FOR several months Brandon heard nothing of John Smith. Not able to
write himself, he had not the courage to dictate a letter. In such
circumstances there was nothing to be said which did not seem an
impertinence, yet many times he was possessed by an intense desire
to communicate. Day by day the man himself remained at the root of
Brandon’s thoughts.
In their last interview John had said that he had a great work to do.
Although his fate had even then been foreshadowed, he had made that
declaration; moreover, he had expressed a serene confidence that grace
would be given for his task.
From the first Brandon had had a great curiosity as to what that
task could be. Believing implicitly in the full mental and moral
responsibility of his friend, he would not permit a doubt of his
capacity. And yet it was only too likely that the conditions in which
his life was now passed would paralyze a wonderful mind. Brandon
had done all that lay in his power to lighten its lot; he had not
spared money to provide reasonable comfort, reasonable amenity of
surroundings; books and papers had gone to Wellwood from time to time;
all that could be done by a friend’s devotion had been done to sustain
John Smith and keep his soul alive.
At last the silence was broken. Brandon received a letter from
Wellwood, expressing deep gratitude for this solicitude. But it also
expressed far more. It disclosed a penetration of thought, a power of
vision, above all a real nobility of temper whose only parallel in the
mind of Brandon was that of Socrates in similar but less degrading
circumstances.
Somehow Brandon was comforted. The transcendent qualities he had long
perceived in this man were here in their fullness. Amid the Stygian
glooms of a world ever groping in darkness, a great light shone. In
Brandon’s opinion it was better to be immured with John Smith in
Wellwood Sanatorium than to enjoy the sanctions of human freedom.
In the course of a full letter, which Brandon read again and again,
John Smith referred to a work upon which he was engaged. He was going
forward with his task, and with the help of others it was nearing
fulfillment. He did not disclose what the task was, nor did he refer to
“the others” specifically.
Weeks passed. Visibly helped by John Smith’s letter, Brandon, to the
joy of his friends, regained much of his mental poise. The dark clouds
of a few months back were slowly dispersed, but in body he remained
inert, and now without hope of cure. And then one morning at the
beginning of December there came a second letter from Wellwood.
It merely contained these words: “Come soon. I need you.”
Such authoritative brevity was for Brandon a command which he felt he
must obey. But he was at once aware that he could only get to Wellwood
in the teeth of a junta. Wife, doctor, nurse, all had very strong
reasons to urge against a journey of nearly twenty miles in the middle
of winter to such a place on such a pretext. To them the summons itself
was the caprice of an unsound mind, the wish to obey it the whim of a
sick man.
But in this, as they were to learn, they underrated the forces now at
work. Fully set on obeying the summons, Brandon would brook no refusal.
In vain Millicent dissuaded, in vain Joliffe and the nurse issued a
ukase. Come what might he must see John Smith; if the heavens fell he
must go to Wellwood.
Opposition raised Brandon’s will to such a pitch that at last his
guardians had to consider the question very seriously. And they
reluctantly saw that beyond the amount of trouble involved there was
no real reason why he should not have his way. Prejudice, it was true,
also entered into the matter; doctor and nurse agreed that it could
not be good for a sick man to visit such a place as Wellwood. But the
sick man declared he alone must be judge of that; and as a growing
excitement threatened a return of fever, consent was reluctantly given
for a letter to be written to the chief medical officer at Wellwood for
permission to see John Smith.
Millicent Brandon wrote the letter at the invalid’s dictation, devoutly
hoping the while that its purpose would fail. Alas for the frailty of
human hopes in the scale of official perversity! By return of post came
full permission to visit the patient at any time. In the presence of
this bombshell nothing was left but to submit with a good grace to the
inevitable.
Accordingly, in the gray of a December afternoon, Brandon made the
journey to Wellwood by motor. It hardly took an hour. Little of the
landscape was visible in the winter half-light, and the place itself
was unable to reveal the beauties of its setting. Run on modern lines
with accommodation for a hundred patients, it had the comforts of a
home to offer and a very great deal in the way of human kindness. To
one in John Smith’s rank of life it was a place of luxury; to those
whose lot had been cast on more liberal lines there was little to
complain of in regard to food, housing, reasonable recreation. Yet to
each and all of its inmates, from the most open and amenable to the
most sullen and defiant, it had one truly dreadful drawback. They were
not there of their own free will, but were held by the order of the
State.
