Night and Morning, Volume 2Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Night and Morning, Volume 2
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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