Dr Greatrex's Engagement
Everybody knows by name at least the celebrated Dr. Greatrex, the
discoverer of that abstruse molecular theory of the interrelations of
forces and energies. He is a comparatively young man still, as times go,
for a person of such scientific distinction, for he is now barely forty;
but to look at his tall, spare, earnest figure, and his clear-cut,
delicate, intellectual face, you would scarcely imagine that he had once
een the hero of a singularly strange and romantic story. Yet there have
been few lives more romantic than Arthur Greatrex's, and few histories
stranger in their way than this of his engagement. After all, why should
not a scientific light have a romance of his own as well as other
people?
Fifteen years ago Arthur Greatrex, then a young Cambridge fellow, had
just come up to begin his medical studies at a London hospital. He was
tall in those days, of course, but not nearly so slender or so pale as
now; for he had rowed seven in his college boat, and was a fine,
athletic young man of the true English university pattern. Handsome,
too, then and always, but with a more human-looking and ordinary
handsomeness when he was young than in these latter times of his
scientific eminence. Indeed, any one who met Arthur Greatrex at that
time would merely have noticed him as a fine, intelligent young English
gentleman, with a marked taste for manly sports, and a decided opinion
of his own about most passing matters of public interest.
Already, even in those days, the young medical student was very deeply
engaged in recondite speculations on the question of energy. His active
mind, always dwelling upon wide points of cosmical significance, had hit
upon the germ of that great revolutionary idea which was afterwards to
change the whole course of modern physics. But, as often happens with
young men of twenty-five, there was another subject which divided his
attention with the grand theory of his life: and that subject was the
pretty daughter of his friend and instructor, Dr. Abury, the eminent
authority on the treatment of the insane. In all London you couldn't
have found a sweeter or prettier girl than Hetty Abury. Young Greatrex
thought her clever, too; and, though that is perhaps saying rather too
much, she was certainly a good deal above the average of ordinary London
girls in intellect and accomplishments.
"They say, Arthur," she said to him on the day after their formal
engagement, "that the course of true love never did run smooth; and yet
it seems somehow as if ours was wonderfully smoothed over for us by
everybody and everything. I am the happiest and proudest girl in all the
world to have won the love of such a man as you for my future husband."
Arthur Greatrex stroked the back of her white little hand with his, and
answered gently, "I hope nothing will ever arise to make the course of
our love run any the rougher; for certainly we do seem to have every
happiness laid out most temptingly before us. It almost feels to me as
if my paradise had been too easily won, and I ought to have something
harder to do before I enter it."
"Don't say that, Arthur," Hetty put in hastily. "It sounds too much like
an evil omen."
"You superstitious little woman!" the young doctor replied with a
smile. "Talking to a scientific man about signs and portents!" And he
kissed her wee hand tenderly, and went home to his bachelor lodging with
that strange exhilaration in heart and step which only the ecstasy of
first love can ever bring one.
"No," he thought to himself, as he sat down in his own easy-chair, and
lighted his cigar; "I don't believe any cloud can ever arise between me
and Hetty. We have everything in our favour--means to live upon, love
for one another, a mutual respect, kind relations, and hearts that were
meant by nature each for the other. Hetty is certainly the very sweetest
little girl that ever lived; and she's as good as she's sweet, and as
loving as she's beautiful. What a dreadful thing it is for a man in love
to have to read up medicine for his next examination!" and he took a
medical book down from the shelf with a sigh, and pretended to be deeply
interested in the diagnosis of scarlet fever till his cigar was
finished. But, if the truth must be told, the words really swam before
him, and all the letters on the page apparently conspired together to
make up but a single name a thousand times over--Hetty, Hetty, Hetty,
Hetty. At last he laid the volume down as hopeless, and turned dreamily
into his bedroom, only to lie awake half the night and think perpetually
on that one theme of Hetty.
Next day was Dr. Abury's weekly lecture on diseases of the brain and
nervous system; and Arthur Greatrex, convinced that he really must make
an effort, went to hear it. The subject was one that always interested
him; and partly by dint of mental attention, partly out of sheer desire
to master the matter, he managed to hear it through, and even take in
the greater part of its import. As he left the room to go down the
hospital stairs, he had his mind fairly distracted between the
premonitory symptoms of insanity and Hetty Abury. "Was there ever such
an unfortunate profession as medicine for a man in love?" he asked
himself, half angrily. "Why didn't I go and be a parson or a barrister,
or anything else that would have kept me from mixing up such incongruous
associations? And yet, when one comes to think of it, too, there's no
particular natural connection after all between 'Chitty on Contract' and
dearest Hetty."
