Эдвард Бенсон
The House of Defence. Volume 2

CHAPTER V

THEY went back into the billiard-room again; outside the wild hurly-burly of the storm still screamed and wailed round the house, but Cochrane now was utterly unconscious of it. A clear command, louder than the wind and the tattoo of rain, the “still small voice” which made all else inaudible, had come to his soul. He knew that what he was going to do was right, and had no fear at all of the consequences. Consequences? He gloried in them, and embraced them, for they would be nothing else than a demonstration, convincing and conclusive, as to the truth of all he taught and worked and believed. He had said to Maud half an hour ago that he did not then know what he should do if Thurso had a relapse, but now that the relapse had come he knew. He was perfectly certain that he was doing right.

He rang the bell as soon as he got to the fireplace.

“We want some glasses, I suppose, don’t we?” he said. “I beg your pardon, may I ring? Because I have rung.”

Thurso looked at him secretly.

“Better for the servants not to know,” he said.

“Why not? We’re doing nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “I should like everybody to know. Ah! Would you bring a couple of glasses, please?” he said to the man.

Thurso came close to him, and whispered:

“I take a little water and sugar with mine,” he said. “Perhaps hot water would be nice; I got so wet.”

“Yes, very wise,” said Cochrane. “And some hot water and sugar, please,” he added.

Then a sudden distrust came into Thurso’s mind.

“You are not going to cheat me?” he asked.

Cochrane felt one moment of vast pity for him. Ever since he and Maud had gone out into the hall, and found him stealthily closing the door so that his return should be unheard, he had felt it was a different personality from the Thurso of the last three days whom they had discovered there dripping from his secret errand. It was as if he was possessed; he was furtive and suspicious and bubbling with this one desire; nothing remained of him but Thirst, and the jealous fear that it was not going to be quenched – Thirst for that drug which had already dragged him so near to the precipitous edge of ruin and death, and that expunged from his mind all sense of honour, all the rudimentary moral code by which men are bound, all sense that anything in the world existed except Thirst and the quenching of it.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” he said quietly, “because I never have cheated you or anybody, and you have no right to suppose that I ever should. Dear me! how long they are bringing our glasses! Did you forge the prescription again?”

Again Thurso gave that dreadful little cackle of cunning laughter. He took such pleasure in his success, such pride as some foolish-natured dog takes in doing its “trick.”

“Well, yes, I suppose I did,” he said, “and I forged Sir James’s name quite beautifully. The one I did on the steamer was a clumsy affair. And I wrote it on a rather crumpled piece of paper, so that it looked to be an old prescription.”

“Why, that was real smart of you!” said Cochrane.

The man had brought the sugar and water and glasses, and as soon as he had left the room Thurso produced his package, and tore its coverings off. What was going to happen Maud did not know, but she trusted Cochrane, and she trusted the Power in obedience to which she felt sure he was acting. Thurso trusted him too, it appeared, for after he had poured some half of the bottle into his own glass, he passed it across to Cochrane. Then he dropped a lump of sugar into his glass, and poured in a little hot water, stirring it up, and stabbing with his spoon at the lump.

“I wouldn’t take much if I were you,” he said.

“Ah, to leave more for you to-morrow morning,” said Cochrane. “Greedy fellow! And look at your ration! Why, you’ve taken half the bottle!”

Thurso gave that dreadful giggle again.

“I know,” he said. “It’s a regular bumper this time, isn’t it? I’m going to drink to our first merry meeting. Damn the sugar! it melts so slowly.”

A moment’s doubt and fear swept over Maud like some huge combing breaker.

“Thurso, Thurso!” she cried. “Mr. Cochrane!”

He still held the bottle in his hand.

“Ah, reverse your fear quickly,” he said.

But Thurso seemed not to hear her. The sugar was nearly dissolved now, and he was stabbing at the few remaining crystals.

“What a nice fire!” he said. “I shall sit by it all the evening, and not come to dinner, and enjoy four or five hours of Paradise. Time goes so slowly, too, in Paradise; it seems an eternity. I shouldn’t take more than a tea-spoonful if I were you,” he said to Cochrane, who was just tilting the bottle. “That’s what I began with.”

