MR. HARDIE was taken by surprise for once, and had not a word to say, but looked in his son’s face, mute and gasping as a fish.

During this painful silence his children eyed him inquiringly, but not with the same result; for one face is often read differently by two persons. To Jane, whose intelligence had no aids, he seemed unaffectedly puzzled; but Alfred discerned beneath his wonder the terror of detection rising, and then thrust back by the strong will: that stoical face shut again like an iron door, but not quickly enough: the right words, the “open sesame,” had been spoken, and one unguarded look had confirmed Alfred’s vague suspicions of foul play. He turned his own face away: he was alienated by the occurrences of the last few months, but Nature and tender reminiscences still held him by some fibres of the heart — in a moment of natural indignation he had applied the touchstone, but its success grieved him. He could not bear to go on exposing his father; so he left the room with a deep sigh, in which pity mingled with shame and regret. He wandered out into the silent night, and soon was leaning on the gate of Albion Villa, gazing wistfully at the windows, and sore perplexed and nobly wretched.

As he was going out, Mr. Hardie raised his eyebrows with a look of disinterested wonder and curiosity; and touched his forehead to Jane, as much as to say, “Is he disordered in his mind?”

As soon as they were alone, he asked her coolly what Alfred meant. She said she had no idea. Then he examined her keenly about this fourteen thousand pounds, and found, to his relief, Alfred had never even mentioned it to her.

And now Richard Hardie, like his son, wanted to be alone, and think over this new peril that had risen in the bosom of his own family, and, for once, the company of his favourite child was irksome: he made an excuse and strolled out in his turn into the silent night. It was calm and clear: the thousand holy eyes, under which men prefer to do their crimes — except when they are in too great a hurry to wait — looked down and seemed to wonder anything can be so silly as to sin; and beneath their pure gaze the man of the world pondered with all his soul. He tormented himself with conjectures: through what channel did Alfred suspect him? Through the Dodds? Were they aware of their loss? Had the pocket-book spoken? If so, why had not Mrs. Dodd or her son attacked him? But then perhaps Alfred was their agent: they wished to try a friendly remonstrance through a mutual friend before proceeding to extremities; this accorded with Mrs. Dodd’s character as he remembered her.

The solution was reasonable; but he was relieved of it by recollecting what Alfred had said, that he had not entered the house since the bank broke.

On this he began to hope Alfred’s might be a mere suspicion he could not establish by any proof; and at all events, he would lock it in his own breast like a good son: his never having given a hint even to his sister favoured this supposition.

Thus meditating, Mr. Hardie found himself at the gate of Albion Villa.

Yet he had strolled out with no particular intention of going there. Had his mind, apprehensive of danger from that quarter, driven his body thither?

He took a look at the house, and the first thing he saw was a young lady leaning over the balcony, and murmuring softly to a male figure below, whose outline Mr. Hardie could hardly discern, for it stood in the shadow. Mr. Hardie was delighted.

“Aha, Miss Juliet,” said he, “if Alfred does not visit you, some one else does. You have soon supplied your peevish lover’s place.” He then withdrew softly from the gate, not to disturb the intrigue, and watched a few yards off; determined to see who Julia’s nightly visitor was, and give Alfred surprise for surprise.

He had not long to wait: the man came away directly, and walked, head erect, past Mr. Hardie, and glanced full in his face, but did not vouchsafe him a word. It was Alfred himself.

Mr. Hardie was profoundly alarmed and indignant. “The young traitor! Never enter the house? no; but he comes and tells her everything directly under her window on the sly; and, when he is caught — defies me to my face.” And now he suspected female cunning and malice in the way that thunderbolt had been quietly prepared for him and launched, without warning, in his very daughter’s presence, and the result just communicated to Julia Dodd.

In a very gloomy mood he followed his son, and heard his firm though elastic tread on the frosty ground, and saw how loftily he carried his head; and from that moment feared, and very, very nearly hated him.

