Our Mutual Friend, Page 57

  Chapter 7

  BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN

  Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible,but there was dull light in the east that was not the light of night.The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river,seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the waterwas the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did thepale stars: while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat orcolour, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likenedto the stare of the dead.

  Perhaps it was so likened by the lonely Bargeman, standing on the brinkof the lock. For certain, Bradley Headstone looked that way, when achill air came up, and when it passed on murmuring, as if itwhispered something that made the phantom trees and water tremble--orthreaten--for fancy might have made it either.

  He turned away, and tried the Lock-house door. It was fastened on theinside.

  'Is he afraid of me?' he muttered, knocking.

  Rogue Riderhood was soon roused, and soon undrew the bolt and let himin.

  '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 amind for to advertise you in the newspapers to come for'ard.'

  Bradley's face turned so dark on this hint, that Riderhood deemed itexpedient 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 therestretch of a comic idea, as a sort of a playful game? Why, I says tomyself; "He's a man o' honour." That's what I says to myself. "He's aman o' double honour."'

  Very remarkably, Riderhood put no question to him. He had looked at himon opening the door, and he now looked at him again (stealthily thistime), 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 youturns your mind to breakfast,' said Riderhood, when his visitor satdown, resting his chin on his hand, with his eyes on the ground. Andvery remarkably again: Riderhood feigned to set the scanty furniture inorder, 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 hisposition.

  'I myself should recommend it, governor,' assented Riderhood. 'Might yoube anyways dry?'

  'Yes. I should like a drink,' said Bradley; but without appearing toattend 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 andspread it smooth, and Bradley stretched himself upon it in the clotheshe wore. Mr Riderhood poetically remarking that he would pick the bonesof 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 soundasleep. 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 upwhat he had seen.

  'One of his sleeves is tore right away below the elber, and thet'other's had a good rip at the shoulder. He's been hung on to, prettytight, for his shirt's all tore out of the neck-gathers. He's been inthe grass and he's been in the water. And he's spotted, and I know withwhat, and with whose. Hooroar!'

  Bradley slept long. Early in the afternoon a barge came down. Otherbarges had passed through, both ways, before it; but the Lock-keeperhailed only this particular barge, for news, as if he had made a timecalculation 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 hesaw Bradley coming out of the house, 'as you've been a sleeping all thetime, old boy!'

  Bradley came to him, sitting on his wooden lever, and asked what o'clockit 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 anegative 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, andconversational manner, 'you did not tell me so. But most like you meantto it and forgot to it. How, otherways, could a doubt have come intoyour 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 inand have it, T'otherest.'

  The formality of spreading a tablecloth not being observed in MrRiderhood's establishment, the serving of the 'peck' was the affair ofa moment; it merely consisting in the handing down of a capacious bakingdish with three-fourths of an immense meat pie in it, and the productionof two pocket-knives, an earthenware mug, and a large brown bottle ofbeer.

  Both ate and drank, but Riderhood much the more abundantly. In lieu ofplates, that honest man cut two triangular pieces from the thick crustof the pie, and laid them, inside uppermost, upon the table: the onebefore himself, and the other before his guest. Upon these platters heplaced two goodly portions of the contents of the pie, thus impartingthe unusual interest to the entertainment that each partaker scooped outthe inside of his plate, and consumed it with his other fare, besideshaving the sport of pursuing the clots of congealed gravy over the plainof the table, and successfully taking them into his mouth at last fromthe blade of his knife, in case of their not first sliding off it.

  Bradley Headstone was so remarkably awkward at these exercises, that theRogue 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 instanding close to him for the purpose, he shook his hand under the smartof the wound, and shook blood over Riderhood's dress.

  When dinner was done, and when what remained of the platters and whatremained of the congealed gravy had been put back into what remained ofthe pie, which served as an economical investment for all miscellaneoussavings, Riderhood filled the mug with beer and took a long drink. Andnow he did look at Bradley, and with an evil eye.

  'T'otherest!' he said, hoarsely, as he bent across the table to touchhis 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 hedisdainfully 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 suddenhot humour that broke out upon it, showed how grimly the intelligencetouched him. But he said not a single word, good or bad. He only smiledin a lowering manner, and got up and stood leaning at the window,looking through it. Riderhood followed him with his eyes. Riderhood castdown his eyes on his own besprinkled clothes. Riderhood began to have anair of being better at a guess than Bradley owned to being.

  'I have been so long in want of rest,' said the schoolmaster, 'that withyour leave I'll lie down again.'

  'And welcome, T'otherest!' was the hospitable answer of his host. He hadlaid himself down without waiting for it, and he remained upon the beduntil 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-pathoutside the door.

