In the gloomiest part of that gloomy street called Carey, and in the
darkest corner of his printing-office, sat Septimus Hardon. The
dragon's teeth and their appurtenances lay around, but all thickly
covered with that strange black dust peculiar to the region; the dust
compounded of who can tell what, as it rests on every ledge, and settles
thickly upon every article in room or workshop, office or chamber.
Business had not prospered with Septimus, though his place looked
business-like, save for the animation that a few moving figures would
have lent to it, while for position it was all that could be desired.
But the star of Septimus Hardon was not in the ascendant. With the
knowledge full upon him that he must work to keep the wife and child he
had taken to his breast upon leaving Somesham, he had adopted the trade
which seemed most congenial from the little knowledge that he possessed;
but as the years passed on, leaving him poorer, and with increased
expenses, he grew hopeless, helpless, and, if it were possible, less
fitted than ever for fighting his way amidst the busy throngs of the
great city. At times, almost in despair, he would go forth into the
streets of the busy hive and canvass for work; but he always carried
with him an atmosphere of his own, so quiet, strange, and retiring a
manner, that his very appearance invited either pity or rebuff, and
often and often, when tired out, he would return to his wife for the
comfort that she, grown more sickly than ever, could ill afford to give.
But Septimus seldom complained, and there was always a pleasant smile
for Lucy Grey, now grown a blooming girl, the mainstay of the family for
cheerfulness, and the constant attendant of her invalid mother; and, in
spite of her years, almost taking the place of parent to the two
children, the fruit of Septimus Hardon's marriage.
And now, after long years of straggling, Septimus sat thinking of the
state of his affairs, of the rent he had to make up, and the silence of
his father in spite of the many humble appeals that he had made to him
for help. Mattering and calculating, with a piece of paper and a
pencil, he suddenly stopped short, for he saw that he was not alone, and
shuffling off his high stool he hurried towards the new-comer, in the
hope that some solicitor had sent orders for some large amount of work,
or that, better still, an estimate was wanted for a new magazine.
"Any chance of a job, sir?" said the new-comer, who might have been
Septimus Hardon twenty years older, and more shabby. There was `old
compositor' oozing out of him at every corner, and the corners in his
person were many; he smelt of stale tobacco-smoke, and he was taking
almost his last pinch of snuff out of a dirty piece of paper, with his
long, lithe, active fingers as Septimus Hardon approached him. A shabby
black frock-coat was buttoned tightly to his chin; his shiny black
trousers had the gloss of age thick upon them; Wellington boots were
upon his feet that rivalled his tall hat for dilapidations; old, sallow,
dirty, and wild-looking, he was not the man a master would have employed
unless from some latent idea that he suited the district. "Any chance
of a job, sir?"
Septimus Hardon shook his head and sighed, which was, to say the least
of it, unbusiness-like.
The old man echoed the sigh, leaned one hand upon the case of type at
his elbow, and began to finger the letters, bringing up the bright
unused types from the bottom of the boxes. He then sighed again, took
in at one glance the fittings of the office, and ended by fixing his
eyes upon the owner.
"Might do a deal of work with all this, sir."
Septimus Hardon nodded drearily, and sighed again, instead of promptly
ordering the man off his premises.
"Yes; should be glad of an hour's work or so, sir. Seems hard here in
this world of ours that when a man's ready and willing to work he can't
get it to do, sir; don't it?"
Septimus nodded, and looked hard at the man, thinking how his was after
all the worse lot.
"I'm faint, sir," continued the old printer, "and hungry, and hard up;"
and then he looked down at his clothes with a dreary smile upon his
grim, unshorn face.
"I would give you work with pleasure," said Septimus; "but I might as
well close the office for all that comes to my share."
The man scraped the last of his snuff out of the shabby piece of
newspaper, and lost it all beneath his long dirty finger and
thumb-nails; when, not to disappoint his itching organ, he ran a lean
finger along a ledge where dust lay thick, and administered it to his
nose in an absent way, snapped his fingers loudly to get rid of the
residue, and then slowly turned to go; but, on reaching the door, he
faced round again:
"If you'd stand an advance of a shilling, sir, I'd come honestly another
time and work it out; for I _am_ hard up, sir, and no mistake."
Mistake there certainly was none; but shillings were then scarce things
with Septimus Hardon. A shilling, the sum tossed carelessly to the
cabman for a few hundred yards' ride, meant, perhaps, the dinner of
himself and family; and he knew in his heart that the odds were very
long against his ever seeing man or shilling again; but there was so
great a knowledge of want in his heart that he could not bear to see it
in others, and almost the last shilling in his pocket was slipped into
the visitor's hand.
The old printer took the money with his trembling fingers; looked at it,
then at the donor; tried to speak, but choked over it; and then, with
something like a maundering tear in each eye, he shuffled out of the
office, taking with him: The solicitor's work; The magazine estimate;
and, most needed of all, Septimus Hardon's shilling.
There was so little weight in the pocket before, that the shilling was
not missed; and in spite of the black look of his affairs there was
something in the act which made Septimus Hardon's heart feel light as
his pocket, as, thrusting his papers into the desk and locking it, he
went and stood before a piece of looking-glass and stretched his face to
take out the care-wrinkles, smiled two or three times to give a pleasant
tarnish to his countenance, and then, loudly humming a tune, he hurried
up to the first-floor, where Mrs Septimus, Lucy, and the children, were
located.
