Ferse strode to the window and back.
‘I’ve got to do something for poor devils like myself.’
‘Oh!’ said Dinny, dismayed.
‘I’ve had luck. Most people like me would have been certified, and stuck away against their will. If I’d been poor we couldn’t have afforded that place. To be there was bad enough, but it was miles better than the usual run of places. I used to make my man talk. He’d seen two or three of them.’
He stood silent, and Dinny thought of her uncle’s words: ‘He’ll get up against something, and that will ungear him again in no time.’
Ferse went on suddenly: ‘If you had any other kind of job possible, would you take on the care of the insane? Not you, nor anyone with nerves or sensibility. A saint might, here and there, but there aren’t saints enough to go round by a long chalk. No! To look after us you’ve got to shed the bowels of compassion, you must be made of iron, you must have a hide like leather; and no nerves. With nerves you’d be worse than the thick-skinned because you’d be jumpy, and that falls on us. It’s an impasse. My God! Haven’t I thought about it? And – money. No one with money ought to be sent to one of those places. Never, never! Give him his prison at home somehow – somewhere. If I hadn’t known that I could come away at any time – if 1 hadn’t hung on to that knowledge even at my worst, I wouldn’t be here now – I’d be raving. God! I’d be raving! Money! And how many have money? Perhaps five in a hundred! And the other ninety-five poor devils are stuck away, willy-nilly, stuck away! I don’t care how scientific, how good those places may be, as asylums go – they mean death in life. They must. People outside think we’re as good as dead already – so who cares? Behind all the pretence of scientific treatment that’s what they really feel. We’re obscene – no longer human – the old idea of madness clings, Miss Cherrell; we’re a disgrace, we’ve failed. Hide us away, put us underground. Do it humanely – twentieth century! Humanely! Try! You can’t! Cover it all up with varnish then – varnish – that’s all it is. What else can it be? Take my word for that. Take my man’s word for it. He knew.’
Dinny was listening, without movement. Suddenly Ferse laughed. ‘But we’re not dead; that’s the misfortune, we’re not dead. If only we were! All those poor brutes – not dead – as capable of suffering in their own way as anyone else – more capable. Don’t I know? And what’s the remedy?’ He put his hands to his head.
‘To find a remedy,’ said Dinny, softly, ‘wouldn’t it be wonderful?’
He stared at her.
‘Thicken the varnish – that’s all we do, all we shall do.’
‘Then why worry yourself?’ sprang to Dinny’s lips, but she held the words back.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you will find the remedy, only that will need patience and calm.’
Ferse laughed.
‘You must be bored to death.’ And he turned away to the window.
Dinny slipped quietly out.
Chapter Twenty-three
IN that resort of those who know – the Piedmont Grill – the knowing were in various stages of repletion, bending towards each other as if in food they had found the link between their souls. They sat, two by two, and here and there four by five, and here and there a hermit, moody or observant over a cigar, and between the tables moved trippingly the lean and nimble waiters with faces unlike their own, because they were harassed by their memories. Lord Saxenden and Jean, in a corner at the near end, had already consumed a lobster, drunk half a bottle of hock, and talked of nothing in particular, before she raised her eyes slowly from an empty claw and said:
‘Well, Lord Saxenden?’
His blue stare goggled slightly at that thick-lashed glance.
‘Good lobster?’ he said.
‘Amazing.’
‘I always come here when I want to be well fed. Is that partridge coming, waiter?’
‘Yes, milord.’
‘Well, hurry with it. Try this hock, Miss Tasburgh; you’re not drinking.’
Jean raised her greenish glass. ‘I became Mrs Hubert Cherrell yesterday. It’s in the paper.’
Lord Saxenden’s cheeks expanded slightly with the thought: ‘Now, how does that affect me? Is this young lady more amusing single or more amusing married?’
‘You don’t waste time,’ he said, his eyes exploring her, as though seeking confirmation of her changed condition. ‘If I’d known, I shouldn’t have had the cheek to ask you to lunch without him.’