“It can do no good,” he told Lilith impatiently, “and it may do great harm. I have been so careful to screen her from every kind of excitement or strain, so that the brain should have time to rest.”
“Or stagnate?” suggested Lilith coldly. “She has had—how many years is it—ten or twelve?—of this wrapping in cotton wool, and she has progressed—how far should you call it—one inch, or two? How much longer shall you be content with inches? If she were in my charge—”
Rupert stopped and faced her in the narrow path. There was a hint of roughness in his manner. When a man is strung to the finest point of tension it is not always easy to preserve the conventions. “It is easy to boast when one has had no experience! What would you do if she were in your charge?”
“Neglect her, ignore her, leave her to fend for herself! You and that drudge of a nurse imagine that you are helping by waiting on her hand and foot. What if instead you are sapping her vitality, and stealing her chance of life? What do you leave for her to do, except to breathe? If you could breathe for her, you would relieve her of that also! You make her into a doll, and expect the doll to live! She is asleep, and you feed her with drugs. Better a thousand times to waken her out of her sleep, even if it be to suffer. It was a shock which deadened the brain; it may be that only a shock can rouse it to life again!”
“Ah!” cried Rupert bitterly. “I have heard that theory before. It’s a devilish theory! My poor Eve! She has been tortured enough; she shall be tortured no more. It was the horror of what she saw and heard which caused the mischief in the beginning. The one thing I am thankful for in this loss of memory is that that honour has faded.”
Lilith looked at him with her steady eyes.
“Have you ever been delirious?” she asked him. “Not for an odd hour here and there, but for days together, stretching out into weeks? I have; and I know. Nothing real can approach the horror of the unknown. There is no beginning to it, and no end. It’s a great cloud darkening the sky; it presses lower, lower, strangling the breath. There is no hope in it, no appeal. Your wife saw her parents killed before her eyes. I tell you the memory of the truth would be peaceful, compared with this struggle in the darkness. She would realise that it was over, that they were at rest; that it would pain them if she went mourning all her life. I tell you, Rupert, the only chance of Eve’s recovery is to shock her into remembrance!”
“And if it were, if it were?”—he turned upon her fiercely as though battling against an inner conviction. “A shock strong enough to revolutionise the brain lies in the hands of Providence, to give or to retain. What man dare meddle with such a cure? I love my wife; she is my world. Am I to risk her life for a possible relief? To deliberately court danger that she—she—” He threw out his arms with a gesture of intolerable impatience. “Oh, it is unthinkable! You don’t know what you are talking about. It is easy for you to talk. You have no heart. You cannot feel—”
He strode away up the road leading to the hills, and Lilith stood and watched him go, and picked a leaf of sorrel from the bank by her side and rubbed it daintily between her small teeth, enjoying the sharp, pungent taste. Rupert’s anger had no power to ruffle her calm.
By and by she also started on her morning promenade, passing by the gate of Dempster’s house, and catching a glimpse of Eve upon the veranda. There had been thunder-storms in the neighbourhood during the last few days, and though the actual storms had not yet reached their little retreat, the atmosphere was heavy and breathless. That morning Eve had complained of a headache, and had seemed content to remain in the garden. As she passed by, Lilith saw the nurse come out of the gate, basket in hand, and turn in the direction of the canal bank. Evidently she was bound for the barge-omnibus, which should convey her to the nearest township. Lilith repaired to her own room in the Inn, and set about the task of answering a pile of letters.