Had I, then, sold everything to this man?
I had been pretty religious in a way—a young man’s way. Now I had lost all religious feeling whatever. I had once ambition and hopes, these were gone; I had once the capacity of love, that was gone; I had once a generous heart, that was gone; I once loved things worth loving, I felt no emotion now for anything. I was a machine which could feel. I was a man with the humanity taken out of him.
This time lasted for about four months. On the first of each month I went to receive my pay—the wages of sin—from the clerk, who surveyed me critically, but said nothing till the morning of the fourth month. Then, while he handed me my money, he whispered confidentially across the table:
“Look here, old fellow, you know; you’re going it worse than poor Tom Kirby. Why don’t you stop it? What is the good of a feller’s drinking himself to death? The old gentleman was here yesterday, asking me how you looked, and if you continued steady. Pull up, old man, and knock it off.”
I took the money in my trembling hands and slunk away abashed. When I got home again, I am not ashamed to say that I cried like a child.
Delirium tremens! That would begin soon, and then the end would not be far off. It was too awful. Think of my position. I was but four-and-twenty. Not only was I deprived of the pleasure—mind you, a very real pleasure—of eating and drinking; I was the most temperate man in the world, though that was no great credit to myself, considering; and yet I bore in my face and my appearance, and felt in my very brain, all the marks and signs of confirmed drunkenness and the hopelessness of it. That hardened old voluptuary, that demon of gluttony, that secret murderer, would have no pity. He must have felt, by the falling-off of the splendid appetite which he was doing his utmost to ruin, that things were getting worse, and he was resolved—I had suspected this for some time—to kill me off by drinking me to death.
I believe I should have been dead in another week, but for a blessed respite, due, I afterwards discovered, to my demon being laid up with so violent a sore throat that he could not even swallow. What was my joy at being able to go to bed sober, to wake without a headache, to feel my bad symptoms slowly disappearing, to recover my nerves! For a whole fortnight I was happy—so happy that I even believed the improvement would last and that the old man was penitent. One day, after fourteen days of a veritable earthly paradise, I was walking along the Strand—for I was no longer afraid of venturing out—and met my old manager, Juliet’s father. He greeted me with a warmth that was quite touching under all the circumstances. “My dear boy, I have been longing to know your whereabouts. Come and tell me all about it. Have you dined? Let us have some dinner together.”
I excused myself, and asked after Juliet.
“Juliet is but so-so. Ah, do you know, Lucraft, sometimes I think that I did wrong to part you. And yet, you know, you had no money. Make some, my boy, and come back to us.”
This was hearty. I forgot my troubles and my state of bondage and everything, except Juliet.
“I—I—I have money,” I said. “I have come into a little money unexpectedly.”
“Have you?” he replied, clasping me by the hand. “Then come down and see Juliet. Or—stay; no. The day after tomorrow is Juliet’s ben. We are playing at Richmond. We have one of your own parts—you shall be Sir Harry Wildair. I will alter the bills. You are sure to come?”
“Sure to come,” I said, with animation. “Capital! I know every line in the part. Tell Juliet an old friend will act with her.”
We made a few new arrangements and parted—I bought a copy of the play at Lacy’s and studied the part over again.
Next day I got over to Richmond in good time. The day was fine, I remember; my spirits were rapidly rising because it was the fifteenth day since I had had one of my usual attacks. I was in great hopes that the old man was really going to change his life and behave with consideration towards me. With the birth of hope, there revived in my heart some of my old feelings. I had a real desire to see Juliet again, but yet the old warmth seemed gone. It was a desire to see one in whom I had once been interested; the desire to awake old memories, which, I think, principally actuated me.
I found the dear girl waiting for me with an impatience which ought to have touched my heart, but which, somehow, only seemed to remind me of old times. My heart was gone—sold to my master with everything else. Mechanically I took her hands in mine, and kissed her on the lips as I used to do. She threw both arms round my neck, kissed me again and again, and burst into tears of joy.
