black cigars and chewed tobacco on Frederick's broad verandas until he
felt like an intruder in his own house. There was no touch with them.
They regarded him as a stranger to be tolerated. They came to see Tom.
And their manner of seeing him was provocative of innocent envy pangs to
Frederick. Day after day he watched them. He would see the Yukoners
meet, perhaps one just leaving the sick room and one just going in. They
would clasp hands, solemnly and silently, outside the door. The
newcomer would question with his eyes, and the other would shake his
head. And more than once Frederick noted the moisture in their eyes.
Then the newcomer would enter and draw his chair up to Tom's, and with
jovial voice proceed to plan the outfitting for the exploration of the
upper Kuskokeem; for it was there Tom was bound in the spring. Dogs
could be had at Larabee's--a clean breed, too, with no taint of the soft
Southland strains. It was rough country, it was reported, but if
sour-doughs couldn't make the traverse from Larabee's in forty days
they'd like to see a _chechako_ do it in sixty.
And so it went, until Frederick wondered, when he came to die, if there
was one man in the county, much less in the adjoining county, who would
come to him at his bedside.
Seated at his desk, through the open windows would drift whiffs of
strong tobacco and rumbling voices, and he could not help catching
snatches of what the Yukoners talked.
"D'ye recollect that Koyokuk rush in the early nineties?" he would hear
one say. "Well, him an' me was pardners then, tradin' an' such. We had
a dinky little steamboat, the _Blatterbat_. He named her that, an' it
stuck. He was a caution. Well, sir, as I was sayin', him an' me loaded
the little _Blatterbat_ to the guards an' started up the Koyokuk, me
firin' an' engineerin' an' him steerin', an' both of us deck-handin'.
Once in a while we'd tie to the bank an' cut firewood. It was the fall,
an' mush-ice was comin' down, an' everything gettin' ready for the
freeze up. You see, we was north of the Arctic Circle then an' still
headin' north. But they was two hundred miners in there needin' grub if
they wintered, an' we had the grub.
"Well, sir, pretty soon they begun to pass us, driftin' down the river
in canoes an' rafts. They was pullin' out. We kept track of them. When a
hundred an' ninety-four had passed, we didn't see no reason for keepin'
on. So we turned tail and started down. A cold snap had come, an' the
water was fallin' fast, an' dang me if we didn't ground on a
bar--up-stream side. The _Blatterbat_ hung up solid. Couldn't budge
her. 'It's a shame to waste all that grub,' says I, just as we was
pullin' out in a canoe. 'Let's stay an' eat it,' says he. An' dang me if
we didn't. We wintered right there on the _Blatterbat_, huntin' and
tradin' with the Indians, an' when the river broke next year we brung
down eight thousand dollars' worth of skins. Now a whole winter, just
two of us, is goin' some. But never a cross word out of him.
Best-tempered pardner I ever seen. But fight!"
"Huh!" came the other voice. "I remember the winter Oily Jones allowed
he'd clean out Forty Mile. Only he didn't, for about the second yap he
let off he ran afoul of Husky Travers. It was in the White Caribou. 'I'm
a wolf!' yaps Jones. You know his style, a gun in his belt, fringes on
his moccasins, and long hair down his back. 'I'm a wolf,' he yaps, 'an'
this is my night to howl. Hear me, you long lean makeshift of a human
critter?'--an' this to Husky Travers."
"Well?" the other voice queried, after a pause.
"In about a second an' a half Oily Jones was on the floor an' Husky on
top askin' somebody kindly to pass him a butcher knife. What's he do but
plumb hack off all of Oily Jones' long hair. 'Now howl, damn you, howl,'
says Husky, gettin' up."
"He was a cool one, for a wild one," the first voice took up. "I seen
him buck roulette in the Little Wolverine, drop nine thousand in two
hours, borrow some more, win it back in fifteen minutes, buy the drinks,
an' cash in--dang me, all in fifteen minutes."
