Shadows of Flames: A Novel

"'Chilled'?" echoed Chesney, with his most good-natured grin. "My dear chap, that's what I'm hoping...."

He was getting out of his flannels as he spoke.

"I really wouldn't, you know," repeated Amaldi.

But Chesney only whipped his shirt over his head for reply; his feet were already bare. And against the blazing mainsail, in the full glare of sunshine, he stood there naked—a magnificent, glistering shape of manhood that caused Peppin's eyes to shine.

And Amaldi, too, could not withhold his admiration. So superb was this huge, stripped man—so perfectly proportioned—so admirably free from the least ounce of unnecessary fat.

"Accidenti! Che Marc Antoni!" (Lord! What a Mark Antony of a man!) breathed Peppin, as the sunlit body flashed off into the water.

But its very splendour as of the supremacy of flesh sickened Amaldi. Were they primitive men—men of the Stone Age—and should they grapple, man to man, what chance would he, Amaldi, have against those mighty thews and sinews?

Chesney swam a few strokes, his white body greenish under the clear water, like the silver belly of a fish; then dived beneath the yacht, came up the other side, swam on his side, his back, dived again; then swung himself aboard, gleaming with wet like a great mother-o'-pearl image. He took the towel that Peppin handed him with a "Ha!" of gusto.

"I feel like Jupiter!" he called, rubbing his sides, and back, standing on one foot to dry the other, his glossy skin all rosed in patches from his vigorous rubbing.

Getting quickly into his shirt and trousers, he announced that he was "hungry as ten hunters."

Peppin opened the luncheon hamper. There were sandwiches of salami and anchovies, purple and white figs, a fiasco of red wine from Solcio.

"By God! this is living! Eh? What?" asked Chesney, his lips fresh and ruddy with wine. He grinned with the sheer lust of life, splitting a fig, and laying its seedy pulp against his tongue as Peppin had shown him how to eat them without getting the rough bite of the skin. "When you find rye-bread and fish and raw fruit better than pressed ducklings at Voisin's—you're jolly thoroughly alive, I take it. What are you peering at? Wind coming?"

"Yes," said Amaldi.

Chesney leaped up, still munching the other half of his fig. All about them the water lay in long, smooth fluctuations as of molten glass; but here and there a dark-blue patch spread widening like a stain on some shining fabric. The sails filled, though near by the water still shone clear and smooth as glass. Far out, beyond the point of the Fortino, there was a band of indigo, stretched right across the lake.

"The Inverna," said Amaldi, pointing. "Won't you take the tiller?" he added.

Chesney grasped it willingly. All his blood was beating in little pleasant hammer-strokes of exultant health and strength. Yet as the first chill breaths of the coming breeze played over him, he felt a shivery sensation not altogether agreeable.

"Going to be a bit of a blow—eh?" he asked, screwing up his eyes against the sun to watch the iron-blue band that was widening every second. "Think I'll just get my coat on in that case," he added.

Amaldi took the tiller while Chesney got into his coat. Now there came white flashes from the band of blue.

"Un Invernung, Scior Marchese," grinned Peppin.

"What's he say?" asked Chesney.

"That we're going to have an 'Invernung'—'a big Inverna'—'a stiff breeze,'" translated Amaldi patiently.

And indeed the South Wind pounced on them in a few moments, blowing more than a capful. As the full gust struck her, the little Wind-Flower heeled till her shrouds were under water. The spray came from her dipping bows in a silver sluice, drenching them even where they sat. Against the wind they ran, and the sails bulged full and hard as though carved from marble—only a slight flutter near the mast showed how close to the wind Chesney was holding her. He shouted like a Viking with the fierce fun of it, as the spume slapped his face now and then with the topping of a bigger wave—exultant with that exultation in sheer health known only to the lately redeemed morphinomaniac. Amaldi thought him strangely effusive in his pleasure, for an Englishman. The more he saw of him the more distasteful he found Chesney. He sat balanced on the upper side of the cock-pit, gazing steadily forward. Peppin lay flat on deck to windward. The whole lake was now one welter of white and indigo.

But though for a while his delight in this wild game with wind and water shut out lesser things, by the time that the Inverna had romped with him for half an hour, Chesney felt chilled to the bone. Pride kept him from admitting it. He was vexed to think that Amaldi's warning had been justified. Also, it annoyed him that he should not have sufficient vital force to resist getting chilled by a whiff of wind on a day so mild as this. Anne Harding had told him that he was not yet so "almighty strong as he thought himself, by a long shot."

He reached Villa Bianca two hours later, feeling rather moody, and with a nasty, teasing pain in his legs and the small of his back.

XXXVII

So Chesney was invited to sail also in other yachts, and Amaldi was relieved from such incessant contact with him. However, he found it impossible, with civility, to decline all his invitations to lunch and dine at Villa Bianca. In this way he saw even more of Sophy than he had hitherto done. But seeing her in this way was more painful to him than not seeing her at all. He longed for the time to come when they would leave Lago Maggiore. And Sophy talked very little when the two men were present.

"I thought you liked Amaldi?" Chesney said one day, looking at her rather keenly.

"I do," said Sophy. "Very much," she added, feeling that the coldness of her tone might seem singular.

"Well, upon my soul, no one would guess it," he retorted, rather crossly. Those pains were beginning to irritate him again. "Sometimes I wonder that he comes here at all—you're so confoundedly glacial and snubby in your manner to him."

"I?... 'Snubby' to Marchese Amaldi?" asked Sophy, really surprised.

"Yes, by Gad! Just that," said Chesney. "You never open your lips to him if you can help it. You sail out of the room for the least excuse—and stay out. The other night, at dinner, he asked you a question and you didn't even answer him."

"I didn't hear him ... really I didn't, Cecil." Sophy felt much distressed. Could Amaldi think that she meant to be "glacial" and "snubby" to him?

"I'm very sorry. I do like him sincerely," she added.

Cecil was in a really bad humour. That right leg of his, from the hip down, hurt like the devil!

