The pains in his back and legs persisted all that night, and in the
morning he confessed to Sophy that he thought he'd "caught a damned cold
somehow," that his legs felt like a pair of red-hot compasses, and could
she suggest a remedy? Sophy brought him ten grains of phenacetine from
her little travelling medicine-chest, and in an hour he was much
relieved. These pains were all the more annoying, as he had heard lately
of the yearly boat-races on Lago Maggiore, and was keen on having Amaldi
enter _The Wind-Flower_ for these races.
"And if I get shelved with an attack of sciatica, there's the end of
it!" he growled. "It nipped me once before, in Canada, so I know the
strength of its cursed fangs."
Amaldi, finding that he would have to endure more than a good deal of
Chesney's company, unless he devised some mitigation, had introduced him
to several friends of his--keen yachtsmen, members of the R. V. Y. C.
(Royal Verbano Yacht Club), an offshoot of the R. I. Y. C. This club has
no seat, and its funds are devoted to prizes. It meets at Stresa, in a
room, always gratuitously provided by the _Hotel des Isles Barromees_.
There Amaldi took Chesney. The latter was much pleased with these
Italian devotees of _le sport_, though he was also vastly tickled by
some things about them. For instance, he could not get over the fact
that, while they were one and all very well dressed in London clothes,
three at least of them wore evening pumps with their yachting flannels,
and one kept gloves on all the time, and even shook hands in them. That
they spoke such excellent English struck him as astonishing. He had
thought Amaldi an exception.
So Chesney was invited to sail also in other yachts, and Amaldi was
relieved from such incessant contact with him. However, he found it
impossible, with civility, to decline all his invitations to lunch and
dine at Villa Bianca. In this way he saw even more of Sophy than he had
hitherto done. But seeing her in this way was more painful to him than
not seeing her at all. He longed for the time to come when they would
leave Lago Maggiore. And Sophy talked very little when the two men were
present.
"I thought you liked Amaldi?" Chesney said one day, looking at her
rather keenly.
"I do," said Sophy. "Very much," she added, feeling that the coldness of
her tone might seem singular.
"Well, upon my soul, no one would guess it," he retorted, rather
crossly. Those pains were beginning to irritate him again. "Sometimes I
wonder that he comes here at all--you're so confoundedly glacial and
snubby in your manner to him."
"I?... 'Snubby' to Marchese Amaldi?" asked Sophy, really surprised.
"Yes, by Gad! Just that," said Chesney. "You never open your lips to him
if you can help it. You sail out of the room for the least excuse--and
stay out. The other night, at dinner, he asked you a question and you
didn't even answer him."
"I didn't hear him ... really I didn't, Cecil." Sophy felt much
distressed. Could Amaldi think that she meant to be "glacial" and
"snubby" to him?
"I'm very sorry. I do like him sincerely," she added.
Cecil was in a really bad humour. That right leg of his, from the hip
down, hurt like the devil!
"And the way you refused to sing when I asked you after dinner, that
same evening, was downright rude!" he fumed on. "You'd been singing for
me every evening that week--I'd told the poor devil so. Fancy how he
must have felt, when you minced out: 'Not _this_ evening, please,
Cecil.'"
To her intense dismay, Sophy felt herself flushing. She had excused
herself from singing because Amaldi had never heard her sing and she had
felt that it would be sad and painful to sing before him for the first
time under these circumstances. She knew how much he liked music. He had
said once in her presence that he thought a contralto voice the most
beautiful of all. She did not want to sing for Amaldi at her husband's
bidding, and a slightly relaxed throat had made her feel that she could
refuse reasonably. Now this flush added to her distress.
"You know, Cecil, I explained that I had a sore throat," she murmured.
"I am sure the Marchese didn't think I meant to be rude."
"Well, I hope you'll have recovered from your sore throat by the next
time I ask him here," said Chesney drily. "It's annoying to have one's
wife even seem discourteous to one's friends. Have you any more of that
stuff you gave me yesterday?" he wound up. "I took the last tablet two
hours ago, and my leg's cutting up hell again."
"Won't you see Doctor Camenis, Cecil? Do. Let him come here, or see him
some time when you're in Stresa, I don't like giving you so much
phenacetine. It's so depressing--so bad on one's heart."
"Oh, damn doctors!" he said impatiently. "Get me the stuff, can't you?"
