Night and Morning, CompleteLytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Night and Morning, Complete
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction
He waved his arm, and the menials shrank back at his tread, stalked
across the inhospitable hall, and vanished. When he had gained the
street, he turned and looked up at the house. His dark and hollow eyes,
gleaming through the long and raven hair that fell profusely over his
face, had in them an expression of menace almost preternatural, from its
settled calmness; the wild and untutored majesty which, though rags and
squalor, never deserted his form, as it never does the forms of men
in whom the will is strong and the sense of injustice deep; the
outstretched arm the haggard, but noble features; the bloomless and
scathed youth, all gave to his features and his stature an aspect awful
in its sinister and voiceless wrath. There he stood a moment, like one
to whom woe and wrong have given a Prophet’s power, guiding the eye of
the unforgetful Fate to the roof of the Oppressor. Then slowly, and with
a half smile, he turned away, and strode through the streets till he
arrived at one of the narrow lanes that intersect the more equivocal
quarters of the huge city. He stopped at the private entrance of a small
pawnbroker’s shop; the door was opened by a slipshod boy; he ascended
the dingy stairs till he came to the second floor; and there, in a small
back room, he found Captain de Burgh Smith, seated before a table with
a couple of candles on it, smoking a cigar, and playing at cards by
himself.
“Well, what news of your brother, Bully Phil?”
“None: they will reveal nothing.”
“Do you give him up?”
“Never! My hope now is in you.”
“Well, I thought you would be driven to come to me, and I will do
something for you that I should not loike to do for myself. I told you
that I knew the Bow Street runner who was in the barouche. I will find
him out--Heaven knows that is easily done; and, if you can pay well, you
will get your news.”
“You shall have all I possess, if you restore my brother. See what it
is, one hundred pounds--it was his fortune. It is useless to me without
him. There, take fifty now, and if--”
Philip stopped, for his voice trembled too much to allow him farther
speech. Captain Smith thrust the notes into his pocket, and said--
“We’ll consider it settled.”
Captain Smith fulfilled his promise. He saw the Bow Street officer. Mr.
Sharp had been bribed too high by the opposite party to tell tales, and
he willingly encouraged the suspicion that Sidney was under the care
of the Beauforts. He promised, however, for the sake of ten guineas,
to procure Philip a letter from Sidney himself. This was all he would
undertake.
Philip was satisfied. At the end of another week, Mr. Sharp transmitted
to the Captain a letter, which he, in his turn, gave to Philip. It ran
thus, in Sidney’s own sprawling hand:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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