“You Thief, you did!” retorted Jonas. “I’ll pay you for the carriage of it one day, and settle an old score besides. I will!”
“Tut, tut,” said Tom, “you needn’t waste words or threats. I wish you to understand—plainly because I would rather keep clear of you and everything that concerns you: not because I have the least apprehension of your doing me any injury: which would be weak indeed—that I am no party to the contents of that letter. That I know nothing of it. That I was not even aware that it was to be delivered to you; and that I had it from—”
“By the Lord!” cried Jonas, fiercely catching up the chair, “I’ll knock your brains out, if you speak another word.”
Tom, nevertheless, persisting in his intention, and opening his lips to speak again, Jonas set upon him like a savage; and in the quickness and ferocity of his attack would have surely done him some grievous injury, defenceless as he was, and embarrassed by having his frightened sister clinging to his arm, if Merry had not run between them, crying to Tom for the love of Heaven to leave the house. The agony of this poor creature, the terror of his sister, the impossibility of making himself audible, and the equal impossibility of bearing up against Mrs. Gamp, who threw herself upon him like a featherbed, and forced him backwards down the stairs by the mere oppression of her dead weight, prevailed. Tom shook the dust of that house off his feet, without having mentioned Nadgett’s name.
If the name could have passed his lips; if Jonas, in the insolence of his vile nature, had never roused him to do that old act of manliness, for which (and not for his last offence) he hated him with such malignity; if Jonas could have learned, as then he could and would have learned, through Tom’s means, what unsuspected spy there was upon him; he would have been saved from the commission of a Guilty Deed, then drawing on towards its black accomplishment. But the fatality was of his own working; the pit was of his own digging; the gloom that gathered round him was the shadow of his own life.
His wife had closed the door, and thrown herself before it, on the ground, upon her knees. She held up her hands to him now, and besought him not to be harsh with her, for she had interposed in fear of bloodshed.
“So, so!” said Jonas, looking down upon her, as he fetched his breath. “These are your friends, are they, when I am away? You plot and tamper with this sort of people, do you?”
“No, indeed! I have no knowledge of these secrets, and no clue to their meaning. I have never seen him since I left home but once—but twice—before today.”
“Oh!” sneered Jonas, catching at this correction. “But once, but twice, eh? Which do you mean? Twice and once, perhaps. Three times! How many more, you lying jade?”
As he made an angry motion with his hand, she shrunk down hastily. A suggestive action! Full of a cruel truth!
“How many more times?” he repeated.
“No more. The other morning, and today, and once besides.”
He was about to retort upon her, when the clock struck. He started stopped, and listened; appearing to revert to some engagement, or to some other subject, a secret within his own breast, recalled to him by this record of the progress of the hours.
“Don’t lie there! Get up!”
Having helped her to rise, or rather hauled her up by the arm, he went on to say:
“Listen to me, young lady; and don’t whine when you have no occasion, or I may make some for you. If I find him in my house again, or find that you have seen him in anybody else’s house, you’ll repent it. If you are not deaf and dumb to everything that concerns me, unless you have my leave to hear and speak, you’ll repent it. If you don’t obey exactly what I order, you’ll repent it. Now, attend. What’s the time?”
“It struck eight a minute ago.”
He looked towards her intently; and said, with a laboured distinctness, as if he had got the words off by heart:
“I have been travelling day and night, and am tired. I have lost some money, and that don’t improve me. Put my supper in the little off-room below, and have the truckle-bed made. I shall sleep there tonight, and maybe tomorrow night; and if I can sleep all day tomorrow, so much the better, for I’ve got trouble to sleep off, if I can. Keep the house quiet, and don’t call me. Mind! Don’t call me. Don’t let anybody call me. Let me lie there.”
She said it should be done. Was that all?
“All what? You must be prying and questioning!” he angrily retorted. “What more do you want to know?”
“I want to know nothing, Jonas, but what you tell me. All hope of confidence between us has long deserted me!”
“Ecod, I should hope so!” he muttered.
“But if you will tell me what you wish, I will be obedient and will try to please you. I make no merit of that, for I have no friend in my father or my sister, but am quite alone. I am very humble and submissive. You told me you would break my spirit, and you have done so. Do not break my heart too!”
She ventured, as she said these words, to lay her hand upon his shoulder. He suffered it to rest there, in his exultation; and the whole mean, abject, sordid, pitiful soul of the man, looked at her, for the moment, through his wicked eyes.
For the moment only; for, with the same hurried return to something within himself, he bade her, in a surly tone, show her obedience by executing his commands without delay. When she had withdrawn he paced up and down the room several times; but always with his right hand clenched,
