Chapter 16

ON THE RIVER.

Notwithstanding the good-humored answer Thomas had made to Mattie, her words stuck to him and occasioned him a little discomfort. For if the bookseller's daughter, whose shop lay between the counting-house and the court, knew so well of his visits to Lucy, how could he hope that they would long remain concealed from other and far more dangerous eyes. This thought oppressed him so much, that instead of paying his usual visit to Mr. Molken, he went to Mrs. Boxall's at once. There, after greetings, he threw himself on the cushions of the old settle, and was gloomy. Lucy looked at him with some concern. Mrs. Boxall murmured something about his being in the doldrums—a phrase she had learned from her son John.

"Let's go out, Lucy," said Thomas; "it is so sultry."

Lucy was quite ready in herself to comply. For one reason, she had something upon her mind about which she wanted to talk to him. But she objected.

"My grandmother is not fit to be left alone, Thomas," she said, regretfully.

"Oh! ah!" said Thomas.

"Never mind me, child," interposed the old woman. "You'll make me wish myself in my grave, if you make me come between young people. You go, my dear, and never mind me. You needn't be gone a great while, you know."

"Oh, no, grannie; I'll be back in an hour, or less, if you like," said Lucy, hastening to put on her bonnet.

"No, no, my dear. An hour's in reason. Anything in reason, you know."

So Lucy made the old lady comfortable in her arm-chair, and went out with Thomas.

The roar of the city had relaxed. There would be no more blocks in Gracechurch Street that night. There was little smoke in the air, only enough to clothe the dome of St. Paul's in a faintly rosy garment, tinged from the west, where the sun was under a cloud. The huge mass looked ethereal, melted away as to a shell of thicker air against a background of slate-color, where a wind was gathering to flow at sunset through the streets and lanes, cooling them from the heat of the day, of the friction of iron and granite, of human effort, and the thousand fires that prepared the food of the city-dining population. Crossing the chief thoroughfares, they went down the lanes leading to the river. Here they passed through a sultry region of aromatic fragrance, where the very hooks that hung from cranes in doorways high above the ground, seemed to retain something of the odor of the bales they had lifted from the wagons below during the hot sunshine that drew out their imprisoned essences. By yet closer ways they went toward the river, descending still, and at length, by a short wooden stair, and a long wooden way, they came on a floating pier. There the wind blew sweet and cooling and very grateful, for the summer was early and fervid. Down into the east the river swept away, somber and sullen, to gurgle blindly through the jungle of masts that lay below the bridge and crossed the horizontal lines of the sky with their delicate spars, and yet more delicate cordage. Little did Thomas think that one of those masts rose from a vessel laden, one might say, with his near, though not his final fate—a fate that truth might have averted, but which the very absence of truth made needful and salutary. A boat was just starting up the river toward the light.

"Let's have a blow," said Thomas.

"That will be delightful," answered Lucy, and they went on board. First one wheel, then the other, then both together, dashed the Stygian waters of the Thames into a white fury, and they were moving up the stream. They went forward into the bows of the boat to get clear of the smoke, and sat down. There were so few on board that they could talk without being overheard. But they sat silent for some time; the stillness of the sky seemed to have sunk into their hearts. For that was as pure over their heads as if there had been no filthy Thames beneath their feet; and its light and color illuminated the surface of the river, which was not yet so vile that it could not reflect the glory that fell upon its face. The tide was against them, and with all the struggles of the little steamer they made but slow way up the dark, hurrying water. Lucy sat gazing at the banks of the river, where the mighty city on either hand has declined into sordid meanness, skeleton exposure; where the struggles of manufacture and commerce are content to abjure their own decencies for the sake of the greater gain. Save where the long line of Somerset House, and the garden of the Temple asserted the ancient dignity of order and cleanliness, the whole looked like a mean, tattered, draggled fringe upon a rich garment. Then she turned her gaze down on the river, which, as if ashamed of the condition into which it had fallen from its first estate, crawled fiercely away to hide itself in the sea.