But when she came back with it, he looked ashamed of himself.
"Sorry if I was rude, Sophy," he said; "but I've had just about as much
doctoring as I can stand for the present."
This was the only allusion that he had made to his experience with
Carfew since his arrival in Italy. Sophy thought it most natural. She
could imagine the horror and loathing with which he looked back on those
two months in the sanatorium.
Next day, however, he came to her quite meekly.
"Just give me that doctor chap's address in Stresa, will you?" he said.
"This damnable leg is getting too much for me."
Dr. Camenis wanted Chesney to go to bed for forty-eight hours and take
large doses of salicylate of soda. Chesney said that he would take the
stuff, but refused to go to bed.
"In that case, Signore," said Camenis firmly, "I cannot prescribe
salicylate of sodium. It produces heavy perspiration. You would probably
increase this attack of sciatica."
Chesney said very well, to give him the prescription and he'd promise
not to take it unless he went to bed for two days.
He had gone to Stresa that day by one of the Lake Steamers. By the time
he returned to Intra, he was in severe pain. Camenis had said that he
could suggest no palliative but opium in some form, and he was averse
from prescribing anodynes except in extreme cases. As he came up the
slant of the embarcadero, Chesney had actual difficulty in walking. His
face was flushed with that drilling anguish in his sciatic nerve. He
limped across to the Piazza. At once the _vetturini_ waiting there on
the boxes of their rusty little traps began to hail him. One red-faced,
grey-eyed fellow shouted out:
"_He!_ Meester! I drive you Villa Bianca--_ne_?"
But Chesney, leaning heavily on his stick, had his eyes fixed on a sign
that ran along the front of a shop just across the way. "_Farmacia
Lavatelli_," it read. His heart was thumping hard with a bolt-like
thought that had just struck him. He had set his teeth. The vetturino,
his scampish grey eyes looking white like glass in his dark-red face,
drove nearer.
"I drive you at Villa Bianca quveek, sir," he said. "I spik Engleesh.
Liva Noo York two year. I name John. You wanta me drive you, _ne_?"
Chesney glanced around with a start; then clambered painfully into the
_carrozzella_.
The man gave his old screw a flick, it started forward in a gallant
shamble.
"Hold on!" cried Chesney.
The vetturino nearly drew the poor nag onto its haunches.
"_He?_ What's it?" he asked.
Chesney pointed with his stick at Lavatelli's sign.
"Is that a good chemist's?" he asked.
"_He?_" said the vetturino, glancing where the stick pointed. "You say
Lavatelli--is he good?"
"Yes," said Chesney.
"Veree good," said John cheerfully. "Lavatelli he all right. Caccia he
good, too. You want go there?"
Chesney hesitated an instant; the blood rushed to his face, then ebbed.
"Yes. Drive there," he said, throwing himself back against the greasy
seat and clenching his teeth. A pang like the throb of a red-hot piston
had shot from the joint of his ankle to his hip. His muscles drew with
the anguish of it.
"Where I must go--Lavatelli or Caccia?" asked the vetturino.
"There," said Chesney, indicating the shop opposite. Somewhere behind
those gilt-lettered windows was relief ready to his hand. He had
determined very seriously to tamper no more with morphia, but agony such
as he was enduring at this moment certainly justified him in making an
exception to his self-imposed rule. Besides, he was no sottish weakling,
who could not trust himself to take one moderate dose of morphia without
risking the danger of a renewal of the habit. Of course, old Carfew
would howl blue ruin at the mere idea. Sophy would be horrified. Anne
Harding would lash him with her prickly tongue.... Well, thank the Lord,
there was no need of taking them into his confidence! One, or perhaps
two, moderate doses--that was all. He could take it by mouth. He would
go to bed--sleep it off. No one would be the wiser. But he would be
relieved of this maddening "tooth-ache" in his leg. He might even try
that old Italian prig's remedy, afterwards--do the thing up thoroughly
while he was about it.
As the vetturino drove across the street, Chesney got out his
pocketbook. His fingers slid as from habit to a little flap on the
inside of the case. As he felt the paper that he was in search of under
his fingers, a queer thrill ran through him. He started, flushing. This
thrill had been one of exultation; at the same time he had a sense of
guilt. What rot! He was a responsible being--independent--he had a
brain. What was it for if not to guide him in just such cases as this?
