And with that the Master laughed and swung away from them, almost as if his laugh was a bad thing for people to see.
“Might I speak to you a moment?” said Turnbull, stepping forward with a respectful resolution. But the shoulders of the Master only seemed to take on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he strode away.
Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the other two doctors, and said, harshly: “What in snakes does he mean–and who are you?”
“My name is Hutton,” said the short, stout man, “and I am–well, one of those whose business it is to uphold this establishment.”
“My name is Turnbull,” said the other; “I am one of those whose business it is to tear it to the ground.”
The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull’s anger seemed suddenly to steady him.
“But I don’t want to talk about that,” he said, calmly; “I only want to know what the Master of this asylum really means.”
Dr. Hutton’s smile broke into a laugh which, short as it was, had the suspicion of a shake in it. “I suppose you think that quite a simple question,” he said.
“I think it a plain question,” said Turnbull, “and one that deserves a plain answer. Why did the Master lock us up in a couple of cupboards like jars of pickles for a mortal month, and why does he now let us walk free in the garden again?”
“I understand,” said Hutton, with arched eyebrows, “that your complaint is that you are now free to walk in the garden.”
“My complaint is,” said Turnbull, stubbornly, “that if I am fit to walk freely now, I have been as fit for the last month. No one has examined me, no one has come near me. Your chief says that I am only free because he has made other arrangements. What are those arrangements?”
The young man with the round face looked down for a little while and smoked reflectively. The other and elder doctor had gone pacing nervously by himself upon the lawn. At length the round face was lifted again, and showed two round blue eyes with a certain frankness in them.
“Well, I don’t see that it can do any harm to tell you know,” he said. “You were shut up just then because it was just during that month that the Master was bringing off his big scheme. He was getting his bill through Parliament, and organizing the new medical police. But of course you haven’t heard of all that; in fact, you weren’t meant to.”
“Heard of all what?” asked the impatient inquirer.
“There’s a new law now, and the asylum powers are greatly extended. Even if you did escape now, any policeman would take you up in the next town if you couldn’t show a certificate of sanity from us.”
“Well,” continued Dr. Hutton, “the Master described before both Houses of Parliament the real scientific objection to all existing legislation about lunacy. As he very truly said, the mistake was in supposing insanity to be merely an exception or an extreme. Insanity, like forgetfulness, is simply a quality which enters more or less into all human beings; and for practical purposes it is more necessary to know whose mind is really trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint. We have therefore reversed the existing method, and people now have to prove that they are sane. In the first village you entered, the village constable would notice that you were not wearing on the left lapel of your coat the small pewter S which is now necessary to any one who walks about beyond asylum bounds or outside asylum hours.”
“You mean to say,” said Turnbull, “that this was what the Master of the asylum urged before the House of Commons?”
Dr. Hutton nodded with gravity.
“And you mean to say,” cried Turnbull, with a vibrant snort, “that that proposal was passed in an assembly that calls itself democratic?”
The doctor showed his whole row of teeth in a smile. “Oh, the assembly calls itself Socialist now,” he said, “But we explained to them that this was a question for men of science.”
Turnbull gave one stamp upon the gravel, then pulled himself together, and resumed: “But why should your infernal head medicine-man lock us up in separate cells while he was turning England into a madhouse? I’m not the Prime Minister; we’re not the House of Lords.”
“He wasn’t afraid of the Prime Minister,” replied Dr. Hutton; “he isn’t afraid of the House of Lords. But–”
“Well?” inquired Turnbull, stamping again.
“He is afraid of you,” said Hutton, simply. “Why, didn’t you know?”
MacIan, who had not spoken yet, made one stride forward and stood with shaking limbs and shining eyes.
“He was afraid!” began Evan, thickly. “You mean to say that we–”
“I mean to say the plain truth now that the danger is over,” said Hutton, calmly; “most certainly you two were the only people he ever was afraid of.” Then he added in a low but not inaudible voice: “Except one–whom he feared worse, and has buried deeper.”
“Come away,” cried MacIan, “this has to be thought about.”
Turnbull followed him in silence as he strode away, but just before he vanished, turned and spoke again to the doctors.
“But what has got hold of people?” he asked, abruptly. “Why should all England have gone dotty on the mere subject of dottiness?”
Dr. Hutton smiled his open smile once more and bowed slightly. “As to that also,” he replied, “I don’t want to make you vain.”
Turnbull swung round without a word, and he and his companion were lost in the lustrous leafage of the garden. They noticed nothing special about the scene, except that the garden seemed more exquisite than ever in the deepening sunset, and that there seemed to be many more people, whether patients or attendants, walking about in it.
From behind the two black-coated doctors as they stood on the lawn another figure somewhat similarly dressed strode hurriedly past them, having also grizzled hair and an open flapping frock-coat. Both his decisive step and dapper black array marked him out as another medical man, or at least a man in authority, and as he passed Turnbull the latter was aroused by a strong impression of having seen the man somewhere before. It was no one that he knew well, yet he was certain that it was someone at whom he had at sometime or other looked steadily. It was neither the face of a friend nor of an enemy; it aroused neither irritation nor tenderness, yet it was a face which had for some reason been of great importance in his life. Turning and returning, and making detours about the garden, he managed to study the man’s face again and again–a moustached, somewhat military face with a monocle, the sort of face that is aristocratic without being distinguished. Turnbull could not remember any particular doctors in his decidedly healthy existence. Was the man a long-lost uncle, or was he only somebody who had sat opposite him regularly in a railway train? At that moment the man knocked down his own eye-glass with a gesture of annoyance; Turnbull remembered the gesture, and the truth sprang up solid in front of him. The man with the moustaches was Cumberland Vane, the London police magistrate before whom he and MacIan had once stood on their trial. The magistrate must have been transferred to some other official duties– to something connected with the inspection of asylums.
Turnbull’s heart gave a leap of excitement which was half hope. As a magistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow, but certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense so long as it was put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least an authority of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with the wagging beard or the fiend with the forked chin.