CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CONCLUSION OF THE ENTERPRISE OF MR JONAS AND HIS FRIEND
Did no men passing through the dim streets shrink without knowing why,when he came stealing up behind them? As he glided on, had no child inits sleep an indistinct perception of a guilty shadow falling on itsbed, that troubled its innocent rest? Did no dog howl, and strive tobreak its rattling chain, that it might tear him; no burrowing rat,scenting the work he had in hand, essay to gnaw a passage after him,that it might hold a greedy revel at the feast of his providing? When helooked back, across his shoulder, was it to see if his quick footstepsstill fell dry upon the dusty pavement, or were already moist andclogged with the red mire that stained the naked feet of Cain!
He shaped his course for the main western road, and soon reached it;riding a part of the way, then alighting and walking on again. Hetravelled for a considerable distance upon the roof of a stage-coach,which came up while he was afoot; and when it turned out of his road,bribed the driver of a return post-chaise to take him on with him; andthen made across the country at a run, and saved a mile or two before hestruck again into the road. At last, as his plan was, he came up with acertain lumbering, slow, night-coach, which stopped wherever it could,and was stopping then at a public-house, while the guard and coachmanate and drank within.
He bargained for a seat outside this coach, and took it. And he quittedit no more until it was within a few miles of its destination, butoccupied the same place all night.
All night! It is a common fancy that nature seems to sleep by night. Itis a false fancy, as who should know better than he?
The fishes slumbered in the cold, bright, glistening streams and rivers,perhaps; and the birds roosted on the branches of the trees; and intheir stalls and pastures beasts were quiet; and human creatures slept.But what of that, when the solemn night was watching, when it neverwinked, when its darkness watched no less than its light! The statelytrees, the moon and shining stars, the softly stirring wind, theover-shadowed lane, the broad, bright countryside, they all kept watch.There was not a blade of growing grass or corn, but watched; and thequieter it was, the more intent and fixed its watch upon him seemed tobe.
And yet he slept. Riding on among those sentinels of God, he slept,and did not change the purpose of his journey. If he forgot it in histroubled dreams, it came up steadily, and woke him. But it never wokehim to remorse, or to abandonment of his design.
He dreamed at one time that he was lying calmly in his bed, thinking ofa moonlight night and the noise of wheels, when the old clerk puthis head in at the door, and beckoned him. At this signal he aroseimmediately--being already dressed in the clothes he actually wore atthat time--and accompanied him into a strange city, where the names ofthe streets were written on the walls in characters quite new to him;which gave him no surprise or uneasiness, for he remembered in his dreamto have been there before. Although these streets were very precipitous,insomuch that to get from one to another it was necessary to descendgreat heights by ladders that were too short, and ropes that moved deepbells, and swung and swayed as they were clung to, the danger gave himlittle emotion beyond the first thrill of terror; his anxieties beingconcentrated on his dress which was quite unfitted for some festivalthat was about to be holden there, and in which he had come to takea part. Already, great crowds began to fill the streets, and inone direction myriads of people came rushing down an interminableperspective, strewing flowers and making way for others on white horses,when a terrible figure started from the throng, and cried out that itwas the Last Day for all the world. The cry being spread, there was awild hurrying on to Judgment; and the press became so great that he andhis companion (who was constantly changing, and was never the same mantwo minutes together, though he never saw one man come or another go),stood aside in a porch, fearfully surveying the multitude; in whichthere were many faces that he knew, and many that he did not know, butdreamed he did; when all at once a struggling head rose up among therest--livid and deadly, but the same as he had known it--and denouncedhim as having appointed that direful day to happen. They closedtogether. As he strove to free the hand in which he held a club, andstrike the blow he had so often thought of, he started to the knowledgeof his waking purpose and the rising of the sun.
The sun was welcome to him. There were life and motion, and a worldastir, to divide the attention of Day. It was the eye of Night--ofwakeful, watchful, silent, and attentive Night, with so much leisure forthe observation of his wicked thoughts--that he dreaded most. There isno glare in the night. Even Glory shows to small advantage in the night,upon a crowded battle-field. How then shows Glory's blood-relation,bastard Murder!
Aye! He made no compromise, and held no secret with himself now. Murder.He had come to do it.
'Let me get down here' he said
'Short of the town, eh!' observed the coachman.
'I may get down where I please, I suppose?'
'You got up to please yourself, and may get down to please yourself. Itwon't break our hearts to lose you, and it wouldn't have broken 'em ifwe'd never found you. Be a little quicker. That's all.'
The guard had alighted, and was waiting in the road to take his money.In the jealousy and distrust of what he contemplated, he thought thisman looked at him with more than common curiosity.
