Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

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 know him.'

It is the first anniversary of the happy marriage of Mr and Mrs
Lammle, 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, Twemlow 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 Snigsworth 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 Twemlow,
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 has 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-its-name 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
before-hand that you are not going to talk! And Veneering, 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 positively 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 dying
for the honour of presentation to Lady Tippins. Fledgeby
presented, 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.'

'I believe so,' says Fledgeby, 'but my mother and her family were
two.'

'Are you staying in town?' asks Twemlow.

'I 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, Twemlow 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. Even
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
with a 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
in coming to take his master up on some charge of the first
magnitude.

Veneering, M.P., on the right of Mrs Lammle; Twemlow 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
Twemlow gives a little sudden turn towards Mrs Lammle, and
then says to her, 'I beg your pardon!' This not being Twemlow's
usual way, why is it his way to-day? Why, the truth is, Twemlow
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 earth
(including grape-juice in the category) becomes livelier, and
applies herself to elicit sparks from Mortimer 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 conversational fire out of him. In a pause of mastication
and deglutition, 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
reputation, and tell us something else.'

'Lady Tippins, I exhausted myself for life that day, and there is
nothing more to be got out of me.'

Mortimer parries thus, with a sense upon him that elsewhere it is
Eugene and not he who is the jester, and that in these circles
where Eugene persists in 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 you'll
tell us.'

'Monster, away!' retorts Lady Tippins. 'Your own Golden
Dustman referred me to you.'

Mr Lammle, striking in here, proclaims aloud that there is a sequel
to the story of the man from somewhere. Silence ensues upon the
proclamation.

'I assure you,' says Lightwood, glancing round the table, 'I have
nothing to tell.' But Eugene adding in a low voice, 'There, tell it,
tell it!' he corrects himself with the addition, 'Nothing worth
mentioning.'

Boots and Brewer immediately perceive that it is immensely
worth mentioning, and become politely clamorous. Veneering 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.

'Pray don't be at the trouble of composing yourselves to listen,'
says 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:

     "I'll tell you a story
       Of Jack a Manory,
       And now my story's begun;
       I'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 suppose to be made
by my honourable 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
retraction 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 retraction I 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 Eugene 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
professional 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 an 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 Eugene, 'of putting myself in
communication with her; but I fail too, because she has vanished.'

'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 honourable and fair enslaver opposite referred.'

Tippins, with a bewitching little scream, opines that we shall every
one of us be murdered in our beds. Eugene 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 Honourable Gentleman at the
head of the Home Department in his place) whether it is intended
to be conveyed that the vanished person has been spirited away or
otherwise 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 recall 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 rising, 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
years as happy as the last, and many many friends as congenially
united as themselves. And this he will add; that Anastatia
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.

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 delightfiil
occasions--in a residence better suited to your claims on the rites
of hospitality. He will never forget that at Veneering'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 Veneering for the
feeling manner in which he referred to their common friend
Fledgeby, for he holds that gentleman in the highest estimation.
Thank you. In fact (returning 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 opportunity of saying a few words to you
when you come up stairs?'

'Assuredly. I shall be honoured.'

'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.
Fledgeby has devoted the interval to taking an observation of
Boots's whiskers, Brewer's whiskers, and Lammle's whiskers, and
considering 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
Tippins. Outsiders cultivate Veneering, M P., and Mrs Veneering,
W.M.P. Lammle stands with folded arms, Mephistophelean in a
corner, with Georgiana and Fledgeby. Mrs Lammle, on a sofa by
a table, invites Mr Twemlow'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 see him, you see what he is. You are not proud
of him?'

'To say the truth, Mrs Lammle, no.'

'If 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
impossible to tell you what the struggle in my mind has been,
before I 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
confidence--that you will respect it, even though you may no
longer respect me,--and I shall be as satisfied as if you had sworn
it.'

'Madam, on the honour of a poor gentleman--'

'Thank you. I can desire no more. Mr Twemlow, I implore you to
save that child!'

'That child?'

'Georgiana. She will be sacrificed. She 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 herself and she is on the brink of being sold into
wretchedness for life.'

'Amazing! But what can I do to prevent it?' demands Twemlow,
shocked and bewildered to the last degree.

'Here is another 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.

'Decidedly not good,' says Mrs Lammle. 'Stiff and exaggerated!'

'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.

'That is the last of Mr Lammle. Do you think it good?--Warn her
father against me. I deserve it, for I 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 a
mockery, he is my husband, and we must live.--Do you think it
like?'

Twemlow, in a stunned condition, feigns to compare the portrait in
his hand with the original looking towards him from his
Mephistophelean corner.

'Very well indeed!' are at length the words which Twemlow with
great difficulty extracts from himself.

'I am glad you think so. On the whole, I myself consider it the
best. The others are so dark. Now here, for instance, is another
of Mr Lammle--'

'But I don't understand; I don't see my way,' Twemlow stammers,
as he falters over the book with his glass at his eye. 'How warn
her father, and not tell him? Tell him how much? Tell him how
little? I--I--am getting lost.'

'Tell him I am a match-maker; tell him I am an artful and
designing woman; tell him you are sure his daughter 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
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 Twemlow, 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 I 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. For the moment, Mrs
Lammle does not turn to them, but remains looking at Twemlow
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
lettercart, 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.

BOOK THE THIRD

A LONG LANE

Chapter 1

LODGERS IN QUEER STREET

It 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-
creatures 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
collapsing 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 Co. 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, 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 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 fog 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
comfortable rampart of shoulder to the chilled figure of the old
man.

'Sir, it is full half-past ten in the morning.'

'The deuce it is! Then it must be precious foggy?'

'Very foggy, 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.'

'All right. I'll turn the general subject over in my mind for a
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.
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 suppresed 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. It was
an edifying 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
you?'

'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,
deferentially 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
employment, with the character which it is your policy that I
should bear?'

'I 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 connexion!
Bring out your vouchers, and don't talk Jerusalem palaver.'

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
selecting 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?'

'In 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
bedroom 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
unfortunate 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?'

'I am but the representative of another, sir,' returned the Jew in a
low voice. 'I do as I am 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.

'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 invaRiahle 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 ha ha!' 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 I
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.

'Halloa!' 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.'

'I 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.

'I 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.

'THE game. OUR game. Read that.'

Fledgeby took a note from his extended hand and read it aloud.
'Alfred Lammle, 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 honour to be, Sir, your most obedient and very humble
servant, JOHN PODSNAP.' 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.

'Impossible to imagine,' said Lammle.

'Perhaps,' suggested Fledgeby, after reflecting with a very
discontented brow, 'somebody has been giving you a bad
character.'

'Or you,' said Lammle, with a deeper frown.

Mr Fledgeby appeared to be on the verge of some mutinous
expressions, 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
circumstances prevent your doing.'

'And that you undertook to do what you might have done 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 understand
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.

'NOW, Mr Fledgeby,' said Lammle, as before; 'am I to understand
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
affectionate 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
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?'

'I showed her the letter.'

'Very much surprised?' asked Fledgeby.

'I 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 have a pair of whiskers, Lammle, which I never liked,'
murmured 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 for a failure, and your wife
says I 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 legs of the
Turkish trousers, straightened himself on his knees, and called out
to Riah in the next room, 'Halloa, you sir!' At sight of the old man
re-entering with a gentleness monstrously in contrast with the
character he had given him, Mr Fledgeby was so tickled again, that
he exclaimed, laughing, 'Good! Good! Upon my soul it is
uncommon 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 you'll 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 I'll write.'

When he had unlocked a drawer and taken a key from it to open
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
pocketbook, 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.

'No, sir.'

'Is she in your garden up atop of that house--gone up to be dead, or
whatever the game is?' asked Fledgeby.

'No, sir.'

'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. 'O, 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 stipulation) it
is in sacred confidence; it is strictly upon honour.'

'Honour too!' cried Fledgeby, with a mocking lip. 'Honour among
Jews. Well. Cut away.'

'It is upon honour, sir?' the other still stipulated, with respectful
firmness.

'Oh, certainly. Honour 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 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, I have no motive but to help the helpless.'

Mr Fledgeby could only express the feelings to which this
incredible statement gave rise in his breast, by a prodigiously long
derisive sniff.

'How I came to know, and much to esteem and to respect, this
damsel, I 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 by a selfish and ungrateful
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 closing 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. I 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.

'I 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? Oh 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. I'll be more communicative with you.
The other name's Hexam.'

Riah bent his head in assent.

'Look here, you sir,' said Fledgeby. 'I have a notion I know
something of the inveigling chap, the powerful one. Has he
anything to do with the law?'

'Nominally, I believe it his calling.'

'I thought so. Name anything like Lightwood?'

'Sir, not at all like.'

'Come, old 'un,' said Fledgeby, meeting his eyes with a wink, 'say
the name.'

'Wrayburn.'

'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 I 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. Not a hit 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.

'I 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 something 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! It don't count for much, being a Jew, in a match against ME!'

Another dry twist in place of a smile, made his face crooked here.

'As to Christians,' proceeded Fledgeby, 'look out, fellow-
Christians, 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
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 countenance (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 2

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 fog,
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 ARE 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! I'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, o' 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 look so
unlike the rest of people, and so much as if you had changed
yourself into that shape, just this moment, with some benevolent
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. I say! Let's believe so!'

'With all my heart,' replied the good old man.

'And I'll 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
altogether. 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 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. I 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 honour
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 compassionately
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.'

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?'

'Explain, god-daughter.'

'I feel so much more solitary and helpless without Lizzie now, than
I used to feel before I knew her.' (Tears 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,
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
foggier course that way.

But previously, as they were going along, Jenny twisted her
venerable 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 Fete, or what you like. Very well. I squeeze
among the crowd, and I look about me. When I see a great lady
very suitable for my business, I say "You'll do, my dear!' and I take
particular notice of her, and run home and cut her out and baste
her. Then another day, I 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, "I 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
physiognomy poked out from behind a policeman's cape in the
rain, I 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 carriages. Very bad night too. At last, "Lady Belinda
Whitrose's carriage! Lady Belinda Whitrose coming down!" And
I made her try on--oh! and take pains about it too--before she got
seated. That's Lady Belinda hanging up by the waist, much too
near the gaslight 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?'

'Could we see Miss Potterson?' asked the old man, uncovering his
head.

'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 crutch-
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--'

'Stop a bit,' interposed Miss Wren. 'I'll give the lady my card.' She
produced it from her pocket with an air, after struggling with the
gigantic door-key which had got upon the top of it and kept it
down. Miss Abbey, with manifest tokens of astonishment, took
the diminutive document, and found it to run concisely thus:--

MISS JENNY WREN

DOLLS' DRESSMAKER.

Dolls attended at their own residences.

'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--'

'For where, in the name of the Cape of Good Hope?' asked Miss
Potterson, as though supposing her to have emigrated.

'For 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.'

'I 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 temper
that never tires, and a touch that never hurts,' Miss Jenny struck in,
flushed, 'she is proud. And if it's not, she is NOT.'

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?'

'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'll 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-bottle from its niche, and whispered:

'Child, or woman?'

'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. 'I 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
Potterson's skilful hands, whereof Riah too partook. After this
preliminary, 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. I 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
forgetting 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
scribelike figure intent upon the work, and the little dolls'
dressmaker sitting 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,
dreamlike, 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.

'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.

'Does anybody down there know what has happened?' demanded
Miss Abbey, in her voice of authority.

'It's a steamer, Miss Abbey,' cried one blurred figure in the fog.

'It 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 made a 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.

It appeared to Miss Abbey and her two companions that a
considerable 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.

'If 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 is it, Tootle?' demanded Miss Abbey.

'It'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 inside, 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
talk without. Momentary pause. Two 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.
Stoppage of rush. Door shut. Baffled boots from the vexed souls
of disappointed 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!'

Chapter 3

THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE

In 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
pronounces, not hopefully, that it is worth while trying to
reanimate the same. All the best means are at once in action, and
everybody present 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
avoidance, 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
anyone 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
figurative, 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 impontant 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
manoeuvre 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 instantly
seizes the Captain by the collar, and without a single word ejects
him, not presuming 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.

If you are not gone for good, Mr Riderhood, it would be something
to know where you are hiding at present. This flabby lump of
mortality 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.'

'I 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 not express 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 self-command 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
woman's aptitude soon renders her able to give a little help.
Anticipating 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 experienced 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
occupation 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 outlet 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.

The short-lived delusion begins to fade. The low, bad,
unimpressible 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 I expect he will.'

'Or than he done afore,' adds William Williams.

'But no, not he!' says Jonathan of the no surname, clinching the
quartette.

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 anybody 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'll look rummer when he wakes; won't they?' says 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. 'I'll
take him away ever so soon as I can,' thinks Pleasant with a sigh;
'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 gruffly, 'Nothing to boast on.' Having, in fact, returned
to life in an uncommonly sulky state.

'I 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.'

The patient's discontented growl of a reply is not intelligible; his
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.'

'I'll 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 impression that his nose is bleeding, and 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? O' 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 4

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 Wilfer 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 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 impossible 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
somebody 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
celebration. 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 beforehand, 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 uncomfortable a collar on as if he had been George the
Fourth, were deposited 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?'

'I 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.'

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
contents. 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, carefully 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 to ruminate before it. 'Oh, indeed, sir! I fancy I can guess
whom you think THAT'S like. But I'll 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 Lavvy think magnificent me fit for
nothing, but I intend to prove the contrary. I mean to be Cook
today.'

'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, I 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
recommend 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
other, 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-cellars 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
aggravation into one back! What's the matter, Ma? Ain't you well,
Ma?'

'Doubtless I am 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 I am uncomplaining, if I am silently contented with my
lot, let that suffice for my family.'

'Well, Ma,' returned Lavvy, '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 having 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 my 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.'

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 time,
is rendered uncertain by the arrival of a flag of truce in the person
of Mr George Sampson: bidden to the feast as a friend of the
family, whose affections were now understood to be in course of
transference from Bella to Lavinia, and whom Lavinia kept--
possibly in remembrance of his bad taste in having overlooked her
in the first instance--under a course of stinging discipline.

'I 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.

'I am surprised,' said Mr Sampson feebly, 'that Miss Bella
condescends to cook.'

Here Miss Lavinia descended on the ill-starred young gentleman
with a crushing supposition that at all events it was no business 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
illustrious guest: Mrs Wilfer first responding to her husband's
cheerful 'For what we are about to receive--'with a sepulchral
Amen, calculated 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 in 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, undertook 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 performed 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 supplemental cookery, and made him
very happy, but put him in mortal terror too by asking him when
they sat down at table again, 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 remonstrance, 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.

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
intervals 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?'

'I 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
honours of the first glass by proclaiming: 'R. W. I 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. I
think 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. R. W.,
it is appropriate to recall that it is for you to command and for me
to obey. It is your house, and you are master at your own table.
Both our healths!' Drinking the toast with tremendous stiffness.

'I really am a little afraid, my dear,' hinted the cherub meekly, 'that
you are not enjoying yourself?'

'On the contrary,' returned Mrs Wilfer, 'quite so. Why should I
not?'

'I thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might--'

'My face might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or
who should know it, if I smiled?'

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, 'naturally
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;
perhaps I was. Papa and Mamma were unquestionably tall. I have
rarely seen a finer women 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
impressiveness, until she should force that skulker to give himself
up. 'Mamma would appear to have had an indefinable foreboding
of what afterwards 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 number, 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 NOT
an engraver.'  (Here Mr Sampson said, with no reason whatever,
Of course not.)  'This gentleman was so obliging as to honour 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 favour 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 denominate 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 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 entertainment
was truly pitiable. For, not only was he exposed defenceless
to the harangues of Mrs Wilfer, but he received the utmost
contumely 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 gone.'

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; 'I am all right, my dear. Well, and how
do you get on, Bella?'

'I am not at all improved, Pa.'

'Ain't you really though?'

'No, Pa. On the contrary, I am worse.'

'Lor!' said the cherub.

'I am 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?'

'I 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,
and then laid it on her father's lip--'that's a kiss for you. And now I
am 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
comfortably 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?'

'I 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. I am astonished indeed. I wonder he committed
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.

'It'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.'

'I 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 I
am? 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 crying 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 provided
for and so raised in the world; but don't YOU cry, don't YOU cry.
I 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 uncomfortable.
Have you said No to anybody else, my dear?'

'No, Pa.'

'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! I am so sorry for it, I am
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.'

'I 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!'

Chapter 5

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? Ill news travels fast. We shall know full soon.

On that very night of her return from the Happy Return, something
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 snugness, which upholstering despotism had banished to
that spot when it inexorably set its face against Mr Boffin'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 particularly 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
words, Bella took her book 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?'

'You were saying, sir,' returned the Secretary, with an air of some
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 any salary when I was in
service.'

'My wages,' said the Secretary, correcting himself.

'Rokesmith, you are not proud, I hope?' observed Mr Boffin, eyeing
him askance.

'I 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
go well together? Why it stands 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 you sit down before?' asked Mr Boffin, distrustfully. 'I
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
acquainted with the duties of property. I 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 Boffin, 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
misunderstanding regarding what I buy for two hundred a year. If
I pay for a sheep, I buy it out and out. Similarly, if I pay for a
secretary, I buy HIM out and out.'

'In other words, you purchase my whole time?'

'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 to do. 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, 'I
couldn't go cutting about at my will and pleasure, and you won't
expect to go cutting about at your will and pleasure. You've rather
got into a habit of that, lately; but perhaps it was for want of a right
specification betwixt us. Now, let there be a right specification
betwixt us, and let it be this. If you want leave, ask for it.'

Again the Secretary bowed. His manner was uneasy and
astonished, and showed a sense of humiliation.

'I'll have a bell,' said Mr Boffin, 'hung from this room to yours, and
when I want you, I'll touch it. I don't call to mind that I have
anything more to say at the present moment.'

The Secretary rose, gathered up his papers, and withdrew. Bella's
eyes followed him to the door, lighted on Mr Boffin complacently
thrown back in his easy chair, and drooped over her book.

'I have let that chap, that young man of mine,' said Mr Boffin,
taking a trot up and down the room, get above his work. It won't
do. I must have him down a peg. A man of property owes a duty
to other men of property, and must look sharp after his inferiors.'

Bella felt that Mrs Boffin was not comfortable, and that the eyes of
that good creature sought to discover from her face what attention
she had given to this discourse, and what impression it had made
upon her. For which reason Bella's eyes drooped more engrossedly
over her book, and she turned the page with an air of profound
absorption in it.

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

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

'Excuse my putting it to you, Noddy, but now really! Haven't you
been a little strict with Mr Rokesmith to-night? Haven't you been
a little--just a little little--not quite like your old self?'

'Why, old woman, I hope so,' returned Mr Boffin, cheerfully, if not
boastfully.

'Hope so, deary?'

'Our old selves wouldn't do here, old lady. Haven't you found that
out yet? Our old selves would be fit for nothing here but to be
robbed and imposed upon. Our old selves weren't people of
fortune; our new selves are; it's a great difference.'

'Ah!' said Mrs Boffin, pausing in her work again, softly to draw a
long breath and to look at the fire. 'A great difference.'

'And we must be up to the difference,' pursued her husband; 'we
must be equal to the change; that's what we must be. We've got to
hold our own now, against everybody (for everybody's hand is
stretched out to be dipped into our pockets), and we have got to
recollect that money makes money, as well as makes everything
else.'

'Mentioning recollecting,' said Mrs Boffin, with her work
abandoned, her eyes upon the fire, and her chin upon her hand, 'do
you recollect, Noddy, how you said to Mr Rokesmith when he first
came to see us at the Bower, and you engaged him--how you said
to him that if it had pleased Heaven to send John Harmon to his
fortune safe, we could have been content with the one Mound
which was our legacy, and should never have wanted the rest?'

'Ay, I remember, old lady. But we hadn't tried what it was to have
the rest then. Our new shoes had come home, but we hadn't put
'em on. We're wearing 'em now, we're wearing 'em, and must step
out accordingly.'

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

'As to Rokesmith, that young man of mine,' said Mr Boffin,
dropping his voice and glancing towards the door with an
apprehension of being overheard by some eavesdropper there, 'it's
the same with him as with the footmen. I have found out that you
must either scrunch them, or let them scrunch you. If you ain't
imperious with 'em, they won't believe in your being any better
than themselves, if as good, after the stories (lies mostly) that they
have heard of your beginnings. There's nothing betwixt stiffening
yourself up, and throwing yourself away; take my word for that,
old lady.'

Bella ventured for a moment to look stealthily towards him under
her eyelashes, and she saw a dark cloud of suspicion,
covetousness, and conceit, overshadowing the once open face.

'Hows'ever,' said he, 'this isn't entertaining to Miss Bella. Is it,
Bella?'

A deceiving Bella she was, to look at him with that pensively
abstracted air, as if her mind were full of her book, and she had not
heard a single word!

'Hah! Better employed than to attend to it,' said Mr Boffin. 'That's
right, that's right. Especially as you have no call to be told how to
value yourself, my dear.'

Colouring a little under this compliment, Bella returned, 'I hope
sir, you don't think me vain?'

'Not a bit, my dear,' said Mr Boffin. 'But I think it's very creditable
in you, at your age, to be so well up with the pace of the world, and
to know what to go in for. You are right. Go in for money, my
love. Money's the article. You'll make money of your good looks,
and of the money Mrs Boffin and me will have the pleasure of
settling upon you, and you'll live and die rich. That's the state to
live and die in!' said Mr Boffin, in an unctuous manner. R--r--
rich!'

There was an expression of distress in Mrs Boffin's face, as, after
watching her husband's, she turned to their adopted girl, and said:

'Don't mind him, Bella, my dear.'

'Eh?' cried Mr Boffin. 'What! Not mind him?'

'I don't mean that,' said Mrs Boffin, with a worried look, 'but I
mean, don't believe him to be anything but good and generous,
Bella, because he is the best of men. No, I must say that much,
Noddy. You are always the best of men.'

She made the declaration as if he were objecting to it: which
assuredly he was not in any way.

'And as to you, my dear Bella,' said Mrs Boffin, still with that
distressed expression, 'he is so much attached to you, whatever he
says, that your own father has not a truer interest in you and can
hardly like you better than he does.'

'Says too!' cried Mr Boffin. 'Whatever he says! Why, I say so,
openly. Give me a kiss, my dear child, in saying Good Night, and
let me confirm what my old lady tells you. I am very fond of you,
my dear, and I am entirely of your mind, and you and I will take
care that you shall be rich. These good looks of yours (which you
have some right to be vain of; my dear, though you are not, you
know) are worth money, and you shall make money of 'em. The
money you will have, will be worth money, and you shall make
money of that too. There's a golden ball at your feet. Good night,
my dear.'

Somehow, Bella was not so well pleased with this assurance and
this prospect as she might have been. Somehow, when she put her
arms round Mrs Boffin's neck and said Good Night, she derived a
sense of unworthiness from the still anxious face of that good
woman and her obvious wish to excuse her husband. 'Why, what
need to excuse him?' thought Bella, sitting down in her own room.
'What he said was very sensible, I am sure, and very true, I am
sure. It is only what I often say to myself. Don't I like it then? No,
I don't like it, and, though he is my liberal benefactor, I disparage
him for it. Then pray,' said Bella, sternly putting the question to
herself in the looking-glass as usual, 'what do you mean by this,
you inconsistent little Beast?'

The looking-glass preserving a discreet ministerial silence when
thus called upon for explanation, Bella went to bed with a
weariness upon her spirit which was more than the weariness of
want of sleep. And again in the morning, she looked for the cloud,
and for the deepening of the cloud, upon the Golden Dustman's
face.

She had begun by this time to be his frequent companion in his
morning strolls about the streets, and it was at this time that he
made her a party to his engaging in a curious pursuit. Having been
hard at work in one dull enclosure all his life, he had a child's
delight in looking at shops. It had been one of the first novelties
and pleasures of his freedom, and was equally the delight of his
wife. For many years their only walks in London had been taken
on Sundays when the shops were shut; and when every day in the
week became their holiday, they derived an enjoyment from the
variety and fancy and beauty of the display in the windows, which
seemed incapable of exhaustion. As if the principal streets were a
great Theatre and the play were childishly new to them, Mr and
Mrs Boffin, from the beginning of Bella's intimacy in their house,
had been constantly in the front row, charmed with all they saw
and applauding vigorously. But now, Mr Boffin's interest began to
centre in book-shops; and more than that--for that of itself would
not have been much--in one exceptional kind of book.

'Look in here, my dear,' Mr Boffin would say, checking Bella's arm
at a bookseller's window; 'you can read at sight, and your eyes are
as sharp as they're bright. Now, look well about you, my dear, and
tell me if you see any book about a Miser.'

If Bella saw such a book, Mr Boffin would instantly dart in and
buy it. And still, as if they had not found it, they would seek out
another book-shop, and Mr Boffin would say, 'Now, look well all
round, my dear, for a Life of a Miser, or any book of that sort; any
Lives of odd characters who may have been Misers.'

Bella, thus directed, would examine the window with the greatest
attention, while Mr Boffin would examine her face. The moment
she pointed out any book as being entitled Lives of eccentric
personages, Anecdotes of strange characters, Records of
remarkable individuals, or anything to that purpose, Mr Boffin's
countenance would light up, and he would instantly dart in and
buy it. Size, price, quality, were of no account. Any book that
seemed to promise a chance of miserly biography, Mr Boffin
purchased without a moment's delay and carried home. Happening
to be informed by a bookseller that a portion of the Annual
Register was devoted to 'Characters', Mr Boffin at once bought a
whole set of that ingenious compilation, and began to carry it home
piecemeal, confiding a volume to Bella, and bearing three himself.
The completion of this labour occupied them about a fortnight.
When the task was done, Mr Boffin, with his appetite for Misers
whetted instead of satiated, began to look out again.

It very soon became unnecessary to tell Bella what to look for, and
an understanding was established between her and Mr Boffin that
she was always to look for Lives of Misers. Morning after
morning they roamed about the town together, pursuing this
singular research. Miserly literature not being abundant, the
proportion of failures to successes may have been as a hundred to
one; still Mr Boffin, never wearied, remained as avaricious for
misers as he had been at the first onset. It was curious that Bella
never saw the books about the house, nor did she ever hear from
Mr Boffin one word of reference to their contents. He seemed to
save up his Misers as they had saved up their money. As they had
been greedy for it, and secret about it, and had hidden it, so he was
greedy for them, and secret about them, and hid them. But beyond
all doubt it was to be noticed, and was by Bella very clearly
noticed, that, as he pursued the acquisition of those dismal records
with the ardour of Don Quixote for his books of chivalry, he began
to spend his money with a more sparing hand. And often when he
came out of a shop with some new account of one of those
wretched lunatics, she would almost shrink from the sly dry
chuckle with which he would take her arm again and trot away. It
did not appear that Mrs Boffin knew of this taste. He made no
allusion to it, except in the morning walks when he and Bella were
always alone; and Bella, partly under the impression that he took
her into his confidence by implication, and partly in remembrance
of Mrs Boffin's anxious face that night, held the same reserve.

