XXXV
Dawn again.... I cannot see the new morning light; but I am conscious of its approach. The grated window is still dark; but I am sure the night is ending. Through the thick panes of glass, I feel a chill, the harbinger of day.
The three candles have burned low on the tips of the three lances. Their wicks have curled in upon themselves, sinking into the last drops of molten wax. Only a faint uncertain flame is sputtering from them now and that bit of light threatens to go out at intervals.
* * * * * * * * *
Sleep seems to have done me good, giving me back some strength, however little.
“Could I sit up now, if I tried?”
How long have I been here? Let’s figure it out, from the beginning, from the beginning of my Adventure! Or rather, no ... let’s go backward from today.... Today, yes ... sunrise ... there was a sunrise yesterday ... cold and rainy. That’s one day ... the day when I grew old so fast ... I got this way yesterday, between dawn and twilight!.... The night before that, night before last ... I came to this House, the House of the Secret.... Last night, and night before last. Yesterday between.... Two nights and one day, in all....
One single day ... yet how deep these wrinkles, how withered the skin on this aged face of mine! And these bristles on my face ... on my cheeks and chin ... bristles white as snow, white as hoar-frost! One day for them to grow ... just one day ... but a day that lies heavier than a century upon my soul! Who will ever believe me when I tell this story? No one! No one!
Could I sit up, if I tried? But first, I must get rid of this sheet that’s tied around me.... Trusses me all up, and I can’t move.... The sheet? Where’s the sheet? Here’s a sheet; but it doesn’t seem to be troubling me.... Where’s the ... ah, yes ... it’s the sheet on Him—on the Man, I mean.... They have swathed Him in a sheet.... I can still see.... I see.... So naturally ... natural, isn’t it?... I get things mixed a little....
* * * * * * * * *
Dawn ... no doubt about it now ... the oblong opening of the grated window is pale with light.
* * * * * * * * *
I did not hear the door open.... I was caught by surprise. I had no time to close my eyes.
There they are again, the two of them, the Count François and the Vicomte Antoine. They are looking at me.... And I can easily see, see as easily as yesterday ... I can see they don’t know what to make of it ... don’t know what to make of me, that is.
* * * * * * * * *
“Monsieur, be so good as to get up, I beg of you.” It was the Count François who spoke.
And I arose, without the slightest difficulty. I was weak, very weak indeed, but light, ever so light ... as light as the air about me....
The Count François spoke again:
“Monsieur, my father is very tired today; he is in no condition to leave his room. For that reason my son and I have come to ask you to go with us to him.”
I followed them.... What difference did it make to me whether I was in one place or in another?
* * * * * * * * *
The old man, the Marquis Gaspard, I did not see.... A portière of antique silk was standing in front of his bed, there in his chamber. Of the bed I could see the four columns of carved wood which supported the canopy. It was a square bed, without curtains.... That was all I saw....
But I recognized the queer falsetto of the marquis, and the marvelously gentle and persuasive tone his voice could assume, when it was not hardened with wilfulness or soured with irony.
The Living Man began to speak. I stood in the doorway listening.... And as I listened, this worn-out memory of mine, a memory so wasted, so decayed that one by one all my recollections of the good old days have fallen away as dust from it, took in his every word so deeply, so burningly, that I shall remember all he said till my course is wholly run.
He began to speak. He said:
“Monsieur, I had greater hopes of my own magnetic resources and of your powers of resistance. I cannot say I regret having done what I did.... I did my duty.... Our security, our peace of mind, our probable immortality could be conserved in no other way. Those at any rate are now adequately safe-guarded, at the price simply of a somewhat greater effort. But I should be much better satisfied had the experiment cost you a fatigue as great as mine, without drawing so deeply on your vital reserves. To be sure, I warned you that what we were about to do might prove extremely dangerous. I feared for your life especially when the moment would necessarily come for breaking the magnetic bond that connected you with the Being I derived from your substance. I foresaw also a great and cruel suffering on your part when I should kill, as I was obliged to kill, this newly created Being. Now those two shocks you withstood marvelously, Monsieur; but only to fall quite unexpectedly for us, into the particular state of languor and exhaustion in which I see you now. Monsieur, I am immensely, immensely sorry; and I trust you will understand that, had it been within my power, I would have been only too glad to leave you in a much stronger and sturdier state of health!”
A pause ... I drew back a step, with the idea of returning to my room. But the voice began again, in a slower and more solemn tone.
“Monsieur, since things are as they are, the simplest course for you is to bow to the inevitable. But I venture to point out that the present situation, bad as it is, is not without its advantage for you. The objections we were obliged to put forward originally to your immediate release obtain no longer. A favor we could not think of granting to the man you were yesterday at this hour—a man robust of body and vigorous of will, we are only too happy to accord to the man you are today—an aged invalid, broken in body and weak from more weaknesses than one.... Monsieur, you are, from this moment, free, a freedom without any qualifications or restrictions whatsoever. As soon as you choose to say so, my grandson will have the honor of showing you to our door. You may go anywhere you wish. We ask only that you refrain from mentioning to any living soul the things that you have seen during your stay in this House. I am sure you will decide to say nothing of them.”
Still I stood there listening. Somehow I was not at all surprised at this offer of my freedom however unexpected. I stood there listening; and I could feel the words I had heard sinking deeply into me, eating their way into the substance of my brain to remain there with indelible fixity.... I stood there listening....
Ah yes! I understand, I understand! From what I have been through, my will, my intelligence, my reason, have all been rarefied, depleted. My head is half emptied, as it were; and these sentences that are being addressed to me, these orders that are being given me, this password of silence that is being graven eternally upon my memory, all dictated by another will, another intelligence, another reason, are to be substituted in my brain by what is no longer there, for what has been taken away, and made to fill the intolerable hollowness of my skull!...
The falsetto voice concluded:
“For the rest you have our promise ... Madame de X.... the girl you love, left our abode last night.... She will never again be recalled to us....”
Madame de X....? The girl I love?... I love? Ah yes, yes, yes! I had forgotten! You see, I’m an old old man and my heart is empty too ... sucked dry, impoverished! I’m an old old man! Many things have changed in me.... Madame de X....? Ah yes!... Madeleine! Madeleine will never be recalled! Yes, of course. She will never come back here again.... As we agreed.
The falsetto voice fell silent with two words:
“Farewell, Monsieur!”
All was finished!
* * * * * * * * *
At the door, the outer door, of the heavy oaken panels studded with iron nails, and which had just been opened ... on the highest of the eight steps leading down from it ... the Count François and the Vicomte Antoine likewise said to me:
“Farewell, Monsieur.”
* * * * * * * * *
I crossed the garden, my feet treading and crushing the tall unmown grass, my head grazing the thick matted branches of the pine and cedar trees.
The gate was open.
I hurried through it.
And now I was out upon the heath, walking indifferent to direction save that I turned my face toward the brightening dawn....