Carey-street was a most desirable place for residence or business, as
any landlord would have told you in the old days, before the houses I
write of were carted away by contractors, and huge law-courts threatened
in their stead. Lucy Grey knew the place now by heart. There was
generally something out of the common way to be seen there, in spite of
the place being so retired and its echoes so seldom disturbed by
carriages, unless by those of the judges, when coachman and footman
thought it advisable to wash down the legal dust of the place by copious
draughts of porter at the Barley Mow or the Blue Horse. The dust-cart--
that hearse for bearing off the remains of many a dancing, merry, cheery
fire--might be seen there in the morning; and at every cloud of dust
raised by the emptying of the fantail man's basket, scraps of parchment
and torn folios of cold, bitter cold crabbed writing, were caught up by
the fierce winds of the place, and away they went scudding down the
street, to the amusement of Septimus Hardon's children; for the mocking
wind tossed the scraps on high, as if to show how light and empty they
were. Interesting words they were too, mostly about "our client" and
his "heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns;" while of a morning
the man whom Septimus Hardon himself knew well as a class, "our client"
himself, might be seen in the streets; now early in his suit--Chancery
suit, perhaps,--wrapped in it and looking busy and important, glossy and
shiny, and, on the whole, apparently liking it. Now with the suit old
and shabby, with the pocket-holes frayed and worn with the passage in
and out of papers--papers always without end, while the owner crept
along, dejected and dismal as Septimus himself, ready at times to enter
his office, and sit down and make him the repository of the fact that he
hoped the Lord Chancellor or his Vice will give judgment next week. Now
he went along, silent and thoughtful; now he brightened up and became
energetic, and gesticulated to an audience composed of the apple-woman
at the corner, who sat there beneath the lamp summer and winter, like
some dowdy old hen in a nest, for her lower extremities were all tightly
tucked in a worn sieve-basket.
"Our client" generally went into Carey-street to eat his sandwiches; now
looking crumby, now crusty, as the case might be, while he paced
irresolutely up and down, or round into the Lane or Portugal-street, or
even into the Fields for a change, to gaze at the trees beyond those
railings, upon every spike of which a disappointed or broken heart might
be stuck by way of ornament. As before said, "our client" had generally
plenty of papers with him; some yellow and frayed, some new, but all
carefully tied with red tape, which by its friction has a wonderful
effect upon black-kid gloves, soon wearing out the fingers, as the
papers are untied in doorways for reference while the tape-string is
held in the mouth.
"Our client" was decidedly the principal object of interest in
Carey-street; but there were thin, clever, cold-looking lawyers; thin,
cold, and underpaid clerks, blue-bag bearing; portly thick clerks, warm,
glossy, and gold-chained, red-bag bearing--bags gasping and choking
fearfully with their contents--choking horribly with the papers thrust
into them, sticking out of their very mouths; long-headed barristers,
whose eyes seemed to have turned cold and oysterish--meaningless, and as
if gazing within--men upon whose long heads briefs rained incessantly;
men in gowns, men bewigged, and with the insignia of their rank put on
all ways--straight, crooked, here awry, and there awry, with the frontal
apex descending upon the nose, and the caudal beauty behind raised at
right angles to display the undergrowth, black, brown, grey, or sandy,
or perhaps resting upon the nape of the wearer's neck, with the tails
beating a white powdery tune upon his back, like a hare's feet upon a
tabor; shabby witnesses, shabby porters, shabby inhabitants; dirt
everywhere, and a sharp, gritty, pouncey dust flying before the wind to
bring tears into the eyes.
Lucy Grey knew all this by heart, and so did Septimus Hardon's
children--lessons learned from the windows, or during their walks, when
Lucy showed them the wonders of the shops at hand, and that
ever-banging, restless door where the shabby law-writers went in and
out, night and day; the three wigs resting upon as many blockheads--
wooden blockheads--new, fresh, and cool for their future wearers; the
works in the law-booksellers', all bound in dismal paper, or
Desert-of-Sahara-coloured leather--law-calf--Tidd on this, Todd on that,
Equity Reports, Chancery Practice, Common Law, Statutes at Large,
Justice of the Peace, Stone's Manual. Law everywhere: Simson, tin
deed-box manufacturer; Bodgers, deeds copied; Screw, law-writer; Bird,
office-furniture warehouse--valuations for probate; S Hardon, legal and
general printer; while, like a shade at the end of the street, stood the
great hospital, where the wan faces of patients might be seen gazing up
at the sky, towards where the clouds scudded before the wind, hurrying
to be once more in the country. Away they went, each one a very
chariot, bearing with it the thoughts of the prisoned ones--captives
from sickness, or poverty, or business. There were faces here at the
hospital that would smile, and heads that would nod to Septimus Hardon's
little golden-haired children when Lucy held them up; when perchance the
patient went back to sit upon some iron bedstead's edge, and tell some
fellow-sufferer of the bright vision she had seen,--a vision of angels
in the legal desert.
With such surroundings, no one upon entering Septimus Hardon's rooms
would have been surprised to see Mrs Septimus careworn, and lying upon
a shabby couch, and the children slight and fragile. The rooms were
close, heavy, and dull, heavy-windowed, heavy-panelled, earthy-smelling,
and cryptish, as though the dust of dead-and-gone suitors lay thick in
the place. There was but little accommodation for the heavy rent he
paid; and Septimus Hardon looked uneasily from face to face, crushing
down the sorrowful thoughts that tried to rise; for in that close room
there was not space for more than one complaining soul. Mrs Septimus
told of her troubles often enough; and Septimus felt that his task was
to cheer. Still, it was hard work when he had to think of the landlord
and the rent; the landlord who, when he complained of this said rent,
told him to look at the situation; which Septimus Hardon did, and
sighed; and then, by way of raising his spirits, took down and read the
copies of the letters he had from time to time sent to his father,
unanswered one and all; and then he sighed again, and wondered how it
would all end.
Volume One, Chapter V.