Our Mutual Friend
was only Lightwood that he objected to meet. And now it seems to be
everybody, except you.’
Oho! thought Miss Bella. ‘In—deed! That’s it, is it!’ For Mr Mortimer
Lightwood had dined there two or three times, and she had met him
elsewhere, and he had shown her some attention. ‘Rather cool in a
Secretary—and Pa’s lodger—to make me the subject of his jealousy!’
That Pa’s daughter should be so contemptuous of Pa’s lodger was odd;
but there were odder anomalies than that in the mind of the spoilt girl:
spoilt first by poverty, and then by wealth. Be it this history’s part,
however, to leave them to unravel themselves.
‘A little too much, I think,’ Miss Bella reflected scornfully, ‘to
have Pa’s lodger laying claim to me, and keeping eligible people off!
A little too much, indeed, to have the opportunities opened to me by Mr
and Mrs Boffin, appropriated by a mere Secretary and Pa’s lodger!’
Yet it was not so very long ago that Bella had been fluttered by the
discovery that this same Secretary and lodger seem to like her. Ah! but
the eminently aristocratic mansion and Mrs Boffin’s dressmaker had not
come into play then.
In spite of his seemingly retiring manners a very intrusive person, this
Secretary and lodger, in Miss Bella’s opinion. Always a light in his
office-room when we came home from the play or Opera, and he always at
the carriage-door to hand us out. Always a provoking radiance too on
Mrs Boffin’s face, and an abominably cheerful reception of him, as if it
were possible seriously to approve what the man had in his mind!
‘You never charge me, Miss Wilfer,’ said the Secretary, encountering her
by chance alone in the great drawing-room, ‘with commissions for home.
I shall always be happy to execute any commands you may have in that
direction.’
‘Pray what may you mean, Mr Rokesmith?’ inquired Miss Bella, with
languidly drooping eyelids.
‘By home? I mean your father’s house at Holloway.’
She coloured under the retort—so skilfully thrust, that the words
seemed to be merely a plain answer, given in plain good faith—and said,
rather more emphatically and sharply:
‘What commissions and commands are you speaking of?’
‘Only little words of remembrance as I assume you sent somehow or
other,’ replied the Secretary with his former air. ‘It would be a
pleasure to me if you would make me the bearer of them. As you know, I
come and go between the two houses every day.’
‘You needn’t remind me of that, sir.’
She was too quick in this petulant sally against ‘Pa’s lodger’; and she
felt that she had been so when she met his quiet look.
‘They don’t send many—what was your expression?—words of remembrance
to me,’ said Bella, making haste to take refuge in ill-usage.
‘They frequently ask me about you, and I give them such slight
intelligence as I can.’
‘I hope it’s truly given,’ exclaimed Bella.
‘I hope you cannot doubt it, for it would be very much against you, if
you could.’
‘No, I do not doubt it. I deserve the reproach, which is very just
indeed. I beg your pardon, Mr Rokesmith.’
‘I should beg you not to do so, but that it shows you to such admirable
advantage,’ he replied with earnestness. ‘Forgive me; I could not help
saying that. To return to what I have digressed from, let me add that
perhaps they think I report them to you, deliver little messages, and
the like. But I forbear to trouble you, as you never ask me.’
‘I am going, sir,’ said Bella, looking at him as if he had reproved her,
‘to see them tomorrow.’
‘Is that,’ he asked, hesitating, ‘said to me, or to them?’
‘To which you please.’
‘To both? Shall I make it a message?’
‘You can if you like, Mr Rokesmith. Message or no message, I am going to
see them tomorrow.’
‘Then I will tell them so.’
He lingered a moment, as though to give her the opportunity of
prolonging the conversation if she wished. As she remained silent, he
left her. Two incidents of the little interview were felt by Miss Bella
herself, when alone again, to be very curious. The first was, that he
unquestionably left her with a penitent air upon her, and a penitent
feeling in her heart. The second was, that she had not an intention or
a thought of going home, until she had announced it to him as a settled
design.
‘What can I mean by it, or what can he mean by it?’ was her mental
inquiry: ‘He has no right to any power over me, and how do I come to
mind him when I don’t care for him?’
Mrs Boffin, insisting that Bella should make tomorrow’s expedition
in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs Wilfer and Miss
Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and improbabilities of
her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the chariot from
the window at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed
that it must be detained at the door as long as possible, for the
mortification and confusion of the neighbours. Then they repaired to
the usual family room, to receive Miss Bella with a becoming show of
indifference.
The family room looked very small and very mean, and the downward
staircase by which it was attained looked very narrow and very crooked.
The little house and all its arrangements were a poor contrast to the
eminently aristocratic dwelling. ‘I can hardly believe,’ thought Bella,
‘that I ever did endure life in this place!’
Gloomy majesty on the part of Mrs Wilfer, and native pertness on the
part of Lavvy, did not mend the matter. Bella really stood in natural
need of a little help, and she got none.
‘This,’ said Mrs Wilfer, presenting a cheek to be kissed, as sympathetic
and responsive as the back of the bowl of a spoon, ‘is quite an honour!
You will probably find your sister Lavvy grown, Bella.’
‘Ma,’ Miss Lavinia interposed, ‘there can be no objection to your being
aggravating, because Bella richly deserves it; but I really must request
that you will not drag in such ridiculous nonsense as my having grown
when I am past the growing age.’
‘I grew, myself,’ Mrs Wilfer sternly proclaimed, ‘after I was married.’
‘Very well, Ma,’ returned Lavvy, ‘then I think you had much better have
left it alone.’
