A heavy step upon the stairs, a heavy knock upon the door, and a
heavy-eyed, heavy-countenanced man asking for Septimus Hardon.
"And he wants you, too, Miss," said the man. "O dear, O dear! he was
the only friend I ever had, and he came back the night afore last, after
you'd been to ask for him. Not seen him, we hadn't, for long enough;
and then to come back like this!" and the great fellow sat down unasked
upon a chair, and sobbed like a child.
"He wants to see you, sir," he said again, "and we've done all we
could," he cried pitifully; "but you see he's old, sir, and there ain't
nothing of him as'll hold together, and he knows it, sir; and he only
laughed and said, he says, `Ikey, old man,' he says, `it must be all new
stuff,' he says, `for the stitches won't hold no longer;' and he was the
only friend I ever had. `Go and tell them,' he says, `as old Matt's
taken his last copy, and would like to see 'em afore he takes the wages
he's earned.' You'll come and see him, won't you, sir? though it's no
sort of a place to come to; and the missus is breaking her heart about
him."
Half-an-hour after, Septimus Hardon and Lucy were in Lower Series-place,
where, in the dingy back-room, close to the waste-paper, lay poor old
Matt, with Mrs Gross upon her knees beside his bed, crying bitterly, as
the poor old man lay calm and apparently sleeping; but he started when
Lucy knelt down and took his hand, to let a tear-fall upon it.
"God bless you!" he whispered earnestly, as his dim eyes recognised the
face bending over him. "Come like an angel to a dying man. God bless
you, sir, I'm glad you've come; I was in mortal fear that you would be
too late. Tell her--but no, I will.--Mother Slagg, you and Ikey go for
a bit, please."
The weeping woman put her apron to her eyes, and went out with her
husband. It was a heavy afternoon, and the fog was settling down fast
over the City. The light struggled feebly through the window,
half-covered as it was with boots; but the great landlord returned
directly with a thick, strong-smelling candle, stuck upon a block of
wood between three nails.
As soon as the door was once more closed--a rare position for it, and
one which it resented for some time, until Ikey had poked the corners
clean with an awl, and oiled the lock--old Matt said huskily:
"Put your hand, sir, under my pillow. That's it, that there little
Bible. Know it, sir?" he said, for Septimus Hardon had changed colour,
and his hands were trembling. "That took me a long time to get, sir,"
and then he slowly and painfully told what he said he would have spared
Miss Lucy if he could, but it was not to be; how he had seen Agnes
Hardon lying dead, she whom he knew now to have been Agnes Hardon; how
he had attended the inquest, and then tried to get a Bible that had been
there mentioned, seeking for it day after day, night after night, ready
to drop always, but feeling that he should succeed in spite of all. He
searched the streets, he said, but all in vain; and at last he began to
fear that the poor girl to whom Agnes gave the Bible had emulated her
fate, when he recalled the address of the juryman, found to his delight
she had been there, and through the stranger's influence obtained the
prize he sought.
"And now," said Matt, "I'm happy. I can feel, sir, that I've done one
little bit of good in my life, and I can go easy. Now, sir that book."
Septimus, wondering and surprised, turned from Matt to Lucy, sobbing and
horror-stricken at the old man's recital, for much of what he heard now
had yet to be explained to him; but the old man was intent upon the
little Bible, one that Septimus remembered to have seen at home in his
father's desk.
"Now!" exclaimed the old man, with hands trembling, and eyes appealing,
lest his hearers should lose anything of what he disclosed; "now look,
look, look!" he cried, "I fastened it down again, as it was before. A
knife, quick! Now look here," he said huskily, and he tried to insert
the blade of the penknife given to him beneath the fly-leaf, groaning
bitterly at his inability, when, with hands trembling nearly as much,
Septimus took Bible and knife, loosened the paper round, and laid it
open, when the first thing that met his eyes, in his father's clear
handwriting, was the date of the marriage, and eighteen months after
appeared the entry of his birth, while upon the opposite side, in a
delicate woman's hand, were the words--
"Agnes Hardon.