That simple but terrible fact galled one and all like a chain. And few
cherished any real hope of ever getting free. “Abandon hope all ye
who enter here,” might have been engraved above the pleasant portals
of this polite prison. Once behind those doors, the young and the old
alike felt themselves caught in the meshes of a deep-laid conspiracy,
of a darkness and a subtlety beyond belief. Every attempt at freedom
was a struggle against fate, every effort to break the fetters of the
law riveted them more securely. From time to time the patients were
visited by doctors, magistrates, clergymen, commissioners in lunacy,
but these came as a concession to the wisdom and humanity of an
abstract conception. Insight, hope, healing, came not in their train.
Brandon felt a sudden chill of soul as he was lifted by his chauffeur
and his valet from the car and carried into the light and the
suffocating warmth beyond those ornate, nail-studded doors. The place
was overheated, yet to Brandon it had an effect of sudden immersion in
icy water. There was something in its atmosphere which struck right
down to the roots of his being. It was so subtle yet so deadly that a
nausea came upon him. And yet, as he was soon to realize, this emotion
had its source in his own weakness, in his own state of extreme mental
tension.
Brandon was carried into a private room and was there received by the
chief medical officer, Dr. Thorp, to whom he was known by hearsay.
And it was his privilege to have a conversation with a humane and
enlightened man, which interested him profoundly.
Dr. Thorp stood very high in his profession, and his many years’
experience of mental cases was wide and deep. For him the subject with
which he dealt, terrible as it was, had an all-absorbing interest.
It offered to the researches of science a boundless field; moreover,
this expert had a power over himself, and was therefore able to keep a
sane, cool, balanced judgment in the midst of perils which too often
overthrew his fellow workers. In a word, he could detach the part from
the whole and so prevent the mind from being subdued to that in which
it worked.
In Dr. Thorp’s cozy room, under the bust of Æsculapius, Brandon had
a talk in which he learned many things. The chief medical officer
spoke with a frankness, a fair-minded desire to be impartial, which
Brandon somehow had not looked for. To begin with he did not hesitate
to describe the case of John Smith as quite the most remarkable that
had ever come into his ken. And the fact that Brandon had known him
intimately for many years, that he had always been his friend and
champion, and that grievously stricken as he was, he had come to see
him now, appeared in the eyes of Dr. Thorp to give this visitor an
importance altogether unusual.
“I welcome you here, Mr. Brandon, for several reasons,” he said. “Apart
from the fact that you pay John’s bills every quarter, and that he
always speaks of you in the most affectionate terms, I am hoping that
you will be able to add to our knowledge of the dear fellow himself.”
Somehow Brandon was a little startled by the epithet. It had an odd
sound on official lips. He would have expected it to fall almost as
soon from the governor of a jail. The doctor met Brandon’s look of
surprise with a smile. “It’s the only way to describe him,” he said.
“But he is a great puzzle to us all. And if in any way you can help us
to solve him we shall be much in your debt.”
“There is little I can tell you,” said Brandon, “that you don’t
already know. And that little I’ll preface with a simple statement
which I hope will not annoy you too much. It’s my unshakable belief
that John Smith ought not to be here.”
A perceptible shadow crossed the alert face of Dr. Thorp. “It is my
province to disagree with you,” he said very gravely. “Not for a moment
could I allow myself to hold anyone here against his will if I thought
him entirely sane, normal, rational.”
“I readily understand that,” said Brandon with his air of charming
courtesy. “But may I ask what means are open to you in an institution
of this kind of forming an impartial judgment?”
Dr. Thorp answered the question with a frankness which greatly
prepossessed Brandon in his favor. “I readily admit that for us here an
impartial judgment is hardly possible. John Smith has been certified
insane in the particular way that the law requires, and we are only
able to approach his case in the light of that knowledge.”
“Yes, that I quite understand. But may I ask this question? Had John
Smith not been certified as a lunatic when he came here, had he, let us
assume, come here on probation, could you conscientiously certify him
by the light of your present knowledge?”
“You have asked a most difficult question, but I will answer it as
well as I can. As a private individual, although he shows certain
symptoms which sooner or later are bound, in my judgment, to lead to
serious mental derangement, he is not likely at present to do actual
harm; in fact he is capable of doing positive good; but of course, in a
time like this he has to be considered as a political entity, and it is
on these grounds I understand that he is here to be taken care of until
the war is over.”
“_Prima facie_, that is true,” said Brandon. “In other words, a man of
pure and noble genius is the victim of a shallow, sectarian ignorance
which deserves to be the laughing-stock of the universe.”
The words were extravagant, and a certain violence of gesture
accompanied them, but the reaction of Dr. Thorp was serious, even
troubled. “You are bent on involving me in the most difficult problem
of my experience,” he said, after a pause.
“I am. And perhaps--who knows?--in the most difficult problem the
civilized world has yet had to face.”
