Septimus Hardon bore his Christian name from no numerical reason, for he
was an only child; but his father, Octavius Hardon, Esquire, of
Somesham, thought that, like his own, the name had a good bold sound
with it--a sonorous classical twang. There was a vibration with it that
should impress people in the future life of the bearer and add
importance denied by Nature; but Mrs Octavius, during her lifetime, was
always in disgrace with her lord for shortening the name into Sep, which
was decidedly not impressive; while as for Septimus himself, he too was
always in trouble with his father for being what he was--decidedly
impressive, but not in the way his father wished; for to look at
Septimus Hardon it might have been supposed that Nature, after trying
her 'prentice hand on man, and then making "the lasses, O," had had a
quantity of rough stuff left--odds and ends, snips and scraps and
awkward tags--when, sooner than there should be any waste of the
precious material, she made Septimus Hardon. You could not say that he
was deformed, but there was an odd look about him; his head seemed too
big, and was badly thatched, while, by contrast, his body was too small;
then his nose was a trifle on one side, and his mouth too wide, though
it certainly disclosed an enviable set of teeth; his arms were long, and
swung about too much, while one leg was slightly shorter than the other,
short enough to make him limp; but there was mildness written in his
pitted face, and honesty peered at you from his clear bright eyes. And
there was a true heart too in his breast, a large swelling heart, to
which must have been due the obtrusiveness of his breast, and the
decided roundness of his shoulders. And while Septimus Hardon had in
some things most excellent taste--taste that his cousins sneered at,
save when they wanted their music copied neatly, or their drawings
touched up--yet dress was not his forte, since he always made the worst
of himself by wearing clothes that did not fit him, and bad as his
figure was, some tailor could have been found who would have guaranteed
fit, if not style. Septimus generally wore shabby faded black coats and
vests, trousers of a dead leaf or baker's drab, blucher boots of the
pattern known as contract--very bulgy and wrinkly; and a real beaver
hat, with a propensity for growing irritated under the brush, and
becoming rough and startling.
Born in London, Septimus had lived since childhood with his father at
the Grange, a solitary house about a couple of miles from Somesham town;
and for years past the amusement and toil of the father and son had been
centred in a little amateur printing-office, fitted up in a side-room,
where they laboriously printed, page by page, the work that Octavius
Hardon called his brother Thomas--the doctor practising in the town--a
fool for not appreciating,--a work upon political reform, one that was
to astonish the world at large when it was completed; and though
Septimus owned to himself that the world would be easily astonished and
its state rather startling if it accepted and acted upon the opinions
there set forth, yet, at forty years of age, he was still working on day
after day at his father's beck and call, obedient as a child, and never
venturing an opinion of his own in presence of the irascible old man,
who always called him "boy."
It might have been supposed that living so secluded a life himself, and
being so strange of aspect, the idle god would have spared him as an
object for his shafts; but for long years Septimus Hardon had loved in
secret, loved and sorrowed,--for he was not happy in the choice he had
made. Mary Phillips was the betrothed of Tom Grey, the mate of an East
Indiaman; and Septimus Hardon had been divided between love for the fair
girl and friendship for his old schoolfellow, who made him the
repository, in his frank, sailorlike fashion, of all his secrets.
So while the sailor had wooed and won, Septimus Hardon had nursed his
love for years, hardly realising the passion he had harboured, till one
night when, after a woodside ramble, he stood leaning upon a stile, and
glancing down with bitterness at his uncouth form. The shadows were
growing deeper, when, hearing approaching footsteps, he entered the
wood, where before him lay many a dark mossy arcade--fit places for the
sighs of a sorrowful heart; and he thought as he entered one that he
could wander here in peace for a while; but the next instant the hot
blood flushed up into his face, making his veins throb as he stood with
clenched hands gazing through the thin screen of leaves at Mary, leaning
lovingly upon his friend's arm, and listening with downcast eyes to his
words.
