BOOK THE FIRST — THE CUP AND THE LIP

           Chapter 1

            ON THE LOOK OUT

 In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.

            The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty, sufficiently like

            him to be recognizable as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls

            very easily; the man, with the rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband, kept an eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line, and

            he could not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boathook and a coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy and too small to take in cargo

            for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or river-carrier; there was no clue

            to what he looked for, but he looked for something, with a most intent and

            searching gaze. The tide, which had turned an hour before, was running down,

            and his eyes watched every little race and eddy in its broad sweep, as the boat made slight head-way against it, or drove stern foremost before it, according as

            he directed his daughter by a movement of his head. She watched his face as earnestly as he watched the river. But, in the intensity of her look there was a touch of dread or horror.

            Allied to the bottom of the river rather than the surface, by reason of the slime

            and ooze with which it was covered, and its sodden state, this boat and the two

            figures in it obviously were doing something that they often did, and were

            seeking what they often sought. Half savage as the man showed, with no

            covering on his matted head, with his brown arms bare to between the elbow and

            the shoulder, with the loose knot of a looser kerchief lying low on his bare breast

            in a wilderness of beard and whisker, with such dress as he wore seeming to be

            made out of the mud that begrimed his boat, still there was a business-like usage

            in his steady gaze. So with every lithe action of the girl, with every turn of her

            wrist, perhaps most of all with her look of dread or horror; they were things of

            usage.

            ‘Keep her out, Lizzie. Tide runs strong here. Keep her well afore the sweep of it.’

            Trusting to the girl’s skill and making no use of the rudder, he eyed the

            coming tide with an absorbed attention. So the girl eyed him. But, it happened now, that a slant of light from the setting sun glanced into the bottom of the boat,

            and, touching a rotten stain there which bore some resemblance to the outline of

            a muffled human form, coloured it as though with diluted blood. This caught the

            girl’s eye, and she shivered.

            ‘What ails you?’ said the man, immediately aware of it, though so intent on

            the advancing waters; ‘I see nothing afloat.’

            The red light was gone, the shudder was gone, and his gaze, which had come

            back to the boat for a moment, travelled away again. Wheresoever the strong

            tide met with an impediment, his gaze paused for an instant. At every mooring-

            chain and rope, at every stationery boat or barge that split the current into a broad-arrowhead, at the offsets from the piers of Southwark Bridge, at the

            paddles of the river steamboats as they beat the filthy water, at the floating logs

            of timber lashed together lying off certain wharves, his shining eyes darted a hungry look. After a darkening hour or so, suddenly the rudder-lines tightened in

            his hold, and he steered hard towards the Surrey shore.

            Always watching his face, the girl instantly answered to the action in her

            sculling; presently the boat swung round, quivered as from a sudden jerk, and the upper half of the man was stretched out over the stern.

            The girl pulled the hood of a cloak she wore, over her head and over her face,

            and, looking backward so that the front folds of this hood were turned down the

            river, kept the boat in that direction going before the tide. Until now, the boat had

            barely held her own, and had hovered about one spot; but now, the banks

            changed swiftly, and the deepening shadows and the kindling lights of London

            Bridge were passed, and the tiers of shipping lay on either hand.

            It was not until now that the upper half of the man came back into the boat.

            His arms were wet and dirty, and he washed them over the side. In his right hand

            he held something, and he washed that in the river too. It was money. He

            chinked it once, and he blew upon it once, and he spat upon it once,—‘for luck,’

            he hoarsely said—before he put it in his pocket.

            ‘Lizzie!’

            The girl turned her face towards him with a start, and rowed in silence. Her face was very pale. He was a hook-nosed man, and with that and his bright eyes

            and his ruffled head, bore a certain likeness to a roused bird of prey.

            ‘Take that thing off your face.’

            She put it back.

            ‘Here! and give me hold of the sculls. I’ll take the rest of the spell.’

            ‘No, no, father! No! I can’t indeed. Father!—I cannot sit so near it!’

            He was moving towards her to change places, but her terrified expostulation

            stopped him and he resumed his seat.

            ‘What hurt can it do you?’

            ‘None, none. But I cannot bear it.’

            ‘It’s my belief you hate the sight of the very river.’

            ‘I—I do not like it, father.’

            ‘As if it wasn’t your living! As if it wasn’t meat and drink to you!’

            At these latter words the girl shivered again, and for a moment paused in her

            rowing, seeming to turn deadly faint. It escaped his attention, for he was

            glancing over the stern at something the boat had in tow.

            ‘How can you be so thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The very fire that

            warmed you when you were a babby, was picked out of the river alongside the

            coal barges. The very basket that you slept in, the tide washed ashore. The very

            rockers that I put it upon to make a cradle of it, I cut out of a piece of wood that

            drifted from some ship or another.’

            Lizzie took her right hand from the scull it held, and touched her lips with it,

            and for a moment held it out lovingly towards him: then, without speaking, she

            resumed her rowing, as another boat of similar appearance, though in rather

            better trim, came out from a dark place and dropped softly alongside.

            ‘In luck again, Gaffer?’ said a man with a squinting leer, who sculled her and

            who was alone, ‘I know’d you was in luck again, by your wake as you come

            down.’

            ‘Ah!’ replied the other, drily. ‘So you’re out, are you?’

            ‘Yes, pardner.’

            There was now a tender yellow moonlight on the river, and the new comer,

            keeping half his boat’s length astern of the other boat looked hard at its track.

            ‘I says to myself,’ he went on, ‘directly you hove in view, yonder’s Gaffer, and

            in luck again, by George if he ain’t! Scull it is, pardner—don’t fret yourself—I

            didn’t touch him.’ This was in answer to a quick impatient movement on the part

            of Gaffer: the speaker at the same time unshipping his scull on that side, and laying his hand on the gunwale of Gaffer’s boat and holding to it.

            ‘He’s had touches enough not to want no more, as well as I make him out, Gaffer! Been a knocking about with a pretty many tides, ain’t he pardner? Such

            is my out-of-luck ways, you see! He must have passed me when he went up last

            time, for I was on the lookout below bridge here. I a’most think you’re like the

            wulturs, pardner, and scent ‘em out.’

            He spoke in a dropped voice, and with more than one glance at Lizzie who

            had pulled on her hood again. Both men then looked with a weird unholy interest

            in the wake of Gaffer’s boat.

            ‘Easy does it, betwixt us. Shall I take him aboard, pardner?’

            ‘No,’ said the other. In so surly a tone that the man, after a blank stare, acknowledged it with the retort:

            ‘—Arn’t been eating nothing as has disagreed with you, have you, pardner?’

            ‘Why, yes, I have,’ said Gaffer. ‘I have been swallowing too much of that

            word, Pardner. I am no pardner of yours.’

            ‘Since when was you no pardner of mine, Gaffer Hexam Esquire?’

            ‘Since you was accused of robbing a man. Accused of robbing a live man!’

            said Gaffer, with great indignation.

            ‘And what if I had been accused of robbing a dead man, Gaffer?’

            ‘You couldn’t do it.’

            ‘Couldn’t you, Gaffer?’

            ‘No. Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a dead man to have

            money? What world does a dead man belong to? ‘Tother world. What world

            does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse’s? Can a corpse

            own it, want it, spend it, claim it, miss it? Don’t try to go confounding the rights

            and wrongs of things in that way. But it’s worthy of the sneaking spirit that robs

            a live man.’

            ‘I’ll tell you what it is—.’

            ‘No you won’t. I’ll tell you what it is. You got off with a short time of it for

            putting your hand in the pocket of a sailor, a live sailor. Make the most of it and

            think yourself lucky, but don’t think after that to come over me with your pardners. We have worked together in time past, but we work together no more

            in time present nor yet future. Let go. Cast off!’

            ‘Gaffer! If you think to get rid of me this way—.’

            ‘If I don’t get rid of you this way, I’ll try another, and chop you over the fingers with the stretcher, or take a pick at your head with the boat-hook. Cast

            off! Pull you, Lizzie. Pull home, since you won’t let your father pull.’

            Lizzie shot ahead, and the other boat fell astern. Lizzie’s father, composing

            himself into the easy attitude of one who had asserted the high moralities and taken an unassailable position, slowly lighted a pipe, and smoked, and took a survey of what he had in tow. What he had in tow, lunged itself at him

            sometimes in an awful manner when the boat was checked, and sometimes

            seemed to try to wrench itself away, though for the most part it followed

            submissively. A neophyte might have fancied that the ripples passing over it

            were dreadfully like faint changes of expression on a sightless face; but Gaffer

            was no neophyte and had no fancies.

            Chapter 2

            THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE

            Mr and Mrs Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-

            new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span

            new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they

            were as newly married as was lawfully compatible with their having a bran-new

            baby, and if they had set up a great-grandfather, he would have come home in matting from the Pantechnicon, without a scratch upon him, French polished to

            the crown of his head.

            For, in the Veneering establishment, from the hall-chairs with the new coat of

            arms, to the grand pianoforte with the new action, and upstairs again to the new

            fire-escape, all things were in a state of high varnish and polish. And what was

            observable in the furniture, was observable in the Veneerings—the surface smelt

            a little too much of the workshop and was a trifle sticky.

            There was an innocent piece of dinner-furniture that went upon easy castors

            and was kept over a livery stable-yard in Duke Street, Saint James’s, when not in

            use, to whom the Veneerings were a source of blind confusion. The name of this

            article was Twemlow. Being first cousin to Lord Snigsworth, he was in frequent

            requisition, and at many houses might be said to represent the dining-table in its

            normal state. Mr and Mrs Veneering, for example, arranging a dinner, habitually

            started with Twemlow, and then put leaves in him, or added guests to him.

            Sometimes, the table consisted of Twemlow and half a dozen leaves; sometimes,

            of Twemlow and a dozen leaves; sometimes, Twemlow was pulled out to his

            utmost extent of twenty leaves. Mr and Mrs Veneering on occasions of ceremony

            faced each other in the centre of the board, and thus the parallel still held; for, it

            always happened that the more Twemlow was pulled out, the further he found

            himself from the center, and nearer to the sideboard at one end of the room, or

            the window-curtains at the other.

            But, it was not this which steeped the feeble soul of Twemlow in confusion.

            This he was used to, and could take soundings of. The abyss to which he could

            find no bottom, and from which started forth the engrossing and ever-swelling

            difficulty of his life, was the insoluble question whether he was Veneering’s oldest friend, or newest friend. To the excogitation of this problem, the harmless

            gentleman had devoted many anxious hours, both in his lodgings over the livery

            stable-yard, and in the cold gloom, favourable to meditation, of Saint James’s Square. Thus. Twemlow had first known Veneering at his club, where Veneering

            then knew nobody but the man who made them known to one another, who

            seemed to be the most intimate friend he had in the world, and whom he had known two days—the bond of union between their souls, the nefarious conduct

            of the committee respecting the cookery of a fillet of veal, having been

            accidentally cemented at that date. Immediately upon this, Twemlow received an

            invitation to dine with Veneering, and dined: the man being of the party.

            Immediately upon that, Twemlow received an invitation to dine with the man,

            and dined: Veneering being of the party. At the man’s were a Member, an

            Engineer, a Payer-off of the National Debt, a Poem on Shakespeare, a Grievance,

            and a Public Office, who all seem to be utter strangers to Veneering. And yet immediately after that, Twemlow received an invitation to dine at Veneerings,

            expressly to meet the Member, the Engineer, the Payer-off of the National Debt,

            the Poem on Shakespeare, the Grievance, and the Public Office, and, dining,

            discovered that all of them were the most intimate friends Veneering had in the

            world, and that the wives of all of them (who were all there) were the objects of

            Mrs Veneering’s most devoted affection and tender confidence.

            Thus it had come about, that Mr Twemlow had said to himself in his lodgings,

            with his hand to his forehead: ‘I must not think of this. This is enough to soften

            any man’s brain,’—and yet was always thinking of it, and could never form a

            conclusion.

            This evening the Veneerings give a banquet. Eleven leaves in the Twemlow;

            fourteen in company all told. Four pigeon-breasted retainers in plain clothes

            stand in line in the hall. A fifth retainer, proceeding up the staircase with a mournful air—as who should say, ‘Here is another wretched creature come to

            dinner; such is life!’—announces, ‘Mis-ter Twemlow!’

            Mrs Veneering welcomes her sweet Mr Twemlow. Mr Veneering welcomes

            his dear Twemlow. Mrs Veneering does not expect that Mr Twemlow can in

            nature care much for such insipid things as babies, but so old a friend must please to look at baby. ‘Ah! You will know the friend of your family better, Tootleums,’ says Mr Veneering, nodding emotionally at that new article, ‘when

            you begin to take notice.’ He then begs to make his dear Twemlow known to his

            two friends, Mr Boots and Mr Brewer—and clearly has no distinct idea which is

            which.

            But now a fearful circumstance occurs.

            ‘Mis-ter and Mis-sus Podsnap!’

            ‘My dear,’ says Mr Veneering to Mrs Veneering, with an air of much friendly

            interest, while the door stands open, ‘the Podsnaps.’

            A too, too smiling large man, with a fatal freshness on him, appearing with his

            wife, instantly deserts his wife and darts at Twemlow with:

            ‘How do you do? So glad to know you. Charming house you have here. I hope

            we are not late. So glad of the opportunity, I am sure!’

            When the first shock fell upon him, Twemlow twice skipped back in his neat

            little shoes and his neat little silk stockings of a bygone fashion, as if impelled to

            leap over a sofa behind him; but the large man closed with him and proved too

            strong.

            ‘Let me,’ says the large man, trying to attract the attention of his wife in the

            distance, ‘have the pleasure of presenting Mrs Podsnap to her host. She will be,’

            in his fatal freshness he seems to find perpetual verdure and eternal youth in the

            phrase, ‘she will be so glad of the opportunity, I am sure!’

            In the meantime, Mrs Podsnap, unable to originate a mistake on her own

            account, because Mrs Veneering is the only other lady there, does her best in the

            way of handsomely supporting her husband’s, by looking towards Mr Twemlow

            with a plaintive countenance and remarking to Mrs Veneering in a feeling

            manner, firstly, that she fears he has been rather bilious of late, and, secondly, that the baby is already very like him.

            It is questionable whether any man quite relishes being mistaken for any other

            man; but, Mr Veneering having this very evening set up the shirt-front of the young Antinous in new worked cambric just come home, is not at all

            complimented by being supposed to be Twemlow, who is dry and weazen and

            some thirty years older. Mrs Veneering equally resents the imputation of being the wife of Twemlow. As to Twemlow, he is so sensible of being a much better

            bred man than Veneering, that he considers the large man an offensive ass.

            In this complicated dilemma, Mr Veneering approaches the large man with

            extended hand and, smilingly assures that incorrigible personage that he is

            delighted to see him: who in his fatal freshness instantly replies:

            ‘Thank you. I am ashamed to say that I cannot at this moment recall where we

            met, but I am so glad of this opportunity, I am sure!’

