Mad.

by George Manville Fenn.

Volume One.

Chapter I.

THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE.

Septimus Hardon bore his Christian name from no numerical reason, for he was an only child; but his father, Octavius Hardon, Esquire, of Somesham, thought that, like his own, the name had a good bold sound with it--a sonorous cla.s.sical tw.a.n.g. There was a vibration with it that should impress people in the future life of the bearer and add importance denied by Nature; but Mrs Octavius, during her lifetime, was always in disgrace with her lord for shortening the name into Sep, which was decidedly not impressive; while as for Septimus himself, he too was always in trouble with his father for being what he was--decidedly impressive, but not in the way his father wished; for to look at Septimus Hardon it might have been supposed that Nature, after trying her 'prentice hand on man, and then making "the la.s.ses, O," had had a quant.i.ty of rough stuff left--odds and ends, snips and sc.r.a.ps and awkward tags--when, sooner than there should be any waste of the precious material, she made Septimus Hardon. You could not say that he was deformed, but there was an odd look about him; his head seemed too big, and was badly thatched, while, by contrast, his body was too small; then his nose was a trifle on one side, and his mouth too wide, though it certainly disclosed an enviable set of teeth; his arms were long, and swung about too much, while one leg was slightly shorter than the other, short enough to make him limp; but there was mildness written in his pitted face, and honesty peered at you from his clear bright eyes. And there was a true heart too in his breast, a large swelling heart, to which must have been due the obtrusiveness of his breast, and the decided roundness of his shoulders. And while Septimus Hardon had in some things most excellent taste--taste that his cousins sneered at, save when they wanted their music copied neatly, or their drawings touched up--yet dress was not his forte, since he always made the worst of himself by wearing clothes that did not fit him, and bad as his figure was, some tailor could have been found who would have guaranteed fit, if not style. Septimus generally wore shabby faded black coats and vests, trousers of a dead leaf or baker's drab, blucher boots of the pattern known as contract--very bulgy and wrinkly; and a real beaver hat, with a propensity for growing irritated under the brush, and becoming rough and startling.

Born in London, Septimus had lived since childhood with his father at the Grange, a solitary house about a couple of miles from Somesham town; and for years past the amus.e.m.e.nt and toil of the father and son had been centred in a little amateur printing-office, fitted up in a side-room, where they laboriously printed, page by page, the work that Octavius Hardon called his brother Thomas--the doctor practising in the town--a fool for not appreciating,--a work upon political reform, one that was to astonish the world at large when it was completed; and though Septimus owned to himself that the world would be easily astonished and its state rather startling if it accepted and acted upon the opinions there set forth, yet, at forty years of age, he was still working on day after day at his father's beck and call, obedient as a child, and never venturing an opinion of his own in presence of the irascible old man, who always called him "boy."

It might have been supposed that living so secluded a life himself, and being so strange of aspect, the idle G.o.d would have spared him as an object for his shafts; but for long years Septimus Hardon had loved in secret, loved and sorrowed,--for he was not happy in the choice he had made. Mary Phillips was the betrothed of Tom Grey, the mate of an East Indiaman; and Septimus Hardon had been divided between love for the fair girl and friendship for his old schoolfellow, who made him the repository, in his frank, sailorlike fashion, of all his secrets.

So while the sailor had wooed and won, Septimus Hardon had nursed his love for years, hardly realising the pa.s.sion he had harboured, till one night when, after a woodside ramble, he stood leaning upon a stile, and glancing down with bitterness at his uncouth form. The shadows were growing deeper, when, hearing approaching footsteps, he entered the wood, where before him lay many a dark mossy arcade--fit places for the sighs of a sorrowful heart; and he thought as he entered one that he could wander here in peace for a while; but the next instant the hot blood flushed up into his face, making his veins throb as he stood with clenched hands gazing through the thin screen of leaves at Mary, leaning lovingly upon his friend's arm, and listening with downcast eyes to his words.

