Reuel

“ Late that night Reuel tossed upon his silken couch in distress of mind. If the disk were true, then Dianthe and Aubrey both lived and were together. He was torn by doubts, haunted by dreadful fears of he knew not what. If the story of the disk were true, never was man so deceived and duped as he had been. Then in the midst of his anger and despair came an irresistible impulse to rise from his bed. He did so, and distinctly felt the pressure of a soft hand upon his brow, and a yielding body at his side. ”

“ You go down-stairs, Reuel, quick metre. Wake up, Mis' Dow! It's time ter hyper. Rub her feet, w'ile I git the brandy. Three o'clock to-night 'll tell the story!"
Lyra and the great constellations wheeled slowly overhead, while Reuel walked up and down, up and down the path between the hollyhocks all night. At every turn in his walk he looked up with a sinking heart and a dull horror at the window's faint glimmer. And suddenly he fell on his knees; he didn't dare pray, he only murmured over and over: "She's sech a young thing! She never done wrong in her born days. She loves to live. ”

“ His place in the world would soon be filled; no vacuum remained empty; the eternal movement of all things onward closed up the gaps, and the wail of the newly-born augmented the great army of mortals pressing the vitals of mother Earth with hurrying tread. So he had tormented himself for months, but the courage was yet wanting for strength to rend the veil. It had grown dark early. Reuel had not stirred from his room since coming from the hospital—had not eaten nor drank, and was in full possession of the solitude he craved. ”

“ The friend into whose care you gave me has acquired the power over me that you alone possessed, that power sacred to our first meeting and our happy love. Why did you leave me in the power of a fiend in human shape, to search for gold? There are worse things in life than poverty.”
Calming the frenzy of his thoughts by a strong effort, Reuel continued his mental questions until the whole pitiful story was his. He knew not how long he continued in this communion. ”

“ From profound unconsciousness, deep, merciful, oblivious to pain and the flight of time, from the gulf of the mysterious shadows wherein earth and heaven are alike forgotten, Reuel awoke at the close of the fourth day after his entrance into the Great Pyramid. That Lethean calm induced by narcotic odors, saved his reason. Great pain, whether physical or mental, cannot last long, and human anguish must find relief or take it. ”

“ I was but a bungler, and often my heart failed me.”
“Unhappy man! how could you plot to hurt one who has never harmed you?” exclaimed Reuel.
“Aubrey Livingston was my foster brother, and I could deny him nothing.”
“Aubrey Livingston! Was he the instigator?”
“Yes,” sighed the dying man. “Return home as soon as possible and rescue your wife—your wife, and yet not your wife—for a man may not marry his sister.”
“What!” almost shrieked Reuel. “What!”
“I have said it. Dianthe Lusk is your own sister, the half-sister of Aubrey Livingston, who is your half-brother.” ”

“ Men like me get love from them which is half akin to pity, when they get anything at all. It is but the shadow. This is my opportunity for happiness; I seize it. Fate has linked us together and no man and no man’s laws shall part us.”
Livingston sipped his wine quietly, intently watching Reuel’s face. Now he leaned across the table and stretched out his hand to Briggs; his eyes looked full into his. As their hands met in a close clasp, he whispered a sentence across the board. Reuel started, uttered an exclamation and flushed slowly a dark, dull red. ”

“ Reuel thought he had never heard music more fascinating. Ababdis would assume the leading part. “Ah, when shall I see my family again; the rain has fallen and made a canal between me and my home. Oh, shall I never see it more?” Then would follow the chorus [Pg 268] of drivers: “Oh, what pleasure, what delight, to see my family again; when I see my father, mother, brothers, sisters, I will hoist a flag on the head of my camel for joy!” ”

“ To solve it is my life; I live for that alone; let’m talk.”
“You ought to be re-named the ‘Science of Trance-States,’ Reuel. How a man can grind day and night beats me.” Livingston handed him a cigar and for a time they smoked in silence. [Pg 33] At length Reuel said:
“Shake hands with Poverty once, Aubrey, and you will solve the secret of many a student’s success in life.” ”

