"Be calm," said I, taking him by the shoulders; "what new discovery is this? Nothing wrong with Mrs. Graeme, I hope?"
"The child," he cried; but he could get no further.
"The child is"--
"Is what?" said I.
"Is marked on the back with the figure of the ten of diamonds."
"Pity it was not marked where it will wear its pockets," said I; "but it will a.s.suredly be a very fortunate child, nevertheless, and shall bear a load of diamonds on his back like the Arabian Alcansar."
"Are you mad?" he cried.
"Yes, with reason," I replied. "You know, nothing appears so outrageously insane to a madman, as that same G.o.d"s gift called reason.
They say, those who are bitten by the tarantula, and get dancing mad, think the wondering crowd about them raving maniacs. And there was the weeping philanthropist in the asylum of Montrose, in Scotland, who wept all day, and could not be consoled, because of all the people outside the asylum being mad."
"But," he gasped, "the thing is there."
"No doubt on"t," said I, "and you ought to be grateful. I have read somewhere of one John Zopyrus, who went mad when he heard of a son being born to him; and here you are not mad, though you have a son (I hope) born to you, with ten diamonds besides."
"But the thing is there," he again cried.
"Ay, there"s the rub, my dear fellow; the rub is there--let the rub _be_ there; that is, go and rub, and the thing rubbed will not be there after the rubbing."
"Madness, man! It is a true mother"s mark."
"Verily, a real _noevus maternus_" said I, "impressed by an avenging angel on the mother"s brain, and transferred by nature"s daguerreotype to the back of the child."
"You have said it."
"Nay, it is you who have said it," I continued; "and I will even suppose it is a mother"s mark, to please you for a little, though it has no more that character than this sword-p.r.i.c.k in my left cheek. But taking it in your own way, I have a theory I could propound to you about these marks.
We say that the soul is in the body. It is just as true that the body is in the soul. Every member of the entire physical person is represented in the brain, though we cannot discern the form in these white viscera. Now, see you, if a man loses his finger, his son will not be awanting in that member. But there are cases where the want of a member is hereditary. Why? Because the member was not represented in the cerebral microcosm of the first deficient person. From this small epitome in the brain, the child is an extended copy--_extended_ from a mathematical point, where all the members and lineaments are _intended_.
So, when the fancy of the mother is working in the brain--say, in realizing some external image--it will impress it in the cerebral person (woman) there epitomized; and if she is in a certain way, the image will go to a corresponding part of the foetal point, which is the epitome of the child. A most ingenious, and satisfactory, and simple theory, which will explain the ten-of-diamond naevus, for"----
"Dreadful imbecility!" he exclaimed, as he threw himself on his chair; "most unaccountable and cruel trifling with a notable visitation of retributive justice, indicated by visible signs of terrible import to him who must bear the cross, and be reconciled to an angry Deity."
"Against all that may tend to penitence for a past crime," said I, getting grave, where gravity might avail for good, "I have nothing to say. But Heaven does not work through the mean of man"s deceit and stratagem, and the good that comes of fear goes with returning courage."
Conscious of getting into a puling humour, I had no objection to an interruption by the entrance of Rogers, who, having finished his work, was probably intent upon the gratification which generally follows.
"I wish you joy of the boy and the diamonds," he said, as he seized Graeme by the half-palsied hand. "The nurse is reconciled to the omen of a fortune; and surely never was omen more auspicious, for no sooner had the strange indication shown its mute vaticination than it disappeared, that there might be no deduction of beauty from the favourite of the G.o.ds." And drawing, with his lumbering hand, the tumbler near him, he filled it two-thirds up of pure wine, and presently his lips grappled with it like a camel at the bucket in the desert, with such effect that the contents changed vessels in a twinkling.
"Disappeared!" said I musingly.
"Yea, temperance hath her demands on occasions," said he, thinking I alluded to the exit of the wine, and not the ominous mark; "for there be two kinds of this n.o.ble virtue, the jejune and the hearty, whereof the former observes no plethoric gratifications, and the other is not averse to an extreme of cordial indulgence."
"Disappeared!" said I in a harping way, once again, "and left the skin discoloured."
"But it was there, and I saw it with these eyes," cried Graeme, "and the doctor saw it, and Betha, but, thank G.o.d, not the mother."
"The vouchsafing of the eyes is an easy task," drawled Rogers. "The truth of present fact is of the moment of experience as regards the seer; but, as a moral ent.i.ty, it never dies. The great Author of nature has his intention in these mysterious signs. We know only that there are two kinds of these G.o.d"s finger-touches--the enduring and the evanescent. That we have now witnessed was of the latter kind, which we also call superficial in opposition to the other, which is painted on the _rete mucosum_, and never goes off. The difference of indications we know not, further than that a mysterious purpose is served by both.