While these occurrences were in progress, Mrs Lammle made the
discovery that Bella had a fascinating influence over her. The
Lammles, originally presented by the dear Veneerings, visited the
Boffins on all grand occasions, and Mrs Lammle had not
previously found this out; but now the knowledge came upon her
all at once. It was a most extraordinary thing (she said to Mrs
Boffin); she was foolishly susceptible of the power of beauty, but it
wasn't altogether that; she never had been able to resist a natural
grace of manner, but it wasn't altogether that; it was more than
that, and there was no name for the indescribable extent and degree
to which she was captivated by this charming girl.

This charming girl having the words repeated to her by Mrs Boffin
(who was proud of her being admired, and would have done
anything to give her pleasure), naturally recognized in Mrs
Lammle a woman of penetration and taste. Responding to the
sentiments, by being very gracious to Mrs Lammle, she gave that
lady the means of so improving her opportunity, as that the
captivation became reciprocal, though always wearing an
appearance of greater sobriety on Bella's part than on the
enthusiastic Sophronia's. Howbeit, they were so much together
that, for a time, the Boffin chariot held Mrs Lammle oftener than
Mrs Boffin: a preference of which the latter worthy soul was not in
the least jealous, placidly remarking, 'Mrs Lammle is a younger
companion for her than I am, and Lor! she's more fashionable.'

But between Bella Wilfer and Georgiana Podsnap there was this
one difference, among many others, that Bella was in no danger of
being captivated by Alfred. She distrusted and disliked him.
Indeed, her perception was so quick, and her observation so sharp,
that after all she mistrusted his wife too, though with her giddy
vanity and wilfulness she squeezed the mistrust away into a corner
of her mind, and blocked it up there.

Mrs Lammle took the friendliest interest in Bella's making a good
match. Mrs Lammle said, in a sportive way, she really must show
her beautiful Bella what kind of wealthy creatures she and Alfred
had on hand, who would as one man fall at her feet enslaved.
Fitting occasion made, Mrs Lammle accordingly produced the
most passable of those feverish, boastful, and indefinably loose
gentlemen who were always lounging in and out of the City on
questions of the Bourse and Greek and Spanish and India and
Mexican and par and premium and discount and three-quarters and
seven-eighths. Who in their agreeable manner did homage to
Bella as if she were a compound of fine girl, thorough-bred horse,
well-built drag, and remarkable pipe. But without the least effect,
though even Mr Fledgeby's attractions were cast into the scale.

'I fear, Bella dear,' said Mrs Lammle one day in the chariot, 'that
you will be very hard to please.'

'I don't expect to be pleased, dear,' said Bella, with a languid turn
of her eyes.

'Truly, my love,' returned Sophronia, shaking her head, and smiling
her best smile, 'it would not be very easy to find a man worthy of
your attractions.'

'The question is not a man, my dear,' said Bella, coolly, 'but an
establishment.'

'My love,' returned Mrs Lammle, 'your prudence amazes me--
where DID you study life so well!--you are right. In such a case as
yours, the object is a fitting establishment. You could not descend
to an inadequate one from Mr Boffin's house, and even if your
beauty alone could not command it, it is to be assumed that Mr and
Mrs Boffin will--'

'Oh! they have already,' Bella interposed.

'No! Have they really?'

A little vexed by a suspicion that she had spoken precipitately, and
withal a little defiant of her own vexation, Bella determined not to
retreat.

'That is to say,' she explained, 'they have told me they mean to
portion me as their adopted child, if you mean that. But don't
mention it.'

'Mention it!' replied Mrs Lammle, as if she were full of awakened
feeling at the suggestion of such an impossibility. 'Men-tion it!'

'I don't mind telling you, Mrs Lammle--' Bella began again.

'My love, say Sophronia, or I must not say Bella.'

With a little short, petulant 'Oh!' Bella complied. 'Oh!--Sophronia
then--I don't mind telling you, Sophronia, that I am convinced I
have no heart, as people call it; and that I think that sort of thing is
nonsense.'

'Brave girl!' murmured Mrs Lammle.

'And so,' pursued Bella, 'as to seeking to please myself, I don't;
except in the one respect I have mentioned. I am indifferent
otherwise.'

'But you can't help pleasing, Bella,' said Mrs Lammle, rallying her
with an arch look and her best smile, 'you can't help making a
proud and an admiring husband. You may not care to please
yourself, and you may not care to please him, but you are not a free
agent as to pleasing: you are forced to do that, in spite of yourself,
my dear; so it may be a question whether you may not as well
please yourself too, if you can.'

Now, the very grossness of this flattery put Bella upon proving that
she actually did please in spite of herself. She had a misgiving that
she was doing wrong--though she had an indistinct foreshadowing
that some harm might come of it thereafter, she little thought what
consequences it would really bring about--but she went on with her
confidence.

'Don't talk of pleasing in spite of one's self, dear,' said Bella. 'I
have had enough of that.'

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

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

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

'Tell me, Bella. Come, my dear. What provoking burr has been
inconveniently attracted to the charming skirts, and with difficulty
shaken off?'

'Provoking indeed,' said Bella, 'and no burr to boast of! But don't
ask me.'

'Shall I guess?'

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

'My dear! The hermit Secretary, who creeps up and down the back
stairs, and is never seen!'

'I don't know about his creeping up and down the back stairs,' said
Bella, rather contemptuously, 'further than knowing that he does no
such thing; and as to his never being seen, I should be content
never to have seen him, though he is quite as visible as you are.
But I pleased HIM (for my sins) and he had the presumption to tell
me so.'

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

'Are you sure of that, Sophronia?' said Bella. 'I am not. In fact, I
am sure of the contrary.'

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

'He appeared to be in his senses,' returned Bella, tossing her head,
'and he had plenty to say for himself. I told him my opinion of his
declaration and his conduct, and dismissed him. Of course this
has all been very inconvenient to me, and very disagreeable. It has
remained a secret, however. That word reminds me to observe,
Sophronia, that I have glided on into telling you the secret, and that
I rely upon you never to mention it.'

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

This time Sophronia was so much in earnest that she found it
necessary to bend forward in the carriage and give Bella a kiss. A
Judas order of kiss; for she thought, while she yet pressed Bella's
hand after giving it, 'Upon your own showing, you vain heartless
girl, puffed up by the doting folly of a dustman, I need have no
relenting towards YOU. If my husband, who sends me here,
should form any schemes for making YOU a victim, I should
certainly not cross him again.' In those very same moments, Bella
was thinking, 'Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I
told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have
withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in
spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?'

As usual, there was no answer in the looking-glass when she got
home and referred these questions to it. Perhaps if she had
consulted some better oracle, the result might have been more
satisfactory; but she did not, and all things consequent marched the
march before them.

On one point connected with the watch she kept on Mr Boffin, she
felt very inquisitive, and that was the question whether the
Secretary watched him too, and followed the sure and steady
change in him, as she did? Her very limited intercourse with Mr
Rokesmith rendered this hard to find out. Their communication
now, at no time extended beyond the preservation of commonplace
appearances before Mr and Mrs Boffin; and if Bella and the
Secretary were ever left alone together by any chance, he
immediately withdrew. She consulted his face when she could do
so covertly, as she worked or read, and could make nothing of it.
He looked subdued; but he had acquired a strong command of
feature, and, whenever Mr Boffin spoke to him in Bella's presence,
or whatever revelation of himself Mr Boffin made, the Secretary's
face changed no more than a wall. A slightly knitted brow, that
expressed nothing but an almost mechanical attention, and a
compression of the mouth, that might have been a guard against a
scornful smile--these she saw from morning to night, from day to
day, from week to week, monotonous, unvarying, set, as in a piece
of sculpture.

The worst of the matter was, that it thus fell out insensibly--and
most provokingly, as Bella complained to herself, in her impetuous
little manner--that her observation of Mr Boffin involved a
continual observation of Mr Rokesmith. 'Won't THAT extract a
look from him?'--'Can it be possible THAT makes no impression
on him?' Such questions Bella would propose to herself, often as
many times in a day as there were hours in it. Impossible to know.
Always the same fixed face.

'Can he be so base as to sell his very nature for two hundred a
year?' Bella would think. And then, 'But why not? It's a mere
question of price with others besides him. I suppose I would sell
mine, if I could get enough for it.' And so she would come round
again to the war with herself.

A kind of illegibility, though a different kind, stole over Mr
Boffin's face. Its old simplicity of expression got masked by a
certain craftiness that assimilated even his good-humour to itself.
His very smile was cunning, as if he had been studying smiles
among the portraits of his misers. Saving an occasional burst of
impatience, or coarse assertion of his mastery, his good-humour
remained to him, but it had now a sordid alloy of distrust; and
though his eyes should twinkle and all his face should laugh, he
would sit holding himself in his own arms, as if he had an
inclination to hoard himself up, and must always grudgingly stand
on the defensive.

What with taking heed of these two faces, and what with feeling
conscious that the stealthy occupation must set some mark on her
own, Bella soon began to think that there was not a candid or a
natural face among them all but Mrs Boffin's. None the less
because it was far less radiant than of yore, faithfully reflecting in
its anxiety and regret every line of change in the Golden
Dustman's.

'Rokesmith,' said Mr Boffin one evening when they were all in his
room again, and he and the Secretary had been going over some
accounts, 'I am spending too much money. Or leastways, you are
spending too much for me.'

'You are rich, sir.'

'I am not,' said Mr Boffin.

The sharpness of the retort was next to telling the Secretary that he
lied. But it brought no change of expression into the set face.

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

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

'Well,' returned Mr Boffin, 'if I am, that's my business. I am not
going to spend at this rate, to please you, or anybody. You
wouldn't like it, if it was your money.'

'Even in that impossible case, sir, I--'

'Hold your tongue!' said Mr Boffin. 'You oughtn't to like it in any
case. There! I didn't mean to he rude, but you put me out so, and
after all I'm master. I didn't intend to tell you to hold your tongue.
I beg your pardon. Don't hold your tongue. Only, don't contradict.
Did you ever come across the life of Mr Elwes?' referring to his
favourite subject at last.

'The miser?'

'Ah, people called him a miser. People are always calling other
people something. Did you ever read about him?'

'I think so.'

'He never owned to being rich, and yet he might have bought me
twice over. Did you ever hear of Daniel Dancer?'

'Another miser? Yes.'

'He was a good 'un,' said Mr Boffin, 'and he had a sister worthy of
him. They never called themselves rich neither. If they HAD
called themselves rich, most likely they wouldn't have been so.'

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

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

'Then they are not the Misers I mean. Those abject wretches--'

'Don't call names, Rokesmith,' said Mr Boffin.

'--That exemplary brother and sister--lived and died in the foulest
and filthiest degradation.'

'They pleased themselves,' said Mr Boffin, 'and I suppose they
could have done no more if they had spent their money. But
however, I ain't going to fling mine away. Keep the expenses
down. The fact is, you ain't enough here, Rokesmith. It wants
constant attention in the littlest things. Some of us will be dying in
a workhouse next.'

'As the persons you have cited,' quietly remarked the Secretary,
'thought they would, if I remember, sir.'

'And very creditable in 'em too,' said Mr Boffin. 'Very independent
in 'em! But never mind them just now. Have you given notice to
quit your lodgings?'

'Under your direction, I have, sir.'

'Then I tell you what,' said Mr Boffin; 'pay the quarter's rent--pay
the quarter's rent, it'll be the cheapest thing in the end--and come
here at once, so that you may be always on the spot, day and night,
and keep the expenses down. You'll charge the quarter's rent to
me, and we must try and save it somewhere. You've got some
lovely furniture; haven't you?'

'The furniture in my rooms is my own.'

'Then we shan't have to buy any for you. In case you was to think
it,' said Mr Boffin, with a look of peculiar shrewdness, 'so
honourably independent in you as to make it a relief to your mind,
to make that furniture over to me in the light of a set-off against the
quarter's rent, why ease your mind, ease your mind. I don't ask it,
but I won't stand in your way if you should consider it due to
yourself. As to your room, choose any empty room at the top of the
house.'

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

'You can take your pick,' said Mr Boffin, 'and it'll be as good as
eight or ten shillings a week added to your income. I won't deduct
for it; I look to you to make it up handsomely by keeping the
expenses down. Now, if you'll show a light, I'll come to your
office-room and dispose of a letter or two.'

On that clear, generous face of Mrs Boffin's, Bella had seen such
traces of a pang at the heart while this dialogue was being held,
that she had not the courage to turn her eyes to it when they were
left alone. Feigning to be intent on her embroidery, she sat plying
her needle until her busy hand was stopped by Mrs Boffin's hand
being lightly laid upon it. Yielding to the touch, she felt her hand
carried to the good soul's lips, and felt a tear fall on it.

'Oh, my loved husband!' said Mrs Boffin. 'This is hard to see and
hear. But my dear Bella, believe me that in spite of all the change
in him, he is the best of men.'

He came back, at the moment when Bella had taken the hand
comfortingly between her own.

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

'She is only praising you, sir,' said Bella.

'Praising me? You are sure? Not blaming me for standing on my
own defence against a crew of plunderers, who could suck me dry
by driblets? Not blaming me for getting a little hoard together?'

He came up to them, and his wife folded her hands upon his
shoulder, and shook her head as she laid it on her hands.

'There, there, there!' urged Mr Boffin, not unkindly. 'Don't take on,
old lady.'

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

'Nonsense! Recollect we are not our old selves. Recollect, we
must scrunch or be scrunched. Recollect, we must hold our own.
Recollect, money makes money. Don't you be uneasy, Bella, my
child; don't you be doubtful. The more I save, the more you shall
have.'

Bella thought it was well for his wife that she was musing with her
affectionate face on his shoulder; for there was a cunning light in
his eyes as he said all this, which seemed to cast a disagreeable
illumination on the change in him, and make it morally uglier.

Chapter 6

THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY

It had come to pass that Mr Silas Wegg now rarely attended the
minion of fortune and the worm of the hour, at his (the worm's and
minion's) own house, but lay under general instructions to await
him within a certain margin of hours at the Bower. Mr Wegg took
this arrangement in great dudgeon, because the appointed hours
were evening hours, and those he considered precious to the
progress of the friendly move. But it was quite in character, he
bitterly remarked to Mr Venus, that the upstart who had trampled
on those eminent creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt
Jane, and Uncle Parker, should oppress his literary man.

The Roman Empire having worked out its destruction, Mr Boffin
next appeared in a cab with Rollin's Ancient History, which
valuable work being found to possess lethargic properties, broke
down, at about the period when the whole of the army of
Alexander the Macedonian (at that time about forty thousand
strong) burst into tears simultaneously, on his being taken with a
shivering fit after bathing. The Wars of the Jews, likewise
languishing under Mr Wegg's generalship, Mr Boffin arrived in
another cab with Plutarch: whose Lives he found in the sequel
extremely entertaining, though he hoped Plutarch might not expect
him to believe them all. What to believe, in the course of his
reading, was Mr Boffin's chief literary difficulty indeed; for some
time he was divided in his mind between half, all, or none; at
length, when he decided, as a moderate man, to compound with
half, the question still remained, which half? And that stumbling-
block he never got over.

One evening, when Silas Wegg had grown accustomed to the
arrival of his patron in a cab, accompanied by some profane
historian charged with unutterable names of incomprehensible
peoples, of impossible descent, waging wars any number of years
and syllables long, and carrying illimitable hosts and riches about,
with the greatest ease, beyond the confines of geography--one
evening the usual time passed by, and no patron appeared. After
half an hour's grace, Mr Wegg proceeded to the outer gate, and
there executed a whistle, conveying to Mr Venus, if perchance
within hearing, the tidings of his being at home and disengaged.
Forth from the shelter of a neighbouring wall, Mr Venus then
emerged.

'Brother in arms,' said Mr Wegg, in excellent spirits, 'welcome!'

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

'Walk in, brother,' said Silas, clapping him on the shoulder, 'and
take your seat in my chimley corner; for what says the ballad?

     "No malice to dread, sir,
      And no falsehood to fear,
      But truth to delight me, Mr Venus,
      And I forgot what to cheer.
      Li toddle de om dee.
      And something to guide,
      My ain fireside, sir,
      My ain fireside."'

With this quotation (depending for its neatness rather on the spirit
than the words), Mr Wegg conducted his guest to his hearth.

'And you come, brother,' said Mr Wegg, in a hospitable glow, 'you
come like I don't know what--exactly like it--I shouldn't know you
from it--shedding a halo all around you.'

'What kind of halo?' asked Mr Venus.

''Ope sir,' replied Silas. 'That's YOUR halo.'

Mr Venus appeared doubtful on the point, and looked rather
discontentedly at the fire.

'We'll devote the evening, brother,' exclaimed Wegg, 'to prosecute
our friendly move. And arterwards, crushing a flowing wine-cup--
which I allude to brewing rum and water--we'll pledge one
another. For what says the Poet?

     "And you needn't Mr Venus be your black bottle,
      For surely I'll be mine,
      And we'll take a glass with a slice of lemon in it to which
       you're partial,
      For auld lang syne."'

This flow of quotation and hospitality in Wegg indicated his
observation of some little querulousness on the part of Venus.

'Why, as to the friendly move,' observed the last-named gentleman,
rubbing his knees peevishly, 'one of my objections to it is, that it
DON'T move.'

'Rome, brother,' returned Wegg: 'a city which (it may not be
generally known) originated in twins and a wolf; and ended in
Imperial marble: wasn't built in a day.'

'Did I say it was?' asked Venus.

'No, you did not, brother. Well-inquired.'

'But I do say,' proceeded Venus, 'that I am taken from among my
trophies of anatomy, am called upon to exchange my human
warious for mere coal-ashes warious, and nothing comes of it. I
think I must give up.'

'No, sir!' remonstrated Wegg, enthusiastically. 'No, Sir!

"Charge, Chester, charge,
On, Mr Venus, on!"

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

'It's not so much saying it that I object to,' returned Mr Venus, 'as
doing it. And having got to do it whether or no, I can't afford to
waste my time on groping for nothing in cinders.'

'But think how little time you have given to the move, sir, after all,'
urged Wegg. 'Add the evenings so occupied together, and what do
they come to? And you, sir, harmonizer with myself in opinions,
views, and feelings, you with the patience to fit together on wires
the whole framework of society--I allude to the human skelinton--
you to give in so soon!'

'I don't like it,' returned Mr Venus moodily, as he put his head
between his knees and stuck up his dusty hair. 'And there's no
encouragement to go on.'

'Not them Mounds without,' said Mr Wegg, extending his right
hand with an air of solemn reasoning, 'encouragement? Not them
Mounds now looking down upon us?'

'They're too big,' grumbled Venus. 'What's a scratch here and a
scrape there, a poke in this place and a dig in the other, to them.
Besides; what have we found?'

'What HAVE we found?' cried Wegg, delighted to be able to
acquiesce. 'Ah! There I grant you, comrade. Nothing. But on the
contrary, comrade, what MAY we find? There you'll grant me.
Anything.'

'I don't like it,' pettishly returned Venus as before. 'I came into it
without enough consideration. And besides again. Isn't your own
Mr Boffin well acquainted with the Mounds? And wasn't he well
acquainted with the deceased and his ways? And has he ever
showed any expectation of finding anything?'

At that moment wheels were heard.

'Now, I should be loth,' said Mr Wegg, with an air of patient
injury, 'to think so ill of him as to suppose him capable of coming
at this time of night. And yet it sounds like him.'

A ring at the yard bell.

'It is him,' said Mr Wegg, 'and he it capable of it. I am sorry,
because I could have wished to keep up a little lingering fragment
of respect for him.'

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

'Keep your seat, Mr Venus,' said Wegg. 'He may not stop.' And
then called out, 'Halloa, sir! Halloa! I'm with you directly, sir!
Half a minute, Mr Boffin. Coming, sir, as fast as my leg will bring
me!' And so with a show of much cheerful alacrity stumped out to
the gate with a light, and there, through the window of a cab,
descried Mr Boffin inside, blocked up with books.

'Here! lend a hand, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin excitedly, 'I can't get out
till the way is cleared for me. This is the Annual Register, Wegg,
in a cab-full of wollumes. Do you know him?'

'Know the Animal Register, sir?' returned the Impostor, who had
caught the name imperfectly. 'For a trifling wager, I think I could
find any Animal in him, blindfold, Mr Boffin.'

'And here's Kirby's Wonderful Museum,' said Mr Boffin, 'and
Caulfield's Characters, and Wilson's. Such Characters, Wegg,
such Characters! I must have one or two of the best of 'em to-
night. It's amazing what places they used to put the guineas in,
wrapped up in rags. Catch hold of that pile of wollumes, Wegg, or
it'll bulge out and burst into the mud. Is there anyone about, to
help?'

'There's a friend of mine, sir, that had the intention of spending the
evening with me when I gave you up--much against my will--for
the night.'

'Call him out,' cried Mr Boffin in a bustle; 'get him to bear a hand.
Don't drop that one under your arm. It's Dancer. Him and his
sister made pies of a dead sheep they found when they were out a
walking. Where's your friend? Oh, here's your friend. Would you
be so good as help Wegg and myself with these books? But don't
take Jemmy Taylor of Southwark, nor yet Jemmy Wood of
Gloucester. These are the two Jemmys. I'll carry them myself.'

Not ceasing to talk and bustle, in a state of great excitement, Mr
Boffin directed the removal and arrangement of the books,
appearing to be in some sort beside himself until they were all
deposited on the floor, and the cab was dismissed.

'There!' said Mr Boffin, gloating over them. 'There they are, like
the four-and-twenty fiddlers--all of a row. Get on your spectacles,
Wegg; I know where to find the best of 'em, and we'll have a taste
at once of what we have got before us. What's your friend's name?'

Mr Wegg presented his friend as Mr Venus.

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

'Of Clerkenwell, sir,' said Mr Venus.

'Why, I've heard of you,' cried Mr Boffin, 'I heard of you in the old
man's time. You knew him. Did you ever buy anything of him?'
With piercing eagerness.

'No, sir,' returned Venus.

'But he showed you things; didn't he?'

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

'What did he show you?' asked Mr Boffin, putting his hands
behind him, and eagerly advancing his head. 'Did he show you
boxes, little cabinets, pocket-books, parcels, anything locked or
sealed, anything tied up?'

Mr Venus shook his head.

'Are you a judge of china?'

Mr Venus again shook his head.

'Because if he had ever showed you a teapot, I should be glad to
know of it,' said Mr Boffin. And then, with his right hand at his
lips, repeated thoughtfully, 'a Teapot, a Teapot', and glanced over
the books on the floor, as if he knew there was something
interesting connected with a teapot, somewhere among them.

Mr Wegg and Mr Venus looked at one another wonderingly: and
Mr Wegg, in fitting on his spectacles, opened his eyes wide, over
their rims, and tapped the side of his nose: as an admonition to
Venus to keep himself generally wide awake.

'A Teapot,' repeated Mr Boffin, continuing to muse and survey the
books; 'a Teapot, a Teapot. Are you ready, Wegg?'

'I am at your service, sir,' replied that gentleman, taking his usual
seat on the usual settle, and poking his wooden leg under the table
before it. 'Mr Venus, would you make yourself useful, and take a
seat beside me, sir, for the conveniency of snuffing the candles?'

Venus complying with the invitation while it was yet being given,
Silas pegged at him with his wooden leg, to call his particular
attention to Mr Boffin standing musing before the fire, in the space
between the two settles.

'Hem! Ahem!' coughed Mr Wegg to attract his employer's
attention. 'Would you wish to commence with an Animal, sir--
from the Register?'

'No,' said Mr Boffin, 'no, Wegg.' With that, producing a little book
from his breast-pocket, he handed it with great care to the literary
gentlemen, and inquired, 'What do you call that, Wegg?'

'This, sir,' replied Silas, adjusting his spectacles, and referring to
the title-page, 'is Merryweather's Lives and Anecdotes of Misers.
Mr Venus, would you make yourself useful and draw the candles a
little nearer, sir?' This to have a special opportunity of bestowing a
stare upon his comrade.

'Which of 'em have you got in that lot?' asked Mr Boffin. 'Can you
find out pretty easy?'

'Well, sir,' replied Silas, turning to the table of contents and slowly
fluttering the leaves of the book, 'I should say they must be pretty
well all here, sir; here's a large assortment, sir; my eye catches
John Overs, sir, John Little, sir, Dick Jarrel, John Elwes, the
Reverend Mr Jones of Blewbury, Vulture Hopkins, Daniel Dancer-
-'

'Give us Dancer, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin.

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

'Page a hundred and nine, Mr Boffin. Chapter eight. Contents of
chapter, "His birth and estate. His garments and outward
appearance. Miss Dancer and her feminine graces. The Miser's
Mansion. The finding of a treasure. The Story of the Mutton Pies.
A Miser's Idea of Death. Bob, the Miser's cur. Griffiths and his
Master. How to turn a penny. A substitute for a Fire. The
Advantages of keeping a Snuff-box. The Miser dies without a
Shirt. The Treasures of a Dunghill--"'

'Eh? What's that?' demanded Mr Boffin.

'"The Treasures," sir,' repeated Silas, reading very distinctly, '"of a
Dunghill." Mr Venus, sir, would you obleege with the snuffers?'
This, to secure attention to his adding with his lips only, 'Mounds!'

Mr Boffin drew an arm-chair into the space where he stood, and
said, seating himself and slyly rubbing his hands:

'Give us Dancer.'

Mr Wegg pursued the biography of that eminent man through its
various phases of avarice and dirt, through Miss Dancer's death on
a sick regimen of cold dumpling, and through Mr Dancer's keeping
his rags together with a hayband, and warming his dinner by
sitting upon it, down to the consolatory incident of his dying naked
in a sack. After which he read on as follows:

'"The house, or rather the heap of ruins, in which Mr Dancer lived,
and which at his death devolved to the right of Captain Holmes,
was a most miserable, decayed building, for it had not been
repaired for more than half a century."'

