A WILL AND A WAY.

Xc161A WILL AND A WAY.IT WAS in that pleasant season of the year when there is a ladder at every apple-tree, and every man met on the road is driving with his left hand and eating a red apple from his right. At this season, as regularly as the year rolled round, old Carshena Hubblestone nearly died of cramps, caused by gorging himself with apples that fell almost into his mouth from the spreading boughs of fruit trees that fairly roofed his low-built house. This was, as it were, Carshena’s one dissipation. The apples cost him nothing, and his medical attention after his bouts cost him nothing either, for he was the son of a physician, and though his father was long since dead, the village doctor would not render a bill.“Crow don’t eat crow,” Dr. Michel answered, roughly, when Carshena weakly asked him what he owed. The chance of thus roistering so cheaply is not presented to every man, and reluctance to let such a bargain pass was perhaps what helped to lend periodicity to the old man’s attacks. Dr. Michel always held that this was his chief incentive, and, be this as it might, it was very certain that apples and bargains were the only two things on earth for which Carshena was ever known to show a weakness, creditable or discreditable. Most small communities have their rich men and their mean men, but in the village of Leonard the two were one.As the years passed on and Carshena’s head whitened, it naturally grew to be a less and less easy task for Dr. Michel to bring his patient back to the placewhere he had been before apples ripened. If the situation had not tickled a spice of humor that lay under the physician’s grim exterior he would have refused these autumnal attentions. As it was he confined himself to futile warnings and threats of non-attendance, but he always did obey the summons when it came. The townsfolk of Leonard would all have taken the same humorous view of this weakness of Carshena’s but for the trouble which it gave his too-good sister Adelia—liked and pitied by every one. Adelia nursed her brother in each attack with a tenderness and anxiety that aggravated all the community. Nobody but his sister Adelia was ever anxious over Carshena. It was, therefore, like a bolt from a clear sky when, in this chronicled autumn, the following conversation took place at the Hubblestones’ gate. Dr. Michel’s buggy was wheeling out to the main road as Mr. Gowan, the town butcher, was about to drive through the gateway.“Well, doctor,” called the genial man of blood, a broad grin on his round face, “how’s the patient?”“He’s gone, sir,” said Dr. Michel, drawing rein. The butcher drew up his horse sharply, his ruddy face changing so suddenly that the doctor laughed outright.“Gone!” echoed Mr. Gowan. “Not gone?”“Yes, sir, as I warned him time and again he would go.”The butcher shook his head and pursed his lips, the news slowly penetrating his mind. “Well, I certainly would hate to die of eatin’ apples,” he said at last.“I guess you’ll find you hate to die of anything, when the time comes,” said the more experienced physician. “Carshena,” he added, “got nothing he didn’t bring on himself, if that’s any comfort to him.”“Don’t speak hard of the dead, doctor,” he urged. “We’ve all got to follow him some day. He wasn’t a nice man in some ways, Carshena wasn’t, but—”“He was a nasty old man in most ways,” snapped the doctor.“Don’t say such things now, doctor, don’t,” urged his companion. “Ain’t he paid in his full price, whatever his sins was? Poor soul! he can’t be worse’n dead.”“Oh, yes, he can, and for one I believe he is,” interrupted the doctor. His crisp white hair seemed to Mr. Gowan to curl tighter over his head as he frowned with some thought he was nursing. “You haven’t seen the will I had to witness this morning!” he burst out. “Just you wait a little! Upon my soul! the more I think of it the madder I get! It’s out of my bailiwick, but if I were a lawyer I’d walk right up now under those old apple-trees yonder, and before that man was cold on his bed I’d have his sister’s promise to break his old will into a thousand splinters! Wait till you hear it. Good-morning.”When the will was read and its contents announced, the town of Leonard, including its butcher, took the doctor’s view to a man.“A brute,” said Dr. Michel, hotly, “who has let his old sister work her hands to the bone for him, and then turned her off like some old worn-out horse, has, in my opinion, no right to a will at all. How about setting this will aside in his sister’s interests, judge?”A little convocation of the leading spirits of Leonard were met together in Dr. Michel’s office to discuss the matter of Carshena’s will, and what should be done with Adelia, cast on the charity of the village. Judge Bowles, when appealed to, raised his mild blue eyes and looked around the company.“Adelia,” he said, “is the best sister I ever knew. Had the man no shame?”“Shame!” said the town’s barber, with a reminiscent chuckle; “why, he came into my parlors one day and asked me if I’d cut the back of his hair for twelve cents, and let him cut the front himself; and I did it, for the joke of the thing! He saved thirteen cents that way.”“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” demurred the judge; butamid the general laughter the tax-gatherer’s voice rose:“There isn’t a tax he didn’t fight. This town got nothing out of Carshena Hubblestone that he could help paying; and now he leaves us his relatives to support.”Judge Bowles rose to his feet.“Gentlemen,” he said, in mild but earnest rebuke, “the man is dead. We all know what his character was without these distressing particulars. It is entirely true that we owe him nothing, but a dead man is defenceless, and his will is his will, and law is law. Did you ever think what a solemn title a man’s last will is? It means just what it says, gentlemen—his last will, his last wish and power of disposition writ down on paper, concerning his own property. It’s a solemn thing to break that.”“A man’s no business having such a will and a disposition to write it down on paper,” said the doctor. “What were the exact terms of the will, judge?”“Very simple,” said Judge Bowles, dryly. “The whole estate is to be sold, and the entire proceeds, every cent realized, except what is kept back for repairs and care, is to be applied to the purchase of a suitable lot and the raising of a great monument over the mortal remains of Carshena Hubblestone.”“While his sister starves!” added Dr. Michel.“Gee!” exclaimed the kindly butcher. He had heard all this before, but thus repeated it seemed to strike him anew, as somehow it did all the rest of the company. They sat looking at each other in silence, with indrawings of the breath and compression of lips.“There is this extenuating circumstance,” said the doctor, with dangerous smoothness; “our lamented brother was aware that unless he erected a monument to himself he might never enjoy one. We—the judge, Mr. Gowan, and myself—are made sole executors under the will—without pay. In Carshena’s life Adelia was his white slave. In his death, doubtless,he felt he could trust her to make no protest. I wish you could have seen her with him as I have, gentlemen. I shall call it a shame upon us if we let her eat the bitter bread of our charity. She’s been put upon and trodden down, but she’s still a proud woman in her way, and we’ve got to save her from a bitter old age. We’ve got to do it.”“It’s the kind of thing that discourages one’s belief in humanity,” said the judge, in a lowered tone. “This affair might be only absurd if it weren’t for the sister’s share in it. As it is, it’s a revelation of human selfishness that makes one heart-sick.”Dr. Michel’s laugh rang out irreverently.“It’s perfectly absurd, sister or no sister,” he said. “Nobody, not one of us, loved Carshena in life—though I think now we didn’t hate him half enough—and here in death he’s fixed it so the town’s got to pay for his responsibilities while his money builds him a grand monument! I call that about as absurd as you’ll get anywhere. I’ll grant you it makes me downright sick at my stomach, judge, but it don’t touch my heart. No, sir. Keep your organs separate, as I do, gentlemen. There’s one thing certain”—he drew the eyes of his audience with uplifted finger—”if we can’t outwit this will somehow, we’ll be the laughing-stock of this whole county. I don’t care a snap of my finger if Carshena has a monument as high as Haman’s gallows, if only his sister is protected at the same time.”“Well, short of breaking the will, what would you suggest, doctor?” asked Judge Bowles, with a little stiffness. He had not liked the familiar discourse on his organs, but the doctor did not care. The judge was ruffled at last, which was exactly what he desired.“Suggest?” he cried, laughing. “I don’t know; but I know there never was a will written that couldn’t be driven through with a coach and six if the right man sits on the box. You’re the lawyer, judge.”The judge was a lawyer, as he then and there proceededto prove. He rose to his feet and spoke in his old-fashioned style:“Gentlemen, I think I speak for this company when I say that we strongly object to the breaking of this will as a bad precedent in the community. We wish it carried out to the very letter. Our fellow-townsman knew his sister’s needs better than we, and he chose to leave her needy. There are many, many things this town sorely wants, as he also knew, but he chose to use his money otherwise. What a monument to him it would have been had he built us the new school-house our town requires! The wet south lot down by the old mill is an eyesore to the village. Had he used that land and drained it and set up a school-house there, or indeed any public building, what a different meeting this would have been! He was our only man of wealth, and he leaves not so much as a town clock to thank him for. No; a monument tohimselfis what his will calls for, and a monument he shall have. If we failed him here, which of us would feel sure that our own wills would be carried out? In the confidence of these four walls we can say that the difficulties of the inscription and the style of monument seem insuperable. I know but one man to whom I would intrust this delicate commission. I feel confident that he would not render us too absurd by too conspicuous a monument or too florid an inscription. Need I name Dr. Michel?”“Out of my bailiwick,” cried the doctor—”’way out of my bailiwick.” But his voice was drowned in the confusion of the popular acclaim that was forming him into a committee of one. The kindly butcher made his way to the doctor’s side under cover of the noise.“Take it, doctor; now do take it,” he whispered in his ear. “There ain’t a man in the town that can shave this pig if you can’t. I was sayin’ just yesterday you’re lost in this little place of ourn. You’ve got more sense than’s often called for here. Here’sthe chance for you to show ‘em what you can do. Do take it.”The physician looked at the wheedling little butcher with a glance from his blue eye that was half kindly, half irritated. “Well, I’ll take it,” he cried; “I’ll take it; and I thank you for your confidence, gentlemen.”It was a full month before the little company met again in the doctor’s office, but during that period they knew Dr. Michel had not been idle in the matter intrusted to his care. He was seen in close conversation with the town’s first masons, the best carpenters, the local architect, and these worthies, under close and eager examination, gave answers that dashed the unspoken hopes of those who questioned. Here werebona fidebids asked for on so much masonry, so much carpentering, and the architect had been ordered to send in designs of monuments, how high he deemed it unprofessional to state; but arguing inversely, they judged by the length of his countenance that the measurements were not short—he had particularly hated Carshena. It was, for all these reasons, a rather anxious-looking company that met in Dr. Michel’s office at his summons, and the doctor’s own face was not reassuring as he opened the meeting.“Well, gentlemen,” he said, slowly, “it’s a thankless task you’ve given me, but such as it is, I hope you will find I have performed it to your satisfaction. Here are various plans for the monument to be erected to our late fellow-citizen, and here is a plan of the ground that it has seemed to me most suitable to purchase. It has been a task peculiarly uncongenial to me, because I, I suppose, know more than any of you here how this money is needed where it ought to have gone. I saw Adelia yesterday, and lonely and ghost-ridden as that old house would be to any of us, it’s a home to her that’s to be sold over her head to build this.” He laid his hand on the papers he had thrown down on the table before him. The little companylooked silently at each other, with faces as downcast as if they were to blame. It was Judge Bowles who spoke first.“Gentlemen,” he said, “we must not let ourselves feel too responsible in this matter. We are only following our plain duty. Show us the monument which you consider best, doctor.”The doctor was silently turning over the papers. “Family feeling is a queer thing,” he said, meditatively. “I saw Adelia the other day, and I asked her if she wanted a neighbor to sleep in the house at night.“’There’s nothing here for robbers to take, Dr. Michel,’ she said; ‘and if it’s ghosts you think I’m afraid of, I only wish from my heart ghosts would come back to visit me. Everybody of my blood is dead.’”“It’s very pitiful,” said Judge Bowles, slowly.The doctor turned on him instantly. “Do you seem to feel now that you could countenance breaking the will, judge?”“No,” said the judge, shortly, as one who whistles to keep his courage up.The doctor’s fingers drummed on the table as he paused thoughtfully.“Carshena,” he said, “if you can believe me, measured out the kerosene oil he allowed for each week on Monday; and when it gave out they went to bed at dusk, if it gave out on Friday night. But one thing Adelia did manage to do. So long as a drop of oil was in the measure a light stood in a window that lit up the ugly turn in the county road round the corner of their house. I know her light saved me from a bad collision once; some of you also, perhaps. She’s kept that little lamp so clean it always shone like a jewel up there. The window-pane it shone through had never a speck on it either. That’s what I call public spirit. And it’s public spirit, too, that makes her keep sweet-smelling flowers growing on the top of the old road wall. In summer I always drive past there slowlyto enjoy them. When she comes on the charity of the town she may console herself by remembering these things. She did what she could (in spite of Carshena), and nobody can do more. Here are the plans for his monument, gentlemen. I would like to have your vote on them.”The little company, as if glad to move, drew about the table as the doctor opened out the plans in a row. The butcher, whose ruddy face looked dim in his disappointment, and whose despondent chin hung down on his white shirt bosom, picked up one of the designs gingerly and examined it.“Are they all alike, doctor?” he asked.Judge Bowles looked over Mr. Gowan’s shoulder.“Each design seems to be a hollow shaft of some kind, with a round opening at the top,” he said, and looked inquiringly over his glasses at the doctor, who nodded assent.“They are all hollow. You seem to get more for your money so. The round opening at the top of the shaft can be filled with anything we choose later. I might suggest a crystal with the virtues of the deceased inscribed on it. Then, if we keep a light burning behind the glass at night, those virtues will shine before us by night and by day.”Judge Bowles lifted his eyes quickly. The doctor’s face was unpleasantly satiric, and his blue eyes looked out angrily from under his curling white hair. Judge Bowles sat down, leaning back heavily in his chair, his perplexed eyes still on Dr. Michel’s frowning brow. Mr. Gowan, with a look as near anger as he could achieve, moved to a seat behind the stove. His idol was failing him utterly. He felt he himself could have done better than this. Dr. Michel’s roving eyes glanced round the circle of dissatisfied and dismayed faces, and then for the first time he seemed to break from his indifference:“This is all very well, gentlemen—very well indeed. The facts are, you gave me a commission, and boundme to fulfill it strictly and to the letter, and now you are dissatisfied because I have followed your wishes. What did you expect? If you had left the matter to me without restrictions, I should certainly have tried to break the will, as I told you. Briefly, here is my report. We shall have about twenty thousand dollars all told to invest in a monument over our lamented brother. Any one of these hollow masonry structures here will cost about ten thousand dollars. As to the purchase of a suitable lot, which the will directs, I think even Carshena would declare it a good bargain to pay nothing whatever for the land, and that I can arrange, I believe. I have good reason to suppose”—he began to speak very slowly—”that the town would, without price, allow us to erect this monument on that unsightly bit of wet land to the south, near the old mill, if we in turn will agree to drain the grounds, keep them in good order, plant flowers and shrubbery, and further promise to keep a light burning all night in an opening at the top of the monument. I spoke of a crystal set in that opening, with the virtues of the deceased inscribed upon it, but we can, if we choose, carve those same virtues in the more imperishable stone below, and print something else—a clock face perhaps—on the crystal above. That’s a mere minor detail.”Judge Bowles, whose gaze had been growing more and more bewildered, now started in his chair and sat suddenly upright. He stared at the doctor uncertainly. The doctor cast a quick look at him, and went on rapidly:“If you will allow me, I’ll make my report quickly, and leave it with you. I have a great deal to do this morning in other directions. It has occurred to me that as the base of the monument is to be square and hollow, it would be easy to fit it into a comfortable living-room, with one, or perhaps two, small rooms built about it. I have not mentioned this to the architect, but I know it can be done. The will especially directsthat repairs and care be allowed for.” The doctor was talking rapidly now. “The monument will not cost more than ten thousand, the clock about two. Twelve thousand from twenty thousand leaves eight thousand. The yearly interest on eight thousand and the fact that we could offer free residence in the monument should let us engage a reliable resident keeper, who would give the time and attention that such a monument and such a park would need.”The doctor paused, and again looked about him.The whole circle of faces looked back at him curiously—some with a puzzled gaze, but several, including Judge Bowles, with a half-fascinated, half-dismayed air. Mr. Gowan alone preserved his look of utter hopelessness.“Who’d take a job like that?” he said, gloomily. “I wouldn’t, for one, live in a vault with Carshena, dead or alive.”“Oh, the grave could be outside, and the monument as a kind of monster head-stone,” said the doctor pleasantly. “My idea was to have the grave well outside. Four or five hundred and a home isn’t much to offer a man, gentlemen, but I happen to know a very respectable elderly woman who would, it seems to me, suit us exactly as well as a man. In fact, I think it would considerably add to the picturesque features of our little town park to have a resident female keeper. I think I see her now, sitting in the summer sunshine at the door of this unique head-stone monument, or in winter independently luxuriating in its warm and hospitable shelter. I see her winding the clock, affectionately keeping the grave like a gorgeous flower-bed, caring for the shrubbery, burnishing the clock lamp till it shines like a jewel, as she well knows how to do, and best of all in her case, gentlemen, I happen to know from her own lips that she has no fear of ghosts. Why, gentlemen, what’s the matter? I protest, gentlemen.”At that moment Mr. Gowan might be said to be thedoctor’s only audience. The rest of the company were engaged in whispering to each other, or speechlessly giving themselves over to suppressed and unholy glee. Judge Bowles was openly wiping his eyes and shaking in his chair. Dr. Michel looked around the circle with resentful surprise.“You seem amused, gentlemen!” he said, with dignity; and then addressing himself to Mr. Gowan exclusively, as if that gentleman alone were worthy to be his listener, “Would you object to a woman as keeper, Mr. Gowan?”“What’s her name?” asked the butcher.A roar of laughter, not to be long suppressed, drowned his words. Mr. Gowan looked about the shaken circle, stared for a moment, then suddenly, as comprehension, like a breaking dawn, spread over his round face, he brought his hand down hard on his fat knee.“Well, doctor,” he roared, in admiration too deep for laughter, “if you ain’t the dawgornest!”The doctor’s wiry hair seemed to rise and spread as wings, his eyes snapped and twinkled, his mouth puckered. “Will some one embody this in the form of a motion?” he asked, gravely. The judge dried his eyes, and, with difficulty, rose to his feet.“Gentlemen,” he said, “I move that we build this monument with a base large enough for a suite of rooms inside; that we set this structure on the lot which our good doctor has chosen; that we ornament it with an illuminated clock at the top; and further, that—that this female keeper be appointed.”“Seconded, by Harry!” roared Mr. Gowan.The doctor, with his hands on his hips, his body thrown far back, looked with the eye of a conqueror over the assembly. “Those in favor of the motion will please say Aye; those opposed No. It seems to be carried! it is carried,” he recited in one rapid breath.“Amen!” endorsed Mr. Gowan, fervently.And this warm approval of their butcher was in the end echoed as cordially by the most pious citizens of Leonard. After the first shock of their surprise was over, natural misgivings were lost in enjoyment of the grim humor of this very practical jest of their good doctor’s, that visitors now actually stop over a train to see. Many a village has its park, and many a one its illuminated clock; it was left for Leonard to have in its park a grave kept like a gorgeous flower-bed, and at the grave’s head a towering monument that is at once a tombstone, an illuminated clock and a residence.Who the next keeper may be it is one of the amusements of Leonard to imagine. The present keeper is a happy old woman, whose fellow-citizens like nothing better than to see her winding the clock, caring for the flowers, burnishing the town lamp; in summer sitting in the sunshine at the door of the head-stone monument, in winter luxuriating in that warm and independent shelter.“I feel as if Carshena knew just what was best for me, after all, doctor,” she said to her physician, in his first call upon her in her new home; and that worthy, with a nod of his white head, assented in the readiest manner.“Doubtless, madam, doubtless,” he said, “Carshena had all this in mind when he made me his executor. Didn’t you, Carshena?” He winked his eye genially at the grave as he passed out, and with no shade of uncertainty or repentance in his mind, climbed into his buggy and went on his satisfied way.Margaret Sutton Briscoe.XIc174DOCTOR ARMSTRONG.I.COLVIN ARMSTRONG tried to take up his pen with an air of happiness and relief, for it was the last chapter of his great work which he was about to commence. But the effort failed, and he leaned back in his chair, thoroughly tired out—too jaded to be brisk or energetic.It was not his professional work that tired him. A London surgeon, with a magnificent reputation, he had more than enough to do; but he was only forty, and his constitution was of iron. Work agreed with him: it was Thought that utterly prostrated him at times. No sooner was his last engagement fulfilled, or his last patient despatched, than he retired to his library and gave himself up to the great psychological problem that racked his brains. Night brought a short relief: he slept from twelve till six; but morning renewed his wrestlings, and it was only the necessity of attending to his surgery that freed him from the incessant train of thought. Would that his head were as cool as his strong, firm hands!It was the Mystery of Human Pain that was haunting him. Until two years back he had never given such questions a thought, but then the problem began to force itself upon him. How was it that so many suffered a living martyrdom, whilst he himself never knew a moment’s pain? How was it that, having no personal knowledge of pain, he nevertheless felt such an overpowering sympathy with those who suffered, and had such an instinctive inborn gift of giving relief? And then the larger, less personal questions: Was there any guiding hand allotting pain to innocent mortals? Were they really innocent? If there was design in it all, from whom came the design, and what was its purpose? Was it for good, or evil, or both? If no Providence guided humanity, what was the origin of pain? Why was it allowed to be? And so on, in an endless train of thought, one problem suggesting ten others, till the subject broadened out to the doors of Eternity itself, and the mind reeled before its own imaginings.i174Vaccinating the BabyArmstrong flew to his books for assistance, and primed himself with the ideas of the metaphysicians; but he was not satisfied, and a strong impulse led him to try his own hand at solving the mystery. Gradually, after much hard reading and thinking, he evolved a theory which, though far from satisfactory, seemed ampler and better than the ideas of the old philosophers; and then, slowly and laboriously, he committed it to paper. As the work grew, he became more convinced of the truth which seemed to lurk in his views, the foundation of real discovery on which his theses were based. Something of his marvellous insight into disease and distortion seemed to have entered into the book, and he was eager to give it to the world.So this was the last chapter! By Jove! how hot and close the room was! It was annoying to feel so dull and listless, but there was some excuse: nine o’clock at night is not a time when a man is at his freshest, and there was nothing so wearing as this closely woven intellectual work, where every thread had to be followed to its end, every detail thought out, every possible ramification explored, and the mind kept at its highest tension throughout, straining to cover the whole ground and to order in logical sequence its myriad elusive thoughts. Difficult? Why, there was nothing to compare to it! But what was the good of magnifying troubles? Here was the final chapter, theconclusion which was to be so masterly, already mapped out in his mind, only waiting to be transferred to paper. Armstrong wiped his damp forehead, and seized the pen. The room was lit as he liked it, with only a lamp casting a subdued light on his desk; the rest in deepest gloom. Now was the time to begin. But he was terribly tired.*********Kr-rk!Armstrong leaned back in his chair, and pressed his hand to his head. Something inside seemed to have broken with a snap, or a tiny shutter had fallen away, as in a camera, revealing a hidden lens in his brain. His head was clearer and freer, as if some clogging veil had suddenly been removed, and before his eyes there burned a new light, steady and cold, but brilliant. A cooler, purer air filled the room. The present melted away from his vision.* * * * *Far away—so far that everything was dwarfed, but yet as distinct in every detail as though it had been close at hand—Armstrong saw a vision.A dark underground dungeon, with damp standing in beads on its bare stone walls; a man, bound, gagged, and helpless; another, black-masked and sullen of movement; a third, seated on a small platform, with his face in shadow. A feeble hanging lamp, swaying to and fro in the draughts of the cell, was the only illumination.The vision came nearer and nearer, and grew larger as it came, until it reached Armstrong and filled his room, and he felt the dank breath of the dungeon stir his hair. He looked again: the masked man was at his elbow, the man on the dais was above him—unrecognisable in the shadow, but smiling gently; that much he could see. Then he looked at the third man, the prisoner; and a thrill of dread went through him, for he recognised himself,—in old-world, long-forgotten garb, but still himself. And then the whole grew real, with a deadly reality; he was no more a mere spectator,but a part of the vision, and the vision was a part of his own existence. The chill of the room fell on his spirit, filling him with vague, horrible forebodings: the present mingled with the past, and his spirit passed into the limp, helpless figure on the rack. He—he himself, and none other—was the victim in the torture chamber, and the world was black around him.There was a clank of steel on the floor, as though little instruments had been dropped, and then a sudden sharp pang struck him from an unseen source. Another, another, and yet another,—a very multitude of keen stabbing pangs. In uncontrollable agony he raised his voice to shout with pain, but the gag stopped him, choked him, throttled his curses. And the dark figure smiled from above.Then came hot, burning, throbbing pains that shot through him, turning the blood in his veins to fire, and gnawing his vitals till they consumed away. He tried to turn, to roll, to ease himself in any way; but he was bound and rigid and helpless, and his efforts only increased the torture. And still the figure sat motionless above him. He turned his streaming eyes upwards in mute appeal, and his answer was a smile.Then the sharp pains and the burning misery ceased for a while, and his aching limbs rested, and all seemed over. But the presiding fiend waved a silent signal, and worse came—stretching, straining torture, that nearly pulled the wretched frame asunder (well if it had!), and dull grinding agonies, worse than the sharper pains, more cruel and relentless than the stabs or blows or thrusts.And then the worst of all—the whole in combination. Crushing, grinding, distorting, straining, breaking, bending, blinding, burning, flaying, racking, stabbing—more than the mind can picture or words describe—in turn and together, and all the more horrible, coming unseen and sudden and unawares. Crush and rack and burn and grind, till the brain wason fire and the body groaning under its burdens; till the face was furrowed with tears of agony, the whole frame shapeless and broken, limbs useless, muscles tortured, twisted and crushed, nerves shattered, and the spirit within flaming with miserable, hopeless hate. Madness? No; that had come in the first silent moments of fear and pain, but the cruel hand had driven it away, and now there was only PAIN—deep, unfathomable Pain.Then came a low whisper, the cool breath of Death waiting softly outside the chamber, and the wounded soul fluttered for a moment in joyous answer. But the human fiend above knew it, and the torture stopped. Sore, blistered, broken, and useless, he was flung aside to endure still longer in his misery, and Death turned sighing away.*********Armstrong sprang from his chair with curses on his tongue and fury in his heart, and grasped convulsively at the retreating vision. But it was far, far off, and melting slowly into air.Then a great calm fell upon him, and he knew what he had seen. It was a scene from a former life—his last existence—and it was vouchsafed to him as a lesson, a glimpse of the everlasting order of life. The inspiration of a great Message glowed on his brow and in his soul. And this was the Message which he read, clear as the words of a seer:—“For inasmuch as thou hast suffered pain and bitterness of spirit in the past, so shalt thou now know freedom from such; and to thee it shall be given, by thy past sufferings, to discern and make lighter the grievous burdens of thy fellow-men. And the pain that thou hast felt in thy veins shall give thee understanding above all others, that thou mayest cure man’s infirmities and heal the sick of his house.”II.The light of a great revelation dazzled Armstrong for a while, but he rose from it with renewed strength and hope and courage, resolved to devote himself more than ever to the healing art. And first he destroyed his manuscript, for his theories were shattered and forgotten. The mystery of human pain was still unsolved; but was it for him to solve it? Providence had given him another mission,—to heal and cure. And Providence had given him the clue to one mystery, at all events—his own great sympathy with sufferers and insight into suffering. Sometimes he wondered whether another revelation would follow; but none came, and he pursued his usual career, doing good and working hard. The idle speculations, the restless quest of secret things, which had haunted him and wearied him before, were now of the past, and he lived for work alone.But more was to come—unexpectedly and without warning.It was an ordinary case he was treating: brain surgery. The man, a wretched creature, suffered severely, and was in a broken state of health; Armstrong had traced it to brain pressure, and saw his way easily to put things right by a cerebral operation. He was just concluding an examination, and the patient lay quietly in the great chair, soothed by a slight injection of morphia. Armstrong turned away to get a light—it was five o’clock on an autumn day, just beginning to grow dark—when suddenly there came that strange grating “Kr-rk” in his head, and he felt the room whirl around him. He clutched hard at a table near him, but it receded from his grasp and he felt himself falling down, down, down in giddy helplessness. Then the movement stopped, and he felt, as before, that some weight had been lifted from his brain, and a new, unused sense developed in him. But this time there was no clear light, no pure air, no vision.What was coming? Something, he felt, was in store—some strange, new revelation—and he waited eagerly. As the prophets of old were inspired, so light had come to him, and now perhaps he would learn one more secret of the troubled world.But nothing came; all was blank darkness around him, and an uneasy sense of foreboding stole slowly over him, till his hand shook and his face grew damp with cold sweat.What was that? A far-off mocking laugh? And* * *O God in heaven! Notthatagain! Notthat!He tried to call again, for pangs worse than of death were racking him; but something cold was thrust into his mouth and choked him. And then his eyes, shut tight in the clenched agony of pain, opened again, and he saw the streaming dungeon walls, the swaying lamp, the masked torturer, and the grim shadow-figure seated motionless on the dais above him; and his heart sank within him, and he turned sick and faint.For one brief moment the masked man turned away—to heat his irons, perhaps, or rest his arms, weary of their heavy work—and all Armstrong’s spirit went up in one short, agonised, burning prayer, in one deep, strenuous remonstrance.“I have felt it before,” he cried. “I have endured it before, and I know its meaning. Must I go through all again? Have I failed in my duty? Save me from pain and madness before it is too late! O God of cruelty, Pain-giver, merciless, wicked, infernal, save me, save me, preserve me!”His words, stifled by the gag, reached no human ear; but in the cell a new presence was lurking, and on his face fell a hot, quick breath.A voice spoke in his ear, very soft and gentle and low.“You blaspheme in vain,” it said; “God has not sent you this vision, butI.”III.The torture was over, and Armstrong waited quietly for the moment of restoration to the world; but it did not come, and a new fear seized him. What if he never recovered from this state? As the Powers of Good had vouchsafed him the first vision, so the Powers of Evil had mocked him with the second—the same as the first, but infinitely more terrible, for through the former a subtle strength of will had sustained him, and he had emerged from it wiser, happier, and stronger, whilst now he felt himself deserted and unaided, and* * *Heavens above! What would come next? The physical torture was over, but now his mind was on the rack, and it was worse, far worse!The two grim figures remained in the cell, motionless as statues. A strange detachment of mind, a mystic duality of self, was torturing Armstrong. Here he felt the pangs and achings of the most terrible pain; yet at the same time he knew that it was all unreal, and his thoughts turned to the world above—his work, his house, his friends, the very patient in his chair, waiting and wondering. Somewhere between the two lay madness, and his spirit cried for peace—a world all vision, or a world all reality—anything but this perplexing, torturing union of the two.Quick as thought came the answer. “Look around before you go.”It was the soft voice he had heard before—gentle, but insistent. But he had seen too much of that hateful cell, and he closed his eyes in tight resistance.“Look around,” said the voice, even more gently than before.A shuddering fear seized Armstrong.The spirit read his thoughts. “You are afraid: you dare not look atme. But you shall not see me. Look!”He put his hand to his head and covered his eyes with a convulsive movement.“Listen!” said the voice. “You have not even seen your enemy. Would you not know him?”A cold sickness fell on Armstrong’s spirit, and he shuddered. Why see the monster who had tortured him, the human fiend who could be nothing other than repulsive?Then the voice spoke again, more gently than before.“Listen! I am the God of Evil, but I befriend you. I pass my hand along your frame, and the pain leaves you. I touch your eyes with my fingers, and they open. Look around!”Armstrong rose, sound and strong. The dungeon was dark, but in its recesses he could see two cowering figures, striving to hide themselves from his eyes. One was the masked man; one was the director, the inquisitor, the author of all his misery.“See how he hides from you,” whispered the voice. “But you shall not be denied.Turn!”The sudden thunder of that last word echoed through the vault, and then there came a short, sharp, double flash of blinding light. The first flash showed a crouching, cowering figure in the background, with pale, set face, and cruel eyes; the second struck Armstrong full in the face and felled him to the ground.*********Dazed and frightened, as after a hideous nightmare, he pulled himself together. The match he had taken up was still in his hand, and he turned back, mastering himself with a great effort, to his patient.He lighted the big burner and turned it full on the chair. The man, roused from the lethargy of morphia, slowly opened his eyes.Armstrong staggered back, stifling the cry of horror that rose to his lips; for in that one glance he saw, clear and unmistakable, the face of his torturer—reincarnated, but still the same.IV.Armstrong turned aside to hide his excitement. After all, then, the vision had not been in vain: it was the complement of the first; and now all was clear. The Mystery of Human Pain! His own great book on the subject! He laughed aloud. All that thought and time and labour had been wasted, and here was the truth, shown to him in a dream—the truth that all the world should know. A strange exaltation filled his spirit.