Mr. Silvanus Key, changing his position in bed for the third time in
five minutes, lay on his back and groaned lamentably.
“I, shall never be well,” he murmured faintly. “Forty-three,
good-looking, with the best moustache in the town, and done for.”
“Has the pain come on again?” inquired his wife softly.
“Not what you could call pain,” said Mr. Key. “There’s a red
hot corkscrew going through my left shoulder and a very capable
monkey-wrench trying to screw my knee-joints out. The only time I get
any rest is when it leaves off to spit on its hands. _O-ow! Ouch! O-o!_”
Mrs. Key rose and, standing by the side of the bed, gazed at him
compassionately.
“The doctor doesn’t seem to be doing you much good,” she murmured.
“That’ll do,” said the sufferer sharply. “He is doing his best.”
“So it seems,” said his wife dryly. “How you can imagine that stuff
out of a bottle can cure you, I can’t think. It’s the soul that wants
treating, not the body. You want to be bathed in a stream of healing
thought that would kill all those ideas of pain and----”
“_Ideas!_” shouted Mr. Key. “You wait till you get rheumatism, and
neuritis, and gout, and sciatica, all mixed up together, and trying to
see which can be the worst. If that blessed Circle of Healers, as you
call it, was here I’d punch its head.”
“Some of them are women,” said his wife.
Mr. Key remarked that he supposed women possessed heads, some of them
at any rate, and, licking his lips, speculated on the good to be
achieved by knocking all the heads of the Circle together.
“Shake their brains up and make ’em think,” he added.
His wife sighed, and bestowed upon him a look of tender and elevating
love.
“You are so wilful,” she murmured. “If you would only see Mr. Punshon;
no foolish and nasty drugs; no clumsy interference with that wonderful
combination of soul and body that we know as man. You are simply out of
tune with the infinite. _I_ am never ill.”
“You wouldn’t talk like that if you were,” said Mr. Key. “You’d know
better.”
He lay back with closed eyes and pondered gloomily. It was his first
real illness and, to an active man fond of rather more than his share
of the good things of this life, extremely distasteful. He opened his
eyes at a rather sharper twinge than usual and, in a few ill-chosen
words, expressed his opinion that members of the medical profession
were as useless as the Healers.
“And we work for love,” said his wife, improving the occasion.
Mr. Key closed his eyes again, and a faint and unseemly grin passed
furtively.
“Miss Olsen is a healer, isn’t she?” he inquired. “The pretty one.
Perhaps I might----”
“She is a neophyte,” said his wife coldly, “the same as myself.”
“Nothing doing,” murmured the graceless Mr. Key. “Still, if she wants a
little practice----”
Mrs. Key implored him not to make a jest of solemn things, and spoke
with some eloquence of the marvellous cures effected by Mr. Punshon.
Her husband pointed out, when she had finished, that she had omitted
the marvellous case of old Mr. Jackson, who, after being bedridden for
over three years, was able, owing to the healer’s ministrations, to
spend the evenings of his life at the Shakespeare Arms.
[Illustration: THE MARVELLOUS CASE OF OLD MR. JACKSON, WHO, AFTER BEING
BEDRIDDEN FOR OVER THREE YEARS, WAS ABLE TO SPEND THE EVENINGS OF HIS
LIFE AT THE SHAKESPEARE ARMS]
“It is easy to mock at things,” said Mrs. Key, bitterly. “Mr. Punshon
would cure him of that, but the artful old man won’t let him go near
him.”
She went out of the room, and the invalid, after turning in the bed
with great care, lay gazing wistfully out of the window. There was
a cheerful hum from the street below, and he thought with great
bitterness of the happy people there who knew nothing of Uric Acid and
its liking for hot joints. A visit from the doctor next day depressed
him still more.
“Another week or two?” he gasped.
“You’re going on beau-ti-fully,” said the other, with an admiring but
thoughtless pat on Mr. Key’s left knee. “Sorry.”
“Don’t mind me,” said the sufferer coldly. “Am I to go on taking that
beastly physic of yours?”
The doctor nodded. “For some time,” he said grinning. “Shut your eyes
when you are taking it and tell yourself it is a vintage port. Smack
your lips over it.”
