THE dog-cart, with Mr. Thomas Idle and his ankle on the hanging seat
behind, Mr. Francis Goodchild and the Innkeeper in front, and the rain in
spouts and splashes everywhere, made the best of its way back to the
little inn; the broken moor country looking like miles upon miles of
Pre-Adamite sop, or the ruins of some enormous jorum of antediluvian
toast-and-water. The trees dripped; the eaves of the scattered cottages
dripped; the barren stone walls dividing the land, dripped; the yelping
dogs dripped; carts and waggons under ill-roofed penthouses, dripped;
melancholy cocks and hens perching on their shafts, or seeking shelter
underneath them, dripped; Mr. Goodchild dripped; Thomas Idle dripped; the
Inn-keeper dripped; the mare dripped; the vast curtains of mist and cloud
passed before the shadowy forms of the hills, streamed water as they were
drawn across the landscape. Down such steep pitches that the mare seemed
to be trotting on her head, and up such steep pitches that she seemed to
have a supplementary leg in her tail, the dog-cart jolted and tilted back
to the village. It was too wet for the women to look out, it was too wet
even for the children to look out; all the doors and windows were closed,
and the only sign of life or motion was in the rain-punctured puddles.
Whiskey and oil to Thomas Idle’s ankle, and whiskey without oil to
Francis Goodchild’s stomach, produced an agreeable change in the systems
of both; soothing Mr. Idle’s pain, which was sharp before, and sweetening
Mr. Goodchild’s temper, which was sweet before. Portmanteaus being then
opened and clothes changed, Mr. Goodchild, through having no change of
outer garments but broadcloth and velvet, suddenly became a magnificent
portent in the Innkeeper’s house, a shining frontispiece to the fashions
for the month, and a frightful anomaly in the Cumberland village.
Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the conscious Goodchild
quenched it as much as possible, in the shadow of Thomas Idle’s ankle,
and in a corner of the little covered carriage that started with them for
Wigton—a most desirable carriage for any country, except for its having a
flat roof and no sides; which caused the plumps of rain accumulating on
the roof to play vigorous games of bagatelle into the interior all the
way, and to score immensely. It was comfortable to see how the people
coming back in open carts from Wigton market made no more of the rain
than if it were sunshine; how the Wigton policeman taking a country walk
of half-a-dozen miles (apparently for pleasure), in resplendent uniform,
accepted saturation as his normal state; how clerks and schoolmasters in
black, loitered along the road without umbrellas, getting varnished at
every step; how the Cumberland girls, coming out to look after the
Cumberland cows, shook the rain from their eyelashes and laughed it away;
and how the rain continued to fall upon all, as it only does fall in hill
countries.
Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with rain all
down the street. Mr. Thomas Idle, melodramatically carried to the inn’s
first floor, and laid upon three chairs (he should have had the sofa, if
there had been one), Mr. Goodchild went to the window to take an
observation of Wigton, and report what he saw to his disabled companion.
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘What do you see
from the turret?’
‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘what I hope and believe to be one of the
most dismal places ever seen by eyes. I see the houses with their roofs
of dull black, their stained fronts, and their dark-rimmed windows,
looking as if they were all in mourning. As every little puff of wind
comes down the street, I see a perfect train of rain let off along the
wooden stalls in the market-place and exploded against me. I see a very
big gas lamp in the centre which I know, by a secret instinct, will not
be lighted to-night. I see a pump, with a trivet underneath its spout
whereon to stand the vessels that are brought to be filled with water. I
see a man come to pump, and he pumps very hard, but no water follows, and
he strolls empty away.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what more do you
see from the turret, besides the man and the pump, and the trivet and the
houses all in mourning and the rain?’
‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘one, two, three, four, five,
linen-drapers’ shops in front of me. I see a linen-draper’s shop next
door to the right—and there are five more linen-drapers’ shops down the
corner to the left. Eleven homicidal linen-drapers’ shops within a short
stone’s throw, each with its hands at the throats of all the rest! Over
the small first-floor of one of these linen-drapers’ shops appears the
wonderful inscription, BANK.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what more do you
see from the turret, besides the eleven homicidal linen-drapers’ shops,
and the wonderful inscription, “Bank,”—on the small first-floor, and the
man and the pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the
rain?’
‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘the depository for Christian Knowledge,
and through the dark vapour I think I again make out Mr. Spurgeon looming
heavily. Her Majesty the Queen, God bless her, printed in colours, I am
sure I see. I see the _Illustrated London News_ of several years ago,
and I see a sweetmeat shop—which the proprietor calls a “Salt
Warehouse”—with one small female child in a cotton bonnet looking in on
tip-toe, oblivious of rain. And I see a watchmaker’s with only three
great pale watches of a dull metal hanging in his window, each in a
separate pane.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what more do you
see of Wigton, besides these objects, and the man and the pump and the
trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?’
‘I see nothing more,’ said Brother Francis, ‘and there is nothing more to
see, except the curlpaper bill of the theatre, which was opened and shut
last week (the manager’s family played all the parts), and the short,
square, chinky omnibus that goes to the railway, and leads too rattling a
life over the stones to hold together long. O yes! Now, I see two men
with their hands in their pockets and their backs towards me.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what do you make
out from the turret, of the expression of the two men with their hands in
their pockets and their backs towards you?’
‘They are mysterious men,’ said Brother Francis, ‘with inscrutable backs.
They keep their backs towards me with persistency. If one turns an inch
in any direction, the other turns an inch in the same direction, and no
more. They turn very stiffly, on a very little pivot, in the middle of
the market-place. Their appearance is partly of a mining, partly of a
ploughing, partly of a stable, character. They are looking at
nothing—very hard. Their backs are slouched, and their legs are curved
with much standing about. Their pockets are loose and dog’s-eared, on
account of their hands being always in them. They stand to be rained
upon, without any movement of impatience or dissatisfaction, and they
keep so close together that an elbow of each jostles an elbow of the
other, but they never speak. They spit at times, but speak not. I see
it growing darker and darker, and still I see them, sole visible
population of the place, standing to be rained upon with their backs
towards me, and looking at nothing very hard.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘before you draw
down the blind of the turret and come in to have your head scorched by
the hot gas, see if you can, and impart to me, something of the
expression of those two amazing men.’
‘The murky shadows,’ said Francis Goodchild, ‘are gathering fast; and the
wings of evening, and the wings of coal, are folding over Wigton. Still,
they look at nothing very hard, with their backs towards me. Ah! Now,
they turn, and I see—’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘tell me quickly
what you see of the two men of Wigton!’
