For now I stand as one upon a rock,
Environ’d with a wilderness of sea,
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave;
Expecting ever when some envious surge
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.
—Shakspere.
Mr. Grahame, after the departure of Chewkle, suffered the worst tortures of a terrible suspense. He had no peace night nor day within his house, or away from it. The second flight of Helen, and the narration given of it by Lester Vane, in terms calculated to excoriate the haughty man’s arrogant pride, were deprived of their more agonizing features by the greater evils that threatened him.
Already had Nathan Gomer so far kept his word, that he had caused process to be issued upon the sums last advanced: and Mr. Grahame had the inexpressible mortification of being served with a series of writs in his own library, and by no other person than Charles Clinton.
The firm with which he was connected had been instructed by Nathan Gomer, and the delicate task—a very painful one, as it proved—of serving process was entrusted to him, because Mr. Grahame had not responded to a request made to him to name a solicitor who would accept service for him.
Charley was quite aware of the desperate position of Mr. Grahame’s affairs, as well as of the internal misery raging in the bosom of one-half of the members of the family, and the inflated elevation of the other portion, ignorant, through the most blind fatuity, of the fearful precipice upon which they were already tottering.