THE MIDNIGHT SEARCH.
It was late in the day when Virdow awoke. The excitement, the unwonted
hours which circumstances forced him to keep, brought at last unbroken
rest and restored his physical structure to its normal condition.
He dressed himself and descended to find a brief telegram announcing the
safety of Edward. It was a joyful addition to the conditions that had
restored him. The telegram had not been opened. He went quickly to
Gerald's room and found that young man at work upon a painting of Rita
as he had seen her last--the profile sketch. His emotional nature had
already thrown off its gloom, and with absorbed interest he was pushing
his work. Already the face had been sketched in and the priming
completed. Under his rapid and skillful hands the tints and contours
were growing, and Virdow, accustomed as he was to the art in all its
completeness and technical perfection, marveled to see the changed face
of the woman glide back into view, the counterpart he knew of the vivid
likeness clear cut in the sensitive brain that held it. He let him work
undisturbed. A word might affect its correctness. Only when the artist
ceased and laid aside his brush for a brief rest did he speak.
Gerald turned to him as to a co-laborer, and took the yellow slip of
paper, so potent with intelligent lettering. He read it in silence; then
putting it aside went on with his painting. Virdow rubbed his brow and
studied him furtively. Such lack of interest was inconceivable under the
conditions. He went to work seriously to account for it and this he did
to his own satisfaction. In one of his published lectures on memory,
years after, occurred this sentence, based upon that silent reverie:
"Impressions and forgetfulness are measurable by each other; indeed, the
power of the mind to remember vividly seems to be measured by its power
to forget."
But afterward Gerald picked up the telegram, read it intently and seemed
to reflect over the information it contained. Later in the day the
postman brought the mail and with it one of the "extras." Virdow read it
aloud in the wing-room. Gerald came and stood before him, his eyes
revealing excitement. When Virdow reached the part wherein Edward was
described as never removing his eyes from his antagonist, his hearer
exclaimed:
"Good! He will kill him!"
"No," said Virdow, smiling; "fortunately he did not. Listen."
"Fortunately!" cried Gerald; "fortunately! Why? What right has such a
man to live? He must have killed him!" Virdow read on. A cry broke from
Gerald's lips as the explanation appeared.
"I was right! The hand becomes a part of the eye when the mind wills it;
or, rather, eye and hand become mind. The will is everything. But why he
should have struck the guard----" He went to the wall and took down two
pistols. Handing one to Virdow and stepping back he said: "You will
please sight at my face a moment; I cannot understand how the accident
could have happened." Virdow held the weapon gingerly.
"But, Herr Gerald, it may be loaded."
"They are empty," said Gerald, breeching his own and exposing the
cylinder chambers, with the light shining through. "Now aim!" Virdow
obeyed; the two men stood at ten paces, aiming at each other's faces.
"Your hand," said the young man, "covers your mouth. Edward aimed for
the mouth."
There was a quick, sharp explosion; Virdow staggered back, dropping his
smoking pistol. Gerald turned his head in mild surprise and looked upon
a hole in the plastering behind.
"I have no recollection of loading that pistol," he said. And then: "If
your mind had been concentrated upon your aim I would have lost a finger
and had my weapon driven into my face." Virdow was shocked at the narrow
escape and pale as death.
"It is nothing," said Gerald, replacing the weapon; "you would not hit
me in a dozen trials, shooting as you do."
At 10 o'clock that night Edward, pale and weary, entered. He returned
with emotion the professor's enthusiastic embrace, and thanked him for
his care and attention of Gerald and the household and for his services
to the dead. Gerald studied him keenly as he spoke, and once went to one
side and looked upon him with new and curious interest. The professor
saw that he was examining the profile of the speaker by the aid of the
powerful lamp on the table beyond. The discovery set his mind to working
in the same direction, and soon he saw the profiles of both. Edward's
did not closely resemble the other. That this was true, for some reason,
the expression that had settled upon Gerald's face attested. The
portrait had been covered and removed.
Edward, after concluding some domestic arrangements, went directly to
his room and, dressed as he was, threw himself upon his bed and slept.
