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Our Mutual Friend
‘Oh I know all about myself,’ said Miss Podsnap.
‘I’ll tell you something I know about you, my dear,’ returned Mrs Lammle in her winning way, ‘and that is, you are most unnecessarily shy.’
‘Ma ain’t,’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘ – I detest you! Go along!’ This shot was levelled under her breath at the gallant Grompus for bestowing an insinuating smile upon her in passing.
‘Pardon me if I scarcely see, my dear Miss Podsnap,’ Mrs Lammle was beginning when the young lady interposed.
‘If we are going to be real friends (and I suppose we are, for you are the only person who ever proposed it) don’t let us be awful. It’s awful enough to be Miss Podsnap, without being called so. Call me Georgiana.’
‘Dearest Georgiana,’ Mrs Lammle began again.
‘Thank you,’ said Miss Podsnap.
‘Dearest Georgiana, pardon me if I scarcely see, my love, why your mamma’s not being shy, is a reason why you should be.’
‘Don’t you really see that?’ asked Miss Podsnap, plucking at her fingers in a troubled manner, and furtively casting her eyes now on Mrs Lammle, now on the ground. ‘Then perhaps it isn’t?’
‘My dearest Georgiana, you defer much too readily to my poor opinion. Indeed it is not even an opinion, darling, for it is only a confession of my dullness.’
‘Oh you are not dull,’ returned Miss Podsnap. ‘I am dull, but you couldn’t have made me talk if you were.’
Some little touch of conscience answering this perception of her having gained a purpose, called bloom enough into Mrs Lammle’s face to make it look brighter as she sat smiling her best smile on her dear Georgiana, and shaking her head with an affectionate playfulness. Not that it meant anything, but that Georgiana seemed to like it.
‘What I mean is,’ pursued Georgiana, ‘that Ma being so endowed with awfulness, and Pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being so much awfulness everywhere – I mean, at least, everywhere where I am – perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened at it – I say it very badly – I don’t know whether you can understand what I mean?’
‘Perfectly, dearest Georgiana!’ Mrs Lammle was proceeding with every reassuring wile, when the head of that young lady suddenly went back against the wall again and her eyes closed.
‘Oh there’s Ma being awful with somebody with a glass in his eye! Oh I know she’s going to bring him here! Oh don’t bring him, don’t bring him! Oh he’ll be my partner with his glass in his eye! Oh what shall I do!’ This time Georgiana accompanied her ejaculations with taps of her feet upon the floor, and was altogether in quite a desperate condition. But, there was no escape from the majestic Mrs Podsnap’s production of an ambling stranger, with one eye screwed up into extinction and the other framed and glazed, who, having looked down out of that organ, as if he descried Miss Podsnap at the bottom of some perpendicular shaft, brought her to the surface, and ambled off with her. And then the captive at the piano played another ‘set,’ expressive of his mournful aspirations after freedom, and other sixteen went through the former melancholy motions, and the ambler took Miss Podsnap for a furniture walk, as if he had struck out an entirely original conception.
In the mean time a stray personage of a meek demeanour, who had wandered to the hearthrug and got among the heads of tribes assembled there in conference with Mr Podsnap, eliminated Mr Podsnap’s flush and flourish by a highly unpolite remark; no less than a reference to the circumstance that some half-dozen people had lately died in the streets, of starvation. It was clearly ill-timed after dinner. It was not adapted to the cheek of the young person. It was not in good taste.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Mr Podsnap, putting it behind him.
The meek man was afraid we must take it as proved, because there were the Inquests and the Registrar’s returns.
‘Then it was their own fault,’ said Mr Podsnap.
Veneering and other elders of tribes commended this way out of it. At once a short cut and a broad road.
The man of meek demeanour intimated that truly it would seem from the facts, as if starvation had been forced upon the culprits in question – as if, in their wretched manner, they had made their weak protests against it – as if they would have taken the liberty of staving it off if they could – as if they would rather not have been starved upon the whole, if perfectly agreeable to all parties.