"How different," she said, looking up at Thomas, who had been sitting gazing at her all the time that she contemplated the shore and the river—"How different things would be if they were only clean!"

"Yes, indeed," returned Thomas. "Think what it would be to see the fishes—the salmon, say—shooting about in clear water under us, like so many silver fishes in a crystal globe! If people were as fond of the cleanliness you want as they are of money, things would look very different indeed!"

I have said that Thomas loved Lucy more and more. Partly a cause, partly a consequence of this, he had begun to find out that there was a poetic element in her, and he flattered himself that he had developed it. No doubt he had had a share in its development, but it was of a deeper, truer, simpler kind than his own, and would never have been what it was, in rapport always with the facts of nature and life, if it had been only a feminine response to his. Men like women to reflect them, no doubt; but the woman who can only reflect a man, and is nothing in herself, will never be of much service to him. The woman who cannot stand alone is not likely to make either a good wife or mother. She may be a pleasant companion so far as the intercourse of love-making goes, no doubt—scarcely more; save, indeed, the trials that ensue upon marriage bring out the power latent in her. But the remark with which Thomas responded to Lucy was quite beyond his usual strain. He had a far finer nature underneath than his education had allowed to manifest itself, and the circumstances in which he was at the moment were especially favorable to his best. Casca, on his first appearance in Julius C�sar, talks blunt and snarling prose: in the very next scene, which is a fearfully magnificent thunder-storm, he speaks poetry. "He was quick mettle when he went to school," and the circumstances brought it out.

"I wish the world was clean, Thomas, all through," said Lucy.

Thomas did not reply. His heart smote him. Those few words went deeper than all Mr. Simon's sermons, public and private. For a long time he had not spoken a word about religion to Lucy. Nor had what he said ever taken any hold upon her intellect, although it had upon her conscience; for, not having been brought up to his vocabulary, and what might be called the technical phrases if not slang of his religion, it had been to her but a vague sound, which yet she received as a reminder of duty. Some healthy religious teaching would be of the greatest value to her now. But Mr. Potter provided no food beyond the established fare; and whatever may be said about the sufficiency of the church-service, and the uselessness of preaching, I for one believe that a dumb ass, if the Lord only opens his mouth, may rebuke much madness of prophets, and priests too. But where there is neither honesty nor earnestness, as in the case of Mr. Potter, the man is too much of an ass for even the Lord to open his mouth to any useful purpose. His heart has to be opened first, and that takes time and trouble.

Finding that Thomas remained silent, Lucy looked into his face, and saw that he was troubled. This brought to the point of speech the dissatisfaction with himself which had long been moving restlessly and painfully in his heart, and of which the quiet about him, the peace of the sky, and that sense of decline and coming repose, which invades even the heart of London with the sinking sun, had made him more conscious than he had yet been.

"Oh, Lucy," he said, "I wish you would help me to be good."

To no other could he have said so. Mr. Simon, for instance, aroused all that was most contrarious in him. But Lucy at this moment seemed so near to him that before her he could be humble without humiliation, and could even enjoy the confession of weakness implied in his appeal to her for aid.

She looked at him with a wise kind of wonder in her look. For a moment she was silent.

"I do not know how I can help you, Thomas, for you know better about all such things than I do. But there is one thing I want very much to speak to you about, because it makes me unhappy—rather—not very, you know."

She laid his hand upon his. He looked at her lovingly. She was encouraged, and continued:

"I don't like this way of going on, Thomas. I never quite liked it, but I've been thinking more about it, lately. I thought you must know best, but I am not satisfied with myself at all about it."

"What do you mean, Lucy?" asked Thomas, his heart beginning already to harden at the approach of definite blame. It was all very well for him to speak as if he might be improved—it was another thing for Lucy to do so.

"Do not be vexed with me, Thomas. You must know what I mean. I wish your mother knew all about it," she added, hastily, after a pause. And then her face flushed red as a sunset.

