during the next month we saw a good deal of mr. julius mackenzie, and made ourselves quite at home in mrs. grimes’s bed-room. we went in and out of the spotted dog as if we had known that establishment all our lives, and spent many a quarter of an hour with the hostess in her little parlour, discussing the prospects of mr. mackenzie and his family. he had procured to himself decent, if not exactly new, garments out of the money so liberally provided by my learned friend the doctor, and spent much of his time in the library of the british museum. he certainly worked very hard, for he did not altogether abandon his old engagement. before the end of the first month the index of the first volume, nearly completed,{276} had been sent down for the inspection of the doctor, and had been returned with ample eulogium and some little criticism. the criticisms mackenzie answered by letter, with true scholarly spirit, and the doctor was delighted. nothing could be more pleasant to him than a correspondence, prolonged almost indefinitely, as to the respective merits of a τ? or a τον, or on the demand for a spondee or an iamb. when he found that the work was really in industrious hands, he ceased to be clamorous for early publication, and gave us to understand privately that mr. mackenzie was not to be limited to the sum named. the matter of remuneration was, indeed, left very much to ourselves, and mackenzie had certainly found a most efficient friend in the author whose works had been confided to his hands.
all this was very pleasant, and mackenzie throughout that month worked very hard. according to the statements made to me by mrs. grimes he took no more gin than what was necessary for a hard-working man. as to the exact quantity of that cordial which she imagined to be beneficial and needful, we made no close enquiry. he certainly kept himself in a condition for work, and so far all went on happily. nevertheless, there was a terrible skeleton in the cupboard,—or rather out of the{277} cupboard, for the skeleton could not be got to hide itself. a certain portion of his prosperity reached the hands of his wife, and she was behaving herself worse than ever. the four children had been covered with decent garments under mrs. grimes’s care, and then mrs. mackenzie had appeared at the spotted dog, loudly demanding a new outfit for herself. she came not only once, but often, and mr. grimes was beginning to protest that he saw too much of the family. we had become very intimate with mrs. grimes, and she did not hesitate to confide to us her fears lest “john should cut up rough,” before the thing was completed. “you see,” she said, “it is against the house, no doubt, that woman coming nigh it.” but still she was firm, and mackenzie was not disturbed in the possession of the bed-room. at last mrs. mackenzie was provided with some articles of female attire;—and then, on the very next day, she and the four children were again stripped almost naked. the wretched creature must have steeped herself in gin to the shoulders, for in one day she made a sweep of everything. she then came in a state of furious intoxication to the spotted dog, and was removed by the police under the express order of the landlord.{278}
we can hardly say which was the most surprising to us, the loyalty of mrs. grimes or the patience of john. during that night, as we were told two days afterwards by his wife, he stormed with passion. the papers she had locked up in order that he should not get at them and destroy them. he swore that everything should be cleared out on the following morning. but when the morning came he did not even say a word to mackenzie, as the wretched, downcast, broken-hearted creature passed up stairs to his work. “you see i knows him, and how to deal with him,” said mrs. grimes, speaking of her husband. “there aint another like himself nowheres;—he’s that good. a softer-hearteder man there aint in the public line. he can speak dreadful when his dander is up, and can look——; oh, laws, he just can look at you! but he could no more put his hands upon a woman, in the way of hurting,—no more than be an archbishop.” where could be the man, thought we to ourselves as this was said to us, who could have put a hand,—in the way of hurting,—upon mrs. grimes?
on that occasion, to the best of our belief, the policeman contented himself with depositing mrs. mackenzie at her own lodgings. on the next day she was picked{279} up drunk in the street, and carried away to the lock-up house. at the very moment in which the story was being told to us by mrs. grimes, mackenzie had gone to the police office to pay the fine, and to bring his wife home. we asked with dismay and surprise why he should interfere to rescue her—why he did not leave her in custody as long as the police would keep her? “who’d there be to look after the children?” asked mrs. grimes, as though she were offended at our suggestion. then she went on to explain that in such a household as that of poor mackenzie the wife is absolutely a necessity, even though she be an habitual drunkard. intolerable as she was, her services were necessary to him. “a husband as drinks is bad,” said mrs. grimes,—with something, we thought, of an apologetic tone for the vice upon which her own prosperity was partly built,—“but when a woman takes to it, it’s the —— devil.” we thought that she was right, as we pictured to ourselves that man of letters satisfying the magistrate’s demand for his wife’s misconduct, and taking the degraded, half-naked creature once more home to his children.
we saw him about twelve o’clock on that day, and he had then, too evidently, been endeavouring to support{280} his misery by the free use of alcohol. we did not speak of it down in the parlour; but even mrs. grimes, we think, would have admitted that he had taken more than was good for him. he was sitting up in the bed-room with his head hanging upon his hand, with a swarm of our learned friend’s papers spread on the table before him. mrs. grimes, when he entered the house, had gone up stairs to give them out to him; but he had made no attempt to settle himself to his work. “this kind of thing must come to an end,” he said to us with a thick, husky voice. we muttered something to him as to the need there was that he should exert a manly courage in his troubles. “manly!” he said. “well, yes; manly. a man should be a man, of course. there are some things which a man can’t bear. i’ve borne more than enough, and i’ll have an end of it.”