“Ah, was it?” said Cochrane. “Then, see here.”

He poured the whole of the rest of the bottle into the glass. Then, without troubling about hot water or sugar, he put it to his mouth and drank it off.

“Can’t say I like your brand,” he said, putting the glass down.

The sugar was melted in Thurso’s glass, and he had withdrawn the spoon. The first sip was imminent now, that first sip of so many. Then the struggle began; he longed for that first sip, but as he saw what Cochrane had done his hands trembled; they would not raise the glass to his mouth. But the stammering had gone, and the giggling laugh was dumb.

“Why, it will kill you! it will kill you!” he screamed. “You don’t know what you have done! It’s nearly pure laudanum. You must take an emetic at once. Here, this hot water. Ah, it’s too hot! But go quick. You’ll be dead in a couple of hours. Maud, don’t sit there!” he cried. “Send for a doctor! Send for somebody quick!”

He put his own glass down, and sprang up from his chair with the helpless agitation of a man who has no control of himself. But Maud did not move. Cochrane looked at her once, and she smiled at him, and he seemed satisfied, as if he had been waiting for that, waiting for the assurance of her confidence that the smile gave. Then he turned to Thurso.

“Now, I haven’t cheated you, have I?” he said. “There’s your glass; drink it. I told you I would not interfere with you, and I am not doing so. I have finished the bottle, I am afraid, but you can get some more to-morrow. And while you are drinking – why don’t you drink? – just listen to me a minute. I’m going to talk straight to you now.

“What I have drunk will have no effect at all on me,” he said. “You may sit here, and not have dinner, but I shall have dinner just the same, please. I drank that in order to show you how you have been a slave to a thing that has no real power or effect of any kind. What you have been a slave to is your intention, your false belief, your self-indulgence. And now at last you will see how unreal is the power of that stuff which you love so much compared to the Power which I love so much. It is through error that you have made an unreal thing real to you. It is through truth that I show you how unreal it is. And look what error has made of you! Think for a moment of what you were a year ago, and what you are to-day. There’s a glass: look. You know without it.”

Thurso had risen, and was walking up and down the room, waving his hands in the impotent gesticulations of despair. Once or twice he paused by the table where his steaming glass still stood brimming, but he only shuddered at it. Once he tried to go to the curtain that led to the hall, but Cochrane stood in front of it, big, cheerful, but rather determined, blocking his way.

“Aren’t you going to drink that?” he asked, pointing to Thurso’s untasted glass. “Aren’t you going to have four hours of Paradise?”

Thurso shrank from the table where the glass stood.

“Oh, I implore you, I implore you!” he cried, “run to a doctor, take an emetic, and be quick. You have taken a fatal dose: you will be dead in a couple of hours. You are such a good chap: you’ve been so good to me, so patient, and have helped me so much. And this damnable habit of mine will have killed you. You don’t know what you have done: you think drugs have no power. And you’ve done it to convince me. Oh, if you’ll only go before it is too late, I will swear to you never to touch the stuff again. As for that – ”

He took his own glass, and flung it, contents and all, into the heart of the fire. There, with a huge puff of steam, a hissing and blackening of the wood logs, and crack of glass, it passed away up the chimney.

“There, will that show you that I am in earnest?” he cried. “Just when I was worked up for it, just when I wanted it as I never wanted it before, you have caused me to do that! Oh, I implore you to go and make yourself sick. Maud! Maud! tell him to do something. If he doesn’t I shall have killed him, and he has helped me so, has helped me – damned beast that I am!”

