An Apparition and a Confession.
He let himself in with his latch-key, went into his dining-room, and sat
down dressed as he was to wait. He listened through minute after minute
for the expected step. The window was open (for the midsummer night was
warm), and all the sounds of belated and revelling London floated
vaguely in the air. Twelve o'clock boomed softly from Westminster, and
made the heavy atmosphere drowsily vibrate with the volume of the
strokes. The reverberation of the last had scarcely died away when a
light, measured footfall made him sit up. It came nearer and nearer, and
then, after a moment's hesitation, sounded on his own doorstep. With
that there came the tap of a cane on the window. With thought and
expectation resolutely suspended, Lefevre swung out of the room and to
the hall-door. He opened it, and stood and gazed. The light of the
hall-lamp fell upon a figure, the sight of which sent the blood in a
gush to his heart, and pierced him with horror. He expected Julius, and
he looked on the man whom he had followed on the crowded pavements some
weeks before,--the man whom the police had long sought for
ineffectually!
"Won't you let me in, Lefevre?" said the man.
The doctor stood speechless, with his eyes fixed: the face and dress of
the person before him were those of Hernando Courtney, but the voice was
the voice of Julius, though it sounded strange and distant, and bore an
accent as of death. Lefevre was involved in a wild turmoil and horror of
surmise, too appalling to be exactly stated to himself; for he shrank
with all his energy from the conclusion to which he was being forced. He
turned, however, upon the request for admission, and led the way into
the dining-room, letting his visitor close the door and follow.
"Lefevre," said the strange voice, "I have come to show myself to you,
because I know you are a true-hearted friend, and because I think you
have that exquisite charity that can forgive all things."
"_Show myself!_" ... As Lefevre listened to the strange voice and looked
at the strange person, the suspicion came upon him--What if he were but
regarding an Illusion? He had read in some of his mystical and magical
writers, that men gifted with certain powers could project to a distance
eidola or phantasms of varying likeness to themselves: might not this be
such a mocking phantasm of Julius? He drew his hand across his eyes, and
looked again: the figure still sat there. He put out his hand to test
its substantiality, and the voice cried in a keen pitch of terror--
"Don't touch me!--for your own sake!... Why, Lefevre, do you look so
amazed and overcome? Is not my wretched secret written in my face?"
"And you are really Julius Courtney?" asked Lefevre, at length finding
utterance, with measured emphasis, and in a voice which he hardly
recognised as his own.
"I am Julius Courtney--"
He paused, for Lefevre had put his head in his hands, shaken with a
silent paroxysm of grief. It wrung the doctor's heart, as if in the
person that sat opposite him, all that was noblest and most gracious in
humanity were disgraced and overthrown.
"Yes," continued the voice, "I am Julius; there is no other Courtney
that I know of, and soon there will be none at all." The doctor
listened, but he could not endure to look again. "I am dying--I have
been dying for a dozen years, and for a dozen years I have resisted and
overcome death; now I surrender. I have come to my period. I shall never
enter your house again. I have only come now to confess myself, and to
ask a last favour of you--a last token of friendship."
"I will freely do what I can for you, Julius," said the doctor, still
without looking at him, "though I am too overcome, too bewildered, yet
to say much to you."
"Thank you. You will hear my story and understand. It contains a secret
which I, like a blind fool, have only used for myself, but which you
will apply for the wide benefit of mankind. The request I have to make
of you is small, but it may seem extraordinary,--be my companion for
twelve hours. I cannot talk to you here, enclosed and oppressed with
streets of houses. Come with me for a few hours on the water; I have a
fancy to see the sun rise for the last time over the sea. I have my
yacht ready near London Bridge, and a boat waiting at the steps by
Cleopatra's Needle; a cab will soon take us there. Will you come?"
Lefevre did not look up. The voice of Julius sounded like an appeal from
the very abode of death. Then he glanced in spite of himself in his
face, and was moved and melted to unreserved compassion by the strained
weariness of his expression--the open, luminous wistfulness of his eyes.
"Yes; I'll go," said he. "But can't I do something for you first? Let me
consider your case."
