Part 87 (2/2)

Should he tell Kate? No! Let the thing go on; let it end. After it was over she would see where their account lay. Thinking in this way, he laughed aloud.

The town was quiet when he came to it. So absorbed had he been that, though the air was sharp, he had been carrying his cloak over his arm. Now he put it on, and drew the hood close over his head. A dog, a homeless cur, had begun to follow at his heels. He drove it off, but it continued to hang about him. At last it got in front of his feet, and he stumbled over it in one of his large, quick strides. Then he kicked the dog, and it crossed the dark street yelping. He was a worse man, and he knew it.

He let himself into the house with his latch-key, and banged the door behind his back. But no sooner had he breathed the soft, woolly, stagnant air within than a change came over him. His ferocious strength ebbed away, and he began to tremble.

The hall pa.s.sage and staircase were in darkness. This was by his orders--coming in late, he always forgot to put out the gas. But the lamp of his room was burning on the candle rest at the stairhead, and it cast a long sword of light down the staircase well.

Chilled by some unknown fear, he had set one foot on the first tread when he thought he heard the step of some one coming down the stairs. It was a familiar step. He was sure he knew it. It must be a step he heard daily.

He stopped, and the step seemed to stop also. At that moment there was a shuffling of slippered feet on an upper landing, and Jem-y-Lord called down, ”Is it you, your Honour?”

With an effort he answered, ”Yes.”

”Is anything the matter?” called the man-servant.

”There's somebody coming downstairs, isn't there?” said Philip.

”Somebody coming downstairs?” repeated the man-servant, and the light s.h.i.+fted as if he were lifting the lamp.

”Is it you coming down, Jem?”

”Me coming down? I'm here, holding the lamp, your Honour.”

”Another of my fancies,” thought Philip; and he laid hold of the handrail, and started afresh. The step came on. He knew it now; it was his own step. ”An echo,” he told himself. ”A dream,” he thought, ”a mirage of the mind;” and he compelled himself to go up. The step came down. It pa.s.sed him on the stairs, going by the wall as he went by the rail, with an irresistible down-drive, headlong, heavily.

Then came one of those moments of partial unconsciousness in which the sensation of a sound takes shape. It seemed to Philip that the figure of a man had pa.s.sed him. He remembered it instantly. It was the same that he had seen in the lobby to the Council Chamber, his own figure, but wrapped in a cloak like the one he was then wearing, and with the hood drawn over the head. The body had been half turned aside, the face had been hidden, and the whole form had expressed contempt, repugnance, and loathing.

”Not well to-night, your Honour?” said the far-off voice of Jem-y-Lord.

He was holding the dazzling lamp up to the Deemster's face.

”A little faint--that's all. Go to bed.”

Then Philip was alone in his room. ”Conscience!” he thought. ”Pete may go, but _this_ will be with me to the end. Which, O G.o.d?--which?”

He poured out half a tumbler from the bottle on the table, and gulped it down at a draught. At the same moment he heard a light foot overhead. It was a woman's foot; it crossed the floor, and then ceased.

IX.

Next morning the Deemster was still sleeping while the sun was s.h.i.+ning into his room. He was awakened by a thunderous clamour, which came as from a nail driven into the back of his head. Opening his eyes, he realised that somebody was knocking at his door, and shouting in a robustious ba.s.s--

”Christian, I say! Ever going to get up at all?”

It was the Clerk of the Rolls. Under one of his heavy poundings the catch of the door gave way, and he stepped into the room.

”Degenerate Manxman!” he roared. ”In bed on Tynwald morning. Pooh! this room smells of dead sleep, dead spirits, and dead everything. Let me get at that window--you pitch your clothes all over the floor. Ah! that's fresher! Headache? I should think so. Get up, then, and I'll drive you to St. John's.”

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