Chapter VII: Part 7

These concessions of his little tyrant so wrought on both the gratitude and the pride of the man, whom morphia had reduced to a certain childlike weakness, that he, on his part, would sometimes stretch the interval of abstinence even longer than she had required. When, therefore, he found himself, all at once, in the unyielding straitjacket of Sophy's conscientious care, rebellion began to glow in him like a fever. Once he had tried to explain to her Anne's more elastic methods; but though Sophy met him very sweetly, he saw the little shock that had flitted through her eyes. She suspected him of trying to coax her with plausible lies. Had not Anne warned her not to trust him? The little nurse had chiefly meant that she must not trust him by leaving the drug in the remotest way accessible to him; but then Anne could not have instructed Sophy to practise her own leniency. It was one of those situations to which the word "fatal" can be well applied.

A second time, when suffering from one of his severe headaches, in addition to the horrid, chill, damp nervousness, Chesney had again ventured (sullenly angry at the enforced humility of his attitude) to suggest that she give him a slightly larger dose, skipping the next dose entirely, if she wished.

Sophy's look had been full of frank reproach and grief this time. "Ah, Cecil! How can you ask me such a thing?" she had exclaimed. She had come and knelt beside him, taking his clammy hand, which resisted the clasp of the smooth, warm fingers so full of health and love. "Don't you know it's because I love you that I must refuse? Why do you look at me so angrily? You asked me to do this for you, dear. I'm only doing what you _asked_ me to...."

But he had jerked his hand roughly away. He hated her at that moment. "She'll drive me to it, with her smug self-righteousness ... ignorant, sentimental fool!" He feigned to drop asleep after a few minutes, watching her all the time from under his lowered lids--detesting her--wondering why he had ever married her. How damned prim her mouth had looked when she refused him! Fancy kissing a mouth like that with passion! What an ass he had been! And he had thought her such a marvel of intelligence and sympathy! The little Bush-Ranger had more real brains in her skinny finger-tip--her rough slang held more human sympathy than all that other's gush of frilled, silky words! Very well. He'd take things in his own hands. He'd "'fess up" to the little Harding when she returned; but in the meantime he was going to do for himself what she had so often done for him--take a slightly larger dose to ease this damned pain that was prizing his skull asunder. Yes, by God! He was a bally simpleton not to have done it before!

It amused him to reach stealthily for the little tablet (he had it to his hand) and take it "under Sophy's nose," as it were--watching her all the time from between his lashes. She was sitting near a window, chin on hand, gazing out at the sky which seemed to her so like a vast ground-glass cover set above the green bowl of the earth. He grew impatient, waiting for the slow effect of the morphia, thus taken into his stomach. He missed that pringle of the stuff when hypodermically administered, quick through his veins. Then it occurred to him that these were hypodermic tablets--they would naturally be weaker than those to be taken by mouth. He took another quarter-grain tablet. Its vile bitterness seemed delicious to him. All at once he felt that grip at his midriff, as of a tiny claw clutching and teasing. Triumph seized him. He looked at her mockingly, his eyes wide open now. He did not hate her any longer. She amused him now. It was even very pleasant to watch her sitting there in her dejected attitude of unwilling Tyrant. She was not the stuff of which real tyrants are made. It took gritty little devils like the Bush-Bully to tyrannise with _eclat_....

So it had begun.

But unfortunately the self-administration of morphia is not a thing that can be moderately done. Soon Chesney began to confuse the number of doses; could not remember exactly when he had last taken the stuff; would swallow a tablet at the least symptom of physical _malaise_. He seemed stronger; wished to get up. Then came the morning when the larger dose revealed its presence clearly to Bellamy.

* * * * *

Sophy went to Cecil, all her soul in arms for him, not against him; but he met her with easy mockery. Would not admit it. Played with her. She had tried to tyrannise--well, let her tyrannise, then.

"If you're so damned sure I've got the stuff, why don't you find it?" he jeered. "Why didn't the little Bush-Sleuth unearth it? She's got the nose of a Pytchley bitch--the baggage!"

The poison was at its ugly work again. In its deadening clasp, kindliness and fellow-feeling lay numb; the sheer brute ramped free--the strong, coarse, primal animal which morphia rouses, at first merely to a savage irritation but later informs with more than ape-like cunning, with a callous cruelty lower than the brute's because moved by more than the brute's intelligence.

And within a week from his first lapse the change in Chesney had become alarming. Something was here that Bellamy could not understand. Dilated pupils and violent rages, as in London. A sort of false vigour that sent him roaming about the house at times--haranguing in his brilliant, bitter way--insolent, vituperative, insupportable. Sick with humiliation, Sophy told the physician of what Dr. Carfew had said: that Chesney alternated the morphia with cocaine.

So strange and wild were his brother's moods that Gerald had to be taken into confidence. Even Lady Wychcote agreed that Bellamy should wire to London for a man-nurse; but she held out implacably against all idea of committing Cecil against his will to a sanatorium.

"It's a phase," she kept saying. "It's a phase. When Nurse Harding comes back, she will know what to do."

And all the while it rained, ever rained--now lightly, now whelmingly. The climate was like a vast Melancholia wrapping England as in sickness.

Search was made everywhere for the concealed drugs. Sophy lay awake at night, racking her brain for possible solutions, until it haunted her dreams like a dark rebus, cluttering her only half-unconscious brain with the refuse of rejected theories.

The man-nurse came. When he entered Chesney's room, he was flung out so violently by the enraged giant (Chesney stood six-foot-four in his socks) that he barely missed having his arm broken against the opposite wall.

