On one occasion when we
were walking in the grounds, he suddenly snatched up a
spade from a grass-plot, and rushed at an inoffensive
under-gardener. The man ran screaming for his life, with
my patient cursing at his very heels, and me within a few
paces of him. When I at last laid my hand on his collar,
he threw down his weapon and burst into shrieks of
laughter. It was only mischief and not ferocity; but
when that under-gardener saw us coming after that he was
off with a face like a cream cheese. At night the
attendant slept in a camp-bed at the foot of the
patient's, and my room was next door, so that I could be
called if necessary. No, it was not a very exhilarating
life!
We used to go down to family meals when there were no
visitors; and there we made a curious quartette:
Jimmy (as he wished me to call him) glum and silent; I
with the tail of my eye always twisted round to him; Lady
Saltire with her condescending eyelids and her blue
veins; and the good-natured peer, fussy and genial, but
always rather subdued in the presence of his wife. She
looked as if a glass of good wine would do her good, and
he as if he would be the better for abstinence; and so,
in accordance with the usual lopsidedness of life, he
drank freely, and she took nothing but lime-juice and
water. You cannot imagine a more ignorant, intolerant,
narrow-minded woman than she. If she had only been
content to be silent and hidden that small brain of hers,
it would not have mattered; but there was no end to her
bitter and exasperating clacking.
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