“I don’t know. It would make me more comfortable; I should enjoy it more.”
“Well, I propose a slightly different plan,” she said. “I promise you that I will go and get it for you myself at twelve o’clock to-night if you still really want it. Hold on for six hours—five hours—and then, if you ask me, I will take down the forged prescription myself. Only in the interval you must do your best—your best, mind, not to think about it. And you must go to bed at eleven. That’s not much to ask, is it?”
He weighed this in his mind, and soon decided, for there was something rapturous in the waiting, provided he knew he would soon get it.
“Yes, of course I’ll wait,” he said, “though I can’t guess what your point is. You really promise it me at twelve? And you won’t tell Cochrane?” he added, with a little spurt of glee, thinking that for some inexplicable reason Maud was going to help him.
“Oh no, I won’t tell him; you probably will. Now, if the sleepiness of the sleigh-drive has gone off, I will read to you. It will help to pass the hours till twelve.”
It had required all Maud’s faith to get through with this, but she had understood and agreed with what Mr. Cochrane had said before he left. He wanted, above all things, that Thurso should make an effort of abstention, though it was only for a few hours, of his own accord, and believed that at present he could hardly do so unless he was bribed, so to speak. He had, in fact, suggested this plan.
“And if he wants it at twelve?” she asked.
“Keep your promise. But he won’t. He can’t.”
All this Thurso thought over as he lay in bed next morning watching his valet put out his clothes. He had gone to bed, as he had promised, before eleven, hugging to himself the thought that midnight was coming closer every minute. And then he had simply fallen asleep, and when he woke the pale winter sunlight was flooding the room.
Yet, mixed with the exhilaration of this cold, bracing air, the memory of the pleasant day before, the sense of recuperation after his excellent night, there came the feeling as he got up and dressed, turning over these events in his head, that he had been tricked. He had no idea how the trick was done, or how it was that he could have gone to sleep when, if he had but kept awake so short a time, he would have enjoyed, and that with no sense of concealment or surreptitious dealing, the one sensation that turned life into paradise. Certainly it had been extremely neatly done. As a conjurer, Cochrane’s sleight of mind, so to speak, was of the most finished sort, for, as has been said, Thurso had had no sense of his presence or intimation of his influence. Cochrane, however, would be here to-day, and perhaps he would explain. But the feeling of having been tricked somehow piqued him, and the pique was not lessened by the fact that he could not guess how the trick was done. Of course, it must have been suggestion or hypnotism in some form; but the odd thing was that neither Maud nor Cochrane had suggested to him at all that he should go to sleep. He had gone to sleep by accident without intending to do anything of the sort, and without any feeling that others were intending it for him.