The Keeper of the Door Part 56

Her eyes were raised to his, very earnestly beseeching him. "Yes, for her sake," she said. "You would do her much more harm than good. Let me take the composing draught to her! Oh, Max, really it is the only way.

Please be reasonable!"

Her voice trembled a little. She knew well that where his patients were concerned he would endure no interference. Again and again he had made this clear to her. But this was an exceptional case, and she prayed that as such he might view it.

She wondered a little that Nick did not come to her aid, but he stood aloof as if unwilling to be drawn into the discussion. Max seemed to have completely forgotten his existence.

"Look here," he said finally. "The matter isn't so desperate as you seem to think, but if I give in, so must you. There are several questions I shall have to ask, and I must have a clear answer."

"I will tell you anything in my power," she said.

"Very well," he said. "Tell me first--if you can--why Miss Campion hates me so violently."

His manner was curtly professional. He looked straight into her eyes with cool determination in his own.

She answered him, but her answer did not come very easily. "I think she feels that you have had her under supervision all along, and she resents it."

"Quite true," he said. "I have. Is that why she wants to kill me?"

"Not entirely." Olga was plainly speaking against her will.

But Max was merciless. "And the other reason?"

She locked her fingers very tightly together. "It--it would be a breach of confidence to tell you that," she said.

"I see," said Max. "She was annoyed because I didn't fulfil expectations by falling in love with her. She misunderstood my att.i.tude; was that it?

You did so yourself at one time, if I remember aright."

"Yes," admitted Olga reluctantly.

"I don't know quite how you managed it," he commented. "However, we are none of us infallible. Now tell me--without reservation--exactly what pa.s.sed this morning between you two girls and Hunt-Goring."

With quivering lips she began to tell him. There were certain items of that conversation with Hunt-Goring, of which, though they were branded deep upon her mind, she could not bring herself to speak. It was a difficult recital in any case, and the grim silence with which he listened did not make it any easier.

"Have you told me everything?" he asked at last.

She answered steadily. "Everything that concerns Violet!"

He looked at her very closely for a few moments, and she saw his mouth take a cynical, downward curve.

"Hunt-Goring has my sympathy," he observed enigmatically. "Well, I think you are right. I had better keep out of the way for the present. I shall know better what course to take in the morning. Her state of mind just now is quite abnormal, but she may very well have settled down a little by that time. She will probably go through a stage of lethargy and depression after this. Her brother should be back again in a week's time. We may manage to ward off another outbreak till then. But, mind, you are not to be left alone with her during any part of that week.

There must always be someone within call."

"I shall be within call," said Nick.

Max glanced at him. "Yes, you will be quite useful no doubt. But I must have a nurse as well."

"A nurse!" exclaimed Olga.

He looked back at her. "You don't seriously suppose I am going to leave you and Mrs. Briggs--and Nick--in sole charge?"

"But, Max," she protested, almost incoherent in her dismay, "she will be herself again to-morrow or the next day! This isn't going to last!"

"What do you mean?" he said.

She controlled herself with a sharp effort, warned of the necessity to do so by his tone.

"I mean that--hysteria--isn't a thing that lasts long as a rule."

"It isn't hysteria," he said.

She flinched in spite of herself. "But you think she will get better?"

she urged.

He was silent a moment, looking at her. "I will tell you exactly what I think, Olga," he said then, in a tone that was utterly different from any he had used to her before. "For you certainly ought to know now. The tale you heard this morning was true--every word of it. I heard it myself from Bruce Campion and also from Kersley Whitton. Kersley was engaged to marry her mother when he detected in her a tendency to madness which he afterwards discovered to be an hereditary taint in her family. It is a disease of the brain which is absolutely incurable. It is in fact a peculiarly rapid decay caused by a kind of leprous growth which nothing can arrest. In some cases it causes total paralysis of every faculty almost at the outset, in others there may be years of violent mania before the inevitable paralysis sets in. Either way it is quite incurable, and if it takes the form of madness it is only intermittent for the first few weeks. There are no lucid intervals after that."

He paused. Olga was listening with white face upturned. She spoke no word; only the agony in her eyes spoke for her.

He went on very quietly, with a gentleness to which she was wholly unaccustomed. "It has been coming on for some little time now. I hoped at first that it would be slow in developing, and so at first it appeared to be. Sometimes, at the very beginning, it is not possible to detect it with any certainty. It is only when the disease has begun to manifest itself unmistakably that it moves so rapidly. It was because I feared a sudden development that I asked Sir Kersley to come down. He was of the opinion that that was not imminent, that three months or even six might intervene. I feared he was mistaken, but I hoped for the best.

Of course a sudden shock was more than sufficient to precipitate matters. But I knew that she was less likely to encounter any in your society than anywhere else. Nick wanted me to warn you, but--rightly or wrongly--I wouldn't! I thought you would know soon enough."

He paused again, as if to give her time to blame him; but still she spoke no word, still she waited with face upturned.

He went on gravely and steadily. "I knew that opium was a very dangerous drug for her to take in however minute a quant.i.ty, but I hoped I had put a stop to that. I could not foresee to-day's events. Hunt-Goring is no favourite of mine, but I never antic.i.p.ated his taking such a step. I did not so much as know that he was in a position to do so. He suppressed that fact on the sole occasion on which Miss Campion's name was mentioned between us."

Olga spoke for the first time, her stiff lips scarcely moving. "I think he is a devil," she said slowly.

Max made a gesture expressive of indifference on that point. "People who form the drug habit are seldom over-squeamish in other respects," he said. "He has certainly hastened matters, but he is not responsible for the evil itself. That has been germinating during the whole of her life."

"And--that--was why Sir Kersley jilted her mother?" Olga spoke in a low, detached voice. She seemed to be trying to grasp a situation that eluded her.

"It was." Max answered with a return to his customary brevity; his tone was not without bitterness. "Kersley was merciful enough to think of the next generation. He was a doctor, and he knew that hereditary madness is the greatest evil--save one--in the world. Therefore he sacrificed his happiness."

"What is the greatest evil?" she asked, still with the air of bringing herself painfully back as it were from a long distance.

He was watching her shrewdly as he answered. "Hereditary vice--crime."

"Is crime hereditary?"

"In nine cases out of ten--yes."

"And that is worse than--madness?"

"I should say much worse."

"I see." She pa.s.sed a hand across her eyes, and very suddenly she s.h.i.+vered and seemed to awake. "Oh, is it quite hopeless?" she asked him piteously. "Are you sure?"

"It is quite hopeless," he said.

"She can never be herself again--not even by a miracle?"