A Gentleman's Gentleman/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
THE JUSTIFICATION OF RODERICK CONNOLEY
It is my business in these memoirs to speak chiefly of the many strange things which happened to Sir Nicolas Steele during the last three or four years I served him; but I do not know why that should prevent me saying a last word here about Roderick Connoley, the barrister, and the many queer stories he told us during our stay in London and afterward in Paris. How far he believed these stories, what foundation in fact they had, it is not for me to decide. That he had lived a curious life, I knew well; that he had lost his left hand in his boyhood was a truth which my eyes told me unmistakably. But how he came to lose it, if his own account is not to be believed, is a thing I am not competent to speak about.
It was a year after the death of Lilian More that we met this remarkable man again; and then we ran against him quite by accident in Paris, where we had been living some months, and allowing London to forget that we existed. He came almost every day to the Hôtel de Lille, where we were stopping; and it was there that he gave my master the manuscript of the following story, which contains his own account of his deformity. Sir Nicolas declared at that time that he would send the writing to one of the London papers; but he never did so, and when I left him in Russia last year, I took the pages with me to America. In this way I am able to give the tale without altering a line or a word that Roderick Connoley wrote, and, for my part, I say this—that a stranger tale of an accident I never read.
THE SEVEN MEN WITH THE SEVEN HANDS, AND THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A BARRISTER
Part I—The Raven
The rain was pitiless, and the night was dark. There was pretence of light from the floors of the restaurant and the misted street lamps, but none of it came upon the slum where the stage-door opened. For the fiftieth time, as the clock struck eleven, I drew my cape around me, and cursed the folly which led me to pace a stone-yard and ape the idiocy of boyhood when maturer years had come. And "The Raven" did the same, I doubt not.
I had watched "The Raven" many a night as I had kept a vigil akin to this. For whom did he wait, and why was he here? Had he done as I had done—thrown sense to the winds for a chit in lace petticoats; staked all on a baby-face which smiled upon him in the second row of the stalls, but smiled not in the dark of the exit hour? I judged so, for no man would keep such a watch at such an hour if madness did not lead him. The thought begot my sympathy for him. I had seen his face on other nights, and knew that he could hope for nothing, for his was the face of a wizened old man, long-drawn in solitude and bitterness; and the black locks which fell upon his shoulders seemed a mockery of time. I called him "The Raven," and for many nights we watched each other as beasts that would quarrel, but lack the courage. He knew my secret, I did not doubt; for it was a tale in all the theatre that I had waited for Lelia Winnie since the autumn had gone, and that I had spoken no word to her. There were others—richer, perhaps—of great name, and able to move managers. I had not the password; none showed me deference; and Lelia danced on, a stranger to me.
The rain was pitiless, and the night was dark. But Lelia did not pass out when the others left. I had taken up a position close to the stage-door, and scanned the faces of those going into the night, but hers was not among them. Bright faces they were for the most part—the faces of girls moved by all the curious romance of the theatre, moved to desire of excitement, in some cases to desire of shame; a merry throng of irresponsibles, who would die peeresses or paupers, in old family mansions or in the gutter. And they went to lovers and to suppers with the gas-jets lighting up their faces, and the black still thick upon their eyes, while I waited as the rain fell and struck me, cold and chill, with disappointment. I had forgotten "The Raven" as the crowd surged out; but he, too, was looking, and when all had gone he spoke to me with a voice hard as the crack of dry wood:
"Again!"
It was the one word only, but I turned upon him with a sharp reply, when I saw, by the light streaming through the still open door, that there was a smile upon his lips, while he gripped my arm tightly with his hand.
"Again, and unto seventy times! Seek and find—seek and find—like all the fools before and since, unto seventy times!"
He was either a madman or a fanatic, and I determined to let him be, giving him smile for smile and jest for jest; but he gripped my arm yet tighter, saying:
"Come!"
I went with him down the passage and into the open Strand, passing from the valley of the disreputable to the highway of the respectable going home to supper and to bed. Nor did he pause until we had gone westward many paces, when he drew me with him to a small eating-house by Covent Garden, and there we sat. In the clearer light of the room I had that opportunity to observe him which the dark of the passage had denied me; and in truth he was a strange man, much furrowed in the flesh, and glittering with the light of madness in his eyes. But he drank full well from the cup set before him, and there were diamonds, large and lustrous, upon the fingers which he raised. I waited for him to speak, for the advance had been of his, and not of my seeking; but he drank many glasses before he spoke, and then it was in the tone of the hard-mouthed cynic who has bitten into life and found gall for his palate.
