CHAPTER II.
‘Of all things tired thy lips look weariest.’* * * * *‘What shall I do to be for ever known?’
‘Of all things tired thy lips look weariest.’* * * * *‘What shall I do to be for ever known?’
‘Of all things tired thy lips look weariest.’* * * * *‘What shall I do to be for ever known?’
‘Of all things tired thy lips look weariest.’
* * * * *
‘What shall I do to be for ever known?’
The handle was turned, and the door opened with a considerable amount of caution (the Professor did not permit interruptions). It was evidently, however, the caution of one who was suppressing badly a wild desire to make a rush into the room, and presently a man’s head appeared round the corner of the door, and after it his body. He came a yard or two beyond the threshold, and then stood still. His reddish hair was standing out a little, and his small twinkling Irish eyes were blinking nervously. He looked eagerly first at the younger man, who was his master, andthen at the Professor, and then back again at Wyndham.
‘Well, Denis?’ said the latter, a little impatiently.
‘If ye plaze, sir, there’s an unfortunate young faymale on the steps below.’
The Professor frowned. As if such an ordinary occurrence as that should be allowed to interfere with a discussion on the great discovery! Wyndham spoke.
‘If she is noisy or troublesome, you had better call a policeman,’ he said indifferently.
‘Noisy! Divil a sound out of her,’ said Denis. ‘She looks for all the world, yer honour, as if there wasn’t a spark o’ life left in her. Sthretched in the hall she is, an’ the colour o’ death.’
‘In the hall?’ said Wyndham quickly. ‘I thought you said she was on the steps.’
‘She was. She’—cautiously—‘was. But——’ He paused and scanned anxiously the two faces before him. ‘It’s bitther cowld outside to-night, so I tuk her in.’
And, indeed, though the month was May, a searching wind was shaking the city, and biting into the hearts of young and old. As often happens in that ‘merrie month,’ a light fall of snow was whitening the tops of the houses.
‘I had better see to this,’ said the young man, rising. He left the room, followed by Denis (who had stopped to throw a few more coals on the now cheerful fire), and went down to the cold, bare, hideous hall below. The light from the solitary gas-lamp scarcely lit it, and it took him a few seconds to discern something that lay on the worn tarpaulin at the lower end of it. At last he made it out, and, stepping nearer, saw that it was the figure of a young and very slight girl. She was lying on the ground, her back supported against a chair, and Wyndham could see that Denis had folded an old coat of the Professor’s that usually hung on the hat-stand, and placed it behind her head.
The light was so dim that he could not see what she was like; but stooping over her, hefelt her hands, and found that they were cold as ice. Instinct, however, told him that life still ran within her veins, and lifting her quickly in his arms, he carried her upstairs to the room he had just left, and where the Professor still sat, so lost in fresh dreams of the experiment yet to be made that he started as Wyndham re-entered the room with his strange burden; it was, indeed, with difficulty that he brought his mind back to the present moment. He had forgotten why the young man had left the room.
‘She seems very ill,’ said Wyndham. His man had followed him, and now, through a sign from his master, he pulled forward a huge armchair, in which Wyndham placed the unconscious girl.
The Professor came nearer and stared down at her. She was very young—hardly eighteen—but already Misery or Want, or both, had seized and laid their cruel hands upon her, dabbing in dark bistre shades beneath her eyes, and making sad hollows in her pallid cheeks. The lips, white now, were firmlyclosed as if in death, but something about the formation of them suggested the idea that even in life they could be firm too.
It was a face that might be beautiful if health had warmed it, and if joy had found a seat within the heart that now seemed at its last ebb. The lashes lying on the white, cold cheek were singularly long and dark, and Wyndham roused himself suddenly to find himself wondering what could be the colour of the eyes that lay hidden behind that wonderful fringe.
Her gown was of blue serge, neatly, even elegantly made, and the collar and cuffs she wore were quite primitive in their whiteness and simplicity. She had no hat or cloak with her, but a little gray woollen shawl had been evidently twisted round her head. Now it had fallen back, leaving all the glory of her rich chestnut hair revealed.
Involuntarily the young man glanced at her left hand.
There was no ring there. An intense wave of pity swept over him. Another!Dear God! what cruel sorrows lie within this world of Yours!
