December 9
Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face—even my own—become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism even, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated—a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.
Later: While at a public meeting, the office-boy approached me and immediately whispered without hesitation—
“Just had a telephone message to say that your father is at the T⸺ Railway Station, lying senseless. He has evidently had an apoplectic fit.”
(How those brutal words, “lying senseless,” banged and bullied and knocked me down. Mother was waiting for me at the door in a dreadful state and expecting the worst.)
Met the train with the Doctor, and took him home in the cab—still alive, thank God, but helpless. He was brave enough to smile and shake me by the hand—with his left, though he was speechless and the right side of his body helpless. A porter discovered him at the railway terminus lying on the floor of a second-class carriage.