Yes, Comely, genial and deferential and unsuspicious, would prove an excellent febrifuge in the fever of mind which consumed me.
But I was destined never to reach him—never to get beyond the fall of the bank where the little wicket gave upon the road. For there the wind had heaped the snow in a mighty drift, and in endeavouring to negotiate it, I slipped and plunged up to my neck.
That was little in itself, had not my feet in sinking encountered some body, soft, and of a texture indescribably different from what they had expected. It was elastic, and potentially human. Fighting for my balance, I groped down, and found a buried man.
He was dead, to all appearance—a dark, small, foreign-looking fellow, with closed eyes and a face like wax. His crop of hair and short beard were grey and stark like rime. He was cheaply dressed, but newly, in a suit of coarse tweed, and woollen gloves were on his hands.
I discovered this all when I had prized and tugged him out of his deadly burrow, and laid him on his back, and brushed the snow from his clothes and features. My great strength had served me well; but I thought to no profitable end. I was not to guess for a moment what wonderful fatality had guided my steps to this drifted cache, and set my foot on the key to all the mysteries—and at the fruitful moment, too. Another hour, half hour, perhaps, and it had been too late.
And in the meantime I thought him gone beyond recovery. Listening and feeling, I could detect no pulse in him nor any sign of life. His teeth, white and regular still, for all his grey hairs, showed in a set grin; his lips were pale violet. I believed him dead.
Still, there was no telling; and here at least was material for my superfluous vigour, something external and challenging to my hunger for distraction in action. With a huge effort I lifted the body in my arms, and made with it for the lodge. The wind cut at me; the snow, still flying viciously, beat and stung my face. I joyed in the battle, and won triumphant through it into shelter, and laid my burden down by the fire. Then I fetched brandy, and forced a spoonful of it through the biting teeth, and stroked the hairy throat to irritate it to action, and waited and persisted, and persisted and waited. Sometimes, as the day sank, I thought I could detect a shadowy movement on the face; but it was only the illusion of dancing firelight. Sometimes a sound as of a tiny voice calling from a vast depth would startle me, until I identified it for the thin whine of wind in the keyhole. The stiff body never moved, never responded by one thrill to the persistence of my efforts. And presently I gave it up, and withdrew into the scullery to wash my hands, and ponder my unenviable position as the keeper of a mortuary, with no immediate or definite prospect of release.
It was while I was there, scrubbing, preoccupied and depressed, that the growth of a sound, unnoticed at first, or attributed to familiar causes, began to impress itself on my hearing. It was like a low continuous babbling at the outset; but, even while I listened, it rose all in a moment into a series of strained and gasping screams. Petrified for an instant, the next I had rushed back into the sitting-room. The pseudo-dead man was writhing and rolling on the hearthrug, and it was by him that those cries of suffering were emitted. His congested veins were recovering their circulation, and his torment was unspeakable.
I flung myself on my knees beside him, and caught and chafed his agonised limbs, and poured more brandy down his throat. And by-and-by the devil fled, and his cries sank into moans, and his moans to spasmodic gasps; and when those ceased, I got him by degrees into a chair, where he sat tottery and dribbling, and conning me speechlessly from bloodshot eyes dim with wonder and the spent tragedy of pain.
“Rest quiet now,” I said, “and don’t attempt to speak or move. You needn’t worry your brain either about what brought you here. It’s quite simple. I stumbled on you by chance, sleeping to your death in a snowdrift, and I fished you out of it and carried you to my house here, which happened to be close by. Don’t answer, but if you think you could stand more brandy, move your head, and I will get you a glass, stiff and hot.”