‘For the shades are about us that hover
When darkness is half withdrawn,
And the skirts of the dead Night cover
The face of the live new Dawn.’
The doctors when they came could do nothing for him. The Professor,
though hardly an old man as the ordinary acceptation of the word goes,
being still within the seventies, had so burnt out his candle at both
ends that all the science in Europe could not have kept him alive for
another twenty-four hours. A spice of gruesome mirth seemed to fall into
the situation when their declaration was laid bare and one thought of
the great discovery.
Wyndham was the one who thought of it, and a wild longing to rouse the
old man, who was now sunk into an oblivion that presaged death, and
compel him even in his death-throes to reveal the secret that might
bring even him back to life, seized upon him. But he felt it was
impossible, and presently the two great men went downstairs to consult
each other, and he was left alone with his dying friend.
They had hardly gone when, watching as he incessantly did the face of
the Professor, he noticed a change. He bent over him.
‘Why doesn’t she speak now,’ said the Professor. He was thinking of the
girl’s voice—a voice that had taken him back to his early days in some
strange way.
‘Master,’ said Wyndham—he, too, had gone back to the old days—‘you are
thinking——’
‘Of her. They said she was dead.’
‘Who was dead?’ asked Wyndham.
At this the old man roused. He had not known Wyndham’s voice the first
time, but now he did, and he turned and looked at him; and presently
consciousness once more grew within his eyes.
‘It is you, boy. And where is she?’
‘She? The girl, you mean?’
‘Yes.... I promised her. You remember.... It is late now, very late ...
and I must sleep. But ... a word, boy.... I have left you all, and
she ... out of it ... you must give her ... give her....’ He sank back.
‘All—all,’ said Wyndham eagerly.
‘No ... no’—he rallied wonderfully—‘three hundred a year—that for a
girl.... The rest is yours.... But see to her.... I can trust you. You
are a good boy. But your Greek, boy—your Greek is bad—your aorists are
weak. You must mend—you must mend....’
His dying eyes tried to take the old stern look as they rested on
Wyndham, the look he used to give the boy when his Greek or his Latin
verses were hardly up to the mark, but presently it changed and softened
into a wider light. ‘The boy,’ in the last of all moments, was forgotten
for the love that was strongest of all.
‘She was very like my wife,’ he gasped faintly, and fell back and died.
* * * * *
It was all over. The doctors had taken their departure, and the old
dismal house was very still. The Professor had died in the morning, and
it was quite night again before Wyndham had time to think of ordinary
matters. It was the presence of Denis, who had come up to see, probably,
how his master had continued to live so long without him, that brought
back the thought of the girl to Wyndham’s mind.
‘Where did you take her?’ he asked listlessly. Even as the words passed
his lips he knew it was most important that she should be found again.
She was now the inheritress of three hundred a year—no mean thing for a
girl who only last night was ready and willing to die of want, amongst
other things, no doubt.
‘To the Cottage, sir.’
‘To——’ Wyndham gazed at him as if too astonished to give way to the
words that evidently lay very near to his tongue.
‘The Cottage, sir. Yer own place, sir.’
‘The Cottage,’ repeated Wyndham, now breaking forth in earnest. ‘What
the devil did you take her there for?’
His extreme anger would have cowed perhaps any other servant in Europe
save Denis. That good man stood to his guns without a flinch.
‘Fegs, sir, ’tis you can answer that,’ said he, with quite an
encouraging air.
‘What d’ye mean, Denis?’ demanded Wyndham almost violently.
‘I’m manin’—what I’m manin’,’ said Denis, who certainly was not violent
at all. ‘Ye know yourself, sir, that the first thing ye said to me about
the crathur was to take her to the safest place ye knew.’
‘Well?’ said Wyndham, with anger he tried hard to stifle.
‘Faix, yer honour, it seemed to me that the safest place I knew for the
young lady was the house that belonged to yer honour.’
This no doubt was distinctly flattering, but at the moment the flattery
did not appeal to Wyndham. The girl down there—and what the deuce was he
to do with her? And what would all the people round be thinking?—for the
most part country folk. The Cottage lay twenty miles outside Dublin. The
Rector, Mr. Barry, would for one be positively enraged. He would require
all sorts of explanations.
Denis had waited for a reply, but finding none, now went on:
‘Anything wrong, sir?’
‘Anything!’ said Wyndham. ‘Were you mad that you should take a—a person
like that down to my house? A girl found lying on the Professor’s
doorstep! Good heavens, man! what could you mean by it?’
He exaggerated a little when he said ‘my house.’ As a fact, he lived
very little in the Cottage, only using it when he felt tired and
overdone by work. His real home was to be found in rooms in
Dublin—pleasant rooms in Upper Merrion Street. There he entertained his
bachelor friends, and was highly regarded by his landlady. He was one of
those men—more usual than the coming young lady believes—who thought a
great deal more of their work, and their reading, and their golf, than
of the opposite sex.
‘Well, sir, there’s this,’ said Denis, who had remained beautifully
calm. ‘Besides tellin’ me I was to take her to a safe place, ye
specially said as she was to be thrated as me own daughter. I remimber
the words well. Now, ye know well, sir, havin’ bin intimate with me an’
Bridget since ye wur in yer first throusers, that we haven’t a child
between us; an’ yet for all that I tuck it for manin’ that the young
lady was to be given to Bridget.’
‘You took a great deal upon yourself then,’ said Wyndham.
‘Maybe so,’ said Denis, pursing up his lips. ‘But ye said as how she was
to be thrated like that; an’ if a girl was my daughter—why, I’d take her
to Bridget.’
It was impossible to go into this involved affair. Wyndham dismissed him
with a gesture; but Denis dallied at the door.
‘I suppose there’s something wrong, sir?’ persisted he.
‘Nothing,’ said Wyndham, putting a match to his cigar, ‘except that you
are the most infernal ass I ever met.’
With a heavy heart Wyndham, assisted by a physician of great note, had
gone through the Professor’s papers. There were few of them, and with
regard to the experiment only a few useless notes here and there,
principally written on the backs of envelopes. There was nothing
connected—nothing that could be used. The Professor, it seemed, had been
in the habit of writing on his brain, and on that only. Alas! there was
nothing left wherewith to carry on the great discovery.
Wyndham abandoned his search with a sigh. There was no doubt now that
the wonderful experiment was lost to all time. With this sad ending of
it he told himself he had closed one chapter in his life, but he made a
mistake there; the chapter was only beginning.