The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased, even then; but that my attention was then diverted into a current very memorable to me.
As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble. Looking up, I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.
'Charley,' said I, 'are you so cold?'
'I think I am, miss,' she replied. 'I don't know what it is. I can't hold myself still. I felt so, yesterday; at about this same time, miss. Don't be uneasy, I think I'm ill.'
I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to the door of communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the key.
Ada called to me to let her in; but I said, 'Not now, my dearest. Go away. There's nothing the matter; I will come to you presently.' Ah! it was a long, long time, before my darling girl and I were companions again.
Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her to my room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. I told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary that I should seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above all. At first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and even reproached me with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter, saying that she made me anxious and unhappy, and imploring her, as she loved me, and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than the garden. After that, she came beneath the window, even oftener than she had come to the door; and, if I had learnt to love her dear sweet voice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love it then, when I stood behind the window-curtain listening and replying, but not so much as looking out! How did I learn to love it afterwards, when the harder time came!
They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had vacated that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There was not a servant, in or about the house, but was so good that they would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night, without the least fear or unwillingness; but I thought it best to choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada, and whom I could trust to come and go with all precaution. Through her means, I got out to take the air with my guardian, when there was no fear of meeting Ada; and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any more than in any other respect.
And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such a gentle fortitude, that very often as I sat by Charley, holding her head in my arms – repose would come to her, so, when it would come to her in no other attitude – I silently prayed to our Father in heaven that I might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught me.
I was very sorrowful to think that Charley's pretty looks would change and be disfigured, even if she recovered – she was such a child with her dimpled face – but that thought was, for the greater part, lost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind rambled again to the cares of her father's sick bed, and the little children, she still knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur out the wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At those times I used to think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that the baby who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them in their need, was dead!
There were other times when Charley knew me well, and talked to me; telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma, and that she was sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley would speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could, to comfort him; of that young man carried out to be buried, who was the only son of his mother and she was a widow; of the ruler's daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of death. And Charley told me that when her father died, she had kneeled down and prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be raised up, and given back to his poor children; and that if she should never get better, and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come into Tom's mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show Tom how these people of old days had been brought back to life on earth, only that we might know our hope to be restored to Heaven!
But of all the various times there were in Charley's illness, there was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of. And there were many, many, when I thought in the night of the last high belief in the watching Angel, and the last higher trust in God, on the part of her poor despised father.
And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend. The hope that never had been given, from the first, of Charley being in outward appearance Charley any more, soon began to be encouraged; and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish likeness again.
It was a great morning, when I could tell Ada all this as she stood out in the garden; and it was a great evening, when Charley and I at last took tea together in the next room. But, on that same evening, I felt that I was stricken old.
Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed again and placidly asleep, that I began to think the contagion of her illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was rapidly following in Charley's steps.
I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to return my darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at times – with a curious sense of fulness, as if I were becoming too large altogether.
In the evening I was so much worse, that I resolved to prepare Charley; with which view I said, 'You're getting quite strong, Charley, are you not?'
'O quite!' said Charley.
'Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?'
'Quite strong enough for that, miss!' cried Charley. But Charley's face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in my face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom, and said, 'O miss, it's my doing! It's my doing!' and a great deal more, out of the fulness of her grateful heart,
'Now, Charley,' said I, after letting her go on for a little while, 'if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And unless you are as quiet and composed for me, as you always were for yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley.'
'If you'll let me cry a little longer, miss,' said Charley. 'O my dear, my dear! if you'll only let me cry a little longer, O my dear!'—how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out, as she clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears– 'I'll be good.'
So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good.
'Trust in me now, if you please, miss,' said Charley, quietly. 'I am listening to everything you say.'
'It's very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor to-night that I don't think I am well, and that you are going to nurse me.'
For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart.
'And in the morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley, and say I am asleep – that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep. At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one come.'
Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the doctor that night, and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask, relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day, and of day melting into night again; but I was just able, on the first morning, to get to the window, and speak to my darling.
On the second morning I heard her dear voice – O how dear now! – outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer softly, 'Don't disturb her, Charley, for the world!'
'How does my own Pride look, Charley?' I inquired.
'Disappointed, miss,' said Charley, peeping through the curtain.
'But I know she is very beautiful this morning.'
'She is indeed, miss,' answered Charley, peeping. 'Still looking up at the window.'
With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when raised like that!
I called Charley to me, and gave her her last charge.
'Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for one moment as I lie here, I shall die.'
'I never will! I never will!' she promised me.
'I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you, Charley; I am blind.'
Chapter XXXII
The appointed time
It is night in Lincoln's Inn – perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day – and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs, and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine o'clock, has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows, clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over which bee-like industry, these benefactors of their species linger yet, though office-hours be past; that they may give, for every day, some good account at last.
