The Incubated Girl

Chapter I The Coming Of Stella

O one used to such places, there was but little in the laboratory to claim or arrest attention. Its appurtenances were, mostly, usual and ordinary enough : rows upon rows of great glass-stoppered bottles, retorts, stands of test-tubes, pipes, thermometers, taps, Bunsen burners, and elec trical machines, all ranged round the room in a prodigal confusion, so plentifully that, save for a large cleared space in the middle, the whole seemed to be an inextricably crowded and jumbled chaos. Only in the centre of the place, where beyond the zone of light two men bent eagerly over something upon a massive, marble-topped table, was the collection of material curious and strange, of a sort to make the most indifferent pause and wonder. Here were things unusual, indeed : a mysterious engine in the form of an immense incubator ; and below it, beyond where bowls of steaming liquid gave forth a wall of vapour that rose as a mystic intangible curtain, stood, strangest thing of all, a cradle ready for an infant child !

Neither of the men heeded it ; the attentions of both were given to the extraordinary contrivance that towered along the whole length of the table. The elder of the two, a man verging upon fifty, seemed to be an onlooker rather than aught else, for every now and again he turned his head to gaze idly round the room, as though weary of watching; and as he did so, the distant lamps lighting up his face, showed it white and fearful, as of one who is embarked upon an enterprise from which, if he could, he would fain withdraw. The other, Blackburne Zadara, professor of Egyptology, fellow of many a learned society, a man some fifteen years the other's junior, was wrought up to an equal tension, for he paused occasionally to wipe the sweat from his heated brow, and as he did so his steel-grey eyes glittered with suppressed excitement; yet such relapses were but momentary and occasional ; for the most part he steadily and coolly went on with his task.

Before him, a little to the left of a row of gauges •and thermometers, was a large vessel of quaint workmanship, rudely egg-shaped in form, and this was in a continual state of slight oscillation, as though it held some pent-up force ; while through its semi-transparent sides, dimly visible, were faint white forms moving aimlessly to and fro like the tentacles of a sea-anemone at the set of the tide. Zadara was now busily engaged in scraping off the clay that sealed the mouth of this vessel, and at last, after some forty minutes of arduous labour, the greater part of it had been removed. Then, while he yet laboured, gently and cautiously, there came a violent explosion, the clay floated off in an impalpable dust ; and a strange, pungent, all pervading odour of some unknown gas filled the room.

So strong was it that he reeled where he stood, clutching at the table for support, as, faint and dizzy, he sought to control his senses. "The solution, numbered three," he hoarsely whispered. The other, with trembling hands, passed him a jar, the contents of which he presently poured into and over the Egg ; then, hastily glancing at a sheet of paper that was pinned up in front of him, he took a mallet, steadied himself for a moment, and struck the Egg one sharp, short blow with it. Immediately the shell split asunder, the pieces falling this way and that ; and before him, living and breathing, there lay a female child ! " Thank God ! " ejaculated the elder man, as he heard the infant's cry, and saw its little perfect limbs, "you have not created a Frankenstein monster as I feared you would."

" I never expected to, my friend," returned the other shortly, as he wrapped the wailing baby in a blanket. " Hand me that bottle of water and asses' milk ; we must feed the brat." " Aye ; but you, Zadara, knew nothing of the stranger." "What stranger, man ? You speak in riddles," said the professor, as he busied himself over the infant, washing and dressing her in some sort of fashion. "I did not tell you of it before, for various reasons. First, I have often thought that it may have been but a hallucination ; secondly, I did not wish to have the experiment delayed while you began it all over again, as you would have done had you believed my tale ; thirdly, I " — " Never mind your reasons, Wilson ; tell me, rather, what it was that you saw, or think you saw." " It was nearly seven months ago now, you had gone out about something, leaving me here on watch ; and as I sat in the big chair yonder, I became conscious that I was not alone ; I felt that there was someone in the room with me.

It was in the darkening of the twilight, and as I rose to look about me, I saw, standing over the incubator, a man, one whose face I could not see. He had opened the frame, and was doing something to the Egg, but what, I could not, in the darkness, discern. ' Hold ! ' I cried to him ; ' leave that alone.' He made no answer, nor any sign that he had heard, and presently, fearing to approach him, I lit the gas to see him the better. . . . Zadara, when I looked again, there was no one there ! " " He had gone out of the door while your back was turned, I suppose ? " " He had not ; the door was locked from the inside." " Then, my dear fellow, you may take it that you were dreaming; I, too, have had my hal lucinations. . . . However, here is the child ; that is a fact, and facts are all we have to deal with."

