Part 3 (2/2)

”Get me the machine and the insulating sheet,” said Lefevre.

While his a.s.sistant 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-gla.s.s 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 a.s.sistant.

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 a.s.sistant,--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 s.h.i.+ver ran through the frame of both Lefevre and his companion, a convulsive shudder pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.sure 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sage 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 rus.h.i.+ng, like the maniac of the Gospel, through dry places, seeking rest and finding none. His hair, which should have been black, looked l.u.s.treless 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 compa.s.sion 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 appet.i.te 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.

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