“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.

“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.”

“Why, how fagged you look! Who is ill?”

“Ill? Who is ill?” said North wonderingly. “Oh, I see! Well, I am.”

“Yes, that’s plain enough,” said Salis anxiously. “My dear fellow, you are not at all up to the mark.”

“Not up to the mark, old chap? Right as the mail! Here, come in, and have some breakfast.”

This was said with so much boisterous, coarse jollity, that the curate could not help a wondering look. North saw it, and his countenance assumed a look of intense pain.

“Did you want me?” he said, closing the breakfast-room door, and speaking in a different tone entirely.

“Well, old fellow, I thought I’d run over just to consult you.”

“Not ill?” said North, in a voice full of anxiety, but only to supplement it with a sharp, back-handed blow in the chest, and exclaim, in quite a rollicking way: “See! you! I say, you’re in tip-top condition!” And then he burst into a hearty roar.

“I don’t know about tip-top condition,” said Salis tartly, “for I’m not at all well. I’m a good deal bothered, old fellow, about – about some matters; and you’ll not mind my coming to see you about things that one would not go to a doctor about, but to a friend.”

“I am very, very glad to have you come to me as a friend, Salis,” said North earnestly. “Anything I can do I – is it money?”

“Money? Tut – tut! No! When did you ever know me a borrower, man? I beg your pardon, North,” he added, beaming at his friend. “That’s just like you – so good and thoughtful; but no, no – no money! Old Polonius was right.”

Just then Mrs Milt entered with the coffee, toast, and a covered dish, a second cup and saucer being on her tray.

“Well, yes; I’ll have another cup,” said Salis, smiling and nodding; and, directly after, the old friends were seated together opposite to each other, but with North leaving his breakfast untasted, while Salis seemed to enjoy his number two.

“You’re not eating, old fellow! I say, you know you’re ill. It’s my turn now to prescribe.”

“Only a little feverish. I have been and had a long walk.”

“Ah, that’s right. Nature is splendid for that sort of thing.”

“Yes,” said North quickly. “Now, what can I do for you?”

He winced as he spoke, for he expected to hear something about Leo.

“Well, the fact is, old fellow, you know that my surplice was stolen.”

North shrank again, but nodded sharply.

“Well, old fellow, I banteringly said something about the loss being severe to a poor man.”

“I – I wish I had known,” said North, with a frank smile.

“You mean if you had you would have given me one.”

“Yes, that is what I mean,” said North.

“And if you had, I’d have cut you, sir, dead! Sure it was not you?”

“Not me?”

“Who sent me a present of a remarkably fine new surplice.”

“Certainly not.”

“Then it was she.”

“I do not understand you.”

“Look here! there is only one person who could have sent such a present, and it must be Mrs Berens.”

“Ah, you sly dog! Oh, shame! shame! Ha – ha – ha!” roared North. “The pretty widow – eh? That’s pulse-feeling, and putting out the tongue, and how are we this morning! Ha – ha – ha!”

Hartley Salis had a small piece of broiled ham upon his fork, being a man of excellent appetite; and at his friend’s first words, uttered in a most singular tone, he let the fork drop with a clatter, pushed his chair a little way back, and stared!

“I – I’m very sorry,” faltered North, in a most penitent tone.

“My dear North! Why, what is the matter with you?”

“A little – er – feverish, I think; that is all!”

“One is not used to hear such outbursts from you, old fellow,” said Salis; and there was a tinge of annoyance in his tone.

“Pray, pray go on. I – er – hardly know what I said.”

Salis drew his chair up again, picked up the fork, raised the piece of brown ham once, set it down, and then took up his cup and sipped the coffee, with his face resuming its unruffled aspect.

“I’m not cross, old fellow – only nettly. It’s so unlike you to attempt to – well, to use our old term – chaff me. Besides which, this thing is a great source of annoyance to me. I feel as if I cannot accept the present – as if it laid me under an obligation to Mrs Berens; and, really, I should be glad to have your advice. What would you do?”

“What would I do?” cried North, in a coarse, rasping voice. “Why, you know what you want me to say. Get out, you jolly old humbug!”

“Sir!”

“Go along with you! What are you to do with the surplice? Why, wear it, and lend it to old May afterwards when he comes down to marry you and the pretty widow.”

“Horace North!” cried the curate indignantly.

“Sit down, and none of your gammon, you transparent old humbug! Why, I can see right through you, just as if you were so much glass.”

Salis had pushed back his chair, and now rose, just as North burst out passionately:

“No, no, Salis; don’t go – for pity’s sake don’t go. I have so much to say to you.”

“If it is of a piece with what you have already said, Horace North, I would prefer to be ignorant of its import.”

The doctor had risen too, and caught the back of his chair, which he stood grasping with spasmodic force, as, suffering an agony he could not have expressed, he saw his friend stalk solemnly along the path to the great gate, which swung after him to and fro for some seconds before the iron latch closed with a loud click.

“Heaven help me! – what shall I do?” groaned North, as he threw himself upon the couch, and covered his face with his hands. “What does this mean? What new horror is this? Have I lost all power over thought and tongue?”

“May I clear away, sir?” said a sharp, clear voice.

North started as if he had been stung, but he did not uncover his face; and he dared not speak, lest words should gush forth for which he could not hold himself accountable – and to Mrs Milt!

Under the circumstances, he nodded his head quickly, and lay back with his eyes closed.

“You do too much, sir,” said the housekeeper, speaking authoritatively. “You work too hard.”

North’s irritability was terrible, but he kept it down.

“It’s my impression that you’re going to be ill,” continued Mrs Milt, as she went on clearing the table.

Strange words seemed to be effervescing in Horace North’s breast, and he set his teeth hard, for he felt that if he spoke he should say something which would horrify the old housekeeper and startle himself.

“Well, you can’t blame me,” cried Mrs Milt, going out and shutting the door too sharply to be polite.

North was alone, and he rose up with his hands clenched to utter words of wonder as to what his friend would think; but, instead, he burst into a curious fit of laughter and uttered a mocking curse.

The next moment he had sunk back upon his couch with his hands clasped, as he gazed with bent head straight before him between his thick brows, right away into the future, and mentally asking himself what that future was to be.