Part 37

She looked across at her husband. He was sitting near the medium, engaging her in talk, and it seemed as if his words were the mere play of his graceful fingers, on one of which the ring was flashing, as if dominating the whole. Then the woman’s heart was overcome with a strange sad feeling, stilling the fever in her breast--a feeling of lofty womanly sympathy. He seemed such a child, she said to herself. “Without me he would be defenceless. He is like a hoop rolling down the street, its course determined by the obstacles and unevennesses in its path.”

With this feeling upon her, she experienced a renewed glow as she thought of her encounter with the dancer; she was lifted out of her everyday existence, borne onward as in a mighty rush of passion, then again becoming cool and collected as at the contact with something cold and forbidding. It seemed to her then that she was struggling to reach her husband and ever as she approached him she was driven back, encountering the inflexible and steely glance of the man beside her.

Mabuse grew more and more silent. He ate nothing, and he took no pains to conceal his taciturnity. On the contrary, he seemed, as it were, to strive to impress it upon the whole company, just as a mighty African potentate might exercise his tyranny on his patient and long-suffering followers, and the very actions of the others served to accentuate this attitude of adoration of a superior force.

Count Told alone seemed to trifle with graceful gestures about the medium, who, black-haired and deadly pale, kept her unwieldy form pressed close to his side, seeming to have eyes for no other. Then the Countess felt that she hated the man who sat beside her in his sullen mood while her husband’s attitude was thus bordering on the ridiculous. And yet it was not hate she felt, but the inward conflict between the desire to yield herself to the domination of a self-sufficing and stronger heart and brain and resistance to the impulse of subjugation.

The supper-table was cleared and the company stood around talking for a while. Mabuse had left his table-companion and sought the society of Count Told. He engaged him in a discourse on the psychological aspect of gambling.

“I am a born gambler,” said the Count. “When I am losing, I remain as cold as ice, but when I am winning my brain lights up and my phantasies are redoubled.”

Then Mabuse said: “Games of chance are the oldest form, the strongest and most widespread form, in which a man who is not gifted with artistic expression may yet feel himself an artist.”

“That is an interesting idea,” said the Count; “pray follow it up a little further.”

“It is because in a game of chance every man feels that he can force himself to a creative act. Creation, through the principle which underlies all life, draws its force from the parallel powers of volition and accident. By accident we must understand all that is untried, immeasurable, strange, and impossible of expression in itself. This is, too, the mental process of creative work, to which nature has lent a portion of primal force, the work of the artist! Between the poles of volition and accident this power is wielded as in a state of trance. Goethe confessed that to be the case with himself when he was composing his poems. In games of chance there is a like synthesis. Accident gives the player his material--it may be trifling and insignificant, or it may be of dominating power. The player sets his will to work to accomplish a creation of his own from his material.”

“You are a poet yourself, Doctor?”

“Oh, no, I am a physician practising psychotherapy.”

“Such people are our most modern poets. For they give our knowledge of the unconscious, or rather the subconscious, its perceptible form, and the subconscious world, which is now firmly established, produces our psychic existence. We will have a game of baccarat afterwards, shall we not?”

“Agreed!”

The hypnotic subject was about to begin her test. A doctor led her forward and threw her into a hypnosis in which she would recall her wonderful recollections. On the first evening, as Count Told informed Mabuse in an awestruck whisper, she had related her mental experiences during her first attempts to walk.

While the Count was speaking he felt an unnatural warmth stealing over the back of his head. He turned round, but there was nothing behind him save the tapestried wall, upon which pictures of the old school, to which he was quite indifferent, were hanging.

The patient did not respond to the hypnotist’s suggestions. She did indeed fall into a state of trance, but all the spectators could see that gradually the expression of her eyes indicated that she was returning from a far-off view, until suddenly they looked straight ahead and were wide awake again, awake and indignant.

“Someone is tormenting me,” she said.

“No one is tormenting you,” said the hypnotist in a monotonous and measured tone. “We are guiding you to the early home of your youth--one, two, three ... you are sleeping--one, two ... you are sleeping!”

He passed his hand slowly and lightly over her forehead, continuing to count, “Three ... one ... two ... where are you now?--how old are you?”

“I am ten months and three days old.”

“What did your mother do this morning when she took you out of the cradle?”

“She unwrapped me and hurt me and ... and ...” She breathed a deep sigh, then awoke suddenly and said, “There is someone here who ought to go away. Who is tormenting me?”

“We can obtain no results to-day. There are some disturbing influences which I do not recognize and therefore cannot remove,” said the hypnotist.

The Privy Councillor approached Mabuse. “How would it be, Doctor, if you were to make an attempt? After the tests of your power which I have already seen, I think we can promise to get rid of these disturbing influences,” he said.

Mabuse declared himself willing to try, at any rate, though he could not vouch for the result, as he was suffering from a slight chill which affected his head. He at once took a short step towards the medium, however, and they saw that she moved slightly in his direction as if attracted by a magnet. Mabuse did not utter a word, but he let his glance wander over part of her body. The girl became even paler than before, if possible, and although she made no movement, it was easy to see that she struggled against something invisible, that her resistance grew quickly weaker and that her eyes fell before him.

Then Mabuse said in a rapid and violent tone: “You are lying in swaddling clothes. Your arms are bound fast to your side. You are six months’ old. It is evening, and you are crying. Why are you crying?”

And from the heavy body of this girl, sleeping with wide-open eyes, there came a piping, fretful voice: “I have a pain in my stomach.”

“That is only wind. You’ve had too much to drink. Who gave it you?”