The man, white with wrath and pain, went straight to the library where the family had gathered about Bellamy, apprehensive and anxious as to the nurse's reception. He had chosen himself to go alone. He told them that for no consideration would he attempt the case, unless he were given "a free hand." When coldly required by Lady Wychcote to state what he meant precisely by "a free hand," he had replied sullenly that he must be given permission to use violence in return--that is, to defend himself by a blow, if attacked, and to resort to binding the patient, if necessary.

"In other words, you wish to introduce the methods of a lunatic asylum into my house," said Lady Wychcote haughtily. "That will do. We shall not need your services."

The man turned away, muttering that "madhouse methods were made for madmen."

Bellamy tried to persuade Lady Wychcote to send for Dr. Carfew and have Cecil placed in a sanatorium by force.

"Never shall that be done--never while I live," she said resolutely. "I will not have such a stigma put upon a son of mine. Let him die, if he must. Better dead than with the shame of madness put upon him."

In vain Bellamy argued with her, pointing out the difference between a sanatorium and a madhouse. She was adamant.

"Never! Never!" she kept repeating.

In despair, Sophy herself telegraphed to Anne Harding. The answer somewhat consoled her:

"_Mother doing well. Will come Thursday._"

This was Sunday. In three days, then, the little nurse would be in charge again.

When Chesney heard this, that awful, blind rage shook him from within. He felt the horror of "possession." It seemed to him that to kill was the only thing that would relieve him. His rash excess of the last week had ended by confining him to his bed again. He lay there after Sophy had left him, dozing fitfully, waking with dreadful starts from the unspeakable dreams that had begun to visit him of late, by night and day. He, too, had read De Quincey. He remembered how the wandering Malay had haunted "The Opium-Eater's" sweating dreams. Did the dark drug always send such visions? For now he, Cecil, was hunted down through the dark alleys of sleep by horrible deformed Chinamen, who squatted on their hams, mocking him, bedizened in cruel, violent colours that filled him with unreasoning fear; mopping and mowing at him with chattered words that iced his blood. And one dream that came again and again racked him with the extremity of loathing: a violin would begin playing somewhere--harsh, Chinese music; behind a stiff, embroidered curtain it would begin to play. Then, from under the curtain would peep a foot, the deformed "lily foot" of a Chinese woman; then there would crawl out from under the curtain the violin itself, like the brown carapace of some misshapen turtle, and its head was a woman's--a little Chinese harlot's, with gilded underlip--and in place of the turtle's flippers, the "lily-feet" and long-nailed, tiny hands would come scratching towards him. Then, like a luxurious cat, the little turtle-violin would begin rubbing itself against his feet, that were glued fast with terror, till the strings underneath its belly would give forth again that sinister Chinese music.

Or, in another dream even worse--conscious that he was dreaming--he would begin to sink with his bed, slowly, very slowly, through the floor of his room; down through the library which was underneath; down, down, into the dark cellars where were stored the liquors that he craved; down, ever down, into the wormy earth, among dead men's bones and all uncleanness he would sink slowly, so slowly. And his hair oozy with terror, his flesh glazed as with a coating of thin ice, he would think: "This is what is called 'sinking to the lowest depth'--I am sinking to hell ... to the sewers of hell...."

Then began a reckless orgy of self-indulgence. These horrors must come because he was not getting enough of the drug--could not take it hypodermically. He must alter this. He must take larger, ever larger doses. And he must have stimulant. Damn them! They locked his own father's wine-cellar against him, did they? Well, he would outwit them. Where there was a will there was a way. Good old adage! Made for morphinomaniacs!

He came to these conclusions on the Sunday that Sophy received Anne Harding's telegram.

XXVII

On Wednesday evening, about eleven o'clock, Gaynor knocked at the door of Sophy's bedroom. She was sitting before the fire, her dressing-gown over her night-gown, ready for any emergency. She sent Tilda to bed early these terrible days--living, as she did, in constant terror lest the servants should witness some odious scandal.

She opened the door herself, not knowing who it might be. The little man was very pale, he had the appearance attributed to those who have "just seen a ghost." In his hand he held a white glass quart bottle. He looked at Sophy without speaking.

"What is it? What _is_ it?" she urged. Her eyes were fixed on that big, empty bottle. Why should Gaynor bring an empty bottle to her room at eleven o'clock at night? Why was he so frightened?

"Mrs. Chesney ..." said the valet. "Pardon me, but you must know. I've thought different. Now it's plain. This bottle was more than half full at five this afternoon. Now, you see, madam; you see for yourself...."

Sophy stared bewildered.

"I don't understand," she said, full of vague terror herself now. "What was in the bottle? Why is it empty?"

"Spirit, madam; ninety-five-proof spirit--for the little spirit lamp I use for Mr. Chesney, madam. It was two-thirds full six hours ago. Oh, don't you see, madam? And now the master's door is locked. He won't answer--I've knocked and knocked. He laughed once--so he's not unconscious, madam."

Sophy stood staring.

"Do you mean...?" she whispered finally. "You don't mean that he ... he...?"

"Oh, madam! What else can I think? It began yesterday. I thought one of the maids had upset it and didn't like to say--they never do, madam. Full a pint went yesterday. But as there was enough left in the bottle for the making of his morning coffee, I didn't trouble to fill it till this afternoon. But now.... And he was so strange an hour ago. So wild-like ... different...."

"I didn't know...." murmured Sophy, her eyes fixed in horror on the empty bottle. "I didn't know that ... that.... I thought it was poisonous...."

