Kitobni o'qish: «The Last Call: A Romance (Vol. 2 of 3)», sahifa 6

Part II

CHAPTER I

For a while Lavirotte sat on the floor of that vault, immovable. He was confounded, stunned. He found himself confronted by three terrible facts. There was no treasure here. Here was the dead body of Lionel Crawford. Here was he himself entombed. When he closed the door of the tower, he locked it on the inside, and put the key in his pocket. How was anyone to find out he was here? Lionel Crawford had told him that during all the months and months he had lived in that place no one, to his knowledge, had ever rapped at the door. Was it likely anyone would rap now? And, if anyone did, what use would the rapping be? From the top of the vault to the threshold of the door was at least twenty feet; and he was twelve feet below the top of the vault. And all day long, around and about the base of St. Prisca's Tower the heavy traffic of one of the great waterside streets groaned and screeched and murmured, continually pierced by the shouts and oaths of men, until such a dull, dead, loud tumult reared itself against the walls of the tower that no single human voice could by any possibility be, in the daytime, heard without from where he now sat. By night things would not improve. If he happened to be on a level with the door leading from the tower into the lane, he could, no doubt, hear the footfall of the infrequent policeman. But here, thirty feet down, and with the concave shield of the vault between him and the doorway, and the massive door between him and the lane, it would be insanity to expect he could hear so slight a sound. There, it is true, dangled the rope through the hole. He could read the last chapter in the life of Lionel Crawford by the aid of that rope. Would someone else, years, ay perhaps a century hence, be able to read the last chapter of his life by the aid of what would then remain of that rope? He saw how it had been with the dead old man. During his (Lavirotte's) absence, Crawford's pickaxe had struck upon the roof of the vault. Crawford then felt that the labours of his life were at an end. While he (Lavirotte) was sleeping, the old man must have worked like a giant. They had found the floor above the vault a few days ago. Now, here was hard against the steel pick the very stone that kept the treasure from the old man's eyes. He could see Crawford stoop in the dim light of the lantern, lean over his pick, grovel under his shovel, panting, praying, sweating, until a large space of the stonework of the roof had been cleared. Then he could see the ardent, eager, tremulous haste of the old man as, bit by bit, he picked out the mortar from between the stones, until at last he had freed one stone, and succeeded in getting it out of the bed in which it had lain for centuries. To enlarge the orifice was a matter of no great labour or time. He simply put his arm through the hole, and swung a sledgehammer against the roof-stones until he had loosed them. Then he removed them one by one, making the opening big enough to allow him to descend. When all was ready for going down he went up to one of the lofts and fetched a rope, tied one end of this rope to the foot of the ladder that dipped into the pit, or to several of the larger stones, or to the handles of one of the baskets filled with earth-to something which would more than counterpoise his weight. Then, taking the lantern with him, and the hopes of years and the certainty of success, he had lowered himself into that blind void, in the full belief that within a minute from the time he began the descent he would be in possession of one of the largest treasures ever discovered by man on earth. He had slid down that rope. He had in all likelihood done as he (Lavirotte) had done-swung the lantern hither and thither, round and round, until he had found out that the vault was empty, the treasure had been carried away, or had never been deposited there at all. Then the shock had, no doubt, been too much for the overwrought nature, and the broken spirit of Lionel Crawford had fled. There was no reason to suppose that any vapours of the place had killed him, for while he died the light in the lantern lived. Man has taken the wolf and made a servant of him. Man has taken the fox and made a servant of him. He has called the two when fused, the dog. Man has taken the heat of the sun and the blaze of the volcano, and has called the two when fused, fire. They are both his especial slaves. They are both his especial prerogatives. The dog is his creature. Fire is his creature. Neither exists without him. Either will die where he cannot live. The light of the lantern had outlived Crawford, which showed that he had not died of any exhaled or infiltrated poisonous gas. Shock or exhaustion had killed the old man. What was to kill him, Lavirotte? Hunger? He shuddered and looked around. How horrible the thought of dying of hunger; there, within thirty feet of one of the great ways that, from early to late, was crammed and choked with all kinds of simple or rich or rare or exquisite food, endlessly moving westward for the sustentation of the great city. To die of hunger there, when the freight of one huge van now lumbering by would preserve a whole regiment from starving for a week, would give him enough food for years. To die of hunger there within five hundred yards of five thousand people, not the humblest of whom would refuse to share with him his crust, if that humblest of the upper earth but knew how dire his extremity. To die of hunger there, with money in his pocket, when, within a stone's throw of the door