“Neither Do I Condemn”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 863, 6 January 1930, Page 7

“Neither Do I Condemn”

By

C. Kernahan

From the London terminus of the line by which I travel to town, the shortest cut to my club is through the side street which forms a dark and deserted backwater, as it were, t 0 a busy, brilliant 1 ' -Ruminated, and police-paraded mai noroughfare. In this side street when on my way to the club one evening, 1 was struck by something familiar in the figure of a man who was lurking at a corner Seeing me approaching, he walked away, and I should have thought no more of the matter but for the fact that, whereas there had been nothing unusual in the carriage of his head and the shape of his shoulders when I first saw him standing at the corner, no sooner had he caught sight of me and begun to walk away than his head went down between his shoulders, which he hunched up on either side of his head. “That's curious,” I said to myself. “When he didn’t think anyone saw him he held himself naturally. and like a normally-formed man. When someone comes along his head down into his shoulders, and his shoulders go up, hunched and rounded, about his head, as if he wished to alter his appearance lest anyone recognise him.” Just then a man who, as he approached a lamp. I saw to he unmistakably a negro, turned the far corner, he was coming in the direction of the other man, but on the opposite side of the pavement. No one else was in sight at the end of the street, but the man X had first seen glanced back over his shoulder to see whether I was still approaching from behind. 1 was, as It happened, in the shadow of the corner I was nearing, and so must have escaped his notice. Anyhow, his head went up and his shoulders went down into what was no doubt the normal carriage of both, and I saw him dart across and join company w ith the negro, who, as they walked together, slipped something (surreptitiously, for neither raised a hand) into the clasp of the other. I recognised the negro as one who, only a few days before, I had seen in the dock on a charge of supplying cocaine to devotees of the drug. On that occasion he had escaped conviction by the narrowest of margins. When 1 say that I recognised the toegro I ought to add that the negro J had seen in the dock had a black patch over his right eye. So had this negro.

The negro I had seen in the dock was singularly attired. The coat he was wearing was of a light and very loud check, cut with long skirts, and in the shape of what is called a t'frock.”

So was the coat of the negro whom I had seen slip into the hand of the other man a packet of what I suspected to be cocaine. Bat what troubled me was that I Said to myself, "Were it not so preposterous as to be unthinkable, I could swear that the man I saw first was Dr. Arthur E., of Marbury.” ("Arthur,” I should add, is not his real Christian name, nor “E” the Initial letter of his surname, any more than the name of the town in which he and I then lived is Marbury.) "He was not dressed,” I went on, •‘as E. invariably dresses, in a blue serge suit and wearing a bowler hat, for yonder fellow is in tweeds and a cap, which latter article of attire I have never known E. to wear But living as E. and I do in a small seaside town, and meeting him constantly, seeing him approaching or walking away from me practically every day, I have come to know the lines of his figure, the angle of his shoulders, his way of standing or of stepping out, every swing of arm or leg, and his tricks of carriage, scarcely less well than I know the palm of my own hand. “But It can’t be E.” I went on again lo tell myself: "the thing is unthinkable. Drugs affect the moral sense and the character; and of all men I know, or have ever known, E. is the atraightest. the most honourable, and the highest minded. That such a man Js a secret drug-taker is too preposterous, seriously to be even considered. Besides, if E. could fall so low as to drug himself —which, knowing him as intimately as I do, I won’t believe —he could surely obtain all the drug that he required through the ordinary professional channels open to a doctor.”

So I walked on to the club, and without so much as once looking back. But coming away from the club a couple of hours later, on my way to catch my train, I saw in front of me—he did not appear to have seen me—and walking away from the very corner where I had first seen the man in tweeds and a cap, Dr. Arthur E.. Of Marbury. This time, at least, there could be no question of identity, for he had changed from the cap and tweeds into the familiar bowler hat and suit of blue serge. He turned into a dark side street, up which I glanced without stopping when I reached it, but he was then nowhere in sight. That 1 told none of what 1 had seen goes without saying. But since I had Unintentionally witnessed happenings which seemed to show a friend whom I held in high regard as undeserving of the regard in which otheirs as well as I held him, ought I not to give him a chance of clearing himself? in the case of Arthur E. I hesitated. Be was the most sensitive man I have ever known. I have seen him, when a friendly advance on his part has been coldly received, wince like a hurt child. His gratitude for some small kindness —as if surprised that anyone should think it worth while to do a kindness to a person who counted for so little —he did not fail to express, but reproach he never expressed. Reproach at a harsh word or rebuff, if expressed at all, was to be seen only in a look of pain, and then it seemed to me as if not only his brows, but, as it were, the very balls of his large, dark, almost tragic eyes were drawn together in Pain. But though I held my peace to E. and to others about what I had seen that night—about E.. as time went on, ugly stories were in circulation in Marbury. In that town his life was irreproachable, but in London, and by more than one person, he was reported to have been seen in circumstances upon which it was difficult to put other than the construction that he went thither to indulge some kccret and hitherto unsuspected craving for cither drink or drugs, and Possibly for other and, too often, accompanying forms of vice. Weight was lent to these stories by the fact that though at one time he scarcely ever left Marbury except for his annual holiday, and so was always within call if needed, he had now taken, suddenly, mysteriously, and uncertainly to disappearing, and with-

