A Mysterious Case.
The two friends returned, as they had arranged, to the Hyacinth Club for
dinner. Courtney's coruscating brilliancy sank into almost total
darkness when they parted from Lady and Miss Lefevre, and when they sat
down to table he was preoccupied and silent, yet in no proper sense
downcast or dull. Lefevre noted, while they ate, that there was clear
speculation in his eye, that he was not vaguely dreaming, but with alert
intelligence examining some question, or facing some contingency; and it
was natural he should think that the question or contingency must
concern Nora as much as Julius. Yet he made no overture of
understanding, for he knew that Courtney seldom offered confidence or
desired sympathy; not that he was churlish or reserved, but simply that
he was usually sufficient unto himself, both for counsel and for
consolation. Lefevre was therefore surprised when he was suddenly asked
a question, which was without context in his own thought.
"Have you ever found something happen or appear," said Julius, "that
completely upsets your point of view, and tumbles down your scheme of
life, like a stick thrust between your legs when you are running?"
"I have known," said Lefevre, "a new fact arise and upset a whole
scientific theory. That's often a good thing," he added, with a pointed
glance; "for it compels a reconstruction of the theory on a wider and
sounder basis."
"Yes," murmured Julius; "that may be. But I should think it does not
often happen that the new fact swallows up all the details that
supported your theory,--as Aaron's rod, turned into a serpent, swallowed
up the serpent-rods of the magicians of Egypt,--so that there is no
longer any theory, but only one great, glorious fact. I do admire," he
exclaimed, swerving suddenly, "the imagination of those old Greeks, with
their beautiful, half-divine personifications of the Spirits of Air and
Earth and Sea! But their imagination never conceived a goddess that
embodied them all!"
"I have often thought, Julius," said Lefevre, "that you must be some
such embodiment yourself; for you are not quite human, you know."
The doctor said that with a clear recollection of his mother's request.
He hoped that his friend would take the cue, and tell him something of
his family. Julius, however, said nothing but "Indeed." Lefevre then
tried to tempt him into confession by talking about his own father and
mother, and by relating how the French name "Lefevre" came to be
domiciled in England; but Julius ignored the temptation, and dismissed
the question in an eloquent flourish.
"What does a man want with a family and a name? They only tie him to the
earth, as Gulliver was tied by the people of Lilliput. We have life and
health,--_if_ we have them,--and it is only veiled prurience to inquire
whence we got them. A man can't help having a father and a mother, I
suppose; but he need not be always reminding himself of the fact: no
other creature on earth does. For myself, I wish I were like that
extraordinary person, Melchizedek, without father and without mother,
without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life."
In a little while the friends parted. Lefevre said he had work to do,
but he did not anticipate such work as he had to turn to that night.
Though the doctor was a bachelor, he had a professional residence apart
from his mother and sister. They lived in a small house in Curzon
Street; he dwelt in Savile Row. Savile Row was a place of consequence
long before Regent Street was thought of, but now they are few who know
of its existence. Fashion ignores it. It is tenanted by small clubs,
learned societies, and doctors. It slumbers in genteel decorum, with its
back to the garish modern thoroughfare. It is always quiet, but by nine
o'clock of a dark evening it is deserted. When Dr Lefevre, therefore,
stepped out of his hired hansom, and prepared to put his latch-key in
his own door, he was arrested by a hoarse-voiced hawker of evening news
bursting in upon the repose of the Row with a continuous roar of
"Special--Mystery--Paper--Railway--Special--Brighton--Paper--Victoria
--Special!" It was with some effort, and only when the man was close
at hand, that he interpreted the sounds into these words.
"Paper, sir," said the man; and he bought it and went in. He entered his
dining-room, and read the following paragraph;--
"A Mysterious Case.
"A report has reached us that a young man, about two or four and
twenty years of age, whose name is at present unknown, was found
yesterday (Sunday) to all appearance dead in a first-class carriage
of the 5 P.M. train from Brighton to Victoria. The discovery was
only made at Grosvenor Road Station, where tickets are taken before
entering Victoria. At Victoria the body was searched for purposes
of identification, and there was found upon him a card with the
following remarkable inscription:--'_I am not dead. Take me to the
St. James's Hospital._' To St. James's Hospital accordingly the
young man was conveyed. It seems probable he is in a condition of
trance--not for the first time--since he was provided with the
card, and knew the hospital with which is associated in all men's
minds the name of Dr Lefevre, who is so famous for his skill in the
treatment of nervous disorders."
