The Imitator Part 2

He could hear the whistling of steamers out in the harbor, and the noise of the great town came to him faintly. All that seemed strangely remote.

His whole intelligence was centered upon his host, upon the spa.r.s.ely furnished room, and the secret whose solution he thought himself approaching. He was, for almost the first time in his life, intense in the mere act of existence; he was conscious of no imitation of others; his a.n.a.lysis of self was sunk in an eagerness, a tenseness of purposeness. .h.i.therto unfelt.

The professor went to a far, dark corner of the room, and rolled thence a tall, sheeted thing that might have been a painting, or an easel. He held it tenderly; his least motion with it revealed solicitude. When it was immediately in front of where Vane reclined, Vanlief loosed his hold of the thing, and began pacing up and down the room.

"The question of mirrors," he began, after what seemed to Vane an age, "has never, I suppose, interested you."

"On the contrary," said Vane, "I have had Italy searched for the finest of its cheval-gla.s.ses. In my dressing-room are several that would give even a man of your fine height, sir, a complete reflection of every detail, from a shoe-lace to an eyebrow. It is not altogether vanity; but I never could do justice to my toilette before a mirror that showed me only a shoulder, or a waist, or a foot, at a time; I want the full-length portrait or nothing. I like to see myself as others will see me; not in piece-meal. The Florentines made lovely mirrors."

"They did." Vanlief smiled sweetly. "Yet I have made a better." He paced the floor again, and then resumed speech. "I am glad you like tall mirrors. You will have learned how careful one must be of them. One more or less in your dressing-room will not matter, eh?"

"I have an excellent man," said Vane. "There has not been a broken mirror in my house for years. He looks after them as if they were his own."

"Ah, better and better."

Vane interrupted the Professor's silence with, "It is a mirror, then?"

"Yes," said Vanlief, nodding at the sheeted mirror, "it is a mirror.

Have you ever thought of the wonderfulness of mirrors? What wonder, and yet what simplicity! To think that I--I, a simple, plodding old man of science--should be the only one to have come upon the magic of a mirror!" His talk took the note of monologue. He was pacing, pacing, pacing; smiling at Vane now and then, and fingering the covered mirror with loving touch as he pa.s.sed near it. "Have you ever, as a child, looked into a mirror in the twilight, and seen there another face beside your own? Have you never thought that to the mirror were revealed more things than the human eye can note? Have you heard of the old, old folk-superst.i.tions; of the bride that may not see herself in a mirror without tragedy touching her; of the Warwicks.h.i.+re mirror that must be covered in a house of death, lest the corpse be seen in it; of the future that some magic mirrors could reveal? Fanciful tales, all of them; yet they have their germ of truth, and for my present discovery I owe them something." He drew the sheet from the mirror, and revealed another veil of gauze resting upon the gla.s.s, as, in some houses, the most prized pictures are sometimes doubly covered. "You see; it is just a mirror, a full-length mirror. But, oh, my dear Vane, the wonderfulness of this mirror! I have only to look into this mirror; to veil it; and then, when next you glance into it, if it be within the hour, my soul, my spirit, my very self, pa.s.ses from the face of the mirror to you! That is the whole secret, or at least, the manifestation of it! Do you wish to be the President, to think his thoughts, feel as he feels, dream as he dreams? He has only to look into this mirror, and you have only to take from it, as one plucks a lily from the pool, the spiritual image he has left there! Think of it, Vane, think of it! Is this not seeing life?

Is this not riddling the secret of existence? To reach the innermost depths of another's spirit; to put on his soul, as others can put on your clothes, if you left them on a chair,--is this not a stupendous thing?" In his fever and fervor the professor had exhausted his strength; he flung himself into a chair. Vane saw the old man's eyes glowing and his chest throbbing with pa.s.sion; he hardly knew whether the whole scene was real or a something imposed upon his senses by a species of hypnotism. He pa.s.sed his hand before his forehead; he shook his head. Yet nothing changed. Vanlief, in the chair, still quaking with excitement; the mirror, veiled and immobile.

For a time the room stood silent, save for Vanlief's heavy breathing.

"Of course," he resumed presently, in a quieter tone, "you cannot be expected to believe, until you have tried. But trial is the easiest thing in the world. I can teach you the mere externals to be observed in five minutes. One trial will convince you. After that,--my dear Vane, you have the gamut of humanity to go. You can be another man every day.

