Flames Part 19

"Your advice is a command to those who know you, doctor," said Valentine, with a sudden laugh.

"And what advice of mine have you put in the corner with its face to the wall?"

"We have been table-turning again."

"Ah!"

Doctor Levillier formed his lips into the shape a.s.sumed by one whistling.

"And this has been the result?"

"Yes," Julian cried. "Never, as long as I live, will I sit again. Val, if you go down on your knees to me--"

"I shall not do that," Valentine quietly interposed. "I have no desire to sit again now."

"You both seem set against such dangerous folly at last," said the doctor. "Give me your solemn promise to stick to what you have said."

And the two young men gave it, Julian with a strong gravity, Valentine with a light smile. Julian had by no means recovered his usual gaiety.

The events of the night had seriously affected him. He was excited and emotional, and now he grasped Valentine by the arm as he exclaimed:

"Valentine, tell me, what made you give that strange cry just before you went into your trance? Were you frightened? or did something--that hand--touch you? Or what was it?"

"A cry?"

"Yes."

"It was not I."

"Didn't you hear it?"

"No."

Julian turned to the doctor.

"It was an unearthly sound," he said. "Like nothing I have ever heard or imagined. And, doctor, just afterward I saw something, something that made me believe Valentine was really dead."

"What was it?"

Julian hesitated. Then he avoided directly replying to the question.

"Doctor," he said, "of course I needn't ask you if you have often been at deathbeds?"

"I have. Very often," Levillier replied.

"I have never seen any one die," Julian continued, still with excitement.

"But people have told me, people who have watched by the dying, that at the moment of death sometimes a tiny flame, a sort of shadow almost, comes from the lips of the corpse and evaporates into the air. And they say that flame is the soul going out of the body."

"I have never seen that," Levillier said. "And I have watched many deaths."

"I saw such a flame to-night," Julian said. "After I heard the cry, I distinctly saw a flame come from where Valentine was sitting and float up and disappear in the darkness. And--and afterwards, when Valentine lay so still and cold, I grew to believe that flame was his soul and that I had actually seen him die in the dark."

"Imagination," Valentine said, rather abruptly. "All imagination. Wasn't it, doctor?"

"Probably," Levillier said. "Darkness certainly makes things visible that do not exist. I have patients who are perfectly sane, yet whom I forbid ever to be entirely in the dark. Remove all objects from their sight, and they immediately see non-existent things."

"You think that flame came only from my inner consciousness?" Julian asked.

"I suspect so. Shut your eyes now."

Julian did so. Doctor Levillier bent over and pressed his two forefingers hard on Julian's eyes. After a moment,

"What do you see?" he asked.

"Nothing," Julian replied.

"Wait a little longer. Now what do you see?"

"Now I see a broad ring of yellow light edged with ragged purple."

"Exactly. You see flame-colour."

He removed his fingers and Julian opened his eyes.

"Yes," he said. "But that cry. I most distinctly heard it."

"Imitate it."

"That would be impossible. It was too strange. Are the ears affected by darkness?"

"The sense of hearing is intimately affected by suspense. If you do not listen attentively you may fail to hear a sound that is. If you listen too attentively you may succeed in hearing a sound that is not. Now, shut your eyes again."

Julian obeyed.

"I am going to clap my hands presently," said the doctor. "Tell me as soon as you have heard me do so."

"Yes."

Doctor Levillier made no movement for some time. Then he softly leant forward, extended his arms in the air, and made the motion of clapping his hands close to Julian's face. In reality he did not touch one hand with the other, yet Julian cried out:

"I heard you clap them then."

"I have not clapped them at all," Levillier said.

Julian expressed extreme surprise.

"You see how very easy it is for the senses to be deceived," the doctor added. "Once stir the nervous system into an acute state of antic.i.p.ation, and it will conjure up for you a veritable panorama of sights, sounds, bodily sensations. But throw it into that state once too often, and the panorama, instead of pa.s.sing and disappearing, may remain fixed for a time, even forever, before your eyes, your ears, your touch. And that means recurrent or permanent madness. Valentine, I desire you most especially to remember that."

He uttered the words weightily, with very definite intention. Valentine, who still seemed to be in an unusually lazy or careless mood, laughed easily.