“Isuffered pain, and now I reap my reward—strong, happy, a healer of wounds, myself knowing no suffering.Heinflicted pain and torture, and now he suffers for it.”The patient in the chair moved uneasily and groaned. Armstrong went on: “A righteous Judge rewards me for what I have undergone, and scourges him for the evil he has wrought.”“The Lord have Mercy on his Soul!”It was a deep voice that spoke, the words booming and reverberating like the notes of heavy bells. It touched a new chord in Armstrong’s mind, and sent the blood throbbing and pulsing through his head. “The Lord have mercy on his soul!” Why? What mercy hadhehad for others? And with that the fury of hate returned to him and surged through his veins, till he felt himself more demon than man. Every pang, every pain, every racking agony that he had suffered in those two terrible visions, returned to him threefold, burned into his soul, branded on every limb and sinew. Curse him with the curse of the martyr, and blast him with the breath of his iniquities!And then a cold, unnatural calm fell upon Armstrong, and his quivering hands grew steady and cunning as before.*********It was all so easy! The man lay there, half conscious—withenough sensation left to feel every torture inflicted on him, but yet unable to speak or groan. It was a carefully managed anæsthetic, administered just sufficiently to glaze the eyes and paralyze the tongue, but no more. And the brain lay so near at hand!The mad fury of revenge had left Armstrong, and he was cold, scientific and deliberate—no movement hurried, no torment left untried, and all done with the mechanical, even touch of the skilled workman. A pang for a pang, a stab for a stab, a scald for a scald; Armstrong remembered each pain he had endured, and paid it back threefold. On the subtle mechanism of the head he played as on a keyed instrument, sending hot, shooting pains, and dull, numbing clutches, to the remotest parts of the wretched frame.All the poor worn nerves centered within his grasp, and to his eyes they were visible throughout their hidden course, coming to one common end, where he grasped them as with a handle, and turned and ground and twisted and crushed, till they stretched, strained, groaned and quivered under his racking touch. He hissed taunting words in his ears—words that he knew could not be answered; he mocked at the helpless agony. And all the while he watched the blue lips, striving to curse and moan, but bound by the hellish drug as with a gag; and the bloodshot, straining eyes, too fixed even to appeal; and the dumb agony of the whole wretched form. And a grim, silent laughter shook him.But it could not last forever: his hand wearied, and his head reeled. He fell to the ground in a swoon.* * *Bells were ringing—light, airy, joyous bells; and he roused himself. The bells grew slower, fainter—died out altogether—and in their place a voice was in his ears, very soft and low. What was it saying? It was so faint, so indistinct* * *“Onyoursoul may the Lord have mercy!”Armstrong rose as from a dream. In the chair lay a shape, not mangled, indeed, but pale-faced, shrunken, distorted, horrible. He bent his head down and listened to the heart; there were two feeble beats, a faint flicker, and then it stopped.There was a strange catch in the surgeon’s breath. The room was hot and close; he pushed the curtains back, and looked out. It was night now—a deep blue sky, studded with a myriad stars. And one star shot upwards in a blaze of silver light.Armstrong turned away, breathing heavily. There was the body still, and there were the little instruments he had used.The present did not stir him, gave him no thought; but the knowledge of the future was upon him, and he groaned aloud in the new-born agony of his soul. For he knew what he had done: it was his chance, and he had missed it; it was his trial, his ordeal, and he had failed* * *And in the next life on earth his torture would be longer and harder to bear. The Lord would have no mercy on his soul.D. L. B. S.XIIc186DR. WYGRAM’S SON.CHAPTER I.WHEN I met Dr. Clarence Wygram a few weeks ago, I had not seen him for nearly fifteen years. We were boys at school together, and fast friends at that time, but our intercourse since then has been very intermittent. Since he lost his wife in Southern Italy, many years ago, much of his life has been spent abroad, and, though he is to be seen in London at intervals, I seldom catch a glimpse of him. We do not belong to the same set in town, and as, being possessed of an ample fortune, he has never engaged in practice as a physician, his wandering and unoccupied life is little akin to my own. We do, however, meet occasionally by accident, when we talk over old times, vow to see more of each other in the future, and then part for—perhaps, other ten years. Such acquaintanceships as this of Wygram and myself are the most unsatisfactory of all—they can scarcely be called friendships. Life, in my opinion, is too brief for such unfrequent greetings. It is important, however, that I recall, for a moment, this penultimate meeting with my old friend. It happened long ago, but the circumstances are still fresh in my memory. As I have said, this was our last meeting but one, and the date some fifteen years ago.I was about to travel to the North by the night mail, and accidentally stumbled against Dr. Wygram on the crowded platform at Euston. He is always pleased to be facetious, when we do chance to see each other, in regard to our mutually altered appearance sinceour last meeting, and predicts, in jocular fashion, that, ere long, we shall certainly pass without recognition on either side. There is some truth in what he says, yet, to judge by my friend’s careworn and haggard appearance on this occasion, I should say he was aging somewhat faster than myself.It seemed that we were to be fellow-travellers. He also was going north, though not so far as myself, and I willingly shared a compartment, which he had already secured for himself and his son, a stripling youth, apparently about fourteen. The latter was returning to school after the Easter Holidays, and his father (who, by the way, is not above the Cockney weakness of calling every big school a college) was accompanying him on the journey. I remember that, for the first hour or two, we had enough of conversation to beguile the time. Wygram had, of course, been abroad—I forget where, or for how long, but we were quite agreed—we always are, on this point—to view the simple fact of his absence as being a perfectly sufficient and satisfactory explanation of the time that has elapsed since our last meeting, however long that interval may be. After that, our conversation began to languish. Our old friendship notwithstanding, we have really very little in common. Having spent a somewhat fatiguing day, I felt disposed to doze, and I believe that I ultimately slept.When I awoke, with a start, we were travelling at a high rate of speed. On the seat directly opposite to mine reclined my young travelling companion, apparently asleep, the lamplight falling full upon his upturned face. He seemed to all appearance not very robust; I think his father had hinted as much to me on the platform before we started. The boy’s sleep was a somewhat restless one, and he shifted his position uneasily, as, ever and anon, the oscillation of the carriage half aroused him. As, only half awake myself, I sat drowsily watching him, I suddenly became aware that his father, who was looking over somepapers by the aid of a reading lamp at the farther end of the compartment, seemed to wish, by a sign that he made, that I should join him. The thought struck me at the time, that perhaps he desired some conversation with me while his son was not a listener. I accordingly shifted my travelling rugs, and took a seat opposite to that of my old friend.The impression, on my part, that he did not wish the boy to overhear what he said was partly confirmed when my companion began the conversation in tones so low as to be barely audible above the rattle of the train. But I confess that I was somewhat unprepared for the substance of his communication, even when I did catch his meaning. At first, what he said was almost unintelligible to me, but at length I contrived to gather, from what he told me, that some trouble (affliction, I think, was the word he used) had lately overtaken him, and he seemed, though indirectly, to appeal to me for sympathy under his trial. The appeal, however, was entirely indirect, as no particulars were afforded—at least, if they were, I failed to understand their meaning. Under these circumstances, I was about to inquire, as delicately as I could, what the nature of his difficulty might be, when I chanced to notice that, as he spoke, his eyes would every now and then wander from looking in my face, and turn, as it were unconsciously, in the direction of his boy, not apprehensively, or as if he were afraid of him as a listener, but gently and tenderly, as if in deep solicitude on his account. This being the case, I forebore to press the father with questions which might be considered intrusive. The trouble to which he alluded was perhaps connected with the lad’s future, perhaps with something else concerning him, anyhow the secret, whatever it was, seemed to lie in that, or in some other equally delicate quarter, for Dr. Wygram did not give me any explicit details—rather avoided doing so, with a reticence quite unlike his customary frankness. But he had a favour to ask of me. It came to that, in the end.“You know,” he said appealingly, “you are my oldest friend—almost my only friend now, for my wandering life does not gain me new ones, and I beg you, most earnestly, to aid me, to help me, in this trouble—” Here he paused as if about to make some disclosure, then, checking himself, “to counsel me, when I ask you, at a future time.”Of course, my somewhat pardonable curiosity had no further excuse, but I murmured that I would be very glad if, at any time, I could be of service to him. I added that our old friendship justified such a claim on his part, and that, for my own, I would gladly meet it, when necessary. I confess I thought that the reserve accompanying his request was somewhat singular.“Ah, but promise! promise to me!” (he repeated the word with such passionate emphasis as to startle me); “promise that if I write you at any time and ask you to come to my help, you will do it—wherever I may be.”This last clause of his request was a tolerably comprehensive one, as, from the doctor’s well-known migratory habits, the summons might possibly be indited from Mongolia, or the farthest recesses of Crim-Tartary. But to pacify him, for I saw that my old friend was strangely perturbed, I said that I would do what he wished, at any time, if I could; which latter clause covered the aforesaid difficulty so far. He seemed relieved by my assurance. His manner grew calmer.“I cannot tell you more just at present,” he said (this with a glance at the boy), “except that I am in sore trouble, from which, at another time, not now, the counsel of a friend may relieve me. It concerns one near and dear to me” (ah! then the secret did lie there), “and you are the only one I could trust. Perhaps, in time, my trouble may be dissipated” (this with a hopeless, sickly smile), “and then you will be glad I have not bored you with it, but if not, and if I seek fulfilment of your promise, remember!” With which words he abruptly broke off the conversation.Shortly afterwards my fellow-travellers reached their destination. Dr. Wygram had, by this time, completely recovered his vivacity. When wishing me good-bye, a silent pressure of the hand, more prolonged than usual, alone betrayed any recollection, on his part, of our midnight conversation. I did not recover my own equanimity so rapidly; the interview came back upon me, as I sat alone for the rest of the journey, somewhat too vividly for that. A nameless uneasiness possessed me. I wearied myself with possible explanations of Wygram’s alleged troubles. Money difficulties were out of the question in the case of one so well off as he, so simple and unostentatious in his mode of life, and he would be the last man to gamble. His son—pooh! The birch was the best cure for boyish peccadilloes, and he would get that on going back to school. Still, reason with myself as I might, Dr. Wygram’s nameless trouble remained with me; the boy’s sleeping face in the lamplight, the father’s urgent entreaty “remember,” these did not pass away. After all, I would reproach myself for having promised to obey the summons of my friend whenever it might come; how awkward that might be! Why could not he, if so anxious for my counsel, arrange to come to me? Altogether, it was not until several days had elapsed that I shook off the disagreeable impression left by the journey. As for Dr. Wygram’s possible summons, I looked for that, more or less confidently, for several months, then my expectation of its coming began to fade. As a matter of fact, it did come after all, but not for fifteen years. Then it came upon this wise. I had been from home for some days. On returning, a pile of letters awaited me. Sorting them over one by one, the last in the heap was addressed in an unmistakable handwriting. “Wygram’s summons at last,” I said to myself, as the mist of the years rolled away and I was once more travelling northwards in the train; once more my friend’s voice in my ear, “remember!” once more the lamplight on his son’s sleeping face.Opening the letter, I read as follows:—Low Tor Cottage, by Liskeard, Cornwall,Sept. 3, 188—.Dear F.:—Remember promise given long ago. Pray come as soon as possible!ThineClarence Wygram.In the circumstances, what could I do but make arrangements, as speedily as I could, to keep my promise? Within twenty-four hours I was on my way to Cornwall.CHAPTER II.A GIG awaited my arrival at the nearest railway station, and a short drive brought me to Low Tor Cottage. Dr. Wygram met me at the door. Considering the lapse of years since our last interview, I was, of course, prepared to find my friend looking much older; but I was scarcely prepared to see him so utterly feeble-looking and broken, alike, apparently, with age and sorrow, as when he greeted me in the doorway. He bade me welcome in hurried nervous tones; evidently he laboured under the influence of suppressed emotion. We entered the sitting-room: the dinner-table was set for two persons only. He apologized for his secluded quarters, and the humble arrangements of his household. “I have only been here for a month or two,” he explained, “since my return from the Continent.” A staid, elderly maid-servant here entered the room. It was, of course, too early for any confidential talk between my host and myself; and, as the servant waited upon us during dinner, anything but commonplaces were out of the question. I judged from what I saw, however, that Dr. Wygram was living alone; perhaps it was better so. Our intercourse would be the more unrestrained.Somehow, I do not know how it happened, I was the first to break the ice, upon the question of the object of my visit. And this prematurely, in fact within half an hour of my arrival. Now I had mentally cautioned myself, on the way down, against precipitate allusions to the purpose of my coming; yet, as it chanced, I stumbled upon the delicate topic, unawares, before the servant had left us to our wine. It was, then, on his son’s account that Dr. Wygram sought my presence here. As much I gathered from his silence, sudden and pained, when I made the remark.Of course after this, and until we were alone together, I turned the conversation into other channels, in what I fear must have seemed a very clumsy fashion. My host grew more and more absent and distrait. When at length we drew our chairs near the fire, for the autumn evenings were growing chilly, he had not opened his lips for some minutes. I was quite unprepared for what was to come. No sooner were we alone, than, in his attempt to speak, he burst into tears. It was long before he regained his composure. At first all he could utter was a renewal of his thanks to me for coming to see him in his loneliness—his worse than lonely life, as he termed it.I could make nothing of all this, but I endeavoured to assure him of my earnest desire to help him, if only he would frankly confide in me as his friend. It was pitiful to see how, even after this invitation, it pained him to make any avowal. He sank into a reverie for a few moments, then, quickly rising to his feet and laying a hand on my shoulder, said:—“I will show you my sorrow, my friend, rather than speak of it myself. What I show you will speak for itself, for all words are vain.”So saying, he motioned me to follow him, and led the way from the room, carrying with him a small shaded lamp.When we entered an adjoining apartment the shadows there were so dense, and the light we had with us was so feeble, that, for some moments, I could discern nothing. A dull fire smouldered in the grate, but shed no light on the interior of the room, which seemed furnished as a small parlour. There was a large sofa at the farther end, and someone lay upon it covered with rugs. Dr. Wygram held the light a little lower, the rays fell upon an upturned face, that of a boy apparently asleep. I started, for was it not the self-same face upon which the flickering light of a railway carriage lamp had fallen so many years before? The very same, in every lineament, nothing was changed.I am not naturally quick in coming to a conclusion. Things dawn upon me now even more slowly than of old. I was startled for the moment, nothing more; though a creeping horror moved already towards my heart, I had not felt its actual touch.“That is my sorrow,” said the father, turning to me, without diverting the rays of the lamp from his son’s face; then, without another word, motioned me to follow him out. I did so. The shadows fell once more upon the sleeper, even as the shadows of the years had fallen, till that moment, upon my recollection of his features.On a sudden the full significance of what I had seen rushed upon me.“Great God!” I cried, “what is this, Wygram? Speak!”We were in the corridor now, and he did not return an answer. We re-entered the lighted room. My patience gave way.“For Heaven’s sake,” I said, “Wygram, tell me what is the meaning of this! How is your son—the boy sleeping yonder—the same, unchanged—?” The query died upon my lips, for he to whom I spoke was pale as ashes. I read the answer of my inarticulate question, there and then, in his face. By virtue of some nightmare spell, the boy I had seen so many years before, the boy, who by this time should have been a grown man, was slumbering,still a boy, in the room we had just quitted.They say that when, in dreams, anything manifestly absurd or inconsistent presents itself, the dreamer at once awakes. In the sitting-room of the cottage that night, seated beside my old friend, how often did I think myself dreaming, and long for the moment of waking to be precipitated by the seeming contradiction I had just witnessed! For some time neither of us spoke. Dr. Wygram sat motionless with the blank and, as it were, featureless expression on his countenance which I have so often seen sudden calamity impart.Yet his affliction, new and inexplicable to me as yet, must have become familiar enough to himself. After all, it must have been its first, its only revelation to another, which, as it were, reawakened himself to a sense of its utter bewilderment and hopelessness. And to me (of all men) he had turned for help, for counsel, in circumstances so astounding! What could I do? My own brain was in a whirl. The sense of wonderment once past, a painful search for possible explanation succeeded—explanation of what? That was the puzzling difficulty. A problem was before me, but, from lack of all precedent, the conditions of effectual presentation were wanting. How, then, attempt the solution?It must have arisen, I suppose, from the mental confusion under which I laboured that I can give no very lucid account of what immediately followed. I cannot tell at what period of the evening the silent current of our several thoughts flowed into a stream of conversation. But I reproduce here the substance of Dr. Wygram’s narrative, in his own words, as far as possible, omitting some details not germane to the narrative.“My son,” commenced Dr. Wygram, “inherited his mother’s malady, that which in her case proved fatal, pulmonary consumption. The unmistakable symptoms developed themselves in him at an early age. All the so-called remedies had been tried without avail. Humanly speaking, my boy was doomed, my house was apparently to be left unto me desolate. At first I was in despair, a despair lightened to me at last, however, by a gleam of hope. You are aware that I have devoted my life to the study rather than the practice of medicine. Being untrammelled with regular avocations, I have been enabled to explore, more fully than many of my professional brethren, what may be called the by-paths of study—those less explored tracks which are open to the medical scientist who is, by training, a chemist as well. The practice of scientificmedicine, among us in this country, at all events, is in its infancy, although many, whose interest it is to conceal the fact, will assure you to the contrary. If any proof were needed of my assertion, the lame and halting methods in use at the present day would suffice. The insufferable greed for money so shamelessly manifested renders the modern practitioner only a better-class charlatan. Their failures are so gross, their expedients to conceal these failures so unblushing, that I have long recommended an adoption by the public of the Chinese system. The far-seeing Celestials only pay their medical adviser when they are perfectly well. When they fall sick his pay stops till he can restore them to health.“But there is a second, and a higher path, known only to a few, and these enthusiasts, careless of the rewards of the crowd. It is but a dim and perilous way at the best—it is easier to deride those who attempt to traverse it than to follow them. The herd of the profession eschew it for the most part. Present-day materialists will have nothing, accept nothing, which cannot be seen, tasted, handled, brayed in a mortar, fitting fate for themselves as purblind fools! See how reluctantly, how incredulously, the results of even such a coarsely unmistakable remedy as electricity are received by the profession. Yet electrical energy, in medicine, is a clumsy weapon compared with others in the armoury of transcendentalism. There are blades infinitely keener for the expert—viewless brands, wielded by few—the peerless Excalibur itself, known to still fewer—for its point of a truth turneth every way, to guard the path to the Tree of Life.” Here he shuddered, but after a pause went on: “These higher methods have their risks, their inseparable dangers. Remember that experiment must at last be made upon the living, human, subject. Demonstration upon a score of tortured puppies will not avail. Isita wonder that the crude experimentalist, great at the torture trough, and brave initscruelties, recoilswhen the higher issue is at stake? But as I said, my boy was doomed, save, as I hoped, in the last resort of transcendentalism. That last resort I tried, but not until numberless trials in the laboratory had convinced me that my method must avail. I had discounted every possibility of failure. So long did I delay that the lamp of life had almost, with him, burned to the socket. But I was wary; I knew well that the step I was about to take was an irrevocable one, and my chief anxiety was to prevent a possible miscarriage of consequences. My plan, in short, promised to secure for one, already within sight of death’s portal, a lease of life prolonged—by how many months or years I could not tell—that question lay in darkness, but at least prolonged beyond what I could reasonably expect considering his condition. A growth of new vital force—which yet was not a growth—everything pointed the other way, let me say a stock, was to be grafted into the decaying and wasting organism, permanent in its character, constant, without flux or reflux. But (ah! that but which mars all that blooms and hopes!), like all gifts added from without, unlike all properties resident within, it, the gift, had an imperfection, a strange, deadly, and irremediable fault. It grew not, progressed not, aged not (do not start!); and this, its thrice-accursed property, was so malignantly, so devilishly potent, beyond hope of elimination or reduction, that it subdued unto itself whatsoever it touched or joined. Life preserved under its influence would be preserved, not in activity but as it were in arrestment, in default of needed repair, or rather with a subtle supply and repair of its own so elusive as to evade detection.“Thus,” continued Dr. Wygram—”thus, with all my caution, I erred—erred as all do, misled by some devil’s wile, who work against the gods. Fool that I was, my own caution deceived me, and that lying legend of him who sought for immortality, but forgot the advent of old age. But it is past now; otherswould have slipped on that insuperable threshold where I fell. I exulted in the thought that my boy would drink of the water of life and so defy the killing years—but I forgot thathe was not yet a man—knew not that I was condemning him to a life of immaturity. Hurry misled me at the last. Before I knew it, he was almost gone—then I took the irrevocable step. It was well that I worked in secret. No eye but mine saw him as (oh, wondrous change!) he rose from his sick-bed with an assured gift of life in every limb and pulse, so sudden and startling that I dreaded the coming of life’s angel almost as much as I had the advent of him of death. For a time, I say, I would almost, unknowing, have undone that which had been done—but that stage passed, and I only watched and waited.”Dr. Wygram paused. Was it fancy that as he did so I thought I heard a light footstep in the room above us? The speaker did not seem to notice it, but went on:—“For a time I knew no fear, that I had erred I did not know, as yet. For months he advanced in growth towards manhood. Then the spell began to work its hellish will. As he was then, as he is now, so will he ever be. A blight fell upon him, a chill mildew rained itself upon the issues of his life. A true death in life is his, for life hasteth to fruition and then falls; but this existence, with which I have dowered him, continues changeless, dateless, ageless, as the years of the Everlasting. I tell thee,” screamed the father, as he sprang to his feet in a frenzy of uncontrollable horror—”I tell thee my boy will never die!”Overmastered by the contagion of his excitement, I too had risen from my seat. As we faced each other in silence, a breathing murmur rose on the air, formless at first, then died away. Again a hushed murmur, then a crash of chords from an instrument in the room above. He of whom we spoke was playing Chopin’s “Marche Funèbre.”CHAPTER III.I NEED not enter into the details of my stay at Low Tor Cottage, even if I were able to reproduce them with correctness. My residence there was, to me, a prolonged nightmare, with all hope of an awakening denied me. Dr. Wygram had so completely surrendered himself to despair as to be incapable of making any effort. It would have been a positive relief to myself had I been able to have considered him insane, and the mystery before me a delusion springing from that cause. But that conclusion was shut out most effectually by my own personal testimony (of which he always eagerly availed himself) as to his son’s identity, and his practically unaltered condition after an interval of so many years. I had every opportunity of assuring myself on this point. Young Wygram, though shy and backward, preferring to mope in solitude, was our companion after a day or two. But he never seemed wholly at ease, would not join in any sustained conversation, and had an apathetic listlessness about him which was positively repellent. It was vain to try to arouse either father or son from the overwhelming depression into which both had apparently sunk. Some melancholy drives we took together in a pony phaeton through the solitudes of West Cornwall did not enliven us much. It is a haunted land at its best, with its rolling moorlands, and its mystic Dosmery Pool, fabled as ebbing and flowing in its silent depths in sympathy with the tides of the distant sea. As day after day slipped away, I began to feel myself as partaking of my friend’s hopelessness. Yet, if I hinted the uselessness of continuing with him, he would become almost frantic. As he pathetically repeated to me, I was his only friend, the only one to whom he could confide hissorrows, so insupportable when borne alone. Gradually he persuaded me, on one point, against my better judgment. It was finally agreed between us that ere I left some steps should be taken on his part to endeavour to obtain a reversal, or part reversal rather, of the conditions under which his son laboured (I use the periphrasis as the plain words to me are unspeakably painful), by something of the same methods by which they had been compassed. The prospect to me was very distasteful, indeed revolting, nor did Dr. Wygram’s laboured explanations convey much information to my non-professional mind. It is useless to detail them here, they would be intelligible only to the expert. But I could not deny him what he asked. I fancy his wish was to secure some witness of his own moral innocency, should any untoward accident happen. I cannot blame him; indeed, I think he would have been justified in taking almost any steps, short of taking his son’s life, in the unparalleled circumstances of the case.And the time was short. That was another perplexity. The constant state of nervous apprehension which overcame Dr. Wygram whenever his residence in one place lasted any time, pointed, of itself, to the necessity of making haste. Perhaps he magnified this difficulty; I cannot say. But there was something about their retired life which seemed likely to invite gossiping curiosity, in a country district more especially. That the neighbours had already questioned him as to the nature of his son’sdelicacyhe assured me over and over again. What could they mean? “He has been watched,” the father would say, excitedly. “We have already been here too long. They notice his unaltered appearance since our arrival. A growing lad, such as he appears, would have made some progress in the time, and they notice that he does not—nor ever will,” he would add bitterly, “unless my last efforts should prove successful.” It was idle to try to reason him out of these fears—for all I knewthey might be real. It was pitiful to think how long they had possessed him, during many weary years. When I had met himself and his son fifteen years before, they were, even then, travelling as fugitives from place to place to avoid detection; still more harrowing to think that, in the father’s case, from his rapidly aging look and growing feebleness, these wanderings must soon cease. Of his son’s fate, in that overwhelming contingency, I could never trust myself to think. The thought of it often overcame Dr. Wygram himself. He told me once, that on one occasion, when abroad, the terror of this self-same prospect so unmanned him that he had attempted to confide in a brother practitioner, an Englishman, resident, I think, in Milan. “Like most countrymen of his craft abroad,” said my poor friend bitterly, “he proved to be utterly incredulous. I might have known it, before exposing myself to his coarse ridicule. The line of my studies has been so utterly outside the old groove of pill and bolus, lancet and catheter, it is little wonder that the crowd will have none of its results. This professional brother only laughed in my face, rubbed his hands in glee, as at a good joke, asking me if I would not part with my recipe for a consideration, seeing he had some half-dozen youngsters of his own whose growing powers added to the tailor’s bill. English medical men are proverbially obtuse, but for the full development of their sheer obstinacy and mulishness they should be transplanted to the soil which gave birth to transcendentalism.”It was a breathless autumn evening when, in my presence, Dr. Wygram commenced his second experiment with his son. The dim scent of the shrubberies stole in through the open windows—over which the blinds were drawn. On a couch in the centre of the room lay young Wygram in a deep slumber, super-induced by an opiate which his father had administered, to aid the further stages of the treatment. A brass chafing dish lay upon the floor, containing somesmouldering embers; from a tripod upon the table hung a small retort of crimson glass which glowed like a ruddy gem in the flickering light of the spirit lamp underneath.With arms stripped bare to the elbows, Dr. Wygram bent over his son, watching the depth of unconsciousness in which the latter was immersed. For nearly an hour my friend had not spoken a word. I did not wish to interrupt him, but I saw by his manner at length that the critical moment had arrived. He turned to me at last, and in a broken whisper told me that a few moments longer would decide his success or failure. “We shall now, I trust,” he said, “have insight granted us in regard to a hitherto hidden mystery.”I do not know whether he ever obtained the insight in question, but I know that it was never granted to me. For, at that moment, loud voices were heard in the corridor. The door was unceremoniously thrown open, and three men entered the room. Their leader, a puffy, red-faced individual, fixed me with his glittering eye from the moment of his coming into the room. “That is the man!” he said, to his subordinates, pointing, at the same time, to me as I stood irresolute.A sudden panic possessed me that instant. To escape by the door was impossible, as the men stood beside it, but the window behind me was handy. I turned, lifted the blind, and precipitately jumped into the garden a few feet below. I do not believe that I ever ran so fast in my life as I did on that occasion through the mazes of the shrubbery. My one frantic desire was to get away at all hazards from that dreadful dwelling, though from what I fled I could not have told. I only knew that horror, the accumulated horror, of the past weeks, compressed into the moment, possessed me to my very heels. A wretched dog prowling about the garden gave chase to me as I fled, under the impression that I was making off with some portable property belonging to the establishment; butI soon left him far behind, and I do not think that the men joined in the pursuit, beyond the limits of the cottage, if, indeed, they followed me at all. In my terror I never looked behind, but ran through fields, hedges, and ditches till I arrived, breathless and hatless, at the nearest railway station. The officials seemed somewhat surprised at the appearance I presented, but I got a ticket without question, and was soon seated in a railway carriage on my way to London.*********These memoranda, written after a long period of nervous prostration, must be published, if for my own exculpation alone. Shortly after their committal to paper, a longing curiosity impelled me to inquire as to the fate of my old friend. I had promised not to desert him, and that promise I had scarcely kept. At all hazards, then, I resolved to go to Cornwall once more, even if by doing so, I should fall into the hands of the authorities, as I doubted not he had done. At all events, my own innocency was beyond question.On the Paddington platform my apprehensions in this latter respect were redoubled. A young man standing beside me, when I was taking out my ticket, certainly eyed me very narrowly.“One of the minions of the law,” I said to myself; “the affair has got wind after all.” As I was about to take my seat he came forward and asked if he had the pleasure of addressing Mr. F—— of Blank Street. Resolved to brazen it out to the last, I admitted my identity.“You are acquainted with Dr. Wygram, I think?” he continued, interrogatively.I owned that I was. Denial, at this stage, would have been useless.“I am his son,” he said smilingly.“His son!” I gasped. Then, after all, Dr. Wygram’s second experiment had succeeded, and he who was before me had been freed from the spell ofhis youth. Yes, there was no doubt of it! He was now a man! “Is it possible?” I repeated, gazing at him with astonishment.“I think there is no doubt of it,” he replied coolly. “You will be sorry to learn that my father is far from well,” he resumed. “I have been from home for a long time, but am just going down to see him, in Cornwall.”“Just going down to see him?” This was mystery upon mystery.“My dear sir,” I said in despair, “I am very sorry indeed to hear of your father’s illness, but would you kindly answer me one question as distinctly as you can. If you are Dr. Wygram’s son, how is it that you do not remember me?”“I do now most distinctly,” he replied. “I remember travelling with you and my father, many years ago, when I was going to school in the North.”Heavens! Then all the years, since then, had been a blank to him!“Have you no recollection,” I suggested, “of having been with your father since then, a short time ago, in Cornwall?”“Ah! that is my brother,” he quickly returned. “Yes,hewas with my father, when he took ill—been with him too long, in fact, for the good of either. My father, I am sorry to say, has for some time been quite unhinged mentally.”I should think he has, was my inward comment, for I saw it all in a moment. There were two young Wygrams; both of these I had seen when they were youngsters of the same age. Why had I not thought of this before? Is it not my special weakness that things dawn upon me very slowly? The rest, of course, was Dr. Wygram’s delusion, ultimately necessitating his being placed under the care of his friends.“My dear sir,” I replied, after a pause, and with some effusion of manner, “I sincerely trust that your father’s distressing illness may be but temporary. Onhis being able to receive the message, kindly present him with my warmest regards. Meanwhile, one question more before we part, for I am not going by this train; I—I have changed my mind. How many years, may I ask, may there be between your own age and that of your brother?”“About fourteen or fifteen,” was the reply.“Quite so; and when you were youngsters of about the same age, say, were you not considered very like one another?”“Remarkably so,” he answered, laughingly, “as like as two peas.”G. M. McCrie.

