Our Mutual Friend
which would bring it to about that time.’
‘Do you think they suppose you to have inveigled her away?’
‘My dear Mortimer, you know the absorbing nature of my professional
occupations; I really have not had leisure to think about it.’
‘Have you asked them what they want? Have you objected?’
‘Why should I ask them what they want, dear fellow, when I am
indifferent what they want? Why should I express objection, when I don’t
object?’
‘You are in your most reckless mood. But you called the situation just
now, a ludicrous one; and most men object to that, even those who are
utterly indifferent to everything else.’
‘You charm me, Mortimer, with your reading of my weaknesses. (By-the-by,
that very word, Reading, in its critical use, always charms me. An
actress’s Reading of a chambermaid, a dancer’s Reading of a hornpipe, a
singer’s Reading of a song, a marine painter’s Reading of the sea,
the kettle-drum’s Reading of an instrumental passage, are phrases
ever youthful and delightful.) I was mentioning your perception of my
weaknesses. I own to the weakness of objecting to occupy a ludicrous
position, and therefore I transfer the position to the scouts.’
‘I wish, Eugene, you would speak a little more soberly and plainly, if
it were only out of consideration for my feeling less at ease than you
do.’
‘Then soberly and plainly, Mortimer, I goad the schoolmaster to madness.
I make the schoolmaster so ridiculous, and so aware of being made
ridiculous, that I see him chafe and fret at every pore when we cross
one another. The amiable occupation has been the solace of my life,
since I was baulked in the manner unnecessary to recall. I have derived
inexpressible comfort from it. I do it thus: I stroll out after dark,
stroll a little way, look in at a window and furtively look out for the
schoolmaster. Sooner or later, I perceive the schoolmaster on the watch;
sometimes accompanied by his hopeful pupil; oftener, pupil-less. Having
made sure of his watching me, I tempt him on, all over London. One
night I go east, another night north, in a few nights I go all round the
compass. Sometimes, I walk; sometimes, I proceed in cabs, draining the
pocket of the schoolmaster who then follows in cabs. I study and get
up abstruse No Thoroughfares in the course of the day. With Venetian
mystery I seek those No Thoroughfares at night, glide into them by means
of dark courts, tempt the schoolmaster to follow, turn suddenly, and
catch him before he can retreat. Then we face one another, and I pass
him as unaware of his existence, and he undergoes grinding torments.
Similarly, I walk at a great pace down a short street, rapidly turn the
corner, and, getting out of his view, as rapidly turn back. I catch him
coming on post, again pass him as unaware of his existence, and again
he undergoes grinding torments. Night after night his disappointment is
acute, but hope springs eternal in the scholastic breast, and he follows
me again to-morrow. Thus I enjoy the pleasures of the chase, and derive
great benefit from the healthful exercise. When I do not enjoy the
pleasures of the chase, for anything I know he watches at the Temple
Gate all night.’
‘This is an extraordinary story,’ observed Lightwood, who had heard it
out with serious attention. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘You are a little hipped, dear fellow,’ said Eugene; ‘you have been too
sedentary. Come and enjoy the pleasures of the chase.’
‘Do you mean that you believe he is watching now?’
‘I have not the slightest doubt he is.’
‘Have you seen him to-night?’
‘I forgot to look for him when I was last out,’ returned Eugene with the
calmest indifference; ‘but I dare say he was there. Come! Be a British
sportsman and enjoy the pleasures of the chase. It will do you good.’
Lightwood hesitated; but, yielding to his curiosity, rose.
‘Bravo!’ cried Eugene, rising too. ‘Or, if Yoicks would be in better
keeping, consider that I said Yoicks. Look to your feet, Mortimer, for
we shall try your boots. When you are ready, I am—need I say with a Hey
Ho Chivey, and likewise with a Hark Forward, Hark Forward, Tantivy?’
‘Will nothing make you serious?’ said Mortimer, laughing through his
gravity.
‘I am always serious, but just now I am a little excited by the glorious
fact that a southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a hunting evening.
Ready? So. We turn out the lamp and shut the door, and take the field.’
As the two friends passed out of the Temple into the public street,
Eugene demanded with a show of courteous patronage in which direction
Mortimer would you like the run to be? ‘There is a rather difficult
country about Bethnal Green,’ said Eugene, ‘and we have not taken in
that direction lately. What is your opinion of Bethnal Green?’ Mortimer
assented to Bethnal Green, and they turned eastward. ‘Now, when we come
to St Paul’s churchyard,’ pursued Eugene, ‘we’ll loiter artfully, and
I’ll show you the schoolmaster.’ But, they both saw him, before they got
there; alone, and stealing after them in the shadow of the houses, on
the opposite side of the way.
‘Get your wind,’ said Eugene, ‘for I am off directly. Does it occur
to you that the boys of Merry England will begin to deteriorate in an
educational light, if this lasts long? The schoolmaster can’t attend to
me and the boys too. Got your wind? I am off!’
