At dinner (he insisted on Janet dining with him) he talked of nothing but Victor and the trial.
"He has got his foot on the ladder now, Miss Curphey, and there is no height to which he may not ascend."
Janet could do nothing but wipe her shining eyes and say,
"Aw, well now! Think of that now!" And then, with a wise shake of her old head, "But nobody can say I didn't know he would make us proud of him some day."
Night fell. Janet began to be afraid of the Deemster's excitement. She remembered Doctor Clucas's order (privately given to her) to knock at the Deemster's door between six and seven every morning, and, if she got no answer, to go into the room. She would do so to-morrow.
After Janet had gone to bed the Deemster sat at his desk in the Library and wrote for a long time in his leather-bound book. When he rose the clock on the landing was striking twelve.
He closed the book, but instead of putting it under lock and key, as he had always done before, he left it open on the desk, merely shutting the lid on it. Then with a long look round the room he put out the lamps and turned to go upstairs.
The reaction had begun by this time, and he staggered a little and laid hold of the handrail. He paused three times on the stairs, but his weakness did not frighten him. Lighting his candle on the landing, he wound the clock, extinguished the lamp that stood by it and faced the last flight with a smile. All was silent in the house now.
On reaching his own bedroom he paused again, and then stepped down the corridor to Victor's. The door was ajar. He pushed it open, took a step into the empty room and looked round—at the cocoa-nut matting, the rugs, the bed in the shadow, the discoloured school trunk in the corner. And then he smiled again. But he was breathing deeply at intervals and had the look of a man who knew that he was doing familiar things for the last time.
The window in his own room was open, and the smell of tropical plants (especially the magnolia, with its sleep-inducing odour) was coming up from the garden. He remembered that his own father had brought them from the East long ago, when he was himself a boy.