When Ian came back from the Bodleian Library, where he was working, he
heard voices talking in raised tones before he entered the drawing-room.
He found no Milly there, but Lady Thomson and Miss Timson seated at the
extreme ends of the same sofa and engaged in a heated discussion.
"It can't be true," Lady Thomson was stating firmly. "If it were, what
becomes of Personal Immortality?"
Miss Timson had just time to convey the fact that Personal Immortality
was not the affair of a woman of science, before she rose to greet Ian,
which she did effusively.
"Hullo!" he remarked, cheerfully, when her effusion was over. "No Milly
and no tea!"
"We don't want either just yet," returned Lady Thomson. "I'm terribly
anxious about Mildred, Ian, and Miss Timson has not said anything to
make me less so. I want a sound, sensible opinion on the state of
her--her nerves."
Ian's brow clouded.
"Tell me frankly, do you notice so great a difference in her from time
to time, as to account for the positively insane delusion she has got
into her head?"
"What do you mean, Aunt Beatrice?" asked Ian, shortly, sternly eying
Tims, whom he imagined to have let out the secret.
"Mildred has made an extraordinary statement to me about not being the
same person now as she was in March. Of course I see she--well, she is
not so full of life as she was then. Yes, I do admit she is in a very
different mood. But do you know the poor unfortunate child has got it
into her head that she is possessed by an evil spirit? I can't think how
you could have allowed her to come to that state of--of mental
aberration, without doing anything."
Ian was silent. He looked gaunt and sombrely dark in the low,
awning-shaded room, with its heavy beams and floor of wavelike
unevenness.
"You'll have to put her under care next, if you don't take some steps.
Send her for a sea-voyage."
"I'd take her myself if I thought it would do her any good," said Tims.
"But I'll lay my bottom dollar it wouldn't."
"I'm afraid I think Miss Timson's view of the matter as insane as
Milly's," returned Lady Thomson, tartly.
Ian lifted his bowed head and addressed Tims:
"I should like to know exactly what your view of the matter is, Miss
Timson. We need not discuss poor Milly's; it's too absurd and also too
painful."
"It's no doubt a case of disintegration of personality," replied Tims,
after a pause. "Somewhere inside our brains must be a nerve-centre
which co-ordinates most of our mental, our sensory and motor processes,
in such a manner as to produce consciousness, volition, what we call
personality. But after all there are always plenty of activities within
us going on independent of it. Your heart beats, your stomach
digests--even your memory works apart from your consciousness sometimes.
Now suppose some shock or strain enfeebles your centre of consciousness,
so that it ceases to be able to co-ordinate all the mental processes it
has been accustomed to superintend. What you call your personality is
the outcome of your memory and all your other faculties and tendencies
working together, checking and balancing each other. Suppose your centre
of consciousness so enfeebled; suppose at the same time an enfeeblement
of memory, causing you to completely forget external facts: certain of
your faculties and tendencies are left working and they are co-ordinated
without an important part of the memory, without many other faculties
and tendencies which checked and balanced them. Naturally you appear to
yourself and to every one else a totally different person; but it's not
a new personality really, it's only a bit of the old one which goes on
its own hook, while the rest is quiescent."
"This is the most abominably materialistic theory of the human mind I
ever heard," exclaimed Lady Thomson, indignantly. "The most degrading to
our spiritual natures."
Ian leaned against the high, carved mantel-piece and pushed back the
black hair from his forehead.
"I'm not concerned with that," he replied, deliberately, discussing
this case so vitally near to him with an almost terrible calmness. "But
I can't feel that this disintegration theory altogether covers the
ground. There is no development of characteristics previously to be
found in Milly; on the contrary, the qualities of mind and character
which she exhibits when--when the change comes over her, are precisely
the opposite of those she exhibits in what I presume we ought to call
her normal state."
"There must be some reason for it, old chap, you know," returned Tims;
"and it seems to me that's the line you've got to move along, unless
you're an idiot and go in for devils or spiritualistic nonsense."
"I believe I've followed what you've been saying, Miss Timson," said
Lady Thomson, in her fullest tones; "and I can assure you I feel under
no necessity to become either a materialist or an idiot in consequence."
Ian spoke again.
"I don't profess to be scientific, but I do seem to see another possible
line, running parallel with yours, but not quite the same. It's evident
we can inherit faculties, characteristics, from our ancestors which
never become active in us; but we know they must have been present in us
in a quiescent state, because we can transmit them to children in whom
they become active. Mildred's father and mother, for example, are not
scholars, although her grandfather and great-grandfather were; yet in
one of her parents at least there must be a germ of the scholar's
faculty which has never been developed, because Mildred has inherited
it. Now why can't we develop all the faculties, the germs of which lie
within our borders? Perhaps because we have each only a certain amount
of what I'll call vital current. If the Nile could overflow the whole
desert it would all be fertilized, and perhaps if we had sufficient
vital force we could develop all the faculties whose germs we inherit.