‘I see,’ said Francis Goodchild, ‘that they have no expression at all.
And now the town goes to sleep, undazzled by the large unlighted lamp in
the market-place; and let no man wake it.’
At the close of the next day’s journey, Mr. Thomas Idle’s ankle became
much swollen and inflamed. There are reasons which will presently
explain themselves for not publicly indicating the exact direction in
which that journey lay, or the place in which it ended. It was a long
day’s shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough roads, and a long day’s
getting out and going on before the horses, and fagging up hills, and
scouring down hills, on the part of Mr. Goodchild, who in the fatigues of
such labours congratulated himself on attaining a high point of idleness.
It was at a little town, still in Cumberland, that they halted for the
night—a very little town, with the purple and brown moor close upon its
one street; a curious little ancient market-cross set up in the midst of
it; and the town itself looking much as if it were a collection of great
stones piled on end by the Druids long ago, which a few recluse people
had since hollowed out for habitations.
‘Is there a doctor here?’ asked Mr. Goodchild, on his knee, of the
motherly landlady of the little Inn: stopping in his examination of Mr.
Idle’s ankle, with the aid of a candle.
‘Ey, my word!’ said the landlady, glancing doubtfully at the ankle for
herself; ‘there’s Doctor Speddie.’
‘Is he a good Doctor?’
‘Ey!’ said the landlady, ‘I ca’ him so. A’ cooms efther nae doctor that
I ken. Mair nor which, a’s just THE doctor heer.’
‘Do you think he is at home?’
Her reply was, ‘Gang awa’, Jock, and bring him.’
Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stirring up some bay
salt in a basin of water for the laving of this unfortunate ankle, had
greatly enjoyed himself for the last ten minutes in splashing the carpet,
set off promptly. A very few minutes had elapsed when he showed the
Doctor in, by tumbling against the door before him and bursting it open
with his head.
‘Gently, Jock, gently,’ said the Doctor as he advanced with a quiet step.
‘Gentlemen, a good evening. I am sorry that my presence is required
here. A slight accident, I hope? A slip and a fall? Yes, yes, yes.
Carrock, indeed? Hah! Does that pain you, sir? No doubt, it does. It
is the great connecting ligament here, you see, that has been badly
strained. Time and rest, sir! They are often the recipe in greater
cases,’ with a slight sigh, ‘and often the recipe in small. I can send a
lotion to relieve you, but we must leave the cure to time and rest.’
This he said, holding Idle’s foot on his knee between his two hands, as
he sat over against him. He had touched it tenderly and skilfully in
explanation of what he said, and, when his careful examination was
completed, softly returned it to its former horizontal position on a
chair.
He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, but afterwards
fluently. He was a tall, thin, large-boned, old gentleman, with an
appearance at first sight of being hard-featured; but, at a second
glance, the mild expression of his face and some particular touches of
sweetness and patience about his mouth, corrected this impression and
assigned his long professional rides, by day and night, in the bleak
hill-weather, as the true cause of that appearance. He stooped very
little, though past seventy and very grey. His dress was more like that
of a clergyman than a country doctor, being a plain black suit, and a
plain white neck-kerchief tied behind like a band. His black was the
worse for wear, and there were darns in his coat, and his linen was a
little frayed at the hems and edges. He might have been poor—it was
likely enough in that out-of-the-way spot—or he might have been a little
self-forgetful and eccentric. Any one could have seen directly, that he
had neither wife nor child at home. He had a scholarly air with him, and
that kind of considerate humanity towards others which claimed a gentle
consideration for himself. Mr. Goodchild made this study of him while he
was examining the limb, and as he laid it down. Mr. Goodchild wishes to
add that he considers it a very good likeness.
It came out in the course of a little conversation, that Doctor Speddie
was acquainted with some friends of Thomas Idle’s, and had, when a young
man, passed some years in Thomas Idle’s birthplace on the other side of
England. Certain idle labours, the fruit of Mr. Goodchild’s
apprenticeship, also happened to be well known to him. The lazy
travellers were thus placed on a more intimate footing with the Doctor
than the casual circumstances of the meeting would of themselves have
established; and when Doctor Speddie rose to go home, remarking that he
would send his assistant with the lotion, Francis Goodchild said that was
unnecessary, for, by the Doctor’s leave, he would accompany him, and
bring it back. (Having done nothing to fatigue himself for a full
quarter of an hour, Francis began to fear that he was not in a state of
idleness.)
Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of Francis Goodchild,
‘as it would give him the pleasure of enjoying a few more minutes of Mr.
Goodchild’s society than he could otherwise have hoped for,’ and they
went out together into the village street. The rain had nearly ceased,
the clouds had broken before a cool wind from the north-east, and stars
were shining from the peaceful heights beyond them.
Doctor Speddie’s house was the last house in the place. Beyond it, lay
the moor, all dark and lonesome. The wind moaned in a low, dull,
shivering manner round the little garden, like a houseless creature that
knew the winter was coming. It was exceedingly wild and solitary.
‘Roses,’ said the Doctor, when Goodchild touched some wet leaves
overhanging the stone porch; ‘but they get cut to pieces.’
The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and led the way into a
low but pretty ample hall with rooms on either side. The door of one of
these stood open, and the Doctor entered it, with a word of welcome to
his guest. It, too, was a low room, half surgery and half parlour, with
shelves of books and bottles against the walls, which were of a very dark
hue. There was a fire in the grate, the night being damp and chill.
Leaning against the chimney-piece looking down into it, stood the
Doctor’s Assistant.
A man of a most remarkable appearance. Much older than Mr. Goodchild had
expected, for he was at least two-and-fifty; but, that was nothing. What
was startling in him was his remarkable paleness. His large black eyes,
his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey hair, his wasted hands,
and even the attenuation of his figure, were at first forgotten in his
extraordinary pallor. There was no vestige of colour in the man. When
he turned his face, Francis Goodchild started as if a stone figure had
looked round at him.
‘Mr. Lorn,’ said the Doctor. ‘Mr. Goodchild.’
The Assistant, in a distraught way—as if he had forgotten something—as if
he had forgotten everything, even to his own name and
himself—acknowledged the visitor’s presence, and stepped further back
into the shadow of the wall behind him. But, he was so pale that his
face stood out in relief again the dark wall, and really could not be
hidden so.
‘Mr. Goodchild’s friend has met with accident, Lorn,’ said Doctor
Speddie. ‘We want the lotion for a bad sprain.’
