Master of His Fate Part 3

In a little while the friends parted. Lefevre said he had work to do, but he did not antic.i.p.ate such work as he had to turn to that night.

Though the doctor was a bachelor, he had a professional residence apart from his mother and sister. They lived in a small house in Curzon Street; he dwelt in Savile Row. Savile Row was a place of consequence long before Regent Street was thought of, but now they are few who know of its existence. Fas.h.i.+on ignores it. It is tenanted by small clubs, learned societies, and doctors. It slumbers in genteel decorum, with its back to the garish modern thoroughfare. It is always quiet, but by nine o'clock of a dark evening it is deserted. When Dr Lefevre, therefore, stepped out of his hired hansom, and prepared to put his latch-key in his own door, he was arrested by a hoa.r.s.e-voiced hawker of evening news bursting in upon the repose of the Row with a continuous roar of "Special--Mystery--Paper--Railway--Special--Brighton--Paper--Victoria --Special!" It was with some effort, and only when the man was close at hand, that he interpreted the sounds into these words.

"Paper, sir," said the man; and he bought it and went in. He entered his dining-room, and read the following paragraph;--

"A Mysterious Case.

"A report has reached us that a young man, about two or four and twenty years of age, whose name is at present unknown, was found yesterday (Sunday) to all appearance dead in a first-cla.s.s carriage of the 5 P.M. train from Brighton to Victoria. The discovery was only made at Grosvenor Road Station, where tickets are taken before entering Victoria. At Victoria the body was searched for purposes of identification, and there was found upon him a card with the following remarkable inscription:--'_I am not dead. Take me to the St. James's Hospital._' To St. James's Hospital accordingly the young man was conveyed. It seems probable he is in a condition of trance--not for the first time--since he was provided with the card, and knew the hospital with which is a.s.sociated in all men's minds the name of Dr Lefevre, who is so famous for his skill in the treatment of nervous disorders."

In matters of plain duty Dr Lefevre had got into the excellent habit of acting first and thinking afterwards. He at once rang the bell, and ordered the responsible serving-man who appeared to call a cab. The man went to the door and sounded his shrill whistle, grateful to the ears of several loitering cabbies. There was a mad race of growlers and hansoms for the open door. Dr Lefevre got into the first hansom that drew up, and drove off to the hospital. By that time he had told himself that the young man must be a former patient of his (though he did not remember any such), and that he ought to see him at once, although it is not for the visiting physician of a hospital to appear, except between fixed hours of certain days. He made nothing of the mystery which the newspaper wished, after the manner of its kind, to cast about the case, and thought of other things, while he smoked cigarettes, till he reached the hospital. The house-physician was somewhat surprised by his appearance.

"I have just read that paragraph," said Lefevre, handing him the paper.

"Oh yes, sir," said the house-physician. "The man was brought in last night. Dr Dowling" [the resident a.s.sistant-physician] "saw him, and thought it a case of ordinary trance, that could easily wait till you came, as usual, to-morrow."

"Ah, well," said Lefevre, "let me see him."

Seen thus, the physician appeared a different person from the cheerful, modest man of the Hyacinth Club. He had now put on the responsibility of men's health and the enthusiasm of his profession. He seemed to swell in proportions and dignity, though his eye still beamed with a calm and kindly light.

The young man led the way down the echoing flagged pa.s.sage, and up the flight of stone stairs. As they went they encountered many silent female figures, clean and white, going up or down (it was the time of changing nurses), so that a fanciful stranger might well have thought of the stairway reaching from earth to heaven, on which the angels of G.o.d were seen ascending and descending. A stranger, too, would have noted the peculiar odours that hung about the stairs and pa.s.sages, as if the ghosts of medicines escaped from the chemist's bottles were hovering in the air. Opening first an outer and then an inner door, Lefevre and his companion entered a large and lofty ward. The room was dark, save for the light of the fire and of a shaded lamp, by which, within a screen, the night-nurse sat conning her list of night-duties. The evening was just beginning out of doors,--shop-fronts were flaring, taverns were becoming noisy, and brilliantly-lit theatres and music-halls were settling down to business,--but here night and darkness had set in more than an hour before. Indeed, in these beds of languis.h.i.+ng, which stretched away down either side of the ward, night was hardly to be distinguished from day, save for the sunlight and the occasional excitement of the doctor's visit; and many there were who cried to themselves in the morning, "Would G.o.d it were evening!" and in the evening, "Would G.o.d it were morning!" But there was yet this other difference, that disease and doctor, fear and hope, gossip and grumbling, newspaper and Bible and tract, were all forgotten in the night, for some time at least, and Nature's kind restorer, sleep, went softly round among the beds and soothed the weary spirits into peace.

