It was a chill November afternoon in the autumn of the same year, and
Catherine was seated at the table in her sitting-room at Thurso House,
surrounded by a plentiful litter of letters and telegrams, writing
busily, fiercely almost, as if to absorb herself in what she was doing
to the exclusion of other thoughts. Her secretary, to whom she had just
finished dictating a pile of business correspondence and letters less
private than those she was occupying herself with, had just left her,
and Catherine had begun to tackle this great heap of letters which she
felt she had better answer herself--inquiries, mainly, from personal
friends. She knew she had given herself more to do than it was really
needful that she should, but what to her mind was needful was that she
should be occupied in writing, and leave herself no leisure to think. At
present there was nothing to be gained by thinking; she could take no
step.
Outside the day was utterly dispiriting; there had been a dense yellow
fog all morning, and though it had cleared a little about midday, so
that from her window she could see the lilac-bushes of the garden that
bordered the Green Park, it hovered still overhead, and though the hour
was still not yet three in the afternoon, and her table was in the
window, she had to light the shaded electric candle that stood on it to
enable her to write. A big fire burned in the open hearth, compounded of
logs and coal, that hissed and whistled cheerfully as they blazed, and
the room was warm and fragrant. But so dense had been the fog this
morning that it had penetrated a little through the joinings of the
windows, and a haze, visible now that the electric lights were burning,
hung in the atmosphere.
The room where she sat was one of her own private suite, which she had
fitted up not long ago for occupation in those numerous flying visits
she had to pay to town, when she intended to stop only a day or two and
do some necessary business. On these occasions it was not worth while to
open the whole house, and so she had established herself here on the
third-floor, with just the one sitting-room, and a bedroom and bathroom
adjoining. Until half-way through November she had been paying a series
of visits at different country houses ever since she came down from
Scotland, while Thurso, so she then believed, had been doing the same at
other houses. This week they were to have had the first big shoot at
their place in Norfolk, but all that had been put off. Ten days ago now
she had arrived here for a couple of days' stay before going down to
Norfolk, and had found her husband was in the house. He had been there
ever since they came down from Scotland, alone with his valet and a
couple of maidservants, one to cook and one to clean, having excused
himself from the various houses where he had told her he should be
staying, in order to live here in the hell-paradise of opium. Catherine
had at once telegraphed for Maud, who was of more use than anybody with
her brother, and the two had been here now for ten days. It was just
better that they should be with him than that he should be alone; he
still occasionally felt ashamed of himself if they were there.
Since last June the habit had gained on him with appalling rapidity,
though for a few months he had, as she knew, made frantic, agonising
efforts to throw it off. He had seen doctors, he had done apparently all
that lay in his power to do. But now it seemed that a sort of atrophy of
his will had set in; he no longer actively desired to be a free man
again, though sometimes a sort of shame and remorse seemed to visit
him; and though his will had been so completely dominated and destroyed
by the drug, it had left the calculating, scheming part of his brain
untouched, and he had a thousand devices for obtaining it after the
chemists with whom he habitually dealt had been warned not to give it
him. Indeed, it was ten days now since he made what appeared to be the
very last effort of will, when, on Catherine's appearance here, he had
burned the prescription which enabled him to obtain it. But within
twenty-four hours he had himself forged it again, and Lord Thurso,
calling suddenly at some big pharmacy with a prescription bearing an
eminent doctor's name, was naturally not refused the blue bottle with
its red poison label.
Yet busily as Catherine occupied herself with her correspondence,
striving, since at the moment she could do nothing for her husband, to
engage her mind rather than let it dwell on the hideous realities that
were going on, and so vitally concerning her, she was alert for the
interruption she expected. For yesterday afternoon Thurso, undermined
and weakened as he was by this habit, had had an attack of syncope, and
for an hour or two they thought he could not live. But the doctor had
pulled him round out of immediate danger, and he had regained a little
strength during the last twenty-four hours. Sir James Sanderson had, in
fact, just come back for his afternoon visit, and was with him now. He
had promised to make his report to Lady Thurso before he left the house.