A pause.
‘My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to-night. The lotion
for a bad sprain.’
‘Ah! yes! Directly.’
He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his white face and
his wild eyes to a table in a recess among the bottles. But, though he
stood there, compounding the lotion with his back towards them, Goodchild
could not, for many moments, withdraw his gaze from the man. When he at
length did so, he found the Doctor observing him, with some trouble in
his face. ‘He is absent,’ explained the Doctor, in a low voice. ‘Always
absent. Very absent.’
‘Is he ill?’
‘No, not ill.’
‘Unhappy?’
‘I have my suspicions that he was,’ assented the Doctor, ‘once.’
Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor accompanied these
words with a benignant and protecting glance at their subject, in which
there was much of the expression with which an attached father might have
looked at a heavily afflicted son. Yet, that they were not father and
son must have been plain to most eyes. The Assistant, on the other hand,
turning presently to ask the Doctor some question, looked at him with a
wan smile as if he were his whole reliance and sustainment in life.
It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try to lead the mind
of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-chair, away from what was before
him. Let Mr. Goodchild do what he would to follow the Doctor, his eyes
and thoughts reverted to the Assistant. The Doctor soon perceived it,
and, after falling silent, and musing in a little perplexity, said:
‘Lorn!’
‘My dear Doctor.’
‘Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion? You will show the best
way of applying it, far better than Mr. Goodchild can.’
‘With pleasure.’
The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the door.
‘Lorn!’ said the Doctor, calling after him.
He returned.
‘Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come home. Don’t hurry.
Excuse my calling you back.’
‘It is not,’ said the Assistant, with his former smile, ‘the first time
you have called me back, dear Doctor.’ With those words he went away.
‘Mr. Goodchild,’ said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice, and with his former
troubled expression of face, ‘I have seen that your attention has been
concentrated on my friend.’
‘He fascinates me. I must apologise to you, but he has quite bewildered
and mastered me.’
‘I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,’ said the Doctor,
drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr. Goodchild’s, ‘become in the
course of time very heavy. I will tell you something. You may make what
use you will of it, under fictitious names. I know I may trust you. I
am the more inclined to confidence to-night, through having been
unexpectedly led back, by the current of our conversation at the Inn, to
scenes in my early life. Will you please to draw a little nearer?’
Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went on thus:
speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, that the wind,
though it was far from high, occasionally got the better of him.
When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many years
than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened
to arrive in the town of Doncaster, exactly in the middle of a race-week,
or, in other words, in the middle of the month of September. He was one
of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, and open-mouthed young
gentlemen, who possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection,
and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life making friends, as
the phrase is, wherever they go. His father was a rich manufacturer, and
had bought landed property enough in one of the midland counties to make
all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly envious of him.
Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect of the great estate and
the great business after his father’s death; well supplied with money,
and not too rigidly looked after, during his father’s lifetime. Report,
or scandal, whichever you please, said that the old gentleman had been
rather wild in his youthful days, and that, unlike most parents, he was
not disposed to be violently indignant when he found that his son took
after him. This may be true or not. I myself only knew the elder Mr.
Holliday when he was getting on in years; and then he was as quiet and as
respectable a gentleman as ever I met with.
Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to Doncaster,
having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained way, that he would go
to the races. He did not reach the town till towards the close of the
evening, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed at the
principal hotel. Dinner they were ready enough to give him; but as for a
bed, they laughed when he mentioned it. In the race-week at Doncaster,
it is no uncommon thing for visitors who have not bespoken apartments, to
pass the night in their carriages at the inn doors. As for the lower
sort of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that full time,
sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep under.
Rich as he was, Arthur’s chance of getting a night’s lodging (seeing that
he had not written beforehand to secure one) was more than doubtful. He
tried the second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the inferior inns
after that; and was met everywhere by the same form of answer. No
accommodation for the night of any sort was left. All the bright golden
sovereigns in his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the
race-week.
To a young fellow of Arthur’s temperament, the novelty of being turned
away into the street, like a penniless vagabond, at every house where he
asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new and highly
amusing piece of experience. He went on, with his carpet-bag in his
hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for travellers
that he could find in Doncaster, until he wandered into the outskirts of
the town. By this time, the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the
moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, the clouds
were gathering heavily, and there was every prospect that it was soon
going to rain.
The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young Holliday’s
good spirits. He began to contemplate the houseless situation in which
he was placed, from the serious rather than the humorous point of view;
and he looked about him, for another public-house to inquire at, with
something very like downright anxiety in his mind on the subject of a
lodging for the night. The suburban part of the town towards which he
had now strayed was hardly lighted at all, and he could see nothing of
the houses as he passed them, except that they got progressively smaller
and dirtier, the farther he went. Down the winding road before him shone
the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint, lonely light that struggled
ineffectually with the foggy darkness all round him. He resolved to go
on as far as this lamp, and then, if it showed him nothing in the shape
of an Inn, to return to the central part of the town and to try if he
could not at least secure a chair to sit down on, through the night, at
one of the principal Hotels.
As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walking close under it,
found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court, on the wall of
which was painted a long hand in faded flesh-colour, pointing with a lean
forefinger, to this inscription:—
THE TWO ROBINS.
Arthur turned into the court without hesitation, to see what The Two
Robins could do for him. Four or five men were standing together round
the door of the house which was at the bottom of the court, facing the
entrance from the street. The men were all listening to one other man,
better dressed than the rest, who was telling his audience something, in
a low voice, in which they were apparently very much interested.
On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a stranger with a knapsack
in his hand, who was evidently leaving the house.
‘No,’ said the traveller with the knapsack, turning round and addressing
himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-looking, bald-headed man, with a dirty
white apron on, who had followed him down the passage. ‘No, Mr.
landlord, I am not easily scared by trifles; but, I don’t mind confessing
that I can’t quite stand _that_.’
It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these words, that the
stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a bed at The Two Robins;
and that he was unable or unwilling to pay it. The moment his back was
turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own well-filled pockets,
addressed himself in a great hurry, for fear any other benighted
traveller should slip in and forestall him, to the sly-looking landlord
with the dirty apron and the bald head.
‘If you have got a bed to let,’ he said, ‘and if that gentleman who has
just gone out won’t pay your price for it, I will.’
The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur.
‘Will you, sir?’ he asked, in a meditative, doubtful way.