Musing thus, he turned to walk down the great central staircase of the
hospital. As he did so, his attention was attracted for a moment by a
singular person who was descending the opposite stair towards the same
landing. This person was tall and not ill-looking; but, as he came down
the steps, he kept pursing up his mouth and cheeks into the most
extraordinary and hideous grimaces; in fact, he was obviously making
insulting faces at Arthur Greatrex. Arthur was so much preoccupied at
the moment, however, that he hardly had time to notice the eccentric
stranger; and, as he took him for one of the harmless lunatic patients
in the mental-diseases ward, he would have passed on without further
observing the man but for an odd circumstance which occurred as they
both reached the great central landing together. Arthur happened to drop
the book he was carrying from under his arm, and instinctively stooped
to pick it up. At the same moment the grimacing stranger dropped his own
book also, not in imitation, but by obvious coincidence, and stooped to
pick it up with the self-same gesture. Struck by the oddity of the
situation, Arthur turned to look at the curious patient. To his utter
horror and surprise, he discovered that the man he had been observing
was his own reflection.
In one second the real state of the case flashed like lightning across
his bewildered brain. There was no opposite staircase, as he knew very
well, for he had been down those steps a hundred times before: nothing
but a big mirror, which reflected and doubled the one-sided flight from
top to bottom. It was only his momentary preoccupation which had made
him for a minute fall into the obvious delusion. The man whom he saw
descending towards him was really himself, Arthur Greatrex.
Even so, he did not at once grasp the full strangeness of the scene he
had just witnessed. It was only as he turned to descend again that he
caught another glimpse of himself in the big mirror, and saw that he was
still making the most horrible and ghastliest grimaces--grimaces such as
he had never seen equalled save by the monkeys at the Zoo, and
(horridest thought of all!) by the worst patients in the mental-disease
ward. He pulled himself up in speechless horror, and looked once more
into the big mirror. Yes, there was positively no mistaking the fact: it
was he, Arthur Greatrex, fellow of Catherine's, who was making these
hideous and meaningless distortions of his own countenance.
With a terrible effort of will he pulled his face quite straight again,
and assumed his usual grave and quiet demeanour. For a full minute he
stood looking at himself in the glass; and then, fearful that some one
else would come and surprise him, he hurried down the remaining steps,
and rushed out into the streets of London. Which way he turned he did
not know or care; all he knew was that he was repressing by sheer force
of muscular strain a deadly impulse to pucker up his mouth and draw down
the corners of his lips into one-sided grimaces. As he passed down the
streets, he watched his own image faintly reflected in the panes of the
windows, and saw that he was maintaining outward decorum, but only with
a conscious and evident struggle. At one doorstep a little child was
playing with a kitten; Arthur Greatrex, who was a naturally kindly man,
looked down at her and smiled, in spite of his preoccupation: instead of
smiling back, the child uttered a scream of terror, and rushed back into
the house to hide her face in her mother's apron. He felt instinctively
that, in place of smiling, he had looked at the child with one of his
awful faces. It was horrible, unendurable, and he walked on through the
streets and across the bridges, pulling himself together all the time,
till at last, half-unconsciously, he found himself near Pimlico, where
the Aburys were then living.
Looking around him, he saw that he had come nearly to the corner where
Hetty's little drawing-room faced the road. The accustomed place seemed
to draw him off for a moment from thinking of himself, and he remembered
that he had promised Hetty to come in for luncheon. But dare he go in
such a state of mind and body as he then found himself in? Well, Hetty
would be expecting him; Hetty would be disappointed if he didn't come;
he certainly mustn't break his engagement with dear little Hetty. After
all, he began to say to himself, what was it but a mere twitching of his
face, probably a slight nervous affection? Young doctors are always
nervous about themselves, they say; they find all their own symptoms
accurately described in all the text-books. His face wasn't twitching
now, of that he was certain; the nearer he got to Hetty's, the calmer he
grew, and the more he was conscious he could relax his attention without
finding his muscles were playing tricks upon him. He would turn in and
have luncheon, and soon forgot all about it.
Hetty saw him coming, and ran lightly to open the door for him, and as
he took his seat beside her at the table, he forgot straightway his
whole trouble, and found himself at once in Paradise once more. All
through lunch they talked about other things--happy plans for the
future, and the small prettinesses that lovers find so perennially
delightful; and long before Arthur went away the twitching in his face
had altogether ceased to trouble him. Once or twice, indeed, in the
course of the afternoon he happened to glance casually at the
looking-glass above the drawing-room fireplace (those were the
pre-Morrisian days when overmantels as yet were not), and he saw to his
great comfort that his face was resting in its usual handsome repose and
peacefulness. A bright, earnest, strong face it was, with all the
promise of greatness already in it; and so Hetty thought as she looked
up at it from the low footstool where she sat by his side, and half
whispered into his ear the little timid confidences of early betrothal.
Five o'clock tea came all too soon, and then Arthur felt he must really
be going and must get home to do a little reading. On his way, he
fancied once he saw a street boy start in evident surprise as he
approached him, but it might be fancy; and when the street boy stuck his
tongue into the corner of his cheek and uttered derisive shouts from a
safe distance, Arthur concluded he was only doing after the manner of
his kind out of pure gratuitous insolence. He went home to his lodgings
and sat down to an hour's work; but after he had read up several pages
more of "Stuckey on Gout," he laid down the book in disgust, and took
out Helmholtz and Joule instead, indulging himself with a little
desultory reading in his favourite study of the higher physics.
