Shadows of Flames Part 24

"You must excuse me, Sophy," he said rather formally. "I think you must be able to imagine the shock it was to me to hear that you had called in one of those dirty fakirs, knowing as you do my opinion of the fraternity."

He heard the breath that she had again held in escape softly, little by little from her bosom which was pressed against the bedclothes. She was still kneeling where he had dragged her forward. It was an att.i.tude of prayer. Her whole body seemed to beseech him. Yet, though he saw this, he was not moved by it, except to extra caution. She could not speak at once, so he spoke again himself. Each word that he uttered calmed him.

The naturalness of his a.s.sumed tone rea.s.sured him as it fell upon his own ear. As he would have said of another, he was "doing it d.a.m.ned well."

"I hope, since you adopted such radical measures," he remarked coldly, "that you at least chose a decent specimen. Was it by any chance my mother's little medical poodle!"

"No--Cecil. Doctor Hopkins came afterwards, but----"

"What? you had two of those vermin in my house yesterday?"

There was rage in his eyes again. Quickly he veiled them.

"This is a bit overwhelming, you must admit," he said in a tired voice.

Then he asked: "Who was the other luminary of hypocrisy?"

"It was Doctor Carfew, Cecil--Algernon Carfew."

Chesney's worst fears were realised. If this man had seen him, he _knew_. A dark, smothering fear rushed over him--he was a brave man, but this vague, shadowy yet poignant terror seemed to turn his very vitals to water. He was as afraid of the fancied image of this accursedly knowing physician as a condemned lout of the headsman. It seemed to him, lying there, a strong man, master of his own house, the free-born citizen of a great Empire, that he was yet but a little doll of pith in the clutches of this grim, devilishly well-informed scientist. The medical profession took suddenly a symbolic form in his mind--it bulked before him like a huge, black Octopus heaving up from that shadowy sea of dread in which he was sinking. One of the vast tentacles had gripped him--was dragging him down--down. It was with amazement that he heard his own voice demanding in icy composure:

"And the verdict of this learned gentleman?"

He had closed his eyes again as though bored and wearied by the subject.

He felt one of Sophy's soft, bare arms go round his neck. Her hair brushed his lips as she laid her head upon his breast. Her face was hidden from him. He heard her impa.s.sioned whisper:

"Cecil--don't, don't shut me out! Let me share it, I know-- I _know_!"

XVIII

The moods of a morphinomaniac are very inconsistent. There were times when Cecil Chesney agonised over this degrading vice which was slowly sapping his manhood and self-respect, which was turning him into a bowelless egoist. Yes, at times, so great was his suffering over his own abas.e.m.e.nt that he had frequently thought of self-destruction as a means of escape from the dark coil. These were during the luridly lucid moments which come to fine natures in such thrall--the moments when they see themselves as they are--when they say, with appalled realisation: "I am a morphinomaniac. I would sacrifice the happiness of my nearest and dearest for a dose of the terrible stuff when the horror of lacking it is upon me." But these moods are varied by others, singularly callous, when all humanity seems to have ebbed from the nature, and the formula of the victim's faith might be a paraphrase of that of the Moslem: "There is no G.o.d but Morphia and I am its prophet." This was Chesney's mood to-night. So far from being touched by Sophy's sudden, almost childlike appeal, he felt intensely irritated by it. It was all that he could do not to push away her head roughly from his breast. The tender, pleading tone of her voice was insufferably annoying to him.

He controlled himself rigidly, however, merely saying in a hard voice, without touching her, "I could understand you better if you didn't bury your mouth in my chest. I shall be interested to hear what it is that you '_know_.'"

Sophy drew back without any anger. She knew his hard voice, his "metal voice" she was used to call it. She realised sadly that she had made a mistake in appealing to him. But she would not let him hurt her or make her angry now. She turned and sat quietly in the chair again--looking down at her wedding ring--it seemed to fascinate her eyes in those days.

It was so long before she spoke that he said impatiently:

"Well--am I not to share this evidently interesting knowledge of yours?"

She looked at him honestly, trying to keep anything like sentiment from her eyes and voice.

"You make it so hard--for us both, Cecil," she said.

"Pray what do I make hard?"

"The truth."