  'Whenever it may be necessary that you and I should have any furthercommunication 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 addedunder his
breath, looking after him with a leer: 'You wouldn't be let togo like that, if my Relief warn't as good as come. I'll catch you up ina mile.'

  In a word, his real time of relief being that evening at sunset, hismate came lounging in, within a quarter of an hour. Not staying to fillup the utmost margin of his time, but borrowing an hour or so, to berepaid again when he should relieve his reliever, Riderhood straightwayfollowed on the track of Bradley Headstone.

  He was a better follower than Bradley. It had been the calling of hislife to slink and skulk and dog and waylay, and he knew his callingwell. He effected such a forced march on leaving the Lock House that hewas close up with him--that is to say, as close up with him as he deemedit convenient to be--before another Lock was passed. His man looked backpretty often as he went, but got no hint of him. HE knew how to takeadvantage of the ground, and where to put the hedge between them, andwhere the wall, and when to duck, and when to drop, and had a thousandarts beyond the doomed Bradley's slow conception.

  But, all his arts were brought to a standstill, like himself whenBradley, turning into a green lane or riding by the river-side--asolitary spot run wild in nettles, briars, and brambles, and encumberedwith the scathed trunks of a whole hedgerow of felled trees, on theoutskirts of a little wood--began stepping on these trunks and droppingdown among them and stepping on them again, apparently as a schoolboymight have done, but assuredly with no schoolboy purpose, or want ofpurpose.

  'What are you up to?' muttered Riderhood, down in the ditch, and holdingthe hedge a little open with both hands. And soon his actions made amost 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 haspassed on to the water-side and had begun undressing on the grass. Fora moment it had a suspicious look of suicide, arranged to counterfeitaccident. 'But you wouldn't have fetched a bundle under your arm, fromamong that timber, if such was your game!' said Riderhood. Neverthelessit was a relief to him when the bather after a plunge and a few strokescame out. 'For I shouldn't,' he said in a feeling manner, 'have liked tolose you till I had made more money out of you neither.'

  Prone in another ditch (he had changed his ditch as his man had changedhis position), and holding apart so small a patch of the hedge that thesharpest eyes could not have detected him, Rogue Riderhood watched thebather 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, doingsomething with his hands, and again stood up with his bundle under hisarm. Looking all around him with great attention, he then went to theriver's edge, and flung it in as far, and yet as lightly as he could. Itwas not until he was so decidedly upon his way again as to be beyond abend of the river and for the time out of view, that Riderhood scrambledfrom the ditch.

  'Now,' was his debate with himself 'shall I foller you on, or shall Ilet you loose for this once, and go a fishing?' The debate continuing,he followed, as a precautionary measure in any case, and got him againin 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 findyou out in one way or another. If I wasn't to go a fishing, othersmight.--I'll let you loose this once, and go a fishing!' With that, hesuddenly 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,and of every face he saw, but was under a spell which very commonlyfalls upon the shedder of blood, and had no suspicion of the real dangerthat lurked in his life, and would have it yet. Riderhood was muchin his thoughts--had never been out of his thoughts since thenight-adventure of their first meeting; but Riderhood occupied a verydifferent place there, from the place of pursuer; and Bradley had beenat the pains of devising so many means of fitting that place to him, andof wedging him into it, that his mind could not compass the possibilityof his occupying any other. And this is another spell against whichthe shedder of blood for ever strives in vain. There are fifty doors bywhich discovery may enter. With infinite pains and cunning, he doublelocks and bars forty-nine of them, and cannot see the fiftieth standingwide open.

  Now, too, was he cursed with a state of mind more wearing and morewearisome than remorse. He had no remorse; but the evildoer who can holdthat avenger at bay, cannot escape the slower torture of incessantlydoing the evil deed again and doing it more efficiently. In thedefensive declarations and pretended confessions of murderers, thepursuing shadow of this torture may be traced through every lie theytell. If I had done it as alleged, is it conceivable that I would havemade this and this mistake? If I had done it as alleged, should I haveleft that unguarded place which that false and wicked witness against meso infamously deposed to? The state of that wretch who continually findsthe weak spots in his own crime, and strives to strengthen them whenit is unchangeable, is a state that aggravates the offence by doingthe deed a thousand times instead of once; but it is a state, too, thattauntingly visits the offence upon a sullen unrepentant nature with itsheaviest punishment every time.