"Oh, no, madam! It's methylated spirits you're thinking of. This is ninety-five-proof--pure alcohol. It's done, madam. I've heard of it's being done. But I never thought...."

He too stopped, overcome.

Sophy looked at the little servant helplessly.

"I don't know what to do, Gaynor," she said, in the voice of a child. "What can I do?"

"Would you come speak to him, madam, through the door? He might answer you."

"Yes, I'll come," she said. She looked at him out of appalled eyes. "But don't leave me, Gaynor, will you? Come, too."

"No, no, madam. I'll not leave you. Never fear."

Together the little grey figure and the tall white one stole down the corridor to Chesney's door.

Sophy put her mouth close to the crevice of the door. Her heart was beating so that it shook her lips against the wood.

"Cecil--Cecil!" she called softly. "It's I--Sophy. I'm so afraid you're ill. Won't you speak to me, Cecil?"

There was no answer. She tried again and again. Presently she heard that low, ominous laugh.

"It's no use," she whispered, drawing away in terror. "Have you told Doctor Bellamy?"

"No, madam. No one but you. I didn't like to."

"I know, Gaynor," she said, still whispering. "It's hard to have to tell--but I'm afraid we ought."

"Mightn't we wait? Just a bit longer, madam? I'll keep watch...."

Sophy hesitated.

"Well, then," she said reluctantly, "I shall not sleep, either."

She thought a moment; then she said:

"Bring me a few of Mr. Chesney's cigarettes, Gaynor. Mine have given out. Bring me some of his cigarette-papers, too. I'll roll them smaller, as he's been doing lately."

"Very well, madam. But there's very few in the last-opened box. Mr. Chesney won't have me open a new box, madam. He's very particular. He don't like me to meddle with his cigarettes. If you'll just be so kind, madam, as to tell him it was your orders. I fear to anger him as he is now."

"Certainly I will, Gaynor. Gladly. Bring a fresh box here--I will open it myself and tell him to-morrow that it was I who did it."

But when the valet brought her the box of cigarettes, and she had taken out a handful, all desire to smoke left her. She had not the habit--only did so now and then, when she felt very nervous and restless, as to-night. Now as she looked at these huge cigarettes so intimately associated with her husband, she felt averse from touching them. She shut them away in a drawer of her writing-table, and began to walk to and fro, her arms pressed tightly against her heart which was so full of fear and apprehension, which beat so heavily as though tired with its ceaseless task of life.

She went to a window and, drawing the curtains aside, looked out. The night was soft and black, with hurrying clouds. Two greenish stars gleamed at her from a rent in the ragged drapery of vapour. They looked like the phosphorescent eyes of some wild creature glaring from the jungle of the night. She shrank, letting the curtain fall into place again.

Again some one knocked. She went quickly, her heart pounding. It was only Gaynor. His face wore a relieved look.

"Mr. Chesney has opened his door. He's reading. He seems quiet. I hope that you'll try to sleep now, madam."

"But you will call me if you need me, Gaynor."

"Yes, madam--surely."

"Very well. I will lie down, then. I am very tired. But I doubt if I can sleep. Don't hesitate to call me."

"No. I will not, madam."

Sophy got into bed, and turned out her lamp. But she thought that she would never go to sleep. She thought of herself as a girl. How confident of life--her life--she had been then! The world was very surely her oyster. Within lay that pearl of great price--her happiness. How simple it had seemed! Where was that confident girl now--the girl who had been so sweetly "spoiled" by father and mother and sister, and adoring friends? That girl had gone the way of all the other Sophies. The baby-Sophy, and Sophy the four-year-old imp, and the grave, independently religious Sophy of nine. Was she religious now? Why couldn't she pray, then--really pray? Was that constant, dull cry of her heart, "God help ... help ... help!"--was that a prayer? Yes, that must be prayer.

A dulness came over her. Her mind refused to reason.

"At least I am really living," she thought. "This pain is living---- Oh, mould me!" her heart called suddenly into the Void. "Mould me into something higher!"

She seemed aware, in the pause of thought that followed, of an immense Presence. Personal, yet Impersonal--one with her--with some part of her. She seemed cherished and approved. A little after, she fell asleep.

She knew that she had been asleep, for she waked to that sense of interval, of break in one's continuous life that follows on profound sleep. At the same time there crept over her a chill sense of uneasiness--the sense of a presence. It was not like that vast, lulling sense that had come to her just before she fell asleep. No--this was different, sinister. Something--some one--was in that dark room--with her--near her--very near her. She held her breath. A wild leap of fear, like a pang of bodily anguish, blazed suddenly through her. She was sure--oh, horribly, dissolvingly sure!--that in the thick darkness a face--a face that could not see her--was looking down on her. For a second she lost consciousness. Then again came the blaze of fear, like a bolt through her paralysed body. She must move--she must _know_--or die of terror. She put up her hand. It touched a face--the dry teeth in an open mouth--a grinning mouth. She felt sure afterwards that, had she screamed then, she would have lost her reason with her self-control. She fought with herself as with giants. One part of her said: "Shriek and die." The other part said: "Don't give way--don't give way!"

"Cecil...?" she managed to utter.

"Ha!" said a voice that laughed low. "Plucky lass! Just thought I'd give you a taste of what it is to be spied on. So-long. Sweet dreams."

She heard him fumbling his way out. The door clicked. For another minute the terror held her. Then she struck a match--two, three--she could not hold them steady enough to aid the flame. The floor was strewn with matches. At last--her candle shone out. She leaped from bed. Her knees gave way. She fell to them where she stood. A second--then up again. She reached the door--ran, ran--ran....

