1861–1907
‘Not for a moment,’ said the Count, with great dignity, ‘did I suppose so.’
I thanked him.
He pressed my hand.
There followed one of those awkward pauses which are apt to follow on a supreme moment. He had just informed me that he did not for an instant suppose that I preferred any consideration before honour. The wind was driving the rain against my window as if it were a human thing that must be chased from the wide world without. The flames were leaping up the chimney, as if they owned some kinship with the wind and were rushing to meet him. I wanted to be alone, to enjoy the uproar in peace. How to get rid of the Count I did not know. Why the Count insisted on staying, I did not know. As he was going to shoot me, or I was going to shoot him, at eight o’clock the next morning, it seemed to me that this was waste of time; but you cannot make a remark of that kind to a guest, and he happened to be in my room.
‘Let me ask you one thing!’ said the Count. ‘You are a generous enemy. Though not in your first youth, you are younger than I am, and you have not been out before. I would not take you at a disadvantage. Do you believe in the soul’s future?’
‘A most unnecessary question,’ I said lightly. ‘In a few hours one of us will have answered it for good and all.’
He frowned.
‘You do not believe in it. I am reduced to a most unpleasant extremity. Unless you can reassure me upon this point, it is impossible for me to fight you. Unless I fight you, I am dishonoured.’
‘Why should it be impossible?’ I asked. But that the Count was by birth and breeding a perfect gentleman I might have suspected his courage.
‘It gives me an unfair advantage,’ he said, gazing steadily at me out of his deep-set eyes. ‘You fight, believing death is death. I fight, believing death is birth. I know something of your chivalrous nature. If I kill you, I, in my own opinion, set free a soul. If you kill me, you, in your own opinion, commit murder. I would not have you tortured in after life by this reflection. Once more I tell you, it is impossible for me to fight unless you give me some assurance. Once more I ask you, Do you believe in eternal life?’
‘I am fully sensible of your kind consideration for my feelings, but permit me to observe that I do not see what right you have to ask that question.’
‘You decline to answer it?’
‘I do.’
‘Then our affair is settled. I also decline to fight.’
He bowed, and walked towards the door.
‘Stay!’ I cried. ‘What are you going to do?’
He laid his hand upon a pistol.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘You leave me no other choice.’
It was absurd of me to object to his shooting himself when I had no objection whatever to shooting him with my own hand if I could. But it was just this one phrase if I could that made a difference. The alternative was too cold-blooded; I felt bound to prevent it.
‘Could it not be arranged——?’ I spoke nervously, only to gain time, in the confusion of the moment.
‘You are not the man I took you for,’ he said.
This time he did not bow as he turned towards the door.
‘You do not seem to be aware,’ I remarked, ‘that you are exposing me to a sense of blood-guiltiness far more onerous than that which you deprecate. If I am to be a murderer, at least allow me to feel that I did the deed myself, not that I compelled some one else to do it. Do you think that you are treating me fairly? You put a premium upon lies. You leave no other course open to me. By all that is held most sacred I swear to you that I believe in eternal life.’
And rising, I laid my hand upon my heart.
‘Sir,’ said the Count sternly, ‘would you die with a falsehood on your lip? You do not believe it?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I do not. I merely wished to show you to what extremes you are driving me. But you are right. Between gentlemen this sort of thing is a mistake, even in jest. You do not leave this room till you have promised to fight me to-morrow!’ and I threw myself across the door. I was the younger and the stronger man.
With perfect gravity the Count sat down in an armchair. The wind was howling more loudly than before; the flames had sunk lower.
I became conscious of the absurdity of the situation. Nothing short of flood, fire, or earthquake could put an end to it in a fitting manner. There we were bound to stay till we died of starvation, unless one or the other would compromise his dignity. As the little I knew of the Count made me feel certain that nothing would ever induce him to compromise his, I compromised mine.