Mr. Key closed his eyes and groaned.
“And don’t be too sorry for yourself,” pursued the other. “You are not
nearly so bad as some of my poor patients. Not nearly.”
Mr. Key, with a faint smile, said that he could quite believe it.
He also expressed his firm belief that their troubles would soon be
over--one way or another.
“The last bottle,” said his medical attendant, breathing hard, “was not
strong enough. You are suffering from depression.”
“You never see me at my best,” said the other; “the moment you come
into the room----”
“Good-bye,” said the doctor briskly.
He went downstairs and, meeting in the hall Mrs. Key, who had just
come in, announced in a loud voice that the patient was much better. A
louder voice from the sick-room denied all knowledge of the fact.
For two days the patient had no reason to alter his opinion, but on the
third he confided to Mrs. Key, with a happy smile, that he certainly
felt much easier.
“Since when?” inquired his wife, with a mysterious expression on her
face.
Mr. Key pondered. “Yesterday afternoon I got the turn, I think. It’s
nothing to laugh at.”
“I was not laughing, I was smiling,” said his wife. “With happiness,”
she added hastily. “But I’m not surprised. Mr. Punshon had a
half-holiday yesterday afternoon.”
Mr. Key gazed at her blankly.
“And instead of going out and enjoying himself stayed at home and gave
you ‘absent treatment.’”
“Infernal impudence!” gasped the astonished invalid.
“I’ll--I’ll--Punshon----Oh, Lord! How many people have you told!”
“He could do you much more good if he came into contact with you,” said
his wife timidly.
“Fancy,” murmured the other brokenly, “that ginger-bearded
fraud--treating _me_! Poor Johnson pulls me round and Punshon steps
in and takes the credit. I shall be the laughing-stock of the town.
Everybody knows what I’ve said about him.”
“You’ve said things--to me--about Dr. Johnson too,” said his wife.
Mr. Key lay back and regarded her for some time, deep in thought.
“All right,” he said at last, in a ferocious voice, “have it your own
way. I’ll give him a run for his money. Punshon has put his hand to
the plough and he’d better finish the job. But mind, I shall take the
medicine.”
His wife turned upon him a face that literally shone with happiness.
“It won’t make much difference,” she said. “Mr. Punshon’s force is much
too strong for drugs to interfere with it.”
She brought the healer round the following afternoon, and Mr. Key,
gazing at the flabby, bearded face, with its pouched eyes and foolish
mouth, waited breathlessly for developments.
“I hope it is not going to be painful,” he remarked.
“We soothe,” said Mr. Punshon, in a deep voice marred by adenoids.
He took a chair by the bed, and taking the patient’s hands in his
own, leaned forward and fixed upon him the healing glare of a pair of
pale and protuberant blue eyes. Mr. Key, closing his, bit his lips to
suppress a smile.
For twenty minutes the silence was unbroken except for the odd noises
in Mr. Punshon’s air-passages. He released the patient’s hands and,
folding his arms, spoke with authority.
“You feel better!”
“I do,” said Mr. Key in reverent tones. “Waves of--something or
other--seemed to go right through me.”
Mr. Punshon smiled and, taking out a handkerchief, wiped his brow.
“You mustn’t expect to be well all at once,” he said, raising a warning
hand. “Evil is not destroyed in five minutes. I will come in and give
you further treatment to-morrow evening.”
Mr. Key thanked him, and for some time after his departure lay smiling
seraphically at the ceiling. Under the combined treatment of Mr.
Punshon and Dr. Johnson he improved steadily, the wrath of the latter,
when he heard of his collaborator, doing the invalid, according to his
own account, more good than medicine.
“I’ve done with you,” said the doctor, fuming. “It’s all over the town
that Punshon has cured you when I failed. What do you mean by it?”
“I’m not cured yet,” said the invalid grimly. “Dear Brother Punshon has
got to do a lot more for me before he has finished. I have an idea that
I am going to be one of his most difficult cases.”
“All this stuff about Christian Science----” began the doctor.
“It’s nothing to do with Christian Science,” retorted the other. “It’s
a little special brand of Punshon’s own. He is far too conceited to
adopt anybody else’s ideas. He is charged with electricity--a living
magnet, that’s the idea, and, in a lesser degree, he thinks he is able
to magnetise his followers.”