  Bradley toiled on, chained heavily to the idea of his hatred and hisvengeance, and thinking how he might have satiated both in many betterways than the way he had taken. The instrument might have been better,the spot and the hour might have been better chosen. To batter a mandown from behind in the dark, on the brink of a river, was well enough,but he ought to have been instantly disabled, whereas he had turned andseized his assailant; and so, to end it before chance-help came, andto be rid of him, he had been hurriedly thrown backward into the riverbefore the life was fully beaten out of him. Now if it could be doneagain, it must not be so done. Supposing his head had been held downunder water for a while. Supposing the first blow had been truer.Supposing he had been shot. Supposing he had been strangled. Supposethis way, that way, the other way. Suppose anything but gettingunchained from the one idea, for that was inexorably impossible.

  The school reopened next day. The scholars saw little or no change intheir master's face, for it always wore its slowly labouring expression.But, as he heard his classes, he was always doing the deed and doing itbetter. As he paused with his piece of chalk at the black board beforewriting on it, he was thinking of the spot, and whether the water wasnot deeper and the fall straighter, a little higher up, or a littlelower down. He had half a mind to draw a line or two upon the board, andshow himself what he meant. He was doing it again and improving onthe manner, at prayers, in his mental arithmetic, all through hisquestioning, all through the day.

  Charley Hexam was a master now, in another school, under another head.It was evening, and Bradley was walking in his garden observed frombehind a blind by gentle little Miss Peecher, who contemplated offeringhim a loan of her smelling salts for headache, when Mary Anne, infaithful attendance, held up her arm.

  'Yes, Mary Anne?'

  'Young Mr Hexam, if you please, ma'am, coming to see Mr Headstone.'

  'Very good, Mary Anne.'

  Again Mary Anne held up her arm.

  'You may speak, Mary Anne?'

  'Mr Headstone has beckoned young Mr Hexam into his house, ma'am, and hehas gone in himself without waiting for young Mr Hexam to come up, andnow HE has gone in too, ma'am, and has shut the door.'

  'With all my heart, Mary Anne.'

  Again Mary Anne's telegraphic arm worked.

  'What more, Mary Anne?'

  'They must find it rather dull and dark, Miss Peecher, for the parlourblind's down, and neither of them pulls it up.'

  'There is no accounting,' said good Miss Peecher with a little sad sighwhich she repressed by laying her hand on her neat methodical boddice,'there is no accounting for tastes, Mary Anne.'

  Charley, entering the dark room, stopped short when he saw his
oldfriend in its yellow shade.

  'Come in, Hexam, come in.'

  Charley advanced to take the hand that was held out to him; but stoppedagain, short of it. The heavy, bloodshot eyes of the schoolmaster,rising to his face with an effort, met his look of scrutiny.

  'Mr Headstone, what's the matter?'

  'Matter? Where?'

  'Mr Headstone, have you heard the news? This news about the fellow, MrEugene Wrayburn? That he is killed?'

  'He is dead, then!' exclaimed Bradley.

  Young Hexam standing looking at him, he moistened his lips with histongue, looked about the room, glanced at his former pupil, and lookeddown. 'I heard of the outrage,' said Bradley, trying to constrain hisworking mouth, 'but I had not heard the end of it.'

  'Where were you,' said the boy, advancing a step as he lowered hisvoice, 'when it was done? Stop! I don't ask that. Don't tell me. If youforce your confidence upon me, Mr Headstone, I'll give up every word ofit. Mind! Take notice. I'll give up it, and I'll give up you. I will!'

  The wretched creature seemed to suffer acutely under this renunciation.A desolate air of utter and complete loneliness fell upon him, like avisible shade.

  'It's for me to speak, not you,' said the boy. 'If you do, you'll doit at your peril. I am going to put your selfishness before you, MrHeadstone--your passionate, violent, and ungovernable selfishness--toshow you why I can, and why I will, have nothing more to do with you.'

  He looked at young Hexam as if he were waiting for a scholar to go onwith a lesson that he knew by heart and was deadly tired of. But he hadsaid his last word to him.

  'If you had any part--I don't say what--in this attack,' pursued theboy; 'or if you know anything about it--I don't say how much--or if youknow who did it--I go no closer--you did an injury to me that's neverto be forgiven. You know that I took you with me to his chambers in theTemple when I told him my opinion of him, and made myself responsiblefor my opinion of you. You know that I took you with me when I waswatching him with a view to recovering my sister and bringing her to hersenses; you know that I have allowed myself to be mixed up with you, allthrough this business, in favouring your desire to marry my sister. Andhow do you know that, pursuing the ends of your own violent temper, youhave not laid me open to suspicion? Is that your gratitude to me, MrHeadstone?'