"Again, Roderick Connoley"—having my name in what way I knew not—"again, and the woman is no nearer—no nearer, but more distant, while you wait."
"What my business is to you, I cannot think," I answered, "or why you should seek to discuss it."
He replied with a loud guffaw, throwing his sod- den cape over his shoulders so that the rain ran down upon his shirt and over the heavy-linked chain hanging at his waistcoat.
"Why should I discuss it?" he said. "Because, my friend, the only serious thing that man does discuss is woman. Since the world began he has discussed her; since the day that there was chaos and she sat a star in the heavens; and he will discuss her when the world is no more. Sometimes it will be the good thought from which springs the tree of life; sometimes it will be with the more base and degrading idea of self, which they call possession—such an idea as moves you now, the evil, ill-gotten desire for a woman who may be innocent, but whom you would make guilty before the day comes—you, I say, who find life at a stage-door!"
He pointed threateningly with his finger across the table, and I knew that he spoke the truth. I could find no answer to his accusation, so I drank deeply of the wine and avoided the search of his eyes. But I continued to feel his look; almost the terrible grasp of his hand upon mine. There was silence for some minutes before he spoke again, and then it was with another voice, as though one had put ice upon his tongue.
"One fool often makes two," he said, as he called for a second bottle of wine. " Forget that I have spoken, for I am but the servant of the Master, and how shall the servant speak when the Master has not spoken? I brought you here for your ends, not for mine, and therefore would serve your ends before my own. You are Roderick Connoley, a barrister, with little money and with less employment; your life, for what it is worth, is a dream mostly dreamed in tobacco-smoke; and what you lack in performance at the moment you find in promise for the future. As a so-called man about town, you are condescending enough to patronize the vices, for which you care little, but in the true pleasures of living you remain a child. In this respect you are as other men, for how many of the thousands who drift on the sea of enjoyment in this city know any thing of those treasures which Life can give to him who understands her? I have watched you as I have watched others, and have been moved to pity for you. I have even spoken to the Master, who has listened to me as I have talked of yon, and has made known his will about you. This night your lesson in pleasure shall begin; but it remains with you to profit all or to lose all. At this moment I say no more, for the hour is at hand, and we go. Look! the clock is about to strike midnight."
He rose up from the table, this amiable madman I had met, and I knew not how to humor him. I remembered that it was a terrible night, the rain falling pitilessly, and the streets empty; so I followed the old man into the street, and entered the single brougham that was at the curbstone. It was an adventure, and why should I not pursue it?
Part II—The Lord of the Hundred Lanterns
When we left Coven t Garden we seemed to drive by way of Bloomsbury toward the north of London. The rain was still falling, but the clouds skirmished over the heavens, leaving gaps through which the stars shone, and there was light from the moon newly risen above the endless roofing. I had a mind to ask my companion whither he went; but he appeared to be sleeping as he reclined deeply in the cushions, and I, in my turn, was almost overpowered by an incontrollable drowsiness. It was just at the moment when I opened my eyes for the last time— eyes then almost fixed in sleep—that I observed a strange movement on the old man's part; for he started up of a sudden, holding something to my nostrils, and in that moment I fell asleep.
The sensations of waking have been described often. I shall not attempt to describe them again, saying only that, when I awoke from that which appeared to me an unusually long sleep, it was with the sense of a profound delight and realization of ease. I seemed to be sunken deeply in a bed of silk, whereof the huge cushions towered up around me, so that, as my eyes opened, I saw nothing but the roof of the room in which I lay. Gilded spandrels richly dowered with mosaic united in a star of silver in the centre of the chamber, and from the silver star shot down a soft white light that drew the eyes in sympathy and yet bathed them in content. There was something so rich, so resplendent in all this maze of gold-work, in the flow of the steady rays of white light that poured upon me, in the ease of the bed whereon I rested, that I lay for many minutes content to let the mystery be. What did it matter? I suffered from some dream; such things as men shape in that keen moment of imagination when the brain wakes and the body is yet sleeping; but I would not be fooled by them.
