The Last Call: A Romance (Vol. 2 of 3)

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.

CHAPTER IV

There was no hope. What hope could there be for him, Lavirotte, buried thirty feet below a roaring thoroughfare of London, with no possible means of communication with the upper world, a feebleness so great that it did not allow him to do more than stand, and twelve clear feet in the perpendicular between him and deliverance? Under such circumstances how could anyone hope? What could anyone do? Nothing. Lie down and die. There was space enough to die, and air enough to make dying tedious. That was the worst of it. It was bad enough to die at any time; but to die when young, of no fault of one's own, and when dying happened to be tedious, was almost beyond endurance. And yet what could one do but endure? Nothing. No action was possible. He could not without violence accelerate his death. By no power at his disposal could he retard it. It was dismal to die here, alone, unknown. It was chilling to think that the whole great, bustling world abroad would go on while, from mere hunger, or, still worse, thirst, he was panting out the last faint breaths of life in this hideous darkness here. There was no help for it. Second by second, man lives through his life, is conscious of living; and when the proper time comes, hour by hour he is conscious that, owing to some failure in his internal economy, he is dying. But here was he, Lavirotte, in the full consciousness of the possession of youth and of health, save in so far as health had been exhausted by trying labours and wasting fasts, about to die because there was no pitcher of water from which he might slake his thirst, no crust which could allay the pangs of hunger. Suppose he had been upon the upper, gracious earth, without any of the money now in his pocket. Suppose he had nothing but his youth and youthful elasticity of spirits, even feeble as he now was, he might pick up a living somewhere. He had education and good manners. He might not be able to earn two hundred pounds a year, but he could make a shilling, eighteenpence a day somehow, and on eighteenpence a day a man could live. On eighteenpence a day no man could have splendours or luxuries, but he might have water free from the fountain he had just passed in front of that church in Fleet Street, and water was a great deal. Water was half life, more than half life-water was all life when one was thirsty, as he was now. Then, for eighteenpence a day he might have food, not luxurious or exquisite food; but in his wanderings through London he had seen places where suppers were set forth at threepence-large bowls of boiled eels swimming in appetising gravy, with, to each bowl, a huge junk of milky white bread. He had, when his pocket was comparatively full of money, often seen the wearied artisan or factory "hand" eating with relish eel-soup and bread. He had stood looking in at the windows, and, being full-fed himself, congratulated himself upon the comfort, the luxury, these poor people enjoyed in their savoury evening repast. He had watched them go in tired and dreary, worn out with the mean commonplaces of hard work and insufficient wages. He had watched them sit down in a listless, careless way, as though they cared not whether the next hour brought them death or not. Then, gradually, as the savour of the place penetrated them, and as the eager but delayed appetite became satisfied, he had seen a kind of attenuated conviviality arise between these poor folk, until, at the end, when they had finished their meal, they came forth congratulating themselves upon the cheapness, wholesomeness, and satisfying power of the food they had enjoyed. Now, supposing in a shop he had a basin of this eel-soup, not merely soup, but soup with luscious, succulent flesh of the rich fish swimming about in that delicious liquor, and in his hand a piece of bread larger than one fist, but not quite so large as two, what should he do? First of all he would take the spoon-nay, not the spoon, the bowl itself, and quench his thirst and recruit his failing energies with a long draught out of that humble, yellow bowl. He would drink nearly all the liquid up, for he was parched and dry. Abroad would be the sound of traffic and of human voices, stronger than the sound of traffic now beating against his ears. Then, when he had slaked his thirst he would eat some of the bread-no, the bread was too dry. It would make him thirsty again. He would eat some of the fish, and sop the soft white bread in what remained of the soothing liquor. And when he had finished, he, too, would come forth with a contented mind, and supposing any trace of thirst remained, and he had no money to spend in fantastic ways of allaying thirst, he would go to some public drinking-fountain where there was an unlimited supply of water, and out of the clean white metal cups drink and drink and drink until this horrible dryness of mouth and throat had been finally removed, and he felt cheered and invigorated, and fit to face any difficulty or odds that might be against him. Threepence, and he might enjoy what then seemed to him an unparalleled luxury! But supposing he were free and penniless, there was nothing to prevent him walking to the first drinking-fountain that offered and quenching his thirst, drowning his thirst in its free waters. He could have one, two, three, any number of cups of water, and, while drinking, he could touch his fellow-man, see the blue sky above him, and feel upon his cheek the wind made by passing men and vehicles. Now was he here, young and full of notions of life, with no malady of ordinary growth upon him, merely the victim of an extraordinary accident, destined to die in darkness of thirst, of hunger, of despair. There was no hope for him. Dora knew he spent most of his day in that tower. She did not know why. She would never think of seeking him there. And if she did seek him, if she came and knocked, she would get no reply. She would have no reason to assume more than that he did not hear, being there, or was absent from the place. If she called at his lodgings she would be told all they knew of him, and all they knew of him would not help her forward towards his present condition. He had no means of measuring time. His watch had ceased to beat, he could not tell how long ago. He held it up against his ear. It was silent. This silence seemed to him typical of the final silence which already surrounded Lionel Crawford, and which was now gathering around himself. Through this silence now came a sound, It was the sound of something falling. Something very small falling sharply, as it were, against the dull murmur of the traffic around him. He paused and listened. Then he sprang to his feet, aroused by a tremendous crash which deafened his ears, shook him as though a great gale blew, and filled his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils with some thick air or dust, he knew not which, that for a moment threatened to suffocate him. The loft above had fallen.