The doctor stood regarding him with a perplexed grin.
“What is the game?” he inquired bluntly.
“Game?” repeated Mr. Key loftily. “There is no ‘game.’ You don’t
understand. Magnetic healing is serious, most serious. So are the
healers. If they could see a joke they wouldn’t be healers. Punshon
couldn’t see a joke if I put it in front of his nose and burnt coloured
lights round it.”
“You might try,” suggested the other.
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” said Mr. Key severely. “Besides, I’m going
to. Meantime, you had better leave Punshon a free hand. I don’t want
you to get the credit of his cure. You don’t want it either. If you go,
and I have a relapse----”
The doctor nodded. “Nobody could expect me to halve a patient with
Punshon,” he murmured.
“Exactly,” said the other, “but you needn’t put it in quite such a
surgical way. It’s not nice. By the way----”
“Well?”
“What about one weak whisky-and-soda a day?” inquired Mr. Key in
persuasive accents.
The doctor stood for a time considering. “Better ask Punshon,” he said
at last, and faded slowly from the room.
A good man would have been moved by the tender gratitude displayed by
Mrs. Key when she learnt that her husband had abandoned drugs entirely,
in favour of spiritual treatment. The only effect on Mr. Key was to
confirm him in his iniquities. His spirits rose and the hue of health
returned to his cheeks. And he praised Mr. Punshon and his strange and
beneficent power until that gentleman nearly fell a victim to the sin
of pride.
“Walk across the room,” he commanded.
Mr. Key obeyed.
“Your limbs are straight and supple,” chanted the healer; “your body is
strong; your soul is in command; you are healed.”
“Thanks to you,” breathed the admiring Mrs. Key.
“To-morrow you can go for a walk,” continued Mr. Punshon to his
patient. “My work is finished.”
Both husband and wife were certain as to his exact words. In fact, the
excellent Mrs. Key repeated them to two or three friends the same day.
And yet, just before midnight, she sat up in the small bed she occupied
in the sick-room almost persuaded that she had heard a moan. Within the
next minute five full-grown moans, muffled by the bedclothes, issued
from the other bed.
“Aren’t you well?” she inquired.
“Well?” repeated Mr. Key, bringing his head up and suppressing moan
number six. “Yes, of course I am. Didn’t Mr. Punshon say I was?”
In confirmation, he groaned three times and wound up with a faint
shriek.
“What are you making that noise for then?” inquired his wife, not
unnaturally.
Mr. Key made no reply. It was evident by his lamentations that
he wanted his breath for other purposes. His wife slipped on a
dressing-gown and, lighting a candle, crossed over to him.
“What _is_ the matter?” she said in alarm.
“Don’t mind me,” said the invalid, with a groan that made the ornaments
on the mantelpiece rattle. “Go to sleep.”
His wife suppressed an obvious retort and stood regarding him anxiously.
“_O-o-o-o!_” said Mr. Key. “_A-a-a-h!_” He wiped his brow with the
sleeve of his pyjamas and, uttering a faint sigh, was taken suddenly
with a series of noises in the throat highly reminiscent of Mr. Punshon.
“I wish I could stop that,” he said fretfully. “I suppose it’s
Punshon’s influence. Perhaps I’m too receptive. _O-oh!_ my leg!”
Mrs. Key eyed him wistfully. “Which one?” she inquired.
“What the--what does that matter?” exclaimed the sufferer. “Now it’s my
shoulder. The _left_ one,” he added, bitterly. “Has Jane gone to bed?”
“Long ago,” replied his wife, staring.
“I can’t bear it,” gasped the sufferer, wildly. “You’ll have to tell
her to get up and run for the doctor.”
Mrs. Key clasped her hands. “Oh, Silvanus!” she cried reproachfully.
“I can’t help it,” muttered her husband. “I’d rather have Punshon, of
course, but I don’t like to disturb him. He could stop it. As soon as
he got his blessed paw--hands--on me, it would go.”
“I’ll ask him to come round in the morning,” said Mrs. Key.
“I can’t wait,” moaned the sufferer. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to ask
Jane to get up and go for the doctor. It isn’t far.”