_The gift of Uncle Octavius_."
"There, there, there, sir! That's it, isn't it, sir?" cried the old man
excitedly. "I wouldn't rest till I'd got it, and 'twas hard work, for
the poor girl clung to it as the gift of someone she loved; but the more
she hung back, the more I was set upon having it. I knew enough of
binding to see that the end-leaf was gummed down, and under that leaf I
knew there was what I wanted. Here; breath!" he gasped; "open the
window."
Septimus Hardon sat gazing dreamily at the entry in his hand; it was
indisputable, though he could hardly believe in its truth, while the few
words he heard coming from the weeping girl seemed only to add to the
confused state of his mind; but it appeared to him now that the old
man's condition was the first thing to consider, and placing the book in
his pocket, he begged that he might try and have him removed to his own
lodgings.
"No," said Matt feebly, "no; I won't leave here, for somehow these
people love me after their way, and I seem to think that the end should
be much what the life has been; and as to doctor, sir, why I've got one
here," he said, gazing fondly up in Lucy's weeping face, "and if she'll
stop here, and let me hold her hand, God bless her! I can go easy, for
it will seem to keep ill away. No other doctor's any use, sir. I'm
worn out, sir, worn out!"
But Septimus would not be satisfied, and leaving Lucy by the old man's
side, he fetched assistance to his old friend.
"No hope at all?" he said, as the doctor and he walked together
afterwards through the dingy shop.
"Not the slightest," said the surgeon once more, as he stood upon the
doorstep. "He has never thoroughly recovered from the effects of the
operations he suffered, and besides, it's the old tale with the poor
fellow--sorrow, misery, starvation, on the one hand; dissipation, drink,
late hours on the other. The poor old fellow speaks the truth; he is
worn out."
Night came, and Lucy and Septimus still waited by the old man's dying
bed. He had slept for some little time, during which interval Lucy had
replied to her stepfather's many queries--replied as she thought of the
despair that must have prompted the awful plunge into futurity. Then
the old man woke, and talked eagerly for awhile of the future prospects
of the family. But soon a change came over his face, his head tossed
wearily from side to side of his dirty pillow, while often he would
raise it and stare wildly from face to face, but recognising none, sink
back again with a pitiful moan.
"Lost life, lost life! Worn out, worn out!" he kept on muttering as he
tossed restlessly from side to side, frequently starting and looking
round as if not knowing where he was. Then he seemed to sleep
peacefully for awhile, to open his eyes once more, and smile feebly at
his visitors, beckoning them to come nearer.
"God bless you both!" he muttered; "it's all over."
Septimus half-rose and would have fetched the doctor again, but Matt
whispered "No."
"Don't go," he said. "He can do no good now, nor anyone else; I'm past
all that. It's been coming for days past, and I've fought it out; kept
on till my work was done. I've never been much good, sir; but now I'm
worn out. P'r'aps I might have been different, if I'd had other
chances; but I was always weak, sir; weak."
He paused again; and Lucy's sobs were the only sounds that broke the
silence.
"Ah!" said Matt again, feebly; "I've justified many a line, sir; line by
line--`line upon line,' don't it say somewhere? but I can't justify
myself. Dropping out of the old forme, sir; fast--fast now. But there,
sir, hold up; for I'm happy enough. You did me a good turn once, and
I've tried to pay it back; and since I've known you, and you've been
ready to be my friends, I've seemed to get proud, and wouldn't do
anything that should disgrace Miss Lucy here. But I began too late, and
I never deserved such friends as I've found; for I've been a poor, weak,
helpless drinking old galley-slave. But there, sir," he said with a
smile, "my case is foul; the sorts are out; and I'm putting away my
stick for good."
"May I fetch Mr Sterne?" whispered Septimus.
"No, no, no," said the old man wearily; "we were never friends; and I
can't play the hypocrite, sir. It's too late, sir; too late! What I've
done, I've done. Let me die in peace, here, with your loving faces by
me; and fetch poor old Ike in, by and by, for he loves me in his way.
