CHAPTER XLVII.
ON THE MARGINS OF TWO WORLDS.
The discovery of Gerald's death necessitated a change of plans. Theconcealment of Slippery Dick and Edward must necessarily be accomplishedat Ilexhurst. There were funeral arrangements to be made, the propertycared for and Virdow to be rescued from his solitary and embarrassingposition. Moreover, the gray dawn was on ere the confession was written,and Virdow had briefly explained the circumstances of Gerald's death.Exhausted by excitement and anxiety and the depression of grief, he wentto his room and brought Edward a sealed packet which had been writtenand addressed to him during the early hours of the night.
"You will find it all there," he said; "I cannot talk upon it." He wenta moment to look upon the face of his friend and then, with a singlepathetic gesture, turned and left them.
One of the eccentricities of the former owner of Ilexhurst had been agranite smoke-house, not only burglar and fireproof but cyclone proof,and with its oaken door it constituted a formidable jail.
With food and water, Dick, freed of his bonds, was ushered into thisbuilding, the small vents in the high roof affording enough light formost purposes. A messenger was then dispatched for Barksdale and Edwardlocked himself away from sight of chance callers in his upper room. Thegeneral, thoughtful and weary, sat by the dead man.
The document that Virdow had prepared was written in German. "When youreye reads these lines, you will be grieved beyond endurance; Gerald isno more! He was killed to-night by a flash of lightning and his deathwas instantaneous. I am alone, heartbroken and utterly wretched.Innocent of any responsibility in this horrible tragedy I was yet thecause, since it was while submitting to some experiments of mine that hereceived his death stroke. I myself received a frightful electric shock,but it now amounts to nothing. I would to God that I and not he hadreceived the full force of the discharge. He might have been of vastservice to science, but my work is little and now well-nigh finished.
"Gerald was kneeling under a steel disk, in the glass-room, you willremember where we began our sound experiments, and I did not know thatthe steel wire which suspended it ran up and ended near a metal strip,along the ridge beam of the room. We had just begun our investigation,when the flash descended and he fell dead.
"At this writing I am here under peculiar circumstances; the butler whocame to my call when I recovered consciousness assisted me in theattempt at resuscitation of Gerald, but without any measure of success.He then succeeded in getting one or two of the old negroes and a doctor.The latter declared life extinct. There was no disfigurement--only ablack spot in the crown of the head and a dark line down the spine,where the electric fluid had passed. That was all."
Edward ceased to read; his chin sank upon his breast and the linesslipped from his unfocused eyes. The dark line down the spine! His heartleaped fiercely and he lifted his face with a new light in his eyes. Fora moment it was radiant; then shame bowed his head again. He laid asidethe paper and gave himself up to thought, from time to time pacing theroom. In these words lay emancipation. He resumed the reading:
"We arranged the body on the lounge and determined to wait until morningto send for the coroner and undertaker, but one by one your negroesdisappeared. They could not seem to withstand their superstition, thebutler told me, and as there was nothing to be done I did not worry. Icame here to the library to write, and when I returned, the butler, too,was gone. They are a strange people. I suppose I will see none of themuntil morning, but it does not matter; my poor friend is far beyond thereach of attention. His rare mind has become a part of cosmos; itsrelative situation is our mystery.
"I will, now, before giving you a minute description of our last eveningtogether, commit for your eye my conclusions as to some of the phenomenaand facts you have observed. I am satisfied as far as Gerald's origin isconcerned, that he is either the son of the woman Rita or that they arein some way connected by ties of blood. In either case the similarity oftheir profiles would be accounted for. No matter how remote theconnection, nothing is so common as this reappearance of tribal featuresin families. The woman, you told me, claimed him as her child, butsilently waived that claim for his sake. I say to you that a mother'sinstinct is based upon something deeper than mere fancy, and thatintuitions are so nearly correct that I class them as the nearestapproach to mind memory to be observed.
"The likeness of his full face to the picture of the girl you callMarion Evan may be the result of influences exerted at birth. Do youremember the fragmentary manuscript? If that is a history, I am of theopinion that it is explanation enough. At any rate, the profile is astronger evidence the other way.
"The reproduction of the storm scene is one of the most remarkableincidents I have ever known, but it is not proof that he inherited it asa memory. It is a picture forcibly projected upon his imagination by theauthor of the fragment--and in my opinion he had read that fragment. Itcame to him as a revelation, completing the gap. I am sure that from theday that he read it he was for long periods convinced that he was theson of Rita Morgan; that she had not lied to him. In this I am confirmedby the fact that as she lay dead he bent above her face and called her'mother'. I am just as well assured that he had no memory of the originof that picture; no memory, in fact, of having read the paper. This mayseem strange to you, but any one who has had the care of victims ofopium will accept the proposition as likely.
