Human Traces (14 page)

thing I can say with certainty is this. Tonight my heart is filled with love and pride in you, my dear friends, and I wish you with all the fervour I can command a safe and peaceful harbour at the end of the voyage the Almighty has set out before you. Ladies and gentlemen, good night." The attendants moved into the room, gathering their charges. "Come on Alice, move along, girl. Don't do that, you filthy man. Come here, Jack. Put that down. Bedtime now, come along, come along." Thomas stood in the vestibule as they marshalled their patients through the door and into the long corridor. In the ballroom, the instruments were already packed up and Tyson was turning off the gas lamps; Brissenden was the last to leave, walking silently across the floor with his gathered sheet music furling beneath his arm. He was humming to himself as he walked past and did not hear when Thomas wished him goodnight. Dr. Faverill had already left the building to escort the visitors to their waiting carriages. Maud Illsley and Miss Whitman had put up stepladders to blow out the candles in the hall and take down Daisy's banner. Thomas stood for a moment, looking, hearing the rattle of keys and the clank of locks being turned, as through the length of the building the lamps were turned out. He took a candle to light his way through the resumed darkness.

Six

As Sonia had foreseen, there was nothing she could do to affect the course her husband and father had chosen, and the practical details of a divorce were surprisingly easy to arrange; what was more complicated was the disarray in which she was left by her conflicting emotions. She sighed from the depths of her heart as she packed her trunks and locked up the rooms of the London house. She knew that it was perverse, almost comic, for her to be the last to abandon the marriage when she was the wronged party within it; yet the more her efforts to be a good wife were mocked, the more anxious she became to make them work. Of course, she had been too young to marry; but she was quite grown-up for her age, and she had deceived no one about the nature of her feelings. She had followed the good advice of those who knew better and was content to believe that love would come; or that in its absence, the pleasure she brought to her parents and husband would be reward enough. A sort of love had come an absolute identification of her interests with Richard's and an anguished desire for him to prosper, which was tested but not shaken when she saw that as well as being socially inept, her husband was a bully. Any resentment she might have felt at this discovery was stifled by her guilt at being unable to conceive: Richard was entitled to be brusque when he had been disappointed in a man's simplest expectation. In the months after their separation, when she had returned to live with her parents, Sonia endlessly reviewed the course of her marriage. She should perhaps have resisted acting as financial go-between; but there was a sense of unease in her that she had been influenced to marry in the first place by a degree of impatience. Maybe she ought to have left when he casually told her, of the rooms that had been found for him: "Of course you can come if you like." At the time she put her staying down to a sense of duty, a conviction that someone at least must behave with dignity; but had she really clung on from fear of the unknown? It seemed to her, as she resumed her old duties at Torrington, that she had undoubtedly missed a chance, somewhere; she had been made a fool of, sold and re bought Such was the effect on her self-respect, however, that she could feel little relief at being rid of a man she did not love, and one who had behaved unkindly towards her. So unsure was she now of what value to place on herself that she could not even feel affection for her father: he seemed to think that he had ransomed and redeemed her and to expect her gratitude in return, but she felt that he had merely dealt with her at Richard Prendergast's level. For some months, Sonia wept at night from a sense of injustice. She even missed the rough embrace of her husband, alone as she was, and cast back into her child's bedroom. Then, very slowly, a little relief did find her; she became able to smile a little at the memory of some of Richard's absurdities, and her own. By the time the spring came, her grief had turned through tears into a kind of mute acceptance. She was in all probability unable to conceive, though this had not, in her view, been proved beyond doubt. Assuming the worst, however, her prospects as a wife were limited; but this was something she could adapt to, and need not circumscribe her life too narrowly. One thing in all the uncertainties did become clear to her: that she would never, in any circumstances, allow herself to be so used again. She held this determination tight in her heart, as some of the old lightness, her humour and her influence about the house began to return. One morning in early summer Jacques received a package from England. Madame Maurel, his landlady, handed it over in person, curious that one of her tenants should have an overseas correspondent, but Jacques did not respond to her imploring glance as he walked out into the morning. As he tore open the envelope on his way to the hospital, two pieces of paper fell out: one was a folded English banknote, and the other was a return ticket, issued by Thomas Cook and Son, for the Channel steamer. There was also a brief accompanying letter in English from Thomas.

