MEDICAL OPINION.
From that day forth, by some unspoken compact, it was "Eustace" and
"Cleer," wherever they met, between them. Le Neve began it, by coming
round in the afternoon of that self-same day, as soon as he'd slept off
the first effects of his fatigue and chill, to inquire of Mrs.
Trevennack "how Cleer was getting on" after her night's exposure. And
Mrs. Trevennack accepted the frank usurpation in very good part, as
indeed was no wonder, for Cleer had wanted to know half an hour before
whether "Eustace" had yet been round to ask after her. The form of
speech told all. There was no formal engagement, and none of the party
knew exactly how or when they began to take it for granted; but from
that evening on Michael's Crag it was a tacitly accepted fact between
Le Neve and the Trevennacks that Eustace was to marry Cleer as soon as
he could get a permanent appointment anywhere.
Engineering, however, is an overstocked profession. In that particular
it closely resembles most other callings.
The holidays passed away, and Walter Tyrrel recovered, and the
Trevennacks returned to town for the head of the house to take up his
new position in the Admiralty service; but Eustace Le Neve heard of no
opening anywhere for an energetic young man with South American
experience. Those three years he had passed out of England, indeed, had
made him lose touch with other members of his craft. People shrugged
their shoulders when they heard of him, and opined, with a chilly
smile, he was the sort of young man who ought to go to the colonies.
That's the easiest way of shelving all similar questions. The colonies
are popularly regarded in England as the predestined dumping-ground for
all the fools and failures of the mother-country. So Eustace settled
down in lodgings in London, not far from the Trevennacks, and spent
more of his time, it must be confessed, in going round to see Cleer
than in perfecting himself in the knowledge of his chosen art. Not that
he failed to try every chance that lay open to him--he had far too much
energy to sit idle in his chair and let the stream of promotion flow by
unattempted; but chances were few and applicants were many, and month
after month passed away to his chagrin without the clever young
engineer finding an appointment anywhere. Meanwhile, his little
nest-egg of South-American savings was rapidly disappearing; and though
Tyrrel, who had influence with railway men, exerted himself to the
utmost on his friend's behalf--partly for Cleer's sake, and partly for
Eustace's own--Le Neve saw his balance growing daily smaller, and began
to be seriously alarmed at last, not merely for his future prospects of
employment and marriage, but even for his immediate chance of a modest
livelihood.
Nor was Mrs. Trevennack, for her part, entirely free from sundry qualms
of conscience as to her husband's condition and the rightfulness of
concealing it altogether from Cleer's accepted lover. Trevennack
himself was so perfectly sane in every ordinary relation of life, so
able a business head, so dignified and courtly an English gentleman,
that Eustace never even for a moment suspected any undercurrent of
madness in that sound practical intelligence. Indeed, no man could talk
with more absolute common sense about his daughter's future, or the
duties and functions of an Admiralty official, than Michael Trevennack.
It was only to his wife in his most confidential moments that he ever
admitted the truth as to his archangelic character; to all others whom
he met he was simply a distinguished English civil servant of blameless
life and very solid judgment. The heads of his department placed the
most implicit trust in Trevennack's opinion; there was no man about the
place who could decide a knotty point of detail off-hand like Michael
Trevennack. What was his poor wife to do, then? Was it her place to
warn Eustace that Cleer's father might at any moment unexpectedly
develop symptoms of dangerous insanity? Was she bound thus to wreck her
own daughter's happiness? Was she bound to speak out the very secret of
her heart which she had spent her whole life in inducing Trevennack
himself to bottle up with ceaseless care in his distracted bosom?
And yet ... she saw the other point of view as well--alas, all too
plainly. She was a martyr to conscience, like Walter Tyrrel himself;
was it right of her, then, to tie Eustace for life to a girl who was
really a madman's daughter? This hateful question was up before her
often in the dead dark night, as she lay awake on her bed, tossing and
turning feverishly; it tortured her in addition to her one lifelong
trouble. For the silver-haired lady had borne the burden of that
unknown sorrow locked up in her own bosom for fifteen years; and it had
left on her face such a beauty of holiness as a great trouble often
leaves indelibly stamped on women of the same brave, loving temperament.
