Volume Three—Chapter Eighteen.
One Way of Escape.
North drew a deep breath as one of the men stationed himself at the study window and looked in.
He strode towards him, and the man smiled and beckoned to him to come out; but the smile became a scowl as the cord was seized and the blind drawn down.
Just then the door cracked as some one pressed it hard, and then a whispering penetrated to where North stood looking round before crossing to the surgery, entering, and locking himself in.
His first act was to go to the window, where he expected to find that there was another sentry; but window and outer door faced in another direction, and were shut off from the part of the garden where the man stood by a dense patch of ancient shrubbery and a tall yew hedge.
North felt perfectly calm now, but his soul was full of a terrible despair.
He told himself that for him hope was dead; that in dealing with the occult secrets of Nature he had nearly mastered that which he wished to discover, but had failed, and must pay the penalty; while in the future some more fortunate student would profit by that which he had done; and, avoiding the pitfall into which he had fallen, take another turning and triumph.
To this end in the hours of his misery—when it had seemed to him that the strange essence which pervaded him slept—he had committed to paper the whole history of his experiments, from the first start to the time when he had awakened to the fact that he could no longer arrest the decomposition of the important organs, or do more than make a kind of mummy of his subject; but the essence or spirit was, as it were, taken captive, and at the same time held him in thrall.
This, to the most extreme point, he had carefully written out, showing, in addition, the time when he felt that he must have gone wrong, as that where a different course must be pursued by the daring scientist who would venture so much in the great cause.
For he wrote clearly and impressively: failure meant such a fate as his, the constant presence of the spirit of the person who had died, and with it the being compelled to suffer for every wild act or speech this essence would do or make. He told how helpless he was, how he had striven to bring scientific knowledge to bear, fought with his position as a man should who was in the full possession of his faculties, but that he could do no more.
Success meant a crown of triumphant honour; failure, a kind of sane madness, whose only end could be death—a death he was compelled to seek to save himself at once—to save himself from being treated as a maniac, and then to spend a few weeks or months of torture which he knew he could not bear.
In his last paragraphs he pointed out his position. He was believed to be mad, and to clear himself he would have to explain his experiment and his abnormal position, which he owned that no one would or could be expected to believe, save such a savant as the one he addressed—a man who had made the brain his study, and who could feel for the sufferings of the writer.
This letter was enclosed in the packet addressed to his executors for delivery to Mr Delton, and lay in the study, waiting till those executors should receive the last commands.
All was at an end now, and with a feeling of calmness approaching to content, Horace North looked round his surgery with its many familiar objects; and without the slightest feeling of dread took down a small medicine glass from the set standing all ready upon a shelf, and then lifted a large bottle from one particular spot at the end where it always stood, veiling a little recess wherein were a couple of smaller bottles, carefully labelled and marked as to their degree of strength.
“Is it cowardly?” he said quietly. “Is it a sin? Surely not, when I know my position, and—yes, that is my fate.”
For at that moment there was a sharp crack: the door had yielded, and he knew that his cousin’s emissaries—the people from some private asylum—had forced their way into the study, and their next step would be to make their way to where he was.
He could have opened the door, and fled by way of the meadows; but where? To whom? Perhaps at the moment when he made his first appeal for help, the living shadow that he had, as it were, taken to him, would utter some wild cry or absurd jest, and people would believe his pursuers in spite of all that he could declare.
No, it was not cowardice, this hastening of his end; and, withdrawing the stopper, he began pouring out the liquid contents of the little bottle, as the handle of the surgery door was turned, and the panel gave an ominous crack.
“You shall let me pass away in peace,” he said quietly, as he drew away a chair which propped back an inner door of baize, let it swing to, and thrust in both its bolts.
“Cousin Thompson,” he said bitterly, “you were always a miserable wretch, but I withdraw my curse. Take all, and enjoy your wretched life as well as such a reptile can.”
He paused for a few moments, with his lips moving slowly, and a calm look of resignation softening the harsh austerities of his face.
“To forgiveness!” he said softly. “To oblivion!” and he raised the glass to his lips.