Another lovely morning and more sunbathing with Sally on the terrace. After we had been chatting for a while I asked her if she really and truly believed that I was nuts, and would be prepared to take her oath to that effect in a court of law.
She looked up at me from where she was lying on her rug, and her nice freckled face was intensely serious as she replied:
‘I’d hate to do that, but I’m afraid I’d have to, Toby. Of course, you’re not out of your mind at all frequently, but very few mental people are all the time. I wouldn’t have believed that you were mental at all if I hadn’t seen you as you were last week, and known about your quite unreasoned hatred of Dr. Lisický.’
‘Surely,’ I said, controlling my voice as carefully as I could, ‘the riots you saw me create downstairs in the library, and after my escape, could easily be accounted for as outbursts of temper, due to the frustration felt by an invalid who believes that an undue restraint is being put upon him?’
She pulled hard on her cigarette. ‘But that’s just the trouble, Toby. You imagine that an undue restraint is being put upon you; but it isn’t really so.’
‘Are you absolutely convinced of that?’
‘Absolutely. There is nothing whatever about the arrangements here, or Dr. Lisický’s treatment of you, to suggest that you are being persecuted. Yet you think you are. So I’m afraid there is no escaping the fact that you are suffering from a form of persecution mania.’
‘All right, then,’ I said after a moment. ‘Naturally, I don’t agree about that; but we’ll let it pass. Do you think that my state would justify putting me in an asylum?’
‘Oh, please, let’s not talk about it,’ she begged. ‘Tell me about some of the exciting times you had when you were in the R.A.F.’
‘No, Sally. I want you to answer my question,’ I insisted.
‘Well then,’ she said in rather a small voice, ‘if you must know, I think it might. That is, if these bouts of yours continue. You see, nearly all lunacy is periodic, and yours seems to take the classic form, in which the subject is affected by the moon. Dr. Lisický says that you are perfectly normal during the rest of the month, but suffer from these outbreaks whenever the moon is near full. This last time you raved, used the most filthy language—which I am sure you would never do in front of me when you are your real self—wept and became violent.’
‘And that,’ I cut in, bitterly, ‘is just what mad people do, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘I’m afraid it is. So you see, if you go on getting these attacks every month, it may become necessary to put you under restraint while they last. But that would be only for a few days each time, of course. And please don’t worry yourself about it, because that sort of mental trouble is perfectly curable, and I’m sure that you’ll be quite all right again in a few months.’
‘Thanks, Sally,’ I said. ‘I’m very grateful to you for being honest with me. Now we’ll talk of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings—or of anything else that you like’; and we did for the rest of the morning.
All the same, I am damnably disturbed by what she said. She may admire Helmuth, but I am positive that she is not under his thumb to the extent of deliberately deceiving me on his instructions. She was speaking from her own convictions, and with considerable reluctance. I am certain of that, and it has given me furiously to think.
Of course she knows nothing of the huge financial interests that are involved in this question of my sanity or madness; and she knows nothing about the Horror—which is the prime cause of my outbursts. But did I really see that Shadow or did I only think I did, owing to my mind having become subject to the malefic influence of the moon?
I can’t help wishing now that I had never raised the matter with Sally and forced her to answer my questions.