XVIII. A RIDDLE OF FACES
Just behind him stood two other doctors: one, the familiar Dr. Quayle,of the blinking eyes and bleating voice; the other, a more commonplacebut much more forcible figure, a stout young doctor with short,well-brushed hair and a round but resolute face. At the sight of theescape these two subordinates uttered a cry and sprang forward, buttheir superior remained motionless and smiling, and somehow the lackof his support seemed to arrest and freeze them in the very gesture ofpursuit.
"Let them be," he cried in a voice that cut like a blade of ice; and notonly of ice, but of some awful primordial ice that had never been water.
"I want no devoted champions," said the cutting voice; "even the follyof one's friends bores one at last. You don't suppose I should have letthese lunatics out of their cells without good reason. I have the bestand fullest reason. They can be let out of their cell today, becausetoday the whole world has become their cell. I will have no moremedieval mummery of chains and doors. Let them wander about the earth asthey wandered about this garden, and I shall still be their easy master.Let them take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost partsof the sea--I am there. Whither shall they go from my presence andwhither shall they flee from my spirit? Courage, Dr. Quayle, and donot be downhearted; the real days of tyranny are only beginning on thisearth."
And with that the Master laughed and swung away from them, almost as ifhis laugh was a bad thing for people to see.
"Might I speak to you a moment?" said Turnbull, stepping forward witha respectful resolution. But the shoulders of the Master only seemed totake on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he strode away.
Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the other two doctors, andsaid, harshly: "What in snakes does he mean--and who are you?"
"My name is Hutton," said the short, stout man, "and I am--well, one ofthose whose business it is to uphold this establishment."
"My name is Turnbull," said the other; "I am one of those whose businessit is to tear it to the ground."
The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull's anger seemed suddenly to steadyhim.
"But I don't want to talk about that," he said, calmly; "I only want toknow what the Master of this asylum really means."
Dr. Hutton's smile broke into a laugh which, short as it was, had thesuspicion of a shake in it. "I suppose you think that quite a simplequestion," he said.
"I think it a plain question," said Turnbull, "and one that deservesa plain answer. Why did the Master lock us up in a couple of cupboardslike jars of pickles for a mortal month, and why does he now let us walkfree in the garden again?"
"I understand," said Hutton, with arched eyebrows, "that your complaintis that you are now free to walk in the garden."
"My complaint is," said Turnbull, stubbornly, "that if I am fit to walkfreely now, I have been as fit for the last month. No one has examinedme, no one has come near me. Your chief says that I am only free becausehe has made other arrangements. What are those arrangements?"
The young man with the round face looked down for a little whileand smoked reflectively. The other and elder doctor had gone pacingnervously by himself upon the lawn. At length the round face was liftedagain, and showed two round blue eyes with a certain frankness in them.
"Well, I don't see that it can do any harm to tell you know," he said."You were shut up just then because it was just during that month thatthe Master was bringing off his big scheme. He was getting his billthrough Parliament, and organizing the new medical police. But of courseyou haven't heard of all that; in fact, you weren't meant to."
"Heard of all what?" asked the impatient inquirer.
"There's a new law now, and the asylum powers are greatly extended. Evenif you did escape now, any policeman would take you up in the next townif you couldn't show a certificate of sanity from us."
"Well," continued Dr. Hutton, "the Master described before both Housesof Parliament the real scientific objection to all existing legislationabout lunacy. As he very truly said, the mistake was in supposinginsanity to be merely an exception or an extreme. Insanity, likeforgetfulness, is simply a quality which enters more or less into allhuman beings; and for practical purposes it is more necessary to knowwhose mind is really trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint.We have therefore reversed the existing method, and people now have toprove that they are sane. In the first village you entered, the villageconstable would notice that you were not wearing on the left lapel ofyour coat the small pewter S which is now necessary to any one who walksabout beyond asylum bounds or outside asylum hours."
"You mean to say," said Turnbull, "that this was what the Master of theasylum urged before the House of Commons?"
