"Well, damn it— I admit a 'low curiosity.' Get on, can't you?"
Carfew "got on." Coolly and methodically, as though unrolling a neatly illustrated script before the other's eyes, he presented to him a clear, detailed picture of the morphinomaniac's descent of Avernus.
"Little by little, all will go but that one, ever-increasing desire," he concluded; "honour first, then sex, then all human sympathy—then, a small matter perhaps, after these others, but to a well-bred man sufficiently unpleasant to contemplate—personal cleanliness. You will become filthy—you will not care. One thing alone of heaven and earth will be left you—the lust for morphia and its parasite—alcohol. So these two were available, you might stink in the nostrils of God and man—you would be quite indifferent. I remember," he broke off on another tone, seeming not to see the dull, unwilling look of arrestment, as it were, on Chesney's face, "I remember, years ago, reading a clever book by Knatchbull-Hugessen, a little volume of fairy-tales. Among these tales was one called 'Skitzland.' I rather suspect that he was having a fling at us specialists in that sketch; but then there are those who specialise on other things than science—morphia, for instance. To Skitzland were supposed to go those who had sacrificed all senses to one. A man in Skitzland would find himself only a huge ear, or an eye, or a stomach, and so on. Well, Mr. Chesney"—he turned sideways in his chair and fixed his cold, super-intelligent eyes on the sick man's—"your fate in the Skitzland of morphia will be to exist only as one huge, avid, diseased nerve-cell rank with the lust of morphia. Just that. Nothing more. And this diseased nerve-cell which will be you would slay Christ if He appeared again, and you thought the last dose of morphia were secreted in the Seamless Garment. Good-morning."
And he was gone before Cecil could moisten his dry lips to reply.
Anne found him sullenly resentful of the doctor's visit.
"I hope you've packed that old prime faker back to the courts of science," he grumbled, as she busied herself tidying his bed which he had rumpled with his ill-humoured tossings. "I'll none of him nor his damned mountebanking, that's flat."
"He'll none of you, unless you do as he wishes, and that's flatter," rejoined Anne tartly.
Chesney gave a whiff of utter contempt.
"Stick myself in one of his man-traps, I suppose you mean. I'll sign to Mephisto with my blood first!—Just let 'em try it on!" he added ominously.
"Oh you make me tired!—tired and sick," flashed Anne Harding. "You talk and act as if we were all trying to lure you to destruction, instead of wearing ourselves to the bone to save you from worse than death! Look here——" She drew up a chair and sat down squarely on it, her little black eyes like coals in which a red spark lingers. "I'm not going to stay on with you as things are, so I might just as well have my say out— I don't give a hang whether it's 'unprofessional' or not. So I'll just tell you this: Your mother went back on you this morning. I mean she went over to our side—we, who'd put you in a sanatorium ay or no. 'Twas your wife held out against it. And the more I think of it, the more I believe she's right. Says she, 'No, I won't lend myself to using force on him. Unless he goes of his own will it won't do any good.' I didn't think so then. But I do now. If your own will is bent on perdition, not all the other wills in the world are going to save you. That's why I'm going to give you up. I'm too useful, thank God! to waste my time on a man who's hell-bent on his own destruction."