Nothing could have been quieter than the marriage at Rathclare. There was no display of any kind, no wedding-breakfast, no rejoicings. The men employed by Mr. O'Donnell had proposed subscribing and giving the bride a present, until they were told that anything of the kind would be inopportune. The presents which private friends sent were, out of respect to the few people who called, set forth in the dining-room. But, upon the whole, neither before nor after the marriage, was there anything connected with it which could give the people of Rathclare the least pretence for uncharitableness. The bride and bridegroom drove away from the house early in the afternoon, with the intention of spending a short time on the Continent, and then returning to Rathclare. When they had gone, not more than half-a-dozen guests remained at O'Donnell's. Among these was Lavirotte, who had promised to stay with the old folk that night. There was a very quiet dinner, and before one o'clock the old man and Lavirotte found themselves alone in the dining-room. "I have been waiting for this opportunity, sir," said the Frenchman, "when we should be quiet and alone, with no chance of interruption, in order that I might speak to you about the matter which is nearest my heart." The old man looked at Lavirotte gratefully, and said: "You are alluding to the property you spoke to me of?" "Yes," said Lavirotte. "I am still in no position to talk freely of the matter; but this much I can tell you, that since I saw you last I have made it my business to ascertain as closely as possible our chances of success." "And they are?" said O'Donnell, leaning forward and looking at his guest eagerly. "Excellent, most excellent. Nothing could be better. Ever since I left Glengowra I have devoted all my time to their furtherance, and I have come to the conclusion that, although I cannot now say with certainty the exact amount, no more than a few months need pass before you shall be in command of any sum of money you may require." "Thank God!" cried the old man, throwing himself back in his chair, clasping his hands, and looking upwards. "You do not know what a blessed relief your words are to me; for no longer ago than this morning I had news from Dublin to the effect that there is to be another and an immediate call, and that this will be at least double the former one." "How soon is this likely to come upon you? How soon shall you want the money for this call?" "Within a few weeks. What distresses me most of all is other news which accompanies what I have already told you, to the effect that although the first demand had been very freely met, the general impression, the conviction, was that the second demand would be met by very few indeed in full, and that all of those who met it in part, and many of those who met it in full, would be absolutely ruined." "I do not exactly know the full meaning of what you tell me," said Lavirotte. "Will you explain?" "Nothing is simpler. Let us say a man held one one-hundred pound share. When the bank stopped, having lost all its capital and a vast quantity of the money lent to it and deposited in it, this man's hundred pounds was then not only gone, but the rest of his fortune also (the bank being unlimited) if the whole of his fortune was necessary to pay the last penny to the lenders and depositors." "That's very hard," said Lavirotte. "Very hard--cruel. Now, the first call, let us say of fifty pounds, means that the man who held the one-hundred pound share is called upon to pay fifty pounds towards indemnifying the depositors and lenders." "So that if the man pays the fifty he loses a hundred and fifty?" "Exactly. Now, if the second call is double the first, he will, when he has paid that----" "He will have lost two hundred and fifty pounds on his original hundred pound speculation." "Quite so. You see that. Let us say nine out of ten can pay the fifty pounds, but not more than six out of ten can pay the hundred. Now, my correspondent in Dublin gives me to understand that nothing like six out of ten will be able to meet the second call, and that, in fact, the solvent shareholders after the second call will be only rich men; so that there will be no need for proceeding further gradually, and, in all likelihood, the third call will be for a very large sum indeed per share, two hundred and fifty, five hundred, or a thousand pounds perhaps." "Mr. O'Donnell, you will not consider me impertinent if I ask you, in strict confidence, whether you think you will be able to pay this second call?" "Yes, I think I shall be able to pay the second call, but as far as I can see it will drain me to the utmost. My credit is now, of course, gone, and I am obliged to pay cash, so that after paying the hundred pound call I shall have barely sufficient capital to keep the business going. The business consists, of course, of the good-will, the plant, the stock, and the debts. All this put together would not go nearly meeting a third call of any such magnitude as I have spoken of." "And the result of that would be to you?" "That I should be a bankrupt and a pauper." "Well," said Lavirotte, going over and taking the old man by the hand, "meet the second at all hazards." He drew himself up then to his full height, raised his right hand to heaven, saying: "And I swear to you, Mr. O'Donnell, that I will answer for the third." The merchant