The next day he feigned sick and sent for Osmond. That worthy prescribed a pill and a draught, the former laxative, the latter astringent. This ceremony performed, Mr. Hardie gossipped with him; and, after a detour or two, glided to his real anxiety. “Sampson tells me you know more about Captain Dodd’s case than he does: he is not very clear as to the cause of the poor man’s going mad.”

“The cause? Why, apoplexy.”

“Yes, but I mean what caused the apoplexy?”

Mr. Osmond replied that apoplexy was often idiopathic.14 Captain Dodd, as he understood, had fallen down in the street in a sudden fit: “but as for the mania, that is to be attributed to an insufficient evacuation of blood while under the apoplectic coma.”

14 “Arising of itself.” A term rather hastily applied to disorders the coming signs of which have not been detected by the medical attendant.

The birth of Topsy was idiopathic — in that learned lady’s opinion. ——

“Not bled enough! Why, Sampson says it is because he was bled too much.”

Osmond was amused at this, and repeated that the mania came of not being bled enough.

The discussion was turned into an unexpected quarter by the entrance of Jane Hardie, who came timidly in and said, “Oh, Mr. Osmond, I cannot let you go without telling you how anxious I am about Alfred. He is so thin, and pale, and depressed.”

“Nonsense, Jane,” said Mr. Hardie; “have we not all cause to be dejected in this house?” But she persisted gently that there was more in it than that; and his headaches were worse, and she could not be easy any longer without advice.

“Ah! those headaches,” said Mr. Osmond, “they always made me uneasy. To tell the truth, Miss Hardie, I have noticed a remarkable change in him, but I did not like to excite apprehensions. And so he mopes, does he? seeks solitude, and is taciturn, and dejected?”

“Yes. But I do not mind that so much as his turning so pale and thin.”

“Oh, it is all part of one malady.”

“Then you know what is the matter?”

“I think I do; and yours is a wise and timely anxiety. Your brother’s is a very delicate case of hyperaesthetic character; and I should like to have the advice of a profound physician. Let me see, Dr. Wycherley will be with me tomorrow: may I bring him over as a friend?”

This proposal did not at all suit Mr. Hardie. He put his own construction on Alfred’s pallor and dejection, and was uneasy at the idea of his being cross-questioned by a couple of doctors:

“No, no,” said he; “Taff has fancies enough already. I cannot have you gentlemen coming here to fill his head with many more.”

“Oh, he has fancies, has he?” said Osmond keenly. “My dear sir, we shall not say one word to him: that might irritate him: but I should like you to hear a truly learned opinion.”

Jane looked so imploringly that Mr. Hardie yielded a reluctant assent, on those terms.

So the next day, by appointment, Mr. Osmond introduced his friend Dr. Wycherley: bland and bald with a fine bead, and a face naturally intelligent, but crossed every now and then by gleams of vacancy; a man of large reading, and of tact to make it subserve his interests. A voluminous writer on certain medical subjects, he had so saturated himself with circumlocution, that it distilled from his very tongue: he talked like an Article, a Quarterly one; and so gained two advantages: 1st, he rarely irritated a fellow-creature; for if he began a sentence hot, what with its length, and what with its windiness, he ended it cool: item, stabs by polysyllables are pricks by sponges. 2ndly, this foible earned him the admiration of fools; and that is as invaluable as they are innumerable.

Yet was there in the mother-tongue he despised one gem of a word he vastly admired: like most Quarterly writers. That charming word, the pet of the polysyllabic, was “OF.”

He opened the matter in a subdued and sympathising tone well calculated to win a loving father, such as Richard Hardie — was not.

“My good friend here informs me, sir, you are so fortunate as to possess a son of distinguished abilities, and who is at present labouring under some of those precursory indications of incipient disease of the cerebro-psychical organs, of which I have been, I may say, somewhat successful in diagnosing the symptoms. Unless I have been misinformed, he has, for a considerable time, experienced persistent headache of a kephalalgic or true cerebral type, and has now advanced to the succeeding stage of taciturnity and depression, not15 unaccompanied with isolation, and probably constipation: but as yet without hallucination, though possibly, and, as my experience of the great majority of these cases would induce me to say, probably he is not16 undisturbed by one or more of those latent, and, at first, trifling aberrations, either of the intelligence or the senses, which in their preliminary stages escape the observation of all but the expert nosologist.”

