The Fate of Felix Brand

“Yes, I wondered what it would be like really to be somebody else now and then. The dream was no more real to me than any dream ever is, and if I could let myself be this other individuality for a little while awake it seemed to me that it would be a wonderful experience – something that nobody else had ever had. One morning last fall I woke up with the remembrance of such a dream particularly vivid and the impression of this other personality stronger than it had ever been. It seemed to me that if I so much as shut my eyes I’d drift off into this other being. While I was dressing I thought I’d just try it and see what would happen. I was getting ready to shave and as I made up my mind, or, rather, took down my determination against it, I happened to look at the bright blade of my razor. It seemed as if my eyes fairly stuck fast to it for a moment and – the thing was done.”

The doctor nodded. “Yes. Self-hypnosis. Go on. The case is most interesting.”

“Well, for about an hour I was – the Lord knows where or what. When I came to myself again I had no recollection of what had taken place. Except for the clock I wouldn’t have known that any time at all had passed. I found that I had shaved myself, and had left my mustache, but what else I had done I don’t know. I tried it again a little later, hoping I might, if I knew what was coming, be aware of what happened. But I wasn’t. I completely lost my own consciousness for that time.

“Then this – this creature was able, after that, to come out of his own will, without my giving permission. He would come while I was asleep, at first only for a few hours, and he would usually leave a letter for me in the room telling me what he had done and what he wanted me to do. He called himself ‘Hugh Gordon’ and always signed his letters that way.

“At first I thought this was rather amusing. But each time that he came his power grew stronger, and so did his desire for an independent existence. Before long he was taking possession of my body for a day or two at a time, going out and following his own affairs. He bought a suit of gray clothes – he seemed to want everything different from me – and when at last he was able to keep himself going for a week or two he had my hair cut short and let a mustache grow, and began sending his damned insolent letters through the mail to my office.

“Now you know, Dr. Annister, why I couldn’t explain my absences any better. Each time that he pushes me down and gets possession of my body he keeps it longer. Now he’s threatening me with annihilation. He says that the next time he comes he’s going to stay. And I’m at the end of my strength, doctor. I’ve fought him back, and he’s fought to get out, for hours, and days. It’s worst at night, because, so far, the change has always taken place when I was asleep. For the last two nights I have not slept – I’ve been afraid to close my eyes. I’ve tramped up and down my apartment and I’ve drank brandy and I’ve gone around town and raised hell. But I can’t fight him off much longer and I’ve got to have some sleep. Unless you can help me I’ve come to the end.”

Dr. Annister was looking at him gravely, sympathetically, the deepest interest manifest in his countenance. “I hope I can help you, Felix. I hope I can. We’ll try. I wish you had come to me with this long ago. It might have been easier. But I need to know still more about it. The case is very peculiar, very interesting, and it has features that differentiate it from any other that has been studied by any physician. These dreams that the whole thing seems to have grown out of – try to remember, Felix, were they preceded by any severe nervous shock, an illness, anything that might have aided in the breaking up of your personality?”

Brand hesitated and a faint color crept into his face. He knew when they began and it was a thing he did not like to think of, even now, after so many years and the change which these later months had made in his character. But the doctor’s gaze was upon him and he felt compulsion in it.

“I think,” he said slowly, “it must have been perhaps twenty years or more ago. I had just entered my teens. My sister and I were in a tree in our yard and she fell out and was badly hurt. She – she has never recovered. It was a good deal of a shock to me. I began to notice the dreams soon afterward. But they weren’t very frequent.”

“Just so. It might have been that.” The doctor was tapping his finger-tips together thoughtfully. There was something he wanted to know, which he must find out. But he did not believe that the man before him would answer truthfully the questions he needed to ask. So he decided to experiment in another direction. “This – this other you,” he went on, “this Hugh Gordon, came to see me once and – ”

“Don’t call him my other self!” Felix cried out angrily, jumping to his feet and scowling. “He is a thief, a murderer! He has stolen my good name, my money, my body, he is trying to kill me! I know he came here and tried to poison your feeling against me – and I think he must have succeeded, too. He has tried to set my own mother and sister against me in that same way. He goes snooping out to their home and makes them believe all sorts of tales about me. He’s even been whispering his lies into the ear of my secretary, until she’s going to leave me.”

