She smiled, and said nothing. Dr. Abury gave her a little wine in a
teaspoon, and she drank it quietly. Then she shut her eyes again, but
this time she was sleeping.
All night Arthur watched still by the bedside where they put her a
little later, and Dr. Abury and a nurse watched with him. In the morning
she woke slightly better, and when she saw Arthur still there, she
smiled again, and said that if he was with her, she was happy. When
Freeling came to inquire after the patient, he found her so much
stronger, and Arthur so worn with fear and sleeplessness, that he
insisted upon carrying off his friend in his brougham to his own house,
and giving him a slight restorative. He might come back at once, he
said; but only after he had had a dose of mixture, a glass of brandy and
seltzer, and at least a mouthful of something for breakfast.
As Freeling was drawing the cork of the seltzer, Arthur's eye happened
to light on a monkey, which was chained to a post in the little area
plot outside the consulting-room. Arthur was accustomed to see monkeys
there, for Freeling often had invalids from the Zoo to observe side by
side with human patients; but this particular monkey fascinated him even
in his present shattered state of nerves, because there was a something
in its face which seemed strangely and horribly familiar to him. As he
looked, he recognized with a feeling of unspeakable aversion what it was
of which the monkey reminded him. It was making a series of hideous and
apparently mocking grimaces--the very self-same grimaces which he had
seen on his own features in the mirror during the last day or two!
Horrible idea! He was descending to the level of the very monkeys!
The more he watched, the more absolutely identical the two sets of
grimaces appeared to him to be. Could it be fancy or was it reality? Or
might it be one more delusion, showing that his brain was now giving way
entirely? He rubbed his eyes, steadied his attention, and looked again
with the deepest interest. No, he could not be mistaken. The monkey was
acting in every respect precisely as he himself had acted.
"Harry," he said, in a low and frightened tone, "look at this monkey. Is
he mad? Tell me."
"My dear Arthur," replied his friend, with just a shade of expostulation
in his voice, "you have really got madness on the brain at present. No,
he isn't mad at all. He's as sane as you are, and that's saying a good
deal, I can assure you."
"But, Harry, you can't have seen what he's doing. He's grimacing and
contorting himself in the most extraordinary fashion."
"Well, monkeys often do grimace, don't they?" Harry Freeling answered
coolly. "Take this brandy and you'll soon feel better."
"But they don't grimace like this one," Arthur persisted.
"No, not like this one, certainly. That's why I've got him here. I'm
going to operate upon him for it under chloroform, and cure him
immediately."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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