"You are a sceptic and materialist, Zadara; I am a " — "Overwrought fool, perhaps, just at present," interrupted the other. " Let us get out of this place, to where we can discuss the future quietly. . . . Pah ! this gas that was in the Egg is like champagne mixed with chloroform : no wonder your fancies run riot." He picked up the cradle as he spoke, and together they went into an adjoining room, which, with a bright fire burning in the grate, contrasted cheerfully with the dismal place that they had just quitted. The professor pressed a button in the wall, and presently a middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway. He signed to the sleeping babe, rapidly said a few words on the deaf and dumb alphabet ; in reply to which, she, with a vacuous nod of response, lifted the cradle and carried it and the child away.

" Now," said Zadara, " we can rest and think. . . . Let us first, however, look over the papyrus, to make sure that nothing has been omitted ; though, faith, I think that I know every word by heart. . . . Here we are : I will read you the portion that refers to to-day's proceedings. ... I have kept the translation pretty closely to the original — as closely as I could, that is." He paused a moment, while he found the place then read : — " Thereafter shalt thou nurture her upon the cakes that be within the casket. Also thou mayest give her of the milk of she-asses, or of cows, or of she-goats : yet, nurture her not upon the milk of any woman, lest thereby she take the nature of the woman. "And when site shall be of an age to be weaned, then shalt thou feed her upon bread and upon corn and upon fruits of every sort, but neither flesh nor wine shalt thou give unto her.

" Yet, beware, in these days of her tender years that she be brought up in the fear of tlie gods. Behold site shall be a woman that is a woman, not as other women that be but the part of a man. "And so long as she remain a virgin un defiled, so shall she neither grow old nor fade in lier beauty that is more than the beauty of the daughters of men. In the likeness of Isis, the earth-form of Isis, till the day long appointed shall dawn on tfie world. She shall not die nor suffer sickness, nor shall she be weary. And coming the day long appointed ttien shall " — He stopped reading, and folded up his translation, saying as he did so : — " That is about enough of that sort of rubbish." " I consider it interesting," said Wilson, " and would be glad to hear more. What we have already witnessed is so astounding, so miracu lous, that I am prepared to believe anything and everything that the papyrus may say.

Let me hear the rest." " There is very little more ; and what there is, I have not yet succeeded in translating," replied Zadara, as though annoyed at the request. " We had better, I think, select a name for her," he added hastily, changing the subject. " You can choose it. ... I thought myself of Proto plasma." " I should prefer Stella ; it is prettier and shorter." " Stella be it, then," assented the professor, much as though the name of a dog were under discus sion. "And now," said Wilson, "let us think about the girl's upbringing. You, of course, will have her registered and baptized." "I shall, of course, do nothing of the sort. She is an animal, so needs no registration ; as to baptism, that is, in any case, a silly waste of time." " Unless the Sacrament of Baptism is adminis tered she will be unregen " — " Nonsense !

" "Well — you are, perhaps, right; I forgot that Stella is not of the race of men. She will, of course, be therefore free from ' original sin,' and " — " Original fiddlesticks ; remember our compact, Wilson, not to discuss religion." " I have not forgotten ; but, Zadara, I cannot let you bring her up as a heathen without a word of protest. I firmly believe that this child has been vouchsafed to you for some divine purpose — unless, indeed, it is some new and terrible device of the Evil One. I believe that the man that I saw was no creature of earth, that he was a being from another world, that " — " And I," interrupted the professor, as was his wont, " believe nothing of the sort ; for I believe in neither God nor devil. . . . However, my friend, we can, each of us, experiment in his own fashion ; you have your son Meredyth, train him up in your theories; I, adopting this Stella as my daughter, will educate her in mine ; then we shall see what we shall see."

" But consider, the injustice that you will do the girl ; for, too well, I know the sort of training you will give. By a judicious course of education — she being free from original sin — you might make of her an earthly angel, a guiding beacon to all suffering women ; a type impossible, perhaps, to imitate, yet one to follow from afar ; a very " — " A truce to what I might do. Listen, and you shall hear what I really feel and hope in the matter, for I have a scheme before me, already mapped and planned. . . . Women, as you know, have of late grown aggressive and insufferable in their views of their own importance, and as regards their relations with men ; at the present rate, some forty years hence they will have attained such influence, that, either the race of men will become a collection of effeminate, emasculated entities, or else women will, one and all, be practically harlots.

