The Man with a Shadow

Chapter Twenty Seven.

The Doctor’s Opportunity

About midday, on his return from visiting his patients, North looked rather black.

Perhaps it was the reflection from the sleek, superfine garments of his cousin, for that gentleman was walking slowly up and down on the lawn in front of the old Manor House, and in no way adding to the attractions of the quaintly-cut, well-kept place. “You here, Thompson!”

“Yes, my dear Horace; I had to come down on business to-day, and I thought you would give me a bit of lunch before I went on.”

“To see Mrs Berens?”

“Well – er – perhaps I may give her a call; but my business was with – dear me, how strange that you should take any interest in social matters that have nothing to do with the body!”

“Am I such a very eccentric man, then, that I should study my profession hard?”

“Not at all, my dear fellow – not at all. I study mine hard, my dear Horace. Left almost penniless, it was a necessity, and I have, I am proud to say, been very successful, and am practically independent. But my visit here to-day was not to see the handsome widow – there, don’t blush, old fellow.”

“Don’t be a fool, Thompson,” said the doctor testily. “Now, then, what were you going to say?”

“I was going to tell you that my visit would be to the Hall.”

“To the Hall?” cried North excitedly. “Yes. Here, what’s the matter?” said Cousin Thompson excitedly. “He hasn’t given me the slip?”

“If you mean Sir Luke Candlish – ”

“No,” said Thompson harshly; “I don’t mean Luke Candlish. Here, why don’t you speak, man? Has Tom Candlish gone?”

“No; he is at the Hall; but – ”

“That’s all right, then,” said Cousin Thompson, drawing a breath of relief. “Oh, I see, you’ve been over.”

“Yes, I have been over.”

“And he is shamming illness again because he expected me to-day. But it won’t do, Horace – it won’t do. Come, now, he’s quite well, isn’t he? Don’t turn against your own cousin, and back him up.”

“Tom Candlish is as well as a man can be under such horrible circumstances. His brother is dead.”

“Phew!” whistled the lawyer – a long-drawn, low, deep whistle. “Then he is now Sir Thomas Candlish.”

“Yes, and if you have lent him money at usury it will be all right.”

“At usury!” snarled the lawyer; “don’t you be so fond of using that word. I must make money, and lending at interest is fair enough.”

“Where are you going?”

“Going down to the Hall at once.”

“You said you had come to lunch.”

“Hang your lunch! I must see Tom Candlish.”

“Impossible. It would not be decent to go on business now.”

“Decent or indecent, I must see him at once.”

“My cousin; and how cordially I do dislike him!” muttered the doctor, as he watched the sleek, black back of his visitor as he went down towards the gate. “To go at a time like this! Well, thank goodness, I am not a money-grubber.”

He sat down in his study, and took a manuscript book from his drawer. Over this book he began to pore, but the words danced before his eyes, and he could think of nothing but Luke Candlish, the hale, strong man, suddenly cut off by accident, and of Leo’s words bidding him distinguish himself.

“No rest last night,” he said, throwing the book back into the drawer; “I can’t read, or think, or do anything.”

“Are you ready for your lunch, sir?” said Mrs Milt. “Mr Thompson will join you, I suppose?”

“No; but I dare say he will come to dinner.”

“Ho! Lunch is quite ready, sir,” said the old lady, in an ill-used tone, as the doctor moved towards the door.

“Never mind; I can’t eat to-day. Going out,” said North hastily; and he hurriedly left the house, and passed down the village, where every one was discussing the accident at the Hall, and longed to question him, if such a thing could have been ventured upon.

He had not seen Moredock for two or three days, and almost immediately, to avoid the torture of his thoughts, and what was rapidly approaching the stage of a great temptation, he walked to the old sexton’s cottage.

The door was ajar, and he tapped, but there was no reply, and the only sound within was the regular beat of the great clock as the heavy pendulum swung to and fro.

“Asleep, perhaps,” he said to himself, and pushing the door, he walked in; but the big arm-chair was vacant, and after a glance round, in which his eyes rested for a moment upon the old carved oak coffer, the doctor went slowly out, and, without considering which way he should go, walked straight on towards the church.

