Had old Mr. Septimus Lingard a soul too, a soul that troubled him
maybe, a soul that had its moving memories, and its immortal
aspirations? Yes, somewhere hidden in that strange legal document of a
body, there was evidently a soul. Mr. Lingard had a soul!

But wait a moment, here was an addition of the old man's own! The
passage quoted had been of death and its possible significance, and it
was just a sigh, a fear, the old man had breathed after it: _How high
has the winding-sheet encompassed my own bosom_!

Solemn as were the words in themselves, they seemed doubly so in that
lonely room; and Henry was glad to lock the door and return to the
comparatively living world downstairs. But from that moment old Mr.
Lingard was transfigured in his eyes. Beneath all the sternness of his
exterior, the grimness of the business interests which seemed to absorb
him, Henry had discovered the blessed human spring. And he came too to
wear a certain pathos and sanctity in Henry's eyes, as he remembered how
old a man he was, and that secretly all this time, while he seemed so
busy with this public company and another, he was quietly preparing to
die. From this moment tasks done for him came to have a certain joy in
them. For his sake, as it were, he began to understand how you might
take a pride in doing well something that, in your opinion, was not
worth doing; and one day when the old man, well satisfied with some work
he had done, patted him kindly on the back and said, "We'll make a
business man of you after all!" the tears started to his eyes, and for a
moment he almost hoped that they would.