THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE
This is the letter which Swinnerton Loughburne received over the
signature of Doctor Randall Byrne. It was such a strange letter that
between paragraphs Swinnerton Loughburne paced up and down his Gramercy
Park studio and stared, baffled, at the heights of the Metropolitan
Tower.
"Dear Swinnerton,
"I'll be with you in good old Manhattan about as soon as you get this
letter. I'm sending this ahead because I want you to do me a favour. If
I have to go back to those bare, blank rooms of mine with the smell of
chemicals drifting in from the laboratory, I'll--get drunk. That's all!"
Here Swinnerton Loughburne lowered the letter to his knees and grasped
his head in both hands. Next he turned to the end of the letter and made
sure that the signature was "Randall Byrne." He stared again at the
handwriting. It was not the usual script of the young doctor. It was
bolder, freer, and twice as large as usual; there was a total lack of
regard for the amount of stationery consumed.
Shaking his head in bewilderment, Swinnerton Loughburne shook his fine
grey head and read on: "What I want you to do, is to stir about and find
me a new apartment. Mind you, I don't want the loft of some infernal
Arcade building in the Sixties. Get me a place somewhere between
Thirtieth and Fifty-eighth. _Two_ bed-rooms. I want a place to put some
of the boys when they drop around my way. And at least one servant's
room. Also at least one large room where I can stir about and wave my
arms without hitting the chandelier. Are you with me?"
Here Swinnerton Loughburne seized his head between both hands again and
groaned: "Dementia! Plain and simple dementia! And at his age, poor
boy!"
He continued: "Find an interior decorator. Not one of these fuzzy haired
women-in-pants, but a he-man who knows what a he-man needs. Tell him I
want that place furnished regardless of expense. I want some deep chairs
that will hit me under the knees. I want some pictures on the wall--but
_nothing out of the Eighteenth Century_--no impressionistic
landscapes--no girls dolled up in fluffy stuff. I want some pictures I
can enjoy, even if my maiden aunt can't. There you are. Tell him to go
ahead on those lines.
"In a word, Swinnerton, old top, I want to live. For about thirty years
I've _thought_, and now I know that there's nothing in it. All the
thinking in the world won't make one more blade of grass grow; put one
extra pound on the ribs of a long-horn; and in a word, thinking is the
bunk, pure and simple!"
At this point Swinnerton Loughburne staggered to the window, threw it
open, and leaned out into the cold night. After a time he had strength
enough to return to his chair and read through the rest of the epistle
without interruption.
"You wonder how I've reached the new viewpoint? Simply by seeing some
concentrated life here at the Cumberland ranch. My theories are blasted
and knocked in the head--praise God!--and I've brushed a million cobwebs
out of my brain. Chemistry? Rot! There's another sort of chemistry that
works on the inside of a man. That's what I want to study. There are
three great preliminary essentials to the study:
1st: How to box with a man.
2nd: How to talk with a girl.
3rd: How to drink old wine.
Try the three, Swinnerton; they aren't half bad. At first they may give
you a sore jaw, an aching heart, and a spinning head, but in the end
they teach you how to keep your feet and _fight!_
"This is how my eyes were opened.
"When I came out to this ranch it was hard for me to ride a horse. So
I've been studying how it should be done. Among other things, you should
keep your toes turned in, you know. And there are many other things to
learn.
"When I had mastered them one by one I went out the other day and asked
to have a horse saddled. It was done, and a lantern-jawed cowpuncher
brought out a piebald gelding with long ears and sleepy eyes. Not a
lovely beast, but a mild one. So I went into the saddle according to
theory--with some slight hesitations here and there, planted my feet in
the stirrups, and told the lantern-jawed fellow to turn loose the head
of the piebald. This was done. I shook the reins. The horse did not
move. I called to the brute by name. One ear wagged back to listen to
me.
"I kicked the beast in the ribs. Unfortunately I had forgotten that long
spurs were on my heels. The horse was instantly aware of that fact,
however. He leaped into a full gallop. A very jolty process. Then he
stopped--but I kept on going. A fence was in the way, so I was halted.
Afterwards the lantern-jawed man picked me up and offered to carry me
back to the house or at least get a wheelbarrow for me. I refused with
some dignity. I remarked that I preferred walking, really, and so I
started out across the hills and away from the house. My head was sore;
so were my shoulders where I hit the fence; I began to think of the joy
of facing that horse again, armed with a club.
"It was evening--after supper, you see--and the light of the moon was
already brighter than the sunlight. And by the time I had crossed the
first range of hills, it was quite dark. As I walked I brooded upon many
things. There were enough to disturb me.
