The Second Class Passenger Part 41

"It took you longer than it usually does," he said; "to send me on, I mean. I expect I wasn't as good a subject as usual, too. I know I was full of a sort of gladness and expectation, for I didn't doubt that you could do it. I had a feeling that I was going to see--really to see, with mortal eyes--Him, my Redeemer, the Son of G.o.d! I wasn't afraid--only joyful with a great solemnity. I carried it with me, that joy, into the fog and darkness; it was all that I knew when the utter night surged up and gulfed me, and even life was forgotten. I was to see Him, like the pure in heart who are to see G.o.d. I had had that wonder in my mind since Sunday evening; the curate preached on it--and I--I thought my heart was pure."

His fearful eyes fluttered to Carrick's face and sank.

"The light came as it came before," he went on, quickly and miserably. "First a sense of something that was not mere darkness, infinitely distant, but swooping down upon me at an unimaginable speed, broadening more quickly than the sense could follow--and then it was daylight all about me, and I was in the world, seeing, hearing, and--yes, and speaking, speaking, Carrick. Oh, my G.o.d!"

He s.h.i.+vered and put a hand out to the arm of the big chair. Carrick said nothing.

"It's so clear," said Mr. Newman. "If it weren't so clear, I might persuade myself that it was an illusion, a vision--but it's not. It happened. The first thing I know was that it was very hot. A sun stood in the sky; its rays beat on me, and they were strong. I was in a crowd of people, and they--we, that is--we all stood facing a building, a white building with a great door. There were many of us; I was thrust between two big hairy men, and there was a great noise.

Everybody was shouting. I was shouting too. I had both my arms raised above my head, with my fists clenched--like that----"

Mr. Newman raised his shut hands as high as he could; his tragic face compelled Carrick's eyes.

"But my arms were bare and very brown, I noticed. I was shouting vehemently, frantically, in some strange tongue. It was a language I do not know; but I knew what I was shouting, and I know still."

He stopped. Carrick waited.

"What was it?" he asked at last.

For answer Mr. Newman raised his arms again, the hands clenched, in a sudden and savage gesture.

"I was shouting like this," he said, and raised a voice that Carrick did not recognize. "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

He dropped his arms and stood staring at Carrick; then covered his face with his hands.

Carrick stood aghast and shaken. At last he went to his friend and took his arm.

XIII

THE STRANGE PATIENT

There were only two arrivals by the train from London when it stopped at the little flower-banked station of Barthiam; and Mary, who was waiting for it, had no difficulty in deciding which of them was Professor Fish. That great man never failed to look the part. His tall, lean figure, stooping at the shoulders, his big, smooth-shaven face, mildly abstracted behind his gla.s.ses, but retaining always something of a keen and formidable character, his soft hat and great flapping ulster, made up a noticeable personality anywhere. He seemed alone to crowd the little platform; the small man who accompanied him was lost in his shadow.

"Professor Fish?" accosted Mary primly, at his elbow.

He turned upon her with a movement like a swoop.

"I am Mary Pond," she explained. "My father was called away to a case, so he sent me to meet you and bring you up to the house. I have a fly waiting."

"Ah!" The Professor nodded and was bland. "Very good of you to take the trouble, Miss Pond. I am much obliged." He stepped aside to let his companion be seen. "This," he explained, "is your--er--guest."

Mary put out her hand, but the little man, who had been standing behind the Professor, made no motion to take it. He was staring at the planks of the platform; he lifted his eyes for an instant to glance at her, and dropped them again at once. Mary saw a listless, empty face, pale eyes, and pale hair, a mere effect of vacuity and weakness. The man drooped where he stood as though he were no more than half alive; his clothes were grotesquely ill-fitting. A little puzzled, she looked up to the Professor, and saw that he was watching her.

"How do you do?" she asked gently of the little man.

The Professor answered for him. "He does very well, Miss Pond," he said robustly. "Much better than he thinks. Between ourselves,"

dropping his voice and nodding at her with intention, "a most remarkable case. Very remarkable indeed. And now, if I can find a porter, we might as well be moving."