'What are you staring at?' said Jonas.
'Not at a handsome man,' returned the guard. 'If you want your fortunetold, I'll tell you a bit of it. You won't be drowned. That's aconsolation for you.'
Before he could retort or turn away, the coachman put an end to thedialogue by giving him a cut with his whip, and bidding him get out for asurly dog. The guard jumped up to his seat at the same moment, and theydrove off, laughing; leaving him to stand in the road and shake his fistat them. He was not displeased though, on second thoughts, to havebeen taken for an ill-conditioned common country fellow; but rathercongratulated himself upon it as a proof that he was well disguised.
Wandering into a copse by the road-side--but not in that place; two orthree miles off--he tore out from a fence a thick, hard, knotted stake;and, sitting down beneath a hayrick, spent some time in shaping it, inpeeling off the bark, and fashioning its jagged head with his knife.
The day passed on. Noon, afternoon, evening. Sunset.
At that serene and peaceful time two men, riding in a gig, came outof the city by a road not much frequented. It was the day on which MrPecksniff had agreed to dine with Montague. He had kept his appointment,and was now going home. His host was riding with him for a shortdistance; meaning to return by a pleasant track, which Mr Pecksniff hadengaged to show him, through some fields. Jonas knew their plans. He hadhung about the inn-yard while they were at dinner and had heard theirorders given.
They were loud and merry in their conversation, and might have beenheard at some distance; far above the sound of their carriage wheelsor horses' hoofs. They came on noisily, to where a stile and footpathindicated their point of separation. Here they stopped.
'It's too soon. Much too soon,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'But this is theplace, my dear sir. Keep the path, and go straight through the littlewood you'll come to. The path is narrower there, but you can't miss it.When shall I see you again? Soon I hope?'
'I hope so,' replied Montague.
'Good night!'
'Good night. And a pleasant ride!'
So long as Mr Pecksniff was in sight, and turned his head at intervalsto salute him, Montague stood in the road smiling, and waving his hand.But when his new partner had disappeared, and this show was no longernecessary, he sat down on the stile with looks so altered, that he mighthave grown ten years older in the meantime.
He was flushed with wine, but not gay. His scheme had succeeded, but heshowed no triumph. The effort of sustaining his difficult part beforehis late companion had fatigued him, perhaps, or it may be that theevening whispered to his conscience, or it may be (as it HAS been) thata shadowy veil was dropping round him, closing out all thoughts but thepresentiment and vague
foreknowledge of impending doom.
If there be fluids, as we know there are, which, conscious of a comingwind, or rain, or frost, will shrink and strive to hide themselves intheir glass arteries; may not that subtle liquor of the blood perceive,by properties within itself, that hands are raised to waste and spillit; and in the veins of men run cold and dull as his did, in that hour!
So cold, although the air was warm; so dull, although the sky wasbright; that he rose up shivering from his seat, and hastily resumedhis walk. He checked himself as hastily; undecided whether to pursue thefootpath, which was lonely and retired, or to go back by the road.
He took the footpath.
The glory of the departing sun was on his face. The music of the birdswas in his ears. Sweet wild flowers bloomed about him. Thatched roofs ofpoor men's homes were in the distance; and an old grey spire, surmountedby a Cross, rose up between him and the coming night.
He had never read the lesson which these things conveyed; he had evermocked and turned away from it; but, before going down into a hollowplace, he looked round, once, upon the evening prospect, sorrowfully.Then he went down, down, down, into the dell.
It brought him to the wood; a close, thick, shadowy wood, through whichthe path went winding on, dwindling away into a slender sheep-track. Hepaused before entering; for the stillness of this spot almost dauntedhim.
The last rays of the sun were shining in, aslant, making a path ofgolden light along the stems and branches in its range, which, even ashe looked, began to die away, yielding gently to the twilight that camecreeping on. It was so very quiet that the soft and stealthy moss aboutthe trunks of some old trees, seemed to have grown out of the silence,and to be its proper offspring. Those other trees which were subduedby blasts of wind in winter time, had not quite tumbled down, but beingcaught by others, lay all bare and scathed across their leafy arms, asif unwilling to disturb the general repose by the crash of their fall.Vistas of silence opened everywhere, into the heart and innermostrecesses of the wood; beginning with the likeness of an aisle, acloister, or a ruin open to the sky; then tangling off into a deep greenrustling mystery, through which gnarled trunks, and twisted boughs, andivy-covered stems, and trembling leaves, and bark-stripped bodies of oldtrees stretched out at length, were faintly seen in beautiful confusion.
