Shadows of Flames: A Novel

There was a silence. Then from under the lifted sheet came the words:

"Twelve grains a day."

"In the twenty-four hours?"

"Yes."

"That's really all?... I'm asking for your own sake, mind you. The dose will be in proportion, you know."

"As near as I can tell—it's all. Maybe now and then it's more——"

Suddenly he started up, flinging off the sheet.

"Damn you! You little hell-cat! Damn you!" he cried. "You're worming it out of me for your own ends. You're lying!"

"You're lying, and you know it!" said Anne Harding sternly. "Here—keep still while I prepare this. You'll soon know whether I'm lying or not when I've given it to you. It doesn't lie."

He closed his eyes, feeling that he lay in the very bilge-water of existence. A woman—a scrawny little hireling—had him, Cecil Chesney, in her power. Had made him confess. Was about to deal mercy out to him with a drug. He could have howled with the Chaldean: "Cursed be the day that I was born and the hour wherein I was conceived!"

Then into his loathed flesh slipped suddenly the little sting of steel—sweeter than the kiss of first love to the innocent.

XXIV

Things went on smoothly for two weeks after that. Chesney, hating the nurse with a bitter, feverish hatred, yet submitting to her control, clung to her with that distorted passion of the man who knows that his well-being depends on what he hates. Temporarily he was in their power—the power of those whom he called his "well-wishers" with that ferocious sneer of helpless anger. He was too weak from the lack of the accustomed doses which he had been taking surreptitiously to "fight a good fight!" for his freedom just then. But let them wait! Just let them wait till he got back his strength. He was afraid now that if he rebelled against Anne Harding they would get another nurse for him, one less independent and intelligent, who would not take things in her hands as Anne did, who would follow the directions of that soft fool Bellamy blindly, and keep him agonising on doses too rapidly diminished. Anne had promised that she would not let him suffer overmuch.

"I'm not a doctor-run machine," she had said, in her brisk, blunt way. "I'll give you what I think best, when I think best. If Doctor Bellamy don't like it, he can chuck me. But he won't. He knows I've had experience and he hasn't. 'Tisn't likely he'll fuss with me, when men like Doctor Carfew and Doctor Playfair have trusted me and been satisfied with my work. Just you be a good sport, and keep straight with me. And I'll not let you reach the hell point. Just a peep of purgatory, maybe—for the salvation of your soul. But you're plucky. You'll stand a bit of purgatory to get to paradise—health is really paradise, you know. Eh?" She had wound up, with that engaging, little-girl smile of hers.

Chesney grinned rather feebly, and said:

"All right, Bush-Ranger. 'En voiture, pour le purgatoire, messieurs, mesdames.'"

"That's good!" Anne said heartily. "I always know they're mending when they crack jokes."

"You've a hard nut to crack in me, colonial snippet!" retorted Chesney, with another grin.

Anne grinned a cheerful little grin back at him.

"No, you're soft enough, old sport," said she; "it's your husk of morphia that's hard."

They exchanged this rough, free speech when alone. In the presence of others, Anne was most respectful, almost demure.

"What a hypocritical little demi-semi-savage you are, Bush-lass," he said to her one day. "You give me the rough of your tongue like a slangy lad when we're 'enfin seul'—and before the Chief Eunuch and the rest, butter would congeal upon it, by Gad!"

"There's a time for everything," replied Anne Harding sedately. "If you prefer it, sir, I'll be buttery with you from this moment."

Chesney laughed outright. He was feeling quite happy just then, under the effects of a sixth of morphia.

"Just you try it on," he said, with feigned grimness. When she had just given him the drug he really liked her. Her funny, brisk little ways and speech amused him. He longed sometimes to romp with her, as if she had been the child that she looked when her elfish smile stirred her face. Once when she had bent over him as she withdrew the needle from his arm, he had tweaked one of the black curls that hung near. He had not believed that her little lean hand could give such a stinging smack as she bestowed upon his.

"You little spitfire!" he had exclaimed angrily. "Don't dare to take liberties with me because I'm ill."

"Don't you dare to take liberties with me, ill or well," Anne Harding had replied, red with anger. "You treat me with proper respect, or I'll go back to London by the next train. Suit yourself."

She wouldn't talk or jest with him for the rest of that day, but by the next morning she seemed to have regained her usual cool poise, and remarked, as she served his early cup of cocoa:

"I surmise from your pretty behaviour that you've decided to keep me and your self-respect."

"Thou hast said, O Bush-Bully," replied he gravely. "I'll even address your Bullyship in the third person if it be required."

