Tales of the Wonder Club, Volume I

by M. Y. Halidom

Poor old fool! I sincerely pitied him. "This comes," said I to myself, "of turning nephews out of doors. Had you, instead of trying to bend the iron resolve of your nephew to your own poor old obstinate will, assisted him in his very laudable determination to follow science, you might yet have lived and died a bachelor to your heart's content. But console yourself, my uncle, St. Anthony was tempted by a fair demon before you. Now you have learned a lesson, although it has come somewhat late in life."

Although I deeply sympathised with my guardian's mistake, I could not do otherwise than feel that he fully deserved this punishment for his treatment of myself. How absurd and arrogant of a man, to persist in bending another to his own selfish will! Are we free agents, or are we not?

But enough of this. My uncle had sinned, and he was punished. He had imagined his charmer an angel, and found after all that she was but mortal like the rest of her sex, a poor, weak woman. He could hardly ever have been besotted enough to fancy that she had married him for anything else than his money, but what will not a man do to obtain the idol of his affections?

Perhaps it was not mere blind passion that had induced him to thrust his neck under the yoke. It might only have been pique. He would show his nephew that he could live very happily without his companionship, and this was the way he showed it.

I mentally drew a portrait of my aunt. A dashing, reckless girl, determined to have her own way in everything, running up dressmakers' bills, driving about in her carriage to spend her days in visiting and frivolity. Ambitious of pleasing every man but her husband. Dragging her poor old wooden-legged spouse after her to balls, operas, and concerts, or else leaving him at home, perhaps poorly, whilst she was enjoying herself in some crowded assembly, surrounded by a troop of young gallants, encouraging their attentions and making game of the poor old fool she had cajoled into marrying her. I imagined her pretty, witty, vivacious and with a temper. A thorough incapacity for the management of a household, vain, extravagant, frivolous, heartless, calculating.

Such was the mental picture I had drawn of my young aunt. How I could imagine her of an evening—if she ever stayed at home with her husband in the evening—yawning over the admiral's long nautical stories, sighing and pouting when he asked her to bring him his slippers, or rather his slipper, for he had but one. Turning up her nose as she mixed his grog for him or lighted his pipe. Shuddering when the old man caressingly touched her dimpled chin, and pleading fatigue that she might go to bed early to be alone and dream of some handsome young lieutenant she had met at Mrs. So-and-So's ball.

"Well, well," said I to myself, "I will not triumph too long over your fall, uncle, lest some day the like may happen to myself, which Heaven forfend."

I tried to imagine myself with a wife like my aunt. I, a scholar, a searcher after the philosopher's stone, with a gay young wife always out at parties, a family of neglected children at home, breaking in upon my studies and smashing my crucibles and retorts, tearing up my valuable MSS, turning my laboratory into a nursery, and profaning my hours of study with their crying and squabbling.

"No," said I, "it shall not be. I will live single. A scientific man is wedded to science."

After the letter I had received from my friend Langton, the opinion I had formed of womankind was somewhat of the lowest. I imagined that all women were alike, and the dread I felt lest I should fall into a trap myself, induced me to shut myself up more than ever. I built a laboratory and fitted it up. I pored over my books, fasted, slept little, and sought as much as possible to reduce matter into mind. I resolved to give myself wholly up to the study of the transmutation of metals, nothing doubting that some day if I persisted in my labours I should be rewarded by the discovery of the philosopher's stone. I paid no visits, neither received any. I had seen enough of dissipation, and was now resolved to make up for lost time. A sudden change had come over me. I was no longer the "flotter bursch" that the year before swaggered, booted and spurred through the streets of Jena, foremost in the midnight revel, dauntless at the duel, guilty of every species of extravagance and excess. I had become the haggard and emaciated student of the dark arts, nervous in the extreme, shunning company, and the nature of whose studies was a mystery to all. Slovenly and smoke begrimed, daily and nightly I poured over my crucibles, trying all sorts of experiments and suffering many disappointments, denying myself the common necessaries of life, that I might expend my small income in instruments and articles wherewith to pursue my science. Absorbed in that one pursuit, I quite forgot the world without, forgot that I was of the same clay as my fellow mortals, lost all sympathy for the rest of my kind, neither sought any from them. My whole mental energies were concentrated on that one topic—that of making gold. Nor was it avarice that induced me to make gold the object of my pursuit. Nothing, I assure you, but the pure love of science prompted me in my studies. I had already made several curious discoveries. I was on the eve, or thought I was, of discovering the great secret, when owing to excessive fasting and want of sleep, my health broke down. Being originally of an iron constitution, I deemed in the pride of my youth that I was proof against any fatigue of mind or body until actual experience taught me that there were bounds even to my powers of endurance.