Slowly the last rays of the sun fade out of the sky, and the lingering light as slowly follows. The world lies hushed as a tired sleeper, and the moon and the stars come out as watchers—as signs too of other worlds and other lives. But the old man sitting pale and peaceful in the house-porch knows now what he no longer sees; for the gloaming of his life has passed into the deep stillness of something beyond, as the day has flowed into the night, and both lie in the hollow of God’s right hand.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER XIV.—THE SHARING OF THE SPOIL.
The name of Mr Enoch Wilkins, Solicitor in the High Court of Chancery, and Attorney-at-law, before, according to the polite legal fiction, the Queen herself at Westminster, was deeply inscribed, in fat black engraved characters, on a gleaming brass plate which formed the chief adornment of the dark-green door of his City office. If this brass plate really did gleam, as it did, like a piece of burnished gold, its refulgence was due to unremitting exertions on the part of the office lad, whose objurgations were frequent as at unholy matutinal hours he plied the obdurate metal with rotstone, oiled flannels, and chamois leather. For the atmosphere of St Nicholas Poultney (so named from the hideous effigy of a begrimed saint, mottled by frost and blackened by soot, which yet decorated the low-browed doorway of a damp little church hard by) was not conducive to brilliancy, whether of glass, brass, or paint, being heavily charged, on the average of days, with tainted air, foul moisture, and subdivided carbon, with rust, dust, and mildew. Nevertheless Mr Wilkins, who was a master to be obeyed, contrived that his plate-glass windows should flash back whatever rays of light the pitying sun might deign to direct on so dismal a region, girt in and stifled by a wilderness of courts, lanes, streets, and yards, and also that door-handles and bell-pulls should be shining and spotless as a sovereign new-minted, the door-step a slab of unsullied stone, and passage, staircase, and offices as trim and clean as the floors of some lavender-scented farmhouse among the cabbage roses of Cheshire. These praiseworthy results were not attained without labour, sustained and oft renewed, on the part of Mrs Flanagan, the so-called laundress, whose washing was effected by the vigorous application of scrubbing-brush and Bath-brick; of a melancholy window-cleaner from Eastcheap, whose bread was earned by perpetual acrobatic feats on narrow sills and outside ledges; and of the office lad already mentioned, whose main duties, though he called himself a clerk, were those of keeping the externals of his master’s place of business at the utmost pitch of polish.
In very truth, although there was a messenger, fleet of foot and cunning in threading his way through the labyrinthine intricacies of the City, always perched on a leather-covered stool in the antechamber, to supplement the services of the office lad, Mr Wilkins had no clerk. A great deal of his business was transacted by word of mouth; he answered his own letters; and when much of the scribe’s work became requisite, some civic law stationer would send in one or two red-eyed men in mouldy black, with finger-nails indelibly stained by the ink that had become their owners’ element, and a sufficient quantity of draught folio paper would be covered with legal copperplate.
The outer office was neatness itself, from the bright fire-irons in the fender to the maps on the wall and the rulers and pewter inkstands on the desks. And the inner room, where the lawyer himself gave audience, was almost cheerful, with its well-brushed Turkey carpet, sound furniture, well-stored book-shelves, and general aspect of snug comfort. There were those who wondered that Mr Wilkins, whose reputation did not rank very high in the learned confraternity to which he belonged, should so pointedly have deviated from the tradition which almost prescribes dirt and squalor and darkness for the surroundings of those who live by the law. There were, not very far off, most respectable firms, the name of whose titled employers was Legion, yet through whose cobwebbed panes was filtered the feeble light by which their bewildered clients stumbled among ragged carpets and rickety furniture to reach the well-known beehive chair. But Mr Wilkins was a man capable of attending to his own interests, and probably he had found out what best chimed with the prejudices of those for whose custom he angled.
There was nothing in the room itself to shew that it was a lawyer’s office. It might have been that of a surveyor or a promoter of companies, for there was nothing on the walls but a set of good maps and four or five excellent engravings. Not a deed-box, not a safe, was to be seen, and if there were law-books on the shelves they held their place unobtrusively amongst other well-bound volumes. Mr Wilkins sitting in his usual place, with one elbow resting on the table before him, seemed to be indulging in a reverie of no distasteful character, to judge by the smile that rested on his coarse mouth as he softly tapped his front teeth with the mother-of-pearl handle of a penknife, as though beating time to his thoughts. At last, warned by the striking of the office clock, the hour-hand of which pointed to eleven, Mr Wilkins shook off his preoccupation of mind, and rang the hand-bell at his elbow.
The office lad, who called himself a clerk, was prompt in answering the tinkling summons of his employer.