J. Maclaren Cobban

“ Reason, sir, is what you want!"
"My dear Embro," said Julius, "there are several kinds of facts. There are, for instance, big facts and little facts,—clean facts and dirty facts. Imagination raises you and gives you a high and comprehensive view of them all; your mere reason keeps you down in some noisome corner, like the man with the muck-rake."
"Hear, hear!" cried the journalist and the artist heartily.
"You're wrong, Julius," said Embro,—"quite wrong. Keep your imagination for painting and poetry. In science it just leads you the devil's own dance, and fills you with delusions." ”

“ Science has resource enough to deliver you from your mistake."
"Lefevre," said Julius,—and his eyes sparkled with tears and his weakening voice was choked,—"your friendship moves me deeply—to the soul. But science can do nothing for me: science has not yet sufficient knowledge of the principle on which I lived. Would you have me, then, live on,—passing to and fro among mankind merely as a blight, taking the energy of life, even from whomsoever I would not? No, I must die! Death is best!" ”

“ Nature is the sphinx: she appears soft and gentle and more lovely than heart can bear, but if you look closer, you see she is a creature with claws and teeth that rend and devour! I thought, fool that I was! that I had found the secret to solve her riddle! But it was an empty hope, a vain imagination.... Yet, I have lived! Yes, I have lived!"
He rose and stood erect, facing the dawn, with his back to Lefevre. He stood thus for some time, with one foot on the low bulwark of the vessel, till the sun leaped above the horizon and flamed with blinding brilliance across the sea. ”

“ With nimble accustomed fingers Lady Mary undid Nora's dress, while the doctor applied the remedies usual in hysterical fainting. Nora opened her eyes and fixed them upon Julius.
"O Julius, Julius!" she cried. "Do not leave me! Come near me! Oh!... I think I am going to die!"
"My love! my life! my soul!" said Julius, stretching out his hands to her, but approaching no nearer. "I cannot—I must not touch you! No, no! I dare not!"
"O Julius!" said she. "Are you afraid of me? How can I harm you?"
"Nora, my life! I am afraid of myself! ”

“ The spirit of life is electric and elective, and it is 'imponderable:' it can neither be weighed nor measured! It flows and thrills in the nerves of men and women, animals and plants, throughout the whole of Nature! It connects the whole round of the Cosmos by one glowing, teasing, agonising principle of being, and makes us and beasts and trees and flowers all kindred!"
"That is all very beautiful and fresh," said Lefevre, "but——"
"But," interrupted Julius, "it is not a new truth: the poet divined it ages ago! ”

“ It is ever and everywhere the same: death in company with life! And swift, strong death is better than slow, weak life!... Almost the splendour and inspiration of his rising tempt me to stay! Great nourisher and renewer of life's heat!"
He put off his fur coat, and let it fall on the deck, and stood for a while as if wrapt in ecstasy. Then, before Lefevre could conceive his intention, his feet were together on the bulwark, and with a flash and a plunge he was gone!
Amazement held the doctor's energies congealed, though but for an instant or two. ”

“ He had been an intimate friend of the elder Lefevre, and the son greeted him with respect and affection.
"Who is the gentleman?" said Dr Rippon, aside, when their greeting was over. "It does an old man's heart good to see and hear him," and the old doctor straightened himself. "But he'll get old too; that's the sad thing, from my point of view, that such beauty of person and swift intelligence of mind must grow old and withered, and slow and dull. What did you say his name is, John?"
"His name is Courtney—Julius Courtney," said Lefevre. ”

“ How do ideas ever come? As inspirations, we say, or as revelations; and truly they come upon us with such amazing and inspiriting freshness, that they may well be called either the one or the other. But no great idea had ever yet an epiphany but from the ferment of more familiar small ideas,—just as the glorious Aphrodite was born of the ferment and pother of the waves of the sea. Lefevre's new idea clothed itself in the form of a comparative question—Why should there not be Transfusion of Nervous Force, Ether, or Electricity, just as there is Transfusion of Blood? ”

“ A shiver ran through the frame of both Lefevre and his companion, a convulsive shudder passed upon the unconscious body, and—a strange cry rang out upon the silence of the ward, and Lefevre withdrew his hands. He and the house-physician looked at each other pale and shaken. The nurse came running at the cry. Lefevre looked out beyond the screen to reassure her, and saw in the dim red reflection of the firelight a sight which struck him gruesomely, used though he was to hospital sights; all about the ward pale scared figures were sitting up in bed, like corpses suddenly raised from the dead. ”

“ Not a ripple or flash of water passed unheeded; the flood of sunshine rose fuller and fuller over the world; moments grew to minutes, and minutes swelled to hopeless hours under the doctor's weary eyes, till it seemed to them as if the universe were only a swirling, greedy ocean;—but no sign appeared of his night's companion: his life was quenched in the depths of the restless waters, as a flaming meteor is quenched in night. At length Lefevre ordered the yacht to stand away to the shore, his heart torn with grief and self-upbraiding. ”

“ Why was Julius estranged from his father? What was the secret of the old man's life which had left such an awful impress on his face? And why was he nightly haunting the busiest pavements of London, in the crowd, but not of it, urged on as by some desire or agony?
He went to bed, but not to sleep. In the quiet and the darkness his imagination ranged without constraint over the whole field of his questionings. He went back upon Dr Rippon's story of the Spanish marquis, and fixed on the mention of his occult studies. ”

