Our Mutual Friend
turned round. As Riah followed to attend him down the stairs, the little
creature called out to the Jew in a silvery tone, ‘Don’t be long gone.
Come back, and be dead!’ And still as they went down they heard the
little sweet voice, more and more faintly, half calling and half
singing, ‘Come back and be dead, Come back and be dead!’
When they got down into the entry, Fledgeby, pausing under the shadow of
the broad old hat, and mechanically poising the staff, said to the old
man:
‘That’s a handsome girl, that one in her senses.’
‘And as good as handsome,’ answered Riah.
‘At all events,’ observed Fledgeby, with a dry whistle, ‘I hope she
ain’t bad enough to put any chap up to the fastenings, and get the
premises broken open. You look out. Keep your weather eye awake and
don’t make any more acquaintances, however handsome. Of course you
always keep my name to yourself?’
‘Sir, assuredly I do.’
‘If they ask it, say it’s Pubsey, or say it’s Co, or say it’s anything
you like, but what it is.’
His grateful servant—in whose race gratitude is deep, strong, and
enduring—bowed his head, and actually did now put the hem of his coat
to his lips: though so lightly that the wearer knew nothing of it.
Thus, Fascination Fledgeby went his way, exulting in the artful
cleverness with which he had turned his thumb down on a Jew, and the old
man went his different way up-stairs. As he mounted, the call or song
began to sound in his ears again, and, looking above, he saw the face
of the little creature looking down out of a Glory of her long bright
radiant hair, and musically repeating to him, like a vision:
‘Come up and be dead! Come up and be dead!’
Chapter 6
A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER
Again Mr Mortimer Lightwood and Mr Eugene Wrayburn sat together in the
Temple. This evening, however, they were not together in the place of
business of the eminent solicitor, but in another dismal set of
chambers facing it on the same second-floor; on whose dungeon-like black
outer-door appeared the legend:
PRIVATE
MR EUGENE WRAYBURN
MR MORTIMER LIGHTWOOD
(Mr Lightwood’s Offices opposite.)
Appearances indicated that this establishment was a very recent
institution. The white letters of the inscription were extremely white
and extremely strong to the sense of smell, the complexion of the
tables and chairs was (like Lady Tippins’s) a little too blooming to
be believed in, and the carpets and floorcloth seemed to rush at the
beholder’s face in the unusual prominency of their patterns. But the
Temple, accustomed to tone down both the still life and the human life
that has much to do with it, would soon get the better of all that.
‘Well!’ said Eugene, on one side of the fire, ‘I feel tolerably
comfortable. I hope the upholsterer may do the same.’
‘Why shouldn’t he?’ asked Lightwood, from the other side of the fire.
‘To be sure,’ pursued Eugene, reflecting, ‘he is not in the secret of
our pecuniary affairs, so perhaps he may be in an easy frame of mind.’
‘We shall pay him,’ said Mortimer.
‘Shall we, really?’ returned Eugene, indolently surprised. ‘You don’t
say so!’
‘I mean to pay him, Eugene, for my part,’ said Mortimer, in a slightly
injured tone.
‘Ah! I mean to pay him too,’ retorted Eugene. ‘But then I mean so much
that I—that I don’t mean.’
‘Don’t mean?’
‘So much that I only mean and shall always only mean and nothing more,
my dear Mortimer. It’s the same thing.’
His friend, lying back in his easy chair, watched him lying back in his
easy chair, as he stretched out his legs on the hearth-rug, and said,
with the amused look that Eugene Wrayburn could always awaken in him
without seeming to try or care:
‘Anyhow, your vagaries have increased the bill.’
‘Calls the domestic virtues vagaries!’ exclaimed Eugene, raising his
eyes to the ceiling.
‘This very complete little kitchen of ours,’ said Mortimer, ‘in which
nothing will ever be cooked—’
‘My dear, dear Mortimer,’ returned his friend, lazily lifting his head
a little to look at him, ‘how often have I pointed out to you that its
moral influence is the important thing?’
‘Its moral influence on this fellow!’ exclaimed Lightwood, laughing.
‘Do me the favour,’ said Eugene, getting out of his chair with much
gravity, ‘to come and inspect that feature of our establishment which
you rashly disparage.’ With that, taking up a candle, he conducted
his chum into the fourth room of the set of chambers—a little narrow
room—which was very completely and neatly fitted as a kitchen. ‘See!’
said Eugene, ‘miniature flour-barrel, rolling-pin, spice-box, shelf of
brown jars, chopping-board, coffee-mill, dresser elegantly furnished
with crockery, saucepans and pans, roasting jack, a charming kettle, an
armoury of dish-covers. The moral influence of these objects, in forming
the domestic virtues, may have an immense influence upon me; not upon
you, for you are a hopeless case, but upon me. In fact, I have an idea
that I feel the domestic virtues already forming. Do me the favour to
step into my bedroom. Secretaire, you see, and abstruse set of solid
mahogany pigeon-holes, one for every letter of the alphabet. To what use
do I devote them? I receive a bill—say from Jones. I docket it neatly
at the secretaire, JONES, and I put it into pigeonhole J. It’s the next
thing to a receipt and is quite as satisfactory to ME. And I very much
wish, Mortimer,’ sitting on his bed, with the air of a philosopher
lecturing a disciple, ‘that my example might induce YOU to cultivate
habits of punctuality and method; and, by means of the moral influences
with which I have surrounded you, to encourage the formation of the
domestic virtues.’
