North gazed straight before him, as he held on by that metal rail of the Candlish tomb, with a dark plunge before him, and beyond that, after battling with the waters of discovery, a wonderland opening out, wherein he was about to explore, to find fame and win the woman he told himself he loved, and who, he believed, loved him as dearly in return. And yet all the while, as, from time to time, Moredock looked in with a smile, after pottering about the entrance to the mausoleum, whose keys he held, the doctor seemed to be staring at the Candlish tomb, which took up so much of the chancel, just as its occupant had taken up space when he was alive.
It was a curious structure, that tomb, curious as the railings which the doctor held. The edifice resembled nothing so much as an ornamental, extremely cramped, four-post bedstead, built in marble, with the palisade to keep the vulgar from coming too close to the stony effigy of the great Sir Wyckeley Candlish, Baronet, of the days of good King James; the more especially that, in company with his wife, Dame Candlish, he had apparently gone to bed with all his clothes on. He had been, unless the sculptor’s chisel had lied, a man like a bull-headed butcher who had married a cook, and she was represented in her puffs and furbelows, and he in his stuffed breeches and rosetted shoes, feathered cap, and short cape. His feet had the appearance of ornaments, not members for use; and his lady’s hands, joined in prayer, were like small gloves, as they lay there side by side. A pair of ornaments upon which their posterity might gaze what time they came to read the eulogy in Latin carved in a panel of the stone bedstead, with arms and escutcheons, and mottoes and puffs that were not true, after the fashion of the time.
It was a curious specimen of old-world vanity, so large that it seemed as if it were the principal object of the place—an idol altar, with its gods, about which the chancel had been built for protection.
“What trash!” exclaimed North, when he suddenly seemed to awaken to the object at which he gazed, “as if a Candlish was ever of any value in this world—ever did one good or virtuous act.”
“Any good in this world? Why not at last. Everything seems to point to it. Even the worst of the race might do some good. I’ll hesitate no longer. He can’t refuse me.”
“Doctor! Been asleep?”
“Asleep, man? No. Never more thoroughly awake.”
“I asked you to let me have another bottle of that—the tingling stuff. It done me a mort o’ good.”
“Yes, yes,” said North huskily. “You shall have some more, old man!”
“Ay; that’s right,” said the old fellow, giving his hands a rub. “Couldn’t tell me what it is, could you, so as I might get some of it myself without troubling you?”