Robert Falconer

‘Look,’ he said, ‘how it crawls along—black and slimy! how silent and yet how fierce! Is that a nice place to go to down there? Would there be any rest there, do you think, tumbled about among filth and creeping things, and slugs that feed on the dead; among drowned women like yourself drifting by, and murdered men, and strangled babies? Is that the door by which you would like to go out of the world?’

‘It’s no worse,’ she faltered, ‘—not so bad as what I should leave behind.’

‘If this were the only way out of it, I would not keep you from it. I would say, “Poor thing! there is no help: she must go.” But there is another way.’

‘There is no other way, sir—if you knew all,’ she said.

‘Tell me, then.’

‘I cannot. I dare not. Please—I would rather go.’

She looked, from the mere glimpses I could get of her, somewhere about five-and-twenty, making due allowance for the wear of suffering so evident even in those glimpses. I think she might have been beautiful if the waste of her history could have been restored. That she had had at least some advantages of education, was evident from both her tone and her speech. But oh, the wild eyes, and the tortured lips, drawn back from the teeth with an agony of hopelessness, as she struggled anew, perhaps mistrusting them, to escape from the great arms that held her!

‘But the river cannot drown you,’ Falconer said. ‘It can only stop your breath. It cannot stop your thinking. You will go on thinking, thinking, all the same. Drowning people remember in a moment all their past lives. All their evil deeds come up before them, as if they were doing them all over again. So they plunge back into the past and all its misery. While their bodies are drowning, their souls are coming more and more awake.’

‘That is dreadful,’ she murmured, with her great eyes fixed on his, and growing steadier in their regard. She had ceased to struggle, so he had slackened his hold of her, and she was leaning back against the fence.

‘And then,’ he went on, ‘what if, instead of closing your eyes, as you expected, and going to sleep, and forgetting everything, you should find them come open all at once, in the midst of a multitude of eyes all round about you, all looking at you, all thinking about you, all judging you? What if you should hear, not a tumult of voices and noises, from which you could hope to hide, but a solemn company talking about you—every word clear and plain, piercing your heart with what you could not deny,—and you standing naked and shivering in the midst of them?’

‘It is too dreadful!’ she cried, making a movement as if the very horror of the idea had a fascination to draw her towards the realization of it. ‘But,’ she added, yielding to Falconer’s renewed grasp, ‘they wouldn’t be so hard upon me there. They would not be so cruel as men are here.’

‘Surely not. But all men are not cruel. I am not cruel,’ he added, forgetting himself for a moment, and caressing with his huge hand the wild pale face that glimmered upon him as it were out of the infinite night—all but swallowed up in it.

She drew herself back, and Falconer, instantly removing his hand, said,

‘Look in my face, child, and see whether you cannot trust me.’

As he uttered the words, he took off his hat, and stood bare-headed in the moon, which now broke out clear from the clouds. She did look at him. His hair blew about his face. He turned it towards the wind and the moon, and away from her, that she might be undisturbed in her scrutiny. But how she judged of him, I cannot tell; for the next moment he called out in a tone of repressed excitement,

‘Gordon, Gordon, look there—above your head, on the other bridge.’

I looked and saw a gray head peering over the same gap through which Falconer had looked a few minutes before. I knew something of his personal quest by this time, and concluded at once that he thought it was or might be his father.

‘I cannot leave the poor thing—I dare not,’ he said.

I understood him, and darted off at full speed for the Surrey end of the bridge. What made me choose that end, I do not know; but I was right.

I had some reason to fear that I might be stopped when I reached it, as I had no business to be upon the new bridge. I therefore managed, where the upper bridge sank again towards a level with the lower, to scramble back upon it. As I did so the tall gray-headed man passed me with an uncertain step. I did not see his face. I followed him a few yards behind. He seemed to hear and dislike the sound of my footsteps, for he quickened his pace. I let him increase the distance between us, but followed him still. He turned down the river. I followed. He began to double. I doubled after him. Not a turn could he get before me. He crossed all the main roads leading to the bridges till he came to the last—when he turned toward London Bridge. At the other end, he went down the stairs into Thames Street, and held eastward still. It was not difficult to keep up with him, for his stride though long was slow. He never looked round, and I never saw his face; but I could not help fancying that his back and his gait and his carriage were very like Falconer’s.

