Mora succeeded in checking the boy's spasms, but was much relieved when
Sophy asked to have Cesare Camenis in consultation--there were things
about the case that he could not understand. He said so frankly. That
such a robust, sunburnt little fellow, past the age for teething, should
have convulsions baffled him. Camenis arrived at five o'clock. To him
Sophy told the whole truth. He was a quiet, grey man of about sixty,
whose own life had been tragic. The comprehension of dominated sorrow
was in his face. Sophy felt that she could trust him, and that he should
know all if he was to save Bobby for her. She could not have spoken to
Mora. He was too young--and he was still encased in the hard shell of
happiness. She could not have laid the wound of her life bare to him, as
she did to this quiet, sad-eyed man whose only son was a cripple born,
and whose wife had left him for a singer.
After hearing her, Camenis released his young _confrere_ from further
responsibility. He would stay himself that night, he said, at Villa
Bianca.
Bobby was very ill for some days. He had fever and was delirious. Sophy
never left the nursery. Camenis stayed with her till the crisis was
past--being taken to and fro between Stresa and the Villa during the day
in the launch.
Chesney avoided being alone with the doctor. He had his meals served at
different hours, also in his room, for the most part. When he could not
avoid meeting Camenis, he would halt awkwardly for a moment, and say:
"Little chap going on well?" or, "Don't let Mrs. Chesney break down,
will you?" or some such commonplace. He did not like to feel those
shrewd, sad eyes of the Genoese physician on his face. He had slipped
into the way of taking morphia pretty regularly, ever since that fatal
afternoon. To face the prospect of Bobby's possible death, with clear,
undrugged mind, was too much for him. And Sophy would not see him--had
sent him a sealed line as soon as she could command herself enough to
write, saying that she would not.
"Do not try to see me," she had written. "It is all I ask of you."
It was the fourth day of Bobby's illness. The late September evening was
still as warm as August. Chesney lay on his bed in the darkness, his
hands under his head, staring out at the onyx wall of the Sasso di
Ferro, that rose against a sky pricked with stars. The fronds of a big
mimosa tree just outside his window, furled sensitively from the heavy
dew, made a delicate pattern against the sombre stolidity of the
mountain. Through them, as though winking with sardonic humour, the red
eye of the Chaldee lime-kiln glowed intermittently. Chesney was not
undressed, though he lay upon his bed. He lay there because he felt dead
tired, soul and mind and body, and because he had just taken his evening
dose of morphia. He was so tired that he was not even thinking his own
thoughts. Emile Verhaeren was thinking for him--Verhaeren, the one poet
that he had ever really cared for. The great Belgian's volcanic and
almost demoniacally virile imagination had appealed to him from the
first, as no other had ever done. His own tempestuous, rebellious,
intolerant nature echoed to these trumpets of anguish and defiance and
exultation. Spirit writhing in the blast-furnace of untempered and
primordial sensuality, the distorted religious instinct easing its
throes with supernal blasphemies, a dark Prometheus thrusting with his
defiant torch at the eye-sockets of the God from whom he had filched
it--these things stirred him to the very depths. And, to-night, it was
as if Verhaeren had written for him and him alone. Who but he and
Verhaeren had ever felt what these words expressed?--these words that
thundered and howled through his mind translating himself to himself,
with such appalling fitness:
"_Dites suis-je seul avec mon ame,
Mon ame helas maison d'ebene
Ou s'est fendu sans bruit un soir
Le grand miroir de mon espoir._"
And again:
"_Aurai-j'enfin l'atroce joie
De voir nuit apres nuit comme une proie
La demence attaquer mon cerveau,
Et detraque, malade, sorti de la prison
Et des travaux forces de sa raison
D'appareiller vers un lointain nouveau?_"
* * * * *
He lay there thinking through the terrible, implacable mind of Verhaeren
until midnight. Then a foot on the stair roused him. It was light and
swift--a running step--Sophy's. Was the boy worse? Was he dying,
perhaps? He leaped to the door, jerked it open. His haggard,
drug-ravaged face stared out between the cheap yellow wood of the
newel-post and the door. Sophy was coming down the stair opposite. She
looked like a somnambule in her long white dressing-gown, with eyes
fixed before her. He came out and stood facing her. She looked straight
at him, but her face was blank of recognition.
"Sophy!" he muttered--there was anguish in his hoarse voice: "Sophy!"
For all response, she leaned over the banister.
"_Dottore! Dottore!_" she called.
"_Vengo--vengo, signora!_" came at once the reply of Camenis. As soon as
he answered, she turned and ran fleetly up the stairs again. She had
not even glanced towards Chesney. Then Camenis went by, also very
quickly. Chesney wanted to ask what it was ... he could not speak.
Later, he waylaid the doctor coming back. Yes--the boy was conscious
again. He would live. The crisis was past.
Chesney hung so heavily on the door that it swung back a little with
him.
"Can I do anything for you, signore?" said Camenis, hesitating. "You
look ill yourself."
"No--thanks--the--shock----" Chesney mumbled. He retreated, closing the
door. Camenis stood a second looking at the closed door. Then he passed
on to his own room.
