I love my husband long dead and gone, in him;
[love my children dead and gone, in him; I love my young and

hopeful days dead and gone, in him.

look you in your bright kind face. It’s a free gift.
of nothing. When my strength fails me, if I can but die out quick

and quiet, I shall be quite content.

I couldn’t sell that love, and

I am in want

I have stood between my

dead and that shame I have spoken of, and it has been kept off from
every one of them. Sewed into my gown,” with her hand upon her

breast, “is sjust enough to lay me im the grave.

Only see that it’s

rightly spent, so as I may rest free to the last from that cruelty and
disgrace, and yowll have done much more than a little thing for me,

and all that in this present world my heart is set upon.”

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
   
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

154 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Mrs. Betty Higden’s visitor pressed her hand. There was no
more breaking up of the strong old face into weakness. My Lords
and Gentlemen and Honorable Boards, it really was as composed as
our own faces, and almost as dignified.

And now, Johnny was to be inveigled into occupying a temporary
position on Mrs. Boffin’s lap. It was not until he had been piqued
into competition with the two diminutive Minders, by seeing them
successively raised to that post and retire from it without injury, that
he could be by any means induced to leave Mrs. Betty Higden’s
skirts; towards which he exhibited, even when in Mrs. Boffin’s em-
brace, strone yearnings, spiritual and bodily ; the former expressed
in a very gloomy visage, the latter in extended arms. However, a
general description of the toy-wonders lurking in Mrs. Boffin’s
house, so far conciliated this worldly-minded orphan as to induce him
to stare at her frowningly, with a fist in his mouth, and even at
length to chuckle when a richly-caparisoned horse on wheels, with
a miraculous gift of cantering to cake-shops, was mentioned. ‘This
sound being taken up by the Minders, swelled into a rapturous trio
which gave general satisfaction.

So, the interview was considered very successful, and Mrs. Boftin
was pleased, and all were satisfied. Not least of all, Sloppy, who
undertook to conduct the visitors back by the best way to the Three
Magpies, and whom the hammer-headed young man much despised.

This piece of business thus put in train, the Secretary drove Mrs.
Boffin back to the Bower, and found employment for himself at the
new house until evening. Whether, when evening came, he took a
way to his lodgings that led through fields, with any design of finding
Miss Bella Wilfer in those fields, is not so certain as that she regularly
walked there at that hour.

And, moreover, it is certain that there she was.

No longer in mourning, Miss Bella was dressed in as pretty colours
as she could muster. ‘here is no denying that she was as pretty
as they, and that she and the colours went very prettily together.
She was reading as she walked, and of course it is to be inferred, from
her showing no knowledge of Mr. Rokesmith’s approach, that she did
not Inow he was approaching.

“Hh?” said Miss Bella, raising her eyes from her book, when he
stopped before her. “Oh! It’s you.”

“Only I. <A fine evening!”

“Ts it?” said Bella, lookmg coldly round. “I suppose it is, now
you mention it. I have not been thinking of the evening.”

“So intent upon your book?”

“ Ye-e-es,” replied Bella, with a drawl of indifference.

“A love story, Miss Wilfer ?”

“Oh dear no, or I shouldn’t be reading it. It’s more about money
than anything else.” yf

“ And does it say that money is better than anything ?”

“Upon my word,” returned Bella, “I forget what it says, but you
can find out for yourself, if you like, Mr. Rokesmith. I don’t want it
any more.”

The Secretary took the book—she had fluttered the leaves as if it
were a fan—and walked beside her

  

 

Une

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Tam charged with a message for you, Miss Wilfer.”

“Impossible, I think!” said Bella, with another drawl.

“From Mrs. Boffin. She desired me to assure you of the pleasure
she has in finding that she will be ready to receive you in another
week or two at furthest.”

Bella turned her head .towards him, with her prettily-insolent
eyebrows raised, and her eyelids drooping. As muchas to say, “ How
did you come by the message, pray ?”

“J have been waiting for an opportunity of telling you that IT am
Mr. Boftin’s S¢ cretary.”

“T am as wise as ever,” said Miss Bella, loftily, “for I don’t know
what a Secretary is. Not that it signifies.”

SN Ouraiby allacy

A covert glance at her face, as he walked beside her, showed him
that she had not expected his ready assent to that proposition.

“Then are you going to be always there, Mr. Rokesmith?” she
inquired, as if that would be a drawback.

“ Always? No. Very much there? Yes.”

“Dear me!” drawled Bella, in a tone of mortification.

“But my position there as Secretary, will be very different from.
yours as guest. You will know little or nothing about me. T shall
transact the business: you will transact the pleasure. I shall have
my salary to earn; you will have nothing to do but to enjoy and
attract.”

“ Attract, sir?” said Bella, again with her eyebrows raised, and her
eyelids drooping. “I don’t understand you.”

Without replying on this point, Mr. Rokesmith went on.

“Hxcuse me; when I first saw you in your black dress

(“ There!” was Miss Bella’s mental exclamation. “What did I say
to them at home? Hverybody noticed that ridiculous mourning i

“When I fi saw you in your black dress, I was at a loss to
account for that distinction between yourself and your family. [I
hope it was not impertinent to speculate upon it?”

‘“‘T hope not, I am sure,” said Miss Bella, haughtily. “But you
ought to know best how you speculated upon it.”

Mr. Rokesmith inclined his head in a deprecatory manner, and
went on.

“Since I have been entrusted with Mr. Boffin’s affairs, I have
necessarily come to understand the little mystery. I venture to
remark that I feel persuaded that much of your loss may be repaired.
I speak, of course, merely of wealth, Miss Wilfer. ‘lhe loss of a
perfect stranger, whose worth, or worthlessness, I cannot estimate—
nor you either—is beside the question. But this excellent gentle-
man and lady are so full of simplicity, so full of generosity, so in-
clined towards you, and so desirous to—how shall I express it ?—to
make amends for their good fortune, that you have only to respond.”

As he watched her with another covert look, he saw a certain
ambitious triumph in her face which no assumed coldness could
conceal.

‘As we have been brought under one roof by an accidental combina-
tion of circumstances, which oddly extends itself to the new relations
before us, I have taken the liberty of saying these few words. You

   

 

 

 

 

‘

ocd

  
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
   
  
 
 
  
  
 
    
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2 a a

 

 

 

   

   
  
  
  
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

   

156

don’t consider them intrusive I hope?’ said the Secretary with
deference.

“Really, Mr. Rokesmith, 1 can’t say what I consider them,” re-
turned the young lady. “They are perfectly new to me, and may
be founded altogether on your own imagination.”

“ You will see.”

These same fields were opposite the Wilfer premises. The dis-
crect Mrs. Wilfer now looking out of window and beholding her
daughter in conference with her lodger, instantly tied up her head
and came out for a casual walk.

“[ have been telling Miss Wilfer,” said John Rokesmith, as the
majestic lady came stalking up, “that 1 have become, by a’ curious
chance, Mr. Boffin’s Secretary or man of business.”

“JT have not,” returned Mrs, Wilfer, waving her gloves in her
chronic state of dignity, and vague ill-usage, “the honor of any
intimate acquaintance with Mr. Boffin, and it is not for me to con-
eratulate that gentleman on the acquisition he has made.”

«<A poor one enough,” said Rokesmith.

“Pardon me,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, “the merits of Mr. Boffin
may be highly distinguished—may be more distinguished than the
countenance of Mrs. Boffin would imply—but it were the insanity
of humility to deem him worthy of a better assistant.”

“You are very good. I have also been telling Miss Wilfer that
she is expected very shortly at the new residence in town.”

“ Having tacitly consented,” said Mrs. Wilfer, with a grand shrug
of her shoulders, and another wave of her gloves, “to my child's
acceptance of the proffered attentions of Mrs. Boftin, I interpose no
objection.”

Here Miss Bella offered the remonstrance : “ Don’t talk nonsense,
ma, please.”

“Peace!” said Mrs. Wilfer.

“No, ma, I am not going to be made so absurd. Interposing
objections !” j

STASI 5h repeated Mus. Wilfer, with a vast access of grandeur,
“that I am not going to interpose objections. If Mrs. Boffin (to
whose countenance no disciple of Lavater could possibly for a
single moment subscribe),” with a shiver, “seeks to illuminate her
new residence in town with the attractions ofa child of mine, J] am
content that she should be favoured by the company of a child of
mine.”

“You use the word, ma’am, I have myself used,” said Roke-
smith, with a glance at Bella, “when you speak of Miss Wilfer’s
attractions there.”

“Pardon me,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, with dreadful solemnity,
“but I had not finished.”

« Pray excuse me.”

“T was about to say,” pursued Mrs. Wilfer, who clearly had not
had the faintest idea of saying anything more: “ that when I use the
term attractions, | do so with the qualification that I do not mean it
in any way whatever.”

The excellent lady delivered this luminous elucidation of her
views withan air of greatly obliging her hearers, and greatly dis-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. Le

tinguishing herself. Whereat Miss Bella laughed a scornful little
laugh and said :

« Quite enough about this, I am sure, on all sides. Have the good-
ness, Mr. Rokesmith, to give my love to Mrs. Boffin H :

“Pardon me!” cried Mrs. Wilfer. ‘“ Compliments.”

“Love!” repeated Bella, with a little stamp of her foot.

“No!” said Mrs. Wilfer, monotonously. “Compliments.”

(“Say Miss Wilfer’s love, and Mrs. Wilfer’s compliments,” th«
Secretary proposed, as a compromise. )

“ And I shall be very glad to come when she is ready for me. The
sooner, the better.”

“One last word, Bella,” said Mrs. Wilfer, “ before descending to the
family apartment. I trust that as a child of mine you will ever be
sensible that it will be graceful in you, when associating with Mr.
and Mrs. Boffin upon equal terms, to remember that the Secretary,
Mr. Rokesmith, as your father’s lodger, has a claim on your good
word.”

The condescension with which Mrs. Wilfer delivered this procla-
mation of patronage, was as wonderful as the swiftness with which
the lodger had lost caste in the Secretary. He smiled as the mother
retired down stairs; but his face fell, as the daughter followed.

“So insolent, so trivial, so capricious, so mercenary, so careless, so
hard to touch, so hard to turn!” he said, bitterly.

And added as he went upstairs. “And yet so pretty, so pretty!”

And added presently, as he walked to and fro im his room, “And
if she knew !”

She knew that he was shaking the house by his walking to and
fro; and she declared it another of the miseries of beimg poor, that
you couldn’t get rid of a haunting Secretary, stump—stump—stump-
ing overhead in the dark, like a Ghost.

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVII.
A DISMAL SWAMP.

Anp now, in the blooming summer days, behold Mr. and Mrs. Boffin
established in the eminently aristocratic family mansion, and behold
all manner of crawling, creeping, fluttering, and buzzing creatures,
attracted by the gold dust of the Golden Dustman!

Foremost among those leaving cards at the eminently aristocratic
door before it is quite painted, are the Vencerings: out of breath, one
might imagine, from the impetuosity of their rush to the eminently
aristocratic steps. One copper-plate Mrs. Veneering, two copper-
plate Mr. Veneerings, and a connubial copper-plate Mr. and Mrs.
Vencering, requesting the honour of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin’s company
at dinner with the utmost Analytical solemnities. The enchanting
Lady Tippins leaves a card. Twemlow leaves cards. <A tall
custard-coloured phaeton tooling up in a solemn manner leaves four
cards, to wit, a couple of Mr. Podsnaps, a Mrs. Podsnap, and a Miss
Podsnap. All the world and his wife and daughter leave cards.
Sometimes the world’s wife has so many daughters, that her card

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

158 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

reads rather like a Miscellaneous Lot at an Auction; comprising
Mrs. Tapkins, Miss Tapkins, Miss Frederica Tapkins, Miss Antonina
Tapkins, Miss Malvina ‘Tapkins, and Miss Euphemia * Tapkins.; at the
same time, the same lady leaves the card of Mrs. Henry George
Alfred Swoshle, nee Tapkins; also, a card, Mrs. Tapkins at Home,
Wednesdays, Music, Portland Place.

Miss Bella Wilfer becomes an inmate, for an indefinite period, of
the eminently aristocratic dwelling. Mrs. Boffin bears Miss Bella
away to her Milliner’s and Dressmaker’s, and she gets beautifully
dressed. ‘The Veneerings find with swift remorse that they have
omitted to invite Miss Bella Wilfer. One Mrs. Veneering and one
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering requesting that additional honor, instantly
do penance in white cardboard on the hall table. Mrs. Tapkins
likewise discovers her omission, and with promptitude repairs it;
for herself, for Miss Tapkins, for Miss Frederica Tapkins, for Miss
Antonina Tapkins, for Miss Malvina Tapkins, and for Miss Eu-
phemia Tapkins. Likewise, for Mrs. Henry George Alfred Swoshle
a Tapkins. Likewise, for Mrs. Tapkins at Home, Wednesdays,

Music, Portland Place.

Tradesmen’s books hunger, and tradesmen’s mouths water, for the
gold dust of the Golden Dustman. As Mrs. Boffin and Miss Wilfer
drive out, or as Mr. Boffin walks out at his jog-trot pace, the fish-
monger pulls off his hat with an air of reverence founded on con-
viction. His men cleanse them fingers on their woollen aprons
before presuming to touch their foreheads to Mr. Boffin or Lady. The
gaping salmon and the golden mullet lying on the slab seem to turn
up their eyes sideways, as they would turn up their hands if they had
ay, in worshi pping admiration. The butcher, though a portly and

v prosperous man, doesn’t know what to do with himself, so anxious
z he to express humility when discovered by the passine Boffins
» the air in a mutton grove. | nts are made to the Boffin
servants, and bland strangers with business-cards meeting said ser-
vants in the street, offer hypothetical corruption. As, “Supposing
T was i be favored with an order from Mr. Boffin, my dear friend,
th would be worth my while”*—to do a certain thing that I hope

might not prove wholly disagreeable to your feelings.

But no one knows so well as the Secret: wry, who. opens and reads
the letters, what a set is made at the man marked by a stroke of
notoriety. Oh the varieties of dust for ocular use, offered in
exchange for the gold dust of the Golden Dustman! Fifty-seven
3 to be erected with half

   

   

 

 
 

 

 

 

   

 

 

   

 

chur rowns, forty-two parsonage houses

to be repaired with shillings, seven- and-twenty organs to be built

with halfpence, twelve hundred children to be brought up on
+ y

stamps. Not that a half-crown, shilling, halfpenny, or
stamp, would be particularly acceptable from Mr. Boffin,
it is so obvious he is the man to make up the deficiency.
And then the charities, my Christian brother! And mostly in
difficulties, yet mostly lavish, too, in the expensive articles of
print and paper. Large fat private double letter, sealed with ducal
coronet. “Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire. My Dear Sir,—Having con-
se onted to Dee at the forthcoming Annual Dinner of the Family
rty Fund, and feeling deeply impressed with the immense, useful-

 

 

  
   
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
      
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
   
   
   
   
  
      
   
   
   
    

 

 

    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 159

ness of that noble Institution and the great importance of its being
supported by a List of Stewards that shall prove to the public the
interest taken in it by popular and distinguished men, I have
undertaken to ask you to become a Steward on that occasion.
Soliciting your fayorable reply before the 14th instant, I am, My
Dear Sir, Your faithful Servant, Linsrep. P.S. The Steward’s fee
” Friendly this, on the part of the

 

 

is limited to three Guineas.’
Duke of Linseed (and thoughtful in “the postscript), only Eth”
graphed by the hundred and presenting but a pale noe ity
Bales to Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, in quite another hand. Tt
takes two noble Earls and a Viscount, combined, to inform WNico-
demus: Boffin, Esquire, in an equally flattering manner, that an
estimable lady in the West of England has offered to present a
purse containing twenty pounds, to the EOE for Granting An-
nuities to Unassuming Members of the Middle Classes, if twenty
individuals will previously present purses of one emule d pounds
each. And those benevolent noblemen very kindly point out that
if Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, should wish to prese a two or more
purses, it will not be inconsistent with the design of the estimable
lady in the West of England, provided each purse be coupled with
the name of some member of his honored and respected family.
These are the corporate beggars. But there are, besides, the in-
dividual beggars ; and how does the heart of the Secretary fail him
when he has to cope with them! And they must be coped with to
some extent, because they all enclose documents (the sy call their
scraps documents ; but they are, as to papers deserving the name, what
minced veal is to a calf), ‘the non-return of which “would be their
ruin. That is say, they are utterly ruined now, but they would be
more utterly ruined then. Among these correspondents are several
daughters of general officers, long accustomed to every luxury of life
(except spelling ), who little » thought, when their gallant fathers waged
war in the Peninsula, that they Saal d ever have e to appeal to those
whom Providence, in its inscrutable wisdom, has ]

  

 

 

    

blessed with untold
gold, and from among whom they select the name of Nicodemus
Boffin, Esquire, for a maiden effort in this wise, understanding that he
has such a heart as never was. ‘The Secretary learns, too, that cor
fidence between man and wife would seem to obtain but rarel:
when yirtue is in distress, so numerous are the wives who take 1
their pens to ask Mr. Boffin for money without the knowledge of
their devoted husbands, who would never permit it; whi
other hand, so numerous are the husbands who take up their pens to
ask Mr. Boffin for money without the knowledge of their devoted
wives, who would instantly go out of their senses if they had th«
least suspicion of the circumstance. There are the inspired beggars
too. ‘These were sitting, only yesterday evening, musing over a fre o
ment of candle which must soon go out and leave them in the dark
for the rest of their nights, when surely some Angel whisps red the
name of Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, to their souls, in pparng, rays of
hope, né vy confidence, to which they had long been SEF angers !
to these are the Sromaeeae ly-be friended beggars. They were par-
talking of a cold potato and water by the flic ke: ring and gloomy light
of a Tucifer- match, in their lodgings | (rent considerably in arrear, and

 

 

     

  

 

 

 

    

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oF LEE

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  

160 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

heartless landlady threatening expulsion “ like a dog ” into the streets),
when a gifted friend happening to look in, said, “ Write immediately
to Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire,” and would take no denial. ‘There are
the nobly independent beggars too. These, in the days of their abund-
ance, ever regarded gold as dross, and have not yet got over that only
impediment in the way of their amassing wealth, but they want no
dross from Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire ; No, Mr. Boffin; the world may
term it pride, paltry pride if you will, but they wouldn't take it if you
offered it; a loan, sir—for fourteen weeks to the day, interest caleu-
lated at the rate of five per cent per annum, to be bestowed upon
any charitable institution you may name is all they want of you,
and if you have the meanness to refuse it, count on being despised
by these great spirits. There are the beggars of punctual business-
habits too. These will make an end of themselves at a quarter to
one p.m. on Tuesday, if no Post-oftice order is im the interim received
from Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire; arriving after a quarter to one P.M.
on Tuesday, it need not be sent, as they will then (having made an
exact memorandum of the heartless circumstances) be “cold in
death.” There are the beggars on horseback too, in another sense
from the sense of the proverb. These are mounted and ready to
start on the highway to affluence. The goal is before them, the
road is in the best condition, their spurs are on, the steed is willing,
but, at the last moment, for want of some special thing—a clock, a
violin, an astronomical telescope, an electrifying machine—they must
dismount for ever, unless they receive its equivalent in money from
Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire. Less given to detail are the beggars who
make sporting ventures. These, usually to be addressed in reply

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i

i Oe OE wal : . : 7 oate
HI under initials at a country post-office, inquire in feminine hands, Dare

| one who cannot disclose herself to Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, but
A whose name might startle him were it revealed, solicit the immediate
Wy advance of two hundred pounds from unexpected riches exercising

their noblest privilege in the trust of a common humanity ? 4
He In such a Dismal Swamp does the new house stand, and through
1 it does the Secretary daily struggle breast-high. Not to mention all
1 the people alive who haye made inventions that won't act, and all
wal the jobbers who job in all the jobberies jobbed; though these may
be regarded as the Alligators of the Dismal Swamp, and are always
lying by to drag the Golden Dustman under.
3ut the old house. There are no designs against the Golden Dust-
man there? There are no fish of the shark tribe in the Bower
waters? Perhaps not. Still, Wege is established there, and would
seem, judged by his secret proceedings, to cherish a notion of making
| a discovery. For, when a man with a wooden leg lies’ prone on his
I stomach to peep under bedsteads; and hops up ladders, like some
|| | extinct bird, to survey the tops of presses and cupboards; and
i

 

provides himself an iron rod which he is always poking and prod-
ding into dust-mounds; the probability is that he expects to find
i something.

 

THE END OF THE

  

FIRST BOOK.

    

 

  

  

Boor THE Seconp. Birps or a FEATHER.

 

CHAPTER I.
OF AN EDUCATIONAL CHARACTER.

TE school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a
book—the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great Prepara-
tory Establishment in which very much that is never unlearned
is learned without and before book— was a miserable loft in an
unsavoury yard. Its atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable ;
it was crowded, noisy, and confusing ; half the pupils dropped asleep,
or fell into a state of waking stupefaction; the other half kept them
in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if
they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of
bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no
idea of execution, and a lamentable jumble was the upshot of their
kind endeavours.

It was a school for all ages, and for both sexes. The latter were
kept apart, and the former were partitioned off into square assort-
ments. But, all the place was pervaded by a grimly ludicrous
pretence that every pupil was childish and innocent. ‘his pre-
tence, much favoured by the lJady-visitors, led to the ghastliest
absurdities. Young women old in the vices of the commonest and
worst life, were expected to profess themselves enthralled by the
good child’s book, the Adventures of Little Margery, who resided in
the village cottage by the mill; severely reproved and morally
squashed the miller, when she was five and he was fifty; divided
her porridge with singing birds; denied herself a new nankeen
bonnet, on the ground that the turnips did not wear nankeen bonnets,
neither did the sheep who ate them; who plaited straw and deli-
vered the dreariest orations to all comers, at all sorts of un-
seasonable times. So, unwieldy young dredgers and hulking mud-
Jarks were referred to the experiences of Thomas ‘wopence, who,
having resolved not to rob (under circumstances of uncommon
atrocity) his particular friend and benefactor, of eighteenpence,
presently came into supernatural possession of three and sixpence,
and lived a shining light ever afterwards. (Note, that the bene-
factor came to no good.) Several swaggering sinners had written
their own biographies in the same strain; it always appearing from
the lessons of those very boastful persons, that you were to do good,
not because it was good, but because you were to make a good thing
of it. Contrariwise, the adult pupils were taught to read (if they
could learn) out of the New Testament; and by dint of stumbling
over the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the particular
syllables coming round to their turn, were as absolutely ignorant of
VOL. I, M

 

 

 

 

 

re ie

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

Stace... i A ayaateet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

162 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

the sublime history, as if they had never seen or heard of Tis. ahaa
exceedingly and confoundingly perplexing jumble of a school, in fact,
where black spirits and grey, red spirits and white, jumbled jumbled
jumbled jumbled, jumbled every night. And particularly every
Sunday night. For then, an inclined plane of unfortunate infants
would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers
with good intentions, whom nobody older would endure. Who,
taking his stand on the floor before them as chief executioner, would
be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as executioner's
assistant. When and where it first became the conventional sys-
tem that a weary or inattentive infant in a class must have its face
smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when and where the con-
ventional volunteer boy first beheld such system in operation,
and became inflamed with a sacred zeal to administer it, matters
not. It was the function of the chief executioner to hold forth, and
it was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants, yawn-
ine infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth their
wretched faces; sometimes with one hand, as if he were anointing
them for a whisker; sometimes with both hands, applied after the
fashion of blinkers. And so the jumble would be in action in this
department for a mortal hour; the exponent drawling on to My
Dearerr Childerrenerr, let us say, for example, about the beautiful
coming to the Sepulchre; and repeating the word Sepulchre (com-
monly used among infants) five hundred times, and never once hint-
ing what it meant; the conventional boy smoothing away right and
left, as an infallible commentary; the whole hot-bed of flushed and
exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes, whooping-cough, fever,
and stomach disorders, as if they were assembled in High Market for
the purpose,

Eyen in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp
boy exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and,
having learned it, could impart it much better than the teachers ;
as being more knowing. than they, and not at the disadvantage in
which they stood towards the shrewder pupils. In this way it had
come about that Charley Hexam had risen in the jamble, taught in
the jumble, and been received from the juml le into a better school.

«So you want to go and see your sister, Hexam ?”

«Tf you please, Mr. Headstone.”

«JT have half a mind to go with you. Where does your sister live ””

“Why, she is not settled yet, Mr. Headstone. Vd rather you
didn’t see her till she is settled, if it was all the same to you.”

“Took here, Hexam.” Mr. Bradley Headstone, highly certificated
stipendiary schoolmaster, drew his right forefinger through one
of the buttonholes of the boy’s coat, and looked at it attentively.
“JT hope your sister may be good company for you ee

“Why do you doubt it, Mr. Headstone?”

“JT did not say I doubted it.”

“No, sir; you didn’t say so.”

Bradley Headstone looked at his finger again, took it out of the
puttonhole and looked at it closer, bit the side of it and looked at ib
again.

Ss at

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 1638

 

“You see, Hexam, you will be one of us. In good time you are
sure to pass a creditable examination and become one of us. Then
the question is

The boy waited so lone for the ‘question, while the schoolmaster
looked at a new side of his finger, and bit it, and looked at it agai
that at length the boy repeated :

“'The question is, sir— ?”

“Whether you had not better leave well alone.”

“Ts it well to leave my sister alone, Mr. Headstone ?”

“T do not say so, because | do not know. I put it to you. J
you to think of it. I want you to consider. You know how sei
you are doing here.”

“ After all, she got me here,” said the boy, with a struggle.

“Perceiving the necessity of it,” acquiesced the sc hoolmas

29

 

 

 

2

 

“and making up her mind fully to the separation. Yes.
The boy, with a return of that former reluctance or str
hatever it was, seemed to debate with himself. At leneth he sai id,
raising his eyes to the master’s face

“T wish you'd come with me and see her, Mr.
she is not settled. I wish you’d come with me, ¢
rough, and judge her for yourself.”

“You are sure you would not like,” asked the se
prepare her?”

“My sister Lizzie,” said the boy, proudly, “wants no pre
Ma. Headstone. What she is, she is, and shows herself to be.
no pretending about my sister.’

His confidence in her, sat more easily upon him than the inde-
cision with which he had twice contended. It was his better nature
to be true to her, if it were his worse nature to be wholly selfish.
And as yet the better nature had the stronger hold.

“Well, I can spare the evening,” said the schoolmaster.
ready to walk with Nits

te ‘Thank you, Mr. Headstone. And TI am ready to go.’

bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and w: xistcoat, and
decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons
f pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and
its decent hair- onard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent
oung man of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any oth or
Less, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of we
this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it,
> some mechanics in their holiday clothes. He had acquired
mechanically a great store of teacher’s knowledge. He could do
mental arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechanically, blow
various wind instruments mechanically, even play the great church
organ mechanically. From his early childhood mp, his mind had been
a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale
warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the demands of
retail dealers—history here, geography there, astronomy to the richt,
political economy to the left—natural history, the physical sciences,
igures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in their
several places—this care had imparted to his countenance a look of
u 2

     

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164 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

care; while the habit of questioning and being questioned had given
him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would be better described
as one of lying in wait. There was a kind of settled trouble in the
face. It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive
intellect that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that had
to hold it now that it was gotten. He always seemed to be uneasy
lest anything should be missing from his mental warehouse, and
taking stock to assure himself.

Suppression of so much to make room for so much, had given him
2 constrained manner, over and above. Yet there was enough of
what was animal, and of what was fiery (though smouldering), still
visible in him, to suggest that if young Bradley Headstone, when a
pauper lad, had chanced to be told off for the sea, he would not have
been the last man in a ship’s crew. Regarding that origin of his, he
was proud, moody, and sullen, desiring it to be forgotten. And few
people knew of it.

In some visits to the Jumble his attention had been attracted to
this boy Hexam. An undeniable boy for a pupil-teacher ; an unde-
niable boy to do credit to the master who should bring him on.
Combined with this consideration, there may have been some thought
of the pauper lad now never to be mentioned. Be that how it might,
he had with pains gradually worked the boy into his own school, and
procured him some offices to discharge there, which were repaid with
food and lodging. Such were the circumstances that had brought
together, Bradley Headstone and young Charley Hexam that autumn
evening. Autumn, because full half a year had come and gone since
the bird of prey lay dead upon the river-shore. :

The schools—for they were twofold, as the sexes—were down in
that district of the flat country tending to the Thames, where Kent
and Surrey meet, and where the railways still bestride the market-
gardens that will soon die under them. The schools were newly
built, and there were so many like them all over the country, that one
might have thought the whole were but one restless edifice with the
locomotive gift of Aladdin’s palace. They were in a neighbourhood
which looked like a toy neighbourhood taken in blocks out of a box
by a child of particularly incoherent mind, and set up anyhow ; here,
one side of a new street; there, a large solitary public-house facing
nowhere: here, another unfinished street already im ruins; there, a
church; here, an immense new warehouse; there, a dilapidated old
country villa; then, a medley of black ditch, sparkling cucumber-
frame, rank field, richly cultivated kitchen-garden, brick viaduct,
arch-spanned canal, and disorder of frowziness and fog. As if the child
had given the table a kick, and gone to sleep.

But, even among school-buildings, school-teachers, and school-
pupils, all according to pattern and all engendered in the light of the
latest Gospel according to Monotony, the older pattern into which so
many fortunes have been shaped for good and evil, comes out. it
came out in Miss Peecher the schoolmistress, watering her flowers, as
Mr. Bradley Headstone walked forth. It came out in Miss Peecher the
schoolmistress, watering the flowers in the little dusty bit of garden

attached to her small official residence, with little windows like

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 165

the eyes in needles, and little doors like the covers of school.
books.

Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom was Miss Peecher
cherry-cheeked and tuneful of voice. A little pincushion, a little
housewife, a little book, a little workbox, a little set of tables and
weights and measures, and a little woman, all in one. She could
write a little essay on any subject, exactly a slate long, beginning at
the left-hand top of one side and ending at the right-hand bottom of
the other, and the essay should be strictly according to rule. If My,
Bradley Headstone had addressed a written proposal of marriage to
her, she would probably have replied in a complete little essay on
the theme exactly a slate long, but would certainly have replied Yes.
For she loved him. The decent hair-guard that went round his
neck and took care of his decent silver watch was an object of envy
to her. So would Miss Peecher have gone round his neck and taken
care of him. Of him, insensible. Because he did not love Miss
Peecher.

Miss Peecher’s favourite pupil, who assisted her in her little house-
hold, was in attendance with a can of water to replenish her little
watering-pot, and sufficiently divined, the state of Miss Peecher’s
affections to feel it necessary that she herself should love young
Charley Hexam. So, there was a double palpitation among the
double stocks and double wall-flowers, when the master and the boy
looked over the little gate.

“ A fine evening, Miss Peecher,” said the Master.

“A very fine evening, Mr. Headstone,” said Miss Peecher. “Are
you taking a walk?”

“exam and I are going to take a long walk.”

“Charming weather,” remarked Miss Peecher, “for a long walk.”

“Ours is rather on business than mere pleasure,” said the Master.

Miss Peecher inverting her watering-pot, and very carefully shaking
out the few last drops over a flower, as if there were some special virtue
in them which would make it a Jack’s beanstalk before morning, called
for replenishment to her pupil, who had been speaking to the boy.

“ Good-night, Miss Peecher,” said the Master.

“Good-night, Mr. Headstone,” said the Mistress.

The pupil had been, in her state of pupilage, so imbued with the
class-custom of stretching out an arm, as if to hail a cab or omnibus,
whenever she found she had an observation on hand to offer to Miss
Peecher, that she often did it in their domestic relations; and she did
it now.

“Well, Mary Anne?” said Miss Peecher.

“Tf you please, ma’am, Hexam said they were going to see his
sister.”

“But that can’t be, I think,” returned Miss Peecher : “ because Mr.
Headstone can have no business with her.”

Mary Anne again hailed.

“Well, Mary Anne?”

“Tf you please, ma’am, perhaps it’s Hexam’s business ?”

“That may be,” said Miss Peecher. “I didn’t think of that. Not
that it matters at all.”

   
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

PS EE at oe eS

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

166 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Mary Anne again hailed.

“ Well, Mary Anne?”

“They say she’s very handsome.”

“Qh, Mary Anne, Mary Amne!” returned Miss Peecher, slightly
colouring and shaking her head, a little out of humour; “ how often.
have I told you not to use that vague expression, not to speak in
that general way? When you say they say, what do you mean?
Part of speech They?”

Mary Anne hooked her right arm behind ber in her left hand,
as being under examination, and replied :

“ Personal pronoun.”

“Person, They ?”

“ Third person. ”

“ Number, They?”

“Plural number.”

“Then how many do you mean, Mary Anne? Two? Or more ?”

“JT beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Mary Anne, disconcerted now
she came to think of it; “but I don’t know that I mean more than
her brother himself.” As she said it, she unhooked her arm.

“ [ felt convinced of it,” returned Miss Peecher, smiling again.
“Now pray, Mary Anne, be careful another time. He says is very
different from they say, remember. Difference between he says and
they say? Give it me.”

Mary Anne immediately hooked her right arm behind her in her left
hand—an attitude absolutely necessary to the situation—and replied :
“Qno is indicative mood, present tense, third person singular, verb
active to say. Other is indicative mood, present tense, third person
plural, verb active to say.”

“ Why verb active, Mary Anne Te

“Because it takes a pronoun after it in the objective case, Miss
Peecher.”

“Very good indeed,” remarked Miss Peecher, with encouragement.
“Tn fact, could not be better. Don’t forget to apply it, another time,
Mary Anne.” ‘This said, Miss Peecher finished the watering of her
flowers, and went into her little official residence, and took a refresher of
the principal rivers and mountains of the world, their breadths, depths,
and heights, before settling the measurements of the body of a dress
for her own personal occupation.

Bradley Headstone and Charley Hexam duly got to the Surrey
side of Westminster Bridge, and crossed the bridge, and made along
the Middlesex shore towards Millbank. In this region are a
certain little street called Church Street, and a certain little blind
square, called Smith Square, in the centre of which last retreat is a
very hideous church with four towers at the four corners, generally
resembling some petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back
with its leos in the air. They found a tree near by in a corner, and a
blacksmith’s forge, and a timber yard, and a dealer’s in old iron.
What a rusty portion of a boiler and a great iron wheel or so meant
by lying half-buried in the dealer’s fore-court, nobody seemed to know
orto want to know. Like the Miller of questionable jollity in the
song, They cared for Nobody, no not they, and Nobody cared for them.

 

 

  

 

 

  
      
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  

 

 

      
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 167

After making the round of this place, and noting that there was a
deadly kind of repose on it, more as though it had taken laudanum
than fallen into a natural rest, they stopped at the pomt where the
street and the square joined, and where there were some little quiet
houses ina row. ‘To these Charley Hexam finally led the way, and
at one of these stopped.

“This must be where my sister lives, sir. This is where she came
for a temporary lodging, soon after father’s death.”

“ How often have you seen her since?”

“Why, only twice, sir,’ returned the boy, with his former
reluctance ; “but that’s as much her doing as mine.”

“ How does she support herself ?”

“She was always a fair needlewoman, and she keeps the stock-
room of a seaman’s outfitter.”

“Does she ever work at her own lodging here ?”

“Sometimes; but her recular hours and regular occupation are at
their place of business, I believe, sir. This is the number.”

The boy knocked at a door, and the door promptly opened with a
spring and a click. A parlour door within a small entry stood open,
and disclosed a child—a dwarf—a girl—a something—sitting on a
little low old-fashioned arm-chair, which had a kind of little working
bench before it.

“T can’t get up,” said the child, “because my back’s bad, and my
legs are queer. But I’m the person of the house.”

“Who else is at home ?” asked Charley Hexam, staring.

“Nobody’s at home at present,” returned the child, with a glib
assertion of her dignity, “except the person of the house. What did
you want, young man ?”

“T wanted to see my sister.”

“Many young men have sisters,” returned the child. “Give me
your name, young man ?”

The queer little fizure, and the queer but not ugly little face, with
its. bright grey eyes, were so sharp, that the sharpness of the manner
seemed unavoidable. As if, being turned out of that mould, it must
be sharp.

“ Hexam is my name.”

“ Ah, indeed?” said the person of the house. “I thought it might
be. Your sister will be in, in about a quarter of an hour. Iam very
fond of your sister. She’s my particular friend. Take a seat. And
this gentleman’s name ?”

“Mr. Headstone, my schoolmaster.”

“Take a seat. And -would you please to shut the street door first ?
I can’t very well do it myself, because my back’s so bad, and my legs
are so queer.” ‘ aboot

They complied in silence, and the little figure went on with its
work of gumming or gluing together with a camel’s-hair brush cer-
tain pieces of cardboard and thin wood, previously cut into various
shapes. The scissors and knives upon the bench showed that the child
herself had cut them; and the bright scraps of velvet and silk and
ribbon also strewn upon the bench showed that when duly stuffed
(and stuffing too was there), she was to cover them smartly. The

 

 

 

 

 

Pilon, sk Naceeemng

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
    

 

 

 

168 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

dexterity of her nimble fingers was remarkable, and, as she brought
two thin edges accurately together bygiving them a little bite, she
would glance at the visitors out of the corners of her grey eyes with
a look that out-sharpened all her other sharpness.

“ You can’t tell me the name of my trade, I'll be bound,” she said,
after taking several of these observations.

« You make pincushions,” said Charley.

«“ What else do I make ?”

“ Pen-wipers,” said Bradley Headstone.

“Ha!ha! What else dol make? You're a schoolmaster, but you
can’t tell me.”

“You de something,” he returned, pointing to a corner of the little
bench, “with straw ; but I don’t know what.”

“ Well done you!” cried the person of the house. “I only make
pincushions and pen-wipers, to use up my waste. But my straw
really does belong to my business. ‘ry again, What do I make
with my straw ?”

“ Dinner-mats ?”

«“ A schoolmaster, and says dinner-mats! Il give you a clue to
my trade, in a game of forfeits. I love my love with a B because
she’s Beautiful; I hate my love with a B because she is Brazen ; I
took her to the sign of the Blue Boar, and I treated her with Bon-
nets; her name’s Bouncer, and she lives in Bedlam.—Now, what
do I make with my straw?”

“TLadies’ bonnets ?”

“Fine ladies’,” said the person of the house, nodding assent.
“Dolls’. I’m a Doll’s Dressmaker.” .

“JT hope it’s a good business *”

The person of the house shrugged her shoulders and shook her
head. “No. Poorly paid. And I’m often so pressed for time! I
had a doll married, last week, and was obliged to work all night.
And it’s not good for me, on account of my back being so bad and
my legs so queer.”

‘hey looked at tho little creature with a wonder that did not
diminish, and the schoolmaster said: “Iam sorry your fine ladies
are so inconsiderate.”

“Tt’s the way with them,’ said the person of the house, shrugging
her shoulders again. “And they take no care of their clothes, and
they never keep to the same fashions a month. I work for a doll
with three daughters. Bless you, she’s enough to ruin her husband!”

The person of the house gave a weird little laugh here, and gave
them another look out of the corners of her eyes. She had an elfin
chin that was capable of great expression; and whenever she gave
this look, she hitched this chin up. As if her eyes and her chin
worked together on the same wires.

“ Are you always as busy as you are nov

“Busier. I’m slack just now. I finished a large mourning order
the day before yesterday. Doll I work for, lost a canary-bird.”
The person of the house gave another little langh, and then nodded.
her head several times, as who should moralize, “ Oh this world, this
world !”

v 223

  

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 169

“ Are you alone all day?” asked Bradley Headstone. “ Don’t any
of the neighbouring children

“ Ah, lud!” cried the person of the house, with a little scream, as
if the word had pricked her. “ Don’t talk of children. I can’t bear
children. J know their tricks and their manners.” She said this
with an angry little shake of her right fist close before her eyes.

Perhaps it scarcely required the teacher-habit, to perceive that the
doll’s dressmaker was inclined to be bitter on the difference between
herself and other children. But both master and pupil understood
it sO.

“ Always running about and screeching, always playing and fight-
ing, always skip-skip-skipping on the pavement and chalking it for
their games! Oh! I know their tricks and their manners!” Shak-
ing the little fist as before. “And that’s not all. Ever so often
calling names in through a person’s keyhole, and imitating a person’s
back and legs. Oh! I know their tricks and their manners. And I'll
tell you what I’d do, to punish ’em. There’s doors under the church
in the Square—black doors, leading into black vaults. Well! I'd
open one of those doors, and I’d cram ’em all in, and then I’d lock
the door and through the keyhole I’d blow in pepper.”

“What would be the good of blowing in pepper?’ asked Charley
Hexam.

“To set ’em sneezing,’ said the person of the house, “and make
their eyes water. And when they were all sneezing and inflamed,
(’d mock ’em through the keyhole. Just as they, with their tricks
and their manners, mock a person through a person’s keyhole!”

An uncommonly emphatic shake of her little fist close before her
eyes, seemed to ease the mind of the person of the house; for she
added with recovered composure, “No, no, no. No children for me.
Give me grown-ups.”

It was difficult to guess the age of this strange creature, for her
poor figure furnished no clue to it, and her face was at once so
young and so old. ‘I'welve, or at the most thirteen, might be near
the mark.

“J always did like grown-ups,” she went on, “and always kept
company with them. So sensible. Sit so quiet. Don’t go prancing
and capering about! And I mean always to keep among none but
erown-ups till I marry. I suppose I must make up my mind to
marry, one of these days.”

She listened to a step outside that caught her ear, and there was a
soft knock at the door. Pulling at a handle within her reach, she
said, with a pleased laugh : “ Now here, for instance, is a grown-up
that’s my particular friend!” and Lizzie Hexam in a black dress
entered the room.

“Charley! You!”

Taking him to her arms in the old way—of which he seemed a
little ashamed—she saw no one else.

“There, there, there, Liz, all right my dear. See! MHere’s Mr.
Headstone come with me.”

Her eyes met those of the schoolmaster, who had evidently expected.
to see w very different sort of person, and a murmured word or two of

bb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

170 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

salutation passed between them. She was a little flurried by the
unexpected visit, and the schoolmaster was not at his ease. But he
never was, quite.

“T told Mr. Headstone you were not settled, Liz, but he was so
kind as to take an interest in coming, and so Il brought him. How
well you look!”

Bradley seemed to think so.

“Ah! Don't she, don’t she?’ cried the person of the house,
resuming her occupation, though the twilight was falling fast. “I
believe you she does! But go on with your chat, one and all:

You one two three,

My com-pa-nie,

And don’t mind me.’”
—pointing this impromptu rhyme with three points of her thin fore-
finger.

“T didn’t expect a visit from you, Charley,” said his sister. “I
supposed that if you wanted to see me you would have sent to me,
appointing me to come somewhere near the school, as I did last time.
I saw my brother near the school, sir,” to Bradley Headstone,“ because
it’s easier for me to go there, than for him to come here. I work
about midway between the two places.”

“You don’t see much of one another,” said Bradley, not improving
in respect of ease.

“No.” With a rather sad shake of herhead. “Charley always
does well, Mr. Headstone ?”

“He could not do better. I regard his course as quite plaim
before him.”

“J hoped so. I am so thankful. So well done of you, Charley
dear! It is better for me not to come (except when he wants me)
between him and his prospects. You think so, Mr. Headstone ?”

Conscious that his pupil-teacher was looking for his answer, and
that he himself had suggested the boy’s keeping aloof from this
sister, now seen for the first time face to face, Bradley Headstone
stammered :

“Your brother is very much occupied, you know. He has tv
work hard. One cannot but say that the less his attention is diverted
from his work, the better for his future. When he shall have esta-
blished himself, why then: it will be another thing then.”

Lizzie shook her head again, and returned, with a quiet smile: “I
always advised him as you advise him. Did I not, Charley ?”

“Well, never mind that now,” said the boy. “How are you
getting on?”

“Very well, Charley. I want for nothing.”

“You have your own room here ?”

“Qh yes. Upstairs. And it’s quiet, and pleasant, and airy.”

“And she always has the use of this room for visitors,” said the
person of the house, screwing up one of her little bony fists, like an
opera-glass, and looking through it, with her eyes and her chin in
that quaint accordance. ‘“ Always this room for visitors; haven’t
you, Lizzie dear ?”

It happened that Bradley Headstone noticed a very slight action

 

  

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 171

of Lizzie Hexam’s hand, as though it checked the doll’s dressmaker.
And it happened that the latter noticed him in the same instant:
for she made a double eyeglass of her two hands, looked at him
through it, and cried, with a waggish shake of her head: “Aha!
Caught you spying, did I?”

It might have fallen out so, any way; but Bradley Headstone
also noticed that immediately after this, Lizzie, who had not taken
off her bonnet, rather hurriedly proposed that as the room was
getting dark they should go out into the air. They went out; the
visitors saying good-night to the doll’s dressmaker, whom they
left, leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed, singing to
herself in a sweet thoughtful little voice.

“T’ll saunter on by the river,’ said Bradley. “You will be glad
to talk together.”

As his uneasy figure went on before them among the evening
shadows, the boy said to his sister, petulantly :

“ When are you going to settle yourself in some Christian sort of
place, Liz? 1 thought you were going to do it before now.”

“T am very well where I am, Charle yy.”

“Very well where you are! J am ashamed to have brought
Mr. Headstone with me. How came you to get into such company
as that little witch’s?”

“ By chance at first, as it se eemed, Charley. But I think it must
have been by something more than chance, for that child You
remember the bills upon the walls at home?’

“ Confound the pills upon the walls at home! I-want to forget the
bills upon the walls at home, and it would be better for you to do
the same,” grumbled the boy. “ Well; what of them ?”

«This child is the grandchild of the old man.”

“ What old man ?”

“The terrible drunken old man, in the list slippers and the nightcap.’

The boy asked, rubbing his nose in a manner that half expr
vexation at hearing so much, and half curiosity to hear more: “ How
came you to make that out? What a girl you are!”

“The child’s father is employed by the house that employs me; that’s
how I came to know it, Charley. The father is like his own father,
a weak wretched trembling ee falling to pieces, never sober.
But a good workman too, at the work he does. ‘I'he mother is dead.
This poor ailing little creature has come to be what she is, surrounded
by drunken people from her cradle—if she ever had one, Charley.”

“T don’t see what you] have to do with her, for all that,” said the boy.

“Don’t you, Charley ?

The boy looked doggedly at the river. They were at Millbank,
and the river rolled on their left. His sister gently touched him on
the shoulder, and pointed to it.

“ Any compensation—re stitution—never mind the word, you know
my meaning. Father's grave

But he did not: mepous with 1any tenderness. After a moody silence
he broke out in an ill-used tone:

“Ill be a very hard thing, Liz, if, when I am trying my best to
get up in the world, you pull me back.”

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

172 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“T, Charley ?”

“Yes, you, Liz. Why can’t you let bygones be bygones? Why can’t
you, as Mr. Headstone said to me this very evening about another
matter, leave well alone? What we have got to do, is, to turn our
faces full in our new direction, and keep straight on.”

“And never look back? Not even to try to make some amends

“You are such a dreamer,” said the boy, with his former petulance.
“Tt was all very well when we sat before the fire—when we looked
into the hollow down by the flare—but we are looking into the real
world, now.”

“ Ah, we were looking into the real world then, Charley !”

“JT understand what you mean by that, but you are not justified
init. I don’t want, as I raise myself, to shake you off, Liz. I want
to carry you up with me. That’s what I want to do, and mean to do.
I know what 1 owe you. I said to Mr. Headstone this very evening,
‘After all, my sister got me here.’ Well, then. Don’t pull me
back, and hold me down. That’s all I ask, and surely that’s not
unconscionable.”

She had kept a steadfast look upon him, and she answered with
composure :

“fam not here selfishly, Charley. To please myself, I could not
be too far from that river.”

“Nor could you be too far from it to please me. Let us get quit
of it equally. Why should you linger about it any more than I? I
give it a wide berth.”

“JT can’t get away from it, I think,” said Lizzie, passing her hand
across her forehead. “It’s no purpose of mine that I live by it
still.”

“There you go, Liz! Dreaming again! You lodge yourself of
your own accord in a house with a drunken—tailor, | suppose—or
something of the sort, and a little crooked antic of a child, or old
person, or whatever it is, and then you talk as if you were drawn
or driven there. Now, do be more practical.”

She had been practical enough with him, in suffering and striving
for him ; but she only laid her hand upon his shoulder—not reproach-
fully—and tapped it twice or thrice. She had been used to do so, to
soothe him when she carried him about, a child as heavy as herself.
Tears started to his eyes.

“Upon my word, Liz,” drawing the back of his hand across them,
“T mean to be a good brother to you, and to prove that I know what
Lowe you. All I say is, that I hope youll control your fancies a
little, on my account. ll get a school, and then you must come and
live with me, and you'll have to control your fancies then, so why
not now? Now, say I haven’t vexed you.”

“You haven’t, Charley, you haven't.”

“ And say I haven’t hurt you.”

“You haven't, Charley.” But this answer was less ready.

“Say you are sure I didn’t mean to. Come! ‘here’s Mr.
Headstone stopping, and looking over the wall at the tide, to hint
that it’s time to go. Kiss me, and tell me that you Imow I didn’t
mean to hurt you.”

9”

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 175

She told him so, and they embraced, and walked on and came up
with the schoolmaster.

“But we go your sister’s way,” he remarked, when the boy told
him he was ready. And with his cumbrous and uneasy action he
stiffly offered her his arm. Her hand was just within it, when she
drew it back. He looked round with a start, as if he thought she
had detected something that repelled her, in the momentary touch.

“J will not go in just yet,” said Lizzie. “And you have a
distance before you, and will walk faster without me.”

Being by this time close to Vauxhall Bridge, they resolved, in
consequence, to take that way over the Thames, and they left her ;
Bradley Headstone giving her his hand at parting, and she thanking
him for his care of her brother.

The master and the pupil walked on, rapidly and silently. They
had nearly crossed the bridge, when a gentleman came coolly saunter-
ing towards them, with a cigar in his mouth, his coat thrown back,
and his hands behind him. Something in the careless manner of
this person, and in a certain lazily arrogant air with which he ap-
proached, holding possession of twice as much pavement as another
would have claimed, instantly caught the boy’s attention. As the
gentleman passed, the boy looked at him narrowly, and then stood
still, looking after him.

“Who is it that you stare after ?” asked Bradley.

“Why!” said the boy, with a confused and pondering frown upor
his face, “It 7s that Wrayburn one!”

3radley Headstone scrutinized the boy as closely as the boy had
scrutinized the gentleman.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Headstone, but I couldn’t help wondering
what in the world brought him here !”

Though he said it as if his wonder were past—at the samo time
resuming the walk—it was not lost upon the master that he looked
over his shoulder after speaking, and that the same perplexed and
pondering frown was heavy on his face.

“You don’t appear to like your friend, Hexam ?”

“T pon’? like him,” said the boy.

“Why not?”

“He took hold of me by the chin in a precious impertinent way,
the first time I ever saw him,” said the boy.

“ Again, why ?”

“Tor nothing. Or—it’s much the same—because something I
happened to say about my sister didn’t happen to please him.”

“Then he knows your sister ?”

“He didn’t at that time,” said the boy, still moodily pondering.

“ Does now ?”

The boy had so lost himself that he looked at Mr. Bradley Head-
stone as they walked on side by side, without attempting to reply
until the question had been repeated; then he nodded and answered,
“Yes, sir.’

“Going to see her, I dare say.”

“Tt can’t be!” said the boy, quickly. ‘He doesn’t know her well
enough, I should like to catch him at it!”

   

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

174 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

When they had walked on for a time, more rapidly than before,
the master said, clasping the pupil’s arm between the elbow and the
shoulder with his hand :

“You were going to tell me something about that person. What
did you say his name was”

“Wrayburn. Mr. Eugene Wrayburn. He is what they call a
barrister, with nothing to do. The first time he came to our old
place was when my father was alive. He came on business; not
that it was his business—he never had any business—he was broug ht
by a friend of his.”

“ And the other times ?”

“There was only one other time that I knowof. When my father
was killed by accident, he chanced to be one of the finders. He was
mooning about, I suppose, taking liberties with people’s chins; but
there he was, somehow. He brought the news home to my sister
early in the morning, and brought Miss Abbey Potterson, aneighb OUT,
to help break it to her. He was mooning about the house when I was
fetched home in the afternoon—they didn’t know where to find me
till my sister could be brought round sufficiently to tell them—and
then he mooned away.”

“ And is that all?”

“That's all, sir.”

Bradley Headstone eradually released the boy’s arm, as if he were
thoughtful, and they walked on side by side as ‘before. After a lone
silence between them, Bradley resume od the talk.

“ TI suppose—your sister: ’ with a curious break both before and
after the words, “has received havdly any teaching, Hexam ?”

“Hardly any, sir.”

“Sacrificed, no doubt, to her father’s objections. I remember
them in your case. Yet—your sister—scarcely looks or speaks like
an ignorant person.”

“Lizzie has.as much thought as the best, Mr. Headstone. Too
much, perhaps, without teaching. I used to call the fire at home,
her books, for she was always full of fancies—sometimes quite wise
fancies, considering—w hen she sat looking at it.”

“TJ don’t like that,” said Bradley Headstone.

His pupil was a little sur prised by this striking in with so sudden
and decided and emotional an obj ection, but took it as a proof of the
master’s interest In himself. It Ebldbtie d him to say:

“J have never brought myself to mention it openly to you, Mr.
Headstone, and you’re my witness that 1 couldn’t even make up my
mind to take it from you before we came out to-night; but it’s a
painful thing to think that if I get on as well as you hope, I shall
be—I won't say diseraced, because I don’t mean disgraced—but—

rather put to the blush if it was known—by a sister who has been
very good to me.’

“Yes,” said Bradley Headstone in a slurring way, for his mind
scarcely seemed to touch that point, so smoothly did it glide to
another, “and there is this possibility to consider. Some man who
had worked his way might come to admire—your sister
even in time bring himself to think of marrying—your sister—

 

 

 

               

 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
     

 

 

     
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
  
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 175

and it would be a sad drawback and a heavy penalty upon him, if,
overcoming in his mind other inequalities of condition and other con-
siderations against it, this inequality and this consideration remained
in full force.”

“That's much my own meaning, sir.”

“ Ay, ay,” said Bradley Headstone, “but you spoke of a mere
brother. Now, the case I have supposed would be a much stronger
case; because an admirer, a husband, would form the connexion
voluntarily, besides being obliged to proclaim it: which a brother is
not. After all, you know, it must be said of you that you couldn’t
help yourself: while it would be said of him, with equal reason, that
he could.”

“That’s true, sir. Sometimes since Lizzie was left free by father’s
death, I have thought that such a young woman might soon acquire
more than enough to pass muster. And sometimes I have even
thought that perhaps Miss Peecher——”

“For the purpose, I would advise Nor Miss Peecher,’ Bradley
Headstone struck in with a recurrence of his late decision of manner.

“Would you be so kind as to think of it for me, Mr. Head-
storie?”

“Yes, Hexam, yes. Ill think of it. TU thi
VU think well of it.”

Their walk was almosta silent one afterwards, until it ended at 1
school-house. ‘There, one of neat Miss Peecher’s little windows, li
the eyes in needles, was illuminated, and in a corner near it sat
Mary Anne watching, while Miss Peecher at the table stitched at the
neat little body she was making up by brown paper pattern for her
own wearing. N.B. Miss Peecher and Miss Peecher’s pupils were not
much encouraged in the unscholastic art of needlework, by Govern-
ment.

Mary Anne with her face to the window, held her arm up.

“Well, Mary Anne?”

“Mr. Headstone coming home, ma'am.”

In about a minute, Mary Anne again hailed.

“Yes, Mary Anne?”

“Gone im and locked his door, ma’am.”

Miss Peecher repressed a sigh as she gathered her work together
for bed, and transfixed that part of her dress where her heart would
have been if she had had the dress on, with a sharp, sharp needle.

 

=

< maturely of it.

he
ke

 

le)

 

CHAPTER II.

STILL EDUCATIONAL.

  

Tur person of the house, doll’s dressmaker and manufacturer of
ornamental pincushions and pen-wipers, sat in her quaint little low
arm-chair, singing in the dark, until Lizzie came back. The person
of the house had attained that dignity while yet of very tender years
indeed, through being the only trustworthy person i the house.

  

 

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176 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Well Lizzie-Mizzie-Wizzie,” said she, breaking off in her song
«“ What's the news out of doors ?”

“ What's the news in doors?” returned Lizzie, playfully smoothing
the bright long fair hair which grew very luxuriant and beautiful on
the head of the doll’s dressmaker.

“Let me see, said the blind man, Why the last news is, that 1
don’t mean to marry your brother.”

SIN Ova

“No-o,” shaking her head and her chin. “Don’t like the boy.”

“What do you say to his master?”

“T say that I think he’s bespoke.”

Lizzie finished putting the hair carefully back over the mis-
shapen shoulders, and then lighted a candle. It showed the little
parlour to be dingy, but orderly and clean. She stood it on the
mantelshelf, remote from the dressmaker’s eyes, and then put the
room door open, and the house door open, and turned the little low
chair and its occupant towards the outer air. It was a sultry night,
and this was a fine-weather arrangement when the day’s work was
done. To complete it, she seated herself in a chair by the side of the
little chair, and protectingly drew under her arm the spare hand that
crept up to her.

“This is what your loving Jenny Wren calls the best time in the
day and night,” said the person of the house. Her real name was
Manny Cleaver; but she had long ago chosen to bestow upon herself
the appellation of Miss Jenny Wren.

“T have been thinking,” Jenny went on, “as I sat at work to-day,
what a thing it would be, if [should be able to have your company
till I am married, or at least courted. Because when I am courted,
I shall make Him do some of the things that you do forme. He
couldn’t brush my hair like you do, or help me up and down stairs
like you do, and he couldn't do anything like you do; but he could
take my work home, and he could call for orders in his clumsy way.
And he shall too. Jl trot him about, I can tell him !”

Jenny Wren had her personal vanities—happily for her—and no
intentions were stronger in her breast than the various trials and
torments that were, in the fulness of time, to be inflicted upon “ him.”

“ Wherever he may happen to be just at present, or whoever he
may happen to be,” said Miss Wren, “I know his tricks and his
manners, and I give him warning to look out.”

“Don’t you think you are rather hard upon him %” asked her friend,
smiling, and smoothing her hair.

“Not a bit,” replied the sage Miss Wren, with an air of vast
experience. “My dear, they don’t care for you, those fellows, if
youre not hard upon ‘em. But I was saying If I should be able to
have your company. Ah! What a large If! Ain’t it?”

“T have no intention of parting company, Jenny.”

“Don’t say that, or you'll go directly.”

“ Ain I so little to be relied upon ?”

‘*You’re more to be relied upon than silver and gold.” As she said it,
Miss Wren suddenly broke off, screwéd wp her eyes and her chin,
and looked prodigiously knowing “Aha!

 

 

 

    
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Who comes here ?
“A Grenadier.
“What does he want ?
“A pot of beer.

And nothing else in the world, my dear!”

Aman’s figure paused on the pavement at the outer door. “Mr.
Eugene Wrayburn, ain’t it?” said Miss Wren.

‘So I am told,” was the answer.

“You may come in, if you’re good.”

“JT am not good,” said Hugene, ‘* but I'll come in.”

He gave his hand to Jenny Wren, and he gave his hand to Lizzie,
and he stood leaning by the door at Lizzie’s side. He had been
strolling with his cigar, he said, Gt was smoked out and gone
by this time,) and he had strolled round to return in that direction
that he might lookin ashe passed. Had she not seen her brother to-
night ?

“ Yes,” said Lizzie, whose manner was a little troubled.

Gracious condescension on our brother’s part! Mr. Eugene Wray-
burn thought he had passed my young gentleman on the bridge
yonder. Who was his friend with him?

“The schoolmaster.”

“To be sure. Looked like it.”

Lizzie sat so still, that one could not have said wherein the fact of
her manner being troubled was expressed; and yet one could not
have doubted it. Eugene was as easy as ever; but perhaps, as she sat
with her eyes cast down, it might have been rather more perceptible
that his attention was concefitrated upon her for certain moments,
than its concentration upon any subject for any short time ever was,
elsewhere.

“JT have nothing to report, Lizzie,’ said Eugene. “But, having
promised you that an eye should be always kept on Mr. Riderhood
through my friend Lightwood, I like occasionally to renew my
assurance that I keep my promise, and keep my friend up to the
mark.”

“T should not have doubted it, sir.”

“Generally, I confess myself a man to be doubted,’ returned
Iugene, coolly, “for all that.”

“Why are you?” asked the sharp Miss Wren.

“Because, my dear,” said the airy Eugene, “I am a bad idle
dog.”

“Then why don’t you reform and be a good dog?” inquired Miss
Wren.

“ Because, my dear,” returned Eugene, “there's nobody who makes
it worth my while. Have you considered my suggestion, Lizzie?’
This in a lower voice, but only as if it were a graver matter; not at
all to the exclusion of the person of the house.

“T have thought of it, Mr. Wrayburn, but I have not been able ta
make up my mind to accept it.”

“False pride !” said Hugene.

“T think not, Mr. Wrayburn. I hope not.”

“ False pride!” repeated Eugene. “Why, what else is it? The
VOL. I. N

 

 

 

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178 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

thing is worth nothing in itself. The thing is worth nothing to me.
What can it be worth to me? You know the most I make of it.
I propose to be of some use to somebody: which I never was in this
world, and never shall be on any other occasion—by paying some
yualified person of your own sex and age, so many (or rather
so few) contemptible shillings, to come here, certaim nights in
the week, and give you certain instruction which you wouldn’t
want if you hadn't been a self-denying daughter and sister. You
know that it’s good to have it, or you would never have so devoted
yourself to your brother’s having it. Then why not haye it:
especially when our friend Miss Jenny here would profit by it too?
If I proposed to be the teacher, or to attend the lessons—obviously in-
congruous!—but as to that, I might as well be on the other side of the
globe, or not on the globe at all. False pride, Lizzie. Because true
pride wouldn’t shame, or be shamed by, your thankless brother.
True pride wouldn’t have schoolmasters brought here, like doctors, to
look at a bad ease. True pride would go to work and do it. You
know that, well enough, for you know that your own true pride
‘would do it to-morrow, if you had the ways and means which false
pride won’t let me supply. Very well. I add no more than this.
Your false pride does wrong to yourself and does wrong to your dead
father.”

« How to my father, Mx. Wrayburn?”’ she asked, with an anxious
face.

“How to your father? Can you ask! By perpetuating the
consequences of his ignorant and blind obstinacy. By resolving not
to set right the wrong he did you. By determining that the depri-
vation to which he condemned you, and which he forced upon you,
shall always rest upon his head.”

Tt chanced to be a subtle string to sound, in her who had so spoken
to her brother within the hour. 1+ sounded far more forcibly, because
of the change in the speaker for the moment; the passing appearance
of earnestness, complete conviction, injured resentment of suspicion,
generous and unselfish interest. All these qualities, in him usually
so light and careless, she felt to be inseparable from some touch of their
opposites in her own breast. She thought, had she, so far below
him and so different, rejected this disinterestedness, because of some
vain misgiving that he sought her out, or heeded any personal
attractions that he might descry in her? The poor girl, pure of
heart and purpose, could not bear to think it. Simking before her
own eyes, as she suspected herself of it, she drooped her head as though
she had done him some wicked and grievous injury, and broke into
silent tears.

“ Don’t be distressed,” said Eugene, very, very kindly. “I hope it
is not I who have distressed you. I meant no.more than to put the
matter in its true light before you; though I acknowledge I did it
selfishly enough, for I am disappointed.”

Disappointed of doing her a service.
disappointed ?

“Tt won't break my heart,” laughed Eugene; “it won't stay by
me eight-and-forty hours; but Iam genuinely disappointed. 1 had

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL’ FRIEND. 179

set my fancy on doing this little thing for you and for our friend
Miss Jenny. ‘The novelty of my doing anything in the least useful,
had its charms. I see, now, that I might have managed it better.
I might have affected to do it wholly for our friend Miss J. I might
have got myself up, morally, as Sir Eugene Bountiful. But upon my soul
I can’t make flourishes, and I would rather be disappointed than try.”

If he meant to follow home what was in Lizzie’s thoughts, it was
skilfully done. If he followed it by mere fortuitous coincidence, it
was done by an evil chance.

“Tt opened out so naturally before me,” said Eugene. “The ball
seemed, so thrown imto my hands by accident! I happen to be
originally brought into contact with you, Lizzie, on those two occasions
that you know of. I happen to be able to promise you that a watch
shall be kept upon that false accuser, Riderhood. I happen to be
able to give you some little consolation in the darkest hour of
your distress, by assuring you that I don’t believe him. On the
same occasion I tell you that 1 am the idlest and least of lawyers,
but that Iam better than none, in a case I have noted down with
my own hand, and that you may be always sure of my best
help, and incidentally of Lightwood’s too, in your efforts to clear your
father. So, it gradually takes my fancy that I may help you—so easily!
—to clear your father of that other blame which I mentioned a few
minutes ago, and which is a just and real one. I hope I have
explained myself, for I am heartily sorry to have distressed you.
I hate to claim to mean well, but I really did mean honestly and
sumply well, and I want you to know it.”

“T have never doubted that, Mr. Wrayburn,” said Lizzie; the
more repentant, the less he claimed.

“Tam very glad to hear it. Though if you had quite understood
my whole meaning at first, [ think you would not have refused. Do
you think you would?”

“T—I don’t know that I should, Mr. Wrayburn.”

“Well! Then why refuse now you do understand it?”

“Tt’s not easy for me to talk to you,” returned Lizzie, in some
confusion, “for you see all the consequences of what I say, as soon as
I say it.”

“Take all the consequences,” laughed Eugene, “and take away my
disappomtment. Lizzie Hexam, as I truly respect you, and as I am
your friend and a poor devil of a gentleman, I protest I don’t even
now understand why you hesitate.”

There was an appearance of openness, trustfulness, unsuspecting
generosity, in his words and manner, that won the poor girl over;
and not only won her over, but again caused her to feel as though
she had been influenced by the opposite qualities, with vanity at
their head.

“J will not hesitate any longer, Mr. Wrayburn. I hope you will
not think the worse of me for having hesitated at all. For myself
and for Jenny—you let me answer for you, Jenny dear ?”

The little creature had been leaning back, attentive, with her
elbows resting on the elbows of her chair, and her chin upon her
hands. Without changing her attitude, she answered, “ Yes!” so
nN 2

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180 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

suddenly that it rather seemed as if she had chopped the mony-
syllable than spoken it.

«For myself and for Jenny, I thankfully accept your kind offer.”

“Aoreed! Dismissed!” said Eugene, giving Lizzie his hand before
lightly waving it, as if he waved the whole subject away. “ I hope
it may not be often that so much is made of so little MA

Then he fell to talking playfully with Jenny Wren. “I think of
setting up a doll, Miss Jenny,” he said.

“You had better not,” replied the dressmaker.

“Why not?”

“You are sure to break it. All you children do.”

“But that makes good for trade, you know, Miss Wren,” returned
Eugene. “Much as people’s breaking promises and contracts and
bargains of all sorts, makes good for my trade.”

“J don’t know about that,’ Miss Wren retorted; “but you
had better by half set up a pen-wiper, and turn industrious, and
use it.”

“Why, if we were all as industrious as you, little Busy-Body, we
should begin to work as soon as we could crawl, and there would be
a bad thing!”

“Do you mean,” returned the little creature, with a flush suffusing
her face, “bad for your backs and your legs?”

“No, no, no,” said Eugene; shocked—to do him justice—at the
thought of trifling with her infirmity. “Bad for business, bad for
business. If we all set to work as soon as we could use our hands,
it would be all over with the doll’s dressmakers.”

“There’s something in that,” replied Miss Wren; “you have a
sort of an idea-in your noddle sometimes.” Then, in a changed
tone; “Talking of ideas, my Lizzie,” they were sitting side by side
as they had sat at first, “I wonder how it happens that when }
am work, work, working here, all alone in the summer-time, I smell
flowers.”

« As a commonplace individual, I should say,” Eugene suggested
languidly—for he was growing weary of the person of the house—
“that you smell flowers because you do smell flowers.”

“No I don’t,” said the little creature, resting one arm upon the
elbow of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking
vacantly before her; “this is not a flowery neighbourhood. It’s
anything but that. And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of
flowers. I smell roses, till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in
heaps, bushels, on the floor. I smell fallen leaves, till I put down
my hand—so—and expect to make them rustle. I smell the
white and the pink May in the hedges, and all sorts of flowers that
I never was among. For I have seen very few flowers indeed, in
my life.”

“Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!” said her friend: with a
glance towards Eugene as if she would have asked him whether
they were given the child in compensation for her losses.

“So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And the birds I
hear! Oh!” cried the little creature, holding out her hand and
looking upward, “ how they sing !”

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 181

There was something in the face and action for the moment, quite
inspired and beautiful. ‘Then the chin dropped musingly upon the
hand again.

“J dare say my birds sing better than other birds, and my flowers
smell better than other flowers. For when I was a little child,” in
a tone as though it were ages ago, “the children that I used to see
early in the morning were very different from any others that I ever
saw. ‘They were not like me; they were not chilled, anxious, ragged,
or beaten; they were never in pain. They were not like the
children of the neighbours; they never made me tremble all over, by
setting up shrill noises, and they never mocked me. Such numbers
of them too! All in white dresses, and with something shining on the
borders, and on their heads, that I have never been able to imitate
with my work, though I know it so well. They used to come down
in long bright slanting rows, and say all together, ‘Who is this in
pain! Who is this in pain!’ When I told them who it was, they
answered, ‘Come and play with us!’ When I said ‘I never play! I
can’t play!’ they swept about me and took me up, and made me
light. ‘Then it was all delicious ease and rest till they laid me down,
and said, all together, ‘Have patience, and we will come again.’
Whenever they came back, I used to know they were coming before
I saw the long bright rows, by hearing them ask, all together a long
way off, ‘Who is this in pain! who is this in pain!’ And I used to
cry out, ‘O my blessed children, it’s poor me. Have pity on me.
Take me up and make me light!”

By degrees, as she progressed in this remembrance, the hand was
raised, the late ecstatic look returned, and she became quite beautiful.
Having so paused for a moment, silent, with a listening smile upon
her face, she looked round and recalled herself.

“ What poor fun you think me; don’t you, Mr. Wrayburn? You
may well look tired of me. But it’s Saturday night, and I won’t
detain you.”

“That is to say, Miss Wren,” observed Hugene, quite ready to
profit by the hint, “you wish me to go?”

“ Well, it’s Saturday night,” she returned, “and my child’s coming
home. And my child is a troublesome bad child, and costs me a
world of scolding. I would rather you didn’t see my child.”

“A doll?” said Eugene, not understanding, and looking for an
explanation.

3ut Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, “ Her father,”
he delayed no longer. He took his leave immediately. At the corner
of the street he stopped to light another cigar, and possibly to ask
himself what ne was doing otherwise. If so, the answer was indefinite
and vague. Who knows what he is doing, who is careless what he
does! —

A man stumbled against him as he turned away, who mumbled
some maudlin apology. Looking after this man, Eugene saw him go
in at the door by which he himself had just come out.

On the man’s stumbling into the room, Lizzie rose to leave it.

“Don’t go away, Miss Hexam,” he said in a submissive manner,
speaking thickly and with difficulty. “Don’t fly fromh unfortunate

 

   
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  

 

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182 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
man in shattered state of health. Give poor invalid honor of your
company. It ain’t—ain’t catching.”

Lizzie murmured that she had something to do in her own room,
and went away upstairs.

“How's my Jenny?” said the man, timidly. “How’s my Jenny
Wren, best. of children, object dearest: affections ‘broken-hearted
invalid ?”

To which the person of the house, stretching out her arm in an
attitude of command, replied with irresponsive asperity: “Go along
with you! Goalong into your corner! Get into your corner directly !”

The wretched spectacle made as if he would have offered some
remonstrance; but not venturing to resist the person of the house,
thought better of it, and went and sat down on a particular chair of
disgrace.

“Oh-h-h!” cried the person of the house, pointing her little finger,
“You bad old boy! Oh-h-h you naughty, wicked creature! What
do you mean by it ?”

The shaking figure, unnerved and disjointed from head to foot,
put out its two hands a little way, as making overtures of peace and
reconciliation. Abject tears stood in its eyes, and stained the blotched
red of its cheeks. ‘The swollen lead-coloured under lip trembled
with a shameful whine. ‘The whole indecorous threadbare ruin, from
the broken shoes to the prematurely-grey scanty hair, grovelled. Not
with any sense worthy to be called a sense, of this dire reversal of
the places of parent and child, but in a pitiful expostulation to be let
off from a scolding.

“T know your tricks and your manners,” cried Miss Wren. “I
know where you've been to!” (which indeed it did) not require
discernment to discover). “Oh, you disgraceful old chap!”

The very breathing of the figure was contemptible, as it laboured
and rattled in that operation, like a blundering clock.

“ Glave, slave, slave, from morning to night,” pursued the person of
the house, “and all for this! What do you mean by it ?”

There was something in that emphasized “ What,’ which absurdly
frightened the figure. As often as the person of the house worked
her way round to it—even as soon as he saw that it was coming
—he collapsed in an extra degree.

«J wish you had been taken up, and locked up,” said the person of
the house. - “I wish you had been poked into cells and black holes,
and run over by rats and spiders and beetles. I know their tricks
and their manners, and they’d have tickled you nicely: Ain’t you
ashamed of yourself?”

“Yes, my dear,” stammered the father.

“Then,” said the person of the house, terrifying him by a grand
muster of her spirits and forces before recurring to the emphatic
word, “ What do you mean by it?”

“(Circumstances over which had no control,” was’ the miserable
creature’s plea in extenuation.

“ 7’ll circumstance you and control you too,” retorted the person of
the house, speaking with vehement sharpness, “if you talk in that
way. Ill give youin charge to the police, and have you fined five

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHILD.

BAD

HOUSE AND

THE

OF

-ERSON

I

THE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 183

shillings when you can’t pay, and then I won’t pay the money for you,
and you'll be transported for life. How should you like to be trans-
ported for life ?”

“Shouldn’t like it. Poor shattered invalid. Trouble nobody
long,” cried the wretched figure.

“Come, come!” said the person of the house, tapping the table near
her in a business-like manner, and shaking her head and her chin ;
“vou know what you've got todo. Put down your’ money this
instant.”

The obedient figure began to rummage in its pockets.

“Spent a fortune out of your wages, I’ll be bound!” said the person
of the house. “Put it here! All you've got left! Every farthing!”

Such a business as he made of collecting it from his dogs’-eared
pockets; of expecting it in this pocket, and not finding it; of not
expecting it in that pocket, and passing it over; of finding no pocket
where that other pocket ought to be!

“Ts this all?” demanded the person of the house, when a confused
heap of pence and shillings lay on the table.

“Got no more,” was the rueful answer, with an accordant shake of
the head.

“Let me make sure. You know what you've got to do. Tum all
your pockets inside out, and leave em so!” cried the person of the
house.

He obeyed. And if anything could have made him look more
abject or more dismally ridiculous than before, it would have been
his so displaying himself.

“Here’s but seven and eightpence halfpenny!” exclaimed Miss
Wren, after reducing the heap to order. “Oh, you prodigal old son!
Now you shall be starved.”

“No, don’t starve me,” he urged, whimpering.

“Tf you were treated as you ought to be,” said Miss Wren, “you'd
be fed upon the skewers. of cats’ meat;—only the skewers, after
the cats had had the meat. As it is, go to bed.”

When he stumbled out of the corner to comply, he again put
out both his hands, and pleaded: “Circumstances over which no
control ——”

“Get along with you to bed!” cried Miss Wren, snapping him up.
“Don’t speak io me. I’m not going to forgive you. Go to bed
this moment!”

Seeing another emphatic “What” upon its way, he evaded it
by complying, and was heard to ‘shuffle heavily up stairs, and shut’ his
door, and throw himself on his bed: Within a little while afterwards,
Lizzie came down.

“ Shall we have our supper, Jenny dear ?”

“Ah! bless us and save us, we need haye something to keep
us going,” returned Miss Jenny, shrugging her shoulders. :

Lizzie laid a cloth upon the little bench (more handy for the
person of the house than an ordinary table), and put upon it
such plain fare as they were accustomed to have, and drew up
a stool for herself.

“Now for supper! What are you thinking of, Jenny darling ?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

184 CUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“[ was thinking,” she returned, coming out of a deep study,
“what I would do to Him, if he should turn out a drunkard.”

“Oh, but he won’t,” said Lizzie. “Youll take care of that,
beforehand.”

“J shall try to take care of it beforehand, but he might deceive
me. Oh, my dear, all those fellows with their tricks and their
manners do deceive!” With the little fist in full action. “And
if so, I tell you what I think I'd do. When he was asleep, ’d make a
spoon red hot, and I’d have some boiling liquor bubbling in a saucepan,
and I’d take it out hissing, and I’d open his mouth with the
other hand—or perhaps he’d sleep with his mouth ready open—and
I'd pour it down his throat, and blister it and choke him.”

“Tam sure you would do no such horrible thing,” said Lizzie.

“Shouldn’t 1? Well; perhaps I shouldn’t. But I should like to ie

“Tam equally sure you would not.”

“Not even like to? Well, you generally know best. Only you
haven’t always lived among it as I have lived—and your back isn’t
bad and your legs are not queer.”

As they went on with their supper, Lizzie tried to bring her
round to that prettier and better state. But, the charm was broken.
The person of the house was the person of a house full of
sordid shames and cares, with an upper room in which that abased
figure was infecting even innocent sleep with sensual brutality and
degradation. The doll’s dressmaker had become a little quaint
shrew; of the world, worldly; of the earth, earthy.

Poor doll’s dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that
should have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing
her way on the eternal road, and asking guidance! Poor, poor
little doll’s dressmaker !

 

 

 

CHAPTER III.

A PIECE OF WORK.

BriranniA, sitting meditating one fine day (perhaps in the attitude
in which she is presented on the copper coinage), discovers all of a
sudden that she wants Veneering in Parliament. It occurs to her
that Veneering is “a representative man”—which cannot in these
times be doubted—and that Her Majesty’s faithful Commons are in-
complete without him. So, Britannia mentions to a legal gentleman
of her acquaintance that if Veneering will “ put down” five thousand
pounds, he may write a couple of initial letters after his name at the
extremely cheap rate of two thousand five hundred per letter. It is
clearly understood between Britannia and the legal gentleman that
nobody is to take up the five thousand pounds, but that being put
down they will disappear by magical conjuration and enchantment.

The legal gentleman in Britannia’s confidence going straight from
that lady to Veneering, thus commissioned, Veneering declares him-
self highly flattered, but requires breathing time to ascertain
“whether his friends will rally round him.” Above all things, he

 

 

   

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 185

says, it behoves him to be clear, at a crisis of this importance, “ whether
his friends will rally round him.” The legal gentleman, in the
interests of his client cannot allow much time for this purpose, as
the lady rather thinks she knows somebody prepared to put down
six thousand pounds; but he says he will-give Veneering four hours.

Venecering then says to Mrs. Veneering, “We must work,” and
throws himself into a Hansom cab. Mrs. Veneering in the same
moment relinquishes baby to Nurse; presses her aquiline hands upon
her brow, to arrange the throbbing intellect with; orders out the
carriage ; and repeats in a distracted and deyoted manner, compounded
of Ophelia and any selfimmolating female of antiquity you may
prefer, “We must work.”

Veneering having instructed his driver to charge at the Public in
the streets, like the Life-Guards at Waterloo, is driven furiously to
Duke Street, Saint James’s. There, he finds T'wemlow in his lodgings,
fresh from the hands of a secret artist who has been doing something
to his hair with yolks of eggs. The process requiring that Twemlow
shall, for two hours after the application, allow his hair to stick upright
and dry gradually, he is inan appropriate state for the receipt of start-
ling intelligence; looking equally like the Monument on Fish Street
Hill, and King Priam on a certain incendiary occasion not wholly
unknown as a neat point from the classics.

“My dear Twemlow,” says Veneering, grasping both his hands,
“as the dearest and oldest of my friends—’

(“Then there can be no more doubt about it in future,” thinks
Twemlow, “and I am!”)

“Are you of opinion that your cousin, Lord Snigsworth, would
give his name as a Member of my Committee? 1 don’t go so far as
to ask for his lordship; I only ask for his name. Do you think he
would give me his name?”

In sudden low spirits, Twemlow replies, “ I don’t think he would.”

“My political opinions,” says Veneering, not previously aware of
having any, “are identical with those of Lord Snigsworth, and
perhaps as a matter of public feeling and public principle, Lord
Snigsworth would give me his name.”

“Tt might be so,” says Twemlow; “but And perplexedly
scratching his head, forgetful of the yolks of eggs, is the more dis-
comfited by being reminded how stickey he is.

“Between such old and intimate friends as ourselves,” pursues
Veneering, “there should in such a case be no reserve. Promise me
that if I ask you to do anything for me which you don’t like to do,
or feel the slightest difficulty in doing, you will freely tell me so.”

This, 'wemlow is so kind as to promise, with every appearance of
most heartily intending to keep his word.

“Would you have any objection to write down to Snigsworthy
Park, and ask this favor of Lord Snigsworth? Of course if it were
granted I should know that I owed it solely to you; while at the
satne time you would put it to Lord Snigsworth entirely upon public
grounds. Would you have any objection ?”

Says Twemlow, with his hand to his forehead, “ You have
exacted a promise from me.”

”

 

a en a aes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ie

>)

186 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“JT have, my dear Twemlow.”

« And you expect me to keep it honorably.’

“T do, my dear ‘I'wemlow.”

“ On the whole, then;—observe me,” urges Twemlow with. great
nicety, as if, in the case of its having: been off the whole, he would
have done it directly—* on the whole, I must beg you to excuse me
from addressing’ any communication to Lord Snigsworth.”

“Bless you, bless you!” says Veneering ; horribly disappointed, but
grasping him by both hands again, in a particularly fervent manner.

Tt is not to be wondered at that poor ‘Twemlow should decline to
inflict a letter on his noble cousin (who has gout in the temper), imas-
much as his noble cousin, who allows him a small annuity on which
he lives, takes it out of him, as the phrase goes, in: extreme severity ;
putting him, when he visits at Snigsworthy Park, under a kind of
martial law; ordaining that he shall hang his hat ona particular peg,
sit on a particular chair, talk on particular subjects to particular
people, and perform particular exercises: such as sounding the praises
of the Family Varnish (not to say Pictures), and abstaining from the
choicest of the Family Wines unless expressly invited to partake.

“One thing, however, I can do for you,” says Twemlow; “and
that is, work for you.”

Veneering blesses him again:

“Tl go,” says T'wemlow, ina rising hurry of spirits, “to’ the
club ;—let us see now; what o'clock is it?”

“Twenty minutes to eleven.”

“Tl be,” says T'wemlow, “at the club by ten minutes to twelve,
and Ill never leave it all day.”

Veneering feels that his friends are rallying round him, and says,
“Thank you, thank you. I knew I could rely upon you. I said to
Anastatia before leaving home just now to come to you—of course
the first friend I have seen on a subject so momentous to me, my
dear 'T'wemlow—I said to Anastatia, ‘ We must work.’ ”

“You were right, you were right,” replies Twemlow. “ Tell me,
Is she working ?”

“She is,” says Veneering.

“Good!” cries T'wemlow, polite: little gentleman. that he is. “A
woman’s tact is invaluable. 'I'o have the dear sex with us, is to have
everything with us.”

« But you have not imparted to me,” remarks Veneering, “what
you think of my entering the House of Commons?” :

«J think,” rejoins Twemlow, feelingly, “ that it is the best club in
London.”

Vencering again blesses him, plunges down stairs, rushes into his
Hansom, and directs the driver to be up and atthe British» Public,
and to charge into the City.

Meanwhile T'wemlow, in an increasing hurry of spirits, gets his
hair down as well as he can—-which is not very well; for, after these
glutinous applications it is restive, and has a surface on it somewhat
in the nature of pastry—and gets to the club by the appointed time.
At the club he promptly secures a large window, writing materials,
and all the newspapers, and establishes himself, immoveable, to be

Nid 10 it |

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 187

respectfully contemplated by Pall Mall. Sometimes, when a man
enters who nods to him, T'wemlow says, “Do you know Veneering ?”
Man says, “No; member: of the club?” 'lwemlow ‘says, “ Yes:
Coming in for Pocket-Breaches.” Man says, “ Ah! Hope he may
find it worth the money!” yawns, and saunters out. ‘Towards six
o’clock of the afternoon, 'l’wemlow begins to persuade himself that he is
positively jaded with work, and thinks it much to be regretted that
he was not brought up asa Parliamentary agent.

From Twemlow’s, Veneering dashes at Podsnap’s place of business.
Finds Podsnap reading the paper, standing, and inclined to be
oratorical over the astonishing: discovery he has made, that Italy is
not England. Respectfully entreats Podsnap’s pardon for stopping
the flow of his words of wisdom, and informs him what is in the
wind. Tells Podsnap that their political opinions are identical.
Gives Podsnap to understand that he, Veneering; formed his political
opinions while sitting at the feet of him, Podsnap. Seeks earnestly to
know whether Podsnap “will rally round him ?”

Says Podsnap, something sternly. “Now, first of ‘all, Veneering,
do you ask my advice ?”

Veneering falters that as so old and so-dear a friend.

“Yes, yes, that’s all very well,” says Podsnap ; “but have you
made up your mind to take this borough of Pocket-Breaches on its
own terms, or do you ask my opinion whether you shall take it or
leave it alone ?”

Veneering repeats that: his heart’s:desire and his soul’s thirst are,
that Podsnap shall rally round him.

“Now, lll be plain with you, Veneering,” says Podsnap, knitting
his brows. “ You will infer that I don’t care about Parliament, from
the fact of my not being there ?”

Why, of course Veneering, knows that! Of course Veneering
knows that if Podsnap chose to: go there, he would be there, in
a space of time that might: be stated by the light and: thoughtless
as a jiffy.

«|¢ is not worth my while,” pursues Podsnap, becoming hand-
somely mollified, “and it is the reverse of important to my position.
But it is not my wish to set: myself up as law for another man,
differently situated. You think it is worth your while, and 2s im-
portant to your position. Is that so te

Always with the proviso that Podsnap will rally round him,
Veneering thinks it 1s so.

«Then you don’t ask my advice,” says Podsnap: “Good. Then
Twon’t giveit you. Butyoudoaskmy help. G ood. Then Pl work
for you.”

Veneering instantly blesses him, and apprises him that Twemlow
is already working. Podsnap does not quite approve that anybody
should be already working—regarding it rather in the light of a liberty
—_but tolerates T'wemlow, and says he is a well-connected. old: female
who will do no harm.

“T have nothing very"particular to do to-day,” adds Podsnap,
“and Il mix with some influential people. I had engaged myself to

dinner, but I’ll send Mrs. Podsnap and get off going myself, and TU

 

 

     

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

188 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

dine with you at eight. It’s important we should report progress
and compare notes. Now, let me see. You ought to have a couple of
active energetic fellows, of gentlemanly manners, to go about.”

Veneering, after cogitation, thinks of Boots and Brewer.

“ Whom | have met at your house,” says Podsnap. “Yes. They'll
do very well. Let them each have a cab, and go about.”

Veneering immediately mentions what a blessing he feels it, to
possess a friend capable of such grand administrative suggestions,
and really is elated at this going about of Boots and Brewer, as an
idea wearing an electioneering aspect and looking desperately like
business. Leaving Podsnap, ata hand-gallop, he descends upon Boots
and Brewer, who enthusiastically rally round him by at once bolting
off in cabs, taking opposite directions. ‘Then Vencering repairs to
the legal gentleman in Britannia’s confidence, and with him transacts
some delicate affairs of business, and issues an address to the inde-
pendent electors of Pocket-Breaches, announcing that he is coming
among them for their suffrages, as the mariner returns to the
home of his early childhood: a phrase which is none the worse
for his never having been near the place in his life, and not even
now distinctly knowing where it is.

Mrs. Veneering, during the same eventful hours, is not idle. No
sooner does the carriage turn out, all complete, than she turns into it,
all complete, and gives the word “'T'o Lady Tippins’s.” That charmer
dwells over a staymaker’s in the Belgravian Borders, with a life-size
model in the window on the ground floor, of a distinguished beauty in
a blue petticoat, stay-lace in hand, looking over her shoulder at
the town in innocent surprise. As well she may, to find herself
dressing under the circumstances.

Lady Tippins at home? Lady Tippins at home, with the room
darkened, and her back (like the lady’s at the ground-floor window,
though for a different reason) cunningly turned towards the light.
Lady Tippins is so surprised by seeing her dear Mrs. Veneering
so early—in the middle of the night, the pretty creature calls it—
that her eyelids almost go up, under the influence of that emotion.

To whom Mrs. Veneering incoherently communicates, how that
Veneering has been offered Pocket-Breaches ; how that it is the time
for rallying round ; how that Veneering has said “ We must work ” ;
how that she is here, ay a wife and mother, to entreat Lady Tippins
to work; how that the carriage is at Lady Tippims’s disposal for
purposes of work ; how that she, proprietess of said bran new elegant
equipage, will return home on foot—on bleeding feet if need be—to
work (not specifying how), until she drops by the side of baby’s
crib.

“My love,” says Lady Tippins, “compose yourself; we'll bring
him in.” And Lady ippins really does work, and work the
Veneering horses too; for she clatters about town all day, calling
upon everybody she knows, and showing her entertaining powers and
green fan to immense advantage, by rattling on with, My dear soul,
what do you think? What do you suppose me to be? Yow ll
never guess. I’m pretending to be an electioneering agent. And
for what place of all places? Pocket-Breaches. And why? Because

   

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 189

the dearest friend I have in the world has bought it. And who
is the dearest friend I have in the world? A man of the name
of Veneering. Not omitting his wife, who is the other dearest
friend I have in the world; and I positively declare I forgot their
baby, who is the other. And we are carrying on this little farce to
keep up appearances, and isn’t it refreshing! T’hen, my precious
child, the fun of it is that nobody knows who these Veneerings
are, and that they know nobody, and that they have a house out
of the Tales of the Genii, and give dinners out of the Arabian Nights.
Curious to see em, my dear? Say you'll know ’em. Come and dine
with ’em. ‘They shan’t bore you. Say who shall meet you. We'll
make up a party of our own, and I'll engage that they shall not
interfere with you for one single moment. You really ought to
see their gold and silver camels. I call their dinner-table, the
Caravan. Do come and dine with my Veneerings, my own Ve-
neerings, my exclusive property, the dearest friends I have in the
world! And above all, my dear, be sure you promise me your vote and
interest and all sorts of plumpers for Pocket-Breaches : for we couldn’t
think of spending sixpence on it, my love, and can only consent to be
brought in by the spontaneous thingummies of the incorruptible
whatdoyoucallums.

Now, the point of view seized by the bewitching Tippins, that this
same working and rallying round is to keep up appearances, may have
something in it, but not all the truth. More is done, or considered to be
done—which does as well—by taking cabs, and “ going about,” than
the fair Tippins knew of. Many vast vague reputations have
been made, solely by taking cabs and going about. This particularly
obtains in all Parliamentary affairs. Whether the business in hand
be to get a man in, or get a man out, or get a man over, or promote a
railway, or jockey a railway, or what else, nothing is understood
to be so effectual as scouring nowhere in a violent hurry—in
short, as taking cabs and going about.

Probably because this reason is in the air, T'wemlow, far from
being singular in his persuasion that he works lke a Trojan, is
capped by Podsnap, who in his turn is capped by Boots and Brewer.
At eight o’clock, when all these hard workers assemble to dine
at Veneering’s, it is understood that the cabs of Boots and Brewer
mustn’t leave the door, but that pails of water must be brought from
the nearest baiting-place, and cast over the horses’ legs on the
very spot, lest Boots and Brewer should have instant occasion to
mount and away. ‘hose fleet messengers require the Analytical to
see that their hats are deposited where they can be laid hold of
at an instant’s notice; and they dine (remarkably well though)
with the air of firemen in charge of an engine, expecting intelligence
of some tremendous conflagration.

Mrs. Veneering faintly remarks, as dinner opens, that many
such days would be too much for her.

“Many such days would be too much for all of us,” says Podsnap ;
“but we'll bring him in!”

“Weill bring him in,” says Lady Tippins, sportively waving
her green fan. “ Veneering for ever!”

 

 

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

   

190

“We'll bring him in!” says Twemlow.

“We'll bring him in!” say Boots and Brewer.

Strictly speaking, it would be hard to show cause why they should
not bring-him in, Pocket-Breaches having closed its little bargain, and
there being no opposition. However, it isagreed that they must “work”
to the last, and that if they did not work, something indefinite would
happen. It is likewise agreed that they are all so exhausted with
the work behind them, and need to be so fortified for the work
before them, as to require peculiar strengthening from Veneering’s
cellar. Therefore, the Analytical has orders to produce the cream of
the cream of his binns, and therefore it falls out that rallying
becomes rather a trying word for the occasion; Lady Tippins being
observed gamely to inculcate the necessity of rearmg round their
dear Veneering; Podsnap advocating roaring round him; Boots
and Brewer declaring their intention of zeelmg round him; and
Veneering thanking his devoted, friends one and all, with great
emotion, for rarullarning round him.

In these inspiring moments, Brewer strikes out an idea which
is the great hit of the day. He consults his watch, and says
(like Guy Fawkes), he’ll now go down to the House of Commons and
see how things look.

“Tl keep about the lobby for an hour or so,” says Brewer, with a
deeply mysterious countenance, “and if things look well, I won't
come back, but will order my cab for nine in the morning.”

“You couldn’t do better,” says Podsnap.

Veneering expresses his inability ever to acknowledge this last
service. ‘Tears stand in Mrs. Veneering’s affectionate eyes. Boots
shows envy, loses ground, and is regarded as possessing a second-
rate mind. They all crowd to the door, to see Brewer off. Brewer
says to his driver, “Now, is your. horse pretty fresh?” eyeing’
the animal with critical scrutmy. Driver says he’s as fresh
as butter. “Put him along then,” says Brewer; “House of Com-
mons.” Driver darts up, Brewer leaps in, they cheer him as he
departs, and Mr. Podsnap says, “Mark my words, sir. That's a man
of resource; that’s a man to make his way in life.”

When the time comes for Veneering to deliver a neat and appro-
priate stammer to the men of Pocket-Breaches, only Podsnap and
‘Twemlow accompany him by railway to that sequestered spot. The
legal gentleman is at the Pocket-Breaches Branch Station, withan
open carriage with a printed bill “ Veneering for ever ” stuck upon it,
as if it were a wall; and they gloriously proceed, amidst the grins of
the populace, to a feeble little town hall on crutches, with some
onions and bootlaces under it, which the legal gentleman says are a
Market ; and from the front window of that edifice Veneering speaks
to the listening earth. In the moment of his taking his hat off,
Podsnap, as per agreement made with Mrs. Veneering, telegraphs to
that wife and mother, “ He’s up.”

Veneering loses his way in the usual No Thoroughfares of speech,
and Podsnap and Twemlow say Hear hear! and sometimes, when he
can’t by any means back himself out of some very unlucky No
Thoroughfare, “ He-a-a-r He-a-a-r!” with an air of facetious convic-

 

 

    
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 191

tion, as if the ingenuity of the thing gave them a sensation of exqui-
site pleasure. But Veneering makes two remarkably good points;
so good, that they are supposed to have been suggested to him
by the legal gentleman in Britannia’s confidence, while briefly con-
ferring on the stairs.

Point the first is this. WVeneering institutes an original compari-
son between the country, and a ship; pointedly calling the ship, the
Vessel of the State, and the Minister the Man at the Helm. Veneer-
ing’s object is to let Pocket-Breaches know that his friend on his
right (Podsnap) is a man of wealth. Consequently says he, “ And,
gentlemen, when the timbers of the Vessel of the State are unsound
and the Man at the Helm is unskilful, would those great Marine
Insurers, who rank among our world-famed merchant-princes—
would they insure her, gentlemen? Would they underwrite her?
Would they incur a risk in her? Would they have confidence in
her? W hy, gentlemen, if I appealed to my honorable friend upon
my right, himself among the greatest and most espera of that
great and much respected class, he would answer No!”

Point the second is this. The telling fact ‘that Twemlow is
related to Lord Snigsworth, must be let off. WVeneering: supposes a
state of public affairs that probably never could by any possibility
exist (though this is not quite certain, Im consequence of his
picture being: unintelligible to himself and everybody else), and
thus proceeds. “Why, gentlemen, if I were to indicate such a pro-
gramme to any class of society, I say it would be received with
derision, would be pointed at by the: finger of scorn. If I indicated
such a programme to any worthy and intelligent tradesman of your
town—nay, I will here be personal, and say Our town—what would
he reply? He would reply, ‘ Away with it! That's what he
would reply, gentlemen. In his honest indignation he would
reply, ‘Away withit! But suppose 1 mounted higher in the social
scale. Suppose I drew my arm through the arm of my respected
friend upon my left, and, walking with him through the ancestral
woods of his family, and under the, spreading bee ches of Snigsworthy
Park, ¢ approac shed. the noble hall, crossed the courtyard, entered by the
door, went up the staircase, and, passing from room to room, found
my self at last in the august presence of my friend’s near kinsman,
Lord Snigsworth. And suppose I said to that venerable earl, ‘My
Lord, I am here before your lordship, presented by your lordship’s near
kinsman, my friend upon my left, to indicate that programme ;’) what
would his lordship answer? Why, he would answer, ‘ Away with it!’
That’s what he would answer, gentlemen. ‘Away with it!’ Uncon-
sciously using, in his exalted sphere, the exact language of the worthy
and intelligent tradesman of our town, the near and dear kinsman of
my friend upon my left would answer in his wrath, ‘Away with it!”

Veneering finishes -with this last success, and Mr. Pods snap tele-
graphs to Mrs. Vene ering, “ He’s down.’

Then, dinner is had at the Hotel with the legal gentleman, and
then there are in due succession, nomination, and declaration. Finally
Mr. Podsnap telegraphs to Mrs. Veneering, “We have brought
him in.”

 

 

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192 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Another gorgeous dinner awaits them on their return to the
Veneering halls, and Lady Tippins awaits them, and Boots and
Brewer await them. There is a modest assertion on everybody's
part that everybody single-handed “brought him in;” but in the
main it is conceded by all, that that stroke of business on Brewer's
part, in going down to the house that night to see how things looked,
was the master-stroke.

A touching little incident is related by Mrs. Vencering, in the
course of the evening. Mrs. Vencering is habitually disposed to be
tearful, and has an extra disposition that way after her late excite-
ment. Previous to withdrawing from the dinner-table with Lady
‘Tippins, she says, in a pathetic and physically weak manner :

“ You will all think it foolish of me, I know, but I must mention
it. As Isat by Baby’s crib, on the night before the election, Baby
was very uneasy in her sleep.”

The Analytical chemist, who is gloomily looking on, has diaboli-
cal impulses to suggest “ Wind” and throw up his situation; but
represses them.

“ After an interval almost convulsive, Baby curled her little hands
in one another and smiled.”

Mrs. Veneering stopping here, Mr. Podsnap deems it incumbent on
him to say: “I wonder why!”

“Could it be, I asked myself,” says Mrs. Veneering, looking
about her for her pocket-handkerchief, “ that the Fairies were telling
Baby that her papa would shortly be an M.P.?”

So overcome by the sentiment is Mrs. Vencering, that they all get
up to make a clear stage for Veneering, who goes round the table to
the rescue, and bears her out backward, with her feet impressively
scraping the carpet: after remarking that her work has been too
much for her strength. Whether the fairies made any mention of
the five thousand pounds, and it disagreed with Baby, is not specu-
lated upon.

Poor little Twemlow, quite done up, is touched, and still continues
touched after he is safely housed over the livery-stable yard in
Duke Street, Saint James’s. But there, upon his sofa, a tremendous
consideration breaks in upon the mild gentleman, putting all softer
considerations to the rout.

“Gracious heavens! Now I have time to think of it, he never
saw one of his constituents in all his days, until we saw them to-
gether |”

After having paced the room in distress of mind, with his hand to
his forehead, the innocent T'wemlow returns to his sofa and moans:

“T shall either go distracted, or die, of this man. He comes upon
me too late in life. I am not strong enough to bear him!”

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

CHAPTER IV.
CUPID PROMPTED.

To use the cold language of the world, Mrs. Alfred Lammle
rapidly improved the acquaintance of Miss Podsnap. ‘To use the warm
language of Mrs. Lammle, she and her sweet Georgiana soon became
one: in heart, in mind, in sentiment, in soul.

Whenever Georgiana could escape from the thraldom of Podsnappery ;
could throw off the bedclothes of the custard-coloured phaéton, and
get up ; could shrink out of the range of her mother’s rocking, and
(so to speak) rescue her poor little frosty toes from being rocked over ;
she repaired to her friend, Mrs. Alfred Lammle. Mrs. Podsnap by
no means objected. As a consciously “ splendid woman,” accustomed
to overhear herself so denominated by elderly osteologists pursuing
their studies in dinner society, Mrs. Podsnap could dispense with her
daughter. Mr. Podsnap, for his part, on being informed where
Georgiana was, swelled with patronage of the Lammles. That they,
when unable to lay hold of him, should respectfully grasp at the hem
of his mantle; that they, when they could not bask in the glory of
him the sun, should take up with the pale reflected light of the watery
young moon his daughter; appeared quite natural, becoming, and
proper. It gave him a better opinion of the discretion of the
Lammles than he had heretofore held, as showing that they ap-
preciated the value of the connexion. So, Georgiana repairing to her
friend, Mr. Podsnap went out to dinner, and to dinner, and yet to
dinner, arm in arm with Mrs. Podsnap : settling his obstinate head
in his cravat and shirt-collar, much as if he were performing on the
Pandean pipes, in his own honor, the triumphal march, See the
conquering Podsnap comes, Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!

It was a trait in Mr. Podsnap’s character (and in one form or other
it will be generally seen to pervade the depths and shallows of Pod-
snappery), that he could not endure a hint of disparagement of any
friend or acquaintance of his. “How dare you?” he would seem to
say, in such a case. “What do you mean? I have licensed this
person. ‘This person has taken out my certificate. Through this
person you strike at me, Podsnap the Great. And it is not that I
particularly care for the person’s dignity, but that I do most particu-
larly care for Podsnap’s,” Hence, if any one in his presence had pre-
sumed to doubt the responsibility of the Lammles, he would have
been mightily huffed. Not that any one did, for Veneering, M.P.,
was always the authority for their being very rich, and perhaps
believed it. As indeed he might, if he chose, for anything he knew
of the matter.

Mr. and Mrs. Lammle’s house in Sackville Street, Piccadilly, was
but a temporary residence. It had done well enough, they informed
their friends, for Mr. Lammle when a bachelor, but it would not do
now. So,they were always looking at palatial residences in the best

VOL. I. 0

 

 

 

194 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

situations, and always very nearly taking or buying one, but never
quite concluding the bargain. Hereby they made for themselves a
shining little reputation apart. People said, on seeing a vacant
palatial residence, “The very thing for the Lammles!” and wrote to
the Lammles about it, and the Lammles always went to look at it,
but unfortunately it never exactly answered. In short, they suffered
so many disappointments, that they began to think it would be
necessary to build a palatial residence. And hereby they made
another shining reputation; many persons of their acquaintance
becoming by anticipation dissatisfied with their own houses, and
envious of the non-existent Lammle structure.

The handsome fittings and furnishings of the house in Sackville
Street were piled thick and high over the skeleton up-stairs,
and if it ever whispered from under its load of upholstery, “Here L
am in the closet!” it was to very few ears, and certainly never to
Miss Podsnap’s. What Miss Podsnap was particularly charmed with,
next to the graces of her friend, was the happiness of her friend’s
married life. This was frequently their theme of conversation.

“TJ am sure,” said Miss Podsnap, “Mr. Lammle is like a lover. At
least I—I should think he was.”

“ Georgiana, darling!” said Mrs. Lammle, holding up a forefinger,
“Take care !”

“Oh my goodness me!” exclaimed Miss Podsnap, reddening.
“ What have I said now ?”

“ Alfred, you know,” hinted Mrs. Lammle, playfully shaking her
head. “You were neyer to say Mr. Lammle any more, Georgiana.”

“Oh! Alfred, then. Jam glad it’s no worse. I was afraid I had
said something shocking. I am always saying something wrong
to ma.”

“To me, Georgiana dearest ?”

“No, not to you; you arenot ma. I wish you were.”

Mrs. Lammle bestowed a sweet and loving smile upon her friend,
which Miss Podsnap returned as she best could, ‘They sat at lunch
in Mrs. Lammle’s own boudoir.

« And go, dearest Georgiana, Alfred is like your notion of a lover?”

“J don’t say that, Sophronia,” Georgiana replied, beginning to con-
ceal her elbows. “I haven't any notion of a lover. The dreadful
wretches that ma brings up at places to torment me, are not lovers.
I only mean that Mr. ;

« Aoain, dearest Georgiana ?”

“That Alfred—”

«Sounds much better, darling.” z

“loves you so. He always treats you with such delicate
gallantry and attention. Now, don’t he?”

“Truly, my dear,” said Mrs. Lammle, with a rather singular ex-
pression crossing her face. “I believe that he loves me, fully as
much as I love him.”

“Oh, what happiness!” exclaimed Miss Podsnap.

«But do you know, my Georgiana,” Mrs. Lammle resumed. pre-
sently, “that there is something suspicious in your enthusiastic sym-
pathy with Alfred’s tenderness ?”

 

 

    
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND 195

“Good gracious no, I hope not!”

“Doesn't it rather suggest,” said Mrs. Lammle archly, “that my
Georgiana’s little heart is——” 3

“Oh don’t!” Miss Podsnap blushingly besought her. “Please
don’t! I assure you, Sophronia, that I only praise Alfred, because he
is your husband and so fond of you.”

Sophronia’s glance was as if a rather new light broke in upon her.
It shaded off into a cool smile, as she said, with her eyes upon her
lunch, and her eyebrows raised :

“You are quite wrong, my love, in your guess at my meaning.
What I insinuated was, that my Georgiana’s little heart was growing
conscious of a vacancy.”

“No, no, no,” said Georgiana. “T wouldn’t have anybody say any-
thing to me in that way for I don’t know how many thousand
pounds.”

“In what way, my Georgiana?” inquired Mrs. Lammle, still
smiling coolly with her eyes upon her lunch, and her eyebrows
raised.

“ You know,” returned poor little Miss Podsnap. “I think I should
go out of my mind, Sophronia, with vexation and shyness and detesta-
tion, if anybody did. It’s enough for me to see how loving you
and your husband are. That’s a different thing. I couldn’t bear to
have anything of that sort going on with myself. I should beg and
pray to—to have the person taken away and trampled upon.” =

Ah! here was Alfred. Having stolen in unobserved, he playfully
leaned on the back of Sophronia’s chair, and, as Miss Podsnap saw
him, put one of Sophronia’s wandering locks to his lips, and waved a
lass from it towards Miss Podsnap.

“ What is this about husbands and detestations ?” inquired the cap-
tivating Alfred.

“Why, they say,” returned his wife, “that listeners never hear
any good of themselves; though you--but pray how long have you
been here; sir ?”

“This instant arrived, my own.”

“Then I may goon—though if you had been here but a moment or
two sooner, you would have heard your praises sounded by Georgiana.”

“Only, if they were to be called praises at all which I really don’t
think they were,” explained Miss Podsnap in a flutter, “ for being
so devoted to Sophronia.”

“Sophronia!” murmured Alfred. “My life!” and kissed her hand.
In return for which she kissed his watch-chain.

“ But it was not I who was to be taken away and trampled upon,
I hope?” said Alfred, drawing a seat between them.

“ Ask Georgiana, my soul,” replied his wife.

Alfred touchingly appealed to Georgiana.

“Oh, it was nobody,” replied Miss Podsnap. “It was nonsense.”

“But if you are determined to know, Mr. Inquisitive Pet, as I sup-"
pose you are,” said the happy and fond Sophronia, smiling, “it was
any one who should venture t: aspire to Georgiana.”

“Sophronia, my love,” remoustrated Mr. Lammle, becoming grayer,
“you are not serious ?”

2

‘One

> aS a wi atten idues

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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196 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

« Alfred, my love,” returned his wife, “I dare say Georgiana was
not, but I am.”

“Now this,” said Mr. Lammle, “shows the accidental combina-
tions that there are in things! Could you believe, my Ownest, that
{ came in here with the name of an aspirant to our Georgiana on my
lips?”

« Of course I could believe, Alfred,” said Mrs. Lammle, “ anything
that you told me.”

“You dear one! And I anything that you told me.”

How delightful those interchanges, and the looks accompanying
them! Now, if the skeleton up-stairs had taken that opportunity, for
instance, of calling out “Here I am, suffocating in the closet!”

“J give you my honor, my dear Sophronia

« And I know what that is, love,” said she.

“You do, my darling—that I came into the room all but uttering
young Fledgeby’s name. ‘Tell Georgiana, dearest, about young
Fledgeby.

“Qh no, don’t! Please don’t!” cried Miss Podsnap, putting her
fingers in her ears. “I'd rather not.”

Mrs. Lammle laughed in her gayest manner, and, removing her
Georgiana’s unresisting hands, and playfully holding them in her own
at arms’ length, sometimes near together and sometimes wide apart,
went on:

“You must know, you dearly beloved little goose, that once upon
a time there was a certain person called young Fledgeby. And this
young Fledgeby, who was of an excellent family and rich, was known
to two other certain persons, dearly attached to one another and called
Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lammle. So this young Fledgeby, being one
night at the play, there sees with Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lammle, a
certain heroine called a

“No, don’t say Georgiana Podsnap!” pleaded that young lady
almost in tears. “Please don’t. Oh do do do say somebody else!
Not Georgiana Podsnap. Oh don’t, don’t, don’t!”

“No other,” said Mrs. Lammle, laughing airily, and, full of affec-
tionate blandishments, opening and closing Georgiana’s arms like a
pair of compasses, “ than my little Georgiana Podsnap. So this young
Fledgeby goes to that Alfred Lammle and says -

“Oh ple-e-e-ease don’t!” cried Georgiana, as if the supplication
were being squeezed out of her by powerful compression. “ I so
hate him for saying it!”

« For saying what, my dear?’ laughed Mrs. Lammle.

“Oh, I don’t know what he said,” cried Georgiana wildly, “but I
hated him all the same for saying it.”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Lammle, always laughing in her most capti-
vating way, “the poor young fellow only says that he is stricken all
of a heap.”

“Qh, what shall I ever do!” interposed Georgiana. “Oh my good-
ness what a Fool he must be!”

“__And implores to be asked to dinner, and to make a fourth at
the play another time. And so he dines to-morrow and goes to the
Opera with us. That’s all. Except, my dear Georgiana—and what

 

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 197
will you think of this !—that he is infinitely shyer than you, and far
more afraid of you than you ever were of any one in all your
days !”

In perturbation of mind Miss Podsnap still fumed and plucked at
her hands a little, but could not help laughing at the notion of any-
body’s being afraid of her. With that advantage, Sophronia flattered
her and rallied her more successfully, and then the insinuating
Alfred flattered her and rallied her, and promised that at any moment
when she might require that service at his hands, he would take
young Fledgeby ont and trample on him. Thus it remained amicably
understood that young Fledgeby was to come to admire, and that
Georgiana was to come to be admired; and Georgiana with the
entirely new sensation in her breast of having that prospect before
her, and with many kisses from her dear Sophronia in present
possession, preceded six feet one of discontented footman (an amount
of the article that always came for her when she walked home) to
her father’s dwelling.

The happy pair being left together, Mrs. Lammle said to her
husband : :

“lf I understand this girl, sir, your dangerous fascinations have
produced some effect upon her. I mention the conquest in good time
because I apprehend your scheme to be more important to you than
your vanity.”

There was a mirror on the wall before them, and her eyes just
caught him smirking in it. She gave the reflected image a look of
the deepest disdain, and the image received it in the glass. Next
moment they quietly eyed each other, as if they, the principals, had
had no part in that expressive transaction.

It may have been that Mrs. Lammle tried in some manner to ex-
cuse her conduct to herself by depreciating the poor little victim of
whom she spoke with acrimonious contempt. It may have been too
that in this she did not quite succeed, for it is very difficult to resist
confidence, and she knew she had Georgiana’s.

Nothing more was said between the happy pair. Perhaps conspi-
rators who have once established an understanding, may not be over-
fond of repeating the terms and objects of their conspiracy. Next
day came; came Georgiana; and came Fledgeby.

Georgiana had by this time seen a good deal of the house and its
frequenters. As there was a certain handsome room with a billiard
table in it—on the ground floor, eating out a backyard—which might
have been Mr. Lammle’s office, or library, but was called by neither
name, but simply Mr. Lammle’s room, so it would have been hard for
stronger female heads than Georgiana’s to determine whether its fre-
quenters were men of pleasure or men of business. Between the
room and the men there were strong points of general resemblance.
Both were too gaudy, too slangey, too odorous of cigars, and too much
given to horseflesh ; the latter characteristic being exemplified in the
room by its decorations, and in the men by their conversation. High-
stepping horses seemed necessary to all Mr. Lammle’s friends—as neces-
sary as their transaction of business together in a gipsy way at un-
timely hours of the morning and evening, and in rushes and snatches.

    
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

198 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

There were friends who seemed fo be always coming and going across
the Channel, on errands about the Bourse, and Greek and Spanish and
India and Mexican and par and premium and discount and three
quarters and seven eighths. There were other friends who seemed to
be always lolling and lounging in and out of the City, on questions of
the Bourse, and Greek and Spanish and India and Mexican and par
and premium and discount and three quarters and seven eighths.
They were all feverish, boastful, and imdefinably loose; and they
all ate and drank a great deal; and made bets in eating and
drinking. ‘They all spoke of sums of money, and only mentioned the
sums and left the money to be understood ; as “five and forty thou-
sand Tom,” or “Two hundred and twenty-two on every individual
share in the lot Joe.” They seemed to divide the world into two
classes of people; people who were making enormous fortunes, and
people who were being enormously ruined. ‘They were always in a
hurry, and yet seemed to have nothing tangible to do; except a few
of them (these, mostly asthmatic and thick-lpped) who were for ever
demonstrating to the rest, with gold pencil-cases which they could
hardly hold because of the big rings on their forefingers, how money
was to be made. Lastly, they all swore at their grooms, and the
grooms were not quite as respectful or complete as other men’s
grooms; seeming somehow to fall short of the groom point as their
masters fell short of the gentleman point.

Young Fledgeby was none of these. Young Fledgeby had a peachy
cheek, or a cheek compounded of the peach and the red red red wall
on which it grows, and was an awkward, sandy-haired, small-eyed
youth, exceeding slim (his enemies would have said lanky), and prone
to self-examination in the articles of whisker and moustache. While
feeling for the whisker that he anxiously expected, Fledgeby under-
went remarkable fluctuations of spirits, ranging along the whole scale
from confidence to despair. ‘There were times when he started, as
exclaiming “By Jupiter here it is at last!” There were other times
when, being equally depressed, he would be seen to shake his head, and
give up hope. Tosee himat those periods leaning on a chimneypiece,
like as on an wn containing the ashes of his ambition, with the cheek
that would not sprout, upon the hand on which that cheek had forced
conviction, was a distressing sight.

Not so was Fledgeby seen on this occasion. Arrayed in superb
raiment, with his opera hat under his arm, he concluded his self
examination hopefully, awaited the arrival of Miss Podsnap, and talked
small-talk with Mrs. Lammle. In facetious homage to the smallness
of his talk, and the jerky nature of his manyers, Fledgeby’s familiars
had agreed to confer upon him (behind his back) the honorary title
of Fascination Fledgeby.

“Warm weather, Mrs. Lammle,’ said Fascination Fledgeby.
Mrs. Lammle thought it scarcely as warm as it had been yesterday.
“Perhaps not,” said Fascination Fledgeby, with great quickness of
repartee ; “ but I expect it will be devilish warm to-morrow.”

He threw off another little scintillation. “Been out to-day, Mrs.
Lammle ?”

Mrs. Lammle answered, for a short drive.

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 199

“Some people,” said Fascination Fledgeby, “are accustomed to
take.long drives; but it generally appears to me that if they make
’em too long, they overdo it.”

Being in such feather, he might have surpassed himself in his next
sally, had not Miss Podsnap been announced. Mrs. Lammle flew to
embrace her darling little Georgy, and when the first transports
were over, presented Mr. Fledgeby. Mr. Lammle came on the
scene last, for he was always late, and so were the frequenters always
late; all hands bemg bound to be made late, by private infor-
mation about the Bourse, and Greek and Spanish and India and
Mexican and par and premium and discount and three quarters and
seven eighths.

A handsome little dinner was served immediately, and Mr. Lammle
sat sparkling at his end of the table, with his servant behind his
chair, and his ever-lingering doubts upon the subject of his wages
behind himself. Mr. Lammle’s utmost powers of sparkling were in
requisition to-day, for Fascination Fledgeby and Georgiana not only
struck each other speechless, but struck each other into astonishing
attitudes; Georgiana, as she sat facing Fledgeby, making such efforts
to conceal her elbows as were totally incompatible with the use of a
knife and fork; and Fledgeby, as he sat facing Georgiana, avoiding
her countenance by every possible device, and betrayimg the discom-
posure of his mind in feeling for his whiskers with his spoon, his
wine glass, and his bread.

So, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lammle had to prompt, and this is how
they prompted.

“Georgiana,” said Mr. Lammle, low and smiling, and spark-
ling all over, like a harlequin; “you are not in your usual spirits.
Why are you not in your usual spirits, Georgiana ?”

Georgiana faltered that she was much the same as she was in
general; she was not aware of being different.

“Not aware of being different!” retorted Mr. Alfred Lammle.
“You, my dear Georgiana! who are always so natural and uncon-
strained with us! who are such a relief from the crowd that are all
alike! who are the embodiment of gentleness, simplicity, and reality !”

Miss Podsnap looked at the door, as if she entertained confused
thoughts of taking refuge from these compliments in flight.

“Now, I will be judged,” said Mr. Lammle, raising his voice a
little, “ by my friend Fledgeby.”

“Oh pon’r!” Miss Podsnap faintly ejaculated: when Mrs. Lammle
took the prompt-book.

“JT beg your pardon, Alfred, my dear, but I cannot part with
Mr. Fledgeby quite yet; you must wait for him a moment. Mr.
Fledgeby and I are engaged in a personal discussion.”

Fledgeby must have conducted it on his side with immense art,
for no appearance of uttering one syllable had escaped him.

“A personal discussion, Sophronia, my love? What discussion ?
Fledgeby, Iam jealous. What discussion, Fledgeby ?”

“Shall I tell him, Mr. Fledgeby ?” asked Mrs. Lammle.

Trying too look as if he knew anything about it, Fascination
replied, “ Yes, tell him.”

Fi RE Se ne

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

'@ e « PS ie

200 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

“ We were discussing then,” said Mrs. Lammle, “if you must know,
Alfred, whether Mr. Fledgeby was in his usual flow of spirits.”

“Why, that is the very point, Sophronia, that Georgiana and I
were discussing as to herself! What did Fledgeby say ?”

“Oh, a likely thing, sir, that I am going to tell you everything,
and be told nothing! What did Georgiana say ?”

“Georgiana said she was doing her usual justice to herself to-day,
and I said she was not.”

“Precisely,” exclaimed Mrs. Lammle, “ what I said to Mr. Fledgeby.”

Still, it wouldn’t do. They would not look at oneanother. No, not
even when the sparkling host proposed that the quartette should take
an appropriately sparkling glass of wine. Georgiana looked from her
wine glass at Mr. Lammle and at Mrs. Lammle ; but mightn’t, couldn’t,
shouldn’t, wouldn’t, look at Mr. Fledgeby. Fascination looked from
his wine glass at Mrs. Lammle and at Mr. Lammle; but mightn’t,
couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, look at Georgiana.

More prompting was necessary. Cupid must be brought up to the
mark. ‘he manager had put him down in the bill for the part, and
he must play it.

“Sophronia, my dear,” said Mr. Lammle, “I don’t like the colour
of your dress.”

“I appeal,” said Mrs. Lammle, “to Mr. Fledgeby.”

“ And I,” said Mr. Lammle, “ to Georgiana.”

“ Georgy, my love,” remarked Mrs. Lammle aside to her dear giz],
“TI rely upon you not to go oyer to the opposition. Now, Mr.
Fledgeby.”

Fascination wished to know if the colour were not called rose-colour ?
Yes, said Mr. Lammle; actually he knew everything; it was really rose-
colour. Fascination took rose-colour to mean the colour of roses. (In
this he was very warmly supported by Mr. and Mrs. Lammle.) Fas-
cination had heard the term Queen of Flowers applied to the Rose.
Similarly, it might be said that the dress was the Queen of Dresses.
(“Very happy, Fledgeby!” from Mr. Lammle.) Notwithstanding,
Fascination’s opinion was that we all had our eyes—or at least a large
majority of us—and that—and—and his further opinion was several
ands, with nothing beyond them.

“Oh, Mr. Fledgeby,” said Mrs. Lammle, “to desert mein that way!
Oh, Mr. Fledgeby, to abandon my poor dear injured rose and declare
for blue!”

“ Victory, victory!” cried Mr. Lammle; “ your dress is condemned,
my dear.”

“But what,” said Mrs. Lammle, stealing her affectionate hand
towards her dear girl’s, “what does Georgy say ?”

“She says,” replied Mr. Lammle, interpreting for her, “that in
her eyes you look well in any colour, Sophronia, and that if she had
expected to be embarrassed by so pretty a compliment as she has
received, she would have worn another colour herself. Though I tell
her, in reply, that it would not have saved her, for whatever colour
she had worn would have been Fledgeby’s colour. But what does
FPledgeby say ?”

“He says,” replied Mrs. Lammle, interpreting for him, and patting

; a

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 201

the back of her dear girl’s hand, as if it were Fledgeby who was pat-
ting it, “ that it was no compliment, but a little natural act of homage
that he couldn’t resist. And,” expressing more feeling as if it were
more feeling on the part of Fledgeby, “he is right, he is right!”

Still, no not even now, would they look at one another. Seeming
to gnash his sparkling teeth, studs, eyes, and buttons, all at once,
Mr. Lammle secretly bent a dark frown on the two, expressive of an
intense desire to bring them together by knocking their heads
together.

“Have you heard this opera of to-night, Fledgeby ?” he asked,
stopping very short, to prevent himself from running on into “con-
found you.”

“Why no, not exactly,” said Fledgeby. “In fact I don’t know a
note of it.”

“ Neither do you know it, Georgy?” said Mrs. Lammle.

“N-no,” replied Georgiana, faintly, under the sympathetic coin-
cidence.

“Why, then,” said Mrs. Lammle, charmed by the discovery which
flowed from the premises, “you neither of you know it! How
charming !”

Even the craven Fledgeby felt that the time was now come
when he must strike a blow. He struck it by saying, partly to Mrs.
Lammle and partly to the circumambient air, “I consider myself
very fortunate in being reserved by ?

As he stopped dead, Mr. Lammle, making that gingerous bush of
his whiskers to look out of, offered him the word “ Destiny.”

“No, I wasn’t going to say that,” said Fledgeby. “I was going to
say Fate. I consider it very fortunate that Fate has written in the
book of—in the book which is its own property—that I should go to
that opera for the first time under the memorable circumstances
of going with Miss Podsnap.”

‘Yo which Georgiana replied, hooking her two little fingers in one
another, and addressing the tablecloth, “‘Thank you, but 1 generally
go with no one but you, Sophronia, and J like that very much.”

Content perforce with this success for the time, Mr. Lammle let
Miss Podsnap out of the room, as if he were opening her cage door,
and Mrs. Lammle followed. Coffee being presently served up stairs,
he kept a watch on Fledgeby until Miss Podsnap’s cup was empty,
and then directed him with his finger (as if that young gentleman
were a slow Retriever) to go and fetch it. This feat he performed,
not only without failure, but even with the original embellishment
of informing Miss Podsnap that green tea was considered bad for the
nerves. ‘Uhough there Miss Podsnap unintentionally threw him
out by faltering, “Oh, is it indeed? How does it act?” Which he
was not prepared to elucidate.

The carriage announced, Mrs. Lammle said, “Don’t mind me,
Mr. Fledgeby, my skirts and cloak occupy both my hands, take
Miss Podsnap.” And he took her, and Mrs. Lammle went next,
and Mr. Lammle went last, savagely following his little flock, like a
drover.

But he was all sparkle and glitter in the box at the Opera, and

 

     
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

202 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

there he and his dear wife made a conversation between Fledgeby and
Georgiana in the following ingenious and skilful manner. They
sat in this order: Mrs. Lammle, Fascination Fledgeby, Georgiana,
Mr. Lammle. Mrs. Lammle made leading remarks to Fledgeby, only
require monosyllabic replies. Mr. Lammle did the like with
Georgiana. At times Mrs, Lammle would lean forward to address Mr.
Lammle to this purpose.

« Alfred, my dear, Mr. Fledgeby very justly says, apropos of the last
scene, that true constancy would not require any such stimulant
as the stage deems necessary.” ‘lo which Mr. Lammle would reply,
“ Ay, Sophronia, my love, but as Georgiana has observed to me, the
lady had no sufficient reason to know the state of the gentleman’s
affections.” Tio which Mrs. Lammle would rejoin, “ Very true,
Alfred; but Mr. Fledgeby points out,” this. To which Alfred would
demur: “ Undoubtedly, Sophronia, but Georgiana acutely remarks,”
that. Through this device the two young people conversed at great
length and committed themselves to a variety of delicate senti-
ments, without having once opened their lips, save to say yes or no,
and even that not to one another.

Fledgeby took his leave of Miss Podsnap at the carriage door,
and the Lammles dropped her at her own home, and on the way
Mrs. Lammle archly rallied her, in her fond and protecting manner,
by saying at intervals, “Oh little Georgiana, little Georgiana!”
Which was not much; but the tone added, ‘You have enslaved.
your Fledgeby.”

And thus the Lammles got home at last, and the lady sat down
moody and weary, looking at her dark lord engaged in a deed of
violence with a bottle of soda-water as though he were wringing the
neck of some unlucky creature and pouring its blood down his throat.
As he wiped his drippmg whiskers in an ogreish way, he met her
eyes, and pausing, said, with no very gentle voice:

«Well ?”

“Was such an absolute Booby necessary to the purpose ?”

“JT know what lam doing. He is no such dolt as you suppose.”

“ A genius, perhaps ?”

“You sneer, perhaps; and you take a lofty air upon your-
self, perhaps! But 1 tell you this:—when that young fellow’s
interest is concerned, he holds as tight as a horse-leech. When
money is in question with that young fellow, he is a match for the
Devil.”

“Ts he a match for you ?”

“He is. Almost as good a one as you thought me for you. He
has no quality of youth in him, but such as you have seen to-
day. Touch him upon money, and you touch no booby then. He
really is a dolt, | suppose, in other things; but it answers his one
purpose very well.”

“ Has she money in her own right in any case?”

“Ay! she has money in her own right in any case. You have
done so well to-day, Sophronia, that I answer the question, though
you know I object to any such questions. You have done so well to-
day, Sophronia, that you must be tired. Get to bed.”

ie a8 a a

  

     
  
    
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER YV.
MERCURY PROMPTING.

Frepcesy deserved Mr. Alfred Lammle’s eulogium. He was tho
meanest cur existing, with a single pair of legs. And instinct (a word
we all clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason
always on two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection
of meanness on two.

The father of this young gentleman had been a money-lender,
who had transacted professional business with the mother of this
young gentleman, when he, the latter, was waiting in the vast
dark ante-chambers of the present world to be born. The lady,
a widow, being unable to pay the money-lender, married him ; and in
due course, Fledgeby was summoned ‘out of the vast dark ante-
chambers to come and be presented to the Registrar-General. Rather
a curious speculation how Fledgeby would otherwise have disposed of
his leisure until Doomsday

Fledgeby’s mother offended her family by marrying Fledgeby’s
father. tis one of the easiest achievements in life to offend your
family when your family want to get rid of you. Fledgeby’s mother’s
family had been very much offended with her for being poor, and
broke with her for becoming comparatively rich. Fledgeby’s
mother’s family was the Snigsworth family. She had even the high
honour to be cousin to Lord Snigsworth—so many times removed
that the noble Harl would have had no compunction in removing her
one time more and dropping her clean outside the cousinly pale; but
cousin for all that.

Among her pre-matrimonial transactions with Fledgeby’s father,
Fledgeby’s mother had raised money of him at a great disadvantage
on a certain reversionary interest. The reversion fallmg im soon
after they were married, Fledgeby’s father laid hold of the cash for
his separate use and benefit. This led to subjective differences of
opinion, not to say objective interchanges of boot-jacks, backgammon.
boards, and other such domestic missiles, between Fledgeby’s father
and Fledgeby’s mother, and those led to Fledgeby’s mother spending
as much money as she could, and to Fledgeby’s father doing all he
couldn’t to restrain her. Fledgeby’s childhood had been, in conse-
quence, a stormy one ; but the winds and the waves had gone down
in the grave, and Fledgeby flourished alone.

He lived in chambers in the Albany, did Fledgeby, and main-
tained a spruce appearance. But his youthful fire was all composed
of sparks from the grindstone; and as the sparks flew off, went out,
and never warmed anything, be sure that Fledgeby had his tools at
the grindstone, and turned it with a wary eye.

Mr. Alfred Lammle came round to the Albany to breakfast with
Fledgeby. Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf,
two scanty pats of butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a oa RETer-remeresareees
A) BY = ( + Mee 2 Abe

204 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

eggs, and an abundance of handsome china bought a second-hand
bargain.

“What did you think of Georgiana?” asked Mr. Lammle.

“Why, Ill tell you,” said Fledgeby, very deliberately.

“Do, my boy.” -

“You misunderstand me,” said Fledgeby. “I don’t mean I'll tell
you that. I mean I'll tell you something else.”

“Tell me anything, old fellow !”

“ Ah, but there you misunderstand me again,” said Fledgeby. “I
mean I'll tell you nothing.”

Mr. Lammle sparkled at him, but frowned at him too.

“Look here,” said Fledgeby. “You're deep and you're ready.
Whether I am deep or not, never mind. I am not ready. But I
can do one thing, Lammle, I can hold my tongue. And I intend
always doing it.”

“You are a long-headed fellow, Fledgeby.”

“May be, or may not be. If I ama short-tongued fellow, it may
amount to the same thing. Now, Lammle, I am never going to
answer questions.”

“My dear fellow, it was the simplest question in the world.”

“Never mind. It seemed so, but things are not always what
they seem. I saw a man examined as a witness in Westminster
Hall. Questions put to him seemed the simplest in the world, but
turned out to be anything rather than that, after he had answered
‘em. Very well. ‘Then he should have held his tongue. If he had
held his tongue he would have kept out of scrapes that he got into.”

“Tf I had held my tongue, you would never have seen the subject
of my question,” remarked Lammle, darkening.

“Now, Lammle,” said Fascination Fledgeby, calmly feeling for
his whisker, “it won’t do. I won’t be led on into a discussion. I can’t
manage a discussion. But I can manage to hold my tongue.”

“Can?” Mr. Lammle fell back upon propitiation. “I should think
you could! Why, when these fellows of our acquaintance drink and
you drink with them, the more talkative they get, the more silent
you get. ‘The more they let out, the more you keep in.”

“TI don’t object, Lammle,” returned Fledgeby, with an internal
chuckle, “to being understood, though I object to being questioned.
That certainly is the way I do it.”

“ And when ali the rest of us are discussing our ventures, none
of us ever know what a single venture of yours is!”

“And none of you ever will from me, Lammle,” replied Fledgeby,
with another internal chuckle; “ that certainly is the way I do it.”

“Why of course it is, 1know!” rejoined Lammle, with a flourish of
frankness, and a laugh, and stretching out his hands as if to show
the universe a remarkable man in Fledgeby. “If I hadn’t known
it of my Fledgeby, should I have proposed our little compact of
advantage, to my Fledgeby ?”

“Ah!” remarked Fascination, shaking his head slyly. “ But lam not
to be got at in that way. Lam notvain. That sortof vanity don’t pay,
Lammle. No, no, no. Compliments only make me hold my tongue
the more.”

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 205

Alfred Lammle pushed his plate away (no great sacrifice under
the circumstances of there being so little in it), thrust his hands in his
pockets, leaned back in his chair, and contemplated Fledgeby in
silence. Then he slowly released his left hand from its pocket, and
made that bush of his whiskers, still contemplating him in silence.
hen he slowly broke silence, and slowly said: “ What—the—
Dev-il is this fellow about this morning ?”

“Now, look here, Lammle,” said Fascination Fledgeby, with the
meanest of twinkles in his meanest of eyes: which were too near
together, by the way : “look here, Lammle; Iam very well aware that
I didn’t show to advantage last night, and that you and your wife—
who, I consider, is a very clever woman and an agreeable woman—
did. Iam not calculated to show toadvantage under that sort of cir-
cumstances. I know very well you two did show to advantage,
and managed capitally. But don’t you on that account come talking
to me as if I was your doll and puppet, because 1 am not.”

“ Andall this,” cried Alfred, after studying with a look the mean-
ness that was fain to have the meanest help, and yet was so mean as
to turn upon it: “all this because of one simple natural question !”

“You should have waited till I thought proper to say something
about it of myself. I don’t like your coming over me with your
Georgianas, as if you was her proprietor and mine too.”

“Well, when you are in the gracious mind to say anything
about it of yourself,” retorted Lammle, “ pray do.”

“J have done it. J have said you managed capitally. You and
your wife both. If you'll go on managing capitally, I'l go on
doing my part. Only don’t crow.”

“T crow!” exclaimed Lammle, shrugging his shoulders.

“Or,” pursued the other—‘ or take it in your head that people are
your puppets because they don’t come out to advantage at the parti-
cular moments when you do, with the assistance of a very clever
and agreeable wife. All the rest keep on doing, and let Mrs. Lammle
keep ondoing. Now, I have held my tongue when I thought proper,
and I have spoken when I thought proper, and there’s an end of that.
And now the question is,” proceeded Fledgeby, with the greatest
reluctance, “will you haye another egg ?”

“ No, I won’t,” said Lammle, shortly.

“Perhaps you're right and will find yourself better without it,”
replied Fascination, in greatly improved spirits. “To ask you if youll
have another rasher would be unmeaning flattery, for it would
make you thirsty all day. Will you have some more bread and
butter ?”

“No, I won't,” repeated Lammle.

«Then I will,” said Fascination. And it was not a mere retort
for the sound’s sake, but was a cheerful cogent consequence of the
refusal; for if Lammle had applied himself again to the loaf, it
would have been so heavily visited, in Fledgeby’s opinion, as to de-
mand abstinence from bread, on his part, for the remainder of that
meal at least, if not for the whole of the next.

Whether this young gentleman (for he was but three-and-twenty )
combined with the miserly vice of an old man, any of the open-

Pa, ee nr eee Heep

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

206 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

handed vices of a young one, was a moot point ; so very honorably
did he keep his own counsel. He was sensible of the value of
appearances as an investment, and liked to dress well; but he
drove a bargain for every moveable about him, from the coat on his
back to the china on his breakfast-table; and every bargain by re-
presenting somebody’s ruin or somebody’s loss, acquired a peculiar
charm for him. It was a part of his avarice to take, within narrow
bounds, long odds at races; if he won, he drove harder bargains ;
if he lost, he half starved himself until next time. Why money
should be so precious to an Ass too dull and mean to exchange it for
any other satisfaction, is strange ; but there is no animal so sure to
get laden with it, as the Ass who sees nothing written on the face of
the earth and sky but the three letters L. 8. D.—not Luxury,
Sensuality, Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but the three
dry letters. Your concentrated Fox is seldom comparable to your
concentrated Ass in money-breeding.

Fascination Fledgeby feigned to be a young gentleman living on
his means, but was known secretly to be a kind of outlaw in the bill-
broking line, and to put money out at high interest in various ways.
His circle of familiar acquaintance, from Mr. Lammle round, all had
a touch of the outlaw, as to their rovings in the merry greenwood of
Jobbery Forest, lying on the outskirts of the Share-Market and the
Stock xchange.

“I suppose you, Lammle,” said Fledgeby, eating his bread and
butter, “always did go in for female society ”

“ Always,” replied Lammle, glooming considerably under his late
treatment.

“Came natural to you, eh?” said Fledgeby.

“'The sex were pleased to like me, sir,” said Lammle sulkily, but
with the air of a man who had not been able to help himself.

' “Made a pretty good thing of marrying, didn’t you?” asked
Pledgeby.

The other smiled (an ugly smile), and tapped one tap upon his
nose.

“My late governor made a mess of it,” said EF ledgeby. “But
Geor—— is the right name Georgina or Georgiana?”

“ Georgiana.”

“I was thinking yesterday, I didn’t know there was such a name.
I thought it must end in ina.”

cOOWVilasya oe

“Why, you play—if you can—the Concertina, you know,” replied
Fledgeby, meditating very slowly. “ And you have—when you catch
it—the Scarlatina. And you can come down from a balloon in a
parach——no you can’t though. Well, say Georgeute—I mean
Georgiana.”

“You were going to remark of Georgiana—?” Lammle moodily
hinted, after waiting in vain.

“T was going to remark of Georgiana, sir,” said Fledgeby, not at all
pleased to be reminded of his having forgotten it, “that she don’t
seem to be violent. Don’t seem to be of the pitching-in order.”

“She has the gentleness of the dove, Mr. Fledgeby.”

 

   
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
   
   
   
 
  
  
     
   
    

    
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 207

“ Of course you'll say so,” replied Fledgeby, sharpening, the moment
his interest was touched by another. “But you know, the real look-
out is this:—what I say, not what you say. I say—having my
late governor and my late mother in my eye—that Georgiana don’t
seem to be of the pitching-in order.”

The respected Mr. Lammle was a bully, by nature and by usual
practice. Perceiving, as Fledgeby’s affronts cumulated, that conci-
liation by no means answered the purpose here, he now directed a
scowling look into Fledgeby’s small eyes for the effect of the opposite
treatment. Satisfied by what he saw there, he burst into a violent
passion and struck his hand upon the table, making the china ring
and dance.

“You are a very offensive fellow, sir,” cried Mr. Lammle, rising.
“You are a highly offensive scoundrel. What do you mean by this
behaviour ?”

“Tsay!” remonstrated Fledgeby. ‘Don’t break out.”

“You are a very offensive fellow sir,” repeated Mr. Lammle. “ You
are a highly offensive scoundrel !”

“JT say, you know!” urged Fledgeby, quailing.

“Why, you coarse and vulgar vagabond!” said Mr. Lammle,
looking fiercely about him, “if your servant was here to give me six-
pence of your money to get my boots cleaned afterwards—for you are
not worth the expenditure—I’d kick you.”

“ No you wouldn't,” pleaded Fledgeby. “JT am sure you'd think
better of it.”

“T tell you what, Mr. Fledgeby,” said Lammle advancing on him.
“Since you presume to contradict me, Tl assert myself a little. Give
me your nose!”

Fledgeby covered it with his hand instead, and said, retreating, “I
beg you won't!”

“Give me your nose, sir,” repeated Lammle.

Still covering that feature and backing, Mr. Fledgeby reiterated
(apparently with a severe cold in his head), “I beg, I beg, you won't.”

“And this fellow,” exclaimed Lammle, stopping and making the
most of his chest— This fellow presumes on my having selected
him out of all the young fellows I know, for an advantageous oppor-
tunity! This fellow presumes on my having in my desk round the
corner, his dirty note of hand for a wretched sum payable on the
occurrence of a certain event, which event can only be of my and my
wife's bringing about! This fellow, Fledgeby, presumes to be im-
pertinent to me, Lammle. Give me your nose sir 12

“No! Stop! I beg your pardon,” said Pledgeby, with humility.

«What do you say, sir?” demanded Mr. Lammle, seeming too
furious to understand.

“1 beg your pardon,” repeated Fledgeby.

“Repeat your words louder, sir. The just indignation of a gentle-
man has sent the blood boiling to my head. I don’t hear you.”

“TI say,” repeated Fledgeby, with laborious explanatory polite-
ness, “I beg your pardon.”

Mr. Lammle paused. “As aman of honour,’
himself into a chair, “I am disarmed.”

5)

 

2

7

said he, throwing

an ones

 

a ie ane a en ters

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

208 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

Mr. Fledgeby also took a chair, though less demonstratively, and
by slow approaches removed his hand from his nose. Some natural
diffidence assailed him as to blowing it, so shortly after its having:
assumed a personal and delicate, not to say public, character; but
he overcame his scruples by degrees, and modestly took that liberty
under an implied protest.

“Tammle,” he said sneakingly, when that was done, “I hope we
are friends again ?”

“Mr. Fledgeby,” returned Lammle, “say no more.”

“TI must have gone too far in making myself disagreeable,” said
Fledgeby, “ but I never intended it.”

“Say no more, say no more!” Mr. Lammle repeated in a magnifi-
cent tone. “Give me your”—Fledgeby started —* hand.”

They shook hands, and on Mr. Lammle’s part, in particular, there
ensued great geniality. For, he was quite as much of a dastard as
the other, and had been in equal danger of falling into the second
place for good, when he took heart just in time, to act upon the
information conveyed to him by Fledgeby’s eye.

The breakfast ended in a perfect understanding. Incessant
machinations were to be kept at work by Mr. and Mrs. Lammle ;
love was to be made for Fledgeby, and conquest was to be insured
to him ; he on his part very humbly admitting his defects as to the
softer social arts, and entreating to be backed to the utmost by his
two able coadjutors.

Little recked Mr. Podsnap of the traps and toils besetting his Young
Person. He regarded her as safe within the Temple of Podsnappery,
biding the fulness of time when she, Georgiana, should take him,
Fitz-Podsnap, who with all his worldly goods should her endow.
Jt would call a blush into the cheek of his standard Young Person to
have anything to do with such matters save to take as directed,
and with worldly goods as per settlement to be endowed. Who
giveth this woman to be married to this man? I, Podsnap.
Perish the daring thought that any smaller creation should come
between !

It was a public holiday, and Fledgeby did not recover his spirits or
his usual temperature of nose until the afternoon. Walking into the
City in the holiday afternoon, he walked against a livine stream
setting out of it; and thus, when he turned into the precincts of
St. Mary Axe, he founda prevalent repose and quiet there. A yellow
overhanging plaster-fronted house at which he stopped was quiet too.
The blinds were all drawn down, and the inscription Pubsey and Co.
seemed to doze in the counting-house window on the ground-floor
giving on the sleepy street.

Fledgeby knocked and rang, and Fledgeby rang and knocked, but
no one came. Fledgeby crossed the narrow street and looked up at
the house-windows, but nobody looked down at Fledgeby. He got
out of temper, crossed the narrow street again, and pulled the house-
bell as if it were the house’s nose, and he were taking a hint from his
late experience. His ear at the keyhole seemed then, at last, to give
him assurance that something stirred within. His eye at the key-
hole seemed to confirm his ear, for he angrily pulled the house’s

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
    
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
   
    

 

     
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 209

nose again, and pulled and pulled and continued to pull, until a human
nose appeared in the dark doorway.

“Now you sir!” cried Fledgeby. “'These are nice games!”

He addressed an old Jewish man in an ancient coat, long of skirt,
and wide of pocket. A venerable man, bald and shining at the top
of his head, and with long grey hair flowing down at its-sides and
mingling with his beard. A man who with a graceful Eastern action
of homage bent his head, and stretched out his hands with the palms
downward, as if to deprecate the wrath of a superior.

“ What have you been upto?” said Fledgeby, storming at him.

“Generous Christian master,” urged the Jewish man, “it being
holiday, I looked for no one.”

“ Holiday be blowed!” said Fledgeby, entering. “ What have you
got to do with holidays? Shut the door.”

With his former action the old man obeyed. In the entry hung
his rusty large-brimmed low-crowned. hat, as long out of date as his
coat; in the corner near it stood his staff—no walking-stick but
a veritable staff. Fledgeby turned into the counting-house, perched
himself on a business stool, and cocked his hat. There were light
boxes on shelves in the counting-house, and strings of mock beads
hanging up. There were samples of cheap clocks, and samples of
cheap vases of flowers. Foreign toys, all.

Perched on the stool with his hat cocked on his head and one of
his legs dangling, the youth of Fledgeby hardly contrasted to advan-
tage with the age of the Jewish man as he stood with his bare head
bowed, and his eyes (which he only raised in speaking) on the ground.
His clothing was worn down to the rusty hue of the hat in the entry,
but though he looked shabby he did not look mean. Now, Fledgeby,
though not shabby, did look mean.

“You have not told me what you were up to, you sir,” said
Fledgeby, scratching his head with the brim of his hat.

“Sir, I was breathing the air.”

“Jn the cellar, that you didn’t hear ?”

“On the house-top.”

“Upon my soul! That’s a way of doing business.”

“Sir,” the old man represented witha grave and patient air, “there
must be two parties to the transaction of busimess, and the holiday
has left me alone.”

“Ah! Can’t be buyer and seller too. That's what the Jews say ;
ain’t it?”

“ At least we say truly, if we say so,” answered the old man with
a smile.

“Your people need speak the truth sometimes, for they lie enough,”
remarked Fascination Fledgeby.

“ Sir, there is,” returned the old man with quiet emphasis, “too
much untruth among all denominations of men.”

Rather dashed, Fascination Fledgeby took another scratch at his
intellectual head with his hat, to gain time for rallying.

“For instance,” he resumed, as though it were he who had spoken
last, “who but you and I ever heard of a poor Jew ?”