we shall never forget that scene. after awhile he got up, and became almost violent. talk of bearing! who had borne half as much as he? there were things a man should not bear. as for manliness, he believed that the truly manly thing would be to put an end to the lives of his wife, his children, and himself at one swoop. of course the judgment of a mealy-mouthed world would{281} be against him, but what would that matter to him when he and they had vanished out of this miserable place into the infinite realms of nothingness? was he fit to live, or were they? was there any chance for his children but that of becoming thieves and prostitutes? and for that poor wretch of a woman, from out of whose bosom even her human instincts had been washed by gin,—would not death to her be, indeed, a charity? there was but one drawback to all this. when he should have destroyed them, how would it be with him if he should afterwards fail to make sure work with his own life? in such case it was not hanging that he would fear, but the self-reproach that would come upon him in that he had succeeded in sending others out of their misery, but had flinched when his own turn had come. though he was drunk when he said these horrid things, or so nearly drunk that he could not perfect the articulation of his words, still there was a marvellous eloquence with him. when we attempted to answer, and told him of that canon which had been set against self-slaughter, he laughed us to scorn. there was something terrible to us in the audacity of the arguments which he used, when he asserted for himself the right to shuffle off from his shoulders a burden which they had not been made{282} broad enough to bear. there was an intensity and a thorough hopelessness of suffering in his case, an openness of acknowledged degradation, which robbed us for the time of all that power which the respectable ones of the earth have over the disreputable. when we came upon him with our wise saws, our wisdom was shattered instantly, and flung back upon us in fragments. what promise could we dare to hold out to him that further patience would produce any result that could be beneficial? what further harm could any such doing on his part bring upon him? did we think that were he brought out to stand at the gallows’ foot with the knowledge that ten minutes would usher him into what folks called eternity, his sense of suffering would be as great as it had been when he conducted that woman out of court and along the streets to his home, amidst the jeering congratulations of his neighbours? “when you have fallen so low,” said he, “that you can fall no lower, the ordinary trammels of the world cease to bind you.” though his words were knocked against each other with the dulled utterances of intoxication, his intellect was terribly clear, and his scorn for himself, and for the world that had so treated him, was irrepressible.{283}
we must have been over an hour with him up there in the bed-room, and even then we did not leave him. as it was manifest that he could do no work on that day, we collected the papers together, and proposed that he should take a walk with us. he was patient as we shovelled together the doctor’s pages, and did not object to our suggestion. we found it necessary to call up mrs. grimes to assist us in putting away the “opus magnum,” and were astonished to find how much she had come to know about the work. added to the doctor’s manuscript there were now the pages of mackenzie’s indexes,—and there were other pages of reference, for use in making future indexes,—as to all of which mrs. grimes seemed to be quite at home. we have no doubt that she was familiar with the names of greek tragedians, and could have pointed out to us in print the performances of the chorus. “a little fresh air’ll do you a deal of good, mr. mackenzie,” she said to the unfortunate man,—“only take a biscuit in your pocket.” we got him out to the street, but he angrily refused to take the biscuit which she endeavoured to force into his hands.
that was a memorable walk. turning from the end of liquorpond street up gray’s inn lane towards holborn, we at once came upon the entrance into a miserable court.{284} “there,” said he; “it is down there that i live. she is sleeping it off now, and the children are hanging about her, wondering whether mother has got money to have another go at it when she rises. i’d take you down to see it all, only it’d sicken you.” we did not offer to go down the court, abstaining rather for his sake than for our own. the look of the place was as of a spot squalid, fever-stricken, and utterly degraded. and this man who was our companion had been born and bred a gentleman,—had been nourished with that soft and gentle care which comes of wealth and love combined,—had received the education which the country gives to her most favoured sons, and had taken such advantage of that education as is seldom taken by any of those favoured ones;—and cucumber court, with a drunken wife and four half-clothed, half-starved children, was the condition to which he had brought himself! the world knows nothing higher nor brighter than had been his outset in life,—nothing lower nor more debased than the result. and yet he was one whose time and intellect had been employed upon the pursuit of knowledge,—who even up to this day had high ideas of what should be a man’s career,—who worked very hard and had always worked,—who as far as we knew had struck upon no rocks in the{285} pursuit of mere pleasure. it had all come to him from that idea of his youth that it would be good for him “to take refuge from the conventional thraldom of so-called gentlemen amidst the liberty of the lower orders.” his life, as he had himself owned, had indeed been a mistake.
we passed on from the court, and crossing the road went through the squares of gray’s inn, down chancery lane, through the little iron gate into lincoln’s inn, round through the old square,—than which we know no place in london more conducive to suicide; and the new square,—which has a gloom of its own, not so potent, and savouring only of madness, till at last we found ourselves in the temple gardens. i do not know why we had thus clung to the purlieus of the law, except it was that he was telling us how in his early days, when he had been sent away from cambridge,—as on this occasion he acknowledged to us, for an attempt to pull the tutor’s nose, in revenge for a supposed insult,—he had intended to push his fortunes as a barrister. he pointed up to a certain window in a dark corner of that suicidal old court, and told us that for one year he had there sat at the feet of a great gamaliel in chancery, and had worked with all his energies. of course we asked him why he had left a{286} prospect so alluring. though his answers to us were not quite explicit, we think that he did not attempt to conceal the truth. he learned to drink, and that gamaliel took upon himself to rebuke the failing, and by the end of that year he had quarrelled irreconcilably with his family. there had been great wrath at home when he was sent from cambridge, greater wrath when he expressed his opinion upon certain questions of religious faith, and wrath to the final severance of all family relations when he told the chosen gamaliel that he should get drunk as often as he pleased. after that he had “taken refuge among the lower orders,” and his life, such as it was, had come of it.
