Dead Man's Rock Part 19

"That," said I, "from the shape of it, must be Joe Roscorla."

And Joe Roscorla it was, only by no means the Joe Roscorla of ordinary life, but a galvanised and gesticulating Joe, whereas the Joe that we knew was of a lethargic bearing and slow habit of speech.

Still, it was he, and as he came up to us he stayed all questioning by gasping out the word "Missus!" and then falling into a violent fit of coughing.

"Well, what is amiss?" asked Tom.

"Took wi' a seizure, an' maister like a thing mazed," blurted Joe, and then fell to panting and coughing worse than ever.

"What! a seizure? paralysis do you mean?" I asked, while Tom turned white.

"Just a seizure, and I ha'n't got time for no longer name. But run if 'ee want to see her alive."

We ran without further speech, Joe keeping at our side for a minute, but soon dropping behind and fading into distance. As we entered the door Uncle Loveday met us, and I saw by his face that Aunt Elizabeth was dead.

She had been in the kitchen busied with our supper, when she suddenly fell down and died in a few minutes. Heart disease was the cause, but in our part people only die of three complaints--a seizure, an inflammation, or a decline. The difference between these is purely one of time, so that Joe Roscorla, learning the suddenness of the attack, judged it forthwith a case of "seizure," and had so reported.

My poor aunt was dead; and until now we had never known how we loved her. Like so many of the Trenoweths she seemed hard and reserved to many, but we who had lived with her had learnt the goodness of her soul and the sincerity of her religion. The grief of her husband was her n.o.blest epitaph.

He, poor man, was inconsolable. Without his wife he seemed as one deprived of most of his limbs, and moved helplessly about, as though life were now without purpose. Accustomed to be ruled by her at every turn, he missed her in every action of the day. Very swiftly he sank, of no a.s.signed complaint, and within six months was laid beside her.

On his death-bed my uncle seemed strangely troubled about us.

Tom was to be a doctor. My destiny was not so certain; but already I had renounced in my heart an inglorious life in Lizard Town.

I longed to go with Tom; in London, too, I thought I should be free to follow the purpose of my life. But the question was, how should I find the money? For I knew that the sum obtained by the sale of Lantrig was miserably insufficient. So I sat with idle hands and waited for destiny; nor did I realise my helplessness until I stood in the room where Uncle Loveday lay dying.

"Tom," said my uncle, "Tom, come closer."

Tom bent over the bed.

"I am leaving you two boys without friends in this world. You have friends in Lizard Town, but Lizard Town is a small world, Tom.

I ought to have sent you to London before, but kept putting off the parting. If one could only foresee--could only foresee."

He raised himself slightly on his elbow, and continued with pain--

"You will go to Guy's, and Jasper, I hope, may go with you.

Be friends, boys; you will want friendship in this world. It will be a struggle, for there is barely enough for both. But it is best to share equally; _she_ would have wished that. She was always planning that. I am doing it badly, I know, but she would have done it better."

The chill December sun came stealing in and illumined the sick man's face with a light that was the shadow of heaven. The strange doctor moved to the blind. My uncle's voice arrested him--

"No, no. Leave it up. You will have to pull it down very soon--only a few moments now. Tom, come closer. You have been a good boy, Tom, a good boy, though"--with a faint smile--"a little trying at times.

Ah, but she forgave you, Tom. She loved you dearly; she will tell me so--when we meet."

My uncle's gaze began to wander, as though antic.i.p.ating that meeting; but he roused himself and said--

"Kiss me, Tom, and send Jasper to me."

Bitterly weeping, Tom made room, and I bent over the bed.

"Ah, Jasper, it is you. Kiss me, boy. I have been telling Tom that you must share alike. G.o.d has been stern with you, Jasper, to His own good ends--His own good ends. Only be patient, it will come right at the last. How dark it is getting; pull up the blind."

"The blind is up, uncle."

"Ah, yes, I forgot. I have often thought--do you remember that day-- reading your father's paper--and the key?"

"Yes, uncle."

