Our Mutual Friend

The kindling triumph in his face was bright indeed, as he looked up and rapturously exclaimed, what had he done to deserve the blessing of this dear confiding creature’s heart! Again she put her hand upon his lips, saying, ‘Hush!’ and then told him, in her own little natural pathetic way, that if all the world were against him, she would be for him; that if all the world repudiated him, she would believe him; that if he were infamous in other eyes, he would be honoured in hers; and that, under the worst unmerited suspicion, she could devote her life to consoling him, and imparting her own faith in him to their little child.

A twilight calm of happiness then succeeding to their radiant noon, they remained at peace, until a strange voice in the room startled them both. The room being by that time dark, the voice said, ‘Don’t let the lady be alarmed by my striking a light,’ and immediately a match rattled, and glimmered in a hand. The hand and the match and the voice were then seen by John Rokesmith to belong to Mr Inspector, once meditatively active in this chronicle.

‘I take the liberty,’ said Mr Inspector, in a business-like manner, ‘to bring myself to the recollection of Mr Julius Handford, who gave me his name and address down at our place a considerable time ago. Would the lady object to my lighting the pair of candles on the chimneypiece, to throw a further light upon the subject? No? Thank you, ma’am. Now, we look cheerful.’

Mr Inspector, in a dark-blue buttoned-up frock coat and pantaloons, presented a serviceable, half-pay, Royal Arms kind of appearance, as he applied his pocket handkerchief to his nose and bowed to the lady.

‘You favoured me, Mr Handford,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘by writing down your name and address, and I produce the piece of paper on which you wrote it. Comparing the same with the writing on the fly-leaf of this book on the table – and a sweet pretty volume it is – I find the writing of the entry, “Mrs John Rokesmith. From her husband on her birthday” – and very gratifying to the feelings such memorials are – to correspond exactly. Can I have a word with you?’

‘Certainly. Here, if you please,’ was the reply.

‘Why,’ retorted Mr Inspector, again using his pocket handkerchief, ‘though there’s nothing for the lady to be at all alarmed at, still, ladies are apt to take alarm at matters of business – being of that fragile sex that they’re not accustomed to them when not of a strictly domestic character – and I do generally make it a rule to propose retirement from the presence of ladies, before entering upon business topics. Or perhaps,’ Mr Inspector hinted, ‘if the lady was to step up-stairs, and take a look at baby now!’

‘Mrs Rokesmith,’ – her husband was beginning; when Mr Inspector, regarding the words as an introduction, said, ‘Happy I am sure, to have the honour.’ And bowed, with gallantry.

‘Mrs Rokesmith,’ resumed her husband, ‘is satisfied that she can have no reason for being alarmed, whatever the business is.’

‘Really? Is that so?’ said Mr Inspector. ‘But it’s a sex to live and learn from, and there’s nothing a lady can’t accomplish when she once fully gives her mind to it. It’s the case with my own wife. Well, ma’am, this good gentleman of yours has given rise to a rather large amount of trouble which might have been avoided if he had come forward and explained himself. Well you see! He didn’t come forward and explain himself. Consequently, now that we meet, him and me, you’ll say – and say right – that there’s nothing to be alarmed at, in my proposing to him to come forward – or, putting the same meaning in another form, to come along with me – and explain himself.’

When Mr Inspector put it in that other form, ‘to come along with me,’ there was a relishing roll in his voice, and his eye beamed with an official lustre.

‘Do you propose to take me into custody?’ inquired John Rokesmith, very coolly.

‘Why argue?’ returned Mr Inspector in a comfortable sort of remonstrance; ‘ain’t it enough that I propose that you shall come along with me?’

‘For what reason?’

‘Lord bless my soul and body!’ returned Mr Inspector, ‘I wonder at it in a man of your education. Why argue?’

‘What do you charge against me?’

‘I wonder at you before a lady,’ said Mr Inspector, shaking his head reproachfully: ‘I wonder, brought up as you have been, you haven’t a more delicate mind! I charge you, then, with being some way concerned in the Harmon Murder. I don’t say whether before, or in, or after, the fact. I don’t say whether with having some knowledge of it that hasn’t come out.’