(Here Mr Wegg eyes his comrade and the room in which they sat:
which had not been repaired for a long time.)

'"But though poor in external structure, the ruinous fabric was very
rich in the interior. It took many weeks to explore its whole
contents; and Captain Holmes found it a very agreeable task to
dive into the miser's secret hoards."'

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

'"One of Mr Dancer's richest escretoires was found to be a
dungheap in the cowhouse; a sum but little short of two thousand
five hundred pounds was contained in this rich piece of manure;
and in an old jacket, carefully tied, and strongly nailed down to the
manger, in bank notes and gold were found five hundred pounds
more."'

(Here Mr Wegg's wooden leg started forward under the table, and
slowly elevated itself as he read on.)

'"Several bowls were discovered filled with guineas and half-
guineas; and at different times on searching the corners of the
house they found various parcels of bank notes. Some were
crammed into the crevices of the wall"';

(Here Mr Venus looked at the wall.)

'"Bundles were hid under the cushions and covers of the chairs"';

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

'"Some were reposing snugly at the back of the drawers; and notes
amounting to six hundred pounds were found neatly doubled up in
the inside of an old teapot. In the stable the Captain found jugs
full of old dollars and shillings. The chimney was not left
unsearched, and paid very well for the trouble; for in nineteen
different holes, all filled with soot, were found various sums of
money, amounting together to more than two hundred pounds."'

On the way to this crisis Mr Wegg's wooden leg had gradually
elevated itself more and more, and he had nudged Mr Venus with
his opposite elbow deeper and deeper, until at length the
preservation of his balance became incompatible with the two
actions, and he now dropped over sideways upon that gentleman,
squeezing him against the settle's edge. Nor did either of the two,
for some few seconds, make any effort to recover himself; both
remaining in a kind of pecuniary swoon.

But the sight of Mr Boffin sitting in the arm-chair hugging himself,
with his eyes upon the fire, acted as a restorative. Counterfeiting a
sneeze to cover their movements, Mr Wegg, with a spasmodic
'Tish-ho!' pulled himself and Mr Venus up in a masterly manner.

'Let's have some more,' said Mr Boffin, hungrily.

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

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

He did not appear to have hidden anything, so went off rather
flatly. But an exemplary lady named Wilcocks, who had stowed
away gold and silver in a pickle-pot in a clock-case, a canister-full
of treasure in a hole under her stairs, and a quantity of money in an
old rat-trap, revived the interest. To her succeeded another lady,
claiming to be a pauper, whose wealth was found wrapped up in
little scraps of paper and old rag. To her, another lady, apple-
woman by trade, who had saved a fortune of ten thousand pounds
and hidden it 'here and there, in cracks and corners, behind bricks
and under the flooring.' To her, a French gentleman, who had
crammed up his chimney, rather to the detriment of its drawing
powers, 'a leather valise, containing twenty thousand francs, gold
coins, and a large quantity of precious stones,' as discovered by a
chimneysweep after his death. By these steps Mr Wegg arrived at
a concluding instance of the human Magpie:

'"Many years ago, there lived at Cambridge a miserly old couple of
the name of Jardine: they had two sons: the father was a perfect
miser, and at his death one thousand guineas were discovered
secreted in his bed. The two sons grew up as parsimonious as
their sire. When about twenty years of age, they commenced
business at Cambridge as drapers, and they continued there until
their death. The establishment of the Messrs Jardine was the most
dirty of all the shops in Cambridge. Customers seldom went in to
purchase, except perhaps out of curiosity. The brothers were most
disreputable-looking beings; for, although surrounded with gay
apparel as their staple in trade, they wore the most filthy rags
themselves. It is said that they had no bed, and, to save the
expense of one, always slept on a bundle of packing-cloths under
the counter. In their housekeeping they were penurious in the
extreme. A joint of meat did not grace their board for twenty years.
Yet when the first of the brothers died, the other, much to his
surprise, found large sums of money which had been secreted even
from him.'

'There!' cried Mr Boffin. 'Even from him, you see! There was only
two of 'em, and yet one of 'em hid from the other.'

Mr Venus, who since his introduction to the French gentleman,
had been stooping to peer up the chimney, had his attention
recalled by the last sentence, and took the liberty of repeating it.

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

'I beg your pardon, sir?'

'Do you like what Wegg's been a-reading?'

Mr Venus answered that he found it extremely interesting.

'Then come again,' said Mr Boffin, 'and hear some more. Come
when you like; come the day after to-morrow, half an hour sooner.
There's plenty more; there's no end to it.'

Mr Venus expressed his acknowledgments and accepted the
invitation.

'It's wonderful what's been hid, at one time and another,' said Mr
Boffin, ruminating; 'truly wonderful.'

'Meaning sir,' observed Wegg, with a propitiatory face to draw him
out, and with another peg at his friend and brother, 'in the way of
money?'

'Money,' said Mr Boffin. 'Ah! And papers.'

Mr Wegg, in a languid transport, again dropped over on Mr
Venus, and again recovering himself, masked his emotions with a
sneeze.

'Tish-ho! Did you say papers too, sir? Been hidden, sir?'

'Hidden and forgot,' said Mr Boffin. 'Why the bookseller that sold
me the Wonderful Museum--where's the Wonderful Museum?' He
was on his knees on the floor in a moment, groping eagerly among
the books.

'Can I assist you, sir?' asked Wegg.

'No, I have got it; here it is,' said Mr Boflin, dusting it with the
sleeve of his coat. 'Wollume four. I know it was the fourth
wollume, that the bookseller read it to me out of. Look for it,
Wegg.'

Silas took the book and turned the leaves.

'Remarkable petrefaction, sir?'

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

'Memoirs of General John Reid, commonly called The Walking
Rushlight, sir? With portrait?'

'No, nor yet him,' said Mr Boffin.

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

'To hide it?' asked Mr Boffin.

'Why, no, sir,' replied Wegg, consulting the text, 'it appears to have
been done by accident. Oh! This next must be it. "Singular
discovery of a will, lost twenty-one years."'

'That's it!' cried Mr Boffin. 'Read that.'

'"A most extraordinary case,"' read Silas Wegg aloud, '"was tried at
the last Maryborough assizes in Ireland. It was briefly this.
Robert Baldwin, in March 1782, made his will, in which he
devised the lands now in question, to the children of his youngest
son; soon after which his faculties failed him, and he became
altogether childish and died, above eighty years old. The
defendant, the eldest son, immediately afterwards gave out that his
father had destroyed the will; and no will being found, he entered
into possession of the lands in question, and so matters remained
for twenty-one years, the whole family during all that time
believing that the father had died without a will. But after twenty-
one years the defendant's wife died, and he very soon afterwards, at
the age of seventy-eight, married a very young woman: which
caused some anxiety to his two sons, whose poignant expressions
of this feeling so exasperated their father, that he in his resentment
executed a will to disinherit his eldest son, and in his fit of anger
showed it to his second son, who instantly determined to get at it,
and destroy it, in order to preserve the property to his brother.
With this view, he broke open his father's desk, where he found--
not his father's will which he sought after, but the will of his
grandfather, which was then altogether forgotten in the family."'

'There!' said Mr Boffin. 'See what men put away and forget, or
mean to destroy, and don't!' He then added in a slow tone, 'As--
ton--ish--ing!' And as he rolled his eyes all round the room, Wegg
and Venus likewise rolled their eyes all round the room. And then
Wegg, singly, fixed his eyes on Mr Boffin looking at the fire again;
as if he had a mind to spring upon him and demand his thoughts or
his life.

'However, time's up for to-night,' said Mr Boffin, waving his hand
after a silence. 'More, the day after to-morrow. Range the books
upon the shelves, Wegg. I dare say Mr Venus will be so kind as
help you.'

While speaking, he thrust his hand into the breast of his outer coat,
and struggled with some object there that was too large to be got
out easily. What was the stupefaction of the friendly movers when
this object at last emerging, proved to be a much-dilapidated dark
lantern!

Without at all noticing the effect produced by this little instrument,
Mr Boffin stood it on his knee, and, producing a box of matches,
deliberately lighted the candle in the lantern, blew out the kindled
match, and cast the end into the fire. 'I'm going, Wegg,' he then
announced, 'to take a turn about the place and round the yard. I
don't want you. Me and this same lantern have taken hundreds--
thousands--of such turns in our time together.'

'But I couldn't think, sir--not on any account, I couldn't,'--Wegg
was politely beginning, when Mr Boffin, who had risen and was
going towards the door, stopped:

'I have told you that I don't want you, Wegg.'

Wegg looked intelligently thoughtful, as if that had not occurred to
his mind until he now brought it to bear on the circumstance. He
had nothing for it but to let Mr Boffin go out and shut the door
behind him. But, the instant he was on the other side of it, Wegg
clutched Venus with both hands, and said in a choking whisper, as
if he were being strangled:

'Mr Venus, he must be followed, he must be watched, he mustn't
be lost sight of for a moment.'

'Why mustn't he?' asked Venus, also strangling.

'Comrade, you might have noticed I was a little elewated in spirits
when you come in to-night. I've found something.'

'What have you found?' asked Venus, clutching him with both
hands, so that they stood interlocked like a couple of preposterous
gladiators.

'There's no time to tell you now. I think he must have gone to look
for it. We must have an eye upon him instantly.'

Releasing each other, they crept to the door, opened it softly, and
peeped out. It was a cloudy night, and the black shadow of the
Mounds made the dark yard darker. 'If not a double swindler,'
whispered Wegg, 'why a dark lantern? We could have seen what
he was about, if he had carried a light one. Softly, this way.'

Cautiously along the path that was bordered by fragments of
crockery set in ashes, the two stole after him. They could hear him
at his peculiar trot, crushing the loose cinders as he went. 'He
knows the place by heart,' muttered Silas, 'and don't need to turn
his lantern on, confound him!' But he did turn it on, almost in that
same instant, and flashed its light upon the first of the Mounds.

'Is that the spot?' asked Venus in a whisper.

'He's warm,' said Silas in the same tone. 'He's precious warm.
He's close. I think he must be going to look for it. What's that he's
got in his hand?'

'A shovel,' answered Venus. 'And he knows how to use it,
remember, fifty times as well as either of us.'

'If he looks for it and misses it, partner,' suggested Wegg, 'what
shall we do?'

'First of all, wait till he does,' said Venus.

Discreet advice too, for he darkened his lantern again, and the
mound turned black. After a few seconds, he turned the light on
once more, and was seen standing at the foot of the second mound,
slowly raising the lantern little by little until he held it up at arm's
length, as if he were examining the condition of the whole surface.

'That can't be the spot too?' said Venus.

'No,' said Wegg, 'he's getting cold.'

'It strikes me,' whispered Venus, 'that he wants to find out whether
any one has been groping about there.'

'Hush!' returned Wegg, 'he's getting colder and colder.--Now he's
freezing!'

This exclamation was elicited by his having turned the lantern off
again, and on again, and being visible at the foot of the third
mound.

'Why, he's going up it!' said Venus.

'Shovel and all!' said Wegg.

At a nimbler trot, as if the shovel over his shoulder stimulated him
by reviving old associations, Mr Boffin ascended the 'serpentining
walk', up the Mound which he had described to Silas Wegg on the
occasion of their beginning to decline and fall. On striking into it
he turned his lantern off. The two followed him, stooping low, so
that their figures might make no mark in relief against the sky
when he should turn his lantern on again. Mr Venus took the lead,
towing Mr Wegg, in order that his refractory leg might be
promptly extricated from any pitfalls it should dig for itself. They
could just make out that the Golden Dustman stopped to breathe.
Of course they stopped too, instantly.

'This is his own Mound,' whispered Wegg, as he recovered his
wind, 'this one.

'Why all three are his own,' returned Venus.

'So he thinks; but he's used to call this his own, because it's the one
first left to him; the one that was his legacy when it was all he took
under the will.'

'When he shows his light,' said Venus, keeping watch upon his
dusky figure all the time, 'drop lower and keep closer.'

He went on again, and they followed again. Gaining the top of the
Mound, he turned on his light--but only partially--and stood it on
the ground. A bare lopsided weatherbeaten pole was planted in the
ashes there, and had been there many a year. Hard by this pole, his
lantern stood: lighting a few feet of the lower part of it and a little
of the ashy surface around, and then casting off a purposeless little
clear trail of light into the air.

'He can never be going to dig up the pole!' whispered Venus as
they dropped low and kept close.

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

He was going to dig, with whatsoever object, for he tucked up his
cuffs and spat on his hands, and then went at it like an old digger
as he was. He had no design upon the pole, except that he
measured a shovel's length from it before beginning, nor was it his
purpose to dig deep. Some dozen or so of expert strokes sufficed.
Then, he stopped, looked down into the cavity, bent over it, and
took out what appeared to be an ordinary case-bottle: one of those
squat, high-shouldered, short-necked glass bottles which the
Dutchman is said to keep his Courage in. As soon as he had done
this, he turned off his lantern, and they could hear that he was
filling up the hole in the dark. The ashes being easily moved by a
skilful hand, the spies took this as a hint to make off in good time.
Accordingly, Mr Venus slipped past Mr Wegg and towed him
down. But Mr Wegg's descent was not accomplished without
some personal inconvenience, for his self-willed leg sticking into
the ashes about half way down, and time pressing, Mr Venus took
the liberty of hauling him from his tether by the collar: which
occasioned him to make the rest of the journey on his back, with
his head enveloped in the skirts of his coat, and his wooden leg
coming last, like a drag. So flustered was Mr Wegg by this mode
of travelling, that when he was set on the level ground with his
intellectual developments uppermost, he was quite unconscious of
his bearings, and had not the least idea where his place of
residence was to be found, until Mr Venus shoved him into it.
Even then he staggered round and round, weakly staring about
him, until Mr Venus with a hard brush brushed his senses into him
and the dust out of him.

Mr Boffin came down leisurely, for this brushing process had been
well accomplished, and Mr Venus had had time to take his breath,
before he reappeared. That he had the bottle somewhere about him
could not be doubted; where, was not so clear. He wore a large
rough coat, buttoned over, and it might be in any one of half a
dozen pockets.

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

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

'Bile,' said Mr Boffin, blowing out the light in the lantern, shutting
it up, and stowing it away in the breast of his coat as before. 'Are
you subject to bile, Wegg?'

Mr Wegg again replied, with strict adherence to truth, that he
didn't think he had ever had a similar sensation in his head, to
anything like the same extent.

'Physic yourself to-morrow, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin, 'to be in order
for next night. By-the-by, this neighbourhood is going to have a
loss, Wegg.'

'A loss, sir?'

'Going to lose the Mounds.'

The friendly movers made such an obvious effort not to look at one
another, that they might as well have stared at one another with all
their might.

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

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

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

'Yes,' said Mr Boffin, rubbing his ear in his old way, with that new
touch of craftiness added to it. 'It has fetched a penny. It'll begin
to be carted off to-morrow.'

'Have you been out to take leave of your old friend, sir?' asked
Silas, jocosely.

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

He was so sudden and rough, that Wegg, who had been hovering
closer and closer to his skirts, despatching the back of his hand on
exploring expeditions in search of the bottle's surface, retired two
or three paces.

'No offence, sir,' said Wegg, humbly. 'No offence.'

Mr Boffin eyed him as a dog might eye another dog who wanted
his bone; and actually retorted with a low growl, as the dog might
have retorted.

'Good-night,' he said, after having sunk into a moody silence, with
his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes suspiciously
wandering about Wegg.--'No! stop there. I know the way out, and
I want no light.'

Avarice, and the evening's legends of avarice, and the
inflammatory effect of what he had seen, and perhaps the rush of
his ill-conditioned blood to his brain in his descent, wrought Silas
Wegg to such a pitch of insatiable appetite, that when the door
closed he made a swoop at it and drew Venus along with him.

'He mustn't go,' he cried. 'We mustn't let him go? He has got that
bottle about him. We must have that bottle.'

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

'Wouldn't I? Yes I would. I'd take it by any force, I'd have it at
any price! Are you so afraid of one old man as to let him go, you
coward?'

'I am so afraid of you, as not to let YOU go,' muttered Venus,
sturdily, clasping him in his arms.

'Did you hear him?' retorted Wegg. 'Did you hear him say that he
was resolved to disappoint us? Did you hear him say, you cur, that
he was going to have the Mounds cleared off, when no doubt the
whole place will be rummaged? If you haven't the spirit of a
mouse to defend your rights, I have. Let me go after him.'

As in his wildness he was making a strong struggle for it, Mr
Venus deemed it expedient to lift him, throw him, and fall with
him; well knowing that, once down, he would not he up again
easily with his wooden leg. So they both rolled on the floor, and,
as they did so, Mr Boffin shut the gate.

Chapter 7

THE FRIENDLY MOVE TAKES UP A STRONG POSITION

The friendly movers sat upright on the floor, panting and eyeing
one another, after Mr Boffin had slammed the gate and gone away.
In the weak eyes of Venus, and in every reddish dust-coloured hair
in his shock of hair, there was a marked distrust of Wegg and an
alertness to fly at him on perceiving the smallest occasion. In the
hard-grained face of Wegg, and in his stiff knotty figure (he looked
like a German wooden toy), there was expressed a politic
conciliation, which had no spontaneity in it. Both were flushed,
flustered, and rumpled, by the late scuffle; and Wegg, in coming to
the ground, had received a humming knock on the back of his
devoted head, which caused him still to rub it with an air of having
been highly--but disagreeably--astonished. Each was silent for
some time, leaving it to the other to begin.

'Brother,' said Wegg, at length breaking the silence, 'you were
right, and I was wrong. I forgot myself.'

Mr Venus knowingly cocked his shock of hair, as rather thinking
Mr Wegg had remembered himself, in respect of appearing
without any disguise.

'But comrade,' pursued Wegg, 'it was never your lot to know Miss
Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, nor Uncle Parker.'

Mr Venus admitted that he had never known those distinguished
persons, and added, in effect, that he had never so much as desired
the honour of their acquaintance.

'Don't say that, comrade!' retorted Wegg: 'No, don't say that!
Because, without having known them, you never can fully know
what it is to be stimilated to frenzy by the sight of the Usurper.'

Offering these excusatory words as if they reflected great credit on
himself, Mr Wegg impelled himself with his hands towards a chair
in a corner of the room, and there, after a variety of awkward
gambols, attained a perpendicular position. Mr Venus also rose.

'Comrade,' said Wegg, 'take a seat. Comrade, what a speaking
countenance is yours!'

Mr Venus involuntarily smoothed his countenance, and looked at
his hand, as if to see whether any of its speaking properties came
off.

'For clearly do I know, mark you,' pursued Wegg, pointing his
words with his forefinger, 'clearly do I know what question your
expressive features puts to me.'

'What question?' said Venus.

'The question,' returned Wegg, with a sort of joyful affability, 'why
I didn't mention sooner, that I had found something. Says your
speaking countenance to me: "Why didn't you communicate that,
when I first come in this evening? Why did you keep it back till
you thought Mr Boffin had come to look for the article?" Your
speaking countenance,' said Wegg, 'puts it plainer than language.
Now, you can't read in my face what answer I give?'

'No, I can't,' said Venus.

'I knew it! And why not?' returned Wegg, with the same joyful
candour. 'Because I lay no claims to a speaking countenance.
Because I am well aware of my deficiencies. All men are not
gifted alike. But I can answer in words. And in what words?
These. I wanted to give you a delightful sap--pur--IZE!'

Having thus elongated and emphasized the word Surprise, Mr
Wegg shook his friend and brother by both hands, and then
clapped him on both knees, like an affectionate patron who
entreated him not to mention so small a service as that which it
had been his happy privilege to render.

'Your speaking countenance, ' said Wegg, 'being answered to its
satisfaction, only asks then, "What have you found?" Why, I hear
it say the words!'

'Well?' retorted Venus snappishly, after waiting in vain. 'If you
hear it say the words, why don't you answer it?'

'Hear me out!' said Wegg. 'I'm a-going to. Hear me out! Man and
brother, partner in feelings equally with undertakings and actions, I
have found a cash-box.'

'Where?'

'--Hear me out!' said Wegg. (He tried to reserve whatever he could,
and, whenever disclosure was forced upon him, broke into a
radiant gush of Hear me out.) 'On a certain day, sir--'

'When?' said Venus bluntly.

'N--no,' returned Wegg, shaking his head at once observantly,
thoughtfully, and playfully. 'No, sir! That's not your expressive
countenance which asks that question. That's your voice; merely
your voice. To proceed. On a certain day, sir, I happened to be
walking in the yard--taking my lonely round--for in the words of a
friend of my own family, the author of All's Well arranged as a
duett:

     "Deserted, as you will remember Mr Venus, by the waning
       moon,
      When stars, it will occur to you before I mention it, proclaim
       night's cheerless noon,
      On tower, fort, or tented ground,
      The sentry walks his lonely round,
      The sentry walks:"

--under those circumstances, sir, I happened to be walking in the
yard early one afternoon, and happened to have an iron rod in my
hand, with which I have been sometimes accustomed to beguile
the monotony of a literary life, when I struck it against an object
not necessary to trouble you by naming--'

'It is necessary. What object?' demanded Venus, in a wrathful
tone.

'--Hear me out!' said Wegg. 'The Pump.--When I struck it against
the Pump, and found, not only that the top was loose and opened
with a lid, but that something in it rattled. That something,
comrade, I discovered to be a small flat oblong cash-box. Shall I
say it was disappintingly light?'

'There were papers in it,' said Venus.

'There your expressive countenance speaks indeed!' cried Wegg.
'A paper. The box was locked, tied up, and sealed, and on the
outside was a parchment label, with the writing, "MY WILL,
JOHN HARMON, TEMPORARILY DEPOSITED HERE."'

'We must know its contents,' said Venus.

'--Hear me out!' cried Wegg. 'I said so, and I broke the box open.

'Without coming to me!' exclaimed Venus.

'Exactly so, sir!' returned Wegg, blandly and buoyantly. 'I see I
take you with me! Hear, hear, hear! Resolved, as your
discriminating good sense perceives, that if you was to have a sap-
-pur--IZE, it should be a complete one! Well, sir. And so, as you
have honoured me by anticipating, I examined the document.
Regularly executed, regularly witnessed, very short. Inasmuch as
he has never made friends, and has ever had a rebellious family,
he, John Harmon, gives to Nicodemus Boffin the Little Mound,
which is quite enough for him, and gives the whole rest and
residue of his property to the Crown.'

'The date of the will that has been proved, must be looked to,'
remarked Venus. 'It may be later than this one.'

'--Hear me out!' cried Wegg. 'I said so. I paid a shilling (never
mind your sixpence of it) to look up that will. Brother, that will is
dated months before this will. And now, as a fellow-man, and as a
partner in a friendly move,' added Wegg, benignantly taking him
by both hands again, and clapping him on both knees again, 'say
have I completed my labour of love to your perfect satisfaction, and
are you sap--pur--IZED?'

Mr Venus contemplated his fellow-man and partner with doubting
eyes, and then rejoined stiffly:

'This is great news indeed, Mr Wegg. There's no denying it. But I
could have wished you had told it me before you got your fright to-
night, and I could have wished you had ever asked me as your
partner what we were to do, before you thought you were dividing
a responsibility.'

'--Hear me out!' cried Wegg. 'I knew you was a-going to say so.
But alone I bore the anxiety, and alone I'll bear the blame!' This
with an air of great magnanimity.

'No,' said Venus. 'Let's see this will and this box.'

'Do I understand, brother,' returned Wegg with considerable
reluctance, 'that it is your wish to see this will and this--?'

Mr Venus smote the table with his hand.

'--Hear me out!' said Wegg. 'Hear me out! I'll go and fetch 'em.'

After being some time absent, as if in his covetousness he could
hardly make up his mind to produce the treasure to his partner, he
returned with an old leathern hat-box, into which he had put the
other box, for the better preservation of commonplace appearances,
and for the disarming of suspicion. 'But I don't half like opening it
here,' said Silas in a low voice, looking around: 'he might come
back, he may not be gone; we don't know what he may be up to,
after what we've seen.'

'There's something in that,' assented Venus. 'Come to my place.'

Jealous of the custody of the box, and yet fearful of opening it
under the existing circumstances, Wegg hesitated. 'Come, I tell
you,' repeated Venus, chafing, 'to my place.' Not very well seeing
his way to a refusal, Mr Wegg then rejoined in a gush, '--Hear me
out!--Certainly.' So he locked up the Bower and they set forth: Mr
Venus taking his arm, and keeping it with remarkable tenacity.

They found the usual dim light burning in the window of Mr
Venus's establishment, imperfectly disclosing to the public the
usual pair of preserved frogs, sword in hand, with their point of
honour still unsettled. Mr Venus had closed his shop door on
coming out, and now opened it with the key and shut it again as
soon as they were within; but not before he had put up and barred
the shutters of the shop window. 'No one can get in without being
let in,' said he then, 'and we couldn't be more snug than here.' So
he raked together the yet warm cinders in the rusty grate, and made
a fire, and trimmed the candle on the little counter. As the fire cast
its flickering gleams here and there upon the dark greasy walls; the
Hindoo baby, the African baby, the articulated English baby, the
assortment of skulls, and the rest of the collection, came starting to
their various stations as if they had all been out, like their master
and were punctual in a general rendezvous to assist at the secret.
The French gentleman had grown considerably since Mr Wegg last
saw him, being now accommodated with a pair of legs and a head,
though his arms were yet in abeyance. To whomsoever the head
had originally belonged, Silas Wegg would have regarded it as a
personal favour if he had not cut quite so many teeth.

Silas took his seat in silence on the wooden box before the fire, and
Venus dropping into his low chair produced from among his
skeleton hands, his tea-tray and tea-cups, and put the kettle on.
Silas inwardly approved of these preparations, trusting they might
end in Mr Venus's diluting his intellect.

'Now, sir,' said Venus, 'all is safe and quiet. Let us see this
discovery.'

With still reluctant hands, and not without several glances towards
the skeleton hands, as if he mistrusted that a couple of them might
spring forth and clutch the document, Wegg opened the hat-box
and revealed the cash-box, opened the cash-box and revealed the
will. He held a corner of it tight, while Venus, taking hold of
another corner, searchingly and attentively read it.

'Was I correct in my account of it, partner?' said Mr Wegg at
length.

'Partner, you were,' said Mr Venus.

Mr Wegg thereupon made an easy, graceful movement, as though
he would fold it up; but Mr Venus held on by his corner.

'No, sir,' said Mr Venus, winking his weak eyes and shaking his
head. 'No, partner. The question is now brought up, who is going
to take care of this. Do you know who is going to take care of this,
partner?'

