Chapter 11

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             Original

            PODSNAPPERY

            Mr Podsnap was well to do, and stood very high in Mr Podsnap’s opinion.

            Beginning with a good inheritance, he had married a good inheritance, and had

            thriven exceedingly in the Marine Insurance way, and was quite satisfied. He

            never could make out why everybody was not quite satisfied, and he felt

            conscious that he set a brilliant social example in being particularly well satisfied

            with most things, and, above all other things, with himself.

            Thus happily acquainted with his own merit and importance, Mr Podsnap

            settled that whatever he put behind him he put out of existence. There was a dignified conclusiveness—not to add a grand convenience—in this way of

            getting rid of disagreeables which had done much towards establishing Mr

            Podsnap in his lofty place in Mr Podsnap’s satisfaction. ‘I don’t want to know about it; I don’t choose to discuss it; I don’t admit it!’ Mr Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him (and consequently sheer

            away) with those words and a flushed face. For they affronted him.

            Mr Podsnap’s world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor even

            geographically: seeing that although his business was sustained upon commerce

            with other countries, he considered other countries, with that important

            reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and customs would conclusively

            observe, ‘Not English!’ when, presto! with a flourish of the arm, and a flush of

            the face, they were swept away. Elsewise, the world got up at eight, shaved close

            at a quarter-past, breakfasted at nine, went to the City at ten, came home at half-

            past five, and dined at seven. Mr Podsnap’s notions of the Arts in their integrity

            might have been stated thus. Literature; large print, respectfully descriptive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to

            the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven. Painting and

            Sculpture; models and portraits representing Professors of getting up at eight,

            shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven. Music; a respectable

            performance (without variations) on stringed and wind instruments, sedately

            expressive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at

            nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven.

            Nothing else to be permitted to those same vagrants the Arts, on pain of

            excommunication. Nothing else To Be—anywhere!

            As a so eminently respectable man, Mr Podsnap was sensible of its being

            required of him to take Providence under his protection. Consequently he always

            knew exactly what Providence meant. Inferior and less respectable men might

            fall short of that mark, but Mr Podsnap was always up to it. And it was very remarkable (and must have been very comfortable) that what Providence meant,

            was invariably what Mr Podsnap meant.

            These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling, after its representative man,

            Podsnappery. They were confined within close bounds, as Mr Podsnap’s own

            head was confined by his shirt-collar; and they were enunciated with a sounding

            pomp that smacked of the creaking of Mr Podsnap’s own boots.

            There was a Miss Podsnap. And this young rocking-horse was being trained in

            her mother’s art of prancing in a stately manner without ever getting on. But the

            high parental action was not yet imparted to her, and in truth she was but an undersized damsel, with high shoulders, low spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped

            surface of nose, who seemed to take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood

            into womanhood, and to shrink back again, overcome by her mother’s head-

            dress and her father from head to foot—crushed by the mere dead-weight of

            Podsnappery.

            A certain institution in Mr Podsnap’s mind which he called ‘the young person’

            may be considered to have been embodied in Miss Podsnap, his daughter. It was

            an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring everything in the universe

            to be filed down and fitted to it. The question about everything was, would it bring a blush into the cheek of the young person? And the inconvenience of the

            young person was, that, according to Mr Podsnap, she seemed always liable to

            burst into blushes when there was no need at all. There appeared to be no line of

            demarcation between the young person’s excessive innocence, and another

            person’s guiltiest knowledge. Take Mr Podsnap’s word for it, and the soberest

            tints of drab, white, lilac, and grey, were all flaming red to this troublesome Bull

            of a young person.

            The Podsnaps lived in a shady angle adjoining Portman Square. They were a

            kind of people certain to dwell in the shade, wherever they dwelt. Miss Podsnap’s life had been, from her first appearance on this planet, altogether of a

            shady order; for, Mr Podsnap’s young person was likely to get little good out of

            association with other young persons, and had therefore been restricted to

            companionship with not very congenial older persons, and with massive

            furniture. Miss Podsnap’s early views of life being principally derived from the

            reflections of it in her father’s boots, and in the walnut and rosewood tables of

            the dim drawing-rooms, and in their swarthy giants of looking-glasses, were of a

            sombre cast; and it was not wonderful that now, when she was on most days

            solemnly tooled through the Park by the side of her mother in a great tall

            custard-coloured phaeton, she showed above the apron of that vehicle like a

            dejected young person sitting up in bed to take a startled look at things in general, and very strongly desiring to get her head under the counterpane again.

            Said Mr Podsnap to Mrs Podsnap, ‘Georgiana is almost eighteen.’

            Said Mrs Podsnap to Mr Podsnap, assenting, ‘Almost eighteen.’

            Said Mr Podsnap then to Mrs Podsnap, ‘Really I think we should have some

            people on Georgiana’s birthday.’

            Said Mrs Podsnap then to Mr Podsnap, ‘Which will enable us to clear off all

            those people who are due.’

            So it came to pass that Mr and Mrs Podsnap requested the honour of the

            company of seventeen friends of their souls at dinner; and that they substituted

            other friends of their souls for such of the seventeen original friends of their souls as deeply regretted that a prior engagement prevented their having the

            honour of dining with Mr and Mrs Podsnap, in pursuance of their kind

            invitation; and that Mrs Podsnap said of all these inconsolable personages, as she

            checked them off with a pencil in her list, ‘Asked, at any rate, and got rid of;’

            and that they successfully disposed of a good many friends of their souls in this

            way, and felt their consciences much lightened.

            There were still other friends of their souls who were not entitled to be asked

            to dinner, but had a claim to be invited to come and take a haunch of mutton vapour-bath at half-past nine. For the clearing off of these worthies, Mrs

            Podsnap added a small and early evening to the dinner, and looked in at the music-shop to bespeak a well-conducted automaton to come and play quadrilles

            for a carpet dance.

            Mr and Mrs Veneering, and Mr and Mrs Veneering’s bran-new bride and

            bridegroom, were of the dinner company; but the Podsnap establishment had

            nothing else in common with the Veneerings. Mr Podsnap could tolerate taste in

            a mushroom man who stood in need of that sort of thing, but was far above it himself. Hideous solidity was the characteristic of the Podsnap plate. Everything

            was made to look as heavy as it could, and to take up as much room as possible.

            Everything said boastfully, ‘Here you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I

            were only lead; but I am so many ounces of precious metal worth so much an ounce;—wouldn’t you like to melt me down?’ A corpulent straddling epergne,

            blotched all over as if it had broken out in an eruption rather than been

            ornamented, delivered this address from an unsightly silver platform in the

            centre of the table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished with four staring heads, each head obtrusively carrying a big silver ring in each of its ears, conveyed the sentiment up and down the table, and handed it on to the pot-bellied silver salt-cellars. All the big silver spoons and forks widened the mouths

            of the company expressly for the purpose of thrusting the sentiment down their

            throats with every morsel they ate.

            The majority of the guests were like the plate, and included several heavy

            articles weighing ever so much. But there was a foreign gentleman among them:

            whom Mr Podsnap had invited after much debate with himself—believing the

            whole European continent to be in mortal alliance against the young person—

            and there was a droll disposition, not only on the part of Mr Podsnap but of everybody else, to treat him as if he were a child who was hard of hearing.

            As a delicate concession to this unfortunately-born foreigner, Mr Podsnap, in

            receiving him, had presented his wife as ‘Madame Podsnap;’ also his daughter as

            ‘Mademoiselle Podsnap,’ with some inclination to add ‘ma fille,’ in which bold

            venture, however, he checked himself. The Veneerings being at that time the

            only other arrivals, he had added (in a condescendingly explanatory manner),

            ‘Monsieur Vey-nair-reeng,’ and had then subsided into English.

            ‘How Do You Like London?’ Mr Podsnap now inquired from his station of

            host, as if he were administering something in the nature of a powder or potion

            to the deaf child; ‘London, Londres, London?’

            The foreign gentleman admired it.

            ‘You find it Very Large?’ said Mr Podsnap, spaciously.

            The foreign gentleman found it very large.

            ‘And Very Rich?’

            The foreign gentleman found it, without doubt, enormement riche.

            ‘Enormously Rich, We say,’ returned Mr Podsnap, in a condescending manner.

            ‘Our English adverbs do Not terminate in Mong, and We Pronounce the “ch” as

            if there were a “t” before it. We say Ritch.’

            ‘Reetch,’ remarked the foreign gentleman.

            ‘And Do You Find, Sir,’ pursued Mr Podsnap, with dignity, ‘Many Evidences

            that Strike You, of our British Constitution in the Streets Of The World’s

            Metropolis, London, Londres, London?’

            The foreign gentleman begged to be pardoned, but did not altogether

            understand.

            ‘The Constitution Britannique,’ Mr Podsnap explained, as if he were teaching

            in an infant school. ‘We Say British, But You Say Britannique, You Know’

            (forgivingly, as if that were not his fault). ‘The Constitution, Sir.’

            The foreign gentleman said, ‘Mais, yees; I know eem.’

            A youngish sallowish gentleman in spectacles, with a lumpy forehead, seated

            in a supplementary chair at a corner of the table, here caused a profound

            sensation by saying, in a raised voice, ‘ Esker,’ and then stopping dead.

            ‘Mais oui,’ said the foreign gentleman, turning towards him. ‘Est-ce que?

            Quoi donc?’

            But the gentleman with the lumpy forehead having for the time delivered

            himself of all that he found behind his lumps, spake for the time no more.

            ‘I Was Inquiring,’ said Mr Podsnap, resuming the thread of his discourse,

            ‘Whether You Have Observed in our Streets as We should say, Upon our Pavvy

            as You would say, any Tokens—’

            The foreign gentleman, with patient courtesy entreated pardon; ‘But what was

            tokenz?’

            ‘Marks,’ said Mr Podsnap; ‘Signs, you know, Appearances—Traces.’

            ‘Ah! Of a Orse?’ inquired the foreign gentleman.

            ‘We call it Horse,’ said Mr Podsnap, with forbearance. ‘In England,

            Angleterre, England, We Aspirate the “H,” and We Say “Horse.” Only our

            Lower Classes Say “Orse!”’

            ‘Pardon,’ said the foreign gentleman; ‘I am alwiz wrong!’

            ‘Our Language,’ said Mr Podsnap, with a gracious consciousness of being

            always right, ‘is Difficult. Ours is a Copious Language, and Trying to Strangers.

            I will not Pursue my Question.’

            But the lumpy gentleman, unwilling to give it up, again madly said, ‘ Esker,’

            and again spake no more.

            ‘It merely referred,’ Mr Podsnap explained, with a sense of meritorious

            proprietorship, ‘to Our Constitution, Sir. We Englishmen are Very Proud of our

            Constitution, Sir. It Was Bestowed Upon Us By Providence. No Other Country is so Favoured as This Country.’

            ‘And ozer countries?—’ the foreign gentleman was beginning, when Mr

            Podsnap put him right again.

            ‘We do not say Ozer; we say Other: the letters are “T” and “H;” You say Tay

            and Aish, You Know; (still with clemency). The sound is “th”—“th!”’

            ‘And other countries,’ said the foreign gentleman. ‘They do how?’

            ‘They do, Sir,’ returned Mr Podsnap, gravely shaking his head; ‘they do—I

            am sorry to be obliged to say it— as they do.’

            ‘It was a little particular of Providence,’ said the foreign gentleman, laughing;

            ‘for the frontier is not large.’

            ‘Undoubtedly,’ assented Mr Podsnap; ‘But So it is. It was the Charter of the Land. This Island was Blest, Sir, to the Direct Exclusion of such Other Countries

            as—as there may happen to be. And if we were all Englishmen present, I would

            say,’ added Mr Podsnap, looking round upon his compatriots, and sounding

            solemnly with his theme, ‘that there is in the Englishman a combination of

            qualities, a modesty, an independence, a responsibility, a repose, combined with

            an absence of everything calculated to call a blush into the cheek of a young person, which one would seek in vain among the Nations of the Earth.’

            Having delivered this little summary, Mr Podsnap’s face flushed, as he

            thought of the remote possibility of its being at all qualified by any prejudiced citizen of any other country; and, with his favourite right-arm flourish, he put the

            rest of Europe and the whole of Asia, Africa, and America nowhere.

            The audience were much edified by this passage of words; and Mr Podsnap,

            feeling that he was in rather remarkable force to-day, became smiling and

            conversational.

            ‘Has anything more been heard, Veneering,’ he inquired, ‘of the lucky

            legatee?’

            ‘Nothing more,’ returned Veneering, ‘than that he has come into possession of

            the property. I am told people now call him The Golden Dustman. I mentioned to

            you some time ago, I think, that the young lady whose intended husband was

            murdered is daughter to a clerk of mine?’

            ‘Yes, you told me that,’ said Podsnap; ‘and by-the-bye, I wish you would tell

            it again here, for it’s a curious coincidence—curious that the first news of the discovery should have been brought straight to your table (when I was there), and curious that one of your people should have been so nearly interested in it.

            Just relate that, will you?’

            Veneering was more than ready to do it, for he had prospered exceedingly

            upon the Harmon Murder, and had turned the social distinction it conferred upon

            him to the account of making several dozen of bran-new bosom-friends. Indeed,

            such another lucky hit would almost have set him up in that way to his

            satisfaction. So, addressing himself to the most desirable of his neighbours,

            while Mrs Veneering secured the next most desirable, he plunged into the case,

            and emerged from it twenty minutes afterwards with a Bank Director in his

            arms. In the mean time, Mrs Veneering had dived into the same waters for a

            wealthy Ship-Broker, and had brought him up, safe and sound, by the hair. Then

            Mrs Veneering had to relate, to a larger circle, how she had been to see the girl,

            and how she was really pretty, and (considering her station) presentable. And

            this she did with such a successful display of her eight aquiline fingers and their

            encircling jewels, that she happily laid hold of a drifting General Officer, his wife and daughter, and not only restored their animation which had become

            suspended, but made them lively friends within an hour.

            Although Mr Podsnap would in a general way have highly disapproved of

            Bodies in rivers as ineligible topics with reference to the cheek of the young person, he had, as one may say, a share in this affair which made him a part proprietor. As its returns were immediate, too, in the way of restraining the company from speechless contemplation of the wine-coolers, it paid, and he was

            satisfied.

            And now the haunch of mutton vapour-bath having received a gamey

            infusion, and a few last touches of sweets and coffee, was quite ready, and the bathers came; but not before the discreet automaton had got behind the bars of

            the piano music-desk, and there presented the appearance of a captive

            languishing in a rose-wood jail. And who now so pleasant or so well assorted as

            Mr and Mrs Alfred Lammle, he all sparkle, she all gracious contentment, both at

            occasional intervals exchanging looks like partners at cards who played a game

            against All England.

            There was not much youth among the bathers, but there was no youth (the

            young person always excepted) in the articles of Podsnappery. Bald bathers

            folded their arms and talked to Mr Podsnap on the hearthrug; sleek-whiskered

            bathers, with hats in their hands, lunged at Mrs Podsnap and retreated; prowling

            bathers, went about looking into ornamental boxes and bowls as if they had

            suspicions of larceny on the part of the Podsnaps, and expected to find

            something they had lost at the bottom; bathers of the gentler sex sat silently comparing ivory shoulders. All this time and always, poor little Miss Podsnap,

            whose tiny efforts (if she had made any) were swallowed up in the magnificence of her mother’s rocking, kept herself as much out of sight and mind as she could,

            and appeared to be counting on many dismal returns of the day. It was somehow

            understood, as a secret article in the state proprieties of Podsnappery that nothing

            must be said about the day. Consequently this young damsel’s nativity was

            hushed up and looked over, as if it were agreed on all hands that it would have

            been better that she had never been born.

            The Lammles were so fond of the dear Veneerings that they could not for

            some time detach themselves from those excellent friends; but at length, either a

            very open smile on Mr Lammle’s part, or a very secret elevation of one of his gingerous eyebrows—certainly the one or the other—seemed to say to Mrs

            Lammle, ‘Why don’t you play?’ And so, looking about her, she saw Miss

            Podsnap, and seeming to say responsively, ‘That card?’ and to be answered,

            ‘Yes,’ went and sat beside Miss Podsnap.

            Mrs Lammle was overjoyed to escape into a corner for a little quiet talk.

            It promised to be a very quiet talk, for Miss Podsnap replied in a flutter, ‘Oh!

            Indeed, it’s very kind of you, but I am afraid I don’t talk.’

            ‘Let us make a beginning,’ said the insinuating Mrs Lammle, with her best

            smile.

