What Will He Do with It? — Volume 10Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
What Will He Do with It? — Volume 10
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction -- 19th century
Cutts, on ariving in London, went straight to Mrs. Crane's old lodging
opposite to Jasper's. But she had now removed to Podden Place, and left
no address. On reaching his own home, Cutts, however, found a note from
her, stating that she should be at her old lodging that evening, if he
would call at half-past nine o'clock; for, indeed, she had been expecting
Jasper's promised visit--had learned that he had left his lodgings, and
was naturally anxious to learn from Cutts what had become of him. When
Cutts called at the appointed hour and told his story, Arabella Crane
immediately recognised all the danger which her informant had so
prudently shunned. Nor was she comforted by Cutts's assurance that
Jasper, on finding himself deserted, would have no option but to abandon,
or at least postpone, an enterprise that, undertaken singly, would be too
rash even for his reckless temerity. As it had become the object of her
life to save Losely from justice, so she now shrunk from denouncing to
justice his meditated crime; and the idea of recurring to Colonel Morley
happily flashed upon her.
Having thus explained to the reader these antecedents in the narrative,
we return to Jasper. He did not rise till late at noon; and as he was
generally somewhat stupefied on rising by the drink he had taken the
night before, and by the congested brain which the heaviness of such
sleep produced, he could not at first believe that Cutts had altogether
abandoned the enterprise--rather thought that, with his habitual
wariness, that Ulysses of the Profession had gone forth to collect
further information in the neighbourhood of the proposed scene of action.
He was not fully undeceived in this belief till somewhat late in the day,
when, strolling into the stable-yard, the ostler, concluding from the
gentleman's goodly thews and size that he was a north-country grazier,
delivered Cutts's allegorical caution against the bullocks.
Thus abandoned, Jasper's desperate project only acquired a still more
concentrated purpose and a ruder simplicity of action. His original
idea, on first conceiving the plan of robbery, had been to enter into
Darrell's presence disguised and masked. Even, however, before Cutts
deserted him; the mere hope of plunder had become subordinate to the
desire of a personal triumph; and now that Cutts had left him to himself,
and carried away the means of disguise, Jasper felt rather pleased than
otherwise at the thought that his design should have none of the
characteristics of a vulgar burglary. No mask now; his front should be
as open as his demand. Cutts's report of the facility of penetrating
into Darrell's very room also lessened the uses of an accomplice. And in
the remodification of his first hasty plan of common place midnight
stealthy robbery, he would no longer even require an assistant to dispose
of the plunder he might gain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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