"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.
Volume 3, Chapter XIV.