of that tower, there were ten places whose only business was to supply food, not to those who were absolutely hungry in the sense of their approaching death through hunger, but to those who were hungry in the ordinary trivial routine of the day. It seemed horrible. He took down his hands from before his eyes, and looked with horror around him. To be alone without any chance of delivery and in danger of death is bad, seemingly almost the worst condition in which a man could find himself; but to be alone, beyond succour, threatened by death, and in the presence of the already dead, is ten thousand times more appalling. In the former case we know to a certainty, we are assured beyond doubt that we shall die, but the realisation of death is unfixed and' shadowy. We have, ever since we can remember, known we should die. We have seen death, touched death, kissed the dear dead, seen the dead put finally away in the cold envicinage of earth. But few have sat looking at the dead, waiting for death. Here to Lavirotte death was approaching. There to Lavirotte was an exemplar of the dead. As that was, he should be. The whole blue vault of heaven should vanish. The whole sweet plains and dales and hills of earth should be to him no more. No more to him than to that lying there now before him. Hope and love and joy and friendship, and the sweet commune with the great body of sympathetic man, where experience had first developed, expectancy had first arisen, and vague and splendid imaginings had had their hint and form, should all, all evanesce. Here, upon what was to have been the completion of their joint great work, was to be no reward, but their joint death. Of old he had smiled at Crawford's enthusiastic belief in this buried treasure. Then he had come to share Crawford's beliefs and hopes. Now he had come to share Crawford's despair and grave. Out of that vault there was no chance he should ever go alive. The friends whom he had striven to serve would believe him to have been a foolish braggart or a vicious liar. The girl whom he was to wed would know no more of his fate than though a whirlwind had plucked him up and cast him, unseen by man, into the middle of the sea. There would be no record of him when all was over, until, perhaps, a century hence reference would be made somewhere to his bones. It was hotter here than above-ground, much hotter. To die of hunger was, he had always heard, one of the most painful of deaths. Yet here was he caged in by all adversity, destined to end his life for want of such things as no man above-ground need die for lack of, since, when all man's individual enterprise was marred or put away, the State stepped forth and said he shall not die for need of mere bread. It was much hotter here than in the cool broad streets, fenced with places where one could get wholesome food, and get that wholesome food-cheap. The sky was above those streets. He had seen the sky as he drove along the Strand and Fleet Street to-day. The sky was blue, and to wave one's arms upwards towards it was to feel refreshed and cool. Cool-cool-cool. It was getting hotter. As he had come along the Strand that evening he had thought he would stop the cab at one of those many, many shops that hedged the way, and get a drink of something deliciously cool and bitter to take away the thirst which that wine had put upon him. But then he was so eager to reach the tower, he had forborne. Now he was sorry. He had had only two glasses of that wine, and two such small glasses were very little good to quench thirst when one was thirsty. How much better it would have been for him to have taken a whole pint of milk, or cold, clear, sparkling water. If he had had either of these- The place was getting hotter and hotter. He looked at the candle in the lantern. It was burning low. In an hour he should be in the dark. What a pity he had not bought a lemon for a penny. How strange seemed the difference between a penny here and a penny in the Strand or Fleet Street a little while ago. He had gold and silver in his pocket, and although he thought to himself as he drove along, "Why should I give a penny for a lemon, when I know as soon as I get to the tower I shall be able to have as much water as I desire for nothing?" now he was in the tower, and he knew that on one of the lofts above was water more than any man could drink in many days, and yet he would have given all the silver he had in his pocket for one pint. The heat seemed to increase. He stood up. His limbs were scarcely strong enough to support him. His strength had left him wholly. He looked up at the opening over his head. He clutched the rope. He pushed his arms up as far as they would reach, then raised his feet from the ground. The hands would not support the body. The rope slipped through them. He fell awkwardly upon the hard floor of the vault. A subtle dust rose from the floor. It filled his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He rose into a kneeling posture. He pressed his eyelids down with his fingers. He blew the dust from his nose. He thrust out his dry parched tongue, and sought to clear it of the dust with the back of his hand. But his hand, too, was dusty, dry. Oh, if he might have but one wineglassful of the water in the loft above! Just one wineglassful to clear his mouth of the hideous dryness, and the still more hideous dust of two hundred years. Just so much water as would suffice to lave the parched portions of his mouth, and carry away the foul savour. He had heard that to die of hunger was painful. He had heard that to die of thirst was madness. Was he to die of thirst?