            ‘Oh! I am afraid you’ll find me very dull. But Ma talks!’

            That was plainly to be seen, for Ma was talking then at her usual canter, with

            arched head and mane, opened eyes and nostrils.

            ‘Fond of reading perhaps?’

            ‘Yes. At least I—don’t mind that so much,’ returned Miss Podsnap.

            ‘M-m-m-m-music.’ So insinuating was Mrs Lammle that she got half a dozen

            ms into the word before she got it out.

            ‘I haven’t nerve to play even if I could. Ma plays.’

            (At exactly the same canter, and with a certain flourishing appearance of

            doing something, Ma did, in fact, occasionally take a rock upon the instrument.)

            ‘Of course you like dancing?’

            ‘Oh no, I don’t,’ said Miss Podsnap.

            ‘No? With your youth and attractions? Truly, my dear, you surprise me!’

            ‘I can’t say,’ observed Miss Podsnap, after hesitating considerably, and

            stealing several timid looks at Mrs Lammle’s carefully arranged face, ‘how I

            might have liked it if I had been a—you won’t mention it, will you?’

            ‘My dear! Never!’

            ‘No, I am sure you won’t. I can’t say then how I should have liked it, if I had

            been a chimney-sweep on May-day.’

            ‘Gracious!’ was the exclamation which amazement elicited from Mrs

            Lammle.

            ‘There! I knew you’d wonder. But you won’t mention it, will you?’

            ‘Upon my word, my love,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘you make me ten times more

            desirous, now I talk to you, to know you well than I was when I sat over yonder

            looking at you. How I wish we could be real friends! Try me as a real friend.

            Come! Don’t fancy me a frumpy old married woman, my dear; I was married but

            the other day, you know; I am dressed as a bride now, you see. About the

            chimney-sweeps?’

            ‘Hush! Ma’ll hear.’

            ‘She can’t hear from where she sits.’

            ‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ said Miss Podsnap, in a lower voice. ‘Well, what I mean is, that they seem to enjoy it.’

            ‘And that perhaps you would have enjoyed it, if you had been one of them?’

            Miss Podsnap nodded significantly.

            ‘Then you don’t enjoy it now?’

            ‘How is it possible?’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘Oh it is such a dreadful thing! If I

            was wicked enough—and strong enough—to kill anybody, it should be my

            partner.’

            This was such an entirely new view of the Terpsichorean art as socially

            practised, that Mrs Lammle looked at her young friend in some astonishment.

            Her young friend sat nervously twiddling her fingers in a pinioned attitude, as if

            she were trying to hide her elbows. But this latter Utopian object (in short sleeves) always appeared to be the great inoffensive aim of her existence.

            ‘It sounds horrid, don’t it?’ said Miss Podsnap, with a penitential face.

            Mrs Lammle, not very well knowing what to answer, resolved herself into a

            look of smiling encouragement.

            ‘But it is, and it always has been,’ pursued Miss Podsnap, ‘such a trial to me! I

            so dread being awful. And it is so awful! No one knows what I suffered at

            Madame Sauteuse’s, where I learnt to dance and make presentation-curtseys, and

            other dreadful things—or at least where they tried to teach me. Ma can do it.’

            ‘At any rate, my love,’ said Mrs Lammle, soothingly, ‘that’s over.’

            ‘Yes, it’s over,’ returned Miss Podsnap, ‘but there’s nothing gained by that. It’s worse here, than at Madame Sauteuse’s. Ma was there, and Ma’s here; but Pa

            wasn’t there, and company wasn’t there, and there were not real partners there.

            Oh there’s Ma speaking to the man at the piano! Oh there’s Ma going up to

            somebody! Oh I know she’s going to bring him to me! Oh please don’t, please

            don’t, please don’t! Oh keep away, keep away, keep away!’ These pious

            ejaculations Miss Podsnap uttered with her eyes closed, and her head leaning

            back against the wall.

            But the Ogre advanced under the pilotage of Ma, and Ma said, ‘Georgiana, Mr

            Grompus,’ and the Ogre clutched his victim and bore her off to his castle in the

            top couple. Then the discreet automaton who had surveyed his ground, played a

            blossomless tuneless ‘set,’ and sixteen disciples of Podsnappery went through

            the figures of - 1, Getting up at eight and shaving close at a quarter past - 2, Breakfasting at nine - 3, Going to the City at ten - 4, Coming home at half-past

            five - 5, Dining at seven, and the grand chain.

            While these solemnities were in progress, Mr Alfred Lammle (most loving of

            husbands) approached the chair of Mrs Alfred Lammle (most loving of wives),

            and bending over the back of it, trifled for some few seconds with Mrs Lammle’s

            bracelet. Slightly in contrast with this brief airy toying, one might have noticed a

            certain dark attention in Mrs Lammle’s face as she said some words with her

            eyes on Mr Lammle’s waistcoat, and seemed in return to receive some lesson.

            But it was all done as a breath passes from a mirror.

            And now, the grand chain riveted to the last link, the discreet automaton

            ceased, and the sixteen, two and two, took a walk among the furniture. And

            herein the unconsciousness of the Ogre Grompus was pleasantly conspicuous;

            for, that complacent monster, believing that he was giving Miss Podsnap a treat,

            prolonged to the utmost stretch of possibility a peripatetic account of an archery

            meeting; while his victim, heading the procession of sixteen as it slowly circled

            about, like a revolving funeral, never raised her eyes except once to steal a glance at Mrs Lammle, expressive of intense despair.

            At length the procession was dissolved by the violent arrival of a nutmeg,

            before which the drawing-room door bounced open as if it were a cannon-ball;

            and while that fragrant article, dispersed through several glasses of coloured

            warm water, was going the round of society, Miss Podsnap returned to her seat

            by her new friend.

            ‘Oh my goodness,’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘ that’s over! I hope you didn’t look at

            me.’

            ‘My dear, why not?’

            ‘Oh I know all about myself,’ said Miss Podsnap.

            ‘I’ll tell you something I know about you, my dear,’ returned Mrs Lammle in

            her winning way, ‘and that is, you are most unnecessarily shy.’

            ‘Ma ain’t,’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘—I detest you! Go along!’ This shot was

            levelled under her breath at the gallant Grompus for bestowing an insinuating

            smile upon her in passing.

            ‘Pardon me if I scarcely see, my dear Miss Podsnap,’ Mrs Lammle was

            beginning when the young lady interposed.

            ‘If we are going to be real friends (and I suppose we are, for you are the only

            person who ever proposed it) don’t let us be awful. It’s awful enough to be Miss

            Podsnap, without being called so. Call me Georgiana.’

            ‘Dearest Georgiana,’ Mrs Lammle began again.

            ‘Thank you,’ said Miss Podsnap.

            ‘Dearest Georgiana, pardon me if I scarcely see, my love, why your mamma’s

            not being shy, is a reason why you should be.’

            ‘Don’t you really see that?’ asked Miss Podsnap, plucking at her fingers in a

            troubled manner, and furtively casting her eyes now on Mrs Lammle, now on the

            ground. ‘Then perhaps it isn’t?’

            ‘My dearest Georgiana, you defer much too readily to my poor opinion.

            Indeed it is not even an opinion, darling, for it is only a confession of my dullness.’

            ‘Oh you are not dull,’ returned Miss Podsnap. ‘I am dull, but you couldn’t have made me talk if you were.’

            Some little touch of conscience answering this perception of her having

            gained a purpose, called bloom enough into Mrs Lammle’s face to make it look

            brighter as she sat smiling her best smile on her dear Georgiana, and shaking her

            head with an affectionate playfulness. Not that it meant anything, but that

            Georgiana seemed to like it.

            ‘What I mean is,’ pursued Georgiana, ‘that Ma being so endowed with

            awfulness, and Pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being so much

            awfulness everywhere—I mean, at least, everywhere where I am—perhaps it

            makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened at it—I say it very

            badly—I don’t know whether you can understand what I mean?’

            ‘Perfectly, dearest Georgiana!’ Mrs Lammle was proceeding with every

            reassuring wile, when the head of that young lady suddenly went back against

            the wall again and her eyes closed.

            ‘Oh there’s Ma being awful with somebody with a glass in his eye! Oh I know

            she’s going to bring him here! Oh don’t bring him, don’t bring him! Oh he’ll be

            my partner with his glass in his eye! Oh what shall I do!’ This time Georgiana

            accompanied her ejaculations with taps of her feet upon the floor, and was

            altogether in quite a desperate condition. But, there was no escape from the

            majestic Mrs Podsnap’s production of an ambling stranger, with one eye screwed

            up into extinction and the other framed and glazed, who, having looked down

            out of that organ, as if he descried Miss Podsnap at the bottom of some

            perpendicular shaft, brought her to the surface, and ambled off with her. And then the captive at the piano played another ‘set,’ expressive of his mournful aspirations after freedom, and other sixteen went through the former melancholy

            motions, and the ambler took Miss Podsnap for a furniture walk, as if he had struck out an entirely original conception.

            In the mean time a stray personage of a meek demeanour, who had wandered

            to the hearthrug and got among the heads of tribes assembled there in conference

            with Mr Podsnap, eliminated Mr Podsnap’s flush and flourish by a highly

            unpolite remark; no less than a reference to the circumstance that some half-

            dozen people had lately died in the streets, of starvation. It was clearly ill-timed

            after dinner. It was not adapted to the cheek of the young person. It was not in

            good taste.

            ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Mr Podsnap, putting it behind him.

            The meek man was afraid we must take it as proved, because there were the

            Inquests and the Registrar’s returns.

            ‘Then it was their own fault,’ said Mr Podsnap.

            Veneering and other elders of tribes commended this way out of it. At once a

            short cut and a broad road.

            The man of meek demeanour intimated that truly it would seem from the

            facts, as if starvation had been forced upon the culprits in question—as if, in their wretched manner, they had made their weak protests against it—as if they

            would have taken the liberty of staving it off if they could—as if they would rather not have been starved upon the whole, if perfectly agreeable to all parties.

            ‘There is not,’ said Mr Podsnap, flushing angrily, ‘there is not a country in the

            world, sir, where so noble a provision is made for the poor as in this country.’

            The meek man was quite willing to concede that, but perhaps it rendered the

            matter even worse, as showing that there must be something appallingly wrong

            somewhere.

            ‘Where?’ said Mr Podsnap.

            The meek man hinted Wouldn’t it be well to try, very seriously, to find out where?

            ‘Ah!’ said Mr Podsnap. ‘Easy to say somewhere; not so easy to say where!

            But I see what you are driving at. I knew it from the first. Centralization. No.

            Never with my consent. Not English.’

            An approving murmur arose from the heads of tribes; as saying, ‘There you

            have him! Hold him!’

            He was not aware (the meek man submitted of himself) that he was driving at

            any ization. He had no favourite ization that he knew of. But he certainly was more staggered by these terrible occurrences than he was by names, of

            howsoever so many syllables. Might he ask, was dying of destitution and neglect

            necessarily English?

            ‘You know what the population of London is, I suppose,’ said Mr Podsnap.

            The meek man supposed he did, but supposed that had absolutely nothing to

            do with it, if its laws were well administered.

            ‘And you know; at least I hope you know;’ said Mr Podsnap, with severity,

            ‘that Providence has declared that you shall have the poor always with you?’

            The meek man also hoped he knew that.

            ‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Mr Podsnap with a portentous air. ‘I am glad to hear

            it. It will render you cautious how you fly in the face of Providence.’

            In reference to that absurd and irreverent conventional phrase, the meek man

            said, for which Mr Podsnap was not responsible, he the meek man had no fear of

            doing anything so impossible; but—

            But Mr Podsnap felt that the time had come for flushing and flourishing this

            meek man down for good. So he said:

            ‘I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It is not pleasant to my

            feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings. I have said that I do not admit these things. I have also said that if they do occur (not that I admit it), the fault lies with the sufferers themselves. It is not for me’—Mr Podsnap pointed ‘me’

            forcibly, as adding by implication though it may be all very well for you—‘it is

            not for me to impugn the workings of Providence. I know better than that, I trust,

            and I have mentioned what the intentions of Providence are. Besides,’ said Mr Podsnap, flushing high up among his hair-brushes, with a strong consciousness

            of personal affront, ‘the subject is a very disagreeable one. I will go so far as to

            say it is an odious one. It is not one to be introduced among our wives and young

            persons, and I—’ He finished with that flourish of his arm which added more expressively than any words, And I remove it from the face of the earth.

            Simultaneously with this quenching of the meek man’s ineffectual fire;

            Georgiana having left the ambler up a lane of sofa, in a No Thoroughfare of back

            drawing-room, to find his own way out, came back to Mrs Lammle. And who

            should be with Mrs Lammle, but Mr Lammle. So fond of her!

            ‘Alfred, my love, here is my friend. Georgiana, dearest girl, you must like my

            husband next to me.’

            Mr Lammle was proud to be so soon distinguished by this special

            commendation to Miss Podsnap’s favour. But if Mr Lammle were prone to be

            jealous of his dear Sophronia’s friendships, he would be jealous of her feeling towards Miss Podsnap.

            ‘Say Georgiana, darling,’ interposed his wife.

            ‘Towards—shall I?—Georgiana.’ Mr Lammle uttered the name, with a

            delicate curve of his right hand, from his lips outward. ‘For never have I known

            Sophronia (who is not apt to take sudden likings) so attracted and so captivated

            as she is by—shall I once more?—Georgiana.’

            The object of this homage sat uneasily enough in receipt of it, and then said,

            turning to Mrs Lammle, much embarrassed:

            ‘I wonder what you like me for! I am sure I can’t think.’

            ‘Dearest Georgiana, for yourself. For your difference from all around you.’

            ‘Well! That may be. For I think I like you for your difference from all around

            me,’ said Georgiana with a smile of relief.

            ‘We must be going with the rest,’ observed Mrs Lammle, rising with a show of

            unwillingness, amidst a general dispersal. ‘We are real friends, Georgiana dear?’

            ‘Real.’

            ‘Good night, dear girl!’

            She had established an attraction over the shrinking nature upon which her

            smiling eyes were fixed, for Georgiana held her hand while she answered in a secret and half-frightened tone:

            ‘Don’t forget me when you are gone away. And come again soon. Good

            night!’

            Charming to see Mr and Mrs Lammle taking leave so gracefully, and going

            down the stairs so lovingly and sweetly. Not quite so charming to see their

            smiling faces fall and brood as they dropped moodily into separate corners of

            their little carriage. But to be sure that was a sight behind the scenes, which nobody saw, and which nobody was meant to see.

            Certain big, heavy vehicles, built on the model of the Podsnap plate, took

            away the heavy articles of guests weighing ever so much; and the less valuable

            articles got away after their various manners; and the Podsnap plate was put to

            bed. As Mr Podsnap stood with his back to the drawing-room fire, pulling up his

            shirtcollar, like a veritable cock of the walk literally pluming himself in the midst

            of his possessions, nothing would have astonished him more than an intimation

            that Miss Podsnap, or any other young person properly born and bred, could not

            be exactly put away like the plate, brought out like the plate, polished like the plate, counted, weighed, and valued like the plate. That such a young person

            could possibly have a morbid vacancy in the heart for anything younger than the

            plate, or less monotonous than the plate; or that such a young person’s thoughts

            could try to scale the region bounded on the north, south, east, and west, by the

            plate; was a monstrous imagination which he would on the spot have flourished

            into space. This perhaps in some sort arose from Mr Podsnap’s blushing young

            person being, so to speak, all cheek; whereas there is a possibility that there may

            be young persons of a rather more complex organization.

            If Mr Podsnap, pulling up his shirt-collar, could only have heard himself

            called ‘that fellow’ in a certain short dialogue, which passed between Mr and Mrs Lammle in their opposite corners of their little carriage, rolling home!

            ‘Sophronia, are you awake?’

            ‘Am I likely to be asleep, sir?’

            ‘Very likely, I should think, after that fellow’s company. Attend to what I am

            going to say.’

            ‘I have attended to what you have already said, have I not? What else have I

            been doing all to-night.’

            ‘Attend, I tell you,’ (in a raised voice) ‘to what I am going to say. Keep close

            to that idiot girl. Keep her under your thumb. You have her fast, and you are not

            to let her go. Do you hear?’

            ‘I hear you.’

            ‘I foresee there is money to be made out of this, besides taking that fellow down a peg. We owe each other money, you know.’

            Mrs Lammle winced a little at the reminder, but only enough to shake her

            scents and essences anew into the atmosphere of the little carriage, as she settled

            herself afresh in her own dark corner.

