3
A year passed slowly by, and at the end of it Dr. Laidlaw had found itnecessary to sever his working connexion with his friend and one-timeleader. Professor Ebor was no longer the same man. The light had goneout of his life; the laboratory was closed; he no longer put pen topaper or applied his mind to a single problem. In the short space ofa few months he had passed from a hale and hearty man of late middlelife to the condition of old age--a man collapsed and on the edge ofdissolution. Death, it was plain, lay waiting for him in the shadows ofany day--and he knew it.
To describe faithfully the nature of this profound alteration in hischaracter and temperament is not easy, but Dr. Laidlaw summed it up tohimself in three words: _Loss of Hope_. The splendid mental powersremained indeed undimmed, but the incentive to use them--to use them forthe help of others--had gone. The character still held to its fine andunselfish habits of years, but the far goal to which they had been theleading strings had faded away. The desire for knowledge--knowledge forits own sake--had died, and the passionate hope which hitherto hadanimated with tireless energy the heart and brain of this splendidlyequipped intellect had suffered total eclipse. The central fires hadgone out. Nothing was worth doing, thinking, working for. There _was_nothing to work for any longer!
The professor's first step was to recall as many of his books aspossible; his second to close his laboratory and stop all research. Hegave no explanation, he invited no questions. His whole personalitycrumbled away, so to speak, till his daily life became a mere mechanicalprocess of clothing the body, feeding the body, keeping it in goodhealth so as to avoid physical discomfort, and, above all, doing nothingthat could interfere with sleep. The professor did everything he couldto lengthen the hours of sleep, and therefore of forgetfulness.
It was all clear enough to Dr. Laidlaw. A weaker man, he knew, wouldhave sought to lose himself in one form or another of sensualindulgence--sleeping-draughts, drink, the first pleasures that came tohand. Self-destruction would have been the method of a little boldertype; and deliberate evil-doing, poisoning with his awful knowledge allhe could, the means of still another kind of man. Mark Ebor was none ofthese. He held himself under fine control, facing silently and withoutcomplaint the terrible facts he honestly believed himself to have beenunfortunate enough to discover. Even to his intimate friend andassistant, Dr. Laidlaw, he vouchsafed no word of true explanation orlament. He went straight forward to the end, knowing well that the endwas not very far away.
And death came very quietly one day to him, as he was sitting in thearm-chair of the study, directly facing the doors of the laboratory--thedoors that no longer opened. Dr. Laidlaw, by happy chance, was with himat the time, and just able to reach his side in response to the suddenpainful efforts for breath; just in time, too, to catch the murmuredwords that fell from the pallid lips like a message from the other sideof the grave.
"Read them, if you must; and, if you can--destroy. But"--hisvoice sank so low that Dr. Laidlaw only just caught the dyingsyllables--"but--never, never--give them to the world."
And like a grey bundle of dust loosely gathered up in an old garment theprofessor sank back into his chair and expired.
But this was only the death of the body. His spirit had died two yearsbefore.