Septimus Hardon took the old man by the arm and placed him in a chair; for it was evident that he was a little testy and jealous of other interposition in the matters in which he had taken so much interest; but the cordiality of Mrs Septimus seemed to chase it away; while Lucy, returning from a walk, beamed so happily upon the old man, that he looked his old self again, and owned to the feeling that, as he expressed it, he had expected that he was going to be “pitched overboard,” now there were new friends.
It was partly by Mr Sterne’s advice that Septimus had sought out and asked Matt to accompany him this day; for though much hurt, and weak from loss of blood, the curate had taken great interest in the future of the Hardon family. At his request Septimus had sought and removed to lodgings in Essex-street, and since then passed an evening by the curate’s bedside; for he had been found by a policeman perfectly insensible, and carried home; and, though nearly certain of who was his assailant, he felt indisposed to take any steps in the matter for fear that affairs might be made public which he wished concealed. He had not seen Lucy since; but somehow there was a feeling of repose and content within his breast that it had not known for months; and he longed for the time when he could again meet with the woman whose words would have, he now felt, set him at rest for ever.
There seemed, too, a brightness in Lucy foreign to her looks, as Septimus leaned over her and whispered a few words before leaving; then, after kissing her tenderly, he descended to the street with old Matt, who, though weak, still refused sturdily every offer of a ride, and they trudged steadily on till they reached Finsbury.
“Hallo!” said Matt, “what d’ye call this? Same name, but the business is changed, and that’s her a-cutting up paper. To be sure—why it is her! I thought I knew her face, but I was in such a muddle just then that all my letter was mixed, and whenever I wanted a p, I got a q, and all on like that. Why, she came and chattered away, and bought an old set of tobacco-jars and covers and a heap of waste-paper of Mother Slagg, just before I went into hospital; and there they are, sir—that’s them, fresh varnished and painted, and stuck on the shelf. Ikey took ’em home for her, and I remember asking myself ever so long as to where I’d seen her before. Well, come on, sir. I want a bit of snuff, so that’s an excuse for going in. P’r’aps, after all, she’s bought the very paper.”
The visitors made their way into the old formal registry-office, turned into a very smart little shop, fitted up with some taste; where Miss Tollicks herself was busily weighing and packing a pile of those little rolls of tobacco known as “screws.” Fine thick paper, too, she was using, such as would weigh well and add to the rather fine profit she obtained upon her fragrant weed. For there was no mistake: Miss Tollicks had executed her threat, turned the registering out of doors, and taken to the business most popular in the streets of London. No seat now existed for maids to sit and wait to be hired from ten to four; no green baize; no intense air of respectability, but all quite the correct thing as established by custom in the weedy way. There was a monster cigar outside, set perpendicularly, with an internal gas-jet, and a transparency bearing the legend, “Take a light.” On the other side of the door was a little, freshly-varnished, red-nosed, chip-elbowed Scotchman, taking snuff in the imperfect tense, with his fingers half-way to his nose; an imitation roll of tobacco hung over the door; while just inside, upon a tub, stood a small black gentleman in a very light feather petticoat, smoking a pipe about double the length of his body. Then there were clay pipes, crossed and tied into diamond-pattern d’oyleys, swung in the top panes of the windows; while beneath them “so gracefully curled” a perfect anaconda of a hookah—one that it would have taken a bold Turk to smoke. There were meerschaums and brier-roots, cutty- and billiard-pipes; glass, cherry, and jasmine stems; tobacco-pouches of india-rubber, looking like fresh-flayed negro-skin; snuff-boxes of all sorts and sizes, embracing miniature, scene, and tartan of every pattern; stacks of cigar-boxes carefully branded but very European in their look; bundles of cigars tied with fancy ribbon; the day’s playbills on the walls; rows of snuff- and tobacco-jars, as pointed out by Matt, and labelled from “Scotch” to “Hardham’s 37,” and from “Returns” to “Latakia.” There was a whole tubful of odorous shag, and a stack of packets of Bristol bird’s-eye; the scales were of the glossiest, the glass-case of the cleanest, and altogether the shop owned by Miss Tollicks seemed to be of the most prosperous; for things looked smart and well attended to—a rare sign of plenty of business, as, according to the old saying, “the less there is to do, the worse it is done;” but there was a strong smell of varnish, and it was evident that Miss Tollicks had been picking up her fittings here and there at various secondhand stores, or, as Matt Space called it, “on the cheap.”
Matt advanced to the counter and asked for his penn’orth of snuff.
“Then you’re not dead!” exclaimed Miss Tollicks, putting down the jar in a most businesslike way, with motions rapid as her speech; for she had banished the black-velvet blackbird and deportment along with the green baize; but, not quite used to her business, in spite of her ability of adapting herself to circumstances, she sneezed loudly as she lifted the lid. “And how do you do?—there, dear me, how I do sneeze!—and I thought I had quite conquered it, for it does look so—tchisher-er—so—er-tchisher! There, I’m sure I beg your pardon. And how do you do? and you’ve got well again, like poor Mary did, in that horrible place, who was dying too, and didn’t. And Mr Harding too! and I’m so glad to see you, for you were that kind to me, I don’t know what I should have done else. Now you’ve come to ask me about the doctor again—now haven’t you?”
Septimus said he had.
“Well, now, I hadn’t forgotten it, and you were both right, you know; but I shall never forget your kindness, Mr Harding, for but for you that day, everyone must have seen that I had been crying. But you were right; and the doctor did live here, and died here too, ages ago; and then his widow went to live somewhere in one of those quiet streets by the Strand, going down to the river, you know; and then she died, and there was a sale, and that’s all; and it isn’t much, is it?”
Septimus said it was not, certainly.