            Chapter 12

            THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN’S BROW

            Mr Mortimer Lightwood and Mr Eugene Wrayburn took a coffee-house

            dinner together in Mr Lightwood’s office. They had newly agreed to set up a

            joint establishment together. They had taken a bachelor cottage near Hampton,

            on the brink of the Thames, with a lawn, and a boat-house; and all things fitting,

            and were to float with the stream through the summer and the Long Vacation.

            It was not summer yet, but spring; and it was not gentle spring ethereally mild,

            as in Thomson’s Seasons, but nipping spring with an easterly wind, as in

            Johnson’s, Jackson’s, Dickson’s, Smith’s, and Jones’s Seasons. The grating wind

            sawed rather than blew; and as it sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit.

            Every street was a sawpit, and there were no top-sawyers; every passenger was

            an under-sawyer, with the sawdust blinding him and choking him.

            That mysterious paper currency which circulates in London when the wind

            blows, gyrated here and there and everywhere. Whence can it come, whither can

            it go? It hangs on every bush, flutters in every tree, is caught flying by the electric wires, haunts every enclosure, drinks at every pump, cowers at every

            grating, shudders upon every plot of grass, seeks rest in vain behind the legions

            of iron rails. In Paris, where nothing is wasted, costly and luxurious city though

            it be, but where wonderful human ants creep out of holes and pick up every

            scrap, there is no such thing. There, it blows nothing but dust. There, sharp eyes

            and sharp stomachs reap even the east wind, and get something out of it.

            The wind sawed, and the sawdust whirled. The shrubs wrung their many

            hands, bemoaning that they had been over-persuaded by the sun to bud; the

            young leaves pined; the sparrows repented of their early marriages, like men and

            women; the colours of the rainbow were discernible, not in floral spring, but in

            the faces of the people whom it nibbled and pinched. And ever the wind sawed,

            and the sawdust whirled.

            When the spring evenings are too long and light to shut out, and such weather

            is rife, the city which Mr Podsnap so explanatorily called London, Londres,

            London, is at its worst. Such a black shrill city, combining the qualities of a smoky house and a scolding wife; such a gritty city; such a hopeless city, with no

            rent in the leaden canopy of its sky; such a beleaguered city, invested by the

            great Marsh Forces of Essex and Kent. So the two old schoolfellows felt it to be, as, their dinner done, they turned towards the fire to smoke. Young Blight was gone, the coffee-house waiter was gone, the plates and dishes were gone, the

            wine was going—but not in the same direction.

            ‘The wind sounds up here,’ quoth Eugene, stirring the fire, ‘as if we were

            keeping a lighthouse. I wish we were.’

            ‘Don’t you think it would bore us?’ Lightwood asked.

            ‘Not more than any other place. And there would be no Circuit to go. But

            that’s a selfish consideration, personal to me.’

            ‘And no clients to come,’ added Lightwood. ‘Not that that’s a selfish

            consideration at all personal to me.’

            ‘If we were on an isolated rock in a stormy sea,’ said Eugene, smoking with

            his eyes on the fire, ‘Lady Tippins couldn’t put off to visit us, or, better still, might put off and get swamped. People couldn’t ask one to wedding breakfasts.

            There would be no Precedents to hammer at, except the plain-sailing Precedent

            of keeping the light up. It would be exciting to look out for wrecks.’

            ‘But otherwise,’ suggested Lightwood, ‘there might be a degree of sameness

            in the life.’

            ‘I have thought of that also,’ said Eugene, as if he really had been considering

            the subject in its various bearings with an eye to the business; ‘but it would be a

            defined and limited monotony. It would not extend beyond two people. Now, it’s

            a question with me, Mortimer, whether a monotony defined with that precision

            and limited to that extent, might not be more endurable than the unlimited

            monotony of one’s fellow-creatures.’

            As Lightwood laughed and passed the wine, he remarked, ‘We shall have an

            opportunity, in our boating summer, of trying the question.’

            ‘An imperfect one,’ Eugene acquiesced, with a sigh, ‘but so we shall. I hope

            we may not prove too much for one another.’

            ‘Now, regarding your respected father,’ said Lightwood, bringing him to a

            subject they had expressly appointed to discuss: always the most slippery eel of

            eels of subjects to lay hold of.

            ‘Yes, regarding my respected father,’ assented Eugene, settling himself in his

            arm-chair. ‘I would rather have approached my respected father by candlelight,

            as a theme requiring a little artificial brilliancy; but we will take him by twilight,

            enlivened with a glow of Wallsend.’

            He stirred the fire again as he spoke, and having made it blaze, resumed.

            ‘My respected father has found, down in the parental neighbourhood, a wife for his not-generally-respected son.’

            ‘With some money, of course?’

            ‘With some money, of course, or he would not have found her. My respected

            father—let me shorten the dutiful tautology by substituting in future M. R. F., which sounds military, and rather like the Duke of Wellington.’

            ‘What an absurd fellow you are, Eugene!’

            ‘Not at all, I assure you. M. R. F. having always in the clearest manner

            provided (as he calls it) for his children by pre-arranging from the hour of the birth of each, and sometimes from an earlier period, what the devoted little

            victim’s calling and course in life should be, M. R. F. pre-arranged for myself that I was to be the barrister I am (with the slight addition of an enormous practice, which has not accrued), and also the married man I am not.’

            ‘The first you have often told me.’

            ‘The first I have often told you. Considering myself sufficiently incongruous

            on my legal eminence, I have until now suppressed my domestic destiny. You

            know M. R. F., but not as well as I do. If you knew him as well as I do, he would

            amuse you.’

            ‘Filially spoken, Eugene!’

            ‘Perfectly so, believe me; and with every sentiment of affectionate deference

            towards M. R. F. But if he amuses me, I can’t help it. When my eldest brother

            was born, of course the rest of us knew (I mean the rest of us would have known,

            if we had been in existence) that he was heir to the Family Embarrassments—we

            call it before the company the Family Estate. But when my second brother was

            going to be born by-and-by, “this,” says M. R. F., “is a little pillar of the church.”

             Was born, and became a pillar of the church; a very shaky one. My third brother

            appeared, considerably in advance of his engagement to my mother; but M. R.

            F., not at all put out by surprise, instantly declared him a Circumnavigator. Was

            pitch-forked into the Navy, but has not circumnavigated. I announced myself and

            was disposed of with the highly satisfactory results embodied before you. When

            my younger brother was half an hour old, it was settled by M. R. F. that he should have a mechanical genius. And so on. Therefore I say that M. R. F.

            amuses me.’

            ‘Touching the lady, Eugene.’

            ‘There M. R. F. ceases to be amusing, because my intentions are opposed to

            touching the lady.’

            ‘Do you know her?’

            ‘Not in the least.’

            ‘Hadn’t you better see her?’

            ‘My dear Mortimer, you have studied my character. Could I possibly go down

            there, labelled “ELIGIBLE. ON VIEW, ” and meet the lady, similarly labelled?

            Anything to carry out M. R. F.‘s arrangements, I am sure, with the greatest

            pleasure—except matrimony. Could I possibly support it? I, so soon bored, so

            constantly, so fatally?’

            ‘But you are not a consistent fellow, Eugene.’

            ‘In susceptibility to boredom,’ returned that worthy, ‘I assure you I am the

            most consistent of mankind.’

            ‘Why, it was but now that you were dwelling in the advantages of a monotony

            of two.’

            ‘In a lighthouse. Do me the justice to remember the condition. In a

            lighthouse.’

            Mortimer laughed again, and Eugene, having laughed too for the first time, as

            if he found himself on reflection rather entertaining, relapsed into his usual gloom, and drowsily said, as he enjoyed his cigar, ‘No, there is no help for it; one of the prophetic deliveries of M. R. F. must for ever remain unfulfilled. With

            every disposition to oblige him, he must submit to a failure.’

            It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing and the sawdust

            was whirling outside paler windows. The underlying churchyard was already

            settling into deep dim shade, and the shade was creeping up to the housetops among which they sat. ‘As if,’ said Eugene, ‘as if the churchyard ghosts were rising.’

            He had walked to the window with his cigar in his mouth, to exalt its flavour

            by comparing the fireside with the outside, when he stopped midway on his

            return to his arm-chair, and said:

            ‘Apparently one of the ghosts has lost its way, and dropped in to be directed.

            Look at this phantom!’

            Lightwood, whose back was towards the door, turned his head, and there, in

            the darkness of the entry, stood a something in the likeness of a man: to whom

            he addressed the not irrelevant inquiry, ‘Who the devil are you?’

            ‘I ask your pardons, Governors,’ replied the ghost, in a hoarse double-

            barrelled whisper, ‘but might either on you be Lawyer Lightwood?’

            ‘What do you mean by not knocking at the door?’ demanded Mortimer.

            ‘I ask your pardons, Governors,’ replied the ghost, as before, ‘but probable you was not aware your door stood open.’

            ‘What do you want?’

            Hereunto the ghost again hoarsely replied, in its double-barrelled manner, ‘I

            ask your pardons, Governors, but might one on you be Lawyer Lightwood?’

            ‘One of us is,’ said the owner of that name.

            ‘All right, Governors Both,’ returned the ghost, carefully closing the room

            door; ‘’tickler business.’

            Mortimer lighted the candles. They showed the visitor to be an ill-looking

            visitor with a squinting leer, who, as he spoke, fumbled at an old sodden fur cap,

            formless and mangey, that looked like a furry animal, dog or cat, puppy or kitten,

            drowned and decaying.

            ‘Now,’ said Mortimer, ‘what is it?’

            ‘Governors Both,’ returned the man, in what he meant to be a wheedling tone,

            ‘which on you might be Lawyer Lightwood?’

            ‘I am.’

            ‘Lawyer Lightwood,’ ducking at him with a servile air, ‘I am a man as gets my

            living, and as seeks to get my living, by the sweat of my brow. Not to risk being

            done out of the sweat of my brow, by any chances, I should wish afore going further to be swore in.’

            ‘I am not a swearer in of people, man.’

            The visitor, clearly anything but reliant on this assurance, doggedly muttered

            ‘Alfred David.’

            ‘Is that your name?’ asked Lightwood.

            ‘My name?’ returned the man. ‘No; I want to take a Alfred David.’

            (Which Eugene, smoking and contemplating him, interpreted as meaning

            Affidavit.)

            ‘I tell you, my good fellow,’ said Lightwood, with his indolent laugh, ‘that I

            have nothing to do with swearing.’

            ‘He can swear at you,’ Eugene explained; ‘and so can I. But we can’t do more

            for you.’

            Much discomfited by this information, the visitor turned the drowned dog or

            cat, puppy or kitten, about and about, and looked from one of the Governors

            Both to the other of the Governors Both, while he deeply considered within

            himself. At length he decided:

            ‘Then I must be took down.’

            ‘Where?’ asked Lightwood.

            ‘Here,’ said the man. ‘In pen and ink.’

            ‘First, let us know what your business is about.’

            ‘It’s about,’ said the man, taking a step forward, dropping his hoarse voice, and shading it with his hand, ‘it’s about from five to ten thousand pound reward.

            That’s what it’s about. It’s about Murder. That’s what it’s about.’

            ‘Come nearer the table. Sit down. Will you have a glass of wine?’

            ‘Yes, I will,’ said the man; ‘and I don’t deceive you, Governors.’

            It was given him. Making a stiff arm to the elbow, he poured the wine into his

            mouth, tilted it into his right cheek, as saying, ‘What do you think of it?’ tilted it

            into his left cheek, as saying, ‘What do you think of it?’ jerked it into his stomach, as saying, ‘What do you think of it?’ To conclude, smacked his lips, as

            if all three replied, ‘We think well of it.’

            ‘Will you have another?’

            ‘Yes, I will,’ he repeated, ‘and I don’t deceive you, Governors.’ And also

            repeated the other proceedings.

            ‘Now,’ began Lightwood, ‘what’s your name?’

            ‘Why, there you’re rather fast, Lawyer Lightwood,’ he replied, in a

            remonstrant manner. ‘Don’t you see, Lawyer Lightwood? There you’re a little

            bit fast. I’m going to earn from five to ten thousand pound by the sweat of my

            brow; and as a poor man doing justice to the sweat of my brow, is it likely I can

            afford to part with so much as my name without its being took down?’

            Deferring to the man’s sense of the binding powers of pen and ink and paper,

            Lightwood nodded acceptance of Eugene’s nodded proposal to take those spells

            in hand. Eugene, bringing them to the table, sat down as clerk or notary.

            ‘Now,’ said Lightwood, ‘what’s your name?’

            But further precaution was still due to the sweat of this honest fellow’s brow.

            ‘I should wish, Lawyer Lightwood,’ he stipulated, ‘to have that T’other

            Governor as my witness that what I said I said. Consequent, will the T’other Governor be so good as chuck me his name and where he lives?’

            Eugene, cigar in mouth and pen in hand, tossed him his card. After spelling it

            out slowly, the man made it into a little roll, and tied it up in an end of his neckerchief still more slowly.

            ‘Now,’ said Lightwood, for the third time, ‘if you have quite completed your

            various preparations, my friend, and have fully ascertained that your spirits are cool and not in any way hurried, what’s your name?’

            ‘Roger Riderhood.’

            ‘Dwelling-place?’

            ‘Lime’us Hole.’

            ‘Calling or occupation?’

            Not quite so glib with this answer as with the previous two, Mr Riderhood

            gave in the definition, ‘Waterside character.’

            ‘Anything against you?’ Eugene quietly put in, as he wrote.

            Rather baulked, Mr Riderhood evasively remarked, with an innocent air, that

            he believed the T’other Governor had asked him summa’t.

            ‘Ever in trouble?’ said Eugene.

            ‘Once.’ (Might happen to any man, Mr Riderhood added incidentally.)

            ‘On suspicion of—’

            ‘Of seaman’s pocket,’ said Mr Riderhood. ‘Whereby I was in reality the man’s

            best friend, and tried to take care of him.’

            ‘With the sweat of your brow?’ asked Eugene.

            ‘Till it poured down like rain,’ said Roger Riderhood.

            Eugene leaned back in his chair, and smoked with his eyes negligently turned

            on the informer, and his pen ready to reduce him to more writing. Lightwood

            also smoked, with his eyes negligently turned on the informer.

            ‘Now let me be took down again,’ said Riderhood, when he had turned the

            drowned cap over and under, and had brushed it the wrong way (if it had a right

            way) with his sleeve. ‘I give information that the man that done the Harmon

            Murder is Gaffer Hexam, the man that found the body. The hand of Jesse

            Hexam, commonly called Gaffer on the river and along shore, is the hand that done that deed. His hand and no other.’

            The two friends glanced at one another with more serious faces than they had

            shown yet.

            ‘Tell us on what grounds you make this accusation,’ said Mortimer

            Lightwood.

            ‘On the grounds,’ answered Riderhood, wiping his face with his sleeve, ‘that I

            was Gaffer’s pardner, and suspected of him many a long day and many a dark

            night. On the grounds that I knowed his ways. On the grounds that I broke the

            pardnership because I see the danger; which I warn you his daughter may tell

            you another story about that, for anythink I can say, but you know what it’ll be worth, for she’d tell you lies, the world round and the heavens broad, to save her

            father. On the grounds that it’s well understood along the cause’ays and the stairs

            that he done it. On the grounds that he’s fell off from, because he done it. On the

            grounds that I will swear he done it. On the grounds that you may take me where

            you will, and get me sworn to it. I don’t want to back out of the consequences. I

            have made up my mind. Take me anywheres.’

            ‘All this is nothing,’ said Lightwood.

            ‘Nothing?’ repeated Riderhood, indignantly and amazedly.

            ‘Merely nothing. It goes to no more than that you suspect this man of the

            crime. You may do so with some reason, or you may do so with no reason, but

            he cannot be convicted on your suspicion.’

            ‘Haven’t I said—I appeal to the T’other Governor as my witness—haven’t I

            said from the first minute that I opened my mouth in this here world-withoutend-everlasting chair’ (he evidently used that form of words as next in force to

            an affidavit), ‘that I was willing to swear that he done it? Haven’t I said, Take me

            and get me sworn to it? Don’t I say so now? You won’t deny it, Lawyer

            Lightwood?’

            ‘Surely not; but you only offer to swear to your suspicion, and I tell you it is

            not enough to swear to your suspicion.’

            ‘Not enough, ain’t it, Lawyer Lightwood?’ he cautiously demanded.

            ‘Positively not.’

