The House of Defence. Volume 2. Benson Edward Frederic

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СКАЧАТЬ worth while to open the whole house, and so she had established herself here on the third-floor, with just the one sitting-room, and a bedroom and bathroom adjoining. Until half-way through November she had been paying a series of visits at different country houses ever since she came down from Scotland, while Thurso, so she then believed, had been doing the same at other houses. This week they were to have had the first big shoot at their place in Norfolk, but all that had been put off. Ten days ago now she had arrived here for a couple of days’ stay before going down to Norfolk, and had found her husband was in the house. He had been there ever since they came down from Scotland, alone with his valet and a couple of maidservants, one to cook and one to clean, having excused himself from the various houses where he had told her he should be staying, in order to live here in the hell-paradise of opium. Catherine had at once telegraphed for Maud, who was of more use than anybody with her brother, and the two had been here now for ten days. It was just better that they should be with him than that he should be alone; he still occasionally felt ashamed of himself if they were there.

      Since last June the habit had gained on him with appalling rapidity, though for a few months he had, as she knew, made frantic, agonising efforts to throw it off. He had seen doctors, he had done apparently all that lay in his power to do. But now it seemed that a sort of atrophy of his will had set in; he no longer actively desired to be a free man again, though sometimes a sort of shame and remorse seemed to visit him; and though his will had been so completely dominated and destroyed by the drug, it had left the calculating, scheming part of his brain untouched, and he had a thousand devices for obtaining it after the chemists with whom he habitually dealt had been warned not to give it him. Indeed, it was ten days now since he made what appeared to be the very last effort of will, when, on Catherine’s appearance here, he had burned the prescription which enabled him to obtain it. But within twenty-four hours he had himself forged it again, and Lord Thurso, calling suddenly at some big pharmacy with a prescription bearing an eminent doctor’s name, was naturally not refused the blue bottle with its red poison label.

      Yet busily as Catherine occupied herself with her correspondence, striving, since at the moment she could do nothing for her husband, to engage her mind rather than let it dwell on the hideous realities that were going on, and so vitally concerning her, she was alert for the interruption she expected. For yesterday afternoon Thurso, undermined and weakened as he was by this habit, had had an attack of syncope, and for an hour or two they thought he could not live. But the doctor had pulled him round out of immediate danger, and he had regained a little strength during the last twenty-four hours. Sir James Sanderson had, in fact, just come back for his afternoon visit, and was with him now. He had promised to make his report to Lady Thurso before he left the house. The news of Thurso’s sudden illness had been in the evening papers last night, and had appeared again this morning. She was answering the inquiries of her huge circle of friends.

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