Our Mutual Friend
seen him in that state, and that they were possessed by a dread of his
relapsing.
One winter day when a slight fall of snow was feathering the sills and
frames of the schoolroom windows, he stood at his black board, crayon in
hand, about to commence with a class; when, reading in the countenances
of those boys that there was something wrong, and that they seemed in
alarm for him, he turned his eyes to the door towards which they faced.
He then saw a slouching man of forbidding appearance standing in the
midst of the school, with a bundle under his arm; and saw that it was
Riderhood.
He sat down on a stool which one of his boys put for him, and he had a
passing knowledge that he was in danger of falling, and that his face
was becoming distorted. But, the fit went off for that time, and he
wiped his mouth, and stood up again.
‘Beg your pardon, governor! By your leave!’ said Riderhood, knuckling
his forehead, with a chuckle and a leer. ‘What place may this be?’
‘This is a school.’
‘Where young folks learns wot’s right?’ said Riderhood, gravely nodding.
‘Beg your pardon, governor! By your leave! But who teaches this school?’
‘I do.’
‘You’re the master, are you, learned governor?’
‘Yes. I am the master.’
‘And a lovely thing it must be,’ said Riderhood, ‘fur to learn young
folks wot’s right, and fur to know wot THEY know wot you do it. Beg your
pardon, learned governor! By your leave!—That there black board; wot’s
it for?’
‘It is for drawing on, or writing on.’
‘Is it though!’ said Riderhood. ‘Who’d have thought it, from the
looks on it! WOULD you be so kind as write your name upon it, learned
governor?’ (In a wheedling tone.)
Bradley hesitated for a moment; but placed his usual signature,
enlarged, upon the board.
‘I ain’t a learned character myself,’ said Riderhood, surveying the
class, ‘but I do admire learning in others. I should dearly like to hear
these here young folks read that there name off, from the writing.’
The arms of the class went up. At the miserable master’s nod, the shrill
chorus arose: ‘Bradley Headstone!’
‘No?’ cried Riderhood. ‘You don’t mean it? Headstone! Why, that’s in a
churchyard. Hooroar for another turn!’
Another tossing of arms, another nod, and another shrill chorus:
‘Bradley Headstone!’
‘I’ve got it now!’ said Riderhood, after attentively listening, and
internally repeating: ‘Bradley. I see. Chris’en name, Bradley sim’lar to
Roger which is my own. Eh? Fam’ly name, Headstone, sim’lar to Riderhood
which is my own. Eh?’
Shrill chorus. ‘Yes!’
‘Might you be acquainted, learned governor,’ said Riderhood, ‘with a
person of about your own heighth and breadth, and wot ’ud pull down in
a scale about your own weight, answering to a name sounding summat like
Totherest?’
With a desperation in him that made him perfectly quiet, though his jaw
was heavily squared; with his eyes upon Riderhood; and with traces of
quickened breathing in his nostrils; the schoolmaster replied, in a
suppressed voice, after a pause: ‘I think I know the man you mean.’
‘I thought you knowed the man I mean, learned governor. I want the man.’
With a half glance around him at his pupils, Bradley returned:
‘Do you suppose he is here?’
‘Begging your pardon, learned governor, and by your leave,’ said
Riderhood, with a laugh, ‘how could I suppose he’s here, when there’s
nobody here but you, and me, and these young lambs wot you’re a learning
on? But he is most excellent company, that man, and I want him to come
and see me at my Lock, up the river.’
‘I’ll tell him so.’
‘D’ye think he’ll come?’ asked Riderhood.
‘I am sure he will.’
‘Having got your word for him,’ said Riderhood, ‘I shall count upon him.
P’raps you’d so fur obleege me, learned governor, as tell him that if he
don’t come precious soon, I’ll look him up.’
‘He shall know it.’
‘Thankee. As I says a while ago,’ pursued Riderhood, changing his hoarse
tone and leering round upon the class again, ‘though not a learned
character my own self, I do admire learning in others, to be sure! Being
here and having met with your kind attention, Master, might I, afore I
go, ask a question of these here young lambs of yourn?’
‘If it is in the way of school,’ said Bradley, always sustaining his
dark look at the other, and speaking in his suppressed voice, ‘you may.’
‘Oh! It’s in the way of school!’ cried Riderhood. ‘I’ll pound it,
Master, to be in the way of school. Wot’s the diwisions of water, my
lambs? Wot sorts of water is there on the land?’
Shrill chorus: ‘Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds.’
‘Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds,’ said Riderhood. ‘They’ve got all the
lot, Master! Blowed if I shouldn’t have left out lakes, never having
clapped eyes upon one, to my knowledge. Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds.
Wot is it, lambs, as they ketches in seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds?’
Shrill chorus (with some contempt for the ease of the question):
‘Fish!’
‘Good a-gin!’ said Riderhood. ‘But wot else is it, my lambs, as they
sometimes ketches in rivers?’
Chorus at a loss. One shrill voice: ‘Weed!’
‘Good agin!’ cried Riderhood. ‘But it ain’t weed neither. You’ll never
guess, my dears. Wot is it, besides fish, as they sometimes ketches in
rivers? Well! I’ll tell you. It’s suits o’ clothes.’
Bradley’s face changed.
‘Leastways, lambs,’ said Riderhood, observing him out of the corners
of his eyes, ‘that’s wot I my own self sometimes ketches in rivers. For
strike me blind, my lambs, if I didn’t ketch in a river the wery bundle
under my arm!’
