The Blue Wall

What's behind this wall?

As I write, here in my surgeon's study, I ask myself that question. What's behind it? My neighbors? Then what do I know-really know-of them? After all, this wall which rises beyond my desk, the wall against which my glass case of instruments rests, symbolizes the boundary of knowledge-seemingly an opaque barrier. I am called a man of science, a man with a passion for accuracies. I seek to define a part of the limitless and undefined mysteries of the body. But what is behind the wall? Are we sensitive to it? You smile. Give your attention then to a narrative of facts.

How little we know what influence the other side has upon us or we upon the human beings beyond this boundary. We think it is opaque, impassable. I am writing of the other wall. There was a puzzle! The wall of the Marburys!...

Here I risk my reputation as a scientific observer. But that is all; I offer no conclusions. I set down in cold blood the bare facts. They are fresh enough in my memory. All seasons are swift when a man slips into age and it was only four short years ago that this happened-so marvelous, so suggestive of the things that we may do without knowing-mark me! the things we may accomplish-beyond the wall!

You will see what I mean when I make a record of those strange events. They began when poor MacMechem-an able practitioner he was, too-was thrown from his saddle horse in the park and died in the ambulance before they could get him to the Matthews Hospital. I inherited some of his cases, and Marbury was one of those who begged me to come in at the emergency. It was meningitis and it is out of my line. Perhaps the Marbury wealth influenced me; perhaps it was because the banker-of course I am not using the real names-went down on his knees on this very rug which is under my feet as I write. There is such a thing as a financial face. You see it often enough among those who deal with loans, percents, examiners, and the market. It's the face of terror peering through a heavy mask of smugness, and it was dreadful to see it looking up at me.... I yielded.

The Marburys' house faces the group of trees which shade the very spot where MacMechem's horse went insane. It is one of a block where each residence represents a different architect-a sort of display of individuality and affluence squeezed together like fancy crackers packed in a box. My machine used to wait for me by the hour in front of the pretentious show of flowers, tub-evergreens, glass and bronze vestibules, and the other conventional paraphernalia of our rich city successes.

It was their little girl. She was eight, I think, and her beauty was not of the ordinary kind. Sometimes there rises out of the coarse, undeveloped blood of peasants, or the thin and chilly tissue of families going to seed, some extraordinary example like my little friend Virginia. The spirit that looks out of eyes of profound depth, the length of the black lashes lying upon a cheek of marvelous whiteness, the delicate lines of the little body which delight the true artist, the curve of the sensitive lips, the patient calm of personality suggesting a familiarity with other worlds and with eternity, makes a strong impression upon a medical man or surgeon who deals with the thousands of human bodies, all wearing somewhere the repulsive distortions of civilization. The ordinary personality stripped of the pretense which cannot fool the doctor, appears so hysterical, so distorted by the heats of self-interest, so monkey-like!

Oh, well,-she was extraordinary! I was impressed from the moment when, having reread MacMechem's notes on the case under the lamp, and then having crossed the blue-and-gold room to the other wall, I drew aside the corners of an ice pack and gazed for the first time upon little Virginia.

When I raised my glance I noticed the mother for the first time. I might have stopped then to wonder that this child was her daughter, for the woman was one of those who with a fairly refined skill endeavor to retain the appearance of youth. I knew her history. I knew how her feet had moved-it always seems to me so futilely-through miles and miles and miles of dance on polished floors and her mouth in millions of false smiles. She had been débutante, belle, coquette, old maid. Marbury had married her when wrinkles already were at her chin and her hands had taken on the dried look which no fight against age can truly conceal; then after six years of longing for new hopes in life she had had a single child.

Just as she turned to go out, I saw her eyes upon me, dry, unwinking. But I know the look that means that death is unthinkable, that a woman has concentrated all her love on one being. It is not the appeal of a man or woman-that look. Her eyes were not human. I tell you, they were the praying eyes of a thoroughbred dog!

I knew I must fight with that case-put strength into it-call upon my own vitality....

The bed on which Virginia lay was placed sideways along the wall-as I have said-the Marburys' wall. I drew a chair close to it, and before I looked again at the child I glanced up at the nurse to be sure of her character. Perhaps I should say that I found her to be a thin-lipped person not over thirty, with long, square-tipped fingers, eyes as cold as metal, and colorless skin of that peculiar texture which always denotes to me an unbreakable vitality and endurance, and perhaps a mind of hard sense. Her name was Peters.