"She'll know all about it in good time," returned Thomas, testily; adding, in an undertone, as if he did not mean to press the remark, although he wanted her to hear it: "You do not know my mother, or you would not be so anxious for her to know all about it."

"Couldn't you get your father to tell her, then, and make it easier for you?"

"My father," answered Thomas, coolly, "would turn me out of the house if I didn't give you up; and as I don't mean to do that, and don't want to be turned out of the house just at present, when I have nowhere else to go, I don't want to tell him."

"I can't go on in this way, then. Besides, they are sure to hear of it, somehow."

"Oh, no, they won't. Who's to tell them?"

"Don't suppose I've been listening, Tom, because I heard your last words," said a voice behind them—that of Mr. Wither. "I haven't been watching you, but I have been watching for an opportunity of telling you that Stopper is keeping far too sharp a lookout on you to mean you any good by it. I beg your pardon, Miss Boxall," he resumed, taking off his hat. "I fear I have been rude; but, as I say, I was anxious to tell Mr. Worboise to be cautious. I don't see why a fellow should get into a scrape for want of a hint."

The manner with which Wither spoke to her made poor Lucy feel that there was not merely something unfitting, but something even disreputable, in the way her relation to Thomas was kept up. She grew as pale as death, rose, and turned to the side of the vessel, and drew her veil nervously over her face.

"It's no business of mine, of course, Tom. But what I tell you is true. Though if you take my advice," said Wither, and here he dropped his voice to a whisper, "this connection is quite as fit a one to cut as the last; and the sooner you do it the better, for it'll make a devil of a row with old Boxall. You ought to think of the girl, you know. Your own governor's your own lookout. There's none of it any business of mine, you know."

He turned with a nod and went aft; for the steamer was just drawing in to the Hungerford pier, where he had to go ashore.

For a few minutes not a word passed between Thomas and Lucy. A sudden cloud had fallen upon them. They must not go on this way, but what other way were they to take? They stood side by side, looking into the water, Thomas humiliated and Lucy disgraced. There was no comfort to be got out of that rushing blackness, and the mud banks grew wider and wider.

Lucy was the first to speak, for she was far more capable than Tom.

"We must go ashore at the next pier," she said.

"Very well," said Tom, as if he had been stunned into sullenness. "If you want to get rid of me because of what that fellow said—"

"Oh, Tom!" said Lucy, and burst out crying.

"Well, what do you want, Lucy?"

"We must part, Tom," sobbed Lucy.

"Nonsense!" said Tom, nearly crying himself, for a great, painful lump had risen in his throat.

"We can love each other all the same," said Lucy, still sobbing; "only you must not come to see me any more—that is—I do not mean—never any more at all—but till you have told them—all about it. I don't mean now, but some time, you know. When will you be of age, Tom?"

"Oh, that makes no difference. As long's I'm dependent, it's all the same. I wish I was my own master. I should soon let them see I didn't care what they said."

Silence again followed, during which Lucy tried in vain to stop her tears by wiping them away. A wretched feeling awoke in her that Thomas was not manly, could not resolve—or rather, could not help her when she would do the right thing. She would have borne anything rather than that. It put her heart in a vise.

The boat stopped at the Westminster pier. They went on shore. The sun was down, and the fresh breeze that blew, while it pleasantly cooled the hot faces that moved westward from their day's work, made Lucy almost shiver with cold. For loss had laid hold of her heart. They walked up Parliament Street. Thomas felt that he must say something, but what he should say he could not think. He always thought what he should say—never what he should do.

"Lucy, dear," he said at last, "we won't make up our minds to-night. Wait till I see you next. I shall have time to think about it before then. I will be a match for that sneaking rascal, Stopper, yet."

Lucy felt inclined to say that to sneak was no way to give sneaking its own. But she said neither that nor anything else.

They got into an omnibus at Charing Cross, and returned—deafened, stupefied, and despondent—into the city. They parted at Lucy's door, and Thomas went home, already much later than usual.

