“Ah, poor darling!” said Maud once, as his struggles grew less.
And the voice answered her.
“Yes, that’s just how I often feel,” it said.
A minute or two more passed.
“Isn’t your gillie here yet?” she asked.
“Yes, he came ten minutes ago. Shall I gaff him for you, or shall he?”
“Who is he?” asked Maud.
“It’s Duncan Fraser, my lady,” said another voice.
“Oh, then, Duncan, please,” she said. “Is that rude of me? I am so sorry. But, you see, I know Duncan: he has often gaffed fish for me. Get further down, Duncan, and lie down—get below him; don’t let him see you.”
But there were several agitating moments yet. Each time the fish drifted with the stream she towed him a little nearer to the bank; but though he was very weak now and his protests feeble, he was still capable of momentary violences. But at last he was a mere log, floating with fin out of the water and broad silvery side shining. With a swift, crafty movement, Duncan had him on the bank.
Maud laid down her rod and turned away.
“Kill him quick, Duncan,” she said. “Is itdone?” Then, with fine inconsistence: “Oh, what a darling!” she cried. “Quite fresh from the sea, too!”
Then for the first time Maud turned to look at the owner of the voice, and found a tall, pleasant-looking young man smiling at her.
“I am really extremely obliged to you,” she said. “I don’t see how I could have landed him without your gaff. There is nowhere in the pool where you can tail a fish.”
He laughed at this.
“Why, I think that is so,” he said. “But I am much more your debtor. I’ve never seen a fish so beautifully handled. Look at your tackle, too! Well, I never!”
“Oh, I know the water,” she said, “and that makes so much difference, though I couldn’t explain how.”
Then suddenly the conjunction of a total stranger—American, too, so she could hear—witha rod on her brother’s river, in company with one of her brother’s gillies, struck her as odd.
“I am afraid my fish and I have detained you very long,” she said. “You are fishing at Scarsdale, I suppose.”
“No, I am fishing here,” he said. “At least, I shall walk down a mile or two, and try the lower pools.”
This was more solidly incomprehensible. Yet the man did not look in the least like a poacher or trespasser. And how did it come about that Duncan was with him? Maud grew just a shade dignified, though she was still quite cordial.
“I’m sure you will excuse me,” she said; “but, you know, this is my brother’s river, Lord Thurso’s.”
Again the stranger laughed with sincere and quiet merriment.
“Oh yes, I know,” he said. “But, you see, he has been kind enough to let the fishing to me until the end of July.”
Maud stood quite silent a moment. A situation so horrible was dawning on her that she was unable to speak. What had he said? That Thurso had let him the fishing? Then, what was she? A poacher, caught red-handed by the tenant himself.
“What?” she said. “Say it again.”
The stranger took off his hat.
“May I introduce myself?” he said. “I am Mr. Bertie Cochrane. Excuse me; I really can’t help laughing. Why, it’s just killing!”
Maud, already flushed with excitement and exercise, grew perfectly crimson.
“Oh, what am I to do?” she said. “It is too awful! How can you laugh? I can never forgive myself.”
She raised her eyes to his again, and saw there such genuine, kindly amusement that, in spite of her horror, she laughed too.
“Oh, don’t make me laugh,” she said. “Itis too dreadful. Poaching! I thought it was you who were going to poach, and it’s been me!”
“Yes, it’s serious,” he said; “and it’s for me to make conditions.”
Maud had one moment’s fleeting terror that he was going to make an ass of himself, as she phrased it: ask to kiss her hand or do something dreadful. But he did not look that kind of donkey.
“Oh, my conditions are not difficult,” he said. “I only insist on your not cutting short your day’s fishing.”
“Don’t,” she said. “I couldn’t fish any more. Thank you very much, but I really think I couldn’t.”
“I think you should make an effort. You must consider me as insisting. You won’t get in my way, nor I in yours. I meant to go a couple of miles down—I did indeed.”
The situation which five minutes ago was so appalling had quite lost its horror; it was no longer unfaceable. Had Maud been told that morning that in the inscrutable decrees of Fate she was going to be caught poaching before lunch, she would have wished the earth to open and swallow her sooner than that anything so unspeakable should happen to her, while even two minutes ago there was nothing in life so impossible as that she should continue her career of poaching. But her captor was so unaffectedly friendly, his amusement, also, at her horror and the cause of it so sincerely kind, that she was no longer horrified.
“Really, Mr. Cochrane, it is too good of you,” she said. “But you must first put me at my ease about one thing. You do know—don’t you?—how dreadfully sorry I am, and that I hadn’t the very slightest idea that Thurso had let the fishing. Oh, by the way, I reallyamLady Maud Raynham.”
“Why, yes,” he said, and paused. “Then it’s all settled.”
The whole situation had gone, vanished, before his perfect simplicity and kindliness, and she smiled back at him.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “I shall love to have this day on the river.”
“And Duncan?” he said. “Pray keep him if you wish; otherwise I shall send him home. His wife is ill of this—this typhoid.”
“Oh no; please let him go home, then,” said Maud.
Then Cochrane turned to the gillie.
“Get along home with you, Duncan,” he said, “and be sure—tell yourself—that you will find the wife still improving. I think you’ll find she’s been getting better all morning. But if you give her any of that medicine you will be just helping her—helping her, mind—to get worse again. You understand? If you find when you get home she is worse, give it her by all means. But you won’tfind that: you will find she is better. Yes, gaff, landing-net, lunch—I’ve got them all, thanks. So off with you, and let your heart go singing. God’s looking after her this morning, as He always did. She’s going to get quite well. Don’t lose sight of that, and don’t let her lose sight of it either.”
He had apparently quite forgotten about Maud as he spoke, and had turned a side face to her as he talked to the gillie. And though, during this little speech, all the kindliness and merriment that had twinkled in his eyes and twitched in his mouth when “the situation” had been unfolded between Maud and himself was still there, yet there shone through it now some vital and intense seriousness. He had laid his hand on the rough homespun of Duncan’s shoulder, and spoke with a quiet and convinced air of authority. Then he nodded dismissal to him, and turned to Maud again, while Duncan trudged off down the riverbank.
“I’m so sorry for you and Lord Thurso,” he said, “and I think it’s downright good of you to have come up here, right in the middle of the season, just because your folk were ill. It’s real kind of you.”
Then suddenly his eye fell on the silver-mailed fish that still lay on the bank.
“Hi, Duncan!” he called out after the retreating figure, “take her ladyship’s fish up to the house.”
Duncan came back, and with difficulty folded the big fish into his bag, and shouldered it. But he paused a moment before he went again, looking at Cochrane with doglike eyes that, though they trust, yet beseech.
“But the wife is better, sir?” he asked.
“Ever so much. You are beginning to know that as well as I do. Now, off with you, for you’ve got to look after the baby, as she thinks she can’t. Make it happy. Give it a real good time, and let it pull that great beard of yours.”
He watched Duncan tramp away again with his heavy, peasant-footed tread down the bank.
“Dear blind soul,” he said, half to himself. “But it’s getting near dawn with his night.”
