CHAPTER IV

Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage

I was running the head of my pencil-case along the line as I read it, and something caused me to raise my eyes.

Directly before me was one of the mirrors I have mentioned, in which I saw reflected the tall shape of my friend, Mr. Jennings, leaning over my shoulder, and reading the page at which I was busy, and with a face so dark and wild that I should hardly have known him.

I turned and rose.  He stood erect also, and with an effort laughed a little, saying: 

“I came in and asked you how you did, but without succeeding in awaking you from your book; so I could not restrain my curiosity, and very impertinently, I’m afraid, peeped over your shoulder.  This is not your first time of looking into those pages.  You have looked into Swedenborg, no doubt, long ago?”

“Oh dear, yes!  I owe Swedenborg a great deal; you will discover traces of him in the little book on Metaphysical Medicine, which you were so good as to remember.”

Although my friend affected a gaiety of manner, there was a slight flush in his face, and I could perceive that he was inwardly much perturbed.

“I’m scarcely yet qualified, I know so little of Swedenborg.  I’ve only had them a fortnight,” he answered, “and I think they are rather likely to make a solitary man nervous—­that is, judging from the very little I have read—­I don’t say that they have made me so,” he laughed; “and I’m so very much obliged for the book.  I hope you got my note?”

I made all proper acknowledgments and modest disclaimers.

“I never read a book that I go with, so entirely, as that of yours,” he continued.  “I saw at once there is more in it than is quite unfolded.  Do you know Dr. Harley?” he asked, rather abruptly.

In passing, the editor remarks that the physician here named was one of the most eminent who had ever practised in England.

I did, having had letters to him, and had experienced from him great courtesy and considerable assistance during my visit to England.

“I think that man one of the very greatest fools I ever met in my life,” said Mr. Jennings.

This was the first time I had ever heard him say a sharp thing of anybody, and such a term applied to so high a name a little startled me.

“Really! and in what way?” I asked.

“In his profession,” he answered.

I smiled.

“I mean this,” he said:  “he seems to me, one half, blind—­I mean one half of all he looks at is dark—­preternaturally bright and vivid all the rest; and the worst of it is, it seems wilful.  I can’t get him—­I mean he won’t—­I’ve had some experience of him as a physician, but I look on him as, in that sense, no better than a paralytic mind, an intellect half dead.  I’ll tell you—­I know I shall some time—­all about it,” he said, with a little agitation.  “You stay some months longer in England.  If I should be out of town during your stay for a little time, would you allow me to trouble you with a letter?”