Master of His Fate Part 12

"For heaven's sake!" cried Julius, "don't shrink from me now, or you will tempt me to be less frank than I have been. I wish to make full confession. I know, I see now, I have been cruelly, brutally selfish--as selfish as Nature herself!--none knows that better than I. But remember, in extenuation, what I have told you of my origin and my growth. And I had not the suspicion of a thought of injuring any one. Fool! fool!

egregious fool that I was! I who understood most things so clearly did not guess that no creature, no being in the universe--G.o.d, or man, or beast--can indulge in arrogant, full, magnificent enjoyment without gathering and living in himself, squandering through himself, the lives of others, to their eternal loss and his own final ruin! But, as I said, I did not think, and it was not evident until recently, that I injured any one. I had for a long time been aware that I had an unusual mesmeric or magnetic influence--call it what you will--over others. I cultivated that power in eye and hand, so that I was soon able to take any person at unawares whom I considered fit for my purpose, and subdue him or her completely to myself. Then after one or two failures I hit upon a method, which I perfected at length into entire simplicity, by which I was able to tap the nervous system and draw into myself as much as ever I needed of the abounding force of life, without leaving any sign which even the most skilful doctor could detect."

"Julius, you sicken me!" exclaimed Lefevre. "I am a doctor, but you sicken me!"

"I explain myself so in detail," said Julius, "_because_ you are a doctor. But let me finish. I lived that life of complete wedlock with Nature for I dare not think how many years."

"And you did not get weary of it?" asked Lefevre.

"Weary of it? No! I returned to it always, after a pause of a few days for the reinvigoration I needed,--I returned to it with all the freshness of youth, with the advantage which, of course, mere youth can never have,--an amazingly rich experience. I revelled in the full lap of life. I pa.s.sed through many lands, civilised and barbaric; but it was my especial delight to strike down to that simple, pa.s.sionate, essential nature which lies beneath the thickest lacquer of refinements in our civilised societies. Oh, what a life it was!--what a life!

"But a change came: it must have been growing on me for some time without my knowledge. I commonly removed from society when I felt exhaustion coming on me; but on one occasion it chanced that I stayed on in the pleasant company I was in (I was then in Vienna). I did not exactly feel ill; I felt merely weary and languid, and thought that presently I would go to bed. Gradually I began to observe that the looks of my companions were bent strangely on me, and that the expression of their countenances more and more developed surprise and alarm. 'What is the matter with you all?' I demanded; when they instantly cried, 'What is the matter with _you?_ Have you been poisoned?' I rose and went and looked in a mirror; I saw, with ghastly horror, what I was like, and I knew then that I was _doomed_. I fled from that company for ever. I saw that, when the alien life on which I flourished was gone out of me, I was a worn old man--that the Fire of Life which usually burned in my body, making me look bright and young, was now none of it my own; a few hot ashes only were mine, which Death sat cowering by! I could not but sit and gaze at the reflection of the seared ghastliness of that face, which was mine and yet not mine, and feel well-nigh sick unto death.

After a while, however, I plucked up heart. I considered that it was impossible this change had come all at once; I must have looked like that--or almost like that--once or twice or oftener before, and yet life and reinvigoration had gone on as they had been wont. I wrapped myself well up, and went out. I found a fit subject. I replenished my life as theretofore; my youthful, fresh appearance returned, and my confidence with it. I refused to look again upon my own, my worn face, from that time until tonight.

"But alarm again seized me about a year ago, when I chanced by calculation to note that my periods of abounding life were gradually getting shorter,--that I needed reinvigoration at more frequent intervals;--not that I did not take as much from my subjects as formerly--on the contrary, I seemed to take more--but that I lost more rapidly what I took, as if my body were becoming little better than a fine sieve. The last stage of all was this that you are familiar with, when my subjects began to be so utterly exhausted as to attract public notice. Yet that is not what has given me pause, and made me resolve to bring the whole weary, selfish business to an end. Could I not have gone elsewhere--anywhere, the wide world over--and lived my life? But I was kept, I was tethered here, to this London by a feeling I had never known before. Call it by the common fool's name of Love; call it what you will. I was fascinated by your sister Nora, even as others had been fascinated by me, even as I had been in my youth by the bountiful, gracious beauty of Nature."

"I have wanted to ask you," said Lefevre, "for an explanation of your conduct towards Nora. Why did you--with your awful life--life which, as you say, was not your own, and your extraordinary secret--why did you remain near her, and entangle her with your fascinations? What did you desire?--what did you hope for?"

