Our Mutual Friend
‘Dear, loving, self-forgetting, easily-satisfied Pa! Oh, yes! He thinks
so.’
‘It is enough if he only thinks so,’ said the Secretary. ‘Excuse the
interruption: I don’t like to hear you depreciate yourself.’
‘But YOU once depreciated ME, sir,’ thought Bella, pouting, ‘and I hope
you may be satisfied with the consequences you brought upon your head!’
However, she said nothing to that purpose; she even said something to a
different purpose.
‘Mr Rokesmith, it seems so long since we spoke together naturally, that
I am embarrassed in approaching another subject. Mr Boffin. You know I
am very grateful to him; don’t you? You know I feel a true respect for
him, and am bound to him by the strong ties of his own generosity; now
don’t you?’
‘Unquestionably. And also that you are his favourite companion.’
‘That makes it,’ said Bella, ‘so very difficult to speak of him. But—.
Does he treat you well?’
‘You see how he treats me,’ the Secretary answered, with a patient and
yet proud air.
‘Yes, and I see it with pain,’ said Bella, very energetically.
The Secretary gave her such a radiant look, that if he had thanked her a
hundred times, he could not have said as much as the look said.
‘I see it with pain,’ repeated Bella, ‘and it often makes me miserable.
Miserable, because I cannot bear to be supposed to approve of it, or
have any indirect share in it. Miserable, because I cannot bear to be
forced to admit to myself that Fortune is spoiling Mr Boffin.’
‘Miss Wilfer,’ said the Secretary, with a beaming face, ‘if you could
know with what delight I make the discovery that Fortune isn’t spoiling
YOU, you would know that it more than compensates me for any slight at
any other hands.’
‘Oh, don’t speak of ME,’ said Bella, giving herself an impatient little
slap with her glove. ‘You don’t know me as well as—’
‘As you know yourself?’ suggested the Secretary, finding that she
stopped. ‘DO you know yourself?’
‘I know quite enough of myself,’ said Bella, with a charming air of
being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, ‘and I don’t improve
upon acquaintance. But Mr Boffin.’
‘That Mr Boffin’s manner to me, or consideration for me, is not what it
used to be,’ observed the Secretary, ‘must be admitted. It is too plain
to be denied.’
‘Are you disposed to deny it, Mr Rokesmith?’ asked Bella, with a look of
wonder.
‘Ought I not to be glad to do so, if I could: though it were only for my
own sake?’
‘Truly,’ returned Bella, ‘it must try you very much, and—you must
please promise me that you won’t take ill what I am going to add, Mr
Rokesmith?’
‘I promise it with all my heart.’
‘—And it must sometimes, I should think,’ said Bella, hesitating, ‘a
little lower you in your own estimation?’
Assenting with a movement of his head, though not at all looking as if
it did, the Secretary replied:
‘I have very strong reasons, Miss Wilfer, for bearing with the drawbacks
of my position in the house we both inhabit. Believe that they are not
all mercenary, although I have, through a series of strange fatalities,
faded out of my place in life. If what you see with such a gracious
and good sympathy is calculated to rouse my pride, there are other
considerations (and those you do not see) urging me to quiet endurance.
The latter are by far the stronger.’
‘I think I have noticed, Mr Rokesmith,’ said Bella, looking at him with
curiosity, as not quite making him out, ‘that you repress yourself, and
force yourself, to act a passive part.’
‘You are right. I repress myself and force myself to act a part. It is
not in tameness of spirit that I submit. I have a settled purpose.’
‘And a good one, I hope,’ said Bella.
‘And a good one, I hope,’ he answered, looking steadily at her.
‘Sometimes I have fancied, sir,’ said Bella, turning away her eyes,
‘that your great regard for Mrs Boffin is a very powerful motive with
you.’
‘You are right again; it is. I would do anything for her, bear anything
for her. There are no words to express how I esteem that good, good
woman.’
‘As I do too! May I ask you one thing more, Mr Rokesmith?’
‘Anything more.’
‘Of course you see that she really suffers, when Mr Boffin shows how he
is changing?’
‘I see it, every day, as you see it, and am grieved to give her pain.’
‘To give her pain?’ said Bella, repeating the phrase quickly, with her
eyebrows raised.
‘I am generally the unfortunate cause of it.’
‘Perhaps she says to you, as she often says to me, that he is the best
of men, in spite of all.’
‘I often overhear her, in her honest and beautiful devotion to him,
saying so to you,’ returned the Secretary, with the same steady look,
‘but I cannot assert that she ever says so to me.’
Bella met the steady look for a moment with a wistful, musing little
look of her own, and then, nodding her pretty head several times, like
a dimpled philosopher (of the very best school) who was moralizing on
Life, heaved a little sigh, and gave up things in general for a bad job,
as she had previously been inclined to give up herself.
But, for all that, they had a very pleasant walk. The trees were bare of
leaves, and the river was bare of water-lilies; but the sky was not bare
of its beautiful blue, and the water reflected it, and a delicious
wind ran with the stream, touching the surface crisply. Perhaps the old
mirror was never yet made by human hands, which, if all the images it
has in its time reflected could pass across its surface again, would
fail to reveal some scene of horror or distress. But the great serene
mirror of the river seemed as if it might have reproduced all it had
ever reflected between those placid banks, and brought nothing to the
light save what was peaceful, pastoral, and blooming.