The next day he said to Sophy:
"Signora, now that the little one is out of danger, I feel that I must
speak to you about your husband."
He saw her grow rigid.
"Signora," he pursued very gently, "one forgives much to illness. Your
husband is an ill man, signora." He saw her eyes waver, but her nostrils
were still set.
"You have been kind enough to trust me with your confidence, signora,"
Camenis went on in his flat, gentle voice. "And so I feel it my duty to
speak quite plainly to you."
"Yes," said Sophy mechanically.
Camenis looked at her with that tender pity, which from the wise eyes of
a kindly priest or physician does not hurt. His look reminded Sophy of
Father Raphael of the Poor. She braced herself to meet what was coming.
"Then, signora," said Camenis, "I will remind you that your husband came
to me two weeks ago, to consult me about a severe attack of sciatica. He
asked for a palliative. I told him that I knew of none save
opium--morphia ... that I did not give it except in extreme cases. Now,
signora, from what you have told me--about the unfortunate habit that
your husband has only lately escaped from.... You will pardon my perfect
frankness, signora?"
"Yes.... Yes...."
"Then.... You must not be too shocked--too horrified. We, who have not
endured it, cannot imagine this terrible temptation of morphia. But to
one, only so lately cured ... to whom severe pain comes...."
He hesitated again, and Sophy said in a hard, clear voice:
"Do you mean that my husband is taking morphia again?"
"I fear so, signora," said Camenis very gently.
Sophy sat looking down at her hand which she clenched and unclenched as
it lay on her knee.
"Yes--I think it's very likely," she said at last, still in that hard,
resonant voice.
Camenis was silent for a time; then he said:
"I think your husband has suffered much for what he did the other day,
signora."
Sophy's face flamed. Her eyes glittered.
"Don't speak of it ... don't speak of it...!" she cried, as though
suffocating.
Again Camenis waited.
"Forgive me, signora," he then said, "but I must tell you that I think
this is a crisis for your husband as well as for your son."
Sophy turned suddenly and hid her face against the back of her chair.
The tired, kind eyes of Camenis looked at the bent head compassionately.
After another pause, he said:
"I think--as a physician--if you could go to him--gently--he would
confess and try once more to--to be what you would have him be,
signora."
Then Sophy broke down and wept like a desperate child.
"I can't! Oh, I can't!" she sobbed. "You don't know.... I can't bear
even the memory of his face--his voice! How am I to go to him? I can't!
I can't!"
The little doctor's face looked very worn as he sat watching her, while
she clung to the big, ugly chair as to a rock of refuge, clutching it
with her white hands that had grown thin in this one week of Bobby's
illness--staining its gay chintz cover with her tears. Suddenly he rose,
and went over to her.
"_Bambina_ ... _bambina_ ..." he said tenderly, "when you have saved
him, you will love him. We always love what we have saved."
He just touched her hair softly, once, as a father would have done.
"_Coraggio_ ..." he murmured, in his kind, faded voice. Then he left
her.
Chesney was filling his hypodermic syringe that evening, about seven,
when there came a low knock at his door. He started, nearly dropping the
little instrument.
"Who's there?" he called sharply. In every nerve he felt the need of
this dose that he was preparing--so soon does the tyrant morphia assert
its sway. He was transfixed to hear Sophy's voice reply:
"It's I, Cecil."
Hurriedly, his hands shaking as with ague, he bundled everything into a
drawer, and closed it. Then he went to the door. He stood with it in his
hand, staring at her as though just waked.
"May I come in?" she said very low. "I--I want to talk with you."
He was still too overcome to speak. Silently he stepped aside, drawing
the door with him. She entered quickly, her head a little bent, her
hands clasped nervously in front of her. The weather was still very
warm; she had come from the nursery, and wore a long peignoir of white
muslin. The soft, straight folds made her seem taller than ever. Her
bent head contradicted the haughtiness of her body. It was as if she
wanted to command a mood of gentleness by forcing its physical
semblance.
"Will you sit here?" asked Chesney. His voice shook.
"Thanks...." she murmured, and took the chair that he pushed forward.
She didn't seem able to say what she had come for. She sat silent so
long that he felt forced to speak.
"Is ... is Bobby all right?" he faltered.
The colour streamed across her cheek at these words, as though he had
struck her.
"Forgive me," he said humbly. "I.... I really care, you know."
"He is better," she managed to reply. Her lips moved stiffly. Then she
lifted her head with a sort of desperation of resolve. Her eyes fixed on
his.
"Cecil...." she said, "I've come ... one, last time...." She broke off;
then went on: "This one, last time," she repeated, "to see if you ... if
we ... if together...." Again words failed her. Looking firmly at him,
she ended more quietly: "I've come to beg you to tell me the truth," she
said, and her dark eyes rested on him full of doubt and pain.
He could scarcely have grown paler, but his head drooped; he sat looking
down at his great hands which he clasped and unclasped nervously.
"Well...." she whispered finally. "Will you?.... It's our last ... last
chance."