suffering from repressed shell-shock, want to know about tubercle?” And
that night he sat up very late, peering into the flames of the wood-fire
in his bed-room, seeing visions of this new science, the science of
neurology, by which men who had learned how to die might be taught how
to live.
§ 3
Heron Baynet had planned his return to London for Boxing Day; but he
cancelled his appointments by wire, and stayed on at Sunflowers. He felt
his daughter’s happiness to be staked on a correct diagnosis of her
husband’s mental condition; and as Peter’s reserve made direct methods
impossible, the diagnosis necessitated vigilance and unceasing study.
After two days spent apparently in idleness, actually in the most minute
observation, the doctor succeeded in decoying his daughter away from
home, husband and children; suggested a little stroll through Arlsfield
Woods.
It was a dull December afternoon; and as they took the footpath across
the paddock, picked their way under leafless branches over slippery
tree-roots, Patricia could not help contrasting this winter sombreness
with the splendid springtime when she and Francis had first found
Sunflowers. Then, the world had been one great promise; now, the world
and her own hope seemed withered, never to blossom again. . . .
“I wanted to talk to you about Peter.” Her father’s voice interrupted
reverie. “Does he ever fire that gun he carries about all the time?”
She looked up astonished. “No, I don’t think he ever does. Why do you
ask, pater?”
But Heron Baynet only muttered, “H’m, I thought not”; and walked on in
silence. “You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” he said at last.
“A little”—loyalty restrained her from giving the correct reason—“he
doesn’t seem really well yet.”
“He isn’t. He’s very far from well. He’s about as ill as any one can
be.”
“Pater!” she stopped in her walk, and they stood facing each other. “Not
his lungs.”
“No”—the man spoke very gently—“not his lungs, but his mind. You’ve
often heard me talk about shell-shock, Pat; and I’ve often bored you
with my jargon of neurasthenia. Well, now you’ll have to listen to it
all over again. Only this time, it’s got a personal application.”
He took her arm, and they resumed their walk, pacing slowly among the
trees.
“Peter,” began Heron Baynet, “is suffering from acute neurasthenia
brought on partly by actual shell-shock, and partly by the general
strain of war. In a weaker character the symptoms would be perfectly
plain—shaky hand, general jumpiness, irritability, forgetfulness. Peter
is controlling all these symptoms—and Heaven knows what impulses—with
the result that, sooner or later unless we can find some means to save
him, his mind will give way altogether.”
“You don’t mean that he’ll go mad, pater.” Love and horror mingled in
Patricia’s voice.
“Nothing of the sort,” said her father angrily. “Neurasthenia isn’t
madness; any more than a sprained ankle is madness. Neurasthenia is a
mind-sprain; and like all sprains, its primary treatment must be rest.
Do you think Peter’s soul ever gives his mind a rest? Not a bit of it.
Peter’s mind is afraid of going out by itself—that’s why he always
carries that gun—but Peter’s soul says to it, ‘Afraid, are you? I’ll
teach you to be afraid’; and off he goes for a walk. Result: he comes
back with his mind a little more sprained than when he started. Peter’s
mind wants his fingers to shake, his body to start when it hears some
sudden noise: Peter’s soul says to his mind, ‘You let those fingers
shake—and there’ll be trouble.’ Result: more mind-sprain.”
Heron Baynet elaborated his theory of the “soul and the mind”—known
also in the patter of neurologists as the “mind and the brain,” or the
“conscious and the subconscious”—till he succeeded in making clear to
Patricia that the thing to be feared in Peter’s case was not madness, a
wrong-functioning of the brain, but break-down, a non-functioning of it.
“But surely, pater,” she said at last, “if he’s as bad inside as you
think, he’d have consulted you about it?”
“My dear, he’s afraid to.”
“Afraid?” Patricia laughed incredulously. In spite of all she had just
heard, she could not yet bring herself to believe Peter afraid of
anything. “Afraid to consult you?”
“Yes, afraid to consult me. Scared to death! Don’t you see, Pat, that
the whole trouble lies in that one word, ‘Fear’? Do you think that your
so-called ‘heroes’ aren’t afraid? Of course they are—otherwise they
wouldn’t be heroes. The hero is the man who controls fear—not the man
who doesn’t feel it. But the process of controlling fear can’t go on
indefinitely. Every man has his limit. . . .”
“But Peter!” she interrupted, still unbelieving. “Peter!”
“Peter’s gone beyond his limit and his fear-controlling apparatus is
breaking down; that’s all. Take his history, and you’ll see what I mean.
