XXIII
Brandonwas still brooding over a tragedy he could not avert when a nurse came into the room. She was a practical, vigorous creature, plain and clean of mind, and after a single shrewd glance at the patient she proceeded to take his temperature with a clinical thermometer.
“Just as I thought.” An ominous head was shaken. “That man always has a bad effect upon you. I shall have to forbid him seeing you in the future.”
“What nonsense!” said Brandon.
“This speaks for itself.” The nurse held up the thermometer. “He always puts you up to a hundred. You are nearly a hundred and one now, and you’ll have to go to bed and stay there until you are down a bit.”
It was vain for Brandon to desist. He was at the mercy of Olympians who did not hesitate to misuse their powers. He was whisked off to bed like a naughty child, and the privilege of a further talk with John Smith was withdrawn indefinitely. He protested strongly to the nurse and bitterly to his wife, but he was told that it would not be safe to see the youngman again until he could do so without playing tricks with his temperature.
Brandon fumed in durance for the rest of the day. The patience which had borne him through all his trials threatened to desert him now. He was tormented with the thought of his own helplessness. The recent visit had moved Brandon to the very depths of his being, and the longing to help John Smith escape the coil that fate was weaving now burnt in his veins a living fire. As he lay helpless and overwrought, on the verge of fever, the stupidities of the little world around him were magnified into a crime for which humanity itself would have to pay.
The next morning, Wednesday, at eleven o’clock came Dr. Joliffe. The higher medical science had begun to despair of ever restoring to Brandon the use of his limbs, and he was now in the sole care of his local attendant, who came to see him every other day.
Dr. Joliffe found the patient still keeping his bed by the orders of the nurse. In the course of an uncomfortable night he had slept little, and his temperature was still a matter for concern. Moreover, not the nurse alone, but Mrs. Brandon also, had already delivered themselves vehemently on the subject of John Smith.
For one reason or another Dr. Joliffe would havebeen very willing just now to consign John Smith to limbo. Nor was this desire made less when the patient, after being duly examined, reported upon, and admonished, requested the nurse to withdraw from the room in order that he might talk with the doctor privately.
Joliffe knew well enough what was coming. And he would have done much to avoid further contact with a most unhappy subject, from which consequences were flowing of an ever-increasing embarrassment. But there was no means of escape. For Brandon, the subject of John Smith had become almost an obsession; a fact which the doctor had begun to realize to his cost.
“What steps have been taken?” Brandon began as soon as they were free of the nurse’s presence.
“Steps?” Joliffe fenced a little.
“In regard to John Smith.” There was a sudden excitement in the bright eyes. “He’s in my mind night and day. I can’t bear the thought that he should be destroyed.”
“I’m sorry to say that Birdwood Thompson can’t come here.” The professional voice was dulcet and disarming. “He’s in a very bad state of health and giving up practice. His second boy went down on theVictorious, and his eldest was killed the other day inFrance, so I suppose that may have something to do with it.”
“Well, what is being done?”
“As you ask the question,” was the cautious reply, “we have agreed upon Murfin. Personally, I don’t think he’s as good as Moriarty or the other man, but we wrote to him in order to save trouble.”
“In order to save trouble!” Brandon gasped. “Save trouble in a matter of this kind?”
“Certainly. And we are all of us very anxious that you should not worry over it any more.”
“But—don’t you see—what a terrible thing it is?”
“Not exactly terrible.” Dr. Joliffe spoke gravely but cheerfully. “Quite an everyday occurrence, you know, if one looks at it in the right way.”
“An everyday occurrence—if—one—looks—at—it—in—the right way!”
“Undoubtedly. Cases of this kind are always arising. Whatever view one may take of the man, he is certainly on the border line; therefore, whether he’s certified or not is merely a question of expediency. And what I have to point out to you is that in the last resort, as the world is just now, with all these public safeguards in operation the final decision will be taken by the authorities.”
“How cruel!” said Brandon, with growing excitement.
“Not necessarily cruel,” said Dr. Joliffe in a mellifluous tone.
“To think of our localShallowssitting in judgment on the first spirit of the age!”
“The irony of circumstances.”
“No.” Brandon’s eyes were hectic. “It takes more than two thousand years to change the world. An old story is being retold with a few modern improvements. I see that. But, Joliffe, I believe you to be a just man, and I count on your help. For the love we both bear the Republic, I want you to put up a fight for John Smith.”
“There, my dear fellow, calm yourself,” said the doctor soothingly. “I will undertake to see that no injustice is done in the matter.”
“In other words, that he is not molested.”
“That is beyond my power, because, as I say, the Bench will move if we don’t.”
“Then leave it to them to take the first step. And in the meantime we’ll get legal advice.”
