The Darrow Enigma by Melvin L. Severy (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📖

CHAPTER I

What shall we say when Dream-Pictures leave their frames

of night and push us from the waking world?

 

As the part I played in the events I am about to narrate was rather

that of a passive observer than of an active participant, I need say

little of myself. I am a graduate of a Western university and, by

profession, a physician. My practice is now extensive, owing to my

blundering into fame in a somewhat singular manner, but a year ago

I had, I assure you, little enough to do. Inasmuch as my practice

is now secure, I feel perfectly free to confess that the cure I

effected in the now celebrated case of Mrs. P-was altogether the

result of chance, and not, as I was then only too glad to have

people believe, due to an almost supernatural power of diagnosis.

 

Mrs. P-was not more surprised at the happy result than was I; the

only difference being that she showed her astonishment, while I

endeavoured to conceal mine, and affected to look upon the whole

thing as a matter of course.

 

My fame spread; the case got into the medical journals, where my

skill was much lauded, and my practice became enormous. There is

but one thing further I need mention regarding myself: that is,

that I am possessed of a memory which my friends are pleased to

consider phenomenal. I can repeat a lecture, sermon, or

conversation almost word for word after once hearing it, provided

always, that the subject commands my interest. My humble abilities

in this direction have never ceased to be a source of wonderment to

my acquaintance, though I confess, for my own part, when I compare

them with those of Blind Tom, or of the man who, after a single

reading, could correctly repeat the London Times, advertisements

and all, they seem modest indeed.

 

It was about the time when, owing to the blessed Mrs. P -, my

creditors were beginning to receive some attention, that I first met

George Maitland. He had need, he said, of my professional services;

he felt much under the weather; could I give him something which

would brace him up a bit; he had some important chemical work on

hand which he could not afford to put by; in fact, he didn’t mind

saying that he was at work upon a table of atomical pitches to match

Dalton’s atomic weights; if he succeeded in what he had undertaken

he would have solved the secret of the love and hatred of atoms,

and unions hitherto unknown could easily be effected.

 

I do not know how long he would have continued had not my interest

in the subject caused me to interrupt him. I was something of an

experimenter myself, and here was a man who could help me.

 

It was a dream of mine that the great majority of ailments could be

cured by analysing a patient’s blood, and then injecting into his

veins such chemicals as were found wanting, or were necessary to

counteract the influence of any deleterious matter present. There

were, of course, difficulties in the way, but had they not already

at Cornell University done much the same for vegetable life? And

did not those plants which had been set in sea sand out of which

every particle of nutriment had been roasted, and which were then

artificially fed with a solution of the chemicals of which they were

known to be composed, grow twice as rank as those which had been set

in the soil ordinarily supposed to be best adapted to them? What

was the difference between a human cell and a plant cell? Yes, since

my patient was a chemist, I would cultivate his acquaintance.

 

He proceeded to tell me how he felt, but I could make nothing of it,

so I forthwith did the regulation thing; what should we doctors do

without it! I looked at his tongue, pulled down his eyelid, and

pronounced him bilious. Yes, there were the little brown spots under

his skin - freckles, perhaps - and probably he had an occasional

ringing in his ears. He was willing to admit that he was dizzy on

suddenly rising from a stooping posture, and that eggs, milk, and

coffee were poison to him; and he afterward told me he should have

said the same of any other three articles I might have mentioned, for

he looked so hale and vigorous, and felt so disgracefully well, that

he was ashamed of himself. We have had many a laugh over it since.

The fact of the matter is the only affliction from which he was

suffering was an inordinate desire to make my acquaintance. Not for

my own sake - oh, dear, no! - but because I was John Darrow’s family

physician, and would be reasonably sure to know Gwen Darrow, that

gentleman’s daughter. He had first met her, he told me after we had

become intimate, at an exhibition of paintings by William T. Richards,

- but, as you will soon be wondering if it were, on his part, a case

of love at first sight, I had best relate the incident to you in his

own words as he told it to me. This will relieve me of passing any

judgment upon the matter, for you will then know as much about it as

I, and, doubtless, be quite as capable of answering the question, for

candour compels me to own that my knowledge of the human heart is

entirely professional. Think of searching for Cupid’s darts with a

stethoscope!