She was clinging to Gaynor--holding him fast in both arms--sobbing--biting off laughter between her teeth--sobbing again.

"Oh, Gaynor, hold me! Don't let him get me! Run to Master Bobby! Run! Take me with you--I can't move of myself---- Then leave me! Go alone! Go to Master Bobby!"

But when, blindly obedient, he turned and ran towards the nursery, she was after him, fleet and strong as Atalanta. The golden apple was her son--her son!...

XXVIII

But all was quiet in the nursery. The night-light burned near Miller's bed. The embers made a soft jewelry of the iron grate. Under the pink blanket could be seen the little mound of Bobby's curled body, and the glow of his red locks on the pillow. Sophy went and sank down beside his crib, stretching out her arms above him, her face hidden against the blanket.

"What's a-matter? What's a-matter?" asked the nurse, a blue-eyed Nottinghamshire woman, struggling to her elbow and staring, frightened, at the valet. "What be _you_ doin' here?"

Fright had startled her into her childhood's tongue. She was as correct in her ordinary speech as Gaynor himself.

"Keep quiet," he whispered. "The mistress thought she heard the child scream. It gave her a turn. Be quiet. I'll fetch some brandy."

"I s'll be quiet enow. You need na' fret for that," said the woman huffily. She resented being hectored in the middle of the night by that "wizzening little stick of a man." She got up grumpily and shuffled on her brown woolen wrapper. Looking like a sulky but dutiful she-bear in the clumsy garment, she went over beside her mistress. She had recovered her power of "proper" speech.

"I'm sorry you got a fright, madam. Won't you sit in a chair?"

Sophy did not move or answer. She could not. She felt as though some violent natural force had flung her against the little crib. She clung to it dizzily. A great void seemed waiting for her, should she loose her hold on it an instant.

Gaynor came back with the brandy. She turned her head when he urged her, respectfully insistent, and supped the liquor from the glass that Miller held to her lips, like a child. It revived her. She gave a long sigh, putting up her hand before her eyes, her elbow on the bed. She found strength to rise in a few moments. There were things that she and Gaynor must see to at once. She looked about the room. Thank God, the nursery windows were barred! She had a dread feeling that Cecil might be able to crawl over the sheer face of a building, like "Dracula." She turned to Miller, whose little blue eyes still stared inquisitively. There was something "beyond" in all this, the nurse was telling herself shrewdly.

"I wish you to lock the nursery doors on the inside to-night, Miller," Sophy said, looking frankly at her. "Mr. Chesney is delirious. I'm afraid he might startle you. He is very restless."

Miller paled. Privately, she had decided, long ago, that the master was "a bit off his head"; but she had orders never to lock the nursery doors, for fear of fire.

"I will do, madam," she said with energy.

Sophy went to her own room again, bidding Gaynor come with her. She shut the door and told him what had happened.

"Go and see if he is in his room now, Gaynor. I will wait here."

Gaynor returned saying that his master had again locked his door.

"Is he in the room, Gaynor?"

The man looked startled.

"I suppose so, madam. He would not answer when I knocked; but why else would he lock the door?"

"I don't know," said Sophy. "But I feel very uneasy. Is there any way that he could get out except by the door?"

"There's a ledge of the East Wing roof that passes under one of his windows, madam. But why should he want to get out on the roof?"

"I don't know," said Sophy again. "Perhaps it is only that I'm nervous. But we must tell Doctor Bellamy, Gaynor. You must go to his room and wake him."

Bellamy hurried on his clothes when the valet had explained to him. He went to Sophy's room, where Gaynor said that she was awaiting him. She, too, had dressed herself fully, in serge skirt and jacket. Somehow she felt that she must be dressed to meet emergencies--to go out into the night, if necessary. She looked oddly girlish in the plain, dark-blue costume. She had wound her long braid round and round her head to avoid its weight at the nape of her neck. This added to the girlish, scared look of her pale face.

"This is terrible, Mrs. Chesney," said Bellamy. "I feel that your life has been in danger. He must be a madman for the time being, with that crude spirit in him--nearly a quart within six hours, Gaynor tells me. I think Lady Wychcote and his brother should be put on their guard."

"Yes. I wanted to ask you about that."

And Sophy told him about the access from Chesney's window to the roof.

"Come--they had better be roused at once!" said Bellamy, turning pale. Pale faces were the custom at Dynehurst in those days.

Sophy went with the doctor along the corridor leading to Lady Wychcote's room. Gerald slept on the other side of the house. They went cautiously, being careful not to speak or make any sound that might rouse the servants on the floor above. Gaynor was left on guard by his master's door.

But as they trod, noiseless and silent, with cautious apprehension, the sleeping house was roused by a long-drawn, fearful shriek--then another. The silence that followed seemed to echo with it like the air with a clap of thunder.

Transfixed for an instant, the next both Sophy and Bellamy were running wildly towards Lady Wychcote's room. The scream had come from it.

They tore open the door without ceremony. Lady Wychcote was sitting up in bed, staring at the open window as though Death had appeared to her in its embrasure. Her eyes seemed to have set in her head.

Bellamy applied restoratives. She gasped, came to herself. She grew rigid with self-control under his hands, as though made of fine steel. Her thin lips snapped to--then parted.

"A nightmare," she said curtly. "I thought I saw Cecil's face." Shudders took her in spite of her grim will. She put her hand over her eyes. "Horrible!" she muttered. "'Twas horrible! I saw him as I see you--at the window ... his face, yet not his face ... a murderer's ... swollen...." Then she added, curt again: "You can leave me now. I have these disgusting dreams occasionally. I am quite over it."

