"Twenty-foor hour he "ve been at it," said another.
A short dispute grew over the exact number of hours. One boy declared that thirty hours had been reached. "Father heerd"n yesterday morning as he was aff to "s work in the town afore six: that brings "t nigh thirty and he ha"n"t stopped yet."
The earl was invited to step inside the gate, a little way up to the house, and under the commander"s window, that he might obtain a better hearing.
He swung round, walked away, walked back, and listened.
If it was indeed a voice, the voice, he would have said, was travelling high in air along the sky.
Yesterday he had described to his wife Nevil"s chattering of hundreds to the minute. He had not realized the description, which had been only his manner of painting delirium: there had been no warrant for it. He heard the wild scudding voice imperfectly: it reminded him of a string of winter geese changeing waters. Shower gusts, and the wail and hiss of the rows of fir-trees bordering the garden, came between, and allowed him a moment"s incredulity as to its being a human voice. Such a cry will often haunt the moors and wolds from above at nightfall. The voice hied on, sank, seemed swallowed; it rose, as if above water, in a hush of wind and trees. The trees bowed their heads rageing, the voice drowned; once more to rise, chattering thrice rapidly, in a high-pitched key, thin, shrill, weird, interminable, like winds through a crazy chamber-door at midnight.
The voice of a broomstick-witch in the clouds could not be thinner and stranger: Lord Romfrey had some such thought.
Dr. Gannet was the bearer of Miss Denham"s excuses to Lord Romfrey for the delay in begging him to enter the house: in the confusion of the household his lordship"s card had been laid on the table below, and she was in the sick-room.
"Is my nephew a dead man?" said the earl.
The doctor weighed his reply. "He lives. Whether he will, after the exhaustion of this prolonged fit of raving, I don"t dare to predict.
In the course of my experience I have never known anything like it. He lives: there"s the miracle, but he lives."
"On brandy?"
"That would soon have sped him."
"Ha. You have everything here that you want?"
"Everything."
"He"s in your hands, Gannet."
The earl was conducted to a sitting-room, where Dr. Gannet left him for a while.
Mindful that he was under the roof of his enemy, he remained standing, observing nothing.
The voice overheard was off at a prodigious rate, like the far sound of a yell ringing on and on.
The earl unconsciously sought a refuge from it by turning the leaves of a book upon the table, which was a complete edition of Harry Denham"s Poems, with a preface by a man named Lydiard; and really, to read the preface one would suppose that these poets were the princes of the earth. Lord Romfrey closed the volume. It was exquisitely bound, and presented to Miss Denham by the Mr. Lydiard. "The works of your ill.u.s.trious father," was written on the t.i.tle-page. These writers deal queerly with their words of praise of one another. There is no law to restrain them. Perhaps it is the consolation they take for the poor devil"s life they lead!
A lady addressing him familiarly, invited him to go upstairs.
He thanked her. At the foot of the stairs he turned; he had recognized Cecilia Halkett.
Seeing her there was more strange to him than being there himself; but he bowed to facts.
"What do you think?" he said.
She did not answer intelligibly.
He walked up.
The crazed gabbling tongue had entire possession of the house, and rang through it at an amazing pitch to sustain for a single minute.
A reflection to the effect that dogs die more decently than we men, saddened the earl. But, then, it is true, we shorten their pangs by shooting them.
A dismal figure loomed above him at the head of the stairs.
He distinguished it in the vast lean length he had once whipped and flung to earth.
Dr. Shrapnel was planted against the wall outside that raving chamber, at the salient angle of a common prop or b.u.t.tress. The edge of a shoulder and a heel were the supports to him sideways in his distorted att.i.tude. His wall arm hung dead beside his pendent frock-coat; the hair of his head had gone to wildness, like a field of barley whipped by tempest. One hand pressed his eyeb.a.l.l.s: his unshaven jaw dropped.
Lord Romfrey pa.s.sed him by.
The dumb consent of all present affirmed the creature lying on the bed to be Nevil Beauchamp.
Face, voice, lank arms, chicken neck: what a sepulchral sketch of him!
It was the revelry of a corpse.
Shudders of alarm for his wife seized Lord Romfrey at the sight. He thought the poor thing on the bed must be going, resolving to a cry, unwinding itself violently in its hurricane of speech, that was not speech nor exclamation, rather the tongue let loose to run to the death.
It seemed to be out in mid-sea, up wave and down wave.
A nurse was at the pillow smoothing it. Miss Denham stood at the foot of the bed.
"Is that pain?" Lord Romfrey said low to Dr. Gannet.
"Unconscious," was the reply.
Miss Denham glided about the room and disappeared.
Her business was to remove Dr. Shrapnel, that he might be out of the way when Lord Romfrey should pa.s.s him again: but Dr. Shrapnel heard one voice only, and moaned, "My Beauchamp!" She could not get him to stir.
Miss Denham saw him start slightly as the earl stepped forth and, bowing to him, said: "I thank you, sir, for permitting me to visit my nephew."
Dr. Shrapnel made a motion of the hand, to signify freedom of access to his house. He would have spoken the effort fetched a burst of terrible chuckles. He covered his face.
Lord Romfrey descended. The silly old wretch had disturbed his equanimity as a composer of fiction for the comfort and sustainment of his wife: and no sooner had he the front door in view than the calculation of the three strides requisite to carry him out of the house plucked at his legs, much as young people are affected by a dancing measure; for he had, without deigning to think of matters disagreeable to him in doing so, performed the duty imposed upon him by his wife, and now it behoved him to ward off the coming blow from that double life at Romfrey Castle.
He was arrested in his hasty pa.s.sage by Cecilia Halkett.
She handed him a telegraphic message: Rosamund requested him to stay two days in Bevisham. She said additionally: "Perfectly well. Shall fear to see you returning yet. Have sent to Tourdestelle. All his friends.
Ni espoir, ni crainte, mais point de deceptions. Lumiere. Ce sont les tenebres qui tuent."
Her nimble wits had spied him on the road he was choosing, and outrun him.
He resigned himself to wait a couple of days at Bevisham. Cecilia begged him to accept a bed at Mount Laurels. He declined, and asked her: "How is it you are here?"
"I called here," said she, compressing her eyelids in anguish at a wilder cry of the voice overhead, and forgetting to state why she had called at the house and what services she had undertaken. A heap of letters in her handwriting explained the nature of her task.
Lord Romfrey asked her where the colonel was.