The news of Thurso's sudden illness had been in the evening papers last
night, and had appeared again this morning. She was answering the
inquiries of her huge circle of friends.
Her pen went rapidly from the top to the bottom of her sheets, and
envelope after envelope was directed and thrown on her pile. Awful as
the present moment was, yet, in a sense, now that a crisis like this had
come, it was almost more bearable than the hideous growth of the
anxieties and torments she had suffered before. For as the habit gained
on him, his moral perception, like his will, seemed to wither and
vanish. He had conceived wholly baseless suspicions against his wife; he
had uttered them to her; he had told her in what relation he believed
her to stand towards Villars. Worse even than that, he did not seem to
mind it. He had spied on her; he had opened her letters, both those
which she received and those which she wrote--in a word, he seemed to
hate her, and to delight in his hate. He made long absences, when he was
not at his club or in the house, and gave elaborate, palpably false
accounts of his movements when he returned. Finally, all sense of
decency seemed to have left him, and he had brought to Thurso House,
while his wife was in it, a common woman off the street. How it would
all end she dared not think. If he lived, it seemed impossible to her
that she should go on living with him. What would happen to the
children? what would happen to Maud? And the shame, the atrocious shame
and publicity that must follow!
* * * * *
But the crisis which had occurred yesterday afternoon, the crisis that
concerned life and death, had somewhat mitigated the horror of these
things. It had also blunted the acuteness of another question that did
not concern her less. Since June last she had known that Villars loved
her now just as he had always loved her, and though, since he was a
gentleman, to put the matter broadly, he had not traded on her growing
disgust at the man who was her husband, it was impossible for her not to
know that her lover had moved closer. She had no moral House of Defence
to take refuge in--nothing of that nature prevented her letting the man
who loved her, the lover whom she was sure now she loved, become in deed
what both he and she knew that he was in all else but that. Nothing,
except a blind determination, which she often told herself was
irrational, that this should not be so, stood in her way. Again and
again Thurso had taunted her with a lie; he could not taunt her more if
it had been a truth. Indeed, to taunt her, as he had done, with what was
not true was more unbearable to her than if it had been. Had Villars
been her lover, she almost felt as if she would have hurled that fact in
his face. For her actions never ran away with her; she was not in the
habit of doing what she was ashamed of afterwards; and certainly if she
had taken a step so momentous, so vitally affecting her life, as that of
having a lover, she was sure she would not have done so blindly or in
any sudden flash of passion. Had she meant to live the double life she
would have done so deliberately, and for reasons which seemed to her
excellent--namely, that her husband was opium-drenched, and had vilely
insulted her; secondly, that she loved Villars; and, thirdly, that she
did not think it wicked for her in this position to do so. And yet,
though in judging others she had no moral code, she judged herself and
made her decision in obedience to some stricter law, though
all-unformulated, than she applied to others. She knew she was
irrational and inconsistent, but she knew she could not be otherwise.
It is probably difficult for those of high and complex moral
organisation to appreciate the workings of a nature which, on analysis,
seems so rudimentary as hers, and the most rigid sort of moralist may
easily say that after all there was extremely little difference between
her and people of no morals whatever. But that is where the higher
moralist would go astoundingly astray. There are plants so sensitive
that they seem to have organic life; there are amoebæ so apparently
immobile and unsensitive that to a creature so immensely distant from
them in point of organisation as man they may seem to be much lower in
the scale of life than the highly sensitive plant. But to the trained
biologist the amoebæ are so transcendently higher than the other that
he despairs of finding a bridge that can ever link up the two. And in
the same way, though Catherine could formulate no moral code at all, and
would unhesitatingly let any friend of hers lead any life he pleased,
and yet not abate one jot of her friendship, provided only he did not do
things which were mean; the fact that when "it came to" in her own case
she utterly refused to contemplate doing this, made the classification
of her with the moral inorganic an abysmal error. She was far stricter
with herself than with others, which shows a moral generosity, and she
blindly followed the more difficult way, which shows a faith that is
perhaps the finer since it is conscious of no leading.
