our two horses; and when we were all in the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he had matter to discuss with Mrs. Fonblanque. They came at a foot’s-pace, eagerly conversing in a whisper; and presently after the moon rose and showed them looking eagerly into each other’s faces as they went, my mother laying her hand upon the doctor’s arm, and the doctor himself, against his usual custom, making vigorous gestures of protest or asseveration.
At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the mountain to his door, the doctor overtook me at a trot.
“Here,” he said, “we shall dismount; and as your mother prefers to be alone, you and I shall walk together to my house.”
“Shall I see her again?” I asked.
“I give you my word,” he said, and helped me to alight. “We leave the horses here,” he added. “There are no thieves in this stone wilderness.”
The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view. The windows were once more bright; the chimney once more vomited smoke; but the most absolute silence reigned, and, but for the figure of my mother very slowly following in our wake, I felt convinced there was no human soul within a range of miles. At the thought, I looked upon the doctor, gravely walking by my side, with his bowed shoulders and white hair, and then once more at his house, lit up and pouring smoke like some industrious factory. And then my curiosity broke forth. “In Heaven’s name,” I cried, “what do you make in this inhuman desert?”
He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an evasion:
“This is not the first time,” said he, “that you have seen my furnaces alight. One morning, in the small hours, I saw you driving past; a delicate experiment miscarried; and I cannot acquit myself of having startled either your driver or the horse that drew you.”
“What!” cried I, beholding again in fancy the antics of the figure, “could that be you?”
“It was I,” he replied; “but do not fancy that I was mad. I was in agony. I had been scalded cruelly.”
We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses of the country, was built of hewn stone and very solid. Stone, too, was its foundation, stone its background. Not a blade of grass sprouted among the broken mineral about the walls, not a flower adorned the windows. Over the door, by way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured; I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood; but since the night of our escape, it had acquired a new significance, and set me shrinking. The smoke rolled voluminously from the chimney-top, its edges ruddy with the fire; and from the far corner of the building, near the ground, angry puffs of steam shone snow-white in the moon and vanished.
The doctor opened the door and paused upon the threshold. “You ask me what I make here,” he observed: “Two things: Life and Death.” And he motioned me to enter.
“I shall await my mother,” said I.
“Child,” he replied, “look at me: am I not old and broken? Of us two, which is the stronger, the young maiden or the withered man?”
I bowed and, passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen, lit by a good fire and a shaded reading-lamp. It was furnished only with a dresser, a rude table, and some wooden benches; and on one of these the doctor motioned me to take a seat; and passing by another door into the interior of the house, he left me to myself. Presently I heard the jar of iron from the far end of the building; and this was followed by the same throbbing noise that had startled me in the valley, but now so near at hand as to be menacing by loudness, and even to shake the house with every recurrence of the stroke. I had scarce time to master my alarm when the doctor returned, and almost in the same moment my mother appeared upon the threshold. But how am I to describe to you the peace and ravishment of that face? Years seemed to have passed over her head during that brief ride, and left her younger and fairer; her eyes shone, her smile went to my heart; she seemed no more a woman, but the angel of ecstatic tenderness. I ran to her in a kind of terror; but she shrank a little back and laid her finger on her lips, with something arch and yet unearthly. To the doctor, on the contrary, she reached out her hand as to a friend and helper; and so strange was the scene that I forgot to be offended.
“Lucy,” said the doctor, “all is prepared. Will you go alone, or shall your daughter follow us?”
“Let Asenath come,” she answered, “dear Asenath! At this hour when I am purified of fear and sorrow, and already survive myself and my affections, it is for your sake, and not for mine, that I desire her presence. Were she shut out, dear friend, it is to be feared she might misjudge your kindness.”
“Mother,” I cried wildly, “mother, what is this?”
But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only “Hush!” as though I were a child again, and tossing in some fever-fit; and the doctor bade me be silent and trouble her no more. “You have made a choice,” he continued, addressing my mother, “that has often strangely tempted me. The two extremes: all, or else nothing; never, or this very hour upon the clock – these have been my incongruous desires. But to accept the middle term, to be content with a half-gift, to flicker awhile and to burn out – never for an hour, never since I was born, has satisfied the appetite of my ambition.” He looked upon my mother fixedly, much of admiration and some touch of envy in his eyes; then, with a profound sigh, he led the way into the inner room.
It was very long. From end to end it was lit up by many lamps, which by the changeful colour of their light, and by the incessant snapping sounds with which they burned, I have since divined to be electric. At the extreme end an open door gave us a glimpse into what must have been a lean-to shed beside the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to the room, was painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-doors. The walls were lined with books and glazed cases, the tables crowded with the implements of chemical research; great glass accumulators glittered in the light; and through a hole in the gable near the shed door a heavy driving-belt entered the apartment and ran overhead upon steel pulleys, with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds. In one corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiously wreathed with wire. To this my mother advanced with a decisive swiftness.
“Is this it?” she asked.
The doctor bowed in silence.
“Asenath,” said my mother, “in this sad end of my life I have found one helper. Look upon him: it is Doctor Grierson. Be not, O my daughter, be not ungrateful to that friend!”
She sat upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes that terminated the arms.
“Am I right?” she asked, and looked upon the doctor with such a radiancy of face that I trembled for her reason. Once more the doctor bowed, but this time leaning hard against the wall. He must have touched a spring. The least shock agitated my mother where she sat; the least passing jar appeared to cross her features; and she sank back in the chair like one resigned to weariness. I was at her knees that moment; but her hands fell loosely in my grasp; her face, still beatified with the same touching smile, sank forward on her bosom: her spirit had for ever fled.
I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a moment my tearful face, I met the doctor’s eyes. They rested upon mine with such a depth of scrutiny, pity, and interest, that even from the freshness of my sorrow I was startled into attention.
“Enough,” he said, “to lamentation. Your mother went to death as to a bridal, dying where her husband died. It is time, Asenath, to think of the survivors. Follow me to the next room.”
I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by the fire, he gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone floor,