In his rage, which grew with each fresh accusation that he brought against his enemy, Brand was rushing about with uneven steps and now and then smiting a table or a chair with his fist. “He is determined to pull me down and cover me with disgrace and then annihilate me for his own benefit. Damn him, I won’t have him spoken of as my other self!”

“Try to be calm, Felix,” urged the doctor quietly. “You only make your task the harder every time you give up to such outbursts of rage.” He was looking at the other’s trembling hands and working face and thinking that here was at least a beginning of what he wished to know.

“Has this abnormal condition affected you in the exercise of your special gift?” he asked. Brand’s face brightened and his manner quieted at once.

“Ah! That’s something he’s not been able to filch from me, the damned thief!” he exclaimed exultantly as he seated himself again. “I’ve kept all the talent I ever had in that line, and it has developed and increased wonderfully – I don’t mean to boast, Dr. Annister, but I know what I’m talking about – since this has been going on. If you saw the pictures that were published and the things all the critics said of me a few weeks ago you would know that is true. I’m astonished myself lately at the ease, the rapidity and the success with which I work. But it’s all he has not stolen,” Brand continued more gloomily. “He has taken all my business sense. I used to have a good deal of it. I could make money and I would soon have been a rich man. Now I’m getting poorer every day, and he’s getting rich.”

“Yes, I see.” The physician was nodding and softly beating his fingers together. “I get an idea of how the cleavage has been. Your nature was broken into two parts – as clean and sharp and complete a break as in any case I know of. Our task now is to reunite them and make a whole man again out of the halves into which you have separated.”

Brand leaned forward eagerly. “Then you’ll help me?” he demanded. “You won’t go over to his side? The damned hypocrite! He says he is more entitled to life than I am, because he’s a better man, because he wants to do good. Why, Doctor, in the last letter he sent me – ” Brand’s anger was rising again – “he ordered me to make my will, and to leave a letter for some one that would explain my disappearance so that it would be known that I was gone for good, that I was never coming back!” The physician held his patient with a calm gaze and made a sign that he was to control himself. And in a moment Felix sank back into his seat, trembling with the reaction from his burst of temper, and imploring the other for the gift of a longer lease of life.

“You’ll send him back to where he came from, won’t you, Dr. Annister? You won’t let him have his will over me?”

“We can succeed,” the doctor assured him in confident tones, “if you will do your part. You must control yourself at all times. Try to strengthen your enfeebled will power. Live quietly, sanely, and a clean, moral life. I don’t believe you’ve been doing that, Felix.”

“Oh, I’ve had to keep some excitement going. I’ve motored like the devil all around New York, and when I could have pleasant company with me that helped to hold that damned creature down as much as anything. Some people were better than others. Miss Marne’s sister, a jolly girl, especially if I fed her with champagne while we were out, was very useful and she saved me several times. But the last time it was a failure. She seemed to be afraid of me and though I made her drink wine till she was drunk, it was no good. I came back no better off than I was before.”

Dr. Annister made a sudden movement and looked at his watch. He was conscious of an irruption of unprofessional loathing into his feeling for his patient. He was wondering how much this callous disregard of everything but his own interest was due to his abnormal condition and how much to his innate selfishness; and his thoughts flew to his own cherished daughter.

“Well, Felix,” he said rising, “I’m due – I’ve barely time to make it – at a consultation over an important case, so that we can’t go any farther into this now. But I can help you. I’m sure I can, if you will follow orders. I shall try hypnosis. It’s the only thing we know, yet, that really has much effect. But some wonderful cures have been made with it. Come back tonight. My evening office hour is from eight to nine. Come about nine o’clock, so that I can take you the last one and have plenty of time for experiment. And there’s another thing, Felix, – ah!” He stopped suddenly, as a little spasm of pain crossed his face, and pressed his hand against his heart. “It’s nothing,” he went on deprecatingly, at the other’s look of inquiry. “This little organ in here,” and he patted his breast, “reminds me of its existence, once in a while, lately. I’m ordered to take a rest, and I suppose I’ll have to before long.”

