‘’TIS WITH US PERPETUAL NIGHT.’
They dug Ferdinand Sivewright out from under that pile of shattered
brickwork and fallen timber, after labours that lasted late into
the night. Help had not been far to seek amongst the good-natured
Shadrackites. Stout navigators and stalwart stevedores had arisen as if
by magic, spade and pickaxe had been brought, and the work of rescue
had begun, as it seemed, almost before the echo of that thunderous
sound of falling beam and brickwork had died out of the air.
When Lucius rushed down-stairs he found the forecourt full of
wind-driven lime-dust and crumbled plaster and worm-eaten wood that
drifted into his face like powder, and a clamorous crowd at the iron
gate eager to know if any one was under the ruins.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’s a man yonder. Who’ll help me to dig him out?’
A chorus of eager voices rent the air.
‘Come, half a dozen of the strongest of you,’ said Lucius, unlocking
the gate, ‘and bring picks and spades.’
The men filed in from among the miscellaneous crowd, women and babies
in the foreground. Stray boys, frantic to do something, were sent right
and left to fetch spades and picks. The miscellaneous crowd was forced
back from the gate, unwilling to the last; the gate opened and the men
entered, at once calm and eager, men who had seen peril and faced death
in their time.
‘I knowed that end of the house would come down some day,’ said one
brawny navvy, looking up at the dilapidated wing. ‘I told the old gent
as much when he employed me to fasten some loose slates on one of the
outhouses, but he didn’t thank me for my warning. “It’ll last my time,”
says he. Is it the old gent that’s under the rubbidge, sir?’
‘Thank God, no. But there is a man there. Lose no time. There’s little
hope of getting him out alive, but you can try your best.’
‘That we will,’ cried several voices unanimously.
The stray boys reappeared breathless, and handed in spades and picks
through the half-open gate, which Lucius guarded. He didn’t want a
useless crowd in the forecourt.
‘Now, lads, heave ahead!’ cried a stentorian voice, and the work began;
a tedious labour, for the wreck of the old chimney made a mighty pile
of ruin.
The labour thus fairly started, Lucius went back to the old man’s room.
He found Homer Sivewright sitting half-dressed upon his bed, staring at
that gap in the opposite wall, shaken terribly, but calmer than he had
hoped to find him.
‘Save him, Lucius,’ cried the old man, clasping Lucius’s hand. ‘He has
been an ingrate—a villain. There was bad blood in him, a taint that
poisoned his nature—hereditary falsehood. But save him from such a
hideous fate. Is there any hope?’
Lucius shook his head.
‘None, I fear. The fall alone was enough to kill any man, and that
crossbeam may have fallen upon him. There are half a dozen men clearing
away the rubbish, but all we can hope to find is the dead body of your
son. Better that he should perish thus than by the gallows.’
‘Which must have been his inevitable doom, had he been permitted to
finish his course,’ said the old man bitterly.
Lucius helped to remove his patient to Lucille’s vacant chamber, and
tried to calm his agitation—a vain effort; for though quiet enough
outwardly, Mr. Sivewright suffered intensely during this interval of
uncertainty.
‘Go down and see how they are getting on,’ he said eagerly. ‘They must
have cleared all away by this time surely.’
‘I’m going to look for a lantern or two,’ replied Lucius; ‘the night is
as black as Erebus, and that strong wind makes the work slower.’
Mr. Sivewright told him where to find a couple of lanterns.
‘Go,’ he cried; ‘don’t waste time here with me. Rescue my son, if you
can.’
His son still—by the mere force of habit, perhaps, although ten minutes
ago his baffled murderer.
Lucius went out to the end of the house with a couple of lighted
lanterns, and remained there moving about among the men as the work
slowly progressed—remained giving them such help as he could—sustaining
them with counsel—supplying them with beer, which one of the stray
boys, retained for the purpose, fetched from a neighbouring publichouse
by special license of the policeman, who acknowledged the necessity of
the case—remained faithful to his post, until, in the dullest coldest
hour of the dark windy night, Ferdinand Sivewright was discovered under
a heap of rafters, which had fallen crosswise and made a kind of
penthouse above him.
This accident had just saved him from being smothered by the fallen
rubbish. The massive crossbeam of the chimney had fallen under him, and
not above him—the long-loosened supports perhaps finally destroyed by
that fierce shock which his own mad rush at the sliding panel had given
to the fabric, weakened long ago by the injudicious cutting of the
timbers when the old banquet-hall was pulled down.
