‘A land of darkness, as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death;
without any order, and where the light is as darkness.’
Morning had broken through the sullen gloom of night, and still the two
men watched beside the couch on which the girl lay, seemingly, in all
the tranquillity of death. The Professor’s drug had been calculated to
keep her asleep for exactly six hours. So long a time would be a test.
If she lived, and woke at the right time, then he would try again. He
would make it worth her while. For the younger man, during this anxious
vigil, there had been passing lapses of memory, that he, however, would
have disdained to acknowledge as sleep; but with the old man there had
been no question of oblivion, and now, as the vital moment drew near
that should test the truth of the great discovery, even Wyndham grew
abnormally wide-awake, and with nervous heart-sinkings watched the pale,
death-like face of the girl.
Could it be unreal? Wyndham rose once and bent over her. No faintest
breath came from her lips or nostrils; the whole face had taken the
pinched, ashen appearance of one who had lain for a full day dead. The
hands were waxen, and the forehead too. He shuddered and drew back. At
that moment he told himself that she was dead, and that he had
undoubtedly assisted at a form of murder.
He turned to the Professor, who was sitting watch in hand, counting the
moments. He would have spoken, but the old man’s grim face forbade him.
He was waiting. At twelve o’clock the girl had sunk into a slumber so
profound, so representative of death, that Wyndham had uttered an
exclamation of despair, and had told himself she was indeed struck down
by the Destroyer, and now when six o’clock strikes she ought to rise
from her strange slumbers if the Professor’s drug possessed the powerful
properties attributed to it by its discoverer.
As Wyndham stood watching the Professor, a sound smote upon his ear.
One! Again the city clock was tolling the hour. The Professor rose; his
face was ghastly. One, two, three, four, five, six!
Six! The Professor bent down over the girl, and Wyndham went near to
him, to be ready to help him when the moment came—when the truth was
made clear to him that his discovery had failed. Wyndham himself had
long ago given up hope, but he feared for the old man, to whom his
discovery had been more than life or love for over twenty years.
The Professor still stood peering into the calm face. Six, and no sign,
no change!
Already the sun’s rays were beginning to peep sharply through the
window; there was a slight stir in the street below. Six-thirty, and
still the Professor stood gazing on the quiet figure, as motionless as
it. Seven o’clock, and still no movement. The face, now lovely in its
calm, was as marble, and the limbs lay rigid, the fingers lightly
locked. Death, death alone could look like that!
Half-past seven! As the remorseless clock recorded the time, the
Professor suddenly threw up his arms.
‘She is dead!’ he said. ‘Oh, my God!’
He reeled forward, and the young man caught him in his arms. He was
almost insensible, and was gasping for breath. Wyndham carried him into
an adjoining room and laid him on a bed, and, finding him cold, covered
him with blankets. This, so far as it went, was well enough for the
moment, but what was the next step to be? The old man lay gasping, and
evidently there was but a short step between his state and that of his
victim outside. Yet how to send for a doctor with that victim outside?
To the Professor, whose hours were numbered, it would mean little or
nothing; but to him, Wyndham, it would mean, if not death, eternal
disgrace. He drew a long breath and bent over the Professor, who was now
again sensible.
‘Shall I send for Marks or Drewd?’ he asked, naming two of the leading
physicians in Dublin.
The Professor grasped his arm; his face grew frightful.
‘No one—no one!’ he gasped. ‘Are you mad? Do you think I would betray my
failure to the world? To have them laugh—deride——’ He fell back, gasping
still, but menacing the young man with his eye. By degrees the fury of
his glance relaxed, and he fell into a sort of slumber, always holding
Wyndham’s arm, however, as if fearing he should go. He seemed stronger,
and Wyndham knelt by the bed, wondering vaguely what was going to be the
end of it all, and whether it would be possible to remove the corpse
outside without detection. There was Denis—Denis was faithful, and could
be trusted.
Presently the Professor roused from his fit of unconsciousness. He
looked up at the young man, and his expression was terrible. Despair in
its worse form disfigured his features. The dream of a life had been
extinguished. He tried to speak, but at first words failed him, then,
‘All the years—all the years!’ he mumbled. Wyndham understood, and his
heart bled. The old man had given the best years of his life to his
discovery, and now——
‘I have killed her!’ went on the Professor, after a minute or two.
‘Science has killed her,’ said Wyndham.
‘No; I, with my cursed pride of belief in myself—I have killed her,’
persisted the old man. ‘I would to God it were not so!’ He did not
believe in anything but science, yet he appealed to the Creator
occasionally, as some moderns still do to Jove. His lean fingers beat
feebly on the blankets. ‘A failure—a failure,’ he kept muttering, his
eyes fixed on vacancy. ‘I go to my grave a failure! I set my soul on it.