"And the way you refused to sing when I asked you after dinner, that same evening, was downright rude!" he fumed on. "You'd been singing for me every evening that week—I'd told the poor devil so. Fancy how he must have felt, when you minced out: 'Not this evening, please, Cecil.'"

To her intense dismay, Sophy felt herself flushing. She had excused herself from singing because Amaldi had never heard her sing and she had felt that it would be sad and painful to sing before him for the first time under these circumstances. She knew how much he liked music. He had said once in her presence that he thought a contralto voice the most beautiful of all. She did not want to sing for Amaldi at her husband's bidding, and a slightly relaxed throat had made her feel that she could refuse reasonably. Now this flush added to her distress.

"You know, Cecil, I explained that I had a sore throat," she murmured. "I am sure the Marchese didn't think I meant to be rude."

"Well, I hope you'll have recovered from your sore throat by the next time I ask him here," said Chesney drily. "It's annoying to have one's wife even seem discourteous to one's friends. Have you any more of that stuff you gave me yesterday?" he wound up. "I took the last tablet two hours ago, and my leg's cutting up hell again."

"Won't you see Doctor Camenis, Cecil? Do. Let him come here, or see him some time when you're in Stresa, I don't like giving you so much phenacetine. It's so depressing—so bad on one's heart."

"Oh, damn doctors!" he said impatiently. "Get me the stuff, can't you?"

But when she came back with it, he looked ashamed of himself.

"Sorry if I was rude, Sophy," he said; "but I've had just about as much doctoring as I can stand for the present."

This was the only allusion that he had made to his experience with Carfew since his arrival in Italy. Sophy thought it most natural. She could imagine the horror and loathing with which he looked back on those two months in the sanatorium.

Next day, however, he came to her quite meekly.

"Just give me that doctor chap's address in Stresa, will you?" he said. "This damnable leg is getting too much for me."

Dr. Camenis wanted Chesney to go to bed for forty-eight hours and take large doses of salicylate of soda. Chesney said that he would take the stuff, but refused to go to bed.

"In that case, Signore," said Camenis firmly, "I cannot prescribe salicylate of sodium. It produces heavy perspiration. You would probably increase this attack of sciatica."

Chesney said very well, to give him the prescription and he'd promise not to take it unless he went to bed for two days.

He had gone to Stresa that day by one of the Lake Steamers. By the time he returned to Intra, he was in severe pain. Camenis had said that he could suggest no palliative but opium in some form, and he was averse from prescribing anodynes except in extreme cases. As he came up the slant of the embarcadero, Chesney had actual difficulty in walking. His face was flushed with that drilling anguish in his sciatic nerve. He limped across to the Piazza. At once the vetturini waiting there on the boxes of their rusty little traps began to hail him. One red-faced, grey-eyed fellow shouted out:

"Hé! Meester! I drive you Villa Bianca—né?"

But Chesney, leaning heavily on his stick, had his eyes fixed on a sign that ran along the front of a shop just across the way. "Farmacia Lavatelli," it read. His heart was thumping hard with a bolt-like thought that had just struck him. He had set his teeth. The vetturino, his scampish grey eyes looking white like glass in his dark-red face, drove nearer.

"I drive you at Villa Bianca quveek, sir," he said. "I spik Engleesh. Liva Noo York two year. I name John. You wanta me drive you, né?"

Chesney glanced around with a start; then clambered painfully into the carrozzella.

The man gave his old screw a flick, it started forward in a gallant shamble.

"Hold on!" cried Chesney.

The vetturino nearly drew the poor nag onto its haunches.

"Hé? What's it?" he asked.

Chesney pointed with his stick at Lavatelli's sign.

"Is that a good chemist's?" he asked.

"Hé?" said the vetturino, glancing where the stick pointed. "You say Lavatelli—is he good?"

"Yes," said Chesney.

"Veree good," said John cheerfully. "Lavatelli he all right. Caccia he good, too. You want go there?"

Chesney hesitated an instant; the blood rushed to his face, then ebbed.

"Yes. Drive there," he said, throwing himself back against the greasy seat and clenching his teeth. A pang like the throb of a red-hot piston had shot from the joint of his ankle to his hip. His muscles drew with the anguish of it.

"Where I must go—Lavatelli or Caccia?" asked the vetturino.

"There," said Chesney, indicating the shop opposite. Somewhere behind those gilt-lettered windows was relief ready to his hand. He had determined very seriously to tamper no more with morphia, but agony such as he was enduring at this moment certainly justified him in making an exception to his self-imposed rule. Besides, he was no sottish weakling, who could not trust himself to take one moderate dose of morphia without risking the danger of a renewal of the habit. Of course, old Carfew would howl blue ruin at the mere idea. Sophy would be horrified. Anne Harding would lash him with her prickly tongue.... Well, thank the Lord, there was no need of taking them into his confidence! One, or perhaps two, moderate doses—that was all. He could take it by mouth. He would go to bed—sleep it off. No one would be the wiser. But he would be relieved of this maddening "tooth-ache" in his leg. He might even try that old Italian prig's remedy, afterwards—do the thing up thoroughly while he was about it.

As the vetturino drove across the street, Chesney got out his pocketbook. His fingers slid as from habit to a little flap on the inside of the case. As he felt the paper that he was in search of under his fingers, a queer thrill ran through him. He started, flushing. This thrill had been one of exultation; at the same time he had a sense of guilt. What rot! He was a responsible being—independent—he had a brain. What was it for if not to guide him in just such cases as this? He had endured this grinding pain for a week now—had only slept in wretched snatches for seven whole nights. Why should he feel that absurd, little-boy sense of guilt because he was going to provide himself with a good night's rest?