One evening Tom was unusually brightly awake, and Frederick, joining the
rapt young circle, sat and listened to his brother's serio-comic
narrative of the night of wreck on the island of Blang; of the swim
through the sharks where half the crew was lost; of the great pearl
which Desay brought ashore with him; of the head-decorated palisade that
surrounded the grass palace wherein dwelt the Malay queen with her royal
consort, a shipwrecked Chinese Eurasian; of the intrigue for the pearl
of Desay; of mad feasts and dances in the barbaric night, and quick
dangers and sudden deaths; of the queen's love-making to Desay, of
Desay's love-making to the queen's daughter, and of Desay, every joint
crushed, still alive, staked out on the reef at low tide to be eaten by
the sharks; of the coming of the plague; of the beating of tom-toms and
the exorcising of the devil-devil doctors; of the flight over the
man-trapped, wild-pig runs of the mountain bush-men; and of the final
rescue by Tasman, he who was hatcheted only last year and whose head
reposed in some Melanesian stronghold--and all breathing of the warmth
and abandon and savagery of the burning islands of the sun.
And despite himself, Frederick sat entranced; and when all the tale was
told, he was aware of a queer emptiness. He remembered back to his
boyhood, when he had pored over the illustrations in the old-fashioned
geography. He, too, had dreamed of amazing adventure in far places and
desired to go out on the shining ways. And he had planned to go; yet he
had known only work and duty. Perhaps that was the difference. Perhaps
that was the secret of the strange wisdom in his brother's eyes. For
the moment, faint and far, vicariously, he glimpsed the lordly vision
his brother had seen. He remembered a sharp saying of Polly's. "You have
missed romance. You traded it for dividends." She was right, and yet,
not fair. He had wanted romance, but the work had been placed ready to
his hand. He had toiled and moiled, day and night, and been faithful to
his trust. Yet he had missed love and the world-living that was forever
a-whisper in his brother. And what had Tom done to deserve it?--a
wastrel and an idle singer of songs.
His place was high. He was going to be the next governor of California.
But what man would come to him and lie to him out of love? The thought
of all his property seemed to put a dry and gritty taste in his mouth.
Property! Now that he looked at it, one thousand dollars was like any
other thousand dollars; and one day (of his days) was like any other
day. He had never made the pictures in the geography come true. He had
not struck his man, nor lighted his cigar at a match held in a woman's
hand. A man could sleep in only one bed at a time--Tom had said that. He
shuddered as he strove to estimate how many beds he owned, how many
blankets he had bought. And all the beds and blankets would not buy one
man to come from the end of the earth, and grip his hand, and cry, "By
the turtles of Tasman!"
Something of all this he told Polly, an undercurrent of complaint at the
unfairness of things in his tale. And she had answered:
"It couldn't have been otherwise. Father bought it. He never drove
bargains. It was a royal thing, and he paid for it royally. You grudged
the price, don't you see. You saved your arteries and your money and
kept your feet dry."
VI
On an afternoon in the late fall all were gathered about the big chair
and Captain Tom. Though he did not know it, he had drowsed the whole day
through and only just awakened to call for his _ukulele_ and light a
cigarette at Polly's hand. But the _ukulele_ lay idle on his arm, and
though the pine logs crackled in the huge fireplace he shivered and took
note of the cold.
"It's a good sign," he said, unaware that the faintness of his voice
drew the heads of his listeners closer. "The cold weather will be a
tonic. It's a hard job to work the tropics out of one's blood. But I'm
beginning to shape up now for the Kuskokeem. In the spring, Polly, we
start with the dogs, and you'll see the midnight sun. How your mother
would have liked the trip. She was a game one. Forty sleeps with the
dogs, and we'll be shaking out yellow nuggets from the moss-roots.
Larabee has some fine animals. I know the breed. They're timber wolves,
that's what they are, big grey timber wolves, though they sport brown
about one in a litter--isn't that right, Bennington?"
"One in a litter, that's just about the average," Bennington, the
Yukoner, replied promptly, but in a voice hoarsely unrecognisable.
"And you must never travel alone with them," Captain Tom went on. "For
if you fall down they'll jump you. Larabee's brutes only respect a man
when he stands upright on his legs. When he goes down, he's meat. I
remember coming over the divide from Tanana to Circle City. That was
before the Klondike strike. It was in '94 ... no, '95, and the bottom
had dropped out of the thermometer. There was a young Canadian with the
outfit. His name was it was ... a peculiar one ... wait a minute it will
come to me...."
His voice ceased utterly, though his lips still moved. A look of
unbelief and vast surprise dawned on his face. Followed a sharp,
convulsive shudder. And in that moment, without warning, he saw Death.
He looked clear-eyed and steady, as if pondering, then turned to Polly.
