In 371 an irresolute way, and stealing a clumsy | palm of his left, like the action of one who was look at her, Bradley rose to place a chair for her, being physically hurt, and was unwilling to cry and then returned to his own. "Strictly speaking," said he, "I come from Charley, because I left him only a little while ago; but I am not commissioned by Charley. I come of my own spontaneous act." With her elbows on her bench, and her chin upon her hands, Miss Jenny Wren sat looking at him with a watchful sidelong look. Lizzie, in her different way, sat looking at him too. The fact is," began Bradley, with a mouth so dry that he had some difficulty in articulating his words: the consciousness of which rendered his manner still more ungainly and undecided; "the truth is, that Charley, having no secrets from me (to the best of my belief), has confided the whole of this matter to me." He came to a stop, and Lizzie asked: matter, Sir?” "What "I thought," returned the schoolmaster, stealing another look at her, and seeming to try in vain to sustain it; for the look dropped as it lighted on her eyes, "that it might be so superfluous as to be almost impertinent, to enter upon a definition of it. My allusion was to this matter of your having put aside your brother's plans for you, and given the preference to those of Mr. -I believe the name is Mr. Eugene Wrayburn." He made this point of not being certain of the name, with another uneasy look at her, which dropped like the last. Nothing being said on the other side he had to begin again, and began with new embarrassment. "Your brother's plans were communicated to me when he first had them in his thoughts. In point of fact he spoke to me about them when I was last here-when we were walking back together, and when I-when the impression was fresh upon me of having seen his sister." There might have been no meaning in it, but the little dress-maker here removed one of her supporting hands from her chin, and musingly turned the Honorable Mrs. T. with her face to the company. That done she fell into her former attitude. "I approved of his idea," said Bradley, with his uneasy look wandering to the doll, and unconsciously resting there longer than it had rested on Lizzie, "both because your brother ought naturally to be the originator of any such scheme, and because I hoped to be able to promote it. I should have had inexpressible pleasure, I should have taken inexpressible interest, in promoting it. Therefore I must acknowledge that when your brother was disappointed, I too was disappointed. I wish to avoid reservation or concealment, and I fully acknowledge that." He appeared to have encouraged himself by having got so far. At all events he went on with much greater firmness and force of emphasis: though with a curious disposition to set his teeth, and with a curious tight-screwing movement of his right hand in the clenching out. strongly felt this disappointment. I do strongly "I am a man of strong feelings, and I have feel it. I don't show what I feel; some of us keep it down. But to return to your brother. are obliged habitually to keep it down. To He has taken the matter so much to heart that he has remonstrated (in my presence he remonthe name. strated) with Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, if that be any one not blinded to the real character of Mr. He did so quite ineffectually. As Mr. Eugene Wrayburn-would readily suppose." And his face turned from burning red to white, He looked at Lizzie again, and held the look. and from white back to burning red, and so for the time to lasting deadly white. appeal to you. I resolved to come here alone, "Finally, I resolved to come here alone and and entreat you to retract the course you have chosen, and instead of confiding in a mere stranger-a person of most insolent behavior to your brother and others—to prefer your brother and your brother's friend." changes came over him, and her face now exLizzie Hexam had changed color when those pressed some anger, more dislike, and even a touch of fear. But she answered him very steadily. visit is well meant. "I can not doubt, Mr. Headstone, that your friend to Charley that I have no right to doubt You have been so good a accepted the help to which he so much objects it. I have nothing to tell Charley, but that I before he made any plans for me; or certainly before I knew of any. It was considerately and delicately offered, and there were reasons that had weight with me which should be as dear to Charley on this subject." Charley as to me. I have no more to say to lowed this repudiation of himself, and limitation His lips trembled and stood apart, as he folof her words to her brother. "I should have told Charley, if he had come stone, grinding his words slowly out, as though "Thank you, Mr. Headstone." "But I fear," he pursued, after a pause, furtively