University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
OVERHEAD, WITHIN.

The same door which we had battered and
shaken so rudely I now pushed open with quiet,
almost reverent hand.

Was I entering into the presence of Death?
No sleep but that, it seemed to me, could hug a
sleeper so close as to silence his answer or his
protest at our noise.

So I stole into the tacit chamber, eagerly, and
yet with my nerves in that timorous tremor when
they catch influences, as lifting ripples catch sunrise
before the calms.

I pushed back the door against the close, repellent
atmosphere within. Holding it, still, as it
were a shield against some sorrowful shock I was
to encounter, I paused a breath to see my way.

The force of the faint moonlight brought it
only as far as the middle of the room. There
there was a neutral ground, not light, not dark,
a vague in which forms could be discerned by
intent vision.

I involuntarily closed my eyes, to give sight the

recoil before the leap. When I opened them, and
flung my look forward to grapple with what it
could find, the first object it seized was a small
splash of white light, half drowned in the dimness.
The moonbeams were also, without much
vigor, diving to examine this sunken object.
Their entrance, or perhaps my own trembling
eagerness, seemed to make a little fluctuation
about it. I steadied and accustomed my glance,
and presently deciphered the spot as a mass of
white drapery in a picture, standing upon an
easel.

While I was making this out, I heard behind
me the crack and fizz of Locksley's second failure
with his matches.

The little sound was both ally and stimulant.
I advanced another step, and my groping sight
detected a large arm-chair posted before the easel.

Hanging over the arm of the chair, where the
moonlight could not reach, I saw another faint,
pale spot. It was where a hand would rest.
Was it a hand?

Beckoned forward by this doubt, I moved on
and saw, flung back in the arm-chair, a shadowy
figure. A man? Yes; dim form and deathly
face, — a man!

The air of the room was close and sickly. I
choked for breath. Life needs a double portion
at such moments.

Dead? Is he dead? I seemed to scream the
unspoken question to my heart.

It cost me an effort to master the involuntary
human shudder at such an encounter. I sprang
forward where the pale hand without motion
beckoned, and the pale face pleaded for succor.

Nothing of the repellent magnetism of a corpse
as my hand approached the forehead.

But as little the responsive thrill of life wakening
at life's touch, and renewing with a start the
old delicious agony of conscious being.

I laid my hand upon the brow.

Cold! But surely not the cold of death! This
was no dead man whom I anxiously, and the
moon impassively, were studying. Tranced, not
dead, so instinct told me. Life might be latent,
but it was there.

I felt tears of relief start into my eyes.

Whoever has lived knows that timely death is
the great prize of life; who can regret when a
worthy soul wins it? But this untimely perishing
of a brother-man, alone and helpless in the
dark and cold, was pure waste and ruin.

Locksley now came to my side, sheltering his
lighted candle.

“Dead?” gasped he, and stopped silent before
the arm-chair.

“No, no,” I whispered, and the curdling whisper
showed me how deep my horror had been.

“No; only fainted, I trust. Open the window!
Fresh air is the first want.”

“Fresh air he shall have, if there 's any blowing,”
says Locksley, briskly. “Fresh air beats
the world for stiddy vittles.”

While he worked at the window, I poured a
compacter restorative than air out of Stillfleet's
flask. I gently forced a few drops of the brandy
down the unconscious man's throat, and expended
a few sprinkles to bathe his forehead.

“It is the painter, Locksley?” I asked.

“Yes sir.”

And so began my acquaintance with Cecil
Dreeme.