Maud was already “arrested” with regard to her companion—she paid, that is to say, a good deal more attention to him than she paid to nine-tenths of casual strangers with whom she was, as now, accidentally brought into somewhat intimate contact. He had the arresting quality, whatever that is, which compels attention. It may be called animal magnetism, or vitality of a superior kind, but it has nothing to do with love or hate, like or dislike, though it may coexist, and often does, with any of these. It had not, for instance, even occurred to her to wonder whether she liked or disliked him, or was utterly indifferent to him; she only knew that he had the arresting quality. In manner he was very quiet, rather boyish, quitewell-bred, and rather good-looking, and in none of these respects was he different from the casual crowd. But there was, and she knew it, something that distinguished him from all men and women that she had ever seen, and this pause of a second or two, as Duncan took up the fish, was sufficient for her to determine in what the distinction lay. And it was this: he was so happy. Happiness of a sort she had never yet seen surrounded him like an atmosphere of his own, which it was given to others to breathe. She herself had breathed it—it radiated from him. Hundreds of people were happy—thank God, that is a very common gift—but the happiness that she now encountered was on a different plane. It was happiness distilled, sublimated. He seemed normally to dwell on the heights to which others in fine moments can attain. He seemed happy in the way that some extraordinary good news makes others happy for a moment or two, or an hour or two. Yet this was no retrospective happiness, the happiness of vividmemory: it was his normally; it gushed from him as from some unquenchable spring.
This impression was made, as all strong impressions are made, in a moment, and there was no pause between his parting speech to Duncan, the fish-laden, and her taking up again the casual thread of talk. Yet was the thread a casual one? For his last words to Duncan seemed to come from the very heart and soul of the man, from the spring of his happiness.
“Do tell me,” she said, “why did you say to Duncan that his wife only thought she was ill?”
The convinced happiness of his brown eyes looked at her a moment before he answered.
“Doesn’t it come somewhere in Shakespeare?” he said. “‘There’s nothing but thinking makes it so?’ Or words to the same purpose?”
“Yes, but if we take that literally,” said Maud, “we must conclude that if she could only thinkshe was well, poor soul, she would be. It is hard to think that when you happen to have typhoid.”
The brown eyes grew graver, but their happiness, as well as their gravity, seemed to deepen.
“Certainly, it is hard,” he said. “Indeed, it is impossible, unless you can think right. But when you can do that, all the rest follows.”
Maud suddenly felt slightly antagonistic to him. She remembered the few words she had had with Thurso last night about people who say they are always well, because they think they are, and his conclusion that they must be fools. She had tacitly agreed with him then, and was a little vexed with Mr. Cochrane because, honestly, he did not seem to be a fool.
“Have you ever had toothache?” she asked briskly.
“Never. And if I had, I shouldn’t. Soundsnonsense, doesn’t it? But it just expresses the truth.”
Then the name she had been unable to remember last night came back to her.
“Ah, you are a Christian Scientist!” she said. “You think all pain and illness is unreal.”
He laughed.
“I know it,” he said. “Now, I am sure you want to get on with your fishing. So there’s your rod, and please keep this gaff. You are far more likely to hook another salmon in these upper pools than I am down below.”
He had changed the subject with such undisguised abruptness that she could not help remarking on it. Yet, sudden as it had been, there was no hint of ill-breeding or rudeness about it. He merely spoke quite courteously of something else.
“Do you always change the subject as quickly as that?” she asked, smiling.
“Always, if I think I may be led into a discussionabout Christian Science with strangers, who—— Pray don’t think me rude, Lady Maud, but one can’t talk about the subject which means more to one than the whole world with people who ask questions about it out of a sort of—well, derisive curiosity. Also, I don’t proselytise. I think there are better ways of making the truth known.”
The words were extremely direct, but again no hint of rudeness or want of courtesy was ever so faintly suggested, and though Maud still felt antagonistic, she knew that the most sensitive person in the world could not have found offence in them, so perfectly friendly and good-natured was his tone. He made this very plain statement without the least touch of resentment himself or fear of arousing it. And she, generous and fair-minded herself, gave in at once.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “You are quite right. There was a touch, though really not more, of what you so justly call derisive curiosityin my mind. I had no business either to feel or show it. But may I ask you a question with that touch left out—honestly left out?”
“Why, of course—a hundred,” said he.
“Then, why don’t you proselytise?” she asked. “As you are convinced of the truth of your doctrine, isn’t it your duty to spread it?”
Cochrane let his eyes wander from her face over the hillside, fragrant with heather and murmurous with bees. Then they looked at her again, and for the first time she saw that they were different from any eyes she had ever seen in the face of man or woman, for they were unmistakably a child’s eyes, full of a child’s disarming frankness, and almost terrible honesty.
“You can spread a thing in many ways,” he said. “But preaching was not the primary way He chose. ‘He went about doing good.’”
Maud felt herself suddenly seized with that shyness which is instinctive to most Anglo-Saxonswhen “religion” puts in its appearance in conversation, and she was suddenly tongue-tied. With many people, no doubt, reticence on religious subjects is due to the fact that, since they have no religion, there is nothing for them to talk about. But it was not so with her. Religion formed a very vital and essential part of her life, but it was not a thing to be publicly trotted out like this. So, since the subject had so unexpectedly and profoundly deepened with this last remark, it was she who rather precipitately changed it now.
“I see,” she said. “But please don’t leave me the gaff. I should immensely like, since you are so kind, to try for another sea-trout or two, but having poached one salmon without your leave, I couldn’t contemplate poaching another, even with it. So if I hook another he shall break me, and so I shall present your river with a fly and a cast by way ofamende.”
Maud felt vexed and annoyed with herself.She was not managing well; she thought she must be giving a quite false impression by chattering this stupid nonsense in order to get away from the subject of religion. But then a rather more natural topic suggested itself—namely, the idea of offering him hospitality, which had occurred to and been rejected by Thurso.
“And do come and dine with us to-morrow,” she said, “and eat some of your own fish. Thurso and I would be delighted. We are just squatting in the house, you know, and eat and live in one room, and the caretaker’s wife cooks. Ah, how stupid of me! I forgot. Thurso is turning the rest of the house into a typhoid hospital, and by evening the place will be full of patients. So please say ‘No’ point-blank if you don’t like the thought. I shall quite understand.”
Those childlike eyes looked at her in frank, unveiled admiration.
“Why, that’s just splendid of you both,” he said; “and as for coming to dinner, I shall bedelighted. We Scientists are often told we are inconsistent, but we are not quite so bad as to mind coming to a house where a few poor souls think they are ill. So,au revoir, Lady Maud, and many thanks.”
Maud was a girl of great singleness of purpose, and generally, when she was out for a day’s fishing, the number of moments in which she thought about things unconnected in any way with fishing scarcely made any total at all, while any other subject that was present in her mind was there only in a very dim and distant fashion. But to-day, during the hour’s fishing which she indulged in between Mr. Cochrane’s departure and lunch, her thoughts persistently strayed from fishing, and when eventually she made herself a windless seat in the heather, overlooking the pool which she had just fished, even the brace of silvery sea-trout she had already caught, and theprospective brace or two that she promised herself before evening, occupied but a very small part of her meditations.
