bedroom prepared for him, and it was broad day, his mind was still dwelling on this theme,
“I would rather have lost,” he said, “a thousand pounds than lost the boy just now. But I'll return home alone. I am resolved upon that. Chuzzlewit shall go forward first, and I will follow in my own time. I'll have no more of this,” he added, wiping his damp forehead. “Twenty-four hours of this would turn my hair grey!”
After examining his chamber, and looking under the bed, and in the cupboards, and even behind the curtains, with unusual caution (although it was, as has been said, broad day), he double-locked the door by which he had entered, and retired to rest. There was another door in the room, but it was locked on the outer side; and with what place it communicated, he knew not.
His fears or evil conscience reproduced this door in all his dreams. He dreamed that a dreadful secret was connected with it; a secret which he knew, and yet did not know, for although he was heavily responsible for it, and a party to it, he was harassed even in his vision by a distracting uncertainty in reference to its import. Incoherently entwined with this dream was another, which represented it as the hiding-place of an enemy, a shadow, a phantom; and made it the business of his life to keep the terrible creature closed up, and prevent it from forcing its way in upon him. With this view Nadgett, and he, and a strange man with a bloody smear upon his head (who told him that he had been his playfellow, and told him, too, the real name of an old schoolmate, forgotten until then), worked with iron plates and nails to make the door secure; but though they worked never so hard, it was all in vain, for the nails broke, or changed to soft twigs, or what was worse, to worms, between their fingers; the wood of the door splintered and crumbled, so that even nails would not remain in it; and the iron plates curled up like hot paper. All this time the creature on the other side—whether it was in the shape of man, or beast, he neither knew nor sought to know— was gaining on them. But his greatest terror was when the man with the bloody smear upon his head demanded of him if he knew this creatures name, and said that he would whisper it. At this the dreamer fell upon his knees, his whole blood thrilling with inexplicable fear, and held his ears. But looking at the speaker's lips, he saw that they formed the utterance of the letter “J'; and crying out aloud that the secret was discovered, and they were all lost, he awoke.
Awoke to find Jonas standing at his bedside watching him. And that very door wide open.
As their eyes met, Jonas retreated a few paces, and Montague sprang out of bed.
“Heyday!” said Jonas. “You're all alive this morning.”
“Alive!” the other stammered, as he pulled the bell-rope violently. “What are you doing here?”
“It's your room to be sure,” said Jonas; “but I'm almost inclined to ask you what YOU are doing here? My room is on the other side of that door. No one told me last night not to open it. I thought it led into a passage, and was coming out to order breakfast. There's —there's no bell in my room.”
Montague had in the meantime admitted the man with his hot water and boots, who hearing this, said, yes, there was; and passed into the adjoining room to point it out, at the head of the bed.
“I couldn't find it, then,” said Jonas; “it's all the same. Shall I order breakfast?”
Montague answered in the affirmative. When Jonas had retired, whistling, through his own room, he opened the door of communication, to take out the key and fasten it on the inner side. But it was taken out already.
He dragged a table against the door, and sat down to collect himself, as if his dreams still had some influence upon his mind.
“An evil journey,” he repeated several times. “An evil journey. But I'll travel home alone. I'll have no more of this.”
His presentiment, or superstition, that it was an evil journey, did not at all deter him from doing the evil for which the journey was undertaken. With this in view, he dressed himself more carefully than usual to make a favourable impression on Mr Pecksniff; and, reassured by his own appearance, the beauty of the morning, and the flashing of the wet boughs outside his window in the merry sunshine, was soon sufficiently inspirited to swear a few round oaths, and hum the fag-end of a song.
But he still muttered to himself at intervals, for all that: “I'll travel home alone!”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
HAS AN INFLUENCE ON THE FORTUNES OF SEVERAL PEOPLE. MR PECKSNIFF IS EXHIBITED IN THE PLENITUDE OF POWER; AND WIELDS THE SAME WITH FORTITUDE AND MAGNANIMITY
On the night of the storm, Mrs Lupin, hostess of the Blue Dragon, sat by herself in her little bar. Her solitary condition, or the bad weather, or both united, made Mrs Lupin thoughtful, not to say sorrowful. As she sat with her chin upon her hand, looking out through a low back lattice, rendered dim in the brightest day-time by clustering vine-leaves, she shook her head very often, and said, “Dear me! Oh, dear, dear me!”
It was a melancholy time, even in the snugness of the Dragon bar. The rich expanse of corn-field, pasture- land, green slope, and gentle undulation, with its sparkling brooks, its many hedgerows, and its clumps of beautiful trees, was black and dreary, from the diamond panes of the lattice away to the far horizon, where the thunder seemed to roll along the hills. The heavy rain beat down the tender branches of vine and jessamine, and trampled on them in its fury; and when the lightning gleamed it showed the tearful leaves shivering and cowering together at the window, and tapping at it urgently, as if beseeching to be sheltered from the dismal night.
As a mark of her respect for the lightning, Mrs Lupin had removed her candle to the chimney-piece. Her basket of needle-work stood unheeded at her elbow; her supper, spread on a round table not far off, was untasted; and the knives had been removed for fear of attraction. She had sat for a long time with her chin upon her hand, saying to herself at intervals, “Dear me! Ah, dear, dear me!”
She was on the eve of saying so, once more, when the latch of the house-door (closed to keep the rain out), rattled on its well-worn catch, and a traveller came in, who, shutting it after him, and walking straight up to the half-door of the bar, said, rather gruffly:
“A pint of the best old beer here.”
He had some reason to be gruff, for if he had passed the day in a waterfall, he could scarcely have been wetter than he was. He was wrapped up to the eyes in a rough blue sailor's coat, and had an oil-skin hat on, from the capacious brim of which the rain fell trickling down upon his breast, and back, and shoulders. Judging from a certain liveliness of chin—he had so pulled down his hat, and pulled up his collar, to defend himself from the weather, that she could only see his chin, and even across that he drew the wet sleeve of his shaggy coat, as she looked at him—Mrs Lupin set him down for a good-natured fellow, too.
“A bad night!” observed the hostess cheerfully.
The traveller shook himself like a Newfoundland dog, and said it was, rather.
“There's a fire in the kitchen,” said Mrs Lupin, “and very good company there. Hadn't you better go and dry yourself?”
“No, thankee,” said the man, glancing towards the kitchen as he spoke; he seemed to know the way.
“It's enough to give you your death of cold,” observed the hostess.
“I don't take my death easy,” returned the traveller; “or I should most likely have took it afore to-night. Your health, ma'am!”
Mrs Lupin thanked him; but in the act of lifting the tankard to his mouth, he changed his mind, and put it down again. Throwing his body back, and looking about him stiffly, as a man does who is wrapped up, and has his hat low down over his eyes, he said:
“What do you call this house? Not the Dragon, do you?”
Mrs Lupin complacently made answer, “Yes, the Dragon.”
“Why, then, you've got a sort of a relation of mine here, ma'am,” said the traveller; “a young man of the name of Tapley. What! Mark, my boy!” apostrophizing the premises, “have I come upon you at last, old buck!”
This was touching Mrs Lupin on a tender point. She turned to trim the candle on the chimney-piece, and said, with her back towards the traveller:
“Nobody should be made more welcome at the Dragon, master, than any one who brought me news of Mark. But it's many and many a long day and month since he left here and England. And whether he's alive or dead, poor fellow, Heaven above us only knows!”
She shook her head, and her voice trembled; her hand must have done so too, for the light required a deal of trimming.