A sound, as of something falling, made him raise his eyes, and he saw that the chancel door was open.

“What’s Salis doing there?” he said to himself; and, entering the gate, he walked up the steps to the open doorway.

“You here, Salis?” he said.

“Nay, sir,” came back, in a harsh, familiar tone; “parson’s been and gone. Things is looking up again, doctor.”

“Looking up?”

“Ay. Been trebble quiet lately: only a bit of a child as hasn’t been chrissen’ this month past. Horrible healthy place, Dook’s Hampton.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Doing? Here? Why, haven’t you heard as the young squire – why, of course you have; you were called up this morning. Well, he’s got to be buried, hasn’t he?”

“Buried? Yes, of course,” said the doctor thoughtfully.

“Yes; he’s got to be buried,” said Moredock. “Some says it arn’t decent and like Christians, as ought to be buried tight in the brown earth. But they don’t know, doctor. They can’t tell what a lot o’ water there is in the ground o’ winters. I know, and I know what ’matics is. Nobody knows how damp that there churchyard is better than I do, doctor.”

North stood looking at the sexton, but his thoughts were far away.

“Ay, Squire Luke ’ll be buried in the morslem – he’ll lie with his fathers, as Scripter says; and when I die, which won’t be this twenty year, that’s how I’d like to lie with my fathers. Stretched out nice and warm in his lead coffin, that’s how he’s going to be, and put on a nice dry shelf. Ay, it’s a nasty damp old churchyard, doctor, and well they folk in Church Row know it. He, he, he! their wells is allus full o’ nice clean water, but I allus goes to the fur pump.”

North did not seem to hear a word, but stood holding on by the rail of the Candlish tomb, thinking. His head swam with the dazzling light that blazed into his understanding. He was confused, and full of wonder, hesitation, and doubt.

Luke Candlish – dead – the mausoleum – the hale, hearty young man – struck down.

“Good heavens!” he ejaculated; “has my opportunity come – at last?”

Volume Two – Chapter One.

The First Baronet’s Tomb

As Horace North battled with his thoughts, Moredock chuckled and went on:

“They drinks it, doctor, the idiots, and all the time they say it’s horrid to eat a bit o’ churchyard mutton. Squire Luke didn’t care, though. He wouldn’t have said no to a bit o’ mutton ’cause it was pastured in the churchyard. But he has to send they sheep right t’other side o’ the county to sell ’em. Folks ’bout here wouldn’t touch a bit o’ churchyard mutton. Such stuff! Keeps the graves nibbled off clean and neat. Don’t hurt they. Mutton’s sweet enough, and so they goes on drinking the water all round the yard, as is piled up with dead folk as I’ve buried, and my father and grandfather before me. Ay, they drinks the water, but wouldn’t touch the mutton; they’d rather starve. Damp churchyard; and squire ’ll lay snug on his dry shelf, and me – some day – in the cold, wet ground.”

“It all comes to the same thing, Moredock,” said the doctor, rousing himself.

“May be, doctor: may be as you’re right,” said the old man, shaking his head solemnly – “‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;’ but there’s a deal o’ differ, and it takes a deal longer to come to that. I say, doctor, ’member what I said to you ’bout squire drinking himself to death?” said the old man, stooping to pick up a crowbar that he had let fall a few minutes before.

“Yes,” said North, gazing thoughtfully at the old man, and hardly realising what he said.

“More strange things happen than what I told you. I knowed it wouldn’t be long before he drank himself to death.”

“The squire died from an accident, Moredock,” said the doctor sternly.

“Ay, but what made the accident?” said the old man, with a chuckle. “Was it steps, was it bottles, was it corks? Nay, it were something inside the bottle. Drop o’ brandy’s good, but when you gets too much, it’s poison.”

The doctor did not speak, only stood just inside the chancel door, gazing fixedly at the old man, with his thoughts wandering from the mausoleum built by the vestry, to the squire’s remains lying up at the Hall, and his strange schemes, by which humanity might, perhaps, be spared much pain and care.

