“Marry, good words, master doctor,” said the imperturbable stranger. “Your bedel, possibly, is a family man; and conscience forbids that, except in the last resort, I should lay a father of a family in a dungeon for crimes that, you are pleased to assert, are of my doing: and, except that I do not propose myself for the office of bedel, it were an easy thing for me to do so. But hearken, my honest friend. I wish you well—no man better. Getting old is a sad affair, sadder even than dying. I think that you are sixty, and I don’t think that just now you are quite in your best health. Has the world gone very well with you? In five years, ten years, will it go better? You have written a silly book that nobody will read, and you are ashamed of it. You have wasted your years of manhood in twisting ropes of sand. And the solitude, Matthew! My heart bleeds to think what your solitude will be. What friend have you to smooth the downhill course? Who cares for the friend of dead books? Altogether, you have very little use now for Matthew Makepeace. Who is it that should sleep in yonder bed?” he asked, pointing to the truckle used by Marmaduke Dacre. “Is he young? Is he comely? Has he friends to love him and be loved? Is he of a quick spirit and a high hope? Matthew Makepeace, you know the acts and the word. The door lies open to you. Take wisdom, and be young.”
“The door lies open to you,” shouted Makepeace, throwing it open as he spoke. “Pass out of it, and avoid the chamber of a Christian man: and the foul fiend fly away with you and your abominable suggestions!”
“Doctor Makepeace, I wish you a very good evening,” said his visitor.
The night was far advanced, and Matthew Makepeace had no mind for bed. A dim rush candle, set on a stool in a corner of the apartment, cast flickering shadows on the walls and floor. In an opposite dark corner his pupil slept. But for the dread of awaking him, Makepeace would have paced the room in his perplexity. As it was, he sat bent double on the stool by the window.
One thing was clear enough. If what he had seen and heard was not a fiction or the delusion of his senses, the Speculum was a colossal stupidity. Even if the rejuvenations of Commagenus were as much in the course of nature as he affirmed them to be, did they not warrant the Pope’s most arrogant pretensions? But it was with himself that he was most concerned. Was it not the fact that, as Commagenus had declared, his life had been most miserably wasted? And the mistake was past repair. If only his youth had known! And his mind went back to a short, happy time, just after he had taken his degree, when he had served as chaplain in his far-away northern country, at the ancestral castle of the Dacres. His pupil then had been the present Lord, Marmaduke’s father; and the pupil had had so much to teach his master about hawks and horses and hounds that the master had little leisure to repay it in Greek and Latin. Those were happy days when they had roamed the Cumbrian fells together. And now this Lord Dacre was great in the councils of his sovereign, the wise and respected ruler of a barony that was almost a kingdom in itself. And in his trusting confidence he had committed his son to the care of his old master at Cambridge; and that son in course of years would naturally succeed to his father’s station.
Had Commagenus indeed sat in that chamber, only a few hours since, and unfolded to him the secret of perpetual youth? Yes: there was the evidence of the written scrap lying on the open page of the Speculum. True, Commagenus had made a detestable use of his wonderful power. But with Makepeace it would be different. He was conscious of his sobriety and virtue, and there were the noble traditions of the house of Dacre to keep him in the right way. He had abilities, if only he had youth and opportunity to use them, and the experience of sixty years was a better guarantee for their proper employment than any that a callow youth could offer. Clearer, louder than the voices of conscience or calculation there came back to him, like the drumming burden of an iterated song, the words “The door is open. Be young.” Was it fancy that a door seemed to open in the dark book-press opposite, and that through it he looked out on a sunny haze enveloping blue hills and waters and the towers of Dacre Castle? And cool breaths from heathery heights took up the refrain, and whispered to him “Be young.”
Matthew Makepeace crept quietly to the dark corner where his pupil lay. His will was intense as he had never known it before. He took care that his shadow should not fall on the sleeper’s face and arouse him. He made the wonderful passes—with what extraordinary clearness they were printed on his recollection! He stooped and whispered in his pupil’s ear the mysterious word.
If Matthew had expected a flash of lightning, the apparition of the Evil One, the jubilations of triumphant fiends on the success of his experiment, he was agreeably disappointed. Nothing of the kind happened. Only in the dim light of the candle he saw a grey shadow of weary age steal over his pupil’s face, and he felt the vigour and vitality of youth invade his own limbs as with the intoxication of wine. Then the wick suddenly flickered in the candle-socket and went out. He heard Marmaduke turn over in his bed with an uneasy sigh.
Then Makepeace woke to reason and a horrible dread. He dared not relight the candle for fear of rousing the sleeper. In the dark, before he was discovered, he must repeat the process which should restore each to his own person. In the dark, as nearly as he could, he went through the magical passes, and with extraordinary vehemence he willed himself back into Matthew Makepeace. But the word! Great heavens! It had passed from him as suddenly and completely as the light of the extinguished candle. In vain he racked his memory of every language, living or dead. It had no meaning in any language, living or dead: of that he felt sure, and he was sure of nothing else. For an hour, by his pupil’s bedside, he tore his hair in desperate efforts to recall it. For an hour he alternately cursed Commagenus and prayed that he might return before day to give him the forgotten word. Then the grey morning light began to creep through the casement, and the birds woke and sang.