rose from his chair and took his hand. "There is no use in attempting to thank a man for a service such as you promise. I will not try to say anything; I could not if I would." "Be seated, sir, I beg you, be seated. Think no more of the matter. Rely on me. Leave the rest to me. And now that we have settled the matter" (both men had sat down) "I wish you to answer me a question which affects a friend of mine, and is connected with Vernon's bank. My friend is a minor. Her affairs were in the hands of trustees. Her trustees--or, I believe, trustee, more accurately--invested the money in Vernon's bank, shares I presume. Now, my friend has heard nothing from the bank about these calls. How is that?" "She has nothing to do with the matter. She has lost all her money." "Yes; but what about the calls?" "The trustee has to pay those." "Out of his own pocket?" "Yes, out of his own pocket." "Supposing him to be an honest man, and that he did everything for the best?" "Supposing him to be an honest man, and that he did everything for the best." "What an infamous injustice! What an infamous injustice to a well-meaning, honest man!" "An infamous injustice you may say, supposing the man to be honest. He gets your friend's money on trust to invest. Here is a highly respectable banking firm which will pay him, according to the market value of its shares, six or seven per cent. He is anxious his ward should have the most interest he can safely get for her money. He invests, and is ruined." Lavirotte started to his feet, threw his arms above his head wildly, and, walking up and down the room, excitedly cried: "By heavens, Mr. O'Donnell, he shall not be ruined, I will see that he shall not be ruined. He did me a bad turn once, or rather he refused to do me a good one when he could; but I shall protect him against this execrable injustice, this infamous law." Mr. O'Donnell did not feel himself justified in asking any questions, and there was no further conversation of any interest that night. Next morning Lavirotte set off for London, arrived in due time, called upon Dora first, and related to her all the interesting particulars of the marriage. She had but a reflected interest in the bride and bridegroom, and, therefore, the subject was soon exhausted. Before this he had, of course, told her of the large fortune into which he hoped to come soon. They had, upon one or two occasions, talked over the loss of her money; but he had always tossed the matter to the winds as of no consequence when confronted with the mighty results he was expecting. Now he had a matter of another kind to speak about. He asked her pointedly, elaborately, how upon the whole Kempston had behaved towards her. She said that no one could have been more kind and considerate, and that the only occasion upon which she had any reason to complain of him, was when he refused to let Lavirotte have the money or her to marry him. Then Lavirotte informed her that not only was her money swallowed up in the Vernon whirlpool, but that Kempston, her trustee, would inevitably be ruined owing to his connection with her and it. The girl was horrified. Then Lavirotte told her that he had sworn this man should not be ruined, and that he meant to keep his oath. She clung to him and kissed him, and praised him with all the dearest words of her heart, for his noble, his sublime generosity, and after some time he left her to see Crawford. He found the old man more busy, more energetic, more enthusiastic, more hopeful than ever. Lavirotte told him that since he had seen him last additional reason had arisen for haste. He did not go into detail. He merely said that business called him hence for a few hours; but that on his return he would throw into the work twice the energy he had previously displayed. "Then," said the old man, "you are digging at once to find a treasure and a grave." "But in what a glorious cause!" cried Lavirotte, in an excited voice. "The cause of honour, of justice, of reparation. When I have secured my dear friends from the disaster which now threatens them, and when I have paid back the prudent parsimony of this attorney a thousandfold, why should I not die! I shall never do a better thing in all my life, and when a man has done his best he ought to go, lest, peradventure, he live to do his worst, and die in doing it." "And Dora?" The look of exaltation faded from the face of Lavirotte. "And Dora, my darling Dora! My own sweet, trusting girl!" he cried, tenderly. "I do not understand myself; I am two beings; I have two natures. To myself I would be merciless to gain this final glory of assuaging the wrong I have done my friends, and in act forgiving the injury this man Kempston has done to me. But Dora! Dora! Then something else comes in, my other self, my weaker self, my better self, perhaps. Any weakness is better than the tyranny of glory, than the lust of applause." He was silent for a while. The old man had listened to him without a word. "Now, I must go and see that attorney, and show him that I am not the interested adventurer he took me for, and that if a little time ago I was willing to borrow a few paltry pounds, which in a year or two should in any case be my own, I am now willing to throw down thousands for him who never did me personally a service, simply because he was kind and good to the woman whom I love." Lavirotte left the tower.