He flung himself down on a sofa in a paroxysm of despair, writhing and sobbing and shuddering. As for Maud, though she dared not speak for fear of giving way to some uncontrollable outburst of emotion, she thanked God for it, telling herself she was not afraid, and would not be afraid. Here in this room life and death, not the mere life or death of a man, even the man she loved, were fighting their battle: the eternal principle of life, love, health, was asserting its serene supremacy over sin and death and disease. As ever, its work was kind and compassionate, bringing healing with it, and deliverance from error, and nothing could prevail against it. She believed now, in spite of her moment’s panic terror when she saw Cochrane toss off that deadly draught, that he had done right. God could not play him false without playing Himself false, while, as for Thurso, poor, trembling, sobbing Thurso, at last he was broken. A thousand times had he fallen and been sorry, and vowed to amend, but it had never been like this. This was the complete abandonment, the absolute break-up, without which there is no real repentance. If, as Cochrane had said, there had still been a reservoir of error, so to speak, within him, she could not doubt now but that its banks were broken; it was coming out from him in torrents.

For a minute or two Cochrane looked with those kind, sorry eyes on Thurso’s agony; then, still smiling, still serene, he sat down by him as he writhed on the sofa, and laid his hand on his shoulder.

“I’m awfully sorry for all the anguish you are feeling,” he said, “but I had to do it. There was really no other way, as far as I could see, of convincing you. You are not convinced yet, but you will soon see that your fears for me now are just as false, just as mistaken, as was your desire for that stuff that tasted so abominable. But, apart from that, I can’t tell you how glad I am to have had this opportunity, for I feel sure you will see now. You’ve thrown it off for good, I believe. You’ve been getting better all these days, you know, but somehow I was unable to get deep enough into you. But it’s all right now.”

“Oh, it’s not too late yet!” cried Thurso; “but go at once, before you begin to feel the effects. Go! go!”

“And show you I don’t really believe a word of all that I have ever said to you and Lady Maud?” he asked. “You can’t seriously invite me to show myself such a hypocrite as that. Why, anyone of the least spirit would sooner really die, as you still fancy I am going to do, than do that.”

Thurso laid an agonised hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, your work is done,” he cried, “as regards me. And – and I know you believe you are safe. But make it really safe. Or have you ever done anything of the sort before? For pity’s sake tell me that you have, and that it had no result. The minutes are passing, too.”

Cochrane laughed.

“Well, no, I haven’t,” he said, “and this is the opportunity I have long hoped would come my way. Now, when is this bad-tasting stuff supposed to take effect?”

Again Thurso beat the air with his hands.

“Oh, it’s my fault, it’s all my fault!” he cried. “Maud, can’t you persuade him? You are friends.”

“No, dear Thurso,” she said quietly. “I can’t persuade him, and I don’t want to.”

Thurso sat quivering there a moment longer, then he suddenly got up, dashed through the curtained doorway, and a moment afterwards the curtain again bellied inwards, rising free of the ground, and showing that the gale had got into the house again. Then the front-door banged to, and the wind subsided.

“He has gone out again,” said Maud. “Is it safe to leave him?”

“Oh yes. I think he has gone for a doctor, or he may have gone just to despair by himself. Then he will come back and see. He will not harm himself; he won’t even catch cold,” he added, smiling.

“You are sure?” she asked.

“Yes; so are you. Why, Divine Love is pouring into him on all sides. It has got to break him first, then it builds so tenderly, so gloriously.”

He looked at her for a long moment.

“He is cured, you know,” he said. “It’s over.”

Then in flood there came over him all that he had so resolutely banished all these days. He felt that his visit as healer must come to an end at once. But he would see them again, see her again.

“There is no longer any reason for me to stop here,” he said. “It’s rather a rough night, but if you don’t think it is very rude and abrupt of me, I think I’ll go back to town at once.”

Then Maud’s lip quivered, and her eyes brimmed over.

“Without letting me say ‘God bless you?’” she asked.

“No; thank you for that,” he said gravely.

She took both his hands in hers for a moment, silently thanking him. Then she looked at him once more.

“You mustn’t think of going up to-night, or to-morrow, or, I hope, for a long time,” she said. “You say your work is over, and so I believe. But won’t you stay a little while with your friends when they ask you?”

“As your friend?” he said.

“Yes, mine and Thurso’s.”

They looked at each other, still gravely.

“Thanks, yes,” he said. “It is kind of you.”

But his hour had come.

“Maud, Maud,” he cried, “don’t you know what I have kept back so long? Why, I love you, I love you!”

