It took some little time, some work, to arrange what the Professor had decided must be done. He went about his plans with care and skill. He suborned Nevins easily enough, using, chiefly, the plain truth. Nevins, with the superstition of his class, was willing to believe far greater mysteries than the Professor half hinted at. By Nevins' aid it happened that Orson Vane slept, one night, face to face with the polished surface of the new mirror. In the morning it was curtained as usual.
That morning Augustus Vanlief called at the Wentworth house. He asked for Mrs. Wentworth. He went to his point at once.
"You know who I am, I dare say, Mrs. Wentworth. You love your husband, I am sure; you will pardon my intrusion when I tell you that perhaps I can do something the best thing of all—for him. It is, in its way, a matter of life and death. Do the doctors give you any hope?"
Mrs. Wentworth, her beauty now tired and touched by traces of spoilt ambition, made a listless motion with her hands.
"I don't know why I should tell you," she said, "or why I should not. They tell me vague things, the doctors do, but I don't believe they know what is the matter."
"Do you?"
"I?" she looked at Vanlief, and found a challenge in his regard. "It seems," she admitted, "as if—I hardly like to say it,—but it seems as if there was no soul in him any more. He is a shell, a husk. The life in him seems purely muscular. It is very depressing. Why do you think you can do anything for Clarence, Professor? I did not know your researches took you into medicine?"
"Ah, but you admit this is not a matter for medicine, but for the mind. Will you allow me an experiment madame? I give you my word of honor, my honor and my reputation, that there is no risk, and there may be—perhaps, an entire restoration. There is—a certain operation that I wish to try—"
"An operation? The most eminent doctors have told me such a thing would be useless. We might as well leave my poor husband clear of the knife, Professor."
"Oh, it is no operation, in that sense. Nothing surgical. I can hardly explain; professional secrets are involved. If you did not know that I am but a plodding old man of science—if I were an unknown charlatan—I would not ask you to put faith in me. But—I give you my word, my promise, that if you will let Mr. Wentworth come with me in my brougham I will return with him within the hour. He will be either as he is now, or—as he once was."
"As he once was—!" Mrs. Wentworth repeated the phrase, and the thought brought her a keen moment of anguish that left a visible impress on her features. "Ah," she sighed, "if I could only think such a thing possible!" She brooded in silence a moment or two. Then she spoke.
"Very well. You will find him in the library. Prim, show the gentleman to the library. If you can persuade him, Professor—" She smiled bitterly. "But then, anybody can persuade him nowadays." She turned to some embroidery as if to dismiss the subject, to show that she was resigned even to hopeless experiments. The very fact that she was plying the needle rather than the social sceptre was gauge of her descent from the heights. As a matter of fact Vanlief found Wentworth amenable enough. Wentworth was reading Marie Corelli. His mind was as empty as that. Nothing could better define his utter lapse from intelligence. He put the book down reluctantly as the Professor came in. He listened without much enthusiasm. A drive? Why not? He hadn't driven much of late, but if it was something that would please the Professor. He remembered, through a mist, that he had known Vanlief when he himself was a boy; his father had often spoken of Vanlief with respect. Nothing further in the way of mental exertion came to him. He followed Vanlief as a dog follows whoso speaks kindly to it.
The conversation between the two, in the brougham, would hardly tend to the general entertainment. It was a thing of shreds and patches. It led nowhither.
The brougham stopped at the door of Orson Vane's house. Nevins let them in, whispering an assuring confidence to the professor. As they reached the door of the dressing-room Vanlief pushed Wentworth ahead of him, and bade him enter. He kept behind him, letting the other's body screen him from the staring mirror.
Wentworth looked at himself. A hand traveled slowly up to his forehead.
"By Jove!" he said, hesitatingly, "I never put the curtain back, after all." And he covered up the mirror. "Curious thing," he went on, with energy vitalizing each word, "what possessed me to come here just now, when I know for a fact that they're playing the Inter-State Golf championships to-day. Dashed if I know why I didn't go!" He walked out, plainly puzzled, clumsily heedless of Vanlief and Nevins, but—himself once more.
Orson Vane, at just that time, was on the links of the Fifeshire Golf Club. He was wearing a little red coat with yellow facings. He was in the act of stooping on a green, to look along the line of his putt, when he got to his feet in a hurried, bewildered way. He threw his putter down on the green. He blushed all over, shaming the tint of his scarlet coat.
"What a foolish game for a grown-up man!" he blurted out, and strode off the grounds.
The bystanders were aghast. They could not find words. Orson Vane, the very prophet of golf, to throw it over in that fashion! It was inexplicable! The episode was simply maddening.
But it was remarked that the decline of golf on this side of the water dated from that very day.
Orson Vane was taking lunch with Professor Vanlief. Jeannette, learning of Vane's coming, had absented herself.
"It is true," Vane was saying, "that I can assert what no other man has asserted before,—that I know the exact mental machinery of two human beings. Yes; that is quite true. But—"
"I promised nothing more," remarked Vanlief.
"No. That is true, too. I have lived the lives of others; I have given their thoughts a dwelling. But I am none the happier for that."
"Oh," admitted Vanlief, "wisdom does not guarantee happiness...." He drummed with his fine, long fingers, upon the table-cloth. Vane, watching him, noted the almost transparent quality of his skin. Under that admirable mask of military uprightness there was an aging, a fading process going on, that no keen observer could miss. "It is the pursuit, not the capture of wisdom, that brings happiness. Wisdom is too often only a bubble that bursts when you touch it."
"Perhaps that is it. At any rate I know that I do not love my neighbor any more because I have fathomed some of his thoughts. Moreover, Professor, has it occurred to you that your discovery, your secret, carries elements of danger with it? Take my own experiments; there might have been tragic results; whole lives might have been ruined. In one case I was nearly the victim of a tragedy myself; I might have become, for all time, the dreadful creature I was giving house-room to. In the other, there was no more than a farce possible; the visiting spirit was, after all, in subjection to my own. I think you will have to simplify the details of your marvelous secret. It works a little clumsily, a little—"
"Oh," the Professor put in, "I am perfecting the process. I spend my days and my nights in elaborating the details. I mean to have it in the simplest, most unmistakable perfection before I hand it over to the human race."
"Sometimes I think," mused Vane, "that your boon will be a doubtful one. I can see no good to be gained. My whole point of view is changing. I ached for such a chance of wisdom once; now that it has come to me I am sad because the things I have learned are so horrible, so silly. I had not thought there were such souls in the world; or not, at any rate, in the immediate world about me."
"Oh," the Professor went on, steadfastly, "there will be many benefits in the plan. Doctors will be able to go at once to the root of any ailments that have their seat in the brain. Witnesses cab be made to testify the truth. Oh—there are ever so many possibilities."
"As many for evil as for good. Second-rate artists could steal the ideas, the inventions of others. No inventor, no scientist, would be sure of keeping his secrets. The thing would be a weapon in the hands of the unscrupulous."
"Ah, well," smiled Vanlief, "so far I have not made my discovery public, have I? It is a thing I must consider very carefully. As you say, there are arguments on either side. But you must bear in mind that you are somewhat embittered. It was your own fault; you chose the subject wittingly. If you were to read a really beautiful mind, you might turn to the other extreme; you might urge me to lose no time in giving the world my secret. The wise way is between the two; I must go forward with my plans, prepared for either course. I may take it to my grave with me, or I may give it to the world; but, so far, it is still a little incomplete; it is not ripe for general distribution. Instead of the one magic mirror there must be myriads of them. There are stupendous opportunities. All that you have told me of your own experiences in these experiments has proved my skill to have been wisely employed; your success was beyond my hopes. Do you think you will go on?"
