Our Mutual Friend
‘I should recommend your looking ’em up if you consider ’em game to do
anything for you,’ said the Deputy Lock. ‘Have you got any money?’
‘Just a morsel of money, sir.’
‘Do you want to keep it?’
‘Sure I do!’
‘Well, you know,’ said the Deputy Lock, shrugging his shoulders with his
hands in his pockets, and shaking his head in a sulkily ominous manner,
‘the parish authorities down town will have it out of you, if you go on,
you may take your Alfred David.’
‘Then I’ll not go on.’
‘They’ll make you pay, as fur as your money will go,’ pursued the
Deputy, ‘for your relief as a Casual and for your being passed to your
Parish.’
‘Thank ye kindly, Master, for your warning, thank ye for your shelter,
and good night.’
‘Stop a bit,’ said the Deputy, striking in between her and the door.
‘Why are you all of a shake, and what’s your hurry, Missis?’
‘Oh, Master, Master,’ returned Betty Higden, ‘I’ve fought against the
Parish and fled from it, all my life, and I want to die free of it!’
‘I don’t know,’ said the Deputy, with deliberation, ‘as I ought to let
you go. I’m a honest man as gets my living by the sweat of my brow, and
I may fall into trouble by letting you go. I’ve fell into trouble afore
now, by George, and I know what it is, and it’s made me careful. You
might be took with your deadness again, half a mile off—or half of half
a quarter, for the matter of that—and then it would be asked, Why did
that there honest Deputy Lock, let her go, instead of putting her safe
with the Parish? That’s what a man of his character ought to have done,
it would be argueyfied,’ said the Deputy Lock, cunningly harping on the
strong string of her terror; ‘he ought to have handed her over safe to
the Parish. That was to be expected of a man of his merits.’
As he stood in the doorway, the poor old careworn wayworn woman burst
into tears, and clasped her hands, as if in a very agony she prayed to
him.
‘As I’ve told you, Master, I’ve the best of friends. This letter will
show how true I spoke, and they will be thankful for me.’
The Deputy Lock opened the letter with a grave face, which underwent no
change as he eyed its contents. But it might have done, if he could have
read them.
‘What amount of small change, Missis,’ he said, with an abstracted air,
after a little meditation, ‘might you call a morsel of money?’
Hurriedly emptying her pocket, old Betty laid down on the table, a
shilling, and two sixpenny pieces, and a few pence.
‘If I was to let you go instead of handing you over safe to the Parish,’
said the Deputy, counting the money with his eyes, ‘might it be your own
free wish to leave that there behind you?’
‘Take it, Master, take it, and welcome and thankful!’
‘I’m a man,’ said the Deputy, giving her back the letter, and pocketing
the coins, one by one, ‘as earns his living by the sweat of his brow;’
here he drew his sleeve across his forehead, as if this particular
portion of his humble gains were the result of sheer hard labour and
virtuous industry; ‘and I won’t stand in your way. Go where you like.’
She was gone out of the Lock-house as soon as he gave her this
permission, and her tottering steps were on the road again. But, afraid
to go back and afraid to go forward; seeing what she fled from, in the
sky-glare of the lights of the little town before her, and leaving a
confused horror of it everywhere behind her, as if she had escaped it
in every stone of every market-place; she struck off by side ways, among
which she got bewildered and lost. That night she took refuge from the
Samaritan in his latest accredited form, under a farmer’s rick; and
if—worth thinking of, perhaps, my fellow-Christians—the Samaritan had
in the lonely night, ‘passed by on the other side’, she would have most
devoutly thanked High Heaven for her escape from him.
The morning found her afoot again, but fast declining as to the
clearness of her thoughts, though not as to the steadiness of her
purpose. Comprehending that her strength was quitting her, and that the
struggle of her life was almost ended, she could neither reason out the
means of getting back to her protectors, nor even form the idea. The
overmastering dread, and the proud stubborn resolution it engendered
in her to die undegraded, were the two distinct impressions left in her
failing mind. Supported only by a sense that she was bent on conquering
in her life-long fight, she went on.
The time was come, now, when the wants of this little life were passing
away from her. She could not have swallowed food, though a table had
been spread for her in the next field. The day was cold and wet, but
she scarcely knew it. She crept on, poor soul, like a criminal afraid of
being taken, and felt little beyond the terror of falling down while it
was yet daylight, and being found alive. She had no fear that she would
live through another night.
Sewn in the breast of her gown, the money to pay for her burial was
still intact. If she could wear through the day, and then lie down to
die under cover of the darkness, she would die independent. If she were
captured previously, the money would be taken from her as a pauper who
had no right to it, and she would be carried to the accursed workhouse.
Gaining her end, the letter would be found in her breast, along with
the money, and the gentlefolks would say when it was given back to them,
‘She prized it, did old Betty Higden; she was true to it; and while she
lived, she would never let it be disgraced by falling into the hands
of those that she held in horror.’ Most illogical, inconsequential, and
light-headed, this; but travellers in the valley of the shadow of death
are apt to be light-headed; and worn-out old people of low estate have
a trick of reasoning as indifferently as they live, and doubtless
would appreciate our Poor Law more philosophically on an income of ten
thousand a year.