"There was old Joe Cumberland, at death's door and beyond the reach of
my knowledge; and he had been taken away from death by the wild man, Dan
Barry. There was the girl with the bright hair--Kate Cumberland. In
education, nothing; in brain, nothing; in experience, nothing; and yet I
was attracted. But she was not attracted in the least until along came
the wild man again, and then she fell into his arms--actually fought for
him! Why? I could not tell. My name and the things I have done and even
my money, meant nothing to her. But when he came it was only a glance, a
word, a smile, and she was in his arms. I felt like Caligula. I wished
the world had only one neck, and I an axe. But why should I have felt
depressed because of failures in the eyes of these silly yokels? Not one
of them could read the simplest chemical formula!
"All very absurd, you will agree, and you may get some inkling as to my
state of mind while I walked over those same dark hills. I seemed a part
of that darkness. I looked up to the stars. They were merely like the
pages of a book. I named them off hand, one after the other, and thought
of their characteristics, their distances, their composition, and
meditated on the marvels the spectrum has made known to us. But no
sooner did such a train of thoughts start in my brain, than I again
recurred to the girl, Kate Cumberland, and all I was aware of was a pain
at heart--something like homesickness. Very strange.
"She and the man are together constantly. The other day I was in Joseph
Cumberland's room and we heard whistling outside. The face of the old
man lighted, 'They are together again,' he said. 'How do you guess at
that?' I asked. 'By the sound of his whistling,' he answered. 'For he
whistles as if he expected an answer--as if he were talking with
someone.' And by the Lord, the old man was right. It would never have
occurred to me!
"Now as I started down the farther slope of a hill a whistling sound ran
upon me through the wind, and looking back I saw a horseman galloping
with great swiftness along the line of the crest, very plainly outlined
by the sky, and by something of smoothness in the running of the horse I
knew that it was Barry and his black stallion. But the whistling--the
music! Dear God, man, have you read of the pipes of Pan? That night I
heard them and it made a riot in my heart.
"He was gone, suddenly, and the whistling went out like a light, but
something had happened inside me--the first beginning of this process of
internal change. The ground no longer seemed so dark. There were earth
smells--very friendly--I heard some little creature chirruping
contentedly to itself. Something hummed--a grasshopper, perhaps. And
then I looked up to the stars. There was not a name I could think of--I
forgot them all, and for the first time I was contented to look at them
and wonder at their beauty without an attempt at analysis or labelling.
"If I say that I went back to the ranch-house with my feet on the ground
and by heart up there among the stars, will you understand?
"I found the girl sewing in front of the fire in the living room.
Simply looked up to me with a smile, and a certain dimness about the
eyes--well, my breath stopped.
"'Kate,' said I, 'I am going away to-morrow morning!'
"'And leave Dad?' said she.
"'To tell you the truth,' I answered, 'there is nothing I can do for
him. There has never been anything I could do for him.'
"'I am sorry,' said she, and lifted up her eyes to me.
"Now, I had begun by being stiff with her, but the ringing of that
whistling--pipes of Pan, you know--was in my ears. I took a chair beside
her. Something overflowed in my heart. For the first time in whole days
I could look on her beauty without pain.
"'Do you know why I'm going?' I asked.
"She waited.
"'Because,' said I, and smiled right into her face, 'I love you, Kate,
most infernally; and I know perfectly well that I will get never the
devil a bit of good out of it.'
"She peered at me. 'You aren't jesting?' says she. 'No, you're serious.
I'm very sorry, Doctor Byrne.'
"'And I,' I answered, 'am glad. I wouldn't change it for the world. For
once in my life--to-night--I've forgotten myself. No, I won't go away
and nurse a broken heart, but I'll think of you as a man should think of
something bright and above him. You'll keep my heart warm, Kate, till
I'm a very old man. Because of you, I'll be able to love some other
girl--and a fine one, by the Lord!'
"Something in the nature of an outburst, eh? But it was the music which
had done it. All the time it rang and echoed through my ears. My words
were only an echo of it. I was in tune with the universe. I was living
for the first time. The girl dropped her sewing--tossed it aside. She
came over to me and took my hands in a way that would have warmed even
the icicles of your heart, Swinnerton.
"'Doctor,' says she, 'I know that you are going to be very happy.'
"'Happiness,' said I, 'is a trick, like riding a horse. And I think that
I've learned the trick. I've caught it from you and from Barry.'
"At that, she let go my hands and stepped back. The very devil is in
these women, Swinnerton. You never can place them for a minute at a
time.
"'I am trying to learn myself,' she said, and there was a shadow of
wistfulness in her eyes.
"In another moment I should have made a complete fool of myself, but I
remembered in time and got out of the room. To-morrow I start back for
the old world but I warn you beforehand, my dear fellow, that I'm
bringing something of the new world with me.
"What has it all brought to me? I am sad one day and gay the next. But
at least I know that thinking is not life and now I'm ready to fight.
"Randall Byrne."