I thought thus, and closed my eyes, opening them again when some minutes had gone. The light was still shining, and it shone with a greater power, as it seemed to me, making clear the darker portions of the room, lighting the niches and the black recesses. The air I breathed seemed laden with a strange perfume, as of the perfume of unknown flowers; but to breathe it was to take strength, to feel a newer energy and a newer life. I looked around the chamber, raising myself upon my elbows in the great bed, and sitting up so that I saw all the wondrous sight. It was a great room, banked up by twenty couches,—for that upon which I rested proved to be a couch,—and, as I judged, at least a hundred silver lanterns hung down from its painted roof. All the upper portions—the metopes in the frieze of the entablature, and the frieze itself—were covered with strange Eastern pictures depicting fables and tales from the myths of Greece and the richer stories of the East. But no pen may tell of the splendor of the mosaics let into the painted walls, or of the paintings which filled the lower panels. When I looked at length from the walls to the centre of the room the sight that met my gaze was not less bewildering. There were vases of jasper and of agate, from which there stood out wide-spreading palms and the lesser palms of the forests of the East; there were tables studded with gems and with precious stones, the like of which I had seen in no land; there were hookahs in pure amber, and smaller lamps in amethyst stone from which the vapor rose. Many smaller tables placed by the couches were heaped up with fruit such as was not then to be had in London, and there were goblets chased after the fashion of the chalice known to the Western Church. I saw that a dish of the fruit and one of these goblets had been placed at the foot of my own bed, and I drank of the wine,—a deep draught and luscious,—and as I drank the sensation of pleasure, pure and without blemish, came upon me. Perhaps for the first time in my life I lived—lived in an existence which no tongue can make clear; an existence which promised to be infinite, unmarred by any bridge of death, wanting nothing of the promise of priests; an existence of the imagination, in which the body had no part. And in the very ecstasy of living I leaned back in my cushions and closed my eyes to dream.
When I opened them again it was to look into the face of an old man. He sat squat upon his haunches, with the mouthpiece of a hookah in his hand. He had the face of an Eastern, yet moulded somewhat finely in the features; and his jet-black hair hung in ringlets upon his shoulders. His robe was woven in one piece,—a robe of purple silk,—but there was no turban on his head, and his legs and feet were bare but for slippers studded with gems. Jewels shone from rings on his hands, and his one woven vestment was bound about him at the girdle with a cincture of fine linen studded with diamonds. A quaint figure and impressive; a mind not lacking thought or purpose, I surmised, and something kindly in the black eyes which then looked upon me.
"Son, I give you greeting," he said, "and thanks that you wait upon me."
"The thanks are yours," I replied. "To drink that wine is to live."
"It is good wine," he said thoughtfully; "and good wine is one of the factors of life—blessed be him that made it!"
"It is new to me as an Englishman," I answered; "and if I were not a stranger to you, I would ask questions."
"Son, he that asks questions is a poor learner; ask nothing from life, but take it as it comes to you. He that asks shall learn lies."
"You are a philosopher, I see."
He laughed scornfully in reply.
"la philosopher! Nay, my son, I am no philosopher. I am the concentration of life, which I have squeezed as you squeeze a lemon, until it has poured its last drop into my skin—blessed be he that made it!"
"Wonderful man! You have learned, then, to live, and you keep the secret to yourself?"
"Nay, not so, since you are here to share it. I have waited for you many days until I could give you what you wished; for what you wish is another factor of your life. To-night it is in my power to put before you the realization of the dream which has been in your mind the month past. I intend to do so without condition; for condition is not an element of satisfaction, though made one by your teachers here, who would have no sustenance or employment if limitation were not part of their gospel. To-night you are my guest in the secret of pleasure as in the freedom of my house; and again I give you greeting."
He said the words, putting his hand upon an ivory knob in the floor beside him, when of a sudden the hundred silver lanterns about him slowly waxed radiant with a soft rose light that fell upon us and lit the scarlet and the gold of the tapestries so wonderfully wrought. I knew not until that time how large that chamber was, and I fell to wondering what sort of house it was which possessed such an apartment, and where it lay. But I had small opportunity to wonder, for at the lanterns' light there was the sound of distant music, and a surpassing strange sensation of singers and dancers near to me, yet all invisible. I was conscious only of a movement of the warm and perfumed air and of the presence of women surpassingly lovely, though unseen by me. The spirit-music, too, was entrancing beyond all music that I have heard—harmonious in its discordance, message-bearing, sensuous music, by which the walls of cities might have been built. Again, it was a sensation, and not a grasp of mathematical sound. I heard, and was not sure that I heard; I shut my ears, and yet was moved; hearkened for melody, and yet took none to me. But the delight was transcendent, indescribable; and I lay ravished, troubled as a woman in the ecstasy of her love. And he who had made the sign watched me, inhaling a thin vapor from the amber bowl, drinking of the cup which was at his hand.