“You’re not going away?” Brand queried anxiously. “You won’t go till after you’ve fixed me up?”

“I can’t go for some time – unless I have to. And don’t mention it to Mildred or Mrs. Annister. Now, about that other thing. I must insist, Felix, that you release Mildred from this engagement between you. I have let it go on against my own judgment too long already, because I was hoping that time would lessen her infatuation. But in the light of all that you have just told me it is impossible – it must not continue another day. You ought to see yourself how unfair it would be to her.”

“But suppose,” said Brand, with the suggestion of a sneer in his voice, “that Mildred should not wish to be released?”

The doctor pressed his lips together and his gray eyes flashed. His pale face looked very weary. “Her wishes can make no difference now,” he replied decisively. “Write to her and say that you wish to end the engagement. Make any excuse that you like. But you must not see her again. That is final, Felix. Good-bye. I’ll see you tonight.”

CHAPTER XXI

Hugh Gordon Tells His Story

Dr. Annister dismissed his last patient and looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock and Felix Brand, he thought, was probably in the waiting room. His face was even paler than usual and its deep lines told of pain, anxiety and spent strength. He sat down, his head upon his hand and his thoughts upon his daughter.

“Poor child!” he said to himself. “It will go hard with her. But there can be no ‘ifs’ or ‘ands’ about it now. Her mother must take her away where there will be no possibility of her seeing him again. Poor little girl!”

He rose with a weary sigh and crossed to the door into the waiting room. As he threw it open a man at the farther side of the room arose and came toward him with a quick, firm stride and a confident manner. He saw at once that it was not Felix Brand.

“Good evening, Dr. Annister,” said the stranger. “I know you were expecting to see Mr. Brand, but I have come in his place. I am Hugh Gordon.”

“I am glad to see you, Mr. Gordon,” the doctor replied, his interest at once at high pitch. “You can tell me the other side of the case. I met you once before, I believe. Will you come in?”

The physician cast a keen glance at his visitor and said to himself, astonished, that he would never have believed this physical envelope to be the same that housed the man with whom he had talked a few hours before. Feature and coloring were there, it was true, but a different soul animated the body and lighted the countenance and made of the whole another man. The tell-tale signs of evil living had vanished from the face, and so also had its expression of ultra refinement and sensitiveness, while in the eyes no longer shone that winning, caressing look which had been a magnet for the hearts of women. This man held his head high, his eyes were keen, penetrating, virile, and in his countenance the doctor read sincerity, forcefulness, determination. “‘As he thinketh in his heart, so is he’,” Dr. Annister mused as he leaned forward to listen to what the young man was saying.

“I have come to tell you the truth about this matter, so that you can see for yourself that Felix Brand is not worth saving. You promised him this morning that you would help him. But when you hear what I can tell you I have no doubt you will feel, as I do, that he deserves the fate he has brought upon himself and that the world will be better to be rid of him.”

“One moment,” said the doctor. “Were you aware of all that passed between us this morning? Do you know all that happens to him?”

“Everything he thinks and says and does I know, and I have always known. That is one of the reasons why I have determined that he must go. I will no longer be a witness within his body of his evil deeds. I am never unconscious, as he is always when he goes under. And that is why, also, I am able to tell you the simple truth. It is not so strange a story as you may think. I wonder sometimes why something of the sort has not happened to many a man.

“It began with that incident about his sister of which he told you. But it wasn’t an accident. He wanted her seat on the limb of the tree and when she wouldn’t give it to him he pushed her off. She was almost killed and was crippled for life. But nobody, except him and her and me, has ever known that it was not an accident. He surrendered to selfishness and cowardice and for the first time in his life denied his conscience. That was the beginning of me, and of all that has happened since.”

