Besides, how did I know that this fancied discovery of mine was of the least value? I had never had a chance of making experiment of it, and no doubt it was an idle chimera of my brain, when it was overwrought by anxiety for my mother's sake. I had not hitherto thought enough of it to ask the opinion of any of my medical friends and colleagues. Why should I attach any importance to it now? Let it rest. Not a soul knew of it but myself. I had a perfect right to keep or destroy my own notes. Suppose I destroyed that one at once?
I unlocked the desk, and took out my book again. The leaf on which these special notes were written was already loose, and might have been easily lost at any time, I thought. I burned it by the flame of the gas, and threw the brown ashes into the grate. For a few minutes I felt elated, as if set free from an oppressive burden; and I returned to the story I had been reading, and laughed more heartily than before at the grotesque turn of the incidents. But before long the tormenting question came up again. The notes were not lost. They seemed now to be burned in upon my brain.
The power has been put into your hands to save life, said my conscience, and you are resolving to let it perish. What have you to do with the fact that the nature is mean, selfish, cruel? It is the physical life simply that you have to deal with. What is beyond that rests in the hands of God. What He is about to do with this soul is no question for you. Your office pledges you to cure him if you can, and the fulfilment of this duty is required of you. If you let this man die, you are a murderer.
But, I said in answer to myself, consider what trivial chances the whole thing has hung upon. Besides the accident that this was my mother's malady, there was the chance of Lowry not being called from home. The man was his patient, not mine. After that there was the chance of Jack going to see him, instead of me; or of him refusing my attendance. If the chain had broken at one of these links, no responsibility could have fallen upon me. He would have died, and all the good results of his death would have followed naturally. Let it rest at that.
But it could not rest at that. I fought a battle with myself all through the quiet night, motionless and in silence, lest Jack should become aware that I was not sleeping. How should I ever face him, or grasp his hearty hand again, with such a secret weight upon my soul? Yet how could I resolve to save Foster at the cost of dooming Olivia to a life-long bondage should he discover where she was, or to life-long poverty should she remain concealed? If I were only sure that she was alive! But if she were dead—why, then all motive for keeping back this chance of saving him would be taken away. It was for her sake merely that I hesitated.
For her sake, but for my own as well, said my conscience; for the subtle hope, which had taken deeper root day by day, that by-and-by the only obstacle between us would be removed. Suppose then that he was dead, and Olivia was free to love me, to become my wife. Would not her very closeness to me be a reproving presence forever at my side? Could I ever recall the days before our marriage, as men recall them when they are growing gray and wrinkled, as a happy golden time? Would there not always be a haunting sense of perfidy, and disloyalty to duty, standing between me and her clear truth and singleness of heart? There could be no happiness for me, even with Olivia, my cherished and honored wife, if I had this weight and cloud resting upon my conscience.
The morning dawned before I could decide. The decision, when made, brought no feeling of relief or triumph to me. As soon as it was probable that Dr. Senior could see me; I was at his house at Fulham; and in rapid, almost incoherent words laid what I believed to be my important discovery before him. He sat thinking for some time, running over in his own mind such cases as had come under his own observation. After a while a gleam of pleasure passed over his face, and his eyes brightened as he looked at me.
"I congratulate you, Martin," he said, "though I wish Jack had hit upon this. I believe it will prove a real benefit to our science. Let me turn it over a little longer, and consult some of my colleagues about it. But I think you are right. You are about to try it on poor Foster?"
"Yes," I answered, with a chilly sensation in my veins, the natural reaction upon the excitement of the past night.
"It can do him no harm," he said, "and in my opinion it will prolong his life to old age, if he is careful of himself. I will write a paper on the subject for the Lancet, if you will allow me."