Christian Science! She had indeed a “touch of derision” for that philosophy and its philosophers, though it was not worth while even to deride it. Nor was her derision founded on ignorance only, for last year Alice Yardly, a friend of hers, had joined the Church, and that had seemed to Maud a most suitable thing. For she had always thought that Alice, though a dear, was a fool, and now she knew it. Certainly, however, Mrs. Yardly did not in the least resemble Mr. Cochrane either in the matter of folly, because it was clearly impossible to think of him as a fool, or in the matter of proselytising, for Mrs. Yardly used to proselytise (with almost touching ill-success) by the hour, pouring out a perfect torrent of optimistic gabble about the nonexistence of pain and sickness, and be prostrated the moment afterwards by one of those nervousheadaches to which she was subject. She would boldly, trying to nail a smile to her face, label this a “false claim” (though it was a pedantically accurate imitation of the real thing), and “demonstrate” over it, which, being interpreted, meant that she assured herself two or three million times that she could not have a nervous headache, since there was no nervous headache in Divine Love, and nothing existed except Divine Love. After that she would go to bed, and wake up next morning without any headache, and be delighted with the success of the demonstration that had banished it.
And then, her dreadful delirium of words appalled and confused the hearer. Texts were torn up from their roots by that inconsequent hurricane, and sent hurtling at your head, and paragraphs from Mrs. Eddy’s “Key to the Scriptures” squirted at you as from some hydrant, all to convince Maud, as far as she could see, of what she put rather differently to herself, whenshe said that mind had a great influence over matter, and that Mrs. Eddy had not been the first to discover that. But this view of the question proved to be an utter mistake, and would not do for Mrs. Yardly at all, who insisted that there was no such thing as matter, and never had been, since it existed only in the error of mortal mind, of which there wasn’t any really. Last winter, too, Alice had had a false claim of influenza, and after a week of demonstrating over it, and not taking ordinary precautions, it had developed into a further false claim (though a pretty imitation) of congestion of the lungs. Three weeks’ further demonstration over congestion of the lungs, combined this time with stopping in bed (though that had really nothing to do with it, as could easily be explained in another hour or two), had led to her complete recovery, and the subsequent recital of this wonderful cure at a Wednesday testimony meeting, to the great edification of the faithful. But whenMaud asked her why, if she was going to condescend to stop in bed at all (especially since stopping in bed had, like the flowers of spring, “nothing to do with the case”) she should not have done so when she had the false claim of influenza, instead of waiting for the further false claim of congestion, this led only to the kind Christian Science smile, and a voluble explanation, with torrents of Psalms and Mrs. Eddy, to point out once again from the very beginning that she did not have influenza at all. No further progress, in fact, could be made in such discussions, for though Mrs. Yardly was far from refusing to answer questions, she poured forth in answer so turbid a flow of pure twaddle, with so stern a determination never to be brought up to the point at issue, that it was impossible for the inquirer to proceed. All sickness and illness was inconceivable, said Mrs. Yardly, because everything was Infinite Mind (mortal mind had no more real existence than had matter); and whether Maudasked how it was that the impression of there being such things as headaches and broken legs had come in, or whether she wanted to know why Mrs. Eddy said that tobacco was disgusting, if there was no such thing, it appeared to Alice that to state over and over again in a variety of ways this fact about Infinite Mind was a satisfactory answer to any question of whatever kind.
Of course, Alice was silly—she seemed sometimes to have no mind, mortal or otherwise, though she was a dear, all the same—and Maud, as she sat here now eating her sandwich in this sheltered nest of heather, with the wild bees buzzing about her, and all the infinite and beneficent powers of Nature pursuing their functions heedless of any interpretations that the meddlesome mind of man might choose to put upon them, felt that she had done an injustice to the subject about which she inquired when she derided it just because a woman who was very silly gave absurd answers to questions which, though quitesimple, were of the utmost profundity in that they concerned the origin of evil and sickness. Mrs. Yardly had not been a Christian Scientist long, and Maud now told herself that it was absurd to expect her all at once (for she understood so little before) to understand everything now. But what nettled her, though, indeed, she was not easily nettled, was to find that this same dear, stupid person did profess to be able to explain everything—mind, matter, and God alike. She claimed to have recaptured the faith of a child, and at once to be able to argue like a theologian about it. Maud herself was a professed and believing Christian, but had a brilliant Atheist subtly questioned her on the doctrine of the Incarnation, she knew quite well that many of his questions would be completely unanswerable. But because she was a Christian it did not follow she was a theologian, and she hoped that she would not try, by turning a blinding squirt of texts upon her questioner, to make him believe that she could explainthe mystery of the material and spiritual world. She could not—many things were mysterious. But why not say so? That these things were mysterious did not prevent her being a Christian. She believed, too, the root doctrine of Christian Science—namely, that God was the Author of the world, and was immanent there. But surely it was wiser and truer to confess that one did not understand the whole working of the world in all its details; for if one did, one could manage it all oneself. Alice Yardly, Maud felt sure, would undertake the post with the greatest pleasure. And a pretty mess she would make of it, thought she. For Alice could never even contrive that the carriage should call for anybody at the right time or place, and constantly went out to dinner on the wrong night, for the confusion of hostesses.
Yet ... the law of gravity, so Maud believed, was in sound working order; but if one asked some mere child to explain it, and he explainedit imperfectly or incorrectly, that proved nothing against the validity of the law, but only proved the inability of the exponent. So, too, in Christian Science, one person surely knew more about it than another, and Mrs. Yardly, in all probability, less than any; and Maud confessed to herself that her present derision had been founded on the explanations (or want of them) given by a Scientist whom she had always thought silly. No doubt there were others who were not silly, but what a pity it was that the silly ones were allowed to gabble like this! Alice had tried to proselytise her, with the effect only that Maud had been almost fanatically convinced of the absurdity of her faith. But Mr. Cochrane had pointedly refused to proselytise, and, perversely enough, she felt she would like to hear what he had to say about it. He, too, had that childlike faith and those childlike eyes. Alice’s eyes were not childlike: they resembled the shining buttons in railway-carriages.
A great fish jumped clear out of the water in the pool at her feet—a noble silver-sided salmon, which for the moment made her fisherman’s heart leap in her throat. But it was no use trying for him; a fish that jumped like that never took the fly. Besides, she had no gaff. Then she smiled at herself, for she knew that, though that reason was sound enough, it was not the real cause why she still sat in her sheltered place. She was interested in something else: she wanted to think about that.
Mr. Cochrane did not seem silly; in fact, she would have bet on the verdict of an intelligent and impartial jury with regard to the point. What if she asked him, when he came to dine to-morrow night, a few of the questions onto which Alice had turned the squirt of irrelevant texts? There would be no derision on her side now, for in this half-hour of self-communing she had convinced herself that she wanted to know. Therewas no such thing as illness—he had said that; he had practically told Duncan that. What, then, if she made an appeal to him—told him how many of these poor folk had died from typhoid, and were suffering now, and asked him to stop it all? Yet that was too much to ask; it seemed profane, as if she asked him to invest himself in the insignia of Divinity. But might he not—for she could ask him now without derision, without, so far as she could manage it, unbelief in the huge power which Christian Scientists (healers, at any rate) distinctly professed to wield—might he not relieve one sufferer, make well one of those forty who would be lying sick in the house to-morrow? But then there occurred to her the parrot-like answer of Alice Yardly when she had asked her the same question. It was parrot-like, it was glib and without conviction and sense of the true meaning of the words, when she said it was wrong to make a “cure” for a sign. Lots of texts from the Gospels, of course, came up as reinforcements.But how hopelessly she misunderstood! Maud did not want a sign: she wanted that suffering should be relieved. It was not human to withhold that power merely because she would be interested in seeing it manifested. It was inhuman to withhold it, if the possessor really believed it was his. Besides, for what, except its exercise, had it been given?
