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Volume Three – Chapter Eleven.
Salis Makes a Discovery
“I cannot interfere, really, my dear Mary – I cannot interfere. Mrs Berens is a friend of yours, and one of my parishioners, but what can I do?”
“She is alone in the world, and in great trouble.”
“But here is a foolish woman; goes and listens to a plausible lawyer, and makes at his suggestion a number of investments, and then repents and comes to the parson.”
“Well, to whom better?” said Mary, smiling.
“For advice over her sins it would be right enough,” said Salis.
“I don’t think Mrs Berens has any. If so, dear, they must be only small ones.”
“But to come to the parson for help on money matters is absurd. This is the third time she has been.”
“Yes, dear.”
“It is not as if the investments had gone wrong.”
“No, dear; she mistrusts Mr Thompson.”
“Perhaps without reason. Let her get the money back, then, at as little loss as she can, and put it in consols.”
“There, you see, you can give good advice, Hartley.”
“Oh, any noodle could give advice like that. It isn’t perfect.”
“No, dear,” said Mary sadly; “for Mrs Berens says that this Mr Thompson tells her it is impossible to withdraw now, and it seems he has been very angry with her – almost threatening.”
“Confound his insolence!”
“He told her she ought not to have invested if she meant to change her mind, and that she is making a fool of him.”
“Impossible!” said Salis sharply. “She might make him a rogue.”
“You will help her, will you not, Hartley?”
“Well, I’ll see what I can do; but I shall be an unfair advocate, for I hate that man.”
“And you will go and see Mr North to-day.”
“Perhaps,” said Salis. “He faithfully promised to send for me when I could be of any use, and I may do more harm than good by forcing myself there.”
Three days had passed since the last visit, and the suspicions which had flashed through the curate’s brain had faded away as soon as he had found himself questioned by Mary, and felt how much she would be alarmed if he alluded to several little matters in connection with his interview.
“The fact is,” he had said to himself, “my imagination is too active, and I am ready to invent horrors and troubles which are never likely to exist.”
It had been a busy morning, for one of the rector’s customary lectures on the management of the parish had arrived; and it was only by Mary’s special request that a sharp retort had not been sent back to a remark in the rector’s letter to the effect that he was glad Mr Salis had taken his advice respecting his sister’s appearance in the hunting-field, and had put down the unnecessary horse.
“It makes me feel disposed to go and borrow of Horace North, and immediately set up a carriage and pair, with servants in livery of mustard and washing blue.”
This was an attempt at being comic in allusion to the rector’s showy liveries, which generally created a sensation in King’s Hampton when he came down to the neighbouring place and went for a drive.
Mary smiled and went on with her work.
“How is Leo this morning?”
“Much better, I think. She was sitting with me for a long time yesterday evening. Hartley, I am sure she is undergoing a great change.”
“I am very glad, dear,” said Salis sadly.
“She seemed so quiet and affectionate to me.”
“Why, of course. Who would not be?” said the curate affectionately.
“She seemed unwilling to leave me, and kissed me very tenderly when she went to bed.”
“I’m very glad, dear,” said Salis; “but I wish she would give up confining herself so to her room. It will grow into a habit.”
“Let us wait,” said Mary. “Yes, dear,” said Salis, looking sadly from the window as he dwelt upon the lives of his two sisters. “Time cures a great many ills.”
“Yes,” said Mary gravely. “What did Moredock want this morning?”
“Wine,” said Salis shortly. “And it’s my belief the old rascal can afford to buy it far better than I can.”
“And you gave him some?”
“No,” said Salis, with a droll look; “the last bottle in number one bin, of the four we stood up six weeks ago, went to poor Sally Drugate.”
“To be sure, yes,” said Mary. “She had two of the others, had she not?”
“Yes, dear,” said Salis, who was trying hard to get a hair out of his pen. “Old Mrs Soames had the other. By the way, Mary, oughtn’t we to have laid down that wine?”
“I believe wine drinkers do generally lay down wine,” said Mary, smiling. “But what difference does it make?”
