The Man with a Shadow

“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?”

End of Volume One

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.”