Then Bellamy explained matters to her. There was no doubt that she had really seen Cecil's face at her window. She always slept with curtains drawn back, and shutters wide. The light from the shaded lamp which she kept burning all night on her writing-table would have just caught his face, had he stood on the stone ledge beneath her window and looked in. This is what he must have done.

When she had taken in the import of Bellamy's words, Lady Wychcote said that she, too, would rise and dress. They left her and went out to find the stairs and upper corridors rustling with frightened servants. Jepson, the butler, was talking in low tones with Gaynor. He came forward as he saw Sophy and the doctor.

"I tried to make them keep their rooms, madam," he said to Sophy. "But there's no doing with them when they're frightened."

Bellamy explained that Lady Wychcote had screamed from nightmare, but, as Mr. Chesney had been taken seriously ill and was delirious, she had thought it better to get up.

"Just send the maids to bed, and come back, Jepson--we may need you," he concluded.

He was nonplussed as to the next move to make. Should he have the door of Chesney's bedroom forced, the man, frenzied with alcohol and drugs, might commit some hideous act of folly--either against himself or against others. He might just be climbing in again at his window as the door was burst open, and throw himself backwards in his rage onto the flagged court below.

Lady Wychcote and Gerald finally joined them as they stood perplexed, looking at that locked door, listening for some sound from behind it that would tell them that Cecil had come back safe from his perilous clambering over the dark roof. It was agreed that all should await events, together, in Sophy's bedroom. It was the nearest room to Cecil's, and by leaving the door open they could still see his door, and Gaynor sitting before it.

The night dragged on interminably--one of those grisly nights, when not only illness but peril and fear and madness squat on the hearthstone.

About five o'clock, they saw Gaynor start and rise, listening. They all rose. Bellamy went towards the door. Gaynor turned and came to meet him.

"He's back, sir," the man whispered. "He's moving round heavy-like. Do you think it may have worn off, sir?"

"I don't know," said Bellamy.

He, too, went and listened. Suddenly harsh, snoring breaths--slow, regular--fell on his ear. He straightened, giving a long sigh of relief.

"What is it, sir?" whispered the valet eagerly.

"He's asleep, Gaynor. He'll sleep for hours now. You'd better get some rest."

He went back to the others.

"It's over for the present," he explained. "You need have no more anxiety for the next seven or eight hours--maybe more. By what train do you expect Nurse Harding, Mrs. Chesney?"

"I had a letter. She will come early to-morrow morning--I mean this morning," Sophy corrected herself, looking at the bone-white dawn that showed in streaks through the heavy somnolence of the wrapt trees. Gerald had opened the shutters fully an hour ago, looking for the daybreak.

"Good!" said Bellamy. He glanced at the worn faces about him. "Now I am going to take a doctor's privilege and prescribe," he added, trying to assume a lighter tone. "I advise your ladyship, and every one, to come down to the dining-room and have coffee and something more solid. A night like this is terribly exhausting. We shall need all our strength to meet the next twenty-four hours."

XXIX

Anne Harding arrived at ten o'clock. Bellamy asked Sophy to explain the situation to the nurse while she changed into her uniform. There was no time to lose. He would see her himself as soon as she had dressed.

Bellamy had wanted a locksmith sent for to pick the lock of Chesney's door while he slept, but Lady Wychcote would not have this. She was determined that things should wait as they were for Nurse Harding's arrival.

"She may want to make him open the door himself--for the moral effect of it," she said, with real acumen.

"Awfully keen old lady she is, my word!" Anne had exclaimed, when Sophy told her this. "Just what I do want!"

"But, Nurse, do you think he will open that door for any one?" Sophy had asked, wondering.

"I know how to make him--never you fear," Anne had replied crisply. "We'll have to wait a bit--for him to sober up, you know," she added, with her usual bluntness.

She then went for her interview with Bellamy. It astounded and chagrined her to find that Chesney had procured morphine and cocaine, for she was convinced that he had been in possession of it all the while. She felt humiliated, in her capacity of little Know-All, that she had been ignorant of this fact. For the present, however, she contented herself with seeing that all the alcohol in the house was locked safely away. Her little brown mouth looked very grim as she sat near the bedroom door, waiting for Chesney to wake from his stupefied slumber.

He did not rouse till nearly four o'clock. Then she heard short, impatient moans, given under his breath, as it were. The bed creaked now and again with his feverish tossings. Anne lifted an alert head. She half smiled, queerly; then turned to Gaynor. The two had sat side by side for hours now--Anne crocheting, the valet looking down at his hands or straight at the wall opposite.

"Go get a small glass of brandy, please," she said, putting her crochet-work into her pocket.

The valet looked so startled that she nodded to him reassuringly.

"That's all right," she said. "Doctor Bellamy knows. You trust to me."

"I do, miss," he said meekly, and went to fetch the brandy.

When he brought it, Anne took the glass in her hand, and, rising, rapped sharply on Chesney's door.

"It's me, sir--Nurse Harding," she said, in her most matter-of-fact voice. "You'll let _me_ in, won't you?"

Perfect silence. Even the restless tossing stopped. Gaynor looked at her in deep discouragement. She only smiled again, bobbing her black curls at him with the energy of her consoling nod. "That's all right, my good man," the nod said. "I'm just taking my own time about it."

His puckered face smoothed out somewhat.

"See here, sir," called Anne, rapping on the door again. "You know I've always played fair and square with you. I just want to tell you that I know you'll be needing brandy to-day, and I have it here for you--a glass of it--in my hand. If you'll only open the door for me, I'll give it you right away."

