by E. F. Benson
THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE.
CHAPTER I.
The little travelling-clock that stood on the broad marblechimney-piece, looking strangely minute and insignificant on the slabsupported by two huge Caryatides, had some minutes ago rapped out thehour of eight in its jingling voice, but here, in these high latitudesof Caithness, since the time of the year was close on midsummer, the sunstill swung some way above the high hills to the north-west. It shonefull, with the cool brightness of the light of Northern evenings, intothe deep-seated window where Maud Raynham was sitting, waiting, withoutimpatience, for impatience was alien to her serene habit of mind, butwith a little touch of anxiety, for her brother's return. The anxiety,the wish that he would come, could not be absent, since affection andall its kindred cares were the hearth-side inhabitants of her heart.Also, it must be confessed, she was extremely hungry, and wanted dinnerquite enormously.
The window in which she sat was one of six, for the room was of greatextent, and looked, perhaps, even larger than it really was owing to itshalf-dismantled condition, while the shining parquetted floor, almostbare of carpets, was like a surface of dim looking-glass, multiplyingthe area. In one corner was a small table, laid for two, where theywould belatedly dine when he came in; near it was a man's table,littered with correspondence and the apparatus of tobacco, while closeby the fireplace was a low easy-chair, with a basket disgorgingneedlework beside it, which indicated where she herself had been makingher nest until she had strolled across to the window, when the clockstruck eight, to enjoy the last half-hour of sunlight, and also to catchsight of her brother when his figure should appear coming up thestraight riband of the road towards the house, from the village below,where he had been all day. Though the month was mid-June, a gay sparkleof fire, born of the delectable mixture of peat and coal, burned on thehearth between the two marble Caryatides, making an agreeable brightnessfor the eye, and destined after sunset to make a warmth not lessagreeable; for nights even now were not often without the chill thatturned to frost before morning, and this evening, in spite of the clearshining of the low sun, there was in the air that crystalline brightnessthat portended cold when the direct rays were withdrawn. For the housestood high and exposed on these grey and purple-heathered hills ofCaithness, without protection from neighbouring tops or screen ofwind-swept trees, and the full vigour of the temperatures both of noonand midnight was felt there without abatement.
This table laid for dinner in one corner, the man's littered desk, andthe woman's nook near the fireplace, all planted together in one bigroom out of the many big rooms that this great grey house contained,gave the note as of gipsy and unpremeditated encampment, and this wasborne out also by the holland sheetings that had not been removed fromthe two big glass chandeliers which hung from the ceiling, and whichloosely enveloped certain large articles of furniture, and made a pallin front of a bookcase. All this pointed to a sudden and temporaryoccupation, as if those who had taken possession of the house werecontent with the mere necessities of life, and gave no thought to itsadornments and decorations. Such was indeed the case, for Lord Thursoand his sister, Lady Maud Raynham, had arrived here a few days ago only,preceded by a telegram to the caretaker to make habitable a bedroom foreach of them, and a living-room for them together. They had come, infact, suddenly and in mid-season, for in the village of Achnaleesh, overwhich Maud's eyes now looked, a mile below the house, there had brokenout, virulent and appalling, an epidemic of typhoid fever; and sinceAchnaleesh, like everything else within those wide horizons, was part ofLord Thurso's immense Scotch property, it had been clear to him, withoutdebate or question on the subject, that it was his business to leavetown at once and come up here to see how far human efforts could availto check this pestilence, and relieve the sufferings of those homesalready stricken with it. His wife, however, though not her heart only,but her efforts and active support, were ever at the service ofcharitable schemes, had not in the least seen her way to accompanyinghim. If Thurso thought he had better go, by all means let him do so, butshe failed to see what object there could be in her accompanying himwhich would compensate for the inconvenience of leaving town just now.For herself, she could see nothing gained by the journey of either ofthem, since he was in hourly communication with his agent, a reliableand careful man, who would see that everything medically desirable wascarried out. But she was not aware how either his presence or hers wouldbe conducive to the effectiveness of sanitary measures; yet, since sheknew that her husband looked on many questions with a different eye fromhers, she had no more attempted to dissuade him from going than he hadtried to persuade her to come up with him. But it had seemed quiteobvious to Maud that Thurso must not go by himself, and without eitherpublicly or privately criticising his wife's refusal to go, she hadsimply taken her place. Indeed, she had not even felt the inclination tocriticise; the things that kept Catherine in London were such as couldill be cancelled. Maud had hardly offered her brother her companionship;she had just joined him at an early dinner, and driven to King's Crosswith him. Perhaps it seemed almost equally natural to him that sheshould come.
