Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend

BOOK THE FIRST: THE CUP AND THE LIP Chapter 12: The Sweat of an Honest Man's Brow (continued)

'It ain't what I implicate, it's what Gaffer implicated,' was the dogged and determined answer. 'I don't pretend to know more than that his words to me was, "I done it." Those was his words.'

'I must see this out, Mortimer,' whispered Eugene, rising. 'How shall we go?'

'Let us walk,' whispered Lightwood, 'and give this fellow time to think of it.'

Having exchanged the question and answer, they prepared themselves for going out, and Mr Riderhood rose. While extinguishing the candles, Lightwood, quite as a matter of course took up the glass from which that honest gentleman had drunk, and coolly tossed it under the grate, where it fell shivering into fragments.

'Now, if you will take the lead,' said Lightwood, 'Mr Wrayburn and I will follow. You know where to go, I suppose?'

'I suppose I do, Lawyer Lightwood.'

'Take the lead, then.'

The waterside character pulled his drowned cap over his ears with both hands, and making himself more round-shouldered than nature had made him, by the sullen and persistent slouch with which he went, went down the stairs, round by the Temple Church, across the Temple into Whitefriars, and so on by the waterside streets.

'Look at his hang-dog air,' said Lightwood, following.

'It strikes me rather as a hang-MAN air,' returned Eugene. 'He has undeniable intentions that way.'

They said little else as they followed. He went on before them as an ugly Fate might have done, and they kept him in view, and would have been glad enough to lose sight of him. But on he went before them, always at the same distance, and the same rate. Aslant against the hard implacable weather and the rough wind, he was no more to be driven back than hurried forward, but held on like an advancing Destiny. There came, when they were about midway on their journey, a heavy rush of hail, which in a few minutes pelted the streets clear, and whitened them. It made no difference to him. A man's life being to be taken and the price of it got, the hailstones to arrest the purpose must lie larger and deeper than those. He crnshed through them, leaving marks in the fast- melting slush that were mere shapeless holes; one might have fancied, following, that the very fashion of humanity had departed from his feet.