My dear Jacques

I cannot bear your procrastination any longer. I am certain that your studies in neurology are most engrossing, but time is short and my asylum overlords allow me scant leave. Go to Calais. Take this ticket to the harbour and walk on to the vessel. You may study all you wish on the waves; no need even to raise your eyes from the book to view the white cliffs as they approach. The money will buy you a train ticket to London, a cab from Victoria to St. Pancras and a ticket to Lincoln. I shall be waiting for you at the station. What could be simpler? At Torrington will be assembled: the undersigned; his sister Sonia (sans Prendergast, who has departed our lives); his aged parents; his brother Edgar, his wife Lucy and assorted children; Miss Brigstocke, a cook, and her maid, May; new girl, name as yet unknown; sundry Dalmatian dogs; pages, hautboys, drums &c. The action takes place in the space of a summer week. You need to bring one decent suit for dinner, otherwise clothes suitable for outdoor activity, fishing, riding and so forth. Your linen will be cared for by the maid, who, though nameless, is reported by my sister to be fair of face and 'obliging in all things'. What can she mean? Please do not disquiet yourself about the money. My masters pay me a salary of 190 pounds per year; my board, lodging, laundry and coals are understood in this sum. In the eight months I have been at the asylum I have contrived to spend no more than 24 guineas (beer, books, photographic equipment; it is hard to find anything at all even my shoes are mended by the lunatics). So this is my first investment in our joint venture which we will discuss at length beneath the cedars of Torrington. You can repay me out of your first cheque when we set up our clinic. Do not reply; only come. We await you with impatience. Sincerely Thomas Midwinter PS Have you heard of lawn-tennis? It is a game patented by a British army officer a few years ago, an adaptation of the original game to the exigencies of an ordinary lawn. It is apparently popular in Lincolnshire. You are warned. Jacques smiled as he tucked the letter away in his pocket. Presumably Thomas had hoped to pique his interest by his mention of the new maid, but it was not the presence of an anonymous girl that interested him. He sat by the window on the hard bench of the Channel packet. Although the function of the boat was to carry the mails, there were about three dozen passengers, tradesmen he supposed, reading newspapers or books. Many had brought food and wine, which they spread out beside them. A woman at the end of his bench produced a half camembert and a slab of terrine the size of a small headstone; she sliced a loaf neatly, smeared it with butter from a paper packet and began to pile up each oval plank with food. As she ate, she pulled the paper stopper from a bottle of red wine, which she upended against her pursed lips, so thin red dribbles mingled with the excess of terrine on her dimpled chin. The smell of pork and garlic caused Jacques's belly to make such desperate noises that he had to move to a different seat. The time had come, he thought, when he and Thomas would have to start behaving like serious men. In the language of the student, which had till then been their rhetoric, there was always comedy and exaggeration; there was the self-consciousness that sprang from the difference between their private estimation of their worth and their knowledge of the public fact that others, more eminent, had preceded them. There was the self-mockery that was their pre-emptive defence against their elders, and against the unyielding nature of the obstacles ahead. So many sentences in the conversations of students began with the words, "Apparently, they..." "They' were the masters, those who had gone before and probably sought, for no clear reason, to obstruct the young; and 'apparently' showed how little students knew at first hand, how much of what they dealt in was hearsay. Jacques felt it was time to take possession of the facts, to confront the 'they' and to cease to hide behind self-mockery: to stare the world, unsmiling, in the face. At the same time, he was reluctant to lose the humour of his dialogue with Thomas. Three times since their meeting at Deauville, Thomas had visited him in Paris, where Jacques had been not only exhilarated to see him, but impressed by his determination. He had not retreated one pace, one half-pace, from the ambition of their shared objective and he had showed himself resolute in the surroundings of his English asylum. Having visited Olivier, Jacques knew what such places were like. For almost ten years, Olivier had been in the public asylum. Jacques went to see him when he could, though the distance to be travelled and the hours of his work, first as a student then as an intern, made it difficult. Olivier had intervals of lucidity, occasions when he seemed to know who Jacques was and to be able to communicate almost