CHAPTER XVIII.
Orson Vane, scintillating theatrically by the sea, was in a fine ragewhen Nevins ceased to answer his telegrams. Telegrams struck Vane as themost dramatic of epistles; there was always a certain pictorial effectin tearing open the envelope, in imagining the hushed expectation of anaudience. A letter--pooh! A letter might be anything from a bill to abillet. But a telegram! Those little slips of paper struck immediateterror, or joy, or despair, or confusion; they hit hard, and swiftly.Certainly he had been hitting Nevins hard enough of late. He hadpeppered him with telegrams about the furniture, about the pictures; hehad forbidden one day what he had ordered the day before. It neveroccurred to him that Nevins might seek escape from these torments. Yetthat was what Nevins had done. He had tippled himself into a conditionwhere he signed sweetly for each telegram and put it in the hall-rack.They made a beautiful, yellow festoon on the mahogany background.
"Those," Nevins told himself, "is for a gentleman as is far too busy tonotice little things like telegrams."
Nevins watched that yellow border growing daily with fresh delight.
He could keep on accepting telegrams just as long as the sideboard heldits strength. Each new arrival from the Western Union drove him to moreglee and more spirits--of the kind one can buy bottled.
At last Orson Vane felt some alarm creeping through his armor ofdramatic pose. Could Nevins have come to any harm? It was very annoying,but he would have to go to town for a day or so. That seemedunavoidable. Just as he had made up his mind to it, he happened to slipon a bit of lemon-peel. At once he fell into a towering rage. He cursedthe entire service on the _Beaurivage_ up hill and down dale. You couldhear him all over the harbor. It was the voice of a profane Voltaire.
That night, at the Casino, his rage found vent in action. He sold the_Beaurivage_ as hastily as he had bought her.
He left for town, by morning, full of bitterness at the world'sconspiracy to cheat him. He felt that for a careless deck-hand to leavelemon-peel on the deck of the Beaurivage was nothing less than part ofthe world-wide cabal against his peace of mind.
He reached his town-house in a towering passion, all the accumulatedill-temper of the last few days bubbling in him. He flung the housedoorwide, stamped through the halls. "Nevins!" he shouted, "Nevins!"
Nothing stirred in the house. He entered room after room. Passing intohis dressing-room he almost tore the hanging from its rod. A gust of airstruck him from the wide-open window. Before he proceeded another stepthis gust, that his opening of the curtain had produced, lifted the veilfrom the mirror facing him. The veil swung up gently, revealed theglass, and dropped again.
Then he realized the figure of Nevins on a couch. He walked up to him.The smell of spirits met him at once.
"Poor Nevins!" he muttered.
Then he fell to further realizations.
The whole history of his three experiments unfolded itself before him.What, after them all, had he gained? What, save the knowledge of thelittleness of the motives controlling those lives? This actor, this manthe world thought great, whose soul he had held in usurpation, up to alittle while ago, what was he? A very batch of vanities, a mountain ofegoisms. Had there been, in any of the thoughts, the moods he hadexperienced from out the mental repertoire of that player, anythingindicative of nobility, of large benevolence, of sweet and light in thefinest human sense? Nothing, nothing. The ambition to imitate theobvious points of human action and conduct, to the end that one becalled a character-actor; the striving for an echoed fame rightlybelonging to the supreme names of history; a yearning for the stimulusof immediate acclamation--these things were not worth gaining. To haveexperienced them was to have caught nothing beneficial.
Orson Vane began to consider himself with contempt. Upon himself mustfall the odium of what the souls he had borrowed had induced in him. Thelittleness he had fathomed, the depths of character to which he hadsunk, all left their petty brands on him. He had penetrated the barriersof other men's minds, but what had it profited him? As a ship becalmedin foul waters takes on barnacles, so had he brought forth, from therealm of alien springs and motives he had made his own, a dreadfulincrustation of painful conjectures on the supremacy of evil in theworld.
It needed only a glance at the man, Nevins, to force home thedestructiveness born of these incursions into other lives. Thattrembling, cowering thing had been, before Orson Vane's departure fromthe limitations of his own temperament, a decent, self-respectingfellow. While now--
Vane paced about the house in bitter unrest. In the outer hall henoticed the yellow envelopes bordering the coat-rack. He took one ofthem down, opened it, and smiled. "Poor Nevins!" he murmured. The nextmoment a lad from the Telegraph office appeared in the doorway. Vanewent forward himself; there was no use disturbing Nevins.
The wire had followed him on from the _Beaurivage_, or rather from theman to whom he had sold her. It was from Augustus Vanlief. Its brevitywas like a blow in the face.
"Am ill," it said, "must see you."