"There's nothing now to be done for me, Lefevre," said Julius, shaking
his head. "You will perceive that when you have heard me out."
The doctor went to find his man and tell him that he was going out for
the night to attend on an urgent case. When he returned he stood a
moment touched with misgiving. He thought of Lady Mary--he thought of
his mother and sister. Ought he not to leave some hint behind him of the
strange adventure upon which he was about to embark, and which might end
he knew not how or where? Julius was observing him, and seemed to divine
his doubt.
"You need have no hesitation," said he. "I ask you only for twelve
hours. You can easily get back here by noon to-morrow. There is a
south-west wind blowing, with every prospect of settled weather. I am
quite certain about it."
Fortified with that assurance, Lefevre put on a thicker overcoat and an
old soft hat, turned out the lights in the dining-room and in the hall,
closed the door with a slam, and stood with the new, the strange Julius
in the street, fairly embarked upon his adventure. It was only with an
effort that he could realise he was in the company of one who had been a
familiar friend. They walked towards Regent Street without speaking. At
the corner of Savile Row they came upon a policeman, and Lefevre had a
sudden thrill of fear lest his companion should, at length, be
recognised and arrested. Courtney himself, however, appeared in no wise
disturbed. In Regent Street he hailed a passing four-wheeler.
"Wouldn't a hansom be quicker?" said Lefevre.
"It is better on your account," said Julius, "that we should sit apart."
When they entered the cab, Courtney ensconced himself in the remote
corner of the other seat from Lefevre; and thus without another word
they drove to the Embankment. At the foot of the steps by Cleopatra's
Needle, they found a waterman and a boat in waiting. They entered the
boat, Lefevre going forward while Julius sat down at the tiller. The
waterman pulled out. The tide was ebbing, and they slipped swiftly down
the dark river, with broken reflections of lamps and lanterns on either
bank streaming deep into the water like molten gold as they passed, and
with tall buildings and chimney-shafts showing black against the calm
night sky. Lefevre found it necessary at intervals to assure himself
that he was not drifting in a dream, or that the ghastly, burning-eyed
figure, wrapped in a dark cloak in the stern, was not a strange visitor
from the nether world.
Soon after they had shot through London Bridge they were alongside a
yacht almost in mid-stream. It was clear that all had been prearranged
for Julius's arrival; for as soon as they were on board, the yacht
(loosed from her upper mooring by the waterman who had brought them down
the river) began to stand away.
"We had better go forward," said Courtney. "Are you warm enough?"
The doctor answered that he was. Courtney gave an order to one of the
men, who went below and returned with a fur-lined coat which his master
put on. That little incident gave a curious shock to Lefevre: it made
him think of the mysterious stranger who had sat down opposite the young
officer in the Brighton train, and it showed him that he had not been
completely satisfied that his friend Julius and the person he had been
wont to think of as Hernando Courtney were one and the same.
They went forward to be free of the sail and its tackling. Courtney,
wrapped in his extra, his fur-lined coat, pointing to a low
folding-chair for Lefevre, threw himself on a heap of cordage. He looked
around and above him, at the rippling, flashing water and the black
hulls of ships, and at the serene, starlit heavens stretching over all.
"How wonderful!--how beautiful it all is!" he exclaimed. "All,
all!--even the dullest and deadest-seeming things are vibrating,
palpitating with the very madness of life! He set the world in my heart,
and oh, how I loved!--how I loved the world!"
"It is a wonderful world," said Lefevre, trying to speak cheerfully;
"and you will take delight in it again when this abnormal fit of
depression is over."
"Never, Lefevre!--never, never!" said Courtney in strenuous tones. "I
regret it deeply, bitterly, madly,--but yet I know that I have about
done with it!"
"Julius," said Lefevre, "I have been so amazed and bewildered, that I
have found little to say: I can scarcely believe that you are in very
deed the Julius I have known for years. But now let me remind you I am
your friend--"
"Thank you, Lefevre."
"--And I am ready to help you to the uttermost in this crisis, which I
but dimly understand. Tell me about yourself, and let me see what I can
do."