“Oh, Luke, Luke!” she said, “I have so longed to see you again. The time has been weary, weary, without you.”
We sat together for half an hour, she all the time talking to me, and I, remembering what I used to be with her, wondering where the old feelings were gone, and trying to act as I used to.
“Luke, you are not growing cold to me, are you?” she asked, as some little gesture or word of hers passed me unnoticed.
“Cold, Juliet?” I replied. “What should make you think so?”
“I will not think so,” she said. “It is too great happiness to meet again, is it not? And you are silent because you feel too happy to speak. Is not that so?”
Presently it became time to go and dress.
“Let me look at you, Sir Henry Wildair,” she said. “Yes, we shall do it very well tonight. You are not looking, somehow, quite so well as you used, Luke dear. Is it that London does not agree with you? Are you working too hard? Your face is swollen and—fancy—Mrs. Mould says you look as if you had been drinking.”
Mrs. Mould was the dresser.
If Mrs. Mould had seen me a fortnight before, she might well have said I had been drinking. A fortnight, however, of rest had done wonders for me.
I laughed, but felt a little uneasy.
We rang up at seven.
The house was quite full, because my Juliet was popular at Richmond.
I began with all my former fire and vigour, because I was acting again with her. The old life came back to me; I forgot my troubles; I was really happy, and I believe I acted well. At all events, the house applauded. Between the first and second acts a sudden terror seized me. I felt that the old man was eating again. That passed off, because he ate very little. But then he began to drink, and to drink fast.
It was no use fighting against it. I believe the villain must have been drinking raw brandy, because I was drunk in five minutes. I stammered and reeled about on the stage, I laughed wildly and sang foolishly, and then I tumbled down in a heap and could not get up again. The last thing I remember is the angry roar of poor old Kerrans, beside himself with passion, telling the carpenters to carry that drunken beast away and throw him into the road. I heard afterwards that they were obliged to drop the curtain, and that the éclat of poor Juliet’s benefit was entirely spoiled. As for myself, the carpenters carried me out to the middle of Richmond-green, where they were going to leave me, only one of them had compassion, and wheeled me to his own house in a barrow.
In the morning I returned hastily to London, sought my cottage at Islington, and shut myself in with an agony of shame and humiliation.
I was quite crushed by this blow. For the first time I felt tempted to commit suicide and end it all. To be sure I ought to have foreseen this, and all the other dreadful things. Directly my master, my owner, got able to swallow, though he could not eat, he could drink, and ordered the most fiery liquor he could procure, with a view to kill me off and begin with another victim.
But Providence ruled otherwise.
Then began a week of cruel suffering. My master sent me word by Boule-de-neige that he intended to finish me off. My appetite, he said, had been long failing, and was now perfectly contemptible. He complained that I had neglected my part of the contract, that I must have been practising intemperance—the horrible hypocrite—to have reduced so
fine an appetite to nothing in a short four months. Therefore he felt obliged to tell me that in a week or two I should probably find the agreement ended. That was his ferocious way of putting it. He meant that in a week I should be dead. His words were prophetic, but not in the sense in which he meant them.
He drank brandy now. He drank it morning, noon, and night. He drank it, not because he liked it, but in hopes of despatching me. I was no sooner partially recovered from one drunken bout than I plunged into another.
I lost all power of walking. I could not move about. I lay the whole day sick and feverish on my bed, or, if I got up at all, it was only to change it for an easy chair. I could eat nothing.
Then I began to have visions and to see spectres in my loneliness and misery.
First I saw all over again the scenes of my early life—my poor deserted mother; the tramp who took charge of me; the sleep in which I nearly perished; the strolling actors with whom I wandered; the girl with whom I fell in love. Only among them all there hovered perpetually the ugly face of Boule-de-neige, spoiling the pleasant memories, and corrupting the current of my thoughts with his “Cluck—cluck”, and his demoniac grin.
