"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.
CHAPTER VI
WE MAKE READY THE WEDDING GARMENT
This was Connoley's story, just as he wrote it. Strange enough I never set eyes on the man after that time in Paris; and within a month from the day he gave us the paper we were in Derbyshire, and Sir Nicolas Steele was in a fair way to do the best deal he ever did in his life. How it came about that fortune checkmated him once more I shall now try to tell, simply saying that while no man was ever more surprised than I was to find myself, after twelve months' exile, so to speak, again comfortably settled in a great country house, so was I sure from the start that the affair would never come to a head, and that Janet Oakley would never be Lady Steele.
We had been in Paris six months, living anyhow, but avoiding any thing which could remind London of our existence, when my master received the invitation, and determined to accept it.
"’Tis good luck entirely," said he, "for there will be no one in Derbyshire in July, and I'll be glad to see the back of these Frenchmen for a while. Bedad, 'tis possible that the old man will adopt me. He has a pretty daughter any way, and that's a good beginning."
I said nothing, though I thought that he ran some risk in going to England just then; and three days after we were at Melbourne station driving to the house of Mr. Robert Oakley, than whom there is no better horseman nor more honorable gentleman in all Derbyshire, or Europe for that matter. Nicky would listen to no advice at that time; nor did he answer my suggestions with any thing but a laugh.
"Indeed, and 'tis a ladies' school ye should have kept," he would say. "Ye're over fearful for any decent business, and that's a fact. Is it ghosts ye look to see when we're at the White House?"
I did not answer him, but I was still sure that we were wrong in leaving Paris, and when we had been Mr. Oakley's guests for a month, he had reason to think as I did. For it was then that we received the telegram I am going to speak about, and that I shall never forget. The moment it came into my hands I knew the game was up; and he didn't need to read many times to agree with me.
"Hildebrand," said he, when I went up to his room with it just after the first gong for dinner had struck, "what the devil are you pulling a long face about now? Man, I'd think from your countenance that you were come to wake and not to marry me. Is it a tale you want to tell in all the house?"
"No tale, sir," said I, "but what's worse than a tale—a bungle. And you won't blame me, I'm sure. It was done against my advice all along. Now you see what's come of it."
He took the telegram in his hands and sat, half-dressed as he was, upon the bed to read it. I don't think, even then, that he understood it at all, for he looked it up and down, and turned it over and over, just as if there was more written upon the back of it.
"Well," said he at last, "and if I can make heads or tails of it, put me in Hanwell!"
"Then you don't read it properly, sir," said I; "can't you see that it's not for me at all?"
"Then whom, pray, is it for?"
I took the telegram and read it to him. It was in these words: "Return to Datcham at once—meet you there." But there was no signature nor any mark that would have betrayed the sender.
"Now, sir," said I, holding the message still in my hands, "isn't it plain to you?"
"Be hanged if it is!" said he.
He was always a very poor thinker, was Sir Nicolas Steele, but that night he was stupid beyond ordinary. I had no patience with him, and yet, goodness knows, it was not a night for temper.
"Look, sir," said I, "it's all as plain as the signboard of an inn. That telegram is meant for Lord Heresford, over at Altenham Lodge. There's been a bungle at the post-office, and what was meant for him has come to me, while, likely as not, what was meant for me has gone to him."
He saw it now, and his face went white as a sheet.
"Then," said he, "you think that he'll get to know we are here?"
"That depends upon what my telegram said. Better to have sleeping dogs lie, sir. We might have lived here a month just as snug and safe as aboard your own yacht. And it was any odds you'd have got through without talk—leastwise until the wedding was done."
He heard me testily, beginning to dress himself anyhow, just as he always did when trouble was at our heels.
"Well," said he, after some time, "that may be all true, and he may come here; but what then, Hildebrand, what then?"
"Ah! that's for you to say, sir. It seems to me that we shall want a change of air again. He is not a merciful man, is Lord Heresford—and this isn't the first time he's bundled us out neck and crop,