And his other self replied, "Beyond doubt the oyster is the happier, since it makes full use of the body it possesses, and fulfills its destiny completely, as I do not."
He sat now in his chair before the fireplace. Behind him the early autumnal dusk was darkening the window; the usual fire of cannel glowed its reflection on his face. His languor was not unpleasant, as he sat in a dreamy half-reality, a reverie; his twin minds ranged at random through devious courses. He wandered from memories of the past to hypothetical visions of might-have-been. Images of old experiments in fields he had wished to explore came to him, carrying breath-taking intimations of things incredible; of that diffuse cosmic intelligence which is everywhere, called Natural Law, or God, or the Law of Chance, according to one's nature. And this universal Entity, Edmond reflected, breathed a fiery purpose and vital fertility in every part, but in the infinite aggregate was sterile, purposeless and static.
Pictures of Vanny—flaming, incoherent visions that burned in an aura of emotion! Vanny dancing before the fire—Vanny's eyes with the haunting terror in them, and then those eyes lit up with an ecstasy. Vanny sleeping—Vanny laughing—Vanny's body tense and sweet and vital, or that body warm and languorous, with the perfume of wine upon her breath.
"I have made a good trade," he reflected. "Now I pay without regret that which I value little, for this that I prize highly."
Instantly a memory of Sarah moved quietly into his minds, her dry little voice sounding almost audibly her dolorous admonition. "Edmond, the way of glory was my way; now at the end look back upon the ruin you have made of that which might have been a noble thing."
Edmond replied: "I look back upon a ruin indeed, but I see a charm about it. For the austere pale marble is softened, its outlines merge into the back-ground which is living, and about the broken columns trail the vines of the grape. There is an air about ruins that the structure never owns; Sarah, do wild doves nest in a temple that is new?"
"Words!" said Sarah. "You blanket your life with verbiage, and tuck it in soft and warm while about you the lightnings flash. You argue with your own reason and temporize with your body, and are in all ways unworthy of your heritage—a beater of bushes and a trapper of flies!"
"Doubtless you are right," said Edmond, and dismissed her presence from his minds.
Now he sat for some time weighing Sarah's re-marks, and his rational self saw their justice, but he found no real meaning therein. Sarah spoke from a viewpoint he could not assume; understanding was possible between them, but sympathy never. Edmond smiled again as he reflected that between himself and Vanny, exactly opposite conditions obtained; there was sympathy without understanding.
Vanny and Sarah—his physical complement and his intellectual. "It is true, then, that bodily things are far more than intellectual; the important elements are not the highest. The mental is not the fundamental."
He reflected in this vein, lapsing again into a reverie, until Vanny returned from some errand. She dropped a package or two, and slid to the footstool between Edmond and the fire.
"Of what do you dream, Edmond?"
He told her, since the thought was harmless.
"I think you under-value those things, Edmond, be-cause they are what you possess in abundance. To me, everything else is a foundation for the intellect you despise."
He smiled at her, gently as his thin lips and satyric features could manage. "I may not explain further."
Vanny flushed. "Oh, I know!—I'm not a thorough fool! But you see that's why I prize this quality of understanding." A trace of the old haunted light showed in her eyes, and her mien grew a little wistful. "See, Edmond, I traded my soul for the chance to understand you, only the price I had to offer was not great enough."
CHAPTER XXIII
EVENING ON OLYMPUS
WINTER found Edmond's vitality, which he had poured out so freely at first, now at very low ebb. He lived out his days in a pallid half-dream, and it was only with effort that he could call his twin minds to clarity. That vigor which remained he hoarded care-fully, spending it like a miser's pennies, seeking full value in pleasure for each coin expended. No longer the spendthrift nights of ecstasy, but an avid grasping at sensation that grew ever more dream-like and elusive. He was perforce content to watch the will-o-the-wisp of knowledge dance and beckon without pursuit; he remained mostly in his chair before the fire-place of the monkey's skull, engrossed in dreams and memories like a very old man. He who had dwelt so thoroughly in the future found himself squeezed into the past, as that future foreshortened and the past lengthened.