'I am,' said Wegg.

'Oh dear no, partner,' retorted Venus. 'That's a mistake. I am.
Now look here, Mr Wegg. I don't want to have any words with
you, and still less do I want to have any anatomical pursuits with
you.'

'What do you mean?' said Wegg, quickly.

'I mean, partner,' replied Venus, slowly, 'that it's hardly possible
for a man to feel in a more amiable state towards another man than
I do towards you at this present moment. But I am on my own
ground, I am surrounded by the trophies of my art, and my tools is
very handy.'

'What do you mean, Mr Venus?' asked Wegg again.

'I am surrounded, as I have observed,' said Mr Venus, placidly, 'by
the trophies of my art. They are numerous, my stock of human
warious is large, the shop is pretty well crammed, and I don't just
now want any more trophies of my art. But I like my art, and I
know how to exercise my art.'

'No man better,' assented Mr Wegg, with a somewhat staggered
air.

'There's the Miscellanies of several human specimens,' said Venus,
'(though you mightn't think it) in the box on which you're sitting.
There's the Miscellanies of several human specimens, in the lovely
compo-one behind the door'; with a nod towards the French
gentleman. 'It still wants a pair of arms. I DON'T say that I'm in
any hurry for 'em.'

'You must be wandering in your mind, partner,' Silas remonstrated.

'You'll excuse me if I wander,' returned Venus; 'I am sometimes
rather subject to it. I like my art, and I know how to exercise my
art, and I mean to have the keeping of this document.'

'But what has that got to do with your art, partner?' asked Wegg, in
an insinuating tone.

Mr Venus winked his chronically-fatigued eyes both at once, and
adjusting the kettle on the fire, remarked to himself, in a hollow
voice, 'She'll bile in a couple of minutes.'

Silas Wegg glanced at the kettle, glanced at the shelves, glanced at
the French gentleman behind the door, and shrank a little as he
glanced at Mr Venus winking his red eyes, and feeling in his
waistcoat pocket--as for a lancet, say--with his unoccupied hand.
He and Venus were necessarily seated close together, as each held
a corner of the document, which was but a common sheet of paper.

'Partner,' said Wegg, even more insinuatingly than before, 'I
propose that we cut it in half, and each keep a half.'

Venus shook his shock of hair, as he replied, 'It wouldn't do to
mutilate it, partner. It might seem to be cancelled.'

'Partner,' said Wegg, after a silence, during which they had
contemplated one another, 'don't your speaking countenance say
that you're a-going to suggest a middle course?'

Venus shook his shock of hair as he replied, 'Partner, you have
kept this paper from me once. You shall never keep it from me
again. I offer you the box and the label to take care of, but I'll take
care of the paper.'

Silas hesitated a little longer, and then suddenly releasing his
corner, and resuming his buoyant and benignant tone, exclaimed,
'What's life without trustfulness! What's a fellow-man without
honour! You're welcome to it, partner, in a spirit of trust and
confidence.'

Continuing to wink his red eyes both together--but in a self-
communing way, and without any show of triumph--Mr Venus
folded the paper now left in his hand, and locked it in a drawer
behind him, and pocketed the key. He then proposed 'A cup of tea,
partner?' To which Mr Wegg returned, 'Thank'ee, partner,' and the
tea was made and poured out.

'Next,' said Venus, blowing at his tea in his saucer, and looking
over it at his confidential friend, 'comes the question, What's the
course to be pursued?'

On this head, Silas Wegg had much to say. Silas had to say That,
he would beg to remind his comrade, brother, and partner, of the
impressive passages they had read that evening; of the evident
parallel in Mr Boffin's mind between them and the late owner of
the Bower, and the present circumstances of the Bower; of the
bottle; and of the box. That, the fortunes of his brother and
comrade, and of himself were evidently made, inasmuch as they
had but to put their price upon this document, and get that price
from the minion of fortune and the worm of the hour: who now
appeared to be less of a minion and more of a worm than had been
previously supposed. That, he considered it plain that such price
was stateable in a single expressive word, and that the word was,
'Halves!' That, the question then arose when 'Halves!' should be
called. That, here he had a plan of action to recommend, with a
conditional clause. That, the plan of action was that they should
lie by with patience; that, they should allow the Mounds to be
gradually levelled and cleared away, while retaining to themselves
their present opportunity of watching the process--which would be,
he conceived, to put the trouble and cost of daily digging and
delving upon somebody else, while they might nightly turn such
complete disturbance of the dust to the account of their own private
investigations--and that, when the Mounds were gone, and they
had worked those chances for their own joint benefit solely, they
should then, and not before, explode on the minion and worm. But
here came the conditional clause, and to this he entreated the
special attention of his comrade, brother, and partner. It was not to
be borne that the minion and worm should carry off any of that
property which was now to be regarded as their own property.
When he, Mr Wegg, had seen the minion surreptitiously making
off with that bottle, and its precious contents unknown, he had
looked upon him in the light of a mere robber, and, as such, would
have despoiled him of his ill-gotten gain, but for the judicious
interference of his comrade, brother, and partner. Therefore, the
conditional clause he proposed was, that, if the minion should
return in his late sneaking manner, and if, being closely watched,
he should be found to possess himself of anything, no matter what,
the sharp sword impending over his head should be instantly
shown him, he should be strictly examined as to what he knew or
suspected, should be severely handled by them his masters, and
should be kept in a state of abject moral bondage and slavery until
the time when they should see fit to permit him to purchase his
freedom at the price of half his possessions. If, said Mr Wegg by
way of peroration, he had erred in saying only 'Halves!' he trusted
to his comrade, brother, and partner not to hesitate to set him right,
and to reprove his weakness. It might be more according to the
rights of things, to say Two-thirds; it might be more according to
the rights of things, to say Three-fourths. On those points he was
ever open to correction.

Mr Venus, having wafted his attention to this discourse over three
successive saucers of tea, signified his concurrence in the views
advanced. Inspirited hereby, Mr Wegg extended his right hand,
and declared it to be a hand which never yet. Without entering into
more minute particulars. Mr Venus, sticking to his tea, briefly
professed his beliet as polite forms required of him, that it WAS a
hand which never yet. But contented himself with looking at it,
and did not take it to his bosom.

'Brother,' said Wegg, when this happy understanding was
established, 'I should like to ask you something. You remember
the night when I first looked in here, and found you floating your
powerful mind in tea?'

Still swilling tea, Mr Venus nodded assent.

'And there you sit, sir,' pursued Wegg with an air of thoughtful
admiration, 'as if you had never left off! There you sit, sir, as if you
had an unlimited capacity of assimilating the flagrant article!
There you sit, sir, in the midst of your works, looking as if you'd
been called upon for Home, Sweet Home, and was obleeging the
company!

     "A exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,
      O give you your lowly Preparations again,
      The birds stuffed so sweetly that can't be expected to come at
       your call,
      Give you these with the peace of mind dearer than all.
      Home, Home, Home, sweet Home!"

--Be it ever,' added Mr Wegg in prose as he glanced about the
shop, 'ever so ghastly, all things considered there's no place like it.'

'You said you'd like to ask something; but you haven't asked it,'
remarked Venus, very unsympathetic in manner.

'Your peace of mind,' said Wegg, offering condolence, 'your peace
of mind was in a poor way that night. HOW'S it going on? IS it
looking up at all?'

'She does not wish,' replied Mr Venus with a comical mixture of
indignant obstinacy and tender melancholy, 'to regard herself, nor
yet to be regarded, in that particular light. There's no more to be
said.'

'Ah, dear me, dear me!' exclaimed Wegg with a sigh, but eyeing
him while pretending to keep him company in eyeing the fire, 'such
is Woman! And I remember you said that night, sitting there as I
sat here--said that night when your peace of mind was first laid
low, that you had taken an interest in these very affairs. Such is
coincidence!'

'Her father,' rejoined Venus, and then stopped to swallow more tea,
'her father was mixed up in them.'

'You didn't mention her name, sir, I think?' observed Wegg,
pensively. 'No, you didn't mention her name that night.'

'Pleasant Riderhood.'

'In--deed!' cried Wegg. 'Pleasant Riderhood. There's something
moving in the name. Pleasant. Dear me! Seems to express what
she might have been, if she hadn't made that unpleasant remark--
and what she ain't, in consequence of having made it. Would it at
all pour balm into your wounds, Mr Venus, to inquire how you
came acquainted with her?'

'I was down at the water-side,' said Venus, taking another gulp of
tea and mournfully winking at the fire--'looking for parrots'--taking
another gulp and stopping.

Mr Wegg hinted, to jog his attention: 'You could hardly have been
out parrot-shooting, in the British climate, sir?'

'No, no, no,' said Venus fretfully. 'I was down at the water-side,
looking for parrots brought home by sailors, to buy for stuffing.'

'Ay, ay, ay, sir!'

'--And looking for a nice pair of rattlesnakes, to articulate for a
Museum--when I was doomed to fall in with her and deal with her.
It was just at the time of that discovery in the river. Her father had
seen the discovery being towed in the river. I made the popularity
of the subject a reason for going back to improve the acquaintance,
and I have never since been the man I was. My very bones is
rendered flabby by brooding over it. If they could be brought to me
loose, to sort, I should hardly have the face to claim 'em as mine.
To such an extent have I fallen off under it.'

Mr Wegg, less interested than he had been, glanced at one
particular shelf in the dark.

'Why I remember, Mr Venus,' he said in a tone of friendly
commiseration '(for I remember every word that falls from you,
sir), I remember that you said that night, you had got up there--and
then your words was, "Never mind."'

'--The parrot that I bought of her,' said Venus, with a despondent
rise and fall of his eyes. 'Yes; there it lies on its side, dried up;
except for its plumage, very like myself. I've never had the heart to
prepare it, and I never shall have now.'

With a disappointed face, Silas mentally consigned this parrot to
regions more than tropical, and, seeming for the time to have lost
his power of assuming an interest in the woes of Mr Venus, fell to
tightening his wooden leg as a preparation for departure: its
gymnastic performances of that evening having severely tried its
constitution.

After Silas had left the shop, hat-box in hand, and had left Mr
Venus to lower himself to oblivion-point with the requisite weight
of tea, it greatly preyed on his ingenuous mind that he had taken
this artist into partnership at all. He bitterly felt that he had
overreached himself in the beginning, by grasping at Mr Venus's
mere straws of hints, now shown to be worthless for his purpose.
Casting about for ways and means of dissolving the connexion
without loss of money, reproaching himself for having been
betrayed into an avowal of his secret, and complimenting himself
beyond measure on his purely accidental good luck, he beguiled
the distance between Clerkenwell and the mansion of the Golden
Dustman.

For, Silas Wegg felt it to be quite out of the question that he could
lay his head upon his pillow in peace, without first hovering over
Mr Boffin's house in the superior character of its Evil Genius.
Power (unless it be the power of intellect or virtue) has ever the
greatest attraction for the lowest natures; and the mere defiance of
the unconscious house-front, with his power to strip the roof off the
inhabiting family like the roof of a house of cards, was a treat
which had a charm for Silas Wegg.

As he hovered on the opposite side of the street, exulting, the
carriage drove up.

'There'll shortly be an end of YOU,' said Wegg, threatening it with
the hat-box. 'YOUR varnish is fading.'

Mrs Boffin descended and went in.

'Look out for a fall, my Lady Dustwoman,' said Wegg.

Bella lightly descended, and ran in after her.

'How brisk we are!' said Wegg. 'You won't run so gaily to your old
shabby home, my girl. You'll have to go there, though.'

A little while, and the Secretary came out.

'I was passed over for you,' said Wegg. 'But you had better provide
yourself with another situation, young man.'

Mr Boffin's shadow passed upon the blinds of three large windows
as he trotted down the room, and passed again as he went back.

'Yoop!'cried Wegg. 'You're there, are you? Where's the bottle?
You would give your bottle for my box, Dustman!'

Having now composed his mind for slumber, he turned homeward.
Such was the greed of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond
halves, two-thirds, three-fourths, and gone straight to spoliation of
the whole. 'Though that wouldn't quite do,' he considered, growing
cooler as he got away. 'That's what would happen to him if he
didn't buy us up. We should get nothing by that.'

We so judge others by ourselves, that it had never come into his
head before, that he might not buy us up, and might prove honest,
and prefer to be poor. It caused him a slight tremor as it passed;
but a very slight one, for the idle thought was gone directly.

'He's grown too fond of money for that,' said Wegg; 'he's grown too
fond of money.' The burden fell into a strain or tune as he stumped
along the pavements. All the way home he stumped it out of the
rattling streets, PIANO with his own foot, and FORTE with his
wooden leg, 'He's GROWN too FOND of MONEY for THAT, he's
GROWN too FOND of MONEY.'

Even next day Silas soothed himself with this melodious strain,
when he was called out of bed at daybreak, to set open the yard-
gate and admit the train of carts and horses that came to carry off
the little Mound. And all day long, as he kept unwinking watch on
the slow process which promised to protract itself through many
days and weeks, whenever (to save himself from being choked
with dust) he patrolled a little cinderous beat he established for the
purpose, without taking his eyes from the diggers, he still stumped
to the tune: He's GROWN too FOND of MONEY for THAT, he's
GROWN too FOND of MONEY.'

Chapter 8

THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY

The train of carts and horses came and went all day from dawn to
nightfall, making little or no daily impression on the heap of ashes,
though, as the days passed on, the heap was seen to be slowly
melting. My lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, when
you in the course of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking have
piled up a mountain of pretentious failure, you must off with your
honourable coats for the removal of it, and fall to the work with the
power of all the queen's horses and all the queen's men, or it will
come rushing down and bury us alive.

Yes, verily, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards,
adapting your Catechism to the occasion, and by God's help so you
must. For when we have got things to the pass that with an
enormous treasure at disposal to relieve the poor, the best of the
poor detest our mercies, hide their heads from us, and shame us by
starving to death in the midst of us, it is a pass impossible of
prosperity, impossible of continuance. It may not be so wrirten in
the Gospel according to Podsnappery; you may not 'find these
words' for the text of a sermon, in the Returns of the Board of
Trade; but they have been the truth since the foundations of the
universe were laid, and they will be the truth until the foundations
of the universe are shaken by the Builder. This boastful handiwork
of ours, which fails in its terrors for the professional pauper, the
sturdy breaker of windows and the rampant tearer of clothes,
strikes with a cruel and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and
is a horror to the deserving and unfortunate. We must mend it,
lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, or in its own evil hour
it will mar every one of us.

Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage as many ruggedly
honest creatures, women and men, fare on their toiling way along
the roads of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare living, and quietly
to die, untouched by workhouse hands--this was her highest
sublunary hope.

Nothing had been heard of her at Mr Boffin's house since she
trudged off. The weather had been hard and the roads had been
bad, and her spirit was up. A less stanch spirit might have been
subdued by such adverse influences; but the loan for her little outfit
was in no part repaid, and it had gone worse with her than she had
foreseen, and she was put upon proving her case and maintaining
her independence.

Faithful soul! When she had spoken to the Secretary of that
'deadness that steals over me at times', her fortitude had made too
little of it. Oftener and ever oftener, it came stealing over her;
darker and ever darker, like the shadow of advancing Death. That
the shadow should be deep as it came on, like the shadow of an
actual presence, was in accordance with the laws of the physical
world, for all the Light that shone on Betty Higden lay beyond
Death.

The poor old creature had taken the upward course of the river
Thames as her general track; it was the track in which her last
home lay, and of which she had last had local love and knowledge.
She had hovered for a little while in the near neighbourhood of her
abandoned dwelling, and had sold, and knitted and sold, and gone
on. In the pleasant towns of Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and
Staines, her figure came to be quite well known for some short
weeks, and then again passed on.

She would take her stand in market-places, where there were such
things, on market days; at other times, in the busiest (that was
seldom very busy) portion of the little quiet High Street; at still
other times she would explore the outlying roads for great houses,
and would ask leave at the Lodge to pass in with her basket, and
would not often get it. But ladies in carriages would frequently
make purchases from her trifling stock, and were usually pleased
with her bright eyes and her hopeful speech. In these and her clean
dress originated a fable that she was well to do in the world: one
might say, for her station, rich. As making a comfortable provision
for its subject which costs nobody anything, this class of fable has
long been popular.

In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you may hear the fall of
the water over the weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the
rushes; and from the bridge you may see the young river, dimpled
like a young child, playfully gliding away among the trees,
unpolluted by the defilements that lie in wait for it on its course,
and as yet out of hearing of the deep summons of the sea. It were
too much to pretend that Betty Higden made out such thoughts; no;
but she heard the tender river whispering to many like herself,
'Come to me, come to me! When the cruel shame and terror you
have so long fled from, most beset you, come to me! I am the
Relieving Officer appointed by eternal ordinance to do my work; I
am not held in estimation according as I shirk it. My breast is
softer than the pauper-nurse's; death in my arms is peacefuller than
among the pauper-wards. Come to me!'

There was abundant place for gentler fancies too, in her untutored
mind. Those gentlefolks and their children inside those fine
houses, could they think, as they looked out at her, what it was to
be really hungry, really cold? Did they feel any of the wonder
about her, that she felt about them? Bless the dear laughing
children! If they could have seen sick Johnny in her arms, would
they have cried for pity? If they could have seen dead Johnny on
that little bed, would they have understood it? Bless the dear
children for his sake, anyhow! So with the humbler houses in the
little street, the inner firelight shining on the panes as the outer
twilight darkened. When the families gathered in-doors there, for
the night, it was only a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little
hard in them to close the shutter and blacken the flame. So with
the lighted shops, and speculations whether their masters and
mistresses taking tea in a perspective of back-parlour--not so far
within but that the flavour of tea and toast came out, mingled with
the glow of light, into the street--ate or drank or wore what they
sold, with the greater relish because they dealt in it. So with the
churchyard on a branch of the solitary way to the night's sleeping-
place. 'Ah me! The dead and I seem to have it pretty much to
ourselves in the dark and in this weather! But so much the better
for all who are warmly housed at home.' The poor soul envied no
one in bitterness, and grudged no one anything.

But, the old abhorrence grew stronger on her as she grew weaker,
and it found more sustaining food than she did in her wanderings.
Now, she would light upon the shameful spectacle of some
desolate creature--or some wretched ragged groups of either sex, or
of both sexes, with children among them, huddled together like the
smaller vermin for a little warmth--lingering and lingering on a
doorstep, while the appointed evader of the public trust did his
dirty office of trying to weary them out and so get rid of them.
Now, she would light upon some poor decent person, like herself,
going afoot on a pilgrimage of many weary miles to see some
worn-out relative or friend who had been charitably clutched off to
a great blank barren Union House, as far from old home as the
County Jail (the remoteness of which is always its worst
punishment for small rural offenders), and in its dietary, and in its
lodging, and in its tending of the sick, a much more penal
establishment. Sometimes she would hear a newspaper read out,
and would learn how the Registrar General cast up the units that
had within the last week died of want and of exposure to the
weather: for which that Recording Angel seemed to have a regular
fixed place in his sum, as if they were its halfpence. All such
things she would hear discussed, as we, my lords and gentlemen
and honourable boards, in our unapproachable magnificence never
hear them, and from all such things she would fly with the wings
of raging Despair.

This is not to be received as a figure of speech. Old Betty Higden
however tired, however footsore, would start up and be driven
away by her awakened horror of falling into the hands of Charity.
It is a remarkable Christian improvement, to have made a pursuing
Fury of the Good Samaritan; but it was so in this case, and it is a
type of many, many, many.

Two incidents united to intensify the old unreasoning abhorrence--
granted in a previous place to be unreasoning, because the people
always are unreasoning, and invaRiahly make a point of producing
all their smoke without fire.

One day she was sitting in a market-place on a bench outside an
inn, with her little wares for sale, when the deadness that she
strove against came over her so heavily that the scene departed
from before her eyes; when it returned, she found herself on the
ground, her head supported by some good-natured market-women,
and a little crowd about her.

'Are you better now, mother?' asked one of the women. 'Do you
think you can do nicely now?'

'Have I been ill then?' asked old Betty.

'You have had a faint like,' was the answer, 'or a fit. It ain't that
you've been a-struggling, mother, but you've been stiff and
numbed.'

'Ah!' said Betty, recovering her memory. 'It's the numbness. Yes.
It comes over me at times.'

Was it gone? the women asked her.

'It's gone now,' said Betty. 'I shall be stronger than I was afore.
Many thanks to ye, my dears, and when you come to be as old as I
am, may others do as much for you!'

They assisted her to rise, but she could not stand yet, and they
supported her when she sat down again upon the bench.

'My head's a bit light, and my feet are a bit heavy,' said old Betty,
leaning her face drowsily on the breast of the woman who had
spoken before. 'They'll both come nat'ral in a minute. There's
nothing more the matter.'

'Ask her,' said some farmers standing by, who had come out from
their market-dinner, 'who belongs to her.'

'Are there any folks belonging to you, mother?' said the woman.

'Yes sure,' answered Betty. 'I heerd the gentleman say it, but I
couldn't answer quick enough. There's plenty belonging to me.
Don't ye fear for me, my dear.'

'But are any of 'em near here? 'said the men's voices; the women's
voices chiming in when it was said, and prolonging the strain.

'Quite near enough,' said Betty, rousing herself. 'Don't ye be afeard
for me, neighbours.'

'But you are not fit to travel. Where are you going?' was the next
compassionate chorus she heard.

'I'm a going to London when I've sold out all,' said Betty, rising
with difficulty. 'I've right good friends in London. I want for
nothing. I shall come to no harm. Thankye. Don't ye be afeard for
me.'

A well-meaning bystander, yellow-legginged and purple-faced,
said hoarsely over his red comforter, as she rose to her feet, that
she 'oughtn't to be let to go'.

'For the Lord's love don't meddle with me!' cried old Betty, all her
fears crowding on her. 'I am quite well now, and I must go this
minute.'

She caught up her basket as she spoke and was making an
unsteady rush away from them, when the same bystander checked
her with his hand on her sleeve, and urged her to come with him
and see the parish-doctor. Strengthening herself by the utmost
exercise of her resolution, the poor trembling creature shook him
off, almost fiercely, and took to flight. Nor did she feel safe until
she had set a mile or two of by-road between herself and the
marketplace, and had crept into a copse, like a hunted animal, to
hide and recover breath. Not until then for the first time did she
venture to recall how she had looked over her shoulder before
turning out of the town, and had seen the sign of the White Lion
hanging across the road, and the fluttering market booths, and the
old grey church, and the little crowd gazing after her but not
attempting to follow her.

The second frightening incident was this. She had been again as
bad, and had been for some days better, and was travelling along
by a part of the road where it touched the river, and in wet seasons
was so often overflowed by it that there were tall white posts set up
to mark the way. A barge was being towed towards her, and she
sat down on the bank to rest and watch it. As the tow-rope was
slackened by a turn of the stream and dipped into the water, such a
confusion stole into her mind that she thought she saw the forms of
her dead children and dead grandchildren peopling the barge, and
waving their hands to her in solemn measure; then, as the rope
tightened and came up, dropping diamonds, it seemed to vibrate
into two parallel ropes and strike her, with a twang, though it was
far off. When she looked again, there was no barge, no river, no
daylight, and a man whom she had never before seen held a candle
close to her face.

'Now, Missis,' said he; 'where did you come from and where are
you going to?'

The poor soul confusedly asked the counter-question where she
was?

'I am the Lock,' said the man.

'The Lock?'

'I am the Deputy Lock, on job, and this is the Lock-house. (Lock
or Deputy Lock, it's all one, while the t'other man's in the hospital.)
What's your Parish?'

'Parish!' She was up from the truckle-bed directly, wildly feeling
about her for her basket, and gazing at him in affright.

'You'll be asked the question down town,' said the man. 'They
won't let you be more than a Casual there. They'll pass you on to
your settlement, Missis, with all speed. You're not in a state to be
let come upon strange parishes 'ceptin as a Casual.'

''Twas the deadness again!' murmured Betty Higden, with her hand
to her head.

'It was the deadness, there's not a doubt about it,' returned the man.
'I should have thought the deadness was a mild word for it, if it
had been named to me when we brought you in. Have you got any
friends, Missis?'

'The best of friends, Master.'

'I should recommend your looking 'em up if you consider 'em game
to do anything for you,' said the Deputy Lock. 'Have you got any
money?'

'Just a morsel of money, sir.'

'Do you want to keep it?'

'Sure I do!'

'Well, you know,' said the Deputy Lock, shrugging his shoulders
with his hands in his pockets, and shaking his head in a sulkily
ominous manner, 'the parish authorities down town will have it out
of you, if you go on, you may take your Alfred David.'

'Then I'll not go on.'

'They'll make you pay, as fur as your money will go,' pursued the
Deputy, 'for your relief as a Casual and for your being passed to
your Parish.'

'Thank ye kindly, Master, for your warning, thank ye for your
shelter, and good night.'

'Stop a bit,' said the Deputy, striking in between her and the door.
'Why are you all of a shake, and what's your hurry, Missis?'

'Oh, Master, Master,' returned Betty Higden, I've fought against the
Parish and fled from it, all my life, and I want to die free of it!'

'I don't know,' said the Deputy, with deliberation, 'as I ought to let
you go. I'm a honest man as gets my living by the sweat of my
brow, and I may fall into trouble by letting you go. I've fell into
trouble afore now, by George, and I know what it is, and it's made
me careful. You might be took with your deadness again, half a
mile off--or half of half a quarter, for the matter of that--and then it
would be asked, Why did that there honest Deputy Lock, let her
go, instead of putting her safe with the Parish? That's what a man
of his character ought to have done, it would be argueyfied,' said
the Deputy Lock, cunningly harping on the strong string of her
terror; 'he ought to have handed her over safe to the Parish. That
was to be expected of a man of his merits.'

As he stood in the doorway, the poor old careworn wayworn
woman burst into tears, and clasped her hands, as if in a very
agony she prayed to him.

'As I've told you, Master, I've the best of friends. This letter will
show how true I spoke, and they will be thankful for me.'

The Deputy Lock opened the letter with a grave face, which
underwent no change as he eyed its contents. But it might have
done, if he could have read them.

'What amount of small change, Missis,' he said, with an abstracted
air, after a little meditation, 'might you call a morsel of money?'

Hurriedly emptying her pocket, old Betty laid down on the table, a
shilling, and two sixpenny pieces, and a few pence.