We were now in a quarter of which I knew nothing, but as far as I can guess from after knowledge, it was one of the worst districts in London, lying to the east of Spital Square. It was late, and there were not many people about.

As I passed a court, I was accosted thus:

‘’Ain’t you got a glass of ale for a poor cove, gov’nor?’

‘I have no coppers,’ I said hastily. ‘I am in a hurry besides,’ I added as I walked on.

‘Come, come!’ he said, getting up with me in a moment, ‘that ain’t a civil answer to give a cove after his lush, that ‘ain’t got a blessed mag.’

As he spoke he laid his hand rather heavily on my arm. He was a lumpy-looking individual, like a groom who had been discharged for stealing his horse’s provender, and had not quite worn out the clothes he had brought with him. From the opposite side at the same moment, another man appeared, low in stature, pale, and marked with the small-pox.

He advanced upon me at right angles. I shook off the hand of the first, and I confess would have taken to my heels, for more reasons than one, but almost before I was clear of him, the other came against me, and shoved me into one of the low-browed entries which abounded.

I was so eager to follow my chase that I acted foolishly throughout. I ought to have emptied my pockets at once; but I was unwilling to lose a watch which was an old family piece, and of value besides.

‘Come, come! I don’t carry a barrel of ale in my pocket,’ I said, thinking to keep them in good-humour. I know better now. Some of these roughs will take all you have in the most good-humoured way in the world, bandying chaff with you all the time. I had got amongst another set, however.

‘Leastways you’ve got as good,’ said a third, approaching from the court, as villanous-looking a fellow as I have ever seen.

‘This is hardly the right way to ask for it,’ I said, looking out for a chance of bolting, but putting my hand in my pocket at the same time. I confess again I acted very stupidly throughout the whole affair, but it was my first experience.

‘It’s a way we’ve got down here, anyhow,’ said the third with a brutal laugh. ‘Look out, Savoury Sam,’ he added to one of them.

‘Now I don’t want to hurt you,’ struck in the first, coming nearer, ‘but if you gives tongue, I’ll make cold meat of you, and gouge your pockets at my leisure, before ever a blueskin can turn the corner.’

Two or three more came sidling up with their hands in their pockets.

‘What have you got there, Slicer?’ said one of them, addressing the third, who looked like a ticket-of-leave man.

‘We’ve cotched a pig-headed counter-jumper here, that didn’t know Jim there from a man-trap, and went by him as if he’d been a bull-dog on a long-chain. He wants to fight cocum. But we won’t trouble him. We’ll help ourselves. Shell out now.’

As he spoke he made a snatch at my watch-chain. I forgot myself and hit him. The same moment I received a blow on the head, and felt the blood running down my face. I did not quite lose my senses, though, for I remember seeing yet another man—a tall fellow, coming out of the gloom of the court. How it came into my mind, I do not know, and what I said I do not remember, but I must have mentioned Falconer’s name somehow.

The man they called Slicer, said,

‘Who’s he? Don’t know the—.’

Words followed which I cannot write.

‘What! you devil’s gossoon!’ returned an Irish voice I had not heard before. ‘You don’t know Long Bob, you gonnof!’

All that passed I heard distinctly, but I was in a half faint, I suppose, for I could no longer see.

‘Now what the devil in a dice-box do you mean?’ said Slicer, possessing himself of my watch. ‘Who is the blasted cove?—not that I care a flash of damnation.’

‘A man as ‘ll knock you down if he thinks you want it, or give you a half-a-crown if he thinks you want it—all’s one to him, only he’ll have the choosing which.’

‘What the hell’s that to me? Look spry. He mustn’t lie there all night. It’s too near the ken. Come along, you Scotch haddock.’

I was aware of a kick in the side as he spoke.

‘I tell you what it is, Slicer,’ said one whose voice I had not yet heard, ‘if so be this gentleman’s a friend of Long Bob, you just let him alone, I say.’

I opened my eyes now, and saw before me a tall rather slender man in a big loose dress-coat, to whom Slicer had turned with the words,

‘You say! Ha! ha! Well, I say—There’s my Scotch haddock! who’ll touch him?’

‘I’ll take him home,’ said the tall man, advancing towards me. I made an attempt to rise. But I grew deadly ill, fell back, and remember nothing more.