XXXII
In the course of a few minutes two attendants entered for the purpose of conveying the visitor to the doctor’s room. Brandon returned to his chair, his friend bade him good-by, and then the sufferer allowed himself to be carried down the corridor as if nothing had happened.
His brain was in a state of wild ferment, yet he was sufficiently its master to refrain from letting Dr. Thorp know that the power of motion had returned to his limbs. At the instance of faith he had risen from his bed and walked, but now was not the time to proclaim a miracle in the sight of men.
“I hope you had an interesting talk with our friend,” said the doctor, with a smile of professional politeness. “And what is that I see? Is that the great work? How high you must stand in his favor!” The voice of the doctor rose to a sympathetic laugh. “You should be a proud man. Quite extraordinary pains have been bestowed upon it by him and his friends here.”
“Have you read it?” asked Brandon, the blood drumming in his ears.
“Oh, yes.”
Brandon, startled by the sound of his own voice, had just enough courage to ask the doctor’s opinion of the play.
Dr. Thorp replied with a happy frankness: “Don’t laugh at me if I confess that to my mind it’s a sublime work.”
“You really think so?”
“I do, and I’ll tell you why. There’s such a great idea at the back of it, that I feel a better, a stronger, a saner man for having come in contact with it. That play takes one into another world. It draws aside the curtain, and gives us harassed mortals a peep into the kingdom of the Something Else. Nothing is but thinking makes it so. Believe me, that’s a sublime conception. And the Master has made us all feel here that we have a share in it. Shakespeare, Molière, Sophocles, Menander, and other august old gentlemen you saw round the fire in the other room, have all been consulted, and Beethoven has composed some enchanting music for it, so we can’t help thinking it wonderful.” The doctor’s laugh was now a note of pure joy. “Believe me, in its way, the whole thing is incomparable.”
“What is the title?”
“It is called, ‘A Play Without a Name,’ but I am convinced that it ought to be called, ‘The Something Else,’ or ‘The Power of Love.’ And although you’ll begin to doubt my sanity, I can’t help feeling that if the play were performed in every town in Europe at the present hour, it would be the beginning of a new era for the human race.”
“That is to say, the whole world might be born again through the power of the spoken word.”
“Exactly,” said the doctor, with enthusiasm. “And that, by the way, is what the author aims at. Of course you realize what his particular form of delusion is, and you will have noticed that he begins to bear a remarkable resemblance to his prototype.”
“Yes,” said Brandon, in a hushed, broken tone, “it’s quite uncanny.”