As he read and read the theory of correlation, the great idea as to the
real nature of energy, which had escaped all these learned physicists,
and which was then slowly forming itself in his own mind, grew gradually
clearer and clearer still before his mental vision. Helmholtz was wrong
here, because he had not thoroughly appreciated the disjunctive nature
of electric energy; Joule was wrong here, because he had failed to
understand the real antithesis between potential and kinetic. He laid
down the books, paced up and down the room thoughtfully, and beheld the
whole concrete theory of interrelation embodying itself visibly before
his very eyes. At last he grew fired with the stupendous grandeur of his
own conception, seized a quire of foolscap, and sat down eagerly at the
table to give written form to the splendid phantom that was floating
before him in so distinct a fashion. He would make a great name, for
Hetty's sake; and, when he had made it, his dearest reward would be to
know that Hetty was proud of him.
Hour after hour he sat and wrote, as if inspired, at his little table.
The landlady knocked at the door to tell him dinner was ready, but he
would have none of it, he said; let her bring him up a good cup of
strong tea and a few plain biscuits. So he wrote and wrote in feverish
haste, drinking cup after cup of tea, and turning off page after page of
foolscap, till long past midnight. The whole theory had come up so
distinctly before his mind's eye, under the exceptional exaltation of
first love, and the powerful stimulus of the day's excitement, that he
wrote it off as though he had it by heart; omitting only the
mathematical calculations, which he left blank, not because he had not
got them clearly in his head, but because he would not stop his flying
pen to copy them all out then and there at full length, for fear of
losing the main thread of his argument. When he had finished, about
forty sheets of foolscap lay huddled together on the table before him,
written in a hasty hand, and scarcely legible; but they contained the
first rough draft and central principle of that immortal work, the
"Transcendental Dynamics."
Arthur Greatrex rose from the table, where his grand discovery was first
formulated, well satisfied with himself and his theory, and fully
determined to submit it shortly to the critical judgment of the Royal
Society. As he took up his bedroom candle, however, he went over to the
mantelpiece to kiss Hetty's photograph, as he always did (for even men
of science are human) every evening before retiring. He lifted the
portrait reverently to his lips, and was just about to kiss it, when
suddenly in the mirror before him he saw the same horrible mocking face
which had greeted him so unexpectedly that morning on the hospital
staircase. It was a face of inhuman devilry; the face of a mediaeval
demon, a hideous, grinning, distorted ghoul, a very caricature and
insult upon the features of humanity. In his dismay he dropped the frame
and the photograph, shivering the glass that covered it into a thousand
atoms. Summoning up all his resolution, he looked again. Yes, there was
no mistaking it: a face was gibing and jeering at him from the mirror
with diabolical ingenuity of distorted hideousness; a disgusting face
which even the direct evidence of his senses would scarcely permit him
to believe was really the reflection of his own features. It was
overpowering, it was awful, it was wholly incredible; and, utterly
unmanned by the sight, he sank back into his easy-chair and buried his
face bitterly between the shelter of his trembling hands.
At that moment Arthur Greatrex felt sure he knew the real meaning of the
horror that surrounded him. He was going mad.
For ten minutes or more he sat there motionless, hot tears boiling up
from his eyes and falling silently between his fingers. Then at last he
rose nervously from his seat, and reached down a volume from the shelf
behind him. It was Prang's "Treatise on the Physiology of the Brain." He
turned it over hurriedly for a few pages, till he came to the passage he
was looking for.
"Ah, I thought so," he said to himself, half aloud: "'Premonitory
symptoms: facial distortions; infirmity of the will; inability to
distinguish muscular movements.' Let's see what Prang has to say about
it. 'A not uncommon concomitant of these early stages'--Great heavens,
how calmly the man talks about losing your reason!-'is an unconscious or
semi-conscious tendency to produce a series of extraordinary facial
distortions. At times, the sufferer is not aware of the movements thus
initiated; at other times they are quite voluntary, and are accompanied
by bodily gestures of contempt or derision for passing strangers.' Why,
that's what must have happened with that boy this morning! 'Symptoms of
this character usually result from excessive activity of the brain, and
are most frequent among mathematicians or scholars who have overworked
their intellectual faculties. They may be regarded as the immediate
precursors of acute dementia.' Acute dementia! Oh, Hetty! Oh, heavens!
What have I done to deserve such a blow as this?"
He laid his face between his hands once more, and sobbed like a
broken-hearted child for a few minutes. Then he turned accidentally
towards his tumbled manuscript. "No, no," he said to himself,
reassuringly; "I can't be going mad. My brain was never clearer in my
life. I couldn't have done a piece of good work like that, bristling
with equations and figures and formulas, if my head was really giving
way. I seemed to grasp the subject as I never grasped it in my life
before. I never worked so well at Cambridge; this is a discovery, a
genuine discovery. It's impossible that a man who was going mad could
ever see anything so visibly and distinctly as I see that universal
principle. Let's look again at what Prang has to say upon that subject."
He turned over the volume a few pages further, and glanced lightly at
the contents at the head of each chapter, till at last a few words in
the title struck his eye, and he hurried on to the paragraph they
indicated, with feverish eagerness. As he did so, these were the words
which met his bewildered gaze.