And, poor soul, she knew but too well that her trials in this respect
had not really begun; she had only been told to look at the rack where
she was soon to be placed. For Rudolf Villars was her real stand-by in
these dark passages in her life. Maud was splendid, too: she felt she
could not have got through the days without her; but Maud was a woman,
and she was a woman, and Villars was a man. Therefore he could help her
in a way that Maud could not. For humankind is created male and female,
and those of different sex can and must help each other in a manner
impossible for those of the same sex. That is the glory of the world and
its shame.
Villars had known about this drug habit on the Sunday he had spent with
them in June, for he had seen Thurso by chance when the ecstasy of the
dose was on him; and since then, day by day, she owed more to him, till
the debt was mounting up into huge figures. And though she knew well
that to him the debt was non-existent--he never would add it up, that is
to say, and present the bill--it was fearfully existent to her. In
payment of it she could only give him one thing--herself; and that she
would not. True, he had made no absolutely direct declaration of his
love, but in a hundred ways he showed it, and day by day, as she saw, it
was getting harder for him to be silent. And what would happen then? She
had made her determination. She would have to declare it. That was all
... oh yes, that was all.
For the time, however, the acuteness of these perplexities had lost its
sharpness, since Thurso's attack yesterday, and such thoughts, the
summary of her inner life for the last two or three months, did not get
between her pen and her paper. She had to answer these letters and
telegrams inquiring about him, and to regret her unavoidable absence
from the various engagements of the next few weeks. She knew, too, that
it had become a matter of common knowledge what was the matter with him;
she had even talked to certain friends about it, and she had to word her
answers carefully. But it was no use any longer to pretend that nothing
was wrong; the whole world knew that something was wrong.
But the interruption for which she had been waiting soon came, and Sir
James Sanderson was shown in. He looked extraordinarily unlike an
eminent doctor, and resembled nothing so much as a captain on some
respectable line of steamers. He had a toothbrush of a moustache, a
plump, bronzed, and ruddy face, and wore a black frockcoat, with yellow
boots and a red tie. He was awkward, cheerful, embarrassed, and
nautical, and played golf whenever possible, which was not often, with
boyish enthusiasm and remarkable inability. But, incidentally, he had
saved more lives and restored more health, which he personally
considered of greater importance, than any other two doctors put
together.
He shook hands with Catherine, and sat down on a small chair, which
broke into fragments beneath his extremely ponderous frame, leaving him
couched in splinters on the floor. He said "Damn!" quite distinctly,
and struggled to his feet.
"Oh, I am so sorry," said Catherine. "I hope you are not hurt?"
"Not in the least, but the chair is," he said. "Yes, I have been with
your husband for the last hour."
He found a more reliable seat.
"Now, be brave," he said.
Then his wonderful skill in dealing with people, whether the sick or the
whole, showed itself. There was dreadful news he had to tell to this
beautiful woman, but in spite of the obsoleteness of the phrase
"breaking the news," news could still be prepared for. It was wise to
start like that, to say "Be brave," and then, since he knew he was
dealing with a brave woman, to wait for her bracing herself up to it.
"I know I am allowed to smoke a cigarette," he said, thus securing his
moment's pause, "though it is most unprofessional."
Catherine's courage had sunk for a moment, like the mercury in a
thermometer exposed to zero, but in that pause she recalled it again. It
was that he had been waiting for.
"Lord Thurso has lived through twenty-four hours," he said, "and
immediate danger is really over. The attack he had was enough to kill
most people. It has not killed him, and he will not now die of this
attack. He may have others, but I don't see why he should, unless he
provokes them himself."
He flicked the charred end of his cigarette.
"That is the bright side," he said. "Now we must talk about the other.
He came to me in July, you know, and told me about it. Probably he did
not tell me all. You must do that, my dear lady. I guess a good deal
from what I have seen to-day. I want to know all. Has he lost the power
of will, do you think? There is nothing, I may say, that you can tell me
which will be worse than what I conjecture."