            Then pouncing upon Twemlow, who holds back with all his feeble might, he

            is haling him off to present him, as Veneering, to Mrs Podsnap, when the arrival

            of more guests unravels the mistake. Whereupon, having re-shaken hands with Veneering as Veneering, he re-shakes hands with Twemlow as Twemlow, and

            winds it all up to his own perfect satisfaction by saying to the last-named,

            ‘Ridiculous opportunity—but so glad of it, I am sure!’

            Now, Twemlow having undergone this terrific experience, having likewise

            noted the fusion of Boots in Brewer and Brewer in Boots, and having further

            observed that of the remaining seven guests four discrete characters enter with wandering eyes and wholly declined to commit themselves as to which is

            Veneering, until Veneering has them in his grasp;—Twemlow having profited by

            these studies, finds his brain wholesomely hardening as he approaches the

            conclusion that he really is Veneering’s oldest friend, when his brain softens again and all is lost, through his eyes encountering Veneering and the large man

            linked together as twin brothers in the back drawing-room near the conservatory

            door, and through his ears informing him in the tones of Mrs Veneering that the

            same large man is to be baby’s godfather.

            ‘Dinner is on the table!’

            Thus the melancholy retainer, as who should say, ‘Come down and be

            poisoned, ye unhappy children of men!’

            Twemlow, having no lady assigned him, goes down in the rear, with his hand

            to his forehead. Boots and Brewer, thinking him indisposed, whisper, ‘Man faint.

            Had no lunch.’ But he is only stunned by the unvanquishable difficulty of his existence.

            Revived by soup, Twemlow discourses mildly of the Court Circular with

            Boots and Brewer. Is appealed to, at the fish stage of the banquet, by Veneering,

            on the disputed question whether his cousin Lord Snigsworth is in or out of

            town? Gives it that his cousin is out of town. ‘At Snigsworthy Park?’ Veneering

            inquires. ‘At Snigsworthy,’ Twemlow rejoins. Boots and Brewer regard this as a

            man to be cultivated; and Veneering is clear that he is a remunerative article.

            Meantime the retainer goes round, like a gloomy Analytical Chemist: always

            seeming to say, after ‘Chablis, sir?’—‘You wouldn’t if you knew what it’s made

            of.’

            The great looking-glass above the sideboard, reflects the table and the

            company. Reflects the new Veneering crest, in gold and eke in silver, frosted and

            also thawed, a camel of all work. The Heralds’ College found out a Crusading ancestor for Veneering who bore a camel on his shield (or might have done it if

            he had thought of it), and a caravan of camels take charge of the fruits and flowers and candles, and kneel down be loaded with the salt. Reflects Veneering;

            forty, wavy-haired, dark, tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy—a kind of sufficiently well-looking veiled-prophet, not prophesying. Reflects Mrs

            Veneering; fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not so much light hair as she might

            have, gorgeous in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory, conscious that a

            corner of her husband’s veil is over herself. Reflects Podsnap; prosperously

            feeding, two little light-coloured wiry wings, one on either side of his else bald

            head, looking as like his hairbrushes as his hair, dissolving view of red beads on

            his forehead, large allowance of crumpled shirt-collar up behind. Reflects Mrs

            Podsnap; fine woman for Professor Owen, quantity of bone, neck and nostrils

            like a rocking-horse, hard features, majestic head-dress in which Podsnap has

            hung golden offerings. Reflects Twemlow; grey, dry, polite, susceptible to east wind, First-Gentleman-in-Europe collar and cravat, cheeks drawn in as if he had

            made a great effort to retire into himself some years ago, and had got so far and

            had never got any farther. Reflects mature young lady; raven locks, and

            complexion that lights up well when well powdered—as it is—carrying on

            considerably in the captivation of mature young gentleman; with too much nose

            in his face, too much ginger in his whiskers, too much torso in his waistcoat, too

            much sparkle in his studs, his eyes, his buttons, his talk, and his teeth. Reflects

            charming old Lady Tippins on Veneering’s right; with an immense obtuse drab

            oblong face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long Walk up the top of her

            head, as a convenient public approach to the bunch of false hair behind, pleased

            to patronize Mrs Veneering opposite, who is pleased to be patronized. Reflects a

            certain ‘Mortimer’, another of Veneering’s oldest friends; who never was in the

            house before, and appears not to want to come again, who sits disconsolate on Mrs Veneering’s left, and who was inveigled by Lady Tippins (a friend of his boyhood) to come to these people’s and talk, and who won’t talk. Reflects

            Eugene, friend of Mortimer; buried alive in the back of his chair, behind a

            shoulder—with a powder-epaulette on it—of the mature young lady, and

            gloomily resorting to the champagne chalice whenever proffered by the

            Analytical Chemist. Lastly, the looking-glass reflects Boots and Brewer, and two

            other stuffed Buffers interposed between the rest of the company and possible

            accidents.

            The Veneering dinners are excellent dinners—or new people wouldn’t come—

            and all goes well. Notably, Lady Tippins has made a series of experiments on her

            digestive functions, so extremely complicated and daring, that if they could be published with their results it might benefit the human race. Having taken in provisions from all parts of the world, this hardy old cruiser has last touched at

            the North Pole, when, as the ice-plates are being removed, the following words

            fall from her:

            ‘I assure you, my dear Veneering—’

            (Poor Twemlow’s hand approaches his forehead, for it would seem now, that

            Lady Tippins is going to be the oldest friend.)

            ‘I assure you, my dear Veneering, that it is the oddest affair! Like the

            advertising people, I don’t ask you to trust me, without offering a respectable reference. Mortimer there, is my reference, and knows all about it.’

            Mortimer raises his drooping eyelids, and slightly opens his mouth. But a faint

            smile, expressive of ‘What’s the use!’ passes over his face, and he drops his eyelids and shuts his mouth.

            ‘Now, Mortimer,’ says Lady Tippins, rapping the sticks of her closed green

            fan upon the knuckles of her left hand—which is particularly rich in knuckles, ‘I

            insist upon your telling all that is to be told about the man from Jamaica.’

            ‘Give you my honour I never heard of any man from Jamaica, except the man

            who was a brother,’ replies Mortimer.

            ‘Tobago, then.’

            ‘Nor yet from Tobago.’

            ‘Except,’ Eugene strikes in: so unexpectedly that the mature young lady, who

            has forgotten all about him, with a start takes the epaulette out of his way:

            ‘except our friend who long lived on rice-pudding and isinglass, till at length to

            his something or other, his physician said something else, and a leg of mutton somehow ended in daygo.’

            A reviving impression goes round the table that Eugene is coming out. An

            unfulfilled impression, for he goes in again.

            ‘Now, my dear Mrs Veneering,’ quoth Lady Tippins, I appeal to you whether

            this is not the basest conduct ever known in this world? I carry my lovers about,

            two or three at a time, on condition that they are very obedient and devoted; and

            here is my oldest lover-in-chief, the head of all my slaves, throwing off his allegiance before company! And here is another of my lovers, a rough Cymon at

            present certainly, but of whom I had most hopeful expectations as to his turning

            out well in course of time, pretending that he can’t remember his nursery

            rhymes! On purpose to annoy me, for he knows how I doat upon them!’

            A grisly little fiction concerning her lovers is Lady Tippins’s point. She is always attended by a lover or two, and she keeps a little list of her lovers, and

            she is always booking a new lover, or striking out an old lover, or putting a lover

            in her black list, or promoting a lover to her blue list, or adding up her lovers, or

            otherwise posting her book. Mrs Veneering is charmed by the humour, and so is Veneering. Perhaps it is enhanced by a certain yellow play in Lady Tippins’s

            throat, like the legs of scratching poultry.

            ‘I banish the false wretch from this moment, and I strike him out of my

            Cupidon (my name for my Ledger, my dear,) this very night. But I am resolved

            to have the account of the man from Somewhere, and I beg you to elicit it for me, my love,’ to Mrs Veneering, ‘as I have lost my own influence. Oh, you

            perjured man!’ This to Mortimer, with a rattle of her fan.

            ‘We are all very much interested in the man from Somewhere,’ Veneering

            observes.

            Then the four Buffers, taking heart of grace all four at once, say:

            ‘Deeply interested!’

            ‘Quite excited!’

            ‘Dramatic!’

            ‘Man from Nowhere, perhaps!’

            And then Mrs Veneering—for the Lady Tippins’s winning wiles are

            contagious—folds her hands in the manner of a supplicating child, turns to her left neighbour, and says, ‘Tease! Pay! Man from Tumwhere!’ At which the four

            Buffers, again mysteriously moved all four at once, explain, ‘You can’t resist!’

            ‘Upon my life,’ says Mortimer languidly, ‘I find it immensely embarrassing to

            have the eyes of Europe upon me to this extent, and my only consolation is that

            you will all of you execrate Lady Tippins in your secret hearts when you find, as

            you inevitably will, the man from Somewhere a bore. Sorry to destroy romance

            by fixing him with a local habitation, but he comes from the place, the name of

            which escapes me, but will suggest itself to everybody else here, where they

            make the wine.’

            Eugene suggests ‘Day and Martin’s.’

            ‘No, not that place,’ returns the unmoved Mortimer, ‘that’s where they make

            the Port. My man comes from the country where they make the Cape Wine. But

            look here, old fellow; its not at all statistical and it’s rather odd.’

            It is always noticeable at the table of the Veneerings, that no man troubles himself much about the Veneerings themselves, and that any one who has

            anything to tell, generally tells it to anybody else in preference.

            ‘The man,’ Mortimer goes on, addressing Eugene, ‘whose name is Harmon,

            was only son of a tremendous old rascal who made his money by Dust.’

            ‘Red velveteens and a bell?’ the gloomy Eugene inquires.

            ‘And a ladder and basket if you like. By which means, or by others, he grew rich as a Dust Contractor, and lived in a hollow in a hilly country entirely composed of Dust. On his own small estate the growling old vagabond threw up

            his own mountain range, like an old volcano, and its geological formation was Dust. Coal-dust, vegetable-dust, bone-dust, crockery dust, rough dust and sifted

            dust,—all manner of Dust.’

            A passing remembrance of Mrs Veneering, here induces Mortimer to address

            his next half-dozen words to her; after which he wanders away again, tries

            Twemlow and finds he doesn’t answer, ultimately takes up with the Buffers who

            receive him enthusiastically.

            ‘The moral being—I believe that’s the right expression—of this exemplary

            person, derived its highest gratification from anathematizing his nearest relations

            and turning them out of doors. Having begun (as was natural) by rendering these

            attentions to the wife of his bosom, he next found himself at leisure to bestow a

            similar recognition on the claims of his daughter. He chose a husband for her, entirely to his own satisfaction and not in the least to hers, and proceeded to settle upon her, as her marriage portion, I don’t know how much Dust, but

            something immense. At this stage of the affair the poor girl respectfully

            intimated that she was secretly engaged to that popular character whom the

            novelists and versifiers call Another, and that such a marriage would make Dust

            of her heart and Dust of her life—in short, would set her up, on a very extensive

            scale, in her father’s business. Immediately, the venerable parent—on a cold

            winter’s night, it is said—anathematized and turned her out.’

            Here, the Analytical Chemist (who has evidently formed a very low opinion

            of Mortimer’s story) concedes a little claret to the Buffers; who, again

            mysteriously moved all four at once, screw it slowly into themselves with a

            peculiar twist of enjoyment, as they cry in chorus, ‘Pray go on.’

            ‘The pecuniary resources of Another were, as they usually are, of a very

            limited nature. I believe I am not using too strong an expression when I say that

            Another was hard up. However, he married the young lady, and they lived in a

            humble dwelling, probably possessing a porch ornamented with honeysuckle and

            woodbine twining, until she died. I must refer you to the Registrar of the District

            in which the humble dwelling was situated, for the certified cause of death; but

            early sorrow and anxiety may have had to do with it, though they may not appear

            in the ruled pages and printed forms. Indisputably this was the case with

            Another, for he was so cut up by the loss of his young wife that if he outlived her

            a year it was as much as he did.’

            There is that in the indolent Mortimer, which seems to hint that if good society

            might on any account allow itself to be impressible, he, one of good society, might have the weakness to be impressed by what he here relates. It is hidden with great pains, but it is in him. The gloomy Eugene too, is not without some

            kindred touch; for, when that appalling Lady Tippins declares that if Another had

            survived, he should have gone down at the head of her list of lovers—and also

            when the mature young lady shrugs her epaulettes, and laughs at some private

            and confidential comment from the mature young gentleman—his gloom

            deepens to that degree that he trifles quite ferociously with his dessert-knife.

            Mortimer proceeds.

            ‘We must now return, as novelists say, and as we all wish they wouldn’t, to the

            man from Somewhere. Being a boy of fourteen, cheaply educated at Brussels

            when his sister’s expulsion befell, it was some little time before he heard of it—

            probably from herself, for the mother was dead; but that I don’t know. Instantly,

            he absconded, and came over here. He must have been a boy of spirit and

            resource, to get here on a stopped allowance of five sous a week; but he did it

            somehow, and he burst in on his father, and pleaded his sister’s cause. Venerable

            parent promptly resorts to anathematization, and turns him out. Shocked and

            terrified boy takes flight, seeks his fortune, gets aboard ship, ultimately turns up

            on dry land among the Cape wine: small proprietor, farmer, grower—whatever

            you like to call it.’

            At this juncture, shuffling is heard in the hall, and tapping is heard at the dining-room door. Analytical Chemist goes to the door, confers angrily with

            unseen tapper, appears to become mollified by descrying reason in the tapping,

            and goes out.

            ‘So he was discovered, only the other day, after having been expatriated about

            fourteen years.’

            A Buffer, suddenly astounding the other three, by detaching himself, and

            asserting individuality, inquires: ‘How discovered, and why?’

            ‘Ah! To be sure. Thank you for reminding me. Venerable parent dies.’

            Same Buffer, emboldened by success, says: ‘When?’

            ‘The other day. Ten or twelve months ago.’

            Same Buffer inquires with smartness, ‘What of?’ But herein perishes a

            melancholy example; being regarded by the three other Buffers with a stony

            stare, and attracting no further attention from any mortal.

            ‘Venerable parent,’ Mortimer repeats with a passing remembrance that there is

            a Veneering at table, and for the first time addressing him—‘dies.’

            The gratified Veneering repeats, gravely, ‘dies’; and folds his arms, and composes his brow to hear it out in a judicial manner, when he finds himself again deserted in the bleak world.

            ‘His will is found,’ said Mortimer, catching Mrs Podsnap’s rocking-horse’s

            eye. ‘It is dated very soon after the son’s flight. It leaves the lowest of the range

            of dust-mountains, with some sort of a dwelling-house at its foot, to an old servant who is sole executor, and all the rest of the property—which is very considerable—to the son. He directs himself to be buried with certain eccentric

            ceremonies and precautions against his coming to life, with which I need not

            bore you, and that’s all—except—’ and this ends the story.

            The Analytical Chemist returning, everybody looks at him. Not because

            anybody wants to see him, but because of that subtle influence in nature which

            impels humanity to embrace the slightest opportunity of looking at anything,

            rather than the person who addresses it.

