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Page 98
A blank whirl is your memory,--nothing stands clearly out. How came
you here? With whom did you speak just now? What was said?--Two
persons there seemed to be, oddly combined in one,--most unfamiliar in
their familiarity. Or was it your evil genius, Manetho? who by
devilish artifice has at this last hour shut the door against your
first good impulse; locked the door against soul and body; shut you in
and carried off the key of your salvation.
Do not give way yet; review your situation carefully.--Your voice
would be inaudible through these massive walls, were the listener but
a yard away.--Be quick with your thinking, for the unmitigable minutes
are dying fast and forever.--Were it known that you were here, could
you be got out? No, for the secret of the door is known only to
yourself. Those who once shared the knowledge with you are dead, or
many years gone! Your evil genius no doubt knows it, and all your
secrets; but dream not that she will liberate you. She has been
awaiting this opportunity. You shall remain here to-night and many
nights. Your bones shall lie gaunt on this cobwebbed floor. Only the
daily sunbeam shall know of your tomb. And Gnulemah?...
Your knees falter beneath you, and you sink in wretched tears to the
floor,--tears that bring no drop of comfort. To be shut up alone with
a soul like yours, at the moment when the sin so long tampered with
has escaped your control, and is pitilessly doing its devilish work
on the other side your prison-walls, near, yet inaccessible,--who can
measure the horror of it? Till now you have made your will the law of
right and wrong, and read your life by no higher light than your own.
You read it otherwise to-night, lying here helpless and alone. That
lost key has unlocked the fair front of your complacency and revealed
the wizened deformity behind it. You have been insane; but the anguish
that would craze a sane man clears the mist from your reason. You
behold the truth at last; but as the drowning man sees the ship pass
on and leave him.
But we care not to watch too curiously the writhings of your
imprisoned soul, Manetho; the less, because we doubt whether the agony
will be of benefit to you. Forgiveness of enemies is perhaps beyond
your scope; even your rage to save Gnulemah was kindled chiefly by
your impotence to do so. God forbid we do you less than justice! but
hope seems dim for such as you; nor will a death-bed repentance,
however sincere, avail to wipe away the sins of a lifetime. Jealousy
of Balder, rather than desire for Gnulemah's eternal weal, awoke your
conscience. For the thought of their spending life in happy ignorance
of their true relationship inflames--does not allay--your agony!
Your womanish outburst of despairing tears over, a hot fever of
restlessness besets you. The space is narrow for disquiet such as
yours,--you hunt up and down the strip of floor like a caged beast. No
way out,--no way out!--Face to face with lingering death, why not
hasten it? No moral scruple withholds you. Yet will you not die by
your own hand. Through all your suffering you will cling to life and
worship it. Never will you open your arms to death,--which seems to
you no grave, compassionate angel, but a malignant fiend lying in
ambush for your soul. And such a fiend will your death be; for to all
men death is the reflection of their life in the mind's mirror.--Still
to and fro you fare, a moving shadow through a narrow gloom, walled in
with stone.
Awful is this unnatural sanity of intellect: it is like the calm in
the whirlwind's centre, where the waves run higher though the air is
deadly still, and the surly mariner wishes the mad wind back
again.--To and fro you flit, goaded on and strengthened by untiring
anguish. You are but the body of a man; your thought and emotion are
abroad, haunting the unconscious, happy lovers!--
Suddenly you stop short in your blind walk, throw up your arms, and
break into an irrepressible chuckle. Has your brain given way at
last?--No, your laugh is the outcome of a genuine revulsion of
feeling, intense but legitimate. What is the cause of it?--You plunge
into the rubbish-heap at one end of the room, and grasp and draw
forth the rickety old ladder which has been lying there these twenty
years. You have seen it almost daily, poking out amidst the cobwebs,
and probably for that very reason have so long failed to perceive that
it was susceptible of a better use than to be food for worms. You set
it upright against the wall; its top round falls three feet below the
horizontal aperture. Enough, if you tread with care. Narrow, steep,
and rickety is the path to deliverance; but up! for your time is
short.
Upward, with cautious eagerness! The ladder is warped and rests
unevenly, and once or twice a round cracks beneath the down-pressing
foot; the thing is all unsound and might fall to pieces at any moment.
However, the top is gained, and your nervous hands are on the sill at
last. Easing yourself a little higher, you look forth on the world
once more.
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