The listener could hardly see the looks of those who passed, but their
words seemed to ring through the stillness of the summer eve, each one
falling with a heavy impact upon his ear, and vibrating through his
frame, as if a sharp blow had been struck upon sonorous metal. For a
moment a wild fury seemed to blind him, and he stood trembling with
passion till the footsteps died away; when, half wild with agony, he
dashed headlong, deeper and deeper into the wood, crashing through the
light hazels, tripping over the tortuous roots; and at last, stumbling
over a fallen bough, he fell heavily, and lay insensible in the calm
depths of the wood. But thought soon dawned upon him again, and he lay
and shuddered as the anguish of heart came slowly creeping back; for he
now thoroughly understood his fate, and knew that the bright dreamy
structures in which his imagination had revelled had crumbled before him
into bitter dust.
Time sped on, and after another voyage Tom Grey was back, and standing
with his hand upon Septimus Hardon's shoulder.
"Come? Why, of course, my boy; what should we do without you? Mary
begs that you won't refuse; and, Sep, old fellow, I shall expect you to
be her bodyguard when I'm far away at sea."
Septimus Hardon was standing opposite to a tall pier-glass in his
father's drawing-room when these words were spoken; and he glanced at
himself, and then, sighing bitterly, wondered whether, had he been as
other men, he would have been chosen. But the next moment the thought
was crushed down, and he was returning the frank, handsome sailor's
honest grasp.
Septimus Hardon nursed his love, but he hid it, buried it in the deepest
recesses of his heart; and no one knew of the secret held by the
bridegroom's friend, who held by one of the pews when a swimming came
upon him in the church, and he would have fallen had not Tom Grey
grasped his arm. But that soon passed, and the stricken man added his
congratulations to those of the friends assembled to follow the couple,
in whose path flowers were strewn--the couple joined together till death
did them part.
And that was soon--soon to the loving wife--soon to the husband whose
journeyings were upon the great deep; but years passed first, during
which quiet, vacillating Septimus Hardon was the faithful friend of his
schoolfellow's wife, and the patient slave of her bright-eyed child, at
whose bidding he was always ready to attend, even to the neglect of his
father's book.
Then came the day when, after whispering of hope, for many months,
Septimus learned that his fears were but too well founded, and that his
friend's ship had gone down with all on board.
A bitter trial was his to break the fatal tidings to the widow, and he
stood trembling as she, the woman he had for long years worshipped in
secret, reviled him and cursed him in her madness for the news--the
blasting news that he had brought upon her home.
Then two years glided away, when the widow, passing through many a phase
of sorrow, sickness, and misery, sat hoping on that he whom she mourned
would yet return, and all the while ignorant of the hand that supplied
her wants, or of the good friend with so great a love for fancy-work
that she sent order after order, liberally paid for by the hands of
Septimus Hardon. The beauty of the past slowly faded, so that she
became haggard and thin; a lasting illness seemed to have her in its
grasp; but still faithful to his trust, true to the love he bore her,
Septimus Hardon set at naught the frowns of his father and the sneers of
his cousins, while he devoted himself to the alleviation of the widow's
sufferings, and kept her from the additional stings of want, for she had
been left totally unprovided for by her young and hopeful husband.
And what was the result? Such as might have been expected from such a
nature as Septimus Hardon's. Patient and true, the love he bore this
woman was hidden for years, and then, when in her hopeless misery the
widow turned her head upon the sick pillow and asked his advice, he told
her to give him the right to protect her, to be to her child, little
Lucy, a second father, and then shrank, crushed and trembling, from the
room, affrighted at her look of horror, and the words accusatory which
told him of faithlessness to his trust, to his schoolfellow, who she
felt yet lived.
But it was only in her hopeful heart he lived, and six months after
forbidding Septimus her house, Mary Grey, weeping bitterly over the
discovery she had made of the hand that had so long sustained her, wrote
these words and sent them to the Grange: "Forgive me!"
Volume One, Chapter II.