Ives should not be able to live
quietly in a private lodging, while the authorities amuse
themselves by looking for Champdivers. You forget, there is no
connection between these two personages.'
'And you forget your cousin,' retorted Romaine. 'There is the
link. There is the tongue of the buckle. He knows you are
Champdivers.' He put up his hand as if to listen. 'And, for a
wager, here he is himself!' he exclaimed.
As when a tailor takes a piece of goods upon his counter, and rends
it across, there came to our ears from the avenue the long tearing
sound of a chaise and four approaching at the top speed of the
horses. And, looking out between the curtains, we beheld the lamps
skimming on the smooth ascent.
'Ay,' said Romaine, wiping the window-pane that he might see more
clearly. 'Ay, that is he by the driving! So he squanders money
along the king's highway, the triple idiot! gorging every man he
meets with gold for the pleasure of arriving--where? Ah, yes,
where but a debtor's jail, if not a criminal prison!'
'Is he that kind of a man?' I said, staring on these lamps as
though I could decipher in them the secret of my cousin's
character.
'You will find him a dangerous kind,' answered the lawyer. 'For
you, these are the lights on a lee shore! I find I fall in a muse
when I consider of him; what a formidable being he once was, and
what a personable! and how near he draws to the moment that must
break him utterly! we none of us like him here; we hate him,
rather; and yet I have a sense--I don't think at my time of life it
can be pity--but a reluctance rather, to break anything so big and
figurative, as though he were a big porcelain pot or a big picture
of high price.
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