* * * * *
In any case, the state of things which they found on their arrivalseemed to them both to have rendered his coming imperative. Even in thelast twenty-four hours there had been a portentous increase of cases,and a panic terror, such as is only possible among folks ignorant forthe most part of all illness except such as shadows old age, andnaturally of rude health, had seized the village at this sudden smitingdown of the strongest and healthiest among them. Mixed with this panic,too, was the fear and distrust of doctors, and the inability to believethat it could be right, when a man was prostrate with the exhaustion oflong-continued fever, to deny him a morsel of meat or a crust of solidfood. Doctors were there and nurses, as Thurso had ordered, but it wasthe obedience to their orders which, till he came, had been so hard toenforce. For this alone he knew he had been right in coming himself,apart from the reason of sentiment which forbade him to be absent, sincea word from him, his expressed wish, was more potent than all the ordersthat doctors might give. For feudal obedience to that long and kindlyrace of landlords was far more paramount than medical advice; and sincethe laird ranged himself on the side of the doctors, who ordered windowsto be opened when all other folk of commonsense would be inclined toshut every chink and cranny by which air might enter and give cold tothe patient, and forbade solid food even to those "puir bodies who hadbeen crying out half the nicht for a bit of bread," it was necessary tofollow these inscrutable decrees, though wise heads were shaken oversuch unreasonable treatment. Lady Maud, too, had had the fever, and withher own mouth testified that even she, when all delicacies were withinthe reach of her purse, had been content with nothing but milk, and nobite of solid food. That, too, carried weight.
* * * * *
Thurso had brought his valet up with him, but Maud's maid had so clearlyshown that she regarded the journey to the plague-stricken spot asequivalent to a sentence of death that she had left her behind in town,and the caretaker and his wife were the only other servants in the hugehouse that in autumn buzzed with attendance. Upstairs there was abedroom for each of them, and below just this one half-shrouded room, ina corner of which they encamped, leaving the rest to holland sheeting.Otherwise the great house was at siesta, and to Maud, who only knew ithitherto when it was a kaleidoscope of guests, there was somethingattractive in its repose. She had come straight from the whirl ofmid-season in London, at the time of the year when every day consists offorty-eight hours, and each hour of that day of a hundred and twentyminutes, all immensely occupied; and the contrast between the hour now,while she sat in the late evening sun in the window-seat waiting forThurso to return, and the corresponding hour which was going on inLondon, when she would have been hurrying out to dinner, with a busy daybehind her, and the opera and a ball to make short work of the night,gave her food for a certain quiet contentment. The
contrast was sopleasantly violent; it was like that moment when one steps suddenly, outof the blare and brilliance of a ball-room, where one has enjoyed thewaltz quite immensely, onto some quiet, tented balcony, with the treesof the park in front, and above the serenity of starlight. On a slightlylarger scale that contrast was hers now. She had stepped out from Londoninto the tranquillity of these Caithness moors. To say that she had notregretted leaving town would be untrue; she had, at any rate, regrettedthe clear necessity of leaving it, and coming up here with her brother.But it had been necessary for her to go; she could not possibly havedone otherwise, and though she was sorry (if she allowed her mind todwell on that) to have cut herself off from all the delightful thingsthat were going on in town, from the ceaseless stream of friends whomone met all day and all night, and who were amusing themselves sodiligently, even as she had been amusing herself, it was still quiteclear that somebody must come up here with Thurso, and that, sinceCatherine did not propose to come, she was the obvious person to do so.But she no more wasted sighs over what she was missing in town than shewasted sighs when she lost a fish. That particular fish was off; shewould angle for another fish instead. There were fish everywhere; therewas no situation, as far as she knew, out of which nothing was to becaptured. Here, indeed, she had her fish already hooked for her; she hadcome to keep house for Thurso, to make things cheerful for him as far asshe could, to prevent his being a prey to boredom and depression whenhe came home in the evening after a long day spent in the fever-strickenvillage. She had already found that there was room for her skill.
* * * * *
Nature had for many generations adopted a very reasonable plan withregard to the gifts she devoted to the Raynhams. As a family they wereextremely prolific, so with regard to them she had certainly said toherself, "There is not enough beauty at my disposal to go round. Whatshall I do about them? Shall I divide all the beauty which I feeljustified in investing in each generation, among all the children, orshall I endow one of them with it all, and leave the rest to look afterthemselves?"
