Our Mutual Friend
of truth in that superstition about bodies bleeding when touched by the
hand of the right person; you never got a sign out of bodies. You got
row enough out of such as her—she was good for all night now (referring
here to the banging demands for the liver), ‘but you got nothing out of
bodies if it was ever so.’
There being nothing more to be done until the Inquest was held next day,
the friends went away together, and Gaffer Hexam and his son went their
separate way. But, arriving at the last corner, Gaffer bade his boy go
home while he turned into a red-curtained tavern, that stood dropsically
bulging over the causeway, ‘for a half-a-pint.’
The boy lifted the latch he had lifted before, and found his sister
again seated before the fire at her work. Who raised her head upon his
coming in and asking:
‘Where did you go, Liz?’
‘I went out in the dark.’
‘There was no necessity for that. It was all right enough.’
‘One of the gentlemen, the one who didn’t speak while I was there,
looked hard at me. And I was afraid he might know what my face meant.
But there! Don’t mind me, Charley! I was all in a tremble of another
sort when you owned to father you could write a little.’
‘Ah! But I made believe I wrote so badly, as that it was odds if any one
could read it. And when I wrote slowest and smeared but with my finger
most, father was best pleased, as he stood looking over me.’
The girl put aside her work, and drawing her seat close to his seat by
the fire, laid her arm gently on his shoulder.
‘You’ll make the most of your time, Charley; won’t you?’
‘Won’t I? Come! I like that. Don’t I?’
‘Yes, Charley, yes. You work hard at your learning, I know. And I work
a little, Charley, and plan and contrive a little (wake out of my
sleep contriving sometimes), how to get together a shilling now, and a
shilling then, that shall make father believe you are beginning to earn
a stray living along shore.’
‘You are father’s favourite, and can make him believe anything.’
‘I wish I could, Charley! For if I could make him believe that learning
was a good thing, and that we might lead better lives, I should be
a’most content to die.’
‘Don’t talk stuff about dying, Liz.’
She placed her hands in one another on his shoulder, and laying her
rich brown cheek against them as she looked down at the fire, went on
thoughtfully:
‘Of an evening, Charley, when you are at the school, and father’s—’
‘At the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters,’ the boy struck in, with a
backward nod of his head towards the public-house.
‘Yes. Then as I sit a-looking at the fire, I seem to see in the burning
coal—like where that glow is now—’
‘That’s gas, that is,’ said the boy, ‘coming out of a bit of a forest
that’s been under the mud that was under the water in the days of Noah’s
Ark. Look here! When I take the poker—so—and give it a dig—’
‘Don’t disturb it, Charley, or it’ll be all in a blaze. It’s that dull
glow near it, coming and going, that I mean. When I look at it of an
evening, it comes like pictures to me, Charley.’
‘Show us a picture,’ said the boy. ‘Tell us where to look.’
‘Ah! It wants my eyes, Charley.’
‘Cut away then, and tell us what your eyes make of it.’
‘Why, there are you and me, Charley, when you were quite a baby that
never knew a mother—’
‘Don’t go saying I never knew a mother,’ interposed the boy, ‘for I knew
a little sister that was sister and mother both.’
The girl laughed delightedly, and her eyes filled with pleasant tears,
as he put both his arms round her waist and so held her.
‘There are you and me, Charley, when father was away at work and locked
us out, for fear we should set ourselves afire or fall out of window,
sitting on the door-sill, sitting on other door-steps, sitting on the
bank of the river, wandering about to get through the time. You
are rather heavy to carry, Charley, and I am often obliged to rest.
Sometimes we are sleepy and fall asleep together in a corner, sometimes
we are very hungry, sometimes we are a little frightened, but what is
oftenest hard upon us is the cold. You remember, Charley?’
‘I remember,’ said the boy, pressing her to him twice or thrice, ‘that I
snuggled under a little shawl, and it was warm there.’
‘Sometimes it rains, and we creep under a boat or the like of that:
sometimes it’s dark, and we get among the gaslights, sitting watching
the people as they go along the streets. At last, up comes father and
takes us home. And home seems such a shelter after out of doors! And
father pulls my shoes off, and dries my feet at the fire, and has me
to sit by him while he smokes his pipe long after you are abed, and
I notice that father’s is a large hand but never a heavy one when it
touches me, and that father’s is a rough voice but never an angry one
when it speaks to me. So, I grow up, and little by little father trusts
me, and makes me his companion, and, let him be put out as he may, never
once strikes me.’
The listening boy gave a grunt here, as much as to say ‘But he strikes
ME though!’
‘Those are some of the pictures of what is past, Charley.’
‘Cut away again,’ said the boy, ‘and give us a fortune-telling one; a
future one.’
‘Well! There am I, continuing with father and holding to father, because
father loves me and I love father. I can’t so much as read a book,
because, if I had learned, father would have thought I was deserting
him, and I should have lost my influence. I have not the influence I
want to have, I cannot stop some dreadful things I try to stop, but I
go on in the hope and trust that the time will come. In the meanwhile
I know that I am in some things a stay to father, and that if I was
not faithful to him he would—in revenge-like, or in disappointment, or
both—go wild and bad.’
‘Give us a touch of the fortune-telling pictures about me.’