"In certain cases, especially among men of unusual intelligence and high
attainments, the exaltation of incipient madness takes rather the guise
of a scientific or philosophic enthusiasm. Instead of imagining himself
the possessor of untold wealth, or the absolute despot of a servile
people, the patient deludes himself with the belief that he has made a
great discovery or lighted upon a splendid generalization of the deepest
and most universal importance. He sees new truths crowding upon him
with the most startling and vivid objectivity. He perceives intimate
relations of things which he never before suspected. He destroys at one
blow the Newtonian theory of gravitation; he discovers obvious flaws in
the nebular hypothesis of Laplace; he gives a scholar's-mate to Kant in
the very fundamental points of the 'Critique of Pure Reason.' The more
serious the attack, the more utterly convinced is the patient of the
exceptional clearness of his own intelligence at that particular moment.
He writes pamphlets whose scientific value he ridiculously
over-estimates; and he is sure to be very angry with any one who tries
rationally to combat his newly found authority. Mathematical reasoners
are specially liable to this form of incipient mental disease, which,
when combined with the facial distortions already alluded to in a
previous section, is peculiarly apt to terminate in acute dementia."
"Acute dementia again!" Arthur Greatrex cried with a gesture of horror,
flinging the book from him as if it were a poisonous serpent. "Acute
dementia, acute dementia, acute dementia; nothing but acute dementia
ahead of me, whichever way I happen to turn. Oh, this is too horrible! I
shall never be able to marry Hetty! And yet I shall never be able to
break it to Hetty! Great heavens, that such a phantom as this should
have risen between me and paradise only since this very morning!"
In his agony he caught up the papers on which he had written the rough
draft of his grand discovery, and crumpled them up fiercely in his
fingers. "The cursed things!" he groaned between his teeth, tossing them
with a gesture of impatient disgust into the waste-paper basket; "how
could I ever have deluded myself into thinking I had hit off-hand upon a
grand truth which had escaped such men as Helmholtz, and Mayer, and
Joule, and Thomson! The thing's preposterous upon the very face of it; I
must be going mad, indeed, ever to have dreamt of it!"
He took up his candle once more, kissed the portrait in the broken frame
with intense fervour a dozen times over, and then went up gloomily into
his own bedroom. There he did not attempt to undress, but merely pulled
off his boots, lay down in his clothes upon the bed, and hastily blew
out the candle. For a long time he lay tossing and turning in
unspeakable terror; but at last, after perhaps two hours or so, he fell
into a troubled sleep, and dreamed a hideous nightmare, in which
somebody or other in shadowy outlines was trying perpetually to tear him
away by main force from poor pale and weeping Hetty.
It was daylight when Arthur woke again, and he lay for some time upon
his bed, thinking over his last night's scare, which seemed much less
serious, as such things always do, now that the sun had risen upon it.
After a while his mind got round to the energy question; and, as he
thought it over once more, the conviction forced itself afresh upon him
that he was right upon the matter after all, and that if he was going
mad there was at least method in his madness. So firmly was he convinced
upon this point now (though he recognized that that very certainty might
be merely a symptom of his coming malady) that he got up hurriedly,
before the lodging-house servant came to clean up his little
sitting-room, so as to rescue his crumpled foolscap from the waste-paper
basket. After that, a bath and breakfast almost made him laugh at his
evening terrors.
All the morning Arthur Greatrex sat down at his table again, working in
the algebraical calculations which he had omitted from his paper
overnight, and finishing it in full form as if for presentation to a
learned society. But he did not mean now to offer it to any society: he
had a far deeper and more personal interest in the matter at present
than that. He wanted to settle first of all the question whether he was
going mad or not. Afterwards, there would be plenty of time to settle
such minor theoretical problems as the general physical constitution of
the universe.
As soon as he had finished his calculations he took the paper in his
hands, and went out with it to make two calls on scientific
acquaintances. The first man he called upon was that distinguished
specialist, Professor Linklight, one of the greatest authorities of his
own day on all questions of molecular physics. Poor man! he is almost
forgotten now, for he died ten years ago; and his scientific reputation
was, after all, of that flashy sort which bases itself chiefly upon
giving good dinners to leading fellows of the Royal Society. But fifteen
years ago Professor Linklight, with his cut-and-dried dogmatic notions,
and his narrow technical accuracy, was universally considered the
principal physical philosopher in all England. To him, then, Arthur
Greatrex--a far deeper and clearer thinker--took in all humility the
first manuscript of his marvellous discovery; not to ask him whether it
was true or not, but to find out whether it was physical science at all
or pure insanity. The professor received him kindly; and when Arthur,
who had of course his own reasons for attempting a little modest
concealment, asked him to look over a friend's paper for him, with a
view to its presentation to the Royal Society, he cheerfully promised to
do his best. "Though you will admit, my dear Mr. Greatrex," he said with
his blandest smile, "that your friend's manuscript certainly does not
err on the side of excessive brevity." From Linklight's, Arthur walked
on tremulously to the house of another great scientific magnate, Dr.
