And John Rokesmith, what did he?
He went down to his room, and buried John Harmon many
additional fathoms deep. He took his hat, and
walked out, and, as he went to Holloway or anywhere
else—not at all minding where—heaped
mounds upon mounds of earth over John Harmon’s
grave. His walking did not bring him home until
the dawn of day. And so busy had he been all night,
piling and piling weights upon weights of earth above
John Harmon’s grave, that by that time John
Harmon lay buried under a whole Alpine range; and still
the Sexton Rokesmith accumulated mountains over him,
lightening his labour with the dirge, ‘Cover
him, crush him, keep him down!’
STRONG OF PURPOSE
The sexton-task of piling earth above John Harmon
all night long, was not conducive to sound sleep;
but Rokesmith had some broken morning rest, and rose
strengthened in his purpose. It was all over now.
No ghost should trouble Mr and Mrs Boffin’s
peace; invisible and voiceless, the ghost should look
on for a little while longer at the state of existence
out of which it had departed, and then should for ever
cease to haunt the scenes in which it had no place.
He went over it all again. He had lapsed into
the condition in which he found himself, as many a
man lapses into many a condition, without perceiving
the accumulative power of its separate circumstances.
When in the distrust engendered by his wretched childhood
and the action for evil—never yet for good
within his knowledge then—of his father
and his father’s wealth on all within their
influence, he conceived the idea of his first deception,
it was meant to be harmless, it was to last but a
few hours or days, it was to involve in it only the
girl so capriciously forced upon him and upon whom
he was so capriciously forced, and it was honestly
meant well towards her. For, if he had found
her unhappy in the prospect of that marriage (through
her heart inclining to another man or for any other
cause), he would seriously have said: ’This
is another of the old perverted uses of the misery-making
money. I will let it go to my and my sister’s
only protectors and friends.’ When the
snare into which he fell so outstripped his first
intention as that he found himself placarded by the
police authorities upon the London walls for dead,
he confusedly accepted the aid that fell upon him,
without considering how firmly it must seem to fix
the Boffins in their accession to the fortune.
When he saw them, and knew them, and even from his
vantage-ground of inspection could find no flaw in
them, he asked himself, ’And shall I come to
life to dispossess such people as these?’ There
was no good to set against the putting of them to
that hard proof. He had heard from Bella’s
own lips when he stood tapping at the door on that
night of his taking the lodgings, that the marriage
would have been on her part thoroughly mercenary.
He had since tried her, in his own unknown person and
supposed station, and she not only rejected his advances
but resented them. Was it for him to have the
shame of buying her, or the meanness of punishing
her? Yet, by coming to life and accepting the
condition of the inheritance, he must do the former;
and by coming to life and rejecting it, he must do
the latter.
