Short Fiction · The Spotted Dog (3/3) (3/4)

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 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 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 doorstep.

“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 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, deathlike 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 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 fireplace was strewn with half-burnt sheets of 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 wastepaper⁠—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 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 tomorrow,” 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 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 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 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 schoolboy 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 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 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 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!