“The Jews,” said the old man, raising his eyes from the ground
VOL.. I. P

  

stato enim ln ae ae,

ne ese lng

MGS ac ..

  

   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
   
 
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

210 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
with-his former smile. “They hear of poor Jews often, and are
very good to them.”

“Bother that!” returned Fledgeby. “You know what I mean.
You'd persuade me if you could, that you are a poor Jew. I wish
you'd confess how much you really did make out of my late governor.
I should have a better opinion of you.”

The old man only bent his head, and stretched out his hands as
before.

“Don’t go on posturing like a Deaf and Dumb School,” said the
ingenious Fledgeby, “but express yourself like a Christian—or as
nearly as you can.”

“T had had sickness and misfortunes, and was so poor,” said the
old man, “as hopelessly to owe the father, principal and interest. The
son inheriting, was so merciful as to forgive me both, and place me
here.”

He made a little gesture as though he kissed the hem of an
imaginary garment worn by the noble youth before him. It was
humbly done, but picturesquely, and was not abasing to the
doer.

“You won't say more, I see,” said Fledgeby, looking at him as if
he would like to try the effect of extracting a double-tooth or two,
“and so it’s of no use my putting it to you. But confess this, Riah ;
who believes you to be poor now?”

“No one,” said the old man.

“There you're right,” assented Fledgeby.

“No one,” repeated the old man with a grave slow wave of his
head. “All scout it as a fable. Were I to say ‘This little fancy
business is not mine ;’” with a lithe sweep of his easily-turning hand
around him, to comprehend the various objects on the shelves; “‘ it is
the little business of a Christian young gentleman who places me, his
servant, in trust and charge here, and to whom I am accountable for
every single bead, they would laugh. When, in the larger money-
business, I tell the borrowers——”

“Tsay, old chap!” interposed Fledgeby, “I hope you mind what
you de tell ’em ?”

“Sir, I tell them no more than I am about to repeat. When I tell
them, ‘I cannot promise this, 1 cannot answer for the other, I must
see my principal, I have not the money, I am a poor man and it
does not rest with me, they are so unbelieving and so impatient,
that they sometimes curse me in Jehovah’s name.”

“That's deuced good, that is!” said Fascination Fledgeby.

“ And at other times they say, ‘Can it never be done without these
tricks, Mr. Riah? Come, come, Mr. Riah, we know the arts of your
people "—my people !—‘ If the money is to be lent, fetch it, fetch it ;
if it is not to be lent, keep it and say so.’ They never believe me.”

“ That's all right,” said Fascination Fledgeby.

“'They say, ‘ We know, Mr. Riah, we know. We have but to look
at you, and we know.’”

“ Oh, a good ’un are you for the post,” thought Fledgeby, “and a
good ’un was I to mark you out for it! I may be slow, but Iam
precious sure.”

   

  

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, alee

Not a syllable of this reflection shaped itself in any scrap of
Mr. Fledgeby’s breath, lest it should tend to put his servant's price up.
But looking at the old man as he stood quiet with his head bowed
and his eyes cast down, he felt that to relinquish an inch of his bald-
ness, an inch of his grey hair, an inch of his coat-skirt, an inch of
his hat-brim, an inch of his walkine-staff, would be to relinquish
hundreds of pounds. :

“Look here, Riah,” said Fledgeby, mollified by these self approving
considerations. “I want to go a little more into buying-up queer
bills. Look out in that direction.”

“Sir, it shall be done.”

“Casting my eye over the accounts, I find that branch of business
pays pretty fairly, and I am game for extending it. I like to know
people’s aftairs likewise. So look out.”

“Sir, I will, promptly.”

“Put it about in the right quarters, that youll buy queer bills by
the lump—by the pound weight if that’s all—supposing you see
your way to a fair chance on looking over the parcel. And there’s
one thing more. Come to me with the books for periodical inspection.
as usual, at eight on Monday morning.”

Riah drew some folding tablets from his breast and noted it down.

“That’s all I wanted to say at the present time,” continued
Pledgeby in a grudging vein, as he got off the stool, “except that I
wish you'd take the air where you can hear the bell, or the knocker,
either one of the two or both. By-the-by how do you take the air
at the top of the house? Do you stick your head out of a chim-
ney-pot ?”

“Sir, there are leads there, and I have made a little garden
there.”

“To bury your money in, you old dodger ?”

“Athumbnail’s space of garden would hold the treasure I bury,
master,” said Riah, “Twelve shillings a week, even when they are an
old man’s wages, bury themselves.”

“I should like to know what you really are worth,” returned
Pledgeby, with whom his growing rich on that stipend and grati-
tude was a very convenient fiction. “But come! Let's have a look at
your garden on the tiles, before I go!”

The old man took a step back, and hesitated.

“Truly, sir, I have company there.”

“Have you, by George !” said Fledgeby ; “I suppose you happen to
Inow whose premises these are?”

“Sir, they are yours, and I am your servant in them.”

“Oh! I thought you might have overlooked that,” retorted
Fledgeby, with his eyes on Riah’s beard as he felt for his own 5
company on my premises, you know!”

“Come up and see the guests, sir.
that they can do no harm.”

Passing him with a courteous reverence, specially unlike any action
that Mr. Fledgeby could for his life have imparted to his own head
and hands, the old man began to ascend the stairs. Ags he toiled on
before, with his palm upon the stair-rail, and his long black skirt, a

P 2

“having

I hope for your admission

 

   
   
  
  
 
  
 
  
     
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
  
  
   
 
   
   
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* N ae

212 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

very gaberdine, overhanging each successive step, he might have been
the leader in some pilgrimage of devotional ascent to a prophet’s tomb.
Not troubled by any such weak imagining, Fascination Fledgeby
merely speculated on the time of life at which his beard had begun,
and thought once more what a good ’un he was for the part.

Some final vrooden steps conducted them, stoopmg under a low
penthouse roof, to the house-top. Riah stood still, and, turning to his
master, pointed out his guests.

Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren. For whom, perhaps with some
old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated
on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-
stack over which some humble creeper had been trained, they both
pored over one book; both with attentive faces; Jenny with the
sharper; Lizzie with the more perplexed. Another little book or
two were lying near, and a common basket of common fruit, and
another basket full of strings of beads and tinsel scraps. A few boxes
of humble flowers and evergreens completed the garden; and the
encompassing wilderness of dowager old chimneys twirled their
cowls and fluttered their smoke, rather as if they were bridling, and
fanning themselves, and looking on in a state of airy surprise.

Taking her eyes off the book, to test her memory of something in
it, Lizzie was the first to see herself observed. As she rose, Miss
Wren likewise became conscious, and said, irreverently addressing the
great chief of the premises: “ Whoever you are, I can’t get up, because
my back’s bad and my legs are queer.”

“This is my master,” said Riah, stepping forward.

(“Don’t look like anybody’s master,” observed Miss Wren to her-
self, with a hitch of her chin and eyes.

“This, sir,” pursued the old man, “1s a little dressmaker for little
people. Explain to the master, Jenny.”

“Dolls; that’s all,” said Jenny, shortly. “ Very difficult to fit too,
because their figures are so uncertain. You never know where to
expect their waists.”

“ Her friend,” resumed the old man, motioning towards Lizzie ; “and
as industrious as virtuous. But that they both are. They are busy
early and late, sir, early and late; and in bye-times, as on this
holiday, they go to book-learning.”

“Not much good to be got out of that,” remarked Fledgeby.

“Depends upon the person!” quoth Miss Wren, snapping him up.

“JT made acquaintance with my guests, sir,’ pursued the Jew,
with an evident purpose of drawing out the dressmaker, “through
their coming here to buy of our damage and waste for Miss Jenny's
millinery. Our waste goes into the best of company, sir, on her
rosy-cheeked little customers. They wear it in their hair, and
on their ball-dresses, and even (so she tells me) are presented at
Court with it.”

“Ah!” said Fledgeby, on whose intelligence this doll-fancy made
rather strong demands; “she’s been buying that basketful to-day, iL
sippose ?”

“I suppose she has,” Miss Jenny interposed ; “and paying for it too,
most likely |”

 

 

 

THE GARDEN ON THE ROOF.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 213

“Tet’s have a look at it,” said the suspicious chief. Riah handed
it to him. “How much for this now?”

“ Two precious silver shillings,” said Miss Wren.

Riah confirmed her with two nods, as Fledgeby looked to him. A
nod for each shilling.

“ Well,” said Fledgeby, poking into the contents of the basket with
his forefinger, “the price is not so bad. You have got good measure,
Miss What-is-it.”

“Try Jenny,’ suggested that young lady with great calmness.

“You have got good measure, Miss Jenny; but the price is not so
bad.—And you,” said Fledgeby, turning to the other visitor, “do
you buy anything here, miss ?”

SIN; sins?

“ Nor sell anything neither, miss?”

“No, sir.”

Looking askew at the questioner, Jenny stole her hand up to her
friend’s, and drew her friend down, so that she bent beside her on her
imee.

“ We are thankful to come here for rest, sir,” said Jenny. “You
see, you don’t know what the rest of this place is to us; does he,
Lizzie? It’s the quiet, and the air.”

“The quiet!” repeated Fledgeby, with a contemptuous turn of his
head towards the City’s roar. “And the air!” with a “Poof!” at the
smoke.

“Ah!” said Jenny. “But it’s so high. And you see the clouds
rushing on above the narrow streets, not minding them, and you see
the golden arrows pointing at the mountains in the sky from which
the wind comes, and you feel as if you were dead.”

The little creature looked above her, holding up her slight trans-
parent hand.

“How do you feel when you are dead?” asked Fledgeby, much per-
plexed.

“Oh, so tranquil!” cried the little creature, smiling. “Oh, so
peaceful and so thankful! And you hear the people who are alive,
crying, and working, and calling to one another down in the close
dark streets, and you seem to pity them so! And such a chain has
fallen from you, and such a strange good sorrowful happiness comes
upon you!”

Her eyes fell on the old man, who, with his hands folded, quietly
looked on.

“Why it was only just now,” said the little creature, pointing at
him, “that I fancied 1 saw him come out of his grave! He toiled
out at that low door so bent and worn, and then he took his breath
and stood upright, and looked all round him at the sky, and the wind
blew upon him, and his life down in the dark was over !—Till he was
called back to life,” she added, looking round at Fledgeby with that
lower look of sharpness. “ Why did you call him back?”

“He was long enough coming, anyhow,” grumbled Fledgeby.

“But you are not dead, you know,” said Jenny Wren. “Get down
to lite !”

Mr. Fledgeby seemed to think it rather a good suggestion, and

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PR Eee

214 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

with a nod turned round. As Riah followed to attend him down the
stairs, the little creature called out to the Jew in a silvery tone,
“Don’t be long gone. Come back, and be dead!” And still as they
went down they heard the little sweet voice, more and more faintly,
half calling and half singing, “Come back and be dead, Come back
and be dead !”

When they got down into the entry, Fledgeby, pausing under the
shadow of the broad old hat, and mechanically poising the staff, said
to the old man:

“That's a handsome girl, that one in her senses.”

« And as good as handsome,” answered Riah.

“ At all events,” observed Fledgeby, with a dry whistle, “I hope
she ain’t bad enough to put any chap up to the fastenings, and get
the premises broken open. You look out. Keep your weather eye
awake, and don’t make any more acquaintances, however handsome.
Of course you always keep my name to yourself?”

“Sir, assuredly I do.”

“Tf they ask it, say it’s Pubsey, or say it’s Co, or say it’s anything
you like, but what it is.”

His grateful servant—in whose race gratitude is deep, strong,
and enduring—bowed his head, and actually did now put the
hem of his coat to his lips: though so lightly that the wearer
knew nothing of it.

Thus, Fascination Fledgeby went his way, exulting in the artful
cleverness with which he had tumed his thumb down on a Jew, and
the old man went his different way up-stairs. As he mounted, the
call or song began to sound in his ears again, and, looking above, he
saw the face of the little creature looking down out of a Glory of her
long bright radiant hair, and musically repeating to him, like a vision :

“Come up and be dead! Come up and be dead |”

 

CHAPTER VI.
A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER.

Aqaty Mr. Mortimer Lightwood and Mr. Eugene Wrayburn sat
together in the Temple. This evening, however, they were not
together in the place of business of the eminent solicitor, but in
another dismal set of chambers facing it on the same second-floor ; on
whose dungeon-like black outer-door appeared the legend :

PRIVATE.
Mr. Eucene WRAYBURN.
Mr. Mortimer Licurwoop.
(86 Mr. Lightwood’s Offices opposite.)
Appearances indicated that this establishment was a very recent
institution. The white letters of the inscription were extremely
white and extremely strong to the sense of smell, the complexion of

       
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

 

  

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 21d

the tables and chairs was (like Lady Tippins’s) a little too blooming
to be believed in, and the carpets and floorcloth seemed to rush at
the beholder’s face in the unusual prominency of their patterns.
But the Temple, aceustomed to tone down both the still life and the
human life that has much to do with it, would soon get the better of
all that.

“ Well!” said Eugene, on one side of the fire, “I feel tolerably com-
fortable. I hope the upholsterer may do the same.”

“Why shouldn’t he?” asked Lightwood, from the other side of the
fire.

“To be sure,” pursued Eugene, reflecting, “he is not in the secret
of our pecuniary affairs, so perhaps he may be in an easy frame of
mind.”

“We shall pay him,” said Mortimer.

“Shall we, really?” returned Eugene, indolently surprised. “You
don’t say so!”

“T mean to pay him, Eugene, for my part,” said Mortimer, in a
slightly injured tone.

“Ah! I mean to pay him too,” retorted Eugene. “But then I
mean so much that I—that I don’t mean.”

“Don’t mean ?”

“So much that I only mean and shall always only mean and. no-
thing more, my dear Mortimer. It’s the same thing.”

His friend, lying back in his easy chair, watched him lying back
in his easy chair, as he stretched out his legs on the hearth-rug, and
said, with the amused look that Eugene Wrayburn could always
awaken in him without seeming to try or care :

“ Anyhow, your vagaries have increased the bill.”

“Calls the domestic virtues vagaries!” exclaimed Eugene, raising
his eyes to the ceiling.

“his very complete little kitchen of ours,” said Mortimer, “in
which nothing will ever be cooked es

“My dear, dear Mortimer,” returned his friend, lazily lifting his
head a little to look at him, “ how often have I pointed out to you
that its moral influence is the important thing ?”

“Tts moral influence on this fellow!” exclaimed Lightwood,
laughing.

“Do me the favour,” said Eugene, getting out of his chair with
much gravity, “to come and inspect that feature of our establishment
which you rashly disparage.” With that, taking up a candle, he con-
ducted his chum into the fourth room of the set of chambers—a little
narrow room—which was very completely and neatly fitted as a
kitchen. “See!” said Eugene, “miniature flour-barrel, rolling-pin,
spice-box, shelf of brown jars, chopping-board, coffee-mill, dresser
elegantly furnished with crockery, saucepans and pans, roasting jack,
a charming kettle, an armoury of dish-covers. The moral influence
of these objects, in forming the domestic virtues, may have an im
mense influence upon me; not upon you, for you are a hopeless case,
but upon me. In fact, I have an idea that I feel the domestic virtues
already foming.**Do:me the favour to step into my bedroom.
ment see, and abstruse set of solid mahogany pigeon-holes,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tae, 7 UST re: a

216 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

one for every letter of the alphabet. Tio what use do I devote them?
I receive a bill—say from Jones. I docket it neatly at the secrétaire,
Jonxs, and I put it into pigeon-hole J. It’s the next thing to a re-
ceipt and is quite as satisfactory to me. And 1 very much wish, Mor-
timer,” sitting on his bed, with the air of a philosopher lecturing a
disciple, “ that my example might induce you to cultivate habits of
punctuality and method ; and, by means of the moral influences with
which I have surrounded you, to encourage the formation of the
domestic virtues.”

Mortimer laughed again, with his usual commentaries of “ How can
you be so ridiculous, Eugene!” and “ What an absurd fellow you
are!” but when his laugh + was out, there was something serious, if
not anxious, in his face. Despite that pernicious assumption of las-
situde and indifference, which had become his second nature, he was
strongly attached to his friend. He had founded himself upon
HKugene when they were yet boys at school; and at this hour imitated
him no less, admired him no less, loved him no less, than in those de-
parted days.

“ Hugene,” said he, “if I could find you in earnest for a minute,
would try to say an earnest word to you.”

“ An earnest word?” repeated Eugene. “The moral influences are
beginning to work. Say on.”

NY, ell, I will,” returned the other, “ though you are not earnest yet.”

“Tn this desire for earnestness,” murmured Eugene, with the air of
one who was meditating deeply, “I trace the happy influences of the
little flour-barrel and the cotfee-mill. Gratifying.”

“Hugene,” resumed Mortimer, disregarding the light interruption,
and laying a hand upon Eugene’s shoulder, as he, 1 Mortimer, stood
before him seated on his bed, bs you are withholding something from
me.’

Hugene looked at him, but said nothing.

“All this past summer, you have been withholding something
from me. Before we entered! on our boating vacation, you were as
bent upon it as I have seen you upon anything since we first rowed
together. But you cared very little for it when it came, often found
it a tie and a drag upon you, and were constantly away. Now it was
well enough half-a-dozen times, a dozen times, twenty times, to say
to mé in your own odd manner, which I know so well and like so
much, that your disappearances were precautions against our boring
one another; but of course after a short while I began to know that
they cover ed something. I don’t ask what it is, as you have not told
me; but the fact is so. Say, is it not?”

“TI give you my word of honor, Mortimer,” returned Hugene, after
a serious pause of a few moments, “that I don’t know.”

“ Don’t know, Eugene ?”

“ Upon my soul, don’t know. I know less about myself than about
most people in the world, and I don’t know.”

“You have some design in your mind ?”

“Have 1? I don’t think Ihave.”

“At any rate, you have some subject of interest there which used
not to be there ?”

PUEONE

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 217

“J really can’t say,” replied Eugene, shaking his head blankly,
after pausing again to reconsider. “At times I have thought yes; at
other times I have thought no. Now, I have been inclined to pursue
such a subject; now I have felt that it was absurd, and that it tired
and embarrassed me. Absolutely, I can’t say. Frankly and faith-
fully, I would if I could.”

So replying, he clapped a hand, in his turn, on his friend’s shoulder,
as he rose from his seat upon the bed, and said :

“You must take your friend as he is. You know what I am, my
dear Mortimer. You know how dreadfully susceptible I am to bore-
dom. You know that when I became enough of a man to find myself
an embodied conundrum, I bored myself to the last degree by trying
to find out what I meant. You know that at length I gave it up,
and declined to guess any more. Then how can I possibly give you
the answer that I have not discovered? The old nursery form runs,
‘ Riddle-me-riddle-me-ree, p’raps you can’t tell me what this may be?”
My reply runs, “No. Upon my life, I can’t.”

So much of what was fantastically true to his own knowledge of
this utterly careless Eugene, mingled with the answer, that Mortimer
could not receive it as a mere evasion. Besides, it was given with
an engaging air of openness, and of special exemption of the one
friend he valued, from his reckless indifference.

“Come, dear boy!” said Eugene. “Let us try the effect of
smoking. If it enlightens me at all on this question, I will impart
unreservedly.”

They returned to the room they had come from, and, finding it
heated, opened a window. Having lighted their cigars, they leaned
out of this window, smoking, and looking down at the moonlight, as
it shone into the court below.

“No enlightenment,” resumed Eugene, after certain minutes of
silence. “I feel sincerely apologetic, my dear Mortimer, but nothing
comes.”

“Tf nothing comes,” returned Mortimer, “nothing can come from it.
So I shall hope that this may hold good throughout, and that there
may be nothing on foot. Nothing injurious to you, Eugene, or——”

Eugene stayed him for a moment with his hand on his arm, while
he took a piece of earth from an old flowerpot on the window-sill
and dexterously shot it at a little point of light opposite; having
done which to his satisfaction, he said, “Or?”

“Or injurious to any one else.”

“How,” said Eugene, taking another little piece of earth, and
shooting it with great precision at the former mark, “how injurious
to any one else?”

“JT don’t know.”

« And,” said Eugene, taking, as he said the word, another shot, “to
whom else ?”

“J don’t know.”

Checking himself with another piece of earth in his hand, Eugene
looked at his friend inquiringly and a little suspiciously. ‘There was
no concealed or half-expressed meaning in his face.

“Two belated wanderers in the mazes of the law,” said Eugene,

   
 
   
 
  
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

218 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

attracted by the sound of footsteps, and glancing down as he spoke,
“stray into the court. ‘They examine the door-posts of number one,
seeking the name they want. Not finding it at number one, they
come to number two. On the hat of wanderer number two, the
shorter one, I drop this pellet. Hitting him on the hat, I smoke
serenely, and become absorbed in contemplation of the sky.”

Both the wanderers looked up towards the window; but, after
interchanging a mutter or two, soon applied themselves to the door-
posts below. There they seemed to discover what they wanted, for
they disappeared from view by entermg at the doorway. “When
they emerge,” said Eugene, “you shall see me bring them both
down ;” and so prepared two pellets for the purpose.

He had not reckoned on their seeking his name, or Lightwood’s.
But either the one or the other would seem to be in question, for now
there came a knock at the door. “Iam on duty to-night,” said Mor-
timer, “stay you where you are, Hugene.” Requiring no persuasion,
he stayed there, smoking quietly, and not at all curious to know who
knocked, until Mortimer spoke to him from within the room, and
touched him. ‘Then, drawing in his head, he found the visitors to be
young Charley Hexam and the schoolmaster; both standing facing
him, and both recognized at a glance.

“You recollect this young fellow, Hugene?” said Mortimer.

“Let me look at him,” returned Wrayburn, coolly. “Oh, yes, yes.
I recollect him !”

He had not been about to repeat that former action of taking him
by the chin, but the boy had suspected him of it, and had thrown up
his arm with an angry start. Laughingly, Wrayburn looked to
Lightwood for an explanation of this odd visit.

“He says he has something to say.”

“Surely it must be to you, Mortimer.”

“So I thought, but he says no. He says it is to you.”

“Yes, I do say so,” interposed the boy. “And I mean to say what
I want to say, too, Mr. Eugene Wrayburn!”

Passing him with his eyes as if there were nothing where he
stood, Hugene looked on to Bradley Headstone. With consummate
indolence, he turned to Mortimer, inquiring: “And who may this
other person be?”

“Tam Charles Hexam’s friend,” said Bradley; “I am Charles
Hexam’s schoolmaster.”

“My good sir, you should teach your pupils better manners,” re-
turned Eugene.

Composedly smoking, he leaned an elbow on the chimneypiece, at
the side of the fire, and looked at the schoolmaster. It was a cruel
look, in its cold disdain of him, as a creature ofno worth. The school-
master looked at him, and that, too, was a cruel look, though of the
different kind, that it had a raging jealousy and fiery wrath in it.

Very remarkably, neither Eugene Wrayburn nor Bradley Head-
stone looked at all at the boy. ‘I‘hrough the ensuing dialogue, those
two, no matter who spoke, or whom was addressed, looked at each.
other. ‘There was some secret, sure perception between them, which
set them against one another in all ways.

et a AL |

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 219

“In some high respects, Mr. Eugene Wrayburn,” said Bradley,
answering him with pale and quivering lips, “the natural feelings of
my pupils are stronger than my teaching.”

“In most respects, I dare say,” replied Eugene, enjoying his cigar,
“though whether high or low is of no importance. You have my
name very correctly. Pray what is yours?”

“Tt cannot concern you much to know, but

“True,” interposed Eugene, striking sharply and cutting him
short at his mistake, “it does not concern me at all to know. I can
say Schoolmaster, which is a most respectable title. You are right,
Schoolmaster.”

It was not the dullest part of this goad in its galling of

3radley Headstone, that he had made it himself in a moment of
incautious anger. He tried to set his lips so as to prevent their qui-
vering, but they quivered fast.

“Mr. Eugene Wrayburn,” said the boy, “I want a word with you.
T have wanted it so much, that we have looked out your address in
the book, and we have been to your office, and we have come from
your office here.”

“You have given yourself much trouble, Schoolmaster,” observed
Eugene, blowing the feathery ash from his cigar. “I hope it may
prove remunerative.”

“And I am glad to speak,” pursued the boy, “in presence of
Mr. Lightwood, because it was through Mr. Lightwood that you ever
saw my sister.”

For a mere moment, Wrayburn turned his eyes aside from the
schoolmaster to note the effect of the last word on Mortimer, who,
standing on the opposite side of the fire, as soon as the word was
spoken, turned his face towards the fire and looked down into it.

“Similarly, it was through Mr. Lightwood that you ever saw her
again, for you were with him on the night when my father was
found, and so I found you with her on the next day. Since then, you
have seen my sister often. You have seen my sister oftener and
oftener. And I want to know why?”

“Was this worth while, Schoolmaster?” murmured Hugene, with
the air of a disinterested adviser. “So much trouble for nothing?
You should know best, but I think not.”

“TJ don’t know, Mr. Wrayburn,” answered Bradley, with his passion
rising, “ why you address me——’

“Don’t you?” said Eugene. “Then I won't.”

He said it so tauntingly in his perfect placidity, that the respect-
able right-hand clutching the respectable hair-guard of the respect-
able watch could have wound it round his throat and strangled him
withit. Not another word did Eugene deem it worth while to utter,
but stood leaning his head upon his hand, smoking, and looking
imperturbably at the chafing Bradley Headstone with his clutching
right-hand, until Bradley was wellnigh mad.

“Mr. Wrayburn,” proceeded the boy, “ we not only know this that
I have charged upon you, but we know more. It has not yet come
to my sister’s knowledge that we have found it ont, but we have.
We had a plan, Mr, Headstone and I, for my sister’s education, and

”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

tie

 

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220 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

for its being advised and overlooked by Mr. Headstone, who is a
much more competent authority, whatever you may pretend to think,
as you smoke, than you could produce, if you tried. Then, what do
we find? What do we find, Mr. Lightwood? Why, we find that my
sister is already being taught, without our knowing it. We find that
while my sister gives an unwilling and cold ear to our schemes for
her advantage—I, her brother, and Mr. Headstone, the most com-
petent authority, as his certificates would easily prove, that could be
produced—she is wilfully and willingly profiting by other schemes.
Ay, and taking pains, too, for I know what such pains are. And
so does Mr. Headstone! Well! Somebody pays for this, is a thought
that naturally occurs to us; who pays? We apply ourselves to find
out, Mr. Lightwood, and we find that your friend, this Mr. Eugene
Wrayburn, here, pays. Then I ask him what right has he to do it,
and what does he mean by it, and how comes he to be taking such
a liberty without my consent, when J am raising myself in the scale
of society by my own exertions and Mr. Headstone’s aid, and have
no right to have any darkness cast upon my prospects, or any im-
putation upon my respectability, through my sister ?”

The boyish weakness of this speech, combined with its great self-
ishness, made it a poor one indeed. And yet Bradley Headstone,
used to the little audience of a school, and unused to the larger ways
of men, showed a kind of exultation in it.

“Now I tell Mr. Eugene Wrayburn,” pursued the boy, forced into
the use of the third person by the hopelessness of addressing him in
the first, “that I object to his having any acquaintance at all with
my sister, and that I request him to drop it altogether. He is not
to take it into his head that 1am afraid of my sister’s caring for
him.

(As the boy sneered, the Master sneered, and Eugene blew off the
feathery ash again.)

— “But I object to it, and that’s enough. Iam more important to
my sister than he thinks. As I raise myself, I intend to raise
her; she knows that, and she has to look to me for her prospects.
Now I understand all this very well, and so does Mr. Headstone.
My sister is an excellent girl, but she has some romantic notions:
not about such things as your Mr. Eugene Wrayburns, but about the
death of my father and other matters of that sort. Mr. Wrayburn
encourages those notions to make himself of importance, and so she
thinks she ought be grateful to him, and perhaps even likes to be.
Now I don’t choose her to be grateful to him, or to be grateful to
anybody but me, except Mr. Headstone. And I tell Mr. Wrayburn
that if he don’t take heed of what I say, it will be worse for her.
Let him turn that over in his memory, and make sure of it. Worse
for her!”

A pause ensued, in which the. schoolmaster looked very awkward.

“May I suggest, Schoolmaster,” said Eugene, removing his fast-
waning cigar from his lips to glance at it, “that you can now take
your pupil away.”

“And Mr. Lightwood,” added the boy, with a burning face, under
the flaming aggravation of getting no sort of answer or attention,

 

  
 
 
 
 
  
     
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
   
  
 
  
   
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
     

    
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 221

“T hope you'll take notice of what I have said to your friend, and
of what your friend has heard me say, word by word, what-
ever he pretends to the contrary. You are bound to take notice of it,
My. Lightwood, for, as I have already mentioned, you first brought
your friend into my sister's company, and but for you we never
should have seen him. Lord knows none of us ever wanted him,
any more than any of us will ever miss him. Now Mr. Headstone,
as Mr. Eugene Wrayburn has been obliged to hear what I had to
say, and couldn’t help himself, and as I have said it out to the last
word, we have done all we wanted to do, and may go.’

“Go down-stairs, and leave me a moment, exams? he returned.
The boy complying with an indignant look and as much noise as he
could make, swung out of the room; and Lightwood went to the
window, and leaned there, looking out.

“You think me of no more value than the dirt under your feet,”
said Bradley to Eugene, speaking in a carefully weighed and mea-
sured tone, or he could not have spoken at all.

al assure You, Schoolmaster,” replied Hugene, “I don’t think
about you.’

“That's not true,” returned the other; “-you know better.”

“'That’s coarse,’ Eugene retorted ; “ but you don’t know better.”

“Mr. Wrayburn, at “Teast I know very well that it would be idle
to set myself against you in insolent words or overbearing manners.
That lad who has just gone out could put you to shame in half-a-
dozen branches of knowledge in half an hour, but you can throw him
aside like an inferior. You can do as much by me, I have no doubt,
beforehand.”

“ Possibly,” remarked Eugene.

“But I am more than a lad, a ead Bradley, with his clutching
hand, “and I wit be heard, six.’

“ As a schoolmaster,’ said Hee “you are always being heard.
That ought to content you.”

“But it does not content me,” replied the other, white with passion.
“Do you suppose that a man, in forming himself for the duties I
discharge, and in watching and repressing himself daily to discharge
them well, dismisses a man’s nature ?”

“T suppose you,” said Eugene, “ judging from what I see as I look
at you, to be rather too passionate for a good schoolmaster.” As he
spoke, he tossed away the end of his cigar.

“Passionate with you, sir, admit lam. Passionate with you, sir,
I respect myself for being. But I have not Devils for my pupils.”

“For your Teachers, 1 “should rather say,” replied Eugene.

soVETe Wrayburn.”

“ Schoolmaster.”

“Sir, my name is Bradley Headstone.”

“As you justly said, my good sir, your name cannot concern me.
Now, what more ?”

“This more. Oh, what a misfortune is mine,” cried Bradley,
breaking off to wipe the starting perspiration from his face as he
shook from head to foot, “that “I cannot so control myself as to
appear a stronger creature than this, when a man who has not felt in

 

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222 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Weil all his life what I have felt in a day can so command himself!” He
| said it im a very agony, and even followed it with an errant motion
of his hands as if he could have torn himself.

Hugene Wrayburn looked on at him, as if he found him beginning
to be rather an entertaining study.
ae “Mr. Wrayburn, I desire to say something to you on my own

nay part.”

“Come, come, Schoolmaster,” returned Eugene, with a languid
approach to impatience as the other again strugeled with himself;
“say what you have to say. And let me remind you that the door is
standing open, and your young friend waiting for you on the stairs.”
| “When I accompanied that youth here, sir, I did so with the pur-
ij WAU Hh pose of adding, as a man whom you should not be permitted to put
aside, in case you put him aside as a boy, that his instinct is correct
and right.” Thus Bradley Headstone, with great effort and diffi-
culty.

“Is that all?” asked Hugene.

“No, sir,” said the other, flushed and fierce. “I strongly support
him in his disapproval of your visits to his sister, and in his objection
to your officiousness—and worse—in what you have taken upon your-
self to do for her.”

“Ts that all?” asked Eugene.

“No, sir. I determined to tell you that you are not justified in
these proceedings, and that they are injurious to his sister.”

“Are you her schoolmaster as well as her brother’s ?—Or perhaps
ii you would like to be?” said Eugene.

It was a stab that the blood followed, in its rush to Bradley Head-
stone’s face, as swiftly as if it had been dealt with a dagger. “What
do you mean by that?” was as much as he could utter.

“A natural ambition enough,” said Eugene, coolly. “Far be it
from me to say otherwise. The sister—who is something too much
upon your lips, perhaps—is so very different from all the associations
Hil to which she has been used, and from all the low obscure people
| about her, that it is a very natural ambition.”

“Do you throw my obscurity in my teeth, Mr. Wrayburn ?”
“That can hardly be, for 1 know nothing concerning it, School-
master, and seek to know nothing.”
“You reproach me with my origin,” said Bradley Headstone; “you
cast insinuations at my bringing-up. But I tell you, sir, I have
{ worked my way onward, out of both and in spite of both, and have
aright to be considered a better man than you, with better reasons
for being proud.”
ii “ How I can reproach you with what is not within my knowledge,
Nat or how I can cast stones that were never in my hand, is a problem
for the ingenuity of a schoolmaster to prove,” returned Eugene. “Is
that ali?”
Pda “No, sir. If you suppose that boy
‘lt {i il “ Who really will be tired of waiting,” said Eugene, politely.

ae “If you suppose that boy to be friendless, Mr. Wrayburn, you

| deceive yourself. I am his friend, and you shall find me so.”

“And you-will find him on the stairs,” remarked Hugene.

 

 

 

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

293

“You may have promised yourself, sir, that you could do what you
chose here, because you had to deal with a mere boy, inexperienced,
friendless, and unassisted. But I give you warning that this mean
calculation is wrong. You have to do with a man also. You have
to do with me. I will support him, and, if need be, require repara-
tion for him. My hand and heart are in this cause, and are open to
him.”

“ And—quite a coincidence—the door is open,” remarked Eugene.

“T scorn your shifty evasions, and I scorn you,” said the school-
master. “In the meanness of your nature you revile me with the
meanness of my birth. I hold you in contempt for it. But if you
don’t profit by this visit, and act accordingly, you will find me as
bitterly in earnest against you as I could be if 1 deemed you worth
a second thought on my own account.”

With a consciously bad grace and stiff manner, as Wrayburn
looked so easily and calmly on, he went out with these words, and
the. heavy door closed like a furnace-door upon his red and whi
heats of rage.

“ A curious monomaniac,” said Eugene. “The man seems to be-
lieve that everybody was acquainted with his mother!”

Mortimer Lightwood being still at the window, to which he had
in delicacy withdrawn, Eugene called to him, and he fell to slowly
pacing the room.

“My dear fellow,” said Eugene, as he lighted another cigar, “I
fear my unexpected visitors have been troublesome. If as a set-off
(excuse the legal phrase from a barrister-at-law) you would like to
ask Tippins to tea, I pledge myself to make love to her.”

“Hugene, Hugene, Kugene,” replied Mortimer, still pacing the
room, “I am sorry for this. And to think that I have been so
blind!”

“ How blind, dear boy?” mquired his unmoved friend.

“What were your words that night at the river-side public-house ?”
said Lightwood, stopping. “ What was it that you asked me? Did
I feel like a dark combination of traitor and pickpocket when I
thought of that girl ?”

“J seem to remember the expression,” said Eugene.

“How do you feel when you think of her just now ?”

His friend made no direct reply, but observed, after a few whiffs
of his cigar, “Don’t mistake the situation. ‘There is no better girl
in all this London than Lizzie Hexam. ‘There is no better among
my people at home; no better among your people.”

“Granted. What follows ?”

“There,” said Eugene, looking after him dubiously as he paced
away to the other end of the room, “you put me again upon guessing
the riddle that I have given up.”

«“ Hugene, do you design to capture and desert this girl?”
“My-dear fellow, no.”

“Do you design to marry her?”

“My dear fellow, no.”

“To you design to pursue her ?”

“My dear fellow, I don’t design anything.

?

I have no design

 

    
  
 
  
 
   
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

 

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224 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

whatever. Iam incapable of designs. If I conceived a design, I
should speedily abandon it, exhausted by the operation.”

“ Oh Eugene, Eugene !”

“My dear Mortimer, not that tone of melancholy reproach, I en-
treat. What can I do more than tell you all I know, and acknowledge
my ignorance of all I don’t know! How does that little old song go,
which, under pretence of being cheerful, is by far the most lugu-
brious I ever heard im my life?

‘ Away with melancholy,

Nor doleful changes ring

On life and human folly,

But merrily merrily sing

Fal la!’

Don’t let us sing Fal Ja, my dear Mortimer (which is comparatively
unmeaning), but let us sing that we give up guessing the riddle
altogether.”

“Are you in communication with this girl, Eugene, and is what
these people say true ?”

“TI concede both admissions to my honorable and learned friend.”

“Then what is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are
you going ?”

“My dear Mortimer, one would think the schoolmaster had left
behind him a catechizing infection. You are ruffled by the want of
another cigar. ‘Take one of these, I entreat. Light it at mine,
which is in perfect order. So! Now do me the justice to observe
that Iam doing all I can towards self-improvement, and that you
have a light thrown on those household implements which, when
you only saw them as in a glass darkly, you were hastily—I must say
hastily—inclined to depreciate. Sensible of my deficiencies, I have
surrounded myself with moral influences expressly meant to promote
the formation of the domestic virtues. 'T'o those influences, and to
the improving society of my friend from boyhood, commend me with
your best wishes.”

“Ah, Hugene!” said Lightwood, affectionately, now standing near
him, so that they both stood in one little cloud of smoke; “I would
that you answered my three questions! What is to come of it?
What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“And my dear Mortimer,” returned Eugene, lightly fanning away
the smoke with his hand for the better exposition of his frankness
of face and manner, “ believe me, I would answer them instantly if I
could. But to enable me to do so, I must first have found out the
troublesome conundrum long abandoned. Hereit is. Eugene Wray-
burn.” ‘Tapping his forehead and breast. “Riddle-me, riddle-me-ree,
perhaps you can’t tell me what this may be?—No, upon my life I
can’t. I give it up!”

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH A FRIENDLY MOVE IS ORIGINATED.

THE arrangement between Mr. Boffin and his literary man, Mr.
Silas Wegg, so far altered with the altered habits of Mr. Boffin’s lite,
as that the Roman Empire usually declined in the morning and in
the eminently aristocratic family mansion, rather than in the even-
ing, as of yore, and in Boffin’s Bower. There were occasions, how-
ever, when Mr. Boffin, seeking a brief refuge from the blandishments
of fashion, would present himself at the Bower after dark, to antici-
pate the next sallying forth of Wegg, and would there, on the old
settle, pursue the downward fortunes of those enervated and corrupted
masters of the world who were by this time on their last legs. If
Wege had been worse paid for his office, or better qualified to dis-
charge it, he would have considered these visits complimentary and
agreeable; but, holding the position of a handsomely-remunerated
humbug, he resented them. This was quite according to rule, for
the incompetent servant, by whomsoever employed, is always against
his employer. Even those born governors, noble and right honorable
creatures, who have been the most imbecile in high places, have uni-
formly shown themselves the most opposed (sometimes in belying
distrust, sometimes in vapid insolence) to their employer. What is in
such wise true of the public master and servant, is equally true of
the private master and servant all the world over.

When Mr. Silas Wege did at last obtain free access to “Our
House,” as he had been wont to call the mansion outside which he
had sat shelterless so long, and when he did at last find it in all
particulars as different from his mental plans of it as according to
the nature of things it well could be, that far-seeing and far-reaching
character, by way of asserting himself and making out a case for
compensation, affected to fall into a melancholy strain of musing over
the mournful past; as if the house and he had had a fall m life
together.

“ And this, sir,’ Silas would say to his patron, sadly nodding his
head and musing, “was once Our House! This, sir, is the building
from which I have so often seen those great creatures, Miss Elizabeth,
Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker ”—whose very names
were of his own inventing—“ pass and repass! And has it come to
this, indeed! Ah dear me, dear me!”

So tender were his lamentations, that the kindly Mr. Boffin was
quite sorry for him, and almost felt mistrustful that in buying the
house he had done him an irreparable injury.

Two or three diplomatic interviews, the result of great subtlety on
Mr. Wege’s part, but assuming the mask of careless yielding to a
fortuitous combination of circumstances impelling him towards
Clerkenwell, had enabled him to complete his bargain with Mr.
Venus.

“Bring me round to the Bower,” said Silas, when the bargain was

VOL. i. Q

 

pence erence

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226 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

closed, “next Saturday evening, and if a sociable glass of old
Jamaikey warm should meet your views, I am not the man to
begrudge it

“You are aware of my being poor company, sir,” replied Mr.
Venus, “but be it so.”

It being so, here is Saturday evening come, and here is Mr. Venus
come, and ringing at the Bower-gate.

Mr. Wegg opens the gate, descries a sort of brown paper truncheon
under Mr. Venus’s arm, and remarks, in a dry tone: “Oh! I thought
perhaps you might have come in a cab.”

“No, Mr. Wegg,” replies Venus. “Iam not above a parcel.”

 

ge,

“Above a parcel! No!” says Wegg, with some dissatisfaction.
But does not openly growl, “a certain sort of parcel might be above
you.”

“Here is your purchase, Mr. Wegg,” says Venus, politely handing
it over, “and 1am glad to restore it to the source from whence it
—flowed.”

“Thankee,” says Weegee. “Now this affair is concluded, I may
mention to you in a friendly way that I’ve my doubts whether, if J
had consulted a lawyer, you could have kept this article back from
me. I only throw it an as a legal point.”

“Do you think so, Mr. Wegg? 1 bought you in open contract.”

“You can’t buy human flesh and blood in this country, sir ; not
alive, you can’t,” says Wegg, shaking his head. “Then query, bone?

“ As a legal point?” asks Venus.

“ Asa legal point.”

“T am not competent to speak upon that, Mr. Wegg,” says Venus,
reddening and growing something louder; “but upon a point ot
fact I think myself competent to speak; and as a (point of fact I
would have seen you—will you allow me to say, further ?”

“T wouldn’t say more than further, if I was you,’ Mr. Weee

suggests, pacifically.

— Before I’d have een that packet into your hand without
being paid my price for I don’t pretend to know how the point
of law may stand, but I’m thoroughly confident upon the point of fact.”

As Mr. Venus is irritable (no doubt owing to his disappointment
a love), and as it is not the cue of Mr. Weee to have him out of

temper, the latter gentleman soothingly remarks, “T only putit asa
little case; I only put it ha’porthetically.”

“Then I’d rather, Mr. Wegg, you put it another time, ipenio
etically,” is Mr. Venus’s retort, “for 1 tell you candidly I don’t like
your little cases.”

Arrived by this time in Mr. Wege’s sitting-room, made bright on
the chilly evening by gashight and fire, Mr. Venus softens and com-
r liments him on his abode; Branns by the occasion to remind W ege

hat he (Venus) told him he had got into a good thing.

“Volerable,” Wegg rejoins. “But bear in mind, Mr. Venus, that
there’s no gold w ithout its alloy. Mix for yourself and take a seat
ia the chimbley- corner. Will you perform upon a pipe, sir?”

“Tam but an indifferent per former, sir,” returns the other; “but
TV accompany you with a whiff or two at intervals.”

 

 

 

   

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

So, Mr. Venus mixes, and Wegg mixes; and Mr. Venus lights and
pufis, and Wege lights and pufis.

“ And there’s alloy even in this metal of yours, Mr. Wegg, you
was remarking ?”

“Mystery,” returns Wega. “I don’t like it, Mr. Venus. I don’t
like to have the life knocked out of former inhabitants of this house,
in the gloomy dark, and not know who did it.”

“Might you have any suspicions, Mr. Wegg ?”

“No,” returns that gentleman. “I know who profits by it. But
I’ve no suspicions.”

Having said which, Mr. Wegg smokes and looks at the fire with a
most determined expression of Charity; as if he had caught that
cardinal virtue by the skirts as she felt it her painful duty to de-
part from him, and held her by main force.

“ Similarly,” resumes Wegg, “I have observations as I can offer
upon certain points and parties ; but I make no objections, Mr. Venus.
Here is an immense fortune drops from the clouds upon a person that
shall be nameless. Here is a weekly allowauce, with a certain weight
of coals, drops from the clouds upon me. Which of us is the better
man? Not the person that shall be nameless. hat’s an observation
of mine, but I don’t make it an objection. I take my allowance and
my certain weight of coals. He takes his fortune. That’s the way it
works.”

“It would be a good thing for me, if I could see things in the
calm light you do, Mr. Wegg.”

“ Acain look here,” pursues Silas, with an oratorical flourish of his
pipe and his wooden leg: the latter having an undignified tendency
to tilt him back in his chair; “ here’s another observation, Mr. Venus,
unaccompanied with an objection. Him that shall be nameless is
liable to be talked over. He gets talked over. Him that shall be
nameless, having me at his right hand, naturally looking to be pro-
moted higher, and you may perhaps say meritmg to be promoted
higher——”

(Mr. Venus murmurs that he does say so.)

“__Him that shall be nameless, under such circumstances passes me
by, and puts a talking-over stranger above my head. Which of us two
is the better man? Which of us two can repeat most poetry? Which
of us two has, in the service of him that shall be nameless, tackled the
Romans, both civil and military, till he has got as husky as if he’d
been weaned and ever since brought up on sawdust? Not the
talking-over stranger. Yet the house is as free to him as if it was
his, and he has his room, and is put upon a footing, and draws about
a thousand a year. Jam banished to the Bower, to be found in it
like a piece of furniture whenever wanted. Merit, therefore, don’t
win. That’s the way it works. I observe it, because I can’t help
observing it, being accustomed to take a powerful sight of notice;
but I don’t object. Hver here before, Mr. Venus?” ,

“Not inside the gate, Mr. Wegg.”

“ You've been as far as the gate then, Mr. Venus?

“Yes, Mr. Wegg, and peeped in from curiosity.”
“Did you see anything ?”

 

99

FLEeea

228 OUR, MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Nothing but the dust-yard.”

Mr. Wegg rolls his eyes all round the room, in that ever unsatisfied
quest of his, and then rolls his eyes all round Mr. Venus; as if
suspicious of his haying something about him to be found out.

“And yet, sir,” he pursues, “being acquainted with old Mr.
Harmon, one would have thought it might have been polite in you,
too, to give him a call. And you're naturally of a polite disposition,
you are.” This last clause as a softenmg compliment to Mr.
Venus.

“Tt is true, sir,” replies Venus, winking his weak eyes, and running
his fingers through his dusty shock of hair, “that I was so, before a
certain observation soured me. You understand to what I allude,
Mr. Wegg? To a certain written statement respecting not wishing to
be regarded in a certain light. Since that, all is fled, save gall.”

“Not all,” says Mr. Weee, in a tone of sentimental condolence.

“Yes, sir,’ returns Venus, “all! ‘The world may deem it harsh,
but I’d quite as soon pitch into my best friend as not. Indeed, Vd
sooner !”

Involuntarily making a pass with his wooden leg to guard himself
as Mr. Venus springs up in the emphasis of this unsociable declara-
tion, Mr. Wegg tilts over on his back, chair and all, and is rescued
by that harmless misanthrope, in a disjointed state and ruefully
rubbing his head.

“Why, you lost your balance, Mr. Wegg,” says Venus, handing
him his pipe.

“ And about time to do it,” grumbles Silas, “ when a man’s visitors,
without a word of notice, conduct themselves with the sudden
wiciousness of Jacks-in-boxes! Don’t come flying out of your chair
like that, Mr. Venus!”

“TJ ask your pardon, Mr. Wegg. Iam so soured.”

“Yes, but hang it,” says Wege argumentatively, “a well-governed
mind can be soured sitting! And as to being regarded in lights,
there’s bumpey lights as well as bony. Jn which,” again rubbing
his head, “ I object to regard myself.”

“ll bear it in memory, sir.”

“Jf you'll be so good.” Mr. Wegg slowly subdues his ironical
tone and his lingering irritation, and resumes his pipe. ‘ We were
talking of old Mr. Harmon being a friend of yours.”

“ Not a friend, Mr. Wege. Only known to speak to, and to have
a little deal with now and then. A very inquisitive character, Mr.
Weee, regarding what was found in the dust. As inquisitive as
secret.”

“ Ah! You found him secret ”’ returns Wegg, with a greedy relish.

“He had always the look of it, and the manner of it.”

“ Ah!” with another roll of his eyes. “As to what was found im
the dust now. Did you ever hear him mention how he found it, my
dear friend? Jiving on the mysterious premises, one would like to
know. For instance, where he found things? Or, for instance, how he
set about it? Whether he began at the top of the mounds, or whether
he began at the bottom. Whether he prodded ;’ Mr. Wegg’s panto-
mime is skilful and expressive here; “or whether he scooped?

 

 

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 229

Should you say scooped, my dear Mr. Venus; or should you—as a
man—say prodded ?”

“T should say neither, Mr. Wegg.

“ As a fellow-man, Mr. Venus—mix again—why neither ?”

3ecause I suppose, sir, that what was found, was found in the
sorting and sifting. All the mounds are sorted and sifted ?”

“You shall see em and pass your opinion. Mix again.”

On each occasion of his sayimg “mix again,” Mr. Wegg, with a
hop on his wooden leg, hitches his chair a little nearer; more as if
he were proposing that himself and Mr. Venus should mix again,
than that they should replenish their glasses.

“ Living (as I said before) on the mysterious premises,” says Wegg
when the other has acted on his hospitable entreaty, “one likes to
iknow. Would you be inclined to say now—as a brother—that he
ever hid things in the dust, as well as found ’em ?”

“Mr. Wegg, on the whole I should say he might.”

Mr. Wegg claps on his spectacles, and admiringly surveys Mr.
Venus from head to foot.

“ As a mortal equally with myself, whose hand I take in mine for
the first time this day, having unaccountably overlooked that act so
full of boundless confidence binding a fellow-creetur to a fellow-
ereetur,” says Wege, holding Mr. Venus’s palm ont, flat and ready
for smiting, and now smiting it; “as such—and no other-—for IL
scorn all lowlier ties betwixt myself and the man walking with his
face erect that alone I call my Twin—regarded and regarding in this
trustful bond—what do you think he might have hid?”

“Tt is but a supposition, Mr. Wegg.”

“ Ag a Being with his hand upon his heart,” cries Wegg ; and the
apostrophe is not the less impressive for the Being’s hand being
actually upon his rum and water; “put your supposition into
language, and bring it out, Mr. Venus!”

“He was the species of old gentleman, sir,” slowly returns that
practical anatomist, after drinking, “that I should judge likely to
take such opportunities as this place offered, of stowing away money,
valuables, maybe papers.”

« Ag one that was ever an ornament to human life,” says Mr. Wegg,
again holding out Mr. Venus’s palm as if he were going to tell his
fortune by chiromancy, and holding his own up ready for smiting
it when the time should come; “as one that the poet might have had
his eye on, in writing the national naval words:

”

Helm a-weather, now lay her close
Yard arm and yard arm she li

Again, cried I, Mr. Venus, give her tother dose,
Man shrouds and grapple, sir, or she flies!

   

—that is to say, regarded in the light of true British Oak, for such you
are—explain, Mr. Venus, the expression ‘ papers’ !”

“Seeing that the old gentleman .was generally cutting off some
near relation, or blocking out some natural affection,’ Mr. Venus
rejoins, “he most likely made a good many wills and codicils.”

The palm of Silas Wegg descends with a sounding smack upon

 

 

Bie hain ae rc an

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   

x ERO

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

230 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

the palm of Venus, and Wegg lavishly exclaims, “Twin in opinion
equally with ce Mix a little more!”

Having now hitched his wooden leg and his chair close in front of

Mr. Venus, Mr. Wegg 1 Tapidly mixes for both, gives his visitor his
elass, touches its rim ae 1 the rim of his own, puts his own to his
ips, otis it down, and spreading his hands on his visitor’s knees thus
addresses him :

“Mr. Venus. It ain’t that I object to being passed over for a
stranger, though I regard the stranger as a more than doubtful cus-
tomer. I¢ ain’t for the sake of m: ukine money, though money is ever
welcome. It ain't for myself, though | I am not so haughty as to be
above doing myself a good turn. It’s for the cause of the right.”

Mr. Venus, pass iv ely winking his weak eyes both at. once, demands :
Poe vt is, Mr. Wege ?”

“The friendly move, sir, that I now propose. You see the move,
Sirs”

“ T i
or not.”

“Tf there is anything to be found on these premises, let us find it
gether. Let us make the friendly move of agreeing to look for it
ogether. et us make the friendly move of agreeing to share the
profits of i it equally betwixt us. In the cause of the right.” Thus
Silas assuming a noble air.

“Then,” says Mr. Venus, looking up, after meditating with his
hair held in his hands, as if he Cond only fix his atte ntion by fixing
his head; “if anything was to be unburied from under the dust, it
would be kept a secret by you and me? Would that be it, Mr.
Weege ?”

“That would depend upon what it was, Mr. Venus. Say it was
money, or plate, or jewellery, it would be as much ours as anybody
ile i 2B)

fr. Venus rubs an eyebrow, interrogatively.

fe De the cause of the ‘right it would. Because it would be eee
ingly sold with the mounds else, and the buyer would get what he
was never meant to have, and never bought. And what would that
be, Ma. Venus, but the ¢ cause of the wrong ?”

“Say it was papers,” Mr. Venus propounds.

“ According to what they contained we should offer to dispose of
‘em to the parties most interested,” replies Wege, promptly.

“In the cause of the right, Mr. Wee's 2?”

“ Always so, Mr. Venus. If the parties should use them in the
cause of the wrong, that would be their act and deed. Mr. Venus. I
have an cent of you, sir, to which it is not easy to give mouth.
Since I called upon you that evening when you were, as I may say,
floating your powerful mind in tea, | have felt that you rec ae a to
be roused w ith an object. In this friendly move, sir, you will hay

glorious object to rouse you.’

Mr. Wegg then goes on to enlarge upon what throughout has been
uppermost in his crafty mind :—the qualifications of Mr. Venus for
such a search. He expatiates on Mr. Venus’s patient habits and
delicate manipulation; on his skill in piecing little things together ;

 
  

 

you have pointed it out, Mr. Wegg, I can’t say whether I do

 

to:
4
t

 

 

 

 

   

 

              
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

23

 

OUR MUTUAL

 

FRIEND.

on his knowledge of various tissues and textures; on the likelihood of
small indications leading him on to the discovery of great conceal-
ments. “While as to myself,” says Wege, “I am not good at it.
Whether I gave myself up to prodding, or whether I gave myself up
to scooping, I couldn’t do it with that delicate touch so as not to
show that I was disturbing the mounds. Quite different with you,
going to work (as you would) i in the light of a fellow- man, holily
pledged in a friendly move to his brother man.” Mr, Wege next
modestly remarks on the want of adaptation in a wooden leg to ladders
and such like airy perches, and also hints at an inherent tendency
in that timber fiction, when called into action for the purposes of a
promenade on an ashey slope, to stick itself into the Tiel foothold,
and peg its owner to one spot. ‘Then, leaving this part of the sub-
ject; he remarks on the special phenomenon that before his instal-
lation in the Bower, it was from Mr. Venus that he first heard of
the legend of hidden wealth in the Mounds: “which,” he observes
with a vaguely pious air, “was surely never meant for nothing.”
Lastly, he returns to the cause of the right, gloomily foreshadowing
the possibility of something being unearthed to criminate Mr. Boffin
(of whom he once more candidly ‘admits it cannot be denied that he
profits by amurder), and anticipating his denunciation by the friendly
movers to avenging justice. And this, Mr. Wege expressly points
out, not at all for the sake of the rew raxd—though ; it would be a want
of principle not to take it.

‘fo all this, Mr. Venus, with his shock of dusty hair cocked after
the manner of a terrier’s ears, attends profoundly. When Mr. Wegg,
having finished, opens his arms wide, as if to show Mr. Venus how
bare his breast is, and then folds them pending a reply, Mr. Venus
winks at him with both eyes some little pis before speaking.

“JT see you have tried it by yourself, Mr. Wegg,” he says when he
does speak. ‘“ You have found out the “ifficultios by experience.”

“No, it can hardly be said that I have tried it,” replies We
little dashed by the hint. “I have just skimmed it. Skimmed it.”

«“ And found nothing besides the difficulties ?”

Weee shakes his head.

“T scarcely know what to say to this, Mr. Wegg,” observes Venus,
after ruminating for a while.

“Say yes,’ Wege naturally urges.

“Tf [wasn’t soured, my answer would be no. But being soured, Mr.
Weegg, and driven to reckless madness and desperation, 1 suppose it’s
Bes)

Weegg joyfully reproduces the two glasses, repeats the ceremony of
clinking their rims, and inwardly drinks with great heartiness to the
health and success in life of the young lady hg has reduced Mr.
Venus to his present convenient state of rohiic

The articles of the friendly move are then severally recited and
agreed upon. ‘They are but secrecy, fidelity, and perseverance. ‘I'he
Bower to be always free of access to Mr. Venus for his researc]
and every pr ecaution to be taken against their attracting observation
in the neighbourhood.

“There’s a footstep!” exclaims Venus.

 

  

   

 

ih dene een en etna an ls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

232 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Where ?” cries Wegg, starting.

“Outside. St!”

They are in the act of ratifying the treaty of friendly move, by
shaking hands upon it. They softly break off, ight their pipes which
have gone out, and lean back in their chairs. No doubt, a footstep.
It approaches the window, and a hand taps at the glass. “Come
in!” calls Weg; meaning come round by the door. But the heavy

old-fashioned sash is slowly raised, and a head slowly looks in out of

the dark background of night.

“ Pray 1s Mr. Silas W egg here? Oh! I see him!”

The friendly movers might not have been quite at their ease, even
though the visitor had entered in the usual manner. But, leaning
on the breast-high window, and staring in out of the darkness, they
find the visitor extremely embarrassing. Especially Mr. Venus: who
removes his pipe, draws back his head, and stares at the starer, as
if it were his own Hindoo baby come to fetch him home.

“Good evening, Mr. Wege. The yard gate-lock should be looked
to, if you please ; it don’t catch.”

“TIsit Mr. Rokesmith ?” falters Wege.

“Tt is Mr. Rokesmith. Don’t let me disturb you. I am not coming
m. I have only a message for you, which I undertook to deliver on
my way home to my lodgings. I was in two minds about coming
beyond the gate without ringing: not knowing but you might have
a dog about.”

“J wish I had,” mutters Wege, with his back turned as he rose
from his chair. St! Hush! _ The talking-over stranger, Mr. Venus.”

“Ts that any one I know ?” inquires the staring Secretary.

“No, Mr. Rokesmith. Friend of mine. P assing the evening with
me.’

“Oh! I beg his pardon. Mr. Boffin wishes you to know that he
does not expect you to stay at home any evening, on the chance of his
coming. It has occurred to him that he may, without intending it,
have been a tie upon you. In future, if he should come without
notice, he will take his chance of finding you, and it will be all the
same to him if he does not. I undertook to tell you on my way.
Whatis/ alli

With that, and “Good night,” the Secretary lowers the window,
and disappears. They listen, and hear his footsteps go back to the
gate, and hear the gate close after him.

“ And for that individual, Mr. Venus,” remarks Wege, when he is
fully gone, “I have been passed over! Let me ask you what you
think of him ?”

Apparently, Mr. Venus does not know what to think of him, for
he raakes sundry efforts to reply, without delivering himself of any
other articulate utterance than that he has “a singul: ir look.”

“A double look, you mean, sir,’ rejoins Wege, playing bitterly
upon the word. “That's his look. Any amount of singular look for
me, but not a double look! That’s an under-handed mind, sir.”

“ Do you say there’s something against him?’ Venus asks.

“Something against him?’ repeats Wegg. “Something? What
would the relief be to my feelings—as a fellow-man—if I wasn’t the

Hee

   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 233
slave of truth, and didn’t feel myself compelled to answer, Every-
thing !”

See into what wonderful maudlin refuges, featherless ostriches
plunge their heads! It is such unspeakabie moral compensation to
Wege, to be overcome by the consideration that Mr. Rokesmith has au
underhanded mind!

“On this starlight night, Mr. Venus,” he remarks, when he is
showing that friendly mover out across the yard, and both are some-
thing the worse for mixing again and again: “on this starlight night
to think that talking-over strangers, and underhanded minds, can go
walking home under the sky, as if they was all square!”

“The spectacle of those orbs,” says Mr. Venus, gazing upward with
his hat tumbling off, “ brings heavy on me her crushing words that
she did not wish to regard herself nor yet to be regarded in
that——”

“T know! I know! You needn’t repeat ’em,” says Wege, pressing
his hand. “ But think how those stars steady me in the cause of the
right against some that shall be nameless. It isn’t that I bear malice.
But see how they glisten with old remembrances! Old remembrances
of what, sir?”

Mr. Venus begins drearily replying, “Of her words, in her own
handwriting, that she does not wish to regard herself, nor yet——”
when Silas cuts him short with dignity.

“No, sir! Remembrances of Our House, of Master George, of Aunt
Jane, of Uncle Parker, all laid waste! All offered up sacrifices to the
minion of fortune and the worm of the hour!”

 

 

CHAPTER VIII.
IN WHICH AN INNOCENT ELOPEMENT OCCURS.

THE minion of fortune and the worm of the hour, or in less cutting
language, Nicodemus Boffin, Hsquire, the Golden Dustman, had become
as much at home in his eminently aristocratic family mansion as he
was likely ever to be. He could not but feel that, like an eminently
aristocratic family cheese, it was much too large for his wants, and
bred an infinite amount of parasites; but he was content to regard
this drawback on his property as a sort of perpetual Legacy Duty.
He felt the more resigned to it, forasmuch as Mrs. Boffin enjoyed
herself completely, and Miss Bella was delighted.

That young lady was, no doubt, an acquisition to the Boffins. She
was far too pretty to be unattractive anywhere, and far too quick of
perception to be below the tone of her new career. Whether it im-
proved her heart might be a matter of taste that was open to question ;
but as touching another matter of taste, its improvement of her ap-
pearance and manner, there could be no question whatever.

And thus it soon came about that Miss Bella began to set Mrs.
Boffin right; and even further, that Miss Bella began to feel ill at
ease, and as it were responsible, when she saw Mrs. Boffin going

     
  
 
  
   
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

234 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

wrong. Not that so sweet a disposition and so sound a nature
could ever go very wrong even among the great visiting authorities
who agreed. that the Boffins were “char mingly vulgar” (which for
certain was not their own case in saying so), but that when she
made a slip on the social ice on which all the children of I odsnap-
pery, with genteel souls to be saved, are required to skate in fan
or to slide in long rows, she inevitably tripped Miss Bella up (so th iat
young lady fe It), and caused her to experience great confusion
under the glances of the more skilful performers engaged i in those
ice-e xercises.

At Miss Bella’s time of life it was not to be expected that she

should examine herself very closely on the congruity or stability of

her position in Mr. Boffin’s house. And as she had never been
sparing of complaints of her old home w hen she had no other to
compare it with, so there was no novelty of ingratitude or disdain in
her very much preferring her new one.

«An dae man is Rokesmith,” said Mr. Boffin, after some two
or three months. “But I can’t quite make him out.”

Ne ither could Bella, so she found the subject re ather interesting.

“He takes more care of my affairs, morning, noon, and night, * said
Mr. Boffin, “ than fifty other men put together e sither could or would ;
and yet ig has ways of his own that are like + tying a scaffolding-pole
right across the road, and bringing me up short when I am almost
a-walking arm in arm with him.”

“May I ask how 60, sir?” inquired Bella.

“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Boftin, “he won't meet any company
here, but you. When we have visitors, I should wish him to have
his regular place at the table like ourselves; but no, he won't take it.”

“Tf he considers himself above it,” said Miss Bella, with an airy
toss of her head, “I should leave him alone.”

“It ain’t that, my dear,’ ’ replie d Mr. Boffin, thinking it over. “He
don’t consider himself above it.”

“Perhaps he considers himself beneath it,” suggested Bella. “If
so, he ought to oy best.”

“No, ny dear; nor it ain’t that, neither. No,’ repeated Mr. Boffin,
with a shake of his head, after again thinking it over ; “ Rokesmith’s
a modest man, but he don’t consider himself beneath in

“Then what does he consider, sir?” asked Bella.

“ Dashed if I know!” said Mr. Boffin. “It seemed at first as if it
was only Lightwood that he objected to meet. And now it seems to
be every body, exce pt you.”

“Oho!” thought M Bella. “In—deed! That's it, is it!” For
Mr. Mortimer } Ag] een had dined there two or three times, and
she had met tim’ elsewhere, and he, had shown her some attention.
“Rather cool in a Secretary—and Pa’s lodger ake me the sub-
ject of his Jealousy lie

That Pa’s daughter should be so contemptuous of Pa’s lodger was
odd; but there were odder anomalies than that in the mind of the
spoilt girl: the doubly spoilt ; t girl: te first by poverty, and then
by wealth. Be it this his tory’s part, however, to leave them to
unravel themsely

 

 

      

 

PIECES

 

 

 

 

HEN

                   

 

>
iS

DAUGHTER.

 

PA’S

LODGER, AND

PA’S

 

 

 

 

 

    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

«A little too much, I think,” Miss Bella reflected scornfully, “to
have Pa’s lodger laying claim to me, and keeping eligible people off!
A little too much, indeed, to have the opportunities opened to me by
Mr. and Mrs. Boflin, appropriated by a mere Secretary and Pa’s lodger !”

Yet it was not so very long ago that Bella had been fluttered by
the discovery that this same Secretary and lodger seemed to like her.
Ah! but the eminently aristocratic mansion and Mrs. Boffin’s dress-
maker had not come into play then.

In spite of his seemingly retiring manners a very imtrusive
person, this Secretary and lodger, in Miss Bella’s opinion. Always
a light in his office-room when we came home from the play or
Opera, and he always at the carriage-door to hand us out. Always
a provoking radiance too on Mrs. Boffin’s face, and an abominably
cheerful reception of him, as if it were possible seriously to approve
what the man had in his mind!

“You never charge-me, Miss Wilfer,” said the Secretary, encoun-
tering her by chance alone in the great drawing-room, “with com-
missions for home. I shall always be happy to execute any commands
you may have in that direction.”

“Pray what may you mean, Mr. Rokesmith ?” inquired Miss Bella,
with languidly drooping eyelids.

“By home? I mean your father’s house at Holloway.”

She coloured under the retort—so skilfully thrust, that the words
seemed to be merely a plain answer, given in plain good faith—and
said, rather more emphatically and sharply :

“ What commissions and commands are you speaking of ?”

“Only such little words of remembrance as I assume you send some-
how or other,” replied the Secretary with his former air. “ Tt would
be a pleasure to me if you would make me the bearer of them. As
you know, I come and go between the two houses every day.”

“You needn’t remind me of that, sir.”

She was too quick in this petulant sally against “Pa’s lodger ;”
and she felt that she had been so when she met his quiet look.

“They don’t send many-—what was your expression ?—words of
remembrance to me,” said Bella, making haste to take refuge in ill-

 

usage.

“'They frequently ask me about you, and I give them such slight
intelligence as I can.”

“J hope it’s truly given,” exclaimed Bella.

“JT hope you cannot doubt it, for it would be very much against
you, if you could.”

“No, I do not doubt it. I deserve the reproach, which is very just
indeed. I beg your pardon, Mr. Rokesmith.”

“J should beg you not te do so, but that it shows you to such
admirable advantage,” he replied with earnestness. “Forgive me; I
could not help saying that. To return to what I have digressed
from, let me add that perhaps they think I report them to you,
deliver little messages, and the like. But I forbear to trouble you,
as you never ask me.”

“JT am going, sir,” said Bella, looking at him as if he had reproved
her “to see them to-morrow.”

  

    

        
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

236 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Ts that,’ he asked, hesitating, “ said to me, or to them ?”

“To which you please.”

“To both? Shall I make it a message ?”

“You can if you like, Mr. Rokesmith. Message or no message, I
am going to see them to-morrow.”

“'(hen I will tell them so.”

He lingered a moment, as though to give her the opportunity of
prolonging the conversation if che! “alias As she remained silent,
he left her. T'wo incidents of the little interview were felt by Miss
Bella herself, when alone again, to be very curious. ‘The first was,
that he unquestionably left her with a penitent air upon her, and a
penitent feeling in her heart. ‘The second was, that she had not had
an intention or a thought of going home, until she had announced it
to him as a settled desion.

“What can I mean by it, or what can he mean by it?’ was her
mental mquiry: “He has no right to any power over me, and how
do I come to mind him when IJ don’t care for him?”

Mrs. Boffin, insisting that Bella should make to-morrow’s expedi-
tion in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs. Wilfer
and Miss Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and
improbabilities of her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on behold-
ing the chariot from the window at which they were secreted to
look out for it, agreed that it must be detained at the door as
long as possible, for the mortification and confusion of the neighbours.
Then they repaired to the usual family room, to receive Miss Bella
with a becoming show of indifference.

The family room looked very small and very mean, and the down-
ward staircase by which it was attained looked very narrow and
very crooked. The little house and all its arrangements were a poor
contrast to the eminently aristocratic dwelling. “I can hardly be-
lieve,” thought Bella, “that I ever did endure life in this place!”

Gloomy majesty on the part of Mrs. Wilfer, and native pertness on
the part of Lavvy, did not mend the matter. Bella really stood in
natural need of a little help, and she got none.

“This,” said Mrs. Wilfer, presenting a cheek to be kissed, as
sympathetic and responsive as the back of the bowl of a spoon, “is
quite an honor! You will probably find your sister Lavvy grown,
Bella.”

“Ma,” Miss Lavinia interposed, “there can be no objection to your
being aggravating, because Bella richly deserves it; but I really
must request that you will not drag in such ridiculous nonsense as
my having grown when I am past the growing age.”

“I grew, myself,” Mrs. Wilfer sternly proclaimed, “after I was
matried.”

“Very well, Ma,” returned Lavvy, “then I think you had much
better have left it alone.”

The lofty glare with which the majestic woman received this
answer, might have embarrassed a less pert opponent, but it had no
effect upon Lavinia: who, leaving her parent to the enjoyment of
any amount of glaring that she might deem desirable under the
circumstances, accosted her sister, undismayed.

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. PRT

“TI suppose you won’t consider yourself quite disgraced, Bella, if I
give you a kiss? Well! And how do you do, Bella? And how are
your Boffins ?” :

“Peace!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilfer. “Hold! I will not suffer this
tone of levity.”

“My goodness me! How are your Spoffins, then?’ said Lavvy,
“since Ma so very much objects to your Boffins.”

“Tmpertinent girl! Minx!” said Mrs. Wilfer, with dread seve-
rity.

“JT don’t care whether I am a Minx, or a Sphinx,” returned
Lavinia, coolly, tossing her head; “it’s exactly the same thing to
me, and I’d every bit as soon be one as the other; but 1 know this—
Vil not grow after I am married!”

“You will not? You will not?” repeated Mrs. Wilfer, solemnly.

“No, Ma, I will not. Nothing shall induce me.”

Mrs. Wilfer, having waved her gloves, became loftily pathetic.
“But it was to be expected ;” thus she spake. “A child of mine
deserts me for the proud and prosperous, and another child of mine
despises me. It is quite fitting.”

“Ma,” Bella struck in, “Mr. and Mrs. Boffin are prosperous, no
doubt; but you have no right to say they are proud. You must
know very well that they are not.”

“Tn short, Ma,” said Layvvy, bouncing over to the enemy without
a word of notice, “you must know very well—or if you don’t, more
shame for you !—that Mr. and Mrs. Boffin are just absolute perfection.”

“Truly,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, courteously receiving the deserter,
“it would seem that we are required to think so. And this,
Lavinia, is my reason for objecting to a tone of levity. Mrs. Boffin
(of whose physiognomy I can never speak with the composure |
would desire to preserve), and your mother, are not on terms of
intimacy. It is not for a moment to be supposed that she and her
husband dare to presume to speak of this family as the Wilfers. I
cannot therefore condescend to speak of them as the Boffins. No;
for such a tone—call it familiarity, levity, equality, or what you will
—would imply those social interchanges which do not exist. Do
I render myself intelligible ?”

Without taking the least notice of this inquiry, albeit delivered in
an imposing and forensic manner, Lavinia reminded her sister,

« After all, you know, Bella, you haven't told us how your Whatshis-
names are.”

“J don’t want to speak of them here,” replied Bella, suppressing
indignation, and tapping her foot on the floor. “They are much too
kind and too good to be drawn into these discussions.”

“Why put it so?” demanded Mrs. Wilfer, with biting sarcasm.
“Why adopt a circuitous form of speech? It is polite and it is
obliging ; but why do it? Why not openly say that they are much
too kind and too good for us? We understand the allusion. Why
disguise the phrase ?”

“Ma,” said Bella, with one beat of her foot, “you are enough to
drive a saint mad, and so is Lavvy.”

“Unfortunate Lavvy!” cried Mrs. Wilfer, in a tone of commisera-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

238 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

tion. “She always comes in for it. My poor child!” But Lavvy,
with the suddenness of her former desertion, now bounced over to the
other enemy: very sharply remarking, “Don’t patronise me, Ma,
because I can take care of myself.”

“T only wonder,” resumed Mrs. Wilfer, directing her observations
to her elder daughter, as safer on the whole than her utterly un-
manageable younger, “that you found time and inclination to tear
yourself from Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, and come to see us at all. I only
wonder that our claims, contending against the superior claims of
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, had any weight. I feel I ought to be thankful
for gaining so much, in competition with Mr;and Mrs. Boffin.” (The
good lady bitterly emphasized the first letter of the word Boffin, as
if it represented her chief objection to the owners of that name,
and as if she could have borne Doffin, Moffin, or Poffin much better. )

“Ma,” said Bella, angrily, “you force me to say that I am truly
sorry I did come home, and that I never will come home again,
except when poor dear Pa is here. For, Pa is too magnanimous to
feel envy and spite towards my generous friends, and Pa is delicate
enough and gehtle enough to remember the sort of little claim they
thought I had upon them and the unusually trying position in
which, through no act of my own, I had been placed. And I always
did love poor dear Pa better than all the rest of you put together,
and I always do and I always shall!”

Here Bella, deriving no comfort from her charming bonnet and
her elegant dress, burst into tears.

“J think, R. W.,” cried Mrs. Wilfer, lifting up her eyes and apos-
trophising the air, “that if you were present, it would be a trial to
your feelings to hear your wife and the mother of your family depre-
ciated in your name. But Fate has spared you this, R. W., whatever
it may have thought proper to inflict upon her !”

Here Mrs. Wilfer burst into tears.

“J hate the Boffins!” protested Miss Lavinia. “I don’t care who
objects to their being called the Boffins. I win call ’em the Boffins.
‘he Boftins, the Boffins, the Boffins! And I say they are mischief-
making Boffins, and I say the Boffins have set Bella against me,
and I tell the Boffins to their faces :” which was not strictly the fact,
but the young lady was excited: “that they are detestable Boffins,
disreputable Boffins, odious Boffins, beastly Boffins. There !”

Here Miss Lavinia: burst into tears.

The front garden-gate clanked, and the Secretary was seen coming
at a brisk pace up the steps. “Leave Me to open the door to him,”
said Mrs. Wilfer, rising with stately resignation as she shook her
head and dried her eyes; “we have at present no stipendiary girl to
do so. We have nothing to conceal. If he sees these traces of
emotion on our cheeks, let him construe them as he may.”

With those words she stalked out. In a few moments she stalked
in again, proclaiming in her heraldic manner, “Mr. Rokesmith is the
bearer of a packet for Miss Bella Wilfer.”

Mr. Rokesmith followed close upon his name, and of course saw
what was amiss. But he discreetly affected to see nothing, and
addressed Miss Bella.

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 239

“My. Boffin intended to have placed this in the carriage for you
this morning. He wished you to have it, as a little keepsake he had
prepared—it is only a purse, Miss Wilfer—but as he was disappointed
in his fancy, I volunteered to come after you with it.”

Bella took it in her hand, and thanked him.

“We have been quarrelling here a little, Mr. Rokesmith, but not
more than we used; you know our agreeable ways among ourselves.
You find me just going. Good-bye,mamma. Good-bye, Lavvy!” And
with a kiss for each Miss Bella turned to the door. ‘The Secretary
would have attended her, but Mrs. Wilfer advancing and saying with
dignity, “Pardon me! Permit me to assert my natural right to
escort my child to the equipage which is in waiting for her,’ he
begged pardon and gave place. It was a very magnificent spectacle
indeed, to see Mrs. Wilfer throw open the house-door, and loudly
demand with extended gloves, “The male domestic of Mrs. Boffin!”
To whom presenting himself, she delivered the brief but majestic
charge, “Miss Wilfer. Coming out!” and so delivered her over, like
a female Lieutenant of the Tower relinquishing a State Prisoner.
The effect of this ceremonial was for some quarter of an hour after-
wards perfectly paralysing on the neighbours, and was much en-
hanced by the worthy lady airing herself for that term in a kind of
splendidly serene trance on the top step.

When Bella was seated in the carriage, she opened the little
packet in her hand. It contained a pretty purse, and the purse
contained a bank note for fifty pounds. “This shall be a joyful
surprise for poor dear Pa,” said Bella, “and V'll take it myself into
the City !”

As she was uninformed respecting the exact locality of the place
of business of Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, but knew it to be
near Mincing Lane, she directed herself to be driven to the corner of
that darksome spot. Thence she despatched “the male domestic of
Mrs. Boffin,” in search of the counting-house of Chicksey Veneering
and Stobbles, with a message importing that if R. Wilfer could come
out, there was a lady waiting who would be glad to speak with him.
The delivery of these mysterious words from the mouth of a footman
caused so great an excitement in the counting-house, that a youthful
scout was instantly appointed to follow Rumty, observe the lady,
and come in with his report. Nor was the agitation by any means
diminished, when the scout rushed back with the intelligence that
the lady was “a slap-up gal in a bang-up chariot.”

Rumty himself, with his pen behind his ear under his rusty hat,
arrived at the carriage-door in a breathless condition, and had been
fairly lugged into the vehicle by his cravat and embraced almost
unto choking, before he recognised his daughter. “My dear child!”
he then panted, incoherently. “Good gracious me! What a lovely
woman you are! I thought you had been unkind and forgotten
your mother and sister.”

“T have just been to see them, Pa dear.”

“Qh! and how—how did you find your mother?” asked R. W.,
dubiously.

“ Very disagreeable, Pa, and so was Lavvy.”

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 

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240 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“They are sometimes a little liable to it,” observed the patient
cherub ; “ but I hope you made allowances, Bella, my dear ?”

“No. Iwas disagreeable too, Pa; we were all of us disagreeable
together. But 1 want you to come and dine with me somewhere,
Bay

“Why, my dear, I have already partaken of a—if one might
mention such an article in this superb chariot—of a—Saveloy,” re-
plied R. Wilfer, modestly dropping his voice on the word, as he eyed
the canary-coloured fittings.

“Oh! That’s nothing, Pa!”

“Truly, it ain’t as much as one could sometimes wish it to be, my
dear,” he admitted, drawing his hand across his mouth. “Still when,
circumstances over which you have no control, interpose obstacles
between yourself and Small Germans, you can’t do better than bring
a contented mind to bear on ”—again dropping his voice in deference
to the chariot—* Saveloys!”

“You poor good Pa! Pa, do, I beg and pray, get leave for the
rest of the day, and come and pass it with me!”

“Well, my dear, I'll cut back and ask for leave.”

“But before you cut back,” said Bella, who had already taken him
by the chin, pulled his hat off, and begun to stick up his hair in her
old way, ‘‘do say that you are sure lam giddy and inconsiderate,
but have never really slighted you, Pa.”

“My dear, I say it with all my heart. And might I likewise
observe,” her father de licately hinted, with a elance out at window,
“that perhaps it might be calculated to attract attention, having
one’s hair publicly done by a lovely woman in an elegant turn-out in
fenchurch Street ?”

Bella laughed and put on his hat again. But when his boyish
figure bobbed away, its shabbiness and cheerful patience smote the
tears out of her eyes. ‘TJ hate that Secretary for thinking it of me,”
she said to herself, “and yet it seems half true!”

Back came her father, more like a boy than ever, in his release
from school. “All right, my dear. Leave given at once. Really
very handsomely done!”

“Now where can we find some quiet place, Pa, in which T can
wait for you while you go on an errand for me, if I send the carriage
away 2”

It demanded cogitation. ‘ You see, my dear,” he explained, “you
really have become such a very lovely woman, that it ought to be a
very quiet place.” At length he suggested, “Near the garden up by
the Trinity House on Tower Hill.” So, they were driven there, and
Bella dismissed the chariot; sending a pencilled note by it to Mrs.
Poffin, that she was with her father.

“Now, Pa, attend to what I am going to say, and promise and vow
to be obedient.”

“I promise and vow, my dear.”

“You ask no questions. You take this purse; you go to the
nearest place where they keep everything of the very very best,
ready made; you buy and put on, the most beautiful suit of clothes,
the most beautiful hat, and the most beautiful pair of bright boots

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 241

(patent leather, Pa, mind!) that are to be got for money; and you

come ee to me.”
Rd

                      

& i ake care, Pa me annals her forefinger at him, merrily. “You
have promised and yowed. It’s perjury, you know.”

There was water in the foolish little fellow’s eyes, bu+ she kissed
them dry (though her own were wet), and he bobbed away again.
After half an hour, he came back, so brilliantly transformed, that
Bella was obliged to walk round him in ecstatic admiration twenty
times, before she could draw her arm through ‘is, and delightedly
squeeze it.

“‘ Now, Pa,” said Bella, hugging him close, “take this lovely woman
out to dinner.”

“Where shall we go, my dear?”

“Greenwich !” said Bella, valiantly. ‘And be sure you treat this
lovely woman with everything of the best.”

While they were going along to take boat, “Don’t you w ish, my
dear,” said R. W., timidly, “that your mother was here?”

“No, I don’t, Pa, for I like to have you all to myself to-day. Iw
always your little favourite at home, and you were always mine. We
have run away together often, before now; haven *t we, Pa?”

“ Ah, to be sure we have! Many a Sunday when your mother was
—was a little liable to it,” repeating his former delicate expression
after pausing to cough.

“Yes, and I am afraid I was seldom or never as good as I ought to
have been, Pa. I made you carry me, over and over again, when you
should have made me walk; and I often drove you in harness, when
you would much rather have sat down and read your newspaper :
didn’t I?”

“Sometimes, sometimes. But Lor, what a child you were! What
a companion you were!”

“Companion? That’s just what I want to be to-day, Pa.”

“You are safe to succeed, my love. Your brothers and sisters
have all in their turns been companions to me, to a certain extent,
but only to a certain extent. Your mother has, throughout life, been
a companion that any man might—might look up to—and—and
commit the sayings of, to memory—and. —form himself wpon—if
he——”

“Tf he liked the model ?” suggested Bella.

“We-ell, ye-es,” he returned, thinking about it, not quite satis-
fied with the phrase : “or perhaps I might say, if it was in him.
Supposing, for instance, that a man wanted to be always march-
ine, he would find your mother an inestimab le companion. But
if he had any taste for wal kine, or should wish at any time to break
into a trot, he might sometimes find it a little difficult to keep
step with your mother. Or take it this way, Bella,” he added,
after a moment’s reflection; “ Supposing that a man had to go
through life, we won’t say with a companion, but we'll say to a tune.
Very ‘good. Supposing that the tune allotted to him was the Dead
March in Saul. Well. It would be a very suitable tune for parti-
cular occasions—none better—but it would be difficult to kee p time
VOL. 01. R

 

 

     
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
  
  
 
 
   
 
 
  
   
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
     

 

 

 

 

 

242 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

with in the ordinary run of domestic transactions. Hor instance, if
he took his supper after a hard day, to the Dead March in Saul, his
food might be likely to sit heavy on him. Or, if he was at any
time inclined to relieve his mind by singing a comic song or dancing
a hornpipe, and was obliged to do it to the Dead March in Saul, he
might find himself put out in the execution of his lively intentions.”

“Poor Pa!” thought Bella, as she hung upon his arm.

“Now, what I will say for you, my dear,” the cherub pursued
mildly and without a notion of complaining, “is, that you are so
adaptable. So adaptable.”

“Indeed I am afraid I have shown a wretched temper, Pa. J am
afraid I have been very complaining, and very capricious. I seldom or
never thought of it before. But when I sat in the carriage just now
and saw you coming along the pavement, I reproached myself.”

“Not at all, my dear. Don’t speak of such a thing.”

A happy and a chatty man was Pa in his new clothes that day.
Take it for all in all, it was perhaps the happiest day he had ever
known in his life; not even excepting that on which his heroic
partner had approached the nuptial altar to the tune of the Dead
March in Saul.

The little expedition down the river was delightful, and the little
room overlooking the river into which they were shown for dinner
was delightful. Hyverything was delightful. The park was delight-
ful, the punch was delightful, the dishes of fish were delightful, the
wine was delightful. Bella was more delightful than any other item
in the festival; drawing Pa out in the gayest manner; making a
point of always mentioning herself as the lovely woman; stimu-
lating Pa to order things, by declaring that the lovely woman in-
sisted on being treated with them; and in short causing Pa to be
quite enraptured with the consideration that he was the Pa of such
a charming daughter.

And then, as they sat looking at the ships and steamboats making
their way to the sea with the tide that was running down, the lovely
woman imagined all sorts of voyages for herself and Pa. Now, Pa,
in the character of owner of a lumbering square-sailed collier, was
tacking away to Newcastle, to fetch black diamonds to make his
fortune with; now, Pa was going to China in that handsome three-
masted ship, to bring home opium, with which he would for ever cut
out Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, and to bring home silks and
shawls without end for the decoration of his charming daughter.
Now, John Harmon’s disastrous fate was all a dream, and he had
come home and found the lovely woman just the article for him, and
the lovely woman had found him just the article for her, and they
were going away on a trip, in their gallant bark, to look after their
vines, with streamers flying at all points, a band playing on deck,
and Pa established in the great cabin. Now, John Harmon was
consigned to his grave again, and a merchant of immense wealth
(name unknown) had courted and married the lovely woman, and he
was so enormously rich that everything you saw upon the river
sailing or steaming belonged to him, and he kept a perfect fleet of
yachts for pleasure, and that little impudent yacht which you saw over

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 243
there, with the great white sail, was called The Bella, in honor of
his wife, and she held her state aboard when it pleased her, like a
modern Cleopatra. Anon, there would embark in that troop-ship
when she got to Gravesend, a mighty general, of large property
(name also unknown), who wouldn’t hear of going to victory without
his wife, and whose wife was the lovely woman, and she was destined
to become the idol of all the red coats and blue jackets alow and
aloft. And then again: you saw that ship being towed out by a
steam-tug? Well! where did you suppose she was going to? She
was going among the coral reefs and cocoa-nuts and all that sort of
thing, and she was chartered for a fortunate individual of the name
of Pa (himself on board, and much respected by all hands), and she
was going, for his sole profitand advantage, to fetch a cargo of sweet-
smelling woods, the most beautiful that ever were seen, and the most
profitable that never were heard of, and her cargo would be a great,
fortune, as indeed it ought to be: the lovely woman who had pur-
chased her and fitted her expressly for this voyage, being married to
an Indian Prince, who was a Something-or-Other, and who wore
Cashmere shawls all over himself, and diamonds and emeralds blazing
in his turban, and was beautifully coffee-coloured and excessively
devoted, though a little too jealous. Thus Bella ran on merrily, in a
manner perfectly enchanting to Pa, who was as willing to put his
head into the Sultan’s tub of water as the beggar-boys below the
window were to put their heads in the mud.

“IT suppose, my dear,” said Pa after dinner, “we may come to the
conclusion at home, that we have lost you for good ?”

Bella shook her head. Didn't know. Couldn't say. All she was
able to report was, that she was most handsomely supplied with
everything she could possibly want, and that whenever she hinted
at leaving Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, they wouldn’t hear of it.

“ And now, Pa,” pursued Bella, “Il make a confession to you. 1
am the most mercenary little wretch that ever lived in the world.”

“J should hardly have thought it of you, my dear,’ returned her
father, first glancing at himself, and then at the dessert.

“J understand what you mean, Pa, but it’s not that. It’s not that
I care for money to keep as money, but I do care so much for what
it will buy!”

“ Really I think most of us do,” returned R. W.

“But not to the dreadful extent that I do, Pa. O-o!’’ cried Bella,
screwing the exclamation out of herself with a twist of her dimpled
chin. “I Am so mercenary !”

With a wistful glance R. W. said, in default of having anything better
to say: “ About when did you begin to feel it coming on, my dear ?”

“That's it, Pa. That's the terrible part of it. When I was at
home, and only knew what it was to be poor, I grumbled but didn’t
so much mind. When I was at home expecting to be rich, I thought
vaguely of all the great things I would do. But when I had been
disappointed of my splendid fortune, and came to see it from day to
day in other hands, and to have before my eyes what it could really
do, then I became the mercenary little wretch I am.”

“Tt's your fancy, my dear.”

     
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

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244 : OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“J can assure you it’s nothing of the sort, Pa!” said Bella, nodding
at him, with her very pretty eyebr ows raised as high as they would
go, and looking comically frightened. “It’s a fact. I am always
avariciously scheming.”

“Lor! But how?”

“Tl tell you, Pa. I don’t mind telling you, because we have
always been favourites of each other's, and because you are not like a
Pa, but more like a sort of a younger brother with a dear venerable
chubbiness on him. And _ besides,” added Bella, laughing as she
pointed a rallying finger at his face, “ because I have got you in my
power. ‘his isa secret expedition. If ever you tell of me, I'll tell
of you. J’ll tell Ma that you dined at Greenwich.”

“ Well; seriously, my dear,” observed R. W., with some trepidation
of manner, “it might be as well not to mention it.”

“Aha!” laughed Bella. “I knew you wouldn’t like it, sir! So
you keep my confidence, and I'll keep yours. But betray the lovely
woman, and you shall find her a serpent. Now, you may give me a
laiss, Pa, and I should like to give your hair a turn, because it has
been dreadfully neglected in my absence.”

R. W. submitted his head to the operator, and the operator went
on talking; at the same time putting separate locks of his hair
through a curious process of beg smartly rolled over her two
re volving forefingers, which were then suddenly pulled out of it in
opposite “lateral directions. On each of these occasions the patient
winced and winked.

“JT have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel
that I can’t beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved
that I must marry it.”

R. W. cast up his eyes towards her, as well as he could under the
operating circumstances, and said in a tone of remonstrance, “My
de-ar Bella!”

“Have resolved, I say, Pa, that to get money I must marry money.
tn consequence of which, | am always looking out for money to
captivate.”

“My de-a-r Bella!”

“Yes, Pa, that is the state of the case. If ever there was a
mercenary Paes whose thoughts and designs were always in her
mean occupation, 1 am the amiable creature. But I don't care. 1
hate and detest being poor, and I won't be poor if I can marry
money. Now you are deliciously fluffy, Pa, and in a state to astonish
the waiter and pay the bill.”

3ut, my dear Bella, this is quite alarming at your age.”

‘I told you so, Pa, but you wouldn’t believe it,” returned. Bella,
Ww ithie a pleasant childish gravity. “Isn't it shocking 2

“It would be quite so, if you fully knew what you said, my dear,
or meant it.”

“Well, Pa, I can only tell you that I mean nothing else. Tall to
me of love!” said Bella, contemptuously : though her face and figure
analy rendered the subject no incongruous one. “ Talk toe me

f fiery dragons! But talk to me of poverty and wealth, and there
zidged we touch upon realities.”

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 245

“My De-ar, this is becoming Awful—” her father was emphatically
beginning: when she stopped him.

“Pa, tell me. Did you marry money ?”

“You know I didn’t, my dear.”

Bella hummed the Dead March in Saul, and said, after all it
signified very little! But seeing him look grave and downcast, she
took him round the neck and kissed him back to cheerfulness again.

“J didn’t mean that last touch, Pa; it was only said in joke. Now
mind! You are not to tell of me, and I'll not tell of you. And
more than that; I promise to have no secrets from you, Pa, and you
may make certain that, whatever mercenary things go on, I shall
always tell you all about them in strict confidence.”

Fain to be satisfied with this concession from the lovely woman,
R. W. rang the bell, and paid the bill. “Now, all the rest of this,
Pa,” said Bella, rolling up the purse when they were alone again,
hammering it small with her little fist on the table, and cramming it
into one of the pockets of his new waistcoat, “is for you, to buy
presents with for them at home, and to pay bills with, and to divide
as you like, and spend exactly as you think proper. Last of all take
notice, Pa, that it’s not the fruit of any avaricious scheme. Perhaps
if it was, your little mercenary wretch of a daughter wouldn't make
so free with it!”

After which, she tugged at his coat with both hands, and pulled
him all askew in buttoning that garment over the precious waistcoat
pocket, and then tied her dimples into her bonnet-strings in a very
knowing way, and took him back to London. Arrived at Mr. Boffin’s
door, she set him with his back against it, tenderly took him by
the ears as convenient handles for her purpose, and kissed him until
he knocked muffled double knocks at the door with the back of his
head. That done, she once more reminded him of their compact and
gaily parted from him.

Not so gaily, however, but that tears filled her eyes as he went
away down the dark street. Not so gaily, but that she several times
said, “Ah, poor little Pa! Ah, poor dear struggling shabby little
Pa!” before she took heart to knock at the door. Not so gaily, but
that the brilliant furniture seemed to stare her out of countenance as
ifit insisted on being compared with the dingy furniture at home. Not
so gaily, but that she fell into very low spirits sitting late in her own
room, and very heartily wept, as she wished, now that the deceased
old John Harmon had never made a will about her, now that the
deceased. young John Harmon had lived to marry her. “ Contra-
dictory things to wish,” said Bella, “but my life and fortunes are so
contradictory altogether that what can I expect myself to be!”

asta

Pe Oa Oe ee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

246 OUR MUTUAL’ FRIEND.

CHAPTER IX.
IN WHICH THE ORPHAN MAKES HIS WILL.

Tur Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning,
was informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of
Sloppy. The footman who communicated this intelligence made a
decent pause before uttering the name, to express that it was forced
on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had
had the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it
would have spared the feelings of him the bearer.

“ Mrs. Boffin will be very well pleased,” said the Secretary in a
perfectly composed way. “Show him in.”

Mr. Sloppy being introduced, remained close to the door : revealing
in yarious parts of his form many surprising, confounding, and in-
comprehensible buttons.

“Tam glad to see you,” said John Rokesmith, in a cheerful tone of
welcome. “TI have been expecting you.”

Sloppy explained that he had meant to come before, but that the
Orphan (of whom he made mention as Our Johnny) had been ailing,
and he had waited to report him well.

“Then he is well now?” said the Secretary.

“No he ain’t,” said Sloppy.

Mr. Sloppy having shaken his head to a considerable extent, pro-
ceeded to remark that he thought Johnny “must have took ’em from
the Minders.” Being asked what he meant, he answered, them that
come out upon him and partickler his chest. Being requested to
explain himself, he stated that there was some of ’em wot you couldn’t
kiver with a sixpence. Pressed to fall back upon a nominative case,
he opined that they wos about as red as ever red could be. “ But as
long as they strikes out’ards, sir,” continued Sloppy, “they ain’t so
much. It’s their striking in’ards that’s to be kep off.”

John Rokesmith hoped the child had had medical attendance? Oh
yes, said Sloppy, he had been took to the doctor's shop once. And
what did the doctor call it? Rokesmith asked him. After some
perplexed reflection, Sloppy answered, brightening, “He called it
something as wos wery long for spots.” Rokesmith suggested measles.
“No,” said Sloppy, with confidence, “ever so much longer than them,
sir!” (Mr. Sloppy was elevated by this fact, and seemed to consider
that it reflected credit on the poor little patient.)

“Mrs. Boffin will be sorry to hear this,’ said Rokesmith.

“Mrs. Higden said so, sir, when she kep it from her, hoping as
Our Johnny would work round.”

But I hope he will?” said Rokesmith, with a quick turn upon
the messenger.

“TI hope so,” answered Sloppy. “It all depends on their striking
ivards.” He then went on to say that whether Johnny had “took
*em” from the Minders, or whether the Minders had “took ’em” from
Johnny, the Minders had been sent home and had “ got’em.” Further-
more, that Mrs. Higden’s days and nights being devoted to Our

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 247

Johnny, who was never out of her lap, the whole of the mangling
arrangements had devolved upon himself, and he had had “rayther a
tight time.” The ungainly piece of honesty beamed and blushed as
he said it, quite enraptured with the remembrance of having been
serviceable.

“Last night,” said Sloppy, “when I was a-turning at the wheel
pretty late, the mangle seemed to go like Our Johnny’s breathing. It
begun beautiful, then as it went out it shook a little and got un-
steady, then as it took the turn to come home it had a rattle-like
and lumbered a bit, then it come smooth, and soit went on till i
scarce know’d which was mangle and which was Our Johnny. Nor
Our Johnny, he scarce know’d either, for sometimes when the mangle
lumbers he says, ‘Me choking, Granny! and Mrs. Higden holds
him up in her lap and says to me ‘Bide a bit, Sloppy, and we all
stops together. And when Our Johnny gets his breathing again, I
turns again, and we all goes on together.”

Sloppy had gradually expanded with his description into a stare ,

and a vacant grin. He now contracted, being silent, into a half-
repressed gush of tears, and, under pretence of being heated, drew
the under part of his sleeve across his eyes with a singularly awk-
ward, laborious, and roundabout smear.

“his ig unfortunate,” said Rokesmith. “I must go and break it
to Mrs. Boffin. Stay you here, Sloppy.”

Sloppy stayed there, staring at the pattern of the paper on the
wall, until the Secretary and Mrs. Boffin came back together. And
with Mrs. Boffin was a young lady (Miss Bella Wilfer by name) who
was better worth staring at, it occurred to Sloppy, than the best of
wall-papering.

« Ah, my poor dear pretty little John Harmon!” exclaimed Mrs.
Boffin.

“Yes mum,” said the sympathetic Sloppy.

“You don’t think he is in a very, very bad way, do you?” asked
the pleasant creature with her wholesome cordiality.

Put upon his good faith, and finding it in collision with his incli-
nations, Sloppy threw back his head and uttered a mellifluous howl,
rounded off with a sniff.

“So bad as that!” cried Mrs. Boffin. “And Betty Higden not to
tell me of it sooner !”

“J think she might have been mistrustful, mum,” answered Sloppy,
hesitating.

“Of what, for Heaven’s sake ?”

“J think she might have been mistrustful, mum,” returned Sloppy
with submission, “of standing in Our Johnny’s light. ‘There's so
much trouble in illness, and so much expense, and she’s seen such a
lot of its being objected to.”

“ But she never can have thought,” said Mrs. Boffin, “that I would
grudge the dear child anything ?”

“No mum, but she might have thought (as a habit-like) of its
standing in Johnny’s light, and might have tried to bring him
through it unbeknownst.”

Sloppy knew his ground well. To conceal herself in sickness,
like a lower animal; to creep out of sight and coil herself away and

PIece(gi

248 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

die; had become this woman’s instinct. T’o catch up in her arms the
sick child who was dear to her, and hide it as if it were a criminal,
and keep off all ministration but such as her own ignorant tenderness
and patience could supply, had become this woman’s idea of maternal
love, fidelity, and duty. ‘The shameful accounts we read, every week
in the Christian year, my lords and gentlemen and honorable boards,
the infamous records of small official inhumanity, do not pass by the
people as they pass by us. And hence these irrational, blind, and
obstinate prejudices, so astonishing to our magnificence, and having
no more reason in them—God save the Queen and Con-found their
politics—no, than smoke has in coming from fire!

“It’s not a right place for the poor child to stay in,” said Mrs.
Boffin. “Tell us, dear Mr. Rokesmith, what to do for the best.”

He had already thought what to do, and the consultation was very
short. He could pave the way, he said, in half an hour, and then
they would go down to Brentford. “Pray take me,” said Bella.
Therefore a carriage was ordered, of capacity to take them all, and in
the meantime Sloppy was regaled, feasting alone in the Secretary's
room, with a complete realization of that fairy vision—meat, beer,
vegetables, and pudding. In consequence of which his buttons
became more importunate of public notice than before, with the
exception of two or three about the region of the waistband, which
modestly withdrew into a creasy retirement.

Punctual to the time, appeared the carriage and the Secretary. He
sat on the box, and Mr. Sloppy graced the rumble. So, to the Three
Magpies as before: where Mrs. Boftin and Miss Bella were handed
out, and whence they all went on foot to Mrs. Betty Higden’s.

But, on the way down, they had stopped at a toy-shop, and had
bought that noble charger, a description of whose points and trappings
had on the last occasion conciliated the then worldly-minded orphan,
and also a Noah’s ark, and also a yellow bird with an artificial voice
in him, and also a military doll so well dressed that if he had only
been of life-size his brother-officers in the Guards might never have
found him out. Bearing these gifts, they raised the latch of Betty
Higden’s door, and saw her sitting in the dimmest and furthest
corner with poor Johnny in her lap.

“And how’s my boy, Betty?” asked Mrs. Boffin, sitting down
beside her.

“He's bad! He's bad!” said Betty. “I begin to be afeerd he'll
not be yours any more than mine. All others belonging to him have
gone to the Power and the Glory, and I have a mind that they’re
drawing him to them—leading him away.”

“No, no, no,” said Mrs. Boffin.

“T don’t know why else he clenches his little hand as if it had hold
of a finger that I can’t see. Look at it,” said Betty, opening the
wrappers in which the flushed child lay, and showing his small right
hand lying closed upon his breast. “It’salwaysso. It don’t mind me.”

“Ts he asleep ?”

“No, I think not. You're not asleep, my Johnny ?”

“No,” said Johnny, with a quiet air of pity for himself, and with-
out opening his eyes.

“Here's the lady, Johnny. And the horse.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Naa 0a a 1

TOWN N YV_

aA TYP

    
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 249

Johnny could bear the lady, with complete indifference, but not
the horse. Opening his heavy eyes, he slowly broke into a smile on
beholding that splendid phenomenon, and wanted to take it in his
arms. As it was much too big, it was put upon a chair where he
could hold it by the mane and contemplate it. Which he soon forgot
to do.

But, Johnny murmuring something with his eyes closed, and Mrs.
Boffin not knowing what, old Betty bent her ear to listen and took
pains to understand. Being asked by her to repeat what he had
said, he did so two or three times, and then it came out that he must
have seen more than they supposed when he looked up to see the
horse, for the murmur was, “ Who is the boofer lady?’ Now, the
boofer, or beautiful, lady was Bella; and whereas this notice from
the poor baby would have touched her of itself, it was rendered
more pathetic by the late melting of her heart to her poor
little father, and their joke about the lovely woman. So, Bella’s
behaviour was very tender and very natural when she kneeled on the
brick floor to clasp the child, and when the child, with a child’s
admiration of what is young and pretty, fondled the boofer lady.

“ Now, my good dear Betty,” said Mrs. Boffin, hoping that she saw
her opportunity, and laying her hand persuasively on her arm; “we
have come to remove Johnny from this cottage to where he can be
taken better care of.”

Instantly, and before another word could be spoken, the old woman
started up with blazing eyes, and rushed at the door with the sick
child.

“Stand away from me every one of ye!” she cried out wildly. “I
see what ye mean now. Let me go my way, all of ye. Vd sooner
kill the Pretty, and kill myself!”

“Stay, stay!” said Rokesmith, soothing her. “ You don’t under-
stand.”

“T understand too well. I know too much about it, sir. Ive rm
from it too many a year. No! Never for me, nor for the child, while
there’s water enough in England to cover us!”

The terror, the shame, the passion of horror and repugnance, firing
the worn face and perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite
terrible sight, if embodied in one old fellow-creature alone. Yet it
“crops up ’—as our slang goes—my lords and gentlemen and hono-
rable boards, in other fellow-creatures, rather frequently !

“Tt’s ‘been chasing me all my life, but it shall never take me nor
mine alive!” cried old Betty. “Ive done with ye. Id have
fastened door and window and starved out, afore ’d ever have let
ye in, if I had known what ye came for!”

But, catching sight of Mrs. Boffin’s wholesome face, she relented,
and crouching down by the door and bending over her burden to
hush it, said humbly : “ Maybe my fears has put me wrong. If they
have so, tell me, and the good Lord forgive me! I’m quick to take
this fright, | know, and my head is summ/’at light with wearying
and watching.”

“There, there, there!” returned Mrs. Boffin. “Come, come! Say
no more of it, Betty. It was a mistake, a mistake. Any one of us
might have made it in your place, and felt just as you do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

250 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

.. “The Lord bless ye!” said the old woman, stretching out her
hand.

“Now, see, Betty,” pursued the sweet compassionate soul, holding
the hand kindly, “what I really did mean, and what I should have
begun by saying out, if I had only been a little wiser and handier.
We want to move Johnny to a place where there are none but
children ; a place set up on purpose for sick children; where the
good doctors and nurses pass their lives with children, talk to none
but children, touch none but children, comfort and cure none but
children.”

“Is there really such a place?” asked the old woman, with a gaze
of wonder.

“Yes, Betty, on my word, and you shall see it. If my home was
a better place for the dear boy, I’d take him to it; but indeed indeed
it’s not.”

“You shall take him,” returned Betty, fervently kissing the com-
forting hand, “ where you will, my deary. I am not so hard, but that
I believe your face and voice, and I will, as long as I can see and
hear.”

This victory gained, Rokesmith made haste to profit by it, for he
saw how wofully time had been lost. He despatched Sloppy to bring
the carriage to the door; caused the child to be carefully wrapped
up; bade old Betty get her bonnet on; collected the toys, enabling
the little fellow to comprehend that his treasures were to be trans-
ported with him; and had all things prepared so easily that they
were ready for the carriage as soon as it appeared, and in a minute
afterwards were on their way. Sloppy they left behind, relieving
his overcharged breast with a paroxysm of mangling.

At the Children’s Hospital, the gallant steed, the Noah’s ark, the
yellow bird, and the officer in the Guards, were made as welcome as
their child-owner. But the doctor said aside to Rokesmith, “This
should have been days ago. ‘Too late!”

However, they were all carried up into a fresh airy room, and
there Johnny came to himself, out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever
it was, to find himself lying in a little quiet bed, with a little platform
over his breast, on which were already arranged, to give him heart
and urge him to cheer up, the Noah’s ark, the noble steed, and the
yellow bird; with the officer in the Guards doing duty over the
whole, quite as much to the satisfaction of his country as if he had
been upon Parade. And at the bed’s head was a colored picture
beautiful to see, representing as it were another Johnny seated on
the knee of some Angel surely who loved little children. And, mar-
vellous fact, to lie and stare at: Johnny had become one of a little
family, all in little quiet beds (except two playing dominoes in little
arm-chairs at a little table on the hearth): and on all the little beds

Pieeeiaig

were little platforms whereon were to be seen dolls’ houses, woolly,

dogs with mechanical barks in them not very dissimilar from the
artificial voice pervading the bowels of the yellow bird, tin armies,
Moorish tumblers, wooden tea things, and the riches of the earth.

As Johnny murmured something in his placid admiration, the
ministering women at his bed’s head asked him what he said. It
seemed that he wanted to know whether all these were brothers and

     
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 251

sisters of his? So they told him yes. It seemed then, that he wanted
to know whether God had brought them all together there? So they
told him yes again. They made out then, that he wanted to know
whether they would all get out of pain? So they answered yes to
that question likewise, and made him understand that the reply
included himself.

Johnny's powers of sustaining conversation were as yet so very
imperfectly developed, even in a state of health, that in sickness they
were little more than monosyllabic. But, he had to be washed and
tended, and remedies were applied, and though those offices were far,
far more skilfully and lightly done than ever anything had been done
for him in his little life, so rough and short, they would have
hurt and tired him but for an amazing circumstance which laid
hold of his attention. ‘This was no less than the appearance on his
own little platform in pairs, of All Creation, on its way into his own
particular ark: the elephant leading, and the fly, with a diffident
sense of his size, politely bringing up the rear. A very little brother
lying in the next bed with a broken leg, was so enchanted by this
spectacle that his delight exalted its enthralling interest; and so
came rest and sleep.

“TI see you are not afraid to leave the dear child here, Betty,” whis-
pered Mrs. Boffin.

“No, ma’am. Most willingly, most thankfully, with all my
heart and soul.”

So, they kissed him, and left him there, and old Betty was to come
back early in the morning, and nobody but Rokesmith knew for
certain how that the doctor had said, “ ‘his should have been days
ago. ‘Too late!”

But, Rokesmith knowing it, and knowing that his bearing it in
mind would be acceptable thereafter to that good woman who had.
been the only light in the childhood of desolate John Harmon dead
and gone, resolved that late at night he would go back to the bedside
of John Harmon’s namesake, and see how it fared with him.

The family whom God had brought together were not all asleep,
but were all quiet. From bed to bed, a light womanly tread and a
pleasant fresh face passed in the silence of the night. A little head
would lift itself up into the softened light here and there, to be kissed
as the face went by—for these little patients are very loving—and
would then submit itself to be composed to rest again. The mite
with the broken leg was restless, and moaned ; but after a while
turned his face towards Johnny’s bed, to fortify himself with a view
of the ark, and fell asleep. Over most of the beds, the toys were yet
grouped as the children had left them when they last laid them-
selves down, and, in their innocent grotesqueness and incongruity,
they might have stood for the children’s dreams.

‘he doctor came in too, to see how it fared with Johnny. And he
and Rokesmith stood together, looking down with compassion on him.

“What is it, Johnny?” Rokesmith was the questioner, and put an
arm round the poor baby as he made a struggle.

“Him!” said the little fellow. “Those!”

The doctor was quick to understand children, and, taking the
horse, the ark, the yellow bird, and the man in the Guards, from

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

252 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Johnny’s bed, softly placed them on that of his next neighbour, the
mite with the broken leg.

With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an action as if he
stretched his little figure out to rest, the child heaved his body on
the sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith’s face with his lips, said :

“ A kiss for the boofer lady.”

Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose of, and arranged his
affairs in this world. Johnny, thus speaking, left it.

CHAPTER X.
A SUCCESSOR.

Some of the Reverend Frank Milvey’s brethren had found them-
selves exceedingly uncomfortable in their minds, because they were
required to bury the dead too hopefully. But, the Reverend Frank,
inclining to the belief that they were required to do one or two other
things (say out of nine-and-thirty) calculated to trouble their con-
sciences rather more if they would think as much about them, held
his peace.

Indeed, the Reverend Frank Milvey was a forbearing man, who
noticed many sad warps and blights in the vineyard wherein he
worked, and did not profess that they made him savagely wise. He
only learned that the more he himself knew, in his little limited
human way, the better he could distantly imagine what Omniscience
might know.

Wherefore, if the Reverend Frank had had to read the words that
troubled some of his brethren, and profitably touched innumerable
hearts, in a worse case than Johnny’s, he would have done so out of
the pity and humility of his soul. Reading them over J ohnny, he
thought of his own six children, but not of his poverty, and read
them with dimmed eyes. And very seriously did he and his bright
little wife, who had been listening, look down into the small grave
and walk home arm-in-arm.

There was grief in the aristocratic house, and there was joy in the
Bower. Mr. Wegg argued, if an orphan were wanted, was he not an
orphan himself, and could a better be desired? And why go beating
about Brentford bushes, seeking orphans forsooth who had esta-
blished no claims upon you and made no sacrifices for you, when
here was an orphan ready to your hand who had given up in your
cause, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker ?

Mr. Wege chuckled, consequently, when he heard the tidings.
Nay, it was afterwards affirmed by a witness who shall at present be
nameless, that in the seclusion of the Bower he poked out his wooden
leg, in the stage-ballet manner, and executed a taunting or triumphant
pirouette on the genuine leg remaining to him.

John Rokesmith’s manner towards Mrs. Boffin at this time, was more
the manner of a young man towards a mother, than that of a Secretary
towards his employer's wife. It had always been marked bya subdued
affectionate deference that seemed to have sprung up on the very day

  
  
  
  
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
  
   
   
 
   
  
   
  
  
 
  
    

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 253

of his engagement ; whatever was odd in her dress or her ways had
seemed to have no oddity for him; he had sometimes borne a quietly-
amused face in her company, but still it had seemed as if the
pleasure her genial temper and radiant nature yielded him, could
have been quite as naturally expressed in a tear asin a smile. The
completeness of his sympathy with her fancy for having a little John
Harmon to protect and rear, he had shown in every act and word,
and now that the kind fancy was disappointed, he treated it with a
manly tenderness and respect for which she could hardly thank him
enough,

“But I do thank you, Mr. Rokesmith,” said Mrs. Boffin, “and I
thank you most kindly. You love children.”

“T hope everybody does.”

“They ought,” said Mrs. Boffin; “but we don’t all of us do what
we ought; do us?”

John Rokesmith replied, “Some among us supply the shortcomings
of the rest. You have loved children well, Mr. Boffin has told me.”

“ Not a bit better than he has, but that’s his way; he puts all the
good upon me. You speak rather sadly, Mr. Rokesmith.”

LDS UE”

“Tt sounds to me so. Were you one of many children?”

He shook his head.

“ An only child ?”

“No, there was another. Dead long ago.”

“Father or mother alive?”

“Dead.”

« And the rest of your relations ?”

“ Dead—if I ever had any living. I never heard of any.”

At this point of the dialogue Bella came in with a light step. She
paused at the door a moment, hesitating whether to remain or retire ;
perplexed by finding that she was not observed.

“Now, don’t mind an old lady’s talk,” said Mrs. Boffin, “but tell
me. Are you quite sure, Mr. Rokesmith, that you have never had a
disappointment in love ?”

“(uite sure. Why do you ask me?”

“Why, for this reason. Sometimes you have a kind of kept-down
manner with you, which is not like your age. You can’t be thirty ?”

“JT am not yet thirty.”

Deeming it high time to make her presence known, Bella coughed
here to attract attention, begged pardon, and said she would go,
fearing that she interrupted some matter of business.

“No, don’t go,” rejomed Mrs. Boffin, ‘because we are coming: to
business, instead of having begun it, and you belong to it as much
now, my dear Bella, as I do. But I want my Noddy to consult with
us. Would somebody be so good as find my. Noddy for me?”

Rokesmith departed on that errand, and presently returned accom
panied by Mr. Boffin at his jog-trot. Bella felt a little vague trepi-
dation as to the subject-matter of this same consultation, until Mrs.

30ffin announced it.

“ Now, you come and sit by me, my dear,” said that worthy soul,
taking her comfortable place on a large ottoman in the centre of the
room, and drawing her arm through Bella’s; “and Noddy, you sit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

254 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

here, and Mr. Rokesmith you sit there. Now, you see, what I want
to talk about, is this. Mr. and Mrs. Milvey have sent me the kindest
note possible (which Mr. Rokesmith just now read to me out loud,
for I ain’t good at handwritings), offerine to find me another little
child to name and educate and bring up. Well. This has set me
thinking.”

(“ And she is a steam-ingein at it,” murmured Mr. Boffin, in an ad-
miring parenthesis, “when she once begins. It mayn’t be so easy
to start her; but once started, she’s a ingein.”)

“—This has set me thinking, I say,” repeated Mrs. Boffin, cordially
beaming under the influence of her husband’s compliment, “and [
have thought two things. First of all, that I have grown timid of
reviving John Harmon’s name. It’s an unfortunate name, and I
fancy I should reproach myself if I gave it to another dear child,
and it proved again unlucky.”

“Now, whether,” said Mr. Boffin, gravely propounding a case for
his Secretary’s opinion ; “ whether one might call that a superstition ?”

“Tt is a matter of feeling with Mrs. Boftin,” said Rokesmith, gently.
“The name has always been unfortunate. It has now this new un-
fortunate association connected with it. ‘The name has died out.
Why revive it? Might I ask Miss Wilfer what she thinks ?”

“It has not been a fortunate name for me,” said Bella, colouring—
“or at least it was not, until it led to my bemg here—but that is not
the point in my thoughts. As we had given the name to the poor child,
and as the poor child took so lovingly to me, I think I should feel
jealous of calling another child by it. 1 think I should feel as if the
name had become endeared to me, and I had no right to use it so.”

“ And that’s your opinion ?” remarked Mr. Boffin, observant of the
Secretary’s face and again addressing him.

“T say again, it is a matter of fecling,” returned the Secretary.
“T think Miss Wilfer’s feeling very womanly and pretty.”

“Now, give us your opinion, Noddy,” said Mrs. Boffin.

“ My opinion, old lady,” returned the Golden Dustman, “is your
opinion.”

“Then,” said Mrs. Boffin, “we agree not to revive John Harmon’s
name, but to let it rest in the grave. It is, as Mr. Rokesmith SAYS,
a matter of feeling, but Lor how many matters are matters of feeling !
Well; and so I come to the second thing I have thought of. You
must know, Bella, my dear, and Mr. Rokesmith, that when I first
named to my husband my thoughts of adopting a little orphan boy
in remembrance of John Harmon, I further named to my husband
that it was comforting to think that how the poor boy would be
benefited by John’s own money, and protected from John’s own for-
lornness.”

“ Hear, hear!” cried Mr. Boffin. “So she did. Ancoar!”

“No, not Ancoar, Noddy, my dear,” returned Mrs. Boffin, “ because
Tam going to say something else. I meant that, [am sure, as much as
I still mean it. But this little death has made me ask myself the
question, seriously, whether I wasn’t too bent upon pleasing myself.
lilse why did I seek out so much for a pretty child, and a child quito
tomy liking? Wanting to do good, why not do it for its own sake,
and put my tastes and likings by ?”

”

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, Z50

oO

“Perhaps,” said Bella; and perhaps she said it with some little
sensitiveness arising out of those old curious relations of hers towards
the murdered man; “perhaps, in reviving the name, you would not
have liked to give it to a less interesting child than the original. He
interested you very much.”

“ Well, my dear,” returned Mrs. Boffin, giving her a squeeze, “it’s
kind of you to find that reason out, and I hope it may have been so,
and indeed to a certain extent I believe it was so, but I am afraid
not to the whole extent. However, that don’t come in question now,
because we have done with the name.”

“Laid it up as a remembrance,” suggested Bella, musingly.

“Much better said, my dear; laid it up as a remembrance. Well
then; I have been thinking if I take any orphan to provide for, let it
not be a pet and a plaything for me, but a creature to be helped for
its own sake.”

“Not pretty then?’ said Bella.

“No,” returned Mrs. Boffin, stoutly.

“Nor prepossessing then?” said Bella.

“No,” returned Mrs. Boffin. “Notnecessarily so. That's as it may
happen. A well-disposed boy comes in my way who may be even a
little wanting in such advantages for getting on in life, but is honest
and industrious and requires a helping hand and deserves it. If]
am very much in earnest and quite determined to be unselfish, let me
take care of him.”

Here the footman whose feelings had been hurt on the former
occasion, appeared, and crossing to Rokesmith apologetically announced
the objectionable Sloppy.

The four members of Council looked at one another, and paused.
“ Shall he be brought here, ma’am?” asked Rokesmith.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Boffin. ‘Whereupon the footman disappeared,
reappeared presenting Sloppy, and retired much disgusted.

The consideration of Mrs. Boffin had clothed Mr. Sloppy in a suit
of black, on which the tailor had received personal directions from
Rokesmith to expend the utmost cunning of his art, with a view to
the concealment of the cohering and sustaining buttons. But, so
much more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy’s form than the
strongest resources of tailoring science, that he now stood before the
Council, a perfect Argus in the way of buttons : shining and winking
and gleaming and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of bright
metal, at the dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some unknown
hatter had furnished him with a hatband of wholesale capacity which
was fluted behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, and termi-
nated in a black bunch, from which the imagination shrunk discom-
fited and the reason revolted. Some special powers with which his
legs were endowed, had already hitched up his glossy trousers at the
ankles, and bagged them at the knees; while similar gifts in his arms
had raised his coat-sleeves from his wrists and accumulated them at
his elbows. ‘Thus set forth, with the additional embellishments of a
very little tail to his coat, and a yawning gulf at his waistband,
Sloppy stood confessed.

« And how is Betty, my good fellow?” Mrs. Boftin asked him.
“Thankee, mum,” said Sloppy, “she do pretty nicely, and sending

       
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

256 UR MUTUAL FRIEND.

her dooty and many thanks for the tea and all faviours and wishing
to know the family’s healths.”

“Have you just come, Sloppy ?”

“Yes, mum.”

“Then you have not had your dinner yet?”

“No,mum. But I mean to it. For] ain't forgotten your handsome
orders that I was never to go away without having had a good ‘mm
off of meat and beer and pudding—no: there was four of ’em, for 1
reckoned ‘em up when I had ’em; meat one, beer two, vegetables
three, and which was four?—Why, pudding, he was four!” Here
Sloppy threw his head-back, opened his mouth wide, and laughed
rapturously.

‘How are the two poor little Minders?” asked Mrs. Boffin.

“Striking right out, mum, and coming round beautiful.”

Mrs. Boffin looked on the other three members of Council, and
then said, beckoning with her finger :

“ Sloppy.”

“Wes,mum.”

“Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here every
day ! yy

“ Off of all four on ’em, mum? O mum!” Sloppy’s feelings obliged
him to squeeze his hat, and contract one leg at the knee.

“Yes. And should you like to be always taken care of here, if
you were industrious and deserving ?”

“Oh, mum!—But there’s Mrs. “Higden, ” said Sloppy, checking
himself in his raptures, drawing back, and shaking his head with
very serious meaning. “There’s Mrs. Higden. Mrs. Higden goes
before all, None can eyer be better friends 7 me than Mrs. Higde n’s
been. And she must be turned for, must Mrs. Higden. Where would
Mrs. Higden be if she warn’t turned for!” At the mere thought
of Mrs. Higden in this inconceivable affliction, Mr. Sloppy’s counte-
nance hegane pale, and manifested the most distressful emotions.

“You are as right as right can be, Sloppy,” said Mrs. Boffin “and
far be it from me to tell you otherwise. It shall be seen to. If
Betty Higden can be turned for all the s same, you shall come here
and be taken care of for life, and be made able to keep her in other
ways than the turning.”

“ Even as to that, mum,” answered the ecstatic Sloppy, “the turn-
ine might be done in the pens don’t you see? I could be here in the

day, and turn in the night. I don’t want no sleep, I don’t. Or even
if | any ways should want a wink or two,” added Sloppy, after a
mome nt’s apologetic reflection, “1 could take em turning. I’ve took

‘em turning many a time, and enjoyed ’em wonderful!”

On the gr ateful impulse of the moment, Mr. Sloppy kissed Mrs.
Boffin’s hand, and then deta iching himself from that good creature
that he might have room enough for his feelings, threw back his
head, opened his mouth wide, and uttered a dismal howl. It was
creditable to his tenderness of heart, but suggested that he might
on occasion give some offence to the neighbours : the rather, as the
footman looked in, and begged pardon, finding he was not wanted,
but excused himself, on the a Goud “that he thought it was Cats.”

Pieeeig

  

    
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER XI.
SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART.

Lirrte Miss Peecher, from her little official dwelling-house, with its
little windows like the eyes in needles, and its little doors like the
covers of school-books, was very observant indeed of the object of
her quiet affections. Love, though said to be afflicted with blind-
ness, is a vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him on double
duty over Mr. Bradley Headstone. It was not that she was naturally
given to playing the spy—it was not that she was at all secret, plot-
ting, or mean—it was simply that she loved the irresponsive Bradley
with all the primitive and homely stock of love that had never been
examined or certificated out of her. If her faithful slate had had
the latent qualities of sympathetic paper, and its pencil those of in-
visible ink, many a little treatise calculated to astonish the pupils would
have come bursting through the dry sums in school-time under the
warming influence of Miss Peecher’s bosom. Jor, oftentimes when
school was not, and her calm leisure and calm little house were her
own, Miss Peecher would commit to the confidential slate an ima-
ginary description of how, upon a balmy evening at dusk, two
figures might have been observed in the market-garden ground
round the corner, of whom one, being a manly form, bent over the
other, being a womanly form of short stature and some compactness,
and breathed in a low voice the words, “ Emma Peecher, wilt thou
be my own?” after which the womanly form’s head reposed upon
the manly form’s shoulder, and the nightingales tuned up. Though
all unseen, and unsuspected by the pupils, Bradley Headstone even
pervaded the school exercises. Was Geography in question? He
would come triumphantly flying out of Vesuvius and Aitna ahead
of the lava, and would boil unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland,
and would float majestically down the Ganges and the Nile. Did
History chronicle a king of men? Behold him in pepper-and-salt
pantaloons, with his watch-guard round his neck. Were copies to
be written? In capital B’s and H’s most of the girls under Miss
Peecher’s tuition were half a year ahead of every other letter in the
alphabet. And Mental Arithmetic, administered by Miss Peecher, often
devoted itself to providing Bradley Headstone with a wardrobe of
fabulous extent: fourscore and four neck-ties at two and ninepence-
halfpenny, two gross of silver watches at four pounds fifteen and
sixpence, seventy-four black hats at eighteen shillmgs; and many
similar superfluities.

The vigilant watchman, using his daily opportunities of turning
his eyes in Bradley’s direction, soon apprized Miss Peecher that
Bradley was more preoccupied than had been his wont, and more
given to strolling about with a downcast and reserved face, turning
something difficult in his mind that was not in the scholastic syl-
labus. Putting this and that together—combining under the head
VOL. I, iS

  

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58 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

” present appearances and the intimacy with Charley Hexam,
and ranging under the head “that” the visit to his sister, the
watchman reported to Miss Peecher his strong suspicions that the
sister was at the bottom of it.

“J wonder,” said Miss Peecher, as she sat making up her weekly
report on a half-holiday afternoon, “what they call Hexam’s sister pe

Mary Anne, at her needlew ork, attendant Sahl attentive, held her
arm up.

“Well, Mary Anne oe

“She is named Lizzie, ma’am.”

“She can hardly be named Lizzie, 1 i think, Mary Anne,” returned
Miss Peecher, in a ‘tunefully instructive voice. “Is Lizzie a Christian
name, Mary ‘Anne ?

Mary Anne laid down her work, rose, hooked herself behind, as
being under catechization, and replied: “No, it is a corruption, Miss
Peecher.”

“Who gave her that name?” Miss Peecher was going on, from the
mere panes of habit, when she checked herself, on Mary Anne’s
evincing theolo: eae impatience to strike in with her godfathers
and Hor god Amoth and said: “I mean of what name is it a cor-
ruption ? ”

“ Wlizabeth, or Hliza, Miss Peecher.

“ Right, Mar y Anne. Whether there were any Lizzies in the « arly
Christian Cc hurch must be considered very doubtful, very doubtful.”
Miss Peecher was exceedingly sage here. “Speaking correctly, we
say, then, that Hexam’s sister is called Lizzie; not that she is
named so. Do we not, Mary Anne?”

“ We do, Miss Peecher.”

“And where,” pursued Miss Peecher, com] place ent in her little
transparent fiction of conducting the examinati on in a semi-official
manner for Mary Anne’s benefit, not her own, “where does this
young woman, W ho is called Gut not named Lizzie, live? ‘Think,
now, before answering.”

“Tn Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank, ma’am.”

“Jn Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,” repeated Miss
Peecher, as if possessed beforehand of the book in which it was
written. “Hxactly so. And what occupation does this young woman
pursue, Mary Anne? ‘Take time.”

“She has a place of trust at an outfitter’s in the City, ma’am.”

“Oh!” said Miss Peecher, pondering on it; but smoothly added,
in a confirmatory tone, “At an outfitter’s in the City. Ye-es on

« And Charley ” Mary Anne was proceeding, when Miss Peecher
stared.

“T mean Hexam, Miss Peecher.”

“T should think you did, Mary Anne. Iam glad to hear you do.
And Hexam— ?”

“Says,” ALE Anne went on, “that he is not pleased with his
sister, and that his sister won’t be guided by his advice, and persists
in being guided by somebody else’s; and that

Mr: Headstane coming across the garden!” exclaimed Miss
Peecher, with a flushed elance at the looking- glass. “You have

 

    

 

 
  

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 289
answered very well, Mary Anne. You are forming an excellent
habit of arranging your thoughts clearly. 'That will do.”

The discreet Mary Anne resumed her seat and her silence, and
stitched, and stitched, and was stitching when the schoi master’s
shadow came in before him, announcing that he might be in
expected.

“Good evening, Miss Peecher,” he said, pursuing the shadow, and
taking its place.

“Good evening, Mr. Headstone. Mary Anne, a chair.”

“Thank you,” said Bradley, seating himself in his constrained
manner. “his is but a flying visit. I have looked in, on my way,
to ask a kindness of you as a neighbour.” : ;

“Did you say on your way, Mr. Headstone?’ asked Miss Peecher.

“On my way to—where I am gone,”

“Church Street, Smith Square, by Mil
Peecher, in her own thoughts.

“Charley Hexam has gone to get a book or two he wants, and will
probably be back before me. As we leave my house empty, I took
the liberty of telling him I would leave the key here. Would you
kindly allow me to do so?”

“Certainly, Mr. Headstone. Going for an evening walk, :
“Partly for a walk, and partly for—on business.”
“ Business in Church Street, Smith Square, by Mill Bank,” 1 peated
Peecher to herself.

aving said which,” pursued Bradley. laying his door-key on the
table, “I must be already going. There is nothing I can do for you,
Miss Peecher ?”

“Thank you, Mr. Headstone. In which direction?”

“Tn the direction of Westminster.”

“Mill Bank,” Miss Peecher repeated in her own thou
again. “No, thank you, Mr. Headstone; I’ll not trouble you.

“You couldn’t trouble me,” said the schoolmaster,

“Ah!” returned Miss Peecher, though not aloud; “but you can
trouble me!” And for all her quiet manner, and her quict smile,
she was full of trouble as he went his way.

She was right touching his destination. He held as straight a

 

tantly

  
    

 

  
 

  

dy

  

 

course for the house of the dolls’ dressmaker as the wisdom of his
ancestors, exemplified in the construction of the intervening streets,
would let him, and walked with a bent head hammering at one fixed
idea. It had been an immoveable idea since he first set eyes upon
her. It seemed to him as if all that he could suppress in himself he
had suppressed, as if all that’ he could restrain in himself he had
restrained, and the time had come—in a rush, in a moment—when
the power of self-command had departed from him. ‘Love at first
sight is a trite expression quite sufficiently discussed ; enough that
in certain smouldering natures like this man’s, that passion leaps
into a blaze, and makes such head as fire does in a rage of wind,
when other passions, but for its mastery, could be held in chains. As
a multitude of weak, imitative natures are always lying by, ready to
go mad upon the next wrong idea that may be broached—in these
times, generally some form of tribute to Somebody for something
82

 

 

a aN ae ae,

 

  

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Feeeig

260 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
that never was done, or, if ever done, that was done by Somebody
Flse—so these less ordinary natures may lie by for years, ready on
the touch of an instant to burst into flame.

The schoolmaster went his way, brooding and brooding, and a
sense of being vanquished in a struggle might have been pieced out
of his worried face. Truly, in his breast there lingered a resentful
shame to find himself defeated by this passion for Charley Hexam’s
sister, though in the very selfsame moments he was concentrating
himself upon the object of bringing the passion to a successful issue.

He appeared before the dolls’ dressmaker, sitting alone at her
work. “Oho!” thought that sharp young personage, “ it’s you, 1s it?
I know your tricks and your manners, my friend !”

« Hexam’s sister,” said Bradley Headstone, “ isnot come home yet ?”

«You are quite a conjuror,” returned Miss Wren.

«J will wait, if you please, for I want to speak to her.”

“Do you?” returned Miss Wren. “Sit down. 1 hope it’s mutual.”

Bradley glanced distrustfully at the shrewd face again bending
over the work, and said, trying to conquer doubt and hesitation :

«1 hope you don’t imply that my visit will be unacceptable to
Hexam’s sister ?”

“There! Don’t call her that. I can’t bear you to call her that,”
returned Miss Wren, snapping her fingers in a volley of impatient
snaps, “for I don’t like Hexam.”

“ Indeed ?”

“No.” Miss Wren wrinkled her nose, to express dislike. ‘Selfish.
Thinks only of himself. The way with all of you.”

«The way with all of us? Then you don’t like me?”

 §o-go,” replied Miss Wren, with a shrug and a laugh. “ Don’t
know much about you.”

«But I was not aware it was the way with all of us,” said Bradley,
returning to the accusation, a little injured. ‘“ Won’t you say, some
of us?”

“Meaning,” returned the little creature, “ every one of you, but
you. Hah! Now look this lady in the face. his is Mrs. Truth.
The Honorable. Full-dressed.”

Bradley glanced at the doll she held up for his observation—which
had been lying on its face on her bench, while with a needle and
thread she fastened the dress on at the back—and looked from it
to her.

“J stand the Honorable Mrs. T. on my bench in this corner
against the wall, where her blue eyes can. shine upon you,” pursued
Miss Wren, doing so, and making two little dabs at him in the air
with her needle, as if she pricked him with it in his own eyes; © and
I defy you to tell me, with Mrs. 1, for a witness, what you have
come here for.”

“To see Hexam’s sister.”

“You don’t say so!” retorted Miss Wren, hitching her chin. “But
on whose account 2”

“ Her own.”
«O Mrs. T.!” exclaimed Miss Wren. “ You hear him (”
«To reason with her,” pursued Bradley, half humouring what was

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. ZO)

present, and half angry with what was not present; “for her own
sake.”

“Oh Mrs. T.!” exclaimed the dressmaker.

“For her own sake,” repeated Bradley, warming, “and for her
brother’s, and as a perfectly disinterested person.”

“Really, Mrs. T.,” remarked the dressmaker, “since it comes to
this, we must positively turn you with your face to the wall.” She
had hardly done so, when Lizzie Hexam arrived, and showed some
surprise on seeing Bradley Headstone there, and Jenny shaking her
little fist at him close before her eyes, and the Honorable Mrs. T.
with her face to the wall.

“Here’s a perfectly disinterested person, Lizzie dear,” said the
knowing Miss Wren, “come to talk with you, for your own sake and
your brother’s. Think of that. Iam sure there ought to be no
third party present at anything so very kind and so very serious ;
and so, if you'll remove the third party upstairs, my dear, the third
party will retire.”

Lizzie took the hand which the dolls’ dressmaker held out to her
for the purpose of being supported away, but only looked at her with
an inquiring smile, and made no other movement.

«The third party hobbles awfully, you know, when she’s left to
herself,” said Miss Wren, “her back being so bad, and her legs so
queer ; so she can’t retire gracefully unless you help her, Lizzie.”

“She can do no better than stay where she is,” returned Lizzie,
releasing the hand, and laying her own lightly on Miss Jenny’s
curls. And then 10 Bradley: “ From Charley, sir?”

In an irresolute way, and stealing a clumsy look at her, Bradley
rose to place a chair for her, and then returned to his own.

“ Strictly speaking,” said he, “I come from Charley, because I left
him only a little while ago; but I am not commissioned by Charley.
T come of my own spontaneous act.”

With her elbows on her bench, and her chin upon her hands, Miss
Jenny Wren sat looking at him with a watchful sidelong look.
Lizzie, in her different way, sat looking at him too. i

«Phe fact is,” began Bradley, with a mouth so dry that he had
some difficulty in articulating his words: the consciousness of which
rendered his manner still more ungainly and undecided; “the truth
is, that Charley, having no secrets from me (to the best of my belief),
has confided the whole of this matter to me.”

He came to a stop, and Lizzie asked: “ What matter, sir?”

“J thought,” returned the schoolmaster, stealing another look at
her, and seeming to try in vain to sustain it; for the look dropped
as it lighted on her eyes, “that it might be so superfluous as to be
almost impertinent, to enter upon a definition of it. My allusion was
to this matter of your having put aside your brother’s plans for you,
and given the preference to those of Mr.—I believe the name is
Mr. Eugene Wrayburn.”

He made this point of not being certain of the name, with another
uneasy look at her, which dropped like the last.

Nothing being said on the other side, he had to begin again, and
began with new embarrassment.

 

Die bi sie ne alee meaning

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262 UR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Your brother’s plans were communicated to me when he first
had them in his thoughts. In point of fact he spoke to me about
them when I was last here—when we were w: alking back together,
and when J—when the impression was fresh upon me of having
seen his sister.”

There might have been no meaning in it, but the little dress-
maker here removed one of her supporting hands from her chin, and
musingly turned the Honorable Mrs. T. with her face to the com-
py Mhat done, she fell into her former attitude.

[ approved of his idea,” said Bradley, with his uneasy look wan-
dering to the doll, and unconsciously resting there longer than it
had rested on Lizzie, “ both because your brother ought natur: ally to
be the originator of any such scheme, and because I ane to be able
to promote it. I should have had inexpressible pleasure, I showld
have taken inexpressible interest, in promoting it. Therefore I must
acknowledge that when your brother was disappointed, I too was
disappointed. I-wish to avoid reservation or cone ealment, and I fully
acknowledge that.”

He appeared to have encouraged himself by having got so far. At
all events he went on with much greater firmness and force of
emphasis: though with a curious disposition to set his teet h, and
with a curious tight- screwing movement of his right hand in the
clenching palm of his le iit like the action of one who was being
physically hurt, and was unwilli ling to cry out.

“Tam a man of strong feelings, and I have strongly felt this dis-
appointment. I do strong] y feel it. I don’t show what I feel;
some of us are obliged hateieae to keepit down. To keep it down.
But to return to your brother. He has taken the matter so much to
heart that he has remonstrated (in my presence he remonstr: ated)
with Mr. Eugene W. rayburn, if that be ‘the name. He did so, quite
ineffec tually. As any one not blinded to the real character of Mr.
me Eugene Wrayburn—would re adily suppose.”

9 lew dat Lizzie again, and held the look. And his face turned.

dee burning red to white, and from white bade to burning red, and
so fon the time to lasting deadly white.

“ Winally, I resolved to come here alone, and appeal to you. I
resolved to come here alone, and entreat you to retract the course
you have chosen, and instead of confiding in a mere stranger—a
person of most iapolent behaviour to your brother sini other:
prefer your brother and your brother’s fie nd.”

Lizzie Hexam had ch: unged colour when those changes came over
him, and her face now expressed some anger, more dislike, and even
a touch of fear. But she ule red him very steadily.

“I cannot doubt, Mr. Headstone, that your visit is well meant.
You have be en so good a eee to € ‘harley that I have no right to
doubt it. I have nothing to tell Charley, but that I acc epted the
help to which he so much objects before he made any plans for
me; or certainly before I knew of any. It was considerately and
delicate y offered, and there were reasons that had weieht with me
which should be as dear to Cl harley as to me. I-have no more to

vy to Charley on this subject.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 263

His lips trembled and stood apart, as he followed this repudiation
of himself, and limitation of her words to her brother.

“J should have told Charley, if he had come to me,” she resumed,
as though it were an after-thought, “that Jenny and I find our
teacher very able and very patient, and that she takes great pains
with us. So much so, that we have said to her we hope in a very
little while to be able to go on by ourselves. Charley knows about
teachers, and I should also have told him, for his satisfaction, that
ours comes from an institution where teachers are regularly brought
up.”

“JT should like to ask you,” said Bradley Headstone, grinding his
words slowly out, as though they came from a rusty mill; “I should like
to ask you, if I may without offence, whether -you would have ob-
jected ——no ; rather, I should like to say, if I may without offence,
that I wish I had had the opportunity of coming here with your
brother and devoting my poor abilities and experience to your
service.”

“Thank you, Mr. Headstone.”

«But I fear,” he pursued, after a pause, furtively wrenching at the
seat of his chair with one hand, as if he would have wrenched the
chair to pieces, and gloomily observing her while her eyes were cast
down, “that my humble services would not have found much favor
with you?”

She made no reply, and the poor stricken wretch sat contending
with himself in a heat of passion and torment. After a while he
took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead and hands.

“There is only one thing more I had to say, but it is the most im-
portant. ‘There is a reason against this matter, there is a personal
relation concerned in this matter, not yet explained to you. It
might—I don’t say it would—it might—induce you to think dif
ferently. ‘To proceed under the present circumstances is out of the
question. Will you please come to the understanding that there
shall be another interview on the subject ?”

“ With Charley, Mr. Headstone ?”

“ With—well,” he answered, breaking off, “yes! Say with him
too. Will you please come to the understanding that there must be
another interview under more favorable circumstances, before the
whole case can be submitted ?”

“J don’t,” said Lizzie, shaking her head, “understand your mean-
ing, Mr. Headstone.”

“Limit my meaning for the present,” he interrupted, “to the
whole case being submitted to you in another interview.”

« What case, Mr. Headstone? What is wanting to it?”

“ You—you shall be informed in the other interview.” ‘Then he
said, as if in a burst of irrepressible despair, “I—LI leave it.all in-
complete! There is a spell upon me, J think!” And then added,
almost as if he asked for pity, “ Good-night !”

He held out his hand. As she, with manifest hesitation, not to
say reluctance, touched it, a strange tremble passed over him, and
his face, so deadly white, was moved as by a stroke of pain. ‘Then

he was gone.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

264 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

The dolls’ dressmafer sat with her attitude unchanged, eyeing the
door by which he had departed, until Lizzie pushed her bench aside
and sat down near her. Then, eyeing Lizzie as she had previously
eyed Bradley and the door, Miss Wren chopped that very sudden
and keen chop in which her jaws sometimes indulged, leaned back in
her chair with folded arms, and thus expressed herself:

“Humph! If he—I mean, of course, my dear, the party who is
coming to court me when the time comes—should be that sort of man,
he may spare himself the trouble. He wouldn’t do to be trotted
about and made useful. He'd take fire and blow up while he was
about it.”

“And so you would be rid of him,” said Lizzie, humouring her.

“Not so easily,” «returned Miss Wren. “He wouldn’t blow up
alone. He'd carry me up with him. J know his tricks and his
manners.”

“Would he want to hurt you, do you mean?” asked Lizzie.

“Mightn’t exactly want to do it, my dear,” returned Miss Wren ;
“but a lot of gunpowder among lighted lucifer-matches in the next
room might almost as well be here.”

“ He is a very strange man,” said Lizzie, thoughtfully.

“T wish he was so very strange a man as to be a total stranger,”
answered the sharp little thing.

It being Lizzie’s regular occupation when they were alone of an
evening to brush out and smooth the long fair hair of the dolls’
dressmaker, she unfastened a ribbon that kept it back while the
little creature was at her work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over
the poor shoulders that were much in need of such adorning rain.
“ Not now, lizzie, dear,” said Jenny ; “let us have a talk by the fire.”
With those words, she in her turn loosened her friend’s dark hair,
and it dropped of its own weight over her bosom, in two rich masses.
Pretending to compare the colours and admire the contrast, Jenny so
managed a mere touch or two of her nimble hands, as that she her-
self laying a cheek on one of the dark folds, seemed blinded by her
own clustering curls to all but the fire, while the fine handsome face
and brow of lizzie were revealed without obstruction in the sober

light.

“ Let us have a talk,” said Jenny, “about Mr. Eugene Wrayburn.”

Something sparkled down among the fair hair resting on the dark
hair; and if it were not a star—which it couldn’t be—it was an
eye; andif it were an eye, it was Jenny Wren’s eye, bright and
watchful as the bird’s whose name she had taken.

“Why about Mr. Wrayburn?” Lizzie asked.

“For no better reason than because I’m in the humour. I wonder
whether he’s rich!”

“No, not rich.”

ROOr A

“TY think so, for a gentleman.”

“Ah! To be sure! Yes, he’s a gentleman. Not of oursort; is he?”

A shake of the head, a thoughtful shake of the head, and the
answer, softly spoken, “Oh no, oh no!”

The dolls’ dressmaker had an arm round her friend’s waist. Ad-

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  

    
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 260

justing the arm, she slyly took the opportunity of blowing at her
own hair where it fell over her face; then the eye down there, under
lighter shadows sparkled more brightly and appeared more watchful.

“When He turns up, he shan’t be a gentleman; 111 very soon
send him packing, if he is. However, he’s not Mr. Wrayburn - I
haven't captivated him. 1 wonder whether anybody has, Lizzie |”

“Tt is very likely.”

“Ts it very likely? I wonder who!”

“Ts it not very likely that some lady has been taken by him, and
that he may love her dearly ?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. What would you think of him, Lizzie,
if you were a lady?”

“Ta lady!” she repeated, laughing. “Such a fancy !”

“Yes. But say: just as a fancy, and for instance.”

“Talady! I,a poor girl who used to row poor father on the
river. I, who had rowed poor father out and home on the very
night when I saw him for the first time. 1, who was made so timid
by his looking at me, that I got up and went out!”

(«He did look at you, even that night, though you were not a
lady!” thought Miss Wren.)

“Ta lady!” Lizzie went on in a low voice, with her eyes upon the
fire. “I, with poor father’s grave not even cleared of undeserved
stain and shame, and he trying to clear it forme! Ia lady!”

“ Only as a fancy, and for instance,” urged Miss Wren.

“Too much, Jenny, dear, too much! My fancy is not able to get
that far.” As the low fire gleamed upon her, it showed her smiling,
mournfully and abstractedly.

“But I am in the humour, and I must be humoured, Lizzie,
because after all I ama poor little thing, and have had a hard day
with my bad child. Look in the fire, as I like to hear you tell how
you used to do when you lived in that dreary old house that had
once been a windmill. Look in the—what was its name when you
told fortunes with your brother that I don’t like ?”

“The hollow down by the flare ?”

“Ah! That’s the name! You can find a lady there, I know.”

“More easily than I can make one of such material as myself,
Jenny.”

