Michael's Crag Part 6

It was only to his wife in his most confidential moments that he ever admitted the truth as to his archangelic character; to all others whom he met he was simply a distinguished English civil servant of blameless life and very solid judgment. The heads of his department placed the most implicit trust in Trevennack's opinion; there was no man about the place who could decide a knotty point of detail off-hand like Michael Trevennack. What was his poor wife to do, then? Was it her place to warn Eustace that Cleer's father might at any moment unexpectedly develop symptoms of dangerous insanity? Was she bound thus to wreck her own daughter's happiness? Was she bound to speak out the very secret of her heart which she had spent her whole life in inducing Trevennack himself to bottle up with ceaseless care in his distracted bosom?

And yet ... she saw the other point of view as well--alas, all too plainly. She was a martyr to conscience, like Walter Tyrrel himself; was it right of her, then, to tie Eustace for life to a girl who was really a madman's daughter? This hateful question was up before her often in the dead dark night, as she lay awake on her bed, tossing and turning feverishly; it tortured her in addition to her one lifelong trouble. For the silver-haired lady had borne the burden of that unknown sorrow locked up in her own bosom for fifteen years; and it had left on her face such a beauty of holiness as a great trouble often leaves indelibly stamped on women of the same brave, loving temperament.

One day, about three months later, in their drawing-room at Bayswater, Eustace Le Neve happened to let drop a casual remark which cut poor Mrs. Trevennack to the quick, like a knife at her heart. He was talking of some friend of his who had lately got engaged. "It's a terrible thing," he said, seriously. "There's insanity in the family. I wouldn't marry into such a family as that--no, not if I loved a girl to distraction, Mrs. Trevennack. The father's in a mad-house, you know; and the girl's very nice now, but one never can tell when the tendency may break out. And then--just think! what an inheritance to hand on to one's innocent children!"

Trevennack took no open notice of what he said. But Mrs. Trevennack winced, grew suddenly pale, and stammered out some conventional none-committing plat.i.tude. His words entered her very soul. They stung and galled her. That night she lay awake and thought more bitterly to herself about the matter than ever. Next morning early, as soon as Trevennack had set off to catch the fast train from Waterloo to Portsmouth direct (he was frequently down there on Admiralty business), she put on her cloak and bonnet, without a word to Cleer, and set out in a hansom all alone to Harley Street.

The house to which she drove was serious-looking and professional--in point of fact, it was Dr. Yate-Westbury's, the well-known specialist on mental diseases. She sent up no card and gave no name. On the contrary, she kept her veil down--and it was a very thick one. But Dr.

Yate-Westbury made no comment on this reticence; it was a familiar occurrence with him--people are often ashamed to have it known they consult a mad-doctor.

"I want to ask you about my husband's case," Mrs. Trevennack began, trembling. And the great specialist, all attention, leaned forward and listened to her.

Mrs. Trevennack summoned up courage, and started from the very beginning. She described how her husband, who was a government servant, had been walking below a cliff on the seash.o.r.e with their only son, some fifteen years earlier, and how a shower of stones from the top had fallen on their heads and killed their poor boy, whose injuries were the more serious. She could mention it all now with comparatively little emotion; great sorrows since had half obliterated that first and greatest one. But she laid stress upon the point that her husband had been struck, too, and was very gravely hurt--so gravely, indeed, that it was weeks before he recovered physically.

"On what part of the head?" Yate-Westbury asked, with quick medical insight.

And Mrs. Trevennack answered, "Here," laying her small gloved hand on the center of the left temple.

The great specialist nodded. "Go on," he said, quietly. "Fourth frontal convolution! And it was a month or two, I have no doubt, before you noticed any serious symptoms supervening?"

"Exactly so," Mrs. Trevennack made answer, very much relieved. "It was all of a month or two. But from that day forth--from the very beginning, I mean--he had a natural horror of going BENEATH a cliff, and he liked to get as high up as he could, so as to be perfectly sure there was n.o.body at all anywhere above to hurt him." And then she went on to describe in short but graphic phrase how he loved to return to the place of his son's accident, and to stand for hours on lonely sites overlooking the spot, and especially on a crag which was dedicated to St. Michael.

The specialist caught at what was coming with the quickness, she thought, of long experience. "Till he fancied himself the archangel?"

he said, promptly and curiously.

Mrs. Trevennack drew a deep breath of satisfaction and relief. "Yes,"

she answered, flushing hot. "Till he fancied himself the archangel.

There--there were extenuating circ.u.mstances, you see. His own name's Michael; and his family--well, his family have a special connection with St. Michael's Mount; their crest's a castled crag with 'Stand fast, St. Michael's!' and he knew he had to fight against this mad impulse of his own--which he felt was like a devil within him--for his daughter's sake; and he was always standing alone on these rocky high places, dedicated to St. Michael, till the fancy took full hold upon him; and now, though he knows in a sort of a way he's mad, he believes quite firmly he's St. Michael the Archangel."

Yate-Westbury nodded once more. "Precisely the development I should expect to occur," he said, "after such an accident."