He could no longer disguise his illness from Vanny, but her anxiety was tempered by a sublime faith in him. To her he was as he wished to be, and his wishes remained beyond her understanding. That he chose to weaken himself was merely a mystery, not a danger.
Sarah came at intervals, standing before him unspeaking, regarding him silently with cold eyes. The time for words had long passed, and she watched Edmond's doom roll upon him now in silence. Some-times she carried with her their child, and then the already half-intelligent imp backed up its mother's silent stare with an intense little silence of its own. Edmond was too weary to raise his head, but he noted a dawning bitterness in its eyes. A sense of pity and regret smote him, as he caught a fore-glimpse of this little being's life.
"Far better for you to kill it," he told Sarah once, while the imp stared fixedly at him. She made no answer, but continued her gaze for a minute or more and departed.
One day thereafter he called Vanny to him, strengthening himself by means of an alkaloid of his own synthesis. For some hours the drug offered him a modicum of vitality, though he knew that payment would be exacted.
"My permitted time draws to an end, Vanny."
Into her eyes swept a look of terror and a glistening of tears. She dropped to the stool before him, gazing up at him, but saying nothing.
"Remember that when I depart, dear, I go the way of my own devising, and do not grieve."
"No, Edmond!—No," she murmured. "Do not abandon me again! Had I more to offer, you know I would give what you demand, and more, but I have traded all I am for your presence; do not deny me ill"
"I would not," said Edmond, "but that I must. Nevertheless, this parting is but temporary; there will be another union and another—forever."
"Then the parting is hard but not unbearable."
Through Edmond's other self flashed a memory of a chance remark of Stein's dropped long ago when discussing Edmond's picture of a circular Time; "How do you know the curvature is constant? Nothing else in nature is absolute: why must Time return exactly on itself in a perfect circle?" His slim fingers caressed Vanny while his twin minds seized the thought; here at last might come the way of escape, the little crevice in the hopeless circle that bound all things! Perhaps Time moved not in a circle through a fourth dimension but in a spiral through still another, and things did not repeat themselves forever without point or outcome, but varied a little through each repetition. Perhaps this spiral spun in still another spiral, and that in another, and so through greater and still greater spirals mounting in unthinkable dimensions toward infinity. Progress and hope—two illusions that Edmond had denied throughout his life—were born for him. He perceived at last the ultimate implication of his own philosophy; that the price demanded to make anything—absolutely anything—possible is truly a very small price, involving merely the shifting of the observer's point of view from one angle to another, from this valley to that peak. A surge of exaltation revived him; the untasted poignancy of hope was like a strong drug in his body, and in those moments he was close to happiness. He reflected that after all he had made of his life no ruin, but an edifice of beauty, since he alone of all the millions had uncovered Truth. His other self murmured the one true statement—once terrible, but now inspiring (thus again proving itself!) : "All things are relative to the point of view; nothing is either true or false save in the mind of the observer." He turned back to Vanny.
/> "This shall be only a little parting, and not for very long as we judge time. A few score years for you, Vanny, and it may be only a few hours for me. And then all this shall be again, and perhaps on a happier plane. This I promise, Vanny, and you will believe me."
She smiled a quiet and tearful smile. "Yes, Edmond."
"Think, dear—has not all this been in the past, not very long since? Your memory runs back some twenty-five years; was it not just before that time that this was again? Do you recall?"
"Yes, Edmond; I recall."
"What matter then the unthinkable ages intervening, since we are oblivious of their passing? When again in eternity the circle or the spiral spins back to this arc, we shall be together again, and perhaps happier. This is my promise."
"Yes, Edmond." Smiled again, wistfully, "If only I were sure."
"I am sure."
"Then it is enough. I shall go with you. What is there for me to fear in Death who have met Him twice already?"