But there was Thurso. It was better that he should not know that she intended to ask Mr. Cochrane to do this, and, indeed, that he should not know that she had asked it. There Alice Yardly’s contention, again with texts, seemed to her to be possibly true. It was reasonable, anyhow, to suppose that unbelief might hamper the power of faith, just as dampness hindered the functions of frictional electricity. But if Thurso was not told, there would be none of this impeding counteraction. She herself did not disbelieve, and honestly she wanted to believe. She deridedno longer: she was at the bar of conscience able to say that she had an open mind on the subject. She believed in the miraculous cures of ancient days; there was no known reason why modern days should not witness them again.
Yet why had her mind changed? Why had the derision vanished? Again she was truthful with herself, and acknowledged that it was probably owing to Mr. Cochrane’s personality. He seemed wise and gentle and self-reliant because he relied on an Infinite Power. He himself entirely trusted in that Power, and it was exactly that which made Maud trust him.
Yes, that was all. She had gone over the ground she wished to traverse. Thereafter she was absorbed in watching her fly traverse another element.
THEshifting and removal of furniture and the banishment of carpets preparatory to the reception of patients next day, together with the installation of the necessaries for sick-rooms, were complete when Maud got home that evening, and she found Dr. Symes, who had come up to superintend this, just on the point of leaving. He had no very cheering account to give concerning several of the patients whom Maud asked after, but there was one cause, at least, for thankfulness, since no fresh case had appeared during the day.
“And that is rather strange,” he said, “for we have not yet been able to discover what the cause of the epidemic was, and so have not intentionallycut off any source of infection. But, God knows, I am quite content not to know what it is, provided it is cut off.”
“Yes, indeed,” said she. “And to-morrow you will fill up all the beds here?”
“Yes, all, I am sorry to say. Of course, we are taking certain risks, but, for the sake of the fresher air and better attention they will be able to receive up here, we shall move some very serious cases. Ah, my dear lady, we doctors get sick at heart sometimes! Doctor though I am, and prescriber of drugs, I wonder how much good we really do with our powders and potions. I wonder if all the contents of all the chemists’ shops, and our cabalistic prescriptions, are measurable by the side of fresh air and quiet, and the conviction on the part of the patient that he is going to get well.”
“But if he believes that the drugs are going to make him well, surely they are a spring of faith,” said she.
He laughed.
“Well, well, they may get better how they choose, and I won’t quarrel with it,” he said. “By the way, I should like to say just once how splendid it is of you and Lord Thurso to give up the house like this.”
“It was absolutely Thurso’s idea,” said she, “though, of course, it seemed obvious when he suggested it. And he wanted to send me back to town! Has he come in yet, do you know?”
“Yes, he came in half an hour ago, in great pain, I fear, with one of those neuralgic headaches. He is rather overdone; he wants rest.”
Maud made a little quick movement towards him.
“Not seriously so?” she asked. “You don’t mean that there is anything to be anxious about?”
“I don’t, anyhow, want you to be anxious,” said he, “but as long as he is continually anxious himself, and gets constantly tired, those headaches will probably be rather frequent. He has hadattacks during these last three days, and pain like that is good for nobody. I certainly hope he will get rest soon. We do not want it to become chronic.”
“Chronic?”
“Yes; your nerves, you know, form habits, like everything else.”
Maud was silent a moment; an anxiety she had felt while she was waiting for Thurso to come in last night reminded her again of its presence. She did not much want to speak of it, but, after all, she was speaking to the old doctor whom she had known since she was a child. Also, she very much wanted to be reassured.
“He takes laudanum when he is in great pain,” she said. “Is that wise?”
“It would be unwise of him to do so frequently, or continue doing so for long. There, again, is a reason why we do not want his nerves to form the habit of pain. I did not know, bythe way, that he took it. It was prescribed for him, of course.”
“Oh yes; I know it was.”
Dr. Symes seemed to dismiss that from his mind.
“Then it is no business of mine,” he said. “Now I hope—and to-day there is cause for hoping—that we have seen the worst of this epidemic. There has been no fresh case to-day, so before many days are over I think Lord Thurso can get away. I tell you frankly that I shall be glad when he can.”
“Ought he to go now, do you think?” asked Maud.
Dr. Symes considered this before he replied.
“No, I think he ought to stop here,” he said at length. “It is true he is running a certain danger of producing a chronic irritation and—how shall I say it?—exasperation of nerves. Also, there is a certain risk in continuing to take laudanum. But, after all, he is sensible, and he iscertainly brave, and I think for the present his sense of duty is right in keeping him here. Our orders and the nurses’ orders are obeyed when they know he is here and is backing us up. You have no idea of the difficulties we had before you and he came. Well, I must get back to the village again. And, Lady Maud, I like plucky people like you and your brother. Good night. The patients will begin to arrive early to-morrow.”
Dr. Symes, brisk and active for all his sixty years and grey head, hopped nimbly onto his bicycle, and rode off, feeling that Maud had done him good. Apart from the Raynhams, his notions of the British aristocracy were founded on those curious volumes known as society novels, books which his wife read aloud to him in the evening with horrified gusto. These works presented this class in a more lurid but less pleasantlight. But Lord Thurso and his sister were both so simple and so good, to use that ordinary word in its most ordinary sense. They made no more fuss over the reception of forty patients suffering from typhoid into the house than they would have made over a few friends dropping in to tea. No thought of risk or inconvenience seemed to have occurred to either of them; it appeared to them the most natural thing in the world that the house should be turned into a hospital, and though professionally he believed that there was no risk, still he felt that the wicked countesses and marchionesses in “Lepers” or “Lady Babylon” would not have behaved quite like this. Indeed, for one half moment he let himself wonder what even Mrs. Symes would have said if he had suggested taking cases into their house. But it had seemed to that beautiful girl whom he had left on the doorstep with her fishing-rod in one hand and a landing-net weighed down with half a dozen sea-trout in the other a perfectly naturalthing to do. It was this courageous acceptation of events that did him good.
Thurso, to his sister’s great relief, came down to dinner in the most equable and cheerful spirits. All trace of his headache had vanished, and Maud thought that Dr. Symes must have been mistaken about it, for, as he had said, he had only guessed that Thurso must be in great pain. In any case, it was her part to try to take his thoughts away from fever and neuralgia, and all the darker side of things, and she instantly began on her own poaching comedy by the river.