The listener could hardly see the looks of those who pa.s.sed, but their words seemed to ring through the stillness of the summer eve, each one falling with a heavy impact upon his ear, and vibrating through his frame, as if a sharp blow had been struck upon sonorous metal. For a moment a wild fury seemed to blind him, and he stood trembling with pa.s.sion till the footsteps died away; when, half wild with agony, he dashed headlong, deeper and deeper into the wood, crashing through the light hazels, tripping over the tortuous roots; and at last, stumbling over a fallen bough, he fell heavily, and lay insensible in the calm depths of the wood. But thought soon dawned upon him again, and he lay and shuddered as the anguish of heart came slowly creeping back; for he now thoroughly understood his fate, and knew that the bright dreamy structures in which his imagination had revelled had crumbled before him into bitter dust.

Time sped on, and after another voyage Tom Grey was back, and standing with his hand upon Septimus Hardon's shoulder.

"Come? Why, of course, my boy; what should we do without you? Mary begs that you won't refuse; and, Sep, old fellow, I shall expect you to be her bodyguard when I'm far away at sea."

Septimus Hardon was standing opposite to a tall pier-gla.s.s in his father's drawing-room when these words were spoken; and he glanced at himself, and then, sighing bitterly, wondered whether, had he been as other men, he would have been chosen. But the next moment the thought was crushed down, and he was returning the frank, handsome sailor's honest grasp.

Septimus Hardon nursed his love, but he hid it, buried it in the deepest recesses of his heart; and no one knew of the secret held by the bridegroom's friend, who held by one of the pews when a swimming came upon him in the church, and he would have fallen had not Tom Grey grasped his arm. But that soon pa.s.sed, and the stricken man added his congratulations to those of the friends a.s.sembled to follow the couple, in whose path flowers were strewn--the couple joined together till death did them part.

And that was soon--soon to the loving wife--soon to the husband whose journeyings were upon the great deep; but years pa.s.sed first, during which quiet, vacillating Septimus Hardon was the faithful friend of his schoolfellow's wife, and the patient slave of her bright-eyed child, at whose bidding he was always ready to attend, even to the neglect of his father's book.

Then came the day when, after whispering of hope, for many months, Septimus learned that his fears were but too well founded, and that his friend's ship had gone down with all on board.

A bitter trial was his to break the fatal tidings to the widow, and he stood trembling as she, the woman he had for long years worshipped in secret, reviled him and cursed him in her madness for the news--the blasting news that he had brought upon her home.

Then two years glided away, when the widow, pa.s.sing through many a phase of sorrow, sickness, and misery, sat hoping on that he whom she mourned would yet return, and all the while ignorant of the hand that supplied her wants, or of the good friend with so great a love for fancy-work that she sent order after order, liberally paid for by the hands of Septimus Hardon. The beauty of the past slowly faded, so that she became haggard and thin; a lasting illness seemed to have her in its grasp; but still faithful to his trust, true to the love he bore her, Septimus Hardon set at naught the frowns of his father and the sneers of his cousins, while he devoted himself to the alleviation of the widow's sufferings, and kept her from the additional stings of want, for she had been left totally unprovided for by her young and hopeful husband.

And what was the result? Such as might have been expected from such a nature as Septimus Hardon's. Patient and true, the love he bore this woman was hidden for years, and then, when in her hopeless misery the widow turned her head upon the sick pillow and asked his advice, he told her to give him the right to protect her, to be to her child, little Lucy, a second father, and then shrank, crushed and trembling, from the room, affrighted at her look of horror, and the words accusatory which told him of faithlessness to his trust, to his schoolfellow, who she felt yet lived.

But it was only in her hopeful heart he lived, and six months after forbidding Septimus her house, Mary Grey, weeping bitterly over the discovery she had made of the hand that had so long sustained her, wrote these words and sent them to the Grange: "Forgive me!"

Volume One, Chapter II.

SEP'S COMPLAINT.

