IN the course of a few minutes two attendants entered for the purpose
of conveying the visitor to the doctor’s room. Brandon returned to
his chair, his friend bade him good-by, and then the sufferer allowed
himself to be carried down the corridor as if nothing had happened.
His brain was in a state of wild ferment, yet he was sufficiently its
master to refrain from letting Dr. Thorp know that the power of motion
had returned to his limbs. At the instance of faith he had risen from
his bed and walked, but now was not the time to proclaim a miracle in
the sight of men.
“I hope you had an interesting talk with our friend,” said the doctor,
with a smile of professional politeness. “And what is that I see? Is
that the great work? How high you must stand in his favor!” The voice
of the doctor rose to a sympathetic laugh. “You should be a proud man.
Quite extraordinary pains have been bestowed upon it by him and his
friends here.”
“Have you read it?” asked Brandon, the blood drumming in his ears.
“Oh, yes.”
Brandon, startled by the sound of his own voice, had just enough
courage to ask the doctor’s opinion of the play.
Dr. Thorp replied with a happy frankness: “Don’t laugh at me if I
confess that to my mind it’s a sublime work.”
“You really think so?”
“I do, and I’ll tell you why. There’s such a great idea at the back of
it, that I feel a better, a stronger, a saner man for having come in
contact with it. That play takes one into another world. It draws aside
the curtain, and gives us harassed mortals a peep into the kingdom
of the Something Else. Nothing is but thinking makes it so. Believe
me, that’s a sublime conception. And the Master has made us all feel
here that we have a share in it. Shakespeare, Molière, Sophocles,
Menander, and other august old gentlemen you saw round the fire in the
other room, have all been consulted, and Beethoven has composed some
enchanting music for it, so we can’t help thinking it wonderful.” The
doctor’s laugh was now a note of pure joy. “Believe me, in its way, the
whole thing is incomparable.”
“What is the title?”
“It is called, ‘A Play Without a Name,’ but I am convinced that it
ought to be called, ‘The Something Else,’ or ‘The Power of Love.’ And
although you’ll begin to doubt my sanity, I can’t help feeling that if
the play were performed in every town in Europe at the present hour, it
would be the beginning of a new era for the human race.”
“That is to say, the whole world might be born again through the power
of the spoken word.”
“Exactly,” said the doctor, with enthusiasm. “And that, by the way,
is what the author aims at. Of course you realize what his particular
form of delusion is, and you will have noticed that he begins to bear a
remarkable resemblance to his prototype.”
“Yes,” said Brandon, in a hushed, broken tone, “it’s quite uncanny.”