"The company was dispersed, the palace gloomy with night (and they were black nights at Forres!), and on the walls I heard the sentinel's replying.... In the wood's last glow I entered and stood in his self-same station before the empty stool. And even as I stood thus, my hair creeping, my will concentred, gazing with every cord at stretch, fell a light, light footfall behind me." He glanced whitely over his shoulder.
"Sir, it was the queen come softly out of slumber on my own unquiet errand."
The doctor strode to the door, and peered out like a man suspicious or guilty of treachery. It was indeed a house of broken silences. And there, in the doorway, he seemed to be addressing his own saddened conscience.
"With all my skill, and all a leal man's gentleness, I solaced and persuaded, and made an oath, and conducted her back to her own chamber unperceived. How weak is sleep!... It was a habit, sir, contracted in childhood, long dormant, that Evil had woke again. The Past awaits us all. So run Time's sands, till mercy's globe is empty and ..."
He stooped and whispered it across to me: "... A child, a comparative child, shrunk to an anatomy, her beauty changed, ghostly of youth and all its sadness, baffled by a word, slave to a doctor's nod! None knew but I, and, at the last, one of her ladies—a gentle, faithful, and fearful creature. Nor she till far beyond all mischief....
"Wild deeds are done. But to have blood on the hands, a cry in the ears, and one same glassy face eye to eye, that nothing can dim, nor even slumber pacify—dreams, dreams, intangible, enorm! Forefend them, God, from me!"
He stood a moment as if he were listening; then turned, smiling irresolutely, and eyed me aimlessly. He seemed afraid of his own house, askance at his own furniture. Yet, though I scarce know why, I felt he had not told me the whole truth. Something fidelity had yet withheld from vanity. I longed to enquire further. I put aside how many burning questions awhile!
XIV
And if we gang to sea, master,
I fear we'll come to harm.