After the marriage and the going back of Lavirotte to London, all things went on regularly in their old course. Before the return of the bride and bridegroom from their Continental tour, Mr. O'Donnell paid the second call. He had done so with extreme difficulty. It had taken every penny he could lay his hand upon; and, indeed, the way in which he was obliged to draw in money from those who owed it to him threatened to be of serious injury to his business. Still he fought on bravely. The heart of the old man was stirred within him. His dogged nature was aroused to activity such as it had never known, even in his younger days. James O'Donnell was at bay, and he would show the world what James O'Donnell could do when his case seemed desperate. Day and night he worked. His energy appeared inextinguishable. His resources seemed to increase with the demands upon them. His vision was clear, his judgment infallible, his instincts true, his premonitions verified. Rathclare stood still and watched this miracle of new-born strength in the old man. People knew well enough that he had called in his last farthing, and that now, outside the four walls of his business place, he had not a hundred pounds in the world, beyond the book debts, which to claim hastily would be finally to destroy the business. When his son came back from abroad, he was more amazed than anyone else. The slow, plodding manner of late years had completely disappeared from his father, and instead he encountered the indomitable energy, the insatiable thirst for activity, and a judgment clearer and sounder than he had ever found in any other man. The newly-married couple took a small house in Glengowra. Every day Eugene went in to business, and every day returned to Glengowra in time for dinner. While Eugene was away his father had written to him, saying he had paid the second call, and that, with the help of Lavirotte, he would be able to pay the third, which would, he assumed, be the last. In Dublin the opinion was that the third call would certainly be the last. The determination was to wind the whole thing up with the greatest possible despatch, and hide its infamy away for ever. It was possible for accountants, who had charge of the affair, to go over the share book, and place opposite every name, which had hitherto proved solvent, a very close approximation of the resources at the disposal of each; and it gradually oozed out that there would be no use in having a call of anything less than five hundred pounds, for if they had two hundred and fifty now, and another two hundred and fifty later on, they would simply have the same names recurring, since the men who could meet the two hundred and fifty could meet the five. In Rathclare, at last, people began to believe that someone must have promised to sustain O'Donnell at the final moment, for all agreed that unless the old man had lost his reason, there could be now no doubt he was certain to tide over the affair. He had made arrangements one, two, three years in advance. He was in treaty for purchasing adjoining buildings with a view to incorporating them in his vast store. He had ordered new lighters to be laid down for him in the dockyard. Up to this he had always refused the mayoralty of the town, although he had for many years been a member of the corporation. Now he allowed himself to be put forward as a candidate for next year. No bankrupt could be mayor. From first to last he had never once sought any communication with the Vernons. Now he seemed to think his old friend not so great a criminal as at one time he appeared. Although he could not entirely forgive him, he spoke less harshly of him than of old, and was heard even to say once: "Poor devil, how do we know how he was dragged into it?" Meanwhile, Lionel Crawford and Dominique Lavirotte wrought with the energy of desperate men in the basement of St. Prisca's Tower. By day they dug and delved, Lavirotte, being younger, carrying the fruit of their labour to the top of the tower. The slow and cautious mode of procedure adopted by the old man was too tedious for the fiery-hearted Frenchman. "I'll risk the lofts," cried Lavirotte, "if I were to perish beneath them. You may stick to your old plan if you like, but it is too slow for me. It would kill me. It would drive me mad, when I think of my friends over there, when I think of the approaching ruin which we may avert." Mr. Kempston was a bachelor, easy-going and somewhat indolent, when the first news reached him that Vernon and Son had closed their doors. Hour after hour, and day after day, brought him nothing but a tedious aggravation of the worst reports, and gradually it dawned upon him that now, when he was no longer young, he was a ruined man. Harrington, the father of Dora, and he had been friends in youth. Hence his trusteeship to the will. Hence his guardianship of Dora. He had always been a man of excellent business capacity; but outside his business he was inclined to be lazy, self-indulgent, extravagant. When younger, he was greatly devoted to what is called fun. Now he liked rich living, good company, good clubs, and, if the truth might be told, a great deal more rather high whist than was good for his pocket. He paid the first "call" of the Vernon bank with a