She heard the bed creak. She called again:

"It's the physic that you need, Mr. Chesney, and you know it as well as I do. You won't get it any other way. Come--be a good sport and let me in!"

There was another silence; then she heard his slow, heavy, dragging tread along the floor. The door shook suddenly. He had evidently half fallen against it for support. Then the key turned. Anne pushed the door open and went in, closing it behind her in Gaynor's dumfounded face. The valet felt a faint revival of his childhood's belief in witches as the little black-maned figure disappeared behind that dread door and closed and locked it. Lion-tamers were but feeble folk compared with her. He sat down on the hall-chair nearest, and wiped his forehead.

Anne told Dr. Bellamy afterwards that Chesney that day was the "grisliest sight she had ever looked on in twelve years of mighty varied nursing."

When she entered he was returning laboriously to his bed. He swayed as he went, and the little nurse gave him her thin arm and shoulder for support. The two went reeling slowly across the room, Anne with the glass of brandy held at arm's length to keep from slopping it.

The great hulk fell helplessly upon the bed, and she dragged the bedclothes over him with her free hand. As she looked at him, she thought that this might be the end of him--his unshaven face was so congested with alcohol and morphia. There was a yellow-white ring around his nostrils and the edge of his moustache.

She supported his head and fed him the raw spirit as a woman feeds milk to a baby out of a feeding-mug. He drank languidly at first; then greedily.

She left him lying, and set about to tidy the room. Thrusting her curly head from the door, she sent Gaynor for warm water, fresh bed-linen, and pyjamas. When she dressed him and made up the bed, she sat down beside him with businesslike fingers on his pulse, and her eyes on the bracelet-watch.

She then fed him half a glass of hot milk as she had fed him the brandy, and waited patiently. In ten minutes he was asleep again.

When Lady Wychcote heard that her son had admitted Nurse Harding to his room and was sleeping again after taking some nourishment, she felt immensely encouraged and relieved. Anne left her this happy illusion, but with Sophy she was perfectly frank.

"He's got what we nurses sometimes call a 'wet brain,' Mrs. Chesney. That means _delirium tremens_ to a greater or less degree. He must have been sopping up that spirit like a sponge, long before Gaynor suspected him. I fancy we'll have lively times for the next week or so."

This diagnosis proved correct. For three nights and days Nurse Harding scarcely slept, though another nurse was wired for, to be under her orders.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, when Chesney was sleeping under the influence of a moderate dose of morphia, Anne left Nurse Hawkins in charge, and went to Sophy's room. Her little face looked bleached rather than pale. Her skin was so swarthy that it could never reach actual pallor. It looked to-day like an autumn leaf that has been bleached by the following season's rains and suns. In answer to Sophy's exclamation of sympathy, she sank down upon a chair, saying:

"Yes, I _am_ rather done, Mrs. Chesney--just for the moment, you know. I'm going to turn in for a four hours' sleep now. That will set me up again. But somehow I can't rest well, for thinking of where that extra morphia can be hidden. I feel such a fool about it, Mrs. Chesney. It's my _duty_ to find it. I feel a regular amateur--a duffer----"

"Oh, dear Nurse Harding! How can you feel so?" asked Sophy warmly. "It would baffle any one--any one!"

Anne took her peaked little face between her brown fists, resting her elbows on her knees, and shaking her head disconsolately.

"I've been called 'Miss Sherlock Holmes' in my day," she admitted ruefully. "But I rather think my day's gone by. May I sit with you and puzzle over it a bit, before going for my sleep?"

Sophy made her warmly welcome. She even urged the little thing to lie down on her sofa and rest, at least while she cogitated. But Anne refused with resolution.

"No," she said. "No; thank you so much, Mrs. Chesney. Just let me sit here in this armchair. I can think better sitting."

She sat for a minute or two, frowning down at the carpet; then suddenly she turned to Sophy, with the oddest little guilty smile, half embarrassed, half determined.

"I'll tell you what you can do for me, Mrs. Chesney," she said. "I've got a little vice of my own, though I make it a rule never to indulge it when I'm on a case. But now--I do so need to think hard--it's so important for my patient that I should. Could you, would you be so kind as to give me a cigarette and let me smoke it here? You see, I haven't any with me--and I daren't smoke in my room, for fear of the housemaids. Do you think me _very_ impertinent and cheeky for asking you this favour, Mrs. Chesney?"

"Oh, my dear girl!" cried Sophy. "Of course you shall have a cigarette. I have some very nice ones of my own...." She turned to get them; then remembered.

"What a pity!" she said. "Mine are all out. They gave out some days ago, and I forgot to order more."

Then she brightened.

"But I remember, now-- I have some of my husband's here. They are very good, only rather too large, I think. But I have cigarette-papers. You can pull one to pieces, and roll it smaller--as he does, you know."

Anne laughed when Sophy opened the table drawer and handed her one of the huge cigarettes.

"It _is_ a corker, isn't it?" she said, but her black eyes gleamed. She added whimsically: "I don't think I'll thin it down, though. Since I'm to have a smoke (and it's awfully unprofessional of me to do it while I'm on a case) I might as well have a good one while I'm about it."

She put the big white roll of thin paper and gold-hued tobacco between her lips, and held a match to it, drawing her thin cheeks in with luxurious anticipation of the first whiff. But the cigarette drew badly; wouldn't draw at all, in fact. She took it from her mouth, looking at it disappointedly.

"Here--take another," urged Sophy, holding it to her. "That must have got damp in some way. Try this one."

But the second cigarette refused to draw also. Sophy forced a third on her. That, too, was a failure.

