第182章

"Come, come! none of that damned rubbish! My life is of no end of value to me! Besides, it's too late. If I were young now, with a constitution like yours, and the world before me, there might be some good in a paring or two of self-denial; but you wouldn't stab your murderer for fear of the clasp knife closing on your hand! you would not fire your pistol at him for fear of its bursting and blowing your brains out!"

"I have no desire to keep you alive, my lord; but I would give my life to let you get some of the good of this world before you pass to the next. To lengthen your life infinitely, I would not give you a single drop of any one of those cursed drugs!"

He rang the bell again.

"You're a friendly fellow!" grunted his lordship, and went back to his bed to ponder how to gain the solace of his passion.

Mrs. Brookes came.

"Will you please send to Mr. Avory, the new surgeon," said Donal, "and ask him, in my name, to come to the castle."

The earl was so ill, however, as to be doubtful, much as he desired them, whether, while rendering him for the moment less sensible to them, any of his drugs would do no other than increase his sufferings. He lay with closed eyes, a strange expression of pain mingled with something like fear every now and then passing over his face. I doubt if his conscience troubled him. It is in general those, I think, who through comparatively small sins have come to see the true nature of them, whose consciences trouble them greatly.

Those who have gone from bad to worse through many years of moral decay, are seldom troubled as other men, or have any bands in their death. His lordship, it is true, suffered terribly at times because of the things he had done; but it was through the medium of a roused imagination rather than a roused conscience: the former deals with consequences; the latter with the deeds themselves.

He declared he would see no doctor but his old attendant Dowster, yet all the time was longing for the young man to appear: he might--who could tell?--save him from the dreaded jaws of death!

He came. Donal went to him. He had summoned him, he said, without his lordship's consent, but believed he would see him; the earl had been long in the habit of using narcotics and stimulants, though not alcohol, he thought; he trusted Mr. Avory would give his sanction to the entire disuse of them, for they were killing him, body and soul.

"To give them up at once and entirely would cost him considerable suffering," said the doctor.

"He knows that, and does not in the least desire to give them up. It is absolutely necessary he should be delivered from the passion."

"If I am to undertake the case, it must be after my own judgment," said the doctor.

"You must undertake two things, or give up the case," persisted Donal.

"I may as well hear what they are."

"One is, that you make his final deliverance from the habit your object; the other, that you will give no medicine into his own hands."

"I agree to both; but all will depend on his nurse."

"I will be his nurse."

The doctor went to see his patient. The earl gave one glance at him, recognized firmness, and said not a word. But when he would have applied to his wrist an instrument recording in curves the motions of the pulse, he would not consent. He would have no liberties taken with him, he said.

"My lord, it is but to inquire into the action of your heart," said Mr. Avory.

"I'll have no spying into my heart! It acts just like other people's!"

The doctor put his instrument aside, and laid his finger on the pulse instead: his business was to help, not to conquer, he said to himself: if he might not do what he would, he would do what he could.

While he was with the earl, Donal found lady Arctura, and told her all he had done. She thanked him for understanding her.