So, they walked, speaking of the newly filled-up grave, and of Johnny,
and of many things. So, on their return, they met brisk Mrs Milvey
coming to seek them, with the agreeable intelligence that there was no
fear for the village children, there being a Christian school in the
village, and no worse Judaical interference with it than to plant its
garden. So, they got back to the village as Lizzie Hexam was coming from
the paper-mill, and Bella detached herself to speak with her in her own
home.
‘I am afraid it is a poor room for you,’ said Lizzie, with a smile of
welcome, as she offered the post of honour by the fireside.
‘Not so poor as you think, my dear,’ returned Bella, ‘if you knew all.’
Indeed, though attained by some wonderful winding narrow stairs, which
seemed to have been erected in a pure white chimney, and though very low
in the ceiling, and very rugged in the floor, and rather blinking as
to the proportions of its lattice window, it was a pleasanter room than
that despised chamber once at home, in which Bella had first bemoaned
the miseries of taking lodgers.
The day was closing as the two girls looked at one another by the
fireside. The dusky room was lighted by the fire. The grate might have
been the old brazier, and the glow might have been the old hollow down
by the flare.
‘It’s quite new to me,’ said Lizzie, ‘to be visited by a lady so nearly
of my own age, and so pretty, as you. It’s a pleasure to me to look at
you.’
‘I have nothing left to begin with,’ returned Bella, blushing, ‘because
I was going to say that it was a pleasure to me to look at you, Lizzie.
But we can begin without a beginning, can’t we?’
Lizzie took the pretty little hand that was held out in as pretty a
little frankness.
‘Now, dear,’ said Bella, drawing her chair a little nearer, and taking
Lizzie’s arm as if they were going out for a walk, ‘I am commissioned
with something to say, and I dare say I shall say it wrong, but I
won’t if I can help it. It is in reference to your letter to Mr and Mrs
Boffin, and this is what it is. Let me see. Oh yes! This is what it is.’
With this exordium, Bella set forth that request of Lizzie’s touching
secrecy, and delicately spoke of that false accusation and its
retraction, and asked might she beg to be informed whether it had any
bearing, near or remote, on such request. ‘I feel, my dear,’ said Bella,
quite amazing herself by the business-like manner in which she was
getting on, ‘that the subject must be a painful one to you, but I
am mixed up in it also; for—I don’t know whether you may know it or
suspect it—I am the willed-away girl who was to have been married to
the unfortunate gentleman, if he had been pleased to approve of me. So
I was dragged into the subject without my consent, and you were dragged
into it without your consent, and there is very little to choose between
us.’
‘I had no doubt,’ said Lizzie, ‘that you were the Miss Wilfer I have
often heard named. Can you tell me who my unknown friend is?’
‘Unknown friend, my dear?’ said Bella.
‘Who caused the charge against poor father to be contradicted, and sent
me the written paper.’
Bella had never heard of him. Had no notion who he was.
‘I should have been glad to thank him,’ returned Lizzie. ‘He has done a
great deal for me. I must hope that he will let me thank him some day.
You asked me has it anything to do—’
‘It or the accusation itself,’ Bella put in.
‘Yes. Has either anything to do with my wishing to live quite secret and
retired here? No.’
As Lizzie Hexam shook her head in giving this reply and as her glance
sought the fire, there was a quiet resolution in her folded hands, not
lost on Bella’s bright eyes.
‘Have you lived much alone?’ asked Bella.
‘Yes. It’s nothing new to me. I used to be always alone many hours
together, in the day and in the night, when poor father was alive.’
‘You have a brother, I have been told?’
‘I have a brother, but he is not friendly with me. He is a very good
boy though, and has raised himself by his industry. I don’t complain of
him.’
As she said it, with her eyes upon the fire-glow, there was an
instantaneous escape of distress into her face. Bella seized the moment
to touch her hand.
‘Lizzie, I wish you would tell me whether you have any friend of your
own sex and age.’
‘I have lived that lonely kind of life, that I have never had one,’ was
the answer.
‘Nor I neither,’ said Bella. ‘Not that my life has been lonely, for I
could have sometimes wished it lonelier, instead of having Ma going on
like the Tragic Muse with a face-ache in majestic corners, and Lavvy
being spiteful—though of course I am very fond of them both. I wish
you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have
no more of what they call character, my dear, than a canary-bird, but I
know I am trustworthy.’
The wayward, playful, affectionate nature, giddy for want of the
weight of some sustaining purpose, and capricious because it was always
fluttering among little things, was yet a captivating one. To Lizzie it
was so new, so pretty, at once so womanly and so childish, that it won
her completely. And when Bella said again, ‘Do you think you could,
Lizzie?’ with her eyebrows raised, her head inquiringly on one side,
and an odd doubt about it in her own bosom, Lizzie showed beyond all
question that she thought she could.
‘Tell me, my dear,’ said Bella, ‘what is the matter, and why you live
like this.’
Lizzie presently began, by way of prelude, ‘You must have many lovers—’
when Bella checked her with a little scream of astonishment.
‘My dear, I haven’t one!’
‘Not one?’
‘Well! Perhaps one,’ said Bella. ‘I am sure I don’t know. I HAD one, but
what he may think about it at the present time I can’t say. Perhaps I
have half a one (of course I don’t count that Idiot, George Sampson).
However, never mind me. I want to hear about you.’
‘There is a certain man,’ said Lizzie, ‘a passionate and angry man, who
says he loves me, and who I must believe does love me. He is the friend