“Didn’t you say,” asked Riderhood, after watching him for a while with a sidelong glance, “as you had come back for a couple o’ hours’ rest?” But, even then he had to jog him with his elbow before he answered.
“Eh? Yes.”
“Hadn’t you better come in and take your couple o’ hours’ rest?”
“Thank you. Yes.”
With the look of one just awakened, he followed Riderhood into the lock-house, where the latter produced from a cupboard some cold salt beef and half a loaf, some gin in a bottle, and some water in a jug. The last he brought in, cool and dripping, from the river.
“There, t’otherest,” said Riderhood, stooping over him to put it on the table. “You’d better take a bite and a sup, afore you takes your snooze.” The draggling ends of the red neckerchief caught the schoolmaster’s eyes. Riderhood saw him look at it.
“Oh!” thought that worthy. “You’re a-taking notice, are you? Come! You shall have a good squint at it then.” With which reflection he sat down on the other side of the table, threw open his vest, and made a pretence of re-tying the neckerchief with much deliberation.
Bradley ate and drank. As he sat at his platter and mug, Riderhood saw him, again and yet again, steal a look at the neckerchief, as if he were correcting his slow observation and prompting his sluggish memory. “When you’re ready for your snooze,” said that honest creature, “chuck yourself on my bed in the corner, t’otherest. It’ll be broad day afore three. I’ll call you early.”
“I shall require no calling,” answered Bradley. And soon afterwards, divesting himself only of his shoes and coat, laid himself down.
Riderhood, leaning back in his wooden armchair with his arms folded on his breast, looked at him lying with his right hand clenched in his sleep and his teeth set, until a film came over his own sight, and he slept too. He awoke to find that it was daylight, and that his visitor was already astir, and going out to the riverside to cool his head:—“Though I’m blest,” muttered Riderhood at the lock-house door, looking after him, “if I think there’s water enough in all the Thames to do that for you!” Within five minutes he had taken his departure, and was passing on into the calm distance as he had passed yesterday. Riderhood knew when a fish leaped, by his starting and glancing round.
“Lock ho! Lock!” at intervals all day, and “Lock ho! Lock!” thrice in the ensuing night, but no return of Bradley. The second day was sultry and oppressive. In the afternoon, a thunderstorm came up, and had but newly broken into a furious sweep of rain when he rushed in at the door, like the storm itself.
“You’ve seen him with her!” exclaimed Riderhood, starting up.
“I have.”
“Where?”
“At his journey’s end. His boat’s hauled up for three days. I heard him give the order. Then, I saw him wait for her and meet her. I saw them”—he stopped as though he were suffocating, and began again—“I saw them walking side by side, last night.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you going to do?”
He dropped into a chair, and laughed. Immediately afterwards, a great spirt of blood burst from his nose.
“How does that happen?” asked Riderhood.
“I don’t know. I can’t keep it back. It has happened twice—three times—four times—I don’t know how many times—since last night. I taste it, smell it, see it, it chokes me, and then it breaks out like this.”
He went into the pelting rain again with his head bare, and, bending low over the river, and scooping up the water with his two hands, washed the blood away. All beyond his figure, as Riderhood looked from the door, was a vast dark curtain in solemn movement towards one quarter of the heavens. He raised his head and came back, wet from head to foot, but with the lower parts of his sleeves, where he had dipped into the river, streaming water.
“Your face is like a ghost’s,” said Riderhood.
“Did you ever see a ghost?” was the sullen retort.
“I mean to say, you’re quite wore out.”
“That may well be. I have had no rest since I left here. I don’t remember that I have so much as sat down since I left here.”
“Lie down now, then,” said Riderhood.
“I will, if you’ll give me something to quench my thirst first.”
The bottle and jug were again produced, and he mixed a weak draught, and another, and drank both in quick succession. “You asked me something,” he said then.
“No, I didn’t,” replied Riderhood.
“I tell you,” retorted Bradley, turning upon him in a wild and desperate manner, “you asked me something, before I went out to wash my face in the river.
“Oh! Then?” said Riderhood, backing a little. “I asked you wot you wos a-going to do.”
“How can a man in this state know?” he answered, protesting with both his tremulous hands, with an action so vigorously angry that he shook the water from his sleeves upon the floor, as if he had wrung them. “How can I plan anything, if I haven’t sleep?”
“Why, that’s what I as good as said,” returned the other. “Didn’t I say lie down?”
“Well, perhaps you did.”
“Well! Anyways I says it again. Sleep where you slept last; the sounder and longer you can sleep, the better you’ll know arterwards what you’re up to.”
His pointing to the truckle bed in the corner, seemed gradually to bring that poor couch to Bradley’s wandering remembrance. He slipped off his worn downtrodden shoes, and cast himself heavily, all wet as he was, upon the bed.
Riderhood sat down in his wooden armchair, and looked through the window at the lightning, and listened to the thunder. But, his thoughts were far from being absorbed by the thunder and the lightning, for again and again and again he looked very curiously at the exhausted man upon the bed. The man had turned up the collar of the rough coat
