I turned towards the door again at last. It must be very late, but I still felt that I couldn’t sleep until I knew what was going to happen to me—even if thus seeking it out was only hastening the end. I left “Beauty’s Room” and stood for a moment in the hall, watching the bright plaque catch fire and shadow in the candlelight as the door shut behind me. I turned away to walk more corridors, more tall arched and pillared rooms. I spent little time looking at the wonders I passed; I was too intent on that one thing: finding my host, or my gaoler. I paused at last on a balcony overlooking a large dim hall similar to the one I had eaten dinner in. Candies lit themselves only a few feet ahead of me as I walked, and beyond them all was darkness; after I had passed, in a minute or two, they winked out again, as I saw when I turned once or twice to watch them. The big windows, when they were not muffled with curtains, showed only as paler grey shapes in the walls; there was no moon yet to shine through them. But then, looking up again, I thought I saw a golden edge of light to a partly open door, beyond the glow of my entourage of lighted candles. My heart began to beat very much faster, and I made my way quietly towards that door.
Like all of the other doors I had met in the castle, this one opened at my approach. A few days of this and I would forget the operation of a latch or a door-handle. The room it revealed was a large, warm, and gracious one, although small by the standards of this castle. On one wall to my left a fire was burning in a fireplace framed with wrought iron in the shape of climbing vines; two armchairs were drawn up before it. One chair was empty. In the other a massive shadow sat. Except for the faint and nickering light of the fire the room was in darkness; there was a table behind the occupied armchair, and on it stood a candelabrum of a dozen tall candles, but they remained dark. I realized I was standing in a little halo of light, the candles in the hall shining around me as I stood on the threshold. My eyes slowly adjusted themselves to the gloom beyond the door. I caught a gleam of dark-green velvet on what might have been a knee in the shadowed armchair. “Good evening, Beauty,” said a great harsh voice.
I shivered, and put a hand to the door-frame, and tried to take courage from the fact that the Beast—for it must be he—had not devoured me at once. “Good evening, milord,” I said. My voice was misleadingly steady.
“I am the Beast,” was the reply. “You will call me that, please.” A pause. “Have you come of your own free will to stay in my castle?”
“I have,” I said, as bravely as I could.
“Then I am much obliged to you.” This was said in so quiet a voice, notwithstanding the deep rumbling echo that was part of every word, and was so totally different a greeting from what I was expecting that I was shocked into saying before I thought:
“Obliged! Milord, you gave me no choice. I could not let my father die for the sake of a silly rose.”
“Do you hate me then?” The rough voice sounded almost wistful.
Again I was taken aback, “Well, you give me little cause to love you.” I thought then guiltily of the fine meal, and the beautiful room—especially the books. It occurred to me for the first time that if he had planned to eat me immediately it was unlikely, or at least curious, that he should have provided me with enough books for years’ reading.
The immense shadow shifted in its chair. I was sure of the knee, now, and the velvet; and now I could see a glitter of eyes, and also—perhaps—of sharp claws. I
looked hastily away from the claws. The feet were lost in the pool of darkness beneath the wrought-iron grate.
“Would it help perhaps if I told you that, had your father returned to me alone, I would have sent him on his way unharmed?”
“You would!” I said; it was half a shriek. “You mean that I came here for nothing?”
A shadowy movement like the shaking of a great shaggy head. “No. Not what you would count as nothing. He would have returned to you, and you would have been glad, but you also would have been ashamed, because you had sent him, as you thought, to his death. Your shame would have grown until you came to hate the sight of your father, because he reminded you of a deed you hated, and hated yourself for. In time it would have ruined your peace and happiness, and at last your mind and heart.”
My tired brain refused to follow this. “But—I could not have let him go alone,” I said, bewildered.
“Yes,” said the Beast.
I thought about it for a minute. “Can you see the future, then?” I asked uneasily.
“Not exactly,” said the shadow. “But I can see you.”
There didn’t seem to be any answer to that, either. “I cannot see you at all, milord,” I ventured timidly.
Again the gleam of eyes. “Indeed,” said the Beast. “I should have welcomed you when you first arrived this afternoon; but I thought candlelight might be a little kinder for a first impression of such as me.” He stood up, straightening himself slowly, but I still shrank back. He must have been seven feet tall at full height, with proportionate breadth of shoulder and chest, like the great black bears of the north woods that could break a hunter’s back with one blow of a heavy paw. He stood still for a moment, as if waiting for me to recover myself, and then with a sigh as deep as a storm wind, he raised the candelabrum from the table. It lit as he brought it to shoulder level, and I was staring suddenly into his face. “Oh no,” I cried, and covered my own face with my hands. But when I heard him take a step towards me, I leaped back in alarm like a deer at the crack of a branch nearby, turning my eyes away from him.
“You have nothing to fear,” the Beast said, as gently as his harsh voice allowed.
After a moment I looked up again. He was still standing, watching me with those eyes. I realized that what made his gaze so awful was that his eyes were human. We looked at each other a moment. Not bearish at all, I decided. Not like anything else I could put a name to either. If Yggdrasil had been given an animal’s shape, it might have looked like the Beast.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but I am somewhat shortsighted, and I would like a closer look at you.” He stepped forwards again, and I backed up until I reached the balcony. I wrapped my fingers around the railing and stood: cornered, with the hunter’s lantern shining in my eyes. “You—you aren’t going to—eat me?” I quavered.
He stopped as if he had walked into a tree, and the candlestick in his hand dropped several inches. “Bat you?” he said, with convincing horror. “Certainly not. What made you think so? Have you not been well looked after since you arrived? Have I frightened you—in any fashion that I could avoid?”
“I—Well, I couldn’t think of any other reason for your—er—inviting me here.”
“Did I not tell your father that no harm should come to his daughter?” I opened my mouth, and then shut it again, and he continued sadly: “No, you need say nothing. I am a Beast, and a Beast has no honour. But you may trust my word: You are safe here, in my castle and anywhere on my lands.”
My curiosity, at least for the moment, was stronger than fear or courtesy; his gentle mien encouraged me, and I need not look into his face; I would look no higher than his waistcoat buttons, which were about at my eye level anyway. “Then why?”
“Well—I lack companionship. It is rather lonesome here sometimes, with no one to talk to,” he said simply.
My sudden sympathy must have shown on my face, for he raised the light again, and as he came closer I looked up at him with very little fear, although I still leaned against the balustrade. But he looked at me so long that I became uneasy again. I couldn’t read his expression; the face was too unlike any I was accustomed to. “I—er—I hope you weren’t misled by my foolish nickname,” I said. What if he was angry at being cheated of Beauty, and killed me for tricking him?
“Misled?” he said. “No. I think your name suits you very well.”