Orson Vane was taking lunch with Professor Vanlief. Jeannette, learning
of Vane's coming, had absented herself.
"It is true," Vane was saying, "that I can assert what no other man has
asserted before,--that I know the exact mental machinery of two human
beings. Yes; that is quite true. But--"
"I promised nothing more," remarked Vanlief.
"No. That is true, too. I have lived the lives of others; I have given
their thoughts a dwelling. But I am none the happier for that."
"Oh," admitted Vanlief, "wisdom does not guarantee happiness...." He
drummed with his fine, long fingers, upon the table-cloth. Vane,
watching him, noted the almost transparent quality of his skin. Under
that admirable mask of military uprightness there was an aging, a fading
process going on, that no keen observer could miss. "It is the pursuit,
not the capture of wisdom, that brings happiness. Wisdom is too often
only a bubble that bursts when you touch it."
"Perhaps that is it. At any rate I know that I do not love my neighbor
any more because I have fathomed some of his thoughts. Moreover,
Professor, has it occurred to you that your discovery, your secret,
carries elements of danger with it? Take my own experiments; there might
have been tragic results; whole lives might have been ruined. In one
case I was nearly the victim of a tragedy myself; I might have become,
for all time, the dreadful creature I was giving house-room to. In the
other, there was no more than a farce possible; the visiting spirit was,
after all, in subjection to my own. I think you will have to simplify
the details of your marvelous secret. It works a little clumsily, a
little--"
"Oh," the Professor put in, "I am perfecting the process. I spend my
days and my nights in elaborating the details. I mean to have it in the
simplest, most unmistakable perfection before I hand it over to the
human race."
"Sometimes I think," mused Vane, "that your boon will be a doubtful one.
I can see no good to be gained. My whole point of view is changing. I
ached for such a chance of wisdom once; now that it has come to me I am
sad because the things I have learned are so horrible, so silly. I had
not thought there were such souls in the world; or not, at any rate, in
the immediate world about me."
"Oh," the Professor went on, steadfastly, "there will be many benefits
in the plan. Doctors will be able to go at once to the root of any
ailments that have their seat in the brain. Witnesses cab be made to
testify the truth. Oh--there are ever so many possibilities."
"As many for evil as for good. Second-rate artists could steal the
ideas, the inventions of others. No inventor, no scientist, would be
sure of keeping his secrets. The thing would be a weapon in the hands of
the unscrupulous."
"Ah, well," smiled Vanlief, "so far I have not made my discovery public,
have I? It is a thing I must consider very carefully. As you say, there
are arguments on either side. But you must bear in mind that you are
somewhat embittered. It was your own fault; you chose the subject
wittingly. If you were to read a really beautiful mind, you might turn
to the other extreme; you might urge me to lose no time in giving the
world my secret. The wise way is between the two; I must go forward with
my plans, prepared for either course. I may take it to my grave with me,
or I may give it to the world; but, so far, it is still a little
incomplete; it is not ripe for general distribution. Instead of the one
magic mirror there must be myriads of them. There are stupendous
opportunities. All that you have told me of your own experiences in
these experiments has proved my skill to have been wisely employed; your
success was beyond my hopes. Do you think you will go on?"
Orson Vane did not answer at once. It was something he had been asking
himself; he was not yet sure of the answer.
"I haven't made up my mind," he replied. "So far I have hardly been
repaid for my time and the vital force employed. I almost feel toward
these experiments as toward a vice that refines the mind while
coarsening the frame. That is the story of the most terrible vices, I
think; they corrode the body while gilding the brain. But this much I
know; if I use your mirror again it will not be to borrow a merely smart
soul; I mean to go to some other sphere of life. That one is too
contracted."
"Strange," said the Professor, "that you should have said that.
Jeannette pretends she thinks that, too. I cannot get her to take her
proper position in the world. She is a little elusive. But then, to be
sure, she is not, just now, at her best."
"She is not ill?" asked Vane, with a guilty start.
"Nothing tangible. But not--herself...."
Vane observed that he wished he might have found her in; he feared he
had offended her; he hoped the Professor would use his kind offices
again to soften the young lady's feelings toward him. Then he got up to
go.
Strolling along the avenue he noted certain aspects of the town with an
appreciation that he had not always given them. He had seen these things
from so many other points of view of late; had been in sympathy with
them, had made up a fraction of their more grotesque element; that to
see them clearly with his own eyes had a sort of novelty. The life of
to-day, as it appeared on the smartest surfaces, was, he reflected, a
colorful if somewhat soulless picture....
The young men sit in the clubs and in the summer casinos, smoking and
wondering what the new mode in trousers is to be; an acquaintance goes
by; he has a hat that is not quite correct, and his friends comment on
it yawningly; he has not the faintest notion of polite English, but
nobody cares; a man who has written great things walks by, but he wears
a creased coat, and the young men in the smoking-room sniff at him. In
the drags and the yachts the women and the girls sit in radiance and gay
colors and arrogant unconsciousness of position and power; they talk of
golfing and fashion and mustachios; Mrs. Blank is going a hot pace and
Mrs. Landthus is a thoroughbred; adjectives in the newest sporting slang
fly about blindingly; the language is a curious argot, as distinct as
the tortuous lingo of the Bowery. A coach goes rattling by, the horses
throwing their heads in air, and their feet longing for the Westchester
roads. The whip discusses bull-terriers; the people behind him are
declaring that the only thing you can possibly find in the Waldorf rooms
is an impossible lot of people. The complexions of all these people,
intellectually presentable in many ways, and fashionable in yet more
modes, are high in health. They look happy, prosperous and
satisfied....
Yes, there was a superficial fairness to the picture, Vane admitted. If
only, if only, he had not chosen to look under the surface! Now that he
had seen the world with other eyes, its fairness could rarely seem the
same to him.
A sturdy beggar approached him, with a whine that proved him an
admirable actor. But Vane could not find it in him to reflect that if
there is one thing more than another that lends distinction to a town it
is an abundance of beggars.
He wondered how it would be to annex this healthy impostor's mite of a
soul. But no; there could be little wisdom gained there.
He made, finally, for the Town and Country Club, and tried to immerse
himself in the conversation that sped about. The talked turned to the
eminent actor, Arthur Wantage. The subject of that man's alleged
eccentricities invariably brought out a flood of the town's stalest
anecdotes. Vane, listening in a lazy mood, made up his mind to see
Wantage play that night. It would be a distraction. It would show him,
once again, the present limit in one human being's portraiture of
another; he would see the highest point to which external imitation
could be brought; he could contrast it with the heights to which he
himself had ascended.
It would be a chance for him to consider Wantage, for the first time in
his life, as a merely second-rate actor. This player was an adept only
in the making the shell, the husk, seem lifelike; since he could not
read the character, how could he go deeper?
The opportunities the theatre held for him suddenly loomed vast before
Vane.