Dr. Annister was leaning forward, almost out of his chair, and so intense was the interest with which he was listening that his pale face was alight and its lines of anxiety and fatigue smoothed out.

“I see!” he exclaimed eagerly. “I begin to understand how it was. The shock, the struggle within himself and the revulsion of his conscience from the victory won by the worse side of his nature started up a new center, or threw off a new nebula, of consciousness – we can only vaguely guess at the process. It proved strong enough to form within his brain the embryo of another individuality.

“I have thought sometimes – ” the doctor stopped for a moment, his attention turning inwards again, while his elbows sought the arms of the chair and his finger-tips came together. “I am beginning to believe,” he went on, his gaze fixed high up on the wall, “that even in apparently normal human beings there may exist two or more of these nebulæ of consciousness in process of formation, but bound up so closely with the dominating consciousness that they never quite separate themselves. The case never becomes that of complete dual personality, although such a person may have within himself two widely different sets of ideals and principles of living.

“Strangely enough, these cases seem always to be evolved out of the person’s attitude toward the ethical problems of life. There, for instance, are the officers of powerful corporations who may be rapacious, ruthless, brutal, criminal, in their business methods, but in private life the kindest, most sympathetic and generous of men. Yes, I am beginning to think it may be that such men have set going within themselves some such physiological and psychological process as this which has nearly overwhelmed Felix Brand.

“Who can tell what a few more years of investigation and study of this problem will give us!” The finger-tips were rhythmically tapping and the physician’s face was alight with interest, although he seemed for the moment to have forgotten his companion. “Perhaps in another generation or two we shall have discovered that it is medical not legal treatment that pirate captains of industry stand in need of. Perhaps the too shrewd financiers of that day will not be fined or sent to prison but compelled to take courses of hypnotic treatment.”

Dr. Annister’s gaze, wandering downward, fell upon his companion, and he came back to the matter in hand with a deprecatory smile.

“Pardon me, Mr. Gordon. I’ve been going far astray. But the whole question interests me deeply. Strange, strange, what havoc within a man’s brain that war between right and wrong can make, when his own fierce desires get mixed up in it! Will you go on, please? After this first act of cruelty, unintentional doubtless, but afterward concealed, out of cowardice and the desire to advance his own selfish interests – then?”

“Why, it was the beginning of a constantly growing habit of selfishness in thought and action. I could tell you of thousands of little incidents, each of which helped to strengthen his conception of himself as the center of everything and his notion that his wishes must be gratified and his desires satisfied, at whatever cost to others. This didn’t come all at once, you know. It was the growth of years, and kept on all through his youth and early manhood, till it reached its present abominable state. And as it grew, so did I.”

“Yes, yes!” the physician broke in again. “Every impulse toward altruistic thought or action that was denied broke off and attached itself to the other nebula of consciousness. Thus he set up within himself two centers of consciousness, of moral growth, one altruistic and the other egotistic. And, as these grew, certain other mental qualities were caught within them, so that, when the separation was at last complete, each individuality had, intensified, the qualities that, mingled together, ought to have gone to the making of an evenly balanced, highly endowed man.”

“That’s it. And now the question is, which of us are you going to try to save? Which will you allow to live?”

“Why, I’m going to try to put you together again, to mingle you into one proportioned, rounded individuality.”

Gordon’s manner bristled with aggressiveness. “You can’t do it,” he exclaimed abruptly. “It’s beyond human power, now. ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men’ wouldn’t be enough for such a job. Felix Brand is beyond saving. He chose his part and wilfully kept in it. Let him suffer the consequences. I was his conscience – the part of him in which conscience abode. He denied me and repulsed me over and over again, until he so calloused himself that there was no point left for attack. And so we have become two separate and complete human beings.”

Gordon’s words were rushing forth in an impulsive torrent and the physician held up an arresting finger. “No, you’re wrong there. You are not two complete human beings. It has come about that he has divested himself of moral sense. But he still has a wonderful esthetic gift, of very great value to the world. Have you any part in that?”