*****

Bertie Cochrane’s conjecture had been right, and half an hour later Thurso came back, drenched with storm, for he had put on neither hat nor coat, with the doctor from Port Washington. A minute later a highly affronted physician left again, wondering if it was some form of aristocratic English humour to drag a man out on a night like this, because a friend in the house had inadvertently taken a huge dose of laudanum, only to find on arrival that the friend in the house, who, if he had really done so, would certainly by now have lost consciousness, looked rather annoyed at the interruption, but otherwise perfectly well.

But a glance at his companion seemed to the doctor to account for his annoyance.

CHAPTER VI

CATHERINE was returning home to Thurso House the next afternoon about four o’clock. She had been lunching out, and a number of people, she was glad to think, were coming to dinner; but she had a good deal to do before that, and she hardly liked to estimate how much to think about. Also, a telegram from Maud, who cabled to her every day, would probably have arrived by the time she got home. That might add considerably to the number of things to be thought about.

Ever since the departure of her husband and sister-in-law to America her hands had been very full, and she had devoted more time than usual to purely social duties. For she knew perfectly well that London had talked a good deal about Thurso’s “illness,” in that particular tone which means that in public and to her it was referred to as an “illness” in the abstract, but that when two or three only were gathered together it was discussed with far more detail and circumstance. To one of her tact, therefore, and knowledge of life it was clear that the more she was seen about, the more she entertained and was entertained, the less disagreeable and loud would all the talk and scandal about him be. With all its faults and general lack of respect, the world immensely respects pluck and the power of facing things, and certainly Catherine had faced things magnificently. The result already was that the world had begun to think that it was rather a “shame” to talk about Thurso even among intimates when Catherine was so plucky. It would very much have liked to know why she had not gone with him, for the reason that she gave – namely, that she abhorred the sea, and Maud delighted in it – was too straightforward and true to be accepted at all generally. Still, on the whole, it was a “shame” to talk. And since the memory of the world resides in its tongue, it follows that it soon forgets when it ceases to talk. It was understood, however, that Thurso’s case was hopeless, though Catherine – brave woman – always said that she hoped the voyage would quite restore him after his nervous breakdown.

Catherine, in herself, believed his case to be hopeless. He had refused to see her on the morning he left, or to say good-bye, but from her window she had seen his face as he got into the carriage which took him and Maud to the station, and it seemed to her that Death had already set his seal upon it, and, as a matter of fact, she had scarcely expected that he would reach America alive. But in spite of the news which might reach her any day, she had, consistently with her declaration that the voyage would probably restore him, acted as if she really thought so, and had been indefatigable in her activities. If he ever was to come back (and as long as he lived that possibility was still there), her part was to minimise the gossip and discussion about him which at the present moment was inevitable.

During that week when he was at sea she had thought about the whole situation more deeply and earnestly than in all probability she had thought of anything before in her very busy but very unemotional life, and with her whole heart she had forgiven him – not by intention only, but in fact, so that she dismissed the matter from her mind – for the suffering and indignities he had brought on her during these last six months. Whether he would ever read her letter or not, she did not know, but some three days after their departure she had written to him, quite shortly, but quite sincerely, telling him never to reproach himself as regards her for what happened in the past, but to dismiss it as absolutely as she had dismissed it, and devote himself to getting well. The letter was not an easy one to write, or rather the attitude of mind which had made it possible to write it had not been attained without effort; for just as she was very slow to take offence, so she was naturally slow to forgive, and the events of the last six months, with their crowning indignity, had bitten very deeply into her. But the effort had been made and the letter written, and she had pledged herself to oblivion and whole-hearted forgiveness. Should he get well, she had given him to understand that the past was blotted out, and that she was willing and eager to join with him in making the best possible out of the future.

But she knew quite well, with that ruthless honesty with which she judged herself, and which was so fine a trait in her character, that she did not expect him to live, and this, she knew, made the letter an easier one to write, and her complete forgiveness less difficult to arrive at, than it would otherwise have been. She thought that it was unlikely that she would ever see him again. But she was absolutely willing, whether he lived or died, to abide by what she had said.