In matters of plain duty Dr Lefevre had got into the excellent habit of
acting first and thinking afterwards. He at once rang the bell, and
ordered the responsible serving-man who appeared to call a cab. The man
went to the door and sounded his shrill whistle, grateful to the ears of
several loitering cabbies. There was a mad race of growlers and hansoms
for the open door. Dr Lefevre got into the first hansom that drew up,
and drove off to the hospital. By that time he had told himself that the
young man must be a former patient of his (though he did not remember
any such), and that he ought to see him at once, although it is not
for the visiting physician of a hospital to appear, except
between fixed hours of certain days. He made nothing of the mystery
which the newspaper wished, after the manner of its kind, to cast about
the case, and thought of other things, while he smoked cigarettes, till
he reached the hospital. The house-physician was somewhat surprised by
his appearance.
"I have just read that paragraph," said Lefevre, handing him the paper.
"Oh yes, sir," said the house-physician. "The man was brought in last
night. Dr Dowling" [the resident assistant-physician] "saw him, and
thought it a case of ordinary trance, that could easily wait till you
came, as usual, to-morrow."
"Ah, well," said Lefevre, "let me see him."
Seen thus, the physician appeared a different person from the cheerful,
modest man of the Hyacinth Club. He had now put on the responsibility of
men's health and the enthusiasm of his profession. He seemed to swell in
proportions and dignity, though his eye still beamed with a calm and
kindly light.
The young man led the way down the echoing flagged passage, and up the
flight of stone stairs. As they went they encountered many silent female
figures, clean and white, going up or down (it was the time of changing
nurses), so that a fanciful stranger might well have thought of the
stairway reaching from earth to heaven, on which the angels of God were
seen ascending and descending. A stranger, too, would have noted the
peculiar odours that hung about the stairs and passages, as if the
ghosts of medicines escaped from the chemist's bottles were hovering in
the air. Opening first an outer and then an inner door, Lefevre and his
companion entered a large and lofty ward. The room was dark, save for
the light of the fire and of a shaded lamp, by which, within a screen,
the night-nurse sat conning her list of night-duties. The evening was
just beginning out of doors,--shop-fronts were flaring, taverns were
becoming noisy, and brilliantly-lit theatres and music-halls were
settling down to business,--but here night and darkness had set in more
than an hour before. Indeed, in these beds of languishing, which
stretched away down either side of the ward, night was hardly to be
distinguished from day, save for the sunlight and the occasional
excitement of the doctor's visit; and many there were who cried to
themselves in the morning, "Would God it were evening!" and in the
evening, "Would God it were morning!" But there was yet this other
difference, that disease and doctor, fear and hope, gossip and
grumbling, newspaper and Bible and tract, were all forgotten in the
night, for some time at least, and Nature's kind restorer, sleep, went
softly round among the beds and soothed the weary spirits into peace.
Lefevre and the house-physician passed silently up the ward between the
rows of silent blue-quilted beds, while the nurse came silently to meet
them with her lamp. Lefevre turned aside a moment to look at a man whose
breathing was laboured and stertorous. The shaded light was turned upon
him: an opiate had been given him to induce sleep; it had performed its
function, but, as if resenting its bondage, it was impishly twitching
the man's muscles and catching him by the throat, so that he choked and
started. Dr Lefevre raised the man's eyelid to look at his eye: the
upturned eye stared out upon him, but the man slept on. He put his hand
on the man's forehead (he had a beautiful hand--the hand of a born
surgeon and healer--fine but firm, the expression of nervous force), and
with thumb and finger stroked first his temples and then his neck. The
spasmodic twitching ceased, and his breath came easy and regular. The
house-doctor and the nurse looked at each other in admiration of this
subtle skill, while Lefevre turned away and passed on.
"Where is the man?" said he.
"Number Thirteen," answered the house-doctor, leading the way.
The lamp was set on the locker beside the bed of Thirteen, screens were
placed round to create a seclusion amid the living, breathing silence of
the ward, and Lefevre proceeded to examine the unconscious patient who
had so strangely put himself in his hands.
He was young and well-favoured, and, it was evident from the firmness of
his flesh, well-fed. Lefevre considered his features a moment, shook his
head, and murmured, "No; I don't think I've seen him before." He turned
to the nurse and inquired concerning the young man's clothes: they were
evidently those of a gentleman, she said,--of one, at least, who had
plenty of money. He turned again to the young man. He raised the left
arm to feel the heart, but, contrary to his experience in such cases,
the arm did not remain as he bent it, nor did the eyes open in obedience
to the summons of the disturbed nerves. The breathing was scarcely
perceptible, and the beating of the heart was faint.
"A strange case," said Lefevre in a low voice to his young comrade--"the
strangest I've seen. He does not look a subject for this kind of thing,
and yet he is in the extreme stage of hypnotism. You see." And the
doctor, by sundry tests and applications, showed the peculiar exhausted
and contractive condition of the muscles. "It is very curious."
"Perhaps," said the other, "he has been--" and he hesitated.
"Been what?" asked Lefevre, turning on him his keen look.
"Enjoying himself."