‘There is not,’ said Mr Podsnap, flushing angrily, ‘there is not a country in the world, sir, where so noble a provision is made for the poor as in this country.’
The meek man was quite willing to concede that, but perhaps it rendered the matter even worse, as showing that there must be something appallingly wrong somewhere.
‘Where?’ said Mr Podsnap.
The meek man hinted Wouldn’t it be well to try, very seriously, to find out where?
‘Ah!’ said Mr Podsnap. ‘Easy to say somewhere; not so easy to say where! But I see what you are driving at. I knew it from the first. Centralization. No. Never with my consent. Not English.’
An approving murmur arose from the heads of tribes; as saying, ‘There you have him! Hold him!’
He was not aware (the meek man submitted of himself) that he was driving at any ization. He had no favourite ization that he knew of. But he certainly was more staggered by these terrible occurrences than he was by names, of howsoever so many syllables. Might he ask, was dying of destitution and neglect necessarily English?
‘You know what the population of London is, I suppose,’ said Mr Podsnap.
The meek man supposed he did, but supposed that had absolutely nothing to do with it, if its laws were well administered.
‘And you know; at least I hope you know;’ said Mr Podsnap, with severity, ‘that Providence has declared that you shall have the poor always with you?’
The meek man also hoped he knew that.
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Mr Podsnap with a portentous air. ‘I am glad to hear it. It will render you cautious how you fly in the face of Providence.’
In reference to that absurd and irreverent conventional phrase, the meek man said, for which Mr Podsnap was not responsible, he the meek man had no fear of doing anything so impossible; but —
But Mr Podsnap felt that the time had come for flushing and flourishing this meek man down for good. So he said:
‘I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It is not pleasant to my feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings. I have said that I do not admit these things. I have also said that if they do occur (not that I admit it), the fault lies with the sufferers themselves. It is not for me’ – Mr Podsnap pointed ‘me’ forcibly, as adding by implication though it may be all very well for you– ‘it is not for me to impugn the workings of Providence. I know better than that, I trust, and I have mentioned what the intentions of Providence are. Besides,’ said Mr Podsnap, flushing high up among his hair-brushes, with a strong consciousness of personal affront, ‘the subject is a very disagreeable one. I will go so far as to say it is an odious one. It is not one to be introduced among our wives and young persons, and I – ’ He finished with that flourish of his arm which added more expressively than any words, And I remove it from the face of the earth.
Simultaneously with this quenching of the meek man’s ineffectual fire; Georgiana having left the ambler up a lane of sofa, in a No Thoroughfare of back drawing-room, to find his own way out, came back to Mrs Lammle. And who should be with Mrs Lammle, but Mr Lammle. So fond of her!
‘Alfred, my love, here is my friend. Georgiana, dearest girl, you must like my husband next to me.’
Mr Lammle was proud to be so soon distinguished by this special commendation to Miss Podsnap’s favour. But if Mr Lammle were prone to be jealous of his dear Sophronia’s friendships, he would be jealous of her feeling towards Miss Podsnap.
‘Say Georgiana, darling,’ interposed his wife.
‘Towards – shall I? – Georgiana.’ Mr Lammle uttered the name, with a delicate curve of his right hand, from his lips outward. ‘For never have I known Sophronia (who is not apt to take sudden likings) so attracted and so captivated as she is by – shall I once more? – Georgiana.’
The object of this homage sat uneasily enough in receipt of it, and then said, turning to Mrs Lammle, much embarrassed:
‘I wonder what you like me for! I am sure I can’t think.’
‘Dearest Georgiana, for yourself. For your difference from all around you.’
‘Well! That may be. For I think I like you for your difference from all around me,’ said Georgiana with a smile of relief.
‘We must be going with the rest,’ observed Mrs Lammle, rising with a show of unwillingness, amidst a general dispersal. ‘We are real friends, Georgiana dear?’
‘Real.’
‘Good night, dear girl!’