MacMechem's notes on the case, which I still held in my hand, set forth the usual symptoms-headache, inequality of the eye pupils, vertigo, convulsions. He had determined that the variety was not the cerebro-spinal or epidemic form. He had tapped the spinal canal with moderate results. According to his observations and those of the nurse there was an intermittent coma. For hours little Virginia would lie unconscious, and restless, suffering failing strength and a slow retraction of the head and neck, or on other occasions she would rest in absolute peace, so that the disease, which depends so much upon strength, would later show improvement. The cause of this case, he believed, was either an abscess of the ear which had not received sufficient treatment-probably owing to the fact that the child, though abnormally sensitive, had always masked her sufferings under her quiet and patience, or a blow on her head not thought of consequence at the time it had happened.

Well, I happened to turn the notes over and, by George!-there was the first signal to me. It was scrawled hastily in the characteristic nervous hand,-a communication from poor Mac, a question but also a sort of command,-like a message from the grave!

These were the words,-"What keeps her alive? What is behind the Marburys' wall?"

They startled me. "Behind the wall?" I said to myself. "Behind the wall? What wall?"

There were the scientific notes he had made! Then at the end a sane and eminent doctor had written shocking gibberish. "What's behind the wall?"

"Come here," I called to that grim machine, the nurse.

She came, looked over my shoulder at my finger pointing at the words, and her face filled with a dreadful expression of apprehension, all the more uncouth because it sat upon a countenance habitually blank. She did not answer. She pointed. I looked up. And then I knew that the wall in question was that blank expanse of pale blue, that noncommittal wall that rose beside the bed, at one moment flat, hard, and impenetrable, at another with the limitless depths and color of a summer sky.

"Turn up that light a little," said I uneasily. "What has this wall to do with us?"

"Nothing," said Miss Peters. "Nothing. I refuse to recognize such a thing."

"Then, what did Dr. MacMechem see?" I asked.

"He saw nothing," she answered. "It is the child who knows that something is beyond that wall. It is her delirium. There is no sense in it. She believes some one is there. She has tried to explain. She puts her hands upon that surface and smiles, or sometimes her face, as she looks, will all screw up in pain. It has a strange effect upon her."

"How?" said I. "You are impressed, too, eh? Well, how does it show? MacMechem was no fool. Speak."

The raw-boned woman shivered a little, I thought. "That's what causes me to wonder, Doctor," she said. "There is an effect upon her. She can foretell the condition of her disease. She seems conscious that her life depends on the welfare of something else or the misfortune and suffering of something else-beyond-that-wall."

"Poppycock!" I growled at her. "It's a pretty pass when sane medical men in their practice begin to fancy-"

"Sh-sh!" she said, interrupting me sharply. "See! Now the child is conscious! Watch!"

I drew back a little from the bedside as Virginia stirred, but I could see the milk-white lids of her eyes-eyes, as I have said, deep and blue and intense like the wall behind her, with their long black lashes. Her slender body shook as if she was undergoing the first rippling torsions of a convulsion. Her face was drawn into such an expression as one might imagine would appear on the face of an angel in agony, and then, gradually, as some renewed circulation relaxed the nerve centres, her breath was expelled with a long patient sigh. And this I noticed,-she did not turn toward us, but with an almost imperceptible twist of her body and the reaching of her little hands she sought the wall.

I confess I half believed that she would float off into the infinite blue of the plaster and be lost in its depths. I found my own eyes following hers. I felt, I think, that I too was conscious of some dreadful or marvelous, horrible or inspiring something behind the partition; but in light of subsequent discoveries my memory may have been distorted. Besides, I have promised none but the cold-blooded facts and I need only assert that the little girl looked, moved her lips, stretched her arms, and then suddenly, as if she had sensed some agony, some fearful turbulence, she cried out softly, her face grew white, her upper lip trembled, she fell back, if one may so speak of an inch of movement, and lay panting on her pillow. The nurse, I think, seized the moment to renew the cold applications. Yet I, who had scoffed, who had sneered at poor MacMechem's perplexity, stood looking at that blank blue wall, expecting to see it become transparent, to see it open and some uncanny thing emerge, holding out to little Virginia a promise of life or a sentence of death.

My first instinct would have endeavored to shake off the question of the other side of that wall. I would, perhaps, if younger, have rejected the whole impression, declared the girl delirious, and would not now be reciting a story, the conclusion of which never fails to catch my breath. But mine is an empirical science. We deal not so much with weights and measures as with illusive inaccuracies. To be exact is to be a failure. To reject the unknown is to remain a poor doctor, indeed. The issue in this case was defined. Either the congestion of the membranes in the spinal cord was producing a persistent hallucination or else there was, in fact, something going on behind that wall. Either an influence was affecting the child from within or an influence was affecting her from without. I was mad to save her. Even a doctor who habitually views patients and data cards with the same impersonal regard may sometimes feel a call to work for love. And I loved that little child. I meant to exhaust the possibilities. As poor MacMechem had asked the question, I asked it.

