“Nothing of the sort,” said her father angrily. “Neurasthenia isn’t madness; any more than a sprained ankle is madness. Neurasthenia is a mind-sprain; and like all sprains, its primary treatment must be rest. Do you think Peter’s soul ever gives his mind a rest? Not a bit of it. Peter’s mind is afraid of going out by itself—that’s why he always carries that gun—but Peter’s soul says to it, ‘Afraid, are you? I’ll teach you to be afraid’; and off he goes for a walk. Result: he comes back with his mind a little more sprained than when he started. Peter’s mind wants his fingers to shake, his body to start when it hears some sudden noise: Peter’s soul says to his mind, ‘You let those fingers shake—and there’ll be trouble.’ Result: more mind-sprain.”
Heron Baynet elaborated his theory of the “soul and the mind”—known also in the patter of neurologists as the “mind and the brain,” or the “conscious and the subconscious”—till he succeeded in making clear to Patricia that the thing to be feared in Peter’s case was not madness, a wrong-functioning of the brain, but break-down, a non-functioning of it.
“But surely, pater,” she said at last, “if he’s as bad inside as you think, he’d have consulted you about it?”
“My dear, he’s afraid to.”
“Afraid?” Patricia laughed incredulously. In spite of all she had just heard, she could not yet bring herself to believe Peter afraid of anything. “Afraid to consult you?”
“Yes, afraid to consult me. Scared to death! Don’t you see, Pat, that the whole trouble lies in that one word, ‘Fear’? Do you think that your so-called ‘heroes’ aren’t afraid? Of course they are—otherwise they wouldn’t be heroes. The hero is the man who controls fear—not the man who doesn’t feel it. But the process of controlling fear can’t go on indefinitely. Every man has his limit. . . .”
“But Peter!” she interrupted, still unbelieving. “Peter!”
“Peter’s gone beyond his limit and his fear-controlling apparatus is breaking down; that’s all. Take his history, and you’ll see what I mean. At eighteen, he goes into business: that means anxiety, mind-strain, fear to be controlled; at twenty-one, his father dies—more mind-strain; he gets married, takes on more responsibilities; buys another business. . . . Then, comes the War; instead of going to it with an easy mind. . . . Well, you know what’s happened since 1914.” Heron Baynet broke off for a minute, resumed: “I felt, when he came home on leave in April that the strain was telling on him. However, apparently he gets over it; goes back to the front. What do we know after that? Practically nothing. He tells us that he had a ‘cushy time’ at Neuve Eglise, that he had rather a ‘rotten time’ on the Somme. At the end of the ‘rather rotten time’ he gets a crack on the head which keeps him unconscious for the best part of three days, a wound in the fleshy part of the arm, and bronchial pneumonia. How did he get bronchial pneumonia?”
“Exposure,” said Patricia.
“Exposure be sugared. He was picked up the same day. . . . By the way, has he ever spoken to you about consumption?”