Mad: A Story of Dust and Ashes

by George Manville Fenn

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.