Clementina

He resigned himself in the end to a sleepless night, and lying in his

bed drew some comfort from the sound of voices and the tread of feet in

the passages and the rooms about him. These, at all events, were

companionable, and they assured him of safety. But in a while they

ceased, and he was left in a silence as absolute as the darkness. He

endured this silence for perhaps half an hour, and then all manner of

infinitesimal sounds began to stir about him. The lightest of footsteps

moved about his bed, faint sighs breathed from very close at hand, even

his name was softly whispered. He sat suddenly up in his bed, and at

once all these sounds became explained to him. They came from the street

and the square outside the window. So long as he sat up they were

remote, but the moment he lay down again they peopled the room.

"Sure," said Wogan, "here is a lesson for architects. Build no shutters

to a house when the man that has to live in it has a spark of

imagination, else will he go stark raving mad before the mortar's dry.

Window shutters are window shutters, but they are the doors of Bedlam as

well. Now Gaydon should have slept in this room. Gaydon's a great man.

Gaydon has a great deal of observation and common sense, and was never

plagued with a flim-flam of fancies. To be sure, I need Gaydon, but

since I have not Gaydon, I'll light a candle."

With that Wogan got out of bed. He had made himself so secure with his

key and his tilted chair and his shutters that he had not thought of

placing his candle by his bedside. It stood by his looking-glass on the

table. Now the room was so pitch dark that Wogan could do no more than

guess at the position even of the window. The table, he remembered, was

not far from the door, and the door was at some distance from his bed,

and in the wall on his right. He moved forward in the darkness with his

hands in front of him, groping for the table. The room was large; in a

little his hands touched something, and that something was a pillar of

the bed. He had missed his way in his bedroom. Wogan laughed to himself

and started off again; and the next thing which his outstretched hands

touched was a doorknob. The table should now be a little way to his

left. He was just turning away in that direction, when it occurred to

him that he ought to have felt the rim of the top bar of his tilted

chair underneath the door-handle. He stooped down and felt for the

chair; there was no chair, and he stood very still.