His hand moved impotently, as if to reach hers, and when he found it,
his fingers could not close. He gazed at her with a great smile that
slowly faded. The eyes drooped as the life went out, and remained a face
of quietude and repose. The _ukulele_ clattered to the floor. One by one
they went softly from the room, leaving Polly alone.
From the veranda, Frederick watched a man coming up the driveway. By the
roll of the sea in his walk, Frederick could guess for whom the stranger
came. The face was swarthy with sun and wrinkled with age that was given
the lie by the briskness of his movements and the alertness in the keen
black eyes. In the lobe of each ear was a tiny circlet of gold.
"How do you do, sir," the man said, and it was patent that English was
not the tongue he had learned at his mother's knee. "How's Captain Tom?
They told me in the town that he was sick."
"My brother is dead," Frederick answered.
The stranger turned his head and gazed out over the park-like grounds
and up to the distant redwood peaks, and Frederick noted that he
swallowed with an effort.
"By the turtles of Tasman, he was a man," he said, in a deep, changed
voice.
"By the turtles of Tasman, he was a man," Frederick repeated; nor did he
stumble over the unaccustomed oath.
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS
A strange life has come to an end in the death of Mr. Sedley Crayden, of
Crayden Hill.
Mild, harmless, he was the victim of a strange delusion that kept him
pinned, night and day, in his chair for the last two years of his life.
The mysterious death, or, rather, disappearance, of his elder brother,
James Crayden, seems to have preyed upon his mind, for it was shortly
after that event that his delusion began to manifest itself.
Mr. Crayden never vouchsafed any explanation of his strange conduct.
There was nothing the matter with him physically; and, mentally, the
alienists found him normal in every way save for his one remarkable
idiosyncrasy. His remaining in his chair was purely voluntary, an act of
his own will. And now he is dead, and the mystery remains unsolved.
--_Extract from the Newton Courier-Times._
Briefly, I was Mr. Sedley Crayden's confidential servant and valet for
the last eight months of his life. During that time he wrote a great
deal in a manuscript that he kept always beside him, except when he
drowsed or slept, at which times he invariably locked it in a desk
drawer close to his hand.
I was curious to read what the old gentleman wrote, but he was too
cautious and cunning. I never got a peep at the manuscript. If he were
engaged upon it when I attended on him, he covered the top sheet with a
large blotter. It was I who found him dead in his chair, and it was then
that I took the liberty of abstracting the manuscript. I was very
curious to read it, and I have no excuses to offer.
After retaining it in my secret possession for several years, and after
ascertaining that Mr. Crayden left no surviving relatives, I have
decided to make the nature of the manuscript known. It is very long, and
I have omitted nearly all of it, giving only the more lucid fragments.
It bears all the earmarks of a disordered mind, and various experiences
are repeated over and over, while much is so vague and incoherent as to
defy comprehension. Nevertheless, from reading it myself, I venture to
predict that if an excavation is made in the main basement, somewhere in
the vicinity of the foundation of the great chimney, a collection of
bones will be found which should very closely resemble those which James
Crayden once clothed in mortal flesh.
--_Statement of Rudolph Heckler._
Here follows the excerpts from the manuscript, made and arranged by
Rudolph Heckler:
I never killed my brother. Let this be my first word and my last. Why
should I kill him? We lived together in unbroken harmony for twenty
years. We were old men, and the fires and tempers of youth had long
since burned out. We never disagreed even over the most trivial things.
Never was there such amity as ours. We were scholars. We cared nothing
for the outside world. Our companionship and our books were
all-satisfying. Never were there such talks as we held. Many a night we
have sat up till two and three in the morning, conversing, weighing
opinions and judgments, referring to authorities--in short, we lived at
high and friendly intellectual altitudes.
* * * * *
He disappeared. I suffered a great shock. Why should he have
disappeared? Where could he have gone? It was very strange. I was
stunned. They say I was very sick for weeks. It was brain fever. This
was caused by his inexplicable disappearance. It was at the beginning of
the experience I hope here to relate, that he disappeared.
How I have endeavoured to find him. I am not an excessively rich man,
yet have I offered continually increasing rewards. I have advertised in
all the papers, and sought the aid of all the detective bureaus. At the
present moment, the rewards I have out aggregate over fifty thousand
dollars.
* * * * *
They say he was murdered. They also say murder will out. Then I say, why
does not his murder come out? Who did it? Where is he? Where is Jim? My
Jim?