"You can do nothing," said Julius, sadly shaking his head. "Understand
me; I am not going to state a case for diagnosis. Put that idea aside; I
merely wish to confess myself to my friend."
"But surely," said Lefevre, "I may be your physician as well as your
friend. As long as you have life there is hope of life."
"No, no, no, Lefevre! There is a depth of life--life on the lees--that
is worse than death! If I could retrace my steps to the beginning of
this, taking my knowledge with me, then--! But no, I must go my
appointed way, and face what is beyond.... But let me tell you my story.
"You have heard something of my parentage from Dr Rippon, I believe. My
father was Spanish, and my mother was English. I think I was born
without that sense of responsibility to a traditional or conventional
standard which is called Conscience, and that sense of obligation to
consider others as important as myself, which, I believe, they call
Altruism. I do not know whether the lack of these senses had been
manifest in my mother's family, but I am sure it had been in my
father's. For generations it had been a law unto itself; none of its
members had known any duty but the fulfilment of his desires; and I
believe even that kind of outward conscience called Honour had scarcely
existed for some of them. I had from my earliest recollection the nature
of these ancestors: they, though dead, desired, acted, lived in
me,--with something of a difference, due to I know not what. Let me try
to state the fact as it appears to me looking back: I was for myself the
one consciousness, the one person in the world, all else--trees, beasts,
men and women, and what not--being the medium in which, and on which, I
lived. I conceived of nothing around me but as existing to please, to
amuse, to delight me, and if anything showed itself contrary to these
ends, I simply avoided it. What I wished to do I did; what I wished to
have I had;--and nothing else. I do not suppose that in these points I
was different from most other children of wealthy parents. Where I
differed, I believe, was in having a peculiarly sensitive, and at the
same time admirably healthy, constitution of body, which induced a
remarkable development of desire and gratification. I can hardly make
you understand, I am sure I cannot make you feel--I myself cannot feel,
I can only remember--what a bright natural creature I was when I was
young."
"Don't I remember well," said Lefevre, "what you were like when I first
met you in Paris?"
"Ah," said Julius, "the change had begun then,--the change that has
brought me to this. I contemplate myself as I was before that with
bitter envy and regret. I was as a being sprung fresh from the womb of
primitive Nature. I delighted in Nature as a child delights in its
mother, and I throve on my delight as a child thrives. I refused to go
to school--and indeed little pressure was put upon me--to be drilled in
the paces and hypocrisy of civilised mankind. I ran wild about the
country; I became proficient in all bodily exercises; I fenced and
wrestled and boxed; I leaped and swam; I rowed for days alone in a
skiff; I associated with simple peasants, and with all kinds of animals;
I delighted in air and water, and grass and trees: to me they were as
much alive as beasts are. Oh, what an exquisite, abounding, unclouded
pleasure life was! When I was hungry I ate; when I was thirsty I drank;
when I was tired I slept; and when I woke I stretched myself like a
giant refreshed. It was a pure joy to me in those days to close my
fingers into a fist and see the beauty and firmness of my muscles. When
solemn, civilised people spoke to me of duty and work, I listened like
an idiot. I had nothing in my consciousness to help me to understand
them. I knew no more of duty than Crusoe on his island; and as for work,
I had no ambition,--why, then, should I work? I read, of course; but I
read because I liked it, not because I had tasks set me. I read
everything that came in my way; and very soon all literature and
science--all good poetry and romance, and all genuine science--came to
mean for me a fine, orderly expression of nature and life. And religion,
too, I felt as the ecstasy of nature. So I fed and flourished on the
milk of life and the bread of life.
"But a time came when I longed to live deeper, and to get at the pith
and marrow of life. I was over twenty when it was revealed to me in a
noonday splendour and warmth of light, that the human is unspeakably the
highest and most enthralling expression of life in all Nature. That
discovery happened to me when I was in Morocco with my father, who died
there--no matter how--among those whom he liked to believe were his own
people: my mother had died long before. I had considerable wealth at my
command, and I began to live at the height of all my faculties; I lived
in every nerve, and at every pore.
