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

have given my life?’ he gasps. ‘My

generalisation is firmly established in the minds of all - all but

myself - no one will ever chance upon this particular experiment,

and it may not disprove my theory after all; better, much better,

that the floor there keep the secret of it all both from me and from

others!’ But even as he says this to himself he has taken a new

tube from the rack and crawled - ten years older for that last ten

minutes - to his chemical case. The lifelong habit of truth is so

strong in him that self-interest cannot submerge it. He repeats the

experiment, and confirms his fears. The battle between his life and

a few drops of liquid in a test-tube has been mercilessly fought,

and he has lost! The elasticity of the man is gone forever, and the

only indication the world ever receives of this terrible conflict

between a human soul and its destiny is some half a dozen lines in

Nature, giving the experiment and stating that it utterly refutes

its author’s previous conclusions. Half a dozen lines - the epitaph

of a dead, though unburied, life!”

 

My companion paused there, but I found myself unable to reply. He

had spoken with such intensity, such dramatic fervour, that I was

completely swept away by his eloquence; so much so, indeed, that it

did not even occur to me to ask myself why he should have burst out

in this peculiar strain. I have given you the incident in order

that you may see the strange moods into which Maitland occasionally

relapsed - at least, at that time. After a quick glance at me he

continued, in a quieter vein: “All of us men of science have felt

something, however little, of this, and I believe, as a class,

scientists transcend all other men in their respect for absolute

truth.” He cast another one of his searching glances at me, and

said quickly: “This is precisely why I am going to confide in you

and rely upon your assistance in a matter, the successful termination

of which would please me as much as the discovery of an absolute

standard of measurement.”

 

He then made the confession which I have already given you, and

ended by asking me to secure him an introduction to Miss Darrow.

I cheerfully promised to bring this about at the first opportunity.

He asked me if I thought, on account of his having met her so

frequently, she would be likely to think it was all a “put up job.”

 

“I do not know,” I replied. “Miss Darrow is a singularly close

observer. On the whole I think you had better reach her through

her father. Do you play croquet?” He replied that he was considered

something of an expert in that line. That, then, was surely the best

way. John Darrow was known in the neighbourhood as a “crank” on the

subject of croquet. He had spent many hundreds of dollars on his

grounds. His wickets were fastened to hard pine planks, and these

were then carefully buried two feet deep. The surface of the ground,

he was wont to descant, must be of a particular sort of gravel,

sifted just so, and rolled to a nicety. The balls must be of hard

rubber, and have just one-eighth inch clearance in passing through

the wickets, with the exception of the two wires forming the “cage,”

where it was imperative that this clearance should be reduced to

one-sixteenth of an inch - but I need not state more to show how he

came to be considered a “crank” upon the subject.

 

It was easy enough to bring Maitland and Darrow together. “My

friend is himself much interested in the game; he heard of your

superb ground; may he be permitted to examine it closely?” Darrow

was all attention. He would be delighted to show it. Suppose they

make a practical test of it by playing a game. This they did and

Maitland played superbly, but he was hardly a match for the old

gentleman, who sought to palliate his defeat by saying: “You play

an excellent game, sir; but I am a trifle too much for you on my own

ground. Now, if you can spare the time, I should like to witness a

game between you and my daughter; I think you will be pretty evenly

matched.”

 

If he could spare the time! I laughed outright at the idea. Why,

with the prospect of meeting Gwen Darrow before him, an absolute

unit of measure, with a snail’s pace, would have made good its

escape from him. As it is a trick of poor humanity to refuse when

offered the very thing one has been madly scheming to obtain, I

hastened to accept Darrow’s invitation for my friend, and to assure

him on my own responsibility, that time was just then hanging heavily

on Maitland’s hands. Well, the game was played, but Maitland was so

unnerved by the girl’s presence that he played execrably, so poorly,

indeed, that the always polite Darrow remarked: “You must charge

your easy victory, Gwen, to your opponent’s gallantry, not to his

lack of skill, for I assure you he gave me a much harder rub.” The

young lady cast a quick glance at Maitland, which said so plainly

that she preferred a fair field and no favour that he hastened to

say: “Your father puts too high an estimate upon my play. I did my

best to win, but - but I was a little nervous; I see, however, that

you would have defeated me though I had been in my best form.” Gwen

gave him one of those short, searching looks, so peculiarly her own,

which seem to read, with mathematical certainty, one’s innermost

thoughts, - and the poor fellow blushed to the tips of his ears.

- But he was no boy, this Maitland, and betrayed no other sign of

the tempest that was raging within him. His utterance remained as

usual, deliberate and incisive, and I thought this perplexed the

young lady. Before leaving, both Maitland and I were invited to

become parties to a six-handed game to be played the following week,

after the grounds had been redressed with gravel.

