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Page 5
"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, and 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 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 life-long 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!"
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