The lofty glare with which the majestic woman received this answer,
might have embarrassed a less pert opponent, but it had no effect upon
Lavinia: who, leaving her parent to the enjoyment of any amount of
glaring at she might deem desirable under the circumstances, accosted
her sister, undismayed.
‘I suppose you won’t consider yourself quite disgraced, Bella, if I give
you a kiss? Well! And how do you do, Bella? And how are your Boffins?’
‘Peace!’ exclaimed Mrs Wilfer. ‘Hold! I will not suffer this tone of
levity.’
‘My goodness me! How are your Spoffins, then?’ said Lavvy, ‘since Ma so
very much objects to your Boffins.’
‘Impertinent girl! Minx!’ said Mrs Wilfer, with dread severity.
‘I don’t care whether I am a Minx, or a Sphinx,’ returned Lavinia,
coolly, tossing her head; ‘it’s exactly the same thing to me, and I’d
every bit as soon be one as the other; but I know this—I’ll not grow
after I’m married!’
‘You will not? YOU will not?’ repeated Mrs Wilfer, solemnly.
‘No, Ma, I will not. Nothing shall induce me.’
Mrs Wilfer, having waved her gloves, became loftily pathetic.
‘But it was to be expected;’ thus she spake. ‘A child of mine deserts me
for the proud and prosperous, and another child of mine despises me. It
is quite fitting.’
‘Ma,’ Bella struck in, ‘Mr and Mrs Boffin are prosperous, no doubt; but
you have no right to say they are proud. You must know very well that
they are not.’
‘In short, Ma,’ said Lavvy, bouncing over to the enemy without a word
of notice, ‘you must know very well—or if you don’t, more shame for
you!—that Mr and Mrs Boffin are just absolute perfection.’
‘Truly,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, courteously receiving the deserter, ‘it
would seem that we are required to think so. And this, Lavinia, is
my reason for objecting to a tone of levity. Mrs Boffin (of whose
physiognomy I can never speak with the composure I would desire to
preserve), and your mother, are not on terms of intimacy. It is not
for a moment to be supposed that she and her husband dare to presume to
speak of this family as the Wilfers. I cannot therefore condescend to
speak of them as the Boffins. No; for such a tone—call it familiarity,
levity, equality, or what you will—would imply those social
interchanges which do not exist. Do I render myself intelligible?’
Without taking the least notice of this inquiry, albeit delivered in an
imposing and forensic manner, Lavinia reminded her sister, ‘After all,
you know, Bella, you haven’t told us how your Whatshisnames are.’
‘I don’t want to speak of them here,’ replied Bella, suppressing
indignation, and tapping her foot on the floor. ‘They are much too kind
and too good to be drawn into these discussions.’
‘Why put it so?’ demanded Mrs Wilfer, with biting sarcasm. ‘Why adopt a
circuitous form of speech? It is polite and it is obliging; but why do
it? Why not openly say that they are much too kind and too good for US?
We understand the allusion. Why disguise the phrase?’
‘Ma,’ said Bella, with one beat of her foot, ‘you are enough to drive a
saint mad, and so is Lavvy.’
‘Unfortunate Lavvy!’ cried Mrs Wilfer, in a tone of commiseration. ‘She
always comes for it. My poor child!’ But Lavvy, with the suddenness of
her former desertion, now bounced over to the other enemy: very sharply
remarking, ‘Don’t patronize ME, Ma, because I can take care of myself.’
‘I only wonder,’ resumed Mrs Wilfer, directing her observations to her
elder daughter, as safer on the whole than her utterly unmanageable
younger, ‘that you found time and inclination to tear yourself from
Mr and Mrs Boffin, and come to see us at all. I only wonder that our
claims, contending against the superior claims of Mr and Mrs Boffin,
had any weight. I feel I ought to be thankful for gaining so much, in
competition with Mr and Mrs Boffin.’ (The good lady bitterly emphasized
the first letter of the word Boffin, as if it represented her chief
objection to the owners of that name, and as if she could have born
Doffin, Moffin, or Poffin much better.)
‘Ma,’ said Bella, angrily, ‘you force me to say that I am truly sorry I
did come home, and that I never will come home again, except when poor
dear Pa is here. For, Pa is too magnanimous to feel envy and spite
towards my generous friends, and Pa is delicate enough and gentle enough
to remember the sort of little claim they thought I had upon them and
the unusually trying position in which, through no act of my own, I had
been placed. And I always did love poor dear Pa better than all the rest
of you put together, and I always do and I always shall!’
Here Bella, deriving no comfort from her charming bonnet and her elegant
dress, burst into tears.
‘I think, R.W.,’ cried Mrs Wilfer, lifting up her eyes and
apostrophising the air, ‘that if you were present, it would be a
trial to your feelings to hear your wife and the mother of your family
depreciated in your name. But Fate has spared you this, R.W., whatever
it may have thought proper to inflict upon her!’
Here Mrs Wilfer burst into tears.
‘I hate the Boffins!’ protested Miss Lavinia. ‘I don’t care who objects
to their being called the Boffins. I WILL call ’em the Boffins. The
Boffins, the Boffins, the Boffins! And I say they are mischief-making
Boffins, and I say the Boffins have set Bella against me, and I tell the
Boffins to their faces:’ which was not strictly the fact, but the
young lady was excited: ‘that they are detestable Boffins, disreputable
Boffins, odious Boffins, beastly Boffins. There!’
Here Miss Lavinia burst into tears.
The front garden-gate clanked, and the Secretary was seen coming at a