there was a gray, woolly october fog over hyde park. the railings wept grimy tears, and the damp yellow leaves dropped soddenly from the soaked trees. pedestrians looked chilled and sulky; camphor chests and cedar-presses had yielded up their treasures of sables and sealskin, chinchilla and silver fox. a double stream of fashionable traffic rolled west and east, and the rich clarets and vivid crimsons of the automobiles burned through the fog like genial, warming fires.
a baby-bunting six horse-power petrol-car, in color a chrysanthemum yellow, came jiggeting by. the driver stopped. he was a technical chemist and biologist of note and standing, and i had last heard him speak from the platform of the royal institution.
“i haven’t seen you,” said the professor, “for years.”
“that must be because you haven’t looked,” said i, “for i have both seen and heard you quite recently. only you were upon the platform and i was on the ground-floor.”
“you are too much upon the ground-floor now,” said the professor, with a shudder of a southern european at the dampness around and under foot, “and i advise you to accept a seat in my car.”
and the baby-bunting, trembling with excitement at being in the company of so many highly-varnished electric victorias and forty horse-power auto-cars, joined the steadily-flowing stream going west.
“i wonder that you stoop to petrol, professor,” i said, as the thin, skillful hand in the baggy chamois 265glove manipulated the driving-wheel, and the little car snaked in and out like a torpedo-boat picking her way between the giant warships of a channel squadron.
the professor’s black brows unbent under the cap-peak, and his thin, tightly-gripped lips relaxed into a mirthless smile.
“ah, yes; you think that i should drive my car by radio-activity, is it not? and so i could—and would, if the pure radium chloride were not three thousand times the price of gold. from eight tons of uranium ore residues about one gramme—that is fifteen grains—can be extracted by fusing the residue with carbonates of soda, dissolving in hydrochloric acid, precipitating the lead and other metals in solution by the aid of hydrogen-sulphide, and separating from the chlorides that remain—polonium, actinium, barium, and so forth—the chloride of radium. with a single pound of this i could not only drive an auto-car, my friend”—his olive cheek warmed, and his melancholy dark eyes grew oddly lustrous—“i could stop the world!”
“and supposing it was necessary to make it go on again?” i suggested.
“when i speak of the world,” exclaimed the professor, “i do not refer to the planet upon which we revolve; i speak of the human race which inhabits it.”
“would the human race be obliged to you, professor?” i queried.
the professor turned upon me with so sudden a verbal riposte that the baby-bunting swerved violently.
“you are not as young as you were when i met you first. to be plain, you are getting middle-aged. do you like it?”
“i hate it!” i answered, with beautiful sincerity.
“would you thank the man who should arrest, not the beneficent passage of time, which means progress, but the wear and tear of nerve and muscle, tissue, and 266bone, the slow deterioration of the blood by the microbes of old age, for metchnikoff has shown that there is no difference between the atrophy of senility and the atrophy caused by microbe poison? would you thank him—the man who should do that for you? tell me, my friend.”
i replied, briefly and succinctly: “wouldn’t i?”
“ha!” exclaimed the professor, “i thought so!”
“but i should have liked him to have begun earlier,” i said. “twenty-nine is a nice age, now.... it is the age we all try to stop at, and can’t, however much we try. look there!”
a landau limousine, dark blue, beautifully varnished, nickel-plated, and upholstered in cream-white leather, came gliding gracefully through the press of vehicles. from the crest upon the panel to the sober workmanlike livery of the chauffeur, the turn-out was perfection. the pearl it contained was worthy of the setting.
“look there?” i repeated, as the rose-cheeked, sapphire-eyed, smiling vision passed, wrapped in a voluminous coat of chinchilla and silver fox, with a toque of parma violets under the shimmer of the silken veil that could only temper the burning glory of her wonderful renaissance hair.
“there’s the exception to the rule.... there’s a woman who doesn’t need the aid of science or of art to keep her at nine and twenty. there’s a woman in whom ‘the wear and tear of nerve and muscle, tissue and bone’ goes on—if it does go on—imperceptibly. her blood doesn’t seem to be much deteriorated by the microbe of old age, professor, does it? and she’s forty-three! the alchemistical forty-three, that turns the gold of life back into lead! the gold remains gold in her case, for that hair, that complexion, that figure, are,” i solemnly declared, “her own.”
