"Now!" exclaimed the old man, with hands trembling, and eyes appealing, lest his hearers should lose anything of what he disclosed; "now look, look, look!" he cried, "I fastened it down again, as it was before. A knife, quick! Now look here," he said huskily, and he tried to insert the blade of the penknife given to him beneath the fly-leaf, groaning bitterly at his inability, when, with hands trembling nearly as much, Septimus took Bible and knife, loosened the paper round, and laid it open, when the first thing that met his eyes, in his father's clear handwriting, was the date of the marriage, and eighteen months after appeared the entry of his birth, while upon the opposite side, in a delicate woman's hand, were the words--

"Agnes Hardon.

_The gift of Uncle Octavius_."

"There, there, there, sir! That's it, isn't it, sir?" cried the old man excitedly. "I wouldn't rest till I'd got it, and 'twas hard work, for the poor girl clung to it as the gift of someone she loved; but the more she hung back, the more I was set upon having it. I knew enough of binding to see that the end-leaf was gummed down, and under that leaf I knew there was what I wanted. Here; breath!" he gasped; "open the window."

Septimus Hardon sat gazing dreamily at the entry in his hand; it was indisputable, though he could hardly believe in its truth, while the few words he heard coming from the weeping girl seemed only to add to the confused state of his mind; but it appeared to him now that the old man's condition was the first thing to consider, and placing the book in his pocket, he begged that he might try and have him removed to his own lodgings.

"No," said Matt feebly, "no; I won't leave here, for somehow these people love me after their way, and I seem to think that the end should be much what the life has been; and as to doctor, sir, why I've got one here," he said, gazing fondly up in Lucy's weeping face, "and if she'll stop here, and let me hold her hand, G.o.d bless her! I can go easy, for it will seem to keep ill away. No other doctor's any use, sir. I'm worn out, sir, worn out!"

But Septimus would not be satisfied, and leaving Lucy by the old man's side, he fetched a.s.sistance to his old friend.

"No hope at all?" he said, as the doctor and he walked together afterwards through the dingy shop.

"Not the slightest," said the surgeon once more, as he stood upon the doorstep. "He has never thoroughly recovered from the effects of the operations he suffered, and besides, it's the old tale with the poor fellow--sorrow, misery, starvation, on the one hand; dissipation, drink, late hours on the other. The poor old fellow speaks the truth; he is worn out."

Night came, and Lucy and Septimus still waited by the old man's dying bed. He had slept for some little time, during which interval Lucy had replied to her stepfather's many queries--replied as she thought of the despair that must have prompted the awful plunge into futurity. Then the old man woke, and talked eagerly for awhile of the future prospects of the family. But soon a change came over his face, his head tossed wearily from side to side of his dirty pillow, while often he would raise it and stare wildly from face to face, but recognising none, sink back again with a pitiful moan.

"Lost life, lost life! Worn out, worn out!" he kept on muttering as he tossed restlessly from side to side, frequently starting and looking round as if not knowing where he was. Then he seemed to sleep peacefully for awhile, to open his eyes once more, and smile feebly at his visitors, beckoning them to come nearer.

"G.o.d bless you both!" he muttered; "it's all over."

Septimus half-rose and would have fetched the doctor again, but Matt whispered "No."

"Don't go," he said. "He can do no good now, nor anyone else; I'm past all that. It's been coming for days past, and I've fought it out; kept on till my work was done. I've never been much good, sir; but now I'm worn out. P'r'aps I might have been different, if I'd had other chances; but I was always weak, sir; weak."

He paused again; and Lucy's sobs were the only sounds that broke the silence.

"Ah!" said Matt again, feebly; "I've justified many a line, sir; line by line--`line upon line,' don't it say somewhere? but I can't justify myself. Dropping out of the old forme, sir; fast--fast now. But there, sir, hold up; for I'm happy enough. You did me a good turn once, and I've tried to pay it back; and since I've known you, and you've been ready to be my friends, I've seemed to get proud, and wouldn't do anything that should disgrace Miss Lucy here. But I began too late, and I never deserved such friends as I've found; for I've been a poor, weak, helpless drinking old galley-slave. But there, sir," he said with a smile, "my case is foul; the sorts are out; and I'm putting away my stick for good."

