"I know how you're hating me," she said, crisp and practical as usual.

"But don't get scared over it. It's natural. This drug breeds murder.

Just you remember it's not _you_, but the morphine that hates me. Keep that well in mind. _I_ do. Don't you worry about going crazy, and suchlike. It takes years and years for morphine really to injure the brain. It's your nerves that are yapping and yowling 'murder!'--your brain's all right."

"I do hate you!" Chesney had said, with weak but dreadful intensity. "I could give Cain points on murder. But there's a part of me that says you're a d.a.m.ned good sort, all the same."

"Hate away," Anne replied serenely. "You're getting on first-rate--that's all _I_ care about."

So it went, and Chesney slowly improved; now weaker, now stronger, as the capricious drug sheathed its claws or gripped him tight again.

"d.a.m.nation! I'm like the frog in the well!" he would groan. "I crawl up one foot and slip back two."

"No, you don't--not really," Anne a.s.sured him. "Up you're coming; slow, maybe, but sure. A nice nurse I'd be to let you slip back two feet for one!"

And she sniffed with her little blunt nose that reminded him of an intelligent pug's.

The worst of it, the thing that aggravated him almost to frenzy at these times, was that he still had morphia in his possession--a large supply of that and cocaine, utterly unsuspected by Anne, for all her shrewdness. He almost chuckled aloud sometimes as he lay watching her during one of his black fits. His spirit did chuckle, as he thought how he had outwitted even her, the little "Bush-Sleuth," in this matter. But he did not dare to take an extra dose, even by mouth. She would have seen instantly--and nosed out the precious stuff that was his dearest earthly possession. He was quite sure of that. It cowed him from taking the morphia that he had secreted, even during those times of anguish, when sometimes she stepped into the next room for a moment to fetch something and he could have swallowed a tablet easily--it was within reach always. No; he did not dare for the sake of one moment's self-indulgence, to run the risk of still greater sufferings. So he lay there, enduring, cursing silently, waiting, ever waiting, for the time to come when he should be his own man again. Then hey! for some distant country--a long journey _en garcon_--with a glittering, brand-new needle, and package on package of the little flat, white, innocent-looking tablets that dissolved so easily in a teaspoonful of warm water.

There were no more drives now: he was too weak. Anne said that in about six weeks he would begin to feel more normal, though he would still be weak. He would feel depressed and weak for a long time after his system was rid of the poison, she warned him with her admirable frankness. Six weeks more of it! Good G.o.d! He wondered that he could keep his hands from her when she said such things to him in that matter-of-fact, casual way. But he waited. Chance was a good deity for such as he to pray to.

One never knew what might happen. So he lay there and said curt, impious prayers to Chance that the G.o.d of Whimsy would help him to his own undoing.

Chance himself serves sometimes one Overlord, sometimes another.

Sometimes he plays henchman to Ormuzd, sometimes to Ahriman. This time he elected to do the bidding of Ahriman.

On the fifteenth day after Chesney's enforced confession to the little nurse, there came a wire from London for Anne Harding. It said:

"_Your mother ill--pneumonia. Come at once._"

There was nothing else for it. She had to go, and by the next train. She loved her mother, whom she supported by her cleverness, very dearly; yet there was almost an equal grief in her strongly professional little heart at leaving a case so difficult, which she had managed with such skill.

She tried to get Chesney to promise her on his word of honour to "act straight" with the nurse who would supplant her, promising that if he did so she would return as soon as her mother was well enough, and take up his case again. But he would only smile at her that faintly jeering smile, which she felt in the marrow of her small bones meant mischief.

"Your word of honour--your word of honour as a gentleman that you'll play fair," she urged vehemently, "or I swear I'll not come back!"

"You forget, my little Bush-Queen," Chesney said, still smiling, "there's no such thing as honour among morphinomaniacs. You've told me that yourself, often enough, my Poppet, have you not?"

"Shame! Shame!" she cried, with pa.s.sion. "Here you are, through the worst--and you won't even promise that you'll keep on! My word! I don't believe I'll come back, no matter _how_ you act!"

"'Suit yourself,' Bush-la.s.s," Chesney returned coolly, quoting one of her favourite expressions.

Anne went to Sophy before leaving--went to her bedroom and under the unusual excitement of her double anxiety over parent and patient, seized the slender white hands in her little skinny brown ones, wringing them eagerly to accentuate her pa.s.sionate words of warning.

"Watch him yourself--_yourself_!" she begged. "Don't trust him a moment--not though he swore on the head of his own son. He means mischief. I know him by now. I know him as only a nurse who's tussled through the worst of the morphia craze with a man _can_ know him. Don't leave him to Gaynor, or his mother, or even Doctor Bellamy. I don't know what sort of nurse they'll send you. She may be good, or she may be a chump. But"--the little spurt of very human vanity became her eager, c.o.c.ky face--"but there's not many Anne Hardings," she wound up. "I give you that for what it's worth, Mrs. Chesney. Forgive my tooting my own trumpet."

