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The Disowned, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Chapter 84 |
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_ CHAPTER LXXXIV A Hounsditch man, one of the devil's near kinsmen,--a
It was an evening of mingled rain and wind, the hour about nine, when Mr. Morris Brown, under the shelter of that admirable umbrella of sea-green silk, to which we have before had the honour to summon the attention of our readers, was, after a day of business, plodding homeward his weary way. The obscure streets through which his course was bent were at no time very thickly thronged, and at the present hour the inclemency of the night rendered them utterly deserted. It is true that now and then a solitary female, holding up, with one hand, garments already piteously bedraggled, and with the other thrusting her umbrella in the very teeth of the hostile winds, might be seen crossing the intersected streets, and vanishing amid the subterranean recesses of some kitchen area, or tramping onward amidst the mazes of the metropolitan labyrinth, till, like the cuckoo, "heard," but no longer "seen," the echo of her retreating pattens made a dying music to the reluctant ear; or indeed, at intervals of unfrequent occurrence, a hackney vehicle jolted, rumbling, bumping over the uneven stones, as if groaning forth its gratitude to the elements for which it was indebted for its fare. Sometimes also a chivalrous gallant of the feline species ventured its delicate paws upon the streaming pavement, and shook, with a small but dismal cry, the raindrops from the pyramidal roofs of its tender ears. But, save these occasional infringements on its empire, solitude, dark, comfortless, and unrelieved, fell around the creaking footsteps of Mr. Morris Brown. "I wish," soliloquized the worthy broker, "that I had been able advantageously to dispose of this cursed umbrella of the late Lady Waddilove; it is very little calculated for any but a single lady of slender shape, and though it certainly keeps the rain off my hat, it only sends it with a double dripping upon my shoulders. Pish, deuce take the umbrella! I shall catch my death of cold." These complaints of an affliction that was assuredly sufficient to irritate the naturally sweet temper of Mr. Brown, only ceased as that industrious personage paused at the corner of the street, for the purpose of selecting the driest path through which to effect the miserable act of crossing to the opposite side. Occupied in stretching his neck over the kennel, in order to take the fullest survey of its topography which the scanty and agitated lamps would allow, the unhappy wanderer, lowering his umbrella, suffered a cross and violent gust of wind to rush, as if on purpose, against the interior. The rapidity with which this was done, and the sudden impetus, which gave to the inflated silk the force of a balloon, happening to occur exactly at the moment Mr. Brown was stooping with such wistful anxiety over the pavement, that gentleman, to his inexpressible dismay, was absolutely lifted, as it were, from his present footing, and immersed in a running rivulet of liquid mire, which flowed immediately below the pavement. Nor was this all: for the wind, finding itself somewhat imprisoned in the narrow receptacle it had thus abruptly entered, made so strenuous an exertion to extricate itself, that it turned Lady Waddilove's memorable relic utterly inside out; so that when Mr. Brown, aghast at the calamity of his immersion, lifted his eyes to heaven, with a devotion that had in it more of expostulation than submission, he beheld, by the melancholy lamps, the apparition of his umbrella,--the exact opposite to its legitimate conformation, and seeming, with its lengthy stick and inverted summit, the actual and absolute resemblance of a gigantic wineglass. "Now," said Mr. Brown, with that ironical bitterness so common to intense despair, "now, that's what I call pleasant." As if the elements were guided and set on by all the departed souls of those whom Mr. Brown had at any time overreached in his profession, scarcely had the afflicted broker uttered this brief sentence, before a discharge of rain, tenfold more heavy than any which had yet fallen, tumbled down in literal torrents upon the defenceless head of the itinerant. "This won't do," said Mr. Brown, plucking up courage and splashing out of the little rivulet once more into terra firma, "this won't do: I must find a shelter somewhere. Dear, dear, how the wet runs down me! I am for all the world like the famous dripping well in Derbyshire. What a beast of an umbrella! I'll never buy one again of an old lady: hang me if I do." As the miserable Morris uttered these sentences, which gushed out, one by one, in a broken stream of complaint, he looked round and round--before, behind, beside--for some temporary protection or retreat. In vain: the uncertainty of the light only allowed him to discover houses in which no portico extended its friendly shelter, and where even the doors seemed divested of the narrow ledge wherewith they are, in more civilized quarters, ordinarily crowned. "I shall certainly have the rheumatism all this winter," said Mr. Brown, hurrying onward as fast as he was able. Just then, glancing desperately down a narrow lane, which crossed his path, he perceived the scaffolding of a house in which repair or alteration had been at work. A ray of hope flashed across him; he redoubled his speed, and, entering the welcome haven, found himself entirely protected from the storm. The extent of the scaffolding was, indeed, rather considerable; and though the extreme narrowness of the lane and the increasing gloom of the night left Mr. Brown in almost total darkness, so that he could not perceive the exact peculiarities of his situation, yet he was perfectly satisfied with the shelter he had obtained; and after shaking the rain from his hat, squeezing