She would go to Rome. She would see Nan; find out how things were. Nan always liked to see her, would put up with her even when she wanted no one else.
That was, at least, a job one could do. These family jobs—they still go on, they never cease, even when one is getting middle-aged and one’s brain has gone to pot. They remain, always, the jobs of the affections.
She would write to Nan tonight, and tell her she was starting for Rome in a few days, to have a respite from the London fogs.
V
But she did not start for Rome, or even write to Nan, for when she got home she went to bed with influenza.
XII
The Mother
I
The happiness Mrs. Hilary now enjoyed was of the religious type—a deep, warm glow, which did not lack excitement. She felt as those may be presumed to feel who have just been converted to some church—newly alive, and sunk in spiritual peace, and in profound harmony with life. Where were the old rubs, frets, jars and ennuis? Vanished, melted like yesterday’s snows in the sun of this new peace. It was as if she had cast her burden upon the Lord. That, said her psychoanalyst doctor, was quite in order; that was what it ought to be like. That was, in effect, what she had in point of fact done; only the place of the Lord was filled by himself. To put the matter briefly, transference of burden had been effected; Mrs. Hilary had laid all her cares, all her perplexities, all her grief, upon this quiet, acute-looking man, who sat with her twice a week for an hour, drawing her out, arranging her symptoms for her, penetrating the hidden places of her soul, looking like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Henry Ainley. Her confidence in him was, he told her, the expression of the father-image, which surprised Mrs. Hilary a little, because he was twenty years her junior.
Mrs. Hilary felt that she was getting to know herself very well indeed. Seeing herself through Mr. Cradock’s mind, she felt that she was indeed a curious jumble of complexes, of strange, mysterious impulses, desires and fears. Alarming, even horrible in some ways; so that often she thought “Can he be right about me? Am I really like that? Do I really hope that Marjorie (Jim’s wife) will die, so that Jim and I may be all in all to each other again? Am I really so wicked?” But Mr. Cradock said that it was not at all wicked, perfectly natural and normal—the Unconscious was like that. And worse than that; how much worse he had to break to Mrs. Hilary, who was refined and easily shocked, by gentle hints and slow degrees, lest she should be shocked to death. Her dreams, which she had to recount to him at every sitting, bore such terrible significance—they grew worse and worse in proportion, as Mrs. Hilary could stand more.
“Ah well,” Mrs. Hilary sighed uneasily, after an interpretation into strange terms of a dream she had about bathing, “it’s very odd, when I’ve never even thought about things like that.”
“Your Unconscious,” said Mr. Cradock, firmly, “has thought the more. The more your Unconscious is obsessed by a thing, the less your conscious self thinks of it. It is shy of the subject, for that very reason.”
Mrs. Hilary was certainly shy of the subject, for that reason or others. When she felt too shy of it, Mr. Cradock let her change it. “It may be true,” she would say, “but it’s very terrible, and I would rather not dwell on it.”
So he would let her dwell instead on the early days of her married life, or on the children’s childhood, or on her love for Neville and Jim, or on her impatience with her mother.
II
They were happy little times, stimulating, cosy little times. They spoke straight to the heart, easing it of its weight of tragedy. A splendid man, Mr. Cradock, with his shrewd, penetrating sympathy, his kind firmness. He would listen with interest to everything; the sharp words she had had with Grandmama, troubles with the maids, the little rubs of daily life (and what a rubbing business life is, to be sure!) as well as to profounder, more tragic accounts of desolation, jealousy, weariness and despair. He would say “Your case is a very usual one,” so that she did not feel ashamed of being like that. He reduced it all, dispassionately and yet not unsympathetically, and with clear scientific precision, to terms of psychical and physical laws. He trained his patient to use her mind and her will, as well as to remember her dreams and to be shocked at nothing that they signified.
Mrs. Hilary would wake each morning, or during the night, and clutch at the dream which was flying from her, clutch and secure it, and make it stand and deliver its outlines to her. She was content with outlines; it was for Mr. Cradock to supply the interpretation. Sometimes, if Mrs. Hilary couldn’t remember any dreams, he would supply, according to a classic precedent, the dream as well as the interpretation. But on the whole, deeply as she revered and admired him, Mrs. Hilary preferred to remember her own dreams; what they meant was bad enough, but the meaning of the dreams that Mr. Cradock told her she had dreamt was beyond all words. … That terrible Unconscious! Mrs. Hilary disliked it excessively; she felt rather as if it were a sewer, sunk beneath an inadequate grating.
But from Mr. Cradock she put
