Our Mutual Friend
aside with an impatient hand, ‘since they began. And I never will leave
him now, till I have seen him with her.’
‘And when you have seen him with her?’ said Riderhood.
‘—I’ll come back to you.’
Riderhood stiffened the knee on which he had been resting, got up, and
looked gloomily at his new friend. After a few moments they walked side
by side in the direction the boat had taken, as if by tacit consent;
Bradley pressing forward, and Riderhood holding back; Bradley getting
out his neat prim purse into his hand (a present made him by penny
subscription among his pupils); and Riderhood, unfolding his arms to
smear his coat-cuff across his mouth with a thoughtful air.
‘I have a pound for you,’ said Bradley.
‘You’ve two,’ said Riderhood.
Bradley held a sovereign between his fingers. Slouching at his side with
his eyes upon the towing-path, Riderhood held his left hand open, with
a certain slight drawing action towards himself. Bradley dipped in his
purse for another sovereign, and two chinked in Riderhood’s hand, the
drawing action of which, promptly strengthening, drew them home to his
pocket.
‘Now, I must follow him,’ said Bradley Headstone. ‘He takes this
river-road—the fool!—to confuse observation, or divert attention, if
not solely to baffle me. But he must have the power of making himself
invisible before he can shake Me off.’
Riderhood stopped. ‘If you don’t get disapinted agin, T’otherest, maybe
you’ll put up at the Lock-house when you come back?’
‘I will.’
Riderhood nodded, and the figure of the bargeman went its way along the
soft turf by the side of the towing-path, keeping near the hedge and
moving quickly. They had turned a point from which a long stretch of
river was visible. A stranger to the scene might have been certain that
here and there along the line of hedge a figure stood, watching the
bargeman, and waiting for him to come up. So he himself had often
believed at first, until his eyes became used to the posts, bearing the
dagger that slew Wat Tyler, in the City of London shield.
Within Mr Riderhood’s knowledge all daggers were as one. Even to Bradley
Headstone, who could have told to the letter without book all about Wat
Tyler, Lord Mayor Walworth, and the King, that it is dutiful for youth
to know, there was but one subject living in the world for every sharp
destructive instrument that summer evening. So, Riderhood looking after
him as he went, and he with his furtive hand laid upon the dagger as he
passed it, and his eyes upon the boat, were much upon a par.
The boat went on, under the arching trees, and over their tranquil
shadows in the water. The bargeman skulking on the opposite bank of the
stream, went on after it. Sparkles of light showed Riderhood when
and where the rower dipped his blades, until, even as he stood idly
watching, the sun went down and the landscape was dyed red. And then the
red had the appearance of fading out of it and mounting up to Heaven, as
we say that blood, guiltily shed, does.
Turning back towards his Lock (he had not gone out of view of it), the
Rogue pondered as deeply as it was within the contracted power of such
a fellow to do. ‘Why did he copy my clothes? He could have looked like
what he wanted to look like, without that.’ This was the subject-matter
in his thoughts; in which, too, there came lumbering up, by times, like
any half floating and half sinking rubbish in the river, the question,
Was it done by accident? The setting of a trap for finding out whether
it was accidentally done, soon superseded, as a practical piece of
cunning, the abstruser inquiry why otherwise it was done. And he devised
a means.
Rogue Riderhood went into his Lock-house, and brought forth, into the
now sober grey light, his chest of clothes. Sitting on the grass beside
it, he turned out, one by one, the articles it contained, until he came
to a conspicuous bright red neckerchief stained black here and there by
wear. It arrested his attention, and he sat pausing over it, until he
took off the rusty colourless wisp that he wore round his throat, and
substituted the red neckerchief, leaving the long ends flowing. ‘Now,’
said the Rogue, ‘if arter he sees me in this neckhankecher, I see him in
a sim’lar neckhankecher, it won’t be accident!’ Elated by his device, he
carried his chest in again and went to supper.
‘Lock ho! Lock!’ It was a light night, and a barge coming down summoned
him out of a long doze. In due course he had let the barge through
and was alone again, looking to the closing of his gates, when Bradley
Headstone appeared before him, standing on the brink of the Lock.
‘Halloa!’ said Riderhood. ‘Back a’ ready, T’otherest?’
‘He has put up for the night, at an Angler’s Inn,’ was the fatigued and
hoarse reply. ‘He goes on, up the river, at six in the morning. I have
come back for a couple of hours’ rest.’
‘You want ’em,’ said Riderhood, making towards the schoolmaster by his
plank bridge.
‘I don’t want them,’ returned Bradley, irritably, ‘because I would
rather not have them, but would much prefer to follow him all night.
However, if he won’t lead, I can’t follow. I have been waiting about,
until I could discover, for a certainty, at what time he starts; if I
couldn’t have made sure of it, I should have stayed there.—This would
be a bad pit for a man to be flung into with his hands tied. These
slippery smooth walls would give him no chance. And I suppose those
gates would suck him down?’
‘Suck him down, or swaller him up, he wouldn’t get out,’ said Riderhood.
‘Not even, if his hands warn’t tied, he wouldn’t. Shut him in at both
ends, and I’d give him a pint o’ old ale ever to come up to me standing
here.’
Bradley looked down with a ghastly relish. ‘You run about the brink, and
run across it, in this uncertain light, on a few inches width of rotten
wood,’ said he. ‘I wonder you have no thought of being drowned.’
‘I can’t be!’ said Riderhood.
