Chapter 16 The Gates of Doom by Rafael Sabatini
RESURRECTION
For almost all the matter contained in this chapter I acknowledge an indebtedness that will presently be apparent to that memoir of Dr Blizzard which I have mentioned, and upon which already I have drawn for those dream-sensations experienced by Captain Gaynor when he was turned off and left swinging after the cart had drawn away from under him.
I closely followed that portion of the memoir up to the point at which the Captain lost consciousness, or—to adhere strictly to his own impressions—at which he sank to sleep, his head pillowed upon the bosom of Damaris.
When next he awakened it was in surroundings vastly different from those under which he had sunk to slumber, as he believed. Here was no sunlit garden, but a square, whitewashed chamber, lighted not only by a window in one of its walls, but also from another—and a very large one this—in the ceiling immediately above him.
Someone was bending over him, and a face was peering into his. But it was not the lovely, beloved face of Damaris. Instead, it was a keen, lean, almost wolfish face, with leathern cheeks and very piercing little eyes that were considering him through horn-rimmed spectacles.
He lay quite still and only half conscious as yet, looking up into that face, and neither wondering nor caring to whom it might belong. Then, as his awakening proceeded, he was conscious that his body was cold and stiff and that there was a strong taste of brandy in his mouth. His left wrist, he discovered, was in the grip of this wizened-faced man; but it was a very gentle grip, with a finger pressing lightly upon his pulse.
Then, quite suddenly, memory like a flood poured in upon his consciousness, and his awakening was complete.
He attempted to rise from his recumbent position, and the effort set a thousand hammers swinging in his brain. His head, he found, was just an ache, a globe of pain, no more. The window above him appeared to slide to and fro, the couch upon which he lay heaved under him, and the wizened face of his companion dilated and contracted horribly as he watched it. He groaned and closed his eyes. The pain spread downwards through his body, which lay stark there upon a table—for such was the nature of his couch. Then, at last, the tide of torment slowly ebbed again, leaving him bedewed from head to foot with sweat.
He opened his eyes once more. He attempted to speak, and this fresh effort centralised the pain in his throat and tongue. They seemed swollen to elephantine proportions.
The leathern mask of a face above him appeared suddenly to crack across. A very wide and quite lipless mouth had opened, and from it issued a queer, clucking sound.
"Tut, tut! Tut tut! Better keep still! Better keep still!"
The hand had already left his wrist, and now the figure turned and moved away a little to another table under the window in the wall. Captain Gaynor was able to follow it with his eyes without moving his head. He observed the man to be of middle height and very thin. He wore black velvet breeches, black silk stockings and shoes with steel buckles. He was without a coat, and the sleeves of his waistcoat and shirt were rolled up to the elbows of two long, thin, sinewy arms. His waistcoat itself was concealed by a coarse, yellowish apron in which there were several dull, brown patches. This apron covered him in front from chin to waist; the remainder of it had been rolled into a rope and was twisted round his middle. The table to which he had moved was of a good size and of plain deal. Part of it was encumbered by phials of all forms and sizes; but in a clear space in the middle, upon a spread cloth, was an array of very bright instruments of queer shapes, whose purpose the Captain could not have guessed had his mind been in a condition to attempt the task.
Dr Emanuel Blizzard—for this was the identity of the man—took up a short-stemmed lily-shaped glass, and held it up in one of his enormous, bony hands. From one of the phials he poured into it a ruby-coloured liquid; from another he added something else that was quite colourless, and he did this with great care, pausing, adding another drop or two, pausing again, and yet again adding a drop. Then he set the phial down, and carrying the glass he once more approached the table where the Captain lay.
He thrust his left hand under his patient's head, and raised it very slowly and gently. But for all his gentleness those great hammers were set to swing again, and they crashed forward and backward in Harry Gaynor's brain. The rim of the glass was brought to his lips.
"Drink this," said the gruff voice, and obediently, without any will of his own, the Captain painfully swallowed the fluid. He was not conscious of any flavour in it at the time. But afterwards, when his head had been lowered once more, and the room had ceased to swing about him like the cabin of a ship, he became aware of a fresh pungency in his mouth, soothing and cooling and seeming to reduce its inflammation.
