PART TWENTY-NINE

THE LIFTING OF SHADOWS

§ 1

It is no use pretending that Patricia was not ashamed of herself. She was—desperately so. She felt she had been guilty of immodesty, that she had forfeited her husband’s respect. Even when she realized that Peter’s damaged memory retained few details of their night except his promise to consult her father about his “nerves,” shame haunted her. Constantly, she expected him to remember, to judge, to condemn. . . . Yet actually, she had saved him!

For Peter’s “case” was, in the terms of psycho-pathology (which is the science of soul-illnesses), one of “repressed complexes”: in simpler language, of bottling-up his emotions. At their first interview, Heron Baynet put the matter to him very simply. Heron Baynet said:—

“You have been twice wounded. One wound is in your arm; the other in your mind. The flesh wound, you let us cure: you understood that it needed antiseptics, drainage, bandages, rest. The wound in your mind, you concealed from us; and it has festered. Now, tell me what you are most afraid of?”

“Consumption,” admitted Peter.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ve got it.”

“Who put that idea into your head?”

Peter told his father-in-law about the gas-attack at Neuve Église, about his cough, about Rolleston. Heron Baynet laughed.

“We’ll soon settle that. Tubercle’s a bacillus. I’ll test you for it. Now then, what else are you afraid of?”

Peter hesitated.

“Shall I tell you a few things?” went on the doctor. “You’re afraid of going out by yourself. You’re afraid of noise. You’re afraid of time.”

“How do you know?” asked Peter wonderingly.

“My dear boy, how do _you_ know things? By learning them, don’t you? You were trained in business, you were trained in soldiering. You studied them. Well, I’ve studied the mind. . . .”

“But damn it,” said Peter, “one oughtn’t to be afraid of anything. At least, one oughtn’t to admit it?”

“Oughtn’t”—the doctor smiled. “There’s no ‘oughtn’t’ in the mind. ‘Oughtn’t’ is half your trouble. You’ve corked-up all these fears with your ‘oughtn’ts’ until they’ve become obsessions.”

“Well, anyway I’m a coward,” said Peter stubbornly. “You can’t get over that, however much you argue about it.”

“Of course you are,” countered his father-in-law blandly, “of course you’re a coward. So are nine-hundred and ninety-nine men out of every thousand. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have tried to control this wound in your mind. You were afraid to tell anybody about it, weren’t you?”

“I suppose I was.”

“Why?”

“Cowardice, I suppose. According to your theory.”

“Exactly. Don’t you see, Peter, that cowardice and bravery are ridiculous terms?”

“No, I don’t,” snapped Peter. “A man either does his job, or he funks it. If he funks it, he’s a coward.”

“You mean, if he funks it and doesn’t do it. Supposing he funks it, and does it all the same.”

“Then,” admitted Peter, “he’s not a coward.”

“Good. Now, let me tell you something. That power which drives the man to do a thing he funks, is not bravery but the will-to-be-brave. Your will-to-be-brave is damaged; you’ve overstrained it. If you go on overstraining it, you’ll lose it altogether. Give it a rest. Do you understand me? Give it a rest. All these repressions you’ve been so proud of—don’t interrupt, you _have_ been proud of them, subconsciously proud—all these repressions are wrong. You’ve bound the wound up tight instead of allowing it to drain. You’ve been sitting on you’re mental safety-valves. If you want to jump when you hear a noise, for God’s sake jump. It’s much better for you than the effort to control yourself. If you’re afraid of open spaces, avoid ’em—don’t go through them with a loaded gun and pretend you’re trying to shoot rabbits. . . .”

Peter blushed scarlet; and the lesson went on. One by one, Heron Baynet detailed the Fears—Fear of Open Spaces, Fear of Closed Spaces, Fear of Time, Fear of Money, Fear of Pain and Fear of Death. To his listening son-in-law, the catalogue seemed inexhaustible.

“Is everybody afraid of something?” asked the patient at last.

“Everybody with any sense,” was the answer. “Fear is the beginning of knowledge.”

“Then what are _you_ afraid of?”

