Shadows of Flames Part 40

"It's over for the present," he explained. "You need have no more anxiety for the next seven or eight hours--maybe more. By what train do you expect Nurse Harding, Mrs. Chesney?"

"I had a letter. She will come early to-morrow morning--I mean this morning," Sophy corrected herself, looking at the bone-white dawn that showed in streaks through the heavy somnolence of the wrapt trees.

Gerald had opened the shutters fully an hour ago, looking for the daybreak.

"Good!" said Bellamy. He glanced at the worn faces about him. "Now I am going to take a doctor's privilege and prescribe," he added, trying to a.s.sume a lighter tone. "I advise your ladyship, and every one, to come down to the dining-room and have coffee and something more solid. A night like this is terribly exhausting. We shall need all our strength to meet the next twenty-four hours."

XXIX

Anne Harding arrived at ten o'clock. Bellamy asked Sophy to explain the situation to the nurse while she changed into her uniform. There was no time to lose. He would see her himself as soon as she had dressed.

Bellamy had wanted a locksmith sent for to pick the lock of Chesney's door while he slept, but Lady Wychcote would not have this. She was determined that things should wait as they were for Nurse Harding's arrival.

"She may want to make him open the door himself--for the moral effect of it," she said, with real ac.u.men.

"Awfully keen old lady she is, my word!" Anne had exclaimed, when Sophy told her this. "Just what I do want!"

"But, Nurse, do you think he will open that door for any one?" Sophy had asked, wondering.

"I know how to make him--never you fear," Anne had replied crisply.

"We'll have to wait a bit--for him to sober up, you know," she added, with her usual bluntness.

She then went for her interview with Bellamy. It astounded and chagrined her to find that Chesney had procured morphine and cocaine, for she was convinced that he had been in possession of it all the while. She felt humiliated, in her capacity of little Know-All, that she had been ignorant of this fact. For the present, however, she contented herself with seeing that all the alcohol in the house was locked safely away.

Her little brown mouth looked very grim as she sat near the bedroom door, waiting for Chesney to wake from his stupefied slumber.

He did not rouse till nearly four o'clock. Then she heard short, impatient moans, given under his breath, as it were. The bed creaked now and again with his feverish tossings. Anne lifted an alert head. She half smiled, queerly; then turned to Gaynor. The two had sat side by side for hours now--Anne crocheting, the valet looking down at his hands or straight at the wall opposite.

"Go get a small gla.s.s of brandy, please," she said, putting her crochet-work into her pocket.

The valet looked so startled that she nodded to him rea.s.suringly.

"That's all right," she said. "Doctor Bellamy knows. You trust to me."

"I do, miss," he said meekly, and went to fetch the brandy.

When he brought it, Anne took the gla.s.s in her hand, and, rising, rapped sharply on Chesney's door.

"It's me, sir--Nurse Harding," she said, in her most matter-of-fact voice. "You'll let _me_ in, won't you?"

Perfect silence. Even the restless tossing stopped. Gaynor looked at her in deep discouragement. She only smiled again, bobbing her black curls at him with the energy of her consoling nod. "That's all right, my good man," the nod said. "I'm just taking my own time about it."

His puckered face smoothed out somewhat.

"See here, sir," called Anne, rapping on the door again. "You know I've always played fair and square with you. I just want to tell you that I know you'll be needing brandy to-day, and I have it here for you--a gla.s.s of it--in my hand. If you'll only open the door for me, I'll give it you right away."

She heard the bed creak. She called again:

"It's the physic that you need, Mr. Chesney, and you know it as well as I do. You won't get it any other way. Come--be a good sport and let me in!"

There was another silence; then she heard his slow, heavy, dragging tread along the floor. The door shook suddenly. He had evidently half fallen against it for support. Then the key turned. Anne pushed the door open and went in, closing it behind her in Gaynor's dumfounded face. The valet felt a faint revival of his childhood's belief in witches as the little black-maned figure disappeared behind that dread door and closed and locked it. Lion-tamers were but feeble folk compared with her. He sat down on the hall-chair nearest, and wiped his forehead.