normally, but such times seemed to give him no insight into his condition. When he was better, he could not understand or picture himself when he was possessed; and when he was worse, he could not draw on any deposit of reason or comfort from his better periods, because he could not remember them. Jacques had at first persuaded Abbe Henri to accompany him, but the Curé found the experience so harrowing that he had reduced his visits to one a year. He told Jacques that after each occasion it required several weeks of prayer and meditation to restore his faith: the sights he saw, the sounds, the parodies of human grace, made it hard for him to discern God's purpose. Jacques did not sympathise, but his debt to Abbe Henri was such that he could not express his misgivings. At least the Curé did visit; old Rebière had not been once to see his son. Jacques could forgive Tante Mathilde, who was not related to Olivier, for not visiting, and Grandmere, who was too frail to manage a journey by coach, but not his father, whose attitude to Olivier was that of a farmer rejecting ill-bred livestock at market: take it away, he seemed to say, it is of no value to me. Yet Olivier was his son, his first-born, and in his blood and brain ran particles of Rebière's own transmitted self. As a consequencejacques had ceased to write to him and no longer visited Sainte Agnes. Often in his narrow attic room at Madame Maurel's he dreamed of the fields and paths where he had grown up; he walked again along the shingled beach or emerged from the wood at dusk and saw the thin drift of smoke coming from the chimney of his father's house below: this was the country of his heart, and no human changes could supplant it. His plan was to remove Olivier from the asylum as soon as he had a place for him to live and the money to support him. He did not share Thomas's view that living in an asylum could in itself be of benefit. Although Esquirol had had success with patients in his private hospital at Charenton, Jacques doubted the severity of their illness. Olivier's health had certainly not improved by his being incarcerated with other lunatics; and although he generally evinced little awareness of his surroundings, Jacques felt that in his periods of relative calm it could not be helpful to Olivier to see himself surrounded by others suffering, in squalor, the torments from which he had a brief remission. The only worthwhile thing that Olivier did in the asylum was to make drawings in his neat, clerk's hand; he had studied some architectural books and, in his saner interludes, drew up intricate plans for improved accommodation. Jacques ordered some lamb cutlets and beer at a chop house in Dover and ate them wolfishly with some sort of suet pudding, unknown to him, in a dark savoury broth. He seemed to have plenty of money left over when he took the train to London and watched the hop fields of Kent gliding past the window. This was England... Pale, flat, lacking the grandeur and variety of Brittany, but pleasant in its own way. It was the first foreign country he had seen. Until he had met Thomas, he had given little thought to the island across the water; he knew that its people were warlike and practical, but they had, so far as he had been taught, contributed nothing original to civilisation some agricultural tools, a play or two, perhaps; but otherwise his own country had remained a self-sufficient universe, which had discovered or invented all it needed to make it, and keep it, pre-eminent. Yet Thomas had a sort of confidence'Jacques noticed, that was not a personal trait but seemed to spring from the power of a tradition, as though he were able to draw at will on some sort of inheritance; so as the train neared London, he decided he had better be watchful in what he assumed about this new country. He did not want to betray the fact that besides Olivier, whom he had lost, and Thomas, he had seen no need for friends and so had never dined in company or attended social events. Thomas was waiting for him at the station with Jenkins the coachman. He squeezed Jacques so hard in his arms that Jacques began to cough and had to push him away. "Tussis nervosa," said Thomas. "Jump in the coach. Quick. We can still be in time for dinner. I presume you are hungry?" "Always." "Drive like hell, Jenkins. We've killed the fatted calf. The fatted sow at any rate. What do you think of my country?" "I love it," said Jacques. "I feel I am Englishman already' "Good. Then you will want to ride with us tomorrow." "Of course I will." "I suppose that is another of your talents." "We had a violent mare at home. If you could ride her, my father used to say, you could ride any horse in France." Thomas laughed. "You wait till you try Achilles. Do you have a clean shirt and all that nonsense for dinner? Tell me about your journey. And what is happening in the world of the nervous system? Tell me everything." "First, you tell me what I need to know for tonight. Who else will be