out leaving word when he would be back. When he returned after a night s, two nights*, or it might be a eek s absence, looking haggard and worn, he who was not secretive about other matters, kept whatever reason he had for thus disappearing to himself.

So circumstantial were the stories Jhld of him, and increasingly, that, though the last person to hear what is said of him is often the person most concerned, E. must have noticed that folk looked askance at him, that there were houses to which he was no longer invited, and that more than one old patient had, when necessity for a doctor arose, called in another than himself.

At last matters came to a head by the call upon me of a prominent resilient, Arthur E. was senior honorary surgeon to the hospital, and my caller was the chairman of the general committee. He had come to ask me, as the friend of E., to induce the latter to plead overwork, or any other pretext, for resigning his connection with the hospital. Failing such resignation, my caller feared there would be trouble, perhaps even a painful scene at the forthcoming meeting of the subscribers. My caller had received letters protesting against E.’s association with the hospital. Some of these letters were shown to me; and as two of the writers, one a lay preacher who was about to be ordained for the ministry, and the other a woman, expressed their intention of proposing at the meeting that the name of Dr. Arthur 12. be removed from the list of the hospital medical staff, I felt that speak to E. I must. I told him very gently what I had witnessed on my way to niy club, and what the woman writer of one of the letters alleged, which was that she and her sister, who lived in Marbury and could confirm the statement, had seen E., dressed as a clergyman (the writer of the letter called it "disguised as a clergyman”), rolling drunk in a side street off the Euston Road, whither the writer and her sister had gone on an errand of mercy.

Just as E.’s nerves steadied, his fidgeting and trembling ceased, and he went to work calmly, coolly, and with a steady hand, when about to operate, so—l had noticed this characteristic of his before—when a real and serious emergency threatened he rose to it- like another man.

“I have no explanation to offer to you, or to my other accusers,” he replied quietly. "I am not ” “I am not your accuser, Arthur,” I broke in. “I accuse you of nothing. I have done no more than tell you what I have chanced to witness, and I did not at the time, nor do I now, ask for any explanation, though an explanation honourable to yourself I am positive there is. The only reason why I have spoken now of what I saw, and up to now I have kept silent about it even to you, is because others say, are saying all over Marbury, that they have seen you under the influence of drink or in a drugged condition, and because the chairman of the hospital committee presses me, as your friend, and possibly to spare you a painful scene at the forthcoming meeting, to acquaint you with the position. For myself, I say only that were you to tell me that what they say of you is true, that I am to put the worst construction on what I saw, I should stand by my friend, and to the end. But one question there is I should like to ask you. I ask it in no distrust of you, and looking for no explanation, but merely as a question of facts, on which it is possible I am mistaken. When I first saw the man I believed to be you he was wearing a cap and. tweeds. Two hours later I saw, as I thought, the same man and in the same place, but then he was wearing a blue serge suit and a bowler hat. The second man, beyond a doubt, was you. Of that I am positive. What 1 want to ask you, and for the reason I have already given, is this: "Were these two men different inen, or were they one and the same?” "Please do not concern yourself to inquire further into the matter,” was his reply. “By doing so you will be making things more difficult, not easier, for me, as you will see for yourself when I say that the two men you saw that night were one and the same. I was that man, and for what that man did when you first saw him, and when you saw him later, I take all and full responsibility. I hav ® answered your question, as you wished me to do so. Now please let us talk of something else —about the hospital, if you like, since that is a matter which must be dealt with.” “Well,” I said. "What do you propose to do?” , - ' “Nothing,” he replied, except, of course, to resign my appointment, and never to set foot within the doors of the place again.” As he spoke, and as if some mocking fate sat at the other end of the chessboard of life, to say to her puny opponent, man, “You will do so and so, will you? That is for me, not for you, to decide. Wait for my next move ” a servant came to the door with a telephoned message from the hospital. A terrible railway accident had just occurred where the lines crossed, outside Marbury station many people, the fear was, being killed, and more injured. Dr. E.’s way to the hospital passed the scene of the disaster, would he stop there to do what could be done for those of the injured whose condition required attention before they were moved, and then come on with all haste to the hospital, as the number of the injured already being brought in was more than that with which the staff could deal? Except, to say to the servant, lelephone back, please, that I’m leaving for the scene of the accident instantly, and will come on to the hosptial as soon as possible,” E. made no comment, but took up his surgical case to add what was necessary, and left the h °By e one of life's ironies among the most seriously injured were his two “accusers,” the lay preacher and the woman who hail written letters demanding his resignation. They had been in the same compartment m the front of the train and, as one of them admitted afterward, were at the moment of the collision discussing ways and means by which E. could be so publiclv exposed that he would be com ; pelled to leave the town The case of the lay preacher was hopeless from the first, but all that could be done to aneviate his sufferings E. did and with a woman’s tenderness. His next patient—she had just been extricated from the wreckage—was the writer of the letter I had seen. She was in a critical condition, but conscious, and declared later that in other and less marvelously skilful hands than Ls she would have lost her life. But, her