‘Name your price,’ said young Holliday, thinking that the landlord’s
hesitation sprang from some boorish distrust of him. ‘Name your price,
and I’ll give you the money at once if you like?’
‘Are you game for five shillings?’ inquired the landlord, rubbing his
stubbly double chin, and looking up thoughtfully at the ceiling above
him.
Arthur nearly laughed in the man’s face; but thinking it prudent to
control himself, offered the five shillings as seriously as he could.
The sly landlord held out his hand, then suddenly drew it back again.
‘You’re acting all fair and above-board by me,’ he said: ‘and, before I
take your money, I’ll do the same by you. Look here, this is how it
stands. You can have a bed all to yourself for five shillings; but you
can’t have more than a half-share of the room it stands in. Do you see
what I mean, young gentleman?’
‘Of course I do,’ returned Arthur, a little irritably. ‘You mean that it
is a double-bedded room, and that one of the beds is occupied?’
The landlord nodded his head, and rubbed his double chin harder than
ever. Arthur hesitated, and mechanically moved back a step or two
towards the door. The idea of sleeping in the same room with a total
stranger, did not present an attractive prospect to him. He felt more
than half inclined to drop his five shillings into his pocket, and to go
out into the street once more.
‘Is it yes, or no?’ asked the landlord. ‘Settle it as quick as you can,
because there’s lots of people wanting a bed at Doncaster to-night,
besides you.’
Arthur looked towards the court, and heard the rain falling heavily in
the street outside. He thought he would ask a question or two before he
rashly decided on leaving the shelter of The Two Robins.
‘What sort of a man is it who has got the other bed?’ he inquired. ‘Is
he a gentleman? I mean, is he a quiet, well-behaved person?’
‘The quietest man I ever came across,’ said the landlord, rubbing his fat
hands stealthily one over the other. ‘As sober as a judge, and as
regular as clock-work in his habits. It hasn’t struck nine, not ten
minutes ago, and he’s in his bed already. I don’t know whether that
comes up to your notion of a quiet man: it goes a long way ahead of mine,
I can tell you.’
‘Is he asleep, do you think?’ asked Arthur.
‘I know he’s asleep,’ returned the landlord. ‘And what’s more, he’s gone
off so fast, that I’ll warrant you don’t wake him. This way, sir,’ said
the landlord, speaking over young Holliday’s shoulder, as if he was
addressing some new guest who was approaching the house.
‘Here you are,’ said Arthur, determined to be beforehand with the
stranger, whoever he might be. ‘I’ll take the bed.’ And he handed the
five shillings to the landlord, who nodded, dropped the money carelessly
into his waistcoat-pocket, and lighted the candle.
‘Come up and see the room,’ said the host of The Two Robins, leading the
way to the staircase quite briskly, considering how fat he was.
They mounted to the second-floor of the house. The landlord half opened
a door, fronting the landing, then stopped, and turned round to Arthur.
‘It’s a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on yours,’ he said.
‘You give me five shillings, I give you in return a clean, comfortable
bed; and I warrant, beforehand, that you won’t be interfered with, or
annoyed in any way, by the man who sleeps in the same room as you.’
Saying those words, he looked hard, for a moment, in young Holliday’s
face, and then led the way into the room.
It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it would be. The two
beds stood parallel with each other—a space of about six feet intervening
between them. They were both of the same medium size, and both had the
same plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary, all round them.
The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window. The curtains were all
drawn round this, except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side of
the bed farthest from the window. Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping
man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was
lying flat on his back. He took the candle, and advanced softly to draw
the curtain—stopped half-way, and listened for a moment—then turned to
the landlord.
‘He’s a very quiet sleeper,’ said Arthur.
‘Yes,’ said the landlord, ‘very quiet.’
Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked in at the man
cautiously.
‘How pale he is!’ said Arthur.
‘Yes,’ returned the landlord, ‘pale enough, isn’t he?’
Arthur looked closer at the man. The bedclothes were drawn up to his
chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his chest.
Surprised and vaguely startled, as he noticed this, Arthur stooped down
closer over the stranger; looked at his ashy, parted lips; listened
breathlessly for an instant; looked again at the strangely still face,
and the motionless lips and chest; and turned round suddenly on the
landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the moment as the hollow cheeks
of the man on the bed.
‘Come here,’ he whispered, under his breath. ‘Come here, for God’s sake!
The man’s not asleep—he is dead!’
‘You have found that out sooner than I thought you would,’ said the
landlord, composedly. ‘Yes, he’s dead, sure enough. He died at five
o’clock to-day.’
‘How did he die? Who is he?’ asked Arthur, staggered, for a moment, by
the audacious coolness of the answer.
‘As to who is he,’ rejoined the landlord, ‘I know no more about him than
you do. There are his books and letters and things, all sealed up in
that brown-paper parcel, for the Coroner’s inquest to open to-morrow or
next day. He’s been here a week, paying his way fairly enough, and
stopping in-doors, for the most part, as if he was ailing. My girl
brought him up his tea at five to-day; and as he was pouring of it out,
he fell down in a faint, or a fit, or a compound of both, for anything I
know. We could not bring him to—and I said he was dead. And the doctor
couldn’t bring him to—and the doctor said he was dead. And there he is.
And the Coroner’s inquest’s coming as soon as it can. And that’s as much
as I know about it.’
Arthur held the candle close to the man’s lips. The flame still burnt
straight up, as steadily as before. There was a moment of silence; and
the rain pattered drearily through it against the panes of the window.
‘If you haven’t got nothing more to say to me,’ continued the landlord,
‘I suppose I may go. You don’t expect your five shillings back, do you?
There’s the bed I promised you, clean and comfortable. There’s the man I
warranted not to disturb you, quiet in this world for ever. If you’re
frightened to stop alone with him, that’s not my look out. I’ve kept my
part of the bargain, and I mean to keep the money. I’m not Yorkshire,
myself, young gentleman; but I’ve lived long enough in these parts to
have my wits sharpened; and I shouldn’t wonder if you found out the way
to brighten up yours, next time you come amongst us.’ With these words,
the landlord turned towards the door, and laughed to himself softly, in
high satisfaction at his own sharpness.
Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time sufficiently
recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick that had been played on
him, and at the insolent manner in which the landlord exulted in it.
‘Don’t laugh,’ he said sharply, ‘till you are quite sure you have got the
laugh against me. You shan’t have the five shillings for nothing, my
man. I’ll keep the bed.’
‘Will you?’ said the landlord. ‘Then I wish you a goodnight’s rest.’