in fleet street, as we came out of the temple, we turned into an eating-house and had some food. by this time the exercise and the air had carried off the fumes of the liquor which he had taken, and i knew that it would be well that he should eat. we had a mutton chop and a hot potato and a pint of beer each, and sat down to table for the first and last time as mutual friends. it was odd to see how in his converse with us on that day he seemed to possess a double identity. though the hopeless misery of his condition was always present to him, was constantly on his tongue, yet he could talk about his{287} own career and his own character as though they belonged to a third person. he could even laugh at the wretched mistake he had made in life, and speculate as to its consequences. for himself he was well aware that death was the only release that he could expect. we did not dare to tell him that if his wife should die, then things might be better with him. we could only suggest to him that work itself, if he would do honest work, would console him for many sufferings. “you don’t know the filth of it,” he said to us. ah, dear! how well we remember the terrible word, and the gesture with which he pronounced it, and the gleam of his eyes as he said it! his manner to us on this occasion was completely changed, and we had a gratification in feeling that a sense had come back upon him of his old associations. “i remember this room so well,” he said,—“when i used to have friends and money.” and, indeed, the room was one which has been made memorable by genius. “i did not think ever to have found myself here again.” we observed, however, that he could not eat the food that was placed before him. a morsel or two of the meat he swallowed, and struggled to eat the crust of his bread, but he could not make a clean plate of it, as we did,—regretting that the nature of{288} chops did not allow of ampler dimensions. his beer was quickly finished, and we suggested to him a second tankard. with a queer, half-abashed twinkle of the eye, he accepted our offer, and then the second pint disappeared also. we had our doubts on the subject, but at last decided against any further offer. had he chosen to call for it he must have had a third; but he did not call for it. we left him at the door of the tavern, and he then promised that in spite of all that he had suffered and all that he had said he would make another effort to complete the doctor’s work. “whether i go or stay,” he said, “i’d like to earn the money that i’ve spent.” there was something terrible in that idea of his going! whither was he to go?
the doctor heard nothing of the misfortune of these three or four inauspicious days; and the work was again going on prosperously when he came up again to london at the end of the second month. he told us something of his banker, and something of his lawyer, and murmured a word or two as to a new curate whom he needed; but we knew that he had come up to london because he could not bear a longer absence from the great object of his affections. he could not endure to be thus parted from his manuscript, and was again childishly anxious that a{289} portion of it should be in the printer’s hands. “at sixty-five, sir,” he said to us, “a man has no time to dally with his work.” he had been dallying with his work all his life, and we sincerely believed that it would be well with him if he could be contented to dally with it to the end. if all that mackenzie said of it was true, the doctor’s erudition was not equalled by his originality, or by his judgment. of that question, however, we could take no cognizance. he was bent upon publishing, and as he was willing and able to pay for his whim and was his own master, nothing that we could do would keep him out of the printer’s hands.
he was desirous of seeing mackenzie, and was anxious even to see him once at his work. of course he could meet his assistant in our editorial room, and all the papers could easily be brought backwards and forwards in the old despatch-box. but in the interest of all parties we hesitated as to taking our revered and reverend friend to the spotted dog. though we had told him that his work was being done at a public-house, we thought that his mind had conceived the idea of some modest inn, and that he would be shocked at being introduced to a place which he would regard simply as a gin-shop. mrs. grimes, or if not mrs. grimes, then{290} mr. grimes, might object to another visitor to their bed-room; and mackenzie himself would be thrown out of gear by the appearance of those clerical gaiters upon the humble scene of his labours. we, therefore, gave him such reasons as were available for submitting, at any rate for the present, to having the papers brought up to him at our room. and we ourselves went down to the spotted dog to make an appointment with mackenzie for the following day. we had last seen him about a week before, and then the task was progressing well. he had told us that another fortnight would finish it. we had enquired also of mrs. grimes about the man’s wife. all she could tell us was that the woman had not again troubled them at the spotted dog. she expressed her belief, however, that the drunkard had been more than once in the hands of the police since the day on which mackenzie had walked with us through the squares of the inns of court.
it was late when we reached the public-house on the occasion to which we now allude, and the evening was dark and rainy. it was then the end of january, and it might have been about six o’clock. we knew that we should not find mackenzie at the public-house; but it was probable that mrs. grimes could send for him, or, at{291} least, could make the appointment for us. we went into the little parlour, where she was seated with her husband, and we could immediately see, from the countenance of both of them, that something was amiss. we began by telling mrs. grimes that the doctor had come to town. “mackenzie aint here, sir,” said mrs. grimes, and we almost thought that the very tone of her voice was altered. we explained that we had not expected to find him at that hour, and asked if she could send for him. she only shook her head. grimes was standing with his back to the fire and his hands in his trousers pockets. up to this moment he had not spoken a word. we asked if the man was drunk. she again shook her head. could she bid him to come to us to-morrow, and bring the box and the papers with him? again she shook her head.
“i’ve told her that i won’t have no more of it,” said grimes; “nor yet i won’t. he was drunk this morning,—as drunk as an owl.”
“he was sober, john, as you are, when he came for the papers this afternoon at two o’clock.” so the box and the papers had all been taken away!
“and she was here yesterday rampaging about the place, without as much clothes on as would cover her{292} nakedness,” said mr. grimes. “i won’t have no more of it. i’ve done for that man what his own flesh and blood wouldn’t do. i know that; and i won’t have no more of it. mary anne, you’ll have that table cleared out after breakfast to-morrow.” when a man, to whom his wife is usually polly, addresses her as mary anne, then it may be surmised that that man is in earnest. we knew that he was in earnest, and she knew it also.
“he wasn’t drunk, john,—no, nor yet in liquor, when he come and took away that box this afternoon.” we understood this reiterated assertion. it was in some sort excusing to us her own breach of trust in having allowed the manuscript to be withdrawn from her own charge, or was assuring us that, at the worst, she had not been guilty of the impropriety of allowing the man to take it away when he was unfit to have it in his charge. as for blaming her, who could have thought of it? had mackenzie at any time chosen to pass down stairs with the box in his hands, it was not to be expected that she should stop him violently. and now that he had done so we could not blame her; but we felt that a great weight had fallen upon our own hearts. if evil should come to the manuscript would not the doctor’s wrath fall upon us with a crushing weight? something must{293} be done at once. and we suggested that it would be well that somebody should go round to cucumber court. “i’d go as soon as look,” said mrs. grimes, “but he won’t let me.”
“you don’t stir a foot out of this to-night;—not that way,” said mr. grimes.
“who wants to stir?” said mrs. grimes.
we felt that there was something more to be told than we had yet heard, and a great fear fell upon us. the woman’s manner to us was altered, and we were sure that this had come not from altered feelings on her part, but from circumstances which had frightened her. it was not her husband that she feared, but the truth of something that her husband had said to her. “if there is anything more to tell, for god’s sake tell it,” we said, addressing ourselves rather to the man than to the woman. then grimes did tell us his story. on the previous evening mackenzie had received three or four sovereigns from mrs. grimes, being, of course, a portion of the doctor’s payments; and early on that morning all liquorpond street had been in a state of excitement with the drunken fury of mackenzie’s wife. she had found her way into the spotted dog, and was being actually extruded by the strength of grimes himself,—of grimes,{294} who had been brought down, half dressed, from his bed-room by the row,—when mackenzie himself, equally drunk, appeared upon the scene. “no, john;—not equally drunk,” said mrs. grimes. “bother!” exclaimed her husband, going on with his story. the man had struggled to take the woman by the arm, and the two had fallen and rolled in the street together. “i was looking out of the window, and it was awful to see,” said mrs. grimes. we felt that it was “awful to hear.” a man,—and such a man, rolling in the gutter with a drunken woman,—himself drunk,—and that woman his wife! “there aint to be no more of it at the spotted dog; that’s all,” said john grimes, as he finished his part of the story.
then, at last, mrs. grimes became voluble. all this had occurred before nine in the morning. “the woman must have been at it all night,” she said. “so must the man,” said john. “anyways he came back about dinner, and he was sober then. i asked him not to go up, and offered to make him a cup of tea. it was just as you’d gone out after dinner, john.”
“he won’t have no more tea here,” said john.
“and he didn’t have any then. he wouldn’t, he said, have any tea, but went up stairs. what was i to do?{295} i couldn’t tell him as he shouldn’t. well;—during the row in the morning john had said something as to mackenzie not coming about the premises any more.”
“of course i did,” said grimes.
“he was a little cut, then, no doubt,” continued the lady; “and i didn’t think as he would have noticed what john had said.”
“i mean it to be noticed now.”
“he had noticed it then, sir, though he wasn’t just as he should be at that hour of the morning. well;—what does he do? he goes up stairs and packs up all the papers at once. leastways, that’s as i suppose. they aint there now. you can go and look if you please, sir. well; when he came down, whether i was in the kitchen,—though it isn’t often as my eyes is off the bar, or in the tap-room, or busy drawing, which i do do sometimes, sir, when there are a many calling for liquor, i can’t say;—but if i aint never to stand upright again, i didn’t see him pass out with the box. but miss wilcox did. you can ask her.” miss wilcox was the young lady in the bar, whom we did not think ourselves called upon to examine, feeling no doubt whatever as to the fact of the box having been taken away by mackenzie. in all this mrs. grimes seemed to defend herself, as though{296} some serious charge was to be brought against her; whereas all that she had done had been done out of pure charity; and in exercising her charity towards mackenzie she had shown an almost exaggerated kindness towards ourselves.
“if there’s anything wrong, it isn’t your fault,” we said.
“nor yet mine,” said john grimes.
“no, indeed,” we replied.
“it aint none of our faults,” continued he; “only this;—you can’t wash a blackamoor white, nor it aint no use trying. he don’t come here any more, that’s all. a man in drink we don’t mind. we has to put up with it. and they aint that tarnation desperate as is a woman. as long as a man can keep his legs he’ll try to steady hisself; but there is women who, when they’ve liquor, gets a fury for rampaging. there aint a many as can beat this one, sir. she’s that strong, it took four of us to hold her; though she can’t hardly do a stroke of work, she’s that weak when she’s sober.”
we had now heard the whole story, and, while hearing it, had determined that it was our duty to go round into cucumber court and seek the manuscript and the box. we were unwilling to pry into the wretchedness of the{297} man’s home; but something was due to the doctor; and we had to make that appointment for the morrow, if it were still possible that such an appointment should be kept. we asked for the number of the house, remembering well the entrance into the court. then there was a whisper between john and his wife, and the husband offered to accompany us. “it’s a roughish place,” he said, “but they know me.” “he’d better go along with you,” said mrs. grimes. we, of course, were glad of such companionship, and glad also to find that the landlord, upon whom we had inflicted so much trouble, was still sufficiently our friend to take this trouble on our behalf.