They lifted him out of the wreck, and, to the marvel of all of them,
alive, although unconscious. Lucius examined him carefully as he lay
upon a heap of the men’s coats and jackets, pallid, and bloodstained.
Two of the men held the lanterns as Lucius knelt down beside that awful
figure to make his investigation. Both legs were broken, the ribs
crushed inwards; in short, the case was fatal, though the man still
lived.
‘Come indoors with me,’ cried Lucius, ‘two of you good fellows, and
we’ll pull down a door and put a mattress upon it; we must take him to
the London Hospital.’
Two men followed him to the house; they selected one of the doors in
the back premises, an old washhouse door that hung loosely enough on
its rusty hinges, and proceeded to unscrew this, while Lucius went
up-stairs for a mattress. A few minutes afterwards they had laid
Ferdinand Sivewright on this extemporary litter, and were carrying him,
loosely covered with a couple of coats, to the London Hospital.
There was a surgical examination by two of the best men in London early
next morning; but as nothing that surgery could do could have prolonged
that wicked life, the consultation ended only in the simple sentence,
‘A fatal case.’
‘Do what you can to make the poor fellow comfortable,’ said the chief
surgeon; ‘it would be useless to put him to any pain by trying to
set the broken bones; amputation might have answered, but for those
injuries to the ribs and chest—those alone would be fatal. I give him
about twenty-four hours. The brain is uninjured, and there may be a
return of consciousness before the end.’
For this Lucius waited, never leaving his post by the narrow hospital
bed. It was important that he should be at hand, to hear whatever this
man might have to say—most important that he should receive from these
lips the secret of Lucille’s parentage. All that care or skill could do
to alleviate Ferdinand Sivewright’s sufferings Lucius did, patiently,
kindly, and waited for the end, strong in his trust in Providence.
‘Better that he should perish thus by the visitation of God than by my
hand,’ he said to himself, with deepest thankfulness.
He telegraphed to his sister, asking her to come to London immediately,
and to bring Lucille with her. They were to travel by a particular
train, and to go straight to his house, where he would meet them.
Painful as the scene would be to both, he deemed it best that both
should hear this man’s last words; that Lucille should be told by his
own lips that he was not her father; that Janet should hear the truth
about her unhappy marriage, from him who alone had power to enlighten
her. It was to give to both a bitter memory; but it was to relieve the
minds of both from doubt and misconception.
A little before the hour at which Lucius expected the arrival of Janet
and Lucille, the dying man awoke to consciousness. Lucius at once
resolved not to leave him. He wrote a few lines to Janet, begging her
to come on with Lucille to the hospital, and dispatched the note by a
messenger.
Ferdinand Sivewright looked about him for a little while with a dull
half-conscious wonder. Then with that bitter smile which Lucius
remembered years ago in the log-hut, he said slowly.
‘Another hospital! I thought I’d had enough of them. I’ve been laid
by the heels often enough. Once in Mexico; another time in British
Columbia, when those Canadian trappers picked me up, half dead with
frost-bites and with a bullet through my shoulder, a mile or so from
that villanous log-hut, and carried me on to the nearest settlement.
Yes, I thought I’d had enough of sick beds and strange faces.’
Presently his eyes turned slowly towards Lucius. He looked at him for
a little while with a lazy stare; then with a sudden fierceness in the
dark fever-bright eyes.
‘_You!_’ he cried; ‘you, that sent that bullet into my shoulder! It
must be a bad dream that brings you to my bedside.’
‘I am here to help and not to hurt you,’ answered Lucius quietly. ‘The
end of your life is so near that there is no time for enmity. I saved
you last night from becoming a parricide; and afterwards helped to
rescue you from a horrible death under the ruins of the house you had
invaded. If it is possible for such a nature as yours to feel remorse
for the past or apprehension for the future, give the few remaining
hours of your life to penitence and prayer.’
‘What, am I doomed?’
‘Yes, your hours are numbered. Medical skill can do nothing, except to
make your end a little easier.’
‘That’s bitter,’ muttered Ferdinand. ‘Just as I saw my grip upon the
old man’s hoard. I had schemes enough in this busy brain to occupy
twenty years more. Dying! How did I come here? What happened to me? I
remember nothing, except that I got into my father’s house last night
to have a little peaceable conversation with him. Did I see him? I
can’t remember.’
‘Don’t rack your brain to remember. There is no time to think of
your life in detail. Repent, even at this last hour, and pray to an
all-merciful God to pardon a life that has been all sin.’
