The Man with a Shadow

“Recollect where I am!” cried North with a bitter laugh. “You say that to me, you sacrilegious hound!”

They swayed here and there again, North striving hard to get a hand free to strike a blow, but in vain; and the struggle was one savage wrestle, in which the weaker man seemed to be made the equal of the stronger by the passion in his breast.

Meanwhile Leo Salis, trembling in every limb, crouched in the dark far corner of the vestry, and half lay huddled up, listening to the fierce struggle, too much unnerved to move.

At last, though, the desire to escape – to make her way home – mastered all else, and she made for the nearest point of exit – the door into the churchyard; but though she passed her hand over it again and again, the key was not there. Tom Candlish had it in his pocket, and he was unable to set her free.

She tried to creep past the contending couple to the chancel door, but as she strove for it, Tom Candlish was driven against her, nearly fell, and uttered a savage curse, which drowned her cry of agony, for he had crushed her delicate hand beneath his heel.

She shrank back into the corner again, sobbing with fear: but as the struggle continued she nerved herself once more, and this time rose to her feet and tried the other way, just as Tom Candlish was gaining the mastery, and swung North round so savagely that he struck the wretched girl, and drove her heavily against the wall.

Leo uttered a hoarse gasp, and stretched out her hands to save herself, when her left touched the oaken door leading into the chancel.

This revived her just as her feelings were overcoming her and she was turning faint.

With a quick motion she caught the latch, dragged it up, passed through the opening, and, closing the heavy oaken door, sped along the chancel and south aisle to the big door, unlatched it, and, hardly knowing what she did, passed into the porch, and relocked the door before running down to the lych-gate, round to the meadows, and then breathlessly back to the Rectory garden.

“Safe!” she panted; “safe!” as she reached the rustic summer-house, and climbed rapidly up to gain her room, and, after softly closing the casement, sink down sobbing on the floor, bathed in perspiration, and with her breath coming in sobs. “That idiot will not dare to speak. I hope Tom will half kill him. What an escape! But no one will know.”

At this thought she breathed more freely, in happy ignorance of the fact that Dally was just closing her window, gleefully hoping that there had been a scene.

That scene was over now, for as the big south door closed on Leo the struggle was at its fiercest, and Tom Candlish was getting the worst of the encounter.

“Loose my throat, North!” he cried. “So cursedly ungentlemanly.”

“Yes; I am dealing with a scoundrel, whom Hartley Salis thrashed, and I’ll thrash you too, you dog!”

As he spoke, he dealt with his now freed hand a fierce blow right between Tom Candlish’s eyes, making him stagger back.

But the triumph was momentary, for, rendered savage by the pain, the young squire flung himself upon his adversary, and bore him back as a jingling of a falling key was heard. The wrestling grew wilder and fiercer, and then Horace North felt as if his legs were suddenly enmeshed. He strove to free them, but in vain; and before he could recover the ground he had lost he was flung heavily, his head coming with a crash upon the stone floor, just where the matting did not cover it, and he lay without motion, and made no sound.

“Curse him for a fool! Let him lie there till he comes to,” panted Tom Candlish. “Where’s the key? What a fool! I heard it fall as we struggled. Matches? They went too, and if they didn’t I daren’t light one.”

He felt his way to the chancel door, but in his confusion he could not open it, as Leo had made it fast.

“She’s got away home by now,” muttered Candlish. “Where’s my hat? All right; I put it on the window-ledge. Hah! – yes, that will do.”

He stepped up on the oaken chest beneath the long, narrow window, opened the iron-framed casement, and, squeezing himself through, stood in a bent attitude, holding on for a few moments, and then leaped down into the black darkness.

A dull thud as he came down on the gravel, a crushing blow, followed by another rapidly given; a heavy groan, and then silence.

A minute later a rustling sound as of some one stealing away.

Volume Two – Chapter Fourteen.

“What Have! Done?”

“Where am I?”