15 Anglice, “accompanied.”

16 Anglice, “disturbed.”

“There, you see,” said Osmond, “Dr. Wycherley agrees with me: yet I assure you I have only detailed the symptoms, and not the conclusion I had formed from them.”

Jane inquired timidly what that conclusion was.

“Miss Hardie, we think it one of those obscure tendencies which are very curable if taken in time ——” Dr. Wycherley ended the sentence: “But no longer remediable if the fleeting opportunity is allowed to escape, and diseased action to pass into diseased organisation.”

Jane looked awestruck at their solemnity; but Mr. Hardie, who was taking advice against the grain, turned satirical. “Gentleman,” said he, “be pleased to begin by moderating your own obscurity; and then perhaps I shall see better how to cure my son’s disorder. What the deuce are you driving at?”

The two doctors looked at one another inquiringly, and so settled how to proceed. Dr. Wycherley explained to Mr. Hardie that there was a sort of general unreasonable and superstitious feeling abroad, a kind of terror of the complaint with which his son was threatened; “and which, instead of the most remediable of disorders, is looked at as the most incurable of maladies:” it was on this account he had learned to approach the subject with singular caution, and even with a timidity which was kinder in appearance than in reality; that he must admit.

“Well, you may speak out, as far as I am concerned,” said Mr. Hardie, with consummate indifference.

“Oh, yes!” said Jane, in a fever of anxiety; “pray conceal nothing from us.”

“Well, then, sir, I have not as yet had the advantage of examining your son personally, but, from the diagnostics, I have no doubt whatever he is labouring under the first fore-shadowings of cerebro-psychical perturbation. To speak plainly, the symptoms are characteristic of the initiatory stage of the germination of a morbid state of the phenomena of intelligence.

His unprofessional hearers only stared.

“In one word, then,” said Dr. Wycherley, waxing impatient at their abominable obtuseness, “it is the premonitory stage of the precursory condition of an organic affection of the brain.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Hardie, “the brain!17 I see; the boy is going mad.”

17 What a blessing there are a few English words left in all our dialects.

The doctors stared in their turn at the prodigious coolness of a tender parent. “Not exactly,” said Dr. Wycherley; “I am habitually averse to exaggeration of symptoms. Your son’s suggest to me ‘the Incubation of Insanity,’ nothing more.”

Jane uttered an exclamation of horror; the doctor soothed her with an assurance that there was no cause for alarm. “Incipient aberration” was of easy cure: the mischief lay in delay. “Miss Hardie,” said he paternally, “during a long and busy professional career, it has been my painful province to witness the deplorable consequences of the non-recognition, by friends and relatives, of the precedent symptoms of those organic affections of the brain, the relief of which was within the reach of well-known therapeutic agents if exhibited seasonably.”

He went on to deplore the blind prejudice of unprofessional persons, who choose to fancy that other diseases creep, but Insanity pounces, on a man; which he expressed thus neatly: “that other deviations from organic conditions of health are the subject of clearly defined though delicate gradations, but that the worst and most climacteric forms of cerebro-psychical disorder are suddenly developed affections presenting no evidence of any antecedent cephalic organic change, and unaccompanied by a premonitory stage, or by incipient symptoms.”

This chimera he proceeded to confute by experience: he had repeatedly been called in to cases of mania described as sudden, and almost invariably found the patient had been cranky for years; which he condensed thus: “His conduct and behaviour for many years previously to any symptom of mental aberration being noticed, had been characterised by actions quite irreconcilable with the supposition of the existence of perfect sanity of intellect.”

