The man scraped the last of his snuff out of the shabby piece of newspaper, and lost it all beneath his long dirty finger and thumb-nails; when, not to disappoint his itching organ, he ran a lean finger along a ledge where dust lay thick, and administered it to his nose in an absent way, snapped his fingers loudly to get rid of the residue, and then slowly turned to go; but, on reaching the door, he faced round again:
“If you’d stand an advance of a shilling, sir, I’d come honestly another time and work it out; for I am hard up, sir, and no mistake.”
Mistake there certainly was none; but shillings were then scarce things with Septimus Hardon. A shilling, the sum tossed carelessly to the cabman for a few hundred yards’ ride, meant, perhaps, the dinner of himself and family; and he knew in his heart that the odds were very long against his ever seeing man or shilling again; but there was so great a knowledge of want in his heart that he could not bear to see it in others, and almost the last shilling in his pocket was slipped into the visitor’s hand.
The old printer took the money with his trembling fingers; looked at it, then at the donor; tried to speak, but choked over it; and then, with something like a maundering tear in each eye, he shuffled out of the office, taking with him: The solicitor’s work; The magazine estimate; and, most needed of all, Septimus Hardon’s shilling.
There was so little weight in the pocket before, that the shilling was not missed; and in spite of the black look of his affairs there was something in the act which made Septimus Hardon’s heart feel light as his pocket, as, thrusting his papers into the desk and locking it, he went and stood before a piece of looking-glass and stretched his face to take out the care-wrinkles, smiled two or three times to give a pleasant tarnish to his countenance, and then, loudly humming a tune, he hurried up to the first-floor, where Mrs Septimus, Lucy, and the children, were located.
Carey-street was a most desirable place for residence or business, as any landlord would have told you in the old days, before the houses I write of were carted away by contractors, and huge law-courts threatened in their stead. Lucy Grey knew the place now by heart. There was generally something out of the common way to be seen there, in spite of the place being so retired and its echoes so seldom disturbed by carriages, unless by those of the judges, when coachman and footman thought it advisable to wash down the legal dust of the place by copious draughts of porter at the Barley Mow or the Blue Horse. The dust-cart – that hearse for bearing off the remains of many a dancing, merry, cheery fire – might be seen there in the morning; and at every cloud of dust raised by the emptying of the fantail man’s basket, scraps of parchment and torn folios of cold, bitter cold crabbed writing, were caught up by the fierce winds of the place, and away they went scudding down the street, to the amusement of Septimus Hardon’s children; for the mocking wind tossed the scraps on high, as if to show how light and empty they were. Interesting words they were too, mostly about “our client” and his “heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns;” while of a morning the man whom Septimus Hardon himself knew well as a class, “our client” himself, might be seen in the streets; now early in his suit – Chancery suit, perhaps, – wrapped in it and looking busy and important, glossy and shiny, and, on the whole, apparently liking it. Now with the suit old and shabby, with the pocket-holes frayed and worn with the passage in and out of papers – papers always without end, while the owner crept along, dejected and dismal as Septimus himself, ready at times to enter his office, and sit down and make him the repository of the fact that he hoped the Lord Chancellor or his Vice will give judgment next week. Now he went along, silent and thoughtful; now he brightened up and became energetic, and gesticulated to an audience composed of the apple-woman at the corner, who sat there beneath the lamp summer and winter, like some dowdy old hen in a nest, for her lower extremities were all tightly tucked in a worn sieve-basket.
“Our client” generally went into Carey-street to eat his sandwiches; now looking crumby, now crusty, as the case might be, while he paced irresolutely up and down, or round into the Lane or Portugal-street, or even into the Fields for a change, to gaze at the trees beyond those railings, upon every spike of which a disappointed or broken heart might be stuck by way of ornament. As before said, “our client” had generally plenty of papers with him; some yellow and frayed, some new, but all carefully tied with red tape, which by its friction has a wonderful effect upon black-kid gloves, soon wearing out the fingers, as the papers are untied in doorways for reference while the tape-string is held in the mouth.
“Our client” was decidedly the principal object of interest in Carey-street; but there were thin, clever, cold-looking lawyers; thin, cold, and underpaid clerks, blue-bag bearing; portly thick clerks, warm, glossy, and gold-chained, red-bag bearing – bags gasping and choking fearfully with their contents – choking horribly with the papers thrust into them, sticking out of their very mouths; long-headed barristers, whose eyes seemed to have turned cold and oysterish – meaningless, and as if gazing within – men upon whose long heads briefs rained incessantly; men in gowns, men bewigged, and with the insignia of their rank put on all ways – straight, crooked, here awry, and there awry, with the frontal apex descending upon the nose, and the caudal beauty behind raised at right angles to display the undergrowth, black, brown, grey, or sandy, or perhaps resting upon the nape of the wearer’s neck, with the tails beating a white powdery tune upon his back, like a hare’s feet upon a tabor; shabby witnesses, shabby porters, shabby inhabitants; dirt everywhere, and a sharp, gritty, pouncey dust flying before the wind to bring tears into the eyes.
Lucy Grey knew all this by heart, and so did Septimus Hardon’s children – lessons learned from the windows, or during their walks, when Lucy showed them the wonders of the shops at hand, and that ever-banging, restless door where the shabby law-writers went in and out, night and day; the three wigs resting upon as many blockheads – wooden blockheads – new, fresh, and cool for their future wearers; the works in the law-booksellers’, all bound in dismal paper, or Desert-of-Sahara-coloured leather – law-calf – Tidd on this, Todd on that, Equity Reports, Chancery Practice, Common Law, Statutes at Large, Justice of the Peace, Stone’s Manual. Law everywhere: Simson, tin deed-box manufacturer; Bodgers, deeds copied; Screw, law-writer; Bird, office-furniture warehouse – valuations for probate; S Hardon, legal and general printer; while, like a shade at the end of the street, stood the great hospital, where the wan faces of patients might be seen gazing up at the sky, towards where the clouds scudded before the wind, hurrying to be once more in the country. Away they went, each one a very chariot, bearing with it the thoughts of the prisoned ones – captives from sickness, or poverty, or business. There were faces here at the hospital that would smile, and heads that would nod to Septimus Hardon’s little golden-haired children when Lucy held them up; when perchance the patient went back to sit upon some iron bedstead’s edge, and tell some fellow-sufferer of the bright vision she had seen, – a vision of angels in the legal desert.
With such surroundings, no one upon entering Septimus Hardon’s rooms would have been surprised to see Mrs Septimus careworn, and lying upon a shabby couch, and the children slight and fragile. The rooms were close, heavy, and dull, heavy-windowed, heavy-panelled, earthy-smelling, and cryptish, as though the dust of dead-and-gone suitors lay thick in the place. There was but little accommodation for the heavy rent he paid; and Septimus Hardon looked uneasily from face to face, crushing down the sorrowful thoughts that tried to rise; for in that close room there was not space for more than one complaining soul. Mrs Septimus told of her troubles often enough; and Septimus felt that his task was to cheer. Still, it was hard work when he had to think of the landlord and the rent; the landlord who, when he complained of this said rent, told him to look at the situation; which Septimus Hardon did, and sighed; and then, by way of raising his spirits, took down and read the copies of the letters he had from time to time sent to his father, unanswered one and all; and then he sighed again, and wondered how it would all end.
Volume One – Chapter Five.
A Pair of Shoes
This is a world of change; but the time was when you could turn by Saint Clement’s Church, from the roar of the waves of life in the Strand, and make your way between a baked-potato can – perspiring violently in its efforts to supply the demands made upon it – and a tin of hot