Strange Scenes in Curzon Street.
Ithappened, however, that just when all the bays and creeks of Dr Lefevre's attention were occupied, as by a springtide, with the excellent, the divine fortune that had come to him,—when he seemed thus most completely divorced from anxious speculation about Julius Courtney and "M. Dolaro," his attention was suddenly and in unexpected fashion hurried again to the mystery. The doctor had not seen Julius since the day he had received him in his bedroom—it must be admitted he had notsought to see him—but he had heard now and then from his mother, in casual notes and postscripts, that Courtney continued to call in Curzon Street.
On a certain evening Lady Lefevre gave a dinner and a reception, designed to introduce Lady Mary to the Lefevre circle. Julius was not at dinner (at which only members of the two families sat down), but he was expected to appear later. It is probable, under the circumstances, that Lefevre would not have remarked the absence of Julius from the dinner-table, had it not been for Nora. He was painfully struck with her appearance and demeanour. She seemed to have lost much of her beautiful vigour and bloom of health, like a flower that has been for some time cut from its stem; and she, who had been wont to be ready and gay ofspeech, was now completely silent, yet without constraint, and as if wrapt in a dream.
"What has come over Nora?" asked Lefevre of his mother when they had gone to the drawing-room.
"Ah," said Lady Lefevre, "you have noticed something, have you? Do you find her very changed, then?"
"Very much changed."
"It's this attachment of hers to Julius. I want to have a talk with you about it presently. She seems scarcely to live when he is not with her. She sits like that always when he is gone, and appears only to dream and wait,—wait with her life as if suspended till he comes back."
"Has it, indeed, got so far as that?" said her son with concern. "I had better have a word or two with Julius about it."
Just then Mr Courtney was announced, and there were introductions on this side and on that. He turned to be introduced to Lady Mary, and for the time Lefevre forgot his sister, so engrossed was he with the altered aspect of his friend. He looked worn and weary, like a student when the dawn finds him still at his books. Lady Lefevre expressed that in her question—
"Why, Julius, have you taken to hard work? You're not looking well, and we have not seen you for days."
A flush rose to tinge his cheek, but it sank as soon as it appeared.
"I have been out of sorts," said he; "that is all. And you have not seen me because I have bought a yacht and have been trying it on the river."
"A yacht!" exclaimed Lefevre. "I did not know you cared for the water."
"Youknow me," laughed Julius in his own manner, "and not know that I care for everything!" So saying, he laid his hand on Lefevre's arm. The act was not remarkable, but its result was, for Lefevre felt it as if it were a blow, and stood astonished at it.
During this interchange of words Lefevre (with Lady Mary) had been moving with Julius, as he drew off across the room to greet Nora, and the doctor could not help observing how the attention of all the company was bent on his friend. Before his entrance all had been chatting or laughing easily with their neighbours; now they seemed as constrained and belittled as is a crowd of courtiers when a royal personage appears in their midst. In truth, Julius at all times had a grace, an ease, and a distinction of manner not unworthy of aprince; but on this occasion he had an added something, an indefinable attraction which strangely held the attention. Lefevre, therefore, was scarcely surprised (though, perhaps, a trifle disappointed, considering that he was a lover) to note that Lady Mary was regarding Julius with a silent, wide-eyed fascination. They convoyed Julius to Nora, and then withdrew, leaving them together.
There were several fresh arrivals and new introductions to Lady Mary. These, Lefevre observed, she went through half-absently, still turning her eyes on Julius in the intervals with open and intense interest.
"Well," said Lefevre at length, smiling in spite of a twinge of jealousy, "what do you think, now you have seen him, of the fascinating Julius?"
She gave him no answering smile, but replied as if she painfully withdrew herself from abstraction,—"I—I don't know. He is very interesting and very strange. I—I can't make him out. I don't know."
Then Lefevre turned his eyes on Julius, and became aware of something strained in the relations of his sister and his friend. He could not forbear to look, and as he continued looking he instinctively felt that a passionate scene was being silently enacted between them. They sat markedly apart. Nora's bosom heaved with suppressed emotion, and her look, when raised to Julius, plied him with appeal or reproach—Lefevre could not determine which. The doctor's interest almost drew him over to them, when Lady Lefevre appeared and said to Julius—
"Do go to the piano, Julius, and wake us up."
Nora put out her hand with a gesture which plainly meant, "Don't!... Don't leave me!"
