Mad: A Story of Dust and Ashes

by George Manville Fenn

Sick Man’s Fancies.

There was a strange battle in the breast of the Reverend Arthur Sterne about this time. Now he would feel satisfied in his own mind that he had obtained the victory over self, while directly after, an encounter with Lucy, or some little incident that occurred during one of his visits, would teach him his weakness. Pained, and yet pleased, he left Septimus Hardon’s rooms on the day after Mrs Jarker’s death, for he had been gazing upon a picture that an artist would have been delighted to copy: Lucy Grey weeping over the sunny-haired child she had just fetched from Mrs Sims’ room. He was pained, for the scene had brought up the thoughts of its mother, and her strange intimacy with Lucy, though the gentle, loving interest shown for the helpless, worse than orphan child, made his heart swell and beat faster as he thought of the mine of wealth, the tenderness the fair girl could bestow were she all he could have wished.

But the pain and sorrow predominated as he left the house and slowly descended, for he encountered ma mère upon the staircase, and he felt the colour mount to his temples as he met her sardonic smile and thought of her words; and then he hurried away, feeling at times that he must leave the place and seek another home, for his present life was wearying in the extreme. He would have done so before but for one powerful thought, one which he could feel would maintain its sway, so that he would be drawn back and his efforts rendered useless—efforts that he made to break the chain that fettered him. For her part, Lucy avoided him, meeting him but seldom, and then with flushed cheek and averted eye; while though in any other instance he would have declared instantly that flush to have been that of shame or modesty, yet here, tortured by doubt, he could not satisfy himself, for at such times as he tried to be content came the memory of the scene in the Lane, and the words of the old Frenchwoman.

Lucy had fetched the child from across the court, but it was only admitted by Mrs Septimus under sufferance, for she was in one of her weak fits that day, and if it had not been that Septimus encouraged the act, the little thing would have remained in Mrs Sims’ charge.

“Keep her, at all events, till I come back,” Septimus had said, and his evident desire to go out had somewhat shortened the curate’s visit, for the desire was strong now upon Septimus to gain fresh information touching the legitimacy of his birth. The more now that obstacles sprung up, the more he felt disposed to assert his right; but he acknowledged to himself that it was but a passing fit, and that he would soon return to his old weakness and despondency. Still there was a warm feeling of friendship for Matt to prompt him to revisit the hospital at an early day, and, soon after the curate had left Bennett’s-rents, Septimus was on his way to the sick-bed of the old man.

He thought a great deal of old Matt’s assertion that he had seen an entry somewhere; but the more he thought, the more it seemed that this was merely a hallucination produced by his illness, for he could not but recall how he had confused it with matters of the past and present.

The old man slept when Septimus reached his bedside, and some time elapsed before he unclosed his dim eyes, and then they gazed blankly into his visitor’s before he recognised him, when a light seemed to spread across his features, and he smiled faintly.

“Come again? That’s right. I wanted to ask you something, sir,” he said.

“Indeed!” said Septimus eagerly, for he felt that it had to do with the matter in which he was interested.

“Why,” said the old man, hesitating, “it was about the nurses, and your father, and—do you think that they had anything to do with the rats?”