‘You can’t be drowned?’
‘No!’ said Riderhood, shaking his head with an air of thorough
conviction, ‘it’s well known. I’ve been brought out o’ drowning, and I
can’t be drowned. I wouldn’t have that there busted B’lowbridger aware
on it, or her people might make it tell agin’ the damages I mean to get.
But it’s well known to water-side characters like myself, that him as
has been brought out o drowning, can never be drowned.’
Bradley smiled sourly at the ignorance he would have corrected in one of
his pupils, and continued to look down into the water, as if the place
had a gloomy fascination for him.
‘You seem to like it,’ said Riderhood.
He took no notice, but stood looking down, as if he had not heard the
words. There was a very dark expression on his face; an expression
that the Rogue found it hard to understand. It was fierce, and full
of purpose; but the purpose might have been as much against himself as
against another. If he had stepped back for a spring, taken a leap, and
thrown himself in, it would have been no surprising sequel to the look.
Perhaps his troubled soul, set upon some violence, did hover for the
moment between that violence and another.
‘Didn’t you say,’ asked Riderhood, after watching him for a while with
a sidelong glance, ‘as you had come back for a couple o’ hours’ rest?’
But, even then he had to jog him with his elbow before he answered.
‘Eh? Yes.’
‘Hadn’t you better come in and take your couple o’ hours’ rest?’
‘Thank you. Yes.’
With the look of one just awakened, he followed Riderhood into the
Lock-house, where the latter produced from a cupboard some cold salt
beef and half a loaf, some gin in a bottle, and some water in a jug. The
last he brought in, cool and dripping, from the river.
‘There, T’otherest,’ said Riderhood, stooping over him to put it on
the table. ‘You’d better take a bite and a sup, afore you takes
your snooze.’ The draggling ends of the red neckerchief caught the
schoolmaster’s eyes. Riderhood saw him look at it.
‘Oh!’ thought that worthy. ‘You’re a-taking notice, are you? Come! You
shall have a good squint at it then.’ With which reflection he sat down
on the other side of the table, threw open his vest, and made a pretence
of re-tying the neckerchief with much deliberation.
Bradley ate and drank. As he sat at his platter and mug, Riderhood saw
him, again and yet again, steal a look at the neckerchief, as if he were
correcting his slow observation and prompting his sluggish memory.
‘When you’re ready for your snooze,’ said that honest creature, ‘chuck
yourself on my bed in the corner, T’otherest. It’ll be broad day afore
three. I’ll call you early.’
‘I shall require no calling,’ answered Bradley. And soon afterwards,
divesting himself only of his shoes and coat, laid himself down.
Riderhood, leaning back in his wooden arm-chair with his arms folded
on his breast, looked at him lying with his right hand clenched in his
sleep and his teeth set, until a film came over his own sight, and he
slept too. He awoke to find that it was daylight, and that his
visitor was already astir, and going out to the river-side to cool his
head:—‘Though I’m blest,’ muttered Riderhood at the Lock-house door,
looking after him, ‘if I think there’s water enough in all the Thames
to do THAT for you!’ Within five minutes he had taken his departure,
and was passing on into the calm distance as he had passed yesterday.
Riderhood knew when a fish leaped, by his starting and glancing round.
‘Lock ho! Lock!’ at intervals all day, and ‘Lock ho! Lock!’ thrice in
the ensuing night, but no return of Bradley. The second day was sultry
and oppressive. In the afternoon, a thunderstorm came up, and had but
newly broken into a furious sweep of rain when he rushed in at the door,
like the storm itself.
‘You’ve seen him with her!’ exclaimed Riderhood, starting up.
‘I have.’
‘Where?’
‘At his journey’s end. His boat’s hauled up for three days. I heard
him give the order. Then, I saw him wait for her and meet her. I saw
them’—he stopped as though he were suffocating, and began again—‘I saw
them walking side by side, last night.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What are you going to do?’
He dropped into a chair, and laughed. Immediately afterwards, a great
spirt of blood burst from his nose.
‘How does that happen?’ asked Riderhood.
‘I don’t know. I can’t keep it back. It has happened twice—three
times—four times—I don’t know how many times—since last night. I
taste it, smell it, see it, it chokes me, and then it breaks out like
this.’
He went into the pelting rain again with his head bare, and, bending low
over the river, and scooping up the water with his two hands, washed the
blood away. All beyond his figure, as Riderhood looked from the door,
was a vast dark curtain in solemn movement towards one quarter of the
heavens. He raised his head and came back, wet from head to foot, but
with the lower parts of his sleeves, where he had dipped into the river,
streaming water.
‘Your face is like a ghost’s,’ said Riderhood.
‘Did you ever see a ghost?’ was the sullen retort.
‘I mean to say, you’re quite wore out.’
‘That may well be. I have had no rest since I left here. I don’t
remember that I have so much as sat down since I left here.’
‘Lie down now, then,’ said Riderhood.
‘I will, if you’ll give me something to quench my thirst first.’
The bottle and jug were again produced, and he mixed a weak draught, and
another, and drank both in quick succession. ‘You asked me something,’
he said then.
‘No, I didn’t,’ replied Riderhood.
‘I tell you,’ retorted Bradley, turning upon him in a wild and desperate
manner, ‘you asked me something, before I went out to wash my face in
the river.
‘Oh! Then?’ said Riderhood, backing a little. ‘I asked you wot you wos
a-going to do.’