ON THE MARGINS OF TWO WORLDS.
The discovery of Gerald's death necessitated a change of plans. The
concealment of Slippery Dick and Edward must necessarily be accomplished
at Ilexhurst. There were funeral arrangements to be made, the property
cared for and Virdow to be rescued from his solitary and embarrassing
position. Moreover, the gray dawn was on ere the confession was written,
and Virdow had briefly explained the circumstances of Gerald's death.
Exhausted by excitement and anxiety and the depression of grief, he went
to his room and brought Edward a sealed packet which had been written
and addressed to him during the early hours of the night.
"You will find it all there," he said; "I cannot talk upon it." He went
a moment to look upon the face of his friend and then, with a single
pathetic gesture, turned and left them.
One of the eccentricities of the former owner of Ilexhurst had been a
granite smoke-house, not only burglar and fireproof but cyclone proof,
and with its oaken door it constituted a formidable jail.
With food and water, Dick, freed of his bonds, was ushered into this
building, the small vents in the high roof affording enough light for
most purposes. A messenger was then dispatched for Barksdale and Edward
locked himself away from sight of chance callers in his upper room. The
general, thoughtful and weary, sat by the dead man.
The document that Virdow had prepared was written in German. "When your
eye reads these lines, you will be grieved beyond endurance; Gerald is
no more! He was killed to-night by a flash of lightning and his death
was instantaneous. I am alone, heartbroken and utterly wretched.
Innocent of any responsibility in this horrible tragedy I was yet the
cause, since it was while submitting to some experiments of mine that he
received his death stroke. I myself received a frightful electric shock,
but it now amounts to nothing. I would to God that I and not he had
received the full force of the discharge. He might have been of vast
service to science, but my work is little and now well-nigh finished.
"Gerald was kneeling under a steel disk, in the glass-room, you will
remember where we began our sound experiments, and I did not know that
the steel wire which suspended it ran up and ended near a metal strip,
along the ridge beam of the room. We had just begun our investigation,
when the flash descended and he fell dead.
"At this writing I am here under peculiar circumstances; the butler who
came to my call when I recovered consciousness assisted me in the
attempt at resuscitation of Gerald, but without any measure of success.
He then succeeded in getting one or two of the old negroes and a doctor.
The latter declared life extinct. There was no disfigurement--only a
black spot in the crown of the head and a dark line down the spine,
where the electric fluid had passed. That was all."
Edward ceased to read; his chin sank upon his breast and the lines
slipped from his unfocused eyes. The dark line down the spine! His heart
leaped fiercely and he lifted his face with a new light in his eyes. For
a moment it was radiant; then shame bowed his head again. He laid aside
the paper and gave himself up to thought, from time to time pacing the
room. In these words lay emancipation. He resumed the reading:
"We arranged the body on the lounge and determined to wait until morning
to send for the coroner and undertaker, but one by one your negroes
disappeared. They could not seem to withstand their superstition, the
butler told me, and as there was nothing to be done I did not worry. I
came here to the library to write, and when I returned, the butler, too,
was gone. They are a strange people. I suppose I will see none of them
until morning, but it does not matter; my poor friend is far beyond the
reach of attention. His rare mind has become a part of cosmos; its
relative situation is our mystery.
"I will, now, before giving you a minute description of our last evening
together, commit for your eye my conclusions as to some of the phenomena
and facts you have observed. I am satisfied as far as Gerald's origin is
concerned, that he is either the son of the woman Rita or that they are
in some way connected by ties of blood. In either case the similarity of
their profiles would be accounted for. No matter how remote the
connection, nothing is so common as this reappearance of tribal features
in families. The woman, you told me, claimed him as her child, but
silently waived that claim for his sake. I say to you that a mother's
instinct is based upon something deeper than mere fancy, and that
intuitions are so nearly correct that I class them as the nearest
approach to mind memory to be observed.
"The likeness of his full face to the picture of the girl you call
Marion Evan may be the result of influences exerted at birth. Do you
remember the fragmentary manuscript? If that is a history, I am of the
opinion that it is explanation enough. At any rate, the profile is a
stronger evidence the other way.
"The reproduction of the storm scene is one of the most remarkable
incidents I have ever known, but it is not proof that he inherited it as
a memory. It is a picture forcibly projected upon his imagination by the
author of the fragment--and in my opinion he had read that fragment. It
came to him as a revelation, completing the gap. I am sure that from the
day that he read it he was for long periods convinced that he was the
son of Rita Morgan; that she had not lied to him. In this I am confirmed
by the fact that as she lay dead he bent above her face and called her
'mother'. I am just as well assured that he had no memory of the origin
of that picture; no memory, in fact, of having read the paper. This may
seem strange to you, but any one who has had the care of victims of
opium will accept the proposition as likely.
