Volume Two—Chapter Eleven.
An Interruption.
Other people, too, noticed the doctor’s strangely intent manner, as he went hurriedly about among his patients every morning, and then returned to his study to pore over sundry manuscript notes and refer to certain books.
Mrs Milt had to almost insist upon his taking his meals, for on two occasions his dinner had gone out untasted, and she had found him sitting, with his head resting upon his hands, deep in thought.
He started upon being spoken to, and seemed once more himself; but as soon as he was alone again, he relapsed into another fit of abstraction.
A few more days passed, and his task was telling upon him terribly; but he persevered, for each night he felt that he was getting nearer to success.
“I shall succeed,” he said to himself, with a wild excitability of manner that was startling; but he was alone when he said these words, and no one heard them.
“Arn’t it a very long experiment, doctor?” said Moredock, one night, looking at the doctor seriously, and rubbing his cheek slowly.
“Yes. It is taking me longer than I thought, but I shall soon finish now.”
“Glad o’ that,” said the old man drily; “because a pitcher as goes too often to the well, doctor, gets broke at last.”
“What do you mean?”
“Naught, only we might be found out.”
“Nonsense!” said the doctor uneasily. “Nobody is likely to be about except any person should be ill, and I know exactly who is likely to want the doctor by night.”
“Ah, well, let’s be careful, doctor, for it would be awkward for both if we was to be found out.”
“Pish! Who would find us out, man?”
“Well, say parson.”
“Absurd! He is in bed, and sound asleep. There, take your glass; I want to begin.”
“Nay,” said the old man, looking at the rich liqueur North poured out for him, “I don’t think I’ll have no drop to-night.”
“Nonsense, man!” said North, holding out the glass, at which the old man gazed longingly. But he shook his head and thrust it away.
“Nay, doctor; I’m going to keep watch to-night.”
“Keep watch, man?” said North, who seemed staggered at this determination.
“Yes, doctor, I’m going to keep watch. I can’t afford to have aught go wrong, if you can. You get on with your work, and I’ll be on the look-out.”
“Here?”
“Nay, nay. I’ll hang about outside.”
“Yes, do,” said North, who seemed relieved; and he turned down the lamp to let Moredock out.
“I shall give three taps on the door, doctor, when I come back,” whispered the old man. “You go on just as if I was here; but when I tap, you turn down the light again, and let me in. Don’t s’pose I shall see anybody, but I must take care.”
“Yes, do,” said North hurriedly; and, as the old man passed out, he closed the door after him and made it fast.
“It would have been like checking my experiment now I am so near success,” he said to himself, as, now quite alone, he once more turned up the shaded lamp, when the warm yellow glow shone out full upon the recumbent figure, carefully draped with the great white sheet.
Horace North stood bending over the subject of his ghastly experiment, the remains of Luke Candlish lying apparently unchanged, and as if decay had been completely arrested.
There was a strange odour of chemicals in the place, and, as the doctor removed the cloth, it was to uncover, just as they had been left on the previous night, a powerful galvanic battery, syringes, and other surgical paraphernalia.
For the next hour the doctor continued his labours, feeling more and more assured that he should triumph; and, as he toiled on, he talked rapidly to himself of the apparently complete arrest of decay, and the perfectly calm manner in which his subject lay, as it were, placidly waiting for the awakening which North felt, in his excitement, absolutely sure would come.
“It is so near now that I have but to vitalise and obtain positive proof that, when carried to its full extent, I have performed what is almost a miracle, and proved that what I worked out in theory is possible in practice.”
He stood gazing down at the calm, cold face, with its closed eyes, hesitating, not from the horror that had half paralysed him before, but from dread lest, now he had gone so far that he could apply his final test, he should be disappointed.
His head burned, his pulses throbbed heavily, and his hesitation increased.
Rousing himself at last, he laid his hand upon the icy-cold forehead before him, the contact sending a chill through his frame; but he did not notice it.
“Why do I stop?” he said. “It only wants this. I am alone, and no better opportunity could come. Oh, if I had but the aiding hand of that old savant, how easy it would be!”
This brought back the scene in the theatre—the lecture, the applause; and his heart beat more rapidly in anticipation of his grand triumph when he could demonstrate this, the greatest surgical feat that had ever been performed.
“And yet I hesitate,” he exclaimed excitedly; “hesitate when I have but to plunge boldly to succeed.”
“And I will,” he said firmly, after a pause.
The scene which followed was weird and horrible, had there been an onlooker; to North it had all the fascination of an intense scientific experiment. For he had arrived at the pitch when, according to his theory, he had but to make the warm living blood pass from his own veins, as in a case of transfusion, to prove that his studies bore the fruit of success.
The preliminaries were all arranged, and, with a sigh of satisfaction, North took a bright, keen lancet from its case, but only to let it fall back, starting violently, for he was, as it were, snatched back from his scientific dream by a faint rap upon the door of the great vault, and this was followed directly after by two more.
North rapidly replaced the great sheet, and turned down the light before going softly to the entry.
“Well?” he said harshly; “returned?”
“Hist!” whispered the old sexton. “Out here!”
He caught the doctor’s hand and drew him out from the entry of the vault to stand within the iron railings.
“Why have—”
“Hist!” whispered the old man again. “Come with me.”
North hesitated again, but yielded to his companion and followed him softly right round the church to the belfry door, which yielded to the old man’s touch.
“What does this mean?” said the doctor angrily. “Why have you brought me here?”
“Come and see,” whispered the old man so earnestly that North hesitated no longer, but followed him wonderingly into the church, and along the matting-covered aisle, to the old oak screen, where Moredock paused and caught his arm.
“Some one watching?” whispered North, as they stood together in the darkness; “in yonder?”
For the old man had indicated the vestry door with his outstretched hand.
It seemed strange, for a minute before they had been beside the outer door of the vestry, and now he had been brought in to stand by the inner door in the chancel.
“You’re wanted there,” whispered Moredock—“yonder!”
“Watchers?”
“You’re wanted there, doctor,” whispered the old man. “Go in and see.”
The silence was painful in the extreme, as North stood wondering there, but the next moment, feeling attracted by he knew not what desire to see who was within there face to face, he took a couple of steps forward to the old oak door, when a faint whispering seemed to come from the other side, followed by a low cough, which sent the blood surging to his brain.
There was no hesitation now, for, half-mad with excitement and the strange passion that seemed for the moment to stifle him, he seized the great latch, which snapped loudly as he threw it up, and strode into the little stone-walled room.