Chapter 17

"I don't want to mix up a matter of clear science with your religious emotions," he had declared. "And I've got a certain amount of religion of my own, for that matter. I manage to believe in it without corroboration; what's the matter with yours, that you can't do the same?"

But it was not corroboration which Mr. Newman desired. He had not so much argued as insisted; and it had been difficult to reason with his manner of one buoyed up, exalted, inspired. He had had his way, on the sole condition that he should wait two days--"and give sanity a chance," Carrick had added.

But on the stroke of nine, on the appointed evening, he was standing within the door of Carrick's study, his hat in his hand, a white silk muffler about his neck, instead of a collar.

"I was very careful to eat very little at dinner," were his first words.

Carrick, who had been looking forward to his arrival with nervous dread, glanced up sharply with an affectation of annoyance at an interruption.

"More fool you," he barked, in his harshest voice. Mr. Newman smiled, and laid his hat down on the table and began to unwind his muffler.

Carrick frowned at him. "I'm rather busy to-night, Newman," he said. That had no effect. He rose. "Besides, something has occurred to me, and--it is not safe, you know."

Mr. Newman laid his muffler beside his hat; without it he had a curiously incomplete and undressed appearance. He turned round.

"Oh yes, it is," he contradicted mildly. "As safe as it was on Monday, at any rate!"

"Ah!" Carrick caught him up eagerly. "But that wasn't safe, either. I hadn't thought of this then. You see, we don't understand yet how the thing applies. What is it that becomes conscious in the period you see? Is it you, in an earlier incarnation? If so, supposing I--I let go of you at a time when you were dead! What happens then? Do I get you back--or what?"

He tried to make the consideration graphic, driving it at Mr. Newman's serenity with a knit brow and a moving forefinger.

Mr. Newman shook his head. "I don't know," he answered, unmoved by Carrick's fervor. "I can't tell you that. But--you leave me where you found me--in the hands of my God."

With the same quiet cheerfulness, he crossed to the big chair, turned it to face the wall, and sat down in it. "I'm quite ready," he said.

Carrick was still standing by the table. He was frowning heavily; the proceeding was utterly against his inclination. When Mr. Newman spoke, he sighed windily, a sigh of resignation, of defeat.

"I warned you," he said, and wiped the palms of his hands on his trousers for what he had to do.

A less honest man than Carrick, finding himself in the like predicament, might plausibly have contrived a failure. Nothing easier than to tell Mr. Newman that nerves, a mental burden, or what not, stood in the way of the adventure. Mr. Carrick got to work forthwith.

Mr. Newman, supine in his chair, knew the preliminary stages of the process well. They took longer than usual to-night; both of them were unkeyed and had to compose themselves to the affair. But at last the visible world, the wall before him, commenced to dislimn; it shifted; it became mist, writhing and tinged with faint colors, that submerged his will and his consciousness, till they sank, gathering impetus, into a void below--the vacancy of the spirit that looses its hold on the body and is rudderless. He knew the blackness which is death, the momentary throe of entering it, the shock, the sense of chill, the dumbness.

"Ah!" Carrick saw that his head fell, and ceased his labors. He stood, gaunt and perplexed, contemplating the body from which he had expelled the will, the life--the soul. It was a plump body, well clad, well fed, a carcase that had absorbed much of its world. It cost labor and the pains of innumerable toilers to clothe it, nourish it, maintain it, guard, comfort, and embellish it. And an effort of ten minutes was enough to drain it of all save the fleshly, the mere bestial. The habit of his mind impelled him to sneer as he stood above it, to moralise in the tune of cynicism. "Ecce homo!" were the words he chanced upon; but the flavor of them troubled him when he remembered the goal of the journey upon which that absent spirit had departed.

"Oh, Lord!" said Carrick, in a kind of whispering panic.

He cast scared looks to and fro, as though he feared the great room should contain a spy upon him. It was empty save for him and that witless body. He put his hands together with the gesture of a child and shut his eyes tight.

"Our Father," he began, "Which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name!"

The place was as still as a church. He recited his prayer aloud, in a quiet, careful voice that echoed faintly among the book-shelves.