Anne told Dr. Bellamy afterwards that Chesney that day was the "grisliest sight she had ever looked on in twelve years of mighty varied nursing."

When she entered he was returning laboriously to his bed. He swayed as he went, and the little nurse gave him her thin arm and shoulder for support. The two went reeling slowly across the room, Anne with the gla.s.s of brandy held at arm's length to keep from slopping it.

The great hulk fell helplessly upon the bed, and she dragged the bedclothes over him with her free hand. As she looked at him, she thought that this might be the end of him--his unshaven face was so congested with alcohol and morphia. There was a yellow-white ring around his nostrils and the edge of his moustache.

She supported his head and fed him the raw spirit as a woman feeds milk to a baby out of a feeding-mug. He drank languidly at first; then greedily.

She left him lying, and set about to tidy the room. Thrusting her curly head from the door, she sent Gaynor for warm water, fresh bed-linen, and pyjamas. When she dressed him and made up the bed, she sat down beside him with businesslike fingers on his pulse, and her eyes on the bracelet-watch.

She then fed him half a gla.s.s of hot milk as she had fed him the brandy, and waited patiently. In ten minutes he was asleep again.

When Lady Wychcote heard that her son had admitted Nurse Harding to his room and was sleeping again after taking some nourishment, she felt immensely encouraged and relieved. Anne left her this happy illusion, but with Sophy she was perfectly frank.

"He's got what we nurses sometimes call a 'wet brain,' Mrs. Chesney.

That means _delirium tremens_ to a greater or less degree. He must have been sopping up that spirit like a sponge, long before Gaynor suspected him. I fancy we'll have lively times for the next week or so."

This diagnosis proved correct. For three nights and days Nurse Harding scarcely slept, though another nurse was wired for, to be under her orders.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, when Chesney was sleeping under the influence of a moderate dose of morphia, Anne left Nurse Hawkins in charge, and went to Sophy's room. Her little face looked bleached rather than pale. Her skin was so swarthy that it could never reach actual pallor. It looked to-day like an autumn leaf that has been bleached by the following season's rains and suns. In answer to Sophy's exclamation of sympathy, she sank down upon a chair, saying:

"Yes, I _am_ rather done, Mrs. Chesney--just for the moment, you know.

I'm going to turn in for a four hours' sleep now. That will set me up again. But somehow I can't rest well, for thinking of where that extra morphia can be hidden. I feel such a fool about it, Mrs. Chesney. It's my _duty_ to find it. I feel a regular amateur--a duffer----"

"Oh, dear Nurse Harding! How can you feel so?" asked Sophy warmly. "It would baffle any one--any one!"

Anne took her peaked little face between her brown fists, resting her elbows on her knees, and shaking her head disconsolately.

"I've been called 'Miss Sherlock Holmes' in my day," she admitted ruefully. "But I rather think my day's gone by. May I sit with you and puzzle over it a bit, before going for my sleep?"

Sophy made her warmly welcome. She even urged the little thing to lie down on her sofa and rest, at least while she cogitated. But Anne refused with resolution.

"No," she said. "No; thank you so much, Mrs. Chesney. Just let me sit here in this armchair. I can think better sitting."

She sat for a minute or two, frowning down at the carpet; then suddenly she turned to Sophy, with the oddest little guilty smile, half embarra.s.sed, half determined.

"I'll tell you what you can do for me, Mrs. Chesney," she said. "I've got a little vice of my own, though I make it a rule never to indulge it when I'm on a case. But now--I do so need to think hard--it's so important for my patient that I should. Could you, would you be so kind as to give me a cigarette and let me smoke it here? You see, I haven't any with me--and I daren't smoke in my room, for fear of the housemaids.

Do you think me _very_ impertinent and cheeky for asking you this favour, Mrs. Chesney?"

"Oh, my dear girl!" cried Sophy. "Of course you shall have a cigarette.

I have some very nice ones of my own...." She turned to get them; then remembered.

"What a pity!" she said. "Mine are all out. They gave out some days ago, and I forgot to order more."

Then she brightened.