Sons and Fathers

"I did not know that," she said, "but it is a great sorrow to the general, and a girl who could give up such a man must have been wrong at heart or infatuated."

"Infatuated, let us hope."

"That is the best explanation," she said gently.

He was driving; in a few moments he would arrive at the house. Should he tell her the history of Gerald and let her clear, honest mind guide him? Should he tell her that Fate had made him the custodian of the only being in the world who had a right to that honorable name when the veteran back yonder found his last camp and crossed the river to rest in the shade with the immortal Jackson? He turned to her and she met his earnest gaze with a winning smile, but at the moment something in his life cried out. The secret was as much his duty as the ward himself and to confess to her his belief that Gerald was the son of Marion Evan was to confess to himself that he was the son of the octoroon. He would not. Her smile died away before the misery in his face.

"You are ill," she said in quick sympathy.

"Yes," he replied, faintly; "yes and no. The loss of sleep – excitement – your southern sun – " The world grew black and he felt himself falling. In the last moment of his consciousness he remembered that her arm was thrown about him and that in response to her call for help negroes from the cotton fields came running.

He opened his eyes. They rested upon the chintz curtains of the room upstairs, from the window of which he had heard her voice calling the chickens. Some one was bathing his forehead; there were figures gliding here and there across his vision. He turned his eyes and saw the anxious face of Mrs. Montjoy watching him.

"What is it?" He spoke in wonder.

"Hush, now, my boy; you have been very ill; you must not talk!" He tried to lift his hand. It seemed made of lead and not connected with him in any way. Gazing helplessly upon it, he saw that it was thin and white – the hand of an invalid.

"How long?" he asked, after a rest. The slight effort took his strength.

"Three weeks." Three weeks! This was more than he could adjust in the few working sections of his brain. He ceased to try and closed his eyes in sleep.

CHAPTER XVI

BEYOND THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT

It had been brain fever. For ten days Edward was helpless, but under the care of the two loving women he rapidly recovered. The time came when he could sit in the cool of the evening upon the veranda and listen to the voices he had learned to love – for he no longer disguised the truth from himself. The world held for him but one dream, through it and in the spell of his first home life the mother became a being to be reverenced. She was the fulfilled promise of the girl, all the tender experiences of life were pictured in advance for him who should win her hand and heart.

But it was only a dream. During the long hours of the night as he lay wakeful, with no escape from himself, he thought out the situation and made up his mind to action. He would go to Col. Montjoy and confess the ignorance of his origin that overwhelmed him and then he would provide for his ward and go away with Virdow to the old world and the old life.

The mental conclusion of his plan was a species of settlement. It helped him. Time and again he cried out, when the remembrance came back to him, but it was the honorable course and he would follow it. He would go away.

The hours of his convalescence were the respite he allowed himself. Day by day he said: "I will go to-morrow." In the morning it was still "to-morrow." And when he finally made his announcement he was promptly overruled. Col. Montjoy and Norton were away, speaking and campaigning. All primaries had been held but two. The colonel's enemies had conceded to him of the remaining counties the remote one. The other was a county with a large population and cast four votes in the convention. It was the home of Swearingen, but, as frequently happens, it was the scene of the candidate's greatest weakness. There the struggle was to be titanic. Both counties were needed to nominate Montjoy.

The election took place on the day of Edward's departure for Ilexhurst. That evening he saw a telegram announcing that the large county had given its vote to Montjoy by a small majority. The remote county had but one telegraph office, and that at a way station upon its border. Little could be heard from it, but the public conceded Col. Montjoy's nomination, since there had been no doubt as to this county. Edward hired a horse, put a man upon it, sent the news to the two ladies and then went to his home.

He found awaiting him two letters of importance. One from Virdow, saying he would sail from Havre on the 25th; that was twelve days previous. He was therefore really due at Ilexhurst then. The other was a letter he had written to Abingdon soon after his first arrival, and was marked "returned to writer." He wondered at this. The address was the same he had used for years in his correspondence. Although Abingdon was frequently absent from England, the letters had always reached him. Why, then, was this one not forwarded? He put it aside and ascertained that Virdow had not arrived at the house.

It was then 8 o'clock in the evening. By his order a telephone had been placed in the house, and he at once rang up the several hotels. Virdow was found to be at one of these, and he succeeded in getting that distinguished gentleman to connect himself with the American invention and explained to him the situation.

"Take any hack and come at once," was the message that concluded their conversation, and Virdow came! In the impulsive continental style, he threw himself into Edward's arms when the latter opened the door of the carriage.