“Thurso, I have broken the record to-day,” she said. “I have done the most awful thing that has ever been done. After you went out this morning, I took a rod down to the river to look about for sea-trout, and was firm in a salmon—oh no, he saw me hook it—when Mr. Bertie Cochrane appeared. How could you forget to tell me you had let the fishing? There I was,tied to it—to his fish. He watched me play it. And, of course, I didn’t know him from Adam.”
For the moment Thurso was almost as horrified as Maud had been.
“Good Lord!” he said; “I hope you lost the fish.”
“Not at all. It was entirely owing to Mr. Cochrane that I landed it, for in the nick of time down came Duncan—his gillie, not ours at all—with a gaff. Mr. Cochrane looked on with interest and sympathy.”
Thurso had laid down his knife and fork, and a huge grin was beginning to take the place of his horror.
“Go on, quick,” he said.
“I will. Mr. Cochrane had a rod, and I said I supposed he was going over to Scarsdale. No, he was not. So, with a slight addition of stiffness, I thanked him for his help, but said that this was your river. He explained. Oh, Thurso,did you ever? And I asked him to come and dine to-morrow, and eat some of his own fish. He is coming.”
Thurso shouted with laughter.
“Oh, what would I not give to have been there when the light broke on you!” he said. “And to ask him to dinner—add insult to injury! You were caught poaching—poaching, you know—and then you ask the rightful owner to have some. Did you tell him, by the way, that we were a typhoid hospital?”
“Yes; he didn’t mind.”
“Oh, Maud—oh, Maud! An American, too! He will probably telegraph an account of it to the New York press, and it will come out all over the States with enormous headlines!”
“Oh, I think not,” said she. “I’m sure he wouldn’t do it.”
Thurso recollected his own meeting with Cochrane.
“No, I don’t think he would,” he said. “BecauseI met him in the village yesterday evening, and I agree he doesn’t look like that. Go on.”
“Isn’t that enough?” she asked. “Afterwards we sat and talked as if I hadn’t been caught poaching at all. He begged me to go on fishing, too, and he did it, somehow, so simply and naturally that I thanked him and did go on. I caught six sea-trout, too, and we’re just going to have some of them. He really made it easy for me to say ‘Yes.’ In fact, it would have been absurd to say ‘No.’”
Thurso laughed again.
“That almost beats everything,” he said. “You are absolutely brazen.”
“Not in the least. When you see Mr. Cochrane you will understand how simple it was.”
“I have seen him, as I told you. It occurred to me then that we might ask him to dinner. It was that I began to suggest last night, but you were so curious to know what I was going to say that I stopped.”
Maud looked at him reproachfully.
“Oh, Thurso, if you had gone on you would have saved me from all this!” she said. “But don’t you understand how it was possible for me to accept?”
Thurso considered.
“Yes, even though I did not speak to him, I think perhaps I do. He did look to be the sort of man whose sea-trout you might catch after he had caught you poaching his salmon. That is rather a high compliment. It is a great gift to be able to make people not ashamed of themselves. I should have absolutely sunk into the earth.”
“And Mr. Cochrane would very kindly have pulled you out,” said Maud. “At least, he pulled me out.”
There was a short pause, during which Maud occupied her mouth with sea-trout and her mind with the question as to whether she should tell Thurso that Mr. Cochrane was a ChristianScientist. But his remark that it was not his plan to proselytise decided her against doing so. Then Thurso spoke again.
“Do you know, to-day is the first on which I haven’t felt absolutely swamped and water-logged with depression and anxiety?” he said. “There has been no fresh case since morning, and Duncan’s wife, who, like Sandie, was almost despaired of, has taken a sudden inexplicable turn for the better. She was dying of sheer exhaustion from fever, and now all day she has been gaining strength—gaining it quickly, too, though you would have said there was no strength left. I saw Duncan this evening. He—really, I wondered whether he had been drinking.”
“Drinking?” asked Maud. “Why, he is a tee-totaller!”
“The worst sort of drunkard,” remarked Thurso rather cynically.
“Oh, don’t be cheap!”
Thurso looked up at her, and then nodded.
“Quite right,” he said; “it’s a pity. Sorry.”
“You old darling! But Duncan’s as sober as I am. Soberer. Go on. It interests me.”
“Well, it all leads back to Mr. Cochrane again,” he said. “Don’t interrupt. I looked in to-night, as I told you, and there was Duncan sitting by his wife’s bedside, nursing the baby, who was, with extraordinary gurgles, trying to swarm up his beard. And his wife lay there, different, changed, with life instead of death in her face. But fancy bringing a baby into a room where there is typhoid! So I got Duncan and the child out, and cursed him, and told him that his wife was really on the mend, as the nurse had just told me. I thought he would like to know that, but apparently he had known it all day. Our Mr. Cochrane had told him this morning that his wife was getting better all the time.”
“Yes, I heard him tell him,” said Maud.
“Well, but how did he know?” asked Thurso. “Twelve hours ago they thought she couldn’t livethrough the day. And what the deuce has our Mr. Cochrane got to do with it? Who is he? What is he? How did he know?”
Maud had no reply to this at once; “our Mr. Cochrane” had repudiated preaching on his own account—clearly, then, it was not her business to state his views.
“Well, he hasn’t done any harm, anyhow,” she said.
“Of course not; but it’s an odd coincidence. Mr. Cochrane tells Duncan that his wife is getting better, and Duncan has only got to walk home, and finds it is so. Oh, and another thing: Dr. Symes called there this afternoon, and Duncan kindly but quite firmly refused to let him in at all unless he promised not to give her any more medicine. So he promised, because when he saw her last she was absolutely past all hope; also, he doesn’t much believe in medicines, though you needn’t mention it. He saw, of course, the enormous improvement, and wanted to take hertemperature, but Duncan again firmly, and with beaming smiles, would not allow it. I suppose he considered a thermometer a sort of modified medicine.”
“Well?”
“Dr. Symes insisted, and eventually Duncan, with great respect, threw the thermometer out of the window. That is why I supposed he was drunk.”
“No, I’m sure he wasn’t drunk,” said Maud. “Go on, dear.”
They had finished dinner, and Thurso rose to get a cigarette.
“That’s the end,” he said. “Dr. Symes tells me he has seen that sort of recovery before, but what is odd is that our Mr. Cochrane should have foreseen it. Is he a crank, do you think, or a spiritualist, or some sort of innocent lunatic?”
Again Maud mentally reviewed her decision not to do Mr. Cochrane’s preaching (which hewould not do for himself) for him, and again endorsed her policy.
“How do you expect me to know?” she asked. “I talked to him for ten minutes. But he’s coming to dine to-morrow, and you can judge for yourself. And how have you been? No headache?”
He glanced at her sharply and sideways a moment, with a movement of vague suspicion.
“Headache?” he said; “I haven’t seemed much like headache this evening, have I? Why?”
“Only Dr. Symes told me he was afraid you were in pain. I am delighted he was mistaken.”
Thurso shrugged his shoulders.
“Lord, what bad guesses a skilful doctor makes!” he said. “He half wants people to be ill, so that he may have the pleasure of curing them.”