Mrs. Trevennack almost bounded from her seat in her relief. "Then you attribute it to the accident first of all?" she asked, eagerly.

"Not a doubt about it," the specialist answered. "The region you indicate is just the one where similar illusory ideas are apt to arise from external injuries. The bruise gave the cause, and circ.u.mstances the form. Besides, the case is normal--quite normal altogether. Does he have frequent outbreaks?"

Mrs. Trevennack explained that he never had any. Except to herself, and that but seldom, he never alluded to the subject in any way.

Yate-Westbury bit his lip. "He must have great self-control," he answered, less confidently. "In a case like that, I'm bound to admit, my prognosis--for the final result--would be most unfavorable. The longer he bottles it up the more terrible is the outburst likely to be when it arrives. You must expect that some day he will break out irrepressibly."

Mrs. Trevennack bowed her head with the solemn placidity of despair.

"I'm quite prepared for that," she said, quietly; "though I try hard to delay it, for a specific reason. That wasn't the question I came to consult you about to-day. I feel sure my poor husband's case is perfectly hopeless, as far as any possibility of cure is concerned; what I want to know is about another aspect of the case." She leaned forward appealingly. "Oh, doctor," she cried, clasping her hands, "I have a dear daughter at home--the one thing yet left me. She's engaged to be married to a young man whom she loves--a young man who loves her.

Am I bound to tell him she's a madman's child? Is there any chance of its affecting her? Is the taint hereditary?"

She spoke with deep earnestness. She rushed out with it without reserve. Yate-Westbury gazed at her compa.s.sionately. He was a kind-hearted man. "No; certainly not," he answered, with emphasis. "Not the very slightest reason in any way to fear it. The sanest man, coming from the very sanest and healthiest stock on earth, would almost certainly be subject to delusions under such circ.u.mstances. This is accident, not disease--circ.u.mstance, not temperament. The injury to the brain is the result of a special blow. Grief for the loss of his son, and brooding over the event, no doubt contributed to the particular shape the delusion has a.s.sumed. But the injury's the main thing. I don't doubt there's a clot of blood formed just here on the brain, obstructing its functions in part, and disturbing its due relations. In every other way, you say, he's a good man of business. The very apparent rationality of the delusion--the way it's been led up to by his habit of standing on cliffs, his name, his a.s.sociations, his family, everything--is itself a good sign that the partial insanity is due to a local and purely accidental cause. It simulates reason as closely as possible. Dismiss the question altogether from your mind, as far as your daughter's future is concerned. Its no more likely to be inherited than a broken leg or an amputated arm is."

Mrs. Trevennack burst into a flood of joyous tears. "Then all I have to do," she sobbed out, "is to keep him from an outbreak until after my daughter's married."

Dr. Yate-Westbury nodded. "That's all you have to do," he answered, sympathetically. "And I'm sure Mrs. Trevennack---" he paused with a start and checked himself.

"Why, how do you know my name?" the astonished mother cried, drawing back with a little shudder of half superst.i.tious alarm at such surprising prescience.

Dr. Yate-Westbury made a clean breast of it. "Well, to tell the truth,"

he said, "Mr. Trevennack himself called round here yesterday, in the afternoon, and stated the whole case to me from his own point of view, giving his name in full--as a man would naturally do--but never describing to me the nature of his delusion. He said it was too sacred a thing for him to so much as touch upon; that he knew he wasn't mad, but that the world would think him so; and he wanted to know, from something he'd heard said, whether madness caused by an injury of the sort would or would not be considered by medical men as inheritable.

And I told him at once, as I've told you to-day, there was not the faintest danger of it. But I never made such a slip in my life before as blurting out the name. I could only have done it to you. Trust me, your secret is safe in my keeping. I have hundreds in my head." He took her hand in his own as he spoke. "Dear madam," he said, gently, "I understand; I feel for you."

"Thank you," Mrs. Trevennack answered low, with tears standing in her eyes. "I'm--I'm so glad you've SEEN him. It makes your opinion so much more valuable to me. But you thought his delusion wholly due to the accident, then?"

"Wholly due to the accident, dear lady. Yes, wholly, wholly due to it.

You may go home quite relieved. Your doubts and fears are groundless.

Miss Trevennack may marry with a clear conscience."

CHAPTER X.

A BOLD ATTEMPT.

During the next ten or eleven months poor Mrs. Trevennack had but one abiding terror--that a sudden access of irrepressible insanity might attack her husband before Cleer and Eustace could manage to get married. Trevennack, however, with unvarying tenderness, did his best in every way to calm her fears. Though no word on the subject pa.s.sed between them directly, he let her feel with singular tact that he meant to keep himself under proper control. Whenever a dangerous topic cropped up in conversation, he would look across at her affectionately, with a rea.s.suring smile. "For Cleer's sake," he murmured often, if she was close by his side; "for Cleer's sake, dearest!" and his wife, mutely grateful, knew at once what he meant, and smiled approval sadly.

Her heart was very full; her part was a hard one to play with fitting cheerfulness; but in his very madness itself she couldn't help loving, admiring, and respecting that strong, grave husband who fought so hard against his own profound convictions.

