"Thus, gentlemen, the whole thing comes to this. It matters not how much morphine this woman had taken herself, prior to her illness; it matters not how diseased were her kidneys: the cause of her death was that last dose of morphine, and you have to decide whether this man administered it as the nurse tells us, or whether the weak convalescent mixed and prepared the drug, and then injected it herself. We claim that Dr. Medjora administered that last dose, and that by that act he committed the crime of murder. And remember this, that if you decide that he administered that morphine, your verdict must be murder in the first degree, for having denied that he gave the drug at all, he cannot claim now that he gave it with no intention to destroy life. Gentlemen, you are the final arbiters in this matter."
The Recorder immediately charged the jury, but though he spoke at considerable length, I need scarcely give his speech here, as it was chiefly an explanation of the law. He was eminently impartial in all that he said, and it was surprising, therefore, how many objections and exceptions were entered by the defence. At last the jury was sent out, and the long wait began. The hours passed slowly and still those present remained in their seats, loath to risk being absent when the verdict should be announced.
It was nearly ten o'clock at night, and the jury had been out five hours, when word was sent in, that a verdict had been found. The Recorder a few moments later resumed his seat, and the jury filed in. After the usual formalities, the foreman arose and announced the following verdict:
"We find the prisoner, Dr. Emanuel Medjora, not guilty."
The words were received almost in silence by all present. Above the stillness a deep sob was heard at the farther end of the room. This had escaped from the tightly compressed lips of Madame Cora Corona.
BOOK SECOND
CHAPTER I.
ONE NIGHT
"Leon! Leon!"
The cry was low and weak, and the suffering woman fell back upon her pillow. The youth, though asleep, heard, and quickly responded to the call. He had been sitting in the large arm-chair, beside a rude wooden table, upon which stood a common glass lamp, with red wick, whose flickering flame shed but a dim ray across the well-thumbed pages of a book which lay open. While reading under such unfavorable circumstances, the boy had slumbered, his mind drifting slowly toward dream-land, yet not beyond the voice of the sufferer. She had scarcely repeated his name, when he was kneeling beside her, speaking in a voice that was tender and solicitous.
"What is it, mother?" he asked.
"Nothing," was the reply.
"Do you wish to drink?"
"No."
"Are you in pain?"
"Yes. But no matter."
"Will you take your medicine?"
"No. Leon, I want to tell you something."
"Not to-night, mother. You must sleep to-night. To-morrow you may talk."
"Leon, when I sleep to-night, it will be forever."
"Do not talk so, mother. You are nervous. Perhaps the darkness oppresses you. I will turn up the light."
He did so, but the lamp only spluttered, flaring up brighter for a moment, only to burn as dull as before.
"You see," said the old woman, with a ghastly smile, "there will be no more light in my life."
"Indeed there will be."
"I tell you no!" She spoke fiercely, and summoned all her waning energy to her aid, as she struggled to raise herself upon her elbow. Then, extending a bony finger in his direction and shaking it in emphasis of her words, she continued: "I tell you I am dying. Death is here; in this room; I see his form, and I feel his cold fingers on my forehead. Sh! Sh! Listen! Do you not hear? A voice from the darkness is calling – 'Confess! Confess!'" Then with a feeble cry she dropped back, moaning and groaning as in anguish.
"Mother! Mother! Lie still! Do not talk so." Leon was much agitated by the scene which had just transpired. The woman was quiet for a time, except that she sobbed, but presently she addressed him again.
"Leon, I must talk. I must tell. But don't call me mother."
"Why not?
How frequently in life do we thus rush ruthlessly upon unsuspected crises in our fates? Leon said these words, with no thought of their import, and with no foreboding of what would follow. How could he guess that from the moment of their utterance his life would be changed, and his boyhood lost to him forever, because of the momentousness of the reply which he invited?
