He has taken the matter so much to heart that he has remonstrated (in my presence he remonstrated) with Mr Eugene Wrayburn, if that be the name. He did so, quite ineffectually. As any one not blinded to the real character of Mr—Mr Eugene Wrayburn—would readily suppose.’
He looked at Lizzie again, and held the look. And his face turned from burning red to white, and from white back to burning red, and so for the time to lasting deadly white.
‘Finally, I resolved to come here alone, and appeal to you. I resolved to come here alone, and entreat you to retract the course you have chosen, and instead of confiding in a mere stranger—a person of most insolent behaviour to your brother and others—to prefer your brother and your brother’s friend.’
Lizzie Hexam had changed colour when those changes came over him, and her face now expressed some anger, more dislike, and even a touch of fear. But she answered him very steadily.
‘I cannot doubt, Mr Headstone, that your visit is well meant. You have been so good a friend to Charley that I have no right to doubt it. I have nothing to tell Charley, but that I accepted the help to which he so much objects 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 as to me. I have no more to say to Charley on this subject.’
His lips trembled and stood apart, as he followed this repudiation of himself; and limitation of her words to her brother.
‘I should have told Charley, if he had come to me,’ she resumed, as though it were an after-thought, ‘that Jenny and I find our teacher very able and very patient, and that she takes great pains with us. So much so, that we have said to her we hope in a very little while to be able to go on by ourselves. Charley knows about teachers, and I should also have told him, for his satisfaction, that ours comes from an institution where teachers are regularly brought up.’
‘I should like to ask you,’ said Bradley Headstone, grinding his words slowly out, as though they came from a rusty mill; ‘I should like to ask you, if I may without offence, whether you would have objected—no; rather, I should like to say, if I may without offence, that I wish I had had the opportunity of coming here with your brother and devoting my poor abilities and experience to your service.’
‘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 favour 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 favourable 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, ‘Good-night!’
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’ dressmaker sat with her attitude unchanged, eyeing the door by which he had departed, until Lizzie pushed her bench aside and sat down near her. Then, eyeing 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:
‘Humph! If he—I mean, of course, my dear, the party who is coming to court me when the time comes—should be that sort of man, he may spare himself the trouble. he wouldn’t do to be trotted about and made useful. He’d take fire and blow up while he was about it.’
‘And so you would be rid of him,’ said Lizzie, humouring her.
‘Not so easily,’ returned Miss Wren. ‘He 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’ dressmaker, 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 colours 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 sombre 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.
‘Why about Mr Wrayburn?’ Lizzie asked.
‘For no better reason than because I’m in the humour. 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’ dressmaker 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 shan’t be a gentleman; I’ll very soon send him packing, if he is. However, he’s not Mr Wrayburn; I haven’t captivated him. I wonder whether anybody has, Lizzie!’
‘It is very likely.’
‘Is it very likely? I wonder who!’
‘Is it not very likely that some lady has been taken by