Our Mutual Friend
thickness of speech, in consequence of the Gum-Ticklers having tickled
it. ‘I’ve got him under inspection, and I’ll inspect him.
“Along the line the signal ran,
England expects as this present man
Will keep Boffin to his duty.”
—Boffin, I’ll see you home.’
Mr Boffin descended with an air of resignation, and gave himself up,
after taking friendly leave of Mr Venus. Once more, Inspector and
Inspected went through the streets together, and so arrived at Mr
Boffin’s door.
But even there, when Mr Boffin had given his keeper good-night, and had
let himself in with his key, and had softly closed the door, even there
and then, the all-powerful Silas must needs claim another assertion of
his newly-asserted power.
‘Bof—fin!’ he called through the keyhole.
‘Yes, Wegg,’ was the reply through the same channel.
‘Come out. Show yourself again. Let’s have another look at you!’
Mr Boffin—ah, how fallen from the high estate of his honest
simplicity!—opened the door and obeyed.
‘Go in. You may get to bed now,’ said Wegg, with a grin.
The door was hardly closed, when he again called through the keyhole:
‘Bof—fin!’
‘Yes, Wegg.’
This time Silas made no reply, but laboured with a will at turning an
imaginary grindstone outside the keyhole, while Mr Boffin stooped at it
within; he then laughed silently, and stumped home.
Chapter 4
A RUNAWAY MATCH
Cherubic Pa arose with as little noise as possible from beside majestic
Ma, one morning early, having a holiday before him. Pa and the lovely
woman had a rather particular appointment to keep.
Yet Pa and the lovely woman were not going out together. Bella was up
before four, but had no bonnet on. She was waiting at the foot of the
stairs—was sitting on the bottom stair, in fact—to receive Pa when he
came down, but her only object seemed to be to get Pa well out of the
house.
‘Your breakfast is ready, sir,’ whispered Bella, after greeting him with
a hug, ‘and all you have to do, is, to eat it up and drink it up, and
escape. How do you feel, Pa?’
‘To the best of my judgement, like a housebreaker new to the business,
my dear, who can’t make himself quite comfortable till he is off the
premises.’
Bella tucked her arm in his with a merry noiseless laugh, and they went
down to the kitchen on tiptoe; she stopping on every separate stair to
put the tip of her forefinger on her rosy lips, and then lay it on his
lips, according to her favourite petting way of kissing Pa.
‘How do YOU feel, my love?’ asked R. W., as she gave him his breakfast.
‘I feel as if the Fortune-teller was coming true, dear Pa, and the fair
little man was turning out as was predicted.’
‘Ho! Only the fair little man?’ said her father.
Bella put another of those finger-seals upon his lips, and then said,
kneeling down by him as he sat at table: ‘Now, look here, sir. If you
keep well up to the mark this day, what do you think you deserve?
What did I promise you should have, if you were good, upon a certain
occasion?’
‘Upon my word I don’t remember, Precious. Yes, I do, though. Wasn’t
it one of these beau—tiful tresses?’ with his caressing hand upon her
hair.
‘Wasn’t it, too!’ returned Bella, pretending to pout. ‘Upon my word! Do
you know, sir, that the Fortune-teller would give five thousand guineas
(if it was quite convenient to him, which it isn’t) for the lovely piece
I have cut off for you? You can form no idea, sir, of the number of
times he kissed quite a scrubby little piece—in comparison—that I cut
off for HIM. And he wears it, too, round his neck, I can tell you! Near
his heart!’ said Bella, nodding. ‘Ah! very near his heart! However, you
have been a good, good boy, and you are the best of all the dearest boys
that ever were, this morning, and here’s the chain I have made of
it, Pa, and you must let me put it round your neck with my own loving
hands.’
As Pa bent his head, she cried over him a little, and then said (after
having stopped to dry her eyes on his white waistcoat, the discovery of
which incongruous circumstance made her laugh): ‘Now, darling Pa,
give me your hands that I may fold them together, and do you say after
me:—My little Bella.’
‘My little Bella,’ repeated Pa.
‘I am very fond of you.’
‘I am very fond of you, my darling,’ said Pa.
‘You mustn’t say anything not dictated to you, sir. You daren’t do it in
your responses at Church, and you mustn’t do it in your responses out of
Church.’
‘I withdraw the darling,’ said Pa.
‘That’s a pious boy! Now again:—You were always—’
‘You were always,’ repeated Pa.
‘A vexatious—’
‘No you weren’t,’ said Pa.
‘A vexatious (do you hear, sir?), a vexatious, capricious, thankless,
troublesome, Animal; but I hope you’ll do better in the time to come,
and I bless you and forgive you!’ Here, she quite forgot that it was
Pa’s turn to make the responses, and clung to his neck. ‘Dear Pa, if you
knew how much I think this morning of what you told me once, about the
first time of our seeing old Mr Harmon, when I stamped and screamed
and beat you with my detestable little bonnet! I feel as if I had been
stamping and screaming and beating you with my hateful little bonnet,
ever since I was born, darling!’
‘Nonsense, my love. And as to your bonnets, they have always been nice
bonnets, for they have always become you—or you have become them;
perhaps it was that—at every age.’
‘Did I hurt you much, poor little Pa?’ asked Bella, laughing
(notwithstanding her repentance), with fantastic pleasure in the
picture, ‘when I beat you with my bonnet?’
‘No, my child. Wouldn’t have hurt a fly!’
‘Ay, but I am afraid I shouldn’t have beat you at all, unless I had
meant to hurt you,’ said Bella. ‘Did I pinch your legs, Pa?’
