THE DEVIL'S COUNSEL.
"Steal it," said the Devil.
Simon was all of a twitter; for though he fancied his own heart said it,
still his ear-drum rattled, as if somebody had spoken.
Simon--that ear-drum was to put you off your guard: the deaf can hear
the devil: he needs no tympanum to commune with the spirit: listen
again, Simon; your own thoughts echo every word.
"Steal it: hide in her room; you know she has a shower-bath there, which
nobody has used for years, standing in a corner; two or three cloaks in
it, nothing else: it locks inside, how lucky! ensconce yourself there,
watch the old woman to sleep--what a fat heavy sleeper she is!--quietly
take her keys, and steal the store: remember, it is a honey-pot.
Nothing's easier--or safer. Who'd suspect you?"
"Splendid! and as good as done," triumphantly exclaimed the nephew,
snapping his fingers, and prancing with glee;--"a glorious fancy! bless
my lucky star!"
If there be a planet Lucifer, that was Simon's lucky star.
And so, Mrs Quarles the biter is going to be bit, eh? It generally is so
in this world's government. You, who brought in your estimable nephew to
aid and abet in your own dishonest ways, are, it seems, going to be
robbed of all your knavish gains by him. This is taking the wise in
their own craftiness, I reckon: and richly you deserve to lose all your
ill-got hoard. At the same time, Mrs. Quarles--I will be just--there are
worse people in the world than you are: in comparison with your nephew,
I consider you a grosser kind of angel; and I really hope no harm may
befall your old bones beyond the loss of your money. However, if you are
to lose this, it is my wish that poor Mrs. Scott, or some other honest
body, may get it, and not Simon; or rather, I should not object that he
may get it first, and get hung for getting it, too, before the sister
has the hoard.
Our friend, Simon Jennings, could not sleep that night; his reveries and
scheming lasted from the rum-punch's final drop, at ten P.M., to
circiter two A.M., and then, or thenabouts, the devil hinted "steal it;"
and so, not till nearly four, he began to shut his eyes, and dream
again, as his usual fashion was, of adding up receipts in five figures,
and of counting out old Bridget's hoarded gold.
Next day, notwithstanding nocturnal semi-sleeplessness, he awoke as
brisk as a bee, got up in as exhilarated a state as any gas-balloon, and
was thought to be either surprisingly in spirits, or spirits
surprisingly in him; none knew which, "where each seemed either." That
whole day long, he did the awkwardest things, and acted in the most
absent manner possible; Jonathan thought Mr. Simon was beside himself;
Sarah Stack, foolish thing! said he was in love, and was observed to
look in the glass several times herself; other people did not know what
to think--it was quite a mystery. To recount only a few of his
unprecedented exploits on that day of anticipative bliss:
First, he asked the porter how his gout was, and gave him a thimble-full
of whiskey from his private store.
Secondly, he paid Widow Soper one whole week's washing in full, without
the smallest deduction or per centage.
Thirdly, he ordered of Richard Buckle, commonly called Dick the Tanner,
a lot of cart harness, without haggling for price, or even asking it.
And, fourthly, he presented old George White, who was coming round with
a subscription paper for a dead pig--actually, he presented old Gaffer
White with the sum of two-pence out of his own pocket! never was such
careless prodigality.
But the little world of Hurstley did not know what we know. They
possessed no clue to the secret happiness wherewithal Simon Jennings
hugged himself; they had no inkling of the crock of gold; they thought
not he was going to be suddenly so rich; they saw no cause, as we do,
why he should feel to be like a great heir on the eve of his majority;
they wotted not that Sir John Devereux Vincent, Baronet, had scarcely
more agreeable or triumphant feelings when his clock struck twenty-one,
than Simon Jennings, butler, as the hour of his hope drew nigh.
If a destiny like this man's can ever have a crisis, the hour of his
hope is that; but downward still, into a lower gulf, has been
continually his bad career; there is (unless a miracle intervene) no
stopping in the slope on which he glides, albeit there may be
precipices. He that rushes in his sledge down the artificial ice-hills
of St. Petersburgh, skims along not more swiftly than Jennings, from the
altitude of infant innocence, had sheered into the depths of full-grown
depravity; but even he can fall, and reach, with startling suddenness, a
lower deep.
As if that Russian mountain, hewn asunder midway, were fitted flush to
a Norwegian cliff, beetling precipitately over the whirlpool; then tilt
the sledge with its furred inmate over the slope, let it skim with
quicker impetus the smoking ice, let it touch that beetling edge, and,
leaping from the tangent, let it dart through the air, let it strike the
eddying waters, be sucked hurriedly down that hoarse black throat, wind
among the roots of the everlasting hills, and split upon the loadstone
of the centre.
Even such a fate, "down, down to hell," will come to Simon Jennings;
wrapped in the furs of complacency, seated in the sledge of
covetousness, a-down the slippery launch of well-worn evil habit--over
the precipice of crime--into the billows of impenitent remorse--to be
swallowed by the vortex of Gehenna!