He bad got as far as "Thine is the kingdom, the power"--no farther-- when Mr. Newman stirred, and he gabbled the words to an end hastily before he opened his eyes. Mr. Newman came back to consciousness with a rush; his body inflated with life, his still face woke, and his vacant eyes, meeting Carrick's and recognising him, suddenly lit with sense--and terror.

"I say!" exclaimed Carrick; "will you have some water?"

His hand groped for the glass on the mantelshelf, but he continued to look at Mr. Newman, and presently he forgot the glass. Terror was the word, the terror of a man who finds--unawaited, ambushed in his being--depths and capacities unguessed and appalling. A blank, horror-ridden face fronted his own, till Mr. Newman put his hands before his face and shuddered. "What is it?" cried Carrick. "Old chap, what's up?"

"My God!"

It was not an expletive, but a prayer, a supplication. Mr. Newman dashed the hands from his face and sprang up. Carrick caught him by the arm.

"I say," he cried. "It's rot. It's a fake--it must be! Whatever happened--it's not a sure thing. Pull yourself together, Newman. I--I may be wrong; perhaps it's all an induced--you know, an illusion. I say, look here----"

"No!"

Gently, but with decision, Mr. Newman put his friendly hand away. "It's not an illusion," he said.

He walked away. Carrick stood staring after him, a battlefield of compunctions and a growing curiosity. Mr. Newman was wrestling with his trouble in the shadows; minutes passed before he came again into the lamplight. His face was blenched, but something like a stricken purpose dwelt on it.

"I'll tell you," he said. Then, wildly, "Oh, man! why did you let me? This trick of yours--it's the knowledge of good and evil; it's the forbidden fruit. Why did you let me?"

Carrick stammered futilely; there was no answer possible to give.

"I am a Christian," went on Mr. Newman, as though he appealed for justification. "By my lights I serve God. I try not to judge others. I've not judged you, have I, Carrick? You--you don't go to church, but I make a friend of you, don't I?"

"Yes," said Carrick.

"Then--why--" cried Mr. Newman--"why, of all people, should I--oh, Carrick, I don't know how to tell you."

Let Carrick's answer be remembered when his epitaph is written.

"Then don't tell me," he said. "I don't want to hear."

Mr. Newman shook his head. He had come to a standstill at the side of the big chair. He looked old and stricken and sad.

"Ah," he said. "But listen all the same."

He remained standing while he told his tale, with eyes that sought Carrick's listening face and fell away again.

"It took you longer than it usually does," he said; "to send me on, I mean. I expect I wasn't as good a subject as usual, too. I know I was full of a sort of gladness and expectation, for I didn't doubt that you could do it. I had a feeling that I was going to see--really to see, with mortal eyes--Him, my Redeemer, the Son of God! I wasn't afraid--only joyful with a great solemnity. I carried it with me, that joy, into the fog and darkness; it was all that I knew when the utter night surged up and gulfed me, and even life was forgotten. I was to see Him, like the pure in heart who are to see God. I had had that wonder in my mind since Sunday evening; the curate preached on it--and I--I thought my heart was pure."

His fearful eyes fluttered to Carrick's face and sank.

"The light came as it came before," he went on, quickly and miserably. "First a sense of something that was not mere darkness, infinitely distant, but swooping down upon me at an unimaginable speed, broadening more quickly than the sense could follow--and then it was daylight all about me, and I was in the world, seeing, hearing, and--yes, and speaking, speaking, Carrick. Oh, my God!"

He shivered and put a hand out to the arm of the big chair. Carrick said nothing.

"It's so clear," said Mr. Newman. "If it weren't so clear, I might persuade myself that it was an illusion, a vision--but it's not. It happened. The first thing I know was that it was very hot. A sun stood in the sky; its rays beat on me, and they were strong. I was in a crowd of people, and they--we, that is--we all stood facing a building, a white building with a great door. There were many of us; I was thrust between two big hairy men, and there was a great noise. Everybody was shouting. I was shouting too. I had both my arms raised above my head, with my fists clenched--like that----"

Mr. Newman raised his shut hands as high as he could; his tragic face compelled Carrick's eyes.

