Our Mutual Friend

‘There are you, Charley, working your way, in secret from father, at the school; and you get prizes; and you go on better and better; and you come to be a – what was it you called it when you told me about that?’

‘Ha, ha! Fortune-telling not know the name!’ cried the boy, seeming to be rather relieved by this default on the part of the hollow down by the flare. ‘Pupil-teacher.’

‘You come to be a pupil-teacher, and you still go on better and better, and you rise to be a master full of learning and respect. But the secret has come to father’s knowledge long before, and it has divided you from father, and from me.’

‘No it hasn’t!’

‘Yes it has, Charley. I see, as plain as plain can be, that your way is not ours, and that even if father could be got to forgive your taking it (which he never could be), that way of yours would be darkened by our way. But I see too, Charley – ’

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

‘Ah! Still. That it is a great work to have cut you away from father’s life, and to have made a new and good beginning. So there am I, Charley, left alone with father, keeping him as straight as I can, watching for more influence than I have, and hoping that through some fortunate chance, or when he is ill, or when – I don’t know what – I may turn him to wish to do better things.’

‘You said you couldn’t read a book, Lizzie. Your library of books is the hollow down by the flare, I think.’

‘I should be very glad to be able to read real books. I feel my want of learning very much, Charley. But I should feel it much more, if I didn’t know it to be a tie between me and father. – Hark! Father’s tread!’

It being now past midnight, the bird of prey went straight to roost. At mid-day following he reappeared at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, in the character, not new to him, of a witness before a Coroner’s Jury.

Mr Mortimer Lightwood, besides sustaining the character of one of the witnesses, doubled the part with that of the eminent solicitor who watched the proceedings on behalf of the representatives of the deceased, as was duly recorded in the newspapers. Mr Inspector watched the proceedings too, and kept his watching closely to himself. Mr Julius Handford having given his right address, and being reported in solvent circumstances as to his bill, though nothing more was known of him at his hotel except that his way of life was very retired, had no summons to appear, and was merely present in the shades of Mr Inspector’s mind.

The case was made interesting to the public, by Mr Mortimer Lightwood’s evidence touching the circumstances under which the deceased, Mr John Harmon, had returned to England; exclusive private proprietorship in which circumstances was set up at dinner-tables for several days, by Veneering, Twemlow, Podsnap, and all the Buffers: who all related them irreconcilably with one another, and contradicted themselves. It was also made interesting by the testimony of Job Potterson, the ship’s steward, and one Mr Jacob Kibble, a fellow-passenger, that the deceased Mr John Harmon did bring over, in a hand-valise with which he did disembark, the sum realized by the forced sale of his little landed property, and that the sum exceeded, in ready money, seven hundred pounds. It was further made interesting, by the remarkable experiences of Jesse Hexam in having rescued from the Thames so many dead bodies, and for whose behoof a rapturous admirer subscribing himself ‘A friend to Burial’ (perhaps an undertaker), sent eighteen postage stamps, and five ‘Now Sir’s to the editor of the Times.

Upon the evidence adduced before them, the Jury found, That the body of Mr John Harmon had been discovered floating in the Thames, in an advanced state of decay, and much injured; and that the said Mr John Harmon had come by his death under highly suspicious circumstances, though by whose act or in what precise manner there was no evidence before this Jury to show. And they appended to their verdict, a recommendation to the Home Office (which Mr Inspector appeared to think highly sensible), to offer a reward for the solution of the mystery. Within eight-and-forty hours, a reward of One Hundred Pounds was proclaimed, together with a free pardon to any person or persons not the actual perpetrator or perpetrators, and so forth in due form.

This Proclamation rendered Mr Inspector additionally studious, and caused him to stand meditating on river-stairs and causeways, and to go lurking about in boats, putting this and that together. But, according to the success with which you put this and that together, you get a woman and a fish apart, or a Mermaid in combination. And Mr Inspector could turn out nothing better than a Mermaid, which no Judge and Jury would believe in.

Thus, like the tides on which it had been borne to the knowledge of men, the Harmon Murder – as it came to be popularly called – went up and down, and ebbed and flowed, now in the town, now in the country, now among palaces, now among hovels, now among lords and ladies and gentlefolks, now among labourers and hammerers and ballast-heavers, until at last, after a long interval of slack water it got out to sea and drifted away.

Chapter 4

THE R. WILFER FAMILY

Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather a grand sound, suggesting on first acquaintance brasses in country churches, scrolls in stained-glass windows, and generally the De Wilfers who came over with the Conqueror. For, it is a remarkable fact in genealogy that no De Any ones ever came over with Anybody else.

But, the Reginald Wilfer family were of such commonplace extraction and pursuits that their forefathers had for generations modestly subsisted on the Docks, the Excise Office, and the Custom House, and the existing R. Wilfer was a poor clerk. So poor a clerk, though having a limited salary and an unlimited family, that he had never yet attained the modest object of his ambition: which was, to wear a complete new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, at one time. His black hat was brown before he could afford a coat, his pantaloons were white at the seams and knees before he could buy a pair of boots, his boots had worn out before he could treat himself to new pantaloons, and, by the time he worked round to the hat again, that shining modern article roofed-in an ancient ruin of various periods.

If the conventional Cherub could ever grow up and be clothed, he might be photographed as a portrait of Wilfer. His chubby, smooth, innocent appearance was a reason for his being always treated with condescension when he was not put down. A stranger entering his own poor house at about ten o’clock P.M. might have been surprised to find him sitting up to supper. So boyish was he in his curves and proportions, that his old schoolmaster meeting him in Cheapside, might have been unable to withstand the temptation of caning him on the spot. In short, he was the conventional cherub, after the supposititious shoot just mentioned, rather grey, with signs of care on his expression, and in decidedly insolvent circumstances.

