Our Mutual Friend
Perhaps it was so likened by the lonely Bargeman, standing on the brink
of the lock. For certain, Bradley Headstone looked that way, when a
chill air came up, and when it passed on murmuring, as if it
whispered something that made the phantom trees and water tremble—or
threaten—for fancy might have made it either.
He turned away, and tried the Lock-house door. It was fastened on the
inside.
‘Is he afraid of me?’ he muttered, knocking.
Rogue Riderhood was soon roused, and soon undrew the bolt and let him
in.
‘Why, T’otherest, I thought you had been and got lost! Two nights away!
I a’most believed as you’d giv’ me the slip, and I had as good as half a
mind for to advertise you in the newspapers to come for’ard.’
Bradley’s face turned so dark on this hint, that Riderhood deemed it
expedient to soften it into a compliment.
‘But not you, governor, not you,’ he went on, stolidly shaking his head.
‘For what did I say to myself arter having amused myself with that there
stretch of a comic idea, as a sort of a playful game? Why, I says to
myself; “He’s a man o’ honour.” That’s what I says to myself. “He’s a
man o’ double honour.”’
Very remarkably, Riderhood put no question to him. He had looked at him
on opening the door, and he now looked at him again (stealthily this
time), and the result of his looking was, that he asked him no question.
‘You’ll be for another forty on ’em, governor, as I judges, afore you
turns your mind to breakfast,’ said Riderhood, when his visitor sat
down, resting his chin on his hand, with his eyes on the ground. And
very remarkably again: Riderhood feigned to set the scanty furniture in
order, while he spoke, to have a show of reason for not looking at him.
‘Yes. I had better sleep, I think,’ said Bradley, without changing his
position.
‘I myself should recommend it, governor,’ assented Riderhood. ‘Might you
be anyways dry?’
‘Yes. I should like a drink,’ said Bradley; but without appearing to
attend much.
Mr Riderhood got out his bottle, and fetched his jug-full of water,
and administered a potation. Then, he shook the coverlet of his bed and
spread it smooth, and Bradley stretched himself upon it in the clothes
he wore. Mr Riderhood poetically remarking that he would pick the bones
of his night’s rest, in his wooden chair, sat in the window as before;
but, as before, watched the sleeper narrowly until he was very sound
asleep. Then, he rose and looked at him close, in the bright daylight,
on every side, with great minuteness. He went out to his Lock to sum up
what he had seen.
‘One of his sleeves is tore right away below the elber, and the
t’other’s had a good rip at the shoulder. He’s been hung on to, pretty
tight, for his shirt’s all tore out of the neck-gathers. He’s been in
the grass and he’s been in the water. And he’s spotted, and I know with
what, and with whose. Hooroar!’
Bradley slept long. Early in the afternoon a barge came down. Other
barges had passed through, both ways, before it; but the Lock-keeper
hailed only this particular barge, for news, as if he had made a time
calculation with some nicety. The men on board told him a piece of news,
and there was a lingering on their part to enlarge upon it.
Twelve hours had intervened since Bradley’s lying down, when he got up.
‘Not that I swaller it,’ said Riderhood, squinting at his Lock, when he
saw Bradley coming out of the house, ‘as you’ve been a sleeping all the
time, old boy!’
Bradley came to him, sitting on his wooden lever, and asked what o’clock
it was? Riderhood told him it was between two and three.
‘When are you relieved?’ asked Bradley.
‘Day arter to-morrow, governor.’
‘Not sooner?’
‘Not a inch sooner, governor.’
On both sides, importance seemed attached to this question of relief.
Riderhood quite petted his reply; saying a second time, and prolonging a
negative roll of his head, ‘n—n—not a inch sooner, governor.’
‘Did I tell you I was going on to-night?’ asked Bradley.
‘No, governor,’ returned Riderhood, in a cheerful, affable, and
conversational manner, ‘you did not tell me so. But most like you meant
to it and forgot to it. How, otherways, could a doubt have come into
your head about it, governor?’
‘As the sun goes down, I intend to go on,’ said Bradley.
‘So much the more necessairy is a Peck,’ returned Riderhood. ‘Come in
and have it, T’otherest.’
The formality of spreading a tablecloth not being observed in Mr
Riderhood’s establishment, the serving of the ‘peck’ was the affair of
a moment; it merely consisting in the handing down of a capacious baking
dish with three-fourths of an immense meat pie in it, and the production
of two pocket-knives, an earthenware mug, and a large brown bottle of
beer.
Both ate and drank, but Riderhood much the more abundantly. In lieu of
plates, that honest man cut two triangular pieces from the thick crust
of the pie, and laid them, inside uppermost, upon the table: the one
before himself, and the other before his guest. Upon these platters he
placed two goodly portions of the contents of the pie, thus imparting
the unusual interest to the entertainment that each partaker scooped out
the inside of his plate, and consumed it with his other fare, besides
having the sport of pursuing the clots of congealed gravy over the plain
of the table, and successfully taking them into his mouth at last from
the blade of his knife, in case of their not first sliding off it.
Bradley Headstone was so remarkably awkward at these exercises, that the
Rogue observed it.
‘Look out, T’otherest!’ he cried, ‘you’ll cut your hand!’
But, the caution came too late, for Bradley gashed it at the instant.