"The drawing of the woman's face was simple. His hope had been to findhimself the son of Marion Evan; his dreams were full of her. He had seenthe little picture; his work was an idealized copy, but it must beadmitted a marvelous work. Still the powers of concentration in this manexceeded the powers of any one I have ever met.
"And that brings me to what was the most wonderful demonstration he gaveus. Edward, I have divined your secret, although you have never told it.When you went to secure for me the note of the waterfall, the home note,you were accompanied by your friend Mary. I will stake my reputationupon it. It is true because it is obliged to be true. When you playedfor us you had her in your mind, a vivid picture, and Gerald drew it. Itwas a case of pure thought transference--a transference of a mentalconception, line for line. Gerald received his conception from you uponthe vibrating air. To me it was a demonstration worth my whole journeyto America.
"And here let me add, as another proof of the sympathetic chord betweenyou, that Gerald himself had learned to love the same woman. You gavehim that, my young friend, with the picture.
"You have by this time been made acquainted with the terrible accusationagainst you--false and infamous. There will be little trouble inclearing yourself, but oh, what agony to your sensitive nature! I triedto keep the matter from Gerald, as I did the inquest by keeping him busywith investigations; but a paper fell into his hands and his excitementwas frightful. Evading me he disappeared from the premises one evening,but while I was searching for him he came to the house in a carriage,bringing the picture of that repulsive negro, which you will remember.Since then he has been more calm. Mr. Barksdale, your friend, I suppose,was with him once or twice.
"And now I come to this, the last night of our association upon earth;the night that has parted us and rolled between us the mystery acrosswhich our voices cannot reach nor our ears hear.
"Gerald had long since been satisfied with the ability of livingsubstance to hold a photograph, and convinced that these photographs liedormant, so to speak, somewhere in our consciousness until awakenedagain--that is, until made vivid. He was proceeding carefully toward theproposition that a complete memory could be inherited, and in the secondgeneration or even further removed; you know his theory. There wereintermediate propositions that needed confirmation. When forms andscenes come to the mind of the author, pure harmonies of color to thatof the artist, sweet co-ordinations of harmonies to the musician, whencecome they? Where is the thread of connection? Most men locate the seatof their consciousness at the top of the head; they seem to think inthat spot. And strange, is it not, that when life passes out and all thebeau
tiful structure of the body claimed by the frost of death, that heatlingers longest at that point! It is material in this letter, becauseexplaining Gerald's idea. He wished me to subject him to the finestvibrations at that point.
"The experiment was made with a new apparatus, which had been hung inplace of the first in the glass-room; or, rather, to this we made anaddition. A thin steel plate was fixed to the floor, directly under thewire and elevated upon a small steel rod. Gerald insisted that as thedrum and membrane I used made the shapes we secured a new experimentshould be tried, with simple vibrations. So we hung in its place a steeldisk with a small projection from the center underneath. Kneeling uponthe lower disk Gerald was between two plates subject to the finestvibration, his sensitive body the connection. There was left a gap ofone inch between his head and the projection under the upper disk and wewere to try first with the gap closed, and then with it opened.
"You know how excitable he was. When he took his position he was whiteand his large eyes flashed fire. His face settled into that peculiarlyharsh, fierce expression, for which I have never accounted except uponthe supposition of nervous agony. The handle to his violin had beenwrapped with fine steel wire, and this, extending a yard outward, wasbent into a tiny hook, intended to be clasped around the suspended wirethat it might convey to it the full vibrations from the sounding boardof the instrument. I made this connection, and, with the violin againstmy ear, prepared to strike the 'A' note in the higher octave, which ifthe vibrations were fine enough should suggest in his mind the figure ofa daisy.
"Gerald, his eyes closed, remained motionless in his kneeling posture.Suddenly a faint flash of light descended into the room and the thunderrolled. And I, standing entranced by the beauty and splendor of thatface, lost all thought of the common laws of physics. A look of rapturehad suffused it, his eyes now looked out upon some vision, and a tendersmile perfected the exquisite curve of his lips. There was no need ofviolin outside, the world was full of the fine quiverings ofelectricity, the earth's invisible envelope was full of vibrations!Nature was speaking a language of its own. What that mind saw betweenthe glories of this and the other life as it trembled on the margins ofboth, is not given to me to know; but a vision had come to him--of what?
"Ah, Edward, how different the awakening for him and me! I remember thatfor a moment I seemed to float in a sea of flame; there was a shock likeunto nothing I had ever dreamed, and lying near me upon the floor, hismortal face startled out of its beautiful expression, lay Gerald--dead!"
The conclusion of the letter covered the proposed arrangements forinterment. Edward had little time to reflect upon the strange document.The voice of Gen. Evan was heard calling at the foot of the stair.Looking down he saw standing by him the straight, manly figure ofBarksdale. The hour of dreams had ended; the hour of action had arrived!
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