Dr. Hutton nodded with gravity.
"And you mean to say," cried Turnbull, with a vibrant snort, "that thatproposal was passed in an assembly that calls itself democratic?"
The doctor showed his whole row of teeth in a smile. "Oh, the assemblycalls itself Socialist now," he said, "But we explained to them thatthis was a question for men of science."
Turnbull gave one stamp upon the gravel, then pulled himself together,and resumed: "But why should your infernal head medicine-man lock us upin separate cells while he was turning England into a madhouse? I'm notthe Prime Minister; we're not the House of Lords."
"He wasn't afraid of the Prime Minister," replied Dr. Hutton; "he isn'tafraid of the House of Lords. But----"
"Well?" inquired Turnbull, stamping again.
"He is afraid of you," said Hutton, simply. "Why, didn't you know?"
MacIan, who had not spoken yet, made one stride forward and stood withshaking limbs and shining eyes.
"He was afraid!" began Evan, thickly. "You mean to say that we----"
"I mean to say the plain truth now that the danger is over," saidHutton, calmly; "most certainly you two were the only people he everwas afraid of." Then he added in a low but not inaudible voice: "Exceptone--whom he feared worse, and has buried deeper."
"Come away," cried MacIan, "this has to be thought about."
Turnbull followed him in silence as he strode away, but just before hevanished, turned and spoke again to the doctors.
"But what has got hold of people?" he asked, abruptly. "Why should allEngland have gone dotty on the mere subject of dottiness?"
Dr. Hutton smiled his open smile once more and bowed slightly. "As tothat also," he replied, "I don't want to make you vain."
Turnbull swung round without a word, and he and his companion were lostin the lustrous leafage of the garden. They noticed nothing specialabout the scene, except that the garden seemed more exquisite than everin the deepening sunset, and that there seemed to be many more people,whether patients or attendants, walking about in it.
From behind the two black-coated doctors as they stood on the lawnanother figure somewhat similarly dressed strode hurriedly past them,having also grizzled hair and an open flapping frock-coat. Both hisdecisive step and dapper black array marked him out as another medicalman, or at least a man in authority, and as he passed Turnbull thelatter was aroused by a strong impression of having seen the mansomewhere before. It was no one that he knew well, yet he was certainthat it was someone at whom he had at sometime or other looked steadily.It was neither the face of a friend nor of an enemy; it aroused neitherirritation nor tenderness, yet it was a face which had for some reasonbeen of great importance in his life. Turning and returning, and makingdetours about the garden, he managed to study the man's face again andagain--a moustached, somewhat military face with a monocle, the sort offace that is aristocratic without being distinguished. Turnbull couldnot remember any particular doctors in his decidedly healthy existence.Was the man a long-lost uncle, or was he only somebody who had satopposite him regularly in a railway train? At that moment the manknocked down his own eye-glass with a gesture of annoyance; Turnbullremembered the gesture, and the truth sprang up solid in front of him.The man with the moustaches was Cumberland Vane, the London policemagistrat
e before whom he and MacIan had once stood on their trial. Themagistrate must have been transferred to some other official duties--tosomething connected with the inspection of asylums.
Turnbull's heart gave a leap of excitement which was half hope. As amagistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow,but certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense so long asit was put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least anauthority of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with thewagging beard or the fiend with the forked chin.
He went straight up to the magistrate, and said: "Good evening, Mr.Vane; I doubt if you remember me."
Cumberland Vane screwed the eye-glass into his scowling face for aninstant, and then said curtly but not uncivilly: "Yes, I remember you,sir; assault or battery, wasn't it?--a fellow broke your window. A tallfellow--McSomething--case made rather a noise afterwards."
"MacIan is the name, sir," said Turnbull, respectfully; "I have him herewith me."
"Eh!" said Vane very sharply. "Confound him! Has he got anything to dowith this game?"
