He had made for himself a certain
position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall,
the utter annihilation of all his chances in life.
The stockbroker's fitful slumbers at this time began to be haunted by the
vision of a black board fixed against the wall of a public resort, a
black board on which appeared his own name. In what strange places
feverish dreams showed him this hideous square of painted deal!--Now it
was on the walls of the rooms he lived in; now on the door of a church,
like Luther's propositions; now at a street-corner, where should have
been the name of the street; now inky-black against the fair white
headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miserable man, for whom the
scraping together of sordid dross was life's only object, and who, in
losing money, lost all!
This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending disgrace was
the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat
day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence
went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his
hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool
work than by the inner life of her husband; and Charlotte and her lover
contemplated existence from their own point of view, and cherished their
own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all things, as far away from
the moody meditator as if they had been natives of Upper India.
Pages:
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262