The music ceased suddenly with a mad crash of strings. The man who sat before me pressed again upon the knob, and doors burst open in the wall behind him. I was conscious that a woman veiled in gauze, but whose rounded limbs showed pink and white beneath the veiling, was bending before him, and anon others, like dressed to her, spread meats at our feet. The old man made a sign to them, and they withdrew; but to me he spoke not, only pointing at the dishes as he cast the amber behind him. Then, too, I ate of the meats, which were cut in portions as the size of toast dressings, but had a flavor most curious and unknown to me. I found that so much as one mouthful had satisfied my hunger, but had produced a prodigious thirst, slaked only in many draughts from the goblet, which was deep and long- bodied. It was new tome thus to dine, and I asked him whose guest I was and what kind were the meats which he had set before me.
"Son," he said, "the guest asks not of the host, What do I eat with thee? Nor does he who would dine waste his moments on words which have been said by others, and better said. As you are a stranger, I make light of your fault; but hark to this; When you shall know how to live you shall know also that man, who has labored two thousand years and more to learn the things of life, has given not one year to learn of those things which are of the essence of life. He remains as the beasts, taking the fodder of the field, and where food should be his idol be has no reverence for it. Eat you, then, as the wise who have found light."
But I was satisfied, and could eat no more. The drink in the goblet, too, swayed me in a paroxysm of sensuous ecstasy. The room seemed a very bower of rose light. The jewels sent myriads of rays dancing toward me and blinding the eyes. Again the music arose, again he who ate touched the knob at his side, and the door in the wall of tapestry flew open. I saw the figure of a woman pass in, she veiled as the others had been; but she passed on to my side, and drawing back the veil, showed a face wondrous fair.
It was the face of Lelia, for whom I had waited so long at the theatre.
Part III—The Seven Men with the Seven Sands
When the pleasures of the lantern-room had continued three days, it came that the third night fell, and a deep sleep held me. Many hours passed, and I lay in a trance,—the trance of living death,—knowing nothing even of dreams, nor of that consciousness of rest which waits upon a brain yet active. I awoke at length, to find myself alone and in another chamber. A soft light—the dim light of day—fell from a rose window in the ceiling of the room, but there was no other aperture, and I could not distinguish any visible door which gave access to the place. For my own part, I lay upon a low bed, whose curtains were of silk, and I saw that an ivory table at my side had meat and drink upon it; but it was not the food which I had tasted when the old man served me, nor was the wine dream-giving as the wine of the other time.
For many hours I lay, suffering much from a weakness which had come upon me in waking, and I set myself to ask for the first time what the meaning of this strange adventure might be. Into whose hands had I fallen, and for what object? Who was this old man who had troubled himself to gratify my pleasures and to satisfy my wishes? What recompense did he ask? and in what way would the affair end? That there was danger in my position I did not doubt in my cooler moments, for, if all were well, for what object had my long-eyed host thus isolated me! I knew that I had been in the house at least three days, and a great longing came upon me to be out in the world again. I remembered that there would be many to ask for me, that engagements awaited me, that I had my pretence of business to attend to; and, above all, I began to long to fly from these rooms of darkness, from the perpetual night, from the perfume-laden atmosphere. And yet I was in a room the walls of which seemed impenetrable—a room without door or window—a room which was a well-furnished prison I did not doubt. This knowledge moved me to action, and I sprang from the bed, determined to ascertain the truth.
Now, at the moment when I rose, a curious thing happened, for the curtain of blue in the right corner of the chamber, which had seemed a perfect whole, divided in half, and a man with one hand stood before me. He was dressed in a long white garment, shaped as an alb, and girded at his waist, and was altogether as an Eastern, though his face was as the face of our people. I saw that he was young, but lines furrowed his cheeks, and he was deadly pale, with the pallor of a man who is shut from the air of life. Nor did he seem to see me when he moved to the table and laid upon it a small casket in pure gold; only he raised his voice, and said, in loud tones"
"Son, three days are numbered and three nights are numbered. Rise, and go hence, or be for all time as I am."
