The Man with a Shadow

He was hurrying from the room, but his friend caught his arm.

“No, no; not yet,” he said hurriedly. “I would not raise her hopes too much.”

“Not when she is starving for the merest crumb of comfort? I must tell her.”

“Then be content to say I think she is a trifle better,” whispered North.

“But the climax must have come and gone?”

“I – I am not sure. The case is peculiar. Do as I say, and give her the crumb of comfort of which you spoke. To-morrow, perhaps, I can speak more definitely.”

Hartley Salis left the room, and North once more bent over the bed. His heart beat, his pulses throbbed, and the nerves in his temples seemed to tingle, as he laid his hand upon the burning brow, placed a finger upon the wrist, where the pulse beat so hard and pitifully, while, when he softly raised one of the blue-veined eyelids and gazed at the pupil, he drew back slowly, and shaded the sick girl’s face from the light.

It was growing late, the wind howled mournfully about the house, and from time to time there was a soft, patting noise at the window, as of some one tapping the panes with finger-tips. So high was the wind without that the candle flames were at times wafted to and fro.

Horace North had left the bedside, and was standing with his foot upon the fender, gazing down into the tiny glowing caverns in the fire, where the cinders fell together from time to time with a peculiar musical sound – the sound that strikes a watcher’s ear so strangely in the long hours of the night.

His thoughts were wild, and a tempest was raging in his breast as furious as that without. Love had made its first attack upon a strong man, and the wound was rankling. His brain was confused. He was almost giddy with his new sensations, astonished at the position in which he found himself.

He had been keen enough man of the world to understand Mrs Berens’ tender, shrinking advances, and they had been to him by turns a cause of annoyance and of mirth. But this was a novel and an intense delight. He could not have believed that he could be so moved.

It was a hard fight, but the man of honour won.

“I am her brother’s friend; I am her medical attendant,” he mused; “and neither by word nor look will I betray what passes in my heart till she is well. Then I, too, will lay bare the secret I shall hide.”

“And if she speaks to you again as she spoke a while ago – what then?”

It was as if a soft voice had whispered those words in his ear, and he shivered as he asked himself, “What shall I say?”

“It is all madness,” he cried fiercely – “utter madness. They were the outpourings of her diseased brain. Am I growing into an idiot? Has much study of the occult wonders of our life half turned my brain?”

He walked quickly to the bed, took up the candle, and let its light fall upon the flushed face for a few moments, a face looking so beautifully attractive with its wealth of rich hair tossed away over the white pillow.

He set down the candle, and pressed his hand softly once more upon her burning brow, listening the while to the dull throbbings of his heart.

“Yes, Horace North,” he said at last, “you, the much-praised would-be savant, are as weak as the weakest of your sex, ready to be flattered into a passion by the first sweet words which fall from a woman’s lips. You are strong in knowledge, you have mastered endless difficulties, but you have not mastered Horace North.”

“Fool – fool – fool!” he whispered to himself, after a pause; “with all your study to be so ready to rush to such a belief – ready to forget the trust reposed in you by a true man, by his sweet-minded sister, and, as it were, by you, my poor helpless girl. Spoken in your wild delirium, my child – the emanations of a young girl’s brain, of one whose waking thoughts must, Nature taught, be almost always of who is to be your mate through life. You opened the secret casket of your heart, my child, when helpless and without control, and I have gazed therein with prying eyes. But sleep in peace; they shall be secrets still. Yes,” he added, once more, as he drew steadily back – “delirium: she knows not what she says.”

A sigh from the sleeper made him pause, and then a low, musical laugh rang out, followed by a quick muttering.

Then once more the low laugh was heard, and the muttering became louder – then plainly heard, as if the speaker were in a merry protesting mood.

“You ask so much. Again? Well, I will confess. Yes, I do love you – with all my poor weak heart!”

Chapter Twenty.

A Venerable Old Man

“No, Moredock, I am not going to find more fault, and I am not going to complain to the rector. If you had been a young man, with chances of getting work elsewhere, I should have had you discharged at once.”

“Ay, discharged at once,” said the old man, trying to bite his livid lip with one very yellow old tooth, as he stood in the vestry doorway, looking down at the curate.

“But as you are a venerable old man – ”

“Gently, Parson Salis; a bit old, but not venerable,” grumbled the sexton.

“I shall look over it, and not disturb you for the short time you have to live upon this earth. But – ”

“Now, don’t go on like that, sir, and don’t get talking about little time on earth. I may live a many years.”

“I hope you will, Moredock,” said the curate, taking out the cigar-case he had started at North’s recommendation, and carefully selecting a cigar before replacing it; “and I hope you will bitterly repent. If you had come to me and asked me I would have given you a bottle of wine, but for a trusted servant of the church to take advantage of his position and steal – ”

“On’y borri’d it, sir.”

“I say steal, Moredock. It was a wicked theft,” said Salis sternly. “The wine kept here for sacramental purposes – ”

“But it was only in the cupboard.”

“It was a wicked theft, sir.”

“And it’s poor sweet stuff; no more like the drop o’ port Squire Candlish give me than treacle and water’s like gin.”

“You’re a scoundrelly old reprobate, Moredock.”

“No, I arn’t, parson. I’m a good old sarvant o’ the church. Here have I been ill, as doctor ’ll tell you, and I was took bad in the church o’ Saturday, and you’d ha’ done the same, and took a drop o’ the wine.”

“And you’ve been taken bad Saturday after Saturday for months past, eh, sir?” said the curate sternly.

“Been out of order for a long bit, sir,” grumbled Moredock, shuffling from foot to foot like a scolded schoolboy.

“You old scoundrel!” said the curate, half rising from his seat in the dim vestry, where the surplices and gowns, hung against the old oak panels, seemed like a jury listening to the sexton’s impeachment. “You old scoundrel!” he said again, shaking the cigar at him, as if it were a little staff. “It’s quite a year since I began missing the wine, and I would not – I could not – suspect you. Why, I should as soon have thought that you would rob the alms box.”

The old man started, as if his guilty conscience needed no accuser, for he had more than once helped himself to a silver coin from the box within the south door, telling himself that the alms were for the poor, and that he was one of that extremely large fringe of rags upon civilisation.

“Well,” continued the curate, “I shall to some extent condone this very serious offence, Moredock, for I cannot find it in my heart to prosecute an old man of over ninety; so now go, and I sincerely hope that you will repent.”

“Ay, I’ll repent, parson; but it wouldn’t ha’ been much loss to ha’ been turned out o’ being saxton. Nobody dies now, and no one gets married. How’s Miss Leo?”

“Getting quite strong again.”

“That’s a blessing, sir,” grumbled the old man, who in spirit abused the young girl for defrauding him of certain fees. “Health’s a blessing, sir.”

“Yes, Moredock, it is,” said the curate, rising.

“And I thankye kindly, sir, for looking over the wine, I do. You needn’t lock it up. I won’t touch it again.”

“I shall not lock it up, Moredock. My forgiveness is full. I shall trust you as if this had never occurred.”