In the Dead of Night: A Novel. Volume 2 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

But when he did reach Park Newton he found, greatly to his disgust, that Richard Dering was still there, and that there were no signs whatever of his speedy departure. That there was no love lost between the two men was evident both to themselves and others; but although their coolness towards each other could hardly fail to be noticed by General St. George, he never made the slightest allusion to it, but treated them both as if they were the best of possible friends. Kester he treated with greater cordiality than he had ever accorded to him before.

Richard and Kester saw hardly anything of each other except at the dinner-table, and then the conversation between them was limited to the baldest possible topics. Richard never sat over his wine, and generally asked and obtained his uncle’s permission to leave the table the moment dessert was placed upon it. He was an early riser, and had breakfasted and was out riding or walking long before his uncle or cousin made their appearance downstairs.

But these meetings over dinner, brief though they were, were to Kester like a dreadful oft-recurring nightmare which, although it may last for a minute or two only, murders sleep by the dread which it inspires before it comes, and the horror it leaves behind it after it has gone. Richard’s voice, his eyes, the swing of his walk, the very pose of his head, were all so many reminders to Kester of a dead and gone man, the faintest recollection of whom he would fain have erased not from his own memory alone, but from that of every one else who had known him. But to hear Richard speak was to hear, as it were, Lionel speaking from the tomb.

General St. George made the delicate state of his health a plea for not seeing much company at Park Newton, nor did he visit much himself. But there was no such restriction on Kester, and he was out nearly every day at one place or another, though he generally contrived to get back in time to dine with his uncle. He had not forgotten Dr. Bolus’s advice, and for the last month or two he had been leading a very quiet life indeed. As a result of this, he fancied that there was a decided improvement in the state of his health. In any case, he felt quite sure that the symptoms which had troubled him so much at one time troubled him less frequently now, and were milder at each recurrence. As a consequence, he had shrunk with a sort of morbid dread from seeking any further professional advice. He always felt the worst in a morning—so weak, nervous, and depressed when he woke up from the three or four hours of troubled sleep, which was all that nature could now be persuaded to give him. Let him tire himself as he might, he never could get much more sleep than when he went to bed comparatively fresh, the consequence simply being that he was more weak and ill than usual next morning. For a little while he tried narcotics; but the remedy proved worse than the disease it was intended to cure. More sleep he got, it is true; but sleep so burdened with frightful dreams that it seemed to him as if it would be better to lie awake for ever, than run the risk of floating helplessly in such a sea of horrors any more.

As Finch had said, he had to dose himself heavily with brandy before he could dress and crawl downstairs to breakfast. But as the day wore on he always got stronger and better, so that by the time it was necessary to dress for dinner, he was quite like his old self again, as well seemingly and as buoyant as the Kester St. George of a dozen years before. It was the dark hours that tried him most, when he was left alone in his great gloomy bedroom, with a candle, and a book, and his own thoughts.

He had brought his valet with him to Park Newton. Not Pierre Janvard this time. Pierre had left Mr. St. George’s service a little while previously, and had started business on his own account as an hotel keeper at Bath.

Mr. St. George’s new valet was an Englishman named Dobbs. He was a well-trained servant—noiseless, deferential, smooth-spoken, and treating all his master’s whims and capricious fluctuations of temper as the merest matter of course: a man who would allow himself to be sworn at, and called an idiot, an ass, the biggest blockhead in existence; and retaliate only with a faint smile of deprecation, and a gentle rubbing of his lean white hands.

Mr. St. George had a strange dislike to being left alone. When he could not have any other society—that is to say, early in the morning, and late at night, after everybody else was in bed—he would rather have the company of Dobbs than that of his own thoughts only. In a morning, between six and seven—long before daylight in winter—Dobbs was there in his master’s room, arranging his clothes, laying out his dressing-case, mixing him his cup of chocolate, supplying him with his brandy, doing anything—it did not matter what—so long as he was not out of his master’s sight for many minutes at a time.

Then at night, late, when the old house was as quiet as a tomb, Mr. St. George would sit in his dressing-room, drinking cold brandy-and-water, and smoking cigars till far into the small hours. It was Dobbs’s duty at such times to sit with his master in a chair removed a few yards away, and a little behind that of Mr. St. George. It was not that Kester wanted him there for conversational purposes, for he rarely condescended to speak to him except to ask him for something that he wanted. The man’s silent presence was all that he required, and for such a duty as that Dobbs was invaluable. He never dozed—he would have sat up all night without closing an eye—he never read, he never sneezed or coughed, or made his presence objectionable in any way; and he never spoke unless first spoken to. Silent, watchful, and alert, he was always there and always the same.

Mr. St. George never slept without a light in his room, and Dobbs, who had a little sofa-bed in the dressing-room, and who was a remarkably light sleeper, was instructed to arouse his master at once should he hear the latter begin to toss about or moan in his sleep.