‘Count,’ I said, ‘this is a ridiculous position for both of us. My presence causes you an intolerable gêne, and yours, the whole night through, would scarcely be agreeable to me. Let us consider the thing dispassionately. You will not fight me because I do not hold an opinion which you, rightly or wrongly, hold to be necessary for my future happiness, if I live; i.e. you do not object to kill me, because you think no one can die, but you do object to poison the remainder of my mortal existence. If you do not fight me, you will shoot yourself, for you would be unable to survive your honour. That is the case on your side. Now for mine. I have an instinctive dislike of suicide, either for myself or for any one else whom I respect. It may be a mere prejudice, but so it is. If, therefore, you blow out your brains, it will seriously affect my peace of mind, inasmuch as I shall consider myself to a certain extent responsible. But fair fight is another thing altogether. It is now five o’clock. According to our agreement we meet at eight to-morrow morning. I shall need at least five hours’ sleep beforehand, or I shall not take steady aim. Allowing full time to dress, breakfast, and get to the rendezvous, I ought not to go to bed later than two. Between five o’clock this evening and two to-morrow morning there are nine hours. Now, these nine hours I will promise you, on my word of honour as a gentleman, to spend on the investigation of a question that does not interest me in the least, and on which, but for you, I should never, in the whole course of my life, have spent nine minutes—if you, on your part, will promise to meet me at eight to-morrow. If, by that time, I can answer your question in the affirmative—and I know already that it is not by words alone that you will judge whether I speak the truth—well and good! Let us fight! Whichever way the duel ends, you will have the satisfaction of thinking that I have gained a belief which, but for you, I should not even have wished to gain. If, on the contrary, I retain my present scepticism, we will shoot ourselves instead of each other. Voilà tout! It is a pity: the country will lose two possible defenders instead of one, but I do not see how that can be helped. Is it a bond? Will you meet me at eight?’
The Count rose from his chair: his eyes shone.
‘I have the greatest pleasure in accepting your generous proposal,’ he replied, ‘more especially as I am quite convinced that no one could study this question for nine hours without answering it as I myself have been taught to answer it. As for the method of study, that of course must be left to yourself. The “Phaidon” of Plato’—
‘No,’ I said carelessly, moving away from the door to let him pass. ‘My tastes are not philosophical. I shall sit by the fire for three hours, and think it over in my own way. (I dare not engage that my mind will not wander to other subjects. La Girouette danced adorably in the ballet last night.) Then, if you have no objection, I shall dine out and go to a ball, the invitation for which I accepted some time ago, so that my absence would be remarked: and, when the clock strikes eleven, I shall betake myself to my confessor. If serious reflection, if the sight of the vanities of this world, if the consolation of religion, all put together, cannot persuade me to believe in the immortality of the soul, it will be a hopeless affair indeed; for I am sure nothing else could.’
The Count sighed.
‘It is a strange way to take,’ he said; ‘but let no man judge for another. I myself was led to believe by a series of events which, to any other than myself, would appear almost incredible. I pray that you may be rightly directed. In the meantime I wish you good-night. I shall not retire to rest before two o’clock.’ He bowed again and went out.
When he was gone I threw myself down in the chair which he had occupied, that I might enjoy to the full the luxury of being alone. The Count’s presence had become a hideous oppression to me during the last quarter of an hour. I had felt as if he would never go—as if he were a nightmare, as if he were the Old Man of the Sea, as if he were a whole crowd of people in himself, and made the room stuffy. I ran to the window and flung it open; the wind rushed in and puffed the curtains out, and rioted amongst my books and papers, bathing me, body and soul, in freedom. I heaped up faggot after faggot, and stirred them into a blaze that might have set the chimney on fire. Then, between wind and flame, down I sat, according to contract, to consider that part of myself which was more subtle than either.
