Our Mutual Friend
‘In short, dear John,’ said Bella, ‘this is the topic of my lecture: I
want nothing on earth, and I want you to believe it.’
‘If that’s all, the lecture may be considered over, for I do.’
‘It’s not all, John dear,’ Bella hesitated. ‘It’s only Firstly. There’s
a dreadful Secondly, and a dreadful Thirdly to come—as I used to say to
myself in sermon-time when I was a very small-sized sinner at church.’
‘Let them come, my dearest.’
‘Are you sure, John dear; are you absolutely certain in your innermost
heart of hearts—?’
‘Which is not in my keeping,’ he rejoined.
‘No, John, but the key is.—Are you absolutely certain that down at the
bottom of that heart of hearts, which you have given to me as I
have given mine to you, there is no remembrance that I was once very
mercenary?’
‘Why, if there were no remembrance in me of the time you speak of,’ he
softly asked her with his lips to hers, ‘could I love you quite as well
as I do; could I have in the Calendar of my life the brightest of its
days; could I whenever I look at your dear face, or hear your dear
voice, see and hear my noble champion? It can never have been that which
made you serious, darling?’
‘No John, it wasn’t that, and still less was it Mrs Boffin, though I
love her. Wait a moment, and I’ll go on with the lecture. Give me a
moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John dear, to
cry for joy.’
She did so on his neck, and, still clinging there, laughed a little when
she said, ‘I think I am ready now for Thirdly, John.’
‘I am ready for Thirdly,’ said John, ‘whatever it is.’
‘I believe, John,’ pursued Bella, ‘that you believe that I believe—’
‘My dear child,’ cried her husband gaily, ‘what a quantity of
believing!’
‘Isn’t there?’ said Bella, with another laugh. ‘I never knew such a
quantity! It’s like verbs in an exercise. But I can’t get on with less
believing. I’ll try again. I believe, dear John, that you believe that
I believe that we have as much money as we require, and that we want for
nothing.’
‘It is strictly true, Bella.’
‘But if our money should by any means be rendered not so much—if we
had to stint ourselves a little in purchases that we can afford to
make now—would you still have the same confidence in my being quite
contented, John?’
‘Precisely the same confidence, my soul.’
‘Thank you, John dear, thousands upon thousands of times. And I may take
it for granted, no doubt,’ with a little faltering, ‘that you would be
quite as contented yourself John? But, yes, I know I may. For, knowing
that I should be so, how surely I may know that you would be so; you who
are so much stronger, and firmer, and more reasonable and more generous,
than I am.’
‘Hush!’ said her husband, ‘I must not hear that. You are all wrong
there, though otherwise as right as can be. And now I am brought to a
little piece of news, my dearest, that I might have told you earlier
in the evening. I have strong reason for confidently believing that
we shall never be in the receipt of a smaller income than our present
income.’
She might have shown herself more interested in the intelligence;
but she had returned to the investigation of the coat-button that had
engaged her attention a few hours before, and scarcely seemed to heed
what he said.
‘And now we have got to the bottom of it at last,’ cried her husband,
rallying her, ‘and this is the thing that made you serious?’
‘No dear,’ said Bella, twisting the button and shaking her head, ‘it
wasn’t this.’
‘Why then, Lord bless this little wife of mine, there’s a Fourthly!’
exclaimed John.
‘This worried me a little, and so did Secondly,’ said Bella, occupied
with the button, ‘but it was quite another sort of seriousness—a much
deeper and quieter sort of seriousness—that I spoke of John dear.’
As he bent his face to hers, she raised hers to meet it, and laid her
little right hand on his eyes, and kept it there.
‘Do you remember, John, on the day we were married, Pa’s speaking of the
ships that might be sailing towards us from the unknown seas?’
‘Perfectly, my darling!’
‘I think...among them...there is a ship upon the ocean...bringing...to
you and me...a little baby, John.’
Chapter 6
A CRY FOR HELP
The Paper Mill had stopped work for the night, and the paths and roads
in its neighbourhood were sprinkled with clusters of people going home
from their day’s labour in it. There were men, women, and children in
the groups, and there was no want of lively colour to flutter in the
gentle evening wind. The mingling of various voices and the sound of
laughter made a cheerful impression upon the ear, analogous to that of
the fluttering colours upon the eye. Into the sheet of water reflecting
the flushed sky in the foreground of the living picture, a knot of
urchins were casting stones, and watching the expansion of the rippling
circles. So, in the rosy evening, one might watch the ever-widening
beauty of the landscape—beyond the newly-released workers wending
home—beyond the silver river—beyond the deep green fields of corn, so
prospering, that the loiterers in their narrow threads of pathway seemed
to float immersed breast-high—beyond the hedgerows and the clumps of
trees—beyond the windmills on the ridge—away to where the sky appeared
to meet the earth, as if there were no immensity of space between
mankind and Heaven.
It was a Saturday evening, and at such a time the village dogs, always
much more interested in the doings of humanity than in the affairs of
their own species, were particularly active. At the general shop, at
the butcher’s and at the public-house, they evinced an inquiring spirit
never to be satiated. Their especial interest in the public-house would
seem to imply some latent rakishness in the canine character; for little
was eaten there, and they, having no taste for beer or tobacco (Mrs
Hubbard’s dog is said to have smoked, but proof is wanting), could only
have been attracted by sympathy with loose convivial habits. Moreover,
a most wretched fiddle played within; a fiddle so unutterably vile, that
one lean long-bodied cur, with a better ear than the rest, found himself
under compulsion at intervals to go round the corner and howl. Yet, even
he returned to the public-house on each occasion with the tenacity of a
confirmed drunkard.