'If I was to let you go instead of handing you over safe to the
Parish,' said the Deputy, counting the money with his eyes, 'might
it be your own free wish to leave that there behind you?'

'Take it, Master, take it, and welcome and thankful!'

'I'm a man,' said the Deputy, giving her back the letter, and
pocketing the coins, one by one, 'as earns his living by the sweat of
his brow;' here he drew his sleeve across his forehead, as if this
particular portion of his humble gains were the result of sheer hard
labour and virtuous industry; 'and I won't stand in your way. Go
where you like.'

She was gone out of the Lock-house as soon as he gave her this
permission, and her tottering steps were on the road again. But,
afraid to go back and afraid to go forward; seeing what she fled
from, in the sky-glare of the lights of the little town before her, and
leaving a confused horror of it everywhere behind her, as if she had
escaped it in every stone of every market-place; she struck off by
side ways, among which she got bewildered and lost. That night
she took refuge from the Samaritan in his latest accredited form,
under a farmer's rick; and if--worth thinking of, perhaps, my
fellow-Christians--the Samaritan had in the lonely night, 'passed
by on the other side', she would have most devoutly thanked High
Heaven for her escape from him.

The morning found her afoot again, but fast declining as to the
clearness of her thoughts, though not as to the steadiness of her
purpose. Comprehending that her strength was quitting her, and
that the struggle of her life was almost ended, she could neither
reason out the means of getting back to her protectors, nor even
form the idea. The overmastering dread, and the proud stubborn
resolution it engendered in her to die undegraded, were the two
distinct impressions left in her failing mind. Supported only by a
sense that she was bent on conquering in her life-long fight, she
went on.

The time was come, now, when the wants of this little life were
passing away from her. She could not have swallowed food,
though a table had been spread for her in the next field. The day
was cold and wet, but she scarcely knew it. She crept on, poor
soul, like a criminal afraid of being taken, and felt little beyond the
terror of falling down while it was yet daylight, and being found
alive. She had no fear that she would live through another night.

Sewn in the breast of her gown, the money to pay for her burial
was still intact. If she could wear through the day, and then lie
down to die under cover of the darkness, she would die
independent. If she were captured previously, the money would be
taken from her as a pauper who had no right to it, and she would
be carried to the accursed workhouse. Gaining her end, the letter
would be found in her breast, along with the money, and the
gentlefolks would say when it was given back to them, 'She prized
it, did old Betty Higden; she was true to it; and while she lived, she
would never let it be disgraced by falling into the hands of those
that she held in horror.' Most illogical, inconsequential, and light-
headed, this; but travellers in the valley of the shadow of death are
apt to be light-headed; and worn-out old people of low estate have
a trick of reasoning as indifferently as they live, and doubtless
would appreciate our Poor Law more philosophically on an income
of ten thousand a year.

So, keeping to byways, and shunning human approach, this
troublesome old woman hid herself, and fared on all through the
dreary day. Yet so unlike was she to vagrant hiders in general, that
sometimes, as the day advanced, there was a bright fire in her eyes,
and a quicker beating at her feeble heart, as though she said
exultingly, 'The Lord will see me through it!'

By what visionary hands she was led along upon that journey of
escape from the Samaritan; by what voices, hushed in the grave,
she seemed to be addressed; how she fancied the dead child in her
arms again, and times innumerable adjusted her shawl to keep it
warm; what infinite variety of forms of tower and roof and steeple
the trees took; how many furious horsemen rode at her, crying,
'There she goes! Stop! Stop, Betty Higden!' and melted away as
they came close; be these things left untold. Faring on and hiding,
hiding and faring on, the poor harmless creature, as though she
were a Murderess and the whole country were up after her, wore
out the day, and gained the night.

'Water-meadows, or such like,' she had sometimes murmured, on
the day's pilgrimage, when she had raised her head and taken any
note of the real objects about her. There now arose in the darkness,
a great building, full of lighted windows. Smoke was issuing from
a high chimney in the rear of it, and there was the sound of a
water-wheel at the side. Between her and the building, lay a piece
of water, in which the lighted windows were reflected, and on its
nearest margin was a plantation of trees. 'I humbly thank the
Power and the Glory,' said Betty Higden, holding up her withered
hands, 'that I have come to my journey's end!'

She crept among the trees to the trunk of a tree whence she could
see, beyond some intervening trees and branches, the lighted
windows, both in their reality and their reflection in the water. She
placed her orderly little basket at her side, and sank upon the
ground, supporting herself against the tree. It brought to her mind
the foot of the Cross, and she committed herself to Him who died
upon it. Her strength held out to enable her to arrange the letter in
her breast, so as that it could be seen that she had a paper there. It
had held out for this, and it departed when this was done.

'I am safe here,' was her last benumbed thought. 'When I am
found dead at the foot of the Cross, it will be by some of my own
sort; some of the working people who work among the lights
yonder. I cannot see the lighted windows now, but they are there.
I am thankful for all!'

The darkness gone, and a face bending down.

'It cannot be the boofer lady?'

'I don't understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again with
this brandy. I have been away to fetch it. Did you think that I was
long gone?'

It is as the face of a woman, shaded by a quantity of rich dark hair.
It is the earnest face of a woman who is young and handsome. But
all is over with me on earth, and this must be an Angel.

'Have I been long dead?'

'I don't understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again. I
hurried all I could, and brought no one back with me, lest you
should die of the shock of strangers.'

'Am I not dead?'

'I cannot understand what you say. Your voice is so low and
broken that I cannot hear you. Do you hear me?'

'Yes.'

'Do you mean Yes?'

'Yes.'

'I was coming from my work just now, along the path outside (I
was up with the night-hands last night), and I heard a groan, and
found you lying here.'

'What work, deary?'

'Did you ask what work? At the paper-mill.'

'Where is it?'

'Your face is turned up to the sky, and you can't see it. It is close
by. You can see my face, here, between you and the sky?'

'Yes.'

'Dare I lift you?'

'Not yet.'

'Not even lift your head to get it on my arm? I will do it by very
gentle degrees. You shall hardly feel it.'

'Not yet. Paper. Letter.'

'This paper in your breast?'

'Bless ye!'

'Let me wet your lips again. Am I to open it? To read it?'

'Bless ye!'

She reads it with surprise, and looks down with a new expression
and an added interest on the motionless face she kneels beside.

'I know these names. I have heard them often.'

'Will you send it, my dear?'

'I cannot understand you. Let me wet your lips again, and your
forehead. There. O poor thing, poor thing!' These words through
her fast-dropping tears. 'What was it that you asked me? Wait till
I bring my ear quite close.'

'Will you send it, my dear?'

'Will I send it to the writers? Is that your wish? Yes, certainly.'

'You'll not give it up to any one but them?'

'No.'

'As you must grow old in time, and come to your dying hour, my
dear, you'll not give it up to any one but them?'

'No. Most solemnly.'

'Never to the Parish!' with a convulsed struggle.

'No. Most solemnly.'

'Nor let the Parish touch me, not yet so much as look at me!' with
another struggle.

'No. Faithfully.'

A look of thankfulness and triumph lights the worn old face.

The eyes, which have been darkly fixed upon the sky, turn with
meaning in them towards the compassionate face from which the
tears are dropping, and a smile is on the aged lips as they ask:

'What is your name, my dear?'

'My name is Lizzie Hexam.'

'I must be sore disfigured. Are you afraid to kiss me?'

The answer is, the ready pressure of her lips upon the cold but
smiling mouth.

'Bless ye! NOW lift me, my love.'

Lizzie Hexam very softly raised the weather-stained grey head, and
lifted her as high as Heaven.

Chapter 9

SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION

'"We give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to
deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world."'
So read the Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled voice,
for his heart misgave him that all was not quite right between
us and our sister--or say our sister in Law--Poor Law--and that
we sometimes read these words in an awful manner, over our Sister
and our Brother too.

And Sloppy--on whom the brave deceased had never turned her
back until she ran away from him, knowing that otherwise he
would not be separated from her--Sloppy could not in his
conscience as yet find the hearty thanks required of it. Selfish in
Sloppy, and yet excusable, it may be humbly hoped, because our
sister had been more than his mother.

The words were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner
of a churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there
was nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single
tombstone. It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the
diggers and hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their graves
at the common charge; so that a new generation might know which
was which: so that the soldier, sailor, emigrant, coming home,
should be able to identify the resting-place of father, mother, playmate,
or betrothed. For, we turn up our eyes and say that we are all
alike in death, and we might turn them down and work the saying
out in this world, so far. It would be sentimental, perhaps? But
how say ye, my lords and gentleman and honourable boards, shall
we not find good standing-room left for a little sentiment, if we
look into our crowds?

Near unto the Reverend Frank Milvey as he read, stood his little
wife, John Rokesmith the Secretary, and Bella Wilfer. These, over
and above Sloppy, were the mourners at the lowly grave. Not a
penny had been added to the money sewn in her dress: what her
honest spirit had so long projected, was fulfilled.

'I've took it in my head,' said Sloppy, laying it, inconsolable,
against the church door, when all was done: I've took it in my
wretched head that I might have sometimes turned a little harder
for her, and it cuts me deep to think so now.'

The Reverend Frank Milvey, comforting Sloppy, expounded to him
how the best of us were more or less remiss in our turnings at our
respective Mangles--some of us very much so--and how we were
all a halting, failing, feeble, and inconstant crew.

'SHE warn't, sir,' said Sloppy, taking this ghostly counsel rather ill,
in behalf of his late benefactress. 'Let us speak for ourselves, sir.
She went through with whatever duty she had to do. She went
through with me, she went through with the Minders, she went
through with herself, she went through with everythink. O Mrs
Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a woman and a mother and a
mangler in a million million!'

With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from
the church door, and took it back to the grave in the comer, and
laid it down there, and wept alone. 'Not a very poor grave,' said
the Reverend Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes,
'when it has that homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could
be made by most of the sculpture in Westminster Abbey!'

They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket-gate. The
water-wheel of the paper-mill was audible there, and seemed to
have a softening influence on the bright wintry scene. They had
arrived but a little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them
the little she could add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr
Rokesmith's letter and had asked for their instructions. This was
merely how she had heard the groan, and what had afterwards
passed, and how she had obtained leave for the remains to be
placed in that sweet, fresh, empty store-room of the mill from
which they had just accompanied them to the churchyard, and how
the last requests had been religiously observed.

'I could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,' said Lizzie. 'I
should not have wanted the will; but I should not have had the
power, without our managing partner.'

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

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

'The gentleman certainly is a Jew,' said Lizzie, 'and the lady, his
wife, is a Jewess, and I was first brought to their notice by a Jew.
But I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.'

'But suppose they try to convert you!' suggested Mrs Milvey,
bristling in her good little way, as a clergyman's wife.

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

'To make you change your religion,' said Mrs Milvey.

Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. 'They have never asked me
what my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told
them. They asked me to be industrious and faithful, and I
promised to be so. They most willingly and cheerfully do their
duty to all of us who are employed here, and we try to do ours to
them. Indeed they do much more than their duty to us, for they are
wonderfully mindful of us in many ways.

'It is easy to see you're a favourite, my dear,' said little Mrs Milvey,
not quite pleased.

'It would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,' returned Lizzie,
'for I have been already raised to a place of confidence here. But
that makes no difference in their following their own religion and
leaving all of us to ours. They never talk of theirs to us, and they
never talk of ours to us. If I was the last in the mill, it would be
just the same. They never asked me what religion that poor thing
had followed.'

'My dear,' said Mrs Milvey, aside to the Reverend Frank, 'I wish
you would talk to her.'

'My dear,' said the Reverend Frank aside to his good little wife, 'I
think I will leave it to somebody else. The circumstances are
hardly favourable. There are plenty of talkers going about, my
love, and she will soon find one.'

While this discourse was interchanging, both Bella and the
Secretary observed Lizzie Hexam with great attention. Brought
face to face for the first time with the daughter of his supposed
murderer, it was natural that John Harmon should have his own
secret reasons for a careful scrutiny of her countenance and
manner. Bella knew that Lizzie's father had been falsely accused
of the crime which had had so great an influence on her own life
and fortunes; and her interest, though it had no secret springs, like
that of the Secretary, was equally natural. Both had expected to
see something very different from the real Lizzie Hexam, and thus
it fell out that she became the unconscious means of bringing them
together.

For, when they had walked on with her to the little house in the
clean village by the paper-mill, where Lizzie had a lodging with an
elderly couple employed in the establishment, and when Mrs
Milvey and Bella had been up to see her room and had come down,
the mill bell rang. This called Lizzie away for the time, and left the
Secretary and Bella standing rather awkwardly in the small street;
Mrs Milvey being engaged in pursuing the village children, and
her investigations whether they were in danger of becoming
children of Israel; and the Reverend Frank being engaged--to say
the truth--in evading that branch of his spiritual functions, and
getting out of sight surreptitiously.

Bella at length said:

'Hadn't we better talk about the commission we have undertaken,
Mr Rokesmith?'

'By all means,' said the Secretary.

'I suppose,' faltered Bella, 'that we ARE both commissioned, or we
shouldn't both be here?'

'I suppose so,' was the Secretary's answer.

'When I proposed to come with Mr and Mrs Milvey,' said Bella,
'Mrs Boffin urged me to do so, in order that I might give her my
small report--it's not worth anything, Mr Rokesmith, except for it's
being a woman's--which indeed with you may be a fresh reason for
it's being worth nothing--of Lizzie Hexam.'

'Mr Boffin,' said the Secretary, 'directed me to come for the same
purpose.'

As they spoke they were leaving the little street and emerging on
the wooded landscape by the river.

'You think well of her, Mr Rokesmith?' pursued Bella, conscious
of making all the advances.

'I think highly of her.'

'I am so glad of that! Something quite refined in her beauty, is
there not?'

'Her appearance is very striking.'

'There is a shade of sadness upon her that is quite touching. At
least I--I am not setting up my own poor opinion, you know, Mr
Rokesmith,' said Bella, excusing and explaining herself in a pretty
shy way; 'I am consulting you.'

'I noticed that sadness. I hope it may not,' said the Secretary in a
lower voice, 'be the result of the false accusation which has been
retracted.'

When they had passed on a little further without speaking, Bella,
after stealing a glance or two at the Secretary, suddenly said:

'Oh, Mr Rokesmith, don't be hard with me, don't be stern with me;
be magnanimous! I want to talk with you on equal terms.'

The Secretary as suddenly brightened, and returned: 'Upon my
honour I had no thought but for you. I forced myself to be
constrained, lest you might misinterpret my being more natural.
There. It's gone.'

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

'No!' cried the Secretary, eagerly. 'Forgive ME!' For there were
tears in her eyes, and they were prettier in his sight (though they
smote him on the heart rather reproachfully too) than any other
glitter in the world.

When they had walked a little further:

'You were going to speak to me,' said the Secretary, with the
shadow so long on him quite thrown off and cast away, 'about
Lizzie Hexam. So was I going to speak to you, if I could have
begun.'

'Now that you CAN begin, sir,' returned Bella, with a look as if she
italicized the word by putting one of her dimples under it, 'what
were you going to say?'

'You remember, of course, that in her short letter to Mrs Boffin--
short, but containing everything to the purpose--she stipulated that
either her name, or else her place of residence, must be kept strictly
a secret among us.'

Bella nodded Yes.

'It is my duty to find out why she made that stipulation. I have it in
charge from Mr Boffin to discover, and I am very desirous for
myself to discover, whether that retracted accusation still leaves
any stain upon her. I mean whether it places her at any
disadvantage towards any one, even towards herself.'

'Yes,' said Bella, nodding thoughtfully; 'I understand. That seems
wise, and considerate.'

'You may not have noticed, Miss Wilfer, that she has the same
kind of interest in you, that you have in her. Just as you are
attracted by her beaut--by her appearance and manner, she is
attracted by yours.'

'I certainly have NOT noticed it,' returned Bella, again italicizing
with the dimple, 'and I should have given her credit for--'

The Secretary with a smile held up his hand, so plainly interposing
'not for better taste', that Bella's colour deepened over the little
piece of coquetry she was checked in.

'And so,' resumed the Secretary, 'if you would speak with her alone
before we go away from here, I feel quite sure that a natural and
easy confidence would arise between you. Of course you would
not be asked to betray it; and of course you would not, if you were.
But if you do not object to put this question to her--to ascertain for
us her own feeling in this one matter--you can do so at a far greater
advantage than I or any else could. Mr Boffin is anxious on the
subject. And I am,' added the Secretary after a moment, 'for a
special reason, very anxious.'

'I shall be happy, Mr Rokesmith,' returned Bella, 'to be of the least
use; for I feel, after the serious scene of to-day, that I am useless
enough in this world.'

'Don't say that,' urged the Secretary.

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

'No one is useless in this world,' retorted the Secretary, 'who
lightens the burden of it for any one else.'

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

'Not for your father?'

'Dear, loving, self-forgetting, easily-satisfied Pa! Oh, yes! He
thinks so.'

'It is enough if he only thinks so,' said the Secretary. 'Excuse the
interruption: I don't like to hear you depreciate yourself.'

'But YOU once depreciated ME, sir,' thought Bella, pouting, 'and I
hope you may be satisfied with the consequences you brought upon
your head!' However, she said nothing to that purpose; she even
said something to a different purpose.

'Mr Rokesmith, it seems so long since we spoke together naturally,
that I am embarrassed in approaching another subject. Mr Boffin.
You know I am very grateful to him; don't you? You know I feel a
true respect for him, and am bound to him by the strong ties of his
own generosity; now don't you?'

'Unquestionably. And also that you are his favourite companion.'

'That makes it,' said Bella, 'so very difficult to speak of him. But--.
Does he treat you well?'

'You see how he treats me,' the Secretary answered, with a patient
and yet proud air.

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

The Secretary gave her such a radiant look, that if he had thanked
her a hundred times, he could not have said as much as the look
said.

'I see it with pain,' repeated Bella, 'and it often makes me
miserable. Miserable, because I cannot bear to be supposed to
approve of it, or have any indirect share in it. Miserable, because I
cannot bear to be forced to admit to myself that Fortune is spoiling
Mr Boffin.'

'Miss Wilfer,' said the Secretary, with a beaming face, 'if you could
know with what delight I make the discovery that Fortune isn't
spoiling YOU, you would know that it more than compensates me
for any slight at any other hands.'

'Oh, don't speak of ME,' said Bella, giving herself an impatient
little slap with her glove. 'You don't know me as well as--'

'As you know yourself?' suggested the Secretary, finding that she
stopped. 'DO you know yourself?'

'I know quite enough of myself,' said Bella, with a charming air of
being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, 'and I don't improve
upon acquaintance. But Mr Boffin.'

'That Mr Boffin's manner to me, or consideration for me, is not
what it used to be,' observed the Secretary, 'must be admitted. It is
too plain to be denied.'

'Are you disposed to deny it, Mr Rokesmith?' asked Bella, with a
look of wonder.

'Ought I not to be glad to do so, if I could: though it were only for
my own sake?'

'Truly,' returned Bella, 'it must try you very much, and--you must
please promise me that you won't take ill what I am going to add,
Mr Rokesmith?'

'I promise it with all my heart.'

'--And it must sometimes, I should think,' said Bella, hesitating, 'a
little lower you in your own estimation?'

Assenting with a movement of his head, though not at all looking
as if it did, the Secretary replied:

'I have very strong reasons, Miss Wilfer, for bearing with the
drawbacks of my position in the house we both inhabit. Believe
that they are not all mercenary, although I have, through a series of
strange fatalities, faded out of my place in life. If what you see
with such a gracious and good sympathy is calculated to rouse my
pride, there are other considerations (and those you do not see)
urging me to quiet endurance. The latter are by far the stronger.'

'I think I have noticed, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, looking at him
with curiosity, as not quite making him out, 'that you repress
yourself, and force yourself, to act a passive part.'

'You are right. I repress myself and force myself to act a part. It is
not in tameness of spirit that I submit. I have a settled purpose.'

'And a good one, I hope,' said Bella.

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

'Sometimes I have fancied, sir,' said Bella, turning away her eyes,
'that your great regard for Mrs Boffin is a very powerful motive
with you.'

'You are right again; it is. I would do anything for her, bear
anything for her. There are no words to express how I esteem that
good, good woman.'

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

'Anything more.'

'Of course you see that she really suffers, when Mr Boffin shows
how he is changing?'

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

'To give her pain?' said Bella, repeating the phrase quickly, with
her eyebrows raised.

'I am generally the unfortunate cause of it.'

'Perhaps she says to you, as she often says to me, that he is the best
of men, in spite of all.'

'I often overhear her, in her honest and beautiful devotion to him,
saying so to you,' returned the Secretary, with the same steady
look, 'but I cannot assert that she ever says so to me.'

Bella met the steady look for a moment with a wistful, musing
little look of her own, and then, nodding her pretty head several
times, like a dimpled philosopher (of the very best school) who
was moralizing on Life, heaved a little sigh, and gave up things in
general for a bad job, as she had previously been inclined to give
up herself.

But, for all that, they had a very pleasant walk. The trees were
bare of leaves, and the river was bare of water-lilies; but the sky
was not bare of its beautiful blue, and the water reflected it, and a
delicious wind ran with the stream, touching the surface crisply.
Perhaps the old mirror was never yet made by human hands,
which, if all the images it has in its time reflected could pass
across its surface again, would fail to reveal some scene of horror
or distress. But the great serene mirror of the river seemed as if it
might have reproduced all it had ever reflected between those
placid banks, and brought nothing to the light save what was
peaceful, pastoral, and blooming.

So, they walked, speaking of the newly filled-up grave, and of
Johnny, and of many things. So, on their return, they met brisk
Mrs Milvey coming to seek them, with the agreeable intelligence
that there was no fear for the village children, there being a
Christian school in the village, and no worse Judaical interference
with it than to plant its garden. So, they got back to the village as
Lizzie Hexam was coming from the paper-mill, and Bella detached
herself to speak with her in her own home.

'I am afraid it is a poor room for you,' said Lizzie, with a smile of
welcome, as she offered the post of honour by the fireside.

'Not so poor as you think, my dear,' returned Bella, 'if you knew
all.' Indeed, though attained by some wonderful winding narrow
stairs, which seemed to have been erected in a pure white chimney,
and though very low in the ceiling, and very rugged in the floor,
and rather blinking as to the proportions of its lattice window, it
was a pleasanter room than that despised chamber once at home,
in which Bella had first bemoaned the miseries of taking lodgers.

The day was closing as the two girls looked at one another by the
fireside. The dusky room was lighted by the fire. The grate might
have been the old brazier, and the glow might have been the old
hollow down by the flare.

'It's quite new to me,' said Lizzie, 'to be visited by a lady so nearly
of my own age, and so pretty, as you. It's a pleasure to me to look
at you.'

'I have nothing left to begin with,' returned Bella, blushing,
'because I was going to say that it was a pleasure to me to look at
you, Lizzie. But we can begin without a beginning, can't we?'

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

'Now, dear,' said Bella, drawing her chair a little nearer, and taking
Lizzie's arm as if they were going out for a walk, 'I am
commissioned with something to say, and I dare say I shall say it
wrong, but I won't if I can help it. It is in reference to your letter to
Mr and Mrs Boffin, and this is what it is. Let me see. Oh yes!
This is what it is.'

With this exordium, Bella set forth that request of Lizzie's touching
secrecy, and delicately spoke of that false accusation and its
retraction, and asked might she beg to be informed whether it had
any bearing, near or remote, on such request. 'I feel, my dear,' said
Bella, quite amazing herself by the business-like manner in which
she was getting on, 'that the subject must be a painful one to you,
but I am mixed up in it also; for--I don't know whether you may
know it or suspect it--I am the willed-away girl who was to have
been married to the unfortunate gentleman, if he had been pleased
to approve of me. So I was dragged into the subject without my
consent, and you were dragged into it without your consent, and
there is very little to choose between us.'

'I had no doubt,' said Lizzie, 'that you were the Miss Wilfer I have
often heard named. Can you tell me who my unknown friend is?'

'Unknown friend, my dear?' said Bella.

'Who caused the charge against poor father to be contradicted, and
sent me the written paper.'

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

'I should have been glad to thank him,' returned Lizzie. 'He has
done a great deal for me. I must hope that he will let me thank him
some day. You asked me has it anything to do--'

'It or the accusation itself,' Bella put in.

'Yes. Has either anything to do with my wishing to live quite
secret and retired here? No.'

As Lizzie Hexam shook her head in giving this reply and as her
glance sought the fire, there was a quiet resolution in her folded
hands, not lost on Bella's bright eyes.

'Have you lived much alone?' asked Bella.

'Yes. It's nothing new to me. I used to be always alone many
hours together, in the day and in the night, when poor father was
alive.'

'You have a brother, I have been told?'

'I have a brother, but he is not friendly with me. He is a very good
boy though, and has raised himself by his industry. I don't
complain of him.'

As she said it, with her eyes upon the fire-glow, there was an
instantaneous escape of distress into her face. Bella seized the
moment to touch her hand.

'Lizzie, I wish you would tell me whether you have any friend of
your own sex and age.'

'I have lived that lonely kind of life, that I have never had one,' was
the answer.

'Nor I neither,' said Bella. 'Not that my life has been lonely, for I
could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma
going on like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners,
and Lavvy being spiteful--though of course I am very fond of them
both. I wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think
you could? I have no more of what they call character, my dear,
than a canary-bird, but I know I am trustworthy.'

The wayward, playful, affectionate nature, giddy for want of the
weight of some sustaining purpose, and capricious because it was
always fluttering among little things, was yet a captivating one. To
Lizzie it was so new, so pretty, at once so womanly and so
childish, that it won her completely. And when Bella said again,
'Do you think you could, Lizzie?' with her eyebrows raised, her
head inquiringly on one side, and an odd doubt about it in her own
bosom, Lizzie showed beyond all question that she thought she
could.

'Tell me, my dear,' said Bella, 'what is the matter, and why you live
like this.'

Lizzie presently began, by way of prelude, 'You must have many
lovers--' when Bella checked her with a little scream of
astonishment.

'My dear, I haven't one!'

'Not one?'

'Well! Perhaps one,' said Bella. 'I am sure I don't know. I HAD
one, but what he may think about it at the present time I can't say.
Perhaps I have half a one (of course I don't count that Idiot, George
Sampson). However, never mind me. I want to hear about you.'

'There is a certain man,' said Lizzie, 'a passionate and angry man,
who says he loves me, and who I must believe does love me. He is
the friend of my brother. I shrank from him within myself when
my brother first brought him to me; but the last time I saw him he
terrified me more than I can say.' There she stopped.