Catherine required no further stimulus to enable her to brace herself to
this hideous recital, and she began at once, telling Sir James the whole
history of the case as far as she knew it. Once only did he interrupt
her, and that early in the tale, when she told him that the original
cause of Thurso's taking opium was those frightful attacks of neuralgia
to which he was subject. To that Sir James said:
"Quite so. I gave him the authorisation myself."
Then, month by month, she went through the tragic history; she spoke of
that week up in Scotland when he began to take it more frequently, when,
too, Maud began to suspect that he was taking it not only for relief of
pain, but for the effects of it on his nerves and brain. Then came the
stealthy dose in the train, then the scenes at Bray. But as she spoke,
though he attended very carefully to all she said, he watched her not
for that reason alone. It was not so unlikely, he saw, that he might
have another patient on his hands, for it was as much as she could do to
get through with what she was saying.
Then the tale became harder of telling: from that day he had seemed to
have begun to hate her, and with hate there grew and flourished in his
mind ignoble suspicions. He had taken to spying on her, to opening her
letters; then came the infamous taunts he had levelled at her, and the
final insult. And when she had finished there was silence.
* * * * *
She had spoken quite calmly, arranging and reviewing the events of those
hideous months in orderly manner, and stopping only when she could not
quite command her voice. And without any long pause after she had done,
Sir James went on with what had to be told her.
"The opium habit," he said, "even when one begins to treat it quite
early, is the most difficult thing in the world to cure. Give me ten
drunkards who want to get over the habit, and I will very likely cure
eight, but give me ten opium-eaters or laudanum-drinkers--for the two,
of course, are exactly the same--who are equally desirous to amend, and
I may cure one of them. God knows why it is so, Lady Thurso, but this
particular drug, this poppy of the fields, binds body and soul in a way
that no other habit binds, not alcohol, nor sensualism, nor anything.
And your husband's case has not been taken early. He is completely
undermined by it. It is impossible to imagine a more serious case."
Catherine shifted her chair a little; she was so overwhelmingly tired,
now that she had ceased writing, that it was something of an effort to
meet the doctor's eye.
"And now you need your bravery again," he said. "He might have died any
minute during those first six hours after his attack. And, dear lady,
it might have been better if he had. It might have saved God knows what
suffering and misery to himself and others. Sometimes I think that we
doctors do a cruel kindness in snatching poor folk out of death's jaws.
Of course, one cannot, and I do not, say that any case is incurable,
because, thank God, miracles still happen. But I cannot see how he can
be cured. As he gets stronger from this attack, his craving for the drug
will get stronger also; he has already asked for it. Unless you
absolutely shut him up he will find means of getting hold of it. He will
probably begin with smaller doses, for the poison will have more effect
when he is still weak, and he will increase them and increase them until
this or something like it happens again. His digestion, too, is in the
most feeble condition. I do not suppose he has eaten a pound of
nourishing food in the last week.
"No; he has hardly touched it," said she. "He says it gets in the way.
But if we could succeed in keeping him away from the drug by--by any
means, would there not be hope?"
The kind old doctor gave a long sigh. He hated this part of his
business, and the braver people were, the more cruel he seemed to
himself.
"No," he said; "I think he would probably go off his head without it.
One can't tell, but I should fear that. You see, it is not the time for
me to keep anything from you. And you are bearing it splendidly: you are
bearing it in the way we are meant to bear these terrors of life. We may
get white with pain, as you did just now, we may feel sick with the
anguish of it all, but we ought still to be able to clench our teeth and
not cry out. And, do you know, that is such a sound policy. Being brave
carries its dividends quicker than any investment I know. For every
effort of the sort that we make strengthens us, exactly as gymnastics
strengthen our muscles."
Something in this arrested her attention very strongly; for the moment
she was led away from the thought of Thurso to another matter that
concerned her quite as vitally. She turned round to him again.
