He had seen such a face as that hundreds of times in the case of patients suffering from some form of mania, generally in connection with drink, and it petrified him for the time, for his brain refused to accept the fact that he was gazing at his own reflection.
It was a strange scene in that darkened room, with the one broad band of light shining in through the half-drawn curtain, falling upon that haggard and ghastly face gazing at its counterpart, each displaying a haunted look of horror—a dread so terrible that it explained North’s next action, which was to let fall decanter and glass with a crash upon the floor, before slowly backing away right to the furthest portion of the room, where he stood against the wall, panting heavily.
The curtain fell back, as if an invisible hand had held it for a time, and once more the room was in semi-gloom, while the faint, sick odour of the brandy gradually diffused itself through the place till it reached the trembling man’s nostrils and made him shudder.
“Like the smell of that place—like the smell of that place! Is this to go on for ever?”
Again he determinedly argued the question, and felt that, failing to arrest the decay of Luke Candlish, he had imbibed the essence of the man which, needing a fleshy body in which to live, had possessed him, so that his fate seemed to be that he must evermore lead a double life, in which there was one soul under the control of his well-schooled brain; the other wild, independent, and for whose words and actions he must respond.
“I cannot bear it,” he muttered, as he stood back against the wall, as far from the faint light as the room would allow. “It must be like madness in others’ eyes, and yet I am sane. I feel like a man haunted by a shadow, and yet it is a fancy—a terrible waking dream. But I will—Heaven help me!—I will look at it from a scientific point of view; say it is so—that I have arrested spirit and not body. Well, what then? Is there anything to fear?
“No; and I will not fear it,” he muttered, “any more than I would the dead; but,” he added, after a pause, “it is the living I fear. I cannot explain—I cannot control—this horror—bah! this essence—when it speaks, and the living give me the blame. No, I cannot, I dare not, explain. Who would believe? No one. They would say I was mad.”
A gentle tap at the door, but no response. A louder tapping, and no answer.
“Mr Thompson, sir, says he must see you on very particular business.”
North heard the words. His crafty, keen-eyed cousin was there. How could he see him now? It was impossible. He had declined before, and he was persisting again.