During ten days Amos was to remain under the strictest watch, to be guarded by two men at night and by two others in the day-time, and to be permitted under no conditions to leave that wing of the building. By the subordinate in charge and by the four guardians he was believed to be the victim of a suicidal mania. As the fourth of November approached Mr. Cabot’s thoughts were less upon his business than with his imprisoned friend. He remembered with what inexorable force he himself had been held to the fulfilment of a prediction. He had felt the hand of an unswerving fate; and he had not forgotten.
But the fourth of November came and went with no serious results, and when the five succeeding days had safely passed he experienced a relief which he was very careful to conceal. With friendly hypocrisy he assumed a perfect confidence in the result of their course, and he was glad to see that Amos himself began to realize that anything like a literal fulfilment of his vision was now improbable.
One week later, the last day of durance, the prisoner and Mr. Cabot had an interview with Dr. Chapin in the latter’s private office. Dr. Chapin, the physician in charge, an expert of distinction in mental disorders, was a man about sixty years of age, short, slight, and pale, with small eyes, a very large nose, and a narrow, clean-shaven face. His physical peculiarities were emphasized by a complete indifference as to the shape or quality of his raiment; his coat was a consummate misfit, and his trousers were baggy at the knees. Even the spectacles, which also fitted badly, were never parallel with his eyes and constantly required an upward shove along his nose. But a professional intercourse with this gentleman led to a conviction that his mental outfit bore no relation to his apparel. Mr. Cabot had known him for years, and Amos felt at once that he was in the presence of a man of unusual insight. Dr. Chapin spoke calmly and without pretension, but as one careful of his speech and who knew his facts.
“That you should have made that visit against your will,” he said to Mr. Cabot in answering a question, “is not difficult to explain as Mr. Judd unconsciously brought to bear upon your movements a force to which he himself has repeatedly yielded. If he happens to remember, I think he will find that his thoughts were with you at that time,” and he smiled pleasantly on Amos.
“Yes, sir, but only as a matter of interest in the novel experience I knew Mr. Cabot was going through.”
“Certainly, but if you had forgotten the visit and if you believed at that moment that he was to go in another direction, Mr. Cabot would have followed the other thought with equal obedience. This unconscious control of one intelligence over another is well established and within certain limits can be explained, but in these affairs science is compelled to accept a barrier beyond which we can only speculate. In this case the unusual and the most interesting feature is the unvarying accuracy of your visions. You have inherited something from your Eastern ancestors to which a hypothesis can be adjusted, but which is in fact beyond a scientific explanation. I should not be at all surprised to find somewhere in the city the room in which you saw yourself lying; and it is more than probable that, if unrestrained, you would have discovered it and fulfilled your prophecy, unconsciously obedient to that irresistible force. A blow, a fall, a stroke of apoplexy or heart disease; the sudden yielding of your weakest part under a nervous pressure, could easily bring about the completion of your picture. Some of the authenticated reports of corresponding cases are almost incredible. But before you are forty, Mr. Judd, you will find in these visions a gradual diminution of accuracy and also, as in this case, that their fulfilment is by no means imperative.”
For Amos there was immense relief in hearing this, especially from such a source, and he left the building with a lighter heart than he had known for months. Now that the danger was over, he wished the wedding to take place at once, but Molly would consent to no undignified haste. He found, however, an unexpected and influential ally in her grandmother Jouvenal, just arrived from her home in Maryland for a month’s visit, and who insisted upon the wedding taking place while she was with them. Mrs. Jouvenal was a slender person of sprightly manners, whose long life had been sweetly tempered by an exaggerated estimate of the importance of her own family; but in other matters she was reasonable and clear-headed, endowed with quick perceptions, a ready wit, and one of those youthful spirits that never grow old. She was interested in all that went on about her, was never bored and never dull. It was of course a little disappointing that a girl with such an ancestry as Molly’s, on her mother’s side, should give herself to an unknown Judd from an obscure New England village; but her fondness for Amos soon consoled her for the mésalliance. Molly had a strong desire to acquaint her grandmother with the ancestral facts of the case, but Amos refused to give his consent. Those discoveries in the attic he insisted they must keep to themselves, at least while he was alive. “When I am transplanted I shall be beyond the reach of terrestrial snobs, and you can do as you please.”
The first week in December Mrs. Jouvenal was to visit her son in Boston. “And really, my child,” she said to Molly, “it is the last wedding in the family I shall be alive to see, and with such an exotic specimen as you have selected, I shall not be sure of a Christian ceremony unless I see it myself.”
As her father remained neutral Molly finally yielded, and there was a wedding the first Wednesday in December.