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The Third Vision1
ONE afternoon in October, four months and more after that previous conversation, the card of Mr. Edward Scrope was brought up to Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey. The name awakened no memories. The doctor descended to discover a man so obviously in unaccustomed plain clothes that he had a momentary disagreeable idea that he was facing a detective. Then he saw that this secular disguise draped the familiar form of his old friend, the former Bishop of Princhester. Scrope was pale and a little untidy; he had already acquired something of the peculiar, slightly faded quality one finds in a don who has gone to Hampstead and fallen amongst advanced thinkers and got mixed up with the Fabian Society. His anxious eyes and faintly propitiatory manner suggested an impending appeal.
Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey had the savoir-faire of a successful consultant; he prided himself on being all things to all men; but just for an instant he was at a loss what sort of thing he had to be here. Then he adopted the genial, kindly, but by no means lavishly generous tone advisable in the case of a man who has suffered considerable social deterioration without being very seriously to blame.
Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was a little round-faced man with defective eyesight and an unsuitable nose for the glasses he wore, and he flaunted--God knows why--enormous side-whiskers.
"Well," he said, balancing the glasses skilfully by throwing back his head, "and how are you? And what can I do for you? There`s no external evidence of trouble. You`re looking lean and a little pale, but thoroughly fit."
"Yes," said the late bishop, "I`m fairly fit--"
"Only--?" said the doctor, smiling his teeth, with something of the manner of an old bathing woman who tells a child to jump.
"Well, I`m run down and--worried."
"We`d better sit down," said the great doctor professionally, and looked hard at him. Then he pulled at the arm of a chair.
The ex-bishop sat down, and the doctor placed himself between his patient and the light.
"This business of resigning my bishopric and so forth has involved very considerable strains," Scrope began. "That I think is the essence of the trouble. One cuts so many associations.... I did not realize how much feeling there would be.... Difficulties too of readjusting one`s position."
"Zactly. Zactly. Zactly," said the doctor, snapping his face and making his glasses vibrate. "Run down. Want a tonic or a change?"
"Yes. In fact--I want a particular tonic."
Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey made his eyes and mouth round and interrogative.
"While you were away last spring--"
"Had to go," said the doctor, "unavoidable. Gas gangrene. Certain enquiries. These young investigators all very well in their way. But we older reputations--Experience. Maturity of judgment. Can`t do without us. Yes?"
"Well, I came here last spring and saw, an assistant I suppose he was, or a supply,--do you call them supplies in your profession?--named, I think--Let me see--D--?"
"Dale!"
The doctor as he uttered this word set his face to the unaccustomed exercise of expressing malignity. His round blue eyes sought to blaze, small cherubic muscles exerted themselves to pucker his brows. His colour became a violent pink. "Lunatic!" he said. "Dangerous Lunatic! He didn`t do anything--anything bad in your case, did he?"
He was evidently highly charged with grievance in this matter. "That man was sent to me from Cambridge with the highest testimonials. The very highest. I had to go at twenty-four hours` notice. Enquiry--gas gangrene. There was nothing for it but to leave things in his hands."
Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey disavowed responsibility with an open, stumpy-fingered hand.
"He did me no particular harm," said Scrope.
"You are the first he spared," said Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey.
"Did he--? Was he unskilful?"
"Unskilful is hardly the word."
"Were his methods peculiar?"
The little doctor sprang to his feet and began to pace about the room. "Peculiar!" he said. "It was abominable that they should send him to me. Abominable!"
He turned, with all the round knobs that constituted his face, aglow. His side-whiskers waved apart like wings about to flap. He protruded his face towards his seated patient. "I am glad that he has been killed," he said. "Glad! There!"
His glasses fell off--shocked beyond measure. He did not heed them. They swnng about in front of him as if they sought to escape while he poured out his feelings.
"Fool!" he spluttered with demonstrative gestures. "Dangerous fool! His one idea--to upset everybody. Drugs, Sir! The most terrible drugs! I come back. Find ladies. High social position. Morphine-maniacs. Others. Reckless use of the most dangerous expedients.... Cocaine not in it. Stimulants--violent stimulants. In the highest quarters. Terrible. Exalted persons. Royalty! Anxious to be given war work and become anonymous.... Horrible! He`s been a terrible influence. One idea--to disturb soul and body. Minds unhinged. Personal relations deranged. Shattered the practice of years. The harm he has done! The harm!"
He looked as though he was trying to burst--as a final expression of wrath. He failed. His hands felt trembling to recover his pince-nez. Then from his tail pocket he produced a large silk handkerchief and wiped the glasses. Replaced them. Wriggled his head in his collar, running his fingers round his neck. Patted his tie.
"Excuse this outbreak!" he said. "But Dr. Dale has inflicted injuries "
Scrope got up, walked slowly to the window, clasping his hands behind his back, and turned. His manner still retained much of his episcopal dignity. "I am sorry. But still you can no doubt tell from your books what it was he gave me. It was a tonic that had a very great effect on me. And I need it badly now."
Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was quietly malignant. "He kept no diary at all," he said. "No diary at all."
"But
"If he did," said Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey, holding up a flat hand and wagging it from side to side, "I wouldn`t follow his treatment." He intensified with the hand going faster. "I wouldn`t follow his treatment. Not under any circumstances."
