CHAPTER III.
"The secret you are seeking," said the man who had put his hand on OrsonVane's shoulder, "is mine."
Vane's eyes widened slightly, roving the stranger up and down. He was aman of six feet in height, of striking, white-haired beauty, of the typemade familiar to us by pictures of the Old Guard under Napoleon. Herewas still the Imperial under the strong chin, the white mustache overthe shapely lips; the high, clear forehead; the long, thin hands, whereveins showed blue, and the nails were rosy. The head was bowed forwardof the shoulders; the man, now old, had once been inches taller. Youlooked, on the spur of first noting him, for the sword and the epaulets,or, at least, for the ribbon of an order. But his clothes were quiteplain, nor had his voice any touch of the military.
"I overheard a part of your conversation," the stranger went on, "notintentionally, yet unavoidably. I had either to move or to listen. Andyou see the place is so full that moving was out of the question. Didyou mean what you were saying?"
"About the--"
"The Chinese wall," said the stranger.
"Every word of it," said Vane.
"If the chance to penetrate another's soul came to you, would you takeit?"
"At once."
Moncreith laughed aloud. "Where are we?" he said, "in Aladdin's cave?What rubbish!" And he shook himself, as if to disturb a bad dream. Hewas on the point of reaching for his hat, when he saw the face of thegirl in the mirror once more; the sight of it stayed him. He smiled tohimself, and waited for the curious conversation between Vane and thestranger to continue.
"My name," the stranger was observing, taking a card from an _etui_,"may possibly be known to you?"
Vane bent his head to the table, read, and looked at the white-hairedman with a quick access of interest.
"I am honored," he said. "My name is Orson Vane."
"Oh," said the other, "I knew that. I do not study the human interest inmere theory; I delight in the tangible. That is why I presume uponyou"--he waved his hand gracefully--"thus."
"You must join us," said Vane; "there is plenty of room at this table."
"No; I must--if your friend will pardon me--see you alone. Will you cometo my place?"
He spoke as youthfully as if he were of Vane's own age.
Vane considered a second or so, and then sprang to his feet.
"Yes," he said, "I will come. Good-night, Luke. Stay on; enjoy yourself.Shall I see you to-morrow? Good-night!"
They went out together, the young man and the one with the white hair.One glance into the mirror flashed from Orson's eyes as he turned to go;it brought him a memory of a burnished halo on a fragile, rosy, beauty.He sighed to himself, wishing he could reach the truth behind the robeof beauty, and, with that sigh, turned with a sort of fierceness uponhis companion.
"Well," said Vane, "well?"
They were passing through a most motley thoroughfare. Barrel-organsdotted the asphalt; Italian and Sicilian poverty elbowed the poverty ofRussian and Polish Jews. The shops bore signs in Italian, Hebrew,French--in anything but English. The Elevated roared above the music andthe chatter; the cool gloom of lower Broadway seemed far away.
"Patience," said the old man, "patience, Mr. Vane. Look about you! Howmuch of the heart of this humanity that reeks all about us do we know?Think,--think of your Chinese wall! Oh--how strange, how very strangethat I should have come upon you to-night, when, in despair of everfinding my man, I had gone for distraction to a place where, I thought,philosophy nor science were but little welcome."
"My dear Professor," urged Vane finally, when they were come to astiller region, where many churches, some parks and ivy-sheltered housesgave an air of age and sobriety and history, "I have no more patienceleft. Did I not know your name for what it is I would not have followedyou. Even now I hardly know whether your name and your title suffice. Ifit is an adventure, very well. But I have no more patience formysteries."
"Not even when you are about to penetrate the greatest mystery of all?Oh, youth, youth! Well, we have still a little distance to go. I shallemploy it to impress upon you that I, Professor Vanlief, am notover-fond of the title of Professor. It has, here in America, a taint ofthe charlatan. But it came to me, this title, in a place where onlyhonors were implied. I was, indeed, a fellow student with many of whomthe world has since heard; Bismarck was one of them. I have eaten smokedgoose with him in Pommern. You see, I am very old, very old. I havespent my life solving a riddle. It is the same riddle that has balkedyou, my young friend. But I have striven for the solution; you havemerely wailed against the riddle's existence."
Vane felt a flush of shame.
"True," he murmured, "true. I never went further into any art, anyscience, than to find its shortcomings."
"Yet even that," resumed the Professor, "is something. You are, at anyrate, the only man for my purpose."
"Your purpose?"
"Yes. It is the same as yours. You are to be the instrument; I furnishthe power. You are to be able to feel, to think, as others do."
"Oh!" muttered Vane, "impossible." Now that his wish was called possibleof fulfilment, he shrank a little from it. He followed the Professor upa long flight of curving steps, through dim halls, to where a bluishlight flickered. As they passed this feeble glow it flared suddenly intoa brilliant jet of flame; a door swung open, revealing a somewhat barechamber fitted up partly as a study, partly as a laboratory. The doorclosed behind them silently.
"Mere trickery," said the Professor, "the sort of thing that the knavesof science fool the world with. Will you sit down? Here is where I haveworked for--for more years than you have lived, Mr. Vane. Here is whereI have succeeded. In pursuit of this success I have spent my life andnearly all the fortune that my family made in generations gone. I havethis house, and my daughter, and my science. The world spins madly allabout me, in this splendid town; here, in this stillness, I have workedto make that world richer than I found it. Will you help me?"
Vane had flung himself upon a wicker couch. He watched his hoststriding up and down the room with a fervor that had nothing of senilityin it. The look of earnestness upon that fine old face was magnetic.Vane's mistrust vanished at sight of it.