The class looked at the master, as if appealing from the irregular
entrapment of this mode of examination. The master looked at the
examiner, as if he would have torn him to pieces.
‘I ask your pardon, learned governor,’ said Riderhood, smearing his
sleeve across his mouth as he laughed with a relish, ‘tain’t fair to the
lambs, I know. It wos a bit of fun of mine. But upon my soul I drawed
this here bundle out of a river! It’s a Bargeman’s suit of clothes. You
see, it had been sunk there by the man as wore it, and I got it up.’
‘How do you know it was sunk by the man who wore it?’ asked Bradley.
‘Cause I see him do it,’ said Riderhood.
They looked at each other. Bradley, slowly withdrawing his eyes, turned
his face to the black board and slowly wiped his name out.
‘A heap of thanks, Master,’ said Riderhood, ‘for bestowing so much of
your time, and of the lambses’ time, upon a man as hasn’t got no other
recommendation to you than being a honest man. Wishing to see at my Lock
up the river, the person as we’ve spoke of, and as you’ve answered for,
I takes my leave of the lambs and of their learned governor both.’
With those words, he slouched out of the school, leaving the master
to get through his weary work as he might, and leaving the whispering
pupils to observe the master’s face until he fell into the fit which had
been long impending.
The next day but one was Saturday, and a holiday. Bradley rose early,
and set out on foot for Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. He rose so early that
it was not yet light when he began his journey. Before extinguishing the
candle by which he had dressed himself, he made a little parcel of his
decent silver watch and its decent guard, and wrote inside the paper:
‘Kindly take care of these for me.’ He then addressed the parcel to Miss
Peecher, and left it on the most protected corner of the little seat in
her little porch.
It was a cold hard easterly morning when he latched the garden gate
and turned away. The light snowfall which had feathered his schoolroom
windows on the Thursday, still lingered in the air, and was falling
white, while the wind blew black. The tardy day did not appear until he
had been on foot two hours, and had traversed a greater part of London
from east to west. Such breakfast as he had, he took at the comfortless
public-house where he had parted from Riderhood on the occasion of
their night-walk. He took it, standing at the littered bar, and looked
loweringly at a man who stood where Riderhood had stood that early
morning.
He outwalked the short day, and was on the towing-path by the river,
somewhat footsore, when the night closed in. Still two or three miles
short of the Lock, he slackened his pace then, but went steadily on. The
ground was now covered with snow, though thinly, and there were floating
lumps of ice in the more exposed parts of the river, and broken sheets
of ice under the shelter of the banks. He took heed of nothing but the
ice, the snow, and the distance, until he saw a light ahead, which he
knew gleamed from the Lock House window. It arrested his steps, and he
looked all around. The ice, and the snow, and he, and the one light, had
absolute possession of the dreary scene. In the distance before him, lay
the place where he had struck the worse than useless blows that mocked
him with Lizzie’s presence there as Eugene’s wife. In the distance
behind him, lay the place where the children with pointing arms had
seemed to devote him to the demons in crying out his name. Within there,
where the light was, was the man who as to both distances could give him
up to ruin. To these limits had his world shrunk.
He mended his pace, keeping his eyes upon the light with a strange
intensity, as if he were taking aim at it. When he approached it so
nearly as that it parted into rays, they seemed to fasten themselves
to him and draw him on. When he struck the door with his hand, his foot
followed so quickly on his hand, that he was in the room before he was
bidden to enter.
The light was the joint product of a fire and a candle. Between the two,
with his feet on the iron fender, sat Riderhood, pipe in mouth.
He looked up with a surly nod when his visitor came in. His visitor
looked down with a surly nod. His outer clothing removed, the visitor
then took a seat on the opposite side of the fire.
‘Not a smoker, I think?’ said Riderhood, pushing a bottle to him across
the table.
‘No.’
They both lapsed into silence, with their eyes upon the fire.
‘You don’t need to be told I am here,’ said Bradley at length. ‘Who is
to begin?’
‘I’ll begin,’ said Riderhood, ‘when I’ve smoked this here pipe out.’
He finished it with great deliberation, knocked out the ashes on the
hob, and put it by.
‘I’ll begin,’ he then repeated, ‘Bradley Headstone, Master, if you wish
it.’
‘Wish it? I wish to know what you want with me.’
‘And so you shall.’ Riderhood had looked hard at his hands and his
pockets, apparently as a precautionary measure lest he should have any
weapon about him. But, he now leaned forward, turning the collar of
his waistcoat with an inquisitive finger, and asked, ‘Why, where’s your
watch?’
‘I have left it behind.’
‘I want it. But it can be fetched. I’ve took a fancy to it.’
Bradley answered with a contemptuous laugh.
‘I want it,’ repeated Riderhood, in a louder voice, ‘and I mean to have
it.’
‘That is what you want of me, is it?’
‘No,’ said Riderhood, still louder; ‘it’s on’y part of what I want of
you. I want money of you.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Everythink else!’ roared Riderhood, in a very loud and furious way.
‘Answer me like that, and I won’t talk to you at all.’
Bradley looked at him.
‘Don’t so much as look at me like that, or I won’t talk to you at all,’
vociferated Riderhood. ‘But, instead of talking, I’ll bring my hand
down upon you with all its weight,’ heavily smiting the table with great
force, ‘and smash you!’
‘Go on,’ said Bradley, after moistening his lips.
‘O! I’m a going on. Don’t you fear but I’ll go on full-fast enough for
you, and fur enough for you, without your telling. Look here, Bradley
Headstone, Master. You might have split the T’other governor to chips
and wedges, without my caring, except that I might have come upon you