 

Maitland looked forward to this second meeting with Miss Darrow

with an eagerness which made every hour seem interminably long, and

he was in such a flutter of expectancy that I was sure if

 

“We live … in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial

We should count time by heart-throbs,”

 

he must have passed through a period as long as that separating the

Siege of Troy from the “late unpleasantness.” The afternoon came at

last, however. The party consisted, besides Darrow and his daughter,

Maitland and myself, of two young gentlemen with whom personally I

had but a slight acquaintance, although I knew them somewhat by

reputation. The younger one, Clinton Browne, is a young artist whose

landscapes were beginning to attract wide attention in Boston, and

the elder, Charles Herne, a Western gentleman of some literary

attainments, but comparatively unknown here in the East. There is

nothing about Mr. Herne that would challenge more than passing

attention. If you had said of him, “He is well-fleshed, well-groomed,

and intellectually well-thatched,” you would have voiced the opinion

of most of his acquaintances.

 

This somewhat elaborately upholstered old world has a deal of mere

filling of one kind and another, and Mr. Herne is a part of it. To

be sure, he leaves the category of excelsior very far behind and

approaches very nearly to the best grade of curled hair, but, in

spite of all this, he is simply a sort of social filling.

 

Mr. Browne, on the other hand, is a very different personage. Of

medium height, closely knit, with the latent activity and grace of

the cat flowing through every movement and even stagnating in his

pose, he is a man that the first casual gaze instantly returns to

with sharpened focus. You have seen gymnasts whose normal movements

were slowly performed springs, just as rust is a slow combustion and

fire the same thing in less time. Well, Clinton Browne strongly

suggested that sort of athlete. Add to this a regularly formed,

clearly cut, and all-but-beautiful face, with a pair of wonderfully

piercing, albeit somewhat shifty, black eyes, and one need not marvel

that men as well as women stared at him. I have spoken of his gaze

as “somewhat shifty,” yet am not altogether sure that in that term

I accurately describe it. What first fastened my attention was this

vague, unfocussed, roving, quasi-introspective vision flashing with

panther-like suddenness into a directness that seemed to burn and

pierce one like the thrust of a hot stiletto, His face was

clean-shaven, save for a mere thumbmark of black hair directly

under the centre of his lower lip. This Iago-like tab and the

almost fierce brilliancy of his concentrated gaze gave to his

countenance at times a sinister, Machiavellian expression that was

irresistible and which, to my thinking, seriously marred an otherwise

fine face. Of=20course due allowance must be made for the strong

prejudice I have against any form of beard. However, I’d wager a

box of my best liver-pills against any landscape Browne ever painted,

- I don’t care if it’s as big as a cyclorama, - that if he had known

how completely Gwen shared my views, - how she disliked the

appearance of bewhiskered men, - that delicately nurtured little

imperial would soon have been reduced to a tender memory, - that is

to say, if a physician can diagnose a case of love from such symptoms

as devouring glances and an attentiveness so marked that it quite

disgusted Maitland, who repeatedly measured his rival with the

apparent cold precision of a mathematician, albeit there was warmth

enough underneath.

 

This singular self-poise is one of Maitland’s most noticeable

characteristics and is, I think, rather remarkable in a man of such

strong emotional tendencies and lightning-like rapidity of thought.

No doubt some small portion of it is the result of acquirement, for

life can hardly fail to teach us all something of this sort; still

I cannot but think that the larger part of it is native to him.

Born of well-to-do parents, he had never had the splendid tuition

of early poverty. As soon as he had left college he had studied law,

and had been admitted to the bar. This he had done more to gratify

the wishes of his father than to further any desires of his own, but

he had soon found the profession, so distasteful to him that he

practically abandoned it in favour of scientific research. True,

he still occasionally took a legal case when it turned upon

scientific points which interested him, but, as he once confessed

to me, he swallowed, at such times, the bitter pill of the law

for the sugar coating of science which enshrouded it. This legal

training could, therefore, it seems to me, have made no deep or

radical change in his character, which leads me to think that the

self-control he exhibited, despite the angry disgust with which I

know Browne’s so apparent attentions to Gwen inspired him, must,

for the most part, have been native to him rather than acquired.

 

Nothing worthy of record occurred until evening; at least nothing

which at the time impressed me as of import, though I afterward

remembered that Darrow’s behaviour was somewhat strange. He

appeared singularly preoccupied, and on one occasion started

nervously when I coughed behind him. He explained that a

disagreeable dream had deprived him of his sleep the previous night

and left his nerves somewhat unstrung, and I thought no more of it.

 

When the light failed we were all invited into