It was scarcely light when I jumped out of bed, and murmuring, "Thank
God it was only a dream," dressed myself with all speed, and flinging
open the window, looked out on a calm morning after the previous
night's storm.
Muddily and angrily the Thames rolled onward to the sea. On the opposite
side of the river I could see stretches of green, with here and there a
house dotting the banks.
A fleet of barges lay waiting the turn of the tide to proceed to their
destination. The voices of the men shouting to each other, and
blaspheming for no particular reason, came quite clear and distinct
over the water. The garden was strewed with twigs and branches blown
off the trees during the night; amongst them the sprigs of ivy I had
myself cut off.
An hour and a scene not calculated to encourage superstitious fancies,
it may be, but still not likely to enliven any man's spirits--a quiet,
dull, gray, listless, dispiriting morning, and, being country-bred, I
felt its influence.
"I will walk into town, and ask Ned Munro to give me some breakfast," I
thought, and found comfort in the idea.
Ned Munro was a doctor, but not a struggling doctor. He was not rich,
but he "made enough for a beginner": so he said. He worked hard for
little pay; "but I mean some day to have high pay, and take the world
easy," he explained. He was blessed with great hopes and good courage;
he had high spirits, and a splendid constitution. He neither starved
himself nor his friends; his landlady "loved him as her son"; and
there were several good-looking girls who were very fond of him, not
as a brother.
But Ned had no notion of marrying, yet awhile. "Time enough for that,"
he told me once, "when I can furnish a good house, and set up a
brougham, and choose my patients, and have a few hundreds lying idle in
the bank."
Meantime, as no one of these items had yet been realized, he lived in
lodgings, ate toasted haddocks with his morning coffee, and smoked and
read novels far into the night.
Yes, I could go and breakfast with Munro. Just then it occurred to me
that the gas I had left lighted when I went to bed was out; that the
door I had left locked was open.
Straight downstairs I went. The gas in the hall was out, and every door
I had myself closed and locked the previous morning stood ajar, with the
seal, however, remaining intact.
I had borne as much as I could: my nerves were utterly unhinged.
Snatching my hat and coat, I left the house, and fled, rather than
walked, towards London.
With every step I took towards town came renewed courage; and when I
reached Ned's lodgings, I felt ashamed of my pusillanimity.
"I have been sleep-walking, that is what it is," I decided. "I have
opened the doors and turned off the gas myself, and been frightened at
the work of my own hands. I will ask Munro what is the best thing to
insure a quiet night."