Part 42 (2/2)
”It is exactly as I at first told you,”--he said--”The man is strong in muscle and sinew,--but his brain is ruined. It can no longer control or command the body's mechanism,--therefore the body is practically useless. Power of volition is gone,--the poor fellow will never be able to walk again or to lift a hand. A certain faculty of speech is left,--but even this is limited to a few words which are evidently the result of the last prevailing thoughts impressed on the brain-cells. It is possible he will repeat those words thousands of times!--the oftener he repeats them the more he will like to say them.”
”What are they?” Morgana asked in a tone of sorrow and compa.s.sion.
”Strange enough for a man in his condition”--replied Ardini--”And always the same. 'THERE SHALL BE NO MORE WARS! THERE CAN BE NONE! I SAY IT!--_I_ ONLY! IT IS MY GREAT SECRET! _I_ AM MASTER OF THE WORLD!' Poor devil! What a 'master of the world' is there!”
Morgana shuddered as with cold, shading her eyes from the radiant suns.h.i.+ne.
”Does he say nothing else?” she murmured--”Is there no name--no place--that he seems to remember?”
”He remembers nothing--he knows nothing”--answered Ardini--”He does not even realize me as a man--I might be a fish or a serpent for all his comprehension. One glance at his moveless eyes is enough to prove that.
They are like pebbles in his head--without cognisance or expression. He mutters the words 'Great Secret' over and over again, and tacks it on to the other phrase of 'No more wars' in a semi-conscious sort of gabble,--this is, of course, the disordered action of the brain working to catch up and join together hopelessly severed fragments.”
Morgana lifted her sea-blue eyes and looked with grave appeal into the severely intellectual, half-frowning face of the great Professor.
”Is there no hope of an ultimate recovery?” she asked--”With time and rest and the best of unceasing care, might not this poor brain right itself?”
”Medically and scientifically speaking, there is no hope,--none whatever”--he replied--”Though of course we all know that Nature's remedial methods are inexhaustible, and often, to the wisest of us, seem miraculous, because as yet we do not understand one t.i.the of her processes. But--in this case,--this strange and terrible case”--and he uttered the words with marked gravity,--”It is Nature's own force that has wrought the damage,--some powerful influence which the man has been testing has proved too much for him--and it has taken its own vengeance.”
Morgana heard this with strained interest and attention.
”Tell me just what you mean,”--she said--”There is something you do not quite express--or else I am too slow to understand--”
Ardini took a few paces up and down the loggia and then halted, facing her in the att.i.tude of a teacher preparing to instruct a pupil.
”Signora,”--he said--”When you began to correspond with me some years ago from America, I realised that I was in touch with a highly intelligent and cultivated mind. I took you to be many years older than you are, with a ripe scientific experience. I find you young, beautiful, and pathetic in the pure womanliness of your nature, which must be perpetually contending with an indomitable power of intellectuality and of spirituality,--spirituality is the strongest force of your being. You are not made like other women. This being so I can say to you what other women would not understand. Science is my life-subject, as it is yours,--it is a window set open in the universe admitting great light. But many of us foolishly imagine that this light emanates from ourselves as a result of our own cleverness, whereas it comes from that Divine Source of all things, which we call G.o.d. We refuse to believe this,--it wounds our pride. And we use the discoveries of science recklessly and selfishly--without grat.i.tude, humbleness or reverence. So it happens that the first tendency of G.o.dless men is to destroy. The love of destruction and torture shows itself in the boy who tears off the wing of an insect, or kills a bird for the pleasure of killing. The boy is father of the man. And we come, after much ignorant denial and obstinacy, back to the inexorable truth that 'they who take the sword shall perish with the sword.' If we consider the 'sword' as a metaphor for every instrument of destruction, we shall see the force of its application--the submarine, for example, built for the most treacherous kind of sea-warfare--how often they that undertake its work are slain themselves! And so it is through the whole gamut of scientific discovery when it is used for inhuman and unlawful purposes. But when this same 'sword' is lifted to put an end to torture, disease, and the manifold miseries of life, then the Power that has entrusted it to mankind endows it with blessing and there are no evil results. I say this to you by way of explaining the view I am forced to take of this man whose strange case you ask me to deal with,--my opinion is that through chance or intention he has been playing recklessly with a great natural force, which he has not entirely understood, for some destructive purpose, and that it has recoiled on himself.”
Morgana looked him steadily in the eyes.
”You may be right,”--she said--”He is--or was--one of the most brilliant of our younger scientists. You know his name--I have sent you from New York some accounts of his work--He is Roger Seaton, whose experiments in the condensation of radioactivity startled America some four or five years ago--”
”Roger Seaton!” he exclaimed--”What! The man who professed to have found a new power which would change the face of the world? ...
He,--this wreck?--this blind, deaf lump of breathing clay? Surely he has not fallen on so horrible a destiny!”
Tears rushed to Morgana's eyes,--she could not answer. She could only bend her head in a.s.sent.
Profoundly moved, Ardini took her hand, and kissed it with sympathetic reverence.
”Signora,” he said--”This is indeed a tragedy! You have saved this life at I know not what risk to yourself--and as I am aware what a life of great attainment it promised to be, you may be sure I will spare no pains to bring it back to normal conditions. But frankly I do not think it will be possible. There is the woman who loves him--her influence may do something--”
”If he ever loved her--yes”--and Morgana smiled rather sadly--”But if he did not--if the love is all on her side--”
Ardini shrugged his shoulders.
”A great love is always on the woman's side,”--he said--”Men are too selfish to love perfectly. In this case, of course, there is no emotion, no sentiment of any sort left in the mere hulk of man. But still I will continue my work and do my best.”
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