Xc161A WILL AND A WAY.IT WAS in that pleasant season of the year when there is a ladder at every apple-tree, and every man met on the road is driving with his left hand and eating a red apple from his right. At this season, as regularly as the year rolled round, old Carshena Hubblestone nearly died of cramps, caused by gorging himself with apples that fell almost into his mouth from the spreading boughs of fruit trees that fairly roofed his low-built house. This was, as it were, Carshena’s one dissipation. The apples cost him nothing, and his medical attention after his bouts cost him nothing either, for he was the son of a physician, and though his father was long since dead, the village doctor would not render a bill.“Crow don’t eat crow,” Dr. Michel answered, roughly, when Carshena weakly asked him what he owed. The chance of thus roistering so cheaply is not presented to every man, and reluctance to let such a bargain pass was perhaps what helped to lend periodicity to the old man’s attacks. Dr. Michel always held that this was his chief incentive, and, be this as it might, it was very certain that apples and bargains were the only two things on earth for which Carshena was ever known to show a weakness, creditable or discreditable. Most small communities have their rich men and their mean men, but in the village of Leonard the two were one.As the years passed on and Carshena’s head whitened, it naturally grew to be a less and less easy task for Dr. Michel to bring his patient back to the placewhere he had been before apples ripened. If the situation had not tickled a spice of humor that lay under the physician’s grim exterior he would have refused these autumnal attentions. As it was he confined himself to futile warnings and threats of non-attendance, but he always did obey the summons when it came. The townsfolk of Leonard would all have taken the same humorous view of this weakness of Carshena’s but for the trouble which it gave his too-good sister Adelia—liked and pitied by every one. Adelia nursed her brother in each attack with a tenderness and anxiety that aggravated all the community. Nobody but his sister Adelia was ever anxious over Carshena. It was, therefore, like a bolt from a clear sky when, in this chronicled autumn, the following conversation took place at the Hubblestones’ gate. Dr. Michel’s buggy was wheeling out to the main road as Mr. Gowan, the town butcher, was about to drive through the gateway.“Well, doctor,” called the genial man of blood, a broad grin on his round face, “how’s the patient?”“He’s gone, sir,” said Dr. Michel, drawing rein. The butcher drew up his horse sharply, his ruddy face changing so suddenly that the doctor laughed outright.“Gone!” echoed Mr. Gowan. “Not gone?”“Yes, sir, as I warned him time and again he would go.”The butcher shook his head and pursed his lips, the news slowly penetrating his mind. “Well, I certainly would hate to die of eatin’ apples,” he said at last.“I guess you’ll find you hate to die of anything, when the time comes,” said the more experienced physician. “Carshena,” he added, “got nothing he didn’t bring on himself, if that’s any comfort to him.”“Don’t speak hard of the dead, doctor,” he urged. “We’ve all got to follow him some day. He wasn’t a nice man in some ways, Carshena wasn’t, but—”“He was a nasty old man in most ways,” snapped the doctor.“Don’t say such things now, doctor, don’t,” urged his companion. “Ain’t he paid in his full price, whatever his sins was? Poor soul! he can’t be worse’n dead.”“Oh, yes, he can, and for one I believe he is,” interrupted the doctor. His crisp white hair seemed to Mr. Gowan to curl tighter over his head as he frowned with some thought he was nursing. “You haven’t seen the will I had to witness this morning!” he burst out. “Just you wait a little! Upon my soul! the more I think of it the madder I get! It’s out of my bailiwick, but if I were a lawyer I’d walk right up now under those old apple-trees yonder, and before that man was cold on his bed I’d have his sister’s promise to break his old will into a thousand splinters! Wait till you hear it. Good-morning.”When the will was read and its contents announced, the town of Leonard, including its butcher, took the doctor’s view to a man.“A brute,” said Dr. Michel, hotly, “who has let his old sister work her hands to the bone for him, and then turned her off like some old worn-out horse, has, in my opinion, no right to a will at all. How about setting this will aside in his sister’s interests, judge?”A little convocation of the leading spirits of Leonard were met together in Dr. Michel’s office to discuss the matter of Carshena’s will, and what should be done with Adelia, cast on the charity of the village. Judge Bowles, when appealed to, raised his mild blue eyes and looked around the company.“Adelia,” he said, “is the best sister I ever knew. Had the man no shame?”“Shame!” said the town’s barber, with a reminiscent chuckle; “why, he came into my parlors one day and asked me if I’d cut the back of his hair for twelve cents, and let him cut the front himself; and I did it, for the joke of the thing! He saved thirteen cents that way.”“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” demurred the judge; butamid the general laughter the tax-gatherer’s voice rose:“There isn’t a tax he didn’t fight. This town got nothing out of Carshena Hubblestone that he could help paying; and now he leaves us his relatives to support.”Judge Bowles rose to his feet.“Gentlemen,” he said, in mild but earnest rebuke, “the man is dead. We all know what his character was without these distressing particulars. It is entirely true that we owe him nothing, but a dead man is defenceless, and his will is his will, and law is law. Did you ever think what a solemn title a man’s last will is? It means just what it says, gentlemen—his last will, his last wish and power of disposition writ down on paper, concerning his own property. It’s a solemn thing to break that.”“A man’s no business having such a will and a disposition to write it down on paper,” said the doctor. “What were the exact terms of the will, judge?”“Very simple,” said Judge Bowles, dryly. “The whole estate is to be sold, and the entire proceeds, every cent realized, except what is kept back for repairs and care, is to be applied to the purchase of a suitable lot and the raising of a great monument over the mortal remains of Carshena Hubblestone.”“While his sister starves!” added Dr. Michel.“Gee!” exclaimed the kindly butcher. He had heard all this before, but thus repeated it seemed to strike him anew, as somehow it did all the rest of the company. They sat looking at each other in silence, with indrawings of the breath and compression of lips.“There is this extenuating circumstance,” said the doctor, with dangerous smoothness; “our lamented brother was aware that unless he erected a monument to himself he might never enjoy one. We—the judge, Mr. Gowan, and myself—are made sole executors under the will—without pay. In Carshena’s life Adelia was his white slave. In his death, doubtless,he felt he could trust her to make no protest. I wish you could have seen her with him as I have, gentlemen. I shall call it a shame upon us if we let her eat the bitter bread of our charity. She’s been put upon and trodden down, but she’s still a proud woman in her way, and we’ve got to save her from a bitter old age. We’ve got to do it.”“It’s the kind of thing that discourages one’s belief in humanity,” said the judge, in a lowered tone. “This affair might be only absurd if it weren’t for the sister’s share in it. As it is, it’s a revelation of human selfishness that makes one heart-sick.”Dr. Michel’s laugh rang out irreverently.“It’s perfectly absurd, sister or no sister,” he said. “Nobody, not one of us, loved Carshena in life—though I think now we didn’t hate him half enough—and here in death he’s fixed it so the town’s got to pay for his responsibilities while his money builds him a grand monument! I call that about as absurd as you’ll get anywhere. I’ll grant you it makes me downright sick at my stomach, judge, but it don’t touch my heart. No, sir. Keep your organs separate, as I do, gentlemen. There’s one thing certain”—he drew the eyes of his audience with uplifted finger—”if we can’t outwit this will somehow, we’ll be the laughing-stock of this whole county. I don’t care a snap of my finger if Carshena has a monument as high as Haman’s gallows, if only his sister is protected at the same time.”“Well, short of breaking the will, what would you suggest, doctor?” asked Judge Bowles, with a little stiffness. He had not liked the familiar discourse on his organs, but the doctor did not care. The judge was ruffled at last, which was exactly what he desired.“Suggest?” he cried, laughing. “I don’t know; but I know there never was a will written that couldn’t be driven through with a coach and six if the right man sits on the box. You’re the lawyer, judge.”The judge was a lawyer, as he then and there proceededto prove. He rose to his feet and spoke in his old-fashioned style:“Gentlemen, I think I speak for this company when I say that we strongly object to the breaking of this will as a bad precedent in the community. We wish it carried out to the very letter. Our fellow-townsman knew his sister’s needs better than we, and he chose to leave her needy. There are many, many things this town sorely wants, as he also knew, but he chose to use his money otherwise. What a monument to him it would have been had he built us the new school-house our town requires! The wet south lot down by the old mill is an eyesore to the village. Had he used that land and drained it and set up a school-house there, or indeed any public building, what a different meeting this would have been! He was our only man of wealth, and he leaves not so much as a town clock to thank him for. No; a monument tohimselfis what his will calls for, and a monument he shall have. If we failed him here, which of us would feel sure that our own wills would be carried out? In the confidence of these four walls we can say that the difficulties of the inscription and the style of monument seem insuperable. I know but one man to whom I would intrust this delicate commission. I feel confident that he would not render us too absurd by too conspicuous a monument or too florid an inscription. Need I name Dr. Michel?”“Out of my bailiwick,” cried the doctor—”’way out of my bailiwick.” But his voice was drowned in the confusion of the popular acclaim that was forming him into a committee of one. The kindly butcher made his way to the doctor’s side under cover of the noise.“Take it, doctor; now do take it,” he whispered in his ear. “There ain’t a man in the town that can shave this pig if you can’t. I was sayin’ just yesterday you’re lost in this little place of ourn. You’ve got more sense than’s often called for here. Here’sthe chance for you to show ‘em what you can do. Do take it.”The physician looked at the wheedling little butcher with a glance from his blue eye that was half kindly, half irritated. “Well, I’ll take it,” he cried; “I’ll take it; and I thank you for your confidence, gentlemen.”It was a full month before the little company met again in the doctor’s office, but during that period they knew Dr. Michel had not been idle in the matter intrusted to his care. He was seen in close conversation with the town’s first masons, the best carpenters, the local architect, and these worthies, under close and eager examination, gave answers that dashed the unspoken hopes of those who questioned. Here werebona fidebids asked for on so much masonry, so much carpentering, and the architect had been ordered to send in designs of monuments, how high he deemed it unprofessional to state; but arguing inversely, they judged by the length of his countenance that the measurements were not short—he had particularly hated Carshena. It was, for all these reasons, a rather anxious-looking company that met in Dr. Michel’s office at his summons, and the doctor’s own face was not reassuring as he opened the meeting.“Well, gentlemen,” he said, slowly, “it’s a thankless task you’ve given me, but such as it is, I hope you will find I have performed it to your satisfaction. Here are various plans for the monument to be erected to our late fellow-citizen, and here is a plan of the ground that it has seemed to me most suitable to purchase. It has been a task peculiarly uncongenial to me, because I, I suppose, know more than any of you here how this money is needed where it ought to have gone. I saw Adelia yesterday, and lonely and ghost-ridden as that old house would be to any of us, it’s a home to her that’s to be sold over her head to build this.” He laid his hand on the papers he had thrown down on the table before him. The little companylooked silently at each other, with faces as downcast as if they were to blame. It was Judge Bowles who spoke first.“Gentlemen,” he said, “we must not let ourselves feel too responsible in this matter. We are only following our plain duty. Show us the monument which you consider best, doctor.”The doctor was silently turning over the papers. “Family feeling is a queer thing,” he said, meditatively. “I saw Adelia the other day, and I asked her if she wanted a neighbor to sleep in the house at night.“’There’s nothing here for robbers to take, Dr. Michel,’ she said; ‘and if it’s ghosts you think I’m afraid of, I only wish from my heart ghosts would come back to visit me. Everybody of my blood is dead.’”“It’s very pitiful,” said Judge Bowles, slowly.The doctor turned on him instantly. “Do you seem to feel now that you could countenance breaking the will, judge?”“No,” said the judge, shortly, as one who whistles to keep his courage up.The doctor’s fingers drummed on the table as he paused thoughtfully.“Carshena,” he said, “if you can believe me, measured out the kerosene oil he allowed for each week on Monday; and when it gave out they went to bed at dusk, if it gave out on Friday night. But one thing Adelia did manage to do. So long as a drop of oil was in the measure a light stood in a window that lit up the ugly turn in the county road round the corner of their house. I know her light saved me from a bad collision once; some of you also, perhaps. She’s kept that little lamp so clean it always shone like a jewel up there. The window-pane it shone through had never a speck on it either. That’s what I call public spirit. And it’s public spirit, too, that makes her keep sweet-smelling flowers growing on the top of the old road wall. In summer I always drive past there slowlyto enjoy them. When she comes on the charity of the town she may console herself by remembering these things. She did what she could (in spite of Carshena), and nobody can do more. Here are the plans for his monument, gentlemen. I would like to have your vote on them.”The little company, as if glad to move, drew about the table as the doctor opened out the plans in a row. The butcher, whose ruddy face looked dim in his disappointment, and whose despondent chin hung down on his white shirt bosom, picked up one of the designs gingerly and examined it.“Are they all alike, doctor?” he asked.Judge Bowles looked over Mr. Gowan’s shoulder.“Each design seems to be a hollow shaft of some kind, with a round opening at the top,” he said, and looked inquiringly over his glasses at the doctor, who nodded assent.“They are all hollow. You seem to get more for your money so. The round opening at the top of the shaft can be filled with anything we choose later. I might suggest a crystal with the virtues of the deceased inscribed on it. Then, if we keep a light burning behind the glass at night, those virtues will shine before us by night and by day.”Judge Bowles lifted his eyes quickly. The doctor’s face was unpleasantly satiric, and his blue eyes looked out angrily from under his curling white hair. Judge Bowles sat down, leaning back heavily in his chair, his perplexed eyes still on Dr. Michel’s frowning brow. Mr. Gowan, with a look as near anger as he could achieve, moved to a seat behind the stove. His idol was failing him utterly. He felt he himself could have done better than this. Dr. Michel’s roving eyes glanced round the circle of dissatisfied and dismayed faces, and then for the first time he seemed to break from his indifference:“This is all very well, gentlemen—very well indeed. The facts are, you gave me a commission, and boundme to fulfill it strictly and to the letter, and now you are dissatisfied because I have followed your wishes. What did you expect? If you had left the matter to me without restrictions, I should certainly have tried to break the will, as I told you. Briefly, here is my report. We shall have about twenty thousand dollars all told to invest in a monument over our lamented brother. Any one of these hollow masonry structures here will cost about ten thousand dollars. As to the purchase of a suitable lot, which the will directs, I think even Carshena would declare it a good bargain to pay nothing whatever for the land, and that I can arrange, I believe. I have good reason to suppose”—he began to speak very slowly—”that the town would, without price, allow us to erect this monument on that unsightly bit of wet land to the south, near the old mill, if we in turn will agree to drain the grounds, keep them in good order, plant flowers and shrubbery, and further promise to keep a light burning all night in an opening at the top of the monument. I spoke of a crystal set in that opening, with the virtues of the deceased inscribed upon it, but we can, if we choose, carve those same virtues in the more imperishable stone below, and print something else—a clock face perhaps—on the crystal above. That’s a mere minor detail.”Judge Bowles, whose gaze had been growing more and more bewildered, now started in his chair and sat suddenly upright. He stared at the doctor uncertainly. The doctor cast a quick look at him, and went on rapidly:“If you will allow me, I’ll make my report quickly, and leave it with you. I have a great deal to do this morning in other directions. It has occurred to me that as the base of the monument is to be square and hollow, it would be easy to fit it into a comfortable living-room, with one, or perhaps two, small rooms built about it. I have not mentioned this to the architect, but I know it can be done. The will especially directsthat repairs and care be allowed for.” The doctor was talking rapidly now. “The monument will not cost more than ten thousand, the clock about two. Twelve thousand from twenty thousand leaves eight thousand. The yearly interest on eight thousand and the fact that we could offer free residence in the monument should let us engage a reliable resident keeper, who would give the time and attention that such a monument and such a park would need.”The doctor paused, and again looked about him.The whole circle of faces looked back at him curiously—some with a puzzled gaze, but several, including Judge Bowles, with a half-fascinated, half-dismayed air. Mr. Gowan alone preserved his look of utter hopelessness.“Who’d take a job like that?” he said, gloomily. “I wouldn’t, for one, live in a vault with Carshena, dead or alive.”“Oh, the grave could be outside, and the monument as a kind of monster head-stone,” said the doctor pleasantly. “My idea was to have the grave well outside. Four or five hundred and a home isn’t much to offer a man, gentlemen, but I happen to know a very respectable elderly woman who would, it seems to me, suit us exactly as well as a man. In fact, I think it would considerably add to the picturesque features of our little town park to have a resident female keeper. I think I see her now, sitting in the summer sunshine at the door of this unique head-stone monument, or in winter independently luxuriating in its warm and hospitable shelter. I see her winding the clock, affectionately keeping the grave like a gorgeous flower-bed, caring for the shrubbery, burnishing the clock lamp till it shines like a jewel, as she well knows how to do, and best of all in her case, gentlemen, I happen to know from her own lips that she has no fear of ghosts. Why, gentlemen, what’s the matter? I protest, gentlemen.”At that moment Mr. Gowan might be said to be thedoctor’s only audience. The rest of the company were engaged in whispering to each other, or speechlessly giving themselves over to suppressed and unholy glee. Judge Bowles was openly wiping his eyes and shaking in his chair. Dr. Michel looked around the circle with resentful surprise.“You seem amused, gentlemen!” he said, with dignity; and then addressing himself to Mr. Gowan exclusively, as if that gentleman alone were worthy to be his listener, “Would you object to a woman as keeper, Mr. Gowan?”“What’s her name?” asked the butcher.A roar of laughter, not to be long suppressed, drowned his words. Mr. Gowan looked about the shaken circle, stared for a moment, then suddenly, as comprehension, like a breaking dawn, spread over his round face, he brought his hand down hard on his fat knee.“Well, doctor,” he roared, in admiration too deep for laughter, “if you ain’t the dawgornest!”The doctor’s wiry hair seemed to rise and spread as wings, his eyes snapped and twinkled, his mouth puckered. “Will some one embody this in the form of a motion?” he asked, gravely. The judge dried his eyes, and, with difficulty, rose to his feet.“Gentlemen,” he said, “I move that we build this monument with a base large enough for a suite of rooms inside; that we set this structure on the lot which our good doctor has chosen; that we ornament it with an illuminated clock at the top; and further, that—that this female keeper be appointed.”“Seconded, by Harry!” roared Mr. Gowan.The doctor, with his hands on his hips, his body thrown far back, looked with the eye of a conqueror over the assembly. “Those in favor of the motion will please say Aye; those opposed No. It seems to be carried! it is carried,” he recited in one rapid breath.“Amen!” endorsed Mr. Gowan, fervently.And this warm approval of their butcher was in the end echoed as cordially by the most pious citizens of Leonard. After the first shock of their surprise was over, natural misgivings were lost in enjoyment of the grim humor of this very practical jest of their good doctor’s, that visitors now actually stop over a train to see. Many a village has its park, and many a one its illuminated clock; it was left for Leonard to have in its park a grave kept like a gorgeous flower-bed, and at the grave’s head a towering monument that is at once a tombstone, an illuminated clock and a residence.Who the next keeper may be it is one of the amusements of Leonard to imagine. The present keeper is a happy old woman, whose fellow-citizens like nothing better than to see her winding the clock, caring for the flowers, burnishing the town lamp; in summer sitting in the sunshine at the door of the head-stone monument, in winter luxuriating in that warm and independent shelter.“I feel as if Carshena knew just what was best for me, after all, doctor,” she said to her physician, in his first call upon her in her new home; and that worthy, with a nod of his white head, assented in the readiest manner.“Doubtless, madam, doubtless,” he said, “Carshena had all this in mind when he made me his executor. Didn’t you, Carshena?” He winked his eye genially at the grave as he passed out, and with no shade of uncertainty or repentance in his mind, climbed into his buggy and went on his satisfied way.Margaret Sutton Briscoe.