With that brief farewell, he went out, and shut the door after him.
A good night’s rest! The words had hardly been spoken, the door had
hardly been closed, before Arthur half-repented the hasty words that had
just escaped him. Though not naturally over-sensitive, and not wanting
in courage of the moral as well as the physical sort, the presence of the
dead man had an instantaneously chilling effect on his mind when he found
himself alone in the room—alone, and bound by his own rash words to stay
there till the next morning. An older man would have thought nothing of
those words, and would have acted, without reference to them, as his
calmer sense suggested. But Arthur was too young to treat the ridicule,
even of his inferiors, with contempt—too young not to fear the momentary
humiliation of falsifying his own foolish boast, more than he feared the
trial of watching out the long night in the same chamber with the dead.
‘It is but a few hours,’ he thought to himself, ‘and I can get away the
first thing in the morning.’
He was looking towards the occupied bed as that idea passed through his
mind, and the sharp, angular eminence made in the clothes by the dead
man’s upturned feet again caught his eye. He advanced and drew the
curtains, purposely abstaining, as he did so, from looking at the face of
the corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the outset by fastening some
ghastly impression of it on his mind. He drew the curtain very gently,
and sighed involuntarily as he closed it. ‘Poor fellow,’ he said, almost
as sadly as if he had known the man. ‘Ah, poor fellow!’
He went next to the window. The night was black, and he could see
nothing from it. The rain still pattered heavily against the glass. He
inferred, from hearing it, that the window was at the back of the house;
remembering that the front was sheltered from the weather by the court
and the buildings over it.
While he was still standing at the window—for even the dreary rain was a
relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because it moved,
and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and companionship
in it—while he was standing at the window, and looking vacantly into the
black darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock strike ten. Only
ten! How was he to pass the time till the house was astir the next
morning?
Under any other circumstances, he would have gone down to the
public-house parlour, would have called for his grog, and would have
laughed and talked with the company assembled as familiarly as if he had
known them all his life. But the very thought of whiling away the time
in this manner was distasteful to him. The new situation in which he was
placed seemed to have altered him to himself already. Thus far, his life
had been the common, trifling, prosaic, surface-life of a prosperous
young man, with no troubles to conquer, and no trials to face. He had
lost no relation whom he loved, no friend whom he treasured. Till this
night, what share he had of the immortal inheritance that is divided
amongst us all, had laid dormant within him. Till this night, Death and
he had not once met, even in thought.
He took a few turns up and down the room—then stopped. The noise made by
his boots on the poorly carpeted floor, jarred on his ear. He hesitated
a little, and ended by taking the boots off, and walking backwards and
forwards noiselessly. All desire to sleep or to rest had left him. The
bare thought of lying down on the unoccupied bed instantly drew the
picture on his mind of a dreadful mimicry of the position of the dead
man. Who was he? What was the story of his past life? Poor he must
have been, or he would not have stopped at such a place as The Two Robins
Inn—and weakened, probably, by long illness, or he could hardly have died
in the manner in which the landlord had described. Poor, ill,
lonely,—dead in a strange place; dead, with nobody but a stranger to pity
him. A sad story: truly, on the mere face of it, a very sad story.
While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he had stopped
insensibly at the window, close to which stood the foot of the bed with
the closed curtains. At first he looked at it absently; then he became
conscious that his eyes were fixed on it; and then, a perverse desire
took possession of him to do the very thing which he had resolved not to
do, up to this time—to look at the dead man.
He stretched out his hand towards the curtains; but checked himself in
the very act of undrawing them, turned his back sharply on the bed, and
walked towards the chimney-piece, to see what things were placed on it,
and to try if he could keep the dead man out of his mind in that way.
There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, with some mildewed
remains of ink in the bottle. There were two coarse china ornaments of
the commonest kind; and there was a square of embossed card, dirty and
fly-blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it, in all
sorts of zig-zag directions, and in variously coloured inks. He took the
card, and went away, to read it, to the table on which the candle was
placed; sitting down, with his back resolutely turned to the curtained
bed.
He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one corner of the
card—then turned it round impatiently to look at another. Before he
could begin reading the riddles printed here, the sound of the
church-clock stopped him. Eleven. He had got through an hour of the
time, in the room with the dead man.
Once more he looked at the card. It was not easy to make out the letters
printed on it, in consequence of the dimness of the light which the
landlord had left him—a common tallow candle, furnished with a pair of
heavy old-fashioned steel snuffers. Up to this time, his mind had been
too much occupied to think of the light. He had left the wick of the
candle unsnuffed, till it had risen higher than the flame, and had burnt
into an odd pent-house shape at the top, from which morsels of the
charred cotton fell off, from time to time, in little flakes. He took up
the snuffers now, and trimmed the wick. The light brightened directly,
and the room became less dismal.
Again he turned to the riddles; reading them doggedly and resolutely, now
in one corner of the card, now in another. All his efforts, however,
could not fix his attention on them. He pursued his occupation
mechanically, deriving no sort of impression from what he was reading.
It was as if a shadow from the curtained bed had got between his mind and
the gaily printed letters—a shadow that nothing could dispel. At last,
he gave up the struggle, and threw the card from him impatiently, and
took to walking softly up and down the room again.
The dead man, the dead man, the _hidden_ dead man on the bed! There was
the one persistent idea still haunting him. Hidden? Was it only the
body being there, or was it the body being there, concealed, that was
preying on his mind? He stopped at the window, with that doubt in him;
once more listening to the pattering rain, once more looking out into the
black darkness.
Still the dead man! The darkness forced his mind back upon itself, and
set his memory at work, reviving, with a painfully-vivid distinctness the
momentary impression it had received from the first sight of the corpse.
Before long the face seemed to be hovering out in the middle of the
darkness, confronting him through the window, with the paleness whiter,
with the dreadful dull line of light between the imperfectly-closed
eyelids broader than he had seen it—with the parted lips slowly dropping
farther and farther away from each other—with the features growing larger
and moving closer, till they seemed to fill the window and to silence the
rain, and to shut out the night.
The sound of a voice, shouting below-stairs, woke him suddenly from the
dream of his own distempered fancy. He recognised it as the voice of the
landlord. ‘Shut up at twelve, Ben,’ he heard it say. ‘I’m off to bed.’
He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his forehead, reasoned with
himself for a little while, and resolved to shake his mind free of the
ghastly counterfeit which still clung to it, by forcing himself to
confront, if it was only for a moment, the solemn reality. Without
allowing himself an instant to hesitate, he parted the curtains at the
foot of the bed, and looked through.