“I’ve took the last o’ that there physic, doctor.”

“Perhaps be of incalculable benefit to coming generations,” mused the doctor, as he went on dreaming, standing there with one hand resting on the tomb rail, and seeming to look through the present in the shape of the crabbed and gnarled old sexton to a future where all was health and strength.

“It was rare stuff, doctor,” continued old Moredock, with a chuckle, as he glanced sidewise at the dreaming man. “Mussy me! a drop o’ that allus seemed to make my toes tingle, and it went right up into the roots of my hair.”

“Why not – why not try?” It seemed a great experiment, but how little as compared with what had been done of old! “Why not – why not try?”

“You’ll let me have another bottle, doctor. It does me a sight of good.”

“I must. It seems like fate urging me on. It is for her – to do something to distinguish myself. Here is the opportunity, and I hesitate.”

“One day I took a dose, doctor, and I thought it was trubble nasty, but five minutes after I said to myself, this beats brandy from the inn. They sperrets don’t make your fingers go cricking and your toes tingle. Rare stuff, doctor. What’s he gone to sleep?”

“Yes, I will do it; but how? No; it is impossible.”

“You’ll let me have another bottle o’ that there physic, doctor, won’t yer?”

“Physic, Moredock? Physic?” said the doctor, starting. “You don’t require more now.”

“Ah! but I do. See what a lot o’ good last lot did me. I’m a deal stronger than I used to were. You’ll let me have another bottle, doctor?”

“Well, well, I’ll see. Terrible job this, Moredock.”

“Ay, it be trubble job, doctor. I’m going to open the morslem. Say, doctor, ’member what I said ’bout my Dally. Be strange thing if she got to be missus up at Hall now. Why, he be dreaming like again,” he added to himself.

“Remember what?” said the doctor. “Your Dally – the Rectory maid?”

“Ay, doctor; seems as if them as is maids may be missuses. Who knows, eh?”

“Who knows, you old wretch!” cried the doctor angrily. “You look sharply after your grandchild, for fear trouble should come.”

“All right, doctor, I will. I’ll look out, and I’m not going to quarrel with you. I arn’t forgot what you did when I cut my hand with the spade.”

“And suffered from blood poisoning, eh? Ah! I saved your life then, Moredock.”

“And you will again, won’t you, doctor?” said the old man smoothly; “for I’ve a deal to do yet. Don’t be jealous, doctor. If my gal gets to be my lady you shall ’tend her. You’re a clever one, doctor; but there, I must go on, for I’ve a deal to do.”

The old man gave the doctor a ghoul-like smile, and went off to busy himself, doing nothing apparently, though he was busier than might have been supposed; while, as if unable to tear himself away, Horace North stood holding on to the railing of the tomb in the chancel – the tomb where the founder of the family lay – the next in descent of the line of baronets having preferred to build the noble mausoleum on the opposite side, where it looked like a handsome chapel of the fine old ecclesiastical structure; and it would be there that the last dead baronet would in a few days lie.

North gazed straight before him, as he held on by that metal rail of the Candlish tomb, with a dark plunge before him, and beyond that, after battling with the waters of discovery, a wonderland opening out, wherein he was about to explore, to find fame and win the woman he told himself he loved, and who, he believed, loved him as dearly in return. And yet all the while, as, from time to time, Moredock looked in with a smile, after pottering about the entrance to the mausoleum, whose keys he held, the doctor seemed to be staring at the Candlish tomb, which took up so much of the chancel, just as its occupant had taken up space when he was alive.

