Chapter 19
Such was, on that day, 2nd July, the climax of this strange historywhich I have taken into my head to relate.I agree that it seems incredible.In that event, it will suffice to blame the incompetence of the author.The story itself is unfortunately only too true, even though it be unique in the annals of the past, even though it ought, as I sincerely hope, to remain unique in the annals of the future.
It goes without saying that my brother and Myra had given up the schemes they had once held.There could no longer be any question of travelling to France, and I could see that Marc would in future make an appearance only very rarely in Paris, and that he would settle down for good in Ragz.This distressed me greatly, but I had to resign myself to it.
The best thing would be for him and his wife to live near Dr.and Madame Roderich.Time would settle that, and Marc would get used to that life.Myra was very skilful, too, in creating the illusion that she was present, so that we always knew where she was, and what she was doing.She was the soul of the home, and as invisible as a soul.
What was more, her material appearance had not vanished completely.Did we not still possess her admirable portrait which Marc had painted?Myra loved to sit down beside it and to say in reassuring tones, ‘Here I am, here I'm visible once more, and you can see me just as I can see myself.'
After their wedding, I stayed a few weeks longer at Ragz, staying with the Roderich's in the most complete intimacy with that muchtried family.I could not see without regret the day when I should have to leave them, but the longest holiday must come to an end, and at last I had to return to Paris.
I went back to my work, more fascinating than ordinary people would think.Yet the happenings into which I had been plunged were too strange for it to make me forget them.I kept thinking about them, and not a day elapsed without my thoughts flying back to Ragz, back to my brother and his wife, present in my heart but yet so far away.
During the beginning of the following January, I was evoking for the hundredth time that terrible scene which had culminated in the death of Wilhelm Storitz.Then an idea came to me, an idea so simple, so self-evident indeed, that I was amazed it had not dawned upon me earlier.Though my blindness may make my logical powers seem contemptible, I had never thought of combining two of the circumstances of this tragedy.
On that day, however, the conclusion imposed itself upon me that if the dead body of our vanquished enemy had lost the invisibility it had possessed during his lifetime, the only cause of this had been the abundant and continuous haemorrhage due solely to Haralan's swordthrust.This was a revelation.I realised then, for certain, that the mysterious substance had been held in suspension in the blood and had been lost with it.
This hypothesis conceded, the results followed of themselves.What the blow of Haralan's sword had done, the surgeon's scalpel might likewise do.So all that this involved was a most beneficent operation, which would be easy to perform gradually and which could be repeated whenever it were necessary.The blood Myra lost would be replaced by blood newly-produced, and at last the day would come when her veins would no longer contain any trace of that accursed substance which had deprived Marc of the pleasure of seeing her.
I at once wrote to my brother to that effect.But just as I was going to send off my letter, I received one from him, and I thought it judicious to delay sending mine.Indeed, in his letter, my brother announced tidings which, for the moment at any rate, rendered my suggestions useless.Myra, he told me, was going to make him a father.This was not the time, it will be realised to deprive her of the smallest drop of blood.She would need all her strength to bear the ordeal of childbirth.
The birth of my nephew—or of my niece—would, I was told, take place towards the end of May.As the reader already knows the affection I bore to my brother, it is needless to add that I was prompt in keeping the appointment.By the 15th May I was at Ragz, where I awaited the event with an impatience no less than that of the father.
It was on 27th May that the event occurred, and that date will never be effaced from my memory.They say that miracles never happen nowadays, but a miracle took place that day, a miracle whose authenticity I can personally guarantee.
For it certainly was a miracle.Nature brought us the help which I had hoped to derive from art, and Myra, like Lazarus, emerged living from the tomb.Marc, bewildered, almost mad with joy, watched her slowly surge out of darkness.A father twice over, he saw the birth at the same time of his child and his wife, who seemed even more beautiful because she had been so long hidden from his eyes.
Since then my brother and Myra have no more had a history than myself.While I rack my brains to seek a perfection that is mathematically ideal—and inaccessible, for mathematics are, like the universe, infinite!—Marc is following the glorious career of a famous artist.He lives in Paris, only a few yards from me, in a splendid house, where every year Dr.and Madame Roderich come to spend two months with them, along with Captain, now become Colonel, Haralan.Every year the two return that visit by going to Ragz.
That is the only moment when I am deprived of the prattle of my nephew—it really is a nephew—whom I cherish with a tenderness, which you might call that of an uncle and a grandfather.Marc and Myra are happy.
Heaven grant that that happiness endure for many a long year!Heaven grant that nobody else ever suffers the evils that they have suffered!Heaven grant, and this shall be my last word, that nobody ever rediscovers the execrable secret of Wilhelm Storitz!