267at that moment lady clanbevan gave a smiling gracious nod to the professor, and he responded with a cold, grave bow. the glow of her gorgeous hair, the liquid sapphire of her eyes, were wasted on this stony man of science. she passed, going home to stanhope gate, i suppose, in which neighborhood she has a house; i had barely a moment to notice the white-bonneted, blue-cloaked nurse on the front of the landau, holding a bundle of laces and cashmeres, and to reflect that i have never yet seen lady clanbevan taking the air out of the society of a baby, when the professor spoke:
“so lady clanbevan is the one woman who has no need of the aid of art or science to preserve her beauty and maintain her appearance of youth? supposing i could prove to you otherwise, my friend, what then?”
“i should say,” i returned, “that you had proved what everybody else denies. even the enemies of that modern ninon de l’enclos, who has just passed——”
“with the nurse and the baby?” interpolated the professor.
“with the nurse and the baby,” said i. “even her enemies—and they are legion—admit the genuineness of the charms they detest. mentioning the baby, do you know that for twenty years i have never seen lady clanbevan out without a baby? she must have quite a regiment of children—children of all ages, sizes, and sexes.”
“upon the contrary,” said the professor, “she has only one!”
“the others have all died young, then?” i asked sympathetically, and was rendered breathless by the rejoinder:
“lady clanbevan is a widow.”
“one never asks questions about the husband of a professional beauty,” i said. “his individuality is 268merged in hers from the day upon which her latest photograph assumes a marketable value. are you sure there isn’t a lord clanbevan alive somewhere?”
“there is a lord clanbevan alive,” said the professor coldly. “you have just seen him, in his nurse’s arms. he is the only child of his mother, and she has been a widow for nearly twenty years! you do not credit what i assert, my friend?”
“how can i, professor?” i asked, turning to meet his full face, and noticed that his dark, somewhat opaque brown irises had lights and gleams of carbuncle-crimson in them. “i have had lady clanbevan and her progeny under my occasional observation for years. the world grows older, if she doesn’t, and she has invariably a baby—toujours a new baby—to add to the charming illusion of young motherhood which she sustains so well. and now you tell me that she is a twenty-years’ widow with one child, who must be nearly of age—or it isn’t proper. you puzzle me painfully!”
“would you care,” asked the professor after a moment’s pause, “to drive back to harley street with me? i am, as you know, a vegetarian, so i will not tax your politeness by inviting you to lunch. but i have something in my laboratory i should wish to show you.”
“of all things, i should like to come,” i said. “how many times haven’t i fished fruitlessly for an invitation to visit the famous laboratory where nearly twenty years ago——”
“i traced,” said the professor, “the source of phenomena which heralded the evolution of the r?ntgen ray and the ultimate discovery of the radio-active salt they have christened radium. i called it protium twenty years ago, because of its various and protean qualities. why did i not push on—perfect the discovery and anticipate 269sir william c—— and the x——’s? there was a reason. you will understand it before you leave my laboratory.”
the baby-bunting stopped at the unfashionable end of harley street, in front of the dingy yellow house with the black front door, flanked by dusty boxes of mildewed dwarf evergreens, and the professor, relieved of his fur-lined coat and cap, led the way upstairs as lightly as a boy. two garret-rooms had been knocked together for a laboratory. there was a tiled furnace at the darker end of the long skylighted room thus made, and solid wooden tables much stained with spilt chemicals, were covered with scales, glasses, jars, and retorts—all the tools of chemistry. from one of the many shelves running round the walls, the professor took down a circular glass flask and placed it in my hands. the flask contained a handful of decayed and moldy-looking wheat, and a number of peculiarly offensive-looking little beetles with tapir-like proboscides.
“the perfectly developed beetle of the calandria granaria,” said the professor, as i cheerfully resigned the flask, “a common british weevil, whose larv? feed upon stored grain. now look at this.” he reached down and handed me a precisely similar flask, containing another handful of grain, cleaner and sounder in appearance, and a number of grubs, sharp-ended chrysalis-like things buried in the grain, inert and inactive.