there? What special customs do you have?" said Jacques, trying to sound facetious, not just worried. "What English rituals are there?" "Early June," said Thomas. "The sacrifice of the virgins. You have missed the maypole dancing, but it is the season for the burning of the Roman Catholics. I have told my father you would be happy to oblige." "Delighted, of course. Provided that I am allowed to witness the sacrifice of the virgins." "But of course. Noblesse oblige. And you pass the port to your left. Or is it your right? I can never remember. Do not kiss anyone. Do not shake hands. That is considered vulgar and foreign." "And foreign things are bad?" "Invariably. Is that not your experience?" "It was until a few moments ago. Now I see possibilities. There is a part of me that feels almost English." "Make sure it is a thinking part. We are entering the village of Torrington. They may never have seen a Frenchman before. I wish you good luck. After dinner we shall meet again." The new maid, who turned out to be called Violet, showed Jacques to his bedroom and told him to be downstairs in ten minutes. Jacques had time to take out his best suit and shirt for dinner, to wash his face and hands and to check his appearance in the mirror on the dressing table. There was something about the room that pleased him the planed and polished floorboards, the jar of fresh wild flowers, the selection of books on a side table: Atkinson's Flora of Lincolnshire, a translation of Eugenie Grandet and an old copy of The Lancet. Someone had been thoughtful on his behalf that was what it was, more than the details of the room itself and he was touched by it. He peered at his face one more time in the glass. Although he had slept only a few hours the night before in a Holborn inn, his brown eyes were bright, and the skin below was clear; he was excited for no reason he could tell, merely that he was young, there was an evening ahead, friendship, wine and much to say. Thomas's family was in the library, to which the waiting Violet escorted him. "This way, sir. "Jacques felt fraudulent, being called 'sir' by a servant in a big house in a foreign country; he felt the gloom of his humble home envelop him like a flag that said 'impostor'. Thomas sprang from the sofa where he had been lounging and put his arm round Jacques's shoulders as he introduced him. Jacques's eyes took in people English people, lumpish, powdery, stiff. He held out his hand, then, remembering, rapidly thrust it back behind him. On his shoulder was Thomas's arm "My mother... father... Mrs. Meadowes..." and round his knees were what appeared to be a pack of Dalmatian dogs, snuffling and grinning, thrashing his thighs with their tails."... Dr. Meadowes... Stop it, Dido, get down... Gordon, sit down... And my sister Sonia Prendergast whom you will remember from Deauville." Jacques found himself bowing, and as his eyes went down to the carpet saw a proffered pale hand briefly appear then vanish. "I remember very well," he managed to say, looking up again into Sonia's slightly amused eyes, dark and rapid, exactly as he did indeed recall from the walled garden of the Pension des Dunes: that look sardonic, but modest. She wore a dress of burgundy silk with a row of pearls; the skin of her throat and upper chest, Jacques noticed, was still that of a girl. "Welcome to Torrington, Mr. Rebière," said Mrs. Midwinter. She stressed it on the first syllable, as though it were "Rebbier'. "A glass of Marsala, perhaps," said Mr. Midwinter. "Don't let the dogs do that or you'll have white hairs all over your trousers." "Not black hairs," said Jacques, 'from the spots? That would be preferable." "No," said Mrs. Midwinter, without any acknowledgment that Jacques might have been attempting a pleasantry, 'it is only the white hairs that moult. Most inconvenient." Jacques stood with his back to the fireplace, trapped in an enfilade of polite enquiry: journey, family, home, work... He turned to left and right and knew, like a St. Cyr infantry subaltern, that it was a matter of standing firm and soaking up the fire. He felt the affectionate eyes of Thomas and he thought Sonia on him as he held his position until relief came with a knock at the door: "Dinner is served," said Violet giving a small curtsey, blushing and disappearing swiftly back into the hall. The French doors of the dining room were open on to the terrace, and a light breeze cooled the overdressed company as they took their seats. Jacques found himself between Mrs. Midwinter and Mrs. Meadowes, wife of the local doctor; he disguised the weakness of his English by asking numerous questions of the ladies and obliging them to talk. Opposite him was Dr. Meadowes, who had a swollen foot and walked with a stick; his ailment seemed to make him short-tempered and disapproving. Thomas was two seats to the left, out of range for Jacques, unless he were to crane rudely in front of Mrs. Meadowes's bosom or sneak behind her back; but diagonally across
