“Just to think of that young man serving me so!” said Dame Worthington, when sufficiently recovered from her state of collapse to articulate coherently. “Just to think of him who’s been more than a mother, to knock over my flowers and the gold fish, to tumble over me in the passage and go to sleep lying in my room, without word of apology, in a state of senselessness; laughing with the lodgers on the stairs, and to go to bed with Mistress Haylark in a delicate state of health on the landing! Oh, Mary, Mary! that I should have lived to see him with my own eyes in bed in the parlour, laughing, making fun, and tumbling over me before you and Mistress Haylark’s daughter, which is old enough to be his mother! Deary me, Mary, my dear, deary me! Such is the way, my dear, that the black bottle in the cupboard which lodgers marked ‘poison’ operates at the dead of night upon a poor defenceless housekeeper and widow who’s been quiet and kind to him in the passage, but not old enough or forgetful enough to disremember the young man in her night-clothes named Warbeck, who has lost her lawful consoler, which smells, on the top shelf behind the pickles, for ten long years, like gin!”
It is difficult to imagine, perhaps, the dreadful state of feeling in which the garrulous dame found herself after the consolations of her lawful consoler which smells—on the top shelf behind the pickles, for ten long years—like gin; but of this we are fully assured, that when Charles Warbeck had had a pleasant nap in his cosy room, and concluded a long consultation with the water-pitcher, he discovered, unmistakably, that several hundred fairies, or demons rather, were busily engaged at wood-chopping under the canopy of his cranium, and threatening every moment to split his invaluable head into halves.
Pale, penitent, and full of pious intentions for the future, Charley Warbeck lay on the sofa before his fire, buried in thought.
The church clock struck the hour of eleven, and, as he heard it, he sighed,
“What a fool I have been to-day in not taking that packet of notes to the India House. I shake like a leaf, and I know not why; and haunted by every imaginable terror. I cannot gaze firmly at any one; the sound of every voice seems like a demon bawling in my ears, and every step that approaches appears to be that of some officer ready to tap me on the shoulder, and march me off to prison. I’d give anything in the world to have had this cursed money delivered to-day, and should not have dreamed of such a thing as to absent myself, but for Redgill. He has continually bored me to lend him money and lend him money, until my own poverty almost tempted me to steal. D—n the money!” said Warbeck, in a rage, slamming the packet of notes upon the table, and tossing about in his chair. “It burns my very pocket, and my brain even seems on fire since I’ve had that wine.”
For some time young Warbeck sat looking at the notes, and would willingly have gone to the India House then, but it was too late.
While thus reflecting the door noiselessly opened, and Redgill entered the chamber!
Approaching the table he was much surprised at Charley’s absence of mind in not awaking from his reverie, but was pleased to see the bank package lying on the table.
Pretending not to have observed anything of the sort, he slapped his friend familiarly on the back, who, awaking to his senses, seized the package in much haste and confusion, and placed it, as he supposed, unseen, beneath the cushions of the sofa.
Redgill, cold as ice, perfectly collected, and fully resolved in purpose, observed his friend’s perturbation and confusion, but smiled good-humouredly, and conversed with animation.