Our Mutual 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