There was a sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful mystery of
stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow. No stir, no change there!
He only looked at it for a moment before he closed the curtains again—but
that moment steadied him, calmed him, restored him—mind and body—to
himself.
He returned to his old occupation of walking up and down the room;
persevering in it, this time, till the clock struck again. Twelve.
As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was succeeded by the
confused noise, down-stairs, of the drinkers in the tap-room leaving the
house. The next sound, after an interval of silence, was caused by the
barring of the door, and the closing of the shutters, at the back of the
Inn. Then the silence followed again, and was disturbed no more.
He was alone now—absolutely, utterly, alone with the dead man, till the
next morning.
The wick of the candle wanted trimming again. He took up the
snuffers—but paused suddenly on the very point of using them, and looked
attentively at the candle—then back, over his shoulder, at the curtained
bed—then again at the candle. It had been lighted, for the first time,
to show him the way up-stairs, and three parts of it, at least, were
already consumed. In another hour it would be burnt out. In another
hour—unless he called at once to the man who had shut up the Inn, for a
fresh candle—he would be left in the dark.
Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had entered his room, his
unreasonable dread of encountering ridicule, and of exposing his courage
to suspicion, had not altogether lost its influence over him, even yet.
He lingered irresolutely by the table, waiting till he could prevail on
himself to open the door, and call, from the landing, to the man who had
shut up the Inn. In his present hesitating frame of mind, it was a kind
of relief to gain a few moments only by engaging in the trifling
occupation of snuffing the candle. His hand trembled a little, and the
snuffers were heavy and awkward to use. When he closed them on the wick,
he closed them a hair’s breadth too low. In an instant the candle was
out, and the room was plunged in pitch darkness.
The one impression which the absence of light immediately produced on his
mind, was distrust of the curtained bed—distrust which shaped itself into
no distinct idea, but which was powerful enough in its very vagueness, to
bind him down to his chair, to make his heart beat fast, and to set him
listening intently. No sound stirred in the room but the familiar sound
of the rain against the window, louder and sharper now than he had heard
it yet.
Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed him, and kept
him to his chair. He had put his carpet-bag on the table, when he first
entered the room; and he now took the key from his pocket, reached out
his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped in it for his travelling
writing-case, in which he knew that there was a small store of matches.
When he had got one of the matches, he waited before he struck it on the
coarse wooden table, and listened intently again, without knowing why.
Still there was no sound in the room but the steady, ceaseless, rattling
sound of the rain.
He lighted the candle again, without another moment of delay and, on the
instant of its burning up, the first object in the room that his eyes
sought for was the curtained bed.
Just before the light had been put out, he had looked in that direction,
and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort, in the folds of
the closely-drawn curtains.
When he looked at the bed, now, he saw, hanging over the side of it, a
long white hand.
It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the bed, where the
curtain at the head and the curtain at the foot met. Nothing more was
visible. The clinging curtains hid everything but the long white hand.
He stood looking at it unable to stir, unable to call out; feeling
nothing, knowing nothing, every faculty he possessed gathered up and lost
in the one seeing faculty. How long that first panic held him he never
could tell afterwards. It might have been only for a moment; it might
have been for many minutes together. How he got to the bed—whether he
ran to it headlong, or whether he approached it slowly—how he wrought
himself up to unclose the curtains and look in, he never has remembered,
and never will remember to his dying day. It is enough that he did go to
the bed, and that he did look inside the curtains.
The man had moved. One of his arms was outside the clothes; his face was
turned a little on the pillow; his eyelids were wide open. Changed as to
position, and as to one of the features, the face was, otherwise,
fearfully and wonderfully unaltered. The dead paleness and the dead
quiet were on it still.
One glance showed Arthur this—one glance, before he flew breathlessly to
the door, and alarmed the house.
The man whom the landlord called ‘Ben,’ was the first to appear on the
stairs. In three words, Arthur told him what had happened, and sent him
for the nearest doctor.
I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a medical friend of
mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking care of his patients for him,
during his absence in London; and I, for the time being, was the nearest
doctor. They had sent for me from the Inn, when the stranger was taken
ill in the afternoon; but I was not at home, and medical assistance was
sought for elsewhere. When the man from The Two Robins rang the
night-bell, I was just thinking of going to bed. Naturally enough, I did
not believe a word of his story about ‘a dead man who had come to life
again.’ However, I put on my hat, armed myself with one or two bottles
of restorative medicine, and ran to the Inn, expecting to find nothing
more remarkable, when I got there, than a patient in a fit.
My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the literal truth was
almost, if not quite, equalled by my astonishment at finding myself face
to face with Arthur Holliday as soon as I entered the bedroom. It was no
time then for giving or seeking explanations. We just shook hands
amazedly; and then I ordered everybody but Arthur out of the room, and
hurried to the man on the bed.
The kitchen fire had not been long out. There was plenty of hot water in
the boiler, and plenty of flannel to be had. With these, with my
medicines, and with such help as Arthur could render under my direction,
I dragged the man, literally, out of the jaws of death. In less than an
hour from the time when I had been called in, he was alive and talking in
the bed on which he had been laid out to wait for the Coroner’s inquest.
You will naturally ask me, what had been the matter with him; and I might
treat you, in reply, to a long theory, plentifully sprinkled with, what
the children call, hard words. I prefer telling you that, in this case,
cause and effect could not be satisfactorily joined together by any
theory whatever. There are mysteries in life, and the condition of it,
which human science has not fathomed yet; and I candidly confess to you,
that, in bringing that man back to existence, I was, morally speaking,
groping haphazard in the dark. I know (from the testimony of the doctor
who attended him in the afternoon) that the vital machinery, so far as
its action is appreciable by our senses, had, in this case,
unquestionably stopped; and I am equally certain (seeing that I recovered
him) that the vital principle was not extinct. When I add, that he had
suffered from a long and complicated illness, and that his whole nervous
system was utterly deranged, I have told you all I really know of the
physical condition of my dead-alive patient at The Two Robins Inn.
When he ‘came to,’ as the phrase goes, he was a startling object to look
at, with his colourless face, his sunken cheeks, his wild black eyes, and
his long black hair. The first question he asked me about himself, when
he could speak, made me suspect that I had been called in to a man in my
own profession. I mentioned to him my surmise; and he told me that I was
right.
