Paul Lambone took up the discourse. “I do so sympathize with that. So far from that being insane it’s perfectly rational. Becoming somebody else greater than oneself is part of half the religions of the world. All the Mithraists used to become Mithra. The Serapists, if I remember rightly, used to become Osiris. We all want to be born again really. Every one with any sense and humility does. Into something greater. ‘Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ That’s why Christina Alberta’s Daddy is so tremendously interesting. He’s got imagination; he’s got originality. He may be a feeble little chap, but he has that.”
“Having an exceptional mind isn’t insanity,” said Devizes, “or else we should put all our poets and artists in asylums.”
“Few would come up to that standard,” said Lambone. “I wish they did.”
Devizes reflected. “I think I’ve got things clear. He’s coherent. He’s neat in his dress. He isn’t persecuted. He’s unselfish in his thoughts, almost romantically so. And he’s not fattish and lumpish, and he’s never had any sort of fit. There’s no insane type a properly qualified doctor could class him under, but then most doctors are altogether unqualified for mental practice. A stupid doctor might mistake his imaginations for the splendour of paranoia or take his abstraction in reverie for dementia præcox or think he was a masked epileptic. But all these are cases of mental disease, and your father is probably not diseased at all. He’s mentally disturbed, but that’s all. The difference between him and a real lunatic is the difference between a basketful of fruit that’s been overturned, and a basketful that’s gone rotten. Overturned fruit gets bruised and rots very easily—but being overturned isn’t being rotten. What sort of man is he to look at?”
“She’s got photographs,” said Lambone.
“I’d like to see them,” he said, and was given a recent one of Mr. Preemby as laundryman. “Too much moustache by a long way,” he said. “Is there anything—with some at least of his face uncovered? There’s nothing here but his eyes.”
“I thought you’d feel that,” said Lambone. “There’s one of Mr. Preemby as a young man, taken soon after his wedding with Mrs. Preemby. Have you got it, Christina Alberta?... Here we are.... That’s Mrs. Preemby in the chair. The moustache—in bulk—has yet to come.”
“He married young?” Devizes asked Christina Alberta.
“He must have done,” she said. “I don’t know his exact age. My mother never told me.”
Devizes scrutinized the photograph. “Queer,” he said, and seemed to be searching his memory. “Something familiar. I’ve met people like this.