"But my arms were bare and very brown, I noticed. I was shouting vehemently, frantically, in some strange tongue. It was a language I do not know; but I knew what I was shouting, and I know still."

He stopped. Carrick waited.

"What was it?" he asked at last.

For answer Mr. Newman raised his arms again, the hands clenched, in a sudden and savage gesture.

"I was shouting like this," he said, and raised a voice that Carrick did not recognize. "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

He dropped his arms and stood staring at Carrick; then covered his face with his hands.

Carrick stood aghast and shaken. At last he went to his friend and took his arm.

XIII

THE STRANGE PATIENT

There were only two arrivals by the train from London when it stopped at the little flower-banked station of Barthiam; and Mary, who was waiting for it, had no difficulty in deciding which of them was Professor Fish. That great man never failed to look the part. His tall, lean figure, stooping at the shoulders, his big, smooth-shaven face, mildly abstracted behind his glasses, but retaining always something of a keen and formidable character, his soft hat and great flapping ulster, made up a noticeable personality anywhere. He seemed alone to crowd the little platform; the small man who accompanied him was lost in his shadow.

"Professor Fish?" accosted Mary primly, at his elbow.

He turned upon her with a movement like a swoop.

"I am Mary Pond," she explained. "My father was called away to a case, so he sent me to meet you and bring you up to the house. I have a fly waiting."

"Ah!" The Professor nodded and was bland. "Very good of you to take the trouble, Miss Pond. I am much obliged." He stepped aside to let his companion be seen. "This," he explained, "is your--er--guest."

Mary put out her hand, but the little man, who had been standing behind the Professor, made no motion to take it. He was staring at the planks of the platform; he lifted his eyes for an instant to glance at her, and dropped them again at once. Mary saw a listless, empty face, pale eyes, and pale hair, a mere effect of vacuity and weakness. The man drooped where he stood as though he were no more than half alive; his clothes were grotesquely ill-fitting. A little puzzled, she looked up to the Professor, and saw that he was watching her.

"How do you do?" she asked gently of the little man.

The Professor answered for him. "He does very well, Miss Pond," he said robustly. "Much better than he thinks. Between ourselves," dropping his voice and nodding at her with intention, "a most remarkable case. Very remarkable indeed. And now, if I can find a porter, we might as well be moving."

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before leaving them; then he set off down the platform. He walked with long strides in great spasms of energy, as he did everything. Mary turned from looking after him to the little creature beside her with a sense of absurd contrast. As she did so she saw that he too was looking after the Professor, and his empty face had suddenly become intent; it was hardened and vicious, with the parted lips and narrow eyes of hate. The man had discovered some spring of life within his listless body. It lasted only while one might draw a full breath; then he saw her scrutiny, and sank again to his still dreariness. It was a startling thing to see that flabby little insignificance strengthen to such a force of feeling, and Mary was conscious of a sort of alarm. But before she could frame a thing to say the Professor was back again, and the atmosphere of his vigour had enveloped them.

Professor Fish sat next to her in the cab, and the new patient, who was to be an inmate of her house for some time to come, leaned against the cushions opposite, with eyes half closed and his coarse hands folded in his lap. The Professor talked without ceasing, gazing through the open window at the fat lands of Kent unfolded beside the road and torpid under the July sun; but Mary found more of interest in the still face before her, cryptic and mysterious in its utter vacancy. So little it expressed besides weakness that Mary wondered what illness could thus have cut the man off from the world. She was used to the waste products of life; one "resident patient" succeeded another at her father's house, and to each she was a deft nurse and a supple companion. They had in common, she found, a certain paltriness; most of them had been overtaxed by easy burdens; but this man's aspect conveyed suggestions of a long struggle with a burden beyond all strength. The meanness of him, all his appearance of having begun in the gutter and failed there, touched her not at all; Mary had had too much to do with human flesh in the raw to be greatly concerned about such matters as that.