I found it to the full as difficult as I had expected. The old arguments were no newer. ‘We should like to go on living very much. Therefore we think we shall. But as we really do not know, we will not die till the last possible moment.’ They came to little more than that, so it seemed. As I was without this strong prepossession in favour of life, I failed to recognize their cogency. Besides, to have that man going on for ever? I had a strong prepossession in favour of his extinction, even if it necessarily included my own. I loved myself less than I hated him. Not that I had any reason to hate him. He was everything that he should be, which gave a sort of zest to my abhorrence, reduced it to a fine art—made it essential, not a mere accident. Our natures were antagonistic. I could have forgiven another for murdering me more easily than I could forgive him the fact of his existence in the same universe with myself. He jarred upon my every nerve. My eyes rebelled at the sight of his face, my ears at the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand caused an electric shiver of repulsion. He annihilated all but the animal part of me; when he was in the room I knew his dog had more of a soul than I. And, by the strangest freak of fancy, it was this man who, more than any one I ever met, had the faculty of conjuring anything like it out of me, who insisted not only on my believing it was there, but that it would go on being there for ever and ever.
‘No, Count,’ I said, as I watched the sparks go up the chimney; ‘keep your immortality to yourself! I would not share it with you for the asking,’ and through my mind there flashed the old emblems of the transitoriness of life—the dream, the shadow, the morning mist, the snowflake, the flower of the grass, the bird flying out of the darkness, through the lighted hall, into the darkness again. I was reassured concerning its momentary character. ‘And yet,’ I said to myself, ‘the Count has a very strong will. If any man had the power to insist on living, in defiance of all the rules of Nature, that man would be the Count. Perhaps it is his excessive vitality which is burdensome to ephemeral creatures like myself. It is as if he absorbed their proper part whenever he came near them.’
So thinking, I took out my pistols and cleaned them, not without a certain pleasure. I had had enough of my own society by the time the clock struck eight, and was well inclined to seek that of others.
The dinner to which I was invited was given by Princess X., who lived in an apartment on the third floor of the Hotel Z. She was going to a dance that night—the same that I meant to attend—and the party before-hand would be, she informed me, quite a small one, consisting only of myself and a few intimates. It so happened that I was rather late. Seeing the door of the lift open, I got in. The darkness had prevented me from noticing that in one corner there was already something that looked like a downy ball of white, with a very small head coming out of it. I would fain have beaten a retreat, but it was too late; the porter stepped in after me and we began to ascend.
‘Oh!’ said the little lady, with a gasp, putting out a small white hand to catch hold of me. I am afraid that I did not attempt to reassure her. It was all over in a minute.
The lift stopped. I made way for her to get out. She turned round to me, smiling and blushing.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, ‘I never have been in one before. It is so unlike anything else—when you are not accustomed. I suppose you also are going to dine with Marraine?’
‘I have not the pleasure of calling the Princess X. Marraine,’ I replied; ‘but if she has the pleasure of calling you her godchild, we are bound for one destination. Allow me to ring the bell.’
As she passed into the hall, the clearer light shone, for a moment, on her soft brown curls, and glanced, reflected, in her mirthful eyes.
We entered the drawing-room almost at the same moment. As the Princess rose to make us acquainted, she laughed again and said quickly:
‘No, no, Marraine, it is too late. I was introduced by the lift, as the greatest coward this gentleman has ever known, quite three minutes ago.’
The Princess took her hand.
‘Well! well!’ she said, ‘was there ever such a naughty débutante? It is a pity, as you took each other up so pleasantly, that you cannot take each other down also. But there I must interfere.’
‘It is cruel of you, Princess. Fate was much kinder. But,’—I turned to the younger lady—‘may I presume to ask your hand for the first dance?’
‘You may,’ she said merrily; ‘but I hope you know what you are asking. It is the first dance that I have ever given any one.’
‘Where is your father?’ asked the Princess.