You may take it that 'free love' will, if it ever comes into general use and custom, if it ever becomes orthodox, be simply prostitution under another name. Plenty of women are naturally immoral, because they like to be, that is neither here nor there ; but a far greater number are so because there is money in it. At present, these sort marry for money where they can, the pay is greater that way, the future, so hopeless to the street-women, is assured to the 'honourably married ' strumpet, unless the divorce court inter vene ; but, with ' free love ' as their watchword, women will sell themselves, or remain virgins. . . . You follow me ? " " Perfectly ; go on, I am all attention." " Well, I, as you know, pretend to no sentiment ; to me, virtue and chastity, as sentiments, are all rubbish ; but when they are viewed from a practical, logical standpoint, things assume a very different complexion ; then, I have views, and strong ones.

Wilson, I tell you that women must be chaste ; or else the race must degenerate." " I am with you there, though I confess that such a sentiment from you astonishes me." " Well, — to continue my monologue, — women being on this downgrade, Stella, and others like her that I shall make, will come most opportunely. The present race of women, unmarried, will die out; the Stellas will replace them. So I shall train her strictly in the paths of virtue ; not, let me tell you, in the path the ' new woman ' would have girls brought up in, knowing everything of all the vices and diseases, knowing everything of their anatomy and the causes of sensations ; for, faith, such a girl is far worse than the woman of the streets, no matter how chaste her wisdom may keep her. Innocence is better than chastity that is such merely to increase the ultimate market value of the woman.

The street woman, at least, is an essential of civilisation, a protectress — unmeaningly, no doubt, but still a protectress — to the women yet unfallen ; but the modern virgin is a miasmic fungus, a loathsome, useless parasite, an abscess in our civilisation. Of such as these, Stella shall be the direct antithesis. There now, you have my views in toto!' " There are women, thousands of good, pure women," — began Wilson ; but Zadara would hear no more, and presently the former bade good night, and went home to dream excited and dis torted versions of the extraordinary birth of which he had that night been a witness. Left alone, the professor turned once more to the papyrus document, reading it carefully and slowly, pausing long over the concluding sentences, the same that he had denied knowledge of to Wilson earlier in the evening.

" Yes," he said to himself slowly, " there is no doubt that that is what it says and means, though, whence came the idea ? " He went over his translation yet again, frowning and pursing up his thin, eel-like lips as he did so. " Yes," he murmured once more, " no other reading is permissible or even possible. . . Well, it is an interesting proof of the antiquity of a certain super stition ; though, faith, it has more plausibility here than have some of later growth. Not that I am going to credit it ; but Wilson would. . . . Oh, Wilson ! " he continued, apostrophising his absent friend, " what would you not have said, what would you not have done, had you only been able to read this? . . . What a precious ass you would have made of yourself! ... As things are, I see that you'll be trouble enough ; but if you only knew of these few lines that I have withheld ; ah, what then? . . .

No, my friend, you shall not know ; the little creature in the next room will have other and more practical uses than those to which your superstitions would bring her. . . . Yet, I am half sorry that you will not learn ; it would be interesting to see how this claim — if you believed it — would affect your Christianity ! " Then his thoughts wandered back a couple of years, to when he and Wilson, touring in Egypt, had made the strange find that, to-day, had had such a marvellous development. He could picture it to himself as well as though it were yesterday ; the great ruined temple, the pitiless sun beating down upon the sand-covered stones, the blazing up-cast light driving the two Englishmen to seek shelter where the inviting shadows lay so deep and cool and blue. " How hot the stones are, even in the shade," he had remarked, as he idly tapped his fingers upon the age-worn masonry.

Even as he spoke there had come the hoarse creek of an axis untouched for countless centuries, as a great stone started from its socket, to hang projecting and motionless from the temple wall. There had been no more thought of the heat, as they and their guides struggled for hours to shift it this way and that, till at last as, worn with useless effort, they had been about to desist, the huge mass swung suddenly downward with a crash, leaving a wide black cavity in the temple wall ; and in that opening, upon linen folds that crumbled into nothingness at their touch, stood a strange stone casket carved with many hieroglyphics, coloured vermilion, and green, and black. That same night he had made out the inscription ; and that once deciphered, he could find no rest from his longing to look inside and learn all.