There had been a grim business of telegraphic codes arranged between her and Maud. It was clearly undesirable to telegraph in full such messages as Maud might feel it necessary to send her, and half a dozen cryptic words sent from New York on their arrival had told her that he had broken down once on the voyage, but had subsequently allowed her to throw the rest of the bottle away. His general health, Maud said, was certainly better. Three more telegrams, reporting the events of three more days, had come since then, each recording improvement, and it was news of their fourth day which she was expecting to find now on her return.

But as she drove through the streets, where the shops were gay for Christmas purchasers, her mind was busy over an emotional conflict more intimate than even these things. As was inevitable, matters had come to a crisis between her and Rudolf Villars, and two days ago he had declared to her his steadfast and passionate devotion. But he had refused to continue any longer on this present unbearable footing of friendship. Should she now definitely reject him, he would not see her any more, except as was necessary in the casual meetings when the world brought them together. And she had promised to give him his answer this evening.

She had really no idea at this moment what that answer would be. Months ago she had determined that she would not herself break that moral law, though, as a matter of fact, it meant little to her. But since then much had happened: ruin and degradation had come to her husband; he had offered her the greatest insult that, from the point of view of this moral law, a wife can be offered, and, what was a far more vital and determining factor in her choice, she knew now that she loved this man with an intensity that she believed equalled his. Could the moral law which tied her to an opium-drenched wreck have any significance compared to the significance of her love?

Then suddenly, and for the first time, she remembered, in connection with her choice, the letter she had written to Thurso. She had told him that the past was utterly blotted out, and she saw how insincere that letter would become if the blotting out of the past meant for her that she was to console herself in the future. Already she knew that the fact that she did not expect him to live had made the writing of it easier. Between the two her letter did not now seem to be worth much. Yet she had meant that letter: the best part of her meant it. But just now that best part seemed to have dwindled to a mere pin’s head in her consciousness. Love and life and desire were trumpets and decorations to her, and the little grey battered flag of honour was scarcely visible among the miles of bunting, and the little voice scarcely audible in the blare of the welcome that would be hers if she said but one word to her lover.

Her victoria had already stopped at her door, and the footman had turned back the fur rug that covered her knees to let her get out; but she sat for a moment quite still, for the significance of her letter (or its insignificance) had struck her like a blow. Till she saw it in connection with her decision she had not known how nearly she had decided. She had told her husband, and that with sincerity, that the past was wiped out; all that he had said or done which had been unjust or insulting to her she had cancelled, annihilated, as far as it concerned her. Was she, then, going to make a fresh past, so to speak, on her own account, to give him an opportunity to be as generous as she had been? There was a dreadful ironical fitness about it: the conjunction of these things was brutally apt.

Yet she had forgiven him, and that forgiveness was far more real to her than that which was labelled sin. That did not signify anything very particular to her, but to do this thing behind the screen of her forgiveness seemed mean, and meanness was an impossible quality. She had forgiven Thurso on the big scale, and the very bigness of her nature, which enabled her to do that, made her hatred of meanness strong also. And as she got out, she asked herself whether, if the letter which she had written to Thurso was still unposted, she would let it go or tear it up. And she knew that, though she might stand with it in her hand for a little, she would still send it. She meant what she had said in it.

There were some half-dozen of letters for her on the table in the hall, and a telegram lay a little apart. As she picked these up, she spoke to the footman.

“I shall be in to anybody till six,” she said; “but to nobody after that except Count Villars.”

She had half opened the telegram when her eye fell on two little hats and coats hung up on a rack at the end of the hall. She looked at them a moment, feeling that they ought to convey something to her, but she did not know what. Then she remembered that the two eldest boys were home from school to-day for the holidays.

“Lord Raynham and Master Henry have come?” she asked.

“Yes, my lady: they arrived an hour ago.”

Again she paused. Whatever she said or did to-day seemed to be laden with significance, trivial though it appeared.

“Let them know I have come in,” she said. “They will come and have tea with me in the drawing-room in ten minutes.” (What was it children liked with their tea?) “And a boiled egg for them both,” she added.

