He was very cautious about this dose of morphia. He felt that he must
guard in every possible way against the nausea that might follow it,
thus taken without atropine. Sophy was pleased and surprised to hear
that he had seen Camenis, and still more surprised when he said that he
was going to bed at once, and would she be a dear girl and read aloud to
him. He was looking forward with a half-shamed excitement to the luxury
of relief and stimulation which he knew the morphia, so long refrained
from, would give him to a superlative degree. But he knew also that it
would be apt to make him garrulous. He did not want to talk. He was
afraid of "giving himself away" somehow. So he asked Sophy to read aloud
because he did not want to be alone either. It would intensify that
sensation of blissful _bien etre_ which lay just ahead of him to have
some one near. This feeling was akin to that with which a child, cosily
in bed, regards its nurse sewing beside a shaded lamp.
Yes; he would go to bed, take the morphia, and then, later, the
salicylate of soda. Two days of it would knock out the sciatica, that
old doctor had said. Well--the morphia would keep him from being bored,
in addition to easing his pain. One was never bored while under the
effects of morphia. He would take one dose now, sleep off the bad
effects. Then, next day, take the other in the same way. The
third--well, it depended on how he would be feeling whether he took the
third dose or not.
Sophy sent Luigi to kindle a fire in his bedroom before she would let
him undress there. The _Mareng_, as the Scirocco is called on Lago
Maggiore, had been blowing all day. Now a fine drizzle had begun to
fall. As she went to find the book that Cecil had asked her to read
aloud, she thought of how odd it was that his illnesses should always be
associated in her mind with rainy weather. And the weather had been so
glorious nearly all the time, until now. Some splendid _Temporali_--the
crashing thunderstorms of that region--had come in July and August. But
there had been no steady, sullen rain such as was now falling.
As for Chesney, he congratulated himself on having this acute attack
just at this time. The _Mareng_, Luigi told him, would not last more
than two or three days. _The Wind-Flower_ was at Taroni's having her
bottom scraped for the races.
As soon as he was rid of this deuced pain, he would go and look up a
rowboat. He needed exercise. There were good boats, cheaper than
elsewhere, Amaldi had said, at a little village called Cerro, on the
other side of the Lake.
When Luigi had kindled the fire, he went up to his bedroom and closed
and locked the door. The blaze from dried roots and scraps of wood
looked very jolly tucked away in the corner like that. He glanced at the
fine strands of rain outside his window, and the soggy brown of the
balcony beyond, and thought the contrast only made the fire seem
jollier.
Then he took off his coat, spread a fresh towel on the bed, and laid out
the hypodermic syringe and one of the glass globules upon it. There was
one instant when, as he stood with the syringe poised above the opened
capsule, a strange impulse came over him. He thought: "What if I throw
all this stuff into the fire? Just go to bed, take the salicylate--'grin
and bear it'?" His heart beat violently. Then, with a sudden gesture, he
thrust the nose of the syringe into the capsule, and drew the piston up
till the cylinder was filled with the colourless liquid. Each dose of
the solution held half a grain of morphia. He screwed the needle into
place--pushed up his shirt-sleeve.... Another instant and the needle was
home in his flesh. He pressed the piston gently down--withdrew the
needle, and rubbed the puncture with a bit of cotton soaked in spirit.
Then he cleaned the syringe, put a wire through the needle, locked all
away into his travelling-bag, and, after setting the door slightly ajar,
undressed and got into bed. In two minutes the little clutch at his
midriff told him that the morphia was at its work.... Then he called to
Sophy. And as he lay there with slow bliss stealing over him, and heard
her light step coming up the stair, he justified his action to himself
with persistent and plausible reiteration. The pain was already
lessening--he felt tender and affectionate towards Sophy--longed to talk
to her. But he kept saying to himself: "No, no--I must not. I must not,
on any account." So he only smiled at her and moved his head against the
pillow in assent, when she asked if he felt easier, warm in bed like
this. When she sat down in a low chair beside the bed and began to read,
he reached out and took her free hand, holding it, playing with her
rings--that vague smile still on his face.
The rain fell faster and faster--it became a heavy downpour, rattling on
the magnolia leaves outside and veiling the more distant trees. Sophy
read until he seemed dozing--then went down to her lonely dinner in the
ugly little dining-room. Somehow she felt strangely depressed. The
_Mareng_ seemed to have soaked into her very soul.
Chesney stayed in bed three days. He took all the morphia, but he also
took the salicylate prescribed by Camenis. He suffered a good deal from
nausea; but when he got up again, on the morning of the fourth day, his
attack of sciatica was entirely over. He felt abominably weak, though.
On the second day, he had sent Luigi to Pallanza to buy some good
Cognac--a small glass of this revived him. He scrupulously avoided
taking more than a small quantity at a time. He did not for a moment
intend to lapse into his old habits.
But after he had been about for two days, back came the sciatic pains.
He grumbled savagely. The _Mareng_ had ceased. The Maggiore seemed
kindling the heavens with its clear, fierce blast. The sun would have
been hot as in August but for the wind. There seemed no earthly reason
for the return of the sciatica. He must get rid of this nuisance before
the races, by hook or by crook. He shrank from the idea of taking more
morphia in its Italian form. The nausea had been too wearing. Besides,
he did not wish to go to Caccia's a second time for it. It occurred to
him to take the motor-boat and run over to Stresa. The first chemist
there would probably have English or American preparations of the drug.