            ‘And did I say it was enough? Now, I appeal to the T’other Governor. Now,

            fair! Did I say so?’

            ‘He certainly has not said that he had no more to tell,’ Eugene observed in a

            low voice without looking at him, ‘whatever he seemed to imply.’

            ‘Hah!’ cried the informer, triumphantly perceiving that the remark was

            generally in his favour, though apparently not closely understanding it.

            ‘Fort’nate for me I had a witness!’

            ‘Go on, then,’ said Lightwood. ‘Say out what you have to say. No after-

            thought.’

            ‘Let me be took down then!’ cried the informer, eagerly and anxiously. ‘Let

            me be took down, for by George and the Draggin I’m a coming to it now! Don’t

            do nothing to keep back from a honest man the fruits of the sweat of his brow! I

            give information, then, that he told me that he done it. Is that enough?’

            ‘Take care what you say, my friend,’ returned Mortimer.

            ‘Lawyer Lightwood, take care, you, what I say; for I judge you’ll be answerable for follering it up!’ Then, slowly and emphatically beating it all out

            with his open right hand on the palm of his left; ‘I, Roger Riderhood, Lime’us

            Hole, Waterside character, tell you, Lawyer Lightwood, that the man Jesse

            Hexam, commonly called upon the river and along-shore Gaffer, told me that he

            done the deed. What’s more, he told me with his own lips that he done the deed.

            What’s more, he said that he done the deed. And I’ll swear it!’

            ‘Where did he tell you so?’

            ‘Outside,’ replied Riderhood, always beating it out, with his head

            determinedly set askew, and his eyes watchfully dividing their attention between

            his two auditors, ‘outside the door of the Six Jolly Fellowships, towards a

            quarter after twelve o’clock at midnight—but I will not in my conscience

            undertake to swear to so fine a matter as five minutes—on the night when he picked up the body. The Six Jolly Fellowships won’t run away. If it turns out that

            he warn’t at the Six Jolly Fellowships that night at midnight, I’m a liar.’

            ‘What did he say?’

            ‘I’ll tell you (take me down, T’other Governor, I ask no better). He come out

            first; I come out last. I might be a minute arter him; I might be half a minute, I

            might be a quarter of a minute; I cannot swear to that, and therefore I won’t.

            That’s knowing the obligations of a Alfred David, ain’t it?’

            ‘Go on.’

            ‘I found him a waiting to speak to me. He says to me, “Rogue Riderhood”—

            for that’s the name I’m mostly called by—not for any meaning in it, for meaning

            it has none, but because of its being similar to Roger.’

            ‘Never mind that.’

            ‘’Scuse me, Lawyer Lightwood, it’s a part of the truth, and as such I do mind

            it, and I must mind it and I will mind it. “Rogue Riderhood,” he says, “words passed betwixt us on the river tonight.” Which they had; ask his daughter! “I threatened you,” he says, “to chop you over the fingers with my boat’s stretcher,

            or take a aim at your brains with my boathook. I did so on accounts of your looking too hard at what I had in tow, as if you was suspicious, and on accounts

            of your holding on to the gunwale of my boat.” I says to him, “Gaffer, I know

            it.” He says to me, “Rogue Riderhood, you are a man in a dozen”—I think he said in a score, but of that I am not positive, so take the lowest figure, for precious be the obligations of a Alfred David. “And,” he says, “when your

            fellow-men is up, be it their lives or be it their watches, sharp is ever the word

            with you. Had you suspicions?” I says, “Gaffer, I had; and what’s more, I have.”

            He falls a shaking, and he says, “Of what?” I says, “Of foul play.” He falls a shaking worse, and he says, “There was foul play then. I done it for his money.

            Don’t betray me!” Those were the words as ever he used.’

            There was a silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the grate. An opportunity which the informer improved by smearing himself all over the head

            and neck and face with his drowned cap, and not at all improving his own

            appearance.

            ‘What more?’ asked Lightwood.

            ‘Of him, d’ye mean, Lawyer Lightwood?’

            ‘Of anything to the purpose.’

            ‘Now, I’m blest if I understand you, Governors Both,’ said the informer, in a

            creeping manner: propitiating both, though only one had spoken. ‘What? Ain’t

             that enough?’

            ‘Did you ask him how he did it, where he did it, when he did it?’

            ‘Far be it from me, Lawyer Lightwood! I was so troubled in my mind, that I

            wouldn’t have knowed more, no, not for the sum as I expect to earn from you by

            the sweat of my brow, twice told! I had put an end to the pardnership. I had cut

            the connexion. I couldn’t undo what was done; and when he begs and prays,

            “Old pardner, on my knees, don’t split upon me!” I only makes answer “Never

            speak another word to Roger Riderhood, nor look him in the face!” and I shuns

            that man.’

            Having given these words a swing to make them mount the higher and go the

            further, Rogue Riderhood poured himself out another glass of wine unbidden,

            and seemed to chew it, as, with the half-emptied glass in his hand, he stared at

            the candles.

            Mortimer glanced at Eugene, but Eugene sat glowering at his paper, and

            would give him no responsive glance. Mortimer again turned to the informer, to

            whom he said:

            ‘You have been troubled in your mind a long time, man?’

            Giving his wine a final chew, and swallowing it, the informer answered in a

            single word:

            ‘Hages!’

            ‘When all that stir was made, when the Government reward was offered, when

            the police were on the alert, when the whole country rang with the crime!’ said

            Mortimer, impatiently.

            ‘Hah!’ Mr Riderhood very slowly and hoarsely chimed in, with several

            retrospective nods of his head. ‘Warn’t I troubled in my mind then!’

            ‘When conjecture ran wild, when the most extravagant suspicions were afloat,

            when half a dozen innocent people might have been laid by the heels any hour in

            the day!’ said Mortimer, almost warming.

            ‘Hah!’ Mr Riderhood chimed in, as before. ‘Warn’t I troubled in my mind

            through it all!’

            ‘But he hadn’t,’ said Eugene, drawing a lady’s head upon his writing-paper,

            and touching it at intervals, ‘the opportunity then of earning so much money, you

            see.’

            ‘The T’other Governor hits the nail, Lawyer Lightwood! It was that as turned

            me. I had many times and again struggled to relieve myself of the trouble on my

            mind, but I couldn’t get it off. I had once very nigh got it off to Miss Abbey Potterson which keeps the Six Jolly Fellowships—there is the ‘ouse, it won’t run

            away,—there lives the lady, she ain’t likely to be struck dead afore you get there

            —ask her!—but I couldn’t do it. At last, out comes the new bill with your own

            lawful name, Lawyer Lightwood, printed to it, and then I asks the question of my own intellects, Am I to have this trouble on my mind for ever? Am I never to

            throw it off? Am I always to think more of Gaffer than of my own self? If he’s

            got a daughter, ain’t I got a daughter?’

            ‘And echo answered—?’ Eugene suggested.

            ‘“You have,”’ said Mr Riderhood, in a firm tone.

            ‘Incidentally mentioning, at the same time, her age?’ inquired Eugene.

            ‘Yes, governor. Two-and-twenty last October. And then I put it to myself,

            “Regarding the money. It is a pot of money.” For it is a pot,’ said Mr Riderhood, with candour, ‘and why deny it?’

            ‘Hear!’ from Eugene as he touched his drawing.

            ‘“It is a pot of money; but is it a sin for a labouring man that moistens every

            crust of bread he earns, with his tears—or if not with them, with the colds he catches in his head—is it a sin for that man to earn it? Say there is anything again earning it.” This I put to myself strong, as in duty bound; “how can it be

            said without blaming Lawyer Lightwood for offering it to be earned?” And was

            it for me to blame Lawyer Lightwood? No.’

            ‘No,’ said Eugene.

            ‘Certainly not, Governor,’ Mr Riderhood acquiesced. ‘So I made up my mind

            to get my trouble off my mind, and to earn by the sweat of my brow what was

            held out to me. And what’s more,’ he added, suddenly turning bloodthirsty, ‘I

            mean to have it! And now I tell you, once and away, Lawyer Lightwood, that Jesse Hexam, commonly called Gaffer, his hand and no other, done the deed, on

            his own confession to me. And I give him up to you, and I want him took. This

            night!’

            After another silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the grate, which

            attracted the informer’s attention as if it were the chinking of money, Mortimer

            Lightwood leaned over his friend, and said in a whisper:

            ‘I suppose I must go with this fellow to our imperturbable friend at the police-

            station.’

            ‘I suppose,’ said Eugene, ‘there is no help for it.’

            ‘Do you believe him?’

            ‘I believe him to be a thorough rascal. But he may tell the truth, for his own

            purpose, and for this occasion only.’

            ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

            ‘ He doesn’t,’ said Eugene. ‘But neither is his late partner, whom he

            denounces, a prepossessing person. The firm are cut-throat Shepherds both, in

            appearance. I should like to ask him one thing.’

            The subject of this conference sat leering at the ashes, trying with all his might

            to overhear what was said, but feigning abstraction as the ‘Governors Both’

            glanced at him.

            ‘You mentioned (twice, I think) a daughter of this Hexam’s,’ said Eugene,

            aloud. ‘You don’t mean to imply that she had any guilty knowledge of the

            crime?’

            The honest man, after considering—perhaps considering how his answer

            might affect the fruits of the sweat of his brow—replied, unreservedly, ‘No, I don’t.’

            ‘And you implicate no other person?’

            ‘It ain’t what I implicate, it’s what Gaffer implicated,’ was the dogged and

            determined answer. ‘I don’t pretend to know more than that his words to me was,

            “I done it.” Those was his words.’

            ‘I must see this out, Mortimer,’ whispered Eugene, rising. ‘How shall we go?’

            ‘Let us walk,’ whispered Lightwood, ‘and give this fellow time to think of it.’

            Having exchanged the question and answer, they prepared themselves for

            going out, and Mr Riderhood rose. While extinguishing the candles, Lightwood,

            quite as a matter of course took up the glass from which that honest gentleman

            had drunk, and coolly tossed it under the grate, where it fell shivering into fragments.

            ‘Now, if you will take the lead,’ said Lightwood, ‘Mr Wrayburn and I will

            follow. You know where to go, I suppose?’

            ‘I suppose I do, Lawyer Lightwood.’

            ‘Take the lead, then.’

            The waterside character pulled his drowned cap over his ears with both hands,

            and making himself more round-shouldered than nature had made him, by the

            sullen and persistent slouch with which he went, went down the stairs, round by

            the Temple Church, across the Temple into Whitefriars, and so on by the

            waterside streets.

            ‘Look at his hang-dog air,’ said Lightwood, following.

            ‘It strikes me rather as a hang- man air,’ returned Eugene. ‘He has undeniable

            intentions that way.’

            They said little else as they followed. He went on before them as an ugly Fate

            might have done, and they kept him in view, and would have been glad enough

            to lose sight of him. But on he went before them, always at the same distance,

            and the same rate. Aslant against the hard implacable weather and the rough

            wind, he was no more to be driven back than hurried forward, but held on like an

            advancing Destiny. There came, when they were about midway on their journey,

            a heavy rush of hail, which in a few minutes pelted the streets clear, and

            whitened them. It made no difference to him. A man’s life being to be taken and

            the price of it got, the hailstones to arrest the purpose must lie larger and deeper

            than those. He crashed through them, leaving marks in the fast-melting slush that

            were mere shapeless holes; one might have fancied, following, that the very

            fashion of humanity had departed from his feet.

            The blast went by, and the moon contended with the fast-flying clouds, and

            the wild disorder reigning up there made the pitiful little tumults in the streets of

            no account. It was not that the wind swept all the brawlers into places of shelter,

            as it had swept the hail still lingering in heaps wherever there was refuge for it;

            but that it seemed as if the streets were absorbed by the sky, and the night were

            all in the air.

            ‘If he has had time to think of it,’ said Eugene, ‘he has not had time to think

            better of it—or differently of it, if that’s better. There is no sign of drawing back

            in him; and as I recollect this place, we must be close upon the corner where we

            alighted that night.’

            In fact, a few abrupt turns brought them to the river side, where they had slipped about among the stones, and where they now slipped more; the wind

            coming against them in slants and flaws, across the tide and the windings of the

            river, in a furious way. With that habit of getting under the lee of any shelter which waterside characters acquire, the waterside character at present in question

            led the way to the leeside of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters before he spoke.

            ‘Look round here, Lawyer Lightwood, at them red curtains. It’s the

            Fellowships, the ‘ouse as I told you wouldn’t run away. And has it run away?’

            Not showing himself much impressed by this remarkable confirmation of the

            informer’s evidence, Lightwood inquired what other business they had there?

            ‘I wished you to see the Fellowships for yourself, Lawyer Lightwood, that you

            might judge whether I’m a liar; and now I’ll see Gaffer’s window for myself, that we may know whether he’s at home.’

            With that, he crept away.

            ‘He’ll come back, I suppose?’ murmured Lightwood.

            ‘Ay! and go through with it,’ murmured Eugene.

            He came back after a very short interval indeed.

            ‘Gaffer’s out, and his boat’s out. His daughter’s at home, sitting a-looking at

            the fire. But there’s some supper getting ready, so Gaffer’s expected. I can find

            what move he’s upon, easy enough, presently.’

            Then he beckoned and led the way again, and they came to the police-station,

            still as clean and cool and steady as before, saving that the flame of its lamp—

            being but a lamp-flame, and only attached to the Force as an outsider—flickered

            in the wind.

            Also, within doors, Mr Inspector was at his studies as of yore. He recognized

            the friends the instant they reappeared, but their reappearance had no effect on his composure. Not even the circumstance that Riderhood was their conductor

            moved him, otherwise than that as he took a dip of ink he seemed, by a

            settlement of his chin in his stock, to propound to that personage, without

            looking at him, the question, ‘What have you been up to, last?’

            Mortimer Lightwood asked him, would he be so good as look at those notes?

            Handing him Eugene’s.

            Having read the first few lines, Mr Inspector mounted to that (for him)

            extraordinary pitch of emotion that he said, ‘Does either of you two gentlemen

            happen to have a pinch of snuff about him?’ Finding that neither had, he did quite as well without it, and read on.

            ‘Have you heard these read?’ he then demanded of the honest man.

            ‘No,’ said Riderhood.

            ‘Then you had better hear them.’ And so read them aloud, in an official

            manner.

            ‘Are these notes correct, now, as to the information you bring here and the

            evidence you mean to give?’ he asked, when he had finished reading.

            ‘They are. They are as correct,’ returned Mr Riderhood, ‘as I am. I can’t say

            more than that for ‘em.’

            ‘I’ll take this man myself, sir,’ said Mr Inspector to Lightwood. Then to

            Riderhood, ‘Is he at home? Where is he? What’s he doing? You have made it

            your business to know all about him, no doubt.’

            Riderhood said what he did know, and promised to find out in a few minutes

            what he didn’t know.

            ‘Stop,’ said Mr Inspector; ‘not till I tell you: We mustn’t look like business.

            Would you two gentlemen object to making a pretence of taking a glass of

            something in my company at the Fellowships? Well-conducted house, and highly

            respectable landlady.’

            They replied that they would be happy to substitute a reality for the pretence,

            which, in the main, appeared to be as one with Mr Inspector’s meaning.

            ‘Very good,’ said he, taking his hat from its peg, and putting a pair of

            handcuffs in his pocket as if they were his gloves. ‘Reserve!’ Reserve saluted.

            ‘You know where to find me?’ Reserve again saluted. ‘Riderhood, when you

            have found out concerning his coming home, come round to the window of

            Cosy, tap twice at it, and wait for me. Now, gentlemen.’

            As the three went out together, and Riderhood slouched off from under the

            trembling lamp his separate way, Lightwood asked the officer what he thought of

            this?

            Mr Inspector replied, with due generality and reticence, that it was always

            more likely that a man had done a bad thing than that he hadn’t. That he himself

            had several times ‘reckoned up’ Gaffer, but had never been able to bring him to a

            satisfactory criminal total. That if this story was true, it was only in part true.

            That the two men, very shy characters, would have been jointly and pretty

            equally ‘in it;’ but that this man had ‘spotted’ the other, to save himself and get

            the money.

            ‘And I think,’ added Mr Inspector, in conclusion, ‘that if all goes well with him, he’s in a tolerable way of getting it. But as this is the Fellowships,

            gentlemen, where the lights are, I recommend dropping the subject. You can’t do better than be interested in some lime works anywhere down about Northfleet,

            and doubtful whether some of your lime don’t get into bad company as it comes

            up in barges.’

