Hard Cash Part 58

"What, make a pauper of me?"

"I cannot help it," said the magistrate: "it is the routine; and it was settled at a meeting of the bench last month that we must adhere to the rule as strictly as possible; the asylum is so full: and you know, Maxley, it is not as if you were dangerous."

"That I be, sir: I don't know what I'm a looking at or a doing. Would I ha' gone and killed my poor Susan's hen if I hadn't a been beside myself? and she in her grave, poor dear: no, not for untold gold: and I be fond of that too--used to be, however: but now I don't seem to care for money nor nothing else." And his head dropped.

"Look here, Maxley, old fellow," said Alfred sarcastically, "you must go to the workhouse, and stay there till you hoe a pauper; take him for a crocodile and kill him; then you will get into an asylum whether the Barkington magistrates like it or not: that is the _routine,_ I believe; and as reasonable as most routine."

Dr. Wycherley admired Alfred for this, and whispered Mr. Osmond, "How subtly they reason."

Mr. Hardie did not deign to answer his son, who indeed had spoken at him, and not to him.

As for poor Maxley, he was in sad and sober earnest, and could not relish nor even take in Alfred's irony. He lifted his head and looked Mr. Hardie in the face.

"You be a hard man," said he, trembling with emotion. "You robbed me and my missus of our all; you ha' broke her heart, and turned my head, and if I was to come and kill _you,_ 'twould only be clearing scores. 'Stead of that, I comes to you like a lamb, and says give me your name on a bit of paper, and put me out of harm's way. 'No,' says you, 'go to the workhouse!' Be _you_ in the workhouse--you that owes me nine hundred pounds and my dead missus?" With this he went into a rage, took a packet out of his pocket, and flung L. 900 of Mr. Hardie's paper at Mr.

Hardie's head before any one could stop him.

But Alfred saw his game, stepped forward, and caught it with one hand, and with the dexterity of a wicket-keeper, within a foot of his father's nose. "How's that, Umpire?" said he: then, a little sternly, "Don't do that again, Mr. Maxley, or I shall have to give you a hiding--to keep up appearances." He then put the notes in his pocket, and said quietly, _"I_ shall give you your money for these before the year ends."

"You won't be quite so mad as that, I hope," remonstrated his father.

But he made no reply: they very seldom answered one another now.

"Oh," said Dr. Wycherley, inspecting him like a human curiosity, "nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae."

"Nec parvum sine mixtura stult.i.tiae," retorted Alfred in a moment and met his offensive gaze with a point-blank look of supercilious disdain.

Then having shut him up, he turned to Osmond: "Come," said he, "prescribe for this poor fellow, who asks for a hospital, so Routine gives him a workhouse. Come, you know there is no limit to your skill and good nature: you cured Spot of the worms, cure poor old Maxley of his snakes: oblige me."

"That I will, Mr. Alfred," said Osmond heartily: and wrote a prescription on a leaf of his memorandum-book, remarking that though a simple purgative, it had made short work of a great many serpents and dragons, and not a few spectres and hobgoblins into the bargain.

The young gentleman thanked him graciously, and said kindly to Maxley, "Get that made up--here's a guinea--and I'll send somebody to see how you are to-morrow."

The poor man took the guinea, and the prescription, and his head drooped again, and he slouched away.

Dr. Wycherley remarked significantly that his conduct was worth imitating by _all persons similarly situated:_ and concluded oracularly: "Prophylaxis is preferable to therapeusis."

"Or, as _Porson_ would say, 'Prevention is better than cure.'"

With this parting blow the Oxonian suddenly sauntered away, unconscious, it seemed, of the existence of his companions.

"I never saw a plainer case of Incubation," remarked Dr. Wycherley with vast benevolence of manner.

"Maxley's?"

"Oh, no; that is parochial. It is your profoundly interesting son I alluded to. Did you notice his supercilious departure? _And his morbid celerity of repartee?_"

Mr. Hardie replied with some little hesitation, "Yes; and, excuse me, I thought he had rather the best of the battle with you."

"Indubitably so," replied Dr. Wycherley: "they always do: at least such is my experience. If ever I break a lance of wit with an incubator! I calculate with confidence on being unhorsed with abnormal rapidity, and rare, indeed, are the instances in which my antic.i.p.ations are not promptly and fully realised. By a similar rule of progression the incubator is seldom a match for the confirmed maniac, either in the light play of sarcasm, the coruscations of wit or the severer encounters of dialectical ratiocination."

"Dear, dear, dear! Then how is one to know a genius from a madman?"

inquired Jane.

_"By sending for a psychological physician._"

"If I understand the doctor right, the two things are not opposed,"

remarked Mr. Hardie.

Dr. Wycherley a.s.sented, and made a remarkable statement in confirmation: "One half of the aggregate of the genius of the country is at present under restraint; fortunately for the community; and still more fortunately for itself."

