"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