Suppose by some accident, owing to a shock or strain, as you say, the
flow of this vital current of ours is stopped in the direction in which
it usually flows most strongly; its course is diverted and it fertilizes
tracts of our brain and nervous system which before have been lying
quiescent, sterile. If we lose the memory of our former lives, and if at
the same time hereditary faculties and tendencies, of the existence of
which we were unaware, suddenly become active in us, we are practically
new personalities. Then say the vital current resumes its old course; we
regain our memories, our old faculties, while the newly developed ones
sink again into quiescence. We are once more our old selves. No doubt
this is all very unscientific, but so far Science seems to have nothing
to say on the question."
"It certainly has not," commented Lady Thomson, decisively. "I ought to
know what Science is, considering how often I've met Mr. Darwin and
Professor Huxley. Hypnotism and this kind of unpleasant talk is not
Science. It's only a new variety of the hocus-pocus that's been imposing
on human weakness ever since the world began. I'd sooner believe with
poor Milly that she's possessed by a devil. It's less silly to accept
inherited superstitions than to invent brand-new ones."
"But we've got to account somehow for the extraordinary changes which
take place in Milly," sighed Ian, wearily.
The light lines across his forehead were showing as furrows, and Tims's
whole face was corrugated.
"No hocus-pocus about them, anyway," she said.
"There's a great deal of fancy about them," retorted Lady Thomson. "A
nervous, imaginative man like you, Ian, ought to be on your guard
against allowing such notions to get hold of you. It's so easy to fancy
things are as you're afraid they may be, and then you influence Milly
and she goes from bad to worse. I think I may claim to understand her if
any one does, and all I see is that she gives way to moods. At first I
thought it was a steady development of character; but I admit that when
she is unwell and out of spirits, she becomes just her old timid,
over-conscientious self again. She's always been very easily influenced,
very dependent, and now--I hardly like to say such a thing of my own
niece--but I fear there's a touch of hysteria about her. I've always
heard that hysterical people, even when they've been perfectly frank and
truthful before, become deceitful and act parts till it's impossible to
tell fact from falsehood with regard to them. I would suggest your
letting Mildred come to me for a month or two, Ian. I feel sure I should
send her back to you quite cured of all this nonsense."
At this point Milly came in. Ian stretched out his hand towards her with
protective tenderness; but even at the moment when his whole soul was
moved by an impulse of compassion so strong that it seemed almost love,
a spirit within him arose and mocked at all hypotheses, telling him that
this poor stricken wife of his, seemingly one with the lady of his
heart, was not she, but another.
"Aunt Beatrice was just saying you ought to get away from domestic cares
for a month or two, Milly," he said, as cheerfully as he could.
Lady Thomson explained.
"What you want is a complete change; though I don't know what people
mean when they talk about 'domestic cares.' I should like to have you up
at Clewes for the rest of the Long. Ian can look after the baby."
Milly smiled at her sweetly, but rather as though she were talking
nonsense.
"It's very kind of you, Aunt Beatrice, but Ian and I have never been
parted for a day since we were married; I mean not when--and I don't
feel as though I could spare a minute of his company. And poor Baby,
too! Oh no! But of course it's very good of you to think of it."
"Then you must all come to Clewes," decided Aunt Beatrice, after some
remonstrance. "That'll settle it."
"But my work!" ejaculated Ian in dismay. "How am I to get on at Clewes,
away from the libraries?"
"There are some things in life more important than books, Ian," returned
Lady Thomson.
"But it won't do a penn'orth of good," broke in Tims, argumentatively.
"I don't pretend to have more than a working hypothesis, but whoever
else may prove to be right, Lady Thomson's on the wrong line."
Lady Thomson surveyed her in silence; Ian took no notice of her remark.
He was looking before him with a sadness incomprehensible to the
uncreative man--to the man who has never dreamed dreams and seen
visions; with the sadness of one who just as the cloudy emanations of
his mind are beginning to take form and substance sees them scattered,
perhaps never again to reunite, by some cold breath from the relentless
outside world of circumstance. He made his renunciation in silence;
then, with a quiet smile, he turned to Lady Thomson and answered her.
"You're very kind, Aunt Beatrice, and quite right. There are things in
life much more important than books."