Volume Three—Chapter Twenty Four.

Out of the Shadow.

Hartley Salis found that his words were correct.

He was too late!

He learned that “a gentleman,” as the people at the hotel called him, had been staying at the hotel, that a lady, evidently Leo, had come in by the early train, and that they had gone.

“Heaven only knows where, Mary, dear,” said Salis a week later, as he lay upon the couch, utterly worn out with his efforts to trace the fugitives. “I am broken down. Thank God, dear, I am once more at home. And you?”

“My dearest brother,” she said tenderly, as she knelt beside him and laid her hand upon his burning brow.

“Ah, that’s cool and pleasant,” he sighed, with his eyes closed. “Tell me about North—more than your letters said.”

“He is better—much better,” said Mary, with an eagerness she made no attempt to conceal.

“Yes,” said Salis wearily; “so Mr Delton said.”

“Yes; so Mr Delton said, and he also said, my dear sir, that you too must have rest; your sister, recovering from her own illness, cannot afford to have two invalids on her hands.”

Salis looked up, and held out his hand to the old doctor, who had uttered the words softly, as doctors do: “You have hardly had a good night’s rest since you left.”

“I have not been to bed,” said Salis simply. “There, I will try and sleep now.”

The doctor made Mary a sign, and she drew back as Salis closed his eyes, and the breakfast which had been prepared as he drove in that morning from King’s Hampton after travelling all night remained untasted.

That was at seven o’clock, and it was seven at night when he awoke to look sharply round, and see Mary at the head of the couch.

“I—where am—? Have I been asleep?”

“Yes,” said Mary softly.

“Hah!” he ejaculated, springing up. “I have done all I could, Mary,” he said almost appealingly. “I think they are married. It’s a proud thing for us, dear, to have a lady of title for sister,” he added bitterly, as he took Mary to his heart, and she felt it throbbing with his emotion.

“There,” he said, after a few minutes’ struggle, “now for other duties. I still have you.”

The pressure of Mary’s hand spoke more than words, and the poor fellow sat at last, feeling that, after all, there were great compensations in life.

The sight of a well-dressed visitor coming up to the house interrupted their quiet communion, just as they had felt that no more could be done respecting Leo, after Salis had been placed au courant with the state of affairs at the Rectory. Among others that Dally had been to and fro several times to see her grandfather, but had settled down to her work as of old.

In fact that young lady entered the room directly after the ringing of the gate bell, to state that Mrs Berens was in the drawing-room, and wanted to see master “partickler.”

“I will see her for you, Hartley,” said Mary.

“No,” replied Salis firmly; “I want work to keep my brain quiet, or I shall be ill. Show her in here, Dally.”

“No, no, I will fetch her,” said Mary, smiling at her brother’s want of etiquette.

She left the room to return directly.

“Come and see her, Hartley,” she said. “Poor woman, she is in sad trouble.”

“Hah! I am glad,” cried Salis. “Something to think about. The best medicine for me.”

“Oh, Mr Salis, what shall I do? What you have so often said!” sobbed Mrs Berens, as he entered the room, and she clung to his extended hand.

“What I have so often said?”

“Yes; about riches. I’m a poor, helpless woman now. All gone—all gone!”

It was a long story about how she had allowed herself to be influenced by Cousin Thompson, whom she had permitted to make investment after investment till he seemed to have got the whole of the widow’s money into his hands.

“And all went so well till that day when I offended him, dear Mr Salis. Since then I have had nothing but bad news about my property, and now I can get no answers from him at all.”

“A scoundrel!” cried Salis; “but what day do you mean?”

“That day when—must I tell you everything?”

“If you wish for my help,” said Salis sharply.

“I do, Mr Salis; but pray don’t speak angrily to me. I am so broken and unhappy now.”

“My dear madam, I want to help you. Pray tell me all.”

“He came down to me one day—I have the date somewhere—and he proposed to me. I refused him at once, for I quite disliked the man, and he went away my enemy, I’m sure, and when I heard of his conduct towards his cousin, I felt that I had had a narrow escape from a perfect fiend. And now, Mr Salis, what shall I do?”

“The dog!” ejaculated Salis. “I’m longing for occupation; leave it to me, Mrs Berens. I’ve been seeing a friend—my solicitor—in town about North’s affair with his cousin; we’ll work the two together, and if Mr Thompson does not mind, he’ll find himself in a strange fix.”

Cousin Thompson did find himself in a strange fix, and what with threats of proceedings against him for conspiracy and fraud, he was very glad to compound matters in a way which restored two-thirds of her comfortable little fortune to Mrs Berens.

