I stood up. But she clung to one of my hands, and I had to bend a
little. I was trying to think--What do they give for morphine poisoning?
What are the antidotes?... Stimulants, surely.
I had some strychnine in my little medicine-chest. I gently withdrew my
hand, and went into my room to look for it.
I felt uncertain about this treatment, for I am no physician. But it
might be that there was no time to lose. She was weak, and extremely
nervous. The coldness of her hands led me to believe that at some moment
after she took the drug her heart action must have all but stopped.
Standing there, in my disordered room--for my steamer trunk was open,
my clothes still lay in rumpled heaps on the bed, the cluttered bureau
drawers stood about on chairs and on the table--I made up my mind
to give her the strychnine. I did not realize then that there were
physicians to be had. I felt only our remoteness from the conveniences
of civilized life, here in this little hotel in the Tartar City.
It would doubtless have been better to administer the stimulant by the
hypodermic syringe. But I had none. So I refilled her glass with water,
gave her two of my strychnine pills, and raised her head while she
sipped the water.
I do not recall now whether or not she resisted this treatment. I think
she did, a little. But she was so completely exhausted, in body and
spirit, by all she had gone through, that she really could do nothing
but follow my instructions.
Then I rang for a boy--from my own room. It was getting pretty late in
the evening; but I made him fetch me a large pot of black coffee.
I lifted her, and slipped the two pillows behind her that I had brought
in from my own bed, and made her as nearly comfortable as I could. When
the coffee came I poured out three cups of it, one after another, and
stood over her while she drank them. She protested, every moment, but I
paid no attention to her words, just held the cup to her lips until it
was empty and then refilled it twice.
This done, I put the tray in my own room, and did what little I could
to make her room more attractive to the eye. I moved the bureau from the
hall door to its place against the side wall, the place it had occupied
ever since she and I had moved it for the last time away from the door
that connected our rooms. I even straightened out the various articles
on the bureau.
And all this time I felt her great, weary eyes following me about, the
room. She was distinctly relieved, I thought, at the sharp way in which
I had taken command of her life. Poor child, she had tried hard enough
to end that life. She had passed through the valley, of the shadow. And
now, cheated yet relieved, she leaned on me.
Since that hour my mind has dwelt on the horrors she must have lived
through that day. (She did not finally take the morphia until sometime
after five in the afternoon.) She says nothing about the day; and of
course I ask no questions. But she was there in her room through the
noon hours and all the afternoon. And when I asked her if she slept
at all the preceding night--the night that I sat up, without even
undressing--she said no.... But I think it is better for me not to dwell
on this.
I walked over to the window to let the night air in on her, and perhaps
also to think.
Suddenly I recalled that there was a telephone downstairs. How stupid of
me not to have thought of it before!
And Sir Robert had spoken of a physician at the British Legation. I
should have remembered that! But on second thought, I could not bear to
think of calling in Sir Robert's man.
However, medical advice of some sort I must have. I knew nothing of the
action of morphia on the system. She might be sinking at this moment.