X

c161

IT WAS in that pleasant season of the year when there is a ladder at every apple-tree, and every man met on the road is driving with his left hand and eating a red apple from his right. At this season, as regularly as the year rolled round, old Carshena Hubblestone nearly died of cramps, caused by gorging himself with apples that fell almost into his mouth from the spreading boughs of fruit trees that fairly roofed his low-built house. This was, as it were, Carshena’s one dissipation. The apples cost him nothing, and his medical attention after his bouts cost him nothing either, for he was the son of a physician, and though his father was long since dead, the village doctor would not render a bill.

“Crow don’t eat crow,” Dr. Michel answered, roughly, when Carshena weakly asked him what he owed. The chance of thus roistering so cheaply is not presented to every man, and reluctance to let such a bargain pass was perhaps what helped to lend periodicity to the old man’s attacks. Dr. Michel always held that this was his chief incentive, and, be this as it might, it was very certain that apples and bargains were the only two things on earth for which Carshena was ever known to show a weakness, creditable or discreditable. Most small communities have their rich men and their mean men, but in the village of Leonard the two were one.

As the years passed on and Carshena’s head whitened, it naturally grew to be a less and less easy task for Dr. Michel to bring his patient back to the placewhere he had been before apples ripened. If the situation had not tickled a spice of humor that lay under the physician’s grim exterior he would have refused these autumnal attentions. As it was he confined himself to futile warnings and threats of non-attendance, but he always did obey the summons when it came. The townsfolk of Leonard would all have taken the same humorous view of this weakness of Carshena’s but for the trouble which it gave his too-good sister Adelia—liked and pitied by every one. Adelia nursed her brother in each attack with a tenderness and anxiety that aggravated all the community. Nobody but his sister Adelia was ever anxious over Carshena. It was, therefore, like a bolt from a clear sky when, in this chronicled autumn, the following conversation took place at the Hubblestones’ gate. Dr. Michel’s buggy was wheeling out to the main road as Mr. Gowan, the town butcher, was about to drive through the gateway.

“Well, doctor,” called the genial man of blood, a broad grin on his round face, “how’s the patient?”

“He’s gone, sir,” said Dr. Michel, drawing rein. The butcher drew up his horse sharply, his ruddy face changing so suddenly that the doctor laughed outright.

“Gone!” echoed Mr. Gowan. “Not gone?”

“Yes, sir, as I warned him time and again he would go.”

The butcher shook his head and pursed his lips, the news slowly penetrating his mind. “Well, I certainly would hate to die of eatin’ apples,” he said at last.

“I guess you’ll find you hate to die of anything, when the time comes,” said the more experienced physician. “Carshena,” he added, “got nothing he didn’t bring on himself, if that’s any comfort to him.”

“Don’t speak hard of the dead, doctor,” he urged. “We’ve all got to follow him some day. He wasn’t a nice man in some ways, Carshena wasn’t, but—”

“He was a nasty old man in most ways,” snapped the doctor.

“Don’t say such things now, doctor, don’t,” urged his companion. “Ain’t he paid in his full price, whatever his sins was? Poor soul! he can’t be worse’n dead.”

“Oh, yes, he can, and for one I believe he is,” interrupted the doctor. His crisp white hair seemed to Mr. Gowan to curl tighter over his head as he frowned with some thought he was nursing. “You haven’t seen the will I had to witness this morning!” he burst out. “Just you wait a little! Upon my soul! the more I think of it the madder I get! It’s out of my bailiwick, but if I were a lawyer I’d walk right up now under those old apple-trees yonder, and before that man was cold on his bed I’d have his sister’s promise to break his old will into a thousand splinters! Wait till you hear it. Good-morning.”

When the will was read and its contents announced, the town of Leonard, including its butcher, took the doctor’s view to a man.

“A brute,” said Dr. Michel, hotly, “who has let his old sister work her hands to the bone for him, and then turned her off like some old worn-out horse, has, in my opinion, no right to a will at all. How about setting this will aside in his sister’s interests, judge?”

A little convocation of the leading spirits of Leonard were met together in Dr. Michel’s office to discuss the matter of Carshena’s will, and what should be done with Adelia, cast on the charity of the village. Judge Bowles, when appealed to, raised his mild blue eyes and looked around the company.

“Adelia,” he said, “is the best sister I ever knew. Had the man no shame?”

“Shame!” said the town’s barber, with a reminiscent chuckle; “why, he came into my parlors one day and asked me if I’d cut the back of his hair for twelve cents, and let him cut the front himself; and I did it, for the joke of the thing! He saved thirteen cents that way.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” demurred the judge; butamid the general laughter the tax-gatherer’s voice rose:

“There isn’t a tax he didn’t fight. This town got nothing out of Carshena Hubblestone that he could help paying; and now he leaves us his relatives to support.”

Judge Bowles rose to his feet.

“Gentlemen,” he said, in mild but earnest rebuke, “the man is dead. We all know what his character was without these distressing particulars. It is entirely true that we owe him nothing, but a dead man is defenceless, and his will is his will, and law is law. Did you ever think what a solemn title a man’s last will is? It means just what it says, gentlemen—his last will, his last wish and power of disposition writ down on paper, concerning his own property. It’s a solemn thing to break that.”

“A man’s no business having such a will and a disposition to write it down on paper,” said the doctor. “What were the exact terms of the will, judge?”

“Very simple,” said Judge Bowles, dryly. “The whole estate is to be sold, and the entire proceeds, every cent realized, except what is kept back for repairs and care, is to be applied to the purchase of a suitable lot and the raising of a great monument over the mortal remains of Carshena Hubblestone.”

“While his sister starves!” added Dr. Michel.

“Gee!” exclaimed the kindly butcher. He had heard all this before, but thus repeated it seemed to strike him anew, as somehow it did all the rest of the company. They sat looking at each other in silence, with indrawings of the breath and compression of lips.

“There is this extenuating circumstance,” said the doctor, with dangerous smoothness; “our lamented brother was aware that unless he erected a monument to himself he might never enjoy one. We—the judge, Mr. Gowan, and myself—are made sole executors under the will—without pay. In Carshena’s life Adelia was his white slave. In his death, doubtless,he felt he could trust her to make no protest. I wish you could have seen her with him as I have, gentlemen. I shall call it a shame upon us if we let her eat the bitter bread of our charity. She’s been put upon and trodden down, but she’s still a proud woman in her way, and we’ve got to save her from a bitter old age. We’ve got to do it.”

“It’s the kind of thing that discourages one’s belief in humanity,” said the judge, in a lowered tone. “This affair might be only absurd if it weren’t for the sister’s share in it. As it is, it’s a revelation of human selfishness that makes one heart-sick.”

Dr. Michel’s laugh rang out irreverently.

“It’s perfectly absurd, sister or no sister,” he said. “Nobody, not one of us, loved Carshena in life—though I think now we didn’t hate him half enough—and here in death he’s fixed it so the town’s got to pay for his responsibilities while his money builds him a grand monument! I call that about as absurd as you’ll get anywhere. I’ll grant you it makes me downright sick at my stomach, judge, but it don’t touch my heart. No, sir. Keep your organs separate, as I do, gentlemen. There’s one thing certain”—he drew the eyes of his audience with uplifted finger—”if we can’t outwit this will somehow, we’ll be the laughing-stock of this whole county. I don’t care a snap of my finger if Carshena has a monument as high as Haman’s gallows, if only his sister is protected at the same time.”

“Well, short of breaking the will, what would you suggest, doctor?” asked Judge Bowles, with a little stiffness. He had not liked the familiar discourse on his organs, but the doctor did not care. The judge was ruffled at last, which was exactly what he desired.

“Suggest?” he cried, laughing. “I don’t know; but I know there never was a will written that couldn’t be driven through with a coach and six if the right man sits on the box. You’re the lawyer, judge.”

The judge was a lawyer, as he then and there proceededto prove. He rose to his feet and spoke in his old-fashioned style:

“Gentlemen, I think I speak for this company when I say that we strongly object to the breaking of this will as a bad precedent in the community. We wish it carried out to the very letter. Our fellow-townsman knew his sister’s needs better than we, and he chose to leave her needy. There are many, many things this town sorely wants, as he also knew, but he chose to use his money otherwise. What a monument to him it would have been had he built us the new school-house our town requires! The wet south lot down by the old mill is an eyesore to the village. Had he used that land and drained it and set up a school-house there, or indeed any public building, what a different meeting this would have been! He was our only man of wealth, and he leaves not so much as a town clock to thank him for. No; a monument tohimselfis what his will calls for, and a monument he shall have. If we failed him here, which of us would feel sure that our own wills would be carried out? In the confidence of these four walls we can say that the difficulties of the inscription and the style of monument seem insuperable. I know but one man to whom I would intrust this delicate commission. I feel confident that he would not render us too absurd by too conspicuous a monument or too florid an inscription. Need I name Dr. Michel?”

“Out of my bailiwick,” cried the doctor—”’way out of my bailiwick.” But his voice was drowned in the confusion of the popular acclaim that was forming him into a committee of one. The kindly butcher made his way to the doctor’s side under cover of the noise.

“Take it, doctor; now do take it,” he whispered in his ear. “There ain’t a man in the town that can shave this pig if you can’t. I was sayin’ just yesterday you’re lost in this little place of ourn. You’ve got more sense than’s often called for here. Here’sthe chance for you to show ‘em what you can do. Do take it.”

The physician looked at the wheedling little butcher with a glance from his blue eye that was half kindly, half irritated. “Well, I’ll take it,” he cried; “I’ll take it; and I thank you for your confidence, gentlemen.”

It was a full month before the little company met again in the doctor’s office, but during that period they knew Dr. Michel had not been idle in the matter intrusted to his care. He was seen in close conversation with the town’s first masons, the best carpenters, the local architect, and these worthies, under close and eager examination, gave answers that dashed the unspoken hopes of those who questioned. Here werebona fidebids asked for on so much masonry, so much carpentering, and the architect had been ordered to send in designs of monuments, how high he deemed it unprofessional to state; but arguing inversely, they judged by the length of his countenance that the measurements were not short—he had particularly hated Carshena. It was, for all these reasons, a rather anxious-looking company that met in Dr. Michel’s office at his summons, and the doctor’s own face was not reassuring as he opened the meeting.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, slowly, “it’s a thankless task you’ve given me, but such as it is, I hope you will find I have performed it to your satisfaction. Here are various plans for the monument to be erected to our late fellow-citizen, and here is a plan of the ground that it has seemed to me most suitable to purchase. It has been a task peculiarly uncongenial to me, because I, I suppose, know more than any of you here how this money is needed where it ought to have gone. I saw Adelia yesterday, and lonely and ghost-ridden as that old house would be to any of us, it’s a home to her that’s to be sold over her head to build this.” He laid his hand on the papers he had thrown down on the table before him. The little companylooked silently at each other, with faces as downcast as if they were to blame. It was Judge Bowles who spoke first.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we must not let ourselves feel too responsible in this matter. We are only following our plain duty. Show us the monument which you consider best, doctor.”

The doctor was silently turning over the papers. “Family feeling is a queer thing,” he said, meditatively. “I saw Adelia the other day, and I asked her if she wanted a neighbor to sleep in the house at night.

“’There’s nothing here for robbers to take, Dr. Michel,’ she said; ‘and if it’s ghosts you think I’m afraid of, I only wish from my heart ghosts would come back to visit me. Everybody of my blood is dead.’”

“It’s very pitiful,” said Judge Bowles, slowly.

The doctor turned on him instantly. “Do you seem to feel now that you could countenance breaking the will, judge?”

“No,” said the judge, shortly, as one who whistles to keep his courage up.

The doctor’s fingers drummed on the table as he paused thoughtfully.

“Carshena,” he said, “if you can believe me, measured out the kerosene oil he allowed for each week on Monday; and when it gave out they went to bed at dusk, if it gave out on Friday night. But one thing Adelia did manage to do. So long as a drop of oil was in the measure a light stood in a window that lit up the ugly turn in the county road round the corner of their house. I know her light saved me from a bad collision once; some of you also, perhaps. She’s kept that little lamp so clean it always shone like a jewel up there. The window-pane it shone through had never a speck on it either. That’s what I call public spirit. And it’s public spirit, too, that makes her keep sweet-smelling flowers growing on the top of the old road wall. In summer I always drive past there slowlyto enjoy them. When she comes on the charity of the town she may console herself by remembering these things. She did what she could (in spite of Carshena), and nobody can do more. Here are the plans for his monument, gentlemen. I would like to have your vote on them.”

