“Why, you young humbug, what do you mean by coming here with such a cock-and-bull story? Your physique is perfect. You are as sound as a bell. You are somewhere about thirty years old, and you are a deuced good-looking young fellow. What do you want?”
“You take my breath away, doctor,” said the young man, smiling. “I want to explain.”
“Explain away, then, my dear boy; but, for goodness’ sake, don’t be such an ass as to think the first time you are a bit bilious, or hipped, or melancholy, that you are ill. Oh, by the way, while I think of it, I had a letter from your people yesterday. They want me to have a run down to Shropshire.”
“Why not go?”
“Again? I can’t. Fifty people want me, and they would swear to a man if I went away that I was indirectly murdering them. But come, I keep on chattering. Now then, I say, what’s the matter? In love?”
The colour deepened a little on the white forehead, and the visitor replied quietly:
“I should not consult a physician for that ailment. The fact is, that for some while past I have felt as if my memory were going.”
“Tut! nonsense!”
“At times it seems as if a perfect cloud were drawn between the present and the past. I can’t account for it – I do not understand it; but things I have done one week are totally forgotten by me the next.”
“If they are bad things, so much the better.”
“You treat it very lightly, sir, but it troubles me a great deal.”
“My dear boy, I would not treat it lightly if I thought there was anything in it; but you do not and never have displayed a symptom of brain disease, neither have your father and mother before you. You are not dissipated.”
“Oh no! I never – ”
“You may spare yourself the trouble of talking, John, my boy. I could tell in a moment if you had a bit of vice in you, and I know you have not. But come, my lad: to be serious, what has put this crotchet into your head?”
“Crotchet or no,” said the young man sadly, “I have for months past been tormented with fears that I have something wrong in the head – incipient insanity, or idiocy, if you like to call it so.”
“I don’t like to call it anything of the kind, John Huish,” said the doctor tartly, “because it’s all nonsense. I have not studied insanity for the last five-and-twenty years without knowing something about it; so you may dismiss that idea from your mind. But come, let’s know something more about this terrible bugbear.”
“Bugbear if you like, doctor, but here is the case. Every now and then I have people – friends, acquaintances – reminding me of things I have promised – engagements I have made – and which I have not kept.”
“What sort of engagements?” said the doctor.
“Well, generally about little bets, or games at cards.”
“That you owe money on?”
“Yes,” said Huish eagerly. “I have again and again been asked for money that I owe.”
“Or are said to owe,” said the doctor drily.
“Oh, there is no doubt about it,” said Huish. “About a twelvemonth ago, when this sort of thing began – ”
“What sort of thing?” said the doctor.
“These lapses of memory,” replied Huish. “Oh!”
“I used to be annoyed, and denied them, till I began to be scouted by the men I knew; and at last one or two of them brought unimpeachable witnesses to prove that I was in the wrong.”
“Oh, John Huish, my dear boy, how can you let yourself be imposed upon so easily!”
“There is no imposition, I assure you. I give you the facts.”
“Facts! Did you ever know anyone come and tell you that he owed you money, and pay you?”
“Yes, half a dozen times over – heavier amounts than I have had to pay.”
“Humph! that’s strange,” said the doctor, looking curiously at his visitor.
“Strange? – it’s fearful!” cried the young man passionately. “It is getting to be a curse to me, and I cannot shake off the horrible feeling that I am losing my mind – that I am going wrong. And if this be the case, I cannot bear it, especially just now, when – ”
He checked himself, and gazed piteously at the man to whom he had come for help.
“Be cool, boy. Supposing it is as you say, it is only a trifle, perhaps; but it seems to me that there is a great deal of imagination in it.”
“Oh no – oh no! I fear I am going, slowly but surely, out of my mind.”
“Because you forget things after a certain time, eh? Stuff! Don’t be foolish. Why, you never used to think that your brain was going wrong when you were a schoolboy, and every word of the lesson that you knew perfectly and said verbatim to a schoolfellow dropped out of your mind.”
“No.”
“Of course you did not; and as to going mad, why, my dear boy, have you any idea what a lunatic is?”
“I cannot say that I have.”
“Well, then, you shall have,” said the doctor; “and that will do you more good than all my talking. You shall see for yourself what a diseased mind really is, and that will strengthen you mentally, and show you how ill-advised are your fancies.”
“But, doctor, I should not like to be a witness of the sufferings of others.”
“Nonsense, my boy. There, pray don’t imagine, because I live at Highgate, and am licenced to have so many insane patients under my care, that you are going to see horrible creatures dressed in straw and grovelling in cells. My dear John, I am going to ask you to a mad dinner-party.”
“A mad dinner-party?”
“Well, there, to come and dine with my sister, myself, and our patients. No people hung in chains or straw. Perfectly quiet gentlemen, my dear fellow, but each troubled with a craze. You would not know that they had anything wrong if they did not break out now and then upon the particular subject. Come to-night at seven sharp.”
The doctor glanced at his watch, rose, and held out his hand; and though John Huish hesitated, the doctor’s eyes seemed to force him to say that he would be there, and he began to feel for his purse.
“Look here, sir,” said the doctor, stopping him: “if you are feeling for fees, don’t insult your father’s old friend by trying to offer him one. There, till seven – say half-past six – and I’ll give you a glass of burgundy, my boy, that shall make you forget all these imaginations.”
“Thank you, doctor – ”
“Not another word, sir, but au revoir.”
“Au revoir,” said Huish; and he was shown out, to go back to his chambers thinking about his ailment – and Gertrude, while the doctor began to muse.
“Strange that I should take so much interest in that boy. Heigho! Some years now since I went fly-fishing, and fished his father out of the pit.”
Volume One – Chapter Six.
Aunt Philippa on Matrimony
“Will you speak, Isabella, or shall I?”
“If you please, Philippa, will you?” said her sister with frigid politeness.
The Honourable Miss Dymcox motioned to her nieces to seat themselves, and they sat down.
Then there was a sharp premonitory “Hem!” and a long pause, during which the thoughts of the young