Lefevre and the house-physician pa.s.sed silently up the ward between the rows of silent blue-quilted beds, while the nurse came silently to meet them with her lamp. Lefevre turned aside a moment to look at a man whose breathing was laboured and stertorous. The shaded light was turned upon him: an opiate had been given him to induce sleep; it had performed its function, but, as if resenting its bondage, it was impishly twitching the man's muscles and catching him by the throat, so that he choked and started. Dr Lefevre raised the man's eyelid to look at his eye: the upturned eye stared out upon him, but the man slept on. He put his hand on the man's forehead (he had a beautiful hand--the hand of a born surgeon and healer--fine but firm, the expression of nervous force), and with thumb and finger stroked first his temples and then his neck. The spasmodic twitching ceased, and his breath came easy and regular. The house-doctor and the nurse looked at each other in admiration of this subtle skill, while Lefevre turned away and pa.s.sed on.

"Where is the man?" said he.

"Number Thirteen," answered the house-doctor, leading the way.

The lamp was set on the locker beside the bed of Thirteen, screens were placed round to create a seclusion amid the living, breathing silence of the ward, and Lefevre proceeded to examine the unconscious patient who had so strangely put himself in his hands.

He was young and well-favoured, and, it was evident from the firmness of his flesh, well-fed. Lefevre considered his features a moment, shook his head, and murmured, "No; I don't think I've seen him before." He turned to the nurse and inquired concerning the young man's clothes: they were evidently those of a gentleman, she said,--of one, at least, who had plenty of money. He turned again to the young man. He raised the left arm to feel the heart, but, contrary to his experience in such cases, the arm did not remain as he bent it, nor did the eyes open in obedience to the summons of the disturbed nerves. The breathing was scarcely perceptible, and the beating of the heart was faint.

"A strange case," said Lefevre in a low voice to his young comrade--"the strangest I've seen. He does not look a subject for this kind of thing, and yet he is in the extreme stage of hypnotism. You see." And the doctor, by sundry tests and applications, showed the peculiar exhausted and contractive condition of the muscles. "It is very curious."

"Perhaps," said the other, "he has been--" and he hesitated.

"Been what?" asked Lefevre, turning on him his keen look.

"Enjoying himself."

"Having a debauch, you mean? No; I think not. There would then have probably been some reflex action of the nerves. This is not that kind of exhaustion; and it is more than mere trance or catalepsy; it seems the extremest suspensory condition,--and that in a young man of such apparent health is very remarkable. It will take a long time for him to recover in the ordinary way with food and sleep," he continued, rather to himself than to his subordinates. "He needs rousing,--a strong stimulant."

"Shall I get some brandy, sir?" asked the nurse.

"Brandy? No. That's not the stimulant he needs."

He was silent for a little, moving the young man's limbs, and touching certain muscles which his exact anatomical knowledge taught him to lay his finger on with unerring accuracy. The effect was startling and grotesque. As a galvanic current applied to the proper nerves and muscles of a dead body will produce expressions and actions resembling those of life, so the touch of Lefevre's finger made the unconscious young man scowl or smile or clench his fist according to the muscles impressed.

"The brain," said Lefevre, "seems quite sound,--perfectly pa.s.sive, you see, but active in its pa.s.sivity. You can leave us, nurse," said he; then, turning to the house-physician, he continued: "I am convinced this is such a peculiar case as I have often imagined, but have never seen.

This nervous-muscular suspension is complicated with some exhaustive influence. I want your a.s.sistance, and I ask for it like this, because it is necessary for my purpose that you should give it freely, and without reserve; I am going to try the electrode."

This was a simple machine contrived by Lefevre, on the model of the electric cylinder of Du Bois-Reymond, and worked on the theory that the electricity stored in the human body can be driven out by the human will along a prepared channel into another human body.

"I understand," said the a.s.sistant promptly. He apprehended his chief's meaning more fully than the reader can; for he was deeply interested and fairly skilled in that strange annex of modern medical science which his chief called psycho-dynamics, and which old-fas.h.i.+oned pract.i.tioners decline to recognise.

"Get me the machine and the insulating sheet," said Lefevre.

While his a.s.sistant was gone on his errand, Lefevre with his right hand gently stroked along the main lines of nerve and muscle in the upper part of his patient's body; and it was strange to note how the features and limbs lost a certain constriction and rigidity which it was manifest they had had only by their disappearance. When the house-physician returned, the sheet (a preparation of spun-gla.s.s invented by Lefevre) was drawn under the patient, and the machine, with its vessels of chemical mixture and its conducting wires, was placed close to the bed.

The handles attached to the wires were put into the patient's hands.

"Now," said Lefevre, "this is a trying experiment. Give me your hand--your left; you know how to do; yes, the other hand on the machine, with the fingers touching the chemicals. When you feel strength--virtue, so to say--going out of you, don't be alarmed: let it go; use no effort of the will to keep it back, or we shall probably fail."

"I understand," repeated the a.s.sistant.