As the sunlight died away, and evening fell upon the wood, he enteredit. Moving, here and there a bramble or a drooping bough which stretchedacross his path, he slowly disappeared. At intervals a narrow openingshowed him passing on, or the sharp cracking of some tender branchdenoted where he went; then, he was seen or heard no more.
Never more beheld by mortal eye or heard by mortal ear; one manexcepted. That man, parting the leaves and branches on the other side,near where the path emerged again, came leaping out soon afterwards.
What had he left within the wood, that he sprang out of it as if it werea hell!
The body of a murdered man. In one thick solitary spot, it lay amongthe last year's leaves of oak and beech, just as it had fallen headlongdown. Sopping and soaking in among the leaves that formed its pillow;oozing down into the boggy ground, as if to cover itself from humansight; forcing its way between and through the curling leaves, as ifthose senseless things rejected and forswore it and were coiled up inabhorrence; went a dark, dark stain that dyed the whole summer nightfrom earth to heaven.
The doer of this deed came leaping from the wood so fiercely, that hecast into the air a shower of fragments of young boughs, torn awayin his passage, and fell with violence upon the grass. But he quicklygained his feet again, and keeping underneath a hedge with his bodybent, went running on towards the road. The road once reached, he fellinto a rapid walk, and set on toward London.
And he was not sorry for what he had done. He was frightened when hethought of it--when did he not think of it!--but he was not sorry. Hehad had a terror and dread of the wood when he was in it; but beingout of it, and having committed the crime, his fears were now diverted,strangely, to the dark room he had left shut up at home. He had agreater horror, infinitely greater, of that room than of the wood. Nowthat he was on his return to it, it seemed beyond comparison more dismaland more dreadful than the wood. His hideous secret was shut up in theroom, and all its terrors were there; to his thinking it was not in thewood at all.
He walked on for ten miles; and then stopped at an ale-house for acoach, which he knew would pass through, on its way to London, beforelong; and which he also knew was not the coach he had travelled down by,for it came from another place. He sat down outside the door here, ona bench, beside a man who was smoking his pipe. Having called for somebeer, and drunk, he offered it to this companion, who thanked him, andtook a draught. He could not help thinking that, if the man had knownall, he might scarcely have relished drinking out of the same cup withhim.
'A fine night, master!' said this person. 'And a rare sunset.'
'I didn't see it,' was his hasty answer.
'Didn't see it?' returned the man.
'How the devil could I see it, if I was asleep?'
'Asleep! Aye, aye.' The man appeared surprised by his unexpectedirritability, and saying no more, smoked his pipe in silence. They hadnot sat very long, when there was a knocking within.
'What's that?' cried Jonas.
'Can't say, I'm sure,' replied the man.
He made no further inquiry, for the last question had escaped him inspite of himself. But he was thinking, at the moment, of the closed-uproom; of the possibility of their knocking at the door on some specialoccasion; of their being alarmed at receiving no answer; of theirbursting it open; of their finding the room empty; of their fasteningthe door into the court, and rendering it impossible for him to get intothe house without showing himself in the garb he wore, which would leadto rumour, rumour to detection, detection to death. At that instant, asif by some design and order of circumstances, the knocking had come.
It still continued; like a warning echo of the dread reality he hadconjured up. As he could not sit and hear it, he paid for his beer andwalked on again. And having slunk about, in places unknown to him allday; and being out at night, in a lonely road, in an unusual dress andin that wandering and unsettled frame of mind; he stopped more than onceto look about him, hoping he might be in a dream.
Still he was not sorry. No. He had hated the man too much, and had beenbent, too desperately and too long, on setting himself free. If thething could have come over again, he would have done it again. Hismalignant and revengeful passions were not so easily laid. There was nomore penitence or remorse within him now than there had been while thedeed was brewing.
Dread and fear were upon him, to an extent he had never counted on, andcould not manage in the least degree. He was so horribly afraid of thatinfernal room at home. This made him, in a gloomy murderous, mad way,not only fearful FOR himself, but OF himself; for being, as it were, apart of the room: a something supposed to be there, yet missing from it:he invested himself with its mysterious terrors; and when he pictured inhis mind the ugly chamber, false and quiet, false and quiet, through thedark hours of two nights; and the tumbled bed, and he not in it, thoughbelieved to be; he became in a manner his own ghost and phantom, and wasat once the haunting spirit and the haunted man.