wrenching at the seat of his chair with one hand, as if he would have wrenched the chair to pieces, and gloomily observing her while her eyes were cast down, "that my humble services would not have found much favor with you?" She made no reply, and the poor stricken wretch sat contending with himself in a heat of passion and torment. After a while he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead and hands. "There is only one thing more I had to say, but it is the most important. There is a reason against this matter, there is a personal relation concerned in this matter, not yet explained to you. It might I don't say it would-it might -induce you to think differently. To proceed under the present circumstances is out of the question. Will you please come to the understanding that there shall be another interview on the subject ?" "With Charley, Mr. Headstone?" "With-well," he answered, breaking off, "yes! Say with him too. Will you please come to the understanding that there must be another interview under more favorable circumstances, before the whole case can be submitted ?" "I don't," said Lizzie, shaking her head, "understand your meaning, Mr. Headstone." "Limit my meaning for the present," he interrupted, "to the whole case being submitted to you in another interview." What case, Mr. Headstone? What is wanting to it ?" "You-you shall be informed in the other interview." Then he said, as if in a burst of irrepressible despair, “I—I leave it all incomplete! There is a spell upon me, I think!" And then added, almost as if he asked for pity, "Goodnight!" He held out his hand. As she, with manifest hesitation, not to say reluctance, touched it, a strange tremble passed over him, and his face, so deadly white, was moved as by a stroke of pain. Then he was gone. The dolls' dress-maker sat with her attitude unchanged, eying the door by which he had departed, until Lizzie pushed her bench aside and sat down near her. Then, eying Lizzie as she had previously eyed Bradley and the door, Miss Wren chopped that very sudden and keen chop in which her jaws sometimes indulged, leaned back in her chair with folded arms, and thus expressed herself: wouldn't blow up alone. He'd carry me up with him. I know his tricks and his manners." "Would he want to hurt you, do you mean?" asked Lizzie. "Mightn't exactly want to do it, my dear," returned Miss Wren; "but a lot of gunpowder among lighted lucifer-matches in the next room might almost as well be here." "He is a very strange man," said Lizzie, thoughtfully. "I wish he was so very strange a man as to be a total stranger," answered the sharp little thing. It being Lizzie's regular occupation when they were alone of an evening to brush out and smooth the long fair hair of the dolls' dress-maker, she unfastened a ribbon that kept it back while the little creature was at her work, and it fell in a beautiful shower over the poor shoulders that were much in need of such adorning rain. "Not now, Lizzie' dear," said Jenny; "let us have a talk by the fire." With those words, she in her turn loosened her friend's dark hair, and it. dropped of its own weight over her bosom, in two rich masses. Pretending to compare the colors and admire the contrast, Jenny so managed a mere touch or two of her nimble hands, as that she herself laying a cheek on one of the dark folds, seemed blinded by her own clustering curls to all but the fire, while the fine handsome face and brow of Lizzie were revealed without obstruction in the sober light. "Let us have a talk," said Jenny, "about Mr. Eugene Wrayburn." Something sparkled down among the fair hair resting on the dark hair; and if it were not a star-which it couldn't be-it was an eye; and if it were an eye, it was Jenny Wren's eye, bright and watchful as the bird's whose name she had taken. 66 "Why about Mr. Wrayburn ?" Lizzie asked. "For no better reason than because I'm in the humor. I wonder whether he's rich!" "No, not rich." "Poor ?" "I think so, for a gentleman." "Ah! To be sure! Yes, he's a gentleman. Not of our sort; is he?" A shake of the head, a thoughtful shake of the head, and the answer, softly spoken, “Oh no, oh no!" The dolls' dress-maker had an arm round her friend's waist. Adjusting the arm, she slyly took the opportunity of blowing at her own hair where it fell over her face; then the eye down there, under lighter shadows sparkled more brightly and appeared more watchful. "When He turns up, he sha'n't be a gentle man; I'll very soon send him packing, if he is. However, he's not Mr. Wrayburn; I haven't captivated him. I wonder whether any body 373 been taken by him, and that he may love her up through his being like one cast away, for the dearly?" Perhaps. I don't know. What would you think of him, Lizzie, if you were a lady?" "I a lady!" she repeated, laughing. "Such a fancy!" Yes. But say: just