No answer.
“Ah! I thought so! Still like to climb ’em?”
Again no answer.
“Play the game!” muttered Walter savagely. “Play the game!”
They played, but Richard could hardly see the cards before him. He made many bad mistakes. Once he really forgot himself, and began to peg in fifteen-two’s; but he caught himself in time and let Walter finally peg out a winner of every contest. But his mind was not on that game; it was excitedly going over the ground of some interesting data that his friend in the Columbia faculty, Professor Galloway, had produced in one of their all-night chats on things mental. And here, if everything turned out well, was a parallel case in Walter.
Galloway was telling how the psychologists were turning into veritable wizards and healers. Beginning the study of abnormalities for the impartial purposes of science they had to do with all sorts of freak cases of mental derangement. Naturally the patients and their friends were more interested in cures than in the progress of science in the dim regions of psychology; and naturally, too, the investigator found his fame depending more upon a sensational cure than upon the discovery of psychic law. They had been forced into the practice of psychology; and with hypnotism, “suggestion,” dream readings and casting out of inimical “personalities” their trade began to take on the character of the ancient soothsayer and witch-doctor.
Galloway had been telling Richard of certain sudden and unexpected “cures.” In one case, a “dope fiend,” emaciated and degenerate looking, had abruptly changed not only his mental personality, but had become physically transformed. Growth began in him like a garden after a drought. Healthy flesh multiplied on his brittle limbs, his back straightened, his eye took on intelligence. As if a bolt had been released that chained his real self he cast off the Mr. Hyde and became an uncontaminated Dr. Jekyll. Through accident they learned that a nervous mother some years before had peremptorily refused to let him run an automobile. There had been many violent scenes; the mother had become hysterical; the father, to keep the peace, joined with the mother. Seemingly the boy had acquiesced, but soon after, he had slipped many moral stages, until a bad crowd and cocaine had got him. To the normal mind it would be ridiculous to find a cause for moral degeneracy in so simple a matter as the repression of a strong desire to run a car; but the psychologist knows the wisdom of readiness to believe anything. They got the boy a car; they let him run it, take it apart, rebuild it; they even permitted him to let her out a peg in the open country and paid his fine for speeding. And—a miracle—the long-suppressed spirit rose and took possession and six years of vile living were cleaned out as if they had not been.
It was this case that Richard had strongly in mind when he took up an interest in Walter. It was a chance, he thought, but worth trying for; so he began from the start to probe. Tree climbing had come into the conversation several times before. Richard fell upon it as a clue; but Walter was wary. Like all neurotics he fought away from the cause of his trouble. When pressed directly he always denied any interest in the thing; but Richard had found him watching the men in the crow’s nest; and when he talked about the trip at all it was about the height of the masts, and how fine it would be to crawl up there on the rope-ladder and fix the top lights. He was obviously disappointed when told that the lights were probably electric and were turned off and on by a switch in the engine-room.
Cases of thwarted will are engaging the attention of mind students nowadays. A youngster will grow physically ill, resisting diagnoses and medicines, and all because a dollar watch is denied, or because someone says no to a request for a pink dress. Most of us, fortunately, fall in easily with the pressure of convention. We are the lucky normal children; the ones who thrive under opposition and make the rules for the unlucky others.
When Richard asked Geraldine if she knew about Walter’s desire to climb trees, she could not recall anything of value. The mother on her part said he had never expressed a desire to do such a thing. “He climb a tree?” the energetic mother had ejaculated; “he was always too lazy. What nonsense is this he has been telling you?”