Sons and Fathers

by Harry Stillwell Edwards

"It is nothing," said Gerald, replacing the weapon; "you would not hit me in a dozen trials, shooting as you do."

At 10 o'clock that night Edward, pale and weary, entered. He returned with emotion the professor's enthusiastic embrace, and thanked him for his care and attention of Gerald and the household and for his services to the dead. Gerald studied him keenly as he spoke, and once went to one side and looked upon him with new and curious interest. The professor saw that he was examining the profile of the speaker by the aid of the powerful lamp on the table beyond. The discovery set his mind to working in the same direction, and soon he saw the profiles of both. Edward's did not closely resemble the other. That this was true, for some reason, the expression that had settled upon Gerald's face attested. The portrait had been covered and removed.

Edward, after concluding some domestic arrangements, went directly to his room and, dressed as he was, threw himself upon his bed and slept.

And as he slept there took place about him a drama that would have set his heart beating with excitement could he have witnessed it. The house was silent; the city clock had tolled the midnight hour, when Gerald came into the room, bearing a shaded lamp. The sleeper lay on his back, locked in the slumber of exhaustion. The visitor, moving with the noiselessness of a shadow, glided to the opposite side of the bed, and, placing the lamp on a chair, slowly turned up the flame and tilted the shade. In an instant the strong profile of the sleeper flashed upon the wall. With suppressed excitement Gerald unwrapped a sheet of cardboard, and standing it on the mantel received upon it the shadow. As if by a supreme effort, he controlled himself and traced the profile on his paper. Lifting it from the mantel he studied it for a moment intently and then replaced it. The shadow filled the tracing. Taking it slowly from its position he passed from the room. Fortunately his distraction was too great for him to notice the face of Virdow, or to perceive it in the deep gloom of the little room as he passed out.

The German waited a few moments; no sound came back from the broad carpeted stair; taking the forgotten lamp, he followed him silently. Passing out into the shrubbery, he made his way to the side of the conservatory and looked in. Gerald had placed the two profiles, one on each side of the mirror, and with a duplex glass was studying his own in connection with them. He stood musing, and then, as if forgetting his occupation, he let the hand-glass crash upon the floor, tossed his arms in an abandonment of emotion, and, covering his face with his hands, suddenly threw himself across the bed.

Virdow was distressed and perplexed. He read the story in the pantomime, but what could he do? No human sympathy could comfort such a grief, nor could he betray his knowledge of the secret he had surreptitiously obtained. He paced up and down outside until presently the moving shadow of the occupant of the room fell upon his path. He saw him then take from a box a little pill and put it in his mouth, and he knew that the troubles of life, its doubts, distress and loneliness, would be forgotten for hours.

Forgotten? Who knows? Oh, mystery of creation; that invisible intelligence that vanishes in sleep and in death; gone on its voyage of discovery, appalling in its possibilities; but yet how useless, since it must return with no memory of its experience!

And he, Virdow, what a dreamer! For in that German brain of subtleties lived, with the clearness of an incandescent light in the depths of a coal mine, one mighty purpose; one so vast, so potent in its possibilities, as to shake the throne of reason, a resolution to follow upon the path of mind and wake a memory never touched in the history of science. It was not an ambition; it was a leap toward the gates of heaven! For what cared he that his name might shine forever in the annals of history if he could claim of his own mind the record of its wanderings? The future was not his thought. What he sought was the memory of the past!

He went in now, secure of the possibility of disturbing the sleeper, and stood looking down into the room's appointments; there were the two profiles on either side of the mirror; upon the floor the shivered fragments of the hand-glass.

Virdow returned to his room, but before leaving he took from the little box one of the pellets and swallowed it. If he was to know that mind, he must acquaint himself with its conditions. He had never before swallowed the drug; he took this as the Frenchman received the attenuated virus of hydrophobia from the hands of Pasteur—in the interest of science and the human race.