from him was Sonia, who was doing her best to humour Dr. Meadowes. Jacques found his eyes aching to return to Sonia's face, but forced them to remain on the plump and powdered cheeks of Mrs. Midwinter, as she explained the expense of keeping horses. When she looked down for a moment to her soup, he let his glance flick once across the table and found that Sonia was looking steadily at him. She smiled at him in an unembarrassed, sisterly way without breaking off her attempts to be pleasant to Dr. Meadowes. She had no need actually to look at Meadowes, because he did not raise his face from the soup plate. Sisterly, thought Jacques. Of course: I am her little brother's friend. Why would she not be cordial and unembarrassed? Nevertheless, he felt inexplicably deflated by Sonia's friendliness as he turned to find out more about Mrs. Meadowes's herbaceous borders. The English food was surprisingly palatable. After the soup, there was roast pork carved by Mr. Midwinter at the sideboard and taken round by Violet. Jacques noticed that her hand was shaking when she served him. He did not often eat so much or so well on his unforgiving budget and only wished they had not served vegetables at the same time as the meat. "All our own, you know," said Mrs. Midwinter. "Jenkins has made rather a good job of the kitchen gardens this year." Jacques noticed the enthusiastic helpings that she took for herself; he caught Sonia's eye again and thought he saw a light of amusement in it. His glass was filled with red wine from Bordeaux; his plate was cleared and another, with cold fowl, was placed in front of him. Perhaps he had imagined Sonia's look. After a peculiar milk dessert, Jacques was surprised when Mrs. Midwinter abruptly stood up in mid-conversation, put her napkin on the table and made to leave the room. He hurried from his chair, presuming that dinner was over, hoping to be in time to open the door for her. Sonia and Mrs. Meadowes followed Mrs. Midwinter out, and Jacques stood by the door, waiting for the men. Thomas, still seated, shook his head and pointed Jacques back to his seat. Mr. Midwinter fetched a decanter of port from the sideboard and motioned the others to move up to his end of the table. The sweet wine was unfamiliar to Jacques, but he found it pleasant enough and pushed the decanter across the table into Thomas's waiting hand. "So, Midwinter," said Dr. Meadowes. "Are you pleased to have your daughter back? What sort of fellow did he turn out to be, this Prendergast?" "A rascal," said Mr. Midwinter, sitting back in his chair. "Not a rogue, not a cheat, but a man of straw. Couldn't keep the girl in a respectable way. Built up huge debts and had no chance of getting out of them. There were no children, so we did well to cut our losses." "It must be disappointing for you." "A little. But she is still young. The divorce settlement has been agreed. I still have hopes for her future, though of course she will be seen as tarnished goods, so one's hopes are modest." "It is difficult to see how she is tarnished, father," said Thomas, 'when she acted in such good faith." Mr. Midwinter chuckled. "That was the damn funny thing about it, Meadowes. When I had negotiated her release from this fellow this impecunious rascal she wasn't even fond of then blow me down she says she wants to stay!" Dr. Meadowes coughed into his glass. "Why? In God's name, why? Frightened of being an old maid?" "No," said Mr. Midwinter. "It was a sense of duty, I think. She said a lot of things I didn't understand. About how being his wife was what she did for a living, or some such thing, and she couldn't change that any sooner than she could change her parents. It was a rum thing, I can tell you. I would have been out of there like a shot." "Hmm," said Meadowes. "Queer cattle, women." "Exceedingly queer. But she seems all right. She's a little quiet, but I think in a way she's glad to be home. I know we're pleased to have her back. She's a good girl at heart." Thomas put down his glass. "Papa, I think you might try a little harder to understand Sonia's position. I am sure you acted in her best interests, but can you not see how powerless and forlorn she must have felt to see her life decided for her, wondering about the lack of children, too, and whose fault that was? And then for you to call her "tarnished", as though ' "It's just a word, Thomas, just a blasted word. And what's more it is a word that will be used, whether we like it or not. You were always such a pedant, weren't you, as though the future of the world depended on the choice of a single word or a line of Shakespeare. It doesn't." "But, Father ' "Let it lie, Thomas." Jacques watched as Thomas controlled himself, cleared his throat and reached for the decanter, from which he filled his glass, before passing it silently to Dr. Meadowes. Jacques felt sure the Thomas he had encountered on the beach at Deauville would have poured the contents on his father's head; perhaps