Sons and Fathers

Virdow felt the responsibility of his position. He had come on a scientific errand and found himself plunged into a tragedy. And there were attendant responsibilities, the most serious of which was the revelation to Gerald of what had occurred.

The young man precipitated the crisis. The deputies gone, he wanted his coffee; it had not failed him in a lifetime. Again and again he rang his bell, and finally from the door of his wing-room called loudly for Rita. Then the professor saw that the time for action had come. The watchers about the body were consulting. None cared to face that singular being of whom they felt a superstitious dread, but if they did not come to him he would finally go to them. What would be the result of his unexpected discovery of the tragedy? It might be disastrous. As he spoke, he removed his glasses from time to time, carefully wiping and replacing them, his faded eyes beaming in sympathy and anxiety upon his young acquaintance.

"Herr Gerald," he began, "you know the human heart?" Gerald frowned and surveyed him with impatience.

"Sometimes at last the little valve, as you call it – sometimes the little valve grows weak, and when the blood leaps out too quickly and can't run on quickly enough – you understand – it comes back suddenly again and drives the valve lid back the wrong way."

"Then it is a ruined piece of machinery."

"So," said the professor, sadly; "you have stated it correctly. So, Rita – she had an old heart – and it is ruined!"

Gerald gazed upon him in doubt, but fearful.

"You mean Rita is dead?"

"Yes," said Virdow. "Poor Rita!" Gerald studied the face before him curiously, passed his hand across his brow, as if to clear away a cloud, and then went out across the yard. The watchers fled at his approach. In the little room he came upon the body. The woman, dressed in her best but homely attire, lay with her hands crossed upon her bosom, her face calm and peaceful. Upon her lips was that strange smile which sometimes comes back over a gulf of time from forgotten youth. He touched her wrist and watched her.

Virdow was right; she was dead.

As if to converse with a friend, he took a seat upon the couch and lifting one cold hand held it while he remained. This was Rita, who had always come to wake him when he slept too late; had brought his meals, had answered whenever he called, and found him when he wandered too long under the stars and guided him back to his room. Rita, who, when his moods distracted him, had only to fix her eyes on his and speak his name, and all was peace again.

This was Rita. Dead!

How could it be? How could anything be wrong with Rita? It was impossible! He put his hand above the heart; it was silent. He spoke her name. She did not reply.

Gradually, as he concentrated his attention upon the facts, his mind emerged from its shadows. Yes, Rita, his friend, was dead. And then slowly, his life, with its haunting thoughts, its loneliness, came back, and the significance of these facts overwhelmed him.

He knew now who Rita was; it was an old, old story. He knelt and laid his cheek upon that yellow chilled hand, the only hand that had ever lovingly touched him.

She had been a mother indeed; humoring his every whim. She had never scolded; not Rita!

The doctors had said he could sleep without his opium; they shut him up and he suffered torments. Rita came in the night. Her little store of money had been drawn on. They, together, deceived the doctors. For years they deceived them, he and Rita, until all her little savings were gone. And then she had worked for the gentlemen down-town; had schemed and plotted and brought him comfort, until the doctors gave up the struggle.

Now she was gone – forever! Strange, but this contingency had never once occurred to him. How egotistical he must have been; how much a child – a spoiled child!

He looked about him. Rita had years ago told him a secret. In the night she had bent over him and called him fond names; had wept upon his pillow. She had told him to speak the word just once, never again but that one time, and then to forget it. Wondering he said it – "Mother." He could not forget how she fell upon him then and tearfully embraced him; he the heir and nephew of John Morgan. But it pleased good Rita and he was happy.

Dead! Rita! Would it waken her if he spoke that name again? He bent to her cheek to say it, but first he looked about him cautiously. Rita would not like for any one to share the secret. He bent until his lips were touching hers and whispered it again:

"Mother!" She did not move. He spoke louder and louder.

"Mother." How strange sounded that one word in the deserted room. A fear seized him; would she never speak again? He dropped on his knees in agony; and, with his hand upon her forehead, almost screamed the word again. It echoed for the last time – "Mother!" Just then the face of Virdow appeared at the door, to be withdrawn instantly.