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before leaving them; then he set off down the platform. He walked with long strides in great spasms of energy, as he did everything. Mary turned from looking after him to the little creature beside her with a sense of absurd contrast. As she did so she saw that he too was looking after the Professor, and his empty face had suddenly become intent; it was hardened and vicious, with the parted lips and narrow eyes of hate. The man had discovered some spring of life within his listless body. It lasted only while one might draw a full breath; then he saw her scrutiny, and sank again to his still dreariness. It was a startling thing to see that flabby little insignificance strengthen to such a force of feeling, and Mary was conscious of a sort of alarm. But before she could frame a thing to say the Professor was back again, and the atmosphere of his vigour had enveloped them.

Professor Fish sat next to her in the cab, and the new patient, who was to be an inmate of her house for some time to come, leaned against the cus.h.i.+ons opposite, with eyes half closed and his coa.r.s.e hands folded in his lap. The Professor talked without ceasing, gazing through the open window at the fat lands of Kent unfolded beside the road and torpid under the July sun; but Mary found more of interest in the still face before her, cryptic and mysterious in its utter vacancy. So little it expressed besides weakness that Mary wondered what illness could thus have cut the man off from the world. She was used to the waste products of life; one "resident patient" succeeded another at her father's house, and to each she was a deft nurse and a supple companion. They had in common, she found, a certain paltriness; most of them had been overtaxed by easy burdens; but this man's aspect conveyed suggestions of a long struggle with a burden beyond all strength. The meanness of him, all his appearance of having begun in the gutter and failed there, touched her not at all; Mary had had too much to do with human flesh in the raw to be greatly concerned about such matters as that.

Dr. Pond was at home to meet them when the cab drew up at the door, an elderly, good-natured man, white-haired and sprucely white- bearded. He greeted Professor Fish with some deference, and helped the new patient carefully forth from the cab. It was Mary's duty to see the one trunk of new s.h.i.+ning tin carried in and placed in the room that was prepared for the house's new inmate. This done, she went to the others in the little drawing-room. Her father and Professor Fish were seated in the window, busy with talk; the new patient had an upright chair against the wall, and sat in it with the same la.s.situde and downcast gaze which had already drawn Mary's wondering compa.s.sion. The Professor rose at her entry.

"Ah! Miss Pond," he said in his cheerful, booming voice, "I was just giving your father a few particulars about our young friend."

"I should like to hear them," she answered, taking the chair he reached for her. "You see, I shall have a good deal to do with him."

Old Dr. Pond nodded. "Mary," he said, "is my right hand, Professor."

"Of course," agreed the Professor. "I can see that."

He was seated again, and he leaned across to Mary confidentially, with an explanatory forefinger hovering.

"As I told your father, Miss Pond, it isn't necessary to go far back in the case," he said. "As a matter of fact, I took this case up-- experimentally. The subject was a good one for a--well, call it a theory of mine, a new idea in pathology. You see? I wanted to try it on the dog before publis.h.i.+ng it, and our young friend there"--he nodded at the back of the room and sank his voice--"he was the dog.

You understand?"

Mary nodded, and the Professor smiled.

"Well," he said, "I have succeeded. The patient is convalescent, but--you see how he is. He has very little vital force, and also, occasionally, delusions. Merely ephemeral, you know, but delusions.

He wants quiet chiefly, and very little else--just that atmosphere of repose and--er--peace which you can create for him, Miss Pond."

"These delusions," put in Dr. Pond, "are they of any special character!"

"H'm!" The Professor stroked his chin. "No," he said. "Curious, you know, but not symptomatic." His hard eye scanned the old doctor purposely. "Sometimes," he said slowly, "he thinks he has been dead, and that I brought him back to life."

"And he hates you for it," suggested Mary. The Professor stared at her in open astonishment.

"How on earth did you know that?" he cried.

"I saw him looking after you in the station," Mary explained. "He just--glared."

"I see." Professor Fish was always rather extravagant in manner and speech; his relief now seemed a little exaggerated. He drew a deep breath and glanced past Mary to the patient on his chair at the far end of the room. "Yes," he said, "at such times he is distinctly resentful. I don't wonder you noticed it."

"Your letter didn't mention his name," said Mary.

"I should call him Smith," answered the Professor.

"It's a good name. And that, I think, is all there is to tell. Oh, by the way, though he has no suicidal tendency, of course, or I shouldn't put him here; but all the same----"

Mary nodded. "Quite so," she said. "No razor."

"Exactly," said the Professor. "And no money. Give him the things he needs, and let me have the bill."

He rose and reached for his hat.

"But you will stay and have something to eat," protested old Dr.