Fearful to relate, there was even a sort of little Fair in the village.
Some despairing gingerbread that had been vainly trying to dispose of
itself all over the country, and had cast a quantity of dust upon its
head in its mortification, again appealed to the public from an infirm
booth. So did a heap of nuts, long, long exiled from Barcelona, and yet
speaking English so indifferently as to call fourteen of themselves
a pint. A Peep-show which had originally started with the Battle of
Waterloo, and had since made it every other battle of later date
by altering the Duke of Wellington’s nose, tempted the student of
illustrated history. A Fat Lady, perhaps in part sustained upon
postponed pork, her professional associate being a Learned Pig,
displayed her life-size picture in a low dress as she appeared when
presented at Court, several yards round. All this was a vicious
spectacle as any poor idea of amusement on the part of the rougher
hewers of wood and drawers of water in this land of England ever is and
shall be. They MUST NOT vary the rheumatism with amusement. They may
vary it with fever and ague, or with as many rheumatic variations as
they have joints; but positively not with entertainment after their own
manner.
The various sounds arising from this scene of depravity, and floating
away into the still evening air, made the evening, at any point which
they just reached fitfully, mellowed by the distance, more still by
contrast. Such was the stillness of the evening to Eugene Wrayburn, as
he walked by the river with his hands behind him.
He walked slowly, and with the measured step and preoccupied air of one
who was waiting. He walked between the two points, an osier-bed at this
end and some floating lilies at that, and at each point stopped and
looked expectantly in one direction.
‘It is very quiet,’ said he.
It was very quiet. Some sheep were grazing on the grass by the
river-side, and it seemed to him that he had never before heard the
crisp tearing sound with which they cropped it. He stopped idly, and
looked at them.
‘You are stupid enough, I suppose. But if you are clever enough to get
through life tolerably to your satisfaction, you have got the better of
me, Man as I am, and Mutton as you are!’
A rustle in a field beyond the hedge attracted his attention. ‘What’s
here to do?’ he asked himself leisurely going towards the gate and
looking over. ‘No jealous paper-miller? No pleasures of the chase in
this part of the country? Mostly fishing hereabouts!’
The field had been newly mown, and there were yet the marks of the
scythe on the yellow-green ground, and the track of wheels where the hay
had been carried. Following the tracks with his eyes, the view closed
with the new hayrick in a corner.
Now, if he had gone on to the hayrick, and gone round it? But, say
that the event was to be, as the event fell out, and how idle are such
suppositions! Besides, if he had gone; what is there of warning in a
Bargeman lying on his face?
‘A bird flying to the hedge,’ was all he thought about it; and came
back, and resumed his walk.
‘If I had not a reliance on her being truthful,’ said Eugene, after
taking some half-dozen turns, ‘I should begin to think she had given me
the slip for the second time. But she promised, and she is a girl of her
word.’
Turning again at the water-lilies, he saw her coming, and advanced to
meet her.
‘I was saying to myself, Lizzie, that you were sure to come, though you
were late.’
‘I had to linger through the village as if I had no object before me,
and I had to speak to several people in passing along, Mr Wrayburn.’
‘Are the lads of the village—and the ladies—such scandal-mongers?’ he
asked, as he took her hand and drew it through his arm.
She submitted to walk slowly on, with downcast eyes. He put her hand to
his lips, and she quietly drew it away.
‘Will you walk beside me, Mr Wrayburn, and not touch me?’ For, his arm
was already stealing round her waist.
She stopped again, and gave him an earnest supplicating look. ‘Well,
Lizzie, well!’ said he, in an easy way though ill at ease with himself
‘don’t be unhappy, don’t be reproachful.’
‘I cannot help being unhappy, but I do not mean to be reproachful. Mr
Wrayburn, I implore you to go away from this neighbourhood, to-morrow
morning.’
‘Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie!’ he remonstrated. ‘As well be reproachful as
wholly unreasonable. I can’t go away.’
‘Why not?’
‘Faith!’ said Eugene in his airily candid manner. ‘Because you won’t let
me. Mind! I don’t mean to be reproachful either. I don’t complain that
you design to keep me here. But you do it, you do it.’
‘Will you walk beside me, and not touch me;’ for, his arm was coming
about her again; ‘while I speak to you very seriously, Mr Wrayburn?’
‘I will do anything within the limits of possibility, for you, Lizzie,’
he answered with pleasant gaiety as he folded his arms. ‘See here!
Napoleon Buonaparte at St Helena.’
‘When you spoke to me as I came from the Mill the night before last,’
said Lizzie, fixing her eyes upon him with the look of supplication
which troubled his better nature, ‘you told me that you were much
surprised to see me, and that you were on a solitary fishing excursion.
Was it true?’
‘It was not,’ replied Eugene composedly, ‘in the least true. I came
here, because I had information that I should find you here.’
‘Can you imagine why I left London, Mr Wrayburn?’