When the man drew up before the chemist's shop, Chesney sat for a moment reading over the prescription in his hand. Yes, it was perfectly preserved—quite legible. It was a prescription for soluble tablets of morphia for hypodermic use—one grain of morphia, one one-hundred-and-fiftieth of a grain of atropine. The atropine was to prevent nausea. How cursedly dry it made one's mouth! That was the drawback to atropine. But it was better than nausea. And still he sat there fingering the prescription—something holding him back—something more imperious than reason. His reasons appeared all excellent and logical to himself; yet this something refused them—said: "Not so.... Not so"—with the iteration of steady clockwork. Also, as often happens when one is sure of relief, that hot drilling in his leg had ceased completely. Without the excuse of that anguish, it seemed in a flash monstrous, even to him, that he should be sitting there in the lovely Italian sunshine before Lavatelli's, after all the horrors of the past months and years, deliberately contemplating purchasing and taking a dose of morphia. He slipped the prescription suddenly back into his pocketbook and put it away.

"Villa Bianca!" he called sharply to the vetturino.

The man caught up the reins again, again smacked the old bay's quarters with his whip. They started at a splaying trot towards Ghiffa. But before they reached the Intra post-office, the fierce pain had again gripped him. He was ashamed to tell the man to go back to Lavatelli's. With his stick he tapped John's shoulder.

"What did you say was the name of the other chemist's shop.... Pharmacy.... Whatever-you-call-it...?" he asked.

"Pharmacia? Hé?"

"Yes; the other one."

"Caccia? All right, I go at Caccia."

He turned round and drove to another chemist's, this time in a farther Piazza. It took about four minutes. Chesney got out and entered the shop. The keen, medicinal smell of the place brought the past in a gust upon him. He took the old prescription again from his pocketbook. It was stamped with the names of various chemists where it had been filled before.

"I am suffering severely with sciatica," he said, in a casual tone, to the clerk who took the prescription from him. "I need sleep very badly. I only want enough morphia for two doses—well, perhaps three would be better, as the pain might not yield easily."

The clerk said: "Si, Signore," and went to consult a senior member of the firm. He returned and said respectfully:

"I am sorry, Signore. We do not keep Sulfato di Morphia in this form."

Chesney flushed and paled rapidly as he had done in the cab outside.

"Do you mean you refuse to sell me even one or two doses?" he asked haughtily.

The clerk looked admiringly and a little timidly at his immense, angry customer.

"Prego, Signore—but not at all," he said. "We will sell it to you. This is a good prescription—good firms have filled it before. It is only that we have not the morphia in tablets—but in solution. And we have it not with the atropia."

"Ah!" said Chesney. His face relaxed. "Well, show me the kind you have," he said curtly, but not uncivilly.

The clerk brought a little cardboard box divided into cells. These cells, which were lined with cotton-wool, each held a small glass globule filled with a solution of morphia and sealed at one end with wax.

"It is safer so, Signore. One escapes to infect oneself. One breaks the seal and fills the hypodermic siringa direct from these little globules."

Chesney was silent for a second, gazing at the little transparent amphoræ that held Nepenthe. Then he said:

"Do you keep hypodermic syringes? I have broken mine."

He winced as the unnecessary lie escaped him. It made things more plausible, but need not have been uttered. Untruth seemed somehow the inevitable attendant of morphia, even when innocently indulged in as he was now about to do. Yet all this time his pulse was racing. The clang of the little bell attached to the door of the pharmacy, that rang when customers went in or out, made him start and glance round each time that it sounded....

He went out and got again into the carrozzella. In his pocket were three of the little globules and a shining new hypodermic syringe in a black Morocco case.

"Villa Bianca!" he said.

The vetturino glanced up, struck by the new, firm ring in his voice.

"They must have given him some devil of a good medicine in there," he thought. "He's another man, per Bacco!"

This time the patient screw shambled on to the gates of Villa Bianca without check.

XXXVIII

He was very cautious about this dose of morphia. He felt that he must guard in every possible way against the nausea that might follow it, thus taken without atropine. Sophy was pleased and surprised to hear that he had seen Camenis, and still more surprised when he said that he was going to bed at once, and would she be a dear girl and read aloud to him. He was looking forward with a half-shamed excitement to the luxury of relief and stimulation which he knew the morphia, so long refrained from, would give him to a superlative degree. But he knew also that it would be apt to make him garrulous. He did not want to talk. He was afraid of "giving himself away" somehow. So he asked Sophy to read aloud because he did not want to be alone either. It would intensify that sensation of blissful bien être which lay just ahead of him to have some one near. This feeling was akin to that with which a child, cosily in bed, regards its nurse sewing beside a shaded lamp.

Yes; he would go to bed, take the morphia, and then, later, the salicylate of soda. Two days of it would knock out the sciatica, that old doctor had said. Well—the morphia would keep him from being bored, in addition to easing his pain. One was never bored while under the effects of morphia. He would take one dose now, sleep off the bad effects. Then, next day, take the other in the same way. The third—well, it depended on how he would be feeling whether he took the third dose or not.

Sophy sent Luigi to kindle a fire in his bedroom before she would let him undress there. The Mareng, as the Scirocco is called on Lago Maggiore, had been blowing all day. Now a fine drizzle had begun to fall. As she went to find the book that Cecil had asked her to read aloud, she thought of how odd it was that his illnesses should always be associated in her mind with rainy weather. And the weather had been so glorious nearly all the time, until now. Some splendid Temporali—the crashing thunderstorms of that region—had come in July and August. But there had been no steady, sullen rain such as was now falling.

As for Chesney, he congratulated himself on having this acute attack just at this time. The Mareng, Luigi told him, would not last more than two or three days. The Wind-Flower was at Taroni's having her bottom scraped for the races.

As soon as he was rid of this deuced pain, he would go and look up a rowboat. He needed exercise. There were good boats, cheaper than elsewhere, Amaldi had said, at a little village called Cerro, on the other side of the Lake.

When Luigi had kindled the fire, he went up to his bedroom and closed and locked the door. The blaze from dried roots and scraps of wood looked very jolly tucked away in the corner like that. He glanced at the fine strands of rain outside his window, and the soggy brown of the balcony beyond, and thought the contrast only made the fire seem jollier.