as a fancy, and for instance." “I a lady! I, a poor girl who used to row poor father on the river. I, who had rowed poor father out and home on the very night when I saw him for the first time. I, who was made so timid by his looking at me, that I got up and went out!" ("He did look at you, even that night, though you were not a lady!" thought Miss Wren.) "I a lady!" Lizzie went on in a low voice, with her eyes upon the fire. "I, with poor father's grave not even cleared of undeserved stain and shame, and he trying to clear it for me! I a lady!" think well of. And she says, that lady rich want of something to trust in, and care for, and put me in that empty place, only try how little and beautiful that I can never come near, 'Only I will do and bear for you, and I hope that you I mind myself, only prove what a world of things are, through me who am so much worse, and might even come to be much better than you hardly worth the thinking of beside you.' exalted and forgetful in the rapture of these awakened. "Yes, but not the old pain. Lay me down, "Only as a fancy, and for instance," urged lay me down. Don't go out of my sight toMiss Wren. "Too much, Jenny dear, too fancy is not able to get that far." fire gleamed upon her, it showed mournfully and abstractedly. much! My "But I am in the humor, and I must be humored, Lizzie, because after all I am a poor little thing, and have had a hard day with my bad child. Look in the fire, as I like to hear you tell how you used to do when you lived in that dreary old house that had once been a wind-mill. Look in the-what was its name when you told fortunes with your brother that I don't like?" "The hollow down by the flare ?" 66 "Ah! That's the name! You can find a lady there, I know." "More easily than I can make one of such material as myself, Jenny." Then turning away her face, she said in a whisnight. Lock the door and keep close to me." O my blessed children, come back in the long per to herself, "My Lizzie, my poor Lizzie! She wants help more than I, my blessed chilbright slanting rows, and come for her, not me. dren!" higher and better look, and now she turned She had stretched her hands up with that again, and folded them round Lizzie's neck, and rocked herself on Lizzie's breast. CHAPTER XII. MORE BIRDS OF PREY. The sparkling eye looked steadfastly up, as the musing face looked thoughtfully down. "Well?" said the dolls' dress-maker, "We have found our lady?" Lizzie nodded, and asked, "Shall she be none much worse. rich ?" "She had better be, as he's poor." "She is very rich. Shall she be handsome ?" "Even you can be that, Lizzie, so she ought to be." "She is very handsome." "What does she say about him?" asked Miss Jenny, in a low voice: watchful, through an intervening silence, of the face looking down at the fire. "She is glad, glad, to be rich, that he may have the money. She is glad, glad, to be beautiful, that he may be proud of her. Her poor heart-" ROGUE RIDERHOOD dwelt deep and dark in mast, oar, and block makers, and the boat-buildLimehouse Hole, among the riggers, and the ers, and the sail-lofts, as in a kind of ship's hold stored full of waterside characters, some no better than himself, some very much better, and The Hole, albeit in a general way not over-nice in its choice of company, tivating the Rogue's acquaintance; more frewas rather shy in reference to the honor of culquently giving him the cold shoulder than the warm hand, and seldom or never drinking with Hole, indeed, contained so much public spirit him unless at his own expense. A part of the and private virtue that not even this strong leverage could move it to good fellowship with a drawback on this magnanimous morality, that tainted accuser. But there may have been the its exponents held a true witness before Justice to be the next unneighborly and accursed character to a false one. "Eh? Her poor heart?" said Miss Wren. "Her heart-is given him, with all its love often mentioned, Mr. Riderhood might have Had it not been for the daughter whom he and truth. She would joyfully die with him, found the Hole a mere grave as to any means or, better than that, die for him. She knows it would yield him of getting a living. But Miss he has failings, but she thinks they have grown | Pleasant Riderhood had some little position and connection in Limehouse Hole. Upon the small- | leathern strap, and being discharged hurt her. est of small scales, she was an unlicensed pawnbroker, keeping what was popularly called a Leaving Shop, by lending insignificant sums on insignificant articles of property deposited with her as security. In her four-and-twentieth year of life, Pleasant was already in her fifth year of this way of trade. Her deceased mother had established the business, and on that parent's demise she had appropriated a secret capital of fifteen shillings to establishing