            ‘—Except that the son’s inheriting is made conditional on his marrying a girl,

            who at the date of the will, was a child of four or five years old, and who is now

            a marriageable young woman. Advertisement and inquiry discovered the son in

            the man from Somewhere, and at the present moment, he is on his way home

            from there—no doubt, in a state of great astonishment—to succeed to a very

            large fortune, and to take a wife.’

            Mrs Podsnap inquires whether the young person is a young person of personal

            charms? Mortimer is unable to report.

            Mr Podsnap inquires what would become of the very large fortune, in the

            event of the marriage condition not being fulfilled? Mortimer replies, that by special testamentary clause it would then go to the old servant above mentioned,

            passing over and excluding the son; also, that if the son had not been living, the

            same old servant would have been sole residuary legatee.

            Mrs Veneering has just succeeded in waking Lady Tippins from a snore, by

            dexterously shunting a train of plates and dishes at her knuckles across the table;

            when everybody but Mortimer himself becomes aware that the Analytical

            Chemist is, in a ghostly manner, offering him a folded paper. Curiosity detains Mrs Veneering a few moments.

            Mortimer, in spite of all the arts of the chemist, placidly refreshes himself with

            a glass of Madeira, and remains unconscious of the Document which engrosses

            the general attention, until Lady Tippins (who has a habit of waking totally

            insensible), having remembered where she is, and recovered a perception of

            surrounding objects, says: ‘Falser man than Don Juan; why don’t you take the

            note from the commendatore?’ Upon which, the chemist advances it under the nose of Mortimer, who looks round at him, and says:

            ‘What’s this?’

            Analytical Chemist bends and whispers.

            ‘ Who?’ Says Mortimer.

            Analytical Chemist again bends and whispers.

            Mortimer stares at him, and unfolds the paper. Reads it, reads it twice, turns it

            over to look at the blank outside, reads it a third time.

            ‘This arrives in an extraordinarily opportune manner,’ says Mortimer then,

            looking with an altered face round the table: ‘this is the conclusion of the story

            of the identical man.’

            ‘Already married?’ one guesses.

            ‘Declines to marry?’ another guesses.

            ‘Codicil among the dust?’ another guesses.

            ‘Why, no,’ says Mortimer; ‘remarkable thing, you are all wrong. The story is

            completer and rather more exciting than I supposed. Man’s drowned!’

            Chapter 3

            ANOTHER MAN

            As the disappearing skirts of the ladies ascended the Veneering staircase,

            Mortimer, following them forth from the dining-room, turned into a library of

            bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally gilded, and requested to see the

            messenger who had brought the paper. He was a boy of about fifteen. Mortimer

            looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the bran-new pilgrims on the wall, going to Canterbury in more gold frame than procession, and more carving than

            country.

            ‘Whose writing is this?’

            ‘Mine, sir.’

            ‘Who told you to write it?’

            ‘My father, Jesse Hexam.’

            ‘Is it he who found the body?’

            ‘Yes, sir.’

            ‘What is your father?’

            The boy hesitated, looked reproachfully at the pilgrims as if they had involved

            him in a little difficulty, then said, folding a plait in the right leg of his trousers,

            ‘He gets his living along-shore.’

            ‘Is it far?’

            ‘Is which far?’ asked the boy, upon his guard, and again upon the road to

            Canterbury.

            ‘To your father’s?’

            ‘It’s a goodish stretch, sir. I come up in a cab, and the cab’s waiting to be paid.

            We could go back in it before you paid it, if you liked. I went first to your office,

            according to the direction of the papers found in the pockets, and there I see nobody but a chap of about my age who sent me on here.’

            There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted savagery, and

            uncompleted civilization. His voice was hoarse and coarse, and his face was

            coarse, and his stunted figure was coarse; but he was cleaner than other boys of

            his type; and his writing, though large and round, was good; and he glanced at

            the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding.

            No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one

            who cannot.

            ‘Were any means taken, do you know, boy, to ascertain if it was possible to restore life?’ Mortimer inquired, as he sought for his hat.

            ‘You wouldn’t ask, sir, if you knew his state. Pharaoh’s multitude that were

            drowned in the Red Sea, ain’t more beyond restoring to life. If Lazarus was only

            half as far gone, that was the greatest of all the miracles.’

            ‘Halloa!’ cried Mortimer, turning round with his hat upon his head, ‘you seem

            to be at home in the Red Sea, my young friend?’

            ‘Read of it with teacher at the school,’ said the boy.

            ‘And Lazarus?’

            ‘Yes, and him too. But don’t you tell my father! We should have no peace in

            our place, if that got touched upon. It’s my sister’s contriving.’

            ‘You seem to have a good sister.’

            ‘She ain’t half bad,’ said the boy; ‘but if she knows her letters it’s the most she

            does—and them I learned her.’

            The gloomy Eugene, with his hands in his pockets, had strolled in and assisted

            at the latter part of the dialogue; when the boy spoke these words slightingly of

            his sister, he took him roughly enough by the chin, and turned up his face to look

            at it.

            ‘Well, I’m sure, sir!’ said the boy, resisting; ‘I hope you’ll know me again.’

            Eugene vouchsafed no answer; but made the proposal to Mortimer, ‘I’ll go

            with you, if you like?’ So, they all three went away together in the vehicle that

            had brought the boy; the two friends (once boys together at a public school) inside, smoking cigars; the messenger on the box beside the driver.

            ‘Let me see,’ said Mortimer, as they went along; ‘I have been, Eugene, upon

            the honourable roll of solicitors of the High Court of Chancery, and attorneys at

            Common Law, five years; and—except gratuitously taking instructions, on an

            average once a fortnight, for the will of Lady Tippins who has nothing to leave

            —I have had no scrap of business but this romantic business.’

            ‘And I,’ said Eugene, ‘have been “called” seven years, and have had no

            business at all, and never shall have any. And if I had, I shouldn’t know how to

            do it.’

            ‘I am far from being clear as to the last particular,’ returned Mortimer, with great composure, ‘that I have much advantage over you.’

            ‘I hate,’ said Eugene, putting his legs up on the opposite seat, ‘I hate my profession.’

            ‘Shall I incommode you, if I put mine up too?’ returned Mortimer. ‘Thank

            you. I hate mine.’

            ‘It was forced upon me,’ said the gloomy Eugene, ‘because it was understood

            that we wanted a barrister in the family. We have got a precious one.’

            ‘It was forced upon me,’ said Mortimer, ‘because it was understood that we

            wanted a solicitor in the family. And we have got a precious one.’

            ‘There are four of us, with our names painted on a door-post in right of one black hole called a set of chambers,’ said Eugene; ‘and each of us has the fourth

            of a clerk—Cassim Baba, in the robber’s cave—and Cassim is the only

            respectable member of the party.’

            ‘I am one by myself, one,’ said Mortimer, ‘high up an awful staircase

            commanding a burial-ground, and I have a whole clerk to myself, and he has

            nothing to do but look at the burial-ground, and what he will turn out when arrived at maturity, I cannot conceive. Whether, in that shabby rook’s nest, he is

            always plotting wisdom, or plotting murder; whether he will grow up, after so much solitary brooding, to enlighten his fellow-creatures, or to poison them; is

            the only speck of interest that presents itself to my professional view. Will you

            give me a light? Thank you.’

            ‘Then idiots talk,’ said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking with

            his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, ‘of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy.

            It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I

            to rush out into the street, collar the first man of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake him, and say, “Go to law upon the spot, you dog, and retain me, or

            I’ll be the death of you”? Yet that would be energy.’

            ‘Precisely my view of the case, Eugene. But show me a good opportunity,

            show me something really worth being energetic about, and I’ll show you

            energy.’

            ‘And so will I,’ said Eugene.

            And it is likely enough that ten thousand other young men, within the limits of

            the London Post-office town delivery, made the same hopeful remark in the

            course of the same evening.

            The wheels rolled on, and rolled down by the Monument and by the Tower,

            and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe; down by where

            accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds, like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced it over the

            bank and sunk it in the river. In and out among vessels that seemed to have got

            ashore, and houses that seemed to have got afloat—among bow-splits staring

            into windows, and windows staring into ships—the wheels rolled on, until they

            stopped at a dark corner, river-washed and otherwise not washed at all, where the boy alighted and opened the door.

            ‘You must walk the rest, sir; it’s not many yards.’ He spoke in the singular number, to the express exclusion of Eugene.

            ‘This is a confoundedly out-of-the-way place,’ said Mortimer, slipping over

            the stones and refuse on the shore, as the boy turned the corner sharp.

            ‘Here’s my father’s, sir; where the light is.’

            The low building had the look of having once been a mill. There was a rotten

            wart of wood upon its forehead that seemed to indicate where the sails had been,

            but the whole was very indistinctly seen in the obscurity of the night. The boy lifted the latch of the door, and they passed at once into a low circular room, where a man stood before a red fire, looking down into it, and a girl sat engaged

            in needlework. The fire was in a rusty brazier, not fitted to the hearth; and a common lamp, shaped like a hyacinth-root, smoked and flared in the neck of a

            stone bottle on the table. There was a wooden bunk or berth in a corner, and in

            another corner a wooden stair leading above—so clumsy and steep that it was

            little better than a ladder. Two or three old sculls and oars stood against the wall,

            and against another part of the wall was a small dresser, making a spare show of

            the commonest articles of crockery and cooking-vessels. The roof of the room

            was not plastered, but was formed of the flooring of the room above. This, being

            very old, knotted, seamed, and beamed, gave a lowering aspect to the chamber;

            and roof, and walls, and floor, alike abounding in old smears of flour, red-lead (or some such stain which it had probably acquired in warehousing), and damp,

            alike had a look of decomposition.

            ‘The gentleman, father.’

            The figure at the red fire turned, raised its ruffled head, and looked like a bird

            of prey.

            ‘You’re Mortimer Lightwood Esquire; are you, sir?’

            ‘Mortimer Lightwood is my name. What you found,’ said Mortimer, glancing

            rather shrinkingly towards the bunk; ‘is it here?’

            ‘’Tain’t not to say here, but it’s close by. I do everything reg’lar. I’ve giv’

            notice of the circumstarnce to the police, and the police have took possession of

            it. No time ain’t been lost, on any hand. The police have put into print already, and here’s what the print says of it.’

            Taking up the bottle with the lamp in it, he held it near a paper on the wall, with the police heading, BODY FOUND. The two friends read the handbill as it

            stuck against the wall, and Gaffer read them as he held the light.

            ‘Only papers on the unfortunate man, I see,’ said Lightwood, glancing from

            the description of what was found, to the finder.

            ‘Only papers.’

            Here the girl arose with her work in her hand, and went out at the door.

            ‘No money,’ pursued Mortimer; ‘but threepence in one of the skirt-pockets.’

            ‘Three. Penny. Pieces,’ said Gaffer Hexam, in as many sentences.

            ‘The trousers pockets empty, and turned inside out.’

            Gaffer Hexam nodded. ‘But that’s common. Whether it’s the wash of the tide

            or no, I can’t say. Now, here,’ moving the light to another similar placard, ‘ his pockets was found empty, and turned inside out. And here,’ moving the light to

            another, ‘ her pocket was found empty, and turned inside out. And so was this one’s. And so was that one’s. I can’t read, nor I don’t want to it, for I know ‘em

            by their places on the wall. This one was a sailor, with two anchors and a flag and G. F. T. on his arm. Look and see if he warn’t.’

            ‘Quite right.’

            ‘This one was the young woman in grey boots, and her linen marked with a

            cross. Look and see if she warn’t.’

            ‘Quite right.’

            ‘This is him as had a nasty cut over the eye. This is them two young sisters what tied themselves together with a handkecher. This the drunken old chap, in a

            pair of list slippers and a nightcap, wot had offered—it afterwards come out—to

            make a hole in the water for a quartern of rum stood aforehand, and kept to his

            word for the first and last time in his life. They pretty well papers the room, you

            see; but I know ‘em all. I’m scholar enough!’

            He waved the light over the whole, as if to typify the light of his scholarly intelligence, and then put it down on the table and stood behind it looking

            intently at his visitors. He had the special peculiarity of some birds of prey, that

            when he knitted his brow, his ruffled crest stood highest.

            ‘You did not find all these yourself; did you?’ asked Eugene.

            To which the bird of prey slowly rejoined, ‘And what might your name be,

            now?’

            ‘This is my friend,’ Mortimer Lightwood interposed; ‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’

            ‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn, is it? And what might Mr Eugene Wrayburn have

            asked of me?’

            ‘I asked you, simply, if you found all these yourself?’

            ‘I answer you, simply, most on ‘em.’

            ‘Do you suppose there has been much violence and robbery, beforehand,

            among these cases?’

            ‘I don’t suppose at all about it,’ returned Gaffer. ‘I ain’t one of the supposing

            sort. If you’d got your living to haul out of the river every day of your life, you

            mightn’t be much given to supposing. Am I to show the way?’

            As he opened the door, in pursuance of a nod from Lightwood, an extremely

            pale and disturbed face appeared in the doorway—the face of a man much

            agitated.

            ‘A body missing?’ asked Gaffer Hexam, stopping short; ‘or a body found?

            Which?’

            ‘I am lost!’ replied the man, in a hurried and an eager manner.

            ‘Lost?’

            ‘I—I—am a stranger, and don’t know the way. I—I—want to find the place

            where I can see what is described here. It is possible I may know it.’ He was panting, and could hardly speak; but, he showed a copy of the newly-printed bill

            that was still wet upon the wall. Perhaps its newness, or perhaps the accuracy of

            his observation of its general look, guided Gaffer to a ready conclusion.

            ‘This gentleman, Mr Lightwood, is on that business.’

            ‘Mr Lightwood?’

            During a pause, Mortimer and the stranger confronted each other. Neither

            knew the other.

            ‘I think, sir,’ said Mortimer, breaking the awkward silence with his airy self-

            possession, ‘that you did me the honour to mention my name?’

            ‘I repeated it, after this man.’

            ‘You said you were a stranger in London?’

            ‘An utter stranger.’

            ‘Are you seeking a Mr Harmon?’

            ‘No.’

            ‘Then I believe I can assure you that you are on a fruitless errand, and will not find what you fear to find. Will you come with us?’

            A little winding through some muddy alleys that might have been deposited

            by the last ill-savoured tide, brought them to the wicket-gate and bright lamp of

            a Police Station; where they found the Night-Inspector, with a pen and ink, and

            ruler, posting up his books in a whitewashed office, as studiously as if he were in

            a monastery on top of a mountain, and no howling fury of a drunken woman

            were banging herself against a cell-door in the back-yard at his elbow. With the

            same air of a recluse much given to study, he desisted from his books to bestow

            a distrustful nod of recognition upon Gaffer, plainly importing, ‘Ah! we know all

            about you, and you’ll overdo it some day;’ and to inform Mr Mortimer

            Lightwood and friends, that he would attend them immediately. Then, he

            finished ruling the work he had in hand (it might have been illuminating a

            missal, he was so calm), in a very neat and methodical manner, showing not the

            slightest consciousness of the woman who was banging herself with increased

            violence, and shrieking most terrifically for some other woman’s liver.

