One would like to converse with a man who had been born and had lived in solitude and darkness. What original views he would have about himself and life! Would he think himself an abstract intelligence, out of s.p.a.ce and time? What a riddle his physical sensations would be to him! Or, suppose him to meet with another being brought up in the same way; how they would mystify each other! Would they learn to feel shame, love, hate? or do the pa.s.sions only grow in sunshine? Would they ever laugh? Would they hatch plots against each other, lie, deceive? Would they have secrets from each other?

But, fancy aside, take a supposable case. Suppose two sinners of our daylight world to meet for the first time, mutually unknown, on a night like this. Invisible, only audible, how might they plunge profound into most naked intimacy,--read aloud to each other the secrets of their deepest hearts! Would the confession lighten their souls, or make them twice as heavy as before? Then, the next morning, they might meet and pa.s.s, unrecognizing and unrecognized. But would the knot binding them to each other be any the less real, because neither knew to whom he was tied? Some day, in the midst of friends, in the brightest glare of the sunshine, the tone of a voice would strike them pale and cold.

Somewhat after this fashion, perhaps, did Helwyse commune with himself. He liked to follow the whim of the moment, whither it would lead him. He was romantic; it was one of his agreeablest traits, because spontaneous; and he indulged it the more, as being confident that he had too much solid ballast in the hold to be in danger of upsetting. To-night, at this point of his mental ramble, he found that his cigar had gone out. Had he been thinking aloud? He believed not, and yet there was no telling; he often did so, unconsciously. Were it so, and were any one listening, that person had him decidedly at advantage!

What put it into his head that some one might be listening? It may have come by pure accident,--if there be such a thing. The idea returned, stealing over his mind like a chilling breath. What if some one had all along been close beside him, with eyes fixed upon him!

Helwyse found himself sitting perfectly still, holding his breath to listen. There was no disguising it,--he felt uneasy. He wished his cigar had not gone out. On second thoughts, he wished there had not been any cigar at all, because, if any one were near, the cigar must have pointed out the smoker's precise position. The uneasiness did not lessen, but grew more defined.

It was like the sensation felt when pointed at by a human finger, or stared at persistently. Was there indeed any one near? No sound or movement gave answer, but the odd sensation continued. Helwyse fancied he could now tell whence it came;--from the left, and not far away. He peered earnestly thitherward, but his eyes only swallowed blackness.

Was not this carrying a whim to a foolish length? If he thought he had a companion, why not speak, and end the doubt? But the dense silence, darkness, uncertainty, made common-sense seem out of place.

The whole black fog, the sea, the earth itself, seemed to be pressing down his will! The longer he delayed, the weaker he grew.

A slight shifting of his position caused him all at once to encounter the eyes of the unseen presence with his own! The stout-nerved young fellow was startled to the very heart. Was the unseen presence startled also? At all events, the shock found Balder Helwyse his tongue, seldom before tied up without his consent.

"I hope I'm not disturbing your solitude. You are not a noisy neighbor, sir."

So flat fell the words on the blank darkness, it seemed as if there could never be a reply. Nevertheless, a reply came.

"You must come much nearer me than you are, to disturb my solitude. It does not consist in being without a companion."

The quality of this voice of darkness was peculiar. It sounded old, yet of an age that had not outlived the devil of youth. Probably the invisibility of the speaker enhanced its effect. With most of the elements of pleasing, it was nevertheless repulsive. It was soft, fluent, polished, but savage license was not far off, hard held by a slender leash; an underlying suggestion of harsh discordance. The utterance, though somewhat rapid, was carefully distinct.

Helwyse had the gift of familiarity,--of that rare kind of familiarity which does not degenerate into contempt. But there was an incongruity about this person, hard to a.s.similate. In a couple of not very original sentences, he had wrought upon his listener an effect of depraved intellectual power, strangely combined with artless simplicity,--an unspeakably distasteful conjunction! Imagination, freed from the check of the senses, easily becomes grotesque; and Helwyse, unable to see his companion, had no difficulty in picturing him as a grisly monster, having a satanic head set upon the ingenuous shoulders of a child. And what was Helwyse himself? No longer, surely, the gravely humorous moralizer? The laws of harmony forbid! He is a monster likewise; say--since grotesqueness is in vogue--the heart of Lucifer burning beneath the cool brain of a Grecian sage. The symbolism is not inapt, since Helwyse, while afflicted with pride and ambition as abstract as boundless, had, at the same time, a logical, fearless brain, and keen delight in beauty.

"I was just thinking," remarked the latter monster, "that this was a good place for confidential conversation."

"You believe, then, that talking relieves the mind?" rejoined the former, softly.

"I believe a thief or a murderer would be glad of an hour--such as now pa.s.ses--to impart the story of what is dragging him to h.e.l.l. And even the best houses are better for an airing!"

"A pregnant idea! There are certainly some topics one would like to discuss, free from the restraint that responsibility imposes. Have you ever reflected on the subject of omnipotence?"

Somewhat confounded at this bold question, Helwyse hesitated a moment.

"I can't see you, remember, any more than you can see me," insinuated the voice, demurely.

"I believe I have sometimes asked myself whether it were obtainable,--how it might best be approximated," admitted Helwyse, cautiously; for he began to feel that even darkness might be too transparent for the utterance of some thoughts.

