When she entered her husband's bedroom, he was already in bed, lying
propped up against a heap of pillows. A shaded lamp burnt on a table
close by--the same lamp that Sophy had extinguished at five o'clock the
other morning. Gaynor was folding some garments and laying them away in
a cupboard. As soon as Sophy came in, he slipped out in the mousey way
that she so disliked. She had never been able to overcome her antipathy
towards Gaynor. Then she looked earnestly at Chesney and was startled by
the change in him. His face was slightly flushed, but looked gay and
good-humoured. He had on pyjamas of a light, grey-blue that threw out
the gold in his fair hair. There were books all about him--on the bed,
and on the table. Writing materials were laid close at hand on a leather
blotting-pad. He smiled, with an almost childlike, ingenuous expression,
and held out both hands to her.
Sophy felt bewildered. She did not know how to return this look. Her
heart felt sore and outraged, yet something in this eager, humble look
of his melted her against her will. She went up to the bed and let him
take her hands.
"You'll forgive a chap, won't you, eh, Daphne?" (Oh, if only he wouldn't
call her "Daphne" on these occasions!) "A rum, seedy duffer, who's
devilish crusty at times, but who worships your shoe-soles!" (So he
called it being "crusty"--those ways and words that seared her most
intimate womanhood like a hot iron!)
"Are you really better? What was it?" she said, evading a direct answer,
and trying to infuse extra kindness into her voice to make up for the
evasion.
"Oh, it's just the fag end of that beastly jungle fever I got in India.
Gaynor understands it like a native. Gave me some drops. Indian specific
for the thing, you know. So I'm forgiven--eh? It's _pax_ between us?"
"Yes--_pax_," said Sophy. She felt very tired, and turned as if to draw
up a chair, but the big hands held her fast.
"No--no--not an inch away from me, even for a second. Sit here--on the
bed--close to me."
She let him draw her down. She could not keep her eyes from his face.
There was something in it--a strangeness. It was Cecil's face and yet it
was not quite his face. Or was it his voice that was strange? Yes; there
was something in his voice. It was almost as though he were imitating
himself. She felt that her own thoughts were becoming mixed. But the
impression of strangeness--of something queer--grew upon her. And all at
once, as she became accustomed to the shaded lamp, she noticed, with an
odd little start of the spirit, that his eyes were pale, and dull
again--like bits of glass that have been rubbed together--like those
pale, greenish glass marbles that boys call "taws." It was doubly
striking--this change in his eyes--because of the way that they had been
over-dark and dilated only a little while ago. His lips, too, she
noticed, were very dry. As he talked eagerly, volubly, he kept sipping
champagne from the glass that Gaynor had filled just before leaving the
room. Sometimes his lips stuck to his teeth, they were so dry. And his
upper lip caught up for an instant in this way, gave him a peculiar,
unnatural look.
"Isn't the medicine that Gaynor gives you very strong?" she asked
anxiously. "Isn't it dangerous to take such strong medicine--without a
doctor's advice?"
She was so utterly ignorant of the effects of opium or morphia, that she
put aside the things that Olive Arundel had told her, as she listened to
his excited, garrulous talk. Opium gave wonderful dreams--deep sleep.
Morphine was used to quiet delirium. This could not be the effect of
either of those drugs. It seemed much more probable to her that what he
had said was the simple truth, and that Gaynor had given him some strong
Oriental medicine to check the effects of fever.
"No--no--nonsense," he cried, in answer to her suggestion, a fretful
look crossing his forehead. Then a sort of slow ecstatic expression
crept over his face. He caught her hands in his again.
"Oh, the bliss--the sheer bliss of relief from pain!" he murmured. "Half
an hour ago I was in hell--quite so. Now...." He drew away one of his
hands, and spread it out slowly at arm's length, smiling at it. It was
odd and painful to see the huge man thus reproduce exactly the gesture
of a baby who gazes with wonder at its own hand.
"Now," he went on, "my very hands are happy. It's a pleasure--a
thrilling joy just to move my fingers--quietly, like that...."
"You aren't feverish now, are you?" asked Sophy. She put her hand on his
forehead. It was dry and warm, but not feverish.
"No--no. Not in the least," he said, and again that fretful look crossed
his face. But the next instant he was rambling on.
"Yes--bliss just to be--just to breathe. To stretch out--so." He
elongated his limbs under the bedclothes, stretching luxuriously like a
great cat. "If I were a Titan, by Jove!--I could fill up space just by
stretching myself like that. Bum fancy, eh?" He laughed softly, and took
several sips of champagne--then lighted a cigarette.
"Ought you to smoke?" faltered Sophy. Somehow, the more gay and
garrulous he grew, the more depressed and anxious she felt. She did not
trust Gaynor. What was this sinisterly benevolent medicine that could
change a man from an angry, brutal invalid, into a huge, merry child as
it were, chirping at the toys of fancy?
