Sons and Fathers

"Prove to me it is too late here," shrieked the unhappy being, "and I will end this existence; will go back a thousand cycles, if necessary, carrying with me the impression of this truth, and begin, an infant, to lisp in numbers."

He had snatched a poniard from the wall and was gesticulating frantically. Edward was about to speak when he saw the enthusiast's eyes lose their frenzy and fix upon the woman's. He dropped the weapon and plunged face downward in despair among the pillows. Like a statue the woman stood gazing upon him.

"My violin," said Edward. She disappeared noiselessly.

CHAPTER VII

"BACK! WOULD YOU MURDER HER?"

When Edward Morgan went to Europe from Columbia college it was in obedience to a mandate of John Morgan through the New York lawyers. He went, began there the life of a bohemian. Introduced by a chance acquaintance, he fell in first with the art circles of Paris, and, having a fancy and decided talent for painting, he betook himself seriously to study. But the same shadow, the same need of an overpowering motive, pursued him. With hope and ambition he might have become known to fame. As it was, his mind drifted into subtleties and the demon change came again. He closed his easel. Rome, Athens, Constantinople, the occident, all knew him, gave him brief welcome and quick farewells.

The years were passing; as he had gone from idleness to art, from art to history, and from history to archaeology by easy steps, so he passed now, successively to religion, to philosophy, and to its last broad exponent, theosophy.

The severity of this last creed fitted the crucifixion of his spirit. Its contemplation showed him vacancies in his education and so he went to Jena for additional study. This decision was reached mainly through the suggestion of a chance acquaintance named Abingdon, who had come into his life during his first summer on the continent. They met so often that the face of this man had became familiar, and one day, glad to hear his native tongue, he addressed him and was not repelled.

Abingdon gave to Edward Morgan his confidence; it was not important; a barrister in an English interior town, he crossed the channel annually for ramble in the by-ways of Europe. It had been his unbroken habit for many years.

From this time the two men met often and journeyed much together, the elder seeming to find a pleasure in the gravity and earnestness of the young man, and he in turn a relief in the nervous, jerky lawyer, looking always through small, half-closed eyes and full of keen conceptions. And when apart, occasionally he would get a characteristic note from Abingdon and send a letter in reply. He had so much spare time.

This man had once surprised him with the remark:

"If I were twenty years younger I would go to Jena and study vibration. It is the greatest force of the universe. It is the secret of creation." The more Edward dwelt upon this remark, in connection with modern results and invention, the more he was struck with it. Why go to Jena to study vibration was something that he could not fathom, nor in all probability could Abingdon. America was really the advanced line of discovery, but nevertheless he went, and with important results; and there in the old town, finding the new hobby so intimately connected with music, to which he was passionately devoted, he took up with renewed energy his neglected violin. With feverish toil he struggled along the border land of study and speculation, until he felt that there was nothing more possible for him – in Jena.

In Jena his solitary friend had been the eminent Virdow and to him he became an almost inseparable companion.

The confidence and speculations of Virdow, extending far beyond the limits of a lecture stand, carried Edward into dazzling fields. The intercourse extended through the best part of several years. On leaving Jena he was armed with a knowledge of the possibilities of the vast field he had entered upon, with a knowledge of thorough bass and harmony, and with a technique that might have made him famous had he applied his knowledge. He did not apply it!

His final stand had been Paris. Abingdon was there. Abingdon had discovered a genius and carried Edward to see him. He had been passing through an obscure quarter when he was attracted by the singular pathos of a violin played in a garret. To use his expression, "the music glorified the miserable street." Everybody there knew Benoni, the blind violinist. And to this man, awed and silent, came Edward, a listener.

No words can express the meaning that lay in the blind man's improvisations; only music could contain them. And only one man in Paris could answer! When having heard the heart language, the heart history and cravings of the player expressed in the solitude of that half-lighted garret, Edward took the antique instrument and replied, the answer was overwhelming. The blind man understood; he threw his arms about the player and embraced him.

"Grand!" he cried. "A master plays, but it is incomplete; the final note has not come; the harmony died where it should have become immortal!" And Edward knew it.

From that meeting sprang a warm friendship, the most complete that Morgan had ever known! It made the old man comfortable, gained him better quarters and broadened the horizon toward which his sun of life was setting. It would go down with some of the colors of its morning.

It became Edward's custom to take his old friend to hear the best operas and concerts, and one night they heard the immortal Cambia sing. It was a charity concert and her first appearance in many years.

When the idol of the older Paris came to the footlights for the sixth time to bow her thanks for the ovation given her, she smiled and sang in German a love song, indescribable in its passion and tenderness. It was a burst of melody from the heart of some man, great one moment in his life at least. Edward found himself standing when the tumult ceased. Benoni had sunk from his chair to his knees and was but half-conscious. The excitement had partially paralyzed him. The lithe fingers of the left hand were dead. They would never rest again upon the strings of his great violin – the Cremona to which in sickness and poverty, although its sale would have enriched him, he clung with the faith and instinct of the artist.

There came the day when Edward was ready to depart to America. He went to say good-bye, and this is what happened: The old man held Edward's hands long in silence, but his lips moved in prayer; then lifting the instrument, he placed it in the young man's arms.

"Take it," he said. "I may never meet you again. It is the one thing that I have been true to all my life. I will not leave it to the base and heartless." And so Edward, to please him, accepted the trust. He would return some day; many hours should the violin sing for the old man. As he stood he drew the bow and played one strain of Cambia's song and the blind man lifted his face in sudden excitement. As Edward paused he called the notes until it was complete. "Now again," he said, singing:

If thou couldst love me
As I do love thee,
Then wouldst thou come to me,
Come to me.
Never forsaking me,
Never, oh, never
Forsaking me.
Oceans may roll between,
Thine home and thee
Love, if thou lovest me
Lovest me,
What care we, you and I?
Through all eternity,
I love thee, darling one,
Love me; love me.

"You have found the secret," said Benoni; "the chords on the lower octaves made the song."

And so they had parted! The blind man to wait for the final summons; the young man to plunge into complications beyond his wildest dreams.

"A man," said Virdow once, "is a tribe made up of himself, his family and his friends." And this was the history in outline of the man to whom Rita Morgan handed the violin that fateful day when Gerald lay face down among the pillows of his divan.

Recognizing in the delicate and excitable organism before him the possibilities of emotion and imagination, Edward prepared to play. Without hesitation he drew the bow across the strings and began a solemn prelude to a choral. And as he played he noticed the heaving form below him grow still. Then Gerald lifted his face and gazed past the player, with an intensity of vision that deepened until he seemed in the grasp of some stupendous power or emotion. Edward played the recital; the story of Calvary, the crucifixion and the mourning women, and the march of soldiers. Finally there came the tumult of bursting storm and riven tombs. The climax of action occurred there; it was to die away into a movement fitted to the resurrection and the peaceful holiness of Christ's meeting with Mary. But before this latter movement began Gerald leaped upon the player with the quickness and fury of a tiger and by the suddenness of the onset nearly bore him to the floor. This mad assault was accompanied by a shriek of mingled fear and horror.

"Back – would you murder her?" By a great effort Edward freed himself and the endangered violin, and forced the assailant to the divan. The octoroon was kneeling by his side weeping.

"Leave him to me," she said. Stunned and inexpressibly shocked Edward withdrew. The grasp on his throat had been like steel! The marks remained.

"I have," he wrote that night in a letter to Virdow, "heard you more than once express the hope that you would some day be able to visit America. Come now, at once! I have here entered upon a new life and need your help. Further, I believe I can help you."

After describing the circumstances already related, the letter continued: "The susceptibility of this mind to music I regard as one of the most startling experiences I have ever known, and it will afford you an opportunity for testing your theories under circumstances you can never hope for again. Let me say to you here that I am now convinced by some intuitive knowledge that the assault upon me was based upon a memory stirred by the sound of the violin; that vibration created anew in the delicate mind some picture that had been forgotten and brought back again painful emotions that were ungovernable. I cannot think but that it is to have a bearing upon the concealed facts of my life; the discovery of which is my greatest object now, as in the past. And I cannot but believe that your advice and discretion will guide me in the treatment and care of this poor being, perhaps to the extent of affecting a radical change, and leave him a happier and a more rational being.

"Come to me, my friend, at once! I am troubled and perplexed. And do not be offended that I have inclosed exchange for an amount large enough to cover expenses. I am now rich beyond the comprehension of your economical German mind, and surely I may be allowed, in the interests of science, of my ward and myself to spend from the abundant store. I look for you early. In the meantime, I will be careful in my experiments. Come at once! The mind has an independent memory and you can demonstrate it."

Edward knew that there was more on that concluding sentence than in the rest of the letter and exchange combined, and half-believing it, he stated it as a prophecy. He was preparing to retire, when it occurred to him that the strange occupant of the wing-room might need his attention. Something like affection had sprung up in his heart for the unfortunate being who, with chains heavier than his own, had missed the diversion of new scenes, the broadening, the soothing of great landscapes and boundless oceans. A pity moved him to descend and to knock at the door. There was no answer. He entered to find the apartment deserted, but the curtain was drawn from the doorway of the glass-room and he passed in. Upon the bed in the yellow light of the moon lay the slender figure of Gerald, one arm thrown around the disordered hair, the other hanging listless from his side.

He approached and bent above the bed. The face turned upward there seemed like wax in the oft-broken gloom. The sleeper had not stirred. It was the vibration of chords in harmony, that had moved him. Would it have power again? He hesitated a moment, then returned quickly to the wing-room and secured his instrument. Concealing himself he waited. It was but a moment.

The wind brought the branches of the nearest oleanders against the frail walls, and the play of lightning had become continuous. Then began in earnest the tumult of the vast sound waves as they met in the vapory caverns of the sky. The sleeper tossed restlessly upon his bed; he was stirred by a vague but unknown power; yet something was wanting.

At this moment Edward lifted his violin and, catching the storm note, wove a solemn strain into the diapason of the mighty organ of the sky. And as he played, as if by one motion, the sleeper stood alone in the middle of the room. Again Edward saw that frenzied stare fixed upon vacancy, but there was no furious leap of the agile limbs; by a powerful effort the struggling mind seemed to throw off a weight and the sleeper awoke.

The bow was now suspended; the music had ceased. Gerald rushed to his easel and, standing in a sea of electric flame, outlined with swift strokes a woman's face and form. She was struggling in the grasp of a man and her face was the face of the artist who worked. But such expression! Agony, horror, despair!

The figure of the man was not complete from the waist down; his face was concealed. Between them, as they contended, was a child's coffin in the arms of the woman. Overhead were the bare outlines of an arch.

The artist hesitated and added behind the group a tree, whose branches seemed to lash the ground. And there memory failed; the crayon fell from his fingers; he stood listless by the canvas. Then with a cry he buried his face in his hands and wept.

As he stood thus, the visitor, awed but triumphant, glided through the door and disappeared in the wing-room. He knew that he had touched a hidden chord; that the picture on the canvas was born under the flashlight of memory! Was it brain? Oh, for the wisdom of Virdow!

Sympathy moved him to return again to the glass-room. It was empty!

CHAPTER VIII

ON THE BACK TRAIL