Our Mutual Friend
and weeding and trowelling and other small gardening, such making and
mending and folding and airing, such diverse arrangements, and above all
such severe study! For Mrs J. R., who had never been wont to do too much
at home as Miss B. W., was under the constant necessity of referring for
advice and support to a sage volume entitled The Complete British Family
Housewife, which she would sit consulting, with her elbows on the table
and her temples on her hands, like some perplexed enchantress poring
over the Black Art. This, principally because the Complete British
Housewife, however sound a Briton at heart, was by no means an expert
Briton at expressing herself with clearness in the British tongue,
and sometimes might have issued her directions to equal purpose in the
Kamskatchan language. In any crisis of this nature, Bella would suddenly
exclaim aloud, ‘Oh you ridiculous old thing, what do you mean by that?
You must have been drinking!’ And having made this marginal note, would
try the Housewife again, with all her dimples screwed into an expression
of profound research.
There was likewise a coolness on the part of the British Housewife,
which Mrs John Rokesmith found highly exasperating. She would say,
‘Take a salamander,’ as if a general should command a private to catch
a Tartar. Or, she would casually issue the order, ‘Throw in a handful—’
of something entirely unattainable. In these, the Housewife’s most
glaring moments of unreason, Bella would shut her up and knock her on
the table, apostrophising her with the compliment, ‘O you ARE a stupid
old Donkey! Where am I to get it, do you think?’
Another branch of study claimed the attention of Mrs John Rokesmith for
a regular period every day. This was the mastering of the newspaper, so
that she might be close up with John on general topics when John came
home. In her desire to be in all things his companion, she would have
set herself with equal zeal to master Algebra, or Euclid, if he had
divided his soul between her and either. Wonderful was the way in which
she would store up the City Intelligence, and beamingly shed it
upon John in the course of the evening; incidentally mentioning the
commodities that were looking up in the markets, and how much gold had
been taken to the Bank, and trying to look wise and serious over it
until she would laugh at herself most charmingly and would say, kissing
him: ‘It all comes of my love, John dear.’
For a City man, John certainly did appear to care as little as might be
for the looking up or looking down of things, as well as for the gold
that got taken to the Bank. But he cared, beyond all expression, for his
wife, as a most precious and sweet commodity that was always looking up,
and that never was worth less than all the gold in the world. And she,
being inspired by her affection, and having a quick wit and a fine ready
instinct, made amazing progress in her domestic efficiency, though,
as an endearing creature, she made no progress at all. This was her
husband’s verdict, and he justified it by telling her that she had begun
her married life as the most endearing creature that could possibly be.
‘And you have such a cheerful spirit!’ he said, fondly. ‘You are like a
bright light in the house.’
‘Am I truly, John?’
‘Are you truly? Yes, indeed. Only much more, and much better.’
‘Do you know, John dear,’ said Bella, taking him by a button of his
coat, ‘that I sometimes, at odd moments—don’t laugh, John, please.’
Nothing should induce John to do it, when she asked him not to do it.
‘—That I sometimes think, John, I feel a little serious.’
‘Are you too much alone, my darling?’
‘O dear, no, John! The time is so short that I have not a moment too
much in the week.’
‘Why serious, my life, then? When serious?’
‘When I laugh, I think,’ said Bella, laughing as she laid her head upon
his shoulder. ‘You wouldn’t believe, sir, that I feel serious now? But I
do.’ And she laughed again, and something glistened in her eyes.
‘Would you like to be rich, pet?’ he asked her coaxingly.
‘Rich, John! How CAN you ask such goose’s questions?’
‘Do you regret anything, my love?’
‘Regret anything? No!’ Bella confidently answered. But then, suddenly
changing, she said, between laughing and glistening: ‘Oh yes, I do
though. I regret Mrs Boffin.’
‘I, too, regret that separation very much. But perhaps it is only
temporary. Perhaps things may so fall out, as that you may sometimes see
her again—as that we may sometimes see her again.’ Bella might be very
anxious on the subject, but she scarcely seemed so at the moment. With
an absent air, she was investigating that button on her husband’s coat,
when Pa came in to spend the evening.
Pa had his special chair and his special corner reserved for him on
all occasions, and—without disparagement of his domestic joys—was far
happier there, than anywhere. It was always pleasantly droll to see Pa
and Bella together; but on this present evening her husband thought her
more than usually fantastic with him.
‘You are a very good little boy,’ said Bella, ‘to come unexpectedly,
as soon as you could get out of school. And how have they used you at
school to-day, you dear?’
‘Well, my pet,’ replied the cherub, smiling and rubbing his hands as she
sat him down in his chair, ‘I attend two schools. There’s the Mincing
Lane establishment, and there’s your mother’s Academy. Which might you
mean, my dear?’
‘Both,’ said Bella.
‘Both, eh? Why, to say the truth, both have taken a little out of me
to-day, my dear, but that was to be expected. There’s no royal road to
learning; and what is life but learning!’
‘And what do you do with yourself when you have got your learning by
heart, you silly child?’
‘Why then, my dear,’ said the cherub, after a little consideration, ‘I
suppose I die.’
‘You are a very bad boy,’ retorted Bella, ‘to talk about dismal things
and be out of spirits.’