  Bradley sat looking steadily before him at the vacant air. As oftenas young Hexam stopped, he turned his eyes towards him, as if he werewaiting for him to go on with the lesson, and get it done. As often asthe boy resumed, Bradley resumed his fixed face.

  'I am going to be plain with you, Mr Headstone,' said young Hexam,shaking his head in a half-threatening manner, 'because this is no timefor affecting not to know things that I do know--except certain thingsat which it might not be very safe for you, to hint again. What I meanis this: if you were a good master, I was a good pupil. I have done youplenty of credit, and in improving my own reputation I have improvedyours quite as much. Very well then. Starting on equal terms, I want toput before you how you have shown your gratitude to me, for doing allI could to further your wishes with reference to my sister. You havecompromised me by being seen about with me, endeavouring to counteractthis Mr Eugene Wrayburn. That's the first thing you have done. If mycharacter, and my now dropping you, help me out of that, Mr Headstone,the deliverance is to be attributed to me, and not to you. No thanks toyou for it!'

  The boy stopping again, he moved his eyes again.

  'I am going on, Mr Headstone, don't you be afraid. I am going on to theend, and I have told you beforehand what the end is. Now, you know mystory. You are as well aware as I am, that I have had many disadvantagesto leave behind me in life. You have heard me mention my father, and youare sufficiently acquainted with the fact that the home from which I, asI may say, escaped, might have been a more creditable one than it was.My father died, and then it might have been supposed that my way torespectability was pretty clear. No. For then my sister begins.'

  He spoke as confidently, and with as entire an absence of any tell-talecolour in his cheek, as if there were no softening old time behind him.Not wonderful, for there WAS none in his hollow empty heart. What isthere but self, for selfishness to see behind it?

  'When I speak of my sister, I devoutly wish that you had never seenher, Mr Headstone. However, you did see her, and that's useless now. Iconfided in you about her. I explained her character to you, and how sheinterposed some ridiculous fanciful notions in the way of our being asrespectable as I tried for. You fell in love with her, and I favouredyou with all my might. She could not be induced to favour you, and sowe came into collision with this Mr Eugene Wrayburn. Now, what have youdone? Why, you have justified my sister in being firmly set against youfrom first to last, and you have put me in the wrong again! And whyhave you done it? Because, Mr Headstone, you are in all your passionsso selfish, and so concentrated upon yourself that you have not bestowedone proper thought on me.'

  The cool conviction with which the boy took up and held his position,could have been derived from no other vice in human nature.

  'It is,' he went on, actually with tears, 'an extraordinary circumstanceattendant on my life, that every effort I make towards perfectrespectability, is impeded by somebody else through no fault of mine!Not content with doing what I have put before you, you will drag my nameinto notoriety through dragging my sister's--which you are pretty sureto do, if my suspicions have any foundation at all--and the worse youprove to be, the harder it will be for me to detach myself from beingassociated with you in people's minds.'

  When he had dried his eyes and heaved a sob over his injuries, he beganmoving towards the door.

  'However, I have made up my mind that I will become respectable in thescale of society, and that I will not be dragged down by others. I havedone with my sister as well as with you. Since she cares so little forme as to care nothing for undermining my respectability, she shall goher way and I will go mine. My prospects are very good, and I mean tofollow them alone. Mr Headstone, I don't say what you have got upon yourconscience, for I don't know. Whatever lies upon it, I hope you will seethe justice of keeping wide and clear of me, and will find a consolationin completely exonerating all but yourself. I hope, before many yearsare out, to succeed the master in my present school, and the mistressbeing a single woman, though some years older than I am, I might evenmarry her. If it is any comfort to you to know what plans I may work outby keeping myself strictly respectable in the scale of society, theseare the plans at present occurring to me. In conclusion, if you feel asense of having injured me, and a desire to make some small reparation,I hope you will think how respectable you might have been yourself andwill contemplate your blighted existence.'

  Was it strange that the wretched man should take this heavily toheart? Perhaps he had taken the boy to heart, first, through somelong laborious years; perhaps through the same years he had foundhis drudgery lightened by communication with a brighter and moreapprehensive spirit than his own; perhaps a family resemblance of faceand voice between the boy and his sister, smote him hard in the gloomof his fallen state. For whichsoever reason, or for all, he drooped hisdevoted head when the boy was gone, and shrank together on the floor,and grovelled there, with the palms of his hands tight-clasping his hottemples, in unutterable misery, and unrelieved by a single tear.

  Rogue Riderhood had been busy with the river that day. He had fishedwith assiduity on the previous evening, but the light was short, andhe had fished unsuccessfully. He had fished again that day with betterluck, and had carried his fish home to Plashwater Weir Mill Lock-house,in a bundle.