He went up to his bed that night, a shivering craven. He had always professed to disbelieve in ghosts or anything supernatural, and to condemn those who credited the possibility of their appearance as fools or madmen.
But now he glanced around him as he entered his own apartment, as if he feared to meet the wraith of Jenny Walcheren lurking in the corner, ready to confront and accuse him.
The Hindes had always adopted the foreign plan of occupying separate rooms, so that he was alone, although his wife slept next him, with a door between them. Hindes wished that night that it were not so, for the sense of solitude bore in upon him very heavily, yet he did not like to propose seeking her companionship for fear she should guess the agony he was undergoing. So he crept into his own bed, and lay there, sleepless, and staring vaguely into the darkness, as if he dared not close his eyes, lest a ghostly hand might be placed upon his shoulder, or a ghostly voice whisper in his ear. Hannah, following her husband upstairs, about an hour after, peeped into his room, to see if he required anything.
‘What, still awake, Henry!’ she exclaimed, seeing his eyelids quiver as the light of her candle fell upon them; ‘are you in pain? Shall I get you anything?’
‘No! no! I am all right! All I want is rest and quiet!’
‘Well, I will leave you! But you forgot your usual visit to the bairns this evening. I’ve just come from the nursery. You must have infected Wally with your wakefulness, for I found him sitting up in bed and crying for his dada.’
‘Wally wants me!’ exclaimed Hindes, springing out of bed; ‘give me my dressing-gown. I will go to him!’
‘He is quiet now, my dear. You need not disturb yourself,’ said Hannah.
But her husband was already out of the room and on his way up to the nursery.
‘My Wally, my Wally,’ he thought, as he sat with the little boy closely folded in his arms, ‘if anything should happen to him! If God should be revenged on me, by taking my child—I couldn’t bear it! I couldn’t; it would kill me!’