"I scarcely know for what I hoped. But let me speak of her; for she has traversed and completely eclipsed my former vision of Nature. I have told you what my point of view was,--alone in the midst of Nature. I was for myself the only consciousness in the world, and all the world besides was merely a variety of material and impression, to be observed and known, to be interested in and delighted with. I was thus lonely, lonely as a despot, when Nora, your sister, appeared to me, and instantly I became aware there was another consciousness in the world as great as, or greater than, my own,--another person than myself, a person of supreme beauty and intelligence and faculty. She became to me all that Nature had been, and more. She expressed for me all that I had sought to find diffused through Nature, and at the same time she stood forth to me as an equal of my own kind, with as great a capacity for life. At first I had a vision of our living and reigning together, so to say, though the word may seem to you absurd; but I soon discovered that there was a gulf fixed between us,--the gulf of the life I had lived; she stood pure where I had stood a dozen years ago. So, gradually, she subverted my whole scheme of life; more and more, without knowing it, she made me see and judge myself with her eyes, till I felt altogether abased before her. But that which finally stripped the veil from me, and showed me myself as the hateful incarnation of relentlessly devouring Self, was my influence upon her, which culminated in the event of last night. Can you conceive how I was smitten and pierced with horror by the discovery that rose on me like a nightmare, that even on her sweet, pure, sumptuous life, I had unwittingly begun to prey? For that discovery flung wide the door of the future and showed me what I would become.

"Beautiful, calm, divine Nora! If I could but have continued near her without touching her, to delight in the thought and the sight of her, as one delights in the wind and the suns.h.i.+ne! But it could not be. I could only appear fit company for her if I refreshed and strengthened myself as I had been wont; but my new disgust of myself, and pity for my victims, made me shudder at the thought. What then? Here I am, and the time has come (as that old doctor said it would) when death appears more beautiful and friendly and desirable than life. Forgive me, Lefevre--forgive me on Nora's part,--and forgive me in the name of human nature."

Lefevre could not reply for the moment. He sat convulsed with heartrending sobs. He put out his hand to Julius.

"No, no!" exclaimed Julius, "I must not take your hand. You know I must not."

"Take my hand," cried Lefevre. "I know what it means. Take my life!

Leave me but enough to recover. I give it you freely, for I wish you to live. You shall not die. By heaven! you shall not die. O Julius, Julius!

why did you not tell me this long ago? Science has resource enough to deliver you from your mistake."

"Lefevre," said Julius,--and his eyes sparkled with tears and his weakening voice was choked,--"your friends.h.i.+p moves me deeply--to the soul. But science can do nothing for me: science has not yet sufficient knowledge of the principle on which I lived. Would you have me, then, live on,--pa.s.sing to and fro among mankind merely as a blight, taking the energy of life, even from whomsoever I would not? No, I must die!

Death is best!"

"I will not let you die," said Lefevre, rising to take a pace or two on the deck. "You shall come home with me. I shall feed your life--there are dozens besides myself who will be glad to a.s.sist--till you are healed of the devouring demon you have raised within you."

"No, no, no, my dear friend!" cried Julius. "I have steadily sinned against the most vital law of life."

"Julius," said Lefevre, standing over him, "my friends.h.i.+p, my love for you may blind me to the enormity of your sin, but I can find it in me to say, in the name of humanity, 'I forgive you all! Now, rise up and live anew! Your intelligence, your soul is too rare and admirable to be snuffed out like a guttering candle!'"

"Lefevre," said Julius, "you are a perfect friend! But your knowledge of this secret force of Nature, which we have both studied, is not so great as mine. Let me tell you, then, that this mystical saying, which I once scoffed at, is the profoundest truth:--

"'Who loveth life shall lose it all; Who seeketh life shall surely fall!'

"There is no remedy for me but death, which (who knows?) may be the mother of new life!"

"It would have been better for you," said Lefevre, sitting down again with his head in his hands, "better--if you had never seen Nora."

"Nay, nay," cried Julius, sitting up, animate with a fresh impulse of life. "Better for her, dear, beautiful soul, but not for me! I have truly lived only since I saw her, and I have the joy of feeling that I have beheld and known Nature's sole and perfect chrysolite. But I must be quick, my friend; the dawn will soon be upon us. There is but one other thing for me to speak of--my method of taking to myself the force of life. It is my secret; it is perfectly adapted for professional use, and I wish to give it to you, because you are wise enough in mind, and great enough of soul, to use it for the benefit of mankind."

"I will not hear you, Julius!" exclaimed Lefevre. "I am neither wise nor great. Your perfect secret would be too much for me. I might be tempted to keep it for my own use. Come home with me, and apply it well yourself."

Julius was silent for a s.p.a.ce, murmuring only, "I have no time for argument." Then his face a.s.sumed the white sickness of death, and his dark eyes seemed to grow larger and to burn with a concentrated fire.

"Lefevre!" he panted in amazement, "do you know that you are refusing such a medical and spiritual secret as the world has not known for thousands of years? A secret that would enable you--_you_--to work cures more wonderful than any that are told of the greatest Eastern Thaumaturge?"

"I have discovered a method," answered the doctor,--"an imperfect, clumsy method--for myself, of transmitting nervous force or ether for curative purposes. That, for the present, must be enough for me. I cannot hear your secret, Julius."