"Do you mean that if--if we resist anything our powers of resistance are
increased?" she asked. "Resistance seems to tire me, to make me less
able to make an effort."
Sir James took this in also; his eye, trained to observe obscurities,
saw that for the moment she was not thinking of her husband.
"Temporarily it tires you," he said, "just as exercise does. But you are
really the stronger for it. The opposite holds, too, as you and I and
poor Lord Thurso know very well; not to resist, to yield, weakens our
power of resistance. The body is built up and made strong by effort, and
so, I am sure, is the soul."
She thought over that for a space of silence, noting down in her mind
how it concerned that of which the doctor knew nothing.
"Tell me all you fear about Thurso," she said. "I want to know what you
think the end will be, and when, since I gather that, as far as you
know, you regard him as incurable. I want to hear from you, quietly and
fully, what I must bring myself to expect, the thoughts which I have got
to get used to."
"I have told you the worst," he said, "and I think you understand it.
But, more in detail, it will be this: He will be very weak for a few
days, and will, of course, be in bed. But I fully expect that his
recovery from this attack will be rapid, because he will be properly
fed, and not allowed to make the smallest exertion, but chiefly because
opium, which was the direct cause of it, will be cut off. As he gets
stronger the craving will get stronger."
"Then, you advise----"
"I advise nothing till I see how he pulls round. What I most fear is
that his whole will-power, his very capability to form a resolution, has
been atrophied, made ineffective, by this drug. He--I am telling you all
my worst fears, of course, because this is not a time to buoy you up
with false hopes--he is, I fear, from what you tell me, incapable of
resistance. That is the real and fatal danger. Now, is there any motive,
any thought, or aim, or desire that was his, which we can make use of,
on which, so to speak, we can prop up and train the will-power, which is
lying like a creeper that has been torn from its supports? His devotion
to you, for example? His love for his children?"
Catherine turned on him a perfectly hopeless look, and shook her head.
The waters of Marah were in that gesture.
The doctor spoke again, gently, tenderly.
"Then, who has the most influence over him?" he asked.
"Oh, Maud," said she--"his sister, you know I have no doubt whatever
about that. I think," she added quietly--"I think he hates me."
She spoke quite quietly, as if stating the most commonplace of facts,
and the very simplicity of the words were intensely pathetic to the kind
man. But they were best passed over without comment.
"Then, may I consult with her before I go," he said, "as to anything she
can suggest which can appeal to him, support him? He is drowning, he
must drown as far as purely medical skill can help him, and we want--do
we not?--to throw any sort of life-buoy to him which may keep him
afloat."
"Hypnotism? That sort of thing?" she asked.
"I do not think it possible that hypnotism or suggestion can help him,"
he said. "There must be something to hypnotise, something to suggest to,
and that something is will-power. One cannot say it is wholly destroyed,
because I suppose that would mean death, but it is in so feeble and
impotent a state that I know of nothing which can touch it."
Though Catherine had taken all this very quietly, her quietude was
partly that of someone who is stunned, and now her mind recurred, as she
recovered herself, to one of those sentences which, so to speak, had
dealt the blow.
"You mean that only a miracle can restore him?" she said.
"Yes, but I believe in miracles," said he, "though, unfortunately, you
cannot produce a miracle as you can produce a bottle of medicine."
Catherine got up.
"How strange that you should say that!" she said. "Because Maud believes
in them, as you do, but she thinks them most accessible. Only she no
longer calls them miracles--she calls them Christian Science!"
Sir James could not have looked cynical or sneering if he had tried,
and he certainly did not try. But there was an uncommon dryness in his
tone.
"The lady in Boston?" he inquired.
"No; a man in Caithness," said Catherine. "I will ring; she shall come
and tell you if she is in."
He put up his hand to stop her.
"Ah, one moment, please," he said. "I want to have two words with you
about yourself. My dear lady, you are not well: you are very much
overwrought. You have had, you know, a terrible and trying time, and if
you had finished with it, I should tell you to go to bed for a week. But
you can't do that. Now, it has told on you more than you guess. Do not
give yourself more tasks than you need; for instance, are you not
over-taxing yourself unnecessarily here?"
