“You doctors, clever as you are with the body, know as little of psychology as you did three thousand years ago.”
When the time came for me to fold up my easel and return to the drudgery of life, I parted from Carriston with much regret. One of those solemn, but often broken, promises to join together next year in another sketching tour passed between us. Then I went back to London, and during the subsequent months, although I saw nothing of him, I often thought of my friend of the autumn.
III.
In the spring of 1865 I went down to Bournemouth to see, for the last time, an old friend who was dying of consumption. During a great part of the journey down I had for a travelling companion a well-dressed gentlemanly man of about forty years of age. We were alone in the compartment, and after interchanging some small civilities, such as the barter of newspapers, slid into conversation. My fellow-traveller seemed to be an intellectual man, and well posted up in the doings of the day. He talked fluently and easily on various topics, and judging by his talk must have moved in good society. Although I fancied his features bore traces of hard living and dissipation, he was not unprepossessing in appearance. The greatest faults in his face were the remarkable thinness of the lips, and his eyes being a shade closer together than one cares to see. With a casual acquaintance such peculiarities are of little moment, but for my part I should not choose for a friend one who possessed them without due trial and searching proof.
At this time the English public were much interested in an important will case which was then being tried. The reversion to a vast sum of money depended upon the testator’s sanity or insanity. Like most other people we duly discussed the matter. I suppose, from some of my remarks, my companion understood that I was a doctor. He asked me a good many technical questions, and I described several curious cases of mania which had come under my notice. He seemed greatly interested in the subject.
“You must sometimes find it hard to say where sanity ends and insanity begins,” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes. The boundary-line is in some instances hard to define. To give in such a dubious case an opinion which would satisfy myself I should want to have known the patient at the time he was considered quite sane.”
“To mark the difference?”
“Exactly. And to know the bent of the character. For instance, there is a friend of mine. He was perfectly sane when last I saw him, but for all I know he may have made great progress the other way in the interval.”
Then without mentioning names, dates, or places, I described Carriston’s peculiar disposition to my intelligent listener. He heard me with rapt interest.