In the moment that his head had been raised, he had perceived in a subconscious way that he was quite naked, that there was blood on his left leg, that a ribbon of this blood ran to the little puddle reaching to the table's edge. Now, as he lay back once more, he noticed a faint dripping sound, recurring at very brief and very regular intervals. Dimly, and without much interest, he connected this sound with the puddle he had observed.
The events of the morning were coming back to him now in detail. He remembered the cart, the crowd, his pinioned wrists, the parson who had ridden with him, the glimpse he had of the gallows when he had turned his head as they were going down the hill. What happened afterwards, he could not remember until he came to that point where he had found himself in the open country, still in the cart at first, and later crossing a bridge over a great expanse of glaring water to find Damaris awaiting him.
He could not distinguish between the real and the imagined. That all this had happened to him he never doubted; but he could not explain it, any more than he could explain how he came to be lying stark naked upon a deal table with blood flowing from his leg and dripping into some vessel on the floor whilst a stranger tended him.
It would seem as if he had not been hanged after all, and he wondered why was this. But he did not wonder with any great activity; there was no vigorous mental effort to resolve this mystery. His brain was too tired and indolent for the exertion. The indolence gained upon him; it became a torpor, and very gently he sank once more into oblivion.
His next awakening was very different. It took place some twelve hours later, early in the morning of the following day. He was abed now in a solid furnished room that was full of sunlight, and for some moments he lay still, staring up at the white, flat canopy overhead. Then quite suddenly he sat up. Pain shot through his head once more, to bring back a dim memory of his last awakening. But it was endurable now, though still acute.
His sudden movement had been answered by another. From a chintz-covered settle ranged against the wall on his right sprang now the slender figure of the doctor. An arm went round the Captain to support him in his sitting posture; the little piercing eyes considered him again through those spectacles with their great horn rims, and Gaynor observed that, for all its wolfishness, the face was genial and kindly.
The wide lipless mouth opened, and as before it emitted that clucking sound; but the leathery, close-shaven countenance was wrinkled in a smile.
"Eh, and how do we feel now, eh? Better?" And as he spoke, the professor stamped his foot three times upon the floor—an obvious signal to someone below.
"Who are you?" the bewildered patient asked him.
"Eh? My name is Blizzard—Doctor Emanuel Blizzard, professor of anatomy, eh. And you're safe and snug in my house."
"In your house, Doctor—"
"Blizzard, sir—Emanuel Blizzard."
"And how came I here?" the Captain asked, his wonder and bewilderment increasing. His voice was so husky that he could not speak above a whisper, and he was conscious still of a numbness of tongue and throat.
The professor clucked again. "Tut-tut! 'Tis a long story that, and a strange. You shall hear it when you are more recovered. Ye're weak, eh? Ye will be. I bled you very thoroughly. But we'll soon renew what's lost."
A knock fell on the door. The anatomist set the pillows behind his patient so that they supported him in an upright position. Then he sped to the door, opened it, and returned with a tray on which was a bowl, a flagon of red wine and a glass. This tray he placed upon a table by the head of the bed. He took up the bowl, which was filled with steaming broth.
"Ye'll be hungry, eh?" he said, his head on one side. The Captain nodded weakly. "Aha! 'Tis very well."
He approached the patient, and with a horn spoon proceeded himself to feed him. Then he carefully measured him a half-glass of Burgundy, and he held it to his lips, what time the Captain slowly drained it.
"Another?" he asked. "Tut, tut! Better not. Better not, eh? We must go slowly. Piano si va sano, as the Italians say. For the present—ne quid nimis, eh?"
Gently as a woman might have done, he replaced the pillows, and induced his patient once more to lie down. Captain Gaynor obeyed him, too feeble, too utterly bewildered to resist. Something had happened to him; something altogether inordinate; but what that something might be he had no faintest conception, and least of all could he conceive how he came into the house of a professor of anatomy who treated him with such tenderness and solicitude. There was one point, however, that so plagued him that he must have enlightenment upon it. He looked up into that wolfish yet kindly countenance.