“They say it keeps better,” said the curate drily. “Ours keeps very badly. By the way, Moredock incidentally gave me a bit of news.”
“What, dear?”
“Tom Candlish has gone from the Hall for a tour they say, to restore his health.”
“Left the Hall?”
“Yes, and I hope it will be many months before he returns.”
“Yes,” said Mary softly; “it will be better. There, now you will go on and see Mr North.”
“Oh, dear! who would be a slave?” sighed the curate. “Yes, madam, I will go, and when I come back I ought to go and see Mrs Berens, and then I shall be led into acts which will cause Mr Thompson to commence an action against me. Result: ruin, and our quitting Duke’s Hampton.”
“Did you not say to me that your imagination was too active?” said Mary, smiling.
“Yes, I did. What then?”
“You were quite right,” said Mary; “it is.”
Salis laughed and went on his mission, but in half-an-hour he was back, and Mary looked up at him wonderingly.
“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:
“Ah, North! Why, you seem better. Let me get you a chair. You want no introductions, and I’ll leave you together.”
He approached North with a chair, and the latter took it, gazing keenly at the visitors the while; but as Thompson was passing he caught him by the collar and checked him, holding him fast, as he threw the chair from him with a crash.
Thompson turned white as so much curd, and tried for a moment to extricate himself, but his cousin’s grasp was like iron, and he turned a pitiable face to the two visitors, the taller of whom advanced quickly.
“My dear Dr North,” he said, “pray be calm. Another seat, my dear sir; pray sit down.”
North seemed as if he had not heard him. He had searchingly gazed from one to the other, and then his eyes appeared to blaze as his left hand joined his right at Thompson’s throat.
“You cursed, treacherous, cowardly hound!” he literally yelled, and dashing him backward, so that he fell with a crash against a table, which was overturned, North strode from the room without another word, and made the house echo with the bang he gave the door.
Thompson did not attempt to rise till the visitors held out their hands to assist him to a couch.
“My dear sir, are you hurt?” asked the first man.
“Hurt!” cried Thompson savagely. “Could you be half strangled and then thrown down without being hurt? But you see now. You doubted before: you see now.”
“Yes, perfectly,” said the second visitor calmly. “Oh, yes, I think that we are quite satisfied now. What do you say?”
“Perfectly,” said the first slowly; and as soon as the lawyer had satisfied himself that he was not seriously hurt, they adjourned to the library, where Mrs Milt was summoned to provide sherry and biscuits; and soon after the two visitors re-entered their carriage, and were driven back to King’s Hampton in time to catch the first train back to town.
Volume Three – Chapter Thirteen.
Mrs Milt Takes up Lunch
“The last hope gone!” cried North, as he rushed upstairs and entered his room, to close and lock the door, overcome, as it were, with a despairing dread.
“I might have known it,” he panted excitedly. “The cruel, treacherous hound! I might have known that he had some hidden meaning in what he was doing. Friend from town – no faith in any one but me, forsooth! And I such a miserable, easily deceived child that I was ready to believe it all.”
Without thinking of what he did, he seated himself at the dressing-table, rested his elbows thereon, and gazed straight before him in the glass, but without seeing his distorted, haggard face.
“And it has come to that!” he groaned.
He, in his cunning, is taking all the necessary steps, such as a legal practitioner would know to be necessary, and I am to be carried off on these men’s certificates to some death in life, while my affectionate Cousin Thompson takes possession here.
“And he could,” he mused; “everything has been arranged for him. I am not mad; I am perfectly sane, but, Heaven knows, I am acting like a madman – like one possessed. I go always with this terrible shadow enveloping me, and I cannot shake it off, try how I may.
“What shall I do?
“Salis! No, I cannot tell him. Mr Delton? No, no, no! I could not speak out. What would they say? They must declare it to be a mania if I tell them the simple truth, and how dare I confess to having instituted those experiments on Luke Candlish?
“Was ever man so cursed for his endeavours? I have branded myself as one who is mad, and I must bear the stigma.”