“it’s a dreary place enough,” said grimes, as he led us up the narrow archway. indeed it was a dreary place. the court spread itself a little in breadth, but very little, when the passage was passed, and there were houses on each side of it. there was neither gutter nor, as far as we saw, drain, but the broken flags were slippery with moist mud, and here and there, strewed about between the houses, there were the remains of cabbages and turnip-tops. the place swarmed with children, over whom one ghastly gas-lamp at the end of the court threw a flickering and uncertain light. there was a clamour of scolding{298} voices, to which it seemed that no heed was paid; and there was a smell of damp rotting nastiness, amidst which it seemed to us to be almost impossible that life should be continued. grimes led the way without further speech, to the middle house on the left hand of the court, and asked a man who was sitting on the low threshold of the door whether mackenzie was within. “so that be you, muster grimes; be it?” said the man, without stirring. “yes; he’s there i guess, but they’ve been and took her.” then we passed on into the house. “no matter about that,” said the man, as we apologised for kicking him in our passage. he had not moved, and it had been impossible to enter without kicking him.
it seemed that mackenzie held the two rooms on the ground floor, and we entered them at once. there was no light, but we could see the glimmer of a fire in the grate; and presently we became aware of the presence of children. grimes asked after mackenzie, and a girl’s voice told us that he was in the inner room. the publican then demanded a light, and the girl with some hesitation, lit the end of a farthing candle, which was fixed in a small bottle. we endeavoured to look round the room by the glimmer which this afforded, but could see nothing but the presence of four children, three of whom{299} seemed to be seated in apathy on the floor. grimes, taking the candle in his hand, passed at once into the other room, and we followed him. holding the bottle something over his head, he contrived to throw a gleam of light upon one of the two beds with which the room was fitted, and there we saw the body of julius mackenzie stretched in the torpor of dead intoxication. his head lay against the wall, his body was across the bed, and his feet dangled on to the floor. he still wore his dirty boots, and his clothes as he had worn them in the morning. no sight so piteous, so wretched, and at the same time so eloquent had we ever seen before. his eyes were closed, and the light of his face was therefore quenched. his mouth was open, and the slaver had fallen upon his beard. his dark, clotted hair had been pulled over his face by the unconscious movement of his hands. there came from him a stertorous sound of breathing, as though he were being choked by the attitude in which he lay; and even in his drunkenness there was an uneasy twitching as of pain about his face. and there sat, and had been sitting for hours past, the four children in the other room, knowing the condition of the parent whom they most respected, but not even endeavouring to do anything for his comfort. what could they do? they knew, by long training and{300} thorough experience, that a fit of drunkenness had to be got out of by sleep. to them there was nothing shocking in it. it was but a periodical misfortune. “she’ll have to own he’s been and done it now,” said grimes, looking down upon the man, and alluding to his wife’s good-natured obstinacy. he handed the candle to us, and, with a mixture of tenderness and roughness, of which the roughness was only in the manner and the tenderness was real, he raised mackenzie’s head and placed it on the bolster, and lifted the man’s legs on to the bed. then he took off the man’s boots, and the old silk handkerchief from the neck, and pulled the trousers straight, and arranged the folds of the coat. it was almost as though he were laying out one that was dead. the eldest girl was now standing by us, and grimes asked her how long her father had been in that condition. “jack hoggart brought him in just afore it was dark,” said the girl. then it was explained to us that jack hoggart was the man whom we had seen sitting on the door-step.
“and your mother?” asked grimes.
“the perlice took her afore dinner.”
“and you children;—what have you had to eat?” in answer to this the girl only shook her head. grimes took no immediate notice of this, but called the drunken{301} man by his name, and shook his shoulder, and looked round to a broken ewer which stood on the little table, for water to dash upon him;—but there was no water in the jug. he called again and repeated the shaking, and at last mackenzie opened his eyes, and in a dull, half-conscious manner looked up at us. “come, my man,” said grimes, “shake this off and have done with it.”
“hadn’t you better try to get up?” we asked.
there was a faint attempt at rising, then a smile,—a smile which was terrible to witness, so sad was all which it said; then a look of utter, abject misery, coming, as we thought, from a momentary remembrance of his degradation; and after that he sank back in the dull, brutal, painless, death-like apathy of absolute unconsciousness.
“it’ll be morning afore he’ll move,” said the girl.
“she’s about right,” said grimes. “he’s got it too heavy for us to do anything but just leave him. we’ll take a look for the box and the papers.”
and the man upon whom we were looking down had been born a gentleman, and was a finished scholar,—one so well educated, so ripe in literary acquirement, that we knew few whom we could call his equal. judging of the matter by the light of our reason, we cannot say that the horror of the scene should have been enhanced to us by{302} these recollections. had the man been a shoemaker or a coalheaver there would have been enough of tragedy in it to make an angel weep,—that sight of the child standing by the bedside of her drunken father, while the other parent was away in custody,—and in no degree shocked at what she saw, because the thing was so common to her! but the thought of what the man had been, of what he was, of what he might have been, and the steps by which he had brought himself to the foul degradation which we witnessed, filled us with a dismay which we should hardly have felt had the gifts which he had polluted and the intellect which he had wasted been less capable of noble uses.
our purpose in coming to the court was to rescue the doctor’s papers from danger, and we turned to accompany grimes into the other room. as we did so the publican asked the girl if she knew anything of a black box which her father had taken away from the spotted dog. “the box is here,” said the girl.