“ You are a bachelor: it is not good to be a bachelor," he went on, laying his hand affectionately on the doctor's arm, and flushing—old man of the world though he was—flushing to the eyes. "What—what do you think of my daughter? I mean, not as a doctor, but as a man?"
Lefevre was not in his first youth, and he had had his admirations for women in his time, as all healthy men must have, but yet he was made as deliriously dizzy as if he were a boy by his guess at what Lord Rivercourt meant. ”

“ Is it not forced?"
"Well," began Lefevre.
"It is bad detective business," broke in Julius, "though it may be good friendship. You have thought there was trouble in this for me, and you wished to give me warning of it. But—que diable vas-tu faire dans cette galère? You are the best friend in the world, and whenever I am in trouble—and who knows? who knows? 'Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward'—I may ask of you both your friendship and your skill. One thing I ask of you here: don't speak of me as you see me now, thus miserably moved, to any one! ”

“ Chapter V. The Remarkable Case of Lady Mary Fane.
It was the kind of day that is called seasonable. If the sun had been obscured, the air would have been felt to be wintry; but the sunshine was full and warm, and so the world rejoiced, and declared it was a perfectly lovely May day,—just as a man who is charmed with the smiles and beauty of a woman, thinks her complete though she may have a heart of ice. Lefevre, as he went his hospital round that afternoon, found his patients revelling in the sunlight like flies. ”

“ Having explained to myself, in the way I have told you, the ease of my unwitting replenishment of force whenever I was brought low, I set myself to improve on my discovery. I saw before me a prospect of enjoyment of all the delights of life, deeper and more constant than most men ever know,—if I could only ensure to myself with absolute certainty a still more complete and rapid reinvigoration as often soever as I sank into exhaustion. I was quite sure that no energy of life is finer or fuller than the human at its best. ”

“ Yes, you will live!—live! But I must be cut off—though not for ever—from the sweetest and dearest, the noblest and purest of all God's creatures!"
In the meantime Lefevre had been examining his sister with closer scrutiny. He raised her eyelid and looked at her eye; he pricked her on the arm and wrist; and then he turned to Julius.
"Julius," said he, "what does this mean?"
"It means," answered Julius, covering his face with his hands, "that I am of all living things the most accurst!" Then with a cry of horror and anguish he fled from the room and down the stairs. ”

“ He said to her suddenly,—
"There was a deep, mystical truth in the teaching of the Church to its children—that they should prefer in their moments of human weakness to pray to the Virgin-mother; for woman is always man's best friend."
She looked in his face, wondering at him, still with her finger on his pulse, when she felt an unconsciousness come over her, not unlike "the thick, sweet mystery of chloroform;" and she knew no more till she opened her eyes in the hospital bed. "Revived by you," she said to Lefevre. ”

“ He cast a searching eye on Dr Rippon.
"That's the one thought," said he, "that makes me sometimes feel as if I were already under the horror of the shade. It's not that I am afraid of dying—of merely ceasing to live; it is that life may cease to be delightful and friendly, and become an intolerable, decaying burden."
He filled a glass with Burgundy, and set himself attentively to drink it, lingering on the bouquet and the flavour. Lefevre beheld him with surprise, for he had never before seen Julius take wine: he was wont to say that converse with good company was intoxicating enough for him. ”

“ But the next moment his attention seemed given to the cat; he fondled it, and talked to it soothingly.
"I am sure of it," said Lefevre. "Just listen to me, Julius. You have wonderful intelligence and penetration in everything. You are fond of science; science needs men like you more than the dull plodders that usually take to it. When you were in Charbon's class you were his favourite and his best pupil,—don't I remember?—and if you liked you could be the greatest physician of the age." ”

“ She had, however, a sensuous fulness and bloom, a queenly carriage of head and neck, a clearness of feature, and a liquid kindness of eye that suggested a deep potentiality of passion.
They drove round the Row, and round again, and they talked and laughed their fill of wisdom and frivolity and folly. To be foolish wisely and gracefully is a rare attainment. When they had almost completed their third round, Julius (who had finished a marvellous story of a fairy princess and a cat) said, "I can see you are fond of beasts, Miss Lefevre. ”

“ Tell me about yourself, and let me see what I can do."
"You can do nothing," said Julius, sadly shaking his head. "Understand me; I am not going to state a case for diagnosis. Put that idea aside; I merely wish to confess myself to my friend."
"But surely," said Lefevre, "I may be your physician as well as your friend. As long as you have life there is hope of life."
"No, no, no, Lefevre! There is a depth of life—life on the lees—that is worse than death! ”

“ The doctor began to wonder if he was a pickpocket, and to look about for the watchful eye of a policeman. He kept close behind him past the door of the Strand Theatre, when the throng became slacker, and the man turned quickly about and returned the way he had come. Then Lefevre had a glimpse of his face,—the merest passing glimpse, but it made him pause and ask himself where he had seen it before. A dark, foreign-looking man, with a haggard appeal in his eye: he tried to find the place of such a figure in his memory, but for the time he tried in vain. ”