He instanced a parson, whom he had lately attended, and found him as constipated and as convinced he was John the Baptist engaged to the Princess Mary as could be. “But,” continued the learned doctor, “upon investigation of this afflicted ecclesiastic’s antecedent history, I discovered that, for years before this, he had exhibited conduct incompatible with the hypothesis of a mind whose equilibrium had been undisturbed. He had caused a number of valuable trees to be cut down on his estate, without being able to offer a sane justification for such an outrageous proceeding; and had actually disposed of a quantity of his patrimonial acres, ’and which’ clearly he never would have parted with had he been in anything resembling a condition of sanity.”

“Did he sell the land and timber below the market price?” inquired Mr. Hardie, perking up, and exhibiting his first symptoms of interest in the discussion.

“On that head, sir, my informant, his heir-at-law, gave me no information: nor did I enter into that class of detail. You naturally look at morbid phenomena in a commercial spirit, but we regard them medically — and all this time most assiduously visiting the sick of his parish and preaching admirable serious.

The next instance he gave was of a stockbroker suffering under general paralysis and a rooted idea that all the specie in the Bank of England was his, and ministers in league with foreign governments to keep him out of it. “Him,” said the doctor, “I discovered to have been for years guilty of conduct entirely incompatible with the hypothesis of undisordered mental functions. He had accused his domestics of peculation, and had initiated legal proceedings with a view of prosecuting in a court of law one of his oldest friends.”

“Whence you infer that, if my son has not for years been doing cranky acts, he is not likely to be deranged at present.”

This adroit twist of the argument rather surprised Dr. Wycherley. However, he was at no loss for a reply. “it is not Insanity, but the Incubation of Insanity, which is suspected in your intelligent son’s case: and the best course will be for me to enumerate in general terms the several symptoms of ‘the Incubation of Insanity:’” he concluded with some severity. “After that, sir, I shall cease to intrude what I fear is an unwelcome conviction.”

The parent, whose levity and cold reception of good tidings he had thus mildly, yet with due dignity, rebuked, was a man of the world, and liked to make friends, not enemies: so he took the hint, and made a very civil speech, assuring Dr. Wycherley that, if he ventured to differ from him, he was none the less obliged by the kind interest he took in a comparative stranger: and would be very glad to hear all about the “Incubation of Insanity.”

Dr. Wycherley bowed slightly and complied:

“One diagnostic preliminary sign of abnormal cerebral action is Kephalalgia, or true cerebral headache; I mean persistent headache not accompanied by a furred tongue, or other indicia significant of abdominal or renal disorder as its origin.”

Jane sighed. “He has sad headaches.”

“The succeeding symptom is a morbid affection of sleep. Either the patient suffers from Insomnia, or else from Hypersomnia, which we subdivide into sopor, carus, and lethargus; or thirdly from Kakosomnia, or a propensity to mere dozing, and to all the morbid phenomena of dreams.”

“Papa,” said Jane, “poor Alfred sleeps very badly: I hear him walking at all hours of the night.”

“I thought as much,” said Dr. Wycherley; “Insomnia is the commonest feature. To resume; the insidious advance of morbid thought is next marked by high spirits, or else by low spirits; generally the latter. The patient begins by moping, then shows great lassitude and ennui, then becomes abstracted, moody, and occupied with a solitary idea.”

Jane clasped her hands and the tears stood in her eyes; so well did this description tally with poor Alfred’s case.

“And at this period,” continued Dr. Wycherley, “my experience leads me to believe that some latent delusion is generally germinating in the mind, though often concealed with consummate craft by the patient: the open development of this delusion is the next stage, and, with this last morbid phenomenon, Incubation ceases and Insanity begins. Sometimes, however, the illusion is physical rather than psychical, of the sense rather than of the intelligence. It commences at night: the incubator begins by seeing nocturnal visions, often of a photopsic18 character, or hearing nocturnal sounds, neither of which have any material existence, being conveyed to his optic or auricular nerves not from without, but from within, by the agency of a disordered brain. These the reason, hitherto unimpaired, combats at first, especially when they are nocturnal only; but being reproduced, and becoming diurnal, the judgment succumbs under the morbid impression produced so repeatedly. These are the ordinary antecedent symptoms characteristic of the incubation of insanity; to which are frequently added somatic exaltation, or, in popular language, physical excitability — a disposition to knit the brows — great activity of the mental faculties — or else a well-marked decline of the powers of the understanding — an exaggeration of the normal conditions of thought — or a reversal of the mental habits and sentiments, such as a sudden aversion to some person hitherto beloved, or some study long relished and pursued.”