He pointed to the crowded writing-table and the pile of answered
letters, which she had been working at when he came in.
"You mean I had better sit down and think over all this terrible
tragedy," she said, her voice beginning to break a little, "rather than
find relief and rest in employment?"
"No; I do not actually say that you must not answer your letters,
especially if you find it more bearable to work than to do nothing, but
I strongly advise you to rest yourself as much as you can, and to avoid
anything agitating beyond that which you must bear. There is plenty
that, as your husband's wife, you have got to bear. But if there are
other things that worry you, I entreat you to shut the door in their
faces. Exercise your will-power over that, and make it strong by
resistance. Save yourself from anything harassing or troubling. I speak,
of course, quite at random, but I feel sure that there are other things
which are trying you most acutely."
Then, without warning, the breaking-point came for her. All these months
of ceaseless anxiety about Thurso had been a greater drain on her nerve
force than she had known, and of set purpose she had not abated one jot
of the numerous activities of her life, and had not allowed herself to
consider how tired and drained she was. And simultaneously with that had
come this storm and tempest into the secret life of her soul.
She gave a sudden shriek of laughter that did not sound like mirth.
"Oh, you conjurers!" she cried. "You doctors are like X rays! They see
right into one's inside. Good heavens! I should think I had enough to
try me, and you don't guess the half. If it was only Thurso it would be
quite a holiday. Oh, how very funny----"
Sir James got up quickly, placed himself directly in front of her, and
clapped his hands violently close to her face.
"Now, none of that!" he cried. "I haven't come here to listen to
hysterical ravings. Make an effort; pull yourself together. I'm ashamed
of you."
Catherine checked suddenly in the middle of her sentence; two or three
tears, the precursors of the hysterical storm that had been on the point
of bursting forth, had found their way onto her cheeks, and she wiped
them off. The attack was arrested as suddenly as it had begun, and she
stood silent a moment, still hearing the reverberation of his clapped
hands.
"Yes, quite right," she said. "Thank you very much."
Sir James waited till he felt certain of her. Then he took up one of her
hands and kissed it.
"You dear, brave woman!" he said. "But that shows you the truth of what
I said. Be kind to your fine nerves and senses. Treat them well."
She was quite quiet again now, and sat down in the chair from which she
had jumped up.
"Never mind me," she said. "I can manage my own affairs, and I promise
you I will be as sensible as I find it possible. Oh yes, there are other
worries. You are perfectly right."
He paused a moment.
"Now about this man in Caithness," he said. "He was there, I suppose,
when Lord Thurso and Lady Maud were up during the typhoid. Now, I am not
bigoted on the subject; I know quite well that these Christian
Scientists have got hold of a big truth, but many of them mix such
floods of nonsense up with it that it is quite dissolved. They tell me
that if you have a compound fracture, and only say to yourself that
compound fractures don't exist, the bones will join. That, of course, is
silly. But where you deal with the will, or the nerves, or the
imagination, it is a different sort of thing altogether."
Lady Thurso got up again, quietly this time.
"I will see if Maud is in," she said. "There was very virulent typhoid
up there, you know, in the summer, and Mr. Cochrane is believed by her
to have cured one or two extremely grave cases--in fact, she believes
more than that."
She rang the bell, and in the interval, before it was answered, only a
couple of words passed.
"And you will spare yourself?" said Sir James.
Maud had come in half an hour ago, but hearing that her sister-in-law
was with the doctor, she had not interrupted them. As she entered now,
Catherine shook hands with Sir James.
"Maud, this is Sir James Sanderson," she said. "He wants to talk to you.
Good-bye, Sir James. I shall see you, of course, to-morrow morning."
She left the room, and Maud was alone with the doctor. She had no idea
what he wanted to talk to her about, and waited, wondering why Catherine
had left them.
But he instantly approached the subject.
"Lady Maud," he said, "I want to hear about Caithness and the typhoid
and Mr. Cochrane."