Then he took off his coat, spread a fresh towel on the bed, and laid out the hypodermic syringe and one of the glass globules upon it. There was one instant when, as he stood with the syringe poised above the opened capsule, a strange impulse came over him. He thought: "What if I throw all this stuff into the fire? Just go to bed, take the salicylate—'grin and bear it'?" His heart beat violently. Then, with a sudden gesture, he thrust the nose of the syringe into the capsule, and drew the piston up till the cylinder was filled with the colourless liquid. Each dose of the solution held half a grain of morphia. He screwed the needle into place—pushed up his shirt-sleeve.... Another instant and the needle was home in his flesh. He pressed the piston gently down—withdrew the needle, and rubbed the puncture with a bit of cotton soaked in spirit. Then he cleaned the syringe, put a wire through the needle, locked all away into his travelling-bag, and, after setting the door slightly ajar, undressed and got into bed. In two minutes the little clutch at his midriff told him that the morphia was at its work.... Then he called to Sophy. And as he lay there with slow bliss stealing over him, and heard her light step coming up the stair, he justified his action to himself with persistent and plausible reiteration. The pain was already lessening—he felt tender and affectionate towards Sophy—longed to talk to her. But he kept saying to himself: "No, no—I must not. I must not, on any account." So he only smiled at her and moved his head against the pillow in assent, when she asked if he felt easier, warm in bed like this. When she sat down in a low chair beside the bed and began to read, he reached out and took her free hand, holding it, playing with her rings—that vague smile still on his face.

The rain fell faster and faster—it became a heavy downpour, rattling on the magnolia leaves outside and veiling the more distant trees. Sophy read until he seemed dozing—then went down to her lonely dinner in the ugly little dining-room. Somehow she felt strangely depressed. The Mareng seemed to have soaked into her very soul.

Chesney stayed in bed three days. He took all the morphia, but he also took the salicylate prescribed by Camenis. He suffered a good deal from nausea; but when he got up again, on the morning of the fourth day, his attack of sciatica was entirely over. He felt abominably weak, though. On the second day, he had sent Luigi to Pallanza to buy some good Cognac—a small glass of this revived him. He scrupulously avoided taking more than a small quantity at a time. He did not for a moment intend to lapse into his old habits.

But after he had been about for two days, back came the sciatic pains. He grumbled savagely. The Mareng had ceased. The Maggiore seemed kindling the heavens with its clear, fierce blast. The sun would have been hot as in August but for the wind. There seemed no earthly reason for the return of the sciatica. He must get rid of this nuisance before the races, by hook or by crook. He shrank from the idea of taking more morphia in its Italian form. The nausea had been too wearing. Besides, he did not wish to go to Caccia's a second time for it. It occurred to him to take the motor-boat and run over to Stresa. The first chemist there would probably have English or American preparations of the drug. He succeeded in finding a little case of an American preparation of morphia and atropine. But he was still extremely cautious, not only in regard to others, but about himself. Such doses as he took were very small (he would cut the tablets in half with his penknife—carefully burning the blade first in a candle-flame). And he always took them at bedtime, so that by the next morning the extreme dryness of his mouth would have passed. The pain kept nagging him. And in the intervals between the doses of morphia that hateful weakness came over him. He began to drink Cognac regularly with his meals. This worried Sophy—she could not think so much brandy good for him. At her suggestion he bought some Scotch whiskey in Pallanza. But the smooth, oily liquor, tempered by soda, was not what he wanted. It was even distasteful to him. What he craved was the keen bite of the raw brandy in his stomach and blood.

He grew very irritable at times, under the double stress of the intermittent pain, and the desire for larger doses of morphia than he dared take. His extreme caution would not let him continue drinking the Cognac at meals, since Sophy had objected to it. It might make her suspect something. So he fell into the way of taking a glass here and there, wherever he chanced to be, at some café in Intra or Pallanza, or even in Ghiffa.

He did not find Amaldi so companionable, either, since he had been suffering in this way.

"Rather a wooden chap, that Amaldi, when one comes to see more of him," he said to Sophy.

One evening, when Amaldi chanced to be at Villa Bianca, Chesney again asked his wife to sing. She went at once to the piano. Amaldi sat leaning forward, looking down at his hands, which were clasped loosely between his knees. Chesney kept glancing towards him vexedly all the time that Sophy was singing. Amaldi's expression was rather "wooden."

"Sing that Grieg thing," Chesney had said. She sang Solweg's song from the Peer Gynt series. It seemed to Amaldi that he could not bear it, when the voice of the woman he loved poured over him in that soft wave of heart-break. His face looked ever more and more "wooden" as she sang on. When she stopped and Chesney fixed his eyes on the other man with that sort of irritated challenge in them, Amaldi said in a cut-and-dried tone: "Thanks. It was most beautiful."

Chesney couldn't get over it for the rest of the evening. He mimicked Amaldi's tone and manner to Sophy again and again.

"Damned constipated mind the fellow's got, by God!" he said. "He hears for the first time a great imperial-purple voice like yours, and all he says is: 'Thanks; most beautiful.' Why didn't he say: 'Very nice,' and have done with it!"

Sophy shivered at his ever-increasing irritability. Sometimes she thought the gentle Luigi would surely burst into flame under Cecil's fierce cursings and depart forthwith; but the little man merely looked stolid, as if slightly deaf, on these occasions. She thought that Lombards, whether noble or peasant, had singular self-control, for something in the little Milanese's manner under provocation reminded her vaguely of Amaldi. Then one day she heard him remark to Maria, the cook, who also seemed astonished at his patience:

"Cosa te voeuret? L'è matt quel diavol d'un milord. E quella bella sciora l'è tanto bona." (What'll you have? He's mad, this devil of a milord, and his lovely lady is so good!)

