VI
That night Anthime had a dream. There was a knock at his bedroom door—not the door into the passage, nor the door into the next room; the knock was at another door, which he had not noticed in his waking hours and which led straight into the street. That was why he was frightened, and at first, instead of answering, lay low. There was a faint light which made the smallest objects in the room visible—a sort of dim effulgence, such as a night-light gives—but there was no night-light. As he was trying to make out where this light could come from, there was a second knock.
“What do you want?” he cried in a trembling voice.
At the third knock, he fell into a kind of daze; an extraordinary feeling of yielding—in which every trace of fear was swallowed up—paralysed him. (He called it afterwards a tender resignation.) He suddenly felt both that he was incapable of resistance and that the door was going to open. It opened noiselessly and for a moment he saw nothing but a dark alcove, which at first was empty, but in which, as he gazed, there appeared, as in a shrine, the figure of the Holy Virgin. At first he took the small white form for his little niece Julie, dressed as he had just seen her, with her bare feet showing below her night-gown; but a second later he recognised her whom he had insulted; I mean that her appearance was the same as the wayside statue’s; he could even make out the injury to her right arm; and yet the pale face was still more beautiful, still more smiling than before. Without seeming to walk exactly, she came gliding towards him, and when she was close up against his bedside:
“Dost thou think, thou who hast hurt me,” she asked, “that I have need of my hand to cure thee?” And with this she raised her empty sleeve and struck him.
It seemed to him that it was from her that this strange effulgence emanated. But when the iron rod suddenly pierced his side he felt a stab of frightful pain and woke up in the dark.
Anthime was perhaps a quarter of an hour before coming to his senses. He felt in his whole body a strange kind of torpor—of stupefied numbness—and then a tingling which was almost pleasant, so that he doubted now whether he had really felt any pain in his side; he could not make out where his dream had begun or ended, and whether he was awake now or whether he had dreamt then. He pinched himself, felt himself all over, put his arm out and finally struck a match. Veronica was asleep beside him with her face to the wall.
Then, untucking the sheets and flinging aside the blankets, he let the tips of his bare feet slide down, till they rested on his slippers. His crutch was there, leaning beside the bedside table; without taking it, he raised himself by pushing with his hands against the bed; then he thrust his feet well into the leather slippers; then, stood bolt upright on his legs; then, still doubtful, with one arm stretched in front of him and one behind, he took a step—two steps alongside the bed—three steps; then across the room.... Holy Virgin! Was he ...?
Noiselessly and rapidly he slipped into his trousers, put on his waistcoat, his coat.... Stop, my pen! What rashness is yours? What matters the cure of a paralysed body, what matter all its clumsy agitations, in comparison with the flutterings of a newly liberated soul, when first she tries her wings?
When, a quarter of an hour later, Veronica, disturbed by some kind of presentiment, awoke, she became uneasy at feeling that Anthime was not beside her; she became still more uneasy when, having struck a match, she saw his crutch (which of necessity never left him) still standing by the bedside. The match went out between her fingers, for Anthime had taken the candle with him when he left the room; Veronica hastily slipped on a few things as best she could in the dark, and then in her turn leaving the room, she followed the thread of light which shone from beneath the laboratory door.
“Anthime, are you there, my dear?”
No answer. Veronica, listening with all her might and main, heard a singular noise. Then, sick with anxiety, she pushed open the door. What she saw transfixed her with amazement.
Her Anthime was there, straight in front of her. He was not sitting; he was not standing; the top of his head was on a level with the table and in the full light of the candle, which he had placed upon it; Anthime, the learned man of science, Anthime the atheist, who for many a long year had bowed neither his stiff knee nor his stubborn will (for it was remarkable how in his case body and soul kept pace with each other)—Anthime was kneeling!
He was on his knees, was Anthime; he was holding in his two hands a little fragment of plaster, which he was bathing with his tears, and covering with frantic kisses. At first he took no notice of her, and Veronica, astounded at this mystery, was afraid either to withdraw or to go forward and was already on the point herself of falling on her knees in the doorway opposite her husband, when, oh, miracle! he rose without an effort, walked towards her with a steady step, and, catching her in his arms:
“Henceforth,” he said, as he pressed her to his heart and bent his face towards hers, “henceforth, my dearest, we will pray together.”