testimony apart, before the day was over all Marbury was telling stories of E.’s wonderful skill in life-saving, and ringing with praises of the self-sacri-ficing devotion and tenderness with which he had tended the wounded. From the station, when his work there was done, he had gone to the hospital, remaining on duty all day and throughout the whole of the night, never stopping —so long as there was one patient whose suffering might be alleviated — for the restf the sleep, or the refreshment of which he must have been sorely iu need.

Then word went round that the lay preacher, before he died, had expressed sorrow and grief that he had written a letter making charges against E., which closer knowledge of the man himself convinced the lay preacher were, if not without foundation, at least capable of explanation. "1 ought,” he went on, “to have remembered that the Master whom I serve did not escape calumny; that they said even of Him, ‘Behold a winebibber, and a friend of publicans and sinners,’ and that sins were laid to His charge of which He was innocent.” It was known, too, that his woman accuser had not only said that she owed her life to E., but had also said to the nurses that lying there she had asked herself whether she had not acted uncharitably. Of what she and her sister had seen there must be an explanation, for she could not believe that a man who had shown such spirit of self-sacrifice could be the degraded creature she had thought him. Under the reaction in E.’s favour the townsfolk vied with each other in bearing witness to his good deeds. But once more fate intervened. A child from a town in the Midlands was injured in the accident and had been taken to the hospital. There she was recovering when she developed smallpox and was removed to the isolation ward. In the usual way she would have been under the care of the medical officer whose duty it was to attend infectious cases, but he, too, had been injured in the accident and was then in hospital. Worn out as Arthur E. was by strenuous days and sleepless nights, he attended the child, brought her safely through, but took the disease, and after a few days’ illness, died.

Of the sensation, consternation, and grief caused by the news of his death, and of the public funeral that was accorded to him—never had such a demonstration of universal respect and universal mourning, for men and women were weeping undisguisedly, been seen in Marbury—l will not write here. I pass on, instead, to tell of a sealed letter which, after his death, was forwarded to me by E.’s solicitors.- They informed me that he had handed it to them when on his way to pay his first professional visit to the smallpox-stricken child. The opening sentence ran:

“I have a presentiment that I- shall take the disease from the child I am going to attend, and shall die, which is why I have first to confess to you that my answer to the question you put to me about what you saw that night was a lie.” “That,” the letter continued, “is the only lie I ever told you. Now you shall hear the truth.” He had, he wrote, a twin-brother, so exactly like him in features, in figure, in colouring, in his way of carrying himself, and even in the twitching and restlessness of limb, that one might anywhere pass for the other.

“My brother,” E. wrote, “has been the cause of terrible anxiety, of terrible shame, to me. What I have suffered in trying to keep that shame from knowledge, and in the almost daily expectation of hearing his shame, and so my shame, proclaimed from the housetops, you will understand.

“Yet, what he has done and continues to do notwithstanding, I cannot think of my brother as a bad man. In all but one respect he is a better man than I. He is vicar of a small country parish, and though I have striven to take my own profession conscientiously I should be glad to think that I have always done my work as conscientiously as he for the most part has done his, and that I am as loved and trusted by my patients as he has been tor long years, by his people.