CHAPTER II

Thirst! It was an awful death, one of the worst that could befall man. He had read of it, heard of it both aboard ship and on the solid land. He had read how in China they kept malefactors seven or eight days without food or drink, until at last, having become already mad, they died. But in China or the broad plains of the Pacific, to die of thirst was intelligible, tolerable. In China, a man must have done something more or less criminal, according to the notions of the people there; and at sea, one, when first launched without water, might live for a while upon the hope of a sail. But here was he now, absolutely innocent from a criminal point of view, doomed, beyond the hope of any sail, to final extinction by one of the cruellest of deaths. The candle in the lantern would not burn much longer. It would hold out for an hour or so, let him say. He had read that men can live seven or eight days without sleep, seven or eight days without food, seven or eight days without water. If in a warm climate a man had water alone, he might live for thirty days without food. But, supposing he had neither water nor food, there was little or no chance of his surviving the ninth day. What to him, in his present position, was the value of nine days, nine weeks, nine months; nine years? It was more than probable that since the Great Fire, more than two hundred years ago, no one had ever stood in the vault where he sat now. What likelihood was there that for two hundred years to come his peace would be disturbed by anybody, once his death-struggle was over? As he sat there he could see the clothes of the dead man tremble, owing to the vibration of the air caused by the enormous traffic going on overhead. But all the strong life above-ground was now as remote from him, as little allied to help he might expect, as the faintest cloud darkening in the east. Yes, darkening in the east, for now he knew by the sounds around him-the sounds whose volume thinned while its pitch increased-that evening was coming on, and that soon upon the evening would come the night. When it was dead of night, and there was no longer any chance of feeling the touch of man through the vibration of the din, what should he do? Nothing. Whatever might come or go he could do nothing. He was powerless to climb that rope. The excitement which had sustained him at fever pitch for many days was now gone finally. He could no longer hope, not only to save his friends from financial ruin and realise a handsome fortune, but he could no longer hope to do more than drag on the most miserable of existences hour by hour, under conditions the meanest pauper would refuse to accept. Here was he doomed to death, as surely as the condemned man in the condemned cell is doomed to death. In a certain number of days, in a certain number of hours, he must die, as inevitably as the sun must rise and set upon the broad, fair world above him. He had hoped greatly, and laboured greatly, and lost all-all-all. He put his hand in his pocket and felt his knife. Would it not be best to die while he had the companionship of the light, the companionship of the spectacle of the dead? To all intents and purposes he was as dead as though he had been blown from the muzzle of a gun. Morally, there could be no harm in his anticipating by a few hours, a few days of dreary pain, the fate which was inevitably before him. Morally, he did not shrink from the knife. But in him was strong the brute instinct, the love of life for life's sake, for the infinite potentialities of hope that lie hidden in the last ragged remnant of existence. It would, perhaps, be better after all to wait until the lantern burnt out, and he was alone with silence and the dead. Then he should possibly go mad, and it was incredible that the insane could suffer so acutely as he was suffering now. Supposing, then, some fine delirium seized him, and he fancied himself to be Pluto, and that this realm of darkness was his natural element, his habitual haunt; that hunger and thirst were the inevitable accessories of his gloomy rule, and that the dignity of his position was heightened by the fare which Charon had just ferried across the Styx, and now lay there before him! Here the lantern went out. Fool! Fool! Madman! What had he been thinking about? Two things, only two, had been left to him-life and light. Now the latter had been taken away from him for ever. For ever! What an awful phrase! Here was he, who had no more than touched manhood, thrust downward by a malignant chance into a vile dark dungeon to die. Here was he, who ought to be in the full plenitude of his youthful strength, unable to master the brief space hanging there in the darkness above him, between the invisible floor and the imperceptible roof. If in the heat and hurry of that morning, he had been asked to clamber up a rope three times the length of that now hanging above his head, he could have done so with perfect ease. But since he had left the tower that morning the shears of fate had been busy with his hair, and it was now almost as difficult for him to stand unsupported as it would then have been for him to put his back against the wall and shake down the solid foundations of the tower. And yet, what a paltry thing it was to die because he lacked the brute force to urge, himself upwards twelve feet along that rope. It seemed incredible that one so exquisitely formed, so superbly endowed with intelligence and the mastery of all forces that exert themselves on earth, should here lie prone, helpless, before a difficulty which half the brute creation