"'What is truth?' said doubting Pilate. Can it be that you have found out? You interest me."

Sophy hesitated. How was she to take him? Was he trying to make her put it into brutally plain words? Would he prefer that? Or was he only waiting to launch abuse at her in case she did? As she sat anxiously pondering, one of those sudden changes of mood took place in Chesney, that startle even the slaves of morphia themselves. In a flash--in the twinkling of an eye, he seemed to see a new course open before him--a course that would save him from the powers of darkness as represented in his distorted mind by the medical profession. Holding out his hand, he said in quite a different voice, a very gentle one indeed:

"Come here, Sophy."

A wondering look stole over her face. She went to him almost timidly, seated herself on the edge of the bed, and put her hand in his.

"See here, my child," said he, still in that kind, moderate voice.

"Whatever else you have in mind, don't forget that I'm a rather ill man."

"I don't ... I don't ... not for a moment."

"And you must bear with me if I say things a bit lamely."

"Say anything...." she began eagerly, then restrained herself. "Say anything," she repeated more soberly.

"Very well, then. But please don't exclaim or get emotional, will you?

My head's beastly tired. I've had rather a tight squeak of it, Gaynor tells me."

"Yes--you were very, very ill."

Her lip quivered. She pressed his hand nervously, then loosened her fingers as though afraid of irritating him. But he returned the pressure kindly. He was so absorbed in the part he had finally chosen that he almost deceived himself with his fine acting--as some actors shed real tears in moving roles--almost believed that he really felt kindly to her, and was going to treat her with a n.o.ble candour.

"Well, then, Daphne, dear, I can guess what you mean when you say you '_know_.' I guessed all the time, only one is not always rational when one is ill, and this doctor business enraged me. I confess it frankly.

What you '_know_'--what you have found out, is that I take morphine, is it not?"

He was looking at her keenly. The blood seemed to beat hotly back on her heart, then fly in a jet to her startled face. Tears came into her eyes.

She bit her lip fiercely in her effort not to show her emotion. It was so splendid of him--so deeply, pathetically moving, to hear him thus calmly and honestly name the dreadful thing. She could not help it. She lifted the great hand and pressed her lips to it. This soft touch almost broke Chesney's strong self-control. Indirectly she was making him lie, and he hated her for it--he really hated her at that moment. He could have struck her with pleasure. "Sweet character I am," he thought savagely; "among other things I've got a bit of Bill Sykes in me, too, it seems." He closed his eyes again to veil this violent impulse. Sophy noticed for the first time that evening this trick of closing his eyes, which grew on him so rapidly from that time. It took him four or five minutes to regain the atmosphere of the part which he had chosen. When he spoke again, it was in that same mild, rather melancholy voice that had so touched her.

"My dear Daphne," he said, "I suppose there's a pinch of cowardice in us all--tucked away in some c.h.i.n.k of our charming human nature. Morphine has brought out this in me. I----"

"Oh, no, Cecil! No--_no_!"

Her voice was beautifully fervent. He hurried on. She must not shatter his present mood again.

"Often I've thought: 'Shall I tell her? Shall I ask her help? She's a brave, loyal thing. She'll stand by me--even through this.'"

"Oh, I would have! I will!"

"But then again I thought: 'No--how can I risk her contempt--her misunderstanding? How can I deliberately strike such a blow to her ignorant happiness?' So I determined to struggle along as best I could.

I've fought the d.a.m.nable thing, Sophy--believe me or not as you will."

The cunning mixture of truth and falsehood in what he had been saying lent it somehow an impression of extraordinary sincerity. The bald, dark truth would not have carried such conviction to Sophy's heart. She cried to him piteously, struggling to keep back the tears of anguished compa.s.sion and renewed affection:

"Oh, don't say such things to me! I do believe you! I do! with all my heart, with all my soul!"

Ferociously sarcastic, Chesney completed to himself her unconscious quotation: "With all my mind, and with all my body." Why did she not gush it _all_ over him? he demanded angrily to himself. What fools women were after all! One had only to lie cleverly to them and forthwith they fell flat in fits of hero-wors.h.i.+p. Had he honoured her with the truth, she would have turned on him in contempt. So little did he know her.