CHAPTER V.
‘For the shades are about us that hoverWhen darkness is half withdrawn,And the skirts of the dead Night coverThe face of the live new Dawn.’
‘For the shades are about us that hoverWhen darkness is half withdrawn,And the skirts of the dead Night coverThe face of the live new Dawn.’
‘For the shades are about us that hoverWhen darkness is half withdrawn,And the skirts of the dead Night coverThe face of the live new Dawn.’
‘For the shades are about us that hover
When darkness is half withdrawn,
And the skirts of the dead Night cover
The face of the live new Dawn.’
The doctors when they came could do nothing for him. The Professor, though hardly an old man as the ordinary acceptation of the word goes, being still within the seventies, had so burnt out his candle at both ends that all the science in Europe could not have kept him alive for another twenty-four hours. A spice of gruesome mirth seemed to fall into the situation when their declaration was laid bare and one thought of the great discovery.
Wyndham was the one who thought of it, and a wild longing to rouse the old man, whowas now sunk into an oblivion that presaged death, and compel him even in his death-throes to reveal the secret that might bring even him back to life, seized upon him. But he felt it was impossible, and presently the two great men went downstairs to consult each other, and he was left alone with his dying friend.
They had hardly gone when, watching as he incessantly did the face of the Professor, he noticed a change. He bent over him.
‘Why doesn’t she speak now,’ said the Professor. He was thinking of the girl’s voice—a voice that had taken him back to his early days in some strange way.
‘Master,’ said Wyndham—he, too, had gone back to the old days—‘you are thinking——’
‘Of her. They said she was dead.’
‘Who was dead?’ asked Wyndham.
At this the old man roused. He had not known Wyndham’s voice the first time, but now he did, and he turned and looked athim; and presently consciousness once more grew within his eyes.
‘It is you, boy. And where is she?’
‘She? The girl, you mean?’
‘Yes.... I promised her. You remember.... It is late now, very late ... and I must sleep. But ... a word, boy.... I have left you all, and she ... out of it ... you must give her ... give her....’ He sank back.
‘All—all,’ said Wyndham eagerly.
‘No ... no’—he rallied wonderfully—‘three hundred a year—that for a girl.... The rest is yours.... But see to her.... I can trust you. You are a good boy. But your Greek, boy—your Greek is bad—your aorists are weak. You must mend—you must mend....’
His dying eyes tried to take the old stern look as they rested on Wyndham, the look he used to give the boy when his Greek or his Latin verses were hardly up to the mark, but presently it changed and softened into a wider light. ‘The boy,’ in the last of allmoments, was forgotten for the love that was strongest of all.
‘She was very like my wife,’ he gasped faintly, and fell back and died.
It was all over. The doctors had taken their departure, and the old dismal house was very still. The Professor had died in the morning, and it was quite night again before Wyndham had time to think of ordinary matters. It was the presence of Denis, who had come up to see, probably, how his master had continued to live so long without him, that brought back the thought of the girl to Wyndham’s mind.
‘Where did you take her?’ he asked listlessly. Even as the words passed his lips he knew it was most important that she should be found again. She was now the inheritress of three hundred a year—no mean thing for a girl who only last night was ready and willing to die of want, amongst other things, no doubt.
‘To the Cottage, sir.’
‘To——’ Wyndham gazed at him as if too astonished to give way to the words that evidently lay very near to his tongue.
‘The Cottage, sir. Yer own place, sir.’
‘The Cottage,’ repeated Wyndham, now breaking forth in earnest. ‘What the devil did you take her there for?’
His extreme anger would have cowed perhaps any other servant in Europe save Denis. That good man stood to his guns without a flinch.
‘Fegs, sir, ’tis you can answer that,’ said he, with quite an encouraging air.
‘What d’ye mean, Denis?’ demanded Wyndham almost violently.
‘I’m manin’—what I’m manin’,’ said Denis, who certainly was not violent at all. ‘Ye know yourself, sir, that the first thing ye said to me about the crathur was to take her to the safest place ye knew.’
‘Well?’ said Wyndham, with anger he tried hard to stifle.
‘Faix, yer honour, it seemed to me thatthe safest place I knew for the young lady was the house that belonged to yer honour.’
This no doubt was distinctly flattering, but at the moment the flattery did not appeal to Wyndham. The girl down there—and what the deuce was he to do with her? And what would all the people round be thinking?—for the most part country folk. The Cottage lay twenty miles outside Dublin. The Rector, Mr. Barry, would for one be positively enraged. He would require all sorts of explanations.
Denis had waited for a reply, but finding none, now went on:
‘Anything wrong, sir?’
‘Anything!’ said Wyndham. ‘Were you mad that you should take a—a person like that down to my house? A girl found lying on the Professor’s doorstep! Good heavens, man! what could you mean by it?’
He exaggerated a little when he said ‘my house.’ As a fact, he lived very little in the Cottage, only using it when he felt tired andoverdone by work. His real home was to be found in rooms in Dublin—pleasant rooms in Upper Merrion Street. There he entertained his bachelor friends, and was highly regarded by his landlady. He was one of those men—more usual than the coming young lady believes—who thought a great deal more of their work, and their reading, and their golf, than of the opposite sex.
‘Well, sir, there’s this,’ said Denis, who had remained beautifully calm. ‘Besides tellin’ me I was to take her to a safe place, ye specially said as she was to be thrated as me own daughter. I remimber the words well. Now, ye know well, sir, havin’ bin intimate with me an’ Bridget since ye wur in yer first throusers, that we haven’t a child between us; an’ yet for all that I tuck it for manin’ that the young lady was to be given to Bridget.’
‘You took a great deal upon yourself then,’ said Wyndham.
‘Maybe so,’ said Denis, pursing up his lips. ‘But ye said as how she was to bethrated like that; an’ if a girl was my daughter—why, I’d take her to Bridget.’
It was impossible to go into this involved affair. Wyndham dismissed him with a gesture; but Denis dallied at the door.
‘I suppose there’s something wrong, sir?’ persisted he.
‘Nothing,’ said Wyndham, putting a match to his cigar, ‘except that you are the most infernal ass I ever met.’
With a heavy heart Wyndham, assisted by a physician of great note, had gone through the Professor’s papers. There were few of them, and with regard to the experiment only a few useless notes here and there, principally written on the backs of envelopes. There was nothing connected—nothing that could be used. The Professor, it seemed, had been in the habit of writing on his brain, and on that only. Alas! there was nothing left wherewith to carry on the great discovery.
Wyndham abandoned his search with a sigh. There was no doubt now that thewonderful experiment was lost to all time. With this sad ending of it he told himself he had closed one chapter in his life, but he made a mistake there; the chapter was only beginning.