‘Not much, my dear; but I think it’s almost time I—’
‘Oh, yes!’ cried Bella. ‘If I go on chattering, you’ll be taken alive.
Fly, Pa, fly!’
So, they went softly up the kitchen stairs on tiptoe, and Bella with
her light hand softly removed the fastenings of the house door, and Pa,
having received a parting hug, made off. When he had gone a little way,
he looked back. Upon which, Bella set another of those finger seals upon
the air, and thrust out her little foot expressive of the mark. Pa, in
appropriate action, expressed fidelity to the mark, and made off as fast
as he could go.
Bella walked thoughtfully in the garden for an hour and more, and then,
returning to the bedroom where Lavvy the Irrepressible still slumbered,
put on a little bonnet of quiet, but on the whole of sly appearance,
which she had yesterday made. ‘I am going for a walk, Lavvy,’ she said,
as she stooped down and kissed her. The Irrepressible, with a bounce in
the bed, and a remark that it wasn’t time to get up yet, relapsed into
unconsciousness, if she had come out of it.
Behold Bella tripping along the streets, the dearest girl afoot under
the summer sun! Behold Pa waiting for Bella behind a pump, at least
three miles from the parental roof-tree. Behold Bella and Pa aboard an
early steamboat for Greenwich.
Were they expected at Greenwich? Probably. At least, Mr John Rokesmith
was on the pier looking out, about a couple of hours before the coaly
(but to him gold-dusty) little steamboat got her steam up in London.
Probably. At least, Mr John Rokesmith seemed perfectly satisfied when
he descried them on board. Probably. At least, Bella no sooner stepped
ashore than she took Mr John Rokesmith’s arm, without evincing surprise,
and the two walked away together with an ethereal air of happiness
which, as it were, wafted up from the earth and drew after them a gruff
and glum old pensioner to see it out. Two wooden legs had this gruff and
glum old pensioner, and, a minute before Bella stepped out of the boat,
and drew that confiding little arm of hers through Rokesmith’s, he had
had no object in life but tobacco, and not enough of that. Stranded was
Gruff and Glum in a harbour of everlasting mud, when all in an instant
Bella floated him, and away he went.
Say, cherubic parent taking the lead, in what direction do we steer
first? With some such inquiry in his thoughts, Gruff and Glum, stricken
by so sudden an interest that he perked his neck and looked over the
intervening people, as if he were trying to stand on tiptoe with his two
wooden legs, took an observation of R. W. There was no ‘first’ in the
case, Gruff and Glum made out; the cherubic parent was bearing down and
crowding on direct for Greenwich church, to see his relations.
For, Gruff and Glum, though most events acted on him simply as
tobacco-stoppers, pressing down and condensing the quids within him,
might be imagined to trace a family resemblance between the cherubs in
the church architecture, and the cherub in the white waistcoat. Some
remembrance of old Valentines, wherein a cherub, less appropriately
attired for a proverbially uncertain climate, had been seen conducting
lovers to the altar, might have been fancied to inflame the ardour of
his timber toes. Be it as it might, he gave his moorings the slip, and
followed in chase.
The cherub went before, all beaming smiles; Bella and John Rokesmith
followed; Gruff and Glum stuck to them like wax. For years, the wings
of his mind had gone to look after the legs of his body; but Bella had
brought them back for him per steamer, and they were spread again.
He was a slow sailer on a wind of happiness, but he took a cross cut
for the rendezvous, and pegged away as if he were scoring furiously
at cribbage. When the shadow of the church-porch swallowed them up,
victorious Gruff and Glum likewise presented himself to be swallowed up.
And by this time the cherubic parent was so fearful of surprise, that,
but for the two wooden legs on which Gruff and Glum was reassuringly
mounted, his conscience might have introduced, in the person of that
pensioner, his own stately lady disguised, arrived at Greenwich in a
car and griffins, like the spiteful Fairy at the christenings of the
Princesses, to do something dreadful to the marriage service. And truly
he had a momentary reason to be pale of face, and to whisper to Bella,
‘You don’t think that can be your Ma; do you, my dear?’ on account of
a mysterious rustling and a stealthy movement somewhere in the remote
neighbourhood of the organ, though it was gone directly and was heard no
more. Albeit it was heard of afterwards, as will afterwards be read in
this veracious register of marriage.
Who taketh? I, John, and so do I, Bella. Who giveth? I, R. W. Forasmuch,
Gruff and Glum, as John and Bella have consented together in holy
wedlock, you may (in short) consider it done, and withdraw your two
wooden legs from this temple. To the foregoing purport, the Minister
speaking, as directed by the Rubric, to the People, selectly represented
in the present instance by G. and G. above mentioned.
And now, the church-porch having swallowed up Bella Wilfer for ever and
ever, had it not in its power to relinquish that young woman, but slid
into the happy sunlight, Mrs John Rokesmith instead. And long on the
bright steps stood Gruff and Glum, looking after the pretty bride, with
a narcotic consciousness of having dreamed a dream.
After which, Bella took out from her pocket a little letter, and read it
aloud to Pa and John; this being a true copy of the same.
‘DEAREST MA,
I hope you won’t be angry, but I am most happily married to Mr John
Rokesmith, who loves me better than I can ever deserve, except by loving
him with all my heart. I thought it best not to mention it beforehand,
in case it should cause any little difference at home. Please tell
darling Pa. With love to Lavvy,
Ever dearest Ma, Your affectionate daughter, BELLA (P.S.—Rokesmith).’
Then, John Rokesmith put the queen’s countenance on the letter—when had