‘Kept at home by a letter from the Prime Minister. He begs that you will excuse him; for nothing else would he have given up this party. He is coming later on, to take me home. I hope he will not come till very late indeed, if that is all he cares for. He did not feel sure that it was meet for me to go out to dinner alone, even to the house of my godmother, but he said that he did not want to disappoint you, and I think,’ she put in candidly, though very demurely, ‘he did not want to disappoint me either. I should have died of vexation if I had had to stay at home.’
The Princess laughed.
‘That makes it serious. And seriously, my love, you are quite right. Unless one is dead or dying, one should keep one’s dinner engagement. And, while I think of it,’ she added, addressing herself to me, ‘I must positively engage you to dine with me to-morrow. I expect the Prime Minister, and I cannot be left alone to entertain him. Eight o’clock, do you hear? He will have to leave early, so mind you are in time.’
‘To hear is to obey. Unless I am dead or dying I will keep my dinner engagement.’
‘I think I am sure of you then. You never looked better in your life.’
‘Dinner is on the table,’ said the Princess’s butler.
The ground floor of the hotel had been engaged for the dance. The fiddles were already striking up when I, in company with the other gentlemen of the party, entered the room. My promised partner was standing beside the Princess, busily inscribing the names of various aspirants on her card. I thought she might be better employed inscribing mine, and said so. She gave me the card, and I availed myself of the vacant spaces that appeared on it.
‘Quick, quick!’ she cried. ‘There is the music! Are you not longing to be off?’
Dancing varies inversely as the character of the lady who dances. With her it resembled nothing so much as flight. She scarcely seemed to touch the ground with her feet, she was as light as one of the feathers on her cloak. The music mounted to my brain as we went whirling round and round together. I felt as though I were a spirit chasing another spirit. I forgot everything else and when it stopped I could not have told whether we had been dancing hours or moments. I had begun in another state of existence.
‘Ah!’ she said, ‘your step goes well with mine.’
How I filled up the intervals when I was not dancing with her I do not know. Once, while we were standing together in the recess formed by a window, a great moth flew in and made for the lighted candelabra over our heads. There was a quick change in her.
‘O save it, save it’ she cried, clasping her little hands together in wild distress.
I caught the creature in my handkerchief and let it out again. When I returned to her she was pale and trembling.
‘He is quite safe,’ I said. ‘Do not be unhappy! After all, what would it matter if he did burn himself? In proportion, he would have lived much longer than we shall.’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘We live for ever.’
Her words sent a thrill of recollection through me.
‘Do we?’ I said in a gentler voice. ‘If you tell me so, I will believe it.’
‘Why yes, of course we do!’ she said. ‘I never heard any one say that we did not. Shall we finish this dance?’
It was the last opportunity that I had of talking to her. I think I was engaged in conversation with some one else when, later on in the evening, I heard her pleading tones close behind me.
‘Only one more! O let me stay for only one more!’
In an instant she was at my side.
‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I must have one more dance before I go. I do not know where my partner is.’
It was irresistible, though I had a humiliating sensation that she asked me only because there was no one else at hand. She broke away just when the delirium of enjoyment was at its height.
‘No longer!’ she cried. ‘Not a moment more! That was perfect. Good-night!’
She made me a tricksy sign of adieu with her fan, and tripped away; she could hardly help dancing as she moved.
I stood bewildered for a moment, then rushed to the door that I might see her as she passed to her carriage. She was leaning on her father’s arm as she went down the steps. The link-man raised his torch to guide them, and a sudden glare of light showed me the features of the Count.
I drew a long breath.
‘IT is as well that I am going to fight that man tomorrow,’ I thought. ‘If not, he would inevitably have been my father-in-law. In the first place, I have not enough to marry upon; in the second, we should have made the little thing miserable between us.’
The wind detached a fragment of her swansdown cloak. I stooped and picked it up.
Practically speaking, the disposition of my time had been in no degree influenced by the Count’s grotesque requirement. I had intended all along to stay at home until eight o’clock, to dine with the Princess X., to go to the dance, and to visit the dearest friend that I had in the world. He was a Dominican monk, of great learning and acuteness, resident in the monastery of S. Petrox, about half a mile off. We were old schoolfellows, and, though our ways of life were very different, he had never lost the ascendancy over me which, as a boy, he had understood how to gain.
