Our Mutual Friend
say she is all very well in her way; but her way is not your way as
Mr Headstone’s wife. Now, you see, Liz, on all three accounts—on
Mr Headstone’s, on mine, on yours—nothing could be better or more
desirable.’
They were walking slowly as the boy spoke, and here he stood still, to
see what effect he had made. His sister’s eyes were fixed upon him; but
as they showed no yielding, and as she remained silent, he walked her on
again. There was some discomfiture in his tone as he resumed, though he
tried to conceal it.
‘Having so much influence with you, Liz, as I have, perhaps I should
have done better to have had a little chat with you in the first
instance, before Mr Headstone spoke for himself. But really all this in
his favour seemed so plain and undeniable, and I knew you to have always
been so reasonable and sensible, that I didn’t consider it worth while.
Very likely that was a mistake of mine. However, it’s soon set right.
All that need be done to set it right, is for you to tell me at once
that I may go home and tell Mr Headstone that what has taken place is
not final, and that it will all come round by-and-by.’
He stopped again. The pale face looked anxiously and lovingly at him,
but she shook her head.
‘Can’t you speak?’ said the boy sharply.
‘I am very unwilling to speak, Charley. If I must, I must. I cannot
authorize you to say any such thing to Mr Headstone: I cannot allow you
to say any such thing to Mr Headstone. Nothing remains to be said to him
from me, after what I have said for good and all, to-night.’
‘And this girl,’ cried the boy, contemptuously throwing her off again,
‘calls herself a sister!’
‘Charley, dear, that is the second time that you have almost struck
me. Don’t be hurt by my words. I don’t mean—Heaven forbid!—that you
intended it; but you hardly know with what a sudden swing you removed
yourself from me.’
‘However!’ said the boy, taking no heed of the remonstrance, and
pursuing his own mortified disappointment, ‘I know what this means, and
you shall not disgrace me.’
‘It means what I have told you, Charley, and nothing more.’
‘That’s not true,’ said the boy in a violent tone, ‘and you know it’s
not. It means your precious Mr Wrayburn; that’s what it means.’
‘Charley! If you remember any old days of ours together, forbear!’
‘But you shall not disgrace me,’ doggedly pursued the boy. ‘I am
determined that after I have climbed up out of the mire, you shall not
pull me down. You can’t disgrace me if I have nothing to do with you,
and I will have nothing to do with you for the future.’
‘Charley! On many a night like this, and many a worse night, I have sat
on the stones of the street, hushing you in my arms. Unsay those words
without even saying you are sorry for them, and my arms are open to you
still, and so is my heart.’
‘I’ll not unsay them. I’ll say them again. You are an inveterately bad
girl, and a false sister, and I have done with you. For ever, I have
done with you!’
He threw up his ungrateful and ungracious hand as if it set up a barrier
between them, and flung himself upon his heel and left her. She remained
impassive on the same spot, silent and motionless, until the striking
of the church clock roused her, and she turned away. But then, with the
breaking up of her immobility came the breaking up of the waters that
the cold heart of the selfish boy had frozen. And ‘O that I were lying
here with the dead!’ and ‘O Charley, Charley, that this should be the
end of our pictures in the fire!’ were all the words she said, as she
laid her face in her hands on the stone coping.
A figure passed by, and passed on, but stopped and looked round at
her. It was the figure of an old man with a bowed head, wearing a large
brimmed low-crowned hat, and a long-skirted coat. After hesitating a
little, the figure turned back, and, advancing with an air of gentleness
and compassion, said:
‘Pardon me, young woman, for speaking to you, but you are under some
distress of mind. I cannot pass upon my way and leave you weeping here
alone, as if there was nothing in the place. Can I help you? Can I do
anything to give you comfort?’
She raised her head at the sound of these kind words, and answered
gladly, ‘O, Mr Riah, is it you?’
‘My daughter,’ said the old man, ‘I stand amazed! I spoke as to a
stranger. Take my arm, take my arm. What grieves you? Who has done this?
Poor girl, poor girl!’
‘My brother has quarrelled with me,’ sobbed Lizzie, ‘and renounced me.’
‘He is a thankless dog,’ said the Jew, angrily. ‘Let him go. Shake the
dust from thy feet and let him go. Come, daughter! Come home with me—it
is but across the road—and take a little time to recover your peace and
to make your eyes seemly, and then I will bear you company through the
streets. For it is past your usual time, and will soon be late, and the
way is long, and there is much company out of doors to-night.’
She accepted the support he offered her, and they slowly passed out
of the churchyard. They were in the act of emerging into the main
thoroughfare, when another figure loitering discontentedly by, and
looking up the street and down it, and all about, started and exclaimed,
‘Lizzie! why, where have you been? Why, what’s the matter?’
As Eugene Wrayburn thus addressed her, she drew closer to the Jew, and
bent her head. The Jew having taken in the whole of Eugene at one sharp
glance, cast his eyes upon the ground, and stood mute.
‘Lizzie, what is the matter?’
‘Mr Wrayburn, I cannot tell you now. I cannot tell you to-night, if I
ever can tell you. Pray leave me.’
‘But, Lizzie, I came expressly to join you. I came to walk home with
you, having dined at a coffee-house in this neighbourhood and knowing
your hour. And I have been lingering about,’ added Eugene, ‘like a
bailiff; or,’ with a look at Riah, ‘an old clothesman.’
The Jew lifted up his eyes, and took in Eugene once more, at another
glance.
