The Secret Places of the Heart - Герберт Уэллс

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      “I lie awake at night, thinking of it.”

      “A social smash-up.”

      “Economic. Social. Yes. Don’t you?”

      “A social smash-up seems to me altogether a possibility. All sorts of people I find think that,” said the doctor. “All sorts of people lie awake thinking of it.”

      “I wish some of my damned Committee would!”

      The doctor turned his eyes to the window. “I lie awake too,” he said and seemed to reflect. But he was observing his patient acutely—with his ears.

      “But you see how important it is,” said Sir Richmond, and left his sentence unfinished.

      “I’ll do what I can for you,” said the doctor, and considered swiftly what line of talk he had best follow.

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      “This sense of a coming smash is epidemic,” said the doctor. “It’s at the back of all sorts of mental trouble. It is a new state of mind. Before the war it was abnormal—a phase of neurasthenia. Now it is almost the normal state with whole classes of intelligent people. Intelligent, I say. The others always have been casual and adventurous and always will be. A loss of confidence in the general background of life. So that we seem to float over abysses.”

      “We do,” said Sir Richmond.

      “And we have nothing but the old habits and ideas acquired in the days of our assurance. There is a discord, a jarring.”

      The doctor pursued his train of thought. “A new, raw and dreadful sense of responsibility for the universe. Accompanied by a realization that the job is overwhelmingly too big for us.”

      “We’ve got to stand up to the job,” said Sir Richmond. “Anyhow, what else is there to do? We MAY keep things together. … I’ve got to do my bit. And if only I could hold myself at it, I could beat those fellows. But that’s where the devil of it comes in. Never have I been so desirous to work well in my life. And never have I been so slack and weak-willed and inaccurate. … Sloppy. … Indolent. … VICIOUS! …”

      The doctor was about to speak, but Sir Richmond interrupted him. “What’s got hold of me? What’s got hold of me? I used to work well enough. It’s as if my will had come untwisted and was ravelling out into separate strands. I’ve lost my unity. I’m not a man but a mob. I’ve got to recover my vigour. At any cost.”

      Again as the doctor was about to speak the word was taken out of his mouth. “And what I think of it, Dr. Martineau, is this: it’s fatigue. It’s mental and moral fatigue. Too much effort. On too high a level. And too austere. One strains and fags. FLAGS! ‘Flags’ I meant to say. One strains and flags and then the lower stuff in one, the subconscious stuff, takes control.”

      There was a flavour of popularized psychoanalysis about this, and the doctor drew in the corners of his mouth and gave his head a critical slant. “M’m.” But this only made Sir Richmond raise his voice and quicken his speech. “I want,” he said, “a good tonic. A pick-me-up, a stimulating harmless drug of some sort. That’s indicated anyhow. To begin with. Something to pull me together, as people say. Bring me up to the scratch again.”

      “I don’t like the use of drugs,” said the doctor.

      The expectation of Sir Richmond’s expression changed to disappointment. “But that’s not reasonable,” he cried. “That’s not reasonable. That’s superstition. Call a thing a drug and condemn it! Everything is a drug. Everything that affects you. Food stimulates or tranquillizes. Drink. Noise is a stimulant and quiet an opiate. What is life but response to stimulants? Or reaction after them? When I’m exhausted I want food. When I’m overactive and sleepless I want tranquillizing. When I’m dispersed I want pulling together.”

      “But we don’t know how to use drugs,” the doctor objected.

      “But you ought to know.”

      Dr. Martineau fixed his eye on a first floor window sill on the opposite side of Harley Street. His manner suggested a lecturer holding on to his theme.

      “A day will come when we shall be able to manipulate drugs—all sorts of drugs—and work them in to our general way of living. I have no prejudice against them at all. A time will come when we shall correct our moods, get down to our reserves of energy by their help, suspend fatigue, put off sleep during long spells of exertion. At some sudden crisis for example. When we shall know enough to know just how far to go with this, that or the other stuff. And how to wash out its after effects. … I quite agree with you—in principle. … But that time hasn’t come yet. … Decades of research yet. … If we tried that sort of thing now, we should be like children playing with poisons and explosives. … It’s out of the question.”

      “I’ve been taking a few little things already. Easton Syrup for example.”

      “Strychnine. It carries you for a time and drops you by the way. Has it done you any good—any NETT good? It has—I can see—broken your sleep.”

      The doctor turned round again to his patient and looked up into his troubled face.

      “Given physiological trouble I don’t mind resorting to a drug. Given structural injury I don’t mind surgery. But except for any little mischief your amateur drugging may have done you do not seem to me to be either sick or injured. You’ve no trouble either of structure or material. You are—worried—ill in your mind, and otherwise perfectly sound. It’s the current of your thoughts, fermenting. If the trouble is in the mental sphere, why go out of the mental sphere for a treatment? Talk and thought; these are your remedies. Cool deliberate thought. You’re unravelled. You say it yourself. Drugs will only make this or that unravelled strand behave disproportionately. You don’t want that. You want to take stock of yourself as a whole—find out where you stand.

      “But the Fuel Commission?”

      “Is it sitting now?”

      “Adjourned till after Whitsuntide. But there’s heaps of work to be done.

      “Still,” he added, “this is my one chance of any treatment.”

      The doctor made a little calculation. “Three weeks. … It’s scarcely time enough to begin.”

      “You’re certain that no regimen of carefully planned and chosen tonics—”

      “Dismiss the idea. Dismiss it.” He decided to take a plunge. “I’ve just been thinking of a little holiday for myself. But I’d like to see you through this. And if I am to see you through, there ought to be some sort of beginning now. In this three weeks. Suppose. …”

      Sir Richmond leapt to his thought. “I’m free to go anywhere.”

      “Golf would drive a man of your composition mad?”

      “It would.”

      “That’s that. Still—. The country must be getting beautiful again now—after all the rain we have had. I have a little two-seater. I don’t know. … The repair people promise to release it before Friday.”

      “But I have a choice of two very comfortable little cars. Why not be my guest?”

      “That might be more convenient.”

      “I’d prefer my own car.”

      “Then what do you say?”

      “I agree. Peripatetic treatment.”

      “South and west. We could talk on the road. In the evenings. By the wayside. We might make the beginnings of a treatment. … A simple tour. Nothing elaborate.

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