Then, holding his hand,--closely, but not so as to constrain the muscles,--Lefevre put his own left on the machine according to the direction he had given his a.s.sistant,--with his fingers, that is, dipping into the chemicals from plates in the bottom of which the wires conducted to the patient's hands. A s.h.i.+ver ran through the frame of both Lefevre and his companion, a convulsive shudder pa.s.sed upon the unconscious body, and--a strange cry rang out upon the silence of the ward, and Lefevre withdrew his hands. He and the house-physician looked at each other pale and shaken. The nurse came running at the cry.

Lefevre looked out beyond the screen to rea.s.sure her, and saw in the dim red reflection of the firelight a sight which struck him gruesomely, used though he was to hospital sights; all about the ward pale scared figures were sitting up in bed, like corpses suddenly raised from the dead. He bent over his patient, who presently opened his eyes and stared at him.

"Get some brandy and milk," said Lefevre to his companion.

"Who? Where am I?" murmured the patient in a faint voice.

"I am Dr Lefevre, and this is St. James's Hospital."

"Doctor?--hospital?--oh, I'm dreaming!" murmured the patient.

"We'll talk about that when you have taken some of this," said Lefevre, as the house-physician reappeared with the nurse, bearing the brandy and milk.

Lefevre presently told him how he had been found in the train, and taken for dead till the card--"this card," said he, taking it from the top of the locker--was discovered on him. The young man listened in open amazement, and looked at the card.

"I know nothing of this!" said he. "I never saw the card before! I never heard your name or the hospital's till a minute ago."

"Your case was strange before," said Lefevre; "this makes it stranger.

Who journeyed with you?"

"A man,--a nice, strange, oldish fellow in a fur coat." And the young man wished to enter upon a narrative, when the doctor interrupted him.

"You're not well enough to talk much now. Tell me to-morrow all about it."

The doctor returned home, his imagination occupied with the vision of a train rus.h.i.+ng at express speed over the metals, and of a compartment in the train in which a young man reclined under the spell of an old man.

The young man's face he saw clearly, but the old man's evaded him like a dream, and yet he felt he ought to know one who knew the peculiar repute of the St. James's Hospital. Next day the young man told his story, which was in effect as follows: He was a subaltern in a dragoon regiment stationed in Brighton. On Sunday afternoon he had set out for London on several days' leave. He had taken a seat in a smoking-carriage, and was preparing to make himself comfortable with a novel and a cigar, when an elderly gentleman, who looked like a foreigner, came in as the train was about to move. He particularly observed the man from the first, because, though it was a pleasant spring day, he looked pinched and shrunken with cold in his great fur overcoat, and because he had remarked him standing on the platform and scrutinizing the pa.s.sengers hurrying into the train.

The gentleman sat down in the seat opposite the young officer, and drew his fur wrap close about him. The young officer could not keep his eyes off him, and he noted that his features seemed worn thin and arid, as by pa.s.sage through terrific peril,--as if he had been travelling for many days without sleep and without food, straining forward to a goal of safety, sick both in stomach and heart,--as if he had been rus.h.i.+ng, like the maniac of the Gospel, through dry places, seeking rest and finding none. His hair, which should have been black, looked l.u.s.treless and bleached, and his skin seemed as if his blood had lost all colour and generosity, as if nothing but serum flowed in his veins. His eyes alone did not look bloodless; they were weary and extravasated, as from anxious watching. The young officer's compa.s.sion went out to the stranger; for he thought he must be a conspirator, fleeing probably from the infamous tyranny of Russian rule. But presently he spoke in such good English that the idea of his being a Russian faded away.

"Excuse the liberty I take," said he, with a singularly winning smile; "but let me advise you not to smoke that cigar. I have a peculiarly sensitive nose for tobacco, and my nose informs me that your cigar, though good as cigars go, is not fit for you to smoke."

The young officer was surprised that he was rather charmed than offended by this impertinence.

"Let me offer you one of these instead," said the strange gentleman; "we call them--I won't trouble you with the Spanish name--but in English it means 'Joys of Spain.'"

The officer took and thanked him for a "Joy of Spain," and found the flavour and aroma so excellent that, to use his own phrase, he could have eaten it. He asked the stranger what in particular was his objection to the other cigar.

"This objection," said he, "which is common to all ill-prepared tobaccos, that it lowers the vital force. You don't feel that yet, because you are young and healthy, and gifted with a superabundance of fine vitality; but you may by smoking one bad cigar bring the time a day nearer when you must feel it. And even now it would take a little off the keen edge of the appet.i.te for pleasure. How little," said he, "do we understand how to keep ourselves in condition for the complete enjoyment of life! You, I suppose, are about to take your pleasure in town, and instead of judiciously tickling and stimulating your nerves for the complete fulfilment of the pleasures you contemplate, you begin--you were beginning, I mean, with your own cigar--to dull and stupefy them.