Our Mutual Friend. Чарльз Диккенс
that he was towing by the neck and arms.’
They had helped to release the rope, and of course not.
‘And you will have observed before, and you will observe now, that this knot, which was drawn chock-tight round his neck by the strain of his own arms, is a slip-knot’: holding it up for demonstration.
Plain enough.
‘Likewise you will have observed how he had run the other end of this rope to his boat.’
It had the curves and indentations in it still, where it had been twined and bound.
‘Now see,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘see how it works round upon him. It’s a wild tempestuous evening when this man that was,’ stooping to wipe some hailstones out of his hair with an end of his own drowned jacket, ‘ – there! Now he’s more like himself; though he’s badly bruised, – when this man that was, rows out upon the river on his usual lay. He carries with him this coil of rope. He always carries with him this coil of rope. It’s as well known to me as he was himself. Sometimes it lay in the bottom of his boat. Sometimes he hung it loose round his neck. He was a light-dresser was this man; – you see?’ lifting the loose neckerchief over his breast, and taking the opportunity of wiping the dead lips with it – ‘and when it was wet, or freezing, or blew cold, he would hang this coil of line round his neck. Last evening he does this. Worse for him! He dodges about in his boat, does this man, till he gets chilled. His hands,’ taking up one of them, which dropped like a leaden weight, ‘get numbed. He sees some object that’s in his way of business, floating. He makes ready to secure that object. He unwinds the end of his coil that he wants to take some turns on in his boat, and he takes turns enough on it to secure that it shan’t run out. He makes it too secure, as it happens. He is a little longer about this than usual, his hands being numbed. His object drifts up, before he is quite ready for it. He catches at it, thinks he’ll make sure of the contents of the pockets anyhow, in case he should be parted from it, bends right over the stern, and in one of these heavy squalls, or in the cross-swell of two steamers, or in not being quite prepared, or through all or most or some, gets a lurch, overbalances and goes head-foremost overboard. Now see! He can swim, can this man, and instantly he strikes out. But in such striking-out he tangles his arms, pulls strong on the slip-knot, and it runs home. The object he had expected to take in tow, floats by, and his own boat tows him dead, to where we found him, all entangled in his own line. You’ll ask me how I make out about the pockets? First, I’ll tell you more; there was silver in ‘em. How do I make that out? Simple and satisfactory. Because he’s got it here.’ The lecturer held up the tightly clenched right hand.
‘What is to be done with the remains?’ asked Lightwood.
‘If you wouldn’t object to standing by him half a minute, sir,’ was the reply, ‘I’ll find the nearest of our men to come and take charge of him; – I still call it him, you see,’ said Mr Inspector, looking back as he went, with a philosophical smile upon the force of habit.
‘Eugene,’ said Lightwood and was about to add ‘we may wait at a little distance,’ when turning his head he found that no Eugene was there.
He raised his voice and called ‘Eugene! Holloa!’ But no Eugene replied.
It was broad daylight now, and he looked about. But no Eugene was in all the view.
Mr Inspector speedily returning down the wooden stairs, with a police constable, Lightwood asked him if he had seen his friend leave them? Mr Inspector could not exactly say that he had seen him go, but had noticed that he was restless.
‘Singular and entertaining combination, sir, your friend.’
‘I wish it had not been a part of his singular entertaining combination to give me the slip under these dreary circumstances at this time of the morning,’ said Lightwood. ‘Can we get anything hot to drink?’
We could, and we did. In a public-house kitchen with a large fire. We got hot brandy and water, and it revived us wonderfully. Mr Inspector having to Mr Riderhood announced his official intention of ‘keeping his eye upon him’, stood him in a corner of the fireplace, like a wet umbrella, and took no further outward and visible notice of that honest man, except ordering a separate service of brandy and water for him: apparently out of the public funds.
As Mortimer Lightwood sat before the blazing fire, conscious of drinking brandy and water then and there in his sleep, and yet at one and the same time drinking burnt sherry at the Six Jolly Fellowships, and lying under the boat on the river shore, and sitting in the boat that Riderhood rowed, and listening to the lecture recently concluded, and having to dine in the Temple with an unknown man, who described himself as M. H. F. Eugene Gaffer Harmon, and said he lived at Hailstorm, – as he passed through these curious vicissitudes of fatigue and slumber, arranged upon the scale of a dozen hours to the second, he became aware of answering aloud a communication of pressing importance that had never been made to him, and then turned it into a cough on beholding Mr Inspector. For, he felt, with some natural indignation, that that functionary might otherwise suspect him of having closed his eyes, or wandered in his attention.
‘Here just before us, you see,’ said Mr Inspector.
‘I see,’ said Lightwood, with dignity.
‘And had hot brandy and water too, you see,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘and then cut off at a great rate.’
‘Who?’ said Lightwood.
‘Your friend, you know.’
‘I know,’ he replied, again with dignity.
After hearing, in a mist through which Mr Inspector loomed vague and large, that the officer took upon himself to prepare the dead man’s daughter for what had befallen in the night, and generally that he took everything upon himself, Mortimer Lightwood stumbled in his sleep to a cab-stand, called a cab, and had entered the army and committed a capital military offence and been tried by court martial and found guilty and had arranged his affairs and been marched out to be shot, before the door banged.
Hard work rowing the cab through the City to the Temple, for a cup of from five to ten thousand pounds value, given by Mr Boffin; and hard work holding forth at that immeasurable length to Eugene (when he had been rescued with a rope from the running pavement) for making off in that extraordinary manner! But he offered such ample apologies, and was so very penitent, that when Lightwood got out of the cab, he gave the driver a particular charge to be careful of him. Which the driver (knowing there was no other fare left inside) stared at prodigiously.
In short, the night’s work had so exhausted and worn out this actor in it, that he had become a mere somnambulist. He was too tired to rest in his sleep, until he was even tired out of being too tired, and dropped into oblivion. Late in the afternoon he awoke, and in some anxiety sent round to Eugene’s lodging hard by, to inquire if he were up yet?
Oh yes, he was up. In fact, he had not been to bed. He had just come home. And here he was, close following on the heels of the message.
‘Why what bloodshot, draggled, dishevelled spectacle is this!’ cried Mortimer.
‘Are my feathers so very much rumpled?’ said Eugene, coolly going up to the looking-glass. They are rather out of sorts. But consider. Such a night for plumage!’
‘Such a night?’ repeated Mortimer. ‘What became of you in the morning?’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Eugene, sitting on his bed, ‘I felt that we had bored one another so long, that an unbroken continuance of those relations must inevitably terminate in our flying to opposite points of the earth. I also felt that I had committed every crime in the Newgate Calendar. So, for mingled considerations of friendship and felony, I took a walk.’
Chapter 15
TWO NEW SERVANTS
Mr and Mrs Boffin sat after breakfast, in the Bower, a prey to prosperity. Mr Boffin’s face denoted Care and Complication. Many disordered papers were before him, and he looked at them about as hopefully as an innocent civilian might look at a crowd of troops whom he was required at five minutes’ notice to manoeuvre and review. He had been engaged in some attempts