Our Mutual Friend
As usual, there was no answer in the looking-glass when she got home and
referred these questions to it. Perhaps if she had consulted some better
oracle, the result might have been more satisfactory; but she did not,
and all things consequent marched the march before them.
On one point connected with the watch she kept on Mr Boffin, she felt
very inquisitive, and that was the question whether the Secretary
watched him too, and followed the sure and steady change in him, as she
did? Her very limited intercourse with Mr Rokesmith rendered this hard
to find out. Their communication now, at no time extended beyond the
preservation of commonplace appearances before Mr and Mrs Boffin; and if
Bella and the Secretary were ever left alone together by any chance,
he immediately withdrew. She consulted his face when she could do so
covertly, as she worked or read, and could make nothing of it. He looked
subdued; but he had acquired a strong command of feature, and, whenever
Mr Boffin spoke to him in Bella’s presence, or whatever revelation of
himself Mr Boffin made, the Secretary’s face changed no more than a
wall. A slightly knitted brow, that expressed nothing but an almost
mechanical attention, and a compression of the mouth, that might have
been a guard against a scornful smile—these she saw from morning to
night, from day to day, from week to week, monotonous, unvarying, set,
as in a piece of sculpture.
The worst of the matter was, that it thus fell out insensibly—and most
provokingly, as Bella complained to herself, in her impetuous little
manner—that her observation of Mr Boffin involved a continual
observation of Mr Rokesmith. ‘Won’t THAT extract a look from him?’—‘Can
it be possible THAT makes no impression on him?’ Such questions Bella
would propose to herself, often as many times in a day as there were
hours in it. Impossible to know. Always the same fixed face.
‘Can he be so base as to sell his very nature for two hundred a year?’
Bella would think. And then, ‘But why not? It’s a mere question of price
with others besides him. I suppose I would sell mine, if I could get
enough for it.’ And so she would come round again to the war with
herself.
A kind of illegibility, though a different kind, stole over Mr
Boffin’s face. Its old simplicity of expression got masked by a certain
craftiness that assimilated even his good-humour to itself. His very
smile was cunning, as if he had been studying smiles among the portraits
of his misers. Saving an occasional burst of impatience, or coarse
assertion of his mastery, his good-humour remained to him, but it had
now a sordid alloy of distrust; and though his eyes should twinkle and
all his face should laugh, he would sit holding himself in his own
arms, as if he had an inclination to hoard himself up, and must always
grudgingly stand on the defensive.
What with taking heed of these two faces, and what with feeling
conscious that the stealthy occupation must set some mark on her own,
Bella soon began to think that there was not a candid or a natural face
among them all but Mrs Boffin’s. None the less because it was far less
radiant than of yore, faithfully reflecting in its anxiety and regret
every line of change in the Golden Dustman’s.
‘Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin one evening when they were all in his room
again, and he and the Secretary had been going over some accounts, ‘I
am spending too much money. Or leastways, you are spending too much for
me.’
‘You are rich, sir.’
‘I am not,’ said Mr Boffin.
The sharpness of the retort was next to telling the Secretary that he
lied. But it brought no change of expression into the set face.
‘I tell you I am not rich,’ repeated Mr Boffin, ‘and I won’t have it.’
‘You are not rich, sir?’ repeated the Secretary, in measured words.
‘Well,’ returned Mr Boffin, ‘if I am, that’s my business. I am not going
to spend at this rate, to please you, or anybody. You wouldn’t like it,
if it was your money.’
‘Even in that impossible case, sir, I—’
‘Hold your tongue!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘You oughtn’t to like it in any
case. There! I didn’t mean to be rude, but you put me out so, and after
all I’m master. I didn’t intend to tell you to hold your tongue. I beg
your pardon. Don’t hold your tongue. Only, don’t contradict. Did you
ever come across the life of Mr Elwes?’ referring to his favourite
subject at last.
‘The miser?’
‘Ah, people called him a miser. People are always calling other people
something. Did you ever read about him?’
‘I think so.’
‘He never owned to being rich, and yet he might have bought me twice
over. Did you ever hear of Daniel Dancer?’
‘Another miser? Yes.’
‘He was a good ’un,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and he had a sister worthy of him.
They never called themselves rich neither. If they HAD called themselves
rich, most likely they wouldn’t have been so.’
‘They lived and died very miserably. Did they not, sir?’
‘No, I don’t know that they did,’ said Mr Boffin, curtly.
‘Then they are not the Misers I mean. Those abject wretches—’
‘Don’t call names, Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘—That exemplary brother and sister—lived and died in the foulest and
filthiest degradation.’
‘They pleased themselves,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and I suppose they could
have done no more if they had spent their money. But however, I ain’t
going to fling mine away. Keep the expenses down. The fact is, you ain’t
enough here, Rokesmith. It wants constant attention in the littlest
things. Some of us will be dying in a workhouse next.’
‘As the persons you have cited,’ quietly remarked the Secretary,
‘thought they would, if I remember, sir.’
‘And very creditable in ’em too,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Very independent in
’em! But never mind them just now. Have you given notice to quit your
lodgings?’
‘Under your direction, I have, sir.’