The sparkling eye looked stedfastly up, as the musing face looked
thoughtfully down. “Well?” said the dolls’ dressmaker, “ We have
found our lady ?”

Lizzie nodded, and asked, “ Shall she be rich?”

“She had better be, as he’s poor.”

«She is very rich. Shall she be handsome ?”

«“ Hyen you can be that, Lizzie, so she ought to be.”

“She is very handsome.”

“What does she say about him?” asked Miss Jenny, in a low
voice: watchful, through an intervening silence, of the face looking
down at the fire.

“She is glad, glad, to be rich, that he may have the money. . She
is glad, glad, to be beautiful, that he may be proud of her. Her
poor heart i

 

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266 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Hh? Her poor heart ?” said Miss Wren.

“Her heart—is given him, with all its love and truth. She would
joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows
Hi he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being
like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for,
and think well of. And she says, that lady rich and beautiful that
T can never come near, ‘Only put me in that empty place, only try
how little I mind myself, only, prove what a world of things I will
do and bear for you, and I hope that you might even come to be
much better than you are, through me who am so much worse, dnd
hardly worth the thinking of beside you.’ ”

As the face looking at the fire had become exalted and forgetful in
the rapture of these words, the little creature, openly clearing away
her fair hair with her disengaged hand, had gazed at it with earnest
attention and something like alarm. Now that the speaker ceased,
the little creature laid down her head again, and moaned, “O me,
O me, O me!”

“Tn pain, dear Jenny ?” asked Lizzie, as if awakened.

“Yes, but not the old pain. Lay me down, lay me down. Don’t
go out of my sight tonight. ‘Lock the door and keep close to me.”
Then turning away her face, she said in a whisper to herself, “ My
Lizzie, my poor Lizzie! O my blessed children, come back in the
long bright slanting rows, and come for her, not me. She wants help
more than J, my blessed children!”

She had stretched her hands up with that higher and better look,
and now she turned again, and folded them round Lizzie’s neck, and
rocked herself on Lizzie’s breast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XII.

MORE BIRDS OF PREY.

 

Rocur Riperwoop dwelt deep and dark in Limehouse Hole, among:
the riggers, and the mast, oar and block makers, and the boat-
builders, and the sail-lofts, as in a kind of ship’s hold stored full of
waterside characters, some no better than himself, some very much
better, and none much worse. The Hole, albeit in a general way
not over nice in its choice of company, was rather shy in reference to
the honor of cultivating the Rogue’s acquaintance; more frequently
giving him the cold shoulder than the warm hand, and seldom or
never drinking with him unless at his own expense. <A part of the
Hole, indeed, contained so much public spirit and private virtue that
not even this strong leverage could move it to good fellowship with
a tainted accuser. But, there may have been the drawback on this
magnanimous morality, that its exponents held a true witness before
Justice to be the next unneighbourly and accursed character to a
false one.

Had it not been for the daughter whom he often mentioned, Mr.
Riderhood might have found the Hole a mere grave as to any means

 

 

 

 

  

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 267

it would yield him of getting a living. But Miss Pleasant Riderhood
had some little position and connection in Limehouse Hole. Upon the
smallest of small scales, she was an unlicensed pawnbroker, keeping
what was popularly called a Leaving Shop, by lending insignificant
sums on insignificant articles of property deposited with her as
security. In her four-and-twentieth year of life, Pleasant was
already in her fifth year of this way of trade. Her deceased mother
had established the business, and on that parent’s demise she had
appropriated a secret capital of fifteen shillings to establishing herself
in it; the existence of such capital in a pillow being the last intelli-
gible confidential communication made to her by the departed, before
succumbing to dropsical conditions of snuff and gin, incompatible
equally with coherence and existence.

Why christened Pleasant, the late Mrs. Riderhood might possibly
have been at some time able to explain, and possibly not. Her
daughter had no information on that point. Pleasant she found
herself, and she couldn’t help it. She had not been consulted on the
question, any more than on the question of her coming into these
terrestrial parts, to want a name. Similarly, she found herself pos-
sed of what is colloquially termed a swivel eye (derived from her
father), which she might perhaps have declined if her sentiments on
the subject had been taken. She was not otherwise positively ill-
looking, though anxious, meagre, of a muddy complexion, and looking
as old again as she really was.

As some dogs have it in the blood, or are trained, to worry certain
creatures to a certain point, so—not to make the comparison disre-
spectfully—Pleasant Riderhood had it in the blood, or had been
trained, to regard seamen, within certain limits, as her prey. Show
her a man in a blue jacket, and, figuratively speaking, she pinned
him instantly. Yet, all things considered, she was not of an evil
mind or an unkindly disposition. For, observe how many things
were to be considered according to her own unfortunate experience.
Show Pleasant Riderhood a Wedding in the street, and she only saw
two people taking out a regular license to quarrel and fight. Show her
a, Christening, and she saw a little heathen personage having a quite
superfluous name bestowed upon it, inasmuch as it would be com-
monly addressed by some abusive epithet : which little personage was
not in the least wanted by anybody, and would be shoved and
banged out of everybody’s way, until it should grow big enough to
shove and bang. Show her a Funeral, and she saw an unremunera-
tive ceremony in the nature of a black masquerade, conferring a tem-
porary gentility on the performers, at an immense expense, and
representing the only formal party ever given by the deceased. Show
her a live father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own father, who
from her infancy had been taken with fits and starts of discharging
his duty to her, which duty was always incorporated in the form of
a fist or a leathern strap, and being discharged hurt her. All
things considered, therefore, Pleasant Riderhood was not so very,
very bad. ‘There was even a touch of romance in her—of such
romance ag could creep into Limehouse Hole—and maybe sometimes
of a summer evening, when she stood with folded arms at her shop-

3)

Ss

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

268 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

door, looking from the reeking street to the sky where the sun was
setting, she may have had some vaporous visions of far-off islands in
tle southern seas or elsewhere (not being geographically particular),
where it would be good to roam with a congenial partner among
groves of bread-fruit, waiting for ships to be wafted from the hollow
ports of civilization. or, sailors to be got the better of, were essen-
tial to Miss Pleasant’s den.

Not on a summer evening did she come to her little shop-door,
when a certain man standing over against the house on the opposite
side of the street took notice of her. ‘That was on a cold shrewd windy
evening, after dark. Pleasant Riderhood shared with most of the lady
inhabitants of the Hole, the peculiarity that her hair was a ragged
knot, constantly coming down behind, and that she never could enter
upon any undertaking without first twisting it into place. At that
particular moment, being newly come to the threshold to take a look
out of doors, she was winding herself up with both hands after this
fashion. And so prevalent was the fashion, that on the occasion of a
fight or other disturbance in the Hole, the ladies would be seen
flocking from all quarters universally twisting their back-hair as
they came along, and many of them, in the hurry of the moment,
carrying their back-combs in their mouths.

Tt was a wretched little shop, with a roof that any man standing in it
could touch with his hand; little better than a cellar or cave, down three
steps. Yet in its ill-hghted window, among a flaring handkerchief
or two, an old peacvat or so, a few valueless watches and compasses,
a jar of tobacco and two crossed pipes, a bottle of walnut ketchup,
and some horrible sweets— these creature discomforts serving as
a blind to the main business of the Leaving Shop—was displayed
the inscription SEAMAN’s Boarpinc-Hovss.

Taking notice of Pleasant Riderhood at the door, the man crossed
so quickly that she was still winding herself up, when he stood close
before her.

“Ts your father at home ?” said he.

“T think he is,” returned Pleasant, dropping herarms; “come in.”

It was a tentative reply, the man having a seafaring appearance.
Her father was not at home, and Pleasant knewit. “Take a seat
by the fire,” were her hospitable words when she had got him in;
“men of your calling are always welcome here,”

“'Thankee,” said the man.

His manner was the manner of a sailor, and his hands were the
hands of a sailor, except that they were smooth. Pleasant had an
eye for sailors, and she noticed the unused colour and texture of the
hands, sunburnt though they were, as sharply as she noticed their
unmistakable looseness and suppleness, as he sat himself down with
his left arm carelessly thrown across his left leg a little above the
knee, and the right arm as carelessly thrown over the elbow of the
wooden chair, with the hand curved, half open and half shut, as if it
had just let go a rope.

“Might you be looking for a Boarding-House?” Pleasant inquired,
taking her observant stand on one side of the fire.

“J don’t rightly know my plans yet,” returned the man.

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
“You ain’t looking for a Leaving Shop ?”

“ No,” said the man.

“No,” assented Pleasant, “ you've got too much of an outfit on you
for that. But if you should want either, this is both.”

“Ay, ay!” said the man, glancing round the place. “I know.
I’ve been here before.”

“Did you Leave anything when you were here before
Pleasant, with a view to principal and interest.

“No.” The man shook his head.

“T am pretty sure you never boarded. here ?”

“No.” The man again shook his head.

“What did you do here when you were here before?” asked
Pleasant. “For I don’t remember you.”

«“J#’s not at all likely you should. I only stood at the door, one
night—on the lower step there—while a shipmate of mine looked in
to speak to your father. 1 remember the place well.” Looking very
curiously round it.

« Might that have been long ago 2

“ Ay, a goodish bit ago. When T came off my last voyage.”

“Then you have not been to sea lately ?”

«No. Been in the sick bay since then, and been employed ashore.”

«Then, to be sure, that accounts for your hands.”

The man with a keen look, a quick smile, and a change of manner,
caught her up. “ You're a good observer. Yes. That accounts for
my hands.”

Pleasant was somewhat disquieted by his look, and returned. it
suspiciously. Not only was his change of manner, though very
sudden, quite collected, but his former manner, which he resumed,
had a certain suppressed confidence and sense of power in it that
were half threatening.

“ Will your father be long?” he inquired.

“T don’t know. I can’t say.”

“ As you supposed he was at home, it would seem that he has just
gone out? How’s that?”

“T supposed he had come home,” Pleasant explained.

“Qh! You supposed he had come home? Then he has been
some time out? How’s that?”

“ T don’t want to deceive you. Father’s on the river in his boat.”

« At the old work?” asked the man.

«| don’t know what you mean,” said Pleasant, shrinking a step
back. “ What on earth d’ye want?”

“J don’t want to hurt your father. I don’t want to say I might,
if I chose. I want to speak to him. Not much in that, is there?
There shall be no secrets from you; you shall be by. And plainly,
Miss Riderhood, there’s nothing to be got out of me, or made of me.
I am not good for the Leaving Shop, J am not good for the Boarding-
House, I am not good for anything in your way to the extent of
sixpenn’orth of halfpence. Put the idea aside, and we shall get on
together.”

“ But yowre a seafaring man. ?” aroued Pleasant, as if that were <
sufficient reason for his being good for something in her way.

9

asked

aint:

 

anh ein mine

idee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

970 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Yes and no. I have been, and I may be again. But I am not for

you. Won't you take my word for it ?”
The conversation had arrived at a crisis to justify Miss Pleasant’s
hair in tumbling down. It tumbled down accordingly, and she
twisted it up, looking from under her bent forehead at the man, In
talang stock of his familiarly worn rough-weather nautical clothes,
piece by piece, she took stock of a formidable knife in a sheath
at his waist ready to his hand, and of a whistle hanging round his
neck, and of a short jagged knotted club with a loaded head that
peeped out of a pocket of his loose outer jacket or frock. He sat
quietly looking at her; but, with these appendages partially reveal-
ing themselves, and with a quantity of bristling oakum-colored head
and whisker, he had a formidable appearance.

“ Won't you take my word for it?” he asked again.

Pleasant answered with a short dumb nod. He rejoined with
another short dumb nod. Then he got up and stood with his arms
folded, in front of the fire, looking down into it occasionally, as she
stood with her arms folded, leaning against the side of the chimney-
piece.

“'To wile away the time till your father comes,” he said,—* pray
is there much robbing and murdering of seamen about the water-side
now ?”

“No,” said Pleasant.

se ewahy

“Complaints of that sort are sometimes made, about Ratcliffe
and Wapping, and up that way. But who knows how many are
true ?”

“To be sure. And it don’t seem necessary.”

“That's what I say,” observed Pleasant. “Where's the reason for
it? Bless the sailors, it ain’t ag if they ever could keep what they
have, without it.”

“You're richt. Their money may be soon got out of them, without
violence,” said the man.

“Of course it may,” said Pleasant; “and then they ship again,
and get more. And the best thing for ’em, too, to ship again as soon
as ever they can be brought to it. They're never so well off as when
they're afloat.”

“Tl tell you why I ask,” pursued the visitor, looking up from the
fire. “I was once beset that way myself, and left for dead.”

“No?” said Pleasant. “Where did it happen ?”

“Tt happened,” returned the man, with a ruminative air, as he
drew his right hand across his chin, and dipped the other in the
pocket of his rough outer coat, “it happened somewhere about here
as I reckon. I don’t think it can have been a mile from here.”

“ Were you drunk ?” asked Pleasant.

“T was muddled, but not with fair drinking. I had not been
drinking, you understand. A mouthful did it.”

Pleasant with a grave look shook her head; importing that she
understood the process, but decidedly disapproved.

“air trade is one thing,” said she, “but that’s another. No one
has a right to carry on with Jack in that way.”

 

      
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
    

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 271

  

“The sentiment does you credit,” returned the man, with a gri
smile; and added, in a mutter, “the more so, as I believe it’s not
your father’s.—Yes, I had a bad time of it, that time. I lost every-
thing, and had a sharp struggle for my life, weak as 1 : i

“Did you get the parties punished?” asked Pleasant.

« A tremendous punishment followed,” said the man, more seriously ;
“but it was not of my bringing about.” a

“ Of whose, then ?” asked Pleasant.

The man pointed upward with his forefinger, and, slowly recover-
ing that hand, settled his chin in it again as he looked at the fire.

Bringing her inherited eye to bear upon him, Pleasant Riderhood
felt more and more uncomfortable, his manner was so mysterious, so
stern, so selfpossessed.

« Anyways,” said the damsel, “Tam glad punishment followed,
and I say so. Fair trade with seafaring men gets a bad name
through deeds of violence. I am as much against deeds of violence
being done to seafaring men, as seafaring men can be themselves. I
am of the same opinion as my mother was, when she was living.
Fair trade, my mother used to say, but no robbery and no blows.” |
In the way of trade Miss Pleasant would have taken—and indeed
did take when she could—as much as thitty shillmgs a week for |
poard that would be dear at five, and likewise conducted the Leaving
business upon correspondingly equitable principles; yet she had that
tenderness of conscience and those feelings of humanity, that the
moment her ideas of trade were overstepped, she became the seaman’s |
champion, even against her father whom she seldom otherwise
resisted, |

But, she was here interrupted by her father’s voice exclaiming
angrily, “Now, Poll Parrot!” and by her father’s hat being heavily flung
from his hand and striking her face. Accustomed to such occasional
manifestations of his sense of parental duty, Pleasant merely wiped Hi
her face on her hair (which of course had tumbled down) before she ut
twisted it up. This was another common procedure on the part
the ladies of the Hole, when heated by verbal or fistic altercation.

“Blest if I believe such a Poll Parrot as you was ever learned to
speak!” growled Mr. Riderhood, stooping to pick up his hat, and Hi
making a feint at her with his head and right elbow; for he took |
the delicate subject of robbing seamen in extraordinary dudgeon,
and was out of humour too. “ What are you Poll Parroting at now?
Ain’t you got nothing to do but fold your arms and stand a Poll
Parroting all night?”

“Tether alone,” urged the man. “She was only speaking to me.”

“Let her alone too!” retorted Mr. Riderhood, eyeing him all over.
“Do you know she’s my daughter?”

‘OV E87;

“ And don’t you know that I won't have no Poll Parroting on the
part of my daughter? No, nor yet that I won't take no Poll Parrot-
ing from no man? And who may you be, and what may you
want?”

“How can I tell you until you are silent?” returned the other
fiercely.

 

 

 

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EQ, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Well,” said Mr. Riderhood, quailing a little, “I am willing to be
silent for the purpose of hearing. But don’t Poll Parrot me.”

“Are you thirsty, you?” the man asked, in the same fierce short
way, after returning his look.

“Why nat’rally,” said Mr. Riderhood, “ain’t I always thirsty !”
(Indignant at the absurdity of the question.)

“What will you drink?” demanded the man.

“Sherry wine,” returned Mr. Riderhood, in the same sharp tone,
“if you're capable of it.” :

The man put his hand in his pocket, took out half a sovereign,
and begged the favour of Miss Pleasant that she would fetch a bottle.
“With the cork undrawn,” he added, emphatically, looking at her
father.

“Tll take my Alfred David,” muttered Mr. Riderhood, slowly re-
laxing into a dark smile, “that you know a move. Do I know you ?
N—n—no, I don’t know you.”

The man replied, “No, you don’t know me.” And so they stood
looking at one another surlily enough, until Pleasant came back.

“ There’s small glasses on the shelf,” said Riderhood to his daughter.
“Give me the one without a foot. I gets my living by the sweat of
my brow, and it’s good enough for me.” This had a modest self-
denying appearance; but it soon turned out that as, by reason of the
impossibility of standing the glass upright while there was any-
thing in it, it required to be emptied as soon as filled, Mr. Riderhood
managed to drink in the proportion of three to one.

With his Fortunatus’s goblet ready in his hand, Mr. Riderhood sat
down on one side of the table before the fire, and the strange man on
the other: Pleasant occupying a stool between the latter and the
fireside. ‘I'he background, composed of handkerchiefs, coats, shirts,
hats, and other old articles “On Leaving,” had a general dim re-
semblance to human listeners; especially where a shiny black sou’-
wester suit and hat hung, looking very like a clumsy mariner with
his back to the company, who was so curious to overhear, that he
paused for the purpose with his coat half pulled on, and his shoulders
up to his ears in the uncompleted action.

The visitor first held the bottle against the light of the candle,
and next examined the top of the cork. Satisfied that it had not
been tampered with, he slowly took from his breastpocket a rusty
clasp-knife, and, with a corkscrew in the handle, opened the wine.
That done, he looked at the cork, unscrewed it from the corkscrew,
laid each separately on the table, and, with the end of the sailor's knot
of his neckerchief, dusted the inside of the neck of the bottle. All
this with great deliberation.

At first Riderhood had sat with his footless glass extended at
arm’s length for filling, while the very deliberate stranger seemed
absorbed in his preparations. But, gradually his arm reverted home
to him, and his glass was lowered and lowered until he rested it
upside down upon the table. B y the same degrees his attention
became concentrated on the knife. And now, as the man held out
the bottle to fill all round, Riderhood stood up, leaned over the table
to look closer at the knife, and stared from it to him.

  
  
 
 
 
   
 
    
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
    
  
  
    

  

       
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
   
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
“ What’s the matter?” asked the man.

“ Why, I know that knife!” said Riderhood.
“ Yes, I dare say you do.”

He motioned to him to hold up his glass, and filled it. Riderhood

emptied it to the last drop and began again.

“That there knife——

“Stop,” said the man, composedly. “I was going to drink to your
daughter. Your he< alth, Miss Riderhood.”

i That knife was the knife of a seaman named George Radfoot.”

“Tt was.’

“That seaman was well beknown to me.”

“He was.”

“ What’s come to him ?”

“Death has come to him. Death came to him in an ugly shape.
He looked,” said the man, “ very horrible after it.”

“ Arter what?’ said Riderhood, with a frowning stare.

“ After he was killed.”

“ Killed? Who killed him ?”

Only answering with a shrug, the man filled the footless glass, and
Riderhood emptied it: looking amazedly from his daughter to his
visitor.

“You don’t mean to tell a honest man—” he was recommencing
with his empty glass in his hand, when his eye became fascinated
by the stranger’s outer coat. ‘He leaned across the table to see it
nearer, touched the sleeve, turned the cuff to look at the sleeve-
lining (the man, in his perfect composure, offering not the least
objection), and exclaimed, “It’s my belief as this here coat was
George Radfoot’s too !”

“You are right. He wore it the last time you ever saw him, and
the last time you ever will see him—in this world.”

“It’s my belief you mean to tell me to my face you killed him!”
exclaimed Riderhood; but, nevertheless, allowing his glass to be
filled again.

The man only answered with another shrug, and showed no
symptom of confusion.

“Wish I may die if I know what to be up to with this chap!”
said Riderhood, after staring at him, and tossing his last glassful
down his throat. “ Let’s know what to make of you. Say something
plain.”

“J will,” returned the other, leaning forward across the table, and
speaking in a low impressive voice. “ What a liar you are!”

The honest witness rose, and made as though he would fling:
his glass in the man’s face. The man not wincing, and merely
shaking his forefinger half knowingly, half menacingly, the piece of
honesty thought better of it and sat down again, putting the glass
down too.

“And when you went to that lawyer yonder in the Temple
with that invented story,” sé said the stranger, in an exe usperatingly
comfortable sort of confidence, ‘you might have had your strong
suspicions of a friend of your own, you know. I think you had, you
know.”

VOL, I. T

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q7v4 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Me my suspicions? Of what friend?”

«Tell me again whose knife was this?” .demanded the man.

« Tt was passessed by, and was the property of—him as I have made
mention on,” said Riderhood, stupidly evading the actual mention of
the name.

«Tell me again whose coat was this ?”

“hat there article of clothing likeways belonged to, and was
wore by—him as I have made mention on,” was again the dull
Old Bailey evasion.

“T suspect that you gave him the credit of the deed, and of keep-
ing cleverly out of the way. But there was small cleverness in his
keeping out of the way. The cleverness would have been, to have
got back for one single instant to the light of the sun.”

«Things is come to a pretty pass,” growled Mr. Riderhood,
rising to his feet, goaded to stand at bay, “ when bullyers as is wear-
ing dead men’s clothes, and bullyers as is armed with dead men’s
knives, is to come into the houses of honest live men, getting their
livines by the sweats of their brows, and is to make these here sort of
charges with no rhyme and no reason, neither the one nor yet the
other! Why should I have had my suspicions of him ?”

“Because you knew him,” replied the man; “because you had
een one with him, and knew his real character under a fair outside ;
because on the night which you had afterwards reason to believe
to be the very night of the murder, he came in here, within an hour
of his having left his ship in the docks, and asked you in what
lodgings he could find room. Was there no stranger with him ?”

“Vl take my world-without-end everlasting Alfred David that rou
warn’t with him,” answered Riderhood. “ You talk big, you do, but
things look pretty black against yourself, tomy thinking. You charge
again’me that George Radfoot got lost sight of, and was no more thought
of What's that for a sailor? Why there’s fifty such, out of sight and
out of mind, ten times as long as him—through entering in different
names, re-shipping when the out’ard voyage is made, and what not—a
turning up to light every day about here, and no matter made of it. Ask
my daughter. You could go on Poll Parroting enough with her,
when I warn’t come in: Poll Parrot a little with her on this pint.
You and your suspicions of my suspicions of him! What are my
suspicions of you? You tell me George Radfoot got kilied. I ask
you who done it and how you knowit. You carry his knife and
you wear his coat. Iask you how you come by’em? Hand over
that there bottle!” Here Mr. Riderhood appeared to labour under a
virtuous delusion that it was his own property. “And you,” he
added, turning to his daughter, as he filled the footless glass, “if it
warn’t wasting good sherry wine on you, I’d chuck this at you, for
Poll Parroting with this man. It’s along of Poll Parroting that
such like as him gets their suspicions, whereas I gets mine by arguey-
ment, and being nat’rally a honest man, and sweating away at the
brow as a honest man ought.” Here he filled the footless goblet
again, and stood chewing one half of its contents and looking down
into the other as he slowly rolled the wine about in the glass; while
Pleasant, whose sympathetic hair had come down on her being apo-

 

    

 

 

 

   

 

 

  

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 275
strophised, rearranged it, much in the style of the tail of a horse
when proceeding to market to be sold.

“Well? Have you finished ?” asked the strange man.

“No,” said Riderhood, “I ain’t. Far from it. Now then! I want
to know how George Radfoot come by his death, and how you come
by his kit ?

“Tf you ever do know, you won’t know now.”

“And next I want to know,” proceeded Riderhood “whether you
mean to charge that what-you-may-callit murder—”

“ Harmon murder, father,” suggested Pleasant.

“No. Poll Parroting!” he vociferated, in return. “ Keep your
mouth shut!—I want to know, you sir, whether you charge that
there crime on George Radfoot ?’

“Tf you ever do irom you won't know now.”

“Perhaps you done it yourself?” said Riderhood, with a threaten-
ing Beto.

I alone know,” returned the man, sternly shaking his head, “the
pater of that crime. I alone know that your trumped- up story
cannot possibly be true. L alone know that it must be altogether
false, and that you must know it to be altogether false. I come here
to-night to tell you so much of what I know, and no more.”

Mr. Riderhood, with his crooked eye upon his visitor, meditated
for some moments, and then refilled his glass, and tipped the contents
down his throat in three tips.

“Shut the shop-door!” he then said to his daughter, putting the
glass suddenly down. “ And turn the key and stand by it! If you
know all this, you sir,” getting, as he spoke, between the visitor and
the door, « why han’t ‘you gone to Lawyer Lightwood ?”

“That, also, is alone known to myself,” was the cool answer.

“Don’t you know that, if’ you didn’t do the dee od, what “you say
you could tell is worth from five to ten thousand pound ?” asked
Riderhood.

“TI know it very well, and when I claim the money you shall share

sp) cy

it.

 

 

 

 

The honest man paused, and drew a little nearer to the visitor,
and a little further from the door.

“T know it,” Tepes ated the man, quietly, “as well as I know that
you and George Radfoot were one together in more than one dark
business; and as well as I know that you, Roger Riderhood, con-
spired against an innocent man -for bl ood-money; and as well as I
know that I can—and that I swear I w ill!—give you up on both
scores, and be the proof against you in my own person, if you defy
me !”

“Father!” cried Pleasant, from the door. “Don’t defy him!
Give way to him! ae get into more trouble, father !”

“ Will you leave off a E oll P arroting, I ask you?” cried Mr. Rider-
hood, half beside himself between the 1 ‘two. ‘Then, pr opitiating ly and
craw. lingly ; “You sir! You han’t said what you want of me. Is it
fair, is it worthy of yourself, to talk of my defying you afore ever
you say what you w: ant of me ?”

“T don’t want much,” said the man. “This accusation of yours
7 2

    

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

276 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

roust not be left half made and half unmade. What was done for
the blood-money must be thoroughly undone.”

“Well; but Shipmate——’

“Dont call me Shipmate,” said the man.

“Captain, then,” urged Mr. Riderhood ; “ there! You won’t object
to Captain. It’s a honorable title, and you fully look it. Captain!
Ain’t the man dead? Now I ask you fair. Ain’t Gaffer dead ?”

« Well,” returned the other, with impatience, “ yes, he is dead.
What then ?”

“ (an words hurt a dead man, Captain? I only ask you fair.”

“They can hurt the memory of a dead man, and they can hurt his
living children. How many children had this man”

“Meaning Gaffer, Captain ?”

“Of whom else are we speaking ?” returned the other, with a
movement of his foot, as if Rogue Riderhood were beginning to sneak
before him in the body as well as the spirit, and he spurned him off.
“T have heard of a daughter, andason. I ask for information; I
ask your daughter; I prefer to speak to her. What children dic
Hexam leave ?”

Pleasant, looking to her father for permission to reply, that honest
man exclaimed with great bitterness:

“Why the devil don’t you answer the Captain? You can Poll
Parrot enough when you ain’t wanted to Poll Parrot, you perwerse
jade !”

Thus encouraged, Pleasant explained that there were only Lizzie, the
daughter in question, and the youth. Both very respectable, she
added.

“Tt is dreadful that any stigma should attach to them,” said the
visitor, whom the consideration rendered so uneasy that he rose,
and paced to and fro, muttering, “Dreadful! Untoreseen? How
could it be foreseen!” Then he stopped, and asked aloud: “ Where
do they live?”

Pleasant further explained that only the daughter had resided
with the father at the time of his accidental death, and that she had
immediately afterwards quitted the neighbourhood.

“JT know that,” said the man, “for I have been to the place they
dwelt in, at the time of the inquest. Could you quietly find out for
me where she lives now ?”

Pleasant had no doubt she could do that. Within what time, did
she think? Withina day. The Visitor said that was well, and he
would return for the information, relying on its being obtaimed. ‘To
this dialogue Riderhood had attended in silence, and he now obse-
quiously bespake the Captain.

“Captain! Mentioning them unfort’net words of mine respect-
ing Gaffer, it is contrairily to be bore in mind that Gaffer always
were a precious rascal, and that his lime were a thieving line. Like-
ways when I went to them two Governors, Lawyer Lightwood and
the other Governor, with my information, I may have been a little
over-eager for the cause of justice, or (to put it another way) a little
over-stimilated by them feelings which rouses a man up, when a pot
of money is going about, to get his hand into that pot of money for

     
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
   
 
  
 
  
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 277

his family’s sake. Besides which, I think the wine of them two
Governors was—I will not say a hocussed wine, but fur from a wine
as was elthy for the mind. And there’s another thing to be re-
membered, Captain. Did I stick to them words when Gaffer was no
more, and did I say bold to them two Governors, ‘Governors both,
wot J informed I still inform; wot was took down I hold to’? No.
I says, frank and open—no shuffling, mind you, Captain !—*I may
have been mistook, I’ve been a thinking of it, it mayn’t have been
took down correct on this and that, and 1 won’t swear to thick and
thin, I'd rayther forfeit your good opinions than do it.’ And so far
as I know,” concluded Mr. Riderhood, by way of proof and evidence
to character, “I have actiwally forfeited the good opinions of several
persons—even your own, nee if I understand your words—but
T’d sooner do it than be forswore. There; if that’s conspiracy, call
me conspirator.”

“ You shall sign,” said the visitor, taking very little heed of this
oration, “a statement that it was all utterly false, and the poor girl
shall have it. I will bring it with me for your signature, when I
come again.”

“When might you be expected, Captain?’ inquired Riderhood,
again dubiously getting between him and the door.

“Quite soon enough for you. I shall not disappoint you; don’t be
afraid.”

“Micht you be inclined to leave any name, Captain ?”

“No, not at all. I have no such intention.”

“¢Shall’ is summ’at of a hard word, Captain,” urged Riderhood,
still feebly dodging between him and the door, as he advanced. “ When
you say a man ‘shall’ sign this and that and t’other, Captain, you order
him about in a grand sort of a way. Don’t it seem so to yourself?”

The man sto xd still, and angrily fixed him with his eyes.

“Father, father!” entreated Pleasant, from the door, with her dis-
engaged hand nervously trembling at her lips; “don’t! Don’t get into
trouble any more!”

“ Hear me out, Captain, hear me out! All I was wishing to men-
tion, Captain, afore you took your departer,” said the sneaking Mr.
Riderhood, falling out of his path, “was, your handsome words
relating to the reward.”

“When I claim it,” said the man, in a tone which seemed to leave
some such words as “you dog,” very distinctly understood, “you
shall share it.”

Looking stedfastly at Riderhood, he once more said in a low voice,
this time with a grim sort of admiration of him as a perfect piece of
evil, “ What a liar you are!” and, nodding his head twice or thrice
over the compliment, passed out of the shop. But, to Pleasant he
said good-night kindly.

Av he honest man who gained his living by the sweat of his brow
remained in a state akin to stupefaction, ‘until the footless glass and
the unfinished bottle conveyed themselves into his mind. From his
mind he conveyed them into his hands, and so conveyed the last of
the wine into his stomach. When that was done, he awoke to a clear
perception that Poll Parroting was solely chargeable with what had

oe

ibid de alge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

278 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Therefore, not to be remiss in his duty as a father, he threw
a pair of sea-boots at Pleasant, which she ‘ducked to avoid, and
then cried, poor thing, using her hair for a pocket-handkerchief.

 

 

CHAPTER XIII.
A SOLO AND A DUETT.

THE wind was blowing so hard when the visitor came out at the
shop-door into the darkness and dirt of Limehouse Hole, that it
almost blew him in again. Doors were slamming violently, lamps
were flickering or blown out, signs were rocking in their frames, the
water of the kennels, wind- dispersed, flew about in drops like rain.
Indifferent to the weather, and even preferring it to better weather
for its clearance of the streets, the man looked about him with a
scrutinizing glance. “ thas much I know,” he murmured. “I have
never been here since that night, and never was here before that
night, but thus much I recognize. Iwonder which way did we take
when we came out of that shop. We turned to the right as I have
turned, but I can recall no more. Did we go by this alley? Or down
that little lane ?”

He tried both, but both confused him equally, and he came stray-
ing back to the same spot. ‘I remember there were poles pushed
out of upper windows on which clothes were drying, and I remember
a low public-house, and the sound flowing down a narrow passage
belonging to it of the scraping of a fiddle and the shuffling of feet.
But here are all these things i in the lane, and here are ‘all these
things in the alley. And I have nothing else in my mind but a wall,
a dark doorway, a flight of stairs, and a room.”

He tried a new direction, but made nothing of it; walls, dark
doorways, flights of stairs and rooms, were too abundant. And, like
most people so puzzled, he again and again described a circle, and
found himself at the point from which he had begun. “ T his is like
what I have read im narratives of escape from prison,” said he,
“where the little track of the fugitives in the night always seems
to take the shape of the great round world, on which the y wander; as
rf it were a secret law.”

Here he ceased to be the oakum-headed, oakum-whiskered man on
whom Miss Pleasant Riderhood had looked, and, allowing for his
being still wrapped in a nautical overcoat, became’as like that same
lost wanted Mr. Julius Handford, as never man was like another in
this world. In the breast of the coat he stowed the bristling hair
and whisker, in a moment, as the favoring wind went with him
down a solitary place that it had swept clear of passengers. Yet in
ee same moment he was the Secretary also, Mr. Boffin’s Secretary.

For John Rokesmith, too, was as like that same lost wanted Mr.
Julins Handford as never man was like another in this world.

“J have no clue to the scene of my death,” said he. “Not that it
matters now. But haying risked discovery by venturing here at all,

    

 

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
T should have been glad to track some part of the way.” With
which singular words he abandoned his search, came up out of Lime-
house Hole, and took the way past Limehouse Church. At the great
iron gate of the churchyard he stopped and looked in. He looked up
at the high tower spectrally resisting the wind, and he looked round
at the white tombstones, like enough to the dead in their winding-
sheets, and he counted the nine tolls of the clock-beli.

“Tt is a sensation not experienced by many mortal
be looking into a churchyard on a wild windy ni

     

Giey=

3” said he, “ t&
rt, and to feel

o

oD
that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do,
and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried.

Uh,

yirit that was once a man could

 

here. Nothing uses me toit. A 5
hardly feel stranger or lonelier, goi
than I feel.

“But this is the fanciful side of the
so difficult that, though I think of it every day, I never thoroughly
think it out. Now, let me determine to think it out asI walk home. I
know I evade it, as many men—perhaps most men—do evade think-
ine their way through their greatest perplexity. I will try to pin
myself to mine. Don't evade it, John Harmon; don’t evade it;
think it out!

   

situation. It has a real side,

  

“ When I came back to England, attracted to the country with
which I had none but most miserable associations, by the accounts of
my fine inheritance that found me abroad, I eame back, shrinking
from my father’s money, shrinking from my father’s memory, mis-
trustful of being forced on a mei ‘y wife, mistrustful of my
father’s intention in thrusting that marriage on me, mistrustful that I
was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening in
gratitude to the two dear noble honest friends who had made the
only sunlight in my childish life or that of my heartbroken sister. 1
came back, timid, divided in my mind, afraid of myself and evel,
body here, knowing of nothing but wretchedness that my father’s
wealth had ever brought about. Now, stop, and so far think it out,
John Harmon. Is that so? That is exactly so.

“Qn board serving as third mate was George Radfoot. 1 knew
nothing of him. His name first became known to me about a week
before we sailed, through my being accosted by one of the ship-agent’s
clerks as ‘Mr. Radfoot.’? It was one day when I had gone aboard to
look to my preparations, and the clerk, coming behind me as I stood
on deck, tapped. me on the shoulder, and said, ‘ Mr. Radfoot, look here,’
referring to some papers that he had in his hand. And my name
first became known to Radfoot, through another clerk within a day or
two, and while the ship was yet in port, coming up behind him, tap-
ping him on the shoulder and beginning, ‘1 beg your pardon, Mr.
Harmon: 2 T believe we were alike in bulk and stature but not
otherwise, and that we were not strikingly alike, even in those re-
spects, when we were together and could be compared.

“ However, a sociable word or two on these mistakes became an easy
introduction between us, and the weather was hot, and he helped me
to a cool cabin on deck aloneside his own, and his first school had

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

<a e

TILER

280 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

been at Brussels as mine had been, and he had learnt French as Thad
learnt it, and he had a little history of himself to relate—God only
knows how much of it true, and how much of it false—that had its like-
ness to mine. I had been a seaman too. So we got to be confidential
together, and the more easily yet, because he and every one on board
had known by general rumour what I was making the voyage to
England for. By such degrees and means, he came to the know-
ledge of my uneasiness of mind, and of its setting at that time
in the direction of desiring to see and form some judgment of my
alloted wife, before she could possibly know me for myself; also to
try Mrs. Boffin and give her a glad surprise. So the plot was made
out of our getting common sailors’ dresses (as he was able to guide
me about London), and throwing ourselves in Bella Wilfer’s neigh-
bourhood, and trying to put ourselves in her way, and doing whatever
chance might favour on the spot, and seeing what came of it. If
nothing came of it, I should be no worse off, and there would merely
be a short delay in my presenting myself to Lightwood. I have all
these facts right? Yes. They are all accurately right.

“His advantage in all this was, that for a time I was to be lost.
It might be for a day or for two days, but I must be lost sight of on
landing, or there would be recognition, anticipation, and failure.
Therefore, I disembarked with my valise in my hand—as Potterson
the steward and Mr. Jacob Kibble my fellow-passenger afterwards
remembered—and waited for him in the dark by that very Limehouse
Church which is now behind me.

“As I had always shunned the port of London, I only knew the
church through his pointing out its spire from on board. Perhaps I
might recall, if it were any good to try, the way by which I went to it
alone from the river ; but how we two went from it to Riderhood’s shop,
I don’t know—any more than I know what turns we took and doubles
we made, after we left it. The way was purposely confused, no doubt.

“But let me go on thinking the facts out, and avoid confusing them
with my speculations. Whether he took me by a straight way or a
crooked way, what is that to the purpose now? Steady, John Harmon.

“ When we stopped at Riderhood’s, and he asked that scoundrel a
question or two, purporting to refer only to the lodging-houses in
which there was accommodation for us, had I the least suspicion of
him? None. Certainly none until afterwards when I held the clue.
I think he must have got from Riderhood in a paper, the drug, or
whatever it was, that afterwards stupefied me, but I am far from sure.
All T felt safe in charging on him to-night, was old companionship in
villainy between them, Their undisguised intimacy, and the charac-
ter I now know Riderhood to bear, made that not at all adventurous.

3ut T am not clear about the drug. Thinking out the circum-
stances on which I found my suspicion, they are only two. One: I
remember his changing a small folded paper from one pocket to
another, after we came out, which he had not touched before. Two:
I now know Riderhood to have been previously taken up for being
concerned in the robbery of an unlucky seaman, to whom some such
poison had been given.

“It is my conviction that we cannot have gone a mile from that

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

eee

THAN ALIVE.

DEAD

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 281

shop, before we came to the wall, 'the dark doorway, the flight of
stairs, and the room. The night was particularly dark and it rained
hard. As I think the circumstances back, I hear the rain splashing
on the stone pavement of the passage, which was not under cover.
The room overlooked the river, or a dock, or a creek, and the tide was
out. Being possessed of the time down to that point, I know by the
hour that it must have been about low water; but while the coffee
was getting ready, I drew back the curtain (a dark-brown curtain),
and, looking out, knew by the kind of reflection below, of the few
neighbouring lights, that they were reflected in tidal mud.

“He had carried under his arm a canvas bag, containing a suit of
his clothes. I had no change of outer clothes with me, as I was
to buy slops. ‘You are very wet, Mr. Harmon,—I can hear him
saying—‘and I am quite dry under this good waterproof coat.
Put on these clothes of mine. You may find on trying them that they
will answer your purpose to-morrow, as well as the slops you mean
to buy, or better. While you change, I'll hurry the hot coffee.” When
he came back, I had his clothes on, and there was a black man with
him, wearing a linen jacket, like a steward, who put the smoking
coffee on the table in a tray and never looked at me. I am so far
literal and exact? Literal and exact, I am certain.

“Now, I pass to sick and deranged impressions; they are so strong,
that I rely upon them; but there are spaces between them that I know
nothing about, and they are not pervaded by any idea of time.

“J had drank some coffee, when to my sense of sight he began
to swell immensely, and something urged me to rush at him. We
had a struggle near the door. He got from me, through my not know-
ing where to strike, in the whirling round of the room, and the flash-
ing of flames of fire ketween us. I dropped down. Lying helpless
on the ground, I was turned over by a foot. I was dragged by the
neck into a corner. JI heard men speak together. I was turned over
by other feet. I saw a figure like myself lying dressed in my
clothes on a bed. What might have been, for anything I knew, a
silence of days, weeks, months, years, was broken by a violent
wrestling of men all over the room. The figure like myself was
assailed, and my valise was in its hand. I was trodden upon and
fallen oyer. I heard a noise of blows, and thought it was a wood-
cutter cutting down a tree. I could not have said that my name
was John Harmon —I could not have thought it—I didn’t know it
—but when I heard the blows, I thought of the wood-cutter and his
axe, and had some dead idea that I was lying in a, forest.

“This is still correct? Still correct, with the exception that I
cannot possibly express it to myself without using the word I. But
it wasnot I. There was no such thing as I, within my knowledge.

“Tt was only after a downward slide through something like a
tube, and then a great noise and a sparkling and crackling as of
fires, that the consciousness came upon me, ‘his is John Harmon
drowning! John Harmon, struggle for your life. John Harmon, call
on Heaven and save yourself!’ I think I cried it out aloud in a great
agony, and then a heavy horrid unintelligible something vanished,
and it was I who was struggling there alone in the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

282 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“JT was very weak and faint, frichtfully oppressed with drowsiness,
and driving fast with the tide. Looking over the black water, I saw
the lights racing past me on the two banks of the river, as if they
were eager to be gone and leave me dying in the dark. The tide
was running down, but I knew nothing of up or down then. When,
guiding myself safely with Heaven’s assistance before the fierce set
of the water, I at last caught at a boat moored, one of a tier of boats
at a causeway, I was sucked under her, and came up, only just
alive, on the other side.

“ Was I long in the water? Long enough to be chilled to the heart,
but I don’t know how lone. Yet the cold was merciful, for it was
the cold night air andthe rain that restored me from a swoon on the
stones of the causeway. They naturally supposed me to have toppled
in, drunk, when I crept to the public-house it belonged to; for I had
no notion where I was, and could not articulate—through the
poison that had made me insensible having affected my speech—and
J supposed the night to be the previous night, as it was still dark and
raining. But I had lost twenty-four hours.

“T have checked the calculation often, and it must have been
two nights that I lay recovering in that public-house. Let me see.
Yes. I am sure it was while I lay in that bed there, that the
thought entered my head of turning the danger I had passed through,
to the account of being for some time supposed to have disap-
peared mysteriously, and of proving Bella. ‘Che dread of our being
forced on one another, and perpetuating the fate that seemed to
have fallen on my father’s riches—the fate that they should lead
to nothing but evil—was strong upon the moral timidity that dates
from my childhood with my poor sister.

“ As to this hour I cannot understand that side of the river where
I recovered the shore, being the opposite side to that on which I was
ensnared, I shall never understand it now. Even at this moment,
while I leave the river behind me, going home, I cannot conceive
that it rolls between me and that spot, or that the sea is where it is. But
this is not thinking it out; this is making a leap to the present time.

“J could not have done it, but for the fortune in the waterproof

belt round my body. Not a great fortune, forty and odd pounds
for the inheritor of a hundred and odd thousand! But it was enough.
Without it I must have disclosed myself. Without it, I could never
have gone to that Exchequer Coffee House, or taken Mrs. Wilfer’s
lodgings.
Some twelve days I lived at that hotel, before the night
when I saw the corpse of Radfoot at the Police Station. The
inexpressible mental horror that I laboured under, as one of the con-
sequences of the poison, makes the interval seem greatly longer, but
I know it cannot have been longer. That suffering has gradually
weakened and weakened since, and has only come upon/me by starts,
and I hope I am free from it now; but even now, I have sometimes
to think, constrain myself, and stop before speaking, or I could not
say the words I want to Say.

“ Again I ramble away from thinking it out to the end. It is not
so far to the end that I need be tempted to break off. Now, on straight!

“T examined the newspapers every day for tidings that I was

 

 

 

 

 

    
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 283

missing, but saw none. Going out that night to walk (for I kept
retired iwhile it was light), I found a crowd assembled round a placard
posted at Whitehall. It described myself, John Harmon, as found
dead and mutilated in the river under circumstances of strong sus-
picion, described my dress, described the papers in. my pockets, and
stated where I was lying for recognition. In a wild incautious way
I hurried there, and there—with the horror of the death I had
escaped, before my eyes in its most appalling shape, added to the in-
conceivable horror tormenting me at that time when the poisonous
stuff was strongest on me—I perceived that Radfoot had been mur-
dered by some unknown hands for the money for which he would
have murdered me, and that probably we had both been shot into the
river from the same dark place into the same dark tide, when the
stream ran deep and strong. -

“That night I almost gave up my mystery, though I suspected no
one, could offer no information, knew abs solutely nothing save that
the murdered man was not I, but Radfoot. Next day while I
hesitated, and next day while I hesitated, it see med as if the whole
country were determined to have me dead. The ee declared me
dead, the Government proclaimed me dead ; T could not listen at my
fireside for five minutes to the outer noises, but it was borne into my
ears that I was dead.

“So John Harmon died, and Julius Handford disappeared, and
John Rokesmith was born. John Rokesmith’s intent to-night has
been to repair a wrong that he could never have imagined possible,
coming to his ears through the Lightwood talk rel ited to him, and
which he is bound by every consideration to remedy. In that intent
John Rokesmith will persevere, as his duty is.

“Now, is it all thought out? All to this time? Nothing omitted?
No, nothing. But be yond this time? ‘To think it out through the
future, is a harder though a much shorter task than to think it out
through the’ past. John Harmon ig dead. Should John Harmon
come to life ?

“Tf yes, why? If no, why?

“Take yes, first. To enliehten human Justice concerning the offe nce
of one far beyond it who may have a living mother. To enlighten 1
with the lights of a stone passage, a flight tor stairs, a brown w eee
curtain, and a black man. ‘To come into possession of my father’s
money, and with it sordidly to buy a beautiful creature whom I
love—I cannot help it; reason has nothing to do with it; I love
her against reason—but who would as soon love me for my own sake,
as she would love the beggar at the corner. What a use for the
money, and how worthy of its old misuses!

“Now, take no. ‘The reasons why John Harmon should not come
to life. Because he has passively allowed these dear old faithful
friends to pass into possession of the property. Because he sees
them happy with it, making a good use of it, effacmg the old rust
and tarnish on the money. Bec ause they ha ave aa lly adopted
Bella, and will provide for ‘her. Because there is affection enough i in
her nature, and warmth enough in her heart, to develop into some-
thing enduringly good, under favorable conditions. Because her

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

Pree

     
   
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  

84 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

faults have been intensified by her place in my father’s will, and she
is already growing better. Because her marriage with John Har-
mon, after what I have heard from her own lips, would be a shocking
Hd mockery, of which both she and I must always be conscious, and
which would degrade her in her mind, and me in mine, and each
of us in the other’s. Because if John Harmon comes to life and does
not marry her, the property falls into the very hands that hold it
now.

“What would I have? Dead, I have found the true friends of my
lifetime still as true as tender and as faithful as when I was alive,
and making my memory an incentive to good actions done in my
name. Dead, 1 have found them when they might have slighted
my name, and passed greedily over my grave to ease and wealth,
lingering by the way, like single-hearted children, to recall their
love for me when I was a poor frightened child. Dead, I have heard
from the woman who would have been my wife if I had lived,
the revolting truth that I should have purchased her, caring nothing
for me, as a Sultan buys a slave.

“What would Ihave? If the dead could know, or do know, how
the living use them, who among the hosts of dead has found a more
disinterested fidelity on earth than 1? Is nct that enough for me?
If I had come back, these noble creatures would have welcomed me,
wept over me, given up everything to me with joy. I did not come
back, and they have passed unspoiled into my place. Let them rest
in it, and let Bella rest in hers.

“What course for me then? This. To live the same quiet Secre-
tary life, carefully avoiding chances of recognition, until they shall
have become more accustomed +o their altered state, and until the
great swarm of swindlers under many names shall have found newer
prey. By that time, the method J am establishing through all the
affairs, and with which I will every day take new pains to make them
both familiar, will be, I may hope, a machine in such working order as
that they can keep it going. I know I need but ask of their gene-
rosity, to have. When the right time comes, I will ask no more
than will replace me in my former path of life, and John Rokesmith
shall tread it as contentedly as he may. But John Harmon shall
come back no more.

“That I may never, in the days to come afar off, have any weak
misgiving that Bella might, in any contingency, have taken me for
my own sake if I had plainly asked her, I will plainly ask her:
proving beyond all question what I already know too well. And
now it is all thought out, from the beginning to the end, and my
mind is easier.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

So deeply engaged had the living-dead man been, in thus com-
muning with himself, that he had regarded neither the wind nor the
Way, and had resisted the former as instinctively as he had pursued
-he latter. But being now come into the City, where there was
» coach-stand, he stood irresolute whether to go to his lodgings, or to
go first to Mr. Boffin’s house. He decided to go round by the house,
urguing, as he carried his overcoat upon his arm, that it was less

 

 

  

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 285

likely to attract notice if left there, than if taken to Holloway: both
Mrs. Wilfer and Miss Lavinia being ravenously curious touching
every article of which the lodger stood possessed.

Arriving at the house, he found that Mr. and Mrs. Boffin were out,
but that Miss Wilfer was in the drawing-room. Miss Wilfer had
remained at home, in consequence of not feeling very well, and had
inquired in the evening if Mr. Rokesmith were in his room.

“Make my compliments to Miss Wilfer, and say I am here now.”

Miss Wilfer’s compliments came down in return, and, if it were
not too much trouble, would Mr. Rokesmith be so kind as to come
up before he went?

Jt was not too much trouble, and Mr. Rokesmith came up.

Oh she looked very pretty, she looked very, very pretty! If the
father of the late John Harmon had but left his money uncondition-
ally to his son, and if his son had but lighted on this loveable girl for
himself, and had the happiness to make her loving as well as love-
able!

“Dear me! Are you not well, Mr. Rokesmith ?”

“Yes, quite well. Iwas sorry to hear, when I came in, that you
were not.”

“A mere nothing. I had a headache—gone now—and was not
quite fit for a hot theatre, so I stayed at home. Iasked you if you
were not well, because you look so white.”

“To 1? I have had a busy evening.”

She was on a low ottoman before the fire, with a little shining
jewel of a table, and her book and her work, beside her. Ah! what
a different life the late John Harmon’s, if it had been his happy
privilege to take his place upon that ottoman, and draw his arm
about that waist, and say, “I hope the time has been long without
me? What a Home Goddess you look, my darling!”

3ut, the present John Rokesmith, far removed from the late John
Harmon, remained standing at a distance. A little distance in
respect of space, but a great distance im respect of separation.

“Mr. Rokesmith,” said Bella, taking up her work, and inspect-
ing it all round the corners, “I wanted to say something to you
when I could have the opportunity, as an explanation why I was
rude to you the other day. You have noright to think ill of me, Surge

The sharp little way in which she darted a look at him, half
sensitively injured, and half pettishly, would have been very much
admired by the late John Harmon.

“You don’t know how well I think of you, Miss Wilfer.”

“Truly you must have a very high opinion of me, Mr. Rokesmith,
when you believe that in prosperity I neglect and forget my old home.”

“Do I believe so?”

“You did, sir, at any rate,” returned Bella.

“T took the liberty of reminding you of a little omission into
which you had fallen—insensibly and naturally fallen. It was no
more than that.”

“And I beg leave to ask you, Mr. Rokesmith,” said Bella, “ why
you took that liberty ?—I hope there is no offence in the phrase; 1t
is your own, remember.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

2806 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Because I am truly, deeply, profoundly interested in you, Miss
Wilfer. Because I wish to see you always at your best. Because I
shall I go on?”

“No, sir,” returned Bella, with a burning face, “you have ‘said
more than enough. I beg that you will not go on. If you have any
generosity, any honor, you will say no more.”

The late John Harmon, looking at the proud face with the down-
cast eyes, and at the quick breathing as it stirred the fall of bright
brown hair over the beautiful neck, would probably have remained
silent.

“T wish to speak to you, sir,” said Bella, “ once for all, and I don’t
know how to do it. J have sat here all this evening, wishing to
speak to you, and determining to speak to you, and feeling that
I must. I beg for a moment’s time.”

He remained silent, and she remained with her face averted, some-
times making a slight movement as if she would turn and speak,
At length she did so.

“You know how J am situated here, sir, and you know how I am
situated at home. I must speak to you for myself, since there is
no one about me whom I could ask to do so. It is not generous in
you, it is not honorable in you, to conduct yourself towards me as
you do.”

“Is it ungenerous or dishonorable to be devoted to you; fa
by you?”

“ Preposterous!” said Bella.

The late John Harmon might have thought it rather a con-
temptuous and lofty word of repudiation. ;

“I now feel obliged to go on,” pursued the Secretary, “though it
were only in self-explanation and self-defence. I hope, Miss Wilfer,
that it is not unpardonable—even in me—to make an honest declara-
tion of an honest devotion to you.”

“ An honest declaration!” repeated Bella, with emphasis.

“Ts it otherwise ?”

“T must request, sir,” said Bella, taking refuge in a touch of timely
resentment, “that I may not be questioned. \

I decline to be cross-examined.”

“Oh, Miss Wilfer, this is hardly charitable. I ask you nothing
but what your own emphasis suggests. However, I waive even that
question. But what I have declared, I take my stand by. I cannot
recall the avowal of my earnest and deep attachment to you, and I
do not recall it.”

“T reject it, sir,” said Bella.

“TI should be blind and deaf if I were not prepared for the reply.
Forgive my offence, for it carries its punishment with it.”

“What punishment?” asked Bella.

“Is my present endurance none? But excuse me; I did not mean
to cross-examine you again.”

“You take advantage ofa hasty word of mine,” said Bella with a little
sting of self-reproach, “to make me seem—lI don’t know what. I spoke
without consideration when I used it. If that was bad, lam sorry; but
you repeat it after consideration, and that seems to me to be at least no

 

 

  

‘inated

 

  

  

‘ou must excuse me if

 

     
  
 
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

    
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
     

7

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 287

better. For the rest, 1 bez it may be understood, Mr. Rokesmith,
that there is an end of this between us, now and for ever.”

“ Now and for ever,’ he repeated.

“Yes. I appeal to you, sir,’ proceeded Bella with increasing spirit,
“not to pursue me. IL appeal to you not to take advantage of your
position in this house to make my position in it distressing and dis-
agreeable. appeal to you to discontinue your habit of making your
misplaced attentions as plain to Mrs. Boflin as to me.”

“ Have I done so?”

“TJ should think you have,” replied Bella. “In any case it is not
your fault if you have not, Mr. Rokesmith.”

“JT hope you are wrong in that impression. I should be very
sorry to have justified it. I think I have not. For the future there
is no apprehension. It is all over.”

“JT am much relieved to hear it,” said Bella. “I have far other
views in life, and why should you waste your own?”

“Mine!” said the Secretary. “My life!”

His curious tone caused Bella to glance at the curious smile with
which he said it. It was gone as he glanced back. “ Pardon me,
Miss Wilfer,” he proceeded, when their eyes met; “you have used
some hard words, for which I do not doubt you have a justification in
your mind, that I do not understand. Ungenerous and dishonor-
able. In what?’

“J would rather not be asked,” said Bella, haughtily looking
down.

“J would rather’ not ask, but the question is imposed upon me.
, in; or if not kindly, justly.”

“Oh, sir!” said Bella, raising her eyes to his, after a little struggle
to forbear, “is it generous and honorable to use the power here
which your favor with Mr. and Mrs. Boffin and your ability in your
place give you, against me?”

“ Aoainst you?

“Ts it generous and honorable to form a plan for gradually bringing
their influence to bear upon a suit which I have shown you that lL
do not like, and which J tell you that I utterly reject?”

The late John Harmon could have borne a good deal, but he
would have been cut to the heart by such a suspicion as this.

“Would it be generous and honorable to step into your place—if
you did so, for I don’t know that you did, and I hope you did not—
anticipating, or knowing beforehand, that I should come here, and
designing to take me at this disadvantage ?”

«his mean and cruel disadvantage,” said the Secretary.

“Yes,” assented Bella.

The Secretary kept silence for a little while; then merely said,
“You are wholly mistaken, Miss Wilfer ; wonderfully mistaken. I
cannot say, however, that it is your fault. If I deserve better
things of you, you do not know it.”

“ At least, sir,” retorted Bella, with her old indignation rising,
“you know the history of my being here at all. I have heard Mr.
Boffin say that you are master of every line and word of that will, as
you are master of all his affairs. And was it not enough that 1

  

 

  

  

  

 

 

 

288 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

should have been willed away, like a horse, or a dog, or a bird; but
must you too begin to dispose of me in your mind, and speculate in
me, as soon as 1 had ceased to be the talk and the laugh of the town ?
Am I for ever to be made the proper ty of strangers / Pr

‘Believe me,” returned the Secretary, “you are wonderfully mis-
gee

“JT should be glad to know it,” answered Bella.

“JT doubt if you ever will. Good-night. Of course I shall be
careful to conceal any traces of this interview from Mr. and Mrs.
Boffin, as long as I remain here. Trust me, what you have com-
plained of is at an end for ever.”

“YT am glad I have spoken, then, Mr. Rokesmith. It has been
painful and difficult, but it is done. If I have hurt you, I hope you
will forgive me. I am inexperienced and impetuous, and I have
been a little spoilt; but I really am not so bad as I dare say I appear,
or as you think me.”

He quitted the room when Bella had said this, relenting in her
wilful inconsistent way. Left alone, she threw herself back on her
ottoman, and said, “I didn’t know the lovely woman was such a
Dragon!” Then, she got up and looked in the glass, and said to her
image, “You have been positively swelling your features, you little
fool!” Then, she took an impatient walk to the other end of the
room and back, and said, “I wish Pa was here to have a talk about
an avaricious marriage; but he is better away, poor dear, for I know
I should pull his hair if he was here.” And then she threw her work
away, and threw her book after it, and sat down and hummed a tune,
and hummed it out of tune, and quarrelled with it.

And John Rokesmith, what did he?

He went down to his room, and buried John Harmon many addi-
tioral fathoms deep. He took his hat, and walked out, and, as he
went to Holloway or anywhere else—not at all minding where—
heaped mounds upon mounds of earth over John Harmon’s grave.
His walking did not bring him home until the dawn of day. And
so busy had he been all night, piling and piling weights upon weights
of earth above John Harmon’s grave, that by that time John Harmon
lay buried under a whole Alpine range; and still the Sexton Roke-
smith accumulated mountains over him, lightening his labour with
the dirge, “ Cover him, crush him, keep him down!”

 

  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

   

    
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
     
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER XIV.
STRONG OF PURPOSE.

Tur sexton-task of piling earth above John Harmon all night long,
was not conducive to sound sleep; but Rokesmith had some broken
morning rest, and rose strengthened in his purpose. It was all over
now. No ghost should trouble Mr. and Mrs. Boffin’s peace ; invisible
and voiccless, the ghost should look on for a little while longer at
the state of existence out of which it had departed, and then should
for ever cease to haunt the scenes in which it had no place.

He went over it all again. He had lapsed into the condition in

which he found himself, as many a man lapses into many a condition,
without perceiving the accumulative power of its separate circum-
stances. When in the distrust engendered by his wretched childhood
and the action for evil—never yet for good within his knowledge then—
of his father and his father’s wealth on all within their influence, he
conceived the idea of his first deception, it was meant to be harmless,
it was to last but a few hours or days, it was to involve in it only the
girl so capriciously forced upon him, and upon whom he was so capri-
ciously forced, and it was honestly meant well towards her. For, if he
had found ber unhappy in the prospect of that marriage (through her
heart inclining to another man or for any other cause), he would seri-
ously have said: “This is another of the old perverted uses of the
misery-making money. I will let it go to my and my sister’s only
protectors and friends.” When the snare into which he fell so out-
stripped his first intention as that he found himself placarded by the
police authorities upon the London walls for dead, he confusedly
accepted the aid that fell upon him, without considering how firmly
it must seem to fix the Boffins in their accession to the fortune.
When he saw them, and knew them, and even from his vantage-
ground of inspection could find no flaw in them, he asked himself,
© And ghall I come to life to dispossess such people as these?” ‘There
was no good to set against the putting of them to that hard proof.
He had heard from Bella’s own lips when he stood tapping at the
door on that night of his taking the lodgings, that the marriage would
have been on her part thoroughly mercenary. He had since tried
her, in his own unknown person and supposed station, and she not
only rejected his advances but resented them. Was it for him to have
the shame of buying her, or the meanness of punishing her? Yet, by
coming to life and accepting the condition of the inheritance, he must
do the former; and by coming to life and rejecting it, he must do
the latter.

Another consequence that he had never foreshadowed, was the
implication of an innocent man in his supposed murder. He would
obtain complete retractation from the accuser, and set the wrong
right ; but clearly the wrong could never have been done if he had
never planned a deception, Then, whatever inconvenience or distress

VOL, I. u

ene en ae

Hl ah

|
oa a
Hii i

 

113)
Bh,

    

 

haiti
i i ih

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

  
 
  
 
  

 

nd make no com plaint.

 

than he had been 1

 

 

t earher than he was accustomed to do, he
lat

and the

 

ST 1B ee his way,

 

vy walk ogether.

    

 

 

 

“A present from my dau

 

 

hter Bel lla, Mr. Rokesmith.”

 
 

 

 

     

 

t he loved the girl.
{ don’t know whether you happen to have read m

 

African Travel, Mr. Rokesmith 2?” said R. W.

“T]
lave I

 

several.”
10w, there’s usually a King Geo1

R

 

   
  
  

 

rs may have hay ppened to give him.”
asked Rokesmith.
Ar ames re in mas

sav:

          
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  

 

 

of 1

  

IT assure a

   
  

 

       
   

than one el eee we
easily believe it,

ition it,” said R. 7

 

  

  
   
    
 
 
  
 
 
  
  

W. in the w;

     

she 1s so ver
very pretty,

Mm { 2?
Must.

   

   
  
  

ement for her in Li

 

 

ve no better fr
gratified

 

 

 

cherub. “Re ally

 
   

 

 

 

deception 8S him, it was manful r epentant

in the morning, and it buried

  

at the door. T fe cherub’s way was for
:

It w as impossiblo not to ni o e the change in the cherub’s
ance. ‘he cherub felt very conscious of it, and modest ly rems urked :

S appe

The words gave the y a stroke of pleasui
remembered the fi fty pound ad he still loved the girl.
3 very weak—it always is very weak, some authorit

ean. Pretty well
1eap—and I think”

You were going
is generally dressed in

ble, ¢ and co te affection
h a little snoilt. 7 ouldn’t
he a little spoilt, I couldn’t
much er the circumstances.

{ hope you agree wit
4 9)

  

said the cherub. “Indeed, I have no doub
fe, Mr. Rokesmith.

 

ends than Mx, and Mis. I I

If Mr. John Harmon had

  
  
  
   
   
   
 
 
  
 
  
   
  
 
 
   
  
 
   
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  

   

to accept

ohn

yuried in the

‘ed.

certain

ar-

 

 
 

e, or a Kine Boy, or
0, or a King Bill, or Bull, or Rum, or Junk, or whatey yer

 

to say—?”
London.
braces, or one epaulette, or an
ves, or something of that land.”

mith,” observed the cheer-
: tha when more of my family were at home and to b

sed. to x¢ emind myse self imme ns sely of that king.
have had in

 

uth of his heart, “as a

 

t O

  

    
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
      

MUTUAL FRIEND,

"No, LI won't so far as to say that,’
little remonstrant against the ve ey deci isive
fe peut he mightn’t have suited Bella, or Bella g

m, or fifty things, whereas now I Te she can choose rs

   

 

 

 

   
  
   
 

« Has she—as you place the confidence in me of speaking on the
subject, you ail excuse my aski 3 she hosen ?”

 

faltered the S
“Oh dear

  

med R.

    

sometimes,”

idan, Si eral

Young ladies
mentioning their choice to th i
“Not in this case, Mr. Rokesmith.
and me there i t of confidence. It v il
ratified only ation dé lates fro
said the cherub, giving a Tittle pu the lappels of hi
the pockets of his trousers. “Ob no, she has not cho

VT

ith

 

   
 
  
    

 

 

 

y young Geor

   

 

Ra Wi. at him with

 
 
  
 
  
 
   
 
 

 

tracted an unaccountable
tinued: “In the days when

 

young G
let hin n ho

npson certainly 1

But it never was serioush
Sh thought of now.

think I m: uy predict will marry for
will have the person and the

 

    
  
  
 
 
  
   
     
     
  
   
     

i

 

i Hae {

    

 

 

 

ee si

The Secretary pursued

§ conversation, and
mn waiting for him.

be 47

“J should thank you lance

   
   

 

       

here by my

Eeven mind me; 3 (
“ And what about

Td el just this, sir. Lt ¢
powers of mine but what that he can do

 

=

{

Bie iene SS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

292 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

gentleman and do his work for me, both together. Now he can’t. To
give himself up to being put in the way of arning a good living and
getting on, he must give me up. Well; he won't.”

“J respect him for it,” said Rokesmith.

“Do ye, sir? I don’t know but what I do myseif. Still that
don’t make it right to let him have his way. So as he won’t give me
up, I’m a-going to give him up.”

“ How, Betty ?”

“Tm a-going to run away from him.”

With an astonished look at the indomitable old face and the bright
eyes, the Secretary repeated, “ Run away from him ?”

“Yes, sir,” said Betty, with one nod. And in the nod and in the
firm set of her mouth, there was a vigour of purpose not to be doubted.

“Come, come!” said the Secretary. “We must talk about this.
Let us take our time over it, and try to get at the true sense of the
case and the true course, by degrees.” -

“Now, lookee here, my dear,” returned old Betty—“asking your
excuse for being so familiar, but being of a time of life a’most to be
your grandmother twice over. Now, lookee, here. "Tis a poor living
and a hard as is to be got out of this work that I’m a doing now,
and but for Sloppy I don’t know as I should have held to it this
long. But it didjust keep us on, the two together. Now that I’m
alone—with even Johnny gone—I’d far sooner be upon my feet and
tiring of myself out, than a sitting folding and foledling by the fire. And
Ill tell you why, 'There’s a deadness steals over me at times, that the
kind of life favours and I don’t like. Now, I seem to have Johnny in
my arms—now, his mother—now, his mother’s mother—now, I seem
to be a child myself, a lying once again in the arms of my own
mother—then I get numbed, thought and senses, till I start out of
my seat, afeerd that I’m a growing like the poor old people that they
brick up in the Unions, as you may sometimes see when they let ’em
out of the four walls to have a warm in the sun, crawling quite
scared about the streets. I wasa nimble girl, and have always
been a active body, as I told your lady, first time ever Isee her good
face. I can still walk twenty mile if I am put toit. Id far better
be a walking than a getting numbed and dreary. I’m a good
fair knitter, and can make many little things to sell. The loan from
your lady and gentleman of twenty shillings to fit out a basket with,
would be a fortune for me. ‘Trudging round the country and tiring of
myself out, I shall keep the deadness off, and get my own bread by
my own labour. And what more can J want ?” 7

“ And this is your plan,” said the Secretary, “ for rumning away ?”

“Show me a better! My deary, show me a better! Why, I know
very well,” said old Betty Higden, “and you know very well, that
your lady and gentleman would sect me up likea queen for the rest of
my life, if so be that we could make it right among us to have it so.
But we can't make it right among us to have it so. I’ve never took
charity yet, nor yet has any one belonging to me. And it would be
forsaking of myself indeed, and forsaking of my children dead and
gone, and forsaking of their children dead and gone, to set up a con-
tradiction now at last.”

 

  

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 293

“Tt might come to be justifiable and unavoidable at last,” the
Secretary gently hinted, with a slight stress on the word.

“T hope it never will! It ain't that I mean to give offence by
being anyways proud,” said the old creature simply, “but that J
want to be of a piece like, and helpful of myself right through to my
death.”

“And to be sure,” added the Secretary, as a comfort for her,
“ Sloppy will be eagerly looking forward to his opportunity of being
to you what you have been to him.”

“Trust him for that, sir!” said Betty, cheerfully. “Though he
had need to be something quick about it, for I’m a getting to be an old
one. But I’m a strong one too, and travel and weather never hurt me
yet! Now, be so kind as speak for me to your lady and gentleman, and
tell °em what I ask of their good friendliness to let me do, and why |
ask it.”

The Secretary felt that there was no gainsaying what was urged
by this brave old heroine, and he presently repaired to Mrs. Bofiin
and recommended her to let Betty Higden have her way, at all events
for the time. “It would be far more satisfactory to your kind
heart, I know,” he said, “to provide for her, but it may be a duty to
respect this independent spirit.” Mrs. Boffin was not proof against
the consideration set before her. She and her husband had worked
too, and had brought their simple faith and honour clean out of dust-
heaps. If they owed a duty to Betty Higden, of a surety that duty
must be done.

“But, Betty,” said Mrs. Boffin, when she accompanied John
Rokesmith back to his room, and shone upon her with the light of
her radiant face, “granted all else, I think I wouldn’t run away.”

«°Twould come easier to Sloppy,” said Mrs. Higden, shaking her
head. “’Twould come easier to me too. But ’tis as you please.”

“When would you go?”

f «“ Now,” was the bright and ready answer. “To-day, my deary,
to-morrow. Bless ye, | am used toit. I know many parts of the
sountry well. When nothing else was to be done, I have worked in
many a market-garden afore now, and in many a hop-garden too.”

«{fI give my consent to your going, Betty—which Mr. Roke-
smith thinks I ought to do—’

Betty thanked him with a grateful curtsey.

«We must not lose sight of you. We must not let you pass out
of our knowledge. We must know all about you.”

“Yes, my deary, but not through letter-writing, because letter-
writing —indeed, writing of most sorts—hadn’t much come up for
such as me when I was young. But I shall be to andfro. No fear of
my missing a chance of giving myself a sight of your reviving face.
Besides,” said Betty, with logical good faith, “I shall have a debt
to pay off, by littles, and naturally that would bring me back, if
nothing else would.”

“ Must it be done?’ asked Mrs. Boffin, still reluctant, of the
Secretary.

“{ think it must.”

After more discussion it was agreed that it shculd be done, and

 

 

 

     
  
 
     
 
  
  
    
    
  
 
   
   
 
    
  
  
 
  
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
    
  
  
 
  
   
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UTt

x Un MULT

 

UAL FRIEND.

 

Boffin summoned Bella to note dow1
were necessary to set t Betty up in ti
me, my dear, stanch old heart,

‘when I take my seat with my work, cli
country market-place, I shall turn a
farn xr’s wife there.”

The Secretary took that opp
question ‘of k Sloppy § 8
wonderful cabinet-mak
money to put him to i
had borrowed to eee tl to kno a broken pi
furniture together, sing manner. As to constructing toy
the Minders, out of not th ing, he had done that daily. And once as
many as a dozen peep! le hed got tc aie in the lane to see the
ss with which he fitted the broken pieces of a foreign monkey’s
cal instrument. “'That’s well,” said the Secretary. “It will
not ibe hard to find atrade for him.’

Jobn EHO being buried under mountains now, the Secretary
: day set himself to finish is affairs and have done
> drew up an ample declaration, to be > signed by Rogue
e could get his sionature to it, by making him
1en considered to

shorter evening call), and t
To Hexam’s son, or daughter ?
would be safer to avoid
Juli Handford,
sibly be some
son and g which would
nd lead to consequences. “I might
nded as having been concerned in my
own murder !” to send it to t hter under cover
by the post. Pleasant Riderhood had undertaken to find out where
she lived, and it was not n¢

he little purchases that
Jon’t ye be timorous for
t of Bella’s face:
ind fresh, in a
as sure aS ever a2

 
     

   

  
  

 

 

 

on the practical

] tena have made a

| 5 | 41
eden, “if ad been the

seen him handle tools that he
a :

   
 
  

     
 

 

1
E

     

 

 

     

 

 
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
 

i
D

    
 

the document ?
to the daughter. But it
] e son had seen

 

 

   

comparison of
awaken elas in
even,” he reflec hae

D1}

 

 

      

  
 
 
   

 

sary that it should be attended by a
mole word of expla nation. So far, straight.
But, all that he ae ow Of ik r he derived from Mrs. Boffin’s

accounts c what she heat i sights vood, who seemed to have
+a 1s

 

    

a reputation for his mz x a story, and to havé made
this s ory ous e es 0) [t interes aa ay and he would like to
have the means of f knowing more—as, for instance, that she received
ue paper, and that i. satisfied her—by opening some
aw
I

 

¢ independent L aoa rood: who likewise had
seer lye Handford, “who had publicly advertised for Julius
Handford, and whom of all men he, the Secretary, most avoided.
‘But with whom the
in a moment face to face

day.”

Now, to cast about for some likely means of opening such a channel.
The boy, Hexam, was training for and with a schoolmaster. The
Secretary knew it, because his sister's share in that disposal of him
seemed to be the best part of Lightwood’s account of the family. This
young fellow, Slop Py, stood in need of some instruction. If he, the
Secretar y, engaged that schoolmaster to impart it to him, the channel

  
 

   

 

  

  

  

  
  
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

 

Mrs. Boffin
}

SCNOOL t

might be ope
x+

  
 

med. The next p
schoolmaster’s name? No, but she |
en01 -romptly the Secretary wi
and that very evening Bradley Hea

The Secretary stated to iil schoolmaster how the ol
send to him for certain occasional evening insti
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin wished to help to an indu
in i fe. The schoolmaster was willing to undertake
a pupil. The Sec retary ine qu ired on what terms ?
‘stated on what terms. A

“May I ask, sir,” said Bradle
I owe a recommendation to you?”

“You should know that I am n¢
Boffin’s Secretary. Mr. Boffin ‘
property of which you may have hear
Harmon property.”

“Myr. Harmon,” said Bradley: who would have been a
more at a loss than he was, if he had known to whom he spoke:
“was murdered, and found in the river.’

«“ Was murdered and found in the river

os Tt was not——”
” interpos

       
  
  
 

Quite
t sch ol,

  

   

 

 

 

   
    
 

ed and disposed of.
‘to who

 

    

 

 

 

 
  
 
 

 

sed the Secretary, smi
ne ended you. Mr. Boffin heard of you

1 think you know Mr.
know as much of him

vequaintance with Mr Lightwood, a
Be oa to Mr. L ightwood, but I have a particular obj
some of Mr. Li htwood’s friends—ain short a
friends. His great friend.”

He could hardly get the words ou i,
did he grow (th ough keeping himse
repression), when the careless and contempt
W rayburn rose before his Re

The Secretary saw there was a sti
point, and he would have made a diy yn m it, but for Bradl
holding x to it in his cumbersome way.

T have no objection to mention the friend by name,” he said,
cealy. “The person I object to, is Mr. Eugene Wray bt e
he Secretary remembered him. In his. CSAS
that fata wh 16D ya was | striving against the drugg
: son; but bh
name, rai his manner of « speaking, and how he ha
to view the body, and where he had stood, and what hé

“Pray, Mr. Headstone, what is the name,” he g asked, ¢
to make a, diversion, “ of yenne et Hexam’s sister ?

«Her name is Lizzie,” said the schoolmaster, with a strong contrac-
tion of his wholk eo

“She is a young woman of a remarkable character; is
oe

  

   

 

 

    

 
   

some sore

lew

 

 

   

 
  
 
 
 

   
  

   
   

 

    

 
 

is sufficiently remarkable to be very superior to ]
—though an ordinary night be that.

   

mn miger

 

   

  
  
  
   
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

296 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

schoolmaster ; “and I hope you will not think it impertinent in me,
sir, to ask why you put the two names together ?”

“By mere accident,” returned the Secretary. “Observing that
Mr. Wrayburn was a disagreeable subject with you, I tried to get
away from it: though not very successfully, it would appear.”

“Do you know Mr. Wrayburn, sir?”

NOx

“‘Then perhaps the names cannot be put together on the
authority of any representation of his 2”

“Certainly not.”

“TI took the liberty to ask,” said Bradley, after casting his eyes on
the ground, “because he is capable of making any representation, in
the swaggering levity of his insolence. I—I hope you will not
misunderstand me, sir. IJ—I am much interested in this brother
and sister, and the subject awakens very strong feelings within me.
Very, very, strong feelings.” With a shaking hand, Bradley took
out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

The Secretary thought, as he glanced at the schoolmaster’s face,
that he had opened a channel here indeed, and that it was an un-
expectedly dark and deep and stormy one, and difficult to sound.
All at once, in the midst of his turbulent emotions, Bradley stopped
and seemed to challenge his look. Much as though he suddenly
asked him, “ What do you see in me?”

“The brother, young Hexam, was your real recommendation here,”
said the Secretary, quietly going back to the point; “Mr. and Mrs.
Boffin happening to know, through Mr. Lightwood, that he was your
pupil. Anything that I ask respecting the brother and sister, or
either of them, I ask for myself, out of my own interest in the
subject, and not in my official character, or on Mr. Boffin’s behalf.
How I come to be interested, I need not explain. You know the
father’s connection with the discovery of Mr. Harmon’s body.”

“Sir,” replied Bradley, very restlessly indeed, “I know all the
circumstances of that case.”

“Pray tell me, Mr. Headstone,” said the Secretary. “Does the
sister suffer under any stigma because of the impossible accusation—
groundless would be a better word—that was made against the
father, and substantially withdrawn ?”

“No, sir,” returned bradley, with a kind of anger.

“T am very glad to hear it.”

“The sister,” said Bradley, separating his words over-carefully,
and speaking as if he were repeating them from a book, “suffers
under no reproach that repels a man of unimpeachable character
who has made for himself every step of his way in life, from placing
her in his own station. I will not say, raising her to his own station ;
I say, placing her in it. The sister labours under no reproach, unless
she should unfortunately make it for herself, When such a man is
not deterred from regarding her as his equal, and when he has con-
vinced himself that there is no blemish on hey, I think the fact must
be taken to be pretty expressive.”

“ And there is such a man?” said the Secretary.
Bradley Headstone knotted his brows, and squared his large lower

  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   

    

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 297

jaw, and fixed his eyes on the ground with an air of determination
that seemed unnecessary to the occasion, as he replied: “ And there is
such a man.”

The Secretary had no reason or excuse for prolonging the conver-
sation, and it ended here. Within three hours the oakum-headed
apparition once more dived intothe Leaving Shop, and that night
Rogue Riderhood’s recantation lay in the post office, addressed under
cover to Lizzie Hexam at her right address.

All these proceedings occupied John Rokesmith so much, that it
was not until the following day that he saw Bella again. \It seemed
then to be tacitly understood between them that they were to be as
distantly easy as they could, without attracting the attention of Mr.
and Mrs. Boffin to any marked change in their manner. ‘The fitting
out of old Betty Higden was favourable to this, as keeping Bella
engaged and interested, and as occupying the general attention.

“] think,” said Rokesmith, when they all stood about her, while
she packed her tidy basket—except Bella, who was busily helping
on her knees at the chair on which it stood; “that at least you might
keep a letter in your pocket, Mrs. Higden, which I would write for
you and date from here, merely stating, in the names of Mr. and Mrs.
Boffin, that they are your friends ;—I won't say patrons, because they
wouldn’t like it.”

“No, no, no,” said Mr. Boffin; “no patronizing! Let’s keep out of
that, whatever we come to.”

“There’s more than enough of that about, without us; ain’t there,
Noddy ?” said Mrs. Boffin.

“JT believe you, old lady!” returned the Golden Dustman. “ Over-
much indeed !”

“But people sometimes like to be patronized; don’t they, sir?”
asked Bella, looking up.

“T don’t. And if they do, my dear, they ought to learn better,”
said Mr. Boffin. “ Patrons and Patronesses, and Vice-Patrons and Vice-
Patronesses, and Deceased Patrons and Deceased Patronesses, and
Eix-Vice-Patrons and Ex-Vice-Patronesses, what does it all mean in the
books of the Charities that come pouring in on Rokesmith as he sits
among ’em pretty well up to his neck! If Mr. Tom Noakes gives his five
shillings ain’t he a Patron, and'if Mrs. Jack Styles gives her five
shillings ain’t she a Patroness? What the deuce is it all about? If
it ain’t stark staring impudence, what do you call it?”

“Don’t be warm, Noddy,” Mrs. Boffin urged.

“Warm!” cried Mr. Boffin. “It’s enough to make a man smoking
hot. I can’t go anywhere without being Patronized. I don’t want
to be Patronized. If I buy a ticket for a Flower Show, or a Music
Show, or any sort of Show, and pay pretty heavy for it, why am 1}
to be Patroned and Patronessed as if the Patrons and Patronesses
treated me? If there’s a good thing to be done, can’t it be done on
its own merits? If there’s a bad thing to be done, can it ever be
Patroned and Patronessed right? Yet when a new Institution’s going
to be built, it seems to me that the bricks and mortar ain’t made of
half so much consequence as the Patrons and Patronesses; no, nor
yet the objects. I wish somebody would tell me whether other

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
    
  
 
 
  
    
 
 
   
   
  
  
  
   
  
 
  
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

 

countries get Patronized to anything like the extent of this one!
And as to the Patrons and Patrone themselves, I wonder they’re
shamed of themselves. They ain’t Pills, or Hair-Washes, or

roratine Nervous Essences, to be puffed in that way !”

 

not

  

 

o
5!
aving delivered himself of these remar ks, Mr. Boftin took a trot
rding to his usual custom, and trotted back to the spot, fr

invi
Ee

     
 
  
  

oh he had started.
\s to the letter, Rokesmith,” said Mr. Boffin, “you're as right as
a trivet. Give her the letter, make her take the letter, put it in her
iolence. She might fall sick—_You know you might fall
Boftin), “ Don’t deny it, Mrs. Higden, in your obsti-
ow you might.”

aughed, and said that

 

>

she would take the letter and be

>)

   

 

. Boffin. “Come! That’s sensible. And
nkful to us s (for we never thought of it), but to Mr.

  

he letter was writt 0, al ind read to her, and given to her.

Nov. how do you feel?” said M ee Boffin. “ Do you like it?”

Uhe letter, sir?” said Betty. 2% it’s a beautiful letter !”

‘No, no, no; not the letter,’ sal ‘a Mr. Boffin; “ “the idea. Are you
re youre strong enough to carry out the idea?’

§ ll be stronger, and keep the deadness off better, this way,

vay left open to me, sir.
2
1

 

i

     

a
“ f

 

‘

 

        

“Do ont say than any way left open, you know pig ffin ;
cause there are ways without er nd. A housekeeper would be

  
 
 

able over yonder at the Bower, for instance. Wouldn’t you
to see > th e Bower, and know a retired BY man of the name
1at lives there—with a wooc :
tty was pee ‘oof even against
adjur sting her | black bonnet Hand shawl.
‘I wouldn’t let you GO, 1 10w it comes to this, after all,” said Mr.
jae if I didn’t hope that it may make a man and a workman of
as short a time as ever a man and a workman was made
7, What have you got there, Betty? Nota doll?”
e man in rhe Guards who had been on duty over Johnny’s
solitary old woman showed what it was, and put it up
1er dress. ‘I'hen, she gratefully took leave of Mrs. Boffin,
and of Mr. Boffin, and of Rokesmith, and then put her old withered
arms round Bella’s youns and blooming neck, and said, repeating
Johnny’s words: “A kiss for the boofer lady.”

The Secre tary look eh on. from a doorway at the boofer lady thus
encircled, and still looked on at pee boofer lady standing alone. there,
when the ceropmined old figure with its steady bright eyes was
trudging through the streets, | away from paralysis and pauperism.

     
 
   

 

   

 

 

 

 

  

LADY.

3
i)
i}
fo}
°
faa)
ics}
iss)
a)

\\
aSee ESS’

>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
 
 
    
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 

R MUTUAL FRIEND. 299

 

CHAPTER XY.

SO FAR.

 

THE WHOLE Cz
BRADLEY HEADSTONE held fast by tl hat
e with Lizzie Hexam. In stip mating
a feeling little short of
him. It was very soon
that he and Charley H
noticed by Miss P
pl lishe d.
“hat dolls’ dressmake
me nor to you, Hexam.”
2 t crooked little chit, } u
"in the way, if she. could, < A. sould be ¢
some thing imp¢ ] that account
to the City t ing my sister.’

[ suppe his gloves on his nervous

  
 
 
 
 

lespe ration, a
his inte
out one leader

      
     
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
      

 

 

ii

    

  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
     
 

    

  

 

Nobody but 1
such an extra
fancy of giving
when we went
“Wi
Bradley
CxO] iy rs
tried to co
he we got to ac 5 i
rest follows. 2
“You are
“ Certainly
ept ¥y
gloomily thou
“ Hveryth
dence. “R
everything !
“To be sure, your sister has always shown herself a devoted s
said Bradley, willing to sustain himself on even that low ground of

AA
She has aone
She told

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

pe tha; ps, 2
: sal said nothing.

n our side,” repe sated the boy witl
ili ellent connexion for me, ¢

   

 

 

VY, a >
J?

   

 
    
   

a good deal of influence with
* confid lence and

“ Naturally, Mr. Headstone, I he
And now that you haves honoured me with you
spoken to me first, I say a we have every lol on our side.’

And Bradley thought ag ar, perhaps.”

A grey dusty w ithered evening Be London oa has not a hopeful
aspect. ‘The closed ware houses and. offices have an air of death aie
them, and the enal dread of ¢ eee a 1as an air of mourning. The
towers and steeples of the many house-encompassed churches, dark

and dingy as the sky that seems descending on them, are no relief

   

 

  
 
  

a « Wxcept your si

  

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

300 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

to the general gloom; a sun-dial on a church-wall has the look, in
its useless black shade, of having failed in its business enterprise and
stopped payment for ever; melancholy waifs and strays of house-
keepers and porters sweep melancholy waifs and strays of papers
and pins into the kennels, and other more melancholy waifs and
strays explore them, searching and stooping and poking for anything
to sell. ‘The set of humanity outward from the City is as a set of
prisoners departing from gaol, and dismal Newgate seems quite
as fit a stronghold for the mighty Lord Mayor as his own state-
dwelling.

On such an evening, when the city grit gets into the hair and
eyes and skin, and when the fallen leaves of the few unhappy city
trees grind down in corners under wheels of wind, the schoolmaster
and the pupil emerged upon the Leadenhall Street region, spying
eastward for Lizzie. Being something too soon in their arrival, they
lurked at a corner, waiting for her to appear. The best-looking:
among us will not look very well, lurking at a corner, and Bradley
came out of that disadvantage very poorly indeed.

“Here she comes, Mr. Headstone! Let us go forward and meet
her.”

As they advanced, she saw them coming, and seemed rather
troubled. But she greeted her brother with the usual warmth, and
touched the extended hand of Bradley.

“Why, where are you going, Charley, dear” she asked him
then.

“Nowhere. We came on purpose to meet you.”

“'T'o meet me, Charley ?”

“Yes. Weare going to walk with you. But don’t let us take
the great leading streets where every one walks, and we can’t hear
ourselves speak. Let us go by the quiet backways. Here’s a large
paved court by this church, and quiet, too. Let us go up here.”

“ But it’s not in the way, Charley.”

“Yet it is,” said the boy, petulantly. “It’s in my way, and my way
is yours.”

She had not released his hand, and, still holding it, looked at him
with a kind of appeal. He avoided her eyes, under pretence of
saying, “Come along, Mr. Headstone.” Bradley walked at his side
—not at hers—and the brother and sister walked hand in hand.
The court brought them to a churchyard; a paved square court,
with a raised bank of earth about breast high, in the middle,
enclosed by iron rails. Here, conveniently and healthfully elevated
above the level of the living, were the dead, and the tombstones;
some of the latter droopingly inclined from the perpendicular, as if
they were ashamed of the lies they told.

They paced the whole of this place once, in a constrained and un-
comfortable manner, when the boy stopped and said:

“Lizzie, Mr. Headstone has something to say to you. I don’t
wish to be an interruption either to him or to you, and so I'll go and
take a little stroll and come back. I know in a general way what
Mr. Headstone intends to say, and I very highly approve of it, as I
hope—and indeed I do not doubt—you will. I needn’t tell you,

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
   
   
 
  
  
 
  
    
   
 
  
  
   
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
   

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 301

Lizzie, that lam under great obligations to Mr. Headstone, and that
T am very anxious for Mr. Headstone to succeed in all he undertakes.
As I hope—and as, indeed, I don’t doubt—you must be.”

“Charley,” returned his sister, detaining his hand as he withdrew
it, “1 think you had better stay. I think Mr. Headstone had better
not say what he thinks of saying.”

“Why, how do you know what it is

“Perhaps I don’t, but—”

“ Perhaps you don’t? No, Liz, I should think not. If you knew
what it was, you would give me a very different answer. There ;
let go; be sensible. I wonder you don’t remember that Mr. Headstone
is looking on.”

She allowed him to separate himself from her, and he, after saying,
“Now, Liz, be a rational girl and a good sister,’ walked away. She
remained standing alone with Bradley Headstone, and it was not
until she raised her eyes, that he spoke.

“TJ said,” he began, “when I saw you last, that there was some-
thing unexplained, which might perhaps influence you. I have come
this evening to explain it. I hope you will not judge of me by my
hesitating manner when I speak to you. You see me at my greatest
disadvantage. It is most unfortunate for me that I wish you to see
me at my best, and that I know you see me at my worst.”

She moved slowly on when he paused, and he moved slowly on
beside her.

«Tt seems egotistical to begin by saying so much about myself,”
he resumed, “ but whatever I say to you seems, even in my own ears,
below what I want to say, and different from what I want to say. I
can’t help it. So itis. You are the ruin of me.”

She started at the passionate sound of the last words, and at the
passionate action of his hands, with which they were accompanied.

“Yes! you are the ruin—the ruin—the ruin—of me. I have no
resources in myself, I have no confidence in myself, I have no
government of myself when you are near me or in my thoughts.
And you are always in my thoughts now. I have never been quit,
of you since I first saw you. Oh, that was a wretched day for me!
That was a wretched, miserable day!”

A touch of pity for him mingled with her dislike of him, and she
said: “Mr. Headstone, I am grieved to have done you any harm, but
I have never meant it.”

“There!” he cried, despairingly. “ Now, I seem to have reproached
you, instead of revealing to you the state of my own mind! Bear
with me. I am always wrong when you are in question. It is my
doom.”

Struggling with himself, and by times looking up at the deserted
windows of the houses as if there could be anything written in their

erimy panes that would help him, he paced the whole pavement at
her side, before he spoke again.

“T must try to give expression to what is in my mind; it shall and
must be spoken. Though you see me so confounded—though you
strike me so helpless—I ask you to believe that there are many
people who think well of me ; that there are some people who highly

9”

returned the boy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
   
  
   
   
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
 
   
  
   
   
  
    
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
    
  
 
  
 
 
 
 

802 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

   

teem me; that I have in my way won a station which is considered
th winning.”
“Surely, Mr. He
known it from Charley.
“Task you to believe that if I were to offer my home such as
it is, my station such as it i my affections such as they are, to any one
of the best considered, and best qualified, and most distineuished,
among the young women engaged in my calling, they would pro-
bably "be ace Even readily acce epted.’
“J do not doubt it,” said Lizzie, with her eyes upon the d.
“TI have sometimes had it in my thoughts to make that « an a
to settle down as many men of my class do: I on the one He of ¢
on the other, both of us interested in the same

 

     

   

I do believe it. Surely I have alw:

 

 

 

 
 

     

    

   

school, my wite
work.”
“ Why have you no
you not do so?
“Far | r that I ae did! The only one grain of comfort I
have had these many weeks,” he said, always speaking passionately, and,
vhen most emphatic, repeating that former action of his hands,
rae 1 ike flinging his heart’s blood down before her in drops upon
the pavement-stones; “the only one grain of comfort I have had these
many weeks is, that I never did. For ifI had, and if the same spell
had come upon me for my ruin, I know I should have broken that
tie asunder as if it had been thread.
She glanced at him with a glance of fear, and a shrink ing gesture.
He a goeyore cd, as if she had spoken
“No! It would not have been voluntary on my part, any more

asked Lizzie Hexam. “ Vhy do

 

    

 

 

 

than it is volu ntary in me to be here now. You draw me to you.

{f I were shut up ina strong prison, you would draw me out. I aiald
break through the w allto come to you. If I were lying on a sick bed,
you would draw me up—to stagger to your feet and fall there.”

The w. energy of the man, now quite let loose, was absolutely
terrible. e stopped ¢ and | laid his eal upon a piece of the coping of
the burial-: d enclos if he would havo dis slodged the stone.

“No man eck ws till the time comes, what depths are within him.

it never comes; let ike m rest and be thankful! To
it ; i él ee bottom of this
1¢ breast, “has been heaved u Ip

   

 

 

   

   

   

—
ct

Let me stoy Pp oe he TRE =
Let us rd my brother.”
ae aise a spoken. I have been in torme me
J stopp aa short of it before. You are alarmed. It i

 

 

ever

another of my miseries that I cannot speak to you or s
rithout stumblit ng at every ve

i

    

, unless I let the
ere is a man lighting the lamps.
reat of you let us walk round this place e
son to look alarmed; I can restrain myself,

   

ogvether and run mad. H
Sali be gone directly.’ J
again. You have no xe
and I will.’

 

   

She yielded to the entreaty—how could she do otherwise !—and
they paced the stones in silence. One by one the lights leaped up

  

  

          
  
  
  
  
 
    
 
 
  
   
   
 
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  

  
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 303

making the cold grey church tower more remote, and they were
alone again. He said no more until they had regained the gp
where he had broken off; there, he again stood still, and aga
grasped the stone. In saying what he said then, he never look
at her; but looked at it and wrenched at it.
“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other
tel

 

oO

men may mean w hen they use that expression, I cannot rat
f mean is, that 1 am under the influence of some tremendous attrac-
tion which I haye resisted in vain, and which overmasters me.
You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, yo
could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, vol UW (|
could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw
me to any exposure and dis T

ip se on ane nn

  
 

 

 

erace. ‘his and the confusion of
my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your
being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable answe |
to my offer of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any ane
every good—with equal force. My circumstances are quite easy,
and you would want for nothing. My reputation stands quite hig
and would be a shield for yours. If you saw me at my work, Rs
to do it well and respected in it, you might even come to take a sort
of pride in me ;—I would try hard that you should. Whatever con-
siderations I may have thought of against this offer, I have conquered,
and I make it with all my heart. Your brother ars me to the |
utmost, and it is likely that we might live and work together; any-
how, it is certain that he would have 1 my best influence and support,
I don’t know that I could say more if I tried. [I might only we ue
what is ill enough said as it is. I only add that if
claim on you in earnest, J am in thorough staat Bi 2
earnest.”

The powdered mortar from under the stone at which he wi
rattled on the pavement to confirm his words.

“Mr. Headstone ——”

BSLOp eel implox ‘e you, before you answer me, to wal
place once n t will give you a minute’s time to
@ Ioinute’s time tol: get t some fortitude toge er

 

 

1,
16

 
 
   

     

 

    

         

  

Again she yielde sd to the entreaty, and < to
the same place in he worked at the s
SOARS aie ¢ doys i i it,

“yes, or no?”

“Mr. Headstone, I thank
and hope you may find a wortl Ly wite States e long
But it is no.”

“Ts no short time nec
asked, in the same half-suf

“None whatever.”

“Are you quite decided, and is
my favor ?”

“Tam quite decided, Mr. Headstone, and I am bound to answer I
am certain there is none.”

“Then,” said he, suddenly changing his tone and turning to her,
and bringing his clenched hand down upon the stone with a force

    

 

and be - Vel

 

  
 

ry for refléction; no weeks or days?” he
focated way.

  

Tana ee An Gata ticaire noe in
there no chance of any change in

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
   
 
 
 
 
   
  

TET:

304 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

that laid the knuckles raw and bleeding; “then I hope that I may
never kill him!”

The dark look of hatred and revenge with which the words broke
from his livid lips, and with which he stood holding out his smeared
hand as if it held some weapon and had just struck a mortal blow,
made her so afraid of him that she turned to run away. But he
caught her by the arm.

“Mr. Headstone, let me go. Mr. Headstone, I must call for help!”

“Jt is I who should call for help,” he said; “you don’t know yet
how much I need it.”

The working of his face as she shrank from it, glancing round for
her brother and uncertain what to do, might have extorted a cry
from her in another instant; but all at once he sternly stopped it
and fixed it, as if Death itself had done so.

“There! You see I have recovered myself. Hear me out.”

With much of the dignity of courage, as she recalled her self-
reliant life and her right to be free from accountability to this man,
she released her arm from his grasp and stood looking full at him.
She had never been so handsome, in his eyes. A shade came over
them while he looked back at her, as if she drew the very light out
of them to herself.

“This time, at least, I will leave nothing unsaid,” he went on,
folding his hands before him, clearly to prevent his being be-
trayed into any impetuous gesture; “this last time at least I will not
be tortured with after-thoughts of a lost opportunity. Mr. Eugene
Wrayburn.”

“Was it of him you spoke in your ungovernable ra
lence?” Lizzie Hexam demanded with spirit.

He bit his lip, and looked at her, and said never a word.

“Was it Mr. Wrayburn that you threatened ?”

He bit his lip again, and looked at her, and said never a word.

“You asked me to hear you out, and you will not speak. Let me
find my brother.”

“Stay! I threatened no one.”

Her look dropped for an instant to his bleeding hand. He lifted
it to his mouth, wiped it on his sleeve, and again folded it over the
other. “Mr. Eugene Wrayburn,” he repeated.

“Why do you mention that name again and again, Mr. Head-
stone ?”

“Because it is the text of the little I have left to say. Observe!
There are no threats init. If I utter a threat, stop me, and fasten
it upon me. Mr. Eugene Wrayburn.”

A worse threat than was conveyed in his manner of uttering the
name, could hardly have escaped him.

“He haunts you. You accept favors from him. You are willing
enough to listen to him. I know it, as well as he does.”

“My. Wrayburn has been considerate and good to me, sir,” said
Lizzie, proudly, “in connexion with the death and with the memory
of my poor father.”

“No doubt. He is of course a very considerate and a very good
man, Mr, Eugene Wrayburn.”

eve and vio-

Oo

  

          
  
 
 
  
    
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

# Serene ot

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 305

“He is nothing to you, I think,” said Lizzie, with an indignation
she could not repress.

“Oh yes, he is. There you mistake. He is much to me.”

“What can he be to you?”

“ He can be a rival to me among other things,” said Bradley.

“Mr. Headstone,” returned Lizzie, with a burning face, “it is
cowardly in you to nak to me in this way. But it makes me
able to tell you that I do not like you, and that I never have liked
you from the first, and that no other livi ing creature has anything to
do with the effect you have produced upon me for yourself.”

His head bent for a moment, as if under a weight, and he then
looked up again, moistening his lips. “I was going on with the aE
little I had left’ to say. J “Inew all this about Mr. ‘Eugene Wray-
burn, all the while you were drawing me to you. I strove against We
the knowledge, but quite in vain. “It made no difference in me. wi i
With Mr. Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I went on. With iy
Mr. Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I spoke to you just now. With i
Mr. Hugene Wrayburn in my mind, I have been set aside and I have Hae |
been cast out.” Htc

“If you give those names to my thanking you for your proposal
and declining it, is it my fault, Mr. Headstone?” said Lizzie, com-
passionating the bitter struggle he could not conceal, almost as
much as she was repelled and alarmed by it.

“J am not complaining,” he returned, “I am only stating the case.
I had to wrestle with my self-respect when I submitted to be drawn
to you in spite of Mr. Wrayburn. You may imagine how low my
self-respect lies now.”

She was hurt and angry; but repressed herself in consideration of
his suffering, and of his being her brother’s friend.

“ And it lies under his feet,” said Bradley, unfolding his hands in
spite of himself, and fiercely motioning with them both towards the
stones of the pavement. “ Remember that! It les under that fellow’s
feet, and he treads upon it and exults above it.”

“He does not!” said Lizzie.

“He does!” said Bradley. “I have stood before him face to face,
and he crushed me down in the dirt of his contempt, and walked
over me. Why? Because he knew with triumph what was in store
for me to-night.”

“O, Mr. Headstone, you talk quite wildly.”

“Quite collectedly. I know what I say too well. Now I have
said all. 1 have used no threat, remember; I have done no more
than show you how the case stands ; — how the case stands, so
far,”

At this moment her brother sauntered into view close by. She
darted to him, and caught him by the hand. Bradley followed, and
laid his heavy hand on . the boy’ s opposite shoulder.

“Charley Hexam, I am going home. I must walk home by myself
to-night, and get shut up in my room without being spoken to. Give
me half an hour’ 's start, and let me be, till you find me at my work
in the morning. I shall be at my work in the morning just as
usual.”

VOL. I. x

 

   

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

306 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Clasping his hands, he uttered a short unearthly broken cry, and
went his way. ‘The brother and sister were left looking at one
another near a lamp in the solitary churchyard, and the boy’s face
clouded and darkened, as he said in a rough tone: “What is the
meaning of this? What have you done to my best friend? Out with
the truth |”

“Charley!” said his sister. “Speak a little more considerately !”

“JT am not in the humour for consideration, or for nonsense of a any
sort,’ replied the boy. “ What have you.been doing? Why has Mr
Headstone gone from us in that way ?”

“He asked me—you know he asked me—to be his wife, Charley.’

“Well?” said the boy, impatiently.

“ And I was obliged to tell him that I could not be his wife.”

“You were obliged to tell him,” repeated the boy angrily, between
his teeth, and rudely pushing her away. “You were obliged to tell
him! Do you know that he is worth fifty of you?”

“Tt may easily be so, Charley, but I cannot marry him.”

“You mean that you are conscious that you can’t appreciate
him, and don’t deserve him, I suppose ?”

“T mean that I do not like him, Charley, and that I will never
marry him.”

“ Upon my soul,” exclaimed the boy, “you are a nice picture of a

sister! Upon my soul, you are a pretty piece of disinterestedness!
And so all my endeavours to cancel the past and to raise myself in
the world, and to raise you with me, are to be beaten down by your
low whims ; are they ?”

“J will not reproach you, Charley.’

“Hear her!” exclaimed the boy, looking round at the darkness.
“She won't reproach me! She does her Dent to destroy my fortunes
and her own, and she won't reproach me! W ‘hy, you'll te I me, next,
that you won't reproach Mr. Headstone for coming out of the sphere
to which he is an ornament, and putting himself at your feet, to
be rejected by you /”

“No, Charley; I will only tell you, as I told himself, that I thank
him for doing so, that I am sorry he did so, and that I hope he
will do much “better, and be happy.”

Some touch of compunction smote the boy’s hardening heart as he
looked upon her, his patient little nurse in infancy, his patient friend,
adviser, and reclaimer in boyhood, the self-forgettine sister who had
done everything for him. His tone relented, and he drew her arm
through his.

“Now, come, Liz; don’t let us quarrel: let us be reasonable and

talk this over like brother and sister. Will you listen to me?”

“Oh, Charley!” she replied through her sti urting tears; “do I not
listen to you, and hear many hard things!’ :

“hen Lam sorry. ‘There, Liz! Jam unfeignedly sorry. Only
you do put me out so. Now see. Mr. Headstone is perfectly
devoted to you. He has told me in the strongest manner that he has
never been his old self for one single minute since I first brought
him to see you. Miss Peecher, our schoolmistress—pretty and young,
and all that—is known to be very much attached to him, and he

?

 

   

  
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
    
  
  
  
   
  
     

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 3807

won't so much as look at her or hear of her. Now, his devotion to
you must be a disinterested one; mustn’t it? If he marricd Miss
Peecher, he would be a great deal better off in all worldly respects,
than in marrying you. Well then; he has nothing to get by it, has
he?”

“ Nothing, Heaven knows!”

“Very well then,” said the boy; “that’s something in his favour,
and a great thing. Then Icome in. Mr. Headstone has always got
me on, and he has a good deal in his power, and of course if he was
my brother-in-law he wouldn’t get me on less, but would eet me on
more. Mr. Headstone comes and confides in me, in a very delicat
way, and says, ‘I hope my marrying your sister would be agreeable
to you, Hexam, and useful to you?’ I say, ‘There’s nothing in the
world, Mr. Headstone, that I could be better pleased with’ Mr.
Headstone says, ‘Then I may rely upon your intimate Knowledge of
me for your good word with your sister, Hexam? And I say, ‘Cer-
tainly, Mr, Headstone, and naturally I have a good deal of influence
with her.’ So I have; haven’t I, Liz?”

“Yes, Charley.”

“Well said! Now, you see, we begin to get on, the moment
we begin to be really talking it over, like brother and sister.
Very well. Then you come in. As Mr. Headstone’s wife you
would be occupying a most respectable station,and you would be
holding a far better place in society than you hold now, and you
would at length get quit of the river-side and the old disagreeables
belonging to it, and you would be rid for good of dolls’ dressmakers
and their drunken fathers, and the like of that. Not that I want to
disparage Miss Jenny Wren: I dare say she is all very well in her
way; but her way is not your way as Mr. Headstone’s wife. Now,
you see, Liz, on all three accounts—on Mr. Headstone’s, on mine, on
yours—nothing could be better or more desirable.”

They were walking slowly as the boy spoke, and here he stood
still, to see what effect he had made. His sister’s eyes wero fixed
upon him; but as they showed no yielding, and as she remained
silent, he walked her on again. There was some discomfiture in his
tone as he resumed, though he tried to conceal it.

“Having so much influence with you, Liz, as I have, perhaps I
Should have done better to have had a little chat with you in the
first instance, before Mr. Headstone spoke for himself. But really all
this in his favour seemed so plain and undeniable, and I Inew you
to have always been so reasonable and sensible, that I didn’t con-
sider it worth while. Very likely that was a mistake of mine. How-
ever, it’s soon set right. All that need be done to set it right, is for
you to tell me at once that 1 may go home and tell Mr. Headstone
that what has taken place is not final, and that it will all come round
by-and-by.” :

He stopped again. The pale face looked anxiously and lovingly at
him, but she shook her head.

“Can’t you speak?” said the boy sharply.

“Tam very unwilling to speak, Charley. If I must, I must. I
cannot authorize you to say any such thing to Mr, Headstone: I can-
x2

 

   

ep,

te

   
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

ay

tien alee a ia ea

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

   

308 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
not allow you to say any such thing to Mr. Headstone. Nothing
yemains to be said to him from me, after what I have said for good
and all, to-night.”

“And this girl,” cried the boy, contemptuously throwing her off
again, “calls herself a sister!”

“Charley, dear, that is the second time that you have almost
struck me. Don’t be hurt by my words. I don’t mean—Heaven
forbid !—that you intended it; but you hardly know with what a
sudden swing you removed yourself from me.”

“ Towever!” said the boy, taking no heed of the remonstrance,
and pursuing his own mortified disappointment, “I know what this
means, and you shall not disgrace me.”

“T+ means what I have told you, Charley, and nothing more.”

“That's not true,” said the boy in a violent tone, “and you know
it’snot. Itmeans your precious Mr. Wrayburn ; that’s what it means.”

“ Charley! If you remember any old days of ours together, forbear !”

“But you shall not disgrace me,” doggedly pursued the boy. “1
am determined that after I have climbed up out of the mire, you
shall not pull me down. You can’t disgrace me if I have nothing to
do with you, and I will have nothing to do with you for the future.”

“Charley! On many a night like this, and many a worse night, I
have sat on the stones of the street, hushing you in my arms.
Unsay those words without even saying you are sorry for them, and
my arms are open to you still, and so is my heart.”

“Tl not unsay them. Tl say them again. You are an inveterately
bad girl, and a false sister, and [ have done with you. For ever, |
have done with you!”

He threw up his ungrateful and ungracious hand as if it set up a
parrier between them, and flung himself upon his heel and left her.
She remained impassive on the same spot, silent and motionless,
until the striking of the church clock roused her, and she turned
away. But then, with the breaking up of her immobility came the
breaking up of the waters that the cold heart of the selfish boy had
frozen. And “O that I were lying here with the dead!” and “O
Charley, Charley, that this should be the end of our pictures in
the fire!” were all the words she said, as she laid her face in her
hands on the stone coping.

A figure passed by, and passed on, but stopped and looked round
at her. It was the figure of an old man with a bowed head, wearing
a large brimmed low-crowned hat, and a long-skirted coat. After
hesitating a little, the figure turned back, and, advancing with an
air of gentleness and compassion, said :

“Pardon me, young woman, for speaking to you, but you are
under some distress of mind. I cannot pass upon my way and leave
you weeping here alone, as if there was nothing in the place. Can I
help you? Can I do anything to give you comfort ?”

She raised her head at the sound of these kind words, and answered
gladly, “O, Mr. Riah, is it you?”

“My daughter,” said the old man, “I stand amazed! I spoke as
toa stranger. ‘Take my arm, take my arm. What grieves you’
Who has done this? Poor girl, poor girl!”

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 309

“My brother has quarrelled with me,” sobbed Lizzie, “and re-
nounced me.”

“He is a thankless dog,” said the Jew, angrily. “Let him go.
Shake the dust from thy feet and let him go. Come, daughter!
Come home with me—it is but across the road—and take a little
time to recover your peace and to make your eyes seemly, and then
JT will bear you company through the streets. For it is past your
usual time, and will soon be late, and the way is long, and there is
much company out of doors to-night.”

She accepted the support he offered her, and they slowly passed
out of the churchyard. ‘They were in the act of emerging into the
main thoroughfare, when another figure loitering discontentedly by,
and looking up the street and down it, and all about, started and
exclaimed, “ Lizzie! why, where have you been? Why, what's the
matter ?”

As Eugene Wrayburn thus addressed her, she drew closer to the
Jew, and bent her head. The Jew having taken in the whole of
Eugene at one sharp glance, cast his eyes upon the ground, and stood
mute,

“Lizzie, what is the matter ?”

“Mr. Wrayburn, I cannot tell you now. I cannot tell you to-
night, if I ever can tell you. Pray leave me.”

“But, Lizzie, I came expressly to joi you. I came to walk home
with you, having dined at a coffee-house in this neighbourhood and
knowing your hour. And I have been lingering about,’ added
Eugene, “ like a bailiff; or,” with a look at Riah, “an old clothesman.”

The Jew lifted up his eyes, and took in Eugene once more, at
another glance.

“Mr. Wrayburn, pray, pray, leave me with this protector. And
one thing more. Pray, pray be careful of yourself.”

“Mysteries of Udolpho!” said Eugene, with a look of wonder.
“May I be excused for asking, in the elderly gentleman’s presence,
who is this kind protector ?”

“ A trustworthy friend,” said Lizzie.

“JT will relieve him of his trust,’ returned Eugene. “ But you
must tell me, Lizzie, what is the matter ?”

«“ Fler brother is the matter,” said the old man, lifting up his eyes

again.

~« Our brother the matter?” returned Eugene, with airy contempt.
“Our brother is not worth a thought, far less a tear. What has our
brother done ?”

The old man lifted up his eyes again, with one grave look at
Wrayburn, and one grave glance at Lizzie, as she stood looking
down. Both were so full of meaning that even Hugene was checked
in his light career, and subsided into a thoughtful “« Humph!”

With an air of perfect patience the old man, remaining mute and
keeping his eyes cast down, stood, retaining Lizzie’s arm, as though,
in his habit of passive endurance, it would be all one to him if he had
stood there motionless all night.

“Tf Mr. Aaron,” said Eugene, who soon found this fatiguing, “ will
be good enough to relinquish his charge to me, he will be quite

   

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

310 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

free for any engagement he may haye at the Synagogue. Mr. Aaron,
will you have the kindness ?”

But the old man stood stock still.

“Good evening, Mr. Aaron,” said Hugene, politely ; “we need not
detain you.” Then turning to Lizzie, “Is our friend Mr. Aaron a
little deaf ?” :

“My hearing is very good, Christian gentleman,” replied the old
man, calmly; “but I will hear only one voice to-night, desiring me
to leave this damsel before I have conveyed her to her home.
requests it, I will do it. I will do it for no one else.”

“May Task why so, Mr. Aaron?” said Eugene, quite undisturbed
in his ease.

“Excuse me. If she asks me, I will tell her,” replied the old man.
“J will tell no one else.”

“T do not ask you,’ said Lizzie, “and I beg you to take me
home. Mr. Wrayburn, I have had a bitter trial tonight, and I hope
you will not think me ungrateful, or mysterious, or changeable. 1}
am neither; I am wretched. Pray remember what I said to you.
Pray, pray, take care.”

“ My dear Lizzie,” he returned, in a low voice, bending over her
on the other side; “of what? Of whom?”

“Of any one you have lately seen and made angry.”

He snapped his fingers and laughed. “Come,” said he, “since no
better may be, Mr. Aaron and I will divide this trust, and see you
home together. Mr. Aaron on that side; I on this. If perfectly
agreeable to Mr. Aaron, the escort will now proceed.”

He knew his power over her. He knew that she would not insist
upon his leaving her. He knew that, her fears for him being
aroused, she would be uneasy if he were out of her sight. For all
his seeming levity and carelessness, he knew whatever he chose to
imow of the thoughts of her heart.

And going on at her side, so gaily, regardless of all that had been
urged against him; so superior in his sallies and self-possession to
the gloomy constraint of her suitor and the selfish petulance of her
brother ; so faithful to her, as it seemed, when her own stock was
faithless; what an immense advantage, what an overpowering
influence, were his that night! Add to the rest, poor girl, that she
had heard him vilified for her sake, and that she had suffered for
his, and where the wonder that his occasional tones of serious
interest (setting off his carelessness, as if it were assumed to calm
her), that his lightest touch, his lightest look, his very presence
beside her in the dark common street, were like glimpses of an
enchanted world, which it was natural for jealousy and malice and
all meanness to be unable to bear the brightness of, and to gird at
as bad spirits might.

Nothing more being said of repairing to Riah’s, they went direct
to Lizzie’s lodging. A little short of the house-door she parted from
them, and went in alone.

“Mr. Aaron,” said Eugene, when they were left tc
street, “with many thanks for your company, it re
unwillingly to say Farewell.”

 

Ff

she

 

 

rether in the
mains for me

 

   

  
 
 
   
  
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

      
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. sll

« Sir,” returned the other, “I give you good night, and I wish that
you were not so thoughtless.”

“Mr. Aaron,” retumed Eugene, “I give you good night, and I wish
(for you are a little dull) that you were not so thoughtful.”

But now, that his part was played out for the evening, and when
in turning his back upon the Jew he came off the stage, he was
thoughtful himself. “How did Lightwood’s catechism run?” he
murmured, as he stopped to light his cigar. ‘“ What is to come of
it? What are you doing? Where are you going? We shall soon
know now. Ah!” with a heavy sigh.

The heavy sigh was repeated as if by an echo, an hour afterwards,
when Riah, who had been sitting on some dark steps in a corner
over against the house, arose and went his patient way ; stealing
through the streets in his ancient dress, like the ghost of a departed
Time.

 

CHAPTER XVI.
AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION.

Tip estimable Twemlow, dressing himself in his lodgings over the
stable-yard in Duke Street, Saint James’s, and hearing the horses at
their toilette below, finds himself on the whole in.a disadvantageous
position as compared with the noble animals at livery. Hor whereas,
on the one hand, hehas noattendant to slap him soundingly and require
him in gruff accents to come up and come over, still, on the other hand,
he has no attendant at all; and the mild gentleman’s finger-jomts
and other joints working rustily in the morning, he. could deem. it
agreeable even to be tied up by the countenance at his chamber-
door, so he were there skilfully rubbed down and slushed and sluiced
and polished and clothed, while himself taking merely a passive part in
these trying transactions.

How the fascinating Tippins gets on when arraying herself for the
bewilderment of the senses of men, is known only to the Graces and her
maid; but perhaps even that engaging creature, though not reduced
to the self-dependence of 'T'wemlow, could dispense with a good deal
of the trouble attendant on the daily restoration of her charms,
seeing that as to her face and neck this adorable divinity 1s, as
it were, a diurmal species of lobster—throwing off a shell every
forenoon, and needing to keep in a retired spot until the new crust
hardens.

Howbeit, Twemlow doth at length invest himself with collar and
cravat and wristbands to his knuckles, and goeth forth to breakfast.
And to breakfast with whom but his near neighbours, the Lammles of
Sackville Street, who have imparted to him that he will meet his
distant kinsman, Mr. Fledgely. The awful Snigsworth might taboo
and prohibit Fledgely, but the peaceable ‘Twemlow reasons, “If he
is my kinsman I didn’t make him so, and to meet a man is not to

‘mow him.”
Tt is the first anniversary of the happy marriage of Mr. and Mrs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

312 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Lammile, and the celebration is a breakfast, because a dinner on the
desired scale of sumptuosity cannot be achieved within less limits than
those of the non-existent palatial residence of which so many people
are madly envious. So, ‘T'wemlow trips with not a little stiffness across
Piccadilly, sensible of having once been more upright in figure and
less in danger of being knocked down by swift vehicles. ‘To be sure
that was in the days when he hoped for leave from the dread Snigs-
worth to do something, or be something, in life, and before that
magnificent Tartar issued the ukase, “As he will never distinguish
himself, he must be a poor gentleman-pensioner of mine, and let him
hereby consider himself pensioned.”

Ah! my Twemlow! Say, little feeble grey personage, what
thoughts are in thy breast to-day, of the Fancy—so still to call her
who bruised thy heart when it was green and thy head brown—and
whether it be better or worse, more painful or less, to believe in the
Fancy to this hour, than to know her for a greedy armour-plated
crocodile, with no more capacity of imagining the delicate and
sensitive and tender spot behind thy waistcoat, than of going straight
at it with a knitting-needle. Say likewise, my 'T'wemlow, whether it
be the happier lot to be a poor relation of the great, or to stand in
the wintry slush giving the hack horses to drink out of the shallow
tub at the coach-stand, into which thou hast so nearly set thy
uncertain foot. ‘Twemlow says nothing, and goes on.

As he approaches the Lammles’ door, drives up a little one-horse
carriage, containing 'Tippins the divine. ‘Tippins, letting down the
window, playfully extols the vigilance of her cavalier in being in
waiting there to hand her out. Twemlow hands her out with as much
polite gravity as if she were anything real, and they proceed upstairs :
Tippins all abroad about the legs, and seeking to express that those
unsteady articles are only skipping in their native buoyancy.

And dear Mrs. Lammle and dear Mr. Lammle, how do you do,
and when are you going down to what’s-itsname place—Guy, Earl
of Warwick, you know—what is it ?—Dun Cow—to claim the flitch
of bacon? And Mortimer, whose name is for ever blotted out from
my list of lovers, by reason first of fickleness and then of base
desertion, how do you do, wretch? And Mr. Wrayburn, you here!
What can you come for, because we are all very sure beforehand that
you are not going to talk! And Vencering, M.P., how are things
going on down at the house, and when will you turn out those
terrible people for us? And Mrs. Veneering, my dear, can it posi-
tively be true that you go down to that stifling place night after
night, to hear those men prose? ‘Talking of which, Veneering, why
don’t you prose, for you haven’t opened your lips there yet, and we
are dying to hear what you have got to say to us! Miss Podsnap,
charmed to see you. Pa, here? No! Ma, neither? Oh! Mr.
Boots! Delighted. Mr. Brewer! This is a gathering of the clans.
Thus Tippins, and surveys Fledgeby and outsiders through golden
glass, murmuring as she turns about and about, in her innocent giddy
way, Anybody else I know? No, I think not. Nobody there. Nobody
there. Nobody anywhere!

Mr. Lammle, all a-glitter, produces his friend Fledgeby, as

  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
    

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

dying for the honour of presentation to Lady Tippins. Fledgeby pre-
sented, has the air of going to say something, has the air of going to
say nothing, has an air successively of meditation, of resignation, and
of desolation, backs on Brewer, makes the tour of Boots, and fades into
the extreme background, feeling for his whisker, as if it might have
turned up since he was there five minutes ago.

But Lammle has him out again before he has so much as completely
ascertained the bareness of the land. He would seem to be in a bad
way, Fledgeby ; for Lammle represents him as dying again. He is
dying now, of want of presentation to Twemlow.

Twemlow offers his hand. Glad to see him. “Your mother, sir,
was a connexion of mine.”

“T believe so,” says Fledgeby, “but my mother and her family
were two.”

“ Are you staying in town?” asks ‘Twemlow.

“JT always am,” says Fledgeby.

“You like town,” says Twemlow. But is felled flat by Fledgeby’s
taking it quite ill, and replying, No, he don’t like town. Lammle
tries to break the force of the fall, by remarking that some people
do not like town. Fledgeby retorting that he never heard of any
such case but his own, 'I'wemlow goes down again heavily.

“ There is nothing new this morning, I suppose?” says Twemlow,
returning to the mark with great spirit.

Fledgeby has not heard of anything.

“No, there’s not a word of news,” says Lammle.
“Not a particle,” adds Boots.
“Not an atom,” chimes in Brewer.

Somehow the execution of this little concerted piece appears to
raise the general spirits as with a sense of duty done, and sets the
company a going. Everybody seems more equal than before, to the
calamity of being in the society of everybody else. Hven Eugene
standing in a window, moodily swinging the tassel of a blind,
gives it a smarter jerk now, as if he found himself in better
case.

Breakfast announced. Everything on table showy and gaudy, but
witha self-assertingly temporary and nomadic air on the decorations,
as boasting that they will be much more showy and gaudy in the
palatial residence. Mr. Lammle’s own particular servant behind his
chair; the Analytical behind Veneering’s chair ; instances in point
that such servants fall into two classes: one mistrusting the master’s
acquaintances, and the other mistrusting the master. Mr. Lammle’s
servant, of the second class. Appearing to be lost in wonder and low
spirits because the police are so long im coming to take his master
up on some charge of the first magnitude. ’

Veneering, M.P., on the right of Mrs. Lammle; T'wemlow on her
left; Mrs. Veneering, W.M.P. (wife of Member of Parliament), and
Lady Tippins on Mr. Lammle’s right and left. But be sure that
well within the fascination of Mr. Lammle’s eye and smile sits little
Georgiana. And be sure that close to little Georgiana, also under
inspection by the same gingerous gentleman, sits Fledgeby.

Oftener than twice or thrice while breakfast is in progress, Mr.

 

ete eee

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31 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Hq

Twemlow givesa little sudden turn towards Mrs. Lammle, and
then says to her, “I beg your pardon!” This not being Esemlonis
usual way, why is it his way to-day? Why, the truth i is, T'wemlow
repeatedly labours under the impression that Mrs. Lammle is going
to speak to him, and turning finds that it is not so, and mostly that
she has her eyes upon Veneering. Strange that this impression so
abides by Twemlow after being corrected, yet so it is.

Lady Tippins partaking plentifully of the fruits of the carth
(indluding grape-juice in the category) becomes livelier, and applies
herself to elicit sparks from M ainen Lightwood. It is always
understood among the initiated, that that faithless lover must be
planted at table opposite to Lady Tippins, who will then strike con-
versational fire out of him. Ina pause of mastication and degluti-
tion, Lady 'Tippins, contemplating Mortimer, recalls that it was at
our dear Veneerings, and in the presence of a party who are surely
all here, that he told them his story of the man from somewhere,
which afterwards became so horribly interesting and vulgarly
popular.

“Yes, Lady Tippins,” assents Mortimer; “as they say on the stage,

Even so!”

“Then we expect you,” retorts the charmer, “to sustain your
re putation, and tell us something else.”

“Lady Tippins, I exhausted my self for life that day, and there is
nothing more to be got out of me.’

Mortimer parties thus, with a sense upon him that elsewhere it is
Eugene and ae Ae who is the jester, and that im these circles where
Eugene persists = being speechless, he, Mortimer, is but the double
of the friend on whom he has founded himself.

“But,” quoth the fascinating Tippins, “I am resolved on getting
something more out of you. Traitor! what is this I hear about another
disappearance ?

“As it is you who have heard it,” returns Lightwood, “perhaps
yowll tell us.”

“ Monster, away !” retorts Lady Tippins. “ Your own Golden Dust-
man referred me to you.”

Mr. Lammle, striking in here, proclaims aloud that. there is <
sequel to the story of the man from,somewhere. Silence ensues
upon the proclamation.

“T assure you,” says Lightwood, glancing round the table, “I
have nothing to tell.” But “Eugene : adding in a low _yoic e, “ There,
toll it, tell it!” he corrects himself with the ad dition, “ N jothing worth
mentioning.”

Boots and Brewer immediately perceive that if is immensely
worth mentioning, and become politely clamorous. Veneerig is
also visited by a perception to the same effect. But it is understood
that his attention is now rather used up, and difficult to hold, that
being the tone of the House of Commons.

«Pp, ray don’t be at the trouble of composing yourselves to listen,”
says s Mortimer Lightwood, “ because I shall have finished long before
you have fallen into comfortable attitudes. It’s like—,

“It's like,” impatiently interrupts Eugene, “the children’s narrative:

 

    
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
    
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
    

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Tl tell you a story

“<Of Jack a Manory,

«* And now my story’s begun ;
«<T'll tell you another

“<Of Jack and his brother,

*** And now my story is done.’

—Get on, and get it over!”

Eugene says this with a sound of vexation in his voice, leaning
back in his chair and looking balefully at Lady Tippins, who nods
to him as her dear Bear, and playfully insinuates that she (a self-
evident proposition) is Beauty, and he Beast.

“The reference,” proceeds Mortimer, “ which I swppose to be made
by my honorable and fair enslaver opposite, is to the following
circumstance. Very lately, the young woman, Lizzie Hexam,
daughter of the late Jesse Hexam, otherwise Gaffer, who will be
remembered to have found the body of the man from somewhere,
mysteriously received, she knew not from whom, an explicit retracta-
tion of the charges made against her father, by another water-side
character of the name of Riderhood. Nobody believed them, because
little Rogue Riderhood—I am tempted into the paraphrase by
remembering the charming wolf who would have rendered society a
great service if he had devoured Mr. Riderhood’s father and mother
in their infancy—had previously played fast and loose with the said
charges, and, in fact, abandoned them. However, the retractation J
have mentioned found its way into Lizzie Hexam’s hands, with a
general flavour on it of having been favoured by some anonymous
messenger in a dark cloak and slouched hat, and was by her
forwarded, in her father’s vindication, to Mr. Boffin, my client. You
will excuse the phraseology of the shop, but as I never had another
client, and in all likelihood never shall have, I am rather proud of
him as a natural curiosity probably unique.”

Although as easy as usual on the surface, Lightwood is not quite
as easy as usual below it. With an air of not minding Hugene at
all, he feels that the subject is not altogether a safe one in that
connexion.

“The natural curiosity which forms the sole ornament of my pro-
fessional museum,” he resumes, “ hereupon desires his Secretary—
an individual of the hermit-crab or oyster species, and whose name,
I think, is Chokesmith—but it doesn’t in the least matter—say
Artichoke—to put himself in communication with Lizzie Hexam.
Artichoke professes his readiness so to do, endeavours to do so, but
fails.”

“Why fails?” asks Boots.

“How fails?” asks Brewer.

“Pardon me,” returns Lightwood, “I must postpone the reply for
one moment, or we shall have am anti-climax. Artichoke failing
signally, my client refers the task to me: his purpose being to
advance the interests of the object of his search. I proceed to put
myself in communication with her; I even happen to possess some
Special means,” with a glance at Hugene, “of putting myself in com-
munication with her; but I fail too, because she has vanished.”

 

 

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

316 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

“Vanished !” is the general echo.

“Disappeared,” says Mortimer. “Nobody knows how, nobody
knows when, nobody knows where. And so ends the story to which
my honorable and fair enslaver opposite referred.”

Tippins, with a bewitching little scream, opines that we shall
every one of us be murdered in our beds. Hugene eyes her as if
some of us would be enough for him. Mrs. Veneering, W.M.P.,
remarks that these social mysteries make one afraid of leaving Baby.
Veneering, M.P., wishes to be informed (with something of a second-
hand air of seeing the Right Honorable Gentleman at the head of
the Home Department m his place) whether it is intended to be
conveyed that the vanished person has been spirited away or other-
wise harmed? Instead of Lightwood’s answering, Eugene answers,
and answers hastily and vexedly: “No,no,no; he doesn’t mean that ;
he means voluntarily vanished—but utterly—completely.”

However, the great subject of the happiness of Mr. and Mrs.
Lammle must not be allowed to vanish with the other vanishments
—with the vanishing of the murderer, the vanishing of Julius
Handford, the vanishing of Lizzie Hexam,—and therefore Veneering
must recal the present sheep to the pen from which they have
strayed. Who so fit to discourse of the happiness of Mr. and Mrs.
Lammle, they being the dearest and oldest friends he has in the
world; or what audience so fit for him to take into his confidence as
that audience, a noun of multitude or signifying many, who are all
the oldest and. dearest friends he has in the world? So Veneering,
without the formality of rismg, launches into a familiar oration,
gradually toning into the Parliamentary sing-song, in which he
sees at that board his dear friend Twemlow who on that day
twelvemonth bestowed on his dear friend Lammle the fair hand of
his dear friend Sophronia, and in which he also sees at that board
his dear friends Boots and Brewer whose rallying round him at a
period when his dear friend Lady Tippins likewise rallied round him
—ay, and in the foremost rank—he can never forget while memory
holds her seat. But he is free to confess that he misses from that
board his dear old friend Podsnap, though he is well represented by
his dear young friend Georgiana. And he further sees at that board
(this he announces with pomp, as if exulting in the powers of an
extraordinary telescope) his friend Mr. Fledgeby, if he will permit
him to call him so. For all of these reasons, and many more which
he right well knows will have occurred to persons of your exceptional
acuteness, he is here to submit to you that the time has arrived
when, with our hearts in our glasses, with tears in our eyes, with
blessings on our lips, and in a general way with a profusion of
gammon and spinach in our emotional larders, we should one and
all drink to our dear friends the Lammles, wishing them many
many years as happy as the last, and many many friends as con-
genially united as themselves. And this he will add; that Ana-
statia Veneering (who is instantly heard to weep) is formed on the
same model as her old and chosen friend Sophronia Lammle, in
respect that she is devoted to the man who wooed and won her,
and nobly discharges the duties of a wife.

  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
    

    
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. S17

Seeing no better way out of it, Veneering here pulls up his
oratorical Pegasus extremely short, and plumps down, clean over
his head, with: “Lammle, God bless you!”

Then Lammle. ‘Too much of him every way; pervadingly too
much nose of a coarse wrong shape, and his nose in his mind and his
manners: too much smile to be real; too much frown to be false;
too many large teeth to be visible at once without suggesting a
bite. He thanks you, dear friends, for your kindly greeting, and
hopes to receive you—it may be on the next of these delightful
occasions—in a residence better suited to your claims on the rites
of hospitality. He will never forget that at V eneering’s he first saw
Sophronia. Sophronia will never forget that at Veneering’s she
first saw him. They spoke of it soon after they were married,
and agreed that they would never forget it. In fact, to Veneering
they owe their union. They hope to show their sense of this some
day (No, no,” from Veneering )—oh yes, yes, and let him rely upon
it, they will if they can! His marriage with Sophronia was not a
marriage of interest on either side: she had her little fortune, he
had his little fortune: they joined their little fortunes: it was a
marriage of pure inclination and suitability. Thank you! Sophronia
and he are fond of the society of young people; but he is not sure
that their house would be a good house for young people proposing
to remain single, since the contemplation of its domestic bliss might
induce them to change their minds. He will not apply this to any
one present; certainly not to their darling little Georgiana. Again
thank you! Neither, by-the-by, will he apply it to his friend
Fledgeby. He thanks Vencering for the feelmg manner in which
he referred to their common friend Fledgeby, for he holds that
gentleman in the highest estimation. Thank you. In fact (veturn-
ing unexpectedly to Fledgeby), the better you know him, the more
you find in him that you desire to know. Again thank you! In
his dear Sophronia’s name and in his own, thank you!

Mrs. Lammle has sat quite still, with her eyes cast down upon the
table-cloth. As Mr. Lammle’s address ends, Twemlow once more
turns to her involuntarily, not cured yet of that often recurring
impression that she is going to speak to him. This time she really
is going to speak to him, Veneering is talking with his other next
neighbour, and she speaks in a low voice.

“Mr. Twemlow.”

He answers, “I beg your pardon? Yes?” Still a little doubtful,
because of her not looking at him.

“ You have the soul of a gentleman, and I know I may trust you.
Will you give me the opport unity of saying a few words to you when
you come up stairs 2”

“ Assuredly. I shall be honored.” Hh aes

“Don’t seem to do so, if you please, and don’t think it inconsistent
if my manner should be more careless than my words. I may be
watched.”

Intensely astonished, Twemlow puts his hand to his forehead, and
sinks back in his chair meditating. Mrs. Lammle rises. All rise.
The ladies go up stairs. The gentlemen soon saunter after them.

siti

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Q

318 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

HPledgeby has devoted the interval to taking an observation of Boots’s
whiskers, Brewer’s whiskers, and Lammle’s whiskers, and consider-
ing which pattern of whisker he would prefer to produce out of
himself by friction, if the Genie of the cheek would only answer
to his rubbing.

In the drawing-room, groups form as usual. Lightwood, Boots,
and Brewer, flutter like moths around that yellow wax candle—
guttering down, and with some hint of a winding-sheet in it—Lady
Tippims. Outsiders cultivate V eneering, M.P., and Mrs. Vencering,
W.M.P. Lammle stands with folded arms, Mephistophelean in a
corner, with Georgiana and Fledgeby. Mrs. Lammle, on a sofa bya
table, invites Mr. T'wemlow’s attention to a book of portraits in her
hand.

Mr. Twemlow takes his station on a settee before her, and Mrs.
Lammle shows him a, portrait.

“You have reason to be surprised,” she says softly, “ but I wish
you wouldn’t look so.”

Disturbed Twemlow, making an effort not to look so, looks much
more so.

“I think, Mr. Twemlow, you never saw that distant connexion
of yours before to-day ?”

“ No, never.”

“Now that you do sce him, you see what he is. You are not proud
of him ?”

“To say the truth, Mrs. Lammle, no.”

“Tf you knew more of him, you would be less inclined to
acknowledge him. Here is another portrait. What do you think
of it ?”

‘Twemlow has just presence of mind enough to say aloud: “Very
like! Uncommonly like!”

“You have noticed, perhaps, whom he favours with his attentions ?
You notice where he is now, and how engaged ?”

“Yes. But Mr. Lammle——”

*She darts a look at him which he cannot comprehend, and shows
him another portrait.

“Very good; is it not?”

“Charming!” says 'Twemlow.

“So like as to be almost a caricature ?—Mr. Twemlow, it is im-
possible to tell you what the struggle in my mind has been, before
{ could bring myself to speak to you as I do now. It is only in
the conviction that I may trust you never to betray me, that I can
proceed. Sincerely promise me that you never will betray my con-
fidence—that you will respect it, even though you may no longer
tespect me,—and I shall be as satisfied as if you had sworn it.”

“Madam, on the honor of a poor gentleman i

“Thank you. I can desire no more. Mr. Twemlow, I implore you
to save that child!”

“That child ?”

“Georgiana. She will be sacrificed. Sho will be inveigled and
married to that connexion of yours. It is a partnership affair, a
money-speculation, She has no strength of will or character to help

 

 

      
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
     
   
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
    
 
   
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    
   
  
  
  
  
     

  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
  
  
 
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 319

herself, and she is on the brink of being sold into wretchedness for
life.”

“Amazing! But what can J do to prevent it?” demands Twem-
low, shocked and bewildered to the last degree.

“Here is arother portrait. And not good, is it?’

Aghast at the light manner of her throwing her head back to look
at it critically, Twemlow still dimly perceives the expediency of
throwing his own head back, and does so. Though he no more sees

 

the portrait than if it were in China. t
“Decidedly not good,” says Mrs. Lammle. “Stiff .
gerated !”

 

“And ex But Twemlow, in his demolished state, cannot
command the word, and trails off into “ actly so.”

“Mr. Twemlow, your word will have weight with her pompous,
self-blinded father. You know how much he makes of your family.
Lose no time. Warn him.”

“But warn him against whom?”

“ Against me.”

By great good fortune Twemlow receives a stimulant at this
critical instant. The stimulant is Lammle’s voice.

“Sophronia, my dear, what portraits are you showing Twemlow ?”

“Public characters, Alfred.”

“Show him the last of me.”

“Yes, Alfred.”

She puts the book down, takes another book up, turns the leaves,
and presents the portrait to Twemlow.

“hat is the last of Mr. Lammle. Do you think it good ?—Warn
her father against me. I deserve it, for 1 have been in the scheme
from the first. It is my husband’s scheme, your connexion’s, and
mine, I tell you this, only to show you the necessity of the poor
little foolish affectionate creature’s being befriended and rescued.
You will not repeat this to her father. You will spare me so far,
and spare my husband. For, though this celebration of to-day is all
cery, he is my husband, and we must live.—Do you think it

 

   

 

  
 

Twemlow, in a stunned condition, feigns to compare the portrait
in his hand with the original looking towards him from his Mephis-
tophelean corner.

“Very well indeed!” are at length the words which Twemlow
with ¢ eat difficulty extracts from himself.

“J am glad you think s0. On the whole, I myse
best. Tho others are so dark. Now here, for instance, is anot
Mr. Lammle :

“But 1 don’t understand ; I don’t see my way,” Twemlow stammers,
‘Iters over the book with his glass at his eye. “How warn
ather, and not tell him? Tell him how much? ‘Tell him how

”

 

     

  

a £
CY OL

 

as he
her f
little? I—I—am getting lost.

«Tell him I am a match-maker; tell him IT am an artful and
designing woman ; tell him you are sure his daugl iter is best out of
my house and my company. Tell him any such things of me; they
will all be true. You know what a puffed-up man he is, and how

 

 

   
   
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

320 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
easily you can cause his vanity to take the alarm. Tell him as much
as will give him the alarm and make him careful of her, and spare
me the rest. Mr. T'wemlow, I feel my sudden degradation in your
eyes; familiar as I am with my degradation in my own eyes, I
keenly feel the change that must have come upon me in yours, in
these last few moments. But I trust to your good faith with me as
implicitly as when I began. If you knew how often I have tried to
speak to you to-day, you would almost pity me. I want no new
promise from you on my own account, for I am satisfied, and I always
shall be satisfied, with the promise you have given me. I can
venture to say no more, for I see that | am watched. If you would
set my mind at rest with the assurance that you will interpose with
the father and save this harmless girl, close that book before you
return it to me, and I shall know what you mean, and deeply thank
you in my heart.—Alfred, Mr. Twemlow thinks the last one the
best, and quite agrees with you and me.”

Alfred advances. The groups break up. Lady Tippins rises
to go, and Mrs. Veneering follows her leader. or the moment,
Mrs. Lammle does not turn to them, but remains looking at Twem-
low looking at Alfred’s portrait through his eyeglass. The moment
past, Twemlow drops his eyeglass at its ribbon’s length, rises, and
closes the book with an emphasis which makes that fragile nursling
of the fairies, Tippins, start.

Then good-bye and good-bye, and charming occasion worthy of the
Golden Age, and more about the flitch of bacon, and the like of that ;
and Twemlow goes staggering across Piccadilly with his hand to his
forehead, and is nearly run down by a flushed letter-cart, and at last
drops safe in his easy-chair, innocent good gentleman, with his hand
to his forehead still, and his head in a whirl.

THE END OF THE SECOND BOOK,
AND THE END OF THE TIRST VOLUME.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET
ANN CHARING CROSS,

   

 

Frontispiece.

OTTLE.

B

DUTCH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
   
    
  
    
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

oe er

BY

CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCUS STONE.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VO. IT:

LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 1938 PICCADILLY.
1865.

[The right of Translation is reserved.|

S, STAMFORD STREET

AND CHARING CROSS

a
a
A
4
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n
Ee
2
3
a
2)

LONDON; PRi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
  
    
    
   
  
    
    
    
    
   
  
  
    

CONTENTS.

BOOK THE THIRD. A Lone Lane.

CHAPTER TI.

Loperrs iN Queer Srreer

CHAPTER I,

A Resprecrep Frmnp In A New Asprcr

CHAPTER II.

Tue Same RespecteD FrigrnD IN Morr Aspects THAN ONE

CHAPTER IV.

A Harry Return or THE Day
CHAPTER V.
Tue Gotpen DustMaN FALLS INTO Bap Company
CHAPTER VI.
Tur GoupEN DvusrMAN FALLS INTO Worse ComMPANy
CHAPTER VII.
Tur Frrenpiy Move TAKES Up A Srrona Posrrion
CHAPTER VIII.
Tur Enp or A Lona JourNEY
CHAPTER IX.
SomEBpopy BECOMES THE SuBsECT Or A PREDICTION .
CHAPTER X.

Scouts Our

Q

1

19

44

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
In THE Dark

CHAPTER XII.

Meanine Miscurer

CHAPTER XIII.

GivE A Doc A Bap Nan, anp Hane Hor

CHAPTER XIV.

Mr. Wrce Prepares A Grindstone ror Mr. Borriy’s Nose .

CHAPTER XV.
Tur GoupEN DusrmMAn av HIS Worst
CHAPTER XYI.
Tue Frasr or tHE Turer Hopcosiss .
CHAR DWE] XVI.

A Socran CHorvs

BOOK THE FOURTH. A Tourninc.

CHAPTER I.

Srerring Traps

CHAPTER II.

Tue Gonrpen Dustman Risrs a Lirrir.

CHAPTER IT.

Tur Gotpen Dusrman Sinxs AGAIN

CHAPTER IY.

A Runaway Marcu

CHAPTER VY.

ConcERNING THE Mrnpicant’s Brinn

CHAPTER VI.
A Cry For Hep

 
   
    
  
 
  
  
   
   
  
    
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  

PAGE
97

104

111

119

129

140

161

185

206

 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
  
  
 
  
   

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.

Berrer TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN
CHAPTER VIII.

A Few Grains or Prprer
CHAPTER IX.

Two PLAcES VACATED .
CHAPTER X.

THe Dots’ DressmAkrER Discovers A WorpD
CHAPTER XI.

Errecr 1s GIvEN TO THE Douis’ DressMAKER’s DiscovERY

{ CHAPTER XI.

THe Passing SHADOW
CHAPTER. XIit,

SHowinG How THE Go~pnn DusrmaNn Hetrep to Scarrer Dusr
CHAPTER XIV.

CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY, Move A . : :
CHAPTER XV.

WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET .
CHAPTER XVI.

Prrsons AND THINGS IN GENERAL. : 0 fs 5

CHAPTER THE LAST.

 

Tur VoIcr oF Sociery

Vil

PAGE
216

267

284
992

290

302

HT

a
atch
Hat
a

 
 

i)

rime tts

Sy. _ SNe 2 ae

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tue Dourcu Borrur

TRYING ON FOR THE Doxis’ Dressmaxkur
Rogur Riperwoop’s Recovery

Brs.ioMaNiA OF THE GoLDEN DesTarAn

Tae Evin Genius or tum Houser or Borrmy .

Tan Fricur

Tu INN ORTH Rum

 

Mr. Fiepersy Drparrs on mis Erranp or Muncy

Mr. WrcG Prepar

 

A GRINDSTONE FoR Mr. Borrriy’s Nosr
Betta RicHrep By THE GotpEN Dusrwan
Tur Lovety WomAN HAS HER FoRTUNE TOLD
Tur Lock-Krerprr’s House

Tae Weppine Dinner at Greenwicn

Tur Parting BY THE Rrvrr

BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN Cary

Miss Wren Frxrs ner Ipna.

Kucunn’s B

 

DSIDE : 5 2
Lighrwoop ar Lasr
Mrs. Borrin pors tun Honors or tur Nursery Door

Nov TO BE SHAKEN OFF

ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME JI.

    
  
   
   
   
    
  
   
  
   
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  

PAGE

To face Title

13

Qn

ol
64
70

  

   

   
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
   
  
 
   
  
  
   
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

—*+—__.

an four Books,

 

Book tHe Tuirp. A Lone LANs.

 

 

CHAPTER I.
LODGERS IN QUEER STREET.

Tr was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark.
Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was
blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty
spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and
so being wholly neither. Gaslights flared in the shops with a
haggard and unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night-crea-
tures that had no business abroad under the sun; while the sun
itself, when it was for a few moments dimly indicated through
circling eddies of fog, showed as if it had gone out and were col-
lapsing flat and cold. Even in the surrounding country it was a
foggy day, but there the fog was grey, whereas in London it was,
at about the boundary line, dark yellow, and a little within it brown,
and then browner, and then browner, until at the heart of the City
—which call Saint Mary Axe—it was rusty-black. From any point
of the high ridge of land northward, it might have been discerned that
the loftiest buildings made an occasional struggle to get their heads
above the foggy sea, and especially that the great dome of Saint
Paul’s seemed to die hard; but this was not perceivable in the
streets at their feet, where the whole metropolis was a heap of
vapour charged with muffled sound of wheels, and enfolding a gigantic
catarrh.