would have regarded as no difficulty at all. It was all over with him. When it was all over with him how would it be with others who had depended upon him? He had promised Mr. O'Donnell a vast sum of money to meet the demands of the bank. Now he could not even lay his body before that troubled man in assurance that he had done his best. He had promised to protect Kempston from ruin. Now he was powerless even to go and explain to Kempston the reason of his failure. To go! All the bitterness of his present situation was wrought up in that one phrase-To go! He could now go nowhere until he went forth for ever. Then the thought of Dora came upon him. Dora, the sweetest, the simplest, the truest, the most confiding sweetheart man ever had. He did not pity her for losing him. He pitied her for losing the lover rather than the man. He knew that all her soul was centred in him, that she waited eagerly for his coming, and grieved when he left; that she lived in one only hope-namely, that some day, and soon, she should leave the solitude of her present ways and come and be with him for ever, to soothe him with her gentle ministerings and cheer him with her anxious hopes. He thought of how she would leave her hand trustingly in his, lean her head trustingly on his bosom, take all he said to her as revealed truth, and, in token of gratitude for his love, hold up her sweet lips for his kisses. He thought of how he in the fickle wavering of his nature had been carried away from her beauty, which was the beauty, the dark beauty of his own folk purified and chastened by a less ardent sun, to the rich, ripe, northern beauty of sunnier hue, although remoter from the sun. He thought how for a while he had swerved from Dora to Nellie, and now he could not understand it, for the glamour was withdrawn, and he saw the unapparelled hearts of both. In Nellie, he saw nothing now but the beauty, the unapproachable beauty which could never be more to him than the irresponsive beauty of a marble statue. In Dora, he now saw beauty that was thoroughly informed with love, and that radiated towards him with all the responsive faculties of inexhaustive sympathy. Her slightest word or gesture, was measured for his regard. Her least syllable was designed to move his lightest mood to pleasant consonance. Her smiles were those which came upon her face merely to show him that all the smiles and joyousness of her nature came forth but to greet and welcome him, and show him that all the smiles and joyousness of her nature were his wholly. What a contrast was here! The sunlight of success, the sunlight of love, the sunlight of heaven, shut out by one foul, crass adventure! The sunlight of life, of young life, of life before it had drunk under the meridian sun, extinguished for ever! "Dominique Lavirotte," he thought, "pray to the merciful God that you may go mad-speedily."

CHAPTER III

Of late Lavirotte's visits to Dora had been so infrequent and irregular that she did not know when to expect him, or when to be surprised that he did not come. Three or four days often passed now without her seeing him. She knew he was busy, exceedingly busy, at St. Prisca's Tower, but busy with what she could not tell. For the past few weeks he had always seemed to her exhausted and taciturn. There was no falling off in his tenderness towards her. He seemed to love her more passionately than ever. But his visits were short, and he said little. It was three days before Lavirotte got O'Donnell's last letter that he visited Dora. On going back from her to the tower he had thrown himself more blindly, more enthusiastically into the work of excavation than ever. In this final effort he had exhausted all his physical resources, with the result that when O'Donnell's letter came his strength was completely wasted, and he was as helpless as a little child. When he had seen Dora last he said he would come again soon-as soon as the important business upon which he was engaged would allow him. But he named no hour, no day. Three days passed and she did not see him or hear from him. That was not unusual. A fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh day might go by without arousing anything stronger than longing and disappointment in her heart. Since she had come back from Ireland she had never passed the threshold of that solitary tower in Porter Street. He had never asked her to come, nor had her grandfather. Dominique had told her that matter of the first moment rested upon his uninterrupted attendance at the tower. He had taken her no further into his confidence. It would, he had said, be time enough to tell her all when all was known, and the hopes which moved him had been realised. Beyond Dora there was nobody else in London who had any distinct knowledge of where Lavirotte and the old man lived. It is true, of course, that they had to get food, but this Crawford always procured and brought into the tower, so that the likelihood was not a soul who supplied them with the necessaries of life had any distinct memory as to where they lived. And even if the people knew where they lived, there was no reason in the world why they should be uneasy because a certain old man who had for some time back bought milk, or bread, or meat of them ceased to come any more. It might be he had left the place. It might be he had taken his custom somewhere else. It might be he was dead in the ordinary and familiar ways of death, which require no extraordinary comment and exact no extraordinary cares. Among the four millions of people who live within the mighty circle called London, it was