‘My Bella,’ rejoined her father, ‘I am not out of spirits. I am as gay
as a lark.’ Which his face confirmed.
‘Then if you are sure and certain it’s not you, I suppose it must be
I,’ said Bella; ‘so I won’t do so any more. John dear, we must give this
little fellow his supper, you know.’
‘Of course we must, my darling.’
‘He has been grubbing and grubbing at school,’ said Bella, looking at
her father’s hand and lightly slapping it, ‘till he’s not fit to be
seen. O what a grubby child!’
‘Indeed, my dear,’ said her father, ‘I was going to ask to be allowed to
wash my hands, only you find me out so soon.’
‘Come here, sir!’ cried Bella, taking him by the front of his coat,
‘come here and be washed directly. You are not to be trusted to do it
for yourself. Come here, sir!’
The cherub, to his genial amusement, was accordingly conducted to a
little washing-room, where Bella soaped his face and rubbed his face,
and soaped his hands and rubbed his hands, and splashed him and rinsed
him and towelled him, until he was as red as beet-root, even to his very
ears: ‘Now you must be brushed and combed, sir,’ said Bella, busily.
‘Hold the light, John. Shut your eyes, sir, and let me take hold of your
chin. Be good directly, and do as you are told!’
Her father being more than willing to obey, she dressed his hair in her
most elaborate manner, brushing it out straight, parting it, winding it
over her fingers, sticking it up on end, and constantly falling back on
John to get a good look at the effect of it. Who always received her
on his disengaged arm, and detained her, while the patient cherub stood
waiting to be finished.
‘There!’ said Bella, when she had at last completed the final touches.
‘Now, you are something like a genteel boy! Put your jacket on, and come
and have your supper.’
The cherub investing himself with his coat was led back to his
corner—where, but for having no egotism in his pleasant nature, he
would have answered well enough for that radiant though self-sufficient
boy, Jack Horner—Bella with her own hands laid a cloth for him, and
brought him his supper on a tray. ‘Stop a moment,’ said she, ‘we must
keep his little clothes clean;’ and tied a napkin under his chin, in a
very methodical manner.
While he took his supper, Bella sat by him, sometimes admonishing him
to hold his fork by the handle, like a polite child, and at other times
carving for him, or pouring out his drink. Fantastic as it all was, and
accustomed as she ever had been to make a plaything of her good father,
ever delighted that she should put him to that account, still there was
an occasional something on Bella’s part that was new. It could not be
said that she was less playful, whimsical, or natural, than she always
had been; but it seemed, her husband thought, as if there were some
rather graver reason than he had supposed for what she had so lately
said, and as if throughout all this, there were glimpses of an
underlying seriousness.
It was a circumstance in support of this view of the case, that when she
had lighted her father’s pipe, and mixed him his glass of grog, she sat
down on a stool between her father and her husband, leaning her arm upon
the latter, and was very quiet. So quiet, that when her father rose to
take his leave, she looked round with a start, as if she had forgotten
his being there.
‘You go a little way with Pa, John?’
‘Yes, my dear. Do you?’
‘I have not written to Lizzie Hexam since I wrote and told her that I
really had a lover—a whole one. I have often thought I would like to
tell her how right she was when she pretended to read in the live coals
that I would go through fire and water for him. I am in the humour to
tell her so to-night, John, and I’ll stay at home and do it.’
‘You are tired.’
‘Not at all tired, John dear, but in the humour to write to Lizzie. Good
night, dear Pa. Good night, you dear, good, gentle Pa!’
Left to herself she sat down to write, and wrote Lizzie a long letter.
She had but completed it and read it over, when her husband came back.
‘You are just in time, sir,’ said Bella; ‘I am going to give you your
first curtain lecture. It shall be a parlour-curtain lecture. You shall
take this chair of mine when I have folded my letter, and I will take
the stool (though you ought to take it, I can tell you, sir, if it’s
the stool of repentance), and you’ll soon find yourself taken to task
soundly.’
Her letter folded, sealed, and directed, and her pen wiped, and her
middle finger wiped, and her desk locked up and put away, and these
transactions performed with an air of severe business sedateness, which
the Complete British Housewife might have assumed, and certainly would
not have rounded off and broken down in with a musical laugh, as Bella
did: she placed her husband in his chair, and placed herself upon her
stool.
‘Now, sir! To begin at the beginning. What is your name?’
A question more decidedly rushing at the secret he was keeping from
her, could not have astounded him. But he kept his countenance and his
secret, and answered, ‘John Rokesmith, my dear.’
‘Good boy! Who gave you that name?’
With a returning suspicion that something might have betrayed him to
her, he answered, interrogatively, ‘My godfathers and my godmothers,
dear love?’
‘Pretty good!’ said Bella. ‘Not goodest good, because you hesitate about
it. However, as you know your Catechism fairly, so far, I’ll let you off
the rest. Now, I am going to examine you out of my own head. John dear,
why did you go back, this evening, to the question you once asked me
before—would I like to be rich?’
Again, his secret! He looked down at her as she looked up at him, with
her hands folded on his knee, and it was as nearly told as ever secret
was.
Having no reply ready, he could do no better than embrace her.