‘At nine o'clock on such a morning, the place of business of Pubsey
and (‘o, was not the liveliest object even in Saint Mary Axe—which
is not a very lively spot—with a sobbing gaslight in the counting-
house window, and a burglarious stream of fog creeping in to strangle
it through the keyhole of the main door. But the light went out,

J *
and the main door opened, and Riah came forth with a bag under

his arm.
Almost in the act of coming out at the door, Riah went into the
fog, and was lost to the eyes of Saint Mary Axe. But the eyes of

VOL. Ii. B

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

this history can follow him westward, by Cornhill, Cheapside, Fleet
Street, and the Strand, to Piccadilly and the Albany. Thither he
went at his grave and measured pace, staff in hand, skirt at heel;
and more than one head, turning to look back at his venerable
figure already lost in the mist, supposed it to be some ordinary
figure indistinctly seen, which fancy and the fox had worked into
that passing likeness.

Arrived at the house in which his master’s chambers were on the
second floor, Riah proceeded up the stairs, and paused at Fascination
Fledgeby’s door. Making free with neither bell nor knocker, he
struck upon the door with the top of his staff, and, having
listened, sat down on the threshold. It was characteristic of his
habitual submission, that he sat down on the raw dark staircase, as
many of his ancestors had probably sat down in dungeons, taking
what befell him as it might befall.

After a time, when he had grown so cold as to be fain to blow
upon his fingers, he arose and knocked with his staff again, and
listened again, and again sat down to wait. Thrice he repeated these
actions before his listening ears were greeted by the voice of Fledgeby,
calling from his bed, “Hold your row!—I'll come and open the
door directly!” But, in lieu of coming directly, he fell into a sweet
sleep for some quarter of an hour more, during which added interval
Riah sat upon the stairs and waited with perfect patience.

At length the door stood open, and Mr. Fledgeby’s retreating
drapery plunged into bed again. Following it at a respectful distance,
Riah passed into the bed-chamber, where a fire had been sometime
lighted, and was burning briskly.

“Why, what time of night do you mean to call it?” inquired
Fledgeby, turning away beneath the clothes, and presenting a com-
fortable rampart of shoulder to the chilled figure of the old man.

“Siz, it is full half-past ten in the morning.”

“The deuce it is! ‘Then it must be precious foggy ?”

“Very fogey, sir.”

« And raw, then?”

“Chill and bitter,” said Riah, drawing out a handkerchief, and
wiping the moisture from his beard and long grey hair as he stood
on the verge of the rug, with his eyes on the acceptable fire.

With a plunge of enjoyment, Fledgeby settled himself afresh.

“ Any snow, or sleet, or slush, or anything of that sort?” he
asked.

“No, sir, no. Not quite so bad as that. The streets are pretty
clean.”

“You needn't brag about it,” returned Fledgeby, disappointed in
his desire to heighten the contrast between his bed and the streets.
“But you're always bragging about something. Got the books
there ?”

“They are here, sir.”

“Allright. Tl turn the general subject over in my mind fora
minute or two, and while I’m about it you can empty your bag and
get ready for me.” ;

With another comfortable plunge, Mr. Fledgeby fell asleep again.

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 3

The old man, having obeyed his directions, sat down on the edge of
a chair, and, folding his hands before him, gradually yielded to the
influence of the warmth, and dozed. He was roused by Mr. Fledgeby’s
appearing erect at the foot of the bed, in Turkish slippers, rose-
coloured Turkish trousers (got cheap from somebody who had
cheated some other somebody out of them), and a gown and cap
to correspond. In that costume he would have left nothing to be
desired, if he had been further fitted out with a bottomless chair,
a lantern, and a bunch of matches.

“Now, old ’un!” cried Fascination, in his light raillery, “what
dodgery are you up to next, sitting there with your eyes shut?
You ain’t asleep. Catch a weasel at it, and catch a Jew !”

“Truly, sir, I fear I nodded,” said the old man.

“Not you!” returned Fledgeby, with a cunning look. “A telling
move with a good many, I dare say, but it won’t put me off my
guard. Not a bad notion though, if you want to look indifferent in
driving a bargain. Oh, you are a dodger!”

The old man shook his head, gently repudiating the imputation,
and suppressed a sigh, and moved to the table at which Mr. Fledgeby
was now pouring out for himself a cup of steaming and fragrant
coffee from a pot that had stood ready on the hob. Jt was an edify-
ing spectacle, the young man in his easy chair taking his coffee,
and the old man with his grey head bent, standing awaiting his
pleasure.

“Now!” said Fledgeby. “Fork out your balance in hand, and
prove by figures how you make it out that it ain’t more. First of
all, light that candle.”

Riah obeyed, and then taking a bag from his breast, and referring
to the sum in the accounts for which they made him responsible,
told it out upon the table. Fledgeby told it again with great: care,
and rang every sovereign.

“I suppose,” he said, taking one up to eye it closely, “you haven’t
been lightening any of these; but it’s a trade of your people’s,
you know. You understand what sweating a pound means; don’t
ou?”

% “Much as you do, sir,” returned the old man, with his hands under
Opposite cuffs of his loose sleeves, as he stood at the table, deferen-
tially observant of the master’s face. “ May I take the liberty to
Say something ?”

“You may,” Fledgeby graciously conceded. :

“Do you not, sir—without intending it—of a surety without
intending it—sometimes mingle the character I fairly earn in your
apo with the character which it is your policy that I should

ear 2”

“T don’t find it worth my while to cut things so fine as to go into
the inquiry,” Fascination coolly answered.

“ Not in justice ?”

“Bother justice!” said Fledgeby.

“Not in generosity ?” .

“Jews and generosity!” said Fledgeby. “That's a good con-
nexion! Bring out your vouchers, and don’t talk Jerusalem palaver.”
B 2

   
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

     
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

The vouchers were produced, and for the next half-hour Mr.
Fledgeby concentrated his sublime attention on them. ‘They and
the accounts were all found correct, and the books and the papers
resumed their places in the bag.

“Next,” said Fledgeby, “concerning that bill-broking branch of
the business; the branch I like best. What queer bills are to be
bought, and at what prices? You have got your list of what’s in
the market ?”

“Sir, a long list,” replied Riah, taking out a pocket-book, and select-
ing from its contents a folded paper, which, being unfolded, became a
sheet of foolscap covered with close writing.

“Whew!” whistled Fledgeby, as he took it in his hand. “Queer
Street is full of lodgers just at present! These are to be disposed of
in parcels; are they ?”

“Tn parcels as set forth,’ returned the old man, looking over his
master’s shoulder; “or the lump.”

“Half the lump will be waste-paper, one knows beforehand,” said
Fledgeby. “Can you get it at waste-paper price? That’s the
question.”

Riah shook his head, and Fledgeby cast his small eyes down the
list. ‘They presently began to twinkle, and he no sooner became
conscious of their twinkling, than he looked up over his shoulder at
the grave face above him, and moved to the chimney-piece. Making
a desk of it, he stood there with his back to the old man, warming
his knees, perusing the list at his leisure, and often returning to some
lines of it, as though they were particularly interesting. At those
times he glanced in the chimney-glass to see what note the old man
took of him. He took none that could be detected, but, aware of his
employer's suspicions, stood with his eyes on the ground.

Mr. Fledgeby was thus amiably engaged when a step was heard at
the outer door, and the door was heard to open hastily. “Hark!
That’s your doing, you Pump of Israel,” said Fledgeby; “you can’t
have shut it.” Then the step was heard within, and the voice of Mr.
Alfred Lammle called aloud, ‘« Are you anywhere here, Fledgeby ?” ‘To
which Fledgeby, after cautioning Riah in a low voice to take his cue
as it should be given him, replied, “ Here I am!” and opened his bed-
room door.

“(Come in!” said Fledgeby. “This gentleman is only Pubsey and
Co. of Saint Mary Axe, that I am trying to make terms for an un-
fortunate friend with in a matter of some dishonoured bills. But
really Pubsey and Co. are so strict with their debtors, and so hard to
move, that I seem to be wasting my time. Can’t I make any terms
with you on my friend’s part, Mr. Riah ?”

“T am but the representative of another, sir,” returned the Jew in
a low voice. “I doas Iam bidden by my principal. It is not my
capital that is invested in the business. It is not my profit that
arises therefrom.”

“Ha ha!” laughed Fledgeby. “ Lammle ?”

“Ha ha!” laughed Lammle, “Yes. Of course. We know.”

“Devilish good, ain’t it, Lammle?’ said Fledgeby, unspeakably
amused by his hidden joke.

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. ta)

2

 

« Always the same, always the same!” said Lammle. “ Mr.

“Riah, Pubsey and Co. Saint Mary Axe, ” Fledgeby put in, as he
wiped away the tears that trickled from his eyes, so rare was his
enjoyment of his secret joke.

“Mr. Riah is bound to observe the invariable forms for such cases
made and provided,” said Lammle.

“ He is only the representative of another!” cried Fledgeby. “ Does
as he is told by his principal! Not his capital that’s invested in the
business. Oh, that’s good! Ha ha haha!” Mr. Lammle joined in
the laugh and looked knowing ; and the more he did both, the more
exquisite the secret joke became for Mr. Fledgeby.

“ However,’ said that fascinating gentleman, wiping his eyes again,
“if we go on in this way, we shall seem to be almost making game
of Mr. Riah, or of Pubsey and Co. Saint Mary Axe, or of somebody :
which is far from our intention. Mr. Riah, if you would have the
kindness to step into the next room for a few moments while ] speak
with Mr. Lammle here, I should like to try to make terms with you
once again before you go.”

The old man, who had never raised his eyes during the whole
transaction of Mr. Fledgeby’s joke, silently bowed and passed out by
the door which Fledgeby opened for him. Having closed it on him,
Fledgeby returned to Lammle, standing with his back to the bedroom
fire, with one hand under his coat-skirts, and all his whiskers in the
other.

“Ffalloa!” said Fledgeby. “There’s something wrong!”

“How do you know it?” demanded Lammle.

“ Because you show it,” replied Fledgeby in unintentional rhyme.

“ Well then; there is,” said Lammle; “there is something wrong ;
the whole thing’s wrong.”

“T say!” remonstrated Fascination very slowly, and sitting down
with his hands on his knees to stare at his glowering friend with his
back to the fire.

“T tell you, Fledgeby,” repeated Lammle, with a sweep of his right
arm, “the whole thing’s-wrong. ‘The game’s up.”

“What game’s up?” demanded Fledgeby, as slowly as before, and
more sternly.

“Tur game. Our game. Read that.”

Fledgeby took a note from his extended hand and read italoud. “Alfred
Lammile, Esquire. Sir: Allow Mrs. Podsnap and myself to express
our united sense of the polite attentions of Mrs. Alfred Lammle and
yourself towards our daughter, Georgiana. Allow us also, wholly to
reject them for the future, and to communicate our final desire that
the two families may become entire strangers. I have the honor to
be, Sir, your most obedient and very humble servant, Joun Popsnap.”
Fledgeby looked at the three blank sides of this note, quite as long
and earnestly as at the first expressive side, and then looked at
Lammle, who responded with another extensive sweep of his right arm.

“ Whose doing is this?” said Fledgeby.

“Tmpossible to imagine,” said Lammle.

“Perhaps,” suggested Fledgeby, after reflecting with a very dis-
contented brow, “somebody has been giving you a bad character.”

ra erga sine

a i ie oe a nN

 

 

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Or you,” said Lammle, with a deeper frown.

Mr. Fledgeby appeared to be on the verge of some mutinous ex-
pressions, when his hand happened to touch his nose. A certain
remembrance connected with that feature operating as a timely
warning, he took it thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger,
and pondered; Lammle meanwhile eyeing him with furtive eyes.

“Well!” said Fledgeby. “This won’t improve with talking about.
If we ever find out who did it, we'll mark that person. There’s
nothing more to be said, except that you undertook to do what cir-
cumstances prevent your doing.”

“ And that you undertook to do what you might have doné by this
time, if you had made a prompter use of circumstances,” snarled
Lammle.

“Hah! That,” remarked Fledgeby, with his hands in the Turkish
trousers, “is matter of opinion.”

“Mr. Fledgeby,” said Lammle, in a bullying tone, “am I to under-
stand that you in any way reflect upon me, or hint dissatisfaction
with me, in this affair?”

“No,” said Fledgeby ; “provided you have brought my promissory
note in your pocket, and now hand it over.”

Lammle produced it, not without reluctance. Fledgeby looked at
it, identified it, twisted it up, and threw it into the fire. They both
looked at it as it blazed, went out, and flew in feathery ash up the
chimney.

$c Non Mr. Fledgeby,” said Lammle, as before; “am I to under-
stand that you in any way reflect upon me, or hint dissatisfaction
with me, in this affair ?”

“No,” said Fledgeby.

“ Finally and unreservedly no?”

* Yes.”

“Fledgeby, my hand.”

Mr. Fledgeby took it, saying, “And if we ever find out who did
this, we'll mark that person. And in the most friendly manner, let
me mention one thing more. I don’t know what your circumstances
are, and I don’t ask. You have sustained a loss here. Many men
are liable to be involved at times, and you may be, or you may not
be. But whatever you do, Lammle, don’t—don’t—don’t, I beg of
you—ever fall into the hands of Pubsey and Co. in the next room,
for they are grinders. Regular flayers and grinders, my dear
Lammle,” repeated Fledgeby with a peculiar relish, “and they'll
skin you by the inch, from the nape of your neck to the sole of your
foot, and grind every inch of your skin to tooth-powder. You have
seen what Mr. Riah is. Never fall into his hands, Lammle, I beg of
you as a friend !”

Mr. Lammle, disclosing some alarm at the solemnity of this affec-
tionate adjuration, demanded why the devil he ever should fall into
the hands of Pubsey and Co. ?

“To confess the fact, I was made a little uneasy,” said the candid
Fledgeby, “ by the manner in which that Jew looked at you when he
heard your name. I didn’t like his eye. But it may have been the
heated fancy of a friend. Of course if you are sure that you have no

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
    
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
       

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. q

personal security out, which you may not be quite equal to meeting,
and which can have got into his hands, it must have been fancy.
Still, I didn’t like his eye.”

The brooding Lammle, with certain white dints coming and
going in his palpitating nose, looked as if some tormenting imp were
pinching it. Fledgeby, watching him with a twitch in his mean face
which did duty there for a smile, looked very like the tormentor who
was pinching.

«But I mustn’t keep him waiting too long,” said Fledgeby, “or
he'll revenge it on my unfortunate friend. How’s your very clever
and agreeable wife? She knows we have broken down ?”

“TJ showed her the letter.”

“Very much surprised ?” asked Fledgeby.

“J think she would have been more so,” answered Lammle, “if
there had been more go in you ?”

“Oh !—She lays it upon me, then ?”

“Mr. Fledgeby, I will not have my words misconstrued.”

“Don’t break out, Lammle,” urged Fledgeby, in a submissive tone,
“because there’s no occasion. I only asked a question, ‘Then she
don’t lay it upon me? To ask another question.”

‘No, sir.?

“Very good,” said Fledgeby, plainly seeing that she did. “My
compliments to her. Good-bye!”

They shook hands, and Lammle strode out pondering, Fledgeby
saw him into the fog, and, returning to the fire and musing with his face
to it, stretched the legs of the rose-coloured Turkish trousers wide
apart, and meditatively bent his knees, as if he were going down upon
them.

“You havea pair of whiskers, Lammle, which I never liked,” mur-
mured Fledgeby, “ and which money can’t produce ; you are boastful of
your manners and your conversation; you wanted to pull my nose,
and you have let me in fora failure, and your wife says | am the
cause of it. I’ll bowl you down. I will, though I have no whiskers,”
here he rubbed the places where they were due, “and no manners,
and no conversation !”

Having thus relieved his noble mind, he collected the Jegs of the
Turkish trousers, straightened himself on his knees, and called out to

2iah in the next room, “Halloa, you sir!” At sight of the old man

re-entering with a gentleness monstrously in contrast with the cha-
racter he had given him, Mr. Fledgeby was so tickled again, that
he exclaimed, laughing, “Good! Good! Upon my soul it is uncom-
mon good !”

“ Now, old ’un,” proceeded Fledgeby, when he had had his laugh
out, “ you'll buy up these lots that I mark with my pencil—there’s a
tick there, and a tick there, and a tick there—and I wager two-
pence you'll afterwards go on squeezing those Christians like the Jew
you are. Now, next youll want a cheque—or you'll say you want it,
though you’ve capital enough somewhere, if one only knew where,
but you'd be peppered and salted and grilled on a gridiron before
you'd own to it—and that cheque Vl write.”

When he had unlocked a drawer and taken a key from it to open

att Sites as

Fare

fae ae ale anus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

8 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

another drawer, in which was another key that opened another

drawer, in which was another key that opened another drawer, in
which was the cheque book; and when he had written the cheque;
and when, reversing the key and drawer process, he had placed his
cheque book in safety again ; he beckoned the old man, with the folded
cheque, to come and take it.

“Old ’un,” said Fledgeby, when the Jew had put it in his pocket-
book, and was putting that in the breast of his outer garment; “so
much at present for my affairs. Now a word about affairs that are
not exactly mine. Where is she?”

With his hand not yet withdrawn from the breast of his garment,
Riah started and paused.

“Oho!” said Fledgeby. “Didn’t expect it! Where have you
hidden her ?”

Showing that he was taken by surprise, the old man looked
at his master with some passing confusion, which the master highly
enjoyed.

“Is she in the house I pay rent and taxes for in Saint Mary Axe?”
demanded Fledgeby.

‘ONO site

“Is she in your garden up atop of that house—gone up to be dead,
or whatever the game is?” asked Fledgeby.

NOwmsitys

“Where is she then ?”

Riah bent his eyes upon the ground, as if considering whether he
could answer the question without breach of faith, and then silently
raised them to Fledgeby’s face, as if he could not.

“Come!” said Fledgeby. “I won’t press that just now. But I
want to know this, and I will know this, mind you. What are you
up to?”

The old man, with an apologetic action of his head and hands, as
not comprehending the master’s meaning, addressed to him a look of
mute inquiry.

“You can’t be a gallivanting dodger,” said Fledgeby. “For you're
a ‘regular pity the sorrows,’ you know—if you do know any Christian
rhyme— whose trembling limbs have borne him to’—et cetrer. You're
one of the Patriarchs; you're a shaky old card; and you can’t be in
love with this Lizzie?”

“O, sir!” expostulated Riah. “ , sir, sir, sir!”

“Then why,” retorted Fledgeby, with some slight tinge of a blush,
“don’t you out with your reason for having your spoon in the soup
at all ?”

“Sir, I will tell you the truth. But (your pardon for the stipula-
tion) it is in sacred confidence ; it is strictly upon honor.”

“Honor too!” cried Fledgeby, with a mocking lip. “Honor
among Jews. Well. Cut away.”

“It is upon honor, sir?” the other still stipulated, with respectful
firmness.

“Oh, certainly. Honor bright,” said Fledgeby.

The old man, never bidden to sit down, stood with an earnest hand
laid on the back of the young man’s easy chair. The young man

 

  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
    
 
 
 
  
   
  
    
   
    
 
    

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 9

sat looking at the fire with a face of listening curiosity, ready to
check him off and catch him tripping.

“Cut away,” said Fledgeby. . “Start with your motive.”

“Sir, 1 have no motive but to help the helpless.”

Mr. Fledgeby could only express the feelings to which this incre-
dible statement gave rise in his breast, by a prodigiously long deri-
sive sniff.

“How I came to know, and much to esteem and to respect, this
damsel, | mentioned when you saw her in my poor garden on the
house-top,” said the Jew.

“Did you?” said Fledgeby, distrustfully. “Well, Perhaps you did,
though.”

“The better I knew her, the more interest I felt in her fortunes.
They gathered to a crisis. I found her beset bya selfish and ungrate-
ful brother, beset by an unacceptable wooer, beset by the snares of
a more powerful lover, beset by the wiles of her own heart.”

“She took to one of the chaps then ?’

“Sir, it was only natural that she should incline towards him, for
he had many and great advantages. But he was not of her station,
and to marry her was not in his mind. Perils were closmg round
her, and the circle was fast darkening, when I—being as you have
said, sir, too old and broken to be suspected of any feeling for her
but a father’s—stepped in, and counselled flight. J said, ‘My
daughter, there are times of moral danger when the hardest virtuous
resolution to form is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is
flight.’ She answered, she had had this in her thoughts; but whither
to fly without help she knew not, and there were none to help her.
I showed her there was one to help her, and it was I. And she is
gone.”

“What did you do with her?” asked Fledgeby, feeling his cheek.

“J placed her,” said the old man, “at a distance ;” with a grave
smooth outward sweep from one another of his two open hands at
arm’s length; “at a distance—among certain of our people, where
her industry would serve her, and where she could hope to exercise
it, unassailed from any quarter.”

Fledgeby’s eyes had come from the fire to notice the action of his
hands when he said “at a distance.” Fledgeby now tried (very
unsuccessfully) to imitate that action, as he shook his head and said,
“Placed her in that direction, did you? Ob you circular old
dodger !”

With one hand across his breast and the other on the easy chair,
Riah, without justifying himself, waited for further questioning.
But, that it was hopeless to question him on that one reserved
point, Fledgeby, with his small eyes too near together, saw full
well.

“Lizzie,” said Fledgeby, looking at the fire again, and then looking
up. “Humph, Lizzie. You didn’t tell me the other name in your
garden atop of the house. Il be more.communicative with you.
The other name’s Hexam.”

Riah bent his head in assent.

“Yook here, you sir,” said Fledgeby. “Ihave a notion I know

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10 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

something of the inveigling chap, the powerful one, Has he anything
to do with the law?”

“ Nominally, I believe it his calling.”

“T thought so. Name anything like Lightwood te

“Sir, not at all like.”

“Come, old ’un,” said Fledgeby, meeting his eyes with a wink,
“say the name.”

“ Wray burn.”

“By Jupiter!” cried Fledgeby. “That one, is it? I thought it
might be the other, but I never dreamt of that one! I shouldn't
object to your baulking either of the pair, dodger, for they are both
conceited enough; but that one is as cool a customer as ever 1 met
with. Got a beard besides, and presumes upon it. Well done, old
‘un! Go on and prosper !”

Brightened by this unexpected commendation, Riah asked were
there more instructions for him?

“No,” said Fledgeby, “you may toddle now, Judah, and grope
about on the orders you have got.” Dismissed with those pleasing
words, the old man took his broad hat and. staff, and left the great
presence: more as if he were some superior creature benignantly
blessing Mr. Fledgeby, than the poor dependent on whom he set his
foot. Left alone, Mr. Fledgeby locked his outer door, and came back
to his fire.

“ Well done you!” said Fascination to himself. “Slow, you may
be; sure, you are!” This he twice or thrice repeated with much
complacency, as he again dispersed the legs of the Turkish trousers
and bent the knees.

“A tidy shot that, I flatter myself,” he then soliloquised. “And a
Jew brought down with it! Now, when I heard the story told
at Lammle’s, I didn’t make a jump at Riah. Nota bit of it; I got
at him by degrees.” Herein he was quite accurate ; it being his
habit, not to jump, or leap, or make an upward spring, at-anything in
life, but to crawl at everything.

“JT got at him,” pursued Fledgeby, feeling for his whisker, “ by
degrees. If your Lammles or your Lightwoods had got at him anyhow,
they would have asked him the question whether he hadn’t some-
thing to do with that gal’s disappearance. I knew a better way
of going to work. Having got behind the hedge, and put him in
the light, I took a shot at him and brought him down plump. Oh!
Tt don’t count for much, being a Jew, in a match against me le
ap Another dry twist in place of a smile, made his face crooked

ere.

“As to Christians,” proceeded Fledgeby, “look out, fellow-Chris-
tians, particularly you that lodge in Queer Street! I have got the run
of Queer Street now, and you shall see some games there. To work
a lot of power over you and you not know it, knowing as you think
yourselves, would be almost worth laying out money upon. But
when it comes to squeezing a profit out of you into the bargain, it’s
something like !”

With this apostrophe Mr. Fledgeby appropriately proceeded to
divest himself of his Turkish garments, and invest himself with

   

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 11

Christian attire. Pending which operation, and his morning ablutions,
and his anointing of himself with the last infallible preparation for
the production of luxuriant and glossy hair upon the human counte-
nance (quacks being the only sages he believed in besides usurers),
the murky fog closed about him and shut him up in its sooty
embrace. If it had never let him out any more, the world would
have had no irreparable loss, but could have easily replaced him
from its stock on hand.

 

CHAPTER II,
A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT,

In the evening of this same foggy day when the yellow window-
blind of Pubsey and Co. was drawn down upon the day’s work, Riah
the Jew once more came forth into Saint Mary Axe. “But this time
he carried no bag, and was not bound on his master’s affairs. He
passed over London Bridge, and returned to the Middlesex shore
by that of Westminster, and so, ever wading through the foe, waded
to the doorstep of the dolls’ dressmaker.

Miss Wren expected him. He could see her through the window
by the light of her low fire—carefully banked up with damp cinders
that it might last the longer and waste the less when she was out—
sitting waiting for him in her bonnet. His tap at the glass roused
her from the musing solitude in which she sat, and she came to the
door to open it.; aiding her steps with a little crutch-stick.

“Good evening, godmother!” said Miss Jenny Wren.

The old man laughed, and gave her his arm to lean on.

“Won't you come in and warm yourself, godmother ?” asked Miss
Jenny Wren.

, “Not if you are ready, Cinderella, my dear.”

“ Well!” exclaimed Miss Wren, delighted. “Now you Anz a clever
old boy! If we gave prizes at this establishment (but we only keep
blanks), you should have the first silver medal, for taking me up so
quick.” As she spake thus, Miss Wren removed the key of the
house-door from the keyhole and put it in her pocket, and then
bustlingly closed the door, and tried it as they both stood on the step.
Satisfied that ‘her dwelling was safe, she drew one hand through
the old man’s arm and prepared to ply her crutch-stick with the
other. But the key was an instrument of such gigantic proportions,
that before they started Riah proposed to carry it.

“No, no, no! ll carry it myself,’ returned Miss Wren. “I’m
awfully lopsided, you know, and stowed down in my pocket it'll trim
the ship. To let you into a secret, godmother, I wear my pocket on
my high side, 0’ purpose.”

With that they began their plodding through the fog.

“Yes, it was truly sharp of you, godmother,” resumed Miss Wren
with great approbation, “to understand me. But, you see, you
are so like the fairy godmother in the bright little books! You

int

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12 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

look so unlike the rest of people, and so much as if you had
changed yourself into that shape, just this moment, with some bene-
volent object. Boh!” cried Miss Jenny, putting her face close to
the old man’s. “I can see your features, godmother, behind the
beard.”

“Does the fancy go to my changing other objects too, Jenny ?”

“Ah! That it does! If you'd only borrow my stick and tap this
piece of pavement—this dirty stone that my foot taps—it would
start up a coach and six. Isay! Let’s believe so!”

“With all my heart,” replied the good old man.

“And Pll tell you what I must ask you to do, godmother. I must
ask you to be so’kind as give my child a tap, and change him alto-
gether. O my child has been such a bad, bad child of late! It
worries me nearly out of my wits. Not done a stroke of work
these ten days. Has had the horrors, too, and fancied that four
copper-coloured men in red wanted to throw him into a fiery
furnace.”

“ But that’s dangerous, Jenny.”

“Dangerous, godmother? My bad child is always dangerous,
more or less. He might’—here the little creature glanced back over
her shoulder at the sky—“ be setting the house on fire at this present
moment. & don’t know who would have a child, for my part! It’s
no use shaking him. I have shaken him till I have made myself
giddy. ‘Why don’t you mind your Commandments and honor your
parent, you naughty old boy? I said to him all the time. But he
only whimpered and stared at me.”

“ What shall be changed, after him?” asked Riah in a compassion-
ately playful voice.

“Upon my word, godmother, I am afraid I must be selfish next,
and get you to set me right in the back and the legs. It’s a little

thing to you with your power, godmother, but it’s a great deal to -

poor weak aching me.” i.

There was no querulous complaining in the words, but they were
not the less touching for that.

“ And then?”

“Yes, and then—you know, godmother. We'll both jump up into
the coach and six and go to Lizzie. This reminds me, godmother, to
ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having
been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this: Is it
better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had
it?”

“ Hxplain, god-daughter.”

“J feel so much more solitary and helpless without Lizzie now, |

than I used to feel before I knew her.” (‘l'ears were in her eyes as
she said so.)

“Some beloved companionship fades out of most lives, my dear,”
said the Jew,—that of a wife, and a fair daughter, and a son of
promise, has faded out of my own life—but the happiness was.”

“Ah!” said Miss Wren thoughtfully, by no means convinced, and
chopping the exclamation with that sharp little hatchet of hers;
“then I tell you what change I think you had better begin with,

   
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

 

 

 

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TRYING ON FOR THE DOLLS’ DRESSMAKER.

 

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 13

godmother. You had better change Is into Was and Was into Is,
and keep them so.”

“Would that suit your case? Would you not be always in pain
then?” asked the old man tenderly.

“Right!” exclaimed Miss Wren with another chop. “ You have
changed me wiser, godmother.—Not,” she added with the quaint
hitch of her chin and eyes, “that you need be a very wonderful
godmother to do that deed.”

Thus conversing, and having crossed Westminster Bridge, they
traversed the ground that Riah had lately traversed, and new ground
likewise; for, when they had recrossed the Thames by way of
London Bridge, they struck down by the river and held their still
fogeier course that way.

But previously, as they were going along, Jenny twisted her vene-
rable friend aside to a brilliantly-lighted toy-shop window, and said :
“Now look at ’em! All my work !”

This referred to a dazzling semicircle of dolls in all the colours of
the rainbow, who were dressed for presentation at court, for going to
balls, for going out driving, for going out on horseback, for going out
walking, for going to get married, for going to help other dolls to get
married, for all the gay events of life.”

“Pretty, pretty, pretty!” said the old man with a clap of his
hands. “ Most elegant taste!”

“Glad you like’em,” returned Miss Wren, loftily. “ But the fun is,
godmother, how I make the great ladies try my dresses on. ‘Though
it’s the hardest part of my business, and would be, even if my back
were not bad and my legs queer.”

He looked at her as not understanding what she said.

“Bless you, godmother,” said Miss Wren, “I have to scud about
town at all hours. If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out
and sewing, it would be comparatively easy work ; but it’s the trying-
on by the great ladies that takes it out of me.”

“ How, the trying-on?” asked Riah.

“What a mooney godmother you are,-after all!” returned Miss
Wren. “Look here. There’s a Drawing Room, or a grand day
in the Park, or a Show, or a Féte, or what you like. Very well.
1 squeeze among the crowd, and I look about me. When I see
a great lady very suitable for my business, I say ‘Youll do, my
dear!’ and I take particular notice of her, and run home and cut her
out and baste her. ‘Then another day, 1 come scudding back again
to try on, and then I take particular notice of her again. Sometimes
she plainly seems to say, ‘ How that little creature is staring!’ and
sometimes likes it and sometimes don’t, but much more often yes than
no. All the time I am only saying to myself, ‘1 must hollow out
a bit here; I must slope away there;’ and I am making a perfect
slave of her, with making her try on my doll’s dress. Evening parties
are severer work for me, because there’s only a doorway for a full
view, and what with hobbling among the wheels of the carriages
and the legs of the horses, I fully expect to be run over some night.
However, there I have ’em, just the same. When they go bobbing
into the hall from the carriage, and catch a glimpse of my little

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Bee ne

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

physiognomy poked out from behind a policeman’s cape in the rain,
1 dare say they think I am wondering and admiring with all my
eyes and heart, but they little think they’re only working for my
dolls! There was Lady Belinda Whitrose. I made her do double
duty in one night. I said when she came out of the carriage, ‘ You'll
do, my dear!’ and I ran straight home and cut her out and basted her.
Back I came again, and waited behind the men that called the car-
riages. Very bad night too. At last, ‘Lady Belinda Whitrose’s
carriage! Lady Belinda Whitrose coming down!’ And I made her
try on—ch! and take pains about it too—before she got seated. That's
Lady Belinda hanging up by the waist, much too near the gas-
light for a wax one, with her toes turned in.”

When they had plodded on for some time nigh the river, Riah
asked the way to a certain tavern called the Six Jolly Fellowship
Porters. Following the directions he received, they arrived, after
two or three puzzled stoppages for consideration, and some uncertain
looking about them, at the door of Miss Abbey Potterson’s dominions.
A peep through the glass portion of the door revealed to them the
glories of the bar, and Miss Abbey herself seated in state on her snug
throne, reading the newspaper. ‘To whom, with deference, they
presented themselves.

Taking her eyes off her newspaper, and pausing with a suspended
expression of countenance, as if she must finish the paragraph in
hand before undertaking any other business whatever, Miss Abbey
demanded, with some slight asperity: “Now then, what’s for
you ?”

i “Could we see Miss Potterson ?” asked the old man, uncovering his
ead.

“You not only could, but you can and you do,” replied the hostess.

“Might we speak with you, madam ?”

By this time Miss Abbey’s eyes had possessed themselves of the
small figure of Miss Jenny Wren. For the closer observation of
which, Miss Abbey laid aside her newspaper, rose, and looked over
the half-door of the bar. The crutch-stick seemed to entreat for its
owner leave to come in and rest by the fire; so, Miss Abbey opened
the half-door, and said, as though replying to the erutch-stick: “ Yes,
come in and rest:by the fire.”

“My name is Riah,” said the old man, with courteous action, “and
my avocation is in London city. This, my young companion y

“Stop a bit,” interposed Miss Wren. “I'll give the lady my
card.” She produced it from her pocket with an air, after strug-
gling with the gigantic door-key which had got upon the top of it
and kept it down. Miss Abbey, with manifest tokens of astonish-
ment, took the diminutive document, and found it to run concisely

thusi:——

 

 

Miss JENNY WREN,

DOLLS’ DRESSMAKER.
—— OO

Dolls attended at their own residences.

 

 

  
  
  
 
 
  
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
    

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 15
“Lud!” exclaimed Miss Potterson, staring. And dropped the card.
“We take the liberty of coming, my young companion and I

madam,” said Riah, “on behalf of Lizzie Hexam.”

Miss Potterson was stooping to loosen the bonnet-strings of the
dolls’ dressmaker. She looked round rather angrily, and said:
“Lizzie Hexam is a very proud young woman.”

“She would be so proud,” returned Riah, dexterously, “to stand
well in your good opinion, that before she quitted London for 2

“For where, in the name of the Cape of Good Hope?” asked Miss
Potterson, as though supposing her to have emigrated,

“Wor the country,” was the cautious answer,—“she made us
promise to come and show you a paper, which she left in our hands
for that special purpose. I am an unserviceable friend of hers,
who began to know her after her departure from this neighbourhood.
She has been for some time living with my young companion, and
has been a helpful and a comfortable friend to her. Much needed,
madam,” he added, in a lower voice. “Believe me; if you knew all,
much needed.”

“TI can believe that,” said Miss Abbey, with a softening glance at
the little creature.

“And if it’s proud to have a heart that never hardens, and a tem-
per that never tires, and a touch that never hurts” Miss J enny
struck in, flushed, “she is proud. And if it’s not, she is Nor.”

Her set purpose of contradicting Miss Abbey point blank, was so
far from offending that dread authority, as to elicit a gracious smile.
“You do right, child,” said Miss Abbey, “to speak well of those who
deserve well of you.” :

“Right or wrong,” muttered Miss Wren, inaudibly, with a visible
hitch of her chin, “I mean to do it, and you may make up your
mind to that, old lady.”

“Here is the paper, madam,” said the Jew, delivering into Miss
Potterson’s hands the original document drawn up by Rokesmith,
and signed by Riderhood. “ Will you please to read it?”

We But first of all,” said Miss Abbey, “—did you ever taste shrub,
child ?”

Miss Wren shook her head.

“Should you like to?”

“Should if it’s good,” returned Miss Wren.

“You shall try. And, if you find it good, I'l mix some for you
with hot water. Put your poor little feet on the fender. It’s a
cold, cold night, and the fog clings so.” As Miss Abbey helped her
to turn her chair, her loosened bonnet dropped on the floor. “ Why,
what lovely hair!” cried Miss Abbey. “And enough to make wigs for
all the dolls in the world. What a quantity!”

“Call that a quantity?’ returned Miss Wren. “Poof! What do
you say to the rest of it?” As she spoke, she untied a band, and the
golden stream fell over herself and over the chair, and flowed down
to the ground. Miss Abbey’s admiration seemed to increase her
perplexity. She beckoned the Jew towards her, as she reached down
the shrub-botitle from its niche, and whispered :

_ “Child, or woman?”

?

 

      
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

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EGA (51

16 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Child in years,” was the answer; “woman in self-reliance and
trial.”

“You are talking about Me, good people,” thought Miss Jenny,
sitting in her golden bower, warming her feet. “1 can’t hear what
you say, but I know your tricks and your manners!”

The shrub, when tasted from a spoon, perfectly harmonizing with
Miss Jenny’s palate, a judicious amount was mixed by Miss Potter-
son’s skilful hands, whereof Riah too partook. After this pre-
liminary, Miss Abbey read the document; and, as often as she raised
her eyebrows in so doing, the watchful Miss Jenny accompanied the
action with an expressive and emphatic sip of the shrub and water.

“ As far as this goes,” said Miss Abbey Potterson, when she had read
it several times, and thought about it, “it proves (what didn’t much
need proving) that Rogue Riderhood is a villain. I have my doubts
whether he is not the villain who solely did the deed; but I have
no expectation of those doubts ever being cleared up now. I believe
I did Lizzie’s father wrong, but never Lizzie’s self; because when
things were at the worst I trusted her, had perfect confidence in her,
and tried to persuade her to come to me for a refuge. J am very
sorry to have done a man wrong, particularly when it can’t be
undone. Be kind enough to let Lizzie know what I say; not for-
getting that if she will come to the Porters, after all, bygones being
bygones, she will find a home at the Porters, and a friend at the
Porters. She knows Miss Abbey of old, remind her, and she knows
what-like the home, and what-like the friend, is likely to turn out.
I am generally short and sweet—or short and sour, according as it
may be and as opinions vary—” remarked Miss Abbey, “and that’s
about all I have got to say, and enough too.”

But before the shrub and water was sipped out, Miss Abbey
bethought herself that she would like to keep a copy of the paper
by her. “It’s not long, sir,” said she to Riah, “and perhaps you
wouldn't mind just jotting it down.” ‘The old man willingly put
on his spectacles, and, standing at the little desk in the corner
where Miss Abbey filed her receipts and kept her sample phials
(customers’ scores were interdicted by the strict administration of
the Porters), wrote out the copy in a fair round character. As he
stood there, doing his methodical penmanship, his ancient scribe-like
figure intent upon the work, and the little dolls’ dressmaker sittmg
in her golden bower before the fire, Miss Abbey had her doubts
whether she had not dreamed those two rare figures into the bar of
the Six Jolly Fellowships, and might not wake with a nod next
moment and find them gone.

Miss Abbey had twice made the experiment of shutting her eyes
and opening them again, still finding the figures there, when, dream-
like, a confused hubbub arose in the public room. As she started
up, and they all three looked at one another, it became a noise of
clamouring voices and of the stir of feet ; then all the windows were
heard to be hastily thrown up, and shouts and cries came floating
into the house from the river. A moment more, and Bob Gliddery
came clattering along the passage, with the noise of all the nails in
his boots condensed into every separate nail.

 

    
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

“What is it?” asked Miss Abbey.

“It’s summut run down in the fog, ma’am,” answered Bob.
“'There’s ever so many people in the river.”

“Tell ’em to put on all the kettles!” cried Miss Abbey. “See
that the boiler’s full. Get a bath out. Hang some blankets to the
fire. Heat some stone bottles. Have your senses about you, you
girls down stairs, and use ’em.”

While Miss Abbey partly delivered these directions to Bob—
whom she seized by the hair, and whose head she knocked against
the wall, as a general injunction to vigilance and presence of mind—
and partly hailed the kitchen with them—the company in the public
room, jostling one another, rushed out to the causeway, and the outer
noise increased.

“Come and look,” said Miss Abbey to her visitors. They all
three hurried to the vacated public room, and passed by one of the
windows into the wooden verandah overhanging the river.

“Toes anybody down there know what has happened?” demanded
Miss Abbey, in her voice of authority.

“Tt’s a steamer, Miss Abbey,” cried one blurred figure in the fog.

“Tt always is a steamer, Miss Abbey,” cried another.

“Them’s her lights, Miss Abbey, wot you see a-blinking yonder,”
cried another.

“ She’s a-blowing off her steam, Miss Abbey, and that’s what makes
the fog and the noise worse, don’t you see?” explained another.

Boats were putting off, torches were lighting up, people were
rushing tumultuously to the water’s edge. Some man fell in with
a splash, and was pulled out again with a roar of laughter. The
drags were called for. A cry for the life-buoy passed from mouth to
mouth. It was impossible to make out what was going on upon the
river, for every boat that put off sculled into the fog and was lost to
view at a boat’s length. Nothing was clear but that the unpopular
steamer was assailed with reproaches on all sides. She was the
Murderer, bound for Gallows Bay; she was the Manslaughterer,
bound for Penal Settlement; her captain ought to be tried for his
life ; her crew ran down men in row-boats with a relish; she mashed
up Thames lightermen with her paddles; she fired property with
her funnels; she always was, and she always would be, wreaking
destruction upon somebody or something, after the manner of all her
kind. The whole bulk of the fog teemed with such taunts, uttered
in tones of universal hoarseness. All the while, the steamer’s lights
moved. spectrally a very little, as she lay-to, waiting the upshot
of whatever accident had happened. Now, she began burning blue.
lights. These madea luminous patch about her, as if she had set the
fog on fire, and in the patch—the cries changing their note, and
becoming more fitful and more excited—shadows of men and boats
could be seen moving, while voices shouted: “There!” “'There
again!” “A couple more strokes a-head!” “Hurrah!” “Look
out!” “Hold on!” “Haul in!” and the like. Lastly, with a few
tumbling clots of blue fire, the night closed in dark again, the wheels
of the steamer were heard revolving, and her lights glided smoothly
away in the direction of the sea.

VOL. II. Cc

 

 

17,

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

18 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

It appeared to Miss Abbey and her two companions that a consider-
able time had been thus occupied. There was now as eager a set
towards the shore beneath the house as there had been from it; and
it was only on the first boat of the rush coming in that it was known
what had occurred.

“Tf that’s Tom Tootle,” Miss Abbey made proclamation, in her
most commanding tones, “let him instantly come underneath here.”

The submissive Tom complied, attended by a crowd.

“What 1s it, Tootle?” demanded Miss Abbey.

“Tt’s a foreign steamer, miss, run down a wherry.”

“How many in the wherry ?”

“One man, Miss Abbey.”

“ Found ?”

“Yes. He’s been under water a long time, Miss; but they’ve
grappled up the body.”

“Let ’em bring it here. You, Bob Gliddery, shut the house-door
and stand by it on the imside, and don’t you open till I tell you.
Any police down there ?”

“Here, Miss Abbey,” was official rejoinder.

“ After they have brought the body in, keep the crowd out, will
you? And help Bob Gliddery to shut ’em out.”

“ All right, Miss Abbey.”

The autocratic landlady withdrew into the house with Riah and
Miss Jenny, and disposed those forces, one on either side of her,
within the half-door of the bar, as behind a breastwork.

“You two stand close here,’ said Miss Abbey, “and you'll come
to no hurt, and see it brought in. Bob, you stand by the door.”

That sentinel, smartly giving his rolled shirt-sleeves an extra and
a final tuck on his shoulders, obeyed.

Sound of advancing voices, sound of advancing steps. Shuffle and
tallk without. Momentary pause. ‘I'wo peculiarly blunt knocks
or pokes at the door, as if the dead man arriving on his back were
striking at it with the soles of his motionless feet.

“'That’s the stretcher, or the shutter, whichever of the two they
are carrying,” said Miss Abbey, with experienced ear. “Open, you
Bob!”

Door opened. Heavy tread of laden men. A halt. A rush. Stop-
page of rush. Door shut. Baffled hoots from the vexed souls of dis-
appointed outsiders.

“Come on, men!” said Miss Abbey ; for so potent was she with her
subjects that even then the bearers awaited her permission. “ First
floor.”

The entry being low, and the staircase being low, they so took up
the burden they had set down, as to carry that low. ‘The recumbent
figure, in passing, lay hardly as high as the half door. :

Miss Abbey started back at sight of it. “Why, good God!” said
she, turning to her two companions, “that’s the very man who made
the declaration we have just had in our hands. That's Riderhood EP

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

    
 
   
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

CUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER II.
THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE.

ty sooth, it is Riderhood and no other, or it is the outer husk and
shell of Riderhood and no other, that is borne into Miss Abbey’s
first-floor bedroom. Supple to twist and turn as the Rogue has
ever been, he is sufficiently rigid now; and not without much
shuffling of attendant feet, and tilting of his bier this way and that
way, and peril even of his sliding off it and being tumbled in a heap
over the balustrades, can he be got up stairs.

“Fetch a doctor,’ quoth Miss Abbey. And then, “Fetch his
daughter.” On both of which errands, quick messengers depart.

The doctor-seeking messenger meets the doctor halfway, coming
under convoy of police. Doctor examines the dank carcase, and pro-
nounces, not hopefully, that it is worth while trying to reanimate the
same, All the best means are at once in action, and everybody pre-
sent lends a hand, and a heart and soul. No one has the least
regard for the man; with them all, he has been an object of avoid-
ance, suspicion, and aversion; but the spark of life within him is
curiously separable from himself now, and they have a deep interest
in it, probably because it is life, and they are living and must die.

In answer to the doctor’s inquiry how did it happen, and was any-
one to blame, Tom Tootle gives in his verdict, unavoidable accident
and no one to blame but the sufferer. “He was slinking about in
his boat,’ says Tom, “which slinking were, not to speak ill of the
dead, the manner of the man, when he come right athwart the
steamer’s bows and she cut him in two.” Mr. Tootle is so far figu-
rative, touching the dismemberment, as that he means the boat, and
not the man. For, the man lies whole before them.

Captain Joey, the bottle-nosed regular customer in the glazed hat,
is a pupil of the much-respected old school, and (having insinuated
himself into the chamber, in the execution of the important service
of carrying the drowned man’s neck-kerchief) favours the doctor
with a sagacious old-scholastic suggestion that the body should be
hung up by the heels, “sim’lar,” says Captain Joey, “to mutton in a
butcher’s shop,” and should then, as a particularly choice manceuvre
for promoting easy respiration, be rolled upon casks. ‘These scraps
of the wisdom of the captain’s ancestors are received with such
speechless indignation by Miss Abbey, that she imstantly seizes the
Captain by the collar, and without a single word ejects him, not pre-
suming to remonstrate, from the scene.

There then remain, to assist the doctor and Tom, only those three
other regular customers, Bob Glamour, William Williams, and
Jonathan (family name of the latter, if any, unknown to man-
kind), who are quite enough. Miss Abbey having looked in to
make sure that nothing is wanted, descends to the bar, and there
awaits the result, with the gentle Jew and Miss Jenny Wren.

Tf you are not gone for good, Mr, Riderhood, it would be something

c 2

   
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

20 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

to know where you are hiding at present. This flabby lump of mor-
tality that we work so hard at with such patient perseverance, yields
no sign of you. If you are gone for good, Rogue, it is very solemn,
and if you are coming back, it is hardly less so. Nay, in the suspense
and mystery of the latter question, involving that of where you may
be now, there is a solemnity even added to that of death, making us
who are in attendance alike afraid to look on you and to look off
you, and making those below start at the least sound of a creaking
plank in the floor.

Stay! Did that eyelid tremble? So the doctor, breathing low,
and closely watching, asks himself.

No.

Did that nostril twitch ?

No.

This artificial respiration ceasing, do I feel any faint flutter under
my hand upon the chest ?

No.

Over and over again No. No. But try over and over again,
nevertheless.

See! A token of life! An indubitable token of life! The spark
may smoulder and go out, or it may glow and expand, but see! The
four rough fellows, seeing, shed tears. Neither Riderhood in this
world, nor Riderhood in the other, could draw tears from them; but
a striving human soul between the two can do it easily.

He is struggling to come back. Now, he is almost here, now he is
far away again. Now he is struggling harder to get back. And yet
—like us all, when we swoon—like us all, every day of our lives
when we wake—he is instinctively unwilling to be restored to the
consciousness of this existence, and would be left dormant, if he could.

Bob Gliddery returns with Pleasant Riderhood, who was out when
sought for, and hard to find. She has a shawl over her head, and
her first action, when she takes it off weeping, and curtseys to Miss
Abbey, is to wind her hair up.

“Thank you, Miss Abbey, for having father here.”

“JT am bound to say, girl, I didn’t know who it was,” returns Miss
Abbey; “but I hope it would have been pretty much the same if I
had known.”

Poor Pleasant, fortified with a sip of brandy, is ushered into the
first-floor chamber. She could notexpress much sentiment about her
father if she were called upon to pronounce his funeral oration, but
she has a greater tenderness for him than he ever had for her, and
crying bitterly when she sees him stretched unconscious, asks the
doctor, with clasped hands: “Is there no hope, sir? O poor father!
Is poor father dead ?”

To which the doctor, on one knee beside the body, busy and
watchful, only rejoins without looking round: “ Now, my girl, unless
you have the selfcommand to be perfectly quiet, I cannot allow you
to remain in the room.”

Pleasant, consequently, wipes her eyes with her back-hair, which is
in fresh need of being wound up, and having got it out of the way,

watches with terrified interest all that goes on. Her natural

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 2
woman’s aptitude soon renders her able to give a little help. Anti-
cipating the doctor’s want of this or that, she quietly has it ready for
him, and so by degrees is intrusted with the charge of supporting
her father’s head upon her arm.

It is something so new to Pleasant to see her father an object of
sympathy and interest, to find any one very willing to tolerate his
society in this world, not to say pressingly and soothingly entreating
him to belong to it, that it gives her a sensation she never expe-
rienced before. Some hazy idea that if affairs could remain thus
for a long time it would be a respectable change, floats in her
mind. Also some vague idea that the old, evil is drowned out of
him, and that if he should happily come back to resume his occupa-
tion of the empty form that lies upon the bed, his spirit will be
altered. In which state of mind she kisses the stony lips, and quite
believes that the impassive hand she chafes will revive a tender
hand, if it revive ever.

Sweet delusion for Pleasant Riderhood. But they minister to him
with such extraordinary interest, their anxiety is so keen, their
vigilance is so great, their excited joy grows so intense as the signs
of life strengthen, that how can she resist it, poor thing! And now
he begins to breathe naturally, and he stirs, and the doctor declares
him to have come back from that inexplicable journey where he
stopped on the dark road, and to be here,

Tom Tootle, who is nearest to the doctor when he says this, grasps
the doctor fervently by the hand. Bob Glamour, William Williams,
and Jonathan of the no surname, all shake hands with one another
round, and with the doctor too. Bob Glamour blows his nose, and
Jonathan of the no surname is moved to do likewise, but lacking a
pocket handkerchief abandons that outiet for his emotion. Pleasant
sheds tears deserving her own name, and her sweet delusion is at its
height.

There is intelligence in his eyes. He wants to ask a question. He
wonders where he is. Tell him.

“Father, you were run down on the river, and are at Miss Abbey
Potterson’s.”

He stares at his daughter, stares all around him, closes his eyes,
and lies slumbering on her arm. c

The short-lived delusion begins to fade. The low, bad, unim-
pressible face is coming up from the depths of the river, or what
other depths, to the surface again. As he grows warm, the doctor and
the four men cool. As his lineaments soften with life, their faces
and their hearts harden to him.

“He will do now,” says the doctor, washing his hands, and looking
at the patient with growing disfavour.

“Many a better man,’ moralizes ‘Tom Tootle with a gloomy shake
of the head, “ ain’t had his luck.”

“It’s to be hoped he’ll make a better use of his life,” says Bob
Glamour, “than [ expect he will.”

“Or than he done afore,” adds William Williams.

“But no, not he!” says Jonathan of the no surname, clinching the
quartette.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

22 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

They speak in a low tone because of his daughter, but she sees
that they have all drawn off, and that they stand in a group at the
other end of the room, shunning him. It would be too much to
suspect them of being sorry that he didn’t die when he had done so
much towards it, but they clearly wish that they had had a better
subject to bestow their pains on. Intelligence is conveyed to Miss
Abbey in the bar, who reappears on the scene, and contemplates from
a distance, holding whispered discourse with the doctor. The spark
of life was deeply interesting while it was in abeyance, but now that
it has got established in Mr. Riderhood, there appears to be a general
desire that circumstances had admitted of its being developed in any-
body else, rather than that gentleman.

“ However,” says Miss Abbey, cheering them up, “you have done
your duty like good and true men, and you had better come down
and take something at the expense of the Porters.”

This they all do, leaving the daughter watching the father. To
whom, in their absence, Bob Gliddery presents himself.

“His gills looks rum; don’t they?” says Bob, after inspecting the
patient.

Pleasant faintly nods.

“His gills 11 look rummer when he wakes; won’t they
Bob.

Pleasant hopes not. Why?

“When he finds himself here, you know,” Bob explains. “Cause
Miss Abbey forbid him the house and ordered him out of it. But
what you may call the Fates ordered him into it again. Which is
rumness ; ain’t it?”

“He wouldn’t have come here of his own accord,” returns poor
Pleasant, with an effort at a little pride.

“No,” retorts Bob. “Nor he wouldn’t have been let in, if he
had.”

The short delusion is quite dispelled now. As plainly as she sees
on her arm the old father, unimproved, Pleasant sees that everybody
there will cut him when he recovers consciousness. “Il take him
away ever so soon as I can,” thinks Pleasant with asigh ; “he’s best
at home.”

Presently they all return, and wait for him to become conscious
that they will all be glad to get rid of him. Some clothes are
got together for him to wear, his own being saturated with water,
and his present dress being composed of blankets.

Becoming more and more uncomfortable, as though the prevalent
dislike were finding him out somewhere in his sleep and expressing
itself to him, the patient at last opens his eyes wide, and is assisted
by his daughter to sit up in bed.

“ Well, Riderhood,” says the doctor, “how do you feel ?”

He replies grufily, “ Nothing to boast on.” Having, in fact, returned
to life in an uncommonly sulky state.

“T don’t mean to preach; but I hope,” says the doctor, gravely
shaking his head, “that this escape may have a good effect upon you,
Riderhood.” r
The patient’s discontented growl of a reply is not intelligible; his

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 23
daughter, however, could interpret, if she would, that what he says
is, he “don’t want no Poll-Parroting.”

Mr. Riderhood next demands his shirt; and draws it on over his
head: (with his daughter's help) exactly as if he had just had a
Fight.

“ Warn’t it a steamer?” he pauses to ask her.

“Yes, father.”

“Vl have the law on her, bust her! and make her pay for it.”

He then buttons his linen very moodily, twice or thrice stopping to
examine his arms and hands, as if to see what punishment he has
received in the Fight. He then doggedly demands his other garments,
and slowly gets them on, with an appearance of great malevolence
towards his late opponent and all the spectators. He has an impres-
sion that his nose is bleeding, aud several times draws the back of
his hand across it, and looks for the result, in a pugilistic manner,
greatly strengthening that incongruous resemblance.

“Where's my fur cap?” he asks in a surly voice, when he has
shuffled his clothes on.

“In the river,” somebody rejoins.

«“ And warn’t there no honest man to pick it up? OO’ course there
was though, and to cut off with it arterwards. You are a rare lot,
all on you!”

Thus, Mr. Riderhood: taking from the hands of his daughter, with
special ill-will, a lent cap, and grumbling as he pulls it down over
his ears. Then, getting on his unsteady legs, leaning heavily upon
her, and growling “ Hold still, can’t you? What! You must be a
staggering next, must you?” he takes his departure out of the ring
in which he has had that little turn-up with Death.

  
 

 

CHAPTER IV.
A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY.

Mr. and Mrs. Wilfer had seen a full quarter of a hundred more
anniversaries of their wedding day than Mr. and Mrs. Lammle had
seen of theirs, but they still celebrated the occasion in the bosom of
their family. Not that these celebrations ever resulted in anything
particularly agreeable, or that the family was ever disappointed by
that circumstance on account of having looked forward to the return
of the auspicious day with sanguine anticipations of enjoyment. It
was kept morally, rather as a Fast than a Feast, enabling Mrs. W ilfer
to hold a sombre darkling state, which exhibited that impressive
woman in her choicest colours.

The noble lady’s condition on these delightful occasions was
one compounded of heroic endurance and heroic forgiveness. Lurid
indications of the better marriages she might have made, shone
athwart the awful gloom of her composure, and fitfully revealed the
cherub as a little monster unaccountably favoured by Heaven, who
had possessed himself of a blessing for which many of his superiors

  
 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

24 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

had sued and contended in vain. So firmly had this his position
towards his treasure become established, that when the anniversary
arrived, it always found him in an apologetic state. It is not im-
possible that his modest penitence may have even gone the length
of sometimes severely reproving him for that he ever took the
liberty of making so exalted a character his wife.

As for the children of the union, their experience of these festivals
had been sufficiently uncomfortable to lead them annually to wish,
when out of their tenderest years, either that Ma had married some-
body else instead of much-teased Pa, or that Pa had married somebody
else instead of Ma. When there came to be but two sisters left at
home, the daring mind of Bella on the next of these occasions scaled
the height of wondering with droll vexation “what on earth Pa ever
could have seen in Ma, to induce him to make such a little fool of
himself as to ask her to have him.”

The revolving year now bringing the day round in its orderly
sequence, Bella arrived in the Boffin chariot to assist at the celebra-
tion. It was the family custom when the day recurred, to sacrifice a
pair of fowls on the altar of Hymen; and Bella had sent a note before-
hand, to intimate that she would bring the votive offering with her.
So, Bella and the fowls, by the united energies of two horses, two
men, four wheels, and a plum-pudding carriage dog with as uncom-
fortable a collar on as if he had been George the Fourth, were depo-
sited at the door of the parental dwelling. They were there received
by Mrs. Wilfer in person, whose dignity on this, as on most special
occasions, was heightened by a mysterious toothache.

“I shall not require the carriage at night,” said Bella. “I shall
walk back.”

The male domestic of Mrs. Boffin touched his hat, and in the act of
departure had an awful glare bestowed upon him by Mrs. Wilfer,
intended to carry deep into his audacious soul the assurance that,
whatever his private suspicions might be, male domestics in livery
were no rarity there.

“ Well, dear Ma,” said Bella, “and how do you do?”

“J am as well, Bella,” replied Mrs. Wilfer, “as can be expected.”

«“ Dear me, Ma,” said Bella: “you talk as if one was just born !”

“'That’s exactly what Ma has been doing,” interposed Lavvy, over
the maternal shoulder, “ ever since we got up this morning. It’s all
very well to laugh, Bella, but anything more exasperating it is
impossible to conceive.”

Mrs. Wilfer, with a look too full of majesty to be accompanied by
any words, attended both her daughters to the kitchen, where the
sacrifice was to be prepared.

“Mr. Rokesmith,” said she, resignedly, “has been so polite as to
place his sitting-room at our disposal to-day. You will therefore,
Bella, be entertained in the humble abode of your parents, so far in
accordance with your present style of living, that there will be a
drawing-room for your reception as well as a dining-room. Your
papa invited Mr. Rokesmith to partake of our lowly fare. In excusing

himself on account of a particular engagement, he offered the use of
his apartment.”

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

    
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 25

Bella happened to know that he had no engagement out of his own
room at Mr. Boffin’s, but she approved of his staying away. “We
should only have put one another out of countenance,” she thought,
“and we do that quite often enough as it is.”

Yet she had sufficient curiosity about his room, to run up to it
with the least possible delay, and make a close inspection of its con-
tents. It was tastefully though economically furnished, and very
neatly arranged. ‘There were shelves and stands of books, English.
french, and Italian; and in a portfolio on the writing-table there
were sheets upon sheets of memoranda and calculations in figures,
evidently referring to the Boffin property. On that table also, care-
fully backed with canvas, varnished, mounted, and rolled like a map,
was the placard descriptive of the murdered man who had come from
afar to be her husband. She shrank from this ghostly surprise, and
felt quite frightened as she rolled and tied it up again. Peeping
about here and there, she came upon a print, a graceful head of a
pretty woman, elegantly framed, hanging in the corner by the easy
chair. “Oh, indeed, sir!” said Bella, after stopping toruminate before
it. “Oh, indeed, sir! I fancy I can guess whom you think that’s
like. But Pll tell you what it’s much more like—your impudence!”
Having said which she decamped : not solely because she was offended,
but because there was nothing else to look at.

“Now, Ma,” said Bella, reappearing in the kitchen with some
remains of a blush, “you and Layvy think magnificent me fit for
nothing, but I intend to prove the contrary. I mean to be Cook to-
day.”

“Hold!” rejoined her majestic mother. “I cannot permit it.
Cook, in that dress!”

“As for my dress, Ma,” returned Bella, merrily searching in a
dresser-drawer, “ I mean to apron it and towel it all over the front ;
and as to permission, [ mean to do without.”

“ You cook?” said Mrs. Wilfer. “ You, who never cooked when you
were at home?”

“Yes, Ma,” returned Bella; “that is precisely the state of the
case.”

She girded herself with a white apron, and busily with knots
and pins contrived a bib to it, coming close and tight under her
chin, as if it had caught her round the neck to kiss her. Over
this bib her dimples looked delightful, and under it her pretty figure
not less so. “Now, Ma,” said Bella, pushing back her hair from her
temples with both hands, “ what's first ?”

“ First,” returned Mrs. Wilfer solemnly, “if you persist in what I
cannot but regard as conduct utterly incompatible with the equipage
in which you arrived—”

(“ Which I do, Ma.”)

“First, then, you put the fowls down to the fire.”

“To—be—sure!” cried Bella; “and flour them, and twirl them
round, and there they go!” sending them spinning at a great rate.
“What's next, Ma ?”

“Next,” said Mrs. Wilfer with a wave of her gloves, expressive of
abdication under protest from the culinary throne, “I would recom-

 

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26 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

mend examination of the bacon in the saucepan on the fire, and :also
of the potatoes by the application of a fork. Preparation of the
greens will further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly
demeanour.”

“ As of course I do, Ma.”

Persisting, Bella gave her attention to one thing and forgot the
vther, and gave her attention to the other and forgot the third, and
remembering the third was distracted by the fourth, and made
amends whenever she went wrong by giving the unfortunate fowls
an extra spin, which made their chance of ever getting cooked
exceedingly doubtful. But it was pleasant cookery too. Meantime
Miss Lavinia, oscillating between the kitchen and the opposite room,
prepared the dining-table in the latter chamber. This office she
(always doing her household spiriting with unwillingness) performed
in a startling series of whisks and bumps; laying the table-cloth as
if she were raising the wind, putting down the glasses and salt-
ellars as if she were knocking at the door, and clashing the knives
and forks in a skirmishing manner suggestive of hand-to-hand
conflict.

“Look at Ma,” whispered Lavinia to Bella when this was done,
and they stood over the roasting fowls. “If one was the most
dutiful child in existence (of course on the whole one hopes one is),
isn’t she enough to make one want to poke her with something
wooden, sitting there bolt upright in a corner ?”

“Only suppose,” returned Bella, “that poor Pa was to sit bolt
upright in another corner.”

“ My dear, he couldn’t do it,” said Lavvy. “Pa would loll directly.
But indeed I do not believe there ever was any human creature who
could keep so bolt upright as Ma, or put such an amount of aggra-
vation into one back! What's the matter, Ma? Ain’t you well,
Ma?”

“ Doubtless Lam very well,” returned Mrs. Wilfer, turning her eyes
upon her youngest born, with scornful fortitude. “What should be
the matter with Me?”

“You don’t seem very brisk, Ma,” retorted Lavvy the bold.

“ Brisk ?” repeated her parent, “ Brisk? Whence the low expression,
Lavinia? If lam uncomplaining, if I am silently contented with
my lot, let that suffice for my family.”

“Well, Ma,” returned Layvy, “since you will force it out of me, I
must respectfully take leave to say that your family are no doubt under
the greatest obligations to you for haying an annual toothache on
your wedding day, and that it’s very disinterested in you, and an
immense blessing to them. Still, on the whole, it is possible to be too
boastful even of that boon.”

“You incarnation of sauciness,” said Mrs. Wilfer, “do you speak
like that to me? On this day, of all days in the year? Pray
do you know what would have become of you, if I had not bestowed
iy hand upon R. W., your father, on this day ?”

“No, Ma,” replied Lavvy, “I really do not; and, with the greatest
respect for your abilities and information, I very much doubt if you
do either.”

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
    

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
    
 
    
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 27

Whether or no the sharp vigour of this sally on a weak point of
Mrs. Wilfer’s entrenchments might have routed that heroine for the
ime, is rendered uncertain by the arrival of a flag of truce in the
verson of Mr. George Sampson: bidden to the feast as a friend of the
amily, whose affections were now understood to be in course of trans-
erence from Bella to Lavinia, and whom Lavinia kept—possibly in
emembrance of his bad taste in having overlooked her in the first
nstance—under a course of stinging discipline.

“T congratulate you, Mrs. Wilfer,” said Mr. George Sampson, who
had meditated this neat address while coming along, “(on the day.”
Mrs. Wilfer thanked him with a magnanimous sigh, and again
became an unresisting prey to that inscrutable toothache.

“J am surprised,” said Mr. Sampson feebly, “that Miss Bella con-
descends to cook.”

Here Migs Lavinia descended on the ill-starred young gentleman
with a crushing supposition that at all events it was no b isiness of
his. This disposed of Mr. Sampson in a melancholy retirement of
spirit, until the cherub arrived, whose amazement at the lovely
woman’s occupation was great.

However, she persisted in dishing the dinner as well as cooking it,
and then sat down, bibless and apronless, to partake of it as an illus-
trious guest: Mrs. Wilfer first responding to her husband's cheerful
“For what we are about to receive—” with a sepulchral Amen, cal-
culated to cast a, damp upon the stoutest appetite.

“ But what,” said Bella, as she watched the carving of the fowls,
“makes them pink inside, I wonder, Pa! Is it the breed?”

“No, I don't think it’s the breed, my dear,” returned Pa. “I
rather think it is because they are not done.”

“They ought to be,” said Bella.

“Yes, I am aware they ought to be, my dear,” rejoined her father,
“but they—ain’t.”

So, the gridiron was put jn requisition, and the good-tempered
cherub, who was often as un-cherubically employed in his own family
as if he had been in the employment of some of the Old Masters, unde
took to grill the fowls. Indeed, except in respect of staring about him
(a branch of the public service to which the pictorial cherub is
much addicted), this domestic cherub discharged as many odd
functions as his prototype; with the difference, say, that he per-
formed with a blacking-brush on the family’s boots, instead of
performing on enormous wind instruments and double-basses, and
that he conducted himself with cheerful alacrity to much useful
purpose, instead of foreshortening himself in the air with the
vaguest intentions.

Bella helped him with his suppl mental cookery, and made him
very happy, but put him in mortal terror too by asking him when they
sat down at table arain, how he supposed they cooked fowls at the
Greenwich dinners, and whether he believed they really were such

pleasant dinners as people said? His secret winks and nods of re-
monstrance, in reply, made the mischievous Bella laugh until she
choked, and then Lavinia was obliged to slap her on the back, and
then she laughed the more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
  
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
    
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
   
 
 
  
 
  
    
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

28 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

But her mother was a fine corrective at the other end of the table;
to whom her father, in the innocence of his good-fellowship, at in-
tervals appealed with: “My dear, I am afraid you are not enjoying
yourself ?”

“ Why so, R. W.?” she would sonorously reply.

“ Because, my dear, you seem a little out of sorts.”

“Not at all,” would be the rejoinder, in exactly the same tone.

“Would you take a merry-thought, my dear?”

“Thank you. I will take whatever you please, R. W.”

“Well, but my dear, do you like it?”

«J like it as well as I like anything, R. W.” The stately woman
would then, with a meritorious appearance of devoting herself to
the general good, pursue her dinner as if she were feeding somebody
else on high public grounds.

Bella had brought dessert and two bottles of wine, thus shedding
unprecedented splendour on the occasion. Mrs. Wilfer did the honors
of the first glass by proclaiming: “R. W. 1 drink to you.”

“Thank you, my dear. And I to you.”

“Pa and Ma!” said Bella.

“ Permit me,” Mrs. Wilfer interposed, with outstretched glove.
“No. Ithink not. I drank to your papa. If, however, you insist
on including me, I can in gratitude offer no objection.”

“Why, Lor, Ma,” interposed Lavvy the bold, “isn’t it the day
that made you and Pa one and the same? I have no patience !”

“ By whatever other circumstance the day may be marked,
it is not the day, Lavinia, on which I will allow a child of
mine to pounce upon me. I beg—nay, command !—that you will not
pounce. RK. W., it is appropriate to reeall that it is for you to com-
mand and for me to obey. It is your house, and you are master at
your own table. Both our healths!” Drinking the toast with tre-
mendous stiffness.

“T really am a little afraid, my dear,” hinted the cherub meekly,
“that you are not enjoying yourself?”

“On the contrary,” returned Mrs. Wilfér, “ quite so. Why should
T not?”

“J thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might He

“My face might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or
who should know it, if I smiled 2”

And she did smile; manifestly freezing the blood of Mr. George
Sampson by so doing. For that young gentleman, catching her
smiling eye, was so very much appalled by its expression as to cast
about in his thoughts concerning what he had done to bring it down
upon himself.

“The mind naturally falls,” said Mrs. Wilfer, “shall I say into a
reverie, or shall I say into a retrospect? on a day like this.”

Lavvy, sitting with defiantly folded arms, replied (but not
audibly ), “ For goodness’ sake say whichever of the two you like best,
Ma, and get it over.”

“The mind,” pursued Mrs. Wilfer in an oratorical manner, “natu-
rally reverts to Papa and Mamma—I here allude to my parents—at a
period before the earliest dawn of this day. I was considered tall ;

 

 

  

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 29

perhaps I was. Papa and Mamma were unquestionably tall. I
have rarely seen a finer woman than my mother; never than my
father.”

The irrepressible Lavvy remarked aloud, “ Whatever grandpapa
was, he wasn’t a female.”

“Your grandpapa,” retorted Mrs. Wilfer, with an awful look, and
in an awful tone, “was what I describe him to have been, and would
have struck any of his grandchildren to the earth who presumed to
question it. It was one of mamma’s cherished hopes that I should
become united to a tall member of society. It may have been a
weakness, but if so, it was equally the weakness, I believe, of King
Frederick of Prussia.” These remarks being offered to Mr. George
Sampson, who had not the courage to come out for single combat, but
lurked with his chest under the table and his eyes cast down, Mrs.
Wilfer proceeded, in a voice of increasing sternness and impressive-
ness, until she should force that skulker to give himself up. “Mamma
would appear to have had an indefinable foreboding of what after-
wards happened, for she would frequently urge upon me, ‘Not a
little man. Promise me, my child, not a little man. Never, never,
never, marry a little man!’ Papa also would remark to me (he
possessed extraordinary humour), ‘that a family of whales must not
ally themselves with sprats.’ His company was eagerly sought, as
may be supposed, by the wits of the day, and our house was their
continual resort. I have known as many as three copper-plate
engravers exchanging the most exquisite sallies and retorts there, at
one time.” (Here Mr. Sampson delivered himself captive, and said,
with an uneasy movement on his chair, that three was a large num-
ber, and it must have been highly entertaining.) “Among the most
prominent members of that distinguished circle, was a gentleman
measuring six feet four in height. He was nof an engraver.” (Here
Mr. Sampson said, with no reason whatever, Of course not.) “This
gentleman was so obliging as to honor me with attentions which I
could not fail to understand.” (Here Mr. Sampson murmured. that
when it came to that, you could always tell.) “I immediately
announced to both my parents that. those attentions were misplaced,
and that I could not fayour his suit. They inquired was he too
tall? I replied it was not the stature, but the intellect was too lofty.
At our house, I said, the tone was too brilliant, the pressure was too
high, to be maintained by me, a mere woman, in every-day domestic
life. I well remember mamma’s clasping her hands, and exclaiming
‘This will end in a little man!’” (Here Mr. Sampson glanced at his
host and shook his head with despondency.) “She afterwards
went so far as to predict that it would end in a little man whose
mind would be below the average, but that was in what I may de-
nominate a paroxysm of maternal disappointment. Within a month,”
said Mrs.Wilfer, deepening her voice, as if she were relating a terrible
ghost story, “ within a month, I first saw R. W. my husband. Within
a year, I married him. It is natural for the mind to recall these dark
coincidences on the present day.”

Mr. Sampson at length released from the custody of Mrs. Wilfer’s
eye, now drew a long breath, and made the original and striking remark

SS ae

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30 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

that there was no accounting for these sort of presentiments. R. W.
scratched his head and looked apologetically all round the table until
he came to his wife, when observing her as it were shrouded in a
more sombre veil than before, he once more hinted, “My dear, I am
really afraid you are not altogether enjoying yourself?’ To which
she once more replied, “On the contrary, R. W. Quite so.”

The wretched Mr. Sampson’s position at this agreeable entertain-
ment was truly pitiable. For, not only was he exposed defenceless
to the harangues of Mrs. Wilfer, but he received the utmost con-
tumely at the hands of Lavinia; who, partly to show Bella that she
(Lavinia) could do what she liked with him, and partly to pay him
off for still obviously admiring Bella’s beauty, led him the life of a
dog. Illuminated on the one hand by the stately graces of Mrs.
Wilfer’s oratory, and shadowed on the other by the checks and
frowns of the young lady to whom he had devoted himself in his
destitution, the sufferings of this young gentleman were distressing
to witness. If his mind for the moment reeled under them, it may
be urged, in extenuation of its weakness, that it was constitutionally
a knock-knee’d mind and never very strong upon its legs.

The rosy hours were thus beguiled until it was time for Bella to
have Pa’s escort back. The dimples duly tied up in the bonnet-
strings and the leave-taking done, they got out into the air, and the
cherub drew a long breath as if he found it refreshing.

“Well, dear Pa,” said Bella, “the anniversary may be considered
over.”

“Yes, my dear,” returned the cherub, “there’s another of ’em

Bella drew his arm closer through hers as they walked along, and
gave it a number of consolatory pats. “Thank you, my dear,” he said,
as if she had spoken; “Iam all right, my dear. Well, and how do
you get on, Bella?”

“JY am not atall improved, Pa.”

« Ain’t you really though ?”

“No, Pa. On the contrary, I am worse.”

“Lor!” said the cherub.

“Tam worse, Pa. I make so many calculations how much a year
I must have when I marry, and what is the least I can manage to do
with, that I am beginning to get wrinkles over my nose. Did you
notice any wrinkles over my nose this evening, Pa?”

Pa laughing at this, Bella gave him two or three shakes.

“You won't laugh, sir, when you see your lovely woman turning
haggard. You had better be prepared in time, I can tell you. I
shall not be able to keep my greediness for money out of my eyes
long, and when you see it there you'll be sorry, and serve you right
for not being warned in time. Now, sir, we entered into a bond of
confidence. Have you anything to impart?”

“T thought it was you who was to impart, my love.”

“Oh! did you indeed, sir? Then why didn’t you ask me, the
moment we came out? The confidences of lovely women are not to
be slighted. However, I forgive you this once, and look here, Pa;
that’s’—Bella laid the little forefinger of her right glove on her lip,

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
  
    

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 31

 

and then laid it on her father’s lip—*that’s a kiss for you. And
now Iam going seriously to tell you—let me see how many—four
secrets, Mind! Serious, grave, weighty secrets. Strictly between
ourselves.”

“Number one, my dear?” said her father, settling her arm com-
fortably and confidentially. ‘

“Number one,” said Bella, “will electrify you, Pa. Who do you
think has”—she was confused here in spite of her merry way of
beginning —“ has made an offer to me?”

Pa looked in her face, and looked at the ground, and looked in her
face again, and declared he could never guess.

“Mr. Rokesmith.”

“You don’t tell me so, my dear !”

“Mis—ter Roke—smith, Pa,” said Bella separating the syllables
for emphasis. “What do you say to that ?”

Pa answered quietly with the counter-question, “ What did you say
to that, my love?”

“T said No,” returned Bella sharply. “Of course.”

“Yes. Of course,” said her father, meditating.

“And I told him why I thought it a betrayal of trust on his part,
and an affront to me,” said Bella.

“Yes. To be sure. Jam astonished indeed. I wonder he com-
mitted himself without seeing more of his way first. Now I think
of it, I suspect he always has admired you though, my dear.”

“A hackney coachman may admire me,” remarked Bella, with a
touch of her mother’s loftiness. :

“Tt’s highly probable, my love. Number two, my dear

“Number two, Pa, is much to the same purpose, though not so
preposterous. Mr. Lightwood would propose to me, if I would let
him.”

“Then I understand, my dear, that you don’t intend to let him?”

Bella again saying, with her former emphasis, “ Why, of course
not!” her father felt himself bound to echo, “ Of course not.”

“T don’t care for him,” said Bella.

“That's enough,” her father interposed.

“No, Pa, it’s not enough,” rejoined Bella, giving him another
shake or two. “Haven’t I told you what a mercenary little wretch
Lam? It only becomes enough when he has no money, and no
clients, and no expectations, and no anything but debts.”

“Hah!” said the cherub, a little depressed. ‘“ Number three, my
dear ?”

“ Number three, Pa, is a better thing. A generous thing, a noble
thing, a delightful thing. Mrs. Boffin has herself told me, as a
secret, with her own kind lips—and truer lips never opened or closed
in this life, I am sure—that they wish to see me well married; and
that when I marry with their consent they will portion me most
handsomely.” Here the grateful girl burst out erying very heartily.

“Don’t cry, my darling,” said her father, with his hand to his
eyes; “it’s excusable in me to be a little overcome when I find that
my dear favourite child is, after all disappointments, to be so pro-
vided for and so raised in the world; but don’t you cry, don’t you

99

    
   
    
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

oo al eee

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

$2 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

ery. JI am very thankful I congratulate you with all my heart,
my dear.” The good soft little fellow, drying his eyes, here, Bella put
her arms round his neck and tenderly kissed him on: the high road,
passionately telling him he was the best of fathers and the best of
friends, and that on her wedding-morning she would go down on her
knees to him and beg his pardon for having ever teased him or seemed
insensible to the worth of such a patient, sympathetic, genial, fresh
young heart. At every one of her adjectives she redoubled her
kisses, and finally kissed his hat off, and then laughed immoderately
when the wind took it and he ran after it.

When he had recovered his hat and his breath, and they were
going on again once more, said her father then: “ Number four, my
dear ?”

Bella’s countenance fell in the midst of her mirth. “After all,
perhaps I had better put off number four, Pa. Let me try once more,
if for never so short a time, to hope that it may not really be so.”

The change in her, strengthened the cherub’s interest in number
four, and he said quietly: “May not be so, my dear? May not be
how, my dear ?”

Bella looked at him pensively, and shook her head.

“ And yet I know right well it is so, Pa. I know it only too well.”

“My love,” returned her father, “you make me quite uncomfort-
able. Have you said No to anybody else, my dear ?”

CON Osea:

“Yes to anybody?” he suggested, lifting up his eyebrows.

“No, Pa.”

“Is there anybody else who would take his chance between Yes
and No, if you would let him, my dear ?”

“ Not that I know of, Pa.”

“There can’t be somebody who won't take his chance when you
want him to?” said the cherub, as a last resource.

Why, of course not, Pa,” said Bella, giving him another shake or
two.

“No, of course not,” he assented. “ Bella, my dear, I am afraid I
must either have no sleep to-night, or I must press for number
four.”

“Oh, Pa, there is no good in number four! Iam so sorry for it,
Jam so unwilling to believe it, I have tried so earnestly not to see
it, that it is very hard to tell, even to you. But Mr. Boffin is being
spoilt by prosperity, and is changing every day.”

“My dear Bella, I hope and trust not.”

“J have hoped and trusted not too, Pa; but every day he changes
for the worse, and for the worse. Not to me—he is always much
the same to me—but to others about him. Before my eyes he grows
suspicious, capricious, hard, tyrannical, unjust. If ever a good man
were ruined by good fortune, it is my benefactor. And yet, Pa,
think how terrible the fascination of money is! I see this, and hate
this, and dread this, and don’t know but that money might make a
much worse change in me. And yet I have money always in my
thoughts and my desires; and the whole life I place before myself
is Money, money, money, and what money can make of life!”

 

 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
    

   

    
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER V.
THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO BAD COMPANY.

Were Bella Wilfer’s bright and ready little wits at fault, or was
the Golden Dustman passing through the furnace of proof and
coming out dross? Il] news travels fast. We shall know full soon.

On that very night of her return from the Happy Return, some-
thing chanced which Bella closely followed with her eyes and ears.
There was an apartment at the side of the Boffin mansion, known as
Mr. Boffin’s room. Far less grand than the rest of the house, it was
far more comfortable, being pervaded by a certain air of homely snug-
ness, which upholstering despotism had banished to that spot when
it inexorably set its face against Mr. 3offin’s appeals for mercy in
behalf of any other chamber. Thus, although a room of modest
situation—for its windows gave on Silas Wegg’s old corner—and of
no pretensions to velvet, satin, or gilding, it had got itself established
in a domestic position analogous to that of an easy dressing-gown or
pair of slippers; and whenever the family wanted to enjoy a particu-
larly pleasant fireside evening, they enjoyed it, as an institution that
must be, in Mr. Boffin’s room.

Mr. and Mrs. Boffin were reported sitting in this room, when
Bella got back. Entering it, she found the Secretary there too; in
official attendance it would appear, for he was standing with some
papers in his hand by a table with shaded candles on it, at which
Mr. Boffin was seated thrown back in his easy chair.

“You are busy, sir,” said Bella, hesitating at the door.

“Not at all, my dear, not at all. You're one of ourselves. We
never make company of you. Come in, come in. Here’s the old lady
in her usual place.”

Mrs. Boffin adding her nod and smile of welcome to Mr. Boffin’s
svords, Bella took her bouk to a chair in the fireside corner, by Mrs.
Boffin’s work-table. Mr. Boffin’s station was on the opposite side.

“Now, Rokesmith,” said the Golden Dustman, so sharply rapping
the table to bespeak his attention as Bella turned the leaves of her
book, that she started ; “ where were we Re

“You were saying, sir,” returned the Secretary, with an air of
come reluctance and a glance towards those others who were present,
“that you considered the time had come for fixing my salary.”

“Don’t be above calling it wages, man,” said Mr. Boffin, testily.
“What the deuce! I never talked of my salary when I was in
service.”

“My wages,” said the Secretary, correcting himself.

“Rokesmith, you are not proud, I hope?’ observed Mr. Boftin, :
eyeing him askance.

“T hope not, sir.”

“Because I never was, when I was poor,” said Mr. Boffin. “ Poverty
and pride don’t go at all well together. Mind that. How can they
VOL. II. D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

34 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

go well together? Why itstands to reason. A man, being poor, has
nothing to be proud of. It’s nonsense.”

With a slight inclination of his head, and a look of some surprise,
the Secretary seemed to assent by forming the syllables of the word
“nonsense” on his lips.

“Now, concerning these same wages,” said Mr. Boffin. “Sit
down.”

The Secretary sat down.

“Why didn’t yousit down before?’ asked Mr. Boffin, distrustfully.
“T hope that wasn’t pride? But about these wages. Now, I’ve
gone into the matter, and I say two hundred a year. What do you
think of it? Do you think it’s enough ?”

“Thank you. It is a fair proposal.”

“I don’t say, you know,” Mr. Boffin stipulated, “but what it
may be more than enough. And I'll tell you why, Rokesmith. A
man. of property, like me, is bound to consider the market-price. At
first I didn’t enter into that as much as I might have done; but I’ve
got acquainted with other men of property since, and I’ve got ac-
quainted with the duties of property. 1 mustn’t go putting the
market-price up, because money may happen not to be an object with
me. A sheep is worth so much in the market, and I ought to give
it and no more. A secretary is worth so much in the market, and I
ought to give it and no more. However, I don’t mind stretching a
point with you.”

“Mr. Botfin, you are very good,” replied the Secretary, with an
effort.

“Then we put the figure,” said Mr. Boffin, “at two hundred a
year. Then the figure’s disposed of. Now, there must be no mis-
understanding regarding what I buy for two hundred a year. Hil
pay for a sheep, I buy it out. and out. Similarly, if I pay for a secre-
tary, I buy him out and out.”

“In other words, you purchase my whole time 2”

“Certainly I do. Look here,” said Mr. Boffin, “it ain’t that I
want to occupy your whole time; you can take up a book for a
minute or two when you've nothing better to do, though I think you'll
a most always find something useful todo. But I want to keep you
in attendance. It’s convenient to have you at all times ready on the
premises. Therefore, betwixt your breakfast and your supper,—on
the premises I expect to find you.”

The Secretary bowed.

“In bygone days, when I was in service myself,” said Mr. Boffin,
“T couldn’t go cutting about at my will and pleasure, and you won't
expect to go cutting about at your will and pleasure. You've rather
got into a habit of that, lately; but perhaps it was for want of a
right specification betwixt us. Now, let there be a right specification
betwixt us, and let it be this. If you want leave, ask for it.”

Again the Secretary bowed. His manner was uneasy and asto-
nished, and showed a sense of humiliation.

“Tl have a bell,” said Mr. Boffin, « hung from this room to yours,
and when I want you, I'll touch it. I don’t call to mind that | have
anything more to say at the present moment.”

      
   
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
    
    

  

OUR MUTUAL "FRIEND. oD

‘The Secretary rose, gathered up his papers, and withdrew. Bella’s
eyes followed him to the door, lighted on Mr. Boffin complacently
thrown back in his easy chair, and drooped over her book.

“I have let that chap, that young man of mine,” said Mr. Boffin,
taking a trot up and down the room, “get above his work. It won't
do. 1 must have him down a peg. A man of property owes a duty
to other men of property, and must look sharp after his inferiors.”

Bella felt that Mrs. Boffin was not comfortable, and that the eyes of
that good creature sought to discover from her face what attention she
had given to this discourse, and what impression it had made upon
her. For which reason Bella’s eyes drooped more engrossedly over
her book, and she turned the page with an air of profound absorp-
tion in it.

“Noddy,” said Mrs. Boffin, after thoughtfully pausing in her work.

“My dear,” returned the Golden Dustman, stopping short in his trot.

“Excuse my putting it to you, Noddy, but now really! Haven't
you been a little strict with Mr. Rokesmith to-night? Haven’t
you been a little—just a little little—not quite like your old self?”

“ Why, old woman, I hope so,” returned Mr. Boftin, cheerfully, if
not boastfully.

“Hope so, deary ?”

“Our old selves wouldn’t do here, old lady. Haven’t you found
that out yet? Our old selves would be fit for nothing here but to be
robbed and imposed upon. Our old selves weren’t people of fortune ;
our new selves are; it’s a great difference.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Boffin, pausing in her work again, softly to draw
a long breath and to look at the fire. “A igreat difference.”

“And we must be up to the difference,” pursued her husband ;
“we must be equal to the change ; that’s what we must be. We've
got to hold our own now, against everybody (for everybody’s hand
is stretched out to be dipped into our pockets), and we have got to
recollect that money makes money, as well as makes everything else.”

“Mentioning recollecting,” said Mrs. Boffin, with her work aban-
doned, her eyes upon the fire, and her chin upon her hand, “do you
recollect, Noddy, how you said to Mr. Rokesmith when he first came
to see us at the Bower, and you engaged him—how you said to him
that if it had pleased Heaven to send John Harmon to his fortune
safe, we could have been content with the one Mound which was
our legacy, and should never have wanted the rest ?” :

“Ay, 1 remember, old lady. But we hadn’t tried what it was to
have the rest then. Our new shoes had come home, but we hadn’t
put ’em on. We're wearing ’em now, we're wearing em, and must
step out accordingly.” ;

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

“As to Rokesmith, that young man of mine,” said Mr. Boffin,
dropping his voice and glancing towards the door with an appre-
hension of being overheard by some eavesdropper there, “it’s the
same with him as with the footmen. I have found out that you
must either scrunch them, or let them scrunch you. If you ain’t
imperious with ’em, they won't believe in your being any better than
themselves, if as good, after the stories (lies mostly) that they have

D2

   
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

36 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

heard of your beginnings. There’s nothing betwixt stiffening your-
self up, and throwing yourself away; take my word for that, old
lady.”

Bolla ventured for a moment to look stealthily towards him under
her eyelashes, and she saw a dark cloud of suspicion, covetousness,
and conceit, overshadowing the once open face.

“ Howe’eyver,” said he, “this isn’t entertaining to Miss Bella. Is
it, Bella?”

A deceiving Bella she was, to look at him with that pensively
abstracted air, as if her mind were full of her book, and she had
not heard a single word!

“Hah! Better employed than to attend to it,” said Mr. Boffin.
“That's right, that’s right. Especially as you have no call to be
told how to value yourself, my dear.”

Colouring a little under this compliment, Bella returned, “I hope,
sir, you don’t think me vain ?”

“Not a bit, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin. “But I think it’s very
creditable in you, at your age, to be so well up with the pace of the
world, and to know what to go in for. You are right. Go in for
money, my love. Money’s the article. Youll make money of your
good looks, and of the money Mrs. Boffin and me will have the
pleasure of settling upon you, and youll live and die rich. That's
the state to live and die in!” said Mr. Boffin, in an unctuous manner.
“R—r—rich !”

There was an expression of distress in Mrs. Boffin’s face, as, after
watching her husband’s, she turned to their adopted girl, and said :
“Don’t mind him, Bella, my dear.”

“Hh?” cried Mr. Boffin. “ What! Not mind him?”

“ { don’t mean that,” said Mrs. Boffin, with a worried look, “but
I mean, don’t believe him to be anything but good and generous,
Bella, because he is the best of men. No, I must say that much,
Noddy. You are always the best of men.”

She made the declaration as if he were objecting to it: which
assuredly he was not in any way.

“And as to you, my dear Bella,” said Mrs. Boffin, still with that
distressed expression, “he is so much attached to you, whatever he
says, that your own father has not a truer interest in you and can
hardly like you better than he does.”

“Says too!” cried Mr. Boffin. “Whatever he says! Why, I say so,
openly. Give mea kiss, my dear child, in saying Good Night, and
let me confirm what my old lady tells you. I am very fond of you,
my dear, and I am entirely of your mind, and you and I will take care
that you shall be rich. hese good looks of yours (which you have
some right to be vain of, my dear, though you are not, you know) are
worth money, and you shall make money of ’em. ‘The money you
will have, will be worth money, and you shall make money of that
too. There’s a golden ball at your feet. Good night, my dear.”

Somehow, Bella was not so well pleased with this assurance and
this prospect as she might have been. Somehow, when she put her
arms round Mrs. Boffin’s neck and said Good Night, she derived a
sense of unworthiness from the still anxious face of that good woman

   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 37

and her obvious wish to excuse her husband. “Why, what need to
excuse him?” thought Bella, sitting down in her own room. “ What
he said was very sensible, I am sure, and very true, l am sure. It
is only what I often say to myself. Don’t I like it then? No, I
don’t like it, and, though he is my liberal benefactor, I disparage him
for it. Then pray,” said Bella, sternly putting the question to her-
self in the looking-glass as usual, “what do you mean by this, you
inconsistent little Beast ?”

The looking-glass preserving a discreet ministerial silence when
thus called upon for explanation, Bella went to bed with a weariness
upon her spirit which was more than the weariness of want of
sleep. And again in the morning, she looked for the cloud, and for
the deepening of the cloud, upon the Golden Dustman’s face.

She had begun by this time to be his frequent companion in his
morning strolls about the streets, and it was at this time that he
made her a party to his engaging in a curious pursuit. Having
been hard at work in one dull enclosure all his life, he had a child’s
delight in looking at shops. It had been one of the first novelties
and pleasures of his freedom, and was equally the delight of his
wife. For many years their only walks in London had been taken
on Sundays when the shops were shut ; and when every day in the
week became their holiday, they derived an enjoyment from the
variety and fancy and beauty of the display in the windows, which
seemed incapable of exhaustion. As if the principal streets were a
creat Theatre and the play were childishly new to them, Mr. and
Mrs. Boffin, from the beginning of Bella’s intimacy in their house.
had been constantly in the front row, charmed with all they saw
and applauding vigorously. But now, Mr. Boffin’s interest began to
centre in book-shops; and more than that—for that of itself would
not have been much—in one exceptional kind of book.

“Look in here, my dear,” Mr. Boffin would say, checking Bella’s
arm at a bookseller’s window; “you can read at sight, and your eyes
are as sharp as they’re bright. Now, look well about you, my dear,
and tell me if you see any book about a Miser.”

Tf Bella saw such a book, Mr. Boffin would instantly dart in and
buy it. And still, as if they had not found it, they would seek out
another book-shop, and Mr. Boffin would say, “ Now, look well all
round, my dear, for a Life of a Miser, or any book of that sort; any
Lives of odd characters who may have been Misers.”

Bella, thus directed, would examine the window with the greatest
attention, while Mr. Boffin would examine her face. The moment she
pointed out any book as being entitled Lives of eccentric personages,
Anecdotes of strange characters, Records of remarkable individuals,
or anything to that purpose, Mr. Boffin’s countenance would light
up, and he would instantly dart in and buy it. Size, price, quality,

were of no account. Any book that seemed to promise a chance of
miserly biography, Mr. Boffin purchased without a moment’s delay
and carried home. Happening to be informed by a bookseller that
a portion of the Annual Register was devoted to “ Characters,” Mr.
Boffin at once bought a whole set of that ingenious compilation,
and began to carry it home piecemeal, confiding a volume to Bella,

an a et

 

   

    

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8 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

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and bearing three himself. The completion of this labour occupied
them about a fortnight. When the task was done, Mr. Boffin, with
his appetite for Misers whetted instead of satiated, began to look
out again.

It very soon became unnecessary to tell Bella what to look
for, and an understanding was established between her and Mr.
3offin that she was always to look for Lives of Misers. Morning:
after morning they roamed about the town together, pursuing this
singular research. Miserly literature not being abundant, the pro-
portion of failures to successes may have been as a hundred to
one; still Mr. Boffin, never wearied, remained as avaricious for
misers as he had been at the first onset. It was curious that Bella
never saw the books about the house, nor did she ever hear from
Mr. Boffin one word of reference to their contents. He seemed to
save up his Misers as they had saved up their money. As they had
been greedy for it, and secret about it, and had hidden it, so he was
greedy for them, and secret about them, and hid them. But beyond
all doubt it was'to be noticed, and was by Bella very clearly noticed,
that, as he pursued the acquisition of those dismal records with the
ardour of Don Quixote for his books of chivalry, he began to spend
his money with a more sparing hand. And often when he came
out of a shop with some ‘new account of one of those wretched
lunatics, she would almost shrink from the sly dry chuckle with
which he would take her arm again and trot away. It did not
appear that Mrs. Boffin knew of this taste. He made no allusion
to it, except in the morning walks when he and Bella were always
alone; and Bella, partly under the impression that he took her into
his confidence by implication, and partly in remembrance of Mrs.
Boffin’s anxious face that night, held the same reserve.

While these occurrences were in progress, Mrs. Lammle made tho
discovery that Bella had a fascinating influence over her. The
Lammles, originally presented by the dear Veneerings, visited the
Boffins on all grand occasions, and Mrs. Lammle had not previously
found this out; but now the knowledge came upon her all at once.
It was a most extraordinary thing (she said to Mrs. Boffin) ; she was

foolishly susceptible of the power of beauty, but it wasn’t altogether
that; she never had been able to resist a natural grace of manner,
but it wasn’t altogether that; it was more than that, and there was
no name for the indescribable extent and degree to which she was
captivated by this charming girl.

This charming girl having the words repeated to her by Mrs.
Boffin (who was proud of her being admired, and would have done
anything to give her pleasure), naturally recognized in Mrs. Lammle
& woman of penetration and taste. tesponding to the sentiments, by
being very gracious to Mrs. Lammle, she gave that lady the means of so
improving her opportunity, as that the captivation became reciprocal,
though always wearing an appearance of greater sobriety on Bella’s
part than on the enthusiastic Sophronia’s. Howbeit, they were so
much together that, for a time, the Boffin chariot held Mrs. Lammle
oftener than Mrs. Boffin: a preference of which the latter worthy
soul was not in the least jealous, placidly remarking, “ Mrs. Lammle

  

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 39

is a younger companion for her than I am, and Lor! she’s more
fashionable.”

But between Bella Wilfer and Georgiana Podsnap there was this
one difference, among many others, that Bella was in no danger of
being captivated by Alfred. She distrusted and disliked him.
Indeed, her perception was so quick, and her observation so sharp, that
after all she mistrusted his wife too, though with her giddy vanity
and wilfulness she squeezed the mistrust away into a corner of her
mind, and blocked it up there.

Mrs. Lammle took the friendliest interest in Bella’s making a good
match. Mrs. Lammle said, in a sportive way, she really must show
her beautiful Bella what kind of wealthy creatures she and Alfred
had on hand, who would as one man fall at her feetenslaved. Fitting
occasion made, Mrs. Lammle accordingly produced the most passable
of those feverish, boastful, and indefinably loose gentlemen who were
always lounging in and out of the City on questions of the Bourse
and Greek and Spanish and India and Mexican and par and pre-
mium and discount and three-quarters and seven-eighths. Who in
their agreeable manner did homage to Bella as if she were a com-
pound of fine girl, thorough-bred horse, well-built drag, and remark-
able pipe. But without the least effect, though even Mr. Pledgeby’s
attractions were cast into the scale.

“T fear, Bella dear,” said Mrs. Lammle one day in the chariot,
“that you will be very hard to please.”

“T don’t expect to be pleased, dear,” said Bella, with a languid
turn of her eyes.

“Truly, my love,’ returned Sophronia, shaking her head, and
smiling her best smile, “it would not be very easy to find a man
worthy of your attractions.”

“The question is not a man, my dear,
establishment.”

“ My love,” returned Mrs. Lammle, “your prudence amazes me
where did you study life so well !—you are right. In such a case as
yours, the object is a fitting establishment. You could not descend
to an inadequate one from Mr. Boffin’s house, and even if your beauty
alone could not command it, it is to be assumed that Mr. and Mrs.
Boffin will “

“Oh! they have already,” Bella interposed.

“No! Have they really ?” pa

A little vexed by a suspicion that she had spoken precipitately,
and withal a little defiant of her own vexation, Bella determined not
to retreat.

“That is to say,” she explained, “they have told me they mean to
portion me as their adopted child, if you mean that. But don’t
mention it.”

“Mention it!” replied Mrs. Lammle, as if she were full of awakened
feeling at the suggestion of such an impossibility. ‘“ Men-tion it!”

“T don’t mind telling you, Mrs. Lammle——” Bella began again.

“My love, say Sophronia, or I must not say Bella.”

With a little short, petulant “Oh!” Bella complied. “Oh!—
Sophronia then—I don’t mind telling you, Sophronia, that I am con-

?

?

said Bella, coolly, “ but an

 

 

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40 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

vinced I have no heart, as people call it; and that I think that sort
of thing is nonsense.”

“Brave girl!” murmured Mrs. Lammle.

“ And so,” pursued Bella, “as to seeking to please myself, I don’t ;
except in the one respect I have mentioned. I am indifferent other-
wise.”

“But you can’t help pleasing, Bella,” said Mrs. Lammle, rallying
her with an arch look and her best smile, “you can’t help making a
proud and an admiring husband. You may not care to please yourselt,
and you may not care to please him, but you are not a free agent as
to pleasing: you are forced to do that, in spite of yourself, my dear ;
so 1t may be a question whether you may not as well please yourself
too, if you can.”

Now, the very grossness of this flattery put Bella upon proving
that she actually did please in spite of herself. She had a misgiving
that she was doing wrong—though she had an indistinct foreshadow-
ing that some harm might come of it thereafter, she little thought
what consequences it would really bring about—but she went on
with her confidence.

“ Don’t tallx of pleasing in spite of one’s self, dear,” said Bella. “I
have had enough of that.”

“Ay?” cried Mrs. Lammle.
Bella?”

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

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

“Tell me, Bella. Come, my dear. What provoking burr has been
inconveniently attracted to the charming skirts, and with difficulty
shaken off ?”

“ Provoking indeed,” said Bella, “and no burr to boast of! But
don’t ask me.”

“ Shall I guess?”

“You would never guess. What would you say to our Secretary?”

“My dear! The hermit Secretary, who creeps up and down the
back stairs, and is never seen!”

“JT don’t know about his creeping up and down the back stairs,” said
Bella, rather contemptuously, “further than knowing that he does no
such thing ; and as to his never being seen, I should be content never
to have seen him, though he is quite as visible as youare. But I
pleased him (for my sins) and he had the presumption to tell me so.”

“'The man never made a declaration to you, my dear Bella!”

“ Are you sure of that, Sophronia?” said Bella. “JZ am not. In
fact, I am sure of the contrary.”

“The man must be mad,” said Mrs. Lammle, with a kind of resig-
nation.

“He appeared to be in his senses,” returned Bella, tossing her head,
“and he had plenty to say for himself. I told him my opinion of
his declaration and his conduct, and dismissed him. Of course this
has all been very inconvenient to me, and very disagreeable. It has
remained a secret, however. ‘That word reminds me to observe,

“Am I already corroborated,

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

       
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
    
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 41

Sophronia, that I have glided on into telling you the secret, and that
I rely upon you never to mention it.”

“Mention it!” repeated Mrs. Lammle with her former feeling.
“Men-tion it !” 3

This time Sophronia was so much in earnest that she found it
necessary to bend forward in the carriage and give Bella a kiss. A
Judas order of kiss; for she thought, while she yet pressed Bella’s
hand after giving it, “ Upon your own showing, you vain heartless
girl, puffed up by the doting folly of a dustman, I need have no
relenting towards you. If my husband, who sends me here, should
form any schemes for making you a victim, I should certainly not
cross him again.” In those very same moments, Bella was thinking,
“Why am | always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon
compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why
am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the
whispers against her that I hear in my heart ?”

As usual, there was no answer in the looking-glass when she got
home and referred these questions to it. Perhaps if she had consulted
some better oracle, the result might have been more satisfactory ; but
she did not, and all things consequent marched the march before them.

On one point connected with the watch she kept on Mr. Boffin, she
felt very inquisitive, and that was the question whether the Secretary
watched him too, and followed the sure and steady change in him, as
she did? Her very limited intercourse with Mr. Rokesmith rendered
this hard to find out. Their communication now, at no time extended
beyond the preservation of commonplace appearances before Mr. and
Mrs. Boffin; and if Bella and the Secretary were ever left alone
together by any chance, he immediately withdrew. She consulted
his face when she could do so covertly, as she worked or read, and
could make nothing of it. He looked subdued; but he had acquired
a strong command of feature, and, whenever Mr. Boffin spoke to him
in Bella’s presence, or whatever revelation of himself Mr. Boffin made,
the Secretary’s face changed no more than a wall. A slightly knitted
brow, that expressed nothing but an almost mechanical attention, and a
compression of the mouth, that might have been a guard against a
scornful smile—these she saw from morning to night, from day to
day, from week to week, monotonous, unvarying, set, as in a piece of
sculpture.

The worst of the matter was, that it thus fell out insensibly—and
most provokingly, as Bella complained to herself, in her impetuous
little manner—that her observation of Mr. Boffin involved a continual
observation of Mr. Rokesmith. “Won't that extract a look from
him ?’—* Can it be possible that makes no impression on him?”
Such questions Bella would propose to herself, often as many times
in a day as there were hours in it. Impossible to know. Always
the same fixed face.

“Can he be so base as to sell his very nature for two hundred a
year?” Bella would think. And then, “But why not? It’s a mere
question of price with others besides him. I suppose I would sell
mine, if I could get enough for it.” And so she would come round
again to the war with herself.

 

   
 

   
  
    
 
  
   
     

 
 

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49 4 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

A kind of illegibility, though a different kind, stole over Mr.
Boftin’s face. Its old simplicity of expression got masked by a certain
craftiness that assimilated even his good-humour to itself. His very
smile was cunning, as if he had been studying smiles among the
portraits of his misers. Saving an occasional burst of impatience, or
coarse assertion of his mastery, his good-humour remained to him,
but it had now a sordid alloy of distrust; and though his eyes should
twinkle and all his face should laugh, he would sit holding himself
in his own arms, as if he had an inclination to hoard himself up, and
must always grudgingly stand on the defensive.

What with taking heed of these two faces, and what with feeling
conscious that the stealthy occupation must set some mark on her
own, Bella soon began to think that there was not a candid or a
natural face among them all but Mrs. Boffin’s. None the less because
it was far less radiant than of yore, faithfully reflecting in its anxiety
and regret every line of change in the Golden Dustman’s.

“Rokesmith,” said Mr. Boffin one evening when they were all in
his room again, and he and the Secretary had been going over some
accounts, “Iam spending too much money. Or leastways, you are
spending too much for me.”

“ You are rich, sir.”

“Tam not,” said Mx. Boffin.

The sharpness of the retort was next to telling the Secretary that
he lied. But it brought no change of expression into the set face.

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

“You are not rich, sir?” repeated the Secretary, in measured words.

“Well,” returned Mr. Boffin, “if I am, that’s my business. I am
not going to spend at this rate, to please you, or anybody. You
wouldn’t like it, if it was your money.”

“ Hven in that impossible case, sir, ]——”

“Hold your tongue!” said Mr. Boffin. “You oughtn’t to like it
in any case. There! I didn’t mean to be rude, but you put me out
so, and after all I’m master. I didn’t intend to tell you to hold your
tongue. I beg your pardon. Don’t hold your tongue. Only, don’t
contradict. Did you ever come across the life of Mr. Elwes?” re-
ferring to his favourite subject at last.

«The miser ?”

“ Ah, people called him a miser. People are always calling other
people something. Did you ever read about him ?”

“1 think so.”

“He never owned to being rich, and yet he might have bought me
twice over. Did you ever hear of Daniel Dancer ?”

“ Another miser? Yes.”

“He was a good ’un,” said Mr. Boffin, “and he had a sister worthy
of him. They never called themselves rich neither. If they had
called themselves rich, most likely they wouldn’t have been so.”
“They lived and died very miserably. Did they not, sir?”
“No, I don’t know that they did,” said Mr. Boffin, curtly.
“Then they are not the Misers I mean. Those abject wretches
“Don’t call names, Rokesmith,” said Mr. Bofiin.

”

 

  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
     
  
 
 
  
  
 
   
 
   
 
 
 
    

  

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 43

“That exemplary brother and sister—lived and died in the
foulest and filthiest degradation.”

“They pleased themselves,” said Mr. Boffin, “and I suppose they
could have done no more if they had spent their money. But how-
ever, L ain't going to fling mine away. Keep the expenses down.
The fact is, you ain’t enough here, Rokesmith. It wants constant
attention in the littlest things. Some of us will be dying in a work-
house next.”

“As the persons you have cited,” quietly remarked the Secretary,
“thought they would, if I remember, sir.” f

“And very creditable in em too,” said Mr. Boffin. “Very inde-
pendent in ’em! But never mind them just now. Have you given
notice to quit your lodgings?”

“Under your direction, I have, sir.”

“Then I tell you what,” said Mr. Boffin; “pay the quarter’s rent
—pay the quarter’s rent, it'll be the cheapest thing in the end—and
come here at once, so that you may be always on the spot, day and
night, and keep the expenses down. You'll charge the quarter’s rent
to me, and we must try and save it somewhere. You've got some
lovely furniture ; haven't you ?”

“The furniture in my rooms is my own.”

“Then we shan’t have to buy any for you. In case you was to
think it,” said Mr. Boffin, with a look of peculiar shrewdness, “so
honourably independent in you as to make it a relief to your mind,
to make that furniture over to me in the light of a set-off against the
quarter’s rent, why ease your mind, ease your mind. I don’t ask it,
but I won’t stand in your way if you should consider it due to your-
self As to your room, choose any empty room at the top of the
house.”

“Any empty room will do for me,” said the Secretary.

“You can take your pick,” said Mr. Boffin, “and it’ll be as good as
eight or ten shillings a week added to your income. I won't deduct
for it; I look to you to make it up handsomely by keeping the
expenses down. Now, if yow’ll show a light, I'll come to your office-
room and dispose of a letter or two.”

On that clear, generous face of Mrs. Boffin’s, Bella had seen such
traces of a pang at the heart while this dialogue was being held, that
she had not the courage to turn her eyes to it when they were left
alone. Feioning to be intent on her embroidery, she sat plying her
needle until her busy hand was stopped by Mrs. Boffin’s hand being
lightly laid upon it. Yielding to the touch, she felt her hand carried
to the good soul’s lips, and felt a tear fall on it. cer

“Oh, my loved husband !” said Mrs. Boftin. “ This is hard to see
and hear. But my dear Bella, believe me that in spite of all the
change in him, he is the best of men.”

He came back, at the moment when Bella had taken the hand com-
fortinely between her own. ;

“Hh?” said he, mistrustfully looking in at the door. “ What’s she
telling you?”

“She is only praising you, sir,” said Bella.
“Praisme me? You are sure? Not blaming me for standing on

        
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

44 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

my own defence against a crew of plunderers, who would suck
me dry by driblets? Not blaming me for getting a little hoard
together ?”

He came up to them, and his wife folded her hands upon his
shoulder, and shook her head as she laid it on her hands.

“There, there, there!” urged Mr. Boffin, not unkindly. “Don't
take on, old lady.”

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

“Nonsense! Recollect we are not our old selves. Recollect, we
must scrunch or be scrunched.’ Recollect, we must hold our own.
Recollect, money makes money. Don’t you be uneasy, Bella, my
child; don’t you be doubtful. The more I save, the more you shall
have.” ;

Bella thought it was well for his wife that she was musing with
her affectionate face on his shoulder; for there was a cunning light
in his eyes as he said all this, which seemed to cast a disagreeable
illumination on the change in him, and make it morally uglier.

 

CHAPTER VI.
THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY.

Ir had come to pass that Mr. Silas Wegg now rarely attended the
minion of fortune and the worm of the hour, at his (the worm’s and
minion’s) own house, but lay under general instructions to await him
within a certain margin of hours at the Bower. Mr. Wegg took
this arrangement in great dudgeon, because the appointed hours
were evening hours, and those he considered precious to the progress
of the friendly move. But it was quite in character, he bitterly
remarked to Mr. Venus, that the upstart who had trampled on those
eminent creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and
Uncle Parker, should oppress his literary man.

The Roman Empire having worked out its destruction, Mr. Boftin
next appeared in a cab with Rollin’s Ancient History, which valuable
work being found to possess lethargic properties, broke down, at
about the period when the whole of the army of Alexander the
Macedonian (at that time about forty thousand strong) burst into
tears simultaneously, on his being taken with a shivering fit after
bathing. The Wars of the Jews, likewise languishing under Mr.
Weee’s generalship, Mr. Boffin arrived in another cab with Plutarch :
whose Lives he found in the sequel extremely entertaining, though he
hoped Plutarch might not expect him to believe them all. What to
believe, in the course of his reading, was Mr. Boffin’s chief literary
difficulty indeed ; for some time he was divided in his mind between
half, all, or none; at length, when he decided, as a moderate man,
to compound with half, the question still remained, which half? And
that stumbling-block he never got over.

One evening, when Silas Wege had grown accustomed to the
arrival of his patron in a cab, accompanied by some profane histo-
rian charged with unutterable names of incomprehensible peoples,

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 45

of impossible descent, waging wars any number of years and
syllables long, and carrying illimitable hosts and riches about,
with the greatest ease, beyond the confines of geography—one
evening the usual time passed by, and no patron appeared. After
half an hour’s grace, Mr. Wegg proceeded to the outer gate,
and there executed a whistle, conveying to Mr. Venus, if perchance
within hearing, the tidings of his being at home and disengaged.
Forth from the shelter of a neighbouring wall, Mr. Venus then
emerged.

«“ Brother in arms,” said Mr. Wegg, in excellent spirits, “ welcome !”

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

“ Walk in, brother,” said Silas, clapping him on the shoulder, “and
take your seat in my chimley corner; for what says the ballad?

‘No malice to dread, sir,

‘ And no falsehood to fear,

‘But truth to delight me, Mr. Venus,
«And I forgot what to cheer.

‘Li toddle dee om dee.

‘ And something to guide,

‘My ain fireside, sir,

‘My ain fireside.’ ”

With this quotation (depending for its neatness rather on the spirit
than the words), Mr. Wegg conducted his guest to his hearth.

« And you come, brother,” said Mr. Wegg, ina hospitable glow, “you
come like I don’t know what—exactly like it—I shouldn’t know you
from it—shedding a halo all around you.”

“ What kind of halo?” asked Mr. Venus.

“Ope sir,” replied Silas. “That's your halo.”

Mr. Venus appeared doubtful. on the point, and looked rather
discontentedly at the fire.

“Well devote the evening, brother,” exclaimed Wegg, “to
prosecute our friendly move. And arterwards, crushing a flowing
wine-cup—which I allude to brewing rum and water—we'll pledge
one another. For what says the Poet?

 

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

‘For surely I'll be mine, .
«And we'll take a glass with a slice of lemon in it to which you're partial,

‘For auld lang syne.”

This flow of quotation and hospitality in Wee indicated his observa-
tion of some little querulousness on the part of Venus.

“ Why, as to the friendly move,” observed the last-named gentleman,
rubbing his knees peevishly, “one of my objections to it is, that it
don’t move.”

“Rome, brother,” returned Wegg: “a city which (it may not be
generally known) originated in twins and a wolf, and ended in Im-
perial marble: wasn’t built in a day.”

“Did I say it was?” asked Venus.

“No, you did not, brother. Well-inquired.”

“But I do say,” proceeded Venus, “that I am taken from among
my trophies of anatomy, am called upon to exchange my human

sap ——slrn

ets

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46 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

warious for mere coal-ashes warious, and nothing comes of it. I
think I must give up.”
“No, sir!” remonsirated Wegg, enthusiastically. “No, sir!

‘Charge, Chester, charge,
“On, Mr. Venus, on !’

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

“Tt’s not so much saying it that I object to,’ returned Mr. Venus,
“as doing it. And having got to do it whether or no, I can’t afford
to waste my time on groping for nothing in cinders.”

“But think how little time you have given to the move, sir, after
all,” urged Wegg. “Add the evenings so occupied together, and
what do they come to? And you, sir, harmonizer with myself in
opinions, views, and feelings, you with the patience to fit together
on wires the whole framework of society—I allude to the human
skelinton—you to give in so soon!”

“T don’t like it,” returned Mr. Venus moodily, as he put his head
between his knees and stuck up his dusty hair. “And there’s no
encouragement to go on.”

“Not them Mounds without,” said Mr. Wegg, extending his right
hand with an air of solemn reasoning, “encouragement? Not them
Mounds now looking down upon us?”

“They're too big,” grumbled Venus. “ What's a scratch here and
a scrape there, a poke in this place and a dig in the other, to them?
Besides; what have we found ?”

“What have we found?” cried Wegg, delighted to be able to ac-
quiesce. “Ah! There I grant you, comrade. Nothing. But on the
contrary, comrade, what may we find? There you'll grant me.
Anything.”

“J don’t like it,” pettishly returned Venus as before. “I came
into it without enough consideration. And besides again. Isn't
your own Mr. Boftin well acquainted with the Mounds? And wasn’t
he well acquainted with the deceased and his ways? And has he
ever showed any expectation of finding anything ?”

At that moment wheels were heard.

“Now, I should be loth,” said Mr. Wegg, with an air of patient
injury, “to think so ill of him as to suppose him capable of coming
at this time of night. And yet it sounds like him.”

A ring at the yard bell.

“Tt is him,” said Mr. Wegg, “and he zs capable of it. Iam sorry,
because I could have wished to keep up:a little lingering fragment
of respect for him.”

Here Mr. Boffin was heard lustily calling at the yard gate,
“ Halloa! Wegg! Halloa!”

“Keep your seat, Mr. Venus,” said Wege. “He may not stop.”
And then called out, “Halloa, sir! Halloa! I’m with you directly,
sir! Half a minute, Mr. Boffin. ‘Coming, sir, as fast as my leg will
bring me!” And so with a show of much cheerful alacrity stumped
out to the gate with a light, and there, through the window of a cab,
deseried Mr. Boffin inside, blocked up with books. :

“Here! lend a hand, Wegg,” said Mr. Boffin excitedly, “I can’t

feted)

  

  
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 47

 

get out till the way is cleared forme. This is the Annual Register,
Wegg, in a cab-full of wollumes. Do you know him ?”

“Know the Animal Register, sir?” returned the Impostor, who had
caught the name imperfectly. “For a trifling wager, I think I
could find any Animal in him, blindfold, Mx. Bofiin.”

“And here's Kirby’s Wonderful Museum,” said Mr. Boffin, “and
Caulfield’s Characters, and Wilson’s. Such Characters, Wege, such
Characters! I must have one or two of the best of ’em to-night.
It's amazing what places they used to put the guineas in, wrapped
up in rags. Catch hold of that pile of wollumes, Wege, or it'll bulge
out and burst into the mud. Is there anyone about, to help?”

“There’s a friend of mine, sir, that had the intention of spending
the evening with me when I gave you up—much against my will—
for the night.”

“Call him out,” cried Mr. Boffin in a bustle; “get him to bear a
hand. Don’t drop that one under your arm. It’s Dancer. Him and
his sister made pies of a dead sheep they found when they were out
a walking. Where’s your friend? Oh, here’s your friend. Would
you be so good as help Wegg and myself with these books? But
don’t take Jemmy Taylor of Southwark, nor yet Jemmy Wood of
Gloucester. These are thetwoJemmys. I'll carry them myself.”

Not ceasing to talk and bustle, in a state of great excitement,
Mr. Boffin directed the removal and arrangement of the books,
appearing to be in some sort beside himself until they were all
deposited on the floor, and the cab was dismissed.

“There!” said Mr. Boffin, gloating over them. “There they are,
like the four-and-twenty fiddlers—all of a row. Get on your spec-
tacles, Wego; I know where to find the best of ’em, and we'll have
a taste at once of what we have got before us. What's your friend’s
name ?”

Mr. Wege presented his friend as Mr. Venus.

“Hh?” cried Mr. Boffin, catching at the name. “ Of Clerkenwell ?”

“Of Clerkenwell, sir,” said Mr. Venus.

“Why, I’ve heard of you,” cried Mr. Boffin. “I heard of you in
the old man’s time. You knew him. Did you ever buy anything
of him?” With piercing eagerness.

“No, sir,” returned Venus.

“But he showed you things; didn’t he ?” ;

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

“What did he show you?” asked Mr. Boffin, putting his hands
behind him, and eagerly advancing his head. “Did he show you
boxes, little cabinets, pocket-books, parcels, anything locked or sealed,
anything tied up ?”

Mr. Venus shook his head.

“ Are you a judge of china?”

Mr. Venus again shook his-head.

“Because if he had ever showed you a teapot, I should be glad to
know of it,” said Mr. Boffin. And then, with his right hand at his
lips, repeated thoughtfully, “a Teapot, a Teapot,” and glanced over
the books on the floor, as if he knew there was something interesting
connected with a teapot, somewhere among them.

   
   
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

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48 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Mr. Wegg and Mr. Venus looked at one another wonderingly: and
Mr. Wegg, in fitting on his spectacles, opened his eyes wide, over
their rims, and tapped the side of his nose: as an admonition to Venus
to keep himself generally wide awake.

“A Teapot,” repeated Mr. Boffin, continuing to muse and survey
the books; “a Teapot,a Teapot. Are youready, Wegg ?”

“Tam at your service, sir,’ replied that gentleman, taking his
usual seat on the usual settle, and poking his wooden leg under the
table before it. “Mr. Venus, would you make yourself useful, and
take a seat beside me, sir, for the conveniency of snuffing the candles?”

Venus complying with the invitation while it was yet being given,
Silas pegged at him with his wooden leg, to call his particular atten-
tion to Mr. Boffin standing musing before the fire, in the space
between the two settles.

“Hem! Ahem!’ coughed Mr. Wegg to attract his employer's
attention. “ Would you wish to commence with an Animal, sir—
from the Register ?”

“No,” said Mr. Boffin, “no, Wege.” With that, producing a
little book from his breast-pocket, he handed it with great care to the
literary gentlemen, and inquired, “ What do you call that, Wegg ?”

“This, sir,” replied Silas, adjusting his spectacles, and referring to
the title-page, “is Merryweather’s Lives and Anecdotes of Misers.
Mr. Venus, would you make yourself useful and draw the candles a
little nearer, sir?” ‘This to havea special opportunity of bestowing a
stare upon his comrade.

“ Which of ’em have you got in that lot?’ asked Mr. Boffin. “Can
you find out pretty easy ?”

“ Well, sir,” replied Silas, turning to the table of contents and slowly
fluttering the leaves of the book, “I should say they must be pretty
well all here, sir; here’s a large assortment, sir ; my eye catches J ohn
Overs, sir, John Little, sir, Dick Jarrel, John Elwes, the Reverend
Mr. Jones of Blewbury, Vulture Hopkins, Daniel Dancer 3

“Give us Dancer, Wege,” said Mr. Boffin.

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

“Page a hundred and nine, Mr. Boffin. Chapter eight. Contents
of chapter, ‘ His birth and estate. His garments and outward ap-
pearance. Miss Dancer and her feminine graces. ‘The Miser’s
Mansion. The finding ofa treasure. ‘The Story of the Mutton Pies.
A Miser’s Idea of Death. Bob, the Miser’s cur. Griffiths and his
Master. How to turn a penny. A substitute for a Fire. The
Advantages of keeping a Snuff-box. The Miser dies without a Shirt.
The Treasures of a Dunghill oh

“Kh? What's that?” demanded Mr. Boffin.

“<The Treasures,’ sir,” repeated Silas, reading very distinctly, “ ‘of
a Dunghill.’ Mr. Venus, sir, would you obleege with the snuffers ea
This, to secure attention to his adding with his lips only, “ Mounds i

Mr. Boffin drew an arm-chair into the space where he stood, and
said, seating himself and slyly rubbing his hands :

“Give us Dancer.”
Mr. Wegg pursued the biography of that eminent man through its

 

 

   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 49

various phases of avarice and dirt, through Miss Dancer’s death on a
sick regimen of cold dumpling, and through Mr. Dancer’s keeping his
rags together with a hayband, and warming his dinner by sitting
upon it, down to the consolatory incident of his dying naked in a
sack, After which he read on as follows:

“The house, or rather the heap of ruins, in which Mr. Dancer
lived, and which at his death devolved to the right of Captain
Holmes, was a most miserable, decayed building, for it had not been
repaired for more than half a century.’ ”

(Here Mr. Wegg eyed his comrade and the room in which they
sat: which had not been repaired for a long time.)

“<But though poor in external structure, the ruinous fabric was
very rich in the interior. It took many weeks toexplore its whole
contents ; and Captain Holmes found it a very agreeable task to dive
into the miser’s secret hoards.’ ”

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

“<«Qne of Mr. Dancer’s richest escretoires was found to be a dung-
heap in the cowhouse; a sum but little short of two thousand five
hundred pounds was contained in this rich piece of manure; and in
an old jacket, carefully tied, and strongly nailed down to the manger,
in bank notes and gold were found five hundred pounds more.’ ”

(Here Mr. Wege’s wooden leg started forward under the table, and
slowly elevated itself as he read on.)

“«Several bowls were discovered filled with guineas and half-
guineas; and at different times on searching the corners of the house
they found various parcels of bank notes. Some were crammed into
the crevices of the wall ;’”

' (Here Mr. Venus looked at the wall.)

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

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

“Some were reposing snugly at the back of the drawers; and
notes amounting to six hundred pounds were found neatly doubled
up in the inside of an old teapot. In the stable the Captain found
jugs full of old dollars and shillings. The chimney was not left
unsearched, and paid very well for the trouble; for im nineteen
different holes, all filled with soot, were found various sums of money,
amounting together to more than two hundred pounds.’”

On the way to this crisis Mr. Wegg’s wooden leg had gradually
elevated itself more and more, and he had nudged Mr. Venus with
his opposite elbow deeper and deeper, until at length the preservation
of his balance became incompatible with the two actions, and he now
dropped over sideways upon that gentleman, squeezing him against
the settle’s edge. Nor did either of the two, for some few seconds,
make any effort to recover himself; both remaining ina kind of pecu-
niary swoon.

But the sight of Mr. Boffin sitting in the arm-chair hugging him-
self, with his eyes upon the fire, acted as a restorative. Counter-
feiting asneeze to cover their movements, Mr. Wege, with a spasmodic
“'Tish-ho!” pulled himself and Mr. Venus up in a masterly manner.
“Let's have some more,” said Mr. Boffin, hungrily.

VOL. II. E

allan sis inp

tte

ead

Std i ee

oe,

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

50 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ John Elwes is the next, sir. Is it your pleasure to take John
Elwes ?”

* Ah!” said Mr. Boffin. “Let’s hear what John did.” .

He did not appear to have hidden anything, so went off rather
flatly. But an exemplary lady named Wilcocks, who had stowed
away gold and silver im a pickle-pot in a clock-case, a canister-full of
treasure in a hole under her stairs, and a quantity of money in an
old rat-trap, revived the interest. ‘To her succeeded another lady,
claiming to be a pauper, whose wealth was found wrapped up in
little scraps of paper and old rag. To her, another lady, apple-
woman by trade, who had saved a fortune of ten thousand pounds
and hidden it “ here and there, in cracks and corners, behind bricks
and under the flooring.” To her, a French gentleman, who had
crammed up his chimney, rather to the detriment of its drawing
powers, “a leather valise, containing twenty thousand francs, gold
coins, and a large quantity of precious stones,” as discovered by a
chimneysweep after his death. By these steps Mr. Wegg arrived at
a concluding instance of the human Magpie :

“«Many years, ago, there lived at Cambridge a miserly old couple
of the name of Jardine: they had two sons: the father was a perfect
miser, and at his death one thousand guineas were discovered secreted
in his bed. The two sons grew up as parsimonious as their sire.
When about twenty years of age, they commenced business at Cam-
bridge as drapers, and they continued there until their death. ‘The
establishment of the Messrs. Jardine was the most dirty of all the
shops in Cambridge. Customers seldom went in to purchase, except
perhaps out of curiosity. The brothers were most disreputable-look-
ing beings; for, although surrounded with gay apparel as their
staple in trade, they wore the most filthy rags themselves. It is said
that they had no bed, and, to save the expense of one, always slept
on a bundle of packing-cloths under the counter. In their house-
keeping they were penurious in the extreme. A joint of meat did
not grace their board for twenty years. Yet when the first of the
brothers died, the other, much to his surprise, found large sums of
money which had been secreted even from him.”

“There!” cried Mr. Boffin. “Even from him, you see! There was
only two of em, and yet one of ’em hid from the other.”

Mr. Venus, who since his introduction to the French gentleman,
had been stooping to peer up the chimney, had his attention recalled
by the last sentence, and took the liberty of repeating it.

“Do you like it ?” asked Mr. Boffin, turning suddenly.

“T beg your pardon, sir?”

“Do you like what Wege’s been a-reading ?”

Mx. Venus answered that he found it extremely interesting.

“Then come again,” said Mr. Boffin, “and hear some more. Come
when you like; come the day after to-morrow, half an hour sooner.
There’s plenty more; there’s no end to it.”

Mr. Venus expressed his acknowledgments and accepted the
invitation.

“It’s wonderful what’s been hid, at one time and another,’ said
Mr. Boflin, ruminating ; “truly wonderful.”

  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
    

 

       
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. ai!

“Meaning sir,” observed Wege, with a propitiatory face to draw
him out, and with another peg at his friend and brother, “in the
vay of money ?”

“Money,” said Mr. Boffin. “Ah! And papers.”

Mr. Wegg, in a languid transport, again dropped over on Mr.
Venus, and again recovering himself, masked his emotions with a
sneeze.

“Tish-ho! Did you say papers too, sir? Been hidden, sir?”

“Hidden and forgot,” said Mr. Boffin. “Why the bookseller that
sold me the Wonderful Museum—where’s the Wonderful Museum ?”
He was on his knees on the floor in a moment, groping eagerly among
the books.

“Can I assist you, sir?” asked Wegg.

“No, I have got it; here it is,” said Mr. Boffin, dusting it with the
sleeve of his coat. “Wollume four. I know it was the fourth
wollume, that the bookseller read it to me out of. Look for it,
Wege.”

Silas took the book and turned the leaves.

“Remarkable petrefaction, sir?”

“No, that’s not it,” said Mr. Boffin. “It can’t have been a petre-
faction.”

“Memoirs of General John Reid, commonly called The Walking
Rushlight, sir? With portrait?”

“No, nor yet him,” said Mr. Boffin.

“Remarkable case of a person who swallowed a crown-piece, sir?”

“To hide it?” asked Mr. Boffin.

“Why, no, sir,” replied Wegg, consulting the text, “ it appears to
have been done by accident. Oh! This next must be it. ‘ Singular
discovery of a will, lost twenty-one years.’ i:

“That's it!” cried Mr. Boffin. “Read that.”

«A most extraordinary case,’” read Silas Wegg aloud, “ ‘was tried at
the last Maryborough assizes in Ireland. It was briefly this. Robert
Baldwin, in March 1782, made his will, in which he devised the lands
now in question, to the children of his youngest son; soon after which
his faculties failed him, and he became altogether childish and died,
above eighty years old. The defendant, the eldest son, immediately
afterwards gave out that his father had destroyed the will ; and no will
being found, he entered into possession of the lands in question, and
so matters remained for twenty-one years, the whole family during
all that time believing that the father had died without a will. But
after twenty-one years the defendant’s wife died, and he very soon
afterwards, at the age of seventy-eight, married a very young woman:
which caused some anxiety to his two sons, whose poignant ex-
pressions of this feeling so exasperated their father, that he in his
resentment executed a will to disinherit his eldest son, and in his
fit of anger showed it to his second son, who instantly determined
to get at it, and destroy it, in order to preserve the property to his
brother. With this view, he broke open his father’s desk, where he
found—not his father’s will which he sought after, but the will of
his grandfather, which was then altogether forgotten in the family.’”

“There!” said Mr. Boffin. “See what men put away and forget,

1 9

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Lieciela Riva ci rd

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

52 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

or mean to destroy, and don’t!” He then added in a slow tone,
“ As—ton—ish—ing!” And as he rolled his eyes all round the room,
Wegg and Venus likewise rolled their eyes all round the room, And
then Wegg, singly, fixed his eyes on Mr. Boffin looking at the fire
again; as if he had a mind to spring upon him and demand his
thoughts or his life.

“ However, time’s up for to-night,” said Mr. Boffin, waving his hand
after a silence. “More, the day after to-morrow. Range the books
upon the shelves, Wegg. I dare say Mr. Venus will be so kind as
help you.”

While speaking, he thrust his hand into the breast of his outer
coat, and struggled with some object there that was too large to be
got out easily. What was the stupefaction of the friendly movers
when this object at last emerging, proved to be a much-dilapidated
dark lantern!

Without at all noticing the effect produced by this little in-
strument, Mr. Boffin stood it on his knee, and, producing a box of
matches, deliberately lighted the candle in the lantern, blew out the
kindled match, and cast the end into the fire. “I’m going, Wege,”
he then announced, “to take a turn about the place and round the
yard. I don’t want you. Me and this same lantern have taken
hundreds—thousands—of such turns in our time together.”

“But I couldn’t think, sir—not on any account, I couldn’t,’—
Wegg was politely beginning, when Mr. Boffin, who had risen and
was going towards the door, stopped :

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

Wegg looked intelligently thoughtful, as if that had not occurred
to his mind until he now brought it to bear on the circumstance.
He had nothing for it but to let Mr. Boftin go out and shut the door
behind him. But, the instant he was on the other side of it, Wegg
clutched Venus with both hands, and said in a choking whisper, as if
he were being strangled :

“Mr. Venus, he must be followed, he must be watched, he mustn’t
be lost sight of for a moment.”

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

“Comrade, you might have noticed I was a little elewated in spits
when you come in to-night. I’ve found something.”

“What have you found?’ asked Venus, clutching him with both
hands, so that they stood interlocked like a couple of preposterous
gladiators.

“'There’s no time to tell you now. I think he must have gone to
look for it. We must have an eye upon him instantly.”

Releasing each other, they crept to the door, opened it softly, and
peeped out. It was a cloudy night, and the black shadow of the
Mounds made the dark yard darker. “If not a double swindler,”
whispered Wegg, “why a dark lantern? We could have seen what
he was about, if he had carried a light one. Softly, this
way.”

Cautiously along the path that was bordered by fragments of
crockery set in ashes, the two stole after him. They could hear him
at his peculiar trot, crushing the loose cinders as he went. “He

  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
 
  
  
   
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
     

   

    
  
     
     
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 53

knows the place by heart,” muttered Silas, “and don’t need to turn
his lantern on, confound him!” But he did turn it on, almost in that
same instant, and flashed its light upon the first of the Mounds.

“Ts that the spot?” asked. Venus in a whisper.

“He's warm,” said Silas in the same tone. “He’s precious warm.
He’s close. I think he must be going to look for it. What’s that
he’s got in his hand ?”

“ A shovel,” answered Venus. “And he knows how to use it,
remember, fifty times as well as either of us.”

“Tf he looks for it and misses it, partner,” suggested Wego, “what
shall we do?”

“ First of all, wait till he does,” said Venus.

Discreet advice too, for he darkened his lantern again, and the
mound turned black. After a few seconds, he turned the light on
once more, and was seen standing at the foot of the second mound,
slowly raising the lantern little by little until he held it up at arm’s
leneth, as if he were examining the condition of the whole surface.

“That can’t be the spot too?” said Venus,

“No,” said Wegg, “he’s getting cold.”

“Tt strikes me,’ whispered Venus, “that he wants to find out
whether any one has been groping about there.”

“Hush!” returned Wegeg, “he’s getting colder and colder—Now
he’s freezing !”

This exclamation was elicited by his having turned the lantern off
again, and on again, and being visible at the foot of the third
mound.

“ Why, he’s going up it!” said Venus.

“Shovel and all!” said Wegg.

At a nimbler trot, as if the shovel over his shoulder stimulated
him by reviving old associations, Mr. Boffin ascended the “ser-
pentining walk,” up the Mound which he had described to Silas
Wege on the occasion of their beginning to decline and fall. On
striking into it he turned his lantern off. The two followed him,
stooping low, so that their figures might make no mark in relief
against the sky when he should turn his lantern on again. Mr.
Venus took the lead, towing Mr. Wegg, in order that his refractory
leg might be promptly extricated from any pitfalls it should dig for
itself. They could just make out that the Golden Dustman stopped
to breathe. Of course they stopped too, instantly.

“This is his own Mound,” whispered Wegg, as he recovered his
wind, “this one.”

“ Why all three are his own,” returned Venus.

«Go he thinks; but he’s used to call this his own, because it’s the
one first left to him ; the one that was his legacy when it was all he
took under the will.”

“When he shows his light,” said Venus, keeping watch upon his
dusky figure all the time, “drop lower and keep closer.”

He went on again, and they followed again. Gaining the top of
the Mound, he turned on his light—but only partially—and stood it
on the ground. A bare lopsided weatherbeaten pole was planted in
the ashes there, and had been there many a year. Hard by this

   

RIN Sih
Hult
(eUIith

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  

 

4 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

5

pole, his lantern stood: lighting a few feet of the lower part of it
and a little of the ashy surface around, and then casting off a pur-
poseless little clear trail of light into the air.

“He can never be going to dig up the pole!” whispered Venus as
they dropped low and kept close.

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

He was going to dig, with whatsoever object, for he tucked up his
cuffs and spat on his hands, and then went at it like an old digger as
he was. He had no design upon the pole, except that he measured
a shovel’s length from it before beginning, nor was it his purpose to
dig deep. Some dozen or so of expert strokes sufficed. Then, he
stopped, looked down into the cavity, bent over it, and took out what
appeared to be an ordinary case-bottle: one of those squat, high-
shouldered, short-necked glass bottles which the Dutchman is said to
keep his Courage in. As soon as he had done this, he turned off his
Jantern, and they could hear that he was filling up the hole in the
dark. ‘The ashes being easily moved by a skilful hand, the spies
took this as a hint to make off in good time. Accordingly,
Mr. Venus slipped past Mr. Wege and towed him down. But
Mr. Wegg’s descent was not accomplished without some personal
inconvenience, for his self-willed leg sticking into the ashes about
half way down, and time pressing, Mr. Venus took the liberty of
hauling him from his tether by the collar: which occasioned him to
make the rest of the journey on his back, with his head en-
veloped in the skirts of his coat, and his wooden leg coming last,
like a drag. So flustered was Mr. Wege by this mode of travelling,
that when he was set on the level ground with his intellectual
developments uppermost, he was quite unconscious of his bearings,
and had not the least idea where his place of residence was to be
found, until Mr. Venus shoved him into it. Even then he staggered
round and round, weakly staring about him, until Mr. Venus with a
hard brush brushed his senses into him and the dust out of him.

Mr. Boffin came down leisurely, for this brushing process had
been well accomplished, and Mr. Venus had had time to take his
breath, before he reappeared. That he had the bottle somewhere
about him could not be doubted ; where, was not so clear. He wore
a large rough coat, buttoned over, and it might be in any one of
half a dozen pockets.

“What's the matter, Wegg ?” said Mr. Boffin. “You areas pale
as a candle.”

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

“Bile,” said Mr. Boffin, blowing out the light im the lantern,
shutting it up, and stowing it away in the breast of his coat as
before. “ Are you subject to bile, Wege ?”

Mr. Wege again replied, with strict adherence to truth, that he
didn’t think he had ever had a similar sensation in his head, to any-
thing like the same extent.

“Physic yourself to-morrow, W: ego,” said Mr. Boffin, “to be in
order for next night. By-the-by, this neighbourhood is going to
have a loss, Wege.”

  

    
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
    
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

« A loss, sir?”

“Going to lose the Mounds.”

The friendly movers made such an obvious effort not to look at
one another, that they might as well have stared at one another with
all their might.

“Have you parted with them, Mr. Boffin ?” asked Silas.

“Yes; they're going. Mine’s as good as gone already.”

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

“Yes,” said Mr. Boffin, rubbing his ear in his old way, with that
new touch of craftiness added to it. “It has fetched a penny. Iti
begin to be carted off to-morrow.”

“Have you been out to take leave of your old friend, sir?” asked
Silas, jocosely.

“No,” said Mr. Boffin. “What the devil put that in your head ?”

He was so sudden and rough, that Wegg, who had been hovering
closer and closer to his skirts, despatching the back of his hand on
exploring expeditions in search of the bottle’s surface, retired two or
three paces.

“No offence, sir,” said Wegg, humbly. “No offence.”

Mr. Boffin eyed him as a dog might eye another dog who wanted
his bone; and actually retorted with a low growl, as the dog might
have retorted.

“@ood-night,” he said, after having sunk into a moody silence,
with his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes suspiciously
wandering about Wegg—*No! stop there. I know the way out,
and I want no light.”

Avarice, and the evening’s legends of avarice, and the inflam-
matory effect of what he had seen, and perhaps the rush of his ill-
conditioned blood to his brain in his descent, wrought Silas Weeg to
such a pitch of insatiable appetite, that when the door closed he
made a swoop at it and drew Venus along with him.

“ He mustn’t go,” he cried. “We mustn't let him go? He has
got that bottle about him. We must have that bottle.”

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

“ Wouldn't 1? Yes I would. Id take it by any force, Vd have it
at any price! Are you so afraid of one old man as to let him go, you

 

?

 

coward ?”

“J am so afraid of you, as not to let you go,” muttered Venus,
sturdily, clasping him in his arms.

“Did you hear him?” retorted Wegg. “Did you hear him say
that, he was resolved to disappoint us? Did you hear him say, you
eur, that he was going to have the Mounds cleared off, when no
doubt the whole place will be rummaged ? If you haven't the
spirit of a mouse to defend your rights, I have. Let me go after
him.”

Ag in his wildness he was making a strong struggle for it, Mr.
Venus deemed it expedient to lift him, throw him, and fall with
him; well knowing that, once down, he would not be up again easily
with his wooden leg. So they both rolled on the floor, and, as they

did so, Mx. Boffin shut the gate.

 
 

 

See SE meee a Se mee

 

 

 

 

 

ee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER VII.
THE FRIENDLY MOVE TAKES UP A STRONG POSITION.

Tux friendly movers sat upright on the floor, panting and eyeing
one another, after Mr. Boftin had slammed the gate and gone
away. In the weak eyes of Venus, and in every reddish dust-
coloured hair in his shock of hair, there was a marked distrust of
Wegg and an alertness to fly at him on perceiving the smallest occa-
sion. In the hard-grained face of Wegg, and in his stiff knotty figure
(he looked like a German wooden toy), there was expressed a politic
conciliation, which had no spontaneity in it. Both were flushed,
flustered, and rumpled, by the late scuffle; and Wegg, in coming to
the ground, had received a humming knock on the back of his de-
voted head, which caused him still to rub it with an air of haying
been highly—but disagreeably—astonished. Each was silent for
some time, leaving it to the other to begin.

“Brother,” said Wegg, at length breaking the silence, “ you were
right, and I was wrong. I forgot myself.”

Mr. Venus knowingly cocked his shock of hair, as rather thinking
Mr. Wegg had remembered himself, in respect of appearing without
any disguise.

“But comrade,” pursued Wege, “it was never your lot to know
Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, nor Uncle Parker.”

Mr. Venus admitted that he had never known those distinguished
persons, and added, in effect, that he had never so much as desired
the honor of their acquaintance.

“Don’t say that, comrade!” retorted Wegg: “No, don’t say that!
Because, without having known them, you never can fully know
what it is to be stimilated to frenzy by the sight of the Usurper.”

Offering these excusatory words as if they reflected great credit on
himself, Mr. Wege impelled himself with his hands towards a chair
in a corner of the room, and there, after a variety of awkward
gambols, attained a perpendicular position. Mr. Venus also rose.

“Comrade,” said W: egg, “take a seat. Comrade, what a speaking
countenance is yours!”

Mr. Venus involuntarily smoothed his countenance, and looked at
his hand, as if to see whether any of its speaking properties came off.

“For clearly do I know, mark you,” pursued Wege, pointing his
words with his forefinger, “clearly do | know what question your
expressive features puts to me.”

“ What question ?” said Venus.

“The question,” returned Wegg, with a sort of joyful affa bility,
“why I didn’t mention sooner, that I had found something. Says
your speaking countenance to me: ‘ Why didn’t you communicate that,
when [ first come in this evening? Why did you keep it back till
you thought Mr. Boffin had come to look for the article” Your
speaking countenance,” said Were “puts it plainer than language.

T . 7 oo? . r
Now, you can’t read in my face what answer J give ?”

 

 
    
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
   

   

  

     
 
   
   
   
      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“No, I can’t,” said Venus.

“T knew it! And why not?’ returned Wegg, with the same
joyful candour. “Because | lay no claims to a speaking countenance.
Because I am well aware of my deficiencies. All men are not gifted
alike. But I can answer in words. And in what words? * These.
I wanted to give you a delightful sap—pur—izx !”

Having thus elongated and emphasized the word Surprise, Mr.
Wegg shook his friend and brother by both hands, and then clapped
him on both knees, like an affectionate patron who entreated him not
to mention so small a service as that which it had been his happy
privilege to render.

“Your speaking countenance,” said Wege, “being answered to its
satisfaction, only asks then, ‘What have you found? Why, I hear it
say the words!”

“Well?” retorted Venus snappishly, after waiting in vain. “If
you hear it say the words, why don’t you answer it ?”

“Hear me out!” said Wegg. “Im a-going to. Hear me out!
Man and brother, partner in feelings equally with undertakings and
actions, I have found a cash-box.”

“ Where ?”

“—_ Hear me out!” said Wegg. (He tried to reserve whatever he
could, and, whenever disclosure was forced upon him, broke into a
radiant gush of Hear me out.) “On a certain day, sir fs

“ When?” said Venus bluntly.

“N—no,” returned Wegg, shaking his head at once observantly,
thoughtfully, and playfully. “No, sir! That’s not your expressive
countenance which asks that question. That’s your voice; merely
your voice. To proceed. On a certain day, sir, I happened to be
walking in the yard—taking my lonely round—for in the words of
a friend of my own family, the author of All’s Well arranged asa
duett :

‘ Deserted, as you will remember Mr. Venus, by the waning moon,
When stars, it will occur to you before I mention it, proclaim night's
cheerless noon,
On tower, fort, or tented ground,
The sentry walks his lonely round,
The sentry walks ;’

9”

 

 

—under those circumstances, sir, I happened to be walking in the
yard early one afternoon, and happened to have an iron rod in my
hand, with which I have been sometimes accustomed to beguile the
monotony of a literary life, when I struck it against an object not
necessary to trouble you by naming——”

“Tt is necessary. What object?” demanded Venus, in a wrathful
tone.

“__ Hear me out!” said Wegg. “The Pump.—When I struck it
against the Pump, and found, not only that the top was loose and
opened with a lid, but that something in it rattled. That something,
comrade, I discovered to be a small flat oblong cash-box. Shall I say
it was disappintingly light?”

“There were papers in it,” said Venus.

“ There your expressive countenance speaks indeed!” cried Weee.
“A paper. The box was locked, tied up, and sealed, and on the out-

 

nga

aM
b et
PU BBR thy

1)
Hilt!
a

  

Pistia eg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
   
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 

 

 

     

58 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

side was a parchment label, with the writing, ‘MY WILL, JOHN

HARMON, TEMPORARILY DEPOSITED HERE.’ ”

“ We must know its contents,” said Venus.

“Near me out!” cried Wegg. “I said so, and I broke the box
open.”

Without coming to me!” exclaimed Venus.