The face was so young, so free of hardness, vice, or taint of any kind, that his very heart bled for her. Misery alone seemed to mark it. That was deeply stamped. Looking at her, he almost hoped that she would never wake again—that she was really dead; but even as this thought crossed his mind, she stirred, sighed softly, and opened her eyes.
For awhile she gazed at them—on the Professor, impassive, silent; on the younger man, anxious, pained—and then with a sharp, quick movement she released herself from the arm Wyndham had placed round her, and raised herself to a sitting posture. There was such terror in her eyes as she did this that the younger man hastened to reassure her.
‘You are quite safe here,’ he said kindly. The girl looked at him, then cast a frightened glance past him, and over his shoulder, as though looking fearfully for some dreaded object. ‘My man found you on the stepsoutside. You were ill—fainting, he said—so he brought you in here to’—with a gesture towards the Professor—‘this gentleman’s house.’
The girl looked anxiously at the Professor, who nodded as in duty bound, but who seemed unmistakably bored, for all that, and angry enough to frighten her afresh.
‘If you will tell us where you live,’ said Wyndham gently, ‘we shall see that you are taken back there.’
The girl shrank visibly. She caught the little shawl that had slipped from her, and drew it round her head once more, almost hiding her face.
‘I can find my own way,’ she said. The voice was low, musical; it trembled, and as she moved forward to pass Wyndham, so did she. She even tottered, so much, indeed, that she was obliged to catch hold of a table near to keep herself from falling.
‘It is impossible for you to walk to-night,’ said the young man earnestly. ‘And there is no necessity for it. My servant is at yourdisposal; he can call a cab for you, and he is quite to be trusted; he will see you to your home.’
The girl hesitated for a moment, then lifted her heavy eyes to his.
‘I have no home,’ she said.
It was a very forlorn answer, and it went to Wyndham’s heart. God help her, poor girl! whoever she was. He glanced again at her clothes, which were decidedly above the average of the extremely wretched, and he was conscious of a certain curiosity with regard to her—a distinctly kindly one.
The girl caught the glance and turned away her head.
‘You can at least say where you want to be driven,’ said he gravely, but with sympathy; he hesitated for a moment, and then went on. ‘No questions will be asked,’ he said.
She made no answer to this, and while he waited for one the Professor broke in impatiently:
‘Come, girl, speak! Where do you want to go? Where do you live?’
On this followed another shorter silence, and then at last she spoke.
‘I shall not go back,’ she said. Her tone was low, but defiant, and very firm.
‘That means you will not tell,’ said the Professor. ‘Then go—do you hear—go! You are interrupting us here.’ He motioned towards the door, where Denis stood mute as a sentinel; he was, indeed, an old soldier, for the matter of that.
The girl stepped quickly, eagerly forward, but Wyndham stopped her imperatively, and standing between her and the door, he spoke to the Professor.
‘It is impossible to turn her out at this hour—in this weather.’ He stopped, and now looked at the girl and spoke to her.
‘Why can’t you trust us?’ he said, with angry reproach. ‘Why can’t you let us do something for you? You must have a home somewhere, however bad.’
The girl thus addressed turned upon him suddenly with miserable passion shining in her large, dark eyes.
‘I have not,’ she said. ‘Under the sky of God, there is no creature so homeless as I am.’
Her passion was so great that it struck the listeners into silence. She made a little gesture with her arms suggestive of awful weariness, then spoke again:
‘There was a place where I lived yesterday. It was not a home. I shall not live there again. I have left it. I shall not go back.’
‘But where, then, are you going?’ asked Wyndham impulsively.
‘I don’t know.’ She drew her breath slowly, heavily. It was hardly a sigh. There was enough misery in it for ten sighs. But her passion was all gone, and a terrible indifference had taken its place; and there was such consummate despair in her tone as might have touched even the Professor. But it did not. He had begun to study her. He was always studying people, and now a curious expression had crept into his face. He leaned forward and peered at her. There was no compassion in the glance, no interest whateverin her as a suffering human thing; but there was a sudden sharp interest in her as a means to a desired end. Thought was in his glance, and a wild longing that was fast growing to a hope.