            ‘You hear Eugene?’ said Lightwood, over his shoulder. ‘You are deeply

            interested in lime.’

            ‘Without lime,’ returned that unmoved barrister-at-law, ‘my existence would

            be unilluminated by a ray of hope.’

            Chapter 13

            TRACKING THE BIRD OF PREY

            The two lime merchants, with their escort, entered the dominions of Miss

            Abbey Potterson, to whom their escort (presenting them and their pretended

            business over the half-door of the bar, in a confidential way) preferred his

            figurative request that ‘a mouthful of fire’ might be lighted in Cosy. Always well

            disposed to assist the constituted authorities, Miss Abbey bade Bob Gliddery

            attend the gentlemen to that retreat, and promptly enliven it with fire and

            gaslight. Of this commission the bare-armed Bob, leading the way with a

            flaming wisp of paper, so speedily acquitted himself, that Cosy seemed to leap out of a dark sleep and embrace them warmly, the moment they passed the lintels

            of its hospitable door.

            ‘They burn sherry very well here,’ said Mr Inspector, as a piece of local

            intelligence. ‘Perhaps you gentlemen might like a bottle?’

            The answer being By all means, Bob Gliddery received his instructions from

            Mr Inspector, and departed in a becoming state of alacrity engendered by

            reverence for the majesty of the law.

            ‘It’s a certain fact,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘that this man we have received our information from,’ indicating Riderhood with his thumb over his shoulder, ‘has

            for some time past given the other man a bad name arising out of your lime barges, and that the other man has been avoided in consequence. I don’t say

            what it means or proves, but it’s a certain fact. I had it first from one of the opposite sex of my acquaintance,’ vaguely indicating Miss Abbey with his

            thumb over his shoulder, ‘down away at a distance, over yonder.’

            Then probably Mr Inspector was not quite unprepared for their visit that

            evening? Lightwood hinted.

            ‘Well you see,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘it was a question of making a move. It’s of

            no use moving if you don’t know what your move is. You had better by far keep

            still. In the matter of this lime, I certainly had an idea that it might lie betwixt the

            two men; I always had that idea. Still I was forced to wait for a start, and I wasn’t so lucky as to get a start. This man that we have received our information

            from, has got a start, and if he don’t meet with a check he may make the running

            and come in first. There may turn out to be something considerable for him that

            comes in second, and I don’t mention who may or who may not try for that place. There’s duty to do, and I shall do it, under any circumstances; to the best

            of my judgment and ability.’

            ‘Speaking as a shipper of lime—’ began Eugene.

            ‘Which no man has a better right to do than yourself, you know,’ said Mr

            Inspector.

            ‘I hope not,’ said Eugene; ‘my father having been a shipper of lime before me,

            and my grandfather before him—in fact we having been a family immersed to

            the crowns of our heads in lime during several generations—I beg to observe

            that if this missing lime could be got hold of without any young female relative

            of any distinguished gentleman engaged in the lime trade (which I cherish next

            to my life) being present, I think it might be a more agreeable proceeding to the

            assisting bystanders, that is to say, lime-burners.’

            ‘I also,’ said Lightwood, pushing his friend aside with a laugh, ‘should much

            prefer that.’

            ‘It shall be done, gentlemen, if it can be done conveniently,’ said Mr Inspector,

            with coolness. ‘There is no wish on my part to cause any distress in that quarter.

            Indeed, I am sorry for that quarter.’

            ‘There was a boy in that quarter,’ remarked Eugene. ‘He is still there?’

            ‘No,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘He has quitted those works. He is otherwise disposed

            of.’

            ‘Will she be left alone then?’ asked Eugene.

            ‘She will be left,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘alone.’

            Bob’s reappearance with a steaming jug broke off the conversation. But

            although the jug steamed forth a delicious perfume, its contents had not received

            that last happy touch which the surpassing finish of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters imparted on such momentous occasions. Bob carried in his left hand one

            of those iron models of sugar-loaf hats, before mentioned, into which he emptied

            the jug, and the pointed end of which he thrust deep down into the fire, so leaving it for a few moments while he disappeared and reappeared with three

            bright drinking-glasses. Placing these on the table and bending over the fire, meritoriously sensible of the trying nature of his duty, he watched the wreaths of

            steam, until at the special instant of projection he caught up the iron vessel and

            gave it one delicate twirl, causing it to send forth one gentle hiss. Then he restored the contents to the jug; held over the steam of the jug, each of the three

            bright glasses in succession; finally filled them all, and with a clear conscience

            awaited the applause of his fellow-creatures.

            It was bestowed (Mr Inspector having proposed as an appropriate sentiment

            ‘The lime trade!’) and Bob withdrew to report the commendations of the guests

            to Miss Abbey in the bar. It may be here in confidence admitted that, the room

            being close shut in his absence, there had not appeared to be the slightest reason

            for the elaborate maintenance of this same lime fiction. Only it had been

            regarded by Mr Inspector as so uncommonly satisfactory, and so fraught with

            mysterious virtues, that neither of his clients had presumed to question it.

            Two taps were now heard on the outside of the window. Mr Inspector, hastily

            fortifying himself with another glass, strolled out with a noiseless foot and an unoccupied countenance. As one might go to survey the weather and the general

            aspect of the heavenly bodies.

            ‘This is becoming grim, Mortimer,’ said Eugene, in a low voice. ‘I don’t like

            this.’

            ‘Nor I’ said Lightwood. ‘Shall we go?’

            ‘Being here, let us stay. You ought to see it out, and I won’t leave you.

            Besides, that lonely girl with the dark hair runs in my head. It was little more than a glimpse we had of her that last time, and yet I almost see her waiting by

            the fire to-night. Do you feel like a dark combination of traitor and pickpocket

            when you think of that girl?’

            ‘Rather,’ returned Lightwood. ‘Do you?’

            ‘Very much so.’

            Their escort strolled back again, and reported. Divested of its various lime-

            lights and shadows, his report went to the effect that Gaffer was away in his boat, supposed to be on his old look-out; that he had been expected last high-water; that having missed it for some reason or other, he was not, according to

            his usual habits at night, to be counted on before next high-water, or it might be

            an hour or so later; that his daughter, surveyed through the window, would seem

            to be so expecting him, for the supper was not cooking, but set out ready to be

            cooked; that it would be high-water at about one, and that it was now barely ten;

            that there was nothing to be done but watch and wait; that the informer was keeping watch at the instant of that present reporting, but that two heads were better than one (especially when the second was Mr Inspector’s); and that the reporter meant to share the watch. And forasmuch as crouching under the lee of

            a hauled-up boat on a night when it blew cold and strong, and when the weather

            was varied with blasts of hail at times, might be wearisome to amateurs, the reporter closed with the recommendation that the two gentlemen should remain,

            for a while at any rate, in their present quarters, which were weather-tight and warm.

            They were not inclined to dispute this recommendation, but they wanted to

            know where they could join the watchers when so disposed. Rather than trust to

            a verbal description of the place, which might mislead, Eugene (with a less

            weighty sense of personal trouble on him than he usually had) would go out with

            Mr Inspector, note the spot, and come back.

            On the shelving bank of the river, among the slimy stones of a causeway—not

            the special causeway of the Six Jolly Fellowships, which had a landing-place of

            its own, but another, a little removed, and very near to the old windmill which was the denounced man’s dwelling-place—were a few boats; some, moored and

            already beginning to float; others, hauled up above the reach of the tide. Under

            one of these latter, Eugene’s companion disappeared. And when Eugene had

            observed its position with reference to the other boats, and had made sure that he

            could not miss it, he turned his eyes upon the building where, as he had been told, the lonely girl with the dark hair sat by the fire.

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            He could see the light of the fire shining through the window. Perhaps it drew

            him on to look in. Perhaps he had come out with the express intention. That part

            of the bank having rank grass growing on it, there was no difficulty in getting close, without any noise of footsteps: it was but to scramble up a ragged face of

            pretty hard mud some three or four feet high and come upon the grass and to the

            window. He came to the window by that means.

            She had no other light than the light of the fire. The unkindled lamp stood on

            the table. She sat on the ground, looking at the brazier, with her face leaning on

            her hand. There was a kind of film or flicker on her face, which at first he took to

            be the fitful firelight; but, on a second look, he saw that she was weeping. A sad

            and solitary spectacle, as shown him by the rising and the falling of the fire.

            It was a little window of but four pieces of glass, and was not curtained; he chose it because the larger window near it was. It showed him the room, and the

            bills upon the wall respecting the drowned people starting out and receding by turns. But he glanced slightly at them, though he looked long and steadily at her.

            A deep rich piece of colour, with the brown flush of her cheek and the shining

            lustre of her hair, though sad and solitary, weeping by the rising and the falling

            of the fire.

            She started up. He had been so very still that he felt sure it was not he who had disturbed her, so merely withdrew from the window and stood near it in the

            shadow of the wall. She opened the door, and said in an alarmed tone, ‘Father,

            was that you calling me?’ And again, ‘Father!’ And once again, after listening,

            ‘Father! I thought I heard you call me twice before!’

            No response. As she re-entered at the door, he dropped over the bank and

            made his way back, among the ooze and near the hiding-place, to Mortimer

            Lightwood: to whom he told what he had seen of the girl, and how this was

            becoming very grim indeed.

            ‘If the real man feels as guilty as I do,’ said Eugene, ‘he is remarkably

            uncomfortable.’

            ‘Influence of secrecy,’ suggested Lightwood.

            ‘I am not at all obliged to it for making me Guy Fawkes in the vault and a Sneak in the area both at once,’ said Eugene. ‘Give me some more of that stuff.’

            Lightwood helped him to some more of that stuff, but it had been cooling, and

            didn’t answer now.

            ‘Pooh,’ said Eugene, spitting it out among the ashes. ‘Tastes like the wash of

            the river.’

            ‘Are you so familiar with the flavour of the wash of the river?’

            ‘I seem to be to-night. I feel as if I had been half drowned, and swallowing a

            gallon of it.’

            ‘Influence of locality,’ suggested Lightwood.

            ‘You are mighty learned to-night, you and your influences,’ returned Eugene.

            ‘How long shall we stay here?’

            ‘How long do you think?’

            ‘If I could choose, I should say a minute,’ replied Eugene, ‘for the Jolly

            Fellowship Porters are not the jolliest dogs I have known. But I suppose we are

            best here until they turn us out with the other suspicious characters, at midnight.’

            Thereupon he stirred the fire, and sat down on one side of it. It struck eleven,

            and he made believe to compose himself patiently. But gradually he took the

            fidgets in one leg, and then in the other leg, and then in one arm, and then in the

            other arm, and then in his chin, and then in his back, and then in his forehead,

            and then in his hair, and then in his nose; and then he stretched himself

            recumbent on two chairs, and groaned; and then he started up.

            ‘Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary under the meanest

            circumstances, and the myrmidons of justice are at my heels.’

            ‘I am quite as bad,’ said Lightwood, sitting up facing him, with a tumbled

            head; after going through some wonderful evolutions, in which his head had

            been the lowest part of him. ‘This restlessness began with me, long ago. All the

            time you were out, I felt like Gulliver with the Lilliputians firing upon him.’

            ‘It won’t do, Mortimer. We must get into the air; we must join our dear friend

            and brother, Riderhood. And let us tranquillize ourselves by making a compact.

            Next time (with a view to our peace of mind) we’ll commit the crime, instead of

            taking the criminal. You swear it?’

            ‘Certainly.’

            ‘Sworn! Let Tippins look to it. Her life’s in danger.’

            Mortimer rang the bell to pay the score, and Bob appeared to transact that

            business with him: whom Eugene, in his careless extravagance, asked if he

            would like a situation in the lime-trade?

            ‘Thankee sir, no sir,’ said Bob. ‘I’ve a good sitiwation here, sir.’

            ‘If you change your mind at any time,’ returned Eugene, ‘come to me at my

            works, and you’ll always find an opening in the lime-kiln.’

            ‘Thankee sir,’ said Bob.

            ‘This is my partner,’ said Eugene, ‘who keeps the books and attends to the

            wages. A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work is ever my partner’s motto.’

            ‘And a very good ‘un it is, gentlemen,’ said Bob, receiving his fee, and

            drawing a bow out of his head with his right hand, very much as he would have

            drawn a pint of beer out of the beer engine.

            ‘Eugene,’ Mortimer apostrophized him, laughing quite heartily when they

            were alone again, ‘how can you be so ridiculous?’

            ‘I am in a ridiculous humour,’ quoth Eugene; ‘I am a ridiculous fellow.

            Everything is ridiculous. Come along!’

            It passed into Mortimer Lightwood’s mind that a change of some sort, best

            expressed perhaps as an intensification of all that was wildest and most negligent

            and reckless in his friend, had come upon him in the last half-hour or so.

            Thoroughly used to him as he was, he found something new and strained in him

            that was for the moment perplexing. This passed into his mind, and passed out

            again; but he remembered it afterwards.

            ‘There’s where she sits, you see,’ said Eugene, when they were standing under

            the bank, roared and riven at by the wind. ‘There’s the light of her fire.’

            ‘I’ll take a peep through the window,’ said Mortimer.

            ‘No, don’t!’ Eugene caught him by the arm. ‘Best, not make a show of her.

            Come to our honest friend.’

            He led him to the post of watch, and they both dropped down and crept under

            the lee of the boat; a better shelter than it had seemed before, being directly contrasted with the blowing wind and the bare night.

            ‘Mr Inspector at home?’ whispered Eugene.

            ‘Here I am, sir.’

            ‘And our friend of the perspiring brow is at the far corner there? Good.

            Anything happened?’

            ‘His daughter has been out, thinking she heard him calling, unless it was a

            sign to him to keep out of the way. It might have been.’

            ‘It might have been Rule Britannia,’ muttered Eugene, ‘but it wasn’t.

            Mortimer!’

            ‘Here!’ (On the other side of Mr Inspector.)

            ‘Two burglaries now, and a forgery!’

            With this indication of his depressed state of mind, Eugene fell silent.

            They were all silent for a long while. As it got to be flood-tide, and the water

            came nearer to them, noises on the river became more frequent, and they listened

            more. To the turning of steam-paddles, to the clinking of iron chain, to the creaking of blocks, to the measured working of oars, to the occasional violent barking of some passing dog on shipboard, who seemed to scent them lying in

            their hiding-place. The night was not so dark but that, besides the lights at bows

            and mastheads gliding to and fro, they could discern some shadowy bulk

            attached; and now and then a ghostly lighter with a large dark sail, like a warning arm, would start up very near them, pass on, and vanish. At this time of

            their watch, the water close to them would be often agitated by some impulsion

            given it from a distance. Often they believed this beat and plash to be the boat

            they lay in wait for, running in ashore; and again and again they would have started up, but for the immobility with which the informer, well used to the river,

            kept quiet in his place.

            The wind carried away the striking of the great multitude of city church

            clocks, for those lay to leeward of them; but there were bells to windward that

            told them of its being One—Two—Three. Without that aid they would have

            known how the night wore, by the falling of the tide, recorded in the appearance

            of an ever-widening black wet strip of shore, and the emergence of the paved causeway from the river, foot by foot.

            As the time so passed, this slinking business became a more and more

            precarious one. It would seem as if the man had had some intimation of what was in hand against him, or had taken fright? His movements might have been

            planned to gain for him, in getting beyond their reach, twelve hours’ advantage?

            The honest man who had expended the sweat of his brow became uneasy, and

            began to complain with bitterness of the proneness of mankind to cheat him—

            him invested with the dignity of Labour!

            Their retreat was so chosen that while they could watch the river, they could

            watch the house. No one had passed in or out, since the daughter thought she heard the father calling. No one could pass in or out without being seen.

            ‘But it will be light at five,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘and then we shall be seen.’

            ‘Look here,’ said Riderhood, ‘what do you say to this? He may have been

            lurking in and out, and just holding his own betwixt two or three bridges, for hours back.’

            ‘What do you make of that?’ said Mr Inspector. Stoical, but contradictory.

            ‘He may be doing so at this present time.’

            ‘What do you make of that?’ said Mr Inspector.

            ‘My boat’s among them boats here at the cause’ay.’

            ‘And what do you make of your boat?’ said Mr Inspector.

            ‘What if I put off in her and take a look round? I know his ways, and the likely

            nooks he favours. I know where he’d be at such a time of the tide, and where he’d be at such another time. Ain’t I been his pardner? None of you need show.

            None of you need stir. I can shove her off without help; and as to me being seen,

            I’m about at all times.’

            ‘You might have given a worse opinion,’ said Mr Inspector, after brief

            consideration. ‘Try it.’