She had adopted the latter and most sensible alternative, and now forsix or seven generations of Raynhams one of the many children had alwaysbeen endowed with extraordinary beauty, while the others had to becontent with a certain air of distinction and pleasantness which, afterall, made their plainness of feature a matter of small account.Sometimes Nature had made an error of judgment, as anyone seeing thefamily portraits must feel, in investing the beauty of a generation in aboy instead of a girl; but in this instance she had made no suchmistake, and here in the window, waiting for her brother, was the bankin which the physical fortunes of the family were, for this generation,invested. Like them all, Maud was tall, and charm in her had not beensacrificed to perfection of feature. For violet eyes, rare inthemselves, are so often no more than violet eyes, just pieces ofexquisite colour. But here the myriad moods of the girl's mind thatchased each other like cloud and shadow on some windy day of springacross dark seas, lit wonderful lights in those violet pools, or madethem dark as sapphires at night, and through these beautiful windows ofher soul a beautiful soul looked forth. Humour and an alert sense ofthe ludicrous, so valuable as weapons in that arsenal of the mind fromthe stores of which we have ever to be arming ourselves against theassaults of tiresome and aggressive circumstance, gleamed there, readyto set the mouth smiling; eager and kindly interest in the spectacle oflife was there, like a friendly face in the theatre; and deep down inthose eyes you would say that something not yet awake or aware of itselfslept and perhaps dreamed in its slumber of twenty years. And a manmight find his breath catch in his throat at the thought of awakeningit.
Being a Raynham, she was very fair of complexion, but her hair was notof that vague straw colour which loosely passes for gold, provided onlythat the skin is white and pink, but of that tint which has been touchedand proved by assay to be of the veritable metal. It grew low on herforehead and abundantly, but not in those excessive quantities thatinstantly call to the mind of the observer those ladies who stand allday with their backs to the windows of populous thoroughfares in orderto display the riotous excess of capillary covering which the use ofsome advertised unguent results in. Nor did her mouth ever so faintlyresemble the "Cupid's bow" which is so dear to the fashion-plates offeminine loveliness. It was not like a bow at all; it was rather large,rather full-lipped, but, like her eyes, or like aspen-leaves in spring,it was ever a-quiver to the breeze of the moment, instinctively obeyingthe kindly mind that prompted it. Nor were her lips vermilion--a huethat Nature happily does not employ in the colouring of the human mouth,leaving its employment to art--but they were of that veiled blood-tint,blood below something like oiled silk, that speaks of youth and vitalityas surely as vermilion speaks of the desire to be vital and young.
The window faced north-west, and the rays of the sun, near its setting,poured full onto her, so that she half closed her eyes as she lookedout across the golden haze of its level beams, while the breeze from theopen sash just stirred her hair. The lawn, so pleasant to walk on, thatcarpet of grass woven with moss, and so impossible to use for thedesecrating games which in England demand that a lawn be hard and flat,lay below the windows, enclosed in a riband of flower-bed, brilliantwith the strong colours that distinguish the North and the South fromthe more temperate zone. Beyond ran a wall of grey stone, some four feethigh, where tropaeolum was rampant, but outside the untamed moor brokeagainst it, as against a sea-wall, so that, going out from thegarden-gate, set in the middle of it, one foot might still be on thesoft tameness of the lawn, while the other was on the primeval heather.Just these few acres of garden and land for the house had been capturedand tamed out of the moorland, while outside and all round, ragged andprehistoric as the ocean, there flowed, like the sea round some sandcastle erected by children playing on the shore, the hills and heatherof Caithness, tossing and tumbling there, as they had tumbled and tossedbefore ever the foot of man had set his tread on this waste land. StoneAge and what-not had gone to their making, and in so short timeagain--reckoning as the stones and the vegetable life of thesetransitory things number the years--these little puny efforts of man,the lawns and the terraces, would be swallowed up again, and smotheredin the effervescence and fever of the world. Even now, how theinfinitesimal microbe of disease was prevailing against the fragile lifeof the poor bewildered peasants in the village set down there in awrinkle of the hill, invisible itself, but over which hung the bluesmoke of the fires kindled at sunset!
These thoughts were of sombre texture, and Maud, through whose head theywere passing unbidden, like scenes involuntarily presented, neverconsciously allowed herself indulgence in sombre thought, unless fromthe shadows she expected the birth of something bright. Yet even aftershe had acknowledged the sombreness and inutility of it, she let hermind dwell on it all a little longer, searching, though vaguely, forsome bracing counterblast. Of course, God was over all: she knew thatquite well, and actively believed it. But when a plague like this,caused, no doubt, by the carelessness and uncleanliness of man, wassnapping off lives like dried stalks, she would have liked to be able tothink of some image that reconciled the beneficence of God with thesehideous phenomena. It was impossible to see what ultimate good couldcome of letting people die like this. If from it all came some sign,some signal evidence of Divine power, it would be intelligible, or atleast salutary. As it was, they died; the place was stricken.