'Did you come here to escape from him, Lizzie?'

'I came here immediately after he so alarmed me.'

'Are you afraid of him here?'

'I am not timid generally, but I am always afraid of him. I am
afraid to see a newspaper, or to hear a word spoken of what is done
in London, lest he should have done some violence.'

'Then you are not afraid of him for yourself, dear?' said Bella, after
pondering on the words.

'I should be even that, if I met him about here. I look round for
him always, as I pass to and fro at night.'

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

'No. He might be fierce enough even to do some violence to
himself, but I don't think of that.'

'Then it would almost seem, dear,' said Bella quaintly, 'as if there
must be somebody else?'

Lizzie put her hands before her face for a moment before replying:
'The words are always in my ears, and the blow he struck upon a
stone wall as he said them is always before my eyes. I have tried
hard to think it not worth remembering, but I cannot make so little
of it. His hand was trickling down with blood as he said to me,
"Then I hope that I may never kill him!"

Rather startled, Bella made and clasped a girdle of her arms round
Lizzie's waist, and then asked quietly, in a soft voice, as they both
looked at the fire:

'Kill him! Is this man so jealous, then?'

'Of a gentleman,' said Lizzie. '--I hardly know how to tell you--of a
gentleman far above me and my way of life, who broke father's
death to me, and has shown an interest in me since.'

'Does he love you?'

Lizzie shook her head.

'Does he admire you?'

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

'Is it through his influence that you came here?'

'O no! And of all the world I wouldn't have him know that I am
here, or get the least clue where to find me.'

'Lizzie, dear! Why?' asked Bella, in amazement at this burst. But
then quickly added, reading Lizzie's face: 'No. Don't say why.
That was a foolish question of mine. I see, I see.'

There was silence between them. Lizzie, with a drooping head,
glanced down at the glow in the fire where her first fancies had
been nursed, and her first escape made from the grim life out of
which she had plucked her brother, foreseeing her reward.

'You know all now,' she said, raising her eyes to Bella's. 'There is
nothing left out. This is my reason for living secret here, with the
aid of a good old man who is my true friend. For a short part of
my life at home with father, I knew of things--don't ask me what--
that I set my face against, and tried to better. I don't think I could
have done more, then, without letting my hold on father go; but
they sometimes lie heavy on my mind. By doing all for the best, I
hope I may wear them out.'

'And wear out too,' said Bella soothingly, 'this weakness, Lizzie, in
favour of one who is not worthy of it.'

'No. I don't want to wear that out,' was the flushed reply, 'nor do I
want to believe, nor do I believe, that he is not worthy of it. What
should I gain by that, and how much should I lose!'

Bella's expressive little eyebrows remonstrated with the fire for
some short time before she rejoined:

'Don't think that I press you, Lizzie; but wouldn't you gain in
peace, and hope, and even in freedom? Wouldn't it be better not to
live a secret life in hiding, and not to be shut out from your natural
and wholesome prospects? Forgive my asking you, would that be
no gain?'

'Does a woman's heart that--that has that weakness in it which you
have spoken of,' returned Lizzie, 'seek to gain anything?'

The question was so directly at variance with Bella's views in life,
as set forth to her father, that she said internally, 'There, you little
mercenary wretch! Do you hear that? Ain't you ashamed of your
self?' and unclasped the girdle of her arms, expressly to give
herself a penitential poke in the side.

'But you said, Lizzie,' observed Bella, returning to her subject
when she had administered this chastisement, 'that you would lose,
besides. Would you mind telling me what you would lose, Lizzie?'

'I should lose some of the best recollections, best encouragements,
and best objects, that I carry through my daily life. I should lose
my belief that if I had been his equal, and he had loved me, I
should have tried with all my might to make him better and
happier, as he would have made me. I should lose almost all the
value that I put upon the little learning I have, which is all owing
to him, and which I conquered the difficulties of, that he might not
think it thrown away upon me. I should lose a kind of picture of
him--or of what he might have been, if I had been a lady, and he
had loved me--which is always with me, and which I somehow
feel that I could not do a mean or a wrong thing before. I should
leave off prizing the remembrance that he has done me nothing but
good since I have known him, and that he has made a change
within me, like--like the change in the grain of these hands, which
were coarse, and cracked, and hard, and brown when I rowed on
the river with father, and are softened and made supple by this new
work as you see them now.'

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

'Understand me, my dear;' thus she went on. I have never dreamed
of the possibility of his being anything to me on this earth but the
kind picture that I know I could not make you understand, if the
understanding was not in your own breast already. I have no more
dreamed of the possibility of MY being his wife, than he ever has--
and words could not be stronger than that. And yet I love him. I
love him so much, and so dearly, that when I sometimes think my
life may be but a weary one, I am proud of it and glad of it. I am
proud and glad to suffer something for him, even though it is of no
service to him, and he will never know of it or care for it.'

Bella sat enchained by the deep, unselfish passion of this girl or
woman of her own age, courageously revealing itself in the
confidence of her sympathetic perception of its truth. And yet she
had never experienced anything like it, or thought of the existence
of anything like it.

'It was late upon a wretched night,' said Lizzie, 'when his eyes first
looked at me in my old river-side home, very different from this.
His eyes may never look at me again. I would rather that they
never did; I hope that they never may. But I would not have the
light of them taken out of my life, for anything my life can give me.
I have told you everything now, my dear. If it comes a little
strange to me to have parted with it, I am not sorry. I had no
thought of ever parting with a single word of it, a moment before
you came in; but you came in, and my mind changed.'

Bella kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her warmly for her
confidence. 'I only wish,' said Bella, 'I was more deserving of it.'

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

'I don't mean in respect of keeping it,' said Bella, 'because any one
should tear me to bits before getting at a syllable of it--though
there's no merit in that, for I am naturally as obstinate as a Pig.
What I mean is, Lizzie, that I am a mere impertinent piece of
conceit, and you shame me.'

Lizzie put up the pretty brown hair that came tumbling down,
owing to the energy with which Bella shook her head; and she
remonstrated while thus engaged, 'My dear!'

'Oh, it's all very well to call me your dear,' said Bella, with a
pettish whimper, 'and I am glad to be called so, though I have
slight enough claim to be. But I AM such a nasty little thing!'

'My dear!' urged Lizzie again.

'Such a shallow, cold, worldly, Limited little brute!' said Bella,
bringing out her last adjective with culminating force.

'Do you think,' inquired Lizzie with her quiet smile, the hair being
now secured, 'that I don't know better?'

'DO you know better though?' said Bella. 'Do you really believe
you know better? Oh, I should be so glad if you did know better,
but I am so very much afraid that I must know best!'

Lizzie asked her, laughing outright, whether she ever saw her own
face or heard her own voice?

'I suppose so,' returned Bella; 'I look in the glass often enough, and
I chatter like a Magpie.'

'I have seen your face, and heard your voice, at any rate,' said
Lizzie, 'and they have tempted me to say to you--with a certainty of
not going wrong--what I thought I should never say to any one.
Does that look ill?'

'No, I hope it doesn't,' pouted Bella, stopping herself in something
between a humoured laugh and a humoured sob.

'I used once to see pictures in the fire,' said Lizzie playfully, 'to
please my brother. Shall I tell you what I see down there where the
fire is glowing?'

They had risen, and were standing on the hearth, the time being
come for separating; each had drawn an arm around the other to
take leave.

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

'Limited little b?' suggested Bella with her eyebrows raised.

'A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once
won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never
changes, and is never daunted.'

'Girl's heart?' asked Bella, with accompanying eyebrows. Lizzie
nodded. 'And the figure to which it belongs--'

Is yours,' suggested Bella.

'No. Most clearly and distinctly yours.'

So the interview terminated with pleasant words on both sides, and
with many reminders on the part of Bella that they were friends,
and pledges that she would soon come down into that part of the
country again. There with Lizzie returned to her occupation, and
Bella ran over to the little inn to rejoin her company.

'You look rather serious, Miss Wilfer,' was the Secretary's first
remark.

'I feel rather serious,' returned Miss Wilfer.

She had nothing else to tell him but that Lizzie Hexam's secret had
no reference whatever to the cruel charge, or its withdrawal. Oh
yes though! said Bella; she might as well mention one other thing;
Lizzie was very desirous to thank her unknown friend who had
sent her the written retractation. Was she, indeed? observed the
Secretary. Ah! Bella asked him, had he any notion who that
unknown friend might be? He had no notion whatever.

They were on the borders of Oxfordshire, so far had poor old Betty
Higden strayed. They were to return by the train presently, and, the
station being near at hand, the Reverend Frank and Mrs Frank, and
Sloppy and Bella and the Secretary, set out to walk to it. Few
rustic paths are wide enough for five, and Bella and the Secretary
dropped behind.

'Can you believe, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, 'that I feel as if whole
years had passed since I went into Lizzie Hexam's cottage?'

'We have crowded a good deal into the day,' he returned, 'and you
were much affected in the churchyard. You are over-tired.'

'No, I am not at all tired. I have not quite expressed what I mean.
I don't mean that I feel as if a great space of time had gone by, but
that I feel as if much had happened--to myself, you know.'

'For good, I hope?'

'I hope so,' said Bella.

'You are cold; I felt you tremble. Pray let me put this wrapper of
mine about you. May I fold it over this shoulder without injuring
your dress? Now, it will be too heavy and too long. Let me carry
this end over my arm, as you have no arm to give me.'

Yes she had though. How she got it out, in her muffled state,
Heaven knows; but she got it out somehow--there it was--and
slipped it through the Secretary's.

'I have had a long and interesting talk with Lizzie, Mr Rokesmith,
and she gave me her full confidence.'

'She could not withhold it,' said the Secretary.

'I wonder how you come,' said Bella, stopping short as she glanced
at him, 'to say to me just what she said about it!'

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

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

'That if you were inclined to win her confidence--anybody's
confidence--you were sure to do it.'

The railway, at this point, knowingly shutting a green eye and
opening a red one, they had to run for it. As Bella could not run
easily so wrapped up, the Secretary had to help her. When she
took her opposite place in the carriage corner, the brightness in her
face was so charming to behold, that on her exclaiming, 'What
beautiful stars and what a glorious night!' the Secretary said 'Yes,'
but seemed to prefer to see the night and the stars in the light of her
lovely little countenance, to looking out of window.

O boofer lady, fascinating boofer lady! If I were but legally
executor of Johnny's will! If I had but the right to pay your legacy
and to take your receipt!--Something to this purpose surely
mingled with the blast of the train as it cleared the stations, all
knowingly shutting up their green eyes and opening their red ones
when they prepared to let the boofer lady pass.

Chapter 10

SCOUTS OUT

'And so, Miss Wren,' said Mr Eugene Wrayburn, 'I cannot
persuade you to dress me a doll?'

'No,' replied Miss Wren snappishly; 'if you want one, go and buy
one at the shop.'

'And my charming young goddaughter,' said Mr Wrayburn
plaintively, 'down in Hertfordshire--'

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

'--is to be put upon the cold footing of the general public, and is to
derive no advantage from my private acquaintance with the Court
Dressmaker?'

'If it's any advantage to your charming godchild--and oh, a
precious godfather she has got!'--replied Miss Wren, pricking at
him in the air with her needle, 'to be informed that the Court
Dressmaker knows your tricks and your manners, you may tell her
so by post, with my compliments.'

Miss Wren was busy at her work by candle-light, and Mr
Wrayburn, half amused and half vexed, and all idle and shiftless,
stood by her bench looking on. Miss Wren's troublesome child
was in the corner in deep disgrace, and exhibiting great
wretchedness in the shivering stage of prostration from drink.

'Ugh, you disgraceful boy!' exclaimed Miss Wren, attracted by the
sound of his chattering teeth, 'I wish they'd all drop down your
throat and play at dice in your stomach! Boh, wicked child! Bee-
baa, black sheep!'

On her accompanying each of these reproaches with a threatening
stamp of the foot, the wretched creature protested with a whine.

'Pay five shillings for you indeed!' Miss Wren proceeded; 'how
many hours do you suppose it costs me to earn five shillings, you
imfamous boy?--Don't cry like that, or I'll throw a doll at you. Pay
five shillings fine for you indeed. Fine in more ways than one, I
think! I'd give the dustman five shillings, to carry you off in the
dust cart.'

'No, no,' pleaded the absurd creature. 'Please!'

'He's enough to break his mother's heart, is this boy,' said Miss
Wren, half appealing to Eugene. 'I wish I had never brought him
up. He'd be sharper than a serpent's tooth, if he wasn't as dull as
ditch water. Look at him. There's a pretty object for a parent's
eyes!'

Assuredly, in his worse than swinish state (for swine at least fatten
on their guzzling, and make themselves good to eat), he was a
pretty object for any eyes.

'A muddling and a swipey old child,' said Miss Wren, rating him
with great severity, 'fit for nothing but to be preserved in the liquor
that destroys him, and put in a great glass bottle as a sight for other
swipey children of his own pattern,--if he has no consideration for
his liver, has he none for his mother?'

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

'Oh don't and oh don't,' pursued Miss Wren. 'It's oh do and oh do.
And why do you?'

'Won't do so any more. Won't indeed. Pray!'

'There!' said Miss Wren, covering her eyes with her hand. 'I can't
bear to look at you. Go up stairs and get me my bonnet and shawl.
Make yourself useful in some way, bad boy, and let me have your
room instead of your company, for one half minute.'

Obeying her, he shambled out, and Eugene Wrayburn saw the
tears exude from between the little creature's fingers as she kept
her hand before her eyes. He was sorry, but his sympathy did not
move his carelessness to do anything but feel sorry.

'I'm going to the Italian Opera to try on,' said Miss Wren, taking
away her hand after a little while, and laughing satirically to hide
that she had been crying; 'I must see your back before I go, Mr
Wrayburn. Let me first tell you, once for all, that it's of no use your
paying visits to me. You wouldn't get what you want, of me, no,
not if you brought pincers with you to tear it out.'

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

'Ah!' returned Miss Wren with a hitch of her chin, 'I am so
obstinate. And of course it's on the subject of a doll's dress--or
ADdress--whichever you like. Get along and give it up!'

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

'Give 'em to me and get back into your corner, you naughty old
thing!' said Miss Wren, as she turned and espied him. 'No, no, I
won't have your help. Go into your corner, this minute!'

The miserable man, feebly rubbing the back of his faltering hands
downward from the wrists, shuffled on to his post of disgrace; but
not without a curious glance at Eugene in passing him,
accompanied with what seemed as if it might have been an action
of his elbow, if any action of any limb or joint he had, would have
answered truly to his will. Taking no more particular notice of him
than instinctively falling away from the disagreeable contact,
Eugene, with a lazy compliment or so to Miss Wren, begged leave
to light his cigar, and departed.

'Now you prodigal old son,' said Jenny, shaking her head and her
emphatic little forefinger at her burden, 'you sit there till I come
back. You dare to move out of your corner for a single instant
while I'm gone, and I'll know the reason why.'

With this admonition, she blew her work candles out, leaving him
to the light of the fire, and, taking her big door-key in her pocket
and her crutch-stick in her hand, marched off.

Eugene lounged slowly towards the Temple, smoking his cigar,
but saw no more of the dolls' dressmaker, through the accident of
their taking opposite sides of the street. He lounged along
moodily, and stopped at Charing Cross to look about him, with as
little interest in the crowd as any man might take, and was
lounging on again, when a most unexpected object caught his eyes.
No less an object than Jenny Wren's bad boy trying to make up his
mind to cross the road.

A more ridiculous and feeble spectacle than this tottering wretch
making unsteady sallies into the roadway, and as often staggering
back again, oppressed by terrors of vehicles that were a long way
off or were nowhere, the streets could not have shown. Over and
over again, when the course was perfectly clear, he set out, got half
way, described a loop, turned, and went back again; when he
might have crossed and re-crossed half a dozen times. Then, he
would stand shivering on the edge of the pavement, looking up the
street and looking down, while scores of people jostled him, and
crossed, and went on. Stimulated in course of time by the sight of
so many successes, he would make another sally, make another
loop, would all but have his foot on the opposite pavement, would
see or imagine something coming, and would stagger back again.
There, he would stand making spasmodic preparations as if for a
great leap, and at last would decide on a start at precisely the
wrong moment, and would be roared at by drivers, and would
shrink back once more, and stand in the old spot shivering, with
the whole of the proceedings to go through again.

'It strikes me,' remarked Eugene coolly, after watching him for
some minutes, 'that my friend is likely to be rather behind time if
he has any appointment on hand.' With which remark he strolled
on, and took no further thought of him.

Lightwood was at home when he got to the Chambers, and had
dined alone there. Eugene drew a chair to the fire by which he was
having his wine and reading the evening paper, and brought a
glass, and filled it for good fellowship's sake.

'My dear Mortimer, you are the express picture of contented
industry, reposing (on credit) after the virtuous labours of the day.'

'My dear Eugene, you are the express picture of discontented
idleness not reposing at all. Where have you been?'

'I have been,' replied Wrayburn, '--about town. I have turned up at
the present juncture, with the intention of consulting my highly
intelligent and respected solicitor on the position of my affairs.'

'Your highly intelligent and respect solicitor is of opinion that your
affairs are in a bad way, Eugene.'

'Though whether,' said Eugene thoughtfully, 'that can be
intelligently said, now, of the affairs of a client who has nothing to
lose and who cannot possibly be made to pay, may be open to
question.'

'You have fallen into the hands of the Jews, Eugene.'

'My dear boy,' returned the debtor, very composedly taking up his
glass, 'having previously fallen into the hands of some of the
Christians, I can bear it with philosophy.'

'I have had an interview to-day, Eugene, with a Jew, who seems
determined to press us hard. Quite a Shylock, and quite a
Patriarch. A picturesque grey-headed and grey-bearded old Jew, in
a shovel-hat and gaberdine.'

'Not,' said Eugene, pausing in setting down his glass, 'surely not
my worthy friend Mr Aaron?'

'He calls himself Mr Riah.'

'By-the-by,' said Eugene, 'it comes into my mind that--no doubt
with an instinctive desire to receive him into the bosom of our
Church--I gave him the name of Aaron!'

'Eugene, Eugene,' returned Lightwood, 'you are more ridiculous
than usual. Say what you mean.'

'Merely, my dear fellow, that I have the honour and pleasure of a
speaking acquaintance with such a Patriarch as you describe, and
that I address him as Mr Aaron, because it appears to me Hebraic,
expressive, appropriate, and complimentary. Notwithstanding
which strong reasons for its being his name, it may not be his
name.'

'I believe you are the absurdest man on the face of the earth,' said
Lightwood, laughing.

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

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

'Which looks,' remarked Eugene with much gravity, 'like NOT
knowing me. I hope it may not be my worthy friend Mr Aaron,
for, to tell you the truth, Mortimer, I doubt he may have a
prepossession against me. I strongly suspect him of having had a
hand in spiriting away Lizzie.'

'Everything,' returned Lightwood impatiently, 'seems, by a fatality,
to bring us round to Lizzie. "About town" meant about Lizzie, just
now, Eugene.'

'My solicitor, do you know,' observed Eugene, turning round to the
furniture, 'is a man of infinite discernment!'

'Did it not, Eugene?'

'Yes it did, Mortimer.'

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

Eugene Wrayburn rose, and put his hands in his pockets, and stood
with a foot on the fender, indolently rocking his body and looking
at the fire. After a prolonged pause, he replied: 'I don't know that.
I must ask you not to say that, as if we took it for granted.'

'But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave her
to herself.'

Having again paused as before, Eugene said: 'I don't know that,
either. But tell me. Did you ever see me take so much trouble
about anything, as about this disappearance of hers? I ask, for
information.'

'My dear Eugene, I wish I ever had!'

'Then you have not? Just so. You confirm my own impression.
Does that look as if I cared for her? I ask, for information.'

'I asked YOU for information, Eugene,' said Mortimer
reproachfully.

'Dear boy, I know it, but I can't give it. I thirst for information.
What do I mean? If my taking so much trouble to recover her does
not mean that I care for her, what does it mean? "If Peter Piper
picked a peck of pickled pepper, where's the peck," &c.?'

Though he said this gaily, he said it with a perplexed and
inquisitive face, as if he actually did not know what to make of
himself. 'Look on to the end--' Lightwood was beginning to
remonstrate, when he caught at the words:

'Ah! See now! That's exactly what I am incapable of doing. How
very acute you are, Mortimer, in finding my weak place! When we
were at school together, I got up my lessons at the last moment,
day by day and bit by bit; now we are out in life together, I get up
my lessons in the same way. In the present task I have not got
beyond this:--I am bent on finding Lizzie, and I mean to find her,
and I will take any means of finding her that offer themselves. Fair
means or foul means, are all alike to me. I ask you--for
information--what does that mean? When I have found her I may
ask you--also for information--what do I mean now? But it would
be premature in this stage, and it's not the character of my mind.'

Lightwood was shaking his head over the air with which his friend
held forth thus--an air so whimsically open and argumentative as
almost to deprive what he said of the appearance of evasion--when
a shuffling was heard at the outer door, and then an undecided
knock, as though some hand were groping for the knocker. 'The
frolicsome youth of the neighbourhood,' said Eugene, 'whom I
should be delighted to pitch from this elevation into the churchyard
below, without any intermediate ceremonies, have probably turned
the lamp out. I am on duty to-night, and will see to the door.'

His friend had barely had time to recall the unprecedented gleam of
determination with which he had spoken of finding this girl, and
which had faded out of him with the breath of the spoken words,
when Eugene came back, ushering in a most disgraceful shadow of
a man, shaking from head to foot, and clothed in shabby grease
and smear.

'This interesting gentleman,' said Eugene, 'is the son--the
occasionally rather trying son, for he has his failings--of a lady of
my acquaintance. My dear Mortimer--Mr Dolls.' Eugene had no
idea what his name was, knowing the little dressmaker's to be
assumed, but presented him with easy confidence under the first
appellation that his associations suggested.

'I gather, my dear Mortimer,' pursued Eugene, as Lightwood stared
at the obscene visitor, 'from the manner of Mr Dolls--which is
occasionally complicated--that he desires to make some
communication to me. I have mentioned to Mr Dolls that you and
I are on terms of confidence, and have requested Mr Dolls to
develop his views here.'

The wretched object being much embarrassed by holding what
remained of his hat, Eugene airily tossed it to the door, and put him
down in a chair.

'It will be necessary, I think,' he observed, 'to wind up Mr Dolls,
before anything to any mortal purpose can be got out of him.
Brandy, Mr Dolls, or--?'

'Threepenn'orth Rum,' said Mr Dolls.

A judiciously small quantity of the spirit was given him in a wine-
glass, and he began to convey it to his mouth, with all kinds of
falterings and gyrations on the road.

'The nerves of Mr Dolls,' remarked Eugene to Lightwood, 'are
considerably unstrung. And I deem it on the whole expedient to
fumigate Mr Dolls.'

He took the shovel from the grate, sprinkled a few live ashes on it,
and from a box on the chimney-piece took a few pastiles, which he
set upon them; then, with great composure began placidly waving
the shovel in front of Mr Dolls, to cut him off from his company.

'Lord bless my soul, Eugene!' cried Lightwood, laughing again,
'what a mad fellow you are! Why does this creature come to see
you?'

'We shall hear,' said Wrayburn, very observant of his face withal.
'Now then. Speak out. Don't be afraid. State your business,
Dolls.'

'Mist Wrayburn!' said the visitor, thickly and huskily. '--'TIS Mist
Wrayburn, ain't?' With a stupid stare.

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

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

'Will you do me the favour, my dear Mortimer, to wind up Mr
Dolls again?' said Eugene. 'I am occupied with the fumigation.'

A similar quantity was poured into his glass, and he got it to his
lips by similar circuitous ways. Having drunk it, Mr Dolls, with
an evident fear of running down again unless he made haste,
proceeded to business.

'Mist Wrayburn. Tried to nudge you, but you wouldn't. You want
that drection. You want t'know where she lives. DO you Mist
Wrayburn?'

With a glance at his friend, Eugene replied to the question sternly,
'I do.'

'I am er man,' said Mr Dolls, trying to smite himself on the breast,
but bringing his hand to bear upon the vicinity of his eye, 'er do it.
I am er man er do it.'

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

'Er give up that drection.'

'Have you got it?'

With a most laborious attempt at pride and dignity, Mr Dolls
rolled his head for some time, awakening the highest expectations,
and then answered, as if it were the happiest point that could
possibly be expected of him: 'No.'

'What do you mean then?'

Mr Dolls, collapsing in the drowsiest manner after his late
intellectual triumph, replied: 'Threepenn'orth Rum.'

'Wind him up again, my dear Mortimer,' said Wrayburn; 'wind him
up again.'

'Eugene, Eugene,' urged Lightwood in a low voice, as he complied,
'can you stoop to the use of such an instrument as this?'

'I said,' was the reply, made with that former gleam of
determination, 'that I would find her out by any means, fair or foul.
These are foul, and I'll take them--if I am not first tempted to break
the head of Mr Dolls with the fumigator. Can you get the
direction? Do you mean that? Speak! If that's what you have
come for, say how much you want.'

'Ten shillings--Threepenn'orths Rum,' said Mr Dolls.

'You shall have it.'

'Fifteen shillings--Threepenn'orths Rum,' said Mr Dolls, making an
attempt to stiffen himself.

'You shall have it. Stop at that. How will you get the direction you
talk of?'

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

'How will you get it, I ask you?'

'I am ill-used vidual,' said Mr Dolls. 'Blown up morning t'night.
Called names. She makes Mint money, sir, and never stands
Threepenn'orth Rum.'

'Get on,' rejoined Eugene, tapping his palsied head with the fire-
shovel, as it sank on his breast. 'What comes next?'

Making a dignified attempt to gather himself together, but, as it
were, dropping half a dozen pieces of himself while he tried in vain
to pick up one, Mr Dolls, swaying his head from side to side,
regarded his questioner with what he supposed to be a haughty
smile and a scornful glance.

'She looks upon me as mere child, sir. I am NOT mere child, sir.
Man. Man talent. Lerrers pass betwixt 'em. Postman lerrers.
Easy for man talent er get drection, as get his own drection.'

'Get it then,' said Eugene; adding very heartily under his breath,
'--You Brute! Get it, and bring it here to me, and earn the money for
sixty threepenn'orths of rum, and drink them all, one a top of
another, and drink yourself dead with all possible expedition.' The
latter clauses of these special instructions he addressed to the fire,
as he gave it back the ashes he had taken from it, and replaced the
shovel.

