I AWOKE to much diffidence, even to a feeling that might be called the beginnings of panic, and lay for hours in my bed considering the situation.Seek where I pleased, there was nothing to encourage me and plenty to appal.They kept a close watch about the cottage; they had a beast of a watch-dog - at least, unless I had settled it; and if I had, I knew its bereaved master would only watch the more indefatigably for the loss.In the pardonable ostentation of love I had given all the money I could spare to Flora; I had thought it glorious that the hunted exile should come down, like Jupiter, in a shower of gold, and pour thousands in the lap of the beloved.Then I had in an hour of arrant folly buried what remained to me in a bank in George Street.And now I must get back the one or the other; and which? and how?
As I tossed in my bed, I could see three possible courses, all extremely perilous.First, Rowley might have been mistaken; the bank might not be watched; it might still be possible for him to draw the money on the deposit receipt.Second, I might apply again to Robbie.Or, third, I might dare everything, go to the Assembly Ball, and speak with Flora under the eyes of all Edinburgh.This last alternative, involving as it did the most horrid risks, and the delay of forty-eight hours, I did but glance at with an averted head, and turned again to the consideration of the others.It was the likeliest thing in the world that Robbie had been warned to have no more to do with me.The whole policy of the Gilchrists was in the hands of Chevenix; and I thought this was a precaution so elementary that he was certain to have taken it.If he had not, of course I was all right: Robbie would manage to communicate with Flora; and by four o'clock I might be on the south road and, I was going to say, a free man.Lastly, I must assure myself with my own eyes whether the bank in George Street were beleaguered.
I called to Rowley and questioned him tightly as to the appearance of the Bow Street officer.
'What sort of looking man is he, Rowley?' I asked, as I began to dress.
'Wot sort of a looking man he is?' repeated Rowley.'Well, I don't very well know wot you would say, Mr.Anne.He ain't a beauty, any'ow.'
'Is he tall?'
'Tall? Well, no, I shouldn't say TALL Mr.Anne.'
'Well, then, is he short?'
'Short? No, I don't think I would say he was what you would call SHORT.No, not piticular short, sir.'
'Then, I suppose, he must be about the middle height?'
'Well, you might say it, sir; but not remarkable so.'
I smothered an oath.
'Is he clean-shaved?' I tried him again.
'Clean-shaved?' he repeated, with the same air of anxious candour.
'Good heaven, man, don't repeat my words like a parrot!' I cried.
'Tell me what the man was like: it is of the first importance that I should be able to recognise him.'
'I'm trying to, Mr.Anne.But CLEAN-SHAVED? I don't seem to rightly get hold of that p'int.Sometimes it might appear to me like as if he was; and sometimes like as if he wasn't.No, it wouldn't surprise me now if you was to tell me he 'ad a bit o'
whisker.'
'Was the man red-faced?' I roared, dwelling on each syllable.
'I don't think you need go for to get cross about it, Mr.Anne!'
said he.'I'm tellin' you every blessed thing I see! Red-faced?
Well, no, not as you would remark upon.'
A dreadful calm fell upon me.
'Was he anywise pale?' I asked.
'Well, it don't seem to me as though he were.But I tell you truly, I didn't take much heed to that.'
'Did he look like a drinking man?'
'Well, no.If you please, sir, he looked more like an eating one.'
'Oh, he was stout, was he?'
'No, sir.I couldn't go so far as that.No, he wasn't not to say STOUT.If anything, lean rather.'
I need not go on with the infuriating interview.It ended as it began, except that Rowley was in tears, and that I had acquired one fact.The man was drawn for me as being of any height you like to mention, and of any degree of corpulence or leanness; clean-shaved or not, as the case might be; the colour of his hair Rowley 'could not take it upon himself to put a name on'; that of his eyes he thought to have been blue - nay, it was the one point on which he attained to a kind of tearful certainty.'I'll take my davy on it,' he asseverated.They proved to have been as black as sloes, very little and very near together.So much for the evidence of the artless! And the fact, or rather the facts, acquired? Well, they had to do not with the person but with his clothing.The man wore knee-breeches and white stockings; his coat was 'some kind of a lightish colour - or betwixt that and dark'; and he wore a 'mole-
skin weskit.' As if this were not enough, he presently haled me from my breakfast in a prodigious flutter, and showed me an honest and rather venerable citizen passing in the Square.
'That's HIM, sir,' he cried, 'the very moral of him! Well, this one is better dressed, and p'r'aps a trifler taller; and in the face he don't favour him noways at all, sir.No, not when I come to look again, 'e don't seem to favour him noways.'
'Jackass!' said I, and I think the greatest stickler for manners will admit the epithet to have been justified.
Meanwhile the appearance of my landlady added a great load of anxiety to what I already suffered.It was plain that she had not slept; equally plain that she had wept copiously.She sighed, she groaned, she drew in her breath, she shook her head, as she waited on table.In short, she seemed in so precarious a state, like a petard three times charged with hysteria, that I did not dare to address her; and stole out of the house on tiptoe, and actually ran downstairs, in the fear that she might call me back.It was plain that this degree of tension could not last long.