his coat sleeves and lappets, satisfying himself that it was only about the shoulders that he was thoroughly wetted, and thrusting two pocket-handkerchiefs between his shirt and his skin, as preventives to the dreaded rheumatism, Mr. Brown leaned luxuriously back against the wall in the farthest corner of his retreat, and busied himself with endeavouring to restore his insulted umbrella to its original utility of shape. Our wanderer had been about three minutes in this situation; when he heard the voices of two men, who were hastening along the lane. "But do stop," said one; and these were the first words distinctly audible to the ear of Mr. Brown, "do stop, the rain can't last much longer, and we have a long way yet to go." "No, no," said the other, in a voice more imperious than the first, which was evidently plebeian and somewhat foreign in its tone, "no, we have no time. What signify the inclemencies of weather to men feeding upon an inward and burning thought, and made, by the workings of the mind, almost callous to the contingencies of the frame?" "Nay, my very good friend," said the first speaker, with positive though not disrespectful earnestness, "that may be all very fine for you, who have a constitution like a horse; but I am quite a--what call you it--an invalid, eh? and have a devilish cough ever since I have been in this d--d country; beg your pardon, no offence to it; so I shall just step under cover of this scaffolding for a few minutes, and if you like the rain so much, my very good friend, why, there is plenty of room in the lane to--(ugh! ugh! ugh!) to enjoy it." As the speaker ended, the dim light, just faintly glimmering at the entrance of the friendly shelter, was obscured by his shadow, and presently afterwards his companion, joining him, said,-- "Well, if it must be so; but how can you be fit to brave all the perils of our scheme, when you shrink, like a palsied crone, from the sprinkling of a few water-drops?" "A few water-drops, my very good friend," answered the other, "a few--what call you them, ay, water-falls rather; (ugh! ugh!) but let me tell you, my brother citizen, that a man may not like to get his skin wet with waters and would yet thrust his arm up to the very elbow in blood! (ugh! ugh!)" "The devil!" mentally ejaculated Mr. Brown, who at the word "scheme" had advanced one step from his retreat, but who now at the last words of the intruder drew back as gently as a snail into his shell; and although his person was far too much enveloped in shade to run the least chance of detection, yet the honest broker began to feel a little tremor vibrate along the chords of his thrilling frame, and a new anathema against the fatal umbrella rise to his lips. "Ah!" quoth the second, "I trust that it may be so; but, to return to our project, are you quite sure that these two identical ministers are in the regular habit of walking homeward from that Parliament which their despotism has so degraded?" "Sure? ay, that I am; Davidson swears to it!" "And you are also sure of their persons, so that, even in the dusk, you can recognize them? for you know I have never seen them." "Sure as fivepence!" returned the first speaker, to whose mind the lives of the persons referred to were of considerably less value than the sum elegantly specified in his metaphorical reply. "Then," said the other, with a deep, stern determination of tone, "then shall this hand, by which one of the proudest of our oppressors has already fallen, be made a still worthier instrument of the wrath of Heaven!" "You are a d--d pretty shot, I believe," quoth the first speaker, as indifferently as if he were praising the address of a Norfolk squire. "Never did my eye misguide me, or my aim swerve a hair's-breadth from its target! I thought once, when I learned the art as a boy, that in battle, rather than in the execution of a single criminal, that skill would avail me." "Well, we shall have a glorious opportunity to-morrow night!" answered the first speaker; "that is, if it does not rain so infernally as it does this night; but we shall have a watch of many hours, I dare say." "That matters but little," replied the other conspirator; "nor even if, night after night, the same vigil is renewed and baffled, so that it bring its reward at last." "Right," quoth the first; "I long to be at it!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--what a confounded cough I have! it will be my death soon, I'm thinking." "If so," said the other, with a solemnity which seemed ludicrously horrible, from the strange contrast of the words and object, "die at least with the sanctity of a brave and noble deed upon your conscience and your name!" "Ugh! ugh!--I am but a man of colour, but I am a patriot, for all that, my good friend! See, the violence of the rain has ceased; we will proceed;" and with these words the worthy pair left the place to darkness and Mr. Brown. "O Lord!" said the latter, stepping forth, and throwing, as it were, in that exclamation, a whole weight of suffocating emotion from his chest, "what bloody miscreants! Murder his Majesty's ministers!--'shoot them like pigeons!'--'d--d pretty shot!' indeed. O Lord! what would the late Lady Waddilove, who always hated even the Whigs so cordially, say, if she were alive? But how providential that I should have been here! Who knows but I may save the lives of the whole administration, and get a pension or a little place in the post-office? I'll go to the prime minister directly,--this very minute! Pish! ar'n't you right now, you cursed thing?" upbraiding the umbrella, which, half-right and half-wrong, seemed endued with an instinctive obstinacy for the sole purpose of tormenting its owner. However, losing this petty affliction in the greatness of his present determination, Mr. Brown issued out of his lair, and hastened to put his benevolent and loyal intentions into effect. _ |
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