When the coach came up, which it soon did, he got a place outside andwas carried briskly onward towards home. Now, in taking his seat amongthe people behind, who were chiefly country people, he conceived a fearthat they knew of the murder, and would tell him that the body had beenfound; which, considering the time and place of the commission of thecrime, were events almost impossible to have happened yet, as he verywell knew. But although he did know it, and had therefore no reasonto regard their ignorance as anything but the natural sequence tothe facts, still this very ignorance of theirs encouraged him. So farencouraged him, that he began to believe the body never would be found,and began to speculate on that probability. Setting off from this point,and measuring time by the rapid hurry of his guilty thoughts, andw
hat had gone before the bloodshed, and the troops of incoherent anddisordered images of which he was the constant prey; he came bydaylight to regard the murder as an old murder, and to think himselfcomparatively safe because it had not been discovered yet. Yet! When thesun which looked into the wood, and gilded with its rising light a deadman's lace, had seen that man alive, and sought to win him to a thoughtof Heaven, on its going down last night!
But here were London streets again. Hush!
It was but five o'clock. He had time enough to reach his own houseunobserved, and before there were many people in the streets, if nothinghad happened so far, tending to his discovery. He slipped down fromthe coach without troubling the driver to stop his horses; and hurryingacross the road, and in and out of every by-way that lay near hiscourse, at length approached his own dwelling. He used additionalcaution in his immediate neighbourhood; halting first to look alldown the street before him; then gliding swiftly through that one, andstopping to survey the next, and so on.
The passage-way was empty when his murderer's face looked into it. Hestole on, to the door on tiptoe, as if he dreaded to disturb his ownimaginary rest.
He listened. Not a sound. As he turned the key with a trembling hand,and pushed the door softly open with his knee, a monstrous fear besethis mind.
What if the murdered man were there before him!
He cast a fearful glance all round. But there was nothing there.
He went in, locked the door, drew the key through and through the dustand damp in the fire-place to sully it again, and hung it up as of old.He took off his disguise, tied it up in a bundle ready for carrying awayand sinking in the river before night, and locked it up in a cupboard.These precautions taken, he undressed and went to bed.
The raging thirst, the fire that burnt within him as he lay beneath theclothes, the augmented horror of the room when they shut it out from hisview; the agony of listening, in which he paid enforced regard to everysound, and thought the most unlikely one the prelude to that knockingwhich should bring the news; the starts with which he left his couch,and looking in the glass, imagined that his deed was broadly writtenin his face, and lying down and burying himself once more beneath theblankets, heard his own heart beating Murder, Murder, Murder, in thebed; what words can paint tremendous truths like these!
The morning advanced. There were footsteps in the house. He heard theblinds drawn up, and shutters opened; and now and then a stealthy treadoutside his own door. He tried to call out, more than once, but hismouth was dry as if it had been filled with sand. At last he sat up inhis bed, and cried:
'Who's there?'
It was his wife.
He asked her what it was o'clock? Nine.
'Did--did no one knock at my door yesterday?' he faltered. 'Somethingdisturbed me; but unless you had knocked the door down, you would havegot no notice from me.'
'No one,' she replied. That was well. He had waited, almost breathless,for her answer. It was a relief to him, if anything could be.
'Mr Nadgett wanted to see you,' she said, 'but I told him you weretired, and had requested not to be disturbed. He said it was of littleconsequence, and went away. As I was opening my window to let in thecool air, I saw him passing through the street this morning, very early;but he hasn't been again.'
Passing through the street that morning? Very early! Jonas trembled atthe thought of having had a narrow chance of seeing him himself; evenhim, who had no object but to avoid people, and sneak on unobserved, andkeep his own secrets; and who saw nothing.
He called to her to get his breakfast ready, and prepared to goupstairs; attiring himself in the clothes he had taken off when he cameinto that room, which had been, ever since, outside the door. In hissecret dread of meeting the household for the first time, after what hehad done, he lingered at the door on slight pretexts that they might seehim without looking in his face; and left it ajar while he dressed; andcalled out to have the windows opened, and the pavement watered, thatthey might become accustomed to his voice. Even when he had put off thetime, by one means or other, so that he had seen or spoken to them all,he could not muster courage for a long while to go in among them,but stood at his own door listening to the murmur of their distantconversation.
He could not stop there for ever, and so joined them. His last glance atthe glass had seen a tell-tale face, but that might have been becauseof his anxious looking in it. He dared not look at them to see if theyobserved him, but he thought them very silent.
And whatsoever guard he kept upon himself, he could not help listening,and showing that he listened. Whether he attended to their talk, ortried to think of other things, or talked himself, or held his peace, orresolutely counted the dull tickings of a hoarse clock at his back, healways lapsed, as if a spell were on him, into eager listening. Forhe knew it must come. And his present punishment, and torture anddistraction, were, to listen for its coming.
Hush!