unlikely one would take the trouble to inquire what had become of Crawford and Lavirotte. Dora naturally would; but her grandfather had visited her in Charterhouse Square only two or three times since they had come back from Ireland. She had no reason to expect a visit from him for one week, two weeks, three weeks. Nor had she any reason to feel uneasy if Dominique did not come to Charterhouse Square for several days. Meanwhile, what was to become of him, Lavirotte? While the candle yet burned he had made out that there was only one door into this vault, and that in the direction of what had formerly been the body of the church. Crawford had told him that the ordinary entrance to that vault had been from the crypt of the church, but that with the destruction of the church the crypt had been destroyed, and now a solid bank of masonry and earth, thirty or forty feet thick, forming the lane at the back, lay between the vault and the cellars of the stores beyond. So long as the candle had lasted he did not seem to have severed his last connection with the earth above; but with the absolute darkness following the failure of the light, all the realities of the tomb, without the merciful absence of suffering, had come upon him. He was buried, and yet free to move. He could walk about, and yet the great tower standing over him was little better than a large headstone on his grave. He had committed no crime, and yet was condemned to die-to die the slowest and most painful of all deaths-by want of water. He had read about the Black Hole of Calcutta. This place was about the size of that terrible dungeon. But how much better it would have been to die there a hundred years ago, surrounded by fellow-men-to die there quickly, in the distance of time between evening and day, instead of dragging out here, hour by hour, minute by minute, the terrible solitude of doom foreclosed. It had been a very hot summer, and now the autumn was at hand. The leaves had taken their earliest shade of yellow, and when the wind blew strongly the sicklier leaves fell. For months in London a fierce sun and a dry air had parched all they touched. Nails in woodwork exposed to the sun had worked loose in their holds. It was the beginning of September, and people, thinking of a calamity which occurred more than two hundred years ago, said it was a mercy London was no longer built of wood; since if it was, and the fire should then break out with a strong wind behind it-as at the time of the Great Fire-what was now called the Great Fire would cease to be so named, and be referred to as the Little Fire compared with the gigantic proportions which a burning wooden London of to-day would afford. Crawford and Lavirotte had, owing to the dryness of the season, been able to get rid of the excavated earth by exposing it to the heat on the roof of the tower, and then casting it, handful by handful, through the embrasures. Although no food ever was sent by tradespeople in the vicinity to the tower, it was generally known by the men who worked there that two men visited the tower. But why they lived there, or what their occupation was, no one knew. They had been seen to come in and go out. That was all. When Lavirotte made up his mind that their means of making away with what they dug was out of proportion with his desire of getting downward, he had resolved to trust the lofts to a greater weight than had hitherto been put upon them; and finding loft number one but slightly cumbered with the larger stones Crawford could not dispose of, he had determined to make it the chief depository of the excavated earth. Over and over again Crawford had told him the lofts were old, the beams rotten. He had ignored the warning, saying if they were to win at all they must win quickly, and that he would risk everything but delay. As the weight of earth upon the first loft increased, it gradually sank in the middle. Lavirotte, cautioned by this, tried to find out the absolute condition of the beams, and to his great joy discovered, after carefully probing them, while slung under them in a loop of line, that they were comparatively sound. But the hotter the weather became, and the greater the burden upon the floor above grew, the more the joists bent downward. He did not care. He was certain the joists would not break. They showed no sign of chipping or splitting, and, in perfect fearlessness, he went on piling up the clay, taking, of course, the ordinary precaution to keep the weight as close as possible to the wall. Gradually, however, owing to the inclination towards the centre, the clay slid slightly inward, and, as it dried in the hot air of August, the inner surface of the clay fell inward. Before leaving the tower, the morning he got O'Donnell's letter, Lavirotte looked anxiously at the floor of the first loft. It was now concave above, convex below. But although he looked long and anxiously, he could see no sign of any of the joists giving way. "They will bend like yew," he said. "They will never break." He had omitted one calculation, that when they had bent to a certain degree, they would be withdrawn to a certain extent from their holdfasts in the wall, and when they were withdrawn from their holdfasts beyond a certain extent, they would slip out. On the morning of the day after Lavirotte was entombed in the vault beneath St. Prisca's Tower, the joists of loft number one had been so far withdrawn from their supports in the wall that the loft was in equilibrio, and ten pounds more pressure on the floor would drag the whole loft down with all its burden into the hole beneath.