“Exactly so, sir!’ returned Wege, blandly and buoyantly. “I
see I take you with me! Hear, hear, hear! Resolved, as your
discriminating good sense perceives, that if you was to have a sap—
pur—aizeE, it should be a complete one! ‘Well, six. And so, as you
have honored me by anticipating, I examined the document.
Regularly executed, regularly witnessed, very short. Inasmuch as
he has never made friends, and has ever had a rebellious family, he,
John Harmon, gives to Nicodemus Boffin the Little Mound, which
is quite enough for him, and gives the whole rest and residue of his
property to the Crown.”

“The date of the will that has been proved, must be looked to,”
remarked Venus. “It may be later than this one.”

“__ Hear me out!” cried Wege. “Isaid so. I paidashilling (never
mind your sixpence of it) to look up that will. Brother, that will is
dated months before this will. And now, as a fellow-man, and as a
partner in a friendly move,” added Wege, benignantly taking him by
both hands again, and clapping him on both knees again, “say have
{ completed my labour of love to your perfect satisfaction, and aro
you sap—pur—IZED ?”

Mr. Venus contemplated his fellow-man and partner with doubting
eyes, and then rejoined stiffly :

“This is great news indeed, Mr. Wege. There’s no denying it.

3ut I could have wished you had told it me before you got your
fright to-night, and I could have wished you had ever asked me as
your partner what we were to do, before you thought you were
dividing a responsibility. ;

“__ Hear me out!” cried Wege. “I knew you wasa-going to say so.
But alone I bore the anxiety, and alone [’'ll bear the blame!” ‘This
with an air of great magnanimity.

“Now,” said Venus. “ Let’s see this will and this box.”

“Do I understand, brother,” returned Wege with considerable
reluctance, “that it is your wish to see this will and this—— ?”

Mr. Venus smote the table with his hand.

“Hear me out!” said Wegg. “Hear me out! Tl go and fetch
’em.”

After being some time absent, as if in his covetousness he could
hardly make up his mind to produce the treasure to his partner, he
returned with an old leathern hat-box, into which he had put the
other box, for the better preservation of commonplace appearances,
and for the disarming of suspicion. “But I don’t half like opening
it here,” said Silas in a low voice, looking around: “he might come
back, he may not be gone; we > don’t know what he may be up to,
after what we've seen.’

% There's something in that,’ assented Venus. “Come to my
place.

 

  

  

   
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 59

Jealous of the custody of the box, and yet fearful of opening it
ander the existing circumstances, Wegg hesitated. “ Come, I tell you,”
repeated Venus, chafing, “to my place.” Not very well seeing his
way toa refusal, Mr. Wegg then rejoined in a gush, “—Hear me out!
—Certainly.” So he locked up the Bower and they set forth: Mr.
Venus taking his arm, and keeping it with remarkable tenacity.

They found the usual dim light burning in the window of Mr.
Venus’s establishment, imperfectly disclosing to the public the usual
pair of preserved frogs, sword in hand, with their point of honour
still unsettled. Mr. Venus had closed his shop door on coming out,
and now opened it with the key and shut it again as soon as they
were within; but not before he had put up and barred the shutters
of the shop window. “No one can get in without being let in,” said
he then, “and we couldn’t be more snug than here.” So he raked
together the yet warm cinders in the rusty grate, and made a fire,
and trimmed the candle on the little counter. As the fire cast its
flickering gleams here and there upon the dark greasy walls; the
Hindoo baby, the African baby, the articulated English baby, the
assortment of skulls, and the rest of the collection, came starting to
their various stations as if they had all been out, like their master,
and were punctual in a general rendezvous to assist at the secret.
The French gentleman had grown considerably since Mr. Wegg last
saw him, being now accommodated with a pair of legs and a head,
though his arms were yet in abeyance. To whomsoever the head had
originally belonged, Silas Wegg would have regarded it as a personal
favour if he had not cut quite so many teeth.

Silas took his seat in silence on the wooden box before the fire, and
Venus dropping into his low chair produced from among his skeleton
hands, his tea-tray and tea-cups, and put the kettle on. Silas in-
wardly approved of these preparations, trusting they might end in
Mr. Venus’s diluting his intellect.

“ Now, siz,” said Venus, “all is safe and quiet. Let us see this
discovery.”

With still reluctant hands, and not without several glances towards
the skeleton hands, as if he mistrusted that a couple of them might
spring forth and clutch the document, Wegg opened the hat-box and
revealed the cash-box, opened the cash-box and revealed the will.
He held a corner of it tight, while Venus, taking hold of another
corner, searchingly and attentively read it.

“Was I correct m my account of it, partner ?” said Mr. Wege
at length.

“Partner, you were,” said Mr. Venus.

Mr. Wegg thereupon made an easy, graceful movement, as though
he would fold it up; but Mr. Venus held on by his corner.

“No, sir,” said Mr. Venus, winking his weak eyes and shaking his
head. “No, partner. The question is now brought up, who is going
to take care of this. Do you know who is going to take care of this,
partner ?”

“J am,” said Wegg.

“Oh dear no, partner,” retorted Venus. “ That's a mistake. I
am. Now look here, Mr. Wegg. I don’t want to have any words

Omron tht of Miah dots

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

60 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

with you, and still less do I want to have any anatomical pursuits
with you.”

“ What do you mean?” said Wegg, quickly.

“J mean, partner,” replied Venus, slowly, “ that it’s hardly possible
for aman to feel in a more amiable state towards another man than I
do towards you at this present moment. But I am on my own
ground, I am surrounded by the trophies of my art, and my tools
is very handy.”

“ What do you mean, Mr. Venus?” asked Wegg again.

“I am surrounded, as I have observed,” said Mr. Venus, placidly,
“by the trophies of my art. They are numerous, my stock of human
warious is large, the shop is pretty well crammed, and I don’t just
now want any more trophies of my art. But I like my art, and I
know how to exercise my art.”

“No man better,” assented Mr. Wegg, with a somewhat staggered
air.

“There’s the Miscellanies of several human specimens,” said Venus,
“(though you mightn’t think it) in the box on which you're sitting.
There’s the Miscellanies of several human specimens, in the lovely
compo-one behind the door ;” with a nod towards the French gentle-
man. “It still wants a pair of arms. I don’t say that I’m in any
hurry for ’em.”

“ You must be wandering in your mind, partner,” Silas remonstrated.

“You'll excuse me if I wander,” returned Venus; “I am sometimes
rather subject to it. I like my art, and I know how to exercise
my art, and I mean to have the keeping of this document.”

“But what has that got to do with your art, partner?” asked
Wegg, in an insinuating tone.

Mr. Venus winked his chronically-fatigued eyes both at once, and
adjusting the kettle on the fire, remarked to himself, in a hollow
voice, “ She'll bile in a couple of minutes.”

Silas Wegg glanced at the kettle, glanced at the shelves, glanced
at the French gentleman behind the door, and shrank a little as he
glanced at Mr. Venus winking his red eyes, and feeling in his
waistcoat pocket—as for a lancet, say—with his unoccupied hand.
He and Venus were necessarily seated close together, as each held a
corner of the document, which was but a common sheet of paper.

“Partner,” said Wege, even more insinuatingly than before, “I
propose that we cut it in half, and each keep a half.”

Venus shook his shock of hair, as he replied, “It wouldn’t do
to mutilate it, partner. It might seem to be cancelled.”

“ Partner,” said Wege, after a silence, during which they had con-
templated one another, “don’t your speaking countenance say that
youre a-going to suggest a middle course ?”

Venus shook his shock of hair as he replied, “ Partner, you have
kept this paper from me once. You shall never keep it from me
again. I offer you the box and the label to take care of, but Pl take
care of the paper.”

Silas hesitated a little longer, and then suddenly releasing his
corner, and resuming his buoyant and benignant tone, exclaimed,
“What's life without trustfulness! What's a fellow-man without

 

  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  

   

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 61

 

honor! You're welcome to it, partner, in a spirit of trust and
confidence.”

Continuing to wink his red eyes both together—but in a self-
communing way, and without any show of triumph—Mr. Venus
folded the paper now left in his hand, and locked it in a drawer behind
him, and pocketed the key. He then proposed “A cup of tea,
partner?” To which Mr. Wegg returned, “Thank’ee, partner,” and
the tea was made and poured out.

“Next,” said Venus, blowing at his tea in his saucer, and looking
over it at his confidential friend, “comes the question, What's the
course to be pursued ?”

On this head, Silas Wegg had much to say. Silas had to say That,
he would beg to remind his comrade, brother, and partner, of the
impressive passages they had read that evening; of the evident
parallel in Mr. Boffin’s mind between them and the late owner of the
Bower, and the present circumstances of the Bower; of the bottle ;
and of the box. ‘That, the fortunes of his brother and comrade, and
of himself, were evidently made, inasmuch as they had but to put
their price upon this document, and get that price from the minion of
fortune and the worm of the hour: who now appeared to be less of a
minion and more of a worm than had been previously supposed.
That, he considered it plain that such price was stateable in a single
expressive word, and that the word was, “Halves!” That, the
question then arose when “ Halves!” should be called. That, here
he had a plan of action to recommend, with aconditional clause.
That, the plan of action was that they should lie by with patience ;
that, they should allow the Mounds to be gradually levelled and
cleared away, while retaining to themselves their present oppor-
tunity of watching the process—which would be, he conceived,
to put the trouble and cost of daily digging and delving upon
somebody else, while they might nightly turn such complete
disturbance of the dust to the account of their own private
investigations—and that, when the Mounds were gone, and they
had worked those chances for their own joint benefit solely,
they should then, and not before, explode on the minion and worm.
3ut here came the conditional clause, and to this he entreated the
special attention of his comrade, brother, and partner. It was not to
be borne that the minion and worm should carry off any of that pro-
perty which was now to be regarded as their own property. When
he, Mr. Wege, had seen the minion surreptitiously making off with
that bottle, and its precious contents unknown, he had looked upon
him in the light of a mere robber, and, as such, would have despoiled
him of his ill-gotten gain, but for the judicious interference of his
comrade, brother, and partner. ‘Therefore, the conditional clause he
proposed was, that, if the minion should return in his late sneaking
manner, and if, being closely watched, he should be found to possess
himself of anything, no matter what, the sharp sword impending:
over his head should be instantly shown him, he should he strictly
examined as to what he knew or suspected, should be severely
handled by them his masters, and should be kept in a state of abject.
moral bondage and slavery until the time when they should see fitto

i]
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29

OZ

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

permit him to purchase his freedom at the price of half his posses-
sions. If, said Mr. Wege by way of peroration, he had erred in
saying only “Halves!” he trusted to his comrade, brother, and
partner not to hesitate to set him right, and to reprove his weakness.
J+ might be more according to the rights of things, to say Two-
thirds; it micht be more according to the rights of things, to say
Three-fourths. On those points he was ever open to correction.

Mr. Venus, haying wafted his attention to this discourse over three
successive saucers of tea, signified his concurrence in the views
advanced. Inspirited hereby, Mr. Wegg extended his right hand,
and declared it to be a hand which never yet. Without entering
into more minute particulars. Mr. Venus, sticking to his tea, briefly
professed his belief, as polite forms required of him, that it was a
hand which never yet. But contented himself with looking at it,
and did not take it to his bosom.

3rother,” said Wege, when this happy understanding was esta-
plished, “TI should like to ask you something. You remember the
night when I first looked in here, and found you floating your power-
ful mind in tea ?”

Still swillinge tea, Mr. Venus nodded assent.

“ And there you sit, sir,” pursued Wege with an air of thoughtful
admiration, “as if you had never left off! There you sit, sir, as if you
had an unlimited capacity of assimilating the flagrant article! There
you sit, sir, in the midst of your works, looking as if you’d been
called upon for Home, Sweet Home, and was obleeging the company!

“« A exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,
“*O give you your lowly Preparations again,
“<The birds stuffed so sweetly that can’t be expected to come at your call,

“Give you these with the peace of mind dearer than all.
“« Home, Home, Home, sweet Home !’”

—Be it ever,” added Mr. Wege in prose as he glanced about the
shop, “ever so ghastly, all things considered there’s no place like it.”

“You said you'd like to ask something; but you haven’t asked it,”
remarked Venus, very unsympathetic in manner.

“Your peace of mind,” said Wegg, offering condolence, “ your
peace of mind was in a poor way that night. How’s it going on? Is
it looking up at all ?”

“She does not wish,” replied Mr. Venus with a comical mixture of
indignant obstinacy and tender melancholy, “to regard herself, nor
yet to be regarded, in that particular light. ‘There’s no more to be said.”

“ Ah, dear me, dear me!” exclaimed Wegg with a sigh, but eyemg
him while pretending to keep him company in eyeing the fire,
“such is Woman! And I remember you said that night, sitting
there as I sat here—said that night when your peace of mind was
first laid low, that you had taken an interest in these very affairs.
Such is coincidence !”

“Her father,” rejoined Venus, and then stopped to swallow more
tea, “her father was mixed up in them.”

“You didn’t mention her name, sir, I think?” observed Wegg,
pensively. “No, you didn’t mention her name that night.”

“ Pleasant Riderhood.”

 

  

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 63

“In—deed!” cried Wegg. “Pleasant Riderhood. There’s some
thing moving in the name. Pleasant. Dear me! Seems to express
what she might have been, if she hadn’t made that unpleasant
remark—and what she ain’t, in consequence of having made it.
Would it at all pour balm into your wounds, Mr. Venus, to inquire
how you came acquainted with her?”

“T was down at the water-side,” said Venus, taking another gulp
of tea and mournfully winking at the fire—“ looking for parrots ”—
taking another gulp and stopping.

Mr. Weee hinted, to jog his attention: “ You could hardly have
been out parrot-shooting, in the British climate, sir?”

“No, no, no,” said Venus fretfully. “I was down at the water-
side, looking for parrots brought home by sailors, to buy for stuffing.”

“ Ay, ay, ay, sir!”

«And looking for a nice pair of rattlesnakes, to articulate for a
Museum—when I was doomed to fall in with her and deal with her.
It was just at the time of that discovery in the river. Her father
had seen the discovery being towed in the river. J made the
popularity of the subject a reason for going back to improve the
acquaintance, and I have never since been the man I was. My very
bones is rendered flabby by brooding over it. If they could be
brought to me loose, to sort, | should hardly have the face to claim
em as mine. ‘I’o such an extent have I fallen off under it.”

Mr. Wegg, less interested than he had been, glanced at one par-
ticular shelf in the dark.

“Why I remember, Mr. Venus,” he said in a tone of friendly
commiseration “(for I remember every word that falls from you,
sir), I remember that you said that night, you had got up there—and
then your words was, ‘ Never mind.’”

“The parrot that I bought of her,” said Venus, with a despondent
rise and fall of his eyes. “Yes; there it lies on its side, dried up;
except for its plumage, very like myself. I’ve never had the heart
to prepare it, and I never shall have now.”

With a disappointed face, Silas mentally consigned this parrot
to regions more than tropical, and, seeming for the time to have
lost his power of assuming an interest in the woes of Mr. Venus, fell
to tightening his wooden leg as a preparation for departure: its
gymnastic performances of that evening having severely tried its
constitution.

After Silas had left the shop, hat-box in hand, and had left Mr.
Venus to lower himself to oblivion-point with the requisite weight of
tea, it greatly preyed on his ingenuous mind that he had taken this
artist into partnership at all. He bitterly felt that he had over-
reached himself in the beginning, by grasping at Mr. Venus’s mere
straws of hints, now shown to be worthless for his purpose.. Casting
about for ways and means of dissolving the connexion without loss
of money, reproaching himself for having been betrayed into an
avowal of his secret, and complimenting himself beyond measure on
his purely accidental good luck, he beguiled the distance between
Clerkenwell and the mansion of the Golden Dustman.

For, Silas Wege felt it to be quite out of the question that he could

en es

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

64 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

lay his head upon his pillow in peace, without first hovering over
Mr. Boffin’s house in the superior character of its Evil Genius.
Power (unless it be the power of intellect or virtue) has ever the
greatest attraction for the lowest natures; and the mere defiance of
the unconscious house-front, with his power to strip the roof off the
inhabiting family like the roof of a house of cards, was a treat which
had a charm for Silas Wegg.

As he hovered on the opposite side of the street, exulting, the
carriage drove up.

“There'll shortly be an end of you,” said Wegg, threatening it
with the hat-box. “ Your varnish is fading.”

Mrs. Boffin descended and went in.

“ Look out for a fall, my Lady Dustwoman,” said Wegg.

Bella lightly descended, and ran in after her.

“How brisk we are!” said Wegg. “You won’t run so gaily to
your old shabby home, my girl. You'll have to go there, though.”

A little while, and the Secretary came out.

“T was passed over for you,” said Wegg. “But you had better
provide yourself with another situation, young man.”

Mx. Boffin’s shadow passed upon the blinds of three large windows
as he trotted down the room, and passed again as he went back.

“Yoop!” cried Wegg. “You're there, are you? Where’s the bottle?
You would give your bottle for my box, Dustman !”

Having now composed his mind for slumber, he turned homeward.
Such was the greed of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond
halves, two-thirds, three-fourths, and gone straight to spoliation of
the whole. “Though that wouldn’t quite do,” he considered, growing
cooler as he got away. “That’s what would happen to him if he
didn’t buy us up. We should get nothing by that.”

We so judge others by ourselves, that it had never come into his
head before, that he might not buy us up, and might prove honest,
and prefer to be poor. It caused him a slight tremor as it passed ;
but a very slight one, for the idle thought was gone directly.

“ He’s grown too fond of money for that,” said Wegg ; “he’s grown
too fond of money.” The burden fell into a strain or tune as he
stumped along the pavements. All the way home he stumped it
out of the rattling streets, piano with his own foot, and forte with
his wooden leg, “ He’s GRowN too FonD of money for THAT, he’s GROWN
too FOND of MONEY.”

ven next day Silas soothed himself with this melodious strain,
when he was called out of bed at daybreak, to set open the yard-gate
and admit the train of carts and horses that came to carry off the
little Mound. And all day long, as he kept unwinking watch on
the slow process which promised to protract itself through many
days and. weeks, whenever (to save himself from being choked with
dust) he patrolled a little cinderous beat he established for the
purpose, without taking his eyes from the diggers, he still stumped
to the tune: “ He’s Grown too ronp of MoNEY for THAT, he’s GROWN
too FOND of MONEY.”

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  

 

 

 

THE EVIL GENIUS OF THE HOUSE OF BOFFIN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

CHAPTER VIII.
THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY.

Tue train of carts and horses came and went all day from dawn to
nightfall, making little or no daily impression on the heap of ashes,
though, as the days passed on, the heap was seen to be slowly
melting, My lords and gentlemen and honorable boards, when
you in the course of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking have
piled up a mountain of pretentious failure, you must off with your
honorable coats for the removal of it, and fall to the work with the
power of all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men, or it will
come rushing down and bury us alive.

Yes, verily, my lords and gentlemen and honorable boards, adapt-
ing your Catechism to the occasion, and by God’s help so you must.
For when we have got things to the pass that with an enormous
treasure at disposal to relieve the poor, the best of the poor detest
our mercies, hide their heads from us, and shame us by starving to
death in the midst of us, it is a pass impossible of prosperity, im-
possible of continuance. It may not be so written in the Gospel
according to Podsnappery ; you may not “find these words” for the
text of a sermon, in the Returns of the Board of Trade; but they
have been the truth since the foundatious of the universe were laid,
and they will be the truth until the foundations of the universe are
shaken by the Builder. This boastful handiwork of :ours, which
fails in its terrors for the professional pauper, the sturdy breaker
of windows and the rampant. tearer of clothes, strikes with a cruel
and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and is a horror to the
deserving and unfortunate. We must mend it, lords and gentlemen
and honorable boards, or in its own evil hour it will mar every one
of us.

Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage as many ruggedly
honest creatures, women and men, fare on their toiling way along the
roads of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare living, and quietly to
die, untouched by workhouse hands—this was her highest sublunary
hope.

Nothing had been heard of her at Mr. Boffin’s house since she
trudged off. The weather had been hard and the roads had
been bad, and her spirit was up. A less stanch spirit might have
been subdued by such adverse influences; but the loan for her
little outfit was in no part repaid, and it had gone worse with her
than she had foreseen, and she was put upon proving her case and
maintaining: her independence.

Faithful soul! When she had spoken to the Secretary of that
“deadness that steals over me at times,” her fortitude had made too
little of it. Oftener and ever oftener, it came stealing over her;
daxker and ever darker, like the shadow of advancing Death. That
the shadow should be deep as it came on, like the shadow of an
actual presence, was in accordance with the laws of the physical
VOL. Il. F

  
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 

Siete.

Bia in on aie eee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

66 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

world, for all the Light that shone on Betty Higden lay beyond
Death. : 4

The poor old creature had taken the upward course of the river
Thames as her general track; it was the track in which her last
home lay, and of which she had last had local love and knowledge.
She had hovered for a little while in the near neighbourhood of her
abandoned dwelling, and had sold, and knitted and sold, and gone on.
In the pleasant towns of Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and Staines,
her figure came to be quite well known for some short weeks, and
then again passed on.

She would take her stand in market-places, where there were such
things, on market days; at other times, in the busiest (that was
seldom very busy) portion of the little quiet High Street; at still
other times she would explore the outlying roads for great houses,
and would ask leave at the Lodge to pass in with her basket, and
would not often get it. But ladies im carriages would frequently
make purchases from her trifling stock, and were usually pleased
with her bright eyes and her hopeful speech. In these and her clean
dress originated a fable that she was well to doin the world: one
might say, for her station, rich. As making a comfortable provision
fer its subject which costs nobody anything, this class of fable has
jong been popular.

In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you may hear the fall of
the water over the weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the
rushes; and from the bridge you may see the young river, dimpled
like a young child, playfully gliding away among the trees, un-
polluted by the defilements that lie in wait for it on its course, and as
yet out of hearing of the deep summons of the sea. It were too
much to pretend that Betty Higden made out such thoughts; no;
but she heard the tender river whispering to many like herself,
“Come to me, come tome! When the cruel shame and terror you have
so long fled from, most beset you, come to me! I am the Relieving
Officer appointed by eternal ordinance to do my work; I am not
held in estimation according as I shirk it. My breast is softer than
the pauper-nurse’s; death in my arms is peacefuller than among the
pauper-wards. Come to me!”

There was abundant place for gentler fancies too, in her un-
tutored mind. ‘Those gentlefolks and their children inside those fine
houses, could they think, as they looked out at her, what it was to
be really hungry, really cold? Did they feel any of the wonder
about her, that she felt about them? Bless the dear laughing chil-
dren! If they could have seen sick Johnny in her arms, would they
have cried for pity? If they could have seen dead Johnny on that
little bed, would they have understood it? Bless the dear children for
his sake, any how! So with the humbler houses in the little street, the
inner firelight shining on the panes as the outer twilight darkened.
When the families gathered in-doors there, for the night, it was only
a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little hard in them to close the
shutter and blacken the flame. So with the lighted shops, and
speculations whether their masters and mistresses taking tea Im @
perspective of back-parlour—not so far within but that the flavour of

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 67
tea and toast came out, mingled with the glow of light, mto the
street—ate or drank or wore what they sold, with the greater relish
because they dealt in it. So with the churchyard on a branch of the
solitary way to the night’s sleeping-place. “Ah me! The dead and
I seem to have it pretty much to ourselves in the dark and in this
weather! But so much the better for all who are warmly housed at
home.” The poor soul envied no one in bitterness, and grudged no
one anything.

But, the old abhorrence grew stronger on her as she grew weaker,
and it found more sustaining food than she did in her wanderings.
Now, she would light upon the shameful spectacle of some deso-
late creature—or some wretched ragged groups of either sex, or
of both sexes, with children among them, huddled together like
the smaller vermin for a little warmth—lingering and lingering
on a doorstep, while the appointed evader of the public trust
did his dirty office of trying to weary them out and so get rid of
them. Now, she would light upon some poor decent person, like
herself, going afoot on a pilgrimage of many weary miles to see some
worn-out relative or friend who had been charitably clutched off to a
great blank barren Union House, as far from old home as the County
Jail (the remoteness of which is always its worst punishment for small
rural offenders), and in its dietary, and in its lodging, and in its
tending of the sick, a much more penal establishment. Sometimes she
would hear a newspaper read out, and would learn how the Registrar
General cast up the units that had within the last week died of want
and of exposure to the weather: for which that Recordmg Angel
seemed to have a regular fixed place in his sum, as if they were its
halfpenee. All such things she would hear discussed, as we, my
lords and gentlemen and honorable boards, in our unapproachable
magnificence never hear them, and from all such things she would
fly with the wings of raging Despair.

This is not to be received as a figure of speech. Old Betty Higden
however tired, however footsore, would start up and be driven away
by her awakened horror of falling into the hands of Charity. It is
a remarkable Christian improvement, to have made a pursuing Fury
of the Good Samaritan; but it was so in this case, and it is a type
of many, many, many.

Two incidents united to intensify the old unreasoning abhorrence
—granted in a previous place to be unreasoning, because the people
always are unreasoning, and invariably make a point of producing
all their smoke without fire.

One day she was sitting in a market-place on a bench outside an
inn, with her little wares for sale, when the deadness that she strove
against came over her so heavily that the scene departed from before
her eyes; when it returned, she found herself on the ground, her head
supported by some good-natured market-women, and a little crowd
about her.

“Are you better now, mother?” asked one of the women. “Do
you think you can do nicely now ?”

“Have I been ill then?” asked old Betty.

“You have had a faint like,’ was the answer, “or a fit. It aint
2

Fa

    
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

68 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

that you’ve been a-struggling, mother, but you’ve been stiff and
numbed.”

“Ah!” said Betty, recovering her memory. “It’s the numbness.
Yes. It comes over me at times.”

Was it gone? the women asked her.

“It's gone now,” said Betty. “I shall be stronger than I was
afore. Many thanks to ye, my dears, and when you come to be as old
as I am, may others do as much for you!”

They assisted her to rise, but she could not stand yet, and they
supported her when she sat down again upon the bench.

“My head’s a bit light, and my feet are a bit heavy,” said old Betty,
leaning her face drowsily on the breast of the woman who had spoken
before. “They’ll both come nat’ral in a minute. There’s nothing
more the matter.”

“ Ask her,” said some farmers standing by, who had come out from
their market-dinner, “who belongs to her.”

“Are there any folks belonging to you, mother ?” said the woman.

“Yes sure,” answered Betty. “I heerd the gentleman say it, but
I couldn’t answer quick enough. There’s plenty belonging to me.
Don’t ye fear for me, my dear.”

“But are any of ’em near here?” said the men’s voices; the
women’s voices chiming in when it was said, and prolonging the
strain.

“Quite near enough,” said Betty, rousing herself. ‘Don’t ye be
afeard for me, neighbours.”

“But: you are not fit to travel. Where are you going?” was the
next compassionate chorus she heard.

“Tm a going to London when I’ve sold out all,” said Betty, rising
with difficulty. “I’ve right good friends in London. I want for
nothing. I shall come tono harm. Thankye. Don’t ye be afeard
for me.”

A well-meaning bystander, yellow-lezeinged and purple-faced, said
hoarsely over his red comforter, as she rose to her feet, that she
“oughtn’t to be let to go.”

“ Wor the Lord’s love don’t meddle with me!” cried old Betty, all
her fears crowding on her. “I am quite well now, and I must go
this minute.”

She caught up her basket as she spoke and was making an un-
steady rush away from them, when the same bystander checked her
with his hand on her sleeve, and urged her to come with him and see
the parish-doctor. Strengthening herself by the utmost exercise of her
resolution, the poor trembling creature shook him off, almost fiercely,
and took to flight. Nor did she feel safe until she had set a mile or
two of by-road between herself and the market-place, and had crept
into a copse, like a hunted animal, to hide and recover breath. Not
until then for the first time did she venture to recall how she had
looked over her shoulder before turning out of the town, and had
seen the sign of the White Lion hanging across the road, and the
fluttering market booths, and the old grey church, and the little
crowd gazing after her but not attempting to follow her. 5
The second frightening incident was this. She had been again as

2

  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

    
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 69

 

bad, and had been for some days better, and was travelling along by a
part of the road where it touched the river, and in wet seasons was
so often overflowed by it that there were tall white posts set up to
mark the way. A barge was being towed towards her, and she sat
down on the bank to rest and watch it. As the tow-rope was slack-
ened by a turn of the stream and dipped into the water, such a con-
fusion stole into her mind that she thought she saw the forms of her
dead children and dead grandchildren peopling the barge, and waving
their hands to her in solemn measure; then, as the rope tightened and
came up, dropping diamonds, it seemed to vibrate into two parallel
ropes and strike her, with a twang, though it was far off. When
she looked again, there was no barge, no river, no daylight, and a man
whom she had never before seen held a candle close to her face.

“Now, Missis,” said he; “where did you come from and where are
you going to?”

The poor soul confusedly asked the counter-question where she
was?

“T am the Lock,” said the man.

“The Lock ?”

“Tam the Deputy Lock, on job, and this is the Lock-house. (Lock
or Deputy Lock, it’s all one, while the t’other man’s in the hospital.)
What’s your Parish ?”

“Parish!” She was up from the truckle-bed directly, wildly
feeling about her for her basket, and gazing at him in affright.

“You'll be asked the question down town,” said the man, “They
won't let you be more than a Casual there. They'll pass you on to
your settlement, Missis, with all speed. You're not in a state to be
let come upon strange parishes ’ceptin as a Casual.”

“Twas the deadness again!” murmured Betty Higden, with her
hand to her head.

“Tt was the deadness, there’s not a doubt about it,” returned the
man: “I should have thought the deadness was a mild word for it,
if it had been named to me when we brought you in. Have you got
any friends, Missis?”

“The best of friends, Master.”

“T should recommend your looking ’em up if you consider ’em
game to do anything for you,’ said the Deputy Lock. “Have you
got any money ?”

“ Just a morsel of money, sir.”

“Do you want to keep it?”

“Sure I do!”

“Well, you know,” said the Deputy Lock, shrugging his shoulders
with his hands in his pockets, and shaking his head in a sulkily
ominous manner, “the parish authorities down town will have it out
of you, if you go on, you may take your Alfred David.”

“Then [Il not go on.”

“They'll make you pay, as fur as your money will go,” pursued the
Deputy, “for your relief as a Casual and for your being passed to your
Parish.”

“Thank ye kindly, Master, for your warning, thank ye for your
shelter, and good night.”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
    

70 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Stop a bit,” said the Deputy, striking in between her and the
door. “Why are you all of a shake, and what’s your hurry, Missis ?”

“Oh, Master, Master,” returned Betty Higden, “I’ve fought
against the Parish and fled from it, all my life, and I want to die free
of it!”

“JT don’t know,” said the Deputy, with deliberation, “as TI ought
to let you go. I’m a honest man as gets my living by the sweat
of my brow, and I may fall into trouble by letting you go. I've
fell into trouble afore now, by George, and I know what it is, and
itis made me careful. You might be took with your deadness
again, half a mile off—or half of half a quarter, for the matter of
that—and then it would be asked, Why did that there honest Deputy
Lock, let her go, instead of putting her safe with the Parish? That's
what a man of his character ought to have done, it would be argueyfied,”
said the Deputy Lock, cunningly harping on the strong string of her
terror; “he ought to have handed her over safe to the Parish. That
was to be expected of a man of his merits.”

As he stood in the doorway, the poor old careworn wayworn
woman burst into tears, and clasped her hands, as if im a very agony
she prayed to him.

“ As lve told you, Master, I’ve the best of friends. This letter will
show how true I spoke, and they will be thankful for me.”

The Deputy Lock opened the letter with a grave face, which
underwent no change as he eyed its contents. But it might have
done, if he could have read them.

“ What amount of small change, Missis,” he said, with an abstracted
air, after a little meditation, “might you call a morsel of money ?”

Hurriedly emptying her pocket, old Betty laid down on the table,
a shilling, and two sixpenny pieces, and a few pence.

“If Iwas to let you go instead of handing you over safe to the
Parish,” said the Deputy, counting the money with his eyes, “ might
it be your own free wish to leave that there behind you?”

“Take it, Master, take it, and welcome and thankful !”

“J’m a man,” said the Deputy, giving her back the letter, and
pocketing the coins, one by one, “as earns his living by the sweat of
his brow ;’ here he drew his sleeve across his forehead, as if this
particular portion of his humble gains were the result of sheer hard
labour and virtuous industry; “and I won’t stand in your way. Go
where you like.”

She was gone out of the Lock-house as soon as he gave her this
permission, and her tottering steps were on the road again. But,
afraid to go back and afraid to go forward ; seeing what she fled from,
in the sky-glare of the lights of the little town before her, and
leaving a confused horror of it everywhere behind her, as if she had
escaped it in every stone of every market-place; she struck of by side
Ways, among which she got bewildered and lost. That night she
took refuge from the Samaritan in his latest accredited form, under
a farmer’s rick; and if—worth thinking of, perhaps, my fellow-
Christians—the Samaritan had in the lonely night, “ passed by on the
other side,” she would have most devoutly thanked High Heaven
for her escape from him.

 

LH9ITH GHL

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 1

The morning found her afoot again, but fast declining as to the
clearness of her thoughts, though not as to the steadiness of her
purpose. Comprehending that her strength was quitting her, and
that the struggle of her life was almost ended, she could neither
reason out the means of getting back to her protectors, nor even form
the idea. ‘The overmastering dread, and the proud stubborn resolu-
tion it engendered in her to die undegraded, were the two distinct
impressions left in her failing mind. Supported only by a sense that
she was bent on conquering in her life-long fight, she went on.

The time was come, now, when the wants of this little life were
passing away from her. She could not have swallowed food, though
a table had been spread for her in the next field. The day was cold
and wet, but she scarcely knew it. She crept on, poor soul, like a
criminal afraid of being taken, and felt little beyond the terror of
falling down while it was yet daylight, and being found alive. She
had no fear that she would live through another night.

Sewn in the breast of her gown, the money to pay for her burial
was still intact. If she could wear through the day, and then lie
down to die under cover of the darkness, she would die independent.
Tf she were captured previously, the money would be taken from her
as a pauper who had no right to it, and she would be carried to the
accursed workhouse. Gaining her end, the letter would be found in
her breast, along with the money, and the gentlefolks would say
when it was given back to them, “ She prized it, did old Betty Higden ;
she was true to it; and while she lived, she would never let it be
disgraced by falling into the hands of those that she held in horror.”
Most illogical, inconsequential, and light-headed, this; but travel-
lers in the valley of the shadow of death are apt to be licht-headed ;
and worn-out old people of low estate have a trick of reasoning as in-
differently as they live, and doubtless would appreciate our Poor Law
more philosophically on an income of ten thousand a year.

So, keeping to byways, and shunning human approach, this
troublesome old woman hid herself, and fared on all through the
dreary day. Yet so unlike was she to vagrant hiders in general,
that sometimes, as the day advanced, there was a bright fire in her
eyes, and a quicker beating at her feeble heart, as though she said
exultingly, “ The Lord will see me through it Mes

By what visionary hands she was led along upon that journey of
escape from the Samaritan ; by what voices, hushed in the grave, she
seemed to be addressed; how she fancied the dead child in her
arms again, and times innumerable adjusted her shawl to keep it
warm; what infinite variety of forms of tower and roof and steeple
the trees took; how many furious horsemen rode at her, crying,
“There she goes! Stop! Stop, Betty Higden !? and melted away as
they came close; be these things left untold. Faring on and hiding,
hiding and faring on, the poor harmless creature, as though she were
a Murderess and the whole country were up after her, wore out the
day, and gained the night.

“: Water-meadows, or such like,” she had sometimes murmured, on
the day’s pilgrimage, when she had raised her head and taken any
note of the real objects about her. There now arose in the darkness,

isaac a lM ihe

aren

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72 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

a great building, full of lighted windows. Smoke was issuing from
a high chimney in the rear of it, and there was the sound of a water-
wheel at the side. Between her and the building, lay a piece of
water, in which the lighted windows were reflected, and onits nearest
margin was a plantation of trees. “I humbly thank the Power and
the Glory,” said Betty Higden, holding up her withered hands, “that
I have come to my journey’s end !”

She crept among the trees to the trunk of a tree whence she could
see, beyond some intervening trees and branches, the lighted windows,
both in their reality and their reflection in the water. She placed
her orderly little basket at her side, and sank upon the ground,
supporting herself against the tree. It brought to her mind the foot
of the Cross, and she committed herself to Him who died upon it.
Her strength held out to enable her to arrange the letter in her
breast, so as that it could be seen that she had a paper there. It
had held out for this, and it departed when this was done.

“Tam safe here,” was her last benumbed thought. “ When I am
found dead at the foot of the Cross, it will be by some of my own sort;
some of the working people who work among the lights yonder. I
cannot see the lighted windows now, but they are there. I am thank-
ful for ali!”

The darkness gone, and a face bending down.

“Tt cannot be the boofer lady ?”

“T don’t understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again
with this brandy. I have been away to fetch it. Did you think
that I was long gone?”

It is as the face of a woman, shaded by a quantity of rich dark
hair. It is the earnest face of a woman who is young and handsome.
But all is over with me on earth, and this must be an Angel.

“ Have I been long dead ?”

“J don’t understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again.
I hurried all I could, and brought no one back with me, lest you
should die of the shock of strangers.”

“ Am I not dead ?”

“T cannot understand what you say. Your voice is so low and
broken that I cannot hear you. Do you hear me ?”

“Yes,”

“Do you mean Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Twas coming from my work just now, along the path outside
(1 was up with the night-hands last night), and I heard a groan, and
found you lying here.”

“What work, deary ?”

“Did you ask what work? At the paper-mill.”

“ Where is it ?”

“Your face is turned up to the sky, and you can’t see it. It
is close by. You can see my face, here, between you and the sky ?”

“Yes.”

“Dare I lift you”

SN O tebe:

  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
    

 

    
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Not even lift your head to get it on my arm? I will do it by
very gentle degrees. You shall hardly feel it.”

“Not yet. Paper. Letter.”

“This paper in your breast?”

“Bless ye!”

“Let me wet your lips again. Am I to open it? ‘To read it?”

“Bless ye !”

She reads it with surprise, and looks down with a new expression
and an added interest on the motionless face she kneels beside.

“T know these names. I have heard them often.”

“ Will you send it, my dear?”

“JT cannot understand you. Let me wet your lips again, and your
forehead. There. O poor thing, poor thing!” These words through
her fast-dropping tears. “ What was it that you asked me? Wait
till I bring my ear quite close.”

« Will you send it, my dear?”

“Will [ send it to the writers? Is that your wish? Yes, cer-
tainly.”

“You'll not give it up to any one but them ?”

S.No; 7

“ As you must grow old in time, and come to your dying hour, my
dear, you'll not give it up to any one but them ?”

“No. Most solemnly.”

“Neyer to the Parish!” with a convulsed struggle.

“No. Most solemnly.”

“Nor let the Parish touch me, nor yet so much as look at me!”
with another struggle.

“No. Faithfully.”

A look of thankfulness and triumph lights the worn old face.
The eyes, which have been darkly fixed upon the sky, turn with
meaning in them towards the compassionate face from which the
tears are dropping, and a smile is on the aged lips as they ask:

“ What is your name, my dear ?”

“My name is Lizzie Hexam.”

“TJ must be sore disfigured. Are you afraid to kiss me?”

The answer is, the ready pressure of her lips upon the cold but
smiling mouth.

“Bless ye! Now lift me, my love.”

Lizzie Hexam very softly raised the weather-stained grey head,
and lifted her as high as Heaven.

CHAPTER IX.
SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION.

“¢ We GIVE THEE HEARTY THANKS FOR THAT IT HATH PLEASED THEE TO
DELIVER THIS OUR SISTER OUT OF THE MISERIES OF THIS SINFUL WORLD.’ ”
So read the Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled voice, for
his heart misgave him that all was not quite right between us and
our sister—or say our sister in Law—Poor Law—and that we some-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

74 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

times read these words in an awful manner, over our Sister and
our Brother too. A

And Sloppy—on whom the brave deceased had never turned her
back until she ran away from him, knowing that otherwise he would
not be separated from her—Sloppy could not in his conscience as yet
find the hearty thanks required of it. Selfish in Sloppy, and yet
excusable, it may be humbly hoped, because our sister had been
more than his mother.

The words were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner
of a churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there
was nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single tomb-
stone. It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the
diggers and hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their graves
at the common charge; so that a new generation might know which
was which: so that the soldier, sailor, emigrant, coming home, should
be able to identify the resting-place of father, mother, playmate, or
betrothed, For, we turn up our eyes and say that we are all alike in
death, and we might turn them down and work the saying out in
this world, so far. It would be sentimental, perhaps? But how say
ye, my lords and gentlemen and honorable boards, shall we not
find good standing-room left for a little sentiment, if we look into our
crowds?

Near unto the Reverend Frank Milvey as he read, stood his little
wife, John Rokesmith the Secretary, and Bella Wilfer. These, over
and above Sloppy, were the mourners at the lowly grave. Nota
penny had been added to the money sewn in her dress: what her
honest spirit had so long projected, was fulfilled.

“T’ve took it in my head,” said Sloppy, laying it, inconsolable,
against the church door, when all was done: “I’ve took it in my
wretched head that I might have sometimes turned a little harder
for her, and it cuts me deep to think so now.”

The Reverend Frank Milvey, comforting Sloppy, expounded to him
how the best of us were more or less remiss in our turnings at our
respective Mangles—some of us very much so—and how we were all
a halting, failing, feeble, and inconstant crew.

“She warn’t, sir,” said Sloppy, taking this ghostly counsel rather
ill, in behalf of his late benefactress. Let us speak for ourselves,
sir. She went through with whatever duty she had to do. She went
through with me, she went through with the Minders, she went
through with herself, she went through with everythink. O Mrs.
Higden, Mrs. Higden, you was a woman and a mother and a mangler
in a million million !”

With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from
the church door, and took it back to the grave in the corner, and laid
it down there, and wept alone. “Not a very poor grave,” said the
Reverend Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes, “ when it
has that homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could be made
by most of the sculpture in Westminster Abbey!”

They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket-gate.
The water-wheel of the paper-mili was audible there, and seemed to
have a softening influence on the bright wintry scene. They had

 

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OU MUTUAL FRIEND, Vi)

arrived but a little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them
the little she could add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr.
Rokesmith’s letter and had asked for their instructions. This was
merely how she had heard the groan, and what had afterwards
passed, and how she had obtained leave for the remains to be placed
m that sweet, fresh, empty store-room of the mill from which they
had just accompanied them to the churchyard, and how the last
requests had been religiously observed.

“JT could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,” said Lizzie.
“T should not have wanted the will; but I should not have had the
power, without our managing partner.”

“Surely not the Jew who received us?” said Mrs. Milvey.

(“My dear,” observed her husband in parenthesis, “why not ?”)

“The gentleman certainly is a Jew,” said Lizzie, “and the lady,
his wife, is a Jewess, and Iwas first brought to their notice by a Jew.
But I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.”

“But suppose they try to convert you!” suggested Mrs. Milvey,
bristling in her good little way, as a clergyman’s wife.

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

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

Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. “They have never asked me
what my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told
them. ‘They asked me to be industrious and faithful, and I promised
tobe so. They most willingly and cheerfully do their duty to all
of us who are employed here, and we try to do ours to them. Indeed
they do much more than their duty to us, for they are wonderfully
mindful of‘us in many ways.”

“Tt is easy to see youre a favourite, my dear,” said little Mrs.
Milvey, not quite pleased.

“J+ would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,” returned
Lizzie, “for I have been already raised to a place of confidence
here. But that makes no difference in their following their own
religion and leaving all of us to ours. They never talk of theirs to
us, and they never talk of ours to us. If I was the last in the mill,
it would be just the same. They never asked me what religion that
poor thing had followed.”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Milvey, aside to the Reverend Frank, “I wish
you would talk to her.”

“My dear,” said the Reverend Frank aside to his good little wife,
“JT think I will leave it to somebody else. The circumstances are
hardly favourable. There are plenty of talkers going about, my love,
and she will soon find one.”

While this discourse was interchanging, both Bella and the Secre-
tary observed Lizzie Hexam with great attention. Brought face to face
for the first time with the daughter of his supposed murderer, it was
natural that John Harmon should have his own secret reasons for a
careful scrutiny of her countenance and manner. Bella knew that
Lizzie’s father had been falsely accused of the crime which had had
so great an influence on her own life and fortunes; and her interest,
though it had no secret springs, like that of the Secretary, was equally
natural. Both had expected to see something very different from the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 

 

 

76 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
real Lizzie Hexam, and thus it fell out that she became the uncon-
scious means of bringing them together.

For, when they had walked on with her to the little house in the
clean village by the paper-mill, where Lizzie had a lodging with an
elderly couple employed in the establishment, and when Mrs. Milvey
and Bella had been up to see her room and had come down,
the mill bell rang. This called Lizzie away for the time, and
left the Secretary and Bella standing rather awkwardly in the
small street; Mrs. Milvey being engaged in pursuing the village
children, and her investigations whether they were in danger of
becoming children of Israel ; and the Reverend Frank being engaged
—to say the truth—in evading that branch of his. spiritual functions,
and getting out of sight surreptitiously.

Bella at length said :

“Hadn't we better talk about the commission we have undertaken,
Mr. Rokesmith ?”

“By all means,” said the Secretary.

“IT suppose,” faltered Bella, “that we are both commissioned, or we
shouldn’t both be here?”

“I suppose so,” was the Secretary’s answer.

“When I proposed to come with Mr. and Mrs. Milvey,” said Bella,
“Mrs. Boffin urged me to do so, in order that I might give her my
small report—it’s not worth anything, Mr Rokesmith, except for it’s
being a woman’s—which indeed with you may be a fresh reason for
it’s beg worth nothing—of Lizzie Hexam.”

“Mr. Boftin,” said the Secretary, “directed me to come for the
same purpose.”

As they spoke they were leaving the little street and emerging
on the wooded landscape by the river.

“You think well of her, Mr. Rokesmith 2” pursued Bella, conscious
of making all the advances.

“JT think highly of her.”

“Tam so glad of that! Something quite refined in her beauty, is
there not ?”

““ Her appearance is very striking.’

“There is a shade of sadness upon her that is quite touching.
At least I—I am not setting up my Own poor opinion, you know, Mr.
Rokesmith,” said Bella, excusing and explaining herself in a pretty
shy way; “I am consulting you.”

“TI noticed that sadness. J hope it may not,” said the Secretary in
a lower voice, “be the result of the false accusation which has been
retracted.”

When they had passed on a little further without speaking,
Bella, after stealing a glance or two at the Secretary, suddenly
said :

“Oh, Mx. Rokesmith, don't be hard with me, don’t be stern with me;
be magnanimous! I want to talk with you on equal terms.”

The Secretary as suddenly brightened, and returned: “Upon my
honour I had no thought but for you. I forced myself to be con-
stramed, lest you might misinterpret my being more natural, ‘There.
It’s gone.”

?

  

  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. iT

“Thank you,” said Bella, holding out her little hand. “ Forgive
me.”

“No!” cried the Secretary, eagerly. “Forgive me!” For there
were tears in her eyes, and they were prettier in his sight (though
they smote him on the heart rather reproachfully too) than any other
glitter in the world.

When they had walked a little further :

“You were going to speak to me,” said the Secretary, with the
shadow so long on him quite thrown off and cast away, “about Lizzie
Hexam. So was I going to speak to you, if I could have begun.”

“Now that you can begin, sir,’ returned Bella, with a look as if
she italicized the word by putting one of her dimples under it, “ what
were you going to say?”

“You remember, of course, that in her short letter to Mrs. Boffin—
short, but containing everything to the purpose—she stipulated that
either her name, or else her place of residence, must be kept strictly
a secret among us.”

Bella nodded Yes.

“It is my duty to find out why she made that stipulation. I have
it in charge from Mr. Boffin to discover, and I am very desirous for
myself to discover, whether that retracted accusation still leaves any
stain upon her. I mean whether it places her at any disadvantage
towards any one, even towards herself.”

“Yes.” said Bella, nodding thoughtfully; “I understand. That
seems wise, and considerate.”

“You may not have noticed, Miss Wilfer, that she has the same
kind of interest in you, that you have in her. Just as you are
attracted by her beaut— by her appearance and manner, she is at-
tracted by yours.”

“T certainly have not noticed it,” returned Bella, again italicizing
with the dimple, “and I should have given her credit for di

The Secretary with asmile held up his hand, so plainly interposing
“not for better taste,” that Bella’s colour deepened over the little
piece of coquetry she was checked in.

“And so,” resumed the Secretary, “if you would speak with her
alone before we go away from here, I feel quite sure that a natural
and easy confidence would arise between you. Of course you would
not be asked to betray it; and of course you would not, if you were.
But if you do not object to put this question to her—to ascertain.
for us her own feeling in this one matter—you can do so at a far
greater advantage than I or any else could. Mr. Boffin is anxious on
the subject. And I am,” added the Secretary after a moment, “for
a special reason, very anxious.”

“T¥ shall be happy, Mr. Rokesmith,” returned Bella, “to be of the
least use; for I feel, after the serious scene of to-day, that I am
useless enough in this world.”

“Don’t say that,” urged the Secretary.

“Oh, but [ mean that,” said Bella, raising her eyebrows.

“No one is useless in this world,” retorted the Secretary, “who
lightens the burden of it for any one else.”

“But I assure you I don’t, Mr. Rokesmith,” said Bella, half crying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

78 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Not for your father ?”

“Dear, loving, self-forgetting, easily-satisfied Pa! Oh, yes! Ho
thinks so.”

“It is enough if he only thinks so,” said the Secretary. “Excus
the interruption: I don’t like to hear you depreciate yourself.”

“ But you once depreciated me, sir,” thought Bella, pouting, “and
I hope you may be satisfied with the consequences you brought upon
your head!” However, she said nothing to that purpose; she even
said something to a different purpose.

“Mr. Rokesmith, it seems so long since we spoke together
naturally, that I am embarrassed in approaching another subject.
Mr. Boftin. You know I am very grateful to him; don’t you? You
know I feel a true respect for him, and am bound to him by the
strong ties of his own generosity ; now don’t you ?”

“Unquestionably. And also that you are his favourite com-
panion.”

“That makes it,” said Bella, “so very difficult to speak of hira.
But ——. Does he treat you well?”

“You see how he treats me,” the Secretary answered, with a
patient and yet proud air.

“Yes, and I see it with pain,” said Bella, very energetically.

The Secretary gave her such a radiant look, that if he had thanked
her a hundred times, he could not have said as much as the look
said.

“J see it with pain,” repeated Bella, “and it often makes me
miserable. Miserable, because I cannot bear to be supposed to ap-
prove of it, or have any indirect share in it. Miserable, because I
cannot bear to be foreed to admit to myself that Fortune is spoiling
Mr. Boffin.”

“Miss Wilfer,” said the Secretary, with a beaming face, “if you
could know with what delight I make the discovery that Fortune is
not spoiling you, you would know that it more than compensates me
for any slight at any other hands.”

“Oh, don’t speak of me,” said Bella, giving herself an impatient
little slap with her glove. “ You don’t know me as well as——”

“As you know yourself?’ suggested the Secretary, finding that
she stopped. “Do you know yourself?”

“1 know quite enough of myself,” said Bella, with a charming
air of being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, “and I don’t
Improve upon acquaintance. But Mr. Boffin.”

“That Mr. Boffin’s manner to me, or consideration for me, is not
what it used to be,” observed the Secretary, “must be admitted. It
is too plain to be denied.”

“Are you disposed to deny it, Mr. Rokesmith?” asked Bella, with
a look of wonder.

“Ought I not to be glad to do so, if I could: though it were only
for my own sake 2”

“Truly,” returned Bella, “it must try you very much, and—you
must please promise me that you won’t take ill what I am going to
add, Mr, Rokesmith ?” %

     
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“T promise it with all my heart.”

“«—And it must sometimes, I should think,” said Bella, hesitating,
“a, little lower you in your own estimation ?”

Assenting with a movement of his head, though not at all looking
as if it did, the Secretary replied :

“JT have very strong reasons, Miss Wilfer, for bearing with the
drawbacks of my position in the house we both inhabit. Believe
that they are not all mercenary, although I have, through a series
of strange fatalities, faded out of my place in life. If what you
see with such a gracious and good sympathy is calculated to
rouse iny pride, there are other considerations (and those you do
not see) urging me to quiet endurance. The latter are by far the
stronger.”

“T think I have noticed, Mr. Rokesmith,” said Bella, looking at
him with curiosity, as not quite making him out, “that you repress
yourself, and force yourself, to act a passive part.”

“You are right. I repress myself and force myself to act a part.
It is not in tameness of spirit that I submit. I have a settled
purpose.”

“ And a good one, I hope,” said Bella.

“ And a good one, I hope,” he answered, looking steadily at her.

“Sometimes I have fancied, sir,’ said Bella, turning away her
eyes, “that your great regard for Mrs, Boffin is a very powerful
motive with you.”

“You are night again; it is. I would do anything for her, bear
anything for her. ‘There are no words to express how I esteem that
good, good woman.” 5

“As TI do too! May I ask you one thing more, Mr. Rokesmith ?”

“ Anything more.”

“Of course you see that she really suffers, when Mr. Boffin shows
how he is changing ?”’

“T see it, every day, as you see it, and am grieved to give her
pain.”

“To give her pain?” said Bella, repeating the phrase quickly,
with her eyebrows raised.

“Tam generally the unfortunate cause of it.” :

“Perhaps she says to you, as she often says to me, that he is the
best of men, in spite of all.”

“T often overhear her, in her honest and beautiful devotion to
him, saying so to you,” returned the Secretary, with the same steady
look, “but I cannot assert that she ever says so to me.” f

Bella met the steady look for a moment with a wistful, musing
little look of her own, and then, nodding her pretty head several
times, like a dimpled philosopher (of the very best school) who was
moralizing on Life, heaved a little sigh, and gave up things in general
for a bad job, as she had previously been inclined to give up herself.

But, for all that, they had a very pleasant walk. The trees were
bare of leaves, and the river was bare of water-lilies; but the sky
was not bare of its beautiful blue, and the water reflected it, and a
delicious wind ran with the stream, touching the surface crisply.
Perhaps the old mizror was neyer yet made by human hands, which,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

80 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

if all the images it has in its time reflected could pass across its
surface again, would fail to reveal some scene of horror or distress.
But the great serene mirror of the river seemed as if it might have
reproduced all it had ever reflected between those placid banks, and
brought nothing to the light save what was peaceful, pastoral, and
blooming.

So, they walked, speaking of the newly filled-up grave, and of
Johnny, and of many things. So, on their return, they met brisk
Mrs. Milvey coming to seek them, with the agreeable intelligence
that there was no fear for the village children, there being a Christian
school in the village, and no worse Judaical interference with it
than to plant its garden.. So, they got back to the village as
Lizzie Hexam was coming from the paper-mill, and Bella detached
herself to speak with her in her own home.

“T am afraid it is a poor room for you,” said Lizzie, with a smile of
welcome, as she offered the post of honor by the fireside.

“Not so poor as you think, my dear,” returned Bella, “if you knew
all.” Indeed, though attained by some wonderful winding narrow
stairs, which seemed to have been erected in a pure white chimney,
and though very low in the ceiling, and very rugged in the floor,
and rather blinking as to the proportions of its lattice window, it was
a pleasanter room than that despised chamber once at home, in which
Bella had first bemoaned the miseries of taking lodgers.

The day was closing as the two girls looked at one another by the
fireside. The dusky room was lighted by the fire. The grate
might have been the old brazier, and the glow might have been
the old hollow down by the flare.

“Tt’s quite new to me,” said Lizzie, “to be visited by a lady so
nearly of my own age, and so pretty,as you. It’s a pleasure to me to
look at you.”

“JT have nothing left to begin with,” returned Bella, blushing,
“because | was going to say that it was a pleasure to me to look at
you, Lizzie. But we can begin without a beginning, can’t we ?”

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

“ Now, dear,” said Bella, drawing her chair a little nearer, and
taking Lizzie’s arm as if they were going out for a walk, “I am com-
missioned with something to say, and I dare say I shall say it wrong,
but I won’t if I can help it. It is in reference to your letter to Mr.
and Mrs. Boffin, and this is what it is. Let me see. Oh yes! This
is what it is.”

With this exordium, Bella set forth that request of Lizzie’s touching
secresy, and delicately spoke of that false accusation and its retrac-
tation, and asked might she beg to be informed whether it had any bear-
ing, near or remote, on such request. “I feel, my dear,” said Bella,
quite amazing herself by the business-like manner in which she was
getting on, “that the subject must be a painful one to you, but Iam
mixed ap in it also; for—I don’t know whether you may know it or
suspect it—I am the willed-away girl who was to have been married
to the unfortunate gentleman, if he had heen pleased to approve of
me. So I was dragged into the subject without my consent, and you

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

 

  

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. ror
were dragged into it without your consent, and there is very little to
choose between us.”

“Thad no doubt,” said Lizzie, “that you were the Miss Wilfer |
have often heard named, Can you tell me who my unknown friend
is?”

“Unknown friend, my dear?” said Bella.

“Who caused the charge against poor father to be contradicted, and
sent me the written paper.”

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

“J should have been glad to thank him,” returned Lizzie. “He
has done a great deal for me. I must hope that he will let me
thank him some day. You asked me has it anything to do——”

“Jt or the accusation itself,’ Bella put in.

“Yes. Has either anything to do with my wishing to live quite
secret and retired here? No.”

As Lizzie Hexam shook her head in giving this reply and as
her glance sought the fire, there was a quiet resolution in her folded
hands, not lost on Bella’s bright eyes.

“Have you lived much alone?” asked Bella.

“Yes. It’s nothing new tome. I used to be always alone many
hours together, in the day and in the night, when poor father was
alive.”

“Vou have a brother, I have been told ?”

“T have a brother, but he is not friendly with me. He is a very
good boy though, and has raised himself by his industry. I don't
complain of him.”

As she said it, with her eyes upon the fire-glow, there was an in-
stantaneous escape of distress into her face. Bella seized the moment
to touch her hand.

“Tizzie, | wish you would tell me whether you have any friend
of your own sex and age.”

“J have lived that lonely kind of life, that I have never had one,”
was the answer.

“Nor I neither,” said Bella. “Not that my life has been lonely, for
I could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going;
on like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners, and
Lavvy being spiteful—though of course I am very fond of them both.
I wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you
could? I have no more of what they call character, my dear, than
a canary-bird, but I know I am trustworthy.”

The wayward, playful, affectionate nature, giddy for want of the
weight of some sustaining purpose, and capricious because it was
always fluttering among little things, was yet a captivating one. To
Lizzie it was so new, so pretty, at cnce so womanly and so childish, that
it won her completely. And when Bella said again, “Do you
think you could, Lizzie?” with her eyebrows raised, her head in-
quiring ly on one side, and an odd doubt about it in her own bosom,
Lizzie showed beyond all question that she thought she could.

“Tell me, my dear,” said Bella, “what is the matter, and why
you live like this.”

Lizzie presently began, by way of prelude, “ You must have many
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82 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

lovers—” when Bella checked her with a little scream of astonish-
ment.

“My dear, I haven’t one!”

“ Not one?”

“Well! Perhaps one,’ said Bella. “Iam sure I don’t know. I
had one, but what he may think about it at the present time
I can’t say. Perhaps I have half a one (of course I don’t count that
Idiot, George Sampson). However, never mind me. I want to hear
about you.”

“There is a certain man,” said Lizzie, “a passionate and angry
man, who says he loves me, and who I must believe does love me.
He is the friend of my brother. I shrank from him within myself
when my brother first brought him to me; but the last time I saw
him he terrified me more than I can say.” There she stopped.

“Did you come here to escape from him, Lizzie ?”

“JT came here immediately after he so alarmed me.”

“ Are you afraid of him here?”

“T am not timid generally, but I am always afraid of him. I
am afraid to see a newspaper, or to hear a word spoken of what is
done in London, lest he should have done some violence.”

“Then you are not afraid of him for yourself, dear?’ said Bella,
after pondering on the words.

“T should be even that, if I met him about here. I look round
for him always, as I pass to and fro at night.”

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

“No. He might be fierce enough even to do some violence to him-
self, but I don’t think of that.”

“Then it would almost seem, dear,” said Bella quaintly, “as if
there must be somebody else ?”

Lizzie put her hands before her face for a moment before replying :
“he words are always in my ears, and the blow he struck upon a
stone wall as he said them is always before my eyes. I have tried
hard to think it not worth remembering, but I cannot make so little
of it. His hand was trickling down with blood as he said to me,
‘Then I hope that I may never kill him!’”

Rather startled, Bella made and clasped a girdle of her arms round
Lizzie’s waist, and then asked quietly, in a soft voice, as they both
looked at the fire :

“Kall him! Is this man so jealous, then ?”

“Ofa gentleman,” said Lizzie. “—I hardly know how to tell you—
of a gentleman far above me and my way of life, who broke father’s
death to me, and has shown an interest in me since.”

“Does he love you?”

Lizzie shook her head.

“ Does he admire you ?”

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

“Is it through his influence that you came here?”

“Ono! And of all the world I wouldn’t haye him know that I
am here, or get the least clue where to find me.”

  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
     

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

 

§3

“Lizzie, dear! Why?” asked Bella, in amazement at this burst.
But then quickly added, reading Lizzie’s face: “No. Don’t say why
That was a foolish question of mine. I see, I see.”

There was silence between them. Lizzie, with a drooping head,
glanced down at the glow in the fire where her first fancies had
been nursed, and her first escape made from the grim life out of
which she had plucked her brother, foreseeing her reward.

“You know all now,” she said, raising her eyes to Bella’s. ‘There
is nothing left out. ‘This is my reason for living secret here, with
the aid of a good old man who is my true friend. or a short part
of my life at home with father, I knew of things—don’t ask me what
—that I set my face against, and tried to better. I don’t think I
could have done more, then, without letting my hold on father go;
but they sometimes lie heavy on my mind. By doing all for the
best, I hope I may wear them out.”

“And wear out too,” said Bella soothingly, “ this weakness, Lizzie,
in favour of one who is not worthy of it.”

“No, I don’t want to wear that out,” was the flushed reply, “nor
do I want to believe, nor do I believe, that he is not worthy of it.
What should I gain by that, and how much should I lose!”

Bella’s expressive little eyebrows remonstrated with the fire for
some short time before she rejoined :

“Don’t think that I press you, Lizzie; but wouldn’t you gain
in peace, and hope, and even in freedom? Wouldn’t it be better
not to live a secret life in hiding, and not to be shut out from your
natural and wholesome prospects? Forgive my asking you, would
that be no gain ?”

“Does a woman’s heart that—that has that weakness in it which
you have spoken of,” returned Lizzie, “seek to gain anything ?”

The question was so directly at variance with Bella’s views in life,
as set forth to her father, that she said internally, “There, you
little mercenary wretch! Do you hear that? Ain’t you ashamed
of yourself?” and unclasped the girdle of her arms, expressly to give
herself a penitential poke in the side.

“But you said, Lizzie,” observed Bella, returning to her subject
when she had administered this chastisement, “that you would lose,
besides. Would you mind telling me what you would lose, Lizzie?”

“T should lose some of the best recollections, best encouragements,
and best objects, that I carry through my daily life. I should lose
my belief that if I had been his equal, and he had loved me, I should
have tried with all my might to make him better and happier, as
he would have made me. I should lose almost all the value that I
put upon the little learning I have, which is all owing to him, and
which I conquered the difficulties of, that he might not think it
thrown away upon me, I should lose a kind of picture of him—or
of what he might have been, if I had been a lady, and he had loved
me—which is always with me, and which I somehow feel that I
could not do a mean or a wrong thing before. I should leave off
prizing the remembrance that he has done me nothing but good since
Ihave known him, and that he has made a change within me, like
—like the change in the grain of these hands, which were coarse,

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84 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
and cracked, and hard, and brown when I rowed on the river with
father, and are softened and made supple by this new work as you
see them now.”

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

“ Understand me, my dear;” thus she went on. “T have never
dreamed of the possibility of his being anything to me on this earth
but the kind of picture that I know I could not make you under-
stand, if the understanding was not in your own breast already. 1
have no more dreamed of the possibility of my being his wife, than
he ever has—and words could not be stronger than that. And yet I
love him. I love him so much, and so dearly, that when I sometimes
think my life may be but a weary one, I am proud of it and glad of
it. Iam proud and glad to suffer something for him, even though it
is of no service to him, and he will never know of it or care for it.”

Bella sat enchained by the deep, unselfish passion of this girl or
woman of her own age, courageously revealing itself in the confidence
of her sympathetic perception of its truth. And yet she had neyer
experienced anything like it, or thought of the existence of anything
like it.

“Tt was late upon a wretched night,” said Lizzie, “when his eyes
first looked at me in my old river-side home, very different from this.
His eyes may never look at me again. I would rather that they
never did; I hope that they never may. But I would not have the
light of them taken out of my life, for anything my life can give me-
i have told you everything now, my dear. If it comes a little
strange to me to have parted with it, lam not sorry. Thad no thought
of ever parting with a single word of it, a moment before you came
in; but you came in, and my mind changed.”

Bella kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her warmly for her
confidence. “I only wish,” said Bella, “I was more deserving
of 1t7

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

“JT don’t mean im respect of keeping it,” said Bella, “ because any
one should tear me to bits before getting at a syllable of it—though
there’s no merit in that, for I am naturally as obstinate as a Pig.
What I mean is, Lizzie, that 1am a mere impertinent piece of conceit,
and you shame me.”

Lizzie put up the pretty brown hair that came tumbling down,
owing to the energy with which Bella shook her head; and she
remonstrated while thus engaged, “ My dear !”

“Oh, it’s all very well to call me your dear,” said Bella, with a
pettish whimper, “and I am glad to be called so, though I have
slight enough claim to be. But I am such a nasty little thing !”

“My dear!” urged Lizzie again.

“Such a shallow, cold, worldly, Limited little brute!” said Bella,
bringing out her last adjective with culminating force.

“Do you think,” inquired Lizzie with her quiet smile, the hair
being now secured, “that I don’t know better?”

“Do you know better though?’ said Bella. “Do you really
believe you know better? Oh, I should be so glad if you did know
better, but I am so very much afraid that I must knew best!”

     

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 85d

Lizzie asked her, laughing outright, whether she ever saw her
own face or heard her own voice ?

“T suppose so,” returned Bella; “I look in the glass often enough,
and I chatter like a Magpie.”

“T have seen your face, and heard your voice, at any rate,” said
Lizzie, “and they have tempted me to say to you—with a certainty
of not going wrong—what I thought I should never say to any one.
Does that look ill?”

“No, I hope it doesn’t,” pouted Bella, stopping herself in something
between a humoured laugh and a humoured sob.

“T used once to see pictures in the fire,” said Lizzie playfully, “ to
please my brother. Shall I tell you what I see down there where the
fire is glowing ?”

They had risen, and were standing on the hearth, the time being
come for separating ; each had drawn an arm around the other to
take leave.

“Shall I tell you,” asked Lizzie, “‘ what I see down there

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

“A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once
won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes,
and is never daunted.”

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

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

“Ts yours,” suggested Bella.

' “No. Most clearly and distinctly yours.”

So the interview terminated with pleasant words on both sides,
and with many reminders on the part of Bella that they were friends,
and pledges that she would soon come down into that part of the
country again. herewith Lizzie returned to her occupation, and
Bella ran over to the little inn to rejoin her company.

“You look rather serious, Miss Wilfer,” was the Secretary’s first
remark.

“T feel rather serious,” returned Miss Wilfer.

She had nothing else to tell him but that Lizzie Hexam’s secret had
no reference whatever to the cruel charge, or its withdrawal. Oh yes
though! said Bella; she might as well mention one other thing;
Lizzie was very desirous to thank her unknown friend who had
sent her the written retractation. Was she, indeed? observed the
Secretary. Ah! Bella asked him, had he any notion who that
unknown friend might be? He had no notion whatever.

They were on the borders of Oxfordshire, so far had poor old Betty
Higden strayed. They were to return by the train presently, and,
the station being near at hand, the Reverend Frank and Mrs. Frank,
and Sloppy and Bella and the Secretary, set out to walk to it. Few
rustic paths are wide enough for five, and Bella and the Secretary
dropped behind.

“Can you believe, Mr. Rokesmith,” said Bella, “that I feel as if
whole years had passed since I went into Lizzie Hexam’s cottage ?”

“We have crowded a good deal into the day,” he returned, “ and
you were much affected in the churchyard. You are over-tired.”
“No, Lam not at all tired. I have not quite expressed what I

97

    
  
 
      
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ti Bi bnbbatt
Haida
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Tia

86 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

mean. I don’t mean that I feel as if a great space of time had gone
by, but that I feel as if much had happened—to myself, you know.”

“For good, I hope ?”

“T hope so,” said Bella.

“You are cold; I felt you tremble. Pray let me put this wrapper
of mine about you. May I fold it over this shoulder without injuring
your dress? Now, it will be too heayy and too long. Let me carry
this end over my arm, as you have no arm to give me.”

Yes she had though. How she got it out, in her muffled state,
Heaven knows; but she got it out somehow—there it was—and
slipped it through the Secretary’s.

“{ have had a long and interesting talk with Lizzie, Mr. Roke-
smith, and she gave me her full confidence.”

“She could not withhold it,” said the Secretary.

“JT wonder how you come,” said Bella, stopping short as she
lanced at him, “to say to me just what she said about it!”

“J infer that it must be because I feel just as she felt about it.”

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

“That if you were inclined to win her confidence
fidence—you were sure to do it.”

The railway, at this point, knowingly shutting a green eye and
opening a red one, they had to run for it. As Bella could not run
easily so wrapped up, the Secretary had to help her. When she took
her opposite place in the carriage corner, the brightness in her face
was so charming to behold, that on her exclaiming, “ What beautiful
stars and what a glorious night!” the Secretary said “Yes,” but
seemed to prefer to see the night and the stars in the light of her
lovely little countenance, to looking out of window.

O boofer lady, fascinating boofer lady! IfI were but legally executor
of Johnny’s will! If I had but the right to pay your legacy and to
take your receipt !—Something to this purpose surely mingled with
the blast of the train as it cleared the stations, all knowingly
shutting up their green eyes and opening their red ones when they
prepared to let the boofer lady pass.

 

fou
5

 

any body’s con-

 

CHAPTER X.

SCOUTS OUT.

“« Anp so, Miss Wren,” said Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, “I cannot per-
suade you to dress me a doll?”

“No,” replied Miss Wren snappishly ; “if you want one, go and buy
one at the shop.”

“ And my charming young goddaughter,” said Mr. Wrayburn plain-
tively, “down in Hertfordshire—’

(“ Humbugshire you mean, I think,” interposed Miss Wren.)

““— is to be put upon the cold footing of the general public, and is
to derive no advantage from my private acquaintance with the Court
Dressmaker ?”

 

  

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
   

OUR: MUTUAL FRIEND. 87

“Tf it’s any advantage to your charming godchild—and oh, a precious
godfather she has got!”—replied Miss Wren, pricking at him in the
air with her needle, “to be informed that the Court Dressmaker
knows your tricks and your manners, you may tell her so by post,
with my compliments.”

Miss Wren was busy at her work by candle-light, and Mr. Wray-
burn, half amused and half vexed, and all idle and shiftless, stood by
her bench looking on. Miss Wren’s troublesome child was in the
corner in deep disgrace, and exhibiting great wretchedness in the
shivering stage of prostration from drink,

“Ugh, you disgraceful boy !” exclaimed Miss Wren, attracted by
the sound of his chattering teeth, “I wish they’d all drop down your
throat and play at dice in your stomach! Boh, wicked child! Bee-baa,
black sheep!”

On her accompanying each of these reproaches with a threatening
stamp of the foot, the wretched creature protested with a whine.

“ Pay five shillings for you indeed!” Miss Wren proceeded ; “ how
many hours do you suppose it costs me to earn five shillings, you in-
famous boy ?—Don’t cry like that, or Pll throw a doll at you. Pay
five shillings fine for you indeed. Fine in more ways than one, I
think! Id give the dustman five shillings, to carry you off im the
dust cart.”

“No, no,” pleaded the absurd creature. “ Please !”

“He’s enough to break his mother’s heart, is this boy,” said Miss
Wren, half appealing to Eugene. “I wish J had never brought him
up. He'd be sharper than a serpent’s tooth, if he wasn’t as dull as
ditch water. Look at him. There’sa pretty object for a parent's
eyes !”

Assuredly, in his worse than swinish state (for swine at least fatten
on their guzzling, and make themselves good to eat), he was a pretty
object for any eyes.

“ A muddling and a swipey old child,” said Miss Wren, rating him
with great severity, “fit for nothing but to be preserved in the liquor
that destroys him, and put in a great glass bottle as a sight for
other swipey children of his own pattern,—if he has no consideration
for his liver, has he none for his mother ?”

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

“Oh don’t and oh don’t,” pursued Miss Wren. “ It’s oh do and oh
do, And why do you?”

“Won't do so amy more. Won’t indeed. Pray!”

“There !” said Miss Wren, covering her eyes with her hand. “T
can’t bear to look at you. Go up stairs and get me my bonnet and
shawl. Make yourself useful in some way, bad boy, and let me have
your room instead of your company, for one half minute.”

Obeying her, he shambled out, and Eugene Wreyburn saw the
tears exude from between the little creature’s fingers as she kept her
hand before her eyes. He was sorry, but his sympathy did not move
his carelessness to do anything but feel sorry.

“I’m going to the Italian Opera to try on,” said Miss Wren, taking
away her hand after a little while, and laughing satirically to hide
that she had been crying; “1 must see your back before I go, Mr.

 

i

A —

Ee enon

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

88 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Wrayburn. Let me first tell you, once for all, that it’s of no use your
paying visits to me. You wouldn’t get what you want, of me, no,
not if you brought pincers with you to tear it out.”

“« Are you so obstinate on the subject of a doll’s dress for my god-
child ?”

“Ah!” returned Miss Wren with a hitch of her chin, “T am so
obstinate. And of course it’s on the subject of a doll’s dress—or
address—whichever you like. Get along and give it up !”

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

“Give ‘em to me and get back into your corner, you naughty old
thing!” said Miss Wren, as she turned and espied him. “No, no, I
won't have your help. Go into your corner, this minute!”

The miserable man, feebly rubbing the back of his faltering hands
downward from the wrists, shuffled on to his post of disgrace; but
not without a curious glance at Eugene in passing him, accompanied
with what seemed as if it might have been an action of his elbow, if
any action of any limb or joint he had, would have answered truly to
his will. Taking no more particular notice of him than instinctively
falling away from the disagreeable contact, Hugene, with a lazy com-
pliment or so to Miss Wren, begged leave to light his cigar, and
departed.

“ Now you prodigal old son,” said Ji enny, shaking her head and her
emphatic little forefinger at her burden, “ you sit there till I come back.
You dare to move out of your corner for a single instant while I’m
gone, and Ill know the reason why.”

With this admonition, she blew her work candles out, leaving him
to the light of the fire, and, taking her big door-key in her pocket
and her crutch-stick in her hand, marched off:

Eugene lounged slowly towards the Temple, smoking his cigar, but
saw no more of the dolls’ dressmaker, through the accident of their
taking opposite sides of the street. He lounged along moodily, and
stopped at Charing Cross to look about him, with as little interest in
the crowd as any man might take, and was lounging on again, when
a most unexpected object caught his eyes. No less an object than
Jenny Wren’s bad boy trying to make up his mind to cross the road. -

A more ridiculous and feeble spectacle than this tottering wretch
making unsteady sallies into the roadway, and as often staggering
back again, oppressed by terrors of vehicles that were a long way off
or were nowhere, the streets could not have shown. Over and over
again, when the course was perfectly clear, he set out, got half way,
described a loop, turned, and went back again, when he might have
crossed and re-crossed half a dozen times. Then, he would stand
shivering on the edge of the pavement, looking up the street and

looking down, while scores of people jostled him, and crossed, and
went on. Stimulated in course of time by the sight of so many suc-
cesses, he would make another sally, make another loop, would all but
have his foot on the opposite pavement, would see or imagine some-
thing coming, and would stagger back again. ‘There, he would stand
making spasmodic preparations as if for a great leap, and at last would
decide on a start at precisely the wrong moment, and would be roared

  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
  
     
  

    
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 89

at by drivers, and would shrink back once more, and stand in the old
spot shivering, with the whole of the proceedings to go through again.

“Tt strikes me,” remarked Hugene coolly, after watching him for
some minutes, “that my friend is likely to be rather behind time if
he has any appointment on hand.” With which remark he strolled
on, and took no further thought of him.

Lightwood was at home when he got to the Chambers, and had
dined alone there. Eugene drew a chair to the fire by which he was
having his wine and reading the evening paper, and brought a glass,
and filled it for good fellowship’s sake.

“My dear Mortimer, you are the express picture of contented in-
dustry, reposing (on credit) after the virtuous labours of the day.”

“My dear Eugene, you are the express picture of discontented idle-
ness not reposing at all. Where have you been?”

“J have been,” replied Wrayburn, “‘—about town. Ihave turned
up at the present juncture, with the intention of consulting my highly
intelligent and respected solicitor on the position of my affairs.”

“Your highly intelligent and respected solicitor is of opinion that
your affairs are in a bad way, Eugene.”

“ Though whether,” said Hugene thoughtfully, “that can be intel-
ligently said, now, of the affairs of a client who has nothing to
lose and who cannot possibly be made to pay, may be open to
question.”

“You have fallen into the hands of the Jews, Eugene.”

“My dear boy,” returned the debtor, very composedly taking up
his glass, “having previously fallen into the hands of some of the
Christians, I can bear it with philosophy.”

“T have had an interview to-day, Eugene, with a Jew, who seems
determined to press us hard. Quite a Shylock, and quite a Patriarch.
A picturesque grey-headed and grey-bearded old Jew, in a shovel-hat
and gaberdine.”

“Not,” said Eugene, pausing in setting down his glass, “surely not
my worthy friend Mr. Aaron ?”

“He calls himself Mr. Riah.”

“ By-the-by,” said Eugene, “it comes into my mind that—no doubt
with an instinctive desire to receive him into the bosom of our Church
—1 gave him the name of Aaron !”

“Hugene, Eugene,” returned Lightwood, “you are more ridiculous
than usual. Say what you mean.”

“Merely, my dear fellow, that I have the honor and pleasure
of a speaking acquaintance with such a Patriarch as you describe,
and that I address him as Mr. Aaron, because it appears to me
Hebraic, expressive, appropriate, and complimentary. Notwith-
standing which strong reasons for its being his name, it may not
be his name.”

“T believe you are the absurdest man on the face of the earth,”
said Lightwood, laughing.

“Not at all, I assure you. Did he mention that he knew me?”

“He did not. He only said of you that he expected to be paid by
you.”

“Which looks,” remarked Hugene with much gravity, “like not

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

90 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

knowing me. I hope it may not be my worthy friend Mr. Aaron, for,
to tell you the truth, Mortimer, I doubt he may have a prepossession
against me. I strongly suspect him of having had a hand in spiriting
away Lizzie.”

« Everything,” returned Lightwood. im] atiently, “seems, by a
fatality, to bring us round to, Lizzie. ‘About town’ meant about
Lizzie, just now, Eugene.”

“ My solicitor, do you know,” observed Eugene, turning round to
the furniture, “is a man of infinite discernment!”

“Did it not, Eugene ”

“Yes it did, Mortimer.”

“ And yet, Eugene, you know you do not really care for her.”

Hugene Wrayburn rose, and put his hands in his pockets, and
stood with a foot on the fender, indolently rocking his body and
looking at the fire. After a prolonged pause, he replied : “I don’t
know that. I must ask you not to say that, as if we took it for
granted.”

“But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave
her to herself.”

Having again paused as before, Eugene said: “I don’t know tha ts
either. But tell me. Did you ever see me take so much trouble
about anything, as about this disappearance of hers? I ask, for infor-
mation.”

““My dear Eugene, I wish I ever had!”

“Then you have not? Justso. You confirm my own. impression.
Does that look as if I cared for her? I ask, for information.”

“YT asked yow for information, Eugene,” said Mortimer reproach-
fully.

“ Dear boy, I know it, but I can’t give it. I thirst for information.
What do I mean? If my taking so much trouble to recover her
does not mean that I care for her, what does it mean? ‘If Peter
Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, where’s the peck,’ &c. ?”

Though he said this gaily, he said it with a perplexed and inquisi-
tive face, as if he actually did not know what to make of himself.
“Look on to the end—” Lightwood was beginning to remonstrate,
when he caught at the words:

“Ah! See now! That's exactly what I am incapable of doing.
How very acute you are, Mortimer, in finding my weak place! When
we were at school together, I got up my lessons at the last moment,
day by day and bit by bit; now we are out in life together, I get up
my lessons in the same way. In the present task I have not got
beyond this :—I am bent on finding Lizzie, and I mean to find her,
and I will take any means of finding her that offer themselves. Fair
means or foul means, are all alike to me. I ask you—for information
—what does that mean? When I have found her I may ask you—
also for information—what do I mean now? But it would be pre-
mature in this stage, and it’s not the character of my mind.”

Lightwood was shaking his head over the air with which his
friend held forth thus—an air so whimsically open and argumentative
as almost to deprive what he said of the appearance of evasion—
when a shuffling was heard at the outer door, and then an undecided.

 

 

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
   
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
  
 
 
  

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

    
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 91

knock, as though some hand were groping for the knocker. “The
frolicsome youth of the neighbourhood,” said Hugene, “ whom I should
be delighted to pitch from this elevation into the church-yard below,
without any intermediate ceremonies, have probably turned the lamp
out. Iam on duty to-night, and will see to the door.”

His friend had. barely had time to recall the unprecedented gleam
of determination with which he had spoken of finding this girl, and
which had faded out of him with the breath of the spoken words,
when Hugene came back, ushering in a most disgraceful shadow of a
man, shaking from head to foot, and clothed in shabby grease and
smear.

“This interesting gentleman,” said Eugene, “is the son—the
occasionally rather trying son, for he has his failings—of a lady of
my acquaintance. My dear Mortimer—Mr. Dolls.” Hugene had no
idea what his name was, knowing the little dressmaker’s to be
assumed, but presented him with easy confidence under the first
appellation that his associations suggested.

“T oather, my dear Mortimer,” pursued Eugene, as Lightwood stared
at the obscene visitor, “ from the manner of Mr. Dolls—which is occa-
sionally complicated—that he desires to make some communication to
me. 1 have mentioned to Mr. Dolls that you and I are on terms of
confidence, and have requested Mr. Dolls to develope his views here.”

The wretched object being much embarrassed by holding what
remained of his hat, Eugene airily tossed it to the door, and put him
down in a chair.

“Tt will be necessary, I think,” he observed, “to wind up Mr.
Dolls, before anything to any mortal purpose can be got out of him.
Brandy, Mr. Dolls, or —?”

“Threepenn’orth Rum,” said Mr. Dolls.

A judiciously small quantity of the spirit was given him in a wine-
glass, and he began to convey it to his mouth, with all kinds of
falterings and gyrations on the road.

“The nerves of Mr. Dolls,” remarked Eugene to Lightwood, “are
considerably unstrung. And I deem it on the whole expedient to
fumigate Mr. Dolls.”

He took the shovel from the grate, sprinkled a few live ashes on it,
and from a box on the chimney-piece took a few pastiles, which he
set upon them; then, with great composure began placidly waving
the shovel in front of Mr. Dolls, to cut him off from his company.

“Lord bless my soul, Eugene!” cried Lightwood, laughing again,
“what amad fellow youare! Why does this creature come to see you ?”

“We shall hear,” said Wrayburn, very observant of his face withal.
“Now then. Speak out. Don’t be afraid. State your business,
Dolls.”

“Mist Wrayburn!” said the visitor, thickly and huskily. “—Tis
Mist Wrayburn, ain’t?’ With a stupid stare.

“Of course it is. Look atme. What do you want?”

Mr. Dolls collapsed in his chair, and faintly said “'Threepenn’orth
Rum.”

“Will you do me the favour, my dear Mortimer, to wind up Mx.
Dolls again?” said Eugene. “I am occupied with the fumigation.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

92 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

A similar quantity was poured into his glass, and he got it to his
lips by similar circuitous ways. Having drunk it, Mr. Dolls, with
an evident fear of running down again unless he made haste, pro-
ceeded to business.

“Mist Wrayburn. Tried to nudge you, but you wouldn’t. You
want that drection. You want t’know where she lives. Do you
Mist Wrayburn ?”

With a glance at his friend, Hugene replied to the question sternly,
Bait Glo.*

“T am er man,” said Mr. Dolls, trying to smite himself on the
breast, but bringing his hand to bear upon the vicinity of his eye, “er
do it. J am er man er do it.”

“What are you the man to do?” demanded Eugene, still sternly.

“Hr give up that drection.”

“Have you got it?”

With a most laborious attempt at pride and dignity, Mr. Dolls
rolled his head for some time, awakening the highest expectations,
and then answered, asifit were the happiest point that could possibly
be expected of him: ‘“ No.”

“ What do you mean then

Mr. Dolls, collapsing in the drowsiest manner after his late intel-
lectual triumph, replied: “'Threepenn’orth Rum.”

“Wind him up again, my dear Mortimer,” said Wrayburn ; “wind
him up again.”

“ Hugene, Eugene,” urged Lightwood in a low voice, as he com-
plied, “can you stoop to the use of such an instrument as this?”

“JT said,” was the reply, made with that former gleam of determina
tion, “that Iwould find her out by any means, fair or foul. ‘These
are foul, and J’ll take them—if I am not first tempted to break the
head of Mr. Dolls with the fumigator. Can you get the direction?
Do you mean that? Speak! If that’s what you have come for, say
how much you want.”

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

“You shall have it.”

“ Fifteen shillings—Threepenn’orths Rum,” said Mr. Dolls, making
an attempt to stiffen himself.

“You shall have it. Stop at that. How will you get the direction
you talk of?”

“I am er man,” said Mr. Dolls, with majesty, “er get it, sir.”

“How will you get it, I ask you?”

“IT am ill-used vidual,” said Mr. Dolls. “Blown up morning
Pnight. Called names. She makes Mint money, sir, and never
stands Threepenn’orth Rum.”

“Get on,” rejoined Eugene, tapping his palsied head with the
fire-shovel, as it sank on his breast. “ What comes next?”

Making a dignified attempt to gather himself together, but, as it
were, dropping half a dozen pieces of himself while he tried in vain
to pick up one, Mr. Dolls, swaying his head from side to side, regarded
his questioner with what he supposed to be a haughty smile and a
scornful glance.

“She looks upon me as mere child. sir. I am nor mere child, sit.

929

  
  
 
 
   
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

   
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 93

Man. Man talent. Lerrers pass betwixt ‘em. Postman lerrers.
Easy for man talent er get drection, as get his own drection.”

“Get it then,” said Eugene; adding very heartily under his breath,
“You Brute! Get it, and bring it here to me, and earn the money
for sixty threepenn’orths of rum, and drink them all, one a top of
another, and drink yourself dead with all possible expedition.” The
latter clauses of these special instructions he addressed to the fire, as he
gave it back the ashes he had taken from it, and replaced the shovel.

Mr. Dolls now struck out the highly unexpected discovery that he
had been insulted by Lightwood, and stated his desire to “ have it out
with him” on the spot, and defied him to come on, upon the liberal
terms of a sovereign to a halfpenny. Mr. Dolls then fell a crying,
and then exhibited a tendency to fall asleep. This last manifestation
as by far the most alarming, hy reason of its threatening his pro-
longed stay on the premises, necessitated vigorous measures. Eugene
picked up his worn-out hat with the tongs, clapped it on his head,
and, taking him by the collar—all this at arm’s length—conductec
him down stairs and out of the precincts into Fleet Street. ‘There,
he turned his face westward, and left him.

When he got back, Lightwood was standing over the fire, brooding
in a sufficiently low-spirited manner.

“[]l wash my hands of Mr. Dolls—physically—” said Eugene,
“and be with you again directly, Mortimer.”

“J would much prefer,” retorted Mortimer, “your washing your
hands of Mr. Dolls, morally, Eugene.”

“So would I,” said Eugene; “but you see, dear boy, I can’t do
without him.”

Tn a minute or two he resumed his chair, as perfectly unconcerned
as usual, and rallied his friend on having so narrowly escaped the
prowess of their muscular visitor.

“JT can’t be amused on this theme,” said Mortimer, restlessly-
“You can make almost any theme amusing to me, Eugene, but not this.”

“Well!” cried Eugene, “I am a little ashamed of it myself, and
therefore let us change the subject.”

“Tt isso deplorably underhanded,” said Mortimer. “ It is so un-
worthy of you, this setting on of such a shameful scout.” ;

“We have changed the subject!” exclaimed Eugene, airily. “ We
have found a new one in that word, scout. Don’t be like Patience on.
a mantelpiece frowning at Dolls, but sit down, and Ill tell you
something that you really will find amusing. Take a cigar. Look
at this of mine. I light it—draw one puft—breathe the smoke out—
there it goes—it’s Dolls !—it’s gone and being gone you are a man
again.” hee é

“Your subject,” said Mortimer, after lighting a cigar, and com-
forting himself with a whiff or two, “was scouts, Eugene.”

“Exactly. Isn’t it droll that I never go out after dark, but I find
myself attended, always by one scout, and often by two”

Lightwood took his cigar from his lips in surprise, and looked at
his friend, as if with a latent suspicion that there must bea jest or
nidden meaning in his words. f
“Qn my honour, no,” said Wrayburn, answering the look and

 

 

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94 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

smiling carelessly ; “I don’t wonder at your supposing so, but on m
honour, no. I say what I mean. I never go out after dark, but I
find myself in the ludicrous situation of being followed and observed
at a distance, always by one scout, and often by two.”

“« Are you sure, Hugene ?”

“Sure? My dear boy, they are always the same.”

“But there’s no process out against you. The Jews only
threaten, They have done nothing. Besides, they know where to
find you, and I represent you. Why take the trouble?”

“Observe the legal mind!” remarked Eugene, turning round to
the furniture again, with an air of indolent rapture. “Observe the
dyer’s hand, assimilating itself to what it works in,—or would work
in, if anybody would give it anything to do. Respected solicitor,
it’s not that. The schoolmaster’s abroad.”

“The schoolmaster ?”

“Ay! Sometimes the schoolmaster and the pupil are both abroad.
Why, how soon you rust in my absence! You don’t understand
yet? Those fellows who were here one night. hey are the scouts
I speak of, as doing me the honor to attend me after dark.”

“ How long has this been going on ?” asked Lightwood, opposing a
serious face to the laugh of his friend.

“JT apprehend it has been going on, ever since a certain person went
off. Probably, it had been going on some little time before I noticed
it: which would bring it to about that time.”

“Do you think they suppose you to have inveigled her away ?”

“My dear Mortimer, you know the absorbing nature of my pro-
fessional occupations; I really have not had leisure to think about
Wee

“Have you asked them what they want? Have you objected ?”

“ Why should I ask them what they want, dear fellow, when I am
indifferent what they want? Why should I express objection, when
I don’t object ?”

“You are in your most reckless mood. But you called the situa-
tion just now, a ludicrous one; and most men object to that, even
those who are utterly indifferent to everything else.”

“You charm me, Mortimer, with your reading of my weaknesses.
(By-the-by, that very word, Reading, in its critical use, always
charms me. An actress’s Reading of a chambermaid, a dancer’s
Reading of a hornpipe, a singer's Reading of a song, a marine-
painter’s Reading of the sea, the kettle-drum’s Reading of an instru-
mental passage, are phrases ever youthful and delightful.) I was
mentioning your perception of my weaknesses. I own tothe weakness
of objecting to occupy a ludicrous position, and therefore I transfer
the position to the scouts.”

“1 wish, Eugene, you would speak a little more soberly and
plainly, if it were only out of consideration for my feeling less at
ease than you do.”

“Then soberly and plainly, Mortimer, I goad the schoolmaster to
madness. I make the schoolmaster so ridiculous, and so aware of
being made ridiculous, that I see him chafe and fret at every pore
when we cross one another. The amiable occupation has been the

   
  
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

       
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 95

solace of my life, since I was baulked in the manner unnecessary to
recall. I have derived inexpressible comfort from it. I do it thus:
I stroll out after dark, stroll a little way, look in at a window and
furtively look out for the schoolmaster. Sooner or later, I perceive
the schoolmaster on the watch ; sometimes accompanied by his hope-
ful pupil; oftener, pupil-less. Having made sure of his watching
me, 1 tempt him on, all over London. One night I go east, another
night north, in a few nights I go all round the compass. Sometimes, I
walk; sometimes, I proceed in cabs, draining the pocket of the school-
master who then follows in cabs. Istudy and get up abstruse No
Thoroughfares in the course of the day. With Venetian mystery I seek
those No Thoroughfares at night, glide into them by means of dark
courts, tempt the schoolmaster to follow, turn suddenly, and catch him
before he can retreat. ‘Then we face one another, and I pass him as
unaware of his existence, and he undergoes grinding torments.
Similarly, I walk at a great pace down a short street, rapidly turn
the corner, and, getting out of his view, as rapidly turn back. I
catch him coming on post, again pass him as unaware of his exist-
ence, and again he undergoes grinding torments. Night after night
his disappointment is acute, but hope springs eternal in the scholastic
breast, and he follows me again to-morrow. Thus I enjoy the
pleasures of the chase, and derive great benefit from the healthful
exercise. When I do not enjoy the pleasures of the chase, for any-
thing I know he watches at the Temple Gate all night.”

“This is an extraordinary story,” observed Lightwood, who had
heard it out with serious attention. “I don’t like it.”

“You are a little hipped, dear fellow,” said Eugene; “you have
been too sedentary. Come and enjoy the pleasures of the chase.”

“Do you mean that you believe he is watching now”

“TJ have not the slightest doubt he is.”

“ Have you seen him to-night ?”

“JT forgot to look for him when I was last out,” returned Eugene
with the calmest indifference ; “ but I dare say he was there. Come!
Be a British sportsman and enjoy the pleasures of the chase. It
will do you good.”

Lightwood hesitated; but, yielding to his curiosity, rose.

“ Bravo!” cried Hugene, rising too. “Or, if Yoicks would be in
better keeping, consider, that I said Yoicks. Look to your feet,
Mortimer, for we shall try your boots. When you are ready, 1 am—
need I say with a Hey Ho Chivey, and likewise with a Hark For-
ward, Hark Forward, Tantivy ?”

“ Will nothing make you serious ?” said Mortimer, laughing through
his gravity.

«TI am always serious, but just now I am a little excited by the
glorious fact that a southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a
hunting evening. Ready? So. We turn out the lamp and shut
the door, and take the field.”

As the two friends passed out of the Temple into the public street,
Eugene demanded with a show of courteous patronage in which
direction Mortimer would like the run to be? “here is a rather
difficult country about Bethnal Green,” said Hugene, “and we have

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

96 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

not taken in that direction lately. What is your opinion of Bethnal
Green?” Mortimer assented to Bethnal Green, and they turned east-
ward. “Now, when we come to St. Paul’s churchyard,’ pursued
Eugene, “we'll loiter artfully, and I'll show you the schoolmaster.”
But, they both saw him, before they got there; alone, and stealing
after them in the shadow of the houses, on the opposite side of the
way.

“ Get your wind,” said Eugene, “for I am off directly. Does it occur
to you that the boys of Merry England will begin to deteriorate in an
educational light, if this lasts long? The schoolmaster can’t attend
to me and the boys too. Got your wind? I am off!”

At what a rate he went, to breathe the schoolmaster; and how he
then lounged and loitered, to put his patience to another kind of
wear; what preposterous ways he took, with no other object on
earth than to disappoint and punish him; and how he wore him
out by every piece of ingenuity that his eccentric humour could
devise; all this Lightwood noted, with a feeling of astonishment
that so careless a man could be so wary, and that so idle a man could
take so much trouble. At last, far on in the third hour of the
pleasures of the chase, when he had brought the poor dogging
wretch round again into the City, he twisted Mortimer up a few dark
entries, twisted him into a little square court, twisted him sharp
round again, and they almost ran against Bradley Headstone.

“And you see, as I was saying, Mortimer,’ remarked Eugene
aloud with the utmost coolness, as though there were no one within
hearing but themselves: “and you see, as 1 was saying—under-
going grinding torments.”

It was not too strong a phrase for the occasion. Looking like the
hunted and not the hunter, baffled, worn, with the exhaustion of
deferred hope and consuming hate and anger in his face, white-
lipped, wild-eyed, dragele-haired, seamed with jealousy and. anger, and
torturing himself with the conviction that he showed it all and they
exulted in it, he went by them in the dark, like a haggard head
suspended in the air: so completely did the force of his expression.
cancel his figure. i

Mortimer Lightwood was not an extraordinarily impressible man,
but this face impressed him. He spoke of it more than once
on the remainder of the way home, and more than once when they
got home.

They had been abed in their respective rooms two or three
hours, when Eugene was partly awakened by hearing a footstep
going about, and was fully awakened by seeing Lightwood standing
at his bedside.

“Nothing wrong, Mortimer ?”

Now

“ What fancy takes you, then, for walking about in the night?”

“T am horribly wakeful.”

“ How comes that about, I wonder!”

“ Hugene, I cannot lose sight of that fellow’s face.”

“Odd!” said Eugene with a light laugh, “Z can.” And turned
over, and fell asleep again. z

 

  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

   

    
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER XI.
IN THE DARK.

TurrE was no sleep for Bradley Headstone on that night when
Eugene Wrayburn turned so easily in his bed; there was no sleep
for little Miss Peecher. Bradley consumed the lonely hours, and con-
sumed himself, in haunting the spot where his careless rival lay a
dreaming ; little Miss Peecher wore them away in listening for the
return home of the master of her heart, and in sorrowfully presaging
that much was amiss with him. Yet more was amiss with him than
Miss Peecher’s simply arranged little work-box of thoughts, fitted
with no gloomy and dark recesses, could hold. For, the state of the
man was murderous.

The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it. More; he
irritated it, with a kind of perverse pleasure akin to that which a sick
man sometimes has in irritating 4 wound upon his body. Tied up all
day with his disciplined show upon him, subdued to the performance
of his routine of educational tricks, encircled by a gabbling crowd, he
broke loose at night like an ill-tamed wild animal. Under his daily
restraint, it was bis compensation, vot his trouble, to give a glance
towards his state at night, and to the freedom of its being indulged.
Tf great criminals told the truth—which, being great criminals, they
do not—they would very rarely tell of their struggles against the
crime. Their struggles are towards it. .They buffet with opposing
waves, to gain the bloody shore, not to recede from it. This man per-
fectly comprehended that he hated his rival with his strongest and
worst forces, and that if he tracked him to Lizzie Hexam, his so
doing would never serve himself with her, or serve her. All his pains
were taken, to the end that he might incense himself with the sight
of the detested figure in her company and favour, in her place of
concealment. And he knew as well what act of his would follow if
he did, as he knew that his mother had borne him. Granted, that he
may not have held it necessary to make express mention to himself of
the one familiar truth any more than of the other.

He knew equally well that he fed his wrath and hatred, and that
he accumulated provocation and self-justification, by being made the
nightly sport of the reckless and insolent Eugene. Knowing all this,
and still always going on with infinite endurance, pains, and per-
severance, could his dark soul doubt whither he went?

Baffled, exasperated, and weary, he lingered opposite the Temple
gate when it closed on Wrayburn and Lightwood, debating with
himself should he go home for that time or should he watch longer.
Possessed in his jealousy by the fixed idea that Wrayburn was in the
secret, if it were not altogether of his contriving, Bradley was as
confident of getting the better of him at last by sullenly sticking to
him, as he would have been—and often had been—of mastering any
piece of study in the way of his vocation, by the like slow persistent
VOL. II. H

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98 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

process. A man of rapid passions and sluggish intelligence, it had
served him often and should serve him again.

The suspicion crossed him as he rested in a doorway with his eyes
upon the ‘emple gate, that perhaps she was even concealed in that
set of Chambers. Jt would furnish another reason for Wrayburn’s
purposeless walks, and it might be. He thought of it and thought
of it, until he resolved to steal up the stairs, if the gate-keeper
would let him through, and listen. So, the haggard head suspended
in the air flitted across the road, like the spectre of one of the many
heads erst hoisted upon neighbouring Temple Bar, and stopped before
the watchman.

The watchman looked at it, and asked: “Who for ?” .

“Mr. Wrayburn.”

“It’s very late.”

“He came back with Mr, Lightwood, I know, near upon two hours
ago. But if he has gone to bed, I'll put a paper in his letter-box. I
am expected.”

The watchman said no more, but opened the gate, though rather
doubtfully. Seeing, however, that the visitor went straight and
fast in the right direction, he seemed satisfied.

Tho haggard head floated up the dark staircase, and softly descended
nearer to the floor outside the outer door of the chambers. ‘The doors
of the rooms within, appeared to be standing open. ‘There were rays
of candlelight from one of them, and there was the sound of a foot-
step going about. There were two voices. The words they uttered
were not distinguishable, but they were both the voices‘of men. Ina
few moments the voices were silent, and there was no sound of foot-
step, and the inner light went out. If Lightwood could have seen the
face which kept him awake, staring and listening im the darkness
outside the door as he spoke of it, he might have been less disposed to
sleep, through the remainder of the night.

“Not there,” said Bradley ; “but she might have been.” The head
arose to its former height from the ground, floated down. the staircase
again, and passed on to the gate. A man was standing there, in
parley with the watchman.

“Oh!” said the watchman. “Here he is!”

Perceiving himself to be the antecedent, Bradley looked from the
watchman to the man.

“This man is leaving a letter for Mr. Lightwood,” the watchman
explained, showing it in his hand; “and I ‘was mentioning that a
person had just gone up to Mr. Lightwood’s chambers. It might bo
the same business perhaps ?”

_“No,” said Bradley, glancing at the man, who was a stranger to
him.

“No,” the man assented in a surly way; “my letter—it’'s wrote
by my daughter, but it’s mine—is about my business, and my business
ain’t nobody else’s business.”

As Bradley passed out at the gate with an undecided foot, he heard
ui shut behind him, and heard the footstep of the man coming after

im,

aera hy wows : SA ae
Scuse me,” said the man, who appeared to have been drinking,

  

 

  

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
    
 
  
 
 
  
   
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

and rather stumbled at him than touched him, to attract his at
tion: “but might you be acquainted with the ‘l’other Governor at

“With whom?” asked Bradley.

“With,” returned the man, pointing backward over his right
shoulder with his right thumb, “the T’other Governor ?”

«J don’t know what you mean.”

“Why look here,” hooking his proposition on his left-hand finger:
with the forefinger of his right. “There’s two Governors, ain't
there? One and one, two—Lawyer Lightwood, my first finger, he’s
one, ain't he? Well; might you be acquainted with my middle
finger, the T’other ?”

“1 know quite as much of him,” said Bradley, with a frown and a
distant look before him, “as I want to know.”

“Hooroar!” cried the man. “‘Hooroar T’other tother Governor.
Hooroar ‘W’otherest Governor! J am of your way of thinkin’.”

“Don’t make such a noise at this dead hour of the night. What
are you talking about ?”

“Took here, ’otherest Governor,” replied the man, becoming
hoarsely confidential. “The T’other Goyernor he’s always joked his
jokes agin me, owing, as T believe, to my being a honest man as gets
my living by the sweat of my brow. Which he ain’t, and he don’t.”

“What is that to me?”

«otherest Governor,” returned the man in a tone of injured inno-
cence, “if you don’t care to hear no more, don’t hear no more. You
begun it. You said, and hkeways showed pretty plain, as you warn't
by no means friendly to him. But I don’t seek to force my company
nor yet my opinions on no man, Tam a honest man, that’s what I
am. Put me in the dock anywbere—l don’t care where—and I says,
‘My Lord, I am a honest man.’ Put me in the witness-box any-
where—I don’t care where—and I says the same to his lordship, and
T kisses the book. I don’t kiss my coat-cuff; I kisses the book.”

Tt was not so much in deference to these strong testimonials to
character, as in his restless casting about for any way or help towards
the discovery on which he was concentrated, that Bradley Headstone
replied: “You needn’t take offence. T didn’t mean to stop you. You
were too loud in the open street ; that was all.”

“’Totherest Governor,” replied Mr. Riderhood, mollified and mys-
and L know wot it is to be soft.
risen

 

 

 

 

  

  
  

 
 

 

terious, “I know wot it is to be loud,
Nat’rally I do. It would be a wonder if I did not, being by the Cl
name of Roger, which took it arter my own father, which took it from
his own father, though which of our fam’ly fust took it nat’ral T will
not in any ways mislead you by undertakin’ to say. And ‘wishing
that your elth may be better than your looks, which your inside must
be bad indeed if it’s on the footing of your out.”

Startled by the implication that his face revealed toomuch of his mind,
Bradley made an effort to clear his brow. Itmight be worth knowing
what this strange man’s business was with Lightwood, or Wrayburn,
or both, at such an unseasonable hour. He set himself to find out,
for the man might prove to be a messenger between those two.

“You call at the Temple late,” he remarked, with a lumbering
show of ease.

9

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100 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Wish I may die,” cried Mr. Riderhood, with a hoarse laugh,
“if I warn’t a goin’ to say the self-same words to you, T’otherest
Governor !”

“Tt chanced so with me,” said Bradley, looking disconcertedly
about him.

“ And it chanced so with me,” said Riderhood. ‘But I don’t mind
telling you how. Why should I mind telling you? I’m a Deputy
Lock-keeper up the river, and I was off duty yes’day, and I shall be
on to-morrow.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, and I come to London to look arter my private affairs. My
private affairs is to get appinted to the Lock as reg’lar keeper at fust
hand, and to have the law of a busted B’low-Bridge steamer which
drownded of me. Jain’t a goin’ to be drownded and not paid
for it!”

Bradley looked at him, as though he were claiming to be a Ghost.

“The steamer,” said Mr. Riderhood, obstinately, “run me down and
drownded of me. Interference on the part of other parties brought
me round; but I never asked ’em to bring me round, nor yet the
steamer never asked ’em to it. JI mean to be paid for the life as the
steamer took.”

“Was that your business at Mr. Lightwood’s chambers in the
middle of the night?” asked Bradley, eyemg him with distrust.

“That and to get a writing to be fust-hand Lock Keeper. A
recommendation in writing being looked for, who else ought to give
it tome? As I says in the letter in my daughter's hand, with my
mark put to it to make it good in law, Who but you, Lawyer Light-
wood, ought to hand over this here stifficate, and who but you ought
to go in for damages on my account agin the Steamer? For (as I says
under my mark) I have had trouble enough along of you and your
friend. lf you, Lawyer Lightwood, had backed me good and true, and
if the 'I’other Governor had took me down correct (I says under my
mark), | should have been worth money at the present time, instead of
having a barge-load of bad names chucked at me, and being forced to
eat my words, which is a unsatisfying sort of food wotever a man’s
appetite! And when you mention the middle of the night, T’otherest
Governor,” growled Mr. Riderhood, winding up his monotonous sum-
mary of his wrongs, “ throw your eye on this here bundle under my
arm, and bear in mind that I’m a walking back to my Lock, and that
the Temple laid upon my line of road.”

Bradley Headstone’s face had changed during this latter recital,
and he had observed the speaker with a more sustained attention.

“Do you know,” said he, after a pause, during which they walked
on side by side, “that I believe I could tell you your name, if I tried ?”

“Prove your opinion,” was the answer, accompanied with a stop
and a stare. “Try.”

“Your name is Riderhood.”

“I'm blest if it ain’t,” returned that gentleman. “But I don’t
know your’n.”

i ats quite another thing,” said Bradley. “I never supposed
you did.

  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
     

   

     
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 101

As Bradley walked on meditating, the Rogue walked on at his side
muttering. The purport of the muttering was: “that Rogue Rider-
hood, by George! seemed to be made public property on, now, and
that every man seemed to think himself free to handle his name as
if it was a Street Pump.’ ‘The purport of the meditating was:
“Here is an instrument. Can I use it?”

They had walked along the Strand, and intg Pall Mall, and had
turned up-hill towards Hyde Park Corner; “Bradley Headstone
waiting on the pace and lead of Riderhood, and leaving him to indi-
cate the course. So slow were the schoolmaster’s thoughts, and so in-
distinct his purposes when they were but tributary to the one absorbing
purpose—or rather when, like dark trees under a stormy sky, they
only lined the long vista at the end of which he saw those two
figures of Wrayburn and Lizzie on which his eyes were fixed—that
at least a good half-mile was traversed before he spoke again. Even
then, it was only to ask :

“Where is your Lock ?”

“Twenty mile and odd—call it five-and-twenty mile and odd, if
you like—up stream,” was the sullen reply.

“ How is it called ?”

“Plashwater Weir Mill Lock.”

“Suppose I was to offer you five shillings ; what then

“Why, then, I’d take it,” said Mr. Riderhood.

The schoolmaster put his hand in his pocket, and produced two
half-crowns, and placed them in Mr. Riderhood’s palm: who stopped
at a convenient doorstep to ring them both, before acknowledging
their receipt.

“There’s one thing about you, T’otherest Governor,” said Riderhood,
faring on again, “as looks well and goes fur. You're a ready-money
man. Now;” when he had carefully pocketed the coins on that side
of himself which was furthest from his new friend; ‘ what's this
for?”

“For you.”

“Why, 0’ course I know that,’ said Riderhood, as arguing some-
thing that was self-evident. “O’ course I know very well as no man
in his right senses would suppose as anythink would inake me give it
up agin when I’d once got it. But what do you want for it?”

“T don’t know that I want anything for it. Or if I do want any-

_thing for it, I don’t know what it is.” Bradley gave this answer in
a stolid, vacant, and selfcommuning manner, which Mr. Riderhood
found very extraordinary.

“You have no goodwill towards this Wrayburn,” said Bradley,
coming to the name in a reluctant and forced way, as if he were
dragged to it.

“ No.”

“Neither have I.”

Riderhood nedded, and asked : “Is it for that?”

“Tt’s as much for that as anything else. It’s something to be
agreed with, on a subject that occupies so much of one’s thoughts.”

“Tt don’t agree with you,” returned Mr. Riderhood, bluntly. “No!
It don’t, T’otherest Governor, and it’s no use a lookin’ as if you wanted

9”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

102 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

to make out that it did. I tell you it rankles in you. It rankles in
you, rusts in you, and pisons you.”

“Say that it does so,” returned Bradley with quivering lips; “is
there no cause for it ?”

“ Cause enough, Ill bet a pound!” cried Mr. Riderhood.

“Haven't you yourself declared that the fellow has heaped proyo-
cations, insults, and affronts on you, or something to that effect? He
has done the same“by me. He is made of venomous insults and
affronts, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. Are you so
hopeful or so stupid, as not to know that he and the other will treat
your application with contempt, and light their cigars with it ?”

«J shouldn’t wonder if they did, by George!” said Riderhood,
turning angry.

“Ifthey did! They will. Let me ask you a question. I know
something more than your name about you; I knew something
about Gaffer Hexam. When did you last set eyes upon his
daughter ?”

“When did I last set eyes upon his daughter, T’otherest Governor ee
repeated Mr. Riderhood, growing intentionally slower of comprehen-
sion as the other quickened in his speech.

“Yes. Not to speak to her. ‘I'o see her—anywhere ?”

The Rogue had got the clue he wanted, though he held it with
a clumsy hand. Looking perplexedly at the passionate face, as if he
were trying to work out a sum in his mind, he slowly answered: “I
ain’t set eyes upon her—never once—not since the day of Gaffer’s
death.”

“You know her wel!, by sight?”

“T should think I did! No one better.”

« And you know him as well ?”

“Who's him?” asked Riderhood, taking off his hatand rubbing his
forehead, as he directed a dull look at his questioner.

“Curse the name! Is it so agreeable to you that you want to hear
it again ?”

“Oh! Him!’ said Riderhood, who had craftily worked the school-
master into this corner, that he might again take note of his face
under its evil possession. “ ’d know him among a thousand.”

“Did you ——” Bradley tried to ask it quietly; but, do what he
might with his voice, he could not subdue his face ;—“ did you ever
see them together ?”

(The Rogue had got the clue in both hands now.)

“T see ’em together, T’otherest Governor, on the very day when
Gafier was towed ashore.”

Bradley could have hidden a reserved piece of information from the
sharp eyes of a whole inquisitive class, but he could not veil from the
eyes of the ignorant Riderhood the withheld question next in his
breast. “You shall put it plain if you want it answered,” thought
the Rogue, doggedly ; “I ain’t a-going a wolunteering.”

“ Well! was he insolent to her too 2” asked Bradley after a struggle.
“Or did he make a show of being kind to her ?”

“He made ashow of being most uncommon kind to her,” said
Riderhood. “By George! now I——”

 

 

 

 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
     

 

CUR

   

MUTUAL FRIEND.

Tis flying off at a tangent was indisputably natural. Bradley
looked at him for the reason.

“Now I think of it,” said Mr. Riderhood, evasively, for he was
substituting those words for “ Now I see you so jealous,” which was the
phrase really in his mind; “Paps he went and took me down
wrong, a purpose, on account o’ being sweet upon her!”

The baseness of confirming him in this suspicion or pretence of one
(for he could not have really entertained it), was a line’s breadth
beyond the mark the schoolmaster had reached. ‘he bascness of
communing and intriguing with the fellow who would have set that
stain upon her, and upon her brother too, was attained. ‘The line’s
breadth further, lay beyond. He made no reply, but walked on with
a lowering face.

What he might gain by this acquaintance, he could not work out in
his slow and cumbrous thoughts. The man had an injury against
the object of his hatred, and that was something; though it was
Jess than he supposed, for there dwelt in the man no such deadly
rage and resentment as burned in his own breast. The man knew
her, and might by a fortunate chance see her, or hear of her; that
was something, as enlisting one pair of eyes and cars the more.
The man was a bad man, and willing enough to be in his pay. That
was something, for his own state and purpose were as bad as bad
could be, and he seemed to derive a vague support from the possession
of a congenial instrument, though it might never be used.

Suddenly he stood still, and asked Riderhood point-blank if he
Imew where she was? Clearly, he did not know. He asked Rider-
hood if he would be willing, in case any intelligence of her, or of
Wrayburn as seeking her or associating with her, should fall in his
way, to communicate it if it were paid for? He would be very
willing indeed. He was “agin ’em both,” he said with an oath,
and for why? ’Cause they had both stood betwixt him and his getting
his living by the sweat of his brow.

“Tt will not be long then,” said Bradley Headstone, after some
more discourse to this effect, “ before we see one another again. Here
is the country road, and here is the day. Both have come upon me
by surprise.”

“But, T’otherest Governor,” urged Mr. Riderhood, “JI don’t know
where to find you.”

“Tt is of no consequence, I know where to find you, and I'll come
to your Lock.”

“But, L’otherest Governor,” urged Mr. Riderhood again, “no luck
never come yet of a dry acquaintance. Let’s wet it, in a mouthful of
rum and milk, I’otherest Governor.”

Bradley assenting, went with him into an early public-house,
haunted by unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where
returning carts, farmers’ men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed, and
certain human nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were solacing
themselves after their several manners; and where not one of the
nightbirds hovering about the sloppy bar failed to discern at a
glance in the passion-wasted nightbird with respectable feathers,
the worst nightbird of all.

 

Halt
14

Wy
Ruihil

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104 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

An inspiration of affection for a halfdrunken carter going his way
Jed to Mr. Riderhood’s being elevated on a high heap of baskets on a
waggon, and pursuing his journey recumbent on his back with his
head on his bundle. Bradley then turned to retrace his steps, and
by-and-by struck off through little-traversed ways, and by-and-by
reached school and home. Up came the sun to find him washed and
brushed, methodically dressed in decent black coat and waistcoat,
decent formal black tie, and pepper-and-salt pantaloons, with his
decent silver watch in its pocket, and its decent hair-guard round
his neck : a scholastic huntsman clad for the field, with his fresh
pack yelping and barking around him.

Yet more really bewitched than the miserable creatures of the
much-lamented times, who accused themselves of impossi bilities
under a contagion of horror and the strongly suggestive influences of
Torture, he had been ridden hard by Evil Spirits in the night that
was newly gone. He had been spurred and whipped and. heavily
sweated. If a record of the sport had usurped the places of the
peaceful texts from Scripture on the wall, the most advanced of the
scholars might have taken fright and run away from the master.

 

CHAPTER XII.
MEANING MISCHIEF,

Up came the sun, streaming all over London, and in its glorious
impartiality even condescending to make prismatic sparkles in the
whiskers of Mr. Alfred Lammle as he sat at breakfast. In need
of some brightening from without, was Mr. Alfred Lammile, for he
had the air of being dull enough within, and looked grievously dis-
contented.

Mrs. Alfred Lammle faced her lord. The happy pair of swindlers,
with the comfortable tie between them that each had swindled the
other, sat moodily observant of the tablecloth. Things looked so
gloomy in the breakfast-room, albeit on the sunny side of Sackville
Street, that any of the family tradespeople glancing through the
blinds might have taken the hint to send in his account and press for
it. But this, indeed, most of the family tradespeople had already
done, without the hint.

“Tt seems to me,” said Mrs. Lammle, “that you have had no
money at all, ever since we have been married.”

“What seems to you,” said Mr. Lammle, “to have been the case,
may possibly have been the case. It doesn’t matter.”

Was it the speciality of Mr. and Mrs. Lammle, or does it ever
obtain with other loving couples? In these matrimonial dialogues
they never addressed each other, but alwa ys some invisible presence
that appeared to take a station about midway between them. Per-

haps the skeleton in the cupboard comes out to be talked to, on such
domestic occasions ?

  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
 
 
 
 
   
  
     

     
  
  
  
    
    
  
 
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
   
  
   
    
   
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 105
e

“T have never seen any money in the house,” said Mis. Lammle to
the skeleton, “except my own annuity. That I swear.”

“You needn’t take the trouble of swearing,” said Mr. Lammle to
the skeleton ; “once more, it doesn’t matter. “You never turned your
annuity to so good an account.”

“Good an account! In what way?” asked Mrs. Lammle.

“Jn the way of getting credit, and living well,’ said Mr. Lammle.

Perhaps the skeleton laughed scornfully on being intrusted with
this question and this answer; certainly Mrs. Lammle did, and Mr.
Lammle did.

“And what is to happen next?”
skeleton.

“Smash is to happen next,’ said Mr. Lammle to the same
authority.

After this, Mrs. Lammle looked disdainfully at the skeleton—but
without carrying the look on to Mr. Lammle—and drooped her eyes.
After that, Mr. Lammle did exactly the same thing, and drooped his
eyes. A servant then entering with toast, the skeleton retired into
the closet, and shut itself up.

“ Sophronia,” said Mr. Lammle, when the servant had withdrawn.
And then, very much louder: “ Sophronia !”

“Well?”

“ Attend to me, if you please.” He eyed her sternly until she did
attend, and then went on. “I want to take counsel with you. Come,
come; no more triflmg. You know our league and covenant. We
are to work together for our joint interest, and you are as knowing a
hand as Iam. We shouldn’t be together, if you were not. W. hat’s
to be done? We are hemmed into a corner. What shall we do?”

“ Have you no scheme on foot that will bring in anything ?”

Mr. Lammle plunged into his whiskers for reflection, ‘and came
out hopeless: “No; as adventurers we are obliged to play rash games
for chances of high winnings, and there has been a run of luck
against us.”

She was resuming, “Have you nothing ——”
her.

“We, Sophronia. We, we, we.”

“Have we nothing to sell ?”

“Deuce a bit. I have given a Jew a bill of sale on this furniture,
and he could take it to-morrow, to-day, now. He would have taken
it before now, I believe, but for Fledgeby.”

“What has Fledgeby to do with him?”

“Knew him. OC ‘autioned me against him before I got into his
claws. Couldn’t persuade him then, i in behalf of somebody else.”

“Do you mean that Fledgeby has at all softened him towards
you?”

“Us, Sophronia. Us, us, us.”

“Towards us 2”

“T mean that the Jew has not yet done what he might have done,
and that Fledgeby takes the credit of having got him to hold his
hand.”

“Do you believe Fledgeby ?”

asked Mrs. Lammle of the

when he stopped

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

106 OUR MUTUAL ERIEND.

“Sophronia, I never believe anybody. I never have, my dear,
since 1 believed you. But it looks like it.

Having given her this back-handed reminder of her mutinous
observations to the skeleton, Mr. Lammle rose from table—perhaps,
the better to conceal a smile, and a white dint or two about his nose
—and took a turn on the carpet and came to the hearthrug.

“Tf we could have packed the brute off with Georgiana ;—but
however; that’s spilled milk.”

As Lammle, standing gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown
with his back to the fire, said this, looking down at his wife, she
turned pale and looked down at the ground. With a sense of dis-
loyalty upon her, and perhaps with a sense of personal danger—for
she was afraid of him—even afraid of his hand and afraid of his foot,
though he had never done her violence—she hastened to put herself
right in his eyes.

“Tf we could borrow money, Alfred——”

“ Beg money, borrow money, or steal money. It would be all one
to us, Sophronia,” her husband struck in.

“_Then, we could weather this ?”

“No doubt. To offer another original and undeniable remark,
Sophronia, two and two make four.”

But, seeing that she was turning something in her mind, he
gathered. up the skirts of his dressing-gown again, and, tucking them
under one arm, and collecting his ample whiskers in his other hand,
kept his eye upon her, silently.

“It is natural, Alfred,” she said, looking up with some timidity into
his face, “to think in such an emergency of the richest people we
know, and the simplest.”

“ Just so, Sophronia.”

“The Boflins.”

“Just so, Sophronia.”

“Ts there nothing to be done with them ?”

“ What is there to be done with them, Sophronia ?”

She cast about in her thoughts again, and he kept his eye upon her
as before.

“Of course I have repeatedly thought of the Bofiins, Sophronia,”
he resumed, after a fruitless silence; “but I have seen my way to
nothing. They are well guarded. That infernal Secretary stands
between them and—people of merit.”

“Tfhe could be got rid of?” said she, brightening a little, after
more casting about.

“Take time, Sophronia,” observed her watchful husband, riabeaee
patronizing manner.

“If working him out of the way could be presented in the light of
a service to Mr. Boffin ?”

“Take time, Sophronia.”

“We have remarked lately, Alfred, that the old man is turning
very suspicious and distrustful.”

_“ Miserly too, my dear; which is far the most unpromising for us.
Nevertheless, take time, Sophronia, take time.”
She took time and then said:

 

7

  

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
   
  
 
  
   
 
  
 
  
   
 
  
 
  
   
  
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Suppose we should address ourselves to that tendency in him of
which we have made ourselves quite sure. Suppose my con-
science——”

« And we know what a conscience it is, my soul. Yes?”

“Suppose my conscience should not allow me to keep to myself
any longer what that upstart. girl told me of the Secretary’s having
made a declaration to her. Suppose my conscience should oblige me
to repeat it to Mr. Boftin.”

“J rather like that,” said Lammle.

“Suppose I so repeated it to Mr. Boffin, as to insinuate that my
sensitive delicacy and honor——”

“Very good words, Sophronia.”

«__Ag to insinuate that our sensitive delicacy and honor,” she
resumed, with a bitter stress upon the phrase, “ would not allow us to
be silent parties to so mercenary and designing a speculation on the
Secretary's part, and so gross a breach of faith towards his confiding
employer. ‘ Suppose I had imparted my virtuous uneasiness to my
excellent husband, and he had said, in his integrity, ‘Sophronia,
you must immediately disclose this to Mr. Boffin.’”

“Once more, Sophronia,” observed Lammle, changing the leg on
which he stood, “1 rather like that.”

“You remark that he is well guarded,” she pursued. “ I think so
too. But if this should lead to his discharging his Secretary, there
would be a weak place made.”

“Go on expounding, Sophronia. I begin to like this very

 

much.”

“ Having, in our unimpeachable rectitude, done him the service of
opening his eyes to the treachery of the person he trusted, we shall have
established a claim upon him and a confidence with him. Whether it
can be made much of, or little of, we must wait—because we can't
help it—to see. Probably we shall make the most of it that is to be
made.”

“ Probably,” said Lammle.

“Do you think it impossible,” she asked, in the same cold plotting
way, “that you might replace the Secretary ?”

“Not impossible, Sophronia. It might be brought about. At any
rate it might be skilfully led up to.”

She nodded her understanding of the hint, as she looked at the fire.
“Mr. Lammle,” she said, musingly: not without a slight ironical
touch: “Mr. Lammle would be so delighted to do anything in his
power. Mr. Lammle, himself a man of business as well as a capi-
talist. Max. Lammle, accustomed to be intrusted with the most deli-
cate affairs. Mr. Lammle, who has managed my own little fortune
so admirably, but who, to be sure, began to make his reputation with

the advantage of being a man of property, above temptation, and
beyond suspicion.”

Mr. Lammle smiled, and even patted her on the head. In his
sinister relish of the scheme, as he stood above her, making it the
subject of his cogitations, he seemed to have twice as much nose on
his face as he had ever had in his life.

He stood pondering, and she sat looking at the dusty fire without

 

 

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108 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

moving, for some time. But, the moment he began to speak again
she looked up with a wince and attended to him, as if that double-
dealing of hers had been in her mind, and the fear were revived in
her of his hand or his foot.

“Tt appears to me, Sophronia, that you have omitted one branch of
the subject. Perhaps not, for women understand women. We might
oust the girl herself ?”

Mrs. Lammle shook her head. “She has an immensely strong hold
upon them both, Alfred. Not to be compared with that of a paid
secretary.”

3ut the dear child,” said Lammle, with a crooked smile, “ ought to
have been open with her benefactor and benefactress. The darling

love ought to have reposed unbounded confidence in her benefactor
and benefactress.”

Sophronia shook her head again.

“Well! Women understand women,” said her husband, rather dis-
appointed. “T don’t press it. It might be the making of our fortune
to make a clean sweep of them both. With me to manage the pro
perty, and my wife to manage the people—W hew!”

Again shaking her head, she returned: « They will never quarrel
with the girl. They will never punish the girl. We must accept
the girl, rely upon it.”

“Well!” cried Lammle, shrugging his shoulders, “so be it: only
always remember that we don’t want her.”

“‘ Now, the sole remaining question is,” said Mrs, Lammle, “when
shall I begin ?”

“You cannot begin too soon, Sophronia. As I have told you, the
condition of our affairs is desperate, and may be blown upon at any
moment.”

“T must secure Mr. Boffin alone, Alfred. If his wife was present,
she would throw oil upon the waters. I know I should fail to move
him to an angry outburst, if his wife was there. And as to the girl
herself—as I am going to betray her confidence, she is equally out of
the question.”

“Tt wouldn’t do to write for an appointment ?” said Lammle.

“No, certainly not. They would wonder among themselves why
I wrote, and I want to have him wholly unprepared.”

“Call, and ask to see him alone ?” suggested Lammle.

“I would rather not do that either. Leave it to me. Spare me
the little carriage for to-day, and for to-morrow (if I don’t succeed
to-day), and I'll lie in wait for him.”

It was barely settled when a manly form was seen to pass the
windows and heard to knock and ring. ‘Here's Fledgeby,” said
Lammle. “He admires you, and has a high opinion of you. I’ll be
out. Coax him to use his influence with the Jew. His name is
Riah, of the House of Pubsey and Co.” Adding these words under

his breath, lest he should be audible in the erect ears of Mr. Fledgeby,
throuch two keyholes and the hall, Lammle, making signals of dis-
cretion to his servant, went softly up stairs.

“Mr. Fledgeby,” said Mrs. Lammle, giving him a very gracious
Teception, “so glad to see you! My poor dear Alfred, who is greatly

   
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
   
  
 
  
 
  
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
 
    

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 109

worried just now about his affairs, went out rather early. Dear Mr.
Fledgeby, do sit down.”

Dear Mr. Fledgeby did sit down, and satisfied himself (or, judging
from the expression of his countenance, dissatisfied himself) that
nothing new had occurred in the way of whisker-sprout since he came
round the corner from the Albany.

“ Dear Mr. Fledgeby, it was needless to mention to you that my
poor dear Alfred is much worried about his affairs at present, for he
has told me what a comfort you are to him in his temporary diffi-
culties, and what a great service you have rendered him.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Fledgeby.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Lammle.

“JT didn’t know,” remarked Mr. Fledgeby, trying a new part
of his chair, “but that Lammle might be reserved about his
affairs.”

“Not to me,” said Mis. Lammle, with deep feeling.

“Oh, indeed ?” said Fledgeby.

“ Not to me, dear Mr. Fledgeby. I am his wife.”

“Yes. I—I always understood so,” said Mr. Fledgeby.

“And as the wife of Alfred, may I, dear Mr. Fledgeby, wholly
without his authority or knowledge,as Iam sure your discernment
will perceive, entreat you to continue that great service, and once
more use your well-earned influence with Mr. Riah for a little more
indulgence? The name I have heard Alfred mention, tossing in his
dreams, is Riah ; is it not?”

“The name of the Creditor is Riah,” said Mr. Fledgeby, with a
rather uncompromising accent on his noun-substantive. “Saint
Mary Axe. Pubsey and Co.”

“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Mrs. Lammle, clasping her hands with a
certain gushing wildness. ‘‘ Pubsey and Co. !”

“The pleading of the feminine——” Mr. Fledgeby began, and
there stuck so long for a word to get on with, that Mrs. Lammle
offered him sweetly, ‘‘ Heart?”

“ No,” said Mr. Fledgeby, “‘ Gender—is ever what a man is bound to
listen to, and I wish it rested with myself. But this Riah is a nasty
one, Mrs. Lammle ; he really is.”

“ Not if you speak to him, dear Mr. Fledgeby.’

« Upon my soul and body he is!” said Fledgeby.

«Try. ‘Try once more, dearest Mr. Fledgeby. What is there you
cannot do, if you will !”

“Thank you,” said Fledgeby, “you're very complimentary to say
so. J don’t mind trying him again, at your request. But of course
l can’t answer for the consequences. Riah is a tough subject, and
when he says he’ll do a thing, he'll do it.”

“ Fixactly so,” cried Mrs. Lammle, “and when he says to you he'll
wait, he'll wait.”

(“She is a devilish clever woman,” thought Fledgeby. ‘I didn’t
see that opening, but she spies it out and cuts into it as soon as it’s
made.”)

“Tn point of fact, dear Mr. Fledgeby,” Mrs. Lammle went on in a
very interesting manner, “not to affect concealment of Alfred’s hopes,

prox = renee

pr — sen

Dae ae an

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   

110 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

to you who are so much his friend, there is a distant break in his
horizon.”

This figure of speech seemed rather mysterious to Fascination
Fledgeby, who said, “'There’s a what in his—eh ?”

« Alfred, dear Mr. Fledgeby, discussed with me this very morning
before he went out, some prospects he has, which might entirely
change the aspect of his present troubles.”

“Really ?” said Fledgeby.

“@Q yes!” Here Mrs. Lammle brought her handkerchief mto
play. “And you know, dear Mr. Fledgeby—you who study the
human heart, and study the world—what an affliction it would be to
lose position and to lose credit, when ability to tide over a very short
time might save all appearances.”

“Oh!” said Fledeeby. “Then you think, Mrs. Lammle, that if
Lammle got time, he wouldn’t burst up?—To use an expression,” Mr.
Fledgeby apologetically explained, “which is adopted in the Money
Market.”

“Indeed yes. ‘Truly, truly, yes!”

“That makes all the difference,” said Fledgeby. “I'l make a point
of seeing Riah at once.”

“Blessings on you, dearest Mr. Fledgeby !”

“Not at all,” said Fledgeby. She gave him her hand. “The hand,”
said Mr. Fledgeby, “of a lovely and superior-minded female is ever
the repayment of a ‘

“Noble action!” said Mrs. Lammle, extremely anxious to get rid
of him.

“Tt wasn’t what I was going to say,” returned Fledgeby, who
never would, under any circumstances, accept a suggested expression,
“but you're very complimentary. May I imprint a—a one—upon it?
Good morning !”

“I may depend upon your promptitude, dearest Mr. Fledgeby ot

Said Fledgeby, looking back at the door and respectfully kissing
his hand, “ You may depend upon Tht

In fact, Mr. Fledgeby sped on his errand of mercy through the
streets, at so brisk a rate that his feet might have been winged by all
the good spirits that wait on Generosity. They might have taken up
their station in his breast, too, for he was blithe and merry. There
was quite a fresh trill in his voice, when, arriving at the counting-
house in St. Mary Axe, and finding it for the moment empty, he
trolled forth at the foot of the staircase : “Now, Judah, what are you
up to there ?”

The old man appeared, with his accustomed deference.

“Holloa!” said Fledgeby, falling back, with a wink. “You mean
mischief, Jerusalem!” —

The old man raised his eyes inquiringly.

“Yes you do,” said Fledgeby. “Oh, you sinner! Oh, you dodger!
What!  You’re going to act upon that bill of sale at Lammle’s, are
you? Nothing will turn you, won't it? You won't be put off for

another single minute, won’t you?”

Ordered to immediate action by the master’s tone and look, the old
man took up his hat from the little counter where it lay.

 

 

 

MR. FLEDGEBY DEPARTS ON HIS ERRAND OF MERCY.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 111

“You have been told that he might pull through it, if you didn’t
vo in to win, Wide-Awake; have you?” said Fledgeby. “And it’s
5 ) ‘a ering eo ne
not your game that he should pull through it; ain’t it? You having
got security, and there being enough to pay you? Oh, you Jew!”

The old man stood irresolute and uncertain for a moment, as if
there might be further instructions for him in reserve.

“Do I go, sir?” he at length asked in a low voice.

“ Asks me if he is going!” exclaimed Fledgeby. “ Asks me, as if he
didn’t know his own purpose! Asks me,as if he hadn’t got his hat on

eae ; : 2 ie
ready! Asks me, as if his sharp old eye—why, it cuts like a knife—
wasn’t looking at his walking-stick by the door!”

“Do I go, sir?”

“Do you go?” sneered Fledgeby. “ Yes, youdo go. Toddle, Judah !”

 

CHAPTER XIII.
GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME, AND HANG HIM.

Fascination Fiepcrsy, left alone in the counting-house, strolled
about with his hat on one side, whistling, and investigating the
drawers, and prying here and there for any small evidences of his
being cheated, but could find none. “Not his merit that he don’t
cheat me,” was Mr. Fledgeby’s commentary delivered with a wink,
“but my precaution.” He then with a lazy grandeur asserted his
rights as ‘lord of Pubsey and Co. by poking his cane at the stools
and boxes, and spitting in the fireplace, and so loitered royally to the
window and looked out into the narrow street, with his small eyes
just peering over the top of Pubsey and Co.’s blind. As a blind in
more senses than one, it reminded him that he was alone in the
counting-house with the front door open. He was moving away to
shut it, lest he should be injudiciously identified with the establish-
ment, when he was stopped by some one coming to the door.

This some one was the dolls’ dressmaker, with a little basket on
her arm, and her crutch stick in her hand. Her keen eyes had
espied Mr. Fledgeby before Mr. Fledgeby had espied her, and he was
paralyzed in his purpose of shutting her out, not so much by her
approaching the door, as by her favouring him with a shower of nods,
the instant he saw her. ‘This advantage she improved by hobbling
up the steps with such despatch that before Mr. Fledgeby could take
measures for her finding nobody at home, she was face to face with
him in the counting-house.

“ Hope I see you well, sir,” said Miss Wren. “ Mr. Riah in?”

Fledgeby had dropped into a chair, in the attitude of one waiting
wearily. “I suppose he will be back soon,” he replied; “he has cut
out and left me expecting him back, in an odd way. Haven't I seen
you before ?”

“Once before—if you had your eyesight,” replied Miss Wren; the
conditional clause in an under-tone.

“When you were carrying on some games up at the top of the
house. Iremember. How’s your friend?”

 

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  

 

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112 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“T have more friends than one, sir, I hope,” replied Miss Wren.
“ Which friend ?”

“Never mind,” said Mr. Fledgeby, shutting up one eye, “any of
your friends, all your friends. Are they pretty tolerable ?”

Somewhat confounded, Miss Wren parried the pleasantry, and sat
down in a corner behind the door, with her basket in her lap. By-
and-by, she said, breaking a long and patient silence :

“IT beg your pardon, sir, but I am used to find Mr. Riah at this
time, and so I generally come at this time. I only want to buy my
poor littie two shillings’ worth of waste. Perhaps you'll kindly let
me have it, and I'll trot off to my work.”

“T let you have it?” said Fledgeby, turning his head towards her;
for he had been sitting blinking at the light, and feeling his cheek.
“ Why, you don’t really suppose that I have anything to do with the
place, or the business; do you ?”

“Suppose?” exclaimed Miss Wren. “He said, that day, you were
the master !”

“The old cock in black said? Riah said? Why, he’d say any-
thing.”

“Well; but you said so too,” returned Miss Wren. ‘“ Or at least
you took on like the master, and didn’t contradict him.”

“One of his dodges,” said Mr. Fledgeby, with a cool and contemp-
tuous shrug. ‘“ He’s made of dodges. He said to me, ‘Come up to
the top of the house, sir, and I’ll show you a handsome girl. But
1 shall call you the master.’ So I went up to the top of the house
and he showed me the handsome girl (very well worth looking at she
was), and I was called the master. I don’t know why. I dare say
he don’t. He loves a dodge for its own sake; being,’ added Mr.
Hledgeby, after casting about for an expressive phrase, “ the dodgerest
of all the dodgers.”

“Oh my head!” cried the dolls’ dressmaker, holding it with both
her hands, as if it were cracking. ‘ You can’t mean what you say.”

“T can, my little woman,” retorted Fledgeby, “and I do, I assure
you.”

This repudiation was not only an act of deliberate policy on
Hledgeby’s part, in case of his being surprised by any other caller,
but was also a retort upon Miss Wren for her over-sharpness, and a
pleasant instance of his humour as regarded the old Jew. ‘He has
zot a bad name as an old Jew, and he is paid for the use of it, and
Vll have my money’s worth out of him.” This was Fledgeby’s
habitual reflection in the way of business, and it was sharpened just
now by the old man’s presuming to have a secret from him: though
of the secret itself, as annoying somebody else whom he disliked, he
by no means disapproved.

Miss Wren with a fallen countenance sat behind the door looking
thoughtfully at the ground, and the long and patient silence had
again set in for some time, when the expression of Mr. Fledgeby’s
face betokened that through the upper portion of the door, which
was of glass, he saw some one faltering on the brink of the counting-
house. Presently there was a rustle and a tap, and then some more
rustling and another tap. Fledgeby taking no notice, the door was

 

  

   

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 113

at length softly opened, and the dried face of a mild little elderly
gentleman looked in.

“Mr. Riah ?” said this visitor, very politely.

“Tam waiting for him, sir,” returned Mr. Fledgeby. “He went
out and left me here. I expect him back every minute. Perhaps
you had better take a chair.”

The gentleman took a chair, and put his hand to his forehead, as
if he were in a melancholy frame of mind. Mr. Fledgeby eyed him
aside, and seemed to relish his attitude.

“A fine day, sir,” remarked Fledgeby.

The little dried gentleman was so occupied with his own depressed
reflections that he did not notice the remark until the sound of Mr.
Fledgeby’s voice had died out of the counting-house. Then he
started, and said: “I beg your pardon, sir. 1 fear you spoke to
me ?”

“J said,” remarked Fledgeby, a little louder than before, “it was a
fine day.”

“T beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. Yes.”

Again the little dried gentleman put his hand to his forehead,
and again Mr. Fledgeby seemed to enjoy his domg it. When the
gentleman changed his attitude with a sigh, Fledgeby spake with a
grin.

“Mr. Twemlow, I think ?”

The dried gentleman seemed much surprised.

“Had the pleasure of dining with you at Lammle’s,” said Fledgeby.
“Even have the honor of being a connexion of yours. An unexpected
sort of place this to meet in; but one never knows, when one gets
into the City, what people one may knock up against. I hope you
have your health, and are enjoying yourself.”

There might have been a touch of impertinence in the last words;
on the other hand, it might have been but the native grace of Mr.
Fledgeby’s manner. Mr. Fledgeby sat on a stool with a foot on
the rail of another stool, and his hat on. Mr. Twemlow had un-
covered on looking in at the door, and remained so.

Now the conscientious Twemlow, knowing what he had done to
thwart the gracious Fledgeby, was particularly disconcerted by this
encounter. He was as ill at ease as a gentleman well could be. He
felt himself bound to conduct himself stiffly towards Fledgeby, and
he made him a distant bow. Fledgeby made his small eyes
smaller in taking special note of his manner. ‘The dolls’ dressmaker
sat in her corner behind the door, with her eyes on the ground and
her hands folded on her basket, holding her crutch-stick between
them, and appearing to take no heed of anything.

“He’s a lone time,” muttered Mr. Fledgeby, looking at his watch.
“What time may you make it, Mr. T’'wemlow ?”

Mr. Twemlow made it ten minutes past twelve, sir.

“As near as a toucher,” assented Fledgeby. “I hope, Mr.
Twemlow, your business here may be of a more agreeable character
than mine.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Twemlow.

Fledgeby again made his small eyes smaller, as he glanced with
VOL. IL. I

 

    
  
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  

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1les OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
oveat complacency at T'wemlow, who was timorously tapping the
table with a folded letter.

“ What I know of Mr. Riah,” said Fledgeby, with a very dis-
paraging utterance of his name, “leads me to believe that this is
about the shop for disagreeable business. I have always found him
the bitingest and tightest screw in London.”

Mr. ‘'wemlow acknowledged the remark with a little distant bow.
It evidently made him nervous.

“$0 much so,” pursued Fledgeby, “ that if it wasn’t to be true to a
friend, nobody should catch me waiting here a single minute. But
if you have friends in adversity, stand by them. That’s what I say
and act up to.”

The equitable Twemlow felt that this sentiment, irrespective

of the utterer, demanded his cordial assent. “You are very right,
sir,” he rejoined with spirit. “You indicate the generous and manly
course.”
“@lad to have your approbation,” returned Fledgeby. “It’s a
coincidence, Mr. ''wemlow ;” here he descended from his perch, and
sauntered towards him; “that the friends 1 am standing by to-day
are the friends at whose house I met you! The Lammles. She's
a very taking and agreeable woman ?”

Conscience smote the gentle Twemlow pale.
“She is.”

“ And when she appealed to me this morning, to come and try what
I could do to pacify their creditor, this Mr. Riah—that I certainly
have gained some little influence with in transacting business for
another friend, but nothing like so much as she supposes—and when a
woman like that spoke to me as her dearest Mr. Fledgeby, and shed
tears—why what could I do, you know ?”

Twemlow gasped “Nothing but come.”

“Nothing but come. AndsoIcame. But why,” said Fledgeby,
putting his hands in his pockets and counterfeiting deep meditation,
“why Riah should have started up, when I told him that the Lammles
entreated him to hold over a Bill of Sale he has on all their effects ;
and why he should have cut out, saying he would be back directly ;
and why he should have left me here alone so long; 1 cannot under-
stand.”

The chivalrous Twemlow, Knight of the Simple Heart, was not in
a condition to offer any suggestion. He was too penitent, toc
remorseful. For the first time in his life he had done an under-
handed action, and he had done wrong. He had secretly interposed
against this confiding young man, for no better real reason than
because the young man’s ways were not his ways.

But, the confiding young man proceeded to heap coals of fire on his
sensitive head.

“IT beg your pardon, Mr. Twemlow; you see I am acquainted
with the nature of the affairs that are transacted here. Is there
anything I can do for you here? You have always been brought up
as a gentleman, and never as a man of business;” another touch of
possible impertinence in this place ; “ and perhaps you are but a poor

waan of business. What else is to be expected !”

he said.

 

 

  

  

  

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. TLL is:

“T am even a poorer man of business than Iam a man, sir,” returned
Twemlow, “and I could hardly express my deficiency in a stronger
way. I really do not so much as clearly understand my position in
the matter on which I am brought here. But there are reasons
which make me very delicate of accepting your assistance. I am
greatly, greatly, disinclined to profit by it. 1 don’t deserve it.”

Good childish creature! Condemned to a passage through the
world by such narrow little dimly-lighted ways, and picking up so
few specks or spots on the road!

“Perhaps,” said Fledgeby, “you may be a little proud of entering
on the topic,—having been brought up as a gentleman.”

“Tt’s not that, sir,’ returned 'wemlow, “it’s not that. I hope I
distinguish between true pride and false pride.”

“T have no pride at all, myself,” said Fledgeby, “and perhaps 1
don’t cut things so fine as to know one from tother. But I know
this is a place where even a man of business needs his wits about
him; and if mine can be of any use to you here, you're welcome to
them.”

“You are very good,” said Twemlow, faltering. “But I am most
unwilling ——”

“T don’t, you know,” proceeded Fledgeby with an ill-favoured
elance, “entertain the vanity of supposing that my wits could be
of any use to you in society, but they might be here. You cultivate
society and society cultivates you, but Mr. Riah’s not society. In
society, Mr. Riah is kept dark; eh, Mr. Twemlow ””

Twemlow, much disturbed, and with his hand fluttering about his
forehead, replied: “Quite true.”

