“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.