Maud naturally asked no further question, and told herself that Dr. Symes had simply made what Thurso called a “bad guess.” But, knowing themboth, it seemed to her odd that he should have thought that Thurso had been suffering if he had not. For it was only when he was in the extremes of pain that anyone could guess that he was on the rack, for it had to be strongly screwed before he visibly winced. For one moment it flashed through her mind that he had been in pain, had perhaps taken laudanum to stop it, and had—well, not chosen to tell her so. Yet his answer, though as a matter of fact it was slightly evasive in form, clearly bore the construction that he had been free from pain all day. So she dismissed that at once, telling herself that it was scandalous of her, though involuntarily only and momentarily, to suspect Thurso of insincerity. Thus, the pause only lasted a moment before she spoke of something else. But in that moment he had said to himself, “Shall I tell her?”
The two sat up rather late that night, for Maud disliked going to bed nearly as much asshe disliked getting up, and it was usually Thurso who moved the adjournment. But to-night he was extraordinarily alert; as he had said, to-day had been the first on which there had been any break in the tempest of illness which was devastating the village, and his spirits seemed to have risen in sympathy, enabling him to think and speak of other things than the immediate preoccupations which surrounded them. And chief among these was London and the reopening of Thurso House. His father, the late Earl, had died just a year ago, and next week the house was to celebrate its re-entry into London life with an adequately magnificent ball. His wife, who had stopped in town, was seeing to all arrangements, and when Catherine undertook to see to a thing, it was unnecessary for anyone else, however closely concerned, to feel any anxiety as to the completeness with which it would be seen to.
“I heard from Catherine this morning,” he said—“at least, I heard from her typewriter. Shedid not even sign it. She is up to the eyes in a million affairs, and hopes I am well. Really it seems to me that most of the festivities, as well as all the charities of London would collapse unless she saw to them. And there’s the ball next week. I shall go up for the night, though whether I stop depends on how things go on here. Of course, you’ll come.”
Maud looked at him in mild surprise; it was as if he had said, “Of course, you’ll have breakfast to-morrow.”
“It isnotimprobable,” she said. “Or did you really suppose that your house was going to make its debut again, and me not there?”
“Oh, well, I didn’t know,” he said.
“You do now. What fun it will be! It will be crammed with kings and queens like ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Thurso, what a good thing Catherine is so smart! I hate the word, but she is: she is magnificent. She said the other day that there are only two sorts of entertaining possible—theone where you have a great party, with kings and queens, and everybody in orders and tiaras; and the other where it is just tea-gowns and two or three real friends. I don’t believe she has ever had a party at which there were more than eight people and less than forty.”
“It’s usually not less than forty,” remarked Thurso.
“Oh no; it’s often less than eight. Of course I shall come. Do have a special all the way to town; it will be so expensive! Catherine—I must quote her again—says, ‘Either have a special or go third.’”
“With a preference for specials?”
“Not at all. She doesn’t care which it is. She often goes third, and talks to the people. And on the tops of omnibuses. But she doesn’t go in cabs: she says they are middling, like parties of twenty to meet a Serene Transparency. If she can’t have the twenty-five million horse-power motor, up she gets on the omnibus. She neverstops it, either, because of the horses. She runs after it, and jumps quite beautifully. I do admire her so.”
Thurso laughed.
“So do I. And it’s something to admire your wife when you have been married twelve years!”
Maud made a little sideways movement in her chair, as if her position had become suddenly uncomfortable. Her brother continued.
“I don’t believe a woman ever existed who was so obviously admirable,” he said. “We went to the opera together the night before I came up here, and as she was going on to some large ball afterwards, she was—well, suitably dressed.”
Maud felt, as she always felt when Thurso talked like this, as if a file had been drawn across her teeth. She tried to turn, not the conversation, but its tone.
“Oh, how?” she asked, with deep and genuine interest; for, like all sensible girls, she lovedbeautiful clothes, especially when beautiful people wore them. “She always makes everybody else look dowdy or overdressed. That must be such fun.”
“Well, she had the diamond palisade, as she calls it, in her hair, and what she calls the ruby plaster all, all down her.”
“Yes, but her dress?” said Maud. “I know the plaster.”
“Her dress? Goodness knows what it was made of, but it looked—you know what whipped cream looks like compared to cream—it looked like whipped gold. Sort of froth of gold: not yellow, but gold. Melba was in the middle of the jewel-song when we came in, but at the end of it nobody was paying the slightest attention to her. Every glass in the house was turned on Catherine.”
He got up and threw his cigarette-end away.
“And she’s my wife,” he added; and the four words carried tons of irony.
Maud got up also. She hated this: it was the process of the file again. She knew that Thurso talked to no one but her like that, but she deplored that he felt like that.
“Oh, it is such a pity, dear,” she said.
“That she’s my wife?”
“Oh, Thurso, don’t! All the worst of you spoke then. No, a pity that you feel like that. You are both such splendid people, really. And——”
“And I bore her, and she gets on my nerves,” he remarked.
Maud gave a little frown and gesture of disapproval.
“You should never say such things,” she said. “It is a mistake to say them just because they are—well, partly true. If they were untrue it would not matter. But to let yourself say a true thing, when that thing is a pity, only makes it more real. Speech confirms everything. Good gracious! if people would only hold their tongueson unpleasant topics, how the things themselves would improve! Oh, I am a philosopher.”
He looked at her with great tenderness and affection.
“Are you?” he said. “I like you, anyhow. Go on.”
Maud gave a long sigh.
“You don’t do her justice,” she said, “any more than she does you justice. You don’t allow for each other. And—Thurso, I don’t believe she is happy any more than you are.”
“Why do you think that? She carves forty-eight hours out of every day, and fills them all, while the world looks on in envious admiration. That is her ideal, and she always attains it. And even her husband claps his hands.”
Maud took him by the shoulders and shook him gently.
“Idiot!” she said—“dreadful idiot! Shut up! I am going to bed. Thank me for catching so many beautiful fish.”
“I am not sure that I thank you for asking Mr. Cochrane to dinner to-morrow,” he said. “I love these quiet evenings with you.”
“Thanks, dear. I get on tolerably, too. Good night. What a nice day it has been, and what nice things we’ve got to think about to send us to sleep! No fresh case of typhoid to-day for the people, and no headache for you, and a salmon for me. I am so sleepy that I don’t mind going to bed.”
“Maud,” he began, then stopped.
No, he could not tell her. In himself he was ashamed of having taken laudanum, and was ashamed, also, of having deceived her, for he saw he had done that. Since, then, he was ashamed of it, there was no need that she should know.
“Well?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
“Thurso, your manners are atrocious!” she said. “Both yesterday and to-day you have begun to say something, and then stopped. I shall keepdoing that all to-morrow, and you will see how maddening it is.”
He laughed again.
“Good night, dear old boy,” said she.