Then he left the room as he had come, and I looked behind the divided curtain to see that the wall had opened, and that a long passage lay beyond it—a passage leading into a garden where flowers bloomed. The temptation to greet the sun and the God-given air was immense; but I stayed a moment to open the casket upon the table, and stood still with astonishment as I looked upon its contents. There, on a little bed of wool, lay a ruby, large and lustrous as the finest from Burmah, and a little scroll of gold above it had the words, "Son, who would live must lack." I knew not the whole meaning of the fable, but it appeared that my host wished to make a trial of me; and I determined to go, showing him that I had mastered self and passion. And so I took up the jewel and passed into the garden. But what a wondrous sight there met my eyes! The whole air seemed deep-laden with the richest perfumes, vast shrubs towered up into the high roof of glass above, fountains played, and rare birds sang. There, too, in the very centre, was a great bath of marble, and as the cool of the glittering water spread about, I determined that I would bathe, and go out into the day refreshed.
I had come out of the bath, and wrapped about me one of the robes of linen which hung upon the rail of ivory, when I saw beneath a canopy of silver cloth another cup of wine, standing upon a table, and a couch spread under the leaves of a tree whereon luscious fruit was hanging. What madness took me I know not, but the bath seemed to have fatigued me, and I drank of the wine, and ate of the fruit; yet I had scarce put it to my lips when another man with one hand stood before me, and laid a casket upon the table as the other had done. He, too, cried with doleful voice, saying:
"Son, three days are numbered and three nights are numbered. Rise, and go hence, or be for all time as I am."
I opened his casket and found that it contained a great opal, and a scroll whereon these words were written: "Son, what is all is not all; and what is not all is all." But the meaning was hidden, as the meaning of the other fable; and I began to laugh at the warning as the wine exhilarated me, and to lose inclination to leave the garden of delights and the draught which was life. Indeed, for some while I lay upon the couch of silk and skins, listening to the hours as they were chimed upon a great, sphinx-like clock above me; and as each hour was numbered, it seemed to me that a new man with but one hand stood by me, and cried:
"Son, three days are numbered and three nights are numbered. Rise, and go hence, or be for all time as I am."
And each laid upon the table a casket and a gem, until five were added unto the number which I had— a turquoise, a pink pearl, a black pearl, a diamond, and an emerald; and the five scrolls had these five warnings:
"Look not to reap in the season of the sower."
"When the end cometh seek not to begin."
"Behind thee is thy future; before thee is thy past."
"Mind not matter, if matter be less than mind."
"There is time for all things save for death."
Now, when the Seven Men with the Seven Hands had left me, I thought at length to go forth from the tent, and rose up to dress myself again, and to take away the jewels of price which had come to me so curiously. But as I rose, Lelia, whom I had not seen that day, came of a sudden to the spot, and I drew her to me, wondering at her beauty, which was yet more dazzlingly fair in the garden of delights. And I would have questioned her of herself, and of this strange home of hers, and of a hundred other mysteries as she sat upon the couch at my side. But when I so much as began to speak, and to question her if she would leave the place and follow me, that I might not again be separated from her, she put her hand upon my lips to hush me, and held me tight in her arms so that her hair fell upon my shoulders and her face was close pressed against my breast. Then she begged me to leave her, saying that the end must come, and the better if it should be in that moment. Nay, she implored me to say nothing, nor to delay; "for," said she, "if you do not go now, you may never go, and that shall bring no happiness to you or to me." But how could I leave her in that house of light, knowing not if I should see her or even hear of her again? Through many long months I had waited for her, had watched the lustre of her dark eyes, the beauty of her exquisite figure, the silk-knit waves of her lovely hair that fell upon her shoulders; and at last I held her to me, felt her kisses warm upon me—and she willed that I should leave her! Do you wonder that I answered her with a deep seal upon her lips; with an embrace wherein all the joy of life seemed to be gathered? Alas! that it was the last embrace we knew—die whom I loved, the child of mystery.
As I kissed her thus, of a sudden she rose and tore herself away from me.
"Leave this place," she said, with a voice of fear; "leave it, or the hour will have passed; leave it, if you would see me again! I ask you, who may never ask again; go now, before the moments fly!"
