"The deeds we do, though done in heedless ways,
May have the shaping of our future lives;
And, stretching forth their long arms from the past,
May alter this and that in such strange fashion
That we become as puppets in their hands,
To play the game of life by old events."
Mr. Dombrain's office, situate in Chintle Lane, was a shabby little place consisting of three rooms. One where his clients waited, another occupied by three clerks constantly writing, and a third where Mr. Dombrain himself sat, like a crafty spider in his web waiting for silly flies. The three rooms were all bad, but Mr. Dombrain's was the worst; a square, low-roofed apartment like a box, with a dim twilight atmosphere, which filtered in through a dirty skylight in the roof. This being the case, Dombrain's desk was lighted by a gas-jet with a green shade, fed by a snaky-looking india-rubber tube attached to the iron gas-pipe projecting from the wall above his head.
The heavy yellow light flaring from under this green shade revealed the room in a half-hearted sort of fashion, illuminating the desk, but quite unable to penetrate into the dark corners of the place. On the writing-table were piles of papers, mostly tied into bundles with red tape, a glass inkstand, a pad of pink blotting-paper, three or four pens, all of which were arranged on a dingy ink-stained green cloth in front of a row of pigeon holes, full of loose letters and legal-looking documents.
In front of this table sat Mr. Dombrain in a heavy horsehair-covered chair, and near him were two other chairs of slender construction for the use of clients. Along the walls more pigeon holes crammed with papers, a tall bookshelf filled with hard-looking law books, which had a second-hand look of having been picked up cheap, a ragged carpet on the well-worn floor, and dust everywhere. Indeed, so thickly lay the dust on books, on floor, on papers, on desk, that the whole room looked as if it had just been opened after the lapse of years. The chamber of the Sleeping Beauty, perhaps, and Mr. Dombrain--well no, he was not a beauty, and he never was sleeping, so the comparison holds not. Indeed he was a singularly ugly man in a coarse fashion. A large bullet-shaped head covered with rough red hair, cut so remarkably short that it stood up stiffly in a stubbly fashion, a freckled face with a coarse red beard clipped short, cunning little grey eyes, rather bleared by the constant glare of the gaslight in which he worked, and large crimson ears. Dressed in a neat suit of black broadcloth, he appeared singularly ill at ease in it, and with his large stumpy-fingered hands, with clubbed nails, his awkward manner, his habit of stealthily glancing out of his bleared eyes, Mr. Dombrain was about as unsuited a person for a lawyer as one could find. There was nothing suave about him to invite confidence, and he looked as if he would have been more at home working as a navvy than sitting behind this desk, with his large red hands clumsily moving the papers about.
Three o'clock in the afternoon it was by Mr. Dombrain's fat-faced silver watch lying on the table in front of him, and as the lawyer noted the fact in his usual stealthy fashion, a timid-looking clerk glided into the room.
"Yes?" said Dombrain interrogatively, without looking up.
"If you please--if you please, sir, a lady," stammered the timid clerk, washing his hands with invisible soap and water, "a lady about--about the situation, sir."
"Humph! I said the application was to be by letter."
"But--but the lady, sir?"
Mr. Dombrain looked complacently at his nails, but said nothing.