"Then—I was not hanged?" he inquired feebly.
"Hanged!" cried the other. "Tut, tut! Go to sleep. You'll be stronger when next you wake. Go to sleep now."
The prediction proved true enough. The broth and the wine spreading warmth through that debilitated frame bore a torpor with them, to which the Captain very shortly succumbed, notwithstanding the question with which he still plagued himself.
When next he opened his eyes upon that room, the sunshine had left it. By the mellow light and the tepid air that came through the open casement he knew it to be eventide. A stout, middle-aged woman with red polished cheeks, that gave her face the appearance of a giant apple, occupied a chair near the bed. She smiled reassuringly when she encountered his questioning gaze, and she rose at once.
"Better now?" she greeted him.
Captain Gaynor was better indeed, and he was conscious of an appetite that was keen as a razor's edge. He said so, and found his voice much stronger, whilst there was hardly any of the sensation of pain in tongue and throat. His head, too, was clearer, and it no longer ached when he moved it, as he did by way of testing its condition.
"I'll go call the doctor," she said. "He's resting below."
In a very few minutes the anatomist was at his patient's bedside. In another few minutes there was more broth and Burgundy for the Captain, and even a few slices of capon's breast and a little wheaten bread.
"And now," said Captain Gaynor, reclining comfortably among his heaped-up pillows when he had consumed a meal which he found all too spare, "will you tell me how I come here, and how it befell that I was not hanged? What happened to me?"
The professor looked at him, meditatively stroking his smooth chin.
"It did not befall that you were not hanged," he said slowly. "Ye were hanged—two days since."
"Hanged?" The Captain started up. Horror and incredulity were blent in his countenance.
"Tut, tut, nowl" clucked Dr Blizzard. "Let us be calm, eh! Theres not the need to start and cry out. It's over, and it's not to do again. Nemo bis punitur pro eodem delicto, remember. That is the law, eh?"
But the impossibility of punishing a man twice for the same offence was the last thing that exercised the Captain's thoughts just then.
"But if I was hanged," said he, his face an utter blank, "how—how come I to be alive, for I am alive, am I not? I am not dead and dreaming, perchance?"
"Eh! Why, to be sure you're alive, and in a week or so I make no doubt but ye'll be about again as sound as ever you were."
"But how—how, if I was hanged?"
"Because if a man won't drown who's born to hang, neither will a man hang who's born to drown, eh? 'Tis the best reason I can think of, faith! And, faith! it's reason enough." Still understanding little or nothing, the Captain stared at the doctor.
"I—I don't understand even now," he said weakly. "How came I here?"
"Eh? Ah, that is another matter, and well may it exercise you. It was this wise." The doctor took snuff in prodigious quantities, then snapped and pocketed his box, and sat upon the edge of the bed facing his patient. "It was this wise. When you had hanged for the term of twenty minutes—as by law prescribed—you were cut down by a couple of rascals who know where to obtain a guinea or two for the fruit of the leafless tree, as they humorously term it. And here let me say that ye were mighty fortunate in that ye gave no thought to your own burial and that no friends of yours saw to the reparation of that omission. He, he!" he laughed on a thin high note. "But for that—faith!—ye'ld not be sitting there drinking Burgundy. Ye'ld have been snug under a tombstone by now, eh!
"Well, then," he pursued, "these rascals brought you hither in a cart, and never was there living man who looked more dead. Ye deceived even myself, when I had you lying stark upon my table, for you'll understand that I had bought you to dissect you, and I never so much as suspected how I'd been swindled—that ye were not a corpse at all—until I had run my scalpel across your breast; you'll feel the sting of the scratch belike. It was not a cut; 'twas no more than skin-deep, to mark the line I was to follow. But behold! this line I had drawn turned suddenly bright crimson. If I say that I was amazed, I say nothing. I ran my finger along it and withdrew it moist with blood.