his acquiescence showed that Thomas, like him, had moved on from the days of student self-assurance. "So," said Mr. Midwinter, unable quite to keep a note of triumph from his voice, 'how is your boy, Meadowes? Following in the family profession, I understand." After the port, they rejoined the women in the morning room, though it was not long before Thomas, drawing on the privilege of youth, asked if he and Jacques might be allowed to walk in the garden. "My God, this grass," said Jacques. "It is like velvet." "But you have lawns in France, Jacques." "My father had a stable yard with fields behind. But this is wonderful, it's like walking on cloth." "In the morning I shall take you for a tour of the grounds. I have brought a cigar for you. Shall we sit beneath the cedar? Hello? Who's that?" Jacques turned round to see a female shape hurrying towards them in the darkness. "Do you mind if I join in your walk?" said Sonia, a little breathless. "I could not bear another of Dr. Meadowes's case histories." "Come and sit down," said Thomas. '"Have I told you about the old farmer's deaf wife who fell downstairs?" he asks. And you say, "Yes, you told me earlier." But then he just carries on and tells you again anyway." "Ah, but we like case histories out here," said Thomas. "It is part of what we need to talk about." "I am sure that you will not repeat yourself so soon or so often." "We will try," said Jacques, emboldened by Sonia's modest manner. "Mama thinks I have a headache, so perhaps it would be best if she does not know I came to join you," said Sonia. "It shall be our secret," said Thomas. "Now Jacques was about to tell me what he has discovered since I saw him last." Jacques puffed at his cigar. Although he felt inhibited by Sonia, he thought he might as well be serious. "I think what I am finding," he said slowly, aware that he could not express himself in English as well as he would like, 'is that there may be very little time left in the life of what one calls psychiatry. From what I have seen in the Salpetriere and from the place where Olivier lives, most of the illnesses are of neurological origin. Neurology, as you know," he said to Sonia, 'is the study of diseases of the nervous system which stem from some lesion in the brain or the spinal cord. Anyway, in Paris there are certain eminent men who are making progress in attributing to the different parts of the brain the functions of speech, movement and so on. I believe that soon we will be able to diagnose at post-mortem the half-dozen most important diseases. Then we can set about finding cures." "It is a shame you have to wait until they are dead," said Sonia. "I suppose there is no other way of inspecting someone's brain." "Not yet. Though one day we may be able to take a photograph through the bone of the skull." "Not with my Underwood," said Thomas. "But when this task of nosology is complete," said Jacques, 'the majority of mental patients will become neurological. The remainder, whose damage is incurable, can only be nursed, but they may be looked after in hospital with the limbless or the blind. No more asylums." "My dear Jacques, we have barely begun our lives as alienists and already you are declaring the profession moribund." "All this is happening very quickly," said Jacques. "It is time for us to move, or we shall be overtaken." Thomas sighed. "I agree with you that there is no time to waste. From my point of view the urgency is to discover treatments before all lunatics are classified as incurable and fit only to be managed. For you, the urgency seems to be to make our contribution before all the answers are discovered!" Jacques laughed. "It is good that we have different views. As long as we agree that speed is essential." Sonia coughed. "May I ask a small question? What exactly is this thing that you are going to do?" "We are going to set up in private practice," said Thomas. "Where?" "Not in Lincoln. The competition from Dr. Meadowes would be too fierce." "Don't mock, Thomas. He told me his son is to become a doctor as well." "We will have to follow money, to some extent," said Thomas. "You cannot be a specialist without clients." "Suppose we go to Paris," said Jacques. "That is where the best research is. And there is money' "Suppose we go to Heidelberg or Munich," said Thomas. "I think the Germans have a broader outlook." "Suppose we go to Vienna," said Sonia. "The music and the ' "No, it must be Paris," said Jacques. "At the Salpetriere, the senior neurologist, Professor Charcot, gives public lectures which have changed the face of medicine. He uses hypnotism to demonstrate the nature of hysteria. He is able to induce bodily changes in the patients. These lectures are open to the public. Anyone can go.; "It sounds a little cruel," said Sonia. "No, the completion of the grand malis good for them. The convulsion itself brings relief." "I have another small question," said Sonia. "Do you not believe that talking to people and treating