第14章

Arthur looked closer at the man.The bedclothes were drawn up to his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his chest.Surprised and vaguely startled, as he noticed this, Arthur stooped down closer over the stranger; looked at his ashy, parted lips; listened breathlessly for an instant; looked again at the strangely still face, and the motionless lips and chest; and turned round suddenly on the landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the moment as the hollow cheeks of the man on the bed.

'Come here,' he whispered, under his breath.'Come here, for God's sake!The man's not asleep - he is dead!'

'You have found that out sooner than I thought you would,' said the landlord, composedly.'Yes, he's dead, sure enough.He died at five o'clock to-day.'

'How did he die? Who is he?' asked Arthur, staggered, for a moment, by the audacious coolness of the answer.

'As to who is he,' rejoined the landlord, 'I know no more about him than you do.There are his books and letters and things, all sealed up in that brown-paper parcel, for the Coroner's inquest to open to-morrow or next day.He's been here a week, paying his way fairly enough, and stopping in-doors, for the most part, as if he was ailing.My girl brought him up his tea at five to-day; and as he was pouring of it out, he fell down in a faint, or a fit, or a compound of both, for anything I know.We could not bring him to - and I said he was dead.And the doctor couldn't bring him to - and the doctor said he was dead.And there he is.And the Coroner's inquest's coming as soon as it can.And that's as much as I know about it.'

Arthur held the candle close to the man's lips.The flame still burnt straight up, as steadily as before.There was a moment of silence; and the rain pattered drearily through it against the panes of the window.

'If you haven't got nothing more to say to me,' continued the landlord, 'I suppose I may go.You don't expect your five shillings back, do you? There's the bed I promised you, clean and comfortable.There's the man I warranted not to disturb you, quiet in this world for ever.If you're frightened to stop alone with him, that's not my look out.I've kept my part of the bargain, and I mean to keep the money.I'm not Yorkshire, myself, young gentleman; but I've lived long enough in these parts to have my wits sharpened; and I shouldn't wonder if you found out the way to brighten up yours, next time you come amongst us.' With these words, the landlord turned towards the door, and laughed to himself softly, in high satisfaction at his own sharpness.

Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time sufficiently recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick that had been played on him, and at the insolent manner in which the landlord exulted in it.

'Don't laugh,' he said sharply, 'till you are quite sure you have got the laugh against me.You shan't have the five shillings for nothing, my man.I'll keep the bed.'

'Will you?' said the landlord.'Then I wish you a goodnight's rest.' With that brief farewell, he went out, and shut the door after him.

A good night's rest! The words had hardly been spoken, the door had hardly been closed, before Arthur half-repented the hasty words that had just escaped him.Though not naturally over-sensitive, and not wanting in courage of the moral as well as the physical sort, the presence of the dead man had an instantaneously chilling effect on his mind when he found himself alone in the room - alone, and bound by his own rash words to stay there till the next morning.An older man would have thought nothing of those words, and would have acted, without reference to them, as his calmer sense suggested.But Arthur was too young to treat the ridicule, even of his inferiors, with contempt - too young not to fear the momentary humiliation of falsifying his own foolish boast, more than he feared the trial of watching out the long night in the same chamber withthe dead.

'It is but a few hours,' he thought to himself, 'and I can get away the first thing in the morning.'

He was looking towards the occupied bed as that idea passed through his mind, and the sharp, angular eminence made in the clothes by the dead man's upturned feet again caught his eye.He advanced and drew the curtains, purposely abstaining, as he did so, from looking at the face of the corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the outset by fastening some ghastly impression of it on his mind.He drew the curtain very gently, and sighed involuntarily as he closed it.'Poor fellow,' he said, almost as sadly as if he had known the man. 'Ah, poor fellow!'

He went next to the window.The night was black, and he could see nothing from it.The rain still pattered heavily against the glass.He inferred, from hearing it, that the window was at the back of the house; remembering that the front was sheltered from the weather by the court and the buildings over it.

While he was still standing at the window - for even the dreary rain was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and companionship in it - while he was standing at the window, and looking vacantly into the black darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock strike ten.Only ten! How was he to pass the time till the house was astir the next morning?