Warminster, of being the first living authority on the treatment of the
insane in the United Kingdom. Before Dr. Warminster, Arthur made no
attempt to conceal his apprehensions. He told out all his symptoms and
fears without reserve, even exaggerating them a little, as a man is
prone to do through over-anxiety not to put too favourable a face upon
his own ailments. Dr. Warminster listened attentively and with a
gathering interest to all that Arthur told him, and at the end of his
account he shook his head gloomily, and answered in a very grave and
sympathetic tone.
"My dear Greatrex," he said gently, holding his arm with a kindly
pressure, "I should be dealing wrongly with you if I did not candidly
tell you that your case gives ground for very serious apprehensions. You
are a young man, and with steady attention to curative means and
surroundings, it is possible that you may ward off this threatened
danger. Society, amusement, relaxation, complete cessation of scientific
work, absence, as far as possible, of mental anxiety in any form, may
enable you to tide over the turning point. But that there is danger
threatened, it would be unkind and untrue not to warn you. It is very
unusual for a patient to consult us in person about these matters. More
often it is the friends who notice the coming change; but, as you ask me
directly for an opinion, I can't help telling you that I regard your
case as not without real cause for the strictest care and for a
preventive regimen."
Arthur thanked him for the numerous directions he gave as to things
which should be done or things which should be avoided, and hurried out
into the street with his brain swimming and reeling. "Absence of mental
anxiety!" he said to himself bitterly. "How calmly they talk about
mental anxiety! How can I possibly be free from anxiety when I know I
may go mad at any moment, and that the blow would kill Hetty outright?
For myself, I should not care a farthing; but for Hetty! It is too
terrible."
He had not the heart to call at the Aburys' that afternoon, though he
had promised to do so; and he tortured himself with the thought that
Hetty would think him neglectful. He could not call again while the
present suspense lasted; and if his worst fears were confirmed he could
never call again, except once, to take leave of Hetty for ever. For,
deeply as Arthur Greatrex loved her, he loved her too well ever to dream
of marrying her if the possible shadow of madness was to cloud her
future life with its perpetual presence. Better she should bear the
shock, even if it killed her at once, than that both should live in
ceaseless apprehension of that horrible possibility, and should become
the parents of children upon whom that hereditary curse might rest for a
lifetime, reflecting itself back with the added sting of conscientious
remorse on the father who had brought them into the world against his
own clear judgment of right and justice.
Next morning Arthur went round once more to Professor Linklight's. The
professor had promised to read through the paper immediately, and give
his opinion of its chances for presentation to the Royal Society. He was
sitting at his breakfast-table, in his flowered dressing-gown and
slippers, when Arthur called upon him, and, with a cup of coffee in one
hand, was actually skimming the last few pages through his critical
eyeglass as his visitor entered.
"Good-morning, Mr. Greatrex!" he said, with one of his most gracious
smiles, indicative of the warm welcome attended by acknowledged wisdom
towards rising talent. "You see I have been reading your friend's paper,
as I promised. Well, my dear sir, not to put too fine a point upon it,
it won't hold water. In fact, it's a mere rigmarole. Excuse my asking
you, Greatrex, but have you any idea, my dear fellow, whether your
friend is inclined to be a little cracky?"
Arthur swallowed a groan with the greatest difficulty, and answered in
as unconcerned a tone as possible, "Well, to tell you the truth, Mr.
Linklight, some doubts have been cast upon his perfect sanity."
"Ah, I should have thought so," the professor went on in his airiest
manner; "I should have thought so. The fact is, this paper is fitter for
the Transactions of the Colney Hatch Academy than for those of the
Royal Society. It has a delusive outer appearance of physical thinking,
but there's no real meaning in it of any sort. It's gassy,
unsubstantial, purely imaginative." And the professor waved his hand in
the air to indicate its utter gaseousness. "If you were to ask my own
opinion about it, I should say it's the sort of thing that might be
produced by a young man of some mathematical training with a very
superficial knowledge of modern physics, just as he was on the point of
lapsing into complete insanity. It's the maddest bit of writing that has
ever yet fallen under my critical notice."
"Your opinion is of course conclusive," Arthur answered with unfeigned
humility, his eyes almost bursting with the tears he would not let come
to the surface. "It will be a great disappointment to my friend, but I
have no doubt he will accept your verdict."
"Not a bit of it, my dear sir," the professor put in quickly. "Not a bit
of it. These crazy fellows always stick to their own opinions, and think
you a perfect fool for disagreeing with them. Mark my words, Mr.
Greatrex, your friend will still go on believing, in spite of
everything, that his roundabout reasoning upon that preposterous
square-root-of-Pi theorem is sound mathematics."
And Arthur, looking within, felt with a glow of horror that the theorem
in question seemed to him at that moment more obviously true and certain
in all its deductions than it had ever done before since the first day
that he conceived it. How very mad he must be after all.
He thanked Professor Linklight as well as he was able for his kindness
in looking over the paper, and groped his way blindly through the
passage to the front door and out into the square. Thence he staggered
home wearily, convinced that it was all over between him and Hetty, and
that he must make up his mind forthwith to his horrible destiny.
