Page images
PDF
EPUB

settled. Few people were to be seen and fewer trucks. I mounted the slope of the Bridge and leaned over the parapet, revelling for hours in the stir of the river. The sun had sunk in a dull mist and there was but little wind; the clouds of smoke rolling from the steamers kept abreast of their funnels, the black columns mounting straight up. Lights, large and small, like a swarm of fireflies, began to break out, speckling the great city. Night came on. In the gloom the outline of the larger masses on the opposite bank were merged into the slowly settling haze which fell like a drop-curtain, pricked here and there by pinpoints of light. It was now Gaffer's hourthe hour when:

"A boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark Bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.

"The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty, sufficiently like him to be recognisable as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands

loose in his waist-band, kept an eager look-out. He had no net, hook, or line, and he could not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boat-hook and a coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy and too small to take in a cargo for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or a river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked for something, with a most intent and searching gaze. The tide, which had turned an hour before, was running down, and his eyes watched every little race and eddy in its broad sweep, as the boat made slight headway against it, or drove stern foremost before it, according as he directed his daughter by a movement of his head. She watched his face as earnestly as she watched the river. But, in the intensity of her look there was a touch of dread or horror.

666

Keep her out, Lizzie. Tide runs strong here. Keep her well afore the sweep of it.'

"Trusting to the girl's skill and making no use of the rudder, he eyed the coming tide with an absorbed attention. So the girl eyed him. But, it happened now, that a slant of light from the setting sun glanced into the bottom of the boat, and, touching a rotten stain there

which bore some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human form, coloured it as though with diluted blood. This caught the girl's eye, and she shivered.

"What ails you?' said the man, immediately aware of it, though so intent on the advancing waters; 'I see nothing afloat.'

"The red light was gone, the shudder was gone, and his gaze, which had come back to the boat for a moment, travelled away again.

66

[ocr errors]

'Always watching his face, the girl instantly answered to the action in the sculling; presently the boat swung round, quivered as from a sudden jerk, and the upper half of the man was stretched out over the stern.

"The girl pulled the hood of a cloak she wore over her head and over her face, . . . the banks changed swiftly, and the deepening shadows and the kindling lights of London Bridge were passed, and the tiers of shipping lay on either hand.

"It was not until now that the upper half of the man came back into the boat. His arms were wet and dirty, and he washed them over the side. In his right hand he held something, and he washed that in the river too. It was money. He chinked it once, and he blew upon

it once, and he spat upon it once,

luck,' he hoarsely said

his pocket."

'for

before he put it in

CHAPTER XIII

MR. GREWGIOUS'S OFFICE IN STAPLE INN, WHERE EDWIN DROOD DINED “ONE FOGGY NIGHT"

NE cold, raw November day, some two

ON

years ago, when at work on the Thackeray series, I leaned over the half-door of the janitor's quarters, located just inside the archway leading to the first quadrangle of Staple Inn, his front windows overlooking Holborn, explained my purpose, was directed to the executors of the dear departed Furnival's Inn, a great insurance company with a tender heart and an eye for the picturesque; and later on was given a character and a clerk, a most obliging and courteous clerk who became at once responsible for my further actions and said so to the janitor.

On that occasion my purpose was to make a drawing of the inner courtyard in which Mr. Thackeray hid his mortification (if he did not cool his wrath) when, after having applied to the young Mr. Dickens for permission to illus

« PreviousContinue »