One afternoon Amaldi called to tell Chesney that The Wind-Flower was in the water again. He found Sophy alone on the terrace. She was sewing on a little blouse for Bobby, who had worn out most of his wardrobe. She loved making his little fineries herself. Amaldi was more natural in his manner that afternoon. It was long since he had seen her alone. Sophy had recovered from the first shock of her husband's return; she also felt more natural. Before long she was talking to Amaldi almost eagerly. She had been thinking of her far-away home in Virginia when he arrived. She ran to fetch some photographs of it to show him. Chesney was away in the motor-boat—at Stresa, she believed.... But at that moment Chesney was driving back from Pallanza, having left the motor there to be mended. It had broken down just before he reached the embarcadero, and he had been obliged to row ashore. He was in an evil temper. His leg was "drilling" again, and he had had two glasses of Cognac within an hour.

When he reached the lower terrace he looked up and saw Sophy and Amaldi bending together over the photographs like two children over a picture-book. She was talking eagerly, looking often at Amaldi. There was a pretty flush on her face. Her grey eyes sparkled.... Chesney was so gruff in manner that Amaldi went almost immediately. Sophy sat gazing at her husband with a puzzled expression. She had not yet realised that Chesney had taken a dislike to Amaldi as sudden as his first liking.

"Well, I must say you're making up for lost time!" he threw out roughly.

"How?" she asked, astonished, not getting his meaning.

"Why, a week ago you hadn't a word to throw that chap; now you palaver with him like an old crony."

Sophy reddened with anger.

"Please don't speak to me in this way," she said coldly.

He reddened, too.

"You speak to Amaldi as you damn please—I'll speak to you as I damn please," he said.

"No," said Sophy, "for I shan't stay to listen to you."

And she gathered up the photographs and went into the house with her head high.

"Women are the devil!" said Chesney, scowling after her. "Women are the devil!" he repeated, flinging himself morosely into a chair, and gazing down at the outstretched leg which ached so infernally. Then he rose, went upstairs and injected a fourth of a grain of morphia into it. He sent word that he would not be down to dinner. At twelve o'clock that night, he took another fourth.

XXXIX

"Do come," he said. "Let the Italian woman—let Rosa go for the boy's things. She must know exactly what to buy for children. Do—there's a good girl——"

"No—really, Cecil—I couldn't explain to her. She's very stupid about such things. And Bobby simply must have warmer clothes ready."

"By George! I don't believe you want to come! I believe you're just putting me off with a lot of bally excuses, because you don't want to be with me," he said, glowering at her.

Sophy coloured a little. It was true that she did not want to go with him. She saw too plainly the ugly mood that was gathering in him, and would probably break into a storm of hectoring before night. But, on the other hand, she really felt it necessary to see at once about those warm things for Bobby. He caught cold so easily. The Marchesa had warned her that the weather was apt to change suddenly in October.

"Do you come or do you not?" asked Chesney sharply, watching her.

"I can't to-day, Cecil," she said earnestly. "If you'll wait till to-morrow, I'll go with pleasure. It isn't kind of you to take it like this—as if I wanted to vex you."

"Oh, well; do as you like!" he said, with his ugliest smile. "I've married a 'femme mère,' it seems. Just as well, perhaps, that it wasn't a 'femme courtisane.' There might have been ructions sooner or later."

He turned and ran down the steps of the terrace. He was very light on his feet for so big a man. Sophy stood watching, while Luigi handed him his overcoat and steadied the launch at the banchetta while he got in. Then she saw him dart off at racing speed for Cerro. She drew a breath of relief to think she was not with him. It was then one o'clock. At three she went upstairs to change her tea-gown for the drive to Intra. As she was putting on her hat, Luigi knocked at the door to say that the Marchese was in the drawing-room. She went down at once, and found that Amaldi had come to bring a note from his mother asking Cecil and herself to lunch at Le Vigne the next day. She said that they would be glad to come—if her husband were well enough. He had been suffering a good deal of late. While they were talking, Luigi came again to say that the carrozzella was waiting. Amaldi rose at once, but she said:

"No—don't hurry away. I'm only going shopping. I can go just as well a little later."

But though Amaldi sat down again, they could not find the pleasant, natural ease of their other talk over the photographs of "Sweet-Waters." There was a constraint on them both. Sophy asked about the Marchesa and the autumn crops at Le Vigne. They were talking in this rather forced, desultory fashion, when she heard Cecil's step coming fast up the terrace stairs.

He, in the meantime, had looked in vain at Cerro for the rowboat that he wanted. This, of course, put him in a still worse humour. He had also miscalculated the duration of that eighth of morphia taken in the early morning. Its effects had entirely worn off by two o'clock. This left him stranded at Cerro, with that gone feeling of intense weakness. He went from the boat-yard to the little osteria, and asked for Cognac. Of course there was none; but the Padrone, who spoke a sort of bastard French, explained that they had the most excellent Grappa. In his opinion, Grappa was superior to all the Cognac in the world.

"Q'est ce que c'est que ce sacré 'Grappa'?" Chesney had growled. Then the Padrone explained, and further illuminated his explanation by bringing a bottle of the clear white, fiery liquor—one of the fieriest and most heady of all liquors—the native spirits of Italy distilled from the must of grapes. Chesney, not aware of its strength, drank several glasses. This made him feel so much more "fit" that he drank yet another before leaving. By the time he was halfway across the lake on his way back, his brain was in flames from the ardent spirit. He found himself clenching his teeth till his jaw ached, in a spasm of vague rage against everything—every one! Then he recalled Sophy's refusal to go with him—and his anger concentrated on her.

When he ran up the terrace steps at Villa Bianca, fifteen minutes later, he was half-blind with unreasoning fury. Hearing voices in the drawing-room, he tore open the door and burst in on Sophy and Amaldi. The Grappa had made his face dead-white and his blue eyes black. He looked terrible, towering there, glaring at them speechless for the first second. Then he strode forward and took Sophy by the arm.

"So you lied to me!" he said. "You lied to me! You wanted to stay here alone for your——"

Amaldi also took a step forward. His face, too, was ghastly. Chesney whirled on him, releasing Sophy's arm. She fell back against the wall, grasping at the window curtain for support. She seemed to press against the hard stone of the wall, as though trying to melt into it.