The confiding young man besought him to state his case. The
innocent Twemlow, expecting Fledgeby to be astounded by what
he should unfold, and not for an instant conceiving the possi-
bility of its happening every day, but treating of it as a terrible
phenomenon occurring in the course of ages, related how that he had
had a deceased friend, a married. civil officer with a family, who had
wanted money for change of place on change of post, and how he,
Twemlow, had “given him his name,’ with the usual, but in the
eyes of Twemlow almost incredible result that he had been left to
repay what he had never had. How, in the course of years, he had
reduced the pricipal by trifling sums, “having,” said ‘Twemlow,
“always to observe great economy, being in the enjoyment of a fixed
income limited in extent, and that depending on the munificence of a
certain nobleman,” and had always pinched the full interest out of
himself with punctual pinches. How he had come, in course of
time, to look upon this one only debt of his life as a regular quarterly
drawback, and no worse, when “his name” had some way fallen into
the possession of Mr. Riah, who had sent him notice to redeem it by
paying up in full, in one plump sum, or take tremendous consequences.
This, with hazy remembrances of how he had been carried to some
office to “confess judgment” (as he recollected the phrase), and how
he had been carried to another office where his life was assured for
somebody not wholly unconnected with the sherry trade whom he
remembered by the remarkable circumstance that he hada Straduarius
I 2

 

 

   

   
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
    

116 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

   

violin to dispose of, and alsoa Madonna, formed the sum and substance
of Mr. T'wemlow’s narrative. ‘Through which stalked the shadow of
the awful Snigsworth, eyed afar off by money-lenders as Security in
the Mist, and menacing ‘{‘wemlow with his baronial truncheon.

To all, Mr. Fledgeby listened with the modest gravity becoming a
confiding young man who knew it all beforehand, and, when it
was finished, seriously shook his head. “ I don’t like, Mr. T'wemlow,”
said Fledgeby, “I don’t like Riah’s calling in the principal. If he’s
determined to call it in, it must come.”

“ But supposing, sir,” said T'wemlow, downcast, “ that it can’t come?”

“Then,” retorted Fledgeby, “you must go, you know.”

«“ Where?” asked 'T'wemlow, faintly.

“To prison,” returned Fledgeby. Whereat Mr. Twemlow leaned
his innocent head upon his hand, and moaned a little moan of distress
and disgrace.

“ However,’ said Fledgeby, appearing to pluck up his spirits,
“we'll hope it’s not so bad as that comes to. If you'll allow me,
Tl mention to Mr. Riah when he comes in, who you are, and I'll tell
him you’re my friend, and I'll say my say for you, instead of your
saying it for yourself; I may be able todo it in a more business-like
way. You won't consider it a liberty ?”

“JT thank you again and again, sir,” said Twemlow. “I am
strong, strongly, disinclined to avail myself of your generosity,
though my helplessness yields. For I cannot but feel that I—to
put it in the mildest form of speech—that I have done nothing to
deserve it.”

“Where can he be?” muttered Fledgeby, referring to his watch
again. ‘“ What can he have gone out for ? Did you ever see him,
Mr. Twemlow ?”

“ Never.”

“ He is a thorough Jew to look at, but he is a more thorough Jew
to deal with. He’s worst when he’s quiet. If he’s quiet, I shall
take it as a very bad sign. Keep your eye upon him when he
comes in, and, if he’s quiet, don’t be hopeful. Here he is!—He looks
quiet.”

With these words, which had the effect of causing the harmless
Twemlow painful agitation, Mr. Fledgeby withdrew to his former
post, and the old man entered the counting-house.

“ Why, Mr. Riah,” said Fledgeby, “I thought you were lost!”

The old man, glancing at the stranger, stood stock-still. He per-
ceived that his master was leading up to the orders he was to take,
and he waited to understand them.

“JT really thought,” repeated Fledgeby slowly, “ that you were lost,
Mr. Riah. Why, now I look at you—but no, you can’t have done it ;
no, you can’t have done it!”

Hat in hand, the old man lifted his head, and looked distressfully
at Fledgeby as seeking to know what new moral burden he was to
bear.

“You can’t have rushed out to get the start of everybody else, and
put in that bill of sale at Lammle’s?”’ said Fledgeby. “Say you
haven't, Mr. Riah.”

  
  
   
  
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 117

«Sir, I have,” replied the old man in a low voice.

“Oh my eye!” cried Fledgeby. “Tut, tut, tut! Dear, dear, dear!
Well! I knew you were a hard customer, Mr. Riah, but I never
thought you were as hard as that.”

“Sir,” said the old man, with great uneasiness, “ T do as I am
directed. I am not the principal here. I am but the agent of a
superior, and I have no choice, no power.”

“Don’t say so,” retorted Fledgeby, secretly exultant as the old
man stretched out his hands, with a shrinking action of defending
himself against the sharp construction of the two observers. “ Don’t
play the tune of the trade, Mr. Riah. You've a right to get in your
debts, if you’re determined to do it, but don’t pretend what every
one in your line regularly pretends. At: least, don’t do it to me.
Why should you, Mr. Riah? You know I know all about you.”

The old man clasped the skirt of his long coat with his disengaged
hand, and directed a wistful look at Fledgeby.

« And don’t,” said Fledgeby, “don’t, I entreat you as a favour, Mr.
Riah, be so devilish meek, for I know what'll follow if you are.
Look here, Mr. Riah. ‘This gentleman is Mr. Twemlow.”

The Jew turned to him and bowed. That poor lamb bowed in
return ; polite, and terrified.

“[ have made such a failure,” proceeded Fledgeby, “in trying to
do anything with you for my friend Lammile, that I’ve hardly a hope
of doing anything with you for my friend (and connexion indeed)
Mr. Twemlow. But I do think that if you would do a favor for any-
body, you would for me, and I won’t fail for want of trying, and
T’ve passed my promise to Mr. Twemlow besides. Now, Mr. Riah,
here is Mr. Twemlow. Always good for his interest, always coming
up to time, always paying his little way. Now, why should you
press Mr. Twemlow? You can’t have any spite against Mr. Twem-
low! Why not be easy with Mr. Twemlow?”

The old man looked into Fledgeby’s little eyes for any sign of leave
to be easy with Mr. Twemlow ; but there was no sign in them.

« Mr. T’wemlow is no connexion of yours, Mr. Riah,” said Fledgeby ;
“you can’t want to be even with him for having through life gone in
for a gentleman and hung on to his Family. If Mr. Twemlow has a
contempt for business, what can it matter to you?”

«But pardon me,’ interposed the gentle victim, “JT have not. I
should consider it presumption.”

« There, Mr. Riah !” said Fledgeby, “isn’t that handsomely said ?
Come! Make terms with me for Mr. Twemlow.”

The old man looked again for any sign of permission to, spare the
poor little gentleman. No. Mr. Fledgeby meant him to be racked.

“JT am very sorry, Mr. T'wemlow,” said Riah. “I have my instruc-
tions. I am invested with no authority for diverging from them.
The money must be paid.”

“Tn full and slap down, do you mean, Mr. Riah?” asked Fledgeby,
to make things quite explicit.

“Tn full, sir, and at once,” was Riah’s answer.

Mr. Fledgeby shook his head deploringly at Twemlow, and
mutely expressed in reference to the venerable figure standing before

 
 
  

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118 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

him with eyes upon the ground: “ What a Monster of an Israelite
this is!”

“Mr. Riah,” said Fledgeby.

The old man lifted up his eyes once more to the little eyes in Mr.
Fledgeby’s head, with some reviving hope that the sign might be
coming yet.

“Mr, Riah, it’s of no use my holding back the fact. There’s a
certain great party in the background in Mr. Twemlow’s case, and
you know it.”

“ T know it,” the old man admitted.

“Now, Pll put it as a plain point of business, Mr. Riah. Are you
fully determined (as a plain point of business) either to have that
said great party’s security, or that said great party’s money ?

eB Fully determined,” answered Riah, as he read his master’s face,
and learnt the book.

s¢ Not at all caring for, and indeed as it seems to me ae enjoy-
ing,” said Fledgeby, with peculiar unctior “the precious kick-up and
row that will come off between Mr. T'wemlow and the said great
party ?”

This required no answer, and received none. Poor Mr. Twemlow,
who had betrayed the keenest mental terrors since his noble iinsman
loomed in the perspective, rose W ith a sigh to take his departure. “I
thank you very much, sir,” he said, offering Fledgeby his Pav sha
hand. “You have done me an unmerited service. Thank you,
thank you!”

“Don’t mention it,’ answered Fledgeby. “It’s a failure so far,
but I'll stay behind, pal take another touc -h at Mr. Riah.”

“Do not deceive yourself, Mr. Twemlow,” said the Jew, then
addressing him directly for the first time. “There is no hope for
you. You must expect no leniency here. You must pay im full,
and you cannot pay too promptly, or you will be put to heavy
charges. Trust nothing to me, sir. Money, money, money.” W hen.
he had said these wor ds in an emphatic manner . he acknow ledged.
Mr. Twemlow’s still polite motion of his head, and that amiable litile
worthy took his departure in the lowest spirits.

Fascination Fledgeby was in such a merry vein when the counting-
house was cleared of him, that he had not thing for it but to go to
the window, and lean his arms on the frame of the blind, and have
his silent laugh out, with his back to his subordinate. When he
turned round again with a composed countenance, his subordinate
still stood in the same place, and the dolls’ dressmaker sat behind the
sek with a look of horror.

falloa !” cried Mr. Fledgeby, “ you're forgetting this young lady,
Mr. a and she has been - waiting long enough too. Sell her her
waste, please, and give her good measure if you can make up your
mind to do the liberal thing for once.’

He looked on for a time, as the Jew filled her little basket with
such scraps as she was used to buy; but, his merry vein coming on
egain, he was obliged to turn round to the window once more, “and
tean his arms on the blind.

“There, my Cinderella dear,” said the old man in a whisper, and

 

  

  

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. aii)

with a worn-out look, “the basket’s full now. Bless you! And
get you gone!” S

“Don’t call me your Cinderella dear,’ returned Miss Wren. “O
you cruel godmother !”

She shook that emphatic little forefinger of hers im his face at
parting, as earnestly and reproachfully as she had ever shaken it at
her grim old child at home.

“You are not the godmother at all!” said she. “ You are the

Volf in the Forest, the wicked Wolf! And if ever my dear Lizzie is
sold and betrayed, I shall know who sold and betrayed her !”

 

CHAPTER XIV.
MR. WEGG PREPARES A GRINDSTONE FOR MR. BOFFIN’S NOSE.

THavine assisted at a few more expositions of the lives of Misers,
Mr. Venus became almost indispensable to the evenings at the Bower.
The cireumstance of having another listener to the wonders unfolded
by Wegg, or, as it were, another calculator to cast up the guineas
found in teapots, chimneys, racks and mangers, and other such banks
of deposit, seemed greatly to heighten Mr. Boffin’s enjoyment; while
Silas Wegg, for his part, though of a jealous temperament which
might under ordinary circumstances have resented the anatomist’s
getting into favour, was so very anxious to keep his eye on that gen-
¢leman—lest, being too much left to himself, he should be tempted to
play any tricks with the precious document in his keeping—that he
never lost an opportunity of commending him to Mr. Boffin’s notice as
a third party whose company was much to be desired. Another friendly
demonstration towards him Mr. Wegg now regularly gratified.
After each sitting was over, and the patron had departed, Mr. Wegs:
invariably saw Mr. Venus home. ‘To be sure, he as invariably
requested to be refreshed with a sight of the paper in which he was
a joint proprietor; but he never failed to remark that it was the
great pleasure he derived from Mr. Venus’s improving society which
had insensibly lured him round to Clerkenwell again, and that,
finding himself once more attracted to the spot by the social powers
of Mr. V., he would beg leave to go through that little incidental
procedure, as a matter of form. “For well I know, sir,’ Mr. Wege
would add, “that aman of your delicate mind would wish to be
checked off whenever the opportunity arises, and it is not for me to
baulk your feelings.”

A certain rustiness in Mr. Venus, which never became so lubricated
by the oil of Mr. Wegg but that he turned under the screw in a
creaking and stiff manner, was very noticeable at about this period.
While assisting at the literary evenings, he even went so far, on two
or three occasions, as to correct Mr. Wegg when he grossly mis-
pronouneed a word, or made nonsense of a passage; insomuch that
Mr. Wegg took to surveying his course in the day, and to making
arrangements for getting round rocks at night instead of running
straight upon them. Of the slightest anatomical reference he became

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

120 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

particularly shy, and, if he saw a bone ahead, would go any distance
out of his way rather than mention it by name.

The adverse destinies ordained that one evening Mr. Wege’s
labouring bark became beset by polysyllables, and embarrassed
among a perfect archipelago of hard words. It being necessary to
take soundings every minute, and to feel the way with the greatest
caution, Mr. Wegg’s attention was fully employed. Advantage was
taken of this dilemma by Mr. Venus, to pass a scrap of paper into
Mr. Boffin’s hand, and lay his finger on his own lip.

When Mr. Boffin got home at night he found that the paper con-
tained Mr. Venus’s card and these words: “Should be glad to be
honored with a call respecting business of your own, about dusk on
an early evening.”

The very next evening saw Mr. Boffin peeping in at the preserved
frogs in Mr. Venus’s shop-window, and saw Mr. Venus espying Mr.

3offin with the readiness of one on the alert, and beckoning that

gentleman into his interior. Responding, Mr. Boffin was invited to
seat himself on the box of human miscellanies before the fire, and
did so, looking round the place with admiring eyes. The fire being
low and fitful, and the dusk gloomy, the whole stock seemed to be
winking and blinking with both eyes, as Mr. Venus did. The
French gentleman, though he had no eyes, was not at all behind-
hand, but appeared, as the flame rose and fell, to open and shut his no
eyes, with the regularity of the glass-eyed dogs and ducks and birds.
The big-headed babies were equally obliging in lending their gro-
tesque aid to the general effect.

“You see, Mr. Venus, I’ve lost no time,” said Mr. Boffin. “Here
I am.”

“Here you are, sir,” assented Mr. Venus.

“JT don’t like secrecy,” pursued Mr. Boffin— “at least, not in a
general way I don’t—but I dare say you'll show me good reason
for being secret so far.”

“think I shall, sir,” returned Venus.

“Good,” said Mr. Boffin, “You don’t expect Wegg, I take it for
granted ?”

“No, sir. I expect no one but the present company.”

Mr. Boffin glanced about him, as accepting under that inclusive
denomination the French gentleman and the circle in which he
didn’t move, and repeated, “The present company.”

“Sir,” said Mr, Venus, “before entering upon business, I shall
have to ask you for your word and honor that we are in confi-
dence.”

“ Let’s wait a bit and understand what the expression means,”
answered Mr. Boffin. “In confidence for how long? In confidence
for ever and a day?”

“I take your hint, sir,” said Venus ; “you think you might consider
the business, when you came to know it, to be of a nature incom-
patible with confidence on your part”

“JT might,” said Mr. Boffin with a cautious look.

“True, sir. Well, sir,” observed Venus, after clutching at his dusty
hair, to brighten his ideas, “let us put it another way. I open the

 

 

  
 
  
  
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  

  

    
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
     
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 121

business with you, relying upon your honor not to do anything in it,
and not to mention me in it, without my knowledge.”

“That sounds fair,” said Mr. Boffin. “I agree to that.”

“JT haye your word and honor, sir?”

“My good. fellow,” retorted Mr. Boffin, “you have my word; and
how you can have that, without my honor too, I don’t know. I’ve
sorted a lot of dust in my time, but I never knew the two things go
into separate heaps.”

This remark seemed rather to abash Mr. Venus. He hesitated,
and said, “ Very true, sir;’ and again, “ Very true, sir,” before
resuming the thread of his discourse.

“ Mr. Boffin, if I confess to you that I fell into a proposal of which
you were the subject, and of which you oughtn’t to have been the
subject, you will allow me to mention, and will please take into
favourable consideration, that I was in a crushed state of mind at the
time.”

The Golden Dustman, with his hands folded on the top of his stout
stick, with his chin resting upon them, and with something leering
and whimsical in his eyes, gave a nod, and said, “ Quite so, Venus.”

“That proposal, sir, was a conspiring breach of your confidence,
to such an extent, that I ought at once to have made it known to
you. But I didn’t, Mr. Boffin, and I fell into it.”

Without moving eye or finger, Mr. Boffin gave another nod, and
placidly repeated, “ Quite so, Venus.”

“Not that I was ever hearty in it, sir,” the penitent anatomist
went on, “or that I ever viewed myself with anything but reproach
for having turned out of the paths of science into the paths of ——”
he was going to say “ villany,” but, unwilling to press too hard upon
himself, substituted with great emphasis—*‘ Weggery.”

Placid and whimsical of look as ever, Mr. Boftin answered: “Quite
so, Venus.”

«And now, sir,” said Venus, “having prepared your mind in the
rough, I will articulate the details.” With which brief professional
exordium, he entered on the history of the friendly move, and truly
recounted it. One might have thought that it would have extracted.
some show of surprise or anger, or other emotion, from Mr. Boffin, but
it extracted nothing beyond his former comment: “ Quite so, Venus.”

“J have astonished you, sir, I believe 2” said Mr. Venus, pausing
dubiously.

Mr. Boffin simply answered as aforesaid : “Quite so, Venus.”

By this time the astonishment was all on the other side. It did
not, however, so continue. For, when Venus passed to Wegg’s disco-
very, and from that to their having both seen Mr. Boffin dig up the
Dutch bottle, that gentleman changed colour, changed his attitude,
became extremely restless, and ended (when Venus ended) by being
in a state of manifest anxiety, trepidation, and confusion.

“Now, siz,” said Venus, finishing off; “ you best know what was
in that Dutch bottle, and why you dug it up, and took it away. I
don’t pretend to know anything more about it than I saw. <All I
know is this: I am proud of my calling after all (though it has been
attended by one dreadful drawback which has told upon my heart,

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122 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

and almost equally upon my skeleton), and I mean to live by my
calling. Putting the same meaning into other words, I do not
mean to turn a single dishonest penny by this affair. As the best
amends I can make you for having ever gone into it, | make known
to you, as a warning, what Wege has found out. My Opinion is,
that Wegg is not to be silenced at a modest price, and I build that
opinion on his beginning to dispose of your property the moment he
knew his power. Whether it’s worth your while to silence him at
any price, you will decide for yourself. and take your measures
accordingly. As far as I am concerned, I have no price. If Lam
ever called upon for the truth, I tell it, but 1 want to do nomore than
I have now done and ended.”

“Thank’ee, Venus!” said Mr. Boffin, with a hearty grip of his
hand; “thank’ee, Venus, thank’ee, Venus!” And then walked up and
down the little shop in great agitation. “Butlook here, Venus,” he by-
and-by resumed, nervously sitting down again; “if I have to buy
Wegg up, I shan’t buy him any cheaper for your being out of it.
Instead of his having half the money—it was to have been half, I
suppose? Share and share alike?”

“It was to have been half, sir,” answered Venus.

“Instead of that, hell now have all. I shall pay the same, if
not more. For you tell me he’s an unconscionable dog, a ravenous
rascal.”

“He is,” said Venus.

“Don’t you think, Venus,” insinuated Mr. Boffin, after looking at
the fire for a while—“ don’t you feel as if—you might like to pretend
to be in it till Weee was bought up, and then ease your mind by
handing over to me what you had made believe to pocket ?”

“No I don’t, sir,” returned Venus, very positively.

“Not to make amends?” insinuated Mr. Boffin.

“No, sir. It seems to me, after maturely thinking it over, that
the best amends for having got out of the square is to get back into
the square.”

“Humph!” mused Mr. Boffin. “When you say the square, you
mean -?

“T mean,” said Venus, stoutly and shortly, “the right.”

“Tt appears to me,” said Mr. Boffin, grumbling over the fire in an
injured manner, “that the right is with me, if it’s anywhere. I
have much more right to the old man’s money than the Crown can
ever have. What was the Crown to him except the King’s Taxes?
Whereas, me and my wife, we was all in all to him.”

Mr. Venus, with his head upon his hands, rendered melancholy by
the contemplation of Mr. Boffin’s avarice, only murmured to steep him-
self in the luxury of that frame of mind: “She did not wish so to
regard herself, nor yet to be so regarded.”

“And how am I to live,” asked Mr. Boffin, piteously, “if I’m to
be going buying fellows up out of the little that I’ve got? And how
am I to set about it? When am I to get my money ready ? When
am Ito make a bid? You haven’t told me when he threatens to
drop down upon me.”

Venus explained under what conditions, and with what views, the

 

 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
   

        
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 123

dropping down upon Mr. Boffin was held over until the Mounds
should be cleared away. Mr. Boffin listened attentively. “I sup-
pose,” said he, with a gleam of hope, “ there’s no doubt about the
genuineness and date of this confounded will ?”

“ None whatever,” said Mr. Venus.

« Where might it be deposited at present ?” asked Mr. Boffin, in a
wheedling tone.

“14s in my possession, sir.”

“Tg it? he cried, with great eagerness. “Now, for any liberal
sum of money that could be agreed upon, Venus, would you put it
in the fire?”

“No, sir, | wouldn’t,” interrupted Mr. Venus.

“Nor pass it over to me?”

“That would be the same thing. No, sir,’ said Mr. Venus.

The Golden Dustman seemed about to pursue these questions, when
a stumping noise was heard outside, coming towards the door.
“Hush! here’s Wegg!” said Venus. “Get behind the young alli-
gator in the corner, Mr. Boffin, and judge him for yourself. I won't
light a candle till he’s gone; there'll only be the glow of the fire;
Wege’s well acquainted with the alligator, and he won't take par-
ticular notice of him. Draw your legs in, Mr. Boffin, at present I see a
pair of shoes at the end of his tail. Get your head well behind his
smile, Mr. Boffin, and you'll lie comfortable there; you'll find plenty
of room behind his smile. He’s a little dusty, but he’s very like you
in tone. Are you right, sir?”

Mr. Boffin had but whispered an affirmative response, when Wegg
came stumping in. “Partner,” said that gentleman in a sprightly
manner, “how's yourself?”

“Tolerable,” returned Mr. Venus. “Not much to boast On”

“Tn-deed!” said Wege: “sorry, partner, that youre not picking
up faster, but your soul’s too large for your body, sir; that’s where
itis. And how's our stock in trade, partner? Safe bind, safe find,
partner? Is that about it?”

“Do you wish to see it?” asked Venus.

“1f you please, partner,” said Wegg, rubbing his hands. “I wish
to see it jintly with yourself. Or, in similar words to some that
was set to music some time back :

 

‘I wish you to see it with your eyes,
‘And I will pledge with mine.’ ”

Turning his back and turning a key, Mr. Venus produced the
document, holding on by his usual corner. Mr. Wegg, holding on by
the opposite corner, sat down on the seat so lately vacated by Mr.
Boffin, and looked it over. “All right, sir,” he slowly and unwill-
ingly admitted, in his reluctance to loose his hold, “all right!”
And greedily watched his partner as he turned his back again, and
turned his key again.

«There’s nothing new, I suppose?” said Venus, resuming his low
chair behind the counter.

«“ Yes there is, sir,” replied Wegg; “there was something new this

morning, That foxey old grasper and griper

 

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124 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Myr. Boffin ?” inquired Venus, with a glance towards the alli-
gator’s yard or two of smile.

“ Mister be blowed!” cried Wegg, yielding to his honest indignation.
“ Boffin. Dusty Boffin. That foxey old grunter and grinder, sir,
turns into the yard this morning, to meddle with our property, a
menial tool of his own, a young man by the name of Sloppy. Ecod,
when I say to him, ‘What do you want here, young man? This is
a private yard,’ he pulls out a paper from Boffin’s other blackguard,
the one 1 was passed over for. ‘This is to authorize Sloppy
to overlook the carting and to watch the work.’ That's pretty
strong, I think, Mr. Venus?”

“Remember he doesn’t know yet of our claim on the property,”
ested Venus.

“Then he must have a hint of it,” said Wegg, “and a strong one
that'll jog his terrors a bit. Give him an inch, and he'll take an ell.
Let him alone this time, and what'll he do with our property next ?
I tell you what, Mr. Venus; it comes to this; I must be overbearing
with Boftin, or I shall fly into several pieces. I can’t contain myself
when I look at him. Every time I see him putting his hand in his
pocket, I see him putting it into my pocket. Every time I hear him
jingling his money, I hear him taking liberties with my money.
Hlesh and blood can’t bear it. No,” said Mr. Wege, greatly exaspe-
rated, “and I'll go further. A wooden leg can’t bear it!”

“But, Mr. Wege,” urged Venus, “it was your own idea that he

should not be exploded upon, till the Mounds were carted away.”
_, But it was likewise my idea, Mr. Venus,” retorted Wegg, “that
if he came sneaking and sniffing about the property, he should be
threatened, given to understand that he has no right to it, and be
made our slave. Wasn’t that my idea, Mr. Venus”

“It certainly was, Mr. Wegg.”

“It certainly was, as you say, partner,” assented Wegg, put
into a better humour by the ready admission. “ Very well: J
consider his planting one of his menial tools in the yard, an act of
sneaking and sniffing. And his nose shall be put to the grind-
stone for it.”

“Tt was not your fault, Mr. Wegg, I must admit,” said Venus,
“that he got off with the Dutch bottle that night.”

“As you handsomely say again, partner! No, it was not my
fault. I’d have had that bottle out of him. Was it to be borne
that he should come, like a thief in the dark, digging among stuff
that was far more ours than his (seeing that we could deprive him
of every grain of it, if he didn’t buy us at our own figure), and
carrying off treasure from its bowels? No, it was not to be borne.
And for that, too, his nose shall be put to the grindstone.”

“ How do you propose to do it, Mr. Weggs 2”

$ To put his nose to the grindstone? I propose,” returned that
estimable man, “to instlt him openly. And, if looking into this eye
of mine, he dares to offer a word in answer, to retort upon him before
he can take his breath, «Add another word to that, you dusty old
dog, and you're a beggar.’ ”

“suppose he says nothing, Mr. Wege 2”

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 125

«“ Then,” replied Wegg, “ we shall have come to an understanding
with very little trouble, and Tll break him and drive him, Mr.
Venus. Jl put him in harness, and I'll bear him up tight, and I’
break him and drive him. ‘The harder the old Dust is driven, sir,
the higher hell pay. And I mean to be paid high, Mr. Venus, ]
promise you.”

“You speak quite revengefully, Mr. Wegg.”

“ Revengefully, sir? Is it for him that I have declined and falled,
night after night? Is it for his pleasure that I’ve waited at home
of an evening, like a set of skittles, to be set up and knocked over,
set up and knocked over, by whatever balls—or books—he chose to
bring against me? Why, I’m a hundred times the man he is, sir ;
five hundred times!”

Perhaps it was with the malicious intent of urging him on to his
worst that Mr. Venus looked as if he doubted that.

“What? Was it outside the house at present ockypied, to its dis-
grace, by that minion of fortune and worm of the hour,” said Wegg,
falling back upon his strongest terms of reprobation, and slapping the
counter, “that I, Silas Wegg, five hundred times the man he ever
was, sat in all weathers, waiting for a errand or a customer?
Was it outside that very house as I first set eyes upon him, rolling
in the lap of luxury, when I was a selling halfpenny ballads there
for a living? And am I to grovel in the dust for him to walk over ?
No!”

There was a grin upon the ghastly countenance of the French
gentleman under the influence of the firelizht, as if he were com-
puting how many thousand slanderers and traitors array them-
selves against the fortunate, on premises: exactly answering; to those
of Mr. Wegg. One might have fancied that the big headed babies
were toppling over with their hydrocephalic attempts to reckon
up the children of men who transform their benefactors into their
injurers by the same process. The yard or two of smile on the part
of the alligator might have been invested with the meaning, “ All
about this was quite familiar knowledge down in the depths of the
slime, ages ago.”

“But,” said Wegg, possibly with some slight perception to the
foregoing effect, “your speaking countenance remarks, Mr. Venus,
that I’m duller and savager than usual. Perhaps I have allowed
myself to brood too much. Begone, dull Care! “Lis gone, sir. T’ve
looked in wpon you, and empire resumes her sway. For, as the song
subject to your correction, sir—

‘When the heart of a man is depressed with cares,
‘The mist is dispelled if Venus appears.

‘ Z.ike the notes of a fiddle, you sweetly, sir, sweetly,
‘ Raises our spirits and charms our ears.’

 

Says

Good-night, sir.”
«J shall have a word or two to say to you, Mr. Wegg, before long,”
remarked Venus, “respecting my share in the project we've been
speaking of.”
“My time, sir,” returned Wege, “ is yours. In the meanwhile let it
be fully understood that I shall not neglect bringing the grindstone

 

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126 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

to bear, nor yet bringing Dusty Boffin’s nose to it. His nose once
brought to it, shall be held to it by these hands, Mr. Venus, till the
sparks flies out in showers.”

With this agreeable promise Wege stumped out, and shut the
shop-door after him. “Wait till I light a candle, Mr. Boffin,” said
Venus, “and you'll come out more comfortable.” So, he lighting a
candle and holding it up at arm’s length, Mr. Boffin disengaged
himself from behind the alligator’s smile, with an expression of
countenance so very downcast that it not only appeared as if the
alligator had the whole of the joke to himself, but further as if it
had been conceived and executed at Mr. Boffin’s expense.

“That's a treacherous fellow,” said Mr. Boffin, dusting his arms
and legs as he came forth, the alligator having been but musty com-
pany. “ That's a dreadful fellow.”

“The alligator, sir?” said Venus.

“No, Venus, no. The Serpent.”

“You'll have the goodness to notice, Mr. Boffin,” remarked Venus,
“that I said nothing to him about my going out of the affair alto-
gether, because I didn’t wish to take you anyways by surprise. But
{ can’t be too soon out of it for my satisfaction, Mr. Boffin, and-I now
put it to you when it will suit your views for me to retire ?”

‘Thank’ee, Venus, thank’ee, Venus ; but I don’t know what to say,”
returned Mr. Boffin, “I don’t know what todo. He'll drop down on
me any way. He seems fully determined to drop down; don’t he?”

Mr. Venus opined that such was clearly his intention.

“You might be a sort of protection for me, if you remained in it,”
said Mr. Boffin: “you might stand betwixt him and me, and take
the edge off him. © Don’t you feel as if you could make a show of
remaining in it, Venus, till I had time to turn myself round ?”

Venus naturally inquired how long Mr. Boftin thought it might
take him to turn himself round ?

“Tam sure I don’t know,” was the answer, given quite at a Joss.
“ Everything is so at sixes and sevens, If 1 had never come into
the property, I shouldn’t have minded. But being in it, it would be
very trying to be turned out; now, don’t you acknowledge that it
would, Venus ?” i

Mr. Venus. preferred, he said, to leave Mr. Boffin to arrive at his
own conclusions on that delicate question.

“ Tam sure I don’t know what to do,” said Mr. Boffin. “If Lask
advice of any one else, it’s only letting in another person to be bought
out, and then I shall be ruined that way, and might as well have
Siven up the property and gone slap to the workhouse. If I was
to take advice of my young man, Rokesmith, I should have to buy
ham out. Sooner or later, of course, he’d drop down upon me, like
Wegg. Iwas brought into the world to be dropped down upon, it
appears to me.” \

_ Mr. Venus listened to these lamentations in silence, while Mr. Boffin
jogged to and fro, holding his pockets as if he had a pain in them.
__“ After all, you haven’t said what you mean to do yourself, Venus.
When you do go out of it, how do you mean to go?”

Venus replied that as Wegg had found the document and handed

Pa)

 

 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
   
   
 
  
 
  
   

   

  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 127

it to him, it was his intention to hand it back to Wegg, with the
declaration that he himself would have nothing to say to it, or do
with it, and that Wegg must act as he chose, and take the conse-
quences.

«“ And then he drops down with his whole weight upon me!” cried
Mr. Boffin, ruefully. “Td sooner be dropped upon by you than by
him, or even by you jintly, than by him alone!”

Mr. Venus could only repeat that it was his fixed intention to
betake himself to the paths of science, and to walk in the same all
the days of his life; not dropping down upon his fellow-creatures
until they were deceased, and then only to articulate them to the
best of his humble ability.

“How long could you be persuaded to keep up the appearance of
remaining in it?” asked Mr. Boffin, retiring on his other idea.
“Could you be got to do so, till the Mounds are gone ?”

No. ‘That would protract the mental uneasiness of Mr. Venus too
long, he said.

“Not if L was to show you reason now ?” demanded Mr. Boffin ; “ not
if I was to show you good and sufficient reason ?”

If by good and sufficient reason Mr. Boffin meant honest and wn-
impeachable reason, that might weigh with Mr. Venus against his
personal wishes and convenience. But he must add that he saw no
opening to the possibility of such reason being shown him.

« Come and see me, Venus,” said Mr. Boffin, “at my house.”

«Tg the reason there, sir?” asked Mr. Venus, with an incredulous
smile and blink.

“It may be, or may not be,” said Mr. Boffin, “just as you view it.

3ut in the meantime don’t go out of the matter. Look here. Do

this. Give me your word that you won't take any steps with W:
without my knowledge, just as I have given you my word that I
won’t without yours.”

“Done, Mr. Boffin!” saidVenus, after brief consideration.

“ Thank’ee, Venus, thank’ee, Venus! Done!”

“ When shall I come to see you, Mr. Boffin.”

“When you like. The sooner the better. I must be going now.
Good-night, Venus.”

“Good-night, sir.”

“And goodnight to the rest of the present company,” said Mr.
Boffin, glancing round the shop. “ They make a queer show, Venus,
and I should like to be better acquainted with them some day.
Good-night, Venus, good-night ! Thankee, Venus, thankee, Venus!”
With that he jogged out into the street, and jogged upon his home-
ward way.

“Now, I wonder,” he meditated as he went along, nursing his
stick, “whether it can be, that Venus is setting himself to get the
better of Wegg? Whether it can be, that he means, when I have
bought Weg out, to have me all to himself and to pick me clean to
the bones!”

Tt was a cunning and suspicious idea, quite in the way of his school
of Misers, and he looked very cunning and suspicious as he went
jogging through the streets. More than once or twice, more than

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

128 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

twice or thrice, say half a dozen times, he took his stick from the
arm on which he nursed it, and hit a straight sharp rap at the air
with its head. Possibly the wooden countenance of Mr. Silas Wege
was Incorporeally before him at those moments, for he hit with intense
satisfaction.

He was within a few streets of his own house, when a little private
carriage, coming in the contrary direction, passed him, turned round,
and passed him again. It was a little carriage of eccentric movement,
for again he heard it stop behind him and turn round, and again he
saw it pass him. Then it stopped, and then went on, out of sight.
But, not far out of sight, for, when he came to the corner of his own
street, there it stood again.

There was a lady’s face at the window as he came up with this
carriage, and he was passing it when the lady softly called to him by
his name.

“I beg your pardon, Ma’am?” said Mr. Boffin, coming to a stop.

“Tt is Mrs. Lammle,” said the lady.

Mr. Boffin went up to the window, and hoped Mrs. Lammle was
well.

“Not very well, dear Mr. Boffin ; I have fluttered myself by being—
perhaps foolishly—uneasy and anxious. I have been waiting for you
some time. Can I speak to you ?”

Mr. Boffin proposed that Mrs. Lammle should drive on to his house,
a few hundred: yards further.

“JT would, rather not, Mr. Boffin, unless you particularly wish it.
I feel the difficulty and delicacy of the matter so much that I would
rather avoid speaking to you at your own home. You must think
this very strange ?”

Mr. Boffin said no, but meant yes.

“It is because I am so grateful for the good opinion of all my
friends, and am so touched by it, that I cannot bear to run the risk
of forfeiting it in any case, even in the cause of duty. I have asked
my husband. (my dear Alfred, Mr. Boffin) whether it ¢s the cause of
duty, and he has most emphatically said Yes. I wish I had asked
him sooner. It would have spared me much distress.”

(“Can this be more dropping down upon me!” thought Mr. Boffin,
quite bewildered.)

“It was Alfred who sent me to you, Mr. Boffin. Alfred said,
‘Don’t come back, Sophronia, until you have seen Mr. Boffin, and
told him all. Whatever he may think of it, he ought certainly to
know it.’ Would you mind coming into the carriage ?”

Mr. Boffin answered, “Not at all,” and took his seat at Mrs.
Lammle’s side.

“ Drive slowly anywhere,” Mrs. Lammle called to her coachman,
“and don’t let the carriage rattle.”

“Tt must be more dropping down, I think,” said Mr. Boffin to him-
self. “What next ?”

  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
     

 

     
  
  
   
  
    
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

CHAPTER XY.
THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN AT HIS WORST.

Tue breakfast table at Mr. Boffin’s was usually a very pleasant
one, and was always presided over by Bella. As though he began each
new day in his healthy natural character, and some waking hours were
necessary to his relapse into the corrupting influences of his wealth,
the face and the demeanour of the Golden Dustman were generally
unclouded at that meal. It would have been easy to believe then,
that there was no change in him. It was as the day went on that
the clouds gathered, and the brightness of the morning became
obscured. One might have said that the shadows of avarice and
distrust lengthened as his own shadow lengthened, and that the night
closed around him gradually.

But, one morning long afterwards to be remembered, it was black
midnight with the Golden Dustman when he first appeared. His
altered character had never been so grossly marked. His bearing
towards his Secretary was so charged with insolent distrust and
arrogance, that the latter rose and left the table before breakfast was
half done. The look he directed at the Secretary’s retiring figure
was so cunningly malignant, that Bella would have sat astounded
and indignant, even though he had not gone the length of secretly
threatening Rokesmith with his clenched fist as he closed the door.
This unlucky morning, of all mornings in the year, was the morning
next after Mr. Boffin’s interview with Mrs. Lammle in her little
carriage.

Bella looked to Mrs. Boftin’s face for comment on, or explanation
of, this stormy humour in her husband, but none was there. An
anxious and a distressed observation of her own face was all she
could read in it. When they were left alone together—which was not
until noon, for Mr. Boftin sat long in his easy-chair, by turns jovging
up and down the breakfast-room, clenching his fist and muttering—
Bella, in consternation, asked her what had happened, what was
wrong? “I am forbidden to speak to you about it, Bella dear;
I mustn’t tell you,” was all the answer she could get. And still,

whenever, in her wonder and dismay, she ‘raised her eyes to

Mrs. Poffin’s face, she saw in it the same anxious and distressed
observation of her own.

Oppressed by her sense that trouble was impending, and lost in
speculations why Mrs. Boffin should look at her as if she had any part
in it, Bella found the day long and dreary. It was far on in the
afternoon when, she being in her own room, a servant brought her a
message from Mr. Boffin begging her to come to his.

Mrs. Boffin was there, seated on a sofa, and Mr. Boffin was jogeine
up and down. On seeing Bella he stopped, beckoned her to him,
and drew her arm through his. ‘“ Don’t be alarmed, my dear,” he
said, gently; “I am not angry with you. Why you actually
tremble! Don’t be alarmed, Bella my dear. 1’ll see you righted.”
VOL. II.

ik

  

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130 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“See me righted?” thought Bella. And then repeated aloud in a
tone of astonishment: ‘see me righted, sir?”

“Ay, ay!” said Mr. Boffin, “See you righted. Send Mr. Roke-
smith here, you sir.”

Bella would have been lost in perplexity if there had been pause
enough ; but the servant found Mr. Rokesmith near at hand, and he
almost immediately presented himself.

“Shut the door, sir!” said Mr. Boffin. ‘I have got something to
say to you which I fancy you'll not be pleased to hear.”

“JT am sorry to reply, Mr. Boffin,” returned the Secretary, as,
having closed the door, he turned and faced him, “ that I think that
very likely.”

“What do you mean?” blustered Mr. Boffin.

“JT mean that it has become no novelty to me to hear from your
lips what I would rather not hear.”

“Oh! Perhaps we shall change that,” said Mr. Boffin with a
threatening roll of his head.

“T hope so,” returned the Secretary. He was quiet and respect-
ful; but stood, as Bella thought (and was glad to think), on his
manhood too.

“Now, sit,’ said Mr. Boffin, “look at this young lady on my
arm.”

Bella involuntarily raising her eyes, when this sudden reference
was made to herself, met those of Mr. Rokesmith. He was pale and
seemed agitated. ‘Then her eyes passed on to Mrs. Boffin’s, and she
met the look again. Jn a flash it enlightened her, and she began to
understand what she had done.

“T say to you, sir,” Mr. Boffin repeated, “look at this young lady
on my arm.”

“1 do so,” returned the Secretary.

As his glance rested again on Bella for a moment, she thought
there was reproach in it. But it is possible that the reproach was
within herself.

“How dare you, sir,” said Mr. Boffin, “tamper, unknown to me,
with this young lady ? How dare you come out of your station, and
your place in my house, to pester this young lady with your impudent
addresses ?”

“TI must decline to answer questions,” said the Secretary, “that
are so offensively asked.”

“You decline to answer?” retorted Mr. Boffin. “You decline to
answer, do you? Then I'll tell you what it is, Rokesmith; IU
answer for you. There are two sides to this matter, and I'll take
‘em separately. The first side is, sheer Insolence. ‘That's the first
side.”

The Secretary smiled with some bitterness, as though he would
have said, “So I see and hear.”

“it was sheer Insolence in you, I tell you,” said Mr. Boffin, “ even.
to think of this young lady. This young lady was far above you.
This young lady was no match for you. This young lady was lying
in wait (as she was qualified to do) for money, and you had no
money.” s

 

  

Senne nee SN ee

‘NVWLISOG NAGIOO AHL Ad GHuLHSIU,, VITAE

“

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 131

Bella hung her head and seemed to shrink a little from Mr. Boffin’s
protecting arm.

“What are you, I should like to know,” pursued Mr. Boffin, “ that
you were to have the aud: icity to follow up this young lady? This
young lady was looking about the market for a good bid; she
wasn’t in it to be sn appe dl up by fellows that had no mone Y to lay
out ; gee to buy with.”

“Oh, Boffin! Mrs. Boffin, pray say something for me!” mur-
mured aie disengaging her arm, and covering her face with her
hands.

“Old lady,” said Mr. Boffin, antic ipating his wife, “you hold
your tongue. Bella, my dear, don’t you ‘let yourself be mn out. Tl
right you.”

“ But you don’t, you don’t right me! (enciain d Bella, with great
emphasis. Vou wrong me, wrong me

“Don’t you be put out, my “dear,” complacently retorted Mr.
Boffn. “Tl bring this young man to book. Now, you Rokesmith !
You can’t decline te hear, you know, as well as to answer. You hear
me tell you that the first side of your conduct was Insolence—
Insolence and Pre esumption. Answer me one thing, if you can.
Didn’t this young lady tell you so herself”

“Did I, Mr. Rokesmith ?” asked Be lla with her face still covered.
“O say, Mr. Rokesmith! Did 1?”

“Don’t be distressed, Miss Wilfer; it matters ve ry little now.

“Ah! You can’t deny it, though!” said Mr. Boffin, with a
knowing shake of his head.

3: But I haye asked him to forgive me since,” cried Bella ; “and I
would ask him to forgive me now again, upon my knees, if it would
spare him !”

Here Mrs. Boffin broke out a-crying.

“Old lady,” said Mr. Boffin, “stop that noise! Tender-hearted in
you, Miss Bella; but I mean to have it out right through with this
young man, having got him into a corner. Now. you Rokesmith. I
tell you thé xt Ss one rade of your conduct—Insolence and Presumption.
Now, I’m a-coming to the ‘other, which is much worse. This was a
speculation of yours.”

«J indignantly deny it.”

“Tt’s of no use your denying it; it doesn’t sienify a bit whether
you deny it or not; I’ve got a head upon my shoulders, and it ain’t a
baby’s. What!” said Mr. Boffin, gathering himself together in his
most suspicious attitude, and wrinkling his face into a very map of
curves and corners. “Don’tI know what grabs are made at a man
with money? If I didn’t keep my eyes open, and my pockets but-
toned, shouldn’t I be brought to the workhouse before I knew where
I was? Wasn’t the experience of Dancer, and Elwes, and Hopkins,
and Blewbury Jones, and ever so many more of ’em, similar to mine ?
Didn’t everybody want to make grabs at what they'd got, and bring
*em to pove rt y and ruin? Weren’ t they forced to hide eve ry-
thing be longing to ’em, for fear it should be snatched from ’em? Of
course they was. I shall be told next that they didn’t Inow human

122

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132 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“They ! Poor creatures,” murmured the Secretary.

“What do you say ?” asked Mr. Boffin, snapping at him. “How-
ever, you needn’t be at the trouble of repeating it, for it ain’t worth
hearing, and won't go down with me. I’m a-going to unfold your plan,
before this young lady; I’m a-going to show this young lady the
second view of you; and nothing you can say will stave it off. (Now,
attend here, Bella, my dear.) Rokesmith, youre a needy chap,
You're a chap that I pick up in the street. Are you, or ain't you ?”

“Go on, Mr. Boffin ; don’t appeal to me.”

“Not appeal to you,” retorted Mr. Boffin as if he hadn’t done so-
“No, I should hope not! Appealing to you, would be rather a rum
course. As I was saying, you're a needy chap that I pick up in the
street. You come and ask me in the street to take you for a
Secretary, and I take you. Very good.”

“Very bad,” murmured the Secretary.

“What do you say?” asked Mr. Boftin, snapping at him again.

He returned no answer. Mr. Boffin, after eyeing him with a comi-
cal look of discomfited curiosity, was fain to begin afresh.

“This Rokesmith is a needy young man that I take for my Secre
tary out of the open street. This Rokesmith gets acquainted with
my affairs, and gets to know that I mean to settle a sum of money on
this young lady. ‘Oho!’ says this Rokesmith;” here Mr. Boffin
clapped a finger against his nose, and tapped it several times with a
sneaking air, as embodying Rokesmith confidentially confabulating
with his own nose; “ ‘This will be a good haul; Pl go in for this!’
And so this Rokesmith, greedy and hungering, begins a-creeping on
his hands and knees towards the money. Not so bad a speculation
either: for if this young lady had had less spirit, or had had less
sense, through being at all in the romantic line, by George he might
have worked it out and made it pay! But fortunately she was too
many for him, and a pretty figure he cuts now he is exposed. There
he stands!” said Mr. Boffin, addressing Rokesmith himself with.
ridiculous inconsistency. “ Look at him !”

“ Your unfortunate suspicions, Mr. Boffin——” began the Secretary

“Precious unfortunate for you, I can tell you,” said Mr. Boftin.

“are not to be combated by any one, and I address myself to no
such hopeless task. But I will say a word upon the truth.”

“Yah! Much you care about the truth,” said Mz. Boffin, with a
snap of his fingers.

“Noddy! My dear love!” expostulated his wife.

_ “Old lady,” returned Mr. Boffin, “you keep still. I say to this
Rokesmith here, much he cares about the truth. I tell him again,
much he cares about the truth.”

“ Our connexion being at an end, Mr. Boftin,” said the Secretary,
it can be of very little moment to me what you say.”

“Oh! Youare knowing enough,” retorted Mr. Boftin, witha sly look.
“to have found out that our connexion ’s at an end, eh? But you
can’t get beforehand with me. Look at this in my hand. This is
your pay, on your discharge. You can only follow suit. You can’t
deprive me of the lead. Let’s have no pretending that you discharge
yourself, I discharge you.”

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 133

“So that I go,” remarked the Secretary, waving the point aside
with his hand, “it is all one to me.”

“Tg it?” said Mr. Boffin. “But it’s two to me, let me tell you.
Allowing a fellow that’s found out, to discharge himself, is one thing ;
discharging him for insolence and presumption, and likewise for
designs upon his master’s money, is another. One and one’s two;
mot one. (Old lady, don’t you cut in. You keep still.)”

“Have you said all you wish to say to me?” demanded the Secre-
tary.
© T don’t know whether I have or not,” answered Mr. Boffin. “It
depends.”

“ Perhaps you will consider whether there are any other strong
expressions that you would like to bestow upon me ?”

“Tl consider that,’ said Mr. Boffin, obstinately, “at my con-
venience, and not at yours. You want the last word. It may not be
suitable to let you have it.”

“ Noddy! My dear, dear Noddy! You sound so hard!” cried poor
Mrs. Boffin, not to be quite repressed.

“Old lady,” said her husband, but without harshness, “if you cut
in when requested not, I'll get a pillow and carry you out of the room
upon it. What do you want to say, you Rokesmith ?”

“To you, Mr. Boffin, nothing. But to Miss Wilfer and to your
good kind wife, a word.”

“ Out with it then,” replied Mr. Boffin, “ and cut it short, for we've
had enough of you.”

“JT have borne,” said the Secretary, in a low voice, “ with my
false position here, that I might not be separated from Miss Wilfer.
‘lo be near her, has been a recompense to me from day to day,
even for the undeserved treatment I have had here, and for the
degraded aspect in which she has often seen me. Since Miss Wilfer
rejected me, I have never again urged my suit, to the best of my
belief, with a spoken syllable or a look. But L have never changed
in my devotion to her, except—if she will forgive my saying so—that
it is deeper than it was, and better founded.”

“Now, mark this chap’s saying Miss Wilfer, when he means
£ s. d.!’ cried Mr. Boffin, with a cunning wink. “Now, mark this
chap’s making Miss Wilfer stand for Pounds, Shillings, and Pence!”

“My feeling for Miss Wilfer,” pursued the Secretary, without
deigning to notice him, “is not one to beashamed of. Iavowit. I love
her. Let me go where I may when 1 presently leave this house, I
‘shall go into a plank life, leaving her.”

“Leaving £ s. d. behind me,” said Mr. Boffin, by way of commen-
tary, with another wink. ;

“'That I am incapable,” the Secretary went on, still without heeding
him, “of a mercenary project, or a mercenary thought, m connexion.
with Miss Wilfer, is nothing meritorious in me, because any prize that

I could put before my fancy would sink into insignificance beside
her. Ifthe greatest wealth or the highest rank were hers, it would only
te important in my sight as removing her still farther from me, and
making me more hopeless, if that could be. Say,” remarked the
Seeretary, looking full at his late master, “say that with a word she

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

134 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

could strip Mr. Boffin. of his fortune and take possession of it, she
would be of no greater worth in my eyes than she is.”

“ What do you think by this time, old lady,” asked Mr. Boffin, turn-
ing to his wife in a bantering tone, “ about this Rokesmith here, and
his caring for the truth? You needn’t say what you think, my dear,
because I don’t want you to cut in, but you can think it all the same.
As to taking possession of my property, I warrant you he wouldn't
do that himself if he could.”

“No,” returned the Secretary, with another full look.

“ Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Boffin,
“un while you are about it.”

“J have been for a moment,”

 

“‘There’s nothing like a good

said the Secretary, turing from him
and falling into his former manner, “diverted from the little I have
to say. My interest in Miss Wilfer began when I first saw her;
even began when I had only heard of her. It was, in fact, the cause
of my throwing myself in Mr. Boffin’s way, and entering his service.
Miss Wilfer has never known this until now. I mention it now, only
as a corroboration (though I hope it may be needless) of my being free
from the sordid design attributed to me.”

“ Now, this is a very artful dog,” said Ma. Boffin, with a deep look.
“This is a longer-headed schemer than I thought him. See how
patiently and methodically he goes to work. He gets to know about
me and my property, and about this young lady, and her share in
poor young John’s story, and he puts this and that together, and he
says to himself, ‘Tl get in with Boffin, and Pll get in with this
young lady, and Ill work ’em both at the same time, and Tl bring
my pigs to market somewhere. I hear him say it, bless you! Why,

I look at him, now, and I see him say it!”

Mr. Boffin pointed at the culprit, as it were in the act, and hugged
himself in his great penetration.

“But luckily he hadn’t to deal with the people ke supposed, Bella,
my dear!” said Mr. Boffin. “No! Luckily he had to deal with you,
and with me, and with Daniel and Miss Dancer, and with Elwes,
and with Vulture Hopkins, and with Blewbury Jones and all the
rest of us, one down ¢/other come on. And he’s beat: that’s what he
is; regularly beat. He thought to squeeze money out of us, and he
has done for himself instead, Bella my dear !”

Bella my dear made no re

 

 

sponse, gave no sign of acquiescence.
When she had first covered her face she had sunk upon a chair with
her hands resting on the back of it, and had never moved since.
There was a short silence at this point, and Mrs. Boffin softly rose as
if to go to her. But, Mr. Boffin stopped her with a gesture, and she
obediently sat down again and stayed where she was.
and There’s your pay, Mister Rokesmith,” said the
jerking the folded scrap of paper he had in his hand, towards his late
Secretary. “TI dare Say you can stoop to pick it up, after what you
have stooped to here.”
OIL have stooped to nothing but this,
took it from the ground; “and this is mine, for I have earned it by
the hardest of hard labour.”

“You're a pretty quick packer, I hope,” said Mr. Boffin ; “ because

Golden Dustman,

” Rokesmith answered as he

  
 
  
   
  
  
   
 
   
 
   
  
 
 
  
   
   
  
 
  
 
  
    
     
   
  
  
    
  
 
 
   
  
  
  
   
 
  
  
 
   
   
  
  
    

  
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
       

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 135

vge, the better for all

?

   

the sooner you are gone, bag and he
parties.”

“You need have no fear of my lingering.”

“There’s just one thing though,” said Mr. Boffin, “ that I should
like to ask you before we come toa good riddance, if it was only to
show this young lady how conceited you schemers are, In thinking
that nobody finds out how you contradict yourselves.”

“Ask me anything you wish to ask,” returned Rokesmith, “ but
use the expedition that you recommend.”

“You pretend to have a mighty admiration for this young lady ?”
said Mr. Boffin, laying his hand protectingly on Bella’s head without
looking down at her.

“T do not pretend.”

“Oh! Well. You have a mighty admiration for this your
since you are so particular ?”

“FY egy?

“How do you reconcile that, with this young lady’s being a
weak-spirited, improvident idiot, not knowing what was due to her-
self, flinging up her money to the church-weathexrcocks, and racing off
at a splitting pace for the workhouse ?”

“JT don’t understand you.”

“Don’t you? Or wont you? What else “could you have made
f she had listened to such addresses as

 

 

 

 

this young lady out to be, 1
yours ?”

“What else, if I had been so happy as to win her affections and
possess her heart ?”

«“ Win her affections.” retorted Mr. Boffin, with ineffable contempt,
“and possess her heart! Mew says the cat, Quack-quack says the
duck, Bow-wow-wow says the dog! Win her affections and possess
her heart! Mew, Quack-quack, Bow-wow !”

John Rokesmith stared at him in his outbur
faint idea that he had gone mad.

“ What is due to this young lady,” said Mr. Boffin, “is Money, and
this young lady right well knows ates

“You slander the young lady.”

“ You slander the young lady; you with your affections and
hearts and trumpery,” returned Mr. Boffin. “It’s of a piece with the
rest of your behaviour. I heard of these doings of yours only last
night, or you should have heard of ’em from me, sooner, take your
oath of it. I heard of ’em from a lady with as good a headpiece as
the best,and she knows this young lady, and J know this young lady,
and we all three know that it’s Money she makes a stand for—money,
money, money—and that you and your affections and hearts are a
Lie, sir!”

“Mrs. Boffin,” said Rokesmith, quietly turning to her, “ for your
delicate and unvarying kindness I thank you with the warmest grati-
tude. Good-bye! Miss Wilfer, good-bye !”

“And now, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin, laying lis hand on Bella’s
head again, “ you may begin to make yourself quite comfortable, and.
T hope you feel that you've been righted.”

But, Bella was so far trom appearing to feel it, that she shrank from

as if with some

 

  

RT ee ee ee

die Nadia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

136 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

his hand and from the chair, and, starting up in an incoherent passion
of tears, and stretching out her arms, cried, “O Mr. Rokesmith, before
you go, if you could but make me poor again! O! Make me poor again,
Somebody, I beg and pray, or my heart will break if this goes on! Pa,
dear, make me poor again and take me home! I was bad enough
there, but I have been so much worse here. Don’t give me money,
Mr. Boftin, I won't have money. Keep it away from me, and only let
me speak to good little Pa, and lay my head upon his shoulder, and
tell him all my griefs. Nobody else can understand me, nobody else can
comfort me, nobody else knows how unworthy I am, and yet can love
me like a little child. I am better with Pa than any one—more
innocent, more sorry, more glad!” So, erying out in a wild way that
she could not bear this, Bella drooped her head on Mrs. Boffin’s ready
breast.

John Rokesmith from his place in the room, and Mr. Boffin from
his, looked on at her in silence until she was silent herself. Then
Mr. Boftin observed in a soothing and comfortable tone, “There, my
dear, there ; you are righted now, and it’s all right. I don’t wonder,
I'm sure, at your being a little flurried by having a scene with this
fellow, but it’s all over, my dear, and you're righted, and it’s—and
it’s all right!” Which Mr. Boffin repeated with a highly satisfied air
of completeness and finality.

“J hate you!” cried Bella, turning suddenly upon him, witha stamp
of her little foot—*at least, I can’t hate you, but I don’t like you!”

“ Hur—to!” exclaimed Mr. Boffin in an amazed under-tone.

“You're a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old creature!”
cried Bella. “Jam angry with my ungrateful self for calling you
names ; but you are, you are; you know you are!”

Mr. Boffin stared here, and st :
must be in some sort of fit.

“T have heard you with shame,” said Bella. “With shame for
myself, and with shame for you. You ought to be above the base tale-
bearing of a time-serving woman; but you are above nothing now.”

Mr. Boffin, seeming to become convinced that this was a fit, rolled
his eyes and loosened his neckeloth.

“When I came here, I respected you and honored you, and I soon
loved you,” cried Bella. «And now I can’t bear the sight of you.
At least, I don’t know that I ought to go so far as that—only you're
a—yow're a Monster!” Having shot this bolt out with a great expen-
diture of force, Bella hysterically laughed and cried together.

“The best wish I can wish you is,” said Bella, returning to the
charge, “that you had not one single farthing in the world. If any
true friend and well-wisher could make you a bankrupt, you would be
a Duck; but as a man of property you are a Demon!”

After despatching this second bolt with
of force, Bella langhed and cried still more.

“ Mr. Rokesmith, pray stay one moment. Pray hear one word
from me before you go! Tam deeply sorry for the reproaches you
have borne on my account. Out of the depths of my heart I earnestly
and truly beg your pardon.” 3

As she stepped towards him, he met her.

ared there, as misdoubting that he

 

a still greater expenditure

As she gave him her

  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
   
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
   
  
 
    

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
   
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
      

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 137

hand, he put it to his lips, and said, “God bless you!” No laughing
was mixed with Bella’s crying then; her tears were pure and
fervent.

“There is not an ungenerous word that I have heard addressed to
you—heard with scorn and indignation, Mr. Rokesmith—but it has
wounded me far more than you, for I have deserved it, and you never
have. Mr. Rokesmith, it is tome you owe this perverted account of
what passed between us that night. I parted with the secret, even
while | was angry with myself for doing so. It was very bad in me,
but indecd it was not wicked. I didit ina moment of conceit and folly
—one of my many such moments—one of my many such hours—years.
As I am punished for it severely, try to forgive it!”

“T do with all my soul.”

“Thank you. O thank you! Don’t part from me till I have said
one other word, to do you justice. The only fault you can be truly
charged with, in having spoken to me as you did that night—with
how much delicacy and how much forbearance no one but I can know
or be grateful to you for—is, that you laid yourself open to be slighted
by a worldly shallow girl whose head was turned, and who was
quite unable to rise to the worth of what you offered her. Mr.
Rokesmith, that girl has often seen herself in a pitiful and poor hght
since, but never in so pitiful and poor a light as now, when the
mean tone in which she answered you—sordid and vain girl that she
was—has been echoed in her ears by Mr. Boffin.”

He kissed her hand again.

“Mr. Boffin’s speeches were detestable to me, shocking to me,” said
Bella, startling that gentleman with another stamp of her little foot.
“It is quite true that there was a time, and very lately, when I
deserved to be so ‘righted, Mr. Rokesmith ; but I hope that I shall
never deserve it again !”

He once more put her hand to his lips, and then relinquished it,
and left the room. Bella was hurrying back to the chair in which
she had hidden her face so long, when, catching sight of Mrs. Boffin
by the way, she stopped at her. “He is gone,” sobbed Bella indig-
nantly, despairingly, in fifty ways at once, with her arms round Mrs.

30ffin’s neck. “He has been most shamefully abused, and most
unjustly and most basely driven away, and I am the cause of it!”

‘All this time, Mr. Boffin had been rolling his eyes over his loosened
neckerchief, as if his fit were still upon him. Appearing now to
think that he was coming to, he stared straight before him for a
while, tied his neckerchief again, took several long inspirations,
swallowed several times, and ultimately exclaimed with a deep sigh,
as if he felt himself on the whole better: * Well!”

No word, good or bad, did Mrs. Boffin say ; put she tenderly took
care of Bella, and glanced at her husband as if for orders. Mr. Boffin,
‘without imparting any, took his seat on a chair over against them,

ard, with a fixed countenance, his legs

and there sat leaning forw:
apart, a hand on each knee, and his elbows squared, until Bella

should dry her eyes and raise her head, which in the fulness of time

 

she did.
“T must go home,” said Bella, rising hurriedly. “JT am very

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

13 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

grateful to you for all you have done for me, but I can’t stay
here.”

“ My darling girl!” remonstrated Mrs. Boffin.

“No, I can’t stay here,” said Bella; “I can’t indeed.—Ugh! you
vicious old thing!” (This to Mr. Boffin.)

“Don’t be rash, my love,” urged Mrs. Boffin. “Think well of
what you do.”

“Yes, you had better think well,” said Mr. Boffin.

“T shall never more think well of you,” cried Bella, cutting him
short, with intense defiance in her expressive little eyebrows, and
championship of the late Secretary in every dimple. “No! Never
again! Your money has changed you to marble. You are a hard-
hearted Miser. You are worse than Dancer, worse than Hopkins, worse
than Blackberry Jones, worse than any of the wretches. And more!”
proceeded Bella, breaking into tears again, “you were wholly unde-
serving of the Gentleman you have lost .”

“Why, you don’t mean to say, Miss Bella,” the Golden Dustman
slowly remonstrated, ‘that you set up Rokesmith against me ?”

“Ido!” said Bella. “He is worth a Million of you.”

Very pretty she looked, though very angry, as she made herself as
tall as she possibly could (which was not extremely tall), and utterly
renounced her patron with a lofty toss of her rich brown head.

“I would rather he thought well of me,” said Bella, « though he
swept the street for bread, than that you did, though you splashed the
mud upon him from the wheels of a chariot of pure gold.— There!”

“Well I’m sure!” cried Mr. Boffin, staring.

“And for a long time past, when you have thought you set yourself
above him, I have only seen you under his feet,” said Bella— There!
And throughout I saw in him the master, and I saw in you the man
—There! And when you used him shamefully, I took his part and
loved him—There! I boast of it!”

After which strong avowal Bella underwent reaction, and cried to
any extent, with her face on the back of her chair,

“Now, look here,” said Mr. Boffin, as soon as he could find an
opening for breaking the silence and striking in. “Give me your
attention, Bella. Iam not angry.”

“Tam!” said Bella.

“I say,” resumed the Golden Dustman, “I am not angry, and I
mean kindly to you, and I want to overlook this. So youll stay
where you are, and we'll agree to say no more about it.”

“No, I can’t stay here,” cried Bella, rising hurriedly again; “I can’t
think of staying here. I must go home for good.”

“Now, don’t be silly,” Mr. Boffin reasoned. “Don’t do what you
can’t undo ; don’t do what you're sure to be sorry for.”

“T shall never be sorry for it,” said Bella: “and I should always be
sorry, and should every minute of my life despise myself, if I remained
here after what has happened.”

“At least, Bella,’
about it.

 

argued Mr. Boffin, “let there be no mistake
Look before you leap, you know. Stay where you are, and
all’s well, and all’s as it was to be. Go away, and you can never
come back.” ’ .

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
   
     
  
 
 
 
    
   
     
 
       

     
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 189

“T know that I can never come back, and that’s what I mean,”
said Bella.

“You mustn’t expect,” Mr. Boffin pursued, “that ’m a-going to
settle money on you, if you leave us like this, because Iam not. No,
Bella! Be careful! Not one brass farthing.”

“Hxpect!” said Bella, haughtily. “Do you think that any power
on earth could make me take it, if you did, sir ?”

But there was Mrs. Boffin to part from, and, in the full flush of her
dignity, the impressible little soul collapsed again. Down upon her
knees before that good woman, she rocked herself upon her breast,
and cried, and sobbed, and folded her in her arms with all her
might.

“You're a dear, a dear, the best of dears!” cried Bella. ‘“ You're
the best of human creatures. Ican never be thankful enough to you,
and can never forget you. If I should live to be blind and deaf, I
know I shall see and hear you, in my fancy, to the last of my dim
old days!”

Mrs. Boffin wept most heartily, and embraced her with all fond-
ness; but said not one single word except that she was her dear girl.
She said that often enough, to be sure, for she said it over and over
again; but not one word else.

Bella broke from her at length, and was goine weeping out of the
room, when in her own little queer affectionate way, she half relented
towards Mr. Boffin.

“JT am very glad,” sobbed Bella, “that I called you names, ‘sir,
because you richly deserved it. But I am very sorry that I called
you names, because you used to be so different. Say good-bye !”

“Good-bye,” said Mr. Boffin, shortly.

“Tf I knew which of your hands was the least spoilt, I would ask
you to let me touch it,” said Bella, “for the last time. But not
because I repent of what I have said to you. For I don't. It’s
true!”

«Try the left hand,” said Mr. Boffin, holding it out in a stolid
manner ; “it’s the least used.”

“You have been wonderfully good and kind to me,” said Bella,
“ond I kiss it for that. You haye been as bad as bad could be to
Mr. Rokesmith, and I throw it away for that. Thank you for
myself, and good-bye !”

“ Good-bye,” said Mr. Boffin as before.

Bella caught him round the neck and kissed him, and ran out for
eyer.

She ran up-stairs, and sat down on the floor in her own room, and
cried abundantly. But the day was declining and she had no time
to lose. She opened all the places where she kept her dresses ;

selected only those she had brought with her, leaving all the rest;
and madea great misshapen bundle of them, to be sent for afterwards.

“T won't take one of the others,” said Bella, tying the knots of the
bundle very tight, in the severity of her resolution. “II leave all
the presents behind, and begin again entirely on my own account.”
That the resolution might be thoroughly carried into practice, she
even changed the dress she wore, for that in which she had come to

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

140 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

the grand mansion. Even the bonnet she put on, was the bonnet
that had mounted into the Boffin chariot at Holloway.

“Now, I am complete,” said Bella. “It’s a little trying, but I have
steeped my eyes in cold water, and I won’t cry any more. You have
been a pleasant room to me, dear room. Adieu! We shall never sec
each other again.”

With a parting kiss of her fingers to it, she softly closed the door,
and went with a light foot down the great staircase, pausing and
listening as she went, that she might mect none of the household.
No one chanced to be about, and she got down to the hall in quiet.
The door of the late Secretary’s room stood open. She peeped in as
she passed, and divined from the emptiness of his table, and the
general appearance of things, that he was already gone. Softly
opening the great hall door, and softly closing it upon herself, she
turned and kissed it on the outside—insensible old combination of
‘wood and iron that it was!—before she ran away from the house at
a swift pace.

“That was well done!” panted Bella, slackening in the next street,
and subsiding into a walk. “If I had left myself any breath to cry
with, I should have cried again. Now poor dear darling little Pa,
you are going to see your lovely woman unexpectedly.”

CHAPTER XVI.
THE FEAST OF THE THREE HOBGOBLINS.

Tue City looked unpromising enough, as Bella made her way
along its gritty streets. Most of its money-mills were slackening
sail, or had left off grinding for the day. The master-millers had
already departed, and the journeymen were departing. ‘UVhere was
a jaded aspect on the business lanes and courts, and the very paye-
ments had a weary appearance, confused by the tread of a million of
feet. There must be hours of night to temper down the day’s dis-
traction of so feverish a place. As yet the worry of the newly-stopped
whirling and grinding on the part of the money-mills seemed to
linger in the air, and the quiet was more like the prostration of a
spent giant than the repose of one who was renewing his strength.

If Bella thought, as she glanced at the mighty Bank, how agree-
able it would be to have an hour’s gardening there, with a bright
copper shovel, among the money, still she was not in an avaricious
‘vein. Much improved in that respect, and with certain half-formed
mages which had little gold in their composition, dancing before
her bright eyes, she arrived in the drug-flavoured region of Mincing
Lane, with! the sensation of having just opened a drawer in a che-
mist’s shop. ;

The counting-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles was
pointed out by an elderly female accustomed to the care of offices,
who dropped upon Bella out of a public-house, wiping her mouth,
and accounted for its humidity on natural principles well known to
the physical sciences, by explaining that she had looked in at the

      
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
     
  
  
 
 
   
   
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
   
 
    

   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 141

door to see what o’clock it was. The counting-house was a wall-
eyed ground floor by a dark gateway, and Bella was considering, as
she approached it, could there be any precedent in the City for her
going in and asking for R. Wilfer, when whom should she see, sitting
at one of the windows with the plate-glass sash raised, but R. Wilfer
himself, preparing to take a slight refection !

On approaching nearer, Bella discerned that the refection had the
appearance of a small cottage-loaf and a pennyworth of milk. Simul-
taneously with this discovery on her part, her father discovered her,
and invoked the echoes of Mincing Lane to exclaim “ My gracious
me!”

He then came cherubically flying out without a hat, and embraced
her, and handed her in. “or it’s after hours and Iam all alone, my
dear,” he explained, “and am having—as I sometimes do when they
are all gone—a quiet tea.”

Looking round the office, as if her father were a captive and this
his cell, Bella hugged him and choked him to her heart’s content.

“JT never was so surprised, my dear!” said her father. ‘TI couldn't
believe my eyes. Upon my life, I thought they had taken to lying!
The idea of your coming down the Lane yourself! Why didn’t you
send the footman down the Lane, my dear?”

“JT have brought no footman with me, Pa.”

“Qh indeed! But you have brought the elegant turn-out, my love ?”

No, Pa.”

“ You never can have walked, my dear?”

“ Yes, I have, Pa.”

He looked so very much astonished, that Bella could not make up
her mind to break it to him just yet.

“The consequence is, Pa, that your lovely woman feels a little
faint, and would very much like to share your tea.”

The cottage loaf and the pennyworth of milk had been set forth on
a sheet of paper on the window-seat. ‘The cherubic pocket-knife,
with the first bit of the loaf still on its point, lay beside them where

it had been hastily thrown down. Bella took the bit off, and put it
in her mouth. “My dear child,” said her father, “the idea of your
partaking of such lowly fare! But at least you must have your own
loaf and your own penn’orth, One moment, my dear. The Dairy
is just over the way and round the corner.”

Regardless of Bella’s dissuasions he ran out, and quickly returned
with the new supply. “My dear child,” he said, as he spread it on
another piece of paper before her, “the idea of a splendid !” and
then looked at her figure, and stopped short.

«“ What's the matter, Pa?”

“__of a splendid female,” he resumed more slowly, “ putting up
with such accommodation as the present !—Is that a new dress you
have on, my dear?”

“No, Pa, an old one. Don’t you remember it?”

“Why, I thought I remembered it, my dear !”

‘You should, for you bought it, Pa.”

Yes, I thought I bought it my dear !” said the cherub, giving him-

self a little shake, as if to rouse his faculties.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

142 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ And have you grown so fickle that you don’t like your own taste,
Pa dear ?”

“Well, my love,” he returned, swallowing a bit of the cottage loaf
with considerable effort, for it seemed to stick by the way: “E
should have thought it was hardly sufficiently splendid for existing
circumstances.”

“ And so, Pa,” said Bella, moving coaxingly to his side instead of
remaining opposite, “you sometimes. have a quiet tea here all alone?
J am not in the tea’s way, if I draw my arm over your shoulder like
this, Pa ?”’

“Yes, my dear, and no, my dear. Yes to the first question, and
Certainly Not to the second. Respecting the quict tea, my dear,
why you see the occupations of the day are sometimes a little
wearing; and if there's nothing interposed between the day and
your mother, why she is sometimes a little wearing, too.”

? Dimnowl Par’

“Yes, my dear. So sometimes I put a quiet tea at the window
here, with a little quiet contemplation of the Lane (which comes
soothing), between the day, and domestic ——”

“ Bliss,” sugested Bella, sorrowfully.

“And domestic Bliss,” said her father, quite contented to accept
the phrase.

Bella kissed him. “And it ig in this dark dingy place of cap-
tivity, poor dear, that you pass all the hours of your life when you
are not at home ?”

“Not at home, or not on the road there, or on the road here, my
love. Yes. You see that little desk in the corner?”

“In the dark corner, furthest both from the light and from the
fireplace? . The shabbiest desk of all the desks?”

“ Now, does it really strike you in that point of view, my dear ?”
said her father, surveying it artistically with his head on one side:
“that’s mine. That’s called Rumty’s Perch.” ~
“Whose Perch?” asked Bella with great indignation.

“Rumty’s. You see, being rather high and up two steps they call
it a Perch. And they call me Rumty.”

“How dare they!” exclaimed Bella:

“They're playful, Bella my dear; they're playful. 'They’re more
or less younger than I am, and theyre playful. What does it
matter? It might be Surly, or Sulky, or fifty disagreeable things
that I really shouldn't like to be considered. But Rumty! Lor,
why not Rumty ?”

Vo inflict a heavy disappointment on this sweet nature, which
had been, through all her caprices, the object of her recognition,
love, and admiration from infancy, Bella felt to be the hardest task
of her hard day. “I should have done better.” she thought, “to tell
him at first; I should have done better to tell him just now, when
he had some slight miseiving; he is quite happy again, and I shall
make him wretched.”

He was falling back on his loaf and milk, with the pleasantest
composure, and Bella stealing her arm a little closer about him, and
at the same time sticking up his hair with an irresistible propensity

 

 

pas

 

     
  
  
   
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
   
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
   
     

  
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 143

to play with him founded on the habit of her whole life, had pre-
pared herself to say: ‘Pa dear, don’t be cast down, but I must tell
you something disagreeable!” when he interrupted her in an unlooked-
for manner.

“My gracious me!” he exclaimed, invoking the Mincing Lane
echoes as before. “This is very extraordinary !|”

“ What is, Pa?”

“ Why here’s Mr. Rokesmith now!”

“No, no, Pa, no,” cried Bella, greatly flurried. “Surely not.”

“Yes there is! Look here!” i

Sooth to say, Mr. Rokesmith not only passed the window, but
came into the counting-house. And not only came into the
counting-house, but, finding himself alone there with Bella and
her father, rushed at Bella and caught her in his arms, with
the rapturous words “My dear, dear girl; my gallant, generous,
disinterested, courageous, noble girl!” And not only that even,
(which one might have thought astonishment enough for one dose),
but Bella, after hanging her head for a moment, lifted it up and laid
it on his breast, as if that-were her head’s chosen and lasting resting-
place !

“T knew you would come to him, and I followed you,” said Roke-
smith. “My love, my life! You ARE mine?”

To which Bella responded, “ Yes, 1 am yours if you thmk
me worth taking!” And after that, seemed to shrink to next to
nothing in the clasp of his arms, partly because it was such a strong
one on his part, and partly because there was such a yielding to it
on hers.

The cherub, whose hair would have done for itself, under the
influence of this amazing spectacle, what Bella had just now done
for it, staggered back into the window-seat from which he had risen,
and surveyed the pair with his eyes dilated to their utmost.

“But we must think of dear Pa,” said Bella; “I haven't told dear
Pa; let us speak to Pa.” Upon which they turned to do so.

“J wish first, my dear,” remarked the cherub faintly, “that you'd.
have the kindness to sprinkle me with a little milk, for I feel as if £
was—Going.”

In fact, the good little fellow had become alarmingly limp, and
his senses seemed to be rapidly escaping, from the knees upward.
Bella sprinkled him with kisses instead of milk, but gave him a little
of that article to drink; and he gradually revived under her caressing
care.

“We'll break it to you gently, dearest Pa,” said Bella.

“My dear,” returned the cherub, looking at them both, “you broke
so much in the first—Gush, if I may so express myself—that I think
I am equal to a good large breakage now.”

“Mr. Wilfer,” said John Rokesmith, excitedly and joyfully, “ Bella
takes me, though I have no fortune, even no present occupation ;
nothing but what I can get in the life before us. Bella takes me!”

“Yes, I should rather have inferred, my dear sir,” returned the
cherub feebly, “that Bella took you, from what I have within these
few minutes remarked.”

 

ve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

144 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“You don’t know, Pa,” said Bella, ‘ how ill I have used him!”

“You don’t know, sir,” said Rokesmith, “what a heart she
has!”

“You don’t know, Pa,” said Bella, “ what a shocking creature I was
growing, when he saved me from myself!”

“You don’t know, sir,” said Rokesmith, ‘what a sacrifice she has
made for me!”

“My dear Bella,” replied the cherub, still pathetically scared,
“and my dear John Rokesmith, if you will allow me so to call

you——”

“Yes do, Pa, do!” urged Bella. “J allow you, and my will is his
law. Isn't it—dear John Rokesmith ?”

There was an engaging shyness in Bella, coupled with an engaging
tenderness of love and confidence and pride, in thus first calling him
by name, which made it quite excusable in John Rokesmith to do
what he did. What he did was, once more to give her the appear-
ance of vanishing as aforesaid.

“J think, my dears,” observed the cherub, “that if you could make
it convenient to sit one on one side of me, and the other on the other,
we should get on rather more consecutively, and make things rather
plainer. John Rokesmith mentioned, a while ago, that he had no
present occupation.”

“ None,” said Rokesmith.

“No, Pa, none,” said Bella,

“From which I argue,” proceeded the cherub, “that he has left
Mr. Boffin ?”

ers lets Navel Ro

“Stop a bit, my dear. I wish to lead up to it by degrees. And
that Mr. Boffin has not treated him well ?”

“Has treated him most shamefully, dear Pa!” cried Bella with a
flashing face. "

“Of which,” pursued the cherub, enjoining patience with his hand,
“a certain mercenary young person distantly related to myself,
could not approve? Am I leading up to it right ?”

“Could not approve, sweet Pa,” said Bella, with a tearful laugh and
a joyful kiss.

“ Upon which,” pursued the cherub, “the certain mercenary young
person distantly related to myself, having previously observed and
mentioned to myself that prosperity was spoiling Mr. Boffin, felt that
she must not sell her sense of what was right and what was wrong,
and what was true and what was false, and what was just and what
was unjust, for any price that could be paid to her by any one alive?
Am I leading up to it right ?”

With another tearful laugh Bella joyfully kissed him again.

‘“ And therefore—and therefore,’ the cherub went on in a glowing
voice, as Bella’s hand stole gradually up his waistcoat to his neck,
“this mercenary young person distantly related to myself, refused
the price, took off the splendid fashions that were part of it, put on
the comparatively poor dress that I had last given her, and trusting
to Imy supporting her in what was right, came straight to me. Have
I led up to it?”

”

  

 
  
 
 
  
 
     
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
    

  

       
   
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 145

Bella’s hand was round his neck by this time, and her face was
on it.

“The mercenary young person distantly related to myself,” said
her good father, “did well! The mercenary young person distantly
pela to myself, did not trust tome in vain! I admire this mer-
cenary young person distantly related to myself, more in this dress
than if she had come to me in China silks, Cashmere shawls, and
Golconda diamonds. I love this young person dearly. I say to the
man of this young person’s heart, out of my heart and with all of it,

‘My blessing on this engagement betwixt you, and she brings you a
good fortune when she brings you the poverty she has accepted for
your sake and the honest truth’s!’ ”

The stanch little man’s voice failed him as he gave John Roke-
smith his hand, and he was silent, bending his face low over his
daughter. But, not for long. He soon looked up, saying ina sprightly
nO :

“ And now, my dear child, if you think you can entertain John
Rokesmith for a minute and a half, Ill run over to the Dairy, and
fetch him a cottage loaf and a drink of milk, that we may all have tea
together.”

Jt was, as Bella gaily said, like the supper provided for the three
nursery hobgoblins at ‘their house in the forest, without their thun-
derous low erowlings of the alarming discovery, “ oueaan 8 been
drinking my “milk!” It was a delicious repast ; ‘by £ ar the most deli-
cious that Be lla, or John Bokesmith, or even R. Wilfer had ever made.
The uncongenial oddity of its surroundings, with the two brass knobs
of the iron safe of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles staring from
a corner, like the eyes of some dull dragon, only made it ths more
delightful.

«No think,” said the cherub, looking round the office with un-
speakable enjoyme ant, “that anything “of a tender nature should
come off here, is cee tickles me. To think that ever I should
have seen my Bella folded in the arms of her future husband, here,
you know!”

it was not until the cottage loaves and the milk had for some time
disappeared, and the foreshadowings of night were creeping over
Mincing Lane, that the cherub by degrees became a little nervous,
and said to B sell: 1, as he cleared his throat:

“ Hem !—Have you thought at all about your mother, my dear?”

<@Yiess Pan

“And your sister Lavvyy, for instance, my dear?”

“Yes, Pa, I think we had better not enter into soot lot at home.
{ think it will be quite enough to say that 1 had a difference with
Mr. Boffin, and have left for good.”

“ John Rokesmith being acquainted with your Ma, my love,” said
her father, after some slight hesitation, “I need have no delicacy in
hinting before him that you may perhaps find your Ma a little
wearing.”

«A little, patient Pa?” said Bella with a tuncful laugh: the tune-
fuller for bxing so loving in its tone.

“Well! We'llsay, strictly in confidence among ourselves, wearing ;
Vol. I. L

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

146 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

we won't qualify it,” the cherub stoutly admitted. “And your
sister’s temper is wearing.”

“JT don’t mind, Pa.”

« And you must prepare yourself, you know, my precious,” said her
father, with much gentleness, “for our looking very poor and meagre
at home, and being at the best but very uncomfortable, after Mr.
Boffin’s house.”

“T don’t mind, Pa. JI could bear much harder trials——for John.”

The closing words were not so softly and blushingly said but that
John heard the am, and showed that he heard them by again assisting
Bella to another of those mysterious en

“ Well!” said the cherub gaily, and not expressing disapproval,
“when you—when you come back from retirement, my love, and re-
appear on the surface, I think it will be time to lock up and go.”

If the counting-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles had
ever been shut up by three happier people, glad as most people were
to shut it up, they must have been superlatively happy mdeed. But
first Bella mounted upon Rumty’s Perch, and said, “Show me what
you do here all day long, dear Pa. Do you write like this?’ laying
her round cheek upon her plump left arm, and losing sight of her
pen in waves of hair, in a highly unbusiness-like manner. Though
John Rokesmith seemed to like it.

So, the three hobgoblins, having effaced all traces of their feast, and
swept up the crumbs, came out of Mincing Lane to walk to Holloway ;
and if two of the hobgoblins didn’t wish the distance twice as long as
it was, the third hobgoblin was much mistaken. Indeed, that modest
spirit deemed himself so much in the way of their deep enjoyment
of the j joumey; that he apologetically remarked: “I think, my dears,
Tll take the lead on the other side of the road, and seem not to
belong to you.” Which he did, cherubically strewing the path with
smiles, in the absence of flowers.

It was almost ten o’clock when they stopped within view of Wilfer
Castle ; and then, the spot being quiet and deserted, Bella began a series
of disappearances which threatened to last all nicht.

“JT think, John,” the cherub hinted at last, “that if you can spare
me the young person distantly related to myself, I'll take her in.

“I can’t spare her,” answered John, “but I must lend her to you.
—My Darling!” A word of magic which caused Bella instantly to
disappear again.

“ Now, dearest Pa,” said Bella, when she became visible, “ put your
hand in mine, and we'll run home as fast as ever we can run, and geb
it over. Now, Pa. Once!——”

“My dear,” the cherub faltered, with something of a craven ait, -

“T was going to observe that if your mother——”

“You musn’t hang back, sir, to gain time,” cried Bella, putting
out her richt foot ; “do you see e that, sir? That’s themark; come up
to the mark, sir. Once! Twice! Three times and away, Pa!”
Off she skimmed, bearing the cherub along, nor ever stopped, nor
suff fered him to stop , until she had pulled at the bell. «Now, dear
Pa,” said Bella, a tans him by both ears as if he werea pitcher, and
conveying his face to her rosy lips, “we are in for it!”

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
   
  
 
   
 
     

   

   

     
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Miss Lavvy came out to open the gate, waited on by that attentive
cavalier and friend of the family, Mr. George Sampson. “ WV hy, it’s
never Bella!” exclaimed Miss Lavvy starting back at the sight. And
then bawled, “ Ma! Here’s Bella!”

This produced, before they could get into the house, Mrs. Wilfer.
Who, standing in the portal, received them with ghostly gloom, and
all her other appliances, of ceremony.

“My child is welcome, though unlooked for,” said she, at the time
presenting her cheek as if it were a cool slate for visitors to enrol
themselves upon. “You too, R. W., are welcome, though late.
Does the male domestic of Mrs. Boffin hear me there?’ ‘This deep-
toned inquiry was cast forth into the night, for response from the
menial in question.

“There is no one waiting, Ma, dear,” said Bella.

“There is no one waiting?’ repeated Mrs. Wilfer in majestic
accents.

“No, Ma, dear.”

A dignified shiver pervaded Mrs. Wilfer’s shoulders and gloves,
as who should say, “An Hnigma!” and then she marched’ at
the head of the procession to the family keeping-room, where she
observed :

“Unless, R. W.:” who started on being solemnly turned upon:
“vou have taken the precaution of making some addition to our
frugal supper on your way home, it will prove but a distasteful one to
Bella. Cold neck of mutton and a lettuce can ill compete with the
luxuries of Mr. Boffin’s board.”

“Pray don’t talk like that, Ma dear,’ said Bella; “ Mr. Boffin’s
board is nothing to me.”

But, here Miss Lavinia, who had been intently eyeing Bella’s bonnet,
struck in with “ Why, Bella!”

“Yes, Lavvy, L know.”

The Irrepressible lowered her eyes to Bella’s dress, and stooped to
look at it, exclaiming again: “ Why, Bella!”

“Yes, Lavvy, I know what I have got on. I was going to tell Ma
when you interrupted. I have left Mr. Boffin’s house for good, Ma,
and I have come home again.”

Mrs. Wilfer spake no word, but, having glared at her offspring for
a minute or two in an awful silence, retired into her corner of state
backward, and sat down: like a frozen article on sale in a Russian
market.

“In short, dear Ma,” said Bella, taking off the depreciated bonnet
and shaking out her hair, “I have had a very serious difference with
Mx. Boffin on the subject of his treatment of a member of his house-
hold, and it’s a final difference, and there’s an end of all.”

“And I am bound to tell you, my dear,” added R. W., submis-
sively, “that Bella has acted in a truly brave spirit, and with a truly
right feeling, And therefore I hope, my dear, you'll not allow your-
self to be greatly disappointed.”

“George!” said Miss Lavvy, in a sepulchral, warning voice,
founded on her mother’s; “ George Sampson, speak! What did I tell
you about those Boffins ?” :

 

  
 

 

16) 7

147

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

148 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Mr. Sampson perceiving his frail bark to be labouring among shoals
and breakers, thought it safest not to refer back to any particular thing
that he had been told, lest he should refer back to the wrong thing.
With admirable seamanship he got his bark into deep water by mur-
muring “ Yes indeed.”

«Yes! I told George Sampson, as George Sampson tells you,” said
Miss Lavvy, “that those hateful Boffins would pick a quarrel with
Bella, as soon as her novelty had worn off. Have they done it, or
have they not? Was I right, or was I wrong? And what do you
say to us, Bella, of your Boffins now ?”

“Lavvy and Ma,” said Bella, “I say of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin what
T always have said; and I always shall say of them what I always
have said. But nothing will induce me to quarrel with any one
tonight. I hope you are not sorry to see me, Ma dear,” kissing her ;
“and I hope you are not sorry to see me, Lavvy,” kissing her too;
“and as I notice the lettuce Ma mentioned, on the table, I'll make
the salad.”

Bella playfully setting herself about the task, Mrs. Wilfer’s impres-
sive countenance followed her with glaring eyes, presenting a com-
bination of the once popular sign of the Saracen’s Head, with a piece
of Dutch clock-work, and suggesting to an imaginative mind that
from the composition of the salad, her daughter might prudently
omit the vmegar. But no word issued from the majestic matron’s
lips. And this was more terrific to her husband (as perhaps she
knew) than any flow of eloquence with which she could have edified
the company.

“ Now, Ma dear,” said Bella in due course, “the salad’s ready, and
it’s past supper-time.” ;

Mrs. Wilfer rose, but remained speechless. “George!” said Miss
Lavinia in her voice of warning, “Ma’s chair!” Mr. Sampson flew to
the excellent lady’s back, and followed her up close, chair in hand, as
she stalked to the banquet. Arrived at the table, she took her rigid
seat, after favouring Mr, Sampson with a glare for himself, which
caused the young gentleman to retire to his place in much confusion.

The cherub not presuming to address so tremendous an object,
transacted her supper through the agency of a third person, as
“Mutton to your Ma, Bella, my dear ;” and “Lavvy, I dare say your
Ma would take some lettuce if you were to put it on her plate.” Mrs.
Wilfer’s manner of receiving those viands was marked by petrified
absence ef mind; in which state, likewise, she partook of them, occa-
sionally laying down her knife and fork, as saying within her own
spirit, * What is this Iam doing?” and glaring at one or other of the
party, as if in indignant search of information. A magnetic result
of such glaring was, that the person glared at could not by any
means successfully pretend to be ignorant of the fact: so that a by-
stander, without beholding Mrs. Wilfer at all, must have known at
whom she was glaring, by seeing her refracted from the countenance
of the beglared one. a

Miss Lavinia was extremely affable to Mr. Sampson on this special
occasion, and took the opportunity of informing her sister why.

“Tt was not worth troubling you about, Bella, when you were

   
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
     

sence aU LS

 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 149

in a sphere so far removed from your family as to make it a matter in
which you could be expected to take very little interest,” said Lavinia
with a toss of her chin; “ but George Sampson is paying his addresses
to me.”

Bella was glad to hear it. Mr. Sampson became thoughtfully red,
and felt called upon to encircle Miss Lavinia’s waist with his arm;
but, encountering a large pin in the young lady’s belt, scarified a
finger, uttered a sharp exclamation, and attracted the lightning of
Mrs. Wilfer’s glare.

“George is getting on very well,” said Miss Lavinia—which might
not have been supposed at the moment—‘and I dare say we shall be
married, one of these days. I didn’t care tomention it when you were
with your Bof——” here Miss Lavinia checked herself in a bounce,
and added more placidly, “ when you were with Mr. and Mrs. Boffin ;
but now I think it sisterly to name the circumstance.”

“Thank you, Lavvy dear. I congratulate you.”

“Thank you, Bella. The truth is, George and | did discuss whether
T should tell you; but I said to George that you wouldn’t be much
interested in so paltry an affair, and that it was far more likely you
would rather detach yourself from usaliogether, than have him added
to the rest of us.”

“That was a mistake, dear Lavvy,” said Bella.

“Jt tums out to be,” replied Miss Lavinia; “ but circumstances
have changed, you know, my dear. George is in a new situation, and
his prospects ave very good indeed. I shouldn't have had the courage
to tell you so yesterday, when you would have thought his prospects
poor, and not worth notice ; but I feel quite bold to-night.”

“When did you begin to feel timid, Lavvy 2” inquired Bella, with
a smile.

“J didn’t say that I ever felt timid, Bella,” replied the Irrepres-
sible. “But perhaps I might have said, if I had not been restramed
by delicacy towards a sister’s feelings, that [ have for some time felt
independent ; too independent, my dear, to subject myself to have
my intended match (you'll prick yourself again, George ) looked down
upon. It is not that I could have blamed you for looking down upon
it, when you were looking up to a rich and great match, Bella; it is
only that I was independent.”

Whether the Irrepressible felt slighted by Bella’s declaration that
she would not quarrel, or whether her spitefulness was evoked by
Bella's return to the sphere of Mr. George Sampson’s eourtship, or
whether it was a necessary fillip to her spirits that she should come
into collision with somebody on the present occasion,—anyhow she
made a dash at her stately parent now, with the greatest impetuc sity.

“Ma, pray don’t sit staring at me in that intensely aggravating
manner! If you sce a black on my nose, tell me so; if you don’t,

 

leave me alone.”
= 5? © 7. 7

“Do you address Me in those words? said Mrs. Wilfer. “Do you

presume ?”
+ © be ~ ’ S

“Don’t talk about presuming, Ma, for goodness sake. A girl who
is old enough to be engaged, is quite old enough to object to be stared
at as if she was a Clock.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"ae ay ae

a di Hire tes

 

 

  

150 QUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Andacious one!” said Mrs. Wilfer. “Your grandmamma, if so
addressed by one of her daughters, at any age, would have insisted
on her retiring to a dark apartment.”

“My grandmamma,” returned Lavvy, folding her arms and leaning:
back im her chair, “wouldn’t have sat staring people out of counte-
nance, L think.”

“She would!” said Mrs. Wilfer.

“Then it’s a pity she didn’t know better,” said Lavvy.. “And ifmy
grandmamma wasn’t in her dotage when she took to insisting on
people’s retiring to dark apartments, she ought to have been. A pretty
exhibition my grandmamma must have made of herself! I wonder
whether she ever insisted on people’s retiring into the ball of St.
Paul’s; and if she did, how she got them there !”

“Silence!” proclaimed Mrs. Wilfer. “I command silence!”

“T have not the slichtest intention of being silent, Ma,” returned
Lavinia coolly, “but quite the contrary. Iam 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
Sofiins, 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! Youmutinous 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 Ivrepressible.

“TI say, presumptuous child, if you had come from the neighbour-
hood 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 té 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 2”

Layinia was about replying to her honored 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
Til 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

    
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
 
   
    
 
  
  
 
    
  
  
  
     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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COLL EE ALLE:
OLGA
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OUR MUTUAL ERIEND. 151

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 wp 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 ie

“ 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. J 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 benow. Upon my word, 1 can o ily answer,
because you are so much improved.”

“No, Pa. Because I am so thankful and so happy iF

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.

“Tisten, 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.”

«Ts lie a Knave in the pack of cards?” inquired the cherub, with
a twinkle in his eyes.

“Yes!” cried Bella, in high glee, choking him agaim. “ 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 hera 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 !’”

«T see land at last!” repeated her father.

 

eer

pinnate

Bivebbie tee. i erate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
  
    
   
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
  
  
   

 

 

 

  

18

 

2 QUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“There’s a dear Knave of Wilfers!” exclaimed Bella; then put-
ting 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 XVII.
A SOCIAL CHORUS.

AMAZEMENT sits enthroned upon the countenances of Mr. and Mrs.
Alfred Lamimle’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 ona
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 in-
expressible 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 whis-
pered to have shaken themselves, when Vencering’s extensive dealings
and great wealth were mentioned. But, it is certain that neither
Mr. nor Mrs. Vencering 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 Veneer-
ings 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 tothe Vencerings, 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,

  

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 1538

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 cara-
van of camels, I find it personally offensive to have it hinted to me
that they are broken-kneed camels, or camels labouring under sus-
picion of any sort. “I don’t display camels myself, I am above them :
fam a more solid man; but these camels have basked in the light of
my countenance, and how dare you, sir, insinuate to me that 1 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 ta
pieces, and Mr. 'I'wemlow feels a little queer on the sofaat 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 rbd
connection with the pleasures of the table.” ‘Io 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 wander-
ing within him a little lower down, a servant enters with the an-
nouncement that a lady wishes to speak with him.

“A lady!” says Twemlow, pluning 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 particu-
larly 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.

“J have no doubt, Mr. T'wemlow, 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, Twemlcw, with a little twinge,
admits the imputation.

“Probably it will not,” says Mrs. Lammle. with a certain hardened
manner upon her, that makes ‘I'wemlow shrink, “ have surprised you

wiht a
ale An
nn
Hs a

 

   

 

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154 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

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
{ 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.
Lammile, 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, 1 suppose,” says T'wemlow, nervously, “offer no reasonable
objection to hearing anything that you do me the honor 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 bee to
de 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. Iwasa 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 hus-
band, 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 accom-
plished. This is what I came to say. It is nota stipulation; to a
gentleman it is simply a reminder.”

Twemlov sits murmuring to himself with his hand to his forehead.

“Tt is so plain a case,” Mrs. Lammle goes on, “as between me
(from the first relying on your honor) 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,

 

 

  
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
  
  
 
   
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
  
  
 
     
  

    
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
   
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
    
    
  
  
 
  
    
 
  
   
 
 
  
   
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 155

«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. 'T'wemlow.”

“Stay!” says T'wemlow, rising as she rises. “ Pardon mea moment.
I should never have sought you out, madam, to say what Tam going to
say, but since you have sought me out and are here, [ 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 know-
ledge 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.

eAVieg?

“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 con-
fidence ?”

“J 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 grea
civility, which I could not feel that 1 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. Fledeeby’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
Fledgeby, Mr. Twemlow ?”

“J 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 ?”

ss Unfortunately, madam,” retums Twemlow, “the one money-
obligation to which T 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

 

you saw Mr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

156 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

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 'lwemlow, standing aghast. “How do you
know it?”

“TI scarcely know how I know it. The whole tiain of cireum-
stances 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 bi idly, 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. '’wemlow
and my husband. Yet my husband replies to me ‘You have no
proof, and Mr. I'wemlow replies to me with the very same words !”

sut why, madam ?” 'Twemlow ventures gently to argue. “ Con-
sider 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. ''wemlow 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 remem-
brance 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.

“T 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 bank-
rupt here, and must go abroad, I suppose.”

Mr. 'l’'wemlow, in his good-natured desire to make the best of it,
remarks that there are pleasant lives abroad.

“Yes,” returns Mrs. Lammile, 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, Twemiow 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

 

      
  
 
  
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
   
    
  
  
   
  
   
  
  
  
  
   
   
   
   

  

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
   
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 157

can a woman at my age do? My husband and IT deceived one another
avhen 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 today’s dinner and to-morrow’s breakfast—till death
divorces us.”

With those words, she walks out into Duke Street, Saint James’s.
Mx Twemlow returning to his sofa, lays down his aching head
on its slippery little horsehair bolster, with a strong internal con-
viction 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.

3ut, 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 My. Eugene
Wrayburn, whom ‘T'wemlow 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 haying
been best man atthe nuptials of these deceiving what’s-their-
names who have gone to pieces. Though, indeed, the fan is gene-
rally 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.

‘\ new race of intimate friends has sprung up at Vencering’s since
he went into Parliament for the public good, to whom Mrs. Veneer-
ing 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 bril-
liancy 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 Scerip-
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. Veenering, in his different way, is muvh 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

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

158 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

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. ‘Ske 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. ut, 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.

“T 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 1;” but can find nobody to care whether he
did or not.

“And what was it like?” inquires Veneering.

“T 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. Vencering, “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 1t is; when instantly a
general murmur arises that the principle is not the same.

 

 

 

     
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 

  

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 159

“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 adjust-
ment of affairs, in the case of people of any standing at all.”

Eugene (who would seem to be in a gloomy state of sug-
gestiveness), suggests, “ Suppose you have no means and live beyond
them ?”

This is too insolvent a state of things for the Father to entertain.
Tt 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 specu-
lation 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 2 And
with his favourite right-arm flourish which sweeps away everything
and settles it for ever, Mr. Podsnap sweeps these inconveniently unex-
plainable 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 su-
perior stateliness, if not the superior generalship, of the Analytical
prevails over aman who is as nothing off the box; and the Coachman,

rielding 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.

T i mn a i o my. ¥ ’ a cc Fa ‘ rs .
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 —Hugene 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.” : i

“ Waiting?” savs Eugene over his shoulder, in confidence, with the
Analytical.

 

 

 

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3

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160 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Waiting,” returns the Analytical in responsive confidence.
fugene 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 ab, 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, im 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,
youll die. So Vl be a benefactor to society, and go. A stroll anda
cigar, and I can think this over. Think this over.” ‘Thus, witha
thoughtful face, he finds his hat and cloak, unseen of the Analytical,
and goes his way.

?

THE END OF

   

THE THIRD BOOK.

   
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
      

    

   

 

   

 
 
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
  
     

Book THE FourtH. <A TURNING.

 

CHAPTER I.
SETTING TRAPS.

Prasnwater 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.

Ags 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 ery of “Lock, ho! Lock!” pre-
vented 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 recog-
nized his “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
jn 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 wind-
lass 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 wp, 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 com-
VOL, II. M

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

162 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

plaming 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 Hugene, seating him-
self preparatory to resuming his sculls. “You got the place, then ?”

“T 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 Hugene, “ for
the next candidate—the one who will offer himself when you are trans
ported 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 ssed 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 in-
dolent 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.
Tt ain't Locks as you've been giving your mind to. No, no!”

As he expressively jerked his pointing finger in the direction the

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   
   
 
  
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   
   
  
   
   
 
     

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 163

boat had taken, a flush of impatience mounted into Bradley’s face, and
he looked anxiously up the river. ‘

“Tt 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?”

“T never heerd it called that. It’s a long word for it. Hows’ev
praps you call it so,” said Riderhood, stubbornly chewing his grass.

at What 2” :

“Vt say them, instead of it, if you like,’ was the coolly growled
reply. “It’s safer talk too.” i

“ What do you mean that I should unde

“ Spites, affronts, offences giv’ and took, deadly age
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.

“Taha! 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
had a mind to it.”

“You think I have been following him?” said Bradley.

“TJ 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. Vd 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 gras

« Damn him !”

Tooroar!” cried Riderhood. “Does you credit! Hooroar! 1]
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 ?”

“Tt took the turn,” answered Riderhood, with sullen ferocity, “ of
hoping as I was getting ready to be hanged.”

“Tet 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 lim 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

: M 2

 

 

 

 

rstand by them ?”
rawations, such

 

 

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164 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

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 isa death-bell ringing. And not for them.”

tiderhood, looking fixedly at him, gradually arose from his recum-
bent 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, ‘[’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 goimg to her.”

“You ain’t sure, then ?”

“Tam as sure here,” said Bradley, with a clutch at the breast of
lis coarse shirt, “as if it was written there ;” with a blow ora 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.

“_ Tl] 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.

“J 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 Rider-
hood’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.”

  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
     

    
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
      

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 165

Riderhood stopped. “If you don’t get disapinted agin, T’otherest,
maybe youll put up at the Lock-house when you come back ?”

“TY 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. 'I"hey 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
ficure 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. Hven
to Bradley Headstone, who could have told to the letter without
book all about Wat Tyler, Lord Mayor Walworth, and the King,
that itis dutiful for youth to know, there was but one subject living in
the world for every sharp destructive instrument that summer even-
ing. 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 Rider-
hood 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, euiltily 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 eo AM ae
setting of a trap for finding out whether it was accidentally done,
soon superseded, as a practical piece of cunning, the abstruser mquiry
why otherwise it was done. And he deyised a means.

Rogue Riderhood went into his Lock-house, and brought forth, mto
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 toa 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 neck-
hankecher, I see him in a sim'lar neckhankecher, it won't be acct-
dent!” Elated by his device, he carried his chest in again and went
to supper. :

“Tock ho! Lock!” It wasa light night, and a barge coming down
summoned him out of a long doze. 1m due course he had let the

ay EY ee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

166 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.’

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.

“YT dont 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 T’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
beg drowned.”

“T can’t be!” said Riderhood.

“You can’t be drowned 2”

“No!” said Riderhood, shaking his head with an air of thorough
conviction, “it’s well known. I’ve been bri ught out o’ drowning, and
I can’t be drowned. I wouldn't have that there busted Blowbridger
aware on it, or her px ople 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 0’ drowning, can never be drowned.”

Bradley smiled sourly at the ignorance he would have cor
one of his pupils, and continued to look down into the w
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 ex-
pression 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 jas 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 uple o’

t’” But, even then he had to jog him with his elbow

 

 

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ater, as if

 

 

hours’ rest ?”

before he answered.
‘Wh 2 ,
= tH a hs

 

  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
   
   
  
     

   
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 167
“Hadn’t you better come in and take your couple o’ hours’ rest ?”

«Thank you. Yes.”

Vith 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
inajug. The last he brought in, cool and dripping, from the river.

«here, ‘I’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 re-
flection 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, Rider-
hood 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 sno ze,” said that
honest creature, “chuck yourself on my bed in the corner, T’otherest.
It'll be broad day afore three. Il call you early.”

“J shall require no calling,” answered Bradley. And soon after-
wards, 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 thik 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.

“Tock 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 bre sken 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.

“TJ have.”

« Where ?”

“ At his journey’s end. His boat's hauled up for three days. I
heard him give the order. Then, [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.
a great spirt of plood burst from his nose.

 

 

Immediately afterwards,

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

168 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“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 part 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.

“JT 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.”

“Tie down now, then,” said Riderhood.

“TI 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.

“T 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 aman 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 wrun
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. he 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

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 169

bed; though it would have been much easier to him if he had
unloosened it.

The thunder rolled heavily, and the forked lichtning 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; some-
times 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 ie

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 eg

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 spec-
tacle, 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 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 dis-
closed, 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.

esintdta st ic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

CHAPTER II. <

,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 them-
selves with so much urgency on the golden couple, that evasion
of the honor 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 sim-
plicity 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
eame with Mr. Boffin from the window to the breakfast table, of
taking up his dear and honored wife.

“My Sophronia,” said that
of your poor husband’s charact —

“No! Not too partial, Alfred,” urged the lady, tenderly moved ;
“never say that.”

“ My child, your ‘favourable opinion, then, of your husband—you
on’t object to that phrase, darling ?”

“ How can I, Alfred 2”

“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,”

“ Har 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 reeard 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.

 

~

  
  
  

 

ntleman, “your too partial estimate

d

 

  

     
  
       
  
   
   
 
  
  
   
  
    
   
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   
    
  
  
   
    

 

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
      

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. ay(at

Boffin, I feel his injuries more than he does himself, and feel more
capable of opposing his injurers.”

{t 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.
Tf 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, there-
fore, 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? Andis 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. nor 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 . 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, manceuvred 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 com-
pliment me upon feeling in the case of Mr. Boffin, you have yourselt
confided to me as your own feeling in the case of Mrs. Bofiin.”

(«I shall be beaten by this Lawyer,” Mrs. Lammle gaily whis-
pered to Mrs. Boffin. “1 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. Lammile’s
nose, as he observed that Mrs. Boffin merely looked up from the
teanot 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

 

 

 

tallying tone. :

“Really, I think,” said Mrs. Lamunle, 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.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

172 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

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. Lammile turned to him laughingly. “The Court objects?”

“Ma’am,” said Mr. Boftin, “the Court Gf 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 Gf 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 sooth-
ingly, 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 s0 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 pressutre 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.”

“T would rather,” said Mr. Boffi n, “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 ?”

  

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
  

 

 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 173

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.

“Tt is not impossible,” said Mr. Boffin, addressing Alfred, “that
you have had some general idea, sir, of replacing fokesmith, in
course of time ?”

“Tt 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 honor 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 ?”

“T 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 2” 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.

“Tt 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 con-
elusion. You have done me a great service, a very great service, and
J 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

   

all

 

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J

5
‘

+ OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

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 un-
pleasantly ; at all events I haven’t meant to. So,” said Mr. Boffin,
by way of peroration, “wishing you well in the way you g0, we
now conclude with the observation that perhaps you'll go it.”

Mr. Lammile 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 tome! Oh, Mr. and
Mrs. Boftin, 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 em-
braces, 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.

“T haven’t a minute,” said poor little Georgiana, “to stay. Iam
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 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

 

  

   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 175

my mind every moment more and more when I want more mind
than I have got, by pawing up Mr. Boftin’s street where they have no
business to be. Oh! where is, where is it? Oh! I can’t findit!” 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 1 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, lam 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. “Tl 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 some-
body 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.”

“Qh, 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 some
body 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! Ihave
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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

|

 

  

176 QUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

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 misdemeanor 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.

“Tl take care,” said Mr. Boftin, showing the money and the neck-
lace, “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. Boftin?” she said, turn-
ing her head towards him, but not her eyes.

“No,” said Mr. Boffin.

“JT 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 seem-
ing 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. Boftin 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.

3ecause,” said Alfred, “I am disposed to be sentimental myself,
or your appropriation of the jewels and the money, Mr. Boffin. As
our little Georgiana said, three five-pound notes are better than no-
thing, 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 sen-
timental!

  

  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
   
  

  

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 177

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 ?”

“Tet us go then. I am sorry I have delayed our dignified
departure.”

She passed out and he followed her. Mr. and Mrs. Boftin 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 con-
cealed handcuffs; but, not so, to suppose that they were haggardly
weary of one another, of themselves, and of all this w« je chapel eras
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 III.
THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN.

Tur 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 confi-
dential 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
elanced 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 ar-
yived 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.

“Tt wants five minutes, good, to Venus’s appointment,” said he.
“Tm rather early.”

3ut 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 anato-
mist, but for his furnishing the explanation in what he went on to say-
VOL. II. N

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

178 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

“All right, Venus, all right. Now, that you’ve been to see me,
and have consented to keep up the appearance before Wege of re-
maining 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.

“T think he is, sir.”

“Have you any particular reason for thinking so, Venus 2”

“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, Wege ?” said Mx. Boffin.

“ Just, so, sir.”

S

 

Mr. Boftin took his nose in his hand, as if it were already excori-
ated, 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. Boftin, 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! Dve been looking for you, sir, rather
what I may call specially.”

“You don’t say so, Wege ?”

  

 
  

 
 

:
ae

“Yes, I do say so, sir. And. if you hadn’t come round to me to-
night, dash my wig if I wouldn’t have come round to you to-morrow.
Now! I tell you!”

“ Nothing wrong, I hope, Wege ?”

“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?”

z An unholy glare of contradiction and offence shone in the eyes of
Mr. Wege., as he turned the key on his patron, after ushering him
into the yard with this vocal quotation. Mr. Boffin’s air was crest-
fallen and submissive. Whispered Wege to Venus, as they crossed
the yard behind him: “Look at the worm and minion ; he’s down

  
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
    
  
 
  
 
 
   
   
   
 
     

  
   
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
    
 
  
 
 
 
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. HAS

    

in the mouth already.” Whispered Venus to Weg: “That's because
Tve told him. I’ve prepared the way for you.”

My. 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,
looked disconsolately at Weeg. “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 rucful look upon him.

“First of all, I’m a-going to call you Boffin, for short,” said
Weee. “If you don’t like it, it’s open to you to lump it.”

“T don’t mind it, Wege,” Mr. Boffin replied.

“That’s lucky for you, Boffin. Now, do you want to be read
to?”

“TJ don’t particularly care about it to-night, W oo,”

“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 lone enough.
Vm 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, Weeg,” returned Mr. Boffin, with
folded hands, “1 suppose it must be.” i
“T suppose it must be,” Wegg retorted. “Next (to clear the

 

 

  

ground before coming to business), you've placed in this yard a skulk-
a sneaking, and a sniffing, menial.”

He hadn’t a cold in his head when I sent |
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 con-
tracted an affliction or a habit of the nose, involving a serious draw-
back on the pleasures of social intercourse, until he had discovered.
that Mr. Wegg’s description of him was to be accepted as merely
fiourative:

« Any how, and every how,” said Wegg, “he has been planted here,
and he is here. Now, J

     

here,” said Mr.

 

. won’t have him here. So I eall 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 m-
sive discomfiture, opened the window and beckoned

 

 

terval of imp
him to come in.

“T 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

N 2

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

180 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Mr. Boffin said to him: “Sloppy, my fine fellow, Mr. Weeg is Master

i
here. He doesn’t want you, and you are to go from here.”

“For good!” Mr. Wege 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 Wege, 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. Boflin, 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 Wege, 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 cha-
racters.”

“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 &
bargain with you, I'll put on my hat and take up my walkine~stick,
and go out, and make a bargain with the rightful owner. Now,
what do you say ?”

“TI 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.

“Yowre 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.”

DL Gran willing, Wege,, 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 favor
to come to terms?’ Mr. Wegg again planted his arm, and put his
head on one side.

fiViess?

“Yes what?” said the inexorable Wege: “I won’t take yes. I'll
have it out of you in full, Boffin.”

_ “Dear me!” cried that unfortunate gentleman. “I am so wor-
rited! I ask to be allowed to come to terms, supposing your
document is all correct,”

  

  
   
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
  
    
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
     
  

     
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 181

“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 Ill 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, Beso good as name the terms, Wegg.”

“Now, mark, Boffin,’ returned Silas: “Mark ’em well, because
they're the lowest terms and the only terms. Yowll 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 length-
ened itself; Mr. Venus not having been prepared for such a rapacious
demand.

“ Now, wait a bit, Boffin,’” Wege 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.”

“] 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
Imow to a penny what they’re worth, and youll 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.”

«“]t was mine, Wegg,” protested Mr. Boffin. “I put it there myself.”

« What was in it, Boffin 2?” 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, Botfin ; there’s something more. In your em-
ployment 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
    
  
 
    
  
   
 
   
  
 
 
 
   
   
   
  
   
 
   
  
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
    
   
      
 
   
  
  
 

OUR

 

MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Already discharge * returned Wege, 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
gainst his reverses, and to take time to accustom himself to the
dhought of his new position. But, his taking time was exactly the
thing of all others that Silas Wege could not be induced to hear of.
“ Yes or no, and no half measures!” was the motto which that obdu-
Tate person many times repeated ; ee his fist at Mr, Boffin, and
pegeing his motto into the floor with his wooden Tee, j in a threat-
ening and al:

ning mi ne Yr.
At length,

 

 

  

 

 

  
 
  
  

 

. Boffin er ted to be allowed a quarter of an hour’s
ace, and a elite walle of that duration in the yard. With some
diff hieulty Mr. V oe d this great favour, but. only on condition
that he accomp: r. Boffin in his walk, as not knowing what he
might fraudulently unearth if he were left to himself. A more
absurd sight than | Boffin in his mental irritation trotting very
nimbly, and J * hopping after him with great exer tion, eager
to watch the turn of an eyelash, lest it should indicate a
spot rich wit a assuredly had never been seen in the

 

    
 

 

   

  

shadow of the Mounds. 1 . Wege was much distressed when the
quarter of an hour expired, ‘aha came hopping in, a very bad second.
“T can’t help myself!” cried Mr. Boffin, flouncit n the settle in a

 

 

forlorn manner, w ith 1 hi ee fie ep im his pocke a as if his pockets
had sunk. “ What's the good of my pretending to stand out, when I
can’t help myself? 1] must give in to the terms. But I should like
to see the document.”

Wege, who was all for clinching the nail he had so strone
driven home , announced that Boffin enoutal see it without an hour’s
delay. Taking him into custody for that purpose, or overshadowing
him as if he ve ally were his Evil Genius in visible form, Mr. Weee.
clapped Mr. Boffin’s hat ore the back of his head, and walked him
out by the arm, asserti 1 proprietorship over his soul and body
that was at once more grim and more ridiculous than anything in
Mr. Venus’s ra That leht- haire d gentleman followed
close upon th t le Bae bae king” up Mr. Boftin in a literal sense,
if he had not had recent opportunities of dome so spiritu: ully ; while
Mr. Boffin, trotting on as hard as he could trot, involved Silas W ege
in frequent collisions with the public, much as a pre-occupied blind
man’s dos may be seen to involve his master.

Thus the “y reac ee Mr. Venus’s establishment, somewhat heated
by the nature of thei t progress thither. Mr. Wege, especially, was in

i flaming o glow, and stood in the little shop, panting and mopping

 

  

  

   

 

  
 

 

  

  

 

“hk head 5 h his pocket-handkerchief, speechless for several
minutes,
Meanwhile F

 

: r. 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. Wege, we may now produce
the paper ?” er 4

“Hold on a minute, sir, ” replied that discreet character ; “hold on

a@ minute. Will you obligingly y shove that box—which you mentioned

   

  

    
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
   
  
  
 
  
  
  
   
    
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
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 g od. Will you
hand me that chair, sir, to put a-top of 1b?” ra ‘

Venus handed him the chair.

“Now, Boffin,” said Wegg, “mount up here and take your seat,
will you ?”

M+. 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 inone 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 em] raced by Wege, 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
~vorse for his exertions. “Say when you've put it sate back, Ma. Venus,”
he uttered with difficulty, “for the strain of this is terrimenjious.”

At leneth the document was restored to its place ; and Wegs
whose uncomfortable attitude had been that of a very Pp srsevering
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 ina condition to

<

|

   

 

 

 

 

speak. “Now, you know.”
“Yes, Wege,” said Mr. Boffin, meekly. “Now, I know.”
«You have no doubts about it, Boffin.”
“No, Wegg. No, Wegg. None,” was the slow and sad x “ply.
«Phen, take care, you,” said Wege, “that you stick to your condi-
Hons. 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
yum. In answer to the inquiry, “ Will you mix it, Mr. Weeg ?” that
ntly rejoined, “I think not, sir. On so auspicious
fer to take it in the form of a G um-Tickler.”
1g rum, being still elevated on his pedestal, was
on to be addressed. Wege having eyed him
sed him, therefore, while

 

 

     

  

gentleman pleasa
an occasion, I pre

Mr. Boffin, declinn
in a convenient posit
with an impudent air at leisure, addre
refreshing himself with his dram.

ifs Jy ade oe Oa |

Jof—fin !
“Yes, Wegg,” he answered, coming out of a fit of abstraction, with

 

Sf

a sigh.
«{ hayen’t mentioned one thing
You must be followed up, you know. You must be kept

 
 

cours
under inspection.”
“J don’t quite understand,” said Mr. Boffin.

12, because it’s a detail that comes of

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

184 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Don’t you?” sneered Wege. “ Where’s your wits, Boffin? Till
the Mounds is down and this business completed, youre 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.”

“T’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, dye 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.”

“T suspect, Boffin,” returned Weeg, shaking his head sagaci usly,
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 him-
self 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.”

“TI 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 Weegg, “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,
Wege.”

“Well,” said Wege, contemptuously, though, perhaps, perceiving
some hint of dange

r otherwise, “ keep it from your old lady. JL ain’t
going to tell her. I can have you under close inspection without that.
('m as good a man ag 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 2” 7

“Gently, Mr. Wege, 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, Tl see you home.”

Mr. Boffin descended with an air of resignation, and gave himself
np, 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.

 
   
   
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
     

     
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 185

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, Wege,” was the reply through the same channel.

“Come out. Show yourself again. Let’s have another look at you!”

Mr. Boeffn—ah, how fallen from the high estate of his honest
simplicity !—opened the door and obeyed.

“Goin. You may get to bed now,” said Wegg, with a grin.

The door was hardly closed, when he again called through the
keyhole :

30f—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 IY.
A RUNAWAY MATCH.

Currupic 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, i fact—to recelve
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 ereeting 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 judgment, 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.

“J 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, six. 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 ?”

es

ea eS Da or oe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

186 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“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, su, 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, siz,
of the number of times he kissed quite a scrubby little piece—in com-
parison—that I cut off for him. And he wears it, too, round his neck,
ft can tell you! Near his heart!” said Bella, nodding. “Ah! very near
his heart! However, you haye 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 cizcumstance made her la
“Now, darling 'Pa, give me your hands that I may fold then
gether, and do you say after me :—My little Bella.”

“My little Bella,” repeated Pa.

“fam very fond of you.”

“Tam very fond of you, my darling,” said Pa.
cc ‘ y

 

 

—

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 if in your
responses out of Church.”

“TI 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, thank-
less, troublesome, Animal: but I hope you'll do better im 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 IJ 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 1”

“Ay, but 1 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

 

 

  
 
  
   
  
  
   
 
  
 
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
   

 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 187

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
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 quict, 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
Trrepressible, with a bounce in the bed, and a remark that it wa “6
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 bound for Greenwich.

Were they expected at Greenwich? Probably. At least,
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 tovether 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.
Tro wooden legs had this eruff and elum 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 uno 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 dix ction 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

raisteoat. 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

t
fidelity to the mark,

sn

 

 

 

 

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188 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

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 neigh-
bourhood 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 chureh-porch haying 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 Glun,
looking after the pretty bride, with a narcotic consciousness of haying
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.
“Draresr Ma,

“TI 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 Layvy,

“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

a merrily, “ Now, dearest Pa, you are safe, and will never be taken.
alive !”

 
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
 
  
  
 
    
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
   
 
 
     

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘“HOIMNGAUD LV YUANNIG ONIGGHM FAL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 189

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
ymbush among the harmless trees of Greenwich Park, and seemed to
see a stately countenance tied up in a well-known pocket-handker-
chief 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, hke an
attendant summer breeze, a fluttering young damsel, all pink ana
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 preakfast, 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.

Then they, all three, out for a charming ride, and for a charming
stroll among heath in bloom, and there behold the identical Gruff and
Glum with his wooden legs horizontally disposed before him, ap-
parently sitting meditating on the vicissitudes of life! To whom
said Bella, in her light-hearted surprise: “Oh! How do you do
again? What a dear old pensioner you are !? To which Gruff and
Glum responded that he see her married this morning, my Beauty, and
that if it warn’t a liberty hi wished her ji and the fairest of fair
wind and weather; further, in a general way requesting to know
what cheer? and scrambling up on his two wooden legs to salute,
hat in hand, ship-shape, with the gallantry of a man-of-warsman and
a heart of oak.

It was a pleasant sight, in the midst of the golden bloom, to
see this salt old Gruff and Glum, waving his shovel hat at Bella,
while his thin white hair flowed free, \as if she had once more
launched him into blue water again. “ You are a charming old
pensioner,” said Bella, “and 1 am so happy that i wish I could
make you happy, too.” Answered Gruff and Glum, “Give me leave
to kiss your hand, my Lovely, andit’s done!” So it was done to the
ceneral contentment ; and if Gruff and Glum didn’t in the course of

the afternoon splice the main brace, it was not for want of the means
of inflicting that outrage on the feelings of the Infant Bands of
Hope.
3ut, the marriage dinner was the crowning success, for what had
bride and bridegroom plotted to do, but to have and to hold that:
dinner in the very room of the very hotel where Pa and the lovely
woman had once dined together! ella sat between Pa and John, and
divided her attentions pretty equally, but felt it necessary (in the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

190 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

waiter’s absence before dinner) to remind Pa that she was his lovely
woman no longer.

“lam well aware of it, my dear,” returned the cherub, “and I
resign you willingly.”

“Willinely, six? You ought to be brokenhearted.”

“So I should be, my dear, if I thought that I was going to lose
you.”

“ But you know you are not; don’t you, poor dear Pa? You know
that you have only made a new relation who will be as fond of you.
and as thankful to you—for my sake and your own sake both—
as Tam; don’t you, dear little Pa? Look here, Pa!” Bella put her
finger on her own lip, and then on Pa’s, and then on her own lip
again, and then on her husband’s. “Now, we area partnership of
three, dear Pa.”

The appearance of dinner here cut Bella short in one of her disap-
pearances: the more effectually, because it was put on under the
auspices of a solemn gentleman in black clothes and a white cravat,
who looked much more like a clergyman than the clergyman, and
seemed to have mounted a great deal higher in the church: not to
say, scaled the steeple. This dignitary, conferring in secrecy with
John Rokesmith on the subject of punch and wines, bent his head as
though stooping to the Papistical practice of receiving auricular con-
fession. Likewise, on John’s offering a suggestion which didn’t meet
his views, his face became overcast and reproachful, as enjoining
penance.

What a dinner! Specimens of all the fishes that swim in the sea,
surely had swum their way to it, and if samples of the fishes of
divers colours that made a speech in the Arabian Nights (quite a
ministerial explanation in respect of cloudiness), and then jumped out
of the frying-pan, were not to be recognized, it was only because they
had all become of one hue by being cooked in batter among the
whitebait. And the dishes being seasoned with Bliss—an article
which they are sometimes out of, at Greenwich—were of perfect
flavour, and the golden drinks had been bottled in the golden. age
and hoarding up their sparkles ever since.

The best of it was, that Bella and John and the cherub had made
a covenant that they would not reveal to mortal eyes any appearance
whatever of being a wedding party. Now, the supervising dignitary,
the Archbishop of Greenwich, knew this as well as if he had per-
formed the nuptial ceremony. And the loftiness with which his Grace
entered into their confidence without being invited, and insisted on a
show of keeping the waiters out of it, was the crowning glory of the
entertaimment.

There was an innocent young waiter of a slender form and with
weakish legs, as yet unversed in the wiles of waiterhood, and but too
evidently of a romantic temperament, and deeply (it were not too much
to add hoy velessly) in love with some young female not aware of his
merit. This guileless youth, descrying the position of affairs, which
even his innocence could not mistake, limited his waiting to languish-
ing admiringly against the sideboard when Bella didn’t want anything,
and. swooping at her when she did. Him, his Grace the Archbishop per-
petually obstructed, cutting him out with his elbow in the moment

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

191

of success, despatching him in degrading quest of melted butter, and,
when by any chance he got hold of any dish worth having, bereaving
him of it, and ordermg him to stand back. |
“Pray excuse him, madam,” said the Archbishop in a low stately
voice; “he is a very young man on liking, and we don’t like him.”
This induced John Rokesmith to observe—by way of making the

thing more natural—* Bella, m

y love, this is so much more success-

ful than any of our past anniversaries, that I think we must keep our
future anniversaries here.”

Whereunto Bella replied, with probably the least

successful

attempt at looking matronly that ever was seen: “Indeed, I think

so, John, dear.”

Here the Archbishop o
attract the attention of three of

f Greenwich coughed a stately cough to
his ministers present, and staring

at them, seemed to say: “I call upon you by your fealty to believe

this !”

With his own hands he afterwards put on the dessert, as remark-

ing to the three guest
can dispense with the
confidence,” and would
daring action issuing fi
liking. He finding, by
in the lobbies now approached undetected
glass, and placed it on Bella’s right hand.
ejected and excommunicated him ; but the thin

s, “The period has now arrived at which we
assistance of those fellows who are not in our

have retired with complete dignity but for a

‘om the misguided brain of the young man on.
ill-fortune, a piece of orange flower somewhere
with the same in a finger-
The Archbishop instantly

@ was done.

«J trust, madam,” said his Grace, returning alone, “ that you will
erlook it, in consideration of its being the act

have the kindness to ov'
of a very young man who is me

never answer.”

rely here on liking, and who will
J 25

With that, he solemnly bowed and retired, and they all burst into

laughter, long and merry.

“Disguise is of no use,” said Bella;

“they all find me out; I think it must be, Pa and John dear, because

T look so happy!”

Her husband feeling it necess
those mysterious disappearances on
saying in a softened voice from her place of concealment :

“ You remember how we talked

“Yes, my dear.”

«Tsn’t it strange, now, to think

ships, Pa?”

 

“ Not at all, my dear.”

“Oh, Pa!
“No, my dear.
aboard the ships t

seas |”

Bella remaining
dessert
home to Holloway.

he cherubically added, “
many, many happy returns 0

Not at all?”
How can we tell what coming people are
hat may be sailing to us now from the unknown

and wine, until he remembered it w
«Though I positively cannbt tear myself away,”
it would be a sin—without drinking to
f this most happy day.”

«Hear! ten thousand times!” cried John.

my precious wite’s.”

about the ships that day, +

€

ry at this pomt to demand one of
Bella’s part, she dutifully obeyed ;

Da 9?
a?

that there was no John in all the

invisible and silent, her father remained at his
1s time for him to get

“Jj fill my glass and

 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
   
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
     

 

 

 
  
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

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ita

      
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   

   

192 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Gentlemen,” said the cherub, inaudibly addressing, in his Anglo-
Saxon tendency to throw his feelings into the form of a speech, the
boys down below, who were bidding against each other to put their
heads in the mud for sixpence: “ Gentlemen—and Bella and John—
you will readily suppose that it is not my intention to trouble you
with many observations on the present occasion. You will also at
once infer the nature and even the terms of the toast I am about to
propose on the present occasion. Gentlemen—and Bella and Johnh—
the present occasion is an occasion fraught with feelings that I
cannot trust myself to express. But gentlemen—and Bella and John
—for the part I have had in it, for the confidence you have placed in
me, and for the affectionate good-nature and kindness with which
you have determined not to find me in the way, when I am well
aware that I cannot be otherwise than in it more or less, I do
most heartily thank you. Gentlemen—and Bella and John—my love
to you, and may we meet, as on the present occasion, on many future
occasions ; that is to say, gentlemen—and Bella and John—on many
happy returns of the present happy occasion.”

Having thus concluded his address, the amiable cherub embraced
his daughter, and took his flight to the steamboat which was to
convey him to London, and was then lying at the floating pier,
doing its best to bump the same to bits. But, the happy couple were
not goimg to part with him in that way, and before he had been
on board two minutes, there they were, looking down at him from
the wharf above.

“Pa, dear!’ cried Bella, beckoning him with her parasol to
approach the side, and bending gracefully to whisper.

“Yes, my darling.”

“Did I beat you much with that horrid little bonnet, Pa?”

“Nothing to speak of, my dear.”

“Did I pinch your legs, Pa ?”

“Only nicely, my pet.”

“ You are sure you quite forgive me, Pa? Please, Pa, please, forgive
me quite!” Half laughing at him and half crying to him, Bella be-
sought him in the prettiest manner; in a manner so engaging and
so playful and so natural, that her cherubic parent made a coaxing
face as if she had never grown up, and said, “What a silly little
Mouse it is!”

“But you do forgive me that, and everything else; don’t you,
Payee

“Yes, my dearest.”

“And you don’t feel solitary or neglected, going away by your-
self; do you, Pa?”

“Lord bless you! No, my Life!”

“Good-bye, dearest Pa. G ood-bye !”

“Good-bye, my darling! Take her away, my dear John. Take
her home!”

So, she leaning on her husband’s arm, they turned homeward by
a rosy path which the gracious sun struck out for them in its setting.
And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death. And
O what a bright old song it is, that O ’tis love, ’tis love, ’tis love, that
makes the world go round!

 

  

  

OUR

   

MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER VY.
CONCERNING THE MENDICANT’S BRIDE.

Tue impressive gloom with which Mrs. Wilfer. received her
husband on his return from the wedding, knocked so hard at the
door of the cherubic couscience, and likewise so impaired the firm-
ness of the cherubic legs, that the culprit’s tottering condition of
mind and body might have roused suspicion in less occupied persons
than the grimly heroic lady, Miss Lavinia, and that esteemed
friend of the family, Mr. George Sampson. But, the attention of all
three being fully possessed by the main fact of the marriage, they
had happily none to bestow on the guilty conspirator; to which
fortunate circumstance he owed the escape for which he was in no-
wise indebted to himself.

“You do not, R. W.” said Mrs. Wilfer from her stately corner,
“inquire for your daughter Bella.”

“To be sure, my dear,” he returned, with a most flagrant assump-
tion of unconsciousness, ‘I did omit it. How—or perhaps I should
rather say where—is Bella?”

* Not here,” Mrs. Wilfer proclaimed, with folded arms.

The cherub faintly muttered something to the abortive effect of
“Oh, indeed, my dear !”

“Not here,” repeated Mrs. Wilfer, in a stern sonorous voice.
“Tn a word, R. W., you have no daughter Bella.”

“No daughter Bella, my dear?”

“No. Your daughter Bella,” said Mrs. Wilfer, with a lofty air of
never having had the least copartnership in that young lady: of
whom she now made reproachful mention as an article of luxury
which her husband had set up entirely on his own account, and in
direct opposition to her advice : “—your daughter Bella has bestowed
herself upon a Mendicant.”

“Good gracious, my dear!”

“ Show your father his daughter Bella’s letter, Lavinia,” said Mrs.
Wilfer, in her monotonous Act of Parliament tone, and waving her
hand. “J think your father will admit it to be documentary proof
of what I tell him. I believe your father is acquainted with his
daughter Bella’s writing. But 1do not know. He may tell you he
is not. Nothing will surprise me.”

“Posted at Greenwich, and dated this morning,” said the Irre-
pressible, flouncing at her father in handing him the evidence.
“Hopes Ma won't be angry, but is happily married to Mr. ‘John
Rokesmith, and didn’t mention it beforehand to avoid words, and
please tell darling you, and love to me, and I should like to know
what you'd have said if any other unmarried member of the family
had done it!”

He read the letter, and faintly exclaimed “ Dear me!”

“You may well say Dear me !” rejoined Mrs. Wilfer, in a deep tone.
Upon which encouragement he said it again, though scarcely with
VOL, II. ie)

 

    
  
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

 

 

   

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ar ab tinea 2

 

 

 

 

 

  

194. OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

the success he had expected; for the scornful lady then remarked,
with extreme bitterness: “ You said that before.”

“It’s very surprising. But I suppose, my dear,” hinted the
cherub, as he folded the letter after a disconcerting silence, “ that we
must make the best of it? Would you object to my pointing out,
my dear, that Mr. John Rokesmith is not (so far as I am acquainted
with him), strictly speaking, a Mendicant.”

“Indeed ?” returned Mrs. Wilfer, with an awful air of politeness.
“Truly so? I was not aware that Mr. John Rokesmith was a
gentleman of landed property. But I am much relieved to hear it.”

“T doubt if you have heard it, my dear,” the cherub submitted
with hesitation.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Wilfer. “I make false statements, it
appears? So be it. If my daughter flies in my face, surely my
husband may. The one thing is not more unnatural than the other.
There seems a fitness in the arrangement. By all means!”
Assuming, with a shiver of resignation, a deadly cheerfulness.

« But, here the Irrepressible skirmished into the conflict, dragging
the reluctant form of Mr. Sampson after her.

“Ma,” interposed the young lady, “I must say I think it would
be much better if you would keep to the point, and not hold forth
about people’s flying into people’s faces, which is nothing more nor
less than impossible nonsense.”

“How!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilfer, knitting her dark brows.

« Just im-possible nonsense, Ma,” returned Layyy, “and George
Sampson knows it is, as well as I do.”

Mrs. Wilfer suddenly becoming petrified, fixed her indignant eyes
upon the wretched George: who, divided between the support due
from him to his love, and the support due from him to his love's
mamma, supported nobody, not even himself.

“The true point is,” pursued Lavinia, “that Bella has behaved in
a most unsisterly way to me, and might have severely compromised.
me with George and with George's family, by making off and getting
married in this very low and disreputable manner—with some pew-
opener or other, I suppose, for a bridesmaid—when she ought to
have confided in me, and ought to have said, ‘If, Layvy, you con-
sider it due to your engagement with George, that you should coun-
tenance the occasion by being present, then Lavvy, I beg you_to be
present, keeping my secret from Ma and Pa.’ As of course I should
have done.”

“ As of course you would have done? Ingrate!” exclaimed Mrs.
Wilfer. “ Viper!”

“IT say! You know ma’am. Upon my honor you mustn't,”
Mr. Sampson remonstrated, shaking his head seriously, “ With
the highest respect for you, ma’am, upon my life you mustn't. No
really, you know. When a man with the feelings of a gentleman:
finds himself engaged to a young lady, and it comes (even on the
part of a member of the family) to vipers, you know!—I would
merely put it to your own good feeling, you know,” said Mr.
Sampson, in rather lame conclusion.

Mrs. Wilfer’s baleful stare at the young gentleman in acknowledg-

  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 195
ment of his obliging interference was of such a nature that Miss La-
vinia burst into tears, and caught him round the neck for his protection.

“ My own unnatural mother,” screamed the young lady, “ wants to
annihilate George! But you shan’t be annihilated, George. I'll die
first |”

Mr. Sampson, in the arms of his mistress, still struggled to shake
his head at Mrs. Wilfer, and to remark: “ With every sentiment of
respect for you, you know, ma’am—vipers really doesn’t do you
credit.”

“You shall not be annihilated, George!” cried Miss Lavinia.
“Ma shall destroy me first, and then she'll be contented. Oh, oh,
oh! Havel Inred George from his happy home to expose him to
this! George, dear, be free! Leave me, ever dearest George, to Ma
and to my fate. Give my love to your aunt, George dear, and im-
plore her not to curse the viper that has crossed your path and
blighted your existence. Oh, oh, oh!” The young lady who, hys-
terically speaking, was only just come of age, and had never gone off
yet, here fell into a highly creditable crisis, which, regarded as a
first performance, was very successful; Mr. Sampson, bending
over the body meanwhile, in a state of distraction, which in-
duced him to address Mrs. Wilfer in the inconsistent expressions:
“ Demon—with the highest respect for you—behold your work!”

The cherub stood helplessly rubbing his; chin and looking on,
but on the whole was inclined to welcome this diversion as one in
which, by reason of the absorbent properties of hysterics, the pre-
vious question would become absorbed. And so, indeed, it proved,
for the Irrepressible gradually coming to. herself, and asking with
wild emotion, “George dear, are you safe?” and further, “ George
love, what has happened? _ Where is Ma?’ Mr. Sampson, with
words of comfort, raised her prostrate form, and handed her to Mrs.
Wilfer as if the young lady were something in the nature of refresh-
ments. Mrs. Wilfer with dignity partaking of the refreshments, by
kissing her once on the brow (as if accepting an oyster), Miss Lavvy,
tottering, returned to the protection of Mr. Sampson; to whom she
said, “George dear, I am afraid I have been foolish; but I am stilla
little weak and giddy; don’t let go my hand, George!” And whom
she afterwards greatly agitated at intervals, by giving utterance,
when least expected, to a sound between a sob and a bottle of soda
water, that seemed to rend the bosom of her frock.

Among the most remarkable effects of this crisis may be mentioned
its having, when peace was restored, an inexplicable moral influence,
of an elevating kind, on Miss Lavinia, Mrs. Wilfer, and Mr. George
Sampson, from which R. W. was altogether excluded, as an outsider
and non-sympathizer. Miss Lavinia assumed a modest air of having
distinguished herself; Mrs. Wilfer, a serene air of forgiveness and
resignation; Mr. Sampson, an air of having been improved and
chastened. The influence pervaded the spirit in which they re-
turned to the previous question.

“George dear,” said Lavvy, with a melancholy smile, “after what
has passed, I am sure Ma will tell Pa that he may tell Bella we
shall all be glad to see her and her husband.”

02

     
   
   
  
  
   
   
  
    
   
   
 
 
 
    
    
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
 
  

 

 

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
    

196 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Mr. Sampson said he was sure of it too; murmuring how eminently
he respected Mrs. Wilfer, and ever must, and ever would} Never
more eminently, he added, than after what had passed.

“ Far be it from me,” said Mrs. Wilfer, making deep proclamation
from her corner, “to run counter to the feelings of a child of mine,
and of a Youth,” Mr. Sampson hardly seemed to like that word,
“who is the object of her maiden preference. I may feel—nay,
know—that I have been deluded and deceived. I may feel—nay,
know—that I have been set aside and passed over. 1 may feel—
nay, know—that after having so far overcome my repugnance
towards Mr. and Mrs. Boffin as to receive them under this roof, and
to consent to your daughter Bella’s,” here turning to her husband,
“residing under theirs, it were well if your daughter Bella,” again
turning to her husband, “had profited in a worldly point of view by
a connection so distasteful, so disreputable. I may feel—nay, know—
that in uniting herself to Mr. Rokesmith she has united herself to
one who is, in spite of shallow sophistry, a Mendicant. And I may
feel well assured that your daughter Bella,” again turning to her
husband, “does not exalt her family by becoming a Mendicant’s
bride. But I suppress what I feel, and say nothing of it.”

Mr. Sampson murmured that this was the sort of thing you might
expect from one who had ever in her own family been an example
and never an outrage. And ever more so (Mr. Sampson added, with
some degree of obscurity,) and never more so, than in and through
what had passed. He must take the liberty of adding, that what
was true of the mother was true of the youngest daughter, and
that he could never forget the touching feelings that the conduct
of both had awakened within him. In conclusion, he did hope that
there wasn’t a man with a beating heart who was capable of some-
thing that remained undescribed, in consequence of Miss Lavinia’s
stopping him as he reeled in his speech.

“ ‘Therefore, R. W.” said Mrs. Wilfer, resuming her discourse and
turning to her lord again, “let your daughter Bella come when she
will, and she will be received. So,” after a short pause, and an
air of having taken medicine in it, ‘¢so will her husband.”

“ And I beg, Pa,” said Lavinia, “ that you will not tell Bella what
I have undergone. It can do no good, and it might cause her to
reproach herself.”

“ My dearest girl,” urged Mr. Sampson, “ she ought to know it.”

“No, George,’ said Lavinia, in a tone of resolute self-denial. “No,
dearest George, let it be buried in oblivion.”

Mr. Sampson considered that, “ too noble.”

“Nothing is too noble, dearest George,” returned Lavinia. “And
Pa, Thope you will be careful not to refer before Bella, if you can
help it, to my engagement to George. It might seem like reminding
her of her having cast herself away. And I hope, Pa, that you will
think it equally right to avoid mentioning George’s rising prospects,
when Bella is present. It might seem like taunting her with her
own poor fortunes. Let me ever remember that I am her younger

sister, and ever spare her painful contrasts, which could not but
wound her sharply.”

 
 
 
 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 107

Mr. Sampson expressed his belief that such was the demeanour of
Angels. Miss Lavvy replied with solemnity, “No, dearest George,
Iam but too well aware that I am merely human.”

Mrs. Wilfer, for her part, still further improved the occasion by
sitting with her eyes fastened on her husband, lke two great black
notes of interrogation, severely inquiring, Are you looking into your
breast? Do you deserve your blessings? Can you lay your hand
upon your heart and say that you are worthy of so hysterical a
daughter? Ido not ask you if you are worthy of such a wife—put
Me out of the question—but are you sufficiently conscious of, and
thankful for, the pervading moral grandeur of the family spectacle
on which you are gazing? ‘hese inquiries proved very harassing to
R. W. who, besides being a little disturbed by wine, was in per-
petual terror of committing himself by the utterance of stray words
that would betray his guilty foreknowledge. However, the scene
being over, and—all things considered—well over, he sought refuge
in a doze; which gave his lady immense offence.

“Can you think of your daughter Bella, and sleep?” she disdain-
fully inquired.

To which he mildly answered, ‘‘ Yes, I think I can, my dear.”

“'Then,” said Mrs. Wilfer, with solemn indignation, “I would
recommend you, if you have a human feeling, to retire to bed.”

“Thank you, my dear,” he replied; “I think it is the best place
for me.” And with these unsympathetic words very gladly with-
drew.

Within a few weeks afterwards, the Mendicant’s bride (arm-in-arm
with the Mendicant) came to tea, in fulfilment of an engagement
made through her father. And the way in which the Mendicant’s
bride dashed at the unassailable position so considerately to be held by
Miss Lavvy, and scattered the whole of the works in all directions
in a moment, was triumphant.

“Dearest Ma,” cried Bella, running into the room with a radiant
face, “how do you do, dearest Ma?” And then embraced her, joy-
ously. “And Lavvy darling, how do you do, and how’s George
Sampson, and how is he getting on, and when are you going to be
married, and how rich are you going to grow? You must tell me all
about it, Lavvy dear, immediately. John, love, kiss Ma and Lavvy,
and then we shall all be at home and comfortable.”

Mrs. Wilfer stared, but was helpless. Miss Lavinia stared, but
was helpless. Apparently with no compunction, and assuredly with
no ceremony, Bella tossed her bonnet away, and sat down to make
the tea.

“Dearest Ma and Lavvy, you both take sugar, I know. And Pa
(you good little Pa), you don’t take milk. John does. I didn’t before
1 was married; but | do now, because John does. John dear, did you
kiss Ma and Lavvy ? Oh, you did! Quite correct, John dear; but I
didn’t see you do it, so I asked. Cut some bread and butter, John;
that’s a love. Ma likes it doubled. And now you must tell me,
dearest Ma and Lavvy, upon your words and honours! Didn’t you
for a moment—just a moment—think I was a dreadful little wretch
when I wrote to say I had run away?”

 

  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   
  

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198 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Before Mrs. Wilfer could wave her gloves, the Mendicant’s bride
in her merriest affectionate manner went on again.

“J think it must have made you rather cross, dear Ma and Layvy,
and I know I deserved that you should be very cross. But you see I had
been such a heedless, heartless creature, and had led you so to expect
that I should marry for money, and so to make sure that I was inca-
pable of marrying for love, that I thought you couldn’t believe me.
Because, you see, you didn’t know how much of Good, Good, Good, I
had learnt from John. Well! So I was sly about it, and ashamed of
what you supposed me to be, and fearful that we couldn’t understand
one another and might come to words, which we should all be SOrTy
for afterwards, and so I said to John that if he liked to take me
without any fuss, he might. And as he did like, I let him. And we
were married at Greenwich church in the presence of nobody—except
an unknown individual who dropped in,” here her eyes sparkled more
brightly, “and half a pensioner. And now, isn’t it nice, dearest Ma
and Lavvy, to know that no words have been said which any of us
can be sorry for, and that we are all the best of friends at the plea-
santest of teas !”

Having got up and kissed them again, she slipped back to her
chair (after a loop on the road to squeeze her husband round the
neck) and again went on.

“And now you will naturally want to know, dearest Ma and
Lavvy, how we live, and what we have got to live upon. Well!
And so we live on Blackheath, in the charm—ingest of dolls’ houses,
de—lightfully furnished, and we have a clever little servant who is
de—cidedly pretty, and we are economical and orderly, and do every-
thing by clockwork, and we have a hundred and fifty pounds a year,
and we have all we want, and more. And lastly, if you would like to
know in confidence, as perhaps you may, what is my opinion of my
husband, my opinion is—that I almost love him!”

“And if you would like to know in confidence, as perhaps you
may,’ said her husband, smiling, as he stood by her side, without her
having detected his approach, “ my opinion of my wife, my opinion
is -’ But Bella started up, and put her hand upon. his lips.

“Stop, sir! No, John, dear! Seriously! Please not yet a while!
T want to be something so much worthier than the doll in the doll’s
house.”

“ My darling, are you not?”

“Not half, not a quarter, so much worthier as I hope you may
some day find me! Try me through some reverse, John—try me
through some trial—and tell them after that, what you think of me.”

“J will, my Life,” said John. “I promise it.”

“That's my dear John. And you won't speak a word now; will
you?”

_ “And I won't,” said John, with a very expressive look of admira-
tion around him, “ speak a word now !”