            ‘Stop a bit. Let’s work it out. If I want you, I’ll drop round under the

            Fellowships and tip you a whistle.’

            ‘If I might so far presume as to offer a suggestion to my honourable and

            gallant friend, whose knowledge of naval matters far be it from me to impeach,’

            Eugene struck in with great deliberation, ‘it would be, that to tip a whistle is to

            advertise mystery and invite speculation. My honourable and gallant friend will,

            I trust, excuse me, as an independent member, for throwing out a remark which I

            feel to be due to this house and the country.’

            ‘Was that the T’other Governor, or Lawyer Lightwood?’ asked Riderhood.

            For, they spoke as they crouched or lay, without seeing one another’s faces.

            ‘In reply to the question put by my honourable and gallant friend,’ said

            Eugene, who was lying on his back with his hat on his face, as an attitude highly

            expressive of watchfulness, ‘I can have no hesitation in replying (it not being inconsistent with the public service) that those accents were the accents of the T’other Governor.’

            ‘You’ve tolerable good eyes, ain’t you, Governor? You’ve all tolerable good

            eyes, ain’t you?’ demanded the informer.

            All.

            ‘Then if I row up under the Fellowship and lay there, no need to whistle.

            You’ll make out that there’s a speck of something or another there, and you’ll know it’s me, and you’ll come down that cause’ay to me. Understood all?’

            Understood all.

            ‘Off she goes then!’

            In a moment, with the wind cutting keenly at him sideways, he was staggering down to his boat; in a few moments he was clear, and creeping up the river under

            their own shore.

            Eugene had raised himself on his elbow to look into the darkness after him. ‘I

            wish the boat of my honourable and gallant friend,’ he murmured, lying down

            again and speaking into his hat, ‘may be endowed with philanthropy enough to

            turn bottom-upward and extinguish him!—Mortimer.’

            ‘My honourable friend.’

            ‘Three burglaries, two forgeries, and a midnight assassination.’ Yet in spite of

            having those weights on his conscience, Eugene was somewhat enlivened by the

            late slight change in the circumstances of affairs. So were his two companions.

            Its being a change was everything. The suspense seemed to have taken a new

            lease, and to have begun afresh from a recent date. There was something

            additional to look for. They were all three more sharply on the alert, and less deadened by the miserable influences of the place and time.

            More than an hour had passed, and they were even dozing, when one of the

            three—each said it was he, and he had not dozed—made out Riderhood in his boat at the spot agreed on. They sprang up, came out from their shelter, and went

            down to him. When he saw them coming, he dropped alongside the causeway;

            so that they, standing on the causeway, could speak with him in whispers, under

            the shadowy mass of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters fast asleep.

            ‘Blest if I can make it out!’ said he, staring at them.

            ‘Make what out? Have you seen him?’

            ‘No.’

            ‘What have you seen?’ asked Lightwood. For, he was staring at them in the strangest way.

            ‘I’ve seen his boat.’

            ‘Not empty?’

            ‘Yes, empty. And what’s more,—adrift. And what’s more,—with one scull

            gone. And what’s more,—with t’other scull jammed in the thowels and broke

            short off. And what’s more,—the boat’s drove tight by the tide ‘atwixt two tiers

            of barges. And what’s more,—he’s in luck again, by George if he ain’t!’

            Chapter 14

            THE BIRD OF PREY BROUGHT DOWN

            Cold on the shore, in the raw cold of that leaden crisis in the four-and-twenty

            hours when the vital force of all the noblest and prettiest things that live is at its

            lowest, the three watchers looked each at the blank faces of the other two, and all

            at the blank face of Riderhood in his boat.

            ‘Gaffer’s boat, Gaffer in luck again, and yet no Gaffer!’ So spake Riderhood,

            staring disconsolate.

            As if with one accord, they all turned their eyes towards the light of the fire

            shining through the window. It was fainter and duller. Perhaps fire, like the higher animal and vegetable life it helps to sustain, has its greatest tendency towards death, when the night is dying and the day is not yet born.

            ‘If it was me that had the law of this here job in hand,’ growled Riderhood with a threatening shake of his head, ‘blest if I wouldn’t lay hold of her, at any rate!’

            ‘Ay, but it is not you,’ said Eugene. With something so suddenly fierce in him

            that the informer returned submissively; ‘Well, well, well, t’other governor, I didn’t say it was. A man may speak.’

            ‘And vermin may be silent,’ said Eugene. ‘Hold your tongue, you water-rat!’

            Astonished by his friend’s unusual heat, Lightwood stared too, and then said:

            ‘What can have become of this man?’

            ‘Can’t imagine. Unless he dived overboard.’ The informer wiped his brow

            ruefully as he said it, sitting in his boat and always staring disconsolate.

            ‘Did you make his boat fast?’

            ‘She’s fast enough till the tide runs back. I couldn’t make her faster than she

            is. Come aboard of mine, and see for your own-selves.’

            There was a little backwardness in complying, for the freight looked too much

            for the boat; but on Riderhood’s protesting ‘that he had had half a dozen, dead

            and alive, in her afore now, and she was nothing deep in the water nor down in

            the stern even then, to speak of;’ they carefully took their places, and trimmed the crazy thing. While they were doing so, Riderhood still sat staring

            disconsolate.

            ‘All right. Give way!’ said Lightwood.

            ‘Give way, by George!’ repeated Riderhood, before shoving off. ‘If he’s gone

            and made off any how Lawyer Lightwood, it’s enough to make me give way in a

            different manner. But he always was a cheat, con-found him! He always was a

            infernal cheat, was Gaffer. Nothing straightfor’ard, nothing on the square. So

            mean, so underhanded. Never going through with a thing, nor carrying it out like

            a man!’

            ‘Hallo! Steady!’ cried Eugene (he had recovered immediately on embarking),

            as they bumped heavily against a pile; and then in a lower voice reversed his late

            apostrophe by remarking (‘I wish the boat of my honourable and gallant friend

            may be endowed with philanthropy enough not to turn bottom-upward and

            extinguish us!) Steady, steady! Sit close, Mortimer. Here’s the hail again. See how it flies, like a troop of wild cats, at Mr Riderhood’s eyes!’

            Indeed he had the full benefit of it, and it so mauled him, though he bent his

            head low and tried to present nothing but the mangy cap to it, that he dropped under the lee of a tier of shipping, and they lay there until it was over. The squall

            had come up, like a spiteful messenger before the morning; there followed in its

            wake a ragged tear of light which ripped the dark clouds until they showed a great grey hole of day.

            They were all shivering, and everything about them seemed to be shivering;

            the river itself; craft, rigging, sails, such early smoke as there yet was on the shore. Black with wet, and altered to the eye by white patches of hail and sleet,

            the huddled buildings looked lower than usual, as if they were cowering, and had

            shrunk with the cold. Very little life was to be seen on either bank, windows and

            doors were shut, and the staring black and white letters upon wharves and

            warehouses ‘looked,’ said Eugene to Mortimer, ‘like inscriptions over the graves

            of dead businesses.’

            As they glided slowly on, keeping under the shore and sneaking in and out

            among the shipping by back-alleys of water, in a pilfering way that seemed to be

            their boatman’s normal manner of progression, all the objects among which they

            crept were so huge in contrast with their wretched boat, as to threaten to crush it.

            Not a ship’s hull, with its rusty iron links of cable run out of hawse-holes long

            discoloured with the iron’s rusty tears, but seemed to be there with a fell

            intention. Not a figure-head but had the menacing look of bursting forward to run them down. Not a sluice gate, or a painted scale upon a post or wall,

            showing the depth of water, but seemed to hint, like the dreadfully facetious Wolf in bed in Grandmamma’s cottage, ‘That’s to drown you in, my dears!’ Not

            a lumbering black barge, with its cracked and blistered side impending over

            them, but seemed to suck at the river with a thirst for sucking them under. And everything so vaunted the spoiling influences of water—discoloured copper,

            rotten wood, honey-combed stone, green dank deposit—that the after-

            consequences of being crushed, sucked under, and drawn down, looked as ugly

            to the imagination as the main event.

            Some half-hour of this work, and Riderhood unshipped his sculls, stood

            holding on to a barge, and hand over hand long-wise along the barge’s side

            gradually worked his boat under her head into a secret little nook of scummy water. And driven into that nook, and wedged as he had described, was Gaffer’s

            boat; that boat with the stain still in it, bearing some resemblance to a muffled human form.

            ‘Now tell me I’m a liar!’ said the honest man.

            (‘With a morbid expectation,’ murmured Eugene to Lightwood, ‘that

            somebody is always going to tell him the truth.’)

            ‘This is Hexam’s boat,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘I know her well.’

            ‘Look at the broken scull. Look at the t’other scull gone. Now tell me I am a

            liar!’ said the honest man.

            Mr Inspector stepped into the boat. Eugene and Mortimer looked on.

            ‘And see now!’ added Riderhood, creeping aft, and showing a stretched rope

            made fast there and towing overboard. ‘Didn’t I tell you he was in luck again?’

            ‘Haul in,’ said Mr Inspector.

            ‘Easy to say haul in,’ answered Riderhood. ‘Not so easy done. His luck’s got

            fouled under the keels of the barges. I tried to haul in last time, but I couldn’t.

            See how taut the line is!’

            ‘I must have it up,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘I am going to take this boat ashore, and

            his luck along with it. Try easy now.’

            He tried easy now; but the luck resisted; wouldn’t come.

            ‘I mean to have it, and the boat too,’ said Mr Inspector, playing the line.

            But still the luck resisted; wouldn’t come.

            ‘Take care,’ said Riderhood. ‘You’ll disfigure. Or pull asunder perhaps.’

            ‘I am not going to do either, not even to your Grandmother,’ said Mr

            Inspector; ‘but I mean to have it. Come!’ he added, at once persuasively and with

            authority to the hidden object in the water, as he played the line again; ‘it’s no

            good this sort of game, you know. You must come up. I mean to have you.’

            There was so much virtue in this distinctly and decidedly meaning to have it,

            that it yielded a little, even while the line was played.

            ‘I told you so,’ quoth Mr Inspector, pulling off his outer coat, and leaning well

            over the stern with a will. ‘Come!’

            It was an awful sort of fishing, but it no more disconcerted Mr Inspector than

            if he had been fishing in a punt on a summer evening by some soothing weir high up the peaceful river. After certain minutes, and a few directions to the rest

            to ‘ease her a little for’ard,’ and ‘now ease her a trifle aft,’ and the like, he said

            composedly, ‘All clear!’ and the line and the boat came free together.

            Accepting Lightwood’s proffered hand to help him up, he then put on his coat,

            and said to Riderhood, ‘Hand me over those spare sculls of yours, and I’ll pull

            this in to the nearest stairs. Go ahead you, and keep out in pretty open water, that

            I mayn’t get fouled again.’

            His directions were obeyed, and they pulled ashore directly; two in one boat,

            two in the other.

            ‘Now,’ said Mr Inspector, again to Riderhood, when they were all on the

            slushy stones; ‘you have had more practice in this than I have had, and ought to

            be a better workman at it. Undo the tow-rope, and we’ll help you haul in.’

            Riderhood got into the boat accordingly. It appeared as if he had scarcely had

            a moment’s time to touch the rope or look over the stern, when he came

            scrambling back, as pale as the morning, and gasped out:

            ‘By the Lord, he’s done me!’

            ‘What do you mean?’ they all demanded.

            He pointed behind him at the boat, and gasped to that degree that he dropped

            upon the stones to get his breath.

            ‘Gaffer’s done me. It’s Gaffer!’

            0173m

             Original

            They ran to the rope, leaving him gasping there. Soon, the form of the bird of

            prey, dead some hours, lay stretched upon the shore, with a new blast storming at

            it and clotting the wet hair with hail-stones.

            Father, was that you calling me? Father! I thought I heard you call me twice

            before! Words never to be answered, those, upon the earth-side of the grave. The

            wind sweeps jeeringly over Father, whips him with the frayed ends of his dress

            and his jagged hair, tries to turn him where he lies stark on his back, and force

            his face towards the rising sun, that he may be shamed the more. A lull, and the wind is secret and prying with him; lifts and lets falls a rag; hides palpitating under another rag; runs nimbly through his hair and beard. Then, in a rush, it cruelly taunts him. Father, was that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless and

            the dead? Was it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was it you, thus

            baptized unto Death, with these flying impurities now flung upon your face?

            Why not speak, Father? Soaking into this filthy ground as you lie here, is your

            own shape. Did you never see such a shape soaked into your boat? Speak,

            Father. Speak to us, the winds, the only listeners left you!

            ‘Now see,’ said Mr Inspector, after mature deliberation: kneeling on one knee

            beside the body, when they had stood looking down on the drowned man, as he

            had many a time looked down on many another man: ‘the way of it was this. Of

            course you gentlemen hardly failed to observe that he was towing by the neck and arms.’

            They had helped to release the rope, and of course not.

            ‘And you will have observed before, and you will observe now, that this knot,

            which was drawn chock-tight round his neck by the strain of his own arms, is a

            slip-knot’: holding it up for demonstration.

            Plain enough.

            ‘Likewise you will have observed how he had run the other end of this rope to

            his boat.’

            It had the curves and indentations in it still, where it had been twined and bound.

            ‘Now see,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘see how it works round upon him. It’s a wild

            tempestuous evening when this man that was,’ stooping to wipe some hailstones

            out of his hair with an end of his own drowned jacket, ‘—there! Now he’s more

            like himself; though he’s badly bruised,—when this man that was, rows out upon

            the river on his usual lay. He carries with him this coil of rope. He always carries

            with him this coil of rope. It’s as well known to me as he was himself.

            Sometimes it lay in the bottom of his boat. Sometimes he hung it loose round his

            neck. He was a light-dresser was this man;—you see?’ lifting the loose

            neckerchief over his breast, and taking the opportunity of wiping the dead lips with it—‘and when it was wet, or freezing, or blew cold, he would hang this coil

            of line round his neck. Last evening he does this. Worse for him! He dodges about in his boat, does this man, till he gets chilled. His hands,’ taking up one of

            them, which dropped like a leaden weight, ‘get numbed. He sees some object

            that’s in his way of business, floating. He makes ready to secure that object. He

            unwinds the end of his coil that he wants to take some turns on in his boat, and he takes turns enough on it to secure that it shan’t run out. He makes it too secure, as it happens. He is a little longer about this than usual, his hands being

            numbed. His object drifts up, before he is quite ready for it. He catches at it, thinks he’ll make sure of the contents of the pockets anyhow, in case he should

            be parted from it, bends right over the stern, and in one of these heavy squalls, or

            in the cross-swell of two steamers, or in not being quite prepared, or through all

            or most or some, gets a lurch, overbalances and goes head-foremost overboard.

            Now see! He can swim, can this man, and instantly he strikes out. But in such striking-out he tangles his arms, pulls strong on the slip-knot, and it runs home.

            The object he had expected to take in tow, floats by, and his own boat tows him

            dead, to where we found him, all entangled in his own line. You’ll ask me how I

            make out about the pockets? First, I’ll tell you more; there was silver in ‘em.

            How do I make that out? Simple and satisfactory. Because he’s got it here.’ The

            lecturer held up the tightly clenched right hand.

            ‘What is to be done with the remains?’ asked Lightwood.

            ‘If you wouldn’t object to standing by him half a minute, sir,’ was the reply,

            ‘I’ll find the nearest of our men to come and take charge of him;—I still call it

             him, you see,’ said Mr Inspector, looking back as he went, with a philosophical

            smile upon the force of habit.

            ‘Eugene,’ said Lightwood and was about to add ‘we may wait at a little

            distance,’ when turning his head he found that no Eugene was there.

            He raised his voice and called ‘Eugene! Holloa!’ But no Eugene replied.

            It was broad daylight now, and he looked about. But no Eugene was in all the

            view.

            Mr Inspector speedily returning down the wooden stairs, with a police

            constable, Lightwood asked him if he had seen his friend leave them? Mr

            Inspector could not exactly say that he had seen him go, but had noticed that he

            was restless.

            ‘Singular and entertaining combination, sir, your friend.’

            ‘I wish it had not been a part of his singular entertaining combination to give

            me the slip under these dreary circumstances at this time of the morning,’ said Lightwood. ‘Can we get anything hot to drink?’

            We could, and we did. In a public-house kitchen with a large fire. We got hot

            brandy and water, and it revived us wonderfully. Mr Inspector having to Mr

            Riderhood announced his official intention of ‘keeping his eye upon him’, stood

            him in a corner of the fireplace, like a wet umbrella, and took no further outward

            and visible notice of that honest man, except ordering a separate service of brandy and water for him: apparently out of the public funds.