Octavius Hardon's book was at a standstill, and the world still in the thick darkness of ignorance as regarded political reform upon his basis, for Septimus Hardon was ill, sick almost unto death. He had slowly grown listless and dull, careless of everything, daily becoming weaker, until, apparently without ailment, he had taken to his bed, over which his uncle, Doctor Hardon; his a.s.sistant, Mr Reston, a handsome, cynical-looking man, and the rival pract.i.tioner of the town, had all concurred in shaking their heads and declaring that nothing could be done, since Septimus Hardon was suffering from the effects of an internal malformation.

They were quite right; the poor fellow had too much heart; and though the wise of this earth declare that people do not die of or for love, yet most a.s.suredly Septimus Hardon would slowly have faded from his place among men, and before many months had pa.s.sed over his head gone where there is rest.

But there was medicine of the right kind coming, and the very perusal with lack-l.u.s.tre eyes of the prescription brought to his bedroom sent a flash of light into the gla.s.sy orbs, and in the course of a few weeks Septimus disappointed the doctors by getting well, Nature having arranged respecting the internal malformation.

"I don't think you did him a bit of good, Mr Brande; not a bit--not a bit--not a bit," said Octavius to the rival pract.i.tioner. "He never took any of your stuffs. Now, come and set me up again, for I'm wrong."

"Better, yes, he's better," said the old man to Mr Reston.

"Good-morning--good-morning--good-morning."

Doctor Hardon had sent his a.s.sistant over; but in place of seeing the patient he found himself bowed out; and on loudly complaining to the doctor, not on account of missing his interview with the patient, but for reasons of his own, Doctor Hardon now called.

"Well, Tom--well, Tom--well, Tom?" said Octavius, smiling cynically, and looking his younger brother well over from top to toe. "What is it, Tom?"

"O, about Septimus?"

"There, be off; I'm busy. Septimus is getting on, and Mr Brande will physic him if he wants any more. A man who can't morally physic his own children can't do other people's good."

Doctor Hardon, portly and pompous, rose to speak; but Octavius took hold of his arm and led him to the door, giving him his hat at the same time.

"Good-bye, Tom--good-bye--good-bye. Don't come till I send for you again. You always were a fool, and an a.s.s, and an idiot, and a humbug, Tom--always--always--always."

There was a slight storm at Doctor Hardon's that day, and neither his wife nor daughters ventured much into his presence; but when, some weeks afterwards, the doctor knew of a scene that took place in his brother's house, he smiled softly, and after a fashion of his own he purred, while that night he was graciousness itself.

Octavius Hardon sat writing, and listening to the words of his son till, as he grew interested, the pen ceased to form letters, and at last he pushed back his chair, overturning the inkstand, so that the sable current streamed across a fresh paragraph of his book. He thrust up his gla.s.ses and sheltered his eyes to look at his son--the son who had obeyed his every word and look, who had never seemed to have a thought of his own--the son who was even now, in spite of his forty years, but a boy; and as he looked, he saw that he seemed inches taller, that there was an elate look in his countenance, which it would have been hard at that moment to have called plain.

"Going to be what?" gasped the father.

"To be married," said the son firmly.

"Married?"

"Married, father."

"And to whom? One of those hussies, your cousins?"

"To Mrs Grey," replied Septimus.

"What?" gasped the old man. "To a woman--a widow with a family--a proper inmate for the union--a pauper!"

"Hush, father!" cried Septimus. "I love her;" and he said those simple words with such reverence, such tenderness, that the old man paused and gazed almost wonderingly at the aspect worn by his son; but by degrees his anger gained the ascendant, and a stormy scene ensued in which the father threatened and besought in turn, while the son remained calm and immovable. Once he shrunk back and held up his hands deprecatingly, when the old man spoke harshly of the stricken woman; but directly after his face lit up with a pride and contentment which almost maddened the speaker.

"You cannot keep a wife!" he gasped.

Septimus smiled.

"You were always a helpless, vacillating fool, and you have nothing but the few hundreds from your mother."

Septimus bowed his head.

"Dog!" roared the old man, "I'll leave every penny I have to your uncle's hussies if you dare to marry this woman."