A few minutes later, when Slade comprehended the intelligence, he got unsteadily to his feet. He tugged aimlessly at his untidy collar a time or two, as if it were too tight, and when he again spoke a whine crept into his harsh utterance.
"You won't hurry me, will you? Say you won't hurry me. Give me another month; time to—to adjust myself to the new conditions. You are right: I am old; I—I sha'n't last much longer. I've received a mortal blow,—not this, though, not this."
But the secretary hardened. "We're not hurrying you," said he. "You have till February first—practically a month—and in the meantime you can do pretty much as you please. Understand?"
During the rest of that day Slade conducted himself like a man dazed. There was a forward droop to his knees, to his shoulders, and to his head; and altogether he presented a most unlovely spectacle of irresolution and helplessness.
From long force of habit he did not leave Room 6 until five o'clock; but at that hour he got slowly into his overcoat—once black, but now plum-colored where the light struck upon it—and donned his hat, preparatory to departing for the night. The clerks across the hall, the occupants of the other offices, passed out one by one or in couples, their brisk homeward-bound footsteps clattering cheerfully in the hall; and when he finally turned off the light the building was deserted save for himself and one other. As he slowly descended the stairs, clinging tenaciously to the railing, Doctor Westbrook passed him—also descending,—and as he did so, bent a keen look toward the meagre, tottering form and the parchment-like countenance, drawn by acute physical pain and overcast by an unhealthy pallor. He nodded as he went by, but Slade did not observe it; neither did he see that the physician paused at the foot of the stairs and looked back at him.
Somehow Slade arrived at his single cheerless, disordered apartment. It was dirty, damp, and fireless. He lighted a candle—so primitive were his conveniences—which with some difficulty he stood upright on a corner of the table, where it was held steady by its congealed drippings.
And all that night, and until well into the next forenoon, Slade left the bare table only once or twice: once to get from a shelf a bit of bread and a tin box of sardines. The latter, after several vain attempts to open, he cast aside and contented himself with the crust. The rest of the night he wrote sedulously, though slowly and with much labor; and when he had finished, a considerable pile of numbered pages reposed by his hand. About ten o'clock in the morning the cold enveloped him like an icy mantle; the pen slipped from his nerveless fingers, and he allowed it to remain where it fell; he dropped upon a cot which stood against the wall, pulled the covering closely about him, and slept immediately. In the afternoon he was awakened by a vivid dream and sat suddenly upright, his eyes once more jet-like with the light of a newly formed purpose.
The drifting shadows of the old Fairchild homestead were destined to behold strange sights and to hear strange sounds before being finally banished from beneath the crumbling roof.
Within the roomy dining-hall a heavy table has lost its identity beneath a thick coat of dust and a heap of plaster, sometime fallen from the ceiling; yet it is of solid mahogany, with legs richly carved, and hides a warm, brilliant lustre under its coat of dirt and neglect.
The shadows deepen. The chilly mist without becomes a rain, dripping mournfully from the decaying, moss-covered eaves, and filling the old house with strange, hollow echoes, weird and fantastic.