The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 353: what you’re looking at

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7 @ = 342 THE MYSTERIES. opposite impulses, the echoes of her light feet de- scendiny the stairs rapidly grew fainter and fainter until they ceased altogether. And still he re- mained motionless in the room—his desperate con- dition prompting him to suffer the young maiden to put to the test the only alternative to which hope could possibly point. “Well, I tell you what it is, Mr. Me!moth,” said | the landlady, breakiug silence at the expiration of a minate: “that Miss Foster has gone away to raise money somehow or anuther—and of course I’m not obleezed to know or care by what means. It's just half-past nine o’clock—and I don’t mind waiting till eleven. My ‘usband wont be home till then—and so I’ve got to set up for him. _ Bat if so be the cash isn’t forthcomiag by that hour, you and your family must all tramp off this very night; and if you wont go by fair means, I shall make free to send tor the constable and turn you out by foul. Sv the matter stands in that there way betwixt us.” Having thas spoken, and without waiting for a reply, Mrs, Thomas hurried down stairs. Meimoth closed the door behiud her, and, turn- ing towards his wife, he read despair in the coun- tenauce of the unhappy woman as she sank back on the low seat whence she had risen a few minutes | previously. “ Holy God ! what is to become of us ?” exclaimed the wretched man, dashing his clenched fists with terrible violence ayainst his forehead, so that the blows sounded as plainly as if they had been dealt upon the table. “James—my dearest James, tranquitise your- ; gelf!” almost screa : ed forth his heart-broken wife, now cracvily alarmed by the dreadful excitement to which misery had goaded her husband. And the children, gathering round their father, clung to his clothes—weepiny bitterly, and gazing up in mingled piteousness and alarm towards the countenance which wore anexpression alike strange and menacing, and such as had never been ob- served upon those features until then. CHAPTER XCVIL DESPERATION. For some minutes the persecnted working man re- mained standing, drawn up to his full height, in the midst of his children. His left hand was thrust into his breast—his right was cle.ched—and his whole frame shook with nervous t:emblings, Ter- rible thoughts appeared to sweep across his coun- tenance—aud his wife, who wasa shrewd and in- telligent woman, was seized with the sudden fear that some desperate project was springing up in ber husband’s imayination or that his mind was un- derygoing a fearfal change, the transition convuls- iny his whole being. The litle boy of eight clung to him on one side ~the little girl on the other—and the elder lad ‘stood before him, beseeching that he would be com. forted. Bat the man stared willy upon them; and the more sinieter grew the workings of his features, the deeper became the impression in the bosom of his unhappy wife that he was revolving some plan the nature of which she shuddered to conjecture. “James,” she said at length—once more rising from her seat, and approaching him with the babe BR 4 4 + inher arms—that babe which was giving forth a | weak, plaintive ery, as if the hand of death were — already weighing heavily upon its frail anda ema- ciated form,—* James—my dear husbaad —in the name of God! look not thas upon your children! See — they are terrified — your manner aarms them. What ails yon?— what are you thinking of? Speak -I implore you to speak [” “Father—dear father— speak” murmured the elder boy, joining his thin and wasted hands in earnest appeal. “ Whatam I thinking of ?” he exclaimed, with the wildness and the bitterness of a maniac, his eyes glaring almost savagely as he spoke: and so terribly threatening did his voice sound that the cries of the children, all save the infant, were im- mediately hushed—and they vazed with mingled awe and apprehension upon the parent who had never seemed harsh nor unkind to them before, * Whatam I thinking of?” he repeated —and ayain the unnatural laughter sounded dread and ominous within the four bare walls of the dismantled, denuded garret. “I am thinking,” he proceeded in a tone of concentrated bitterness, “that :t is useless to let society make war upon us any longer without the slightest attempt at retaliation! | am thinking that | am a coward—a sneaking, paltry, mean, despicable coward—to subunit to a diabolical persecution and offer no enmity in return! J am thinking that a civitised society has no right to hant any of its members to death— nor to goad them to despcration: if it do, it must take the consequences! Il ain thinking that. honesty amounts to a crime when my wife and children are starving around me and an unfeeling landlady threaten. to have us turned forth into the strects;—and I begin to look upon myself as a craven-spiritei, pusillanimnous, degraded wretch who wants the couraye to seize apon those rigbts which a vitiated system denies him. God never placed usin this world to starve: He could not have sent these innocent chiidren upon earth to endure all the ayouies of that linger- ing death which famine is iuflicting. No—no: itis impossible! We have a right to live—aod it was intended that we should live, because we were not pat upon thre earth by our own wish! We did not ask to be born. lf we did, then might we be punished for our presumption: but it is not our own fauls that we are here 3;—and since God i- good and wise, He would not have called us into being merely to leave us in the position of intruders upon the rest of the world. Nu—l begin to uao- derstand things ina new light. We hive a right to receive a subsistence from the earth, ina-mucth as we have been placed upon it by Gud himself: and if this subsisteuce be denied tv us—it work be refused when we ask for work—if the bread of industry be withholdea, then must we take whas is not granted |” “In the name of heaven, James, cease this dread- ful language!” cried the wreiched woman, whose powers of utterance had been totally suspended for a few minutes while her husband was shus giving vent to the doctrines which, like new intuitions, had sprung up in his mind as suddenly and with all the vividness of the lightning that awes while it dazzles and is terrible in its grandeur. “ Dreadful language.’ repeated Melmoth, bend- ing upon his quailing, shrinking wife a look thas =r e —=_ ECOMIIEHO® 1?) SS | | co