If he had only known at that moment that forty years earlier Professor
Linklight had used almost the same words about Young's theory of
undulations, and had since used them about every new discovery from that
day to the one on which he then saw him, he might have attached less
importance than he actually did to this supposed final proof of his own
insanity.
As Arthur entered his lodgings he hung his hat up on the stand in the
passage. There was a little strip of mirror in the middle of the stand,
and glancing at it casually he saw once more that awful face--his
own--distorted and almost diabolical, which he had learnt so soon to
hate instinctively as if it were a felon's and a murderer's. He rushed
away wildly into his little sitting-room, and flung his manuscript on
the table, almost without observing that his friend Freeling, the rising
physiologist, was quietly seated on the sofa opposite.
"What's this, Arthur?" Freeling asked, taking it up carelessly and
glancing at the title. "You don't mean to say that you've finally
written out that splendid idea of yours about the interrelations of
energy?"
"Yes, I have, Harry: I have, and I wish to heaven I hadn't, for it's all
mad and silly and foolish and meaningless!"
"If it is, then I'm mad too, my dear fellow, for I think it's the most
convincing thing in physics I ever listened to. Let me have the
manuscript to look over, and see how you've worked out those beautiful
calculations about the square root of Pi, will you?"
"Take the thing, for heaven's sake, and leave me, Harry, for if I'm not
left alone I shall break down and cry before you." And as he spoke he
buried his head in his arm and sobbed like a woman.
Dr. Freeling knew Arthur was in love, and was aware that people
sometimes act very unaccountably under such circumstances; so he did the
wisest thing to be done then and there: he grasped his friend's arm
gently with his hand, spoke never a word, and, taking up his hat and
the manuscript, walked quietly out into the passage. Then he told the
landlady to make Mr. Greatrex a strong cup of tea, with a dash of brandy
in it, and turned away, leaving Arthur to solitude and his own
reflections.
That evening's post brought Arthur Greatrex two letters, which finally
completed his utter prostration. The first he opened was from Dr. Abury.
He broke the envelope with a terrible misgiving, and read the letter
through with a deepening and sickening feeling of horror. It was not he
alone, then, who had distorted the secret of his own incipient insanity.
Dr. Abury's practised eye had also detected the rising symptoms. The
doctor wrote kindly and with evident grief; but there was no mistaking
the firm purport of his intentions. Conferring this morning with his
professional friend Warminster, a case had been mentioned to him,
without a name, which he at once recognized as Arthur's. He recalled
certain symptoms he had himself observed, and his suspicions were thus
vividly aroused. Happening accidentally to follow Arthur in the street
he was convinced that his surmise was correct, and he thought it his
duty both to inform Arthur of the danger that encompassed him, and to
assure him that, deeply as it grieved him to withdraw the consent he had
so gladly given, he could not allow his only daughter to marry a man
bearing on his face the evident marks of an insane tendency. The letter
contained much more of regret and condolence; but that was the pith that
Arthur Greatrex picked out of it all through the blinding tears, that
dimmed his vision.
The second letter was from Hetty. Half guessing its contents, he had
left it purposely till the last, and he tore it open now with a fearful
sinking feeling in his bosom. It was indeed a heart-broken,
heart-breaking letter. What could be the secret which papa would not
tell her? Why had not Arthur come yesterday? Why could she never marry
him? Why was papa so cruel as not to tell her the reason? He couldn't
have done anything in the slightest degree dishonourable, far less
anything wicked: of that she felt sure; but, if not, what could be this
horrible, mysterious, unknown barrier that was so suddenly raised
between them? "Do write, dearest Arthur, and relieve me from this
terrible, incomprehensible suspense; do let me know what has happened to
make papa so determined against you. I could bear to lose you--at least
I could bear it as other women have done--but I can't bear this awful
uncertainty, this awful doubt as to your love or your constancy. For
heaven's sake, darling, send me a note somehow! send me a line to tell
me you love me. Your heart-broken
"HETTY."
Arthur took his hat, and, unable to endure this agony, set out at once
for the Aburys'. When he reached the door, the servant who answered his
ring at the bell told him he could not see the doctor; he was engaged
with two other doctors in a consultation about Miss Hetty. What was the
matter with Miss Hetty, then? What, didn't he know that? Oh, Miss Hetty
had had a fit, and Dr. Freeling and Dr. MacKinlay had been called in to
see her. Arthur did not wait for a moment, but walked upstairs
unannounced, and into the consulting room.
Was it a very serious matter? Yes, Freeling answered, very serious. It
seemed Miss Abury had had a great shock--a great shock to her
affections--which, he added in a lower voice, "you yourself can perhaps
best explain to me. She will certainly have a long illness. Perhaps she
may never recover."
"Come out into the conservatory, Harry," said Arthur to his friend. "I
can tell you there what it is all about."
In a few words Arthur told him the nature of the shock, but without
describing the particular symptoms on which the opinion of his supposed
approaching insanity was based. Freeling listened with an incredulous
smile, and at the end he said to his friend gently, "My dear Arthur, I
wish you had told me all this before. If you had done so, we might have
saved Miss Abury a shock which may perhaps be fatal. You are no more
going mad than I am; on the contrary, you're about the sanest and most
clear-headed fellow of my acquaintance. But these mad-doctors are always
finding madness everywhere. If you had come to me and told me the
symptoms that troubled you, I should soon have set you right again in
your own opinion. To have gone to Warminster was most unfortunate, but
it can't be helped now. What we have to do at present is to take care of
Miss Abury."