"I see now why he's taken to rolling them over," said Anne: "This lot must be badly rolled. It's a pity to have wasted so many; but if I may have a cigarette-paper I'll just unroll one of these and do it over."

Sophy handed her the little packet of rice-paper, and gave her a lacquer pen-tray in which to put the loose tobacco. Anne's deft fingers made quick work of one of the big rolls. She whipped off its white sheath, and began shredding the packed tobacco neatly. All at once she gave a cry. She sat staring down at the tray as though it had turned into a Gorgon's head.

"What is it?" asked Sophy, startled.

The girl made a clutch at her, dragging her nearer, without taking her eyes from the loose tobacco in the tray.

"Look, Mrs. Chesney! _Look!_" she cried, her voice a low tremolo of excitement. She touched something in the tray with the tip of her finger-nail. It was a little white object, round, flat ... indeed, there were several of them--some tangled among the tobacco, some having dropped clear on the dark surface of the lacquer.

Sophy stared. The truth didn't dawn on her.

"Were they in the _cigarette_?" she asked. "_What_ are they?"

Then Anne, overwrought with sleeplessness and excitement, so far forgot herself that, setting the tray on the table, she seized the tall lady in her arms and hugged her wildly.

"What are they? Morphia!... Morphia!... Morphia!" she chanted, as she hugged Sophy to her in little jerks that accompanied each cry of "Morphia!"

"Morphia ... and cocaine, probably, Mrs. Chesney! Oh, the clever devil! The clever, clever devil!"

* * * * *

This secreting of tablets of morphia and cocaine in the big cigarettes had been the employment of Chesney during those hours behind locked doors before leaving London. With a pair of very long, slender forceps, he had pulled out part of the tobacco, dropped the tablets into the hollow thus made, and repacked the tobacco cunningly upon them. Hours and hours he had spent thus, making tiny marks on the cigarettes which contained the different drugs, that he might know them apart. Certain cigarettes he left intact. He mixed these and the doctored ones in the boxes, large tin cases made for importation, which he sealed up again cleverly, with a tiny strip of paper on the same tone as the wrapper.

The morphinomaniac's imagination works in spurts. First come jets of cerebral luminosity; then gaps of a grey vagueness. Cecil's constructive fancy had not worked beyond the point of laying in a large supply of the drug. He had not considered how he would procure more when it should have given out. He had provided for several months ahead. After that he trusted to chance and cunning.

When Sophy understood--and understanding had come in a flash, even as she questioned, even before Anne Harding's triumphant cry--she felt that this was the last straw. Something seemed to go _click!_ within her, as though the fine mechanism of her reasoning mind had set itself to another gauge--would not, forever any more, work to the old standard. She must forgive--but she could never forget. And what is forgiveness without forgetfulness? The cold body of duty, mummied by conscientiousness, void of soul or life. She was done. He had seen her misery, her anguish of anxiety, her heart-racking efforts to help him, and day after day he had said to her, with that faint, mocking smile that her blood burned in remembering:

"Just hand me a cigarette, will you, Sophy?"

And she had handed them to him, had fetched and carried the poison for him like a well-trained retriever. And he had found pleasure--amusement--in thus making her the unconscious instrument of her own frustration--the innocent minister of his vile vice!

That was the most tragic moment of all to her--the moment when she gazed down at those little dots of white on the lacquer tray, and realised what they were.

XXX

That evening Anne Harding had what she called "a downright talk" with Lady Wychcote. The two "hit it off" very well, considering all things. There was a certain hardness in the little trained nurse, as in the haughty old aristocrat, which commanded their mutual respect; though Anne's hardness was always kind, and Lady Wychcote's nearly always unkind. Still the two able creatures set a certain value on each other, and this wrought for understanding.

Anne told her ladyship outright that she would give up the case unless Dr. Carfew or Sir Lionel Playfair were put in charge. Dr. Bellamy had told her that he would not assume further responsibility. Sophy had ranged herself firmly on the side of Bellamy and Anne. Gerald was with her in this decision.

Lady Wychcote looked rather grimly at the Lilliputian envoy.

"Very well," she said. "But I will not countenance an enforced removal to one of their asylums."

"Could not your ladyship leave that to Doctor Carfew?"

"No," was her ladyship's reply.

"Perhaps I can bring _him_ to reason," Anne had said to Sophy after this interview. "At any rate, I want him to hear plainly, from a _man_, what his fate will be if he goes on with his poisons."

Sophy said nothing.

"Poor soul! She's given up!" thought Anne. "Well, _I_ must tussle to the bitter end--that's what nurses are here for."

As soon as Chesney was rational, she "had it out" with him.

"Well, for God's sake, bring on your damned quack and let him have his quack-quackery out!" was his surly response. "I suppose I'm of too tough a fibre to be slain by an ass's jawbone. But I warn you--no sanatorium hocus-pocus!"

"Oh, you needn't worry!" Anne had said crossly. "Your mother's on your side. She'll help you destroy yourself. Mothers have a sort of gift that way, you know. But if you were _my_ man--I'd clap you in a safe place, no matter _what_ you said or did!"

Chesney gave her one of his ugliest looks.

"Leave me in peace!" he growled. "I've said I'd see your precious Carfew. Now you're working me up just because of your own nasty little temper. A fine nurse, _you_ are!"

"Well, I can't beat you for a patient," retorted Anne, with her puggy sniff.

That same night Bobby had a bad attack of croup. Sophy and Bellamy and Anne--who had left Chesney unceremoniously to the strange nurse's care--fought until daybreak for his life.

