He was sitting bolt upright in bed when they arrived, and Felix set her down gently into the armchair which had remained there waiting for her return. They had propped him up on pillows and in the soft gas-light his eyes glittered and his hollow cheeks seemed to be as dark in their depths as the eyes themselves. But in spite of his obvious difficulty in breathing, in spite of the clear evidence of his failing life he was somehow filled with an energy that flowed out to encompass them all. There lingered behind the shell of the old creature who sat against the pillows the figure of the vigorous powerful man he had been in his prime, and also the handsome green-eyed boy who had worked and sweated and struggled to build himself and his hospital out of the same unpromising gutter materials.
And further back still there stood another boy, the child who had been born in the filth and stench of Seven Dials, who had been pick-pocket, burglar, liar and thief before he was ten years old, yet had had the wit and the strength and the sheer granite will to create from such beginnings the life he wanted for himself.
Amy looked at him and saw it all, even though she had never known him in those days. She saw the young heart that had been there and her own lifted in acknowledgement of it and she raised her chin and smiled at him, a brilliant glittering happy smile and she said softly, ‘I wanted to thank you. I wanted to thank you for all you did for me, and to tell you how sorry I am for all that went wrong — I never meant to hurt you, I truly did not. Please, can you believe that?’
The old eyes looked back at her, green and narrow and very cold and slowly and tremulously the dry. lips lifted and parted and the chin came up and he said in a clear, thin voice, ‘Of course I do! Of course I do. I always knew you loved me best. I always knew.’
He closed his eyes and lifted his chin once more almost as though he was triumphing over some secret doubt that once had filled him, and again his lips quirked and moved into a smile.
‘Dear Lilith,’ he whispered. ‘I always knew — I always did —’
He did not open his eyes again, but died an hour later with his wife and his daughters and some of his grandchildren clustered round him. They were weeping, but he was not. He was still smiling.
On June 30th 1867 the case of Lucas Versus Lackland was brought before Judge The Right Honourable Sir James Plaisted Wilde at Doctors’ Commons in Westminster Hall, Dr Bayford being the Registrar and George Thomas Billings the Crier. It was immediately discharged, on the grounds that the plaintiff had disappeared and the defendant had died, so there was no case to argue or answer. Costs were awarded against the absent plaintiff, for which his solicitors, Henry and Horace Wormold, were held responsible.
And on July 22nd 1867, the day that Probate was granted to the Will of Abel Lackland, Apothecary and Surgeon of London, deceased — a Will that left the considerable property of which he died possessed to his widow, Maria Lackland — Miss Amy Lucas of Boston was married to Mr Felix Laurence, physician of London, at All Souls’ Church, Langham Place.
As Mr Laurence and Miss Lucas both agreed, it seemed a fitting day.
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Fleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Claire Rayner