Volume Three—Chapter Sixteen.
Moredock’s Medicine.
“It’s like a shadow following me always,” muttered North, “and it is hopeless for me to try longer. I’ve fought and battled with it as bravely as a man could fight, and for what? I have failed; there is nothing to keep me here. Why should I stay?”
“Yes,” he repeated, “I have failed—failed in my daring attempt—failed in my love—and I want rest. I can bear it no longer; what I want is rest. Ah!”
He drew a long breath and then sighed, and went straight to the window, drew aside the curtain, and for the first time for many days spent about half-an-hour at his toilet, to stand at last, weak and ghastly pale, but looking, otherwise, more like the frank, manly young doctor of the past.
By this time his eyes had grown more accustomed to the light, and he went and stood gazing out of the window at the pleasant woodland landscape spread before him, thinking of his future, and ignorant of the fact that the sight was soothing to his troubled brain.
It seemed to him that his shadow slept, and turning from the window, after a final look across the meadows, where now and again he could see the sun glancing from the stream in the direction of the Rectory, he walked, with a fair amount of steadiness, across the floor, just as the figure of a woman appeared in the lower meadow walking hurriedly and keeping close to the hedges and clumps of trees, which gave the place the aspect of a park.
As North opened the door and made for the stairs he could see that the baize door at the foot, which cut off communication with the rest of the house, was ajar, and then it moved slightly and closed.