            As Mortimer Lightwood sat before the blazing fire, conscious of drinking

            brandy and water then and there in his sleep, and yet at one and the same time

            drinking burnt sherry at the Six Jolly Fellowships, and lying under the boat on the river shore, and sitting in the boat that Riderhood rowed, and listening to the

            lecture recently concluded, and having to dine in the Temple with an unknown

            man, who described himself as M. H. F. Eugene Gaffer Harmon, and said he

            lived at Hailstorm,—as he passed through these curious vicissitudes of fatigue

            and slumber, arranged upon the scale of a dozen hours to the second, he became

            aware of answering aloud a communication of pressing importance that had

            never been made to him, and then turned it into a cough on beholding Mr

            Inspector. For, he felt, with some natural indignation, that that functionary might

            otherwise suspect him of having closed his eyes, or wandered in his attention.

            ‘Here just before us, you see,’ said Mr Inspector.

            ‘I see,’ said Lightwood, with dignity.

            ‘And had hot brandy and water too, you see,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘and then cut

            off at a great rate.’

            ‘Who?’ said Lightwood.

            ‘Your friend, you know.’

            ‘I know,’ he replied, again with dignity.

            After hearing, in a mist through which Mr Inspector loomed vague and large,

            that the officer took upon himself to prepare the dead man’s daughter for what had befallen in the night, and generally that he took everything upon himself, Mortimer Lightwood stumbled in his sleep to a cab-stand, called a cab, and had

            entered the army and committed a capital military offence and been tried by

            court martial and found guilty and had arranged his affairs and been marched out

            to be shot, before the door banged.

            Hard work rowing the cab through the City to the Temple, for a cup of from

            five to ten thousand pounds value, given by Mr Boffin; and hard work holding

            forth at that immeasurable length to Eugene (when he had been rescued with a

            rope from the running pavement) for making off in that extraordinary manner!

            But he offered such ample apologies, and was so very penitent, that when

            Lightwood got out of the cab, he gave the driver a particular charge to be careful

            of him. Which the driver (knowing there was no other fare left inside) stared at

            prodigiously.

            In short, the night’s work had so exhausted and worn out this actor in it, that he had become a mere somnambulist. He was too tired to rest in his sleep, until

            he was even tired out of being too tired, and dropped into oblivion. Late in the

            afternoon he awoke, and in some anxiety sent round to Eugene’s lodging hard

            by, to inquire if he were up yet?

            Oh yes, he was up. In fact, he had not been to bed. He had just come home.

            And here he was, close following on the heels of the message.

            ‘Why what bloodshot, draggled, dishevelled spectacle is this!’ cried Mortimer.

            ‘Are my feathers so very much rumpled?’ said Eugene, coolly going up to the

            looking-glass. They are rather out of sorts. But consider. Such a night for plumage!’

            ‘Such a night?’ repeated Mortimer. ‘What became of you in the morning?’

            ‘My dear fellow,’ said Eugene, sitting on his bed, ‘I felt that we had bored one

            another so long, that an unbroken continuance of those relations must inevitably

            terminate in our flying to opposite points of the earth. I also felt that I had committed every crime in the Newgate Calendar. So, for mingled considerations

            of friendship and felony, I took a walk.’

            Chapter 15

            TWO NEW SERVANTS

            Mr and Mrs Boffin sat after breakfast, in the Bower, a prey to prosperity. Mr

            Boffin’s face denoted Care and Complication. Many disordered papers were

            before him, and he looked at them about as hopefully as an innocent civilian might look at a crowd of troops whom he was required at five minutes’ notice to

            manoeuvre and review. He had been engaged in some attempts to make notes of

            these papers; but being troubled (as men of his stamp often are) with an

            exceedingly distrustful and corrective thumb, that busy member had so often

            interposed to smear his notes, that they were little more legible than the various

            impressions of itself; which blurred his nose and forehead. It is curious to

            consider, in such a case as Mr Boffin’s, what a cheap article ink is, and how far it

            may be made to go. As a grain of musk will scent a drawer for many years, and

            still lose nothing appreciable of its original weight, so a halfpenny-worth of ink

            would blot Mr Boffin to the roots of his hair and the calves of his legs, without

            inscribing a line on the paper before him, or appearing to diminish in the

            inkstand.

            Mr Boffin was in such severe literary difficulties that his eyes were prominent

            and fixed, and his breathing was stertorous, when, to the great relief of Mrs Boffin, who observed these symptoms with alarm, the yard bell rang.

            ‘Who’s that, I wonder!’ said Mrs Boffin.

            Mr Boffin drew a long breath, laid down his pen, looked at his notes as

            doubting whether he had the pleasure of their acquaintance, and appeared, on a

            second perusal of their countenances, to be confirmed in his impression that he

            had not, when there was announced by the hammer-headed young man:

            ‘Mr Rokesmith.’

            ‘Oh!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Oh indeed! Our and the Wilfers’ Mutual Friend, my

            dear. Yes. Ask him to come in.’

            Mr Rokesmith appeared.

            ‘Sit down, sir,’ said Mr Boffin, shaking hands with him. ‘Mrs Boffin you’re

            already acquainted with. Well, sir, I am rather unprepared to see you, for, to tell

            you the truth, I’ve been so busy with one thing and another, that I’ve not had

            time to turn your offer over.’

            ‘That’s apology for both of us: for Mr Boffin, and for me as well,’ said the smiling Mrs Boffin. ‘But Lor! we can talk it over now; can’t us?’

            Mr Rokesmith bowed, thanked her, and said he hoped so.

            ‘Let me see then,’ resumed Mr Boffin, with his hand to his chin. ‘It was

            Secretary that you named; wasn’t it?’

            ‘I said Secretary,’ assented Mr Rokesmith.

            ‘It rather puzzled me at the time,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘and it rather puzzled me and Mrs Boffin when we spoke of it afterwards, because (not to make a mystery

            of our belief) we have always believed a Secretary to be a piece of furniture, mostly of mahogany, lined with green baize or leather, with a lot of little drawers

            in it. Now, you won’t think I take a liberty when I mention that you certainly ain’t that.’

            Certainly not, said Mr Rokesmith. But he had used the word in the sense of

            Steward.

            ‘Why, as to Steward, you see,’ returned Mr Boffin, with his hand still to his chin, ‘the odds are that Mrs Boffin and me may never go upon the water. Being

            both bad sailors, we should want a Steward if we did; but there’s generally one

            provided.’

            Mr Rokesmith again explained; defining the duties he sought to undertake, as

            those of general superintendent, or manager, or overlooker, or man of business.

            ‘Now, for instance—come!’ said Mr Boffin, in his pouncing way. ‘If you

            entered my employment, what would you do?’

            ‘I would keep exact accounts of all the expenditure you sanctioned, Mr

            Boffin. I would write your letters, under your direction. I would transact your business with people in your pay or employment. I would,’ with a glance and a

            half-smile at the table, ‘arrange your papers—’

            Mr Boffin rubbed his inky ear, and looked at his wife.

            ‘—And so arrange them as to have them always in order for immediate

            reference, with a note of the contents of each outside it.’

            ‘I tell you what,’ said Mr Boffin, slowly crumpling his own blotted note in his

            hand; ‘if you’ll turn to at these present papers, and see what you can make of

            ‘em, I shall know better what I can make of you.’

            No sooner said than done. Relinquishing his hat and gloves, Mr Rokesmith sat

            down quietly at the table, arranged the open papers into an orderly heap, cast his

            eyes over each in succession, folded it, docketed it on the outside, laid it in a

            second heap, and, when that second heap was complete and the first gone, took from his pocket a piece of string and tied it together with a remarkably dexterous

            hand at a running curve and a loop.

            ‘Good!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Very good! Now let us hear what they’re all about;

            will you be so good?’

            John Rokesmith read his abstracts aloud. They were all about the new house.

            Decorator’s estimate, so much. Furniture estimate, so much. Estimate for

            furniture of offices, so much. Coach-maker’s estimate, so much. Horse-dealer’s

            estimate, so much. Harness-maker’s estimate, so much. Goldsmith’s estimate, so

            much. Total, so very much. Then came correspondence. Acceptance of Mr

            Boffin’s offer of such a date, and to such an effect. Rejection of Mr Boffin’s proposal of such a date and to such an effect. Concerning Mr Boffin’s scheme of

            such another date to such another effect. All compact and methodical.

            ‘Apple-pie order!’ said Mr Boffin, after checking off each inscription with his

            hand, like a man beating time. ‘And whatever you do with your ink, I can’t

            think, for you’re as clean as a whistle after it. Now, as to a letter. Let’s,’ said Mr

            Boffin, rubbing his hands in his pleasantly childish admiration, ‘let’s try a letter

            next.’

            ‘To whom shall it be addressed, Mr Boffin?’

            ‘Anyone. Yourself.’

            Mr Rokesmith quickly wrote, and then read aloud:

            ‘“Mr Boffin presents his compliments to Mr John Rokesmith, and begs to say

            that he has decided on giving Mr John Rokesmith a trial in the capacity he

            desires to fill. Mr Boffin takes Mr John Rokesmith at his word, in postponing to

            some indefinite period, the consideration of salary. It is quite understood that Mr

            Boffin is in no way committed on that point. Mr Boffin has merely to add, that

            he relies on Mr John Rokesmith’s assurance that he will be faithful and

            serviceable. Mr John Rokesmith will please enter on his duties immediately.”’

            ‘Well! Now, Noddy!’ cried Mrs Boffin, clapping her hands, ‘That is a good one!’

            Mr Boffin was no less delighted; indeed, in his own bosom, he regarded both

            the composition itself and the device that had given birth to it, as a very remarkable monument of human ingenuity.

            ‘And I tell you, my deary,’ said Mrs Boffin, ‘that if you don’t close with Mr

            Rokesmith now at once, and if you ever go a muddling yourself again with

            things never meant nor made for you, you’ll have an apoplexy—besides iron-

            moulding your linen—and you’ll break my heart.’

            Mr Boffin embraced his spouse for these words of wisdom, and then,

            congratulating John Rokesmith on the brilliancy of his achievements, gave him

            his hand in pledge of their new relations. So did Mrs Boffin.

            ‘Now,’ said Mr Boffin, who, in his frankness, felt that it did not become him

            to have a gentleman in his employment five minutes, without reposing some

            confidence in him, ‘you must be let a little more into our affairs, Rokesmith. I mentioned to you, when I made your acquaintance, or I might better say when

            you made mine, that Mrs Boffin’s inclinations was setting in the way of Fashion,

            but that I didn’t know how fashionable we might or might not grow. Well! Mrs

            Boffin has carried the day, and we’re going in neck and crop for Fashion.’

            ‘I rather inferred that, sir,’ replied John Rokesmith, ‘from the scale on which

            your new establishment is to be maintained.’

            ‘Yes,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘it’s to be a Spanker. The fact is, my literary man named

            to me that a house with which he is, as I may say, connected—in which he has

            an interest—’

            ‘As property?’ inquired John Rokesmith.

            ‘Why no,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘not exactly that; a sort of a family tie.’

            ‘Association?’ the Secretary suggested.

            ‘Ah!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Perhaps. Anyhow, he named to me that the house had a

            board up, “This Eminently Aristocratic Mansion to be let or sold.” Me and Mrs

            Boffin went to look at it, and finding it beyond a doubt Eminently Aristocratic (though a trifle high and dull, which after all may be part of the same thing) took

            it. My literary man was so friendly as to drop into a charming piece of poetry on

            that occasion, in which he complimented Mrs Boffin on coming into possession

            of—how did it go, my dear?’

            Mrs Boffin replied:

             ‘“The gay, the gay and festive scene,

            The halls, the halls of dazzling light.”’

            ‘That’s it! And it was made neater by there really being two halls in the house,

            a front ‘un and a back ‘un, besides the servants’. He likewise dropped into a very

            pretty piece of poetry to be sure, respecting the extent to which he would be willing to put himself out of the way to bring Mrs Boffin round, in case she should ever get low in her spirits in the house. Mrs Boffin has a wonderful memory. Will you repeat it, my dear?’

            Mrs Boffin complied, by reciting the verses in which this obliging offer had

            been made, exactly as she had received them.

            ‘“I’ll tell thee how the maiden wept, Mrs Boffin,

            When her true love was slain ma’am,

            And how her broken spirit slept, Mrs Boffin,

            And never woke again ma’am.

            I’ll tell thee (if agreeable to Mr Boffin) how the steed drew

            nigh,

            And left his lord afar;

            And if my tale (which I hope Mr Boffin might excuse) should

            make you sigh,

            I’ll strike the light guitar.”’

            ‘Correct to the letter!’ said Mr Boffin. ‘And I consider that the poetry brings

            us both in, in a beautiful manner.’

            The effect of the poem on the Secretary being evidently to astonish him, Mr

            Boffin was confirmed in his high opinion of it, and was greatly pleased.

            ‘Now, you see, Rokesmith,’ he went on, ‘a literary man— with a wooden leg—

            is liable to jealousy. I shall therefore cast about for comfortable ways and means

            of not calling up Wegg’s jealousy, but of keeping you in your department, and keeping him in his.’

            ‘Lor!’ cried Mrs Boffin. ‘What I say is, the world’s wide enough for all of us!’

            ‘So it is, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘when not literary. But when so, not so.

            And I am bound to bear in mind that I took Wegg on, at a time when I had no

            thought of being fashionable or of leaving the Bower. To let him feel himself anyways slighted now, would be to be guilty of a meanness, and to act like

            having one’s head turned by the halls of dazzling light. Which Lord forbid!

            Rokesmith, what shall we say about your living in the house?’

            ‘In this house?’

            ‘No, no. I have got other plans for this house. In the new house?’

            ‘That will be as you please, Mr Boffin. I hold myself quite at your disposal.

            You know where I live at present.’

            ‘Well!’ said Mr Boffin, after considering the point; ‘suppose you keep as you

            are for the present, and we’ll decide by-and-by. You’ll begin to take charge at

            once, of all that’s going on in the new house, will you?’

            ‘Most willingly. I will begin this very day. Will you give me the address?’

            Mr Boffin repeated it, and the Secretary wrote it down in his pocket-book.

            Mrs Boffin took the opportunity of his being so engaged, to get a better

            observation of his face than she had yet taken. It impressed her in his favour, for

            she nodded aside to Mr Boffin, ‘I like him.’

            ‘I will see directly that everything is in train, Mr Boffin.’

            ‘Thank’ee. Being here, would you care at all to look round the Bower?’

            ‘I should greatly like it. I have heard so much of its story.’

            ‘Come!’ said Mr Boffin. And he and Mrs Boffin led the way.

            A gloomy house the Bower, with sordid signs on it of having been, through its

            long existence as Harmony Jail, in miserly holding. Bare of paint, bare of paper

            on the walls, bare of furniture, bare of experience of human life. Whatever is built by man for man’s occupation, must, like natural creations, fulfil the

            intention of its existence, or soon perish. This old house had wasted—more from

            desuetude than it would have wasted from use, twenty years for one.

            A certain leanness falls upon houses not sufficiently imbued with life (as if they were nourished upon it), which was very noticeable here. The staircase,

            balustrades, and rails, had a spare look—an air of being denuded to the bone—

            which the panels of the walls and the jambs of the doors and windows also bore.

            The scanty moveables partook of it; save for the cleanliness of the place, the dust

            —into which they were all resolving would have lain thick on the floors; and those, both in colour and in grain, were worn like old faces that had kept much

            alone.

            The bedroom where the clutching old man had lost his grip on life, was left as

            he had left it. There was the old grisly four-post bedstead, without hangings, and

            with a jail-like upper rim of iron and spikes; and there was the old patch-work

            counterpane. There was the tight-clenched old bureau, receding atop like a bad

            and secret forehead; there was the cumbersome old table with twisted legs, at the

            bed-side; and there was the box upon it, in which the will had lain. A few old chairs with patch-work covers, under which the more precious stuff to be

            preserved had slowly lost its quality of colour without imparting pleasure to any

            eye, stood against the wall. A hard family likeness was on all these things.

            ‘The room was kept like this, Rokesmith,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘against the son’s

            return. In short, everything in the house was kept exactly as it came to us, for him to see and approve. Even now, nothing is changed but our own room below-

            stairs that you have just left. When the son came home for the last time in his life, and for the last time in his life saw his father, it was most likely in this room

            that they met.’

