The Beetle Richard Marsh (most romantic novels TXT) đ
- Author: Richard Marsh
Book online «The Beetle Richard Marsh (most romantic novels TXT) đ». Author Richard Marsh
âSo youâre not dead!â âyouâre not dead:â âyouâre alive!â âyouâre alive! Wellâ âhow does it feel to be dead? I ask you!â âIs it not good to be dead? To keep dead is betterâ âit is the best of all! To have made an end of all things, to cease to strive and to cease to weep, to cease to want and to cease to have, to cease to annoy and to cease to long, to no more careâ âno!â ânot for anything, to put from you the curse of lifeâ âforever!â âis that not the best? Oh yes!â âI tell you!â âdo I not know? But for you such knowledge is not yet. For you there is the return to life, the coming out of deathâ âyou shall live on!â âfor me!â âLive on!â
He made a movement with his hand, and, directly he did so, it happened as on the previous evening, that a metamorphosis took place in the very abysses of my being. I woke from my torpor, as he put it, I came out of death, and was alive again. I was far, yet, from being my own man; I realised that he exercised on me a degree of mesmeric force which I had never dreamed that one creature could exercise on another; but, at least, I was no longer in doubt as to whether I was or was not dead. I knew I was alive.
He lay, watching me, as if he was reading the thoughts which occupied my brainâ âand, for all I know, he was.
âRobert Holt, you are a thief.â
âI am not.â
My own voice, as I heard it, startled meâ âit was so long since it had sounded in my ears.
âYou are a thief! Only thieves come through windowsâ âdid you not come through the window?â I was stillâ âwhat would my contradiction have availed me? âBut it is well that you came through the windowâ âwell you are a thiefâ âwell for me! for me! It is you that I am wantingâ âat the happy moment you have dropped yourself into my handsâ âin the nick of time. For you are my slaveâ âat my beck and callâ âmy familiar spirit, to do with as I willâ âyou know thisâ âeh?â
I did know it, and the knowledge of my impotence was terrible. I felt that if I could only get away from him; only release myself from the bonds with which he had bound me about; only remove myself from the horrible glamour of his near neighbourhood; only get one or two square meals and have an opportunity of recovering from the enervating stress of mental and bodily fatigue;â âI felt that then I might be something like his match, and that, a second time, he would endeavour in vain to bring me within the compass of his magic. But, as it was, I was conscious that I was helpless, and the consciousness was agony. He persisted in reiterating his former falsehood.
âI say you are a thief!â âa thief, Robert Holt, a thief! You came through a window for your own pleasure, now you will go through a window for mineâ ânot this window, but another.â Where the jest lay I did not perceive; but it tickled him, for a grating sound came from his throat which was meant for laughter. âThis time it is as a thief that you will goâ âoh yes, be sure.â
He paused, as it seemed, to transfix me with his gaze. His unblinking eyes never for an instant quitted my face. With what a frightful fascination they constrained meâ âand how I loathed them!
When he spoke again there was a new intonation in his speechâ âsomething bitter, cruel, unrelenting.
âDo you know Paul Lessingham?â
He pronounced the name as if he hated itâ âand yet as if he loved to have it on his tongue.
âWhat Paul Lessingham?â
âThere is only one Paul Lessingham! The Paul Lessinghamâ âthe great Paul Lessingham!â
He shrieked, rather than said this, with an outburst of rage so frenzied that I thought, for the moment, that he was going to spring on me and rend me. I shook all over. I do not doubt that, as I replied, my voice was sufficiently tremulous.
âAll the world knows Paul Lessinghamâ âthe politicianâ âthe statesman.â
As he glared at me his eyes dilated. I still stood in expectation of a physical assault. But, for the present, he contented himself with words.
âTonight you are going through his window like a thief!â
I had no inkling of his meaningâ âand, apparently, judging from his next words, I looked something of the bewilderment I felt.
âYou do not understand?â âno!â âit is simple!â âwhat could be simpler? I say that tonightâ âtonight!â âyou are going through his window like a thief. You came through my windowâ âwhy not through the window of Paul Lessingham, the politicianâ âthe statesman.â
He repeated my words as if in mockery. I amâ âI make it my boast!â âof that great multitude which regards Paul Lessingham as the greatest living force in practical politics; and which looks to him, with confidence, to carry through that great work of constitutional and
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