Our Mutual Friend
me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or
lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel.
‘But this is the fanciful side of the situation. It has a real side, so
difficult that, though I think of it every day, I never thoroughly think
it out. Now, let me determine to think it out as I walk home. I know
I evade it, as many men—perhaps most men—do evade thinking their way
through their greatest perplexity. I will try to pin myself to mine.
Don’t evade it, John Harmon; don’t evade it; think it out!
‘When I came to England, attracted to the country with which I had none
but most miserable associations, by the accounts of my fine inheritance
that found me abroad, I came back, shrinking from my father’s money,
shrinking from my father’s memory, mistrustful of being forced on a
mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father’s intention in thrusting that
marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious,
mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the two dear noble
honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life or
that of my heartbroken sister. I came back, timid, divided in my mind,
afraid of myself and everybody here, knowing of nothing but wretchedness
that my father’s wealth had ever brought about. Now, stop, and so far
think it out, John Harmon. Is that so? That is exactly so.
‘On board serving as third mate was George Radfoot. I knew nothing of
him. His name first became known to me about a week before we sailed,
through my being accosted by one of the ship-agent’s clerks as
“Mr Radfoot.” It was one day when I had gone aboard to look to my
preparations, and the clerk, coming behind me as I stood on deck, tapped
me on the shoulder, and said, “Mr Rad-foot, look here,” referring to
some papers that he had in his hand. And my name first became known to
Radfoot, through another clerk within a day or two, and while the ship
was yet in port, coming up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder and
beginning, “I beg your pardon, Mr Harmon—.” I believe we were alike
in bulk and stature but not otherwise, and that we were not strikingly
alike, even in those respects, when we were together and could be
compared.
‘However, a sociable word or two on these mistakes became an easy
introduction between us, and the weather was hot, and he helped me to a
cool cabin on deck alongside his own, and his first school had been at
Brussels as mine had been, and he had learnt French as I had learnt it,
and he had a little history of himself to relate—God only knows how
much of it true, and how much of it false—that had its likeness to
mine. I had been a seaman too. So we got to be confidential together,
and the more easily yet, because he and every one on board had known
by general rumour what I was making the voyage to England for. By such
degrees and means, he came to the knowledge of my uneasiness of mind,
and of its setting at that time in the direction of desiring to see and
form some judgment of my allotted wife, before she could possibly know
me for myself; also to try Mrs Boffin and give her a glad surprise. So
the plot was made out of our getting common sailors’ dresses (as he was
able to guide me about London), and throwing ourselves in Bella Wilfer’s
neighbourhood, and trying to put ourselves in her way, and doing
whatever chance might favour on the spot, and seeing what came of it. If
nothing came of it, I should be no worse off, and there would merely
be a short delay in my presenting myself to Lightwood. I have all these
facts right? Yes. They are all accurately right.
‘His advantage in all this was, that for a time I was to be lost. It
might be for a day or for two days, but I must be lost sight of on
landing, or there would be recognition, anticipation, and failure.
Therefore, I disembarked with my valise in my hand—as Potterson
the steward and Mr Jacob Kibble my fellow-passenger afterwards
remembered—and waited for him in the dark by that very Limehouse Church
which is now behind me.
‘As I had always shunned the port of London, I only knew the church
through his pointing out its spire from on board. Perhaps I might
recall, if it were any good to try, the way by which I went to it alone
from the river; but how we two went from it to Riderhood’s shop, I don’t
know—any more than I know what turns we took and doubles we made, after
we left it. The way was purposely confused, no doubt.
‘But let me go on thinking the facts out, and avoid confusing them with
my speculations. Whether he took me by a straight way or a crooked way,
what is that to the purpose now? Steady, John Harmon.
‘When we stopped at Riderhood’s, and he asked that scoundrel a question
or two, purporting to refer only to the lodging-houses in which there
was accommodation for us, had I the least suspicion of him? None.
Certainly none until afterwards when I held the clue. I think he must
have got from Riderhood in a paper, the drug, or whatever it was, that
afterwards stupefied me, but I am far from sure. All I felt safe in
charging on him to-night, was old companionship in villainy between
them. Their undisguised intimacy, and the character I now know Riderhood
to bear, made that not at all adventurous. But I am not clear about the
drug. Thinking out the circumstances on which I found my suspicion, they
are only two. One: I remember his changing a small folded paper from one
pocket to another, after we came out, which he had not touched before.
Two: I now know Riderhood to have been previously taken up for being
concerned in the robbery of an unlucky seaman, to whom some such poison
had been given.
‘It is my conviction that we cannot have gone a mile from that shop,
before we came to the wall, the dark doorway, the flight of stairs, and
the room. The night was particularly dark and it rained hard. As I think
the circumstances back, I hear the rain splashing on the stone pavement
of the passage, which was not under cover. The room overlooked the
river, or a dock, or a creek, and the tide was out. Being possessed of
the time down to that point, I know by the hour that it must have been
about low water; but while the coffee was getting ready, I drew back the
curtain (a dark-brown curtain), and, looking out, knew by the kind
of reflection below, of the few neighbouring lights, that they were
reflected in tidal mud.