herself in it; the existence of such capital in a pillow being the last intelligible confidential communication made to her by the departed, before succumbing to dropsical conditions of snuff and gin, incompatible equally with coherence and exist ence. Why christened Pleasant, the late Mrs. Riderhood might possibly have been at some time able to explain, and possibly not. Her daughter had no information on that point. Pleasant she found herself, and she couldn't help it. She had not been consulted on the question, any more than on the question of her coming into these terrestrial parts, to want a name. Similarly, she found herself possessed of what is colloquially termed a swivel eye (derived from her father), which she might perhaps have declined if her sentiments on the subject had been taken. She was not otherwise positively illlooking, though anxious, meagre, of a muddy complexion, and looking as old again as she really was. As some dogs have it in the blood, or are trained, to worry certain creatures to a certain point, so-not to make the comparison disrespectfully Pleasant Riderhood had it in the blood, or had been trained, to regard seamen, within certain limits, as her prey. Show her a man in a blue jacket, and, figuratively speaking, she pinned him instantly. Yet, all things considered, she was not of an evil mind or an unkindly disposition. For, observe how many things were to be considered according to her own unfortunate experience. Show Pleasant Riderhood a Wedding in the street, and she only saw two people taking out a regular license to quarrel and fight. Show her a Christening, and she saw a little heathen personage having a quite superfluous name bestowed upon it, inasmuch as it would be commonly addressed by some abusive epithet: which little personage was not in the least wanted by any body, and would be shoved and banged out of every body's way, until it should grow big enough to shove and bang. Show her a Funeral, and she saw an unremuncrative ceremony in the nature of a black masquerade, conferring a temporary gentility on the performers, at an immense expense, and representing the only formal party ever given by the deceased. Show her a live father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own father, who from her infancy had been taken with fits and starts of discharging his duty to her, which duty was always incorporated in the form of a fist or a All things considered, therefore, Pleasant Riderhood was not so very, very bad. There was even a touch of romance in her-of such romance as could creep into Limehouse Holeand maybe sometimes of a summer evening, when she stood with folded arms at her shopdoor, looking from the reeking street to the sky where the sun was setting, she may have had some vaporous visions of far-off islands in the southern seas or elsewhere (not being geographically particular), where it would be good to roam with a congenial partner among groves of bread-fruit, waiting for ships to be wafted from the hollow ports of civilization. For, sailors to be got the better of, were essential to Miss Pleas ant's Eden. Not on a summer evening did she come to her little shop-door, when a certain man standing over against the house on the opposite side of the street took notice of her. That was on a cold shrewd windy evening, after dark. Pleasant Riderhood shared, with most of the lady inhabitants of the Hole, the peculiarity that her hair was a ragged knot, constantly coming down behind, and that she never could enter upon any undertaking without first twisting it into place. At that particular moment, being newly come to the threshold to take a look out of doors, she was winding herself up with both hands after this fashion. And so prevalent was the fashion, that on the occasion of a fight or other disturbance in the Hole, the ladies would be seen flocking from all quarters universally twisting their back-hair as they came along, and many of them, in the hurry of the moment, carrying their backcombs in their mouths. It was a wretched little shop, with a roof that any man standing in it could touch with his hand; little better than a cellar or cave, down three steps. Yet in its ill-lighted window, among a flaring handkerchief or two, an old peacoat or so, a few valueless watches and compasses, a jar of tobacco and two crossed pipes, a bottle of walnut ketchup, and some horrible sweets-these creature discomforts serving as a blind to the main business of the Leaving Shop-was displayed the inscription SEAMAN'S BOARDINGHOUSE. Taking notice of Pleasant Riderhood at the door, the man crossed so quickly that she was still winding herself up, when he stood close before her. "Is your father at home?" said he. "I think he is," returned Pleasant, dropping her arms; "come in." It was a tentative reply, the man having a sea-faring appearance. Her father was