Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  It is probably difficult for those of high and complex moral organisation to appreciate the workings of a nature which, on analysis, seems so rudimentary as hers, and the most rigid sort of moralist may easily say that after all there was extremely little difference between her and people of no morals whatever. But that is where the higher moralist would go astoundingly astray. There are plants so sensitive that they seem to have organic life; there are amœbæ so apparently immobile and unsensitive that to a creature so immensely distant from them in point of organisation as man they may seem to be much lower in the scale of life than the highly sensitive plant. But to the trained biologist the amœbæ are so transcendently higher than the other that he despairs of finding a bridge that can ever link up the two. And in the same way, though Catherine could formulate no moral code at all, and would unhesitatingly let any friend of hers lead any life he pleased, and yet not abate one jot of her friendship, provided only he did not do things which were mean; the fact that when “it came to” in her own case she utterly refused to contemplate doing this, made the classification of her with the moral inorganic an abysmal error. She was far stricter with herself than with others, which shows a moral generosity, and she blindly followed the more difficult way, which shows a faith that is perhaps the finer since it is conscious of no leading.

  And, poor soul, she knew but too well that her trials in this respect had not really begun; she had only been told to look at the rack where she was soon to be placed. For Rudolf Villars was her real stand-by in these dark passages in her life. Maud was splendid, too: she felt she could not have got through the days without her; but Maud was a woman, and she was a woman, and Villars was a man. Therefore he could help her in a way that Maud could not. For humankind is created male and female, and those of different sex can and must help each other in a manner impossible for those of the same sex. That is the glory of the world and its shame.

  Villars had known about this drug habit on the Sunday he had spent with them in June, for he had seen Thurso by chance when the ecstasy of the dose was on him; and since then, day by day, she owed more to him, till the debt was mounting up into huge figures. And though she knew well that to him the debt was non-existent — he never would add it up, that is to say, and present the bill — it was fearfully existent to her. In payment of it she could only give him one thing — herself; and that she would not. True, he had made no absolutely direct declaration of his love, but in a hundred ways he showed it, and day by day, as she saw, it was getting harder for him to be silent. And what would happen then? She had made her determination. She would have to declare it. That was all ... oh yes, that was all.

  For the time, however, the acuteness of these perplexities had lost its sharpness, since Thurso’s attack yesterday, and such thoughts, the summary of her inner life for the last two or three months, did not get between her pen and her paper. She had to answer these letters and telegrams inquiring about him, and to regret her unavoidable absence from the various engagements of the next few weeks. She knew, too, that it had become a matter of common knowledge what was the matter with him; she had even talked to certain friends about it, and she had to word her answers carefully. But it was no use any longer to pretend that nothing was wrong; the whole world knew that something was wrong.

  But the interruption for which she had been waiting soon came, and Sir James Sanderson was shown in. He looked extraordinarily unlike an eminent doctor, and resembled nothing so much as a captain on some respectable line of steamers. He had a toothbrush of a moustache, a plump, bronzed, and ruddy face, and wore a black frockcoat, with yellow boots and a red tie. He was awkward, cheerful, embarrassed, and nautical, and played golf whenever possible, which was not often, with boyish enthusiasm and remarkable inability. But, incidentally, he had saved more lives and restored more health, which he personally considered of greater importance, than any other two doctors put together.

  He shook hands with Catherine, and sat down on a small chair, which broke into fragments beneath his extremely ponderous frame, leaving him couched in splinters on the floor. He said “Damn!” quite distinctly, and struggled to his feet.

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” said Catherine. “I hope you are not hurt?”

  “Not in the least, but the chair is,” he said. “Yes, I have been with your husband for the last hour.”

  He found a more reliable seat.

  “Now, be brave,” he said.

  Then his wonderful skill in dealing with people, whether the sick or the whole, showed itself. There was dreadful news he had to tell to this beautiful woman, but in spite of the obsoleteness of the phrase “breaking the news,” news could still be prepared for. It was wise to start like that, to say “Be brave,” and then, since he knew he was dealing with a brave woman, to wait for her bracing herself up to it.

  “I know I am allowed to smoke a cigarette,” he said, thus securing his moment’s pause, “though it is most unprofessional.”

  Catherine’s courage had sunk for a moment, like the mercury in a thermometer exposed to zero, but in that pause she recalled it again. It was that he had been waiting for.

  “Lord Thurso has lived through twenty-four hours,” he said, “and immediate danger is really over. The attack he had was enough to kill most people. It has not killed him, and he will not now die of this attack. He may have others, but I don’t see why he should, unless he provokes them himself.”

  He flicked the charred end of his cigarette.

  “That is the bright side,” he said. “Now we must talk about the other. He came to me in July, you know, and told me about it. Probably he did not tell me all. You must do that, my dear lady. I guess a good deal from what I have seen to-day. I want to know all. Has he lost the power of will, do you think? There is nothing, I may say, that you can tell me which will be worse than what I conjecture.”