The little company, as if glad to move, drew about the table as the doctor opened out the plans in a row. The butcher, whose ruddy face looked dim in his disappointment, and whose despondent chin hung down on his white shirt bosom, picked up one of the designs gingerly and examined it.

“Are they all alike, doctor?” he asked.

Judge Bowles looked over Mr. Gowan’s shoulder.

“Each design seems to be a hollow shaft of some kind, with a round opening at the top,” he said, and looked inquiringly over his glasses at the doctor, who nodded assent.

“They are all hollow. You seem to get more for your money so. The round opening at the top of the shaft can be filled with anything we choose later. I might suggest a crystal with the virtues of the deceased inscribed on it. Then, if we keep a light burning behind the glass at night, those virtues will shine before us by night and by day.”

Judge Bowles lifted his eyes quickly. The doctor’s face was unpleasantly satiric, and his blue eyes looked out angrily from under his curling white hair. Judge Bowles sat down, leaning back heavily in his chair, his perplexed eyes still on Dr. Michel’s frowning brow. Mr. Gowan, with a look as near anger as he could achieve, moved to a seat behind the stove. His idol was failing him utterly. He felt he himself could have done better than this. Dr. Michel’s roving eyes glanced round the circle of dissatisfied and dismayed faces, and then for the first time he seemed to break from his indifference:

“This is all very well, gentlemen—very well indeed. The facts are, you gave me a commission, and boundme to fulfill it strictly and to the letter, and now you are dissatisfied because I have followed your wishes. What did you expect? If you had left the matter to me without restrictions, I should certainly have tried to break the will, as I told you. Briefly, here is my report. We shall have about twenty thousand dollars all told to invest in a monument over our lamented brother. Any one of these hollow masonry structures here will cost about ten thousand dollars. As to the purchase of a suitable lot, which the will directs, I think even Carshena would declare it a good bargain to pay nothing whatever for the land, and that I can arrange, I believe. I have good reason to suppose”—he began to speak very slowly—”that the town would, without price, allow us to erect this monument on that unsightly bit of wet land to the south, near the old mill, if we in turn will agree to drain the grounds, keep them in good order, plant flowers and shrubbery, and further promise to keep a light burning all night in an opening at the top of the monument. I spoke of a crystal set in that opening, with the virtues of the deceased inscribed upon it, but we can, if we choose, carve those same virtues in the more imperishable stone below, and print something else—a clock face perhaps—on the crystal above. That’s a mere minor detail.”

Judge Bowles, whose gaze had been growing more and more bewildered, now started in his chair and sat suddenly upright. He stared at the doctor uncertainly. The doctor cast a quick look at him, and went on rapidly:

“If you will allow me, I’ll make my report quickly, and leave it with you. I have a great deal to do this morning in other directions. It has occurred to me that as the base of the monument is to be square and hollow, it would be easy to fit it into a comfortable living-room, with one, or perhaps two, small rooms built about it. I have not mentioned this to the architect, but I know it can be done. The will especially directsthat repairs and care be allowed for.” The doctor was talking rapidly now. “The monument will not cost more than ten thousand, the clock about two. Twelve thousand from twenty thousand leaves eight thousand. The yearly interest on eight thousand and the fact that we could offer free residence in the monument should let us engage a reliable resident keeper, who would give the time and attention that such a monument and such a park would need.”

The doctor paused, and again looked about him.

The whole circle of faces looked back at him curiously—some with a puzzled gaze, but several, including Judge Bowles, with a half-fascinated, half-dismayed air. Mr. Gowan alone preserved his look of utter hopelessness.

“Who’d take a job like that?” he said, gloomily. “I wouldn’t, for one, live in a vault with Carshena, dead or alive.”

“Oh, the grave could be outside, and the monument as a kind of monster head-stone,” said the doctor pleasantly. “My idea was to have the grave well outside. Four or five hundred and a home isn’t much to offer a man, gentlemen, but I happen to know a very respectable elderly woman who would, it seems to me, suit us exactly as well as a man. In fact, I think it would considerably add to the picturesque features of our little town park to have a resident female keeper. I think I see her now, sitting in the summer sunshine at the door of this unique head-stone monument, or in winter independently luxuriating in its warm and hospitable shelter. I see her winding the clock, affectionately keeping the grave like a gorgeous flower-bed, caring for the shrubbery, burnishing the clock lamp till it shines like a jewel, as she well knows how to do, and best of all in her case, gentlemen, I happen to know from her own lips that she has no fear of ghosts. Why, gentlemen, what’s the matter? I protest, gentlemen.”

At that moment Mr. Gowan might be said to be thedoctor’s only audience. The rest of the company were engaged in whispering to each other, or speechlessly giving themselves over to suppressed and unholy glee. Judge Bowles was openly wiping his eyes and shaking in his chair. Dr. Michel looked around the circle with resentful surprise.

“You seem amused, gentlemen!” he said, with dignity; and then addressing himself to Mr. Gowan exclusively, as if that gentleman alone were worthy to be his listener, “Would you object to a woman as keeper, Mr. Gowan?”

“What’s her name?” asked the butcher.

A roar of laughter, not to be long suppressed, drowned his words. Mr. Gowan looked about the shaken circle, stared for a moment, then suddenly, as comprehension, like a breaking dawn, spread over his round face, he brought his hand down hard on his fat knee.

“Well, doctor,” he roared, in admiration too deep for laughter, “if you ain’t the dawgornest!”

The doctor’s wiry hair seemed to rise and spread as wings, his eyes snapped and twinkled, his mouth puckered. “Will some one embody this in the form of a motion?” he asked, gravely. The judge dried his eyes, and, with difficulty, rose to his feet.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I move that we build this monument with a base large enough for a suite of rooms inside; that we set this structure on the lot which our good doctor has chosen; that we ornament it with an illuminated clock at the top; and further, that—that this female keeper be appointed.”

“Seconded, by Harry!” roared Mr. Gowan.

The doctor, with his hands on his hips, his body thrown far back, looked with the eye of a conqueror over the assembly. “Those in favor of the motion will please say Aye; those opposed No. It seems to be carried! it is carried,” he recited in one rapid breath.

“Amen!” endorsed Mr. Gowan, fervently.

And this warm approval of their butcher was in the end echoed as cordially by the most pious citizens of Leonard. After the first shock of their surprise was over, natural misgivings were lost in enjoyment of the grim humor of this very practical jest of their good doctor’s, that visitors now actually stop over a train to see. Many a village has its park, and many a one its illuminated clock; it was left for Leonard to have in its park a grave kept like a gorgeous flower-bed, and at the grave’s head a towering monument that is at once a tombstone, an illuminated clock and a residence.

Who the next keeper may be it is one of the amusements of Leonard to imagine. The present keeper is a happy old woman, whose fellow-citizens like nothing better than to see her winding the clock, caring for the flowers, burnishing the town lamp; in summer sitting in the sunshine at the door of the head-stone monument, in winter luxuriating in that warm and independent shelter.

“I feel as if Carshena knew just what was best for me, after all, doctor,” she said to her physician, in his first call upon her in her new home; and that worthy, with a nod of his white head, assented in the readiest manner.

“Doubtless, madam, doubtless,” he said, “Carshena had all this in mind when he made me his executor. Didn’t you, Carshena?” He winked his eye genially at the grave as he passed out, and with no shade of uncertainty or repentance in his mind, climbed into his buggy and went on his satisfied way.

Margaret Sutton Briscoe.

XIc174DOCTOR ARMSTRONG.I.COLVIN ARMSTRONG tried to take up his pen with an air of happiness and relief, for it was the last chapter of his great work which he was about to commence. But the effort failed, and he leaned back in his chair, thoroughly tired out—too jaded to be brisk or energetic.It was not his professional work that tired him. A London surgeon, with a magnificent reputation, he had more than enough to do; but he was only forty, and his constitution was of iron. Work agreed with him: it was Thought that utterly prostrated him at times. No sooner was his last engagement fulfilled, or his last patient despatched, than he retired to his library and gave himself up to the great psychological problem that racked his brains. Night brought a short relief: he slept from twelve till six; but morning renewed his wrestlings, and it was only the necessity of attending to his surgery that freed him from the incessant train of thought. Would that his head were as cool as his strong, firm hands!It was the Mystery of Human Pain that was haunting him. Until two years back he had never given such questions a thought, but then the problem began to force itself upon him. How was it that so many suffered a living martyrdom, whilst he himself never knew a moment’s pain? How was it that, having no personal knowledge of pain, he nevertheless felt such an overpowering sympathy with those who suffered, and had such an instinctive inborn gift of giving relief? And then the larger, less personal questions: Was there any guiding hand allotting pain to innocent mortals? Were they really innocent? If there was design in it all, from whom came the design, and what was its purpose? Was it for good, or evil, or both? If no Providence guided humanity, what was the origin of pain? Why was it allowed to be? And so on, in an endless train of thought, one problem suggesting ten others, till the subject broadened out to the doors of Eternity itself, and the mind reeled before its own imaginings.i174Vaccinating the BabyArmstrong flew to his books for assistance, and primed himself with the ideas of the metaphysicians; but he was not satisfied, and a strong impulse led him to try his own hand at solving the mystery. Gradually, after much hard reading and thinking, he evolved a theory which, though far from satisfactory, seemed ampler and better than the ideas of the old philosophers; and then, slowly and laboriously, he committed it to paper. As the work grew, he became more convinced of the truth which seemed to lurk in his views, the foundation of real discovery on which his theses were based. Something of his marvellous insight into disease and distortion seemed to have entered into the book, and he was eager to give it to the world.So this was the last chapter! By Jove! how hot and close the room was! It was annoying to feel so dull and listless, but there was some excuse: nine o’clock at night is not a time when a man is at his freshest, and there was nothing so wearing as this closely woven intellectual work, where every thread had to be followed to its end, every detail thought out, every possible ramification explored, and the mind kept at its highest tension throughout, straining to cover the whole ground and to order in logical sequence its myriad elusive thoughts. Difficult? Why, there was nothing to compare to it! But what was the good of magnifying troubles? Here was the final chapter, theconclusion which was to be so masterly, already mapped out in his mind, only waiting to be transferred to paper. Armstrong wiped his damp forehead, and seized the pen. The room was lit as he liked it, with only a lamp casting a subdued light on his desk; the rest in deepest gloom. Now was the time to begin. But he was terribly tired.*********Kr-rk!Armstrong leaned back in his chair, and pressed his hand to his head. Something inside seemed to have broken with a snap, or a tiny shutter had fallen away, as in a camera, revealing a hidden lens in his brain. His head was clearer and freer, as if some clogging veil had suddenly been removed, and before his eyes there burned a new light, steady and cold, but brilliant. A cooler, purer air filled the room. The present melted away from his vision.* * * * *Far away—so far that everything was dwarfed, but yet as distinct in every detail as though it had been close at hand—Armstrong saw a vision.A dark underground dungeon, with damp standing in beads on its bare stone walls; a man, bound, gagged, and helpless; another, black-masked and sullen of movement; a third, seated on a small platform, with his face in shadow. A feeble hanging lamp, swaying to and fro in the draughts of the cell, was the only illumination.The vision came nearer and nearer, and grew larger as it came, until it reached Armstrong and filled his room, and he felt the dank breath of the dungeon stir his hair. He looked again: the masked man was at his elbow, the man on the dais was above him—unrecognisable in the shadow, but smiling gently; that much he could see. Then he looked at the third man, the prisoner; and a thrill of dread went through him, for he recognised himself,—in old-world, long-forgotten garb, but still himself. And then the whole grew real, with a deadly reality; he was no more a mere spectator,but a part of the vision, and the vision was a part of his own existence. The chill of the room fell on his spirit, filling him with vague, horrible forebodings: the present mingled with the past, and his spirit passed into the limp, helpless figure on the rack. He—he himself, and none other—was the victim in the torture chamber, and the world was black around him.There was a clank of steel on the floor, as though little instruments had been dropped, and then a sudden sharp pang struck him from an unseen source. Another, another, and yet another,—a very multitude of keen stabbing pangs. In uncontrollable agony he raised his voice to shout with pain, but the gag stopped him, choked him, throttled his curses. And the dark figure smiled from above.Then came hot, burning, throbbing pains that shot through him, turning the blood in his veins to fire, and gnawing his vitals till they consumed away. He tried to turn, to roll, to ease himself in any way; but he was bound and rigid and helpless, and his efforts only increased the torture. And still the figure sat motionless above him. He turned his streaming eyes upwards in mute appeal, and his answer was a smile.Then the sharp pains and the burning misery ceased for a while, and his aching limbs rested, and all seemed over. But the presiding fiend waved a silent signal, and worse came—stretching, straining torture, that nearly pulled the wretched frame asunder (well if it had!), and dull grinding agonies, worse than the sharper pains, more cruel and relentless than the stabs or blows or thrusts.And then the worst of all—the whole in combination. Crushing, grinding, distorting, straining, breaking, bending, blinding, burning, flaying, racking, stabbing—more than the mind can picture or words describe—in turn and together, and all the more horrible, coming unseen and sudden and unawares. Crush and rack and burn and grind, till the brain wason fire and the body groaning under its burdens; till the face was furrowed with tears of agony, the whole frame shapeless and broken, limbs useless, muscles tortured, twisted and crushed, nerves shattered, and the spirit within flaming with miserable, hopeless hate. Madness? No; that had come in the first silent moments of fear and pain, but the cruel hand had driven it away, and now there was only PAIN—deep, unfathomable Pain.Then came a low whisper, the cool breath of Death waiting softly outside the chamber, and the wounded soul fluttered for a moment in joyous answer. But the human fiend above knew it, and the torture stopped. Sore, blistered, broken, and useless, he was flung aside to endure still longer in his misery, and Death turned sighing away.*********Armstrong sprang from his chair with curses on his tongue and fury in his heart, and grasped convulsively at the retreating vision. But it was far, far off, and melting slowly into air.Then a great calm fell upon him, and he knew what he had seen. It was a scene from a former life—his last existence—and it was vouchsafed to him as a lesson, a glimpse of the everlasting order of life. The inspiration of a great Message glowed on his brow and in his soul. And this was the Message which he read, clear as the words of a seer:—“For inasmuch as thou hast suffered pain and bitterness of spirit in the past, so shalt thou now know freedom from such; and to thee it shall be given, by thy past sufferings, to discern and make lighter the grievous burdens of thy fellow-men. And the pain that thou hast felt in thy veins shall give thee understanding above all others, that thou mayest cure man’s infirmities and heal the sick of his house.”II.The light of a great revelation dazzled Armstrong for a while, but he rose from it with renewed strength and hope and courage, resolved to devote himself more than ever to the healing art. And first he destroyed his manuscript, for his theories were shattered and forgotten. The mystery of human pain was still unsolved; but was it for him to solve it? Providence had given him another mission,—to heal and cure. And Providence had given him the clue to one mystery, at all events—his own great sympathy with sufferers and insight into suffering. Sometimes he wondered whether another revelation would follow; but none came, and he pursued his usual career, doing good and working hard. The idle speculations, the restless quest of secret things, which had haunted him and wearied him before, were now of the past, and he lived for work alone.But more was to come—unexpectedly and without warning.It was an ordinary case he was treating: brain surgery. The man, a wretched creature, suffered severely, and was in a broken state of health; Armstrong had traced it to brain pressure, and saw his way easily to put things right by a cerebral operation. He was just concluding an examination, and the patient lay quietly in the great chair, soothed by a slight injection of morphia. Armstrong turned away to get a light—it was five o’clock on an autumn day, just beginning to grow dark—when suddenly there came that strange grating “Kr-rk” in his head, and he felt the room whirl around him. He clutched hard at a table near him, but it receded from his grasp and he felt himself falling down, down, down in giddy helplessness. Then the movement stopped, and he felt, as before, that some weight had been lifted from his brain, and a new, unused sense developed in him. But this time there was no clear light, no pure air, no vision.What was coming? Something, he felt, was in store—some strange, new revelation—and he waited eagerly. As the prophets of old were inspired, so light had come to him, and now perhaps he would learn one more secret of the troubled world.But nothing came; all was blank darkness around him, and an uneasy sense of foreboding stole slowly over him, till his hand shook and his face grew damp with cold sweat.What was that? A far-off mocking laugh? And* * *O God in heaven! Notthatagain! Notthat!He tried to call again, for pangs worse than of death were racking him; but something cold was thrust into his mouth and choked him. And then his eyes, shut tight in the clenched agony of pain, opened again, and he saw the streaming dungeon walls, the swaying lamp, the masked torturer, and the grim shadow-figure seated motionless on the dais above him; and his heart sank within him, and he turned sick and faint.For one brief moment the masked man turned away—to heat his irons, perhaps, or rest his arms, weary of their heavy work—and all Armstrong’s spirit went up in one short, agonised, burning prayer, in one deep, strenuous remonstrance.“I have felt it before,” he cried. “I have endured it before, and I know its meaning. Must I go through all again? Have I failed in my duty? Save me from pain and madness before it is too late! O God of cruelty, Pain-giver, merciless, wicked, infernal, save me, save me, preserve me!”His words, stifled by the gag, reached no human ear; but in the cell a new presence was lurking, and on his face fell a hot, quick breath.A voice spoke in his ear, very soft and gentle and low.“You blaspheme in vain,” it said; “God has not sent you this vision, butI.”III.The torture was over, and Armstrong waited quietly for the moment of restoration to the world; but it did not come, and a new fear seized him. What if he never recovered from this state? As the Powers of Good had vouchsafed him the first vision, so the Powers of Evil had mocked him with the second—the same as the first, but infinitely more terrible, for through the former a subtle strength of will had sustained him, and he had emerged from it wiser, happier, and stronger, whilst now he felt himself deserted and unaided, and* * *Heavens above! What would come next? The physical torture was over, but now his mind was on the rack, and it was worse, far worse!The two grim figures remained in the cell, motionless as statues. A strange detachment of mind, a mystic duality of self, was torturing Armstrong. Here he felt the pangs and achings of the most terrible pain; yet at the same time he knew that it was all unreal, and his thoughts turned to the world above—his work, his house, his friends, the very patient in his chair, waiting and wondering. Somewhere between the two lay madness, and his spirit cried for peace—a world all vision, or a world all reality—anything but this perplexing, torturing union of the two.Quick as thought came the answer. “Look around before you go.”It was the soft voice he had heard before—gentle, but insistent. But he had seen too much of that hateful cell, and he closed his eyes in tight resistance.“Look around,” said the voice, even more gently than before.A shuddering fear seized Armstrong.The spirit read his thoughts. “You are afraid: you dare not look atme. But you shall not see me. Look!”He put his hand to his head and covered his eyes with a convulsive movement.“Listen!” said the voice. “You have not even seen your enemy. Would you not know him?”A cold sickness fell on Armstrong’s spirit, and he shuddered. Why see the monster who had tortured him, the human fiend who could be nothing other than repulsive?Then the voice spoke again, more gently than before.“Listen! I am the God of Evil, but I befriend you. I pass my hand along your frame, and the pain leaves you. I touch your eyes with my fingers, and they open. Look around!”Armstrong rose, sound and strong. The dungeon was dark, but in its recesses he could see two cowering figures, striving to hide themselves from his eyes. One was the masked man; one was the director, the inquisitor, the author of all his misery.“See how he hides from you,” whispered the voice. “But you shall not be denied.Turn!”The sudden thunder of that last word echoed through the vault, and then there came a short, sharp, double flash of blinding light. The first flash showed a crouching, cowering figure in the background, with pale, set face, and cruel eyes; the second struck Armstrong full in the face and felled him to the ground.*********Dazed and frightened, as after a hideous nightmare, he pulled himself together. The match he had taken up was still in his hand, and he turned back, mastering himself with a great effort, to his patient.He lighted the big burner and turned it full on the chair. The man, roused from the lethargy of morphia, slowly opened his eyes.Armstrong staggered back, stifling the cry of horror that rose to his lips; for in that one glance he saw, clear and unmistakable, the face of his torturer—reincarnated, but still the same.IV.Armstrong turned aside to hide his excitement. After all, then, the vision had not been in vain: it was the complement of the first; and now all was clear. The Mystery of Human Pain! His own great book on the subject! He laughed aloud. All that thought and time and labour had been wasted, and here was the truth, shown to him in a dream—the truth that all the world should know. A strange exaltation filled his spirit.“Isuffered pain, and now I reap my reward—strong, happy, a healer of wounds, myself knowing no suffering.Heinflicted pain and torture, and now he suffers for it.”The patient in the chair moved uneasily and groaned. Armstrong went on: “A righteous Judge rewards me for what I have undergone, and scourges him for the evil he has wrought.”“The Lord have Mercy on his Soul!”It was a deep voice that spoke, the words booming and reverberating like the notes of heavy bells. It touched a new chord in Armstrong’s mind, and sent the blood throbbing and pulsing through his head. “The Lord have mercy on his soul!” Why? What mercy hadhehad for others? And with that the fury of hate returned to him and surged through his veins, till he felt himself more demon than man. Every pang, every pain, every racking agony that he had suffered in those two terrible visions, returned to him threefold, burned into his soul, branded on every limb and sinew. Curse him with the curse of the martyr, and blast him with the breath of his iniquities!And then a cold, unnatural calm fell upon Armstrong, and his quivering hands grew steady and cunning as before.*********It was all so easy! The man lay there, half conscious—withenough sensation left to feel every torture inflicted on him, but yet unable to speak or groan. It was a carefully managed anæsthetic, administered just sufficiently to glaze the eyes and paralyze the tongue, but no more. And the brain lay so near at hand!The mad fury of revenge had left Armstrong, and he was cold, scientific and deliberate—no movement hurried, no torment left untried, and all done with the mechanical, even touch of the skilled workman. A pang for a pang, a stab for a stab, a scald for a scald; Armstrong remembered each pain he had endured, and paid it back threefold. On the subtle mechanism of the head he played as on a keyed instrument, sending hot, shooting pains, and dull, numbing clutches, to the remotest parts of the wretched frame.All the poor worn nerves centered within his grasp, and to his eyes they were visible throughout their hidden course, coming to one common end, where he grasped them as with a handle, and turned and ground and twisted and crushed, till they stretched, strained, groaned and quivered under his racking touch. He hissed taunting words in his ears—words that he knew could not be answered; he mocked at the helpless agony. And all the while he watched the blue lips, striving to curse and moan, but bound by the hellish drug as with a gag; and the bloodshot, straining eyes, too fixed even to appeal; and the dumb agony of the whole wretched form. And a grim, silent laughter shook him.But it could not last forever: his hand wearied, and his head reeled. He fell to the ground in a swoon.* * *Bells were ringing—light, airy, joyous bells; and he roused himself. The bells grew slower, fainter—died out altogether—and in their place a voice was in his ears, very soft and low. What was it saying? It was so faint, so indistinct* * *“Onyoursoul may the Lord have mercy!”Armstrong rose as from a dream. In the chair lay a shape, not mangled, indeed, but pale-faced, shrunken, distorted, horrible. He bent his head down and listened to the heart; there were two feeble beats, a faint flicker, and then it stopped.There was a strange catch in the surgeon’s breath. The room was hot and close; he pushed the curtains back, and looked out. It was night now—a deep blue sky, studded with a myriad stars. And one star shot upwards in a blaze of silver light.Armstrong turned away, breathing heavily. There was the body still, and there were the little instruments he had used.The present did not stir him, gave him no thought; but the knowledge of the future was upon him, and he groaned aloud in the new-born agony of his soul. For he knew what he had done: it was his chance, and he had missed it; it was his trial, his ordeal, and he had failed* * *And in the next life on earth his torture would be longer and harder to bear. The Lord would have no mercy on his soul.D. L. B. S.