Orson Vane did not answer at once. It was something he had been asking himself; he was not yet sure of the answer.
"I haven't made up my mind," he replied. "So far I have hardly been repaid for my time and the vital force employed. I almost feel toward these experiments as toward a vice that refines the mind while coarsening the frame. That is the story of the most terrible vices, I think; they corrode the body while gilding the brain. But this much I know; if I use your mirror again it will not be to borrow a merely smart soul; I mean to go to some other sphere of life. That one is too contracted."
"Strange," said the Professor, "that you should have said that. Jeannette pretends she thinks that, too. I cannot get her to take her proper position in the world. She is a little elusive. But then, to be sure, she is not, just now, at her best."
"She is not ill?" asked Vane, with a guilty start.
"Nothing tangible. But not—herself...."
Vane observed that he wished he might have found her in; he feared he had offended her; he hoped the Professor would use his kind offices again to soften the young lady's feelings toward him. Then he got up to go.
Strolling along the avenue he noted certain aspects of the town with an appreciation that he had not always given them. He had seen these things from so many other points of view of late; had been in sympathy with them, had made up a fraction of their more grotesque element; that to see them clearly with his own eyes had a sort of novelty. The life of to-day, as it appeared on the smartest surfaces, was, he reflected, a colorful if somewhat soulless picture....
The young men sit in the clubs and in the summer casinos, smoking and wondering what the new mode in trousers is to be; an acquaintance goes by; he has a hat that is not quite correct, and his friends comment on it yawningly; he has not the faintest notion of polite English, but nobody cares; a man who has written great things walks by, but he wears a creased coat, and the young men in the smoking-room sniff at him. In the drags and the yachts the women and the girls sit in radiance and gay colors and arrogant unconsciousness of position and power; they talk of golfing and fashion and mustachios; Mrs. Blank is going a hot pace and Mrs. Landthus is a thoroughbred; adjectives in the newest sporting slang fly about blindingly; the language is a curious argot, as distinct as the tortuous lingo of the Bowery. A coach goes rattling by, the horses throwing their heads in air, and their feet longing for the Westchester roads. The whip discusses bull-terriers; the people behind him are declaring that the only thing you can possibly find in the Waldorf rooms is an impossible lot of people. The complexions of all these people, intellectually presentable in many ways, and fashionable in yet more modes, are high in health. They look happy, prosperous and satisfied....
Yes, there was a superficial fairness to the picture, Vane admitted. If only, if only, he had not chosen to look under the surface! Now that he had seen the world with other eyes, its fairness could rarely seem the same to him.
A sturdy beggar approached him, with a whine that proved him an admirable actor. But Vane could not find it in him to reflect that if there is one thing more than another that lends distinction to a town it is an abundance of beggars.
He wondered how it would be to annex this healthy impostor's mite of a soul. But no; there could be little wisdom gained there.
He made, finally, for the Town and Country Club, and tried to immerse himself in the conversation that sped about. The talked turned to the eminent actor, Arthur Wantage. The subject of that man's alleged eccentricities invariably brought out a flood of the town's stalest anecdotes. Vane, listening in a lazy mood, made up his mind to see Wantage play that night. It would be a distraction. It would show him, once again, the present limit in one human being's portraiture of another; he would see the highest point to which external imitation could be brought; he could contrast it with the heights to which he himself had ascended.
It would be a chance for him to consider Wantage, for the first time in his life, as a merely second-rate actor. This player was an adept only in the making the shell, the husk, seem lifelike; since he could not read the character, how could he go deeper?
The opportunities the theatre held for him suddenly loomed vast before Vane.
The fact that Arthur Wantage was to be seen and heard, nightly, in a brilliant comedy by the author of "Pious Aeneas," was not so much the attraction that drew people to his theatre, as was the fact that he had not yet, that season, delivered himself of a curtain speech. His curtain speeches were wont to be insults delivered in an elaborately honeyed manner; he took the pose of considering his audiences with contempt; he admired himself far more for his condescension in playing to them than he respected his audiences for having the taste to admire him.
The comedy in which he was now appearing was the perfection of paradox. It pretended to be frivolous and was really philosophic. The kernel of real wisdom was behind the elaborately poised mask of wit. A delightful impertinence and exaggeration informed every line of the dialogue. The pose of inimitable, candid egoism showed under every situation. The play was typical of the author as well as of the player. It veiled, as thinly as possible, a deal of irony at the expense of the play going public; it took some of that public's dearest foibles and riddled them to shreds.
It was currently reported that the only excuse for comparatively amicable relations between Wantage and O'Deigh, who had written this comedy, was the fact of there being an ocean between them. Even at that Wantage found it difficult to suffer the many praises he heard bestowed, not upon himself but O'Deigh. He had burst out in spleen at this adulation, once, in the hearing of an intimate.
"My dear Arthur," said the other, "you strike me as very ungrateful. For my part, when I see your theatre crowded nightly, when I see how your exchequer fills steadily, it occurs to me that you should go down on your knees every night, and thank God that O'Deigh has done you such a stunning play."
"Oh," was Wantage's grudging answer, "I do, you know I do. But I also say: Oh, God, why did it have to be by O'Deigh?"
The secret of his hatred for O'Deigh was the secret of his hatred for all dramatists. He was a curious compound of egoism, childishness and shrewdness. Part of his shrewdness—or was it his childishness?—showed in his aversion to paying authors' royalties. He always tried to re-write all the plays he accepted; if the playwrights objected there was sure to be a row of some sort. When he could find no writers willing to make him a present of plays, for the sake, as he put it, of having it done by as eminent an actor as himself, and in so beautiful a theatre, he was in the habit of announcing that he would forsake the theatre, and turn critic. He pretended that the world—the public, the press, even the minor players—were in league against him. There was a conspiracy to drive him from the theatre; the riff-raff resented that a man of genius should be so successful. They lied about him; he was sure they lied; for stories, of preposterous import, came to him; he vowed he never read the newspapers—never. As for London—oh, he could spin you the most fascinating yarn of the cabal that had dampened his London triumph. He mentioned, with a world of meaning in his tone, the name of the other great player of the time; he insinuated that to have him, Wantage, succeed in London, had not been to that other player's mind; so the wires had been pulled; oh, it was all very well done. He laughed at the reminiscence,—a brave, bluff laugh, that told you he could afford to let such petty jealousies amuse him.
The riddle of Arthur Wantage's character had never yet been read. There were those who averred he was never doing anything but acting, not in the most intimate moments of his life; some called him a keen moneymaker, retaining the mummer's pose off the stage for the mere effect of it on the press and the public. What the man's really honest, unrehearsed thoughts were,—or if he ever had such—no man could say. To many earnest students of life this puzzle had presented itself. It began to present itself, now, to Orson Vane.
This, surely, was a secret worth the reading. Here were, so to say, two masks to lift at once. This man, Arthur Wantage, who came out before the curtain now as this, now as that, character of fancy or history, what shred of vital, individual personality had he retained through all these changings? The enthusiasm of discovery, of adventure came upon Vane with a sharpness that he had not felt since the day he had mocked the futility of human science because it could not unlock other men's brains.