“and the papers?” asked grimes. thereupon the girl shook her head, and we both hurried into the outer room. i hardly know who first discovered the sight which we encountered, or whether it was shown to us by the child. the whole fire-place was strewn with half-burnt sheets of{303} manuscript. there were scraps of pages of which almost the whole had been destroyed, others which were hardly more than scorched, and heaps of paper-ashes all lying tumbled together about the fender. we went down on our knees to examine them, thinking at the moment that the poor creature might in his despair have burned his own work and have spared that of the doctor. but it was not so. we found scores of charred pages of the doctor’s elaborate handwriting. by this time grimes had found the open box, and we perceived that the sheets remaining in it were tumbled and huddled together in absolute confusion. there were pages of the various volumes mixed with those which mackenzie himself had written, and they were all crushed, and rolled, and twisted as though they had been thrust thither as waste-paper,—out of the way. “’twas mother as done it,” said the girl, “and we put ’em back again when the perlice took her.”
there was nothing more to learn,—nothing more by the hearing which any useful clue could be obtained. what had been the exact course of the scenes which had been enacted there that morning it little booted us to enquire. it was enough and more than enough that we knew that the mischief had been done. we went down on our knees before the fire, and rescued from the ashes{304} with our hands every fragment of manuscript that we could find. then we put the mass altogether in the box, and gazed upon the wretched remnants almost in tears. “you had better go and get a bit of some’at to eat,” said grimes, handing a coin to the elder girl. “it’s hard on them to starve ’cause their father’s drunk, sir.” then he took the closed box in his hand and we followed him out into the street. “i’ll send or step up to look after him to-morrow,” said grimes, as he put us and the box into a cab. we little thought when we made to the drunkard that foolish request to arise, that we should never speak to him again.
as we returned to our office in the cab that we might deposit the box there ready for the following day, our mind was chiefly occupied in thinking over the undeserved grievances which had fallen upon ourselves. we had been moved by the charitable desire to do services to two different persons,—to the learned doctor and to the red-nosed drunkard, and this had come of it! there had been nothing for us to gain by assisting either the one or the other. we had taken infinite trouble, attempting to bring together two men who wanted each other’s services,—working hard in sheer benevolence;—and what had been the result? we had spent half an hour on our{305} knees in the undignified and almost disreputable work of raking among mrs. mackenzie’s cinders, and now we had to face the anger, the dismay, the reproach, and,—worse than all,—the agony of the doctor. as to mackenzie,—we asserted to ourselves again and again that nothing further could be done for him. he had made his bed, and he must lie upon it; but, oh! why,—why had we attempted to meddle with a being so degraded? we got out of the cab at our office door, thinking of the doctor’s countenance as we should see it on the morrow. our heart sank within us, and we asked ourselves, if it was so bad with us now, how it would be with us when we returned to the place on the following morning.
but on the following morning we did return. no doubt each individual reader to whom we address ourselves has at some period felt that indescribable load of personal, short-lived care, which causes the heart to sink down into the boots. it is not great grief that does it;—nor is it excessive fear; but the unpleasant operation comes from the mixture of the two. it is the anticipation of some imperfectly-understood evil that does it,—some evil out of which there might perhaps be an escape if we could only see the way. in this case we saw no way out of it. the doctor was to be with us at one{306} o’clock, and he would come with smiles, expecting to meet his learned colleague. how should we break it to the doctor? we might indeed send to him, putting off the meeting, but the advantage coming from that would be slight, if any. we must see the injured grecian sooner or later; and we had resolved, much as we feared, that the evil hour should not be postponed. we spent an hour that morning in arranging the fragments. of the first volume about a third had been destroyed. of the second nearly every page had been either burned or mutilated. of the third but little had been injured. mackenzie’s own work had fared better than the doctor’s; but there was no comfort in that. after what had passed i thought it quite improbable that the doctor would make any use of mackenzie’s work. so much of the manuscript as could still be placed in continuous pages we laid out upon the table, volume by volume,—that in the middle sinking down from its original goodly bulk almost to the dimensions of a poor sermon;—and the half-burned bits we left in the box. then we sat ourselves down at our accustomed table, and pretended to try to work. our ears were very sharp, and we heard the doctor’s step upon our stairs within a minute or two of the appointed time. our heart went to the very toes{307} of our boots. we shuffled in our chair, rose from it, and sat down again,—and were conscious that we were not equal to the occasion. hitherto we had, after some mild literary form, patronised the doctor,—as a man of letters in town will patronise his literary friend from the country;—but we now feared him as a truant school-boy fears his master. and yet it was so necessary that we should wear some air of self-assurance!
in a moment he was with us, wearing that bland smile which we knew so well, and which at the present moment almost overpowered us. we had been sure that he would wear that smile, and had especially feared it. “ah,” said he, grasping us by the hand, “i thought i should have been late. i see that our friend is not here yet.”
“doctor,” we replied, “a great misfortune has happened.”
“a great misfortune! mr. mackenzie is not dead?”
“no;—he is not dead. perhaps it would have been better that he had died long since. he has destroyed your manuscript.” the doctor’s face fell, and his hands at the same time, and he stood looking at us. “i need not tell you, doctor, what my feelings are, and how great my remorse.”