* * * * *
We were so happy together. He had a remarkable mind, a most remarkable
mind, so firmly founded, so widely informed, so rigidly logical, that it
was not at all strange that we agreed in all things. Dissension was
unknown between us. Jim was the most truthful man I have ever met. In
this, too, we were similar, as we were similar in our intellectual
honesty. We never sacrificed truth to make a point. We had no points to
make, we so thoroughly agreed. It is absurd to think that we could
disagree on anything under the sun.
* * * * *
I wish he would come back. Why did he go? Who can ever explain it? I am
lonely now, and depressed with grave forebodings--frightened by terrors
that are of the mind and that put at naught all that my mind has ever
conceived. Form is mutable. This is the last word of positive science.
The dead do not come back. This is incontrovertible. The dead are dead,
and that is the end of it, and of them. And yet I have had experiences
here--here, in this very room, at this very desk, that--But wait. Let me
put it down in black and white, in words simple and unmistakable. Let me
ask some questions. Who mislays my pen? That is what I desire to know.
Who uses up my ink so rapidly? Not I. And yet the ink goes.
The answer to these questions would settle all the enigmas of the
universe. I know the answer. I am not a fool. And some day, if I am
plagued too desperately, I shall give the answer myself. I shall give
the name of him who mislays my pen and uses up my ink. It is so silly to
think that I could use such a quantity of ink. The servant lies. I know.
* * * * *
I have got me a fountain pen. I have always disliked the device, but my
old stub had to go. I burned it in the fireplace. The ink I keep under
lock and key. I shall see if I cannot put a stop to these lies that are
being written about me. And I have other plans. It is not true that I
have recanted. I still believe that I live in a mechanical universe. It
has not been proved otherwise to me, for all that I have peered over his
shoulder and read his malicious statement to the contrary. He gives me
credit for no less than average stupidity. He thinks I think he is real.
How silly. I know he is a brain-figment, nothing more.
There are such things as hallucinations. Even as I looked over his
shoulder and read, I knew that this was such a thing. If I were only
well it would be interesting. All my life I have wanted to experience
such phenomena. And now it has come to me. I shall make the most of it.
What is imagination? It can make something where there is nothing. How
can anything be something where there is nothing? How can anything be
something and nothing at the same time? I leave it for the
metaphysicians to ponder. I know better. No scholastics for me. This is
a real world, and everything in it is real. What is not real, is not.
Therefore he is not. Yet he tries to fool me into believing that he
is ... when all the time I know he has no existence outside of my own
brain cells.
* * * * *
I saw him to-day, seated at the desk, writing. It gave me quite a shock,
because I had thought he was quite dispelled. Nevertheless, on looking
steadily, I found that he was not there--the old familiar trick of the
brain. I have dwelt too long on what has happened. I am becoming
morbid, and my old indigestion is hinting and muttering. I shall take
exercise. Each day I shall walk for two hours.
* * * * *
It is impossible. I cannot exercise. Each time I return from my walk, he
is sitting in my chair at the desk. It grows more difficult to drive him
away. It is my chair. Upon this I insist. It _was_ his, but he is dead
and it is no longer his. How one can be befooled by the phantoms of his
own imagining! There is nothing real in this apparition. I know it. I am
firmly grounded with my fifty years of study. The dead are dead.
* * * * *
And yet, explain one thing. To-day, before going for my walk, I
carefully put the fountain pen in my pocket before leaving the room. I
remember it distinctly. I looked at the clock at the time. It was twenty
minutes past ten. Yet on my return there was the pen lying on the desk.
Some one had been using it. There was very little ink left. I wish he
would not write so much. It is disconcerting.
* * * * *
There was one thing upon which Jim and I were not quite agreed. He
believed in the eternity of the forms of things. Therefore, entered in
immediately the consequent belief in immortality, and all the other
notions of the metaphysical philosophers. I had little patience with him
in this. Painstakingly I have traced to him the evolution of his belief
in the eternity of forms, showing him how it has arisen out of his early
infatuation with logic and mathematics. Of course, from that warped,
squinting, abstract view-point, it is very easy to believe in the
eternity of forms.
I laughed at the unseen world. Only the real was real, I contended, and
what one did not perceive, was not, could not be. I believed in a
mechanical universe. Chemistry and physics explained everything. "Can no
being be?" he demanded in reply. I said that his question was but the
major promise of a fallacious Christian Science syllogism. Oh, believe
me, I know my logic, too. But he was very stubborn. I never had any
patience with philosophic idealists.