At eighteen, he goes into business: that means anxiety, mind-strain,
fear to be controlled; at twenty-one, his father dies—more mind-strain;
he gets married, takes on more responsibilities; buys another business.
. . . Then, comes the War; instead of going to it with an easy
mind. . . . Well, you know what’s happened since 1914.” Heron Baynet
broke off for a minute, resumed: “I felt, when he came home on leave in
April that the strain was telling on him. However, apparently he gets
over it; goes back to the front. What do we know after that? Practically
nothing. He tells us that he had a ‘cushy time’ at Neuve Eglise, that he
had rather a ‘rotten time’ on the Somme. At the end of the ‘rather
rotten time’ he gets a crack on the head which keeps him unconscious for
the best part of three days, a wound in the fleshy part of the arm,
_and_ bronchial pneumonia. How did he get bronchial pneumonia?”
“Exposure,” said Patricia.
“Exposure be sugared. He was picked up the same day. . . . By the way,
has he ever spoken to you about consumption?”
“Yes. Twice. He said the children ought to sleep in the open air.”
“Consumption is one of the particular fears he can’t quite control.
That, I’m certain of. I wonder what his other fears are—or aren’t.”
For all her anxiety, Patricia could not restrain a feeling of relief.
One thing at least, her father’s explanation had taught her: that she
might still win her husband’s love—“even if he is a coward,” she said
aloud.
“A coward!”—Heron Baynet snapped at the word as he had snapped at the
suggestion of madness. “A coward! Were you afraid before Primula was
born?”
“A little,” she confessed.
“Well, multiply that fear by infinity—and you will have some idea of
what Peter is going through. And remember, you _knew_; he knows nothing,
except that he is afraid, and that to be afraid is to be”—Heron Baynet
hesitated over the word—“caddish.”
Silently, they began to retrace their steps homewards. Already, light
was failing among the trees. It seemed to Patricia that she walked in
cold shadows—helpless.
“Can nothing be done?” she said at last.
“Without his willingness to be treated—nothing.”
“Will he have to go back to the front in March?”
For the first time that afternoon, her father laughed. “Not if I know
anything about Medical Boards, Pat. He wouldn’t last ten days.” The
doctor grew serious. “But that doesn’t help us much. The damage to his
mind has got to be repaired somehow. _You_ might start the process; I
can’t.”
“I?” The monosyllable carried infinite query.
“Yes. You, and you only. Get his confidence; make him tell you—under
pledge of secrecy—why he carries that gun; why he’s afraid of
consumption for the children. Make him talk to you about the day he was
wounded—about the horrors he’s seen.”
“Can’t you talk to him, pater? He never opens his mouth about that sort
of thing to me.”—Her voice faltered.—“We’re not such good friends as
we used to be, pater.”
Heron Baynet’s voice did not falter. “I know you’re not, Pat. But you’ve
got to be. These repressions are killing Peter. Unless somebody can
break them down, I won’t be answerable for the consequences. It’s no use
my talking to him, he’d freeze up at once. Whereas you, you’re his
wife.”
“But, Pater. . . .”
“Damn it, girl,”—the doctor’s voice rose to fury—“can’t you see that
this is a matter of life or death. You _must_ make him talk. Make him
drunk if you like—get drunk yourself—make love to him as if you were
his mistress: but for God’s sake, make him talk.”
Patricia blushed scarlet; quickened her pace.
“And then?” she asked.
“Persuade him somehow that he’s got shell-shock, and to consult me about
it.” For a moment, the doctor forgot his son-in-law: neurasthenia and
its treatment lay very near his professional heart, and that heart was
being steadily broken by War Office neglect. “Two years, I’ve been at
them,” he burst out, “two years! And they’re only just beginning to
realize that a wound in the mind can be as fatal as a wound in the body.
Meanwhile, God knows how many brave men are being tortured.”
By now, they had reached the paddock-gate, stood gazing down on
Sunflowers. The mellow house behind the leafless walnut-tree looked a
veritable English home of peace; smoke spired lazily from its tall
chimneys; its square windows glinted welcome. They heard the children’s
voices shouting, “Daddy! Daddy!” saw Peter striding, gun over shoulder,
to the front door.
“He’s been to see Francis again,” said Patricia.
“Agoraphobia,” thought Heron Baynet, “the Fear of Open Spaces. I wonder
what particular kind of horror he sees every time he goes down across
that little bit of meadow-land.”
But Patricia’s mind had suddenly remembered Francis; Francis, alone,
night after night, in that quaint up-and-down cottage, firelight glowing
sombrely on panelled walls, Prout and his “female” pottering in the
red-tiled kitchen.
