Michael's Crag

Chapter 9

MEDICAL OPINION.

From that day forth, by some unspoken compact, it was "Eustace" and

"Cleer," wherever they met, between them. Le Neve began it, by coming

round in the afternoon of that self-same day, as soon as he'd slept

off the first effects of his fatigue and chill, to inquire of Mrs.

Trevennack "how Cleer was getting on" after her night's exposure. And

Mrs. Trevennack accepted the frank usurpation in very good part, as

indeed was no wonder, for Cleer had wanted to know half an hour before

whether "Eustace" had yet been round to ask after her. The form of

speech told all. There was no formal engagement, and none of the party

knew exactly how or when they began to take it for granted; but from

that evening on Michael's Crag it was a tacitly accepted fact between

Le Neve and the Trevennacks that Eustace was to marry Cleer as soon as

he could get a permanent appointment anywhere.

Engineering, however, is an overstocked profession. In that particular

it closely resembles most other callings.

The holidays passed away, and Walter Tyrrel recovered, and the

Trevennacks returned to town for the head of the house to take up his

new position in the Admiralty service; but Eustace Le Neve heard of no

opening anywhere for an energetic young man with South American

experience. Those three years he had passed out of England, indeed,

had made him lose touch with other members of his craft. People

shrugged their shoulders when they heard of him, and opined, with a

chilly smile, he was the sort of young man who ought to go to the

colonies. That's the easiest way of shelving all similar questions.

The colonies are popularly regarded in England as the predestined

dumping-ground for all the fools and failures of the mother-country.

So Eustace settled down in lodgings in London, not far from the

Trevennacks, and spent more of his time, it must be confessed, in

going round to see Cleer than in perfecting himself in the knowledge

of his chosen art. Not that he failed to try every chance that lay

open to him--he had far too much energy to sit idle in his chair and

let the stream of promotion flow by unattempted; but chances were few

and applicants were many, and month after month passed away to his

chagrin without the clever young engineer finding an appointment

anywhere. Meanwhile, his little nest-egg of South-American savings was

rapidly disappearing; and though Tyrrel, who had influence with

railway men, exerted himself to the utmost on his friend's behalf--

partly for Cleer's sake, and partly for Eustace's own--Le Neve saw his

balance growing daily smaller, and began to be seriously alarmed at

last, not merely for his future prospects of employment and marriage,

but even for his immediate chance of a modest livelihood.

Nor was Mrs. Trevennack, for her part, entirely free from sundry

qualms of conscience as to her husband's condition and the

rightfulness of concealing it altogether from Cleer's accepted lover.

Trevennack himself was so perfectly sane in every ordinary relation of

life, so able a business head, so dignified and courtly an English

gentleman, that Eustace never even for a moment suspected any

undercurrent of madness in that sound practical intelligence. Indeed,

no man could talk with more absolute common sense about his daughter's

future, or the duties and functions of an Admiralty official, than

Michael Trevennack. It was only to his wife in his most confidential

moments that he ever admitted the truth as to his archangelic

character; to all others whom he met he was simply a distinguished

English civil servant of blameless life and very solid judgment. The

heads of his department placed the most implicit trust in Trevennack's

opinion; there was no man about the place who could decide a knotty

point of detail off-hand like Michael Trevennack. What was his poor

wife to do, then? Was it her place to warn Eustace that Cleer's father

might at any moment unexpectedly develop symptoms of dangerous

insanity? Was she bound thus to wreck her own daughter's happiness?

Was she bound to speak out the very secret of her heart which she had

spent her whole life in inducing Trevennack himself to bottle up with

ceaseless care in his distracted bosom?

And yet ... she saw the other point of view as well--alas, all too

plainly. She was a martyr to conscience, like Walter Tyrrel himself;

was it right of her, then, to tie Eustace for life to a girl who was

really a madman's daughter? This hateful question was up before her

often in the dead dark night, as she lay awake on her bed, tossing and

turning feverishly; it tortured her in addition to her one lifelong

trouble. For the silver-haired lady had borne the burden of that

unknown sorrow locked up in her own bosom for fifteen years; and it

had left on her face such a beauty of holiness as a great trouble

often leaves indelibly stamped on women of the same brave, loving

temperament.