“No, I have not,” was Gordon’s quick reply. “I admit I am lacking on that side of my nature. But is that the most important thing for a man to possess?”

He sprang to his feet and strode about as he went on pouring out his arguments with emphatic, forceful manner. Dr. Annister watched him, wondering at his apparent size. For he looked a considerably larger man than did Felix Brand. The light gray clothing, of looser fit, made some difference, but the physician decided that his manner was responsible for most of the illusion – his self-confident stride, his masterful quality, the impression he gave of abundant vitality and of strength of character and of body. These were all in strong contrast to Brand’s courtly, winning manners, affable tones and leisurely, graceful movements.

“Felix Brand has become a monster, a swollen toad of egotism. He cares for nothing but his own advantage, his own interests, his own pleasures, and these he reaches out and takes, grabs them, without any regard for other people’s rights or necessities. That kind of selfishness is the root of all evil, and Felix Brand is its incarnation. He is soaked with wickedness. Oh, you do not know the half of it, Dr. Annister, though you have guessed something from the change in the expression of his countenance. For years he has been like a carrier of typhoid, spreading the contagion of his own sinful nature wherever he went, himself unpunished, even admired, looked up to and patterned after. Do you want to keep such a man alive? Do you think, do you really believe, Dr. Annister, that the genius of such a man as that, whatever it is, could make amends to the world for all the evil that he does?”

“You forget, Mr. Gordon, that it is no part of my purpose to keep him as he is. It is my duty to save him from the consequences of his folly and of his perverted view of his relations with the world – to make him whole again.”

“You can’t do it, Dr. Annister, you can’t do it! Oil and water will no more mix than my characteristics and his can be made to mingle in a smooth blend again. My purpose in life is to add to the well-being of the world. I want to lessen its poverty and its degradation and help to reform the soul-poisoning conditions under which so many thousands live. I have planned my life and my head is full of schemes for the betterment of the world. I find it easy to make money. I shall be rich soon. My chief interest and pleasure will be in using my money to work out those plans. It is not my intention to do this as charity or according to ordinary, philanthropic methods. I’ve no use for charity. It is wrong and it only makes things worse. What I purpose doing is to carry out my business schemes by such methods as will enable those who work with me and for me to earn their own betterments in life, and then to enlighten and guide them in the spending and investment of their earnings. I want to prove that that sort of thing is possible and profitable. In that and similar ways, which will benefit and make others happy quite as much as they will contribute to my satisfaction, I expect to spend my life. Felix Brand will design some beautiful buildings. But he will add to the rottenness of the world and spread disaster and misery with every day of his life. Will the buildings atone for all that evil?”

Dr. Annister’s person, sunk in the depths of his arm-chair, looked even smaller than usual, in comparison with this energetic, dominating figure that stood above him, speaking with emphasis and conviction, instinct with determined will. He leaned forward and began to tap his finger-tips, his face thoughtful. Silence fell upon them for a moment.

“My mission,” he presently said, slowly and solemnly, “is to heal, not to judge. But,” he added, in a mournful tone, “you give me an idea of what a splendid man Felix Brand might have been if he had not so perverted and maimed himself.”

Gordon made a gesture of impatience and his dark eyes flashed. “He chose his way. Let him walk in it. I did my best to warn him where it would lead. As long as I lived in him, I was his conscience and tried to plead with him and argue with him. After I broke from him and began to live my own life I wrote letters to him and told him the sort of creature he was becoming and what he might expect.

“It was as if we were twins, with only one body between us. At first I felt strongly the bond that held us together. At the start I did not want to do anything to injure him. I thought we might both live, taking turns with our one body. But as soon as I tried to make him see the evil of his ways he began to hate me. His life grew so much worse that I lost all patience with him. He would pay no attention to my warnings.

“When he decided that he wanted that appointment to the Municipal Art Commission, of course, characteristically, he wanted it at once, by fair means or foul. I warned him not to do anything underhanded and he told me to mind my own affairs. I told him I’d show him up if he dabbled in any unscrupulous methods. But he went straight ahead after what he wanted. You know what the consequences were.”