The Pools of Silence Part 38

He declared himself for operation, and he had gone now to make arrangements for nurses and a.s.sistants.

"He will operate this evening," said Maxine.

"And Madame Berselius?"

"I have telegraphed for her."

CHAPTER XLI

THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN BERSELIUS

Berselius, for the last fortnight, had been going back, slowly going from bad to worse, and keeping the fact to himself.

Sulphonal, trional, morphia, each tried in turn had no power to prevent him from dreaming. Sleep as soundly as he would, just as he was awaking, the black blanket of slumber, turned up at a corner or an edge by some mysterious hand, would reveal a dream or part of one.

There was nothing in these dreams to terrify him when he was dreaming them; in them, he was just the old brave Berselius that nothing could terrify, but there was often a good deal to terrify him when he awoke.

Many of them were quite innocent and as fatuous as dreams are wont to be, but even these innocent dreams fretted the soul of the waking man, for in every sc.r.a.p and vestige of them he recognized the mind of that other personality.

After the first few days, his intellect, so severe and logical, began to lose its severity and logic, and to take up sides with his heart and to cry aloud against the injustice of this persecution.

Why should he be haunted like this? He felt no trace of remorse now for the past; the sense of injustice swallowed all that. Every day seemed to drive that past further off, and to increase the sense of detachment from that other man and his works; yet every night a hand, like the hand of some remorseless chess player, put things back in their places.

With the falling of the curtain of sleep he became metamorphosed.

Then came the day when the evil he was suffering from declared itself in a physical manner and Thenard was called in.

Thenard found his patient in bed. His mind was quite clear, but the pupils of his eyes were unequal; there was numbness in the left arm and want of grip in the hand. He had been prepared for the change evident in Berselius's face and manner, for Maxine had told him in a few words of the accident and loss of memory, and as he took his seat by the bedside he was about to put some questions relative to the injury, when Berselius forestalled him.

Berselius knew something about medicine. He guessed the truth about his own case, and he gave a succinct account of the accident and the loss of memory following it.

"This is due to the result of the injury, is it not?" said Berselius, pointing to his left arm when he had finished.

"I am afraid so," said TThenard, who knew his patient, and that plain speaking would be best.

"Some pressure?"

"So I imagine."

"Oh, don't be afraid of speaking out. I don't mind the worst. Will an operation remove that pressure?"

"If, as I imagine, there is some pressure from the inner table of the skull on the brain, it will."

"Well, now," said Berselius, "I want you to listen to me attentively; ever since that accident, or, at least, since I regained memory, I have felt that I am not the same man. Only in sleep do I become myself again--do you understand me? I have quite different aims and objects; my feelings about things are quite different; my past before the accident is ruled off from my present--that is, when I am awake.

"When I dream I become my old self again--is that not strange?"

"No," said Thenard, "every man is double. We have numerous cases where, from accident or other circ.u.mstances, a man's personality changes; one side of his nature is suppressed. There is one strange point about your case, though, and that is the waking up of the suppressed personality so vividly during sleep; but in your case it is perhaps not so strange."

"Why not?"

"Because, and excuse me for being personal even though I am complimentary, your personality as I knew you before your accident was so profound, and vivid, and powerful, that even though it is suppressed it must speak. And it speaks in dreams."

"So!--perhaps you are right. Now tell me, if you operate and remove the pressure, may I become myself again?"

"You may."

"Even after all this time?"

"The mind," said Thenard, "has nothing to do with time. At the Battle of the Nile, a sea captain, one of those iron-headed Englishmen, was struck on his iron head with fragment of sh.e.l.l. He lost his memory. Eight months after he was trephined; he awoke from the operation completing the order he was giving to his sailors when the accident cut him short----"

"I would be the same man. I would not be tormented with the other self which is me, now?"

"Possibly--I do not say probably, but possibly."

"Then," said Berselius, "for G.o.d's sake, operate at once."

"I would like to wait for another twelve hours," said Thenard, rising and re-examining the slight dent of his patient's skull.

"Why?"

"Well, to see if things may be cleared up a bit, and the necessity for operation be removed."

"Operate."

"You know, in every operation, however slight, there is an element of danger to life."

"Life! what do I care? I insist on your operating. Not another night shall pa.s.s----"

"As you will," said Thenard.

"And now," said Berselius, "make your preparations, and send me my secretary."

At twelve o'clock that night, Maxine was seated in the library, with a book which she had been vainly trying to read face downward on the floor beside her.

Thenard, his a.s.sistant surgeon, and two nurses, had arrived shortly after ten. Operating table, instruments, everything necessary had been brought, set up, and fixed by Thenard's own man.

Adams had no part in the proceedings except as a looker-on. No man could a.s.sist Thenard in an operation who was not broken to the job, for, when operating Thenard became quite a different person to the every-day Thenard of lecture room and hospital ward.

That harsh voice which we noticed in him in the first pages of this book when on entering the lecture room of the Beaujon he could not find his coloured chalks, came out during an operation, and he would curse his a.s.sistant to the face for the slightest fault or fancied fault, and he would speak to the nurses as no Frenchman ever spoke to Frenchwoman unless with deliberate intent to insult. When the last st.i.tch was in, all this changed; nurses and a.s.sistant forgot what had been said, and in the ease of released tension, worshipped more than ever the cadaverous genius who was now unwinding from his head and mouth the antiseptic gauze in which he always veiled them when operating.

The clock on the mantel pointed to a few minutes past the hour, when the door opened, and Adams came in.