He said he had come last from Paris, where he had been attached to a
hospital. That he had lately returned to England, on his way to
Edinburgh, to continue his studies; that he had been taken ill on the
journey; and that he had stopped to rest and recover himself at
Doncaster. He did not add a word about his name, or who he was: and, of
course, I did not question him on the subject. All I inquired, when he
ceased speaking, was what branch of the profession he intended to follow.
‘Any branch,’ he said, bitterly, ‘which will put bread into the mouth of
a poor man.’
At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him in silent curiosity,
burst out impetuously in his usual good-humoured way:—
‘My dear fellow!’ (everybody was ‘my dear fellow’ with Arthur) ‘now you
have come to life again, don’t begin by being down-hearted about your
prospects. I’ll answer for it, I can help you to some capital thing in
the medical line—or, if I can’t, I know my father can.’
The medical student looked at him steadily.
‘Thank you,’ he said, coldly. Then added, ‘May I ask who your father
is?’
‘He’s well enough known all about this part of the country,’ replied
Arthur. ‘He is a great manufacturer, and his name is Holliday.’
My hand was on the man’s wrist during this brief conversation. The
instant the name of Holliday was pronounced I felt the pulse under my
fingers flutter, stop, go on suddenly with a bound, and beat afterwards,
for a minute or two, at the fever rate.
‘How did you come here?’ asked the stranger, quickly, excitably,
passionately almost.
Arthur related briefly what had happened from the time of his first
taking the bed at the inn.
‘I am indebted to Mr. Holliday’s son then for the help that has saved my
life,’ said the medical student, speaking to himself, with a singular
sarcasm in his voice. ‘Come here!’
He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony, right hand.
‘With all my heart,’ said Arthur, taking the hand-cordially. ‘I may
confess it now,’ he continued, laughing. ‘Upon my honour, you almost
frightened me out of my wits.’
The stranger did not seem to listen. His wild black eyes were fixed with
a look of eager interest on Arthur’s face, and his long bony fingers kept
tight hold of Arthur’s hand. Young Holliday, on his side, returned the
gaze, amazed and puzzled by the medical student’s odd language and
manners. The two faces were close together; I looked at them; and, to my
amazement, I was suddenly impressed by the sense of a likeness between
them—not in features, or complexion, but solely in expression. It must
have been a strong likeness, or I should certainly not have found it out,
for I am naturally slow at detecting resemblances between faces.
‘You have saved my life,’ said the strange man, still looking hard in
Arthur’s face, still holding tightly by his hand. ‘If you had been my
own brother, you could not have done more for me than that.’
He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three words ‘my own
brother,’ and a change passed over his face as he pronounced them,—a
change that no language of mine is competent to describe.
‘I hope I have not done being of service to you yet,’ said Arthur. ‘I’ll
speak to my father, as soon as I get home.’
‘You seem to be fond and proud of your father,’ said the medical student.
‘I suppose, in return, he is fond and proud of you?’
‘Of course, he is!’ answered Arthur, laughing. ‘Is there anything
wonderful in that? Isn’t _your_ father fond—’
The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday’s hand, and turned his face
away.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Arthur. ‘I hope I have not unintentionally
pained you. I hope you have not lost your father.’
‘I can’t well lose what I have never had,’ retorted the medical student,
with a harsh, mocking laugh.
‘What you have never had!’
The strange man suddenly caught Arthur’s hand again, suddenly looked once
more hard in his face.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh. ‘You have brought
a poor devil back into the world, who has no business there. Do I
astonish you? Well! I have a fancy of my own for telling you what men
in my situation generally keep a secret. I have no name and no father.
The merciful law of Society tells me I am Nobody’s Son! Ask your father
if he will be my father too, and help me on in life with the family
name.’
Arthur looked at me, more puzzled than ever. I signed to him to say
nothing, and then laid my fingers again on the man’s wrist. No! In
spite of the extraordinary speech that he had just made, he was not, as I
had been disposed to suspect, beginning to get light-headed. His pulse,
by this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow beat, and his skin was
moist and cool. Not a symptom of fever or agitation about him.
Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to me, and began
talking of the extraordinary nature of his case, and asking my advice
about the future course of medical treatment to which he ought to subject
himself. I said the matter required careful thinking over, and suggested
that I should submit certain prescriptions to him the next morning. He
told me to write them at once, as he would, most likely, be leaving
Doncaster, in the morning, before I was up. It was quite useless to
represent to him the folly and danger of such a proceeding as this. He
heard me politely and patiently, but held to his resolution, without
offering any reasons or any explanations, and repeated to me, that if I
wished to give him a chance of seeing my prescription, I must write it at
once. Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the loan of a travelling
writing-case, which, he said, he had with him; and, bringing it to the
bed, shook the note-paper out of the pocket of the case forthwith in his
usual careless way. With the paper, there fell out on the counterpane of
the bed a small packet of sticking-plaster, and a little water-colour
drawing of a landscape.
The medical student took up the drawing and looked at it. His eye fell
on some initials neatly written, in cypher, in one corner. He started
and trembled; his pale face grew whiter than ever; his wild black eyes
turned on Arthur, and looked through and through him.
‘A pretty drawing,’ he said in a remarkably quiet tone of voice.
‘Ah! and done by such a pretty girl,’ said Arthur. ‘Oh, such a pretty
girl! I wish it was not a landscape—I wish it was a portrait of her!’
‘You admire her very much?’
Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand for answer.
‘Love at first sight!’ he said, putting the drawing away again. ‘But the
course of it doesn’t run smooth. It’s the old story. She’s monopolised
as usual. Trammelled by a rash engagement to some poor man who is never
likely to get money enough to marry her. It was lucky I heard of it in
time, or I should certainly have risked a declaration when she gave me
that drawing. Here, doctor! Here is pen, ink, and paper all ready for
you.’
‘When she gave you that drawing? Gave it. Gave it.’ He repeated the
words slowly to himself, and suddenly closed his eyes. A momentary
distortion passed across his face, and I saw one of his hands clutch up
the bedclothes and squeeze them hard. I thought he was going to be ill
again, and begged that there might be no more talking. He opened his
eyes when I spoke, fixed them once more searchingly on Arthur, and said,
slowly and distinctly, ‘You like her, and she likes you. The poor man
may die out of your way. Who can tell that she may not give you herself
as well as her drawing, after all?’
Before young Holliday could answer, he turned to me, and said in a
whisper, ‘Now for the prescription.’ From that time, though he spoke to
Arthur again, he never looked at him more.
