When he got up he saw a white, scared face in the looking-glass. A face with a half-open mouth, ready to blab, to blurt out his secret; the face of an idiot. He was afraid to take that face into Eastthwaite or into Shawe. So he shut himself up in the house, half starved on his small stock of bread, bacon and groceries.
Two weeks passed; and then it came again in broad daylight.
It was Mrs. Blenkiron’s morning. He had lit the fire in the study at noon and set up Mr. Greathead’s slippers in the fender. When he rose from his stooping and turned round he saw Mr. Greathead’s phantasm standing on the hearthrug close in front of him. It was looking at him and smiling in a sort of mockery, as if amused at what Steven had been doing. It was solid and completely lifelike at first. Then, as Steven in his terror backed and backed away from it (he was afraid to turn and feel it there behind him), its feet became insubstantial. As if undermined, the whole structure sank and fell together on the floor, where it made a pool of some whitish glistening substance that mixed with the pattern of the carpet and sank through.
That was the most horrible thing it had done yet, and Steven’s nerve broke under it. He went to Mrs. Blenkiron, whom he found scrubbing out the dairy.
She sighed as she wrung out the floor-cloth.
“Eh, these owd yeller stawnes, scroob as you will they’ll navver look clean.”
“Naw,” he said. “Scroob and scroob, you’ll navver get them clean.”
She looked up at him.
“Eh, lad, what ails ’ee? Ye’ve got a faace like a wroong dishclout hanging ower t’ sink.”
“I’ve got the colic.”