The horseshoe-shaped space that held the audience glittered with babble and beauty as Orson Vane took his seat in the stalls. The presence of the smart set gave the theatre a very garland of charm, of grace, and of beauty's bud and blossom. The stalls were radiant, and full of polite chatter. The boxes wore an air of dignified twilight,—a twilight of goddesses. The least garish of the goddesses, yet the one holding the subtlest sway, was Jeanette Vanlief. She sat, in the shadow of an upper box, with her father and Luke Moncreith. On her pale face the veins showed, now and then; the flush of rose came to it like a surprise—like the birth of a new world. She radiated no obvious, blatant fascination. Her hands slim and white; her voice firm and low; her eyes of a hue like that of bronze, streaked like the tiger-lilies; her profile sharp as a cameo's; the nose, with its finely-chiseled nostrils, curved in Roman mode; the mouth, thin and of the faintest possible red, slightly drooping. And then, her hair! It held, again, a spray of lilies of the valley; the artificial lights discovered in the waves and the curls of it the most unexpected shades, the most mercurial tints. The slight touch of melancholy that hovered over her merely enhanced her charm. Moncreith told himself that he would go to the uttermost ends of evil to win this woman. He had come, the afternoon of that day, through the most dangerous stream in the world, the stream of loveliness that flows over certain portions of the town at certain fashionable hours. It is a stream the eddies of which are of lace and silk; its pools are the blue of eye and the rose of mouth; its cataracts are skirts that swirl and whisper and sing of ivory outlines and velvet shadows. Yet, as he looked at Jeannette Vanlief, all that fascinating, dangerous stream lost its enticement for him; he saw her as a dream too high for comparison with the mere earthiness of the town. He felt, with a grim resolution, that nothing human should come between him and Jeannette.
Orson Vane, from his chair, paid scant attention to his fellow spectators. He was intent upon the dish that O'Deigh and Wantage had prepared for his delectation. He felt a delicious interest in every line, every situation. He had made up his mind that he would go to the root of the mystery that men called Arthur Wantage. Whether that mask concealed a real, high intelligence, or a mere, cunning, monkeylike facility in imitation—his was to be the solution of that question. Wrapped up in that thought he never so much as glanced toward the box where his friends sat.
At the end of the first act Vane strolled out into the lobby. He nodded hither and thither, but he felt no desire for nearer converse. A hand on his shoulder brought him face to face with Professor Vanlief. He was asked to come up to the box. He listened, gravely, to the Professor's words, and thanked him. So Moncreith was smitten? He smiled in a kindly way; he understood, now, the many brusqueries of his friend. That day, long ago, when he had been so inexplicable in the little bookshop; the many other occasions, since then, when Luke had been rude and bitter. A man in love was never to be reckoned on. He wished Luke all the luck in the world. It struck him but faintly that he himself had once longed for that sweet daughter of Augustus Vanlief's; he told himself that it was a dream he must put away. He was a mariner bent on many deep-sea voyages and many hazards of fate; it would be unfair to ask any woman to share in any such life. His life would be devoted to furthering the Professor's discoveries; he meant to be an adventurer into the regions of the human soul; it was a land whither none could follow.
Perhaps, if he had seen Jeannette, he might have felt no such resignation. His mood was so tense in its devotion to the puzzle presented by the player, Wantage, that the news brought him by Vanlief did not suffice to rouse him. He had a field of his own; that other one he was content to leave to Moncreith.
Moncreith, in the meanwhile, was making the most of the opportunity the Professor, in the kindness of his heart, had given him. The orchestra was playing a Puccini potpourri. It rose feebly against the prattle and the chatter and the hissing of the human voices. Moncreith, at first, found only the most obvious words.
"A trifle bitter, the play," he said, "rather like a sneer, don't you think?"
"Well," granted Jeannette, indolently, "I suppose it is not called 'Voltaire' for nothing. And there are moods that such a play might suit."
"No doubt. But—do you think one can be bitter, when one loves?"
The girl looked up in wonder. She blushed. The melancholy did not leave her face. "Bitter? Love?" she echoed. "They spell the same thing."
"Oh," he urged, "the play has made you morbid. As for me, I have heard nothing, seen nothing, but you. The bitterness of the play has skimmed by me, that is all; I have been in too sweet a dream to let those people on the stage—"
"How Wantage would rage if he heard you," said the girl. She felt what was coming, and she meant to fence as well as she could to avoid it.
"Wantage? Bother Wantage!" He leaned down to her, and whispered, "Jeannette!"
The flush on her cheek deepened, but she did not stir. It was as if she had not heard. She shut her eyes. All her weapons dropped at once. She knew it had to come; she knew, too, that, in this crisis, her heart stood plainly legible to her. Moncreith's name was not there.
"Jeannette," Moncreith went on, in his vibrant whisper, "don't you guess what dream I have been living in for so long? Don't you know that it is you, you, you—" He faltered, his emotions outstriding his words. "It is you," he finished, "that spell happiness for me. I—oh, is there no other, less crude way of putting it?—I love you, Jeannette! And you?"
He waited. The chattering and light laughter in the stalls and throughout the house seemed to lull into a mere hushed murmur, like the fluttering and twittering of a thousand birds. Moncreith, in his tense expectation, had heed only for the face of the girl beside him. He did not see, in the aisle below, Orson Vane, sauntering to his seat. He did not follow the direction of Jeannette Vanlief's eyes, the instant before she turned, and answered.
"I wish you had not spoken. I can't say anything—anything that you would like. Please, please—" She shook her head, in evident distress.
"Ah," he burst out, "then it is true, after all, what I have feared. It is true that you prefer that—that—"
She stayed him with a quick look.
"I did not say I preferred anyone. I simply said that you must consider the question closed. I am sorry, oh, so sorry. I wish a man and a woman could ever be friends, in this world, without risking either love or hate."
"All the same," he muttered, fiercely, "I believe you prefer that fellow—"
"Orson Vane's downstairs," said the Professor entering the box at that moment.
"That damned chameleon!" So Moncreith closed, under his breath, his just interrupted speech.
A little before the end of that performance of "Voltaire," Orson Vane made his way to Arthur Wantage's dressing-room. They had, in their character of men in some position of eminence in different phases of the town's life, a slight acquaintance. They met, now and then, at the Mummers' Club. Vane's position put him above possibility of affront by Wantage in even the most arrogant and mannerless of the latter's moods.
Vane's invitation to a little supper, a little chat, and a little smoke, just for the duet of them, brought forth Wantage's most winning smile of acquiescence.
"Delighted, dear chap," he vowed. He could be, when he chose, the most winning of mortals. He was, during the drive to Vane's house, an admirable companion. He told stories, he made polite rejoinders, he was all glitter and graciousness. But it was when he was seated to an appetizing little supper that he became most splendid.
"My dear Vane," he said, lifting a glass to the light, "you should write me a play. I am sure you could do it. These fellows who are in the mere business of it,—well, they are really impossible. They are so vulgar, so dreadful to do business with. I hate business, I am a child in such affairs; everyone cheats me. I mean to have none but gentlemen on my business staff next season. The others grate on me, Vane, they grate. And if I could only gather a company of actors who were also gentlemen—Oh, I assure you, one cannot believe what things I endure. The stupidity of actors!" He pronounced the word as if it were accented on the last syllable. He raised his eyes to heaven as he faltered in description of the stupidities he had to contend with.
"Write a play?" said Orson, "I fear that would be out of my line. I merely live, you know; I do not describe."