He clenched his fist and glared before him, recalling the scene in his drawing-room, and burst into a scornful laugh – a laugh so full of savage anger that he started and looked wildly about him in dread.
He calmed down though in a few minutes, and sat repeating the words that had passed.
“I must have been blind not to have seen it before,” he cried aloud; “and now what is to follow?”
He looked up at the light shining down through the drawn curtain, and hurriedly shut it out, to reseat himself and think.
Flight! Yes, he could easily escape from his cousin and his machinations – the Continent – America – or he might boldly face him, and prove that the charge of lunacy was without basis.
But how, when he dared not show his face anywhere lest he should betray himself before his fellow-men?
“It is of no use,” he sighed bitterly; “I am conquered and I must succumb.
“But Cousin Thompson?
“Curse him!” he cried passionately, as he rose and began his old wild-beast tramp again. “What fate is too bad for such a man? Why did I not keep my hold when I had him by the throat?”
He stopped short, and in a paroxysm of mental agony threw himself upon a chair, nerveless, helpless, ready to give up and think that his cousin was right, and that the sooner he was placed under restraint the better, or else sought that other way of escape from his troubles.
As he writhed there in his agony, Mrs Milt was coming up the stairs with a tray covered with a fair white napkin, and on which was a covered dish exhaling an odour which the old dame had settled in her own mind would be certain to tempt her master.
“Poor fellow!” she said to herself; “he’s half starving himself, and perhaps I’ve done wrong in letting him have his own way. I ought to have gone up and made him eat. He’d have scolded and abused me, but I should have done him good.”
Mrs Milt had nearly reached the room, when she uttered an ejaculation of horror, and, setting down the tray upon the carpet, ran swiftly back to close a baize door.
“If he heard it,” she half sobbed, “he would think poor master mad, and heaven knows what would happen then.”
She hurried again to where she had left the tray, and then on to the door, as from within she heard a wild burst of boisterous laughter, and then a fierce oath, and the sounds of a struggle, ending in a crash as of a table being overturned.
“What shall I do?” groaned the poor woman, as, for the moment, she clapped her hands to her face, and stopped her ears, but only to snatch them down wildly, as the strange sounds continued. “He must be alone here, and if I call for help they’ll say he’s mad.”
She stood wringing her hands for a time as a terrible scene appeared to be taking place within that closed room. There was the trampling of feet – the sound as of a struggle. North’s voice in angry denunciation of some one who kept bursting forth into mocking peals of laughter, and then shouting as men shout when excited with the chase, till the room re-echoed. Then again North’s voice came, as if speaking furiously in a low voice, which changed directly afterwards to one of piteous appeal, breaking off into a moan. As the doctor’s voice ceased there was another mocking laugh, apparently from close by the door, and directly after came a crash as if a chair had been used as a weapon, a blow had been struck, and the chair shivered. While vividly painting the scene in her own mind, helped as she was by the sounds, the old housekeeper seemed to see her master hurl the portion of a broken chair which remained in his hands into the corner of the room, where it rattled upon the floor.
“There’s murder being done,” panted the old woman, as she caught at the handle of the door now, and stood clinging to it, while she pressed her other hand upon her heaving bosom.
As if in answer to her words, there was another coarse burst of laughter, and the sound of some one bounding to the door, two hands seeming to shake the panel, and her master’s voice came through, muffled but distinct.
“Curse you! I have you now! Is there no way of forcing you back into your grave?”
A loud rustling sound as of a struggle which was continued to the other side of the room, and the housekeeper’s hair felt to her as if something cold and strange were moving it, while a deathly perspiration broke out upon her face.
“Who is in there with him?” she thought. “What does it mean? There must be some one there, and murder is being done. Help! help!” she shrieked in her agony of fear, as she rattled the handle of the door, and beat upon the panels. “Help! help!” and then in her horror she turned and staggered towards the stairs, as the door was flung open, she felt herself seized from behind and dragged into the room, the door swinging to, and she was forced backwards in the utter darkness, listening to the hoarse sound of the hot breath which fanned her cheek as a hand was pressed heavily over her mouth.