"But you never got a satisfactory answer, and are not therefore omnipotent? Well, the reason probably is, that you started wrongly.

Did it ever occur to you to try the method of sin?"

"To obtain omnipotence? No!"

"It wouldn't be right,--eh?" chuckled the voice. "But then one must lay aside prejudice if one wants to be all-powerful! Now, sin denotes separation; the very etymology of the word should have attracted the attention of an ambitious man, such as you seem to be. It is a path separate from all other paths, and therefore worth exploring."

"It leads to weakness, not to power!"

"If followed in the wrong spirit, very true. But the wise man sins and is strong! See how frank I am!--But don't let me monopolize the conversation."

"I should like to hear your argument, if you have one. You are a prophet of new things."

"Sin is an old force, though it may be applied in new ways. Well, you will admit that the true sinner is the only true reformer and philosopher among men? No? I will explain, then. The world is full of discordances, for which man is not to blame. His endeavor to meet and harmonize this discordance is called sin. His indignation at disorder, rebellion against it, attempts to right it, are crimes! That is the vulgar argument which wise men smile at."

"I may be very dull; but I think your explanations need explaining."

"We'll take some examples. What is the liar, but one who sees the false relations of things, and seeks to put them in the true? The mission of the thief, again, is to equalize the notoriously unjust distribution of wealth. A fundamental defect in the principles of human a.s.sociation gave birth to the murderer; and as for the adulterer, he is an immortal protest against the absurd laws which interfere between the s.e.xes. Are not these men, and others of similar stamp, the bulwarks of true society,--our leaders towards justice and freedom?"

Whether this were satire, madness, or earnest, Helwyse could not determine. The night-fog had got into his brain. He made shift, however, to say that the criminal cla.s.s were not, as a mere matter of fact, the most powerful.

"Again you misapprehend me," rejoined the voice, with perfect suavity.

"No doubt there are many weak and foolish persons who commit crimes,--nay, I will admit that the vast majority of criminals are weak and foolish; but that does not affect the dignity of the true sinner,--he who sins from exalted motives. Ignorance is the only real crime, polluting deeds that, wisely done, are sublime. Sin is culture!"

"Were I, then, from motives of self-culture, to kill you, I should be taking a long step towards rising in your estimation?" put in Helwyse.

"Admirable!" softly exclaimed the voice, in a tone as of an approving pat on the back. "Certainly, I should be the last to deny it! But would it not be more for the general good, were I, who have long been a student of these things, to kill a seeming novice like you? It would a.s.sure me of having had one sincere disciple."

"I wonder whether he's really mad?" mused Balder Helwyse, shuddering a little in the dampness.

"But, badinage aside," resumed this loquacious voice, "although there is so much talk and dispute about evil, very few people know what evil essentially is. Now, there are some things, the mere doing of which by the most involuntary agent would at once stamp his soul with the conviction of ineffable sin. He would have touched the essence of evil. And if a wise man has done that, he has had in his hand the key to omnipotence!"

"It is easily had, then. A man need but take his Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and run through the catalogue of crimes. He would be sure of finding the key hidden beneath some of them."

"No; you do Moses scant justice. He--shrewd soul!--was too cunning to fall into such an error as that. He forbade a few insignificant and harmless acts, which every one is liable to commit. His policy was no less simple than sagacious. By amusing mankind with such trumpery, he lured them off the scent of true sin. Believe me, the artifice was no idle one. Should mankind learn the secret, a generation would not pa.s.s before the world would be turned upside down, and its present Ruler buried in the ruins!"

At this point, surely, Helwyse got up and went to his state-room without listening to another word?--Not so. The Lucifer in him was getting the better of the sage. He wanted to hear all that the voice of darkness had to say. There might be something new, something instructive in it. He might hear a word that would unbar the door he had striven so long to open. He aimed at knowledge and power beyond recognized human reach. He had taken thought with himself keenly and deeply, but was still uncertain and unsatisfied. Here opened a new avenue, so untried as to transcend common criticism. The temptation to omnipotence is a grand thing, and may have shaken greater men than Helwyse; and he had trained himself to regard it--not exactly as a temptation. As for good or bad methods,--at a certain intellectual height such distinctions vanish. Vulgar immorality he would turn from as from anything vulgar; but refined, philosophic immorality, as a weapon of power,--there was fascination in it.

--Folly and delusion!--

But Helwyse was only Helwyse, careering through pitchy darkness, on a viewless sea, with a plausible voice at his ear insinuating villanous thoughts with an air of devilish good-fellowship!

The "Empire State" was at this moment four and a half miles northeast of the schooner whose bowsprit she was destined to carry away. The steamer was making about ten knots an hour: the schooner was slowly drifting with the tide into the line of the steamer's course. The catastrophe was therefore about twenty-seven minutes distant.

IX.

THE VOICE OF DARKNESS.

The fog-whistle screeched dismally. Helwyse took his feet off the camp-stool in front of him, and sat upright.

"Do you know this secret of sin?" he asked.

"It must, of course, be an object of speculation to a thoughtful man,"

answered the voice, modestly parrying the question. "But I a.s.sure you that only a man of intellect--of genius--has in him the intelligence, the sublime reach of soul, which could attain the full solution of the problem; they who merely blunder into it would fail to grasp the grand significance of the idea."