Chesney, his head lowered between his shoulders, roared at Amaldi like the bull he resembled.

"You damned little sneak, get out of here! Out of this house!" he shouted.

Amaldi looked him in the eyes.

"'Charbonnier est maître chez lui,'" (A coal-heaver is master in his own house), he said icily. "I will go. But I will give you a gentleman's chance—I will send you my seconds."

Chesney vented a great "Ha!" of utter, insolent derision.

"Why, you little emasculated Don Juan—— You——" he spat an unmentionable name—"d'you think I'd fight one of your tin-soldier farces with you? Clear out!"

"Coward!" said Amaldi, in that same low, icy voice.

Then Chesney, inarticulate with rage, lifted his walking-stick and rushed on him. Amaldi was a master swords-man. With his own stick he parried the other's blows. Once, twice, thrice he parried; then, suddenly, by a quick, sharp stroke across the wrist, disarmed him.

Chesney stood dazed for an instant by the unexpectedness of the thing. As he stood thus, Amaldi left the room. But even as he did so Chesney broke from his trance and leaped after him. At once Sophy had her arms about him. She clung desperately, swinging round in front of him, hanging upon him with all her weight and strength.

"You shall not! You shall not!" she kept saying through her set teeth.

It was impossible for him to move quickly with the tall, frantic woman clinging to him, adapting herself to all his movements with supple instinct. He could not tear himself loose from her without hurting her brutally. He was not so lost as to do that. At last he caught the folds of Sophy's blouse over her breast in a fierce grip, dragged her to her feet, shook her to and fro as he held her. His whole face was a distorted snarl.

"Be quiet!" he ground out. "Keep still! Your lover's safe ... for this time...."

She panted, wordless, her frenzied eyes pouring loathing on him.

"Ay ... look at me as if I were a toad ... a horned toad." He grinned convulsively. "You've made me one ... you with your dirty little lover!"

Sophy got her breath. She was beside herself. She tore from his grasp, leaving some of the light trimming of her blouse in his clenched hand.

"I wish he were my lover!" she panted. "I wish any one were my lover. Oh, if I could only tell you that I had a lover! If I only could! Brute!... Coward!..."

She faced him quivering with detestation.

The dementia of hatred in her wild eyes sobered Chesney for an instant.

"Cut that!" he said sullenly. "What you've got to do is to swear to me, by all you hold sacred, that you'll never see that little skunk again. Come—out with it!"

She laughed.

"Swear!" he cried furiously, "or I'll ... I'll...." He half-lifted his balled fist.

She went on laughing.

"Oh, you brute...." she whispered between the spasms of laughter. "You great, helpless brute!..."

He gazed at her villainously, out of sideward, blood-shot eyes.

"Swear!" he said. "Swear ... or it'll be worse for you!"

Her laughter renewed itself. Tears of laughter ran down her wild, working face.

"I laugh"—she stammered—"I laugh—because you think it could be—worse for me——"

He stood balked, humiliated before this fierce paroxysmal laughter. Then cunning flashed into his look of thwarted beast.

"I'll tame you!" he said; and, laughing himself now, turned and rushed from the room. A throe of intuition gripped her. Bobby! He was going to wreak his spite against her on her boy. She was after him like the wind. But not fast enough ... not fast enough.... Just before her ... just out of reach ... as in a nightmare ... he was leaping up the steps three at a time. She had a horrible illusion of not moving—of standing stock-still—of being fastened to the spot by heavy weights.

The nursery was on the third floor. She had put the child there because it was the sunniest room in the house. It had two large windows, each with a little balcony before it. Yes—it was the nursery he was making for. She was just in time to see him plunge in. The light door, swung to close of itself, as in most Italian houses, clapped to behind him without latching. She fell against it. As she did so she heard Rosa scream. The wild "dirling" sound of this scream checked her blood. At the same instant she saw. He was out on the light wooden balcony before the west window—with the child, grasped by its middle, in both hands. Then the great arms straightened. He was holding the boy out in the blinding sunshine—out in the empty air, above a drop of thirty feet sheer to the gravel drive below. She saw this red as though bathed with blood. The Italian woman had cast herself prone on the ground—she tore at her hair in a sort of fit. Sophy stood congealed. Even her eyes seemed stiffening. Her breath stopped ... her heart.... She saw the boy begin to writhe—then her heart writhed in her; but she stood fast. Was the boy screaming? Deafness seemed to have smitten her. She could see the piteous round of the little mouth—wide open—but no sound reached her.

Over his shoulder the madman flung with a laugh:

"Perhaps now you'll do as I tell you."

She heard a "Yes" go from her. It seemed like some faint, winged thing fluttering from her mouth towards him. She was afraid it would not reach him. She sent another—another. "Yes.... Yes...."

"You swear it?"

"Yes...."

"Never to see that little cur again?"

"Yes——"

"Then here's 'the pledge of love,'" he chuckled. He strode back and dropped the boy into her arms.

But the next instant his face sobered into a scared look. The child was in spasms. Like a little fish upon a bank, he jerked and twitched on his mother's breast.

"I say," muttered the frightened man; "I've gone it a bit too thick ... eh?"

She was gazing with blind eyes at her boy. All her face looked blind. She had sunk down on the floor with him. There was a dreadful, dulled, yet crazed, look in the very way she held the jerking body. She kept whispering: "A doctor!... A doctor!... A doctor!..." It was as if she were choking and this hoarse word "doctor" were what she coughed up to keep from strangling. Neither she nor Chesney noticed the appalled group that had gathered at the nursery door, drawn there by Rosa's scream—Luigi, Maria, Tilda, the gardener's boy, Tibaldo. Rosa, now sitting up on the tiled floor, muttered and sobbed senselessly.

But when Sophy began her monotonous croak of, "Doctor!... Doctor!..." this group vanished as by magic—all save Tilda, who came and crouched down by her mistress, helping her hold the struggling child. And all at once, Chesney, too, dashed from the room.

