'He is in the habit of taking atropine, Wilson.'
Three hours I remained there, and, God knows, toiled hard for his life:
and when I left him in the dark of the fore-day, my mind was at rest: he
would recover.
I slept till 11 A.M., and then hurried over again to Peters. In the room
were my two nurses, and Clodagh.
My beloved put her forefinger to her lips, whispering:
'Sh-h-h! he is asleep....'
She came closer to my ear, saying:
'I heard the news early. I am come to stay with him, till--the last....'
We looked at each other some time--eye to eye, steadily, she and I: but
mine dropped before Clodagh's. A word was on my mouth to say, but I said
nothing.
The recovery of Peters was not so steady as I had expected. At the end
of the first week he was still prostrate. It was then that I said to
Clodagh:
'Clodagh, your presence at the bed-side here somehow does not please me.
It is so unnecessary.'
'Unnecessary certainly,' she replied: 'but I always had a genius for
nursing, and a passion for watching the battles of the body. Since no
one objects, why should you?'
'Ah!... I don't know. This is a case that I dislike. I have half a mind
to throw it to the devil.'
'Then do so.'
'And you, too--go home, go home, Clodagh!'
'But _why_?--if one does no harm. In these days of "the corruption of
the upper classes," and Roman decadence of everything, shouldn't every
innocent whim be encouraged by you upright ones who strive against the
tide? Whims are the brakes of crimes: and this is mine. I find a
sensuous pleasure, almost a sensual, in dabbling in delicate drugs--like
Helen, for that matter, and Medea, and Calypso, and the great antique
women, who were all excellent chymists. To study the human ship in a
gale, and the slow drama of its foundering--isn't that a quite thrilling
distraction? And I want you to get into the habit at once of letting me
have my little way----'
Now she touched my hair with a lofty playfulness that soothed me: but
even then I looked upon the rumpled bed, and saw that the man there was
really very sick.
I have still a nausea to write about it! Lucrezia Borgia in her own age
may have been heroic: but Lucrezia in this late century! One could retch
up the heart...
The man grew sick on that bed, I say. The second week passed, and only
ten days remained before the start of the expedition.
At the end of that second week, Wilson, the electrician, was one evening
sitting by Peter's bedside when I entered.
At the moment, Clodagh was about to administer a dose to Peters; but
seeing me, she put down the medicine-glass on the night table, and came
toward me; and as she came, I saw a sight which stabbed me: for Wilson
took up the deposited medicine-glass, elevated it, looked at it,
smelled into it: and he did it with a kind of hurried, light-fingered
stealth; and he did it with an under-look, and a meaningness of
expression which, I thought, proved mistrust....
Meantime, Clark came each day. He had himself a medical degree, and
about this time I called him in professionally, together with Alleyne of
Cavendish Square, to consultation over Peters. The patient lay in a
semi-coma broken by passionate vomitings, and his condition puzzled us
all. I formally stated that he took atropine--had been originally
poisoned by atropine: but we saw that his present symptoms were not
atropine symptoms, but, it almost seemed, of some other vegetable
poison, which we could not precisely name.
'Mysterious thing,' said Clark to me, when we were alone.
'_I_ don't understand it,' I said.
'Who are the two nurses?'
'Oh, highly recommended people of my own.'
'At any rate, my dream about you comes true, Jeffson. It is clear that
Peters is out of the running now.'