Charles Dickens - Charles Dickens' Most Influential Works (Illustrated)

So much of what was fantastically true to his own knowledge of this utterly careless Eugene, mingled with the answer, that Mortimer could not receive it as a mere evasion. Besides, it was given with an engaging air of openness, and of special exemption of the one friend he valued, from his reckless indifference.

‘Come, dear boy!’ said Eugene. ‘Let us try the effect of smoking. If it enlightens me at all on this question, I will impart unreservedly.’

They returned to the room they had come from, and, finding it heated, opened a window. Having lighted their cigars, they leaned out of this window, smoking, and looking down at the moonlight, as it shone into the court below.

‘No enlightenment,’ resumed Eugene, after certain minutes of silence. ‘I feel sincerely apologetic, my dear Mortimer, but nothing comes.’

‘If nothing comes,’ returned Mortimer, ‘nothing can come from it. So I shall hope that this may hold good throughout, and that there may be nothing on foot. Nothing injurious to you, Eugene, or—’

Eugene stayed him for a moment with his hand on his arm, while he took a piece of earth from an old flowerpot on the window-sill and dexterously shot it at a little point of light opposite; having done which to his satisfaction, he said, ‘Or?’

‘Or injurious to any one else.’

‘How,’ said Eugene, taking another little piece of earth, and shooting it with great precision at the former mark, ‘how injurious to any one else?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And,’ said Eugene, taking, as he said the word, another shot, ‘to whom else?’

‘I don’t know.’

Checking himself with another piece of earth in his hand, Eugene looked at his friend inquiringly and a little suspiciously. There was no concealed or half-expressed meaning in his face.

‘Two belated wanderers in the mazes of the law,’ said Eugene, attracted by the sound of footsteps, and glancing down as he spoke, ‘stray into the court. They examine the door-posts of number one, seeking the name they want. Not finding it at number one, they come to number two. On the hat of wanderer number two, the shorter one, I drop this pellet. Hitting him on the hat, I smoke serenely, and become absorbed in contemplation of the sky.’

Both the wanderers looked up towards the window; but, after interchanging a mutter or two, soon applied themselves to the door-posts below. There they seemed to discover what they wanted, for they disappeared from view by entering at the doorway. ‘When they emerge,’ said Eugene, ‘you shall see me bring them both down’; and so prepared two pellets for the purpose.

He had not reckoned on their seeking his name, or Lightwood’s. But either the one or the other would seem to be in question, for now there came a knock at the door. ‘I am on duty to-night,’ said Mortimer, ‘stay you where you are, Eugene.’ Requiring no persuasion, he stayed there, smoking quietly, and not at all curious to know who knocked, until Mortimer spoke to him from within the room, and touched him. Then, drawing in his head, he found the visitors to be young Charley Hexam and the schoolmaster; both standing facing him, and both recognized at a glance.

‘You recollect this young fellow, Eugene?’ said Mortimer.

‘Let me look at him,’ returned Wrayburn, coolly. ‘Oh, yes, yes. I recollect him!’

He had not been about to repeat that former action of taking him by the chin, but the boy had suspected him of it, and had thrown up his arm with an angry start. Laughingly, Wrayburn looked to Lightwood for an explanation of this odd visit.

‘He says he has something to say.’

‘Surely it must be to you, Mortimer.’

‘So I thought, but he says no. He says it is to you.’

‘Yes, I do say so,’ interposed the boy. ‘And I mean to say what I want to say, too, Mr Eugene Wrayburn!’

Passing him with his eyes as if there were nothing where he stood, Eugene looked on to Bradley Headstone. With consummate indolence, he turned to Mortimer, inquiring: ‘And who may this other person be?’

‘I am Charles Hexam’s friend,’ said Bradley; ‘I am Charles Hexam’s schoolmaster.’

‘My good sir, you should teach your pupils better manners,’ returned Eugene.

Composedly smoking, he leaned an elbow on the chimneypiece, at the side of the fire, and looked at the schoolmaster. It was a cruel look, in its cold disdain of him, as a creature of no worth. The schoolmaster looked at him, and that, too, was a cruel look, though of the different kind, that it had a raging jealousy and fiery wrath in it.

Very remarkably, neither Eugene Wrayburn nor Bradley Headstone looked at all at the boy. Through the ensuing dialogue, those two, no matter who spoke, or whom was addressed, looked at each other. There was some secret, sure perception between them, which set them against one another in all ways.

‘In some high respects, Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ said Bradley, answering him with pale and quivering lips, ‘the natural feelings of my pupils are stronger than my teaching.’

‘In most respects, I dare say,’ replied Eugene, enjoying his cigar, ‘though whether high or low is of no importance. You have my name very correctly. Pray what is yours?’

‘It cannot concern you much to know, but—’

‘True,’ interposed Eugene, striking sharply and cutting him short at his mistake, ‘it does not concern me at all to know. I can say Schoolmaster, which is a most respectable title. You are right, Schoolmaster.’

It was not the dullest part of this goad in its galling of Bradley Headstone, that he had made it himself in a moment of incautious anger. He tried to set his lips so as to prevent their quivering, but they quivered fast.

‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn,’ said the boy, ‘I want a word with you. I have wanted it so much, that we have looked out your address in the book, and we have been to your office, and we have come from your office here.’

‘You have given yourself much trouble, Schoolmaster,’ observed Eugene, blowing the feathery ash from his cigar. ‘I hope it may prove remunerative.’

‘And I am glad to speak,’ pursued the boy, ‘in presence of Mr Lightwood, because it was through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw my sister.’

For a mere moment, Wrayburn turned his eyes aside from the schoolmaster to note the effect of the last word on Mortimer, who, standing on the opposite side of the fire, as soon as the word was spoken, turned his face towards the fire and looked down into it.

‘Similarly, it was through Mr Lightwood that you ever saw her again, for you were with him on the night when my father was found, and so I found you with her on the next day. Since then, you have seen my sister often. You have seen my sister oftener and oftener. And I want to know why?’

‘Was this worth while, Schoolmaster?’ murmured Eugene, with the air of a disinterested adviser. ‘So much trouble for nothing? You should know best, but I think not.’

‘I don’t know, Mr Wrayburn,’ answered Bradley, with his passion rising, ‘why you address me—’

‘Don’t you? said Eugene. ‘Then I won’t.’

He said it so tauntingly in his perfect placidity, that the respectable right-hand clutching the respectable hair-guard of the respectable watch could have wound it round his throat and strangled him with it. Not another word did Eugene deem it worth while to utter, but stood leaning his head upon his hand, smoking, and looking imperturbably at the chafing Bradley Headstone with his clutching right-hand, until Bradley was wellnigh mad.