When he reached the terrace, he saw Luigi, like a little black hare, scudding towards the banchetta. At his heels ran Tibaldo and the two women. The huge man, in his day the fastest runner in England, overtook them in a few bounds. Now his head was clear. Now he knew what was needed and exactly how to get it. He leaped into the racer, Luigi after him. Within eight minutes they were at Intra. Claudio Mora, a young doctor from Turin, returned with them.

XL

Mora succeeded in checking the boy's spasms, but was much relieved when Sophy asked to have Cesare Camenis in consultation—there were things about the case that he could not understand. He said so frankly. That such a robust, sunburnt little fellow, past the age for teething, should have convulsions baffled him. Camenis arrived at five o'clock. To him Sophy told the whole truth. He was a quiet, grey man of about sixty, whose own life had been tragic. The comprehension of dominated sorrow was in his face. Sophy felt that she could trust him, and that he should know all if he was to save Bobby for her. She could not have spoken to Mora. He was too young—and he was still encased in the hard shell of happiness. She could not have laid the wound of her life bare to him, as she did to this quiet, sad-eyed man whose only son was a cripple born, and whose wife had left him for a singer.

After hearing her, Camenis released his young confrère from further responsibility. He would stay himself that night, he said, at Villa Bianca.

Bobby was very ill for some days. He had fever and was delirious. Sophy never left the nursery. Camenis stayed with her till the crisis was past—being taken to and fro between Stresa and the Villa during the day in the launch.

Chesney avoided being alone with the doctor. He had his meals served at different hours, also in his room, for the most part. When he could not avoid meeting Camenis, he would halt awkwardly for a moment, and say: "Little chap going on well?" or, "Don't let Mrs. Chesney break down, will you?" or some such commonplace. He did not like to feel those shrewd, sad eyes of the Genoese physician on his face. He had slipped into the way of taking morphia pretty regularly, ever since that fatal afternoon. To face the prospect of Bobby's possible death, with clear, undrugged mind, was too much for him. And Sophy would not see him—had sent him a sealed line as soon as she could command herself enough to write, saying that she would not.

"Do not try to see me," she had written. "It is all I ask of you."

It was the fourth day of Bobby's illness. The late September evening was still as warm as August. Chesney lay on his bed in the darkness, his hands under his head, staring out at the onyx wall of the Sasso di Ferro, that rose against a sky pricked with stars. The fronds of a big mimosa tree just outside his window, furled sensitively from the heavy dew, made a delicate pattern against the sombre stolidity of the mountain. Through them, as though winking with sardonic humour, the red eye of the Chaldee lime-kiln glowed intermittently. Chesney was not undressed, though he lay upon his bed. He lay there because he felt dead tired, soul and mind and body, and because he had just taken his evening dose of morphia. He was so tired that he was not even thinking his own thoughts. Emile Verhaeren was thinking for him—Verhaeren, the one poet that he had ever really cared for. The great Belgian's volcanic and almost demoniacally virile imagination had appealed to him from the first, as no other had ever done. His own tempestuous, rebellious, intolerant nature echoed to these trumpets of anguish and defiance and exultation. Spirit writhing in the blast-furnace of untempered and primordial sensuality, the distorted religious instinct easing its throes with supernal blasphemies, a dark Prometheus thrusting with his defiant torch at the eye-sockets of the God from whom he had filched it—these things stirred him to the very depths. And, to-night, it was as if Verhaeren had written for him and him alone. Who but he and Verhaeren had ever felt what these words expressed?—these words that thundered and howled through his mind translating himself to himself, with such appalling fitness:

"Dites suis-je seul avec mon âme,
Mon âme hélas maison d'ébène
Ou s'est fendu sans bruit un soir
Le grand miroir de mon espoir."

And again:

"Aurai-j'enfin l'atroce joie
De voir nuit aprés nuit comme une proie
La démence attaquer mon cerveau,
Et detraqué, malade, sorti de la prison
Et des travaux forcés de sa raison
D'appareiller vers un lointain nouveau?"

He lay there thinking through the terrible, implacable mind of Verhaeren until midnight. Then a foot on the stair roused him. It was light and swift—a running step—Sophy's. Was the boy worse? Was he dying, perhaps? He leaped to the door, jerked it open. His haggard, drug-ravaged face stared out between the cheap yellow wood of the newel-post and the door. Sophy was coming down the stair opposite. She looked like a somnambule in her long white dressing-gown, with eyes fixed before her. He came out and stood facing her. She looked straight at him, but her face was blank of recognition.

"Sophy!" he muttered—there was anguish in his hoarse voice: "Sophy!"

For all response, she leaned over the banister.

"Dottore! Dottore!" she called.

"Vengo—vengo, signora!" came at once the reply of Camenis. As soon as he answered, she turned and ran fleetly up the stairs again. She had not even glanced towards Chesney. Then Camenis went by, also very quickly. Chesney wanted to ask what it was ... he could not speak. Later, he waylaid the doctor coming back. Yes—the boy was conscious again. He would live. The crisis was past.

Chesney hung so heavily on the door that it swung back a little with him.

"Can I do anything for you, signore?" said Camenis, hesitating. "You look ill yourself."

"No—thanks—the—shock——" Chesney mumbled. He retreated, closing the door. Camenis stood a second looking at the closed door. Then he passed on to his own room.

The next day he said to Sophy:

"Signora, now that the little one is out of danger, I feel that I must speak to you about your husband."

He saw her grow rigid.

"Signora," he pursued very gently, "one forgives much to illness. Your husband is an ill man, signora." He saw her eyes waver, but her nostrils were still set.

"You have been kind enough to trust me with your confidence, signora," Camenis went on in his flat, gentle voice. "And so I feel it my duty to speak quite plainly to you."

"Yes," said Sophy mechanically.

Camenis looked at her with that tender pity, which from the wise eyes of a kindly priest or physician does not hurt. His look reminded Sophy of Father Raphael of the Poor. She braced herself to meet what was coming.