"Oh, no! There's no need of that much distance between us, my pretty-spoken gentleman!" came the tart rejoinder. "'Hands off!' is my motto. Just so you remember that I live up to it, and your part is to live up to it, too, while I'm with you—I'm hunky-dory."

"Does that mean 'cheeky' in your native lingo?" grinned Chesney. She was giving him his morning dose (one-seventh to-day) as he spoke; so for the time being he liked her again.

"No, Mr. Smart," said Anne. "It's United States for 'all right.'"

Thus they chaffed amicably when she had just given him his allowance of morphia, or during the first hour after; but as the effects gradually wore off—which they did rapidly, the doses being so reduced by now—his mood changed. As he felt that stark, indescribable malaise stealing over him—that horrid unearthly suffering which is not nausea, or acute pain, or the hot ache of fever, or the shivered ice of chills, but something more subtle, more deathly, as it were an illness drifted down from another darker, crueller, more demoniacal planet than the earth—as there crept through him this nameless, terrible, hideously fatiguing feeling that seemed to rack the finer substance of a body within his body—to strain and fray these more delicate fibres of being, until the torture was far more horrible than if it had been the brutal work-a-day anguish of a fractured bone, or the frank throes of cholera—when these hours were upon him, then he hated the little nurse. He hated her quiet, practical composure as she sat crocheting near the window, or reading aloud to him words that had no meaning—hated her for sitting there calm and healthy—while the discomfort arising from the lack of the usual poison surged into billows of physical distress that flowed over him, one upon another, as he lay sweating, tossing on what seemed the oozy bed of an ocean of malaise. He hated her so that he imagined breaking her to bits with his bare hands, as he had once threatened her. He could feel her little hard, pointed chin denting the hollow of his gripped hand, as he held her thin body between his knees, and pressed her head backwards till the spine snapped. He imagined her naked in his grasp—a little dark, lean, pitifully ugly body—and he was beating her with a stout wand of ash; whipping the flesh in ribbons from her writhing bones. He startled even himself with these savageries—felt afraid sometimes. Was his brain going? Had the stuff attacked his brain?

Once, meeting his smouldering eyes fixed avidly upon her during one of these silent rages, Anne had put down the book and come over to him.

"I know how you're hating me," she said, crisp and practical as usual. "But don't get scared over it. It's natural. This drug breeds murder. Just you remember it's not you, but the morphine that hates me. Keep that well in mind. I do. Don't you worry about going crazy, and suchlike. It takes years and years for morphine really to injure the brain. It's your nerves that are yapping and yowling 'murder!'—your brain's all right."

"I do hate you!" Chesney had said, with weak but dreadful intensity. "I could give Cain points on murder. But there's a part of me that says you're a damned good sort, all the same."

"Hate away," Anne replied serenely. "You're getting on first-rate—that's all I care about."

So it went, and Chesney slowly improved; now weaker, now stronger, as the capricious drug sheathed its claws or gripped him tight again.

"Damnation! I'm like the frog in the well!" he would groan. "I crawl up one foot and slip back two."

"No, you don't—not really," Anne assured him. "Up you're coming; slow, maybe, but sure. A nice nurse I'd be to let you slip back two feet for one!"

And she sniffed with her little blunt nose that reminded him of an intelligent pug's.

The worst of it, the thing that aggravated him almost to frenzy at these times, was that he still had morphia in his possession—a large supply of that and cocaine, utterly unsuspected by Anne, for all her shrewdness. He almost chuckled aloud sometimes as he lay watching her during one of his black fits. His spirit did chuckle, as he thought how he had outwitted even her, the little "Bush-Sleuth," in this matter. But he did not dare to take an extra dose, even by mouth. She would have seen instantly—and nosed out the precious stuff that was his dearest earthly possession. He was quite sure of that. It cowed him from taking the morphia that he had secreted, even during those times of anguish, when sometimes she stepped into the next room for a moment to fetch something and he could have swallowed a tablet easily—it was within reach always. No; he did not dare for the sake of one moment's self-indulgence, to run the risk of still greater sufferings. So he lay there, enduring, cursing silently, waiting, ever waiting, for the time to come when he should be his own man again. Then hey! for some distant country—a long journey en garçon—with a glittering, brand-new needle, and package on package of the little flat, white, innocent-looking tablets that dissolved so easily in a teaspoonful of warm water.

There were no more drives now: he was too weak. Anne said that in about six weeks he would begin to feel more normal, though he would still be weak. He would feel depressed and weak for a long time after his system was rid of the poison, she warned him with her admirable frankness. Six weeks more of it! Good God! He wondered that he could keep his hands from her when she said such things to him in that matter-of-fact, casual way. But he waited. Chance was a good deity for such as he to pray to. One never knew what might happen. So he lay there and said curt, impious prayers to Chance that the God of Whimsy would help him to his own undoing.