"Mr. Vane," said Turnbull, pacifically, "I will not pretend that eitherhe or I acted quite decorously on that occasion. You were very lenientwith us, and did not treat us as criminals when you very well might.So I am sure you will give us your testimony that, even if we werecriminals, we are not lunatics in any legal or medical sense whatever. Iam sure you will use your influence for us."
"My influence!" repeated the magistrate, with a slight start. "I don'tquite understand you."
"I don't know in what capacity you are here," continued Turnbull,gravely, "but a legal authority of your distinction must certainly behere in an important one. Whether you are visiting and inspecting theplace, or attached to it as some kind of permanent legal adviser, youropinion must still----"
Cumberland Vane exploded with a detonation of oaths; his face wastransfigured with fury and contempt, and yet in some odd way he did notseem specially angry with Turnbull.
"But Lord bless us and save us!" he gasped, at length; "I'm not hereas an official at all. I'm here as a patient. The cursed pack ofrat-catching chemists all say that I've lost my wits."
"You!" cried Turnbull with terrible emphasis. "You! Lost your wits!"
In the rush of his real astonishment at this towering unreality Turnbullalmost added: "Why, you haven't got any to lose." But he fortunatelyremembered the remains of his desperate diplomacy.
"This can't go on," he said, positively. "Men like MacIan and I maysuffer unjustly all our lives, but a man like you must have influence."
"There is only one man who has any influence in England now," said Vane,and his high voice fell to a sudden and convincing quietude.
"Whom do you mean?" asked Turnbull.
"I mean that cursed fellow with the long split chin," said the other.
"Is it really true," asked Turnbull, "that he has been allowed to buy upand control such a lot? What put the country into such a state?"
Mr. Cumberland Vane laughed outright. "What put the country into such astate?" he asked. "Why, you did. When you were fool enough to agree tofight MacIan, after all, everybody was ready to believe that the Bank ofEngland might paint itself pink with white spots."
"I don't understand," answered Turnbull. "Why should you be surprised atmy fighting? I hope I have always fought."
"Well," said Cumberland Vane, airily, "you didn't believe in religion,you see--so we thought you were safe at any rate. You went further inyour language than most of us wanted to go; no good in just hurtingone's mother's feelings, I think. But of course we all knew you wereright, and, really, we relied on you."
"Did you?" said the editor of _The Atheist_ with a bursting heart. "I amsorry you did not tell me so at the time."
He walked away very rapidly and flung himself on a garden seat, and forsome six minutes his own wrongs hid from him the huge and hilarious factthat Cumberland Vane had been locked up as a lunatic.
The garden of the madhouse was so perfectly planned, and answered soexquisitely to every hour of daylight, that one could almost fancy thatthe sunlight was caught there tangled in its tinted trees, as the wisemen of Gotham tried to chain the spring to a bush. Or it seemed as ifthis ironic paradise still kept its unique dawn or its special sunsetwhile the rest of the earthly globe rolled through its ordinary hours.There was one evening, or late afternoon, in particular, which EvanMacIan will remember in the last moments of death. It was what artistscall a daffodil sky, but it is coarsened even by reference to adaffodil. It was of that innocent lonely yellow which has never heard oforange, though it might turn quite unconsciously into green. Against itthe tops, one might say the turrets, of the clipt and ordered treeswere outlined in that shade of veiled violet which tints the tops oflavender. A white early moon was hardly traceable upon that delicateyellow. MacIan, I say, will remember this tender and transparentevening, partly because of its virgin gold and silver, and partlybecause he passed beneath it through the most horrible instant of hislife.
Turnbull was sitting on his seat on the lawn, and the golden eveningimpressed even his positive nature, as indeed it might have impressedthe oxen in a field. He was shocked out of his idle mood of awe byseeing MacIan break from behind the bushes and run across the lawn withan action he had never seen in the man before, with all his experienceof the eccentric humours of this Celt. MacIan fell on the bench,shaking it so that it rattled, and gripped it with his knees like one indreadful pain of body. That particular run and tumble is typical only ofa man who has been hit by some sudden and incurable evil, who is bittenby a viper or condemned to be hanged. Turnbull looked up in the whiteface of his friend and enemy, and almost turned cold at what he sawthere. He had seen the blue but gloomy eyes of the western Highlandertroubled by as many tempests as his own west Highland seas, but therehad always been a fixed star of faith behind the storms. Now the starhad gone out, and there was only misery.