He was shy, and unwilling to own to the name of Reginald, as being too aspiring and self-assertive a name. In his signature he used only the initial R., and imparted what it really stood for, to none but chosen friends, under the seal of confidence. Out of this, the facetious habit had arisen in the neighbourhood surrounding Mincing Lane of making christian names for him of adjectives and participles beginning with R. Some of these were more or less appropriate: as Rusty, Retiring, Ruddy, Round, Ripe, Ridiculous, Ruminative; others, derived their point from their want of application: as Raging, Rattling, Roaring, Raffish. But, his popular name was Rumty, which in a moment of inspiration had been bestowed upon him by a gentleman of convivial habits connected with the drug-markets, as the beginning of a social chorus, his leading part in the execution of which had led this gentleman to the Temple of Fame, and of which the whole expressive burden ran:

‘Rumty iddity, row dow dow,
Sing toodlely, teedlely, bow wow wow.’

Thus he was constantly addressed, even in minor notes on business, as ‘Dear Rumty’; in answer to which, he sedately signed himself, ‘Yours truly, R. Wilfer.’

He was clerk in the drug-house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles. Chicksey and Stobbles, his former masters, had both become absorbed in Veneering, once their traveller or commission agent: who had signalized his accession to supreme power by bringing into the business a quantity of plate-glass window and French-polished mahogany partition, and a gleaming and enormous doorplate.

R. Wilfer locked up his desk one evening, and, putting his bunch of keys in his pocket much as if it were his peg-top, made for home. His home was in the Holloway region north of London, and then divided from it by fields and trees. Between Battle Bridge and that part of the Holloway district in which he dwelt, was a tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and dust was heaped by contractors. Skirting the border of this desert, by the way he took, when the light of its kiln-fires made lurid smears on the fog, R. Wilfer sighed and shook his head.

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

With which commentary on human life, indicating an experience of it not exclusively his own, he made the best of his way to the end of his journey.

Mrs Wilfer was, of course, a tall woman and an angular. Her lord being cherubic, she was necessarily majestic, according to the principle which matrimonially unites contrasts. She was much given to tying up her head in a pocket-handkerchief, knotted under the chin. This head-gear, in conjunction with a pair of gloves worn within doors, she seemed to consider as at once a kind of armour against misfortune (invariably assuming it when in low spirits or difficulties), and as a species of full dress. It was therefore with some sinking of the spirit that her husband beheld her thus heroically attired, putting down her candle in the little hall, and coming down the doorsteps through the little front court to open the gate for him.

Something had gone wrong with the house-door, for R. Wilfer stopped on the steps, staring at it, and cried:

‘Hal-loa?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘the man came himself with a pair of pincers, and took it off, and took it away. He said that as he had no expectation of ever being paid for it, and as he had an order for another LADIES’ SCHOOL door-plate, it was better (burnished up) for the interests of all parties.’

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

‘You are master here, R. W.,’ returned his wife. ‘It is as you think; not as I do. Perhaps it might have been better if the man had taken the door too?’

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

‘Couldn’t we?’

‘Why, my dear! Could we?’

‘It is as you think, R. W.; not as I do.’ With those submissive words, the dutiful wife preceded him down a few stairs to a little basement front room, half kitchen, half parlour, where a girl of about nineteen, with an exceedingly pretty figure and face, but with an impatient and petulant expression both in her face and in her shoulders (which in her sex and at her age are very expressive of discontent), sat playing draughts with a younger girl, who was the youngest of the House of Wilfer. Not to encumber this page by telling off the Wilfers in detail and casting them up in the gross, it is enough for the present that the rest were what is called ‘out in the world,’ in various ways, and that they were Many. So many, that when one of his dutiful children called in to see him, R. Wilfer generally seemed to say to himself, after a little mental arithmetic, ‘Oh! here’s another of ‘em!’ before adding aloud, ‘How de do, John,’ or Susan, as the case might be.

‘Well Piggywiggies,’ said R. W., ‘how de do to-night? What I was thinking of, my dear,’ to Mrs Wilfer already seated in a corner with folded gloves, ‘was, that as we have let our first floor so well, and as we have now no place in which you could teach pupils even if pupils – ’

‘The milkman said he knew of two young ladies of the highest respectability who were in search of a suitable establishment, and he took a card,’ interposed Mrs Wilfer, with severe monotony, as if she were reading an Act of Parliament aloud. ‘Tell your father whether it was last Monday, Bella.’

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

‘In addition to which, my dear,’ her husband urged, ‘if you have no place to put two young persons into – ’

‘Pardon me,’ Mrs Wilfer again interposed; ‘they were not young persons. Two young ladies of the highest respectability. Tell your father, Bella, whether the milkman said so.’

‘My dear, it is the same thing.’

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

‘I mean, my dear, it is the same thing as to space. As to space. If you have no space in which to put two youthful fellow-creatures, however eminently respectable, which I do not doubt, where are those youthful fellow-creatures to be accommodated? I carry it no further than that. And solely looking at it,’ said her husband, making the stipulation at once in a conciliatory, complimentary, and argumentative tone – ‘as I am sure you will agree, my love – from a fellow-creature point of view, my dear.’

‘I have nothing more to say,’ returned Mrs Wilfer, with a meek renunciatory action of her gloves. ‘It is as you think, R. W.; not as I do.’

Here, the huffing of Miss Bella and the loss of three of her men at a swoop, aggravated by the coronation of an opponent, led to that young lady’s jerking the draught-board and pieces off the table: which her sister went down on her knees to pick up.

‘Poor Bella!’ said Mrs Wilfer.

‘And poor Lavinia, perhaps, my dear?’ suggested R. W.