“But for some reason he has unaccountably changed within the last 12 months. Till then no word could have been breathed against him. It may be that the sudden death of his wife, an awful shock to him, has so preyed upon his mind as to affect his moral sense. Or the fact that since his wife’s death he has taken to dabbling in spiritualism—for spiritualists themselves warn the unwary of the danger of experimenting, ignorantly, in the occult —may have so affected a man constituted as he, nervous, sensitive, and impressionable to a degree, that he has become intermittently possessed. Evil spirits thus possessing men and women, we are explicitly told, there were in New Testament times, and what happened then may happen now, for human nature remains unchanged. “Be that as it may. my brother every now and then makes an excuse, or makes no excuse, to his people for neglecting them and his work to go to London that he may plunge into a debauch, sometimes of drink, sometimes of drugs, and sometimes of both. Then, as if the evil spirit possesses him —if a case of possession it be —had so exhausted my unhappy brother that he can no longer be used for the Thing’s purpose, the Thing leaves him, perhaps to seek entrance into some other personality, and my brother, horror-stricken at what he has done, returns to his home, once again to devote himself to his people and to his good work. “When he goes to London on these vicious errands, he takes with him generally non-clerical clothes, but does not always trouble to change, as I have reason to know, for on account of the extraordinary resemblance between us I have been charged with being seen, disguised as a clergyman, drunk and in discreditable company. But the resemblance between us is more than bodily. Begotten as we two were at one time, and born within a few minutes of each other, so great is our oneness of personality that, if either be ill or in trouble, the other instantly knows. He knows even the illness or the trouble which is affecting the other. Thus, I know, and to the moment, when my brother’s thoughts are turning to evil, and I have been able to prevent him from carrying his evil intention into effect until such time as the seizure passes and he returns conscience-stricken and despairing, but the evil mood gone, to his home, and in what is normally his right mind. “So remarkable is the telepathic communication between us that I know, especially when his seizures are approaching, the very place at

which he is to be found. That is j why you saw me in a side street near | your club that night. Owing to a breakdown on the line I arrived too late to prevent his carrying out his intention, for he was at that moment, and in the lowest of company, in a public house situate in the side street up which you saw me turn. When I told you that the two men you saw were one and the same man, and that man I, I lied. That a brother of mine, and that brother a minister of religion, should come to be known - I will not say for what he is, for I cannot think v>f that furtive, slinking, vice-seeking creature as my brother, but, even for what he seemed to be—has been to me a nightmare, a horror, an agony, almost too great to be endured. That is why I lied to you, and I think you will forgive. Now for my reason in at last, making the facts known to you. Only iq the event of my death will this letter come to your hand. In the other event, I shall reclaim and destroy it. But about the time I was summoned to the scene of the railway accident I knew by the strange telepathy which exists between him and me that one of my brother’s seizures was coming on and that only by hastening to his side could evil, perhaps an exposure, be prevented. “Again I say that only by hastening to my brother’s side could evil, perhaps exposure, be prevented. But my duty clearly was to the maimed and mangled sufferers by the accident. For the first time since these seizures came upon him I failed my brother in his need, though I knew only too well that on this occasion, and failing my restraining presence, he would so recklessly plunge into evil as to come within reach of the law. He has come within reach of the law-—has been in the hands of the police, and has now been released on bail that further inquiries may be made. “The horrible secret I have striven so desperately to guard is common property in the village In which he lives. Soon it will be common property in Marbury. “Then came word that the child in the hospital had developed smallpox. It was too late then to save my brother. Upon his life and upon my life the shame that I so dreaded had come, but this young and unsullied life I believe it is within my power to save. If Ido so at the cost of my own, what matters? Another than I, one not hopelessly broken in nerve as I now am, one with the calm and controlled brain which now I have not, can do what can be done for my brother better than I can. My will is made, and I have left everything to you in trust for my brother, for as he can no longer remain a beneficed clergyman he will be without means of support. I am asking much of you, but you have never failed me in friendship. Will you see to it that now and hereafter he has no more money in hand than is actually needed? Temptation must not be put in his way by any margin which might be miss-spent. Do as you think best about showing this letter to others, especially to those representing him legally, for to plead that he is irresponsible seems to me the only possible line of defence. Do all you can to induce others not to think too harshly of him. Remind them of the beauty of his life and character, his selfless devotion to his people, and their love and reverence for him before this terrible thing befell him. See him as soon as you can after this letter comes to your hand, and break gently to him the news of my death. Say that I sent him my love and that my steadfast belief is that what he has done was done by something other than himself and that by discontinuing the practices which brought him within the Thing’s power, and by constancy in prayer under temptation, the victory will be his and he may yet come to be as beloved and revered as before. You, who are stronger of will than I, may be a greater restraining power and influence for good upon him than I, who am so miserably weak, have ever been; and though you will not know, as I have known, the day and the hour of his temptation, I know that you will stand by him and do all you can to strengthen him in his need. For what you have done for me, and that for my sake you will do for my brother, my gratitude and love. I shall be dead when this reaches you, so God bless you, and good-bye.”

Later I found the facts to be axactly as E. had said. His brother had been arrested in London and then released on bail. But I did not see the brother. He had developed symptoms closely and strangely resembling, but not actually those of, smallpox, and had died on the same day, at the same hour, at the same moment that his twin brother, my friend Dr. E., had died at Marbury. —From “The Australasian.”