“I!” Heron Baynet’s quiet eyes held Peter’s for a full second. “I’m afraid of not knowing enough.”

. . . “Afraid of not knowing enough!” The phrase lingered in Peter’s mind—as Heron Baynet had intended it should linger: and with it, came back a scrap of Greek wisdom, γνωθι σεαυτον [Greek: gnôthi seauton] (“Know thyself”). For the first time in his life, Peter began to _think_.

Hitherto, he had lived automatically; actions had contented him. Now, he started in to reason about his actions. Why had he done thus? Why had he done so? What was the driving-force behind his actions? Why had that driving-force suddenly run down?

The process—study of “cause” as opposed to study of “effect”—fascinated a mind hitherto devoid of introspection; so that by the time he went up to town for his second “lesson,” the following question formulated itself:

“What,” asked Peter Jameson, “is the real cause of this neurasthenia? Is it a mental trouble or a physical one? I’ve had the devil’s own time since I saw you last. I’m as nervy as fourteen cats. My hands wobble all over the place. I don’t seem able to control my memory. I’ve had three nightmares in four nights; and woken up screaming my guts out. What’s wrong—my mind or my body?”

“Can you separate ’em?” said Heron Baynet. “You’re not God. Nor am I. I’m only a doctor: but I don’t know more about both your body and your mind than you do. Now listen. . . .”

So, twice weekly, the educative process went on. And gradually, with the coming of knowledge, fear abated.

§ 2

But Patricia’s fears did not abate. To her, the days were terror; the nights, agony. The very love she bore her husband became a scourge.

For Patricia was not interested in “cases”: her interest lay in Peter the man. And Peter the man, as she saw him now, seemed utterly broken. She lived too close to his body, too far from his mind, to be aware of the gradual cure which was being wrought in him. She saw only the shaking hands, the glaring eyes of neurasthenia; heard only its high-pitched quavering voice, its outbursts of uncontrollable rage, its intolerable depressions. Night after night, Peter’s screams woke her from tormented sleep: day after day his temper fretted her almost to breaking point.

Yet, out of the very love which scourged her, Patricia fashioned healing for him. Calm, clear-eyed, infinitely tender, mastering herself to save him, she walked by his side through the cold shadows—understanding sometimes, pitying always, but faltering never, learning with each painful step Love’s ultimate lesson, the lesson of self-sacrifice.

And always, as she walked beside him, the petty responsibilities of home-keeping—responsibilities she had never known in the sheltered days of their Kensington existence—fretted at her mind. (They are not “literature,” these responsibilities of home-keeping; they are neither dramatic, nor romantic: but, for the women of what we in England call the “middle-class,” they are “life”—the instant problem of existence, its thousand daily pettinesses which may not be postponed. Only the “middle-class” woman, the woman of moderate income who wants not a house but a _home_, will understand how much these responsibilities added to Patricia’s burden!). . . .

One other burden, too, she carried on her willing shoulders through those dark days of January, 1917—the burden of her responsibility for Francis Gordon. Her brain was never quite free from the picture of the long writing-room, the fire in the grate, the dark bookshelves against the cream walls, and the big desk under the window—the desk—and the silver photograph-frame—and the menacing fully-cocked pistol.

“Melodrama!” she used to say to herself. “Melodrama! People don’t kill themselves for love nowadays—they only kill for hate.” But intuition warned her, every time she saw Francis, that he had determined on suicide. She told herself that such a man was not worth saving, that he was a weakling, a coward . . . but her mind never ceased to make excuses for him.

“Supposing,” she used to argue, “that I had lost Peter and the children—supposing that I were a cripple—supposing that I saw nothing ahead of me but a dragged-out, sexless existence, wouldn’t I think of Death kindly, look forward to it as a relief?” . . .

Again and again, she tackled him about his writing; again and again, he gave her the same answer, “It’s a futile game, Pat. Futile! Books are the most useless things in the world. The worst-educated agricultural labourer does more good with his hoe in ten minutes than I can do with my pen in a whole life-time.” “Then why not take a hoe?” Patricia used to say. “Some of us can’t!” answered Francis Gordon. “We’re built to be brain-workers—and brain-work doesn’t satisfy us. Besides. . . .”

