The thrust might not have been intentional, but the shadow deepened on the vicar’s face. “It is not,” he said. “Yet he is so well cared for, he is allowed such liberty, his relations with all the other inmates are so charmingly harmonious, that it is hard to see how the freedom of the outer world could add to his present happiness; that, at any rate, is Dr. Thorp’s view. His troubles, odd as it may seem, do not spring from his immediate surroundings; they spring from the present state of the world. His mania has crystallized into a strange form. He has become pathetically convinced that he is the Savior, and he spends his whole time in fasting and prayer.”
“Did you see him?”
“Yes.” The vicar paused an instant, and in that instant Brandon literally devoured the subtly changing face of the man before him. “Not only did I see him, I was permitted to speak to him. Moreover, he sent you a message. You are always to remember that one unconverted believer may save the whole world.” As the vicar repeated the odd phrase, his eye met Brandon’s and a silence followed.
“I shall never forget the way he said it,” Mr. Perry-Hennington went on. “The tone of his voice, the look of his eyes gave one quite an uncanny feeling. Whether it was the mental and physical state of the poor man himself, or whether it was his surroundings, I cannot say, but somehow I can’t get the picture of him as he spoke those words out of my mind. It’s weak, I know, but the whole of last night I lay awake thinking of Wellwood, and this poor dear fellow, John Smith.”
“Was he so different from what you expected to find him?”
“Somehow he was. His disease has taken such a curious form. And in that strange place, in the midst of a lot of old men, afflicted like himself with various fantastic delusions, he has an air of authority which is really most striking—I am bound to say is really most striking.”
“I cannot tell you how interested I am to hear you say that,” was Brandon’s eager rejoinder.
“If one had not continually said to oneself: ‘This gloomy place, haunted with dead souls, is Wellwood Asylum,’ one might even have come under a strange spell. Dr. Thorp says the freakish power of some of these broken-down intellects is amazing; and to see them seated around that large and somber room engaged in what John Smith calls ‘the correlation of human experience,’ is at once the most tragic and the most pathetic sight I have ever witnessed.”
“It is a sight that I, at any rate, shall take to my grave.” As Brandon saw again the picture by the inward eye, he was shaken by a wild tremor. “Henceforth, I shall see it always in this life, and I look to see it in the next.”
“Yes,” said the vicar. “I can well understand your feeling about it.”