* * * * *
Once, I made to him my confession of faith. It was simple, brief,
unanswerable. Even as I write it now I know that it is unanswerable.
Here it is. I told him: "I assert, with Hobbes, that it is impossible to
separate thought from matter that thinks. I assert, with Bacon, that all
human understanding arises from the world of sensations. I assert, with
Locke, that all human ideas are due to the functions of the senses. I
assert, with Kant, the mechanical origin of the universe, and that
creation is a natural and historical process. I assert, with Laplace,
that there is no need of the hypothesis of a creator. And, finally, I
assert, because of all the foregoing, that form is ephemeral. Form
passes. Therefore we pass."
I repeat, it was unanswerable. Yet did he answer with Paley's notorious
fallacy of the watch. Also, he talked about radium, and all but asserted
that the very existence of matter had been exploded by these later-day
laboratory researches. It was childish. I had not dreamed he could be so
immature.
How could one argue with such a man? I then asserted the reasonableness
of all that is. To this he agreed, reserving, however, one exception. He
looked at me, as he said it, in a way I could not mistake. The inference
was obvious. That he should be guilty of so cheap a quip in the midst of
a serious discussion, astounded me.
* * * * *
The eternity of forms. It is ridiculous. Yet is there a strange magic in
the words. If it be true, then has he not ceased to exist. Then does he
exist. This is impossible.
* * * * *
I have ceased exercising. As long as I remain in the room, the
hallucination does not bother me. But when I return to the room after an
absence, he is always there, sitting at the desk, writing. Yet I dare
not confide in a physician. I must fight this out by myself.
* * * * *
He grows more importunate. To-day, consulting a book on the shelf, I
turned and found him again in the chair. This is the first time he has
dared do this in my presence. Nevertheless, by looking at him steadily
and sternly for several minutes, I compelled him to vanish. This proves
my contention. He does not exist. If he were an eternal form I could not
make him vanish by a mere effort of my will.
* * * * *
This is getting damnable. To-day I gazed at him for an entire hour
before I could make him leave. Yet it is so simple. What I see is a
memory picture. For twenty years I was accustomed to seeing him there at
the desk. The present phenomenon is merely a recrudescence of that
memory picture--a picture which was impressed countless times on my
consciousness.
* * * * *
I gave up to-day. He exhausted me, and still he would not go. I sat and
watched him hour after hour. He takes no notice of me, but continually
writes. I know what he writes, for I read it over his shoulder. It is
not true. He is taking an unfair advantage.
* * * * *
Query: He is a product of my consciousness; is it possible, then, that
entities may be created by consciousness?
* * * * *
We did not quarrel. To this day I do not know how it happened. Let me
tell you. Then you will see. We sat up late that never-to-be-forgotten
last night of his existence. It was the old, old discussion--the
eternity of forms. How many hours and how many nights we had consumed
over it!
On this night he had been particularly irritating, and all my nerves
were screaming. He had been maintaining that the human soul was itself a
form, an eternal form, and that the light within his brain would go on
forever and always. I took up the poker.
"Suppose," I said, "I should strike you dead with this?"
"I would go on," he answered.
"As a conscious entity?" I demanded.
"Yes, as a conscious entity," was his reply. "I should go on, from
plane to plane of higher existence, remembering my earth-life, you, this
very argument--ay, and continuing the argument with you."
It was only argument[1]. I swear it was only argument. I never lifted a
hand. How could I? He was my brother, my elder brother, Jim.
I cannot remember. I was very exasperated. He had always been so
obstinate in this metaphysical belief of his. The next I knew, he was
lying on the hearth. Blood was running. It was terrible. He did not
speak. He did not move. He must have fallen in a fit and struck his
head. I noticed there was blood on the poker. In falling he must have
struck upon it with his head. And yet I fail to see how this can be, for
I held it in my hand all the time. I was still holding it in my hand as
I looked at it.
[Footnote 1: (Forcible--ha! ha!--comment of Rudolph Heckler on margin.)]
* * * * *
It is an hallucination. That is a conclusion of common sense. I have
watched the growth of it. At first it was only in the dimmest light
that I could see him sitting in the chair. But as the time passed, and
the hallucination, by repetition, strengthened, he was able to appear in
the chair under the strongest lights. That is the explanation. It is
quite satisfactory.
* * * * *