"If you will trust me," he answered. He saw himself as the beneficiary,his host as the giver of a great gift.
"I trust you. I heard enough, to-night, to believe you sincere inwishing to see life from another soul than your own. But you mustpromise to obey my instructions to the letter."
"I promise."
A sense of farce caught Vane. "And now," he said, "what is it? A powderI must swallow, or a trance you pass me into, or what?"
The professor shook his head gravely. "It is none of those things. It ismuch simpler. I should not wonder but that the ancients knew it. Buthuman life is so much more complex now; the experiences you will gainwill be larger than they could ever have been in other ages. Do yourealize what I am about to give you? The power to take upon you the soulof another, just as an actor puts on the outer mask of another! And Iask for no reward. Simply the joy of seeing my process active; andafterwards, perhaps, to give my secret to the world. But you are toenjoy it alone, first. Of course--there may be risks. Do you takethem?"
"I do," said Vane.
He could hear the whistling of steamers out in the harbor, and the noiseof the great town came to him faintly. All that seemed strangely remote.His whole intelligence was centered upon his host, upon the sparselyfurnished room, and the secret whose solution he thought himselfapproaching. He was, for almost the first time in his life, intense inthe mere act of existence; he was conscious of no imitation of others;his analysis of self was sunk in an eagerness, a tenseness ofpurposeness hitherto unfelt.
The professor went to a far, dark corner of the room, and rolled thencea tall, sheeted thing that might have been a painting, or an easel. Heheld it tenderly; his least motion with it revealed solicitude. When itwas immediately in front of where Vane reclined, Vanlief loosed his holdof the thing, and began pacing up and
down the room.
"The question of mirrors," he began, after what seemed to Vane an age,"has never, I suppose, interested you."
"On the contrary," said Vane, "I have had Italy searched for the finestof its cheval-glasses. In my dressing-room are several that would giveeven a man of your fine height, sir, a complete reflection of everydetail, from a shoe-lace to an eyebrow. It is not altogether vanity; butI never could do justice to my toilette before a mirror that showed meonly a shoulder, or a waist, or a foot, at a time; I want thefull-length portrait or nothing. I like to see myself as others willsee me; not in piece-meal. The Florentines made lovely mirrors."
"They did." Vanlief smiled sweetly. "Yet I have made a better." He pacedthe floor again, and then resumed speech. "I am glad you like tallmirrors. You will have learned how careful one must be of them. One moreor less in your dressing-room will not matter, eh?"
"I have an excellent man," said Vane. "There has not been a brokenmirror in my house for years. He looks after them as if they were hisown."
"Ah, better and better."
Vane interrupted the Professor's silence with, "It is a mirror, then?"
"Yes," said Vanlief, nodding at the sheeted mirror, "it is a mirror.Have you ever thought of the wonderfulness of mirrors? What wonder, andyet what simplicity! To think that I--I, a simple, plodding old man ofscience--should be the only one to have come upon the magic of amirror!" His talk took the note of monologue. He was pacing, pacing,pacing; smiling at Vane now and then, and fingering the covered mirrorwith loving touch as he passed near it. "Have you ever, as a child,looked into a mirror in the twilight, and seen there another face besideyour own? Have you never thought that to the mirror were revealed morethings than the human eye can note? Have you heard of the old, oldfolk-superstitions; of the bride that may not see herself in a mirrorwithout tragedy touching her; of the Warwickshire mirror that must becovered in a house of death, lest the corpse be seen in it; of thefuture that some magic mirrors could reveal? Fanciful tales, all ofthem; yet they have their germ of truth, and for my present discovery Iowe them something." He drew the sheet from the mirror, and revealedanother veil of gauze resting upon the glass, as, in some houses, themost prized pictures are sometimes doubly covered. "You see; it is justa mirror, a full-length mirror. But, oh, my dear Vane, the wonderfulnessof this mirror! I have only to look into this mirror; to veil it; andthen, when next you glance into it, if it be within the hour, my soul,my spirit, my very self, passes from the face of the mirror to you! Thatis the whole secret, or at least, the manifestation of it! Do you wishto be the President, to think his thoughts, feel as he feels, dream ashe dreams? He has only to look into this mirror, and you have only totake from it, as one plucks a lily from the pool, the spiritual image hehas left there! Think of it, Vane, think of it! Is this not seeing life?Is this not riddling the secret of existence? To reach the innermostdepths of another's spirit; to put on his soul, as others can put onyour clothes, if you left them on a chair,--is this not a stupendousthing?" In his fever and fervor the professor had exhausted hisstrength; he flung himself into a chair. Vane saw the old man's eyesglowing and his chest throbbing with passion; he hardly knew whetherthe whole scene was real or a something imposed upon his senses by aspecies of hypnotism. He passed his hand before his forehead; he shookhis head. Yet nothing changed. Vanlief, in the chair, still quaking withexcitement; the mirror, veiled and immobile.
For a time the room stood silent, save for Vanlief's heavy breathing.
"Of course," he resumed presently, in a quieter tone, "you cannot beexpected to believe, until you have tried. But trial is the easiestthing in the world. I can teach you the mere externals to be observed infive minutes. One trial will convince you. After that,--my dear Vane,you have the gamut of humanity to go. You can be another man every day.No secret of any human heart will be a secret to you. All wisdom can begained by you; all knowledge, all thought, can be yours. Oh, Orson Vane,I wonder if you realize your fortune! Or--is it possible that youwithdraw?"
Vane got up resolutely.
"No," he said, "I have faith--at last. I am with you, heart and soul.Life seems splendid to me, for the first time. When can I have themirror taken to my house?"
The Imitator: A Novel Page 3