“Ah! give it me back!” he cried. “I can’t let you have it. I told you I couldn’t.”
Maud did not feel bound to demonstrate over this, and she simply ran out of the cabin with the bottle. She made not half a dozen steps of it across the deck, and before ten seconds were over a large, half-empty bottle of laudanum was sinking forlornly into the abysmal depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
“That’s the end of you,” she observed viciously.
But in spite of this piece of gained ground, she knew well that there must be many uphill battles to fight before recovery could be assured. Cochrane had told her that in the letter she had received from him just before she left England. He had answered at once to her cable, merely saying that “he would cure Thurso,” and had written fully afterwards. The letter ended thus:
“I know that you believe in the Infinite and Omnipotent Mind, which is the sole and only cause and origin of all the world; and though you are not a member of our Church at present, yet, since you believe the Gospel on which every cure that Christian Science has ever made is based, begin treating him at once yourself. Combat in your mind every sign of error that you see in him, and never allow yourself to be discouraged, because to be discouraged means that for the moment you doubt. Of course, good must triumph, but when error is so firmly rooted in a man it wants some pulling up. It won’t come away as a mere shallow-rooted weed will. You may have to face apparent failure again and again, but it is a comfort to know that one is on the winning side.”
The days that followed amply illustrated the truth of this, and many were the hours in which Maud was tempted to despair. Every evil, erring mood that had made up Thurso’s record for the last six months was condensed into the few days of that voyage. Sometimes his will would flicker in a little dim flame, so that she knew it was not quite quenched; but the flame was so feeble, and so dense was the blackness that surrounded it. One day he secretly went to the ship’s doctor, taking with him the prescription that was so familiar, which he had himself written out and signed with Sir James Sanderson’s name, asking him to have it made up.
The doctor looked at it. It was all in order.
“Certainly, Lord Thurso,” he said. “I will have it sent to your cabin. It is rather a strong solution, you know. You must be careful not to exceed the dose.”
Thurso almost smiled at this.
“Oh, I am very careful,” he said. “I suffer from terrible neuralgic headaches. Thank you very much.”