"May I fetch Mr Sterne?" whispered Septimus.

"No, no, no," said the old man wearily; "we were never friends; and I can't play the hypocrite, sir. It's too late, sir; too late! What I've done, I've done. Let me die in peace, here, with your loving faces by me; and fetch poor old Ike in, by and by, for he loves me in his way.

No, sir; it would be the act of a hypocrite, I fancy, for me to send for a clergyman now. No, Mr Hardon, sir; stay with me to the last; and let me hold tightly by this little white hand, and I can go from you hopeful and in peace. For if the great G.o.d who sent me here, struggling on through a life of care, has made hearts so gentle, and true, and loving, that they can weep and sorrow over my poor old battered case, can't I hope that He who knows all, and has seen all my helpless weakness, will be merciful? I know, sir, I know. I might have done better: but it's been a life of drive and struggle--money to-day, starve to-morrow, and drink always, to hold up and do the work. I'm sorry, sir, sorry; but the sorrow came too late. I've had a hard life, sir; the wish for better things came too late, when I was worn, and shattered, and used up; when the day was too far spent, sir; and now the night's coming on faster and faster. Hold my hands tight," he whispered, "for it's growing dark and darker; and I'm losing my way."

And now once more there was a long silence, when the old man looked eagerly round.

"What time is it?" he asked; and Septimus told him, then, turning towards Lucy, the old man whispered--

"Put your hand to my lips, that I may kiss it once before I go;" but she leaned over and tenderly kissed him, when he smiled, and some words pa.s.sed, but they were too faint to be heard. Then he was restless for a while; but soon started again, to stare wildly round. "What's that?" he asked.

"Nothing but the wind moaning round the houses," whispered Lucy.

"No," he said with a smile, "nothing but the wind--nothing but the wind waiting to scatter the dust."

And now he lay so still and peaceful, that, in answer to Lucy's inquiring look, Septimus bent over him again and again; but as he looked in that sorrow-ploughed face he could see that the old man still slept, while, with the light strong upon her face as she knelt, Lucy seemed no mean representative of the angel watching by the old man's side.

"An angel, sir, an angel, sir!" he had mattered again; and then he seemed to doze off, muttering the words to himself.

"Worn out!" said Septimus Hardon, as he listened time after time to the faintly-borne chimes of Saint Clement's; and then he thought of the present revelation, which seemed almost dearly bought in the old man's death; of the past; the office in Carey-street, and its sorrows; the bitter struggle for mere life; the lodging in Bennett's-rents; and the shabby old compositor in his frayed suit, pinching himself that he might supply their wants; the watchful care and jealousy with which he had tended Lucy to and from the warehouse; the secret they had shared, and the old man's chivalrous endurance in tracing out the information; spite of all blurs or blots upon his character, ever the same tender, true-hearted man, devoted to his friends' interests, and ready with his offering, even though it were humble as the cup of cold water that should not be without its reward; and now worn out--the poor old setting battered and worthless, but the heart true and bright to the last.

The quarters chimed again. Isaac had been to set up a fresh candle, and then retired to his weeping partner; while, now seated upon an old work-bench, Septimus Hardon still let his thoughts wander, pausing long upon the poverty of the crowded streets of the great City; the prosperity crushing down the misery; the swiftly-hurrying stream of life, and the striving of the throng to keep afloat, as others pressed upon them, climbed upon their shoulders, or, in the madness of despair, clung to their legs and dragged them down to the muddy ooze at the bottom. He thought too once more of his own misery, and that of this waif, after its long encounter with the storms of life, cast up torn, weary, and breathless upon the sh.o.r.e.

Mournfully moaned the wind down the court and at the back of the house, making cowls creak and spin, and rattling worn old windows; for it was no bright starry night, the clouds gathered black overhead, and sent down a pitiless rain to empty the streets, and be caught by the wind and dashed against the panes. By the feeble light in the front shop, Isaac could be seen with his head against the wall sleeping heavily; and, worn out with watching, his wife had returned to the next house. Now faintly heard in the lulls of the wind came the striking of Saint Clement's clock and its laboured chiming, which sounded wild and strange upon the night air.