‘He had carried under his arm a canvas bag, containing a suit of his
clothes. I had no change of outer clothes with me, as I was to buy
slops. “You are very wet, Mr Harmon,”—I can hear him saying—“and I am
quite dry under this good waterproof coat. Put on these clothes of
mine. You may find on trying them that they will answer your purpose
to-morrow, as well as the slops you mean to buy, or better. While you
change, I’ll hurry the hot coffee.” When he came back, I had his clothes
on, and there was a black man with him, wearing a linen jacket, like
a steward, who put the smoking coffee on the table in a tray and never
looked at me. I am so far literal and exact? Literal and exact, I am
certain.
‘Now, I pass to sick and deranged impressions; they are so strong, that
I rely upon them; but there are spaces between them that I know nothing
about, and they are not pervaded by any idea of time.
‘I had drank some coffee, when to my sense of sight he began to swell
immensely, and something urged me to rush at him. We had a struggle near
the door. He got from me, through my not knowing where to strike, in the
whirling round of the room, and the flashing of flames of fire between
us. I dropped down. Lying helpless on the ground, I was turned over by
a foot. I was dragged by the neck into a corner. I heard men speak
together. I was turned over by other feet. I saw a figure like myself
lying dressed in my clothes on a bed. What might have been, for anything
I knew, a silence of days, weeks, months, years, was broken by a violent
wrestling of men all over the room. The figure like myself was assailed,
and my valise was in its hand. I was trodden upon and fallen over. I
heard a noise of blows, and thought it was a wood-cutter cutting down
a tree. I could not have said that my name was John Harmon—I could not
have thought it—I didn’t know it—but when I heard the blows, I thought
of the wood-cutter and his axe, and had some dead idea that I was lying
in a forest.
‘This is still correct? Still correct, with the exception that I cannot
possibly express it to myself without using the word I. But it was not
I. There was no such thing as I, within my knowledge.
‘It was only after a downward slide through something like a tube, and
then a great noise and a sparkling and crackling as of fires, that the
consciousness came upon me, “This is John Harmon drowning! John Harmon,
struggle for your life. John Harmon, call on Heaven and save yourself!”
I think I cried it out aloud in a great agony, and then a heavy horrid
unintelligible something vanished, and it was I who was struggling there
alone in the water.
‘I was very weak and faint, frightfully oppressed with drowsiness, and
driving fast with the tide. Looking over the black water, I saw the
lights racing past me on the two banks of the river, as if they were
eager to be gone and leave me dying in the dark. The tide was running
down, but I knew nothing of up or down then. When, guiding myself safely
with Heaven’s assistance before the fierce set of the water, I at last
caught at a boat moored, one of a tier of boats at a causeway, I was
sucked under her, and came up, only just alive, on the other side.
‘Was I long in the water? Long enough to be chilled to the heart, but
I don’t know how long. Yet the cold was merciful, for it was the cold
night air and the rain that restored me from a swoon on the stones of
the causeway. They naturally supposed me to have toppled in, drunk, when
I crept to the public-house it belonged to; for I had no notion where
I was, and could not articulate—through the poison that had made me
insensible having affected my speech—and I supposed the night to be
the previous night, as it was still dark and raining. But I had lost
twenty-four hours.
‘I have checked the calculation often, and it must have been two nights
that I lay recovering in that public-house. Let me see. Yes. I am sure
it was while I lay in that bed there, that the thought entered my head
of turning the danger I had passed through, to the account of being
for some time supposed to have disappeared mysteriously, and of proving
Bella. The dread of our being forced on one another, and perpetuating
the fate that seemed to have fallen on my father’s riches—the fate that
they should lead to nothing but evil—was strong upon the moral timidity
that dates from my childhood with my poor sister.
‘As to this hour I cannot understand that side of the river where I
recovered the shore, being the opposite side to that on which I was
ensnared, I shall never understand it now. Even at this moment, while I
leave the river behind me, going home, I cannot conceive that it rolls
between me and that spot, or that the sea is where it is. But this is
not thinking it out; this is making a leap to the present time.
‘I could not have done it, but for the fortune in the waterproof
belt round my body. Not a great fortune, forty and odd pounds for the
inheritor of a hundred and odd thousand! But it was enough. Without it I
must have disclosed myself. Without it, I could never have gone to that
Exchequer Coffee House, or taken Mrs Wilfer’s lodgings.
‘Some twelve days I lived at that hotel, before the night when I saw the
corpse of Radfoot at the Police Station. The inexpressible mental horror
that I laboured under, as one of the consequences of the poison, makes
the interval seem greatly longer, but I know it cannot have been longer.