Ten months pa.s.sed away, however, and Eustace Le Neve didn't seem to get much nearer any permanent appointment than ever. He began to tire at last of applying unsuccessfully for every pa.s.sing vacancy. Now and then he got odd jobs, to be sure; but odd jobs won't do for a man to marry upon; and serious work seemed always to elude him. Walter Tyrrel did his best, no doubt, to hunt up all the directors of all the companies he knew; but no posts fell vacant on any line they were connected with.

It grieved Walter to the heart, for he had always had the sincerest friendship for Eustace Le Neve; and now that Eustace was going to marry Cleer Trevennack, Walter felt himself doubly bound in honor to a.s.sist him. It was HE who had ruined the Trevennacks' hopes in life by his unintentional injury to their only son; the least he could do in return, he thought, and felt, was to make things as easy as possible for their daughter and her intended husband.

By July, however, things were looking so black for the engineer's prospects that Tyrrel made up his mind to run up to town and talk things over seriously with Eustace Le Neve himself in person. He hated going up there, for he hardly knew how he could see much of Eustace without running some risk of knocking up accidentally against Michael Trevennack; and there was nothing on earth that sensitive young squire dreaded so much as an unexpected meeting with the man he had so deeply, though no doubt so unintentionally and unwittingly, injured. But he went, all the same. He felt it was his duty. And duty to Walter Tyrrel spoke in an imperative mood which he dared not disobey, however much he might be minded to turn a deaf ear to it.

Le Neve had little to suggest of any practical value. It wasn't his fault, Tyrrel knew; engineering was slack, and many good men were looking out for appointments. In these crowded days, it's a foolish mistake to suppose that energy, industry, ability, and integrity are necessarily successful. To insure success you must have influence, opportunity, and good luck as well, to back them. Without these, not even the invaluable quality of unscrupulousness itself is secure from failure.

If only Walter Tyrrel could have got his friend to accept such terms, indeed, he would gladly, for Cleer's sake, have asked Le Neve to marry on an allowance of half the Penmorgan rent-roll. But in this commercial age, such quixotic arrangements are simply impossible. So Tyrrel set to work with fiery zeal to find out what openings were just then to be had; and first of all for that purpose he went to call on a parliamentary friend of his, Sir Edward Jones, the fat and good-natured chairman of the Great North Midland Railway. Tyrrel was a shareholder whose vote was worth considering, and he supported the Board with unwavering loyalty.

Sir Edward was therefore all attention, and listened with sympathy to Tyrrel's glowing account of his friend's engineering energy and talent.

When he'd finished his eulogy, however, the practical railway magnate crossed his fat hands and put in, with very common-sense dryness, "If he's so clever as all that, why doesn't he have a shot at this Wharfedale Viaduct?"

Walter Tyrrel drew back a little surprised. The Wharfedale Viaduct was a question just then in everybody's mouth. But what a question! Why, it was one of the great engineering works of the age; and it was informally understood that the company were prepared to receive plans and designs from any competent person. There came the rub, though.

Would Eustace have a chance in such a compet.i.tion as that? Much as he believed in his old school-fellow, Tyrrel hesitated and reflected. "My friend's young, of course," he said, after a pause. "He's had very little experience--comparatively, I mean--to the greatness of the undertaking."

Sir Edward pursed his fat lips. It's a trick with your railway kings.

"Well, young men are often more inventive than old ones," he answered, slowly. "Youth has ideas; middle age has experience. In a matter like this, my own belief is, the ideas count for most. Yes, if I were you, Tyrrel, I'd ask your friend to consider it."

"You would?" Walter cried, brightening up.

"Aye, that I would," the great railway-man answered, still more confidently than before, rubbing his fat hands reflectively. "It's a capital opening. Erasmus Walker'll be in for it, of course; and Erasmus Walker'll get it. But don't you tell your fellow that. It'll only discourage him. You just send him down to Yorkshire to reconnoiter the ground; and if he's good for anything, when he's seen the spot he'll make a plan of his own, a great deal better than Walker's. Not that that'll matter, don't you know, as far as this viaduct goes. The company'll take Walker's, no matter how good any other fellow's may be, and how bad Walker's--because Walker has a great name, and because they think they can't go far wrong if they follow Walker. But still, if your friend's design is a good one, it'll attract attention--which is always something; and after they've accepted Walker's, and flaws begin to be found in it--as experts can always find flaws in anything, no matter how well planned--your friend can come forward and make a fuss in the papers (or what's better still, YOU can come forward and make it for him) to say these flaws were strikingly absent from HIS very superior and scientific conception. There'll be flaws in your friend's as well, of course, but they won't be the same ones, and n.o.body'll have the same interest in finding them out and exposing them. And that'll get your man talked about in the papers and the profession. It's better, anyhow, than wasting his time doing nothing in London here."

"He shall do it!" Walter cried, all on fire. "I'll take care he shall do it. And Sir Edward, I tell you, I'd give five thousand pounds down if only he could get the job away from Walker."

"Got a grudge against Walker, then?" Sir Edward cried quickly, puckering up his small eyes.