What time these proceedings were going on, North was gradually improving under Mr Delton’s care, though the old gentleman laughed, and said that the improvement was not due to him.

Certainly it was the case that when North had his often-recurring fits of imagination, when he was fully convinced that the essence of Luke Candlish was with him still, and he turned wild with horror, the touch of Mary Salis’ soft, cool hand laid across his eyes, where he held it as a talisman, invariably exorcised the fancied spirit, and the ghost was laid.

From recurring daily and with terrible force, the fits came at last weekly, and then a month passed before one came, and that was slight.

Then more and more feeble, and then they came no more.

There could only be one result to such intercourse as this. Horace North gradually awakened to the fact that he had been blind as well as partly demented; but a year had elapsed before one day Salis and Mrs Berens entered the Rectory drawing-room to find Mary sobbing gently on the young doctor’s breast, and heard her say:

“I always loved you from the first.”

“Ah, Salis, you here?” said North, rising without a shade of discomposure on his face. “Mens sana in corpore sano, old fellow. I have been asking dear Mary if she will be my wife.”

“My dear Horace,” cried Salis, his face flushing with pleasure, “Heaven bless you both! I am glad: but—er—the fact is, I have been betrayed into asking Mrs Berens—er—to—”

“Dear, dear Mary!” sobbed the homely, simple-hearted woman; “don’t, don’t be angry with me. I do love him so.”

Another year had passed, but there had been nothing definite heard about Leo.

Then came a black-bordered envelope, with the direction in her hand, asking her brother to help her, for she was in terrible straits in London with her child. There was plenty of money to be had, she said, but everything was in confusion, and the agent of Sir Thomas Candlish refused to acknowledge her as the late baronet’s wife.

But the energy of Hartley Salis soon set this right.

For old Moredock’s notion had proved to be correct. Tom Candlish had literally drunk himself to death, and the old man, who had been giving Horace North a good deal of trouble lately, and who was exceedingly fractious and jealous of his grandchild’s young husband, his deputy at the church, suddenly perked up on hearing that “young Squire Tom” was to be brought down from London to the family mausoleum.

There was a grand funeral, and the old man, helped by Joe Chegg, got through his part of the business with a good deal of his old energy.

All was over, and Horace North, who had been one of the mourners, as brother-in-law of Lady Candlish of the Hall, was about to turn away, with his mind strongly exercised by the scene, and the recollections it evoked, when he started, for he felt his sleeve plucked.

He turned sharply round to find himself alone, gazing at the old sexton, as he gave him one of his ghoulish grins—more hideous than ever.

“Now, gran’fa,” said a quick voice, and a rosy little woman, who had evidently been crying, took his arm, “you’re tired out, and must come home. Joe will finish what’s to be done.”

“Go ’way! go ’way!” cried the old man angrily.

“No, no, dear; don’t worrit Dr North now. He’ll come and see you another time.”

“Go ’way! go ’way!” cried the old man again; and then, laying his hideous, gnarled hand upon the doctor’s arm: “Don’t want to try no more ’speriments, do you, doctor, eh?”

North looked at him wildly, and could hardly keep back a shudder.

“No, no, Moredock,” he said, recovering himself.

“But you’ll come and see me to-morrow, doctor, won’t you?”

North nodded, and walked away to Salis, who was waiting for him at the vestry door, and they entered one of the carriages to return to the Hall, while, after watching them go, the old man seated himself upon the mausoleum steps, where he could watch while his new grandson and deputy finished his duty, and the great door was closed.

“Too terrible to attempt,” muttered North to himself. “A narrow escape from a living death, but I still think that I was right.”

“Ay, Joe; ay, Dally; doctor’s a clever man, and I could tell you some strange tales about he; but no, no; no, no! Lock that gate quickly, and help me home. I’m a little stiff about the back. Lock him up, lad! lock him up! Now, Dally, let’s get back. Another Candlish there; eh! my lady, eh!”

“Gran’fa!” cried Dally furiously; and the old man broke out into a chuckling laugh, which nearly killed him, and he had to sit down on a tomb and be patted on the back, and his collar loosened, and then helped slowly home, looking very limp and strange, though with the doctor’s help he managed to survive another year.

The night of the funeral, when the doctor and his young wife returned from the Hall, where the handsome young widow sat alone with her weak, sickly child, North had a return of his imaginative malady; but Mary’s hand was talismanic still, and the shadow passed away, never to return.

The End.