No, sir; it would be the act of a hypocrite, I fancy, for me to send for
a clergyman now. No, Mr Hardon, sir; stay with me to the last; and let
me hold tightly by this little white hand, and I can go from you hopeful
and in peace. For if the great God who sent me here, struggling on
through a life of care, has made hearts so gentle, and true, and loving,
that they can weep and sorrow over my poor old battered case, can't I
hope that He who knows all, and has seen all my helpless weakness, will
be merciful? I know, sir, I know. I might have done better: but it's
been a life of drive and struggle--money to-day, starve to-morrow, and
drink always, to hold up and do the work. I'm sorry, sir, sorry; but
the sorrow came too late. I've had a hard life, sir; the wish for
better things came too late, when I was worn, and shattered, and used
up; when the day was too far spent, sir; and now the night's coming on
faster and faster. Hold my hands tight," he whispered, "for it's
growing dark and darker; and I'm losing my way."
And now once more there was a long silence, when the old man looked
eagerly round.
"What time is it?" he asked; and Septimus told him, then, turning
towards Lucy, the old man whispered--
"Put your hand to my lips, that I may kiss it once before I go;" but she
leaned over and tenderly kissed him, when he smiled, and some words
passed, but they were too faint to be heard. Then he was restless for a
while; but soon started again, to stare wildly round. "What's that?" he
asked.
"Nothing but the wind moaning round the houses," whispered Lucy.
"No," he said with a smile, "nothing but the wind--nothing but the wind
waiting to scatter the dust."
And now he lay so still and peaceful, that, in answer to Lucy's
inquiring look, Septimus bent over him again and again; but as he looked
in that sorrow-ploughed face he could see that the old man still slept,
while, with the light strong upon her face as she knelt, Lucy seemed no
mean representative of the angel watching by the old man's side.
"An angel, sir, an angel, sir!" he had mattered again; and then he
seemed to doze off, muttering the words to himself.
"Worn out!" said Septimus Hardon, as he listened time after time to the
faintly-borne chimes of Saint Clement's; and then he thought of the
present revelation, which seemed almost dearly bought in the old man's
death; of the past; the office in Carey-street, and its sorrows; the
bitter struggle for mere life; the lodging in Bennett's-rents; and the
shabby old compositor in his frayed suit, pinching himself that he might
supply their wants; the watchful care and jealousy with which he had
tended Lucy to and from the warehouse; the secret they had shared, and
the old man's chivalrous endurance in tracing out the information; spite
of all blurs or blots upon his character, ever the same tender,
true-hearted man, devoted to his friends' interests, and ready with his
offering, even though it were humble as the cup of cold water that
should not be without its reward; and now worn out--the poor old setting
battered and worthless, but the heart true and bright to the last.
The quarters chimed again. Isaac had been to set up a fresh candle, and
then retired to his weeping partner; while, now seated upon an old
work-bench, Septimus Hardon still let his thoughts wander, pausing long
upon the poverty of the crowded streets of the great City; the
prosperity crushing down the misery; the swiftly-hurrying stream of
life, and the striving of the throng to keep afloat, as others pressed
upon them, climbed upon their shoulders, or, in the madness of despair,
clung to their legs and dragged them down to the muddy ooze at the
bottom. He thought too once more of his own misery, and that of this
waif, after its long encounter with the storms of life, cast up torn,
weary, and breathless upon the shore.
Mournfully moaned the wind down the court and at the back of the house,
making cowls creak and spin, and rattling worn old windows; for it was
no bright starry night, the clouds gathered black overhead, and sent
down a pitiless rain to empty the streets, and be caught by the wind and
dashed against the panes. By the feeble light in the front shop, Isaac
could be seen with his head against the wall sleeping heavily; and, worn
out with watching, his wife had returned to the next house. Now faintly
heard in the lulls of the wind came the striking of Saint Clement's
clock and its laboured chiming, which sounded wild and strange upon the
night air.