XI

c174

COLVIN ARMSTRONG tried to take up his pen with an air of happiness and relief, for it was the last chapter of his great work which he was about to commence. But the effort failed, and he leaned back in his chair, thoroughly tired out—too jaded to be brisk or energetic.

It was not his professional work that tired him. A London surgeon, with a magnificent reputation, he had more than enough to do; but he was only forty, and his constitution was of iron. Work agreed with him: it was Thought that utterly prostrated him at times. No sooner was his last engagement fulfilled, or his last patient despatched, than he retired to his library and gave himself up to the great psychological problem that racked his brains. Night brought a short relief: he slept from twelve till six; but morning renewed his wrestlings, and it was only the necessity of attending to his surgery that freed him from the incessant train of thought. Would that his head were as cool as his strong, firm hands!

It was the Mystery of Human Pain that was haunting him. Until two years back he had never given such questions a thought, but then the problem began to force itself upon him. How was it that so many suffered a living martyrdom, whilst he himself never knew a moment’s pain? How was it that, having no personal knowledge of pain, he nevertheless felt such an overpowering sympathy with those who suffered, and had such an instinctive inborn gift of giving relief? And then the larger, less personal questions: Was there any guiding hand allotting pain to innocent mortals? Were they really innocent? If there was design in it all, from whom came the design, and what was its purpose? Was it for good, or evil, or both? If no Providence guided humanity, what was the origin of pain? Why was it allowed to be? And so on, in an endless train of thought, one problem suggesting ten others, till the subject broadened out to the doors of Eternity itself, and the mind reeled before its own imaginings.

i174

Vaccinating the Baby

Vaccinating the Baby

Vaccinating the Baby

Armstrong flew to his books for assistance, and primed himself with the ideas of the metaphysicians; but he was not satisfied, and a strong impulse led him to try his own hand at solving the mystery. Gradually, after much hard reading and thinking, he evolved a theory which, though far from satisfactory, seemed ampler and better than the ideas of the old philosophers; and then, slowly and laboriously, he committed it to paper. As the work grew, he became more convinced of the truth which seemed to lurk in his views, the foundation of real discovery on which his theses were based. Something of his marvellous insight into disease and distortion seemed to have entered into the book, and he was eager to give it to the world.

So this was the last chapter! By Jove! how hot and close the room was! It was annoying to feel so dull and listless, but there was some excuse: nine o’clock at night is not a time when a man is at his freshest, and there was nothing so wearing as this closely woven intellectual work, where every thread had to be followed to its end, every detail thought out, every possible ramification explored, and the mind kept at its highest tension throughout, straining to cover the whole ground and to order in logical sequence its myriad elusive thoughts. Difficult? Why, there was nothing to compare to it! But what was the good of magnifying troubles? Here was the final chapter, theconclusion which was to be so masterly, already mapped out in his mind, only waiting to be transferred to paper. Armstrong wiped his damp forehead, and seized the pen. The room was lit as he liked it, with only a lamp casting a subdued light on his desk; the rest in deepest gloom. Now was the time to begin. But he was terribly tired.

*********

Kr-rk!

Armstrong leaned back in his chair, and pressed his hand to his head. Something inside seemed to have broken with a snap, or a tiny shutter had fallen away, as in a camera, revealing a hidden lens in his brain. His head was clearer and freer, as if some clogging veil had suddenly been removed, and before his eyes there burned a new light, steady and cold, but brilliant. A cooler, purer air filled the room. The present melted away from his vision.* * * * *

Far away—so far that everything was dwarfed, but yet as distinct in every detail as though it had been close at hand—Armstrong saw a vision.

A dark underground dungeon, with damp standing in beads on its bare stone walls; a man, bound, gagged, and helpless; another, black-masked and sullen of movement; a third, seated on a small platform, with his face in shadow. A feeble hanging lamp, swaying to and fro in the draughts of the cell, was the only illumination.

The vision came nearer and nearer, and grew larger as it came, until it reached Armstrong and filled his room, and he felt the dank breath of the dungeon stir his hair. He looked again: the masked man was at his elbow, the man on the dais was above him—unrecognisable in the shadow, but smiling gently; that much he could see. Then he looked at the third man, the prisoner; and a thrill of dread went through him, for he recognised himself,—in old-world, long-forgotten garb, but still himself. And then the whole grew real, with a deadly reality; he was no more a mere spectator,but a part of the vision, and the vision was a part of his own existence. The chill of the room fell on his spirit, filling him with vague, horrible forebodings: the present mingled with the past, and his spirit passed into the limp, helpless figure on the rack. He—he himself, and none other—was the victim in the torture chamber, and the world was black around him.

There was a clank of steel on the floor, as though little instruments had been dropped, and then a sudden sharp pang struck him from an unseen source. Another, another, and yet another,—a very multitude of keen stabbing pangs. In uncontrollable agony he raised his voice to shout with pain, but the gag stopped him, choked him, throttled his curses. And the dark figure smiled from above.

Then came hot, burning, throbbing pains that shot through him, turning the blood in his veins to fire, and gnawing his vitals till they consumed away. He tried to turn, to roll, to ease himself in any way; but he was bound and rigid and helpless, and his efforts only increased the torture. And still the figure sat motionless above him. He turned his streaming eyes upwards in mute appeal, and his answer was a smile.

Then the sharp pains and the burning misery ceased for a while, and his aching limbs rested, and all seemed over. But the presiding fiend waved a silent signal, and worse came—stretching, straining torture, that nearly pulled the wretched frame asunder (well if it had!), and dull grinding agonies, worse than the sharper pains, more cruel and relentless than the stabs or blows or thrusts.

And then the worst of all—the whole in combination. Crushing, grinding, distorting, straining, breaking, bending, blinding, burning, flaying, racking, stabbing—more than the mind can picture or words describe—in turn and together, and all the more horrible, coming unseen and sudden and unawares. Crush and rack and burn and grind, till the brain wason fire and the body groaning under its burdens; till the face was furrowed with tears of agony, the whole frame shapeless and broken, limbs useless, muscles tortured, twisted and crushed, nerves shattered, and the spirit within flaming with miserable, hopeless hate. Madness? No; that had come in the first silent moments of fear and pain, but the cruel hand had driven it away, and now there was only PAIN—deep, unfathomable Pain.

Then came a low whisper, the cool breath of Death waiting softly outside the chamber, and the wounded soul fluttered for a moment in joyous answer. But the human fiend above knew it, and the torture stopped. Sore, blistered, broken, and useless, he was flung aside to endure still longer in his misery, and Death turned sighing away.

*********

Armstrong sprang from his chair with curses on his tongue and fury in his heart, and grasped convulsively at the retreating vision. But it was far, far off, and melting slowly into air.

Then a great calm fell upon him, and he knew what he had seen. It was a scene from a former life—his last existence—and it was vouchsafed to him as a lesson, a glimpse of the everlasting order of life. The inspiration of a great Message glowed on his brow and in his soul. And this was the Message which he read, clear as the words of a seer:—

“For inasmuch as thou hast suffered pain and bitterness of spirit in the past, so shalt thou now know freedom from such; and to thee it shall be given, by thy past sufferings, to discern and make lighter the grievous burdens of thy fellow-men. And the pain that thou hast felt in thy veins shall give thee understanding above all others, that thou mayest cure man’s infirmities and heal the sick of his house.”

The light of a great revelation dazzled Armstrong for a while, but he rose from it with renewed strength and hope and courage, resolved to devote himself more than ever to the healing art. And first he destroyed his manuscript, for his theories were shattered and forgotten. The mystery of human pain was still unsolved; but was it for him to solve it? Providence had given him another mission,—to heal and cure. And Providence had given him the clue to one mystery, at all events—his own great sympathy with sufferers and insight into suffering. Sometimes he wondered whether another revelation would follow; but none came, and he pursued his usual career, doing good and working hard. The idle speculations, the restless quest of secret things, which had haunted him and wearied him before, were now of the past, and he lived for work alone.

But more was to come—unexpectedly and without warning.

It was an ordinary case he was treating: brain surgery. The man, a wretched creature, suffered severely, and was in a broken state of health; Armstrong had traced it to brain pressure, and saw his way easily to put things right by a cerebral operation. He was just concluding an examination, and the patient lay quietly in the great chair, soothed by a slight injection of morphia. Armstrong turned away to get a light—it was five o’clock on an autumn day, just beginning to grow dark—when suddenly there came that strange grating “Kr-rk” in his head, and he felt the room whirl around him. He clutched hard at a table near him, but it receded from his grasp and he felt himself falling down, down, down in giddy helplessness. Then the movement stopped, and he felt, as before, that some weight had been lifted from his brain, and a new, unused sense developed in him. But this time there was no clear light, no pure air, no vision.

What was coming? Something, he felt, was in store—some strange, new revelation—and he waited eagerly. As the prophets of old were inspired, so light had come to him, and now perhaps he would learn one more secret of the troubled world.

But nothing came; all was blank darkness around him, and an uneasy sense of foreboding stole slowly over him, till his hand shook and his face grew damp with cold sweat.

What was that? A far-off mocking laugh? And* * *O God in heaven! Notthatagain! Notthat!

He tried to call again, for pangs worse than of death were racking him; but something cold was thrust into his mouth and choked him. And then his eyes, shut tight in the clenched agony of pain, opened again, and he saw the streaming dungeon walls, the swaying lamp, the masked torturer, and the grim shadow-figure seated motionless on the dais above him; and his heart sank within him, and he turned sick and faint.

For one brief moment the masked man turned away—to heat his irons, perhaps, or rest his arms, weary of their heavy work—and all Armstrong’s spirit went up in one short, agonised, burning prayer, in one deep, strenuous remonstrance.

“I have felt it before,” he cried. “I have endured it before, and I know its meaning. Must I go through all again? Have I failed in my duty? Save me from pain and madness before it is too late! O God of cruelty, Pain-giver, merciless, wicked, infernal, save me, save me, preserve me!”

His words, stifled by the gag, reached no human ear; but in the cell a new presence was lurking, and on his face fell a hot, quick breath.

A voice spoke in his ear, very soft and gentle and low.

“You blaspheme in vain,” it said; “God has not sent you this vision, butI.”

The torture was over, and Armstrong waited quietly for the moment of restoration to the world; but it did not come, and a new fear seized him. What if he never recovered from this state? As the Powers of Good had vouchsafed him the first vision, so the Powers of Evil had mocked him with the second—the same as the first, but infinitely more terrible, for through the former a subtle strength of will had sustained him, and he had emerged from it wiser, happier, and stronger, whilst now he felt himself deserted and unaided, and* * *Heavens above! What would come next? The physical torture was over, but now his mind was on the rack, and it was worse, far worse!

The two grim figures remained in the cell, motionless as statues. A strange detachment of mind, a mystic duality of self, was torturing Armstrong. Here he felt the pangs and achings of the most terrible pain; yet at the same time he knew that it was all unreal, and his thoughts turned to the world above—his work, his house, his friends, the very patient in his chair, waiting and wondering. Somewhere between the two lay madness, and his spirit cried for peace—a world all vision, or a world all reality—anything but this perplexing, torturing union of the two.

Quick as thought came the answer. “Look around before you go.”

It was the soft voice he had heard before—gentle, but insistent. But he had seen too much of that hateful cell, and he closed his eyes in tight resistance.

“Look around,” said the voice, even more gently than before.

A shuddering fear seized Armstrong.

The spirit read his thoughts. “You are afraid: you dare not look atme. But you shall not see me. Look!”

He put his hand to his head and covered his eyes with a convulsive movement.

“Listen!” said the voice. “You have not even seen your enemy. Would you not know him?”

A cold sickness fell on Armstrong’s spirit, and he shuddered. Why see the monster who had tortured him, the human fiend who could be nothing other than repulsive?

Then the voice spoke again, more gently than before.

“Listen! I am the God of Evil, but I befriend you. I pass my hand along your frame, and the pain leaves you. I touch your eyes with my fingers, and they open. Look around!”

Armstrong rose, sound and strong. The dungeon was dark, but in its recesses he could see two cowering figures, striving to hide themselves from his eyes. One was the masked man; one was the director, the inquisitor, the author of all his misery.

“See how he hides from you,” whispered the voice. “But you shall not be denied.Turn!”

The sudden thunder of that last word echoed through the vault, and then there came a short, sharp, double flash of blinding light. The first flash showed a crouching, cowering figure in the background, with pale, set face, and cruel eyes; the second struck Armstrong full in the face and felled him to the ground.

*********

Dazed and frightened, as after a hideous nightmare, he pulled himself together. The match he had taken up was still in his hand, and he turned back, mastering himself with a great effort, to his patient.

He lighted the big burner and turned it full on the chair. The man, roused from the lethargy of morphia, slowly opened his eyes.

Armstrong staggered back, stifling the cry of horror that rose to his lips; for in that one glance he saw, clear and unmistakable, the face of his torturer—reincarnated, but still the same.

Armstrong turned aside to hide his excitement. After all, then, the vision had not been in vain: it was the complement of the first; and now all was clear. The Mystery of Human Pain! His own great book on the subject! He laughed aloud. All that thought and time and labour had been wasted, and here was the truth, shown to him in a dream—the truth that all the world should know. A strange exaltation filled his spirit.

“Isuffered pain, and now I reap my reward—strong, happy, a healer of wounds, myself knowing no suffering.Heinflicted pain and torture, and now he suffers for it.”

The patient in the chair moved uneasily and groaned. Armstrong went on: “A righteous Judge rewards me for what I have undergone, and scourges him for the evil he has wrought.”

“The Lord have Mercy on his Soul!”

It was a deep voice that spoke, the words booming and reverberating like the notes of heavy bells. It touched a new chord in Armstrong’s mind, and sent the blood throbbing and pulsing through his head. “The Lord have mercy on his soul!” Why? What mercy hadhehad for others? And with that the fury of hate returned to him and surged through his veins, till he felt himself more demon than man. Every pang, every pain, every racking agony that he had suffered in those two terrible visions, returned to him threefold, burned into his soul, branded on every limb and sinew. Curse him with the curse of the martyr, and blast him with the breath of his iniquities!

And then a cold, unnatural calm fell upon Armstrong, and his quivering hands grew steady and cunning as before.

*********

It was all so easy! The man lay there, half conscious—withenough sensation left to feel every torture inflicted on him, but yet unable to speak or groan. It was a carefully managed anæsthetic, administered just sufficiently to glaze the eyes and paralyze the tongue, but no more. And the brain lay so near at hand!

The mad fury of revenge had left Armstrong, and he was cold, scientific and deliberate—no movement hurried, no torment left untried, and all done with the mechanical, even touch of the skilled workman. A pang for a pang, a stab for a stab, a scald for a scald; Armstrong remembered each pain he had endured, and paid it back threefold. On the subtle mechanism of the head he played as on a keyed instrument, sending hot, shooting pains, and dull, numbing clutches, to the remotest parts of the wretched frame.

All the poor worn nerves centered within his grasp, and to his eyes they were visible throughout their hidden course, coming to one common end, where he grasped them as with a handle, and turned and ground and twisted and crushed, till they stretched, strained, groaned and quivered under his racking touch. He hissed taunting words in his ears—words that he knew could not be answered; he mocked at the helpless agony. And all the while he watched the blue lips, striving to curse and moan, but bound by the hellish drug as with a gag; and the bloodshot, straining eyes, too fixed even to appeal; and the dumb agony of the whole wretched form. And a grim, silent laughter shook him.

But it could not last forever: his hand wearied, and his head reeled. He fell to the ground in a swoon.* * *

Bells were ringing—light, airy, joyous bells; and he roused himself. The bells grew slower, fainter—died out altogether—and in their place a voice was in his ears, very soft and low. What was it saying? It was so faint, so indistinct* * *

“Onyoursoul may the Lord have mercy!”

Armstrong rose as from a dream. In the chair lay a shape, not mangled, indeed, but pale-faced, shrunken, distorted, horrible. He bent his head down and listened to the heart; there were two feeble beats, a faint flicker, and then it stopped.

There was a strange catch in the surgeon’s breath. The room was hot and close; he pushed the curtains back, and looked out. It was night now—a deep blue sky, studded with a myriad stars. And one star shot upwards in a blaze of silver light.

Armstrong turned away, breathing heavily. There was the body still, and there were the little instruments he had used.

The present did not stir him, gave him no thought; but the knowledge of the future was upon him, and he groaned aloud in the new-born agony of his soul. For he knew what he had done: it was his chance, and he had missed it; it was his trial, his ordeal, and he had failed* * *And in the next life on earth his torture would be longer and harder to bear. The Lord would have no mercy on his soul.