Chance himself serves sometimes one Overlord, sometimes another. Sometimes he plays henchman to Ormuzd, sometimes to Ahriman. This time he elected to do the bidding of Ahriman.

On the fifteenth day after Chesney's enforced confession to the little nurse, there came a wire from London for Anne Harding. It said:

"Your mother ill—pneumonia. Come at once."

There was nothing else for it. She had to go, and by the next train. She loved her mother, whom she supported by her cleverness, very dearly; yet there was almost an equal grief in her strongly professional little heart at leaving a case so difficult, which she had managed with such skill.

She tried to get Chesney to promise her on his word of honour to "act straight" with the nurse who would supplant her, promising that if he did so she would return as soon as her mother was well enough, and take up his case again. But he would only smile at her that faintly jeering smile, which she felt in the marrow of her small bones meant mischief.

"Your word of honour—your word of honour as a gentleman that you'll play fair," she urged vehemently, "or I swear I'll not come back!"

"You forget, my little Bush-Queen," Chesney said, still smiling, "there's no such thing as honour among morphinomaniacs. You've told me that yourself, often enough, my Poppet, have you not?"

"Shame! Shame!" she cried, with passion. "Here you are, through the worst—and you won't even promise that you'll keep on! My word! I don't believe I'll come back, no matter how you act!"

"'Suit yourself,' Bush-lass," Chesney returned coolly, quoting one of her favourite expressions.

Anne went to Sophy before leaving—went to her bedroom and under the unusual excitement of her double anxiety over parent and patient, seized the slender white hands in her little skinny brown ones, wringing them eagerly to accentuate her passionate words of warning.

"Watch him yourself—yourself!" she begged. "Don't trust him a moment—not though he swore on the head of his own son. He means mischief. I know him by now. I know him as only a nurse who's tussled through the worst of the morphia craze with a man can know him. Don't leave him to Gaynor, or his mother, or even Doctor Bellamy. I don't know what sort of nurse they'll send you. She may be good, or she may be a chump. But"—the little spurt of very human vanity became her eager, cocky face—"but there's not many Anne Hardings," she wound up. "I give you that for what it's worth, Mrs. Chesney. Forgive my tooting my own trumpet."

Sophy promised, feeling scared and forlorn again, now that this strong little being was going. She had come to depend on her as the one means of Cecil's salvation. Now she was going. Menace, dark and formless, seemed to waver like an evil shadow on the dreary walls of Dynehurst. How could one grapple with a shadow? Only Anne Harding knew the magic tune to which evil shadows danced obedience.

The little nurse left within an hour after receiving the telegram, and Sophy went to her husband as soon as the carriage drove from the door. Anne had turned over her charts to her, with the hypodermic syringes and morphia. As the nurse had instructed, she locked everything away before leaving her room. Between every dose they must be locked away again. No slightest risk must be run, in the interval between Anne's departure and the arrival of the new nurse.

When Sophy had faltered that she did not know how to give a hypodermic injection, Anne had exclaimed almost impatiently: "Oh, he can do that, himself—only too well! All you've got to do is to clean it thoroughly the way I've showed you, each time afterwards. I don't want Gaynor to begin it, because one at a time is enough in such things, and you are the one to leave in charge. You've got character—grit." She looked at Sophy impartially out of her shrewd, black eyes. "I don't believe you know, yourself, how much character you have got," she said. "You're too young and beautiful to have had much chance yet—but this is forming you. Forgive my Bush-girl bluntness—but there's no better character-maker than a husband one's trying to save from morphia. You'll come out of it a sort of soldier-saint. Mark my words: Happiness is mush," said the little nurse, running her words together in her excitement. "One can't get strong on mush. Now life's feeding you meat—a bit raw and bloody, maybe—but it'll build up brawn—soul-brawn. I'm mixing things; but you understand, I know. And, my word! Just think, Mrs. Chesney: if a woman forgets her travail for joy that a man is born into the world, what must she feel when a man—her man—is reborn through her pangs! Forgive me—I'm being too free. But you're so rare—oh, I've watched you, same as I've watched him! And I want you to win out—I lust for it—for you to win out with him. You'll feel you've got the world in a sling then—I give you my word you will, Mrs. Chesney. Only keep a stiff upper lip. Don't give in to him. Don't let him fool you. The watchword is 'Suspicion.' Don't trust him—not if he seems dying. Let him die before you trust him for one second! Bless you, dear lady! I do hate to leave you all alone with it.... Good-bye."