He was busy reading when I entered his cell; he laid his finger on his lips, to show me that I must not interrupt him.
After a long pause, he closed the great volume reverently and asked me what I wanted at that time of night.
‘I want an immortal soul.’
‘Curious!’ he remarked, pushing his spectacles up on his forehead, ‘I have just been studying the question of the soul.’
‘Well! what is the result of your investigation?’
‘My friend,’ returned the Dominican, ‘what would it avail were I to tell you? I know your mind upon these subjects.’
‘That is more than I know myself, then—more than I should ever have wished to know but for a strange occurrence.’
I told him all the circumstances of my conversation with the Count—not mentioning his name, of course.
‘You have helped me at many a difficult pass before now,’ I said. ‘Help me again. Pour out the contents of that great volume upon my head!’
‘You would be as wise as you were before. I know you, amico mio. You own no teacher save experience.’
‘What is the experience that can make a man believe in that of which he has none? Tell me, that I may seek it.’
‘Is there any one in the world of whom you are really fond?’ said the Dominican.
For the fraction of a second I hesitated.
‘Forgive the question! It is of no importance. There is one way by which you can be brought to believe, but it may cost you your life. Are you willing to risk it?’
‘I am bound to preserve my life until to-morrow morning.’
‘So far I can guarantee it, if you are careful to obey. For the rest, you are indifferent? Well and good! Understand that I, on my part, am running a great risk for your sake. If what I am about to do were to become known, I should incur excommunication. My fellow-churchmen would say that I was endangering a soul within the fold to save one that is without. So be it! You are my friend. You are, I know, an actor of some experience. Do you think that you could personate me?’
‘With your instructions, I have no doubt that I could.’
He rose, and took from his cupboard a priest’s robe and a little cap.
‘You have just recovered from an illness; you must wear a beretta. You are close shaven; that is well. Under the beretta your hair is not too long. Be sure to recollect that you are still subject to cold—that you must on no account take it off. Before we go any further, oblige me by taking an oath—a solemn oath. First, that, whatever may happen, you will attempt no resistance; secondly, that you will never reveal the names of those amongst whom I am going to send you, nor any of the circumstances which you may be called upon to witness. Before you swear, reflect! The possession of a secret of this kind implies considerable danger. Is it worth the risk?’
‘A strange question for one of your calling to ask!’ I retorted; ‘I am no priest, but I think it is.’
‘Is there anything in the world that you hold sacred?’ said the Dominican.
I drew the bit of swansdown from its resting-place, profaning the one true sentiment that was in me with a laugh. As for my friend, he never even smiled.
‘That will do!’ he said. ‘Swear upon that!’ I did so.
‘You are now a penitent before me. I have heard your confession. I am about to absolve you. Take accurate note of everything that I say, and reproduce my words, as nearly as you can, when you are called in to the death-bed.’
‘You spoke to me as if I were a woman,’ I observed, when he had finished.
‘You are quite right,’ said the monk. ‘Now let us reverse the parts. Do you absolve me, as if I were a woman!’
I repeated the form of words which he had just gone through.
‘Evviva!’ he said, when I had done. ‘You might have been born in a cassock.’
At the same moment I heard the hooting of an owl in the garden below. He started, and looked at the clock.
‘Late!’ he said. ‘That is the carriage. We have not a moment to lose. Let me recommend you to keep silence from the time you leave these doors to the time when you are set down again. If you say a word more than is necessary, I will not answer for the consequences. I shall await you here on your return. Remember your oath.’ Then, bending forward as if he feared the very walls would hear, he added in a whisper:
‘Take no refreshment in that house.’
He touched the back of a volume of the Via Media as he spoke; part of what had appeared to be the bookcase sprang open and disclosed a winding stair. Without another word, he pointed down it, taking a light to show me the way. At the last turn of the steps he left me.