Sophy promised, feeling scared and forlorn again, now that this strong little being was going. She had come to depend on her as the one means of Cecil's salvation. Now she was going. Menace, dark and formless, seemed to waver like an evil shadow on the dreary walls of Dynehurst.

How could one grapple with a shadow? Only Anne Harding knew the magic tune to which evil shadows danced obedience.

The little nurse left within an hour after receiving the telegram, and Sophy went to her husband as soon as the carriage drove from the door.

Anne had turned over her charts to her, with the hypodermic syringes and morphia. As the nurse had instructed, she locked everything away before leaving her room. Between every dose they must be locked away again. No slightest risk must be run, in the interval between Anne's departure and the arrival of the new nurse.

When Sophy had faltered that she did not know how to give a hypodermic injection, Anne had exclaimed almost impatiently: "Oh, he can do that, himself--only too well! All you've got to do is to clean it thoroughly the way I've showed you, each time afterwards. I don't want Gaynor to begin it, because one at a time is enough in such things, and _you_ are the one to leave in charge. You've got character--grit." She looked at Sophy impartially out of her shrewd, black eyes. "I don't believe you know, yourself, _how_ much character you _have_ got," she said. "You're too young and beautiful to have had much chance yet--but this is forming you. Forgive my Bush-girl bluntness--but there's no better character-maker than a husband one's trying to save from morphia. You'll come out of it a sort of soldier-saint. Mark my words: _Happiness_ is _mush_," said the little nurse, running her words together in her excitement. "One can't get strong on mush. Now life's feeding you meat--a bit raw and b.l.o.o.d.y, maybe--but it'll build up brawn--soul-brawn.

I'm mixing things; but you understand, I know. And, my word! Just think, Mrs. Chesney: if a woman forgets her travail for joy that a man is born into the world, what must she feel when a man--_her_ man--is reborn through her pangs! Forgive me--I'm being too free. But you're so rare--oh, I've watched you, same as I've watched him! And I want you to win out--I _l.u.s.t_ for it--for you to win out with him. You'll feel you've got the world in a sling then--I give you my word you will, Mrs.

Chesney. Only keep a stiff upper lip. Don't give in to him. Don't let him fool you. The watchword is 'Suspicion.' Don't trust him--not if he seems dying. _Let_ him die before you trust him for one second! Bless you, dear lady! I do _hate_ to leave you all alone with it....

Good-bye."

And she was gone before Sophy could even utter some kind wishes about Mrs. Harding's recovery.

XXV

When Sophy went to Cecil's room, he was lying back quietly reading. He put down his book as she entered, and smiled at her. It was his own, good smile--the smile that she remembered far back in their lover-days.

Tears rushed to her eyes. She was not a woman who wept easily; but now, to see his face so purified of poison, to meet the smile that also shone in the eyes--that glimpse of a resurrected soul in the face that had so long been but a blurred mask of exotic pa.s.sions--this brought her tears.

She went over, kneeled down beside him, and laid her face to his.

"I've got you back!" she whispered. "You've come back to me!"

He lay still, stroking her hair, kissing it, looking out over her head at the flicker of leaves beyond his window, at the dim green of air-veiled pastures, and the far-away blur of brownish haze that hung over the mining town, chief source of the Wychcote riches. A bird streaked like a black arrow against the faint blue sky. The weather had cleared within the last few days. There was sunshine, pale but plenteous--filtering through a veil of moony clouds. A sort of eclipse-light, it seemed to Sophy; but she welcomed it for Bobby's sake--the child had been fretting at the prolonged rain. He had lost his st.u.r.dy, lady-apple cheeks. Now he could be out all day pottering at the out-of-door things that children love.

She knelt there with her cheek against her husband's, just resting, soul and body. She was too tired with the long strain to vibrate to a keener joy. Her thankfulness was deep rather than exultant. And Chesney, gazing out at the summer landscape, thought:

"After all--what if I go on with it? I'm lower than brutes if I deceive her."

Weariness and a distaste of life crept over him at the mere thought of keeping up the dreadful, nerve-wearing effort.

"I must. There's no way out of it--with decency," said part of him.

"Fate's against me," said another part. "Why was the little Bush-Ranger whipped away like that, if there are G.o.ds that care? It's too much to ask a man to keep up alone. I'm sickening for the stuff this moment.

Between the lips of this woman--beautiful as she is--and one grain of morphia--would I hesitate?" "No," answered the first self, grimly honest. "You wouldn't. Try to tell her you have the stuff at hand. Give it up to her. You won't. You can't."

"I _will_!" he thought, setting his teeth.

She felt the swell of his cheek-muscles as he did so, and looked up.

"Sophy...." he said; then stopped short.

"What is it, dear?" she asked. "Can I do something for you?"

He continued looking at her an instant, then closed his eyes.

"No," he said.

She thought his expression had been strange. It hurt her. It was as if he _had_ wanted something, but did not dare ask her for it. She flushed suddenly--it was for him she flushed. She thought that he had been about to coax her for the morphia before the time for giving it. Was he going to "try it on with her," as little Anne had feared? Her limbs seemed to turn to water at the mere thought of that possible struggle.