Chapter 20. "Save Me, Dr. Annister!"

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_ CHAPTER XX. "SAVE ME, DR. ANNISTER!"

Mildred Annister, passing the open door of her father's waiting room, sent into it a casual glance, came to a sudden stop, and then, with a brightening face, went quickly in, saying softly, "Felix!" Sweeping the room with her eyes she saw that he was its only occupant and ran toward him, holding out her hands and asking, apprehensively:

"Felix! You're waiting to see father! Are you ill?"

She put her hands upon his shoulders and studied his face with anxious scrutiny for an instant, until, yielding to the pressure of his arms, she sank upon his breast with a murmur of happy laughter.

"No, dearest, I'm not ill--you can see how perfectly well I look. It's just a little nerve tire, I guess, and I want to ask Dr. Annister to prescribe a tonic for me. It's nothing of any consequence."

She drew back and studied his face again. Even her fascinated eyes began to see in it something different from the look of the man who had won her love so completely a year before. She was conscious of a little shiver, that meant, she knew not what, but kept her from yielding when he would press her again into his arms.

"I'm afraid--Felix, dear--I know you must be working too hard. That's what's the matter and that's what makes you look--a little--strange. You are tired. You are doing such lots of work. And you mustn't break down--now!" With another happy, loving little laugh she gave up and nestled against his shoulder, while he kissed her cheek and brow and lips.

"Felix!" she exclaimed, "I'm standing out bravely against that trip to Europe father is so determined I shall take with mother this summer. I won't go and leave you. He hasn't said so much about it lately, because he's not well and mother is anxious about him. I've almost persuaded her that she ought not to leave him."

She paused a moment, her face rosy with his caresses. Her eyes sought his and her voice sank to a whisper. "Felix, dear heart, if we could only go there alone together! Can't we tell them and then just go away by ourselves?"

"I don't think we'd better tell them yet. Your father seems to have become opposed to us, for some reason, and I'm trying to win him over. We must wait a little."

"It's only because he can't bear to think of my marrying any one. He doesn't want to give me up----"

"I don't blame him for that!"

"But he'll have to some time, and--oh, Felix! I wish we could tell him, and mother, soon! It makes me feel so underhanded, and it mars my happiness, just a little, darling. Don't you think it would be better to face the music and have it over with?"

The sound of Dr. Annister's voice dismissing a patient came to their ears and she sprang out of his embrace. "No, no! don't whisper a word of it," he hastily adjured her. "We must wait a little while longer. Remember what I say." There was a touch of impatience, almost of roughness, in his tone as he spoke the last words that made her turn wondering eyes upon him for an instant. But her father was opening the door into his consulting room and now came forward with an outstretched hand. She put her arm through her lover's and walked with him into the office.

"This naughty boy has been working too hard, father," she said gaily, "and he has that tired feeling. I think you'd better prescribe a six months' rest and a trip around the world!"

She was smiling persuasively at her father and did not see the look of irritation that leaped into Brand's eyes as he turned them suddenly upon her. Then he laughingly shook his head, saying:

"It would be a bigger dose than I could swallow, I'm afraid. I have too many contracts on my hands now to be able to take any such French leave as that."

"Anyway, father," she insisted as she moved toward the door and, from behind the doctor's back, threw her lover a kiss, "you must tell him not to overwork himself, as he's been doing lately."

"Well, Felix, what is it? What's the trouble?" said the little physician kindly, as he sank back into the depths of his capacious arm-chair.

But the architect was ill at ease. He sprang up from the chair where he had just seated himself and began walking back and forth in the narrow space. His whole soul was in rebellion against the confession he had come there to make.

"Perhaps you will remember, Dr. Annister," he began, broke off, stopped to wipe his brow, then stumbled on: "It was here in your office--you will remember, when I recall it to you--some time ago, you told me--you asked me about--certain things, and urged me to come to you--if at any time I felt I needed your help."

"Yes, yes, I remember," the doctor rejoined in encouraging tones. He was looking at Brand with a searching gaze and saying to himself: "Faugh! How repulsive his face has grown! He's going to tell me the whole truth this time!"

Brand was silent again and the doctor went on, a little more briskly: "Well, let's begin and have it over with. You must bear in mind that the secrets of the physician's office are as sacred as those of the confessional."

"I know it, Dr. Annister. But it's a strange story I have to tell you, and I don't know whether or not you can help me. I thought I could fight it out myself and win, but I can't. And if you can't help me God knows what will become of me."

His voice sank despairingly and he dropped into the chair again, his face in his hands.