Yet MacIan had the strength to answer the question where Turnbull, takenby surprise, had not the strength to ask it.
"They are right, they are right!" he cried. "O my God! they are right,Turnbull. I ought to be here!"
He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the heart tochoose or check his speech. "I suppose I ought to have guessed longago--all my big dreams and schemes--and everyone being against us--but Iwas stuck up, you know."
"Do tell me about it, really," cried the atheist, and, faced with thefurnace of the other's pain, he did not notice that he spoke with theaffection of a father.
"I am mad, Turnbull," said Evan, with a dead clearness of speech, andleant back against the garden seat.
"Nonsense," said the other, clutching at the obvious cue of benevolentbrutality, "this is one of your silly moods."
MacIan shook his head. "I know enough about myself," he said, "to allowfor any mood, though it opened heaven or hell. But to see things--to seethem walking solid in the sun--things that can't be there--real mysticsnever do that, Turnbull."
"What things?" asked the other, incredulously.
MacIan lowered his voice. "I saw _her_," he said, "three minutesago--walking here in this hell yard."
Between trying to look scornful and really looking startled, Turnbull'sface was confused enough to emit no speech, and Evan went on inmonotonous sincerity:
"I saw her walk behind those blessed trees against that holy sky of goldas plain as I can see her whenever I shut my eyes. I did shut them,and opened them again, and she was still there--that is, of course, shewasn't---- She still had a little fur round her neck, but her dress wasa shade brighter than when I really saw her."
"My dear fellow," cried Turnbull, rallying a hearty laugh, "the fancieshave really got hold of you. You mistook some other poor girl here forher."
"Mistook some other----" said MacIan, and words failed him altogether.
They sat for some moments in the mellow silence of the evening garden,a silence that was stifling for the sceptic, but utterly empty and final
for the man of faith. At last he broke out again with the words: "Well,anyhow, if I'm mad, I'm glad I'm mad on that."
Turnbull murmured some clumsy deprecation, and sat stolidly smoking tocollect his thoughts; the next instant he had all his nerves engaged inthe mere effort to sit still.
Across the clear space of cold silver and a pale lemon sky which wasleft by the gap in the ilex-trees there passed a slim, dark figure, aprofile and the poise of a dark head like a bird's, which really pinnedhim to his seat with the point of coincidence. With an effort he gotto his feet, and said with a voice of affected insouciance: "By George!MacIan, she is uncommonly like----"
"What!" cried MacIan, with a leap of eagerness that was heart-breaking,"do you see her, too?" And the blaze came back into the centre of hiseyes.
Turnbull's tawny eyebrows were pulled together with a peculiar frown ofcuriosity, and all at once he walked quickly across the lawn. MacIan satrigid, but peered after him with open and parched lips. He saw the sightwhich either proved him sane or proved the whole universe half-witted;he saw the man of flesh approach that beautiful phantom, saw theirgestures of recognition, and saw them against the sunset joining hands.
He could stand it no longer, but ran across to the path, turned thecorner and saw standing quite palpable in the evening sunlight, talkingwith a casual grace to Turnbull, the face and figure which had filledhis midnights with frightfully vivid or desperately half-forgottenfeatures. She advanced quite pleasantly and coolly, and put out herhand. The moment that he touched it he knew that he was sane even if thesolar system was crazy.
She was entirely elegant and unembarrassed. That is the awful thingabout women--they refuse to be emotional at emotional moments, upon somesuch ludicrous pretext as there being someone else there. But MacIan wasin a condition of criticism much less than the average masculine one,being in fact merely overturned by the rushing riddle of the events.