When the woman spoke again, her voice was so low that the youth leaned down to hear her words. She said:
"Leon, you have been a good son to me. But – I am not your mother." Having spoken the words with a sadness in her heart, which found echo in the cadence of her voice, she turned her face wearily away from the youth, and waited for his reply. And he, though astounded by what he had heard, did not at the time fully connect the words with himself, but recognized only the misery which their utterance had caused to the suffering woman. With gentleness as tender as a loving woman's, he turned her face to his, touched her lips with his, and softly said:
"You are my mother! The only mother that I have ever known!" Oh! The weakness of human kind, which, at the touch of a loving hand, the sound of a loving voice, yields up its most sacred principles! This dying woman had lived from birth till now in a secluded New England village, and, imbibing her puritanical instincts from her ancestry, she almost deemed it a sin to smile, or show any outward sign of happiness. She had been a mother to this boy, according to her bigoted ideas; she had been good to him in her own way; but she had kissed him but once, and then he was going upon a journey. Yet now, as overcome by his intense sympathy, his long-suppressed love welled out from his heart toward her, with a happy cry she nestled close within his arms, and cried for joy, a joy that was hers for the first time, yet which might have illumined all her declining days, had she not brushed it away from her.
A long silence ensued, presently broken by the woman, as she slowly related the following story.
"Years ago, no matter how many, I was a pretty woman, and a vain one. I had admirers, but I loved none as I loved myself. But at last one came, and then my life was changed. I loved him, and I began to despise myself. For the more I saw and loved him, the less likely it seemed that he could love me. I used all my arts in vain. My prettiest frocks, my most coquettish glances, were all wasted on him. It seemed to me that I had not even made him see that I might be won, if he would woo. He went away, and I thought that I would never meet him again, for he had been but a summer visitor. My heart was broken, and besides my pride was hurt, for I suffered the bitterness of being taunted with my failure by my sisters. A year later, he came to me again. Several months before, I had gone to live in Boston, but in some way he had found me out. To my surprise, he told me that he knew that I loved him. He said that he had not offered me his love, because he was already married. Then he asked me to do him a favor. I gladly assented, without knowing what he would ask, for I would have sacrificed anything for him, I loved him so. The next day he brought me a beautiful baby boy. He told me it was his, that his wife was ill, and that he wished me to care for the baby for a year, whilst he went to Europe. I undertook the charge, without considering the consequences. I returned to the farm, bound to secrecy as to the child's parentage. Very soon I discovered that my friends shunned me, and then I learned that by taking you, Leon, I had lost my good name. Well! I did not care. You were his baby! You had his eyes, and so my heart grew hard against the world, but I determined to keep the baby whose fingers had already gripped my heart. Then, shut out from all friendships, scorned even by my sisters to whom I had refused to make any explanation, I began to pray that something, anything, would happen so that you should not be taken from me. My wicked prayer was answered, for later I learned that the young mother had died, and I was to continue caring for you. At first my joy was very great, but soon I recognized, that you were mine only because I had prayed for the death of your mother. The Lord had granted my wish, as an everlasting punishment for my sinful longing. Thenceforward, however much I yearned to press you to my heart, I have not dared to do so. I have tried to accept the chastisement of the Lord with meekness of spirit. And so I have had my wish! I have kept you with me, ever to be a reproach for my sin. But I thank the Lord, that at the end he has allowed me to have one full moment of happiness. He has granted me the boon to see that my boy has learned to love me in spite of all my harshness. You have kissed me, Leon, and called me mother. Oh! God! Thy will be done!"
Then with a smile almost of beatitude, she sank down lower, and nestled closer to her long-denied love. Leon stooped and kissed her again, but did not speak. His heart was full, and his emotions rose within his breast, so that he felt a curious sensation of fulness in his throat, which warned him not to essay speech.
In silence they remained so for a time, not computed by either. She was lost in thoughts such as have been aroused in many hearts by the poet's magic words, "It might have been!" This boy was his, and might have been hers, if – ! Ah! What chasms have been bridged by these two letters, which form this little, mighty word!
Leon began to grasp, but slowly, all that the future would hold for him with the added knowledge granted to him this night. He pondered over the past, and remembering how stern had been his life, and how austere had been the manner of this woman who had been his mother, and adding up the sum of all, he wondered that he had found such love for her within his heart. For his love had been recognized by himself as suddenly as he had given fervent expression to it, when he embraced that mother who denied her motherhood. If the poet's words which I have quoted conceal a thought of sadness within their meaning, what woe resides within the thought encompassed by those other words, "Too late!" To both of these, the woman and the boy, the recognition of the joys of love, had come too late. As this thought at last penetrated the mind of the dreaming youth, he started, awakening from his abstraction. At the same moment, the lamp flared up, flickered, and went out. Then as darkness enshrouded him, so deep that he almost felt it touch his brow, he shivered, and a long moan escaped him followed by an anguished cry:
"Mother!"