Then Gerald grew cool. "She is dead," he said, sadly to himself. "She would have answered that!"

A change came over him! He seemed to emerge from a dream; Virdow stood by him now. Drawing himself up proudly he gazed upon the dead face.

"She was a good nurse – a better no child ever had. Were my uncle living he would build her a great monument. I will speak to Edward about it. It is not seemly that people who have served the Morgans so long and faithfully should sleep in unmarked graves. Farewell, Rita; you have been good and true to me." He went to his room. An hour later Virdow found him there, crying as a child.

With a tenderness that rose superior to the difficulties of language and the differences of race and customs, Virdow comforted and consoled him. And then occurred one of those changes familiar to the students of nature but marvelous to the unobservant. To Virdow, who had seen the vine of his garden torn from the supporting rod about which it had tied itself with tendrils, attach itself again by the gluey points of new ones to the smooth face of the wall itself, coiling them into springs to resist the winds, the change that came upon Gerald was natural. The broken tendrils of his life touched with quick intelligence the sympathetic old German and linked the simple being of the child-man to him. By an intuition, womanly in its swift comprehension, Virdow knew at once that he had become in some ways necessary to the life of the frail being, and he was pleased. He gave himself up to the mission without effort, disturbing in no way the new process. Watching Gerald, he appeared not to watch; present at all times, he seemed to keep himself aloof.

Virdow called up an undertaker from the city in accordance with the directions left with him and had the body of Rita prepared for the burial, which was to take place upon the estate, and then left all to the care of the watchers. During the day from time to time Gerald went to the little room, and on such visits those in attendance withdrew.

There was little excitement among the negroes. The singing, shouting and violent ecstasies which distinguished the burials of the race were wanting; Rita had been one of those rare servants who keep aloof from her color. Gradually withdrawn from all contact with the world, her life had shrunk into a little round of duties and the care of the Morgan home.

It was only natural that the young master should find himself alone with the nurse on each return to her coffin. During one of these visits Virdow at a distance beheld a curious thing. Gerald had gazed long and thoughtfully into the silent face and returning to his room had secured paper and crayon. Kneeling, he drew carefully the profile of his dead friend and went away to his studio. Standing in his place a moment later, Virdow was surprised to note the change that had come over the face; the relaxing power of death seemed to have rolled back the curtain of age and restored for the hour a glimpse of youth. A woman of twenty-five seemed lying there, her face noble and serene, a glorified glimpse of what had been. The brow was smooth and young, the facial angle high, the hair, now no longer under the inevitable turban, smooth and black, with just a suspicion of frost above the temples. The lips were curved and smiling.

Why had the young man drawn her profile? What real position did this woman occupy in that strange family? As to the latter he could not determine; he would not try. He had nothing to do with the domestic facts of life. There had been a deep significance in the first scene at the bedside. And yet "Mother" under the circumstances might after all mean nothing. He had heard that southern children were taught this, or something like it, by all black nurses. But as to the profile, there was a phenomenon possibly, and science was his life. The young man had drawn the profile because it was the first time he had within his recollections ever seen it. In the analysis of his dreams that profile might be of momentous importance.

The little group that had gathered followed the coffin to a clump of trees not far removed. The men who bore it lowered it at once to the open grave. An old negro preacher lifted his voice in a homely prayer, the women sang a weird hymn, and then they filled up the cavity. The face and form of Rita were removed from human vision, but only the face and form. For one of that concourse, the young white man who had come bareheaded to stand calm and silent at the foot of the grave, she lived clear and distinct upon the hidden film of memory.

Virdow was not deceived by that calmness; he knew and feared the reaction which was inevitable. From time to time during the evening he had gone silently to the wing-room and to the outer yard to gaze in upon his charge. Always he found him calm and rational. He could not understand it.

Then, disturbed by the suspense of Edward's absence, and the uncertainty of his fate, he would forget himself and surroundings in contemplation of the possible disasters of an American duel – exaggerated accounts of which dwelt in his memory. He resolved to remain up until the crisis came.