Patricia knew too well the meaning of that “Besides,” of the downward glance at his left leg, at the distorted boot and the crutch-stick, which accompanied it. At such times, she was glad that she had written to “that girl.” Perhaps, “that girl” would understand. . . . But January passed; February opened with threats of unlimited submarine warfare; threat turned to actuality—and still no word arrived from Beatrice.

“Why should she answer?” thought Patricia. “Why should she come? It was a crazy letter to have written. Perfectly crazy!”

§ 3

February nineteen-seventeen darkled the shadow which had lain so long across the world; but into those particular shadows which brooded over the life of Patricia Jameson it brought a little ray of light.

Peter began to get better—obviously, perceptibly better. Already, rest, freedom from constraint, and, above all, the “suggestions” with which Heron Baynet had been feeding his damaged mind, told their visible tale. There came periods—sometimes a bare ten minutes, sometimes an hour, and once a whole wonderful afternoon—when he seemed his normal self. There came nights when he slept beside her as a child sleeps—motionless, head pillowed on arm.

At first, she could hardly believe. The sudden changes from ill-tempered gloomy hypochondriac to ordinary human being bewildered her. It seemed to Patricia as though there were two Peters; and she never knew, leaving one Peter alone for a minute, whether she would find the other Peter in his place on her return.

As a matter of psychological fact, there were—at this period in the man’s career—not two Peters but at least five.

To begin with, there was Peter the neurasthenic—a huddled frightened soul who lived alone in its black caves of gloom, and still prayed with whining ingratiation for death. At this creature, the new soul of Peter Jameson—Heron Baynet’s creation—used to laugh. “You’re a fraud,” the new soul said to it, “an utter fraud. Call yourself a soul. Absurd! You’re physical. Do you understand? Purely physical. If my body hadn’t got that knock on the head you’d never have existed at all.” Then, there was the original soul of Peter which contented itself with the assertion that both its confrères were non-existent, phantoms of the imagination: also the soul of “P.J.,” sometime a Gunner in Kitchener’s Army, who cared for nothing in the world except the whereabouts and well-being of the Fourth Southdown Brigade (this soul was particularly active at post-time or when reading the newspapers); and lastly, there was the soul of Peter Jameson, worker by instinct, who had begun to want employment. This last Peter spent many profitless hours in the garden, watching Fry dawdle through his work, prowling about the stables, annoyed that they should be horseless, or slipping into the garage to inspect the dust-sheet-shrouded Crossley—and a few profitable ones with old man Tebbits and his son Harry, a blond giant of indomitable labour.

But the Peter of Patricia’s dreaming—Peter the lover—was still fast asleep!

Still, he grew better—obviously, perceptibly better: and for the moment that betterment satisfied his wife’s reason. The other Patricia, the unreasonable love-hungry Patricia, contented herself once more with the thought of palship. . . .

Towards the end of the month, a blizzard swept the Thames Valley, almost isolating them. Their regular callers—Parson Smithers, Doctor and Mrs. Wainwright, the Misses Rapson (who kept prize chows and were always trying to dispose of one: “a sweet doggie, Mrs. Jameson, and such breeding”), and the few other gregarious creatures whom neither Patricia’s stand-offishness nor Peter’s nerves had defeated—left them alone for a whole week.

Sunflowers, red roof snow-covered, looked like a house on a Christmas card. The road to Arlsfield was just passable; but the footpath to Glen Cottage lay three feet deep under crumbly drifts.

“I think I’ll go over and see Francis,” said Peter, one morning. “Poor old chap, he won’t be able to get out much in this.”

“Hadn’t you better wait till this afternoon?” Patricia looked at her husband across the breakfast-table. “Then we can go together.”

His eyes met hers steadily; there was a positive twinkle in them.

“I shan’t take the twelve-bore,” remarked our Mr. Jameson.

