Volume Two—Chapter Twenty Two.
Something Coming On.
Horace North stood in the old mausoleum for a while, appalled by the thoughts that flooded his soul. The silence was awful. At other times, wrapped up in his pursuit, the presence of the dead had been as nothing to him; the fact that he was surrounded by the grisly relics of generations of the Candlishes had not troubled him in the least. There was a professional air about everything he did, and he watched results with the keen eagerness that a chemist watches his experiments.
But now, all at once, a change seemed to have come over him. He had lost the spur given to him by his love for Leo; but, after fighting hard with his misery, he had conquered, and forced himself to go on with his task solely in the cause of science, and a strange awakening had been the result.
He had brought all the knowledge he could collect to bear upon his task, and had reached a certain point. Then he had been checked, and the whole of his work had been thrown out of gear; so that now, when he had taken it up again, feverishly determined to carry it on to the end, he found himself face to face with a horror which at first his mind could hardly conceive.
He stood listening, and for a time it seemed that he was alone—that Moredock had been overcome by the close he had administered; but by degrees his stunned senses took in the fact that the old man was breathing calmly and peacefully, and that he was not alone with the appalling thought which troubled him.
“I ought not to have gone on with it now,” he said, at last. “I am mentally and bodily shaken, and unfit to undertake such a task. I’m ready to imagine all manner of follies—weak as a frightened child. How idiotic to fancy that!”
For the time being his mental strength was in statu quo, and, striding forward, he made up his mind to clear away the apparatus of instruments and chemicals, rouse up Moredock to help restore everything to its normal state, and continue his experiment when a fresh opportunity occurred.
He glanced down at the uncovered body, and then, turning to his various preparations, he replaced instruments in cases, bottles in the black bag, and nothing now remained to do but to lay Luke Candlish where he might continue his long sleep with his fathers.