Slender, his thin black clothes hanging awkwardly upon him, his trousers too short, the breadth of his round German face, the knobs on his shining bald forehead exaggerated by the puffy gathering of the hair over his ears, his candid little eyes shining through the round, double-power glasses, his was a figure one had to know for a long time in order to look upon it without smiling.

Long the two sat with their cigars and ran over the old days together. Then the professor told of wondrous experiments in sound, of the advance knowledge into the regions of psychology, of the marvels of heredity. His old great theme was still his ruling passion. "If the mind has no memory, then much of the phenomena of life is worse than bewildering. Prove its memory," he was wont to say, "and I will prove immortality through that memory."

It was the same old professor. He was up now and every muscle working as he struggled and gesticulated, and wrote invisible hieroglyphics in the air about him and made geometrical figures with palms and fingers. But the professor had advanced in speculation.

"The time will come, my young friend," he said at last, "when the mind will give us its memories complete. We shall learn the secrets of creation by memory. In its perfection we shall place a man yonder and by vibration get his mind memory to work; theoretically he will first write of his father and then his grandfather, describing their mental lives. He will go back along the lines of his ancestry. He will get into Latin, then Greek, then Hebrew, then Chaldean, then into cuneiform inscriptions, then into figure representation. He will be an artist or musician or sculptor, and possibly all if the back trail of his memory crosses such talents. Aye," he continued, enthusiastically, "lost nations will live again. The portraits of our ancestors will hang in view along the corridors of all times! This will come by vibratory force, but how?"

Edward leaned forward, breathless almost with emotion.

"You say the time is come; what has been done?"

"Little and much! The experiments – "

"Tell me, in all your experiments, have you known where a child, separated from a parent since infancy, without aid of description, or photograph, or information derived from a living person, could see in memory or imagination the face of that parent, see it with such distinctness as to enable him, an artist, to reproduce it in all perfection?"

The professor wiped his glasses nervously and kept his gaze upon his questioner.

"Never."

"Then," said Edward, "you have crossed the ocean to some purpose! I have known such an instance here in this house. The person is still here! You know me, my friend, and you do not know me. To you I was a rich young American, with a turn for science and speculation. You made me your friend and God bless you for it, but you did not know all of that mystery which hangs over my life never to be revealed perhaps until the millennium of science you have outlined dawns upon us. The man who educated me, who enriched me, was not my parent or relative; he was my guardian. He has made me the guardian of a frail, sickly lad whose mystery is, or was, as complete as mine. Teach us to remember." The words burst from him. They held the pent-up flood that had almost wrecked his brain.

Rapidly he recounted the situation, leaving out the woman's story as to himself. Not to his Savior would he confess that.

And then he told how, following his preceptor's hints about vibration, he had accidentally thrown Gerald into a trance; its results, the second experiment, the drawing and the woman's story of Gerald's birth.

During this recital the professor never moved his eyes from the speaker's face.

"You wish to know what I think of it? This: I have but recently ventured the proposition publicly that all ideal faces on the artist's canvas are mind memories. Prove to me anew your results and if I establish the reasonableness of my theory I shall have accomplished enough to die on."

"In your opinion, then, this picture that Gerald drew is a mind memory?"

"Undoubtedly. But you will perceive that the more distant, the older the experience, we may say, the less likelihood of accuracy."

"It would depend, then, you think, upon the clearness of the original impression?"

"That is true! The vividness of an old impression may also outshine a new one."

"And if this young man recalls the face of a woman, who we believe it possible – nay, probable – is his mother, and then the face of one we know to be her father, as a reasonable man, would you consider the story of this negro woman substantiated beyond the shadow of a doubt?"

"Beyond the shadow of a doubt."

"We shall try," said Edward, and then, after a moment's silence: "He is shy of strangers and you may find it difficult to get acquainted with him. After you have succeeded in gaining his confidence we shall settle upon a way to proceed. One word more, he is a victim of morphia. Did I tell you that?"

"No, but I guessed it."

"You have known such men before, then?"

"I have studied the proposition that opium may be a power to effect what we seek, and, in connection with it, have studied the hospitals that make a specialty of such cases."

There was a long silence, and presently Edward said:

"Will you say good-night now?"

"Good-night." The professor gazed about him. "How was it you used to say good-night, Edward? Old customs are good. It is not possible that the violin has been lost." He smiled and Edward got his instrument and played. He knew the old man's favorites; the little folk-melodies of the Rhine country, bits of love songs, mostly, around which the loving players of Germany have woven so many beautiful fancies. And in the playing Edward himself was quieted.

The light from the hall downstairs streamed out along the gravel walk, and in the glare was a man standing with arms folded and head bent forward. A tall woman came and gently laid her hand upon him. He started violently, tossed his arms aloft and rushed into the darkness. She waited in silence a moment and then slowly followed him.