“ Livingston lingered with Briggs after the other physicians were gone.
“This is a great day for you, Reuel,” he said, as he laid a light caressing hand upon the other’s shoulder.
Reuel seized the hand in a quick convulsive [Pg 106] clasp. “True and tried friend, do not credit me more than I deserve. No praise is due me. I am an instrument—how I know not—a child of circumstances. Do you not perceive something strange in this case? Can you not deduce conclusions from your own intimate knowledge of this science?” ”

“ If he grasps the jewels, it will prove that he is no ordinary child; if he places his hand to the fire, then shall we be assured he is merely a foolish babe."
"So be it," said Bilam, "and if he grasps the jewels let his punishment be instant death."
Pharaoh and the judges agreed, and two dishes, one containing burning coals and the other gold and precious stones were brought in and placed before Moses. Everybody looked on [131] keenly as Moses stared at the dishes. Princess Bathia made signs to him, but Bilam ordered her to cease and it was Reuel who comforted her and dried her tears. ”

“ Played by the Children of the Kings Maiesties Reuels. Written by Robert Armin, seruant to the Kings most excellent Maiestie. N. O. for Thomas Archer. [Epistle to Reader, signed ‘Robert Armin’.]
Editions in A. B. Grosart, Works of R. A. Actor (1880, Choice Rarities of Ancient English Poetry, ii) , 63, and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.) . The epistle says that the play was ‘acted by the boyes of the Reuels, which perchaunce in part was sometime acted more naturally in the Citty, if not in the hole’, that the writer ‘would haue againe inacted Iohn my selfe but ... ”

“ Raoul looked back over his shoulder.
“My, she’s grand and solemn looking. She’s sitting by the window!” He moved away so that Dian could peer through. The shepherd hesitated. It was not to his liking, this looking in on a woman, but he wanted to see what the room was like and to pass his note to the comtesse. He put his eyes to the opening and saw the comtesse sitting, as Raoul had said, by the narrow window, dressed in her black frock, her hands folded in her lap.
Raoul had roamed on down the hall, peering in at doors and shuffling his feet along the velvet carpet as he went. ”

“ Finally, Rouletabille spoke:
“Messieurs,” said he, his voice low and shaken, because he knew that now he touched the decisive minute, after which there could only be an irrevocable fate. “Messieurs, in order to continue my experiment I am obliged to go through movements that might suggest to you the idea of an attempt at escape, or evasion. I hope you don’t regard me as fool enough to have any such thought.”
“Oh, monsieur,” said the chief, “you are free to go through all the maneuvers you wish. No one escapes us. Outside we should have you within arm’s reach quite as well as here. ”

“ When the passage was once more deserted, he crossed it, opened the door of the dressing-room, went in and shut the door. He found himself in absolute darkness. The gas had been turned out.
"There is some one here!", said Raoul, with his back against the closed door, in a quivering voice. "What are you hiding for?"
All was darkness and silence. Raoul heard only the sound of his own breathing. He quite failed to see that the indiscretion of his conduct was exceeding all bounds.
"You shan't leave this until I let you!", he exclaimed. "If you don't answer, you are a coward! But I'll expose you!" ”

“ The man and the other woman started forward crying "Mistress! Mistress!" but she thrust a silken purse into Raoul's hand. Raoul dandled it and was shrugging his shoulders at the weight of it when:
"I trust you, sir," she said.
"'Tis foolish in you, my fair," Raoul laughed.
"I trust you," she said again.
Raoul stood up in his stirrups and surveyed circumstances. The Spaniards were close now and the little willow clump could not avail to hide them. The only hope was the falling twilight and the mist. "Come!" said Raoul and led on toward the shadow of the long dike. ”

“ He whose intellect was thus supreme, Raoul, was the actual sovereign; the other, nothing but a phantom to whom he lent a soul; and yet, so powerful is majesty amongst us, this man has not even the honor of a tomb at the feet of him in whose service his life was worn away. Remember, Raoul, this! If Richelieu made the king, by comparison, seem small, he made royalty great. ”

“ He tried to push her aside.
"Whom do you mean by `he'?" she asked, in a changed voice. "Who shall not escape you?"
Raoul tried to overcome the girl's resistance by force, but she repelled him with a strength which he would not have suspected in her. He understood, or thought he understood, and at once lost his temper.
"Who?" he repeated angrily. "Why, he, the man who hides behind that hideous mask of death!... The evil genius of the churchyard at Perros!... Red Death!... In a word, madam, your friend ... your Angel of Music!... But I shall snatch off his mask, as I shall snatch off my own ”