He then put on his gloves, and, with much kindness but solemnity, warned Mr. Hardie not to neglect his son's case, nor to suppose that matters could go on like this without "disintegrating or disorganising the grey matter of the brain. I admit" said he, "that in some recorded cases of insanity the brain on dissection has revealed no signs of structural or functional derangement, and, that, on the other hand, considerable encephalic disorganisation has been shown to have existed in other cases without aberration or impairment of the reason: but such phenomena are to be considered as pathological curiosities, with which the empiric would fain endeavour to disturb the sound general conclusions of science. The only safe mode of reasoning on matters so delicate and profound is _a priori:_ and, as it may safely be a.s.sumed as a self-evident proposition, that disturbed intelligence bears the same relation to the brain as disordered respiration does to the lungs, it is not logical, reasoning _a priori,_ to a.s.sume the possibility that the studious or other mental habits of a Kephalalgic, and gifted youth, can be reversed, and erotic monomania germinate, with all the morbid phenomena of isolation, dejection of the spirits, and abnormal exaltation of the powers of wit and ratiocination, without some considerable impairment, derangement, disturbance, or modification, of the psychical, motorial, and sensorial functions of the great cerebral ganglion. But it would be equally absurd to presuppose that these several functions can be disarranged for months, without more or less disorganisation of the medullary, or even of the cineritious, matter of the encephialon. _Therefore_--dissection of your talented son would doubtless reveal at this moment either steatonatous or atheromatous deposits in the cerebral blood-vessels, or an encysted abscess, probably of no very recent origin, or, at the least, considerable insp.i.s.sation, and opacity, of the membranes of the encephalon, or more or less pulpy disorganisation of one or other of the hemispheres of the brain: _good_ morning!!"

"Good morning, sir: and a thousand thanks for your friemidly interest in my unhappy boy."

The Psycho-cerebrals "took their departure" (Psycho-cerebral for "went away"), and left Jane Hardie brimful of anxiety. Alfred was not there to dispose of the tirade in two words "Pet.i.tio principii," and so smoke on; and, not being an university woman, she could not keep her eye on the original a.s.sumption while following the series of inferences the learned doctor built so neatly, story by story, on the foundation _of_ the quicksand _of_ a loose conjecture.*

* So novices sitting at a conjuror see him take a wedding- ring, and put it in a little box before a lady; then cross the theatre with another little box, and put that before another lady: "Hey! presto! pa.s.s!" in box 2 is discovered a wedding-ring, which is instantly _a.s.sumed_ to be _the_ ring: on this the green minds are fixed, and with this is sham business done: Box 1, containing the real ring all the time, is overlooked: and the confederate, in livery or not, does what he likes with it; imprisons it in an orange--for the good of its health.

So poor Argan, when Fleurant enumerates the consequences of his omitting a single--dose shall I say?--is terrified by the threatened disorders, which succeed to each other logically enough: all the absurdity being in the first link of the chain; and from that his mind is diverted.----

"Now not a word of this to Alfred," said Mr. Hardie. "I shall propose him a little foreign tour, to amuse his mind."

"Yes, but papa, if some serious change is really going on inside his poor head."

Mr. Hardie smiled sarcastically. "Don't you see that if the mind can wound the brain, the mind can cure it?" Then, after a while, he said parentally, "My child, I must give you a lesson: men of the world use enthusiasts--like those two I have just been drawing out--for their tools; we don't let them make tools of us. Osmond, you know, is jackal to an asylum in London; Dr. Wycherley, I have heard, keeps two or three such establishments by himself or his agents: blinded by self-interest and that of their clique--what an egotistical world it is, to be sure!--they would confine a melancholy youth in a gloomy house, among afflicted persons, and give him nothing to do but brood; and so turn the scale against his reason. But I have my children's interest at heart more than my own: I shall send him abroad, and so amuse his mind with fresh objects, break off sad a.s.sociations, and restore him to a brilliant career. I count on you to second me in my little scheme for his good."

"That I will, papa."

"Somehow, I don't know why, he is coolish to me."

"He does not understand you as I do, my own papa."

"But he is affectionate with you, I think."

"Oh yes, more than ever: trouble has drawn us closer. Papa, in the midst of our sorrow, how much we have to be thankful for to the Giver of all good things!"

"Yes, little angel: and you must improve Heaven's goodness by working on your brother's affection, and persuading him to this continental tour."

Thus appealed to, Jane promised warmly: and the man of the world, finding he had a blind and willing instrument in the one creature he loved, kissed her on the forehead, and told her to run away, for here was Mr. Skinner, who no doubt wanted to speak on business.

Skinner, who had in fact been holding respectfully aloof for some time, came forward on Jane's retiring, and in a very obsequious tone requested a private interview. Mr. Hardie led the way into the little dining-room.

They were no sooner alone than Skinner left off fawning, very abruptly; and put on a rugged resolute manner that was new to him: "I am come for my commission," said he st.u.r.dily.

Mr. Hardie looked an inquiry.

"Oh, you don't know what I mean, of course," said the little clerk almost brutally: "I've waited, and waited, to see if you would have the decency, and the grat.i.tude, and the honesty, to offer me a trifle out of It; but I see I might wait till dooms-day before you would ever think of thinking of anybody but yourself. So now sh.e.l.l out without more words or I'll blow the gaff" The little wretch raised his voice louder and louder at every sentence.

"Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ Skinner," said Mr. Hardie anxiously, "you are under some delusion. When did ever I decline to recognise your services? I always intended to make you a present, a handsome present."