In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the Rag and Bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been lying in ambush about the byways of Chancery Lane for some hours, and scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of passengers-Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being abed; and they still linger on a door-step over a few parting words, Mr. Krook and his lodger, and the fact of Mr. Krook's being 'continually in liquor,' and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms; where the sound of the piano through the partly-opened windows jingles out into the court, and where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a concerted piece, and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to Listen, listen, listen, Tew the wa-ter-Fall! Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings, and who has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window; Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted syren, and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's Arms every night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments. 'Sooner than which, myself,' says Mrs. Perkins, 'I would get my living by selling lucifers.' Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the same opinion; holding that a private station is better than public applause, and thanking Heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs. Perkins's) respectability. By this time, the potboy of the Sol's Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that tankard and retires in-doors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs. Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court, and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shootings stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too, the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is either robbing or being robbed.
It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too; and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the Registrar of Deaths some extra business. It may be something in the air – there is plenty in it – or it may be something in himself, that is in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He comes and goes, between his own room and the open street door, twenty times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night, Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than before.
It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too; for he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery, of which he is a partaker, and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what seems to be its fountain-head – the rag and bottle shop in the court. It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by the Sol's Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes long from his own door and back again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.
'What, Mr. Weevle?' says the stationer, stopping to speak. 'Are you there?'
'Aye!' says Weevle. 'Here I am, Mr. Snagsby.'
'Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?' the stationer inquires.
'Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is is not very freshening,' Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.
'Very true, sir. Don't you observe,' says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to sniff and taste the air a little; 'don't you observe, Mr. Weevle, that you're – not to put too fine a point upon it– that you're rather greasy here, sir?'
'Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the place to-night,' Mr. Weevle rejoins. 'I suppose it's chops at the Sol's Arms.'
'Chops, do you think? Oh! – Chops, eh?' Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again. 'Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning 'em, sir! And I don't think;' Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again, and then spits and wipes his mouth; 'I don't think – not to put too fine a point upon it – that they were quite fresh, when they were shown the gridiron.'
'That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather.'
'It is a tainting sort of weather,' says Mr. Snagsby, 'and I find it sinking to the spirits.'
'By George! I find it gives me the horrors,' returns Mr. Weevle.
'Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room, with a black circumstance hanging over it,' says Mr. Snagsby, looking in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage, and then falling back a step to look up at the house. 'I couldn't live in that room alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door, and stand here, sooner than sit there. But then it's very true that you didn't see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference.'
'I know quite enough about it,' returns Tony.
'It's not agreeable, is it?' pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. 'Mr. Krook ought to consider it in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.'
'I hope he does,' says Tony. 'But I doubt it.'
'You find the rent too high, do you, sir?' returns the stationer. 'Rents are high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but the law seems to put things up in price. Not,' adds Mr. Snagsby, with his apologetic cough, 'that I mean to say a word against the profession I get my living by.'
Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court, and then looks at the stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a star or so, and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his way out of this conversation.
'It's a curious fact, sir,' he observes, slowly rubbing his hands, 'that he should have been—'
'Who's he?' interrupts Mr. Weevle.
'The deceased, you know,' says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and right eyebrow towards the staircase, and tapping his acquaintance on the button.
'Ah, to be sure!' returns the other, as if he were not over-fond of the subject. 'I thought we had done with him.'
'I was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that you should come and live here, and be one of my writers, too. Which there is nothing derogatory, but far from it, in the appellation,' says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, 'because I have known writers that have gone into Brewers' houses and done really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir,' adds Mr. Snagsby, with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.
'It's a curious coincidence, as you say,' answers Weevle, once more glancing up and down the court.
'Seems a Fate in it, don't there?' suggests the stationer.
'There does.'
'Just so,' observes the stationer, with his confirmatory cough. 'Quite a Fate in it. Quite a Fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid you good night;' Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since he stopped to speak; 'my little woman will be looking for me else. Good night, sir!'
If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this time, and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over her head; honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching glance as she goes past.
'You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events,' says Mr. Weevle to himself; 'and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow never coming!'
This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door. Then they go up-stairs; Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they speak low.
'I thought you had gone to Jericho at least, instead of coming here,' says Tony.
'Why, I said about ten.'
'You said about ten,' Tony repeats. 'Yes, so you did say about ten. But, according to my count, it's ten times ten – it's a hundred o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!'
'What has been the matter?'
'That's it!' says Tony. 'Nothing has been the matter. But here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib, till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. There's a blessed-looking candle!' says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.
'That's easily improved,' Mr. Guppy observes, as he takes the snuffers in hand.
'Is it?' returns his friend. 'Not so easily as you think. It has been smouldering like that ever since it was lighted.'
'Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?' inquires Mr. Guppy, looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the table.
'William Guppy,' replies the other, 'I am in the Downs. It's this unbearably dull, suicidal room – and old Boguey downstairs, I suppose.' Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender, and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his head, and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy attitude.
'Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?'
'Yes, and he – yes, it was Snagsby,' says Mr, Weevle, altering the construction of his sentence.
'On business?'
'No. No business. He was only sauntering by, and stopped to prose.'
'I thought it was Snagsby,' says Mr. Guppy, 'and thought it as well that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone.'
'There we go again, William G.!' cries Tony, looking up for an instant. 'So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!'
Mr. Guppy affects to smile; and with the view of changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty; terminating his survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantel-shelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.
'That's very like Lady Dedlock,' says Mr. Guppy. 'It's a speaking likeness.'
'I wish it was,' growls Tony, without changing his position. 'I should have some fashionable conversation here, then.'
Finding, by this time, that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack, and remonstrates with him.
'Tony,' says he, 'I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man, better than I do; and no man perhaps has a better right to know it, than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his art. But there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.'
'This is strong language, William Guppy,' returned Mr. Weevle.
'Sir, it may be,' retorts Mr. William Guppy, 'but I feel strongly when I use it.'
Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong, and begs Mr. William Guppy to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured remonstrance.
'No! Dash it, Tony,' says that gentleman, 'you really ought to be careful how you wound the feelings of a man, who has an unrequited image imprinted on his art, and who is not altogether happy in those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye, and allure the taste. It is not – happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I could say the same – it is not your character to hover around one flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!'
Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying emphatically, 'William Guppy, drop it!' Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with the reply, 'I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord.'
'And now,' says Tony, stirring the fire, 'touching this same bundle of letters. Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?'
'Very. What did he do it for?'
'What does he do anything for? He don't know. Said to-day was his birthday, and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock. He'll have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day.'
'He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?'
'Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him to-night, about eight – helped him to shut up his shop – and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off, and showed 'em me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I heard him a little while afterwards through the floor here, humming, like the wind, the only song he knows – about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been as quiet, since, as an old rat asleep in his hole.'
'And you are to go down at twelve?'
'At twelve. And, as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a hundred.'
'Tony,' says Mr. Guppy, after considering a little with his legs crossed, 'he can't read yet, can he?'
'Read! He'll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too old to acquire the knack of it now – and too drunk.'
'Tony,' says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs; 'how do you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?'
'He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has, and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye alone. He imitated it – evidently from the direction of a letter; and asked me what it meant.'
'Tony,' says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again; 'should you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?'
'A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's – slopes a good deal, and the end of the letter "n," long and hasty.'
Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue, generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.
'Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is there a chimney on fire?'
'Chimney on fire!'
'Ah!' returns Mr. Guppy. 'See how the soot's falling. See here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow off – smears, like black fat!'
They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a little way up-stairs, and a little way down-stairs. Comes back, and says it's all right, and all quiet; and quotes the remark he lately made to Mr. Snagsby, about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.
'And it was then,' resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads very near together, 'that he told you of his having taken the bundle of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?'
'That was the time, sir,' answers Tony, faintly adjusting his whiskers. 'Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night, and advising him not to call before: Boguey being a Slyboots.'
The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed by Mr. Weevle, sits so ill upon him to-night, that he abandons that and his whiskers together; and, after looking over his shoulder, appears to yield himself up, a prey to the horrors again.
'You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?' asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting his thumb-nail.
'You can't speak too low. Yes. That's what he and I agreed.'
'I tell you what, Tony—'
'You can't speak too low,' says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.
'I tell you what. The first thing to be done is, to make another packet, like the real one; so that, if he should ask to see the real one while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy.'
'And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it– which with his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely than not,' suggests Tony.
'Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never did. You found that; and you placed them in my hands – a legal friend of yours – for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be producible, won't they?'
'Ye-es,' is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission.
'Why, Tony,' remonstrates his friend, 'how you look! You don't doubt William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?'
'I don't suspect anything more than I know, William,' returns the other, gravely.
'And what do you know?' urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little; but on his friend's once more warning him, 'I tell you, you can't speak too low,' he repeats his question without any sound at all; forming with his lips only the words, 'What do you know?'
'I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in secrecy; a pair of conspirators.'
'Well!' says Mr. Guppy, 'and we had better be that than a pair of noodles, which we should be, if we were doing anything else; for it's the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?'
'Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be profitable, after all.'
Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantel-shelf, and replies, 'Tony, you are asked to leave that to the honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that friend, in those chords of the human mind which – which need not be called into agonising vibration on the present occasion – your friend is no fool. What's that?'