Maud was taking off her gloves, but stopped in sheer surprise. There was
nothing that she expected less than this.
"What for?" she said.
"For your brother," said he.
He asked but few questions in her story, for it was a plain and simple
narrative. She described just what had passed in connection with
Duncan's wife; she described all that she had seen with regard to Sandie
Mackenzie; she mentioned the curious and complete cessation of the
epidemic itself.
"And I think I believe exactly what Mr. Cochrane told me," she said.
"Indeed, it seems the simplest explanation to suppose that it was the
direct power of God, in whose presence neither sickness, nor disease,
nor pain can exist."
"You say you think so only," said he. "You are not sure?"
"No, not quite."
"But Mr. Cochrane is?"
She smiled.
"I should say it was the only thing he was absolutely sure of," she
said.
He thought in silence over this for some time, and then spoke as if he
had suddenly made his mind up.
"Medical science, as far as I am acquainted with it," he said, "can do
nothing for Lord Thurso--at least, I fear not. Therefore, if there was a
man outside in the Park there with a barrel-organ and a monkey who said
he could cure the opium habit, I should welcome him in. Personally, I
don't believe in Christian Science for cases of compound fracture, but
it doesn't matter what I believe. It is my duty to try everything I
can. Now, you must let me have a consultation with you about it all."
Again he paused. He wanted to put his thoughts clearly, not only to her,
but to himself.
"We are situated like this," he said. "I have no notion how to cure your
brother, and all that I feel myself able to do is to palliate his
sufferings. But the moment--assuming, that is, which I feel justified in
doing, that he gets over this attack--that I begin to make his days
painless, I aggravate his disease. You, Lady Maud, I know, believe that
there is a chance for him: I do not; but since I cannot professionally
suggest any other chance, all I can say is, 'Do what you can, and God be
with you.' Now, as regards practical details, what are we to do? Where
is this Mr. Cochrane? But I suppose there are plenty of these healers,
are there not? If he is not handy, we can get another."
Maud strove for a moment to separate the strands of her two desires,
that seemed inextricably intermingled. The one was to see Thurso
delivered from this drug-possession, the other to put him in the hands
of Mr. Cochrane--him only.
"I have knowledge of only one Christian Scientist whom I really believe
in," she said, "and that is Mr. Cochrane. You see, I saw him with my own
eyes restore to life a man who was dying. I know there are plenty of
others. I could ask Mrs. Yardly."
Sir James laughed suddenly.
"Why that?" asked Maud.
"She came to me a few months ago for a tonic," he said. "She had been
suffering from general catarrh. She explained to me why this was not
inconsistent, but I failed to follow her."
Maud laughed too.
"Oh, Alice!" she said to herself.
"But Mr. Cochrane, you think, is not like her," said Sir James.
"You can't imagine a more totally different personality," she said. "He
gives confidence, anyhow, and he is not silly. I think there is a great
deal of what is silly about the whole thing, but I believe that the
direct power of God can come and heal people. That is about the biggest
thing possible, isn't it?"
Sir James nodded quietly.
"Yes, my dear young lady," he said. "I believe in that possibility, too,
and that is why I am consulting you. Oh, but compound fracture," he said
suddenly--"what ridiculous nonsense!"
He was silent for a moment after this irrepressible burst of
professional indignation.
"And this Mr. Cochrane," he asked--"where is he?"
"In America," said Maud. "I heard from him two days ago. He is in New
York."
"I have read some of their literature," said Sir James, "and I have
heard about some of their cures. Now, as a doctor, I can't recommend
your employing Mr. Cochrane, but you can, if you choose, send him a
telegram acquainting him with the state of affairs. You see, I don't
think he can hurt your brother, and we doctors can't benefit him."
"Am I to get Mr. Cochrane to come here, then?" asked Maud.
"No; in the first place it is a good deal to ask, and in the second, if
only you or Lady Thurso could persuade Lord Thurso to go, I am convinced
that a sea-voyage, though it will not in the smallest degree cure him,
will be generally beneficial. Now, do you think it is in your power to
persuade him to go? You needn't say anything about a Christian Science
healer waiting for him at the other end; there will be plenty of time
for that when you get him on board ship."