‘I was passing on to them, Charley,’ said the girl, who had not changed
her attitude since she began, and who now mournfully shook her head;
‘the others were all leading up. There are you—’
‘Where am I, Liz?’
‘Still in the hollow down by the flare.’
‘There seems to be the deuce-and-all in the hollow down by the flare,’
said the boy, glancing from her eyes to the brazier, which had a grisly
skeleton look on its long thin legs.
‘There are you, Charley, working your way, in secret from father, at
the school; and you get prizes; and you go on better and better; and you
come to be a—what was it you called it when you told me about that?’
‘Ha, ha! Fortune-telling not know the name!’ cried the boy, seeming to
be rather relieved by this default on the part of the hollow down by the
flare. ‘Pupil-teacher.’
‘You come to be a pupil-teacher, and you still go on better and better,
and you rise to be a master full of learning and respect. But the secret
has come to father’s knowledge long before, and it has divided you from
father, and from me.’
‘No it hasn’t!’
‘Yes it has, Charley. I see, as plain as plain can be, that your way is
not ours, and that even if father could be got to forgive your taking
it (which he never could be), that way of yours would be darkened by our
way. But I see too, Charley—’
‘Still as plain as plain can be, Liz?’ asked the boy playfully.
‘Ah! Still. That it is a great work to have cut you away from father’s
life, and to have made a new and good beginning. So there am I, Charley,
left alone with father, keeping him as straight as I can, watching
for more influence than I have, and hoping that through some fortunate
chance, or when he is ill, or when—I don’t know what—I may turn him to
wish to do better things.’
‘You said you couldn’t read a book, Lizzie. Your library of books is the
hollow down by the flare, I think.’
‘I should be very glad to be able to read real books. I feel my want of
learning very much, Charley. But I should feel it much more, if I didn’t
know it to be a tie between me and father.—Hark! Father’s tread!’
It being now past midnight, the bird of prey went straight to roost. At
mid-day following he reappeared at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, in
the character, not new to him, of a witness before a Coroner’s Jury.
Mr Mortimer Lightwood, besides sustaining the character of one of the
witnesses, doubled the part with that of the eminent solicitor who
watched the proceedings on behalf of the representatives of the
deceased, as was duly recorded in the newspapers. Mr Inspector watched
the proceedings too, and kept his watching closely to himself. Mr Julius
Handford having given his right address, and being reported in solvent
circumstances as to his bill, though nothing more was known of him at
his hotel except that his way of life was very retired, had no summons
to appear, and was merely present in the shades of Mr Inspector’s mind.
The case was made interesting to the public, by Mr Mortimer Lightwood’s
evidence touching the circumstances under which the deceased, Mr John
Harmon, had returned to England; exclusive private proprietorship in
which circumstances was set up at dinner-tables for several days, by
Veneering, Twemlow, Podsnap, and all the Buffers: who all related them
irreconcilably with one another, and contradicted themselves. It was
also made interesting by the testimony of Job Potterson, the ship’s
steward, and one Mr Jacob Kibble, a fellow-passenger, that the deceased
Mr John Harmon did bring over, in a hand-valise with which he did
disembark, the sum realized by the forced sale of his little landed
property, and that the sum exceeded, in ready money, seven hundred
pounds. It was further made interesting, by the remarkable experiences
of Jesse Hexam in having rescued from the Thames so many dead bodies,
and for whose behoof a rapturous admirer subscribing himself ‘A friend
to Burial’ (perhaps an undertaker), sent eighteen postage stamps, and
five ‘Now Sir’s to the editor of the Times.
Upon the evidence adduced before them, the Jury found, That the body
of Mr John Harmon had been discovered floating in the Thames, in an
advanced state of decay, and much injured; and that the said Mr John
Harmon had come by his death under highly suspicious circumstances,
though by whose act or in what precise manner there was no evidence
before this Jury to show. And they appended to their verdict, a
recommendation to the Home Office (which Mr Inspector appeared to think
highly sensible), to offer a reward for the solution of the mystery.
Within eight-and-forty hours, a reward of One Hundred Pounds was
proclaimed, together with a free pardon to any person or persons not the
actual perpetrator or perpetrators, and so forth in due form.
This Proclamation rendered Mr Inspector additionally studious, and
caused him to stand meditating on river-stairs and causeways, and to go
lurking about in boats, putting this and that together. But, according
to the success with which you put this and that together, you get a
woman and a fish apart, or a Mermaid in combination. And Mr Inspector
could turn out nothing better than a Mermaid, which no Judge and Jury
would believe in.
Thus, like the tides on which it had been borne to the knowledge of men,
the Harmon Murder—as it came to be popularly called—went up and down,
and ebbed and flowed, now in the town, now in the country, now among
palaces, now among hovels, now among lords and ladies and gentlefolks,
now among labourers and hammerers and ballast-heavers, until at last,
after a long interval of slack water it got out to sea and drifted away.
Chapter 4
THE R. WILFER FAMILY
Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather a grand sound, suggesting on
first acquaintance brasses in country churches, scrolls in stained-glass
windows, and generally the De Wilfers who came over with the Conqueror.
For, it is a remarkable fact in genealogy that no De Any ones ever came