Suddenly Lucy and her stepfather started, for the old man was sitting up in bed with one hand raised as if to command silence, and loud, clear, and strange, his voice seemed to thrill through the silence as the tones of the bells came louder upon the wind.

"Hush!" cried the old man, "the bells! I set it once, and I've never forgotten it--`Ring out the false, ring in the true'--never forgotten it," he muttered, as he sank heavily back and spoke in a whisper--"`Ring out the false, ring in the true.' Hands--hands--once again; they're ringing out a false and coward heart, and ringing in the true." Then he began to mutter from time to time words connected with his trade--wild incoherent words, but strangely fitted to his past life and present state; while at times he spoke with such wild bitterness that his hearers shuddered, and Isaac came trembling in, leading with him Mr Sterne, anxious at their protracted absence.

And so an hour pa.s.sed, when the dying man had been for some time silent, but another kneeling figure had offered a prayer at the bedside; then once more the old man began to mutter, at first in a low tone, then slowly and aloud.

"Gold, sir, cold; bitter cold for an old man like me--dreary streets, sir, and the lamps out--dark, dark--the dull courts and the foggy alleys--misery--beggary--starvation. Bright fields--light and darkness.

No hypocrite, sir--humbly, with an angel's kiss upon my old lips--a seal--purity. Hark! Copy and proof--copy and proof--blurred and blotted--foul--foul--spelling--outs and doubles--corrections--too late-- too late. Wages on Friday night, air; wages, sir--wages of sin--wages-- death--death--poor girl!--Bleeping--found drowned--the Bible--Agnes Hardon--wages--wages--darker and darker--but no hypocrite, sir--with an angel's kiss--an angel's--forgive--forgive--for ever and ever--and ev--"

Silence in the room, and the watchers stealing away.

Volume Three, Chapter XVII.

"MY SOLICITORS, SIR!"

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 rest.i.tution 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 tw.a.n.g and the iron-barred windows of the sheriffs' houses. There was no difficulty in finding the residence of Mr Barjonas, for the bra.s.s-plate was on the door, though from its colour it was only by supposition that the plate was termed bra.s.s. 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 c.o.c.k was scratching over some sc.r.a.ps 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 sc.r.a.p 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 pa.s.sed; 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 Ess.e.x-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 pa.s.sed, 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 gla.s.s was hot.

A n.o.ble mansion had the doctor built in imagination: one that should be wondrous in its prosperity and endurance, but it had no foundation--a bit had crumbled here, a wall there cracked, then a corner had given way (a key to the whole), and with a crash the fabric had come down--so that the builder's spirit was crushed as here he sat, shrunk and limp, waiting for the news of some fresh calamity, some new fall that should crush him yet more; for in his wild dreams he had seen his brother threatening him, and Septimus triumphantly shaking the will in his face.

And so he sat on, hour after hour, clasping the tiny bottle in his hand--containing what? But a spoonful of some limpid fluid; while the stricken man still listened as if for something that he expected to happen that day.

There he sat, without fire, but feeling not the cold, hearing not the imploring whispered words of his wife--words uttered at the door after he had dismissed her, to wander up and down or sit shivering, and refusing the offered hospitality of some feeling fellow-prisoner.

Deeper grew the wrinkles upon the doctor's brow as he sat. He had taken nothing for many hours, but a wine-gla.s.s stood upon the table, and more than once a trembling hand had been stretched out to grasp it. But he would wait another hour, he would wait until that other crushing news came, that other news hidden from his sight as by a black curtain, which ever trembled as though about to be raised. He would wait until the clocks struck again, just to think; though each stroke of hammer upon bell sounded funereally upon his ear. Again another hour, and another, and so on through the long night, through the grey, cold dawn, and again after the bright rising of the sun, which brought no hope to him.

"Only one other hour," said the crouching man, and the words hissed between his fevered lips. "Only another hour!" he muttered, while his bloodshot eyes seemed to dilate as he drew forth the bottle and held it up to the light, shook it, and, watched the bright beads that trickled down the sides of the gla.s.s. His unshorn beard and sunken cheeks gave him a strangely haggard look; such that those who had known him in former days would have pa.s.sed him without recognition.