His wife hesitated. “If you are no better in ten minutes,” she said at
last, “I’ll go and ask Mr. Punshon to come.”
Mr. Key protested, and for fully five minutes lay silent. At the end of
that time he gave a very fine representation of a soul in torment.
“Better take Jane with you,” he said in a weak voice, as his wife began
to dress.
“I can’t leave you in the house alone,” she murmured. “I’ll wake her up
and let her know I am going out. I shan’t be long.”
She hurried upstairs, and a minute or two later he heard the front door
close.
“Poor thing,” he murmured. “Poor thing. It’s an infernal shame; but
it’s all for her own good.”
He sat up in bed yawning, every now and then releasing a groan for the
benefit of the listener upstairs. The time passed slowly, and a feeling
of drowsiness almost overcame him. He hoped fervently that Punshon was
as fond of sleep as he was.
He awoke with a start and sat up in bed, listening. A continuous
knocking and ringing at the front door seemed to indicate that Mrs.
Key had forgotten to take the key with her. It also proved that Jane
could sleep as soundly at one in the morning as at seven-thirty.
With an idea that every little helped he added a few whines to the
noise below, but in vain. The jangling of the bell was hideous, the
knocking incessant. Then he heard, in addition, the boots of a heavy
and possibly irritated man kicking the paint off his front door and
voices of advice and instruction from his neighbour’s bedroom window.
He had just come to the conclusion that the maid had passed away in her
sleep when he heard her door open and an apologetic whirlwind pass down
the stairs.
Mr. Punshon entered the room in silence and, ignoring the faint smile
with which the sufferer endeavoured to greet him, took a chair by the
bedside and got to work with the air of a man who was going to crowd
half an hour’s work into a few minutes. Mr. Key sighed twice, and then
his face resolved itself into an expression of ineffable peace.
“Magician!” he murmured.
Mr. Punshon grunted and bestowed a smile of conscious power upon the
admiring Mrs. Key.
“It’s wonderful,” continued the sufferer. “Wonderful! I wonder what
caused the relapse?”
Mr. Punshon started. “You must have been thinking wrong,” he said
tartly.
“I can’t remember doing so,” said Mr. Key in a diffident voice. “I have
only been congratulating myself upon having the good sense to take your
treatment. It has been a great joy to me. Great. I knew I was going to
get better when I put myself into your hands. Else I shouldn’t have
done so.”
The unconscious Mr. Punshon smiled again. “Faith helps,” he admitted.
“How do you feel now?”
Mr. Key looked into the red-rimmed, sleepy eyes peering into his, and
hesitated.
“Almost free from pain,” he said, at length. “There’s just a tiny bit
troubling me in the left knee-cap.”
The healer diverted his gaze to a knob in the bedclothes, and
concentrated upon it until the veins stood out on his forehead. An
unusual amount of gurgling and choking testified to his absorption.
“Did I say ‘left’?” inquired Mr. Key, as the other wiped his brow. “How
stupid of me; I meant ‘right.’”
He brought another knob into prominence and, patting it for Mr.
Punshon’s guidance, waited with calm confidence while the other
swallowed a gurgle that threatened to choke him.
“I’m afraid Mr. Punshon is tired,” said Mrs. Key.
“He never tires of good works,” said her husband, reproachfully.
Mr. Punshon smiled wanly and, suppressing a yawn, continued his
ministrations.
“I feel so selfish lying here snug and warm in bed and keeping you out
of yours,” said Mr. Key. “But perhaps you don’t care much for sleep.”
“Eight hours,” said Mr. Punshon somewhat shortly. “Always. Any pain in
the knee now?”
Mr. Key shook his head. “It’s gone,” he said in a hushed voice.
Mr. Punshon leaned back with a sigh, a noisy sigh, of relief.
“Into my left shoulder,” continued the invalid querulously.
Mr. Punshon got up with great suddenness and stood glowering at him.
Mrs. Key, with her hands clasped, eyed them in silent dismay.
“Please don’t trouble any more,” said Mr. Key gently. “I’m afraid it is
a difficult case. Too difficult, perhaps. I ought not to have bothered
you. I suppose Johnson would have pulled me round, in time.”