It was still possible, that very hour, to get an express to theProfessor's mountain retreat. There was nothing to prevent immediatedeparture. Nothing--except Nevins. The man really must exercise morecare about that mirror. He was safely out of all his experiments now,but the thing was dangerous none the less; if it had been his ownproperty, he would have known how to deal with it. But it was theProfessor's secret, the discovery of a lifetime. For elaborateprecautions, or even for hiding the thing in some closet, there was notime. He could only rouse Nevins as energetically as possible to a senseof his previous defection from duty; gently and quite kindly headmonished him to take every care of the new mirror in the time coming.Nevins listened to him wide-eyed; his senses were still too much agogfor him to realize whence this change of voice and manner had come tohis master. It was merely another page in the chapter of bewildermentthat piled upon him. He bowed his promise to be careful, he assented toa number of things he could not fathom, and when Vane was gone hecleared the momentary trouble in his mind by an ardent drink. The liquorbrought him a most humorous notion, and one that he felt sure wouldrelieve him of all further anxieties on the score of the new mirror. Heapproached the back of it, tore the curtain from its face, wheeled it tothe centre of the room, and placed all the other cheval-glasses closeby. Throughout this he had wit enough, or fear enough--for his memorybrought him just enough picture of Orson's own handling of this mirrorto inspire a certain awe of the front of the thing--never to pass inface of the mirror. When he had the mirrors grouped in close ranks, hespun about on his heels quickly, as if seized with the devout frenzy ofa dervish. He fell, finally, in a daze of dizziness and liquor. Yet hehad cunning enough left. He crept out of the room on his stomach, like asnake with fiery breath. He knew that the angle at which the mirrorswere tilted would keep him, belly to the carpet, out of range. Then hereeled, shouting, into the corridors.
He had accomplished his desire. He no longer knew one mirror from theother.
Orson Vane, in the meanwhile, was being rushed to the mountains. It waswith a new shock of shame that he saw the ravages illness was making onthe fine face of Vanlief. This, too, was one of the items in theprofit-and-loss column of his experiments. Yet this burden was,perhaps, a shared one.
"Ah," said Vanlief, with a quick breath of gladness, "thank God!" Heknew, the instant Vane spoke, that it was Orson Vane himself who hadcome; he knew that there was no more doubt as to the success of his ownrecent headlong journeyings. They had prostrated him; but--they had won.Yet there was no knowing how far this illness might go; it was stillimperative to come to final, frank conclusions with the partner in hissecret.
The instant that Vane had been announced Jeannette Vanlief had left herfather's side. She withdrew to the adjoining room, where only a curtainconcealed her; the doors had all been taken down for the summer. She didnot wish to meet Orson Vane. Over her real feelings for him had come acloud of doubts and distastes. She had never admitted to herself,openly, that she loved him; she trie
d to persuade herself that hisnotorious vagaries had put him beyond her pale. She was determined, now,to be an unseen ear to what might pass between Orson and her father. Itwas not a nice thing to do, but, for all she knew, her father's verylife was at stake. What dire influence might Vane not have over herfather? She suspected there was some bond between them; in her father'sweakened state it seemed her duty to watch over him with every devotionand alertness.
Yet, for a long time, the purport of the conversation quite eluded her.
"I have not gone the gamut of humanity," said Orson, "but I have almost,it seems to me, gone the gamut of my own courage."
Vanlief nodded. He, too, understood. Consequences! Consequences! How theconsequences of this world do spoil the castles one builds in it!Castles in the air may be as pretty as you please, but they are sure toobstruct some other mortal's view of the sky.
"If I were younger," sighed Vanlief, "if I were only younger."
They did not yet, either of them, dare to be open, brutal, forthright.
"I could declare, I suppose," Vanlief went on, "that it was somewhatyour own fault. You chose your victims badly. You have, I presume, beendisenchanted. You found little that was beautiful, many things that weredespicable. The spectacles you borrowed have all turned out smoky. Yet,consider--there are sure to be just as many rosy spectacles as dark onesin the world."
"No doubt," assented Vane, though without enthusiasm, "but there arestill--the consequences. There is still the chance that I could neverrepay the soul I take on loan; still the horror of being left to facethe rest of my days with a cuckoo in my brain. Mind, I have noreproaches, none at all. You overstated nothing. I have felt, havethought, have done as other men have felt and thought and done; theirvery inner secret souls have been completely in my keeping. Theexperiment has been a triumph. Yet it leaves me joyless."
"It has made me old," said Vanlief, simply. "Ah," he repeated, "if onlyI were younger!"
"The strain," he began again, "of putting an end to your last experimenthas told on me. I overdid it. Such emotion, and such physical tension,is more than I should have attempted. I begin to fear I may not lastvery long. And in that case I think I shall have to take my secret withme. Orson, it comes to this; I am too old to perfect this marvelousthing to the point where it will be safe for humanity at large. It isstill unsafe,--you will agree to that. You might wreck your own life andthat of others. The chances are one in a thousand of your ever finding ahuman being whom God has so graciously endowed with the divine spirit asto be able to lose part of it without collapse. I have hoped and hoped,that such a thing would happen; then there would be two perfectly even,exactly tempered creatures; even if, upon that transfusion, the mirrordisappeared, there would be no unhappiness as a reproach. But we havefound nothing like that. You have embittered yourself; the glimpses ofother souls you have had have almost stripped you of your belief in aneternal Good."