He succeeded in finding a little case of an American preparation of
morphia and atropine. But he was still extremely cautious, not only in
regard to others, but about himself. Such doses as he took were very
small (he would cut the tablets in half with his penknife--carefully
burning the blade first in a candle-flame). And he always took them at
bedtime, so that by the next morning the extreme dryness of his mouth
would have passed. The pain kept nagging him. And in the intervals
between the doses of morphia that hateful weakness came over him. He
began to drink Cognac regularly with his meals. This worried Sophy--she
could not think so much brandy good for him. At her suggestion he bought
some Scotch whiskey in Pallanza. But the smooth, oily liquor, tempered
by soda, was not what he wanted. It was even distasteful to him. What he
craved was the keen bite of the raw brandy in his stomach and blood.
He grew very irritable at times, under the double stress of the
intermittent pain, and the desire for larger doses of morphia than he
dared take. His extreme caution would not let him continue drinking the
Cognac at meals, since Sophy had objected to it. It might make her
suspect something. So he fell into the way of taking a glass here and
there, wherever he chanced to be, at some _cafe_ in Intra or Pallanza,
or even in Ghiffa.
He did not find Amaldi so companionable, either, since he had been
suffering in this way.
"Rather a wooden chap, that Amaldi, when one comes to see more of him,"
he said to Sophy.
One evening, when Amaldi chanced to be at Villa Bianca, Chesney again
asked his wife to sing. She went at once to the piano. Amaldi sat
leaning forward, looking down at his hands, which were clasped loosely
between his knees. Chesney kept glancing towards him vexedly all the
time that Sophy was singing. Amaldi's expression _was_ rather "wooden."
"Sing that Grieg thing," Chesney had said. She sang Solweg's song from
the Peer Gynt series. It seemed to Amaldi that he could not bear it,
when the voice of the woman he loved poured over him in that soft wave
of heart-break. His face looked ever more and more "wooden" as she sang
on. When she stopped and Chesney fixed his eyes on the other man with
that sort of irritated challenge in them, Amaldi said in a cut-and-dried
tone: "Thanks. It was most beautiful."
Chesney couldn't get over it for the rest of the evening. He mimicked
Amaldi's tone and manner to Sophy again and again.
"Damned constipated mind the fellow's got, by God!" he said. "He hears
for the first time a great imperial-purple voice like yours, and all he
says is: 'Thanks; most beautiful.' Why didn't he say: 'Very nice,' and
have done with it!"
Sophy shivered at his ever-increasing irritability. Sometimes she
thought the gentle Luigi would surely burst into flame under Cecil's
fierce cursings and depart forthwith; but the little man merely looked
stolid, as if slightly deaf, on these occasions. She thought that
Lombards, whether noble or peasant, had singular self-control, for
something in the little Milanese's manner under provocation reminded
her vaguely of Amaldi. Then one day she heard him remark to Maria, the
cook, who also seemed astonished at his patience:
"_Cosa te voeuret? L'e matt quel diavol d'un milord. E quella bella
sciora l'e tanto bona._" (What'll you have? He's mad, this devil of a
milord, and his lovely lady is so good!)
One afternoon Amaldi called to tell Chesney that _The Wind-Flower_ was
in the water again. He found Sophy alone on the terrace. She was sewing
on a little blouse for Bobby, who had worn out most of his wardrobe. She
loved making his little fineries herself. Amaldi was more natural in his
manner that afternoon. It was long since he had seen her alone. Sophy
had recovered from the first shock of her husband's return; she also
felt more natural. Before long she was talking to Amaldi almost eagerly.
She had been thinking of her far-away home in Virginia when he arrived.
She ran to fetch some photographs of it to show him. Chesney was away in
the motor-boat--at Stresa, she believed.... But at that moment Chesney
was driving back from Pallanza, having left the motor there to be
mended. It had broken down just before he reached the embarcadero, and
he had been obliged to row ashore. He was in an evil temper. His leg was
"drilling" again, and he had had two glasses of Cognac within an hour.
When he reached the lower terrace he looked up and saw Sophy and Amaldi
bending together over the photographs like two children over a
picture-book. She was talking eagerly, looking often at Amaldi. There
was a pretty flush on her face. Her grey eyes sparkled.... Chesney was
so gruff in manner that Amaldi went almost immediately. Sophy sat gazing
at her husband with a puzzled expression. She had not yet realised that
Chesney had taken a dislike to Amaldi as sudden as his first liking.
"Well, I must say you're making up for lost time!" he threw out roughly.
"How?" she asked, astonished, not getting his meaning.
"Why, a week ago you hadn't a word to throw that chap; now you palaver
with him like an old crony."
Sophy reddened with anger.
"Please don't speak to me in this way," she said coldly.
He reddened, too.
"You speak to Amaldi as you damn please--I'll speak to you as I damn
please," he said.
"No," said Sophy, "for I shan't stay to listen to you."
And she gathered up the photographs and went into the house with her
head high.
"Women are the devil!" said Chesney, scowling after her. "Women are the
devil!" he repeated, flinging himself morosely into a chair, and gazing
down at the outstretched leg which ached so infernally. Then he rose,
went upstairs and injected a fourth of a grain of morphia into it. He
sent word that he would not be down to dinner. At twelve o'clock that
night, he took another fourth.