Our Mutual Friend
Her Gracious Majesty looked so benign as on that blessed morning!—and
then Bella popped it into the post-office, and said merrily, ‘Now,
dearest Pa, you are safe, and will never be taken alive!’
Pa was, at first, in the stirred depths of his conscience, so far from
sure of being safe yet, that he made out majestic matrons lurking in
ambush among the harmless trees of Greenwich Park, and seemed to see a
stately countenance tied up in a well-known pocket-handkerchief glooming
down at him from a window of the Observatory, where the Familiars of the
Astronomer Royal nightly outwatch the winking stars. But, the minutes
passing on and no Mrs Wilfer in the flesh appearing, he became more
confident, and so repaired with good heart and appetite to Mr and Mrs
John Rokesmith’s cottage on Blackheath, where breakfast was ready.
A modest little cottage but a bright and a fresh, and on the snowy
tablecloth the prettiest of little breakfasts. In waiting, too, like
an attendant summer breeze, a fluttering young damsel, all pink and
ribbons, blushing as if she had been married instead of Bella, and yet
asserting the triumph of her sex over both John and Pa, in an exulting
and exalted flurry: as who should say, ‘This is what you must all come
to, gentlemen, when we choose to bring you to book.’ This same young
damsel was Bella’s serving-maid, and unto her did deliver a bunch of
keys, commanding treasures in the way of dry-saltery, groceries, jams
and pickles, the investigation of which made pastime after breakfast,
when Bella declared that ‘Pa must taste everything, John dear, or it
will never be lucky,’ and when Pa had all sorts of things poked into
his mouth, and didn’t quite know what to do with them when they were put
there.
Then they, all three, out for a charming ride, and for a charming stroll
among heath in bloom, and there behold the identical Gruff and Glum with
his wooden legs horizontally disposed before him, apparently sitting
meditating on the vicissitudes of life! To whom said Bella, in her
light-hearted surprise: ‘Oh! How do you do again? What a dear old
pensioner you are!’ To which Gruff and Glum responded that he see her
married this morning, my Beauty, and that if it warn’t a liberty he
wished her ji and the fairest of fair wind and weather; further, in a
general way requesting to know what cheer? and scrambling up on his two
wooden legs to salute, hat in hand, ship-shape, with the gallantry of a
man-of-warsman and a heart of oak.
It was a pleasant sight, in the midst of the golden bloom, to see this
salt old Gruff and Glum, waving his shovel hat at Bella, while his thin
white hair flowed free, as if she had once more launched him into blue
water again. ‘You are a charming old pensioner,’ said Bella, ‘and I am
so happy that I wish I could make you happy, too.’ Answered Gruff and
Glum, ‘Give me leave to kiss your hand, my Lovely, and it’s done!’ So it
was done to the general contentment; and if Gruff and Glum didn’t in the
course of the afternoon splice the main brace, it was not for want of
the means of inflicting that outrage on the feelings of the Infant Bands
of Hope.
But, the marriage dinner was the crowning success, for what had bride
and bridegroom plotted to do, but to have and to hold that dinner in the
very room of the very hotel where Pa and the lovely woman had once dined
together! Bella sat between Pa and John, and divided her attentions
pretty equally, but felt it necessary (in the waiter’s absence before
dinner) to remind Pa that she was HIS lovely woman no longer.
‘I am well aware of it, my dear,’ returned the cherub, ‘and I resign you
willingly.’
‘Willingly, sir? You ought to be brokenhearted.’
‘So I should be, my dear, if I thought that I was going to lose you.’
‘But you know you are not; don’t you, poor dear Pa? You know that you
have only made a new relation who will be as fond of you and as thankful
to you—for my sake and your own sake both—as I am; don’t you, dear
little Pa? Look here, Pa!’ Bella put her finger on her own lip, and then
on Pa’s, and then on her own lip again, and then on her husband’s. ‘Now,
we are a partnership of three, dear Pa.’
The appearance of dinner here cut Bella short in one of her
disappearances: the more effectually, because it was put on under the
auspices of a solemn gentleman in black clothes and a white cravat, who
looked much more like a clergyman than THE clergyman, and seemed to
have mounted a great deal higher in the church: not to say, scaled the
steeple. This dignitary, conferring in secrecy with John Rokesmith on
the subject of punch and wines, bent his head as though stooping to
the Papistical practice of receiving auricular confession. Likewise,
on John’s offering a suggestion which didn’t meet his views, his face
became overcast and reproachful, as enjoining penance.
What a dinner! Specimens of all the fishes that swim in the sea, surely
had swum their way to it, and if samples of the fishes of divers
colours that made a speech in the Arabian Nights (quite a ministerial
explanation in respect of cloudiness), and then jumped out of the
frying-pan, were not to be recognized, it was only because they had all
become of one hue by being cooked in batter among the whitebait. And the
dishes being seasoned with Bliss—an article which they are sometimes
out of, at Greenwich—were of perfect flavour, and the golden drinks
had been bottled in the golden age and hoarding up their sparkles ever
since.
The best of it was, that Bella and John and the cherub had made a
covenant that they would not reveal to mortal eyes any appearance
whatever of being a wedding party. Now, the supervising dignitary, the
Archbishop of Greenwich, knew this as well as if he had performed the
nuptial ceremony. And the loftiness with which his Grace entered into
their confidence without being invited, and insisted on a show
of keeping the waiters out of it, was the crowning glory of the
entertainment.