 

“I was standing,” Maitland said, “before a masterpiece of sea and

rock, such as only Richards can paint. It was a view of Land’s End,

Cornwall, and in the artist’s very best vein. My admiration made

me totally unmindful of my surroundings, so much so, indeed, that,

although the gallery was crowded, I caught myself expressing my

delight in a perfectly audible undertone. My enthusiasm, since it

was addressed to no one, soon began to attract attention, and people

stopped looking at the pictures to look at me. I was conscious of

this in a vague, far-off way, much as one is conscious of a

conversation which seems to have followed him across the borderland

of sleep, and I even thought that I ought to be embarrassed. How

long I remained thus transported I do not know. The first thing I

remember is hearing someone close beside me take a quick, deep

breath, one of those full inhalations natural to all sensitive

natures when they come suddenly upon something sublime. -I turned

and looked. I have said I was transported by that canvas of sea

and rocks, and have, therefore, no word left to describe the emotion

with which I gazed upon the exquisite, living, palpitating picture

beside me. A composite photograph of all the Madonnas ever painted,

from the Sistine to Bodenhausen’s, could not have been more lovely,

more ineffably womanly than that young girl, radiant with the divine

glow of artistic delight - at least, that is my opinion, which, by

the bye, I should, perhaps, have stated a little more gingerly,

inasmuch as you are yourself acquainted with the young lady. Now,

don’t look incredulous [noticing my surprise]. Black hair - not

brown, black; clear pink and white complexion; large, deep violet

eyes with a remarkable poise to them.” - Here I continued the

description for him: “Slight of figure; a full, honest waist,

without a suggestion of that execrable death-trap, Dame Fashion’s

hideous cuirass; a little above middle height; deliberate, and

therefore graceful, in all her movements; carries herself in a way

to impress one with the idea that she is innocent, without that

time-honoured concomitant, ignorance; half girl, half woman; shy,

yet strong; and in a word, very beautiful - that’s Gwen Darrow.”

I paused here, and Maitland went on somewhat dubiously: “Yes, it’s

not hard to locate such a woman. She makes her presence as clearly

felt among a million of her sex as does a grain of fuchsine in a

hogshead of water. If, with a few ounces of this, Tyndall could

colour Lake Geneva, so with Gwen Darrow one might, such is the power

of the ideal, change the ethical status of a continent.”

 

He then told me how he had made a study of Miss Darrow’s movements,

and had met her many times since; in fact, so often that he fancied,

from something in her manner, that she had begun to wonder if his

frequent appearance were not something more than a coincidence. The

fear that she might think him dogging her footsteps worried him, and

he began as sedulously to avoid the places he knew she frequented,

as he previously had sought them. This, he confessed, made him

utterly miserable. He had, to be sure, never spoken to her, but it

was everything to be able to see her. When he could endure it no

longer he had come to me under pretence of feeling ill, that he

might, when he had made my acquaintance, get me to introduce him to

the Darrows.

 

You will understand, of course, that I did not learn all this at our

first interview. Maitland did not take me into his confidence until

we had had a conference at his laboratory devoted entirely to

scientific speculations. On this occasion he surprised me not a

little by turning to me suddenly and saying: “Some of the grandest

sacrifices the world has ever known, if one may judge by the

fortitude they require,=20and the pain they cause, have occurred in

the laboratory.” I looked at him inquiringly, and he continued:

“When a man, simply for the great love of truth that is in him, has

given his life to the solution of some problem, and has at last

arrived, after years of closest application, at some magnificent

generalisation - when he has, perhaps, published his conclusions,

and received the grateful homage of all lovers of truth, his life

has, indeed, borne fruit. Of him may it then be justly said that

his

 

”’… life hath blossomed downward like

The purple bell-flower.’

 

But suddenly, in the privacy of his laboratory, a single fact arises

from the test-tube in his trembling hand and confronts him! His

brain reels; the glass torment falls upon the floor, and shatters

into countless pieces, but he is not conscious of it, for he feels

it thrust through his heart. When he recovers from the first shock,

he can only ejaculate: ‘Is it possible?’ After a little he is able

to reason. ‘I was fatigued,’ he says; ‘perhaps my senses erred. I

can repeat the experiment again, and be sure. But if it overthrow

those conclusions for which I