No secret of any human heart will be a secret to you. All wisdom can be gained by you; all knowledge, all thought, can be yours. Oh, Orson Vane, I wonder if you realize your fortune! Or--is it possible that you withdraw?"

Vane got up resolutely.

"No," he said, "I have faith--at last. I am with you, heart and soul.

Life seems splendid to me, for the first time. When can I have the mirror taken to my house?"

CHAPTER IV.

Vane's dressing-room was a tasteful chamber, cool and light. Its walls, its furniture, and its hangings told of a wide range of interest. There was nowhere any obvious bias; the aesthetic was no more insistent than the sporting. Orson Vane loved red-haired women as Henner painted them, and he played the aristocratic waltzes of Chopin; but he also valued the cruel breaking-bit that he had brought home from Texas, and read the racing-column in the newspaper quite as carefully as he did the doings of his society. Some hint of this diversity of tastes showed in this, the most intimate room of his early mornings. There were some of those ruddy British prints that are now almost depressingly conventional with men of sporting habits; signed photographs of more or less prominent and personable personages were scattered pell-mell. All the chairs and lounges were of wicker; so much so that some of the men who hobn.o.bbed with Vane declared that a visit to his dressing-room was as good as a yachting cruise.

The morning was no longer young. On the avenue the advance guard of the fas.h.i.+onable a.s.sault upon the shopping district was already astir. The languorous heat that reflects from the town's asphalt was gaining in power momentarily.

Orson Vane, fresh from a chilling, invigorating bath, a j.a.panese robe of exquisite coolness his only covering, sat regarding an addition to his furniture. It had come while he slept. It was proof that the adventure of the night had not been a mere figment of his dreams.

He touched a bell. To the man who answered the call, he said:

"Nevins, I have bought a new mirror. You are to observe a few simple rules in regard to this mirror. In the first place, to avoid confusion, it is always to be called the New Mirror. Is that plain?

"Quite so, sir."

"I may have orders to give about it, or notes to send, or things of that sort, and I want no mistakes made. In the next place, the cord that uncovers the mirror is never to be pulled, never to be touched, save at my express order. Not--under any circ.u.mstances. I do not wish the mirror used. Have you any curiosity left, Nevins?

"None, sir."

"So much the better. In Lord Keswick's time, I think, you still had a touch of that vice, curiosity. Your meddling got you into something of a sc.r.a.pe. Do you remember?"

"Oh, sir," said the man, with a little gesture of shame and pain, "you didn't need reminding me. Have I ever forgotten your saving me from that foolishness?"

"You're right, Nevins; I think I can trust you. But this is a greater trust than any of the others. A great deal depends; mark that; a very great deal. It is not an ordinary mirror, this one; not one of the others compares with it; it is the gem of my collection. Not a breath is to touch it, save as I command."

"I'll see to it, sir."

"Any callers, Nevins?"

"Mr. Moncreith, sir, looked in, but left no word. And the postman."

"No duns, Nevins?"

"Not in person, sir."

"Dear me! Is my position on the wane? When a man is no longer dunned his credit is either too good or too bad; or else his social position is declining." He picked up the tray with the letters, ran his eye over them quickly, and said, "Thank the stars; they still dun me by post.

There should be a law against it; yet it is as sweet to one's vanity as an angry letter from a woman. Nevins, is the day dull or garish?"

"It's what I should call bright, sir."

"Then you may lay out some gloomy clothes for me. I would not add to the heat wittingly. And, Nevins!"

"Yes sir."

"If anyone calls before I breakfast, unless it happens to be Professor Vanlief,--Vanlief, Nevins, of the Vanliefs of New Amsterdam--say I am indisposed."

He dressed himself leisurely, thinking of the wonderful adventures into living that lay before him. He rehea.r.s.ed the simple instructions that Vanlief had given him the night before. It was all utterly simple. As one looked into the mirror, the spirit of that one lay on the surface, waiting for the next person that glanced that way. There followed a complete exodus of the spirit from the one body into the other. The recipient was himself plus the soul of the other. The exodus left that other in a state something like physical collapse. There would be, for the recipient of the new personality, a sense of double consciousness; the mind would be like a palimpsest, the one will and the one habit imposed upon the other. The fact that the person whose spirit pa.s.sed from him upon the magic mirror was left more or less a wreck was cause for using the experiment charily, as the Professor took pains to warn Orson. There was a certain risk. The mirror might be broken; one could never tell. It would be better to pick one's subjects wisely, always with a definite purpose. This man might be used to teach that side of life; that man another. It was not a thing to toy with. It was to be played with as little as human life itself. Vivisection was a pastime to this; this implicated the spirit, the other only the body.