And, what was more unlucky, in asking Riderhood to tie it up, and in
standing close to him for the purpose, he shook his hand under the smart
of the wound, and shook blood over Riderhood’s dress.
When dinner was done, and when what remained of the platters and what
remained of the congealed gravy had been put back into what remained of
the pie, which served as an economical investment for all miscellaneous
savings, Riderhood filled the mug with beer and took a long drink. And
now he did look at Bradley, and with an evil eye.
‘T’otherest!’ he said, hoarsely, as he bent across the table to touch
his arm. ‘The news has gone down the river afore you.’
‘What news?’
‘Who do you think,’ said Riderhood, with a hitch of his head, as if he
disdainfully jerked the feint away, ‘picked up the body? Guess.’
‘I am not good at guessing anything.’
‘She did. Hooroar! You had him there agin. She did.’
The convulsive twitching of Bradley Headstone’s face, and the sudden
hot humour that broke out upon it, showed how grimly the intelligence
touched him. But he said not a single word, good or bad. He only smiled
in a lowering manner, and got up and stood leaning at the window,
looking through it. Riderhood followed him with his eyes. Riderhood cast
down his eyes on his own besprinkled clothes. Riderhood began to have an
air of being better at a guess than Bradley owned to being.
‘I have been so long in want of rest,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘that with
your leave I’ll lie down again.’
‘And welcome, T’otherest!’ was the hospitable answer of his host. He had
laid himself down without waiting for it, and he remained upon the bed
until the sun was low. When he arose and came out to resume his journey,
he found his host waiting for him on the grass by the towing-path
outside the door.
‘Whenever it may be necessary that you and I should have any further
communication together,’ said Bradley, ‘I will come back. Good-night!’
‘Well, since no better can be,’ said Riderhood, turning on his heel,
‘Good-night!’ But he turned again as the other set forth, and added
under his breath, looking after him with a leer: ‘You wouldn’t be let to
go like that, if my Relief warn’t as good as come. I’ll catch you up in
a mile.’
In a word, his real time of relief being that evening at sunset, his
mate came lounging in, within a quarter of an hour. Not staying to fill
up the utmost margin of his time, but borrowing an hour or so, to be
repaid again when he should relieve his reliever, Riderhood straightway
followed on the track of Bradley Headstone.
He was a better follower than Bradley. It had been the calling of his
life to slink and skulk and dog and waylay, and he knew his calling
well. He effected such a forced march on leaving the Lock House that he
was close up with him—that is to say, as close up with him as he deemed
it convenient to be—before another Lock was passed. His man looked back
pretty often as he went, but got no hint of him. HE knew how to take
advantage of the ground, and where to put the hedge between them, and
where the wall, and when to duck, and when to drop, and had a thousand
arts beyond the doomed Bradley’s slow conception.
But, all his arts were brought to a standstill, like himself when
Bradley, turning into a green lane or riding by the river-side—a
solitary spot run wild in nettles, briars, and brambles, and encumbered
with the scathed trunks of a whole hedgerow of felled trees, on the
outskirts of a little wood—began stepping on these trunks and dropping
down among them and stepping on them again, apparently as a schoolboy
might have done, but assuredly with no schoolboy purpose, or want of
purpose.
‘What are you up to?’ muttered Riderhood, down in the ditch, and holding
the hedge a little open with both hands. And soon his actions made a
most extraordinary reply. ‘By George and the Draggin!’ cried Riderhood,
‘if he ain’t a going to bathe!’
He had passed back, on and among the trunks of trees again, and has
passed on to the water-side and had begun undressing on the grass. For
a moment it had a suspicious look of suicide, arranged to counterfeit
accident. ‘But you wouldn’t have fetched a bundle under your arm, from
among that timber, if such was your game!’ said Riderhood. Nevertheless
it was a relief to him when the bather after a plunge and a few strokes
came out. ‘For I shouldn’t,’ he said in a feeling manner, ‘have liked to
lose you till I had made more money out of you neither.’
Prone in another ditch (he had changed his ditch as his man had changed
his position), and holding apart so small a patch of the hedge that the
sharpest eyes could not have detected him, Rogue Riderhood watched the
bather dressing. And now gradually came the wonder that he stood up,
completely clothed, another man, and not the Bargeman.
‘Aha!’ said Riderhood. ‘Much as you was dressed that night. I see.
You’re a taking me with you, now. You’re deep. But I knows a deeper.’
When the bather had finished dressing, he kneeled on the grass, doing
something with his hands, and again stood up with his bundle under his
arm. Looking all around him with great attention, he then went to the
river’s edge, and flung it in as far, and yet as lightly as he could. It
was not until he was so decidedly upon his way again as to be beyond a
bend of the river and for the time out of view, that Riderhood scrambled
from the ditch.
‘Now,’ was his debate with himself ‘shall I foller you on, or shall I
let you loose for this once, and go a fishing?’ The debate continuing,
he followed, as a precautionary measure in any case, and got him again
in sight. ‘If I was to let you loose this once,’ said Riderhood then,
still following, ‘I could make you come to me agin, or I could find
you out in one way or another. If I wasn’t to go a fishing, others
might.—I’ll let you loose this once, and go a fishing!’ With that, he
suddenly dropped the pursuit and turned.
The miserable man whom he had released for the time, but not for long,
went on towards London. Bradley was suspicious of every sound he heard,