Mortimer Lightwood was not an extraordinarily impressible
man, but this face impressed him. He spoke of
it more than once on the remainder of the way home,
and more than once when they got home.
They had been abed in their respective rooms two or
three hours, when Eugene was partly awakened by hearing
a footstep going about, and was fully awakened by
seeing Lightwood standing at his bedside.
‘Nothing wrong, Mortimer?’
‘No.’
‘What fancy takes you, then, for walking about
in the night?’
‘I am horribly wakeful.’
‘How comes that about, I wonder!’
‘Eugene, I cannot lose sight of that fellow’s
face.’
‘Odd!’ said Eugene with a light laugh,
‘I can.’ And turned over, and fell
asleep again.
IN THE DARK
There was no sleep for Bradley Headstone on that night
when Eugene Wrayburn turned so easily in his bed;
there was no sleep for little Miss Peecher. Bradley
consumed the lonely hours, and consumed himself in
haunting the spot where his careless rival lay a dreaming;
little Miss Peecher wore them away in listening for
the return home of the master of her heart, and in
sorrowfully presaging that much was amiss with him.
Yet more was amiss with him than Miss Peecher’s
simply arranged little work-box of thoughts, fitted
with no gloomy and dark recesses, could hold.
For, the state of the man was murderous.
The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it.
More; he irritated it, with a kind of perverse pleasure
akin to that which a sick man sometimes has in irritating
a wound upon his body. Tied up all day with his
disciplined show upon him, subdued to the performance
of his routine of educational tricks, encircled by
a gabbling crowd, he broke loose at night like an
ill-tamed wild animal. Under his daily restraint,
it was his compensation, not his trouble, to give
a glance towards his state at night, and to the freedom
of its being indulged. If great criminals told
the truth—which, being great criminals,
they do not—they would very rarely tell
of their struggles against the crime. Their struggles
are towards it. They buffet with opposing waves,
to gain the bloody shore, not to recede from it.
This man perfectly comprehended that he hated his
rival with his strongest and worst forces, and that
if he tracked him to Lizzie Hexam, his so doing would
never serve himself with her, or serve her. All
his pains were taken, to the end that he might incense
himself with the sight of the detested figure in her
company and favour, in her place of concealment.
And he knew as well what act of his would follow if
he did, as he knew that his mother had borne him.
Granted, that he may not have held it necessary to
make express mention to himself of the one familiar
truth any more than of the other.
He knew equally well that he fed his wrath and hatred,
and that he accumulated provocation and self-justification,
by being made the nightly sport of the reckless and
insolent Eugene. Knowing all this,—and
still always going on with infinite endurance, pains,
and perseverance, could his dark soul doubt whither
he went?
