The Devil in Manuscript And Other Tales of Forbidden Books

by Osie Turner

  The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.

  He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!

  "Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully, thou man of clay!" muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant. "Now, if there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over."

  "Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! Look!"

  Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.

  "Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried he, impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go!"

  "Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain. You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink; for my share in it is far less than your own."

  "No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."

  "I submit," replied she calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."

  "My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height and depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous conception. I have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught except to change your entire physical system. Only one thing remains to be tried. If that fail us we are ruined."

  "Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.

  "Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."

  "Danger? There is but one danger—that this horrible stigma shall be left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"

  "Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And now, dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested."

  He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love—so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each instant required something that was beyond the scope of the instant before.

  The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the consequence of a highly-wrought state of mind and tension of spirit than of fear or doubt.

  "The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer to Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot fail."

  "Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I might wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."

  "You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband "But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its effect upon this plant."

  On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.

  "There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet I joyfully stake all upon your word."

  "Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."

  She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.

  "It is grateful," said she with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset."

  She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect with the emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,—such were the details which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume. Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that volume, but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.

  While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but the birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away.

  "By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success! And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of bl
ood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"

  He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural day to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant Aminadab's expression of delight.

  "Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit—earth and heaven—have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses! You have earned the right to laugh."

  These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and anxiety that he could by no means account for.

  "My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.

  "Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"

  "My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, "you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"

  Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark—that sole token of human imperfection—faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half development, demands the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Alymer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.

  END

  For Art's Sake

  by

  Tod Robbins

  Table of Contents:

  I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI

  XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI

  I

  Burgess Martin! That was a name to conjure with in literary circles a score of years ago. But how many are there now to whom it means more than an echo fast receding in the somber caverns of time? Not many, surely. And yet there was a period in New York's police annals when he juggled the sphere of art before the amazed eyes of the world, playing on the emotions of his readers with the deft touch of a master, instilling in our minds the strange, crimson thoughts which blossomed so abundantly on the twisted branch of his philosophy. And stepping back from life, calm and smiling, a famous toreador, he waved the red flag before the aroused, infuriated beast and waited. Those horns should gore sensitive humanity as a tribute to genius; while art, like a Nero, peered down from the balcony.

  And the man's works—those two thin little volumes bound in red morocco, those two deadly little volumes which formerly crouched between the kindlier books in my library like crime-besmirched dwarfs—have they vanished entirely from the memory of man? Vivid, poisonous growths of mental fungi, those tales sprang to life only to die before the sun. Quite perfect they were, and quite malign. Handbooks of assassins, they. But I must begin at the beginning.

  My younger brother, Paul, was responsible for bringing Martin and me together. He had picked him up in some Bohemian restaurant which he frequented and from that time forward was so loud in his praises that natural curiosity prompted me to see this paragon for myself.

  "You must meet Burgess Martin, Charley," Paul said one evening. "He's just the sort of chap you'd want to room with in Paris. He's an artist to the core."

  But I was not inclined to take my brother's statements without a pinch of salt. My four years’ experience in college ways—I was then a senior at Columbia University—had made me slightly intolerant of freshman enthusiasm. Besides Paul had already shown a marked tendency toward strong drink and the false friendships that went with it. On more than one occasion he had brought back to our apartment "a good fellow" who needed considerable moral persuasion to depart in the morning without a few valuables. I have even known Paul's bibulous friends to pocket saltcellars and spoons, so it is no wonder that his laudatory statements about Martin at first did not move me.

  "But I tell you he's an artist," Paul repeated belligerently.

  "What kind of an artist? Does he mix drinks artistically?"

  "Don't be a damn fool, Charley. Burgess Martin is the most intelligent chap I ever met. He's in my class in English literature and he knows more about the subject than Professor Brent himself."

  "So you have discovered a genius in the freshman class," I said with all the weary tolerance of a senior. "What a strange anomaly! This year I thought they seemed especially unripened."

  "Martin isn't. He makes what he says alive, somehow. You must really meet him, Charley. I'm going over to his rooms tonight. Why don't you come along?"

  "You say he's going to Paris next fall to take up painting?"

  "Yes, he'll study under Verone. If you two fellows hit it off, you might room together. Get your hat, Charley."

  I could see that Paul had set his heart on my meeting his new friend and so I could no longer resist. "Now I'm in for a boring evening," I thought as I followed my brother out of the apartment.

  Burgess Martin at that time lived in one of those dilapidated old boarding houses still to be found in the down-town section of New York City. This particular building seemed to be tottering on its foundation. It had a sodden, dissipated air about it—the air, in fact, of a femme de monde who realizes that she is aging. Here was the tomb of dead intrigue, of soiled romance.

  We were admitted by a slatternly landlady and mounted two flights of rickety stairs. On the second landing Paul came to a halt and thundered on a door which was peeling like the face of a florid man who has sat too long in the sun. Almost immediately it swung open and I confronted that strange individual whose personality was one day to overshadow both our lives.

  Burgess Martin was a tall man, well over six feet. He had one of those faces which seem to challenge time —a face that when young, looks old; and when old, seems young. It was long, lean, ascetic—the lips, colorless and thin; the nose, hooked and warlike; the eyes, small and grey with the piercing quality of gimlets; the forehead, a threatening protuberance which overshadowed the rest and hinted at phenomenal intellectual powers. His body was thin, almost to the point of emaciation; yet, for all that, one sensed a great virility stirring in that skeleton frame.

  I was immediately conscious of this virility and of something which perhaps sprang from it. The man exuded an unpleasant atmosphere, an atmosphere very difficult to resist. His personality, like an octopus, wound its many cold arms of reason about one. To struggle against it was useless and yet one struggled automatically. Genius is one of the most irritating traits in others. To acknowledge it, one must bend the stiff neck of self-pride.

  Perhaps my nerves were a trifle out of tune at the time. It is the only way I have of accounting for that strange sensation which ran through me as Martin's thin, cool hand slipped into mine. I felt as though I had a precious secret which must be guarded at all costs and which even now was threatened. The man's unfeeling grey eyes were fixed intently on me; those eyes which, like magnets, seemed drawing my ego out of my body.

  "Have a seat, gentlemen. And help yourselves to those cigarettes."

  Martin turned to Paul and I felt instant relief. Seating myself in one of the rickety chairs the room afforded, I lit a cigarette and passed the box to my ho
st.

  "No, thank you," he said a trifle bruskly. "I don't smoke. It wastes too much time."

  "Are you so busy as all that?" I asked. "I had no idea the freshman requirements were especially stiff. In my time, one could squeeze through without much work."

  Martin's thin lips drew up at the corners like a cat's. It was his nearest approach to a smile. "My dear fellow," said he, "I hadn't my college work in mind. Of course, that's childishly simple. I am trying to perfect myself in one or two of the arts and that requires time when one hasn't the proper guidance."