‘Mr Wrayburn, pray, pray, leave me with this protector. And one thing
more. Pray, pray be careful of yourself.’
‘Mysteries of Udolpho!’ said Eugene, with a look of wonder. ‘May I be
excused for asking, in the elderly gentleman’s presence, who is this
kind protector?’
‘A trustworthy friend,’ said Lizzie.
‘I will relieve him of his trust,’ returned Eugene. ‘But you must tell
me, Lizzie, what is the matter?’
‘Her brother is the matter,’ said the old man, lifting up his eyes
again.
‘Our brother the matter?’ returned Eugene, with airy contempt. ‘Our
brother is not worth a thought, far less a tear. What has our brother
done?’
The old man lifted up his eyes again, with one grave look at Wrayburn,
and one grave glance at Lizzie, as she stood looking down. Both were so
full of meaning that even Eugene was checked in his light career, and
subsided into a thoughtful ‘Humph!’
With an air of perfect patience the old man, remaining mute and keeping
his eyes cast down, stood, retaining Lizzie’s arm, as though in his
habit of passive endurance, it would be all one to him if he had stood
there motionless all night.
‘If Mr Aaron,’ said Eugene, who soon found this fatiguing, ‘will be good
enough to relinquish his charge to me, he will be quite free for any
engagement he may have at the Synagogue. Mr Aaron, will you have the
kindness?’
But the old man stood stock still.
‘Good evening, Mr Aaron,’ said Eugene, politely; ‘we need not detain
you.’ Then turning to Lizzie, ‘Is our friend Mr Aaron a little deaf?’
‘My hearing is very good, Christian gentleman,’ replied the old man,
calmly; ‘but I will hear only one voice to-night, desiring me to leave
this damsel before I have conveyed her to her home. If she requests it,
I will do it. I will do it for no one else.’
‘May I ask why so, Mr Aaron?’ said Eugene, quite undisturbed in his
ease.
‘Excuse me. If she asks me, I will tell her,’ replied the old man. ‘I
will tell no one else.’
‘I do not ask you,’ said Lizzie, ‘and I beg you to take me home. Mr
Wrayburn, I have had a bitter trial to-night, and I hope you will not
think me ungrateful, or mysterious, or changeable. I am neither; I am
wretched. Pray remember what I said to you. Pray, pray, take care.’
‘My dear Lizzie,’ he returned, in a low voice, bending over her on the
other side; ‘of what? Of whom?’
‘Of any one you have lately seen and made angry.’
He snapped his fingers and laughed. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘since no better
may be, Mr Aaron and I will divide this trust, and see you home
together. Mr Aaron on that side; I on this. If perfectly agreeable to Mr
Aaron, the escort will now proceed.’
He knew his power over her. He knew that she would not insist upon his
leaving her. He knew that, her fears for him being aroused, she would
be uneasy if he were out of her sight. For all his seeming levity and
carelessness, he knew whatever he chose to know of the thoughts of her
heart.
And going on at her side, so gaily, regardless of all that had been
urged against him; so superior in his sallies and self-possession to
the gloomy constraint of her suitor and the selfish petulance of her
brother; so faithful to her, as it seemed, when her own stock was
faithless; what an immense advantage, what an overpowering influence,
were his that night! Add to the rest, poor girl, that she had heard him
vilified for her sake, and that she had suffered for his, and where the
wonder that his occasional tones of serious interest (setting off his
carelessness, as if it were assumed to calm her), that his lightest
touch, his lightest look, his very presence beside her in the dark
common street, were like glimpses of an enchanted world, which it was
natural for jealousy and malice and all meanness to be unable to bear
the brightness of, and to gird at as bad spirits might.
Nothing more being said of repairing to Riah’s, they went direct to
Lizzie’s lodging. A little short of the house-door she parted from them,
and went in alone.
‘Mr Aaron,’ said Eugene, when they were left together in the street,
‘with many thanks for your company, it remains for me unwillingly to say
Farewell.’
‘Sir,’ returned the other, ‘I give you good night, and I wish that you
were not so thoughtless.’
‘Mr Aaron,’ returned Eugene, ‘I give you good night, and I wish (for you
are a little dull) that you were not so thoughtful.’
But now, that his part was played out for the evening, and when in
turning his back upon the Jew he came off the stage, he was thoughtful
himself. ‘How did Lightwood’s catechism run?’ he murmured, as he stopped
to light his cigar. ‘What is to come of it? What are you doing? Where
are you going? We shall soon know now. Ah!’ with a heavy sigh.
The heavy sigh was repeated as if by an echo, an hour afterwards, when
Riah, who had been sitting on some dark steps in a corner over against
the house, arose and went his patient way; stealing through the streets
in his ancient dress, like the ghost of a departed Time.
Chapter 16
AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION
The estimable Twemlow, dressing himself in his lodgings over the
stable-yard in Duke Street, Saint James’s, and hearing the horses at
their toilette below, finds himself on the whole in a disadvantageous
position as compared with the noble animals at livery. For whereas, on
the one hand, he has no attendant to slap him soundingly and require him
in gruff accents to come up and come over, still, on the other hand,
he has no attendant at all; and the mild gentleman’s finger-joints and
other joints working rustily in the morning, he could deem it agreeable
even to be tied up by the countenance at his chamber-door, so he were
there skilfully rubbed down and slushed and sluiced and polished and
clothed, while himself taking merely a passive part in these trying
transactions.