"And then I began to perceive a reverse to the bounteous beauty and the
overflowing life of Nature,--a threatening quality, a devouring faculty
in her by which she fed the joyous abundance of her life. I saw that all
activity, all the pleasant palpitation and titillation in the life of
Nature and of Man, merely means that one living thing is feeding upon or
is feeding another. I began to perceive that all the interest of life
centres in this alter-devouring principle. I discovered, moreover, this
strange point,--that the joy of life is in direct proportion to the
rapidity with which we lose or surrender life."
"Yes," said Lefevre, "the giving of pleasure is always more exquisite
and satisfactory than the getting it."
"I lost life," continued Julius, without noting Lefevre's remark,--"I
lost life,--vital force, nervous ether, electricity, whatever you choose
to call it,--at an enormous rate, but I as quickly replenished my loss.
I had revelled for some time in this deeper life of give and take before
I discovered that this faculty of recuperation also was curiously and
wonderfully active in me. Whenever I fell into a state of weakness,
well-nigh empty of life, I withdrew myself from company, and dwelt for a
little while with the simplest forms of Nature."
"But," asked Lefevre, "how did you get into such a low condition?"
"How? _I lived!_" said he with fervour. "_Yes; I lived:_ that was how! I
had always delighted in animals, but then I began to find that when I
caressed them they were not merely tamed, as they had been wont, but
completely subdued; and I felt rapid and full accessions of life from
contact with them. If I lay upon a bank of rich grass or wild flowers, I
had to a slight extent the same revivifying sensation. The fable of
Antæus was fulfilled in me. The constant recurrence and vigour of this
recuperation not only filled me with pride, but also set me thinking. I
turned to medical science to find the secret of it. I entered myself as
a student in Paris: it was then I met you. I read deeply, too, in the
books of the mediæval alchemists and sages of Spain, which my father had
left me. It came upon me in a clear flood of evidence that Nature and
man are one and indivisible, being animated by one identical Energy or
Spirit of Life, however various may be the material forms; and that all
things, all creatures, according to the activity of their life, have the
power of communicating, of giving or taking, this invisible force of
life. It furthermore became clear to me that, though the force resides
in all parts of a body, floating in every corpuscle of blood, yet its
proper channels of circulation and communication are the nerves, so that
as soon as a nerve in any one shape of life touches a nerve in any
other, there is an instant tendency to establish in them a common level
of the Force of Life. If I or you touch a man or woman with a finger, or
clasp their hand, or embrace them more completely, the tendency is at
once set up, and the force seeks to flow, and, according to certain
conditions, does flow, from one to another, evermore seeking to find a
common level,--always, that is, in the direction of the greater need, or
the greater capacity. I saw then that not only had I a greater storage
capacity, so to say, than most men, but also, therefore, when exhaustion
came, I had a more insistent need for replenishment, and a more violent
shrinking at all times from any weak or unhealthy person who might even
by chance contact make a demand on my store of life."
"And is that your secret?" asked Lefevre. "I have arrived in a different
way at something like the same discovery."
"I know you have," said Julius. "But my peculiar secret is not that,
though it is connected with it. I am growing very tired," said he,
abruptly. "I must be quick, Lefevre," he continued in a hurried, weak
voice of appeal; "grant me one little last favour to enable me to
finish."
"Anything I can do I will, Julius," said Lefevre, suddenly roused out of
the half-drowsiness which the soft night induced. He was held between
alarm and fascination by the look which Julius bent on him.
"I am ashamed to ask, but you are full of life," said Julius: "I am at
the shallowest ebb. Just for one minute help me. Of your free-will
submit yourself to me for but a moment. Will you do me that service?"
"Yes," said Lefevre, after an instant's hesitation; "certainly I will."
Julius half rose from his reclining position; he turned on Lefevre his
wonderful eyes, which in the mysterious twilight that suffused the
midsummer night burned with a surprising brilliance. Lefevre felt
himself seized and held in their influence.
"Give me your hand," said Julius.
