With a cry that might have been heard almost in the grave, the unhappy man shrank from me. At that instant, I turned in the direction to which he was pointing, with that agonised look upon his face; and as I did so, I loosened my hold and my hands fell powerless to my side. In the corner of the chamber hitherto hidden from me, I saw one of those old-fashioned bedsteads, with heavy draperies around it. The curtains were of silk, once a pearly white, now dulled and faded by age. The counterpane and pillow, once like driven snow, were white no more. Lying on the bed, with her head on the pillow, and her body partially concealed by the bed-linen, I saw the form of a woman—a woman who must once have been fair and beautiful to behold. Her luxuriant hair fell in wreaths on each side her face, and was then brought together over the bare white throat. Her arms were uncovered by the counterpane, and, clasping an infant child in their embrace, lay folded across her breast.
As I realised all the details of what seemed like a vision, I confess that my nerves failed me. I could only look at that cold pale face, lying so still on the pillow, with the child-face nestling beside it; and as I looked, I realised that the stillness was the stillness of death.
Like one entranced, I remained motionless for some moments, when again I was aroused to action.
A figure clothed in white—the face scarcely less pale than the face of the dead, the scanty locks of hair, white with age, hanging loosely about her shoulders, the eyes fixed on the bed, and the hands stretched out supplicatingly towards it—glided into the room. Then catching sight of the prostrate figure of the man who had cast himself beside the bed, with his hands spread out on the form that lay there, this apparition of woe, turning on me a glance of reproach that will haunt me to my dying day, exclaimed, amid streaming tears: ‘You have killed him! My son, my son!’
And now, how shall I finish my story without wearying you with explanations? Let me go back to that old question once asked by Gideon West: ‘What if success should come too late?’ For all the happiness it could bring him, it did come too late. His struggle with fate, if not a long, had been a bitter one. There fell a grievous sickness on the neighbourhood; disease and death stalked abroad, and mowed down their victims without counting the numbers. Against the grim tyrants, Gideon West fought day and night; his energy was endless, his courage undaunted; and he triumphed. No; not Gideon West; but the weapons of science triumphed in his hands. Disease and death were driven from the field; as they fled, they shot one last bolt at their victor—it glanced off his armour, but left his wife and child dead at his side.
Yes; he had won. But what was the victory worth? Fame, reward, wealth, all were his; but the one hope of his life was dead. Yet he never spared himself—never ceased work for a day—never hesitated at any sacrifice. He lived, he said, for only one object—it was to ‘wear out his life.’ The old home knew him to the end, and one faithful and devoted woman gave all her years to cheer the one hero of her life, the poor struggling surgeon, the great physician—the man who for pure love had married her only child: Gertrude’s husband!
But the end came suddenly at last, and outwardly there seemed to be no signs of failing power. The mind seemed as fresh and as vigorous as ever. Only in one direction did it give way. Years of never-ceasing brooding over his dead wife and child did its work; and as the sad anniversary of his wife’s birthday, her marriage, and of her death, once more approached, the strain overpowered him. A mania seized him; he must offer her the most costly treasures. Yet they must not appear to come from him, but from others, from those who owed their health, their life, to his skill. They must be proofs of his fame—proofs to the dead wife of her husband’s triumph. The mania grew upon him. Wherever he saw anything that was of peculiar value, he seemed to claim it as his own, fully persuaded, as I believe, that it was a willing offering to the memory of his dead wife. And so those once inexplicable disappearances were explained. No one suspected, would dream of suspecting, the great doctor; and sane in everything else, yet with his brilliant intellect already ripe for decay, the unhappy man for weeks past had been the victim of a mania he neither comprehended nor was able to resist. I learnt afterwards that a medical conference had taken him to the house where the countess’s diamonds were lost on that particular morning, and he must by accident have entered the room where the diamonds were momentarily left unguarded, and at once he had been led, by an irresistible impulse, to possess them.
Before I left that strangely haunted house at Chelsea on that Christmas morning, the twice-stricken mother led me to the dread bedside and placed my hands on the cold face. I looked at the mother, and then I felt the white hands that lay clasped before me. The woman read my thoughts.