And she was gone before Sophy could even utter some kind wishes about Mrs. Harding's recovery.

XXV

When Sophy went to Cecil's room, he was lying back quietly reading. He put down his book as she entered, and smiled at her. It was his own, good smile—the smile that she remembered far back in their lover-days. Tears rushed to her eyes. She was not a woman who wept easily; but now, to see his face so purified of poison, to meet the smile that also shone in the eyes—that glimpse of a resurrected soul in the face that had so long been but a blurred mask of exotic passions—this brought her tears.

She went over, kneeled down beside him, and laid her face to his.

"I've got you back!" she whispered. "You've come back to me!"

He lay still, stroking her hair, kissing it, looking out over her head at the flicker of leaves beyond his window, at the dim green of air-veiled pastures, and the far-away blur of brownish haze that hung over the mining town, chief source of the Wychcote riches. A bird streaked like a black arrow against the faint blue sky. The weather had cleared within the last few days. There was sunshine, pale but plenteous—filtering through a veil of moony clouds. A sort of eclipse-light, it seemed to Sophy; but she welcomed it for Bobby's sake—the child had been fretting at the prolonged rain. He had lost his sturdy, lady-apple cheeks. Now he could be out all day pottering at the out-of-door things that children love.

She knelt there with her cheek against her husband's, just resting, soul and body. She was too tired with the long strain to vibrate to a keener joy. Her thankfulness was deep rather than exultant. And Chesney, gazing out at the summer landscape, thought:

"After all—what if I go on with it? I'm lower than brutes if I deceive her."

Weariness and a distaste of life crept over him at the mere thought of keeping up the dreadful, nerve-wearing effort.

"I must. There's no way out of it—with decency," said part of him. "Fate's against me," said another part. "Why was the little Bush-Ranger whipped away like that, if there are gods that care? It's too much to ask a man to keep up alone. I'm sickening for the stuff this moment. Between the lips of this woman—beautiful as she is—and one grain of morphia—would I hesitate?" "No," answered the first self, grimly honest. "You wouldn't. Try to tell her you have the stuff at hand. Give it up to her. You won't. You can't."

"I will!" he thought, setting his teeth.

She felt the swell of his cheek-muscles as he did so, and looked up.

"Sophy...." he said; then stopped short.

"What is it, dear?" she asked. "Can I do something for you?"

He continued looking at her an instant, then closed his eyes.

"No," he said.

She thought his expression had been strange. It hurt her. It was as if he had wanted something, but did not dare ask her for it. She flushed suddenly—it was for him she flushed. She thought that he had been about to coax her for the morphia before the time for giving it. Was he going to "try it on with her," as little Anne had feared? Her limbs seemed to turn to water at the mere thought of that possible struggle.

But he said quietly the next moment:

"Sophy, the little Harding says that she'll come back here, when her mother is well enough. That being so, I want to ask you a favour."

"Yes—do!" she said eagerly.

"I want to ask you to take me in hand yourself. You have all the—the stuff." The lie choked him somehow. He hastened to correct its literalness though not its import. "I mean nurse said that she was going to turn it over to you."

"Yes—I have it," said Sophy. Why should her heart beat so? He was only asking her to do what Anne had asked her.

"Well, then, there is something you can do for me—you can spare me the humiliation of having some strange wench pottering about, and bulldozing me with her dirty little professional airs and graces. If you'll take me in hand yourself, and spare me that, you'll find me amenable. Will you? Wait a moment," he added, before she could answer. "It's only fair to give you warning that I will not submit in any case to having another of these hussies round me. The Harding was bad enough, but I've got used to her—I rather like her—tough little specimen! She amuses me. But another—I'll wring her neck before I'll submit to it! That's my last word on the subject."

Bellamy was much perturbed at this fiat of Chesney. Yet, when he had thought over it a while, realising the stubborn fixedness of the man's will and fearing to irritate him unnecessarily, he came to the conclusion that it was not so dangerous a situation as he had at first thought. He could trust Sophy, he felt sure, not to be moved by any pleading on the part of her husband. All the morphia was now in her possession. There was no other possible means by which Chesney could obtain the drug. All parcels were opened by Mrs. Chesney or his mother. Besides, Chesney wrote no letters. He seemed perfectly indifferent about the post. Such letters as did come for him only bored him. They were all answered by his wife and Gaynor. Then, too, it was a great concession on Chesney's part to be willing for Anne Harding's return.

When after two days she wrote that her mother had passed the crisis and was rapidly improving, that she (Anne) hoped to be able to return to Dynehurst within three weeks, he felt quite reconciled to the present arrangement. Sophy reported that Chesney never asked for a dose before the regular hours, or for an increase of the amount. She, too, was cheered and hopeful.

