The many slight indications of an attachment—of a passion—between her and this man Hastings,—and they must have been but slight indications,—were presented to me now grossly and palpably. I could see them all,—they stung me;—and I would curse my fool's nature that was blind, or would not see and provide against the consequence. And why did I curse my easy nature? Could I have borne to live a wretched turnkey, a miserable listener at key-holes, a dealer out of "punishment, the drudgery of devils?" Did I marry to suspect virtue, or to control vice? Neither; and I was glad that, when they did wrong me, they permitted me to know it. These thoughts never affected my brain;—there was no fear of that. I thought no longer from the brain;—these thoughts were in my heart, and never moved thence.
One evening, as I was ascending the stairs, I overheard the child inquiring of one of the servants "who that white-haired gentleman was, and why he lived in the house?" I had hitherto refused to see the child; but I now rang the bell, and ordered the housekeeper, who constantly waited upon me, to bring him to me.
He was much grown since I had last seen him, and was a fine boy. He did not know me, and was at first fearful of approaching me; but I induced him to sit upon my knee, and, putting his hair from the forehead, asked him if he would not give me a kiss. As he lifted his face, and looked up at me—that look! his very mother was gazing through those eyes! A sudden faintness possessed me. I lifted the child gently from my knee, and motioned the housekeeper to take him from my sight. I did not see him again.
But there was comfort still:—Hastings was in London,—I was certain of it.
And so he was. One night, about a fortnight after my return to town from Paris, where I was told he had been seen, and where I had sought him in vain, I was proceeding home, baffled in my endeavours to discover him in some of his old haunts, which I had ascertained after many and fruitless inquiries. I was walking rapidly down a miserable street in the vicinity of Clare Market, when a squalid wretch, issuing from a public-house, came in contact with me. I think no human being in the world would have recognised him but myself. Hideously changed as he was, I knew him instantly. The half-shriek that burst from him as he recoiled from me showed that he had recognised me also. The struggle was a short one,—I had omitted to put my pistols in my pocket on that evening. With what a savage triumph, when I had dashed him on the pavement, did I stamp upon the prostrate carcass of the groaning wretch! But my joy was brief; for I was suddenly seized by three or four men, who held me firmly by the arms. I could not get at him. Heedless of my ravings, they assisted the miscreant to rise, who, casting one glance of terror towards me, darted down an alley, and was lost to me for ever. He had escaped me.
How I reached home I know not. Herbert, who visited me next morning, forbade me to rise from my bed. He said my brain was unsettled, and I believe it was. But I was well again in a month.
The one idea pervaded my whole being when I arose from my bed. My rencontre with Hastings had whetted my appetite for revenge so keenly, that no reason, no thought, no feeling could control me. He was evidently in a state of the most abject beggary and want. That conviction did not disarm me; it rendered me only the more determined and inflexible.
I went forth one evening, and with much difficulty discovered the public-house from which I had seen him emerge on that night. From the landlord I obtained every particular I required to know. Hastings had, it seemed, changed his name;—it was now Harris. He resided in one small room on the first floor of a house in a filthy court hard by; that is, if he had not left the neighbourhood, for the man had not seen him for a month past.
It was well. I drank two glasses of brandy, for it was a cold night, and proceeded towards my destination. I found it easily. There was a light in the window, and, from the reflection of a man's figure on the wall, I judged he was at home. The house-door was open, and I entered the narrow passage. At that moment I trembled, and for an instant could not proceed. No: it was not that which made me tremble; I knew, and was prepared for, what I had to do. It was the other,—it was that face which I feared I could not bear to behold.
This was, as I have said, the weakness of a moment. I mounted the stairs, and burst into the room suddenly. A man and a woman were seated at a small fire, who arose abruptly on my entrance. It was not Harris and—his wife.