A FOOTSTEP.
He went out no more at night. From the moment he laid his hand upon the
model again he was safer than he knew. Gradually the old fascination
re-asserted itself. There were hours of lassitude and weariness to be
borne, and moments of unutterable bitterness and disgust for life, in
which he had to fight sharp battles against the poorer side of his
nature; but always at the worst there was something which made itself a
point to fix thought upon. He could force himself to think of this when,
if he had had no purpose in view, he would have been a lost man. The
keen sense of treachery to his own resolve stung him, but it was a spur
after all. The strength of the reaction had its physical effect upon
him, and sometimes he suddenly found himself weak to exhaustion,--so
weak that any exertion was impossible, and he was obliged to leave his
post at the Works and return home for rest. At such times he lay for
hours upon the narrow sofa in the dull little room, as his father had
done long before, and wore a look so like him that, one day, his mother
coming into the room not knowing he was there, cried out aloud and
staggered backward, clutching at her breast.
Her manner toward him softened greatly in these days. It was more what
it had been in his boyhood, when she had watched over him with patient
and unfailing fondness. Once he awakened to see her standing a few
paces from his side, seeming to have been there some moments.
"If--I have seemed hard to you in your trouble," she said, "forgive me."
She spoke without any prelude, and did not seem to expect any answer,
turning away and going about her work at once, but he felt that he need
feel restless and chilled in her presence no longer.
He did not pursue his task at home, but took the model down to the Works
and found a place for it in his little work-cell.
The day he did so he was favored by a visit from Haworth. It was the
first since the rupture between them. Since then they had worked day
after day with only the door between them, they had known each other's
incomings and outgoings, but had been as far apart as if a world
separated them. Haworth had known more of Murdoch than Murdoch had known
of him. No change in him had escaped his eye. He had seen him struggle
and reach his climax at last. He had jeered at him as a poor enough
fellow with fine, white-livered fancies, and a woman's way of bearing
himself. He had raged at and cursed him, and now and then had been lost
in wonder at him, but he had never fathomed him from first to last.
But within the last few weeks his mood had changed,--slowly, it is true,
but it had changed. His bearing had changed, too. Murdoch himself
gradually awakened to a recognition of this fact, in no small wonder. He
was less dogged and aggressive, and showed less ill-will.
That he should appear suddenly, almost in his old way, was a somewhat
startling state of affairs, but he crossed the threshold coolly.
He sat down and folded his arms on the table.
"You brought summat down with you this morning," he said. "What was
it?"
Murdoch pointed to the wooden case, which stood on a shelf a few feet
from him.
"It was that," he answered.
"That!" he repeated. "What! You're at work at it again, are you?"
"Yes."
"Well, look sharp after it, that's all. There's a grudge bore again it."
"I know that," Murdoch answered, "to my cost. I brought it here because
I thought it would be safer."
"Aye, it'll be safer. Take my advice and keep it close, and work at it
at nights, when th' place is quiet. There's a key as'll let you in." And
he flung a key down upon the table.
Murdoch picked it up mechanically. He felt as if he could scarcely be
awake. It seemed as if the man must have brought his purpose into the
room with him, having thought it over beforehand. His manner by no means
disarmed the suspicion.
"It is the favor I should have asked, if I had thought----"
Haworth left his chair.
"There's th' key," he said, abruptly. "Use it. No other chap would get
it."
He went back to his own room, and Murdoch was left to his surprise.
He finished his work for the day, and went home, remaining there until
night came on. Then he went back to the Works, having first told
Christian of his purpose.
"I am going to the Works," he said. "I may be there all night. Don't
wait for me, or feel anxious."
When the great building loomed up before him in the dark, his mind
recalled instantly the night he had entered it before, attracted by the
light in the window. There was no light about it now but that shut in
the lantern he carried. The immensity and dead stillness would have been
a trying thing for many a man to encounter, but as he relocked the door
and made his way to his den, he thought of them only from one point of
view.
"It is the silence of the grave," he said. "A man can concentrate
himself upon his work as if there was not a human breath stirring within
a mile of him."
Somehow, even his room wore a look which seemed to belong to the silence
of night--a look he felt he had not seen before. He marked it with a
vague sense of mystery when he set his lantern down upon the table,
turning the light upon the spot on which his work would stand.
Then he took down the case and opened it and removed the model.
"It will not be forgotten again," he thought aloud. "If it is to be
finished, it will be finished here."
Half the night passed before he returned home. When he did so he went to
his room and slept heavily until daylight. He had never slept as he
slept in these nights,--heavy dreamless sleep, from which, at first, he
used to awaken with a start and a perfectly blank sense of loss and
dread, but which became, at last, unbroken.
Night after night found him at his labor. It grew upon him; he longed
for it through the day; he could not have broken from it if he would.
Once, as he sat at his table, he fancied that he heard a lock click and
afterward a stealthy footstep. It was a sound so faint and indistinct
that his disbelief in its reality was immediate; but he got up, taking
his lantern with him, and went out to look at the entrance passage. It
was empty and dark, and the door was shut and locked as he had left it.
He went back to his work little disturbed. He had not really expected to
find the traces of any presence in the place, but he had felt it best to
make the matter safe.
Perhaps the fact that once or twice on other nights the same light,
indefinite sound fell upon his ear again, made him feel rather more
secure than otherwise. Having examined the place again and with the same
result, it troubled him no more. He set it down to some ordinary
material cause.
After his first visit Haworth came into his room often. Why he came
Murdoch did not understand very clearly. He did not come to talk;
sometimes he scarcely spoke at all. He was moody and abstracted. He went
about the place wearing a hard and reckless look, utterly unlike any
roughness and hardness he had shown before. The hands who had cared the
least for his not altogether ill-natured tempests in days gone by shrank
or were restive before him now. He drove all before him or passed
through the rooms sullenly. It was plain to see that he was not the man
he had been--that he had even lost strength, and was suddenly worn and
broken, though neither flesh nor color had failed him.
Among those who had made a lion of him he was more popular than ever.
The fact that he had held out against ill luck when so many had gone
down, was constantly quoted. The strikes which had kept up an uneven but
prolonged struggle had been the ruin of many a manufacturer who had
thought he could battle any storm. "Haworth's" had held its own and
weathered the worst.
This was what the county potentates were fond of saying upon all
occasions,--particularly when they wanted Haworth to dine with them at
their houses. He used to accept their invitations and then go and sit at
their dinner-tables with a sardonic face. His humor, it was remarked
with some regret, was often of a sardonic kind. Occasionally he laughed
at the wrong time, and his jokes were not always easy to smile under. It
was also remarked that Mr. Ffrench scarcely seemed comfortable upon
these festive occasions. Of late he had not been in the enjoyment of
good health. He explained that he suffered from nervous headaches and
depression. His refined, well-molded face had become rather thin and
fatigued-looking. He had lost his effusive eloquence. He often sat
silent and started nervously when spoken to, but he did not eschew
society at all, always going out upon any state occasion when his
partner was to be a feature of the feast. Once upon such an occasion he
had said privately and with some plaintiveness to Haworth:
"I don't think I can go to-night, my dear fellow. I really don't feel
quite equal to it."
"Blast you!" said Haworth, dispensing with social codes. "You'll go
whether you're up to it or not. We'll keep it up to the end. It'll be
over soon enough."
He evinced interest in the model, in his visits to the work-room, which
seemed a little singular to Murdoch. He asked questions about it, and
more than once repeated his caution concerning its being "kept close."
"I've got it into my head that you'll finish it some of these days," he
said once, "if naught happens to it or you."