Arthur shook his head sadly. "Ah," he said, "you don't know the real
gravity of the symptoms I am suffering from. I shall tell you all about
them some other time. However, as you say, what we have to think about
now is Hetty. Can you let me see her? I am sure if I could see her it
would reassure her and do her good."
Dr. Abury was at first very unwilling to let Arthur visit Hetty, who was
now lying unconscious on the sofa in her own boudoir; but Freeling's
opinion that it might possibly do her good at last prevailed with him,
and he gave his permission grudgingly.
Arthur went into the room silently and took his seat beside the low
couch where the motherless girl was lying. Her face was very white, and
her hands pale and bloodless. He took one hand in his: the pulse was
hardly perceptible. He laid it down upon her breast, and leaned back to
watch for any sign of returning life in her pallid cheek and closed
eyelids.
For hours and hours he sat there watching, and no sign came. Dr. Abury
sat at the bottom of the couch, watching with him; and as they watched,
Arthur felt from time to time that his face was again twitching
horribly. However, he had only thoughts for one thing now: would Hetty
die or would she recover? The servants brought them a little cake and
wine. They sat and drank in silence, looking at one another, but each
absorbed in his own thoughts, and speaking never a word for good or
evil.
At last Hetty's eyes opened. Arthur noticed the change first, and took
her hand in his gently. Her staring gaze fell upon him for a moment, and
she asked feebly, "Arthur, Arthur, do you still love me?"
"Love you, Hetty? With all my heart and soul, as I have always loved
you!"
She smiled, and said nothing. Dr. Abury gave her a little wine in a
teaspoon, and she drank it quietly. Then she shut her eyes again, but
this time she was sleeping.
All night Arthur watched still by the bedside where they put her a
little later, and Dr. Abury and a nurse watched with him. In the morning
she woke slightly better, and when she saw Arthur still there, she
smiled again, and said that if he was with her, she was happy. When
Freeling came to inquire after the patient, he found her so much
stronger, and Arthur so worn with fear and sleeplessness, that he
insisted upon carrying off his friend in his brougham to his own house,
and giving him a slight restorative. He might come back at once, he
said; but only after he had had a dose of mixture, a glass of brandy and
seltzer, and at least a mouthful of something for breakfast.
As Freeling was drawing the cork of the seltzer, Arthur's eye happened
to light on a monkey, which was chained to a post in the little area
plot outside the consulting-room. Arthur was accustomed to see monkeys
there, for Freeling often had invalids from the Zoo to observe side by
side with human patients; but this particular monkey fascinated him even
in his present shattered state of nerves, because there was a something
in its face which seemed strangely and horribly familiar to him. As he
looked, he recognized with a feeling of unspeakable aversion what it was
of which the monkey reminded him. It was making a series of hideous and
apparently mocking grimaces--the very self-same grimaces which he had
seen on his own features in the mirror during the last day or two!
Horrible idea! He was descending to the level of the very monkeys!
The more he watched, the more absolutely identical the two sets of
grimaces appeared to him to be. Could it be fancy or was it reality? Or
might it be one more delusion, showing that his brain was now giving way
entirely? He rubbed his eyes, steadied his attention, and looked again
with the deepest interest. No, he could not be mistaken. The monkey was
acting in every respect precisely as he himself had acted.
"Harry," he said, in a low and frightened tone, "look at this monkey. Is
he mad? Tell me."
"My dear Arthur," replied his friend, with just a shade of expostulation
in his voice, "you have really got madness on the brain at present. No,
he isn't mad at all. He's as sane as you are, and that's saying a good
deal, I can assure you."
"But, Harry, you can't have seen what he's doing. He's grimacing and
contorting himself in the most extraordinary fashion."
"Well, monkeys often do grimace, don't they?" Harry Freeling answered
coolly. "Take this brandy and you'll soon feel better."
"But they don't grimace like this one," Arthur persisted.
"No, not like this one, certainly. That's why I've got him here. I'm
going to operate upon him for it under chloroform, and cure him
immediately."
Arthur leaped from his seat like one demented. "Operate upon him, cure
him!" he cried hastily. "What on earth do you mean, Harry?"
"My dear boy, don't be so excited," said Freeling. "This suspense and
sleeplessness have been too much for you. This is antivivisection
carried ad absurdum. You don't mean to say you object to operations
upon a monkey for his own benefit, do you? If I don't cut a nerve,
tetanus will finally set in, and he'll die of it in great agony. Drink
off your brandy, and you'll feel better after it."
"But, Harry, what's the matter with the monkey? For heaven's sake, tell
me!"
