The Man with a Shadow

“How childish!” he exclaimed. “Well, no,” he added thoughtfully; “it is a lesson worth learning how, under certain circumstances connected with violence and terrible mental distress, the brain acts as in a case of delirium tremens. I was not fit to come here to-night. Better finish, go home, and sleep – and forget,” he added softly, “if I can.

“I must be going mad,” he exclaimed the next moment; and, making an effort over himself, he sat down upon the edge of the stone slab to try and think out consistently the mental trouble which kept attacking him.

“It cannot be that,” he said, at last. “I am perfectly cool and consistent; I know everything about me. I can go right back through my experiments to the beginning, analyse every thought and feeling, and yet I cannot master this idea.”

He sat thinking and gazing at the body by his side, with its form grotesquely marked through the covering sheet.

“It is getting the better of me,” he said aloud, “and I must not give way. Lunacy is often the development of one idea, while, in other respects, the patient is compos mentis. No, no; a lunatic could not feel as I do. I am too calm and self-contained, and yet here it is. Great Heaven! is it possible that I could have arrested the ethereal, the spiritual, part of this man – have retained his essence here, while the body is going back to decay?”

He stood staring down at the slab from which he had started, his eyes dilated, and a wild look of horror in his countenance, till once more the teachings of his scientific education combined with the man’s strong common-sense to bring calm matter-of-fact reasoning to bear.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s time I went home to bed; and to-morrow I’ll ask old Benson to come over and look after my patients while I go to the seaside and look after myself. I want bodily and mental rest. Here, old chap, wake up!”

Moredock started to his feet and stared at the doctor, for he had been rudely awakened by a heavy slap on the back, while North in turn shrank back and stared at the sexton, as if astounded at what had taken place – an act so foreign to his ordinary way.

“You shouldn’t do that, doctor,” grumbled the old man, rubbing his shoulder in a testy way. “Works is a bit shaky, and you jar ’em up.”

“I – I beg your pardon, Moredock,” stammered North confusedly.

“Oh, it don’t matter much, doctor, only I was in a beautiful sleep, and dreaming I’d gone to see my Dally as was living in a great house – quite the lady, and the man going to give me a glass o’ something when you hit me on the back and woke me. Done?”

“Yes. Help me,” said North hastily. “The experiment is at an end.”

“Well, I arn’t sorry, doctor. I arn’t sorry for some things. Hey! but you have been busy clearing up. Quite done, then?”

“Yes, quite done. We’ll leave everything as it should be to-night.”

“Mornin’, you mean, doctor. Well, all right.”

The ghastly task was quickly performed, the old man displaying a surprising activity as he replaced the ornamental coffin-lid and screws, after which the place seemed to have resumed its former state.

“No one won’t come to see whether the lead coffin’s soddered down, eh, doctor?” chuckled the old man, after giving the heavy casket a final thrust with his shoulder to get it exactly in its place. “They don’t do that only when the coroner’s set to work, and people think there’s been poisoning.”

“No, old chap,” cried North, slapping the sexton on the shoulder in a jocular way. “Here, have a drop of brandy. After me; I’d rather drink first.”

Moredock stared again as the doctor produced a second flask from his pocket, poured some spirit gurgling out into the flattened silver cup, and tossed it off.

“That’s good brandy, old man. Stunning. Here you are.”

“Doctor’s glad he’s finished his job,” laughed the sexton. “No wonder. I wouldn’t ha’ been a patticary for no money. Thankye, sir. Hah! that’s good stuff. That goes into your finger-ends; but that other stuff’s best: goes right to the roots of your hair and into your toes. Rare stuff; good brandy.”

“Yes, you old toper,” cried North; and then he seemed to drag his hand down just as he was raising it to slap the old man once more upon the shoulder.

“Toper, eh, doctor? No; I like a drop now and then, just to do a man good. He was a toper – Squire Luke, yonder.”

“Yes,” said North slowly, as he poured out some more brandy and tossed it off. “The poor fellow used to drink.”

“Hi – hi – hi!” chuckled Moredock. “Yes; they say he used to drink, doctor. Job’s done, eh?”

He stared hard at the flask, and in so peculiar a manner that North poured out some more.

“Here, have another drop, old chap,” he cried; “it’ll warm you up.”

“Thankye, doctor, thankye. Hah! yes; it’s good stuff. Does you good too. Makes you cheery like, and free. Why, doctor, I didn’t know you could be so hearty; you keep a man like me a long ways off in general. What’s the matter – not well?”

“Eh?” said North, speaking strangely. “I’m not well, Moredock. I’ll get out of this stifling place.”

“Stifling? Nay, it’s not stifling; you only say so because you’re done. Here, let me carry the tool bag, as you may say.”

The bag was heavy, for packed within it was the lamp as well as the doctor’s bottles, and such instruments as he had not put in his pocket.

“Looks precious queer,” muttered the old man, going to and unfastening the door.

“Ready, sir?”

North did not answer, but followed the sexton, after a hurried glance round.

“It’s all right, sir; nothing left,” muttered Moredock, extinguishing the candle in his lanthorn. “Why, any one would think he was growing skeered. Brandy upsets some, and does others good.”

The old man closed the massive door of the mausoleum, and locked the gates of the iron railing, and as he did so, North uttered a low sigh full of relief, as if with the shutting up of the grim receptacle certain troublous feelings had been dismissed, and a strange haunting sensation had gone.

“S’pose you’d like me to take the bag on to my place, doctor, and bring it up to the Manor House to-night?”

“Yes, I should,” said North hastily; “I’ll talk to you then, Moredock. I’ll – ”

He shuddered, and in place of parting at once from the old man, he kept close to his side, and followed him into his cottage, where he sat down while the old sexton drew the thin curtain over the casement and struck a light.

“Why, doctor,” he said, looking wonderingly at the white, scared face before him; “you’d better go home and mix yourself a dose. You’ve got something coming on.”

“Yes,” said North, with a ghastly smile; “I’m afraid I have something coming on. No – no! Nonsense! I’m tired. Not quite got over my fall. I shall be better soon.”

The old sexton shook his head and went to his locked-up chest, in which, with a good deal of rattling of keys, he deposited the doctor’s bag. He was in the act of shutting the heavy lid, when something made him turn to where he had left his companion seated, and he stared in amazement, for the chair was tenantless!

He had not heard North start from his seat and literally rush out of the cottage, as if pursued by some invisible force.

Volume Two – Chapter Twenty Three.

“My Dear North!”

“No, sir, he isn’t at home,” said Mrs Milt, trying to smile at the curate, but only succeeding in producing two icy wrinkles – one on either side of her lips. “Some one ill, Mrs Milt?”

“Well, really, sir, I can’t say. Master shut himself in his study last thing – as he will persist in ruining his health and his pocket in lamps and candles – and I went to bed as usual, although mortally in dread of fire, for master is so careless with a light. Then I s’pose some one must have come in the night and fetched him. His breakfast has been waiting hours, and – oh, here he comes!”

For at that moment North came round the end of the house, having entered his garden right at the bottom by the meadow, his dew-wet boots and the dust upon his trousers showing that he must have been walking far.

“Breakfast’s quite ready, sir,” said Mrs Milt austerely, as soon as North came within hearing.

“Yes – yes,” he said impatiently, as he waved her away. “Ah, Salis! Come in.”