The House of Defence. Volume 2

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.”

She was quite quiet again now, and sat down in the chair from which she had jumped up.

“Never mind me,” she said. “I can manage my own affairs, and I promise you I will be as sensible as I find it possible. Oh yes, there are other worries. You are perfectly right.”

He paused a moment.

“Now about this man in Caithness,” he said. “He was there, I suppose, when Lord Thurso and Lady Maud were up during the typhoid. Now, I am not bigoted on the subject; I know quite well that these Christian Scientists have got hold of a big truth, but many of them mix such floods of nonsense up with it that it is quite dissolved. They tell me that if you have a compound fracture, and only say to yourself that compound fractures don’t exist, the bones will join. That, of course, is silly. But where you deal with the will, or the nerves, or the imagination, it is a different sort of thing altogether.”

Lady Thurso got up again, quietly this time.

“I will see if Maud is in,” she said. “There was very virulent typhoid up there, you know, in the summer, and Mr. Cochrane is believed by her to have cured one or two extremely grave cases – in fact, she believes more than that.”

She rang the bell, and in the interval, before it was answered, only a couple of words passed.

“And you will spare yourself?” said Sir James.

Maud had come in half an hour ago, but hearing that her sister-in-law was with the doctor, she had not interrupted them. As she entered now, Catherine shook hands with Sir James.

“Maud, this is Sir James Sanderson,” she said. “He wants to talk to you. Good-bye, Sir James. I shall see you, of course, to-morrow morning.”

She left the room, and Maud was alone with the doctor. She had no idea what he wanted to talk to her about, and waited, wondering why Catherine had left them.

But he instantly approached the subject.

“Lady Maud,” he said, “I want to hear about Caithness and the typhoid and Mr. Cochrane.”

Maud was taking off her gloves, but stopped in sheer surprise. There was nothing that she expected less than this.

“What for?” she said.

“For your brother,” said he.

He asked but few questions in her story, for it was a plain and simple narrative. She described just what had passed in connection with Duncan’s wife; she described all that she had seen with regard to Sandie Mackenzie; she mentioned the curious and complete cessation of the epidemic itself.

“And I think I believe exactly what Mr. Cochrane told me,” she said. “Indeed, it seems the simplest explanation to suppose that it was the direct power of God, in whose presence neither sickness, nor disease, nor pain can exist.”

“You say you think so only,” said he. “You are not sure?”

“No, not quite.”

“But Mr. Cochrane is?”

She smiled.

“I should say it was the only thing he was absolutely sure of,” she said.

He thought in silence over this for some time, and then spoke as if he had suddenly made his mind up.

“Medical science, as far as I am acquainted with it,” he said, “can do nothing for Lord Thurso – at least, I fear not. Therefore, if there was a man outside in the Park there with a barrel-organ and a monkey who said he could cure the opium habit, I should welcome him in. Personally, I don’t believe in Christian Science for cases of compound fracture, but it doesn’t matter what I believe. It is my duty to try everything I can. Now, you must let me have a consultation with you about it all.”

Again he paused. He wanted to put his thoughts clearly, not only to her, but to himself.

“We are situated like this,” he said. “I have no notion how to cure your brother, and all that I feel myself able to do is to palliate his sufferings. But the moment – assuming, that is, which I feel justified in doing, that he gets over this attack – that I begin to make his days painless, I aggravate his disease. You, Lady Maud, I know, believe that there is a chance for him: I do not; but since I cannot professionally suggest any other chance, all I can say is, ‘Do what you can, and God be with you.’ Now, as regards practical details, what are we to do? Where is this Mr. Cochrane? But I suppose there are plenty of these healers, are there not? If he is not handy, we can get another.”

Maud strove for a moment to separate the strands of her two desires, that seemed inextricably intermingled. The one was to see Thurso delivered from this drug-possession, the other to put him in the hands of Mr. Cochrane – him only.

“I have knowledge of only one Christian Scientist whom I really believe in,” she said, “and that is Mr. Cochrane. You see, I saw him with my own eyes restore to life a man who was dying. I know there are plenty of others. I could ask Mrs. Yardly.”

Sir James laughed suddenly.

“Why that?” asked Maud.

“She came to me a few months ago for a tonic,” he said. “She had been suffering from general catarrh. She explained to me why this was not inconsistent, but I failed to follow her.”

Maud laughed too.

“Oh, Alice!” she said to herself.

“But Mr. Cochrane, you think, is not like her,” said Sir James.

“You can’t imagine a more totally different personality,” she said. “He gives confidence, anyhow, and he is not silly. I think there is a great deal of what is silly about the whole thing, but I believe that the direct power of God can come and heal people. That is about the biggest thing possible, isn’t it?”

Sir James nodded quietly.

