John Macnab (Unabridged). Buchan John

      I.

       In which Three Gentlemen Confess Their Ennui

       Table of Contents

      The great doctor stood on the hearth-rug looking down at his friend who sprawled before him in an easy-chair. It was a hot day in early July, and the windows were closed and the blinds half-down to keep out the glare and the dust. The standing figure had bent shoulders, a massive clean-shaven face, and a keen interrogatory air, and might have passed his sixtieth birthday. He looked like a distinguished lawyer, who would soon leave his practice for the Bench. But it was the man in the chair who was the lawyer, a man who had left forty behind him, but was still on the pleasant side of fifty.

      “I tell you for the tenth time that there’s nothing the matter with you.”

      “And I tell you for the tenth time that I’m miserably ill.”

      The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Then it’s a mind diseased, to which I don’t propose to minister. What do you say is wrong?”

      “Simply what my housekeeper calls a ‘no-how’ feeling.”

      “It’s clearly nothing physical. Your heart and lungs are sound. Your digestion’s as good as anybody’s can be in London in Midsummer. Your nerves—well, I’ve tried all the stock tests, and they appear to be normal.”

      “Oh, my nerves are all right,” said the other wearily.

      “Your brain seems good enough, except for this dismal obsession that you are ill. I can find no earthly thing wrong, except that you’re stale. I don’t say run-down, for that you’re not. You’re stale in mind. You want a holiday.”

      “I don’t. I may need one, but I don’t want it. That’s precisely the trouble. I used to be a glutton for holidays, and spent my leisure moments during term planning what I was going to do. Now there seems to be nothing in the world I want to do—neither work nor play.”

      “Try fishing. You used to be keen.”

      “I’ve killed all the salmon I mean to kill. I never want to look the ugly brutes in the face again.”

      “Shooting?”

      “Too easy and too dull.”

      “A yacht.”

      “Stop it, old fellow. Your catalogue of undesired delights only makes it worse. I tell you that there’s nothing at this moment which has the slightest charm for me. I’m bored with my work, and I can’t think of anything else of any kind for which I would cross the street. I don’t even want to go into the country and sleep. It’s been coming on for a long time—I did not feel it so badly, for I was in a service and not my own master. Now I’ve nothing to do except to earn an enormous income, which I haven’t any need for. Work comes rolling in—I’ve got retainers for nearly every solvent concern in this land—and all that happens is that I want to strangle my clerk and a few eminent solicitors. I don’t care a tinker’s curse for success, and what is worse, I’m just as apathetic about the modest pleasures which used to enliven my life.”

      “You may be more tired than you think.”

      “I’m not tired at all.” The speaker rose from his chair yawning, and walked to the windows to stare into the airless street. He did not look tired, for his movements were vigorous, and, though his face had the slight pallor of his profession, his eye was clear and steady. He turned round suddenly.

      “I tell you what I’ve got, It’s what the Middle ages suffered from— I read a book about it the other day—and its called Taedium Vitae. It’s a special kind of ennui. I can diagnose my ailment well enough and Shakespeare has the words for it. I’ve come to a pitch where I find ‘nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.’”

      Then why do you come to me, if the trouble is not with your body?”

      “Because you’re you. I should come to you just the same if you were a vet., or a bone-setter, or a Christian Scientist. I want your advice, not as a fashionable consultant, but as an old friend and a wise man. It’s a state of affairs that can’t go on. What am I to do to get rid of this infernal disillusionment? I can’t go through the rest of my life dragging my wing.”

      The doctor was smiling.

      “If you ask my professional advice,” he said, “I am bound to tell you that medical science has no suggestion to offer. If you consult me as a friend, I advise you to steal a horse in some part of the world where a horse-thief is usually hanged.”

      The other considered. “Pretty drastic prescription for a man who has been a Law Officer of the Crown.”

      “I speak figuratively. You’ve got to rediscover the comforts of your life by losing them for a little. You have good food and all the rest of it at your command—well,