I touched Virginia's hands with the tips of my fingers. Her eyes turned toward me, and again I was sure that no madness was in them. You, too, would have said that, awakened from the intermittent coma, the little thing, though mute and helpless, was none the less still the mistress of her thoughts.

"You have not asked her?" I inquired of Miss Peters.

The woman, folding her arms, at the same time shook her head solemnly.

"No," she said as if she disapproved.

But I bent over Virginia. "I am the new doctor," I said. "Do you understand?"

She smiled, and, I tell you, no monster could have resisted that tenderness.

"What is there?" I whispered, pointing with my free hand.

Her eyes opened as children's eyes will do in the distress of innocence; her feeble hand moved in mine as a little weak animal might move. Her face refilled with pain.

"Something is there," she whispered.

"What?"

She shook her head weakly.

The nurse touched my elbow. I thanked her for reminding me of the chances I was taking with the little girl's quiet. I left instructions; then, perhaps not wholly at peace with myself, I crept softly down the stairs. I did not wish an interview with Mrs. Marbury. I did not wish to see that begging look on her face. I would have been glad to have escaped Marbury himself.

He was waiting for me. He waited at the bottom of the steps with that smug financial face of his-a mask through which, in that moment, the warmth of suffering and love seemed struggling to escape. He was plucking, from his thin crop, gray hairs that he could ill afford to lose.

I anticipated his questions.

"It is a matter of conservation of strength," I told him; "a question of mental state, a question of the nervous system. No man can answer now-beforehand."

He drew out his watch and looked at it without knowing what he did or why or observing the hour.

"By the way," said I, "who lives next door-in there?"

"Who?" he answered. "Why, the Estabrooks."

"A large family?"

"Two. Jermyn Estabrook and his wife. They were married six years ago and have lived there ever since. We know them very little. His father has never forgiven my objection to his membership on a certain directorate in 1890. The wife was the daughter of Colfax, the probate judge. They have no children. But perhaps you know as well as I."

"No," said I, studying his face. "I know nothing of them. Are they happy? Is there anything to lead you to believe that some tragedy hangs over them?"

For a moment he looked at me as if he believed me insane; then he laughed nervously.

"Bless me, no," he said. "Imagine a couple very happy together, surrounded by influences the most refined, leading a conservative life well intrenched as to money, the husband a partner and heir-apparent to an important law practice, the wife an attractive young woman who rides well and cares little for excitement. You will have imagined the Estabrooks."

"They and their servants are in the house?"

"Yes. Possibly Jermyn is away just now. I think I heard so. But I do not know."

His words seemed to clear away the chance of any extraordinary abnormal situation beyond the wall.

"What is the mystery?" he asked nervously.

I can hear the querulous tone of his voice now; I can see the tapestry that hangs above the table in their hall.

"Thank you," I said, without answering. And so I left him.

Outside, I stopped a moment to look up at that house next door.

It was October tenth. I remember the date well. The good moon was shining, for it has the decency to bathe with its light these cities we make as well as God's fields. It lit up the front of the residence so that I could see that, perhaps of all in the block, the Estabrooks' was the plainest, the most modest, with its sobriety of architecture and simplicity, and on the whole the most respectable of all. It seemed to insure tranquillity, refinement, and peace to its owner. I tell you that at that moment, with my chauffeur coughing his hints behind me, I felt almost ashamed for the fancies that had led me to find a mystery behind its stones and mortar.

And then, as suddenly as I speak, I realized that a window on the second floor was being opened gently. I saw two hands rest for a moment on the sill, some small object was dropped into the grass below, and my ears were shocked by a low cry of suffering with which few of the millions which I have heard could be compared!

It is always so, I find. We are ever forced by pure reason away from those delicate subconscious whisperings. I had sensed something beyond the wall, and as science, after all, is not so much truth as a search for truth, I would perhaps have done well to have retained an open mind. Instead, I had sneered at the whole idea. And to rebuke me the house, as if it were itself a personality, had for a fleeting second disclosed the presence of some hidden secret. The window was closed, and then I stood upon the deserted thoroughfare, the hum of my fretting limousine behind me, staring up at the moonlit front of the Estabrooks' home. You may be sure that it was with a mind full of speculations that I left the spot, asking myself as MacMechem had asked himself, what was behind the wall, what was the thing which was determining the question of the life or death of so lovable a child as little Virginia Marbury....

