Our Mutual Friend
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 infamous
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 respected 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.’