groan. "When I have paid the second," he said, "I shall still have my profession--that is," he said bitterly, "if they don't make a bankrupt of me." Then Lavirotte came with his amazing promise of indemnity, and his still more amazing forgiveness. The elderly attorney groaned, smiled, shook his head, swore, thanked Lavirotte profusely, said he'd take the help if it came, grasped Lavirotte by the hand, swore again, gave Lavirotte an excellent luncheon at his club, shook hands and said good-bye to Lavirotte, and then swore mutely the whole way from his club back to his office. When the time for paying the second instalment arrived, he paid it without a murmur, and then swore no more. He had nothing to swear by. Day by day Lionel Crawford and Dominique Lavirotte tore at the earth and clay and stones at the base of St. Prisca's Tower. Day by day they grew nearer and nearer to the goal. Crawford had told Lavirotte what that goal would be like. He knew every stone of that tower from his old readings. They were to keep now to the centre, as near as possible, driving the pick down as far as ever they could. "If it meets anything hard," said the old man, "strike again with the pick a few inches all round, and if it meets anything hard all round, that's it--that's the conical roof of the vault. In that vault the chests have now lain buried more than two hundred years." At last, the accountants who had charge of the affairs of Vernon and Son issued the last call. It was for five hundred pounds per share. Eugene wrote to Lavirotte, and asked him, for God's sake, to be quick. Lavirotte scarcely ate or slept. For days now he did not go near Dora, even. He was wasted, haggard, thin. He had long ago given up living at his rooms off the Strand. He and Lionel Crawford spent all their time now in the tower. Once in two or three days he went to his lodgings to see if there were letters. The morning he went and found Eugene's there he felt faint, and he had no sooner sat down in a chair than the fact that he had at last worn out all his energies came upon him. If death threatened him there he could not have arisen. For two nights he had not slept, and he had eaten little for the two days. The lofts had already shown unmistakable signs of impatience at the weight they bore. Any moment they might come crushing down upon the two workers, burying Crawford and himself and the stupendous treasure for ever, since outside that tower no living being knew what they sought. The sight of Eugene's letter, and the sense that not only were his labours not completed, but that they must be redoubled, overcame him. He called for wine. They brought him some. He drank a little, and felt stronger. He thought if he drank a little more he might be able to get back to the tower before his drowsiness overcame him. He drank a little more wine, and, before he found himself sufficiently invigorated to move, he fell asleep in the chair. He did not awake for some hours. Then he felt refreshed and stronger. "It was a shame for me," he said, "to fall asleep, but the sleep has done me good. Now to work once more." He drove to within a hundred yards of St. Prisca's Tower, and there alighted. He walked up to the massive oak door, opened it with his key, and entered the tower. The darkness was Cimmerian. He could see absolutely nothing. "Crawford must be aloft." He looked down. His eye detected something unusual below. In the middle of the impenetrable gloom there was what seemed to him a phosphorescent glow, covering about two square feet of the bottom of the pit. The lantern by which they worked was not to be seen. What could this glow of light be? The lantern, when below, looked like a distinct yellow patch surrounded by circles of light, decreasing in brightness as they receded from the lantern. But the light below was perfectly equal. It was not more intense at the centre than at the edges, and, contrary to the case of the lantern, there was no dark patch in the centre. Lavirotte descended the ladder in uneasy amazement, and approached the glowing space. It was not until within a few feet of it he discovered what it was. A hole! At the bottom, twelve feet below, an uneven floor. Through the hole dangled a rope. On the floor below, the lantern by which Crawford and he worked. Close to the lamp, the prostrate form of a man. Lavirotte seized the rope and descended. This was the vault in which they had hidden the treasure, unmistakably. He stooped and raised the lantern, casting the light slowly all round him, so that when he had finished his inspection nothing that was in that vault could be unknown to him. Then he knelt down beside the prostrate form of the man, and turned the face upward. Lionel Crawford! There was no other way of getting out of that vault but by climbing up that rope. He tried to climb that rope and failed. His strength was gone. He sat down on the floor of the vault, and covered his face with his hands. With the exception of himself, the lantern, and the corpse of Lionel Crawford, the vault was empty!
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 tothatlying 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?
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."
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.