It is already raining. As I write again, the slap of it on the window makes one feel the possibilities of loneliness in city life....

It is hard for me to describe what a fascination there is in campaigning against death in those special extraordinary cases where the doctor becomes something more than a man of science and is also a man of affections. It is impossible to describe the irritation of being unable to act in cases like Virginia's-cases where the fight is made between strength of body and mind, on the one hand, and some deep-seated infection, like meningitis, on the other. I was more than anxious for the late afternoon hour when I could again go to the child. Her blue eyes, as deep and mysterious as the sea, called to me, if I may use that word. And there was something else that called to me as well-the blue wall-blank blue wall beyond the bed.

I found Miss Peters there, sitting in the patient's room and the gathering gloom of dusk, her muscular hands flattened upon her knees in the position of a red granite Rameses from the Nile, looking out the window at the waving treetops of the park and the clouds of falling leaves which were being driven by the dismal October wind across the white radiance of the arc lamps. I thought that I detected upon her metallic face a faint gleam of pleasure.

"It has been a good day," she said, without rising and with her characteristic brusqueness. "Mrs. Marbury is glad that you have not suggested a hospital, and desired me to say so." Indicating the bed with its inert little human body she added, "Peaceful."

"The wall?" said I.

She smiled insultingly.

"You are interested?" she asked.

I scowled, I think.

"Oh, well," she said, moving her shoulders, "she has been talking to it,-whatever is behind there,-and, do you know, I believe it has been talking to her!"

With those deliberate movements which characterized, I suppose, the movements of her mind itself, she lit the light; under its yellow rays lay the girl Virginia, her long lashes fringing her translucent eyelids, her delicately turned mouth with lips parted, and an expression of peace about the whole of her body.

"At twelve to-day," said the nurse with her finger on the chart, "she went through apparent distress. Something seemed to give her the greatest anxiety. She even spoke to me twice. She pointed. She said, 'It is bad! It is bad!' with great vehemence. It was like that for more than an hour. Then suddenly she became peaceful. She went to sleep. I have not wakened her since."

Maybe I shuddered. I remember I merely said in answer, "Yes, yes, that's all right!" and bent over the sleeping child. In the next moment I was lost in wonder at the improvement which had taken place in twenty-four hours. The tension and retraction of the neck and head had relaxed, respiration had diminished, the lips were pink and moist, the spasmodic nerve reaction and muscular twitching had almost ceased. I felt that exultation which comes when instinct as much as specific observation assures me that the tide has turned, that the arrow of fate has swung about, and the odds have changed. Strange as it may seem to many persons, these turns are felt by the doctor at times when the patient is wholly unconscious of them, and often enough I have wondered if, after all, this does not show that the crises of life are not determined within ourselves, but by some watching eye and mind and hand outside of us. As I bent over the little Virginia some such reflection was in my mind.

Then you can imagine, perhaps, how startling, how much an answer to my unspoken question, was the sound which at that very moment came from the blue wall beyond the bed!

How can we analyze our sense of hearing? Do you know the sound of your wife's footsteps? When you were young, could you pick out the approach of your father by the sound of his walk? Yes. But can you tell how? Are you able to say what it is that distinguishes it from the sounds a hundred other men would make going by your closed door? No. And neither can I tell you why I recognized this sound.

All that I can say is this,-the wall was opaque, the sound so faint as to be hardly heard, and yet I knew, as well as if the partition had been of plate glass, that the impact was that of a human body!...

There was something in this sound on the wall which drew an involuntary exclamation from me as the jar of forceps draws a tooth. And the sound of my voice, sharp and explosive, woke the child.

She stared up at me with that strange look of infinity-I must so describe it-infinity; then, as if she too had heard, she turned toward the wall.

"What do you see?" I asked near her ear.

She gave me one of her tender smiles and made a little gesture as if to say that she felt her inability to express something.

"It is there?" I asked, indicating the blank wall at last.

Her eyes sought that space of mysterious blue. Then she whispered, "Yes."

I must say that, though I knew no more than I had at first, I derived some satisfaction from the mere fact that for the second time Virginia had confirmed the extraordinary belief or fancy which had possessed prosaic MacMechem, the unimaginative Miss Peters, and, finally, myself. It seemed to justify positive steps in an investigation; after a further examination of the little body on the bed which offered still better evidence of an improvement in the course of the malady, I left the Marburys' door, determined to settle the question once and for all.

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