But Julius rose, and as he turned (the doctor noted) he bent an inscrutable look of pain on Nora. He sat down at the piano and struck a wild, sad chord. Instantly it became as if the people in the room were the instrument upon which he played,—as if the throbbing human hearts around him were directly connected by invisible strings with the ivory keys that pulsed beneath his fingers. What was the music he played no one knew, no one cared, no one inquired: each individual person was held and played upon, and was allowed no pause for reflection or criticism. The music carried all away as on the floodof time, showing them, on one hand, sunshine and beauty and joy, and all the pride of life; and on the other, darkness and cruelty, despair, and defiance, and death. It might have been, on the one hand, the music with which Orpheus tamed the beasts; and on the other, that which Æschylus arranged to accompany the last act of his tragedy of "Prometheus Bound." There was, however, no clear distinction between the joyous airs and the sombre: all were wrought and mingled into an exciting and bewildering atmosphere of melody, which thrilled the heart and maddened the brain. But as the music continued, its joyous strains died out; the instrument cried aloud in horror and pain, as if the vulture of Prometheus were tearing at its vitals; darkness seemed to descend upon the room—a darkness alivewith the sighs and groans, the disillusions and tears, of lost souls. The men sat transfixed with agony and dread, the women were caught in the wild clutches of hysteria, and Courtney himself was as if possessed with a frenzy: his features were rigid, his eyes dilated, and his hair rose and clung in wavy locks, so that he seemed a very Gorgon's head. The only person apparently unmoved was old Dr Rippon, whose pale, gaunt form rose in the background, sinister and calm as Death!
The situation was at its height, when a black cat (a pet of Miss Lefevre's) suddenly leaped on the top of the piano with a canary in its mouth, and in the presence of them all, laid its captive before Julius Courtney. The music ceased with a dissonant crash. With a cry Julius roseand laid his hand on the cat's neck: to the general amazement the cat lay down limp and senseless, and the little golden bird fluttered away. Then the sobs of the women, hitherto controlled, broke out, and the murmurs of the men.
"O Julius! Julius! what have you done?" cried Nora, sweeping up to him in an ecstasy of emotion.
He caught her in his arms, when with a strange cry—a strained kind of laugh with a hysterical catch in it—she sank fainting on his breast. With a sharp exclamation of pain and fear he bore her swiftly from the room (he was near the door) and into a little conservatory that opened upon the staircase, casting his eyes upon Lefevre as he went, and saying, "Come! come quick!" Lefevre then woke to the fact that he had been fixedly regarding this last strangescene, while Lady Mary clung trembling to his arm. He hurried out after Julius, followed by Lady Mary and his mother.
"Take her!" cried Julius, standing away from Nora, and looking white and terror-stricken. "Restore her! Oh, I must not!—I dare not touch her!"
With nimble accustomed fingers Lady Mary undid Nora's dress, while the doctor applied the remedies usual in hysterical fainting. Nora opened her eyes and fixed them upon Julius.
"O Julius, Julius!" she cried. "Do not leave me! Come near me! Oh!... I think I am going to die!"
"My love! my life! my soul!" said Julius, stretching out his hands to her, but approaching no nearer. "I cannot—I must not touch you! No, no! I dare not!"
"O Julius!" said she. "Are you afraid of me? How can I harm you?"
"Nora, my life! I am afraid of myself! You would not harm me, but I would harm you! Ah, I know it now only too well!"
Then, as she closed her eyes again, she said, "I had better die!"
"No, you must not die!" he exclaimed. "Your time is not yet! Yes, you will live!—live! But I must be cut off—though not for ever—from the sweetest and dearest, the noblest and purest of all God's creatures!"
In the meantime Lefevre had been examining his sister with closer scrutiny. He raised her eyelid and looked at her eye; he pricked her on the arm and wrist; and then he turned to Julius.
"Julius," said he, "what does this mean?"
"It means," answered Julius, coveringhis face with his hands, "that I am of all living things the most accurst!" Then with a cry of horror and anguish he fled from the room and down the stairs.
Lady Lefevre followed him in a flutter of fear. Presently she returned, and said, in answer to a look from her son, "He snatched his hat and coat, and was gone before I came up with him."
Without a word Lefevre set himself to recover his sister, and in half an hour she was well enough to walk with Lady Mary's assistance to bed.
The guests, meanwhile, had departed, all but two or three intimates; and in less than an hour Dr Lefevre was returning home in the Fane carriage. Lord Rivercourt and he talked of the strange events of the evening, while Lady Mary leaned back and half-absently listened. Theywere proceeding thus along Piccadilly, when she suddenly caught the doctor's arm and exclaimed—
"Oh! Look! The very man I met in the Park! I am sure of it! I can never forget the face!"
Lefevre, alert on the instant, looked to recognise Hernando Courtney, the Man of the Crowd: he saw only the back of a person in a loose cape and a slouch hat turning in at the gateway of the Albany courtyard. In flashes of reflection these questions arose: Who could he be but Hernando Courtney?—and where could he be going but to Julius's chambers? Julius, therefore (whose own conduct had been that night so extraordinary), must be familiar with his whole mysterious course, and consequently with the peril he was in. Before Lefevre could out of hisperplexity snatch a resolution, Lord Rivercourt had pulled the cord to stop the coachman. The coachman, however, having received orders to drive home, was driving at a goodly pace, and it was only on a second summons through the cord that he slackened speed, and obeyed his master's direction to "draw up by the kerb."
"I'll get out," said Lefevre, "and look after him. You'd better get Mary home; she's not very strong yet, and she has been upset to-night."
He put himself thus forward for another reason besides,—on the impulse of his friendship for Julius, without considering whether in the event of an arrest and an exposure, he could do anything to shield Julius from shame and pain.