“Murfin comes down on Friday.”
“Easy to stop him.”
“The vicar won’t consent to that, I’m afraid.”
“No, I suppose not. But if you love this countryyou will do your best to restrain a profoundly stupid man.”
Plain, common-sensible Dr. Joliffe thought the line of argument a little high-flown, and said so in a tone of scrupulous kindness.
“I don’t overstate,” said Brandon. “Let me explain my meaning. The Republic is rising to a height of moral grandeur that few would have dared to prophesy for her. But as always, there is a flaw in her armor. The enemies of the light are seeking it, and if they should find it there is absolutely nothing between this world and barbarism.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Dr. Joliffe shook a grave head.
“I can tell you that she is about to treat her most august citizen as Rome, her great prototype, treated Another.”
Dr. Joliffe continued to shake his head. Not only was he puzzled, he was rather distressed by such an extravagant statement. “How I wish I could get your mind off this subject!” he said.
“You must not hope to do that,” said Brandon. “It is decreed that I should lie supine, a helpless log, while night and day my brain is turned into a weaver’s shuttle. I can do nothing, yet I somehow feel that the high gods have called me to do everything. This manhas no other friend, and it is for that reason, Joliffe, that I ask you to stand my proxy in his defense.”
“But I assure you no defense is possible,” said Joliffe, with a feeling of growing distress.
“Let us brief counsel.”
“No purpose will be served. As you know, the vicar is a most stubborn man. And if he doesn’t succeed one way he will another. If we doctors are obdurate he will turn to the Bench, and if the Bench won’t oblige he’ll have recourse to the military.”
“It hardly seems credible.”
“I agree. But that’s the man. And the worst of it is that from his own point of view in a time like the present he may be perfectly right.”
“I refuse to believe that he can be right at any time.”
“But surely, a man who sides openly with the enemy ought not to be at large.”
“Has he gone beyond what Jesus would have done in such circumstances?”
“Hardly a practical analogy, I’m afraid. In any case, John Smith is not Jesus, even if his half-witted old mother may think so. The law is bound to regard him as a crack-brained rustic, and in my humble opinion anyone who tries to persuade it that the poor fellow is anything else, will be very unwise.”
“In other words you decline your help?”
“Only because,” said Dr. Joliffe, “I now see the hopelessness of the position. Knowing John Smith as I do, I consider that Mr. Perry-Hennington has made a mountain out of a molehill. Of course he’s a fanatic on the subject, but the poor, feckless chap is amenable to the law as it exists at present, and he has no means of escape. It will be far wiser, believe me, to accept the inevitable. All that his friends can hope to do is to make things as comfortable for him as possible.”
“That shall be done at any rate,” said Brandon. “It is Perry-Hennington’s intention, I presume, to have him sent to the county asylum.”
“It is the only place for him, I’m afraid. But, of course, even there he will be extremely well treated.”
“I don’t question that, but assuming it to be his destination, I should like him to live in comfort and dignity. Wouldn’t it be possible for him to go to some such place as Wellwood Sanatorium?”
“Well, of course,” said Dr. Joliffe, “that is almost a question of ways and means. Wellwood is an ideal place for the poor fellow. But of course it is out of the question.”
“Why?”
“The expense.”
“No matter what it may be,” said Brandon, “I shall be only too happy to bear it.”
“It will not be less than five hundred a year.”
“If it were twice as much I should count it a high privilege to be allowed to do that for him.”
Dr. Joliffe shook the head of a prudent man over this piece of quixotism. “Very generous of you,” he said, “but they look after their patients so extraordinarily well at Broad Hill, that I am sure this expense is quite unnecessary.”
Brandon, however, stuck to his plan.
He had now made up his mind that if the worst happened, Wellwood should be the home of John Smith.
“Very well.” Dr. Joliffe saw that a purposeless opposition could do no good. “If the necessity arises it shall be arranged for him to go there. And now I want you to forget all about this miserable matter. Dismiss it entirely from your thoughts.”
“Impossible,” said Brandon. “We are deliberately closing the Door.”
“Closing the door?”
“For the human race.”
The doctor looked sadly, uncomprehendingly at his patient. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“Of course you don’t, my dear friend. It is not tobe expected that you should. And at present I can’t enlighten you.”
Dr. Joliffe shook a rather ominous head. Brandon was a mass of morbid fancies and illusions; and the doctor was very far indeed from being satisfied with the state in which he found him. He felt it to be his duty to give a little serious admonition, and then he withdrew from the room. The nurse was waiting in the dressing room adjoining, and to her he confided certain misgivings. The patient must stay in bed, he must not read, he must avoid all things likely to cause worry or excitement. And beyond everything else his mind must be kept from the subject of John Smith.