The next day was wholly given up to the installation of the typhoid patients. Carpets, rugs, and curtains had been rolled up, unnecessary furniture removed, and beds brought up and down from the basement and the higher floors, so that the utmost accommodation might be provided in the big rooms on the first-floor. Dr. Symes, in consultation with the other doctors, had settled that it was better to run a little risk, and move even bad cases up here, since the day was dry and warm, for the sake of the more immediate attention and greater abundance of fresh air than was possible when patients were scattered about in tiny cottage-rooms, and the ambulance, going backwards and forwards all day, brought grave burdens. But by five in the afternoon the workof transportation was done, and the house was full. Afterwards the doctors went the round of the whole house, and found the results satisfactory. Not one, apparently, had suffered from the move, and now, instead of the patients being in small, ill-ventilated rooms, they were airily housed, with every facility for constant supervision from the nurses. Most, too, were going on well; but there was one case, that of Sandie the gillie, which was as serious as it could be. As often when the strong are ill, it seemed as if the fever, vampire-like, sucked out his strength and itself thrived and grew strong on it; and Dr. Symes, before he left, had given orders that he should be sent for at once if any further unfavourable symptoms occurred. Duncan’s wife, it is true, had been through a passage no less perilous that very morning, but, with every wish to be hopeful, it was unlikely that two should be snatched from the very snap of the jaws of death.
Thurso had been in the house all day, and when the move was finished he went down into the room where he and Maud lived, feeling desperately tired, and intending to get an hour’s sleep before dinner. But to have an intention, however strong, laudable, and innocent, does not imply that the very best efforts are able to put it into effect; and instead, in this instance, he had no sooner composed himself to sleep than he felt that, though the surface of his brain was drowsy and tired beyond all words, something below was broadly and staringly awake.
He had lain down on the sofa with his face averted from the light and his eyes shut, so as to give the utmost welcome to sleep, but it was not sleep that came, but a series of vivid though unreal images, born of memory. First an interminable series of stretchers, each with its swathed, fever-stricken burden, came up the stairs, and just when he was beginning to feel that this monotonous procession was the precursor of sleep,another image twitched him and claimed his attention. Maud had gone fishing, poaching, yesterday, and had enjoyed good sport; thus the procession of stretchers gave way to the vision of her landing fish after fish, all dead-beat, all silver-sided, till it seemed that this iteration, too, must end in unconsciousness. But something jarred it, and, instead, Catherine stood at the head of the stairs in Thurso House, dressed in rubies, with a sort of “love-in-the-mist” of gold round her, receiving kings and queens, and queens and kings, all in crowns. But that, again, ended, not in slumber, but in something very antagonistic to it. There was just a little stab—it was hardly pain—inside his head, as remote as the sound of an electric bell in the basement. Then it was repeated, but this time louder and more insistently, as if the ringer, on the one hand, was impatient, and as if the bell was beginning to come up the back-stairs. Then—it was right to call it pain now—the sound grew louder, and the fingerpressed the bell more firmly, while the bell itself came closer. He was quite wide awake now, surface of brain and secret cells alike, and he opened his eyes. Then he said out loud:
“I am in for another.”
That seemed to be the case, for the prediction began to be instantly fulfilled. The half-drowsy similitude of the electric bell vanished, and instead there was pain—clear, clean pain. It stabbed half a dozen times with a firm, practised touch, as a pianist strikes a chord or two before he begins his piece. Then it paused for a moment. Immediately afterwards it began again, but differently. Instead of stabbing at the nerve, it laid a cold, steady finger on it, and that finger grew quietly steadier and colder, till something inside his head seemed to ring with it, as a musical glass rings when it is adroitly stroked. Then came a brilliant passage of all sorts of pain, as if the orchestra had begun to accompany that masterly solo. Then, as the horn holds a long,lazy, piercing note, pain pierced and dwelt in him, while wonderful arpeggios of torture from neighbouring nerves crossed it. That was the prelude.
In his room upstairs, which he could reach in ten seconds, there stood on his dressing-table a bottle, not very large, which contained not only the antidote and instant cure of his suffering, but also blissful content and the gift of ecstatic well-being. But the very fact that yesterday he had so lightly (or so it seemed now) had recourse to that, deceiving Maud, and had uncorked Paradise, made him at this moment brace himself against the temptation of resorting to it again. If he had got to bear pain—and it really appeared just now that he had—then he would set his teeth and bear it, sooner than, at the cost of another step in the formation of a damnable habit, drug himself into remission from his pain, or, what even now, when he was suffering hell, tempted him more closely, into that sense of divine harmonyof being that the drug gave him. He longed that the pain should cease; he longed even more for that seventh heaven of content. It was all in that small bottle, with its brown elixir.
Then his desire disguised itself, and made a more insidious approach. There was a guest coming to dinner to-night. He could not simply retire to bed, leaving Maud to entertain Mr. Cochrane alone, nor, on the other hand, did it seem to him to be physically possible that he should be able to sit through dinner if in this state, for already the beads of anguish were thick upon him. And he knew well that this was but the prelude; it was only an orchestral performance. Soon the curtain would go up; the singers would be there too. It was intolerable enough now; he had never known so full an orchestra. Yet he could stifle them, he could extinguish the singers, by a little draught, a swallowing in the throat.
But his will, his intention, remained firm. Hewas not going to silence them like that. For now he knew quite well that his desire for the drug was acute, not only because of the blessed relief from pain that it would give him, but because of the intense physical enjoyment that it brought. Then, with head splitting and buzzing with pain, he went upstairs to dress and make ready to entertain his guest. There were forty other guests, too, in the house, but those were well looked after. Also they were in bed, lucky devils!
Breeding, and what is implied by that much-abused word, includes courage of a quiet but rather heroic kind, since it has no stirring aids to help it, no moral trumpets and drums to stimulate it to its shining deeds. Yet it demands a greater command of self, a greater obedience to the courtesies of life, to be courageous in hum-drum and unexciting circumstances than in those to which romance and adventure are auxiliary; andcertainly to-night Thurso’s perfectly natural and even gravely convivial manner towards his guest and his sister, while he himself was suffering pain of the most excruciating kind, was courage that in its small and difficult sphere deserved some sort of domestic Victoria Cross. Though most people have more manliness than they themselves or anybody else would have credited them with when pain has got to be borne, or a heart-rending situation faced, yet to have the ready smile, the attentive ear, the genial manner, under such circumstances is a fine exhibition of the courage of good breeding. More than this, too, Thurso had faced before dinner, when the little bottle on his dressing-table reminded him that pain need not be borne a moment longer than he chose.
But all through dinner Thurso achieved the outward signs of inward well-being, and it was through no remissness or failure on his part, but by instinct born of intimate knowledge on Maud’s,that she knew he was going through hells of physical torture. Sometimes he just bit his lip or suddenly stroked his long moustache; sometimes in the middle of a sentence he would make a pause that was scarcely noticeable, as if he but considered for a word; sometimes he gripped knife and fork so that the skin over his knuckles showed white; but that was all. He talked quite easily and naturally, made reference to Maud’s poaching expedition, and its satisfactory results as far as dinner was concerned, for the salmon was excellent, and went on to speak of the epidemic which had brought them both up North.
“But at last it shows some sign of abating,” he said, “though we are still ignorant of the source of it. In fact, there has been no fresh case either to-day or yesterday.”
Maud looked up at Mr. Cochrane, wishing rather intently that he would preach his gospel. She felt that it might do Thurso good, or, at any rate, take his mind off the pain that flickeredround him like a shower of daggers. But the gospel was veiled, at any rate.