He got out, saying his adieus, and thecarriage drove on. He found himself well past the Albany. He hurried back, nerved by the desire to encounter Julius's visitor, and at the same time by the hope that he would not. In his heart was a turmoil of feeling, to the surface of which continued to rise pity for Julius. The events of the evening had forced him to the conclusion that Julius possessed the same singular, magnetic, baleful influence on men and women as his putative father Hernando; but Julius's burst of agony, when Nora lay overcome, had declared to him that till then he had scarcely been aware of the destructive side of his power. All resentment, therefore, all sense of offence and suspicion which had lately begun to arise in his mind, was swallowed up in pity for his afflicted friend. His chief desire, now that he seemed reduced to the level ofsuffering humanity, was to give him help and counsel.
Thus he entered the Albany, and passed the porter. The lamps in the flagged passage were little better than luminous shadows in the darkness, and the hollow silence re-echoed the sound of his hurried steps. No one was to be seen or heard in front of him. He came to the letter which marked Julius's abode. He looked into the gloomy doorway, and resolved he would see and speak to Julius in any case. He passed into the gloom and knocked at Julius's door. After a pause the door was opened by Jenkins. Lefevre could not well make out the expression of the serving-man's face, but he was satisfied that his voice was shaken as by a recent shock.
"I wish to see Mr Courtney," saidLefevre, in the half hope that Jenkins would say, "Which Mr Courtney?"
"Not at home, sir," said Jenkins in his flurried voice, and prepared to shut the door.
"Not at home, Jenkins? You don't mean that!"
"Oh, it's you, Dr Lefevre, sir. Mr Courtney is not at home, but perhaps he will see you, sir! I hope he will; for he don't seem to me at all well."
"But if he is engaged, Jenkins—?"
"Oh, sir, you know what 'not-at-home' means," answered Jenkins. "It means anything or nothing. Will you step into the drawing-room, sir, while I inquire? Mr Courtney is in his study."
"Thank you, Jenkins," said the doctor; "I'll wait where I am."
Jenkins returned with deep concern onhis face. "Mr Courtney's compliments, sir," said he, "and he is very sorry he cannot see you to-night. It is a pity, sir," he added, in a burst of confidence, "for he don't seem well. He's a-settin' there with the lamp turned down, and his face in his hands."
"Is he alone, then?" asked the doctor.
"Oh yes, sir," answered Jenkins, in manifest surprise.
"Has nobody been to see him since he came in?"
"No, sir, nobody," said Jenkins, in wider surprise than before.
It appeared to Lefevre that his friend must be sitting alone with the terrible discovery he had that night made of himself. His heart, therefore, urged him to go in and take him by the hand, and give what help and comfort he could.
"I think," said he to Jenkins, "I'll try and have a word with him."
"Yes, sir," said Jenkins, and led the way to the study. He tapped at the door, and then turned the handle; but the door remained closed.
"Who is there?" asked a weary voice within, which scarce sounded like the voice of Julius.
"I—Lefevre," said the doctor, putting Jenkins aside. "May not I come in? I want a friendly word with you."
"Forgive me, Lefevre," said the voice, "that I do not let you in. I am very busy at present."
"You are alone," said Lefevre, "are you not?"
"Alone," said Julius; "yes, all alone!" There was a melting note of sadness in the words which went to the doctor's heart.
"My dear Julius," said he, "I think I know what's troubling you. Don't you think a talk with me might help you?"
"You are very good, Lefevre." (That was an unusual form of speech to come from Julius.) "I shall come to your house in a few minutes, if you will allow me."
"Do," answered Lefevre, for the moment completely satisfied. "Do!" And he turned away.
But when Jenkins had closed the outer door upon him, doubts arose. Ought he not to have insisted on seeing whether Julius was in truth alone in the study? And why could they not have had their talk there as well as in Savile Row? These doubts, however, he thrust down with the promise to himself that, if Julius did not come to him within half an hour,he would return to him. Yet he had not gone many steps before an unworthy suspicion shot up and arrested him: Suppose Julius had got rid of him to have the opportunity of sending a mysterious companion away unseen? But Jenkins had said he had let no one in, and it was shameful to suspect both master and man of lying. Yet Lady Mary Fane had distinctly recognised the man who passed into the Albany courtyard: had he merely passed through on his unceasing pursuit of something unknown? or were father and son somehow aware of each other? Between this and that his mind became a jumble of the wildest conjectures. He imagined many things, but never conceived that which soon showed itself to be the fact.
An Apparition and a Confession.
Helet 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 scarcelydied 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 hiseyes 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 Lefevrelistened 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 nowto 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'sNeedle; 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 withmisgiving. 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 uponhis 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 stepsby 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 clearthat 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 nothingaround 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 mea 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,—vitalforce, 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 fromcontact 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 ortaking, 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, thanmost 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, andinstantly, 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. Iknow, 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 itwhat 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, "becauseyou 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 onme; 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 withyou?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 wasdoomed. 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—thatthe 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—andlived 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 myformer 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 acapacity 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: sciencehas 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 Ican 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:—