Our Mutual Friend
little scanty box outside in the shivering wind, which I was going to
carry for him down to the steamboat, as the old man wouldn’t hear of
allowing a sixpence coach-money. Mrs Boffin, then quite a young woman
and pictur of a full-blown rose, stands him by her, kneels down at the
fire, warms her two open hands, and falls to rubbing his cheeks; but
seeing the tears come into the child’s eyes, the tears come fast into
her own, and she holds him round the neck, like as if she was protecting
him, and cries to me, “I’d give the wide wide world, I would, to run
away with him!” I don’t say but what it cut me, and but what it at the
same time heightened my feelings of admiration for Mrs Boffin. The poor
child clings to her for awhile, as she clings to him, and then, when
the old man calls, he says “I must go! God bless you!” and for a moment
rests his heart against her bosom, and looks up at both of us, as if it
was in pain—in agony. Such a look! I went aboard with him (I gave him
first what little treat I thought he’d like), and I left him when he had
fallen asleep in his berth, and I came back to Mrs Boffin. But tell
her what I would of how I had left him, it all went for nothing, for,
according to her thoughts, he never changed that look that he had looked
up at us two. But it did one piece of good. Mrs Boffin and me had no
child of our own, and had sometimes wished that how we had one. But not
now. “We might both of us die,” says Mrs Boffin, “and other eyes might
see that lonely look in our child.” So of a night, when it was very
cold, or when the wind roared, or the rain dripped heavy, she would
wake sobbing, and call out in a fluster, “Don’t you see the poor child’s
face? O shelter the poor child!”—till in course of years it gently wore
out, as many things do.’
‘My dear Mr Boffin, everything wears to rags,’ said Mortimer, with a
light laugh.
‘I won’t go so far as to say everything,’ returned Mr Boffin, on whom
his manner seemed to grate, ‘because there’s some things that I never
found among the dust. Well, sir. So Mrs Boffin and me grow older and
older in the old man’s service, living and working pretty hard in it,
till the old man is discovered dead in his bed. Then Mrs Boffin and me
seal up his box, always standing on the table at the side of his bed,
and having frequently heerd tell of the Temple as a spot where lawyer’s
dust is contracted for, I come down here in search of a lawyer to
advise, and I see your young man up at this present elevation, chopping
at the flies on the window-sill with his penknife, and I give him a Hoy!
not then having the pleasure of your acquaintance, and by that
means come to gain the honour. Then you, and the gentleman in the
uncomfortable neck-cloth under the little archway in Saint Paul’s
Churchyard—’
‘Doctors’ Commons,’ observed Lightwood.
‘I understood it was another name,’ said Mr Boffin, pausing, ‘but you
know best. Then you and Doctor Scommons, you go to work, and you do the
thing that’s proper, and you and Doctor S. take steps for finding out
the poor boy, and at last you do find out the poor boy, and me and Mrs
Boffin often exchange the observation, “We shall see him again,
under happy circumstances.” But it was never to be; and the want of
satisfactoriness is, that after all the money never gets to him.’
‘But it gets,’ remarked Lightwood, with a languid inclination of the
head, ‘into excellent hands.’
‘It gets into the hands of me and Mrs Boffin only this very day and
hour, and that’s what I am working round to, having waited for this day
and hour a’ purpose. Mr Lightwood, here has been a wicked cruel
murder. By that murder me and Mrs Boffin mysteriously profit. For the
apprehension and conviction of the murderer, we offer a reward of one
tithe of the property—a reward of Ten Thousand Pound.’
‘Mr Boffin, it’s too much.’
‘Mr Lightwood, me and Mrs Boffin have fixed the sum together, and we
stand to it.’
‘But let me represent to you,’ returned Lightwood, ‘speaking now with
professional profundity, and not with individual imbecility, that the
offer of such an immense reward is a temptation to forced suspicion,
forced construction of circumstances, strained accusation, a whole
tool-box of edged tools.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Boffin, a little staggered, ‘that’s the sum we put o’
one side for the purpose. Whether it shall be openly declared in the new
notices that must now be put about in our names—’
‘In your name, Mr Boffin; in your name.’
‘Very well; in my name, which is the same as Mrs Boffin’s, and means
both of us, is to be considered in drawing ’em up. But this is the first
instruction that I, as the owner of the property, give to my lawyer on
coming into it.’
‘Your lawyer, Mr Boffin,’ returned Lightwood, making a very short
note of it with a very rusty pen, ‘has the gratification of taking the
instruction. There is another?’
‘There is just one other, and no more. Make me as compact a little will
as can be reconciled with tightness, leaving the whole of the property
to “my beloved wife, Henerietty Boffin, sole executrix”. Make it as
short as you can, using those words; but make it tight.’
At some loss to fathom Mr Boffin’s notions of a tight will, Lightwood
felt his way.
‘I beg your pardon, but professional profundity must be exact. When you
say tight—’
‘I mean tight,’ Mr Boffin explained.
‘Exactly so. And nothing can be more laudable. But is the tightness to
bind Mrs Boffin to any and what conditions?’
‘Bind Mrs Boffin?’ interposed her husband. ‘No! What are you thinking
of! What I want is, to make it all hers so tight as that her hold of it
can’t be loosed.’
‘Hers freely, to do what she likes with? Hers absolutely?’
‘Absolutely?’ repeated Mr Boffin, with a short sturdy laugh. ‘Hah! I
should think so! It would be handsome in me to begin to bind Mrs Boffin
at this time of day!’