Then the instinct of youth, of health, of exuberant vitality, came toher aid, and she dismissed these questionings altogether. For herinstinct told her, though the thought did not quite reach the coherenceof definite words, how paralysing to oneself, and how infectious asregards others, is the indulgence of all dispiriting and depressingthought. Its microbes were as truly existent in the emotional andspiritual world as were the fever bacilli in Achnaleesh. But equallyexistent and even more potent and infectious were the sun-loving germsof confidence and the cheerful outlook. Already had she proved the truthof that in conn
ection with Thurso, who had come home about this hourlast night in a state of the blackest gloom and despair over the plightof this village of fever-stricken homes, but whose deadly depression hadbeen quickly dispersed by her steady optimism. Thurso was naturally ofextremely impressionable and imaginative mind, and the day, spent, as ithad been, in going from house to house, finding everywhere the apparatusof illness, or the simpler and grimmer apparatus of death, had been likesome hideous and real nightmare to him. Then, too, he tortured himselfwith a hundred unfounded suppositions. The epidemic seemed to him,though how he knew not, to be primarily his fault. Clearly, ifeverything--drains, water-supply, sanitary arrangements--had all been inperfect order, typhoid could not have come. The people were his tenants;it was his business to make sure that the conditions under which theylived were absolutely healthy.
* * * * *
Now Thurso, as a matter of fact, was the most conscientious and carefulof landlords, and these suppositions, though they had seemed hideouslyreal to him yesterday evening, were but morbid creations of his brain,and on them Maud, with her cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, hadacted like a charm. She knew well that he had in no detail beenneglectful or culpable, and that being certain, she had set herself, notdirectly to combat his doubts and questionings, but to turn hisattention resolutely away from them, just as a wise nurse will direct apatient's attention to some interest alien to his pain, and not, byattempting to prove that pain is only an impression conceived by thebrain, let his mind dwell on it. She had said to herself, "Darling oldThurso is terribly depressed. So I must distract his mind by beingfoolish."
So foolish she had been, but yet with art, so that it did not occur tohim that she was playing the part of a nurse. And as when David playedbefore Saul to exorcise the evil spirit, so she had played till for thetime he forgot his troubles, both real and imaginary, in the charm andgaiety which, though she made deliberate use of them, were yet naturalto her.
* * * * *
To-night, however, the obsession of his fears and despondency seemed tohave descended on and infected her, and it needed a long and consciouseffort to rid herself of them. For--this might be unreasonable too--sheknew at the back of her mind she was very anxious about him. Terribleas the epidemic was, it was producing a disproportionate effect on him;he was taking it too hard and far too self-consciously. From herintimate knowledge of him, and from that instinct which common bloodpossesses, which can enable a sister to know precisely what a brother isfeeling, though to a wife even the knowledge would be vague, she feltthat he was strung up almost to breaking-point. But she knew also, witha glow of secret pride in his courage, that nobody but she would haveguessed that, unless, perhaps, some skilled observer of nervoussymptoms. That from childhood had been the danger of his constitution:he was balanced on so fine an edge, ready to topple over into the gulfsof black despondency; but, with the courage of high breeding, he everconcealed his private hell from the world, turning a brave and tranquilaspect to it, even though he must wear a mask. But for her he wore none,and she often saw his inward torture, when others knew only of apleasant, courteous man--not gay, but of a manner that denoted quietenjoyment of the world and habitual serenity.
Maud got up from her seat in the window and closed the sash--for the airgrew instantaneously chilly, and the sun had dropped behind the hills tothe north-west, leaving her in shadow--still looking down the greyriband of road that led to the lodge and crossed the moor to the villagebeyond. Her mind was decidedly not at ease about her brother. Howinextricably soul and body were mixed and mingled! how instantaneouslythey acted and reacted on each other! For Thurso's anxiety about hispeople, a purely mental or spiritual condition, had kept him awake lastnight, and he had come down this morning with one of those excruciatingneuralgic headaches to which he had been liable all his life. Hissuffering mind had called in his body to suffer with it, and the bodilypain had reacted back on his mind, making the poor fellow--not to puttoo fine a point upon it--most abominably cross to Maud at breakfast.Then, since there was the day's work in front of him, for the sake ofwhich he had come up here--and in his racking pain he was reallyincapable of doing it--he had taken the remedy which he had always byhim, but which, in theory, he disliked having recourse to, as much asMaud disliked his taking it. But when after breakfast he had said toher, "Maud, I simply can't go down there, and if I did, I couldn't helpin any way, unless I get rid of this agony," she had agreed that it wasan occasion for laudanum.
