Our Mutual Friend

‘Why serious, my life, then? When serious?’

‘When I laugh, I think,’ said Bella, laughing as she laid her head upon his shoulder. ‘You wouldn’t believe, sir, that I feel serious now? But I do.’ And she laughed again, and something glistened in her eyes.

‘Would you like to be rich, pet?’ he asked her coaxingly.

‘Rich, John! How can you ask such goose’s questions?’

‘Do you regret anything, my love?’

‘Regret anything? No!’ Bella confidently answered. But then, suddenly changing, she said, between laughing and glistening: ‘Oh yes, I do though. I regret Mrs Boffin.’

‘I, too, regret that separation very much. But perhaps it is only temporary. Perhaps things may so fall out, as that you may sometimes see her again – as that we may sometimes see her again.’ Bella might be very anxious on the subject, but she scarcely seemed so at the moment. With an absent air, she was investigating that button on her husband’s coat, when Pa came in to spend the evening.

Pa had his special chair and his special corner reserved for him on all occasions, and – without disparagement of his domestic joys – was far happier there, than anywhere. It was always pleasantly droll to see Pa and Bella together; but on this present evening her husband thought her more than usually fantastic with him.

‘You are a very good little boy,’ said Bella, ‘to come unexpectedly, as soon as you could get out of school. And how have they used you at school to-day, you dear?’

‘Well, my pet,’ replied the cherub, smiling and rubbing his hands as she sat him down in his chair, ‘I attend two schools. There’s the Mincing Lane establishment, and there’s your mother’s Academy. Which might you mean, my dear?’

‘Both,’ said Bella.

‘Both, eh? Why, to say the truth, both have taken a little out of me to-day, my dear, but that was to be expected. There’s no royal road to learning; and what is life but learning!’

‘And what do you do with yourself when you have got your learning by heart, you silly child?’

‘Why then, my dear,’ said the cherub, after a little consideration, ‘I suppose I die.’

‘You are a very bad boy,’ retorted Bella, ‘to talk about dismal things and be out of spirits.’

‘My Bella,’ rejoined her father, ‘I am not out of spirits. I am as gay as a lark.’ Which his face confirmed.

‘Then if you are sure and certain it’s not you, I suppose it must be I,’ said Bella; ‘so I won’t do so any more. John dear, we must give this little fellow his supper, you know.’

‘Of course we must, my darling.’

‘He has been grubbing and grubbing at school,’ said Bella, looking at her father’s hand and lightly slapping it, ‘till he’s not fit to be seen. O what a grubby child!’

‘Indeed, my dear,’ said her father, ‘I was going to ask to be allowed to wash my hands, only you find me out so soon.’

‘Come here, sir!’ cried Bella, taking him by the front of his coat, ‘come here and be washed directly. You are not to be trusted to do it for yourself. Come here, sir!’

The cherub, to his genial amusement, was accordingly conducted to a little washing-room, where Bella soaped his face and rubbed his face, and soaped his hands and rubbed his hands, and splashed him and rinsed him and towelled him, until he was as red as beet-root, even to his very ears: ‘Now you must be brushed and combed, sir,’ said Bella, busily. ‘Hold the light, John. Shut your eyes, sir, and let me take hold of your chin. Be good directly, and do as you are told!’

Her father being more than willing to obey, she dressed his hair in her most elaborate manner, brushing it out straight, parting it, winding it over her fingers, sticking it up on end, and constantly falling back on John to get a good look at the effect of it. Who always received her on his disengaged arm, and detained her, while the patient cherub stood waiting to be finished.

‘There!’ said Bella, when she had at last completed the final touches. ‘Now, you are something like a genteel boy! Put your jacket on, and come and have your supper.’

The cherub investing himself with his coat was led back to his corner – where, but for having no egotism in his pleasant nature, he would have answered well enough for that radiant though self-sufficient boy, Jack Horner – Bella with her own hands laid a cloth for him, and brought him his supper on a tray. ‘Stop a moment,’ said she, ‘we must keep his little clothes clean;’ and tied a napkin under his chin, in a very methodical manner.