“the larv? of calandria granaria,” said the professor, in his drawling monotone. “how long does it take to hatch the beetle from the grub? you ask. less than a month. the perfect weevils that i have just shown you i placed in their flask a little more than three weeks back. the grubs you see in the flask you are holding, and which, as you will observe by their anxiety to bury themselves in the grain so as to avoid contact with the 270light, are still immature, i placed in the glass receptacle twenty years ago. don’t drop the flask—i value it.”
“professor!” i gasped.
“twenty years ago,” repeated the professor, delicately handling the venerable grubs, “i enclosed these grubs in this flask, with sufficient grain to fully nourish them and bring them to the perfect state. in another flask i placed a similar number of grubs in exactly the same quantity of wheat. then for twenty-four hours i exposed flask number one to the rays emanating from what is now called radium. and as the electrons discharged from radium are obstructed by collision with air-atoms, i exhausted the air contained in the flask.” he paused.
“then, when the grubs in flask number two hatched out,” i anticipated, “and the larv? in flask number one remained stationary, you realized——”
“i realized that the rays from the salt arrested growth, and at the same time prolonged to an almost incalculable extent,” said the professor—“for you will understand that the grubs in flask number one had lived as grubs half a dozen times as long as grubs usually do.... and i said to myself that the discovery presented an immense, a tremendous field for future development. suppose a young woman of, say, twenty-nine were enclosed in a glass receptacle of sufficient bulk to contain her, and exposed for a few hours to my protium rays, she would retain for many years to come—until she was a great-grandmother of ninety!—the same charming, youthful appearance——”
“as lady clanbevan!” i cried, as the truth rushed upon me and i grasped the meaning this astonishing man had intended to convey.
“as lady clanbevan presents to-day,” said the professor, “thanks to the discovery of a——”
271“of a great man,” said i, looking admiringly at the lean worn figure in the closely-buttoned black frock-coat.
“i loved her.... it was a delight to her to drag a disciple of science at her chariot-wheels. people talked of me as a coming man. perhaps i was.... but i did not thirst for distinction, honors, fame.... i thirsted for that woman’s love.... i told her of my discovery—as i told her everything. bah!” his lean nostrils worked. “you know the game that is played when one is in earnest and the other at play. she promised nothing, she walked delicately among the passions she sowed and fostered in the souls of men, as a beautiful tigress walks among the poison-plants of the jungle. she saw that rightly used, or wrongly used, my great discovery might save her beauty, her angelic, dazzling beauty that had as yet but felt the first touch of time. she planned the whole thing, and when she said, ‘you do not love me if you will not do this,’ i did it. i was mad when i acceded to her wish, perhaps; but she is a woman to drive men frenzied. you have seen how coldly, how slightingly she looked at me when we encountered her in the row? i tell you—you have guessed already—i went there to see her. i always go where she is to be encountered, when she is in town. and she bows, always; but her eyes are those of a stranger. yet i have had her on her knees to me. she cried and begged and kissed my hands.”
he knotted his thin hands, their fingers brown-tipped with the stains of acids, and wrung and twisted them ferociously.
“and so i granted what she asked, carried out the experiment, and paid what you english call the piper. the giant glass bulb with the rubber-valve door was blown and finished in france. it involved an expense of three hundred pounds. the salt i used—of protium (christened radium now)—cost me all my savings—over 272two thousand pounds—for i had been a struggling man——”
“but the experiment?” i broke in. “good heavens, professor! how could a living being remain for any time in an exhausted receiver? agony unspeakable, convulsions, syncope, death! one knows what the result would be. the merest common sense——”
“the merest common sense is not what one employs to make discoveries or carry out great experiments,” said the professor. “i will not disclose my method; i will only admit to you that the subject—the subjects were insensible; that i induced an?sthesia by the ordinary ether-pump apparatus, and that the strength of the ray obtained was concentrated to such a degree that the exposure was complete in three hours.” he looked about him haggardly. “the experiment took place here nineteen years ago—nineteen years ago, and it seems to me as though it were yesterday.”
