Even the march of time seems to have been arrested amidst the decay of the place, since the bell of the church clock rusted from its bearings and the index of the old sun-dial fell a prey to accumulated canker. The spring brings a few green buds and feeble leaves upon the grimy trees; the summer serves to accumulate the store of dust and torn paper and shreds of light rubbish which the autumn wind swirls into neglected corners on the dim evenings when the rain weeps on the blackened windows and the mist creeps up to the steeple in long ghostly shapes. The winter brings a frozen cyclone which whistles round and round or gently covers the graveyard with snow, the unbroken whiteness of which is gradually spotted and interlaced with sooty flakes, as though the genius of the place resented the intrusion and would make no further compromise than half mourning.
The dimmest, darkest, and dirtiest of all the houses round the yard was that of Richard Dryce & Co., factors and general merchants. It was never known who was the Co., for Richard Dryce managed his own business, and lived in the house, in one of the back rooms of which overlooking a square paved courtyard he had been born. The business belonged to his father before him, and he himself had married into the business of another factor and general merchant. His wife had died some twenty years before the period of this story—died in giving birth to a boy, who was sometimes mistaken for the Co., but who at present occupied no better position than that of a superior clerk, with the questionable advantage of living with his father in the dull old house, where he had to go through the warehouse amidst innumerable bales and crates and packages to reach the staircase that conducted him to the gloomy rooms, the old-fashioned furniture of which suited his father, but was sorely against his own taste.
How he should have come to have any opinion of his own is perhaps a mystery, for he resembled his mother, who was a simple creature, easily influenced, and with all her tastes apparently moulded on the pattern set before her by her husband. Still, however it may have been, though he was born in the gloomy house, and was subject to the same influences, the younger Dryce—whose name was Robert—never took kindly to the dull routine to which his father's habits doomed him. He was too dutiful and too mild in disposition—in fact, too unlike his own father—to offer any direct opposition to it, or to complain very often of its exactions; but he felt that at twenty he was kept with too tight a hand, and that there were worlds beyond Saint Simon Swynherde, which might be harmlessly explored.
Richard Dryce was, however, not a bad man, not a cruel or a hard man in his inmost heart; but he had been himself devoted from early life to one condition of things, which were in some strange way in accordance with his natural constitution, or with which he had become identified till they grew into a necessary part of his existence. He was a self-contained man—an undemonstrative man, whose mind was attuned to respectable solitude, and who, without being a misanthrope, regarded his fellow creatures through a ground-glass medium, which made them seem shadowy and unapproachable. A few business acquaintances he had, with whom he would sometimes take his chop and glass of old port at a city tavern of an evening; he would even, on rare occasions, go the length of smoking a cigar in company with one or two of his less distant companions; but his laugh was like the harsh echo of a disused violin, and he seldom or never invited anybody to see him at home.
One of the people whom he disliked most said that he was "a buttoned-up man," and Richard Dryce could never forgive him—the description was so true.
One of his most intimate friends, an alderman, of congenial temperament, who had greatly distinguished himself by quarrelling and exchanging vituperative epithets with another alderman on the magisterial bench, seriously advised him to become a candidate for civic honours; but he strenuously refused, although he ultimately permitted his son Robert to achieve something like independence by becoming a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Twidlers, whose hall stood within the precincts of Saint Simon Swynherde. It was only on the occasion of one of their dinners that Robert was allowed to be out after ten o'clock; but that restriction did not prevent his spending the larger number of his evenings between eight o'clock and ten at the Twidlers' Hall, which mouldy old structure, with its great, cold, lonely dining-room and awkward polygonal ante-rooms decorated with portraits of deceased dignitaries, held an attraction not to be found elsewhere, in the person of pretty Agnes Raincliffe, the only daughter of the company's beadle.
For six months they had been under the sweet illusion that disinterested affection must eventually win for itself a way to union; but old Mr. Raincliffe had spoken seriously to them, and altogether forbade their further meeting until Robert had spoken to his father. He went home that very night, and, nerved to a sort of desperation, did speak to his father, ending with the usual declarations that his choice was unalterable. Perhaps it was; but, whether or not, Richard Dryce went the very way to make it so when he laughed that discordant laugh, and, with a taunt against his son's weakness of purpose and his dependent position, told him to dismiss such a scheming little hussey from his thoughts, for he was to marry when he had permission, which would never be granted to such a match as the beadle wanted to bring about.
Robert left his father's presence without a word; but in a week from that date he had followed Agnes down into the country, whither she had been sent out of the way. When he returned he wrote a letter to his father, to say that they were married. It is easy to guess what followed. When he called for an answer to his communication, he received a brief note, saying that he was discarded from that hour, need never trouble himself to enter the doors of the old house again, and that henceforth he must look to his own exertions for the means of living. This letter was sent by the hand of a sort of managing clerk, one Jaggers, who was at the same time commissioned to tell Robert that he could, if he chose, obtain a situation in a house at Liverpool, where his father's interest was sufficient to secure him a clerkship at a very moderate salary. Now it so happened that Jaggers had always appeared to be the best friend young Robert ever had; he had sympathized with him on the subject of his father's harshness; had applauded his noble sentiments when he had imparted the secret of his engagement to Agnes; had wished that he was master of the establishment in St. Simon's Yard, that justice might be done to disinterested virtue, and had generally assumed the part of guide, philosopher, and friend, tempered by humble deference, to the young man. It was arranged between them, therefore, that, after a time, during which Robert should accept the situation at Liverpool, a more successful appeal might be made to Dryce senior, and that a letter addressed to him should be sent under cover to Jaggers, who would lay it on his table.
Robert and his young wife went away, leaving this good-natured fellow to watch their interests. A year passed, and the letter had been written, but remained unanswered; indeed, according to Jaggers's showing, Richard Dryce was more inveterate than ever, and was unapproachable on the subject of his undutiful son, in pleading whose cause he, Jaggers, had very nearly obtained his own dismissal. The firm in which Robert was a clerk became bankrupt in the commercial crisis, and he was thrown out of employment. Again he wrote to his father, saying that he had an appointment offered him in Australia, and only wanted the money to pay his passage. He received no reply, but some people who knew him in Liverpool made up the sum, and his wife came to London to live with her father (who was now superannuated in favour of a new beadle), and to wait for his return, or for the remittance that was to come by the first mail, that she might join him there.
Their first child, a girl, had been a poor sickly little creature, and was dead; but Agnes was likely again to become a mother, and waited anxiously for the money which would enable her to prepare for such an event. Anxiously as she waited, it never came, and Jaggers, to whom it was to have been directed, advanced her a sovereign, as he said, "out of his small means," and then lost sight of her, for she and her father had moved into other lodgings, where the managing clerk could scarcely trouble himself to go, unless he had good news to take with him. Indeed, he had so much to occupy his attention, that some months had elapsed since he had seen Agnes; once only he had written a short reply to a note imploring him to say whether any remittance had arrived; but how could he spare time to attend to such matters when Mr. Dryce was every week taking a less active part in the business, and the Christmas quarter was stealing on with the balance-sheet not even thought of in the press of country orders. Mr. Richard Dryce was still hale and active; but those who knew him best, thought that he was breaking. His voice was less harsh, his hair had turned from iron-gray to white, and in his face there was an anxious look as of one who waits for something that does not come. Once or twice old acquaintances ventured to ask after his son, but he shook his head, and said that he knew nothing of him; he had written to his last address, but had received no reply.