The nurses put their heads together when this was over, and held afterwards a whispering conference with old Cooper. “Law bless ye!—no, there’s no madman in the house,” he protested; “not a soul but what ye saw—it’s just a trifle o’ the fever in his head—no more.”
The Squire grew worse as the night wore on. He was heavy and delirious, talking of all sorts of things—of wine, and dogs, and lawyers; and then he began to talk, as it were, to his brother Scroope. As he did so, Mrs. Oliver, the nurse, who was sitting up alone with him, heard, as she thought, a hand softly laid on the door-handle outside, and a stealthy attempt to turn it. “Lord bless us! who’s there?” she cried, and her heart jumped into her mouth, as she thought of the humpbacked man in black, who was to put in his head smiling and beckoning—“Mr. Cooper! sir! are you there?” she cried. “Come here, Mr. Cooper, please—do, sir, quick!”
Old Cooper, called up from his doze by the fire, stumbled in from the dressing-room, and Mrs. Oliver seized him tightly as he emerged.
“The man with the hump has been atryin’ the door, Mr. Cooper, as sure as I am here.” The Squire was moaning and mumbling in his fever, understanding nothing, as she spoke. “No, no! Mrs. Oliver, ma’am, it’s impossible, for there’s no sich man in the house: what is Master Charlie sayin’?”
“He’s saying ‘Scroope’ every minute, whatever he means by that, and—and—hisht!—listen—there’s the handle again,” and, with a loud scream, she added—“Look at his head and neck in at the door!” and in her tremour she strained old Cooper in an agonizing embrace.
The candle was flaring, and there was a wavering shadow at the door that looked like the head of a man with a long neck, and a longish sharp nose, peeping in and drawing back.
“Don’t be a d⸺ fool, ma’am!” cried Cooper, very white, and shaking her with all his might. “It’s only the candle, I tell you—nothing in life but that. Don’t you see?” and he raised the light; “and I’m sure there was no one at the door, and I’ll try, if you let me go.”
The other nurse was asleep on a sofa, and Mrs. Oliver called her up in a panic, for company, as old Cooper opened the door. There was no one near it, but at the angle of the gallery was a shadow resembling that which he had seen in the room. He raised the candle a little, and it seemed to beckon with a long hand as the head drew back. “Shadow from the candle!” exclaimed Cooper aloud, resolved not to yield to Mrs. Oliver’s panic; and, candle in hand, he walked to the corner. There was nothing. He could not forbear peeping down the long gallery from this point, and as he moved the light, he saw precisely the same sort of shadow, a little further down, and as he advanced the same withdrawal, and beckon. “Gammon!” said he; “it is nout but the candle.” And on he went, growing half angry and half frightened at the persistency with which this ugly shadow—a literal shadow he was sure it was—presented itself. As he drew near the point where it now appeared, it seemed to collect itself, and nearly dissolve in the central panel of an old carved cabinet which he was now approaching.
In the centre panel of this is a sort of boss carved into a wolf’s head. The light fell oddly upon this, and the fugitive shadow seemed to be breaking up, and rearranging itself as oddly. The eyeball gleamed with a point of reflected light, which glittered also upon the grinning mouth, and he saw the long, sharp nose of Scroope Marston, and his fierce eye looking at him, he thought, with a steadfast meaning.
Old Cooper stood gazing upon this sight, unable to move, till he saw the face, and the figure that belonged to it, begin gradually to emerge from the wood. At the same time he heard voices approaching rapidly up a side gallery, and Cooper, with a loud “Lord a-mercy on us!” turned and ran back again, pursued by a sound that seemed to shake the old house like a mighty gust of wind.
Into his master’s room burst old Cooper, half wild with fear, and clapped the door and turned the key in a twinkling, looking as if he had been pursued by murderers.
“Did you hear it?” whispered Cooper, now standing near the dressing-room door. They all listened, but not a sound from without disturbed the utter stillness of night. “God bless us! I doubt it’s my old head that’s gone crazy!” exclaimed Cooper.
He would tell them nothing but that he was himself “an old fool,” to be frightened by their talk, and that “the rattle of a window, or the dropping o’ a pin” was enough to scare him now; and so he helped himself through that night with brandy, and sat up talking by his master’s fire.
The Squire recovered slowly from his brain fever, but not perfectly. A very little thing, the doctor said, would suffice to upset him. He was not yet sufficiently strong to remove for change of scene and air, which were necessary for his complete restoration.
Cooper slept in the dressing-room, and was now his only nightly attendant. The ways of the invalid were odd: he liked, half sitting up in his
