Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/88

ing; it was full grown, it leaped out at me, it was terror of me. She knew!

"'"You are—stirring your coffee like—like—" she cried.

"'She did not finish the sentence. The accusation, really. There was no need. She knew. She rushed from the room, an expression of unutterable horror in her face—and I cowered in my chair, helpless, tongue-tied.

"'It was the end. It was defeat, final defeat. I cannot survive defeat. And so I have been setting Philip's affairs in order. When everything is settled, day after tomorrow—well—

"'I have not seen Mary since that hour. I know I shall never see her again. She remains immured in her rooms, and only Doctor Morton and the servants may see her. Her time is close, her hour of trial which I have imposed upon her. My despised love devours me, and thoughts of Mary are hot needles in my brain. But I shall not approach her again. I could not bear it—to see againin her eyes that awful terror and loathing of me.

"'What I have done I cannot undo. But I can undo myself.'"

"Well?" said the doctor.

"I am overcome," confessed the lawyer. "The poor boy. Why, Philip was—"

"Insane, eh?"

"Absolutely! It shows in nearly every sentence of this—this confession, as his cracked mind conceived it. Insane, and yet he seemed so rational. I, who saw him nearly every day, did not suspect. But apparently you suspected—the delusion, I mean. You said—"

"I guessed it—that is all. I could not be certain. I treated Mary for nerves, a mild hysteria consequent upon her condition. Due to that and nothing more, I was sure. But from what happened after the baby came—the manner in which Mary behaved—well, I guessed it."

"The manner in which Mary behaved," mused the lawyer. "And you hinted that she also—in fact, you said so. Have you concealed something from public knowledge? Did Mary also—er—undo herself?"

"No. That is, not exactly. Mary simply quit."

"Eh? Quit?"

"Yes, quit. Quit living. Gave up the fight. When we brought her son to her."

"In heaven's name, explain."

The doctor drummed upon the table for a long moment before he replied. Then he spoke almost with reluctance, and in broken sentences.

"Now, understand—this does not alter my decision in the case. It is just a—well, a freak, an atavism, a throwback in the ancestral stream. Nothing else. Unless—perhaps the exploded theory of pre-natal influence is not so exploded after all. Mary's mental state, you know. But—understand—it is not the other thing, not the—impossible.

"Whichever of the first two it is—well, the features of Mary's baby were extraordinarily well developed, even at birth. And the resemblance (quite accidental, I am certain, mind you) was unmistakable. Red hair. Parrot nose. The child was a miniature, so to speak, of Chadwick Graves."

There was in the Hospital of Incurables at Paris, a young man, an ideot from his birth, whose body was broken in the same places in which criminals are broken. He lived near twenty years in that condition: many persons saw him, and the queen mother making a visit to that hospital, had the curiosity not only to see, but even to touch the arms and legs of this youth, in the places where they were broken. The cause of this unhappy accident was soon found to be, that the mother while big with child, was present at the execution of a malefactor, who was broken alive on a cross, with an iron bar. That she was excessively terrified, it is easy to believe; but how the force of her imagination could produce such an effect on the foetus is a matter of great difficulty. Mallebranche attempts to account for it, in his usual manner, by ingenious conjectures, saying, that the imaginary faculty is a certain inward sensation, which is entirely performed by the assistance of the animal spirits; that the foetus ought to be deemed a part of the mother's body, so that whatever part of the mother suffers, by some occult communication, transmitted to the same part of the foetus; wherefore, when the pregnant woman was shocked at that dreadful sight, possibly she suffered pain, and even some degree of laceration of the fibres, in the same limbs which she saw broken in the malefactor; but as her bones were firm and solid, they were capable of resisting the shock, whereas those of the foetus, being scarce knit, were easily broken, so as never to unite again. But whether this reasoning be just or not, the fact is a manifest proof, that the imagination has a wonderful degree of power to affect the body.

In the kingdom of the Ashantees, in Africa, (forming, it is supposed, a population of about a million, and possessing a disposable force of 150;000 men), the prevalence of this horrible rite exists to an appalling extent: an authentic communication recently received, states that it forms a leading feature in all their great festivals, some of which occur every 21 days, and that no fewer than 100 victims are sacrificed at each. Besides these, there are sacrifices at the death of every person of rank, more or less bloody, according to their dignity; on the death of his mother, the king butchered no fewer than 3,000 victims. The funeral rites of a great captain were repeated weekly for three months, and nearly 400 persons were slaughtered. At the funeral of a person of rank, it is usual to wet the grave with the blood of a freeman of respectability: all the retainers of a family are present, and the heaps of all the victims being deposited in the bottom of the grave, several are unsuspectingly called out to assist in placing the coffin, and just as it rests on the heads or skulls, a slave from behind stuns one of these freemen by a violent blow, followed by a deep gash in the back-part of the neck, and he is rolled in on the top of the body, and the grave instantaneously filled up. Here is another affecting illustration of the Scripture truth, "The dark habitations of the earth are full of cruelty."