One day, about three months later, in their drawing-room at Bayswater,

Eustace Le Neve happened to let drop a casual remark which cut poor

Mrs. Trevennack to the quick, like a knife at her heart. He was

talking of some friend of his who had lately got engaged. "It's a

terrible thing," he said, seriously. "There's insanity in the family.

I wouldn't marry into such a family as that--no, not if I loved a girl

to distraction, Mrs. Trevennack. The father's in a mad-house, you

know; and the girl's very nice now, but one never can tell when the

tendency may break out. And then--just think! what an inheritance to

hand on to one's innocent children!"

Trevennack took no open notice of what he said. But Mrs. Trevennack

winced, grew suddenly pale, and stammered out some conventional none-

committing platitude. His words entered her very soul. They stung and

galled her. That night she lay awake and thought more bitterly to

herself about the matter than ever. Next morning early, as soon as

Trevennack had set off to catch the fast train from Waterloo to

Portsmouth direct (he was frequently down there on Admiralty

business), she put on her cloak and bonnet, without a word to Cleer,

and set out in a hansom all alone to Harley Street.

The house to which she drove was serious-looking and professional--in

point of fact, it was Dr. Yate-Westbury's, the well-known specialist

on mental diseases. She sent up no card and gave no name. On the

contrary, she kept her veil down--and it was a very thick one. But Dr.

Yate-Westbury made no comment on this reticence; it was a familiar

occurrence with him--people are often ashamed to have it known they

consult a mad-doctor.

"I want to ask you about my husband's case," Mrs. Trevennack began,

trembling. And the great specialist, all attention, leaned forward and

listened to her.

Mrs. Trevennack summoned up courage, and started from the very

beginning. She described how her husband, who was a government

servant, had been walking below a cliff on the seashore with their

only son, some fifteen years earlier, and how a shower of stones from

the top had fallen on their heads and killed their poor boy, whose

injuries were the more serious. She could mention it all now with

comparatively little emotion; great sorrows since had half obliterated

that first and greatest one. But she laid stress upon the point that

her husband had been struck, too, and was very gravely hurt--so

gravely, indeed, that it was weeks before he recovered physically.

"On what part of the head?" Yate-Westbury asked, with quick medical

insight.

And Mrs. Trevennack answered, "Here," laying her small gloved hand on

the center of the left temple.

The great specialist nodded. "Go on," he said, quietly. "Fourth

frontal convolution! And it was a month or two, I have no doubt,

before you noticed any serious symptoms supervening?"

"Exactly so," Mrs. Trevennack made answer, very much relieved. "It was

all of a month or two. But from that day forth--from the very

beginning, I mean--he had a natural horror of going BENEATH a cliff,

and he liked to get as high up as he could, so as to be perfectly sure

there was nobody at all anywhere above to hurt him." And then she went

on to describe in short but graphic phrase how he loved to return to

the place of his son's accident, and to stand for hours on lonely

sites overlooking the spot, and especially on a crag which was

dedicated to St. Michael.

The specialist caught at what was coming with the quickness, she

thought, of long experience. "Till he fancied himself the archangel?"

he said, promptly and curiously.

Mrs. Trevennack drew a deep breath of satisfaction and relief. "Yes,"

she answered, flushing hot. "Till he fancied himself the archangel.

There--there were extenuating circumstances, you see. His own name's

Michael; and his family--well, his family have a special connection

with St. Michael's Mount; their crest's a castled crag with 'Stand

fast, St. Michael's!' and he knew he had to fight against this mad

impulse of his own--which he felt was like a devil within him--for his

daughter's sake; and he was always standing alone on these rocky high

places, dedicated to St. Michael, till the fancy took full hold upon

him; and now, though he knows in a sort of a way he's mad, he believes

quite firmly he's St. Michael the Archangel."

Yate-Westbury nodded once more. "Precisely the development I should

expect to occur," he said, "after such an accident."

Mrs. Trevennack almost bounded from her seat in her relief. "Then you

attribute it to the accident first of all?" she asked, eagerly.

