The hall was quiet and dim. Somewhere a large clock was ticking. Now
and then I heard a carriage roll by outside. As I sat there I fell into
deep thought. What was I going to do? I had come to the house without
making any plan. I could not make any plan till I had seen Vernon. His
demeanour, his action, must guide me. Would he see me? I thought it
probable. There was evidently no one with him. Had there been, Cragg
would have told me; and, if I saw him, should I find the black spaniel
with him? I glanced round me. On the opposite side of the hall, close
to where I was sitting, opened the short corridor, or passage, which
linked the two houses in one. I could see the darkness of what had
been Deeming’s house where the passage stretched away beyond the door
of Vernon’s workroom. Poor Deeming! Gone, with all his fine abilities,
his energy, his persistence, his ambition—his cruelty, perhaps! Had he
been cruel? Possibly Vernon knew. If he had, he was perhaps now being
punished in that other mysterious world of which we know nothing, of
which we seldom think in health, but which seems to loom near us when
we are ill, or weary, or in trouble of mind—to loom as a great vault
before whose entrance we stand, gazing but seeing naught. As I stared
down the corridor into the dimness of the other house, the thought of
Deeming haunted me, came to me vividly, till I almost fancied that
something of him, some thrown-out essence of his personality, of his
strong soul, still remained in the dwelling that had been his, still
knew what went on there, still watched the coming and going of the man
who governed where he had governed once.
I fancied, did I say? It was more than that. I felt as if he were near
me, as if he were even intent upon me.
Then from the thought of him, and still with that sensation of
his nearness, of his attention, upon me, my mind travelled to the
black spaniel. His dog, that mysterious creature never seen by me,
had pattered in the dimness towards which I was gazing. And now,
as Deeming’s place was taken by Vernon, its place was taken by the
black spaniel Vernon had first seen in the Park cowering down against
the earth, its ears laid back, its body trembling, its eyes full of
a message of voiceless fear. Perhaps it was close to me now, this
successor of Deeming’s pet or victim. Perhaps it was shut up in the
room in which I had seen it lying against the red curtain. I could see
the door of the room. It was shut. A few steps would bring me to it. I
glanced towards the staircase. Cragg was not coming down. I got up.
Again I had the sensation that Deeming was near me, was intent upon
me, wanted something of me, and with this sensation was mysteriously
linked my consciousness of the nearness of the black spaniel, till—till
the two sensations seemed to merge the one into the other, to become
one, in some indefinable, fantastic way. I can hardly explain exactly
what I felt at this moment, but my feeling was connected with Vernon’s
workroom. It was as if—as if I almost knew that, did I but take those
few steps to the shut door, did I but open that door, I should find
awaiting me within the room not only the black spaniel, but the dead
man, Deeming, with it. It was as if—as if⸺
I moved across the hall, walking softly, reached the corridor, gained
the door, stood by it, listening for the uneasy movement, for the
whimper of a dog, for the stir, for the murmur of a dead man. But there
was no sound within. There was no sound, and yet I felt positive that
the spaniel was inside the room, separated from me only by a piece of
wood. Once, twice, I put my fingers upon the handle of the door, yet
refrained from turning it. I felt a strong desire to open the door, yet
at the critical moment I was held back from doing so by an imperious
reluctance which seemed to me to be physical, as if my body sickened
and protested against what my mind told it to do.
How long I stood thus uncertainly before the door I do not know. It
seemed to me a very long time. At last—in the struggle between mind
and body, if it were that—the body conquered. I turned to move away
without opening the door. I even took a step towards the hall. But I
was arrested by a sound that startled me, that sent—I could not tell
why—a chill through me.