Throwing Down the Gauntlet.
Shortly after this day at the Rabys, Mrs Joshua Palmer went up to Waynflete ostensibly because she thought that she could be of some use to Aunt Waynflete in getting comfortably settled in there, and in finally arranging her household if, as seemed likely, she remained there for the winter, but really moved by something in her daughter’s letters which excited her anxiety. It would not do at all to have “anything” between Godfrey and Jeanie, at their age. By-and-by, if anything really came of the fancy, things might be different.
Guy and his friend were therefore left alone at Ingleby, and two or three weeks passed without much outward event, but of much inward importance.
Guy, whether wisely or unwisely, plunged into the study of such experiences as his own, and their possible explanations. He had no difficulty in these days in finding material, and he brought to bear on the subject an amount of acute intelligence and reasoning power for which Staunton had hardly given him credit. He puzzled him a good deal by his ridicule of some recorded stories, and his keen interest in others. He mastered the point of the various theories, stating and criticising them with much force, and the discussions were certainly so far good for him that he lost some of his sense of unique and shameful experience. But Cuthbert saw that he tested everything by an incommunicable and inexplicable sense, and he never uttered any definite conviction as regarded himself. He had no “nervous attacks” as Cuthbert called them; but whether the terrible night at Waynflete had done him permanent harm, or whether the strain was more continuous than appeared, he was certainly far from strong, and suffered from any extra exertion, so that the need of care was evident enough.
“I believe I was a fool to set you upon all this reading,” said Cuthbert, one day. “You’ll wear yourself out with it when I have to leave you.”
“It would be very difficult to be alone,” said Guy, thoughtfully.
“It’s out of the question. You’re not fit for the mill or for the hard winter here. You ought to have a sea-voyage, or something of that sort. Or, at any rate, come and stay on the south coast somewhere where I could make my headquarters while I’m lecturing, and see you now and then.”
“There are a great many things I can’t quite tell you,” said Guy, after a pause, “and they don’t only concern myself. It’s all right about the reading, but I’ve got something to do to-day. It’s quite simple, only rather hard. And I know ‘he’ doesn’t want me to do it.”
Guy had said nothing so personal since his first confession, and, as he got up languidly, and prepared to return to the mill for his afternoon work, giving his friend an odd, half-smiling look, as he moved away, Cuthbert felt an uncomfortable thrill.
It startled him to feel that Guy’s conviction lay absolutely untouched by all his recent study. There was something inscrutable behind the pathetic eyes, and what was it? Was the boy “mad north-north west?” or would he at last compel belief in the incredible? Horatio, Cuthbert thought, had a great advantage in having actually seen the ghost that haunted Hamlet.