“Pater,” she said suddenly, “supposing you’re wrong in your diagnosis?”
“I’m never wrong about these things,” he answered, purposely boastful.
“Then tell me what’s the matter with Francis. Even I can see _he’s_ not
normal.”
“Normal!”—Heron Baynet pulled a cigarette-case from his over-coat
pocket, extracted and lit a Gianaclis—“of course he’s normal. That’s
his trouble. A normal man trying to live an abnormal life.”
“It isn’t abnormal to live in the country.”
“No, it isn’t abnormal to live in the country, _but_”—for the second
time that afternoon, Heron Baynet laughed and his daughter blushed—“but
it is abnormal, especially for a man of Francis Gordon’s temperament, to
live there like a monk.”
“But he doesn’t even work, pater,” protested Patricia.
“Why should he?” said her father. “He hasn’t got anybody to work _for_.”
Thoughtfully, they passed into the house.
PART TWENTY-EIGHT
WOMANCRAFT
§ 1
After Heron Baynet’s departure, the influence of his disclosures became
infinitely disturbing to his daughter’s mind.
Inheriting all the prejudices of ignorant generations—the generations
who regarded nervous disorders as akin to lunacy, and made
torture-chambers of our asylums—Patricia found it almost impossible to
realize Peter’s condition. It needed all her reasoning power, all her
affection, to conquer those prejudices, to stifle her instinct of
revulsion from the abnormal.
She felt immensely sorry for him. She understood; and vowed to save him
from the fears which—now that her mind had been opened—she saw behind
his eyes. But she could not, at the outset, quite keep the word
“madness” out of her thoughts. Mad! Supposing Peter were to go mad?
Nor, in her heart of hearts, could she quite help despising him for his
fears—even as she despised Francis Gordon for his idleness. Peter was
no longer a Man, her husband, some one to be looked up to, leaned on,
consulted in emergencies—but a weakling, a creature to be protected.
For these thoughts, she hated herself; they shamed her, as his fears
shamed Peter: and she set herself to conquer them, fearlessly,
resolutely. So that, by the end of two days, she had almost accustomed
herself to the idea of illness. Peter was ill—she said the word over
and over again—ill, not mad, ill with a sickness that she alone could
cure.
This idea of illness satisfied the motherhood in her—and of the
matehood she was not even yet fully unaware.
§ 2
If Patricia had been a religious woman, especially if she had been a
Roman Catholic, her natural refuge in such a crisis would have been the
priest. But Patricia—though she paid the customary lip-service of her
caste in Arlsfield Church—regarded her God as she regarded her King.
Both were symbols: the one a symbol of conduct, the other a symbol of
country. As symbols one owed loyalty to both; but individually neither
could be of the slightest assistance. Every normal human being, argued
Patricia, must fight its way through the world unaided. . . .
Hitherto, her own battles had been purely personal: the fights of reason
(a sensible General) against instincts (a horde of hare-brained
savages); and hitherto—except for one lapse, falling in love with her
own husband—reason had always triumphed. Reason must triumph again;
only Reason—not instinct—could save Peter. . . .
Having thus persuaded herself, as the drunkard persuades himself of his
perfect sobriety, that her passion for Peter would soon be a thing of
the past, Patricia took a lonely walk, tried to sum up her problems.
First and foremost of these was to carry out her father’s instructions:
to make Peter confess; break down the wall of reticent commonplaces
which he had built up against her. How? She remembered her father’s
words, “Make love to him as if you were his mistress!” The words
themselves conveyed nothing whatever to a woman utterly unversed in the
wiles of sex; but they filled her with a delicious feeling of fright.
For a moment, the idea of being Peter’s “mistress” completely routed
that calculating General, Reason. . . .
This “bed-room thought,” as Patricia phrased it, was so disturbing that
reason took refuge among its minor problems. Peter’s leave had still ten
weeks to run; long before it ended, she would find some way of gaining
his confidence.
Meanwhile, the home, Peter’s home, demanded immediate attention. She
really must get rid of Fry, Fry came later and later of a morning, left
earlier and earlier of an evening, Fry overfed the animals, Fry hadn’t
yet finished his seed-potato-sorting. . . . Thought became gloriously
inconsecutive. . . . One oughtn’t to keep three servants. The children
would have to go to school. The Lowndes Square purchase money wouldn’t
last for ever. It was very good of Peter to have given her the Lowndes
Square money. Peter always had been very good to her. . . .