"Having a debauch, you mean? No; I think not. There would then have
probably been some reflex action of the nerves. This is not that kind of
exhaustion; and it is more than mere trance or catalepsy; it seems the
extremest suspensory condition,--and that in a young man of such
apparent health is very remarkable. It will take a long time for him to
recover in the ordinary way with food and sleep," he continued, rather
to himself than to his subordinates. "He needs rousing,--a strong
stimulant."
"Shall I get some brandy, sir?" asked the nurse.
"Brandy? No. That's not the stimulant he needs."
He was silent for a little, moving the young man's limbs, and touching
certain muscles which his exact anatomical knowledge taught him to lay
his finger on with unerring accuracy. The effect was startling and
grotesque. As a galvanic current applied to the proper nerves and
muscles of a dead body will produce expressions and actions resembling
those of life, so the touch of Lefevre's finger made the unconscious
young man scowl or smile or clench his fist according to the muscles
impressed.
"The brain," said Lefevre, "seems quite sound,--perfectly passive, you
see, but active in its passivity. You can leave us, nurse," said he;
then, turning to the house-physician, he continued: "I am convinced this
is such a peculiar case as I have often imagined, but have never seen.
This nervous-muscular suspension is complicated with some exhaustive
influence. I want your assistance, and I ask for it like this, because
it is necessary for my purpose that you should give it freely, and
without reserve; I am going to try the electrode."
This was a simple machine contrived by Lefevre, on the model of the
electric cylinder of Du Bois-Reymond, and worked on the theory that the
electricity stored in the human body can be driven out by the human will
along a prepared channel into another human body.
"I understand," said the assistant promptly. He apprehended his chief's
meaning more fully than the reader can; for he was deeply interested and
fairly skilled in that strange annex of modern medical science which his
chief called psycho-dynamics, and which old-fashioned practitioners
decline to recognise.
"Get me the machine and the insulating sheet," said Lefevre.
While his assistant was gone on his errand, Lefevre with his right hand
gently stroked along the main lines of nerve and muscle in the upper
part of his patient's body; and it was strange to note how the features
and limbs lost a certain constriction and rigidity which it was manifest
they had had only by their disappearance. When the house-physician
returned, the sheet (a preparation of spun-glass invented by Lefevre)
was drawn under the patient, and the machine, with its vessels of
chemical mixture and its conducting wires, was placed close to the bed.
The handles attached to the wires were put into the patient's hands.
"Now," said Lefevre, "this is a trying experiment. Give me your
hand--your left; you know how to do; yes, the other hand on the machine,
with the fingers touching the chemicals. When you feel strength--virtue,
so to say--going out of you, don't be alarmed: let it go; use no effort
of the will to keep it back, or we shall probably fail."
"I understand," repeated the assistant.
Then, holding his hand,--closely, but not so as to constrain the
muscles,--Lefevre put his own left on the machine according to the
direction he had given his assistant,--with his fingers, that is,
dipping into the chemicals from plates in the bottom of which the wires
conducted to the patient's hands. A shiver ran through the frame of both
Lefevre and his companion, a convulsive shudder passed upon the
unconscious body, and--a strange cry rang out upon the silence of the
ward, and Lefevre withdrew his hands. He and the house-physician looked
at each other pale and shaken. The nurse came running at the cry.
Lefevre looked out beyond the screen to reassure her, and saw in the dim
red reflection of the firelight a sight which struck him gruesomely,
used though he was to hospital sights; all about the ward pale scared
figures were sitting up in bed, like corpses suddenly raised from the
dead. He bent over his patient, who presently opened his eyes and stared
at him.
"Get some brandy and milk," said Lefevre to his companion.
"Who? Where am I?" murmured the patient in a faint voice.
"I am Dr Lefevre, and this is St. James's Hospital."
"Doctor?--hospital?--oh, I'm dreaming!" murmured the patient.
"We'll talk about that when you have taken some of this," said Lefevre,
as the house-physician reappeared with the nurse, bearing the brandy and
milk.
Lefevre presently told him how he had been found in the train, and taken
for dead till the card--"this card," said he, taking it from the top of
the locker--was discovered on him. The young man listened in open
amazement, and looked at the card.
"I know nothing of this!" said he. "I never saw the card before! I never
heard your name or the hospital's till a minute ago."
"Your case was strange before," said Lefevre; "this makes it stranger.
Who journeyed with you?"
"A man,--a nice, strange, oldish fellow in a fur coat." And the young
man wished to enter upon a narrative, when the doctor interrupted him.
"You're not well enough to talk much now. Tell me to-morrow all about
it."
The doctor returned home, his imagination occupied with the vision of a
train rushing at express speed over the metals, and of a compartment in
the train in which a young man reclined under the spell of an old man.
