"It's a phase," she kept saying. "It's a phase. When Nurse Harding comes back, she will know what to do."
And all the while it rained, ever rained—now lightly, now whelmingly. The climate was like a vast Melancholia wrapping England as in sickness.
Search was made everywhere for the concealed drugs. Sophy lay awake at night, racking her brain for possible solutions, until it haunted her dreams like a dark rebus, cluttering her only half-unconscious brain with the refuse of rejected theories.
The man-nurse came. When he entered Chesney's room, he was flung out so violently by the enraged giant (Chesney stood six-foot-four in his socks) that he barely missed having his arm broken against the opposite wall.
The man, white with wrath and pain, went straight to the library where the family had gathered about Bellamy, apprehensive and anxious as to the nurse's reception. He had chosen himself to go alone. He told them that for no consideration would he attempt the case, unless he were given "a free hand." When coldly required by Lady Wychcote to state what he meant precisely by "a free hand," he had replied sullenly that he must be given permission to use violence in return—that is, to defend himself by a blow, if attacked, and to resort to binding the patient, if necessary.
"In other words, you wish to introduce the methods of a lunatic asylum into my house," said Lady Wychcote haughtily. "That will do. We shall not need your services."
The man turned away, muttering that "madhouse methods were made for madmen."
Bellamy tried to persuade Lady Wychcote to send for Dr. Carfew and have Cecil placed in a sanatorium by force.
"Never shall that be done—never while I live," she said resolutely. "I will not have such a stigma put upon a son of mine. Let him die, if he must. Better dead than with the shame of madness put upon him."
In vain Bellamy argued with her, pointing out the difference between a sanatorium and a madhouse. She was adamant.