She strolled across to the fire, and held out her hands to the blaze,which shone through her fingers, making them look as if they were redlyluminous in themselves and lit from within. Then suddenly, with a littledramatic gesture, as if she carried her trouble, a palpable burden, inher hands, she threw it into the fire, and, having consigned it todestruction, walked back to the window again. Yet she knew in herselfthat it was not thus easily got rid of, for it went very deep. Theremust be some explanation of all this undeserved suffering, but what wasit? How could it be just that a child should be cursed with inheriteddisease? How could it be just that Thurso's very kindness and concernfor his tenants should give him hours of blinding torture?... But thereat last was a figure on the road, and, without putting on her hat, shewent out to meet him.
* * * * *
She saw at once, before she could clearly see his face, by a limpnessand dejection in his walk, that he was horribly tired and in pain. Butthat, since now there was something for her to do, enabled her to getrid of her own dejection, since her cheerfulness, her serenity, must bebrought into action. So, before they actually met, she called to him.
"Oh, Thurso, how late!" she said. "Have you any idea that it is afterhalf-past eight, and I've got such a sinking inside as is probably quiteunparalleled? Don't let us dress; then we can dine at once. I'm suredinner is ready, because I distinctly smelled soup, and something roast,and baked apples, all rolling richly out of the kitchen windows. Inearly burst into tears because I wanted them so much. Well, how has theday gone?"
He looked at her in a sort of despair.
"Oh, Maud, it is too awful," he said. "Twelve fresh cases to-day; Idon't know what to do. And when my head is like this I'm worse thanuseless. I can't think; I can't face things."
Maud took his arm.
"Poor dear old boy!" she said. "Has it been bad all day?"
"No; it was all right in the morning after the laudanum, but it came onworse than ever after lunch. Well, not exactly after lunch, because Ididn't have any."
Maud gave a little exclamation of impatience.
"Thurso, you are too bad!" she said. "You know perfectly well that ifyou go without food too long, you always get one of these headaches. Andit isn't the slightest use your saying that there wasn't any time forlunch, because the biggest lunch that ever happened can be eaten in tenminutes, whereas a headache takes hours. I hate you to be in pain; butwhat a fool you are, dear! You are wicked also, knave and fool, becauseyou make yourself of absolutely no use to anybody when you are likethis."
He smiled at her; the infection of her energy put a little life intohim.
"Well, I forgot about lunch till the pain came on," he said; "and it wasturned full on at once. After that I simply couldn't eat; it was no usetrying."
"If that is meant to imply that you are not going to have any dinnereither," she said, "you make a grave error. You are going to have soupand meat and roast apples. And if you attempt to deny it, I shallinstantly add toasted cheese. In fact, I think I will in any case."
Thurso was silent a moment.
"Ah, these poor wretched people----" he began.
But Maud rudely and decisively interrupted.
"I am not going to hear one word about them till you have finisheddinner," she said. "Afterwards, because you will be better then, we willtalk. Don't you remember how, if we weren't quite well, nurse alwayssaid that we would be better after dinner? And we always were, unless weate too much. I wo
nder whether it was dinner that did it, or meresuggestion--don't they call it--from the omnipotent and infalliblenurse."
"Dinner," said he. "Oh, damn my head!" he added in a sudden burst oftired irritability and pain, which was rare with him, even to Maud.
"Yes, with pleasure, if that will make it better. But I wonder if it wasentirely dinner. You know, there is something in suggestion, though Iprefer supplementing suggestion with some practical measure. Who arethose people who are always quite well because they think they are?"
"I should think they are fools," said he.
"Yes, but that is not their official title."
"I can't think of a better one," said he. "By the way----"
"Well?"
"No, nothing," he said.
Maud withdrew her arm from his with dignity.
"That is extremely ill-bred," she said. "Mind, I don't in the least wantto know what you were going to say--in fact, I would much sooner you didnot tell me--but having begun, you would, if you had decent manners, goon."
Thurso laughed; sharp though his neuralgia still was, he was alreadybeginning to think of things apart from himself.
"How can you say that?" he asked. "You are bursting to know."
"Well, yes, I am. Do tell me."
"I sha'n't Maud, I think I will change, though it is so late, as I havebeen in and out of those houses all day. But you needn't; you can beginwithout me, if you like."