Suddenly Lucy and her stepfather started, for the old man was sitting up
in bed with one hand raised as if to command silence, and loud, clear,
and strange, his voice seemed to thrill through the silence as the tones
of the bells came louder upon the wind.
"Hush!" cried the old man, "the bells! I set it once, and I've never
forgotten it--`Ring out the false, ring in the true'--never forgotten
it," he muttered, as he sank heavily back and spoke in a whisper--"`Ring
out the false, ring in the true.' Hands--hands--once again; they're
ringing out a false and coward heart, and ringing in the true." Then he
began to mutter from time to time words connected with his trade--wild
incoherent words, but strangely fitted to his past life and present
state; while at times he spoke with such wild bitterness that his
hearers shuddered, and Isaac came trembling in, leading with him Mr
Sterne, anxious at their protracted absence.
And so an hour passed, when the dying man had been for some time silent,
but another kneeling figure had offered a prayer at the bedside; then
once more the old man began to mutter, at first in a low tone, then
slowly and aloud.
"Gold, sir, cold; bitter cold for an old man like me--dreary streets,
sir, and the lamps out--dark, dark--the dull courts and the foggy
alleys--misery--beggary--starvation. Bright fields--light and darkness.
No hypocrite, sir--humbly, with an angel's kiss upon my old lips--a
seal--purity. Hark! Copy and proof--copy and proof--blurred and
blotted--foul--foul--spelling--outs and doubles--corrections--too late--
too late. Wages on Friday night, air; wages, sir--wages of sin--wages--
death--death--poor girl!--Bleeping--found drowned--the Bible--Agnes
Hardon--wages--wages--darker and darker--but no hypocrite, sir--with an
angel's kiss--an angel's--forgive--forgive--for ever and ever--and ev--"
Silence in the room, and the watchers stealing away.
Volume Three, Chapter XVII.
"MY SOLICITORS, SIR!"
It never rains but it pours, and the storm fell heavily now upon the
head of Doctor Hardon of Somesham. Through the instrumentality of Mr
Sterne he was served with the requisite legal notices, which seemed to
be of the nature of seeds calling up a variety of legal plants, which
coiled, and twined, and curled round the doctor, threatening to strangle
him with their powerful tendrils; for he was deeply involved in numerous
speculative matters, and the fact of his being legally summoned to give
up his brother's estate, now reduced to quite one-half--for he had
disposed of all that he could--roused the aggressiveness of the law--a
law which seemed omniscient as regarded failing men's affairs; and a few
days after, from information he had received, as the policemen say,
Septimus Hardon learned that his uncle was in Cursitor-street.
"I would go and see him," said Mr Sterne; "he may feel disposed to give
up all quietly; and I presume that you would take no steps to enforce
restitution of what he has sold during his occupation of your rights?"
"No, no; no, no!" exclaimed Septimus; "he is a ruined man."
Septimus Hardon shuddered as he turned into Cursitor-street--dirty,
cheerless, sponging-housey Cursitor-street of those days, with its legal
twang and the iron-barred windows of the sheriffs' houses. There was no
difficulty in finding the residence of Mr Barjonas, for the brass-plate
was on the door, though from its colour it was only by supposition that
the plate was termed brass. The windows were coated with a preservative
paste of dirt, while the same composition entered strongly into all the
domestic arrangements. In front, the pavement was marked all over with
cabalistic signs, over which hopped and danced dirty children--young
clients, perhaps--in company with pieces of broken plate, there called
"chaney;" the road was decorated with parsnip-cuttings and
potato-peelings, after the mode adopted in Bennett's-rents; while sundry
indications pointed to the fact that coffee was much in favour, for the
grounds found a resting-place in the gutter. A bashaw-like cock was
scratching over some scraps of parchment and sawdust-sweepings, but they
seemed dry, so he refrained from calling up the ladies of his harem--
two--both of whom were of the breed known as "five-toed Dorkings," and
in duty bound to be white, but they were of a peculiar tint, like mouldy
robes.
Septimus Hardon walked up to a thick-lipped gentleman upon the doorstep,
and, as he seemed disposed to bar the way, told him of his business.