"Oh, I think you would be just the man. You would give me a play that society would like. You would make no mistakes of taste. And think, my dear fellow, just think of the prestige my performance would give you. It would be the making of you. You would be launched. You would need no other recommendation. When you approach any of these manager fellows all you have to do is to say, 'Wantage is doing a play of mine.' That is a hallmark; it means success for a young man."
"Perhaps. But I have no ambitions in that way. How do you like my Bonnheimer?"
"H'm—not bad, Vane, not bad. But you should taste my St. Innesse. It is a '74. I got it from the cellars of the Duke of Arran. You know Merrill, the wine-merchant on Broadway? Shrewd fellow! Always keeps me in mind; whenever he sees a sale of a good cellar on the other side, he puts in a bid; knows he can always depend on Wantage taking the bouquet of it off his hands. You must take dinner with me some night, and try that St. Innesse. Ex-President Richards told me, the other evening, that it was the mellowest vintage he had tasted in years. You know Richards? Oh, you should, you should!"
Vane listened, quietly amused. The vanity, the egoism of this player were so obvious, so transparent, so blatant. He wondered, more than ever, what was under that mask of arrogance and conceit. The perfect frankness of the conceit made it almost admirable.
"You know," Wantage remarked presently, "I'm really playing truant, taking supper with you. I ought to be studying."
"A new play?"
"No. My curtain speech for to-morrow night. It's the last night of the season, and they expect it of me, you know. I've vowed, time and again, I would never make another curtain-speech in my life, but they will have them, they will have them!" He sighed, in submission to his fate. Then he returned to a previous thought. "I wish, though," he said, "that I could persuade you to do a play for me. Think it over! Think of the name it would give you. Or you might try managing me. Eh, how does that strike you? Such a relief to me if I could deal with a gentleman. You have no idea—the cads there are in the theatre! They resent my being a man who tries to prove a little better educated than themselves. They hate me because I am college-bred, you know; they prefer actors who never read. How many books do you think I read before I attemptedVoltaire? A little library, I tell you. And then the days I spent in noting the portraits! I traveled France in my search. For the actor who takes historic characters there cannot be too many documents. Imagination alone is not enough. And then the labor of making the play presentable; I wish you could see the thing as it first came to me! You would think a man like O'Deigh would have taken into consideration the actor? But no; the play, as O'Deigh left it, might have been for a stock company.Frederick the Greatwas as fine a part as my own. Oh, they are numbskulls. And the rehearsals! Actors are sheep, simply sheep. The papers say I am a brute at rehearsals. My dear Vane, I swear to you that if Nero were in my place he would massacre all the minor actors in the land. And they expect the salaries of intelligent persons!"
Vane, listening, wondered why Wantage, under such an avalanche of irritations, continued such life. Gradually it dawned on him that all this fume and fret was merely part of the man's mummery; it was his appeal to the sympathy of his audience; his argument against the reputation his occasional exhibitions of rage and waywardness had given him.
Vane's desire to penetrate the surface of this conscious imitator, this fellow who slipped off this character to assume that, grew keener and keener. Where, under all this crust of alien form and action, was the individual, human thought and feeling? Or was there any left? Had the constant corrosion of simulated emotions burnt out all the original character of the mind?
Vane could not sufficiently hasten the end for which he had invited Wantage.
"You are," he said presently, as a lull in the other's monologue allowed him an opening, "something of an amateur of tapestry, of pictures, of bijouterie. I have a little thing or two, in my dressing-room, that I wish you would give me an opinion on."
They took their cigarettes into the adjoining dressing-room. Wantage went, at once, to the mirrors.
"Ah, Florence, I see." He frowned, in critical judgment; he went humming about the room, singing little German phrases to the pictures, snatches of chansonettes to the tapestries. He was very enjoyable as a spectacle, Vane told himself. He tiptoed over the room, now in the mode of his earliest success, "The King of Dandies," now in the half limping style of his "Rigoletto."
"You should have seen the Flemish things I had!" he declared. That was his usual way of noting the belongings of others; they reminded him of his own superior specimens. "I sold them for a song, at auction. Don't you think one tires of one's surroundings, after a time? People go to the hills and the seashore, because they tire of town. I have the same feeling about pictures, and furniture, and bric-a-brac. After a time, they tire me. I have to get rid of them. I sell them at auction. People are always glad to bid for something that has belonged to Arthur Wantage. But everything goes for a song. Oh, it is ruinous, ruinous." He peered, and pirouetted about the corners. "Ah," he exclaimed, "and here is something covered up! A portrait? Something rare?" He posed in front of it, affecting the most devouring curiosity.
"A sort of portrait," said Vane, touching the cord at back of the mirror.
"Ah," said Wantage, gazing, "you are right. A sort of portrait." And he laughed, feebly, feebly. "That Bonnheimer," he muttered, "a deuce of a wine!" He clutched at a chair, reeling into it.
Vane, passing to the mirror's face, took what image it turned to him, and then, leisurely, replaced the curtain.
He surveyed the figure in the chair for a moment or so. Then he called Nevins. "Nevins," he said, "where the devil are you? Never where you're wanted. What does one pay servants outrageous wages for! They conspire to cheat one, they all do. Nevins!" Nevins appeared, wide-eyed at this outburst. He was prepared for many queer exhibitions on the part of his master, but this—this, to a faithful servant! He stood silent, expectant, reproachful.
"Nevins," his master commanded, "have this—this actor put to bed. Use the library; make the two couches serve. He'll stay here for twenty-four hours; you understand, twenty-four hours. You will take care of him. The wine was badly corked, to-night, Nevins. You grow worse every day. You are in league to drive me distracted. It is an outrage. Why do you stand there, and shake, in that absurd fashion? It makes me quite nervous. Do go away, Nevins, go away!"
The papers of that period are all agreed that the eminent actor, Arthur Wantage, was never seen to more advantage than on the last night of that particular season. HisVoltairehad never been a more brilliant impersonation. The irony, the cruelty of the character had rarely come out more effectively; the ingenuity of the dialogue was displayed at its best.
Yet, as a matter of fact, Arthur Wantage, all that day and evening, was in Orson Vane's house, subject to a curious mental and spiritual aphasia that afterwards became a puzzle to many famous physicians.
TheVoltairewas Orson Vane.
It was the final triumph of Professor Vanlief's thaumaturgy. Vane was now in possession of the entire mental vitality sufficient for playing the part of the evening; the lines, the every pose, came to him spontaneously, as if he were machinery moving at another's guidance. The detail of entering the theatre unobserved had been easy; it was dusk and he was muffled to the eyes. Afterwards, it was merely a matter of pigment and paints. His fingers found the use of the colors and powders as easily as his mind held the words to be spoken. There was not a soul, in the company, in the audience, that did not not find theVoltaireof that night theVoltaireof the entire season.
Above the mere current of his speeches and his displayed emotions Orson Vane found a tide of exaltation bearing him on to a triumphant feeling of contempt for his audience. These sheep, these herdlings, these creatures of the fashion, how fine it was to fling into their faces the bitter taunts of aVoltaire, to see them take them smilingly, indulgently. They paid him his price, and he hated them for it. He felt that they did not really understand the half of the play's delicate finesse; he felt their appreciation was a sham, a pose, a bit of mummery even more contemptible than his own, since they paid to pose, while he, at least, had the satisfaction of their money.
