BRANDON was still brooding over a tragedy he could not avert when a
nurse came into the room. She was a practical, vigorous creature, plain
and clean of mind, and after a single shrewd glance at the patient she
proceeded to take his temperature with a clinical thermometer.
“Just as I thought.” An ominous head was shaken. “That man always has
a bad effect upon you. I shall have to forbid him seeing you in the
future.”
“What nonsense!” said Brandon.
“This speaks for itself.” The nurse held up the thermometer. “He always
puts you up to a hundred. You are nearly a hundred and one now, and
you’ll have to go to bed and stay there until you are down a bit.”
It was vain for Brandon to desist. He was at the mercy of Olympians who
did not hesitate to misuse their powers. He was whisked off to bed like
a naughty child, and the privilege of a further talk with John Smith
was withdrawn indefinitely. He protested strongly to the nurse and
bitterly to his wife, but he was told that it would not be safe to see
the young man again until he could do so without playing tricks with
his temperature.
Brandon fumed in durance for the rest of the day. The patience which
had borne him through all his trials threatened to desert him now. He
was tormented with the thought of his own helplessness. The recent
visit had moved Brandon to the very depths of his being, and the
longing to help John Smith escape the coil that fate was weaving now
burnt in his veins a living fire. As he lay helpless and overwrought,
on the verge of fever, the stupidities of the little world around him
were magnified into a crime for which humanity itself would have to pay.
The next morning, Wednesday, at eleven o’clock came Dr. Joliffe. The
higher medical science had begun to despair of ever restoring to
Brandon the use of his limbs, and he was now in the sole care of his
local attendant, who came to see him every other day.
Dr. Joliffe found the patient still keeping his bed by the orders of
the nurse. In the course of an uncomfortable night he had slept little,
and his temperature was still a matter for concern. Moreover, not the
nurse alone, but Mrs. Brandon also, had already delivered themselves
vehemently on the subject of John Smith.
For one reason or another Dr. Joliffe would have been very willing
just now to consign John Smith to limbo. Nor was this desire made
less when the patient, after being duly examined, reported upon, and
admonished, requested the nurse to withdraw from the room in order that
he might talk with the doctor privately.
Joliffe knew well enough what was coming. And he would have done much
to avoid further contact with a most unhappy subject, from which
consequences were flowing of an ever-increasing embarrassment. But
there was no means of escape. For Brandon, the subject of John Smith
had become almost an obsession; a fact which the doctor had begun to
realize to his cost.
“What steps have been taken?” Brandon began as soon as they were free
of the nurse’s presence.
“Steps?” Joliffe fenced a little.
“In regard to John Smith.” There was a sudden excitement in the bright
eyes. “He’s in my mind night and day. I can’t bear the thought that he
should be destroyed.”
“I’m sorry to say that Birdwood Thompson can’t come here.” The
professional voice was dulcet and disarming. “He’s in a very bad state
of health and giving up practice. His second boy went down on the
_Victorious_, and his eldest was killed the other day in France, so I
suppose that may have something to do with it.”
“Well, what is being done?”
“As you ask the question,” was the cautious reply, “we have agreed upon
Murfin. Personally, I don’t think he’s as good as Moriarty or the other
man, but we wrote to him in order to save trouble.”
“In order to save trouble!” Brandon gasped. “Save trouble in a matter
of this kind?”
“Certainly. And we are all of us very anxious that you should not worry
over it any more.”
“But--don’t you see--what a terrible thing it is?”
“Not exactly terrible.” Dr. Joliffe spoke gravely but cheerfully.
“Quite an everyday occurrence, you know, if one looks at it in the
right way.”
“An everyday occurrence--if--one--looks--at--it--in--the right way!”
“Undoubtedly. Cases of this kind are always arising. Whatever view one
may take of the man, he is certainly on the border line; therefore,
whether he’s certified or not is merely a question of expediency. And
what I have to point out to you is that in the last resort, as the
world is just now, with all these public safeguards in operation the
final decision will be taken by the authorities.”
“How cruel!” said Brandon, with growing excitement.
“Not necessarily cruel,” said Dr. Joliffe in a mellifluous tone.
“To think of our local _Shallows_ sitting in judgment on the first
spirit of the age!”
“The irony of circumstances.”
“No.” Brandon’s eyes were hectic. “It takes more than two thousand
years to change the world. An old story is being retold with a few
modern improvements. I see that. But, Joliffe, I believe you to be
a just man, and I count on your help. For the love we both bear the
Republic, I want you to put up a fight for John Smith.”
“There, my dear fellow, calm yourself,” said the doctor soothingly. “I
will undertake to see that no injustice is done in the matter.”
“In other words, that he is not molested.”
“That is beyond my power, because, as I say, the Bench will move if we
don’t.”
“Then leave it to them to take the first step. And in the meantime
we’ll get legal advice.”