He closed his eyes wearily and lay back listening in great content
to an excited whispering between his wife and the healer. Then he
heard the chair creak and felt a pair of clammy hands take his. For
some time the stertorous breathing of Mr. Punshon was the only sound
in the room. Then even that ceased and Mr. Key, opening his eyes to
ascertain the reason, discovered to his indignation that the healer had
gone. Daylight was coming in at the window, and it was only too clear
that his victim had taken advantage of the sleep into which Mr. Key
had fallen, to escape. A clock downstairs struck five. He groaned in
spirit, but soon coming to the conclusion that that was no good, gave
utterance to several fleshly ones. The other bed creaked.
“Do you want anything?” inquired Mrs. Key sleepily.
“Where’s Punshon?” demanded her husband in an aggrieved voice.
“Why, he left hours ago,” said Mrs. Key, sitting up. “He put you into a
refreshing slumber and went.”
“Fetch him back,” said the invalid, briefly.
Mrs. Key’s cry of consternation left him unmoved. Mr. Punshon had taken
the case out of the doctor’s hands by giving absent treatment in the
first place, and, after that, had taken full charge. In a stern voice,
broken by pain and marred by snufflings, Mr. Key ordered him to be
fetched forthwith.
“I can’t,” said his wife desperately.
“Well, will you please go and ask him whether he has any objection to
my consulting Dr. Johnson?”
Mrs. Key went--but only after a long argument--to return an hour later
with a ferocious and demoralised-looking Mr. Punshon, who, advancing
reluctantly to the foot of the bed, stood there gobbling.
“Good of you!” murmured the invalid.
Mr. Punshon took not the slightest notice.
“I do hope this pain will soon go,” continued Mr. Key. “I don’t want to
fetch you out of your bed every night. I know you don’t mind, still----”
Mr. Punshon stared at him and endeavoured--but in vain--to concentrate
his mind upon healing.
“I suppose I can’t have that walk you spoke of, to-day,” said Mr. Key.
“It’s very disappointing. I was looking forward to it. I wanted to go
round and tell people what mental healing had done for me. Some of them
are so incredulous.”
“You must have patience,” said the healer. “Fifty years of wrong
living----”
“Forty-three,” murmured the invalid. “And I feel younger since you have
been treating me. It almost seems as though your healthy, virile spirit
has become part of myself. I feel different. A better man. I think
differently. I--I breathe differently. How is Mrs. Punshon?”
“She is quite well, thank you,” said the healer with some surprise.
Mr. Key half closed his eyes and a seraphic smile played around his
lips. “I dream of her,” he said softly.
“_Dream!_ Dream of her? Dream of _my wife_?” stuttered the outraged
husband in tones that nearly drowned the exclamation of the startled
Mrs. Key.
Mr. Key nodded. “Ever since you started treating me,” he replied. “It’s
very curious. I suppose your powerful mind has overcome mine and your
thoughts have become my thoughts. Have any of your other patients----?”
“No, sir,” interrupted the other with violence.
Mr. Key sighed. “It’s very curious,” he repeated. “I dreamt of her
three times last night. And there’s another funny thing; since this
treatment started I have had an almost irresistible craving for whisky.
Do you----”
“I’m a life-long teetotaller,” said the glaring Mr. Punshon.
He stood breathing noisily for a few seconds and then, with a violent
gesture, turned and walked towards the door.
“Aren’t you going to give me treatment?” inquired Mr. Key in a
surprised voice.
Mr. Punshon made no reply, but the slamming of the front door spoke
volumes. Mr. Key turned and eyed his wife.
“He has given the case up,” he said, shaking his head. “After breakfast
you must send Jane round for the doctor. I can’t go on like this.”
He saw the doctor a few hours later, and after a lengthy
explanation--with Mrs. Key holding a watching brief for the absent
Mr. Punshon--requested him to treat him for the old complaint plus
incipient adenoids, a nasty trick of biting his finger-nails, a
lamentable craving for whisky, and a few other matters.
“I am sorry you spoke so freely,” said Mrs. Key after the doctor had
gone. “He might talk.”
“That’s all right,” said her husband darkly. “He never repeats anything
his patients would mind.”