She postponed the children’s lesson-time a good half-hour—just for the pleasure of slipping out of the house after him, of concealing herself behind Tebbits’ snow-thatched rick to watch his stocky figure toiling downhill.

He came back in time for lunch, very out of breath but very delighted with his achievement; announced that, “Agoraphobia had been bloodily repulsed.”

“And how was Francis?” smiled Patricia, forgetting her usual “Language, Peter!” in excitement at this tangible proof of recovery.

“Francis!”—Peter hesitated a perceptible second. “To tell you the truth, Pat, I’ve been rather bothered about Francis. He’s brooding about something or other. His legs, I suppose. _Have_ you noticed anything?”

“No,” lied Patricia. “I haven’t noticed anything.”

“May be only my imagination,” decided Peter. “But I don’t like the look of him somehow. He ought to consult that father of yours. However, he seemed better this morning. He’s got a new bee in his bonnet—America.”

“What about America?” Patricia pricked up her ears.

“Well, as far as I could make out, this submarine campaign—according to Francis—is going to bring America in. Once America comes in—also according to Francis—the war’s over; the English-speaking races are re-united; and we’re in for a hundred years of peace.”

“Oh, is that all?” said Patricia—who was thinking of Beatrice Cochrane.

“Yes, that’s all.”

Peter did not tell his wife that his “bother” about his cousin had not been allayed, but rather accentuated, by the phrase, “If I could just live to see that come off, old boy, I’d die a happy man,” with which Francis had closed the topic. . . .

§ 4

March cleared the snow from the hills. Already, the leafless trees seemed hinting of springtime; already Patricia’s crocuses made an orange carpet under the walnut-tree. But Peter Jameson was not thinking of crocuses. As leave-time grew shorter, so thoughts turned more and more to the Brigade. Sandiland, now a Major, wrote a long gossipy letter. Could Peter get back to Beer Battery? Had Peter heard about the new Army Artillery Brigades, about six-gun batteries? Had Peter seen Lodden? Of course, the show wasn’t what it used to be—still, some of the old gang were carrying on. Conway would be glad of a sixth for poker. Charlie Henry had got his second pip. Merrilees sent his kind regards. Purves was home—Sandiland didn’t think he’d come out again. The “Brat” was acting Adjutant. Mr. Black had been given a commission. “And R.,” the letter concluded, “is playing up for a Brigadiership. He’ll get it too.”

The war had seemed a thousand miles from Sunflowers, but Sandiland’s blurred handwriting brought it back with a rush. Pictures—Heron Baynet had taught his son-in-law all about brain-pictures—formed themselves in Peter’s mind. He saw war again, the whole nauseating fascinating panorama of war. Did he want to go back to it? “Not much!” said our Mr. Jameson.

But would he go back? Would he have to go back? If he went back, would he be able to stick it? These questions perturbed Peter; and he began testing himself, overhauling the machinery of his mind. Deliberately, he conjured up the worst of his “out there” experiences; saw them clear-pictured at their limit of horror.

The process strained his new will-power very nearly to breaking-point. Twice,—after particularly terrible visions—he abandoned hope. The old reproach of “coward” formulated itself in his brain.

Then he began to make excuses for himself: “It was absurd to go back. Unpatriotic. Unfair to the men. His nerve might give out in a crisis. He might panic; make some ghastly mistake, involving not only his own honour but the lives of others.” . . . This last thought nauseated him; and finally he defeated it.

His physical condition, curiously enough, the man omitted to consider.

“I’ll go back,” said P.J., “be damned if I won’t go back. Self-respect demands it of me. What would happen to the country if everybody who had the slightest excuse stopped at home!”

He began to think about the country, not nebulously but as Something Definite. There were only two classes of people in any country—Citizens and Parasites. The Citizen lived _for_ the country; the Parasite lived on the country. In time of War, the able-bodied citizen had one clear duty—to fight. And he must fight to his last gasp. Any other argument was pure eye-wash.