The young man's face he saw clearly, but the old man's evaded him like a
dream, and yet he felt he ought to know one who knew the peculiar repute
of the St. James's Hospital. Next day the young man told his story,
which was in effect as follows: He was a subaltern in a dragoon regiment
stationed in Brighton. On Sunday afternoon he had set out for London on
several days' leave. He had taken a seat in a smoking-carriage, and was
preparing to make himself comfortable with a novel and a cigar, when an
elderly gentleman, who looked like a foreigner, came in as the train was
about to move. He particularly observed the man from the first, because,
though it was a pleasant spring day, he looked pinched and shrunken with
cold in his great fur overcoat, and because he had remarked him standing
on the platform and scrutinizing the passengers hurrying into the train.
The gentleman sat down in the seat opposite the young officer, and drew
his fur wrap close about him. The young officer could not keep his eyes
off him, and he noted that his features seemed worn thin and arid, as by
passage through terrific peril,--as if he had been travelling for many
days without sleep and without food, straining forward to a goal of
safety, sick both in stomach and heart,--as if he had been rushing, like
the maniac of the Gospel, through dry places, seeking rest and finding
none. His hair, which should have been black, looked lustreless and
bleached, and his skin seemed as if his blood had lost all colour and
generosity, as if nothing but serum flowed in his veins. His eyes alone
did not look bloodless; they were weary and extravasated, as from
anxious watching. The young officer's compassion went out to the
stranger; for he thought he must be a conspirator, fleeing probably from
the infamous tyranny of Russian rule. But presently he spoke in such
good English that the idea of his being a Russian faded away.
"Excuse the liberty I take," said he, with a singularly winning smile;
"but let me advise you not to smoke that cigar. I have a peculiarly
sensitive nose for tobacco, and my nose informs me that your cigar,
though good as cigars go, is not fit for you to smoke."
The young officer was surprised that he was rather charmed than offended
by this impertinence.
"Let me offer you one of these instead," said the strange gentleman; "we
call them--I won't trouble you with the Spanish name--but in English it
means 'Joys of Spain.'"
The officer took and thanked him for a "Joy of Spain," and found the
flavour and aroma so excellent that, to use his own phrase, he could
have eaten it. He asked the stranger what in particular was his
objection to the other cigar.
"This objection," said he, "which is common to all ill-prepared
tobaccos, that it lowers the vital force. You don't feel that yet,
because you are young and healthy, and gifted with a superabundance of
fine vitality; but you may by smoking one bad cigar bring the time a day
nearer when you must feel it. And even now it would take a little off
the keen edge of the appetite for pleasure. How little," said he, "do we
understand how to keep ourselves in condition for the complete enjoyment
of life! You, I suppose, are about to take your pleasure in town, and
instead of judiciously tickling and stimulating your nerves for the
complete fulfilment of the pleasures you contemplate, you begin--you
were beginning, I mean, with your own cigar--to dull and stupefy them.
Don't you see how foolish that is?"
The young officer admitted that it was very foolish and very true; and
they talked on thus, the elder exercising a charm over the younger such
as he had never known before in the society of any man. In a quarter of
an hour the young man felt as if he had known and trusted and loved his
neighbour all his life; he felt, he confessed, so strongly attracted
that he could have hugged him. He told him about his family, and showed
him the innermost secrets of his heart; and all the while he smoked the
delicious "Joy of Spain," and felt more and more enthralled and
fascinated by the stranger's eyes, which, as he talked, lightened and
glowed more and more as their glance played caressingly about him. He
was beginning to wonder at that, when with some emphatic phrase the
stranger laid his fingers on his knee, upon which a thrill shot through
him as if a woman had touched him. He looked in the stranger's face, and
the wonderful eyes seemed to search to the root of his being, and to
draw the soul out of him. He had a flying thought--"Can it be a woman,
after all, in this strange shape?" and he knew no more ... till he woke
in the hospital bed.
That was the patient's story.
"Just look over your property here," said the doctor. "Have you lost
anything?"
The young man turned over his watch and the contents of his purse, and
answered that he had lost nothing.
"Strange--strange!" said Lefevre--"very strange! And the card--of course
the stranger must have put it in your pocket."
"Which would seem to imply," said the young man, "that _he_ knows
something of the hospital."
"Well," said Lefevre, "we must see what can be done to clear the mystery
up."
"Some of those newspaper-men have been here," said the house-physician,
when they had left the ward, "and they will be sure to call again before
the day is out. Shall I tell them anything of this?"
"Certainly," said Lefevre. "Publicity may help us to discover this
amazing stranger."
"Do you quite believe the story?" asked the house-physician.
"I don't disbelieve it."
"But what did the stranger do to put him in that condition, which seems
something more than hypnotism?"
"Ah," said Lefevre, "I don't yet understand it; but there are forces in
Nature which few can comprehend, and which only one here and there can
control and use."