Then the spirits of the sanguine inventor fell suddenly to zero. Nor were they manifestly revived by the daily visits of his wife, for she, poor woman, with tears in her eyes, begged and prayed her recalcitrant husband to give up the documents. But even his love for her did not induce him to forget his duty to the dead.
Sadd was committed to Marston Castle in the early part of November. And before a month had passed over his head he had become the most melancholy and morose of those resorting to the common room. The others had some hope of release. It seemed that he must remain there for ever, unless he relinquished the sacred papers. His cheeks became sunken, his shoulders bent, and his hair prematurely grey. He sat apart from his fellows and mumbled continually to himself.
It was during the first week in December that the others thought he had gone mad. His “little woman,” as he fondly called her, did not pay her customary visits. His solicitor looked in and informed him that Mrs. Sadd was dangerously ill in bed, and urgently pleaded this as an additional reason for complying with the order of the Court. Duty to the dead, love for the living—these conflicting emotions tore his heart. In an agony of spirit he motioned his solicitor to withdraw. Then he burst out crying like a child, and never again opened his lips to mortal man.
On Christmas Day there was service in the jail chapel. Mr. Thorns preached an excellent sermon from the text—“The law is good if a man use it lawfully.” This exemplary cleric dwelt with great severity on the evil that is in the world, and particularly on the evil which brought men into jails. He then proceeded to inform his attentive congregation of a fact which one would have thought was painfully obvious to them—that punishment did not fall only on the wrong doer, but also upon those who were near and dear to him. “Picture to yourselves,” went on the minister of the Gospel, “picture your wives on this holy anniversary, seated in silence and sadness, surrounded by their weeping children. Think of their untold agony as these innocent children—inheritors of a parent’s brand—put the tormenting question, ‘Where’s father?’ Picture—”
It all happened in a moment; a prisoner had burst from the benches occupied by the first-class misdemeanants; had scaled the pulpit like a wild cat; had caught the chaplain by the throat; had suddenly released his grasp; and, with a groan which those who heard it will never forget, had fallen back on to the stone pavement in front of the pulpit—dead.
When the body was searched the precious documents were found stitched beneath his waistcoat. They disclosed an unfinished scheme of the late Mr. McAllister’s for so dealing with horsehair as to render the wigs of judges not only awful to the multitude, but comfortable to the wearer.
VII.
MR. GREY.
For five and twenty years, and on every day during term time, Reginald Grey took his place on the seats devoted to the Junior Bar in one of the Courts allotted to Vice-Chancellors. He did not live to attend before Vice-Chancellors in the spick-and-span mausoleum, that goes by the name of the Royal Courts of Justice. When he was at the Bar, the Vice-Chancellors sat in dingy buildings in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—the same, indeed, which have been so fully described in Bleak House.
To the reporters, barristers, general public, and to successive Vice-Chancellors, Reginald was as well known as “the Fields” themselves. He was a modest, self-contained man, and he never held a brief. But he must have known a wonderful deal of law, for he never missed a case, and he listened to every argument and suggestion as though Coke in propriâ personâ were lecturing him upon Littleton. Even when lunch time came Reginald did not hurry out of Court with the chattering, surging crowd of litigants and lawyers’ clerks. He sat quietly in the position which he had taken up, and when the Court was quite empty, drew a penny bun from his pocket, which he devoured, gazing absently up at the roof of the Court. When the Court resumed its duties, he brushed the crumbs from his trousers, and when the Vice-Chancellor entered, he rose with the rest of the Bar and bowed to his lordship with every dignity.
Wigs, gowns, and bands are, as articles of attire, subject to the very same law of decay which affects a great-coat or a suit of sables, and the years had not spared the robes which denoted Mr. Grey’s professional status. His wig was discoloured by dust, smoke, and other accidents. Whole wisps of horsehair stuck out here and there, and one of the little tails which depend behind had fallen bodily away—had perhaps been eaten away by rats. His bands were most disreputable specimens of man-millinery; for indeed he was his own laundress, and washed those symbolic rags in his own basin, drying them before his fire in his chambers in Gray’s Inn. His stuff gown was a frayed and ragged garment; no ragman would have advanced sixpence on it. For five and twenty years had it—but there! it is about the man himself I would speak. There is something to my mind so pathetic in the sight of these forensic shreds and patches, that I cannot bear to dwell on their dilapidation.