At what a rate he went, to breathe the schoolmaster; and how he then
lounged and loitered, to put his patience to another kind of wear;
what preposterous ways he took, with no other object on earth than to
disappoint and punish him; and how he wore him out by every piece of
ingenuity that his eccentric humour could devise; all this Lightwood
noted, with a feeling of astonishment that so careless a man could be so
wary, and that so idle a man could take so much trouble. At last, far on
in the third hour of the pleasures of the chase, when he had brought the
poor dogging wretch round again into the City, he twisted Mortimer up
a few dark entries, twisted him into a little square court, twisted him
sharp round again, and they almost ran against Bradley Headstone.
‘And you see, as I was saying, Mortimer,’ remarked Eugene aloud with
the utmost coolness, as though there were no one within hearing
by themselves: ‘and you see, as I was saying—undergoing grinding
torments.’
It was not too strong a phrase for the occasion. Looking like the hunted
and not the hunter, baffled, worn, with the exhaustion of deferred
hope and consuming hate and anger in his face, white-lipped, wild-eyed,
draggle-haired, seamed with jealousy and anger, and torturing himself
with the conviction that he showed it all and they exulted in it, he
went by them in the dark, like a haggard head suspended in the air: so
completely did the force of his expression cancel his figure.
Mortimer Lightwood was not an extraordinarily impressible man, but this
face impressed him. He spoke of it more than once on the remainder of
the way home, and more than once when they got home.
They had been abed in their respective rooms two or three hours, when
Eugene was partly awakened by hearing a footstep going about, and was
fully awakened by seeing Lightwood standing at his bedside.
‘Nothing wrong, Mortimer?’
‘No.’
‘What fancy takes you, then, for walking about in the night?’
‘I am horribly wakeful.’
‘How comes that about, I wonder!’
‘Eugene, I cannot lose sight of that fellow’s face.’
‘Odd!’ said Eugene with a light laugh, ‘I can.’ And turned over, and
fell asleep again.
Chapter 11
IN THE DARK
There was no sleep for Bradley Headstone on that night when Eugene
Wrayburn turned so easily in his bed; there was no sleep for little
Miss Peecher. Bradley consumed the lonely hours, and consumed himself in
haunting the spot where his careless rival lay a dreaming; little Miss
Peecher wore them away in listening for the return home of the master
of her heart, and in sorrowfully presaging that much was amiss with him.
Yet more was amiss with him than Miss Peecher’s simply arranged little
work-box of thoughts, fitted with no gloomy and dark recesses, could
hold. For, the state of the man was murderous.
The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it. More; he irritated
it, with a kind of perverse pleasure akin to that which a sick man
sometimes has in irritating a wound upon his body. Tied up all day with
his disciplined show upon him, subdued to the performance of his routine
of educational tricks, encircled by a gabbling crowd, he broke loose at
night like an ill-tamed wild animal. Under his daily restraint, it was
his compensation, not his trouble, to give a glance towards his state at
night, and to the freedom of its being indulged. If great criminals told
the truth—which, being great criminals, they do not—they would very
rarely tell of their struggles against the crime. Their struggles are
towards it. They buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody shore,
not to recede from it. This man perfectly comprehended that he hated his
rival with his strongest and worst forces, and that if he tracked him to
Lizzie Hexam, his so doing would never serve himself with her, or serve
her. All his pains were taken, to the end that he might incense himself
with the sight of the detested figure in her company and favour, in her
place of concealment. And he knew as well what act of his would follow
if he did, as he knew that his mother had borne him. Granted, that he
may not have held it necessary to make express mention to himself of the
one familiar truth any more than of the other.
He knew equally well that he fed his wrath and hatred, and that he
accumulated provocation and self-justification, by being made the
nightly sport of the reckless and insolent Eugene. Knowing all
this,—and still always going on with infinite endurance, pains, and
perseverance, could his dark soul doubt whither he went?
Baffled, exasperated, and weary, he lingered opposite the Temple gate
when it closed on Wrayburn and Lightwood, debating with himself should
he go home for that time or should he watch longer. Possessed in his
jealousy by the fixed idea that Wrayburn was in the secret, if it were
not altogether of his contriving, Bradley was as confident of getting
the better of him at last by sullenly sticking to him, as he would have
been—and often had been—of mastering any piece of study in the way
of his vocation, by the like slow persistent process. A man of rapid
passions and sluggish intelligence, it had served him often and should
serve him again.
The suspicion crossed him as he rested in a doorway with his eyes upon
the Temple gate, that perhaps she was even concealed in that set of
Chambers. It would furnish another reason for Wrayburn’s purposeless
walks, and it might be. He thought of it and thought of it, until
he resolved to steal up the stairs, if the gatekeeper would let him
through, and listen. So, the haggard head suspended in the air flitted
across the road, like the spectre of one of the many heads erst hoisted
upon neighbouring Temple Bar, and stopped before the watchman.
The watchman looked at it, and asked: ‘Who for?’
‘Mr Wrayburn.’
‘It’s very late.’
‘He came back with Mr Lightwood, I know, near upon two hours ago. But if
he has gone to bed, I’ll put a paper in his letter-box. I am expected.’
The watchman said no more, but opened the gate, though rather
doubtfully. Seeing, however, that the visitor went straight and fast in
the right direction, he seemed satisfied.
The haggard head floated up the dark staircase, and softly descended
nearer to the floor outside the outer door of the chambers. The doors
of the rooms within, appeared to be standing open. There were rays of
candlelight from one of them, and there was the sound of a footstep