“As you say, who knows?” said Dr. Thorp, a cloud growing on his
sensitive face.
“In other words,” said Brandon, “you are ready to admit that a man of
very profound and beautiful genius is being held here.”
“Those are big words,” was the reply of professional caution. “And
genius is of many kinds. But speaking of John Smith as I have found
him, I will make an admission which you are entitled to use as you
think fit. We all bless the day he came here.”
A look of startled pleasure came into Brandon’s face. “One somehow
expected to hear that,” he said.
“Whatever his mentality may be, and of its range I am not competent to
judge, the man has what I can only call a largeness of soul which has
an effect upon others. One of our old men, one of our deranged fine
intellects, of whom we have several, and very pathetic they are, has
christened him the Light-Bringer, and somehow we feel it is a title
that he thoroughly deserves.”
“That is to say, he is a good influence among your patients?”
“Yes; in fact a moral force. The staff tell me that since he came here
their work is less by one-half. As an instance of what I mean, let me
give you a little anecdote which our head attendant told me only this
morning. We have an old German professor, who has been here some time.
He is apt to be very cantankerous and now and again gives a great deal
of trouble. On his bad days no one can do anything with him. But it
seems that John is now an established exception to the rule and that
he can simply make him do anything. This morning it appears the Herr
Professor had decided that he would no longer wear a tie. ‘Put it on at
once,’ said Boswell, our head attendant. ‘I shall not,’ said the Herr
Professor, ‘except by the command of God and the Emperor.’ ‘Very well,’
said the head attendant, ‘then I shall ask the Master to come to you.’
Well, the Master came--that, by the way, is the name the patients have
given him. The head attendant stated his case and the Master said to
the Herr Professor, ‘Put on your tie, my dear friend. It is the rule
here in Elysium and you are bound to obey it. Otherwise the gods will
turn you out and you may find yourself wandering in outer darkness for
another hundred years or so.’”
“And did the Herr Professor put on his tie?” asked Brandon.
“He put it on at once,” said Dr. Thorp with a laugh. “Of course it’s a
very trivial anecdote. But to me the whole thing is a remarkable piece
of make-believe.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”
“Well, you see, our friend John has persuaded the old fellow that he is
Goethe, talks to him in German and treats him with a deference which
raises a smile. And the odd side of the affair is that the poor old
chap now firmly believes himself to be Goethe and does his best to act
up to his part.”
“I see,” said Brandon.
“And John Smith has taught us already that in the administration of
a place of this kind, there is practically no limit to the power of
suggestion. We have a hundred patients here, and his power over them is
astonishing. There seems to be nothing he can’t make some of them do;
and as he is a great upholder of law and order we bless the day he came
among us.”
“As I understand your theory, this moral ascendancy has been gained
over your patients by the power of suggestion?”
“Yes; to put it crudely the effect he has upon them is a kind of
hypnotism of the imagination. For instance, a truly remarkable case is
that of a man who might once have done great things in music. Another
German by the way. But for years he has been mentally deranged. Yet
in his case John Smith seems to have performed a miracle. By his
power of sympathy he has hypnotized the man into composing some quite
wonderful music. From time to time he plays it to us. The other day I
got a friend of mine who really understands the subject to come and
hear it. He says it had such a quality that he can only compare it to
Beethoven.”
“Indeed!” said Brandon.
Dr. Thorp laughed. “And the oddest part of the whole matter is that the
music only came to be written because John Smith was able to persuade
our poor friend that he really was Beethoven.”
“Again the power of suggestion?”
“Undoubtedly. And one that deserves to become a classical instance of
the power of sympathetic imagination rightly applied. I am not sure
that John Smith is not a great thinker who has discovered a profound
truth.”
“I am inclined to believe that he has discovered more than one.” A glow
of excitement had begun to course in Brandon’s veins.
“At any rate,” said the doctor, “I defy anyone to see him here in the
midst of our patients--very obscure and baffling mental cases, some of
them are--without a feeling that he wields a quite remarkable power
over certain types of his fellow creatures.”
“One is immensely interested to know that.”
“It is hardly too much to say that the atmosphere of the whole place
has changed. Six months ago we could hope for nothing better than
the sullen bickerings of Bedlam; today certain of our best cases are
rising to a kind of high intellectuality which, I frankly confess, is
amazing.”
“And this you attribute to the direct influence of John Smith?”
“It is the only way to account for it.”
“Can you put into words the precise form it takes?”
“In a few minutes I hope you will be able to judge for yourself. In the
meantime perhaps you will join me in a cup of tea.” And in deference
to the sudden arrival of a well-filled tray, Dr. Thorp suspended for a
moment further consideration of the subject.