She had established an attraction over the shrinking nature upon which her smiling eyes were fixed, for Georgiana held her hand while she answered in a secret and half-frightened tone:
‘Don’t forget me when you are gone away. And come again soon. Good night!’
Charming to see Mr and Mrs Lammle taking leave so gracefully, and going down the stairs so lovingly and sweetly. Not quite so charming to see their smiling faces fall and brood as they dropped moodily into separate corners of their little carriage. But to be sure that was a sight behind the scenes, which nobody saw, and which nobody was meant to see.
Certain big, heavy vehicles, built on the model of the Podsnap plate, took away the heavy articles of guests weighing ever so much; and the less valuable articles got away after their various manners; and the Podsnap plate was put to bed. As Mr Podsnap stood with his back to the drawing-room fire, pulling up his shirtcollar, like a veritable cock of the walk literally pluming himself in the midst of his possessions, nothing would have astonished him more than an intimation that Miss Podsnap, or any other young person properly born and bred, could not be exactly put away like the plate, brought out like the plate, polished like the plate, counted, weighed, and valued like the plate. That such a young person could possibly have a morbid vacancy in the heart for anything younger than the plate, or less monotonous than the plate; or that such a young person’s thoughts could try to scale the region bounded on the north, south, east, and west, by the plate; was a monstrous imagination which he would on the spot have flourished into space. This perhaps in some sort arose from Mr Podsnap’s blushing young person being, so to speak, all cheek; whereas there is a possibility that there may be young persons of a rather more complex organization.
If Mr Podsnap, pulling up his shirt-collar, could only have heard himself called ‘that fellow’ in a certain short dialogue, which passed between Mr and Mrs Lammle in their opposite corners of their little carriage, rolling home!
‘Sophronia, are you awake?’
‘Am I likely to be asleep, sir?’
‘Very likely, I should think, after that fellow’s company. Attend to what I am going to say.’
‘I have attended to what you have already said, have I not? What else have I been doing all to-night.’
‘Attend, I tell you,’ (in a raised voice) ‘to what I am going to say. Keep close to that idiot girl. Keep her under your thumb. You have her fast, and you are not to let her go. Do you hear?’
‘I hear you.’
‘I foresee there is money to be made out of this, besides taking that fellow down a peg. We owe each other money, you know.’
Mrs Lammle winced a little at the reminder, but only enough to shake her scents and essences anew into the atmosphere of the little carriage, as she settled herself afresh in her own dark corner.
Chapter 12
THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN’S BROW
Mr Mortimer Lightwood and Mr Eugene Wrayburn took a coffee-house dinner together in Mr Lightwood’s office. They had newly agreed to set up a joint establishment together. They had taken a bachelor cottage near Hampton, on the brink of the Thames, with a lawn, and a boat-house; and all things fitting, and were to float with the stream through the summer and the Long Vacation.
It was not summer yet, but spring; and it was not gentle spring ethereally mild, as in Thomson’s Seasons, but nipping spring with an easterly wind, as in Johnson’s, Jackson’s, Dickson’s, Smith’s, and Jones’s Seasons. The grating wind sawed rather than blew; and as it sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit. Every street was a sawpit, and there were no top-sawyers; every passenger was an under-sawyer, with the sawdust blinding him and choking him.
That mysterious paper currency which circulates in London when the wind blows, gyrated here and there and everywhere. Whence can it come, whither can it go? It hangs on every bush, flutters in every tree, is caught flying by the electric wires, haunts every enclosure, drinks at every pump, cowers at every grating, shudders upon every plot of grass, seeks rest in vain behind the legions of iron rails. In Paris, where nothing is wasted, costly and luxurious city though it be, but where wonderful human ants creep out of holes and pick up every scrap, there is no such thing. There, it blows nothing but dust. There, sharp eyes and sharp stomachs reap even the east wind, and get something out of it.
The wind sawed, and the sawdust whirled. The shrubs wrung their many hands, bemoaning that they had been over-persuaded by the sun to bud; the young leaves pined; the sparrows repented of their early marriages, like men and women; the colours of the rainbow were discernible, not in floral spring, but in the faces of the people whom it nibbled and pinched. And ever the wind sawed, and the sawdust whirled.