‘You don’t surprise me. I foresaw your visit this afternoon.’

‘Don’t!’ said Mr Inspector. ‘Why, why argue? It’s my duty to inform you that whatever you say, will be used against you.’

‘I don’t think it will.’

‘But I tell you it will,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘Now, having received the caution, do you still say that you foresaw my visit this afternoon?’

‘Yes. And I will say something more, if you will step with me into the next room.’

With a reassuring kiss on the lips of the frightened Bella, her husband (to whom Mr Inspector obligingly offered his arm), took up a candle, and withdrew with that gentleman. They were a full half-hour in conference. When they returned, Mr Inspector looked considerably astonished.

‘I have invited this worthy officer, my dear,’ said John, ‘to make a short excursion with me in which you shall be a sharer. He will take something to eat and drink, I dare say, on your invitation, while you are getting your bonnet on.’

Mr Inspector declined eating, but assented to the proposal of a glass of brandy and water. Mixing this cold, and pensively consuming it, he broke at intervals into such soliloquies as that he never did know such a move, that he never had been so gravelled, and that what a game was this to try the sort of stuff a man’s opinion of himself was made of! Concurrently with these comments, he more than once burst out a laughing, with the half-enjoying and half-piqued air of a man, who had given up a good conundrum, after much guessing, and been told the answer. Bella was so timid of him, that she noted these things in a half-shrinking, half-perceptive way, and similarly noted that there was a great change in his manner towards John. That coming-along-with-him deportment was now lost in long musing looks at John and at herself and sometimes in slow heavy rubs of his hand across his forehead, as if he were ironing cut the creases which his deep pondering made there. He had had some coughing and whistling satellites secretly gravitating towards him about the premises, but they were now dismissed, and he eyed John as if he had meant to do him a public service, but had unfortunately been anticipated. Whether Bella might have noted anything more, if she had been less afraid of him, she could not determine; but it was all inexplicable to her, and not the faintest flash of the real state of the case broke in upon her mind. Mr Inspector’s increased notice of herself and knowing way of raising his eyebrows when their eyes by any chance met, as if he put the question ‘Don’t you see?’ augmented her timidity, and, consequently, her perplexity. For all these reasons, when he and she and John, at towards nine o’clock of a winter evening went to London, and began driving from London Bridge, among low-lying water-side wharves and docks and strange places, Bella was in the state of a dreamer; perfectly unable to account for her being there, perfectly unable to forecast what would happen next, or whither she was going, or why; certain of nothing in the immediate present, but that she confided in John, and that John seemed somehow to be getting more triumphant. But what a certainty was that!

They alighted at last at the corner of a court, where there was a building with a bright lamp and wicket gate. Its orderly appearance was very unlike that of the surrounding neighbourhood, and was explained by the inscription Police Station.

‘We are not going in here, John?’ said Bella, clinging to him.

‘Yes, my dear; but of our own accord. We shall come out again as easily, never fear.’

The whitewashed room was pure white as of old, the methodical book-keeping was in peaceful progress as of old, and some distant howler was banging against a cell door as of old. The sanctuary was not a permanent abiding-place, but a kind of criminal Pickford’s. The lower passions and vices were regularly ticked off in the books, warehoused in the cells, carted away as per accompanying invoice, and left little mark upon it.

Mr Inspector placed two chairs for his visitors, before the fire, and communed in a low voice with a brother of his order (also of a half-pay, and Royal Arms aspect), who, judged only by his occupation at the moment, might have been a writing-master, setting copies. Their conference done, Mr Inspector returned to the fireplace, and, having observed that he would step round to the Fellowships and see how matters stood, went out. He soon came back again, saying, ‘Nothing could be better, for they’re at supper with Miss Abbey in the bar;’ and then they all three went out together.