Edmond considered this thought carefully, since it had about it a specious logic. He turned it about in his twin minds, re-formulating it in the inexpressible, and then somberly rejected it.
"No, Vanny. For you is reserved the difficult part; you must live out your appointed time to the very end of the arc."
"But why, Edmond? To what avail?"
"Because, dear, I do not fully comprehend the terrible and obscure laws that govern Fate and Chance in their relations to Time. Because there is a danger that the foreshortening of both our arcs—the obliviating of both our futures—may condemn us through what you call eternity to an endless repetition of our act. The future grows out of the past; let us not dry up. the spring from which it flows. More than this I cannot tell you."
"As you wish, Edmond, but this will be a cruel thing."
Edmond took her hands in his incredible grasp. The strange fingers twisted about hers like tentacles, but she thrilled to them, to the inhuman delicacy vested in them. She gazed unflinching into the appalling eyes that bred madness, and their glance softened, for now at the very end Edmond had come to a curious realization. As his arc dropped toward oblivion. an understanding came to him. He saw finally that it was not Vanny's body alone he loved, but her self-effacement, her loyalty, her adoration, and the many little illusions called character. These were what Sarah, who stood mind to mind with him, had not, nor could ever have, since her heredity forbade it. Thus finally did Edmond confess to himself that he loved Vanny, and thus did he gaze into her simple human eyes, and tell her so. Her answer was only, "Living without you will be tasteless, Edmond, but not so bitter now."
"I must do what I may to sweeten it, Vanny, who have brought to it all the bitterness it holds."
So he took her chin in his serpentine grasp and up-tilted her head; fixing her gaze with his own of burning intensity. Her eyes widened, turned cold and glassy as she surrendered her mind to his keeping for the while; Edmond probed her mentality until it was as if each of his long fingers rested upon some center in her brain, as if he could play upon these as upon an organ's keys. He murmured softly the while:
"Listen to me, Desired One, now on the eve of our dissolution listen and yield you to these things that I command."
She answered tonelessly, "I do yield."
"Then I will that after my departing you shall think never on the manner of it, nor ever return to the place of it, but be content knowing that I go the way of my own devising."
"This I yield."
"I command that your adoration and the love in which you hold me be erased from your memory, so that you think of me no more, nor ever recall this time with regret."
Still tonelessly she murmured, "This I cannot yield."
"For what reason?"
"Because there is a natural law of my being that forbids it."
For a moment Edmond's minds dissociated, considering separately this statement. "Even Vanny's simplicity eludes me at the end." And his other self replied, "Doubtless there are facts entirely beyond the domain of reason, so that some sorts of knowledge by their very nature remain forever unattainable. Of this degree are mind and life."
He returned his thoughts to Vanny, fusing his twin minds again into a unity.
"Then I will have it thus: That if you cannot forget one, you remember me as a being out of very long ago, so that my reality is dim. That you think of me not as your appointed mate, but as a symbol, an aspiration, and a dream, as a mysterious and not-tobe-satisfied longing, but not ever as a Being made of flesh and mind, wo loved you and was loved."
"This too I yield," she said."
"Then I send you now to Paul, whom you will love tas well as may be. You will love him for his love of you, since you are now the stronger. Out of his simplicity and his ignorance you will love him; he will be the child you lead and the man you inspire. I give not you to Paul, but Paul to you; out of his fleshly vigor you shall love him."
"I yield this too, Edmond," she said.
A moment more he held her passive gaze, while the false vitality of the drug ebbed out of him. He drooped wearily, then raised his hand from her chin, brushing the finger-tips across her wide, unwinking eyes. "Enough," he said, and her eyes suddenly softened and smiled sadly into his own. He tipped two pellets from the vial he carried, swallowed them.
"Edmond," said Vanny, watching him, "does that hold the way?"
"No, dear. This is the means of our farewell, to which we go at once."