them kindly might have a beneficial effect?" Thomas laughed. "You must not start us off on the psychological question. We are not yet at one on that." "You don't appear to be at one on very much." "Thank you, Sonia," said Thomas. "I believe that moral treatment, concern and so on, may well help sick people; even if it does not, it is still kind to ask them about their thoughts and feelings. It is clear to me that many of my patients are suffering from organic illness of the brain that no amount of good will can reach. Jacques, on the other hand, I think, is sceptical about the achievements of his own countrymen in this field. He thinks ' "I think," said Jacques,"that some of those apparently cured in small and wealthy asylums are not suffering from mental illness as you and I understand it. But what most persuades me is my own case." He turned to Sonia. "My brother has been in an asylum for ten years. Before that, he lived in the stable at home. When I go to see him, it is like talking to someone who lives in a world close to our own, but divided from it by an impenetrable barrier. I wonder if he inherited some abnormality of the brain. But I do not have it and neither does my father. As for my mother, I do not know because she died when giving birth... To me." "I am sorry," said Sonia. "So perhaps Olivier's illness is the result of what Pasteur would call a "germ" that he breathed in somewhere. Or maybe he has been driven to behave like this by the circumstances of his life. Yet these were not so different from my own, or from those of most of the young men in our village. And until a certain age he seemed happy' "Also," said Thomas, 'we have noticed, and so have other alienists, that Olivier's symptoms are similar in pattern to those of many others. You feel there is a recurring shape to them. A large number of the people in my asylum have it, and it is hard to believe that so many disparate individual lives could produce such a similar pattern of symptoms, unless there were a common physical base, something they have inherited." "And how are things inherited?" said Sonia. "In the blood, somehow?" "The precise mechanism is still, alas, unknown. But it would be similar to whatever transmits family resemblances, colour of eyes and so forth." "I see," said Sonia. "But the interesting thing," said Jacques, 'is whether there could be some process by which the patient's experience can somehow release an inherited organic illness that until that moment was lying dormant." Sonia and Thomas looked at one another and then at Jacques in the shaded darkness of the cedar. Neither of them spoke for a few moments. "So something could.. jump, as it were," said Thomas,"from the realm of the abstract idea, experience into the physical chemistry of the brain and release a reaction there?" "I believe it is possible," said Jacques. He had not framed this thought clearly before, and he felt elated that he had so dumbfounded his friends. "And that reaction," said Sonia, 'would cause the patient to behave in the way you describe in your brother." "It might," said Jacques. "I think it is conceivable that the physiological changes in the brain that follow on a sensation of fear or anxiety might cause a chemical reaction which might in itself precipitate the entire collapse. It might be like the straw that breaks the camel's back, or the first domino to fall in a line. The rest becomes inevitable because of what has been inherited." "But without that straw, that domino, the inheritance might never be activated?" said Sonia. "It might just lie dormant?" "I don't know," said Jacques. "But I think it is worth considering." "There is a man who brings my coal," said Thomas. "He is called Stevens, and he is melancholic with some chorea. He may be afflicted by a sort of illness a pneumonia, as it were, of the cerebral tissue or he may still be mourning the death of his wife. But he cannot really be both, can he?" "I cannot speak for your coal man," said Jacques,"but I believe we are on the verge of understanding this question and that when we do we shall be able to offer an almost complete explanation of human behaviour. This is the most exciting time there has ever been in human science. Imagine. A theory that explains it all." "They are certainly the profoundest questions," said Thomas, sounding unhappy. "And that," said Jacques, leaping to his feet, "is why you must come to Paris." Jacques was awoken the following morning by a soft knock at his door. It was Violet, who had brought him a cup of tea with, to his surprise, milk in it. She kept her head averted as she placed it on the chest of drawers, and made her way back without having met his eye. "Your shaving water will be up in a moment, sir," she said, closing the door softly behind her. He fetched the cup and took it back to bed, where he propped himself up on two pillows. He could see a fine morning through the window and could hear the sound of wood pigeon and blackbirds from the