Our Mutual Friend
either the one or the other would seem to be in question, for now there
came a knock at the door. ‘I am on duty to-night,’ said Mortimer, ‘stay
you where you are, Eugene.’ Requiring no persuasion, he stayed there,
smoking quietly, and not at all curious to know who knocked, until
Mortimer spoke to him from within the room, and touched him. Then,
drawing in his head, he found the visitors to be young Charley Hexam
and the schoolmaster; both standing facing him, and both recognized at a
glance.
‘You recollect this young fellow, Eugene?’ said Mortimer.
‘Let me look at him,’ returned Wrayburn, coolly. ‘Oh, yes, yes. I
recollect him!’
He had not been about to repeat that former action of taking him by the
chin, but the boy had suspected him of it, and had thrown up his arm
with an angry start. Laughingly, Wrayburn looked to Lightwood for an
explanation of this odd visit.
‘He says he has something to say.’
‘Surely it must be to you, Mortimer.’
‘So I thought, but he says no. He says it is to you.’
‘Yes, I do say so,’ interposed the boy. ‘And I mean to say what I want
to say, too, Mr Eugene Wrayburn!’
Passing him with his eyes as if there were nothing where he stood,
Eugene looked on to Bradley Headstone. With consummate indolence, he
turned to Mortimer, inquiring: ‘And who may this other person be?’
‘I am Charles Hexam’s friend,’ said Bradley; ‘I am Charles Hexam’s
schoolmaster.’
‘My good sir, you should teach your pupils better manners,’ returned
Eugene.
Composedly smoking, he leaned an elbow on the chimneypiece, at the side
of the fire, and looked at the schoolmaster. It was a cruel look, in its
cold disdain of him, as a creature of no worth. The schoolmaster looked
at him, and that, too, was a cruel look, though of the different kind,
that it had a raging jealousy and fiery wrath in it.
Very remarkably, neither Eugene Wrayburn nor Bradley Headstone looked at
all at the boy. Through the ensuing dialogue, those two, no matter
who spoke, or whom was addressed, looked at each other. There was some
secret, sure perception between them, which set them against one another
in all ways.
‘In some high respects, Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ said Bradley, answering
him with pale and quivering lips, ‘the natural feelings of my pupils are
stronger than my teaching.’
‘In most respects, I dare say,’ replied Eugene, enjoying his cigar,
‘though whether high or low is of no importance. You have my name very
correctly. Pray what is yours?’
‘It cannot concern you much to know, but—’
‘True,’ interposed Eugene, striking sharply and cutting him short at his
mistake, ‘it does not concern me at all to know. I can say Schoolmaster,
which is a most respectable title. You are right, Schoolmaster.’
It was not the dullest part of this goad in its galling of Bradley
Headstone, that he had made it himself in a moment of incautious anger.
He tried to set his lips so as to prevent their quivering, but they
quivered fast.
‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ said the boy, ‘I want a word with you. I have
wanted it so much, that we have looked out your address in the book, and
we have been to your office, and we have come from your office here.’
‘You have given yourself much trouble, Schoolmaster,’ observed
Eugene, blowing the feathery ash from his cigar. ‘I hope it may prove
remunerative.’
‘And I am glad to speak,’ pursued the boy, ‘in presence of Mr Lightwood,
because it was through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw my sister.’
For a mere moment, Wrayburn turned his eyes aside from the schoolmaster
to note the effect of the last word on Mortimer, who, standing on the
opposite side of the fire, as soon as the word was spoken, turned his
face towards the fire and looked down into it.
‘Similarly, it was through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw her again, for
you were with him on the night when my father was found, and so I found
you with her on the next day. Since then, you have seen my sister often.
You have seen my sister oftener and oftener. And I want to know why?’
‘Was this worth while, Schoolmaster?’ murmured Eugene, with the air of
a disinterested adviser. ‘So much trouble for nothing? You should know
best, but I think not.’
‘I don’t know, Mr Wrayburn,’ answered Bradley, with his passion rising,
‘why you address me—’
‘Don’t you? said Eugene. ‘Then I won’t.’
He said it so tauntingly in his perfect placidity, that the respectable
right-hand clutching the respectable hair-guard of the respectable watch
could have wound it round his throat and strangled him with it. Not
another word did Eugene deem it worth while to utter, but stood leaning
his head upon his hand, smoking, and looking imperturbably at the
chafing Bradley Headstone with his clutching right-hand, until Bradley
was wellnigh mad.
‘Mr Wrayburn,’ proceeded the boy, ‘we not only know this that I have
charged upon you, but we know more. It has not yet come to my sister’s
knowledge that we have found it out, but we have. We had a plan, Mr
Headstone and I, for my sister’s education, and for its being advised
and overlooked by Mr Headstone, who is a much more competent authority,
whatever you may pretend to think, as you smoke, than you could produce,
if you tried. Then, what do we find? What do we find, Mr Lightwood? Why,
we find that my sister is already being taught, without our knowing
it. We find that while my sister gives an unwilling and cold ear to our
schemes for her advantage—I, her brother, and Mr Headstone, the most
competent authority, as his certificates would easily prove, that could
be produced—she is wilfully and willingly profiting by other schemes.