"I have often thought--about that key--which you flung into the fire--and I picked out--your father Ezekiel's key--keep it.

Closer, Jasper, closer--"

I bent down until my ear almost touched his lips.

"I have--often--thought--we were wrong that night--and perhaps-- meant--search--in . . ."

For quite a minute I bent to catch the next word, then looking on his face withdrew my arm and laid the grey head back upon the pillow.

My uncle was dead.

So it happened that a few weeks after Tom and I, having found Uncle Loveday's savings equally divided between us, started from Lizard Town by coach to seek our fortunes in London. In London it is that I must resume my tale. Of our early mishaps and misadventures I need not speak, the result being discernible as the story progresses.

We did not find our fortunes, but we found some wisdom. Neither Tom nor I ever confessed to disappointment at finding the pavements of mere stone, but certainly two more absolute Whittingtons never trod the streets of the great city.

But before I resume I must say a few words of myself. No reader can gather the true moral of this narrative who does not take into account the effect which the cruel death of my parents had wrought on me. From the day of the wreck hate had been my constant companion, cherished and nursed in my heart until it held complete mastery over all other pa.s.sions. I lived, so I told myself over and over again, but to avenge, to seek Simon Colliver high and low until I held him at my mercy. Thousands of times I rehea.r.s.ed the scene of our meeting, and always I held the knife which stabbed my father. In my waking thoughts, in my dreams, I was always pursuing, and Colliver for ever fleeing before me. In every crowd I seemed to watch for his face alone, at every street-corner to listen for his voice--that face, that voice, which I should know among thousands. I had read De Quincey's "Opium-Eater," and the picture of his unresting search for his lost Ann somehow seized upon my imagination. Night after night it was to Oxford Street that my devil drove me: night after night I paced the "never-ending terraces," as did the opium-eater, on my tireless quest--but with feelings how different! To me it was but one long thirst of hatred, the long avenues of gaslight vistas of an avenging h.e.l.l, all the mult.i.tudinous sounds of life but the chorus of that song to which my footsteps trod--

"Sing ho! but he waits for you."

To London had Simon Colliver come, and somewhere, some day, he would be mine. Until that day I sought a living face in a city of dead men, and down that illimitable slope to Holborn, and back again, I would tramp until the pavements were silent and deserted, then seek my lodging and throw myself exhausted on the bed.

In a dingy garret, looking out, when its grimy panes allowed, above one of the many squalid streets that feed the main artery of the Strand, my story begins anew. The furniture of the room relieves me of the task of word-painting, being more effectively described by catalogue, after the manner of the ships at Troy. It consisted of two small beds, one rickety washstand, one wooden chair, and one tin candlestick. At the present moment this last held a flickering dip, for it was ten o'clock on the night of May the ninth, eighteen hundred and sixty-three. On the chair sat Tom, turning excitedly the leaves of a prodigiously imposing ma.n.u.script. I was sitting on the edge of the bed nearest the candle, brooding on my hate as usual.

Fortune had evidently dealt us some rough knocks. We were dressed, as Tom put it, to suit the furniture, and did it to a nicety.

We were fed, according to the same authority, above our income; but not often. I also quote Tom in saying that we were living rather fast: we certainly saw no long prospect before us. In short, matters had reached a crisis.

Tom looked up from his reading.

"Do you know, Jasper, I could wish that our wash-stand had not a hole cut in it to receive the basin. It sounds hyper-critical.

But really it prejudices me in the eyes of the managers. There's a suspicious bulge in the middle of the paper that is d.a.m.ning."

I was absorbed in my own thoughts, and took no notice. Presently he continued--

"Whittington is an overrated character, don't you think? After all he owed his success to his name. It's a great thing for struggling youth to have a three-syllabled name with a proparoxyton accent.

I've been listening to the bells to-night and they can make nothing of Loveday, while as for Trenoweth, it's hopeless."

As I still remained silent, Tom proceeded to announce--

"The House will now go into the Question of Supply."

"The Exchequer," I reported, "contains exactly sixteen and eightpence halfpenny."

"Rent having been duly paid to-day and receipt given."