Consideration of the new avenues opening for his intelligence had already begun to alter Vane's outlook on life. Persons who remarked him, a little later, strolling the avenue, wondered at the brilliance of his look. He seemed suddenly sprayed with a new youth, a new enthusiasm. It was not, as some of his conversations of that morning proved, an utter lapse into optimism on his part; but it was an exchange of the mere pa.s.sive side of pessimism for its healthier, more buoyant side. He was able to smile to himself as he met the various human marionettes of the avenue; the persons whose names you would be sure to read every Sunday in the society columns, and who seemed, consequently, out of place in any more aristocratic air. He bowed to the newest beauty, he waved a hand to the most perennial of the faded beaux. The vociferous attire of the actors, who idled conspicuously before the shop-windows, caused him inward shouts of laughter; a day or so ago the same sight would have embittered his hour for him.

At Twenty-third street something possessed him to patronize one of the Sicilian flower-sellers. The man had, happily, not importuned him; he merely held his wares, and waited, mutely. Orson put a sprig of lily-of-the-valley into his coat.

Before he left his rooms he had spent an hour or so writing curt notes to the smartest addresses in town. All his invitations were declined by him; a trip to Cairo, he had written, would keep him from town for some time. He took this ruse because he felt that the complications of his coming experiment might be awkward; it was as well to pave the way.

Certainly he could not hope to fulfil his social obligations in the time to come. An impression that he was abroad was the best way out of the dilemma. The riddance from fas.h.i.+onable duties added to his gaiety; he felt like a school-boy on holiday.

It was in this mood that he saw, on the other side of the avenue, a figure that sent a flush to his skin. There was no mistaking that wonderful hair; in the bright morning it shone with a glow a trifle less garish than under the electric light, but it was the same, the same. To make a.s.surance surer, there, just under the hat--a hat that no mere male could have expressed in phrases, a thing of gauze and s.h.i.+mmer--lay a spray of lilies-of-the-valley. The gown--Vane knew at a glance that it was a beautiful gown and a happy one, though as different as possible from the filmy thing she had worn when first he saw her, in the mirror, at night.

At first unconsciously, and then with quite brazen intent, he found himself keeping pace, on his side of the street, with the girl opposite.

He knew not what emotion possessed him; no hint of anything despicable came to him; he had forgotten himself utterly, and he was merely following some sweet, blind impulse. Orson Vane was a man who had tasted the froth and dregs of his town no less thoroughly than other men; there were few sensations, few emotions, he had not tried. Almost the only sort of woman he did not know was The woman. In the year of his majority he had made a summer of it on the Sound in his steam yacht, and his enemies declared that all the harbors he had anch.o.r.ed in were left empty of both champagne and virtue. Yet not even his bitterest enemy had ever accused him of anything vulgar, brazen, coa.r.s.e, conspicuous.

Luke Moncreith was a friend of Vane's, there was no reason for doubting that. But even he experienced a little shock when he met Vane, was unseen of him, and was then conscious, in a quick turn of the head, that Vane's eyes, his entire vitality, were upon a woman's figure across the avenue.

"The population of the Bowery, of Forty-second street, and of the Tenderloin," said Moncreith to himself, "have a name for that sort of thing." He clicked his tongue upon his teeth once or twice. "Poor Orson!

Is it the beginning of the end? Last night he seemed a little mad. Poor Orson!" Then, with furtive shame at his bad manners, he turned about and watched the two. Even at that distance the sunlight glowed like a caress upon the hair of her whom Orson followed. "The girl," exclaimed Moncreith, "the girl of the mirror." He came to a halt before a photographer's window, the angle of which gave him a view of several blocks behind.

Orson Vane, in the meanwhile, was as if there was but one thing in life for him: a meeting with this radiant creature with the lilies. Once he thought he caught a sidelong glance of hers; a little smile even hovered an instant upon her lips; yet, at that distance, he could not be sure.