What should he do? He resolved upon nothing, and did the worst thing he could have done. He lied.

"You are very late to-night, Thomas," said his mother. "Have you been all this time with Mr. Moloch?"

"Yes, mother," answered Thomas.

And when he was in bed he comforted himself by saying there was no such person as Mr. Moloch.

When Lucy went to bed, she prayed to God in sobs and cries of pain. Hitherto she had believed in Thomas without a question crossing the disk of her faith; but now she had begun to doubt, and the very fact that she could doubt was enough to make her miserable, even if there had been no ground for the doubt. My readers must remember that no one had attempted to let her into the secrets of his character as I have done with them. His beautiful face, pleasant manners, self-confidence, and, above all, her love, had blinded her to his faults. For, although I do not in the least believe that Love is blind, yet I must confess that, like kittens and some other animals, he has his blindness nine days or more, as it may be, from his birth. But once she had begun to suspect, she found ground for suspicion enough. She had never known grief before—not even when her mother died—for death has not anything despicable, and Thomas had.

What Charles Wither had told Thomas was true enough. Mr. Stopper was after him. Ever since that dinner-party at Mr. Boxall's he had hated him, and bided his time.

Mr. Stopper was a man of forty, in whose pine-apple whiskers and bristly hair the first white streaks of autumn had begun to show themselves. He had entered the service of Messrs. Blunt & Baker some five-and-twenty years before, and had gradually risen through all the intervening positions to his present post. Within the last year, moved by prudential considerations, he had begun to regard the daughters of his principal against the background of possible marriage; and as he had hitherto, from motives of the same class, resisted all inclinations in that direction, with so much the more force did his nature rush into the channel which the consent of his selfishness opened for the indulgence of his affections. For the moment he saw Mary Boxall with this object in view, he fell in love with her after the fashion of such a man, beginning instantly to build, not castles, but square houses in the air in the dining-rooms especially of which her form appeared in gorgeous and somewhat matronly garments amid ponderous mahogany, seated behind the obscuration of tropical plants at a table set out � la Russe. His indignation, when he entered the drawing-room after Mr. Boxall's dinner, and saw Thomas in the act of committing the indiscretion recorded in that part of my story, passed into silent hatred when he found that while his attentions were slighted, those of Thomas, in his eyes a mere upstart—for he judged everything in relation to the horizon of Messrs. Blunt & Baker, and every man in relation to himself, seated upon the loftiest summit within the circle of that horizon—not even offered, but only dropped at her feet in passing, were yet accepted.

Among men Mr. Stopper was of the bull-dog breed, sagacious, keen-scented, vulgar, and inexorable; capable of much within the range of things illuminated by his own interests, capable of nothing beyond it. And now one of his main objects was to catch some scent—for the bull-dog has an excellent nose—of Thomas's faults or failings, and follow such up the wind of his prosperity, till he should have a chance of pulling him down at last. His first inclination toward this revenge was strengthened and elevated into an imagined execution of justice when Mary fell ill, and it oozed out that her illness had not a little to do with some behavior of Thomas's. Hence it came that, both consciously and unconsciously, Mr. Stopper was watching the unfortunate youth, though so cautious was Thomas that he had not yet discovered anything of which he could make a definite use. Nor did he want to interrupt Thomas's projects before he found that they put him in his power.

So here was a weak and conceited youth of fine faculties and fine impulses, between the malign aspects of two opposite stars—watched, that is, and speculated upon by two able and unprincipled men; the one, Mr. Molken, searching him and ingratiating himself with him, "to the end to know how to worke him, or winde him, or governe him," which, Lord Bacon goes on to say, "proceedeth from a heart that is double and cloven, and not entyre and ingenuous;" the other, Mr. Stopper, watching his conduct, not for the sake of procuring advantage to himself, but injury to Thomas. The one sought to lead him astray, that he might rob him in the dark; the other sought a chance of knocking him down, that he might leave him lying in the ditch. And they soon began to play into each other's hands.