            ‘A bull’s-eye,’ said the Night-Inspector, taking up his keys. Which a

            deferential satellite produced. ‘Now, gentlemen.’

            With one of his keys, he opened a cool grot at the end of the yard, and they all

            went in. They quickly came out again, no one speaking but Eugene: who

            remarked to Mortimer, in a whisper, ‘Not much worse than Lady Tippins.’

            So, back to the whitewashed library of the monastery—with that liver still in

            shrieking requisition, as it had been loudly, while they looked at the silent sight

            they came to see—and there through the merits of the case as summed up by the

            Abbot. No clue to how body came into river. Very often was no clue. Too late to

            know for certain, whether injuries received before or after death; one excellent surgical opinion said, before; other excellent surgical opinion said, after. Steward

            of ship in which gentleman came home passenger, had been round to view, and

            could swear to identity. Likewise could swear to clothes. And then, you see, you

            had the papers, too. How was it he had totally disappeared on leaving ship, ‘till

            found in river? Well! Probably had been upon some little game. Probably

            thought it a harmless game, wasn’t up to things, and it turned out a fatal game.

            Inquest to-morrow, and no doubt open verdict.

            ‘It appears to have knocked your friend over—knocked him completely off his

            legs,’ Mr Inspector remarked, when he had finished his summing up. ‘It has

            given him a bad turn to be sure!’ This was said in a very low voice, and with a

            searching look (not the first he had cast) at the stranger.

            Mr Lightwood explained that it was no friend of his.

            ‘Indeed?’ said Mr Inspector, with an attentive ear; ‘where did you pick him

            up?’

            Mr Lightwood explained further.

            Mr Inspector had delivered his summing up, and had added these words, with

            his elbows leaning on his desk, and the fingers and thumb of his right hand, fitting themselves to the fingers and thumb of his left. Mr Inspector moved

            nothing but his eyes, as he now added, raising his voice:

            ‘Turned you faint, sir! Seems you’re not accustomed to this kind of work?’

            The stranger, who was leaning against the chimneypiece with drooping head,

            looked round and answered, ‘No. It’s a horrible sight!’

            ‘You expected to identify, I am told, sir?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘ Have you identified?’

            ‘No. It’s a horrible sight. O! a horrible, horrible sight!’

            ‘Who did you think it might have been?’ asked Mr Inspector. ‘Give us a

            description, sir. Perhaps we can help you.’

            ‘No, no,’ said the stranger; ‘it would be quite useless. Good-night.’

            Mr Inspector had not moved, and had given no order; but, the satellite slipped

            his back against the wicket, and laid his left arm along the top of it, and with his

            right hand turned the bull’s-eye he had taken from his chief—in quite a casual manner—towards the stranger.

            ‘You missed a friend, you know; or you missed a foe, you know; or you

            wouldn’t have come here, you know. Well, then; ain’t it reasonable to ask, who

            was it?’ Thus, Mr Inspector.

            ‘You must excuse my telling you. No class of man can understand better than

            you, that families may not choose to publish their disagreements and

            misfortunes, except on the last necessity. I do not dispute that you discharge your

            duty in asking me the question; you will not dispute my right to withhold the answer. Good-night.’

            Again he turned towards the wicket, where the satellite, with his eye upon his

            chief, remained a dumb statue.

            ‘At least,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘you will not object to leave me your card, sir?’

            ‘I should not object, if I had one; but I have not.’ He reddened and was much

            confused as he gave the answer.

            ‘At least,’ said Mr Inspector, with no change of voice or manner, ‘you will not object to write down your name and address?’

            ‘Not at all.’

            Mr Inspector dipped a pen in his inkstand, and deftly laid it on a piece of paper close beside him; then resumed his former attitude. The stranger stepped

            up to the desk, and wrote in a rather tremulous hand—Mr Inspector taking

            sidelong note of every hair of his head when it was bent down for the purpose

            —‘Mr Julius Handford, Exchequer Coffee House, Palace Yard, Westminster.’

            ‘Staying there, I presume, sir?’

            ‘Staying there.’

            ‘Consequently, from the country?’

            ‘Eh? Yes—from the country.’

            ‘Good-night, sir.’

            The satellite removed his arm and opened the wicket, and Mr Julius Handford

            went out.

            ‘Reserve!’ said Mr Inspector. ‘Take care of this piece of paper, keep him in view without giving offence, ascertain that he is staying there, and find out anything you can about him.’

            The satellite was gone; and Mr Inspector, becoming once again the quiet

            Abbot of that Monastery, dipped his pen in his ink and resumed his books. The

            two friends who had watched him, more amused by the professional manner

            than suspicious of Mr Julius Handford, inquired before taking their departure too

            whether he believed there was anything that really looked bad here?

            The Abbot replied with reticence, couldn’t say. If a murder, anybody might

            have done it. Burglary or pocket-picking wanted ‘prenticeship. Not so, murder.

            We were all of us up to that. Had seen scores of people come to identify, and never saw one person struck in that particular way. Might, however, have been

            Stomach and not Mind. If so, rum stomach. But to be sure there were rum

            everythings. Pity there was not a word of truth in that superstition about bodies

            bleeding when touched by the hand of the right person; you never got a sign out

            of bodies. You got row enough out of such as her—she was good for all night now (referring here to the banging demands for the liver), ‘but you got nothing

            out of bodies if it was ever so.’

            There being nothing more to be done until the Inquest was held next day, the

            friends went away together, and Gaffer Hexam and his son went their separate

            way. But, arriving at the last corner, Gaffer bade his boy go home while he

            turned into a red-curtained tavern, that stood dropsically bulging over the causeway, ‘for a half-a-pint.’

            The boy lifted the latch he had lifted before, and found his sister again seated

            before the fire at her work. Who raised her head upon his coming in and asking:

            ‘Where did you go, Liz?’

            ‘I went out in the dark.’

            ‘There was no necessity for that. It was all right enough.’

            ‘One of the gentlemen, the one who didn’t speak while I was there, looked

            hard at me. And I was afraid he might know what my face meant. But there!

            Don’t mind me, Charley! I was all in a tremble of another sort when you owned

            to father you could write a little.’

            ‘Ah! But I made believe I wrote so badly, as that it was odds if any one could

            read it. And when I wrote slowest and smeared but with my finger most, father

            was best pleased, as he stood looking over me.’

            The girl put aside her work, and drawing her seat close to his seat by the fire,

            laid her arm gently on his shoulder.

            ‘You’ll make the most of your time, Charley; won’t you?’

            ‘Won’t I? Come! I like that. Don’t I?’

            ‘Yes, Charley, yes. You work hard at your learning, I know. And I work a

            little, Charley, and plan and contrive a little (wake out of my sleep contriving sometimes), how to get together a shilling now, and a shilling then, that shall make father believe you are beginning to earn a stray living along shore.’

            ‘You are father’s favourite, and can make him believe anything.’

            ‘I wish I could, Charley! For if I could make him believe that learning was a

            good thing, and that we might lead better lives, I should be a’most content to die.’

            ‘Don’t talk stuff about dying, Liz.’

            She placed her hands in one another on his shoulder, and laying her rich

            brown cheek against them as she looked down at the fire, went on thoughtfully:

            ‘Of an evening, Charley, when you are at the school, and father’s—’

            ‘At the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters,’ the boy struck in, with a backward nod

            of his head towards the public-house.

            ‘Yes. Then as I sit a-looking at the fire, I seem to see in the burning coal—like

            where that glow is now—’

            ‘That’s gas, that is,’ said the boy, ‘coming out of a bit of a forest that’s been

            under the mud that was under the water in the days of Noah’s Ark. Look here!

            When I take the poker—so—and give it a dig—’

            ‘Don’t disturb it, Charley, or it’ll be all in a blaze. It’s that dull glow near it,

            coming and going, that I mean. When I look at it of an evening, it comes like pictures to me, Charley.’

            ‘Show us a picture,’ said the boy. ‘Tell us where to look.’

            ‘Ah! It wants my eyes, Charley.’

            ‘Cut away then, and tell us what your eyes make of it.’

            ‘Why, there are you and me, Charley, when you were quite a baby that never

            knew a mother—’

            ‘Don’t go saying I never knew a mother,’ interposed the boy, ‘for I knew a

            little sister that was sister and mother both.’

            The girl laughed delightedly, and her eyes filled with pleasant tears, as he put

            both his arms round her waist and so held her.

            ‘There are you and me, Charley, when father was away at work and locked us

            out, for fear we should set ourselves afire or fall out of window, sitting on the door-sill, sitting on other door-steps, sitting on the bank of the river, wandering

            about to get through the time. You are rather heavy to carry, Charley, and I am

            often obliged to rest. Sometimes we are sleepy and fall asleep together in a corner, sometimes we are very hungry, sometimes we are a little frightened, but

            what is oftenest hard upon us is the cold. You remember, Charley?’

            ‘I remember,’ said the boy, pressing her to him twice or thrice, ‘that I snuggled

            under a little shawl, and it was warm there.’

            ‘Sometimes it rains, and we creep under a boat or the like of that: sometimes

            it’s dark, and we get among the gaslights, sitting watching the people as they go

            along the streets. At last, up comes father and takes us home. And home seems

            such a shelter after out of doors! And father pulls my shoes off, and dries my feet

            at the fire, and has me to sit by him while he smokes his pipe long after you are

            abed, and I notice that father’s is a large hand but never a heavy one when it touches me, and that father’s is a rough voice but never an angry one when it speaks to me. So, I grow up, and little by little father trusts me, and makes me

            his companion, and, let him be put out as he may, never once strikes me.’

            The listening boy gave a grunt here, as much as to say ‘But he strikes me though!’

            ‘Those are some of the pictures of what is past, Charley.’

            ‘Cut away again,’ said the boy, ‘and give us a fortune-telling one; a future

            one.’

            ‘Well! There am I, continuing with father and holding to father, because father

            loves me and I love father. I can’t so much as read a book, because, if I had learned, father would have thought I was deserting him, and I should have lost

            my influence. I have not the influence I want to have, I cannot stop some

            dreadful things I try to stop, but I go on in the hope and trust that the time will

            come. In the meanwhile I know that I am in some things a stay to father, and that

            if I was not faithful to him he would—in revenge-like, or in disappointment, or

            both—go wild and bad.’

            ‘Give us a touch of the fortune-telling pictures about me.’

            ‘I was passing on to them, Charley,’ said the girl, who had not changed her attitude since she began, and who now mournfully shook her head; ‘the others

            were all leading up. There are you—’

            ‘Where am I, Liz?’

            ‘Still in the hollow down by the flare.’

            ‘There seems to be the deuce-and-all in the hollow down by the flare,’ said the

            boy, glancing from her eyes to the brazier, which had a grisly skeleton look on

            its long thin legs.

            ‘There are you, Charley, working your way, in secret from father, at the

            school; and you get prizes; and you go on better and better; and you come to be a

            —what was it you called it when you told me about that?’

            ‘Ha, ha! Fortune-telling not know the name!’ cried the boy, seeming to be

            rather relieved by this default on the part of the hollow down by the flare. ‘Pupil-

            teacher.’

            ‘You come to be a pupil-teacher, and you still go on better and better, and you

            rise to be a master full of learning and respect. But the secret has come to father’s knowledge long before, and it has divided you from father, and from

            me.’

            ‘No it hasn’t!’

            ‘Yes it has, Charley. I see, as plain as plain can be, that your way is not ours,

            and that even if father could be got to forgive your taking it (which he never could be), that way of yours would be darkened by our way. But I see too,

            Charley—’

            ‘Still as plain as plain can be, Liz?’ asked the boy playfully.

            ‘Ah! Still. That it is a great work to have cut you away from father’s life, and

            to have made a new and good beginning. So there am I, Charley, left alone with

            father, keeping him as straight as I can, watching for more influence than I have, and hoping that through some fortunate chance, or when he is ill, or when—I

            don’t know what—I may turn him to wish to do better things.’

            ‘You said you couldn’t read a book, Lizzie. Your library of books is the

            hollow down by the flare, I think.’

            ‘I should be very glad to be able to read real books. I feel my want of learning

            very much, Charley. But I should feel it much more, if I didn’t know it to be a tie

            between me and father.—Hark! Father’s tread!’

            It being now past midnight, the bird of prey went straight to roost. At mid-day

            following he reappeared at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, in the character, not

            new to him, of a witness before a Coroner’s Jury.

            Mr Mortimer Lightwood, besides sustaining the character of one of the

            witnesses, doubled the part with that of the eminent solicitor who watched the proceedings on behalf of the representatives of the deceased, as was duly

            recorded in the newspapers. Mr Inspector watched the proceedings too, and kept

            his watching closely to himself. Mr Julius Handford having given his right

            address, and being reported in solvent circumstances as to his bill, though

            nothing more was known of him at his hotel except that his way of life was very

            retired, had no summons to appear, and was merely present in the shades of Mr

            Inspector’s mind.

            The case was made interesting to the public, by Mr Mortimer Lightwood’s

            evidence touching the circumstances under which the deceased, Mr John

            Harmon, had returned to England; exclusive private proprietorship in which

            circumstances was set up at dinner-tables for several days, by Veneering,

            Twemlow, Podsnap, and all the Buffers: who all related them irreconcilably with

            one another, and contradicted themselves. It was also made interesting by the

            testimony of Job Potterson, the ship’s steward, and one Mr Jacob Kibble, a

            fellow-passenger, that the deceased Mr John Harmon did bring over, in a hand-

            valise with which he did disembark, the sum realized by the forced sale of his little landed property, and that the sum exceeded, in ready money, seven hundred

            pounds. It was further made interesting, by the remarkable experiences of Jesse

            Hexam in having rescued from the Thames so many dead bodies, and for whose

            behoof a rapturous admirer subscribing himself ‘A friend to Burial’ (perhaps an

            undertaker), sent eighteen postage stamps, and five ‘Now Sir’s to the editor of the Times.

            Upon the evidence adduced before them, the Jury found, That the body of Mr

            John Harmon had been discovered floating in the Thames, in an advanced state

            of decay, and much injured; and that the said Mr John Harmon had come by his death under highly suspicious circumstances, though by whose act or in what

            precise manner there was no evidence before this Jury to show. And they

            appended to their verdict, a recommendation to the Home Office (which Mr

            Inspector appeared to think highly sensible), to offer a reward for the solution of

            the mystery. Within eight-and-forty hours, a reward of One Hundred Pounds was

            proclaimed, together with a free pardon to any person or persons not the actual

            perpetrator or perpetrators, and so forth in due form.

            This Proclamation rendered Mr Inspector additionally studious, and caused

            him to stand meditating on river-stairs and causeways, and to go lurking about in

            boats, putting this and that together. But, according to the success with which you put this and that together, you get a woman and a fish apart, or a Mermaid in

            combination. And Mr Inspector could turn out nothing better than a Mermaid,

            which no Judge and Jury would believe in.

            Thus, like the tides on which it had been borne to the knowledge of men, the

            Harmon Murder—as it came to be popularly called—went up and down, and

            ebbed and flowed, now in the town, now in the country, now among palaces,

            now among hovels, now among lords and ladies and gentlefolks, now among

            labourers and hammerers and ballast-heavers, until at last, after a long interval of

            slack water it got out to sea and drifted away.

