CHAPTER VIII
To Devonham, meanwhile, LeVallon's behaviour was polite and kind anddistant; he did not show distrust of any sort, but he betrayed acertain diffidence, reserve and caution. Trust he felt; sympathy he didnot feel. To the amusement of Fillery, he suggested almost a kind ofmild contempt when dealing with him, and this amusement was increasedby the fact that it obviously annoyed Devonham, while it gratifiedhis chief. For towards Fillery, LeVallon behaved with an intimate andunderstanding sympathy that proved his instantaneous affection basedupon mutual comprehension. It seemed that LeVallon and Fillery hadknown one another always.
It was doubtless, due to this innate sympathy between them that EdwardFillery's rare gift of absorbing the content of another's mind, even tothe point of taking on that other's conditions, physical and emotionalat the same time, was so successful. By means of a highly developedpower of auto-suggestion, he had learned so to identify his own mind,thought, feeling with those of a patient, that there resulted a kind ofmerging by which he literally became that patient. He felt with him.As a subject sees the pictures in the hypnotiser's mind, perceiveshis thoughts, divines his slightest will, so Fillery, reversing theprocess, could realize for the moment exactly what his patient wasthinking, feeling, desiring. It was of great use to him in his strangepractice.
This gift, naturally, varied in degree, and was not invariablysuccessful. In some cases he only felt, the emotion alone being thustransferred; in others he only saw what the patient saw, or thoughthe saw, the accompanying emotion being omitted; in others again, asin cases of vision at a distance, either of time or space, he hadbeen able to follow the "travelling sight" of his patient, whoseconsciousness in trance was operating far away, and thus to check forsubsequent verification exactly what that patient saw. He had sharedstrange experiences with others--with a man, for instance, in whomsight was transferred to the tip of his index finger, so that he couldread a book by passing that finger along the printed line; with awoman, again, in whom "exteriorized consciousness" manifested itself,so that, if the air several inches from her face was pinched or struck,the impact was received and an actual bruise produced upon her skin.
This extension of consciousness, its seeds already in his nature,he had trained and developed to a point where he could almost relyupon auto-suggestion bringing about quickly the desired conditions.Its success, however, as mentioned, was variable. With "N. H.,"especially now, this variableness was marked; sometimes it was soeasily accomplished as to seem natural and without a conscious effort,while at other times it failed completely. Since it was in no sense anattempt to transfer anything from his own mind to that of the patient,Fillery felt that his promise to his colleague was not involved.
The following scene describes the first time in which the processtook place with his new patient. Fillery himself wrote down thewords, supplied the detailed description, filled in the emotion andpsychology, but exactly as these occurred and as he felt them, bothwhen these took place, respectively, in his own consciousness and inthat of his patient. Part of the time he was present, part of it hewas not visibly so, being screened from observation, yet so placedthat he could note everything that happened. It is clear, however,that his mind was so intimately _en rapport_ with the thoughts andfeelings of "N. H.," that he experienced in his own being all that"N. H." experienced. The description was written immediately afterthe occurrence, though some of it, the spoken language in particular,was jotted down in his hiding place at the actual moment.
The interlacing of the two minds, their interpenetration, as it were,one occasionally dominating the other, is curious to trace and far fromdifficult to disentangle. Similarly the interweaving of LeVallon and"N. H." is noticeable. The description given by Devonham of the portionof the occurrence he witnessed personally, or heard about from NurseRobbins and the attendants--this description reduces the whole thingto the commonplace level of "a slight seizure accompanied by signs ofviolence and moments of delirium due to excitement and fatigue, andsoon cured by sleep."
The occurrence took place precisely at the period when the moon was atthe full.