D. L. B. S.

XIIc186DR. WYGRAM’S SON.CHAPTER I.WHEN I met Dr. Clarence Wygram a few weeks ago, I had not seen him for nearly fifteen years. We were boys at school together, and fast friends at that time, but our intercourse since then has been very intermittent. Since he lost his wife in Southern Italy, many years ago, much of his life has been spent abroad, and, though he is to be seen in London at intervals, I seldom catch a glimpse of him. We do not belong to the same set in town, and as, being possessed of an ample fortune, he has never engaged in practice as a physician, his wandering and unoccupied life is little akin to my own. We do, however, meet occasionally by accident, when we talk over old times, vow to see more of each other in the future, and then part for—perhaps, other ten years. Such acquaintanceships as this of Wygram and myself are the most unsatisfactory of all—they can scarcely be called friendships. Life, in my opinion, is too brief for such unfrequent greetings. It is important, however, that I recall, for a moment, this penultimate meeting with my old friend. It happened long ago, but the circumstances are still fresh in my memory. As I have said, this was our last meeting but one, and the date some fifteen years ago.I was about to travel to the North by the night mail, and accidentally stumbled against Dr. Wygram on the crowded platform at Euston. He is always pleased to be facetious, when we do chance to see each other, in regard to our mutually altered appearance sinceour last meeting, and predicts, in jocular fashion, that, ere long, we shall certainly pass without recognition on either side. There is some truth in what he says, yet, to judge by my friend’s careworn and haggard appearance on this occasion, I should say he was aging somewhat faster than myself.It seemed that we were to be fellow-travellers. He also was going north, though not so far as myself, and I willingly shared a compartment, which he had already secured for himself and his son, a stripling youth, apparently about fourteen. The latter was returning to school after the Easter Holidays, and his father (who, by the way, is not above the Cockney weakness of calling every big school a college) was accompanying him on the journey. I remember that, for the first hour or two, we had enough of conversation to beguile the time. Wygram had, of course, been abroad—I forget where, or for how long, but we were quite agreed—we always are, on this point—to view the simple fact of his absence as being a perfectly sufficient and satisfactory explanation of the time that has elapsed since our last meeting, however long that interval may be. After that, our conversation began to languish. Our old friendship notwithstanding, we have really very little in common. Having spent a somewhat fatiguing day, I felt disposed to doze, and I believe that I ultimately slept.When I awoke, with a start, we were travelling at a high rate of speed. On the seat directly opposite to mine reclined my young travelling companion, apparently asleep, the lamplight falling full upon his upturned face. He seemed to all appearance not very robust; I think his father had hinted as much to me on the platform before we started. The boy’s sleep was a somewhat restless one, and he shifted his position uneasily, as, ever and anon, the oscillation of the carriage half aroused him. As, only half awake myself, I sat drowsily watching him, I suddenly became aware that his father, who was looking over somepapers by the aid of a reading lamp at the farther end of the compartment, seemed to wish, by a sign that he made, that I should join him. The thought struck me at the time, that perhaps he desired some conversation with me while his son was not a listener. I accordingly shifted my travelling rugs, and took a seat opposite to that of my old friend.The impression, on my part, that he did not wish the boy to overhear what he said was partly confirmed when my companion began the conversation in tones so low as to be barely audible above the rattle of the train. But I confess that I was somewhat unprepared for the substance of his communication, even when I did catch his meaning. At first, what he said was almost unintelligible to me, but at length I contrived to gather, from what he told me, that some trouble (affliction, I think, was the word he used) had lately overtaken him, and he seemed, though indirectly, to appeal to me for sympathy under his trial. The appeal, however, was entirely indirect, as no particulars were afforded—at least, if they were, I failed to understand their meaning. Under these circumstances, I was about to inquire, as delicately as I could, what the nature of his difficulty might be, when I chanced to notice that, as he spoke, his eyes would every now and then wander from looking in my face, and turn, as it were unconsciously, in the direction of his boy, not apprehensively, or as if he were afraid of him as a listener, but gently and tenderly, as if in deep solicitude on his account. This being the case, I forebore to press the father with questions which might be considered intrusive. The trouble to which he alluded was perhaps connected with the lad’s future, perhaps with something else concerning him, anyhow the secret, whatever it was, seemed to lie in that, or in some other equally delicate quarter, for Dr. Wygram did not give me any explicit details—rather avoided doing so, with a reticence quite unlike his customary frankness. But he had a favour to ask of me. It came to that, in the end.“You know,” he said appealingly, “you are my oldest friend—almost my only friend now, for my wandering life does not gain me new ones, and I beg you, most earnestly, to aid me, to help me, in this trouble—” Here he paused as if about to make some disclosure, then, checking himself, “to counsel me, when I ask you, at a future time.”Of course, my somewhat pardonable curiosity had no further excuse, but I murmured that I would be very glad if, at any time, I could be of service to him. I added that our old friendship justified such a claim on his part, and that, for my own, I would gladly meet it, when necessary. I confess I thought that the reserve accompanying his request was somewhat singular.“Ah, but promise! promise to me!” (he repeated the word with such passionate emphasis as to startle me); “promise that if I write you at any time and ask you to come to my help, you will do it—wherever I may be.”This last clause of his request was a tolerably comprehensive one, as, from the doctor’s well-known migratory habits, the summons might possibly be indited from Mongolia, or the farthest recesses of Crim-Tartary. But to pacify him, for I saw that my old friend was strangely perturbed, I said that I would do what he wished, at any time, if I could; which latter clause covered the aforesaid difficulty so far. He seemed relieved by my assurance. His manner grew calmer.“I cannot tell you more just at present,” he said (this with a glance at the boy), “except that I am in sore trouble, from which, at another time, not now, the counsel of a friend may relieve me. It concerns one near and dear to me” (ah! then the secret did lie there), “and you are the only one I could trust. Perhaps, in time, my trouble may be dissipated” (this with a hopeless, sickly smile), “and then you will be glad I have not bored you with it, but if not, and if I seek fulfilment of your promise, remember!” With which words he abruptly broke off the conversation.Shortly afterwards my fellow-travellers reached their destination. Dr. Wygram had, by this time, completely recovered his vivacity. When wishing me good-bye, a silent pressure of the hand, more prolonged than usual, alone betrayed any recollection, on his part, of our midnight conversation. I did not recover my own equanimity so rapidly; the interview came back upon me, as I sat alone for the rest of the journey, somewhat too vividly for that. A nameless uneasiness possessed me. I wearied myself with possible explanations of Wygram’s alleged troubles. Money difficulties were out of the question in the case of one so well off as he, so simple and unostentatious in his mode of life, and he would be the last man to gamble. His son—pooh! The birch was the best cure for boyish peccadilloes, and he would get that on going back to school. Still, reason with myself as I might, Dr. Wygram’s nameless trouble remained with me; the boy’s sleeping face in the lamplight, the father’s urgent entreaty “remember,” these did not pass away. After all, I would reproach myself for having promised to obey the summons of my friend whenever it might come; how awkward that might be! Why could not he, if so anxious for my counsel, arrange to come to me? Altogether, it was not until several days had elapsed that I shook off the disagreeable impression left by the journey. As for Dr. Wygram’s possible summons, I looked for that, more or less confidently, for several months, then my expectation of its coming began to fade. As a matter of fact, it did come after all, but not for fifteen years. Then it came upon this wise. I had been from home for some days. On returning, a pile of letters awaited me. Sorting them over one by one, the last in the heap was addressed in an unmistakable handwriting. “Wygram’s summons at last,” I said to myself, as the mist of the years rolled away and I was once more travelling northwards in the train; once more my friend’s voice in my ear, “remember!” once more the lamplight on his son’s sleeping face.Opening the letter, I read as follows:—Low Tor Cottage, by Liskeard, Cornwall,Sept. 3, 188—.Dear F.:—Remember promise given long ago. Pray come as soon as possible!ThineClarence Wygram.In the circumstances, what could I do but make arrangements, as speedily as I could, to keep my promise? Within twenty-four hours I was on my way to Cornwall.CHAPTER II.A GIG awaited my arrival at the nearest railway station, and a short drive brought me to Low Tor Cottage. Dr. Wygram met me at the door. Considering the lapse of years since our last interview, I was, of course, prepared to find my friend looking much older; but I was scarcely prepared to see him so utterly feeble-looking and broken, alike, apparently, with age and sorrow, as when he greeted me in the doorway. He bade me welcome in hurried nervous tones; evidently he laboured under the influence of suppressed emotion. We entered the sitting-room: the dinner-table was set for two persons only. He apologized for his secluded quarters, and the humble arrangements of his household. “I have only been here for a month or two,” he explained, “since my return from the Continent.” A staid, elderly maid-servant here entered the room. It was, of course, too early for any confidential talk between my host and myself; and, as the servant waited upon us during dinner, anything but commonplaces were out of the question. I judged from what I saw, however, that Dr. Wygram was living alone; perhaps it was better so. Our intercourse would be the more unrestrained.Somehow, I do not know how it happened, I was the first to break the ice, upon the question of the object of my visit. And this prematurely, in fact within half an hour of my arrival. Now I had mentally cautioned myself, on the way down, against precipitate allusions to the purpose of my coming; yet, as it chanced, I stumbled upon the delicate topic, unawares, before the servant had left us to our wine. It was, then, on his son’s account that Dr. Wygram sought my presence here. As much I gathered from his silence, sudden and pained, when I made the remark.Of course after this, and until we were alone together, I turned the conversation into other channels, in what I fear must have seemed a very clumsy fashion. My host grew more and more absent and distrait. When at length we drew our chairs near the fire, for the autumn evenings were growing chilly, he had not opened his lips for some minutes. I was quite unprepared for what was to come. No sooner were we alone, than, in his attempt to speak, he burst into tears. It was long before he regained his composure. At first all he could utter was a renewal of his thanks to me for coming to see him in his loneliness—his worse than lonely life, as he termed it.I could make nothing of all this, but I endeavoured to assure him of my earnest desire to help him, if only he would frankly confide in me as his friend. It was pitiful to see how, even after this invitation, it pained him to make any avowal. He sank into a reverie for a few moments, then, quickly rising to his feet and laying a hand on my shoulder, said:—“I will show you my sorrow, my friend, rather than speak of it myself. What I show you will speak for itself, for all words are vain.”So saying, he motioned me to follow him, and led the way from the room, carrying with him a small shaded lamp.When we entered an adjoining apartment the shadows there were so dense, and the light we had with us was so feeble, that, for some moments, I could discern nothing. A dull fire smouldered in the grate, but shed no light on the interior of the room, which seemed furnished as a small parlour. There was a large sofa at the farther end, and someone lay upon it covered with rugs. Dr. Wygram held the light a little lower, the rays fell upon an upturned face, that of a boy apparently asleep. I started, for was it not the self-same face upon which the flickering light of a railway carriage lamp had fallen so many years before? The very same, in every lineament, nothing was changed.I am not naturally quick in coming to a conclusion. Things dawn upon me now even more slowly than of old. I was startled for the moment, nothing more; though a creeping horror moved already towards my heart, I had not felt its actual touch.“That is my sorrow,” said the father, turning to me, without diverting the rays of the lamp from his son’s face; then, without another word, motioned me to follow him out. I did so. The shadows fell once more upon the sleeper, even as the shadows of the years had fallen, till that moment, upon my recollection of his features.On a sudden the full significance of what I had seen rushed upon me.“Great God!” I cried, “what is this, Wygram? Speak!”We were in the corridor now, and he did not return an answer. We re-entered the lighted room. My patience gave way.“For Heaven’s sake,” I said, “Wygram, tell me what is the meaning of this! How is your son—the boy sleeping yonder—the same, unchanged—?” The query died upon my lips, for he to whom I spoke was pale as ashes. I read the answer of my inarticulate question, there and then, in his face. By virtue of some nightmare spell, the boy I had seen so many years before, the boy, who by this time should have been a grown man, was slumbering,still a boy, in the room we had just quitted.They say that when, in dreams, anything manifestly absurd or inconsistent presents itself, the dreamer at once awakes. In the sitting-room of the cottage that night, seated beside my old friend, how often did I think myself dreaming, and long for the moment of waking to be precipitated by the seeming contradiction I had just witnessed! For some time neither of us spoke. Dr. Wygram sat motionless with the blank and, as it were, featureless expression on his countenance which I have so often seen sudden calamity impart.Yet his affliction, new and inexplicable to me as yet, must have become familiar enough to himself. After all, it must have been its first, its only revelation to another, which, as it were, reawakened himself to a sense of its utter bewilderment and hopelessness. And to me (of all men) he had turned for help, for counsel, in circumstances so astounding! What could I do? My own brain was in a whirl. The sense of wonderment once past, a painful search for possible explanation succeeded—explanation of what? That was the puzzling difficulty. A problem was before me, but, from lack of all precedent, the conditions of effectual presentation were wanting. How, then, attempt the solution?It must have arisen, I suppose, from the mental confusion under which I laboured that I can give no very lucid account of what immediately followed. I cannot tell at what period of the evening the silent current of our several thoughts flowed into a stream of conversation. But I reproduce here the substance of Dr. Wygram’s narrative, in his own words, as far as possible, omitting some details not germane to the narrative.“My son,” commenced Dr. Wygram, “inherited his mother’s malady, that which in her case proved fatal, pulmonary consumption. The unmistakable symptoms developed themselves in him at an early age. All the so-called remedies had been tried without avail. Humanly speaking, my boy was doomed, my house was apparently to be left unto me desolate. At first I was in despair, a despair lightened to me at last, however, by a gleam of hope. You are aware that I have devoted my life to the study rather than the practice of medicine. Being untrammelled with regular avocations, I have been enabled to explore, more fully than many of my professional brethren, what may be called the by-paths of study—those less explored tracks which are open to the medical scientist who is, by training, a chemist as well. The practice of scientificmedicine, among us in this country, at all events, is in its infancy, although many, whose interest it is to conceal the fact, will assure you to the contrary. If any proof were needed of my assertion, the lame and halting methods in use at the present day would suffice. The insufferable greed for money so shamelessly manifested renders the modern practitioner only a better-class charlatan. Their failures are so gross, their expedients to conceal these failures so unblushing, that I have long recommended an adoption by the public of the Chinese system. The far-seeing Celestials only pay their medical adviser when they are perfectly well. When they fall sick his pay stops till he can restore them to health.“But there is a second, and a higher path, known only to a few, and these enthusiasts, careless of the rewards of the crowd. It is but a dim and perilous way at the best—it is easier to deride those who attempt to traverse it than to follow them. The herd of the profession eschew it for the most part. Present-day materialists will have nothing, accept nothing, which cannot be seen, tasted, handled, brayed in a mortar, fitting fate for themselves as purblind fools! See how reluctantly, how incredulously, the results of even such a coarsely unmistakable remedy as electricity are received by the profession. Yet electrical energy, in medicine, is a clumsy weapon compared with others in the armoury of transcendentalism. There are blades infinitely keener for the expert—viewless brands, wielded by few—the peerless Excalibur itself, known to still fewer—for its point of a truth turneth every way, to guard the path to the Tree of Life.” Here he shuddered, but after a pause went on: “These higher methods have their risks, their inseparable dangers. Remember that experiment must at last be made upon the living, human, subject. Demonstration upon a score of tortured puppies will not avail. Isita wonder that the crude experimentalist, great at the torture trough, and brave initscruelties, recoilswhen the higher issue is at stake? But as I said, my boy was doomed, save, as I hoped, in the last resort of transcendentalism. That last resort I tried, but not until numberless trials in the laboratory had convinced me that my method must avail. I had discounted every possibility of failure. So long did I delay that the lamp of life had almost, with him, burned to the socket. But I was wary; I knew well that the step I was about to take was an irrevocable one, and my chief anxiety was to prevent a possible miscarriage of consequences. My plan, in short, promised to secure for one, already within sight of death’s portal, a lease of life prolonged—by how many months or years I could not tell—that question lay in darkness, but at least prolonged beyond what I could reasonably expect considering his condition. A growth of new vital force—which yet was not a growth—everything pointed the other way, let me say a stock, was to be grafted into the decaying and wasting organism, permanent in its character, constant, without flux or reflux. But (ah! that but which mars all that blooms and hopes!), like all gifts added from without, unlike all properties resident within, it, the gift, had an imperfection, a strange, deadly, and irremediable fault. It grew not, progressed not, aged not (do not start!); and this, its thrice-accursed property, was so malignantly, so devilishly potent, beyond hope of elimination or reduction, that it subdued unto itself whatsoever it touched or joined. Life preserved under its influence would be preserved, not in activity but as it were in arrestment, in default of needed repair, or rather with a subtle supply and repair of its own so elusive as to evade detection.“Thus,” continued Dr. Wygram—”thus, with all my caution, I erred—erred as all do, misled by some devil’s wile, who work against the gods. Fool that I was, my own caution deceived me, and that lying legend of him who sought for immortality, but forgot the advent of old age. But it is past now; otherswould have slipped on that insuperable threshold where I fell. I exulted in the thought that my boy would drink of the water of life and so defy the killing years—but I forgot thathe was not yet a man—knew not that I was condemning him to a life of immaturity. Hurry misled me at the last. Before I knew it, he was almost gone—then I took the irrevocable step. It was well that I worked in secret. No eye but mine saw him as (oh, wondrous change!) he rose from his sick-bed with an assured gift of life in every limb and pulse, so sudden and startling that I dreaded the coming of life’s angel almost as much as I had the advent of him of death. For a time, I say, I would almost, unknowing, have undone that which had been done—but that stage passed, and I only watched and waited.”Dr. Wygram paused. Was it fancy that as he did so I thought I heard a light footstep in the room above us? The speaker did not seem to notice it, but went on:—“For a time I knew no fear, that I had erred I did not know, as yet. For months he advanced in growth towards manhood. Then the spell began to work its hellish will. As he was then, as he is now, so will he ever be. A blight fell upon him, a chill mildew rained itself upon the issues of his life. A true death in life is his, for life hasteth to fruition and then falls; but this existence, with which I have dowered him, continues changeless, dateless, ageless, as the years of the Everlasting. I tell thee,” screamed the father, as he sprang to his feet in a frenzy of uncontrollable horror—”I tell thee my boy will never die!”Overmastered by the contagion of his excitement, I too had risen from my seat. As we faced each other in silence, a breathing murmur rose on the air, formless at first, then died away. Again a hushed murmur, then a crash of chords from an instrument in the room above. He of whom we spoke was playing Chopin’s “Marche Funèbre.”CHAPTER III.I NEED not enter into the details of my stay at Low Tor Cottage, even if I were able to reproduce them with correctness. My residence there was, to me, a prolonged nightmare, with all hope of an awakening denied me. Dr. Wygram had so completely surrendered himself to despair as to be incapable of making any effort. It would have been a positive relief to myself had I been able to have considered him insane, and the mystery before me a delusion springing from that cause. But that conclusion was shut out most effectually by my own personal testimony (of which he always eagerly availed himself) as to his son’s identity, and his practically unaltered condition after an interval of so many years. I had every opportunity of assuring myself on this point. Young Wygram, though shy and backward, preferring to mope in solitude, was our companion after a day or two. But he never seemed wholly at ease, would not join in any sustained conversation, and had an apathetic listlessness about him which was positively repellent. It was vain to try to arouse either father or son from the overwhelming depression into which both had apparently sunk. Some melancholy drives we took together in a pony phaeton through the solitudes of West Cornwall did not enliven us much. It is a haunted land at its best, with its rolling moorlands, and its mystic Dosmery Pool, fabled as ebbing and flowing in its silent depths in sympathy with the tides of the distant sea. As day after day slipped away, I began to feel myself as partaking of my friend’s hopelessness. Yet, if I hinted the uselessness of continuing with him, he would become almost frantic. As he pathetically repeated to me, I was his only friend, the only one to whom he could confide hissorrows, so insupportable when borne alone. Gradually he persuaded me, on one point, against my better judgment. It was finally agreed between us that ere I left some steps should be taken on his part to endeavour to obtain a reversal, or part reversal rather, of the conditions under which his son laboured (I use the periphrasis as the plain words to me are unspeakably painful), by something of the same methods by which they had been compassed. The prospect to me was very distasteful, indeed revolting, nor did Dr. Wygram’s laboured explanations convey much information to my non-professional mind. It is useless to detail them here, they would be intelligible only to the expert. But I could not deny him what he asked. I fancy his wish was to secure some witness of his own moral innocency, should any untoward accident happen. I cannot blame him; indeed, I think he would have been justified in taking almost any steps, short of taking his son’s life, in the unparalleled circumstances of the case.And the time was short. That was another perplexity. The constant state of nervous apprehension which overcame Dr. Wygram whenever his residence in one place lasted any time, pointed, of itself, to the necessity of making haste. Perhaps he magnified this difficulty; I cannot say. But there was something about their retired life which seemed likely to invite gossiping curiosity, in a country district more especially. That the neighbours had already questioned him as to the nature of his son’sdelicacyhe assured me over and over again. What could they mean? “He has been watched,” the father would say, excitedly. “We have already been here too long. They notice his unaltered appearance since our arrival. A growing lad, such as he appears, would have made some progress in the time, and they notice that he does not—nor ever will,” he would add bitterly, “unless my last efforts should prove successful.” It was idle to try to reason him out of these fears—for all I knewthey might be real. It was pitiful to think how long they had possessed him, during many weary years. When I had met himself and his son fifteen years before, they were, even then, travelling as fugitives from place to place to avoid detection; still more harrowing to think that, in the father’s case, from his rapidly aging look and growing feebleness, these wanderings must soon cease. Of his son’s fate, in that overwhelming contingency, I could never trust myself to think. The thought of it often overcame Dr. Wygram himself. He told me once, that on one occasion, when abroad, the terror of this self-same prospect so unmanned him that he had attempted to confide in a brother practitioner, an Englishman, resident, I think, in Milan. “Like most countrymen of his craft abroad,” said my poor friend bitterly, “he proved to be utterly incredulous. I might have known it, before exposing myself to his coarse ridicule. The line of my studies has been so utterly outside the old groove of pill and bolus, lancet and catheter, it is little wonder that the crowd will have none of its results. This professional brother only laughed in my face, rubbed his hands in glee, as at a good joke, asking me if I would not part with my recipe for a consideration, seeing he had some half-dozen youngsters of his own whose growing powers added to the tailor’s bill. English medical men are proverbially obtuse, but for the full development of their sheer obstinacy and mulishness they should be transplanted to the soil which gave birth to transcendentalism.”It was a breathless autumn evening when, in my presence, Dr. Wygram commenced his second experiment with his son. The dim scent of the shrubberies stole in through the open windows—over which the blinds were drawn. On a couch in the centre of the room lay young Wygram in a deep slumber, super-induced by an opiate which his father had administered, to aid the further stages of the treatment. A brass chafing dish lay upon the floor, containing somesmouldering embers; from a tripod upon the table hung a small retort of crimson glass which glowed like a ruddy gem in the flickering light of the spirit lamp underneath.With arms stripped bare to the elbows, Dr. Wygram bent over his son, watching the depth of unconsciousness in which the latter was immersed. For nearly an hour my friend had not spoken a word. I did not wish to interrupt him, but I saw by his manner at length that the critical moment had arrived. He turned to me at last, and in a broken whisper told me that a few moments longer would decide his success or failure. “We shall now, I trust,” he said, “have insight granted us in regard to a hitherto hidden mystery.”I do not know whether he ever obtained the insight in question, but I know that it was never granted to me. For, at that moment, loud voices were heard in the corridor. The door was unceremoniously thrown open, and three men entered the room. Their leader, a puffy, red-faced individual, fixed me with his glittering eye from the moment of his coming into the room. “That is the man!” he said, to his subordinates, pointing, at the same time, to me as I stood irresolute.A sudden panic possessed me that instant. To escape by the door was impossible, as the men stood beside it, but the window behind me was handy. I turned, lifted the blind, and precipitately jumped into the garden a few feet below. I do not believe that I ever ran so fast in my life as I did on that occasion through the mazes of the shrubbery. My one frantic desire was to get away at all hazards from that dreadful dwelling, though from what I fled I could not have told. I only knew that horror, the accumulated horror, of the past weeks, compressed into the moment, possessed me to my very heels. A wretched dog prowling about the garden gave chase to me as I fled, under the impression that I was making off with some portable property belonging to the establishment; butI soon left him far behind, and I do not think that the men joined in the pursuit, beyond the limits of the cottage, if, indeed, they followed me at all. In my terror I never looked behind, but ran through fields, hedges, and ditches till I arrived, breathless and hatless, at the nearest railway station. The officials seemed somewhat surprised at the appearance I presented, but I got a ticket without question, and was soon seated in a railway carriage on my way to London.*********These memoranda, written after a long period of nervous prostration, must be published, if for my own exculpation alone. Shortly after their committal to paper, a longing curiosity impelled me to inquire as to the fate of my old friend. I had promised not to desert him, and that promise I had scarcely kept. At all hazards, then, I resolved to go to Cornwall once more, even if by doing so, I should fall into the hands of the authorities, as I doubted not he had done. At all events, my own innocency was beyond question.On the Paddington platform my apprehensions in this latter respect were redoubled. A young man standing beside me, when I was taking out my ticket, certainly eyed me very narrowly.“One of the minions of the law,” I said to myself; “the affair has got wind after all.” As I was about to take my seat he came forward and asked if he had the pleasure of addressing Mr. F—— of Blank Street. Resolved to brazen it out to the last, I admitted my identity.“You are acquainted with Dr. Wygram, I think?” he continued, interrogatively.I owned that I was. Denial, at this stage, would have been useless.“I am his son,” he said smilingly.“His son!” I gasped. Then, after all, Dr. Wygram’s second experiment had succeeded, and he who was before me had been freed from the spell ofhis youth. Yes, there was no doubt of it! He was now a man! “Is it possible?” I repeated, gazing at him with astonishment.“I think there is no doubt of it,” he replied coolly. “You will be sorry to learn that my father is far from well,” he resumed. “I have been from home for a long time, but am just going down to see him, in Cornwall.”“Just going down to see him?” This was mystery upon mystery.“My dear sir,” I said in despair, “I am very sorry indeed to hear of your father’s illness, but would you kindly answer me one question as distinctly as you can. If you are Dr. Wygram’s son, how is it that you do not remember me?”“I do now most distinctly,” he replied. “I remember travelling with you and my father, many years ago, when I was going to school in the North.”Heavens! Then all the years, since then, had been a blank to him!“Have you no recollection,” I suggested, “of having been with your father since then, a short time ago, in Cornwall?”“Ah! that is my brother,” he quickly returned. “Yes,hewas with my father, when he took ill—been with him too long, in fact, for the good of either. My father, I am sorry to say, has for some time been quite unhinged mentally.”I should think he has, was my inward comment, for I saw it all in a moment. There were two young Wygrams; both of these I had seen when they were youngsters of the same age. Why had I not thought of this before? Is it not my special weakness that things dawn upon me very slowly? The rest, of course, was Dr. Wygram’s delusion, ultimately necessitating his being placed under the care of his friends.“My dear sir,” I replied, after a pause, and with some effusion of manner, “I sincerely trust that your father’s distressing illness may be but temporary. Onhis being able to receive the message, kindly present him with my warmest regards. Meanwhile, one question more before we part, for I am not going by this train; I—I have changed my mind. How many years, may I ask, may there be between your own age and that of your brother?”“About fourteen or fifteen,” was the reply.“Quite so; and when you were youngsters of about the same age, say, were you not considered very like one another?”“Remarkably so,” he answered, laughingly, “as like as two peas.”G. M. McCrie.

XII

c186

WHEN I met Dr. Clarence Wygram a few weeks ago, I had not seen him for nearly fifteen years. We were boys at school together, and fast friends at that time, but our intercourse since then has been very intermittent. Since he lost his wife in Southern Italy, many years ago, much of his life has been spent abroad, and, though he is to be seen in London at intervals, I seldom catch a glimpse of him. We do not belong to the same set in town, and as, being possessed of an ample fortune, he has never engaged in practice as a physician, his wandering and unoccupied life is little akin to my own. We do, however, meet occasionally by accident, when we talk over old times, vow to see more of each other in the future, and then part for—perhaps, other ten years. Such acquaintanceships as this of Wygram and myself are the most unsatisfactory of all—they can scarcely be called friendships. Life, in my opinion, is too brief for such unfrequent greetings. It is important, however, that I recall, for a moment, this penultimate meeting with my old friend. It happened long ago, but the circumstances are still fresh in my memory. As I have said, this was our last meeting but one, and the date some fifteen years ago.

I was about to travel to the North by the night mail, and accidentally stumbled against Dr. Wygram on the crowded platform at Euston. He is always pleased to be facetious, when we do chance to see each other, in regard to our mutually altered appearance sinceour last meeting, and predicts, in jocular fashion, that, ere long, we shall certainly pass without recognition on either side. There is some truth in what he says, yet, to judge by my friend’s careworn and haggard appearance on this occasion, I should say he was aging somewhat faster than myself.

It seemed that we were to be fellow-travellers. He also was going north, though not so far as myself, and I willingly shared a compartment, which he had already secured for himself and his son, a stripling youth, apparently about fourteen. The latter was returning to school after the Easter Holidays, and his father (who, by the way, is not above the Cockney weakness of calling every big school a college) was accompanying him on the journey. I remember that, for the first hour or two, we had enough of conversation to beguile the time. Wygram had, of course, been abroad—I forget where, or for how long, but we were quite agreed—we always are, on this point—to view the simple fact of his absence as being a perfectly sufficient and satisfactory explanation of the time that has elapsed since our last meeting, however long that interval may be. After that, our conversation began to languish. Our old friendship notwithstanding, we have really very little in common. Having spent a somewhat fatiguing day, I felt disposed to doze, and I believe that I ultimately slept.

When I awoke, with a start, we were travelling at a high rate of speed. On the seat directly opposite to mine reclined my young travelling companion, apparently asleep, the lamplight falling full upon his upturned face. He seemed to all appearance not very robust; I think his father had hinted as much to me on the platform before we started. The boy’s sleep was a somewhat restless one, and he shifted his position uneasily, as, ever and anon, the oscillation of the carriage half aroused him. As, only half awake myself, I sat drowsily watching him, I suddenly became aware that his father, who was looking over somepapers by the aid of a reading lamp at the farther end of the compartment, seemed to wish, by a sign that he made, that I should join him. The thought struck me at the time, that perhaps he desired some conversation with me while his son was not a listener. I accordingly shifted my travelling rugs, and took a seat opposite to that of my old friend.

The impression, on my part, that he did not wish the boy to overhear what he said was partly confirmed when my companion began the conversation in tones so low as to be barely audible above the rattle of the train. But I confess that I was somewhat unprepared for the substance of his communication, even when I did catch his meaning. At first, what he said was almost unintelligible to me, but at length I contrived to gather, from what he told me, that some trouble (affliction, I think, was the word he used) had lately overtaken him, and he seemed, though indirectly, to appeal to me for sympathy under his trial. The appeal, however, was entirely indirect, as no particulars were afforded—at least, if they were, I failed to understand their meaning. Under these circumstances, I was about to inquire, as delicately as I could, what the nature of his difficulty might be, when I chanced to notice that, as he spoke, his eyes would every now and then wander from looking in my face, and turn, as it were unconsciously, in the direction of his boy, not apprehensively, or as if he were afraid of him as a listener, but gently and tenderly, as if in deep solicitude on his account. This being the case, I forebore to press the father with questions which might be considered intrusive. The trouble to which he alluded was perhaps connected with the lad’s future, perhaps with something else concerning him, anyhow the secret, whatever it was, seemed to lie in that, or in some other equally delicate quarter, for Dr. Wygram did not give me any explicit details—rather avoided doing so, with a reticence quite unlike his customary frankness. But he had a favour to ask of me. It came to that, in the end.