"Naturally," said Scrope, "if the results are what you say. But in my case it wasn`t a treatment. I was sleepless, confused in my mind, wretched and demoralized; I came here, and he just produced the stuff--It clears the head, it clears the mind. One seems to get away from the cloud of things, to get through to essentials and fundamentals. It straightened me out.... You must know such a stuff. Just now, confronted with all sorts of problems arising out of my resignation, I want that tonic effect again. I must have it. I have matters to decide--and I can`t decide. I find myself uncertain, changeable from hour to hour. I don`t ask you to take up anything of this man Dale`s. This is a new occasion. But I want that drug."
At the beginning of this speech Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey`s hands had fallen to his hips. As Scrope went on the doctor`s pose had stiffened. His head had gone a little on one side; he had begun to play with his glasses. At the end he gave vent to one or two short coughs, and then pointed his words with his glasses held out.
"Tell me," he said, "tell me." (Cough.) "Had this drug that cleared your head--anything to do with your resignation?"
And he put on his glasses disconcertingly, and threw his head back to watch the reply.
"It did help to clear up the situation."
"Exactly," said Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey in a tone that defined his own position with remorseless clearness. "Exactly." And he held up a flat, arresting hand. .
"My dear Sir," he said. "How can you expect me to help you to a drug so disastrous?--even if I could tell you what it is."
"But it was not disastrous to me," said Scrope.
"Your extraordinary resignation--your still more extraordinary way of proclaiming it!"
"I don`t think those were disasters."
"But my dear Sir!"
"You don`t want to discuss theology with me, I know. So let me tell you simply that from my point of view the illumination that came to me--this drug of Dr. Dale`s helping--has been the great release of my life. It crystallized my mind. It swept aside the confusing commonplace things about me. Just for a time I saw truth clearly.... I want to do so again."
"Why?"
"There is a crisis in my affairs--never mind what. But I cannot see my way clear."
Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was meditating now with his eyes on his carpet and the corners of his mouth tucked in. He was swinging his glasses pendulum-wise. "Tell me," he said, looking sideways at Scrope, "what were the effects of this drug? It may have been anything. How did it give you this--this vision of the truth-- that led to your resignation?"
Scrope felt a sudden shyness. But he wanted Dale`s drug again so badly that he obliged himself to describe his previous experiences to the best of his ability.
"It was," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, "a golden, transparent liquid. Very golden, like a warm-tinted Chablis. When water was added it became streaked and opalescent, with a kind of living quiver in it. I held it up to the light."
"Yes? And when you took it?"
"I felt suddenly clearer. My mind--I had a kind of exaltation and assurance."
"Your mind," Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey assisted, "began to go twenty-nine to the dozen."
"It felt stronger and clearer," said Scrope, sticking to his quest.
"And did things look as usual?" asked the doctor, protruding his knobby little face like a clenched fist.
"No," said Scrope and regarded him. How much was it possible to tell a man of this type?
"They differed?" said the doctor, relaxing.
"Yes.... Well, to be plain.... I had an immediate sense of God. I saw the world--as if it were a transparent curtain, and then God became--evident.... Is it possible for that to determine the drug?"
"God became--evident," the doctor said with some distaste, and shook his head slowly. Then in a sudden sharp cross-examining tone: "You mean you had a vision? Actually saw `um?"
"It was in the form of a vision." Scrope was now mentally very uncomfortable indeed.
The doctor`s lips repeated these words noiselessly, with an effect of contempt. "He must have given you something--It`s a little like morphia. But golden--opalescent? And it was this vision made you astonish us all with your resignation?"
"That was part of a larger process," said Scrope patiently. "I had been drifting into a complete repudiation of the Anglican positions long before that. All that this drug did was to make clear what was already in my mind. And give it value. Act as a developer."
The doctor suddenly gave way to a botryoidal hilarity. "To think that one should be consulted about visions of God--in Mount Street!" he said. "And you know, you know you half want to believe that vision was real. You know you do."
So far Scrope had been resisting his realization of failure. Now he gave way to an exasperation that made him reckless of Brighton-Pomfrey`s opinion. "I do think," he said, "that that drug did in some way make God real to me. I think I saw God."
Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey shook his head in a way that made Scrope want to hit him.
"I think I saw God," he repeated more firmly. "I had a sudden realization of how great he was and how great life was, and how timid and mean and sordid were all our genteel, professional lives. I was seized upon, for a time I was altogether possessed by a passion to serve him fitly and recklessly, to make an end to compromises with comfort and self-love and secondary things. And I want to hold to that. I want to get back to that. I am given to lassitudes. I relax. I am by temperament an easy-going man. I want to buck myself up, I want to get on with my larger purposes, and I find myself tired, muddled, entangled.... The drug was a good thing. For me it was a good thing. I want its help again."
"I know no more than you do what it was."
"Are there no other drugs that you do know, that have a kindred effect? If for example I tried morphia in some form?"
"You`d get visions. They wouldn`t be divine visions. If you took small quantities very discreetly you might get a temporary quickening. But the swift result of all repeated drug-taking is, I can assure you, moral decay--rapid moral decay. To touch drugs habitually is to become hopelessly unpunctual, untruthful, callously selfish and insincere. I am talking mere textbook, mere everyday common-places, to you when I tell you that."
"I had an idea. I had a hope...."
"You`ve a stiff enough fight before you," said the doctor, "without such a handicap as that."
"You won`t help me?"
The doctor walked up and down his hearthrug, and then delivered himself with an extended hand and waggling fingers.
"I wouldn`t if I could. For your good I wouldn`t. And even if I would I couldn`t, for I don`t know the drug. One of his infernal brews, no doubt. Something--accidental. It`s lost--for good-- for your good, anyhow...."
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