She went slowly up the staircase which last June had been a country lane of wild-flowers at her ball, and looking back to that night she wondered whether, if among her guests then had come the prescience of what the next six months were to hold for her, she would not have chosen to die then and there, so deeply had the iron entered. But the past was dead: she must not forget that; and even to think of the bitterness of it was to allow it to writhe and struggle again. But there were things in the past – these children, for instance, though she had never found them particularly interesting – whom the death of the past, in the sense that she had promised it to her husband, made more alive. It was the wretchedness and alienation of the whole past, as well as these tragic six months, that she had meant should be dead, and she willed it more surely in caring for all that was truly vital in it, in neglecting no longer those whom she had neglected too much. She did not reproach herself now for the small part that her children had had in her life; but if Thurso lived, the letter she had written to him must be fulfilled here also. She had forgiven him, and she must amend herself so that he should forgive her. Even now she recognised that the children could help in stabbing the estrangement of the past to death. She was their mother, and though for all these years she had overlooked the joy, just as she had forgotten the pains, of maternity, it was potential still. So … would it not be better if she did not even see Villars? He would understand that as clearly as any words could make him. Yet she rejected that, and knew the cause of her rejection – that, though she told herself her mind was made up, she was still debating what she should say to him.

All this passed like a series of pictures rapidly presented to her as she went up the stairs. Then she paused underneath the electric light at the top, and took out the telegram from the envelope. She looked first at the end of it, as was natural, to see from whom it came, expecting to find it was from Maud. But it was signed “Thurso.”

Then she read it.

“I am cured, and I humbly entreat your pardon, though your letter so generously has given it me. Shall I come back, or would you possibly come out here? I will return immediately if you wish. – Thurso.”

She read it once, and read it again, in order to be sure of the sense of this incredible thing. Could it be a hoax? If so, who could have played so grim a joke? But she hardly grasped it. Yet it was clear and in order; the hour at which it was sent off was there, and the hour of English time when it had been received.

“But it is incredible,” she said to herself. “It means a miracle.”

She passed into the drawing-room, looking round consciously and narrowly at the pictures and the furniture, warming her hands at the fire, and feeling the cold of the marble chimney-piece to convince herself of the reality and normalness of her sensations. She opened a letter or two, and they also were quite ordinary and commonplace; there was an invitation to dinner, a few replies to invitations of her own, all signed with familiar names. A footman was bringing in tea: he had drawn two high chairs up to the table, and had put a plate and an egg-cup opposite each. Everything except this telegram indicated that the world was going on in its normal manner. She had ordered a boiled egg, as a treat, for the two boys. There were the egg-cups.

The boys? Whose? Hers and Thurso’s.

Then a sudden wave of cynical amusement, coming in from the ocean of the world in which her life was passed, went over her head for a moment. She felt that she was being unreal, melodramatic, in that she suddenly thought of her children like this, of her husband, of forgiveness, of all the stale old properties and stock solutions of difficulties. It was like some preposterous Adelphi piece, and she was the burglar who was suddenly filled with repentance and remorse because he heard the clock strike twelve, as he remembered to have heard it strike on New Year’s night in young and innocent days. As if burglars thought of their childhood when they were engaged in the plate-closet! Or as if people like herself thought of maternal obligations and marriage vows when at last love had really come into their lives! Of course, they forgot everything except that, instead of suddenly remembering all sorts of other things which they had, spontaneously and habitually, forgotten for so long. If all this had been described in a book she read, or acted in a play, she would have thrown the book aside, or have got up from her seat at the play whispering, “How perfectly ridiculous! How absolutely unlike life! I think we won’t stop for the end, as I am sure there is going to be an impossible reconciliation.”

Yet what would have seemed to her so unreal in fiction or drama was now extraordinarily real when it actually happened to occur. She wondered whether the life she had led all these years was as unreal as fiction of this sort or drama of this sort would have seemed to her.

Thurso was cured, so he said. He besought her forgiveness. The children were coming down to tea with her. She expected Villars. There was enough there to occupy her mind for the few minutes that would elapse before the children came.