The Man with a Shadow

“Back so soon?” she said; and then with her heart beating frightfully, and a look of agony in her face that came as a revelation to Salis, she stretched out her hands to her brother, her fingers twitching spasmodically, as she uttered a wild cry, which brought him to her feet.

“Mary! My dear child! Be calm!” he panted, for he was evidently out of breath.

“Speak!” she cried. “Have pity on my helplessness. I am chained here by my affliction, and depend on you alone. Don’t torture me – don’t keep me in suspense. Horace North?”

“Yes; only be calm, dear.”

“You are temporising,” cried the poor girl wildly, as she clung to his hands and began to kiss them passionately. “Hartley – Hartley, for pity’s sake, speak!”

“If you will only be calm,” he cried angrily. “This is hysterical madness. You are hindering me when I come back to you for help and advice.”

Mary uttered a piteous moan, and set her teeth, as she clung still to her brother’s hands.

“Tell me the worst,” she implored. “I can bear that more easily than this suspense.”

Salis gazed at his sister more wildly, as he, for the first time, read, in her anguished looks and broken words, the secret which she had kept so well.

For the moment he was as one in a nightmare. He strove to speak, but something seemed to keep him dumb, while all the time she kept on moaning appeal after appeal to him to tell her all.

“I thought little of it then,” he said; “but now the idea seems to have grown stronger and more terrible. Words he used which I did not heed then seem to bear a terrible import now, and I cannot help thinking that something ought to be done.”

“You saw him just now?” said Mary hastily.

“No, but I spoke with Mrs Milt, and she is terribly uneasy. Mary, dear, for your own sake, spare me this.”

“No,” said the suffering woman sternly; “you can tell me nothing so bad as I shall imagine if you are silent. Tell me the very worst. He is dead?”

“No, no, no!” cried Salis; “but I fear for him. He is not in a condition to be left, and yet, strive how I may, I cannot get him to listen to reason.”

“But you have not seen him again?”

“No; he is now shut up in the library, and Mrs Milt has a terrible account of his eccentricity; she fears that he is going – ”

“No, no, no! Don’t say that,” cried Mary; “it is too horrible. But quick! What are you going to do?”

“Drive over to King’s Hampton, take the train to Lowcaster, and come back with two of the principal physicians.”

“No,” said Mary sharply. “Telegraph at once to Mr Delton. Tell him his friend North is in urgent need of his help. He believes in North, and looks upon him almost as a son. His advice will be worth that of a dozen Lowcaster physicians.”

“Mary, you’re a pearl among women,” cried Salis.

“Don’t stop to speak,” she cried, with an energy that startled him. “Your friend’s life – his reason – is in peril. Go!”

“My friend; the man that poor broken-spirited creature loves,” muttered Salis, as he hurried away, and was soon after urging his hired pony to a gallop.

“Oh, what moles we men are!” he said, as the hedges and trees flew by him. “But who could have suspected her of caring for him? Lying crushed and broken there, and no one suspecting the agonies she must have suffered.”

Realising by slow degrees the depth of his sister’s love for North, and the life she must have led, Salis urged the pony on to reach King’s Hampton at last, and hurry to the post-office, to despatch his telegram beseeching the old doctor to send a reply; and for this he determined to sit down and wait, but only to pace the coffee-room of the nearest hotel, with his mind a chaos of bewildering ideas, as he wondered what was to be the end of this new trouble which had come upon his house.

Volume Three – Chapter Twelve.

A Stormy Interview

The old housekeeper had indeed a long series of eccentricities to record to Salis, speaking freely to him, as to her master’s firmest friend, though what she knew and had diminished in intensity more than magnified was but a tithe of that which had occurred.

For it had been a terrible period for the young doctor. Half wrecked by the mental and bodily injuries he had received, the course he had pursued in shutting himself up alone, dreading to be surprised in suddenly uttering some wild speech or committing some vagary, had intensified the abnormal condition of his brain till his sufferings seemed to grow unbearable.

One hour he felt at peace, the next he had none, and asked himself what he was to do to escape the terrible unseen presence that was always with him, never addressing him, but, as it were, making his body the medium by which he communicated with the world.

“I can bear it no longer,” North said to himself at last. “There must be rest for me if I cannot shake it off.”

He shuddered slightly as he paced his darkened room, knowing instinctively how many steps to take in each direction, and what to avoid. For Death, familiar as it was to him, was not without its terrors.

He was so young, and, as it seemed now, the hopes of the past arose once more before him, the faith in the prizes of fame which he would win, his love for Leo, and the promises which had led him on.

But so sure as these thoughts assumed form there was another to rise like a dense cloud of horror and cover everything, as he felt that, come what might, he would be haunted ever by this unseen presence – the spirit which he had freed from its envelope of clay – and this could have but one end.

He felt that he had tried everything. He had forced himself to calmness, and marked out course after course of treatment such as he would have prescribed to some poor wretch who had consulted him in such a case; and when all was still at night he had stolen down to his surgery, and mingled for his own use sedatives and tonics, but all to no effect. If anything, his malady increased.

Two days before Salis had gone over to King’s Hampton, Cousin Thompson came once more to his bedroom door, to beg that he would come down and see his friend.

“It is impossible,” he had replied hoarsely.

“But he has come down again, vastly improved by your treatment; and without you he feels that he would be a dying man. Come, you cannot refuse.”

North held out for a time, and at last gave way, more from the desire of getting rid of his cousin and the patient than from any wish to repeat his advice.

“I’ll come this time,” he said; “but this visit must be final. There are hundreds of doctors who can advise the man better than I.”

“Doubtless,” said Cousin Thompson; “but that is not the point. There is not one in any of those hundreds in whom my poor friend will have the faith that he has in you.”

The argument was unanswerable.

“I will be down in a few minutes,” North said; and trying hard to master the nervous feeling which came over him, and wondering whether he could get through the interview without some absurd utterance, he drew aside the blind to accustom his eyes once more to the light.

It was some moments before he could face it, and then he looked despairingly at the wan, haggard face before him in the glass.

He shrank from it at first, but looked again and again, without the feeling of horror that had pervaded him before. His countenance was changed, and terribly wan and drawn; eyes and cheeks were sunken, so that the former seemed set in deep, cavernous holes; but as he gazed he did not seem to dread the sound of mocking laughter, or of some strange utterance which he could not control, and proceeded to make himself somewhat more presentable for those below.

“And they come to me for help,” he muttered, “who want it more than any man on earth.”

As he opened his door he frowned, for he caught sight of the old housekeeper hastily beating a retreat, and a shiver ran through him as he felt how he was watched.

But he went on down into the hall, where a low murmur of voices told him that his visitors were in the drawing-room.

What followed was a matter of a minute or two.

He entered the room quickly, his coming having been unheard; and Cousin Thompson, who was speaking earnestly to the two gentlemen from town, started quickly away and then said hastily: