‘She is dead!’ he said. ‘Oh, my God!’
He reeled forward, and the young man caught him in his arms. He was almost insensible, and was gasping for breath. Wyndham carried him into an adjoining room and laid him on a bed, and, finding him cold, covered him with blankets. This, so far as it went, was well enough for the moment, but what was the next step to be? The old man lay gasping, and evidently there was but a short step between his state and that of his victim outside. Yet how to send for a doctor with that victim outside? To the Professor, whose hours were numbered, it would mean little or nothing; but to him, Wyndham, it would mean, if not death, eternal disgrace. He drew a long breath and bent over the Professor, who was now again sensible.
‘Shall I send for Marks or Drewd?’ he asked, naming two of the leading physicians in Dublin.
The Professor grasped his arm; his face grew frightful.
‘No one—no one!’ he gasped. ‘Are you mad? Do you think I would betray my failure to the world? To have them laugh—deride——’ He fell back, gasping still, but menacing the young man with his eye. By degrees the fury of his glance relaxed, and he fell into a sort of slumber, always holding Wyndham’s arm, however, as if fearing he should go. He seemed stronger, and Wyndham knelt by the bed, wondering vaguely what was going to be the end of it all, and whether it would be possible to remove the corpse outside without detection. There was Denis—Denis was faithful, and could be trusted.
Presently the Professor roused from his fit of unconsciousness. He looked up at the young man, and his expression was terrible. Despair in its worse form disfigured his features. The dream of a life had been extinguished. He tried to speak, but at first words failed him, then, ‘All the years—all the years!’ he mumbled. Wyndham understood, and his heart bled. The old man had given the best years of his life to his discovery, and now——
‘I have killed her!’ went on the Professor, after a minute or two.
‘Science has killed her,’ said Wyndham.
‘No; I, with my cursed pride of belief in myself—I have killed her,’ persisted the old man. ‘I would to God it were not so!’ He did not believe in anything but science, yet he appealed to the Creator occasionally, as some moderns still do to Jove. His lean fingers beat feebly on the blankets. ‘A failure—a failure,’ he kept muttering, his eyes fixed on vacancy. ‘I go to my grave a failure! I set my soul on it. I believed in it, and it was naught.’ He was rambling, but presently he sprang into a sitting posture, his eyes afire once more. ‘I believe in it still!’ he shouted. ‘Oh, for time, for life, to prove.... O God, if there is a God, grant me a few more days!’ He fell into a violent fit of shivering, and Wyndham gently laid him back in his bed, and covered him again with the blankets, where he lay sullen, powerless.
‘Try not to think,’ implored the young man.