            As the Secretary looked all round it, his eyes rested on a side door in a corner.

            ‘Another staircase,’ said Mr Boffin, unlocking the door, ‘leading down into

            the yard. We’ll go down this way, as you may like to see the yard, and it’s all in

            the road. When the son was a little child, it was up and down these stairs that he

            mostly came and went to his father. He was very timid of his father. I’ve seen him sit on these stairs, in his shy way, poor child, many a time. Mr and Mrs Boffin have comforted him, sitting with his little book on these stairs, often.’

            ‘Ah! And his poor sister too,’ said Mrs Boffin. ‘And here’s the sunny place on

            the white wall where they one day measured one another. Their own little hands

            wrote up their names here, only with a pencil; but the names are here still, and

            the poor dears gone for ever.’

            ‘We must take care of the names, old lady,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘We must take

            care of the names. They shan’t be rubbed out in our time, nor yet, if we can help

            it, in the time after us. Poor little children!’

            ‘Ah, poor little children!’ said Mrs Boffin.

            They had opened the door at the bottom of the staircase giving on the yard, and they stood in the sunlight, looking at the scrawl of the two unsteady childish

            hands two or three steps up the staircase. There was something in this simple memento of a blighted childhood, and in the tenderness of Mrs Boffin, that

            touched the Secretary.

            Mr Boffin then showed his new man of business the Mounds, and his own

            particular Mound which had been left him as his legacy under the will before he

            acquired the whole estate.

            ‘It would have been enough for us,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘in case it had pleased God to spare the last of those two young lives and sorrowful deaths. We didn’t

            want the rest.’

            At the treasures of the yard, and at the outside of the house, and at the

            detached building which Mr Boffin pointed out as the residence of himself and

            his wife during the many years of their service, the Secretary looked with

            interest. It was not until Mr Boffin had shown him every wonder of the Bower

            twice over, that he remembered his having duties to discharge elsewhere.

            ‘You have no instructions to give me, Mr Boffin, in reference to this place?’

            ‘Not any, Rokesmith. No.’

            ‘Might I ask, without seeming impertinent, whether you have any intention of selling it?’

            ‘Certainly not. In remembrance of our old master, our old master’s children,

            and our old service, me and Mrs Boffin mean to keep it up as it stands.’

            The Secretary’s eyes glanced with so much meaning in them at the Mounds,

            that Mr Boffin said, as if in answer to a remark:

            ‘Ay, ay, that’s another thing. I may sell them, though I should be sorry to see

            the neighbourhood deprived of ‘em too. It’ll look but a poor dead flat without the Mounds. Still I don’t say that I’m going to keep ‘em always there, for the sake of the beauty of the landscape. There’s no hurry about it; that’s all I say at

            present. I ain’t a scholar in much, Rokesmith, but I’m a pretty fair scholar in dust. I can price the Mounds to a fraction, and I know how they can be best disposed of; and likewise that they take no harm by standing where they do.

            You’ll look in to-morrow, will you be so kind?’

            ‘Every day. And the sooner I can get you into your new house, complete, the

            better you will be pleased, sir?’

            ‘Well, it ain’t that I’m in a mortal hurry,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘only when you do

            pay people for looking alive, it’s as well to know that they are looking alive.

            Ain’t that your opinion?’

            ‘Quite!’ replied the Secretary; and so withdrew.

            ‘Now,’ said Mr Boffin to himself; subsiding into his regular series of turns in

            the yard, ‘if I can make it comfortable with Wegg, my affairs will be going smooth.’

            The man of low cunning had, of course, acquired a mastery over the man of

            high simplicity. The mean man had, of course, got the better of the generous man. How long such conquests last, is another matter; that they are achieved, is

            every-day experience, not even to be flourished away by Podsnappery itself. The

            undesigning Boffin had become so far immeshed by the wily Wegg that his mind

            misgave him he was a very designing man indeed in purposing to do more for

            Wegg. It seemed to him (so skilful was Wegg) that he was plotting darkly, when

            he was contriving to do the very thing that Wegg was plotting to get him to do.

            And thus, while he was mentally turning the kindest of kind faces on Wegg this

            morning, he was not absolutely sure but that he might somehow deserve the

            charge of turning his back on him.

            For these reasons Mr Boffin passed but anxious hours until evening came, and

            with it Mr Wegg, stumping leisurely to the Roman Empire. At about this period

            Mr Boffin had become profoundly interested in the fortunes of a great military

            leader known to him as Bully Sawyers, but perhaps better known to fame and easier of identification by the classical student, under the less Britannic name of

            Belisarius. Even this general’s career paled in interest for Mr Boffin before the

            clearing of his conscience with Wegg; and hence, when that literary gentleman

            had according to custom eaten and drunk until he was all a-glow, and when he

            took up his book with the usual chirping introduction, ‘And now, Mr Boffin, sir,

            we’ll decline and we’ll fall!’ Mr Boffin stopped him.

            ‘You remember, Wegg, when I first told you that I wanted to make a sort of

            offer to you?’

            ‘Let me get on my considering cap, sir,’ replied that gentleman, turning the

            open book face downward. ‘When you first told me that you wanted to make a

            sort of offer to me? Now let me think.’ (as if there were the least necessity) ‘Yes,

            to be sure I do, Mr Boffin. It was at my corner. To be sure it was! You had first

            asked me whether I liked your name, and Candour had compelled a reply in the

            negative case. I little thought then, sir, how familiar that name would come to be!’

            ‘I hope it will be more familiar still, Wegg.’

            ‘Do you, Mr Boffin? Much obliged to you, I’m sure. Is it your pleasure, sir, that we decline and we fall?’ with a feint of taking up the book.

            ‘Not just yet awhile, Wegg. In fact, I have got another offer to make you.’

            Mr Wegg (who had had nothing else in his mind for several nights) took off

            his spectacles with an air of bland surprise.

            ‘And I hope you’ll like it, Wegg.’

            ‘Thank you, sir,’ returned that reticent individual. ‘I hope it may prove so. On

            all accounts, I am sure.’ (This, as a philanthropic aspiration.)

            ‘What do you think,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘of not keeping a stall, Wegg?’

            ‘I think, sir,’ replied Wegg, ‘that I should like to be shown the gentleman

            prepared to make it worth my while!’

            ‘Here he is,’ said Mr Boffin.

            Mr Wegg was going to say, My Benefactor, and had said My Bene, when a

            grandiloquent change came over him.

            ‘No, Mr Boffin, not you sir. Anybody but you. Do not fear, Mr Boffin, that I

            shall contaminate the premises which your gold has bought, with my lowly pursuits. I am aware, sir, that it would not become me to carry on my little traffic

            under the windows of your mansion. I have already thought of that, and taken my measures. No need to be bought out, sir. Would Stepney Fields be considered

            intrusive? If not remote enough, I can go remoter. In the words of the poet’s song, which I do not quite remember:

            Thrown on the wide world, doom’d to wander and roam,

            Bereft of my parents, bereft of a home,

            A stranger to something and what’s his name joy,

            Behold little Edmund the poor Peasant boy.

            —And equally,’ said Mr Wegg, repairing the want of direct application in the

            last line, ‘behold myself on a similar footing!’

            ‘Now, Wegg, Wegg, Wegg,’ remonstrated the excellent Boffin. ‘You are too

            sensitive.’

            ‘I know I am, sir,’ returned Wegg, with obstinate magnanimity. ‘I am

            acquainted with my faults. I always was, from a child, too sensitive.’

            ‘But listen,’ pursued the Golden Dustman; ‘hear me out, Wegg. You have

            taken it into your head that I mean to pension you off.’

            ‘True, sir,’ returned Wegg, still with an obstinate magnanimity. ‘I am

            acquainted with my faults. Far be it from me to deny them. I have taken it into

            my head.’

            ‘But I don’t mean it.’

            The assurance seemed hardly as comforting to Mr Wegg, as Mr Boffin

            intended it to be. Indeed, an appreciable elongation of his visage might have been observed as he replied:

            ‘Don’t you, indeed, sir?’

            ‘No,’ pursued Mr Boffin; ‘because that would express, as I understand it, that

            you were not going to do anything to deserve your money. But you are; you are.’

            ‘That, sir,’ replied Mr Wegg, cheering up bravely, ‘is quite another pair of

            shoes. Now, my independence as a man is again elevated. Now, I no longer

            Weep for the hour,

            When to Boffinses bower,

            The Lord of the valley with offers came;

            Neither does the moon hide her light

            From the heavens to-night,

            And weep behind her clouds o’er any individual in the present

            Company’s shame.

            —Please to proceed, Mr Boffin.’

            ‘Thank’ee, Wegg, both for your confidence in me and for your frequent

            dropping into poetry; both of which is friendly. Well, then; my idea is, that you

            should give up your stall, and that I should put you into the Bower here, to keep

            it for us. It’s a pleasant spot; and a man with coals and candles and a pound a week might be in clover here.’

            ‘Hem! Would that man, sir—we will say that man, for the purposes of

            argueyment;’ Mr Wegg made a smiling demonstration of great perspicuity here;

            ‘would that man, sir, be expected to throw any other capacity in, or would any

            other capacity be considered extra? Now let us (for the purposes of argueyment)

            suppose that man to be engaged as a reader: say (for the purposes of

            argueyment) in the evening. Would that man’s pay as a reader in the evening, be

            added to the other amount, which, adopting your language, we will call clover;

            or would it merge into that amount, or clover?’

            ‘Well,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘I suppose it would be added.’

            ‘I suppose it would, sir. You are right, sir. Exactly my own views, Mr Boffin.’

            Here Wegg rose, and balancing himself on his wooden leg, fluttered over his

            prey with extended hand. ‘Mr Boffin, consider it done. Say no more, sir, not a word more. My stall and I are for ever parted. The collection of ballads will in

            future be reserved for private study, with the object of making poetry

            tributary’—Wegg was so proud of having found this word, that he said it again,

            with a capital letter—‘Tributary, to friendship. Mr Boffin, don’t allow yourself to

            be made uncomfortable by the pang it gives me to part from my stock and stall.

            Similar emotion was undergone by my own father when promoted for his merits

            from his occupation as a waterman to a situation under Government. His

            Christian name was Thomas. His words at the time (I was then an infant, but so

            deep was their impression on me, that I committed them to memory) were:

            Then farewell my trim-built wherry,

            Oars and coat and badge farewell!

            Never more at Chelsea Ferry,

            Shall your Thomas take a spell!

            —My father got over it, Mr Boffin, and so shall I.’

            While delivering these valedictory observations, Wegg continually

            disappointed Mr Boffin of his hand by flourishing it in the air. He now darted it

            at his patron, who took it, and felt his mind relieved of a great weight: observing

            that as they had arranged their joint affairs so satisfactorily, he would now be glad to look into those of Bully Sawyers. Which, indeed, had been left overnight in a very unpromising posture, and for whose impending expedition

            against the Persians the weather had been by no means favourable all day.

            Mr Wegg resumed his spectacles therefore. But Sawyers was not to be of the

            party that night; for, before Wegg had found his place, Mrs Boffin’s tread was heard upon the stairs, so unusually heavy and hurried, that Mr Boffin would have

            started up at the sound, anticipating some occurrence much out of the common

            course, even though she had not also called to him in an agitated tone.

            Mr Boffin hurried out, and found her on the dark staircase, panting, with a

            lighted candle in her hand.

            ‘What’s the matter, my dear?’

            ‘I don’t know; I don’t know; but I wish you’d come up-stairs.’

            Much surprised, Mr Boffin went up stairs and accompanied Mrs Boffin into

            their own room: a second large room on the same floor as the room in which the

            late proprietor had died. Mr Boffin looked all round him, and saw nothing more

            unusual than various articles of folded linen on a large chest, which Mrs Boffin

            had been sorting.

            ‘What is it, my dear? Why, you’re frightened! You frightened?’

            ‘I am not one of that sort certainly,’ said Mrs Boffin, as she sat down in a chair

            to recover herself, and took her husband’s arm; ‘but it’s very strange!’

            ‘What is, my dear?’

            ‘Noddy, the faces of the old man and the two children are all over the house

            to-night.’

            ‘My dear?’ exclaimed Mr Boffin. But not without a certain uncomfortable

            sensation gliding down his back.

            ‘I know it must sound foolish, and yet it is so.’

            ‘Where did you think you saw them?’

            ‘I don’t know that I think I saw them anywhere. I felt them.’

            ‘Touched them?’

            ‘No. Felt them in the air. I was sorting those things on the chest, and not thinking of the old man or the children, but singing to myself, when all in a moment I felt there was a face growing out of the dark.’

            ‘What face?’ asked her husband, looking about him.

            ‘For a moment it was the old man’s, and then it got younger. For a moment it

            was both the children’s, and then it got older. For a moment it was a strange face,

            and then it was all the faces.’

            ‘And then it was gone?’

            ‘Yes; and then it was gone.’

            ‘Where were you then, old lady?’

            ‘Here, at the chest. Well; I got the better of it, and went on sorting, and went

            on singing to myself. “Lor!” I says, “I’ll think of something else—something

            comfortable—and put it out of my head.” So I thought of the new house and

            Miss Bella Wilfer, and was thinking at a great rate with that sheet there in my hand, when all of a sudden, the faces seemed to be hidden in among the folds of

            it and I let it drop.’

            As it still lay on the floor where it had fallen, Mr Boffin picked it up and laid it on the chest.

            ‘And then you ran down stairs?’

            ‘No. I thought I’d try another room, and shake it off. I says to myself, “I’ll go

            and walk slowly up and down the old man’s room three times, from end to end,

            and then I shall have conquered it.” I went in with the candle in my hand; but the

            moment I came near the bed, the air got thick with them.’

            ‘With the faces?’

            ‘Yes, and I even felt that they were in the dark behind the side-door, and on the little staircase, floating away into the yard. Then, I called you.’

            Mr Boffin, lost in amazement, looked at Mrs Boffin. Mrs Boffin, lost in her

            own fluttered inability to make this out, looked at Mr Boffin.

            ‘I think, my dear,’ said the Golden Dustman, ‘I’ll at once get rid of Wegg for

            the night, because he’s coming to inhabit the Bower, and it might be put into his

            head or somebody else’s, if he heard this and it got about that the house is haunted. Whereas we know better. Don’t we?’

            ‘I never had the feeling in the house before,’ said Mrs Boffin; ‘and I have been

            about it alone at all hours of the night. I have been in the house when Death was

            in it, and I have been in the house when Murder was a new part of its adventures,

            and I never had a fright in it yet.’

            ‘And won’t again, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Depend upon it, it comes of

            thinking and dwelling on that dark spot.’

            ‘Yes; but why didn’t it come before?’ asked Mrs Boffin.

            This draft on Mr Boffin’s philosophy could only be met by that gentleman

            with the remark that everything that is at all, must begin at some time. Then, tucking his wife’s arm under his own, that she might not be left by herself to be

            troubled again, he descended to release Wegg. Who, being something drowsy

            after his plentiful repast, and constitutionally of a shirking temperament, was well enough pleased to stump away, without doing what he had come to do, and

            was paid for doing.

            Mr Boffin then put on his hat, and Mrs Boffin her shawl; and the pair, further

            provided with a bunch of keys and a lighted lantern, went all over the dismal house—dismal everywhere, but in their own two rooms—from cellar to cock-loft. Not resting satisfied with giving that much chace to Mrs Boffin’s fancies, they pursued them into the yard and outbuildings, and under the Mounds. And

            setting the lantern, when all was done, at the foot of one of the Mounds, they

            comfortably trotted to and fro for an evening walk, to the end that the murky cobwebs in Mrs Boffin’s brain might be blown away.

            ‘There, my dear!’ said Mr Boffin when they came in to supper. ‘That was the

            treatment, you see. Completely worked round, haven’t you?’

            ‘Yes, deary,’ said Mrs Boffin, laying aside her shawl. ‘I’m not nervous any

            more. I’m not a bit troubled now. I’d go anywhere about the house the same as

            ever. But—’

            ‘Eh!’ said Mr Boffin.

            ‘But I’ve only to shut my eyes.’

            ‘And what then?’

            ‘Why then,’ said Mrs Boffin, speaking with her eyes closed, and her left hand

            thoughtfully touching her brow, ‘then, there they are! The old man’s face, and it

            gets younger. The two children’s faces, and they get older. A face that I don’t know. And then all the faces!’

            Opening her eyes again, and seeing her husband’s face across the table, she

            leaned forward to give it a pat on the cheek, and sat down to supper, declaring it

            to be the best face in the world.