“I think it is so good of you to bring the cases up here,” he said. “Lady Maud told me yesterday that you were doing so. I am sure it must help towards recovery to remove people from surroundings which they associate with illness to fresh, bright places.”
He paused a moment.
“One sees that every day,” he said. “If you associate a place with pleasure, you are pleased to go there again. The mind, left to itself, clings so strongly to material things. If one has been happy in a certain room, one thinks that those surroundings will tend to produce happiness again. It is one of the illusions we get rid of last.”
Thurso began to speak.
“You mean,” he said, and then stopped, for an access of pain so sharp seized him that he could not get on.
Maud saw, and gave him a sudden quick look of sympathy, which annoyed him, and, for the first time, Cochrane saw too. But after a moment he recovered himself, and went on.
“You mean I shall always associate this house with typhoid and sick, suffering people?” he asked. “That is not very cheering.”
Bertie Cochrane smiled, looking with those happy, childlike eyes first at Maud, then at his host.
“No, I mean just the opposite,” he said. “You will always associate this house with recovery, with the sweeping away of illness and pain.”
Dinner was at an end, and the pause of cigarette-lighting followed. Bertie Cochrane had taken one as he spoke, but he did not light it, and laid it down again on the cloth. Then he got up.
“Lord Thurso, you are wonderfully brave,” he said. “I am sure you feel in horrible pain. Letme go right away now. I have enjoyed coming up to dine with Lady Maud and you ever so much.”
For the last minute or two the pain had become so much more acute that Thurso’s forehead dripped with perspiration. All dinner, too, the longing, the drunkard’s desire, to get to his room and take a dose from that healing bottle had been growing like some nightmare figure. And now, when his pain, in spite of all his gallant efforts to conceal it, was discovered, the desire became overwhelming—he could no longer master it.
“Pray don’t think of going away,” he said, “but if you will excuse me for a few minutes, I think I will go upstairs. I have some medicine there that never fails to set me right, and I shall be down again quite shortly. Yes, I may as well confess it, the pain has been pretty bad.”
For one moment it appeared that Cochrane had something on the tip of his tongue, for he turned eagerly to Thurso, who had risen, and waswiping his face. But it was clear to Maud, when he did speak, that he was not giving expression to the original impulse.
“I shall be delighted to stop,” he said, “if Lady Maud does not mind my being on her hands. I wanted so much to ask about one or two of the pools on the river.”
Thurso left the room, and Cochrane turned to her with the same eagerness as he had shown a minute ago.
“I am so willing, so eager to treat your brother,” he said, “but I didn’t like suggesting it to him. I did not know if he would not think me some very special kind of lunatic.”
Maud shook her head. She knew quite well it would be perfectly idle to suggest such a thing to Thurso, and, indeed, to her sense, too, there was something unthinkable about calling into play the power that rules the world in order to cure neuralgia. Besides, the poppy-juice, though she did not wholly like his taking it, would do that.The other was like cracking your egg for breakfast with a steam-hammer.
“Oh, thank you very much,” she said, “but his medicine always puts him right.”
And she instantly turned the conversation to the subject he had suggested, and spoke of certain pools in the river which he had found difficulty in fishing satisfactorily.
Thurso, meantime, half blind with pain, had almost run to his room, for he longed for the relief which awaited him there as the desert-parched traveller longs for water. And keenly as he desired the cessation of pain, much more keenly did he thirst for the ecstatic sense of well-being that the drug produced. All day, even before this racking neuralgia came on, he had been almost unable to think of anything but that. He had thirsted all day for that stimulated consciousness, that huge, vivid sense of happiness, which already seemed to him the proper, normal level of life. Already, too, he was beginning to be dishonestwith himself, just as yesterday he had been dishonest with Maud; and even as he poured it out he told himself, knowing it was untrue, that he would not be taking it if Mr. Cochrane had not been dining with them. It was inhospitable and impossible to send him away five minutes after dinner; it was equally impossible that he should spend the evening alone with Maud. And though that, so far as it went, was true, it was not the essential truth.
He took the glass in his hand, torturing himself, now that relief was near and assured, with voluntary delay, even as the caged beast which has been roaring for its meat sits fierce and snarling when it has been given it before it begins to assuage the hunger-pangs which it now knows it can satisfy, and deliberately prolonged for a moment more this stabbing pain. He sat down in an easy-chair, and put his feet up on another, in order to make himself quite comfortable before he drank it. His room looked north-west, and theyhad dined early, so that the sun still shone in at his window, flooding the room in cool crystal light. Then he drank.
Inside his head during this last hour he felt as if a sort of piston-rod from a cylinder had been making firm strokes onto some bleeding, mangled nerve. The end of the piston-rod was fitted sometimes with a blunt hammer, so that it crushed the nerve, sometimes with a sharp needle-point which went deeper, and seemed to penetrate the very home and heart of pain. Then perhaps the piston-rod would cease for a few seconds, while an iron-toothed, rusty rake collected the smashed fragments of nerve together again, so that the hammer should not fail to hit them squarely, and made a neat little pyramid of the pieces on the place where it would descend. This raking together (the image was so vivid to him that he almost believed that it actually took place) was about the worst part. He knew that in a minute the hammer would begin again. But now, a few moments only afterhe had taken his dose, the change began. Though the hammer did not cease to fall, its blows no longer produced pain. They produced instead a warm, tingling sensation, like that which the hand feels when it spreads out icy fingers to a friendly blaze. And that tingling warmth felt its way gradually through his head, passed down his neck, and slowly flooded body and limbs to toe and finger tip. He forgot what pain meant; he was unable to realise even before the piston-rod ceased to beat what it connoted, knowing only what the oncoming of this tide of physical bliss was like.
Every sense, too, was quickened and stimulated. The sun that still shone in at his windows burned with a ruddier and more mellow light. The glory of it was soft but incredibly brilliant, and to his quickened sense of smell the air that came in through the open sash was redolent with the honey-scent of warm heather. The blind had been a little drawn down over the top of the window, but whereas, when he was dressing fordinner an hour ago, the sound of it flapping against the frame was a fretting and irritating thing, it now seemed to him to give out flute-like and vibrating notes, while the taste of the cigarette which he had lit five minutes ago, and brought up with him, had a flavour new and exquisite. The present moment, and the sensations of it, were all quickened into the vividness of dream-life, while it was but vaguely that he remembered that downstairs Maud was sitting with a very pleasant American fellow who had come to dinner. At dinner he remembered, but again vaguely, that he was not sure if he liked him; now he appeared to be the most charming of companions. But with the gates of Paradise here upstairs flung wide for his reception, he could not fix his mind very clearly on him. No doubt, if he made an effort, he could recall more about him, and remember his name, which just now eluded him; but an effort was the one thing he certainly would not make, since it might disturb or destroy thisperfect equilibrium on which he was balanced. And there was really no reason, so it now appeared, why he should go downstairs again. Maud and her poaching friend would talk about fishing for awhile, and then he—ah, yes! Bertie Cochrane—would go away. They would both easily understand his own non-appearance. He had suffered tortures; no inquisitor or master of the rack would refuse to grant him this little rest and compensation.