So that instruction, too, was taken by Mr Lightwood; and Mr Lightwood,
having taken it, was in the act of showing Mr Boffin out, when Mr Eugene
Wrayburn almost jostled him in the door-way. Consequently Mr Lightwood
said, in his cool manner, ‘Let me make you two known to one another,’
and further signified that Mr Wrayburn was counsel learned in the
law, and that, partly in the way of business and partly in the way of
pleasure, he had imparted to Mr Wrayburn some of the interesting facts
of Mr Boffin’s biography.
‘Delighted,’ said Eugene—though he didn’t look so—‘to know Mr Boffin.’
‘Thankee, sir, thankee,’ returned that gentleman. ‘And how do YOU like
the law?’
‘A—not particularly,’ returned Eugene.
‘Too dry for you, eh? Well, I suppose it wants some years of sticking
to, before you master it. But there’s nothing like work. Look at the
bees.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ returned Eugene, with a reluctant smile, ‘but will
you excuse my mentioning that I always protest against being referred to
the bees?’
‘Do you!’ said Mr Boffin.
‘I object on principle,’ said Eugene, ‘as a biped—’
‘As a what?’ asked Mr Boffin.
‘As a two-footed creature;—I object on principle, as a two-footed
creature, to being constantly referred to insects and four-footed
creatures. I object to being required to model my proceedings according
to the proceedings of the bee, or the dog, or the spider, or the camel.
I fully admit that the camel, for instance, is an excessively temperate
person; but he has several stomachs to entertain himself with, and I
have only one. Besides, I am not fitted up with a convenient cool cellar
to keep my drink in.’
‘But I said, you know,’ urged Mr Boffin, rather at a loss for an answer,
‘the bee.’
‘Exactly. And may I represent to you that it’s injudicious to say the
bee? For the whole case is assumed. Conceding for a moment that there is
any analogy between a bee, and a man in a shirt and pantaloons (which
I deny), and that it is settled that the man is to learn from the bee
(which I also deny), the question still remains, what is he to learn?
To imitate? Or to avoid? When your friends the bees worry themselves to
that highly fluttered extent about their sovereign, and become perfectly
distracted touching the slightest monarchical movement, are we men to
learn the greatness of Tuft-hunting, or the littleness of the
Court Circular? I am not clear, Mr Boffin, but that the hive may be
satirical.’
‘At all events, they work,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘Ye-es,’ returned Eugene, disparagingly, ‘they work; but don’t you think
they overdo it? They work so much more than they need—they make so much
more than they can eat—they are so incessantly boring and buzzing at
their one idea till Death comes upon them—that don’t you think they
overdo it? And are human labourers to have no holidays, because of the
bees? And am I never to have change of air, because the bees don’t? Mr
Boffin, I think honey excellent at breakfast; but, regarded in the light
of my conventional schoolmaster and moralist, I protest against the
tyrannical humbug of your friend the bee. With the highest respect for
you.’
‘Thankee,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Morning, morning!’
But, the worthy Mr Boffin jogged away with a comfortless impression he
could have dispensed with, that there was a deal of unsatisfactoriness
in the world, besides what he had recalled as appertaining to the Harmon
property. And he was still jogging along Fleet Street in this condition
of mind, when he became aware that he was closely tracked and observed
by a man of genteel appearance.
‘Now then?’ said Mr Boffin, stopping short, with his meditations brought
to an abrupt check, ‘what’s the next article?’
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Boffin.’
‘My name too, eh? How did you come by it? I don’t know you.’
‘No, sir, you don’t know me.’
Mr Boffin looked full at the man, and the man looked full at him.
‘No,’ said Mr Boffin, after a glance at the pavement, as if it were made
of faces and he were trying to match the man’s, ‘I DON’T know you.’
‘I am nobody,’ said the stranger, ‘and not likely to be known; but Mr
Boffin’s wealth—’
‘Oh! that’s got about already, has it?’ muttered Mr Boffin.
‘—And his romantic manner of acquiring it, make him conspicuous. You
were pointed out to me the other day.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘I should say I was a disappintment to you when
I WAS pinted out, if your politeness would allow you to confess it, for
I am well aware I am not much to look at. What might you want with me?
Not in the law, are you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No information to give, for a reward?’
‘No, sir.’
There may have been a momentary mantling in the face of the man as he
made the last answer, but it passed directly.
‘If I don’t mistake, you have followed me from my lawyer’s and tried
to fix my attention. Say out! Have you? Or haven’t you?’ demanded Mr
Boffin, rather angry.
‘Yes.’
‘Why have you?’
‘If you will allow me to walk beside you, Mr Boffin, I will tell you.
Would you object to turn aside into this place—I think it is called
Clifford’s Inn—where we can hear one another better than in the roaring
street?’
(‘Now,’ thought Mr Boffin, ‘if he proposes a game at skittles, or meets
a country gentleman just come into property, or produces any article
of jewellery he has found, I’ll knock him down!’ With this discreet
reflection, and carrying his stick in his arms much as Punch carries
his, Mr Boffin turned into Clifford’s Inn aforesaid.)
‘Mr Boffin, I happened to be in Chancery Lane this morning, when I saw
you going along before me. I took the liberty of following you, trying
to make up my mind to speak to you, till you went into your lawyer’s.
Then I waited outside till you came out.’
(‘Don’t quite sound like skittles, nor yet country gentleman, nor yet
jewellery,’ thought Mr Boffin, ‘but there’s no knowing.’)
‘I am afraid my object is a bold one, I am afraid it has little of the