The doctor gave his hand, his eyes being still held by those of Julius,
and instantly, as it seemed to him, he plunged, as a man dives into the
sea, into a gulf of unconsciousness, from which he presently emerged
with something like a gasp and with a tremulous sensation about his
heart. What had happened to him he did not know; but he felt slacker of
fibre, as if virtue had gone out of him, while Julius, when he spoke,
seemed refreshed as by a draught of wine.
"How are you?" asked Julius. "For heaven's sake don't let me think that
at the last I have troubled much the current of your life! Will you have
something to eat and drink? There's wine and food below."
"Thank you; no," said Lefevre. "I am well enough, only a little drowsy."
"I am stronger," said Julius, "but it will not last; so let me finish my
story."
Then he continued. "Having explained to myself, in the way I have told
you, the ease of my unwitting replenishment of force whenever I was
brought low, I set myself to improve on my discovery. I saw before me a
prospect of enjoyment of all the delights of life, deeper and more
constant than most men ever know,--if I could only ensure to myself with
absolute certainty a still more complete and rapid reinvigoration as
often soever as I sank into exhaustion. I was quite sure that no energy
of life is finer or fuller than the human at its best."
"Good God!" exclaimed Lefevre, turning away with an involuntary shudder.
"For heaven's sake!" cried Julius, "don't shrink from me now, or you
will tempt me to be less frank than I have been. I wish to make full
confession. I know, I see now, I have been cruelly, brutally selfish--as
selfish as Nature herself!--none knows that better than I. But remember,
in extenuation, what I have told you of my origin and my growth. And I
had not the suspicion of a thought of injuring any one. Fool! fool!
egregious fool that I was! I who understood most things so clearly did
not guess that no creature, no being in the universe--god, or man, or
beast--can indulge in arrogant, full, magnificent enjoyment without
gathering and living in himself, squandering through himself, the lives
of others, to their eternal loss and his own final ruin! But, as I said,
I did not think, and it was not evident until recently, that I injured
any one. I had for a long time been aware that I had an unusual mesmeric
or magnetic influence--call it what you will--over others. I cultivated
that power in eye and hand, so that I was soon able to take any person
at unawares whom I considered fit for my purpose, and subdue him or her
completely to myself. Then after one or two failures I hit upon a
method, which I perfected at length into entire simplicity, by which I
was able to tap the nervous system and draw into myself as much as ever
I needed of the abounding force of life, without leaving any sign which
even the most skilful doctor could detect."
"Julius, you sicken me!" exclaimed Lefevre. "I am a doctor, but you
sicken me!"
"I explain myself so in detail," said Julius, "_because_ you are a
doctor. But let me finish. I lived that life of complete wedlock with
Nature for I dare not think how many years."
"And you did not get weary of it?" asked Lefevre.
"Weary of it? No! I returned to it always, after a pause of a few days
for the reinvigoration I needed,--I returned to it with all the
freshness of youth, with the advantage which, of course, mere youth can
never have,--an amazingly rich experience. I revelled in the full lap of
life. I passed through many lands, civilised and barbaric; but it was my
especial delight to strike down to that simple, passionate, essential
nature which lies beneath the thickest lacquer of refinements in our
civilised societies. Oh, what a life it was!--what a life!
"But a change came: it must have been growing on me for some time
without my knowledge. I commonly removed from society when I felt
exhaustion coming on me; but on one occasion it chanced that I stayed on
in the pleasant company I was in (I was then in Vienna). I did not
exactly feel ill; I felt merely weary and languid, and thought that
presently I would go to bed. Gradually I began to observe that the looks
of my companions were bent strangely on me, and that the expression of
their countenances more and more developed surprise and alarm. 'What is
the matter with you all?' I demanded; when they instantly cried, 'What
is the matter with _you?_ Have you been poisoned?' I rose and went and
looked in a mirror; I saw, with ghastly horror, what I was like, and I
knew then that I was _doomed_. I fled from that company for ever. I saw
that, when the alien life on which I flourished was gone out of me, I
was a worn old man--that the Fire of Life which usually burned in my
body, making me look bright and young, was now none of it my own; a few
hot ashes only were mine, which Death sat cowering by! I could not but
sit and gaze at the reflection of the seared ghastliness of that face,
which was mine and yet not mine, and feel well-nigh sick unto death.
