BRANDON returned to Hart’s Ghyll ostensibly as he had left it. Without
telling his wife what had happened, he allowed himself to be carried
to his room and put to bed. For one thing he was worn out with the
strange excitement of the afternoon. The visit to Wellwood had made so
great a call on a devitalized nervous system, that he now felt rather
feverish and overstrung. But as he sank on his pillows in a reaction of
weariness, nature insisted that for a time he should forget.
As he lay trying to reconstruct the amazing experience he had just been
through, a vague, delicious sense of mystery flowed through him. But
it was for a moment only. He had hardly time to ask himself whether
the new life was still in his limbs when sleep stole upon him, and the
chain of his thought was broken.
How long his sleep lasted he didn’t know. But it was heavy, dreamless
and profound, and he awoke in the pitch darkness of a December night.
Almost his first sensation was that something had happened, something
which had forever changed the current of his life. What could it be?
Before the question was answered, before he could relate himself to the
life of the senses, and the mind could gain perception of itself, he
grew conscious of a thought half formed. It was full of strange joy, of
strange fear. Then he tried to cast his mind back, and in the very act
of doing so, he suddenly heard a voice in the room: “If you believe in
me rise from your bed and walk.”
Involuntarily he sat up, flung aside the bedclothes, pressed his
lifeless feet upon the carpet. An instant he stood swaying, expecting
to fall, and then he felt himself sustained by a new power. Foot by
foot he groped his way to the window and drew its curtains aside.
The risen moon was shining on the trees of the park. As its cold light
flowed into Brandon’s eyes, he was able to assure himself that he was
fully awake. He was able to assure himself that a miracle had made him
whole, and that his being was rooted now in some subtle but profound
alchemy of the soul. For long he stood looking out on the night, while
a growing joy pervaded him. Tears of pure happiness, whose shedding was
an exquisite physical relief, ran down his cheeks. Again and again his
flesh responded to the thrill of a recollected touch; a rapture he had
never known coursed through his veins; his bonds were broken; he was
borne upon the wings of a new destiny.
Almost delirious with joy he got back into bed, and lay a long hour
shivering with excitement. Even now he hardly dared to meet the hard
logic of the matter. The events of yesterday besieged him like a
fantastic dream. He had risen from his bed, and he had walked at the
command of One in whom he had implicitly believed. But at this moment
he dare not ask himself to restate that faith in its superhuman aspect.
Long before daylight came, his thoughts had grown so insurgent, that
he put out a hand and switched on the light. On a table by his bed was
laid the manuscript he had brought from Wellwood. In an ecstasy of
growing bewilderment he turned to it now, devouring it greedily, almost
with a sense of ravishment.
It was called simply, ‘A Play Without a Name.’ It set forth a “religion
of humanity,” in a series of parables crystal-clear to the humblest
mind, yet by a superhuman cunning, as it seemed to Brandon, fulfilling
the laws which govern the enchanting art of the dramatist. The action
had been devised for representation, the words that they might be
spoken in the theater. The theme was the power of love, human and
divine, and it was illustrated by vivid, moving, beautiful pictures.
Daylight found Brandon still pondering this wonderful play. He was now
in the thrall of an all-absorbing event. A few hours back he had passed
through a miraculous experience, and the problem now was to relate it
to the known facts of organic life. The difficulties of the situation
were foreshadowed as soon as the nurse came into the room.
“Who has drawn back the curtains?” she demanded at once, in a tone of
stern surprise.
Brandon, in spite of his excitement, was able to affect a torpid
indifference to the question.
“I could have taken an oath,” said the nurse, “that when I left you
last night the curtains were pulled across the window as usual!”