The Man with a Shadow

“You puzzle me, doctor,” said Moredock; “you do, indeed. I’ve been a-going to church all my life, and I’ve listened to hundreds o’ sarmons, and I know all about the Good Samaritan and duty towards your neighbour; but how, after what happened, you could tie him up and sticking-plaster him, and then go next mornin’ to see how he was, caps me.”

“Never mind about that, Moredock,” said North quickly, and looking restlessly about the cottage interior. “I think we may feel satisfied he did not revive while he was in the mausoleum.”

“Not he. I thought he was never going to ’vive any more. So you mean to go there again?”

“Yes, Moredock – yes,” said North, with his eyes moving wildly round. “I must go on now. I have lost too much time as it is.”

“All right, doctor. If you say as we’ll go, that’s enough.”

“You feel convinced that no one has observed us?”

“Yes, I’m convinced, as you call it, of that, doctor. I’ve kept the secret too well. And so you mean to go again?”

“Go again, man! Yes. Did I not tell you so?” cried North, with an angry excitement in his voice. “Yes, to-night.”

“To-night, eh? Very well, doctor. I’ll be there; but you’ll take a drop o’ that cordle with you. There won’t be no need for me to watch the vestry to-night.”

North made an impatient gesture, and walked to the door as if to go, but turned sharply, and walked back to where the sexton was seated smoking.

“What was it you said?” he asked, in an absent way.

“What did I ask, doctor?”

“Yes, yes, man,” cried North impatiently, as he kept glancing towards the door.

“Oh, ’bout that there cordle, doctor. I haven’t been quite right since that night, and I thought a drop or two might do me good, and – ”

Moredock stopped in the middle of his sentence, and sat staring, for North had suddenly turned and walked straight out of the place.

“Doctor’s not got over his tumble that night,” muttered the old man. “He’s shook, that’s what’s the matter with him; and he haven’t got his thinking tackle quite put right again. It’s worried him, too, about that there gel. Well, she won’t come to the vestry to-night, and there’s no fear o’ Squire Tom coming, for he won’t be out o’ bed, they say, for days. Miss won’t want to go and sit there all by herself wi’out she thinks as the doctor would do now. A baggage! – that’s what she is – a baggage! and looking all the time so smooth and good. Wonder what parson would say if he knowed of her goings on?”

The old man sat musing and smoking for an hour, and then, by way of preparation for his night work, he let his head go down upon his chest, and sat sleeping in front of his fire for hours.

As the evening wore on, Joe Chegg came sauntering by, and then returned, so as to get a casual glance in at the window. Then he had another, and satisfied at last that the old man was fast asleep, he stood watching him till he saw by the failing fire that the sleeper was about to awaken, when he drew back, and softly and thoughtfully went away.

Just before twelve the old man took his lanthorn, went to the door, and looked out; stood for a while, and then, with an activity not to be expected of one of his years, he walked sharply and silently in the direction of the churchyard, keeping a keen lookout for interlopers. But his walk beneath the glittering stars was uninterrupted, and he made his way silently to the back of the church, looked about him, and, seeing no one, unlocked the iron gate and the mausoleum door, and then turned to wait.

But as he turned, he started, for a hand was laid upon his shoulder.

“Why, doctor, I didn’t hear you come.”

“I was sitting there waiting,” said North. “Quick!”

He pressed the door, and looked right into the dark place, where he had not been since Tom Candlish was lifted out and placed by the roadside on the night of the encounter; while now it seemed to the sexton that his companion was beset by a feverish energy and desire to continue his task.

“All right, doctor – all right! Wait till I get a light,” grumbled the old man, after he had closed the door. “That’s it. There you are. Brought the cordle?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t want me, and I’m a bit tired and wearied out to-night. Ha, that’s it! Good stuff, doctor. Thankye, doctor. Hah-h-h!”

He tossed off the potent dram that was handed to him, and gave back the silver cup, which fitted upon the end of the doctor’s little flask. Then, quite as a matter of habit, he went to the ledge where he had so often sat, and, after muttering for a few minutes, fell off into an easy sleep.

North had stood motionless after lighting his shaded lamp, evidently deep in thought; but a heavy breathing from the corner of the solemn place roused him, and he lifted the lanthorn, crossed to the sleeper, and held the light to his face.

“Asleep!” he muttered, returning to the great stone slab, and setting down the light. “What’s that?” he cried sharply; and, starting back, he looked wildly about the place.