After a while, however, I plucked up heart. I considered that it was
impossible this change had come all at once; I must have looked like
that--or almost like that--once or twice or oftener before, and yet life
and reinvigoration had gone on as they had been wont. I wrapped myself
well up, and went out. I found a fit subject. I replenished my life as
theretofore; my youthful, fresh appearance returned, and my confidence
with it. I refused to look again upon my own, my worn face, from that
time until tonight.
"But alarm again seized me about a year ago, when I chanced by
calculation to note that my periods of abounding life were gradually
getting shorter,--that I needed reinvigoration at more frequent
intervals;--not that I did not take as much from my subjects as
formerly--on the contrary, I seemed to take more--but that I lost more
rapidly what I took, as if my body were becoming little better than a
fine sieve. The last stage of all was this that you are familiar with,
when my subjects began to be so utterly exhausted as to attract public
notice. Yet that is not what has given me pause, and made me resolve to
bring the whole weary, selfish business to an end. Could I not have gone
elsewhere--anywhere, the wide world over--and lived my life? But I was
kept, I was tethered here, to this London by a feeling I had never known
before. Call it by the common fool's name of Love; call it what you
will. I was fascinated by your sister Nora, even as others had been
fascinated by me, even as I had been in my youth by the bountiful,
gracious beauty of Nature."
"I have wanted to ask you," said Lefevre, "for an explanation of your
conduct towards Nora. Why did you--with your awful life--life which, as
you say, was not your own, and your extraordinary secret--why did you
remain near her, and entangle her with your fascinations? What did you
desire?--what did you hope for?"
"I scarcely know for what I hoped. But let me speak of her; for she has
traversed and completely eclipsed my former vision of Nature. I have
told you what my point of view was,--alone in the midst of Nature. I was
for myself the only consciousness in the world, and all the world
besides was merely a variety of material and impression, to be observed
and known, to be interested in and delighted with. I was thus lonely,
lonely as a despot, when Nora, your sister, appeared to me, and
instantly I became aware there was another consciousness in the world as
great as, or greater than, my own,--another person than myself, a person
of supreme beauty and intelligence and faculty. She became to me all
that Nature had been, and more. She expressed for me all that I had
sought to find diffused through Nature, and at the same time she stood
forth to me as an equal of my own kind, with as great a capacity for
life. At first I had a vision of our living and reigning together, so to
say, though the word may seem to you absurd; but I soon discovered that
there was a gulf fixed between us,--the gulf of the life I had lived;
she stood pure where I had stood a dozen years ago. So, gradually, she
subverted my whole scheme of life; more and more, without knowing it,
she made me see and judge myself with her eyes, till I felt altogether
abased before her. But that which finally stripped the veil from me, and
showed me myself as the hateful incarnation of relentlessly devouring
Self, was my influence upon her, which culminated in the event of last
night. Can you conceive how I was smitten and pierced with horror by the
discovery that rose on me like a nightmare, that even on her sweet,
pure, sumptuous life, I had unwittingly begun to prey? For that
discovery flung wide the door of the future and showed me what I would
become.
"Beautiful, calm, divine Nora! If I could but have continued near her
without touching her, to delight in the thought and the sight of her, as
one delights in the wind and the sunshine! But it could not be. I could
only appear fit company for her if I refreshed and strengthened myself
as I had been wont; but my new disgust of myself, and pity for my
victims, made me shudder at the thought. What then? Here I am, and the
time has come (as that old doctor said it would) when death appears more
beautiful and friendly and desirable than life. Forgive me,
Lefevre--forgive me on Nora's part,--and forgive me in the name of human
nature."
Lefevre could not reply for the moment. He sat convulsed with
heartrending sobs. He put out his hand to Julius.
"No, no!" exclaimed Julius, "I must not take your hand. You know I must
not."
"Take my hand," cried Lefevre. "I know what it means. Take my life!