At last he realized what he had heard. In two ways was he to lose what all good men hold dearest on this earth: a mother. First, she denied the relationship; second, she had told him that she was dying. No answer came back to his cry. The woman in his arms made no sound. She did not stir. He leaned his ear against her heart. It had ceased to beat. She was dead. Her spirit had slipped away, unnoticed by the loving boy whose arms encircled her shrivelled form, but whose love full surely lighted her way up among the stars! Up, to that mysterious realm, too vast for human thought, too limitless for human mind; where the sinning and the sinless meet their deserts. However much of wrong or of error there had been in her life, in the moment of death she found true happiness; and I am grateful to her for arousing the thought, that we may all end our lives in peace. And so I leave her.
But the boy? The youth now left to buffet with the world alone? I will ask you to follow him as, with a heart crowded with anguish and resentment, he rushed bareheaded out into the night, and swiftly sped through the wood. For he is well worth following. He has reached an important epoch in his life, a turning point at which he abandons his boyish past and becomes a man.
Could he have been asked why he ran, or whither, he would have found himself bewildered and at a loss for a reply. Yet it is easily explainable. His home-life had never been attractive to him, nor in any way satisfying to his temperament, which, indeed, as we shall see, was such that he was ever in ill-concealed rebellion against the restraints of his surroundings, which threatened to crush his intellectual yearnings. Nevertheless, it was his home, so endeared to him by long association, that the sudden realization of the complex idea, first, that he did love this home, and second that he would now lose it forever, coming to him instantaneously, overwhelmed him.
He felt a dull pain in his breast, which made him almost imagine that some heavy body had been thrust within his bosom, and weighed heavily against his heart, interfering with that vital organ, so that the blood coursed sluggishly, and the lungs were loath to do their duty. Thus stifling, though only in imagination, he was instinctively compelled to rush out into the air, which cooled the fever in his veins. He ran, impelled by a mysterious feeling akin to fear, yet not fear, which exists within the breasts of all mankind, however loudly one individual may declare himself exempt, and which is aroused when one is suddenly brought into the presence of the dead, alone, and for the first time. Leon had never seen death before, although he had of course seen the dead, coffined and made ready for the grave. But he now passed through an entirely new experience. In one moment he held within his arms a living, breathing being whom he loved; and in the next he gazed upon a voiceless, senseless, shocking thing, and loathed it. It was from this thing, and from the house where this thing now lay, that he was running. But, as I have said, he did not know it at the time, and probably would have spurned the suggestion a day later. But, the fact remains that it was true.
Where he was going, is explainable by a simpler course of analysis. He was going to the lake. He was going to his boat. He was going out upon the water away from the companionship of that dead thing on land. He was going out upon the water, to be alone, and to find solace in his loneliness. In this, he but followed involuntarily a habit which he had practised for several years. When his home-life had pressed most hardly upon him at times, he had slipped away from the little farm, and rowed his boat out upon the lake, for self-communion and comfort. So now, without realizing that he had chosen any special direction in his flight, or that he had any fixed purpose in his mind, he ran swiftly along the wood-choppers' path, until at length he stopped panting on a bit of narrow beach. He stood silent for a moment, and then concluded to get his boat and go out upon the lake. Or rather, he thought that he formed this decision at that moment, but really it originated when he turned towards the lake, rather than towards the next neighbor. It was therefore not companionship, but solitude which he sought.