“Murfin comes down on Friday.”
“Easy to stop him.”
“The vicar won’t consent to that, I’m afraid.”
“No, I suppose not. But if you love this country you will do your best
to restrain a profoundly stupid man.”
Plain, common-sensible Dr. Joliffe thought the line of argument a
little high-flown, and said so in a tone of scrupulous kindness.
“I don’t overstate,” said Brandon. “Let me explain my meaning. The
Republic is rising to a height of moral grandeur that few would have
dared to prophesy for her. But as always, there is a flaw in her armor.
The enemies of the light are seeking it, and if they should find it
there is absolutely nothing between this world and barbarism.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Dr. Joliffe shook a grave head.
“I can tell you that she is about to treat her most august citizen as
Rome, her great prototype, treated Another.”
Dr. Joliffe continued to shake his head. Not only was he puzzled, he
was rather distressed by such an extravagant statement. “How I wish I
could get your mind off this subject!” he said.
“You must not hope to do that,” said Brandon. “It is decreed that I
should lie supine, a helpless log, while night and day my brain is
turned into a weaver’s shuttle. I can do nothing, yet I somehow feel
that the high gods have called me to do everything. This man has no
other friend, and it is for that reason, Joliffe, that I ask you to
stand my proxy in his defense.”
“But I assure you no defense is possible,” said Joliffe, with a feeling
of growing distress.
“Let us brief counsel.”
“No purpose will be served. As you know, the vicar is a most stubborn
man. And if he doesn’t succeed one way he will another. If we doctors
are obdurate he will turn to the Bench, and if the Bench won’t oblige
he’ll have recourse to the military.”
“It hardly seems credible.”
“I agree. But that’s the man. And the worst of it is that from his own
point of view in a time like the present he may be perfectly right.”
“I refuse to believe that he can be right at any time.”
“But surely, a man who sides openly with the enemy ought not to be at
large.”
“Has he gone beyond what Jesus would have done in such circumstances?”
“Hardly a practical analogy, I’m afraid. In any case, John Smith is
not Jesus, even if his half-witted old mother may think so. The law is
bound to regard him as a crack-brained rustic, and in my humble opinion
anyone who tries to persuade it that the poor fellow is anything else,
will be very unwise.”
“In other words you decline your help?”
“Only because,” said Dr. Joliffe, “I now see the hopelessness of
the position. Knowing John Smith as I do, I consider that Mr.
Perry-Hennington has made a mountain out of a molehill. Of course he’s
a fanatic on the subject, but the poor, feckless chap is amenable to
the law as it exists at present, and he has no means of escape. It
will be far wiser, believe me, to accept the inevitable. All that his
friends can hope to do is to make things as comfortable for him as
possible.”
“That shall be done at any rate,” said Brandon. “It is
Perry-Hennington’s intention, I presume, to have him sent to the county
asylum.”
“It is the only place for him, I’m afraid. But, of course, even there
he will be extremely well treated.”
“I don’t question that, but assuming it to be his destination, I should
like him to live in comfort and dignity. Wouldn’t it be possible for
him to go to some such place as Wellwood Sanatorium?”
“Well, of course,” said Dr. Joliffe, “that is almost a question of
ways and means. Wellwood is an ideal place for the poor fellow. But of
course it is out of the question.”
“Why?”
“The expense.”
“No matter what it may be,” said Brandon, “I shall be only too happy to
bear it.”
“It will not be less than five hundred a year.”
“If it were twice as much I should count it a high privilege to be
allowed to do that for him.”
Dr. Joliffe shook the head of a prudent man over this piece of
quixotism. “Very generous of you,” he said, “but they look after their
patients so extraordinarily well at Broad Hill, that I am sure this
expense is quite unnecessary.”
Brandon, however, stuck to his plan.
He had now made up his mind that if the worst happened, Wellwood should
be the home of John Smith.
“Very well.” Dr. Joliffe saw that a purposeless opposition could do
no good. “If the necessity arises it shall be arranged for him to go
there. And now I want you to forget all about this miserable matter.
Dismiss it entirely from your thoughts.”
“Impossible,” said Brandon. “We are deliberately closing the Door.”
“Closing the door?”
“For the human race.”
The doctor looked sadly, uncomprehendingly at his patient. “I don’t
understand,” he said.
“Of course you don’t, my dear friend. It is not to be expected that
you should. And at present I can’t enlighten you.”
Dr. Joliffe shook a rather ominous head. Brandon was a mass of morbid
fancies and illusions; and the doctor was very far indeed from being
satisfied with the state in which he found him. He felt it to be his
duty to give a little serious admonition, and then he withdrew from the
room. The nurse was waiting in the dressing room adjoining, and to her
he confided certain misgivings. The patient must stay in bed, he must
not read, he must avoid all things likely to cause worry or excitement.
And beyond everything else his mind must be kept from the subject of
John Smith.