‘Have you no plans, then?’ asked the young man. His tone was sad. He had looked into the depths of her dark eyes, and found there no guile at all.
‘None!’ She was silent awhile, and then very slowly she raised her head; her brows contracted, and she looked past them both into vacancy. If she was communing with her own heart, the results were very sad. Despair itself gathered in her eyes. She turned presently and looked at Wyndham. ‘I wish,’ said she, with a forlorn look, ‘that I had the courage to die.’
It was unutterably sad, this young creature, with all her life before her, praying for courage to end it; craving for death in the midst of life, wishing she had the courage to escape from a world that had evidently given her but a sorry welcome.
Wyndham looked round at the Professor as if expecting him to join in his commiseration for this poor, unhappy child, but what he saw in the Professor’s face checked him. It startled him, and stopped the tide of sympathy for a time—as great floods will for the moment always catch and carry with them the milder rushes of the rivers near.
The Professor’s face was indeed a study. It was radiant—alight with a strange and sudden hope. His piercing eyes were fixed immovably upon the girl. They seemed to burn into her as though demanding and compelling an answering glance from hers.
She obeyed the call; slowly, languidly she lifted her head.
‘So you would die?’ said he.
‘Yes.’ The word fell listlessly from her lips; but she stared straight at him as she said it, and her young unhappy face looked nearly as gray as the old merciless one bending over it.
‘Then why live?’ pursued he. ‘Death is easy.’
‘No, it is hard,’ she said. ‘And I am afraid of pain.’
‘If there were no pain, you would risk it, then?’
She hesitated. His glance was now, indeed, so wild, so full of frantic eagerness, that it might readily have frightened one older in the world’s ways. To Wyndham, waiting, watching, it occurred that the Professor was like a spider creeping towards its prey. He shuddered.
‘Speak, girl, speak!’ said the Professor. His agitation was intense, and almost beyond control. Here—here to his hand was his chance. Was he to have it at last, or lose it for ever? Wyndham could stand it no longer; he went quickly forward, and, standing between the Professor and the girl, took the former by the shoulders and pushed him gently backwards and out of hearing.
‘If this drug of yours possesses the lifegiving properties you speak of,’ said he sternly, ‘why speak to her of death? Do you honestly believe in this experiment? Ordo you fear it—when you suggest this sort of suicide to her?’
‘I fear nothing,’ said the old man. ‘But we are all mortal. We can all err, even in our surest judgments. The very cleverest of us can be deceived. The experiment—though I do not believe it—might fail.’
At the word ‘fail’ he roused.
‘It will not! It cannot!’ he cried, with vehemence. ‘But in the meantime I would give her her chance, too. She shall know the worst that may befall her.’
‘Why not tell her all?’ said the young man anxiously. ‘It’—he hesitated and coloured faintly—‘it would give her her chance perhaps in another world if your experiment failed. It would take from her—in part—the sin of deliberately destroying herself.’
The Professor shrugged his shoulders. He thought it waste of time, this preparing for another world—another Judge.
‘You think, then, that I should tell her?’
‘I do. I think, too,’ said Wyndham strongly, ‘that if your experiment succeedsyou should consider yourself indebted to her for ever.’
‘I shall see to her future, of course.’
‘If,’ said the young man gloomily, ‘anyone could see to the future of such a one as she is!’
The Professor looked at him.
‘You are out of sorts to-night,’ he said. ‘Your natural instinct is deadened in you. That girl does not belong to the class of which you are thinking. Whatever has driven her to her present desperate state of mind, it is not impurity.’
‘You think that?’ Wyndham looked doubtful, but was still conscious of a faint wave of relief; and the Professor, watching him, smiled, the tolerant smile of one who understands the cranks and follies of poor human nature.
‘If so,’ said Wyndham quickly, ‘she should surely not be subjected to this experiment at all. She——’
‘For all that, I shall not lose this chance,’ said the Professor shortly. He turned and went back to the girl.
She was sitting in the same attitude as when he left her—her hands clenched upon her knees, her eyes staring into the fire. God alone knew what she saw there. She did not change her position, but sat like that, immovable as a statue, as the Professor expounded his experiment to her, and then asked her the cold, unsympathetic question as to whether, now she knew what the risk was, she would accept it. It might mean death, but if not, it would mean safety and protection in the future.