When the spring evenings are too long and light to shut out, and such weather is rife, the city which Mr Podsnap so explanatorily called London, Londres, London, is at its worst. Such a black shrill city, combining the qualities of a smoky house and a scolding wife; such a gritty city; such a hopeless city, with no rent in the leaden canopy of its sky; such a beleaguered city, invested by the great Marsh Forces of Essex and Kent. So the two old schoolfellows felt it to be, as, their dinner done, they turned towards the fire to smoke. Young Blight was gone, the coffee-house waiter was gone, the plates and dishes were gone, the wine was going – but not in the same direction.
‘The wind sounds up here,’ quoth Eugene, stirring the fire, ‘as if we were keeping a lighthouse. I wish we were.’
‘Don’t you think it would bore us?’ Lightwood asked.
‘Not more than any other place. And there would be no Circuit to go. But that’s a selfish consideration, personal to me.’
‘And no clients to come,’ added Lightwood. ‘Not that that’s a selfish consideration at all personal to me.’
‘If we were on an isolated rock in a stormy sea,’ said Eugene, smoking with his eyes on the fire, ‘Lady Tippins couldn’t put off to visit us, or, better still, might put off and get swamped. People couldn’t ask one to wedding breakfasts. There would be no Precedents to hammer at, except the plain-sailing Precedent of keeping the light up. It would be exciting to look out for wrecks.’
‘But otherwise,’ suggested Lightwood, ‘there might be a degree of sameness in the life.’
‘I have thought of that also,’ said Eugene, as if he really had been considering the subject in its various bearings with an eye to the business; ‘but it would be a defined and limited monotony. It would not extend beyond two people. Now, it’s a question with me, Mortimer, whether a monotony defined with that precision and limited to that extent, might not be more endurable than the unlimited monotony of one’s fellow-creatures.’
As Lightwood laughed and passed the wine, he remarked, ‘We shall have an opportunity, in our boating summer, of trying the question.’
‘An imperfect one,’ Eugene acquiesced, with a sigh, ‘but so we shall. I hope we may not prove too much for one another.’
‘Now, regarding your respected father,’ said Lightwood, bringing him to a subject they had expressly appointed to discuss: always the most slippery eel of eels of subjects to lay hold of.
‘Yes, regarding my respected father,’ assented Eugene, settling himself in his arm-chair. ‘I would rather have approached my respected father by candlelight, as a theme requiring a little artificial brilliancy; but we will take him by twilight, enlivened with a glow of Wallsend.’
He stirred the fire again as he spoke, and having made it blaze, resumed.
‘My respected father has found, down in the parental neighbourhood, a wife for his not-generally-respected son.’
‘With some money, of course?’
‘With some money, of course, or he would not have found her. My respected father – let me shorten the dutiful tautology by substituting in future M. R. F., which sounds military, and rather like the Duke of Wellington.’
‘What an absurd fellow you are, Eugene!’
‘Not at all, I assure you. M. R. F. having always in the clearest manner provided (as he calls it) for his children by pre-arranging from the hour of the birth of each, and sometimes from an earlier period, what the devoted little victim’s calling and course in life should be, M. R. F. pre-arranged for myself that I was to be the barrister I am (with the slight addition of an enormous practice, which has not accrued), and also the married man I am not.’
‘The first you have often told me.’
‘The first I have often told you. Considering myself sufficiently incongruous on my legal eminence, I have until now suppressed my domestic destiny. You know M. R. F., but not as well as I do. If you knew him as well as I do, he would amuse you.’
‘Filially spoken, Eugene!’