            Chapter 4

            THE R. WILFER FAMILY

            Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather a grand sound, suggesting on first

            acquaintance brasses in country churches, scrolls in stained-glass windows, and

            generally the De Wilfers who came over with the Conqueror. For, it is a

            remarkable fact in genealogy that no De Any ones ever came over with Anybody

            else.

            But, the Reginald Wilfer family were of such commonplace extraction and

            pursuits that their forefathers had for generations modestly subsisted on the

            Docks, the Excise Office, and the Custom House, and the existing R. Wilfer was

            a poor clerk. So poor a clerk, though having a limited salary and an unlimited family, that he had never yet attained the modest object of his ambition: which

            was, to wear a complete new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, at one time.

            His black hat was brown before he could afford a coat, his pantaloons were

            white at the seams and knees before he could buy a pair of boots, his boots had

            worn out before he could treat himself to new pantaloons, and, by the time he worked round to the hat again, that shining modern article roofed-in an ancient

            ruin of various periods.

            If the conventional Cherub could ever grow up and be clothed, he might be

            photographed as a portrait of Wilfer. His chubby, smooth, innocent appearance

            was a reason for his being always treated with condescension when he was not

            put down. A stranger entering his own poor house at about ten o’clock P.M.

            might have been surprised to find him sitting up to supper. So boyish was he in

            his curves and proportions, that his old schoolmaster meeting him in Cheapside,

            might have been unable to withstand the temptation of caning him on the spot. In

            short, he was the conventional cherub, after the supposititious shoot just

            mentioned, rather grey, with signs of care on his expression, and in decidedly insolvent circumstances.

            He was shy, and unwilling to own to the name of Reginald, as being too

            aspiring and self-assertive a name. In his signature he used only the initial R., and imparted what it really stood for, to none but chosen friends, under the seal

            of confidence. Out of this, the facetious habit had arisen in the neighbourhood surrounding Mincing Lane of making christian names for him of adjectives and

            participles beginning with R. Some of these were more or less appropriate: as Rusty, Retiring, Ruddy, Round, Ripe, Ridiculous, Ruminative; others, derived

            their point from their want of application: as Raging, Rattling, Roaring, Raffish.

            But, his popular name was Rumty, which in a moment of inspiration had been

            bestowed upon him by a gentleman of convivial habits connected with the drug-

            markets, as the beginning of a social chorus, his leading part in the execution of

            which had led this gentleman to the Temple of Fame, and of which the whole

            expressive burden ran:

            ‘Rumty iddity, row dow dow,

            Sing toodlely, teedlely, bow wow wow.’

            Thus he was constantly addressed, even in minor notes on business, as ‘Dear

            Rumty’; in answer to which, he sedately signed himself, ‘Yours truly, R. Wilfer.’

            He was clerk in the drug-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles.

            Chicksey and Stobbles, his former masters, had both become absorbed in

            Veneering, once their traveller or commission agent: who had signalized his

            accession to supreme power by bringing into the business a quantity of plate-

            glass window and French-polished mahogany partition, and a gleaming and

            enormous doorplate.

            R. Wilfer locked up his desk one evening, and, putting his bunch of keys in his pocket much as if it were his peg-top, made for home. His home was in the

            Holloway region north of London, and then divided from it by fields and trees.

            Between Battle Bridge and that part of the Holloway district in which he dwelt,

            was a tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and dust was

            heaped by contractors. Skirting the border of this desert, by the way he took, when the light of its kiln-fires made lurid smears on the fog, R. Wilfer sighed and shook his head.

            ‘Ah me!’ said he, ‘what might have been is not what is!’

            With which commentary on human life, indicating an experience of it not

            exclusively his own, he made the best of his way to the end of his journey.

            Mrs Wilfer was, of course, a tall woman and an angular. Her lord being

            cherubic, she was necessarily majestic, according to the principle which

            matrimonially unites contrasts. She was much given to tying up her head in a pocket-handkerchief, knotted under the chin. This head-gear, in conjunction with

            a pair of gloves worn within doors, she seemed to consider as at once a kind of

            armour against misfortune (invariably assuming it when in low spirits or

            difficulties), and as a species of full dress. It was therefore with some sinking of

            the spirit that her husband beheld her thus heroically attired, putting down her

            candle in the little hall, and coming down the doorsteps through the little front court to open the gate for him.

            Something had gone wrong with the house-door, for R. Wilfer stopped on the

            steps, staring at it, and cried:

            ‘Hal-loa?’

            ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘the man came himself with a pair of pincers, and took

            it off, and took it away. He said that as he had no expectation of ever being paid

            for it, and as he had an order for another LADIES’ SCHOOL door-plate, it was

            better (burnished up) for the interests of all parties.’

            ‘Perhaps it was, my dear; what do you think?’

            ‘You are master here, R. W.,’ returned his wife. ‘It is as you think; not as I do.

            Perhaps it might have been better if the man had taken the door too?’

            ‘My dear, we couldn’t have done without the door.’

            ‘Couldn’t we?’

            ‘Why, my dear! Could we?’

            ‘It is as you think, R. W.; not as I do.’ With those submissive words, the dutiful wife preceded him down a few stairs to a little basement front room, half

            kitchen, half parlour, where a girl of about nineteen, with an exceedingly pretty

            figure and face, but with an impatient and petulant expression both in her face and in her shoulders (which in her sex and at her age are very expressive of discontent), sat playing draughts with a younger girl, who was the youngest of the House of Wilfer. Not to encumber this page by telling off the Wilfers in detail and casting them up in the gross, it is enough for the present that the rest

            were what is called ‘out in the world,’ in various ways, and that they were Many.

            So many, that when one of his dutiful children called in to see him, R. Wilfer generally seemed to say to himself, after a little mental arithmetic, ‘Oh! here’s another of ‘em!’ before adding aloud, ‘How de do, John,’ or Susan, as the case

            might be.

            ‘Well Piggywiggies,’ said R. W., ‘how de do to-night? What I was thinking of,

            my dear,’ to Mrs Wilfer already seated in a corner with folded gloves, ‘was, that

            as we have let our first floor so well, and as we have now no place in which you

            could teach pupils even if pupils—’

            ‘The milkman said he knew of two young ladies of the highest respectability

            who were in search of a suitable establishment, and he took a card,’ interposed

            Mrs Wilfer, with severe monotony, as if she were reading an Act of Parliament

            aloud. ‘Tell your father whether it was last Monday, Bella.’

            ‘But we never heard any more of it, ma,’ said Bella, the elder girl.

            ‘In addition to which, my dear,’ her husband urged, ‘if you have no place to

            put two young persons into—’

            ‘Pardon me,’ Mrs Wilfer again interposed; ‘they were not young persons. Two

            young ladies of the highest respectability. Tell your father, Bella, whether the milkman said so.’

            ‘My dear, it is the same thing.’

            ‘No it is not,’ said Mrs Wilfer, with the same impressive monotony. ‘Pardon

            me!’

            ‘I mean, my dear, it is the same thing as to space. As to space. If you have no

            space in which to put two youthful fellow-creatures, however eminently

            respectable, which I do not doubt, where are those youthful fellow-creatures to

            be accommodated? I carry it no further than that. And solely looking at it,’ said

            her husband, making the stipulation at once in a conciliatory, complimentary,

            and argumentative tone—‘as I am sure you will agree, my love—from a fellow-

            creature point of view, my dear.’

            ‘I have nothing more to say,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, with a meek renunciatory

            action of her gloves. ‘It is as you think, R. W.; not as I do.’

            Here, the huffing of Miss Bella and the loss of three of her men at a swoop,

            aggravated by the coronation of an opponent, led to that young lady’s jerking the

            draught-board and pieces off the table: which her sister went down on her knees

            to pick up.

            ‘Poor Bella!’ said Mrs Wilfer.

            ‘And poor Lavinia, perhaps, my dear?’ suggested R. W.

            ‘Pardon me,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘no!’

            It was one of the worthy woman’s specialities that she had an amazing power

            of gratifying her splenetic or worldly-minded humours by extolling her own

            family: which she thus proceeded, in the present case, to do.

            ‘No, R. W. Lavinia has not known the trial that Bella has known. The trial that

            your daughter Bella has undergone, is, perhaps, without a parallel, and has been

            borne, I will say, Nobly. When you see your daughter Bella in her black dress,

            which she alone of all the family wears, and when you remember the

            circumstances which have led to her wearing it, and when you know how those

            circumstances have been sustained, then, R. W., lay your head upon your pillow

            and say, “Poor Lavinia!”’

            Here, Miss Lavinia, from her kneeling situation under the table, put in that she

            didn’t want to be ‘poored by pa’, or anybody else.

            ‘I am sure you do not, my dear,’ returned her mother, ‘for you have a fine brave spirit. And your sister Cecilia has a fine brave spirit of another kind, a spirit of pure devotion, a beau-ti-ful spirit! The self-sacrifice of Cecilia reveals a

            pure and womanly character, very seldom equalled, never surpassed. I have now

            in my pocket a letter from your sister Cecilia, received this morning—received

            three months after her marriage, poor child!—in which she tells me that her

            husband must unexpectedly shelter under their roof his reduced aunt. “But I will

            be true to him, mamma,” she touchingly writes, “I will not leave him, I must not

            forget that he is my husband. Let his aunt come!” If this is not pathetic, if this is

            not woman’s devotion—!’ The good lady waved her gloves in a sense of the

            impossibility of saying more, and tied the pocket-handkerchief over her head in

            a tighter knot under her chin.

            Bella, who was now seated on the rug to warm herself, with her brown eyes

            on the fire and a handful of her brown curls in her mouth, laughed at this, and

            then pouted and half cried.

            ‘I am sure,’ said she, ‘though you have no feeling for me, pa, I am one of the

            most unfortunate girls that ever lived. You know how poor we are’ (it is probable

            he did, having some reason to know it!), ‘and what a glimpse of wealth I had, and how it melted away, and how I am here in this ridiculous mourning—which

            I hate!—a kind of a widow who never was married. And yet you don’t feel for

            me.—Yes you do, yes you do.’

            This abrupt change was occasioned by her father’s face. She stopped to pull

            him down from his chair in an attitude highly favourable to strangulation, and to

            give him a kiss and a pat or two on the cheek.

            ‘But you ought to feel for me, you know, pa.’

            ‘My dear, I do.’

            ‘Yes, and I say you ought to. If they had only left me alone and told me

            nothing about it, it would have mattered much less. But that nasty Mr Lightwood

            feels it his duty, as he says, to write and tell me what is in reserve for me, and

            then I am obliged to get rid of George Sampson.’

            Here, Lavinia, rising to the surface with the last draughtman rescued,

            interposed, ‘You never cared for George Sampson, Bella.’

            ‘And did I say I did, miss?’ Then, pouting again, with the curls in her mouth;

            ‘George Sampson was very fond of me, and admired me very much, and put up

            with everything I did to him.’

            ‘You were rude enough to him,’ Lavinia again interposed.

            ‘And did I say I wasn’t, miss? I am not setting up to be sentimental about George Sampson. I only say George Sampson was better than nothing.’

            ‘You didn’t show him that you thought even that,’ Lavinia again interposed.

            ‘You are a chit and a little idiot,’ returned Bella, ‘or you wouldn’t make such a

            dolly speech. What did you expect me to do? Wait till you are a woman, and don’t talk about what you don’t understand. You only show your ignorance!’

            Then, whimpering again, and at intervals biting the curls, and stopping to look how much was bitten off, ‘It’s a shame! There never was such a hard case! I shouldn’t care so much if it wasn’t so ridiculous. It was ridiculous enough to have a stranger coming over to marry me, whether he liked it or not. It was ridiculous enough to know what an embarrassing meeting it would be, and how

            we never could pretend to have an inclination of our own, either of us. It was ridiculous enough to know I shouldn’t like him—how could I like him, left to him in a will, like a dozen of spoons, with everything cut and dried beforehand,

            like orange chips. Talk of orange flowers indeed! I declare again it’s a shame!

            Those ridiculous points would have been smoothed away by the money, for I

            love money, and want money—want it dreadfully. I hate to be poor, and we are

            degradingly poor, offensively poor, miserably poor, beastly poor. But here I am,

            left with all the ridiculous parts of the situation remaining, and, added to them all, this ridiculous dress! And if the truth was known, when the Harmon murder

            was all over the town, and people were speculating on its being suicide, I dare

            say those impudent wretches at the clubs and places made jokes about the

            miserable creature’s having preferred a watery grave to me. It’s likely enough they took such liberties; I shouldn’t wonder! I declare it’s a very hard case indeed, and I am a most unfortunate girl. The idea of being a kind of a widow,

            and never having been married! And the idea of being as poor as ever after all,

            and going into black, besides, for a man I never saw, and should have hated—as

            far as he was concerned—if I had seen!’

            The young lady’s lamentations were checked at this point by a knuckle,

            knocking at the half-open door of the room. The knuckle had knocked two or

            three times already, but had not been heard.

            ‘Who is it?’ said Mrs Wilfer, in her Act-of-Parliament manner. ‘Enter!’

            A gentleman coming in, Miss Bella, with a short and sharp exclamation,

            scrambled off the hearth-rug and massed the bitten curls together in their right place on her neck.

            ‘The servant girl had her key in the door as I came up, and directed me to this

            room, telling me I was expected. I am afraid I should have asked her to announce me.’

            ‘Pardon me,’ returned Mrs Wilfer. ‘Not at all. Two of my daughters. R. W.,

            this is the gentleman who has taken your first-floor. He was so good as to make

            an appointment for to-night, when you would be at home.’

            A dark gentleman. Thirty at the utmost. An expressive, one might say

            handsome, face. A very bad manner. In the last degree constrained, reserved,

            diffident, troubled. His eyes were on Miss Bella for an instant, and then looked

            at the ground as he addressed the master of the house.

            ‘Seeing that I am quite satisfied, Mr Wilfer, with the rooms, and with their situation, and with their price, I suppose a memorandum between us of two or three lines, and a payment down, will bind the bargain? I wish to send in

            furniture without delay.’

            Two or three times during this short address, the cherub addressed had made

            chubby motions towards a chair. The gentleman now took it, laying a hesitating

            hand on a corner of the table, and with another hesitating hand lifting the crown

            of his hat to his lips, and drawing it before his mouth.

            ‘The gentleman, R. W.,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘proposes to take your apartments by

            the quarter. A quarter’s notice on either side.’

            ‘Shall I mention, sir,’ insinuated the landlord, expecting it to be received as a

            matter of course, ‘the form of a reference?’

            ‘I think,’ returned the gentleman, after a pause, ‘that a reference is not

            necessary; neither, to say the truth, is it convenient, for I am a stranger in London. I require no reference from you, and perhaps, therefore, you will require

            none from me. That will be fair on both sides. Indeed, I show the greater

            confidence of the two, for I will pay in advance whatever you please, and I am

            going to trust my furniture here. Whereas, if you were in embarrassed

            circumstances—this is merely supposititious—’

            Conscience causing R. Wilfer to colour, Mrs Wilfer, from a corner (she always

            got into stately corners) came to the rescue with a deep-toned ‘Per-fectly.’