I felt the cold breath of the night lifting my hair. Then I was suddenly seized and blindfolded; whether by two or more persons I could not be sure, for I was taken by surprise in the darkness. Determined to adhere to the prescribed conditions of the adventure, I made no sound and I heard a whisper:
‘No need to gag him, he has his cue.’
In a moment strong arms had lifted me and were carrying me along—over the grass, as I judged, for there was no ring of footsteps. I was let down gently enough upon the seat of a carriage, and away we went like the wind. How long it took, which way we went, whether there was any one else in the carriage, I have no idea. A steady hand must have held the reins. We were going at a breakneck pace, yet we never encountered the smallest obstacle, nor did I even feel a jolt. Thus was I whirled along through the night, as little able to see as if I had been sleeping.
We stopped at last. I was helped out, and guided, as I judged by the mouldy smell, into some cellar or disused passage, at the end of which there were steps. Presumably, they led up into a house, for when we trod on level ground again, the atmosphere was dry and warm, and, to my great surprise, I heard the tones of a piano in the distance, familiar tones at the sound of which my heart beat, though it was a minute before I recollected that I had heard them last as I was leaving the ball-room. We went up many stairs, down many more and up again, the sounds growing more and more distinct as we advanced. They ceased abruptly, the bandage was removed, and I found myself standing alone in a tiny room, lit by one small red-shaded lamp. I tried the door, but it was locked; mysterious, for I had heard no turning of the key! A piano stood open, but there was no music upon it. A book lay on the sofa, as if some one had just tossed it down there. On the outer side there was no window at all; in the other wall was a recess, formed by three little windows of painted glass, through which a light from below shone dimly, by way of the Madonna and two attendant saints.
I waited a long time, but no one came. The stillness grew oppressive. I threw myself on the sofa, and tried to read, but the air was heated and magnetic—it seemed to thrust itself between me and the lines. I looked at the first page of the book to see if there were any indication of the owner, but there was none. I then tried several others, all with the same ill success. Clearly they had been read with much affection, for they were often marked with a pencil: but there was never any name in the beginning, and from one or two of them the fly-leaf had been removed.
On a sudden the light reflected from below went out; the saints became indistinguishable.
My curiosity got the better of me. I resolved, come what would, to open one of those windows; to have nothing but a pane of glass between me and the unknown was too strong a temptation. I pressed with all my strength against the woodwork of the centre one: there was a slight, a very slight, yielding; it seemed to give on darkness. I moved the lamp cautiously, so as to concentrate its beams upon the chink, and pressed again. For an instant I caught sight of the dark figure of a man, bending over a table, in front of a fireplace, far down below. Then the window gave an ominous creak. I closed it, and sat breathless. Whether the man had heard? I inclined to think that he must have. Presently there were footsteps outside.
‘In half an hour,’ said a man’s voice.
‘In half an hour,’ said a woman’s.
It was music echoing a discord. The key turned in the lock; the little lady of the swansdown cloak entered, and shut the door behind her. I cannot now conceive my feelings at that moment; but I had just presence of mind enough to recollect that I should be turned out if I did not sustain my part. We saluted each other in the usual way, and she knelt down before me. For the first time it darted through my mind that she was going to make a confession—and to me? A strong repugnance to hear overcame every other consideration. If I could mock that creature, I must be a fiend incarnate. Yet how, with safety to my friend—and to myself—prevent her? I took a step backward. She raised her eyes appealingly. I frowned and turned away.
‘This is some jest,’ I said sternly. ‘I was sent for to attend a deathbed. Take me to the penitent.’
‘It is I that am dying.’
‘Are you mad?’ I demanded. ‘Many a time have I seen death; never with eyes and cheeks like these.’
‘He that has not an hour to live is no nearer death than I am. I shall not see the sun rise to-morrow.’