By this time, she had circled Arlsfield Village, was beyond the Post
Office. In front of her, the boundary road of Arlsfield Hall serpentined
under leafless chestnuts. Still lost in thought, Patricia wandered on.
Peter’s mistress! Why mistress? What did a mistress give that wife
couldn’t? Ridiculous! She smiled to herself. Give! What couldn’t she
give to a man if only. . .
There are certain moments in the life of every woman, when the
sex-antagonism disappears and she realizes the sex-necessity. Such a
moment came to Patricia as she tramped sturdily along the leaf-sodden
road that late-December afternoon of nineteen hundred and sixteen.
Hitherto, she had been content to regard the sex-intimacies as rather
shameful necessities of married life. The man desired; the woman gave
way to his desires. Her own desires, the secret pleasure she sometimes
experienced in giving way to him, were of those savage hordes, the
instincts, which Reason—very reasonably—did its utmost to suppress:
Bedroom thoughts, in fact.
Bedroom thoughts! Suddenly she saw the absurdity of the phrase. If love
meant anything at all, it meant mutuality; and mutuality could not
exclude sex-instinct. Why should woman be ashamed of her desires?
Bedroom thoughts—indeed. Absurd mock-modesty! Rubbish! Stuff and
Nonsense! Early Victorianism at its soppiest extreme! . . .
And the woman of thirty tramped on. It was her moment of matehood: in
that moment, she forgot her two children, her reduced income, her
husband’s illness; realized nothing except this new and to her amazing
truth—that the sex-need was mutual.
There came over her a great mood of clairvoyance. The word “mistress” no
longer puzzled, no longer frightened. By her love, she interpreted the
meaning of it: by her love, she saw the sex-thing whole. It sufficed not
that a wife surrendered her body grudgingly, even though she became her
husband’s pal, his childbearer, the manager of his home and the partner
of his income. Marriage, to be perfect, required more than these. They
twain must be one flesh, one in mutual desire as they were one in mutual
interest. And in clean desire, love sanctifying, could be no shame.
Matehood-moment still on her, Patricia rounded the last bend of the
road; sighted the mellow straggling roof of Francis Gordon’s cottage
above the leafless elder-hedges.
Francis! In the light of her new vision, the man no longer seemed
despicable. Broken, foolishly ashamed of physical infirmity, irresolute,
unwilling or unable to work—one thing, at least, he kept sacred.
“Living like a monk!” Her father’s words held the semblance of a sneer;
but she, Patricia, understood.
And for the first time, understanding him, she respected this man.
Intuition gave her the sure clue to his mind: like herself, Francis
Gordon had climbed the pinnacles, seen the sex-thing whole. As to her,
so to Francis Gordon, Love had vouchsafed the inner meanings; and now,
he could accept no substitute for Love. Either the one woman,—pal and
childbearer, partner and mistress; or this, the lonely cottage among the
lonely woods. . . .
But intuition gave Patricia no clue to the heart of the problem, to the
man’s renunciation. Blind to everything except her own immediate
feelings, she saw only this straggling cottage which might have been a
home—this house without its woman. A girl in America! In her ignorance,
Patricia hated “that girl.” That girl must know Francis loved her. She
corresponded with him; sent him post-cards when he didn’t write
regularly. Then why didn’t she marry him? Obviously, because “that girl”
was a flirt, a light woman, unworthy of love. . . .
By the time she reached the low flint-wall which divided Glen Cottage
from the main-road, Patricia had worked herself up into a fine state of
resolution. She would talk to Francis; warn him against “that girl” who
was ruining his life, warn him against himself. . . .
But, unfortunately for resolution, Francis Gordon was out.
Prout, standing in the gabled doorway, told her that “Mister Peter had
come for Mister Francis, and they’d gone up to Sunflowers.”
Patricia paused for one irresolute moment. Then she said, “Do you think
you could get me a cup of tea, Prout, I’m feeling rather tired?”
“Certainly, Madam. Where will you have it, Madam? In the writing-room?”
“Yes, Prout. That will do nicely.”
She laid down stick and gauntlets; passed through the sombre
oak-panelled hall-way, up the broad shallow staircase, into the long
room above. “Here,” thought Patricia, “he ought to be writing.” She
looked at the great desk under the window, across it to the swelling
turf of Arlsfield Park: she looked at the cushioned settle by the
writing-desk, at the fire in the Morgan-tiled grate, at the
black-lacquer chairs, at the low bookshelves against the
cream-distempered walls, at the écru velvet curtains, the maroon carpet
on the floor. Then she walked deliberately to the desk; picked up
Beatrice’s photograph.
“A fine face,” thought Patricia, “a good face.”