"Do you know anything about epilepsy, Sophy? Bless you, you darling!
don't look so frightened. _I_ haven't got epilepsy--but there was that
Russian chap--Dostoievsky--who had it. He speaks of a wonderful
moment--a luminous moment that comes just before an attack--before the
fit, you know. He says you seem to understand everything, and know
everything, and be in harmony with everything--as if there were no more
time. Well--I have not only one moment like that but hundreds,
thousands--when I'm as I am now--after a collapse like that. By God!
It's worth the suffering. That's what Dostoievsky said. He said that
moment was worth all the rest of his life. He was right.... Yes, he was
right."
Sophy took one of his excited hands and held it in both her own.
"Cecil--dear Cecil," she said. "Please, for my sake--consult a doctor
about that medicine Gaynor gives you."
For a second--the merest flash, a look of fury narrowed his eyes. Then
he laughed, gaily, good-naturedly, patted her hand.
"My good child, haven't you ever heard the expression 'crazy with joy'?
Well, I'm crazy with the joy of relief from pain, that's all. Can't a
chap babble a bit to his own wife without being threatened with a
doctor? Come-- I suppose I _am_ talking a bit too much. Tell me a story,
as the children say--and I'll keep quiet. By the way--talking of
children--I sent for you chiefly to tell you that you were right about
the boy. He's a devil of a little individual, that's all. I'm rather an
individual myself. Naturally we clash. Relationship doesn't alter such
things. Relationship is a big farce. There aren't any true relationships
except those of the spirit. You're Queen of Bobs from this time forward.
There-- I _am_ forgiven now, ain't I!"
"Yes; truly--from my heart," said Sophy, quite melted. She put her face
down against his hand. "If only...."
"If only what?"
"If only you could always be your true self--_this_ self."
Chesney said nothing. He was lighting another cigarette--leaning over
and holding it to the lamp clumsily.
"Oh, poor dear! You can't do it that way; here's your other hand," she
said, smiling and releasing the hand she held. Chesney closed his eyes
for a moment. Dreamily he said:
"Won't you tell me that story? You tell such lovely stories when you're
in the mood."
"I can't think of one somehow. _You_ tell _me_ one."
In that thick dreamy voice, his dry lips cleaving together now and then,
he began to speak.
"Once there was a man who was shut by his arch enemy into a dark
dungeon. This enemy's name was Bios." (Sophy knew no Greek, and somehow
it pleased him to fling out to her this clue to the parable that he was
inventing, knowing that she could not use it.) "Bios shut the man up in
his foul dungeon. But worse than the darkness and the stone walls was
the legend of the place. It was told that out of the crevices there came
a horrid Thing like a winged scorpion, with steely horns and a sting of
living fire. And in the darkness this Thing would dart upon the prisoner
in that dungeon, and drive him round and round. By the light of its
fiery sting he could see just enough to run from it but not to escape.
This man thought: 'I will not run from this Thing until I die from
exhaustion. I will bare my breast to it and die at once, from its
sting.' Pour me out a bit more champagne, there's a dear girl."
"Did--did Gaynor say that champagne was good to take with that
medicine?"
"Yes--yes"--impatiently. "Don't you want to hear the end of my story?"
"Of course--but--yes, go on."
He drank half a glass of the wine at a draught, and dropping the lighted
cigarette on the bedclothes seemed not to notice it. Sophy hastily
brushed it upon the floor, then lifted it and put it in the ash-tray. He
went on in that sing-song way:
"So the man bared his breast. And he felt the little sting go
in--delicately--deliberately----" His slowly modulated voice seemed to
make her see this fiery sting going into the man's flesh in the dark.
She shivered.
"Oh, finish!" she said. "I don't like this story, Cecil."
"Wait," he murmured. "And as the sting went into his living flesh--there
flowed through him, not death--but rapture--rapture--rapture----" His
voice trailed off.
He seemed to have fallen suddenly asleep. Sophy hoped that he had. It
seemed to her as if he were a little delirious. She started to rise
softly--at once his hand gripped her, holding her down. "I'm not
asleep," he said. "I'm only thinking. I'm thinking how badly I told that
story, when it is really beautiful--quite beautiful. But I don't want to
talk any more."
She waited some moments--then said in a soft, even whisper:
"Asleep, dear?"
Only his heavy breathing answered her. She lifted her hand from his
breast, little by little, turned down the lamp, and stole from the room.
Neutral tinted in face and figure, quietly alert, Gaynor sat on a chair
outside the door. He rose for Sophy to pass. For some reason, that even
she herself could not quite make out, she broke down and wept when she
reached her own room. Kneeling beside her bed, her face buried in her
pillow, her arms clasping it, she kept sobbing: "Oh, poor Cecil! poor
Cecil!"