Sir Bale's Dream
It was Doctor Torvey who entered the old still-room now, buttoned-up to
the chin in his greatcoat, and with a muffler of many colours wrapped
partly over that feature.
"Well!--hey? So poor Feltram's had an accident?"
The Doctor was addressing Sir Bale, and getting to the bedside as he
pulled off his gloves.
"I see you've been keeping him warm--that's right; and a considerable
flow of water from his mouth; turn him a little that way. Hey? O, ho!"
said the Doctor, as he placed his hand upon Philip, and gently stirred
his limbs. "It's more than an hour since this happened. I'm afraid
there's very little to be done now;" and in a lower tone, with his hand
on poor Philip Feltram's arm, and so down to his fingers, he said in Sir
Bale Mardykes' ear, with a shake of his head,
"Here, you see, poor fellow, here's the cadaveric stiffness; it's very
melancholy, but it's all over, he's gone; there's no good trying any
more. Come here, Mrs. Julaper. Did you ever see any one dead? Look at
his eyes, look at his mouth. You ought to have known that, with half an
eye. And you know," he added again confidentially in Sir Bale's ear,
"trying any more _now_ is all my eye."
Then after a few more words with the Baronet, and having heard his
narrative, he said from time to time, "Quite right; nothing could be
better; capital practice, sir," and so forth. And at the close of all
this, amid the sobs of kind Mrs. Julaper and the general whimpering of
the humbler handmaids, the Doctor standing by the bed, with his knuckles
on the coverlet, and a glance now and then on the dead face beside him,
said--by way of 'quieting men's minds,' as the old tract-writers used to
say--a few words to the following effect:
"Everything has been done here that the most experienced physician could
have wished. Everything has been done in the best way. I don't know
anything that has not been done, in fact. If I had been here myself, I
don't know--hot bricks--salt isn't a bad thing. I don't know, I say,
that anything of any consequence has been omitted." And looking at the
body, "You see," and he drew the fingers a little this way and that,
letting them return, as they stiffly did, to their former attitude, "you
may be sure that the poor gentleman was quite dead by the time he
arrived here. So, since he was laid there, nothing has been lost by
delay. And, Sir Bale, if you have any directions to send to Golden
Friars, sir, I shall be most happy to undertake your message."
"Nothing, thanks; it is a melancholy ending, poor fellow! You must come
to the study with me, Doctor Torvey, and talk a little bit more;
and--very sad, doctor--and you must have a glass of sherry, or some
port--the port used not to be bad here; I don't take it--but very
melancholy it is--bring some port and sherry; and, Mrs. Julaper, you'll
be good enough to see that everything that should be done here is looked
to; and let Marlin and the men have supper and something to drink. You
have been too long in your wet clothes, Marlin."
So, with gracious words all round, he led the Doctor to the library
where he had been sitting, and was affable and hospitable, and told him
his own version of all that had passed between him and Philip Feltram,
and presented himself in an amiable point of view, and pleased the
Doctor with his port and flatteries--for he could not afford to lose
anyone's good word just now; and the Doctor was a bit of a gossip, and
in most houses in that region, in one character or another, every three
months in the year.
So in due time the Doctor drove back to Golden Friars, with a high
opinion of Sir Bale, and higher still of his port, and highest of all of
himself: in the best possible humour with the world, not minding the
storm that blew in his face, and which he defied in good-humoured
mock-heroics spoken in somewhat thick accents, and regarding the thunder
and lightning as a lively gala of fireworks; and if there had been a
chance of finding his cronies still in the George and Dragon, he would
have been among them forthwith, to relate the tragedy of the night, and
tell what a good fellow, after all, Sir Bale was; and what a fool, at
best, poor Philip Feltram.
But the George was quiet for that night. The thunder rolled over
voiceless chambers; and the lights had been put out within the windows,
on whose multitudinous small panes the lightning glared. So the Doctor
went home to Mrs. Torvey, whom he charmed into good-humoured curiosity
by the tale of wonder he had to relate.
Sir Bale's qualms were symptomatic of something a little less sublime
and more selfish than conscience. He was not sorry that Philip Feltram
was out of the way. His lips might begin to babble inconveniently at any
time, and why should not his mouth be stopped? and what stopper so
effectual as that plug of clay which fate had introduced? But he did not
want to be charged with the odium of the catastrophe. Every man cares
something for the opinion of his fellows. And seeing that Feltram had
been well liked, and that his death had excited a vehement
commiseration, Sir Bale did not wish it to be said that he had made the
house too hot to hold him, and had so driven him to extremity.
Sir Bale's first agitation had subsided. It was now late, he had written
many letters, and he was tired. It was not wonderful, then, that having
turned his lounging-chair to the fire, he should have fallen asleep in
it, as at last he did.
The storm was passing gradually away by this time. The thunder was now
echoing among the distant glens and gorges of Daulness Fells, and the
angry roar and gusts of the tempest were subsiding into the melancholy
soughing and piping that soothe like a lullaby.
Sir Bale therefore had his unpremeditated sleep very comfortably, except
that his head was hanging a little uneasily; which, perhaps, helped him
to this dream.
It was one of those dreams in which the continuity of the waking state
that immediately preceded it seems unbroken; for he thought that he was
sitting in the chair which he occupied, and in the room where he
actually was. It seemed to him that he got up, took a candle in his
hand, and went through the passages to the old still-room where Philip
Feltram lay. The house seemed perfectly still. He could hear the chirp
of the crickets faintly from the distant kitchen, and the tick of the
clock sounded loud and hollow along the passage. In the old still-room,
as he opened the door, was no light, except what was admitted from the
candle he carried. He found the body of poor Philip Feltram just as he
had left it--his gentle face, saddened by the touch of death, was turned
upwards, with white lips: with traces of suffering fixed in its
outlines, such as caused Sir Bale, standing by the bed, to draw the
coverlet over the dead man's features, which seemed silently to upbraid
him. "Gone in weakness!" said Sir Bale, repeating the words of the "daft
sir," Hugh Creswell; as he did so, a voice whispered near him, with a
great sigh, "Come in power!" He looked round, in his dream, but there
was no one; the light seemed to fail, and a horror slowly overcame him,
especially as he thought he saw the figure under the coverlet stealthily
beginning to move. Backing towards the door, for he could not take his
eyes off it, he saw something like a huge black ape creep out at the
foot of the bed; and springing at him, it griped him by the throat, so
that he could not breathe; and a thousand voices were instantly round
him, holloaing, cursing, laughing in his ears; and in this direful
plight he waked.
Was it the ring of those voices still in his ears, or a real shriek, and
another, and a long peal, shriek after shriek, swelling madly through
the distant passages, that held him still, freezing in the horror of his
dream?
I will tell you what this noise was.