Ay, and taking pains, too, for I know what such pains are. And so does
Mr Headstone! Well! Somebody pays for this, is a thought that naturally
occurs to us; who pays? We apply ourselves to find out, Mr Lightwood,
and we find that your friend, this Mr Eugene Wrayburn, here, pays. Then
I ask him what right has he to do it, and what does he mean by it, and
how comes he to be taking such a liberty without my consent, when I
am raising myself in the scale of society by my own exertions and Mr
Headstone’s aid, and have no right to have any darkness cast upon my
prospects, or any imputation upon my respectability, through my sister?’
The boyish weakness of this speech, combined with its great selfishness,
made it a poor one indeed. And yet Bradley Headstone, used to the little
audience of a school, and unused to the larger ways of men, showed a
kind of exultation in it.
‘Now I tell Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ pursued the boy, forced into the use
of the third person by the hopelessness of addressing him in the first,
‘that I object to his having any acquaintance at all with my sister, and
that I request him to drop it altogether. He is not to take it into his
head that I am afraid of my sister’s caring for HIM—’
(As the boy sneered, the Master sneered, and Eugene blew off the
feathery ash again.)
—‘But I object to it, and that’s enough. I am more important to my
sister than he thinks. As I raise myself, I intend to raise her;
she knows that, and she has to look to me for her prospects. Now I
understand all this very well, and so does Mr Headstone. My sister is an
excellent girl, but she has some romantic notions; not about such things
as your Mr Eugene Wrayburns, but about the death of my father and other
matters of that sort. Mr Wrayburn encourages those notions to make
himself of importance, and so she thinks she ought to be grateful to
him, and perhaps even likes to be. Now I don’t choose her to be grateful
to him, or to be grateful to anybody but me, except Mr Headstone. And
I tell Mr Wrayburn that if he don’t take heed of what I say, it will be
worse for her. Let him turn that over in his memory, and make sure of
it. Worse for her!’
A pause ensued, in which the schoolmaster looked very awkward.
‘May I suggest, Schoolmaster,’ said Eugene, removing his fast-waning
cigar from his lips to glance at it, ‘that you can now take your pupil
away.’
‘And Mr Lightwood,’ added the boy, with a burning face, under the
flaming aggravation of getting no sort of answer or attention, ‘I hope
you’ll take notice of what I have said to your friend, and of what
your friend has heard me say, word by word, whatever he pretends to the
contrary. You are bound to take notice of it, Mr Lightwood, for, as I
have already mentioned, you first brought your friend into my sister’s
company, and but for you we never should have seen him. Lord knows none
of us ever wanted him, any more than any of us will ever miss him. Now
Mr Headstone, as Mr Eugene Wrayburn has been obliged to hear what I had
to say, and couldn’t help himself, and as I have said it out to the last
word, we have done all we wanted to do, and may go.’
‘Go down-stairs, and leave me a moment, Hexam,’ he returned. The boy
complying with an indignant look and as much noise as he could make,
swung out of the room; and Lightwood went to the window, and leaned
there, looking out.
‘You think me of no more value than the dirt under your feet,’ said
Bradley to Eugene, speaking in a carefully weighed and measured tone, or
he could not have spoken at all.
‘I assure you, Schoolmaster,’ replied Eugene, ‘I don’t think about you.’
‘That’s not true,’ returned the other; ‘you know better.’
‘That’s coarse,’ Eugene retorted; ‘but you DON’T know better.’
‘Mr Wrayburn, at least I know very well that it would be idle to set
myself against you in insolent words or overbearing manners. That lad
who has just gone out could put you to shame in half-a-dozen branches of
knowledge in half an hour, but you can throw him aside like an inferior.
You can do as much by me, I have no doubt, beforehand.’
‘Possibly,’ remarked Eugene.
‘But I am more than a lad,’ said Bradley, with his clutching hand, ‘and
I WILL be heard, sir.’
‘As a schoolmaster,’ said Eugene, ‘you are always being heard. That
ought to content you.’
‘But it does not content me,’ replied the other, white with passion. ‘Do
you suppose that a man, in forming himself for the duties I discharge,
and in watching and repressing himself daily to discharge them well,
dismisses a man’s nature?’
‘I suppose you,’ said Eugene, ‘judging from what I see as I look at you,
to be rather too passionate for a good schoolmaster.’ As he spoke, he
tossed away the end of his cigar.
‘Passionate with you, sir, I admit I am. Passionate with you, sir, I
respect myself for being. But I have not Devils for my pupils.’
‘For your Teachers, I should rather say,’ replied Eugene.
‘Mr Wrayburn.’
‘Schoolmaster.’
‘Sir, my name is Bradley Headstone.’
‘As you justly said, my good sir, your name cannot concern me. Now, what
more?’
‘This more. Oh, what a misfortune is mine,’ cried Bradley, breaking off
to wipe the starting perspiration from his face as he shook from head to
foot, ‘that I cannot so control myself as to appear a stronger creature
than this, when a man who has not felt in all his life what I have felt
in a day can so command himself!’ He said it in a very agony, and even
followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn
himself.
Eugene Wrayburn looked on at him, as if he found him beginning to be
rather an entertaining study.
‘Mr Wrayburn, I desire to say something to you on my own part.’
‘Come, come, Schoolmaster,’ returned Eugene, with a languid approach to
impatience as the other again struggled with himself; ‘say what you have
to say. And let me remind you that the door is standing open, and your
young friend waiting for you on the stairs.’
‘When I accompanied that youth here, sir, I did so with the purpose of
adding, as a man whom you should not be permitted to put aside, in case
you put him aside as a boy, that his instinct is correct and right.’