            ‘—Why then I—might lose it.’

            ‘Well!’ observed R. Wilfer, cheerfully, ‘money and goods are certainly the

            best of references.’

            ‘Do you think they are the best, pa?’ asked Miss Bella, in a low voice, and without looking over her shoulder as she warmed her foot on the fender.

            ‘Among the best, my dear.’

            ‘I should have thought, myself, it was so easy to add the usual kind of one,’

            said Bella, with a toss of her curls.

            The gentleman listened to her, with a face of marked attention, though he

            neither looked up nor changed his attitude. He sat, still and silent, until his future

            landlord accepted his proposals, and brought writing materials to complete the

            business. He sat, still and silent, while the landlord wrote.

            When the agreement was ready in duplicate (the landlord having worked at it

            like some cherubic scribe, in what is conventionally called a doubtful, which

            means a not at all doubtful, Old Master), it was signed by the contracting parties,

            Bella looking on as scornful witness. The contracting parties were R. Wilfer, and

            John Rokesmith Esquire.

            When it came to Bella’s turn to sign her name, Mr Rokesmith, who was

            standing, as he had sat, with a hesitating hand upon the table, looked at her stealthily, but narrowly. He looked at the pretty figure bending down over the paper and saying, ‘Where am I to go, pa? Here, in this corner?’ He looked at the

            beautiful brown hair, shading the coquettish face; he looked at the free dash of

            the signature, which was a bold one for a woman’s; and then they looked at one

            another.

            0048m

             Original

            ‘Much obliged to you, Miss Wilfer.’

            ‘Obliged?’

            ‘I have given you so much trouble.’

            ‘Signing my name? Yes, certainly. But I am your landlord’s daughter, sir.’

            As there was nothing more to do but pay eight sovereigns in earnest of the

            bargain, pocket the agreement, appoint a time for the arrival of his furniture and

            himself, and go, Mr Rokesmith did that as awkwardly as it might be done, and

            was escorted by his landlord to the outer air. When R. Wilfer returned,

            candlestick in hand, to the bosom of his family, he found the bosom agitated.

            ‘Pa,’ said Bella, ‘we have got a Murderer for a tenant.’

            ‘Pa,’ said Lavinia, ‘we have got a Robber.’

            ‘To see him unable for his life to look anybody in the face!’ said Bella. ‘There

            never was such an exhibition.’

            ‘My dears,’ said their father, ‘he is a diffident gentleman, and I should say particularly so in the society of girls of your age.’

            ‘Nonsense, our age!’ cried Bella, impatiently. ‘What’s that got to do with

            him?’

            ‘Besides, we are not of the same age:—which age?’ demanded Lavinia.

            ‘Never you mind, Lavvy,’ retorted Bella; ‘you wait till you are of an age to ask

            such questions. Pa, mark my words! Between Mr Rokesmith and me, there is a

            natural antipathy and a deep distrust; and something will come of it!’

            ‘My dear, and girls,’ said the cherub-patriarch, ‘between Mr Rokesmith and

            me, there is a matter of eight sovereigns, and something for supper shall come of

            it, if you’ll agree upon the article.’

            This was a neat and happy turn to give the subject, treats being rare in the Wilfer household, where a monotonous appearance of Dutch-cheese at ten

            o’clock in the evening had been rather frequently commented on by the dimpled

            shoulders of Miss Bella. Indeed, the modest Dutchman himself seemed

            conscious of his want of variety, and generally came before the family in a state

            of apologetic perspiration. After some discussion on the relative merits of veal-

            cutlet, sweetbread, and lobster, a decision was pronounced in favour of veal-

            cutlet. Mrs Wilfer then solemnly divested herself of her handkerchief and gloves,

            as a preliminary sacrifice to preparing the frying-pan, and R. W. himself went out to purchase the viand. He soon returned, bearing the same in a fresh

            cabbage-leaf, where it coyly embraced a rasher of ham. Melodious sounds were

            not long in rising from the frying-pan on the fire, or in seeming, as the firelight

            danced in the mellow halls of a couple of full bottles on the table, to play appropriate dance-music.

            The cloth was laid by Lavvy. Bella, as the acknowledged ornament of the

            family, employed both her hands in giving her hair an additional wave while

            sitting in the easiest chair, and occasionally threw in a direction touching the supper: as, ‘Very brown, ma;’ or, to her sister, ‘Put the saltcellar straight, miss, and don’t be a dowdy little puss.’

            Meantime her father, chinking Mr Rokesmith’s gold as he sat expectant

            between his knife and fork, remarked that six of those sovereigns came just in time for their landlord, and stood them in a little pile on the white tablecloth to

            look at.

            ‘I hate our landlord!’ said Bella.

            But, observing a fall in her father’s face, she went and sat down by him at the

            table, and began touching up his hair with the handle of a fork. It was one of the

            girl’s spoilt ways to be always arranging the family’s hair—perhaps because her

            own was so pretty, and occupied so much of her attention.

            ‘You deserve to have a house of your own; don’t you, poor pa?’

            ‘I don’t deserve it better than another, my dear.’

            ‘At any rate I, for one, want it more than another,’ said Bella, holding him by

            the chin, as she stuck his flaxen hair on end, ‘and I grudge this money going to

            the Monster that swallows up so much, when we all want—Everything. And if

            you say (as you want to say; I know you want to say so, pa) “that’s neither reasonable nor honest, Bella,” then I answer, “Maybe not, pa—very likely—but

            it’s one of the consequences of being poor, and of thoroughly hating and

            detesting to be poor, and that’s my case.” Now, you look lovely, pa; why don’t

            you always wear your hair like that? And here’s the cutlet! If it isn’t very brown,

            ma, I can’t eat it, and must have a bit put back to be done expressly.’

            However, as it was brown, even to Bella’s taste, the young lady graciously

            partook of it without reconsignment to the frying-pan, and also, in due course, of

            the contents of the two bottles: whereof one held Scotch ale and the other rum.

            The latter perfume, with the fostering aid of boiling water and lemon-peel,

            diffused itself throughout the room, and became so highly concentrated around

            the warm fireside, that the wind passing over the house roof must have rushed

            off charged with a delicious whiff of it, after buzzing like a great bee at that particular chimneypot.

            ‘Pa,’ said Bella, sipping the fragrant mixture and warming her favourite ankle;

            ‘when old Mr Harmon made such a fool of me (not to mention himself, as he is

            dead), what do you suppose he did it for?’

            ‘Impossible to say, my dear. As I have told you time out of number since his

            will was brought to light, I doubt if I ever exchanged a hundred words with the

            old gentleman. If it was his whim to surprise us, his whim succeeded. For he certainly did it.’

            ‘And I was stamping my foot and screaming, when he first took notice of me;

            was I?’ said Bella, contemplating the ankle before mentioned.

            ‘You were stamping your little foot, my dear, and screaming with your little

            voice, and laying into me with your little bonnet, which you had snatched off for

            the purpose,’ returned her father, as if the remembrance gave a relish to the rum;

            ‘you were doing this one Sunday morning when I took you out, because I didn’t

            go the exact way you wanted, when the old gentleman, sitting on a seat near, said, “That’s a nice girl; that’s a very nice girl; a promising girl!” And so you were, my dear.’

            ‘And then he asked my name, did he, pa?’

            ‘Then he asked your name, my dear, and mine; and on other Sunday

            mornings, when we walked his way, we saw him again, and—and really that’s

            all.’

            As that was all the rum and water too, or, in other words, as R. W. delicately

            signified that his glass was empty, by throwing back his head and standing the glass upside down on his nose and upper lip, it might have been charitable in Mrs Wilfer to suggest replenishment. But that heroine briefly suggesting

            ‘Bedtime’ instead, the bottles were put away, and the family retired; she

            cherubically escorted, like some severe saint in a painting, or merely human

            matron allegorically treated.

            ‘And by this time to-morrow,’ said Lavinia when the two girls were alone in

            their room, ‘we shall have Mr Rokesmith here, and shall be expecting to have our throats cut.’

            ‘You needn’t stand between me and the candle for all that,’ retorted Bella.

            ‘This is another of the consequences of being poor! The idea of a girl with a really fine head of hair, having to do it by one flat candle and a few inches of looking-glass!’

            ‘You caught George Sampson with it, Bella, bad as your means of dressing it are.’

            ‘You low little thing. Caught George Sampson with it! Don’t talk about

            catching people, miss, till your own time for catching—as you call it—comes.’

            ‘Perhaps it has come,’ muttered Lavvy, with a toss of her head.

            ‘What did you say?’ asked Bella, very sharply. ‘What did you say, miss?’

            Lavvy declining equally to repeat or to explain, Bella gradually lapsed over

            her hair-dressing into a soliloquy on the miseries of being poor, as exemplified in

            having nothing to put on, nothing to go out in, nothing to dress by, only a nasty

            box to dress at instead of a commodious dressing-table, and being obliged to

            take in suspicious lodgers. On the last grievance as her climax, she laid great stress—and might have laid greater, had she known that if Mr Julius Handford

            had a twin brother upon earth, Mr John Rokesmith was the man.

            Chapter 5

            BOFFIN’S BOWER

            Over against a London house, a corner house not far from Cavendish Square,

            a man with a wooden leg had sat for some years, with his remaining foot in a basket in cold weather, picking up a living on this wise:—Every morning at eight

            o’clock, he stumped to the corner, carrying a chair, a clothes-horse, a pair of trestles, a board, a basket, and an umbrella, all strapped together. Separating these, the board and trestles became a counter, the basket supplied the few small

            lots of fruit and sweets that he offered for sale upon it and became a foot-warmer, the unfolded clothes-horse displayed a choice collection of halfpenny

            ballads and became a screen, and the stool planted within it became his post for

            the rest of the day. All weathers saw the man at the post. This is to be accepted in

            a double sense, for he contrived a back to his wooden stool, by placing it against

            the lamp-post. When the weather was wet, he put up his umbrella over his stock

            in trade, not over himself; when the weather was dry, he furled that faded article,

            tied it round with a piece of yarn, and laid it cross-wise under the trestles: where

            it looked like an unwholesomely-forced lettuce that had lost in colour and

            crispness what it had gained in size.

            He had established his right to the corner, by imperceptible prescription. He

            had never varied his ground an inch, but had in the beginning diffidently taken

            the corner upon which the side of the house gave. A howling corner in the winter

            time, a dusty corner in the summer time, an undesirable corner at the best of times. Shelterless fragments of straw and paper got up revolving storms there, when the main street was at peace; and the water-cart, as if it were drunk or short-sighted, came blundering and jolting round it, making it muddy when all

            else was clean.

            On the front of his sale-board hung a little placard, like a kettle-holder,

            bearing the inscription in his own small text:

            Errands gone

            On with fi

            Delity By

            Ladies and Gentlemen

            I remain

            Your humble Servt:

            Silas Wegg

            He had not only settled it with himself in course of time, that he was errand-

            goer by appointment to the house at the corner (though he received such commissions not half a dozen times in a year, and then only as some servant’s deputy), but also that he was one of the house’s retainers and owed vassalage to

            it and was bound to leal and loyal interest in it. For this reason, he always spoke

            of it as ‘Our House,’ and, though his knowledge of its affairs was mostly

            speculative and all wrong, claimed to be in its confidence. On similar grounds he

            never beheld an inmate at any one of its windows but he touched his hat. Yet, he

            knew so little about the inmates that he gave them names of his own invention:

            as ‘Miss Elizabeth’, ‘Master George’, ‘Aunt Jane’, ‘Uncle Parker ‘—having no

            authority whatever for any such designations, but particularly the last—to which,

            as a natural consequence, he stuck with great obstinacy.

            Over the house itself, he exercised the same imaginary power as over its

            inhabitants and their affairs. He had never been in it, the length of a piece of fat

            black water-pipe which trailed itself over the area-door into a damp stone

            passage, and had rather the air of a leech on the house that had ‘taken’

            wonderfully; but this was no impediment to his arranging it according to a plan

            of his own. It was a great dingy house with a quantity of dim side window and

            blank back premises, and it cost his mind a world of trouble so to lay it out as to

            account for everything in its external appearance. But, this once done, was quite

            satisfactory, and he rested persuaded, that he knew his way about the house

            blindfold: from the barred garrets in the high roof, to the two iron extinguishers

            before the main door—which seemed to request all lively visitors to have the

            kindness to put themselves out, before entering.

            Assuredly, this stall of Silas Wegg’s was the hardest little stall of all the sterile

            little stalls in London. It gave you the face-ache to look at his apples, the stomach-ache to look at his oranges, the tooth-ache to look at his nuts. Of the latter commodity he had always a grim little heap, on which lay a little wooden

            measure which had no discernible inside, and was considered to represent the

            penn’orth appointed by Magna Charta. Whether from too much east wind or no

            —it was an easterly corner—the stall, the stock, and the keeper, were all as dry

            as the Desert. Wegg was a knotty man, and a close-grained, with a face carved

            out of very hard material, that had just as much play of expression as a

            watchman’s rattle. When he laughed, certain jerks occurred in it, and the rattle sprung. Sooth to say, he was so wooden a man that he seemed to have taken his

            wooden leg naturally, and rather suggested to the fanciful observer, that he might

            be expected—if his development received no untimely check—to be completely

            set up with a pair of wooden legs in about six months.

            Mr Wegg was an observant person, or, as he himself said, ‘took a powerful

            sight of notice’. He saluted all his regular passers-by every day, as he sat on his stool backed up by the lamp-post; and on the adaptable character of these salutes

            he greatly plumed himself. Thus, to the rector, he addressed a bow, compounded

            of lay deference, and a slight touch of the shady preliminary meditation at

            church; to the doctor, a confidential bow, as to a gentleman whose acquaintance

            with his inside he begged respectfully to acknowledge; before the Quality he

            delighted to abase himself; and for Uncle Parker, who was in the army (at least,

            so he had settled it), he put his open hand to the side of his hat, in a military manner which that angry-eyed buttoned-up inflammatory-faced old gentleman

            appeared but imperfectly to appreciate.

            The only article in which Silas dealt, that was not hard, was gingerbread. On a

            certain day, some wretched infant having purchased the damp gingerbread-horse

            (fearfully out of condition), and the adhesive bird-cage, which had been exposed

            for the day’s sale, he had taken a tin box from under his stool to produce a relay

            of those dreadful specimens, and was going to look in at the lid, when he said to

            himself, pausing: ‘Oh! Here you are again!’

            The words referred to a broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in

            mourning, coming comically ambling towards the corner, dressed in a pea over-

            coat, and carrying a large stick. He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger’s. Both as to his dress and to himself, he was of an

            overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his

            eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly-inquiring, grey eyes, under his ragged eyebrows, and broad-brimmed hat. A very odd-looking old fellow altogether.

            ‘Here you are again,’ repeated Mr Wegg, musing. ‘And what are you now?

