The House of Defence v. 2

by E. F. Benson

“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 early. 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?”