|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 46
"It is there!" he cried. "It is close to us, watching us, powerless
to touch either you or me. But this unhappy sceptic proved an easy
victim."
"Would to God I had listened to you yesterday," said Sir Walter.
"Then this innocent man had not perhaps been snatched from life."
"You were directed not to listen. Your heart was hardened. His
hour had come."
"I cannot believe it. We may restore him. It is impossible that
he can be dead in a moment."
They stood over the detective, and Masters and Fred Caunter, with
courage and presence of mind, carried him out into the corridor.
The butler spoke.
"Run for the brandy, Fred," he said. "We must get some down his
neck if we can. I don't feel the gentleman's heart, but it may
not have stopped. He's warm enough."
The footman obeyed, and Hardcastle was laid upon his back. Then
Sir Walter directed Masters.
"Hold his head up. It may be better for him."
They waited, and, during the few moments before Caunter returned,
Sir Walter spoke again. His mind wandered backward and seemed for
the moment incapable of grasping the fact before him.
"Almost the last thing the man said was to ask me why ghosts
haunted the night rather than the day."
Lennox and Mannering to bring him news when the telegram dispatched
to Scotland Yard was answered, and prepared to leave them.
As he rose, he marked his old spaniel standing whimpering by his
side.
"What is the matter with Prince?" he asked.
"He has not had his dinner," said Mary.
"Let him be fed at once," answered her father, and went out alone.
She rose to follow him immediately, but Mannering, who had stopped
and was with them, begged her not to do so.
"Leave him to himself," he said. "This has shaken your father, as
well it may. He's all right. Make him take his bromide to-night,
and let nobody do anything to worry him."
The master of Chadlands meantime went afield, walked half a mile
to a favorite spot, and sat down upon a seat that he had there
erected. A storm was blowing up from the south-west, and the
weather of his mind welcomed it. He alternated between bewilderment
and indignation. His own life-long philosophy and trust in the
ordered foundations of human existence threatened to fail him
entirely before this second stroke. It seemed that the punctual
universe was suddenly turned upside down, and had emptied a vial
of horror upon his innocent head.
Reality was a thing of the past. A nightmare had taken its place,
a nightmare from which there was no waking. He considered the
stability of his days--a lifetime followed upon high principles
and founded on religious convictions that had comforted his
sorrows and countenanced his joys. It seemed a trial undeserved,
that in his old age he should be thrust upon a pinnacle of
publicity, forced into the public eye, robbed of dignity, denied
the privacy he esteemed as the most precious privilege that wealth
could command. Stability was destroyed; to count upon the morrow
seemed impossible. His thought, strung to a new morbidity, unknown
till now, ran on and pictured, with painful, vivid stroke upon
stroke, the insufferable series of events that lay before him.
Life was become a bizarre and brutal business for a man of fine
feeling. He would be thrust into the pitiless mouth of
sensation-mongers, called to appear before tribunals, subjected to
an inquisition of his fellow-men, made to endure a notoriety
infinitely odious even in anticipation. Indeed, Sir Walter's
simple intellect wallowed in anticipation, and so suffered much
that, given exercise of restraint, he might have escaped altogether.
He was brave enough, but personal bravery would not be called for.
He sat now staring dumbly at an imaginary series of events
abominable and unseemly in every particular to his order of mind.
He was so concerned with what the future must hold in store for him
that for a time the present quite escaped his thoughts.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|