Dr. Pond was at home to meet them when the cab drew up at the door, an elderly, good-natured man, white-haired and sprucely white- bearded. He greeted Professor Fish with some deference, and helped the new patient carefully forth from the cab. It was Mary's duty to see the one trunk of new shining tin carried in and placed in the room that was prepared for the house's new inmate. This done, she went to the others in the little drawing-room. Her father and Professor Fish were seated in the window, busy with talk; the new patient had an upright chair against the wall, and sat in it with the same lassitude and downcast gaze which had already drawn Mary's wondering compassion. The Professor rose at her entry.

"Ah! Miss Pond," he said in his cheerful, booming voice, "I was just giving your father a few particulars about our young friend."

"I should like to hear them," she answered, taking the chair he reached for her. "You see, I shall have a good deal to do with him."

Old Dr. Pond nodded. "Mary," he said, "is my right hand, Professor."

"Of course," agreed the Professor. "I can see that."

He was seated again, and he leaned across to Mary confidentially, with an explanatory forefinger hovering.

"As I told your father, Miss Pond, it isn't necessary to go far back in the case," he said. "As a matter of fact, I took this case up-- experimentally. The subject was a good one for a--well, call it a theory of mine, a new idea in pathology. You see? I wanted to try it on the dog before publishing it, and our young friend there"--he nodded at the back of the room and sank his voice--"he was the dog. You understand?"

Mary nodded, and the Professor smiled.

"Well," he said, "I have succeeded. The patient is convalescent, but--you see how he is. He has very little vital force, and also, occasionally, delusions. Merely ephemeral, you know, but delusions. He wants quiet chiefly, and very little else--just that atmosphere of repose and--er--peace which you can create for him, Miss Pond."

"These delusions," put in Dr. Pond, "are they of any special character!"

"H'm!" The Professor stroked his chin. "No," he said. "Curious, you know, but not symptomatic." His hard eye scanned the old doctor purposely. "Sometimes," he said slowly, "he thinks he has been dead, and that I brought him back to life."

"And he hates you for it," suggested Mary. The Professor stared at her in open astonishment.

"How on earth did you know that?" he cried.

"I saw him looking after you in the station," Mary explained. "He just--glared."

"I see." Professor Fish was always rather extravagant in manner and speech; his relief now seemed a little exaggerated. He drew a deep breath and glanced past Mary to the patient on his chair at the far end of the room. "Yes," he said, "at such times he is distinctly resentful. I don't wonder you noticed it."

"Your letter didn't mention his name," said Mary.

"I should call him Smith," answered the Professor.

"It's a good name. And that, I think, is all there is to tell. Oh, by the way, though he has no suicidal tendency, of course, or I shouldn't put him here; but all the same----"

Mary nodded. "Quite so," she said. "No razor."

"Exactly," said the Professor. "And no money. Give him the things he needs, and let me have the bill."

He rose and reached for his hat.

"But you will stay and have something to eat," protested old Dr. Pond.

"Can't," answered the Professor. "Got an engagement in town. I've just time to catch the train back. Now, you quite understand about this case? Just quietness and soothing companionship, you know, fresh air and sleep, and all that."

"We quite understand," said Mary. "We'll do our best."

"I'm sure you will," said Professor Fish cordially. He moved over to where the patient sat; he had not moved at all. He continued to gaze at the carpet while the tall Professor stood over him.

"Now, Smith," said the Professor in his loud voice, "I'm off. You're in good hands here, you know. You've only to take it easy and rest."

"Rest?" Smith repeated the word in a hoarse whisper; it was the first he had spoken. He looked up, and his eye went to the Professor's face with a sort of challenge.

"Yes," said the Professor. "Good-bye."

Smith continued to look at him, but answered nothing. Professor Fish shrugged his shoulders and turned away sharply.

"He'll soon pick up," he said to Dr. Pond. "And now I really must go."

He shook hands with Mary with a manner of cheerful vigour, beaming at her through his gold-rimmed glasses, big, whimsical, and quick. A moment later, Dr. Pond was showing him out, and Mary, alone with her patient, had another glimpse of hate and contempt animating and enlivening that weak and formless face.