‘Perfectly so, believe me; and with every sentiment of affectionate deference towards M. R. F. But if he amuses me, I can’t help it. When my eldest brother was born, of course the rest of us knew (I mean the rest of us would have known, if we had been in existence) that he was heir to the Family Embarrassments – we call it before the company the Family Estate. But when my second brother was going to be born by-and-by, “this,” says M. R. F., “is a little pillar of the church.” Was born, and became a pillar of the church; a very shaky one. My third brother appeared, considerably in advance of his engagement to my mother; but M. R. F., not at all put out by surprise, instantly declared him a Circumnavigator. Was pitch-forked into the Navy, but has not circumnavigated. I announced myself and was disposed of with the highly satisfactory results embodied before you. When my younger brother was half an hour old, it was settled by M. R. F. that he should have a mechanical genius. And so on. Therefore I say that M. R. F. amuses me.’
‘Touching the lady, Eugene.’
‘There M. R. F. ceases to be amusing, because my intentions are opposed to touching the lady.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Not in the least.’
‘Hadn’t you better see her?’
‘My dear Mortimer, you have studied my character. Could I possibly go down there, labelled “ELIGIBLE. ON VIEW,” and meet the lady, similarly labelled? Anything to carry out M. R. F.‘s arrangements, I am sure, with the greatest pleasure – except matrimony. Could I possibly support it? I, so soon bored, so constantly, so fatally?’
‘But you are not a consistent fellow, Eugene.’
‘In susceptibility to boredom,’ returned that worthy, ‘I assure you I am the most consistent of mankind.’
‘Why, it was but now that you were dwelling in the advantages of a monotony of two.’
‘In a lighthouse. Do me the justice to remember the condition. In a lighthouse.’
Mortimer laughed again, and Eugene, having laughed too for the first time, as if he found himself on reflection rather entertaining, relapsed into his usual gloom, and drowsily said, as he enjoyed his cigar, ‘No, there is no help for it; one of the prophetic deliveries of M. R. F. must for ever remain unfulfilled. With every disposition to oblige him, he must submit to a failure.’
It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing and the sawdust was whirling outside paler windows. The underlying churchyard was already settling into deep dim shade, and the shade was creeping up to the housetops among which they sat. ‘As if,’ said Eugene, ‘as if the churchyard ghosts were rising.’
He had walked to the window with his cigar in his mouth, to exalt its flavour by comparing the fireside with the outside, when he stopped midway on his return to his arm-chair, and said:
‘Apparently one of the ghosts has lost its way, and dropped in to be directed. Look at this phantom!’
Lightwood, whose back was towards the door, turned his head, and there, in the darkness of the entry, stood a something in the likeness of a man: to whom he addressed the not irrelevant inquiry, ‘Who the devil are you?’
‘I ask your pardons, Governors,’ replied the ghost, in a hoarse double-barrelled whisper, ‘but might either on you be Lawyer Lightwood?’
‘What do you mean by not knocking at the door?’ demanded Mortimer.
‘I ask your pardons, Governors,’ replied the ghost, as before, ‘but probable you was not aware your door stood open.’
‘What do you want?’
Hereunto the ghost again hoarsely replied, in its double-barrelled manner, ‘I ask your pardons, Governors, but might one on you be Lawyer Lightwood?’
‘One of us is,’ said the owner of that name.
‘All right, Governors Both,’ returned the ghost, carefully closing the room door; ‘’tickler business.’
Mortimer lighted the candles. They showed the visitor to be an ill-looking visitor with a squinting leer, who, as he spoke, fumbled at an old sodden fur cap, formless and mangey, that looked like a furry animal, dog or cat, puppy or kitten, drowned and decaying.
‘Now,’ said Mortimer, ‘what is it?’
‘Governors Both,’ returned the man, in what he meant to be a wheedling tone, ‘which on you might be Lawyer Lightwood?’
‘I am.’
‘Lawyer Lightwood,’ ducking at him with a servile air, ‘I am a man as gets my living, and as seeks to get my living, by the sweat of my brow. Not to risk being done out of the sweat of my brow, by any chances, I should wish afore going further to be swore in.’
‘I am not a swearer in of people, man.’
The visitor, clearly anything but reliant on this assurance, doggedly muttered ‘Alfred David.’
‘Is that your name?’ asked Lightwood.
