Except for a large white wooden cross between two doors, it might have been a waiting-room in a hospital. Something in the atmosphere suggested people meeting agonies—or perhaps it was something in myself. As far as that went, there were no particular agonies in the long table strewn with illustrated papers and magazines, nor in the bookrack containing eight or ten well-thumbed novels. Neither were agonies suggested by the Arundel print of the Resurrection on one bit of wall-space, nor by the large framed photograph of the Arch of Constantine on another. All the same there was that in the air which told one that no human being in the world would ever come into this room otherwise than against his will.
And yet in that I may be wrong, considering how many people there are who enjoy the luxury of sorrow. I guessed, for example, that the well-dressed woman in mourning who sat diagonally opposite me was carrying her grief to every pastor in New York and refusing to be comforted by any. Another woman in mourning, rusty and cheap in her case, flanked by two vacant-eyed children, had evidently come to collect a portion of the huge financial bill she was able to present against fate. An extremely thin lady, with eyes preternaturally wide open, was perhaps a sufferer from insomnia, while the little old man with broken boots and a long red nose was plainly an ordinary "bum." These were my companions except that a beaming lady of fifty or so, dressed partly like a Salvation Army lassie and partly like a nun, and whom I took to be Doctor Scattlethwaite's deaconess en litre, bustled in and out for conferences with the fluffy-haired girl at the desk.
I beguiled the waiting, which was long and tedious, by co-ordinating my tale so as to get the main points into salience. It was about ten in the morning when I arrived, and around half past ten the lady who had first claim on Doctor Scattlethwaite came out from her audience. She was young and might have been pretty if she hadn't been so hollow-eyed and walked with her handkerchief pressed closely to her lips. I put her down as a case of nervous prostration.
The lady with the inconsolable sorrow was next summoned by the secretary, and so one after another those who had preceded me went in to take their turns. Mine came after the old "bum," when it was nearly twelve o'clock.
The room was a kind of library. I retain an impression of books lining the walls, a leather-covered lounge, one or two leather-covered easy-chairs, and a large flat-topped desk in the center of the floor-space. Behind the desk stood a short, square-shouldered man in a dark-gray clerical attire, with a squarish, benevolent, clean-shaven face, and sharp, small eyes which studied me as I crossed the floor. His aspect and attitude were business-like, and business-like was his manner of shaking hands as he asked me to sit down. An upright arm-chair stood at the corner of the desk, and as I took it he resumed his seat in his own revolving-chair which he tilted slightly backward. With his elbows on the arms and fitting the tips of his fingers together, he waited for me to state my errand, eying me all the while.
Relieved and yet slightly disconcerted by this non-committal bearing, I stumbled through my story less coherently than I had meant to tell it. Badly narrated, it was preposterous, especially as coming from a man in seemingly full possession of his faculties. All that enabled me to continue was that my hearer listened attentively, with no outward appearance of disbelieving me.
"And you've come to me for advice as to the wise thing for you to do," he said, not unsympathetically, when I had brought my lame story to a close.
"That's about it," I agreed, though conscious of a regret at having come at all.
"Then the first thing I should suggest," he continued, never taking his penetrating eyes from my face, "is that you should see a doctor—a specialist—a neurologist. I'll give you a line to Doctor Glegg—"
"What would he do?" I ventured to question.