“Yes.”
“Do my questions annoy you?”
“I make no complaint,” he said sadly. “You can see for yourself—I patiently suffer the punishment that I have deserved.”
I contradicted him at once. “It is nothing of the sort! It’s a nervous malady, which medical science can control and cure. Wait till we get to London.”
This expression of opinion produced no effect on him.
“I have taken the life of a fellow-creature,” he said. “I have closed the career of a young man who, but for me, might have lived long and happily and honorably. Say what you may, I am of the race of Cain. He had the mark set on his brow. I have my ordeal. Delude yourself, if you like, with false hopes. I can endure—and hope for nothing. Good-night.”
VIII.
EARLY the next morning, the good old butler came to me, in great perturbation, for a word of advice.
“Do come, sir, and look at the master! I can’t find it in my heart to wake him.”
It was time to wake him, if we were to go to London that day. I went into the bedroom. Although I was no doctor, the restorative importance of that profound and quiet sleep impressed itself on me so strongly, that I took the responsibility of leaving him undisturbed. The event proved that I had acted wisely. He slept until noon. There was no return of “the torment of the voice”—as he called it, poor fellow. We passed a quiet day, excepting one little interruption, which I am warned not to pass over without a word of record in this narrative.