No answer. All was pitchy dark, but a pleasant, cool air fanned the speaker’s burning brow.

“Moredock! Are you asleep? The light’s out. What’s the matter? What’s this cloth about my legs?”

There was a rustling sound as Horace North rose to his feet, dragged a fallen surplice from his feet, and began to feel about him in a confused way.

But that was a wall, not the ends of coffins; that was an overturned table, not the stone slab with its hideous burden; and that —

“Oh!”

Horace North reeled against the wall, and rested there as he uttered that piteous groan; for, like a flash of lightning, the ray of memory had shot into his darkened brain, and he saw once more the wretched idol he had worshipped gazing wildly at him with starting eyes – she, the woman he had set upon a pinnacle, grovelling before him in her shame! The moment before, the lady of his frank, honest love; the next moment revealed to him as low in mind, as degraded as some miserable rustic wench, ready to accept the kisses of the first man who called her “dear!”

“Am I going mad?” he groaned. “Poor Salis! Poor Mary Salis! They must never know. And poor me! Fool! blind idiot! But I loved her,” he moaned: “and I thought her so sweet and pure and true – a woman for whom I would have shed my heart’s best blood – a woman for whom I – Pah! I must not stand puling here! Blood? Yes, blood! The brute! He’s strong as a horse.”

He took out a pocket-handkerchief, doubled it, and roughly bandaged his head; for it was bleeding from a cut at the back.

“Clear my brain,” he muttered; “I must not stand here. That place left open! Is Moredock there?”

He felt his way to the door; and, as he stepped cautiously along, his foot kicked against something which jingled on the tiled floor.

He felt about, touched the surplice which had been dragged down and entangled his legs; and, as he snatched it away, the key jingled once more, and he caught it up.

He opened and relocked the door after he had passed out, breathing more freely as he stood in the cool, dark night.

“Moredock!” he whispered. “Are you there?”

There was no reply, but he did not stir; for a curious feeling of confusion attacked him once more, and he put his hand to his head to try and master his thoughts.

“Yes,” he muttered; “of course I must go and close that place up. Even if I go mad, that must not be known.”

He took a few steps instinctively towards the vault, and fell over something in the path, contriving, however, to save himself, so that he only came down upon his hands and knees.

The shock acted like a spell, and brought back his wandering mind.

“Who’s this?” he muttered. “Moredock?”

He passed his hands rapidly about the body before him, lying flat upon its back.

“Tom Candlish!” he ejaculated, as his hands came in contact, the one with a curiously-shaped breast-pin the young squire wore, the other with the bunch of charms and the locket he wore on his chain.

“Good heavens! What have I done? The man is dead!”

North started to his feet, trying hard to collect his wandering ideas, for he was at sea once more. He could not comprehend how Tom Candlish had contrived to get there, till he recalled the window, and at the same time recollected that he had struck at him again and again with all his might.

“Have I killed him?” he muttered; and, suffering still from the blow upon his head, his mental faculties seemed to be quite off their balance. The calm medical man, with his accurate judgment, was no longer there; but one full of wild excitement – one moment bubbling over with delirious joy at having triumphed over his enemy, of whom he had been madly jealous; the next, ready to shrink and tremble at the deed he had done.

He did not – he could not – pause to calculate how it had happened, beyond feeling that he must have beaten his enemy horribly, till he had in his last efforts struck him down, and then crawled out from the window to fall and die. He could not arrange all this in an orderly manner, for he was now seized with a frantic horror of discovery; and the question filled his mind, what was he – a murderer – to do?

Only one idea occurred to him, and that was the natural one that occurs to the most ignorant under the circumstances: he had slain this man, and the penalty was death for death. He did not know that he wanted to live, the shock had been too horrible that night; but he must act – he must do something; and, yielding entirely to his impulses, he bent down, and, with a wonderful effort of nervous force, raised the fallen man, and stood thinking for a few moments.