Harry Freeling looked at his friend for the first time a little
suspiciously. Could Warminster be right after all, and could Arthur
really be going mad? It was so ridiculous of him to get into such a
state of flurry about the ailments of a tame monkey, and at such a
moment, too! "Well," he answered slowly, "the monkey has got facial
distortions due to a slight local paralysis of the inhibitory nerves
supplied to the buccal and pharyngeal muscles, with a tendency to end in
tetanus. If I cut a small ganglion behind the ear, and exhibit santonin,
the muscles will be relaxed; and though they won't act so freely as
before, they won't jerk and grimace any longer."
"Does it ever occur in human beings?" Arthur asked eagerly.
"Occur in human beings? Bless my soul, yes! I've seen dozens of cases.
Why, goodness gracious, Arthur, it's positively occurring in your own
face at this very moment!"
"I know it is," Arthur answered in an agony of suspense. "Do you think
this twitching of mine is due to a local paralysis of the inhibitories,
such as you speak of?"
"Excuse my laughing, my dear fellow; you really do look so absurdly
comical. No, I don't think anything about it. I know it is."
"Then you believe Warminster was wrong in taking it for a symptom of
incipient insanity?"
It was Freeling's turn now to jump up in surprise. "You don't mean to
tell me, Arthur, that that was the sole ground on which that old fool,
Warminster, thought you were going crazy?"
"He didn't see it himself," answered Arthur, with a sigh of unspeakable
relief. "I only described it to him, and he drew his inference from what
I told him. But the real question is this, Harry: Do you feel quite sure
that there's nothing more than that the matter with me?"
"Absolutely certain, my dear fellow. I can cure you in half an hour.
I've done it dozens of times before, and know the thing as well as you
know an ordinary case of scarlet fever."
Arthur sighed again. "And perhaps," he said bitterly, "this terrible
mistake may cost dear Hetty her life!"
He drank off the brandy, ate a few mouthfuls of food as best he might,
and hastened back to the Aburys'. When he got there he learned from the
servant that Hetty was at least no worse; and with that negative comfort
he had for the moment to content himself.
Hetty's illness was long and serious; but before it was over Freeling
was able to convince Dr. Abury of his own and his colleague's error, and
to prove by a simple piece of surgery that Arthur's hideous grimaces
were due to nothing worse than a purely physical impediment. The
operation was quite a successful one; but though Greatrex's face has
never since been liable to these curious contortions, the consequent
relaxation of the muscles has given his features that peculiarly calm
and almost impassive expression which everybody must have noticed upon
them at the present day, even in moments of the greatest animation. The
difficulty was how to break the cause of the temporary mistake to Hetty,
and this they were unable to do until she was to a great extent
convalescent. When once the needful explanation was over, and Arthur
was able once more to kiss her with perfect freedom from any tinge of
suspicion on her part, he felt that his paradise was at last attained.
A few days before the deferred date fixed for their wedding, Freeling
came into the doctor's drawing-room, where Hetty and Arthur were sitting
together, and threw a letter with a French official stamp on its face
down upon the table. "There," he said, "I find all the members of the
Academie des Sciences at Paris are madmen also!"
Hetty smiled faintly, and said with a little earnestness in her tone,
"Ah, Dr. Freeling, that subject has been far too serious a one for both
of us to make it pleasant jesting."
"Oh, but look here, Miss Abury," said Freeling; "I have to apologise to
Arthur for a great liberty I have ventured to take, and I think it best
to begin by explaining to you wherein it consisted. The fact is, before
you were ill, Arthur had just written a paper on the interrelations of
energy, which he showed to that pompous old nincompoop, Professor
Linklight. Well, Linklight being one of those men who can never see an
inch beyond his own nose, had the incomprehensible stupidity to tell him
there was nothing in it. Thereupon your future husband, who is a modest
and self-depreciating sort of fellow, was minded to throw it
incontinently into the waste-paper basket. But a friend of his, Harry
Freeling, who flatters himself that he can see an inch or two beyond his
own nose, read it over, and recognized that it was a brilliant
discovery. So what does he go and do--here comes in the apologetic
matter--but get this memoir quietly translated into French, affix a
motto to it, put it in an envelope, and send it in for the gold medal
competition of the Academie. Strange to say, the members of the Academie
turned out to be every bit as mad as the author and his friend; for I
have just received this letter, addressed to Arthur at my house (which I
have taken the further liberty of opening), and it informs me that the
Academie decrees its gold medal for physical discovery to M. Arthur
Greatrex, of London, which is a subject of congratulation for us three,
and a regular slap in the face for pompous old Linklight."
Hetty seized Freeling's two hands in hers. "You have been our good
genius, Dr. Freeling," she said with brimming eyes. "I owe Arthur to
you; and Arthur owes me to you; and now we both owe you this. What can
we ever do to thank you sufficiently?"
Since those days Hetty and Arthur have long been married, and Dr.
Greatrex's famous work (in its enlarged form) has been translated into
all the civilized languages of the world, as well as into German; but to
this moment, happy as they both are, you can read in their faces the
lasting marks of that one terrible anxiety. To many of their friends it
seemed afterwards a mere laughing matter; but to those two, who went
through it, and especially to Arthur Greatrex, it is a memory too
painful to be looked back upon even now without a thrill of terrible
recollection.