“The outcome is very near,” said Sarah.
Edmond silently assented.
She swept closer, murmuring in that wordless speech she used. “There is yet time, Edmond. You are needed; out of your knowledge you are needed. Return to me where I am even now waiting.”
Again and again Edmond denied her.
“I have chosen my course, and it yet seems to me that I chose wisely,” he replied. “The things I gain outvalue those I lose.”
“This is an incalculable madness and a delusion,” said Sarah. “Ruin faces you.”
Edmond smiled in a weary fashion. “I do not argue,” he said. His eyes sought Sarah’s thin awkward form as she stood erect and facing him; there was something of suppliance in her appearance, but her eyes were cold and proud. He scanned her, his twin minds probing and seeking; he perceived with a tinge of astonishment that Sarah too was unhappy. And again after many months, the aura of sympathy descended upon them, the inexpressible lay open before their minds. They had found a common ground.
Sarah felt it, and her cold eyes fit up with their ancient fire; she leaned tensely forward and sought to convey to Edmond what thoughts were in her minds.
Sarah:
“This is a concourse of dead gods—
They gather wraith-like in the night
Summoning futile powers.”
Edmond:
“Synods
Of half-forgotten names of might,
Of names still potent to affright—
Sarah, defy them not!”
Sarah:
“Their rods
Are broken and their priests are fled
Save only you!”
Edmond:
“I serve my gods.
I will not see them starved and dead—
I make my ancient sacrifice
And drink my ancient anodyne.”
Sarah:
“But only you must make it twice
Since only you know other wine!
Edmond; your dieties have failed.
Rise from the River!
Cast off the slime of Life;
look down with eyes unveiled!”
Edmond:
“I think my thoughts and bide my time.”
Thus Edmond again denied Sarah, and having ceased, deliberately broke the cords of sympathy that bound them so that their conveyance of thought was constrained to language. Sarah was pale and cold before him, regarding him with deep unwinking eyes. “I shall not ask again,” she said.
“I have fulfilled my destiny with you, Sarah,” replied Edmond wearily. “Why do you not go back to those others, to weave your nets with them?’
“Once,” said Sarah, “you told me that there were truths beyond my grasp, and thoughts outside the reach of my minds. Now I say to you that while your intellect may reach out and circle a star, yet there are simple and unassuming little facts that slip through your mental grasp like quicksilver, and you are as incapable of grasping these as if they lay buried at the uttermost bounds of the world.”
She vanished. Edmond sat staring at the skull of Homo, with a faint wonder in half his mind. “Certainly,” he thought, “it is surprising to hear Sarah so bitter. I had not dreamed she was capable of even such mild emotional disturbance as this; there is something wrong with my analysis of her.”
And his other self brought forth the answer, a solution so banal, so hackneyed, that he smiled again his slow, weary smile. “Like all women, Sarah is reluctant to admit defeat. She is still feminine to the extent of wanting her own way!”
Nevertheless he felt that some element in Sarah had eluded him. He was aware of a certain doubt as he dragged himself erect and betook himself to Vanny.
CHAPTER XXII
DIMINUENDO
SO THINGS sun out their course in a peaceful diminuendo for Edmond; his vitality dropped from him as easily as from an aged man, with as little bodily discomfort. His intellect remained unclouded, even, he thought, clearer than before; certain veils that hung there of old had vanished, opening vistas hitherto obscured. The old hunger for knowledge grew less as he perceived its ultimate futility, but the love of beauty remained.
“My last reality is a sensation,” he thought, “and so I complete the cycle that lies between the superman and, let us say, the oyster. For now the only difference remaining is that I possess a slightly more varied repertory of sensory organs. But doubtless a truly aesthetic oyster finds its compensations for this; it drinks more deeply of the wine at hand.”
And his other self replied, “Beyond doubt the oyster is the happier, since it makes full use of the body it possesses, and fulfills its destiny completely, as I do not.”
He sat now in his chair before the fireplace. Behind him the early autumnal dusk was darkening the window; the usual fire of cannel glowed its reflection on his face. His languor was not unpleasant, as he sat in a dreamy half-reality, a reverie; his twin minds ranged at random through devious courses. He wandered from memories of the past to hypothetical visions of might-have-been. Images of old experiments in fields he had wished to explore came to him, carrying breath-taking intimations of things incredible; or that diffuse cosmic intelligence which is everywhere, called Natural Law, or God, or the Law of Chance, according to one’s nature. And this universal Entity, Edmond reflected, breathed a fiery purpose and vital fertility in every part, but in the infinite aggregate was sterile, purposeless and static.
Pictures of Vanny—flaming, incoherent visions that burned in an aura of emotion! Vanny dancing before the fire—Vanny’s eyes with the haunting terror in them, and then those eyes lit up with an ecstasy. Vanny sleeping—Vanny laughing—Vanny’s body tense and sweet and vital, or that body warm and languorous, with the perfume of wine upon her breath.
“I have made a good trade,” he reflected. “Now I pay without regret that which I value little, for this that I prize highly.”
Instantly a memory of Sarah moved quietly into his minds, her dry little voice sounding almost audibly her dolorous admonition. “Edmond, the way of glory was my way; now at the end look back upon the ruin you have made of that which might have been a noble thing.”