For a week this happy state of things lasted. Then one morning, after his daily visit to Chesney's room, Bellamy came to her with an harassed face.

"Mrs. Chesney," he said, "don't take it too hard—but your husband has got hold of morphia in some way. The symptoms are marked this morning. It's inconceivable, I know; but there's the fact."

Sophy's air-castle broke in upon her in smothering vapours. She sank down on the nearest chair, and gazed out before her with blank eyes.

"Are you sure?" she asked mechanically, after a moment.

"Quite sure."

"Since when?"

"Only recently—during the night, probably. But the eyes show it unmistakably—and the dryness of the mucous membrane."

"I know," said Sophy. So well she knew that she felt as if her own mouth were like an ash, merely from her vivid realisation of the doctor's words.

"Have you taxed him with it?" she then asked.

"Yes. He only jeers. Asks me how he could have got it—says that he's not a wizard. It's terrible, Mrs. Chesney, terrible! If Nurse Harding were only here!"

"Yes. It seems as if Fate were against him."

"Fate!" cried Bellamy. "Himself, you mean! How he could descend to this when——"

He broke off abruptly, shocked by the white hopelessness of the young face.

"Forgive me," he said. "Besides, one should never judge too harshly in these cases. I've heard of men, anxious to be cured, getting well over the cursed thing, getting quite free of it for as much as a year, then, in some sudden moment of weakness, returning to it."

Suddenly a vigorous, alert look replaced Sophy's passive expression. She stood up, facing the perturbed physician.

"What must we do?" she asked. "I am ready to do anything to save him. Anything that I may do with self-respect—anything that will not put my boy in danger. Explain to me. Whatever it is, I will do it—if it is in my power."

She shone white and vivid against the grey, rain-strung frame of the hall window. She dazzled there in the dark, grim hall, flashing something free and Amazonian into the staid discreetness of the sober, conventional house. Bellamy watched her, without being quite able to translate into clear thought the impression that she produced on him at that moment.

She put it into words for him herself: "I mean that I will fight for him like a comrade—not like a submissive wife—a slave," she said.

She stood for a moment looking down at her shoe-tip which she moved slightly to and fro. Then she said abruptly:

"How is my boy? Does his paleness mean that he is not well really—or is it only a passing thing?"

"No, no," he hastened to reassure her. "The boy feels the confinement of the house, of course, but a week of sunny weather would have him right as a trivet."

"And if it keeps on raining?"

"I hardly think it will. We are nearly in July now. Rainy Junes are frequent in England, you know; but July is apt to show some fine weather."

"But in case it does not?" she persisted.

"Then I think a little outing to the Isle of Wight or the south of France might be the thing."

She pondered this.

"I see," she said at last. "And will you promise to tell me, the moment that you think Bobby needs such a change?"

"I do, indeed," he replied earnestly.

"Thank you. Now I feel free to give all my attention to my husband—for the present. I shall go to him myself now. It seems to me the last hope that we have."

"You mean that you will try to persuade him to—to—er—be frank with you?"

"Yes."

Bellamy looked at her in genuine distress.

"I'm afraid you must prepare yourself for disappointment, Mrs. Chesney."

"I am prepared for it," she said. Her voice was grave, but under the gravity there was depth on depth of bitterness.

"Well—God be with you!" said Bellamy, with much feeling.

"Thank you," she said gently.

She passed out of his sight, going upstairs towards her husband's room.

XXVI

To do Chesney justice, he had not taken that first dose of the extra morphia in his possession with any calm determination of deceit. The craving for it, the constant temptation so close at hand, had led him into that subtle, false reasoning so common to all people in like case. He had deceived himself as well as others. It happened in this way: Sophy, burning with all the over-ardour of a novice, with all the exaggerated zeal of the amateur nurse, put on her mettle, as it were, by the warnings and conjurations of Anne Harding, acted with the precision of clockwork. Showed, in fact, to its nth power the very quality which Anne prided herself on lacking—the precision of a "doctor-run machine." It could not have been otherwise. She had neither the knowledge nor the experience which allowed Anne to vary the regularity of the hours of assuagement, those hours when the fractional doses of the drug were to be given him, and to which he looked forward as to bits of life in the slow, grey deathliness that enfolded him. At times his nervousness, the anguish of morbid desire, was far more acute than at others. On these occasions Anne had been used, after observing him narrowly, to give him the prescribed amount, sometimes even an hour before the due time. Again, she would say with rough kindliness:

"Well, will you brace up and go without for, say two extra hours next time, if I give you a crumb more than you really ought to have?"

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 éclat....

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

"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

"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."