Our Mutual Friend
sister in Law—Poor Law—and that we sometimes read these words in an
awful manner, over our Sister and our Brother too.
And Sloppy—on whom the brave deceased had never turned her back until
she ran away from him, knowing that otherwise he would not be separated
from her—Sloppy could not in his conscience as yet find the hearty
thanks required of it. Selfish in Sloppy, and yet excusable, it may be
humbly hoped, because our sister had been more than his mother.
The words were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner of a
churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there was
nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single tombstone.
It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the diggers and
hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their graves at the common
charge; so that a new generation might know which was which: so that the
soldier, sailor, emigrant, coming home, should be able to identify the
resting-place of father, mother, playmate, or betrothed. For, we turn up
our eyes and say that we are all alike in death, and we might turn
them down and work the saying out in this world, so far. It would
be sentimental, perhaps? But how say ye, my lords and gentleman and
honourable boards, shall we not find good standing-room left for a
little sentiment, if we look into our crowds?
Near unto the Reverend Frank Milvey as he read, stood his little wife,
John Rokesmith the Secretary, and Bella Wilfer. These, over and above
Sloppy, were the mourners at the lowly grave. Not a penny had been
added to the money sewn in her dress: what her honest spirit had so long
projected, was fulfilled.
‘I’ve took it in my head,’ said Sloppy, laying it, inconsolable, against
the church door, when all was done: ‘I’ve took it in my wretched head
that I might have sometimes turned a little harder for her, and it cuts
me deep to think so now.’
The Reverend Frank Milvey, comforting Sloppy, expounded to him how the
best of us were more or less remiss in our turnings at our respective
Mangles—some of us very much so—and how we were all a halting,
failing, feeble, and inconstant crew.
‘SHE warn’t, sir,’ said Sloppy, taking this ghostly counsel rather ill,
in behalf of his late benefactress. ‘Let us speak for ourselves, sir.
She went through with whatever duty she had to do. She went through with
me, she went through with the Minders, she went through with herself,
she went through with everythink. O Mrs Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a
woman and a mother and a mangler in a million million!’
With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from the
church door, and took it back to the grave in the corner, and laid it
down there, and wept alone. ‘Not a very poor grave,’ said the Reverend
Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes, ‘when it has that
homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could be made by most of
the sculpture in Westminster Abbey!’
They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket-gate. The
water-wheel of the paper-mill was audible there, and seemed to have a
softening influence on the bright wintry scene. They had arrived but a
little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them the little she could
add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr Rokesmith’s letter and
had asked for their instructions. This was merely how she had heard the
groan, and what had afterwards passed, and how she had obtained leave
for the remains to be placed in that sweet, fresh, empty store-room of
the mill from which they had just accompanied them to the churchyard,
and how the last requests had been religiously observed.
‘I could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,’ said Lizzie.
‘I should not have wanted the will; but I should not have had the power,
without our managing partner.’
‘Surely not the Jew who received us?’ said Mrs Milvey.
(‘My dear,’ observed her husband in parenthesis, ‘why not?’)
‘The gentleman certainly is a Jew,’ said Lizzie, ‘and the lady, his
wife, is a Jewess, and I was first brought to their notice by a Jew. But
I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.’
‘But suppose they try to convert you!’ suggested Mrs Milvey, bristling
in her good little way, as a clergyman’s wife.
‘To do what, ma’am?’ asked Lizzie, with a modest smile.
‘To make you change your religion,’ said Mrs Milvey.
Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. ‘They have never asked me what
my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told them. They
asked me to be industrious and faithful, and I promised to be so.
They most willingly and cheerfully do their duty to all of us who are
employed here, and we try to do ours to them. Indeed they do much more
than their duty to us, for they are wonderfully mindful of us in many
ways.’
‘It is easy to see you’re a favourite, my dear,’ said little Mrs Milvey,
not quite pleased.
‘It would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,’ returned Lizzie,
‘for I have been already raised to a place of confidence here. But that
makes no difference in their following their own religion and leaving
all of us to ours. They never talk of theirs to us, and they never talk
of ours to us. If I was the last in the mill, it would be just the same.
They never asked me what religion that poor thing had followed.’
‘My dear,’ said Mrs Milvey, aside to the Reverend Frank, ‘I wish you
would talk to her.’
‘My dear,’ said the Reverend Frank aside to his good little wife, ‘I
think I will leave it to somebody else. The circumstances are hardly
favourable. There are plenty of talkers going about, my love, and she
will soon find one.’
While this discourse was interchanging, both Bella and the Secretary
observed Lizzie Hexam with great attention. Brought face to face for the
first time with the daughter of his supposed murderer, it was natural
that John Harmon should have his own secret reasons for a careful
scrutiny of her countenance and manner. Bella knew that Lizzie’s
father had been falsely accused of the crime which had had so great an
influence on her own life and fortunes; and her interest, though it had
no secret springs, like that of the Secretary, was equally natural. Both
had expected to see something very different from the real Lizzie Hexam,
and thus it fell out that she became the unconscious means of bringing
them together.