Edmond replied: “I look back upon a ruin indeed, but I see a charm about it. For the austere pale marble is softened, its outlines merge into the background which is living, and about the broken columns trail the vines of the grape. There is an air about ruins that the structure never owns; Sarah, do wild doves nest in a temple that is new?”
“Words!” said Sarah. “You blanket your life with verbiage, and tuck it in soft and warm while about you the lightnings flash. You argue with your own reason and temporize with your body, and are in all ways unworthy of your heritage—a beater of bushes and a trapper of flies!”
“Doubtless you are right,” said Edmond, and dismissed her presence from his minds.
Now he sat for some time weighing Sarah’s remarks, and his rational self saw their justice, but he found no real meaning therein. Sarah spoke from a viewpoint he could not assume; understanding was possible between them, but sympathy never. Edmond smiled again as he reflected that between himself and Vanny, exactly opposite conditions obtained; there was sympathy without understanding.
Vanny and Sarah—his physical complement and his intellectual. “It is true, then, that bodily things are far more than intellectual; the important elements are not the highest. The mental is not the fundamental.” He reflected in this vein, lapsing again into a reverie, until Vanny returned from some errand. She dropped a package or two, and slid to the footstool between Edmond and the fire.
“Of what do you dream, Edmond?”
He told her, since the thought was harmless.
“I think you under-value those things, Edmond, because they are what you possess in abundance. To me, everything else is a foundation for the intellect you despise.”
He smiled at her, gently as his thin lips and satyric features could manage. “I may not explain further.” Vanny flushed. “Oh, I k
now!—I’m not a thorough fool! But you see that’s why I prize this quality of understanding.” A trace of the old haunted light showed in her eyes, and her mien grew a little wistful. “See, Edmond, I traded my soul for the chance to understand you, only the price I had to offer was not great enough.”
CHAPTER XXIII
EVENING ON OLYMPUS
WINTER found Edmond’s vitality, which he had poured out so freely at first, now at very low ebb. He lived out his days in a pallid half-dream, and it was only with effort that he could call his twin minds to clarity. That vigor which remained he hoarded carefully, spending it like a miser’s pennies, seeking full value in pleasure for each coin expended. No longer the spendthrift nights of ecstasy, but an avid grasping at sensation that grew ever more dream-like and elusive. He was perforce content to watch the will-o-the-wisp of knowledge dance and beckon without pursuit; he remained mostly in his chair before the fireplace of the monkey’s skull, engrossed in dreams and memories like a very old man. He who had dwelt so thoroughly in the future found himself squeezed into the past, as that future foreshortened and the past lengthened.
He could no longer disguise his illness from Vanny, but her anxiety was tempered by a sublime faith in him. To her he was as he wished to be, and his wishes remained beyond her understanding. That he chose to weaken himself was merely a mystery, not a danger.
Sarah came at intervals, standing before him unspeaking, regarding him silently with cold eyes. The time for words had long passed, and she watched Edmond’s doom roll upon him now in silence. Sometimes she carried with her their child, and then the already half-intelligent imp backed up its mother’s silent stare with an intense little silence of its own. Edmond was too weary to raise his head, but he noted a dawning bitterness in its eyes. A sense of pity and regret smote him, as he caught a fore-glimpse of this little being’s life.
“Far better for you to kill it,” he told Sarah once, while the imp stared fixedly at him. She made no answer, but continued her gaze for a minute or more and departed.
One day thereafter he called Vanny to him, strengthening himself by means of an alkaloid of his own synthesis. For some hours the drug offered him a modicum of vitality, though he knew that payment would be exacted.
“My permitted time draws to an end, Vanny.”
Into her eyes swept a look of terror and a glistening of tears. She dropped to the stool before him, gazing up at him, but saying nothing.
“Remember that when I depart, dear, I go the way of my own devising, and do not grieve.”
“No, Edmond!—No,” she murmured. “Do not abandon me again! Had I more to offer, you know I would give what you demand, and more, but I have traded all I am for your presence; do not deny me it!”
“I would not,” said Edmond, “but that I must. Nevertheless, this parting is but temporary; there will be another union and another—forever.”
“Then the parting is hard but not unbearable.” Through Edmond’s other self flashed a memory of a chance remark of Stein’s dropped long ago when discussing Edmond’s picture of a circular Time; “How do you know the curvature is constant? Nothing else in nature is absolute; why must Time return exactly on itself in a perfect circle?” His slim fingers caressed Vanny while his twin minds seized the thought; here at last might come the way of escape, the little crevice in the hopeless circle that bound all things! Perhaps Time moved not in a circle through a fourth dimension but in a spiral through still another, and things did not repeat themselves forever without point or outcome, but varied a little through each repetition. Perhaps this spiral spun in still another spiral, and that in another, and so through greater and still greater spirals mounting in unthinkable dimensions toward infinity. Progress and hope—two illusions that Edmond had denied throughout his life—were born for him. He perceived at last the ultimate implication of his own philosophy; that the price demanded to make anything—absolutely anything—possible is truly a very small price, involving merely the shifting of the observer’s point of view from one angle to another, from this valley to that peak. A surge of exaltation revived him; the untasted poignancy of hope was like a strong drug in his body, and in those moments he was close to happiness. He reflected that after all he had made of his life no ruin, but an edifice of beauty, since he alone of all the millions had uncovered Truth. His other self murmured the one true statement—once terrible, but now inspiring (thus again proving itself!): “All things are relative to the point of view; nothing is either true or false save in the mind of the observer.” He turned back to Vanny.