It was a curious structure, that tomb, curious as the railings which the doctor held. The edifice resembled nothing so much as an ornamental, extremely cramped, four-post bedstead, built in marble, with the palisade to keep the vulgar from coming too close to the stony effigy of the great Sir Wyckeley Candlish, Baronet, of the days of good King James; the more especially that, in company with his wife, Dame Candlish, he had apparently gone to bed with all his clothes on. He had been, unless the sculptor’s chisel had lied, a man like a bull-headed butcher who had married a cook, and she was represented in her puffs and furbelows, and he in his stuffed breeches and rosetted shoes, feathered cap, and short cape. His feet had the appearance of ornaments, not members for use; and his lady’s hands, joined in prayer, were like small gloves, as they lay there side by side. A pair of ornaments upon which their posterity might gaze what time they came to read the eulogy in Latin carved in a panel of the stone bedstead, with arms and escutcheons, and mottoes and puffs that were not true, after the fashion of the time.

It was a curious specimen of old-world vanity, so large that it seemed as if it were the principal object of the place – an idol altar, with its gods, about which the chancel had been built for protection.

“What trash!” exclaimed North, when he suddenly seemed to awaken to the object at which he gazed, “as if a Candlish was ever of any value in this world – ever did one good or virtuous act.”

“Any good in this world? Why not at last. Everything seems to point to it. Even the worst of the race might do some good. I’ll hesitate no longer. He can’t refuse me.”

“Doctor! Been asleep?”

“Asleep, man? No. Never more thoroughly awake.”

“I asked you to let me have another bottle of that – the tingling stuff. It done me a mort o’ good.”

“Yes, yes,” said North huskily. “You shall have some more, old man!”

“Ay; that’s right,” said the old fellow, giving his hands a rub. “Couldn’t tell me what it is, could you, so as I might get some of it myself without troubling you?”

“What is it? One of my secrets, Moredock, just as you have yours. Trust me, and you shall have as much as is for your good.”

“Hah! that’s right, doctor; that’s right,” chuckled the old fellow horribly. “I mean to live a long time yet, and may as well do it comfortably. I’ll come round to your surgery to-night, and – hist!” he whispered; “is there anything I can bring?”

“No – no,” said the doctor hastily; “but, Moredock, I do want you to do something for me.”

“Eh? I do something for you, doctor? It isn’t money, is it?”

“Money, man? No; I’ll tell you what I want.”

“Hist! parson!” said the old man, giving him a nudge, as a familiar step was heard upon the gravel path of the churchyard; and, directly after, the tall figure of the curate darkened the door.

“Ah! North; you here? Having a look round?”

“Yes,” said the doctor; “and a chat with my old patient.”

“Ah!” said the curate, shaking his head at the sexton.

“Doctor’s going to let me have another bottle of the stuff as I told you ’bout, sir.”

“Indeed!” said Salis, rather gruffly. “I wish you could do without so many bottles of stuff, Moredock. But, there, I wanted to see you about the preparations.”

“Don’t you trouble yourself about that, sir,” grumbled the old fellow. “It ain’t the first time a Candlish has died, and I’ve put things ready. That’ll be all right, sir. That’s my business. You shan’t have no cause to complain.”

“Be a little extra particular about the church and the yard, Moredock; and, above all, have those sheep out. Mr May writes me word that he shall come down from town on purpose to read the service over Sir Luke, and he hates to see sheep in the churchyard.”

“’Member what I said, doctor?” chuckled the old man. “But what am I to do, sir? Churchwarden Sir Luke had ’em put there; who’s to order ’em to be took away?”

“I will!” said the curate sharply. “There, that will do.”

Moredock trudged away.

“I’m afraid I have a morbid antipathy to that old man,” said the curate.

“Ah, he’s a character.”

“Yes, and a bad one, too: I’m glad we have his grandchild away from him.”

“So am I, and if I were you, Salis, I’d keep a sharp look-out on the girl.”

“Yes, of course!” said the curate impatiently. “But you heard what I said about May coming down?”

“Yes; but what does that matter?”

“Only a long series of lectures to me, which makes my blood boil. I’ve had another unpleasantly, too. I went up to the Hall to see – Sir Thomas – I suppose I must call him now, and he sent me out an insolent message; at least, I thought it so.”

“Never mind, old fellow; we all have our troubles.”

“Not going to trouble,” said the curate quietly. “Coming my way?”

“No. I want another word with Moredock, and then I’m going home.”

