Sons and Fathers

by Harry Stillwell Edwards

"We arranged the body on the lounge and determined to wait until morning to send for the coroner and undertaker, but one by one your negroes disappeared. They could not seem to withstand their superstition, the butler told me, and as there was nothing to be done I did not worry. I came here to the library to write, and when I returned, the butler, too, was gone. They are a strange people. I suppose I will see none of them until morning, but it does not matter; my poor friend is far beyond the reach of attention. His rare mind has become a part of cosmos; its relative situation is our mystery.

"I will, now, before giving you a minute description of our last evening together, commit for your eye my conclusions as to some of the phenomena and facts you have observed. I am satisfied as far as Gerald's origin is concerned, that he is either the son of the woman Rita or that they are in some way connected by ties of blood. In either case the similarity of their profiles would be accounted for. No matter how remote the connection, nothing is so common as this reappearance of tribal features in families. The woman, you told me, claimed him as her child, but silently waived that claim for his sake. I say to you that a mother's instinct is based upon something deeper than mere fancy, and that intuitions are so nearly correct that I class them as the nearest approach to mind memory to be observed.

"The likeness of his full face to the picture of the girl you call Marion Evan may be the result of influences exerted at birth. Do you remember the fragmentary manuscript? If that is a history, I am of the opinion that it is explanation enough. At any rate, the profile is a stronger evidence the other way.

"The reproduction of the storm scene is one of the most remarkable incidents I have ever known, but it is not proof that he inherited it as a memory. It is a picture forcibly projected upon his imagination by the author of the fragment—and in my opinion he had read that fragment. It came to him as a revelation, completing the gap. I am sure that from the day that he read it he was for long periods convinced that he was the son of Rita Morgan; that she had not lied to him. In this I am confirmed by the fact that as she lay dead he bent above her face and called her 'mother'. I am just as well assured that he had no memory of the origin of that picture; no memory, in fact, of having read the paper. This may seem strange to you, but any one who has had the care of victims of opium will accept the proposition as likely.

"The drawing of the woman's face was simple. His hope had been to find himself the son of Marion Evan; his dreams were full of her. He had seen the little picture; his work was an idealized copy, but it must be admitted a marvelous work. Still the powers of concentration in this man exceeded the powers of any one I have ever met.

"And that brings me to what was the most wonderful demonstration he gave us. Edward, I have divined your secret, although you have never told it. When you went to secure for me the note of the waterfall, the home note, you were accompanied by your friend Mary. I will stake my reputation upon it. It is true because it is obliged to be true. When you played for us you had her in your mind, a vivid picture, and Gerald drew it. It was a case of pure thought transference—a transference of a mental conception, line for line. Gerald received his conception from you upon the vibrating air. To me it was a demonstration worth my whole journey to America.

"And here let me add, as another proof of the sympathetic chord between you, that Gerald himself had learned to love the same woman. You gave him that, my young friend, with the picture.

"You have by this time been made acquainted with the terrible accusation against you—false and infamous. There will be little trouble in clearing yourself, but oh, what agony to your sensitive nature! I tried to keep the matter from Gerald, as I did the inquest by keeping him busy with investigations; but a paper fell into his hands and his excitement was frightful. Evading me he disappeared from the premises one evening, but while I was searching for him he came to the house in a carriage, bringing the picture of that repulsive negro, which you will remember. Since then he has been more calm. Mr. Barksdale, your friend, I suppose, was with him once or twice.

"And now I come to this, the last night of our association upon earth; the night that has parted us and rolled between us the mystery across which our voices cannot reach nor our ears hear.

"Gerald had long since been satisfied with the ability of living substance to hold a photograph, and convinced that these photographs lie dormant, so to speak, somewhere in our consciousness until awakened again—that is, until made vivid. He was proceeding carefully toward the proposition that a complete memory could be inherited, and in the second generation or even further removed; you know his theory. There were intermediate propositions that needed confirmation. When forms and scenes come to the mind of the author, pure harmonies of color to that of the artist, sweet co-ordinations of harmonies to the musician, whence come they? Where is the thread of connection? Most men locate the seat of their consciousness at the top of the head; they seem to think in that spot. And strange, is it not, that when life passes out and all the beautiful structure of the body claimed by the frost of death, that heat lingers longest at that point! It is material in this letter, because explaining Gerald's idea. He wished me to subject him to the finest vibrations at that point.