'Have I been long dead?'
'I don't understand what you say. Let me wet your lips again. I hurried all I could, and brought no one back with me, lest you should die of the shock of strangers.'
'Am I not dead?'
'I cannot understand what you say. Your voice is so low and broken that I cannot hear you. Do you hear me?'
'Yes.'
'Do you mean Yes?'
'Yes.'
'I was coming from my work just now, along the path outside (I was up with the night-hands last night), and I heard a groan, and found you lying here.'
'What work, deary?'
'Did you ask what work? At the paper-mill.'
'Where is it?'
'Your face is turned up to the sky, and you can't see it. It is close by. You can see my face, here, between you and the sky?'
'Yes.'
'Dare I lift you?'
'Not yet.'
'Not even lift your head to get it on my arm? I will do it by very gentle degrees. You shall hardly feel it.'
'Not yet. Paper. Letter.'
'This paper in your breast?'
'Bless ye!'
'Let me wet your lips again. Am I to open it? To read it?'
'Bless ye!'
She reads it with surprise, and looks down with a new expression and an added interest on the motionless face she kneels beside.
'I know these names. I have heard them often.'
'Will you send it, my dear?'
'I cannot understand you. Let me wet your lips again, and your forehead. There. O poor thing, poor thing!' These words through her fast-dropping tears. 'What was it that you asked me? Wait till I bring my ear quite close.'
'Will you send it, my dear?'
'Will I send it to the writers? Is that your wish? Yes, certainly.'
'You'll not give it up to any one but them?'
'No.'
'As you must grow old in time, and come to your dying hour, my dear, you'll not give it up to any one but them?'
'No. Most solemnly.'
'Never to the Parish!' with a convulsed struggle.
'No. Most solemnly.'
'Nor let the Parish touch me, not yet so much as look at me!' with another struggle.
'No. Faithfully.'
A look of thankfulness and triumph lights the worn old face.
The eyes, which have been darkly fixed upon the sky, turn with meaning in them towards the compassionate face from which the tears are dropping, and a smile is on the aged lips as they ask:
'What is your name, my dear?'
'My name is Lizzie Hexam.'
'I must be sore disfigured. Are you afraid to kiss me?'
The answer is, the ready pressure of her lips upon the cold but smiling mouth.
'Bless ye! NOW lift me, my love.'
Lizzie Hexam very softly raised the weather-stained grey head, and lifted her as high as Heaven.
Chapter 9
SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION
'"We give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world."' So read the Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled voice, for his heart misgave him that all was not quite right between us and our sister--or say our sister in Law--Poor Law--and that we sometimes read these words in an awful manner, over our Sister and our Brother too.
And Sloppy--on whom the brave deceased had never turned her back until she ran away from him, knowing that otherwise he would not be separated from her--Sloppy could not in his conscience as yet find the hearty thanks required of it. Selfish in Sloppy, and yet excusable, it may be humbly hoped, because our sister had been more than his mother.
The words were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner of a churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there was nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single tombstone. It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the diggers and hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their graves at the common charge; so that a new generation might know which was which: so that the soldier, sailor, emigrant, coming home, should be able to identify the resting-place of father, mother, playmate, or betrothed. For, we turn up our eyes and say that we are all alike in death, and we might turn them down and work the saying out in this world, so far. It would be sentimental, perhaps? But how say ye, my lords and gentleman and honourable boards, shall we not find good standing-room left for a little sentiment, if we look into our crowds?
Near unto the Reverend Frank Milvey as he read, stood his little wife, John Rokesmith the Secretary, and Bella Wilfer. These, over and above Sloppy, were the mourners at the lowly grave. Not a penny had been added to the money sewn in her dress: what her honest spirit had so long projected, was fulfilled.
'I've took it in my head,' said Sloppy, laying it, inconsolable, against the church door, when all was done: I've took it in my wretched head that I might have sometimes turned a little harder for her, and it cuts me deep to think so now.'
The Reverend Frank Milvey, comforting Sloppy, expounded to him how the best of us were more or less remiss in our turnings at our respective Mangles--some of us very much so--and how we were all a halting, failing, feeble, and inconstant crew.
'SHE warn't, sir,' said Sloppy, taking this ghostly counsel rather ill, in behalf of his late benefactress. 'Let us speak for ourselves, sir. She went through with whatever duty she had to do. She went through with me, she went through with the Minders, she went through with herself, she went through with everythink. O Mrs Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a woman and a mother and a mangler in a million million!'
With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from the church door, and took it back to the grave in the corner, and laid it down there, and wept alone. 'Not a very poor grave,' said the Reverend Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes, 'when it has that homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could be made by most of the sculpture in Westminster Abbey!'
They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket-gate. The water-wheel of the paper-mill was audible there, and seemed to have a softening influence on the bright wintry scene. They had arrived but a little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them the little she could add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr Rokesmith's letter and had asked for their instructions. This was merely how she had heard the groan, and what had afterwards passed, and how she had obtained leave for the remains to be placed in that sweet, fresh, empty store-room of the mill from which they had just accompanied them to the churchyard, and how the last requests had been religiously observed.