Maud put her nose in the air.
"Did you _really_ imagine I was going to wait for you?" she asked.
* * * * *
Thurso went upstairs, still smiling at Maud's unbridled curiosity,especially since there was no mystery or reason for secrecy about thatwhich he had stopped himself telling her. He merely was not quite surewhether or no he wanted to do that which he had been on the point ofproposing, and which in itself was of a perfectly unexciting nature. Thebare, dull facts of the matter were these. He had let thesalmon-fishing of the river here until the end of July to an American,whose name at the moment he could not remember, and this afternoon, ashe came out of one of the cottages, he had passed one of his gilliescarrying rod and gaff, and walking with a young man of clearlytransatlantic origin, whom he felt sure must be the American inquestion; and the remark he had refrained from making to Maud was thatit might be neighbourly to ask him to dinner. But as he made his hurriedtoilet, he found himself debating the reasons for and against doing thiswith a perfectly unaccountable earnestness, as if the decision this wayor that was one that could conceivably be of importance. On the oneside, the reasons against asking him were that the hospitality theycould offer him was of the plainest and most baked-apple kind, served ina shrouded room, and that he would probably get a much better dinner atthe inn where he was quartered. Also, he himself felt that if he hadcome up to Caithness to fish, he would much sooner that his landlord didnot ask him to dinner, since his hospitality, if accepted, would meanthe curtailment of the cream of the evening rise. So perhaps the truerhospitality would be shown in not burdening his tenant with thenecessity of inventing an excuse or of accepting a tiresome invitation.Then suddenly the man's name, Bertie Cochrane, flashed into his mind.Thurso had thought it so odd to sign a lease by an abbreviated name. Inany case, it would be kinder not to ask Mr. Bertie Cochrane to comethree miles in order to eat Scotch broth with a tired landlord, whowould probably be suffering from severe neuralgia.
But, on the other hand, Thurso felt a perfectly unaccountable desire tosee him. He had just met and passed him in the village street, aftercoming out from one of those fever-stricken cottages where a youngstalker of his was lying desperately ill. At the moment he, too, wasscrewed down to the rack with this hideous unnerving pain, and feelingutterly dispirited and beaten and hopeless. But for half a second hiseyes had met Cochrane's, and just for that half-second--by chance,perhaps, or perhaps by reason of that subtle animal magnetism which somepeople possess--Thurso had suddenly felt both soothed and encouraged.Maud, he knew, had something of this magnetic quality, and to be withher always braced him to a livelier optimism; but in this case theeffect had been magical. There was nothing particularly remarkable aboutthe man: he was rather tall, young, clean-shaven, with a pleasant boyishface that suggested plenty of cold water and open air. That was all, butat the moment Thurso had felt almost inevitably inclined to speak to himand thank him; to tell him how bitterly his head ached and how miserablydispirited he felt; to tell him also that he had made him feel better.The impulse had been quite absurdly strong, but in another moment theyhad passed, going their respective ways. But all the afternoon,subsequent to that chance encounter, the remembrance of Mr. Cochranestrolling down to the river, and talking in so pleasant and friendly amanner to the gillie, had never been wholly out of his mind. Cochranehad seemed an incarnation of health and contentment, and the other allday had found it scarcely possible to believe in the existence of suchqualities, so remote were they from him. Then antagonism to Mr. Cochranehad begun to take root in him: he seemed a millionaire in happiness,leaving pauperism all round him. Well, it was unlikely they would meetagain; reasons of hospitality were sufficient for not asking him toaccept it.
He finished dressing without any severe return of pain, but just as hewas ready to go downstairs it came suddenly back again in such stabs andspasms of anguish that for a moment he held on to his dressing-tablewith clenched hands, bitten lips, and a dripping forehead. Then his eyefell on the bottle of laudanum which stood by his looking-glass, andthough never before had he taken two doses on the same day, yet neverbefore after one dose had he suffered pain so agonising and excruciatingas this. But to-day the impulse was incontrollable: he could no longerreason about the expediency of it, and next moment, with shaking hand,he poured a full dose into the graduated glass, and drank it. Those fewmoments had made him feel faint and sick with pain, and after drinkinghe sat down to wait for the divine relief that would come so quickly. Onhis very sensitive and excitable nerves the drug exercised an almostinstantaneous effect--not soporific at all, but tranquillising and atthe same time immensely stimulating. The pain would fade like themelting away of the vapour of breath on a frosty morning, till it becamean incredible memory, while even as it faded a warm tingling glow beganto invade him. It was as if after some frost-bitten Arctic night thesun of the South would pour its beams upon his brain; happiness andcontent would unfold, and, like some magic rose miraculously opening itsrosy petals in the luminous peace of a summer morning, a sense ofunspeakable well-being would sprawl and blossom over his consciousness.