She spoke with such conviction that I staggered back, reeling under the shock.
‘You are ill,’ she said solicitously, rising from her knees. ‘Holy Virgin, what shall I do? Help! help!’
I summoned all the strength of mind that I possessed.
‘Do not call, my daughter! It is only a passing weakness. The way hither is long. I am but lately recovered from a severe indisposition. Let me rest!’
Some excuse of this kind I think I made. Whatever it was, she accepted it, and stood watching me for a minute or two. Then, seeing that I was better, she said, with great gentleness:
‘It was not good to send you out on such a wild night as this. You should have stayed at home and slept. It grieved me so to see that I have made you ill. I did not think of this when I asked my father to send for a priest. I have hardly ever been allowed one, but you are very like some one that I have seen—I cannot feel as if you were a stranger. I could believe anything that you said—I know I could. Are you glad to think how greatly it comforts me to see you?’
‘I would give the remnant of my years, if that could be of any service to you,’ I said, striving not to say it too fervently.
She was quiet for a moment;—then, drawing a chair close to the sofa on which I had fallen back, she resumed.
‘I will not weary you with making a long confession. I think I can say what is on my mind better like this. I trust your face.’
She hesitated.
‘It is a dreadful thing. At first I thought I dared not say it to any one. It was wicked of me even to think it.’
She hid her face.
‘But you, you are older; you may not have very long to live either. Things look so different then. If you said it, I could believe it. I know I could.’
Once more she hesitated. The wind had risen again in all its fury, and was howling outside the window.
‘Satan tempts us,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Satan tempts us.’
She turned her face away, clasped her hands tightly, and went on.
‘I do not know how to say it. It was like this. I was at a dance, and very happy. I think I never was so happy in my life. I never danced with any one before. There came a moth, and it was going to burn itself. He saved it; and then he said, “What matter if it had died, for we were all like moths.” There is nothing more.’
‘He told a lie.’
‘I knew it, I knew it,’ she said. ‘Say that! Look at me as you say it! Say: “I believe we live again.”’
‘I believe that we live again,’ I said solemnly, answering her gaze with perfect truthfulness. The anguish passed away; the strained hands loosened. She bent her head and closed her eyes. When she spoke again, she said in a whisper: ‘It is all well. How good of you to come! He said he would believe it, if I told him. I could not tell him. He made me feel as if I did not know. If I could only—will you say this to him for me? Ah, no! I forgot. You must never tell any one.’
‘You shall tell him yourself.’
A light, first of wonder, then of the happiness of those who see a vision, dawned in her eyes. I was still half in heaven with her, when the Count entered. She told him that I had been ill—that I ought not to have come out at night.
‘I am greatly obliged to you for your kindness.’ The Count addressed himself to me with a graceful, though condescending bow. ‘The Abbot is informed of the reasons for which secrecy is imperative,’ he continued. ‘I feel sure that you will hold me excused. But we must not suffer you to go hence without a draught of wine.’ His daughter went before him.
I followed, down the dark staircase into a hall—the same evidently as that into which I had peeped from the window of the boudoir. It lay in darkness now; even the fire burned low. The Count carried a lamp.
Strange figures, stranger faces, met my eyes. Goat-footed creatures were driving airy chariots over my head; Cupids and Fauns and things half man, half beast or bird, were at their wildest revelry around me. Here stood l’homme armé, his visor up, nothing but vacant blackness behind it. There, two colossal heads, man and woman, leered at each other. Garlands of carved fruit and flowers, amidst which squirrels, monkeys, and little owls were playing, wreathed pillar and post of the staircase by which we had come down. No two were alike.
In front of the fire stood a table; on it a tray of polished brass, holding a flask of fine Venetian work and some glasses.
He seated himself in silence. I did the same.
A French clock on its bracket struck, or rather tolled, an hour after midnight.
Lifting his dark eyes, the Count fixed them steadily upon me.