not at home, and Pleasant knew it. "Take a seat by the fire," was her hospitable words, when she had got him in; "men of your calling are always welcome here.". "Thankee," said the man. His manner was the manner of a sailor, and his hands were the hands of a sailor, except that they were smooth. Pleasant had an eye for "I don't know what you mean," said Pleasant, shrinking a step back. "What on earth d'ye want?" "I don't want to hurt your father. I don't want to say I might, if I chose. I want to speak to him. Not much in that, is there? There shall be no secrets from you; you shall be by. And plainly, Miss Riderhood, there's nothing to be got out of me, or made of me. I am not good for the Leaving Shop, I am not good for the Boarding-House, I am not good for any thing in your way to the extent of sixpenn'orth of halfpence. Put the idea aside, and we shall get on "I don't rightly know my plans yet," returned together." the man. "You ain't looking for a Leaving Shop?" "No," said the man. "No," assented Pleasant, "you've got too much of an outfit on you for that. But if you should want either, this is both." "Ay, ay!" said the man, glancing round the place. "I know. I've been here before." "Did you Leave any thing when you were here before?" asked Pleasant, with a view to principal and interest. "No." The man shook his head. "I am pretty sure you never boarded here?" "No." The man again shook his head. "What did you do here when you were here before?" asked Pleasant. "For I don't remember you." "It's not at all likely you should. I only stood at the door, one night-on the lower step there while a ship-mate of mine looked in to speak to your father. I remember the place well." Looking very curiously round it. "Might that have been long ago?" "Ay, a goodish bit ago. When I came off my last voyage." "Then you have not been to sea lately ?" "No. Been in the sick bay since then, and been employed ashore." "But you're a sea-faring man?" argued Pleasant, as if that were a sufficient reason for his being good for something in her way. "Yes and no. I have been, and I may be again. But I am not for you. Won't you take my word for it ?" The conversation had arrived at a crisis to justify Miss Pleasant's hair in tumbling down. It tumbled down accordingly, and she twisted it up, looking from under her bent forehead at the man. In taking stock of his familiarly worn rough-weather nautical clothes, piece by piece, she took stock of a formidable knife in a sheath at his waist ready to his hand, and of a whistle hanging round his neck, and of a short jagged knotted club with a loaded head that peeped out of a pocket of his loose outer jacket or frock. He sat quietly looking at her; but, with these appendages partially revealing themselves, and with a quantity of bristling oakum-colored head and whisker, he had a formidable appearance. "Won't you take my word for it?" he asked again. Pleasant answered with a short dumb nod. He rejoined with another short dumb nod. Then he got up and stood with his arms folded, in front of the fire, looking down into it occasionally, as she stood with her arms folded, leaning "Then, to be sure, that accounts for your against the side of the chimney-piece. hands." The man with a keen look, a quick smile, and a change of manner, caught her up. "You're a good observer. Yes. That accounts for my hands." Pleasant was somewhat disquieted by his look, and returned it suspiciously. Not only was his change of manner, though very sudden, quite collected, but his former manner, which he resumed, had a certain suppressed confidence and sense of power in it that were half threatening. "Will your father be long?" he inquired. "I don't know. I can't say." "As you supposed he was at home, it would seem that he has just gone out? How's that?" "I supposed he had come home," Pleasant explained. "Oh! You supposed he had come home? Then he has been some time out? How's that?" "I don't want to deceive you. Father's on the river in his boat." "At the old work?" asked the man. "To while away the time till your father comes," he said-"pray is there much robbing and murdering of seamen about the water-side now?" "No," said Pleasant. 66 'Complaints of that sort are sometimes made, about Ratcliffe and Wapping, and up that way. But who knows how many are true?" "To be sure. And it don't seem necessary." "That's what I say," observed Pleasant. "Where's the reason for it? Bless the sailors, it ain't as if they ever could keep what they have without it." "You're right. Their money may be soon got out of them, without violence," said the man. "Of course it may," said Pleasant; "and then they ship again, and get more. And the best thing for 'em, too, to ship again as soon as ever they can be brought to it. They're never so well off as when they're afloat." "I'll tell you why I ask," pursued the visitor, |