Evan does not know to this day what particular question he asked, buthe vividly remembers that she answered, and every line or fluctuation ofher face as she said it.
"Oh, don't you know?" she said, smiling, and suddenly lifting her levelbrown eyebrows. "Haven't you heard the news? I'm a lunatic."
Then she added after a short pause, and with a sort of pride: "I've gota certificate."
Her manner, by the matchless social stoicism of her sex, was entirelysuited to a drawing-room, but Evan's reply fell somewhat far short ofsuch a standard, as he only said: "What the devil in hell does all thisnonsense mean?"
"Really," said the young lady, and laughed.
"I beg your pardon," said the unhappy young man, rather wildly, "butwhat I mean is, why are you here in an asylum?"
The young woman broke again into one of the maddening and mysteriouslaughs of femininity. Then she composed her features, and replied withequal dignity: "Well, if it comes to that, why are you?"
The fact that Turnbull had strolled away and was investigatingrhododendrons may have been due to Evan's successful prayers to theother world, or possibly to his own pretty successful experience of thisone. But though they two were as isolated as a new Adam and Eve in apretty ornamental Eden, the lady did not relax by an inch the rigour ofher badinage.
"I am locked up in the madhouse," said Evan, with a sort of stiff pride,"because I tried to keep my promise to you."
"Quite so," answered the inexplicable lady, nodding with a perfectlyblazing smile, "and I am locked up because it was to me you promised."
"It is outrageous!" cried Evan; "it is impossible!"
"Oh, you can see my certificate if you like," she replied with somehauteur.
MacIan stared at her and then at his boots, and then at the sky and thenat her again. He was quite sure now that he himself was not mad, and thefact rather added to his perplexity.
Then he drew nearer to her, and said in a dry and dreadful voice: "Oh,don't condescend to play the fool with such a fool as me. Are you reallylocked up here as a patient--because you helped us to escape?"
"Yes," she said, still smiling, but her steady voice had a shake in it.
Evan flung his big elbow across his forehead and burst into tears.
The pure lemon of the sky faded into purer white as the great sunsetsilently collapsed. The birds settled back into the trees; the moonbegan to glow with its own light. Mr. James Turnbull continued hisbotanical researches into the structure of the rhododendron. But thelady did not move an inch until Evan had flung up his face again; andwhen he did he saw by the last gleam of sunlight that it was not onlyhis face that was wet.
Mr. James Turnbull had all his life professed a profound interest inphysical science, and the phenomena of a good garden were really apleasure to him; but after three-quarters of an hour or so even theapostle of science began to find rhododendrus a bore, and was somewhatrelieved when an unexpected development of events obliged himto transfer his researches to the equally interesting subject ofhollyhocks, which grew some fifty feet farther along the path. Theostensible cause of his removal was the unexpected reappearance of histwo other acquaintances walking and talking laboriously along theway, with the black head bent close to the brown one. Even hollyhocksdetained Turnbull but a short time. Having rapidly absorbed all theimportant principles affecting the growth of those vegetables, he jumpedover a flower-bed and walked back into the building. The other two cameup along the slow course of the path talking and talking. No one butGod knows what they said (for they certainly have forgotten), and if Iremembered it I would not repeat it. When they parted at the head of thewalk she put out her hand again in the same well-bred way, although ittrembled; he seemed to restrain a gesture as he let it fall.
"If it is really always to be like this," he said, thickly, "it wouldnot matter if we were here for ever."
"You tried to kill yourself four times for me," she said, unsteadily,"and I have been chained up as a madwoman for you. I really think thatafter that----"
"Yes, I know," said Evan in a low voice, looking down. "After that webelong to each other. We are sort of sold to each other--until the starsfall." Then he looked up suddenly, and said: "By the way, what is yourname?"
"My name is Beatrice Drake," she replied with complete gravity. "You cansee it on my certificate of lunacy."
The Ball and the Cross Page 18