The legend on the casket, when translated into approximate English, ran : — • HEREIN • IS • THE • SECRET • • OF • LIFE .*. LET • HIM • THAT • • IS • WORTHY • TO • KNOW • ALONE . • OPEN • AND • LEARN .". LET ■ HIM • THAT ■ • IS • NOT • WORTHY • BEWARE .*. THE • DIS- • • COVERY • OF ■ PIANCHI : THE • SON ■ OF • MERHU • • SETI : PRIEST ■ OF • ISIS • HATH ■ PLACED • WITHIN • After an investigation extending over several days, a period during which he had grudged him self the time for food or rest, he had found the upper face of the stone to be cleverly devised into a quaint many-sided form, which followed the design of the top so cunningly that a man might look a thousand times and not perceive how the mechanism acted. This once discovered, the rest had proved easy ; the lid revolved slightly, so that it could be lifted out, to reveal a large bronze vessel inside, while in one corner were laid a number of small squares of some unknown composition that had a peculiarly sweet pungent odour.

Inside this second casket he had found the papyrus already referred to, and a few tiny specks, that might have been dust or anything else, and which he narrowly escaped overlooking. As it was, he had closed the vessel after removing the scroll ; nor did he open it again until many weeks had elapsed. The papyrus was headed by an inscription that prepared him somewhat for the startling nature of the document itself. This set forth, at great length and with many details, the means whereby a child could be chemically constructed ; it was, in fact, — or practically claimed to be,— a solution of that great problem — how to evolve the organic from the inorganic. In the nature of things, it — being Egyptian — had a good deal of mysticism wrapped around it ; many, too, of the chemical formulae were puzzling in the extreme ; but, as though anticipat ing future difficulties of this sort, the papyrus went on to state that the essentials for the experiment had already been combined and solidified, so that the directions could be followed without let or hindrance.

As for the mysticisms involved, he smiled to himself now as he thought of them ; had he credited them, the experiment, in all probability, would never have been attempted ; yet now, as he sat alone in the firelight, he could not help thinking of the stranger of whom Wilson had told him. He looked round, half expecting to see someone watching him, he seemed to feel a Presence ; so strong was this impression, that he lit a candle and went into the next room, where the baby was. The child was sleeping peacefully in its cradle, the mute dozed in a chair near by ; nothing else, nothing of the supernatural, clung about the place. " Faith ! " he exclaimed, using his favourite expression, " I must be overstrung indeed ; what did I expect to see ? Truly, I shall be in for a brain fever if I think of that preposterous claim any more ; what an ass I am, to give it a second thought."

Nevertheless, he set to work to erase the final sentences from his translation ; then sat down again to think about the child whose wonderful destiny he, materialist and sceptic as he was, had decided to warp even while he utterly denied it credence. Somewhere in his nature Zadara had a grain of faith, of credulity, of superstition ; like many another atheist, he discarded all beliefs, only to be thrust into the dilemma of fearing to find some truth-germ in things he discredited ; he dreaded to believe, dreaded to disbelieve, and so his mental state became chaotic, confused, a charnel-house of the might-have-been. Whatever were Zadara's views about Wilson's stranger, he kept them to himself, and expressed no opinion on the matter, utterly refusing to be drawn into conversation about it. After a time he started to manufacture some more children in incubators similar to that which he had used for Stella, but his efforts were unsuccessful; at the most he merely produced a low form of vegetable life ; and presently, after a long study of the papyrus, he destroyed his creations, broke up the incubators, and settled down to other pursuits, morosely and sourly, as one who has struggled unavailingly against the inevitable. Stella meanwhile grew and flourished, a strange and wonderfully beautiful child.

Chapter II How Stella Grew To Be

A WOMAN IGHTEEN years and more rolled away. During this time Stella received such education as Zadara saw fit to give her, but she associated neither with man nor woman, save with the professor or Wilson, in all these long, slow rolling years. Such service as she required was rendered by a couple of middle-aged women, both of them deaf and dumb, who watched and waited upon her in turn. Her early years she spent in Zadara's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, never stirring outside it till she was three years old. About this time, seeing that she was looking rather pale, Zadara sent for a Doctor Brown whom he knew, to come and see her. He came, — a tall, bleary-eyed, theory-loving man, — and having looked at the girl, he suggested a change to sea or country air. " Exactly my own amateur diagnosis," said the professor.

" Well, as I am tired of London, and rabbits are cheaper in the country, I think I will go there." " Rabbits ? " queried the doctor. " I hardly see the connection." "Don't you, my obtuse friend? Didn't you know that I was a physiologist ? Well, come into my laboratory, and I can show you a treat; I have some most interesting experiments under way now." " You are a lucky man, Zadara," said Brown as they went off. " I would I were like you, with private means. Instead, I have to earn my bread and cheese, so have had to abandon all pathological and physiological pursuits, and pose as a general practitioner. I envy you indeed." " Never mind ; some day you shall take part in something interesting . . . Here are the rabbits. I've scooped out or cauterised the brains of a good two hundred in the last year or so; not bad for an amateur, eh?

