I declare I can smell the odious madhouse. Go straight to the window, Matilda; I want to bury my nose among the flowers."
Sir John, upon this, spoke for the first time. His language consisted entirely of beginnings of sentences, mutely completed by a smile. "Upon my word, you know. Eh, Doctor Wybrow? A man of your experience. Horrors in madhouses. A lady in delicate health. No, really. Upon my honor, now, I cannot. Something funny, oh yes. But such a subject, oh no."
He rose to leave us. Dr. Wybrow gently stopped him. "I had a motive, Sir John," he said, "but I won't trouble you with needless explanations. There is a person, unknown to me, whom I want to discover. You are a great deal in society when you are in London. May I ask if you have ever met with a gentleman named Winterfield?"
I have always considered the power of self-control as one of the strongest points in my character. For the future I shall be more humble. When I heard that name, my surprise so completely mastered me that I sat self-betrayed to Dr. Wybrow as the man who could answer his question.
In the meanwhile, Sir John took his time to consider, and discovered that he had never heard of a person named Winterfield. Having acknowledged his ignorance, in his own eloquent language, he drifted away to the window-box in the next room, and gravely contemplated Mrs. Eyrecourt, with her nose buried in flowers.
The doctor turned to me. "Am I wrong, Father Benwell, in supposing that I had better have addressed myself to you?"
I admitted that I knew a gentleman named Winterfield.
Dr. Wybrow got up directly. "Have you a few minutes to spare?" he asked. It is needless to say that I was at the doctor's disposal. "My house is close by, and my carriage is at the door," he resumed. "When you feel inclined to say good-by to our friend Mrs. Eyrecourt, I have something to say to you which I think you ought to know."
We took our departure at once. Mrs. Eyrecourt (leaving some of the color of her nose among the flowers) patted me encouragingly with her fan, and told the doctor that he was forgiven, on the understanding that he would "never do it again." In five minutes more we were in Dr. Wybrow's study.
My watch tells me that I cannot hope to finish this letter by post time. Accept what I have written thus far--and be assured that the conclusion of my report shall follow a day later.
II.
The doctor began cautiously. "Winterfield is not a very common name," he said. "But it may not be amiss, Father Benwell, to discover, if we can, whether your Winterfield is the man of whom I am in search. Do you only know him by name? or are you a friend of his?"
I answered, of course, that I was a friend.
Dr. Wybrow went on. "Will you pardon me if I venture on an indiscreet question? When you are acquainted with the circumstances, I am sure you will understand and excuse me. Are you aware of any--what shall I call it?--any romantic incident in Mr. Winterfield's past life?"
This time--feeling myself, in all probability, on the brink of discovery--I was careful to preserve my composure. I said, quietly: "Some such incident as you describe has occurred in Mr. Winterfield's past life." There I stopped discreetly, and looked as if I knew all about it.
The doctor showed no curiosity to hear more. "My object," he went on, "was merely to be reasonably sure that I was speaking to the right person, in speaking to you. I may now tell you that I have no personal interest in trying to discover Mr. Winterfield; I only act as the representative of an old friend of mine. He is the proprietor of a private asylum at Sandsworth--a man whose integrity is beyond dispute, or he would not be my friend. You understand my motive in saying this?"
Proprietors of private asylums are, in these days, the objects of very general distrust in England. I understood the doctor's motive perfectly.
He proceeded. "Yesterday evening, my friend called upon me, and said that he had a remarkable case in his house, which he believed would interest me. The person to whom he alluded was a French boy, whose mental powers had been imperfectly developed from his childhood. The mischief had been aggravated, when he was about thirteen years old, by a serious fright. When he was placed in my asylum, he was not idiotic, and not dangerously mad--it was a case (not to use technical language) of deficient intelligence, tending sometimes toward acts of unreasoning mischief and petty theft, but never approaching to acts of downright violence. My friend was especially interested in the lad--won his confidence and affection by acts of kindness--and so improved his bodily health as to justify some hope of also improving the state of his mind, when a misfortune occurred which has altered the whole prospect. The poor creature has fallen ill of a fever, and the fever has developed to typhus. So far, there has been little to interest you--I am coming to a remarkable event at last. At the stage of the fever when delirium usually occurs in patients of sound mind, this crazy French boy has become perfectly sane and reasonable!"
I looked at him, when he made this amazing assertion, with a momentary doubt of his being in earnest. Doctor Wybrow understood me.
"Just what I thought, too, when I first heard it!" he said. "My friend was neither offended nor surprised. After inviting me to go to his house, and judge for myself, he referred me to a similar case, publicly cited in the 'Cornhill Magazine,' for the month of April, 1879, in an article entitled 'Bodily Illness as a Mental Stimulant.' The article is published anonymously; but the character of the periodical in which it appears is a sufficient guarantee of the trustworthiness of the statement. I was so far influenced by the testimony thus cited, that I drove to Sandsworth and examined the case myself."
"Did the examination satisfy you?"
"Thoroughly. When I saw him last night, the poor boy was as sane as I am. There is, however, a complication in this instance, which is not mentioned in the case related in print. The boy appears to have entirely forgotten every event in his past life, reckoning from the time when the bodily illness brought with it the strange mental recovery which I have mentioned to you."
This was a disappointment. I had begun to hope for some coming result, obtained by the lad's confession.
"Is it quite correct to call him sane, when his memory is gone?" I ventured to ask.
"In this case there is no necessity to enter into the question," the doctor answered. "The boy's lapse of memory refers, as I told you, to his past life--that is to say, his life when his intellect was deranged. During the extraordinary interval of sanity that has now declared itself, he is putting his mental powers to their first free use; and none of them fail him, so far as I can see. His new memory (if I may call it so) preserves the knowledge of what has happened since his illness. You may imagine how this problem in brain disease interests me; and you will not wonder that I am going back to Sandsworth tomorrow afternoon, when I have done with my professional visits.