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- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.842Z
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- text
- back? But he might still be somewhere in the house; and with a shudder,
I thought of that ivory rattling, and was almost ready to dart forth,
search every room, and save him. But that would be madness, and I had
sworn not to do so. There seemed nothing left, but to await his return.
Yet, if he did not return, what then? I took out the purse, and counted
over the money, and looked at the letter and paper of memoranda.
Though I vividly remember it all, I will not give the superscription of
the letter, nor the contents of the paper. But after I had looked at
them attentively, and considered that Harry could have no conceivable
object in deceiving me, I thought to myself, Yes, he’s in earnest; and
here I am—yes, even in London! And here in this room will I stay, come
what will. I will implicitly follow his directions, and so see out the
last of this thing.
But spite of these thoughts, and spite of the metropolitan magnificence
around me, I was mysteriously alive to a dreadful feeling, which I had
never before felt, except when penetrating into the lowest and most
squalid haunts of sailor iniquity in Liverpool. All the mirrors and
marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to
myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent
still.
It was now grown very late; and faint with excitement, I threw myself
upon a lounge; but for some time tossed about restless, in a sort of
night-mare. Every few moments, spite of my oath, I was upon the point
of starting up, and rushing into the street, to inquire where I was;
but remembering Harry’s injunctions, and my own ignorance of the town,
and that it was now so late, I again tried to be composed.
At last, I fell asleep, dreaming about Harry fighting a duel of
dice-boxes with the military-looking man below; and the next thing I
knew, was the glare of a light before my eyes, and Harry himself, very
pale, stood before me.
“The letter and paper,” he cried.
I fumbled in my pockets, and handed them to him.
“There! there! there! thus I tear you,” he cried, wrenching the letter
to pieces with both hands like a madman, and stamping upon the
fragments. “I am off for America; the game is up.”
“For God’s sake explain,” said I, now utterly bewildered, and
frightened. “Tell me, Harry, what is it? You have not been gambling?”
“Ha, ha,” he deliriously laughed. “Gambling? red and white, you
mean?—cards?—dice?—the bones?—Ha, ha!—Gambling? gambling?” he ground
out between his teeth—“what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables
they are!”
“Wellingborough,” he added, marching up to me slowly, but with his eyes
blazing into mine—“Wellingborough”—and fumbling in his breast-pocket,
he drew forth a dirk—“Here, Wellingborough, take it—take it, I say—are
you stupid?—there, there”—and he pushed it into my hands. “Keep it away
from me—keep it out of my sight—I don’t want it near me, while I feel
as I do. They serve suicides scurvily here, Wellingborough; they don’t
bury them decently. See that bell-rope! By Heaven, it’s an invitation
to hang myself"—and seizing it by the gilded handle at the end, he
twitched it down from the wall.
“In God’s name, what ails you?” I cried.
“Nothing, oh nothing,” said Harry, now assuming a treacherous, tropical
calmness—“nothing, Redburn; nothing in the world. I’m the serenest of
men.”
“But give me that dirk,” he suddenly cried—“let me have it, I say. Oh!
I don’t mean to murder myself—I’m past that now—give it me”—and
snatching it from my hand, he flung down an empty purse, and with a
terrific stab, nailed it fast with the dirk to the table.
- title
- Chunk 6