Part 26 (1/2)

”Well, let me inform you that your life is in danger here; if you are a wise man, you will not fail to leave this neighbourhood this night”.

”But no one knows--”

”It is known, Hogarth: your friends are false, and your enemies crafty.

You will have to walk with your eyes open, my friend. What will you do with all the money?”

”I will buy the world, because _you_ are in it”.

Now she flashed upon him one glance, in which there was astonishment, and judgment.

”You said that so like my father! Hogarth among the dealers? I thought you would be more squeamish, and arduous, and complex”.

”But if a man is famished, he is not complex, he runs to the baker's.

You can have no conception how I peris.h.!.+ And I cannot be contradicted-I claim you-I have the right-I am the lord of this lower world--”

”But you do not see the effect of your words: you disappoint me Richard.

How of what the poet sings:

...this is my favoured lot, My exaltation to afflictions high?

That is more in your line, you know, but you are dazzled, Hogarth-fie.

To _buy me_! And how would you like me afterwards, having renounced my obligations? And how would I like _you_-I whose name is Rebekah, who will mate with none but a wrestler, a fellow of heroic muscle? I feel certain that you are dazzled. It is natural, I suppose--But are all the people in the world so happy, that _you_ too, can find nothing to occupy you but the market-place, with its buying and selling? And to buy _me_?

I am _not_ for sale! How dare you, Hogarth?”

With this she walked off; but, having a creepy instinct in her back that he was on the point to follow, catch, and s.n.a.t.c.h her away, she span round again, crying: ”Do not follow me! Mind you! If you like, be at the elm-tree again at half-past ten-and I will communicate with you.

Goodbye--”

Now she did not once look back; and he had not heard that fainting ”Good-bye”, it had fainted so.

He found himself presently in his room at the paper-shop, and lay biting the bed-clothes, spasm after spasm traversing his body.

Then, turning on his back, he lay with his face now toward the trunk, and a little clock ticked ten more minutes before the fact stole into his consciousness that the bag was not on the trunk.

For some time the disappearance was too stupendous to find room in his brain. He got up and paced, stunned, just conscious of a feeling of unease.

Now he was searching the room mechanically. It was not there....

And again he paced, tapping his top teeth with a finger-nail; and now he called down the stair: ”Have you seen, Mrs. Sturgess, the calico bag you gave me to-day?”

”Why, no”.

”Has anyone been in my room?”

”Why, _no_, sir! Only myself”.

Again he began to pace, and suddenly the grand reality stabbed his brain like a dagger: he was poor....