"Show this gedt idto dudber seved," said the officer; for such he was,
though only holding commission from the sheriff.
A fluey-headed boy, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to his shoulders to
display two very thin arms, at the end of one of which he carried a
black waiter, came forward, performing a sort of shaving operation with
the edge of the said waiter on his smooth chin, and beckoning to the
visitor, ushered him into the room known as number seven, where Septimus
stood in presence of his uncle, and gazed with wonder at the change.
For the doctor's clothes were growing looser upon him hour by hour, and
his cheeks hung flabby and in folds above his dirty white neckcloth.
But more than at this Septimus Hardon gazed at his uncle's strange lost
aspect, as he stood with his gold pencil-case in one hand and a letter
in the other--a letter which he had read over again and again, and then
paused to wipe his forehead with his hand. But it was only a letter of
upbraiding from his wife, enclosing to him a small scrap which the
wretched woman had clipped from a newspaper--a paper weeks old, but
which Fate had ordered should be sent to her; while now she asked her
ruined lord who was the woman taken from the river, the woman who had
nursed Eleanor Anderson, and had asked their help and forgiveness at
that very time. Upbraidings, words almost of rage, she had sent him in
that letter, telling him of his obstinacy, and reminding him of the
times she had implored his forgiveness. And now these words had come at
an hour when he could bear no more. He had read letter and paragraph in
a dreamy, misty way, thinking of his losses--of his wrongs to his
nephew, while now the man himself stood before him, perhaps to add his
revilings. Worn out with anxiety and sleeplessness, faint with hunger
and weary calculations of his affairs, the doctor strove for an instant
to regain command of himself; then stared piteously at his visitor for
an instant, staggered, grasped at his neckcloth, and fell heavily upon
the floor.
Time passed; and as soon as the proper legal arrangements were
completed, Septimus Hardon was to be possessed of his father's much
reduced property--an estate shorn of its extent, but still what, to a
poor man, seemed wealth. In obedience to his wishes, the affairs had
been arranged in the quietest manner, Septimus Hardon's not being a
nature to trample upon a fallen man--fallen indeed; for his next visit
to his uncle was at one of the debtors' prisons, from which there seemed
no likelihood of his release, so deeply was he involved.
Mrs Doctor Hardon had been to Essex-street the night before begging
that he would come, for the poor woman was in despair and dread at the
turn matters were taking; for there the doctor sat as he had sat the
night through in his shabbily-furnished room, sitting with a heavy frown
upon his forehead, wrinkled as though the spirit of evil pressed down
upon him heavily. Three times over he had sternly bade the weeping
woman begone--the wife of many years--who, her fit of bitter anger
passed, now hung about the gates of a morning until they were opened,
and would then have laid her grey head upon his shoulder as she
whispered comfort. But no; her lot was to pace wearily up and down; and
the doctor sat alone, hour after hour, brooding over his fall; the
proofs brought forward that his was a fraud; the curse that had seemed
to attend the money; the failure of venture after venture that he had
looked upon as certainties; the gnawing agony of his heart for the
daughter he had lost, but who was to have been forgiven at some future
time--always at some time in the future--a season put off till it was
too late, and she had gone for forgiveness elsewhere; while, above all,
there was a strange wild impending dread overtopping every cloud and
driving him to turn over and over in his pocket a small-stoppered
bottle--a bottle without a label, and held so long in his hand that the
glass was hot.
A noble mansion had the doctor built in imagination: one that should be
wondrous in its prosperity and endurance, but it had no foundation--a
bit had crumbled here, a wall there cracked, then a corner had given way
(a key to the whole), and with a crash the fabric had come down--so that
the builder's spirit was crushed as here he sat, shrunk and limp,
waiting for the news of some fresh calamity, some new fall that should
crush him yet more; for in his wild dreams he had seen his brother
threatening him, and Septimus triumphantly shaking the will in his face.