The curtain-fall found him aglow with the splendor of his success. The two personalties in him joined in a fever of triumph. He, Orson Vane, had beenVoltaire; he would yet be all the other geniuses of history. He would prove himself the greatest of them all, since he could simulate them all. A certain vein of petty cunning ran under the major emotion; Orson Vane laughed to think how he had despoiled Arthur Wantage of his very temperament, his art, his spirit. This same cunning admonished, too, the prompt return of Wantage's person, after the night was over, to the Wantage residence.
The commotion "in front" brought Orson to a sense of the immediate moment. The cries for a speech came over a crackling of hand-claps. He waited for several minutes. It was not well to be too complaisant with one's public. Then he gave the signal to the man at the curtain, and moved past him, to the narrow space behind the lights. He bowed. It had the very air of irony, had that bow. It does not seem humanly possible to express irony in a curving in the spine, a declension of the head, a certain pose of the hands, but Vane succeeded, just as Wantage had so often succeeded, in giving that impression. The bow over, he turned to withdraw. Let them wait, let them chafe I Commuters were missing the last trains for the night? So much the better! They would not forget him so easily.
When he finally condescended to stride before the curtain again, it was a lift of the eyebrows, a little gesture, an air that said, quite plainly: Really, it is very annoying of you. If I were not very gracious indeed I should refuse to come out again. I do so, I assure you, under protest.
He gave a little, delicate cough, he lifted his eyes. At that the house became still, utterly still.
He began without any vocative at all.
"The actor," he said, "who wins the applause of so distinguished a company is exceedingly fortunate. The applause of such a very distinguished company—" he succeeded in emphasizing his phrase to the point where it became a subtle insult—"is very sweet to the actor. It reconciles him to what he must take to be a breach of true art, the introduction of his own person on the scene where he has appeared as an impersonator of character. Some actors are expected to make speeches after their exertions should be over. I am one of those poor actors. In the name of myself, a poor actor, and the poor actors in my company, I must thank this distinguished body of ladies and gentlemen for the patience with which they have listened to Mr. O'Deigh's little trifle. It is, of course, merely a trifle,pour passer le temps. Next season, I hope, I may give you a really serious production. Mr. O'Deigh cables me that he is happy such distinguished persons in such a critical town have applauded his little effort. I am sure ever so many of you would rather be at home than listening to the apologies of a poor actor. For I feel I must apologize for presenting so inconsiderable a trifle. A mere summer night's amusement. I have played it as a sort of rest for myself, as preparation for larger productions. If I have amused you, I am pleased. The actors' province is to please. The poor actor thanks you."
He bowed, and the bewildered company who had heard him to the end, clapped their hands a little. The newspaper men smiled at one another; they had been there before. The old question of "Why does he do it?" no longer stirred in them. They were used to Wantage's vagaries.
The newspapers of the following day had Wantage's speech in full. The critics wrote editorials on the necessity for curbing this player's arrogance. The public was astonished to find that it had been insulted, but it took the press' word for it. Wantage had made that sort of thing the convention; it was the fashion to call these curtain speeches an insult, yet to invoke them as eagerly as possible. The widespread advertising that accrued to Wantage from this episode enabled his manager to obtain, in his bookings for the following season, an even higher percentage than usual. To that extent Orson Vane's imitation of an imitator benefited his subject. In other respects it left Wantage a mere walking automaton.
It was fortunate that the closing time for Wantage's theatre was now on. There was no hitch in Vane's plan of transporting Wantage to his home quarters; the servants at the Wantage establishment found nothing unusual in their master having been away for a day and a night; he was too frequently in the habit, when his house displeased him in some detail, to stay at hotels for weeks and months at a time; his household was ready for any vagary. Indisposition was nothing new with him, either; in reality and affectation these lapses from well-being were not infrequent with the great player. The doctor told him he needed rest—rest and sea-air; there was nothing to worry over; he had been working too hard, that was all.
So the shell of what had been Wantage proceeded to a watering-place, while the kernel, now a part of Orson Vane, proceeded to astonish the town with its doings and sayings.
Practice had now enabled Vane to control, with a certain amount of consciousness, whatsoever alien spirit he took to himself. Vigorous and alert as was the mumming temperament he was now in possession of, he yet contrived to exert a species of dominance over it; he submitted to it in the mode, the expression of his character, yet in the main-spring of his action he had it in subjection. He had reached, too, a plane from which he was able, more than on any of the other occasions, to enjoy the masquerade he knew himself taking part in. He realized, with a contemptuous irony, that he was playing the part of one who played many parts. The actor in him seemed, intellectually, merely a personified palimpsest; the mind was receptive, ready to echo all it heard, keen to reproduce traits and tricks of other characters.
He held in himself, to be brief, a mirror that reflected whatever crossed its face; the base of that mirror itself was as characterless, as colorless, as the mere metal and glass. Superficialities were caught with a skill that was astonishing; little tricks of manner and speech were reproduced to the very dot upon the i; yet, under all the raiment of other men's merely material attributes, there was no change of soul at all; no transformation touched the little ego-screaming soul of the actor.
The superficial, in the meanwhile, was enough to make the town gossip not a little about the newest diversions of Orson Vane. He talked, now, of nothing but the theatre and the arts allied to it. He purposed doing some little comedies at Newport in the course of the summer that was now beginning. He eyed all the smart women of his acquaintance with an air that implied either, "I wonder whether you could be cast for a girl I must make love to," or, "You would be passable inPrince Halattire." At home, to his servants, Vane was abominable. When the dreadful champagne, that some impulse possessed him to buy of a Broadway swindler, proved as flat as the Gowanus, his language to Nevins was quite contemptible. "What," he shrieked, "do I pay you for? Tell me that! This splendid wine spoiled, spoiled, utterly unfit for a gentleman to drink, and all by your negligence. It is enough to turn one's mind. It is an outrage. A splendid wine. And now—look at it!" As a conclusion he threw the stuff in Nevins' face. Nevins made no answer at all. He wiped the sour mess from his coat with the same air of apology that he would have used had he spilt a glass himself. But his emotions were none the less. They caused him, in the privacy of the servants' quarters, to do what he had not done in years, to drop his h's. "It's the 'ost's place," said Nevins, mournfully, "to entertain his guests, and not bully the butler." Which, as a maxim, was valid enough, save that, in this special case, the guests had come to look upon Vane's treatment of the servants as part of the entertainment a dinner with him would provide.
Another distress that fell to the lot of poor Nevins was the fact that his master was become averse to the paying of bills. The profanity fell upon Nevins from both the duns and the dunned.
"The man from Basser's, Mr. Vane, sir," Nevins would announce, timidly. "Can't get him to go away at all, sir."
"Basser's, Basser's? Oh—that tailor fellow. An impudent creature, to plague me so, when I do him the honor of wearing his coats; they fit very badly, but I put up with that because I want to help the fellow on. And what is my reward? He pesters me, pesters me. Tell him—tell him anything, Nevins. Only do leave me alone; I am very busy, very nervous. I am going to write a comedy for myself. I have some water-colors to paint for Mrs. Carlos; I have a ride in the Park, and ever so many other things to do to-day, and you bother me with pestiferous tailors. Nevins, you are, you are—"
But Nevins quietly bowed himself out before he learned what new thing he was in his master's eyes.
A malady—for it surely is no less than a malady—for attempting cutting speeches at any time and place possessed Vane. Shortsightedness was another quality now obvious in him. He knew you to-day, to-morrow he looked at you with the most unseeing eyes. His voice was the most prominent organ in whatever room or club he happened to be; when he spoke none else could be intelligible. When he knew himself observed, though alone, he hummed little snatches to himself. His gait took on a mincing step. There was not a moment, not a pose of his that had not its forethought, its deliberation, its premeditated effect.