18 Luminous.

Jane asked leave to note these all down in her note-book.

Mr. Hardie assented adroitly; for he was thinking whether he could not sift some grain out of all this chaff. Should Alfred blab his suspicions, here were two gentlemen who would at all events help him to throw ridicule on them.

Dr. Wycherley having politely aided Jane Hardie to note down the “preliminary process of the Incubation of disorders of the Intellect,” resumed: “Now, sir, your son appears to be in a very inchoate stage of the malady: he has cerebral Kephalalgia and Insomnia ——”

“And, oh, doctor,” said Jane, “he knits his brows often and has given up his studies; won’t go back to Oxford this term.”

“Exactly; and seeks isolation, and is a prey to morbid distraction and reverie: but has no palpable illusions, has he?”

“Not that I know of,” said Mr. Hardie.

“Well, but,” objected Jane, “did not he say something to you very curious the other night about Captain Dodd and fourteen thousand pounds?”

Mr. Hardie’s blood ran cold. “No,” he stammered, “not that I remember.”

“Oh, yes, he did, papa: you have forgotten it: but at the time you were quite puzzled what he could meant: and you did so.” She put her finger to her forehead, and the doctors interchanged a meaning glance.

“I believe you are right, Jenny,” said Mr. Hardie, taking the cue so unexpectedly offered him: “he did say some nonsense I could not make head nor tail of; but we all have our crotchets. There, run away, like a good girl, and let me explain all this to our good friends here: and mind, not a word about it to Alfred.”

When she was gone, he said, “Gentlemen, my son is over head and ears in love; that is all.”

“Ay, Erotic monomania is a very ordinary phase of insanity,” said Dr. Wycherley.

“His unreasonable passion for a girl he knows he can never marry makes him somewhat crotchety and cranky: that, and over-study, may have unhinged his mind a little. Suppose I send him abroad? My good brother will find the means; or we could advance it him, I and the other trustees; he comes into ten thousand pounds in a month or two.”

The doctors exchanged a meaning look. They then dissuaded him earnestly from the idea of Continental travel.

“Coelum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt,” said Wycherley, and Osmond explained that Alfred would brood abroad as well as at home, if he went alone; and Dr. Wycherley summed up thus: “The most advisable course is to give him the benefit of the personal superintendence of some skilful physician possessed of means and appliances of every sort for soothing and restraining the specific malady.

Mr. Hardie did not at first see the exact purport of this oleaginous periphrasis. Presently he caught a glimpse; but said he thought confinement was hardly the thing to drive away melancholy.

“Not in all respects,” replied Dr. Wycherley; “but, on the other hand, a little gentle restraint is the safest way of effecting a disruption of the fatal associations that have engendered and tend to perpetuate the disorder. Besides, the medicinal appliances are invaluable, including, as they do, the nocturnal and diurnal attendance of a Psycho-physical physician, who knows the Psychosomatic relation of body and mind, and can apply physical remedies, of the effect of which on the physical instrument of intelligence, the grey matter of the brain, we have seen so many examples.”

The good doctor then feelingly deplored the inhumanity of parents and guardians in declining to subject their incubators to opportune and salutary restraint under the more than parental care of a Psychosomatic physician. On this head he got quite warm, and inveighed against the abominable cruelty of the thing. “It is contrary,” said he, “to every principle of justice and humanity, that a fellow-creature, deranged perhaps only on one point, should, for the want of the early attention of those whose duty it is to watch over him, linger out his existence separated from all who are dear to him, and condemned without any crime to be a prisoner for life.”