And so he sat on, hour after hour, clasping the tiny bottle in his
hand--containing what? But a spoonful of some limpid fluid; while the
stricken man still listened as if for something that he expected to
happen that day.
There he sat, without fire, but feeling not the cold, hearing not the
imploring whispered words of his wife--words uttered at the door after
he had dismissed her, to wander up and down or sit shivering, and
refusing the offered hospitality of some feeling fellow-prisoner.
Deeper grew the wrinkles upon the doctor's brow as he sat. He had taken
nothing for many hours, but a wine-glass stood upon the table, and more
than once a trembling hand had been stretched out to grasp it. But he
would wait another hour, he would wait until that other crushing news
came, that other news hidden from his sight as by a black curtain, which
ever trembled as though about to be raised. He would wait until the
clocks struck again, just to think; though each stroke of hammer upon
bell sounded funereally upon his ear. Again another hour, and another,
and so on through the long night, through the grey, cold dawn, and again
after the bright rising of the sun, which brought no hope to him.
"Only one other hour," said the crouching man, and the words hissed
between his fevered lips. "Only another hour!" he muttered, while his
bloodshot eyes seemed to dilate as he drew forth the bottle and held it
up to the light, shook it, and, watched the bright beads that trickled
down the sides of the glass. His unshorn beard and sunken cheeks gave
him a strangely haggard look; such that those who had known him in
former days would have passed him without recognition.
Suddenly there was a step in the long corridor--one of many, but a step
that he seemed to know; and then followed low voices, and the sound of a
woman sobbing.
It had come at last--he had waited, and it was here--and a bitter smile
trembled, it did not play, round the lips of Doctor Hardon, as he once
more drew forth the bottle.
"This, this, this!" he kept on hissing in a harsh whisper as he smiled,
thinking that the dark curtain which trembled in front would show him
the future and not the present. And now he tried to draw forth the
little stopper, but it was immovable. He tore at it fiercely, and then
seized it with his teeth, but it broke short off, and he spat the piece
angrily upon the floor.
"Now, now!" he muttered, as though there was not a moment to spare,
while with trembling hand he seized the poker, and, holding the bottle
above the wine-glass, struck it sharply, shivered it to atoms, and the
liquid, mingled with sharp fragments, fell into the vessel, a large
portion splashing over the table and moistening the doctor's hand.
"Now, now!" he muttered, seizing the glass; and as he gave one glance at
the bright blue wintry sky, he raised the little vessel hesitatingly to
his lips. Then the door was pushed open, Mrs Hardon stepped in,
shrieked, and dashed the undrained glass from her husband's hand, so
that it fell shivered upon the cold hearthstone, when, falling at his
feet and clutching his knees, the unhappy woman sobbed loudly:
"O Tom, Tom, ask him to forgive us!" but the doctor only stood glaring
at his visitor.
"Indeed, indeed, Septimus, I never knew it," sobbed Mrs Hardon.
"It is of the past--let it rest," said her nephew, who could not remove
his eyes from his uncle, now smiling feebly and pointing to the
chamber-door.
"Why would you provoke this painful scene?" he said in an injured tone.
"You must have known, sir, that the interview would be most unfortunate.
Pray go. My solicitors, Messrs. Keening. Every arrangement has been
made, and the funeral will take place to-morrow."
Mrs Hardon started up, and stood clasping one of her husband's hands as
she looked aghast in his face, while he continued in the same feeble
voice:
"No will, sir--illegitimate--pray leave--most painful," and with his
disengaged hand he still pointed towards the door. "My solicitors, sir,
Messrs. Keening."
"Pray--pray go," whispered Mrs Hardon. "He is worn out, and ill with
anxiety. I'll--I'll write, Septimus," and she hurried her visitor to
the door. "But don't--don't punish us for what is past," she said
imploringly.
The look of Septimus Hardon was sufficient as he turned to the unhappy
woman; and then he stepped into the passage with the intention of
fetching medical assistance, for, as the door closed, he once more heard
the doctor's voice: "My solicitors, sir, Messrs. Keening. Pray go."
Volume Three, Chapter XVIII.