‘Let Him answer for the work of His hands,’ cried the sinner. ‘He gave
me the passions that ruled my life—the brain that plotted, the heart
that knew not compunction. If He has His chosen vessels for good and
evil, I suppose I have fulfilled the purpose of my creation.’
‘May God forgive your blasphemous thought! To all His creatures He
gives the right of choice between two roads. You, of your own election,
chose the evil path. It is not too late even now to cry to Him, “Lord,
have mercy upon me a sinner!”’
The dying man closed his eyes, and made no answer.
‘I don’t suppose I should have been a bad fellow,’ he said by and by,
‘if destiny had provided me with a handsome income, say ten thousand a
year. The tiger is a decent beast enough till he is hungry. I’ve had a
strange life—a chequered fabric—some sunshine; a good deal of shadow.
You never heard of me in the United States, I suppose, where I was best
known as Señor Ferdinando, the violin improvisatore? I was the rage
yonder in my time, I can tell you, and saw the dollars roll in like the
golden waters of Pactolus, and had pretty women going mad about me by
scores. Ferdinando—yes, I was a great man as Señor Ferdinando.’
He paused with a sigh, half regret, half satisfaction.
‘I had a run of luck at the tables at San Francisco, when I got the
better of that accursed bulletwound—your bullet, remember—and I didn’t
do badly at the diggings, though I gained more by a lucky partnership
with some hard-working fools than by actual work. Then came a turn in
the tide, and I landed in this used-up old country without a five-pound
note, and nothing to hope for but the chance of getting on the blind
side of my old father. But that was difficult.’
‘You contrived to rob him, however,’ said Lucius.
The dying eyes looked at him with the old keen gaze, as if taking the
measure of his knowledge. But Ferdinand Sivewright did not trouble
himself either to deny or admit the justice of this accusation.
‘In England things went badly with me always; though I have played the
gentleman here in my time,’ he muttered, and closed his eyes wearily.
Lucius moistened the dry lips with brandy from a bottle that stood by
the bedside.
The messenger returned to say that two ladies were below in the
waiting-room.
Lucius went down-stairs, leaving a nurse in charge of Ferdinand. He
found Janet and Lucille alike pale and anxious. Lucille was the first
to speak.
‘Has anything happened to my grandfather?’ she exclaimed. ‘Is he here?
O, Lucius, tell me quickly.’
‘No, my darling. Mr. Sivewright is safe, at Cedar House. I have sent
for you to see one who has not very long to remain in this world—the
man whom you once loved as a father.’
‘My father here?’
‘No, Lucille, not your father. Ferdinand Sivewright stole that name,
and won your love by a falsehood.’
‘He was kind to me when I was a child,’ said Lucille. ‘But why is he
here? What has happened?’
Lucius told her briefly that there had been an accident by which
Ferdinand Sivewright had been fatally injured. Of the exact nature of
that accident, and the events that immediately preceded it, he told her
nothing.
To Janet he spoke more fully, when he had taken her to the other end of
the room, out of Lucille’s hearing.
‘Your husband is found, Janet,’ he said.
‘What?’ she cried; ‘he is living then; and your friend Mr. Hossack
assured me of his death.’
Her first thought was one of regret that Geoffrey should have pledged
himself to a falsehood.
‘Geoffrey was deceived by a train of circumstances that also deceived
me.’
‘He is living, and in this place!’ said Janet, with a sigh for the man
she had once loved.
‘He is dying, Janet. If you want him to acknowledge any wrong done to
you, it is a fitting time to obtain such a confession.’
‘I will not torture him with questions. I am too sorry for his mistaken
life. Take me to him, Lucius.’
‘And Lucille, she must come with you.’
‘What need has Lucille to be there?’
‘Greater need than you could suppose. Lucille’s pretended father and
your husband are one and the same person. Come, both of you. There is
no time to lose.’
He led the way to the accident ward, and to the quiet corner where
Ferdinand’s bed stood, shaded, and in a manner divided, from the rest
of the room by a canvas screen. His was the worst case in that abode of
pain.
Lucille drew near the bed, and at a sign from Lucius seated herself
quietly in the chair by the dying man’s pillow. Lucius stopped Janet
with a warning gesture, as she was advancing towards the screen.
‘Not yet,’ he whispered; ‘hear all, but don’t let him see you.’
Janet obeyed, and remained hidden by the screen. Ferdinand Sivewright’s
eyes wandered to the gentle face bent tearfully over his pillow.
