Part 11 (1/2)

”You mean,” said Dartmouth, wheeling about and looking him directly in the eyes, ”you mean that I am going mad?”

”I mean, my dear boy, that you will be a raving maniac inside of a month, unless you dislodge from your brain this horrible, unnatural, and ridiculous idea.”

”Do I look like a madman?” demanded Dartmouth.

”Not at the present moment, no. You look remarkably sane. A man with as good a brain as yours does not let it go all at once. It will slide from you imperceptibly, bit by bit, until one day there will be a climax.”

”I am not mad,” said Dartmouth; ”and if I were, my madness would be an effect, not a cause. What is more, I know enough about melancholia to know that it does not drift into dementia until middle age at least.

Moreover, my brain is not relaxed in my ordinary attacks; my spirits are prostrate, and my disgust for life is absolute, but my brain--except when it has been over-exerted, as in one or two climaxes of this experience of mine--is as clear as a bell. I have done some of my best thinking with my hand on the b.u.t.t of a pistol. But to return to the question we are discussing. You have left one or two of the main facts unexplained. What caused Weir's vision? She never had an attack of melancholia in her life.”

”Telepathy, induction, but in the reverse order of your solution of the matter. Your calling her by her grandmother's name was natural enough in your condition--you have acknowledged that your melancholia had already taken possession of you. Miss Penrhyn had, for some reason best known to her sleeping self, got herself up to look like her grandmother, and, she being young and pretty, her semi-lunatic observer addressed her as Sioned instead of heaven knows what jaw-breaking Welsh t.i.tle. Then you went ahead and had the vision, which was quite in keeping with your general lunar condition. I believe you said there was a moon.”

Dartmouth frowned. ”I asked you not to chaff,” he said. ”What is more, I have had melancholia all my life, but delusion never before. But let that pa.s.s. The impulse to write--what do you say to that?”

”The impulse was due to the genius which you have undoubtedly inherited from your grandfather. The inability to put your ideas into verbal form is due to amnesic aphasia. The portion of your brain through which your genius should find speech is either temporarily paralyzed or else deficient in composition. You had better go up and see Jackson. He can cure you if anyone can.”

”Do you believe I can be cured?”

”You can certainly make the attempt.”

Dartmouth threw back his head and covered his face with his hands. ”O G.o.d!” he exclaimed, ”if you knew the agony of the longing to feel the ecstasy of spiritual intoxication, and yet to feel as if your brain were a cloud-bank--of knowing that you are divinely gifted, that the world should be ringing with your name, and yet of being as mute as if screwed within a coffin!”

”My dear boy, it will all come out right in the end. Science and your own will can do much, and as for the rest, perhaps Miss Penrhyn will do for you what those letters intimate Sioned did for your grandfather.”

Dartmouth got up and leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece.

”I do not know that I shall marry Weir Penrhyn,” he said.

”Why not? Because your grandfather had an intrigue with her grandmother?--which, by the way, is by no means clearly proved. That there was a plan on foot to that end the letters pretty well show, but--”

”I don't care a hang about the sins of my ancestors, or of Weir's either--if that were all. If I do not marry her it will be because I do not care to shatter an ideal into still smaller bits. I loved her with what little good was left in me. I placed her on a pedestal and rejoiced that I was able so to do. Now she is the woman whose guilty love sent us both to our death. I could never forget it. There would always be a spot on the sun.”

”My G.o.d, Harold,” exclaimed Hollington, ”you _are_ mad. Of all the insane, ridiculous, idiotic speeches that ever came from man's lips, that is the worst.”

”I can't help it, Becky. The idea, the knowledge, is my very life and soul; and when you think it all over you will see that there are many things that cannot be explained--Weir's words in the gallery, for instance. They coincide exactly with the vision I had four nights later. And a dozen other things--you can think them out for yourself.

When you do, you will understand that there is but one light in which to look at the question: Weir Penrhyn and I are Lionel Dartmouth and Sioned Penrhyn reborn, and that is the end of the matter.”

Hollington groaned, and threw himself back in his chair with an impatient gesture.

”Well,” he said, after a few moments' silence, ”accepting your remarkable premisses for the sake of argument, will you kindly enlighten me as to since when you became so beautifully complete and altogether puerile a moralist? Suppose you did sin with her some three-quarters of a century ago, have not time and suffering purified you both--or rather her? I suppose it does not make so much difference about you.”

”It is not that. It is the idea that is revolting--that this girl should have been my mistress at any time--”

”But, great heaven! Harold, such a sin is a thing of the flesh, not of the spirit, and the physical part of Sioned Penrhyn has enriched the soil of Constantinople these sixty years. She has committed no sin in her present embodiment.”

”Sin is an impulse, a prompting, of the spirit,” said Dartmouth.

Hollington threw one leg over the arm of the chair, half turning his back upon Dartmouth.

”Rot!” he said.