'I could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,' said Lizzie. 'I should not have wanted the will; but I should not have had the power, without our managing partner.'
'Surely not the Jew who received us?' said Mrs Milvey.
('My dear,' observed her husband in parenthesis, 'why not?')
'The gentleman certainly is a Jew,' said Lizzie, 'and the lady, his wife, is a Jewess, and I was first brought to their notice by a Jew. But I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.'
'But suppose they try to convert you!' suggested Mrs Milvey, bristling in her good little way, as a clergyman's wife.
'To do what, ma'am?' asked Lizzie, with a modest smile.
'To make you change your religion,' said Mrs Milvey.
Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. 'They have never asked me what my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told them. They asked me to be industrious and faithful, and I promised to be so. They most willingly and cheerfully do their duty to all of us who are employed here, and we try to do ours to them. Indeed they do much more than their duty to us, for they are wonderfully mindful of us in many ways.
'It is easy to see you're a favourite, my dear,' said little Mrs Milvey, not quite pleased.
'It would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,' returned Lizzie, 'for I have been already raised to a place of confidence here. But that
makes no difference in their following their own religion and leaving all of us to ours. They never talk of theirs to us, and they never talk of ours to us. If I was the last in the mill, it would be just the same. They never asked me what religion that poor thing had followed.'
'My dear,' said Mrs Milvey, aside to the Reverend Frank, 'I wish you would talk to her.'
'My dear,' said the Reverend Frank aside to his good little wife, 'I think I will leave it to somebody else. The circumstances are hardly favourable. There are plenty of talkers going about, my love, and she will soon find one.'
While this discourse was interchanging, both Bella and the Secretary observed Lizzie Hexam with great attention. Brought face to face for the first time with the daughter of his supposed murderer, it was natural that John Harmon should have his own secret reasons for a careful scrutiny of her countenance and manner. Bella knew that Lizzie's father had been falsely accused of the crime which had had so great an influence on her own life and fortunes; and her interest, though it had no secret springs, like that of the Secretary, was equally natural. Both had expected to see something very different from the real Lizzie Hexam, and thus it fell out that she became the unconscious means of bringing them together.
For, when they had walked on with her to the little house in the clean village by the paper-mill, where Lizzie had a lodging with an elderly couple employed in the establishment, and when Mrs Milvey and Bella had been up to see her room and had come down, the mill bell rang. This called Lizzie away for the time, and left the Secretary and Bella standing rather awkwardly in the small street; Mrs Milvey being engaged in pursuing the village children, and her investigations whether they were in danger of becoming children of Israel; and the Reverend Frank being engaged--to say the truth--in evading that branch of his spiritual functions, and getting out of sight surreptitiously.
Bella at length said:
'Hadn't we better talk about the commission we have undertaken, Mr Rokesmith?'
'By all means,' said the Secretary.
'I suppose,' faltered Bella, 'that we ARE both commissioned, or we shouldn't both be here?'
'I suppose so,' was the Secretary's answer.
'When I proposed to come with Mr and Mrs Milvey,' said Bella, 'Mrs Boffin urged me to do so, in order that I might give her my small report--it's not worth anything, Mr Rokesmith, except for it's being a woman's--which indeed with you may be a fresh reason for it's being worth nothing--of Lizzie Hexam.'
'Mr Boffin,' said the Secretary, 'directed me to come for the same purpose.'
As they spoke they were leaving the little street and emerging on the wooded landscape by the river.
'You think well of her, Mr Rokesmith?' pursued Bella, conscious of making all the advances.
'I think highly of her.'
'I am so glad of that! Something quite refined in her beauty, is there not?'
'Her appearance is very striking.'
'There is a shade of sadness upon her that is quite touching. At least I--I am not setting up my own poor opinion, you know, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, excusing and explaining herself in a pretty shy way; 'I am consulting you.'
'I noticed that sadness. I hope it may not,' said the Secretary in a lower voice, 'be the result of the false accusation which has been retracted.'
When they had passed on a little further without speaking, Bella, after stealing a glance or two at the Secretary, suddenly said:
'Oh, Mr Rokesmith, don't be hard with me, don't be stern with me; be magnanimous! I want to talk with you on equal terms.'
The Secretary as suddenly brightened, and returned: 'Upon my honour I had no thought but for you. I forced myself to be constrained, lest you might misinterpret my being more natural. There. It's gone.'
'Thank you,' said Bella, holding out her little hand. 'Forgive me.'
'No!' cried the Secretary, eagerly. 'Forgive ME!' For there were tears in her eyes, and they were prettier in his sight (though they smote him on the heart rather reproachfully too) than any other glitter in the world.
When they had walked a little further:
'You were going to speak to me,' said the Secretary, with the shadow so long on him quite thrown off and cast away, 'about Lizzie Hexam. So was I going to speak to you, if I could have begun.'
'Now that you CAN begin, sir,' returned Bella, with a look as if she italicized the word by putting one of her dimples under it, 'what were you going to say?'