‘Lucille,’ he gasped, ‘I thought you had abandoned me.’
‘Not in the hour of your remorse, father,’ she said; ‘my heart tells me
you are sorry for your sins; for that last worst sin of all I know you
must be sorry. It is not in nature that you should be remorseless.’
‘There are anomalies in nature,’ answered Sivewright. ‘I believe I
was born without a conscience, or wore it out before I was ten years
old. After all I have only sinned against my fellow man when I was
desperate; it has been my ultimate expedient. I have not injured
anybody upon fanciful grounds, for revenge or jealousy, or any of those
incendiary passions which have urged some men to destroy their kind. I
have obeyed the stern law of necessity.’
‘Father, repent; life is ebbing. Have you no words but those of
mockery?’
She took his death-cold hands, trying to fold them in prayer. He looked
at her, and the cynic’s smile faded. There was even some touch of
tenderness in his look.
‘Do you think the God against whom I have shut my mind is very likely
to take pity upon me now, at my last gasp, when further sin is
impossible?’
‘There is no state too desperate for the hope of His mercy. Christ died
for sinners. The penitent thief had briefest time for repentance, none
for atonement.’
‘I wonder whether he had been doing evil all his life; had never done
a good action, never truly served a friend,’ murmured Sivewright in a
musing tone.
‘We only know that he had sinned, and was forgiven.’
‘Ah, that’s a slight ground for belief in illimitable mercy. Can you
forgive me, Lucille—you whom I wronged and deluded, whom I cheated of a
birthright?’
‘I do not know what wrong you have done me; but whatever that wrong may
be, Heaven knows how freely I forgive it. I loved you dearly once.’
‘Ay, once. Poor parasite, why should you love me, except that it was in
your nature to twine your tendrils about something? And I loved you,
little one, as much as it was in _my_ nature to love anything. Whatever
love I had, I divided between you and the fiddle I used to play to you
in that dusky old parlour, when we two sat alone by the fire.’
‘Father, by the memory of that time, when I knew not what sin was—when
I thought you good and true, as you were kind—tell me that you repent
your sins, that you are sorry for having tried to injure that poor old
man.’
‘Repent my sins—sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I’ll say this much, that if
I could begin life afresh, with a clean conscience and a fair start,
I’d try to be an honest man. Outlaws have their pleasures; but I think
respectability has the best of it in the longrun.’
‘The strongest proof of repentance is the endeavour to atone,’ said
Lucius, who dreaded lest the end should come ere he had learned all
he wanted to know about Henry Glenlyne. ‘The wrong you did Lucille
Glenlyne was a bitter one, for you robbed her of a father.’
‘Lucille Glenlyne!’ cried Ferdinand. ‘How came you by the name of
Glenlyne?’
‘Never mind how I learned the name. Your time is short. Remember that,
and if you can be the means of restoring Lucille to her father, lose
not a moment ere you do that one good act.’
‘An affectionate father,’ said Ferdinand, with the old mocking tone.
‘He was very glad to be comfortably rid of his pretty little daughter.
He came to Bond-street a week after his wife’s death, with the merest
apology for a hatband, lest people should ask him why he was in
mourning, and took the little one on his knee and kissed her, and
smoothed her dark curls, but never told her to call him father; and
then, finding that she was so fond of me, proposed that I should adopt
her altogether, and bring her up as my own.’
‘For a consideration, I suppose?’ said Lucius.
‘Yes, he paid me something of course—a sum of money down—very
little—but he was always whining about his difficulties, and pretended
that he could do no more. After that I lost sight of him altogether. I
had left England before he came into his uncle’s fortune, and when I
wrote to him from South America, asking him to remember old promises,
he did not answer my letters. When I came back to England, with some
idea of hunting him up and making him pay me for my discretion, I heard
that he was dead. He was a mean cur at the best of times, and was never
worthy of his wife.’
‘Tell me at least where I can get most information about him?’ asked
Lucius earnestly.
‘From the family lawyers—Pullman and Everill, Lincoln’s-inn.’
This was something. Lucius had set his heart upon restoring Lucille’s
rightful name before she changed it for his own. A somewhat useless
labour, it might seem in the abstract; but to an Englishman that
question of name is a strong point.
‘Is that all you can tell me—the only help you can give me towards
reinstating Lucille in any rights she may have been deprived of through
her father’s desertion of her?’ asked Lucius.