“How you do, Massa Lucraft? How you feel your stumjack this morning? Ole massa him berry fierce. Him gwine to make the noyeau punch tomorrow. Dat finish um off. Dat work um up. You wait till tomorrow, Massa Lucraft.”
I could only groan.
“You nice young gegleman,” he went on, with a grin. “You berry grateful young gegleman. Massa him gib you thirty pounds a month, and you spend it all in ‘temperate courses. Bad; berry bad, dam bad. What you say when you die—eh? Ho! ho!”
The creature seemed always with me during this time. If I opened my eyes I had the feeling that he was hovering about my bed. If it was dark I thought I saw his eyes glaring at me from some corner. If I was asleep he would waken me with his “Cluck”. What he did in my cottage I never knew. The room was filled with the visions which passed through my brain, succeeding each other again and again like the acts of a play repeated incessantly. I saw the octagonal room with the old gentleman eating and drinking. I saw myself at Richmond. I saw myself before the magistrates; and I looked on as an outsider, as a spectator of a tragedy which would end in death and horror.
It was two days before the period allotted to me by my master, at eight o’clock in the evening, as I Was sitting in my lonely cottage, expectant of the usual drunken bout, when I felt a curious agitation within me, an internal struggle, as if through all my veins a tempestuous wave was surging and rushing. I lay down.
“This is some new devilry of the old man,” I said to myself. “Let him do his worst; at least, I must try to bear it with resignation.” I began to speculate on my inevitable and approaching end, and to wonder curiously, what proportion of the sin of all this drunkeness would be laid to my charge.
To my astonishment nothing more followed. The tumult of my system gradually subsided, and I fell asleep.
In the morning I awoke late, and missed the usual headache. I had, therefore, I was surprised to find, actually not been drunk the night before. I rose with my customary depression, and was astonished to discover that my nerves were steadier and spirits higher than I had known for a long time.
I mechanically went to the cupboard and pulled out my cold mutton and potatoes. Who can picture my joy when I found that I could taste the meat again, and that it was nasty? I hardly believed my senses; in fact, I had lost them for so long that it was difficult to understand that they had come back to me. I tried the potatoes. Heavens, what a horrible thing to a well-regulated palate is a cold boiled potato!
At first, as I said, I could not believe that I had recovered my taste; then, as the truth forced itself upon me, and I found that I could not only taste, but was actually hungry, I jumped and danced, and was beside myself with joy. Think of a convict suddenly released, and declared guiltless of the charges brought against him. Think of a prisoner on the very ladder of the gallows-tree, with the rope round his neck, reprieved and pardoned. Think of one doomed to death by his physician receiving the assurance that it was all a mistake, and that he would gather up long years of life as in a sheaf. And think that such joy as these would feel, I felt—and more!
I went to the nearest coffee-shop and ordered bacon, eggs, and tea, offering up a short grace with every plate as it came. And then, because I felt sure that my old tormentor must be dead, I repaired to my lawyers’, and saw the clerk.
“Ah,” he said, “the poor old man’s gone at last! Went out like the snuff of a candle. His illness was only twenty-four hours. Well, he’s gone to heaven, if ever man did.”
“What did he die of—too much eating and drinking?”
“Mr. Lucraft,” said the clerk, severely, “this is not the tone for you to adopt towards that distinguished man, your benefactor. He died, sir—being a man of moral, temperate, and even abstemious life, though of full habit—of apoplexy.”
“Oh!” I said, careless what the clerk said, but glad to be quite sure that the diabolical old villain was really dead. I suppose that never was such joy over the repentance of any sinner as mine over the death of that murdering glutton, for whom no words of hatred were too strong.
“I think you’ve got to see our senior partner,” said the clerk. “Step this way.”
He led me to a room where I found a grave and elderly gentle man sitting at a table.