"There could be no doubt then that ye were not dead, eh? But whether you had travelled too far into the dark valley ever to be dragged back again to the world of the living was what I could not say I held a mirror to your lips, and found it filmed with moisture after a moment. I set my finger to your pulse, but could discover no movement in it. So I opened a vein in your leg to stimulate the heart by setting the blood a-flowing; and within ten minutes you had opened your eyes and were endeavouring to sit up.
"Since then I've done little more than leave you to the vis medicatrix naturae. For Nature, sir, has endowed you very richly; so richly that I could almost regret the loss of the two guineas I gave those rascals for your anatomy—for ye've defrauded me, sir, in a most heartless fashion, eh!"
The Captain smiled feebly at the jest. But it was something that he was able to smile at all, now that he had the full account of this most extraordinary adventure.
"But you repay me richly in another way," the anatomist pursued.
"I can assure you, sir, you shall not be out of pocket in any way," said the Captain.
"Pish! Tut, tut!" The professor waved one of his great bony hands contemptuously.
"Tell me," said the Captain presently, "is it not a very extraordinary thing to have happened?"
"Extraordinary? Godso! Ye're not supposing that it happens every week, eh?"
"Have you ever known such another case?"
"As to that, why yes—though never in my own experience. Did ye never hear of John Smith the housebreaker—a few years ago—who was reprieved after he had been turned off and hanged for a quarter of an hour? When the reprieve arrived it scarce seemed worth while to make haste to cut him down, he looked so dead. Yet to all the world's amazement the rogue revived to return to his house-breaking trade. Then there was the case of Anne Green at Oxford, over fifty years ago. She was hanged for over half an hour, and like yourself fell into the hands of an anatomist—a Dr Petty—who revived her. And there have been others. Still, the event is rare enough—so rare that a man should be thankful when it serves him, eh!"
The Captain lay back among his pillows and abandoned himself freely to his amazement, and to the thoughts and speculations born of his astounding situation.
As the doctor had said, "Nemo bis punitur pro eodem delicto"; and so from the law of England he had nothing more to fear, even should his identity be discovered. But he did not think that it need be.
Very soon his thoughts turned to Damaris, and it was with a sudden fearful doubt that he asked himself what result his revival would have there. How had she received his letter? There was, he thought, but one way in which she could receive it. Yet his being alive again, or alive still, must alter everything and might modify her feelings if they were—as he thought they must be—of forgiveness. The doubt was most cruelly tormenting. He turned suddenly to the doctor.
"How soon," he inquired, "shall I be in case to depart?"
"Tut!" clucked the professor. "Here's a great haste, now! Why, if you are quiet and obedient to me, perhaps in a week or a little longer you will sufficiently have regained your strength. You're healthy, amazing healthy. But I've half drained your veins, ye'll remember, and ye'll need wait until they are replenished, eh."
"A week!" he groaned.
"Tut! 'Tis but a little while. Be thankful ye're not dead and buried. And if ye've any friends with whom you'ld wish me to communicate—
"No," said the Captain. "My friends can wait. It will be better." Then, shifting the subject: "Sir," he said, "there is a debt between us that it would tax my wit and my resources to liquidate."
"It need not. Tut! No. What else could I have done? Carved you up, as it was? Faith! every doctor is not a murderer, whatever the vulgar may say Besides, ye're a more interesting experiment alive. Tell me now, d'ye not actually remember hanging?"
"I do not," said the Captain.
The anatomist nodded. "Ay, ay; 'twas just so with John Smith when he revived. Tell me what you remember."
Readily the Captain complied, relating those dream sensations that had been his, and suppressing no more than the name of the lady who had awaited him in the garden and in whose embrace he had seemed to choke.
"A warning that," snapped Dr Blizzard, "a warning of the perils that may lie in a woman's arms. Still, men will run the risk. Tut! the pity of it!"
But the anatomist treasured those details of the Captain's perilous passage through the gates of doom, and he incorporated them in that memoir he prepared of the curious resurrection of Captain Jenkyn, a memoir which—as I have said—has supplied me with most of these particulars.