The gradual increase in the publicity that was part of the penalty of being in the smart world had made approachment between the stage and society easier than ever before. Orson Vane's bias toward the theatre did not displease the modish. Rumors as to this and that heroine of a romantic divorce having theatric intentions became frequent. The gowns of actresses were copied by the smart quite as much as the smart set's gowns were copied by actresses. The intellectual factor had never been very prominent in the social attitude toward the stage; it was now frankly admitted that good-looking men and handsome dresses were as much as one went to the theatre for. Theatrical people had a wonderful claim upon the printer's ink of the continent; society was not averse to borrowing as much of that claim as was possible. Compliments were exchanged with amiable frequence; smart people married stage favorites, and the stage looked to the smart for its recruits.
Orson Vane could not have shown his devotion to the mummeries of the stage at a better time. He gained, rather than lost, prestige.
It was the fashionable bathing hour at the most exclusive summer resort on the Atlantic coast. The sand in front of the Surf Club was dotted with gaudy tents and umbrellas. Persons whom not to know was to be unknowable were picturesquely distributed about the club verandahs in wicker chairs and lounges. The eye of an artist would have been distracted by the beauties that were suggested in the half-lifted skirts of this beauty, and revealed in the bathing-suit of that one. The little waves that came politely rippling up the slope of sand seemed to know what was expected of them; they were in nowise rude. They may have longed to ruffle this or that bit of feminine frippery, but they refrained. They may have ached to drown out Orson Vane's voice as he said "good morning" to everybody in and out of the water; but they permitted themselves no such luxury.
Orson Vane was a beautiful picture as he entered the water. His suit was immaculate; a belt prevented the least wrinkle in his jersey; a rakish sombrero gave his head a sort of halo. He poised a cigarette in one hand, keeping himself afloat with the other. He bowed obsequiously to all the pretty women; he invited all the rich ones to tea and toast—"We always have a little tea and toast at my cottage on Sundays, you know; you'll meet only nice-looking people, really; we have a jolly time." Most of the men he was unable to see; the sunlight on the water did make such a glare.
On the raft Orson Vane found the only Mrs. Carlos.
"If it were not for you, Mrs. Carlos," he assured her, "the ocean would be quite unfashionable."
Mrs. Carlos smiled amiably. Speeches of that sort were part of the tribute the world was expected to pay her. She asked him if the yachts in the harbor were not too pretty for anything.
"No," said Vane, "no. Most melancholy sight. Bring up the wickedness of man, whenever I look at them. I bought a yacht you know, early in the summer. Liked her looks, made an offer, bought her. A swindle, Mrs. Carlos, an utter swindle. A disgraceful hulk. And now I can't sell her. And my cook is a rascal. Oh—don't mention yachts! And my private car, Mrs. Carlos, you cannot imagine the trials I endure over that! The railroads overcharge me, and the mob comes pottering about with those beastly cameras. Really, you know, I am thinking of living abroad. The theatre is better supported in Europe. I am thinking of devoting my life to the theatre altogether. It is the one true passion. It shows people how life should be lived; it is at once a school of morals and comportment." He peered into the water near the raft. Then he plunged prettily into the sea. "I see that dear little Imogene," he told Mrs. Carlos, as he swam off. Imogene was the little heiress of the house of Carlos; a mere schoolgirl. It was one of Vane's most deliberate appeals for public admiration, this worship of the society of children. He gamboled with all the tots and blossoms he could find. He knew them all by name; they dispelled his shortsightedness marvelously.
After a proper interval Vane appeared, in the coolest of flannels, on the verandah of the Club. He bowed to all the women, whether he knew them or not; he peered under the largest picture hats with an air that said "What sweet creature is hidden here?" as plainly as words.
Someone asked him why he had not been to the Casino the night before.
"Oh," he sighed, "I was fearfully busy."
"Busy?" The word came in a tone of reproach. A suspicion of any sort of toil will brand one more hopelessly in the smart set of America than in any other; one may pretend an occupation but one may not profess it in actuality.
"Oh, terribly busy," said Vane. "I am writing a comedy. I have decided that we must make authorship smarter than it has been. I shall sacrifice myself in that attempt. You've noticed that not one writing-chap in a million knows anything about our little world except what is not true? Yes; it's unmistakable. An entirely false impression of us is given to the world at large. The real picture of us must come from one of ourselves."
"And you will try it?"
"Yes. I shall do my very best. When it is finished I want you all to play parts in it. We must do something for the arts, you know. Why not the arts, as well as tailors and milliners? By the way, I want you all to come to my little lantern-dance to-night, on theBeaurivage. It is something quite novel. You must all come disguised as flowers. There will be no lights but Chinese lanterns. I shall have launches ready for you at the Casino landing. My cook is quite sober to-day, and the yacht is as presentable as if she were not an arrant fraud. I mean to have a dance that shall fit the history of society in America. For that reason the newspapers must know nothing about it. There can be no history where there are newspapers. I shall invite nobody who knows how to write; I am the only one whose taste I can trust. Some people write to live, and some live to write, and the worst class of all are merely dying to write. They are all barred to-night. We must try and break all the conventions. Conventions are like the strolling players: made to be broke."
He rattled on in this way, with painful efforts at brilliance, for quite a time. His hearers really considered it brilliance and listened patiently. Summer was not their season for intellectual exertion; it might be a virtue in others, in themselves it would have been a mistake.
The lantern-dance on Orson Vane'sBeaurivagewas, as everyone will remember, an event of exceeding picturesqueness. Mrs. Sclatersby appeared as a carnation; Mrs. Carlos as a rose. Some of the younger and divinely figured women appeared as various blossoms that necessitated imitation of part of Rosalind's costume under the trees. The slender, tapering stem of one white lily, fragrant and delicious, lingered long in the memories of the men who were there.
A sensation was caused by the arrival of Mrs. Barrett Weston. She came in a scow, seated on her automobile. A shriek of delight from the company greeted her. The weary minds of the elect were really tickled by this conceit. The automobile was arranged to imitate a crysanthemum. Just before she alighted Mrs. Barrett Weston touched a hidden lever and the automobile began to grind out a rag-time tune.
A stranger, approaching theBeaurivageat that moment, might have fancied himself in the politest ward of the most insane of asylums. But Orson Vane found it all most delightful. It was the affair of the season.
"Look," he cried, in the midst of a game of leapfrog in which a number of the younger guests had plunged with desperate glee, "there is the moon. How pitably weak she seems, against this brilliance here! It bears out the theory that art is always finer than nature, and that the theatre is more picturesque than life. Look at what we are doing, this moment! We are imitating pleasure. And will you show me any unconscious pleasure that is so delightful as this?"
By the time people had begun to feel a polite hunger Vane had completed his scheme of having several unwieldy barges brought alongside theBeaurivage. There were two of the clumsy but roomy decks on either side of the slender, shapely yacht. Over this now quite wide space the tables were arranged. While the supper went on, Orson Vane did a little monologue of his own. Nobody paid any attention, but everyone applauded.