Within five minutes he was rowing lustily across the mirror-like surface of Massabesic, out towards the widest portion. The day had been insufferably warm, it being mid-summer, but in this region the nights are usually cool. This night was balmy. Mars had appeared, a glowing red ball, above the eastern horizon, early in the evening, and an hour later the almost full moon had climbed up high enough to shed her silver rays across the waters. Later still the breeze had died away, and slowly the bosom of the lake grew quiet, as though even the waters had drifted into slumberous repose. When Leon started out in his boat, almost immediately his ruffled soul recognized the influence of the deadly calm surrounding him, for though at first he dipped his oars deep, and rowed vigorously, making the light bark leap upward at every pull, before he had gone a quarter of a mile, he stroked his oars with lessening vehemence, and presently, as though thoroughly awed by the stillness, and fearful of creating the noise even of a ripple, he was straining every nerve to dip and withdraw his oars, and to move his boat along without a sound. After a few minutes of this, he slowly raised both oars, letting them rest across the gunwales until the last drop of water had dripped off, and the last series of circles caused thereby had disappeared, and then, with the care and delicacy of one who moves about a chamber where some loved one is asleep who must not be disturbed, he placed his oars gently in the boat, and sat motionless.
Already Mars had almost reached the tops of the trees along the western banks, and, attracted by it, Leon gazed upon the planet until it disappeared. He had been still for ten minutes, and having recognized that all was quiet about him, and having abandoned his rowing, he was now mildly surprised to observe that his boat was in a totally different position; that in fact he had drifted a long distance. This awakened him slightly from his reverie, for here was a new bit of knowledge about a body of water with which he had been acquainted since his earliest recollection. He had never known, nor even suspected, that in a calm there could be a current. He endeavored to calculate by observation how fast he was moving; but the task was difficult. He could readily discern that since abandoning his oars he had moved a hundred yards, but, however intently he gazed upon the shores, he could not detect that he was moving. He pondered over this for a time, and being of a philosophical turn of mind, and fond of speculating, he likened his position at the moment, to life in general. However little we suspect it, there is an unseen but potent energy which urges us forward towards – the grave, and – whatever follows death.
This idea pleased him for a moment, for the analogy was a new one and original with himself, in so far, that he had never head it from another. Quickly, however, returning to the more practical problem, he determined to find a way to ascertain the rapidity with which his boat was moving. Placing a fishing-rod upright before him, and then closing one eye, gazing with the other at a conspicuous object along the horizon, immediately he could see, not only that he was moving, but that the motion was more rapid than he had suspected. Having thus satisfied the immediate and momentary questioning of an inquiring mind, his previous mental state, his loneliness and desolation, returned upon him with redoubled force. A moment later, Nature offered him another abstraction. Looking into the water he saw mirrored there the reflection of the moon. Not the stream of undulating silver over which poets have raved these many years, and which painters have fruitlessly essayed to convey to canvass, but the glorious, full, round orb itself. This he had never seen before, and he wondered why it should be. Almost as though in answer to his thought, a faint zephyr breathed across the surface of the waters, and beginning near the shores, the ripples rolled towards him, and with them brought the shimmering moonlight until all in a moment, the reflected orb had disappeared, and the usual silvery line of light replaced it. Thus he saw, that only water in motion will show the moonbeams, whilst a mirror, whether it be of glass, or the still bosom of the lake, reflects but the moon itself.
Again he returned to the bitterness of his night's experience, and now, no longer attracted by the moon, and not caring how fast or whither he drifted, he lay back in his boat, pillowing his head upon a cushion on the seat in the stern, and gazed up into the sky thus oblivious of the landscape and so without an indication of his progress.
His mind reverted to the house, and the dead woman. She was not his mother. Then who was she? Or rather who was he? She was, or had been, Margaret Grath, and he had thought that he was entitled to the name Leon Grath. But if she was not, or had not been, his mother, then plainly he had no right to her name. On considering this, he concluded that it was his privilege to call himself Leon, but the last name Grath, being obtainable legally only by inheritance, he must abandon. When the word "inheritance" crossed his thoughts, involuntarily a loud mocking laugh escaped him. And when the sonorous echoes laughed with him, he laughed again, and again. The drollery which aroused his mirth, was that, if a name might be inherited, why might not Margaret Grath have bequeathed hers to him? Perhaps she might have mentioned it in her will? But no! A name is a heritage acquired at birth, whilst only chattels are included in an inheritance which follows a death. Evidently he was nameless, except that he might be called Leon, just as his collie answered to the name Lossy. This made him laugh again. For now he thought that his dog had fared better than himself, for he was called "The Marquis of Lossy," after MacDonald's Malcolm. Thus the collie was of noble blood, whilst he was – only Leon, the child of nobody. As he reached this point, the moon dipped down below the western hill, the upper edge shedding its last rays across the boy and his boat, after which he was indeed enshrouded by the night. It seemed colder too, now that the orb had gone, and insensibly he felt in some way more alone. True, there were the stars, still twinkling in the firmament, but they seemed far away, like his own future. Still Leon dreamed on.