When I had written the prescription, he examined it, approved of it, and
then astonished us both by abruptly wishing us good night. I offered to
sit up with him, and he shook his head. Arthur offered to sit up with
him, and he said, shortly, with his face turned away, ‘No.’ I insisted
on having somebody left to watch him. He gave way when he found I was
determined, and said he would accept the services of the waiter at the
Inn.
‘Thank you, both,’ he said, as we rose to go. ‘I have one last favour to
ask—not of you, doctor, for I leave you to exercise your professional
discretion—but of Mr. Holliday.’ His eyes, while he spoke, still rested
steadily on me, and never once turned towards Arthur. ‘I beg that Mr.
Holliday will not mention to any one—least of all to his father—the
events that have occurred, and the words that have passed, in this room.
I entreat him to bury me in his memory, as, but for him, I might have
been buried in my grave. I cannot give my reasons for making this
strange request. I can only implore him to grant it.’
His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face on the pillow.
Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the required pledge. I took young
Holliday away with me, immediately afterwards, to the house of my friend;
determining to go back to the Inn, and to see the medical student again
before he had left in the morning.
I returned to the Inn at eight o’clock, purposely abstaining from waking
Arthur, who was sleeping off the past night’s excitement on one of my
friend’s sofas. A suspicion had occurred to me as soon as I was alone in
my bedroom, which made me resolve that Holliday and the stranger whose
life he had saved should not meet again, if I could prevent it. I have
already alluded to certain reports, or scandals, which I knew of,
relating to the early life of Arthur’s father. While I was thinking, in
my bed, of what had passed at the Inn—of the change in the student’s
pulse when he heard the name of Holliday; of the resemblance of
expression that I had discovered between his face and Arthur’s; of the
emphasis he had laid on those three words, ‘my own brother;’ and of his
incomprehensible acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy—while I was
thinking of these things, the reports I have mentioned suddenly flew into
my mind, and linked themselves fast to the chain of my previous
reflections. Something within me whispered, ‘It is best that those two
young men should not meet again.’ I felt it before I slept; I felt it
when I woke; and I went, as I told you, alone to the Inn the next
morning.
I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my nameless patient again. He
had been gone nearly an hour when I inquired for him.
* * * * *
I have now told you everything that I know for certain, in relation to
the man whom I brought back to life in the double-bedded room of the Inn
at Doncaster. What I have next to add is matter for inference and
surmise, and is not, strictly speaking, matter of fact.
I have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned out to be
strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it as more than probable
that Arthur Holliday would marry the young lady who had given him the
water-colour drawing of the landscape. That marriage took place a little
more than a year after the events occurred which I have just been
relating. The young couple came to live in the neighbourhood in which I
was then established in practice. I was present at the wedding, and was
rather surprised to find that Arthur was singularly reserved with me,
both before and after his marriage, on the subject of the young lady’s
prior engagement. He only referred to it once, when we were alone,
merely telling me, on that occasion, that his wife had done all that
honour and duty required of her in the matter, and that the engagement
had been broken off with the full approval of her parents. I never heard
more from him than this. For three years he and his wife lived together
happily. At the expiration of that time, the symptoms of a serious
illness first declared themselves in Mrs. Arthur Holliday. It turned out
to be a long, lingering, hopeless malady. I attended her throughout. We
had been great friends when she was well, and we became more attached to
each other than ever when she was ill. I had many long and interesting
conversations with her in the intervals when she suffered least. The
result of one of these conversations I may briefly relate, leaving you to
draw any inferences from it that you please.
The interview to which I refer, occurred shortly before her death. I
called one evening, as usual, and found her alone, with a look in her
eyes which told me that she had been crying. She only informed me at
first, that she had been depressed in spirits; but, by little and little,
she became more communicative, and confessed to me that she had been
looking over some old letters, which had been addressed to her, before
she had seen Arthur, by a man to whom she had been engaged to be married.
I asked her how the engagement came to be broken off. She replied that
it had not been broken off, but that it had died out in a very mysterious
way. The person to whom she was engaged—her first love, she called
him—was very poor, and there was no immediate prospect of their being
married. He followed my profession, and went abroad to study. They had
corresponded regularly, until the time when, as she believed, he had
returned to England. From that period she heard no more of him. He was
of a fretful, sensitive temperament; and she feared that she might have
inadvertently done or said something that offended him. However that
might be, he had never written to her again; and, after waiting a year,
she had married Arthur. I asked when the first estrangement had begun,
and found that the time at which she ceased to hear anything of her first
lover exactly corresponded with the time at which I had been called in to
my mysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn.
A fortnight after that conversation, she died. In course of time, Arthur
married again. Of late years, he has lived principally in London, and I
have seen little or nothing of him.
I have many years to pass over before I can approach to anything like a
conclusion of this fragmentary narrative. And even when that later
period is reached, the little that I have to say will not occupy your
attention for more than a few minutes. Between six and seven years ago,
the gentleman to whom I introduced you in this room, came to me, with
good professional recommendations, to fill the position of my assistant.
We met, not like strangers, but like friends—the only difference between
us being, that I was very much surprised to see him, and that he did not
appear to be at all surprised to see me. If he was my son or my brother,
I believe he could not be fonder of me than he is; but he has never
volunteered any confidences since he has been here, on the subject of his
past life. I saw something that was familiar to me in his face when we
first met; and yet it was also something that suggested the idea of
change. I had a notion once that my patient at the Inn might be a
natural son of Mr. Holliday’s; I had another idea that he might also have
been the man who was engaged to Arthur’s first wife; and I have a third
idea, still clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the only man in England who
could really enlighten me, if he chose, on both those doubtful points.
His hair is not black, now, and his eyes are dimmer than the piercing
eyes that I remember, but, for all that, he is very like the nameless
medical student of my young days—very like him. And, sometimes, when I
come home late at night, and find him asleep, and wake him, he looks, in
coming to, wonderfully like the stranger at Doncaster, as he raised
himself in the bed on that memorable night!
The Doctor paused. Mr. Goodchild, who had been following every word that
fell from his lips up to this time, leaned forward eagerly to ask a
question. Before he could say a word, the latch of the door was raised,
without any warning sound of footsteps in the passage outside. A long,
white, bony hand appeared through the opening, gently pushing the door,
which was prevented from working freely on its hinges by a fold in the
carpet under it.
‘That hand! Look at that hand, Doctor!’ said Mr. Goodchild, touching
him.
At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr. Goodchild, and whispered to
him, significantly:
‘Hush! he has come back.’