Plot on thy little hour, and
skein on skein
Weave the vain mesh, in which
thy subtle soul
Broods on its venom!
Lo! behind, before,
Around thee, like an armament
of cloud,
The black Fate labours onward—anonymous.
The dusk of a winter’s evening gathered over
a room in Crauford’s house in town, only relieved
from the closing darkness by an expiring and sullen
fire, beside which Mr. Bradley sat, with his feet upon
the fender, apparently striving to coax some warmth
into the icy palms of his spread hands. Crauford
himself was walking up and down the room with a changeful
step, and ever and anon glancing his bright, shrewd
eye at the partner of his fraud, who, seemingly unconscious
of the observation he underwent, appeared to occupy
his attention solely with the difficulty of warming
his meagre and withered frame.
“Ar’n’t you very cold there, sir?”
said Bradley, after a long pause, and pushing himself
farther into the verge of the dying embers, “may
I not ring for some more coals?”
“Hell and the—: I beg your pardon,
my good Bradley, but you vex me beyond patience; how
can you think of such trifles when our very lives
are in so imminent a danger?”
“I beg your pardon, my honoured benefactor,
they are indeed in danger!”
“Bradley, we have but one hope,—fidelity
to each other. If we persist in the same story,
not a tittle can be brought home to us,—
not a tittle, my good Bradley; and though our characters
may be a little touched, why, what is a character?
Shall we eat less, drink less, enjoy less, when we
have lost it? Not a whit. No, my friend,
we will go abroad: leave it to me to save from
the wreck of our fortunes enough to live upon like
princes.”
“If not like peers, my honoured benefactor.”
“’Sdeath!—yes, yes, very good,—he!
he! he! if not peers. Well, all happiness is
in the senses, and Richard Crauford has as many senses
as Viscount Innisdale; but had we been able to protract
inquiry another week, Bradley, why, I would have been
my Lord, and you Sir John.”
“You bear your losses like a hero, sir,”
said Mr. Bradley. To be sure: there is
no loss, man, but life,—none; let us preserve
that— and it will be our own fault if we
don’t—and the devil take all the
rest. But, bless me, it grows late, and, at all
events, we are safe for some hours; the inquiry won’t
take place till twelve to-morrow, why should we not
feast till twelve to-night? Ring, my good fellow:
dinner must be nearly ready.”
“Why, honoured sir,” said Bradley, “I
want to go home to see my wife and arrange my house.
Who knows but I may sleep in Newgate to-morrow?”
Crauford, who had been still walking to and fro, stopped
abruptly at this speech; and his eye, even through
the gloom, shot out a livid and fierce light, before
which the timid and humble glance of Mr. Bradley quailed
in an instant.