And as he slept there took place about him a drama that would have set
his heart beating with excitement could he have witnessed it. The house
was silent; the city clock had tolled the midnight hour, when Gerald
came into the room, bearing a shaded lamp. The sleeper lay on his back,
locked in the slumber of exhaustion. The visitor, moving with the
noiselessness of a shadow, glided to the opposite side of the bed, and,
placing the lamp on a chair, slowly turned up the flame and tilted the
shade. In an instant the strong profile of the sleeper flashed upon the
wall. With suppressed excitement Gerald unwrapped a sheet of cardboard,
and standing it on the mantel received upon it the shadow. As if by a
supreme effort, he controlled himself and traced the profile on his
paper. Lifting it from the mantel he studied it for a moment intently
and then replaced it. The shadow filled the tracing. Taking it slowly
from its position he passed from the room. Fortunately his distraction
was too great for him to notice the face of Virdow, or to perceive it in
the deep gloom of the little room as he passed out.
The German waited a few moments; no sound came back from the broad
carpeted stair; taking the forgotten lamp, he followed him silently.
Passing out into the shrubbery, he made his way to the side of the
conservatory and looked in. Gerald had placed the two profiles, one on
each side of the mirror, and with a duplex glass was studying his own in
connection with them. He stood musing, and then, as if forgetting his
occupation, he let the hand-glass crash upon the floor, tossed his arms
in an abandonment of emotion, and, covering his face with his hands,
suddenly threw himself across the bed.
Virdow was distressed and perplexed. He read the story in the pantomime,
but what could he do? No human sympathy could comfort such a grief, nor
could he betray his knowledge of the secret he had surreptitiously
obtained. He paced up and down outside until presently the moving shadow
of the occupant of the room fell upon his path. He saw him then take
from a box a little pill and put it in his mouth, and he knew that the
troubles of life, its doubts, distress and loneliness, would be
forgotten for hours.
Forgotten? Who knows? Oh, mystery of creation; that invisible
intelligence that vanishes in sleep and in death; gone on its voyage of
discovery, appalling in its possibilities; but yet how useless, since it
must return with no memory of its experience!
And he, Virdow, what a dreamer! For in that German brain of subtleties
lived, with the clearness of an incandescent light in the depths of a
coal mine, one mighty purpose; one so vast, so potent in its
possibilities, as to shake the throne of reason, a resolution to follow
upon the path of mind and wake a memory never touched in the history of
science. It was not an ambition; it was a leap toward the gates of
heaven! For what cared he that his name might shine forever in the
annals of history if he could claim of his own mind the record of its
wanderings? The future was not his thought. What he sought was the
memory of the past!
He went in now, secure of the possibility of disturbing the sleeper, and
stood looking down into the room's appointments; there were the two
profiles on either side of the mirror; upon the floor the shivered
fragments of the hand-glass.
Virdow returned to his room, but before leaving he took from the little
box one of the pellets and swallowed it. If he was to know that mind, he
must acquaint himself with its conditions. He had never before swallowed
the drug; he took this as the Frenchman received the attenuated virus of
hydrophobia from the hands of Pasteur--in the interest of science and
the human race.
As he lay upon his bed he felt a languor steal upon him, saw in far
dreams cool meadows and flowery slopes, felt the solace of perfect
repose envelop him. And then he stood beside a stream of running water
under the shade of the trees, with the familiar hills of youth along the
horizon. A young woman came and stood above the stream and looked
intently upon its glassy surface. Her feature were indistinct. Drawing
near he, too, looked into the water, and there at his feet was the sad,
sweet face of--Marion Evan. He turned and then looked closer at the
woman; he saw in her arms the figure of an infant, over whose face she
had drawn a fold of her gown. She shook her head as he extended his hand
to remove this and pointed behind her. There the grass ran out and only
white sand appeared, with no break to the horizon.
Toiling on through this, with a bowed head, was a female figure. He knew
her; she was Rita, and the burden she, too, carried in her arms was the
form of a child. The figures disappeared and a leaf floated down the
stream; twenty-six in succession followed, and then he saw a man
descending the mountains and coming forward, his eyes fixed on something
beyond him. It was Edward. He looked in the same direction; there was a
frail man toiling toward him through the deep sands in the hot sunlight.
It was Gerald. And then the figures faded away. There memory ceased to
record.
Whatever else was the experience of that eager mind as it wandered on
through the mystery, and phantasmagoria has no place in science. He
remembered in the morning up to one point only.
It was his last experience with the drug.