            Are you in the Funns, or where are you? Have you lately come to settle in this

            neighbourhood, or do you own to another neighbourhood? Are you in

            independent circumstances, or is it wasting the motions of a bow on you? Come!

            I’ll speculate! I’ll invest a bow in you.’

            Which Mr Wegg, having replaced his tin box, accordingly did, as he rose to

            bait his gingerbread-trap for some other devoted infant. The salute was

            acknowledged with:

            ‘Morning, sir! Morning! Morning!’

            (‘Calls me Sir!’ said Mr Wegg, to himself; ‘ he won’t answer. A bow gone!’)

            ‘Morning, morning, morning!’

            ‘Appears to be rather a ‘arty old cock, too,’ said Mr Wegg, as before; ‘Good

            morning to you, sir.’

            ‘Do you remember me, then?’ asked his new acquaintance, stopping in his amble, one-sided, before the stall, and speaking in a pounding way, though with

            great good-humour.

            ‘I have noticed you go past our house, sir, several times in the course of the

            last week or so.’

            ‘Our house,’ repeated the other. ‘Meaning—?’

            ‘Yes,’ said Mr Wegg, nodding, as the other pointed the clumsy forefinger of

            his right glove at the corner house.

            ‘Oh! Now, what,’ pursued the old fellow, in an inquisitive manner, carrying

            his knotted stick in his left arm as if it were a baby, ‘what do they allow you now?’

            ‘It’s job work that I do for our house,’ returned Silas, drily, and with reticence;

            ‘it’s not yet brought to an exact allowance.’

            ‘Oh! It’s not yet brought to an exact allowance? No! It’s not yet brought to an

            exact allowance. Oh!—Morning, morning, morning!’

            ‘Appears to be rather a cracked old cock,’ thought Silas, qualifying his former

            good opinion, as the other ambled off. But, in a moment he was back again with

            the question:

            ‘How did you get your wooden leg?’

            Mr Wegg replied, (tartly to this personal inquiry), ‘In an accident.’

            ‘Do you like it?’

            ‘Well! I haven’t got to keep it warm,’ Mr Wegg made answer, in a sort of

            desperation occasioned by the singularity of the question.

            ‘He hasn’t,’ repeated the other to his knotted stick, as he gave it a hug; ‘he hasn’t got—ha!—ha!—to keep it warm! Did you ever hear of the name of

            Boffin?’

            ‘No,’ said Mr Wegg, who was growing restive under this examination. ‘I

            never did hear of the name of Boffin.’

            ‘Do you like it?’

            ‘Why, no,’ retorted Mr Wegg, again approaching desperation; ‘I can’t say I

            do.’

            ‘Why don’t you like it?’

            ‘I don’t know why I don’t,’ retorted Mr Wegg, approaching frenzy, ‘but I don’t

            at all.’

            ‘Now, I’ll tell you something that’ll make you sorry for that,’ said the stranger,

            smiling. ‘My name’s Boffin.’

            ‘I can’t help it!’ returned Mr Wegg. Implying in his manner the offensive

            addition, ‘and if I could, I wouldn’t.’

            ‘But there’s another chance for you,’ said Mr Boffin, smiling still, ‘Do you

            like the name of Nicodemus? Think it over. Nick, or Noddy.’

            ‘It is not, sir,’ Mr Wegg rejoined, as he sat down on his stool, with an air of

            gentle resignation, combined with melancholy candour; ‘it is not a name as I

            could wish any one that I had a respect for, to call me by; but there may be persons that would not view it with the same objections.—I don’t know why,’

            Mr Wegg added, anticipating another question.

            ‘Noddy Boffin,’ said that gentleman. ‘Noddy. That’s my name. Noddy—or

            Nick—Boffin. What’s your name?’

            ‘Silas Wegg.—I don’t,’ said Mr Wegg, bestirring himself to take the same

            precaution as before, ‘I don’t know why Silas, and I don’t know why Wegg.’

            ‘Now, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, hugging his stick closer, ‘I want to make a sort

            of offer to you. Do you remember when you first see me?’

            The wooden Wegg looked at him with a meditative eye, and also with a

            softened air as descrying possibility of profit. ‘Let me think. I ain’t quite sure, and yet I generally take a powerful sight of notice, too. Was it on a Monday morning, when the butcher-boy had been to our house for orders, and bought a

            ballad of me, which, being unacquainted with the tune, I run it over to him?’

            ‘Right, Wegg, right! But he bought more than one.’

            ‘Yes, to be sure, sir; he bought several; and wishing to lay out his money to the best, he took my opinion to guide his choice, and we went over the collection

            together. To be sure we did. Here was him as it might be, and here was myself as

            it might be, and there was you, Mr Boffin, as you identically are, with your self-

            same stick under your very same arm, and your very same back towards us. To

            —be—sure!’ added Mr Wegg, looking a little round Mr Boffin, to take him in

            the rear, and identify this last extraordinary coincidence, ‘your wery self-same back!’

            ‘What do you think I was doing, Wegg?’

            ‘I should judge, sir, that you might be glancing your eye down the street.’

            ‘No, Wegg. I was a listening.’

            ‘Was you, indeed?’ said Mr Wegg, dubiously.

            ‘Not in a dishonourable way, Wegg, because you was singing to the butcher;

            and you wouldn’t sing secrets to a butcher in the street, you know.’

            ‘It never happened that I did so yet, to the best of my remembrance,’ said Mr Wegg, cautiously. ‘But I might do it. A man can’t say what he might wish to do

            some day or another.’ (This, not to release any little advantage he might derive

            from Mr Boffin’s avowal.)

            ‘Well,’ repeated Boffin, ‘I was a listening to you and to him. And what do you

            —you haven’t got another stool, have you? I’m rather thick in my breath.’

            ‘I haven’t got another, but you’re welcome to this,’ said Wegg, resigning it.

            ‘It’s a treat to me to stand.’

            ‘Lard!’ exclaimed Mr Boffin, in a tone of great enjoyment, as he settled

            himself down, still nursing his stick like a baby, ‘it’s a pleasant place, this! And

            then to be shut in on each side, with these ballads, like so many book-leaf blinkers! Why, its delightful!’

            ‘If I am not mistaken, sir,’ Mr Wegg delicately hinted, resting a hand on his stall, and bending over the discursive Boffin, ‘you alluded to some offer or

            another that was in your mind?’

            ‘I’m coming to it! All right. I’m coming to it! I was going to say that when I

            listened that morning, I listened with hadmiration amounting to haw. I thought to

            myself, “Here’s a man with a wooden leg—a literary man with—“’

            ‘N—not exactly so, sir,’ said Mr Wegg.

            ‘Why, you know every one of these songs by name and by tune, and if you

            want to read or to sing any one on ‘em off straight, you’ve only to whip on your

            spectacles and do it!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘I see you at it!’

            ‘Well, sir,’ returned Mr Wegg, with a conscious inclination of the head; ‘we’ll

            say literary, then.’

            ‘“A literary man— with a wooden leg—and all Print is open to him!” That’s what I thought to myself, that morning,’ pursued Mr Boffin, leaning forward to

            describe, uncramped by the clotheshorse, as large an arc as his right arm could

            make; ‘“all Print is open to him!” And it is, ain’t it?’

            ‘Why, truly, sir,’ Mr Wegg admitted, with modesty; ‘I believe you couldn’t

            show me the piece of English print, that I wouldn’t be equal to collaring and throwing.’

            ‘On the spot?’ said Mr Boffin.

            ‘On the spot.’

            ‘I know’d it! Then consider this. Here am I, a man without a wooden leg, and

            yet all print is shut to me.’

            ‘Indeed, sir?’ Mr Wegg returned with increasing self-complacency. ‘Education

            neglected?’

            ‘Neg—lected!’ repeated Boffin, with emphasis. ‘That ain’t no word for it. I

            don’t mean to say but what if you showed me a B, I could so far give you change

            for it, as to answer Boffin.’

            ‘Come, come, sir,’ said Mr Wegg, throwing in a little encouragement, ‘that’s

            something, too.’

            ‘It’s something,’ answered Mr Boffin, ‘but I’ll take my oath it ain’t much.’

            ‘Perhaps it’s not as much as could be wished by an inquiring mind, sir,’ Mr Wegg admitted.

            ‘Now, look here. I’m retired from business. Me and Mrs Boffin—Henerietty

            Boffin—which her father’s name was Henery, and her mother’s name was Hetty,

            and so you get it—we live on a compittance, under the will of a diseased

            governor.’

            ‘Gentleman dead, sir?’

            ‘Man alive, don’t I tell you? A diseased governor? Now, it’s too late for me to

            begin shovelling and sifting at alphabeds and grammar-books. I’m getting to be a

            old bird, and I want to take it easy. But I want some reading—some fine bold reading, some splendid book in a gorging Lord-Mayor’s-Show of wollumes’

            (probably meaning gorgeous, but misled by association of ideas); ‘as’ll reach

            right down your pint of view, and take time to go by you. How can I get that reading, Wegg? By,’ tapping him on the breast with the head of his thick stick,

            ‘paying a man truly qualified to do it, so much an hour (say twopence) to come

            and do it.’

            ‘Hem! Flattered, sir, I am sure,’ said Wegg, beginning to regard himself in

            quite a new light. ‘Hew! This is the offer you mentioned, sir?’

            ‘Yes. Do you like it?’

            ‘I am considering of it, Mr Boffin.’

            ‘I don’t,’ said Boffin, in a free-handed manner, ‘want to tie a literary man

            — with a wooden leg—down too tight. A halfpenny an hour shan’t part us. The

            hours are your own to choose, after you’ve done for the day with your house here. I live over Maiden-Lane way—out Holloway direction—and you’ve only

            got to go East-and-by-North when you’ve finished here, and you’re there.

            Twopence halfpenny an hour,’ said Boffin, taking a piece of chalk from his

            pocket and getting off the stool to work the sum on the top of it in his own way;

            ‘two long’uns and a short’un—twopence halfpenny; two short’uns is a long’un

            and two two long’uns is four long’uns—making five long’uns; six nights a week

            at five long’uns a night,’ scoring them all down separately, ‘and you mount up to thirty long’uns. A round’un! Half a crown!’

            Pointing to this result as a large and satisfactory one, Mr Boffin smeared it out

            with his moistened glove, and sat down on the remains.

            ‘Half a crown,’ said Wegg, meditating. ‘Yes. (It ain’t much, sir.) Half a

            crown.’

            ‘Per week, you know.’

            ‘Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain upon the intellect now. Was you

            thinking at all of poetry?’ Mr Wegg inquired, musing.

            ‘Would it come dearer?’ Mr Boffin asked.

            ‘It would come dearer,’ Mr Wegg returned. ‘For when a person comes to grind

            off poetry night after night, it is but right he should expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.’

            ‘To tell you the truth Wegg,’ said Boffin, ‘I wasn’t thinking of poetry, except

            in so fur as this:—If you was to happen now and then to feel yourself in the mind to tip me and Mrs Boffin one of your ballads, why then we should drop into poetry.’

            ‘I follow you, sir,’ said Wegg. ‘But not being a regular musical professional, I

            should be loath to engage myself for that; and therefore when I dropped into poetry, I should ask to be considered so fur, in the light of a friend.’

            At this, Mr Boffin’s eyes sparkled, and he shook Silas earnestly by the hand:

            protesting that it was more than he could have asked, and that he took it very kindly indeed.

            ‘What do you think of the terms, Wegg?’ Mr Boffin then demanded, with

            unconcealed anxiety.

            Silas, who had stimulated this anxiety by his hard reserve of manner, and who

            had begun to understand his man very well, replied with an air; as if he were saying something extraordinarily generous and great:

            ‘Mr Boffin, I never bargain.’

            ‘So I should have thought of you!’ said Mr Boffin, admiringly. ‘No, sir. I

            never did ‘aggle and I never will ‘aggle. Consequently I meet you at once, free

            and fair, with—Done, for double the money!’

            Mr Boffin seemed a little unprepared for this conclusion, but assented, with

            the remark, ‘You know better what it ought to be than I do, Wegg,’ and again shook hands with him upon it.

            ‘Could you begin to night, Wegg?’ he then demanded.

            ‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Wegg, careful to leave all the eagerness to him. ‘I see no difficulty if you wish it. You are provided with the needful implement—a book,

            sir?’

            ‘Bought him at a sale,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Eight wollumes. Red and gold. Purple

            ribbon in every wollume, to keep the place where you leave off. Do you know

            him?’

            ‘The book’s name, sir?’ inquired Silas.

            ‘I thought you might have know’d him without it,’ said Mr Boffin slightly

            disappointed. ‘His name is Decline-And-Fall-Off-The-Rooshan-Empire.’ (Mr

            Boffin went over these stones slowly and with much caution.)

            ‘Ay indeed!’ said Mr Wegg, nodding his head with an air of friendly

            recognition.

            ‘You know him, Wegg?’

            ‘I haven’t been not to say right slap through him, very lately,’ Mr Wegg made

            answer, ‘having been otherways employed, Mr Boffin. But know him? Old

            familiar declining and falling off the Rooshan? Rather, sir! Ever since I was not

            so high as your stick. Ever since my eldest brother left our cottage to enlist into

            the army. On which occasion, as the ballad that was made about it describes:

            ‘Beside that cottage door, Mr Boffin,

            A girl was on her knees;

            She held aloft a snowy scarf, Sir,

            Which (my eldest brother noticed) fluttered in the breeze.

            She breathed a prayer for him, Mr Boffin;

            A prayer he coold not hear.

            And my eldest brother lean’d upon his sword, Mr Boffin,

            And wiped away a tear.’

            Much impressed by this family circumstance, and also by the friendly

            disposition of Mr Wegg, as exemplified in his so soon dropping into poetry, Mr

            Boffin again shook hands with that ligneous sharper, and besought him to name

            his hour. Mr Wegg named eight.

            ‘Where I live,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘is called The Bower. Boffin’s Bower is the

            name Mrs Boffin christened it when we come into it as a property. If you should

            meet with anybody that don’t know it by that name (which hardly anybody

            does), when you’ve got nigh upon about a odd mile, or say and a quarter if you

            like, up Maiden Lane, Battle Bridge, ask for Harmony Jail, and you’ll be put right. I shall expect you, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, clapping him on the shoulder with the greatest enthusiasm, ‘most joyfully. I shall have no peace or patience till

            you come. Print is now opening ahead of me. This night, a literary man— with a

            wooden leg—’ he bestowed an admiring look upon that decoration, as if it

            greatly enhanced the relish of Mr Wegg’s attainments—‘will begin to lead me a new life! My fist again, Wegg. Morning, morning, morning!’