‘My name?’ returned the man. ‘No; I want to take a Alfred David.’
(Which Eugene, smoking and contemplating him, interpreted as meaning Affidavit.)
‘I tell you, my good fellow,’ said Lightwood, with his indolent laugh, ‘that I have nothing to do with swearing.’
‘He can swear at you,’ Eugene explained; ‘and so can I. But we can’t do more for you.’
Much discomfited by this information, the visitor turned the drowned dog or cat, puppy or kitten, about and about, and looked from one of the Governors Both to the other of the Governors Both, while he deeply considered within himself. At length he decided:
‘Then I must be took down.’
‘Where?’ asked Lightwood.
‘Here,’ said the man. ‘In pen and ink.’
‘First, let us know what your business is about.’
‘It’s about,’ said the man, taking a step forward, dropping his hoarse voice, and shading it with his hand, ‘it’s about from five to ten thousand pound reward. That’s what it’s about. It’s about Murder. That’s what it’s about.’
‘Come nearer the table. Sit down. Will you have a glass of wine?’
‘Yes, I will,’ said the man; ‘and I don’t deceive you, Governors.’
It was given him. Making a stiff arm to the elbow, he poured the wine into his mouth, tilted it into his right cheek, as saying, ‘What do you think of it?’ tilted it into his left cheek, as saying, ‘What do you think of it?’ jerked it into his stomach, as saying, ‘What do you think of it?’ To conclude, smacked his lips, as if all three replied, ‘We think well of it.’
‘Will you have another?’
‘Yes, I will,’ he repeated, ‘and I don’t deceive you, Governors.’ And also repeated the other proceedings.
‘Now,’ began Lightwood, ‘what’s your name?’
‘Why, there you’re rather fast, Lawyer Lightwood,’ he replied, in a remonstrant manner. ‘Don’t you see, Lawyer Lightwood? There you’re a little bit fast. I’m going to earn from five to ten thousand pound by the sweat of my brow; and as a poor man doing justice to the sweat of my brow, is it likely I can afford to part with so much as my name without its being took down?’
Deferring to the man’s sense of the binding powers of pen and ink and paper, Lightwood nodded acceptance of Eugene’s nodded proposal to take those spells in hand. Eugene, bringing them to the table, sat down as clerk or notary.
‘Now,’ said Lightwood, ‘what’s your name?’
But further precaution was still due to the sweat of this honest fellow’s brow.
‘I should wish, Lawyer Lightwood,’ he stipulated, ‘to have that T’other Governor as my witness that what I said I said. Consequent, will the T’other Governor be so good as chuck me his name and where he lives?’
Eugene, cigar in mouth and pen in hand, tossed him his card. After spelling it out slowly, the man made it into a little roll, and tied it up in an end of his neckerchief still more slowly.
‘Now,’ said Lightwood, for the third time, ‘if you have quite completed your various preparations, my friend, and have fully ascertained that your spirits are cool and not in any way hurried, what’s your name?’
‘Roger Riderhood.’
‘Dwelling-place?’
‘Lime’us Hole.’
‘Calling or occupation?’
Not quite so glib with this answer as with the previous two, Mr Riderhood gave in the definition, ‘Waterside character.’
‘Anything against you?’ Eugene quietly put in, as he wrote.
Rather baulked, Mr Riderhood evasively remarked, with an innocent air, that he believed the T’other Governor had asked him summa’t.
‘Ever in trouble?’ said Eugene.
‘Once.’ (Might happen to any man, Mr Riderhood added incidentally.)
‘On suspicion of – ’
‘Of seaman’s pocket,’ said Mr Riderhood. ‘Whereby I was in reality the man’s best friend, and tried to take care of him.’
‘With the sweat of your brow?’ asked Eugene.
‘Till it poured down like rain,’ said Roger Riderhood.
Eugene leaned back in his chair, and smoked with his eyes negligently turned on the informer, and his pen ready to reduce him to more writing. Lightwood also smoked, with his eyes negligently turned on the informer.