Prout, entering with the tea-tray, caught her in the act: she stood
there, guiltily, frame in her hand; and the little gray-haired valet in
the scrupulously brushed blue clothes stared at her over the rim of his
high white collar. He, too, had fingered that photograph-frame; peered
not once, but a hundred times, into those clear thoughtful eyes. . . .
Prout drew a little table from its corner by the fireplace, set down his
tea-tray, arranged a chair. Patricia put back the photograph.
“Your tea, Madam,” said Prout; but he made no move to go.
“Prout,” began Patricia—and stopped as though she had accosted a
stranger by mistake.
“Yes, Madam?” There was invitation in the valet’s voice.
Still, Patricia hesitated.
“You were going to ask, Madam?”
She plunged in headlong, “Prout, who is that girl?”
“That, Madam, is Miss Cochrane’s photograph”—the old man spoke
slowly—“and, if I may be allowed to say so, Madam, it’s a great pity
Mister Francis ever met her.”
“Why?” Patricia hated herself for asking the question: it meant the
breaking-down of barriers, made her the old man’s accomplice. But Prout
seemed to take no notice; his voice lost no accent of respect.
“Because, Madam, if it hadn’t been for Miss Cochrane, _he_ might have
had a chance. What chance has he got now?” The respectful voice rose.
“No chance, Madam.”
There fell a silence between these two: rules of conduct, honoured for
generations, kept both tongue-tied. Patricia looked at her tea-cup, but
made no attempt to drink from it: the valet stood stock still, as though
awaiting an order. In the game of etiquette, it was the woman’s move.
“Tell me more about her,” said Patricia at last.
Etiquette went by the board; the valet turned suddenly man, an old man
who spoke broken-heartedly about a boy he loved.
“Mrs. Jameson, she was the woman for him. I knew it the moment they met.
We were on board a steamer, travelling from the Argentine to the West
Indies. And I thought, I thought. . . .”
“Yes, Prout. You thought. . . .”
“I thought she was going to make him happy. . . . Look at him now, Mrs.
Jameson. A broken man! Look at his life. Is it life? It isn’t life, Mrs.
Jameson. It’s just death. And all”—he shook his hand at the photograph
on the writing-table—“all because of one wretched woman who isn’t fit
to polish his boots. _I_ polish his boots, Mrs. Jameson; _I_ run this
house for him; _I_ do my best to make him happy. _I’d_ work my fingers
to the bone for him. Why? Not for the few shillings a week he gives
me—I haven’t been in service forty years for nothing, Mrs. Jameson—but
because . . . because I’m fond of him. Is _she_ fond of him? Would she
let him eat out his heart for her if she was fond of him? If she was
fond of him, why didn’t she marry him then? Why doesn’t she marry him
now? Write, write, write! Three years she’s been writing to him. And
every time one of her letters comes, it makes him worse. Why doesn’t she
stop writing to him? If she doesn’t want him, why can’t she leave him
alone? Why can’t she leave him alone, Mrs. Jameson?”
The man stopped speaking: the valet went on, “Many’s the time I’ve
thought of writing to her myself, Madam. But I’ve served the
Gordons—father and son—for over twenty years. And I know my place,
Madam.”
“And what would you have said in your letter, Prout?” Patricia asked the
question almost automatically.
“I should have told Miss Cochrane the truth, Madam.” . . . The door
closed silently. Patricia found herself alone.
A moment, she hesitated. The whole business seemed suddenly fantastic,
out of its century. Men no longer died for love of one woman. Francis
would get over this infatuation, recover his vitality, his joy of life.
She could not do this thing. She, like Prout, “knew her place.”
Then, for the mood of matehood was still strong in her, Patricia rose
slowly from her chair; walked towards the desk. Again, she picked up the
photograph, gazed into the eyes of it. The eyes seemed to ask a
question, a matehood question. “Tell me,” the eyes seemed to say, “tell
me. I too, can give. . . .”
“What harm can it do?” thought Patricia. Her free hand, resting on a
mass of papers, encountered something hard, something hard and flat. She
put down the photograph; turned over the papers. . . . The Browning
pistol lay at full cock, blue-black on the black wood of the desk; and
she knew instinctively that Francis, disturbed at Peter’s entrance, must
have turned the papers to hide it. . . .
Now, Patricia hesitated no longer. His pen, the pen she had given him,
was lying in a little lacquer pen-tray—her gift too. She picked it out;
unscrewed the mechanism; sat down to the desk; drew a sheet of
note-paper from its rack; and wrote, wrote for the life of a man. . . .