"An ill-lighted staircase is the devil," said I; and I grumbled my way to the street-door. But I heard Mr. Herbert's door shut before I left the house.
Whither I went after leaving the house I was in that perturbation of mind I cannot tell. It was my habit to stable my horse at the Lamb and Flag, opposite, and subsequently I was told that I entered the courtyard and wandered out of it again like one blind. A fire burned in my blood, and the aspect of the world was fiery to my vision. I went whither my footsteps guided me, and all places they led me to were alike. Afterwards it came upon me like the memory of a dream, that I had stood for some while with the sheen of water beneath my eyes, and the lapping of water in my ears, and that hereafter I had climbed for long hours up a wearisome green slope; and indeed my insteps and knees ached for days to come, so it may be that I went down to Derwentwater and thence toiled up some part of Skiddaw. But of all this I knew nothing at the time; I only knew that I came again to the possession of my wits in Keswick Street about ten o'clock of the night, very hungry and very tired. I entered the inn and bade the landlord get me some supper before I started homewards. And this he did, laying a table for me in the best parlour of the house—a long room on the first floor, with window-seats, from which one commanded the street. The landlord prepared the table for me at the inner end of the apartment and set the lamp there; so that as the light was but dim, and I rested myself in the window until such time as supper should be brought, I was well-nigh in the actual dark.
Now while I was seated there, a man came down the street towards me. I should not, I think, have noticed him at all but for the caution of his movements. For he kept very close to the houses and stepped lightly upon his toes; and when for all his care his spurs clinked or his foot rolled on a loose stone, he paused and looked behind and about him. So he walked until he came in front of Mr. Herbert's house. Then he stopped, and it came upon me that there was something familiar in his appearance.
I drew back into the curtains. He gazed up and down the street and then to the windows of the Lamb and Flag. A heavy tramp sounded on the cobbles some yards away, very loud and unexpected, so that it startled me little less than it did the man I watched. I drew yet farther into the curtains; he slunk into a cavity between two of the houses, and that action of his flashed of a sudden a plan into my mind; I remembered that dark angle on the staircase. The footfalls grew louder, a dalesman passed along the centre of the roadway, his steps died away up the hill. My man crept from his hiding-place, and whistled softly under Mr. Herbert's windows. The blind was pushed aside from the window an inch or so, and I saw a head against the light pressed upon the window-pane. Then the window creaked and opened. The head was thrust out and a few words were interchanged, but in so low a tone that I could catch nothing of their purport. Then the window was shut and the man advanced to the door. One thing was clear to me from these proceedings, that whosoever he might be, and I had little doubts upon that score, this was by no means his first visit to Mr. Anthony Herbert.
I set that piece of knowledge aside, however, for the present. There was a further point which concerned me more particularly just then. Was the street-door on the latch? Or must Mr. Herbert descend to give his visitor entrance?
The visitor turned the handle, opened the door, and closed it again behind him. I waited until I saw his shadow on the blind. He had taken off his hat and his cloak, and his profile was figured upon it in a silhouette.
I ran down the stairs and across the street without so much as picking up my hat. I opened Mr. Herbert's door, and crept up the staircase until I came to the angle which I had reason to know so well. There I hid myself and waited in the dark. And how dark it was and how intolerably still! Very rarely a burst of laughter, or a voice louder than the usual, would filter up to me from the back part of the house. But from the studio above, nothing—not the tread of a foot, not the whisper of a voice, not the shuffle of a chair.
What were they debating in such secrecy? I asked myself and then, "Perhaps I had been mistaken after all?" I clung to the possibility, though I had little faith in it. At all events, this night I should make sure—one way or another I should make sure.
After the weariest span, the door was opened. I could not see it because of the turn of the staircase. I stood, in fact, just under the door; but I could see on the wall facing me, at the point where the stairs turned a bright disk of light suddenly appear, such as a lamp will throw. The visitor would pass by that disk; he would intercept the rays of the lamp; those rays would burn upon his face. I leaned forward, holding my breath; the steps above me cracked as a man descended them. I heard a short "good night," but it was Mr. Herbert who spoke; and then the door was closed again and the disk vanished from the wall I could have cursed aloud, so bent was I upon discovering this visitor; but the footsteps descended towards me in the dark, and I drew myself back into my corner.
As they passed me I felt a sudden flap of wind across my face, as though the man was moving his hands in the air to guide him, and I reckoned that the hand was waved within an inch of my nose. A few seconds later and the street-door opened. The sound brought home to me all the folly of my mistake. If I had only waited outside, in that alley, say, where he himself had crept, I should have seen him—I should have known him! Now I must needs wait where I stood until he was clean out of reach, I counted a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred and then in my turn I slipped down the stairs and out of the house. The night was not over-clear, and I could perceive no one in the street. I strained my ears until they ached, and it seemed to me that I heard a light tip-toe tread very faint, diminishing up the hill. I ran in its direction with as little noise as I might. But I heard my spurs clink-clinking even as his had done, only ten times louder.