“Yes, my dear young lady,” he said. “I believe in that possibility, too, and that is why I am consulting you. Oh, but compound fracture,” he said suddenly – “what ridiculous nonsense!”

He was silent for a moment after this irrepressible burst of professional indignation.

“And this Mr. Cochrane,” he asked – “where is he?”

“In America,” said Maud. “I heard from him two days ago. He is in New York.”

“I have read some of their literature,” said Sir James, “and I have heard about some of their cures. Now, as a doctor, I can’t recommend your employing Mr. Cochrane, but you can, if you choose, send him a telegram acquainting him with the state of affairs. You see, I don’t think he can hurt your brother, and we doctors can’t benefit him.”

“Am I to get Mr. Cochrane to come here, then?” asked Maud.

“No; in the first place it is a good deal to ask, and in the second, if only you or Lady Thurso could persuade Lord Thurso to go, I am convinced that a sea-voyage, though it will not in the smallest degree cure him, will be generally beneficial. Now, do you think it is in your power to persuade him to go? You needn’t say anything about a Christian Science healer waiting for him at the other end; there will be plenty of time for that when you get him on board ship.”

Maud thought over this. There was a suggestion that she felt she had better make, which was rather difficult for her to put to him.

“Yes; I think I might be able to persuade him,” she said, “because certainly he used often to listen to me when he would listen to no one else. And would you think it odd if I suggested that he and I went alone, without Lady Thurso?”

“I should have suggested it if you had not,” said the doctor. “But tell me why you did.”

“Ah! poor Thurso is mad,” said she. “He is not in the least himself. But ever since the summer he has been behaving to Catherine as if he hated her.”

The doctor nodded.

“I know; she feels that, too. Now, you cannot see your brother to-day, but to-morrow, if he goes on well, I think you might. We shall see. I shall be back early to-morrow to look at him.”

For a man who had passed through so dangerous an attack, weakened, too, as he was, by months of the opium habit, Thurso showed extraordinary recuperative power, and next day he asked of his own accord whether Maud might come and see him. This Sir James at once allowed.

“I will let her know when I go,” he said. “It will do you good.”

He waited for a moment, but Thurso said nothing about wishing to see Catherine, and shortly after the doctor left him, and told Maud she might pay him a short visit. The nurse was with him when Maud entered, but went to her room next door, leaving brother and sister alone. He was still lying flat, without pillows, but he smiled a welcome at Maud when she came in.

“Come close, Maud,” he said in a minute. “I want to talk to you.”

His voice was still no more than a whisper from weakness, but his words were quite audible.

“I don’t want to see Catherine,” he said, “and you must keep her away from me. I think the sight of her would send me off my head. It’s she who has brought me to this. It was she who ruined my nerves by always rushing and flying about in every direction – ”

Maud interrupted him gently.

“Ah! never mind that,” she said. “At present all you have to do is to lie quiet, and not worry about anything, and get well.”

But Thurso broke in again.

“Oh, don’t imagine I don’t know how atrociously I have behaved to her,” he said; “but she drove me mad. She despised me; I saw that. Well, I gave her something to despise me for.”

“Oh, dear Thurso, don’t talk like that,” she said. “If you don’t want to see Catherine, of course you shall not. But your saying that reminds me of a plan you and I might think of when you get better.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve already spoken to Sir James about it, and he approves. You will have to go somewhere to pick up again, so how about you and me going on a voyage together? We both like the sea, so why not go to America on one of those big liners that are so comfortable? We could stay at that house of Catherine’s on Long Island for a week or two, if you liked.”

“Without Catherine, you mean?” he asked.

“She loathes the sea, you remember. You couldn’t expect her to come.”

His eye brightened.

“Yes; I should like that,” he said. “You and I have had jolly times together by ourselves. But I won’t go if she goes.”

His voice had risen sharply over this, and he was silent afterwards, breathing rather quickly. Then he looked at Maud as she sat beside the bed, and something in her youth and beauty stirred some chord of vibrating memory in him, and his mind, which, for all the deadly weakness of his body, was quite clear, went back to early days when he and she had been together so much, bound in an intimacy and affection that seldom exists between brother and sister. She had always been such a good friend to him, such a capital quick-sympathising comrade, and now, he felt, there must for ever stand between them the horror of these last months. For the moment he got outside himself and judged himself, and saw how hideous he had been.

“I’ve made a pretty good mess of it all,” he said.

She laid her hand on his. It was no time to preach: she could only console.

“Yes, dear Thurso,” she said. “We’ve all made mistakes. But, thank God! it is never too late.”

Then that moment of regret, that nearly amounted to contrition, passed from him. It had been brief as a sudden ray of sun piercing through some unconjectured rent in blinding storm-clouds.

“But it’s Catherine’s fault,” he said.

But the ray had been there. His soul, though sick to death, still lived. And that was the only piece of consolation that Maud could carry away with her.