Leave me but enough to recover. I give it you freely, for I wish you to
live. You shall not die. By heaven! you shall not die. O Julius, Julius!
why did you not tell me this long ago? Science has resource enough to
deliver you from your mistake."
"Lefevre," said Julius,--and his eyes sparkled with tears and his
weakening voice was choked,--"your friendship moves me deeply--to the
soul. But science can do nothing for me: science has not yet sufficient
knowledge of the principle on which I lived. Would you have me, then,
live on,--passing to and fro among mankind merely as a blight, taking
the energy of life, even from whomsoever I would not? No, I must die!
Death is best!"
"I will not let you die," said Lefevre, rising to take a pace or two on
the deck. "You shall come home with me. I shall feed your life--there
are dozens besides myself who will be glad to assist--till you are
healed of the devouring demon you have raised within you."
"No, no, no, my dear friend!" cried Julius. "I have steadily sinned
against the most vital law of life."
"Julius," said Lefevre, standing over him, "my friendship, my love for
you may blind me to the enormity of your sin, but I can find it in me to
say, in the name of humanity, 'I forgive you all! Now, rise up and live
anew! Your intelligence, your soul is too rare and admirable to be
snuffed out like a guttering candle!'"
"Lefevre," said Julius, "you are a perfect friend! But your knowledge of
this secret force of Nature, which we have both studied, is not so great
as mine. Let me tell you, then, that this mystical saying, which I once
scoffed at, is the profoundest truth:--
"'Who loveth life shall lose it all;
Who seeketh life shall surely fall!'
"There is no remedy for me but death, which (who knows?) may be the
mother of new life!"
"It would have been better for you," said Lefevre, sitting down again
with his head in his hands, "better--if you had never seen Nora."
"Nay, nay," cried Julius, sitting up, animate with a fresh impulse of
life. "Better for her, dear, beautiful soul, but not for me! I have
truly lived only since I saw her, and I have the joy of feeling that I
have beheld and known Nature's sole and perfect chrysolite. But I must
be quick, my friend; the dawn will soon be upon us. There is but one
other thing for me to speak of--my method of taking to myself the force
of life. It is my secret; it is perfectly adapted for professional use,
and I wish to give it to you, because you are wise enough in mind, and
great enough of soul, to use it for the benefit of mankind."
"I will not hear you, Julius!" exclaimed Lefevre. "I am neither wise nor
great. Your perfect secret would be too much for me. I might be tempted
to keep it for my own use. Come home with me, and apply it well
yourself."
Julius was silent for a space, murmuring only, "I have no time for
argument." Then his face assumed the white sickness of death, and his
dark eyes seemed to grow larger and to burn with a concentrated fire.
"Lefevre!" he panted in amazement, "do you know that you are refusing
such a medical and spiritual secret as the world has not known for
thousands of years? A secret that would enable you--_you_--to work cures
more wonderful than any that are told of the greatest Eastern
Thaumaturge?"
"I have discovered a method," answered the doctor,--"an imperfect,
clumsy method--for myself, of transmitting nervous force or ether for
curative purposes. That, for the present, must be enough for me. I
cannot hear your secret, Julius."
"Lefevre, I beg of you," pleaded Julius, "take it from me. I have
promised myself, as a last satisfaction, that the secret I have
guarded--it is not altogether mine: it is an old oriental secret--that
now I would hand it over to you for the good of mankind, that at the
last I might say to myself, 'I have, after all, opened my hand liberally
to my fellow-men!' For pity's sake, Lefevre, don't deny me that small
final satisfaction!"
"Julius," said Lefevre, firmly, "if your method is so perfect--as I
believe it must be from what I have seen--I dare not lay on myself the
responsibility of possessing its secret."
"Would not my example keep you from using it selfishly?"
"Does the experience of another," demanded the doctor, "however untoward
it may be, ever keep a man from making his own? I dare not--I dare not
trust myself to hold your perfect secret."
"Then share it with others," responded Julius, promptly; "and I daresay
it is not so perfect, but that it could be made more perfect still."
