The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 05Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 05
Stevenson, Robert Louis
English literature -- 19th century; Fiction
Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by speech or
sight of his mysterious lodger. The doors of the drawing-room flat were
never open; and although Somerset could hear him moving to and fro, the
tall man had never quitted the privacy of his apartments. Visitors,
indeed, arrived; sometimes in the dusk, sometimes at intempestuous hours
of night or morning; men, for the most part; some meanly attired, some
decently; some loud, some cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of
Somerset, displeasing. A certain air of fear and secrecy was common to
them all; they were all voluble, he thought, and ill at ease; even the
military gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentleman at
all; and as for the doctor who attended the sick man, his manners were
not suggestive of a university career. The nurse, again, was scarcely a
desirable house-fellow. Since her arrival, the fall of whisky in the
young man's private bottle was much accelerated; and though never
communicative, she was at times unpleasantly familiar. When asked about
the patient's health, she would dolorously shake her head, and declare
that the poor gentleman was in a pitiful condition.
Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion that his
complaint was other than bodily. The ill-looking birds that gathered to
the house, the strange noises that sounded from the drawing-room in the
dead hours of night, the careless attendance and intemperate habits of
the nurse, the entire absence of correspondence, the entire seclusion of
Mr. Jones himself, whose face, up to that hour, he could not have sworn
to in a court of justice--all weighed unpleasantly upon the young man's
mind. A sense of something evil, irregular and underhand, haunted and
depressed him; and this uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted in
his mind, when, in the fulness of time, he had an opportunity of
observing the features of his tenant. It fell in this way. The young
landlord was awakened about four in the morning by a noise in the hall.
Leaping to his feet, and opening the door of the library, he saw the
tall man, candle in hand, in earnest conversation with the gentleman who
had taken the rooms. The faces of both were strongly illuminated; and in
that of his tenant Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease,
but every sign of health, energy, and resolution. While he was still
looking, the visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having
carefully fastened the front door, sprang upstairs without a trace of
lassitude.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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