I believed in it, and it was naught.’ He was rambling, but presently he
sprang into a sitting posture, his eyes afire once more. ‘I believe in
it still!’ he shouted. ‘Oh, for time, for life, to prove.... O God, if
there is a God, grant me a few more days!’ He fell into a violent fit of
shivering, and Wyndham gently laid him back in his bed, and covered him
again with the blankets, where he lay sullen, powerless.
‘Try not to think,’ implored the young man.
‘Think—think—what else is left to me? Oh, Paul!’ He stretched out his
arm and caught Wyndham. ‘That it should be a failure after all. I
wish——’ He paused, and then went on: ‘I wish I had not tried it upon
her; she was young. She was a pretty creature, too. She was like ...
someone——’ He broke off.
‘She was a mere waif and stray,’ said Wyndham, trying to harden his
voice.
‘She was no waif or stray of the sort you mean,’ said the Professor.
‘Her face—was not like that. There’—pointing to the room outside—‘go;
look on her for yourself, and read the truth of what I say.’
‘It is not necessary,’ said the young man, with a slight shudder. And
again a silence fell between them. It was again broken by the Professor.
‘She was full of life,’ he said; ‘and I took it.’
‘She wished you to take it,’ said Wyndham, who felt choking. Her blood
seemed to lie heavily on him. Had he not seen, countenanced her murder?
The Professor did not seem to hear him; his head had fallen forward, and
he was muttering again.
‘She is dead!’ he whispered to himself. He made a vague but tragic
gesture; and then, after a little while, ‘Dead!’ he said again. His head
had sunk upon his breast. It was a strange scene. Here the Professor
dying—out there the girl dead—and between them he, Paul Wyndham. What
lay before him?
He roused himself with an effort from his horrible thoughts, and made a
faint effort to withdraw his hand from the Professor’s; but though the
latter had fallen into a doze, he still felt the attempt at withdrawal,
and tightened his clutch on Wyndham; and all at once it seemed to the
young man as though the years had rolled backward, and he was still the
pupil, and this old man his tutor, and the days were once more present
when he had been ordered here and there, and had taken his directions
from him, and loved and reverenced him, stern and repellent as he was,
as perhaps no tutor had ever been reverenced before.
After a little while the Professor’s grasp relaxed, and Wyndham rose to
his feet. A shrinking from entering the room beyond was combated by a
wild desire to go there and look once again upon the slender form of the
girl lying in death’s sweet repose upon her couch. He went to the door,
hesitated involuntarily for a second or two, and then entered.
How still is death! And how apart! Nothing can approach it or move it.
He looked at her long and earnestly, and all at once it came to him that
she was beautiful. He had not thought her beautiful last night, but now
the dignity of death had touched her, and her fear and her indifference
and her despair had dropped from her, and the face shone lovely—the
features chiselled, and a vague smile upon the small, closed lips. He
noticed one thing, and it struck him as strange—that pinched look about
the features that he had noticed an hour ago was gone now. The mouth was
soft, the rounded chin curved as if in life. Almost there seemed a
little bloom upon the pale, cold cheeks.
With a heavy sigh he turned away, and, leaning his arm upon the
mantelshelf, gave himself up a prey to miserable thought. The fire had
died out long ago, and the morning was cold and raw, and from under the
ill-fitting door a little harsh wind was rushing. The Professor, though
actually a rich man, had never cared to change the undesirable house
that had sheltered him when first he tried a fall with fortune, and,
conquering it, came out at once to the front as a man not to be despised
in the world of science.
What was to be done? The Professor would have to see a doctor, even if
the medical man were brought in without his knowledge. Would it be
possible to remove the—that girl—and trust to to-night for her removal
to——To where? Again he lost himself in a sea of agonized doubt and
uncertainty.
Denis would still be here, of course; but what could Denis do? He fell
back upon all the old methods of concealing dead bodies he had ever
heard of, but everything seemed impossible. What fools all those others
must have been! Well, he could give himself up and explain matters; but
then the Professor—to have his great discovery derided and held up to
ridicule! The old man’s look, as he saw it a little while ago, seemed to
forbid his betrayal of his defeat. Great heavens! what was to be done?
He drew himself up with a heavy sigh, and passed his hand across his
eyes, then turned to go back to the inner room to see if the Professor
was still sleeping. As he went he tried to avoid glancing at the couch
where the dead form lay, but when he got close, some force stronger than
his will compelled him to look at it. And as he looked he felt turned
into stone. He seemed frozen to the spot on which he stood; his eyes
refused to remove themselves from what they saw. Staring like one
benumbed, he told himself at last that he was going mad. How otherwise
could he see this thing? Sweat broke out on his forehead, and a cry
escaped him. The corpse was looking at him!