As he walked out of the room, Raffles winked slowly
at his back, and then turned towards the window to
watch the banker riding away— virtually
at his command. His lips first curled with a
smile and then opened with a short triumphant laugh.
“But what the deuce was the name?” he
presently said, half aloud, scratching his head, and
wrinkling his brows horizontally. He had not
really cared or thought about this point of forgetfulness
until it occurred to him in his invention of annoyances
for Bulstrode.
“It began with L; it was almost all l’s
I fancy,” he went on, with a sense that he was
getting hold of the slippery name. But the hold
was too slight, and he soon got tired of this mental
chase; for few men were more impatient of private
occupation or more in need of making themselves continually
heard than Mr. Raffles. He preferred using his
time in pleasant conversation with the bailiff and
the housekeeper, from whom he gathered as much as he
wanted to know about Mr. Bulstrode’s position
in Middlemarch.
After all, however, there was a dull space of time
which needed relieving with bread and cheese and ale,
and when he was seated alone with these resources
in the wainscoted parlor, he suddenly slapped his knee,
and exclaimed, “Ladislaw!” That action
of memory which he had tried to set going, and had
abandoned in despair, had suddenly completed itself
without conscious effort—a common experience,
agreeable as a completed sneeze, even if the name
remembered is of no value. Raffles immediately
took out his pocket-book, and wrote down the name,
not because he expected to use it, but merely for the
sake of not being at a loss if he ever did happen
to want it. He was not going to tell Bulstrode:
there was no actual good in telling, and to a mind
like that of Mr. Raffles there is always probable good
in a secret.
He was satisfied with his present success, and by
three o’clock that day he had taken up his portmanteau
at the turnpike and mounted the coach, relieving Mr.
Bulstrode’s eyes of an ugly black spot on the
landscape at Stone Court, but not relieving him of
the dread that the black spot might reappear and become
inseparable even from the vision of his hearth.
THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE.
“Negli occhi porta la mia
donna Amore;
Per che si fa gentil eio ch’ella mira:
Ov’ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si
gira,
E cui saluta fa tremar lo core.
Sicche, bassando il viso, tutto
smore,
E d’ogni suo difetto allor sospira:
Fuggon dinanzi a lei Superbia ed Ira:
Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore.
Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile
Nasee nel core a chi parlar la sente;
Ond’ e beato chi prima la vide.
Quel ch’ella par quand’ un poco sorride,
Non si pub dicer, ne tener a mente,
Si e nuovo miracolo gentile.”
—DANTE: la
Vita Nuova.
