She can't have been gone long. I'll call the police. Give you but information of what she has stolen, and they'll lay hands upon her, trust me.—Here—help!"
"No—no—no," screamed the old man putting his hand upon Ralph's mouth. "I can't, I daren't."
"Help! help!" cried Ralph.
"No, no, no," shrieked the other, stamping upon the ground with the energy of a madman. "I tell you no. I daren't—I daren't!"
"Daren't make this robbery public?" said Ralph eagerly.
"No!" rejoined Gride, wringing his hands. "Hush! Hush! Not a word of this; not a word must be said. I am undone. Whichever way I turn, I am undone. I am betrayed. I shall be given up. I shall die in Newgate!"
With frantic exclamations such as these, and with many others in which fear, grief, and rage, were strangely blended, the panic-stricken wretch gradually subdued his first loud outcry until it had softened down into a low despairing moan chequered now and then by a howl as, going over such papers as were left in the chest, he discovered some new loss. With very little excuse for departing so abruptly, Ralph left him, and greatly disappointing the loiterers outside the house by telling them there was nothing the matter, got into the coach and was driven to his own home.
A letter lay on his table. He let it lie there for some time as if he had not the courage to open it, but at length did so and turned deadly pale.
"The worst has happened," he said, "the house has failed. I see—the rumour was abroad in the City last night, and reached the ears of those merchants. Well—well!"
He strode violently up and down the room and stopped again.
"Ten thousand pounds! And only lying there for a day—for one day! How many anxious years, how many pinching days and sleepless nights, before I scraped together that ten thousand pounds!—Ten thousand pounds! How many proud painted dames would have fawned and smiled, and how many spendthrift blockheads done me lip-service to my face and cursed me in their hearts, while I turned that ten thousand pounds into twenty! While I ground, and pinched, and used these needy borrowers for my pleasure and profit, what smooth-tongued speeches, and courteous looks, and civil letters they would have given me! The cant of the lying world is, that men like me compass our riches by dissimulation and treachery by fawning, cringing, and stooping. Why, how many lies, what mean and abject evasions, what humbled behaviour from upstarts who, but for my money, would spurn me aside as they do their betters every day, would that ten thousand pounds have brought me in!—Grant that I had doubled it—made cent, per cent.—for every sovereign told another—there would not be one piece of money in all that heap of coin which wouldn't represent ten thousand mean and paltry lies, told—not by the money-ender, oh no! but by the money-borrowers—your liberal, thoughtless, generous, dashing folks, who wouldn't be so mean as save a sixpence for the world."