“Mr. Lucraft?” he said. “I was expecting you. I saw your late patron’s negro this morning. He told me that you would call.”
I stared, but said nothing.
“I have a communication to make to you, on the part of our departed friend, Mr. Ebenezer Grumbelow. It is dated a few weeks since, and is to the effect that a sum of money which I hold was to be placed in your hands in case of his death. This, it appears, he anticipated, for some reason or other.”
“Ebenezer Grumbelow”. That was the name which had so long escaped my memory—”Ebenezer Grumbelow”.
I said nothing, but stared with all my eyes.
“My poor friend,” the lawyer went on, “after remarking that unless you change your unfortunate habits you will come to no good, gave me this money himself—here is the cheque—so that it will not appear in his last will and testament.”
I took it in silence.
“Well, sir”—he looked at me in some surprise—”have you no observation to make, or remark to offer, on this generosity?”
“None,” I said.
“I do not know,” he continued; “I do not know—your signature here, if you please—what reason Mr. Grumbelow had in taking you up, or what claim you possessed upon his consideration; but I think, Sir, I do think, that some expression, some sense of regret, is due.”
I buttoned up the cheque in my pocket.
“Mr. Grumbelow was a philanthropist, I believe, Sir?”
“He was. As a philanthropist, as a supporter of charities, as a public donor of great amounts, Mr. Grumbelow’s name stands in the front. So much we all know.”
“A religious man, too?”
“Surely, surely; one of our most deeply religious men. A man who was not ashamed of his saintly profession.”
“Cluck—cluck!”
It was the familiar face of Boule-de-neige at the door.
“You know, I suppose,” said the lawyer, “Mr. Grumbelow’s body-servant, a truly Christian negro?”
“Was there,” I asked, “any clause in Mr. Grumbelow’s letter—any conditions attached to this gift?”
“None whatever. It is a free gift. Stay, there is a postscript which I ought to have read to you. You will perhaps understand it. In it Mr. Grumbelow says that as to the services rendered by him to you, and by you to him, it will be best for your own sake to keep them secret.”
I bowed.
T
he date of the cheque corresponded with the first illness of the old man—his affection of the throat. Probably he was afraid that I should reveal his infamous story.
“I may now tell you, Mr. Lucraft, without at all wishing to break any confidence that may have existed between you and the deceased, that a friend of Mr. Grumbelow’s—no other, indeed, than the Rev. Jabez Jumbles, a pulpit name doubtless known to you—intends to write the biography of this distinguished and religious man, as an example to the young. Any help you can afford to so desirable an end will be gratefully received. Particularly, Mr. Lucraft, any communication on the subject of his continual help given to young men, who regularly disappointed him, and all, except yourself, died of drink.”
I bowed again and retired.
Did anyone ever hear of such a wicked old man?
Outside the office I was joined by the negro.
“What have you got to say to me, detestable wretch?” I cried, shaking my fist in his withered old face.
“Cluck—cluck! Massa not angry with poor old Boule-de-neige. How young massa? Young massa pretty well? How de lubly abbadide of de young gegleman? How him strong stumjack? Cluck—cluck!”
He kept at a safe distance from me. I think I should have killed him if I had ever clutched him by the throat.
“Ole massa him always ask, ‘How dat young debbel? Go and see, Boule-de-neige.’ I go to young massa’s cottage daraway, and come back. ‘Him berry dam bad, Sir,’ I say; ‘him going to be debbel berry fast, just like dem oders. De folk all say he drink too much for him berry fine constitution.’ Cluck—cluck! Ole massa he only say ebbery night, ‘Bring de brandy, Boule-de-neige; let’s finish him.’ Cluck—cluck!”
Here was a Christian negro for you!
“Tell me, what did your master die of?”
“Apple perplexity, massa.”
“Ah! what else? Come, Boule-de-neige, I know a good deal; tell me more.”
The Devils & Demons MEGAPACK ®: 25 Modern and Classic Tales Page 51