"What a scene for a comedy," he explained, proudly surveying the picture of the gaiety before him, "what a delicious scene! It is almost real. I must write a play around it. I have quite made up my mind to devote my life to the theatre. It is the only real life. It touches the emotions at all points; it is not isolated in one narrow field of personality. Have I your permission to put you all in my play? How sweet of you! I shall have a scene where we all race in automobiles. We will be quite like dear little children who have their donkey-races. But I think automobiles are so much more intelligent than donkeys, don't you? And they have such profound voices! Have you ever noticed the intonation of the automobiles here? That one of Mrs. Barrett Weston has a delicate tenor; it is always singing love-songs as if it were tired of life. Then we have bassos, and baritones, and repulsive falsettos. My automobile has a voice like a phonograph. When it bubbles along the avenue I can hear, as plainly as anything, that it is imitating one of the other automobiles. Some automobiles, I suppose, have the true instinct for the theatre. Have you noticed how theatric some of the things are, how they contrive to run away just when everyone is looking?"
"Just like horses," murmured one of his listeners.
"Oh, no; I wouldn't say that. Horses have a merely natural intelligence; it is nothing like the splendidly artificial reasoning of the automobile. The poor horse, I really pity him! He has nothing before him but polo. But how thankful he should be to polo. He was a broncho with disreputable manners; now he is a polo-pony with a neat tail. In time, I dare say, the horse can learn some of the higher civilization of the automobile, just as society may still manage to be as intelligent as the theatre."
The conclusion of that entertainment marked the height of Orson Vane's peculiar fame. The radical newspapers caught echoes of it and invented what they could not transcribe. The young men who owned newspapers had not been invited by Orson Vane, because, in spite of his theatric mania, he had no illusions about the decency of metropolitan journalism. He avowed that the theatre might be a trifle highflavored, but it had, at the least, nothing of the hypocrisy that smothers the town in lies to-day and reads it a sermon to-morrow. The most conspicuous of these newspaper owners went into something like convulsions over what he called the degeneracy of our society. Himself most lamentably in a state of table-d'hotage, this young man trumpeted forth the most bitter editorials against Orson Vane and his doings. He frothed with anarchistic ravings. Finally, since the world will always listen if you only make noise loud enough and long enough, the general public began to believe that Vane was really a dreadful person. He was a leader in the smart set; he stood for the entire family. His taste for the theater would debauch all society. His egoisms would spoil what little of the natural was left in the regions of Vanity Fair. So went the chatter of the man-on-the-street, that mighty power, whom the most insignificant of little men-behind-the-pen can move at will.
One may be ever so immersed in affairs that are not of the world and its superficial doings, yet it is almost impossible to escape some faint echo of what the world is chattering about. Professor Vanlief, who had betaken himself and Jeanette, for the summer, to a little place in the mountains, was finally routed out of his peace by the rumors concerning Orson Vane. The give and take of conversation, even at a little farm-house in the hills, does not long leave any prominent subject untouched. So Augustus Vanlief one morning bought all the morning papers.
He found more than he had wanted. The editorials against the doings of the smart set, the reports of the sermons preached against their goings-on, were especially pregnant that morning.
In another part of the paper he found a line or two, however, that brought him sharply to a sense of necessary action. The lines were these:
"Mr. Arthur Wantage is still seriously ill at Framley Lodge. Unless a decided turn for the better takes place very shortly, it is doubtful if he can undertake his starring season at the usual time this year."
"Mr. Arthur Wantage is still seriously ill at Framley Lodge. Unless a decided turn for the better takes place very shortly, it is doubtful if he can undertake his starring season at the usual time this year."
Augustus Vanlief saw what no other mortal could have guessed. He saw the connection between those two newspaper items, the one about Vane and the one about Wantage.
Professor Vanlief lost no time in inventing an excuse for his immediate departure. Jeannette would be well looked after. He got a few necessaries together and started for Framley Lodge. After some delay he obtained an interview with the distinguished patient.
"Try," urged Vanlief, "to tell me when this illness came upon you. Was it after your curtain-speech at the end of last season?"
Wantage looked with blank and futile eyes. "Curtain-speech? I made none."
"Oh, yes. Try to remember! It made a stir, did that speech of yours. Try to think what happened that day!"
"I made no speech. I remember nothing. I am Wantage, I think. Wantage. I used to act, did I not?" He laughed, feebly. It was melancholy to watch him. He could eat and drink and sleep; he had the intelligence of an echo. Each thought of his needed a stimulant.
Vanlief persisted, in spite of melancholy rebuffs. There was so much at stake. This man's whole career was at stake. And, if matters were not mended soon, the evil would be under way; the harm would have begun. It meant loss, actual loss now, and one could scarcely compute how much ruin afterwards. And he, Vanlief, would be the secret agent of this ruin! Oh, it was monstrous! Something must be done. Yet, he could do nothing until he was sure. To meddle, without absolute certainty, would be criminal.
"What do you remember before you fell ill?" he repeated.
"Oh, leave me alone!" said Wantage. "Isn't the doctor bad enough, without you. I tell you I remember nothing. I was well, and now I am ill. Perhaps it was something Orson Vane gave me at supper that night, I don't remember—"
"At supper? Vane?" The Professor leaped at the words.
"Yes. I said so, didn't I? I had supper in his rooms, and then—"
But Vanlief was gone. He had no time for the amenities now. His age seemed to leave him as his purpose warmed, and his goal neared. All the fine military bearing came out again. The people who traveled with him that day took him for nothing less than a distinguished General.
At the end of the day he reached Vane's town house. Nevins was all alone there; all the other servants were on theBeaurivage. The man looked worn and aged. He trembled visibly when he walked; his nerves were gone, and he had the taint of spirits on him.
"Mr. Vanlief, sir," he whined, "it'll be the death of me, will this place. First he buys a yacht, sir, like I buy a 'at, if you please; and now I'm to sell the furniture and all the antics. These antics, sir, as the master 'as collected all over the world, sir. It goes to me 'eart."
Vanlief, even in his desperate mood, could not keep his smile back. "Sell the antiques, eh? Well, they'll fetch plenty, I've no doubt. But if I were you I wouldn't hurry; Mr. Vane may change his mind, you know."
"Ah," nodded Nevins, brightening, "that's true, sir. You're right; I'll wait the least bit. It's never too soon to do what you don't want to, eh, sir? And I gives you my word, as a man that's 'ad places with the nobility, sir, that the last year's been a sad drain on me system. What with swearing, sir, and letters I wouldn't read to my father confessor, sir, Mr. Vane's simply not the man he was at all. Of course, if he says to sell the furniture, out it goes! But, like as not, he'll come in here some line day and ask where I've got all his trappings. And then I'll show him his own letter, and he'll say he never wrote it. Oh, it's a bad life I've led of late, sir. Never knowing when I could call my soul my own."
The phrase struck the Professor with a sort of chill. It was true; if his discovery went forth upon the world, no man would, in very truth, know when he could call his soul his own. It would be at the mercy of every poacher. But he could not, just now, afford reflections of such wide scope; there was a nearer, more immediate duty.
"Nevins," he said, "I came about that mirror of mine."
"Yes, sir. I'm glad of that, sir; uncommon glad. You'll betaking it away, sir? It's bad luck I've 'ad since that bit of plate come in the house."
"You're right. I mean to take it away. But only for a time. Seeing Mr. Vane's thinking of selling up, perhaps it's just as well if I have this out of the way for a time, eh? Might avoid any confusion. I set store by that mirror, Nevins; I'd not like it sold by mistake."