She laid her laughing cheek upon his breast to thank him, and
said, looking at the rest of them sideways out of her bright eyes:
“Ti go further, Pa and Ma and Lavvy. John don’t suspect it—he
has no idea of it—but I quite love him!”

 

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
      

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 199

Even Mrs. Wilfer relaxed under the influence of her married daugh-
ter, and seemed in a majestic manner to imply remotely that if R. W.
had been a more deserving object, she too might have condescended
to come down from her pedestal for his beguilement. Miss Lavinia, on
the other hand, had strong doubts of the policy of the course of treat-
ment, and whether it might not spoil Mr. Sampson, if experimented on
in the case of that young gentleman. R. W. himself was for his part
convinced that he was father of one of the most charming of girls, and
that Rokesmith was the most favoured of men; which opinion, if pro-
pounded to him, Rokesmith would probably not have contested.

The newly-married pair left early, so that they might walk at
leisure to their starting-place from London, for Greenwich. At first
they were very cheerful and talked much; but after a while, Bella
fancied that her husband was turning somewhat thoughtful. So she
asked him:

“ John dear, what’s the matter?”

“Matter, my love ?”

“ Won’t you tell me,” said Bella, looking up into his face, “ what
you are thinking of ?”

“There’s not much in the thought, my soul. I was thinking
whether you wouldn’t like me to be rich ?”

“You rich, John?” repeated Bella, shrinking a little.

«JT mean, really rich. Say, as rich as Mr. Boffin. You would like
that ?”

«J should be almost afraid to try, John dear. Was he much the
better for his wealth? Was I much the better for the little part if
once had in it?”

“But all people are not the worse for riches, my own.”

“ Most people ?” Bella musingly suggested with raised eyebrows.

“Nor even most people, it may be hoped. If you were rich, for
instance, you would have a great power of doing good to others.”

“Yes, sir, for instance,” Bella playfully rejoined ; “ but should I
exercise the power, for instance? And again, sir, for instance ; should
J, at the same time, have a great power of doing harm to myself?” |

Laughing and pressing her arm, he yetorted: “But still, again for
instance ; would you exercise that power ?”

“JT don’t know,” said Bella, thoughtfully shaking her head. “ i
hope not. I think not. But it’s so, easy to hope not and think not,
without the riches.” f

“Why don’t you say, my darling—instead of that phrase—being
poor?” he asked, looking earnestly at her.

«Why don’t I say, being poor! Because I am not poor. Dear
John, it’s not possible that you suppose I think we are poor?”

“T do, my love.”

“Oh John !”

“Understand me, sweetheart. I know that I am rich beyond all
wealth in having you; but I think of you, and think for you. In
such a dress as you are wearing now, you first charmed me, and in
no dress could you ever look, to my thinking, more graceful or more
beautiful. But you have admired many finer dresses this very day ;
and is it not natural that I wish I could give them to you?”

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

200 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“It’s very nice that you should wish it, John. It brings these
tears of grateful pleasure into my eyes, to hear you say so with such
tenderness. But I don’t want them.”

“ Again,” he pursued, “we are now walking through the muddy
streets. I love those pretty feet so dearly, that I feel as if I could not
bear the dirt to soil the sole of your shoe. Is it not natural that I
wish you could ride in a carriage ?”

“Tt’s very nice,” said Bella, glancing downward at the feet in
question, “to know that you admire them so much, John dear, and
since you do, I am sorry that these shoes area full size too large.
But I don’t want a carriage, believe me.”

“You would like one if you could have one, Bella?”

“T shouldn’t like it for its own sake, half so well as such a wish for
it. Dear John, your wishes are as real to me as the wishes in the
Fairy story, that were all fulfilled as soon as spoken. Wish me every-
thing that you can wish for the woman you dearly love, and I have
as good as got it, John. I have better than got it, John!”

‘They were not the less happy for such talk, and home was not the
less home for coming after it. Bella was fast developing a perfect
genius for home. All the loves and graces seemed (her husband
thought) to have taken domestic service with her, and to help her to
make home engaging,

Her married life glided happily on. She was alone all day, for,
after an early breakfast her husband repaired every morning to the
City, and did not return until their late dinner hour. He was “in a
China house,” he explained to Bella: which she found quite satisfac-
tory, without pursuing the China house into minuter details than a
wholesale vision of tea, rice, odd-smelling silks, carved boxes, and
tight-eyed people in more than double-soled shoes, with their pigtails
pulling their heads of hair off, painted on transparent porcelain. She
always walked with her husband to the railroad, and was always
there again to meet him; her old coquettish ways a little sobered
down (but not much), and her dress as daintily managed as if she
managed nothing else. But, John gone to business and Bella re-
turned home, the dress would be laid aside, trim little wrappers and
aprons would be substituted, and Bella, putting back her hair with
both hands, as if she were making the most business-like arrange-
ments for going dramatically distracted, would enter on the household
affairs of the day. Such weighing and mixing and chopping and
grating, such dusting and washing and polishing, such snipping and
weeding and trowelling and other small gardening, such making and

mending and folding and airing, such diverse arrangements, and above
all such severe study! For Mrs. J. R., who had never been wont to
do too much at home as Miss B. W., was under the constant necessity
of referring for advice and support to a sage volume entitled The
Complete British F amily Housewife, which she would sit consulting,
with her elbows on the table and her temples on her hands, like
some perplexed enchantress poring over the Black Art. This, prin-
cipally because the Complete British Housewife, however sound a
Briton at heart, was by no means an expert Briton at expressing’
herself with clearness in the British tongue, and sometimes might have

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
   
   
     

  
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
  
 
      

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 201

issued her directions to equal purpose in the Kamskatchan language.
In any crisis of this nature, Bella would suddenly exclaim aloud,
“Qh you ridiculous old thing, what do you mean by that? You
must have been drinking!” And having made this marginal note,
would try the Housewife again, with all her dimples screwed into
an expression of profound research.

There was likewise a coolness on the part of the British Housewife,
which Mrs. John Rokesmith found highly exasperating. She would
say, “Take a salamander,” as if a general should command a private
to catch a Tartar. Or, she would casually issue the order, “‘ Throw
ina handful—” of something entirely unattainable. In these, the
Housewife’s most glaring moments of unreason, Bella would shut
her up and knock her on the table, apostrophising her with the com-
pliment, “ O you ARE a stupid old Donkey! Where am I to get it, do
you think ?”

Another branch of study claimed the attention of Mrs. John Roke-
smith for a regular period every day. This was the mastering of the
newspaper, so that she might be close up with John on general topics
when John came home. In her desire to be in all things his compa-
nion, she would have set herself with equal zeal to master Algebra, or
Buclid, if he had divided his soul between her and either. _Won-
derful was the way in which she would store up the City Intelligence,
and beamingly shed it upon John in the course of the evening ; inci-
dentally mentioning the commodities that were looking up in the mar-
kets, and how much gold had been taken to the Bank, and trying to
look wise and serious over it until she would laugh at herself most
charmingly and would say, kissing him: “It all comes of my love,
John dear.”

For a City man, John certamly did appear to care as little as might
be for the looking up or looking down of things, as well as for the
gold that got taken to the Bank. But he cared, beyond all expression,
for his wife, as a most precious and sweet commodity that was always
looking up, and that never was worth less than all the gold in the
world. And she, being inspired by her affection, and having a quick
wit and a fine ready instinct, made amazing progress in her domestic
efficiency, though, as an endearing creature, she made no progress at
all. ‘This was her husband’s verdict, and he justified it by telling
her that she had begun her married life as the most endearing crea-

ture that could possibly be.

« And you have such a cheerful spirit!” he said, fondly. “ You are
like a bright light in the house.”

« Am I truly, John ne

« Are you truly? Yes, indeed, Only much more, and much better.”

“Do you know, John dear,’
his coat, “that I sometimes, at odd

Nothing should induce John to do it, w
do it.

«That I sometimes think, John, I feel a little serious.”
“ Are you too much alone, my darling ?”
“© dear, no, John! The time is so short that I have not a

moment too much in the week.”

moments—don’t laugh, John, please.”
hen she asked him not to

> said Bella, taking him by a button of

> a ARR aw See

>

 

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Hie BHAT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

202 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

“ Why serious, my life, then? When serious?”

“When I laugh, I think,” said Bella, laughing as she laid her head
upon his shoulder. “You wouldn’t believe, sir, that I feel serious
now? ButIdo.” And she laughed again, and something glistened
in her eyes.

“ Would you like to be rich, pet?” he asked her coaxingly.

“ Rich, John! How can you ask such goose’s questions ?”

“Do you regret anything, my love?”

“Regret anything? No!” Bella confidently answered. But then,
suddenly changing, she said, between laughing and glistening: “Oh
yes, Ido though. I regret Mrs. Boffin.”

“T, too, regret that separation very much. But perhaps it is only
temporary. Perhaps things may so fall out, as that you may some-
times see her again—as that we may sometimes see her again.” Bella
might be very anxious on the subject, but she scarcely seemed so at
the moment. With an absent air, she was investigating that button
on her husband’s coat, when Pa came jin to spend the evening.

Pa had his special chair and his special corner reserved for hint on
all occasions, and—without disparagement of his domestic joys—was
far happier there, than anywhere. It was always pleasantly droll to
see Pa and Bella together: but on this present evening her husband
thought her more than usually fantastic with him.

“ You are a very good little boy,” said Bella, “to come unexpectedly,
as Soon as you could get out of school. And how have they used you
at school to-day, you dear ?”

“ Well, my pet,” replied the cherub, smiling and rubbing his hands
as she sat him down in his chair, “I attend two schools. There’s
the Mincing Lane establishment, and. there’s your mother’s Academy.
Which might you mean, my dear ?”

“ Both,” said Bella.

“ Both, eh? Why, to say the truth, both have taken a little out
of me to-day, my dear, but that was to be expected. There’s no
royal road to learning ; and what is life but learning!”

“And what do you do with yourself when you hay
learning by heart, you silly child ?”

“Why then, my dear,” said the cherub, after a little consideration,
““T suppose I die.”

“You are a very bad boy,” retorted Bella, “to talk about dismal
things and be out of spirits.”

““ My Bella,” rejoined her father, “I am not out of spirits. I am as
gay as a lark.” Which his face confirmed.

“Then if you are sure and certain it’s not you, I suppose it must
be I,” said Bella: “go I won't do so any more. John dear, we must
give this little fellow his supper, you know.”

“Of course we must, my darling.”

“He has been grubbing and grubbing at school,” said Bella,
looking at her father’s hand and lightly slapping it, “ till he’s not fit
to be seen. © what a grubby child!”

“ Indeed, my dear,” said her father, “I was going to ask to be
allowed to wash my hands, only you find me out so soon.”

“Come here, sir!” cried Bella, taking him by the front of his coat,

 

e got your

 
  
  
 
 
   
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
   
 
  
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
    
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
    
  

   
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
   
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
  
  
  
      

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 203

«come here and be washed directly. You are not to be trusted
to do it for yourself. Come here, sir!”

The cherub, to his genial amusement, was accordingly conducted.
to a little washing-room, where Bella soaped his face and rubbed his
face, and soaped his hands and rubbed his hands, and splashed him
and rinsed him and towelled him, until he was as red as beet-
root, even to his very ears: ‘‘ Now you must be brushed and combed,
sir,” said Bella, busily. “Hold the light, John. Shut your eyes,
sir, and let me take hold of your chin. Be good directly, and do as
you are told!”

Her father being more than willing to obey, she dressed his hair
in her most elaborate manner, brushing it out straight, parting it,
winding it over her fingers, sticking it up on end, and constantly
falling back on John to get a good look at the effect of it. Who
always received her on his disengaged arm, and detained her, while
the patient cherub stood waiting to be finished.

“There!” said Bella, when she had at last completed the final
touches. “Now, you are something like a genteel boy! Put your
jacket on, and come and have your supper.”

The cherub investing himself with his coat was led back to his
corner—where, but for having no egotism in his pleasant nature, he
would have answered well enough for that radiant though self-
sufficient boy, Jack Horner Bella with her own hands laid a cloth
for him, and brought him his supper on a tray. “ Stop a moment,”
said she, “we must keep his little clothes clean ;” and tied a napkin
under his chain, in a very methodical manner.

While he took his supper, Bella sat by him, sometimes admonishing
him to hold his fork by the handle, like a polite child, and at other
times carving for him, or pouring out his drink. Fantastic as it all
was, and accustomed as she ever had been to make a plaything of her

good father, ever delighted that shle should put him to that account,
still there was an occasional something on Bella’s part that was new.
Tt could not be said that she was less playful, whimsical, or natu-
yal, than she always had been; but it seemed, her husband thought,
as if there were some rather graver reason than he had supposed for
what she had so lately said, and as if, throughout all this, there
were glimpses of an underlying seriousness.

Tt was a circumstance in support of this view of the case, that
when she had lighted her father’s pipe, and mixed him his glass of
grog, she sat down on a stool between her father and her husband,
leaning her arm upon the latter, and was very quiet. So quiet, that
when her father rose to take his leave, she looked round with a start,
as if she had forgotten his being there.

“You go a little way with Pa, John ?”

“Yes, my dear. Do you?”

“TJ have not written to Lizzie Hexam since I wrote and told her
that I really had a lover—a whole one. I have often thought I
would like to tell her how right she was when she pretended to
read in the live coals that I would go through fire and water for him.

Tam in the humour to tell her so to-night, John, and Vl stay at
home and do it.”

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

204 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ You are tired.”

“Not at all tired, John dear, but in the humour to write to Lizzie.
Good night, dear Pa. Good night, you dear, good, gentle Pa!”

Left to herself, she sat down to write, and wrote Lizzie a long
letter. She had but completed it and read it over, when her husband
came back. “You are just in time, sir,” said Bella; “I am going to
give you your first curtain lecture. It shall be a parlour-curtain
lecture. You shall take this chair of mine when I have folded my
letter, and I will take the stool (thongh you ought to take it, I can
tell you, sir, if it’s the stool of repentance), and you'll soon find your-
self taken to task soundly.”

Her letter folded, sealed, and directed, and her pen w
middle finger ‘wiped, and her desk locked u
these transactions performed with an air of severe business sedate-
ness, which the Complete British Housewife might have assumed,
and certainly would not have rounded off and broken down in with
a musical laugh, as Bella did: she placed her husband in his chair,
and placed herself upon her stool.

“Now, sir! To begin at the beginning. What is your name?”

A question more decidedly rushing at the secret he was keeping
from her, could not have astounded him. But he kept his counte-
nance and his secret, and answered, “John Rokesmith, my dear.”

“Good boy! Who gave you that name?”

With a returning suspicion that something might have betrayed
him to her, he answered, interrogatively, “ My godfathers and my
godmothers, dear love ?”

“Pretty good!” said Bella. “Not goodest good, because you hesi-
tate about it. However, as you know your Catechism fairly, so far,
I'll let you off the rest, Now, I am going to examine you out
of my own head. John dear, why did you go back, this evening, to
the question you once asked me before—would I like to be rich”

Again, his secret! He looked down at her as she looked up at
him, with her hands folded on his knee, and it was as nearly told
as ever secret was.

Having no reply ready, he could do no better than embrace her.

“Tn short, dear John,” said Bella, “this is the topic of my lecture :
I want nothing on earth, and I want you to believe it.”

“If that’s all, the lecture may be considered over, for I do.”

“It’s not all, John dear,’ Bella hesitated. “It’s only Firstly.
There’s a dreadful Secondly, and a dreadful Thirdly to come—as I
used to say to myself in’ sermon-time when I was a very small-
sized sinner at church.”

“Let them come, my dearest.”

_ Are you sure,-John dear: are you absolutely certain in your
innermost heart of hearts

“Which is not in my keeping,” he rejoined.

“No, John, but the key is— Are you absolutely certain that down
at the bottom of that heart of hearts, which you have given to me as

have given mine to you, there is no remembrance that I was once
very mercenary ?”

“Why, if there were

iped, and her
p and put away, and

 

99)

no remembrance in me of the time you speak

 
    
  
  
 
  
 
    
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
  
  
 
  
 
   
  
  
   
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
    
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
   
  
   
     
  

      
  
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
   
      

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 205

of,” he softly asked her with his lips to hers, “ could I love you quite
as well as 1 do; could I have in the Calendar of my life the brightest
of its days; could I whenever T look at your dear face, or hear your
dear voice, see and hear my noble champion?. It can never have been
that which made you serious, darling ”

“No John, it wasn’t that, and still less was it Mrs. Boffin, though
Tlove her. Wait a moment, and I’ll go on with the lecture. Give
me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John
dear, to cry for joy.”

She did so on his neck, and, still clinging there, laughed a little
when she said, “I think I am ready now for Thirdly, John.”

“TJ am ready for Thirdly,” said John, “ whatever it is.”

“J believe, John,” pursued Bella, “that you believe that I be-
lieve (

“My dear child,” cried her husband gaily, “what a quantity of
believing !”

«Isn't there ” said Bella, with another laugh. “I never knew such
a quantity! It’s like verbs in an exercise. But I can’t get on with
less believing. Il try again. I believe, dear John, that you
believe that I believe that we have as much money as we require,
and that we want for nothing.”

«It is strictly true, Bella.”

« But if our money should by any means be rendered not so much
_if we had to stint ourselves a little in purchases that we can
afford to make now—would you still have the same confidence in my
being quite contented, John ?”

« Precisely the same confidence, my soul.’

“Thank you, John dear, thousands upon thousands of times.
And I may take it for granted, no doubt,” with a little faltering,
“that you would be quite as contented yourself, John? But, yes, L
know I may. For, knowing that I should be so, how surely | may
know that you would be so; you who are so much stronger, and
firmer, and more reasonable and more generous, than I am.”

“Flush!” said her husband, “I must not hear that. You are all
wrong there, though otherwise as right as can be. And now | am
brought to a little piece of news, my dearest, that I might have told
you earlier in the evening. I have strong reason for confidently
believing that we shall never be in the receipt of a smaller income
than our present income.”

She might have shown herself more interested in the intelligence ;
but she had returned to the investigation of the coat-button that had
engaged her attention a few hours before, and scarcely seemed to
heed what he said.

« And now we have got to the bottom of it at last,” cried her hus-
band, rallying her, “and this is the thing that made you serious ?”

“No dear,” said Bella, twisting the button and shaking her head,
“it wasn’t this.”

“Why then, Lord bless this little wife of mine, there’s a
Fourthly !” exclaimed John.

« [his worried me a little, and so did Secondly,” said Bella, occu-
pied with the button, “ but it was quite another sort of seriousness—

 

Bestival

 

  

 

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206 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

a much deeper and quieter sort of seriousness—that I spoke of, John
dear.”

As he bent his face to hers, she raised hers to meet it, and laid her
little right hand on his eyes, and kept it there.

“Do you remember, John, on the day we were married, Pa’s
speaking of the ships that might be sailing towards us from the un-
known seas ?”

“ Perfectly, my darling !”

pls think|-y-7.)...’amons, them. . . 9. theroan a ship upon
the ocean. .... bringing .... . to youandme..... a little

baby, John.”

Ciel OM ID Ty WIL.
A CRY FOR HELP.

Te Paper Mill had stopped work for the night, and the paths and
roads in its neighbourhood were sprinkled with clusters of people going
home from their day’s labour in it. There were men, women, and child-
ren in the groups, and there was no want of lively colour to flutter in
the gentle evening wind. The mingling of various voices and the sound
of laughter made a cheerful impression upon the ear, analogous to that
of the fluttering colours upon the eye. Into the sheet of water re-
flecting the flushed sky in the foreground of the living picture, a knot
of urchins were casting stones, and watching the expansion of the rip-
pling circles. So, in the Tosy evening, one might watch the ever-
widening beauty of the landscape—beyond the newl y-released workers
wending home—beyond the silver river—beyond the deep green.
fields of corn, so prospering, that the loiterers in their narrow threads
of pathway seemed to float immersed breast-high—beyond the hedge-
rows and the clumps of trees—beyond the windmills on the ridge—
away to where the sky appeared to meet the earth, as if there were
no immensity of space between mankind and Heaven.

It was a Saturday evening, and at such a time the village dogs,
always much more interested in the doings of humanity than in the
affairs of their own Species, were particularly active. At the general
shop, at the butcher's and at the public-house, they evinced an in-
quiring spirit never to be satiated. Their especial interest in the
public-house would seem to imply some latent rakishness in the
canine character ; for little was eaten there, and they, having no taste
for beer or tobacco (Mrs. Hubbard’s dog: is said to have smoked, but
proof is wanting), could only have been attracted by sympathy with
loose convivial habits. Moreover, a most wretched fiddle played
within ; a fiddle go unutterably vile, that one lean long-bodied cur,
with a better ear than the rest, found himself under compulsion at
intervals to go round the corner and howl. Yet, even he returned to
the public-house on each occasion with the tenacity of a confirmed
drunkard.

Fearful to relate, there was even a sort of little Fair in the village.
Some despairing gingerbread that had been vainly trying to dispose

 

 
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
   
   
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
   
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
   
  
 
 
 
     
  

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 207

of itself all over the country, and had cast a quantity of dust upon
its head in its mortification, again appealed to the public from an
infirm booth. So did a heap of nuts, long, long exiled from Barce-
lona, and yet speaking English so indifferently as to call fourteen of
themselves a pint. A Peep-show which had originally started with
the Battle of Waterloo, and had since made it every other battle of
later date by altering the Duke of Wellington’s nose, tempted the
student of illustrated history. A Fat Lady, perhaps in part sustained
upon postponed pork, her professional associate beg a Learned
Pig, displayed her life-size picture in a low dress as she appeared
when presented at Court, several yards round. All this wasa vicious
spectacle as any poor idea of amusement on the part of the rougher
hewers of wood and drawers of water in this land of England ever is
and shall be. They must not vary the rheumatism with amusement.
They may vary it with fever and ague, or with as many rheumatic
variations as they have joints; but positively not with entertainment
after their own manner.

The various sounds arising from this scene of depravity, and
floating away into the still evening air, made the evening, at any
point which they just reached fitfully, mellowed by the distance,
more still by contrast. Such was the stillness of the evening to
Eugene Wrayburn, as he walked by the river with his hands behind
him.

He walked slowly, and with the measured step and preoccupied
air of one who was waiting. He walked between the two points, an
osier-bed at this end and some floating lilies at that, and at each point
stopped and looked expectantly in one direction.

“1+ is very quiet,” said he.

It was very quiet. Some sheep were grazing on the grass by the
river-side, and it seemed to him that he had never before heard the
crisp tearing sound with which they cropped it. He stopped idly,
and looked at them.

“You are stupid enough, I suppose. But if you are clever enough
to get through life tolerably to your satisfaction, you have got the
better of me, Man as I am, and Mutton as you are!”

A rustle in a field beyond the hedge attracted his attention.
“What's here to do?” he asked himself, leisurely going towards
the gate and looking over. “No jealous paper-miller? No pleasures
of the chase in this part of the country? Mostly fishing hereabouts !”

The field had been newly mown, and there were yet the marks
of the scythe on the yellow-green ground, and the track of wheels
where the hay had been carried. Following the tracks with his eyes,
the view closed with the new hayrick in a corner.

Now, if he had gone on to the hayrick, and gone round it? But, say
that the event was to be, as the event fell out, and how idle are such
suppositions ! Besides, if he had gone; what is there of warning in a
Bargeman lying on his face?

“A bird flying to the hedge,” was all he thought about it; and
came back, and resumed his walk.

“Tf I had not a reliance on her being truthful,” said Hugene, after
taking some half-dozen turns, “I should begin to think she had given

 

Denilson es einige

inate ar re

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

208 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

me the slip for the second time. But she promised, and she is a girl
of her word.”

Turning again at the water-lilies, he saw her coming, and advanced
to meet her.

“T was saying to myself, Lizzie, that you were sure to come, though
you were late.”

" “Thad to linger through the village as if I had no object: before
me, and I had to speak to several people in passing along, Mr.
Wrayburn.”

“Are the lads of the village—and the ladies—such scandal-mongers ?”
he asked, as he took her hand and drew it through his arm.

She submitted to wall slowly on, with downcast eyes. He put her
hand to his lips, and she quietly drew it away.

“Will you walk beside me, Mr. Wrayburn, and not touch m pete
For, his arm was already stealing round her waist.

She stopped again, and gave him an earnest supplicating look.
“ Well, Lizzie, well!” said he, in an easy way though ill at ease with
himself, “ don’t be unhappy, don’t be reproachful.”

“TI cannot help being unhappy, but I do not mean to be reproach-
ful. Mr. Wrayburn, I implore you to go av vay from this neighbour-
hood, to-morrow morning.”

“Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie!” he remonstrated. “As well be reproach-
ful as wholly unreasonable. I can’t go away.”

“ Why not ?”

“Faith!” said Eugene in his airily candid manner. “ Because
you won't let me. Mind! I don’t mean to be reproachful either. I
don’t complain that you design to keep me here. But you do it, you
do it.”

“Will you walk beside me, and not touch me;” for, his arm was
coming about her again ; “while I speak to you very seriously, Mr.
Wrayburn ?”

“IT will do anything within the limits of possibility, for you,
Lizzie,” he answered with pleasant gaiety as he folded his arms,
“See here! Napoleon Buonaparte at St. Helena.”

“When you spoke to me as I came from the Mill the night before
last,” said Lizzie, fixing her eyes upon him with the look of supplica-
tion which troubled his better nature, you told me that you were
much surprised to see me, and that you were on a solitary fishing
excursion. Was it true?”

“Tt was not, replied Eugene composedly, “in the least true.
I came here, because I had information that I should find you here.”

“Can you imagine why I left London, Mr. Wrayburn ?”

“Tam afraid, Lizzie,” he openly answered, “that you left London
to get rid of me. It is not flattering to my self-love, but I am afraid
you did.”

Sole didie,

“ How could you be so cruel ?”

“O Mr. Wrayburn,” she answered, suddenly breaking into tears, “ is
the cruelty on my side! O Mr. Wrayburn, Mr. Wrayburn, is there no
cruelty in your being here to-night !”

“Tn the name of all that’s good—and that is not conjuring you in

 

    
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
    
   
   
  
  
  
 
 
 
    
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
   
  
    

 

      
  
   
   
 
 
   
    
  
 
 
 
 
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
    
  
 
 
 
    
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. : 209

my own name, for Heaven knows I am not good”—said Eugene,
“don’t be distressed !”

“ What else can I be, when I know the distance and the difference
between us? What else can I be, when to tell me why you came
here, is to put me to shame!” said Lizzie, covering her face.

He looked at her with a real sentiment of remorseful tenderness
and pity. -It was not strong enough to impel him to sacrifice himself
and spare her, but it was a strong emotion.

“Tizzie! I never thought before, that there was a woman in the
world who could affect me so much by saying so little. But don’t
be hard in your construction of me. You don’t know what my state
of mind towards you is. You don’t know how you haunt me and
bewilder me. You don’t know how the cursed carelessness that is
over-officious in helping me at every other turning of my life, won’r
help me here. You have struck it dead, I think, and I sometimes
almost wish you had struck me dead along with it.”

She had not been prepared for such passionate expressions, and
they awakened some natural sparks of feminine pride and joy in her
breast. To consider, wrong as he was, that he could care so much for
her, and that she had the power to move him so!

“It grieves you to see me distressed, Mr. Wrayburn; it grieves me
to see you distressed. I don’t reproach you. Indeed I don’t reproach
you. You have not felt this as I feel it, being so different from me,
and beginning from another point of view. You have not thought.
But I entreat you to think now, think now!”

«What am I to think of?” asked Hugene, bitterly.

«Think of me.”

“Tell me how not to think of you, Lizzie, and youll change me
altogether.”

“{ don’t mean in that way. Think of me, as belonging to another
station, and quite cut off from you in honor. Remember that I have no
protector near me, unless I have one in your noble heart. Respect my
good name. If you feel towards me, in one particular, as you might if
i was a lady, give me the full claims of a lady upon your generous
behaviour. I am removed from you and your family by being a
working girl. How true a gentleman to be as considerate of me as if
I was removed by being a Queen !”

He would have been base indeed to have stood untouched by her
appeal. His face expressed contrition and indecision as he asked :

“ Have I injured you so much, Lizzie?”

“No, no. You may set me quite right. I don’t speak of the past,
Mr. Wrayburn, but of the present and the future. Are we not here
now, because through two days you have followed me so closely
where there are so many eyes to see you, that I consented to this
appointment as an escape ue tea sigs

“Aoain, not very flattering to my self-love,” said Eugene, moodily ;
“but yes. Yes. Yes.”

“ Then I beseech you, Mr. Wrayburn, I beg and pray you, leave this
neighbourhood. If you do not, consider to what you will drive me.”

He did consider within himself for a moment or two, and then
retorted, “Drive you? To what shall I drive you, Lizzie?”

VOL. II. P

 

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210 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“You will drive me away. I live here peacefully and respected,
and I am well employed here. You will force me to quit this place
as I quitted London, and—by following me again—will force me to
quit the next place in which I may find refuge, as I quitted this.”

“Are you so determined, Lizzie—forgive the word I am going to
use, for its literal truth—to fly from a lover ?”

“JT am so determined,” she answered resolutely, though trembling,
“to fly from such a lover. There was a poor woman died here but a
little while ago, scores of years older than I am, whom I found by
chance, lying on the wet earth. You may have heard some account
of her?”

“T think I have,” he answered, “if her name was Higden.”

“Her name was Higden. Though she was so weak and old, she
kept true to one purpose to the very last. Even at the very last,
she made me promise that her purpose should be kept to, after she
was dead, so settled was her determination. What she did, I can do.
Mr. Wrayburn, if I believed—but I do not believe—that you could
be so cruel to me ag to drive me from place to place to wear me out,
you should drive me to death and not do it.”

He looked full at her handsome face, and in his own handsome face
there was a light of blended admiration, anger, and reproach, which
she—who loved him so in secret—whose heart had long been so full,
and he the cause of its overflowing—drooped before. She tried hard
to retain her firmness, but he saw it melting away under his eyes.
In the moment of its dissolution, and of his first full knowledge of
his influence upon her, she dropped, and he caught her on his arm.

“Jiizzie! Rest soa moment. Answer what I ask you. If I had not
been what you call removed from you and cut off from you, would
you have made this appeal to me to leave you?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. Don’t ask me, Mr. Wrayburn. Let
me go back.”

“I swear to you, Lizzie, you shall go directly. I swear to you, you
shall go alone. Tl not accompany you, I'll not follow you, if you
will reply.”

“ How can I, Mr. Wrayburn? How can I tell you what I should
have done, if you had not been what you are?”

“Tf I had not been what you make me out to be,” he struck in,
skilfully changing the form of words, “would you still have
hated me ?”

“O Mr. Wrayburn,” she replied appealingly, and weeping, “ you
know me better than to think I do!”

“If I had not been what you make me out to be, Lizzie, would you
still have been indifferent to me ?”

“OQ Mr. Wrayburn,” she answered as before, “you know me
better than that too !”

There was something in the attitude of her whole figure as he sup-
ported it, and she hung her head, which besought him to be merciful
and not force her to disclose her heart. He was not merciful with
her, and he made her do it.

“If I know you better than quite to believe (unfortunate dog
though T am !) that you hate me, or even that you are wholly indif-

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UHATY AHL AC ONILUYVd AHI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 217.

ferent to me, Lizzie, let me know so much more from yourself before
we separate. Let me know how you would have dealt with me if
you had regarded me as being what you would have considered on
equal terms with you.”

“Tt is impossible, Mr. Wrayburn. How can I think of you as
being on equal terms with me? If my mind could put you on equal
terms with me, you could not be yourself. How could I remember,
then, the night when I first saw you, and when I went out of the
room because you looked at me so attentively? Or, the night that
passed into the morning when you broke to me that my father was
dead? Or, the nights when you used to come to see me at my next
home? Or, your having known how uninstructed I was, and having
caused me to be taught better? Or, my having so looked up to you
and wondered at you, and at first thought you so good to be at all
mindful of me ?”

“Only ‘at first’ thought me so good, Lizzie? What did you think
me after ‘at first’? So bad ?”

“JT don’t say that. I don’t mean that. But after the first wonder
and pleasure of being noticed by one so different from any one who
had ever spoken to me, I began to feel that it might have been better
if I had never seen you.”

SeoWihiy, ot

“Because you were so different,” she answered in a lower voice.
“ Because it was so endless, so hopeless. Spare me!”

“Did you think for me at all, Lizzie?” he asked, as if he were a
little stung.

“Not much, Mr. Wrayburn. Not much until to-night.”

« Will you tell me why?”

“T never supposed until to-night that you needed to be thought
for. But if youdo need to be; if you do truly feel at heart that you
have indeed been towards me what you have called yourself to-night,
and that there is nothing for us in this life but separation ; then
Heaven help you, and Heaven bless you!”

The purity with which in these words she expressed something of her
own love and her own suffering, made a deep impression on him for the
passing time. He held her, almost as if she were sanctified to him by
death, and kissed her, once, almost as he might have kissed the dead.

«J promised that I would not accompany you, nor follow you.
Shall I keep you in view? You have been agitated, and it’s growing
dark.”

“T am used to be'out alone at this hour, and I entreat you not to
do so,”

“J promise. I can bring myself to promise nothing more to-night,
Lizzie, except that I will try what I can do.”

“There is but one means, Mr. Wrayburn, of sparing yourself and
of sparing me, every way. Leave this neighbourhood to-morrow
morning.”

“J will try.”

As he spoke the words in a grave voice, she put her hand in his,
removed it, and went away by the river-side.

“Now, could Mortimer believe this?” murmured Eugene, still
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212 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

remaining, after a while, where she had left him. “(Can I even
believe it myself?”

He referred to the circumstance that there were tears upon his
hand, as he stood covering his eyes. “A most ridiculous position
this, to be found out in!” was his next thought. And his next struck
its root in a little rising resentment against the cause of the tears.

“Yet I have gained a wonderful power over her, too, let her be as
much in earnest as she will!”

The reflection brought back the yielding of her face and form as
she had drooped under his gaze. Contemplating the reproduction, he
seemed to see, for the second time, in the appeal and in the confession
of weakness, a little fear.

“And she loves me. And so earnest a character must be very
earnest in that passion. She cannot choose for herself to be strong
in this fancy, wavering in that, and weak in the other. She must go
through with her nature, as I must go through with mine. If mine
exacts its pains and penalties all round, so must hers, I suppose.”

Pursuing the inquiry into his own nature, he thought, “ Now, if I
married her. If, outfacinge the absurdity of the situation in corre-
spondence with M. R. F., I astonished M. R. F. to the utmost extent
of his respected powers, by informing him that I had married her,
how would M. R. F. reason with the legal mind? ‘You wouldn’t
marry for some money and some station, because you were frichtfully
likely to become bored. Are you less frightfully likely to become
bored, marrying for no money and no station? Are you sure of
yourself? Legal mind, in spite of forensic protestations, must secretly
admit, ‘ Good reasoning on the part of M. R. F. Not sure of myself.’ ”

In the very act of calling this tone of levity to his aid, he felt it to
be profligate and worthless, and asserted her against it.

“And yet,” said Eugene, “I should like to see the fellow (Mortimer
excepted) who would undertake to tell me that this was not a real
sentiment on my part, won out of me by her beauty and her worth,
in spite of myself, and that I would not be true to her. I should
particularly like 10 see the fellow to-night who would tell me so, or
who would tell me anything that could be construed to her disad-
vantage ; for I am wearily out of sorts with one Wrayburn who cuts
a sorry figure, and I would far rather be out of sorts with some-
body else. ‘ Hugene, Eugene, Eugene, this isa bad business.’ Ah! So
go the Mortimer Lightwood bells, and they sound melancholy to-night.”

Strolling on, he thought of something else to take himself to task
for. “ Where is the analogy, Brute Beast,” he said impatiently, ‘ be-
tween a woman whom your father coolly finds out for you and a
woman whom you have found out for yourself, and have ever drifted
after with more and more of constancy since you first set eyes upon
her? Ass! Can you reason no better than that ?”

But, again he subsided into a reminiscence of his first full know-
ledge of his power just now, and of her disclosure of her heart. ‘To
try no more to go away, and to try her again, was the reckless con-
clusion it turned uppermost. And yet again, “Hugene, Eugene,
Hugene, this is a bad business!” And, “I wish I could stop the
Lightwood peal, for it sounds like a knell.”

  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
   
   
  
  
  
   
   
   
    

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 213

Looking above, he found that the young moon was up, and that
the stars were beginning to shine in the sky from which the tones of
red and yellow were flickering out, in favour of the calm blue of a
summer night. He was still by the river-side. Turning suddenly,
he met a man, so close upon him that Eugene, surprised, stepped
back, to avoid a collision. The man carried something over his
shoulder which might have been a broken oar, or spar, or bar, and
took no notice of him, but passed on.

“ Flalloa, friend!” said Eugene, calling after him, “are you blind ?”

The man made no reply, but went his way.

Eugene Wrayburn went the opposite way, with his hands behind
him and his purpose in his thoughts. He passed the sheep, and
passed the gate, and came within hearing of the village sounds, and
came to the bridge. The inn where he stayed, like the village and
the mill, was not across the river, but on that side of the stream. on
which he walked. However, knowing the rushy bank and the back-
water on the other side to be a retired place, and feeling out of
humour for noise or company, he crossed the bridge, and sauntered on :
looking up at the stars as they seemed one by one to be kindled in
the sky, and looking down at the river as the same stars seemed to
be kindled deep in the water. A landing-place overshadowed by a
willow, and a pleasure-boat lying moored there among some stakes,
caught his eye as he passed along. The spot was in such dark
shadow, that he paused to make out what was there, and then passed
on again.

The rippling of the river seemed to cause a correspondent stir in
his uneasy reflections. He would have laid them asleep if he could,
but they were in movement, like the stream, and all tending one way
with a strong current. As the ripple under the moon broke unex-
pectedly now and then, and palely flashed in a new shape and with
a new sound, so parts of his thoughts started, unbidden, from the
rest, and revealed their wickedness. “ Out of the question to marry
her,” said Eugene, “and out of the question toleave her. The crisis !”

He had sauntered far enough. Before turning to retrace his steps,
he stopped upon the margin, to look down at the reflected night.
Tn an instant, with a’ dreadful crash, the reflected night turned
crooked, flames shot jaggedly across the air, and the moon and stars
came bursting from the sky.

Was he struck by lightning? With some incoherent half-formed
thought to that effect, he tumed under the blows that were blinding
him and mashing his life, and closed with a murderer, whom he
caught by a red neckerchief—unless the raining down of his own
blood gave it that hue. :

Eugene was light, active, and expert; but his arms were broken,
or he was paralyzed, and could do no more than hang on to the man,
with his head swung back, so that he could see nothing !but the
heaving sky. After dragging at the assailant, he fell on the bank
with him, and then there was another great crash, and then a splash,

and ail was done.

  
    
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
   
 
   
   
  
 
      

 

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214 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Lizzie Hexam, too, had avoided the noise, and the Saturday move-
ment of people in the straggling street, and chose to walk alone by
the water until her tears should be dry, and she could so compose
herself as to escape remark upon her looking ill or unhappy on
going home. The peaceful serenity of the hour and place, having no
reproaches or evil intentions within her breast to contend against,
sank healingly into its depths. She had meditated and taken com-
fort. She, too, was turning homeward, when she heard a strange sound.

It startled her, for it was like a sound of blows. She stood still,
and listened. It sickened her, for blows fell heavily and cruelly on
the quiet of the night. As she listened, undecided, all was silent.
As she yet listened, she heard a faint groan, and a fall into the river.

Her old bold life and habit instantly inspired her. Without vain
waste of breath in crying for help where there were none to hear,
she ran towards the spot from which the sounds had come. It lay
between her and the bridge, but it was more removed from her than
she had thought; the night being so very quiet, and sound travelling
far with the help of water,

At length, she reached a part of the green bank, much and newly
trodden, where there lay some broken splintered pieces of wood and
some torn fragments of clothes. Stooping, she saw that the grass was
bloody. Following the drops and smears, she saw that the watery
margin of the bank was bloody. Following the current with her
eyes, she saw a bloody face turned up towards the moon, and drifting
away.

Now, merciful Heaven be thanked for
O Blessed Lord, that through thy wonderful workings it may turn to
good at last! To whomsoever the drifting face belongs, be it man’s
or woman’s, help my humble hands, Lord God, to raise it from death
and restore it to some one to whom it must be dear!

It was thought, fervently thought, but not for a moment did the
prayer check her. She Was away before it welled up in her mind,
away, swift and true, yet steady above all—for without steadiness
it could never be done-—to the landing-place under the willow-tree,
where she also had geen the boat lying moored among the stakes.

A sure touch of her old practised hand, a sure step of her old
practised foot, a sure light balance of her body, and she was in the
boat. A quick glance of her practised eye showed her, even through
the deep dark shadow, the sculls in a’ rack against the red-brick
garden-wall. Another moment, and she had cast off (taking the line
with her), and the boat had shot out into the moonlight, and she

am as never other woman rowed on

that old time, and grant,

was rowing down the stre
English water,

ig

intently over her shoulder,

without slackening speed, she looked
ahead for the driving face.

She passed the scene of the strugele—
yonder it was, on her left, well over the boat's stern—she passed on
her right, the end of the village street, a hilly street that almost
dippéd into the river ; its sounds were growing’ faint again, and she
slackened ; looking as the boat drove, everywhere, everywhere, for
the floating face, 3

She merely kept the boat before the stream now, and rested on

 
  
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
   
 
 
  
  
 
  
   
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
    
  

    
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
  
  
   
  
 
  
  
    
  
 
  
   
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 205

her oars, knowing well that if the face were not soon visible, it
had gone down, and she would overshoot it. An untrained sight
would never have seen by the moonlight what she saw at the length
of a few strokes astern. She saw the drowning figure rise to the
surface, slightly struggle, and as if by instinct turn over on its back
to float. Just so had she first dimly seen the face which she now
dimly saw again.

Firm of look and firm of purpose, she intently vatched its coming
on, until it was very near; then, with a touch unshipped her sculls,
and crept aft in the boat, between kneeling and crouching. Once,
she let the body evade her, not being sure of her grasp. Twice, and
she had seized it by its bloody hair.

Tt was insensible, if not virtually dead; it was mutilated, and
streaked the water all about it with dark red streaks. As it could
not help itself, it was impossible for her to get it on board. She
bent over the stern to secure it with the line, and then the river and
its shores rang to the terrible cry she uttered.

But, as if possessed by supernatural spirit and strength, she lashed
it safe, resumed her seat, and rowed in, desperately, for the nearest
shallow water where she might run the boat aground. Desperately,
put not wildly, for she knew that if she lost distinctness of intention,
all was lost and gone.

She ran the boat ashore, went into the water, released him from
the line, and by main strength lifted him in her arms and laid him
in the bottom of the boat. He had fearful wounds upon hin, and.
she bound them up with her dress torn into strips. Hse, supposing
him to be still alive, she foresaw that he must bleed to death before
he could be landed at his inn, which was the nearest place for
succour.

This done very rapidly, she kissed his disfigured forehead, looked
up in anguish to the stars, and blessed him and forgave him, “if she
had anything to forgive.” It was only in that istant that she
thought of herself, and then she thought of herself only for him.

Now, merciful Heaven be thanked for that old time, enabling me,
without a wasted moment, to have got the boat afloat again, and to row
back against the stream! And grant, O Blessed Lord God, that through
poor me he may be raised from death, and preserved to some one else
to whom he may be dear one day, though never dearer than to me !

She rowed hard—rowed desperately, but never wildly—and seldom
removed her eyes from him in the bottom of the boat. She had
so laid him there, as that she might see his disfigured face ; it was
so much disfigured that his mother might have covered it, but it
was above and beyond disfigurement in her eyes.

The boat touched the edge of the patch of inn lawn, sloping
gently to the water. There were lights in the windows, but there
chanced to be no one out of doors. She made the boat fast, and

again by main strength took him up, and never laid him down until

she laid him down in the house. i

Surgeons were sent for, and she sat supporting his head. She had
oftentimes heard in days that were gone, how doctors would lift
the hand of an insensible wounded person, and would drop it if the

 

Weer

 

    
    
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
   
  
  
  
  
 
  
   
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
 
   
  
   
 
 
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

9

By
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16 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. bd

person were dead. She waited for the awful moment when the doctors
might lift this hand, all broken and bruised, and let it fall.
The first of the surgeons came, and asked, before proceeding to his
examination, “ Who brought him in ?”
“T brought him in, sir,” answered Lizzie, at whom all present looked.

“You, my dear? You could not lift, far less carry, this weight.”

“T think I could not, at another time, sir; but I am sure I did.”

The surgeon looked at her with great attention, and with some
compassion. Having with a grave face touched the
the head, and the broken arms, he took the hand.

O! would he let it drop ?

He appeared irresolute. He did not retain it, but |
down, took a candle, looked more closely at the injuries on the head,

and at the pupils of the eyes. That done, he replaced the candle

and took the hand again. “Another surgeon then coming in, the two

exchanged a whisper, and the second took the hand. Neither did he
let it fall at once, but kept it for a while and laid it gently down.

“ Attend to the poor girl,” said the first surgeon then. “She is
quite unconscious. She sees nothing and hears nothing. All the
better for her! Don’t rouse her, if you can help it; only move her.
Poor girl, poor girl!’ She must be amazingly strong of heart, but it
is much to be feared that she has set her heart upon the dead. Be
gentle with her.”

wounds upon

aid it gently

a Se Se
CHAPTER VII.
BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN,

Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were
yet visible, but there was dull light in the east that was not the
light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along
the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts
of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked
spectral, and so did the pale stars: while the cold eastern glare, ex-
pressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament
quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead.

Perhaps it was so likened by the lonely Bargeman, standing on
the brink of the lock. For certain, Bradley Headstone looked that
way, when a chill air came up, and when it passed on murmuring,
as if it whispered something that made the phantom trees and
water tremble—or threaten—for fancy might have made it either.

He turned away, and tried the Lock-house door. It was fastened
on the inside.

“Is he afraid of me?” he muttered, knocking.

=) 7
Rogue Riderhood was soon roused, and soon undrew the bolt and
let him in.

ee aWihiva T’otherest, I thought you had been and got lost! Two
nights away! I a’most believed as you’d giv’ me the slip, and
I had as good as half a mind for to advertise you in the newspapers
to come for’ard,”

 

   

  
  
 
  
 
  
   
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
   
  
 
  
 
  
   
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 217

Bradley’s face turned so dark on this hint, that Riderhood deemed
it expedient to soften it into a compliment.

“But not you, governor, not you,’ he went on, stolidly shaking his
head. “For what did I say to myself arter having amused myself
with that there stretch of a comic idea, as a sort of a playful game?
Why, I says to myself, ‘ He’s a man o honor.’ That’s what I says
to myself. ‘He’s a man 0’ double honor.’ ”

Very remarkably, Riderhood put no question to him. He had
looked at him on opening the door, and he now looked at him again
(stealthily this time), and the result of his looking was, that he
asked him no question.

“You'll be for another forty on ’em, governor, as I judges, afore
you turns your mind to breakfast,” said Riderhood, when his visitor
sat down, resting his chin on his hand, with his eyes on the ground.
And very remarkably again: Riderhood feigned to set the scanty
furniture in order, while he spoke, to have a show of reason for not
looking at him.

“Yes. I had better sleep, I think,” said Bradley, without changing
his position.

«J myself should recommend it, governor,” assented Riderhood.
“Might you be anyways dry?”

“Yes. I should like a drink,” said Bradley; but without ap-
pearing to attend much.

Mr. Riderhood got out his bottle, and fetched his jug-full of water,
and administered a potation. Then, he shook the coverlet of his bed
and spread it smooth, and Bradley stretched himself upon it in the
clothes he wore. Mr. Riderhood poetically remarking that he would
pick the bones of his night’s rest, in his wooden chair, sat in the
window as before; but, as before, watched the sleeper narrowly until
he was} very sound asleep. Then,'he rose and looked at him close,
in the bright daylight, on every side, with great minuteness. He
went out to his Lock to sum up what he had seen.

“One of his sleeves is tore right away below the elber, and the
Pother’s had a good rip at the shoulder. He’s been hung on to,
pretty tight, for his shirt’s all tore out of the neck-gathers. He’s
been in the grass and he’s been in the water. And jhe’s spotted,
and I know with what, and with whose. Hooroar 1

Bradley slept long. Early in the afternoon a barge came down.
Other barges had passed through, both ways, before it; but the
Lock-keeper hailed only this particular barge, for news, as if he had
made a time calculation with some nicety. The men on board told
him a piece of news, and there was a lingering on their part to
enlarge upon it.

Twelve hours had intervened since Bradley’s lying down, when
he got up. “ Not that I swaller it,” said Riderhood, squinting at his
Lock, when he saw Bradley coming out of the house, “as you've
been a sleeping all the time, old boy !”

Bradley came to him, sitting on his wooden lever, and asked what
o'clock it was? Riderhood told him it was between two and three.

« When are you relieved ?” asked Bradley.

“Day arter to-morrow, governor.”

Saray cca eS

 

 

  

 

 

 

  

218 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“ Not sooner ?”

“ Not a inch sooner, governor.”

On both sides, importance seemed attached to this question of
relief. Riderhood quite petted his reply ; saying a second time, and
prolonging a negative roll of his head, “n—n—not a inch sooner,
governor.”

“Did I tell you I was going on to-night?” asked Bradley.

“No, governor,” returned Riderhood, in a cheerful, affable, and
conversational manner, “you did not tell me so. But most like you
meant to it and forgot to it. How, otherways, could a doubt have
come into your head about it, governor ?”

“As the sun goes down, I intend to go on,” said Bradley.

“So much the more necessairy is a Peck,” returned Riderhood.
“Come in and have it, 'T’otherest.”

The formality of spreading a tablecloth not being observed in Mr,
Riderhood’s establishment, the serving of the “peck” was the affair
of a moment; it merely consisting in the handing down of a capa-
cious baking dish with three-fourths of an immense meat pie in it,
and the production of two pocket-knives, an earthenware mug, and
a large brown bottle of beer,

Both ate and drank, but Riderhood much the more abundantly.
In lieu of plates, that honest man cut two triangular pieces from the
thick crust of the pie, and laid them, inside uppermost, upon the table :
the one before himself, and the other before his guest. Upon these
platters he placed two goodly portions of the contents of the pie,
thus imparting the unusual interest to the entertainment that each
partaker scooped out the inside of his plate, and consumed it with
his other fare, besides having the sport of pursuing the clots of con-
gealed gravy over the plain of the table, and successfully taking
them into his mouth at last from the blade of his knife, in case of
their not first sliding off it.

Bradley Headstone was so remarkably awkward at these exercises,
that the Rogue observed it.

“ Look out, T’otherest!” he cried, “you'll cut your hand !”

But, the caution came too late, for Bradley gashed it at the instant.
And, what was more unlucky, in asking Riderhood to tie it up,
and in standing close to him for the purpose, he shook his hand
under the smart of the wound, and shook blood over Riderhood’s
dress.

When dinner was done, and when what remained of the platters
and what remained of the congealed gravy had been put back into
what remained of the pie, which served as an economical investment
for all miscellaneous savings, Riderhood filled the mug with beer
and took a long drink. And now he did look at Bradley, and with
an evil eye.

“T’otherest!” he said, hoarsely, as he bent across the table to
touch his arm. “The news has gone down the river afore you.”

“ What news 2”

“Who do you think,”
if he disdainfully jerked

“T am not good

said Riderhood, with a hitch of his head, as
the feint away, “picked up the body? Guess.”
at guessing anything.”

 
  
  
 
  
  
   
  
  
 
  
  
  
   
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
   
 
   
    
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
   
   

     
  
  
  
 
    
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
   
 
  
  
  
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
   
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 219

«She did. Hooroar! You had him there agin. She did.” ?

The convulsive twitching of Bradley Headstone’s face, and the
sudden hot humour that broke out upon it, showed how grimly the
intelligence touched him. But he said not a single word, good
or bad. He only smiled in a lowering manner, and got up and stood
leaning at the window, looking through it. Riderhood followed him
with his eyes. Riderhood cast down his eyes on his own besprinkled
clothes. Riderhood began to have an air of being better at a guess
than Bradley owned to being.

“JT have been so long in want of rest,” said the schoolmaster, “ that
with your leave I'll le down again.”

« And welcome, T’otherest!” was the hospitable answer of his
host. He had laid himself down without waiting for it, and he
remained upon the bed until the sun was low. When he arose and
came out to resume his journey, he found his host waiting for him
on the grass by the towing-path outside the door.

« Whenever it may be necessary that you and I should have any
further communication together,” said Bradley, “I will come back.
Good-night !”

“Well, since no better can be,” said Riderhood, turning on his heel,
«Good-night.!” But he turned again as the other set forth, and
added under his breath, looking after him with a leer : “ You wouldn’t
be let to go like that, if my Relief warn't as good as come. Pll
catch you up in a mile.”

Tn a word, his real time of relief being that evening at sunset, his
mate came lounging in, within a quarter of an hour. Not staying to
fill up the utmost margin of his time, but borrowing an hour or so,
to be repaid again when he should relieve his reliever, Riderhood
straightway followed on the track of Bradley Headstone.

He was a better follower than Bradley. It had been the calling
of his life to slink and skulk and dog and waylay, and he knew his
calling well. He effected such a forced march on leaving the Lock
House that he was close up with him—that is to say, as close up
with him as he deemed it convenient to be—before another Lock
was passed. His man looked back pretty often as he went, but

got no hint of him. He knew how to take advantage of the ground,
and where to put the hedge between them, and where the wall, and
when to duck, and when to drop, and had a thousand arts beyond
the doomed Bradley’s slow conception.

But, all his arts were brought to a st
Bradley, turning into a green lane or riding by the river-side
solitary spot run wild in nettles, briars, and brambles, and- encum-
bered with the scathed trunks of a whole hedgerow of felled trees, on
the outskirts of a little wood—began stepping on these trunks and
n among them and stepping on. them again, apparently
but assuredly with no schoolboy pur-

andstill, like himself, when

 

ah

dropping dow
as aschoolboy might have done,

pose, or want of purpose.
“What are you up to 2” muttered Riderhood, down in the ditch,

and holding the hedge a little open with both hands. And soon his
actions made a most extraordinary reply. 3y George and the
Draggin!” cried Riderhood, “ if he ain’t a going to bathe !”

entice eat: Dee

 

,

a 8

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

220 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

He had passed back, on and among the trunks of trees again, and
had passed on to the water-side and had begun undressing on the
grass. For a moment it had a suspicious look of suicide, arranged to
counterfeit accident. “But you wouldn’t have fetched a bundle under
your arm, from among that timber, if such was your game!” said
Riderhood. Nevertheless it was a relief to him when the bather
after a plunge and a few strokes came out. “For I shouldn't,” he
said in a feeling manner, “have liked to lose you till I had made
more money out of you neither.”

Prone in another ditch (he had changed his ditch as his man had
changed his position), and holding apart so small a patch of the
hedge that the sharpest eyes could not have detected him, Rogue
Riderhood watched the bather dressing. And now gradually came
the wonder that he stood up, completely clothed, another man, and
not the Bargeman.

“ Aha!” said Riderhood. “Much as you was dressed that night. I
see. You're a taking me with you, now. Youre deep. But I
knows a deeper.”

When the bather had finished dressing, he kneeled on the grass,
doing something with his hands, and again stood up with his bundle
under his arm. Looking all around "him with great attention, he
then went to the river's edge, and flung it in as far, and yet as
lightly as he could. It was not until he was so decidedly upon
his way again as to be beyond a bend of the river and for the time
out of view, that Riderhood scrambled from the ditch.

“Now,” was his debate ‘with himself, “shall I foller you on, or
shall I let you loose for this once, and go a fishing?” The debate
continuing, he followed, as a precautionary measure in any case, and
got him again in sight. “If I was to let you loose this once,” said
Riderhood then, still following, “I could make you come to me agin,
or I could find you out in one way or another. If I wasn’t to go
a fishing, others might.—I’ll let you loose this once, and go a
fishing!” With that, he suddenly dropped the pursuit and turned.

The miserable man whom he had released for the time, but not for
long, went on towards London. Bradley was suspicious of every sound
he heard, and of every face he saw, but was under a spell which very
commonly falls upon the shedder of blood, and had no suspicion of the
real danger that lurked in his life, and would have it yet. Rider-
hood was much in his thoughts—had never been out of his thoughts
since the night-adventure of their first meeting; but Riderhood
occupied a very different place there, from the place of pursuer ;
and Bradley had been at the pains of devising so many means of
fitting that place to him, and of wedging him into it, that his mind
could not compass the possibility of his occupying any other. And
this is another spell against which the shedder of blood for ever
Strives in vain. ‘There are fifty doors by which discovery may enter.
With infinite pains and cunning, he double locks and bars forty-nine
of them, and cannot see the fiftieth standing wide open.

Now, too, was he cursed with a state of mind more wearing and
more wearisome than remorse. He had no remorse; but the evil-
doer who can hold that avenger at bay, cannot escape the slower

 

 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
 
   
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
   
  
   
    
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
     
  

  
 
 
  
   
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 221

torture of incessantly doing the evil deed again and doing it more
efficiently. In the defensive declarations and pretended confessions of
murderers, the pursuing shadow of this torture may be traced through
every lie they tell. If I had done it as alleged, is it conceivable that I
would have made this and this mistake? If Ihad done it as alleged,
should I have left that unguarded place which that false and wicked
witness against me so infamously deposed to? The state of that
wretch who continually finds the weak spots in his own crime, and
strives to strengthen them when it is unchangeable, is a state that
ageravates the offence by doing the deed a thousand times instead
of once; but it is a state, too, that tauntingly visits the offence upon
a‘sullen unrepentant nature with its heaviest punishment every
time.

Bradley toiled on, chained heavily to the idea of his hatred anc
his vengeance, and thinking how he might have satiated both in
many better ways than the way he had taken. The instrument
micht have been better, the spot and the hour might have been
better chosen. ‘To batter a man down'from behind in the dark, on
the brink of a river, was well enough, but he ought to have been
instantly disabled, whereas he had turned and seized his assailant ;
and so, to end it before chance-help came, and to be rid of him, he had
been hurriedly thrown backward into the river before the life was
fully beaten out of him. Now if it could be done again, It must not
be so done. Supposing his head had been held down under water
for a while. Supposing the first blow had been truer. Supposing he
had been shot. Supposing he had been strangled. Suppose this way,
that way, the other way. Suppose anything but getting unchained
from the one idea, for that was inexorably impossible.

The school reopened next day. The scholars saw little or no
change in their master’s face, for it always wore its slowly labouring
expression. But, as he heard his classes, he was always doing the
deed and doing it better. As he paused with his piece of chalk at
the black board before writing on it, he was thinking of the spot,
and whether the water was not deeper and the fall straighter, a little
higher up, or a little lower down. He had half a mind to draw a
line or two upon the board, and show himself what he meant. He
was doing it again and improving on the manner, at prayers, in his
mental arithmetic, all through his questioning, all through the day.

Charley Hexam was a master now, in another school, under another
head. It was evening, and Bradley was walking in his garden
observed from behind a blind by gentle little Miss Peecher, who con-
templated offering him a loan of her smelling salts for headache,
when Mary Anne, in faithful attendance, held up her arm.

“Yes, Mary Anne?”

“Young Mr. Hexam, if you please, ma’am, coming to see Mr. Head-
stone.”

“ Very good, Mary Anne.”

Again Mary Anne held up her arm.

«You may speak, Mary Anne?”

“Mr. Headstone has beckoned young Mr. Hexam into his house,
ma’am, and he has gone in himself without waiting for young Mr.

=
L

 

Hite |
ial

Kear i

Die ao thee an i

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

222 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Hexam to come up, and now he has gone in too, ma’am, and has shut
the door.”

“With all my heart, Mary Anne.”

Again Mary Anne’s telegraphic arm worked.

“ What more, Mary Anne?”

“They must find it rather dull and dark, Miss Peecher, for the
parlour blind’s down, and neither of them pulls it up.”

“There is no accounting,” said good Miss Peecher with a little sad
sigh which she repressed by laying her hand on her neat methodical
hboddice, “there is no accounting for tastes, Mary Anne.”

Charley, entering the dark room, stopped short when he saw his
old friend in its yellow shade.

“Come in, Hexam, come in.”

Charley advanced to take the hand that was held out to him; but
stopped again, short of it. The heavy, bloodshot eyes of the school-
master, rising to his face with an effort, met his look of scrutiny.

“Mr. Headstone, what’s the matter 2”

“Matter? Where?”

“Mr. Headstone, have you heard the news? This news about the
fellow, Mr. Eugene Wrayburn? That he is killed ?”

“He is dead, then!” exclaimed Bradley.

Young Hexam standing looking at him, he moistened his lips with
his tongue, looked about the room, glanced at his former pupil, and
looked down. “TJ heard of the outrage,” said Bradley, trying to con-
strain his working mouth, “but I had not heard the end of it.”

“Where were you,” said the boy, advancing a step as he lowered
his voice, “ when it was done ? Stop! Idon’t ask that. Don’t tell me.
If you force your confidence upon me, Mr. Headstone, Pll give up
every word of it. Mind! Take notice. Ill give up it, and I'll give
up you. J will!”

The wretched creature seemed to suffer acutely under this renun-
ciation. A desolate air of utter and complete loneliness fell upon him,
like a visible shade.

“It’s for me to speak, not you,” said the boy. “If you do, you'll
do it at your peril. I am going to put your selfishness before you,
Mr. Headstone—your passionate, violent, and ungovernable selfishness
—to show you why I can, and why I will, have nothing more to do
with you.”

He looked at young Hexam as if he were waiting for a scholar to
go on with a lesson that he knew by heart and was deadly tired of.
But he had said his last word to him.

“Tf you had any part—I don’t say what—in this attack,” pursued
the boy ; “or if you know anything about it—I don’t say how much—

or if you know who did it—I go no closer—you did an injury to me
that’s never to be forgiven. You know that I took you with me to
his chambers in the Temple when I told him my opinion of him, and
made myself responsible for my opinion of you. You know that I
took you with me when I was watching him with a view to recovering
my sister and bringing her to her senses; you know that I have
allowed myself to be mixed up with you, all through this business, in
favouring your desire to marry my sister. And how do you know

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
   
  
  
  
    
   
  
   
     

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

that, pursuing the ends of your own violent temper, you have not laid
me open to suspicion ? Ts that your gratitude to me, Mr. Headstone ?”

Bradley sat looking steadily before him at the vacant air. As
often as young Hexam stopped, he turned his eyes towards him, as if
he were waiting for him to go on with the lesson, and get it done.
As often as the boy resumed, Bradley resumed his fixed face.

“T am going to be plain with you, Mr. Headstone,” said young
Hexam, shaking his head in a half-threatening manner, ‘“ because this
is no time for affecting not to know things that I do know—except
certain things at which it might not be very safe for you, to hint
again. What I mean is this: if you were a good master, I was a
good pupil. I have done you plenty of credit, and in improving
my own reputation I have improved yours quite as much. Very
well then. Starting on equal terms, I want to put before you how
you have shown your gratitude to me, for doing all I could to further
your wishes with reference to my sister. You have compromised me
by being seen about with me, endeayouring to counteract this Mr.
Eugene Wrayburn. That’s the first thing you have done. If my
character, and my now dropping you, help me out of that, Mr. Head-
stone, the deliverance is to be attributed to me, and not to you. No
thanks to you for it!”

The boy stopping again, he moved his eyes again.

“Tam going on, Mr. Headstone, don’t you be afraid. I am going on
tothe end, and I have told you beforehand what the end is. Now, you
know my story. You are as well aware as I am, that I have had
many disadvantages to leave behind me in life. You have heard me
mention my father, and you are sufficiently acquainted with the fact
that the home from which I, as I may say, escaped, might have been
2 more creditable one than it was. My father died, and then it might
have been supposed that my way to respectability was pretty clear.
No. For then my sister begins.”

He spoke as confidently, and with as entire an absence of any
tell-tale colour in his cheek, as if there were no softening old time
behind him. Not wonderful, for there was none in his hollow empty
heart. What is there but self, for selfishness to see behind it?

“When I speak of my sister, I devoutly wish that you had never seen
her, Mr. Headstone. However, you did see her, and that’s useless now.
[I confided in you about her. I explained her character to you, and
how she interposed some ridiculous fanciful notions in the way of our
being as respectable as I tried for. You fell in love with her, and I
favoured you with all my might. She could not be induced to favour
you, and so we came into collision with this Mr. Eugene Wrayburn.
Now, what have you done? Why, you have justified my sister in
being firmly set against you from first to last, and you have put me
in the wrong again! And why have you done it? Because, Mr.
Headstone, you are in all your passions so selfish, and so concentrated
upon yourself, that you have not bestowed one proper thought
on me.”

The cool conviction with which the boy took up and held his posi-
tion, could have been derived from no other vice in human nature.

 

“Tt is,” he went on, actually with tears, “an extraordinary cir- -

   
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

224 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

cumstance attendant on my life, that every effort I make towards
perfect respectability, is impeded by somebody else through no fault
of mine! Not content with doing what I have put before you, you
will drag my name into notoriety through dragging my sister’s—
which you are pretty sure to do, if my suspicions have any foundation
at all—and the worse you prove to be, the harder it will be for me to
detach myself from beimg associated with you in people’s minds.”

When he had dried his eyes and heaved a sob over his injuries, he
began moving towards the door.

“However, I have made up my mind that I will become respect-
able in the scale of society, and that I will not be dragged down by
others. I have done with my sister as well as with you. Since she
cares so little for me as to care nothing for undermining my respecta-
bility, she shall go her way and I will go mine. My prospects are
very good, and I mean to follow them alone. Mr. Headstone, I don’t
say what you have got upon your conscience, for I don’t know.
Whatever hes upon it, I hope you will see the justice of keeping wide
and clear of me, and will find a consolation in completely exone-
rating all but yourself. I hope, before many years are out, to succeed
the master in my present school, and the mistress being a single
woman, though some years older than I am, I might even marry her.
If it is any comfort to you to know what plans I may work out by
keeping myself strictly respectable in the scale of society, these are
the plans at present occurring to me. In conclusion, if you feel a
sense of having injured me, and a desire to make some small reparation,
I hope you will think how respectable you might have been yourself,
and will contemplate your blighted existence.”

Was it strange that the wretched man should take this heavily to
heart? Perhaps he had taken the boy to heart, first, through some
long laborious years ; perhaps through the same years he had found
his drudgery lightened by communication with a brighter and more
apprehensive spirit than his own; perhaps a family resemblance of
face and voice between the boy and his sister, smote him hard in the
gloom of his fallen state. For whichsoever reason, or ior all, he
drooped his devoted head when the boy was gone, and shrank toge-
ther on the floor, and grovelled there, with the palms of his hands
tight-clasping his hot temples, in unutterable misery, and unrelieved
by a single tear.

 

Rogue Riderhood had been busy with the river that day. He had
fished with assiduity on the previous evening, but the light was
short, and he had fished unsuccessfully. He had fished again that
day with better luck, and had carried his fish home to Plashwater
Weir Mill Lock-house, in a bundle.

  

  

 

 

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER VIII.
A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER.

Tue dolls’ dressmaker went no more to the business-premises of
Pubsey and Co. in St. Mary Axe, after chance had disclosed to her
(as she supposed) the flinty and hypocritical character of Mr. Riah.
She often moralized over her work on the tricks and the manners of
that venerable cheat, but made her little purchases elsewhere, and
lived a secluded life. After much consultation with herself, she
decided not to put Lizzie Hexam on her guard against the old
man, areuing that the disappoimtment of finding him out would
come upon her quite soon enough. Therefore, in her communication
with her friend by letter, she was silent on this theme, and prin-
cipally dilated on the backslidings of her bad child, who every day
grew worse and worse.

“You wicked old boy,” Miss Wren would say to him, with a
menacing forefinger, “you'll force me to run away from you, after
all, you will; and then you'll shake to bits, and there'll be nobody
to pick up the pieces !”

At this foreshadowing of a desolate decease, the wicked old boy
would whine and whimper, and would sit shaking himself into the
lowest of low spirits, until such time as he could shake himself out
of the house and shake another threepennyworth into himself. But
dead drunk or dead sober (he had come to such a pass that he was least
alive in the latter state), it was always on the conscience of the
paralytic scarecrow that he had betrayed his sharp parent for sixty
threepennyworths of rum, which were all gone, and that her sharp-
ness would infallibly detect his having done it, sooner or later. All
things considered therefore, and addition made of the state of his
body to the state of his mind, the bed on which Mr. Dolls reposed
was a bed of roses from which the flowers and leaves had entirely
faded, leaving him to lie upon the thorns and stalks.

On a certain day, Miss Wren was alone at her work, with the
house-door set open for coolness, and was trolling in a small sweet voice
a mournful little song which might have been the song of the doll
she was dressing, bemoaning the brittleness and meltability of wax,
when whom should she descry standing on the pavement, looking
in at her, but Mr. Fledgeby.

“JT thought it was you?” said Fledgeby, coming up the two
steps.

«Did you?” Miss Wren retorted. “And I thought it was you,
young man. Quite a coincidence. Youre not mistaken, and ’m not
mistaken, How clever we are!”

“Well, and how are you?” said Fledgeby.

“T am pretty much as usual, sir,” replied Miss Wren. “A very
unfortunate parent, worried out of my life and senses by a very bad
child.”

Fledgeby’s small eyes opened so wide that they might have passed
VOL, I. Q

   

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226 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

for ordinary-sized eyes, as he stared about him for the very young
person whom he supposed to be in question.

“ But you're not a parent,” said Miss Wren, “and consequently it’s
of no use talking to you upon a family subject.—To what am I to
attribute the honor and favor ?”

“To a wish to improve your acquaintance,” Mr. Fledgeby replied.

Miss Wren, stopping to bite her thread, looked at him very
knowingly.

“We never meet now,” said Fledgeby ; “do we?”

“No,” said Miss Wren, chopping off the word.

“So I had a mind,” pursued Fledgeby, “to come and have a talk
with you about our dodging friend, the child of Israel.”

“So he gave you my address; did he?” asked Miss Wren.

“T got it out of him,” said Fledgeby, with a stammer.

“You seem to see a good deal of him,” remarked Miss Wren, with
shrewd distrust. “A good deal of him you seem to see, con-
sidering.”

“Yes, I do,” said Fledgeby. « Considering.”

“ Haven't you,” inquired the dressmaker, bending over the doll on
which her art was being exercised, “done interceding with him
yet?”

“No,” said Fledgeby, shaking his head.

“Ta! Been interceding with him all this time, and sticking to
him still?” said Miss Wren, busy with her work.

“Sticking to him is the word,” said Fledgeby.

Miss Wren pursued her occupation with a concentrated air, and
asked, after an interval of silent industry :

‘Are you in the army ?” :

Not exactly,” said Fledgeby, rather flattered by the question.
‘Navy ?” asked Miss Wren,

N—no,” said Fledgel ry. He qualified these two negatives, as if
1e@ were not absolutely in either service, but was almost in both.

“ What are you then?” demanded Miss Wren.

“Tam a gentleman, I am,” said Fledgeby.

“Oh!” assented Jenny, screwing up her mouth with an appearance
of conviction. “Y es, to be sure! That accounts for your having: so
much time to give to intercedine. But only to think how kind and
friendly a gentleman you must be!”

Mr. Fledgeby found that he was skating round a board marked
Dangerous, and had better cut out a fresh track. “Let's get back to
the dodgerest of the ad deers,” said he. “What's he up to in the case
of your friend the handsome gal? He must have some object.
What’s his object 2” e

“Cannot undertake to say, sir, [am sure!” returned Miss Wren,
composedly.

“ He won't acknowledge where she’s gone,” said Fledgeby ; “and I
have a fancy that I should like to have another look at her. Now
1 know he knows where she is eone.”

= Sei undertake to say, sir, I am sure!” Miss Wren again
rejoined.

“And you know where she is gone,” hazarded Fledgeby.

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

“Cannot undertake to say, sir, really,” replied Miss Wren.

The quaint little chin met Mr. Fledgeby’s gaze with such a baf-
fling. hitch, that that agreeable gentleman was for some time at a
loss how to resume his fascinating part in the dialogue. At length
he said :

“Miss Jenny !—That’s your name, if I don’t mistake ?”

“Probably you don’t mistake, sir,’ was Miss Wren’s cool answer ;
“because you had it on the best authority. Mine, you know.”

“Miss Jenny! Instead of coming up and being dead, let’s come
out and look alive. It'll pay better, I assure you,” said Fledgeby,
bestowing an inveigling twinkle or two upon the dressmaker.
“Youll find it pay better.”

“ Perhaps,” said Miss Jenny, holding out her doll at arm’s length,
and critically contemplating the effect of her art with her scissors
on her lips and her head thrown back, as if her interest lay there,
and not in the conversation ; “perhaps you'll explain your meaning,
young man, which is Greek to me.—You must have another touch
of blue in your trimming, my dear.” Having addressed the last
remark to her fair client, Miss Wren proceeded to snip at some blue
fragments that lay before her, among fragments of all colours, and to
thread a needle from a skein of blue silk,

“Took here,” said Fledgeby.—< Are you attending ?”

“T am attending, sir,” replied Miss Wren, without the slightest
appearance of so doing. “ Another touch of blue in your trimming,
my dear.”

“Well, look here,” said Fledgeby, rather discouraged by the
circumstances under which he found himself pursuing the conver-
sation. ‘If you're attending——’

(“Light blue, my sweet young lady,” remarked Miss Wren, in a
sprightly tone, “being best suited to your fair complexion and
your flaxen curls.” )

“JT say, if you're attending,” proceeded Fledgeby, “it'll pay better
in this way. Itll lead in a roundabout manner to your buying
damage and waste of Pubsey and Co. at a nominal price, or even
getting it for nothing.”

“ Aha!” thought the dressmaker. “But you are not so round-
about, Little Eyes, that I don’t notice your answering for Pubsey
and Co. after all! Little Eyes, Little Eyes, youre too cunning
by half.”

«And I take it for granted,’ pursued Fledgeby, “that to get the
most of your materials for nothing would be well worth your while,
Miss Jenny ?”

“You may take it for granted,” returned the dressmaker with
many knowing nods, “ that it’s always well worth my while to make
money.” :

“Now,” said Fledgeby approvingly, “ youre answering toa sensible
purpose. Now, youre coming out and looking alive! So I make so
free, Miss Jenny, as to offer the remark, that you and Judah were too
thick together to last. You can’t come to be intimate with such a
deep file as Judah without beginning to see a little way into-him,
you know,” said Fledgeby with a wink.

2

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“JT must own,” returned the dressmaker, with her eyes upon her

work, “that we are not good friends at present.”

“JT know you're not good friends at present,” said Fledgeby. “I
know all about it. I should like to pay off Judah, by not letting him
have his own deep way in everything. In most things he'll get it
by hook or by crook, but—hang it all !—don’t let him haye his own deep
way ineverything. That’stoo much.” Mr. Fledgeby said this with
some display of indignant warmth, as if he was counsel in the cause
for Virtue.

“How can I prevent his having his own way?” began the dress-
maker.

“ Deep way, I called it,” said Fledgeby.

“His own deep way, in anything ?”

“Tl tell you,” said Fledgeby. “TI like to hear you ask it, because
it’s looking alive. It’s what I should expect to find in one of your
sagacious understanding. Now, candidly.”

“Hh ?” cried Miss Jenny.

“T said, now candidly,” Mr, Fledgeby explained, a little put out.

“ Oh-h !”

“T should be glad to countermine him, respecting the handsome
gal, your friend. He means something there. You may depend
upon it, Judah means something there. He has a motive, and of
course his motive is a dark motive. Now, whatever his motive is, it’s
necessary to his motive ”*—Mr. Fledgeby’s constructive powers were
not equal to the avoidance of some tautology here—* that it should
be kept from me, what he has done with her. So I put it to you,
who know: Whathashe done with her? Iasknomore. And is that
asking much, when you understand that it will pay ?”

Miss Jenny Wren, who had*cast her eyes upon the bench again
after her last interruption, sat looking at it, needle in hand but not
working, for some moments. She then briskly resumed her work, and
said with a sidelong glance of her eyes and chin at Mr. Fledgeby.

“Where d’ye live?”

“ Albany, Piccadilly,” replied Fledgeby.

“When are you at home ?”

“When you like.”

“ Breakfast-time?” said Jenny, in her abruptest and shortest
manner.

“No better time in the day,” said Fledgeby.

“TI look in upon you to-morrow, young man. Those two ladies,”
pointing to dolls, “ have an appointment in Bond Street at ten precisely.
When I’ve dropped ’em there, I'll drive round to you.” With a
weird little laugh, Miss Jenny pointed to her crutch-stick as her
equipage.

“This is looking alive indeed !” cried Fledgeby, rising.

“Mark you! J promise you nothing,” said the dolls’ dressmaker,
dabbing two dabs at him with her needle, as if she put out. both his
eyes.

“No no. JZ understand,” returmed Fledgeby. “The damage and
waste question shall be settled first. It shall be made to pay ; don’t
you be afraid. Good-day, Miss Jenny.”

   
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
   

  

 

 

 

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Good-day, young man.”

Mr. Fledgeby’s prepossessing form withdrew itself; and the little
dressmaker, clipping and snipping and stitching, and stitching and
snipping and clipping, fell to work at a great rate; musing and
muttering all the time.

“ Misty, misty, misty. Can’t make it out. Little Eyes and the wolf
in a conspiracy? Or Little Eyes and the wolf against one another ?
Can’t make it out. My poor Lizzie, have they both designs against
you, either way ? Can’t make it out. Is Little Hyes Pubsey, and the
wolf Co? Can’t make it out. Pubsey true to Co, and Co to Pubsey ?
Pubsey false to Co, and Co to Pubsey? Can't make it out. What
said Little Eyes? ‘Now, candidly? Ah! However the cat
jumps, fe’s a liar. That’s all I can make out at present; but you
may goto bed in the Albany, Piccadilly, with that for your pillow,
young man!” Thereupon, the little dressmaker again dabbed out
his eyes separately, and making a loop in the air of her thread and
deftly catching it into a knot with her needle, seemed to bowstring
him into the bargain.

For the terrors undergone by Mr. Dolls that evening when his
little parent sat profoundly meditating over her work, and when he
imagined himself found out, as often as she changed her attitude, or
turned her eyes towards hin, there is no adequate name. Moreover
it was her habit to shake her head at that wretched old boy when-
ever she caught his eye as he shivered and shook. What are popu-
larly called “the trembles” being in full force upon him that evening,
and likewise what are popularly called “the horrors,” he had a very
bad time of it; which was not made better by his bemg so remorse-
ful as frequently to moan “ Sixty threepennorths.” This imperfect
sentence not being at all intelligible as a confession, but sounding
like a Gargantuan order for a dram, brought him into new difficulties
by occasioning his parent to pounce at him inamore than usually
snappish manner, and to overwhelm him with bitter reproaches.

What was a bad time for Mr. Dolls, could not fail to be a bad time
for the dolls’ dressmaker. However, she was on the alert next
morning, and drove to Bond Street, and set down the two ladies
punctually, and then directed her equipage to conduct her to the
Albany. Arrived at the doorway of the house in. which Mr.
Fledgeby’s chambers were, she found a lady standing there in a
travelling dress, holding in her hand—of all things in the world—a
gentleman’s hat.

“You want some one ?” said the lady in a stern manner.

“J am going up stairs to Mr. Fledgeby’s.”

“You cannot do that at this moment. There is a gentleman with
him. I am waiting for the gentleman. His business with Mr.
Fledgeby will very soon be transacted, and then you can go up.
Until the gentleman comes down, you must wait here.”

While speaking, and afterwards, the lady kept watchfully between
her and the staircase, as if prepared to oppose her going up, by force.
The lady being of a stature to stop her with a hand, and looking
mightily determined, the dressmaker stood still.

“Well? Why do you listen ?” asked the lady.

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4
230 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

“T am not listening,” said the dressmaker.

“ What do you hear ?” asked the lady, altering her phrase.

“Is it a kind of a spluttering somewhere?” said the dressmaker,
with an inquiring look.

“ Mr. Fledgeby in his shower-bath, perhaps,” remarked the lady,
smiling.

“And somebody’s beating a carpet, I think ?”

“Mr. Fledgeby’s carpet, I dare say,” replied the smiling lady.

Miss Wren had a reasonably good eye for smiles, being well accus-
tomed to them on the part of her young friends, though their smiles
mostly ran smaller than in nature. But she had never seen so
singular a smile as that upon this lady’s face. It twitched her
nostrils open in a remarkable manner, and contracted her lips and eye-
brows. It was a smile of enjoyment too, though of such a fierce
kind that Miss Wren thought she would rather not enjoy herself than
do it in that way.

“Well!” said the lady, watching her. “What now 2”

“I hope there’s nothing the matter!” said the dressmaker.

“Where?” inquired the lady.

“T don’t know where,” said Miss Wren, staring about her. “But
Inever heard such odd noises. Don’t you think I had better call
somebody ?” ;

“I think you had better not,” returned the lady with a significant
frown, and drawing closer.

On this hint, the dressmaker relinquished the idea, and stood
looking at the lady as hard as the lady looked at her. Meanwhile
the dressmaker listened with amazement to the odd noises which
still continued, and the lady listened too, but with a coolness in
which there was no trace of amazement.

Soon afterwards, came a slamming and banging of doors; and then
came running down Stairs, a gentleman with whiskers, and out of
breath, who seemed to be red-hot.

“Is your business done, Alfred 2” inquired the lady.

“Very thoroughly done,” replied the gentleman, as he took his hat
from her. 5

“You can go up to Mr. Fledgeby as soon as you like,” said the
lady, moving haughtily away.

“Oh! And you can take these three pieces of stick with you,” added
the gentleman poli tely, “and say, if you please, that, they come from
Mr. Alfred Lammle, with his ¢ mpliments on leaving England.
Mr. Alfred Lammle. Be so good as not to forget the name.”

The three pieces of stick were three broken and frayed fragments
of a stout lithe cane. Miss Jenny taking them wonderingly, and the
gentleman repeating with a grin, “Mr. Alfred Lammle, if youll be
s0 good. Compliments, on leaving England,’ the lady and gentle-
ian walked away quite deliberately, and Miss Jenny and her crutch-
stick went up stairs, “ Lammle, Lammle, Lammle 2? Miss Jenny
repeated as she panted from stair to stair, “where have I heard that
name? Lammle, Lammle? J know! Saint Mary Axe!”

With a gleam of new intelligence in her sharp face, the dolls’
dressmaker pulled at Fledgeby’s bell. No one answered; but, from

   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 231

within the chambers, there proceeded a continuous spluttering sound
of a highly singular and unintelligible nature.

“Good gracious! Is Little Eyes choking?” cried Miss Jenny.

Pulling at the bell again and getting no reply, she pushed the
outer door, and found it standing ajar. No one being visible on her
opening it wider, and the spluttering continuing, she took the liberty

of opening an inner door, and then beheld the extraordinary spec-
tacle of Mr. Fledgeby in a shirt, a pair of Turkish trousers, and a
Turkish cap, rolling over and over on his own carpet, and spluttering
wonderfully.

“Oh Lord!” gasped Mr. Fledgeby. “Oh my eye ! Stop thief! I
am strangling. Fire! Oh my eye! A glass of water. Give me a
glass of water. Shut the door. Murder! Oh Lord!” And then
rolled and spluttered more than ever.

Hurrying into another room, Miss Jenny got a glass of water, and
brought it for Fledgeby’s relief: who, gasping, spluttering, and
vattling in his throat betweenwhiles, drank some water, and laid his
head faintly on her arm.

“Qh my eye!” cried Fledgeby, struggling anew. | “ I¢’s. salt
and snuff. It’s up my nose, and down my throat, and in my wind-
pipe. Ugh! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ah—h—h—h!” And here, crowing
fearfully, with his eyes starting out of his head, appeared to be con-
tending with every mortal disease incidental to poultry.

«And Oh my Hye, ’m so sore!” cried Fledgeby, starting, over
on his back, in a spasmodic way that caused the dressmaker to retreat
to the wall. “Oh I smart so! Do put something to my back and
arms, and legs and shoulders. Ugh! It's down my throat again and
can’t come up. Ow! Ow! Ow! Ah-—h—h—h! Oh I smart so!”
Here Mr. Fledgeby bounded up, and bounded down, and went rolling
over and over again.

The dolls’ dressmaker looked on until he r led himself into a
corner with his Turkish slippers uppermost, and then, resolving in
the first place to address her ministration to the salt and snuff, gave

him more water and slapped his back. But, the latter application was
by no means a Success, causing Mr. Fledgeby to scream, and to ery out,
«Oh my eye! don’t slap me! Tm covered with weales and 1 smart so He

However, he gradually ceased to choke and crow, saving at inter-
vals, and Miss Jenny got him into an easy-chair : where, with his
eyes red and watery, with his features swollen, and with some half-
dozen livid bars across his face, he presented a most rueful sight.

«What ever possessed you to take salt and snuff, young man?”
inquired Miss Jenny.

GT didn’t take it,” the dismal youth replied. “It was crammed
into my mouth.”

« Who crammed it?” asked Miss Jenny.

$e did,’ answered Fledgeby. “ The assassin. Lammle. He
yubbed it into my mouth and up my nose and down my throat—Ow !
Ow! Ow! Ab—h—h—h! Ugh!—to prevent my crying out, and
then cruelly assaulted me.”

« With this?” asked Miss Jenny, showing the pieces of cane.

« That's the weapon,” said Fledgeby, eyeing it with the air of

 

  
  
  
   
  
   
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
   
   
  
  
 
   
  
  
 
 
  
 

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232 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

an acquaintance. “He broke it over me. Oh I smart so! How
did you come by it?”

‘When he ran down stairs and joined the lady he had left in the
hall with his hat ’—Miss J enny began.

“Oh!” groaned Mr. Fledgeby, writhing, “she was holding his hat,
was she? I might have known she was in it.”

“ When he came down stairs and joined the lady who wouldn’t let
me come up, he gave me the pieces for you, and | was to say, ‘ With
Mr, Alfred Lammle’s compliments on his leaving England.’” Miss
Jenny said it with such spiteful satisfaction, and such a hitch of her
chin and eyes as might have added to Mr. Fledgeby’s miseries, if he
could have noticed either, in his bodily pain with his hand to his
head.

“Shall I go for the police ?” inquired Miss Jenny, with a nimble
start towards the door.

“Stop! No, don’t!” cried Fledgeby. “Don’t, please. We'had
better keep it quiet. Will you be so good as shut the door?’ Oh
I do smart so!”

In testimony of the extent to which he smarted, Mr. Fledgeby
came wallowing out of the easy-chair, and took another roll on the
carpet. ;

“ Now the door’s shut,” said Mr. Fledgeby, sitting up in anguish,
with his Turkish cap half on and half off, and the bars on his face
getting bluer, “do me the kindness to look at my back and shoulders.
They must be in an awful state, for I hadn’t got my dressing-cown.
on, when the brute came rushing in. Cut my shirt away from
the collar; there’s a pair of scissors on that table. Oh!” groaned Mr.
Fledgeby, with his hand to his head again. “ How I do smart, to be
sure!”

“There ?” inquired Miss Jenny, alluding to the back and shoulders.

“Oh Lord, yes!” moaned Fledgeby, rocking himself. “And all
over! Everywhere!”

The busy little dressmaker quickly snipped the shirt away, and
laid bare the results of as furious and sound a threshing as even Mr.
Fledgeby merited. «You may well smart, young man!” exclaimed
Miss Jenny. And stealthily rubbed her little hands behind him, and
poked a few exultant pokes: with her two forefingers over the crown
of his head.

“What do you think of vinegar and brown paper?” inquired the
suffering Fledgeby, still rocking and moaning. “Does it look as if
vinegar and brown paper was the sort of application ?”

“Yes,” said Miss Jenny, with a silent chuckle, « Tt looks as if it
ought to be Pickled.”

Mr. Fledgeby collapsed under the word “ Pickled,” and groaned
again. “My kitchen is on this floor,” he said; “youll find brown
paper in a dresser-drawer there, and a bottle of vinegar on a shelf.
Would you have the kindness to make a few plasters and put ‘em
on? It can’t be kept too quiet.”

“One, two—hum—five, six. Yi wll want six,” said the dressmaker,

“There's smart enough,” whimpered Mr. Fledgeby, groaning and
writhing again, “for sixty.”

       
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 233

Miss Jenny repaired to the kitchen, scissors in hand, found the
brown paper and found the vinegar, and skilfully cut out and steeped
six large plasters. When they were all lying ready on the dresser,
an idea occurred to her as she was about to gather them up.

“J think,” said Miss Jenny with a silent laugh, “he ought to have
a little pepper? Just a few grains? I think the young man’s tricks
and manners make a claim upon his friends for a little pepper ?”

Mr. Fledgeby’s evil star showing her the pepper-box on the
chimneypiece, she climbed upon a chair, and got it down, and
sprinkled all the plasters with a judicious hand. She then went
back to Mr. Fledgeby, and stuck them all on him: Mr. Fledgeby
uttering a sharp howl as each was put in its place.

«There, young man!” said the dolls’ dressmaker, “Now I hope
you feel pretty comfortable ?”

Apparently, Mr. Fledgeby did not, for he cried by way of answer,
«Oh—h how I do smart!”

Miss Jenny got his Persian gown upon him, extinguished his eyes
crookedly with his Persian cap, and helped him to his bed: upon
which he climbed groaning. ‘“ Business between you and me being
out of the question to-day, young man, and my time being precious,”
said Miss Jenny then, “I'll make myself scarce. Are you comfortable
now ?”

“Qh my eye!” cried Mr. Fledgeby. “No, I ain't. Oh—h—h!
how I do smart!”

The last thing Miss Jenny saw, as she looked back before closing
the room door, was Mr. Fledgeby in the act of plunging and
gambolling all over his bed, like a porpoise or dolphin in its native
element. She then shut the bedroom door, and all the other doors,
and going down stairs and emerging from the Albany into the busy
streets, took omnibus for Saint Mary Axe : pressing on the road all the
gaily-dressed ladies whom she could see from the window, and making
them unconscious lay-figures for dolls, while she mentally cut them
out and basted them.

 

CHAPTER IX.
TWO PLACES VACATED.

Ser down by the omnibus at the corner of Saint Mary Axe, and
trusting to her feet and her crutch-stick within its precincts, the
dolls’ dressmaker proceeded to the place of business of Pubsey and
Co. All there was sunny and quiet externally, and shady and quiet
internally. Hiding herself in the entry outside the glass door, she
could see from that post of observation the old man in his spectacles
sitting writing at his desk.

“Poh!” cried the dressmaker, popping in her head at the glass-
door. “Mr. Wolf at home?”

The old man took his glasses off, and mildly laid them down beside
him. “Ah Jenny, is it you? I thought you had given me up.”

« Ando I had given up the treacherous wolf of the forest,” she re-

Bani tenn e he ge

 

tare camila

 

 

 

 

254 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

plied ; “ but, godmother, it strikes me you have come back. I am not
quite sure, because the wolf and you change forms. I want to ask you
a question or two, to find out whether you are really godmother or
really wolf. May 1?”

“ Yes, Jenny, yes.” But Riah glanced towards the door, as if he
thought his principal might appear there, unseasonably.

“If you're afraid of the fox,” said Miss J enny, “you may dismiss
all present expectations of seeing that animal. He won’t show himself
abroad, for many a day.”

“ What do you mean, my child 2”

“T mean, godmother,” replied Miss Wren, sitting down beside the
Jew, “that the fox has caught a famous flogeine, and that if his
skin anc: bones are not tingling, aching, and smarting at this present
instant, no fox did ever tingle, ache, and smart.” ‘Therewith Miss
Jenny related what had come to pass in the Albany, omitting the few
grains of pepper.

“Now, godmother,” she went on, “I particularly wish to ask you
what has taken place here, since I left the wolf here? Because I
have an idea about the size of a marble, rolling about in my little
noddle. First and foremost, are you Pubsey and Co., or are you
either? Upon your solemn word and honour.”

The old man shook his head.

“ Secondly, isn’t Fledge by both Pubsey and Co. ?”

The old man answered with a reluctant nod.

“ My idea,” exclaimed Miss Wren, “is now about the size of an
orange. But before it gets any bigger, welcome back, dear god-
mother !”

The little creature folded her arms about the old man’s neck with
great earnestness, and kissed him, «I humbly beg your forgiveness,.
godmother. I am truly sorry. I ought to have had more faith
in you. But what could’ suppose when you said nothing for yourself,
you know? I don’t mean to offer that as a justification, but what
could I Suppose, when you were a silent party to all he said? Jt did
look bad; now didn’t it 2” ‘

_ “Ttlooked so bad, Jenny,” responded the old man, with gravity, “ that
I will straightway tell you what an impression it wrought upon me.
I was hateful in mine own eyes. I was hateful to myself, in being
so hateful to the debtor and to you. But more than that, and worse
than that, and to pass out far and broad beyond myself—I reflected
that evening, sitting alone in my garden on the housetop, that [I was
doing dishonour to my ancient faith and race. I reflected—clearly
reflected for the first time—that in bending my neck to the yoke I
was willing to wear, I bent the unwilling necks of the whole
Jewish people. For it is not, in Christian countries, with the Jews
as with other peoples. Men say, ‘This is a bad Greek, but there are
good Greeks. This is a bad Turk, but there are good Turks.’ Not
so with the "Jews. Men find the bad among us easily enough —
among what peoples are the bad not easily found ?—but they take the
worst of us as samples of the best : they take the lowest of us as pre-
Sentations of the highest ; and they say ‘All Jews are alike. If
doing what I was content to do here, because I was grateful for the

 

   

  
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
    
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 235

past and have small need of money now, I had. been a Christian, I
could have done it, compromising no one but my individual self. But
doing it as a Jew, I could not choose but cc mpromise the Jews of
all conditions and all countries. It is a little hard upon us, but
it ig the truth. I would thatallour people remembered it! Though
I have little right to say so, seeing that it came home so late to me.”

The dolls’ dressmaker sat holding the old man by the hand, and
looking thoughtfully in his face.

«Thus I reflected, I say, sitting that evening in my garden on the
housetop. And passing the painful scene of that day in review before
me many times, I always saw that the poor gentleman believed the
story readily, because I was one of the Jews—that you believed the
story readily, my child, because I was one of the Jews—that the
story itself first came into the invention of the originator thereof,
because I was one of the Jews. ‘This was the result of my having had
you three before me, face to face, and seeing the thing visibly pre-
sented as upon a theatre. Wherefore I perceived that the obliga-
tion was upon me to leave this service. But Jenny, my dear,” said
Riah, breaking off, “I promised that you should pursue your ques-
tions, and I obstruct them.”
~ «On the contrary, godmother ; my idea is as large now as a pumpkin
—and you know what a pumpkin is, don’t you? So you gave notice
that you were going? Does that come. next ?? asked Miss Jenny
with a look of close attention.

“J indited a letter to my master. Yes. ‘To that effect.”

« And what said ‘Tineling-Tossing-Aching-Screaming-Seratching-
Smarter?” asked Miss Wren with an unspeakable enjoyment in the
utterance of those honorable titles and in the recollection of the
pepper.

“ He held me to certain months of servitude, which were his lawful
term of notice. They‘expire to-morrow. Upon their expiration—not
before—I had meant to set myself right with my Cinderella.”

“My idea is getting so immense now,” cried Miss Wren,
clasping her temples, “that my head won't hold it! Listen, god-
mother; I am going to expound. Little Eyes (that’s Screaming-
Scratching-Smarter) owes you a heavy grudge for going. Little Hyes
casts about how best to pay you off. Little Eyes thinks of Lizzie.
Little Eyes says to himself, ‘Tl find out where he has placed that
girl, and Ill betray his secret because it’s dear to him.’ Perhaps
Little Hyes thinks, ‘Tul make love to her myself too;’ but that I

can’t swear—all the rest I can. So, Little Eyes comes to me, and I go
to Little Eyes. That’s the way of it. And now the murder’s all out,
Im sorry,” added the dolls’ dressmaker, rigid from head to foot with
energy as she shook her little fist before her eyes, “ that I didn’t
give him Cayenne pepper and chopped pickled Capsicum !”

This expression of regret being but partially mtelligible to Mr.
Riah, the old man reverted to the inj uries Fledgeby had received, and

hinted at the necessity of his at once going to tend that beaten cur.

“ Godmother, godmother, godmother !” cried Miss Wren iritably,
«J really lose,all patience with you. One would think you believed
in the Good Samaritan. . How can you be so inconsistent ?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

236 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Jenny dear,” began the old man gently, “it is the custom of our
people to help——”

‘Oh! Bother your people!” interposed Miss Wren, with a toss
of her head. “If your people don’t know better than to go and help
Little Eyes, it’s a pity they ever got out of Egypt. Over and above
that,” she added, “he wouldn’t take your help if you offered it.
Too much ashamed. Wants to keep it close and quiet, and to keep
you out of the way.”

They were still debating this point when a shadow darkened the
entry, and the glass door was opened by a messenger who brought a
letter unceremoniously addressed, “ Riah.” To which he said there
Was an answer wanted.

The letter, which was scrawled in pencil uphill and downhill and
round crooked corners, ran thus :

“Op Rran,

“Your accounts being all squared, go. Shut up the place,
turn out directly, and send me the key by bearer. Go. You are an
unthankful dog of a Jew. Get out.

“ He?

The dolls’ dressmaker found it delicious to trace the screaming
and smarting of Little Eyes in the distorted writing of this epistle.
She laughed over it and jeered at it in a convenient corner (to
the great astonishment of the messenger) while the old man got
his few goods together in a black bag. That done, the shutters of
the upper windows closed, and the office blind pulled down, they
issued forth upon the steps with the attendant messenger. There,
while Miss Jenny held the bag, the old man locked the house-door, and
handed over the key to him; who at once retired with the same.

“ Well, godmother,” said Miss Wren, as they remained upon the
steps together, looking at one another. «And so youre thrown upon
the world!”

“It would appear so, Jenny, and somewhat suddenly.”

“ Where are you going to seek your fortune 2” asked Miss Wren.

The old man smiled, but looked about him-with a look of having
lost his way in life, which did not escape the dolls’ dressmaker.

“Verily, J enny,’ said he, “the question is to the purpose, and more
easily asked than answered. But as I have experience of the ready
goodwill and good help of those who have given occupation to Lizzie,
1 think I will seek them out for myself.”

“On foot?” asked Miss Wren, with a chop.

“Ay!” said the old man. “Have I not my staff?”

Tt was exactly because he had his staff, and presented so quaint
an aspect, that she mistrusted his making the journey.

“The best thing you can do,” said Jenny, “for the time being, at
all events, is to come home with me, godmother. Nobody’s there but
my bad child, and Lizzie’s lodging stands empty.” The old man
when satisfied that no inconvenience could be entailed on any one by
his compliance, readily complied; and the singularly-assorted couple
once more went through the streets together.

 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

   
    
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
   
   
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
   
 
   
 
 
  
     
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 237

Now, the bad child having, been strictly charged by his parent to
remain at home in her absence, of course went out; and, being in
the very last stage of mental decrepitude, went out with two objects ;
firstly, to establish a claim he conceived himself to have upon any
licensed victualler living, to be supplied with threepennyworth of
rum for nothing ; and secondly, to bestow some maudlin remorse on
Mr. Eugene’Wrayburn, and see what profit came of it. Stumblingly
pursuing these two designs—they both ‘meant rum, the only mean-
ing of which he was capable—the degraded creature staggered into
Covent Garden Market and there bivouacked, to have an attack of the
trembles succeeded by an attack of the horrors, in a doorway.

This market of Covent Garden was quite out of the creature's line
of road, but it had the attraction for him which it has for the worst
of the solitary members of the drunken tribe. It may be the com-
panionship of the nightly stir, or it may be the companionship of the
gin and beer that slop about among carters and hucksters, or it may
be the companionship of the trodden vegetable refuse which is so
like their own dress that perhaps they take the Market for a great
wardrobe; but be it what it may, you shall see no such individual
drunkards on doorsteps anywhere, as there. Of dozing women-
drunkards especially, you shall come upon such specimens there, in.
the morning sunlight, as you might seek out of doors in vain through
London. Such stale vapid rejected cabbage-leaf and cabbage-stalk
dress, such damaged-orange countenance, such squashed pulp of hu-
manity, are open to the day nowhere else. So, the attraction of the
Market drew Mr. Dolls to it, and he had out his two fits of trembles
and horrors in a doorway on which a woman had had out her sodden
nap a few hours before.

There is a swarm of young savages always flitting about this
same place, creeping off with fragments of orange-chests, and mouldy
litter—-Heaven knows into what holes they can convey them,
having no home !—whose bare feet fall with a blunt dull softness on
the pavement as the policeman hunts them, and who are (perhaps for
that reason) little heard by the Powers that be, whereas in top-
boots they would make a deafening clatter. These, delighting in the
trembles and the horrors of Mr. Dolls, asin a gratuitous drama, flocked
about him in his doorway, butted at him, leaped at him, and pelted
him. Hence, when he came out of his invalid retirement and shook
off that ragged train, he was much bespattered, and in worse case than.
ever. But,enot yet at his worst; for, going into a public-house, and
being supplied in stress of business with his rum, and seeking to
vanish without payment, he was collared, searched, found penniless,
and admonished not to try that again, by having a pail of dirty
water cast over him. This application superinduced another fit of the
trembles ; after which Mr. Dolls, as finding himself in good cue for
making a call on a professional friend, addressed himself to the Temple.

There was nobody at the chambers but Young Blight. That dis-
ereet youth, sensible of a certain incongruity in the association of
such a client with the business that might be coming some day, with
the best intentions temporized with Dolls, and offered a shilling for
coach-hire home. Mr. Dolls, accepting the shilling, promptly laid it

|

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238 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

out in two threepennyworths of conspiracy against his life, and two
threepennyworths of raging repentance. teturnine to the Cham-
bers with which burden, he was descried coming round into the court,
by the wary young Blight watching from the window : who instantly
closed the outer door, and left the miserable object to expend his fury
on the panels.

The more the door resisted him, the more dangerous and imminent
became that bloody conspiracy against his life. Force of police
arriving, he recognized in them the conspirators, and laid about him
hoarsely, fiercely, staringly, convulsively, foamingly. A humble
machine, familiar to the conspirators and called by the expressive
name of Stretcher, being unavoidably sent for, he was rendered a harm-
less bundle of torn rags by being strapped down upon it, with voice
and consciousness gone out of him, and life fast going. As this
machine was borne out at the Temple gate by four men, the poor little
dolls’ dressmaker and her Jewish friend were coming up the street.

“Let us see what it is,” cried the dressmaker. “Let us make
haste and look, godmother.”

The brisk little crutch-stick was but too brisk. “O gentlemen,
gentlemen, he belongs to me!”

“Belongs to you?” said the head of the party, stopping it.

“O yes, dear gentlemen, he’s my child, out without leave. My
poor “bad, bad boy! and he don’t know me, he don’t know me! O
what shall I do,” cried the little creature, wildly beating her hands
together, “when my own child don’t know me!”

The head of the party looked (as well he might) to the old man
for explanation. He whispered, as the dolls’ dressmaker bent over
the exhausted form and vainly tried to extract some sign of recogni-
tion from it? “It’s her drunken father.”

As the load was put down in the street, Riah drew the head of the
party aside, and whispered that he thought the man was dying. “No,
surely not?’ returned the other. But he became less confident, on
looking, and directed the bearers to “bring him to the’ nearest
doctor’s shop.”

Thither he was brought; the window becoming from within, a wall
of faces, deformed into all Iinds of shapes through the agency of
globular red bottles, green bottles, blue bottles, and other coloured
bottles. A ghastly light shining upon him that he didn’t need, the
beast so furious but a few minutes gone, was quiet enough now, with
a strange mysterious writing on his face, reflected fromm one of the
great bottles, as if Death had marked him: « Mine.”

The medical testimony was more precise and more to the purpose
than it sometimes is in ‘a Court of Justice. “You had better send
for something to cover it. AII’s over.”

Therefore, the police sent for something to cover it, and it was
covered and borne through the streets, the people falling away.
After it, went the dolls’ dressmaker, hiding her face in the Jewish skirts,
and clinging to them with one hand, while with the other she plied
her stick. It was carried home, and, by reason that the staircase was
very narrow, it was put down in the parlour—the little working-
bench being set aside to make room for it—and there, in the midst of

 

   

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 239

the dolls with no speculation in their eyes, lay Mr. Dolls with no
speculation in his.

Many flaunting dolls had to be gaily dressed, before the money
was in the dressmaker’s pocket to get mourning for Mr. Dolls. As
the old man, Riah, sat by, helping her in such small ways as he could,
he found it difficult to make out whether she really did realize that
the deceased had been her father.

“If my poor boy,” she would say, “had been brought up better,
he might have done better. Not that I reproach myself. 1 hope iL
have no cause for that.”

“None indeed, Jenny, I am very certain.”

«Thank you, godmother. It cheers me to hear you say so. But
you see it is so hard to bring up a child well, when you work, work,
work, all day. When he was out of employment, I couldn’t always
keep him nearme. He got fractious and nervous, and I was obliged to
let him go into the streets. And he never did well in the streets,
he never did well out of sight. How often it happens with chil-
dren !”

“Too often, even in this sad sense!” thought the old man.

« How can I say what I might have turned out myself, but for my
pack having been so bad and my legs so queer, when I was young ti?
the dressmaker would go on. “I had nothing to do but work, and
so I worked. I couldn’t play. But my poor unfortunate child could
play, and it turned out the worse for him.”

« And not for him alone, Jenny.”

“Well! I don’t know, godmother. He suffered heavily, did my
unfortunate boy. He was very, very ill sometimes. And I called
him a quantity of names;” shaking her head over her work, and
dropping tears. “I don’t know that his’ gomg wrong was much the
worse for me. If it ever was, let us forget it.”

“You are a good girl, you are a patient girl.”

“ As for patience,” she would reply with a shrug, “not much of
that, godmother. If I had been patient, I should never have called
him names. But I hope I did it for his good. And besides, I felt
my responsibility as a mother, so much. I tried reasoning, and
reasoning failed. I tried coaxing, and coaxing failed. I tried
scolding, and scolding failed. But I was bound to try everything,
you know, with such a charge upon my hands. Where would have

been my duty to my poor lost boy, if 1 had not tried everything !”

With such talk, mostly in a cheerful tone on the part of the in-
dustrious little creature, the day-work and the night-work were
beguiled until enough of smart dolls had gone forth to bring into
the kitchen, where the working-bench now stood, the sombre stuff
that the occasion required, and to bring into the house the other
sombre preparations. “ And now,” said Miss Jenny, “having
knocked off my rosy-cheeked young friends, Vl knock off my white-
cheeked self.” his referred to her making her own dress, which at
last was done. “The disadvantage of making for yourself,” said

Miss Jenny, as she stood upon a chair to look at the result in the
glass, “is, that you can’t charge anybody else for the job, and the
advantage is, that you haven’t to go out to try on, Humph! Very

 

 

 

 

 

 

240 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

fair indeed! If He could see me now (whoever he is) I hope he
wouldn’t repent of his bargain !”

The simple arrangements were of her own making, and were
stated to Riah thus:

“JT mean to go alone, godmother, in my usual carriage, and you'll
be so kind as keep house while I am gone. It’s not far off. And when
I return, we'll have a cup of tea, and a chat over future arrange-
ments, It’s a very plain last house that I have been able to give my
poor unfortunate boy; but he'll accept the will for the deed, if he
knows anything about it; and if he doesn’t know anything about
it,” with a sob, and wiping her eyes, “ why, it won’t matter to hin.
I see the service in the Prayer-book says, that we brought nothing
into this world and it is certain we can take nothing out. It com-
forts me for not being able to hire a lot of stupid undertaker’s
things for my poor child, and seeming as if I was trying to smugele
em out of this world with him, when of course I must break down
in the attempt, and bring ’em all back again. As it is, there'll be
nothing to bring back but me, and that’s quite consistent, for I shan’t
be brought back, some day !”

After that previous carrying of him in the streets, the wretched
old fellow seemed to be twice buried. He ‘was taken on the shoul-
ders of half a dozen blossom-faced men, who shuffled with him to the
churchyard, and who were preceded by another blossom-faced man,
affecting a stately stalk, as if he were a Policeman of the D(eath)
Division, and ceremoni vusly pretending not to know his intimate ac-
quaintances, as he led the pageant, Yet, the spectacle of only one little
mourner hobbling after, caused many people to turn their heads with
a look of interest.

At last the troublesome deceased was got into the ground, to be
buried no more, and the stately stalker stalked back before the
solitary dressmaker, as if she were bound in honour to have no notion
of the way home. hose Furies, the conventionalities, being thus
appeased, he left her.

“T must have a very short ery, godmother, before I cheer up for
good,” said the little creature, coming in. “ Because after all a child
is a child, you know.”

Tt was a longer ery than might have been expected. Howbeit, it
wore itself out in a shadowy corner, and then the dressmaker came
forth, and washed her face, and made the tea. “You wouldn’t mind
my cutting out something while we are at tea, would you?” she
asked her Jewish friend, with a coaxing’ air.

“Cinderella, dear child,” the old man expostulated, “will you
never rest ?”

“Oh! It’s not work, cutting out a pattern isn’t,” said Miss Jenny,
with her busy little scissors already snipping at some paper. “The
truth is, godmother, I want to fix it while I have it correct in my
mind,”

“ Have you seen it to-day then?” asked Riah.

_ “Yes, godmother. Saw it just now. It’s a surplice, that’s what
it is. Thing our clergymen wear, you know,” explained Miss Jenny,
im consideration of his professing another faith.

  

      
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
   
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 24.1

“ And what have you to do with that, Jenny ?”

“ Why, godmother,” replied the dressmaker, “ you must know that
we Professors who live upon our taste and invention, are obliged to
keep our eyes always open. And you know already that 1 have
many extra expenses to meet just now. So, it came into my head
while I was weeping at my poor boy’s grave, that something in my
way might be done with a clergyman.”

“What can be done?” asked the old man.

“Not a funeral, never fear!” returned Miss Jenny, anticipating
his objection with a nod. ‘The public don’t like to be made me-
lancholy, 1 know very well. I am seldom called upon to put my
young friends into mourning ; not into real mourning, that is ; Court
mourning they are rather proud of. But a doll clergyman, my dear,
—glossy black curls and whiskers—uniting two of my young friends
in matrimony,” said Miss Jenny, shaking her forefinger, “is quite
another affair. If you don’t see those three at the altar in Bond
Street, in a jiffy, my name’s Jack Robinson!”

With her expert little ways in sharp action, she had got a doll
into whitey-brown paper orders, before the m sal was over, and was
displaying it for the edification of the Jewish mind, when a knock
was heard at the street-door. Riah went to open it, and presently
came back, ushering in, with the grave and courteous air that sat so
well upon him, a gentleman.

The gentleman was a stranger to the dressmaker; but even in the
moment of his casting his eyes upon her, there was something in his
manner which brought to her remembrance Mr. Hugene Wrayburn.

“Pardon me,” said the gentleman. “You are the dolls’ dress-
maker ?”

“J am the dolls’ dressmaker, sir.”

“Tizzie Hexam’s friend ?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Miss Jenny, instantly on the defensive. “ And
Lizzie Hexam’s friend.”

«Here is a note from her, entreating you to accede to the request
of Mr. Mortimer Lightwood, the bearer. Mr. Riah chances to know
that I am Mr. Mortimer Lightwood, and will tell you so.”

Riah bent his head in corroboration.

« Will you read the note?”

“It’s very short,” said Jenny, with a look of wonder, when she
had read it.

«There was no time to make it longer. Time was so very
precious. My dear friend Mr. Jugene Wrayburn is dying.

The dressmaker clasped her hands, and uttered a little piteous
Be . :

“Ts dying,” repeated Lightwood, with emotion, “at some distance
from here. He is sinking under injuries received at the hands of a
villain who attacked him in the dark. I come straight from his
bedside. He is almost always insensible.. In a short restless
interval of sensibility, or partial sensibility, I made out that he
asked for you to be brought to sit by him. Hardly relying on my
own interpretation of the indistinct sounds he made, I caused Lizzie
to hear them. We were both sure that he asked for you.”

VOL. I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

242, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

  

The dressmaker, with her hands still clasped, looked af ffrishtedly
from the one to the other of her two con npanions.

“If you delay, he may die with his request ungratified, with his
last wish—intrusted to me—we have long been much more than
brothers—unfulfilled. I shall break dow n, if I try to say more.’

In a few moments the black bonnet and the erutch-stick were on
duty, the good Jew was left in possession of the house, and the dolls’
dressmaker, side by side in a chaise with Mortimer Lightwood, was
posting out of town

    

 

JCHAPTER X.
THE DOLLS’ DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A worb.

A DARKENED and hushed room; the river ou tside the windows
owing on to the vast ocean: 1 figure on the bed, swathed and
Pandan and pom nd, lying he ines on its back, with its two useless
arms in splints at its sides. Only two da ays of usage so familiari
heel

tne

ed
ittle dressmaker with this scene, that it held ite place occupied
two days ago by the re collections of yea

He had scarcely moved since her arriv
were open, sometimes closed, When they ‘ there was no
meaning in their unwinkine stare at one spot straight before them,
unless for a moment the ‘bi ‘OW ieee into a faint expression of
anger, or surprise. Then, Mortimer Li: ghtwood would speak to him,
and on occasions he would be so far roused as to make an attempt to

 

 

nes his eyes

 

   

 

    

 

     

 

BOURNE his friend’s name. But, in an instant consciousness was
gone again, and no spirit of Eugene was in Eugene’s crushed outer
form.

They vided Jenny with materials for plying her work, and she

 

tle table placed at the foot of his bed. Sitting there, with

)
her rich shower of hair falling over the chair-back, they hoped she
teh vttract his notice. W ith the same object, she would sing, just
yr 1en he opened his eyes, or she saw his” brow
aa ict o that faint expression, so evanescent that it was like a sha ape
1ade in water. But as yet he had not heeded. The “they ” here
mentioned, were the medica] attendant; Lizzie, who was there in all
her intervals of Test; and Lightwood, who never left him.
The two days became three, and the thi ‘ee days became four. At
le ngth, quite unexpectedly, he said something in a whisper.
mae! That was it, my dear Eugene ?”
‘Will you, Mor timer——
Willa rm
—“Send for her 2”
“My dear fellow, she is here.”
Quite unconscious of the long blank, he supposed that they were
still spe aking together.
Vhe little ee cer stood up at the foot of the bed, humming:
her song, and nodded to him brightly. “T can’t shake hands, Jenny,”

said Eugene, with something of his old look; “but I am very glad
to see you.”

1 7
it

 

 

 

      

  

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 243

Mortimer repeated this to her, for it could only be made out by
bending over him and closely watching his attempts to say it. In
a little while, he added :

«“ Ask her if she has seen the children.”

Mortimer could not understand this, neither could Jenny herself,
until he added :

«“ Ask her if she has smelt the flowers.”

“Oh! I know!” cried Jenny. “I understand him now!” Then,
Lightwood yielded his place to her quick approach, and she said,
bending over the bed, with that better look: “You mean my long
bright slanting rows of children, who used to bring me ease and
2 You mean the children who used to take me up, and make
me light?”

Eugene smiled, “ Yes.”

“T have not seen them since I saw you. I never see them now,
jut Tam hardly ever in pain now.”

“Tt was a pretty fancy,” said Eugene.

“But I have heard my birds sing,” cried the little creature, “ and
I have smelt my flowers. Yes, indeed I have! And both were
most beautiful and most Divine!”

“Stay and help to nurse me,” said Eugene, quictly. “I should
like you to have the fancy here, before I die.”

She touched his lips with her hand, and shaded her eyes with that
same hand as she went back to her work and her little low song.
He heard the song with evident pleasure, until she allowed it gradually
to sink away into silence.

“ Mortimer.”

“My dear Hugene.”

If you can give me anything to keep me here for only a few
minutes——”

“To keep you here, Eugene?”

“To prevent my wandering away I don’t know where— for J
begin to be sensible that I have just come back, and that I shall lose
in—do «0, dear boy !”

r gave him such stimulants as could be given him with
safety (they were always at hand, ready), and bending over him once
jnore, was about to caution him, when he said:

“Don’t tell me not to speak, for I must speak. If you knew the
varassing anxiety that enaws and wears me when I am wandering in
hose places—where are those endless places, Mortimer ? They must
be at an immense distance!”

He saw in his friend’s face that he was losing himself; for he added
after a moment: “Don’t be afraid—I am not gone yet. What
was it?”

“Vou wanted to tell me something, Eugene. My poor dear fellow,
you wanted to say something to your old friend—to the friend who has
always loved you, admired you, imitated you, founded himself upon
you, been nothing without you, and who, God knows, would be here
in your place if he could !”

“Tut, tut!” said Eugene with a tender glance as the other put his
hand: before his face. “I am not worth it. IL acknowledge that I
5)

Roa

 

 

)
h
th

 

 

 

 

 

   

i
k
L

 

 

 

me tent ne leases eee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
like it, dear boy, but I am not worth it. This attack, my dear
Mortimer; this murder iG

His friend leaned over him with renewed attention, saying: “ You
and I suspect some one.”

“More than suspect. But, Mortimer, while I lie here, and when I
lie here no longer, I trust to you that the perpetrator is never brought
to justice.”

“ Hugene ?”

“ Her innocent reputation would be ruined, my friend. She would
be punished, not he. I have wronged her enough in fact; I have
wronged her still more inintention. You recollect what pavement is
said to be made of good intentions. It is made of bad intentions too.
Mortimer, I am lying on it, and I know!”

“Be comforted, my dear Eugene.”

“T will, when you have promised me. Dear Mortimer, the man
must never be pursued. If he should be accused, you must keep him
silent and save him. Don’t think of avenging me; think only of
hushing the story and protecting her. You can confuse the case, and
turn aside the circumstances. Listen to what I say to you. It was not
the schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone. Do you hear me? ‘Twice; it
was not the schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone. Do you hear me?
Three times ; it was not the schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone.”

He stopped, exhausted. His speech had been whispered, broken,
and indistinct; but by a great effort he had made it plain enough
to be unmistakeable.

 

“Dear fellow, Iam wandering away. Stay me for another moment,
if you can.”

Lightwood lifted his head at the neck, and put a wine-elass to his
lips. He rallied.

“T don’t know how
hours. No matter.
there not ?”

“ Yes.”

“Check it: divert it!

long ago it was done, whether weeks, days, ox
There is inquiry on foot, and pursuit. Say! Is

Don’t let her be brought in question.
Shield her. The guilty man, brought to justice, would poison her
name. Let the guilty man go unpunished. Lizzie and my reparation
before all! Promise me!”

“Eugene, Ido. I promise you!”

In the act of turning his eyes gratefully towards his friend, he
wandered away. His eyes stood still, and settled into that former
intent unmeaning stare.

Hours and hours, days and nights, he remained in this same con-
dition. There were times when he would calmly speak to his friend
after a long périod of unconsciousness, and would say he was better,
and would ask for something. Before it could be given him, he would
be gone again.

The dolls’ dressmaker, all softened compassion now, watched him
with an earnestness that never relaxed. She would regularly change
the ice, or the cooling spirit, on his head, and would keep her ear at
the pillow betweenwhiles, listening for any faint words that fell from
him in his wanderings. It was amazing through how many hours at a

   
 
 
   
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
   
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
    
   
 
 
     

  
 
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
   
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
   
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 245

time she would remain beside him, in a crouching attitude, attentive
to his shghtest moan. As he could not move a hand, he could make
no sign of distress; but, through this close watching (if through no
secret sympathy or power) the little creature attained an under-
standing of him that Lightwood did not possess. Mortimer
would often turn to her, as if she were an interpreter between this
sentient world and the insensible man ; and she would change the
dressing of a wound, or ease a ligature, or turn his face, or alter the
pressure of the bedclothes on him, with an absolute certainty of doing
right. The natural lightness and delicacy of touch which had
become very refined by practice in her miniature work, no doubt was
involved in this; but her perception was at least as fine.

The one word, Lizzie, he muttered millions of times. In a
certain phase of his distressful state, which was the worst to those
who tended him, he would roll his head upon the pillow, incessantly
repeating the name in a hurried and impatient manner, with the
misery of a disturbed mind, and the monotony of a machine. Equally,
when he lay still and staring, he would repeat it for hours without
cessation, but then, always in a tone of subdued warning and
horror. Her presence and her touch upon his breast or face would
often stop this, and then they learned to expect that he would for
some time remain still, with his eyes closed, and that he would be
conscious on opening them. But, the heavy disappointment of their
hope—revived by the welcome silence of the room—was, that his
spirit would glide away again and be lost, in the moment of their joy
that it was there.

This frequent rising of a drowning man from the deep, to sink again,
was dreadful to the beholders. But, gradually the change stole upon
him that it became dreadful to himself. His desire to impart something
that was on his mind, his unspeakable yearning to have speech with
his friend and make a communication to him, so troubled him when
he recovered consciousness, that its term was thereby shortened. As
the man rising from the deep would disappear the sooner for fighting
with the water, so he in his desperate struggle went down again.

One afternoon when he had been lying still, and Lizzie, unrecog-
nized, had just stolen out of the room to pursue her occupation, he
uttered Lightwood’s name.

“My dear Eugene, J am here.”

«“ How long is this to last, Mortimer aes

Lightwood shook his head. “Still, Eugene, you are no worse than
you were.”

” «But I know there’s no hope. Yet I pray it may last long enough
for you to do me one last service, and for me to do one last action.
Keep me here a few moments, Mortimer. Try, try !s

Tlis friend gave him what aid he could, and encouraged him to
Pelieve that he was more composed, though even then his eyes were
losing the expression they so rarely recovered.

“Hold me here, dear fellow, if you can. Stop my wandering
away. Iam going ” BiGia 1

“ Not yet, not yet. Tell me, dear Eugene, what is it T shall

do?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

246 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

‘Keep me here for only a ingle minute. Tam going
Don’ t let me go. Hear me speak first.
“ My poor Hinpene try to be calm.”

‘Ido try. I try so hard. If you only knew how hard!
eae wander till I have spoken. G

away again.
Stop me—stop me !”
ft

 

Don’t
ive me a little more wine.”
Lightwood complied. Eugene, with a most pathetic struggle

against the unconsciousness that was coming over him, and with a

look of appeal that affected his friend profoundly, s said :

You can leave me with Je nny, while you speak to her and tell

her what I beseech of her. You can leave me with Jenny, while you

are gone. ‘Vhere’s not much for you to do. You won’t be long
bP)
away.

 

No, no, no. But tell me what it is that I shall do, Fi 1gene !”
“Tam going! You can’t hold me.”
“Tell me in a word, Hugene!”
His eyes were Peer again, and: the 2 only word that came from his
lips was the word millions of times repeated. Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie.
But, the watchful little dressmake xr had been vigilant as ever in
her watch, and she now came up and touched Lightwood’s arm. as
he looked down at his friend, desp: tingly,
“Hush!” she said, with her finger on her lips. “H is eye
closing. He'll be consc ious when he
you a a leading word to s: ay to him ?”
KO Je ah if you could only give me the right word!”

 

 

are
next opens them. Shall ie ive

 

lscamns Stoop down.”

He stoope d, and she whispered in his ear. She whisp ered in his
ear one short word of a single syllable. Lightwood started, and
looked at her,

“Vry it,” said the little creature, with an exci ited and exultant

face. She the mn bent over the unconscious man, and, for the first
time, kissed him on the cheeh x, and kissed the poor maimed hand that
was nearest to her. oe ithdrew to the foot of the bed.

Some two hours afterwat Mortimer Lightwood saw his\con-

sciousness come back, he instantly, but very tranquilly, bent over
him. f

“ Don’t Speak, Eugene. Do no more than look at me, and 1
tome. You follow what Is Tica

He moved his head in assent.

i: am going on from the point where we broke off. Is the word

2) e should. soon have come to—is it—_Wife ?

“O God bless you, Mortimer !”

«Hush! Don’t be agitated. Don’t speak. Hear me, dear Hugene.

Your mind will be more at peace, lying here, if you make Lizzie your
Wwitere, Wom wishe mortote vik to her and tell her go , and entreat

8}
her to be your wife. You ask her to kneel at this bedside and be
that your reparation may be complete. Is that so?”

 

  

 

  
 

ister

 

 

 

 

married to you,
“Wes. © God bless you! Yes.”
“Tt shall be done, Rug
away for some few !
this is unavoidabl e?
“ Dear frie nd, I said so,”

 

ne. Trust it to me. I shall have to Zo
10urs, to give effect to your wishes. You see

 
  
 
  
   
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
   
    
   
  
  
   
  
   
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
   
  
  
  
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
    
   
  
 
  
 

 

 

  

 

    
   
 
  
   
 
  
  
  
 
   
 
 
    
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
  
  
   
   

O47

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 247
“True, But I had not the clue then. How do you think ]
sot ib?”
2 > f . .

Glancing wistfully around, Eugene saw Miss Jenny at the foot of
the bed, looking at him with he elbows on the bed, and her he
upon her hands. There was a trace of his whimsical air wpon him,
as he tried to smile at her.

“Yes indeed,” said Lightwood, “the discovery was hers. Observe,

   
 

 

my dear Kugene ; while 1 am away you will know that i have dis-
charged my trust with Lizzie, by finding her here, in my present
place at your bedside, to leave you no more. A final word before I
go. This is the right course of a true man, Eugene. And I solemnly
believe, with all my soul, that if Providence should mercifully restore
you to us, you will be blessed with a noble wife in the preserver of
your life, whom you will dearly love.”

«Amen. I am sure of that. But I shall not come through it,
Mortimer.”

“You will not be the less hopeful or less strong, for this,
Eugene.”

“No, Touch my face with yours, in case I should not hold
till you come back. J love you, Mortimer. Don’t be uneasy for me
while you are gone. If my dear brave girl will take me, I feel
persuaded that I shall live long enough to be married, dear fellow.”

Miss Jenny gave up altogether on this parting taking place
between the friends, and, sitting with her back towards the bed in the
bower made by her bright hair, wept heartily, though noiselessly.
Mortimer Lightwood was soon gone. As the evening light lens
ened the heavy reflections of the trees in the river, another f
came with a soft step into the sick room.

“Tg he conscious?” asked the little dressmal
its station by the pillow. For, Jenny had given place to it imme-
diately, and could not see the sufferer’s face, in the dark room, from
her new and removed position.

“He is conscious, Jenny,” murmured Hugene for himself.

 

 

    
   

igu

    

r, as the figure tool

)

“He

knows his wife.”

CHAPTER XL
EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS’ DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY.

Mrs. Jonn Roxesmirn sat at needlework in” her neat little room,
beside a basket of neat little articles of clothing, which presented so
much of the appearance of: being in the dolls’ dressmaker’s way of
| ss, that one might have supposed she was going to set up in
opposition to Miss Wren. Whether the Complete British Family
Housewife had imparted sa

 

ge counsel anent them, did not appear, but
probably not, as that cloudy oracle was nowhere visible. For certain,
John Rokesmith stitched at them with so dexterous a
ve taken lessons of somebody. Love is in all
acher, and perhaps love (from a pictorial

however, Mrs.
hand, that she must ha
things a most wonderful te

   

    
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
   
 
  
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  

pom EE SR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,
point of view, with nothing on but a thimble), had been teaching
this branch of needlework to Mrs. John Rokesmith.

It was near John’s time for coming home, but as Mrs. Jol
desirous to finish a special triumph of her skil
did not go out to meet him.

m was
1 before dinner, she
Placidly, though rather consequentially
smiling, she sat stitching away with a regular sound, like a sort of
dimpled little charming Dresden-china clock by the very best maker.

A knock at the door, and a ring at the bell. Not John; or Bella
would have flown out to meet him. Then who, if not John? Bella
was asking herself the question, when that fluttering little fool of a
servant fluttered in, saying, “Mr. Lightwood !” y

Oh good gracious!

Bella had but time to throw a h
Mr. Lightwood made his bow.
Mr. Lightwood, for he was str

With a brief reference to
privilege to know Mrs. Rol
explained what was amiss
bearing Lizzie Hexam’s
would see her married,

Bella was so fluttered by the
had feelingly given her, that th
bottle than John’s Imock.
him in.”

But, that turned out to be more easily said than done; for, the
instant she mentioned Mr. Lightwood’s name, John stopped, with his
hand upon the lock of the room door.

“Come up stairs, my darling.”

Bella was amazed by the f
turning away. “ What
nied him up stairs.

SoNowes my life,”
about it.”

All very well to say, “Tell me all about it:” but John was very
much confused. His attention evidently trailed off. now and then,
even while Bella told him all about it. Yet she knew that he took
a great interest in Lizzie and her fortunes. What could it mean ?

“You will come to this marriage with me, John dear 2”

GIN 410 my love; I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do that, John 2”

“No, my dear, it’s quite out of the question. Not to be thought of.”

“Am I to go alone, John 2”

“ No, my dear, you will go with Mr. I

“ Don’t you think it’s time w,
dear?” Bella insinuated.

“ My darling, it’s almost time
excuse me to him altogether,”

“You never mean, John dear
Why, he knows you have com

“That’s a little

or fortunate,

andkerchief over the basket, when
There was something amiss with
angely grave and looked ill.

the happy time when it had been his
cesmith as Miss Wilfer, Mr. Lightwood
with him and why he came. He came
earnest hope that Mrs. John Rokesmith

request, and by the short narrative he
re never was a more timely smelling-
“My husband,” said Bella; “Ill bring

lush in his face, and by his sudden
vt can it mean 2” she thi ught, as she accompa-

said John, taking her on his knee, “tell me all

aghtwood.”
© went down to Mr. Lightwood, John

you went, but I must ask you to

, that you are not going to see him ?
e¢ home. I told him go.”

unfortunate, but it can’t be helped. Unfortunate
I positively cannot see him, my love.”

   

  

     
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
   
 
  
 
 
 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 249 |
Bella cast about in her mind what could be his reason for this un-

accountable behaviour, as she sat on his knee looking at him in asto-

nishment and pouting a little. A weak reason presented itself.

« John dear, you never can be jealous of Mr. Lightwood ?”

“Why, my precious child,” returned her husband, laughing out-
right: “how could I be jealous of him? Why should I be jealous
of him ?”

“ Because, you know, John,” pursued Bella, pouting a little more,
“though he did rather admire me once, it was not my fault.”

“Tt was your fault that I admired you,” returned her husband,
with a look of pride in her, “and why not your fault that he
admired you? But, I jealous on that account? Why, 1 must go
distracted for life, if I turned jealous of every one who used to find
my wife beautiful and winning !”

“Tam half angry with you, John dear,” said Bella, laughing a
little, “and half pleased with you; because you are such a stupid old
fellow, and yet you say nice things, as if you meant them. Don’t be
mysterious, sir. What harm do you know of Mr. Lightwood ?”

“None, my love.”

« What has he ever done to you, John ?”

“fe has never done anything to me, my dear. T know no more
against him than I know against Mr. Wrayburn; he has never done
anything to me; neither has Mr. Wrayburn, And yet I have
exactly the same objection to both of them.” 4

“Qh, John!” retorted Bella, as if she were giving him up for a i all
bad job, as she used to give up herself. “You are nothing better 1
than a sphinx! And a married sphinx isn't a—isn’t a nice con-
fidential husband,” said Bella, in a tone of injury.

“Bella, my life,” said John Rokesmith, touching her cheek, with
a grave smile, as she cast down her eyes and pouted again ; “look at
me. I want to speak to you.”

“In earnest, Blue Beard of the secret chamber?” asked Bella,
clearing her pretty face.

“In earnest. And I confess to the secret chamber. Don’t you
remember that you asked me not to declare what I thought of your

higher qualities until you had been tried ?”

iets oe on arn ect ii

“Yes, John dear. And I fully meant it, and I fully mean it.” ili Rs
«The time ‘will come, my darling—I am no prophet, but I say so, id
—when you will be tried. The time will come, | think, when you i I

will undergo a trial through which you will never pass quite
triumphantly for me, unless you can put perfect faith in me.”

«Then you may be sure of me, John dear, for I can put perfect i
faith in you, and I do, and I always, always will. Don’t judge me ie |
by a little thing like this, John. Jn little things, I am a little thing i |
myself—I always was. But in great things, I hope not; I don’t ie
mean to boast, John dear, but I hope not!” ie

He was even better convinced of the truth of what she said than i

| she was, as he felt her loving arms about him. If the Golden Dust- i
man’s riches had been his to stake, he would have staked them to
the last farthing on the fidelity through good’ and evil of her affec
tionate and trusting heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

UR

 

MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Now, Ul go down to, and go away with, Mr. Li

Achtwood,” said
alla, sprit

ng up. “You are the most creasing and tumbling
umsy-Boots of a packer, John, that ever was; but if youre quite

good, and will pr omise never to do so any more (th ough E. don’t

know what you have done!) you may pack me a little bag for a
night, while I get my bonnet on.’

He gaily comp lied, and ; she tied her dimpled chin up, and shook
ier head into her bonnet, and pull led out the bows of ie bonnet-

strings, and got her cloves on, fir ger by finger, and final ly got them

n her little plump hands, and bade him eood- bye and went down.

Lightwood’s impatience was much relieved when he found her
dressed - for departure.

 

Be
Cl

 

 

 

 

    

“Mr. Rokesmith goes with us?” he «
towards the door.

“Oh, I forgot!” replie cd Bella. “ His best compliments. His fax 6
is Swollen to the size of two ¢ faces, and he is to go to bed direct] Y>
poor fellow, to wait for the doctor, who is coming to lance him.”

“Tt is curious,” observed Lightwood, “that iP have never yet seen
re, Ih okesmit th, though we have been engaged in the same affairs.”
Re lly ?” said the unblushing Bella.

I begin to think,” observed Lightwood, “that I x

ud, hesitating, with a look

 

 

   

ver shall seo

oe Whee ees happen so oddly eee said Bella with a
steady countenance, “that there seem 1 kind of fatality in them.
But | 1 am quite nado, Mr. Lightwood.”

They ae i direct] ly, in a little carria re that Ligehtwood had
brought with him from never-to-be -forgotten Greenwich and from
Greenwic h they started directly for London; and in London they

vaited at a railway sta tion until such time as the Reverend Frank
vey, and Li

Vi garetta his wife, with whom Mortimer Li ightwood
had been ali ady in conference e, should come and jom them. —

That worthy couple were del: uyed by a portentous old parishioner of
the female gender, who was one of the plagues of their lives, and with
whom they bore with most exem plary sweetness and good-humour,

notwithstanding a having an infection of absurdi ty about her.

that communicated ; self to everything with w hich, and every-

body with whom, ais came in contact. She was a nm ember of the
x

Reverend Frank's congregation, and made a point of distineuishing
herself in that oye by

 

 

    

 

   

Conspiouowel ys we eping at everything, how-
ever cheering, said by the Reverend Frank in: his public ministra-
tion; also by appling to herse

lf the ya eee 2xmentations of David,
and compl: Vining in a personally injured manner (much in arr

the clerk and the rest of the respondents) th a her enemies were
ageing pit-falls about her, and breal king her with rods of iron. Tn-

deed, this old widow discharged herself of the ut ee of the Mornine
and Evening: PEE e as if she were lodging a complaint on oath and
applying for a warrant before a magistrate. But this was not her
most inconvenient characteristic, for that took the form of an impres-
sion, usually recurring in inclement w eather and at about day bre ak,
that she had somet hing on her mind and stood in imme diate need of
the Reverend Fy ‘ank to come and take it off. Many a time had that

 

 

  
  
 
   
     
     
   
  
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
 
 
    
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
    
 
 
   
 
   
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
   
 
   
  
   
  
 
 
 
   
   
   
 
  
  
  
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

  
 

 

  

    
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
       

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 25!

kind creature got up, and gone out to Mrs. Sprodgkin (such was the
disciple’s name), suppressing a strong sense of her comicality
by his strong sense of duty, and perfectly knowing that nothing
but a cold would come of it. However, beyond themselves, the
Reverend Frank Milvey and Mrs. Milvey seldom hinted that Mrs.

Sprodgkin was hardly worth the trouble she gave; but both made |
the best of her, as they ‘did of all their troubles. 4
‘This very exacting member of the fold appeared to be endowed
with a sixth sense, in regard of knowing when the Reverend Frank \4
Milvey least desired her company, and with promptitude a ing i

his little hall. Consequently, when the Reverend Frank hé

   

 

    

 

 
 
 

 

i

i ‘3
dw

engaged that he and his wife would accompany Lightwood back,
said, as a matter of course: “We must make haste to get out,
ended on by Mrs. Sprodgkin.”

]
th

 

Margaretta, my dear, or we shall be de:
To which Mrs. Milvey replied, in her pleasantly emphatic way,
yes, for she is such a marplot, Frank, and does worry sol”? We
that were scarcely uttered when their theme was annourced as in fa
ful attendance below, desiring counsel ona spiritual matter, ‘he
points on which Mrs. Sprodgkin sought elucidation being seldom of a
pressing nature (as Who begat Whom, or some information concerning
the Amorites), Mrs. Milvey on this special occasion resorted to the
device of buying her off with a present of tea and sugar, and a loaf
and butter. These gifts Mrs. Sprodekin accepted, but still insisted on
dutifully remaining in the hall, to curtsey to the Reverend Frank as he ii
came forth. Who, incautiously saying ‘in his genial manner, “ Well, i
Sally, there you are !? involved himself in a discursive address from.
Mrs. Sprodgkin, revolving around the result that she res arded tea and. ii
sugar in the light of myrrh and frankincense, and considered bread
and butter identical with. locusts and wild honey. Having com-
municated this edifying piece of information, Mrs. Sprodgkin was left
still unadjourned in the hall, and Mr. and Mrs. Milvey hurried in
a heated condition to the railway station. All of which is here re-
corded to the honor of that good Christian pair, representatives of
hundreds of other good Christian pairs as conscientious and as useful,
who merge the smallness of their work in its greatness, and feel in
no danger of losing dignity when they adapt themselves to incom-
prehensible humbugs. Wad

“ Detained at the lest moment by one who had a claim upon me,” |
was the Reverend Frank’s ap >to Lightwood, taking no thought
of himself. To which Mrs. rey added, taking thought for him, ;
like the championing little wife she was; “ Oh yes, detained at the last i
nt. But as to the claim, Frank, I must say that I do think you
r-considerate sometimes, and allow that to be a litile abused.”

Bella felt conscious, in spite of her late pledge for herself, that her
husband’s absence would give disagreeable occasion for surprise to
the Mil Nor could she appear quite at her ease when Mrs.
Milvey asked :

“ How is Mr. Rokesmith, and is he gone before us, or does he follow

Cin
sites

 

 

 

  
  

   

mome
| are Ove

  

   

   

us ?”

It becoming necessary, upon this, to send him to bed again and
hold him in waiting to be lanced again, Bella did it. But not half

  

 

 

 

 

22, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

as well on the second occasion as on the first; for, a twice-told
white one seems almost to become a black one, when you are not
used to it.

“Oh dear!” said Mrs. Milvey, “I am so sorry! Mr. Rokesmith
took such an interest in Lizzie Hexam, when we were there before.
And if we had only known of his face, we could have given him
something that would have kept it down lohg enough for so short a
purpose.”

By way of making the white one whiter, Bella hastened to stipu-
late that he was not in pain. Mrs. Milvey was so glad of it.

“T don’t know how it is,” said Mrs. Milvey, “and I am sure you
don’t, Frank, but the clergy and their wives seem to cause swelled
faces. Whenever I take notice of a child in the school, it seems to
me as if its face swelled instantly. Frank never makes acquaintance
with a new old woman, but she gets the face-ache. And another
thing is, we do make the poor children sniff so. I don’t know how
we do it, and I should be so glad not to; but the more we take
notice of them, the more they sniff. Just as they do when the text is
given out.—Frank, that’s a schoolmaster, I have seen him some-
where.”

The reference was to a young man of reserved appearance, in a
coat and waistcoat of black, and pantaloons of pepper and salt. He
had come into the office of the station, from its interior, in an un-
settled way, immediately after Lightwood had gone out to the train ;
and he had been hurriedly reading the printed bills and. notices on
the wall. He had had a wandering interest in what was said
among the people waiting there and passing to and fro. He had
drawn. nearer, at about the time when Mrs. Milvey mentioned Lizzie
Hexam, and had remained near, since: though always glancing
towards the door by which Lightwood had gone out. He stood with
his back towards them, and his gloved hands clasped behind him.
There was now so evident a faltering upon him, expressive of in-
decision whether or no he should express his having heard himself
referred to, that Mr. Milvey spoke to him.

“I cannot recall your name,’
seen you in your school.”

“My name is Bradley Headstone, sir,” he replied, backing into a
more retired place.

“T ought to have remembered it,” said Mr. Milvey, giving him his
hand. “TI hope you are well? <A little overworked, I am afraid ?”

“Yes, I am overworked just at present, sir.”

“Had no play in your last holiday time 2”

“ No, sir.”

VAT work and no play, Mr. Headstone, will not make dulness, in
your case, I dare say ;

but it will make dyspepsia, if you don’t take
care.”
“T will endeavour to take care, sir.
you, outside, a moment 2”
“ By all means.”

It was evening, and the office was well lighted.’ The school-
master, who had never remitted his watch on Lightwood’s door, now

* he said, “ but I remember to have

Might I beg leave to speak to

     
  
   
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
   
  
    
   
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
   
  
  
   
 
    

 

 

     
  
 
 
 
    
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

moved by another door to a corner without, where there was more
shadow than light; and said, plucking at his gloves :

“One of your ladies, sir, mentioned within my hearing a name
that I am acquainted with ; I may say, well acquainted with. ‘The
name of the sister of an oll pupil of mine. He was my pupil for a
long time, and has got on and gone upward rapidly. The name of
Hexam. The name of Lizzie Hexam.” He seemed to be a shy
man, struggling against nervousness, and spoke in a very constrained
way. ‘The break he set between his two last sentences was quite
embarrassing to his hearer.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Milvey. “We are going down to see her.”

“J gathered as much, sir. I hope there is nothing amiss with the
sister of my old pupil? I hope no bereavement has befallen her.
I hope she is in no affliction? Has lost no—relation ?”

Mr. Milvey thought this a man with a very odd manner, and
a dark downward look; but he answered in his usual open
way.

“T am glad to tell you, Mr. Headstone, that the sister of your old
pupil has not sustained any such loss. You thought I might he
going down to bury some one 27

“That may have been the connexion of ideas, sir, with your
clerical character, but I was not conscious of it,—Then you are
not, sir?”

A man with a very odd manner indeed, and with a lurking lool
that was quite oppressive.

“No. In fact,” said Mr. Milvey, “since you are so interested in
the sister of your /old pupil, I may as well tell you that I am going
down to marry her.”

The schoolmaster started back.

“Not to marry her, myself,” said Mr. Milvey, with a smile,
“because I have a wife already. ‘To perform the marriage service
at her wedding.”

Bradley Headstone caught hold of a pillar behind him. If Mr.
Milvey knew an ashy face when he saw it, he saw it then.

«You are quite ill, Mr. Headstone !”

“Tt is not much, sir. It will pass over very soon. I am accus-
tomed to be seized with giddiness. Don’t let me detain you, sir; E
stand in need of no assistance, I thank you. Much obliged by your
sparing me these minutes of your time.”

As Mr. Milvey, who had no more minutes to spare, made a suit-
able reply and turned back into the office, he observed the school-
master to lean against the pillar with his hat in his hand, and to
at his neckeloth as if he were trying to tear it off. The Reve-
rend Frank accordingly directed the notice of one of the attendants to
him, by saying: “ There is a person outside who seems to be really ill,
and to require some help, though he says he does not.”

Lightwood had by this time secured their places, and the depar-
ture-bell was about to be rung. They took their seats, and were
beginning to move out of the station, when the sam 2) attendant came
running along the platform, looking into all the carriages.

“Qh! You are here, sir!” he said, springing on the step, and

io

pull

sinh nical i

ee

Ben stds as anes ve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
holding the window-frame by his elbow, as
“That person you pointed out to me is in a fit.”

“JT infer from what he told me that he is subject to such attacks.
He will come to, in the air, in a little while.”

He was took very bad to be sure, and was biting and knocking
about him (the man said) furiously. Would the gentleman give
him his card, as he-had seen him first? The gentleman did so, with
the explanation that he knew no more of the man attacked than that
he was a man of a very respectable occupation, who had said he was
out of health, as his appearance would of itself have indicated. The
attendant received the card, watched his opportunity for sliding
down, slid down, and so it ended.

Then, the train
ragged sides of
the swarming

the carriage moved.

 

2)

rattled among the house-tops, and among the
houses torn down to make way for it, and over
streets, and under the fruitful earth, until it shot
river: bursting over the quiet surface like a bomb-shell,

in as if it had exploded in the rush of smoke and
are. A little more, and again it roared across the
ut rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings
ffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father
oes to his. To whom it is no matter what living waters
run high or low, reflect the heavenly lights and darknesses, produce
their little growth of weeds and flowers, turn here, turn there, are

noisy or still, are troubled or at rest, for their course has one sure
termination, thous

Then, a c
away by night, <
yielding to the a

across the
and gone
steam and
river, a

with ine

   
   

 

 

   
   
 

gh their sources and devices are many.
re ride suc

 

eded, near the solemn river, stealing
gs steal away, by night and by day, so quietly
ttraction of the loadstone rock of Eternity ; and the
nearer they drew to the chamber where Hugene lay, the more they
feared that they might find his wanderings done. At last they saw
its dim light shining out, and it gave them hope: though Lightwood

faltered as he thoug ‘If he were gone, she would still be sitting
Hoek g
by him,’

But he lay quiet,
th a raised admon

 

 

   
    

: in stupor, half in sleep. Bella, entering
wi tory finger, kissed Tizzie softly, but ‘said
not a word. Neither did any of them speak, but all sat down at the
foot of the bed, silently waiting. And now, in this night-watch,
mingling with the flow of the river and with the rush of the train,
came the questions into Bella’s mind again: What could be in the
depths of that mystery of John’s? Why was it that he had never
been seen by I Lightwood, whom he still avoided? When would
that trial come, through which her faith in, and her duty to, her
dear ‘husband, was to carry her, rendering him triumphant? For,
that had been his term. Her passing through the trial was to
make the man she loved with all her heart, triumphant. Term not
to sink out of sight in Bella’s breast.
Far on in the night, E
and said at once:

back ?”

