Chapter 59

CHAPTER 59

The Plots begin to fail, and Doubts and Dangers to disturb the
Plotter

Ralph sat alone, in the solitary room where he was accustomed to
take his meals, and to sit of nights when no profitable occupation
called him abroad. Before him was an untasted breakfast, and near
to where his fingers beat restlessly upon the table, lay his watch.
It was long past the time at which, for many years, he had put it in
his pocket and gone with measured steps downstairs to the business
of the day, but he took as little heed of its monotonous warning, as
of the meat and drink before him, and remained with his head resting
on one hand, and his eyes fixed moodily on the ground.

This departure from his regular and constant habit, in one so
regular and unvarying in all that appertained to the daily pursuit
of riches, would almost of itself have told that the usurer was not
well. That he laboured under some mental or bodily indisposition,
and that it was one of no slight kind so to affect a man like him,
was sufficiently shown by his haggard face, jaded air, and hollow
languid eyes: which he raised at last with a start and a hasty
glance around him, as one who suddenly awakes from sleep, and cannot
immediately recognise the place in which he finds himself.

'What is this,' he said, 'that hangs over me, and I cannot shake
off? I have never pampered myself, and should not be ill. I have
never moped, and pined, and yielded to fancies; but what CAN a man
do without rest?'

He pressed his hand upon his forehead.

'Night after night comes and goes, and I have no rest. If I sleep,
what rest is that which is disturbed by constant dreams of the same
detested faces crowding round me--of the same detested people, in
every variety of action, mingling with all I say and do, and always
to my defeat? Waking, what rest have I, constantly haunted by this
heavy shadow of--I know not what--which is its worst character? I
must have rest. One night's unbroken rest, and I should be a man
again.'

Pushing the table from him while he spoke, as though he loathed the
sight of food, he encountered the watch: the hands of which were
almost upon noon.

'This is strange!' he said; 'noon, and Noggs not here! What drunken
brawl keeps him away? I would give something now--something in
money even after that dreadful loss--if he had stabbed a man in a
tavern scuffle, or broken into a house, or picked a pocket, or done
anything that would send him abroad with an iron ring upon his leg,
and rid me of him. Better still, if I could throw temptation in his
way, and lure him on to rob me. He should be welcome to what he
took, so I brought the law upon him; for he is a traitor, I swear!
How, or when,