“There’s the bell,” said Arthur.
“Ay, ay; I know that,” rejoined Peg.
“Then why don’t you go?” bawled Arthur.
“Go where?” retorted Peg. “I ain’t doing any harm here, am I?”
Arthur Gride in reply repeated the word “bell” as loud as he could roar; and, his meaning being rendered further intelligible to Mrs. Sliderskew’s dull sense of hearing by pantomime expressive of ringing at a street-door, Peg hobbled out, after sharply demanding why he hadn’t said there was a ring before, instead of talking about all manner of things that had nothing to do with it, and keeping her half-pint of beer waiting on the steps.
“There’s a change come over you, Mrs. Peg,” said Arthur, following her out with his eyes. “What it means I don’t quite know; but, if it lasts, we shan’t agree together long I see. You are turning crazy, I think. If you are, you must take yourself off, Mrs. Peg—or be taken off. All’s one to me.” Turning over the leaves of his book as he muttered this, he soon lighted upon something which attracted his attention, and forgot Peg Sliderskew and everything else in the engrossing interest of its pages.
The room had no other light than that which it derived from a dim and dirt-clogged lamp, whose lazy wick, being still further obscured by a dark shade, cast its feeble rays over a very little space, and left all beyond in heavy shadow. This lamp the moneylender had drawn so close to him, that there was only room between it and himself for the book over which he bent; and as he sat, with his elbows on the desk, and his sharp cheekbones resting on his hands, it only served to bring out his ugly features in strong relief, together with the little table at which he sat, and to shroud all the rest of the chamber in a deep sullen gloom. Raising his eyes, and looking vacantly into this gloom as he made some mental calculation, Arthur Gride suddenly met the fixed gaze of a man.
“Thieves! thieves!” shrieked the usurer, starting up and folding his book to his breast. “Robbers! Murder!”
“What is the matter?” said the form, advancing.
“Keep off!” cried the trembling wretch. “Is it a man or a—a—”
“For what do you take me, if not for a man?” was the inquiry.
“Yes, yes,” cried Arthur Gride, shading his eyes with his hand, “it is a man, and not a spirit. It is a man. Robbers! robbers!”
“For what are these cries raised? Unless indeed you know me, and have some purpose in your brain?” said the stranger, coming close up to him. “I am no thief.”
“What then, and how come you here?” cried Gride, somewhat reassured, but still retreating from his visitor: “what is your name, and what do you want?”
“My name you need not know,” was the reply. “I came here, because I was shown the way by your servant. I have addressed you twice or thrice, but you were too profoundly engaged with your book to hear me, and I have been silently waiting until you should be less abstracted. What I want I will tell you, when you can summon up courage enough to hear and understand me.”
Arthur Gride, venturing to regard his visitor more attentively, and perceiving that he was a young man of good mien and bearing, returned to his seat, and muttering that there were bad characters about, and that this, with former attempts upon his house, had made him nervous, requested his visitor to sit down. This, however, he declined.
“Good God! I don’t stand up to have you at an advantage,” said Nicholas (for Nicholas it was), as he observed a gesture of alarm on the part of Gride. “Listen to me. You are to be married tomorrow morning.”
“N—n—no,” rejoined Gride. “Who said I was? How do you know that?”
“No matter how,” replied Nicholas, “I know it. The young lady who is to give you her hand hates and despises you. Her blood runs cold at the mention of your name; the vulture and the lamb, the rat and the dove, could not be worse matched than you and she. You see I know her.”
Gride looked at him as if he were petrified with astonishment, but did not speak; perhaps lacking the power.
“You and another man, Ralph Nickleby by name, have hatched this plot between you,” pursued Nicholas. “You pay him for his share in bringing about this sale of Madeline Bray. You do. A lie is trembling on your lips, I see.”
He paused; but, Arthur making no reply, resumed again.
“You pay yourself by defrauding her. How or by what means—for I scorn to sully her cause by falsehood or deceit—I do not know; at present I do not know, but I am not alone or single-handed in this business. If the energy of man can compass the discovery of your fraud and treachery before your death; if wealth, revenge, and just hatred, can hunt and track you through your windings; you will yet be called to a dear account for this. We are on the scent already; judge you, who know what we do not, when we shall have you down!”
He paused again, and still Arthur Gride glared upon him in silence.
“If you were a man to whom I could appeal with any hope of touching his compassion or humanity,” said Nicholas, “I would urge upon you to remember the helplessness, the innocence, the youth, of this lady; her worth and beauty, her filial excellence, and last, and more than all, as concerning you more nearly, the appeal she has made to your mercy and your manly feeling. But, I take the only ground that can be taken with men like you, and ask what money will buy you off. Remember the danger to which you are exposed. You see I know enough to know much more with very