Mr. Hardie was puzzled by this sentence, in which the speaker’s usual method was reversed, and the thought was bigger than the words.

“Oh,” said he at last, “I see. We ought to incarcerate our children to keep them from being incarcerated.”

“That is one way of putting it with a vengence,” said Mr. Osmond staring. “No; what my good friend means ——”

“Is this; where the patient is possessor of an income of such a character as to enable his friends to show a sincere affection by anticipating the consequences of neglected morbid phenomena of the brain, there a lamentable want of humanity is exhibited by the persistent refusal to the patient, on the part of his relatives, of the incalculable advantage of the authoritative advice of a competent physician accompanied with the safeguards and preventives of ——”

But ere the mellifluous pleonast had done oiling his paradox with fresh polysyllables, to make it slip into the banker’s narrow understanding, he met with a curious interruption. Jane Hardie fluttered in to say a man was at the door accusing himself of being deranged.

“How often this sort of coincidence occurs,” said Osmond philosophically.

“Do not refuse him, dear papa; it is not for money: he only wants you to give him an order to go into a lunatic asylum.”

“Now, there is a sensible man,” said Dr. Wycherley.

“Well, but,” objected Mr. Hardie, “if he is a sensible man, why does he want to go to an asylum?”

“Oh, they are all sensible at times,” observed Mr. Osmond.

“Singularly so,” said Dr. Wycherley, warmly. And he showed a desire to examine this paragon, who had the sense to know he was out of his senses.

“It would be but kind of you, sir,” said Jane; “poor, poor man!” She added, he did not like to come in, and would they mind just going out to him?

“Oh no, not in the least: especially as you seem interested in him.”

And they all three rose and went out together, and found the petitioner at the front door. Who should it be but James Maxley!

His beard was unshaven, his face haggard, and everything about him showed a man broken in spirit as well as fortune: even his voice had lost half its vigour, and, whenever he had uttered a consecutive sentence or two, his head dropped on his breast pitiably: indeed, this sometimes occurred in the middle of a sentence, and then the rest of it died on his lips.

Mr. Richard Hardie was not prepared to encounter one of his unhappy creditors thus publicly, and, to shorten the annoyance, would have dismissed him roughly: but he dared not; for Maxley was no longer alone nor unfriended. When Jane left him to intercede for him, a young man joined him, and was now comforting him with kind words, and trying to get him to smoke a cigar; and this good-hearted young gentleman was the banker’s son in the flesh, and his opposite in spirit, Mr. Alfred Hardie.

Finding these two in contact, the Doctors interchanged demurest glances.

Mr. Hardie asked Maxley sullenly what he wanted of them.

“Well, sir,” said Maxley despondingly, “I have been to all the other magistrates in the borough; for what with losing my money, and what with losing my missus, I think I bain’t quite right in my head; I do see such curious things, enough to make a body’s skin creep at times.” And down went his head on his chest

“Well?” said Mr. Hardie, peevishly: “go on: you went to the magistrates, and what then?”

Maxley looked up, and seemed to recover the thread: “Why they said ‘no,’ they couldn’t send me to the ‘sylum, not from home: I must be a pauper first. So then my neighbours they said I had better come to you.” And down went his head again.

“Well, but,” said Mr. Hardie, “you cannot expect me to go against the other magistrates.”

“Why not, sir? You have had a hatful o’ money of me: the other gentlemen han’t had a farthing. They owes me no service, but you does: nine hundred pounds’ worth, if ye come to that.”

There was no malice in this; it was a plain broken-hearted man’s notion of give and take; but it was a home-thrust all the same; and Mr. Hardie was visibly discountenanced, and Alfred more so.

Mr. Osmond, to relieve a situation so painful, asked Maxley rather hastily what were the curious things he saw.

Maxley shuddered. “The unreasonablest beasts, sir, you ever saw or heard tell on: mostly snakes and dragons. Can’t stoop my head to do no work for them, sir. Bless your heart, if I was to leave you gentlemen now, and go and dig for five minutes in my garden, they would come about me as t............