He had endured this grinding pain for a week now--had only slept in
wretched snatches for seven whole nights. Why should he feel that
absurd, little-boy sense of guilt because he was going to provide
himself with a good night's rest?
When the man drew up before the chemist's shop, Chesney sat for a
moment reading over the prescription in his hand. Yes, it was
perfectly preserved--quite legible. It was a prescription for soluble
tablets of morphia for hypodermic use--one grain of morphia, one
one-hundred-and-fiftieth of a grain of atropine. The atropine was to
prevent nausea. How cursedly dry it made one's mouth! That was the
drawback to atropine. But it was better than nausea. And still he sat
there fingering the prescription--something holding him back--something
more imperious than reason. His reasons appeared all excellent and
logical to himself; yet this something refused them--said: "Not so....
Not so"--with the iteration of steady clockwork. Also, as often happens
when one is sure of relief, that hot drilling in his leg had ceased
completely. Without the excuse of that anguish, it seemed in a flash
monstrous, even to him, that he should be sitting there in the lovely
Italian sunshine before Lavatelli's, after all the horrors of the past
months and years, deliberately contemplating purchasing and taking a
dose of morphia. He slipped the prescription suddenly back into his
pocketbook and put it away.
"Villa Bianca!" he called sharply to the vetturino.
The man caught up the reins again, again smacked the old bay's quarters
with his whip. They started at a splaying trot towards Ghiffa. But
before they reached the Intra post-office, the fierce pain had again
gripped him. He was ashamed to tell the man to go back to Lavatelli's.
With his stick he tapped John's shoulder.
"What did you say was the name of the other chemist's shop....
Pharmacy.... Whatever-you-call-it...?" he asked.
"_Pharmacia? He?_"
"Yes; the other one."
"Caccia? All right, I go at Caccia."
He turned round and drove to another chemist's, this time in a farther
Piazza. It took about four minutes. Chesney got out and entered the
shop. The keen, medicinal smell of the place brought the past in a gust
upon him. He took the old prescription again from his pocketbook. It was
stamped with the names of various chemists where it had been filled
before.
"I am suffering severely with sciatica," he said, in a casual tone, to
the clerk who took the prescription from him. "I need sleep very badly.
I only want enough morphia for two doses--well, perhaps three would be
better, as the pain might not yield easily."
The clerk said: "_Si, Signore_," and went to consult a senior member of
the firm. He returned and said respectfully:
"I am sorry, Signore. We do not keep _Sulfato di Morphia_ in this form."
Chesney flushed and paled rapidly as he had done in the cab outside.
"Do you mean you refuse to sell me even one or two doses?" he asked
haughtily.
The clerk looked admiringly and a little timidly at his immense, angry
customer.
"_Prego, Signore_--but not at all," he said. "We will sell it to you.
This is a good prescription--good firms have filled it before. It is
only that we have not the morphia in tablets--but in solution. And we
have it not with the atropia."
"Ah!" said Chesney. His face relaxed. "Well, show me the kind you have,"
he said curtly, but not uncivilly.
The clerk brought a little cardboard box divided into cells. These
cells, which were lined with cotton-wool, each held a small glass
globule filled with a solution of morphia and sealed at one end with
wax.
"It is safer so, Signore. One escapes to infect oneself. One breaks the
seal and fills the hypodermic _siringa_ direct from these little
globules."
Chesney was silent for a second, gazing at the little transparent
amphorae that held Nepenthe. Then he said:
"Do you keep hypodermic syringes? I have broken mine."
He winced as the unnecessary lie escaped him. It made things more
plausible, but need not have been uttered. Untruth seemed somehow the
inevitable attendant of morphia, even when innocently indulged in as he
was now about to do. Yet all this time his pulse was racing. The clang
of the little bell attached to the door of the pharmacy, that rang when
customers went in or out, made him start and glance round each time that
it sounded....
He went out and got again into the _carrozzella_. In his pocket were
three of the little globules and a shining new hypodermic syringe in a
black Morocco case.
"Villa Bianca!" he said.
The vetturino glanced up, struck by the new, firm ring in his voice.
"They must have given him some devil of a good medicine in there," he
thought. "He's another man, _per Bacco_!"
This time the patient screw shambled on to the gates of Villa Bianca
without check.