‘Then I tell you what,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘pay the quarter’s rent—pay the
quarter’s rent, it’ll be the cheapest thing in the end—and come here at
once, so that you may be always on the spot, day and night, and keep the
expenses down. You’ll charge the quarter’s rent to me, and we must try
and save it somewhere. You’ve got some lovely furniture; haven’t you?’
‘The furniture in my rooms is my own.’
‘Then we shan’t have to buy any for you. In case you was to think it,’
said Mr Boffin, with a look of peculiar shrewdness, ‘so honourably
independent in you as to make it a relief to your mind, to make that
furniture over to me in the light of a set-off against the quarter’s
rent, why ease your mind, ease your mind. I don’t ask it, but I won’t
stand in your way if you should consider it due to yourself. As to your
room, choose any empty room at the top of the house.’
‘Any empty room will do for me,’ said the Secretary.
‘You can take your pick,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and it’ll be as good as eight
or ten shillings a week added to your income. I won’t deduct for it; I
look to you to make it up handsomely by keeping the expenses down. Now,
if you’ll show a light, I’ll come to your office-room and dispose of a
letter or two.’
On that clear, generous face of Mrs Boffin’s, Bella had seen such traces
of a pang at the heart while this dialogue was being held, that she
had not the courage to turn her eyes to it when they were left alone.
Feigning to be intent on her embroidery, she sat plying her needle until
her busy hand was stopped by Mrs Boffin’s hand being lightly laid upon
it. Yielding to the touch, she felt her hand carried to the good soul’s
lips, and felt a tear fall on it.
‘Oh, my loved husband!’ said Mrs Boffin. ‘This is hard to see and hear.
But my dear Bella, believe me that in spite of all the change in him, he
is the best of men.’
He came back, at the moment when Bella had taken the hand comfortingly
between her own.
‘Eh?’ said he, mistrustfully looking in at the door. ‘What’s she telling
you?’
‘She is only praising you, sir,’ said Bella.
‘Praising me? You are sure? Not blaming me for standing on my own
defence against a crew of plunderers, who could suck me dry by driblets?
Not blaming me for getting a little hoard together?’
He came up to them, and his wife folded her hands upon his shoulder, and
shook her head as she laid it on her hands.
‘There, there, there!’ urged Mr Boffin, not unkindly. ‘Don’t take on,
old lady.’
‘But I can’t bear to see you so, my dear.’
‘Nonsense! Recollect we are not our old selves. Recollect, we must
scrunch or be scrunched. Recollect, we must hold our own. Recollect,
money makes money. Don’t you be uneasy, Bella, my child; don’t you be
doubtful. The more I save, the more you shall have.’
Bella thought it was well for his wife that she was musing with her
affectionate face on his shoulder; for there was a cunning light in
his eyes as he said all this, which seemed to cast a disagreeable
illumination on the change in him, and make it morally uglier.
Chapter 6
THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY
It had come to pass that Mr Silas Wegg now rarely attended the minion of
fortune and the worm of the hour, at his (the worm’s and minion’s) own
house, but lay under general instructions to await him within a certain
margin of hours at the Bower. Mr Wegg took this arrangement in great
dudgeon, because the appointed hours were evening hours, and those he
considered precious to the progress of the friendly move. But it was
quite in character, he bitterly remarked to Mr Venus, that the upstart
who had trampled on those eminent creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master
George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, should oppress his literary man.
The Roman Empire having worked out its destruction, Mr Boffin next
appeared in a cab with Rollin’s Ancient History, which valuable work
being found to possess lethargic properties, broke down, at about the
period when the whole of the army of Alexander the Macedonian (at that
time about forty thousand strong) burst into tears simultaneously, on
his being taken with a shivering fit after bathing. The Wars of the
Jews, likewise languishing under Mr Wegg’s generalship, Mr Boffin
arrived in another cab with Plutarch: whose Lives he found in the sequel
extremely entertaining, though he hoped Plutarch might not expect him to
believe them all. What to believe, in the course of his reading, was Mr
Boffin’s chief literary difficulty indeed; for some time he was divided
in his mind between half, all, or none; at length, when he decided, as a
moderate man, to compound with half, the question still remained, which
half? And that stumbling-block he never got over.
One evening, when Silas Wegg had grown accustomed to the arrival of
his patron in a cab, accompanied by some profane historian charged with
unutterable names of incomprehensible peoples, of impossible descent,
waging wars any number of years and syllables long, and carrying
illimitable hosts and riches about, with the greatest ease, beyond the
confines of geography—one evening the usual time passed by, and no
patron appeared. After half an hour’s grace, Mr Wegg proceeded to the
outer gate, and there executed a whistle, conveying to Mr Venus,
if perchance within hearing, the tidings of his being at home and
disengaged. Forth from the shelter of a neighbouring wall, Mr Venus then
emerged.
‘Brother in arms,’ said Mr Wegg, in excellent spirits, ‘welcome!’
In return, Mr Venus gave him a rather dry good evening.
‘Walk in, brother,’ said Silas, clapping him on the shoulder, ‘and take
your seat in my chimley corner; for what says the ballad?
“No malice to dread, sir,
And no falsehood to fear,
But truth to delight me, Mr Venus,
And I forgot what to cheer.
Li toddle de om dee.
And something to guide,
My ain fireside, sir,
My ain fireside.”’