But might I ask if ever there was any occasion on which the figure of this card might, as connected with some thrilling incident, have been impressed upon the imagination of the mother?"
"Never," cried Graeme, as he shook violently.
"Then it betokens fortune to the heir of the Moated Grange," said Rogers.
"It betokens vengeance!" roared Graeme, no longer able to contain himself; and he began to pace rapidly the room. Then stopping before me--
"How long will you torment me with your scepticism? Here, Betha," he cried to the woman, who at the instant again called Rogers, "what did you see on the back of the boy?"
"The ten of diamonds, sir," replied she, evidently frightened by the wild eyes of her master. "But you are not to be feared. Do I not know G.o.d"s signs when I see them fresh from his very finger? I have seen them aforetime; and no man or woman on earth, no, even our minister, will convince me they are meant for nothing. This bairn will be a rich man, but it will not be by the devil"s books; for he who made the mark does not tempt to evil by promises printed on the bodies of them he loves."
"I want not this drivelling," said her master, on whom her reading of the sign had an effect the very opposite of that intended. "You"re a fool, but you have eyes. Say, once for all, you saw it, and will swear.
Take her words, Rymer."
"As clear as I see the mark on your cheek, sir," she said, addressing me. "It was not from one who loved you so well as your mother did when she bore you, you got that mark."
"I got it from a villain called Ruggieri," I replied, caring nothing for the start I produced in Graeme, but keeping my eye on the face of Rogers.
I will say nothing of what I observed on that long, sombre, saturnine index. It was an experiment on my part, and I might have found something, merely because I expected it; nor do I think Graeme knew my object, though he felt the words as a surprise.
"And who is Ruggieri?" said the doctor, by way of putting a simple question.
"_Perhaps_ an Italian," said I. "Rogers is, they say, the Scotch representative of that name."
"It is a lie, sir!" cried the grave son of Aesculapius; but finding he had committed a mistake, he beat up an apology close upon the heels of his insult. "I beg your pardon; I simply meant that the two names are different, and that you were out in your etymology."
"I am satisfied," I replied.
"And so am I," growled the doctor, as he shuffled out, followed by Betha.
"What the devil do you mean?" said the colonel, coming up, and looking me sternly in the face. "Is not this business serious enough for me and this house already, without the mention to that man, who knows nothing of me or of my history, of a name hateful to both you and me?"
"At present I have no intention of telling you what I meant by introducing that name in the presence of Rogers."
"More mystery!" said he.
"No mystery--all as plain as little Edith"s card she got from Trott, or the blazon in the wood, or the mark on the child"s back. But I do not wish to dwell longer on a subject which gives you so much pain. I am to be off in the morning, and I should wish, before I go, to know what is to be the issue of all this wonderful working."
Graeme had now seated himself; and I resumed my chair also, to wait an answer, which his manner seemed to indicate might be slow and delicate.
We looked, in the dim light of the room, at two in the morning, like two wizards trying our skill in working out some scheme of _diablerie_; yet, in reality, how unlike! For though we had both been gamblers, and consequently bad men, we had for years renounced the wild ways of an ill-regulated youth, and settled down to tread, with pleasure to ourselves and profit to others, the decent paths of virtue.
"I am resolved," said Graeme at length----
"On what?" I inquired.
"On making amends. That money, which by means of the subst.i.tuted card I took from Gourlay, sticks like a bone-splint in the red throat of my penitence. I cannot pray myself, nor join Annabel, nor listen to Edith, when they send up their supplications to that place where mercy is, and where, too, vengeance is--vengeance which, in the very form of my pictured crime, dogs me everywhere, as you have seen, though a philosophical pride prevents you from giving faith to what you have seen--vengeance which, though using no earthly instruments, is yet the stronger, and more terrible to me, for that very circ.u.mstance that it brings up my conscience, and parades its pictured whisperings before my vision, scorching my brain, and making me mad--vengeance, breaking no bones, nor lacerating flesh, nor spilling blood, yet going to the heart of the human organism, among the fine tissues where begin the rudiments of being, and whence issue the springs of feeling, sympathy, hope, love, and justice, all of which it poisons, and turns into agonies. Yes, sir, vengeance which, claiming the a.s.sistance of the fairest virtues, conjugal love and angelic purity, makes them smite with shame, so that it were even a relief to me that the wife of my bosom were wicked, and the child of my affections a creature of sin. What are these signs that haunt me but instigators to redemption? and can I hesitate when Heaven asks obedience?"