“Do you remember anything that happened after that?” asked Craig, for the first time asking a mildly leading question.
“Yes; I recall everything that happened when I came here,” she went on. “Roger came up with me to complete the necessary arrangements. We were met at the station by Doctor Burr and this woman who has since been my nurse and companion. On the way up from the station to the sanatorium Doctor Burr was very considerate of me, and I noticed that my husband seemed interested in Miss Giles and the care she was to take of me.”
Kennedy flashed a glance at me from a note-book in which he was apparently busily engaged in jotting down her answers. I did not know just what interpretation to put on it, but surmised that it meant that he had struck what the new psychologists call a “complex,” in the entrance of Miss Giles into the case.
Before we realized it there came a sudden outburst of feeling.
“And now—they are keeping me here by force!” she cried.
Doctor Burr looked at us significantly, as much as to say, “Just what might be expected, you see.” Kennedy nodded, but made no effort to stop Mrs. Cranston.
“They have told Roger that I am insane, and I know he must believe it or he would not leave me here. But their real motive, I can guess, is mercenary. I can’t complain about my treatment here—it costs enough.”
By this time she was sitting bolt upright, staring straight ahead as though amazed at her own boldness in speaking so frankly before them.
“I feel all right at times—then—it is as though I had a paralysis of the body, but not of the mind—not of the mind,” she repeated, tensely. There was a frightened look on her face, and her voice was now wildly appealing.
What would have followed I cannot guess, for at that instant there came a noise outside from another of the rooms as though pandemonium had broken loose. By the shouting and confusion, one might easily have wondered whether keepers and lunatics might not have exchanged places.
“It is just one of the patients who has escaped from his room,” explained Doctor Burr; “nothing to be alarmed about. We’ll soon have him quieted.”
Doctor Burr hurried out into the corridor while Miss Giles was looking out of the door.
Quickly Kennedy reached over and abstracted several drops from a bottle of tonic on the table, pouring it into his handkerchief, which he rolled up tightly and stuffed into his pocket. Mrs. Cranston watched him pleadingly, and clasped her hands in mute appeal, with a hasty glance at Miss Giles.
Kennedy said nothing, either, but rapidly folded up a page of the note-book on which he had been writing and shoved it into Mrs. Cranston’s hand, together with something he had taken from his pocket. She understood, and quickly placed it in her corsage.
“Read it—when you are absolutely alone,” he whispered, just as Miss Giles shut the door and turned to us.
The excitement subsided almost as quickly as it had arisen, but it had been sufficient to put a stop to any further study of the case along those lines. Miss Giles’s keen eyes missed no action or movement of her patient.
Doctor Burr returned shortly. It was evident from his manner that he wished to have the visit terminated, and Kennedy seemed quite willing to take the hint. He thanked Mrs. Cranston, and we withdrew quietly, after bidding her good-by in a manner as reassuring as we could make it under the circumstances.
“You see,” remarked Doctor Burr, as we walked down the hall, “she is quite unstrung still. Mr. Cranston comes up here once in a while, and we notice that after these visits she is, if anything, worse.”
Down the hall a door had been left open, and we could catch a glimpse of a patient rolled in a blanket, while two nurses forced something down his throat. Doctor Burr hastily closed the door as we passed.
“That is the condition Mrs. Cranston might have got into if she had not come to us when she did,” he said. “As it is, she is never violent and is one of the most tractable patients we have.”
We left shortly, without finding out whether Doctor Burr suspected us of anything or not. As we made our way back to the city, I could not help the feeling of depression such as Poe mentioned at seeing the private madhouse in France.
“That glimpse we had into the other room almost makes one recall the soothing system of Doctor Maillard. Is Doctor Burr’s system better?” I asked.
“A good deal of what we used to think and practise is out of date now,” returned Kennedy. “I think you are already familiar with the theory of dreams that has been developed by Dr. Sigmund Freud, of Vienna. But perhaps you are not aware of the fact that Freud’s contribution to the study of insanity is of even greater scientific value than his dream theories taken by themselves.
“Hers, I feel sure now, is what is known as one of the so-called ‘border-line cases,’” he continued. “It is clearly a case of hysteria—not the hysteria one hears spoken of commonly, but the condition which scientists know as such. We trace the impulses from which hysterical conditions arise, penetrate the disguises which these repressed impulses or wishes must assume in order to appear in the consciousness. Such transformed impulses are found in normal people, too, sometimes. The hysteric suffers mostly from reminiscences which, paradoxically, may be completely forgotten.
“Obsessions and phobias have their origin, according to Freud, in sexual life. The obsession represents a compensation or substitute for an unbearable sexual idea and takes its place in consciousness. In normal sexual life, no neurosis is possible, say the Freudists. Sex is the strongest impulse, yet subject to the greatest repression, and hence the weakest point of our cultural development. Hysteria arises through the conflict between libido and sex-repression. Often sex-wishes may be consciously rejected but unconsciously accepted. So when they are understood every insane utterance has a reason. There is really method in madness.
“When hysteria in a wife gains her the attention of an otherwise inattentive husband it fills, from the standpoint of her deeper longing, an important place, and, in a sense, may be said to be desirable. The great point about the psychanalytic method, as discovered by Breuer and Freud, is that certain symptoms of hysteria disappear when the hidden causes are brought to light and the repressed desires are gratified.”
“How does that apply to Mrs. Cranston?” I queried.
“Mrs. Cranston,” he replied, “is suffering from what the psychanalysts call a psychic trauma—a soul-wound, as it were. It is the neglect, in this case, of her husband, whom she deeply loves. That, in itself, is sufficient to explain her experience wandering through the country. It was the region which she associated with her first love-affair, as she told us. The wave of recollection that swept over her engulfed her mind. In other words, reason could no longer dominate the cravings for a love so long suppressed. Then, when she saw, or imagined she saw, one who looked like her lover the strain was too great.”
It was the middle of the afternoon when we reached the laboratory. Kennedy at once set to work studying the drops of tonic which had been absorbed in the handkerchief. As Kennedy worked, I began thinking over again of what we had seen at the Belleclaire Sanatorium. Somehow or other, I could not get out of my mind the recollection of the man rolled in the blanket and trussed up as helpless as a mummy. I wondered whether that alone was sufficient to account for the quickness with which he had been pacified. Then I recalled Mrs. Cranston’s remark about her mental alertness and physical weakness. Had it anything to do with the “tonic”?
“Suppose, while I am waiting,” I finally suggested