Shadows of Flames Part 10

VIII

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 wors.h.i.+ps 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 f.a.g 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 gla.s.s that have been rubbed together--like those pale, greenish gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 h.e.l.l--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 t.i.tan, by Jove!--I could fill up s.p.a.ce just by stretching myself like that. b.u.m 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 G.o.d!

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. Relations.h.i.+p doesn't alter such things. Relations.h.i.+p is a big farce. There aren't any true relations.h.i.+ps 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 gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+vered.

"Oh, finis.h.!.+" 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 pa.s.s. 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!"