Our Mutual Friend
yours. If you saw me at my work, able to do it well and respected in
it, you might even come to take a sort of pride in me;—I would try hard
that you should. Whatever considerations I may have thought of against
this offer, I have conquered, and I make it with all my heart. Your
brother favours me to the utmost, and it is likely that we might live
and work together; anyhow, it is certain that he would have my best
influence and support. I don’t know what I could say more if I tried. I
might only weaken what is ill enough said as it is. I only add that
if it is any claim on you to be in earnest, I am in thorough earnest,
dreadful earnest.’
The powdered mortar from under the stone at which he wrenched, rattled
on the pavement to confirm his words.
‘Mr Headstone—’
‘Stop! I implore you, before you answer me, to walk round this place
once more. It will give you a minute’s time to think, and me a minute’s
time to get some fortitude together.’
Again she yielded to the entreaty, and again they came back to the same
place, and again he worked at the stone.
‘Is it,’ he said, with his attention apparently engrossed by it, ‘yes,
or no?’
‘Mr Headstone, I thank you sincerely, I thank you gratefully, and hope
you may find a worthy wife before long and be very happy. But it is no.’
‘Is no short time necessary for reflection; no weeks or days?’ he asked,
in the same half-suffocated way.
‘None whatever.’
‘Are you quite decided, and is there no chance of any change in my
favour?’
‘I am quite decided, Mr Headstone, and I am bound to answer I am certain
there is none.’
‘Then,’ said he, suddenly changing his tone and turning to her, and
bringing his clenched hand down upon the stone with a force that laid
the knuckles raw and bleeding; ‘then I hope that I may never kill him!’
The dark look of hatred and revenge with which the words broke from his
livid lips, and with which he stood holding out his smeared hand as
if it held some weapon and had just struck a mortal blow, made her so
afraid of him that she turned to run away. But he caught her by the arm.
‘Mr Headstone, let me go. Mr Headstone, I must call for help!’
‘It is I who should call for help,’ he said; ‘you don’t know yet how
much I need it.’
The working of his face as she shrank from it, glancing round for her
brother and uncertain what to do, might have extorted a cry from her in
another instant; but all at once he sternly stopped it and fixed it, as
if Death itself had done so.
‘There! You see I have recovered myself. Hear me out.’
With much of the dignity of courage, as she recalled her self-reliant
life and her right to be free from accountability to this man, she
released her arm from his grasp and stood looking full at him. She had
never been so handsome, in his eyes. A shade came over them while
he looked back at her, as if she drew the very light out of them to
herself.
‘This time, at least, I will leave nothing unsaid,’ he went on, folding
his hands before him, clearly to prevent his being betrayed into any
impetuous gesture; ‘this last time at least I will not be tortured with
after-thoughts of a lost opportunity. Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’
‘Was it of him you spoke in your ungovernable rage and violence?’ Lizzie
Hexam demanded with spirit.
He bit his lip, and looked at her, and said never a word.
‘Was it Mr Wrayburn that you threatened?’
He bit his lip again, and looked at her, and said never a word.
‘You asked me to hear you out, and you will not speak. Let me find my
brother.’
‘Stay! I threatened no one.’
Her look dropped for an instant to his bleeding hand. He lifted it to
his mouth, wiped it on his sleeve, and again folded it over the other.
‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ he repeated.
‘Why do you mention that name again and again, Mr Headstone?’
‘Because it is the text of the little I have left to say. Observe! There
are no threats in it. If I utter a threat, stop me, and fasten it upon
me. Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’
A worse threat than was conveyed in his manner of uttering the name,
could hardly have escaped him.
‘He haunts you. You accept favours from him. You are willing enough to
listen to HIM. I know it, as well as he does.’
‘Mr Wrayburn has been considerate and good to me, sir,’ said Lizzie,
proudly, ‘in connexion with the death and with the memory of my poor
father.’
‘No doubt. He is of course a very considerate and a very good man, Mr
Eugene Wrayburn.’
‘He is nothing to you, I think,’ said Lizzie, with an indignation she
could not repress.
‘Oh yes, he is. There you mistake. He is much to me.’
‘What can he be to you?’
‘He can be a rival to me among other things,’ said Bradley.
‘Mr Headstone,’ returned Lizzie, with a burning face, ‘it is cowardly in
you to speak to me in this way. But it makes me able to tell you that
I do not like you, and that I never have liked you from the first, and
that no other living creature has anything to do with the effect you
have produced upon me for yourself.’
His head bent for a moment, as if under a weight, and he then looked up
again, moistening his lips. ‘I was going on with the little I had left
to say. I knew all this about Mr Eugene Wrayburn, all the while you were
drawing me to you. I strove against the knowledge, but quite in vain. It
made no difference in me. With Mr Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I went
on. With Mr Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I spoke to you just now. With Mr
Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I have been set aside and I have been cast
out.’
‘If you give those names to my thanking you for your proposal
and declining it, is it my fault, Mr Headstone?’ said Lizzie,
compassionating the bitter struggle he could not conceal, almost as much
as she was repelled and alarmed by it.
‘I am not complaining,’ he returned, ‘I am only stating the case. I had
to wrestle with my self-respect when I submitted to be drawn to you in
spite of Mr Wrayburn. You may imagine how low my self-respect lies now.’
She was hurt and angry; but repressed herself in consideration of his
suffering, and of his being her brother’s friend.
