§ 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.