CHAPTER V

Before this tremendous noise and confusion had arisen, Lavirotte had no means of ascertaining how time went. He was conscious of certain pauses and beats in the great noise of traffic above his head. The pauses and beats, he assumed, of traffic in the artery of time. But he knew nothing certain. He had kept no record whatever. He was conscious that there had been periods of activity and quiescence, just as he was conscious there had been periods of activity and quiescence in his youth, when he was a child. But, as in the remote past, he had lost all knowledge or record of the numbers of the period. His reason told him he could not have been a fortnight entombed. His memory told him nothing. Abroad in the busy street and lanes close to St. Prisca's Tower, the fall of the lowest loft made a prodigious commotion. First of all, there was the roar of noise accompanying the fall of the floor, and of the tons upon tons of stones and clay lying on the loft. Then out through the narrow windows of the tower sprang shafts of dust, forced furiously outward by the enormous pressure upon the air within. For a moment the tumultuous traffic of Porter Street was stopped, and men who would scarcely have minded the downfall of the warehouse out of which they were loading their vans or carts, stood in silent amazement at the inexplicable, tremendous subsidence which had occurred in the tower. Those men who were familiar with the place were all the more amazed, because they believed there had been no possibility of the old tower uttering such a terrible note as that which had proceeded from it. They believed that the lofts of the tower were merely decayed wood. It was well known that the bells had been long ago removed, and as there had been in that tower, so far as the frequenters of Porter Street knew, nothing which could with profit be stolen, the interest in that tower to them had been less than in the Monument. To people of this class the Monument was something like the rainbow or the Milky Way. It had no effect on life, no influence upon wages, and, consequently, was altogether unworthy of consideration. Rain and hail and snow influenced wages in so far as they impeded work, but not the Monument, not St. Prisca's Tower, not the rainbow, not the Milky Way, controlled work, and therefore each, while it might be a matter for dreamy speculation under the influence of tobacco, was absolutely indifferent to the workmen frequenting Porter Street. Few, except workmen, or those intimately connected with workmen, frequented Porter Street. You might walk there a whole day long with the assurance you would never meet a brougham or a hansom, a beau or a lady. It was as much out of the line of the fashionable world as Kamtchatka. In Nova Zembla, in Patagonia, in Japan, in Florida, you may meet an English nobleman, an English lady, but in the history of Porter Street it is not recorded that any member of the elegant world wandered there for a hundred years. The first effect of the tremendous crash, caused by the falling of the loft, was to paralyse activity for a short time. The next thing was to create discussion as to the possible source and cause of the crash. The third was to induce speculation as to the fate of anyone who might have been in the tower at the time of the catastrophe. Then slowly, very slowly, those around the place began to realise the fact that someone-a man-more than one man-two men it was thought, of late-one man of old-two men of late-an old man some time ago-a young man latterly, had taken up their residence in that tower. This might account for something of the extraordinary in what had taken place. It might have been that owing to something or other done by these men, this enormous explosion-for so it seemed at first-had occurred. They may have had some object in blowing down the tower, or in some other violent onslaught against its integrity. If this were so, in all likelihood they were both now far beyond the range of any danger which could reach them from the tower. After a while, when speculation had become somewhat methodical and less vague, people began to remember that there was nothing particularly dangerous-looking about either of the men who had taken up their residence in the tower, and that in all probability neither of them had been actuated