She told him something, brokenly, her memory half gone from fear—how something had happened to distress him, and he had turned red and fallen, twisted and unconscious—she did not know what she told him.
“Has it ever happened before?” asked Routh, who was holding her hands to quiet her, while she moved her feet nervously.
It had happened once, she told him, on a winter’s evening when they had been alone. She could say that much, and then her eyes were drawn to Crowdie’s face, and to the horror of it, as a bent spring flies back to its own line when released. Routh pressed her hand.
“Look at me, please,” he said, authoritatively. “We can’t do anything for him till my things come. Tell me why you gave him morphia.”
She had thought it was the right thing. Her husband had told her that he had formerly taken a great deal of it. He had suffered great pain when he had been younger, from an accident, and had fallen into the habit that kills. But before they had been married he had given it up—for her sake.
Her eyes turned to him again. She snatched her hands from Routh’s and pressed them desperately to her ears to keep out the sound of his breathing. But Routh drew her away and made her look at him again.
And these attacks came from having given up morphia, she told him. Crowdie had said so. He had told her that, of course, a dose of the poison would stop one of them, but that he was determined not to begin taking it again. It would ruin his life and hers if he did. The attacks gave him no pain, he had said. He did not remember afterwards what had happened to him. But of course they were bad for him, and might come more frequently. He had been terribly distressed. It had seemed to be breaking his heart, because it must give her pain. He had made her promise never to give him morphia when he was unconscious. He was determined not to fall back into the habit of it.
“Then why did you do it?” asked Routh, scrutinizing her pale face and frightened eyes.
She had imagined that it would save him pain, though he had told her that he recollected nothing of his sensations after the attack was past.
“He was all stiff and twisted!” she cried, in broken tones. “His hands were all twisted—his eyes turned up.”