So, keeping to byways, and shunning human approach, this troublesome
old woman hid herself, and fared on all through the dreary day. Yet so
unlike was she to vagrant hiders in general, that sometimes, as the day
advanced, there was a bright fire in her eyes, and a quicker beating at
her feeble heart, as though she said exultingly, ‘The Lord will see me
through it!’
By what visionary hands she was led along upon that journey of escape
from the Samaritan; by what voices, hushed in the grave, she seemed
to be addressed; how she fancied the dead child in her arms again, and
times innumerable adjusted her shawl to keep it warm; what infinite
variety of forms of tower and roof and steeple the trees took; how many
furious horsemen rode at her, crying, ‘There she goes! Stop! Stop,
Betty Higden!’ and melted away as they came close; be these things left
untold. Faring on and hiding, hiding and faring on, the poor harmless
creature, as though she were a Murderess and the whole country were up
after her, wore out the day, and gained the night.
‘Water-meadows, or such like,’ she had sometimes murmured, on the day’s
pilgrimage, when she had raised her head and taken any note of the real
objects about her. There now arose in the darkness, a great building,
full of lighted windows. Smoke was issuing from a high chimney in
the rear of it, and there was the sound of a water-wheel at the side.
Between her and the building, lay a piece of water, in which the lighted
windows were reflected, and on its nearest margin was a plantation of
trees. ‘I humbly thank the Power and the Glory,’ said Betty Higden,
holding up her withered hands, ‘that I have come to my journey’s end!’
She crept among the trees to the trunk of a tree whence she could see,
beyond some intervening trees and branches, the lighted windows, both in
their reality and their reflection in the water. She placed her orderly
little basket at her side, and sank upon the ground, supporting herself
against the tree. It brought to her mind the foot of the Cross, and
she committed herself to Him who died upon it. Her strength held out to
enable her to arrange the letter in her breast, so as that it could
be seen that she had a paper there. It had held out for this, and it
departed when this was done.
‘I am safe here,’ was her last benumbed thought. ‘When I am found dead
at the foot of the Cross, it will be by some of my own sort; some of
the working people who work among the lights yonder. I cannot see the
lighted windows now, but they are there. I am thankful for all!’
The darkness gone, and a face bending down.
‘It cannot be the boofer lady?’
‘I don’t understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again with this
brandy. I have been away to fetch it. Did you think that I was long
gone?’
It is as the face of a woman, shaded by a quantity of rich dark hair.
It is the earnest face of a woman who is young and handsome. But all is
over with me on earth, and this must be an Angel.
‘Have I been long dead?’
‘I don’t understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again. I hurried
all I could, and brought no one back with me, lest you should die of the
shock of strangers.’
‘Am I not dead?’
‘I cannot understand what you say. Your voice is so low and broken that
I cannot hear you. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mean Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was coming from my work just now, along the path outside (I was up
with the night-hands last night), and I heard a groan, and found you
lying here.’
‘What work, deary?’
‘Did you ask what work? At the paper-mill.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Your face is turned up to the sky, and you can’t see it. It is close
by. You can see my face, here, between you and the sky?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dare I lift you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Not even lift your head to get it on my arm? I will do it by very
gentle degrees. You shall hardly feel it.’
‘Not yet. Paper. Letter.’
‘This paper in your breast?’
‘Bless ye!’
‘Let me wet your lips again. Am I to open it? To read it?’
‘Bless ye!’
She reads it with surprise, and looks down with a new expression and an
added interest on the motionless face she kneels beside.
‘I know these names. I have heard them often.’
‘Will you send it, my dear?’
‘I cannot understand you. Let me wet your lips again, and your forehead.
There. O poor thing, poor thing!’ These words through her fast-dropping
tears. ‘What was it that you asked me? Wait till I bring my ear quite
close.’
‘Will you send it, my dear?’
‘Will I send it to the writers? Is that your wish? Yes, certainly.’
‘You’ll not give it up to any one but them?’
‘No.’
‘As you must grow old in time, and come to your dying hour, my dear,
you’ll not give it up to any one but them?’
‘No. Most solemnly.’
‘Never to the Parish!’ with a convulsed struggle.
‘No. Most solemnly.’
‘Nor let the Parish touch me, not yet so much as look at me!’ with
another struggle.
‘No. Faithfully.’
A look of thankfulness and triumph lights the worn old face.
The eyes, which have been darkly fixed upon the sky, turn with meaning
in them towards the compassionate face from which the tears are
dropping, and a smile is on the aged lips as they ask:
‘What is your name, my dear?’
‘My name is Lizzie Hexam.’
‘I must be sore disfigured. Are you afraid to kiss me?’
The answer is, the ready pressure of her lips upon the cold but smiling
mouth.
‘Bless ye! NOW lift me, my love.’
Lizzie Hexam very softly raised the weather-stained grey head, and
lifted her as high as Heaven.
Chapter 9
SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION
‘“We give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver
this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world.”’ So read the
Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled voice, for his heart misgave
him that all was not quite right between us and our sister—or say our