When he had finished, she turned her sombre eyes on his.
‘I will take the risk,’ she said.
Wyndham made a movement as if to speak, but the Professor checked him.
‘Of course, if the experiment is successful,’ he said, ‘I shall provide for you for life.’
‘I hope you will not have to provide for me,’ she said.
At this, a little silence fell upon the room, that seemed to chill it. The Professor broke it.
‘You agree, then?’
‘I agree.’ She rose, and held out her hand. ‘Give me the draught.’
Wyndham started, his voice vibrating with horror.
‘No, no!’ he cried. ‘She does not understand; and’—to the Professor—‘neither do you. If this thing fails, it will mean murder. Think, I entreat you, before it is too late to think. That girl’—pointing to the young stranger, who was standing regarding him with a dull curiosity—‘she is but a child. She cannot know her own mind. She ought not to be allowed to settle so stupendous a question. Look at her!’ His voice shook. ‘Many a happier girl at her age would still be in her schoolroom. She is so young that, whatever her wrongs, her sorrows may be, she has still time before her to conquer or live them down. Professor, I implore you, do not go on with this.’
The Professor rested a contemptuous glance on him for a moment, then swept it from him, and addressed the girl.
‘You are willing?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ She spoke quite firmly, but she was looking at Wyndham. It was a strange look, made up of surprise and some other feeling hardly defined.
‘She is not all,’ broke in Wyndham again, vehemently. ‘There is you to be considered, too. If this sleep of your making terminates fatally, have you considered the consequences to yourself?’
The Professor smiled. He pointed to the girl, who stood marble-white beneath the dull gaslight.
‘Like her, I take the risk,’ he said. ‘I think I told you a little while ago that I would chance the hanging.’ His smile—a very unpleasant one—faded suddenly, and his manner grew brusque and arrogant. ‘There—enough,’ he said. ‘Stand aside, man. Do you think that now—now when at last my hour has come—I am likely to let it slip, though death itself lay before me?’
‘For God’s sake, Professor, think yet amoment!’ said the younger man, holding him in his grasp. ‘She is young—so young!... To take a life like that!’
‘I am going to take no life’—coldly. ‘I see now that you never had any faith in me at all.’
‘I believe in you as no other man does,’ rejoined Wyndham hotly. ‘But surely at this supreme moment a doubt may be allowed me. If this thing were done openly in the eye of day, in sight of all men, it were well; but to try so deadly an experiment here, at midnight—with no witnesses, as it were—great heavens! you must see the pitfall you are laying for yourself. If this experiment fails——’
‘It will not fail,’ said the Professor coldly. ‘In the meantime’—he cast a scornful glance at him—‘if you are afraid of being called as a witness, it is’—pointing to the door—‘still open to you to avoid such a disagreeability.’
Their eyes met.
‘I don’t think I have deserved that,’ said the other proudly, and all at once in thisqueer hour both men felt that the tie that had bound them for years was stronger than they knew.
‘Stay, then,’ said the Professor.
He went into an inner room and returned with a phial and glass, and advanced towards the girl with an almost buoyant step. There was, indeed, an exhilaration in his whole air, that amounted almost to madness. He looked wild—spectral, indeed—in the dim light of the solitary lamp, with his white hair thrown back and his eyes shining fiercely beneath the rugged brows.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked.
She made a slight gesture of assent, and went a step or two to meet him. She was deadly pale, but she stood without support of any kind. The Professor poured some of the pale fluid from the phial into the glass with a hand that never faltered, and the girl took it with a hand that faltered quite as little; but before she could raise it to her lips, Wyndham caught her arm.
‘Stop!’ cried he, as if choking. ‘Have youthought—have you considered that there is no certainty in this drug?’ Her eyes rested for a moment on his.
‘I thought there was a certainty,’ she said slowly.
‘A certainty of death, perhaps,’ said he, poignant fear in his tone. ‘At this last moment I appeal to you, for your own sake. Don’t take it. If you do, it is doubtful whether you will ever come back to life again.’
She looked at him steadily.
‘I hope there is no doubt,’ she said. She raised the glass and drank its contents to the dregs.
As she did so, some clock in the silent city outside struck the midnight hour.