“You know,” he said appealingly, “you are my oldest friend—almost my only friend now, for my wandering life does not gain me new ones, and I beg you, most earnestly, to aid me, to help me, in this trouble—” Here he paused as if about to make some disclosure, then, checking himself, “to counsel me, when I ask you, at a future time.”

Of course, my somewhat pardonable curiosity had no further excuse, but I murmured that I would be very glad if, at any time, I could be of service to him. I added that our old friendship justified such a claim on his part, and that, for my own, I would gladly meet it, when necessary. I confess I thought that the reserve accompanying his request was somewhat singular.

“Ah, but promise! promise to me!” (he repeated the word with such passionate emphasis as to startle me); “promise that if I write you at any time and ask you to come to my help, you will do it—wherever I may be.”

This last clause of his request was a tolerably comprehensive one, as, from the doctor’s well-known migratory habits, the summons might possibly be indited from Mongolia, or the farthest recesses of Crim-Tartary. But to pacify him, for I saw that my old friend was strangely perturbed, I said that I would do what he wished, at any time, if I could; which latter clause covered the aforesaid difficulty so far. He seemed relieved by my assurance. His manner grew calmer.

“I cannot tell you more just at present,” he said (this with a glance at the boy), “except that I am in sore trouble, from which, at another time, not now, the counsel of a friend may relieve me. It concerns one near and dear to me” (ah! then the secret did lie there), “and you are the only one I could trust. Perhaps, in time, my trouble may be dissipated” (this with a hopeless, sickly smile), “and then you will be glad I have not bored you with it, but if not, and if I seek fulfilment of your promise, remember!” With which words he abruptly broke off the conversation.

Shortly afterwards my fellow-travellers reached their destination. Dr. Wygram had, by this time, completely recovered his vivacity. When wishing me good-bye, a silent pressure of the hand, more prolonged than usual, alone betrayed any recollection, on his part, of our midnight conversation. I did not recover my own equanimity so rapidly; the interview came back upon me, as I sat alone for the rest of the journey, somewhat too vividly for that. A nameless uneasiness possessed me. I wearied myself with possible explanations of Wygram’s alleged troubles. Money difficulties were out of the question in the case of one so well off as he, so simple and unostentatious in his mode of life, and he would be the last man to gamble. His son—pooh! The birch was the best cure for boyish peccadilloes, and he would get that on going back to school. Still, reason with myself as I might, Dr. Wygram’s nameless trouble remained with me; the boy’s sleeping face in the lamplight, the father’s urgent entreaty “remember,” these did not pass away. After all, I would reproach myself for having promised to obey the summons of my friend whenever it might come; how awkward that might be! Why could not he, if so anxious for my counsel, arrange to come to me? Altogether, it was not until several days had elapsed that I shook off the disagreeable impression left by the journey. As for Dr. Wygram’s possible summons, I looked for that, more or less confidently, for several months, then my expectation of its coming began to fade. As a matter of fact, it did come after all, but not for fifteen years. Then it came upon this wise. I had been from home for some days. On returning, a pile of letters awaited me. Sorting them over one by one, the last in the heap was addressed in an unmistakable handwriting. “Wygram’s summons at last,” I said to myself, as the mist of the years rolled away and I was once more travelling northwards in the train; once more my friend’s voice in my ear, “remember!” once more the lamplight on his son’s sleeping face.

Opening the letter, I read as follows:—

Low Tor Cottage, by Liskeard, Cornwall,

Sept. 3, 188—.

Dear F.:—Remember promise given long ago. Pray come as soon as possible!

Thine

Clarence Wygram.

In the circumstances, what could I do but make arrangements, as speedily as I could, to keep my promise? Within twenty-four hours I was on my way to Cornwall.

A GIG awaited my arrival at the nearest railway station, and a short drive brought me to Low Tor Cottage. Dr. Wygram met me at the door. Considering the lapse of years since our last interview, I was, of course, prepared to find my friend looking much older; but I was scarcely prepared to see him so utterly feeble-looking and broken, alike, apparently, with age and sorrow, as when he greeted me in the doorway. He bade me welcome in hurried nervous tones; evidently he laboured under the influence of suppressed emotion. We entered the sitting-room: the dinner-table was set for two persons only. He apologized for his secluded quarters, and the humble arrangements of his household. “I have only been here for a month or two,” he explained, “since my return from the Continent.” A staid, elderly maid-servant here entered the room. It was, of course, too early for any confidential talk between my host and myself; and, as the servant waited upon us during dinner, anything but commonplaces were out of the question. I judged from what I saw, however, that Dr. Wygram was living alone; perhaps it was better so. Our intercourse would be the more unrestrained.

Somehow, I do not know how it happened, I was the first to break the ice, upon the question of the object of my visit. And this prematurely, in fact within half an hour of my arrival. Now I had mentally cautioned myself, on the way down, against precipitate allusions to the purpose of my coming; yet, as it chanced, I stumbled upon the delicate topic, unawares, before the servant had left us to our wine. It was, then, on his son’s account that Dr. Wygram sought my presence here. As much I gathered from his silence, sudden and pained, when I made the remark.Of course after this, and until we were alone together, I turned the conversation into other channels, in what I fear must have seemed a very clumsy fashion. My host grew more and more absent and distrait. When at length we drew our chairs near the fire, for the autumn evenings were growing chilly, he had not opened his lips for some minutes. I was quite unprepared for what was to come. No sooner were we alone, than, in his attempt to speak, he burst into tears. It was long before he regained his composure. At first all he could utter was a renewal of his thanks to me for coming to see him in his loneliness—his worse than lonely life, as he termed it.

I could make nothing of all this, but I endeavoured to assure him of my earnest desire to help him, if only he would frankly confide in me as his friend. It was pitiful to see how, even after this invitation, it pained him to make any avowal. He sank into a reverie for a few moments, then, quickly rising to his feet and laying a hand on my shoulder, said:—

“I will show you my sorrow, my friend, rather than speak of it myself. What I show you will speak for itself, for all words are vain.”

So saying, he motioned me to follow him, and led the way from the room, carrying with him a small shaded lamp.

When we entered an adjoining apartment the shadows there were so dense, and the light we had with us was so feeble, that, for some moments, I could discern nothing. A dull fire smouldered in the grate, but shed no light on the interior of the room, which seemed furnished as a small parlour. There was a large sofa at the farther end, and someone lay upon it covered with rugs. Dr. Wygram held the light a little lower, the rays fell upon an upturned face, that of a boy apparently asleep. I started, for was it not the self-same face upon which the flickering light of a railway carriage lamp had fallen so many years before? The very same, in every lineament, nothing was changed.

I am not naturally quick in coming to a conclusion. Things dawn upon me now even more slowly than of old. I was startled for the moment, nothing more; though a creeping horror moved already towards my heart, I had not felt its actual touch.

“That is my sorrow,” said the father, turning to me, without diverting the rays of the lamp from his son’s face; then, without another word, motioned me to follow him out. I did so. The shadows fell once more upon the sleeper, even as the shadows of the years had fallen, till that moment, upon my recollection of his features.

On a sudden the full significance of what I had seen rushed upon me.

“Great God!” I cried, “what is this, Wygram? Speak!”

We were in the corridor now, and he did not return an answer. We re-entered the lighted room. My patience gave way.

“For Heaven’s sake,” I said, “Wygram, tell me what is the meaning of this! How is your son—the boy sleeping yonder—the same, unchanged—?” The query died upon my lips, for he to whom I spoke was pale as ashes. I read the answer of my inarticulate question, there and then, in his face. By virtue of some nightmare spell, the boy I had seen so many years before, the boy, who by this time should have been a grown man, was slumbering,still a boy, in the room we had just quitted.

They say that when, in dreams, anything manifestly absurd or inconsistent presents itself, the dreamer at once awakes. In the sitting-room of the cottage that night, seated beside my old friend, how often did I think myself dreaming, and long for the moment of waking to be precipitated by the seeming contradiction I had just witnessed! For some time neither of us spoke. Dr. Wygram sat motionless with the blank and, as it were, featureless expression on his countenance which I have so often seen sudden calamity impart.Yet his affliction, new and inexplicable to me as yet, must have become familiar enough to himself. After all, it must have been its first, its only revelation to another, which, as it were, reawakened himself to a sense of its utter bewilderment and hopelessness. And to me (of all men) he had turned for help, for counsel, in circumstances so astounding! What could I do? My own brain was in a whirl. The sense of wonderment once past, a painful search for possible explanation succeeded—explanation of what? That was the puzzling difficulty. A problem was before me, but, from lack of all precedent, the conditions of effectual presentation were wanting. How, then, attempt the solution?

It must have arisen, I suppose, from the mental confusion under which I laboured that I can give no very lucid account of what immediately followed. I cannot tell at what period of the evening the silent current of our several thoughts flowed into a stream of conversation. But I reproduce here the substance of Dr. Wygram’s narrative, in his own words, as far as possible, omitting some details not germane to the narrative.

“My son,” commenced Dr. Wygram, “inherited his mother’s malady, that which in her case proved fatal, pulmonary consumption. The unmistakable symptoms developed themselves in him at an early age. All the so-called remedies had been tried without avail. Humanly speaking, my boy was doomed, my house was apparently to be left unto me desolate. At first I was in despair, a despair lightened to me at last, however, by a gleam of hope. You are aware that I have devoted my life to the study rather than the practice of medicine. Being untrammelled with regular avocations, I have been enabled to explore, more fully than many of my professional brethren, what may be called the by-paths of study—those less explored tracks which are open to the medical scientist who is, by training, a chemist as well. The practice of scientificmedicine, among us in this country, at all events, is in its infancy, although many, whose interest it is to conceal the fact, will assure you to the contrary. If any proof were needed of my assertion, the lame and halting methods in use at the present day would suffice. The insufferable greed for money so shamelessly manifested renders the modern practitioner only a better-class charlatan. Their failures are so gross, their expedients to conceal these failures so unblushing, that I have long recommended an adoption by the public of the Chinese system. The far-seeing Celestials only pay their medical adviser when they are perfectly well. When they fall sick his pay stops till he can restore them to health.

“But there is a second, and a higher path, known only to a few, and these enthusiasts, careless of the rewards of the crowd. It is but a dim and perilous way at the best—it is easier to deride those who attempt to traverse it than to follow them. The herd of the profession eschew it for the most part. Present-day materialists will have nothing, accept nothing, which cannot be seen, tasted, handled, brayed in a mortar, fitting fate for themselves as purblind fools! See how reluctantly, how incredulously, the results of even such a coarsely unmistakable remedy as electricity are received by the profession. Yet electrical energy, in medicine, is a clumsy weapon compared with others in the armoury of transcendentalism. There are blades infinitely keener for the expert—viewless brands, wielded by few—the peerless Excalibur itself, known to still fewer—for its point of a truth turneth every way, to guard the path to the Tree of Life.” Here he shuddered, but after a pause went on: “These higher methods have their risks, their inseparable dangers. Remember that experiment must at last be made upon the living, human, subject. Demonstration upon a score of tortured puppies will not avail. Isita wonder that the crude experimentalist, great at the torture trough, and brave initscruelties, recoilswhen the higher issue is at stake? But as I said, my boy was doomed, save, as I hoped, in the last resort of transcendentalism. That last resort I tried, but not until numberless trials in the laboratory had convinced me that my method must avail. I had discounted every possibility of failure. So long did I delay that the lamp of life had almost, with him, burned to the socket. But I was wary; I knew well that the step I was about to take was an irrevocable one, and my chief anxiety was to prevent a possible miscarriage of consequences. My plan, in short, promised to secure for one, already within sight of death’s portal, a lease of life prolonged—by how many months or years I could not tell—that question lay in darkness, but at least prolonged beyond what I could reasonably expect considering his condition. A growth of new vital force—which yet was not a growth—everything pointed the other way, let me say a stock, was to be grafted into the decaying and wasting organism, permanent in its character, constant, without flux or reflux. But (ah! that but which mars all that blooms and hopes!), like all gifts added from without, unlike all properties resident within, it, the gift, had an imperfection, a strange, deadly, and irremediable fault. It grew not, progressed not, aged not (do not start!); and this, its thrice-accursed property, was so malignantly, so devilishly potent, beyond hope of elimination or reduction, that it subdued unto itself whatsoever it touched or joined. Life preserved under its influence would be preserved, not in activity but as it were in arrestment, in default of needed repair, or rather with a subtle supply and repair of its own so elusive as to evade detection.

“Thus,” continued Dr. Wygram—”thus, with all my caution, I erred—erred as all do, misled by some devil’s wile, who work against the gods. Fool that I was, my own caution deceived me, and that lying legend of him who sought for immortality, but forgot the advent of old age. But it is past now; otherswould have slipped on that insuperable threshold where I fell. I exulted in the thought that my boy would drink of the water of life and so defy the killing years—but I forgot thathe was not yet a man—knew not that I was condemning him to a life of immaturity. Hurry misled me at the last. Before I knew it, he was almost gone—then I took the irrevocable step. It was well that I worked in secret. No eye but mine saw him as (oh, wondrous change!) he rose from his sick-bed with an assured gift of life in every limb and pulse, so sudden and startling that I dreaded the coming of life’s angel almost as much as I had the advent of him of death. For a time, I say, I would almost, unknowing, have undone that which had been done—but that stage passed, and I only watched and waited.”

Dr. Wygram paused. Was it fancy that as he did so I thought I heard a light footstep in the room above us? The speaker did not seem to notice it, but went on:—

“For a time I knew no fear, that I had erred I did not know, as yet. For months he advanced in growth towards manhood. Then the spell began to work its hellish will. As he was then, as he is now, so will he ever be. A blight fell upon him, a chill mildew rained itself upon the issues of his life. A true death in life is his, for life hasteth to fruition and then falls; but this existence, with which I have dowered him, continues changeless, dateless, ageless, as the years of the Everlasting. I tell thee,” screamed the father, as he sprang to his feet in a frenzy of uncontrollable horror—”I tell thee my boy will never die!”

Overmastered by the contagion of his excitement, I too had risen from my seat. As we faced each other in silence, a breathing murmur rose on the air, formless at first, then died away. Again a hushed murmur, then a crash of chords from an instrument in the room above. He of whom we spoke was playing Chopin’s “Marche Funèbre.”

I NEED not enter into the details of my stay at Low Tor Cottage, even if I were able to reproduce them with correctness. My residence there was, to me, a prolonged nightmare, with all hope of an awakening denied me. Dr. Wygram had so completely surrendered himself to despair as to be incapable of making any effort. It would have been a positive relief to myself had I been able to have considered him insane, and the mystery before me a delusion springing from that cause. But that conclusion was shut out most effectually by my own personal testimony (of which he always eagerly availed himself) as to his son’s identity, and his practically unaltered condition after an interval of so many years. I had every opportunity of assuring myself on this point. Young Wygram, though shy and backward, preferring to mope in solitude, was our companion after a day or two. But he never seemed wholly at ease, would not join in any sustained conversation, and had an apathetic listlessness about him which was positively repellent. It was vain to try to arouse either father or son from the overwhelming depression into which both had apparently sunk. Some melancholy drives we took together in a pony phaeton through the solitudes of West Cornwall did not enliven us much. It is a haunted land at its best, with its rolling moorlands, and its mystic Dosmery Pool, fabled as ebbing and flowing in its silent depths in sympathy with the tides of the distant sea. As day after day slipped away, I began to feel myself as partaking of my friend’s hopelessness. Yet, if I hinted the uselessness of continuing with him, he would become almost frantic. As he pathetically repeated to me, I was his only friend, the only one to whom he could confide hissorrows, so insupportable when borne alone. Gradually he persuaded me, on one point, against my better judgment. It was finally agreed between us that ere I left some steps should be taken on his part to endeavour to obtain a reversal, or part reversal rather, of the conditions under which his son laboured (I use the periphrasis as the plain words to me are unspeakably painful), by something of the same methods by which they had been compassed. The prospect to me was very distasteful, indeed revolting, nor did Dr. Wygram’s laboured explanations convey much information to my non-professional mind. It is useless to detail them here, they would be intelligible only to the expert. But I could not deny him what he asked. I fancy his wish was to secure some witness of his own moral innocency, should any untoward accident happen. I cannot blame him; indeed, I think he would have been justified in taking almost any steps, short of taking his son’s life, in the unparalleled circumstances of the case.

And the time was short. That was another perplexity. The constant state of nervous apprehension which overcame Dr. Wygram whenever his residence in one place lasted any time, pointed, of itself, to the necessity of making haste. Perhaps he magnified this difficulty; I cannot say. But there was something about their retired life which seemed likely to invite gossiping curiosity, in a country district more especially. That the neighbours had already questioned him as to the nature of his son’sdelicacyhe assured me over and over again. What could they mean? “He has been watched,” the father would say, excitedly. “We have already been here too long. They notice his unaltered appearance since our arrival. A growing lad, such as he appears, would have made some progress in the time, and they notice that he does not—nor ever will,” he would add bitterly, “unless my last efforts should prove successful.” It was idle to try to reason him out of these fears—for all I knewthey might be real. It was pitiful to think how long they had possessed him, during many weary years. When I had met himself and his son fifteen years before, they were, even then, travelling as fugitives from place to place to avoid detection; still more harrowing to think that, in the father’s case, from his rapidly aging look and growing feebleness, these wanderings must soon cease. Of his son’s fate, in that overwhelming contingency, I could never trust myself to think. The thought of it often overcame Dr. Wygram himself. He told me once, that on one occasion, when abroad, the terror of this self-same prospect so unmanned him that he had attempted to confide in a brother practitioner, an Englishman, resident, I think, in Milan. “Like most countrymen of his craft abroad,” said my poor friend bitterly, “he proved to be utterly incredulous. I might have known it, before exposing myself to his coarse ridicule. The line of my studies has been so utterly outside the old groove of pill and bolus, lancet and catheter, it is little wonder that the crowd will have none of its results. This professional brother only laughed in my face, rubbed his hands in glee, as at a good joke, asking me if I would not part with my recipe for a consideration, seeing he had some half-dozen youngsters of his own whose growing powers added to the tailor’s bill. English medical men are proverbially obtuse, but for the full development of their sheer obstinacy and mulishness they should be transplanted to the soil which gave birth to transcendentalism.”

It was a breathless autumn evening when, in my presence, Dr. Wygram commenced his second experiment with his son. The dim scent of the shrubberies stole in through the open windows—over which the blinds were drawn. On a couch in the centre of the room lay young Wygram in a deep slumber, super-induced by an opiate which his father had administered, to aid the further stages of the treatment. A brass chafing dish lay upon the floor, containing somesmouldering embers; from a tripod upon the table hung a small retort of crimson glass which glowed like a ruddy gem in the flickering light of the spirit lamp underneath.

With arms stripped bare to the elbows, Dr. Wygram bent over his son, watching the depth of unconsciousness in which the latter was immersed. For nearly an hour my friend had not spoken a word. I did not wish to interrupt him, but I saw by his manner at length that the critical moment had arrived. He turned to me at last, and in a broken whisper told me that a few moments longer would decide his success or failure. “We shall now, I trust,” he said, “have insight granted us in regard to a hitherto hidden mystery.”

I do not know whether he ever obtained the insight in question, but I know that it was never granted to me. For, at that moment, loud voices were heard in the corridor. The door was unceremoniously thrown open, and three men entered the room. Their leader, a puffy, red-faced individual, fixed me with his glittering eye from the moment of his coming into the room. “That is the man!” he said, to his subordinates, pointing, at the same time, to me as I stood irresolute.

A sudden panic possessed me that instant. To escape by the door was impossible, as the men stood beside it, but the window behind me was handy. I turned, lifted the blind, and precipitately jumped into the garden a few feet below. I do not believe that I ever ran so fast in my life as I did on that occasion through the mazes of the shrubbery. My one frantic desire was to get away at all hazards from that dreadful dwelling, though from what I fled I could not have told. I only knew that horror, the accumulated horror, of the past weeks, compressed into the moment, possessed me to my very heels. A wretched dog prowling about the garden gave chase to me as I fled, under the impression that I was making off with some portable property belonging to the establishment; butI soon left him far behind, and I do not think that the men joined in the pursuit, beyond the limits of the cottage, if, indeed, they followed me at all. In my terror I never looked behind, but ran through fields, hedges, and ditches till I arrived, breathless and hatless, at the nearest railway station. The officials seemed somewhat surprised at the appearance I presented, but I got a ticket without question, and was soon seated in a railway carriage on my way to London.

*********

These memoranda, written after a long period of nervous prostration, must be published, if for my own exculpation alone. Shortly after their committal to paper, a longing curiosity impelled me to inquire as to the fate of my old friend. I had promised not to desert him, and that promise I had scarcely kept. At all hazards, then, I resolved to go to Cornwall once more, even if by doing so, I should fall into the hands of the authorities, as I doubted not he had done. At all events, my own innocency was beyond question.

On the Paddington platform my apprehensions in this latter respect were redoubled. A young man standing beside me, when I was taking out my ticket, certainly eyed me very narrowly.

“One of the minions of the law,” I said to myself; “the affair has got wind after all.” As I was about to take my seat he came forward and asked if he had the pleasure of addressing Mr. F—— of Blank Street. Resolved to brazen it out to the last, I admitted my identity.

“You are acquainted with Dr. Wygram, I think?” he continued, interrogatively.

I owned that I was. Denial, at this stage, would have been useless.

“I am his son,” he said smilingly.

“His son!” I gasped. Then, after all, Dr. Wygram’s second experiment had succeeded, and he who was before me had been freed from the spell ofhis youth. Yes, there was no doubt of it! He was now a man! “Is it possible?” I repeated, gazing at him with astonishment.

“I think there is no doubt of it,” he replied coolly. “You will be sorry to learn that my father is far from well,” he resumed. “I have been from home for a long time, but am just going down to see him, in Cornwall.”

“Just going down to see him?” This was mystery upon mystery.

“My dear sir,” I said in despair, “I am very sorry indeed to hear of your father’s illness, but would you kindly answer me one question as distinctly as you can. If you are Dr. Wygram’s son, how is it that you do not remember me?”

“I do now most distinctly,” he replied. “I remember travelling with you and my father, many years ago, when I was going to school in the North.”

Heavens! Then all the years, since then, had been a blank to him!

“Have you no recollection,” I suggested, “of having been with your father since then, a short time ago, in Cornwall?”

“Ah! that is my brother,” he quickly returned. “Yes,hewas with my father, when he took ill—been with him too long, in fact, for the good of either. My father, I am sorry to say, has for some time been quite unhinged mentally.”

I should think he has, was my inward comment, for I saw it all in a moment. There were two young Wygrams; both of these I had seen when they were youngsters of the same age. Why had I not thought of this before? Is it not my special weakness that things dawn upon me very slowly? The rest, of course, was Dr. Wygram’s delusion, ultimately necessitating his being placed under the care of his friends.

“My dear sir,” I replied, after a pause, and with some effusion of manner, “I sincerely trust that your father’s distressing illness may be but temporary. Onhis being able to receive the message, kindly present him with my warmest regards. Meanwhile, one question more before we part, for I am not going by this train; I—I have changed my mind. How many years, may I ask, may there be between your own age and that of your brother?”

“About fourteen or fifteen,” was the reply.

“Quite so; and when you were youngsters of about the same age, say, were you not considered very like one another?”

“Remarkably so,” he answered, laughingly, “as like as two peas.”

G. M. McCrie.

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