“and it must seem like yesterday to lady clanbevan—whenever she looks in the glass,” i said. “but you have pricked my curiosity, professor, by the use of the plural. who was the other subject?”
“is it possible you don’t guess?” the sad, hollow eyes questioned my face in surprise. then they turned haggardly away. “my friend, the other subject associated with lady clanbevan in my great experiment was—her baby!”
i could not speak. the dowdy little grubs in the flask became for me creatures imbued with dreadful potentialities.... the tragedy and the sublime absurdity of the thing i realized caught at my throat, and my brain grew dizzy with its horror.
“oh! professor!” i gurgled, “how—how grimly, awfully, tragically ridiculous! to carry about with one wherever one goes a baby that never grows older—a baby——”
273“a baby nearly twenty years old? yes, it is as you say, ridiculous and horrible,” the professor agreed.
“what could have induced the woman!” burst from me.
the professor smiled bitterly.
“she is greedy of money. it is the only thing she loves—except her beauty and her power over men; and during the boy’s infancy—that word is used in the will—she has full enjoyment of the estate. after he ‘attains to manhood’—i quote the will again—hers is but a life-interest. now you understand?”
i did understand, and the daring of the woman dazzled me. she had made the professor doubly her tool.
“and so,” i gurgled between tears and laughter, “lord clanbevan, who ought to be leaving eton this year to commence his first oxford term, is being carried about in the arms of a nurse, arrayed in the flowing garments of a six-months’ baby! what an astonishing conspiracy!”
“his mother,” continued the professor calmly, “allows no one to approach him but the nurse. the family are only too glad to ignore what they consider a deplorable case of atavistic growth-arrest, and the boy himself——” he broke off. “i have detained you,” he said, after a pause. “i will not do so longer. nor will i offer you my hand. i am as conscious as you are—that it has committed a crime.” and he bowed me out with his hands sternly held behind him. there were few more words between us, only i remember turning on the threshold of the laboratory, where i left him, to ask whether protium—radium, as it is now christened—checks the growth of every organic substance? the answer i received was curious:
“certainly, with the exception of the nails and the hair!”
274a week later the professor was found dead in his laboratory.... there were reports of suicide—hushed up. people said he had been more eccentric than ever of late, and theorized about brain-mischief; only i located the trouble in the heart. a year went by, and i had almost forgotten lady clanbevan—for she went abroad after the professor’s death—when at a little watering-place on the dorset coast, i saw that lovely thing, as lovely as ever—she who was fifty if a day! with her were the blue-cloaked elderly nurse and lord clanbevan, borne, as usual, in the arms of his attendant, or wheeled in a luxurious perambulator. day after day i encountered them—the lovely mother, the middle-aged nurse, and the mysterious child—until the sight began to get on my nerves. had the professor selected me as the recipient of a secret unrivaled in the records of biological discovery, or had he been the victim of some maniacal delusion that cold october day when we met in rotten row? one peep under the thick white lace veil with which the baby’s face was invariably covered would clear everything up! oh! for a chance to allay the pangs of curiosity!
the chance came. it was a hot, waspy august forenoon. everybody was indoors with all the doors and windows open, lunching upon the innutritive viands alone procurable at health resorts—everybody but myself, lord clanbevan, and his nurse. she had fallen asleep upon a green-painted esplanade seat, gratuitously shielded by a striped awning. lord clanbevan’s c-springed, white-hooded, cane-built perambulator stood close beside her. he was, as usual, a mass of embroidered cambric and cashmere, and, as always, thickly veiled, his regular breathing heaved his infant breast; the thick white lace drapery attached to his beribboned bonnet obscured the features upon which i so ardently longed to gaze! it was the chance, as i have said; and 275as the head of the blue-cloaked nurse dropped reassuringly upon her breast, as she emitted the snore that gave assurance of the soundness of her slumbers, i stepped silently on the gravel towards the baby’s perambulator. three seconds, and i stood over its apparently sleeping inmate; another, and i had lifted the veil from the face of the mystery—and dropped it with a stifled cry of horror!
the child had a moustache!