"The drawing of the woman's face was simple. His hope had been to find
himself the son of Marion Evan; his dreams were full of her. He had seen
the little picture; his work was an idealized copy, but it must be
admitted a marvelous work. Still the powers of concentration in this man
exceeded the powers of any one I have ever met.
"And that brings me to what was the most wonderful demonstration he gave
us. Edward, I have divined your secret, although you have never told it.
When you went to secure for me the note of the waterfall, the home note,
you were accompanied by your friend Mary. I will stake my reputation
upon it. It is true because it is obliged to be true. When you played
for us you had her in your mind, a vivid picture, and Gerald drew it. It
was a case of pure thought transference--a transference of a mental
conception, line for line. Gerald received his conception from you upon
the vibrating air. To me it was a demonstration worth my whole journey
to America.
"And here let me add, as another proof of the sympathetic chord between
you, that Gerald himself had learned to love the same woman. You gave
him that, my young friend, with the picture.
"You have by this time been made acquainted with the terrible accusation
against you--false and infamous. There will be little trouble in
clearing yourself, but oh, what agony to your sensitive nature! I tried
to keep the matter from Gerald, as I did the inquest by keeping him busy
with investigations; but a paper fell into his hands and his excitement
was frightful. Evading me he disappeared from the premises one evening,
but while I was searching for him he came to the house in a carriage,
bringing the picture of that repulsive negro, which you will remember.
Since then he has been more calm. Mr. Barksdale, your friend, I suppose,
was with him once or twice.
"And now I come to this, the last night of our association upon earth;
the night that has parted us and rolled between us the mystery across
which our voices cannot reach nor our ears hear.
"Gerald had long since been satisfied with the ability of living
substance to hold a photograph, and convinced that these photographs lie
dormant, so to speak, somewhere in our consciousness until awakened
again--that is, until made vivid. He was proceeding carefully toward the
proposition that a complete memory could be inherited, and in the second
generation or even further removed; you know his theory. There were
intermediate propositions that needed confirmation. When forms and
scenes come to the mind of the author, pure harmonies of color to that
of the artist, sweet co-ordinations of harmonies to the musician, whence
come they? Where is the thread of connection? Most men locate the seat
of their consciousness at the top of the head; they seem to think in
that spot. And strange, is it not, that when life passes out and all the
beautiful structure of the body claimed by the frost of death, that heat
lingers longest at that point! It is material in this letter, because
explaining Gerald's idea. He wished me to subject him to the finest
vibrations at that point.
"The experiment was made with a new apparatus, which had been hung in
place of the first in the glass-room; or, rather, to this we made an
addition. A thin steel plate was fixed to the floor, directly under the
wire and elevated upon a small steel rod. Gerald insisted that as the
drum and membrane I used made the shapes we secured a new experiment
should be tried, with simple vibrations. So we hung in its place a steel
disk with a small projection from the center underneath. Kneeling upon
the lower disk Gerald was between two plates subject to the finest
vibration, his sensitive body the connection. There was left a gap of
one inch between his head and the projection under the upper disk and we
were to try first with the gap closed, and then with it opened.
"You know how excitable he was. When he took his position he was white
and his large eyes flashed fire. His face settled into that peculiarly
harsh, fierce expression, for which I have never accounted except upon
the supposition of nervous agony. The handle to his violin had been
wrapped with fine steel wire, and this, extending a yard outward, was
bent into a tiny hook, intended to be clasped around the suspended wire
that it might convey to it the full vibrations from the sounding board
of the instrument. I made this connection, and, with the violin against
my ear, prepared to strike the 'A' note in the higher octave, which if
the vibrations were fine enough should suggest in his mind the figure of
a daisy.
"Gerald, his eyes closed, remained motionless in his kneeling posture.
Suddenly a faint flash of light descended into the room and the thunder
rolled. And I, standing entranced by the beauty and splendor of that
face, lost all thought of the common laws of physics. A look of rapture
had suffused it, his eyes now looked out upon some vision, and a tender
smile perfected the exquisite curve of his lips. There was no need of
violin outside, the world was full of the fine quiverings of
electricity, the earth's invisible envelope was full of vibrations!
Nature was speaking a language of its own. What that mind saw between
the glories of this and the other life as it trembled on the margins of
both, is not given to me to know; but a vision had come to him--of what?
"Ah, Edward, how different the awakening for him and me! I remember that
for a moment I seemed to float in a sea of flame; there was a shock like
unto nothing I had ever dreamed, and lying near me upon the floor, his
mortal face startled out of its beautiful expression, lay Gerald--dead!"
The conclusion of the letter covered the proposed arrangements for
interment. Edward had little time to reflect upon the strange document.
The voice of Gen. Evan was heard calling at the foot of the stair.
Looking down he saw standing by him the straight, manly figure of
Barksdale. The hour of dreams had ended; the hour of action had arrived!