Our Mutual Friend
to that of an easy dressing-gown or pair of slippers; and whenever the
family wanted to enjoy a particularly pleasant fireside evening, they
enjoyed it, as an institution that must be, in Mr Boffin’s room.
Mr and Mrs Boffin were reported sitting in this room, when Bella got
back. Entering it, she found the Secretary there too; in official
attendance it would appear, for he was standing with some papers in his
hand by a table with shaded candles on it, at which Mr Boffin was seated
thrown back in his easy chair.
‘You are busy, sir,’ said Bella, hesitating at the door.
‘Not at all, my dear, not at all. You’re one of ourselves. We never
make company of you. Come in, come in. Here’s the old lady in her usual
place.’
Mrs Boffin adding her nod and smile of welcome to Mr Boffin’s words,
Bella took her book to a chair in the fireside corner, by Mrs Boffin’s
work-table. Mr Boffin’s station was on the opposite side.
‘Now, Rokesmith,’ said the Golden Dustman, so sharply rapping the table
to bespeak his attention as Bella turned the leaves of her book, that
she started; ‘where were we?’
‘You were saying, sir,’ returned the Secretary, with an air of some
reluctance and a glance towards those others who were present, ‘that you
considered the time had come for fixing my salary.’
‘Don’t be above calling it wages, man,’ said Mr Boffin, testily. ‘What
the deuce! I never talked of any salary when I was in service.’
‘My wages,’ said the Secretary, correcting himself.
‘Rokesmith, you are not proud, I hope?’ observed Mr Boffin, eyeing him
askance.
‘I hope not, sir.’
‘Because I never was, when I was poor,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Poverty and
pride don’t go at all well together. Mind that. How can they go well
together? Why it stands to reason. A man, being poor, has nothing to be
proud of. It’s nonsense.’
With a slight inclination of his head, and a look of some surprise,
the Secretary seemed to assent by forming the syllables of the word
‘nonsense’ on his lips.
‘Now, concerning these same wages,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Sit down.’
The Secretary sat down.
‘Why didn’t you sit down before?’ asked Mr Boffin, distrustfully. ‘I
hope that wasn’t pride? But about these wages. Now, I’ve gone into the
matter, and I say two hundred a year. What do you think of it? Do you
think it’s enough?’
‘Thank you. It is a fair proposal.’
‘I don’t say, you know,’ Mr Boffin stipulated, ‘but what it may be more
than enough. And I’ll tell you why, Rokesmith. A man of property, like
me, is bound to consider the market-price. At first I didn’t enter into
that as much as I might have done; but I’ve got acquainted with other
men of property since, and I’ve got acquainted with the duties of
property. I mustn’t go putting the market-price up, because money may
happen not to be an object with me. A sheep is worth so much in the
market, and I ought to give it and no more. A secretary is worth so much
in the market, and I ought to give it and no more. However, I don’t mind
stretching a point with you.’
‘Mr Boffin, you are very good,’ replied the Secretary, with an effort.
‘Then we put the figure,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘at two hundred a year.
Then the figure’s disposed of. Now, there must be no misunderstanding
regarding what I buy for two hundred a year. If I pay for a sheep, I buy
it out and out. Similarly, if I pay for a secretary, I buy HIM out and
out.’
‘In other words, you purchase my whole time?’
‘Certainly I do. Look here,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘it ain’t that I want to
occupy your whole time; you can take up a book for a minute or two when
you’ve nothing better to do, though I think you’ll a’most always find
something useful to do. But I want to keep you in attendance. It’s
convenient to have you at all times ready on the premises. Therefore,
betwixt your breakfast and your supper,—on the premises I expect to
find you.’
The Secretary bowed.
‘In bygone days, when I was in service myself,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘I
couldn’t go cutting about at my will and pleasure, and you won’t expect
to go cutting about at your will and pleasure. You’ve rather got into
a habit of that, lately; but perhaps it was for want of a right
specification betwixt us. Now, let there be a right specification
betwixt us, and let it be this. If you want leave, ask for it.’
Again the Secretary bowed. His manner was uneasy and astonished, and
showed a sense of humiliation.
‘I’ll have a bell,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘hung from this room to yours,
and when I want you, I’ll touch it. I don’t call to mind that I have
anything more to say at the present moment.’
The Secretary rose, gathered up his papers, and withdrew. Bella’s eyes
followed him to the door, lighted on Mr Boffin complacently thrown back
in his easy chair, and drooped over her book.
‘I have let that chap, that young man of mine,’ said Mr Boffin, taking a
trot up and down the room, ‘get above his work. It won’t do. I must have
him down a peg. A man of property owes a duty to other men of property,
and must look sharp after his inferiors.’
Bella felt that Mrs Boffin was not comfortable, and that the eyes of
that good creature sought to discover from her face what attention she
had given to this discourse, and what impression it had made upon her.
For which reason Bella’s eyes drooped more engrossedly over her book,
and she turned the page with an air of profound absorption in it.
‘Noddy,’ said Mrs Boffin, after thoughtfully pausing in her work.
‘My dear,’ returned the Golden Dustman, stopping short in his trot.
‘Excuse my putting it to you, Noddy, but now really! Haven’t you been
a little strict with Mr Rokesmith to-night? Haven’t you been a
little—just a little little—not quite like your old self?’
‘Why, old woman, I hope so,’ returned Mr Boffin, cheerfully, if not
boastfully.
