Then, with face
convulsed, he called down imprecations from the stars and the gulfs
beyond the stars; so that even Surama shuddered, made an elder sign
that no book of history records, and forgot to chuckle. 4


Georgina soothed her brother's hurt as best she could. He had come
home mentally and physically exhausted and thrown himself on the
library lounge; and in that gloomy room, little by little, the faithful
sister had taken in the almost incredible news. Her consolations were
instantaneous and tender, and she made him realize how vast, though
unconscious, a tribute to his greatness the attacks, persecution,
and dismissal all were. He had tried to cultivate the indifference
she preached, and could have done so had personal dignity alone been
involved. But the loss of scientific opportunity was more than he could
calmly bear, and he sighed again and again as he repeated how three
months more of study in the prison might have given him at last the
long-sought bacillus which would make all fever a thing of the past. Then Georgina tried another mode of cheering, and told him that surely
the prison board would send for him again if the fever did not abate,
or if it broke out with increased force. But even this was ineffective,
and Clarendon answered only in a string of bitter, ironic, and
half-meaningless little sentences whose tone showed all too clearly how
deeply despair and resentment had bitten. "Abate? Break out again? Oh, it'll abate all right! At least, they'll
think it has abated. They'd think anything, no matter what happens! Ignorant eyes see nothing, and bunglers are never discoverers. Science
never shows her face to that sort. And they call themselves doctors! Best of all, fancy that ass Jones in charge!" Ceasing with a quick sneer, he laughed so demoniacally that Georgina
shivered. The days that followed were dismal ones indeed at the Clarendon
mansion. Depression, stark and unrelieved, had taken hold of the
doctor's usually tireless mind; and he would even have refused food had
not Georgina forced it upon him. His great notebook of observations
lay unopened on the library table, and his little gold syringe of
anti-fever serum--a clever device of his own, with a self-contained
reservoir, attached to a broad gold finger ring, and single-pressure
action peculiar to itself--rested idly in a small leather case beside
it. Vigor, ambition, and the desire for study and observation seemed to
have died within him; and he made no inquiries about his clinic, where
hundreds of germ cultures stood in their orderly phials awaiting his
attention. The countless animals held for experiments played, lively and well-fed,
in the early spring sunshine; and as Georgina strolled out through
the rose-arbor to the cages she felt a strangely incongruous sense of
happiness about her. She knew, though, how tragically transient that
happiness must be; since the start of new work would soon make all
these small creatures unwilling martyrs to science. Knowing this, she
glimpsed a sort of compensating element in her brother's inaction,
and encouraged him to keep on in a rest he needed so badly. The eight
Tibetan servants moved noiselessly about, each as impeccably effective
as usual; and Georgina saw to it that the order of the household did
not suffer because of the master's relaxation. Study and starward ambition laid aside in slippered and dressing-gowned
indifference, Clarendon was content to let Georgina treat him as an
infant. He met her maternal fussiness with a slow, sad smile, and
always obeyed her multitude of orders and precepts. A kind of faint,
wistful felicity came over the languid household, amidst which the
only dissenting note was supplied by Surama. He indeed was miserable,
and looked often with sullen and resentful eyes at the sunny serenity
in Georgina's face. His only joy had been the turmoil of experiment,
and he missed the routine of seizing the fated animals, bearing them
to the clinic in clutching talons, and watching them with hot brooding
gaze and evil chuckles as they gradually fell into the final coma
with wide-opened, red-rimmed eyes, and swollen tongue lolling from
froth-covered mouth. Now he was seemingly driven to desperation by the sight of the carefree
creatures in their cages, and frequently came to ask Clarendon if there
were any orders. Finding the doctor apathetic and unwilling to begin
work, he would go away muttering under his breath and glaring curses
upon everything; stealing with catlike tread to his own quarters in
the basement, where his voice would sometimes ascend in deep, muffled
rhythms of blasphemous strangeness and uncomfortably ritualistic
suggestion. All this wore on Georgina's nerves, but not by any means so gravely as
her brother's continued lassitude itself. The duration of the state
alarmed her, and little by little she lost the air of cheerfulness
which had so provoked the clinic-man. Herself skilled in medicine, she
found the doctor's condition highly unsatisfactory from an alienist's
point of view; and she now feared as much from his absence of interest
and activity as she had formerly feared from his fanatical zeal and
overstudy. Was lingering melancholy about to turn the once brilliant
man of intellect into an innocuous imbecile? *       *       *       *       *

Then, toward the end of May, came the sudden change. Georgina always
recalled the smallest details connected with it; details as trivial as
the box delivered to Surama the day before, postmarked Algiers, and
emitting a most unpleasant odor; and the sharp, sudden thunderstorm,
rare in the extreme for California, which sprang up that night as
Surama chanted his rituals behind his locked basement door in a droning
chest-voice louder and more intense than usual. It was a sunny day, and she had been in the garden gathering flowers
for the dining-room. Re-entering the house, she glimpsed her brother
in the library, fully dressed and seated at the table, alternately
consulting the notes in his thick observation book, and making fresh
entries with brisk assured strokes of the pen. He was alert and vital,
and there was a satisfying resilience about his movements as he now and
then turned a page, or reached for a book from the rear of the great
table. Delighted and relieved, Georgina hastened to deposit her flowers
in the dining-room and return; but when she reached the library again
she found that her brother was gone. She knew, of course, that he must be in the clinic at work, and
rejoiced to think that his old mind and purpose had snapped back into
place. Realizing it would be of no use to delay the luncheon for him,
she ate alone and set aside a bite to be kept warm in case of his
return at an odd moment. But he did not come. He was making up for lost
time, and was still in the great, stout-planked clinic when she went
for a stroll through the rose-arbor. As she walked among the fragrant blossoms she saw Surama fetching
animals for the test.