He had not to wait long: before the seconds on the watch which he hadjust taken up when the agony seized him had ticked themselves into aminute, the divine remission of pain began, and, increasing as itincreased, there came that extraordinary glow of content, so that acouple of minutes afterwards it was not so much in the utter relief ofpain that his body revelled as in the ecstasy of this supreme,harmonious sense of health. And then, as always, this spread like sometide of warm incoming waters to his mind. The horror and suffering hehad seen that day in the fevered village ceased to weigh upon him anddarken him with the sense of his possible responsibility and certainhelplessness. Instinctively, his mind ceased to dwell on the thought ofthe stalker whose life was nearly despaired of, but went to anotherbedside where a life that had been almost despaired of yesterday hadseemed to pause at the very entrance of the valley of the shadow, andhad crawled back a little way into life again. The shadow from thevalley still lay over it, but its face was set towards the living.Already this divine drug had done that for him: it stopped pain of themind, it seemed, even as it stopped the torture of an anguished nerve.
He had sat down for a moment to recover from the physical faintnesswhich had seized him at that savage assault of pain, but he had sat downalso in order to abandon himself with greater receptiveness to therapture of the effect that he knew would come with that remission. Then,after a few minutes more, he got up, remembering two things--the firstthat Maud was p
robably waiting for him, though she had scorned thenotion; the second that this evening for the first time he wasconsciously revelling and delighting in the bodily and mental sensationsthat the opium produced, apart from its anodynic qualities. Hitherto hehad taken it purely medicinally, sparingly also, in order to relievepain, when the pain was frankly intolerable, or when it paralysed hispower of making exertions that he was clearly called upon to make; and,having taken it like a medicine, he had in intention done no more thanprofit by the medicinal advantage of its restorative qualities. Butto-night he knew, if he honestly looked at the spring of motive, that hehad done something different--had drunk with a different desire. True,the pain had been in itself almost demoralising in its intensity, butwhen he drank he had waited for and desired, not only the remission ofthat, but the glow of exquisite well-being and that harmony of sensationwhich the drug gave him. That was even more heavenly than the cessationof the acutest pain.
But after a minute or so he got up, thereby interrupting theblissfulness of sensation, for Maud would wonder why he tarried. And ashe went downstairs a third thought, suggested by that secret friend inthe brown bottle, occurred to him. He must not let his sister know thathe had taken a second dose to-day, and, arising from that, he mustconceal from her how suddenly and completely the pain had gone, lest sheshould guess or suspect. Already he felt half ashamed of the mixedmotive which had led to his taking it, yet ... yet the supreme sense ofphysical well-being that was his just now prevented him from feelingacutely anything but that. And if Maud suspected up to the point ofasking him if he had dosed himself again? Well, in that case it would bewise to follow the example of Sir Walter Scott. She had no business toask such a question; his answer, whatever it might be, was herresponsibility, not his. Perhaps it would be better to minimise thepossibility of her asking; he had better appear silent and sufferingtill dinner was nearly over, and then confess that dinner had done himgood. She had told him that it would; she would be delighted to see theefficacy of her prescription. And that the pain left him suddenly wouldbe no surprise to her. Often it left him as suddenly as it came on--asif it was the turning of a tap.
All this flashed instantaneously into his mind, just as a man takes in alandscape at a glance, though it may take him many words to describewhat a moment's vision has conveyed to him. Another thought flashedthere too. There was authentic Paradise in that little bottle; whetherone had been in pain or not, there was the Garden of Eden. He felt thathe would willingly endure tortures if at the end he could push openthose golden gates again, and walk past the flaming sword of itsguardian. Pain weighed light compared to those pleasures, and surelyhalf an hour of Paradise now and then could not hurt him, a drop ofwater on the lips of Dives. He felt perfectly willing, weighing the twoin the balance of his mind, to pass through hells of torture for thatcompensation. Then faintly and far away came the suggestion that evenwithout the hours in hell there was Paradise still open.
* * * * *
Maud had been very hungry, and had already finished soup when he camedownstairs, and, according to his plan, he said little or nothing tillhe had caught her up on the "something roast." Indeed, his firstquestion had been the demand for a second supply of that, and Maud gavehim an approving nod. He had eaten no lunch, and now, as soon as hebegan to eat, he was conscious of being extremely hungry, and the secondsupply vanished with the same briskness as the first. Then he leanedback in his chair as plates were changed.