‘Ay, that’s a question that might be worth looking into. You’d better
look at old Glenlyne’s will. Henry married a second time, I know, but
I don’t know whether he had children by that second marriage. I don’t
see how I can help you. Henry Glenlyne married Félicie Dumarques at
the church in Piccadilly—St. James’s—just twenty years ago. I never
had the certificate of the marriage. Hal Glenlyne kept that himself.
But you’ll find the register. Lucille’s rights—if she has any under
Reginald Glenlyne’s will—may be made out clearly enough; provided you
can identify the child I brought home to Bond-street as the daughter of
Henry and Félicie Glenlyne. There’s your greatest difficulty.’
The man’s keen intellect, even clouded by pain, dulled by the dark
shadow of death, grasped every detail, and saw the weak point in the
case.
‘I am no fortune-hunter,’ said Lucius, ‘and were Lucille mistress of a
million she could be no dearer to me than she is now; nor her future
life happier than, with God’s help, I hope to make it. I desire nothing
but that she should have justice—justice to her dead mother—justice to
herself.’
‘You cannot get it out of Henry Glenlyne,’ answered Ferdinand
Sivewright. ‘He has slipped comfortably into his grave and escaped all
reckoning. He was always a sneak.’
‘Enough. We must look for justice to God, if man withhold it. There is
some one here who wishes to see you—some one you have wronged as deeply
as you wronged Lucille. Can you bear to see your wife—my sister Janet?’
‘What, is she here too? You come like the ghosts that circled
crook-back Richard’s bed at Bosworth.’
‘Will you see your wife?’ asked Lucius quietly.
‘Yes. She’ll not reproach me now. Let her come.’
‘Janet.’
Janet came softly to the bed, and knelt beside the man whose influence
had once been all-powerful to lead her.
‘Can _you_ forgive me?’ he asked, looking at her with those awful eyes,
whose intensity was slowly lessening as the dull shade of death dimmed
them. ‘Can _you_ forgive? I wronged you worst of all, for I told you
a lie on purpose to break your heart. You are my lawful wife—I had no
other—never loved any other woman. I stole you secretly from your home
because I knew my character couldn’t stand investigation, and if I had
wooed you openly there’d have been all manner of inquiries. I knew the
keen prying ways of your petty provincial gentry. It was easier to make
the business a secret, and thus escape all danger.’
‘You gave me a bitter burden to bear in all these years,’ Janet
answered gently; ‘but I am grateful even for this tardy justice. May
God forgive you as I do!’
She covered her face with her hands, and her head sank on the coverlet
of the bed, as she knelt in silent prayer. There could be little to be
said between these two. Janet’s wrongs were too deep for many words.
Ferdinand stretched out his hand with a feeble wandering movement, and
the tremulous fingers rested on his wife’s bent head—rested there with
a light and tender touch, it might be in blessing.
‘Father, will you not say one prayer?’ asked Lucille piteously.
‘I will say anything to please you,’ he answered.
‘No, no, not for me, but for your own sake! God is all goodness;
even to those who turn to Him at the eleventh hour. His mercies are
infinite.’
‘They had need be if I am to have any part in them.’
Lucille repeated the Lord’s Prayer slowly, the dying man repeating it
after her, in Latin—the words he had learned in his boyhood when he
went to mass with his mother at the chapel in Spanish-place.
They stayed with him all that day, Lucille reading, at intervals, words
of hope and comfort from the Gospel—words which may have pierced even
those dull ears with some faint promise, may have kindled some vague
yearning for divine forgiveness even in that hardened heart. The sinner
seemed at intervals to listen; there was a grateful look now and then
in the tired eyes.
They did not fatigue him, even with these pious ministrations. The
soothing words were read to him after pauses of silence, and only when
he seemed free from pain. Lucille’s gentle hand bathed the burning
forehead. Janet held the reviving cordial to the pale parched lips. Had
he lived nobly, and perished in the discharge of some sacred duty, his
dying hours could not have been more gently tended. And thus the slow
sad day wore on, and at dusk he started up out of a brief slumber, with
a sharp cry of pain, and repeated, in a strange husky voice, the words
Lucille had read to him a little while before:
‘Lord—be merciful—to me—a—’
He lacked strength to finish that brief sentence; but, conscious to the
last, looked round upon them all, and then, stretching out his arms to
Lucille, fell upon her neck, and died there.
He had loved the little girl who sat on his knee in the gloaming, while
he played by his father’s fireside, better than the wife he wronged.