‘And it lies under his feet,’ said Bradley, unfolding his hands in spite
of himself, and fiercely motioning with them both towards the stones of
the pavement. ‘Remember that! It lies under that fellow’s feet, and he
treads upon it and exults above it.’
‘He does not!’ said Lizzie.
‘He does!’ said Bradley. ‘I have stood before him face to face, and he
crushed me down in the dirt of his contempt, and walked over me. Why?
Because he knew with triumph what was in store for me to-night.’
‘O, Mr Headstone, you talk quite wildly.’
‘Quite collectedly. I know what I say too well. Now I have said all. I
have used no threat, remember; I have done no more than show you how the
case stands;—how the case stands, so far.’
At this moment her brother sauntered into view close by. She darted to
him, and caught him by the hand. Bradley followed, and laid his heavy
hand on the boy’s opposite shoulder.
‘Charley Hexam, I am going home. I must walk home by myself to-night,
and get shut up in my room without being spoken to. Give me half an
hour’s start, and let me be, till you find me at my work in the morning.
I shall be at my work in the morning just as usual.’
Clasping his hands, he uttered a short unearthly broken cry, and went
his way. The brother and sister were left looking at one another near
a lamp in the solitary churchyard, and the boy’s face clouded and
darkened, as he said in a rough tone: ‘What is the meaning of this? What
have you done to my best friend? Out with the truth!’
‘Charley!’ said his sister. ‘Speak a little more considerately!’
‘I am not in the humour for consideration, or for nonsense of any sort,’
replied the boy. ‘What have you been doing? Why has Mr Headstone gone
from us in that way?’
‘He asked me—you know he asked me—to be his wife, Charley.’
‘Well?’ said the boy, impatiently.
‘And I was obliged to tell him that I could not be his wife.’
‘You were obliged to tell him,’ repeated the boy angrily, between his
teeth, and rudely pushing her away. ‘You were obliged to tell him! Do
you know that he is worth fifty of you?’
‘It may easily be so, Charley, but I cannot marry him.’
‘You mean that you are conscious that you can’t appreciate him, and
don’t deserve him, I suppose?’
‘I mean that I do not like him, Charley, and that I will never marry
him.’
‘Upon my soul,’ exclaimed the boy, ‘you are a nice picture of a sister!
Upon my soul, you are a pretty piece of disinterestedness! And so all my
endeavours to cancel the past and to raise myself in the world, and to
raise you with me, are to be beaten down by YOUR low whims; are they?’
‘I will not reproach you, Charley.’
‘Hear her!’ exclaimed the boy, looking round at the darkness. ‘She won’t
reproach me! She does her best to destroy my fortunes and her own,
and she won’t reproach me! Why, you’ll tell me, next, that you won’t
reproach Mr Headstone for coming out of the sphere to which he is an
ornament, and putting himself at YOUR feet, to be rejected by YOU!’
‘No, Charley; I will only tell you, as I told himself, that I thank him
for doing so, that I am sorry he did so, and that I hope he will do much
better, and be happy.’
Some touch of compunction smote the boy’s hardening heart as he looked
upon her, his patient little nurse in infancy, his patient friend,
adviser, and reclaimer in boyhood, the self-forgetting sister who had
done everything for him. His tone relented, and he drew her arm through
his.
‘Now, come, Liz; don’t let us quarrel: let us be reasonable and talk
this over like brother and sister. Will you listen to me?’
‘Oh, Charley!’ she replied through her starting tears; ‘do I not listen
to you, and hear many hard things!’
‘Then I am sorry. There, Liz! I am unfeignedly sorry. Only you do put me
out so. Now see. Mr Headstone is perfectly devoted to you. He has told
me in the strongest manner that he has never been his old self for one
single minute since I first brought him to see you. Miss Peecher, our
schoolmistress—pretty and young, and all that—is known to be very much
attached to him, and he won’t so much as look at her or hear of her.
Now, his devotion to you must be a disinterested one; mustn’t it? If he
married Miss Peecher, he would be a great deal better off in all worldly
respects, than in marrying you. Well then; he has nothing to get by it,
has he?’
‘Nothing, Heaven knows!’
‘Very well then,’ said the boy; ‘that’s something in his favour, and a
great thing. Then I come in. Mr Headstone has always got me on, and he
has a good deal in his power, and of course if he was my brother-in-law
he wouldn’t get me on less, but would get me on more. Mr Headstone
comes and confides in me, in a very delicate way, and says, “I hope my
marrying your sister would be agreeable to you, Hexam, and useful to
you?” I say, “There’s nothing in the world, Mr Headstone, that I could
be better pleased with.” Mr Headstone says, “Then I may rely upon your
intimate knowledge of me for your good word with your sister, Hexam?”
And I say, “Certainly, Mr Headstone, and naturally I have a good deal of
influence with her.” So I have; haven’t I, Liz?’
‘Yes, Charley.’
‘Well said! Now, you see, we begin to get on, the moment we begin to
be really talking it over, like brother and sister. Very well. Then
YOU come in. As Mr Headstone’s wife you would be occupying a most
respectable station, and you would be holding a far better place in
society than you hold now, and you would at length get quit of the
river-side and the old disagreeables belonging to it, and you would be
rid for good of dolls’ dressmakers and their drunken fathers, and the
like of that. Not that I want to disparage Miss Jenny Wren: I dare