Volume Three—Chapter Seventeen.
“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.”