“How absurd!” he muttered, after satisfying himself that they were alone. “Want of sleep. My nerves are shaken, and this incessant pain seems too much for me. But I will succeed. She shall see my success, and learn that I am not a man to be cast aside and crushed by her. Yes, I will succeed. It cannot be too late.”

He seized the white sheet that covered the subject of his study, but instead of drawing it gently aside, as was his wont, he gave it a sharp snatch, lifted the lamp, and gazed down, thinking of what steps he should take next.

“So many days since,” he muttered; “so many days. It cannot be too late. Now to make up for lost time.”

He turned up his cuffs, took a small bottle from where it stood upon the slab, and was in the act of removing the stopper, when he uttered a cry of horror, and darted towards the door, dropping the bottle upon the sawdust which covered the stone floor, as he clapped his hands to his face, and then reeled against the wall, to stand clinging to the stone-work of one of the niches.

There was a light there on the stone slab, but it was as nothing to the light which had flashed in, as it were, to his brain; for he had come there that night to finish his task, and it was as though that task were already complete, and that which he had been waiting to achieve was ready to his hand, but in a way which he had never anticipated, and the revelation seemed more than he could bear.

Volume Two – Chapter Twenty Two.

Something Coming On

Horace North stood in the old mausoleum for a while, appalled by the thoughts that flooded his soul. The silence was awful. At other times, wrapped up in his pursuit, the presence of the dead had been as nothing to him; the fact that he was surrounded by the grisly relics of generations of the Candlishes had not troubled him in the least. There was a professional air about everything he did, and he watched results with the keen eagerness that a chemist watches his experiments.

But now, all at once, a change seemed to have come over him. He had lost the spur given to him by his love for Leo; but, after fighting hard with his misery, he had conquered, and forced himself to go on with his task solely in the cause of science, and a strange awakening had been the result.

He had brought all the knowledge he could collect to bear upon his task, and had reached a certain point. Then he had been checked, and the whole of his work had been thrown out of gear; so that now, when he had taken it up again, feverishly determined to carry it on to the end, he found himself face to face with a horror which at first his mind could hardly conceive.

He stood listening, and for a time it seemed that he was alone – that Moredock had been overcome by the close he had administered; but by degrees his stunned senses took in the fact that the old man was breathing calmly and peacefully, and that he was not alone with the appalling thought which troubled him.

“I ought not to have gone on with it now,” he said, at last. “I am mentally and bodily shaken, and unfit to undertake such a task. I’m ready to imagine all manner of follies – weak as a frightened child. How idiotic to fancy that!”

For the time being his mental strength was in statu quo, and, striding forward, he made up his mind to clear away the apparatus of instruments and chemicals, rouse up Moredock to help restore everything to its normal state, and continue his experiment when a fresh opportunity occurred.

He glanced down at the uncovered body, and then, turning to his various preparations, he replaced instruments in cases, bottles in the black bag, and nothing now remained to do but to lay Luke Candlish where he might continue his long sleep with his fathers.

“Poor wretch!” muttered North; “if that miserable interruption had not taken place, you might have been the means of doing more good to posterity than all your predecessors could have achieved had they lived on right until now.

“Yes,” he continued, as he made a final examination previous to awakening Moredock, “I had succeeded up to then. Decay was arrested, and Nature seemed to be working on my side to prove that I was right. Now I must begin again, for it is as if I had done nothing. No, no; the toil has not been thrown away. I have learned more than I think for; I have – ”

He shrank back, and looked sharply round, as if puzzled. He turned his gaze upon the sleeping figure before him, and saw only too plainly that the decay he had held at defiance for a time had now definitely set in, and yet how he could not tell, for mentally all seemed misty and obscure. Something seemed to suggest that after all he had arrested the progress of death.

“Pish! What strange fancy is upon me now?” he exclaimed angrily.

But even as he said this in a low whisper, he felt a consciousness that in some manner his work had not been in vain. There before him, surely enough, lay the remains of Luke Candlish, passing back into the elements of which they were composed – ashes to ashes, dust to dust; but the man did not seem to him to be dead. There was a feeling almost like oppression troubling him and making him feel that he had succeeded – that he had stayed the flight of the hale, strong man, but not wholly; that his work had partially been successful, and that had he continued, a complete triumph would have been the result.

“Absurd!” he muttered, jerking the cloth over the subject of his experiment, and going towards Moredock, but only to spin round, as if he had been arrested by a hand clapped suddenly upon his shoulder.

He stared sharply round the vault again and then laughed aloud.