 

    

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

Jugene opened his eyes, He was sensible,
oc LT r “ es « t , f

How does the time go? Has our Mortimer come
e Lightwood was there immediately, to answer for himself. « Yes,
tuugene, and all ig ready,”

 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
    
 
  
  
  
   
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
   
    
   
  
  
   
  
 
 
 
   
  

   

 

TR

EUGENE’S

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pert Pe ee ea

 

     
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
   
 
  
   
 
  
  
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 25D

“Dear boy!” returned Eugene with a smile, “we both thank
you heartily. Lizzie, tell them how welcome they are, and that
I would be eloquent if I could.”

“There is no need,” said Mr. Milvey. “We know it. Are you
better, Mr. Wrayburn ?”

“Tam much happier,” said Eugene.

“Much better too, L hope?”

Eugene turned his eyes towards Lizzie, as if to spare her, and
answered nothing.

Then, they all stood around the bed, and Mr. Milvey, opening his
| book, began the service; so rarely associated with the shadow of
death; so inseparable in the mind from a flush of life and g iety
| and hope and health and joy. Bella thought how different from

her own sunny little wedding, and wept. Mrs. Milvey overflowed
with pity, and wept too. The dolls’ dressmaker, with her hands
before her face, wept in her golden bower. Reading in a low clear
voice, and bending over Eugene, who kept his eyes upon him, Mr.
Milvey did his office with suitable simplicity. As the bridegroom
could not move his hand, they touched his fingers with the ring,
and so put it on the bride. When the two plighted their troth, she
laid her hand on his, and kept it there. When the ceremony was
done, and all the rest departed from the room, she drew her arm under
his head, and laid her own head down upon the pillow by his side.

“Undraw the curtains, my dear girl,” said Hugene, after a while,
“and let us see our wedding-day.” —
| The sun was rising, and his first raj
| came back, and put her lips to his;. “le ble
| “I bless the day!” said Lizzie.

“You have made a poor marriage of it, my sweet wife,
| Eugene. “A shattered graceless fellow, stretched at his length
| here, and next to nothing for you when you are a young widow.” i|
| “JT have made the marriage that I would have given all the

| world to dare to hope for,” she replied. i
|

  

 

 

 

  
 

   

 

 

   

g struck into the room, as she
ss the day!” said Hugene.

 

  

said.

 

 

  

 

“You have thrown yourself away,” said Eugene, shaking his A
1 < : Sta ¥) pos F
of your heart. IMy {

head. “But you have followed the treasure
st, dear gixl!” ]

justification is, that you had thrown that away
“No. I had given it to you.”
“The same thing, my poor Lizzie!”
| “Hush, hush! <A very different thing.”
‘

   

There were tears In his eyes, and she besought him to close them.
“No,” said Eugene, again shaking his head: “let me look at you,
Lizzie, while I can. You brave devoted girl! You heroine!”

Her own eyes filled under his praises. And when he mustered.
strength to moye his wounded head a very little way, and. lay it on
her bcsom, the tears of both fell.

“Lizzie,” said Kugene, after a silence: “when you see me wander-
| ing away from this refuge that I have so ill deserved, speak to me
| by my name, and I think I shall come back.”

“Yes, dear Eugene.”

“There!” he exclaimed, smiling. “1 should have gone then, but
for that!”

 

 

 

 
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

256 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

A little while afterwards, when he appeared to ‘be sinking into
insensibility, she said, in a calm loving voice: “ Eugene, my dear
husband!” He immediately answered: “There again! You see
how you can recall me!” And afterwards, when he could not speak,
he still answered by a slight movement of his head upon her bosom.

The sun was high in the sky, when she gently disenzaced herself
Le} ? oD 3 oro

to give him the stimulants and nourishment he required. The utter
helplessness of the wreck of him that lay cast ashore there, now
warmed her, but he himself appeared a little more hopeful.

“Ah, my beloved Lizzie!” he said, faintly. “How shall I ever
pay all I owe you, if I recover!”

“Don’t be ashamed of me,” she replied, “and you will have more
than paid all.”

“It would require a life, Lizzie, to pay all; more than a life.”

“Live for that, then; live for me, Eugene; live to see how hard
[ will try to improve myself, and never to discredit you.”

“ My darling girl,” he replied, rallying more of his old manner than
he had ever yet got together. “On the contrary, I have been
thinking whether it is not the best thing I can do, to die.”

“The best thing you can do, to leave me with a broken heart ?”

“T don’t mean that, my dear girl. I was not thinking: of that.
What I was thinking of was this. Out of your compassion for me, in
this maimed and broken state, you make so much of me—you think
so well of me—you love me so dearly.”

“Heaven knows I love you dearly !”

“And Heaven knows I prize it! Well. If I live, you'll find
me out.”

“T shall find out that my husband has a mine of purpose and
energy, and will turn it to the best account?”

“I hope so, dearest Lizzie,” said Eugene, wistfully, and yet some-
what whimsically, “T hope so. But I can’t summon the vanity
to think so. How can I think so, looking back on such a trifling
wasted youth as mine! J humbly hope it; but I daren’t believe it.
There is a sharp misgivine in my conscience that if I were to live,
[ should disappoint your good opinion and my own—and that I onght
to die, my dear !”

 

 

    
  
    
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

CHAPTER XII.

THE PASSING SHADOW.

Te winds and tides rose and fell a certain number of times, the
earth moved round the sun a certain number of times, the ship upon
the ocean made her voyage safely, and brought a baby-Bella home.
‘Then who so blest and happy as Mrs. John Rokesmith, saving and
excepting Mr. John Rokesmith !

“ Would you not like to be rich now, my darling?”

“How can you ask me such a question, Jobn dear? Am I not
rich ?”

These were among the first words spoken near the baby Bella as she
lay asleep. She soon proved to be a baby of wonderful intelligence,
evincing the strongest objection to her grandmother's society, and
being invariably seized with a painful acidity of the stomach when
that dignified lady honoured her with any attention.

It was charming to see Bella contemplating this baby, and finding;
out her own dimples in that tiny reflection, as if she were looking in.
the glass without personal vanity. Her cherubic father justly re-
marked to her husband that the baby seemed to make her younger
than before, reminding him of the days when she had a pet doll and
used to talk to it as she carried it about. The world might have
been challenged to produce another baby who had such a store of
pleasant nonsense said and sung to it, as Bella said and sung to this
baby ; or who was dressed and undressed as often in four-and-twenty
hours as Bella dressed and undressed this baby; or who was held

behind doors and poked out to stop its father’s way when he came
home, as this baby was; or, im a word, who did half the number of
baby things, through the lively invention of a gay and proud young
mother, that this inexhaustible baby did.

The inexhaustible baby was two or three months old, when Bella
began to notice a cloud upon her husband’s brow. Watchimg it, she
saw a gathering and deepening anxiety there, which caused her
creat disquiet. More than once, she awoke him muttering in his
sleep; and, though he muttered nothing worse than her own name,
it was plain to her that his restlessness originated in some load of
care, ‘Therefore, Bella at length put in her claim to divide this load,
and bear her half of it.

“You know, John dear,” she said, cheerily reverting to their former
conversation, “that I hope I may safely be trusted in great things.
And it surely cannot be a little thing that causes you so much un-
easiness. It’s very considerate of you to try to hide from me that you
are uncomfortable about something, but it’s quite impossible to be
done, John love.”

«J admit that I am rather uneasy, my own.”

“Then please to tell me what about, sine

But no, he evaded that. “Never mind !” thought Bella, resolutely.

VoL, I. 8

Bees oe on ene ern ne

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

258 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,
“ John requires me to put perfect faith in him, and he shalt not bo
disappointed.” ;

She went up to London one day, to meet him, in order that they
might make some purchases. She found him waiting for her at her
journeys end, and they walked away together through the streets.
He was in gay spirits, though still harpimge on that notion of their
bemeg rich; and he said, now let them make believe that yonder fine
carriage was theirs, and that it was waiting to take them home to a
fine house they had; what would Bella, in that case, best like to find
in the house? Well! Bella didn’t know: already having everything
she wanted, she couldn’t say. But, by degrees she was led on to
confess that she would like to have for the inexhaustible baby such
a nursery as never was seen. It was to be “a very rainbow for colours,”
as she was quite sure baby noticed colours; and the staircase was to be
adorned with the most exquisite flowers, as she was absolutely cer-
tain baby noticed flowers; and there was to be an aviary somewhere,
of the loveliest little birds; as there was not the smallest doubt in the
world that baby noticed birds. Was there nothing else? No, John
dear. The predilections of the mexhaustible baby being provided
for, Bella could think of nothing else.

They were chatting on in this way, and John had suggested, “No
jewels for your own wear, for instance?” and Bella had replied
laughing. O! if he came to that, yes, there might be a beautiful ivory
case of jewels on her dressing-table; when these pictures were in a
moment darkened and blotted out:

They turned a corner, and met Mr. Lightwood.

He stopped as if he were petrified by the sight of Bella’s hus-
band, who in the same moment had changed colour.

“Mr. Lightwood and I have met before,” he said.

“Met before, John?” Bella repeated. in atone of wonder. “ Mr.
Lightwood told me he had never seen you.”

“IT did not then know that I had,” said Lightwood, discomposed
on her account. “TI believed that I had only heard of: Mr. Roke-
smith.” With an emphasis on the name.

“When Mr. Lightwood saw me, my love,” observed her husband,
not avoiding his eye, but looking at him, “my name was Julius
Handford.”

Julius Handford! ‘The name that Bella. had so often seen.in old
newspapers, when she was an inmate of Mr. Bofiin’s house! Julius
Hendford, who had been publicly entreated to appear, and for
intelligence of whom a reward had been publicly offered !

‘ft would have avoided mentioning it in your presence,’ said
Livhiwood to Bella, delicately ; “ but since your husband mentions
it himself, I must confirm his strange admission. I saw him as Mr.
Julius Handford, and I afterwards (unquestionably to his knowledge)
took great pains to trace him out.”

“Quite true. But it was not my object or my interest,” said
Rokesmith, quietly, “to be traced out.”

Bella looked from the one to the other, in amazement:

“ Mr. Lightwood,” pursued her husband, “as chance has brought
us iace to face at last—which is not to be wondered at, for the

 

 

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COUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 259

wonder is, that, in spite of all my pains to the contrary, chance has
not con fronte d us together sooner—I have only to remind you that
you have been at my “house e, and to add that I have not chang red my
resider

“Siz

   
 

returned Lightwood, with a meaning glance towards

Bella, “my position is a truly painful one. I hope that no com-

plicity in a very dark transaction may attach to you, but you cannot
fail to know that your own extraordi inary conduct has laid you
under suspicion.”

“T know it has,” was all the reply.

“ My professional duty, ” said Lightwood hesitating, with another
glance towards Bella, “is greatly at variance with my personal
inclination; but I doubt, Mr. Handford, or Mr. Rokesmith, whether
I am Justified in taking leave of you here, with your whole course
unexplained.”

Bella caught her husband by the han

“ Don’t be alarmed, my darling. Me i Mipshswood will find that
he is quite justified in taking eave of me here. At all events,”
added Rokesmith, “he will find that I mean to take leave of him
here.”

“T think, sir,” said Lightwood, “ you can searcely deny that when
I came to your house on the occasion to which you have referred,
you avoided me of a set purpose.”

Mr. Lightwood, I assure you I have no disposition to deny it, or
intention to deny it. I should have continued to avoid you, in
pursuance of the s same. set purpose, for a short time ine 1, if we had
not met now. fam going straight home, and shall remain at home
to-morrow until noon. Heres fier, Lhope we may be better acquainted.
Good-day.”

Lightw ood stood irresolute, but Bella's husband passed him in the
steadiest manne r, with Bella on his arm; and they went home with-
out encountering any further remonstrance or molestation from any
one.

When they had dined and were alone, John Rokesmith said to his
wife, who had preserved her cheerfulness : “And you don’t ask
me, my dear, why I bore that name ?”

“No, John love. I should dearly like to know, of course ;” (which
her anxious face confirmed;) “ but I wait until you can tell me of
your own free will. You asked me if I could have perfect faith im
you, and I said yes, and I meant it.”

It did not escape Bella’s notice that he began to look triumphant.
She wanted no strengthening in her firmness; but if she had had
need of any, she wi ould have der ived it from his kindling face.

“You cannot have been pepe ed, my dearest, for such a discovery
as that this mysterious Mr. Handford wag identical with your hus-
band ?”

“No, John dear, of course not. But you told me to prepare to be
tried, and I prepared myself.”

He drew her to nestle closer to him, and told her it would soon be
over, and the truth would soon appear. “And now,” he went on,
ae lay stress, my dear, on these words that 1 am going to add. I
s2

  

 

 

 

 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

  

260 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

stand in no kind of peril, and I can by possibility be hurt at no
one’s hand.”

“You are quite, quite sure of that, John dear

“Not a hair of my head! Moreover, I have done no wrong, and
have injured no man. Shall I swear it ?”

“No, John!” cried Bella, laying her hand upon his lips, with a
proud look. “Never to me!”

“But circumstances,” he went on “—TI can, and I will, disperse
them in a moment—have surrounded me with one of the strangest
suspicions ever known. You heard Mr. Lightwood speak of a dark
transaction ?”

“Yes, John.”

“You are prepared to hear explicitly what he meant?”

“ Yes, John.”

“My life, he meant the murder of John Harmon, your allotted
husband.”

With a fast palpitating heart, Bella grasped him by the arm.
“You cannot be suspected, John ?”

“Dear love, I can be—for I am!”

There was silence between them, as she sat looking in his face,
with the colour quite gone from her own face and lips. “ How dare
they!” she cried at length, in a burst of generous indignation. “ My
beloved husband, how dare they!”

He caught her in his arms as she opened hers, and held her to his
heart. “ Hvyen knowing this, you can trust me, Bella ?”

“T can trust you, John dear, with all my soul. If I could not
trust you, I should fall dead at your feet.”

The kindling triumph in his face was bright indeed, as he looked
up and rapturously exclaimed, what had he done to deserve the
blessing of this dear confiding creature’s heart! Again she put her
hand upon his lips, saying, “Hush!” and then told him, in her own
little natural pathetic way, that if all the world were against him,
she would be for him; that if all the world repudiated him, she
would believe him; that if he were infamous in other eyes, he would
be honored in hers; and that, under the worst unmerited suspicion,
she could devote her life to consoling him, and imparting her own
faith in him to their little child.

A twilight calm of happiness then succeeding to their radiant
noon, they remained at peace, until a strange voice in the room
startled them both. The room being by that time dark, the voice
said, “Don’t let the lady be alarmed by my striking a light,” and
immediately a match rattled, and glimmered ina hand. ‘he hand
and the match and the voice were then seen by John Rokesmith to
belong to Mr. Inspector, once meditatively active in this chronicle.

“T take the liberty,” said Mr. Inspector, in a business-like manner,
“to bring myself to the recollection of Mr. Julius Handford, who
gave me his name and address down at our place a considerable time
ago. Would the lady object to my lighting the pair of candles on
the chimneypiece, to throw a further light upon the subject? No?
Thank you,ma’am. Now, we look cheerful.”

Mr. Inspector, in a dark-blue buttoned-up frock coat and panta-

9”

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   

 

   
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, 261

loons, presented a serviceable, half-pay, Royal Arms kind of appear-
ance, as he applied his pocket handkerchief to his nose and bowed to
the lady.

“You favoured me, Mr. Handford,” said Mr. Inspector, “by
writing down your name and address, and I produce the piece of
paper on which you wrote it. Comparing the same with the writing
on the fly-leaf of this book on the table—and a sweet pretty volume
it is_—I find the writing of the entry, ‘Mrs. John Rokesmith, From
her husband on her birthday "—and very gratifying to the feelings
such memorials are—to correspond exactly. Can I have a word
with you?”

“Certainly. Here, if you please,” was the reply.

“ Why,” retorted Mr. Inspector, again using his pocket handker-
chief, “though there’s nothing for the lady to be at all alarmed at,
still, ladies are apt to take alarm at matters of business—being of
that fragile sex that they're not accustomed to them when not of a
strictly domestic character—and I do generally make it a rule to
propose retirement from the presence of ladies, before entering upon
business topics. Or perhaps,” Mr. Inspector hinted, “if the lady
was to step up-stairs, and take a look at baby now !”

“Mrs. Rokesmith,”—her husband was beginning; when Mr.
Inspector, regarding the words as an introduction, said, “ Happy,
Tam sure, to have the honor.” And bowed, with gallantry.

“Mrs, Rokesmith,” resumed her husband, “is satisfied that she can
have no reason for being alarmed, whatever the business is.

“Really? Is that so?’ said Mr. Inspector. “ But it’s a sex to
live and learn from, and there’s nothing a lady can’t accomplish when
she once fully gives her mind to it. It’s the case with my own wife.
Well, ma’am, this good gentleman of yours has given rise to a rather
large amount of trouble which might have been avoided if he had
come forward and explained himself. Well you see! He didwt
come forward and explain himself. Consequently, now that we meet,
him and me, youll say—and say right—that there’s nothing to be
alarmed at, in my proposing to him to come forward—or, putting the
same meaning in another form, to come along with me—and explain
himself.”

When Mr. Inspector put it in that other form, “to come along with
me,” there was a relishing roll in his voice, and his eye beamed with
an official lustre.

“Do you propose to take me into custody ?” inquired John Roke-
smith, very coolly.

“Why argue?” returned Mr. Inspector in a comfortable sort of
remonstrance ; “ain’t it enough that I propose that you shall come
along with me?”

“ Hor what reason

“Jord bless my soul and body !” returned Mr. Inspector, “I
wonder at it in a man of your education. Why argue ?”

“ What do you charge against me eu

«J wonder at you before a lady,” said Mr. Inspector, shaking his
head reproachfully: “I wonder, brought up as you have been, you
haven’t a more delicate mind! I charge you, then, with being some way

9?

 

   

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    
 
 
 
   
  
  
   
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
  
  

a9

OUR MUTUAL Ft

 

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concerned inthe Harmon Murder. I don’t say whether before, or in,
or after, the fact. I don’t say whether with having some knowledge
of it that hasn’t come out.”

“You don’t surprise me. I foresaw your visit this afternoon.”

“Don’t!” said Mr. Inspector. “ Why, why argue? It’s my duty
to inform you that whatever you say, will be used :
“T don’t think it will.”

“ But I tell you it will,” said Mr. Inspector. “ Now, haying received
the caution, do you still say that you foresaw my visit this afternoon?”

“Yes, And I will say something more, if you will step with me
into the next room.”

With a reassuring kiss on the lips of the frightened Bella, her
husband (to whom Mr. Inspector obligingly offered his arm), took up
a candle, and withdrew with that gentleman. ‘They were a full half-
hour in conference. When they returned, Mr. Inspector looked con-
siderably astonished.

“T have invited this worthy officer, my dear,” said John, “to make
a short excursion with me in which you shall be a sharer. He will
take something to eat and drink, I dare say, on your invitation,
while you are getting your bonnet on.”

Mr. Inspector declined eating, but assented to the proposal of a
class of brandy and water. Mixing this cold, and pensively consum-
ing it, he broke at intervals into such soliloquies as that he never
did know such a move, that he never had been so gravelled, and that
what a game was this to try the sort of stuff a man’s opinion of
himself was made of ! Concurrently with these comments, he more
than once burst out a laughing, with the half-enjoying and _half-
piqued air of a man, who had given up a good conundrum, after much
guessing, and been told the answer. Bella was so timid of him,
that she noted these things in a halfshrinking, halt-perceptive way,
and similarly noted that there was a great change in his manner
towards John. That coming-along-with-him deportment was now
lost in long musing looks at John and at herself, and sometimes
in slow heavy rubs of his hand across his forehead, as if he were
ironing out the creases which his deep pondering made there. He
had had some coughing and whistling satellites secretly gravitating
towards him about the premises, but they were now dismissed, and
he eyed John as if he had meant to do hima public service, but had
unfortunately been anticipated. Whether Bella might have noted
anything more, if she had been less afraid of him, she could not
determine; but it was a'll inexplicable to her, and not the faintest
flash of the real state of the case broke in upon hermind. Mr. In-
Spector’s increased notice of herself, and Inowing way of raising his
syebrows when their eyes by any chance met, as if he put the ques-
tion “Don’t you see? augmented her timidity, and, consequently,
her perplexity. For all these reasons, when he and she and John,

towards nine o’clock of a winter evening went to London, and
began driving from London Bridge, among low-lying water-side
wharves and docks and strange places, Bella was in the state of a
dreamer : perfectly unable to account for her being there, perfectly
unable to forecast what would happen next, or whither she was

  

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982
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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
going, or why ; certain of nothing in the immediate present, but that
she confided in John, and that John seemed somehow to be getting
more triumphant. But what a certainty was that! i

They alighted at last at the corner of a court, where there was a
building with a bright lamp and a wicket gate. Its orderly appear-
ance was very unlike that of the surrounding neighbourhood, and
as explained by the inscription Poticr STATION.

« We are not soine in here, John?” said Bella, clinging to him.

“Yes, my dear; but of our own accord. We shall come out again
as easily, never fear.”

The whitewashed room was pure white as of old, the methodical
book-keeping was in peaceful progress as of old, and some distant
howler was banging against a cell door as of old. The sanctuary
was not a permanent abiding-place, buta kind of criminal Pickford’s.
The lower passions and vices were regularly ticked off in the books,
svarehoused in the cells, carted away as per accompanying invoice,
and left little mark upon it.

Mr. Inspector placed two chairs for his vi
and communed in a low voice with a brother of his order (also of a
half-pay, and Royal Arms aspect), who, judged only by his occupa-
tion at the moment, might have been a writing-master, setting copi
Their conference done, Mr. Inspector returned to the fireplace, and,
having observed that he would step round to the Fellowships and.
see how matters stood, went out. He soon came back again, saying,
«Nothing could be better, for theyre at supper with Miss Abbey i
the bar ;” and then they all three went out together.

Still, as in a dream, Bella found herself entering a snug old-
fashioned public-house, and found herself smuggled into a little
three-cornered room nearly opposite the bar of that establishment.
Mr. Inspector achieved the smuggling of herself and John into this
queer room, called Cosy in an inscription on the door, by entering in
the narrow passage first in order, and suddenly turning round upon
them with extended arms, as if they had been two sheep. ‘The room
was lighted for their reception.

“Now,” said Mr. Inspector to John, turning the gas lower; “ Pi
mix with ’em in a casual way, and when I say Identification, perhaps
yowll show yourself.”

John nodded, and Mr. Inspector went alone to the half-door of the
bar. From the dim doorway of Cosy, within which Bella and her hus-
band stood, they could see:a comfortable little party of three persons
sitting at supper in the bar, and could hear everything that was said.

The three persons were Miss Abbey and two male guests. To
whom collectively, Mr. Inspector remarked that the weather was
tting sharp for the time of year.

«+ need be sharp to suit your wits, sir,” said Miss Abbey. “What
have you got in hand now ?”

ce Thanking you for your compliment : not much, Miss Abbey,” was
Mr. Inspector's rejoinder.

“ Who have you got in Cosy ?” asked. Miss Abbey.
“Only a gentleman and his wife, Mi
“And who are they? If one may ask it wi

 

 

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OUR

 

MUTUAL FRIEND,
your deep plans in the interests of the honest public?” said Miss
Abbey, proud of Mr. Inspector as an administrative genius.

“hey are strangers in this part of the town, Miss Abbey.” They
are waiting till I shall want the gentleman to show himself some-
where, for half a moment.”

“ While they're waiting,” said Miss Abbey, “couldn’t you
join us?”

Mr. Inspector immediately slipped into the bar, and sat down at
the side of the half-door, with his back towards the passage, and
directly facing the two guests. “I don’t take my supper till later
in the night,” said he, “ and therefore I won’t disturb the compactness
of the table. But Tl take a glass of flip, if that’s flip in the jug in
the fender.”

“That's flip,” replied Miss Abbey, “and it’s my making, and if
even you can find out better, I shall be glad to know where.” Filing
him, with hospitable hands, a steaming tumbler, Miss Abbey replaced
the jug by the fire; the company not having yet arrived at the flip-
stage of their supper, but being as yet skirmishing with strong ale.

‘* Ah—h!” cried Mr. Inspector. “That’sthe smack! There’s not
a Detective in the Force, Miss Abbey, that could find out better
stuff than that.”

“Glad to hear you say so,” rejoined Miss Abbey. ‘ You ought to
know, if anybody does.”

“Mr. Job Potterson,” Mr. Inspector continued, “I drink your
health. Mr. Jacob Kibble, I drink yours. Hope you have made a
prosperous voyage home, gentlemen both.”

Mr. Kibble, an unctuous broad man of few words and many
mouthfuls, said, more briefly than pointedly, raising his ale to his
lips: “Same to you.” Mr. Job Potterson, a semi-seafaring man of
obliging demeanour, said, “Thank you, sir.”

“Lord bless my soul and body !” cried Mr. Inspector. “Talk of
trades, Miss Abbey, and the way they set their marks on men” (a
subject which nobody had approached) ; “ who wouldn’t know your
brother to be a Steward! There’s a bright and ready twinkle in his
eye, there’s a neatness in his action, there’s a smartness in his figure,
there’s an air of reliability about him in case you wanted a basin,
which points out the steward! And Mr. Kibble; ain’t he Passenger,

all over? While there’s that mercantile cut upon him which would
make you happy to give him credit for five hundred pound, don’t
you see the salt sea shining on him too ?”

“ You do, I dare say,” returned Miss Abbey, “ but I don’t. And as
for stewarding, I think it’s time my brother gave that up, and took
this House in hand on his sister’s retiring. The House will go to
pieces if he don’t. I wouldn’t sell it for any money that could be
told out, to a person that I couldn’t depend upon to be a Law to the
Porters, as I have been.”

se There you're right, Miss,” said Mr. Inspector. “A better kept
house 1s not known to our men. What do I say? Half so well a kept
house is not known to our men. Show the Force the Six Jolly Fel-
lowship Porters, and the Force—to a constable—will show you a
plece of perfection, Mr. Kibble.”

  

    
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   
   
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
   
   
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
 

 

 

 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
   
  
   
  
  
   
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
   
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 265

That gentleman, with a very serious shake of his head, subscribed
the article.

« And talk of Time slipping by you, as if it was an animal at rustic
sports with its tail soaped,” said Mr. Inspector (again, a subject
which nobody had approached); “why, well youmay. Well you may.
How has it slipped by us, since the time when Mr. Job Potterson
here present, Mr. Jacob Kibble here present, and an Officer of the
Force here present, first came together on a matter of Identification!”

Bella’s husband stepped softly to the halfdoor of the bar, and
stood there.

“How has Time slipped by us,” Mr. Inspector went on slowly, with
his eyes narrowly observant of the two guests, “since we three very
men, at an Inquest in this very house—Mr. Kibble? Taken ill, sir?”

Mr. Kibble had staggered up, with his lower jaw dropped, catching
Potterson by the shoulder, and pointing to the half-door. He now
cried out; “ Potterson! Look! {ook there!” Potterson started up,
started back, and exclaimed: “ Heaven defend us, what's that!”
Bella’s husband stepped back to Bella, took her in his arms (for she
was terrified by the unintelligible terror of the two men), and shut
the door of the little room. A hurry of voices succeeded, in which
Mr. Inspector’s voice was busiest; it gradually slackened and sank ;
and Mr. Inspector reappeared. “ Sharp’s the word, sir!” he said,
looking in with a knowing wink. “ We'll get your lady out at once.”
Immediately, Bella and her husband were under the stars, making
their way back, alone, to the vehicle they had kept in waiting.

‘All this was most extraordinary, and Bella could make nothing of
+t but that John was in the right. How in the right, and how sus-

yected of being in the wrong, she could not divine. Some vaguc

 

idea that he had never really assumed the name of Handford, and that.

there was a remarkable likeness between him and that mysterious
person, was her nearest approach to any definite explanation. But
John was triumphant ; that much was made apparent ; and she could
wait for the rest.

When John came home to dinner next day, he said, sitting down
on the sofa by Bella and baby-Bella: “My dear, I have a piece of
news to tell you. I have left the China House.”

‘As he seemed to like having left it, Bella took it for granted that
there was no misfortune in the case.

«In a word, my love,” said John, “the China House is broken up
and abolished. ‘There is no such thing any more.”

«Phen, are you already in another House, John?”

“Yes, my darling. I am in another way of business. And I am
rather better off.”

The inexhaustible baby was instantly made to congratulate hin,
and to say, with appropriate action on the part of a very limp arm and
a speckled fist: “ Three cheers, ladies and gemplemorums. Hoo—ray !”

“T am afraid, my life,” said John, “ that you have become very
much attached to this cottage ?”

« Afraid I have, J ohn? Of course I have.”

«The reason why I said afraid,” returned John, “is, because we

must move.”

arcuate <i

SB ie on an meen inn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL Fri

   

“O John!”

“Yes, my dear, we must move. We must have our head-quarterg
in London now. In short, there’s a dwelling-house rent-free, attached
to my new position, and we must occupy it.”

“That's a gain, John.”

“Yes, my dear, it is undoubtedly a gain.

He gave her a very blithe look, and a very sly look. Which oc-
easioned the inexhaustible baby to square at him with the speckled
fists, and demand in a threatening manner what he meant?

“My love, you said it was a gain, and I said it was again, A
very innocent remark, surely.”

“T won't,” said the inexhaustible bal vy, “‘—allow—you—to make
—game—of—my—venerable—Ma.” At each division administerin
a soft facer with one of the speckled fists.

John having stooped down to receive these punishing visitations,
Bella asked him, would it be necessary to move soon? Why yes,
indeed (said John), he did propose that they should move very soon.
Taking the furniture with them, of course? (said Bella). Why, no
(said John), the fact was, that the house was——in a sort of a kind of
a way—furnished already.

The inexhaustible baby, hearing this, resumed the offensive, and
said: “But there’s no nursery for me, sir. What do you mean,
marble-hearted parent?’ 'T'o which the marble-hearted parent re-
joined that there was a—sort of a kind of a—nursery, and it might
be “made to do.” “Made to do?” returned the Inexhaustible, ad-
ministering more punishment, “ what do you take me for?’ And
1 turned over on its back in Bella’s lap, and smothered with

n

   

 

o
co]

 

 

 

really, John dear,” said Bella, flushed in quite a lovely
snanner by these exercises, “will the new house, just as it stands,
do for baby? That's the question.”

“TI felt that to be the question,” he returned, “and therefore I
arranged that you should come with me and look at it, to-morrow

 

 

 

morning.” Appointment made, accordingly, for Bella to go up with
him to-morrow morning ; John kissed: and Bella delichted.
Oo 3 oO

When they reached London in pursuance of their little plan, they
took coach and drove westward. Not only drove westward, but
drove into that particular westward division, which Bella had seen
last when she turned her faco from Mr. Boffin’s door. Not only
drove into that particular division, but drove at last into that very
street. Not only drove into that very street, but stopped at last at
that very house.

“ John dear!” cried Bella, looking out of window in a flutter. « De
you see where we are ?”

“ Yes, my love. The coachman’s quite right.”

The house-door was opened without any knocking or ringing,
and John promptly helped her out. The Servant: who stood hold-
ing the door, asked no question of John, neither did he go be-
fore them or follow them as they went straight up-stairs. It
was only her husband’s encircling arm, urging her on, that pre-
vented Bella from stopping at the foot of the staircase. As they as-

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 257
eended, it was seen to be tastefully ornamented with most beautiful
flowers.

«Q John!” said Bella, faintly. “ What does this mean ?”

“Nothing, my darling, nothing. Let us go on.”

Going on a little higher, they came toa charming aviary, in which
a number of tropical birds, more gorgeous in colour than the flowers,
were flying about; and among those birds were gold and silver fish,
and mosses, and water-lilies, and a fountain, and all manner of
wonders.

“O my dear John!” said Bella. “ What does this mean ?”

“Nothing, my darling,nothing. Let us:go on.”

They went on, until they came to a door. As John put out his
hand to open it, Bella caught his hand.

“J don’t know what it means, butat’s too much for me. Hold me,
John, love.”

John caught her up in his arm, and lightly dashed into the room
with hev.

Behold Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, beaming! Behold Mrs. Boffin clap-
ping her hands in an ecstacy, running to Bella with tears of joy
pouring down her comely face, and folding her to her breast,
with the words: ‘My deary deary, deary girl, that Noddy and
me saw married and couldn’t wish joy to, or so muchas speak to!
My deary, deary, deary, wife of John and mother of his little child !
My loving loving, bright bright, Pretty Pretty! Welcome to your
house and home, my deary !”

 

CHAPTER XIII.
SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER DUST.

Tx all the first bewilderment of her wonder, the most bewilder-
ingly wonderful thing to Bella was the shining countenance of Mr.
Boffn. That his wife should be joyous, open-hearted, and genial, or
that her face should express every quality that was large and trusting,
and no quality that was little or mean, was accordant with Bella’s
experience. But, that he, with a perfectly beneficent air and a plump
1 _should be standing there, looking iat her and John, like
some jovial good spirit, was marvellous. For, how had he looked
when she last saw him in that very room (at was the room in which
she had given him that piece of her mind at parting), and what had
pecome of all those crooked lines of suspicion, avarice, and distrust,
that twisted his visage then ?

Mrs. Boffin seated Bella on the large ottoman, and seated h

 

‘cosy fa

    

 

  

|

beside her, and John ber husband seated himself on the other side o
her, and Mr. Boffin stood beaming at every one and everything he
could gee, with surpassing jollity and enjoyment. Mrs. Boffin was
then taken with a laughing fit of clappimg her hands, and clapping
; and rocking herself to and fro, and then with another
Bella, and rocking her to and fro—both

tg
L

L
i

1
her knees
laughing fit of embraci
s, of consideral le dura

 

  
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
   
  
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
   
   
  
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

  

268 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Old lady, old lady,” said Mr. Boffin, at length; “if you don’t begin
somebody else must.”

“Tm a going to begin, Noddy, my dear,” returned Mrs. Boffin.
“Only it isn’t easy for aiperson to know where to begin, when a
person is in this state of delight and happiness. Bella, my dear.
‘fell me, who’s this ?”

“Who is this?” repeated Bella. “My husband.”

“Ah! But tell me his name, deary!” cried Mrs. Boffin.

“ Rokesmith.”

“No, it ain’t!” cried Mrs. Boffin, clapping her hands, and shaking
her head. “Not a bit of it.” .

“Handford then,” suggested Bella.

“No, it ain’t!” cried Mrs. Boffin, again clapping her hands and
shaking her head. “Not a bit of it.”

“ At least, his name is John, I suppose ?” said Bella.

“Ah! I should think so, deary!” cried Mrs. Boffin, “I should
hope so! Many and many is the time I have called him by his name
of John. But what’s his other name, his true other name? Give a
guess, my pretty!”

“T can’t guess,” said Bella, turning her pale face from one to
another.

“TI could,” cried Mrs. Boffin, “and what’s more, I did! I found
him out, all in a flash as I may say, one night. Didn’t I, Noddy?”

“Ay! That the old lady did!” said Mr. Boffin, with stout pride
in the circumstance.

“Harkee to me, deary,” pursued Mrs. Boffin, taking Bella’s hands
between her own, and gently beating on them from time to time.
“It was after a particular night when John had been disappointed
—as he thought—in his affections. It was after a night when
Jobu had made an offer to a certain young lady, and the certain
young lady had refused it. It was after a particular night, when
he felt ‘himself cast-away-like, and had made up his mind to go seek
his fortune. It was the very next night. My Noddy wanted a
paper out of his Secretary’s room, and | says to Noddy, ‘I am going
by the. door, and I’ll ask him for it’ I tapped at his door, and he didn’t
hear me. I looked in, and saw him a sitting lonely by his fire,
brooding over it. He chanced to look up with a pleased kind of
smile in my company when he saw me, and then in a single moment
every grain of the gunpowder that had been lying sprinkled thick
about him ever since I first set eyes upon him as a man at the Bower,
took fire! ‘T'oo many a time had I seen him sitting lonely, when he
was a poor child, to be pitied, heart and hand! ‘Loo many a time
had I seen him in need of being brightened up with a comforting
word! ‘Too many and too many a time to be mistaken, when that
glimpse of him come at last! “No, no! I just makes out to cry, ‘1
know you now! You're John!’ And he catches me as I drops.—
So what,” said Mrs. Boffin, breaking off in the rush of her speech to
smile most radiantly, “might you think by this time that ‘your
husband’s name was, dear ?”

“Not,” returned Bella, with quivering lips; “not Harmon? That’s
not possible ?”

  

  

 

 
 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
   
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 269

“Don’t tremble. Why not possible, deary, when so many things
are possible ?” demanded Mrs. Boffin, in a soothing tone.

« He was killed,” gasped Bella.

«Thought to be,” said Mrs. Bofin. “But if ever John Harmon
drew the breath of life on earth, that is certainly John Harmon’s
arm round your waist now, my pretty. If ever John Harmon had
a wife on earth, that wife is certainly you. If ever John Harmon
and his wife had a child on earth, that child is certainly this.”

By a master-stroke of secret arrangement, the inexhaustible baby
here appeared at the door, suspended in mid-air by invisible agency.
Mrs. Boffin, plunging at it, brought it to Bella’s lap, where both
Mrs. and Mr. Boffin (as the saying is) “took it out of” the Inexhaus-
tible in a shower of caresses. It was only this timely appearance
that kept Bella from swooning. This, and her husband’s earnestness
in explaining further to her how it had come to pass that he had
been supposed to be slain, and had even been suspected of his own
murder; also, how he had put a pious fraud upon her which had
preyed upon his mind, as the time for its disclosure approached, lest
she might not make full allowance for the object with which it had
originated, and in which it had fully developed.

“But bless ye, my beauty !” cried Mrs. Boffin, taking him up short
at this point, with another hearty clap of her hands. “ It wasn’t
John only that was in it. We was all of us in it.”

“J don’t,” said Bella, looking vacantly from one to another, “ yet
understand—”

“Of course you don’t, my deary,” exclaimed Mrs. Boffin. ‘“ How
can you till you're told | So now lamagoing to tell you. So you put
your two hands between my two hands again,” cried the comfortable
creature, embracing her with that blessed little picter lying on your
lap, and you shall be told all the story. Now, Pm a going to tell
the story. Once, twice, three times, and the horses isoff. Here they
go! When I cries out that night, ‘I know you now, you're John !—
which was my exact words; wasn’t they, John ?”

“ Your exact words,” said John, laying his hand on hers.

«That's a very good arrangement,” cried Mrs. Boflin. “Keep it there,
John. And as we was all of us in it, Noddy you come and lay yours
a top of his, and we won't break the pile till the story’s done.”

Mr. Boffin hitched up a chair, and added his broad brown right
hand to the heap.

«That's capital!” said Mrs. Boffin, giving it a kiss. © Seems quite
a family building; don’t it? But the horses is off. Well! When
T cries out that night, ‘1 know you now! you're John! John catches

but I ain’t a light weight, bless ye, and he’s forced
to let me down. Noddy, he hears a noise, and in he trots, and as
soon as 1 anyways comes to myself I calls to him, ‘Noddy, well I
might say as I did say, that night at the Bower, for the Lord be thank-
ful this 1s John ? On which he gives a heave, and down he goes
likewise, with his head under the writing-table. This brings me
round comfortable, and that brings him round comfortable, and then
John and him and me we all fall a crying for joy.”

“Yes! They cry for joy, my darling,” her husband struck in. “You

of me, it 1s true ;

soo

ea

Ciadiaia en ah ele

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

270 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
understand? These two, whom I come
possess, cry for joy!”

Bella looked at him confusedly, and
radiant face.

to life to disappoint and dis-

looked again at Mrs. Boffin’s

“That's right, my dear, don’t youmind him,” said Mrs. Boffin, “ stick
tome. Well! Then we sits down, gradually gets cool, and holds a
confabulation. John, he tells us how he is despairing in his mind on
accounts of a certain fair young person, and how, if I hadn’t found
him out, he was going away to seek his fortune far and wide, and
had fully meant never to come to life, but to leave the property as
our wrongful inheritance for ever and a day. At which you never
See @ man so frightened as my Noddy was. For to think that he

should have come into the property wroneful, however innocent, and
keeping it to his dying day,

~more than that—might have gone on
turned him whiter than chalk.”

“ And you too,” said Mr, Boftin.
“Don’t you mind him, neither, my deary,” resumed Mrs, Boffin ;
stick to me. This brings up a confabulation regarding the certain
fair young person ; when Noddy he gives it as his opinion that she is
a deary creetur. ‘She may be a leetle spoilt, and natrally spoilt,’ he
Says, ‘by circumstances, but that’s only on the surface, and I lay my
life,’ he says, ‘that she’s the true golden gold at heart.’ ”

“So did you,” said Mr. Boftin.

“Don’t you mind him a single morsel, my dear,” proceeded Mrs,
Boffin, “but stick tome. Then says John, O, if he could but prove
so! Then we both of us ups and says, that minute, ‘Prove go!”

With a start, Bella directed a hurried. glance towards Mr. Boffin.
But, he was sittine thoughtfully smiling at.that broad brown hand
of his, and either didn’t See it, or would take no notice of it.

“* Prove it, John! we says,” repeated Mrs. Boffin, «¢P
overcome your doubts with triumph, and be happy for the first time
in your life, and for the rest of your life.’ This puts John in a state,
to be sure. Then we says, ‘ What will content you? If she was to
stand up for you when you was’ slighted, if' she was to show herself
of a generous mind when you was oppressed, if she was to be truest
to you when you was poorest and friendliest, and all this against her
own seeming interest, how would that do?’ ‘Do?’ says John, ‘it would
raise me-to the skies.’ < Then,’ says my Noddy, ‘make your prepara-
tions for the ascent, John, it being my firm belief that wp you go!”

Bella caught Mr. Boffin’s twinkling eye for half an instant ; but
he got it away from her, and restored it to his broad brown hand.

From the first, you was always a special favourite of N oddy’s,”
said Mrs. Boffin, shaking her head. «@Q you were! And if I had
been inclined to be jealous, I don’t know what I mightn’t have done
to you. But as I wasn’t —why, my beauty,” with a hearty laugh and
an embrace, “I made you a special favourite of my own too. But
the horses is coming round the corner, Well! Then says my
Noddy, shaking his sides till he was fit to make ’em ache again :
‘Look out for being slirhted and oppressed, John, for if ever a man
had a hard master, you shall find me from this present time to be
such to you. And then he began!” cried Mrs, Boflin, in an ecstacy

 

rove it and

 
  
  
 
  
    
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
   
  
  
   
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
   
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
    
 
  

 

   
  
   
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
   
  
  
   
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
    
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

of admiration. “ Lord bless you, then he began! And how he did
begin; didn’t he!”

Bella looked half frightened, and yet half laughed.

« But, bless you,” pursued Mrs. Boffin, “ if you could have seen
him of a night, at that time of it! The way he'd sit and chuckle
over himself! ‘The way he'd say ‘I’ve been a regular brown bear
to-day,’ and take himself in his arms and hug himself at the thoughts
of the brute he had pretended. But every night he says to me:
‘Better and better, old lady. What did we say of her? She'll come
through it, the true golden gold. This’ll be the happiest piece of work
we ever done. And then he'd say, ‘I'll be a grislier old erowler
to-morrow!’ and laugh, he would, till John and me was often forced
to slap his back, and bring it out of his windpipes with a little
water.” y

Mr. Boffin, with his face bent over his heavy hand, made no sound,
but rolled his shoulders when thus referred to, as if he were vastly
enjoying himself.

« ‘And so, my good and pretty,” pursued. Mrs. Boffin, “you was mar-
ried, and there was we hid up in the church-organ by this husband
of yours; for he wouldn't let us out with it then, as was first meant.
‘No, he says, ‘she’s so unselfish and contented, that I can’t afford. to
berich yet. I must wait a little longer’ ‘hen, when baby was ex-
pected, he says, * She is such a cheerful, glorious housewife that I
can’t afford to be rich yet. I must wait a little longer.’ Then when
baby was born, he says, ‘She is so much better than she ever was,
that I can’t afford to be rich yet. I must wait a little longer.’ And
so he goes on and on, till I says outright, * Now, John, if you don’t
fix a time for setting her up in her own house and home, and lettmg
us walk out of it, I’ll turn Informer.” Then he says hell only wait
to triumph beyond what we ever thought possible, and to show her
to us better than even we ever supposed ; and he says, ‘She shall see
me under suspicion of having murdered myself, and you shall see
how trusting and how true she'll be” Well! Noddy and me agreed
to that, and he was right, and here you are, and the horses is in, and
the story is done, and God bless you my Beauty, and God. bless us
all!”

The pile of hands dispersed, and Bella and Mrs. in.
good long hug of one another: to the apparent peril of the inex-
haustible baby, lying staring in Bella’s lap.

“But is the story done?” said Bella, pondering. “Is there no

 

Boffin took a

 

more of* it ?”

«What more of it should there be, deary ?” returned Mrs. Boftin,
full of glee.

« Are you sure you have left nothing out of it?” asked Bella.

«J don’t think I have,” said Mrs. Boffin, archly.

« John dear,” said Bella, “you're a good. nurse; will you please
hold baby?” Having deposited the Tnexhaustible in his arms with
those words, Bella looked hard at Mr. Boffin, who had moved to a
zable where he was leaning his head upon his hand with his face

settling herself on her knees at his side,

turned away, and, quietly
ate 5 %5 oT e a) :
and drawing one arm over his shoulder, said: “Please 1 beg your

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

272 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

pardon, and I made a small mistake of a word when I took leave
of you last. Please I think you are better (not worse) than Hop-
kins, better (not worse) than Dancer, better (not worse) than Black-
berry Jones, better (not worse) than any of them! Please something
more!” cried Bella, with an exultant ringing laugh as she struggled
with him and forced him to turn his delighted face to hers. ‘Please
[ have found out something not yet mentioned. Please I don’t
believe you are a hard-hearted miser at all, and please I don’t
believe you ever for one single minute were !”

At this, Mrs. Boffin fairly screamed with rapture, and sat beating
her feet upon the floor, clapping her hands, and bobbing herself
backwards and forwards, like a demented member of some Mandarin’s
family.

“O, I understand you now, sir!” cried Bella. “I want neither
you nor any one else to tell me the rest of the story. I can tell it to
you, now, if you would like to hear it.”

“Can you, my dear?” said Mr. Boffin. “Tell it then.”

“What?” cried Bella, holding him prisoner by the coat with both
hands. “When you saw what a greedy little wretch you were the
patron of, you determined to show her how much misused and mis-
prized riches could do, and often had done, to spoil people; did you ?
Not caring what she thought of you (and Goodness knows that was
of no consequence!) you showed her, in yourself, the most detestable
sides of wealth, saying in your own mind,‘This shallow creature
would never work the truth out of her own weak soul, if she had a
hundred years to do it in; but a glaring instance kept before her may
open even her eyes and set her thinking. That was what you said
to yourself; was it, sir?”

“ I never said anything of the sort,” Mr. Boffin declared in a state
of the highest enjoyment.

“Then you ought to have said it, sir,” returned Bella, giving him
two pulls and one kiss, “for you must have thought and meant it.
You saw that good fortune was turning my stupid head and harden-
ing my silly heart—was making me grasping, calculating, insolent,
insufferable—and you took the pains to be the dearest and kindest
fingerpost that ever was set up anywhere, pointing out the road that
I was taking and the end it led to. Confess instantly !”

“John,” said Mr. Boffin, one broad piece of sunshine from head to
foot, “I wish you’d help me out of this.”

“You can’t be heard by counsel, sir.”
speak for yourself. Confess instant ly!”

“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin, « the truth is, that when we did
go in for the little scheme that my old lady has pinted out, I did
put it to John, what did he think of going in for some such general
scheme as you have pinted out? But I didn’t in any way so word
it, because I didn’t in any Way so mean it. I only said to John,
wouldn’t it be more consistent, me going in for being a reg’lar brown
bear respecting him, to go in as a reglar brown bear all round ?”

“Confess this minute, sir,” said Bella, “that you did it to correct
and amend me!”

“Certainly, my dear child,” said Mr. Boffin, “I didn't do it to harm

 

returned Bella. “ You must

  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
    
  
    
    
    

 

 

 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
   
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
   
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 278

you; you may be sure of that. And I did hope it might just hint a
caution. Still, it ought to be mentioned that no sooner had my old
lady found out Jobn, than John made known to her and me that
he had had his eye wpon a thankless person by the name of Silas
Wegg. Partly for the punishment of which Wegg, by leading him
on ina very unhandsome and underhanded game that he was playing,
them books that you and me bought so many of together (and, by-
the-by, my dear, he wasn’t Blackberry Jones, but Blewberry) was
read aloud to me by that person of the name of Silas Wege aforesaid.”

Bella, who was still on her knees at Mr, Boffin’s feet, gradually
sank down into a sitting posture on the ground, as she meditated
more and more thoughtfully, with her eyes upon his beaming face.

“ Still,” said Bella, after this meditative pause, “there remain: two
things that I cannot understand. Mrs. Boffin never supposed any
part of the change in Mr. Boffin to be real; did she ?—You never did;
did you ?” asked Bella, turning to her.

« No!” returned Mrs. Boffin, with a most rotund and glowing
negative.

« And yet you took it very much to heart,” said Bella. “1 remember
its making you very uneasy, indeed.”

“Ficod, you see Mrs. John has a sharp eye, John!” cried Mr.
Boffin, shaking his head with an admiring air. “ Youre right, my
dear. Tho old lady nearly plowed us into shivers and smithers,
many times.”

“Why ?” asked Bella. ‘“ How did that happen, when she was in
your secret er

“ Why, it was a weakness in the old lady,”’said Mr. Boffin; “ and yet,
to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I’m rather proud
of it. My dear, the old lady thinks so hich of me that she couldn't
abear to see and hear me coming out as a reg’ lar brown. one. Couldn't

abear to make-believe as 1 meant it! In consequence of which, we
was everlastingly in danger with her.”

Mrs. Boffin laughed heartily at hers If: but a certain glistening
in her honest eyes revé saled that she was by no means cured of that
dangerous propensity.

« T assure you, my dear,” said Mr. Boflin, “ that on the celebrated day
when I made what has since been agreed upon to be my grandest
demonstration—I allude to Mew says the cat, Quack quack says the
duck, and Bow-wow-wow says the dog—I assure you, my dear, that
on that celebrated day, them flinty and unbelieving words hit my old
lady so hard on my account, that I had to hold her, to prevent her
running out after you, and defending me by saying I was playing a

part.”
Mrs. Boffin laughed heartily again, and her eyes glistened again,
and it then appeared, not only that in that burst of sarcastic elo-
quence Mr. Boffin was considered by his two fellow-conspirators to
iself, but that in his own opinion it was a remark-
“Never thought of it afore the moment, my
dear!” he observed to Bella: “When John said, if he had been so
happy as to win your affections and. possess, your heart, it come into
my head to turn round upon him with ‘ Win her affections and pos-
7.

have outdone hin
able achievement.

VOL. Ii.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

O74

Att OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,
LJ

sess her heart! Mew says the cat, Quack quack Say

s the duck, and
Bow-wow-wow says the dog.’

Tcouldn’t tell you how it come into my
head or where from, but it had so much the sound of a rasper that
L own to you it astonished myself. I was awful
a laughing though, when it made John stare !”

“You said, my pretty,” Mrs. Boffin reminded Bella, “ that there
was one other thing you couldn’t understand.”

“QO yes!” cried Bella, covering her face with her hands; “but that
i never shall be able to understand as long as I live. It is, how
John could love me so when I so little deserved it, and how

y you, Mr.
and Mrs. Boffin, could be so forgetful of yourselves, and take such
pains and trouble, to make me

alittle better, and after all to help

him to so unworthy a wife. But Iam very very grateful.”
It was John Harmon’s turn then—John Harmon now for good,
and John Rokesmith for nevermore—to plead with her (quite unne-
sarily) in behalf of his deception, and to tell her, over and over
again, that it had been prolonged by her own w
supposed station of life. This led’on +o many interchanges of en-
dearment and enjoyment on all sides, in the midst of which the
Inexhaustible being observed staring, in a most imbecile manner, on
Mrs. Boffin’s breast, was pronounced to be supernaturally intelligent as
to the whole transaction, and was made to declare to the ladies
gemplemorums, with a wave of the speckled fist (with dif
detached from an exceedingly short waist), “
my venerable Ma that I know all about it!”
Then, said John Harmon, would Mrs.
her house? And a dainty house it was, and a tastefully beautiful ;
and they went through it in procession ; the Inexhaustible on Mrs.
Boffin’s bosom (still staring) occupying the middle station, and Mr.
Boffin bringing up the rear. And on Bella’s exquisite toilette table
Was an ivory casket, and in the casket were jewels the like of which
she had never dreamed of. and aloft on an upper floor was a nurser
garnished as with rainbows: « though we were hard put to it,” said
John Harmon, “ to get it done in so short a time.”

The house inspected, emissaries removed the Inexhaustible, who
was shortly afterwards heard screaming among the rainbows ; where-
upon Bella withdrew herself from the presence and knowledge of
gemplemorums, and the ger aming ceased, and smiling Peace asso-
ciated herself with that young olive branch.

“Come and look in. Noddy!” said Mrs. Boffin to Mr. Boffin.

Mr. Boffin, submitting to be led on tiptoe to the nursery door,
looked in with immense satisfaction, although there was nothing to
see but Bella in a musiz § state of happiness, seated in a little low
chair upon the hearth, with her child in her fair youne arms, and
her soft eyelashes shading her eyes from the fire, :

_ “It looks as if the old man’s spirit had found rest at last; don’é
it?” said Mrs. Boffin.

“ Yes, old lady.”

“And as if his money had turned bright again, after a long lone

rust in the dark, and. was at last a beginning to sparkle in the
sunlight 2”

nigh bursting out

 

inning eraces in her

  

and
culty
I have already informed

John Harmon come and see

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
   
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
   
   
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
     

 

DOOR

Pe
oe
a

THE

OF

HONOURS

DOES THE

BOFFIN

 

 

 

MR.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL YE

 

“Yes, old lady.”

“ And it makes a pretty and a promising picter; don’t it ?”

«Yes, old lady.”

But, aware at the instant of a fine opening for a point, Mr. Boffin
quenched that observation in this—delivered in the grisliest growl-
ing of the regular brown bear. “A pretty and a hopeful picter?
Mew, Quack quack, Bow-wow!” And then trotted silently down-
stairs, with his shoulders in a state of the liveliest commotion.

CHAPTER XIV.
CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE.

Mr. and Mrs. John Harmon had so timed their taking possession
of their rightful name and their London house, that the event befel
on the very day when the last wage m-load of the last Mound was
driven out at the gates of Boffin’s Bower. As it jolted away, Mr.
Weeg felt that the last load was correspondingly removed from his
mind, and hailed the auspicious season when that black sheep, Boffin,
was to be closely sheared.

Over the whole slow process of levelling the Mounds, Silas had
kept watch with rapacious eyes. But, eyes no less rapacious had

 

  

watched the erowth of the Mounds in years bygone, and had vigi-
lantly sifted the dust of which they were composed. No valuables
turned up. How should there be any, seeing that the old hard
jailer of Harmony Jail had coined every waif and stray into money,
long before ?

Though disappomted by this bare result, Mr. We felt too
sensibly relieved by the close of the labour, to grumble to any great
extent. A foreman-representative of the dust contractors, pur-
chasers of the Mounds, had worn Mr. Wege down to skin and bone.
This supervisor of the proceedings, asserting his employers’ rights to
cart off by daylight, nightlight, torchlight, when they would, must

  

  

 

have been the death of Sis at the Sore had lasted much longer.
Seeming never to need sleep himself, he would reappear, with a tied-
up broken head, in fantail hat and yelveteen smalls, like an ac-
cursed goblin, at the most unholy and untimely hours. Tired out by
keeping close ward over a long day’s work im fog and rain, Silas would
haye just crawled to bed and be dozing, when a horrid shake and
rumble under his pillow would announce an approaching train of
carts, escorted by this Demon of Unrest, to fall to work again. At
another time, he would be rumbled up out of his soundest sleep, in the
dead of the night; at another, would be kept at his post eight-
and-forty hours on end. ‘I'he more his persecutor besought him not
to trouble himself to turn out, the more suspicious was the crafty
Weee that indications had been observed of something hidden some-
where, and that attempts were on foot to circumvent him. So con-
tinually broken was his rest through these means, that he led the life
of having wagered to keep ten thousand dog-watches in ten thousand
qT 9

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
      

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

276 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

hours, and looked piteously upon himself as always getting up and
yet never going to bed. So gaunt and haggard had he grown at
last, that his wooden lex showed disproportionate, and presented a
thriving appearance in contrast with the rest of his plagued body,
which might almost have been termed chubby.

However, Wegg’s comfort was, that all his disagreeables were
now over, and that he was immediately coming into his property.
Of late, the grindstone did undoubtedly appear to have been whuling
at his own nose rather than Boffin’s, but Boffin’s nose was now to be
sharpened fine. Thus far, Mr. Wegg had let his dusty friend off lightly,
having been baulked in that amiable design of frequently dining with
him, by the machinations of the sleepless dustman. He had been con-
strained to depute Mr. Venus to keep their dusty friend, Boffin, under
inspection, while he himself turned lank and lean at the Bower.

‘lo Mr. Venus’s museum Mr, Wege repaired when at length the
Mounds were down and gone. It being evening, he found that
gentleman, as he expected, seated over his fire; but did not find him,
as he-expected, floating his powerful mind in tea.

“Why, you smell rather comfortable here!” said Wegg, seeming
to take it ill, and stopping and sniffing as he entered.

“i am rather comfortable, sir,” said Venus.

“You don’t use lemon in your business, do you?” asked Wege,
sniffing again.

“No, Mr. Wegg,” said Venus. “When I use it at all, I mostly
use it in cobblers’ punch.”

“What do you call cobblers’ punch ?” demanded Wegg,
humour than before.

“It’s difficult to impart the receipt for it, sir,” returned Venus.
“because, however particular you may be in allotting your materials,
so much will still depend upon the individual gifts, and there being
a feeling thrown into it. But the groundwork is gin,”

“In a Dutch bottle 2” said Wego gloomily, as he sat himself
down.

im a worse

Very good, sir, very good!” cried Venus. “ Will you partake, sir?”
“Will i partake?” returned Wegg very surlily. «Vy hy, of course
Twill! Willa man partake, as has been tormented out of his five
senses by an everlasting dustman with his head tied up! Will he,
too! As if he wouldn’t!”

“Don’t let it put you out, Mr. Wegg. You don’t seem in your
usual spirits.”

“If you come to that, you don’t
growled Wege. “ You seem to be setting up for lively.”

This circumstance appeared, in his then state of mind, to give Mr.
Wege uncommon offence.

“And you've been having your hair cut!” said Wege, missing the
usual dusty shock.

“Yes, Mr. Wege. But don’t let that put you out, either.”

“And Tam blest if you ain't getting fat!” said Wege, with culmi-
nating discontent. “\What are you going to do next ?”

“Well, Mr. Wege,” said Venus, smiling in a sprightly manner, “ I
suspect you could hardly guess what I am going to do next,”

seem in your usual spirits,”

  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
  
  
 
   
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
   
   
  
 
 
   
    
  

 

 
 

   
 
 
  
 
  
  
   
  
  
 
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
  
 
  
 
  
    
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
   
  
       

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 277

«JT don’t want to guess,” retorted Wegg. “ All I’ve got to say is,
that it’s well for you that the diwision of labour has been what it has
been. It’s well for you to have had so light a part in this business
when mine has been so heavy. You haven't had your rest broke, Plt
be bound.”

“Not at all, sir,” said Venus. “Never rested so well in all my
life, I thank you.”

« Ah!’ grumbled Wegg, “you should have been me. If you had
been me, and had been fretted out of your bed, and your sleep, and
your meals, and your mind, for a stretch of months together, you'd
have been out of condition and out of sorts.”

“ Certainly, it has trained you down, Mr. Wegg,” said Venus, con
templating his figure withan artist’s eye. ‘Trained you down very
low, it has! So weazen and yellow is the kivering upon your bones,
that one might almost fancy you had come to give a look-in upon the
French gentleman in the corner, instead of me.”

Mr. Wegg, glancing in great dudgeon towards the French gentle-
man’s corner, seemed to notice something new there, which induced
him to glance at the opposite corner, and then to put on his glasse
and stare at all the nooks and corners of the dim shop in succession.

“ Why, you've been having the place cleaned up!” he exclaimed.

“ Yes, Mr. Wegg. By the hand of adorable woman.”

«Then what you're going to do next, J suppose, is to get mar

 

 

  

ried ?”

« That's it, sir.”

Silas took off his glasses again—finding himself too intensely dis-
gusted by the sprightly appearance of his friend and partner, to bear
a magnified view of him—and made the inquiry :

“'l'o the old party ?”

“Mr. Wegg!” said Venus, with a sudden flush of wrath. “The
lady in question is not a old party.”

“7 meant,” explaimed Wegg, testily,
objected ?”

“Mr. Wegg,” said Venus, “ ina case of so much delicacy, I must
trouble you to say what you mean. There are strings that must not
be played upon. No sir! Not sounded, unless in the most respect-
fal and tuneful manner. Of such melodious strings is Miss Pleasant

2iderhood formed.”

«Then it is the lady as formerly objected ?” said Wegg.

« Sir,” returned Venus with dignity, “I accept the altered phrase.
It is the lady as formerly objected.”

“ When is it tocome off ?” asked Silas.

“Mr. Wegg,” said Venus, with another flush. “I cannot permit
it to be put in the form of a Fight. I must temperately but firmly
call upon you, sir, to amend that question.”

« When is the lady,” Wegg reluctantly demanded, constraining his
ili temper in remembrance of the partnership and its stock in trade,
“a going to give her ‘and where she has already given her ’art?”

«Qir,” returned Venus, “J again accept the altered phrase, and with

pleasure. ‘I'he lady is a going to give her ’and where she has already
given her ‘art, next Monday.”

“to the party as formerly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
   
  
    
   
 
    
   
  
   
   
  
 
  
 
  
   
   
  
   
  
  
    
   
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
   
    
   
  
   
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  

man’s name ) the part

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

ady’s objection has met?” said Silas.

said Venus, “as I did name to you, I think, on a }
former oc casion, if not on former occasions —”
“On former occasions,” interrupted Weee
\ pursued Venus, “ what t the na
ion was, I may impart, withou

    
 

 

 

ure of the lady’s ¢
{ soli any of the te

tung up between the lady and myself, how it ha
been me hroug h the kind interference of two good friends of mine:
one, previously acquainted with the lady: and one, not. The pint
was thrown out, sir, by those two friends when they aida me the great
Service of waitin g on the lady to try ifa union betwixt the lady and
me could not be bi ough: t to bear

 

jec
confidence;

 

 

since §

 

   

   

 

 

 

 

 

bear—the pint, ] say, was thrown out
by them, sir, whether. if. after n 1arriage, I confined myself to the
articu ation 1 of men, cuales sn, and the lowen animals, it might not
pa] 1.1 ¢

      
  

 

dling

1d of her fe

       
      

 

o pectinge beine—as a lady—

cht. it was a happy thought, sir, and it took

“Tt would seem, Ve observed Weeg, with a touch of
distrust, “that

ish of | friends ?”

   
   

“Pretty well, si
mystery. “So-so, sir. Pre
“ However,” said Wee:
distrust, “I wish you joy. O
and nae in another. You

to try tr: vel TO
“ Inde od. Mr. W C
the of air,

 

Jeman answered, in a tone of placi

ing oe with another touch of
S his i fortune in one way,
try 1 nony. I mean

t Dic

  

   

 

 

   
  
 

‘ rest, I hope may
me round after the pe rséecutions I have undergone from the
an with his ] ead tied up, which I just now mentioned. The
sh job being ended ax Mounds laid low, the hour is come for
Boffi n to stump up. Would ten to- morrow morning suit you, partner.
for finally bringing Boffin’s nose to the erihione

Ten to- ‘morrow morning would quite suit Mr. Venus for that excel-
lent purpos

“You have had him well under inspection, I hope ?”

Mr. Venus had had him under

 

>»

 

 

 

said Silas.
inspection pretty well every day.
“Sur ae you was just to step round to- night then, and al e him
orders from me—] say from me, because he knows I won’t be played
with—to be ready with his papers, his accounts, and his cash,
that time in the morning’; sal id Wegg. “And as a matter of for m, }
which will be aereeable to your own f¢ eelings, before we go out (Ke
PU walk 5 ith you part of hoe way, thou oh. my lee gives under mi
with we 1ess), let’s have a look at the stock in trade.”

Mr. Venus produced it, and it wag perfectly correct; Mr. Venus
undertook to produce it again in the morning, and to keep tryst with
Mr. Weee on Boffin’s doo; ‘ste p as the clock struck ten. Ata certain
point of “the road between Clerkenwell and Boftin’s house (Mr. Wege
expressly insisted that there should be no prefix to the Golden Dust.

tS Separated for the nicht,

It was a ver ry bad Be to which
The streets were so unusually s

 

 

 
  

 

 

   

€

   

 

 

 

succeeded a ver ‘y bad morning

if

lushy, mud Idy, and miserable, in the

  

 

  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
   
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
   

QUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 2,

areuing that a man
+ a handsome pro-

 
  
 

morning, that Wegg rode to the scene of action ;
who was, as it were, going to the Bank to draw «
perty, could well afford that trifling expense.
Venus was punctual, and Wege undertook to knock at tl
and conduct the conference. Door Knocked at. Door opened.
“ Boffin at home?” |
The servant replied that 2 Boffin was at home.
“ He'll do,” said Wegg, “though it aim't what I call him.”
The servant inquired if they had any appointment ?
“Now, I tell you what, young fellow,” said Wege, “ 1 we m’t hay
it. This won't do forme. 1 don’t want menials. 1 want Boffin.”
They were shown into a waiting-room, where the all-powerful
Wege wore his hat, and whistled, and with his forefinger stirred up a
clock that stood upon the chimneypicce, until he made it strike. In
a few minutes they were shown up taixs into what used to be Boffin’s
yoom: which, besides the door of entrance, had folding-doors in it, to
uite of rooms when occasion required. Here, Boffin
and here Mr. Wegg, having imperiously

up a chair and seated him-

> oor,

     

 

 

    

 

 

make it one of as
was seated at a library-table

motioned the servant to withdraw, drew

  

self, in his hat, close beside him. Here, also, Mr. Wegg instantly
q underwent the remarkable experience of having his hat twitched off
his head and thrown out of a window, which was opened and shut

for the purpose.
« Pp * a: _ L. oe & | gi
Be careful what imsolent

liberties you take in that gentleman's
» caid the owner of the hand which had done

presence, this, “or L will
throw you after it.”
Wegg invi luntarily clap] ved his hand to his bare head, and stared
at the Secretary. For, it was he addressed him with a severe counte-
nance, and who had come in quietly by the folding-doors.
“Oh!” said Wegg, as soon as he reccvered his suspended powe
rf of speech. “ Very good! I gave divections for you to be dismissed.
And you ain’t gone, ain't you? Oh! We'll look into this presently,
Very good 12
«No, nor I ain’t gone,” said another voice.
Somebody else had come in quietly by the folding-doors. Turning
his head, Wegg beheld his persecutor, the ev r-owakeful dustman,
accoutred with fantail hat and velveteen smalls comp Who, un-
tying his tied-up broken head, revealed a head that was whole, and
2, face that was Sloppy’s-

“ Ha, ha, ha, gentlemen \”
swith immeasureable relish.
standing, and often done it when

never thought as I used to give Mrs. Higden the Police-news in dif-
ferent voices! But t did lead him a life all through it, gentlemen, J
hope I really and truly pi!” Here, Mx. Sloppy opening his mouth
alarming extent, and throwing back his head to peal again,

 

 

   

 

 

roared Sloppy m a peal of langht er, and
«He never thought as | could sleep
T turned for Mrs. Higden! He

 

to a quite
vevealed incalculable buttons.

«QOh!”’ said Wegg, slightly discomfited, but not much as yet: “one
and one is two not dismissed, is it? Bof—fin! Just let me ask a
question. Who set this chap on, in this dress
began? Who employed this fellow ?”

 

   

  

when the carting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

286 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“T say!” remonstrated Sloppy, jerking his head forward, “No
fellows, or I'll throw you out of winder !”

Mr. Boffin appeased him with a wave of his hand, and said: “]
employed him, Wege.”

“Oh! You employed him, Boffin ? Very good. Mr. Venus, we
raise our terms, and we can’t do better than proceed to business.
Bof—fin! I want the room cleared of these two scum.”

“That's not going to be done, Wege,,” replied Mr. Boffin, sitting
composedly on the library-table, at one end, while the Secretary sat
composedly on it at the other,

“ Bof—tm! Not going to be done”
your peril

“No, Wego,” said Mr. Boffin, shakine his head good-humouredly.
“ Not at my peril, and not on any other terms.”

Weee reflected a moment, and then said: “Mr. Venus, will you
be so good as hand me over that same dockyment ?”

“Certainly, sir,” replied Venus, handing it to him with much
politeness. “There it is, Having now, sir, parted with it, I wish to
make a small observation : not so much because it is anyways neces-
Sary, Or expresses any new doctrine or discovery, as because it is a com-
fort tomy mind. Silas Wege, you are a precious old rascal.”

Mr. Wege, who, as if anticipating a compliment, had been beating
time with the paper to the other’s politeness until this unexpected
conclusion came upon him, stopped rather abruptly.

“Silas Wego,” said Venus, “ know that I took the liberty of taking
Mr. Boffin into our concern as a sleeping partner, at a very early
period of our firm’s existence.”

“Quite true,” added Mr. Boffin; “and T tested Venus by making
him a pretended proposal or two; and i found him on the whole a
very honest man, Weew.”

“So Mr. Boffin, in his indulgence, is pleased to say,” Venus re-
marked: “though in the beginning of this dirt, my hands were not,
for a few hours, quite as clean as | could wish. But I hope I made
early and full amends.”

* Venus, you did,” said Mr. 3oftin. “Certainly, certainly, certainly.”

Venus inclined his head with respect and gratitude. “Thank you,
sir. Tam much obliged to you, sir, for all. For your good opinion
now, for your way of receiving and encouraging me when I first put
myself in communication with you, and for the influence since so
kindly brought to bear upon a certain lady, both by yourself and by
Mr. John Harmon,” To whom, when thus making mention of him,
he also bowed.

Wege followed the name with sharp ears, and the action with
sharp eyes, and a certain cringing: air was infusing itself into his
bullying air, when his attention was re-claimed by Venus.

“Everything else between you and me, Mr. Wega,” said Venus,
_ HOW explains itself, and you can now make out, sir, without further
words from me. But totally to prevent any unpleasantness or mis-
take that micht arise on what I consider an important point, to be
made quite clear at the close of our acquaintance, [ beg the leave of
Mr. Boffin and Mr. John Harmon to repeat an observation which I

 

repeated Wees. “Not at

 

 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
   
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
    
 
 
 
  
 
   
  
 
     
     
  

 

  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
   
  
  
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
     
  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 281

nave already had the pleasure of bringing under your notice. You
are a precious old rascal !”

“You are a fool,” said Weegg, with a snap of his fingers, “and
Ed have got rid of you before now, if I could have struck out
any way of doing it. I have thought it over, I can tell you. You
may go, and welcome. You leave the more for me. Because, you
dividing his next observation between Mr. Boffin

know,” said Wegg,
and I mean to have it.

and Mr. Harmon, “1 am worth my price,
This getting off is all very well in its way, and it tells with such an
anatomical Pump as this one,” pointing out Mr. Venus, “ but it won't
do with a Man. I am here to be bought off, and I have named my
figure. Now, buy me, or leave me.”
“Tl leave you, Wegeg,” said Mr. Boffin, laughing, “as far as J
am concerned.”
“ Bof—fin!” replied Wegg, turning upon him with a severe airy el
understand your new-born boldness. 1 see the brass underneath your
silver plating. You have got your nose put out of joint. Knowing that
you’ve nothing at stake, you can afford to come the independent game.
Why, you're just so much smeary glass to see through, you know! But
Mx. Harmon is in another sitiwation. What Mr. Harmon risks, is
quite another pair of shoes. Now, I’ve heerd something lately about
this being Mr. Harmon—I make out now, some hints that I’ve met
on that subject in the newspaper—and I drop you, Bof—fin, as
beneath my notice. I ask Mr. Harmon whether he has any idea
of the contents of this present paper Ca
«Tt is a will of my late father’s, of more recent date than the will
ed by Mr. Boffin (address whom again, as you have addressed him
), leaving the whole of his property
with as much indifference as was

prov
Aeneas and I'll knock you down
to the Crown,” said John Harmon,
compatible with extreme stermness.
‘ «Right you are!” cried Wegg. “ Then,” screwing the weight of
his body upon his wooden leg, and screwing his wooden head very
much on one side, and screwing up one eye: “then, I put the ques-
tion to you, what’s this paper worth 2?”
“ Nothing,” said John Harmon.
Wegg had repeated the word with a sneer, and was entering on
some sarcastic retort, when, to his poundless amazement, he found
himself gripped by the cravat; shaken until his teeth chattered;
o, into a corner of the room ; and pinned there.

shoved back, staggering
“You scoundrel!” said John Harmon, whose seafaring hold was

like that of a vice.

« Youre knocking my head ag:

«T mean to knowk your head ag
armon, suiting his action to his words, with the heartiest good will;
and V’d give a thousand pounds for leave to knock your brains out.
Listen, you scoundrel, and look at that Dutch bottle.”

Sloppy held it up, for his edification.

« That Dutch bottle, scoundrel, contained the latest will of the many
wills made by my unhappy selftormenting father. That will gives
everything absolutely to my noble benefactor and yours, Mr. Boffin,
excluding and reviling me, and my sister (then a lready dead of a

ainst the wall,” urged Silas faintly.
ainst the wall,” returned Jobn

   
   
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
   
 
 
 
  
   
  
 
 
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
   
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
 
  
  
 
   
   
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meee ES

giin Pees

TE:

 

 

 

 

 

  

282 ‘UAL FRIEND.

broken heart), by name. That Dutch bottle was found by my noble
benefactor and yours, after he entered on possession of the estate.
That Dutch bottle distressed him bh »yond measure, because, though I
and my sister were both no more, it cast a slur upon our memory
which he knew we had done nothing in our miserable youth, to de-
serve. ‘That Dutch bottle, therefore he buried in the Mound belong-
ing to him, and there it lay while you, you thankless wretch, were
prodding and poking—often very near i dare say. His intention
was, that it should never see the light; but he was afraid to destroy
it, lest to destroy such a di
my Pig

 

 

 

   

  

ument, even with his great generous
otive, might be an offence at law. After the discovery
re who | was, Mr. B

vas made
on the subject, told me, upon

    

in, still restle

 
 

conditions impossible for such a hound as you to appreciate,
the secret of that Dutch bottle. L urged upon him the necessity of
being dug up, and the paper being legally produced and esta-
: 2 )
shed.

  

first thing you saw him do, and the second thing has
been done without your knowledge. Consequently, the paper now
rattling in your hand ag I shake you—and I should like to shake the
life out of you—is worth less than the rotten cork of the Dutch
bottle, do you understand 2”

Judging from the fallen countenance of Silas as his head waceed
and forwards in a most uncomfortable manner, he did

  

 
  

  
  

 

 

1 ,’ said John Harmon, taking another sailor-like
turn on his cravat and holding him io his corner at arms’ length, «
shall make two more short speeches +o you, because ] hope they will
torment you. Your di very was a genuine discovery (such
as it was), for nobody had thought of looking into that place.
Neither did we know you had made it, until Venus spoke to Mr.
Boffin, though ] kept you under good observation from my first
appearance here, and though Sloppy has lone made it the chief occu-
pation and delicht of his life, to attend you like your shadow. I tell
you this, that you may know we knew enough of youto persuade Mr.
Boffin to let us lead you on, delud e 1

a
order that you

 

20V'

ed, to the last possible moment, in
| w disappointment might be the heaviest possible disap-
pomtment. That's the first rt speech, do you understand 2”

Here, John Harmon. assisted his comprehension with another
shake.

“Now, scoundrel,” he pursued, “I am going to finish. You
Supposed me just now, to be the possessor of my father’s property.—
So lam. But through any act of my father’s, or by any right | have?
No. Throush the munificence of Mr. Boffin. The conditions that he
made with me, before parting with the secret of the Dutch bottle,
were, that I should take the fortune, and that he should take his
Mound and no more. I owe everything I possess, solely to the
disinterestedness, uprightness, tenderness, goodness (there are no
words to satisfy me) of Mr, and Mrs. Boffin. And when, knowing
what L knew, I saw such a mud-worm as you presume to rise in
his louse against this noble soul, the wonder is,” added John
tarmon throngh his clenched t¢ eth, and with a very ugly turn indeed
on Wegg's cravat, “that I didn’t try to twist your head off, and fling

 

 

 

fee ct

  
 

  

 

   
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
   
   
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
   
 
  
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
   
 
 
     
    

UR MUTUAL FRIEND. 283

that out of window! So. That's the last short speech, do you
understand ?” fi ,
Silas, released, put his hand to his throat,
if he had a rather large fishbone in that reg
this action on his part in his corner, a sims
an incomprehe nsible, movement was made b ry J
backing towards Mz. Wegg along the wall, in the manner of a
porter or heaver who is about to lift a sack of flour or ¢
“JT am sorry, Wegg,” said Mr. Boffi in, in Tee lc ae ney, * “that my
old lady and 1 can’t have a better opinion of you than the eA one
we are forced to entertain. But I shouldn’t like to leave you, after

and looked
neous ly wi

on the surk

 
 

  
  

 

re
ati

\Lr. Sloppy: who beg

 

 

 

 

 

 

all said and done, worse off in life than pal found you. Cherefore
say In a seal before we paxt, what it'll cost to set you up in ano ther

 

stall.”

“ And in another place,” Joh my eka
come outside these windows.

“Mr. Boffin,” returned Wegge in ava ‘cious humiliatic “when |
first had the honor of mé aking your acquaintance, | had got together
2 collection of ballads which was, I may say, above price.”

«Phen they can’t be pag for,” said John Harmon, ‘ ‘and you had
better not try, my dear sir

“Pardon me, Mr. Botiin,” resumed
are in the last speaker's direction,
you, who, if my senses did not deceive me, put t
had a very choice collection of ballads, ae there was a new stock of
gingerbre: ad in the tin box. Jsay no more, but would rather leave
it to you.

« But its difficult to name what's right,? sal
with his hand in his pocket, “ and I don’t want
right, because you 1 als have turned out such
So artful, and so ungrate ful you have been, Weegg ;

fon Ale c VW, qed
on struck i. YOU Gon

 

 

 

 

 

e casetome. |

id Mr. Boffin unea sil,
to go beyond what's
a very bad fe ieee

for when did I

ever injure you?”

«There was also,” Mr. Wegg went on,
“ag errand connection, in which T was much respected. But I would
not wish to be deemed covetuous, and 1 would rather leave it to
you, Mr. Boffin.”

“Upon my word, J
Dyseuan muttered.

“Phere was likewise,” resumed W Vega, “a a parr, of trestles, for which
s deemed a judge of trest tles, rs five

and six—a sum I would not hear of, for I should have lost by it-
and there was a stool, a u imbrell la, a clothes-horse, a und a a But

T leave it to you, Mr. Boffin.’
The Golden Dustman
calculation, Mr. Wegg as
items.
here was, further, Miss Eliz
and Uncle Parker. Ah! When a man thinks of the loss of such
patronage as that: when a man finds so fair a garden roote Xe up by

pigs; he finds it hard indee
money. But I leave it wholly to you, sir.”

Boel

 

in a meditative manner,

 

a é 7
don’t know what to pub 1 at,” the Golden

   

alone a Irish person, who we

seeming to be engaged in some abstruse
isted him with fhe following additional

 

eth, Master George, Aunt Jane,

€

d, without going high, to work it into

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

284. * OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

incomprehensible, movement.

“Leading on has been mentioned,” said Wege with a melancholy
air, “and it’s not easy to say how f:

ar the tone of my mind may haye
been lowered by unwholesome reading on the subject of Misers,
when you was leading me and others on to think you one yourself,
sir. All I can say is, that I felt my tone of mind a lowering at the
time. And how can a man put a price upon his mind! There was
likewise a hat just now. But T leave the ole to you, Mr. Boffin.”
“Come!” said Mr. Boffin. “ Here's a couple of pound.”
“Tn justice to myself, I couldn’t take Ltsesire
The words were but out of his mouth when John Harmon lifted
his finger, and Sloppy, who was now close to Wege, backed to
Wegeo’s back, stooped, grasped his coat collar behind with both hands,
and deftly swung him up like the sack of flour or coals before men-
tioned. A countenance of special discontent and amazement Mr.
Wege exhibited in this position, with his buttons almost as pro-
minently on view ag Sloppy’s own, and with his wooden lee in a
highly unaccommodating state. But, not for many seconds was his
countenance visible in the room : for, Sloppy lightly trotted out with
him and trotted down the staircase, Mr. Venus attending te open
the street door. Mr, Sloppy’s instructions had been to deposit his
burden in the road; but, a scavenger’s cart happening to stand
unattended at the corner, with its little ladder planted against
the wheel, Mr. §, found it impossible to resist the temptation of
shooting Mr. Silas Wegg into the cart’s contents. A somewhat

difficult feat, achieved with great dexterity, and with a prodigious
splash.

Mr. Sloppy still continued his singular, and on the surface his

CHAPTER XY.

WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET.
How Bradley Headstone had be

en racked and riven in his mind
since the quiet evening when

by the river-side he had risen, as it
were, out of the ashes of the Bargeman, none but he could have
told. Not even he could have told, for such misery can only be
felt.

First, he had to bear the combined weight of +]
what he had done, of that haunting

done it so much better, and of the dread of discovery. This was load
enough to crush him, and he ]

aboured under it day and night. It
was as heavy on him in his scanty sleep, as in his red-eyed waking

hours. It bore him down with a dread unchanging monotony, in

which there was not a moment's variety. The overweighted beast of
burden, or the overweighted slave, can for certain instants shift the
physical load, and find some slight respite even in enforcing ad-
ditional pain upon such a set of muscles or such a limb. Not
even that poor mockery of relief could the wretched man obtain,

1e knowledge of
reproach that he might have

 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
  
   
   
   
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
   
 
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
 
  
      
   
 
  

 

  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
   
  
 
   
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
   
      

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 285

under the steady pressure of the infernal atmosphere into which he had
entered.

‘Time went by, and no visible suspicion dogged him; time went
by, and in such public accounts of the attack as were renewed at
intervals, he began to see Mr. Lightwood (who acted as lawyer for the
injured man) straying further from the fact, going wider of the issue,
and evidently slackening in his zeal. By degrees, a glimmering of
the cause of this began to break on Bradley's sight. ‘hen came the
chance encounter with Mr. Milvey at the railway station (where he
often lingered in his leisure hours, as a place where any fresh news of
his deed would be circulated, or any placard referring to it would
be posted), and then he saw in the light what he had brought
about.

For, then he saw that through his desperate attempt to separate those
two for ever, he had been made the means of uniting them. That he
had dipped his hands in blood, to mark himself a miserable fool and
tool. ‘hat Eugene Wrayburn, for his wife’s sake, set him aside and
left him to crawl along his blasted course. He thought of Fate, or
Providence, or be the directing Power what it might, as having put a
fraud upon him—overreached him—and in his impotent mad rage
pit, and tore, and had his fit.

New assurance of the truth came upon him in the next few follow-
ing days, when it was put forth how the wounded man had been
married on his bed, and to whom, and how, though always im a
dangerous condition, he was a shade better. Bradley would far rather
have been seized for his murder, than he would have read that passage,
knowing himself spared, and knowing why.

But, not to be still further defrauded and overreached—which he
would be, if implicated’ by Riderhood, and punished by the law for
his abject failure, as though it had been a success—he kept close in
his school during the day, ventured out warily at night, and went no

more to the railway station. He examined the advertisements in the
newspapers for any sign that Riderhood acted on his hinted threat of
so summoning him to renew their acquaintance, but found none.
Having paid him handsomely for the support and accommodation he
had had at the Lock House, ‘and knowing him to be a very ignorant
man who could not write, he began to doubt whether he was to be
feared at all, or whether they need ever meet again.

All this time, his mind was never off the rack, and his raging
sense of having been made to fle himself across the chasm which
divided those two, and bridge it over for their coming together,
never cooled down. ‘This horrible condition brought on other fits.
He could not have said how many, or when; but he saw in the faces
of his pupils that they had seen him in that state, and that they were
possessed by a dread of his relapsing.

One winter day when a slight fall of snow was feathering the sills
and frames of the schoolroom windows, he stood at his black board,
crayon in hand, about to commence with a class; when, reading in
the countenances of those boys that there was something wrong, and
that they seemed in alarm for him, he turned his eyes to the door
towards which they faced. He then saw a slouching man of for-

 

 

Bt ee ee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

bidding appearance standing in the midst of the school, with a bundle
under his arm ; and saw that it was Riderhood.

He sat down on a stool which one of his boys put for him, and he

had a passing knowledge that he was in danger of falline, and that

face was becoming distorted. But, the fit went off for th

€ wiped his mouth, and stood up again.

eg your pardon, governor! By your leave!” said Riderhood,
knuckline his forehead. with -

a chuckle and a leer. “What place
may this be?”

“This is a school.”

“Where young folks learns wot’s right
nodding. “Beg your pardon, governor!
teaches this school 2”

“edo;

“You're the master, are you, learned governor 2”
Yes. 1am the master.”

a lovely thing it must he.” said Riderhood, “far to learn
young folks wot’s rieht, and fur to know wot they know wot you do
it. Beg your pardon, learned governor! By your leave !—That
black board ; wots it for ?

   

us

 

at time,

y
>
>

 

‘ Said Riderhood, gravely
By your leave! But who

 

 

 

Vine on, or writing on.

 

“Is it though!” said Riderhood. « Vho'd have thought it, from
the looks on it! Would FOU beso kand ag waite same £5
the 106KS on it! mwvould you be so kind as wiite your name %

1pon it,

 

learned governor?’ (In 4 wheedling tone.)
Bradley hesitated for a

moment; but placed his usual signature,
enlarged, upon the board

 

SWwaintta | “myself,” said Riderhood, surveying the
rning in others. I should dearly like

folks read that there name off, from the

arned charac

 

dé
8, “but I do admire le
to hear these here youne

 
  

  

the shrill chorus arose:
cN

vent up. At the miserable master’s nod,

 

radley Heads

‘0?” cried Riderhood. « You don’t meanit? Headstone! Why.
that’s in a churchyard.

Heoroar for another turn!”
Another us, another nod, and another shrill chorus :

stone !

     

Ot

2
1 ”
Headstone !

got it now!” said Riderhood,
ernally repeatin

 

fy

alter attentively listening, and

ante 1g: “Bradley. I see. Chris’en name, Bradley

im'‘lar to Roger which is my own. Hh? Fam’ly name, Headstone,

simlar to Riderhood which is my own. Eh?” ~
Shrill chorus. “ Yes!” :

“Might you be acquainted, leamed
“with a person of about your ow
pull down in a sca]
sounding: summa

: With a desperation in him that made him perfectly quiet, though
us jaw was heavily Squared; with his eyes upon Riderhood : and
with traces of quickened breathing in his nostrils: the school-
master replied, in a

4 Suppressed voice, after a pause: “1 think I know
the man you mean.” :

 

governor,” said Riderhood,
n heighth and breadth, and wot ‘ud

e about your own weight, answering to a name
like Totherest es

 

  

 
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
  
  
   
   
   
  
   
 
 
   
  
  
   
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
  
  
   
   
  
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 287

tH

 

“JT thought you knowed the man I mean, learned governor.
uit the man.”
With a half glance around him at his pupils, Bradley ret
ss Do you suppose he is here?”
cong your pé irdon, Jee arned governor, and by your leay »,” said
nite, with a laugh, “ how could I suppose he’s have when
there’s nobody here but you, and me, and. these young lambs wot
yowre a learning on? But he is most excellent company, that man,
and I want him to come and see me at my Lock, up the river.
“Tl tell him so.
«Dye think he'll come as
“J am sure he will.”
“Having got your word for him,” said Riderhood, “1 shall count
upon him. P’raps you'd so fur obleege me, learned governor, as ; tell
him that if he don’t come precious soon, V1 look him up.”
“ He shall know it.”
ce iivanisee: As I say ‘
his ho . tone and leet ing round upt m the
(nied character my own self, I do admire learning in others, to

 
 

 

 

 

KE ral R lider! L106 a

 

  

1 Riderhood, changing
ass again, “ though not

a while ago,” pu

   

u

be sure! Being here and having met with your kind attention,

ight ise afore 1 go, ask a question of these here young lambs

 

aster, mi
of y our n?
“Tf itis i
dark loc ‘<
may.”
“Oh! It’s in the way o
it, Master, to be in the way of school: Wot’s the di
my lambs? W ‘ot sorts of water as there on the land”
“shrill chorus: “Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds.
« Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds, » said Riderhood. “They've got all

   

 
 
 
 

3 W ay of school,” said Bradley

+, and speaking in his suppres

    

school!” cried Riderhood. “ Il pound
sions of watei

 

 

 
 

 

 

the lot, Master! Blowed if I shouldn’t have lett out lakes, never
raving clapped eyes upon one, to my ere ledge. Seas, rivers, lakes,

 

 

Wot is it, lambs, as -7 ketches in seas, rivers, lakes,

 

and pond
and (ee

 

Shrill chorus (With some contem] t for the ease of the question) :
oe Fish ! a
«Good agin!” said Riderho od. “But wot else is it, my lambs, as

 

they sometimes ketches in rivers ?
Chorus at a los gs. One shrill voice: “ Weed !”
“Good agin?’ cried Rid lerhood. “But it ain’t weed neither.
oe never guess, my dears. Vot is it, besides fish, as they some-

mes ke tches in rivers? Well! Vu tell you. It’s suits 0’ clothes.”

“By radley’s face changed.

 

“ Leasty Ways, lambs.” said Riderhood, observing him out of the

S oe his eyes, “that’s wot I my own oe sometit nes ketches in
. For strike me blind, my lam] ys, if T didn’t ketch in a river
the w ery bool under my arm !”

The class looked at the master, as if appealing from the irregular
entrapme nt of this mode of exai nination. ‘The master eer at the
aminer, as if he w ould have torn him to Pieces.
vay ask your pardon, learned governor,” said Riderhood, smearing

 

 

     
  
  
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
   
  
   
  
 
  
  
   
  
    
   
 
  
 
   
 
 
   
   
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
   
      

   
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 

288 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

his sleeve across his mouth as he laughed witha relish, “tain’t fair to

the lambs, I know. It wos a bit of fun of mine. But upon my soul

[ drawed this here bundle out of a river! It’s a Bargeman’s suit of

clothes. You see, it had been sunk there by the man as wore it, and

1 got it up.”

“ How do you know it was sunk by the man who wore it?” asked

Bradley.

“Cause I see him do it,” said Riderhood.

They looked at each other. Bradley, slowly withdrawing his eyes,
turned his face to the black board and slowly wiped his name out.

“A heap of thanks, Master,” said Riderhood, “for bestowing so
much of your time, and of the lambses’ time, upon a man as hasn't got
no other recommendation to you than being a honest man. Wishing
to see at my Lock up the river, the person as we've spoke of, and as
you've answered for, I takes my leave of the lambs and of their learned
governor both.”

ein With those words, he slouched outof the school, leaving the master

to get through his weary work as he might, and leaving the whisper-

ing pupils to observe the master’s face until he fell into the fit which

} ll had been long impending.

The next day but one was Saturday, anda holiday. Bradley rose
early, and set out on foot for Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. He rose so
early that it was not yet light when he began his journey. Before
extinguishing the candle by which he had dressed himself, he made
a little parcel of his decent silver watch and its decent guard, and

wrote inside the paper: “ Kindly take care of these for me.” He then

iy addressed the parcel to Miss Peecher, and left it on the most pro-
ih tected corner of the little seat in her little porch.

ve It was a cold hard easterly morning when he latched the garden

t gate and turned away. ‘The light snowfall which had feathered his

schoolroom windows on the Thursday, still lingered in the air, and

was falling white, while the wind blew black. The tardy day did

not appear until he had been on foot two hours, and had traversed a

great part of Iondon from east to west. Such breakfast as he had,

he took at the comfortless public-house where he had parted from

Riderhood on the occasion of their night-walk. He took it, standing

Ha at the littered bar, and looked loweringly at a man who stood where

Riderhood had stood that early morning.

He outwalked the short day, and was on the towing-path by the

ni river, somewhat fox tsore, when the night closed in. Still two or

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

three miles short of the Lock, he slackened his pace then, but went
steadily on. The ground was now covered with snow, though

thinly, and there were floating lumps of ice in the more exposed parts
of the river, and broken sheets of ice under the shelter of the banks.
He toolk heed of nothing but the ice, the snow, and the distance,
until he saw a light ahead, which he knew gleamed from the Lock
House window. It arrested his steps, and he looked all around. ‘The
ice, and the snow, and he, and the one light, had absolute possession
of the dreary scene. In the distance before him, lay the place where
he had struck the worse than useless blows that mocked him with
Lizzie’s presence there as Eugene’s wife. In the distance behind him,

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
  

 

 

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 289

lay the place where the children with pointing arms had seemed tec
devote him to the demons in crying out his name. Within there,
where the light was, was the man who as to both distances could
give him up to ruin. ‘To these limits had his world shrunk.

He mended his pace, keeping his eyes upon the light with a strange
intensity, as if he were taking aim at it. When he approached it so
nearly as that it parted into rays, they seemed to fasten themselves to
him and draw him on. When he struck the door with his hand, his
foot followed so quickly on his hand, that he was in the room before
he was bidden to enter.

The light was the joint product of a fire and a candle. Between
the two, with his feet on the iron fender, sat Riderhood, pipe in
mouth. ‘

He looked up with a surly nod when his visitor came in. His
visitor looked down with a surly nod. His outer clothing removed,
the visitor then took a seat on the opposite side of the fire.

“ Not a smoker, 1 think?” said Riderhood, pushing a bottle to him
across the table.

eNO:

They both lapsed into silence, with their eyes upon the fire.

“You don’t need to be told I am here,” said Bradley at length.
“Who is to begin ?”

“TIl begin,” said Riderhood, “when I’ve smoked this here pipe
out.”

He finished it with great deliberation, knocked out the ashes on the
hob, and put it by.

“Tl begin,” he then repeated, “Bradley Headstone, Master, if
you wish it.”

“ Wish it? I wish to know what you want with me.”

« And so you shall.” Riderhood had looked hard at his hands and
his pockets, apparently as a pre autionary measure lest he should
have any weapon about him. But, he now leaned forward, turning the
collar of his waistcoat with an inquisitive finger, and asked, “ Why,
where’s your watch ?”

“JT have left it behind.”

«J want it. But itcan be fetched. I’ve took a fancy to it.”

Bradley answered with a contemptuous laugh.

“T want it,” repeated Riderhood, in a louder voice, “ and I mean
to have it.”

“That is what you want of me, is it?”

“No,” said Riderhood, still louder; “it’s on’y part of what I want
of you. I want money of you.”

“ Anything else ?”

«Byerythink else!” roared Riderhood, in a very loud and furious
way. “ Answer me like that, and 1 won't tall to you at all.”

Bradley looked at him.

“Don’t so much as look at me like that, or I won't talk to you at
all,” vociferated Riderhood. “ But, instead of talking, I'l bring my
hand down upon you with all its weight,” heavily smiting the table
ith great force, “ and smash you 1
“Go on,” said Bradley, after moistening his lips.

VOL. II.

 

Les

 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
   
 
  
  
 
 
   
  
       

   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
    
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
    
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
 
  
  

  

290 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

“O! Tm a going on. Don’t you fear but I'll go on full-fast enough
for you, and fur enough for you, without your telling. Look here,
Bradley Headstone, Master. You might have split the 'T’other governor
to chips and wedges, without my caring, except that I might have &
come upon you for a glass or so now and then. Else why have to do
with you at all? But when you copied my clothes, and when you
copied my neckhankercher, and when you shook blood upon me after
you had done the trick, you did wot I'l be paid for and paid
heavy for. If it come to be throw’d upon you, you was to be ready
to throw it upon me, was you? Where else but in Plashwater Weir
Mill Lock was there a man dressed according as described? Where
ih else but in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock was there a man as had had
words with him coming through in his boat? Look at the Lock-keeper
in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock, in them same answe ing clothes and
with that same answering red neckhankercher, and see whether his
clothes happens to be bloody or not. Yes, they do happen to be
bloody. Ah, you sly devil!”
Bradley, very white, sat looking at him in silence.
ie “But two could play at your game,” said Riderhood, snapping his
i fingers at him half a dozen times, “and I played it long ago; long:
afore you tried your clumsy hand at it; in days when you hadn’t

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

begun croaking your lecters or what not in your school. I know to
a figure how you done it. Where you stole away, I could steal away
arter you, and do it knowinger than you. I know how you come
away from London in your own clothes, and where you changed your
clothes, and hid your clothes. I see you with my own eyes take
i your own clothes from their hiding-place among them felled trees,
and take a dip in the river to account for your dressing yourself, to
any one as might come by. I see you rise up bradley Headstone,
Master, where you sat down Bargeman. I see you pitch your Barge-
man’s bundle into the river. I hooked your Bargeman’s bundle out
of the river. I’ve got your Bargeman’s clothes, tore this way
and that way with the scuffle, stained green with the grass, and
spattered all over with what bust from the blows. I’ve got them,
and I’ve got you. I don’t care a curse for the T’other governor,
alive or dead, but I care a many curses for my own self. And
as you laid your plots agin me and was a sly devil agin me, I'll be
paid for it—I’ll be paid for it—Vll be paid for it—till I’ve drained
you dry !”

Bradley looked at the fire, with a working face, and was silent for a
while. At last he said, with what seemed an inconsistent composure
of voice and feature :

“You can’t get blood out of a sti me, Riderhood.”

“I can get money out of a schoolmaster though.”

“You can’t get out of me what is not in me. You can’t wrest from
me what I have not got. Mine is but a poor calling. You have had
more than two guineas from me, already. Do you know how long it
has taken me (allowing for a long and arduous training) to earn such
a sum ¢

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_ “I don’t know, nor I don’t care. Yours is a ’spectable calling.
lo save your ‘Spectability, it’s worth your while to pawn every article

 

    

 

 

 

SEES

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 291

of clothes you've got, sell every stick in your house, and beg and
borrow every penny you can get trusted with. When you've done
that and handed over, I'll leave you. Not afore.”

“ How do you mean, you'll leave me?”

“JT mean as I'll keep you company, wherever you go, when you go
away from here. Let the Lock take care of itself. Il take care of
you, once I’ve got you.”

Bradley again looked at the fire. Eyeing him aside, Riderhood
took up his pipe, refilled it, lighted it, and sat smoking. Bradley
leaned his elbows on his knees, and his head upon his hands, and
looked at the fire with a most intent abstraction.

Riderhood,” he said, raising himself in his chair, after a long
silence, and drawing out his purse and putting it on the table. “Say
I part with this, which is all the money I have; say I let you have
my watch; say that every quarter, when I draw my salary, I pay
you a certain portion of it.”

“Say nothink of the sort,” retorted Riderhood, shaking his head
as he smoked. “You've got away once, and I won’t run the chance
agin. I’ve had trouble enough to find you, and shouldn’t have found
you, if I hadn’t seen you slipping along the street over-night, and
watched you till you was safe housed. I'll have one settlement with
you for good and all.”

“ Riderhood, I am a man who has lived a retired life. I have no
resources beyond myself. I have absolutely no friends.”

« That's alie,” said Riderhood. “ You've got one friend as I knows
of: one as is good for a Savings-Bank book, or I’m a blue monkey !”

3radley’s face darkened, and his hand slowly closed on the purse
and drew it back, as he sat listening for what the other should go
on to say. :

“JT went into the wrong shop, fust, last Thursday,” said Riderhood.
“Found myself among the young ladies, by George! Over the
young ladies, I see a Missis. ‘Chat Missis is sweet enough upon you,
Master, to sell herself up, slap, to get you out of trouble. Make her
do it then.”

Bradley stared at him so very suddenly that Riderhood, not quite
knowing how to take it, affected to be occupied with the encircling
smoke from his pipe; fanning it away with his hand, and blowing
it off.

“You spoke to the mistress, did you ” inquired Bradley, with
that former composure of voice and feature that seemed inconsistent,
and with averted eyes.

“Poof! Yes,” said Riderhood, withdrawing his attention from the
smoke. “I spoke to her. I didn’t say much to her. She was put
in a fluster by my dropping in among the young ladies (I never did
set up for a lady’s man), and she took me into her parlour to hope as
there was nothink wrong. I tells her, ‘O no, nothink wrong. ‘The
master’s mvy wery good friend.’ But I see how the land laid, and
that she was comfortable off.”

Bradley put the purse in his pocket, erasped his left wrist with
his right hand, and sat rigidly contemplating the fire.

“ She couldn’t lve more handy to you than she does,” said Rider-
U 2

 

 

 
 
 

?

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

292 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

hood, “and when I goes home with you (as of course I am a@
going), I recommend you to clean her out without loss of time.
You can marry her, arter you and me have come to a settle-
ment. She’s nice-looking, and I know you can’t be keeping com-
pany with no one else, having been so lately disapinted in another
quarter.”

Not one other word did Bradley utter all that night. Not once
did he change his attitude, or loosen his hold upon his wrist. Rigid
before the fire, as if it were a charmed flame that was tuning him
old, he sat, with the dark lines deepening in his face, its stare be-
coming more and more haggard, its surface turning whiter and

 

whiter as if it were being overspread with ashes, and the very
texture and colour of his hair degenerating.

Not until the late daylight made the window transparent, did this
decaying statue move. ‘Then it slowly arose, and sat im the window
looking out.

Riderhood had kept his chair all night. In the earlier part of the
night he had muttered twice or thrice that it was bitter cold: or
that the fire burnt fast, when he got up to mend it; but, as he could
elicit from his companion neither sound nor movement, he had after-
wards held his peace. He was ma cing some disorderly preparations
for coffee, when Bradley came from the window and put on his outer
coat and hat.

“Hadn’t us better have a bit o’ breakfast afore we start?” said
Riderhood. “It ain’t good to freeze a empty stomach, Master.”

Without a sion to show that he heard, Bradley walked out of the
Lock House. Catching up from the table a piece of bread, and,
taking his Bargeman’s bundle wider his arm, Riderhood immediately
followed him. Bradley turned towards London. Riderhood caught
him up, and walled at his side.

The two men trudged on, side by side, in silence, full three miles.
Suddenly, Bradley tured to retrace his course. Instantly, Riderhood
turned likewise, and they went back side by side. :

Bradley re-entered the Lock House. So did Riderhood. Bradley

 

sat down in the window. Riderhood warmed himself at the fire,
After an hour or more, Bradley abruptly got up again, and again

went out, but this time turned the other way. Riderhood was close
after him, caught him wp in a few paces, and walked at his side.
This time, as before, when he found his attendant not to be shaken
ff, Bradley suddenly turned back. This time, as before, Riderhood
turned back along with him. But, not this time, as' before, did they
go into the Lock House, for Bradley came to a stand on the snow-
covered turf by the Lock, looking up the river and down the river.
Navigation was impeded by the frost, and the scene was a mere
white and yellow desert.
_ “Come, come, Master,” urged Riderhood, at his side. “This is a
dry game. And where’s the good of if? You can’t get rid of me,

except by coming to a settlement. I am a going along with you

0.

rherever w r.??
wherevei you 20.

Without a word of reply, Bradley passed quickly from him over
the wooden bridge on the lock gates. “Why, there’s even less

  
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
   
   
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
    

 

HHO NHMVHS Wd OF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 293
sense in this move than tother,” said Riderhood, following. “ The
Weir's there, and you'll have to come back, you know.”

Without taking the least notice, Bradley leaned his body against a
post, Im a resting attitude, and there rested with his eyes cast down.
“Being brought here,” said Riderhood, grufily, “ Vl turn it to some
use by changing my gates.” With a rattle and a rush of water, he
then swung-to the lock gates that were standing open, before
opening the others. So, both sets of gates were, for the moment,

 

closed.

«Youd better by far be reasonable, Bradley Headstone,
said Riderhood, passing him, “or [ll drain you all the dryer
when we do settle—Ah! Would you!”

Bradley had caught him round the body. He seemed to be girdled
with an iron ring. They were on the brink of the Lock, about mid-
way between the two sets of gates.

“Tet go!” said Riderhood, “or Tl get my knife out and slash
you wherever I can ent you. Let go Ne

Bradley was drawing to the Lock-edge. Riderhood was drawing
away from it. It was a strong grapple, and a fierce struggle, arm
and lee. Bradley got him round, with his back to the Lock, and still

Cy

 
 

 

 

 

worked him backward.
“Let go!” said Riderhood. “ Stop! What are you trying at?
Youcan’t drown Me. <Ain’t I told you that the man as has come
through drowning can never be drowned? 1 can’t be drowned.”

C ” yeturned Bradley, in a desperate, clenched voice. “I

“7 can be!
am resolved to be. I'l hold you living, and Vl hold you dead. Come

down !”
Riderhood went over imto the smooth pit, packward, and Bradley

Headstone upon him. When the two were found, lying under the
ooze and scum behind one of the rotting gates, Riderhood’s hold had
relaxed, probably in falling, and his eyes were staring upward. But,
he was girdled still with Bradley’s iron ring, and the rivets of the

iron ring held tight.
oO oO

 

CHAPTER XVI.
PERSONS AND THINGS IN GENERAL.

Mr. and Mrs. John Harmon’s first deli ghtful occupation was, to set
all matters right that had strayed im any way wrong, or that might,
could, would, or should, have strayed in any way wrong, while their
name was in abeyance. In tracing out affairs for which John’s
fictitious death was to be considered in any way responsible, they
free construction; regarding, for instance,
the dolls’ dressmaker as having a claim on their protection, because
of her association with Mrs. Hugene Wrayburn, and because of Mrs.
Hugene’s old association, in her turn, with the dark side of the story.
Tt followed that the old man, Riah, as a good and serviceable friend to
both, was not to be disclaimed. Nor even Mr. Inspector, as having

used a very broad and

 

   
   
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
   
  
  
  
   
   
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
       

cas adhncine

ae ee ie

ime bigerne—-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

294 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

been trepanned into an industrious hunt on a false scent. It may be
remarked, in connexion with that worthy officer, that a rumour shortly
afterwards pervaded the Force, to the effect that he had confided to Miss
Abbey Potterson, over a jug of mellow flip in the bar of the Six Jolly
Fellowship Porters, that he “didn’t stand to lose a farthing ” through
Mr. Harmon’s coming to life, but was quite as well satisfied as if that
gentleman had been barbarously murdered, and he (Mr. I nspector )
had pocketed the government reward.

Tn all their arrangements of such nature, Mr. and Mrs. John Harmon
derived much assistance from their eminent solicitor, Mr. Mortimer
Lightwood ; who laid about him professionally with such unwonted
despatch and intention, that a piece of work was vigorously pursued as
Soon as cut out; whereby Young Blight was acted on as by that trans-
atlantie dram which is poetically named An Eye-Opener, and found
himself staring at real clients instead of out of window. The acces-
sibility of Riah proving very useful as to a few hints towards the
disentanglement of Kugene’s affairs, Lightwood applied himself with
infinite zest to attacking and harassing Mr. Fledgeby : who, discovering
himself in danger of being blown into the air by certain explosive
transactions in which he had been engaged, and having been sufficiently
flayed under his beating, came to a parley and asked for quarter. The
harmless 'T'wemlow profited by the conditions entered into, though he
little thought it. Mr. Riah unaccountably melted; waited in person
on him over the stable yard in Duke Street, St. James’s, no longer
ravening but mild, to inform him that payment of interest as hereto-
fore, but henceforth at Mr. Lightwood’s offices, would appease his
Jewish rancour; and departed with the secret that Mr. John Harmon
had advanced the money and become the creditor. Thus, was the
sublime Snigsworth’s wrath averted, and thus did he snort no larger
amount of moral grandeur at the Corinthian column in the print over
the fireplace, than was normally in his (and the British) constitution.

Mrs. Wilfer’s first visit to the Mendicant’s bride at the new abode of
Mendicancy, was a grand event. Pa had been sent for into the City,
on the very day of taking possession, and had been stunned with
astonishment, and brought-to, and led about the house by one
ear, to behold its various treasures, and had been enraptured and
enchanted. Pa had-also been appointed Secretary, and had been
enjoimed to give instant notice of resignation to Chicksey, Veneering,
and Stobbles, for ever and ever. But Ma came later, and ame, as
was her due, in state.

‘The carriage was sent for Ma, who ent ered it with a bearing worthy of
the occasion, accompanied, rather than supported, by Miss Lavinia, who
altogether declined to recognize the maternal majesty. Mr. George
Sampson meekly followed. He was received in the vehicle, by Mrs.
Wilfer, as if admitted to the honor of assisting at a funeral in the family,
and she then issued the order, “ Onward !” to the Mendicant’s menial.

“TI wish to goodness, Ma,” said Lavvy, throwing herself back among
the cushions, with her arms crossed, “that you'd loll a little.”

“How!” repeated Mrs. Wilfer, “Loll!”"

“Yes, Ma.”

 
  
 
  
   
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
   
   
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
  
     
  

 

 

   
    
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“1 hope,” said the impressive lady, “ T am incapable of it.”

«Tam sure you look so, Ma. But why one should go out to dine
with one’s own daughter or sister, as if one’s under-petticoat was a
backboard, I do not understand.”

“Neither do I understand,” retorted Mrs. Wilfer, with deep scorn,
“how a young lady can mention the garment in the name of which
you have indulged. I blush for you.”

«hank you, Ma,” said Lavvy, yawning, “ but I can do it for my-
self, I am obliged to you, when there’s any occasion.” :

Here, Mr. Sampson, with the view of establishing harmony, which
he never under any circumstances succeeded in doing, said with an
agreeable smile: “After all, you know, ma’am, we know it’s there.”
And immediately felt that he had committed himself.

« We know it’s there!” said Mrs. Wilfer, glaring.

“ Really, George,” remonstrated Miss Lavinia, “I must say that 1
don’t understand your allusions, and that I think you might be more
delicate and less personal.”

“Go it!” eried Mr. Sampson, becoming, on the shortest notice, a
prey to despair. “Oh yes! Go it, Miss Lavinia Wilfer !”

“ What you may mean, George Sampson, by your omnibus-driving
expressions, I cannot pretend to imagine. Neither,” said Miss Lavinia,
“Mr. George Sampson, do I wish to imagine. It is enough tor me to
know in my own heart that Iam not going to—” having imprudently
cot into a sentence without providing a way out of it, Miss Lavinia
‘vas constrained to close with “going to go it.” A weak conclusion
which, however, derived some appearance of strength from disdain.

“Oh yes!” cried Mr. Sampson, with bitterness. “ ‘hus it ever is.
I never——”

“Tf you mean to say,” Miss Lavvy cut him short, “that you never
brought up a young gazelle, you may save yourself the trouble, because
nobody in this carriage supposes that you ever did. We know you
better.” (As if this were a home-thrust. )

« Tavinia,” returned Mr. Sampson, in a dismal vein, “I did not
mean to say so. What I did mean to say, was, that I never expected
to retain my favoured place in this family, after Fortune shed her
beams upon it. Why do you take me,” said Mr. Sampson, “ to the
glittering halls with which [ can never compete, and then taunt me
with my moderate salary? Is it generous? Is it kind?”

The stately lady, Mrs. Wilfer, perceiving her opportunity of de-
livering a few remarks from the throne, here took up the altercation.

“Mr. Sampson,” she began, “ I cannot permit you to misrepresent
the intentions of a child of mine.”

“Let him alone, Ma,” Miss Lavvy interposed with haughtiness.
«Tt is indifferent to me what he says or does.”

“ Nay, Lavinia,” quoth Mrs. Wilfer, “this touches the blood of the
family. If Mr. George Sampson. attributes, even to my youngest

daughter——

( “T don’t see why you should use the word ‘even,’ Ma,” Miss Lavvy
interposed, “ pecause I am quite as important as any of the others.” )

“Peace!” said Mrs. Wilfer, solemnly. <1 repeat, If Mr. George
Sampson attributes, to my youngest daughter, grovelling motives, he

2?

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

296 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

attributes them equally to the mother of my youngest daughter. That
mother repudiates them, and demands of Mr. George Sampson, as a
youth of honour, what he would have? I may be mistaken—nothine
is more likely—but Mr. George Sampson,” proceeded Mrs. Wilfer,
majestically waving her gloves, “appears to me to be seated in a
first-class equipage. Mr. George Sampson appears to me to be on his
way, by his own admission, to a residence that may be termed Palatial.
Mr. George Sampson appears to me to be invited to participate in
the—shall I say the—Hlevation which has descended on the family
with which he is ambitious, shall J say to Mingle? Whence, then,
this tone on Mr. Sampson’s part ?”

“It is only, ma’am,” Mr. Sampson explained, in exceedingly low
spirits, “ because, in a pecuniary sense, I am painfully conscious of my
unworthiness. Lavinia is now highly connected. Can I hope that she
will still remain the same Lavinia asof old? And is it not pardonable
if I feel sensitive, when I see a disposition on her part to take me up
short ?”

“Tf you are not satisfied with your position, sir,” observed Miss
Lavinia, with much politeness, “we can set you down at any turing
you may please to indicate to my sister’s coachman.”

“Dearest Lavinia,” urged Mr. Sampson, pathetically, “I adore you.”

“Then if you can’t do it ina more agreeable manner,” returned
the young lady, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

“T also,” pursued Mr. Sampson, “respect you, ma’am, to an extent
which must ever be below your merits, I am well aware, but still up
to an uncommon mark. Bear with a wretch, Lavinia, bear with a
wretch, ma’am, who feels the noble sacrifices you make for him, but is
goaded almost to madness,” Mr. Sampson slapped his forehead, ‘when
he thinks of competing with the rich and influential.”

“When you have to compete with the rich and influential, it will
probably be mentioned to you,” said Miss Lavvy, “in good time.
At least, it will if the case is my case.”

Mr. Sampson immediately expressed his fervent opinion that this
was “more than human,” and was brought upon his knees at Miss
Lavinia’s feet.

It was the crowning addition indispensable to the full enjoyment
of both mother and daughter, to bear Mr. Sampson, a grateful
captive, into the glittering halls he had mentioned, and to parade
him through the same, at once a living witness of their glory, and a
bright instance of their condescension. Ascending the staircase,
Miss Lavinia permitted him to walk at her side, with the air of
Saying: “ Notwithstanding all these surroundings, I am yours as yet,
George. How long it may last is another question, but I am yours
as yet.” She also benignantly intimated to him, aloud, the nature of
the objects upon which he looked, and to which he was unac-
customed : as, “ Exotics, George,” “An aviary, George,” “An ormolu
clock, George,” and the like. While, through the whole of the
decorations, Mrs. Wilfer led the way with the bearing of a Savage
Chief, who would feel himself compromised by manifesting the
slightest token of surprise or admiration.

indeed, the bearing of this impressive woman, throughout the day,

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
   
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
   
   
  
  
   
  
  
   
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
    

 

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 297

was a pattern to all impressive women under similar circumstances.
She renewed the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, as if My. and
Mrs. Boffin had said of her what she had said of them, and as if
Time alone could quite wear her injury out. She regarded every
servant who approached her, as her sworn enemy, expressly intend-
ing to offer her affronts with the dishes, and to pour forth outrages
on her moral feelings from the decanters. She sat erect at table, on
the right hand of her son-in-law, as half suspecting poison in the
viands, and as bearing up with native force of character against
other deadly ambushes. Her carriage towards Bella was as a
carriage towards a young lady of good position, whom she had met in
society a few years ago. Hven when, slightly thawing under the
influence of sparkling champagne, she related to her son-in-law some
passages of domestic interest concerning her papa, she infused into
the narrative such Arctic suggestions of her having been an un-
appreciated blessing to mankind, since her papa’s days, and also
of that gentleman’s having been a frosty impersonation of a frosty
race, as struck cold to the very soles of the feet of the hearers. The
Inexhaustible being produced, staring, and evidently intending a weak
and washy smile shortly, no sooner beheld her, than it was stricken
spasmodic and inconsolable. When she toek her leave at last, it
would have been hard to say whether it was with the air of gomg
to the scaffold herself, or of leaving the inmates of the house for
immediate execution. Yet, John Harmon enjoyed it all merrily,
and told his wife, when he and she were alone, that her natural ways
had never seemed so dearly natural as beside this foil, and that
although he did not dispute her being her father’s daughter, he should
ever remain stedfast in the faith that she could not be her mother’s.

 

This visit was, as has been said, a grand event. Another event,
not grand but deemed in the house a special one, occurred at about
the same period; and this was, the first interview between Mr.
Sloppy and Miss Wren.

he dolls’ dressmaker, being at work for the Inexhaustible upon
a full-dressed doll some two sizes larger than that young person,
Mr. Sloppy undertook to call for it, and did so.

“Come in, sir,” said Miss Wren, who was working at her bench.
“ And who may you be ?”

Mr. Sloppy introduced himself by name and buttons.

“Oh indeed!” cried Jenny. ‘Ah! I have been looking forward
to knowing you. I heard of your distinguishmg yourself.”

“Did you, Miss?” grinned Sloppy. “ J am sure [ am glad to hear
it, but I don’t know how.”

«“ Pitching somebody into a mud-cart,” said Miss Wren.

“Oh! That way!” cried Sloppy. “Yes, Miss.” And threw back
his head and laughed.

“ Bless us!” exclaimed Miss Wren, with a start. “Don’t open your
mouth as wide as that, young man, or it'll catch so, and not shut
again some day.”

Mr. Sloppy opened it, if possible, wider, and kept it open until his
langh was out.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

298 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

“Why, you're like the giant,’ said Miss Wren, “when he came
home in the land of Beanstalk, and wanted Jack for supper.”

“Was he good-looking, Miss ?” asked Sloppy.

“No,” said Miss Wren. “ Ugly.”

Her visitor glanced round the room—which had many comforts
in it now, that had not been in it before—and said: “This is a pretty
place, Miss.”

“Glad you think s0, sir,” retwmmed Miss Wren. “And what do
you think of Me?”

The honesty of Mr. Sloppy being severely taxed by the question,
he twisted a button, grinned, and faltered.

“Out with it!” said Miss Wren, with an arch look. “Don’t you
think me a queer little comicality?’ In shaking her head at him
after asking the question, she shook her hair down.

“Oh!” cried Sloppy, in a burst of admiration. “What a lot, and
what a colour!”

Miss Wren, with her usual expressive hitch, went on with her
work. But, left her hair as it was; not displeased by the effect it had
made,

“ You don’t live here alone; do you, Miss?” asked Sloppy.

“No,” said Miss Wren, with a chop. “Live here with my fairy
2odmother.”

“With ;” Mr. Sloppy couldn’t make it out; “with who did you
say, Miss ?” :

“Well!” replied Miss Wren, more seriously. “With my second
father. Or with my first, for that matter.” And she shook her
head, and drew a sigh. “If you had known a poor child I used to
have here,” she added, “ you'd have understood me. But you didn’t,
and you can’t. All the better!”

“ You must have been taught a long time,” said Sloppy, glancing
at the array of dolls in hand, “before you came to work so neatly,
Miss, and with such a pretty taste.”

“Never was taught a stitch, young man!” returned the dress-
maker, tossing her head. “Just gobbled and gobbled, till I found
out how to do it. Badly enough at first, but better now.”

“And here have I,” said Sloppy, in something of a selfreproachful
tone, “been a learning and a learning, and here has Mr. Boffin been
a paying and a paying, ever so long!”

“I have heard what your trade is,” observed Miss Wren; “it’s
cabinet-making.”

Mr. Sloppy nodded. “Now’ that the Mounds is done with, it is.
I'll tell you what, Miss. I should like to make you something.”

“Much obliged. But what?” :

“YT could make you,” said Sloppy, surveying the room, “I could
make you a handy set of nests to lay the dolls in. Or I could make
you a handy little set of drawers, to keep your silks and threads and
scraps in, Or I could turn you a rare handle for that erutch-stick,
if it belongs to him you call your father.”

“It belongs to me,” returned the little creature, with a quick flush
of her face and neck. “I am lame.”

Poor Sloppy flushed too, for there was an instinctive delicacy

  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 299

behind his buttons, and his own hand had struck it. He said,
perhaps, the best thing in the way of amends that could be said.
“T am very glad it’s yours, because I’d rather ornament it for you
than for any one else. Please may I look at it?”

Miss Wren was in the act of handing it to him over her bench,
when she paused. “But you had better see me use it,” she said,
sharply. “This is the way. Hoppetty, Kicketty, Pep-peg-peg. Not
pretty; is ib?”

«1 seems to me that you hardly want it at all,” said Sloppy.

The little dressmaker sat down again, and gave it into his hand,
saying, with that better look upon her, and with a smile: ‘‘ Thank
you!”

« And as concerning the nests and the drawers,” said Sloppy, after
measuring the handle on his sleeve, and softly standing the stick
aside against the wall, “ why, it would be a real pleasure to me. Tye
heerd tell that you can sing most beautiful ; and I should be better
paid with a song than with any money, for I always loved the likes
of that, and often giv’ Mrs. Higden and Johnny a comic song myself,
with ‘ Spoken’ in it. Though that’s not your sort, Tl wager.”

«You are a very kind young man,” returned the dressmaker; “a
really kind young man. I accept your offer._I suppose He won't
mind,” she added as an afterthought, shrugging her shoulders ; “and
if he does, he may !”

“Meaning him that you call your father, Miss,” asked Sloppy.

“No, no,” replied Miss Wren. “ Him, Him, Him !”

«Him, him, him?” repeated Sloppy ;. staring about, as if for Him.

“Him who is coming to court and marry me,” returned Miss
Wren. “Dear me, how slow you are!”

“Oh! Him!” said Sloppy. And seemed to turn thoughtful
and a little troubled. “I never thought of him. When is he
coming, Miss ?”

« What a question!” cried Miss Wren. “ How should J know!”

“ Where is he coming from, Miss?”

“Why, good gracious, how can T tell! He is coming from some-
where or other, I suppose, and he is coming some day or other, I
suppose. J don’t know any more about him, at present.”

This tickled Mr. Sloppy as an extraordinarily good joke, and he
threw back his head and laughed with measureless enjoyment. At
the sight of him laughing in that absurd way, the dolls’ dressmaker
laughed very heartily indeed. So they both laughed, till they were
tired.

“There, there, there!” said Miss Wren. “For goodness’ sake,
stop, Giant, or I shall be swallowed up alive, before I know it.
And to this minute you haven’t said what you've come for.”

“TJ have come for little Miss Harmonses doll,” said Sloppy.

“J thought as much,” remarked Miss Wren, “ and here is little
Miss Harmonses doll waiting for you. She’s folded up in silver
paper, you see, as if she was wrapped from head to foot in new Bank
notes. ‘Take care of her, and there’s my hand, and thank you
again.”

“ [ll take more care of her than if she was a gold image,” said

   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

300 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

Sloppy, “and there’s both my hands, Miss, and Ill soon come back
again.”

But, the greatest event of all, in the new life of Mr. and Mrs. John
Harmon, was a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Wrayburn. Sadly
wan and worn was the once gallant Hugene, and walked resting
on his wife’s arm, and leaning heavily upon a stick. But, he was
daily growing stronger and better, and it was declared by the
medical attendants that he might not be much disfieured by-and-by.
It was a grand event, indeed, when Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Wray-
burn came to stay at Mr. and Mrs. John Harmon’s house: where, by
the way, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin (exquisitely happy, and daily cruising
about, to look at shops,) were likewise staying indefinitely.

To Mr. Hugene Wrayburn, in confidence, did Mrs. John Harmon
impart what she had known of the state of his wife’s affections, in
his reckless time. And to Mrs. John Harmon, in confidence, did Mr.
Eugene Wrayburn impart that, please God, she should see how his
wife had changed him !

“T make no protestations,” said Hugene ; “—who does, who means
them !—I have made a resolution.”

“But would you believe, Bella,” interposed his wife, coming to
resume her nurse’s place at his side, for he never got on well
without her: “that on our wedding day he told me he almost
thought the best thing he could do, was to die?”

“As I didn’t do it, Lizzie,” said Eugene, “Ill do that better
thing you suggested—for your sake.”

That same afternoon, Hugene lying on his couch in his own room
upstairs, Lightwood came to chat with him, while Bella took his
wife out for a ride. “Nothing short of force will make her go,”
Kugene had said; so, Bella had playfully forced her.

“Dear old fellow,” Eugene began with Lightwood, reaching up
his hand, “you couldn’t have come ata better time, for my mind is
full, and I want to empty it. First, of my present, before I touch
upon my future. M.R. F., who is a much younger cavalier than
I, and a professed admirer of beauty, was so affable as to remark
the other day (he paid us a visit of two days up the river there,
and much objected to the accommodation of the hotel), that Lizzie
ought to have her portrait painted. Which, coming from M. R. F.,
may be cohsidered equivalent to a melodramatic blessing.”

“ You are getting well,” said Mortimer, with a smile.

“ Really,” said Eugene, “I mean it. When M. R. F. said that,
and followed it up by rolling the claret (for which he called, and I
paid), in his mouth, and saying, ‘My dear son, why do you drink
this trash? it was tantamount—in him—to a paternal benediction
on our union, accompanied with a gush of tears. ‘The coolness of
M. R. F. is not to be measured by ordinary standards.”

“True enough,” said Lightwood.

“That's all,” pursued Eugene, “that I shall ever hear from
M. R. F. on the subject, and he will continue to saunter through
the world with his hat on one side. My marriage being thus
solemnly recognized at the family altar, I have no further trouble on

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

    
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 301

   
 

that score. Next, you really have done wonders for me, Mortimer,
in easing my money-perplexities, and with such a guardian and

steward beside me, as the preserver of my life (1 am hardly strong yet,
you see, for I am not man enough to refer to her without a trembling
voice—she is so inexpressibly dear to me, Mortimer!), the little that
T can call my own will be more than it ever has been, It need be
more, for you know what it always has been in my hands. Nothing.”

“Worse than nothing, I fancy, Hugene. My own small imcome
(I devoutly wish that my grandfather had left it to the Ocean rather
than to me!) has been an effective Something, in the way of prevent-
ing me from turning to at Anything. And I think yours has been
much the same.”

“There spake the voice of wisdom,” said Eugene. ‘“ We are shep-
herds both. In tuming to at last, we tum to im earnest. Let us
say no more of that, for a few years to come. Now, I have had an
idea, Mortimer, of taking myself and my wife to one of the colonies,
and working at my vocation there.”

“TJ should be lost without you, Hugene; but you may be right.”

“ No,” said Eugene, emphatically. “ Not right. Wrong!”

He said it with such a lively—almost angry—flash, that Mortimer
showed himself greatly surprised.

“You think this thumped head of mine is excited?” Eugene went
on, with a high look; “not so, believe me. I can say to you of the
healthful music of my pulse what Hamlet said of his. My blood is
up, but wholesomely up, when I think of it. Tellme! Shall I turn
coward to Lizzie, and sneak away with her, as if I were ashamed of
her! Where would your friend’s part in this world be, Mortimer,
if she had turned coward to him, and on immeasurably better
occasion ?”

« Honorable and stanch,” said Lightweod. “« And yet, Hugene——

« And yet what, Mortimer ?”

« And yet, are you sure that youmight not feel ( for her sake, I say
‘ht coldness towards her on the part of—

bas)

 

2?

 

for her sake) any sh
Society ””

* O! You and I may well stumble at the word,” returned Eugene,
laughing. ‘“ Do we mean our Tippins ?”

2

 

“Perhaps we do,” said Mortimer, laughing also.

«: Faith, we po!” returned Eugene, with great animation. “We
may hide behind the bush and beat about it, but we po! Now, my
wife is something nearer to my heart Mortimer, than Tippins is, and
T owe her a little more than I owe to Tippins, and I am rather
prouder of her than I ever was of Tippins. ‘Uherefore, I will fight it
out to the last gasp, with her and for her, here, in the open field.
When I hide her, or strike for her, faint-heartedly, in a hole or a corner,
do you whom £ love next best upon earth, tell me what 1 shall most
righteously deserve to be told :_that she would have done well to
turm me over with her foot that night when Llay bleeding to death,
and spat in my dastard face.”

The glow that shone upon him as he spoke the words, so irradiated
his features that he looked, for the time, as though he had never

been mutilated. His friend responded as Eugene would have had

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

302 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

him respond, and they discoursed of the future until Lizzie came
back. After resuming her place at his side, and tenderly touching
his hands and his head, she said :

“ Hugene, dear, you made me go out, but I ought to have stayed
with you.. You are more flushed than you have been for many
days. What have you been doing ?”

“Nothing,” replied Eugene, “ but looking forward to your coming
back.”

“And talking to Mr. Lightwood,” said Lizzie, turing to him
with a smile. “But it cannot have been Society that disturbed
you.”

“Faith, my dear love!” retorted Eugene, in his old airy manner,
as he laughed and kissed her, “I rather think it was Society
though !”

The word ran so much in Mortimer Lightwood’s thoughts as he
went home to the Temple that night, that he resolved to take a look
at Society, which he had not seen for a considerable period.

”

 

CHAPTER THE LAST.
THE VOICE OF SOCIETY.

Brnoves Mortimer Lightwood, therefore, to answer a dinner card
from Mr. and Mrs. Veneering requesting the honor, and to signify that
Mr. Mortimer Lightwood will be happy to have the other honor.
The Veneerings have been, as usual, indefatigably dealing dinner
cards to Society, and whoever desires to take a hand. had best
be quick about it, for it is written in the Books of the Insolvent
Fates that Vencering shall make a resounding smash next week.
Yes. Having found out the clue to that great mystery how people
can. contrive to live beyond their means, and having over-jobbed his
jobberies as legislator deputed to the Universe by the pure electors
of Pocket Breeches, it shall come to pass next week that Veneering
will accept the Chiltern Hundreds, that the legal gentleman in
Britannia’s confidence will again accept the Pocket Breeches Thou-
sands, and that the Veneerings will retire to Calais, there to live on
Mrs. Veneering’s diamonds (in which Mr. Veneering, as a good
husband, has from time to time invested considerable sums), and to
relate to Neptune and others, how that, before Veneering retired
from Parliament, the House of Commons was composed of himself and
the six hundred and fifty-seven dearest and oldest friends he had in
the world. It shall likewise come to pass, at as nearly as possible the
same period, that Society will discover that it always did despise
Veneering, and distrust Veneering, and that when it went to
Vencering’s to dinner it always had misgivings—though very secretly
at the time, it would seem, and in a perfectly private and con-
fidential manner.

The next week’s books of the Insolvent Fates, however, being not
yet opened, there is the usual rush to the Veneerings, of the people who

 

 

       
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
   

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 303

go to their house to dine with one another and not with them. ‘There
is Lady Tippins. There are Podsnap the Great, and Mrs. Podsnap.
There is Twemlow. There are Buffer, Boots, and Brewer. ‘here is
the Contractor, who is Providence to five hundred thousand men.
There is the Chairman, travelling three thousand miles per week.
There is the brilliant genius who turned the shares into that remark-
ably exact sum of three hundred and seventy five thousand pounds,
no shillings, and nopence.

To whom, add Mortimer Lightwood, coming inamong them with a
yeassumption of his old languid ai, founded on Eugene, and belong-
ing to the days when he told the story of the man from Somewhere.

That fresh fairy, Tippins, all but screams at sight of her false
swain. She summons the deserter to her with her fan; but the
deserter, predetermined not to come, talks Britain with Podsnap.
Podsnap always talks Britain, and talks as if he were a sort of Private
Watchman employed, in the British interests, against the rest of the
world. “We know what Russia means, sir,” says Podsnap; “we
know what France wants; we see what America is up to; but we
know what England is. That's enough for us.”

However, when dinner is served, and Lightwood drops into his
old place over against Lady Tippins, she can be fended off no longer.
“ Long banished Robinson Crusoe,” says the charmer, exchanging
salutations, “how did you leave the Island ?”

«Thank you,” says Lightwood. “It made no complaint of being
in pain anywhere.”

“ Say, how did you leave the savages ?” asks Lady Tippins.

« They were becoming civilized when I left Juan Fernandez,” says
Lightwood. “At least they were eating one another, which looked
like it.”

“Pormentor!” returns the dear young creature. “You know what
I mean, and you trifle with my impatience. Tell me something, 1-
mediately, about the married pair. You were at the wedding.”

“Was I, by-the-by?” Mortimer pretends, at great leisure, to con-
sider. “So [ was!”

“ How was the bride dressed? In rowing costume ?”

Mortimer looks gloomy, and declines to answer.

“JT hope she steered herself, skiffed herself, paddled herself, lar-
}oarded and starboarded herself, or whatever the technical term
may be, to the ceremony ?” proceeds the playful 'Tippins.

« However she got to it, she graced it,” says Mortimer.

Lady Tippins with a skittish little scream, attracts the general
attention. “Graced it! Take care of me if I faint, Veneermg. He
means to tell us, that a horrid female waterman is graceful !”

«Pardon me. J mean to tell you nothing, Lady Tippins,” replies
Lightwood. And keeps his word by eating his dinner with a show
of the utmost indifference.

« You shall not escape me in this way, you morose backwoods-man,”
retorts Lady Tippins. “You shall not evade the question, to screen

your friend Eugene, who has made this exhibition of himself. The
knowledge shall be brought home to you that such a ridiculous affair
is condemned by the voice of Society. My dear Mrs. Vencering

   

 

 

nb

oe er

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
   
   
    
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
    

 

304 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.

 

a

do let us resolve ourselves into a Committee of the whole House on
the subject.”

Mrs. Veneering, always charmed by this rattling sylph, cries : “Oh
yes! Do let us resolve ourselves into a Committee of the whole
House! So delicious!” Veneering says, “As many as are of that
opinion, say Aye,—contrary, No—the Ayes have it.” But nobody
takes the shghtest notice of his joke. ‘

“Now, Lam Chairwoman of Committees!” cries Lady Tippins.

(“ What spirits she has!” exclaims Mrs. Veneering ; to whom like-
wise nobody attends. )

“And this,” pursues the sprightly one, “is a Committee of the
whole House to what-you-may-call-it—elicit, I suppose—the voice of
Society. The question before the Committee is, whether a young
man of very fair family, good appearance, and some talent, makes a
fool or a wise man of himself in marrying a female waterman, turned
factory girl.”

“Hardly so, I think,” the stubborn Mortimer strikes in. “I take
the question to be, whether such a man as you describe, Lady Tippins,
does right or wrong in marrying a brave woman (I say nothing of
her beauty), who has saved his life, with a wonderful energy and
address; whom he knows to be virtuous, and possessed of remarkable q
qualities ; whom he has long admired, and who is deeply attached to
him.”

“But, excuse me,” says Podsnap, with his temper and his shirt-
collar about equally rumpled; “was this young woman ever a female
waterman ?”

“Never. But she sometimes rowed in a boat with her father, I
believe.”

General sensation against the young woman. Brewer shakes his

 

LO
head. Boots shakes his head. Buffer shakes his head.

“And now, Mr. Lightwood, was she ever,” pursues |Podsnap,
with his indignation rising high into those hair-brushes of his, “a
factory girl?”

“ Never. But she had some employment in a paper mill, I believe.”

General sensation repeated. Brewer says, “Oh dear!” Boots Says,
‘Oh dear!” Buffer says, “Oh dear!” All, in a rumbling tone of
protest.

“hen all I have to say is,’ returns Podsnap, putting the thing
away with his right arm, “that my gorge rises against such a
marriage—that it offends and disgusts me—that it makes me sick—
and that I desire to know no more about it.”

(“Now I wonder,” thinks Mortimer, amused, “ whether you are the
Voice of Society !”)

dear, hear, hear!” cries Lady Tippins. “Your opinion of this
mésalliance, honorable colleague of the honorable member who has
just sat down ?”’

Mrs. Podsnap is of opinion that in these matters there should be an
equality of station and fortune, and thata man accustomed to Society
should look out for a woman accustomed to Society and capable of
bearing her part in it with—an ease and elegance of carriage
that.” Mrs. Podsnap stops there, delicately intimating that every

 

 

 

 

  

 

    
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
   
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 305

such man should look out for a fine woman as nearly resembling her-
self as he may hope to discover.

(*« Now I wonder,” thinks Mortimer, “ whether you are the Voice !”’)

Lady Tippins next canvasses the Contractor, of five hundred thou-
sand power. It appears to this potentate, that what the man in
question should have done, would have been, to buy the young woman
a boat and a small annuity, and set her up for herself. ‘These
things are a question of beefsteaks and porter. You buy the young
woman a boat. Very good. You buy her, at the same time, a small
annuity. You speak of that annuity im pounds sterling, but it is in
reality so many pounds of beefsteaks and so many pints of porter.
On the one hand, the young woman has the boat. On the other hand,
she consumes so many pounds of beefsteaks and so many pints of
porter. ‘I’hose beefsteaks and that porter are the fuel to that young
woman’s engine. She derives therefrom a certain amount of power
to row the boat; that power will produce so much money; you add
that to the small annuity; and thus you get at the young woman’s
‘That (it seems to the Contractor) is the way of looking

 

income.

at it.
he fair enslayver having fallen into one of her gentle sleeps during
this last exposition, nobody likes to wake her. Fortunately, she
comes awake of herself, and puts the question to the Wandering
Chairman. ‘The Wande can only speak of the case as if 1t were
his own. If such a young woman as the young woman described,
had saved his own life, he would have been very much obliged to
her, wouldn’t have married her, and would have got her a berth
inan Hlectric Telegraph Office, where young women answer very well.
What does the Genius of the three hundred and seventy-five
thousand pounds, no shillings, and nopence, think? He can’t say
what he thinks, without asking: Had the young woman any money ?
“No,” says Lightwood, in an uncompromising voice; “no money.”
“Madness and moonshine,” is then the compressed verdict of the
Genius. “Aman may do anything lawful, for money. Sut for no

f

     

 

1

money !—Bosh!

What. does Boots say ?

Boots says he wouldn't have done it under twenty thousand pound

What does Brewer say?

Brewer says what Boots says.

What does Buffer say ?

Buffer says he knows a man who married a bathing-woman, and
bolted.

Lady Tippins fancies she has collected the suffrages of the whole
Committee (nobody dreaming of asking the V eneerings for their
opinion ), when, looking round the table through her eyeg!ass, she
perceives Mr. T'wemlow with his hand to his forehead.

Good gracious! My Twemlow forgotten! My dearest! Myown!
What is his vote ?

Twemlow has the air of being ill at ease, as he takes his hand
from his forehead and replies.

“Tam disposed to think,” says he, “that this is a question of the
feelings of a gentleman.”

VOL, It. x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND,

“A gentleman can have no feelings who contracts such a mar-
riage,” flushes Podsnap.

“Pardon me, sir,” says T'wemlow, rather less mildly than usual,
“T don’t agree with you. If this gentleman's feelings of gratitude,
of respect, of admiration, and affection, induced him (as 1 presume
they did) to marry this lady——”

“This lady!” echoes Podsnap.

“Sir,” returns T'wemlow, with his wristbands bristling a little,
“you repeat the word; I repeat the word. This lady. What else
would you call her, if the gentleman were present ?”

This being something in the nature of a poser for Podsnap, he
merely waves it away with a speechless wave.

“TI say,” resumes T'wemlow, “ if such feelings on the part of this
gentleman, induced this gentleman to marry this lady, I think he is
the greater gentleman for the action, and makes her the greater
lady. I bee to say, that when I use the word, gentleman, I use it
in the sense in which the degree may be attained by anyman. ‘The
feelings of a gentleman I hold sacred, and I confess I am not comfort-
able when they are made the subject of sport or general discussion.”

“T should like to know,” sneers Podsnap, “whether your noble
relation would be of your opinion.”

“Mr. Podsnap,” retorts Twemlow, “permit me. He might be, or
he might not be. I cannot say. But, I could not allow even him
to dictate to me on a point of great delicacy, on which I feel very
strongly.”

Somehow, a canopy of wet blanket seems to descend upon the
company, and Lady ‘lippins was never known to turn so very greedy
orso very cross. Mortimer Lightwood alone brightens. He has been
asking himself, as to every other member of the Committee in turn,
“I wonder whether you are the Voice!” But he does not ask him-
self the question after Twemlow has spoken, and he glances in
Twemlow’s direction as if he were grateful. When the company
disperse—by which time Mr. and Mrs. Veneering have had quite

as much as they want of the honor, and the guests have had
quite as much as they want of the other honor—Mortimer sees

‘'wemlow home, shakes hands with him cordially at parting, and
fares to the Temple, gaily.

THE END.

 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
   
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
   
   

 

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
     

ROSS Cee,
IN LIEU OF PREFACE.

—_* >> ——

Wuun I devised this story, I foresaw the likelihood that a class of
readers and commentators would suppose that I was at great pains to
conceal exactly what I was at great pains to suggest : namely, that
Mr. John Harmon was not slain, and that Mr. John Rokesmith was he.
Pleasing myself with the idea that the supposition might im part
arise out of some ingenuity in the story, and.ihinking it worth while,
in the interests of art, to hint to an audience that an artist (of
whatever denomination) may perhaps be trusted to know what he
is about in his vocation, if they will concede him a little patience,

I was not alarmed by the anticipation.

To keep for a long time unsuspected, yet always working itself out,
another purpose originating in that leading incident, and turning it
te a pleasant and useful account at last, was at once the most in-
teresting and the most difficult part of my design. Its difficulty
was much enhanced by the mode of publication ; for, it would be
very unreasonable to expect that many readers, pursuing a story in

portions from month to month through nineteen months, will, until

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

308 POSTSCRIPT.

they have it before them complete, perceive the relations of its finer
threads to the whole pattern which is always before the eyes of the
story-weaver at his loom. Yet, that I hold the advantages of the
mode of publication to outweigh its disadvantages, may be easily
believed of one who revived it in the Pickwick Papers after long

disuse, and has pursued it ever since.

There is sometimes an odd disposition in this country to dispute as
mprobable in fiction, what are the commonest experiences in fact.
Therefore, I note here, though it may not be at all necessary, that there
are hundreds of Will Cases (as they are called), far more remarkable
than that fancied in this book; and that the stores of the Preroga-
tive Office teem with instances of testators who have made, changed,
contradicted, hidden, forgotten, left cancelled, and left uncancelled,
each many more wills than were ever made by the elder Mr.

Harmon of Harmony Jail.

In my social experiences since Mrs. Betty Higden came upon the
scene and left it, I have found Circumlocutional champions disposed
to be warm with me on the subject of my view of the Poor Law.
My friend Mr. Bounderby could never see any difference between
leaving the Coketown “hands” exactly as they were, and requiring
them to be fed with turtle soup and venison out of gold spoons.
Idiotic propositions of a parallel nature have been freely offered for
my acceptance, and I have been called upon to admit that I would
give Poor Law relief to anybody, anywhere, anyhow. Putting this
nonsense aside, I have observed a suspicious tendency in the cham-
pions to divide into two parties; the one, contending that there
are no deserving Poor who prefer death by slow starvation and
bitter weather, to the mercies of some Relieving Officers and some

Union Houses; the other, admitting that there are such Poor, but

   
  
    
   
  
  
  
   
  
   
   
  
   
  
 
 
  
   
    
  

 

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

POSTSCRIPT 309
denying that they have any cause or reason for what they do. ‘The
records in our newspapers, the late exposure by Tue Lanczr, and the
common sense and senses of common people, furnish too abundant
evidence against both defences. But, that my view of the Poor Law
may not be mistaken or misrepresented, I will state it. I believe
there has been in England, since the days of the Sruarrs, no law
so often infamously administered, no law so often openly violated,
no law habitually so ill-supervised. In the majority of the shame-
fal cases of disease and death from destitution, that shock the Public
and diserace the country, the illegality is quite equal to the inhu-
manity—and known language could say no more of their law-

lessness.

On Friday the Ninth of June in the present year, Mr. and Mrs.
Boffin (in their manuscript dress of receiving Mr. and Mrs. Lammle
at breakfast) were on the South Eastern Railway with me, in a ter-
ribly destructive accident. When 1 had done what I could to help
others, I climbed back into my carriage—nearly turned over a viaduct,
and caught aslant upon the turn—to extricate the worthy couple.
They were much soiled, but otherwise unhurt. The same happy
result attended Miss Bella Wilfer on her wedding day, and Myr.
Riderhood inspecting Bradley Headstone’s red neckerchief as he lay
asleep. I remember with devout thankfulness that I can never be
much nearer parting company with my readers for ever, than I was
then, until there shall be written against my life, the two words

with which I have this day closed this book :—Tur Ep.

September 2nd, 1865.

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