She waited till she heard the front door close and the Professor's departing feet crunch on the gravel of the garden path. Then she went and put a hand on the little man's shoulder.

"You look very tired," she said, quietly, in her level, pleasant voice. "Would you like to go to your room and lie down? And I will send you up some tea."

There was a long pause, and she thought he was not going to answer. But she waited restfully, and at last he sighed.

"Yes," he said wearily, "that's what I want."

His voice had the flat tones of Cockneydom, but Mary took no note of it.

"Then let me show you the way," she said, still gently; and he rose at the word and followed her upstairs.

In this manner the new patient was installed in the household of Dr. Pond. He slipped into his place like a shadow, displacing nothing. The Doctor, swollen with the distinction of a visit by Professor Fish in person, would willingly have made a fuss of him, if it had been possible. But Smith was not amenable to polite attentions. To attempts to render him particular consideration he opposed a barren inertia; one could as easily have been obliging to a lamp-post. The man's consciousness seemed to exist in a vacuum; he lived in a solitude to which the kindly Doctor could never penetrate. Once, certainly, his persistent geniality won him a rebuff. It was at breakfast, and he was following his custom of endeavoring to trap Smith into conversation. Smith sat opposite him at the table, staring vacantly at the tablecloth.

"It is a fine morning," the Doctor observed, "I wonder, now, Mr. Smith, if you would care for a little drive with me. I have some brief visits to pay here and there, and I could drop you here again before I go on. The fresh air would do you good--freshen you up, you know; put a little life into you. Come, now! what do you say to accompanying me?"

Smith said nothing, but his cheek twitched once. "Come now!" pressed the Doctor persuasively. "See what a lovely day it is. Sun, fresh air, the smell and sight of the fields--it'll put fresh life into you."

Smith's white face worked slightly. "Ere," he said, and paused. The Doctor bent forward, pleased. "Go to 'ell!" said Smith thoughtfully.

Mary had much more success with him; a slender link of sympathy had established itself between the healthy, tranquil girl and this dreary wisp of a man. She asked him no questions, and in return for her forbearance he would sometimes speak to her voluntarily. He would emerge from his trance-like apathy to watch her as she went about her household duties. Professor Fish had spoken truly when he said that Mary Pond knew how to create about her an atmosphere of serenity. The tones of her quiet voice, the gentleness of her movements, the kindly sobriety of her regard seemed to fortify her patient. For her part, a genuine compassion for the little man was mixed with some liking; he was a furtive and vulgar creature at the best, but his dependence on her, his helplessness and trouble, reached to the maternal in her honest heart. She could manage him; but for her strategy he would have lived in his bed, day and night, in a sort of half torpor.

"It's remarkable what a control you have over these low natures, Mary," Dr. Pond said to her. He had come home one afternoon to find that she had actually sent Smith out for a walk. "I confess it's a case that's beyond me altogether. There doesn't seem to be any thing to take hold of in the man. It would be better if he felt a little pain now and again; it would give one an opening, as it were."

Seated in a low chair in the window, Mary was hemming dusters. She looked up at him thoughtfully.

"Father," she said, "what do you think was the matter with him in the first place? What was the disease that Professor Fish cured?"

Dr. Pond shook his white head vaguely.

"Impossible to say," he answered. "It looks like, a mental case, doesn't it? And yet----You see, Fish has had so many specialities. He was in practice in Harley Street as a nerve man. Then, next thing, one hears of him in heart surgery. He's had a go at electricity lately. And between you and me--he's a great man, of course--but if it wasn't for his position and all that, we'd be calling him a quack."

"Then you can't tell what the disease was?" persisted Mary.

"No," said Dr. Pond. "Nor even if there was a disease. For all I know, Fish may have been vivisecting him. He wouldn't stop at a thing like that, if I know anything about him."

"He ought to have told us," said Mary.

"Yes," agreed the Doctor. "But Fish always does as he likes. How long has Smith been out now, Mary?"

"He went out at three," she answered. "And now it's half-past five. He ought to be in. I think I'll put my hat on, father, and go after him."

Dr. Pond nodded. "I would," he said.