‘Now let me be took down again,’ said Riderhood, when he had turned the drowned cap over and under, and had brushed it the wrong way (if it had a right way) with his sleeve. ‘I give information that the man that done the Harmon Murder is Gaffer Hexam, the man that found the body. The hand of Jesse Hexam, commonly called Gaffer on the river and along shore, is the hand that done that deed. His hand and no other.’
The two friends glanced at one another with more serious faces than they had shown yet.
‘Tell us on what grounds you make this accusation,’ said Mortimer Lightwood.
‘On the grounds,’ answered Riderhood, wiping his face with his sleeve, ‘that I was Gaffer’s pardner, and suspected of him many a long day and many a dark night. On the grounds that I knowed his ways. On the grounds that I broke the pardnership because I see the danger; which I warn you his daughter may tell you another story about that, for anythink I can say, but you know what it’ll be worth, for she’d tell you lies, the world round and the heavens broad, to save her father. On the grounds that it’s well understood along the cause’ays and the stairs that he done it. On the grounds that he’s fell off from, because he done it. On the grounds that I will swear he done it. On the grounds that you may take me where you will, and get me sworn to it. I don’t want to back out of the consequences. I have made up my mind. Take me anywheres.’
‘All this is nothing,’ said Lightwood.
‘Nothing?’ repeated Riderhood, indignantly and amazedly.
‘Merely nothing. It goes to no more than that you suspect this man of the crime. You may do so with some reason, or you may do so with no reason, but he cannot be convicted on your suspicion.’
‘Haven’t I said – I appeal to the T’other Governor as my witness – haven’t I said from the first minute that I opened my mouth in this here world-without-end-everlasting chair’ (he evidently used that form of words as next in force to an affidavit), ‘that I was willing to swear that he done it? Haven’t I said, Take me and get me sworn to it? Don’t I say so now? You won’t deny it, Lawyer Lightwood?’
‘Surely not; but you only offer to swear to your suspicion, and I tell you it is not enough to swear to your suspicion.’
‘Not enough, ain’t it, Lawyer Lightwood?’ he cautiously demanded.
‘Positively not.’
‘And did I say it was enough? Now, I appeal to the T’other Governor. Now, fair! Did I say so?’
‘He certainly has not said that he had no more to tell,’ Eugene observed in a low voice without looking at him, ‘whatever he seemed to imply.’
‘Hah!’ cried the informer, triumphantly perceiving that the remark was generally in his favour, though apparently not closely understanding it. ‘Fort’nate for me I had a witness!’
‘Go on, then,’ said Lightwood. ‘Say out what you have to say. No after-thought.’
‘Let me be took down then!’ cried the informer, eagerly and anxiously. ‘Let me be took down, for by George and the Draggin I’m a coming to it now! Don’t do nothing to keep back from a honest man the fruits of the sweat of his brow! I give information, then, that he told me that he done it. Is that enough?’
‘Take care what you say, my friend,’ returned Mortimer.
‘Lawyer Lightwood, take care, you, what I say; for I judge you’ll be answerable for follering it up!’ Then, slowly and emphatically beating it all out with his open right hand on the palm of his left; ‘I, Roger Riderhood, Lime’us Hole, Waterside character, tell you, Lawyer Lightwood, that the man Jesse Hexam, commonly called upon the river and along-shore Gaffer, told me that he done the deed. What’s more, he told me with his own lips that he done the deed. What’s more, he said that he done the deed. And I’ll swear it!’
‘Where did he tell you so?’
‘Outside,’ replied Riderhood, always beating it out, with his head determinedly set askew, and his eyes watchfully dividing their attention between his two auditors, ‘outside the door of the Six Jolly Fellowships, towards a quarter after twelve o’clock at midnight – but I will not in my conscience undertake to swear to so fine a matter as five minutes – on the night when he picked up the body. The Six Jolly Fellowships won’t run away. If it turns out that he warn’t at the Six Jolly Fellowships that night at midnight, I’m a liar.’