As he could not lift the veil which parted him from what was to be, he wandered back in thought, recalling what had been.
The Theosophist says that man has lived before upon this planet, inhabiting many corporeal forms, and drifting through many earthly existences. The Sceptic cries: "Ridiculous! but, granting the postulate, of what advantage is it to have lived before, or to live again, if in each earth-life I cannot recall those that have gone before?" Yet, without arguing for Theosophy, might I not remind this sceptic that he enjoys his life to-day, even though he might find it difficult to recall yesterday, or the day before, or a week, a month, a year ago? How many of us in looking backward over life's path, can summon up the phantoms of more than a few days? Days on which occurred some events of special moment?
The first landmark along his life's path, which stood out conspicuous among Leon's garnered memories, was his first visit to the church. Margaret Grath had dressed him in his brightest frock, curled his hair, and placed upon his head his newest bonnet. His heart had swelled with pride, as he trotted beside the tall, gaunt, New England woman, who walked with long strides, and held his hands, lest he should lag behind. But though his legs grew tired, he offered no rebellion, for he had often looked upon the red brick building, with wondering eyes, and his ears had oft been mystified at the tolling of the bell which swung and sounded, though moved by no hand that he could see, nor means that he could understand. He marvelled at the outside of the building, its steeple marking it a house apart from every other in the village, and he long had yearned to see it from within. On this day, to which his thought now turned, he had his wish. He followed Miss Grath down the aisle, clinging to her skirts, a little frightened at the people sitting straight and stiff, and he was rejoiced when he found himself at last on a comfortable cushion in the pew. The cushion was a treat; being his first experience with such luxury, and confirmed his idea that the church was better than other houses. Presently he began to be accustomed to his surroundings, having viewed all the walls, the roof, the organ, and the pulpit, until his active mind was satisfied so far as concerned the building itself. Then he began to feel the silence, and he did not like it. He longed to speak, but did not dare, because when he timidly looked up, Miss Grath, catching his glance, scowled reproachfully, and looked straight before her. Small and young as he was, he had learned to know this woman with whom he lived, and he needed no more explicit warning to hold his tongue. So he sat still, adding to the silence which oppressed him.
It was with a sigh of relief that he saw the preacher rise, and heard him speak; and it was with a throb of intense joy that his heart warmed as the notes of the organ reached him for the first time in his life. Thenceforward he was interested up to the point where the sermon began. The tiresome monotone in which this was delivered, and the impossibility of his comprehending what was said, soon fatigued his little brain, and then lulled him to sleep.
I may mention parenthetically, what of course did not now enter Leon's mind, for he never knew the subject of that first sermon which had been preached at him. If it had been incomprehensible to the child, the woman had understood well enough, for it had been aimed at her especially. The preacher, I cannot call him a minister, for he truly ministered unto none except himself, the preacher then, was a cold, hard Scotchman, High Church of course. He firmly believed in the damnation of infants, and a Hell of which the component parts would be brimstone and fire in proper proportions. He also believed in the efficacy of prayer, especially of his own. Therefore, it not infrequently happened, that when any one incurred his ill will, which was not difficult, he would offer up a prayer, consigning said individual to the hottest tortures of the world below. He did this so adroitly, that, while there were no plain personalities in his words, his description of the sinner would be so specific, that the party of the second part readily identified himself as the central figure of the excoriation.