by any criminal designs. There for a while public opinion stood still, and men began to wonder what was the fate of their fellow-men, whose lives had for some time back been associated in their minds with the existence of the tower. Slowly, gradually, the people who were familiar with Porter Street came to think that possibly the two men, whose appearance had been connected in their minds with that place for some time, had been imperilled or destroyed in the fall of the lofts. For to the outside public it had seemed that nothing less than the fall of the lofts could have produced so great a noise as they had heard. They had not taken into account that the beams of dust which shot across the street and lanes had reached no higher than the first loft, and they had not taken care to conclude that since no dust exuded through the higher windows, the likelihood was that the higher lofts were untouched. But after the first sense of arrest and confusion which came upon those within the scope of the sound, there arose the humane idea of rendering succour to the living, if the place contained anyone alive, or tendering services to the dead, supposing both had perished. Then it was anxiously asked, was anything known as to whether either or both men were in the tower. It was well known that the old man now seldom came forth, that the young man brought in the provisions necessary for the two, and that even he was seldom for any long time absent from St. Prisca's. Moment by moment people began to recollect that the old man had not been seen out of the tower for many days, and that the young man had been seen to leave the tower and return. In such a crowded thoroughfare it was almost impossible that the door of the tower could be opened without exciting observation. It was also nearly impossible that any close observation could have been made. It is quite common for a busy man who lives close to a church clock that strikes the hours and the quarters, to hear and yet not heed the striking of the clock; so that you may ask him, after the striking, what has occurred with regard to the hour, and he may have been perfectly unconscious at the time the clock struck that he was observing the sound, and yet when asked he may be able to tell perfectly the time. So it was with these busy folk in Porter Street. They had never regarded those two men with any interest whatever beyond the interest one feels for a friendly but unknown dog, or for a man who is not likely ever in the course of life to have more than a passing interest for the observer. Nevertheless, these busy folk who worked hour by hour, day by day, and the sum of whose life was made up in the sum of their work, and the mere material comforts and pleasures which the result of their work brought them, had insensibly drunk in the fact that two men had entered that tower, that neither of these men had come forth, and that now the likelihood was the lives of either or both of these men had been swallowed up in the catastrophe which had occurred. With men of the class who worked in Porter Street, thought is a very rarely exercised faculty. They have to carry huge weights, heave winches, stow goods, pack and manage vast bales, in the conduct of which the eye for space and the muscle for motion is all that is called into play. Everything else is designed by the foreman, and each man has no more to do with every separate piece of goods than dispose of it as his strength will allow in the position the foreman indicates. Hence men of this class are exceedingly slow to invent, and exceedingly quick to act. When the loft fell, all the men within hearing of the crash immediately ceased to work, and stood stupidly looking on as though they expected some miraculous manifestation. They did not remain inactive because of any disinclination to help, if help were needed, but they had not realised the fact that it was possible their great strength might be of avail to anyone suffering. All at once a woman cried: "My God, the men are buried!" and before the words were well out of her mouth, the crowd seemed to grasp the central idea that underneath the encumbrance of these lofts had been buried two men, who were formed in every way like themselves, and who, although not of their class, were nevertheless entitled to all that could be done for them.