"I'll have nothing to do with it, Julius; you must keep and use it
yourself."
"Then," cried Julius, throwing himself on his bed of cordage, "then
there will be, indeed, an end of me!"
There was no sound for a time, but the soft rush of the sea at the bows
of the yacht. They had left the Thames water some distance behind, and
were then in that part of the estuary where it is just possible in
mid-channel to descry either coast. The glorious rose of dawn was just
beginning to flame in the eastern sky. Lefevre looked about him, and
strove to shake off the sensation, which would cling to him, that he was
involved in a strange dream. There lay Julius or Hernando Courtney
before him; or at least the figure of a man with his face hid in his
hands. What more could be said or done?
In the meantime light was swiftly rushing up the sky and waking all
things to life. A flock of seagulls came from the depth of the night and
wheeled about the yacht, their shrill screams strangely softened in the
morning air. At the sound of them Julius roused himself, and raised
himself on his elbow to watch their beautiful evolutions. As he watched,
one and another swooped gracefully to the water, and hanging there an
instant, rose with a fish and flew away. Julius flung himself again on
his face.
"O God!" he cried. "Is it not horrible? Even on such a beautiful day as
this death wakes as early as life! Devouring death is ushered in by the
dawn, hand in hand with generous life! Awful, devilish Nature! that
makes all creatures full of beauty and delight, and then condemns them
to live upon each other! Nature is the sphinx: she appears soft and
gentle and more lovely than heart can bear, but if you look closer, you
see she is a creature with claws and teeth that rend and devour! I
thought, fool that I was! that I had found the secret to solve her
riddle! But it was an empty hope, a vain imagination.... Yet, I have
lived! Yes, I have lived!"
He rose and stood erect, facing the dawn, with his back to Lefevre. He
stood thus for some time, with one foot on the low bulwark of the
vessel, till the sun leaped above the horizon and flamed with blinding
brilliance across the sea.
"Ah!" he murmured. "The superb, the glorious sun! Unwearied lord of
Creation! Generous giver of all light and life! And yet, who knows what
worlds he may not have drawn into his flaming self, and consumed during
the æons of his existence? It is ever and everywhere the same: death in
company with life! And swift, strong death is better than slow, weak
life!... Almost the splendour and inspiration of his rising tempt me to
stay! Great nourisher and renewer of life's heat!"
He put off his fur coat, and let it fall on the deck, and stood for a
while as if wrapt in ecstasy. Then, before Lefevre could conceive his
intention, his feet were together on the bulwark, and with a flash and a
plunge he was gone!
Amazement held the doctor's energies congealed, though but for an
instant or two. Then he threw off hat and coat, and stood alert and
resolute to dive to Julius's rescue when he rose, while those who manned
the yacht prepared to cast a buoy and line. Not a ripple or flash of
water passed unheeded; the flood of sunshine rose fuller and fuller over
the world; moments grew to minutes, and minutes swelled to hopeless
hours under the doctor's weary eyes, till it seemed to them as if the
universe were only a swirling, greedy ocean;--but no sign appeared of
his night's companion: his life was quenched in the depths of the
restless waters, as a flaming meteor is quenched in night. At length
Lefevre ordered the yacht to stand away to the shore, his heart torn
with grief and self-upbraiding. He had called Courtney his friend, and
yet until that last he had never won his inner confidence; and now he
knew that his friend--he of the gentle heart, the peerless intelligence,
and the wildly erring life--was dead in the hour of self-redemption.
When he had landed, however, given to the proper authorities such
information as was necessary, and set off by train on his return to
town, the agitation of his grief began to assuage; and when next day,
upon the publication in the papers of the news of Courtney's death by
drowning, a solicitor called in Savile Row with a will which he had
drawn up two days before, and by which all Julius Courtney's property
was left to Dr Lefevre, to dispose of as he thought best, "for
scientific and humane ends," the doctor admitted to his reason that a
death that could thus calmly be prepared was not lightly to be
questioned.
"He must have known best," he said to himself, as he bowed over his
hands--"he must have known best when to put off the poisoned garment of
life he had woven for himself."