“Ah, he’s a queer old fellow,” said the curate, glancing towards the sexton as he went round the chancel with a crowbar over his shoulder, the old man turning to give both a cunning, magpie-like look, as he went out of sight.

The two friends parted, and then North followed the sexton.

“I don’t like it,” he muttered. “Salis would be horrified; he would never forgive me; and yet to win the sister’s, I am risking the brother’s love. Oh, but it is more than that,” he said excitedly; “far more than that. It is in the service of science and of humanity at large. I can’t help it. I must – I will!”

There was tremendous emphasis on that “I will!” and, as if now fully resolved, he went to where the old sexton was scraping and chopping about the entrance of the mausoleum, and sometimes stooping to drag out a luxuriant weed.

“Ah, doctor,” he said; “back again? Parson’s a bit hard on me. I hope he hasn’t been running me down.”

“Nonsense! No. Look here, Moredock, you have always expressed a desire to serve me?”

“Yes, doctor; of course.”

“Then, look here,” said North, bending down towards the old man. “I want you to – ”

He finished his speech in a low voice by the old man’s ear.

“You want what?” was the reply.

The doctor whispered to him again more earnestly than before.

The old man let the crowbar fall to his side, his jaw dropped, and he stood in a stooping position, staring.

“You want me to do that, doctor?” he whispered, with a tremble in his voice.

“Yes, I want your help in this.”

“No, no, doctor; I couldn’t indeed!”

“You could, Moredock; and you will!”

The old man shivered.

“I’ve done a deal,” he whispered; “and I’ve seen a deal; but oh, doctor! don’t ask me to do this.”

“I don’t ask you,” said the doctor sternly. “I only say you must – you shall!”

Volume Two – Chapter Two.

“A Fine Berrin’.”

Boom!

The big tenor bell made the louvres rattle in the tower windows, as it sent forth its sonorous note to announce far and wide that the Candlish mausoleum was open and ready to receive the remains of the last owner of the title conferred by King James.

Boom! again: so heavy and deep a sound that it seemed to strike the cottage windows and rebound like a wave, to go quivering off upon the wind and collect the people from far and near.

It was early yet, but one little trim-looking body was astir, in the person of Dally Watlock, who stole out of the back door at the Rectory, made her way into the meadows, hurried down to the river, and along behind the Manor House, and so reached the churchyard at the back, where the vestry door in the north-east corner was easily accessible.

Dally walked and ran, looking sharply from side to side to see if she were noticed, gave a quick glance at the steps leading down to the mausoleum, and longed to peep in, but refrained, and darted in at the vestry door.

She knew the vestry would be empty, for she had left the curate at home, and she had heard that the Reverend Maurice May would not be over for nearly an hour, so there was an excellent chance for her to obtain the seat she wished, and see the funeral, and to that end she had come.

“How tiresome!” she cried, giving the oaken door in the corner of the vestry an angry thump. “Locked!”

Boom! went the big bell.

“And gran’fa’s got the key,” she cried. “I’ll make him give it to me.”

Dally looked a good deal like a big black rabbit turned by a fairy into a girl, as she darted out of the vestry, and dodged in and out among the tombstones and old vaults on her way round to the big west door in the tower, from which came another loud boom to fly quivering away upon the air.

The big door was ajar, and yielded readily to her touch as she thrust, and the next minute she had entered, and pushed it to, to stand facing old Moredock, as he dragged away at the rope and brought forth from the big tenor another heavy boom.

The old man was in his shirt-sleeves, and his coat hung up behind the door, with his cap above it, so that it bore a strong resemblance to the old sexton, who had apparently been bringing his existence to an end by means of a piece of rope belonging to a bell.

“Hallo, Dally!” said the old man, giving her one of his ghoulish grins, as if proud of the yellow tooth still left; “what have you come for?”

“I want to see squire’s funeral, gran’fa. To get a good place.”

“Ah, I know’d you’d come,” said the old man. “I say, Dally; Sir Tom Candlish, eh? Have you tried how it sounds?”

“What nonsense, gran’fa! and do a-done. You’ll have some one hear you.”