For, when they had walked on with her to the little house in the clean
village by the paper-mill, where Lizzie had a lodging with an elderly
couple employed in the establishment, and when Mrs Milvey and Bella
had been up to see her room and had come down, the mill bell rang.
This called Lizzie away for the time, and left the Secretary and Bella
standing rather awkwardly in the small street; Mrs Milvey being engaged
in pursuing the village children, and her investigations whether they
were in danger of becoming children of Israel; and the Reverend Frank
being engaged—to say the truth—in evading that branch of his spiritual
functions, and getting out of sight surreptitiously.
Bella at length said:
‘Hadn’t we better talk about the commission we have undertaken, Mr
Rokesmith?’
‘By all means,’ said the Secretary.
‘I suppose,’ faltered Bella, ‘that we ARE both commissioned, or we
shouldn’t both be here?’
‘I suppose so,’ was the Secretary’s answer.
‘When I proposed to come with Mr and Mrs Milvey,’ said Bella, ‘Mrs
Boffin urged me to do so, in order that I might give her my small
report—it’s not worth anything, Mr Rokesmith, except for it’s being
a woman’s—which indeed with you may be a fresh reason for it’s being
worth nothing—of Lizzie Hexam.’
‘Mr Boffin,’ said the Secretary, ‘directed me to come for the same
purpose.’
As they spoke they were leaving the little street and emerging on the
wooded landscape by the river.
‘You think well of her, Mr Rokesmith?’ pursued Bella, conscious of
making all the advances.
‘I think highly of her.’
‘I am so glad of that! Something quite refined in her beauty, is there
not?’
‘Her appearance is very striking.’
‘There is a shade of sadness upon her that is quite touching. At least
I—I am not setting up my own poor opinion, you know, Mr Rokesmith,’
said Bella, excusing and explaining herself in a pretty shy way; ‘I am
consulting you.’
‘I noticed that sadness. I hope it may not,’ said the Secretary in
a lower voice, ‘be the result of the false accusation which has been
retracted.’
When they had passed on a little further without speaking, Bella, after
stealing a glance or two at the Secretary, suddenly said:
‘Oh, Mr Rokesmith, don’t be hard with me, don’t be stern with me; be
magnanimous! I want to talk with you on equal terms.’
The Secretary as suddenly brightened, and returned: ‘Upon my honour I
had no thought but for you. I forced myself to be constrained, lest you
might misinterpret my being more natural. There. It’s gone.’
‘Thank you,’ said Bella, holding out her little hand. ‘Forgive me.’
‘No!’ cried the Secretary, eagerly. ‘Forgive ME!’ For there were tears
in her eyes, and they were prettier in his sight (though they smote him
on the heart rather reproachfully too) than any other glitter in the
world.
When they had walked a little further:
‘You were going to speak to me,’ said the Secretary, with the shadow so
long on him quite thrown off and cast away, ‘about Lizzie Hexam. So was
I going to speak to you, if I could have begun.’
‘Now that you CAN begin, sir,’ returned Bella, with a look as if she
italicized the word by putting one of her dimples under it, ‘what were
you going to say?’
‘You remember, of course, that in her short letter to Mrs Boffin—short,
but containing everything to the purpose—she stipulated that either
her name, or else her place of residence, must be kept strictly a secret
among us.’
Bella nodded Yes.
‘It is my duty to find out why she made that stipulation. I have it in
charge from Mr Boffin to discover, and I am very desirous for myself to
discover, whether that retracted accusation still leaves any stain upon
her. I mean whether it places her at any disadvantage towards any one,
even towards herself.’
‘Yes,’ said Bella, nodding thoughtfully; ‘I understand. That seems wise,
and considerate.’
‘You may not have noticed, Miss Wilfer, that she has the same kind of
interest in you, that you have in her. Just as you are attracted by her
beaut—by her appearance and manner, she is attracted by yours.’
‘I certainly have NOT noticed it,’ returned Bella, again italicizing
with the dimple, ‘and I should have given her credit for—’
The Secretary with a smile held up his hand, so plainly interposing ‘not
for better taste’, that Bella’s colour deepened over the little piece of
coquetry she was checked in.
‘And so,’ resumed the Secretary, ‘if you would speak with her alone
before we go away from here, I feel quite sure that a natural and easy
confidence would arise between you. Of course you would not be asked to
betray it; and of course you would not, if you were. But if you do not
object to put this question to her—to ascertain for us her own feeling
in this one matter—you can do so at a far greater advantage than I or
any else could. Mr Boffin is anxious on the subject. And I am,’ added
the Secretary after a moment, ‘for a special reason, very anxious.’
‘I shall be happy, Mr Rokesmith,’ returned Bella, ‘to be of the least
use; for I feel, after the serious scene of to-day, that I am useless
enough in this world.’
‘Don’t say that,’ urged the Secretary.
‘Oh, but I mean that,’ said Bella, raising her eyebrows.
‘No one is useless in this world,’ retorted the Secretary, ‘who lightens
the burden of it for any one else.’
‘But I assure you I DON’T, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, half-crying.
‘Not for your father?’