Now this saintly preacher had at one time demeaned himself, or so he thought, sufficiently low to offer himself in marriage to Miss Margaret Grath. She had declined the honor, and he had hated her ever after. Like all true women, however, she had kept his secret, so that none of the congregation knowing the relation which existed, or which might have existed, between them, none could read between the lines of his sermons, when he chose to lash her by a savage denunciation of any mild backsliding, of which she might have been guilty, and himself cognizant. Her return to the village with the child, who had no visible father, and no mother, unless the guesses of the gossips were correct, had afforded him opportunity for a most masterly peroration. But he belched forth his greatest eloquence on that Sunday morning, when she had the temerity to bring into the sacred confines of his sanctuary this fatherless boy, for whose sake she had chosen to live a lonely life. If his prayer of that morning proved efficacious, then surely the infant was damned, and the woman's soul consigned to endless Purgatory. Thus the day to which Leon recurred in thought, was a landmark in another life beside his, and I have turned aside for a moment to relate this incident, that the character of Miss Grath may be better comprehended, for in spite of all that she had suffered through the animosity of the preacher, she had never omitted attendance at church, when it was a physical possibility for her to get there. It must be true that some of her determination and will descended from her to the boy, because association means more than heredity.
The next occurrence in his life, which now occupied his thoughts, was a day long after, when he was nearing his twelfth year. He was off on a hunting expedition, and had climbed a mountain. Careless in leaping from crag to crag, he landed upon a loose boulder, which rolled from under his feet, so that he was thrown. In falling, his foot twisted, and a moment later, intense pain made him aware that he could not walk upon it. For four hours he slowly, but pluckily, dragged himself down the mountain, and at last reached home. It so chanced that a celebrated physician from New York was spending a vacation in the neighborhood, attracted perhaps by the brooks, which were full of fish. This man was Dr. Emanuel Medjora, and having heard of the boy's hurt, he voluntarily visited the lonely farm-house, and attended upon him so skilfully that Leon soon was well.
Just why the thought of Dr. Medjora should come to him at this time was a problem to Leon, but one upon which he did not dwell. After that summer, he had seen the Doctor again at various times, two or three years apart, always at vacation-time. But it was now three years since they had met.
Swiftly his thoughts passed along the years of his life, until they stopped for a moment, arrested by an incident worthy of being chronicled. I have said that Leon lay in his boat, face skyward, and allowed his bark to drift whither it would. Thus he had not noted his progress until a crunching sound startled him, and he became aware that his boat had found a landing-place, having grounded amidst the sands of a little cove, sheltered by a high rock and overhanging shrubbery. Forced thus from his abstraction into some cognizance of his whereabouts, Leon, without raising his head, merely became aware of the branches and leaves overhead, and peered through them. Almost in the midst of the green, he saw what seemed to be a brilliant but monstrous diamond, pendent from a branch. In the next instant he recognized that he was gazing upon Venus, the morning star, which had risen during his reverie, and now shone resplendent and most beautiful. It was just at this moment, that the incident occurred to which I have alluded. Suddenly it seemed to him that the whole of his surroundings were familiar. Everything had occurred before. His boat drifting into the cove, the shrubbery overhead, and Venus in the sky; all that he now realized, in the most minute detail, had held a place in his experience before. Such a phenomenon is not uncommon. All of us have been impressed similarly. Indeed, some Theosophists, trying to prove a previous life for man, have reverted to this well-known feeling, and have claimed that here is a recollection of a former visit to this earth. But Leon, young philosopher though he was, would have laughed in scorn at such an argument. He had considered this problem, and had solved it satisfactorily for himself. His explanation was thus. Man's brain is divided into two hemispheres. Usually they act co-ordinately, but it is possible that, at least momentarily, they may operate independently. It is a fact that the phenomenon under consideration seldom, or never occurs, except when the mind is greatly interested or occupied. Something, perhaps in itself the merest trifle, diverts the mind from the intensity of its attention. This diversion leads by a train of circumstances to a long-forgotten memory, and one hemisphere of the brain reverts to a moment in the past, the other continuing intent upon its surroundings. Within an infinitesimal period of time, a period too brief to be calculable, both hemispheres are again acting in unison. The abstraction has been so brief, and the cause of it is so dimly defined, that the mind is oblivious of what has occurred, except that, as the diverted hemisphere again takes cognizance of its previous thoughts, and again recognizes the environment of the present, the phenomenon of a dual experience is noted. Of course the scene is identically the same as that which is remembered, because it is the same scene. And the previous experience will impress the individual as having occurred long ago, in exact proportion to the date of that circumstance to which one hemisphere has reverted.