While he took his supper, Bella sat by him, sometimes admonishing him to hold his fork by the handle, like a polite child, and at other times carving for him, or pouring out his drink. Fantastic as it all was, and accustomed as she ever had been to make a plaything of her good father, ever delighted that she should put him to that account, still there was an occasional something on Bella’s part that was new. It could not be said that she was less playful, whimsical, or natural, than she always had been; but it seemed, her husband thought, as if there were some rather graver reason than he had supposed for what she had so lately said, and as if throughout all this, there were glimpses of an underlying seriousness.

It was a circumstance in support of this view of the case, that when she had lighted her father’s pipe, and mixed him his glass of grog, she sat down on a stool between her father and her husband, leaning her arm upon the latter, and was very quiet. So quiet, that when her father rose to take his leave, she looked round with a start, as if she had forgotten his being there.

‘You go a little way with Pa, John?’

‘Yes, my dear. Do you?’

‘I have not written to Lizzie Hexam since I wrote and told her that I really had a lover – a whole one. I have often thought I would like to tell her how right she was when she pretended to read in the live coals that I would go through fire and water for him. I am in the humour to tell her so to-night, John, and I’ll stay at home and do it.’

‘You are tired.’

‘Not at all tired, John dear, but in the humour to write to Lizzie. Good night, dear Pa. Good night, you dear, good, gentle Pa!’

Left to herself she sat down to write, and wrote Lizzie a long letter. She had but completed it and read it over, when her husband came back. ‘You are just in time, sir,’ said Bella; ‘I am going to give you your first curtain lecture. It shall be a parlour-curtain lecture. You shall take this chair of mine when I have folded my letter, and I will take the stool (though you ought to take it, I can tell you, sir, if it’s the stool of repentance), and you’ll soon find yourself taken to task soundly.’

Her letter folded, sealed, and directed, and her pen wiped, and her middle finger wiped, and her desk locked up and put away, and these transactions performed with an air of severe business sedateness, which the Complete British Housewife might have assumed, and certainly would not have rounded off and broken down in with a musical laugh, as Bella did: she placed her husband in his chair, and placed herself upon her stool.

‘Now, sir! To begin at the beginning. What is your name?’

A question more decidedly rushing at the secret he was keeping from her, could not have astounded him. But he kept his countenance and his secret, and answered, ‘John Rokesmith, my dear.’

‘Good boy! Who gave you that name?’

With a returning suspicion that something might have betrayed him to her, he answered, interrogatively, ‘My godfathers and my godmothers, dear love?’

‘Pretty good!’ said Bella. ‘Not goodest good, because you hesitate about it. However, as you know your Catechism fairly, so far, I’ll let you off the rest. Now, I am going to examine you out of my own head. John dear, why did you go back, this evening, to the question you once asked me before – would I like to be rich?’

Again, his secret! He looked down at her as she looked up at him, with her hands folded on his knee, and it was as nearly told as ever secret was.

Having no reply ready, he could do no better than embrace her.

‘In short, dear John,’ said Bella, ‘this is the topic of my lecture: I want nothing on earth, and I want you to believe it.’

‘If that’s all, the lecture may be considered over, for I do.’

‘It’s not all, John dear,’ Bella hesitated. ‘It’s only Firstly. There’s a dreadful Secondly, and a dreadful Thirdly to come – as I used to say to myself in sermon-time when I was a very small-sized sinner at church.’

‘Let them come, my dearest.’

‘Are you sure, John dear; are you absolutely certain in your innermost heart of hearts – ?’

‘Which is not in my keeping,’ he rejoined.

‘No, John, but the key is. – Are you absolutely certain that down at the bottom of that heart of hearts, which you have given to me as I have given mine to you, there is no remembrance that I was once very mercenary?’

‘Why, if there were no remembrance in me of the time you speak of,’ he softly asked her with his lips to hers, ‘could I love you quite as well as I do; could I have in the Calendar of my life the brightest of its days; could I whenever I look at your dear face, or hear your dear voice, see and hear my noble champion? It can never have been that which made you serious, darling?’

‘No John, it wasn’t that, and still less was it Mrs Boffin, though I love her. Wait a moment, and I’ll go on with the lecture. Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.’