Peter figured the problem out in his favourite rowing-terms. You had to pull your own weight in the boat. If you didn’t, you became a “passenger.” Racing-eights couldn’t afford “passengers.” And you had to “pull your own weight” from pistol-crack to winning-post. Otherwise, _you_—not the other seven oarsmen and the cox but _you_, you yourself—lost the race; but you didn’t lose it for yourself, you lost it for the School.

He tried to get round this by arguing: “But we can’t all be in the Eight. The Eight is a picked body. Besides somebody has to make the boat, the oars: otherwise one couldn’t row at all.”

“Specious!” decided our Mr. Jameson, “very specious. But it doesn’t apply to me. I’m in the Eight—a picked man. I’m trained to row—not to make oars. This is my privilege. If I throw it away—if I refuse to row. . . .” And he thought of Pat’s brother-in-law, Sir Hubert Rawlings, tricked out in “colours” he had not earned, running along the tow-path, barking encouragement to the rowers.

“Swine,” said Peter—and this time he spoke aloud.

His mind was made up: he would finish the course.

§ 5

. . . And the doctors laughed at him. They laughed very kindly; but all the same, they laughed.

Heron Baynet began the disillusionment when he signed the “opinion” demanded by the Medical Board.

“You haven’t got a dog’s chance,” said his father-in-law. “Not a dog’s chance. Look at yourself in the glass; and be reasonable. I’ll certify you cured of shell-shock if you insist. But what about your physical condition? You’ve lost three stone in weight: you admit you sweat at the slightest exertion: and your lungs wouldn’t pass a medical student if you made him three-parts tight before he tested ’em.”

“All the same,” said Peter, stubbornly, “I’m going to have a shot for it.”

Heron Baynet worded that opinion very carefully. Neither as doctor nor as father-in-law did he wish his patient to fall into the clutches of bureaucratic medicine. For although, after two years of agitation, the War Office had at last consented to admit the existence of neurasthenia, although neurasthenia was to have its own Medical Staff, its special “clinics” for treatment, its special recovery hospitals, so far, very little had been accomplished. Heron Baynet knew that there were at least thirty thousand cases to be treated—and recovery accommodation for about three thousand. The remainder . . . Heron Baynet did not like to think about the remainder: he had heard their screams too often, walked too many nights among the wards where they lay—each man’s distracted mind poisoning his neighbour’s. Therefore Heron Baynet did not write the word “neurasthenia” on the opinion he gave about his son-in-law: instead he wrote . . . “is still suffering, in my opinion, from slight debility.”

“Is that the best you can do?” asked Peter.

“Yes,” the doctor dried his crabbed handwriting with a vicious blow of the tortoise-shell blotting-pad, “and I’ve perjured my medical soul by writing the word ‘slight.’”

Two days later, as he waited his turn for examination in a long draughty corridor, Peter drew the opinion from his tunic-pocket; re-read it with great care—and tore the paper to shreds.

He might just as well have produced the document. Nothing he could say to the three over-kind men in khaki made the slightest difference. They entered up papers; they examined papers; they made him take off his tunic; they made him put it on again. Then with great politeness they turned him out of the room.

“Well?” asked the President, a white-haired gentleman with three medal-ribbons and gold-rimmed eye-glasses.

The two younger members of the Board looked at him doubtfully. “What do you think, sir?”

“Done in,” said the President laconically. . . .

They sent for Peter and put the position to him. “Go into a nursing-home—or resign your commission. Either way you’ll never be fit for active service again.”

Peter thought the matter over for fifteen seconds; then he said, “Very good, sir. I’ll chuck it.”

They entered up more papers; certified him for a temporary pension. They advised him to live in the country; and forgot to acknowledge his meticulous salute. “Next officer, please,” Peter heard behind him as his spur-chains clanked down the corridor.

* * * * *

Once in the open air, he found himself trembling all over. He let himself tremble. He could tremble till Kingdom Come if it amused him. Trembling passed. He lit a cigar; hailed a taxi.

“Where to, sir?” asked the driver.

Peter was conscious of three distinct impulses: to have a drink by himself, to stand somebody else a drink, and to be stood a drink by somebody.

“The Savoy Hotel,” said the man who had finished the course.