I feared his recognition too much to meet them, for he and I had looked each other in the eyes once before. It is impossible to mask the soul when she is sitting at her open windows. But he had no suspicion.
‘In the course of your life,’ he said, ‘you have, no doubt, seen many strange things.’ He waved his hand in the direction of the grotesques. ‘Did you ever, if I may ask the question, see a house furnished in this way before?’
‘Never.’
‘Could it have been so furnished by any reasonable man?’
‘A poet?’ I said tentatively.
The Count shrugged his shoulders.
‘There are no poets in the family.’
I kept silence.
‘The man shot himself. His son built the little room up above. It has no window to the front. There his wife lived until her death.’
He glanced up at a portrait on the wall, the features of which strongly resembled his own.
‘No one knows what became of him.’
As he spoke, he pulled a silk tassel which hung by a long slender cord from the ceiling. A thousand lights flashed out. The heart of every carven rose became a heart of flame, stars glowed among the vine and pomegranate, eyes of fire shone from the grotesque heads. The lights, the faces, the flowers and fruit all round wreathed themselves into the first letter of the name of my enemy. Everywhere it was written. A wave of fresh, vigorous hate surged over me.
‘Have you ever seen an apartment lighted in this manner before?’ he asked.
‘I must confess that it appears to me fantastic, though very beautiful.’
‘We were not speaking of the effect, I think. It is unusual?’
‘Certainly.’
‘The invention is due to the father of the present owner. He fell by his own hand.’
‘And the present owner?’ I said.
The Count’s expression changed. He looked at his daughter, who had seated herself on a low couch by the fire. She did not appear to be listening; but he lowered his voice.
‘The present owner has one child—now in the flower of her youth. She does not know the dreadful fate of her ancestors. She has only been told thus much—that at the age of seventeen she will pass into another life. She feels no fear, since she is going to the mother whom, as a babe, she lost. Of the exact moment and manner of her death she has been kept in ignorance until within an hour of it. Nothing has frightened, nothing has distressed her. Pure and unspotted as she came to him, he that best loves her desires to send her back to that heaven which is more real to her than earth, to that heaven which will save her from knowing—as, but for him, she must infallibly know—that this earth is a hell. Is he right?’
‘No,’ I said, with a certain assurance. ‘He is mad.’ The Count started; but on the instant he was calm again.
‘That makes the fifth generation,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘In the eyes of ignorant persons he may be mad perhaps. Is it not the truest sanity to prevent these horrors from culminating in a sixth? I cannot but approve his judgement.’
He turned towards the girl. She raised her face to his. I saw that it was white as marble. I thought that she was going to faint. Instinctively I seized the flask and poured out some of the wine.
‘Well thought of!’ said the Count. ‘The Church, however, comes first—even before a lady.’
He made a sign to her.
‘You need refreshment more than I,’ she said, offering me the glass.
I took it from her, not thinking what I did. And yet some word of hers recalled a word spoken before.
‘Refreshment!’
Take no refreshment in that house.
I had but tasted. For the moment my senses still were clear. I saw the Count sprinkle drops from a phial on to his handkerchief and give it to the little lady. I saw her fall back softly on the couch.
Her father watched with rapt attention. The swansdown cloak that she had worn was hanging over the back of a chair. Suddenly he tore a bit of it away and held it to her lips. The light down never stirred.
I thought that I called out, but heard no sound. There was a weight of lead upon my eyes—the air was thick with fog. I fought with might and main to get to her. I could not stir a step. I could not even see her now.
Making one last effort to move, I missed my footing and fell—fell, as it seemed, into a yawning gulf that opened suddenly before me—fell down and down and down into the fathomless depths of that slumber wherein we spend the half of existence.
But Lethe had been meted out unevenly; to her the sleep that knew no earthly morrow—to me the sleep that ended in a few hours, leaving the rest of life a dream.
On the day after, I met the Count at eight o’clock in the morning. At eight o’clock in the evening I kept my dinner engagement.