And she left me as she had come. But I remained, drinking from the goblet, mystified and unnerved, until the bell of the sphinx-like clock rang out and the first hour of night chimed. I listened to the hour—it was seven o'clock; and the seventh stroke had not died away in echo when the tent under which I sat dropped upon me, and I felt its folds being bound about my body. It was the work of a moment, and I lay helpless as a log, bound hand and foot, and in black darkness. But I knew that men carried me, and I heard a door clang before silence fell.
Part IV—The Chamber of the Cimeter
They had uncovered my head from the folds of the silver-cloth when they laid me in the room, and they loosened the bonds of my body. I was unbound save at the left hand, which was chained—as I judged by touch—to a cube of iron. But all the room was dark, and I lay for many hours, cold and shivering, upon a floor of stone. When the light came at last it was from an arc lamp high above me, and I saw that my surmise had been right. I was in a cell of stone, bare and cold, without window or furniture, and my left hand was chained to a block of iron. But what brought a new chill to my heart, and damped my forehead with the sweat of fear, was the cimeter of steel which lay close to my touch. For what object was it placed there? With what purpose? Then I remembered the Seven Men with the Seven Hands, and cursed the place and him who had brought me there.
It was my thought at that moment that the men who had brought me to this cell would return anon and do their work upon me, but I lay long and was alone. Nor did I hear any sound or movement through the great mass of stone—not so much as a hum from the city or the fall of a foot. The silence bred a strange terror in me. I seemed in one moment to learn the whole purpose of the man who had been my host. I recalled the seven warnings he had given me, the words upon the scrolls, the repeated urging to curb the will and to fly. Here, then, was a philosopher and a devourer of men. He had offered me pleasure, he had offered me pain; I had chosen both when it lay upon me to take but the first; and now I was about to reap,. What said the Seven Men with the Seven Hands?
"Rise and go, or be for all time as we are."
For all time maimed and a servant in that prison! The thought tortured me. I swore that I would fight for my limb as none had fought there before. And I took the cimeter, which lay at my right hand. It was a weapon superb to see, shaped as the short swords of Japan, sharper than any razor of the
West; and upon the gold that bound the shark-skin of the scabbard I read the words:
"FREE THYSELF—OR BE FREED."
"Free thyself—or be freed." A new enigma, a word puzzle, a humor of the long-eyed man. How should I free myself? How be freed? I looked at the left hand bound to the block, and the answer came to me. I could only free myself by losing the hand; by severing it myself with the cimeter they had offered to me. Horrible thought! To be a self-maimer; to curse one's self to all time for the deed which the right hand did to the left! I shuddered, and the sweat of fear ran from me to the stone.
When many hours had gone, and I had put the thought from me, it came upon me again, and had taken strength tenfold to itself. "Or be forever as we are." The words haunted me; the spectres of the seven men were ever before my eyes. I crouched from them, and yet they fell upon me, pointing at the block. I shut my ears by will, and their words rang louder than before. I prayed to God to be delivered from the dead, and was mocked back by devils who said, "Free thyself, free thyself!" In my agony I rolled upon the floor as my chain would let me, and an all-absorbing longing for life and light and home came upon me. To be for ever amongst the halt and the maimed, the scoff of whole men, the jeered of women! And to be so by an act of self! No mad terror of night was as this terror, no phantom dream as this reality. Hours must have passed—days, perchance—and still I lay chained, the cimeter in my right hand, the other bound. I kissed the fingers of the doomed hand madly, hugged the arm which they prompted me to maim, grew delirious with joy as 1 knew it remained to me. But my strength of reason was going; the longing for freedom was becoming stronger; the will to resist weaker and weaker, until at last, as the frenzy took me, I raised the gleaming blade, and with one powerful stroke laid my left hand upon the stone.
I was free! and as the blood ran I fell back fainting on the floor.
I regained consciousness in my own chambers in the Temple. I was lying in bed with my left hand bound, and my old servant waiting upon me. He said that they who carried me there talked of an accident in the street, and he asked me of what nature it was. I put him off with an idle tale, and took up the letter which had been left for me; but a curse fell from my lips when I found I could not open it, and remembered that I had but one hand. So he broke the seal, and I read the words: "Son, seek in the East, and thou shalt find."
And from the well-sealed envelope there fell out the opal, the ruby, the emerald, and a diamond which was half the size of the diamond I had left in the garden. Then I knew the enigma, and that the day would come when I should meet the long-eyed man again. But it would be in the freedom of sacrifice, the freedom of the pain which I suffered then and after.