'You? Take a partner? You? At your time of life?'

'I am going to take a partner. And you are the first person who has been told of my intention. Keep it a secret for the moment.'

'Take a partner? Divide your beautiful income by two?'

'Yes, Checkley. I am going to give a share in that beautiful income to a young man.'

'What can a partner do for you that I can't do? Don't I know the whole of the office work? Is there any partner in the world who can draw up a conveyance better than me?'

'You are very useful, Checkley, as you always have been. But you are not a partner, and you never can be.'

'I know that very well. But what's the good of a partner at all?'

'If I have a partner, he will have his own room, and he won't interfere with you. There's no occasion for you to be jealous.'

'As for jealous--well--after more than sixty years' work in this office, it would seem hard to be turned out by some new-comer. But what I say is--what is the good of a partner?'

'The chief good is that the House will be carried on. It is a hundred and twenty years old. I confess I do not like the thought of its coming to an end when I disappear. That will be to me the most important advantage to be gained by taking a partner. The next advantage will be that I can turn over to him a quant.i.ty of work. And thirdly, he will bring young blood and new connections. My mind is quite made up, Checkley. I am going to take a partner.'

'Have you found one yet?'

'I have. But I am not going to tell you who he is till the right time comes.'

Checkley grumbled inaudibly.

'If I had been less busy,' Mr. Dering went on, 'I might have married and had sons of my own to put into the House. But somehow, being very much occupied always, and never thinking about such things, I let the time pa.s.s by. I was never, even as a young man, greatly attracted to love or to young women. Their charms, such as they are, seem to me to depend upon nothing but a single garment.'

'Take away their frocks,' said Checkley, 'and what are they? All alike--all alike. I've been married myself--women are expensive frauds.'

'Well--things being as they are, Checkley, I am going to take a partner.'

'You'll do as you like,' said his servant. 'Mark my words, however; you've got ten years more of work in you yet--and all through these ten years you'll regret having a partner. Out of every hundred pounds his share will have to come. Think of that!'

'It is eight years, I remember,' Mr. Dering went on, 'since first I thought of taking a partner. Eight years--and for much the same reason as now. I found my memory going. There were gaps in it--days, or bits of days, which I could not recollect. I was greatly terrified. The man whom I first thought of for a partner was that young Arundel, now----'

'Who forged your name. Lucky you didn't have him.'

'Who ran away in a rage because certain circ.u.mstances seemed to connect him with the crime.'

'Seemed? Did connect him.'

'Then the symptoms disappeared. Now they have returned, as I told you. I have always regretted the loss of young Arundel. He was clever and a quick worker.'

'He was a forger,' said the clerk stoutly.--'Is there anything more I can do for you?'

'Nothing; thank you.'

'Then I'll go. On Sat.u.r.day afternoon I collect my little rents. Not much--in your way of thinking. A good deal to me. I hope you'll like your partner when you do get him. I hope I shan't live to see him the master here and you knuckling under. I hope I shan't see him driving away the clients.'

'I hope you will not see any of these distressing consequences, Checkley.--Good-day.'

The old clerk went away, shutting the outer door after him. Then the lawyer was the sole occupant of the rooms. He was also the sole occupant of the whole house and perhaps of the whole Square. It was three o'clock.

He sat leaning back in his chair, looking through the open window upon the trees in the Square garden. Presently there fell upon his face a curious change. It was as if the whole of the intelligence was taken out of it: his eyes gazed steadily into s.p.a.ce with no expression whatever in them; the lips slightly parted, his head fell back; the soul and spirit of the man had gone out of him, leaving a machine which breathed.

The watch in his pocket ticked audibly: there was no other sound in the room--the old man sat quite motionless.

Four o'clock struck from the Clock Tower in the High Court of Justice, from St. Clement's Church, from Westminster, from half-a-dozen clocks which could be heard in the quiet of the Sat.u.r.day afternoon. But Mr.

Dering heard nothing.

Still he sat in his place with idle hands, and a face like a mask for lack of thought.

The clocks struck five.

He neither moved nor spoke.

The clocks struck six--seven--eight.

The shades of evening began to gather in the corners of the room as the sun sank lower towards his setting. At twilight in the summer there is never anybody to fear--man, woman, or cat--in the chambers, and at that hour the mice come out. They do not eat parchment or foolscap or red tape, but they eat the luncheon crumbs. Mr. Checkley, for instance, always brought his dinner in a paper parcel in his coat-tail pocket, and ate it when so disposed, sprinkling crumbs lavishly--the only lavishment of which he was ever guilty--on the floor. Junior clerks brought buns and biscuits, or even apples, which they devoured furtively. Mr. Dering himself took his luncheon in his own room, leaving crumbs. There was plenty for a small colony of mice. They came out, therefore, as usual; they stopped at sight of a man, an unwonted man, in a chair. But he moved not: he was asleep: he was dead: they ran without fear all about the rooms.

It was past nine, when the chambers were as dark as at this season of the year they ever are, that Mr. Dering returned to consciousness.

He sat up, staring about him. The room was dark. He looked at his watch.

Half-past nine. 'What is this?' he asked. 'Have I been asleep for seven hours? Seven hours? I was not asleep when Checkley went away. Why did I fall asleep? I feel as if I had been somewhere--doing something. What? I cannot remember. This strange sensation comes oftener. It is time that I should take a partner before something worse happens. I am old--I am old.' He rose and walked across the room erect and with firm step. 'I am old and worn out and spent. Time to give up the keys--old and spent.'