"I'll do my best, Felix, whatever it is," the other encouraged again. "Don't hesitate to confide in me. I've listened to many, many strange stories in this room, and only the walls are any the wiser."

"I suppose I'm ill." Brand started up again and moved about with uneasy steps. "I believe you physicians have decided it's an illness--and I think you've treated some cases--" he halted and seemed to gather up resolution for his next words--"dissociated, or dual, personality--that's what you call it, isn't it?"

Dr. Annister sat bolt upright and for an instant could not put under professional control the surprise that crossed his face. But Brand, half turned away, was gazing at the floor as if he found it difficult to meet his companion's eyes. He was conscious of an edge of impersonal interest in the physician's voice:

"Yes, I've done a little in that line--a few cases--but nothing to equal in importance the work of one or two others. But I've been pretty successful. Doubtless I can help you. Go on. Tell me about it."

"It's that damned Hugh Gordon!" the architect broke out, turning savagely toward the doctor, his face distorted with anger and his eyes blazing. "He's fighting me for my body! He said he'd push me off the edge, and he's doing it. Save me, Dr. Annister! Save me from him! Send him back to where he came from!" In sudden realization of the fate that threatened him Brand sank trembling into his chair.

"I'll try, Felix, I'll do my best, and I'm sure I can help you. But you must tell me everything about it. How long has this condition been going on? When did it begin?"

"Oh, I hardly know how to answer that, it came about so gradually. Last fall, in October, was the first time he--he--came out. But long before that he was alive, inside of me, and I knew about him sometimes in my dreams. For years, ever since I was a boy, I have had occasionally a curious experience in a dream. I would be in the dream always, but not as myself. I would know, in the dream and afterwards, that it was I who was feeling, thinking, acting, talking, but at the same time it would seem to be an entirely different personality. Of course there is always more or less of that feeling in a dream, but in this case the divergence was so sharp and the consciousness of a different individuality was so distinct that it was just as if my mind, or soul, or whatever it is that holds the essence of myself, had left me and taken possession of some other individual. Can you tell me what that meant, Dr. Annister? For it was the beginning of the whole business, and I've thought, sometimes, that I might have saved myself all--this. Do you think I could?"

Dr. Annister was gazing at his patient with inscrutable eyes, sitting upright, his fingers tapping. "I can't say now, Felix. I don't know enough yet. But this experience was probably due to your sub-conscious self. For we are pretty well assured that there is an existence, perhaps more than one, in every human being subordinate to that of which he is conscious, which is himself. Submerged beneath the full stream of his conscious existence, with all its phases of physical and psychical activity, this other existence goes on. In most people it is either so deeply submerged or so closely bound up in their conscious existence that they never know anything about it. Sometimes they catch dim glimpses of it, and once in awhile, in one person out of many millions, some nervous shock will break the bonds between the two and the submerged consciousness will rise to the surface and take possession. That is probably what happened in your dreams, with, doubtless, some shock at the beginning to make it possible. Did these dreams occur frequently?"

"I don't think they did at first. But I was too young and thoughtless to take any account of them. I remember that they occurred once in a while in my teens. Afterwards they became more frequent and the impression they made upon me was much stronger. Then that impression began to remain with me after I was awake, more as a memory at first, an unusually vivid remembrance of a dream state. Then it grew so strong that for an hour or two after waking it would dominate me and I could feel myself almost swaying back into that other person I had been while I was asleep and dreaming. I thought it would be a curious and interesting experience if I could slip over into this other person sometimes while I was awake. You know you get rather tired sometimes of your own individuality."

He stopped and smiled, then went on: "It has never been my habit to pass by any interesting or pleasurable experience that came my way."

The smile became almost a leer and then stiffened into a sneering defiance as his gaze met the clear gray eyes of the physician, impersonal, professional, unresponding. The doctor's chin rested upon his locked fingers and his eyes were fastened upon the other's face. Brand did not know how much of his soul that searching gaze was gradually forcing him to reveal.

"I have always thought," he went on, as if moved by an impulse of self-defense, the half-leering, half-sneering smile still on his face, "that a man has the right to sample all the pleasures that come within his reach. It's the only way by which he can come into full knowledge of himself, and so reach his highest development. And that, I take it, is one of the things a man lives for. Therefore he owes it to himself to let nothing pass by him untried."

Brand ceased speaking and waited as if he expected some response. "Don't you agree with me?" he said, after a moment of silence, in his old, suave and deferent manner.

"Eh? Agree with you? Oh, my opinion on that matter is of no consequence just now. You were speaking about this other individuality beginning to dominate you after you awoke. What happened then?"