  Catherine required no further stimulus to enable her to brace herself to this hideous recital, and she began at once, telling Sir James the whole history of the case as far as she knew it. Once only did he interrupt her, and that early in the tale, when she told him that the original cause of Thurso’s taking opium was those frightful attacks of neuralgia to which he was subject. To that Sir James said:

  “Quite so. I gave him the authorisation myself.”

  Then, month by month, she went through the tragic history; she spoke of that week up in Scotland when he began to take it more frequently, when, too, Maud began to suspect that he was taking it not only for relief of pain, but for the effects of it on his nerves and brain. Then came the stealthy dose in the train, then the scenes at Bray. But as she spoke, though he attended very carefully to all she said, he watched her not for that reason alone. It was not so unlikely, he saw, that he might have another patient on his hands, for it was as much as she could do to get through with what she was saying.

  Then the tale became harder of telling: from that day he had seemed to have begun to hate her, and with hate there grew and flourished in his mind ignoble suspicions. He had taken to spying on her, to opening her letters; then came the infamous taunts he had levelled at her, and the final insult. And when she had finished there was silence.

  She had spoken quite calmly, arranging and reviewing the events of those hideous months in orderly manner, and stopping only when she could not quite command her voice. And without any long pause after she had done, Sir James went on with what had to be told her.

  “The opium habit,” he said, “even when one begins to treat it quite early, is the most difficult thing in the world to cure. Give me ten drunkards who want to get over the habit, and I will very likely cure eight, but give me ten opium-eaters or laudanum-drinkers — for the two, of course, are exactly the same — who are equally desirous to amend, and I may cure one of them. God knows why it is so, Lady Thurso, but this particular drug, this poppy of the fields, binds body and soul in a way that no other habit binds, not alcohol, nor sensualism, nor anything. And your husband’s case has not been taken ear
ly. He is completely undermined by it. It is impossible to imagine a more serious case.”

  Catherine shifted her chair a little; she was so overwhelmingly tired, now that she had ceased writing, that it was something of an effort to meet the doctor’s eye.

  “And now you need your bravery again,” he said. “He might have died any minute during those first six hours after his attack. And, dear lady, it might have been better if he had. It might have saved God knows what suffering and misery to himself and others. Sometimes I think that we doctors do a cruel kindness in snatching poor folk out of death’s jaws. Of course, one cannot, and I do not, say that any case is incurable, because, thank God, miracles still happen. But I cannot see how he can be cured. As he gets stronger from this attack, his craving for the drug will get stronger also; he has already asked for it. Unless you absolutely shut him up he will find means of getting hold of it. He will probably begin with smaller doses, for the poison will have more effect when he is still weak, and he will increase them and increase them until this or something like it happens again. His digestion, too, is in the most feeble condition. I do not suppose he has eaten a pound of nourishing food in the last week.

  “No; he has hardly touched it,” said she. “He says it gets in the way. But if we could succeed in keeping him away from the drug by — by any means, would there not be hope?”

  The kind old doctor gave a long sigh. He hated this part of his business, and the braver people were, the more cruel he seemed to himself.

  “No,” he said; “I think he would probably go off his head without it. One can’t tell, but I should fear that. You see, it is not the time for me to keep anything from you. And you are bearing it splendidly: you are bearing it in the way we are meant to bear these terrors of life. We may get white with pain, as you did just now, we may feel sick with the anguish of it all, but we ought still to be able to clench our teeth and not cry out. And, do you know, that is such a sound policy. Being brave carries its dividends quicker than any investment I know. For every effort of the sort that we make strengthens us, exactly as gymnastics strengthen our muscles.”

  Something in this arrested her attention very strongly; for the moment she was led away from the thought of Thurso to another matter that concerned her quite as vitally. She turned round to him again.

  “Do you mean that if — if we resist anything our powers of resistance are increased?” she asked. “Resistance seems to tire me, to make me less able to make an effort.”

  Sir James took this in also; his eye, trained to observe obscurities, saw that for the moment she was not thinking of her husband.

  “Temporarily it tires you,” he said, “just as exercise does. But you are really the stronger for it. The opposite holds, too, as you and I and poor Lord Thurso know very well; not to resist, to yield, weakens our power of resistance. The body is built up and made strong by effort, and so, I am sure, is the soul.”

  She thought over that for a space of silence, noting down in her mind how it concerned that of which the doctor knew nothing.

  “Tell me all you fear about Thurso,” she said. “I want to know what you think the end will be, and when, since I gather that, as far as you know, you regard him as incurable. I want to hear from you, quietly and fully, what I must bring myself to expect, the thoughts which I have got to get used to.”

  “I have told you the worst,” he said, “and I think you understand it. But, more in detail, it will be this: He will be very weak for a few days, and will, of course, be in bed. But I fully expect that his recovery from this attack will be rapid, because he will be properly fed, and not allowed to make the smallest exertion, but chiefly because opium, which was the direct cause of it, will be cut off. As he gets stronger the craving will get stronger.”