"Lefevre, I beg of you," pleaded Julius, "take it from me. I have promised myself, as a last satisfaction, that the secret I have guarded--it is not altogether mine: it is an old oriental secret--that now I would hand it over to you for the good of mankind, that at the last I might say to myself, 'I have, after all, opened my hand liberally to my fellow-men!' For pity's sake, Lefevre, don't deny me that small final satisfaction!"

"Julius," said Lefevre, firmly, "if your method is so perfect--as I believe it must be from what I have seen--I dare not lay on myself the responsibility of possessing its secret."

"Would not my example keep you from using it selfishly?"

"Does the experience of another," demanded the doctor, "however untoward it may be, ever keep a man from making his own? I dare not--I dare not trust myself to hold your perfect secret."

"Then share it with others," responded Julius, promptly; "and I daresay it is not so perfect, but that it could be made more perfect still."

"I'll have nothing to do with it, Julius; you must keep and use it yourself."

"Then," cried Julius, throwing himself on his bed of cordage, "then there will be, indeed, an end of me!"

There was no sound for a time, but the soft rush of the sea at the bows of the yacht. They had left the Thames water some distance behind, and were then in that part of the estuary where it is just possible in mid-channel to descry either coast. The glorious rose of dawn was just beginning to flame in the eastern sky. Lefevre looked about him, and strove to shake off the sensation, which would cling to him, that he was involved in a strange dream. There lay Julius or Hernando Courtney before him; or at least the figure of a man with his face hid in his hands. What more could be said or done?

In the meantime light was swiftly rus.h.i.+ng up the sky and waking all things to life. A flock of seagulls came from the depth of the night and wheeled about the yacht, their shrill screams strangely softened in the morning air. At the sound of them Julius roused himself, and raised himself on his elbow to watch their beautiful evolutions. As he watched, one and another swooped gracefully to the water, and hanging there an instant, rose with a fish and flew away. Julius flung himself again on his face.

"O G.o.d!" he cried. "Is it not horrible? Even on such a beautiful day as this death wakes as early as life! Devouring death is ushered in by the dawn, hand in hand with generous life! Awful, devilish Nature! that makes all creatures full of beauty and delight, and then condemns them to live upon each other! Nature is the sphinx: she appears soft and gentle and more lovely than heart can bear, but if you look closer, you see she is a creature with claws and teeth that rend and devour! I thought, fool that I was! that I had found the secret to solve her riddle! But it was an empty hope, a vain imagination.... Yet, I have lived! Yes, I have lived!"

He rose and stood erect, facing the dawn, with his back to Lefevre. He stood thus for some time, with one foot on the low bulwark of the vessel, till the sun leaped above the horizon and flamed with blinding brilliance across the sea.

"Ah!" he murmured. "The superb, the glorious sun! Unwearied lord of Creation! Generous giver of all light and life! And yet, who knows what worlds he may not have drawn into his flaming self, and consumed during the aeons of his existence? It is ever and everywhere the same: death in company with life! And swift, strong death is better than slow, weak life!... Almost the splendour and inspiration of his rising tempt me to stay! Great nourisher and renewer of life's heat!"

He put off his fur coat, and let it fall on the deck, and stood for a while as if wrapt in ecstasy. Then, before Lefevre could conceive his intention, his feet were together on the bulwark, and with a flash and a plunge he was gone!

Amazement held the doctor's energies congealed, though but for an instant or two. Then he threw off hat and coat, and stood alert and resolute to dive to Julius's rescue when he rose, while those who manned the yacht prepared to cast a buoy and line. Not a ripple or flash of water pa.s.sed unheeded; the flood of suns.h.i.+ne rose fuller and fuller over the world; moments grew to minutes, and minutes swelled to hopeless hours under the doctor's weary eyes, till it seemed to them as if the universe were only a swirling, greedy ocean;--but no sign appeared of his night's companion: his life was quenched in the depths of the restless waters, as a flaming meteor is quenched in night. At length Lefevre ordered the yacht to stand away to the sh.o.r.e, his heart torn with grief and self-upbraiding. He had called Courtney his friend, and yet until that last he had never won his inner confidence; and now he knew that his friend--he of the gentle heart, the peerless intelligence, and the wildly erring life--was dead in the hour of self-redemption.

When he had landed, however, given to the proper authorities such information as was necessary, and set off by train on his return to town, the agitation of his grief began to a.s.suage; and when next day, upon the publication in the papers of the news of Courtney's death by drowning, a solicitor called in Savile Row with a will which he had drawn up two days before, and by which all Julius Courtney's property was left to Dr Lefevre, to dispose of as he thought best, "for scientific and humane ends," the doctor admitted to his reason that a death that could thus calmly be prepared was not lightly to be questioned.

"He must have known best," he said to himself, as he bowed over his hands--"he must have known best when to put off the poisoned garment of life he had woven for himself."