The architect straightened up and sent an irritated glance toward his companion. But that clear gaze had established too firm a hold over his will to be swayed by sudden temper. He fidgeted in his chair, then took up his story again:

"Yes, I wondered what it would be like really to be somebody else now and then. The dream was no more real to me than any dream ever is, and if I could let myself be this other individuality for a little while awake it seemed to me that it would be a wonderful experience--something that nobody else had ever had. One morning last fall I woke up with the remembrance of such a dream particularly vivid and the impression of this other personality stronger than it had ever been. It seemed to me that if I so much as shut my eyes I'd drift off into this other being. While I was dressing I thought I'd just try it and see what would happen. I was getting ready to shave and as I made up my mind, or, rather, took down my determination against it, I happened to look at the bright blade of my razor. It seemed as if my eyes fairly stuck fast to it for a moment and--the thing was done."

The doctor nodded. "Yes. Self-hypnosis. Go on. The case is most interesting."

"Well, for about an hour I was--the Lord knows where or what. When I came to myself again I had no recollection of what had taken place. Except for the clock I wouldn't have known that any time at all had passed. I found that I had shaved myself, and had left my mustache, but what else I had done I don't know. I tried it again a little later, hoping I might, if I knew what was coming, be aware of what happened. But I wasn't. I completely lost my own consciousness for that time.

"Then this--this creature was able, after that, to come out of his own will, without my giving permission. He would come while I was asleep, at first only for a few hours, and he would usually leave a letter for me in the room telling me what he had done and what he wanted me to do. He called himself 'Hugh Gordon' and always signed his letters that way.

"At first I thought this was rather amusing. But each time that he came his power grew stronger, and so did his desire for an independent existence. Before long he was taking possession of my body for a day or two at a time, going out and following his own affairs. He bought a suit of gray clothes--he seemed to want everything different from me--and when at last he was able to keep himself going for a week or two he had my hair cut short and let a mustache grow, and began sending his damned insolent letters through the mail to my office.

"Now you know, Dr. Annister, why I couldn't explain my absences any better. Each time that he pushes me down and gets possession of my body he keeps it longer. Now he's threatening me with annihilation. He says that the next time he comes he's going to stay. And I'm at the end of my strength, doctor. I've fought him back, and he's fought to get out, for hours, and days. It's worst at night, because, so far, the change has always taken place when I was asleep. For the last two nights I have not slept--I've been afraid to close my eyes. I've tramped up and down my apartment and I've drank brandy and I've gone around town and raised hell. But I can't fight him off much longer and I've got to have some sleep. Unless you can help me I've come to the end."

Dr. Annister was looking at him gravely, sympathetically, the deepest interest manifest in his countenance. "I hope I can help you, Felix. I hope I can. We'll try. I wish you had come to me with this long ago. It might have been easier. But I need to know still more about it. The case is very peculiar, very interesting, and it has features that differentiate it from any other that has been studied by any physician. These dreams that the whole thing seems to have grown out of--try to remember, Felix, were they preceded by any severe nervous shock, an illness, anything that might have aided in the breaking up of your personality?"

Brand hesitated and a faint color crept into his face. He knew when they began and it was a thing he did not like to think of, even now, after so many years and the change which these later months had made in his character. But the doctor's gaze was upon him and he felt compulsion in it.

"I think," he said slowly, "it must have been perhaps twenty years or more ago. I had just entered my teens. My sister and I were in a tree in our yard and she fell out and was badly hurt. She--she has never recovered. It was a good deal of a shock to me. I began to notice the dreams soon afterward. But they weren't very frequent."

"Just so. It might have been that." The doctor was tapping his finger-tips together thoughtfully. There was something he wanted to know, which he must find out. But he did not believe that the man before him would answer truthfully the questions he needed to ask. So he decided to experiment in another direction. "This--this other you," he went on, "this Hugh Gordon, came to see me once and----"

"Don't call him my other self!" Felix cried out angrily, jumping to his feet and scowling. "He is a thief, a murderer! He has stolen my good name, my money, my body, he is trying to kill me! I know he came here and tried to poison your feeling against me--and I think he must have succeeded, too. He has tried to set my own mother and sister against me in that same way. He goes snooping out to their home and makes them believe all sorts of tales about me. He's even been whispering his lies into the ear of my secretary, until she's going to leave me."

In his rage, which grew with each fresh accusation that he brought against his enemy, Brand was rushing about with uneven steps and now and then smiting a table or a chair with his fist. "He is determined to pull me down and cover me with disgrace and then annihilate me for his own benefit. Damn him, I won't have him spoken of as my other self!"

