PART THIRD
I
I started back for Midmeadows at ten o'clock the next day. It was a fine breezy morning and the country-side was full of odors. The sky was an intense blue, abounding in great rolling white clouds which spotted it like the continents and islands of a huge map upon which some titanic Napoleon was continually carving and remodeling new realms and empires of the firmament.
I paid less attention to them, however, than I did to the mental empire it was now my purpose to overthrow. If thunder and lightning could burst the cloud that kept the sunshine from my sweetheart's life, I was determined to conjure that storm.
I had, during my few hours in town, consulted a medical friend upon Joy's case, and while he gave no professional approval to my project, he had not denied the possibility of its being effective in producing a cure. Such conditions as Miss Fielding's were by no means rare, but they had been so little studied, except phenomenally, that there was no authorized course of treatment known. Each had to be dealt with according to its especial characteristics, and according to circumstances. He had talked to me a good deal concerning "subliminal selves," of the theory of "successive planes of consciousness" and of "isolated personalities," ending with the statement that, so far as any definite knowledge of the psychology of multiple or dissociated personality was concerned, even doctors were the merest laymen. Of its actual rationale they knew virtually nothing, though in some cases the disintegrated personalities had been synthesized into a normal self by means of hypnotic treatment.
I had left Joy herself, yesterday, and, in view of her accelerated alternations, due to the doctor's influence, I had every reason to expect to find Edna to-day in control. My chief hope was that she and Leah were still upon amicable terms, and that they would be alone in the house. But there had been time for many things to happen, and I awaited the news with considerable anxiety, though braced for any ordeal that might come—except, of course, what did come. I dismissed the carriage at the lane and walked the rest of the way.
There was no sign of life outside the house; I went up to the front door and knocked. It was some time before my summons was answered, and then, to my dismay, by Doctor Copin. This was worse than I had feared.
"Oh, how d'you do, Castle?" he said, making no move to let me in.
"I'm down again, you see. I believe Miss Fielding is expecting me," I said, as coolly as I could.
He stood with his hand on the door, defending the entrance. "I'm very sorry to say that Miss Fielding is not well to-day, and she can't see you."