“destroyed it!” then we took him by the hand and{308} led him to the table. he turned first upon the appetising and comparatively uninjured third volume, and seemed to think that we had hoaxed him. “this is not destroyed,” he said, with a smile. but before i could explain anything, his hands were among the fragments in the box. “as i am a living man, they have burned it!” he exclaimed. “i—i—i——” then he turned from us, and walked twice the length of the room, backwards and forwards, while we stood still, patiently waiting the explosion of his wrath. “my friend,” he said, when his walk was over, “a great man underwent the same sorrow. newton’s manuscript was burned. i will take it home with me, and we will say no more about it.” i never thought very much of the doctor as a divine, but i hold him to have been as good a christian as i ever met.
but that plan of his of saying no more about it could not quite be carried out. i was endeavouring to explain to him, as i thought it necessary to do, the circumstances of the case, and he was protesting his indifference to any such details, when there came a knock at the door, and the boy who waited on us below ushered mrs. grimes into the room. as the reader is aware, we had, during the last two months, become very intimate with the landlady{309} of the spotted dog, but we had never hitherto had the pleasure of seeing her outside her own house. “oh, mr. ----” she began, and then she paused, seeing the doctor.
we thought it expedient that there should be some introduction. “mrs. grimes,” we said, “this is the gentleman whose invaluable manuscript has been destroyed by that unfortunate drunkard.”
“oh, then you’re the doctor, sir?” the doctor bowed and smiled. his heart must have been very heavy, but he bowed politely and smiled sweetly. “oh, dear,” she said, “i don’t know how to tell you!”
“to tell us what?” asked the doctor.
“what has happened since?” we demanded. the woman stood shaking before us, and then sank into a chair. then arose to us at the moment some idea that the drunken woman, in her mad rage, had done some great damage to the spotted dog,—had set fire to the house, or injured mr. grimes personally, or perhaps run a muck amidst the jugs and pitchers, window glass, and gas lights. something had been done which would give the grimeses a pecuniary claim on me or on the doctor, and the woman had been sent hither to make the first protest. oh,—when should i see the last of the results{310} of my imprudence in having attempted to befriend such a one as julius mackenzie! “if you have anything to tell, you had better tell it,” we said, gravely.
“he’s been, and——”
“not destroyed himself?” asked the doctor.
“oh yes, sir. he have indeed,—from ear to ear,—and is now a lying at the spotted dog!”
* * * * *
and so, after all, that was the end of julius mackenzie! we need hardly say that our feelings, which up to that moment had been very hostile to the man, underwent a sudden revulsion. poor, overburdened, struggling, ill-used, abandoned creature! the world had been hard upon him, with a severity which almost induced one to make complaint against omnipotence. the poor wretch had been willing to work, had been industrious in his calling, had had capacity for work; and he had also struggled gallantly against his evil fate, had recognised and endeavoured to perform his duty to his children and to the miserable woman who had brought him to his ruin!
and that sin of drunkenness had seemed to us to be in him rather the reflex of her vice than the result of{311} his own vicious tendencies. still it might be doubtful whether she had not learned the vice from him. they had both in truth been drunkards as long as they had been known in the neighbourhood of the spotted dog; but it was stated by all who had known them there that he was never seen to be drunk unless when she had disgraced him by the public exposure of her own abomination. such as he was he had now come to his end! this was the upshot of his loud claims for liberty from his youth upwards;—liberty as against his father and family; liberty as against his college tutor; liberty as against all pastors, masters, and instructors; liberty as against the conventional thraldom of the world. he was now lying a wretched corpse at the spotted dog, with his throat cut from ear to ear, till the coroner’s jury should have decided whether or not they would call him a suicide!
mrs. grimes had come to tell us that the coroner was to be at the spotted dog at four o’clock, and to say that her husband hoped that we would be present. we had seen mackenzie so lately, and had so much to do with the employment of the last days of his life, that we could not refuse this request, though it came accompanied by no legal summons. then mrs. grimes again became voluble{312} and poured out to us her biography of mackenzie as far as she knew it. he had been married to the woman ten years, and certainly had been a drunkard before he married her. “as for her, she’d been well-nigh suckled on gin,” said mrs. grimes, “though he didn’t know it, poor fellow.” whether this was true or not, she had certainly taken to drink soon after her marriage, and then his life had been passed in alternate fits of despondency and of desperate efforts to improve his own condition and that of his children. mrs. grimes declared to us that when the fit came on them,—when the woman had begun and the man had followed,—they would expend upon drink in two days what would have kept the family for a fortnight. “they say as how it was nothing for them to swallow forty shillings’ worth of gin in forty-eight hours.” the doctor held up his hands in horror. “and it didn’t, none of it, come our way,” said mrs. grimes. “indeed, john wouldn’t let us serve it for ’em.”
she sat there for half an hour, and during the whole time she was telling us of the man’s life; but the reader will already have heard more than enough of it. by what immediate demon the woman had been instigated to burn the husband’s work almost immediately on its production{313} within her own home, we never heard. doubtless there had been some terrible scene in which the man’s sufferings must have been carried almost beyond endurance. “and he had feelings, sir, he had,” said mrs. grimes; “he knew as a woman should be decent, and a man’s wife especial; i’m sure we pitied him so, john and i, that we could have cried over him. john would say a hard word to him at times, but he’d have walked round london to do him a good turn. john aint to say edicated hisself, but he do respect learning.”
when she had told us all, mrs. grimes went, and we were left alone with the doctor. he at once consented to accompany us to the spotted dog, and we spent the hour that still remained to us in discussing the fate of the unfortunate man. we doubt whether an allusion was made during the time to the burned manuscript. if so, it was certainly not made by the doctor himself. the tragedy which had occurred in connection with it had made him feel it to be unfitting even to mention his own loss. that such a one should have gone to his account in such a manner, without hope, without belief, and without fear,—as burley said to bothwell, and bothwell boasted to burley,—that was the theme of the{314} doctor’s discourse. “the mercy of god is infinite,” he said, bowing his head, with closed eyes and folded hands. to threaten while the life is in the man is human. to believe in the execution of those threats when the life has passed away is almost beyond the power of humanity.
