“You were uprooted. You moved from house to house, and failed to get
that curled up safe feeling one has in a real home in any of them.”
“If you saw the fireplaces and the general decoration of the new
palace!” admitted the bishop. “I had practically no control.”
“That confirms me,” said Dr. Dale. “Insomnia followed, and increased the
feeling of physical strangeness by increasing the bodily disturbance. I
suspect an intellectual disturbance.”
He paused.
“There was,” said the bishop.
“You were no longer at home anywhere. You were no longer at home in your
diocese, in your palace, in your body, in your convictions. And then
came the war. Quite apart from everything else the mind of the whole
world is suffering profoundly from the shock of this war--much more
than is generally admitted. One thing you did that you probably did not
observe yourself doing, you drank rather more at your meals, you smoked
a lot more. That was your natural and proper response to the shock.”
“Ah!” said the bishop, and brightened up.
“It was remarked by Tolstoy, I think, that few intellectual men would
really tolerate the world as it is if it were not for smoking and
drinking. Even novelists have their moments of lucidity. Certainly these
things soothe the restlessness in men's minds, deaden their sceptical
sensibilities. And just at the time when you were getting most
dislodged--you gave them up.”
“And the sooner I go back to them the better,” said the bishop brightly.
“I quite see that.”
“I wouldn't say that,” said Dr. Dale....
(3)
“That,” said Dr. Dale, “is just where my treatment of this case differs
from the treatment of “--he spoke the name reluctantly as if he disliked
the mere sound of it--“Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey.”
“Hitherto, of course,” said the bishop, “I've been in his hands.”
“He,” said Dr. Dale, “would certainly set about trying to restore your
old sphere of illusion, your old familiar sensations and ideas and
confidences. He would in fact turn you back. He would restore all your
habits. He would order you a rest. He would send you off to some holiday
resort, fresh in fact but familiar in character, the High lands, North
Italy, or Switzerland for example. He would forbid you newspapers and
order you to botanize and prescribe tranquillizing reading; Trollope's
novels, the Life of Gladstone, the works of Mr. A. C. Benson, memoirs
and so on. You'd go somewhere where there was a good Anglican chaplain,
and you'd take some of the services yourself. And we'd wash out the
effects of the Princhester water with Contrexeville, and afterwards
put you on Salutaris or Perrier. I don't know whether I shouldn't have
inclined to some such treatment before the war began. Only--”
He paused.
“You think--?”
Dr. Dale's face betrayed a sudden sombre passion. “It won't do now,” he
said in a voice of quiet intensity. “It won't do now.”
He remained darkly silent for so long that at last the bishop spoke.
“Then what,” he asked, “do you suggest?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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