Image shook his bird-like head and then sighed.
“No, but I came on behalf of someone else—someone in whom you are interested, or I shouldn’t waste your valuable time. Have you seen Gilbert Currey lately?”
“Not since the attack of influenza, when he”—dryly—“asked my advice and didn’t take it.”
“Ah! you must see him, Neeburg.”
Neeburg never looked surprised or startled, he had the Teutonic phlegmatic temperament. He waited for Image to go on.
“My dear fellow, I won’t usurp your province, but I don’t like the look of him at all. I’ve seen men before on the verge of a nervous breakdown. We got a good many out in India, and I’ve come to know that curious inward, burning look of the eyes.... I was very upset yesterday. I met him suddenly in King’s Bench Walk and he—didn’t know me.”
Neeburg opened his eyes a little.
“He passed it off by saying he was immersed in some difficult case; but I could see he was intensely annoyed with himself, and that led me to deduce it is not the first time his memory has played a trick on him. I needn’t say any more to you, as a physician, except that Robson, the Attorney-General, told me in confidence the other day that he is taking far too much work, and that he is not—doing it well. He’s noticed a great change in him, and he told me, as an old friend, to use my influence to make him take a holiday.”
The eyes of the two men met—Image’s brilliantly bright through his eyeglasses, those of the physician calmly reflective. Then Neeburg got up from his seat and paced the room without speaking.
“I’ve warned him repeatedly,” he said at length, “and I’ve watched it coming. But Gilbert is not an easy man to prescribe for. He is eaten up with ambition, he is so keen on ‘the game’ that he takes no heed of warnings, mine or Nature’s. That man has worked like a horse for the last five years; in fact, he has worked incessantly ever since his boyhood, when his father urged him to win scholarships for the glory of the Currey family.... The father has only been half a success; he had driving power but no judgment, and he was unpopular at the Bar. He took up politics, but he was too vehement and dogmatic for his party. He concentrated his ambition on Gilbert, and Gilbert is very like him—very. With Gilbert, what I call ‘the game’ is the very marrow of his bones. You might as well ask him to change his body as change his manner of life. He had a very good constitution, and I hoped it would stand the strain.... But it’s gone to pieces very badly of late. Outside people will say suddenly, but he’s been undermined for some time. If his memory is going ... God help him and Claudia!”