Maud thought over this. There was a suggestion that she felt she had
better make, which was rather difficult for her to put to him.
"Yes; I think I might be able to persuade him," she said, "because
certainly he used often to listen to me when he would listen to no one
else. And would you think it odd if I suggested that he and I went
alone, without Lady Thurso?"
"I should have suggested it if you had not," said the doctor. "But tell
me why you did."
"Ah! poor Thurso is mad," said she. "He is not in the least himself. But
ever since the summer he has been behaving to Catherine as if he hated
her."
The doctor nodded.
"I know; she feels that, too. Now, you cannot see your brother to-day,
but to-morrow, if he goes on well, I think you might. We shall see. I
shall be back early to-morrow to look at him."
For a man who had passed through so dangerous an attack, weakened, too,
as he was, by months of the opium habit, Thurso showed extraordinary
recuperative power, and next day he asked of his own accord whether Maud
might come and see him. This Sir James at once allowed.
"I will let her know when I go," he said. "It will do you good."
He waited for a moment, but Thurso said nothing about wishing to see
Catherine, and shortly after the doctor left him, and told Maud she
might pay him a short visit. The nurse was with him when Maud entered,
but went to her room next door, leaving brother and sister alone. He was
still lying flat, without pillows, but he smiled a welcome at Maud when
she came in.
"Come close, Maud," he said in a minute. "I want to talk to you."
His voice was still no more than a whisper from weakness, but his words
were quite audible.
"I don't want to see Catherine," he said, "and you must keep her away
from me. I think the sight of her would send me off my head. It's she
who has brought me to this. It was she who ruined my nerves by always
rushing and flying about in every direction----"
Maud interrupted him gently.
"Ah! never mind that," she said. "At present all you have to do is to
lie quiet, and not worry about anything, and get well."
But Thurso broke in again.
"Oh, don't imagine I don't know how atrociously I have behaved to her,"
he said; "but she drove me mad. She despised me; I saw that. Well, I
gave her something to despise me for."
"Oh, dear Thurso, don't talk like that," she said. "If you don't want to
see Catherine, of course you shall not. But your saying that reminds me
of a plan you and I might think of when you get better."
"What's that?"
"I've already spoken to Sir James about it, and he approves. You will
have to go somewhere to pick up again, so how about you and me going on
a voyage together? We both like the sea, so why not go to America on one
of those big liners that are so comfortable? We could stay at that house
of Catherine's on Long Island for a week or two, if you liked."
"Without Catherine, you mean?" he asked.
"She loathes the sea, you remember. You couldn't expect her to come."
His eye brightened.
"Yes; I should like that," he said. "You and I have had jolly times
together by ourselves. But I won't go if she goes."
His voice had risen sharply over this, and he was silent afterwards,
breathing rather quickly. Then he looked at Maud as she sat beside the
bed, and something in her youth and beauty stirred some chord of
vibrating memory in him, and his mind, which, for all the deadly
weakness of his body, was quite clear, went back to early days when he
and she had been together so much, bound in an intimacy and affection
that seldom exists between brother and sister. She had always been such
a good friend to him, such a capital quick-sympathising comrade, and
now, he felt, there must for ever stand between them the horror of these
last months. For the moment he got outside himself and judged himself,
and saw how hideous he had been.
"I've made a pretty good mess of it all," he said.
She laid her hand on his. It was no time to preach: she could only
console.
"Yes, dear Thurso," she said. "We've all made mistakes. But, thank God!
it is never too late."
Then that moment of regret, that nearly amounted to contrition, passed
from him. It had been brief as a sudden ray of sun piercing through some
unconjectured rent in blinding storm-clouds.
"But it's Catherine's fault," he said.
* * * * *
But the ray had been there. His soul, though sick to death, still lived.
And that was the only piece of consolation that Maud could carry away
with her.