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Page 61
"I mean that they were not prepared to grant that he was dead.
Henry and Mannering took him up on that assumption. He may have
been restored to animation and his vital forces recovered. Why
not? There was nothing visible to indicate dissolution. We have
heard of trances, catalepsies, which simulate death so closely
that even physicians are deceived. Have not men been buried alive?
Tom's father at this moment might be restored to life, if we only
knew how to act."
"Then--" she said, with horrified eyes, and stopped.
He saw what he had done.
"God forgive me! No, no, not that, Mary! It's all madness and
moonshine! This is delirium; it will kill me! Don't think I
believe them, any more than Mannering did, or Henry did. Henry
has seen much death; he could not have been deceived. Tom was dead,
and your heart told you he was dead. One cannot truly make any
mistake in the presence of death; I know that."
Mary was marvellously restrained, despite the fact that she had
received this appalling blow and vividly suffered all that it
implied.
"I will try to put it out of my mind, father," she said quietly.
"But if Mr. Hardcastle is alive, I shall go mad!"
"He is not. Mannering was positive."
"Nevertheless, he may be. And if he is, then Mr. May probably is."
"Grotesque, horrible, worse than death even! Keep your mind away
from it, my darling, for the love of God!"
"Who knows what we can suffer till we are called to find out? No,
I shall not go mad. But I must know to-day. I cannot eat or sleep
until I know. I shall not live long if they don't tell me quickly."
Her father trembled and grew very white.
"This is the worst of all," he said. "These things will leave a
burning brand. I am ruined by them, and my life thrown down. I,
that thought I was strong, prove so weak that I can forget my own
daughter, and out of cowardly misery speak of a thing she should
never have known. You have your revenge, Mary, for I shall go a
broken man from this hour. Nothing can ever be the same again.
My self-respect is gone. I could have endured everything else--
the things that I dreaded. All I could have suffered and
survived; but to have forgotten and stabbed you--"
"Don't, don't--come--we have got each other, father--we have
still got each other. The dead understand everything. Who else
matters? Go to your room, and let your dear mind rest. I am not
suffering. We cannot alter the past, and who would wish it, if
they believe in eternal life? I would not call Tom back if I had
the power to do so. Be sure of that."
She spoke comfortable words to him, and supported him to his room.
She knew the police would soon arrive, and though they could not
report concerning the life, or death, of Peter Hardcastle, she
doubted not that definite information relating to him must come to
Chadlands quickly. Upon that another life might hang. Yet, when
the medical man arrived from Newton, he could only say that
Septimus May was dead. He was a friend of Mannering, and knew the
London opinion, that this form of apparent death might in reality
conceal latent possibilities of resuscitation; but he spoke with
absolute certainty. He was old, and had nearly fifty years of
professional experience behind him.
"The man is dead, or I never saw death," he declared. "By a
hundred independent evidences we can be positive. Post-mortem
stains have already appeared, and were they ever known on a living
body? Of the others who died in this room I know nothing
personally; but here is death, and in twenty-four hours the fact
will be plain to the perception of an idiot. What has happened is
this: the London police have heard of a famous, recent German case
mentioned in 'Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschraft'--an astonishing
thing. A woman, who had taken morphine and barbital, was found
apparently dead after a night's exposure in some lonely spot.
There were no reflexes, no pulse, no respiration or heart-beat.
Yet she was alive--existing without oxygen--an impossibility as
we had always supposed. Seeing no actual evidence of death, the
physicians injected camphor and caffein and took other restorative
steps, with the result that in an hour the woman breathed again!
Twenty-four hours later she was conscious and able to speak. It
is assumed that the poison and the cold night air together had
paralyzed her vasomotor nerves and reduced her body to a state akin
to hibernation, wherein physical needs are at their minimum. That
case has doubtless awakened these suspicions, and having regard to
them, we will keep the poor gentleman in a warm room and proceed
with the classical means for restoring respiration."
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