Master of His Fate | Page 9

of men's health and the enthusiasm of his profession. He
seemed to swell in proportions and dignity, though his eye still beamed
with a calm and kindly light.
The young man led the way down the echoing flagged passage, and up
the flight of stone stairs. As they went they encountered many silent
female figures, clean and white, going up or down (it was the time of
changing nurses), so that a fanciful stranger might well have thought of
the stairway reaching from earth to heaven, on which the angels of God
were seen ascending and descending. A stranger, too, would have noted
the peculiar odours that hung about the stairs and passages, as if the
ghosts of medicines escaped from the chemist's bottles were hovering
in the air. Opening first an outer and then an inner door, Lefevre and
his companion entered a large and lofty ward. The room was dark, save
for the light of the fire and of a shaded lamp, by which, within a screen,
the night-nurse sat conning her list of night-duties. The evening was
just beginning out of doors,--shop-fronts were flaring, taverns were
becoming noisy, and brilliantly-lit theatres and music-halls were
settling down to business,--but here night and darkness had set in more
than an hour before. Indeed, in these beds of languishing, which
stretched away down either side of the ward, night was hardly to be
distinguished from day, save for the sunlight and the occasional
excitement of the doctor's visit; and many there were who cried to
themselves in the morning, "Would God it were evening!" and in the
evening, "Would God it were morning!" But there was yet this other
difference, that disease and doctor, fear and hope, gossip and grumbling,
newspaper and Bible and tract, were all forgotten in the night, for some
time at least, and Nature's kind restorer, sleep, went softly round among
the beds and soothed the weary spirits into peace.
Lefevre and the house-physician passed silently up the ward between
the rows of silent blue-quilted beds, while the nurse came silently to
meet them with her lamp. Lefevre turned aside a moment to look at a
man whose breathing was laboured and stertorous. The shaded light
was turned upon him: an opiate had been given him to induce sleep; it

had performed its function, but, as if resenting its bondage, it was
impishly twitching the man's muscles and catching him by the throat,
so that he choked and started. Dr Lefevre raised the man's eyelid to
look at his eye: the upturned eye stared out upon him, but the man slept
on. He put his hand on the man's forehead (he had a beautiful hand--the
hand of a born surgeon and healer--fine but firm, the expression of
nervous force), and with thumb and finger stroked first his temples and
then his neck. The spasmodic twitching ceased, and his breath came
easy and regular. The house-doctor and the nurse looked at each other
in admiration of this subtle skill, while Lefevre turned away and passed
on.
"Where is the man?" said he.
"Number Thirteen," answered the house-doctor, leading the way.
The lamp was set on the locker beside the bed of Thirteen, screens were
placed round to create a seclusion amid the living, breathing silence of
the ward, and Lefevre proceeded to examine the unconscious patient
who had so strangely put himself in his hands.
He was young and well-favoured, and, it was evident from the firmness
of his flesh, well-fed. Lefevre considered his features a moment, shook
his head, and murmured, "No; I don't think I've seen him before." He
turned to the nurse and inquired concerning the young man's clothes:
they were evidently those of a gentleman, she said,--of one, at least,
who had plenty of money. He turned again to the young man. He raised
the left arm to feel the heart, but, contrary to his experience in such
cases, the arm did not remain as he bent it, nor did the eyes open in
obedience to the summons of the disturbed nerves. The breathing was
scarcely perceptible, and the beating of the heart was faint.
"A strange case," said Lefevre in a low voice to his young
comrade--"the strangest I've seen. He does not look a subject for this
kind of thing, and yet he is in the extreme stage of hypnotism. You
see." And the doctor, by sundry tests and applications, showed the
peculiar exhausted and contractive condition of the muscles. "It is very
curious."

"Perhaps," said the other, "he has been--" and he hesitated.
"Been what?" asked Lefevre, turning on him his keen look.
"Enjoying himself."
"Having a debauch, you mean? No; I think not. There would then have
probably been some reflex action of the nerves. This is not that kind of