CHAPTER III

THE SELECT CIRCLE

At half-past nine on this Sat.u.r.day evening, the parlour of the _Salutation Inn_, High Holborn, contained most of its customary visitors. They came every evening at eight: and they sat till eleven, drinking and talking. In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of _habitues_, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful gla.s.s. In this way all respectable burgesses, down to fifty years ago, spent their evenings.

Strangers might enter the room, but they were made to feel that they were there on sufferance: they were received with distance and suspicion. Most of the regular visitors knew each other: when thy did not, it was tavern politeness not to ask; a case is on record of four cronies, who used the _c.o.c.k_ in Meet Street for thirty years, not one knowing either the name or the trade of the other three. Yet when one died, the other three pined away. This good old custom is now decayed.

The respectable burgess stays at home, which is much more monotonous.

Yet there may still be found a parlour here and there with a society meeting every evening all the year round.

The parlour of the _Salutation_ was a good-sized room wainscoted and provided with a sanded floor. It was furnished with a dozen wooden chairs, and three small round tables, the chairs disposed in a circle so as to prevent corners or cliques in conversation. Sacred is the fraternity, liberty, and equality of the parlour. The room was low, and, in the evenings, always hot with its two flaming unprotected gas jets; the window was never opened except in the morning, and there was always present a rich perfume of tobacco, beer, and spirits, both that anciently generated and that of the day's creation.

Among the frequenters,--who were, it must be confessed, a somewhat faded or decayed company--was, to put him first because he was the richest the great Mr. Robert h.e.l.lyer, of Barnard's Inn, usurer or money-lender.

n.o.body quite likes the profession--one knows not why. Great fortunes have been made in it; the same fortunes have been dissipated by the money-lenders' heirs. Such fortunes do not stick, somehow. Mr. h.e.l.lyer, for instance, was reputed wealthy beyond the dreams of the wildest desire. It was also said of him, under breath and in whispers and envious murmurs, that should a man borrow a five-pound note of him, that borrower would count himself lucky if he escaped with the loss of seventy-five pounds; and might generally expect to lose the whole of his household furniture, and the half of his income, for the rest of his natural life. To be sure, he sometimes had losses, as he said himself, with a groan; as when an unscrupulous client jumped off the Embankment, when he had not paid more than fifty pounds on the original five; or when a wicked man sold off his furniture secretly, in contempt of the bill of sale, and got clean out of the country with his wife and children. But on the whole he did pretty well. It was further said, by old clients, that his heart was a simple piece of round granite, for which he had no use, and that he made money out of it by letting it out at so much an hour for a paving mallet.

Mr. Robert h.e.l.lyer was not a genial man, or a cheerful or a pleasant man to look upon; he neither loved nor comprehended a jest; he never smiled; he kept his mind always employed on the conduct of his business. Every night--forgive the solitary weakness--he drank as much as he could carry. In appearance, he was red-faced, thick-necked, and stout; his voice was thick even in the morning, when he was under no compulsion to thickness; it was believed by his friends that his education had been imperfect; perhaps because he never gave anybody reason to suppose that he had ever received any education at all. To such men as Mr. h.e.l.lyer, who every night take much strong drink, and on no occasion whatever take any exercise, sixty is the grand climacteric. He was, a year ago, just fifty-nine. Alas! he has not even reached his grand climacteric. Already he is gone. He was cut off by pneumonia, or apoplexy, last Christmas.

Those who saw the melancholy _cortege_ filing out of the narrow gates of Barnard's Inn, mournfully remarked that none of his money was taken with him, and asked what happiness he could possibly find in the next world, which he would begin with nothing--nothing at all--not even credit--an absolute pauper.

Mr. Robert h.e.l.lyer sat on one side of the empty fireplace. On the opposite side, a great contrast to his coa.r.s.e and vulgar race, sat an elderly man, tall, thin, dressed in a coat whose sleeves were worn to shininess. His face was dejected: his features were still fine: he was evidently a gentleman. This person was a barrister, decayed and unsuccessful; he lived in a garret in Gray's Inn. There are a good many wrecks at the Bar, but few quite so forlorn as this poor old man. He still professed to practise, and picked up a guinea now and then by defending criminals. On these casual fees he managed to live. His clothes were threadbare; it was many years since he had had a greatcoat; on rainy and cold days he had a thin cape which he wore over his shoulders. Heaven knows how he dined and breakfasted; every evening, except in the hot days of summer, he came to this place for light and warmth. Unless he was very poor indeed, he called for a pint of old and mild and read the day's paper. Sometimes he talked, but not often; sometimes one or other of the company would offer him a more costly drink, which he always accepted with all that was left to him of courtesy. Outside, he had no friends; they had all forgotten him or died--it is very easy for a poor man to be forgotten; he had no relations; they had all died, emigrated, and dispersed; the relations of the unsuccessful are easily lost. When he talked, he sometimes became animated, and would tell anecdotes of the Bar and of the time when he was called, nearly fifty years agone, by the Benchers of Gray's Inn.

What had become of the hopes and ambitions with which that young man entered upon the profession, which was to lead him to the parlour of the _Salutation_ and the company that gathered there--and to the bare and miserable garret of Gray's Inn, forgotten and alone?