'You remember, of course, that in her short letter to Mrs Boffin--short, but containing everything to the purpose--she stipulated that either her name, or else her place of residence, must be kept strictly a secret among us.'
Bella nodded Yes.
'It is my duty to find out why she made that stipulation. I have it in charge from Mr Boffin to discover, and I am very desirous for myself to discover, whether that retracted accusation still leaves any stain upon her. I mean whether it places her at any disadvantage towards any one, even towards herself.'
'Yes,' said Bella, nodding thoughtfully; 'I understand. That seems wise, and considerate.'
'You may not have noticed, Miss Wilfer, that she has the same kind of interest in you, that you have in her. Just as you are attracted by her beaut--by her appearance and manner, she is attracted by yours.'
'I certainly have NOT noticed it,' returned Bella, again italicizing with the dimple, 'and I should have given her credit for--'
The Secretary with a smile held up his hand, so plainly interposing 'not for better taste', that Bella's colour deepened over the little piece of coquetry she was checked in.
'And so,' resumed the Secretary, 'if you would speak with her alone before we go away from here, I feel quite sure that a natural and easy confidence would arise between you. Of course you would not be asked to betray it; and of course you would not, if you were. But if you do not object to put this question to her--to ascertain for us her own feeling in this one matter--you can do so at a far greater advantage than I or any else could. Mr Boffin is anxious on the subject. And I am,' added the Secretary after a moment, 'for a special reason, very anxious.'
'I shall be happy, Mr Rokesmith,' returned Bella, 'to be of the least use; for I feel, after the serious scene of to-day, that I am useless enough in this world.'
'Don't say that,' urged the Secretary.
'Oh, but I mean that,' said Bella, raising her eyebrows.
'No one is useless in this world,' retorted the Secretary, 'who lightens the burden of it for any one else.'
'But I assure you I DON'T, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, half-crying.
'Not for your father?'
'Dear, loving, self-forgetting, easily-satisfied Pa! Oh, yes! He thinks so.'
'It is enough if he only thinks so,' said the Secretary. 'Excuse the interruption: I don't like to hear you depreciate yourself.'
'But YOU once depreciated ME, sir,' thought Bella, pouting, 'and I hope you may be satisfied with the consequences you brought upon your head!' However, she said nothing to that purpose; she even said something to a different purpose.
'Mr Rokesmith, it seems so long since we spoke together naturally, that I am embarrassed in approaching another subject. Mr Boffin. You know I am very grateful to him; don't you? You know I feel a true respect for him, and am bound to him by the strong ties of his own generosity; now don't you?'
'Unquestionably. And also that you are his favourite companion.'
'That makes it,' said Bella, 'so very difficult to speak of him. But--. Does he treat you well?'
'You see how he treats me,' the Secretary answered, with a patient and yet proud air.
'Yes, and I see it with pain,' said Bella, very energetically.
The Secretary gave her such a radiant look, that if he had thanked her a hundred times, he could not have said as much as the look said.
'I see it with pain,' repeated Bella, 'and it often makes me miserable. Miserable, because I cannot bear to be supposed to approve of it, or have any indirect share in it. Miserable, because
I cannot bear to be forced to admit to myself that Fortune is spoiling Mr Boffin.'
'Miss Wilfer,' said the Secretary, with a beaming face, 'if you could know with what delight I make the discovery that Fortune isn't spoiling YOU, you would know that it more than compensates me for any slight at any other hands.'
'Oh, don't speak of ME,' said Bella, giving herself an impatient little slap with her glove. 'You don't know me as well as--'
'As you know yourself?' suggested the Secretary, finding that she stopped. 'DO you know yourself?'
'I know quite enough of myself,' said Bella, with a charming air of being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, 'and I don't improve upon acquaintance. But Mr Boffin.'
'That Mr Boffin's manner to me, or consideration for me, is not what it used to be,' observed the Secretary, 'must be admitted. It is too plain to be denied.'
'Are you disposed to deny it, Mr Rokesmith?' asked Bella, with a look of wonder.
'Ought I not to be glad to do so, if I could: though it were only for my own sake?'
'Truly,' returned Bella, 'it must try you very much, and--you must please promise me that you won't take ill what I am going to add, Mr Rokesmith?'
'I promise it with all my heart.'
'--And it must sometimes, I should think,' said Bella, hesitating, 'a little lower you in your own estimation?'
Assenting with a movement of his head, though not at all looking as if it did, the Secretary replied:
'I have very strong reasons, Miss Wilfer, for bearing with the drawbacks of my position in the house we both inhabit. Believe that they are not all mercenary, although I have, through a series of strange fatalities, faded out of my place in life. If what you see with such a gracious and good sympathy is calculated to rouse my pride, there are other considerations (and those you do not see) urging me to quiet endurance. The latter are by far the stronger.'
'I think I have noticed, Mr Rokesmith,' said Bella, looking at him with curiosity, as not quite making him out, 'that you repress yourself, and force yourself, to act a passive part.'
'You are right. I repress myself and force myself to act a part. It is not in tameness of spirit that I submit. I have a settled purpose.'
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