One day, about three months later, in their drawing-room at Bayswater,
Eustace Le Neve happened to let drop a casual remark which cut poor
Mrs. Trevennack to the quick, like a knife at her heart. He was talking
of some friend of his who had lately got engaged. "It's a terrible
thing," he said, seriously. "There's insanity in the family. I wouldn't
marry into such a family as that--no, not if I loved a girl to
distraction, Mrs. Trevennack. The father's in a mad-house, you know;
and the girl's very nice now, but one never can tell when the tendency
may break out. And then--just think! what an inheritance to hand on to
one's innocent children!"
Trevennack took no open notice of what he said. But Mrs. Trevennack
winced, grew suddenly pale, and stammered out some conventional
none-committing platitude. His words entered her very soul. They stung
and galled her. That night she lay awake and thought more bitterly to
herself about the matter than ever. Next morning early, as soon as
Trevennack had set off to catch the fast train from Waterloo to
Portsmouth direct (he was frequently down there on Admiralty business),
she put on her cloak and bonnet, without a word to Cleer, and set out
in a hansom all alone to Harley Street.
The house to which she drove was serious-looking and professional--in
point of fact, it was Dr. Yate-Westbury's, the well-known specialist on
mental diseases. She sent up no card and gave no name. On the contrary,
she kept her veil down--and it was a very thick one. But Dr.
Yate-Westbury made no comment on this reticence; it was a familiar
occurrence with him--people are often ashamed to have it known they
consult a mad-doctor.
"I want to ask you about my husband's case," Mrs. Trevennack began,
trembling. And the great specialist, all attention, leaned forward and
listened to her.
Mrs. Trevennack summoned up courage, and started from the very
beginning. She described how her husband, who was a government servant,
had been walking below a cliff on the seashore with their only son,
some fifteen years earlier, and how a shower of stones from the top had
fallen on their heads and killed their poor boy, whose injuries were
the more serious. She could mention it all now with comparatively
little emotion; great sorrows since had half obliterated that first and
greatest one. But she laid stress upon the point that her husband had
been struck, too, and was very gravely hurt--so gravely, indeed, that
it was weeks before he recovered physically.
"On what part of the head?" Yate-Westbury asked, with quick medical
insight.
And Mrs. Trevennack answered, "Here," laying her small gloved hand on
the center of the left temple.
The great specialist nodded. "Go on," he said, quietly. "Fourth frontal
convolution! And it was a month or two, I have no doubt, before you
noticed any serious symptoms supervening?"
"Exactly so," Mrs. Trevennack made answer, very much relieved. "It was
all of a month or two. But from that day forth--from the very
beginning, I mean--he had a natural horror of going BENEATH a cliff,
and he liked to get as high up as he could, so as to be perfectly sure
there was nobody at all anywhere above to hurt him." And then she went
on to describe in short but graphic phrase how he loved to return to
the place of his son's accident, and to stand for hours on lonely sites
overlooking the spot, and especially on a crag which was dedicated to
St. Michael.
The specialist caught at what was coming with the quickness, she
thought, of long experience. "Till he fancied himself the archangel?"
he said, promptly and curiously.
Mrs. Trevennack drew a deep breath of satisfaction and relief. "Yes,"
she answered, flushing hot. "Till he fancied himself the archangel.
There--there were extenuating circumstances, you see. His own name's
Michael; and his family--well, his family have a special connection
with St. Michael's Mount; their crest's a castled crag with 'Stand
fast, St. Michael's!' and he knew he had to fight against this mad
impulse of his own--which he felt was like a devil within him--for his
daughter's sake; and he was always standing alone on these rocky high
places, dedicated to St. Michael, till the fancy took full hold upon
him; and now, though he knows in a sort of a way he's mad, he believes
quite firmly he's St. Michael the Archangel."
Yate-Westbury nodded once more. "Precisely the development I should
expect to occur," he said, "after such an accident."
Mrs. Trevennack almost bounded from her seat in her relief. "Then you
attribute it to the accident first of all?" she asked, eagerly.