‘Hope so, deary?’
‘Our old selves wouldn’t do here, old lady. Haven’t you found that out
yet? Our old selves would be fit for nothing here but to be robbed and
imposed upon. Our old selves weren’t people of fortune; our new selves
are; it’s a great difference.’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Boffin, pausing in her work again, softly to draw a long
breath and to look at the fire. ‘A great difference.’
‘And we must be up to the difference,’ pursued her husband; ‘we must be
equal to the change; that’s what we must be. We’ve got to hold our own
now, against everybody (for everybody’s hand is stretched out to be
dipped into our pockets), and we have got to recollect that money makes
money, as well as makes everything else.’
‘Mentioning recollecting,’ said Mrs Boffin, with her work abandoned,
her eyes upon the fire, and her chin upon her hand, ‘do you recollect,
Noddy, how you said to Mr Rokesmith when he first came to see us at the
Bower, and you engaged him—how you said to him that if it had pleased
Heaven to send John Harmon to his fortune safe, we could have been
content with the one Mound which was our legacy, and should never have
wanted the rest?’
‘Ay, I remember, old lady. But we hadn’t tried what it was to have the
rest then. Our new shoes had come home, but we hadn’t put ’em on. We’re
wearing ’em now, we’re wearing ’em, and must step out accordingly.’
Mrs Boffin took up her work again, and plied her needle in silence.
‘As to Rokesmith, that young man of mine,’ said Mr Boffin, dropping
his voice and glancing towards the door with an apprehension of being
overheard by some eavesdropper there, ‘it’s the same with him as with
the footmen. I have found out that you must either scrunch them, or let
them scrunch you. If you ain’t imperious with ’em, they won’t believe
in your being any better than themselves, if as good, after the stories
(lies mostly) that they have heard of your beginnings. There’s nothing
betwixt stiffening yourself up, and throwing yourself away; take my word
for that, old lady.’
Bella ventured for a moment to look stealthily towards him under her
eyelashes, and she saw a dark cloud of suspicion, covetousness, and
conceit, overshadowing the once open face.
‘Hows’ever,’ said he, ‘this isn’t entertaining to Miss Bella. Is it,
Bella?’
A deceiving Bella she was, to look at him with that pensively abstracted
air, as if her mind were full of her book, and she had not heard a
single word!
‘Hah! Better employed than to attend to it,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘That’s
right, that’s right. Especially as you have no call to be told how to
value yourself, my dear.’
Colouring a little under this compliment, Bella returned, ‘I hope sir,
you don’t think me vain?’
‘Not a bit, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘But I think it’s very creditable
in you, at your age, to be so well up with the pace of the world, and to
know what to go in for. You are right. Go in for money, my love. Money’s
the article. You’ll make money of your good looks, and of the money Mrs
Boffin and me will have the pleasure of settling upon you, and you’ll
live and die rich. That’s the state to live and die in!’ said Mr Boffin,
in an unctuous manner. ‘R—r—rich!’
There was an expression of distress in Mrs Boffin’s face, as, after
watching her husband’s, she turned to their adopted girl, and said:
‘Don’t mind him, Bella, my dear.’
‘Eh?’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘What! Not mind him?’
‘I don’t mean that,’ said Mrs Boffin, with a worried look, ‘but I mean,
don’t believe him to be anything but good and generous, Bella, because
he is the best of men. No, I must say that much, Noddy. You are always
the best of men.’
She made the declaration as if he were objecting to it: which assuredly
he was not in any way.
‘And as to you, my dear Bella,’ said Mrs Boffin, still with that
distressed expression, ‘he is so much attached to you, whatever he says,
that your own father has not a truer interest in you and can hardly like
you better than he does.’
‘Says too!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘Whatever he says! Why, I say so, openly.
Give me a kiss, my dear child, in saying Good Night, and let me confirm
what my old lady tells you. I am very fond of you, my dear, and I am
entirely of your mind, and you and I will take care that you shall be
rich. These good looks of yours (which you have some right to be vain
of; my dear, though you are not, you know) are worth money, and you
shall make money of ’em. The money you will have, will be worth money,
and you shall make money of that too. There’s a golden ball at your
feet. Good night, my dear.’
Somehow, Bella was not so well pleased with this assurance and this
prospect as she might have been. Somehow, when she put her arms
round Mrs Boffin’s neck and said Good Night, she derived a sense of
unworthiness from the still anxious face of that good woman and her
obvious wish to excuse her husband. ‘Why, what need to excuse him?’
thought Bella, sitting down in her own room. ‘What he said was very
sensible, I am sure, and very true, I am sure. It is only what I often
say to myself. Don’t I like it then? No, I don’t like it, and, though
he is my liberal benefactor, I disparage him for it. Then pray,’ said
Bella, sternly putting the question to herself in the looking-glass as
usual, ‘what do you mean by this, you inconsistent little Beast?’
The looking-glass preserving a discreet ministerial silence when thus
called upon for explanation, Bella went to bed with a weariness upon her
spirit which was more than the weariness of want of sleep. And again
in the morning, she looked for the cloud, and for the deepening of the
cloud, upon the Golden Dustman’s face.
She had begun by this time to be his frequent companion in his morning
strolls about the streets, and it was at this time that he made her a
party to his engaging in a curious pursuit. Having been hard at work in
one dull enclosure all his life, he had a child’s delight in looking
at shops. It had been one of the first novelties and pleasures of his