After it was all over, and Bobby safe, Bellamy told Sophy that the time to keep his promise had come. She gazed at him, startled--not recollecting.

"My promise to tell you frankly when I thought the boy needed a change of climate," he reminded her. "He needs it now, Mrs. Chesney. You both need it."

Sophy whitened.

"You don't mean...?"

"No, no! Nothing in the least serious. But, though we've had some fine days lately, the boy needs a drier climate--hotter sunshine. The Italian Lakes are not at all bad in summer, Mrs. Chesney, though people stare at the idea of going to Italy in the summer. I spent a delightful July and August once at Cadenabbia. Why not try Como? Or, if you want to be perfectly quiet, the other lake--Maggiore. There's a capital hotel at Baveno. I've been there, too. Nice gardens for the boy to play in. Pleasant jaunts to the Barromean Islands--if you care for that sort of thing."

Sophy seemed to be only half listening to him. She had a far-away look in her eyes. He thought that she was brooding over the sad plight in which she would have to leave her husband if she took her boy to Italy. But Sophy was only thinking how strange it was that an English physician was ordering to go to the place where Amaldi had been born. She had thought she might never see him again. Now she might see him very soon. It gave her a frank pleasure to think of seeing Amaldi again. She liked him warmly.

Bellamy was speaking to her with great earnestness:

"Mrs. Chesney, pray don't worry over having to leave your husband. Carfew comes to-morrow, you know, and he will tell you what I tell you now, I feel convinced--that it will be the best thing possible for Chesney to have the brace of feeling that he must do without you, for a time."

Sophy looked at him with her candid eyes.

"I wasn't worrying," she said. "I've thought that out for myself. I know"--she spoke with quiet emphasis--"whether Doctor Carfew says so or not, that it will be best for me to leave Cecil now. Not only for him.... I'm thinking of myself, too, Doctor Bellamy. I've come to the end ... for the present. I haven't anything more to give him." Her voice became suddenly bitter. "Not hope, or patience, or belief ... or ... anything that could really help him," she ended, flushing a little, feeling that she had said too much.

"You are simply worn out, dear lady," he replied gently. "Your own natural feeling has worn you out as much as anything. What Chesney needs now is the cruel kindness of skilled professionals. I hope that we can succeed in getting his consent to go to Carfew's sanatorium."

Sophy looked at him rather inscrutably.

"I shall speak to him about that myself--I made up my mind to do so last night."

Bellamy had never noticed how determined her beautiful mouth could look. He thought how sad it was that character needed to be hammered out on such rough anvils. It was strange to see it being thus shaped under one's eyes, as it were.

From this talk with Bellamy Sophy went straight to Lady Wychcote.

"Doctor Bellamy says that Bobby must have a complete change of climate. I am going to take him to Italy, as soon as I can get packed," she said, without preliminaries.

Lady Wychcote's brow lowered.

"What! You will leave your husband to hirelings?" she asked, in her coldest, most metallic tones.

"'Hirelings' are the best people to leave Cecil with at present. You must see that yourself," Sophy answered, unmoved, and quite as coldly.

"You actually mean it?"

"Yes."

Lady Wychcote's mouth thinned to a hair. The width of this hair-line indicated an ironic smile.

"You have heard the saying, I presume, that a wife should forsake all lesser ties in order to cleave to her husband?"

"I have," replied Sophy. "And that other saying, too: 'Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord.' I haven't the least intention of submitting myself to Cecil as 'unto the Lord.' And I don't mean to sacrifice my son to him, either."

Lady Wychcote said nothing at once, only sat and looked at her daughter-in-law. As she saw the hardness to which Sophy's face was congealing under this look, she broke her silence by observing:

"I was trying to realise that you actually propose to leave the man, whom you promised to cherish in sickness and in health--to leave him in the clutch of a hideous illness--merely because your son, _his_ son, has had an attack of croup."

Sophy said quietly:

"Why do you call it an 'illness,' Lady Wychcote?"

Her mother-in-law reddened; but replied doggedly:

"Because it is an illness. He came near dying the other night."

"People who persistently take poison must come near dying sometimes," said Sophy.

Lady Wychcote rose.

"I pity my son!" she exclaimed. "I pity him from the depths of my soul!"

"Yes.... I pity him, too," said Sophy.

"But not for the same reason. I pity him because he has married a heartless woman!"

Sophy shook her head gently. She had not risen. She sat looking up at her irate mother-in-law out of tired grey eyes.

"You don't think that," she said. "You don't like me--and you are very angry with me because I won't play 'patient Griselda' any longer--but you don't think me heartless."

"Upon my word!" exclaimed her ladyship, with a sort of gasp. "Upon my word!" she repeated. Words failed her.

Now Sophy rose too. She looked earnestly into the angry, pinched face. She was sorry for the mother whose ambition had outweighed her love--and was now but a grey ash of disappointment on her burnt-out, irascible heart.

"Lady Wychcote," she said, "I must tell you, whether you believe me or not, I must tell you that even now, after I had seen Bobby safe and well in proper hands, I would come back to Cecil--if it would do him any real good. No--please let me finish. I shan't speak like this again. I would come back--horrible, hideous as it all is--I would stay near him. But I cannot help him. I am sure that it only does him harm to have me--us--always overlooking--forgiving--weakly, miserably forgiving. I do _not_ forgive any longer--I will never forgive again--unless he will submit himself to those who can cure him. I won't risk my life and Bobby's--for his selfishness--his brutal self-indulgence. I wanted you to understand why I go--just how I feel. It is only fair. I am going to Italy with Bobby. Nothing can change me--nothing that you, or any one else, can say. Nothing--nothing!"