            Left alone at his stall as the other ambled off, Mr Wegg subsided into his

            screen, produced a small pocket-handkerchief of a penitentially-scrubbing

            character, and took himself by the nose with a thoughtful aspect. Also, while he

            still grasped that feature, he directed several thoughtful looks down the street, after the retiring figure of Mr Boffin. But, profound gravity sat enthroned on Wegg’s countenance. For, while he considered within himself that this was an

            old fellow of rare simplicity, that this was an opportunity to be improved, and that here might be money to be got beyond present calculation, still he

            compromised himself by no admission that his new engagement was at all out of

            his way, or involved the least element of the ridiculous. Mr Wegg would even have picked a handsome quarrel with any one who should have challenged his

            deep acquaintance with those aforesaid eight volumes of Decline and Fall. His

            gravity was unusual, portentous, and immeasurable, not because he admitted any

            doubt of himself but because he perceived it necessary to forestall any doubt of

            himself in others. And herein he ranged with that very numerous class of

            impostors, who are quite as determined to keep up appearances to themselves, as

            to their neighbours.

            A certain loftiness, likewise, took possession of Mr Wegg; a condescending

            sense of being in request as an official expounder of mysteries. It did not move

            him to commercial greatness, but rather to littleness, insomuch that if it had been

            within the possibilities of things for the wooden measure to hold fewer nuts than

            usual, it would have done so that day. But, when night came, and with her veiled

            eyes beheld him stumping towards Boffin’s Bower, he was elated too.

            The Bower was as difficult to find, as Fair Rosamond’s without the clue. Mr

            Wegg, having reached the quarter indicated, inquired for the Bower half a dozen

            times without the least success, until he remembered to ask for Harmony Jail.

            This occasioned a quick change in the spirits of a hoarse gentleman and a

            donkey, whom he had much perplexed.

            ‘Why, yer mean Old Harmon’s, do yer?’ said the hoarse gentleman, who was

            driving his donkey in a truck, with a carrot for a whip. ‘Why didn’t yer niver say

            so? Eddard and me is a goin’ by Him! Jump in.’

            Mr Wegg complied, and the hoarse gentleman invited his attention to the third

            person in company, thus;

            ‘Now, you look at Eddard’s ears. What was it as you named, agin? Whisper.’

            Mr Wegg whispered, ‘Boffin’s Bower.’

            ‘Eddard! (keep yer hi on his ears) cut away to Boffin’s Bower!’

            Edward, with his ears lying back, remained immoveable.

            ‘Eddard! (keep yer hi on his ears) cut away to Old Harmon’s.’ Edward

            instantly pricked up his ears to their utmost, and rattled off at such a pace that Mr

            Wegg’s conversation was jolted out of him in a most dislocated state.

            ‘Was-it-Ev-verajail?’ asked Mr Wegg, holding on.

            ‘Not a proper jail, wot you and me would get committed to,’ returned his

            escort; ‘they giv’ it the name, on accounts of Old Harmon living solitary there.’

            ‘And-why-did-they-callitharm-Ony?’ asked Wegg.

            ‘On accounts of his never agreeing with nobody. Like a speeches of chaff.

            Harmon’s Jail; Harmony Jail. Working it round like.’

            ‘Doyouknow-Mist-Erboff-in?’ asked Wegg.

            ‘I should think so! Everybody do about here. Eddard knows him. (Keep yer hi

            on his ears.) Noddy Boffin, Eddard!’

            The effect of the name was so very alarming, in respect of causing a

            temporary disappearance of Edward’s head, casting his hind hoofs in the air,

            greatly accelerating the pace and increasing the jolting, that Mr Wegg was fain to

            devote his attention exclusively to holding on, and to relinquish his desire of ascertaining whether this homage to Boffin was to be considered complimentary

            or the reverse.

            Presently, Edward stopped at a gateway, and Wegg discreetly lost no time in

            slipping out at the back of the truck. The moment he was landed, his late driver

            with a wave of the carrot, said ‘Supper, Eddard!’ and he, the hind hoofs, the truck, and Edward, all seemed to fly into the air together, in a kind of apotheosis.

            Pushing the gate, which stood ajar, Wegg looked into an enclosed space where

            certain tall dark mounds rose high against the sky, and where the pathway to the

            Bower was indicated, as the moonlight showed, between two lines of broken

            crockery set in ashes. A white figure advancing along this path, proved to be nothing more ghostly than Mr Boffin, easily attired for the pursuit of knowledge,

            in an undress garment of short white smock-frock. Having received his literary

            friend with great cordiality, he conducted him to the interior of the Bower and there presented him to Mrs Boffin:—a stout lady of a rubicund and cheerful

            aspect, dressed (to Mr Wegg’s consternation) in a low evening-dress of sable

            satin, and a large black velvet hat and feathers.

            ‘Mrs Boffin, Wegg,’ said Boffin, ‘is a highflyer at Fashion. And her make is

            such, that she does it credit. As to myself I ain’t yet as Fash’nable as I may come

            to be. Henerietty, old lady, this is the gentleman that’s a going to decline and fall off the Rooshan Empire.’

            ‘And I am sure I hope it’ll do you both good,’ said Mrs Boffin.

            It was the queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a luxurious

            amateur tap-room than anything else within the ken of Silas Wegg. There were

            two wooden settles by the fire, one on either side of it, with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables, the eight volumes were ranged flat, in

            a row, like a galvanic battery; on the other, certain squat case-bottles of inviting

            appearance seemed to stand on tiptoe to exchange glances with Mr Wegg over a

            front row of tumblers and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed;

            on the hearth, a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool, and a little table, formed a centrepiece devoted to Mrs Boffin. They were garish in taste and colour, but were expensive articles of drawing-room

            furniture that had a very odd look beside the settles and the flaring gaslight pendent from the ceiling. There was a flowery carpet on the floor; but, instead of

            reaching to the fireside, its glowing vegetation stopped short at Mrs Boffin’s footstool, and gave place to a region of sand and sawdust. Mr Wegg also noticed,

            with admiring eyes, that, while the flowery land displayed such hollow

            ornamentation as stuffed birds and waxen fruits under glass-shades, there were,

            in the territory where vegetation ceased, compensatory shelves on which the best

            part of a large pie and likewise of a cold joint were plainly discernible among other solids. The room itself was large, though low; and the heavy frames of its

            old-fashioned windows, and the heavy beams in its crooked ceiling, seemed to

            indicate that it had once been a house of some mark standing alone in the

            country.

            ‘Do you like it, Wegg?’ asked Mr Boffin, in his pouncing manner.

            ‘I admire it greatly, sir,’ said Wegg. ‘Peculiar comfort at this fireside, sir.’

            ‘Do you understand it, Wegg?’

            ‘Why, in a general way, sir,’ Mr Wegg was beginning slowly and knowingly,

            with his head stuck on one side, as evasive people do begin, when the other cut

            him short:

            ‘You don’t understand it, Wegg, and I’ll explain it. These arrangements is made by mutual consent between Mrs Boffin and me. Mrs Boffin, as I’ve

            mentioned, is a highflyer at Fashion; at present I’m not. I don’t go higher than comfort, and comfort of the sort that I’m equal to the enjoyment of. Well then.

            Where would be the good of Mrs Boffin and me quarrelling over it? We never

            did quarrel, before we come into Boffin’s Bower as a property; why quarrel

            when we have come into Boffin’s Bower as a property? So Mrs Boffin, she keeps up her part of the room, in her way; I keep up my part of the room in mine. In consequence of which we have at once, Sociability (I should go

            melancholy mad without Mrs Boffin), Fashion, and Comfort. If I get by degrees

            to be a higher-flyer at Fashion, then Mrs Boffin will by degrees come for’arder.

            If Mrs Boffin should ever be less of a dab at Fashion than she is at the present

            time, then Mrs Boffin’s carpet would go back’arder. If we should both continny

            as we are, why then here we are, and give us a kiss, old lady.’

            Mrs Boffin who, perpetually smiling, had approached and drawn her plump

            arm through her lord’s, most willingly complied. Fashion, in the form of her

            black velvet hat and feathers, tried to prevent it; but got deservedly crushed in the endeavour.

            ‘So now, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, wiping his mouth with an air of much

            refreshment, ‘you begin to know us as we are. This is a charming spot, is the Bower, but you must get to apprechiate it by degrees. It’s a spot to find out the

            merits of; little by little, and a new’un every day. There’s a serpentining walk up

            each of the mounds, that gives you the yard and neighbourhood changing every

            moment. When you get to the top, there’s a view of the neighbouring premises,

            not to be surpassed. The premises of Mrs Boffin’s late father (Canine Provision

            Trade), you look down into, as if they was your own. And the top of the High Mound is crowned with a lattice-work Arbour, in which, if you don’t read out loud many a book in the summer, ay, and as a friend, drop many a time into poetry too, it shan’t be my fault. Now, what’ll you read on?’

            ‘Thank you, sir,’ returned Wegg, as if there were nothing new in his reading at

            all. ‘I generally do it on gin and water.’

            ‘Keeps the organ moist, does it, Wegg?’ asked Mr Boffin, with innocent

            eagerness.

            ‘N-no, sir,’ replied Wegg, coolly, ‘I should hardly describe it so, sir. I should

            say, mellers it. Mellers it, is the word I should employ, Mr Boffin.’

            His wooden conceit and craft kept exact pace with the delighted expectation

            of his victim. The visions rising before his mercenary mind, of the many ways in

            which this connexion was to be turned to account, never obscured the foremost

            idea natural to a dull overreaching man, that he must not make himself too

            cheap.

            Mrs Boffin’s Fashion, as a less inexorable deity than the idol usually

            worshipped under that name, did not forbid her mixing for her literary guest, or

            asking if he found the result to his liking. On his returning a gracious answer and

            taking his place at the literary settle, Mr Boffin began to compose himself as a listener, at the opposite settle, with exultant eyes.

            ‘Sorry to deprive you of a pipe, Wegg,’ he said, filling his own, ‘but you can’t

            do both together. Oh! and another thing I forgot to name! When you come in

            here of an evening, and look round you, and notice anything on a shelf that happens to catch your fancy, mention it.’

            Wegg, who had been going to put on his spectacles, immediately laid them

            down, with the sprightly observation:

            ‘You read my thoughts, sir. Do my eyes deceive me, or is that object up there

            a—a pie? It can’t be a pie.’

            ‘Yes, it’s a pie, Wegg,’ replied Mr Boffin, with a glance of some little

            discomfiture at the Decline and Fall.

            ‘ Have I lost my smell for fruits, or is it a apple pie, sir?’ asked Wegg.

            ‘It’s a veal and ham pie,’ said Mr Boffin.

            ‘Is it indeed, sir? And it would be hard, sir, to name the pie that is a better pie

            than a weal and hammer,’ said Mr Wegg, nodding his head emotionally.

            ‘Have some, Wegg?’

            ‘Thank you, Mr Boffin, I think I will, at your invitation. I wouldn’t at any other party’s, at the present juncture; but at yours, sir!—And meaty jelly too, especially when a little salt, which is the case where there’s ham, is mellering to

            the organ, is very mellering to the organ.’ Mr Wegg did not say what organ, but

            spoke with a cheerful generality.

            So, the pie was brought down, and the worthy Mr Boffin exercised his

            patience until Wegg, in the exercise of his knife and fork, had finished the dish:

            only profiting by the opportunity to inform Wegg that although it was not strictly

            Fashionable to keep the contents of a larder thus exposed to view, he (Mr Boffin)

            considered it hospitable; for the reason, that instead of saying, in a comparatively

            unmeaning manner, to a visitor, ‘There are such and such edibles down stairs; will you have anything up?’ you took the bold practical course of saying, ‘Cast

            your eye along the shelves, and, if you see anything you like there, have it down.’

            And now, Mr Wegg at length pushed away his plate and put on his spectacles,

            and Mr Boffin lighted his pipe and looked with beaming eyes into the opening

            world before him, and Mrs Boffin reclined in a fashionable manner on her sofa:

            as one who would be part of the audience if she found she could, and would go

            to sleep if she found she couldn’t.

            ‘Hem!’ began Wegg, ‘This, Mr Boffin and Lady, is the first chapter of the first wollume of the Decline and Fall off—’ here he looked hard at the book, and

            stopped.

            ‘What’s the matter, Wegg?’

            ‘Why, it comes into my mind, do you know, sir,’ said Wegg with an air of

            insinuating frankness (having first again looked hard at the book), ‘that you

            made a little mistake this morning, which I had meant to set you right in, only

            something put it out of my head. I think you said Rooshan Empire, sir?’

            ‘It is Rooshan; ain’t it, Wegg?’

            ‘No, sir. Roman. Roman.’

            ‘What’s the difference, Wegg?’

            ‘The difference, sir?’ Mr Wegg was faltering and in danger of breaking down,

            when a bright thought flashed upon him. ‘The difference, sir? There you place me in a difficulty, Mr Boffin. Suffice it to observe, that the difference is best postponed to some other occasion when Mrs Boffin does not honour us with her

            company. In Mrs Boffin’s presence, sir, we had better drop it.’

            Mr Wegg thus came out of his disadvantage with quite a chivalrous air, and

            not only that, but by dint of repeating with a manly delicacy, ‘In Mrs Boffin’s presence, sir, we had better drop it!’ turned the disadvantage on Boffin, who felt

            that he had committed himself in a very painful manner.

            Then, Mr Wegg, in a dry unflinching way, entered on his task; going straight

            across country at everything that came before him; taking all the hard words, biographical and geographical; getting rather shaken by Hadrian, Trajan, and the

            Antonines; stumbling at Polybius (pronounced Polly Beeious, and supposed by

            Mr Boffin to be a Roman virgin, and by Mrs Boffin to be responsible for that necessity of dropping it); heavily unseated by Titus Antoninus Pius; up again

            and galloping smoothly with Augustus; finally, getting over the ground well with

            Commodus: who, under the appellation of Commodious, was held by Mr Boffin

            to have been quite unworthy of his English origin, and ‘not to have acted up to

            his name’ in his government of the Roman people. With the death of this

            personage, Mr Wegg terminated his first reading; long before which

            consummation several total eclipses of Mrs Boffin’s candle behind her black

            velvet disc, would have been very alarming, but for being regularly accompanied

            by a potent smell of burnt pens when her feathers took fire, which acted as a restorative and woke her. Mr Wegg, having read on by rote and attached as few

            ideas as possible to the text, came out of the encounter fresh; but, Mr Boffin, who had soon laid down his unfinished pipe, and had ever since sat intently

            staring with his eyes and mind at the confounding enormities of the Romans, was so severely punished that he could hardly wish his literary friend Good-night, and articulate ‘Tomorrow.’

            ‘Commodious,’ gasped Mr Boffin, staring at the moon, after letting Wegg out

            at the gate and fastening it: ‘Commodious fights in that wild-beast-show, seven

            hundred and thirty-five times, in one character only! As if that wasn’t stunning

            enough, a hundred lions is turned into the same wild-beast-show all at once! As

            if that wasn’t stunning enough, Commodious, in another character, kills ‘em all

            off in a hundred goes! As if that wasn’t stunning enough, Vittle-us (and well named too) eats six millions’ worth, English money, in seven months! Wegg

            takes it easy, but upon-my-soul to a old bird like myself these are scarers. And

            even now that Commodious is strangled, I don’t see a way to our bettering

            ourselves.’ Mr Boffin added as he turned his pensive steps towards the Bower

            and shook his head, ‘I didn’t think this morning there was half so many Scarers

            in Print. But I’m in for it now!’