Heron Baynet had planned his return to London for Boxing Day; but he cancelled his appointments by wire, and stayed on at Sunflowers. He felt his daughter’s happiness to be staked on a correct diagnosis of her husband’s mental condition; and as Peter’s reserve made direct methods impossible, the diagnosis necessitated vigilance and unceasing study.

After two days spent apparently in idleness, actually in the most minute observation, the doctor succeeded in decoying his daughter away from home, husband and children; suggested a little stroll through Arlsfield Woods.

It was a dull December afternoon; and as they took the footpath across the paddock, picked their way under leafless branches over slippery tree-roots, Patricia could not help contrasting this winter sombreness with the splendid springtime when she and Francis had first found Sunflowers. Then, the world had been one great promise; now, the world and her own hope seemed withered, never to blossom again....

“I wanted to talk to you about Peter.” Her father’s voice interrupted reverie. “Does he ever fire that gun he carries about all the time?”

She looked up astonished. “No, I don’t think he ever does. Why do you ask, pater?”

But Heron Baynet only muttered, “H’m, I thought not”; and walked on in silence. “You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” he said at last.

“A little”—loyalty restrained her from giving the correct reason—“he doesn’t seem really well yet.”

“He isn’t. He’s very far from well. He’s about as ill as any one can be.”

“Pater!” she stopped in her walk, and they stood facing each other. “Not his lungs.”

“No”—the man spoke very gently—“not his lungs, but his mind. You’ve often heard me talk about shell-shock, Pat; and I’ve often bored you with my jargon of neurasthenia. Well, now you’ll have to listen to it all over again. Only this time, it’s got a personal application.”

He took her arm, and they resumed their walk, pacing slowly among the trees.

“Peter,” began Heron Baynet, “is suffering from acute neurasthenia brought on partly by actual shell-shock, and partly by the general strain of war. In a weaker character the symptoms would be perfectly plain—shaky hand, general jumpiness, irritability, forgetfulness. Peter is controlling all these symptoms—and Heaven knows what impulses—with the result that, sooner or later unless we can find some means to save him, his mind will give way altogether.”

“You don’t mean that he’ll go mad, pater.” Love and horror mingled in Patricia’s voice.

“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?”

“Yes. Twice. He said the children ought to sleep in the open air.”

“Consumption is one of the particular fears he can’t quite control. That, I’m certain of. I wonder what his other fears are—or aren’t.”

For all her anxiety, Patricia could not restrain a feeling of relief. One thing at least, her father’s explanation had taught her: that she might still win her husband’s love—“even if he is a coward,” she said aloud.

“A coward!”—Heron Baynet snapped at the word as he had snapped at the suggestion of madness. “A coward! Were you afraid before Primula was born?”

“A little,” she confessed.

“Well, multiply that fear by infinity—and you will have some idea of what Peter is going through. And remember, you knew; he knows nothing, except that he is afraid, and that to be afraid is to be”—Heron Baynet hesitated over the word—“caddish.”

Silently, they began to retrace their steps homewards. Already, light was failing among the trees. It seemed to Patricia that she walked in cold shadows—helpless.

“Can nothing be done?” she said at last.

“Without his willingness to be treated—nothing.”

“Will he have to go back to the front in March?”

For the first time that afternoon, her father laughed. “Not if I know anything about Medical Boards, Pat. He wouldn’t last ten days.” The doctor grew serious. “But that doesn’t help us much. The damage to his mind has got to be repaired somehow. You might start the process; I can’t.”

“I?” The monosyllable carried infinite query.

“Yes. You, and you only. Get his confidence; make him tell you—under pledge of secrecy—why he carries that gun; why he’s afraid of consumption for the children. Make him talk to you about the day he was wounded—about the horrors he’s seen.”

“Can’t you talk to him, pater? He never opens his mouth about that sort of thing to me.”—Her voice faltered.—“We’re not such good friends as we used to be, pater.”

Heron Baynet’s voice did not falter. “I know you’re not, Pat. But you’ve got to be. These repressions are killing Peter. Unless somebody can break them down, I won’t be answerable for the consequences. It’s no use my talking to him, he’d freeze up at once. Whereas you, you’re his wife.”

“But, Pater....”

“Damn it, girl,”—the doctor’s voice rose to fury—“can’t you see that this is a matter of life or death. You must make him talk. Make him drunk if you like—get drunk yourself—make love to him as if you were his mistress: but for God’s sake, make him talk.”

Patricia blushed scarlet; quickened her pace.

“And then?” she asked.

“Persuade him somehow that he’s got shell-shock, and to consult me about it.” For a moment, the doctor forgot his son-in-law: neurasthenia and its treatment lay very near his professional heart, and that heart was being steadily broken by War Office neglect. “Two years, I’ve been at them,” he burst out, “two years! And they’re only just beginning to realize that a wound in the mind can be as fatal as a wound in the body. Meanwhile, God knows how many brave men are being tortured.”

By now, they had reached the paddock-gate, stood gazing down on Sunflowers. The mellow house behind the leafless walnut-tree looked a veritable English home of peace; smoke spired lazily from its tall chimneys; its square windows glinted welcome. They heard the children’s voices shouting, “Daddy! Daddy!” saw Peter striding, gun over shoulder, to the front door.

“He’s been to see Francis again,” said Patricia.

“Agoraphobia,” thought Heron Baynet, “the Fear of Open Spaces. I wonder what particular kind of horror he sees every time he goes down across that little bit of meadow-land.”

But Patricia’s mind had suddenly remembered Francis; Francis, alone, night after night, in that quaint up-and-down cottage, firelight glowing sombrely on panelled walls, Prout and his “female” pottering in the red-tiled kitchen.

“Pater,” she said suddenly, “supposing you’re wrong in your diagnosis?”

“I’m never wrong about these things,” he answered, purposely boastful.

“Then tell me what’s the matter with Francis. Even I can see he’s not normal.”

“Normal!”—Heron Baynet pulled a cigarette-case from his over-coat pocket, extracted and lit a Gianaclis—“of course he’s normal. That’s his trouble. A normal man trying to live an abnormal life.”

“It isn’t abnormal to live in the country.”

“No, it isn’t abnormal to live in the country, but”—for the second time that afternoon, Heron Baynet laughed and his daughter blushed—“but it is abnormal, especially for a man of Francis Gordon’s temperament, to live there like a monk.”

“But he doesn’t even work, pater,” protested Patricia.

“Why should he?” said her father. “He hasn’t got anybody to work for.”

Thoughtfully, they passed into the house.