There was an innocent young waiter of a slender form and with weakish
legs, as yet unversed in the wiles of waiterhood, and but too evidently
of a romantic temperament, and deeply (it were not too much to add
hopelessly) in love with some young female not aware of his merit.
This guileless youth, descrying the position of affairs, which even
his innocence could not mistake, limited his waiting to languishing
admiringly against the sideboard when Bella didn’t want anything, and
swooping at her when she did. Him, his Grace the Archbishop perpetually
obstructed, cutting him out with his elbow in the moment of success,
despatching him in degrading quest of melted butter, and, when by any
chance he got hold of any dish worth having, bereaving him of it, and
ordering him to stand back.
‘Pray excuse him, madam,’ said the Archbishop in a low stately voice;
‘he is a very young man on liking, and we DON’T like him.’
This induced John Rokesmith to observe—by way of making the thing more
natural—‘Bella, my love, this is so much more successful than any
of our past anniversaries, that I think we must keep our future
anniversaries here.’
Whereunto Bella replied, with probably the least successful attempt at
looking matronly that ever was seen: ‘Indeed, I think so, John, dear.’
Here the Archbishop of Greenwich coughed a stately cough to attract the
attention of three of his ministers present, and staring at them, seemed
to say: ‘I call upon you by your fealty to believe this!’
With his own hands he afterwards put on the dessert, as remarking to the
three guests, ‘The period has now arrived at which we can dispense with
the assistance of those fellows who are not in our confidence,’ and
would have retired with complete dignity but for a daring action issuing
from the misguided brain of the young man on liking. He finding, by
ill-fortune, a piece of orange flower somewhere in the lobbies now
approached undetected with the same in a finger-glass, and placed it on
Bella’s right hand. The Archbishop instantly ejected and excommunicated
him; but the thing was done.
‘I trust, madam,’ said his Grace, returning alone, ‘that you will have
the kindness to overlook it, in consideration of its being the act of a
very young man who is merely here on liking, and who will never answer.’
With that, he solemnly bowed and retired, and they all burst into
laughter, long and merry. ‘Disguise is of no use,’ said Bella; ‘they
all find me out; I think it must be, Pa and John dear, because I look so
happy!’
Her husband feeling it necessary at this point to demand one of those
mysterious disappearances on Bella’s part, she dutifully obeyed; saying
in a softened voice from her place of concealment:
‘You remember how we talked about the ships that day, Pa?’
‘Yes, my dear.’
‘Isn’t it strange, now, to think that there was no John in all the
ships, Pa?’
‘Not at all, my dear.’
‘Oh, Pa! Not at all?’
‘No, my dear. How can we tell what coming people are aboard the ships
that may be sailing to us now from the unknown seas!’
Bella remaining invisible and silent, her father remained at his
dessert and wine, until he remembered it was time for him to get home to
Holloway. ‘Though I positively cannot tear myself away,’ he cherubically
added, ‘—it would be a sin—without drinking to many, many happy
returns of this most happy day.’
‘Here! ten thousand times!’ cried John. ‘I fill my glass and my precious
wife’s.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said the cherub, inaudibly addressing, in his Anglo-Saxon
tendency to throw his feelings into the form of a speech, the boys down
below, who were bidding against each other to put their heads in the mud
for sixpence: ‘Gentlemen—and Bella and John—you will readily suppose
that it is not my intention to trouble you with many observations on the
present occasion. You will also at once infer the nature and even
the terms of the toast I am about to propose on the present occasion.
Gentlemen—and Bella and John—the present occasion is an occasion
fraught with feelings that I cannot trust myself to express. But
gentlemen—and Bella and John—for the part I have had in it, for the
confidence you have placed in me, and for the affectionate good-nature
and kindness with which you have determined not to find me in the way,
when I am well aware that I cannot be otherwise than in it more or less,
I do most heartily thank you. Gentlemen—and Bella and John—my love
to you, and may we meet, as on the present occasion, on many future
occasions; that is to say, gentlemen—and Bella and John—on many happy
returns of the present happy occasion.’
Having thus concluded his address, the amiable cherub embraced his
daughter, and took his flight to the steamboat which was to convey him
to London, and was then lying at the floating pier, doing its best to
bump the same to bits. But, the happy couple were not going to part with
him in that way, and before he had been on board two minutes, there they
were, looking down at him from the wharf above.
‘Pa, dear!’ cried Bella, beckoning him with her parasol to approach the
side, and bending gracefully to whisper.
‘Yes, my darling.’
‘Did I beat you much with that horrid little bonnet, Pa?’
‘Nothing to speak of; my dear.’
‘Did I pinch your legs, Pa?’
‘Only nicely, my pet.’
‘You are sure you quite forgive me, Pa? Please, Pa, please, forgive me
quite!’ Half laughing at him and half crying to him, Bella besought him
in the prettiest manner; in a manner so engaging and so playful and
so natural, that her cherubic parent made a coaxing face as if she had
never grown up, and said, ‘What a silly little Mouse it is!’
‘But you do forgive me that, and everything else; don’t you, Pa?’
‘Yes, my dearest.’
‘And you don’t feel solitary or neglected, going away by yourself; do
you, Pa?’
‘Lord bless you! No, my Life!’