"I don't like telling you that you are right," he said, "because it willonly confirm your belief in your own wisdom. But I am nothing if nothonest. Dinner or suggestion or both have certainly done the trick. TheLady Neuralgia has turned off the tap--turned it off with the same firmhand as she turned it on. It doesn't even drip. I will allow, even, thatit was your suggestion that made her do it. Who cares how it happened? Iwill allow anything. Yes, two roast apples, please, and I think we willhave toasted cheese. I had no lunch, you must remember."
"Oh, Thurso, I am so glad," she said. "And I so often wish I could takesome of it--no, not toasted cheese, you silly--for you."
"I don't think you would wish it so much when you had got it," heremarked.
"Oh, I don't say I should like it. But I know I could bear lots of painif I knew that otherwise it would be somebody else's. The difficultywould be if it was only your own. And, I tell you frankly, you bear itmost awfully well. You are cross with me because you know I don'tmind----"
"At breakfast, do you mean?" he asked. "I know I was. I am sorry, but Iwas mad with it. You don't think I show it to other people, do you?"
"No, dear, only to me, or I shouldn't have mentioned it."
He looked at her a moment in silence, then he laughed, but grew graveagain before he spoke.
"No; you understand," he said, and then the poisonous fumes of the drugstirred and recommended caution in his brain. "I think you would alwaysunderstand," he said. "I think I would always tell you everything."
"About to-day, then," said she. "You may tell me about it now. Oh, howwise I was not letting you talk before dinner! I'm sure you were takinga neuralgic view."
"I was. I was thinking only of poor Sandie, who, they are afraid, isdying, instead of thinking about Donald Fraser's wife, who seems to bea little better, though yesterday they thought she could not live. Itwas the Lady Neuralgia who made me remember the one and forget theother. There was something else, too, I wanted to talk about with you.It's this, Maud. I made the plan only this morning: I couldn't have toldyou before."
He paused a moment. That last sentence, again, was, though absolutelytrue, an effort of self-justification. He had acquiesced in deceivingMaud on one point, should that point come forward; he felt as if he hadto tell not only her, but himself, that he was showing the whole truthabout this.
"I know you will feel with me," he said, "though no doubt Catherine willmake a fuss when she knows, if she ever does, and will probably painteverything with carbolic. But I must turn this house into a hospital forall those poor folk--for all, at least, who can be moved here. Think ofit! A case appears in one of those tiny houses, and what happens? Thereare three, or perhaps four, rooms in them, and the whole of the familyhas to live in two rooms, or at the most three. The sick-room, too,where it is most important that there should be plenty of air--it is tenfeet by twelve, and one small window! Dr. Symes agrees with me. Hethinks, at any rate, that any case would have a much better chance uphere. The moving is easy. They have one ambulance bed, and I haveordered more to-day from Inverness."
He lit a cigarette, and saw Maud looking at him with shining eyes. Thiswas the Thurso whom she knew and loved. Then he went on:
"There's the big dining-room here," he said: "it will hold a dozen beds.There is the hall: it will hold eighteen, I should think. There are allthe bedrooms; there is the billiard-room. Also, up here every nurse canlook after twice the number of patients that she can attend to inscattered cottages, and look after them all much better. So I havegiven orders. Dr. Symes will move up here to-morrow all those whom hethinks can be moved without undue risk. All fresh cases will come uphere at once. Of course, you will go back to town. I--I appreciatetremendously your coming here at all, but now it will be impossible foryou to stop in the house."
Maud laughed.
"And you, dear?" she asked.
"Me? Oh, I shall stop here, of course. I can't leave."
Maud left her place, and dragged a chair up beside him.
"Thurso, you are admirable," she said. "It's an excellent idea movingthem up here, so excellent that I wonder I did not think of it first.But as for my going back to town----"
"But how on earth can you stop here with the house crammed full oftyphoid patients?"
"Same way as you can. I leave here when you leave."
"But, Maud----"
"There isn't any 'but, Maud.' I don't go unless you turn me out into thecold bleak night--oh, let's poke up the fire, I am sure there is afrost!--in which case I shall die of exposure o
n the lawn. To beginwith, there is no risk of infection, and, to go on with, I shouldn'tcatch it if there was."
"Oh! Why not?"
"Because one is mercifully allowed to get through the day's work. I cameup here as your 'pal.' And if I went to bed with typhoid I couldn't beanybody's 'pal.' Besides, I've had typhoid already. At the presentmoment I am going to play you at picquet, and you owe me nine shillingsfrom last night."