"Then, signora," said Camenis, "I will remind you that your husband came to me two weeks ago, to consult me about a severe attack of sciatica. He asked for a palliative. I told him that I knew of none save opium—morphia ... that I did not give it except in extreme cases. Now, signora, from what you have told me—about the unfortunate habit that your husband has only lately escaped from.... You will pardon my perfect frankness, signora?"

"Yes.... Yes...."

"Then.... You must not be too shocked—too horrified. We, who have not endured it, cannot imagine this terrible temptation of morphia. But to one, only so lately cured ... to whom severe pain comes...."

He hesitated again, and Sophy said in a hard, clear voice:

"Do you mean that my husband is taking morphia again?"

"I fear so, signora," said Camenis very gently.

Sophy sat looking down at her hand which she clenched and unclenched as it lay on her knee.

"Yes—I think it's very likely," she said at last, still in that hard, resonant voice.

Camenis was silent for a time; then he said:

"I think your husband has suffered much for what he did the other day, signora."

Sophy's face flamed. Her eyes glittered.

"Don't speak of it ... don't speak of it...!" she cried, as though suffocating.

Again Camenis waited.

"Forgive me, signora," he then said, "but I must tell you that I think this is a crisis for your husband as well as for your son."

Sophy turned suddenly and hid her face against the back of her chair.

The tired, kind eyes of Camenis looked at the bent head compassionately. After another pause, he said:

"I think—as a physician—if you could go to him—gently—he would confess and try once more to—to be what you would have him be, signora."

Then Sophy broke down and wept like a desperate child.

"I can't! Oh, I can't!" she sobbed. "You don't know.... I can't bear even the memory of his face—his voice! How am I to go to him? I can't! I can't!"

The little doctor's face looked very worn as he sat watching her, while she clung to the big, ugly chair as to a rock of refuge, clutching it with her white hands that had grown thin in this one week of Bobby's illness—staining its gay chintz cover with her tears. Suddenly he rose, and went over to her.

"Bambina ... bambina ..." he said tenderly, "when you have saved him, you will love him. We always love what we have saved."

He just touched her hair softly, once, as a father would have done.

"Coraggio ..." he murmured, in his kind, faded voice. Then he left her.

Chesney was filling his hypodermic syringe that evening, about seven, when there came a low knock at his door. He started, nearly dropping the little instrument.

"Who's there?" he called sharply. In every nerve he felt the need of this dose that he was preparing—so soon does the tyrant morphia assert its sway. He was transfixed to hear Sophy's voice reply:

"It's I, Cecil."

Hurriedly, his hands shaking as with ague, he bundled everything into a drawer, and closed it. Then he went to the door. He stood with it in his hand, staring at her as though just waked.

"May I come in?" she said very low. "I—I want to talk with you."

He was still too overcome to speak. Silently he stepped aside, drawing the door with him. She entered quickly, her head a little bent, her hands clasped nervously in front of her. The weather was still very warm; she had come from the nursery, and wore a long peignoir of white muslin. The soft, straight folds made her seem taller than ever. Her bent head contradicted the haughtiness of her body. It was as if she wanted to command a mood of gentleness by forcing its physical semblance.

"Will you sit here?" asked Chesney. His voice shook.

"Thanks...." she murmured, and took the chair that he pushed forward.

She didn't seem able to say what she had come for. She sat silent so long that he felt forced to speak.

"Is ... is Bobby all right?" he faltered.

The colour streamed across her cheek at these words, as though he had struck her.

"Forgive me," he said humbly. "I.... I really care, you know."

"He is better," she managed to reply. Her lips moved stiffly. Then she lifted her head with a sort of desperation of resolve. Her eyes fixed on his.

"Cecil...." she said, "I've come ... one, last time...." She broke off; then went on: "This one, last time," she repeated, "to see if you ... if we ... if together...." Again words failed her. Looking firmly at him, she ended more quietly: "I've come to beg you to tell me the truth," she said, and her dark eyes rested on him full of doubt and pain.

He could scarcely have grown paler, but his head drooped; he sat looking down at his great hands which he clasped and unclasped nervously.

"Well...." she whispered finally. "Will you?.... It's our last ... last chance."

With difficulty he articulated, "Try me."

"Then ..." she went on, after a slight pause, still whispering, "are you ... taking morphine again?"

There was no pause before his answer.

"Yes," he said, his face still drooped away from her.

She caught one hand to her breast. She could not believe her own ears. Had he said "Yes" at once—simply—outright like that, to such a question? Something fine and brave in her throbbed response to that unequivocal "Yes."

"Cecil...." she said.

All at once he tossed up his hands to his bent face. His great figure, huddled on the little chair, began shaking from head to foot.

"Oh, my God!" he said. "My God! Don't be kind to me ... don't be kind!"

And dreadful sobs began heaving through him.

"Oh ... poor Cecil...!" came from her in a gasp.

And then he fell forward on his knees before her, his face in her lap, his hands grasping the soft folds of her gown. His tumultuous, painful sobbing shook them both—as if torn up by bloody roots came the great sobs.

"Sophy.... God.... Sophy.... I've suffered.... I've suffered.... If he'd died.... Yes ... one shot ... yes ... one...."

And his passion of grief, torrential as his passion of love, flooded her, shook her with its cyclonic abandonment, until she seemed one flesh with him in this unmeasured tragedy of wild remorse.

Through her thin gown she felt his tears soak to her very skin—a hot chrism baptising her once more his in this terrific rite of sorrow.

She bent over him, her hands upon his head, her own tears falling.

"No ... no!" she pleaded. "No ... no, Cecil! Don't ... don't despair like this ... we will begin again.... The truth.... You have told the truth...."

She began to sob herself now.

"And the truth shall make you free ... the truth shall make you free, dear...." she kept sobbing.

Now she had his head against her breast—her cheek pressed down on it. As she held Bobby to comfort him, when he was frightened, so she held the great man. He was afraid now—afraid of himself—like a child. Close she held him to comfort him ... close ... close....