Chicago (Ill.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Gambling -- Fiction; Judges -- Fiction
"No," said Bodney, and Goyle let him have his way. The hours passed,
Bodney lying in a restless stupor, but Goyle slept. Sunlight poured
into the room and Bodney got up. He went to the window and stood to
cool his face in the fresh air. He looked back at the bed. Goyle was
still sleeping, breathing gently. The horror of the night came in a
rush. And there was the cause of it, sleeping in peace. Bodney
snatched open a drawer and seized a razor. Goyle turned over, with his
face toward the window.
"Ah, up? What time is it, George?"
Bodney dropped the razor and sat down. "It is time to get up," he said.
Goyle got out of bed and began to exercise himself by striking out with
his fists. He had passed, he said, a night of delicious rest, with not
a dream to disturb him. He whistled merrily as he dressed himself.
Bodney stood with his elbow resting on the marble top of the "bureau,"
his face yellow and haggard. Glancing down into the half closed drawer,
he saw the razor and shuddered at the sight of it. With his left hand
he felt of his right arm, gripping it from shoulder down to wrist as if
in some strange manner it had been deprived of strength. Goyle moved
toward him and he pushed against the drawer to close it, but the keen
eye of the "artist" fell upon the open razor, and glittered like the eye
of a snake. But he showed no sign of fear or even of resentment.
"I will stay to breakfast with you," he said, putting his hand on
Bodney’s shoulder.
"I wish you wouldn’t," Bodney feebly replied.
"Oh, no you don’t. Come, brace up now. My part of the work is done,
but yours is just beginning. I have saved you from suspicion, but you
must keep yourself saved. That’s right, brighten up. Now you are
beginning to look like yourself. Why, nothing so very bad has been done.
We have enacted a little drama, that’s all. Such things, or things on a
par with them, are enacted every day. The newspapers are full of
stranger things. We haven’t hired a ’castle’ and entered upon a career
of wholesale murder; we haven’t cut up a woman and made her into
sausage."
The voice of William was heard in the passage, scolding a housemaid for
disturbing his papers. The old man tapped on the door and Goyle opened
it.
"Ah, you here?" said the old man, stepping into the room. "You’d better
go in to breakfast. Well, sir, I never saw anything like it in my life.
I can’t put a thing down and find it where I left it. George, what’s
the matter with you this morning?"
"Nothing at all, sir. I had a headache and didn’t sleep very well.
That’s all. Is the Judge up yet?"
"I believe not. And when he does get up I want to have a talk with him.
I’ll be hanged if he didn’t get that preacher to laughing at me last
night—laughing at me right here in my own house. I can stand a good
deal, but when a preacher laughs at me, why things have gone too far."
Goyle smiled upon him. "But, Mr. Elbridge, a preacher means quite as
little when he laughs as when he talks."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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