Mr Dolls now struck out the highly unexpected discovery that he
had been insulted by Lightwood, and stated his desire to 'have it
out with him' on the spot, and defied him to come on, upon the
liberal terms of a sovereign to a halfpenny. Mr Dolls then fell a
crying, and then exhibited a tendency to fall asleep. This last
manifestation as by far the most alarming, by reason of its
threatening his prolonged stay on the premises, necessitated
vigorous measures. Eugene picked up his worn-out hat with the
tongs, clapped it on his head, and, taking him by the collar--all this
at arm's length--conducted him down stairs and out of the precincts
into Fleet Street. There, he turned his face westward, and left him.

When he got back, Lightwood was standing over the fire, brooding
in a sufficiently low-spirited manner.

'I'll wash my hands of Mr Dolls physically--' said Eugene, 'and be
with you again directly, Mortimer.'

'I would much prefer,' retorted Mortimer, 'your washing your hands
of Mr Dolls, morally, Eugene.'

'So would I,' said Eugene; 'but you see, dear boy, I can't do without
him.'

In a minute or two he resumed his chair, as perfectly unconcerned
as usual, and rallied his friend on having so narrowly escaped the
prowess of their muscular visitor.

'I can't be amused on this theme,' said Mortimer, restlessly. 'You
can make almost any theme amusing to me, Eugene, but not this.'

'Well!' cried Eugene, 'I am a little ashamed of it myself, and
therefore let us change the subject.'

'It is so deplorably underhanded,' said Mortimer. 'It is so unworthy
of you, this setting on of such a shameful scout.'

'We have changed the subject!' exclaimed Eugene, airily. 'We have
found a new one in that word, scout. Don't be like Patience on a
mantelpiece frowning at Dolls, but sit down, and I'll tell you
something that you really will find amusing. Take a cigar. Look
at this of mine. I light it--draw one puff--breathe the smoke out--
there it goes--it's Dolls!--it's gone--and being gone you are a man
again.'

'Your subject,' said Mortimer, after lighting a cigar, and
comforting himself with a whiff or two, 'was scouts, Eugene.'

'Exactly. Isn't it droll that I never go out after dark, but I find
myself attended, always by one scout, and often by two?'

Lightwood took his cigar from his lips in surprise, and looked at
his friend, as if with a latent suspicion that there must be a jest or
hidden meaning in his words.

'On my honour, no,' said Wrayburn, answering the look and
smiling carelessly; 'I don't wonder at your supposing so, but on my
honour, no. I say what I mean. I never go out after dark, but I find
myself in the ludicrous situation of being followed and observed at
a distance, always by one scout, and often by two.'

'Are you sure, Eugene?'

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

'But there's no process out against you. The Jews only threaten.
They have done nothing. Besides, they know where to find you,
and I represent you. Why take the trouble?'

'Observe the legal mind!' remarked Eugene, turning round to the
furniture again, with an air of indolent rapture. 'Observe the dyer's
hand, assimilating itself to what it works in,--or would work in, if
anybody would give it anything to do. Respected solicitor, it's not
that. The schoolmaster's abroad.'

'The schoolmaster?'

'Ay! Sometimes the schoolmaster and the pupil are both abroad.
Why, how soon you rust in my absence! You don't understand yet?
Those fellows who were here one night. They are the scouts I
speak of, as doing me the honour to attend me after dark.'

'How long has this been going on?' asked Lightwood, opposing a
serious face to the laugh of his friend.

'I apprehend it has been going on, ever since a certain person went
off. Probably, it had been going on some little time before I
noticed it: which would bring it to about that time.'

'Do you think they suppose you to have inveigled her away?'

'My dear Mortimer, you know the absorbing nature of my
professional occupations; I really have not had leisure to think
about it.'

'Have you asked them what they want? Have you objected?'

'Why should I ask them what they want, dear fellow, when I am
indifferent what they want? Why should I express objection, when
I don't object?'

'You are in your most reckless mood. But you called the situation
just now, a ludicrous one; and most men object to that, even those
who are utterly indifferent to everything else.'

'You charm me, Mortimer, with your reading of my weaknesses.
(By-the-by, that very word, Reading, in its critical use, always
charms me. An actress's Reading of a chambermaid, a dancer's
Reading of a hornpipe, a singer's Reading of a song, a marine
painter's Reading of the sea, the kettle-drum's Reading of an
instrumental passage, are phrases ever youthful and delightful.) I
was mentioning your perception of my weaknesses. I own to the
weakness of objecting to occupy a ludicrous position, and therefore
I transfer the position to the scouts.'

'I wish, Eugene, you would speak a little more soberly and plainly,
if it were only out of consideration for my feeling less at ease than
you do.'

'Then soberly and plainly, Mortimer, I goad the schoolmaster to
madness. I make the schoolmaster so ridiculous, and so aware of
being made ridiculous, that I see him chafe and fret at every pore
when we cross one another. The amiable occupation has been the
solace of my life, since I was baulked in the manner unnecessary to
recall. I have derived inexpressible comfort from it. I do it thus: I
stroll out after dark, stroll a little way, look in at a window and
furtively look out for the schoolmaster. Sooner or later, I perceive
the schoolmaster on the watch; sometimes accompanied by his
hopeful pupil; oftener, pupil-less. Having made sure of his
watching me, I tempt him on, all over London. One night I go
east, another night north, in a few nights I go all round the
compass. Sometimes, I walk; sometimes, I proceed in cabs,
draining the pocket of the schoolmaster who then follows in cabs.
I study and get up abstruse No Thoroughfares in the course of the
day. With Venetian mystery I seek those No Thoroughfares at
night, glide into them by means of dark courts, tempt the
schoolmaster to follow, turn suddenly, and catch him before he can
retreat. Then we face one another, and I pass him as unaware of
his existence, and he undergoes grinding torments. Similarly, I
walk at a great pace down a short street, rapidly turn the corner,
and, getting out of his view, as rapidly turn back. I catch him
coming on post, again pass him as unaware of his existence, and
again he undergoes grinding torments. Night after night his
disappointment is acute, but hope springs eternal in the scholastic
breast, and he follows me again to-morrow. Thus I enjoy the
pleasures of the chase, and derive great benefit from the healthful
exercise. When I do not enjoy the pleasures of the chase, for
anything I know he watches at the Temple Gate all night.'

'This is an extraordinary story,' observed Lightwood, who had
heard it out with serious attention. 'I don't like it.'

'You are a little hipped, dear fellow,' said Eugene; 'you have been
too sedentary. Come and enjoy the pleasures of the chase.'

'Do you mean that you believe he is watching now?'

'I have not the slightest doubt he is.'

'Have you seen him to-night?'

'I forgot to look for him when I was last out,' returned Eugene with
the calmest indifference; 'but I dare say he was there. Come! Be a
British sportsman and enjoy the pleasures of the chase. It will do
you good.'

Lightwood hesitated; but, yielding to his curiosity, rose.

'Bravo!' cried Eugene, rising too. 'Or, if Yoicks would be in better
keeping, consider that I said Yoicks. Look to your feet, Mortimer,
for we shall try your boots. When you are ready, I am--need I say
with a Hey Ho Chivey, and likewise with a Hark Forward, Hark
Forward, Tantivy?'

'Will nothing make you serious?' said Mortimer, laughing through
his gravity.

'I am always serious, but just now I am a little excited by the
glorious fact that a southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a
hunting evening. Ready? So. We turn out the lamp and shut the
door, and take the field.'

As the two friends passed out of the Temple into the public street,
Eugene demanded with a show of courteous patronage in which
direction Mortimer would you like the run to be? 'There is a rather
difficult country about Bethnal Green,' said Eugene, 'and we have
not taken in that direction lately. What is your opinion of Bethnal
Green?' Mortimer assented to Bethnal Green, and they turned
eastward. 'Now, when we come to St Paul's churchyard,' pursued
Eugene, 'we'll loiter artfully, and I'll show you the schoolmaster.'
But, they both saw him, before they got there; alone, and stealing
after them in the shadow of the houses, on the opposite side of the
way.

'Get your wind,' said Eugene, 'for I am off directly. Does it occur
to you that the boys of Merry England will begin to deteriorate in
an educational light, if this lasts long? The schoolmaster can't
attend to me and the boys too. Got your wind? I am off!'

At what a rate he went, to breathe the schoolmaster; and how he
then lounged and loitered, to put his patience to another kind of
wear; what preposterous ways he took, with no other object on
earth than to disappoint and punish him; and how he wore him out
by every piece of ingenuity that his eccentric humour could devise;
all this Lightwood noted, with a feeling of astonishment that so
careless a man could be so wary, and that so idle a man could take
so much trouble. At last, far on in the third hour of the pleasures
of the chase, when he had brought the poor dogging wretch round
again into the City, he twisted Mortimer up a few dark entries,
twisted him into a little square court, twisted him sharp round
again, and they almost ran against Bradley Headstone.

'And you see, as I was saying, Mortimer,' remarked Eugene aloud
with the utmost coolness, as though there were no one within
hearing by themselves: 'and you see, as I was saying--undergoing
grinding torments.'

It was not too strong a phrase for the occasion. Looking like the
hunted and not the hunter, baffled, worn, with the exhaustion of
deferred hope and consuming hate and anger in his face, white-
lipped, wild-eyed, draggle-haired, seamed with jealousy and anger,
and torturing himself with the conviction that he showed it all and
they exulted in it, he went by them in the dark, like a haggard head
suspended in the air: so completely did the force of his expression
cancel his figure.

Mortimer Lightwood was not an extraordinarily impressible man,
but this face impressed him. He spoke of it more than once on the
remainder of the way home, and more than once when they got
home.

They had been abed in their respective rooms two or three hours,
when Eugene was partly awakened by hearing a footstep going
about, and was fully awakened by seeing Lightwood standing at
his bedside.

'Nothing wrong, Mortimer?'

'No.'

'What fancy takes you, then, for walking about in the night?'

'I am horribly wakeful.'

'How comes that about, I wonder!'

'Eugene, I cannot lose sight of that fellow's face.'

'Odd!' said Eugene with a light laugh, 'I can.' And turned over,
and fell asleep again.

Chapter 11

IN THE DARK

There was no sleep for Bradley Headstone on that night when
Eugene Wrayburn turned so easily in his bed; there was no sleep
for little Miss Peecher. Bradley consumed the lonely hours, and
consumed himself in haunting the spot where his careless rival lay
a dreaming; little Miss Peecher wore them away in listening for the
return home of the master of her heart, and in sorrowfully
presaging that much was amiss with him. Yet more was amiss
with him than Miss Peecher's simply arranged little work-box of
thoughts, fitted with no gloomy and dark recesses, could hold.
For, the state of the man was murderous.

The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it. More; he
irritated it, with a kind of perverse pleasure akin to that which a
sick man sometimes has in irritating a wound upon his body. Tied
up all day with his disciplined show upon him, subdued to the
performance of his routine of educational tricks, encircled by a
gabbling crowd, he broke loose at night like an ill-tamed wild
animal. Under his daily restraint, it was his compensation, not his
trouble, to give a glance towards his state at night, and to the
freedom of its being indulged. If great criminals told the truth--
which, being great criminals, they do not--they would very rarely
tell of their struggles against the crime. Their struggles are
towards it. They buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody
shore, not to recede from it. This man perfectly comprehended that
he hated his rival with his strongest and worst forces, and that if he
tracked him to Lizzie Hexam, his so doing would never serve
himself with her, or serve her. All his pains were taken, to the end
that he might incense himself with the sight of the detested figure
in her company and favour, in her place of concealment. And he
knew as well what act of his would follow if he did, as he knew
that his mother had borne him. Granted, that he may not have held
it necessary to make express mention to himself of the one familiar
truth any more than of the other.

He knew equally well that he fed his wrath and hatred, and that he
accumulated provocation and self-justification, by being made the
nightly sport of the reckless and insolent Eugene. Knowing all
this,--and still always going on with infinite endurance, pains, and
perseverance, could his dark soul doubt whither he went?

Baffled, exasperated, and weary, he lingered opposite the Temple
gate when it closed on Wrayburn and Lightwood, debating with
himself should he go home for that time or should he watch longer.
Possessed in his jealousy by the fixed idea that Wrayburn was in
the secret, if it were not altogether of his contriving, Bradley was
as confident of getting the better of him at last by sullenly sticking
to him, as he would have been--and often had been--of mastering
any piece of study in the way of his vocation, by the like slow
persistent process. A man of rapid passions and sluggish
intelligence, it had served him often and should serve him again.

The suspicion crossed him as he rested in a doorway with his eyes
upon the Temple gate, that perhaps she was even concealed in that
set of Chambers. It would furnish another reason for Wrayburn's
purposeless walks, and it might be. He thought of it and thought
of it, until he resolved to steal up the stairs, if the gatekeeper would
let him through, and listen. So, the haggard head suspended in the
air flitted across the road, like the spectre of one of the many heads
erst hoisted upon neighbouring Temple Bar, and stopped before the
watchman.

The watchman looked at it, and asked: 'Who for?'

'Mr Wrayburn.'

'It's very late.'

'He came back with Mr Lightwood, I know, near upon two hours
ago. But if he has gone to bed, I'll put a paper in his letter-box. I
am expected.'

The watchman said no more, but opened the gate, though rather
doubtfully. Seeing, however, that the visitor went straight and fast
in the right direction, he seemed satisfied.

The haggard head floated up the dark staircase, and softly
descended nearer to the floor outside the outer door of the
chambers. The doors of the rooms within, appeared to be standing
open. There were rays of candlelight from one of them, and there
was the sound of a footstep going about. There were two voices.
The words they uttered were not distinguishable, but they were
both the voices of men. In a few moments the voices were silent,
and there was no sound of footstep, and the inner light went out. If
Lightwood could have seen the face which kept him awake, staring
and listening in the darkness outside the door as he spoke of it, he
might have been less disposed to sleep, through the remainder of
the night.

'Not there,' said Bradley; 'but she might have been.' The head
arose to its former height from the ground, floated down the stair-
case again, and passed on to the gate. A man was standing there,
in parley with the watchman.

'Oh!' said the watchman. 'Here he is!'

Perceiving himself to be the antecedent, Bradley looked from the
watchman to the man.

'This man is leaving a letter for Mr Lightwood,' the watchman
explained, showing it in his hand; 'and I was mentioning that a
person had just gone up to Mr Lightwood's chambers. It might be
the same business perhaps?'

'No,' said Bradley, glancing at the man, who was a stranger to him.

'No,' the man assented in a surly way; 'my letter--it's wrote by my
daughter, but it's mine--is about my business, and my business
ain't nobody else's business.'

As Bradley passed out at the gate with an undecided foot, he heard
it shut behind him, and heard the footstep of the man coming after
him.

''Scuse me,' said the man, who appeared to have been drinking and
rather stumbled at him than touched him, to attract his attention:
'but might you be acquainted with the T'other Governor?'

'With whom?' asked Bradley.

'With,' returned the man, pointing backward over his right shoulder
with his right thumb, 'the T'other Governor?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Why look here,' hooking his proposition on his left-hand fingers
with the forefinger of his right. 'There's two Governors, ain't there?
One and one, two--Lawyer Lightwood, my first finger, he's one,
ain't he? Well; might you be acquainted with my middle finger,
the T'other?'

'I know quite as much of him,' said Bradley, with a frown and a
distant look before him, 'as I want to know.'

'Hooroar!' cried the man. 'Hooroar T'other t'other Governor.
Hooroar T'otherest Governor! I am of your way of thinkin'.'

'Don't make such a noise at this dead hour of the night. What are
you talking about?'

'Look here, T'otherest Governor,' replied the man, becoming
hoarsely confidential. 'The T'other Governor he's always joked his
jokes agin me, owing, as I believe, to my being a honest man as
gets my living by the sweat of my brow. Which he ain't, and he
don't.'

'What is that to me?'

'T'otherest Governor,' returned the man in a tone of injured
innocence, 'if you don't care to hear no more, don't hear no more.
You begun it. You said, and likeways showed pretty plain, as you
warn't by no means friendly to him. But I don't seek to force my
company nor yet my opinions on no man. I am a honest man,
that's what I am. Put me in the dock anywhere--I don't care where
--and I says, "My Lord, I am a honest man." Put me in the witness-
box anywhere--I don't care where--and I says the same to his
lordship, and I kisses the book. I don't kiss my coat-cuff; I kisses
the book.'

It was not so much in deference to these strong testimonials to
character, as in his restless casting about for any way or help
towards the discovery on which he was concentrated, that Bradley
Headstone replied: 'You needn't take offence. I didn't mean to stop
you. You were too--loud in the open street; that was all.'

''Totherest Governor,' replied Mr Riderhood, mollified and
mysterious, 'I know wot it is to be loud, and I know wot it is to be
soft. Nat'rally I do. It would be a wonder if I did not, being by the
Chris'en name of Roger, which took it arter my own father, which
took it from his own father, though which of our fam'ly fust took it
nat'ral I will not in any ways mislead you by undertakin' to say.
And wishing that your elth may be better than your looks, which
your inside must be bad indeed if it's on the footing of your out.'

Startled by the implication that his face revealed too much of his
mind, Bradley made an effort to clear his brow. It might be worth
knowing what this strange man's business was with Lightwood, or
Wrayburn, or both, at such an unseasonable hour. He set himself
to find out, for the man might prove to be a messenger between
those two.

'You call at the Temple late,' he remarked, with a lumbering show
of ease.

'Wish I may die,' cried Mr Riderhood, with a hoarse laugh, 'if I
warn't a goin' to say the self-same words to you, T'otherest
Governor!'

'It chanced so with me,' said Bradley, looking disconcertedly about
him.

'And it chanced so with me,' said Riderhood. 'But I don't mind
telling you how. Why should I mind telling you? I'm a Deputy
Lock-keeper up the river, and I was off duty yes'day, and I shall be
on to-morrow.'

'Yes?'

'Yes, and I come to London to look arter my private affairs. My
private affairs is to get appinted to the Lock as reg'lar keeper at fust
hand, and to have the law of a busted B'low-Bridge steamer which
drownded of me. I ain't a goin' to be drownded and not paid for it!'

Bradley looked at him, as though he were claiming to be a Ghost.

'The steamer,' said Mr Riderhood, obstinately, 'run me down and
drownded of me. Interference on the part of other parties brought
me round; but I never asked 'em to bring me round, nor yet the
steamer never asked 'em to it. I mean to be paid for the life as the
steamer took.'

'Was that your business at Mr Lightwood's chambers in the middle
of the night?' asked Bradley, eyeing him with distrust.

'That and to get a writing to be fust-hand Lock Keeper. A
recommendation in writing being looked for, who else ought to
give it to me? As I says in the letter in my daughter's hand, with
my mark put to it to make it good in law, Who but you, Lawyer
Lightwood, ought to hand over this here stifficate, and who but you
ought to go in for damages on my account agin the Steamer? For
(as I says under my mark) I have had trouble enough along of you
and your friend. If you, Lawyer Lightwood, had backed me good
and true, and if the T'other Governor had took me down correct (I
says under my mark), I should have been worth money at the
present time, instead of having a barge-load of bad names chucked
at me, and being forced to eat my words, which is a unsatisfying
sort of food wotever a man's appetite! And when you mention the
middle of the night, T'otherest Governor,' growled Mr Riderhood,
winding up his monotonous summary of his wrongs, 'throw your
eye on this here bundle under my arm, and bear in mind that I'm a
walking back to my Lock, and that the Temple laid upon my line of
road.'

Bradley Headstone's face had changed during this latter recital, and
he had observed the speaker with a more sustained attention.

'Do you know,' said he, after a pause, during which they walked on
side by side, 'that I believe I could tell you your name, if I tried?'

'Prove your opinion,' was the answer, accompanied with a stop and
a stare. 'Try.'

'Your name is Riderhood.'

'I'm blest if it ain't,' returned that gentleman. 'But I don't know
your'n.'

'That's quite another thing,' said Bradley. 'I never supposed you
did.'

As Bradley walked on meditating, the Rogue walked on at his side
muttering. The purport of the muttering was: 'that Rogue
Riderhood, by George! seemed to be made public property on,
now, and that every man seemed to think himself free to handle his
name as if it was a Street Pump.' The purport of the meditating
was: 'Here is an instrument. Can I use it?'

They had walked along the Strand, and into Pall Mall, and had
turned up-hill towards Hyde Park Corner; Bradley Headstone
waiting on the pace and lead of Riderhood, and leaving him to
indicate the course. So slow were the schoolmaster's thoughts, and
so indistinct his purposes when they were but tributary to the one
absorbing purpose or rather when, like dark trees under a stormy
sky, they only lined the long vista at the end of which he saw those
two figures of Wrayburn and Lizzie on which his eyes were fixed--
that at least a good half-mile was traversed before he spoke again.
Even then, it was only to ask:

'Where is your Lock?'

'Twenty mile and odd--call it five-and-twenty mile and odd, if you
like--up stream,' was the sullen reply.

'How is it called?'

'Plashwater Weir Mill Lock.'

'Suppose I was to offer you five shillings; what then?'

'Why, then, I'd take it,' said Mr Riderhood.

The schoolmaster put his hand in his pocket, and produced two
half-crowns, and placed them in Mr Riderhood's palm: who
stopped at a convenient doorstep to ring them both, before
acknowledging their receipt.

'There's one thing about you, T'otherest Governor,' said Riderhood,
faring on again, 'as looks well and goes fur. You're a ready money
man. Now;' when he had carefully pocketed the coins on that side
of himself which was furthest from his new friend; 'what's this for?'

'For you.'

'Why, o' course I know THAT,' said Riderhood, as arguing
something that was self-evident. 'O' course I know very well as no
man in his right senses would suppose as anythink would make
me give it up agin when I'd once got it. But what do you want for it?'

'I don't know that I want anything for it. Or if I do want anything
for it, I don't know what it is.' Bradley gave this answer in a stolid,
vacant, and self-communing manner, which Mr Riderhood found
very extraordinary.

'You have no goodwill towards this Wrayburn,' said Bradley,
coming to the name in a reluctant and forced way, as if he were
dragged to it.

'No.'

'Neither have I.'

Riderhood nodded, and asked: 'Is it for that?'

'It's as much for that as anything else. It's something to be agreed
with, on a subject that occupies so much of one's thoughts.'

'It don't agree with YOU,' returned Mr Riderhood, bluntly. 'No! It
don't, T'otherest Governor, and it's no use a lookin' as if you
wanted to make out that it did. I tell you it rankles in you. It
rankles in you, rusts in you, and pisons you.'

'Say that it does so,' returned Bradley with quivering lips; 'is there
no cause for it?'

'Cause enough, I'll bet a pound!' cried Mr Riderhood.

'Haven't you yourself declared that the fellow has heaped
provocations, insults, and affronts on you, or something to that
effect? He has done the same by me. He is made of venomous
insults and affronts, from the crown of his head to the sole of his
foot. Are you so hopeful or so stupid, as not to know that he and
the other will treat your application with contempt, and light their
cigars with it?'

'I shouldn't wonder if they did, by George!' said Riderhood, turning
angry.

'If they did! They will. Let me ask you a question. I know
something more than your name about you; I knew something
about Gaffer Hexam. When did you last set eyes upon his
daughter?'

'When did I last set eyes upon his daughter, T'otherest Governor?'
repeated Mr Riderhood, growing intentionally slower of
comprehension as the other quickened in his speech.

'Yes. Not to speak to her. To see her--anywhere?'

The Rogue had got the clue he wanted, though he held it with a
clumsy hand. Looking perplexedly at the passionate face, as if he
were trying to work out a sum in his mind, he slowly answered:

'I ain't set eyes upon her--never once--not since the day of Gaffer's
death.'

'You know her well, by sight?'

'I should think I did! No one better.'

'And you know him as well?'

'Who's him?' asked Riderhood, taking off his hat and rubbing his
forehead, as he directed a dull look at his questioner.

'Curse the name! Is it so agreeable to you that you want to hear it
again?'

'Oh! HIM!' said Riderhood, who had craftily worked the
schoolmaster into this corner, that he might again take note of his
face under its evil possession. 'I'd know HIM among a thousand.'

'Did you--' Bradley tried to ask it quietly; but, do what he might
with his voice, he could not subdue his face;--'did you ever see
them together?'

(The Rogue had got the clue in both hands now.)

'I see 'em together, T'otherest Governor, on the very day when
Gaffer was towed ashore.'

Bradley could have hidden a reserved piece of information from the
sharp eyes of a whole inquisitive class, but he could not veil from
the eyes of the ignorant Riderhood the withheld question next in
his breast. 'You shall put it plain if you want it answered,' thought
the Rogue, doggedly; 'I ain't a-going a wolunteering.'

'Well! was he insolent to her too?' asked Bradley after a struggle.
'Or did he make a show of being kind to her?'

'He made a show of being most uncommon kind to her,' said
Riderhood. 'By George! now I--'

His flying off at a tangent was indisputably natural. Bradley
looked at him for the reason.

'Now I think of it,' said Mr Riderhood, evasively, for he was
substituting those words for 'Now I see you so jealous,' which was
the phrase really in his mind; 'P'r'aps he went and took me down
wrong, a purpose, on account o' being sweet upon her!'

The baseness of confirming him in this suspicion or pretence of
one (for he could not have really entertained it), was a line's
breadth beyond the mark the schoolmaster had reached. The
baseness of communing and intriguing with the fellow who would
have set that stain upon her, and upon her brother too, was
attained. The line's breadth further, lay beyond. He made no reply,
but walked on with a lowering face.

What he might gain by this acquaintance, he could not work out in
his slow and cumbrous thoughts. The man had an injury against
the object of his hatred, and that was something; though it was less
than he supposed, for there dwelt in the man no such deadly rage
and resentment as burned in his own breast. The man knew her,
and might by a fortunate chance see her, or hear of her; that was
something, as enlisting one pair of eyes and ears the more. The
man was a bad man, and willing enough to be in his pay. That
was something, for his own state and purpose were as bad as bad
could be, and he seemed to derive a vague support from the
possession of a congenial instrument, though it might never be
used.

Suddenly he stood still, and asked Riderhood point-blank if he
knew where she was? Clearly, he did not know. He asked
Riderhood if he would be willing, in case any intelligence of her,
or of Wrayburn as seeking her or associating with her, should fall
in his way, to communicate it if it were paid for? He would be
very willing indeed. He was 'agin 'em both,' he said with an oath,
and for why? 'Cause they had both stood betwixt him and his
getting his living by the sweat of his brow.