  “Then, you advise — —”

  “I advise nothing till I see how he pulls round. What I most fear is that his whole will-power, his very capability to form a resolution, has been atrophied, made ineffective, by this drug. He — I am telling you all my worst fears, of course, because this is not a time to buoy you up with false hopes — he is, I fear, from what you tell me, incapable of resistance. That is the real and fatal danger. Now, is there any motive, any thought, or aim, or desire that was his, which we can make use of, on which, so to speak, we can prop up and train the will-power, which is lying like a creeper that has been torn from its supports? His devotion to you, for example? His love for his children?”

  Catherine turned on him a perfectly hopeless look, and shook her head. The waters of Marah were in that gesture.

  The doctor spoke again, gently, tenderly.

  “Then, who has the most influence over him?” he asked.

  “Oh, Maud,” said she— “his sister, you know I have no doubt whatever about that. I think,” she added quietly— “I think he hates me.”

  She spoke quite quietly, as if stating the most commonplace of facts, and the very simplicity of the words were intensely pathetic to the kind man. But they were best passed over without comment.

  “Then, may I consult with her before I go,” he said, “as to anything she can suggest which can appeal to him, support him? He is drowning, he must drown as far as purely medical skill can help him, and we want — do we not? — to throw any sort of life-buoy to him which may keep him afloat.”

  “Hypnotism? That sort of thing?” she asked.

  “I do not think it possible that hypnotism or suggestion can help him,” he said. “There must be something to hypnotise, something to suggest to, and that something is will-power. One cannot say it is wholly destroyed, because I suppose that would mean death, but it is in so feeble and impotent a state that I know of nothing which can touch it.”

  Though Catherine had taken all this very quietly, her quietude was partly that of someone who is stunned, and now her mind recurred, as she recovered herself, to one of those sentences which, so to speak, had dealt the blow.

  “You mean that only a miracle can restore him?” she said.

  “Yes, but I believe in miracles,” said he, “though, unfortunately, you cannot produce a miracle as you can produce a bottle of medicine.”

  Catherine got up.

  “How strange that you should say that!” she said. “Because Maud believes in them, as you do, but she thinks them most accessible. Only she no longer calls them miracles — she calls them Christian Science!”

  Sir James could not have looked cynical or sneering if he had tried, and he certainly did not try. But there was an uncommon dryness in his tone.

  “The lady in Boston?” he inquired.

  “No; a man in Caithness,” said Catherine. “I will ring; she shall come and tell you if she is in.”

  He put up his hand to stop her.

  “Ah, one moment, please,” he said. “I want to have two words with you about yourself. My dear lady, you are not well: you are very much overwrought. You have had, you know, a terrible and trying time, and if you had finished with it, I should tell you to go to bed for a week. But you can’t do that. Now, it has told on you more than you guess. Do not give yourself more tasks than you need; for instance, are you not over-taxing yourself unnecessarily here?”

  He pointed to the crowded writing-table and the pile of answered letters, which she had been working at when he came in.

  “You mean I had better sit down and think over all this terrible tragedy,” she said, her voice beginning to break a little, “rather than find relief and rest in employment?”

  “No; I do not actually say that you must not answer your letters, especially if you find it more bearable to work than to do nothing, but I strongly advise you to rest yourself as much as you can, and to avoid anything agitating beyond that which you must bear. There is plenty that, as your husband’s wife, you have got to bear. But if there are other things that worry you, I entreat you to shut the door in their faces. Exercise your will-power over that, and make it strong by resistance. Save yourself from anything harassing or troubling. I speak,
of course, quite at random, but I feel sure that there are other things which are trying you most acutely.”

  Then, without warning, the breaking-point came for her. All these months of ceaseless anxiety about Thurso had been a greater drain on her nerve force than she had known, and of set purpose she had not abated one jot of the numerous activities of her life, and had not allowed herself to consider how tired and drained she was. And simultaneously with that had come this storm and tempest into the secret life of her soul.

  She gave a sudden shriek of laughter that did not sound like mirth.

  “Oh, you conjurers!” she cried. “You doctors are like X rays! They see right into one’s inside. Good heavens! I should think I had enough to try me, and you don’t guess the half. If it was only Thurso it would be quite a holiday. Oh, how very funny — —”

  Sir James got up quickly, placed himself directly in front of her, and clapped his hands violently close to her face.

  “Now, none of that!” he cried. “I haven’t come here to listen to hysterical ravings. Make an effort; pull yourself together. I’m ashamed of you.”

  Catherine checked suddenly in the middle of her sentence; two or three tears, the precursors of the hysterical storm that had been on the point of bursting forth, had found their way onto her cheeks, and she wiped them off. The attack was arrested as suddenly as it had begun, and she stood silent a moment, still hearing the reverberation of his clapped hands.

  “Yes, quite right,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

  Sir James waited till he felt certain of her. Then he took up one of her hands and kissed it.

  “You dear, brave woman!” he said. “But that shows you the truth of what I said. Be kind to your fine nerves and senses. Treat them well.”