"You mean to send for the mirror?"
"It would be better, wiser. If I live, it will still be here. If I die,it must be destroyed. In any event--"
At the actual approach of this conclusion to his experiments Orson Vanefelt a sense of coming loss. With all the dangers, all the loom ofpossible disaster, he was not yet rid of the awful fascination of thissoul-snatching he had been engaged in.
"Perhaps," he argued, "my next experiment might find the one in athousand you spoke of."
"I think you had better not try again. Tell me, what was Wantage's soullike?"
"Oh, I cannot put it into words. A little, feverish, fretful soul,shouting, all the time: I, I, I! Plotting, planning for publicattention, worldly prominence. No thoughts save those of self. An activebrain, all bent on the ego. A brain that deliberately chose the theatrebecause it seems the most spectacular avenue to eminence. A magnetismthat keeps outsiders wondering whether childishness or genius lurksbehind the mask. The bacillus of restlessness is in that brain; it isnever idle, always planning a new pose for the body and the voice."
"Well," urged Vanlief, "think what might have been had I not put a stopto the thing. You don't realize the terrible anxiety I was in. You mighthave ruined the man's career. However petty we, you and I, may holdhim, there are things the world expects of him; we came close tospoiling all that. I had to act, and quickly. You may fancy thedifficulties of getting the mirror to Wantage. Oh, it is still all likean evil dream." He lay silent a while, then resumed: "Is the mirror inthe old room?"
"Yes. With the others, in the dressing-room."
"Nevins looks out for it?"
"As always. Though he grows old, too."
Vanlief looked sharply at Orson, he suspected something behind thatphrase about Nevins. Again he urged:
"Better have Nevins bring the mirror back to me."
Vane hesitated. He murmured a reply that Jeannette no longer cared tohear. The whole secret was open to her, now; she saw that the Orson Vaneshe loved--she exulted now in her admission of that--was still the manshe thought him, that all his inexplicable divagations had been part ofthis awful juggling with the soul that her father had found the trickof. She realized, too, by the manner of Vane, that he had not yet givenup all thought of these experiments; he wanted one more. One more; onemore; it was the cry of the drunkard, the opium-eater, the victim ofevery form of mania.
It should never be, that one more trial. What her father had done, shecould do. She glided out of the room, on the heels of her quickresolution.
The two men, in their arguments, their widening discussions, did notbring her to mind for hours. By that that time she was well on her wayto town.
Her purpose was clear to her; nothing should hinder its achievement. Shemust destroy the mirror. There were sciences that were better killed atthe outset. She did not enter deeply into those phases of the question,but she had the clear determination to prevent further mischief, furtherfollies on the part of Vane, further chances of her father's collapse.
The mirror must be destroyed. That was plain and simple.
It took a tremendous ringing and knocking to bring Nevins to the door ofVane's house.
"I am Miss Vanlief," she said, "I want to see my father's mirror."
"Certainly, miss, certainly." He tottered before her, chuckling andchattering to himself. He was in the condition now when nothingsurprised him; any rascal could have led him with a word or a hint; hewas immeasurably gay at everything in the world. He reeled to thedressing-room with an elaborate air of courtesy.
"At your service, miss, there you are, miss. You walk straight on, andthere you are, miss. There's the mirror, miss, plain as pudding."
She strode past him, drawing her skirt away from the horrible taint ofhis breath. She knew she would find the mirror at once, curtained andsolitary sentinel before the doorway. She would simply break it with herparasol, stab it, viciously, from behind.
But, once past the portal, she gave a little cry.
All the mirrors were jumbled together, all looked alike, and all facedher, mysterious, glaringly.
"Nevins," she called out, "which--which is the one?"
"Ah, miss," he said, leeringly, "don't I wish I knew."
No sense of possible danger to herself, only a despair at failure, cameupon Jeannette. Failure! Failure! She had meant to avert disaster, andshe had accomplished--nothing, nothing at all.
She left the house almost in tears. She felt sure Vane would yield againto the temptation of these frightful experiments. She could do nothing,nothing. She had felt justified in attempting destruction of what washer father's; but she could not wantonly offer all that array of mirrorson the altar of her purpose. She stumbled along the street, suffering,full of tears. It was with a sigh of relief that she saw a hansom andhailed it. The cab had hardly turned a corner before Orson Vane, comingfrom another direction, let himself into his house. His conference withVanlief had ceased at his own promise to make just one more trial of themirror. He could not go about the business of the life he led in townwithout assuring himself the mirror was safe. br />
He found Nevins incoherent and useless. He began to consider seriouslythe advisability of discharging the man; still, he hated to do that toan old servant, and the man might come to his senses and his duties.
He spent some little time re-arranging the mirrors in his room. He wassure there had been no intrusion since he was there himself, and he knewNevins well enough to know that individual's horror of facing themirror. He himself faced the new mirror boldly enough, sure that his ownimage was the only one resting there. He knew the mirror easily, inspite of the robbery that the wind, as he thought, had committed.
Nevins, hiding in the corridor, watched him, in drunken amusement.