"Try to be calm, Felix," urged the doctor quietly. "You only make your task the harder every time you give up to such outbursts of rage." He was looking at the other's trembling hands and working face and thinking that here was at least a beginning of what he wished to know.

"Has this abnormal condition affected you in the exercise of your special gift?" he asked. Brand's face brightened and his manner quieted at once.

"Ah! That's something he's not been able to filch from me, the damned thief!" he exclaimed exultantly as he seated himself again. "I've kept all the talent I ever had in that line, and it has developed and increased wonderfully--I don't mean to boast, Dr. Annister, but I know what I'm talking about--since this has been going on. If you saw the pictures that were published and the things all the critics said of me a few weeks ago you would know that is true. I'm astonished myself lately at the ease, the rapidity and the success with which I work. But it's all he has not stolen," Brand continued more gloomily. "He has taken all my business sense. I used to have a good deal of it. I could make money and I would soon have been a rich man. Now I'm getting poorer every day, and he's getting rich."

"Yes, I see." The physician was nodding and softly beating his fingers together. "I get an idea of how the cleavage has been. Your nature was broken into two parts--as clean and sharp and complete a break as in any case I know of. Our task now is to reunite them and make a whole man again out of the halves into which you have separated."

Brand leaned forward eagerly. "Then you'll help me?" he demanded. "You won't go over to his side? The damned hypocrite! He says he is more entitled to life than I am, because he's a better man, because he wants to do good. Why, Doctor, in the last letter he sent me--" Brand's anger was rising again--"he ordered me to make my will, and to leave a letter for some one that would explain my disappearance so that it would be known that I was gone for good, that I was never coming back!" The physician held his patient with a calm gaze and made a sign that he was to control himself. And in a moment Felix sank back into his seat, trembling with the reaction from his burst of temper, and imploring the other for the gift of a longer lease of life.

"You'll send him back to where he came from, won't you, Dr. Annister? You won't let him have his will over me?"

"We can succeed," the doctor assured him in confident tones, "if you will do your part. You must control yourself at all times. Try to strengthen your enfeebled will power. Live quietly, sanely, and a clean, moral life. I don't believe you've been doing that, Felix."

"Oh, I've had to keep some excitement going. I've motored like the devil all around New York, and when I could have pleasant company with me that helped to hold that damned creature down as much as anything. Some people were better than others. Miss Marne's sister, a jolly girl, especially if I fed her with champagne while we were out, was very useful and she saved me several times. But the last time it was a failure. She seemed to be afraid of me and though I made her drink wine till she was drunk, it was no good. I came back no better off than I was before."

Dr. Annister made a sudden movement and looked at his watch. He was conscious of an irruption of unprofessional loathing into his feeling for his patient. He was wondering how much this callous disregard of everything but his own interest was due to his abnormal condition and how much to his innate selfishness; and his thoughts flew to his own cherished daughter.

"Well, Felix," he said rising, "I'm due--I've barely time to make it--at a consultation over an important case, so that we can't go any farther into this now. But I can help you. I'm sure I can, if you will follow orders. I shall try hypnosis. It's the only thing we know, yet, that really has much effect. But some wonderful cures have been made with it. Come back tonight. My evening office hour is from eight to nine. Come about nine o'clock, so that I can take you the last one and have plenty of time for experiment. And there's another thing, Felix,--ah!" He stopped suddenly, as a little spasm of pain crossed his face, and pressed his hand against his heart. "It's nothing," he went on deprecatingly, at the other's look of inquiry. "This little organ in here," and he patted his breast, "reminds me of its existence, once in a while, lately. I'm ordered to take a rest, and I suppose I'll have to before long."

"You're not going away?" Brand queried anxiously. "You won't go till after you've fixed me up?"

"I can't go for some time--unless I have to. And don't mention it to Mildred or Mrs. Annister. Now, about that other thing. I must insist, Felix, that you release Mildred from this engagement between you. I have let it go on against my own judgment too long already, because I was hoping that time would lessen her infatuation. But in the light of all that you have just told me it is impossible--it must not continue another day. You ought to see yourself how unfair it would be to her."

"But suppose," said Brand, with the suggestion of a sneer in his voice, "that Mildred should not wish to be released?"

The doctor pressed his lips together and his gray eyes flashed. His pale face looked very weary. "Her wishes can make no difference now," he replied decisively. "Write to her and say that you wish to end the engagement. Make any excuse that you like. But you must not see her again. That is final, Felix. Good-bye. I'll see you tonight." _

Read next: Chapter 21. Hugh Gordon Tells His Story

Read previous: Chapter 19. "And You Could Do This, Felix Brand!"

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