"Not a doubt about it," the specialist answered. "The region you

indicate is just the one where similar illusory ideas are apt to arise

from external injuries. The bruise gave the cause, and circumstances

the form. Besides, the case is normal--quite normal altogether. Does

he have frequent outbreaks?"

Mrs. Trevennack explained that he never had any. Except to herself,

and that but seldom, he never alluded to the subject in any way.

Yate-Westbury bit his lip. "He must have great self-control," he

answered, less confidently. "In a case like that, I'm bound to admit,

my prognosis--for the final result--would be most unfavorable. The

longer he bottles it up the more terrible is the outburst likely to be

when it arrives. You must expect that some day he will break out

irrepressibly."

Mrs. Trevennack bowed her head with the solemn placidity of despair.

"I'm quite prepared for that," she said, quietly; "though I try hard

to delay it, for a specific reason. That wasn't the question I came to

consult you about to-day. I feel sure my poor husband's case is

perfectly hopeless, as far as any possibility of cure is concerned;

what I want to know is about another aspect of the case." She leaned

forward appealingly. "Oh, doctor," she cried, clasping her hands, "I

have a dear daughter at home--the one thing yet left me. She's engaged

to be married to a young man whom she loves--a young man who loves

her. Am I bound to tell him she's a madman's child? Is there any

chance of its affecting her? Is the taint hereditary?"

She spoke with deep earnestness. She rushed out with it without

reserve. Yate-Westbury gazed at her compassionately. He was a kind-

hearted man. "No; certainly not," he answered, with emphasis. "Not the

very slightest reason in any way to fear it. The sanest man, coming

from the very sanest and healthiest stock on earth, would almost

certainly be subject to delusions under such circumstances. This is

accident, not disease--circumstance, not temperament. The injury to

the brain is the result of a special blow. Grief for the loss of his

son, and brooding over the event, no doubt contributed to the

particular shape the delusion has assumed. But the injury's the main

thing. I don't doubt there's a clot of blood formed just here on the

brain, obstructing its functions in part, and disturbing its due

relations. In every other way, you say, he's a good man of business.

The very apparent rationality of the delusion--the way it's been led

up to by his habit of standing on cliffs, his name, his associations,

his family, everything--is itself a good sign that the partial

insanity is due to a local and purely accidental cause. It simulates

reason as closely as possible. Dismiss the question altogether from

your mind, as far as your daughter's future is concerned. Its no more

likely to be inherited than a broken leg or an amputated arm is."

Mrs. Trevennack burst into a flood of joyous tears. "Then all I have

to do," she sobbed out, "is to keep him from an outbreak until after

my daughter's married."

Dr. Yate-Westbury nodded. "That's all you have to do," he answered,

sympathetically. "And I'm sure Mrs. Trevennack---" he paused with a

start and checked himself.

"Why, how do you know my name?" the astonished mother cried, drawing

back with a little shudder of half superstitious alarm at such

surprising prescience.

Dr. Yate-Westbury made a clean breast of it. "Well, to tell the

truth," he said, "Mr. Trevennack himself called round here yesterday,

in the afternoon, and stated the whole case to me from his own point

of view, giving his name in full--as a man would naturally do--but

never describing to me the nature of his delusion. He said it was too

sacred a thing for him to so much as touch upon; that he knew he

wasn't mad, but that the world would think him so; and he wanted to

know, from something he'd heard said, whether madness caused by an

injury of the sort would or would not be considered by medical men as

inheritable. And I told him at once, as I've told you to-day, there was not

the faintest danger of it. But I never made such a slip in my life before

as blurting out the name. I could only have done it to you. Trust me,

your secret is safe in my keeping. I have hundreds in my head." He

took her hand in his own as he spoke. "Dear madam," he said, gently,"

I understand; I feel for you."

"Thank you," Mrs. Trevennack answered low, with tears standing in her

eyes. "I'm--I'm so glad you've SEEN him. It makes your opinion so much

more valuable to me. But you thought his delusion wholly due to the

accident, then?"

"Wholly due to the accident, dear lady. Yes, wholly, wholly due to it.

You may go home quite relieved. Your doubts and fears are groundless.

Miss Trevennack may marry with a clear conscience."