I am educating this girl you have just seen upon ideas that I have gleaned from vivisection, though I don't suppose you'll credit that. No matter, it's interesting ; far more so than the Egyptology which used to be my fad." " Well, it is certainly a fascinating pursuit. What particular branch are you now working upon ? " " The angular gyri and the occipital lobes are my present study; I had just begun to cauterise the grey matter of one angular gyrus of this white rabbit when you called. You can amuse yourself with that dog over there, if you like ; but be careful not to press on the injured part of the brain, or you'll kill the brute. If you're careful, he'll live for a few hours." " Thanks," said Brown ; " just help me fix the animal down. . . . Thanks again. ... I ought to be seeing a lady in the suburbs, who sent for me just as I was starting for here.

Cancer; she wanted me to do something to relieve the pain, so it's nothing urgent, and she must wait. One doesn't get loose in a laboratory of this sort every day. . . . Oh, what good I might not have done to the world if only I'd been able to afford to give my whole attention to this sort of thing ! . . . How the brute squirms ! It makes me nervous when it squirms." " Inject some curare — here 'tis — that will keep him quiet. You'll soon get over your nervousness — I was as bad myself once," said Zadara. A few weeks later found Zadara and the child roaming about the grounds of Dunster Castle, an estate which he owned on the Essex coast. It had a great rambling garden, that swept up from the dip in which the house was situated right on to the frowning, precipitous cliffs that fringed the seashore, and in these grounds Stella, as she grew older, was allowed to roam at pleasure, though its walled confines she was never permitted to pass.

Here in the gloomy, desolate house, she learning to read, write, and cipher, passed on to the study of mechanics, physics, geology, chemistry, in fact all that she could learn, without also learning some thing of the world around her. History was to her a sealed book, of morality she learnt nothing, the very name of God was unknown to her till she was sixteen. In this last thing the professor was particularly careful, partly from the atheistical opinions that he held, partly perhaps in defiance to his old friend Wilson, but mostly with an eager ness to note whether a creature, free, so far as he could tell, from all inherited earthly influence, would develop either myths or crude religious ideas; and the results of his observations in this direction were, as he told Wilson, extremely interesting.

For the first ten years of her life, he found Stella as utterly devoid of tendencies to belief in any supernatural agency as must have been expected from her training, but as she grew older Zadara noticed and carefully recorded several peculiar traits. " On the 10th February," he wrote in his book, " Stella being then ten years and three months old, and we having had many fogs and much dull weather for the preceding fortnight, the child was more dispirited than I had ever before noted, she being naturally of a remarkably cheerful disposition. About noon on this day, a wind rising, the sun suddenly burst through the clouds, and no sooner did Stella observe it, than she ran to the French window that chanced to be open, and so out on to the lawn. Following, I found her standing with extended arms crying ' Ra ! ' " ' Where did you hear that word, child, and to whom do you call ? ' I asked.

" ' I never heard it before, nor do I know why I said it, but I was glad and happy to see the sun again,' she answered, after some little hesitation ; nor could I elicit anything further from her about this, which seems to have been an elementary form of sun worship — the most sensible of all religions certainly. The use of the Egyptian name is a curious feature, when considered in connection with the circumstances of her birth, but I can hazard no theory to explain it, and, unfortunately, she subsequently exhibited no further leanings in this direction, so that the experiment remains incomplete. " September 7th. I recently gave Stella one of a batch of young kittens that I had obtained for ex perimental purposes. The animal, which is now a fairly well grown cat, has been her constant com panion, — all animals seem remarkably fond of her, by the way, — she playing with it after the manner of children.

" Chancing to go out into the garden at 0.25 p.m. to-day, I found Stella dressing the cat with leaves and garlands of flowers, occasionally kneeling before it in devotional attitudes. Here again there seems some sort of analogy to the sacred cats of the Egyptians, but again, too, Stella either could not or would not — the former I apprehend — tell me the why or wherefore. Shortly afterwards she abandoned the worship, nor did I subsequently observe any further signs of it. The only circum stance in connection — a connection that I cannot, indeed, place any reliance upon — is that there had been a violent thunderstorm in the early morning. It is possible that this may have produced some superstitious sentiment in her mind, leading her to make a god of the first thing to hand. I note that in both these cases there were unusual atmospheric conditions ; but this may be merely coincidental.