صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

I asked him if he knew Tyler. He said that he had heard of him as a man of fortune and fashion, but did not know him. We parted on the second floor of the lodging-house, as his room, he said, was in that story. Mine was in the fourth.

Upon reaching my chamber I was anxious to light a candle, but had no apparatus for the purpose. I had observed one room, as I came through the passage, in which a light was burning, and I went out to beg permission to light my own.

It was Tyler's room. He was in bed, reading. As I looked at his refined and thoughtful face, I could scarcely help smiling at the absurdity of which I had been guilty in supposing him in any way connected with the gamblers, while at the same time I reproached myself for the injustice I had done the studious and philosophic thinker.

As I returned to my room, I saw the man in the cloak coming up the stairs.

8*

CHAPTER IX.

If I but knew my foe, the victory half
Were gained. Doubts trouble more than ills.
Time must unfold the mystery.

MARLOWE.

WHEN I awoke the next morning it was far into the day; and I was not sorry to have drawn unconsciously on the waking hours to make up the deficiencies of the night. While I was seated at my solitary breakfast, a servant put into my hands a note which he said had been left for me by a gentleman who had gone out on an excursion for the day. The note was from a person whom I remembered as a friend of my father, and with whom I was myself slightly acquainted: its contents were as follows:

"Mr. Roberts presents his compliments to Mr. Henry Stanley, and lets him know that he arrived from town last evening, and has the honour to be the bearer of a verbal communication from Mr. Stanley's father. The latter had come from the south just before Mr. Roberts' leaving the city, for the purpose of arranging some affairs which required the presence of his son at the earliest convenient time. He desired Mr. R. to say that the period of his stay in the north was limited, and that he awaited the coming of his son at Hotel. Mr. R. would have had the pleasure of presenting his communication in person, but an engagement formed last night compels him to join a party of pleasure at an early hour of the day, a circumstance which he farther regrets, as it prevents his renewing an acquaintance which he flatters himself is not forgotten.

"The Shore, Thursday morning."

This was something of a contre temps, for it prevented my pursuing any farther the developement of the mysterious plot which I had accidentally detected, and in which I was now a good deal interested. However, my filial obedience prevailed over all other considerations, and I made up my mind to set out at once.

Seward indeed, as I had gathered from the conversation which I had overheard the evening before, appeared to be the more immediate object of the intended attack, and by communicating to him what I had heard, and putting him on his guard against any temptation, I might accomplish as much as I could do by remaining. I had a warm regard for Seward,-one always has for a wit without malice, especially if he loves us, and I was anxious to save so well-natured and unsuspicious a person from the unpleasant predicament of losing his cash. therefore applied at once to the landlord to know if he was in the house.

"Gone out, sir," said the landlord, squeezing a lemon. "And when will he be in ?"

I

"About five o'clock in the evening, sir. He went out about two hours ago with Mr. Wilson and his daughter, and Mr. Tyler."

"You could deliver him a note, I suppose, as soon as he comes in."

"Certainly, sir," replied the landlord.

I immediately sat down and wrote a short letter to Seward stating all that I had heard and seen, and what suspicions I had, and having sealed it I delivered it with particular injunctions into the hands of the master of the house, and sat off immediately for the city.

On reaching town I drove at once to the hotel which had been indicated in the note of Mr. Roberts as the place where my father was staying. I was surprised to learn that no Mr. Stanley was at that time lodging there, nor had been recently. Thinking that some mistake had been made as to the particular house, I went to another in the neighbourhood, and successively to every respectable lodging-house in the city, but with no better success; none of them remembered that any person of that name had ever stayed there. To add to my astonishment I re

ceived that evening a letter from my father in the south, dating a few days before, and making no mention whatever of any intended visit to the north. Happening to be acquainted with the handwriting of Mr. Roberts, I again consulted the note which I had in my pocket, and after a close examination I felt satisfied that it had been written by him. As he lived, however, in the vicinity I enclosed it in a letter to him and begged to know whether it had really proceeded from him. He assured me in reply that the letter was certainly not written by him, though it was so close an imitation of his hand as at first almost to have deceived himself. I was profoundly amazed at this, and could not for a long time form any plausible conjecture to account for the occurrence. At length it occurred to me that the whole affair might be a contrivance of those gamblers at the shore to get rid of me, and prevent any communication between myself and Seward. The note, if originating with them, must have been written by some one who had a very intimate acquaintance with the concerns of my family, and who that person could be was more than I could imagine. There was a mystery in the whole affair which I could not fathom.

The autumn was so far advanced that I resolved to remain in the city and refer the resolution of my wonders to the "coming on of time." As I was intending to devote the following winter entirely to the amusements of society, I hired a decent house in a "fashionable" quarter of the town and occupied myself for a good while in furnishing it according to my taste. There is no business, by the by, that I am acquainted with, more entertaining than that of furnishing a house, especially if you are a poor man; for it calls forth the greatest pleasure of which man is capable-the pleasure of running in debt. Shenstone somewhere remarks-and it is the only striking remark which I have met with in the whole compass of his prose writings-that we always feel a gratification in paying a bill, and he proceeds to infer from it the innate goodness of the human heart; whatever may be the truth of the theory, the fact, though ingenious, scarcely supports it, for great as may be the delight of paying

debts, the delight of incurring them is, to my mind vastly greater.

The sense of boundless domination with which one enters a shop-be it book-store, or other, where one's credit is yet good-limited by no mean bounds of actual pocketmoney, yet tempered throughout and so far forth heightened in zest by the feeling circum præcordia of the future inevitable consequence-the heroic and soul-ennobling resolutions and cheering schemes for getting the money by the time it is due, which one makes stronger and wider as one goes deeper and madlier into the depths of credit-the delight of breaking from the customary bonds of poverty and ruling for a while with Crassus' sceptreall form a rare and admirable combination of pleasures. When one pays down for a purchase, one has a sense of the same loss in money that there is gain in goodsthere's the minus of a veritable pro quo as an offset to the valuable quid; but the debtor has, till payment, the pure gain without any loss at all-his purchase is as good as a gift or a treasure trove. Then, when a man buys a thing and settles for it, it is his out and out, and there's an end on't; it sinks into a common undisputed possession: but the taker up of goods on tic (or tick), while he has the dear and full enjoyment of the affair, as much as the other, yet has besides,-which the other lacks,-that high appreciation of the article, which we always attach to property that is not ours, he has, during the whole time that the credit runs, the two distinct delights of a calm possession and a ticklish title. Then, again, there is the mild interest of difficulty, and the healthy excitement and agitation of raising the " 'ways and means;" life grows spirited; one has something to think of, o'nights as Carlyle says of the French Revolution, "there's a comfortable appearance of work going on." Moreover since it is "solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris," and agreeable also to have something that links us sympathetically with departed greatness, we may amuse misfortune, as Bolingbroke did his exile, by recounting those that have been in like predicament: we may remember how Mirabeau was "obéré de dettes," how Talleyrand could not pay for his white carriage, the

« السابقةمتابعة »