Thomas Oscard suddenly changed his tactics. He whined and cringed to his own offspring, and begged him to give him the bottle. He dragged across the floor on his knees—three thousand pounds a year on its knees to Guy Oscard, who wanted that money because he knew that he would never get Millicent Chyne without it.
“Get back to bed!” repeated Guy sternly, and at last the man crept sullenly between the rumpled sheets.
Guy put things straight in a simple, man-like way. The doctor's instructions were quite clear. If any sign of excitement or mental unrest manifested itself, the sleeping-draught contained in a small bottle on the mantelpiece was to be administered at once, or the consequences would be fatal. But Thomas Oscard refused to take it. He seemed determined to kill himself. The son stood over him and tried threats, persuasion, prayers; and all the while there was in his heart the knowledge that, unless his father could be made to sleep, the reputed three thousand a year would be his before the morning.
It was worse than the actual physical struggle on the floor. The temptation was almost too strong.
After a while the sick man became quieter, but he still refused to take the opiate. He closed his eyes and made no answer to Guy's repeated supplication. Finally he ceased shaking his head in negation, and at last breathed regularly like a child asleep.
Afterwards Guy Oscard reproached himself for suspecting nothing. But he knew nothing of brain diseases—those strange maladies that kill the human in the human being. He knew, however, why his father had tried to kill himself. It was not the first time. It was panic. He was afraid of going mad, of dying mad like his father before him. People called him eccentric. Some said that he was mad. But it was not so. It was only fear of madness. He was still asleep when the nurse came back from the pantomime in a cab, and Guy crept softly downstairs to let her in.
They stood in the hall for some time while Guy told her in whispers about the belladonna liniment. Then they went upstairs together and found Thomas Oscard—the great historian—dead on the floor. The liniment bottle, which Guy had left on the mantelpiece, was in his hand—empty. He had feigned sleep in order to carry out his purpose. He had preferred death, of which the meaning was unknown to him, to the possibility of that living death in which his father had lingered for many years. And who shall say that his thoughts were entirely selfish? There may have been a father's love somewhere in this action. Thomas Oscard, the eccentric savant, had always been a strong man, independent of the world's opinion. He had done this thing deliberately, of mature thought, going straight to his Creator with his poor human brain full of argument and reason to prove himself right before the Judge.
They picked him up and laid him reverently on the bed, and then Guy went for the doctor.
“I could,” said the attendant of Death, when he had heard the whole story—“I could give you a certificate. I could reconcile it, I mean, with my professional conscience and my—other conscience. He could not have lived thirty hours—there was an abscess on his brain. But I should advise you to face the inquest. It might be”—he paused, looking keenly into the young fellow's face—“it might be that at some future date, when you are quite an old man, you may feel inclined to tell this story.”
Again the doctor paused, glancing with a vague smile towards the woman who stood beside them. “Or even nurse—” he added, not troubling to finish his sentence. “We all have our moments of expansiveness. And it is a story that might easily be—discredited.”