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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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1072 He pressed his hand upon his forehead. ‘Night after night comes and goes, and I have no rest. If I sleep, what rest is that which is disturbed by constant dreams of the same detested faces crowding round me--of the same detested people, in every variety of action, mingling with all I say and do, and always to my defeat? Waking, what rest have I, constantly haunted by this heavy shadow of--I know not what--which is its worst character? I must have rest. One night’s unbroken rest, and I should be a man again.’ Pushing the table from him while he spoke, as though he loathed the sight of food, he encountered the watch: the hands of which were almost upon noon. ‘This is strange!’ he said; ‘noon, and Noggs not here! What drunken brawl keeps him away? I would give something now-- something in money even after that dreadful loss--if he had stabbed a man in a tavern scuffle, or broken into a house, or picked a pocket, or done anything that would send him abroad with an iron ring upon his leg, and rid me of him. Better still, if I could throw temptation in his way, and lure him on to rob me. He should be welcome to what he took, so I brought the law upon him; for he is a traitor, I swear! How, or when, or where, I don’t know, though I suspect.’ After waiting for another half-hour, he dispatched the woman who kept his house to Newman’s lodging, to inquire if he were ill, and why he had not come or sent. She brought back answer that he had not been home all night, and that no one could tell her anything about him. ‘But there is a gentleman, sir,’ she said, ‘below, who was standing at the door when I came in, and he says--’ |