“This shall be only a little parting, and not for very long as we judge time. A few score years for you, Vanny, and it may be only a few hours for me. And then all this shall be again, and perhaps on a happier plane. This I promise, Vanny, and you will believe me.
She smiled a quiet and tearful smile. “Yes, Edmond.”
“Think, dear—has not all this been in the past, not very long since? Your memory runs back some twenty-five years; was it not just before that time that this was again? Do you recall?”
“Yes, Edmond; I recall.”
“What matter then the unthinkable ages intervening, since we are oblivious of their passing? When again in eternity the circle or the spiral spins back to this arc, we shall be together again, and perhaps happier. This is my promise.”
“Yes, Edmond.” Smiled again, wistfully, “If only I were sure.”
“I am sure.”
“Then it is enough. I shall go with you. What is there for me to fear in Death who have met Him twice already?”
Edmond considered this thought carefully, since it had about it a specious logic. He turned it about in his twin minds, re-formulated it in the inexpressible, and then somberly rejected it.
“No, Vanny. For you is reserved the difficult part; you must live out your appointed time to the very end of the arc.”
“But why, Edmond? To what avail?”
“Because, dear, I do not fully comprehend the terrible and obscure laws that govern Fate and Chance in their relations to Time. Because there is a danger that the foreshortening of both our arcs—the obliviating of both our futures—may condemn us through what you call eternity to an endless repetition of our act. The future grows out of the past; let us not dry up the spring from which it flows. More than this I cannot tell you.”
“As you wish, Edmond, but this will be a cruel thing.”
Edmond took her hands in his incredible grasp. The strange fingers twisted about hers like tentacles, but she thrilled to them, to the inhuman delicacy vested in them. She gazed unflinching into the appalling eyes that bred madness, and their glance softened, for now at the very end Edmond had come to a curious realization. As his arc dropped toward oblivion, an understanding came to him. He saw finally that it was not Vanny’s body alone he loved, but her self-effacement, her loyalty, her adoration, and the many little illusions called character. These were what Sarah, who stood mind to mind with him, had not, nor could ever have, since her heredity forbade it. Thus finally did Edmond confess to himself that he loved Vanny, and thus did he gaze into her simple human eyes, and tell her so. Her answer was only, “Living without you will be tasteless, Edmond, but not so bitter now.”
“I must do what I may to sweeten it, Vanny, who have brought to it all the bitterness it holds.”
So he took her chin in his serpentine grasp and up-tilted her head, fixing her gaze with his own of burning intensity. Her eyes widened, turned cold and glassy as she surrendered her mind to his keeping for the while; Edmond probed her mentality until it was as if each of his long fingers rested upon some center in her brain, as if he could play upon these as upon an organ’s keys. He murmured softly the while:
“Listen to me, Desired One, now on the eve of our dissolution listen and yield you to these things that I command”
She answered tonelessly, “I do yield.”
“Then I will that after my departing you shall think never on the manner of it, nor ever retu
rn to the place of it, but be content knowing that I go the way of my own devising.”
“This I yield.”
“I command that your adoration and the love in which you hold me be erased from your memory, so that you think of me no more, nor ever recall this time with regret.”
Still tonelessly she murmured, “This I cannot yield.”
“For what reason?”
“Because there is a natural law of my being that forbids it.”
For a moment Edmond’s minds dissociated, considering separately this statement. “Even Vanny’s simplicity eludes me at the end.” And his other self replied, “Doubtless there are facts entirely beyond the domain of reason, so that some sorts of knowledge by their very nature remain forever unattainable. Of this degree are mind and life.”
He returned his thoughts to Vanny, fusing his twin minds again into a unity.
“Then I will have it thus: That if you cannot forget me, you remember me as a being out of very long ago, so that my reality is dim. That you think of me not as your appointed mate, but as a symbol, an aspiration, and a dream, as a mysterious and not-to-be-satisfied longing, but not ever as a Being made of flesh and mind, who loved you and was loved.”
“This too I yield,” she said.”
“Then I send you now to Paul, whom you will love as well as may be. You will love him for his love of you, since you are now the stronger. Out of his simplicity and his ignorance you will love him; he will be the child you lead and the man you inspire. I give not you to Paul, but Paul to you; out of his fleshly vigor you shall love him.”
“I yield this too, Edmond,” she said.
A moment more he held her passive gaze, while the false vitality of the drug ebbed out of him. He drooped wearily, then raised his hand from her chin, brushing the finger-tips across her wide, unwinking eyes. “Enough,” he said, and her eyes suddenly softened and smiled sadly into his own. He tipped two pellets from the vial he carried, swallowed them.
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