"Not a doubt about it," the specialist answered. "The region you
indicate is just the one where similar illusory ideas are apt to arise
from external injuries. The bruise gave the cause, and circumstances
the form. Besides, the case is normal--quite normal altogether. Does he
have frequent outbreaks?"
Mrs. Trevennack explained that he never had any. Except to herself, and
that but seldom, he never alluded to the subject in any way.
Yate-Westbury bit his lip. "He must have great self-control," he
answered, less confidently. "In a case like that, I'm bound to admit,
my prognosis--for the final result--would be most unfavorable. The
longer he bottles it up the more terrible is the outburst likely to be
when it arrives. You must expect that some day he will break out
irrepressibly."
Mrs. Trevennack bowed her head with the solemn placidity of despair.
"I'm quite prepared for that," she said, quietly; "though I try hard to
delay it, for a specific reason. That wasn't the question I came to
consult you about to-day. I feel sure my poor husband's case is
perfectly hopeless, as far as any possibility of cure is concerned;
what I want to know is about another aspect of the case." She leaned
forward appealingly. "Oh, doctor," she cried, clasping her hands, "I
have a dear daughter at home--the one thing yet left me. She's engaged
to be married to a young man whom she loves--a young man who loves her.
Am I bound to tell him she's a madman's child? Is there any chance of
its affecting her? Is the taint hereditary?"
She spoke with deep earnestness. She rushed out with it without
reserve. Yate-Westbury gazed at her compassionately. He was a
kind-hearted man. "No; certainly not," he answered, with emphasis. "Not
the very slightest reason in any way to fear it. The sanest man, coming
from the very sanest and healthiest stock on earth, would almost
certainly be subject to delusions under such circumstances. This is
accident, not disease--circumstance, not temperament. The injury to the
brain is the result of a special blow. Grief for the loss of his son,
and brooding over the event, no doubt contributed to the particular
shape the delusion has assumed. But the injury's the main thing. I
don't doubt there's a clot of blood formed just here on the brain,
obstructing its functions in part, and disturbing its due relations. In
every other way, you say, he's a good man of business. The very
apparent rationality of the delusion--the way it's been led up to by
his habit of standing on cliffs, his name, his associations, his
family, everything--is itself a good sign that the partial insanity is
due to a local and purely accidental cause. It simulates reason as
closely as possible. Dismiss the question altogether from your mind, as
far as your daughter's future is concerned. Its no more likely to be
inherited than a broken leg or an amputated arm is."
Mrs. Trevennack burst into a flood of joyous tears. "Then all I have to
do," she sobbed out, "is to keep him from an outbreak until after my
daughter's married."
Dr. Yate-Westbury nodded. "That's all you have to do," he answered,
sympathetically. "And I'm sure Mrs. Trevennack---" he paused with a
start and checked himself.
"Why, how do you know my name?" the astonished mother cried, drawing
back with a little shudder of half superstitious alarm at such
surprising prescience.
Dr. Yate-Westbury made a clean breast of it. "Well, to tell the truth,"
he said, "Mr. Trevennack himself called round here yesterday, in the
afternoon, and stated the whole case to me from his own point of view,
giving his name in full--as a man would naturally do--but never
describing to me the nature of his delusion. He said it was too sacred
a thing for him to so much as touch upon; that he knew he wasn't mad,
but that the world would think him so; and he wanted to know, from
something he'd heard said, whether madness caused by an injury of the
sort would or would not be considered by medical men as inheritable.
And I told him at once, as I've told you to-day, there was not the
faintest danger of it. But I never made such a slip in my life before
as blurting out the name. I could only have done it to you. Trust me,
your secret is safe in my keeping. I have hundreds in my head." He took
her hand in his own as he spoke. "Dear madam," he said, gently, "I
understand; I feel for you."
"Thank you," Mrs. Trevennack answered low, with tears standing in her
eyes. "I'm--I'm so glad you've SEEN him. It makes your opinion so much
more valuable to me. But you thought his delusion wholly due to the
accident, then?"
"Wholly due to the accident, dear lady. Yes, wholly, wholly due to it.
You may go home quite relieved. Your doubts and fears are groundless.
Miss Trevennack may marry with a clear conscience."