Mortimer laughed again, with his usual commentaries of ‘How CAN you be
so ridiculous, Eugene!’ and ‘What an absurd fellow you are!’ but when
his laugh was out, there was something serious, if not anxious, in his
face. Despite that pernicious assumption of lassitude and indifference,
which had become his second nature, he was strongly attached to his
friend. He had founded himself upon Eugene when they were yet boys at
school; and at this hour imitated him no less, admired him no less,
loved him no less, than in those departed days.
‘Eugene,’ said he, ‘if I could find you in earnest for a minute, I would
try to say an earnest word to you.’
‘An earnest word?’ repeated Eugene. ‘The moral influences are beginning
to work. Say on.’
‘Well, I will,’ returned the other, ‘though you are not earnest yet.’
‘In this desire for earnestness,’ murmured Eugene, with the air of one
who was meditating deeply, ‘I trace the happy influences of the little
flour-barrel and the coffee-mill. Gratifying.’
‘Eugene,’ resumed Mortimer, disregarding the light interruption, and
laying a hand upon Eugene’s shoulder, as he, Mortimer, stood before him
seated on his bed, ‘you are withholding something from me.’
Eugene looked at him, but said nothing.
‘All this past summer, you have been withholding something from me.
Before we entered on our boating vacation, you were as bent upon it as I
have seen you upon anything since we first rowed together. But you cared
very little for it when it came, often found it a tie and a drag upon
you, and were constantly away. Now it was well enough half-a-dozen
times, a dozen times, twenty times, to say to me in your own odd manner,
which I know so well and like so much, that your disappearances were
precautions against our boring one another; but of course after a short
while I began to know that they covered something. I don’t ask what it
is, as you have not told me; but the fact is so. Say, is it not?’
‘I give you my word of honour, Mortimer,’ returned Eugene, after a
serious pause of a few moments, ‘that I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know, Eugene?’
‘Upon my soul, don’t know. I know less about myself than about most
people in the world, and I don’t know.’
‘You have some design in your mind?’
‘Have I? I don’t think I have.’
‘At any rate, you have some subject of interest there which used not to
be there?’
‘I really can’t say,’ replied Eugene, shaking his head blankly, after
pausing again to reconsider. ‘At times I have thought yes; at other
times I have thought no. Now, I have been inclined to pursue such a
subject; now I have felt that it was absurd, and that it tired and
embarrassed me. Absolutely, I can’t say. Frankly and faithfully, I would
if I could.’
So replying, he clapped a hand, in his turn, on his friend’s shoulder,
as he rose from his seat upon the bed, and said:
‘You must take your friend as he is. You know what I am, my dear
Mortimer. You know how dreadfully susceptible I am to boredom. You know
that when I became enough of a man to find myself an embodied conundrum,
I bored myself to the last degree by trying to find out what I meant.
You know that at length I gave it up, and declined to guess any more.
Then how can I possibly give you the answer that I have not discovered?
The old nursery form runs, “Riddle-me-riddle-me-ree, p’raps you can’t
tell me what this may be?” My reply runs, “No. Upon my life, I can’t.”’
So much of what was fantastically true to his own knowledge of this
utterly careless Eugene, mingled with the answer, that Mortimer could
not receive it as a mere evasion. Besides, it was given with an engaging
air of openness, and of special exemption of the one friend he valued,
from his reckless indifference.
‘Come, dear boy!’ said Eugene. ‘Let us try the effect of smoking. If it
enlightens me at all on this question, I will impart unreservedly.’
They returned to the room they had come from, and, finding it heated,
opened a window. Having lighted their cigars, they leaned out of this
window, smoking, and looking down at the moonlight, as it shone into the
court below.
‘No enlightenment,’ resumed Eugene, after certain minutes of silence. ‘I
feel sincerely apologetic, my dear Mortimer, but nothing comes.’
‘If nothing comes,’ returned Mortimer, ‘nothing can come from it. So
I shall hope that this may hold good throughout, and that there may be
nothing on foot. Nothing injurious to you, Eugene, or—’
Eugene stayed him for a moment with his hand on his arm, while he took a
piece of earth from an old flowerpot on the window-sill and dexterously
shot it at a little point of light opposite; having done which to his
satisfaction, he said, ‘Or?’
‘Or injurious to any one else.’
‘How,’ said Eugene, taking another little piece of earth, and shooting
it with great precision at the former mark, ‘how injurious to any one
else?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And,’ said Eugene, taking, as he said the word, another shot, ‘to whom
else?’
‘I don’t know.’
Checking himself with another piece of earth in his hand, Eugene looked
at his friend inquiringly and a little suspiciously. There was no
concealed or half-expressed meaning in his face.
‘Two belated wanderers in the mazes of the law,’ said Eugene, attracted
by the sound of footsteps, and glancing down as he spoke, ‘stray into
the court. They examine the door-posts of number one, seeking the name
they want. Not finding it at number one, they come to number two. On the
hat of wanderer number two, the shorter one, I drop this pellet. Hitting
him on the hat, I smoke serenely, and become absorbed in contemplation
of the sky.’
Both the wanderers looked up towards the window; but, after
interchanging a mutter or two, soon applied themselves to the door-posts
below. There they seemed to discover what they wanted, for they
disappeared from view by entering at the doorway. ‘When they emerge,’
said Eugene, ‘you shall see me bring them both down’; and so prepared
two pellets for the purpose.
He had not reckoned on their seeking his name, or Lightwood’s. But