at the hour fixed we were at the spotted dog, and found there a crowd assembled. the coroner was already seated in mrs. grimes’s little parlour, and the body as we were told had been laid out in the tap-room. the inquest was soon over. the fact that he had destroyed himself in the low state of physical suffering and mental despondency which followed his intoxication was not doubted. at the very time that he was doing it, his wife was being taken from the lock-up house to the police office in the police van. he was not penniless, for he had sent the children out with money for their breakfasts, giving special caution as to the youngest, a little toddling thing of three years old;—and then he had done it. the eldest girl, returning to the house, had found him lying dead upon the floor. we were called upon for our evidence, and went into the tap-room accompanied by the doctor. alas! the very table which had been dragged up stairs into the landlady’s bed-room with the charitable object of assisting mackenzie in his work,—the table at{315} which we had sat with him conning the doctor’s pages—had now been dragged down again and was used for another purpose. we had little to say as to the matter, except that we had known the man to be industrious and capable, and that we had, alas! seen him utterly prostrated by drink on the evening before his death.
the saddest sight of all on this occasion was the appearance of mackenzie’s wife,—whom we had never before seen. she had been brought there by a policeman, but whether she was still in custody we did not know. she had been dressed, either by the decency of the police or by the care of her neighbours, in an old black gown, which was a world too large and too long for her. and on her head there was a black bonnet which nearly enveloped her. she was a small woman, and, as far as we could judge from the glance we got of her face, pale, and worn, and wan. she had not such outward marks of a drunkard’s career as those which poor mackenzie always carried with him. she was taken up to the coroner, and what answers she gave to him were spoken in so low a voice that they did not reach us. the policeman, with whom we spoke, told us that she did not feel it much,—that she was callous now and beyond the power of mental suffering. “she’s frightened{316} just this minute, sir; but it isn’t more than that,” said the policeman. we gave one glance along the table at the burden which it bore, but we saw nothing beyond the outward lines of that which had so lately been the figure of a man. we should have liked to see the countenance once more. the morbid curiosity to see such horrid sights is strong with most of us. but we did not wish to be thought to wish to see it,—especially by our friend the doctor,—and we abstained from pushing our way to the head of the table. the doctor himself remained quiescent in the corner of the room the farthest from the spectacle. when the matter was submitted to them, the jury lost not a moment in declaring their verdict. they said that the man had destroyed himself while suffering under temporary insanity produced by intoxication. and that was the end of julius mackenzie, the scholar.
on the following day the doctor returned to the country, taking with him our black box, to the continued use of which, as a sarcophagus, he had been made very welcome. for our share in bringing upon him the great catastrophe of his life, he never uttered to us, either by spoken or written word, a single reproach. that idea of suffering as the great philosopher had suffered seemed to{317} comfort him. “if newton bore it, surely i can,” he said to us with his bland smile, when we renewed the expression of our regret. something passed between us, coming more from us than from him, as to the expediency of finding out some youthful scholar who could go down to the rectory, and reconstruct from its ruins the edifice of our friend’s learning. the doctor had given us some encouragement, and we had begun to make enquiry, when we received the following letter:—
“—— rectory, —— ——, 18—.
“dear mr. ——, —you were so kind as to say that you would endeavour to find for me an assistant in arranging and reconstructing the fragments of my work on the metres of the greek dramatists. your promise has been an additional kindness.” dear, courteous, kind old gentleman! for we knew well that no slightest sting of sarcasm was intended to be conveyed in these words. “your promise has been an additional kindness; but looking upon the matter carefully, and giving to it the best consideration in my power, i have determined to relinquish the design. that which has been destroyed cannot be replaced; and it may well be that it was not worth replacing. i am old now, and never could do{318} again that which perhaps i was never fitted to do with any fair prospect of success. i will never turn again to the ashes of my unborn child; but will console myself with the memory of my grievance, knowing well, as i do so, that consolation from the severity of harsh but just criticism might have been more difficult to find. when i think of the end of my efforts as a scholar, my mind reverts to the terrible and fatal catastrophe of one whose scholarship was infinitely more finished and more ripe than mine.
“whenever it may suit you to come into this part of the country, pray remember that it will give very great pleasure to myself and to my daughter to welcome you at our parsonage.
“believe me to be,
“my dear mr. ——,
“yours very sincerely,
“—— ——.”
we never have found the time to accept the doctor’s invitation, and our eyes have never again rested on the black box containing the ashes of the unborn child to which the doctor will never turn again. we can picture him to ourselves standing, full of thought, with his hand{319} upon the lid, but never venturing to turn the lock. indeed, we do not doubt but that the key of the box is put away among other secret treasures, a lock of his wife’s hair, perhaps, and the little shoe of the boy who did not live long enough to stand at his father’s knee. for a tender, soft-hearted man was the doctor, and one who fed much on the memories of the past.
we often called upon mr. and mrs. grimes at the spotted dog, and would sit there talking of mackenzie and his family. mackenzie’s widow soon vanished out of the neighbourhood, and no one there knew what was the fate of her or of her children. and then also mr. grimes went and took his wife with him. but they could not be said to vanish. scratching his head one day, he told me with a dolorous voice that he had—made his fortune. “we’ve got as snug a little place as ever you see, just two mile out of colchester,” said mrs. grimes triumphantly,—“with thirty acres of land just to amuse john. and as for the spotted dog, i’m that sick of it, another year’d wear me to a dry bone.” we looked at her, and saw no tendency that way. and we looked at john, and thought that he was not triumphant.
who followed mr. and mrs. grimes at the spotted dog we have never visited liquorpond street to see.