“ While we were singing, M. Revel mounted the pulpit. He is a man of thirty-five or thereabouts; middlesized, bald, dark; with a broad brow, large gray eyes, and sharp, well-cut features. After two short extempore prayers—almost the only ones I have ever heard in which there was nothing offensive—he began his sermon on a text in Ecclesiastes. As it had little bearing on the argument, and was never alluded to again, I do not repeat it.
“There is much talk,” M. Revel began, “in our day about an order of nature. All acknowledge it; as science advances it is found more and more to be unchangeable. ”

“ It is a strain to a poor, modest, disciplined, modern mind to measure Sir Raoul in the plenitude of his might and the boundlessness of his will, to balance the mountain of his temptations, the meagreness of his lessons, the guilt of his soul. ”

“ Raoul sat thinking.
"Always," says he in that History of Myself, "always I had an eye and a mind for ground. Once seen I knew it forever, or by day or by night." He had, in fact, a dog's sense of place and direction. Wrapped in the wet darkness, he saw clear all around him, the line of poplars close by, the willow clump a gunshot off, the dikes and the sluggish river. He knew the oblong camp, the post of the cavalry on either horn, the park of the guns and powder in the midst of the rearward line.
At last Raoul gathered up his reins and rode down to Taddeo's dead company. ”

“ Dead men's bones, arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first course upon which the walls of the sacristy had been built. The door of the sacristy opened in the middle of that bony structure, as is often seen in old Breton churches.
Raoul said a prayer for Daae and then, painfully impressed by all those eternal smiles on the mouths of skulls, he climbed the slope and sat down on the edge of the heath overlooking the sea. The wind fell with the evening. Raoul was surrounded by icy darkness, but he did not feel the cold. ”

“ Suppose we try to repeat your movements; shall we?"
"It is dangerous, dear, for the glass might carry me off again; and, instead of running away, I should be obliged to go to the end of the secret passage to the lake and there call Erik."
"Would he hear you?"
"Erik will hear me wherever I call him. He told me so. He is a very curious genius. You must not think, Raoul, that he is simply a man who amuses himself by living underground. He does things that no other man could do; he knows things which nobody in the world knows."
"Take care, Christine, you are making a ghost of him again!" ”

“ I know one ought to be sorry for people who live underground.... But he is too horrible! And yet the time is at hand; I have only a day left; and, if I do not go, he will come and fetch me with his voice. And he will drag me with him, underground, and go on his knees before me, with his death's head. And he will tell me that he loves me! And he will cry! Oh, those tears, Raoul, those tears in the two black eye-sockets of the death's head! ”

“ The tone was the same to which Raoul had always submitted, but now he burst forth in open rebellion: "Grandfather, do not goad me too far. You have always reproached me with having my mother's blood in my veins, and you are right. All that I knew of happiness and freedom in the sunny days of my youth belonged to France, and there alone does life seem to me really worth the living. Here, in cold, gray Germany, I have never felt at home. Every joy is doled out to me grudgingly here; the phantom of duty is always held up to me. ”

“ One man went down with a hiss and a cough, the other sprang back yelling for help. Raoul tore Elsa from the Dutchman's arms, cast her over his shoulder and ran. And the Dutchman flung Martha at the Walloon and lumbered after him.
Tents and men stood out black against the yellow glare and the light spread over the plain, but beneath the long dikes the mist loomed in darker shadow. Raoul mounted and made for the blackness of it, spurring, ventre à terre. ”

“ His wisdom was proven. Leyden was open to the foe. An army might have marched through the breach.
But the army lay wearied out with no heart in it at The Hague.
Raoul slapped Valdez's florins in his breeches, and laughed and looked and laughed. He conceived himself justified to God and man. Then he turned westward. Driven by the great wind, swollen by the rain, the waters lay close below him. Boisot's boats were moving hither and thither sounding. Raoul waved his hat to them and shouted.
Loaded with thanks and kindly promises, Raoul was borne to a grand chamber in the burgomaster's house. ”