CHAPTER XXIV
NIGHT ON OLYMPUS
AFTER the farewell, which occurred in a human and quite traditional fashion, Edmond sent Vanny to Paul. "Co now," he commanded, and she departed, a little unsteadily but with glowing eyes and an after-sense of ecstasy. She wondered dimly why she left Edmond with so little reluctance; he seemed to her already dead like a memory once poignant out of a distant and half-forgotten past. Yet for a moment her heart wrenched with pain and she kissed him, but his eyes caught hers, and the fire that was burning her died out. Of the happenings during her trance nothing remained in her conscious memory save a sort of vacuity, a feeling of lack or loss. She was unhappy, but not acutely so; if there were pangs, they were buried for the present under a sort of lethargy. She moved automatically to follow the course that had been graven very deeply on her mind; below at the curb she entered the gray car that waited there. Nor was she surprised to find Eblis curled on the seat; the great cat mewed and stretched in welcome as she sank wearily to her place at the wheel, and its ebon presence seemed evidence to her mind that she was indeed slipping back into the old life.
Edmond watched her departure with a regret less keen than it might have been had not his lassitude been sweeping back. His drug had been lessening steadily in its potency; the effect of his last dose was vanishing already, and he could feel nothing very passionately. There still remained, however, certain things to be done; he fingered the little vial of alkaloid, and poured the contents into his hand. Half a dozen white pellets rolled in his palm, and suddenly he raised his hand and swallowed them all. A few moments, and the stimulant functioned; he dragged himself erect and moved over to the desk.
He wrote. "I, Edmond Hall, being of sound mind, do hereby devise and bequeath-" He smiled his old ironic smile.
"To my dear friend Alfred Stein the entire contents of my laboratory, together with all designs, books, notes and equipment thereof "
"The entire remainder and residue of my estate to be divided equally between my beloved wife Evanne and-" he grinned again— "my sister, Sarah Maddox.”
"I appoint as joint executors of my estate Alfred Stein of Northwestern University"—he paused for a moment, still with his Satanic smile—"and Paul Varney..
He left the satiric document on the open desk, and proceeded to his laboratory. Here he removed the accumulators from the atom-blaster, dropping them into a jar of nitric acid. The heavy brown fumes set him coughing, and he picked up another vial and departed
Alfred would doubtless succeed in destroying him-self w
ith this terrific mechanism," he reflected. "I have left him enough to study over, and enough hints of greater things to occupy his life-time."
Back in his chair before the fire, he looked at the vial he held, shaking the tiny purple ovoids it contained.
"Eggs of nothingness," he reflected, "out of which I am to hatch oblivion." He spilled several into his palm, where they rolled with an obscene fungoid shining.
"A billion billion centuries, perhaps," he reflected, "before Chance or the more obscure laws that govern it, shall re-assemble the particular molecules that I call Myself, yet this will seem no longer than from this night until tomorrow. Certainly obliteration is a wonderful thing, and the one conqueror of Time." His other self responded, "Since in eternity all things that can happen must happen, I depart with assurance; all this will be again, and perhaps in happier fashion. I render my payment therefore without regret."
He raised his hand to his lips, and at the moment he became aware of a presence before him. Sarah stood there, or her image made real to his senses. She was watching him with a little glint of regret in her eyes, and a touch of hopelessness about her mouth. He paused, returning her gaze coldly.
"Paul comes," she said. "He comes to kill you."
Edmond's lips twisted again into their thin smile.
"I had thought my accounts were balanced," he said. "However, perhaps I still owe Paul that satisfaction."
"You are a fool, Edmond. You have traded all glory and the very delights of the gods—for what?"
"For a philosophy and a dream, and a bright little gem of truth, Sarah. Not one of you has more."
"You are a fool, Edmond, and I wonder that your passing grieves me in the least, for all reason denies that it should."
"The more fool reason, then," said Edmond. But his cold eyes softened a moment. "I am sorry, Sarah. Believe me when I say I do not forget you."
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