'It will not be long then,' said Bradley Headstone, after some more
discourse to this effect, 'before we see one another again. Here is
the country road, and here is the day. Both have come upon me by
surprise.'

'But, T'otherest Governor,' urged Mr Riderhood, 'I don't know
where to find you.'

'It is of no consequence. I know where to find you, and I'll come to
your Lock.'

'But, T'otherest Governor,' urged Mr Riderhood again, 'no luck
never come yet of a dry acquaintance. Let's wet it, in a mouth-fill
of rum and milk, T'otherest Governon'

Bradley assenting, went with him into an early public-house,
haunted by unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where
returning carts, farmers' men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed,
and certain human nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were
solacing themselves after their several manners; and where not one
of the nightbirds hovering about the sloppy bar failed to discern at
a glance in the passion-wasted nightbird with respectable feathers,
the worst nightbird of all.

An inspiration of affection for a half-drunken carter going his way
led to Mr Riderhood's being elevated on a high heap of baskets on
a waggon, and pursuing his journey recumbent on his back with
his head on his bundle. Bradley then turned to retrace his steps,
and by-and-by struck off through little-traversed ways, and by-and-
by reached school and home. Up came the sun to find him washed
and brushed, methodically dressed in decent black coat and
waistcoat, decent formal black tie, and pepper-and-salt pantaloons,
with his decent silver watch in its pocket, and its decent hair-guard
round his neck: a scholastic huntsman clad for the field, with his
fresh pack yelping and barking around him.

Yet more really bewitched than the miserable creatures of the
much-lamented times, who accused themselves of impossibilities
under a contagion of horror and the strongly suggestive influences
of Torture, he had been ridden hard by Evil Spirits in the night that
was newly gone. He had been spurred and whipped and heavily
sweated. If a record of the sport had usurped the places of the
peaceful texts from Scripture on the wall, the most advanced of the
scholars might have taken fright and run away from the master.

Chapter 12

MEANING MISCHIEF

Up came the sun, steaming all over London, and in its glorious
impartiality even condescending to make prismatic sparkles in the
whiskers of Mr Alfred Lammle as he sat at breakfast. In need of
some brightening from without, was Mr Alfred Lammle, for he
had the air of being dull enough within, and looked grievously
discontented.

Mrs Alfred Lammle faced her lord. The happy pair of swindlers,
with the comfortable tie between them that each had swindled the
other, sat moodily observant of the tablecloth. Things looked so
gloomy in the breakfast-room, albeit on the sunny side of Sackville
Street, that any of the family tradespeople glancing through the
blinds might have taken the hint to send in his account and press
for it. But this, indeed, most of the family tradespeople had already
done, without the hint.

'It seems to me,' said Mrs Lammle, 'that you have had no money at
all, ever since we have been married.'

'What seems to you,' said Mr Lammle, 'to have been the case, may
possibly have been the case. It doesn't matter.'

Was it the speciality of Mr and Mrs Lammle, or does it ever obtain
with other loving couples? In these matrimonial dialogues they
never addressed each other, but always some invisible presence
that appeared to take a station about midway between them.
Perhaps the skeleton in the cupboard comes out to be talked to, on
such domestic occasions?

'I have never seen any money in the house,' said Mrs Lammle to
the skeleton, 'except my own annuity. That I swear.'

'You needn't take the trouble of swearing,' said Mr Lammle to the
skeleton; 'once more, it doesn't matter. You never turned your
annuity to so good an account.'

'Good an account! In what way?' asked Mrs Lammle.

'In the way of getting credit, and living well,' said Mr Lammle.
Perhaps the skeleton laughed scornfully on being intrusted with
this question and this answer; certainly Mrs Lammle did, and Mr
Lammle did.

'And what is to happen next?' asked Mrs Lammle of the skeleton.

'Smash is to happen next,' said Mr Lammle to the same authority.

After this, Mrs Lammle looked disdainfully at the skeleton--but
without carrying the look on to Mr Lammle--and drooped her eyes.
After that, Mr Lammle did exactly the same thing, and drooped
HIS eyes. A servant then entering with toast, the skeleton retired
into the closet, and shut itself up.

'Sophronia,' said Mr Lammle, when the servant had withdrawn.
And then, very much louder: 'Sophronia!'

'Well?'

'Attend to me, if you please.' He eyed her sternly until she did
attend, and then went on. 'I want to take counsel with you. Come,
come; no more trifling. You know our league and covenant. We
are to work together for our joint interest, and you are as knowing a
hand as I am. We shouldn't be together, if you were not. What's to
be done? We are hemmed into a corner. What shall we do?'

'Have you no scheme on foot that will bring in anything?'

Mr Lammle plunged into his whiskers for reflection, and came out
hopeless: 'No; as adventurers we are obliged to play rash games for
chances of high winnings, and there has been a run of luck against
us.'

She was resuming, 'Have you nothing--' when he stopped her.

'We, Sophronia. We, we, we.'

'Have we nothing to sell ?'

'Deuce a bit. I have given a Jew a bill of sale on this furniture, and
he could take it to-morrow, to-day, now. He would have taken it
before now, I believe, but for Fledgeby.'

'What has Fledgeby to do with him?'

'Knew him. Cautioned me against him before I got into his claws.
Couldn't persuade him then, in behalf of somebody else.'

'Do you mean that Fledgeby has at all softened him towards you?'

'Us, Sophronia. Us, us, us.'

'Towards us?'

'I mean that the Jew has not yet done what he might have done,
and that Fledgeby takes the credit of having got him to hold his
hand.'

'Do you believe Fledgeby?'

'Sophronia, I never believe anybody. I never have, my dear, since I
believed you. But it looks like it.'

Having given her this back-handed reminder of her mutinous
observations to the skeleton, Mr Lammle rose from table--perhaps,
the better to conceal a smile, and a white dint or two about his
nose--and took a turn on the carpet and came to the hearthrug.

'If we could have packed the brute off with Georgiana;--but
however; that's spilled milk.'

As Lammle, standing gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown
with his back to the fire, said this, looking down at his wife, she
turned pale and looked down at the ground. With a sense of
disloyalty upon her, and perhaps with a sense of personal danger--
for she was afraid of him--even afraid of his hand and afraid of his
foot, though he had never done her violence--she hastened to put
herself right in his eyes.

'If we could borrow money, Alfred--'

'Beg money, borrow money, or steal money. It would be all one to
us, Sophronia,' her husband struck in.

'--Then, we could weather this?'

'No doubt. To offer another original and undeniable remark,
Sophronia, two and two make four.'

But, seeing that she was turning something in her mind, he
gathered up the skirts of his dressing-gown again, and, tucking
them under one arm, and collecting his ample whiskers in his other
hand, kept his eye upon her, silently.

'It is natural, Alfred,' she said, looking up with some timidity into
his face, 'to think in such an emergency of the richest people we
know, and the simplest.'

'Just so, Sophronia.'

'The Boffins.'

'Just so, Sophronia.'

'Is there nothing to be done with them?'

'What is there to be done with them, Sophronia?'

She cast about in her thoughts again, and he kept his eye upon her
as before.

'Of course I have repeatedly thought of the Boffins, Sophronia,' he
resumed, after a fruitless silence; 'but I have seen my way to
nothing. They are well guarded. That infernal Secretary stands
between them and--people of merit.'

'If he could be got rid of?' said she, brightening a little, after more
casting about.

'Take time, Sophronia,' observed her watchful husband, in a
patronizing manner.

'If working him out of the way could be presented in the light of a
service to Mr Boffin?'

'Take time, Sophronia.'

'We have remarked lately, Alfred, that the old man is turning very
suspicious and distrustful.'

'Miserly too, my dear; which is far the most unpromising for us.
Nevertheless, take time, Sophronia, take time.'

She took time and then said:

'Suppose we should address ourselves to that tendency in him of
which we have made ourselves quite sure. Suppose my
conscience--'

'And we know what a conscience it is, my soul. Yes?'

'Suppose my conscience should not allow me to keep to myself any
longer what that upstart girl told me of the Secretary's having made
a declaration to her. Suppose my conscience should oblige me to
repeat it to Mr Boffin.'

'I rather like that,' said Lammle.

'Suppose I so repeated it to Mr Boffin, as to insinuate that my
sensitive delicacy and honour--'

'Very good words, Sophronia.'

'--As to insinuate that OUR sensitive delicacy and honour,' she
resumed, with a bitter stress upon the phrase, 'would not allow us
to be silent parties to so mercenary and designing a speculation on
the Secretary's part, and so gross a breach of faith towards his
confiding employer. Suppose I had imparted my virtuous
uneasiness to my excellent husband, and he had said, in his
integrity, "Sophronia, you must immediately disclose this to Mr
Boffin."'

'Once more, Sophronia,' observed Lammle, changing the leg on
which he stood, 'I rather like that.'

'You remark that he is well guarded,' she pursued. 'I think so too.
But if this should lead to his discharging his Secretary, there would
be a weak place made.'

'Go on expounding, Sophronia. I begin to like this very much.'

'Having, in our unimpeachable rectitude, done him the service of
opening his eyes to the treachery of the person he trusted, we shall
have established a claim upon him and a confidence with him.
Whether it can be made much of, or little of, we must wait--
because we can't help it--to see. Probably we shall make the most
of it that is to be made.'

'Probably,' said LammIe.

'Do you think it impossible,' she asked, in the same cold plotting
way, 'that you might replace the Secretary?'

'Not impossible, Sophronia. It might be brought about. At any
rate it might be skilfully led up to.'

She nodded her understanding of the hint, as she looked at the fire.
'Mr Lammle,' she said, musingly: not without a slight ironical
touch: 'Mr Lammle would be so delighted to do anything in his
power. Mr Lammle, himself a man of business as well as a
capitalist. Mr Lammle, accustomed to be intrusted with the most
delicate affairs. Mr Lammle, who has managed my own little
fortune so admirably, but who, to be sure, began to make his
reputation with the advantage of being a man of property, above
temptation, and beyond suspicion.'

Mr Lammle smiled, and even patted her on the head. In his
sinister relish of the scheme, as he stood above her, making it the
subject of his cogitations, he seemed to have twice as much nose
on his face as he had ever had in his life.

He stood pondering, and she sat looking at the dusty fire without
moving, for some time. But, the moment he began to speak again
she looked up with a wince and attended to him, as if that double-
dealing of hers had been in her mind, and the fear were revived in
her of his hand or his foot.

'It appears to me, Sophronia, that you have omitted one branch of
the subject. Perhaps not, for women understand women. We
might oust the girl herself?'

Mrs Lammle shook her head. 'She has an immensely strong hold
upon them both, Alfred. Not to be compared with that of a paid
secretary.

'But the dear child,' said Lammle, with a crooked smile, 'ought to
have been open with her benefactor and benefactress. The darling
love ought to have reposed unbounded confidence in her benefactor
and benefactress.'

Sophronia shook her head again.

'Well! Women understand women,' said her husband, rather
disappointed. 'I don't press it. It might be the making of our
fortune to make a clean sweep of them both. With me to manage
the property, and my wife to manage the people--Whew!'

Again shaking her head, she returned: 'They will never quarrel
with the girl. They will never punish the girl. We must accept the
girl, rely upon it.'

'Well!' cried Lammle, shrugging his shoulders, 'so be it: only
always remember that we don't want her.'

'Now, the sole remaining question is,' said Mrs Lammle, 'when
shall I begin?'

'You cannot begin too soon, Sophronia. As I have told you, the
condition of our affairs is desperate, and may be blown upon at any
moment.'

'I must secure Mr Boffin alone, Alfred. If his wife was present, she
would throw oil upon the waters. I know I should fail to move him
to an angry outburst, if his wife was there. And as to the girl
herself--as I am going to betray her confidence, she is equally out
of the question.'

'It wouldn't do to write for an appointment?' said Lammle.

'No, certainly not. They would wonder among themselves why I
wrote, and I want to have him wholly unprepared.'

'Call, and ask to see him alone?' suggested Lammle.

'I would rather not do that either. Leave it to me. Spare me the
little carriage for to-day, and for to-morrow (if I don't succeed to-
day), and I'll lie in wait for him.'

It was barely settled when a manly form was seen to pass the
windows and heard to knock and ring. 'Here's Fledgeby,' said
Lammle. 'He admires you, and has a high opinion of you. I'll be
out. Coax him to use his influence with the Jew. His name is
Riah, of the House of Pubsey and Co.' Adding these words under
his breath, lest he should be audible in the erect ears of Mr
Fledgeby, through two keyholes and the hall, Lammle, making
signals of discretion to his servant, went softly up stairs.

'Mr Fledgeby,' said Mrs Lammle, giving him a very gracious
reception, 'so glad to see you! My poor dear Alfred, who is greatly
worried just now about his affairs, went out rather early. Dear Mr
Fledgeby, do sit down.'

Dear Mr Fledgeby did sit down, and satisfied himself (or, judging
from the expression of his countenance, DISsatisfied himself) that
nothing new had occurred in the way of whisker-sprout since he
came round the corner from the Albany.

'Dear Mr Fledgeby, it was needless to mention to you that my poor
dear Alfred is much worried about his affairs at present, for he has
told me what a comfort you are to him in his temporary difficulties,
and what a great service you have rendered him.'

'Oh!' said Mr Fledgeby.

'Yes,' said Mrs Lammle.

'I didn't know,' remarked Mr Fledgeby, trying a new part of his
chair, 'but that Lammle might be reserved about his affairs.'

'Not to me,' said Mrs Lammle, with deep feeling.

'Oh, indeed?' said Fledgeby.

'Not to me, dear Mr Fledgeby. I am his wife.'

'Yes. I--I always understood so,' said Mr Fledgeby.

'And as the wife of Alfred, may I, dear Mr Fledgeby, wholly
without his authority or knowledge, as I am sure your discernment
will perceive, entreat you to continue that great service, and once
more use your well-earned influence with Mr Riah for a little more
indulgence? The name I have heard Alfred mention, tossing in his
dreams, IS Riah; is it not?'

'The name of the Creditor is Riah,' said Mr Fledgehy, with a rather
uncompromising accent on his noun-substantive. 'Saint Mary Axe.
Pubsey and Co.'

'Oh yes!' exclaimed Mrs Lammle, clasping her hands with a certain
gushing wildness. 'Pubsey and Co.!'

'The pleading of the feminine--' Mr Fledgeby began, and there
stuck so long for a word to get on with, that Mrs Lammle offered
him sweetly, 'Heart?'

'No,' said Mr Fledgeby, 'Gender--is ever what a man is bound to
listen to, and I wish it rested with myself. But this Riah is a nasty
one, Mrs Lammle; he really is.'

'Not if YOU speak to him, dear Mr Fledgeby.'

'Upon my soul and body he is!' said Fledgeby.

'Try. Try once more, dearest Mr Fledgeby. What is there you
cannot do, if you will!'

'Thank you,' said Fledgeby, 'you're very complimentary to say so.
I don't mind trying him again, at your request. But of course I
can't answer for the consequences. Riah is a tough subject, and
when he says he'll do a thing, he'll do it.'

'Exactly so,' cried Mrs Lammle, 'and when he says to you he'll
wait, he'll wait.'

('She is a devilish clever woman,' thought Fledgeby. 'I didn't see
that opening, but she spies it out and cuts into it as soon as it's
made. ')

'In point of fact, dear Mr Fledgeby,' Mrs Lammle went on in a very
interesting manner, 'not to affect concealment of Alfred's hopes,
to you who are so much his friend, there is a distant break in his
horizon.'

This figure of speech seemed rather mysterious to Fascination
Fledgeby, who said, 'There's a what in his--eh?'

'Alfred, dear Mr Fledgeby, discussed with me this very morning
before he went out, some prospects he has, which might entirely
change the aspect of his present troubles.'

'Really?' said Fledgeby.

'O yes!' Here Mrs Lammle brought her handkerchief into play.
'And you know, dear Mr Fledgeby--you who study the human
heart, and study the world--what an affliction it would be to lose
position and to lose credit, when ability to tide over a very short
time might save all appearances.'

'Oh!' said Fledgeby. 'Then you think, Mrs Lammle, that if Lammle
got time, he wouldn't burst up?--To use an expression,' Mr
Fledgeby apologetically explained, 'which is adopted in the Money
Market.'

'Indeed yes. Truly, truly, yes!'

'That makes all the difference,' said Fledgeby. 'I'll make a point of
seeing Riah at once.'

'Blessings on you, dearest Mr Fledgeby!'

'Not at all,' said Fledgeby. She gave him her hand. 'The hand,'
said Mr Fledgeby, 'of a lovely and superior-minded female is ever
the repayment of a--'

'Noble action!' said Mrs Lammle, extremely anxious to get rid of
him.

'It wasn't what I was going to say,' returned Fledgeby, who never
would, under any circumstances, accept a suggested expression,
'but you're very complimentary. May I imprint a--a one--upon it?
Good morning!'

'I may depend upon your promptitude, dearest Mr Fledgeby?'

Said Fledgeby, looking back at the door and respectfully kissing
his hand, 'You may depend upon it.'

In fact, Mr Fledgeby sped on his errand of mercy through the
streets, at so brisk a rate that his feet might have been winged by
all the good spirits that wait on Generosity. They might have taken
up their station in his breast, too, for he was blithe and merry.
There was quite a fresh trill in his voice, when, arriving at the
counting-house in St Mary Axe, and finding it for the moment
empty, he trolled forth at the foot of the staircase: 'Now, Judah,
what are you up to there?'

The old man appeared, with his accustomed deference.

'Halloa!' said Fledgeby, falling back, with a wink. 'You mean
mischief, Jerusalem!'

The old man raised his eyes inquiringly.

'Yes you do,' said Fledgeby. 'Oh, you sinner! Oh, you dodger!
What! You're going to act upon that bill of sale at Lammle's, are
you? Nothing will turn you, won't it? You won't be put off for
another single minute, won't you?'

Ordered to immediate action by the master's tone and look, the old
man took up his hat from the little counter where it lay.

'You have been told that he might pull through it, if you didn't go
in to win, Wide-Awake; have you?' said Fledgeby. 'And it's not
your game that he should pull through it; ain't it? You having got
security, and there being enough to pay you? Oh, you Jew!'

The old man stood irresolute and uncertain for a moment, as if
there might be further instructions for him in reserve.

'Do I go, sir?' he at length asked in a low voice.

'Asks me if he is going!' exclaimed Fledgeby. 'Asks me, as if he
didn't know his own purpose! Asks me, as if he hadn't got his hat
on ready! Asks me, as if his sharp old eye--why, it cuts like a
knife--wasn't looking at his walking-stick by the door!'

'Do I go, sir?'

'Do you go?' sneered Fledgeby. 'Yes, you do go. Toddle, Judah!'

Chapter 13

GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME, AND HANG HIM

Fascination Fledgeby, 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
establishment, when he was stopped by some one coming to the
door.

This some one was the dolls' dressmaker, with a little basket on
her arm, and her crutch stick in her hand. Her keen eyes had
espied Mr Fledgeby before Mr Fledgeby had espied her, and he
was paralysed in his purpose of shutting her out, not so much by
her approaching the door, as by her favouring him with a shower of
nods, the instant he saw her. This advantage she improved by
hobbling up the steps with such despatch that before Mr Fledgeby
could take measures for her finding nobody at home, she was face
to face with him in the counting-house.

'Hope I see you well, sir,' said Miss Wren. 'Mr Riah in?'

Fledgeby had dropped into a chair, in the attitude of one waiting
wearily. 'I suppose he will be back soon,' he replied; 'he has cut
out and left me expecting him back, in an odd way. Haven't I seen
you before?'

'Once before--if you had your eyesight,' replied Miss Wren; the
conditional clause in an under-tone.

'When you were carrying on some games up at the top of the
house. I remember. How's your friend?'

'I have more friends than one, sir, I hope,' replied Miss Wren.
'Which friend?'

'Never mind,' said Mr Fledgeby, shutting up one eye, 'any of your
friends, all your friends. Are they pretty tolerable?'

Somewhat confounded, Miss Wren parried the pleasantry, and sat
down in a corner behind the door, with her basket in her lap. By-
and-by, she said, breaking a long and patient silence:

'I beg your pardon, sir, but I am used to find Mr Riah at this time,
and so I generally come at this time. I only want to buy my poor
little two shillings' worth of waste. Perhaps you'll kindly let me
have it, and I'll trot off to my work.'

'I let you have it?' said Fledgeby, turning his head towards her; for
he had been sitting blinking at the light, and feeling his cheek.
'Why, you don't really suppose that I have anything to do with the
place, or the business; do you?'

'Suppose?' exclaimed Miss Wren. 'He said, that day, you were the
master!'

'The old cock in black said? Riah said? Why, he'd say anything.'

'Well; but you said so too,' returned Miss Wren. 'Or at least you
took on like the master, and didn't contradict him.'

'One of his dodges,' said Mr Fledgeby, with a cool and
contemptuous shrug. 'He's made of dodges. He said to me,
"Come up to the top of the house, sir, and I'll show you a
handsome girl. But I shall call you the master." So I went up to
the top of the house and he showed me the handsome girl (very
well worth looking at she was), and I was called the master. I
don't know why. I dare say he don't. He loves a dodge for its own
sake; being,' added Mr Fledgeby, after casting about for an
expressive phrase, 'the dodgerest of all the dodgers.'

'Oh my head!' cried the dolls' dressmaker, holding it with both her
hands, as if it were cracking. 'You can't mean what you say.'

'I can, my little woman, retorted Fledgeby, 'and I do, I assure you.

This repudiation was not only an act of deliberate policy on
Fledgeby's part, in case of his being surprised by any other caller,
but was also a retort upon Miss Wren for her over-sharpness, and a
pleasant instance of his humour as regarded the old Jew. 'He has
got a bad name as an old Jew, and he is paid for the use of it, and
I'll have my money's worth out of him.' This was Fledgeby's
habitual reflection in the way of business, and it was sharpened
just now by the old man's presuming to have a secret from him:
though of the secret itself, as annoying somebody else whom he
disliked, he by no means disapproved.

Miss Wren with a fallen countenance sat behind the door looking
thoughtfully at the ground, and the long and patient silence had
again set in for some time, when the expression of Mr Fledgeby's
face betokened that through the upper portion of the door, which
was of glass, he saw some one faltering on the brink of the
counting-house. Presently there was a rustle and a tap, and then
some more rustling and another tap. Fledgeby taking no notice,
the door was at length softly opened, and the dried face of a mild
little elderly gentleman looked in.

'Mr Riah?' said this visitor, very politely.

'I am waiting for him, sir,' returned Mr Fledgeby. 'He went out and
left me here. I expect him back every minute. Perhaps you had
better take a chair.'

The gentleman took a chair, and put his hand to his forehead, as if
he were in a melancholy frame of mind. Mr Fledgeby eyed him
aside, and seemed to relish his attitude.

'A fine day, sir,' remarked Fledgeby.

The little dried gentleman was so occupied with his own depressed
reflections that he did not notice the remark until the sound of Mr
Fledgeby's voice had died out of the counting-house. Then he
started, and said: 'I beg your pardon, sir. I fear you spoke to me?'

'I said,' remarked Fledgeby, a little louder than before, 'it was a
fine day.'

'I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. Yes.'

Again the little dried gentleman put his hand to his forehead, and
again Mr Fledgeby seemed to enjoy his doing it. When the
gentleman changed his attitude with a sigh, Fledgeby spake with a
grin.

'Mr Twemlow, I think?'

The dried gentleman seemed much surprised.

'Had the pleasure of dining with you at Lammle's,' said Fledgeby.
'Even have the honour of being a connexion of yours. An
unexpected sort of place this to meet in; but one never knows,
when one gets into the City, what people one may knock up
against. I hope you have your health, and are enjoying yourself.'

There might have been a touch of impertinence in the last words;
on the other hand, it might have been but the native grace of Mr
Fledgeby's manner. Mr Fledgeby sat on a stool with a foot on the
rail of another stool, and his hat on. Mr Twemlow had uncovered
on looking in at the door, and remained so. Now the conscientious
Twemlow, knowing what he had done to thwart the gracious
Fledgeby, was particularly disconcerted by this encounter. He was
as ill at ease as a gentleman well could be. He felt himself bound
to conduct himself stiffly towards Fledgeby, and he made him a
distant bow. Fledgeby made his small eyes smaller in taking
special note of his manner. The dolls' dressmaker sat in her corner
behind the door, with her eyes on the ground and her hands folded
on her basket, holding her crutch-stick between them, and
appearing to take no heed of anything.

'He's a long time,' muttered Mr Fledgeby, looking at his watch.
'What time may you make it, Mr Twemlow?'

Mr Twemlow made it ten minutes past twelve, sir.

'As near as a toucher,' assented Fledgeby. 'I hope, Mr Twemlow,
your business here may be of a more agreeable character than
mine.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Mr Twemlow.

Fledgeby again made his small eyes smaller, as he glanced with
great complacency at Twemlow, who was timorously tapping the
table with a folded letter.

'What I know of Mr Riah,' said Fledgeby, with a very disparaging
utterance of his name, 'leads me to believe that this is about the
shop for disagreeable business. I have always found him the
bitingest and tightest screw in London.'

Mr Twemlow acknowledged the remark with a little distant bow.
It evidently made him nervous.

'So much so,' pursued Fledgeby, 'that if it wasn't to be true to a
friend, nobody should catch me waiting here a single minute. But
if you have friends in adversity, stand by them. That's what I say
and act up to.'

The equitable Twemlow felt that this sentiment, irrespective of the
utterer, demanded his cordial assent. 'You are very right, sir,' he
rejoined with spirit. 'You indicate the generous and manly course.

'Glad to have your approbation,' returned Fledgeby. 'It's a
coincidence, Mr Twemlow;' here he descended from his perch, and
sauntered towards him; 'that the friends I am standing by to-day
are the friends at whose house I met you! The Lammles. She's a
very taking and agreeable woman?'

Conscience smote the gentle Twemlow pale. 'Yes,' he said. 'She is.'

'And when she appealed to me this morning, to come and try what
I could do to pacify their creditor, this Mr Riah--that I certainly
have gained some little influence with in transacting business for
another friend, but nothing like so much as she supposes--and
when a woman like that spoke to me as her dearest Mr Fledgeby,
and shed tears--why what could I do, you know?'

Twem

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries from the Encyclopedia of the Self by Mark ZimmermanReturn to Part 1 of 2

Our Mutual Friend
by Charles Dickens
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 1 of 2