"Well, sir, if you sets more store by it than the master, I'd like to see it done, sir. The master's made me life a burden about that there glass. I've 'ad to watch it like a cat watches a mouse. I don't know now whether I'd rightly let you take it or not." He scratched his head, and looked in some quandary.
"Nonsense, Nevins. You know it's mine as well as you know your own name. Didn't you fetch it over from my house in the first place, and didn't you pack it and wrap it under my very eyes?"
"True, sir; I did. My memory's a bit shaky, sir, these days. You may do as you like with your own, I'll never dispute that. But Mr. Vane's orders was mighty strict about the plaguey thing. I wish I may never see it again. It's been, 'Nevins, let nobody disturb the new mirror!' and 'Nevins, did anyone touch the new mirror while I was gone?' and 'Nevins, was the window open near the new mirror?' until I fair feel sick at the sight of it."
"No doubt," said the professor, impatiently. "Then you'll oblige me by wrapping it up for shipping purposes as soon as ever you can. I'm going to take it away with me at once. I suppose there's no chance of Mr. Vane dropping in here before I bring the glass back, but, if he does, tell him you acted under my orders."
"A good riddance," muttered Nevins, losing no time over his task of covering and securing the mirror. "I'll pray it never comes this way again," he remarked.
The professor, after seeing that all danger of injury to the mirror's exposed parts was over, walked nervously up and down the rooms. He would have to carry his plan through with force of arms, with sheer impertinence and energy of purpose. It was an interference in two lives that he had in view. Had he any right to that? But was he not, after all, to blame for the fact of the curious transfusion of soul that had left one man a mental wreck, and stimulated the other's forces to a course of life out of all character with the strivings of his real soul? If he had not tempted Orson Vane to these experiments, Arthur Wantage would never be drooping in the shadow of collapse, and in danger of losing his proper place in the roll of prosperity. Vanlief shuddered at thought of what an unscrupulous man might not do with this discovery of his; what lives might be ruined, what successes built on fraud and theft? Fraud and theft? Those words were foul enough in the material things of life; but how much more horrid would they be when they covered the spiritual realm. To steal a purse, in the old dramatic phrase, was a petty thing; but to steal a soul—Professor Vanlief found himself launched into a whirlpool of doubt and confusion.
He had opened a new, vast region of mental science. He had enabled one man to pass the wall with which nature had hedged the unforeseen forces of humanity. Was he to learn that, in opening this new avenue of psychic activity, he had gone counter to the eternal Scheme of Things, and let in no divine light, but rather the fierce glare of diabolism?
His thoughts traversed argument upon argument while Nevins completed his work. He heard the man's voice, finally, with an actual relief, a gladness at being recalled to the daring and doing that lay before him.
When the Professor was gone, a wagon bearing away the precious mirror, Nevins poured himself out a notably stiff glass of Five-Star.
"Here's hoping," he toasted the silent room, "the silly thing gets smashed into everlasting smithereens!"
And he drowned any fears he might have had to the contrary. This particular species of time-killing was now a daily matter with Nevins; the incessant strain upon his nerves of some months past had finally brought him to the pitch where he had only one haven of refuge left.
The Professor sped over the miles to Framley Lodge. He took little thought about meals or sleep. The excitement was marking him deeply; but he paid no heed to, or was unaware of, that. Arrived at the Lodge a campaign of bribery and corruption began. Servant after servant had to be suborned. Nothing but the well-known fame and name of Augustus Vanlief enabled him, even with his desperate expenditures of tips, to avert the suspicion that he had some deadly, some covertly inimical end in view. One does not, at this age of the world, burst into another man's house and order that man's servants about, without coming under suspicion, to put it mildly. Fortunately Vanlief encountered, just as his plot seemed shattering against the rigor of the household arrangements, the doctor who was in attendance on Wantage. The man happened to be on the staff of the University where Vanlief held a chair. He held the older man in the greatest respect; he listened to his rapid talk with all the patience in the world. He looked astonished, even uncomprehending, but he shook his shoulders up and down a few times with complaisance. "There seems no possible harm," he assented.
"Don't ask me to believe in the curative possibilities, Professor; but—there can be no harm, that I see. He is not to be unduly excited. A mirror, you say? You don't think vanity can send a man from illness to health, do you? Not even an actor can be as vain as that, surely. However, I shall tell the attendants to see that the thing is done as quietly as possible. I trust you, you see, to let nothing detrimental happen. I have to get over to the Port of Pines. I shall give the orders. Goodbye. I wish I could see the result of your little—h'm, notion—but I dare say to-morrow will be soon enough."
And he smiled the somewhat condescending smile of the successful practitioner who fancies he is addressing a campaigner whose usefulness is passing.
The setting up of the professor's mirror, so as to face Wantage's sickbed, took no little time, no little care, no little exertion. When it was in place, the professor tiptoed to the actor's side.
"Well," queried Wantage, "what is it? Medicine? Lord, I thought I'd taken all there was in the world. Where is it?"
"No," said the professor, "not medicine. I am going to ask you to look quite hard at that curtain by the foot of the bed for a moment. I have something I think may interest you and—"
As the actor's eyes, in mere physical obedience to the other's suggestion, took the desired direction, Vanlief tugged at a cord that rolled the curtain aside, revealing the mirror, which gave Wantage back the somewhat haggard apparition of himself.
A few seconds went by in silence. Then Wantage frowned sharply.
"Gad," he exclaimed, vigorously and petulantly, "what a beastly bad bit of make-up!"
The voice was the voice of the man whom the town had a thousand times applauded as "The King of the Dandies."
An exceedingly bad quarter of an hour followed for Vanlief. Wantage, now in full possession of all his mental faculties, abused the Professor up hill and down dale. What was he doing there? What business had that mirror there? What good was a covered-up mirror? Where were the servants? The doctor had given orders? The doctor was a fool. Only the mere physical infirmity consequent upon being bedridden for so long prevented Wantage from becoming violent in his rage. Vanlief, sharp as was his sense of relief at the success of his venture, was yet more relieved when his bribes finally got his mirror and himself out of the Lodge. The incident had its humors, but he was too tired, too enervated, to enjoy them. The very moment of Wantage's recovery of his soul had its note of ironic comedy; the succeeding vituperation from the restored actor; Vanlief's own meekness; the marvel and rapacity of the servants—all these were abrim with chances for merriment. But Vanlief found himself, for, perhaps, the first time in his life, too old to enjoy the happy interpretations of life. Into all his rejoicings over the outcome of this affair there crept the constant doubts, the ceaseless questionings, as to whether he had discovered a mine of wisdom and benefit, or a mere addition to man's chances for evil.
His return journey, his delivery of the mirror into Nevins' unwilling care, were accomplished by him in a species of daze.
He had hardly counted upon the danger of his discovery. Was he still young enough to contend with them?
Nevins almost flung the mirror to its accustomed place. He unwrapped it spitefully. When he left the room, the curtain of the glass was flapping in the wind. Nevins heard the sound quite distinctly; he went to the sideboard and poured out a brimming potion.
"I 'opes the wind'll play the Old 'Arry with it," he smiled to himself. He smiled often that night; he went to bed smiling. His was the cheerful mode of intoxication.
Augustus Vanlief reached the cottage in the hills a sheer wreck. He had left it a hale figure of a man who had ever kept himself keyed up to the best; now he was old, shaking, trembling in nerves and muscles.
Jeannette rushed toward him and put her arms around him. She looked her loving, silent wonder into his weary eyes.
"Sleep, dear, sleep," said this old, tired man of science, "first let me sleep."