and ferocity of his attack would have surely done him some grievous injury, defenceless as he was, and embarrassed by having his frightened sister clinging to his arm, if Merry had not run between them, crying to Tom for the love of Heaven to leave the house. The agony of this poor creature, the terror of his sister, the impossibility of making himself audible, and the equal impossibility of bearing up against Mrs. Gamp, who threw herself upon him like a feather-bed, and forced him backwards down the stairs by the mere oppression of her dead-weight, prevailed. Tom shook the dust of that house off his feet, without having mentioned Nadgett's name.
If the name could have passed his lips; if Jonas, in the insolence of his vile nature, had never roused him to do that old act of manliness, for which (and not for his last offence) he hated him with such malignity; if Jonas could have learned, as then he could and would have learned, through Tom's means, what unsuspected spy there was upon him; he would have been saved from the commission of a Guilty Deed, then drawing on towards its black accomplishment. But the fatality was of his own working; the pit was of his own digging; the gloom that gathered round him, was the shadow of his own life.
His wife had closed the door, and thrown herself before it, on the ground, upon her knees. She held up her hands to him now, and besought him not to be harsh with her, for she had interposed in fear of bloodshed.
"So, so!" said Jonas, looking down upon her, as he fetched his breath. "These are your friends, are they, when I am away? You plot and tamper with this sort of people, do you?"
"No, indeed! I have no knowledge of these secrets, and no clue to their meaning. I have never seen him since I left home but once—but twice—before to-day."
"Oh!" sneered Jonas, catching at this correction. "But once, but twice, eh? Which do you mean? Twice and once, perhaps. Three times! How many more, you lying jade?"
As he made an angry motion with his hand, she shrunk down hastily. A suggestive action! Full of a cruel truth!
"How many more times?" he repeated.
"No more. The other morning, and to-day, and once besides."
He was about to retort upon her, when the clock struck. He started, stopped, and listened: appearing to revert to some engagement, or to some other subject, a secret within his own breast, recalled to him by this record of the progress of the hours.
"Don't lie there. Get up!"
Having helped her to rise, or rather hauled her up by the arm, he went on to say:
"Listen to me, young lady; and don't whine when you have no occasion, or I may make some for you. If I find him in my house again, or find that you have seen him in anybody else's house, you 'll repent it. If you are not deaf and dumb to everything that concerns me, unless you have my leave to hear and speak, you 'll repent it. If you don't obey exactly what I order, you 'll repent it. Now, attend. What's the time?"
"It struck Eight a minute ago."