Still, as in a dream, Bella found herself entering a snug old-fashioned public-house, and found herself smuggled into a little three-cornered room nearly opposite the bar of that establishment. Mr Inspector achieved the smuggling of herself and John into this queer room, called Cosy in an inscription on the door, by entering in the narrow passage first in order, and suddenly turning round upon them with extended arms, as if they had been two sheep. The room was lighted for their reception.

‘Now,’ said Mr Inspector to John, turning the gas lower; ‘I’ll mix with ‘em in a casual way, and when I say Identification, perhaps you’ll show yourself.’

John nodded, and Mr Inspector went alone to the half-door of the bar. From the dim doorway of Cosy, within which Bella and her husband stood, they could see a comfortable little party of three persons sitting at supper in the bar, and could hear everything that was said.

The three persons were Miss Abbey and two male guests. To whom collectively, Mr Inspector remarked that the weather was getting sharp for the time of year.

‘It need be sharp to suit your wits, sir,’ said Miss Abbey. ‘What have you got in hand now?’

‘Thanking you for your compliment: not much, Miss Abbey,’ was Mr Inspector’s rejoinder.

‘Who have you got in Cosy?’ asked Miss Abbey.

‘Only a gentleman and his wife, Miss.’

‘And who are they? If one may ask it without detriment to your deep plans in the interests of the honest public?’ said Miss Abbey, proud of Mr Inspector as an administrative genius.

‘They are strangers in this part of the town, Miss Abbey. They are waiting till I shall want the gentleman to show himself somewhere, for half a moment.’

‘While they’re waiting,’ said Miss Abbey, ‘couldn’t you join us?’

Mr Inspector immediately slipped into the bar, and sat down at the side of the half-door, with his back towards the passage, and directly facing the two guests. ‘I don’t take my supper till later in the night,’ said he, ‘and therefore I won’t disturb the compactness of the table. But I’ll take a glass of flip, if that’s flip in the jug in the fender.’

‘That’s flip,’ replied Miss Abbey, ‘and it’s my making, and if even you can find out better, I shall be glad to know where.’ Filling him, with hospitable hands, a steaming tumbler, Miss Abbey replaced the jug by the fire; the company not having yet arrived at the flip-stage of their supper, but being as yet skirmishing with strong ale.

‘Ah – h!’ cried Mr Inspector. ‘That’s the smack! There’s not a Detective in the Force, Miss Abbey, that could find out better stuff than that.’

‘Glad to hear you say so,’ rejoined Miss Abbey. ‘You ought to know, if anybody does.’

‘Mr Job Potterson,’ Mr Inspector continued, ‘I drink your health. Mr Jacob Kibble, I drink yours. Hope you have made a prosperous voyage home, gentlemen both.’

Mr Kibble, an unctuous broad man of few words and many mouthfuls, said, more briefly than pointedly, raising his ale to his lips: ‘Same to you.’ Mr Job Potterson, a semi-seafaring man of obliging demeanour, said, ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Lord bless my soul and body!’ cried Mr Inspector. ‘Talk of trades, Miss Abbey, and the way they set their marks on men’ (a subject which nobody had approached); ‘who wouldn’t know your brother to be a Steward! There’s a bright and ready twinkle in his eye, there’s a neatness in his action, there’s a smartness in his figure, there’s an air of reliability about him in case you wanted a basin, which points out the steward! And Mr Kibble; ain’t he Passenger, all over? While there’s that mercantile cut upon him which would make you happy to give him credit for five hundred pound, don’t you see the salt sea shining on him too?’

‘You do, I dare say,’ returned Miss Abbey, ‘but I don’t. And as for stewarding, I think it’s time my brother gave that up, and took his House in hand on his sister’s retiring. The House will go to pieces if he don’t. I wouldn’t sell it for any money that could be told out, to a person that I couldn’t depend upon to be a Law to the Porters, as I have been.’

‘There you’re right, Miss,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘A better kept house is not known to our men. What do I say? Half so well a kept house is not known to our men. Show the Force the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, and the Force – to a constable – will show you a piece of perfection, Mr Kibble.’