It was midnight when, for the twentieth time, probably, he went to look in upon Gerald. The wing-room, the glass-room, the little house deprived by death of its occupant, the outer premises – he searched them all in vain. Greatly troubled, he stood revolving the new perplexity in his mind when his eye caught in the faint glow of the east, where the moon was beginning to show its approach, the outline of the cemetery clump of trees. It flashed upon him then that, drawn by the power of association, the young man might have wandered off to pay a visit to the grave of his friend. He turned his own feet in the same direction, and approached the spot. The grave had been dug under the wide-spread limbs of cedar, and there he found the object of his quest.

Slowly the moon rose above the level field beyond, outlining a form. In his dressing gown stood Gerald, with folded arms, his long hair falling upon his shoulders, lost in deep thought.

Thrilled by the scene, Virdow was about to speak, when, in the twinkling of an eye, there was flashed upon him a vision that sent his blood back to his heart and left him speechless with emotion. For in that moment the half-moon was at the level of the head, and outlined against its silver surface he saw the profile of the face he had studied in the coffin. Appalled by the discovery, he turned silently and sought his room.

CHAPTER XXV

THE MIDNIGHT SEARCH

It was late in the day when Virdow awoke. The excitement, the unwonted hours which circumstances forced him to keep, brought at last unbroken rest and restored his physical structure to its normal condition.

He dressed himself and descended to find a brief telegram announcing the safety of Edward. It was a joyful addition to the conditions that had restored him. The telegram had not been opened. He went quickly to Gerald's room and found that young man at work upon a painting of Rita as he had seen her last – the profile sketch. His emotional nature had already thrown off its gloom, and with absorbed interest he was pushing his work. Already the face had been sketched in and the priming completed. Under his rapid and skillful hands the tints and contours were growing, and Virdow, accustomed as he was to the art in all its completeness and technical perfection, marveled to see the changed face of the woman glide back into view, the counterpart he knew of the vivid likeness clear cut in the sensitive brain that held it. He let him work undisturbed. A word might affect its correctness. Only when the artist ceased and laid aside his brush for a brief rest did he speak.

Gerald turned to him as to a co-laborer, and took the yellow slip of paper, so potent with intelligent lettering. He read it in silence; then putting it aside went on with his painting. Virdow rubbed his brow and studied him furtively. Such lack of interest was inconceivable under the conditions. He went to work seriously to account for it and this he did to his own satisfaction. In one of his published lectures on memory, years after, occurred this sentence, based upon that silent reverie:

"Impressions and forgetfulness are measurable by each other; indeed, the power of the mind to remember vividly seems to be measured by its power to forget."

But afterward Gerald picked up the telegram, read it intently and seemed to reflect over the information it contained. Later in the day the postman brought the mail and with it one of the "extras." Virdow read it aloud in the wing-room. Gerald came and stood before him, his eyes revealing excitement. When Virdow reached the part wherein Edward was described as never removing his eyes from his antagonist, his hearer exclaimed:

"Good! He will kill him!"

"No," said Virdow, smiling; "fortunately he did not. Listen."

"Fortunately!" cried Gerald; "fortunately! Why? What right has such a man to live? He must have killed him!" Virdow read on. A cry broke from Gerald's lips as the explanation appeared.

"I was right! The hand becomes a part of the eye when the mind wills it; or, rather, eye and hand become mind. The will is everything. But why he should have struck the guard – " He went to the wall and took down two pistols. Handing one to Virdow and stepping back he said: "You will please sight at my face a moment; I cannot understand how the accident could have happened." Virdow held the weapon gingerly.

"But, Herr Gerald, it may be loaded."

"They are empty," said Gerald, breeching his own and exposing the cylinder chambers, with the light shining through. "Now aim!" Virdow obeyed; the two men stood at ten paces, aiming at each other's faces. "Your hand," said the young man, "covers your mouth. Edward aimed for the mouth."

There was a quick, sharp explosion; Virdow staggered back, dropping his smoking pistol. Gerald turned his head in mild surprise and looked upon a hole in the plastering behind.