Juggernaut. Alice Campbell
puts strength into me—and I have need of all my strength. I"—she paused to moisten her lips—"I wish also to have a word with you again about my husband."
"Oh?"
She had stripped off her gloves and was clasping and unclasping her hands.
"Yes, I—I don't feel quite so satisfied about him as I did. I want to ask you some questions."
While she was speaking, the doctor, having signed to Esther to remain, had opened a drawer and was taking out several small bottles which he examined one after the other.
"Miss Rowe," he said, "all these are empty. On the top shelf in the oak cupboard in the laboratory you will find a full one. Bring it to me, please."
He extended an empty bottle for her to see the label.
"Yes, doctor, I won't be a minute," Esther replied, and hastened out, closing the door behind her.
She ran up the two flights of stairs without stopping to take breath, and looked into the Normandy armoire, but neither on the top shelf nor any of the others could she find what she wanted. She went over the contents of the cupboard a second time to make sure, examining the labels of various drugs, chemicals, serums, cultures. What was this new bottle? Tetanus—horrible! She gave a slight shudder, realising that the stuff in that bottle was enough to give lockjaw to half the inhabitants in Cannes. No, the doctor was mistaken, the mixture she sought was not here.
Rather more slowly than she had come up, she retraced her steps to the bottom floor. At the last landing she stopped, listening acutely.
"Non, non, je ne peux pas, je ne peux pas le faire!"
It was the Frenchwoman's voice, high-pitched, emotional, the protest wrung from her as if in agony. What was she saying? A rapid stream of French followed—Esther could not catch a word of it—then at the end a phrase or two that was intelligible.
"Je vous jure, je mourrais—je mourrais. … "
The doctor's voice cut in upon her, dominating, brutal even, a tone that caused Esther to gasp and clutch the stair-rail.
"Stop that! Stop that nonsense! Are you an utter fool?" It was like bidding a dog to lie down. Silence followed, then a stifled sob.
CHAPTER IV
Esther's first thought was, "Why does she stand being talked to like that? I wouldn't, not for a moment."
It was as if all his latent contempt for the opposite sex was concentrated into that one vitriolic burst. Well——! Some physicians, she knew, practised with hyper-emotional subjects the method of "treating them rough." This was probably Sartorius's idea. Certainly she was ready to believe that Lady Clifford was of the uncontrolled, hysterical type, who easily gave way to her feelings; perhaps the doctor had found this the best way of dealing with her. As she still paused, hesitating to enter the room, the doctor spoke again. "Sit down and try to behave like a reasonable woman. Remember all I have told you. Why should you upset yourself like this?"
There was no audible reply. Esther retreated upward a few steps, then descended with a brisk step and opened the door. She observed Lady Clifford sitting with a submissive mien on the edge of a stiff François Premier chair, biting her underlip and pulling a small lace-edged handkerchief between her fingers. The doctor, with an immovable face, was filling a hypodermic syringe from a small phial.
"I'm sorry, doctor——" Esther began, when he interrupted her.
"No, no, it's all right, nurse, I found I had some here after all.
Now, if you will assist Lady Clifford with her dress——"
"I suppose you give it in the thigh?"
"In the thigh."
Lady Clifford had crossed to the hard couch by the window, and was now seated, leaning up against the cushions at the end, cautiously, so as not to disarrange her hat. Esther drew up the narrow skirt, exposing slender legs encased in gossamer stockings and six inches or so of a diaphanous under-garment, pink georgette, delicate as a cobweb and scented like the rest of its owner with an indefinable and slightly cloying perfume. On the white skin just below the hip there showed startlingly a blue-black bruise, the size of a franc piece—the visible mark of repeated injections. Esther sponged a fresh spot and the doctor shot in the long needle with a casual indifference. Simultaneously the woman on the couch closed her eyes and stretched out her limbs with a feline luxurious movement. Esther was tempted to believe she enjoyed the stabbing pain. There were people who took a sensual delight in suffering, or at least she had heard that there were. She watched curiously the sort of rapturous twist of the patient's body, the convulsive grip of her hands on the rim of the couch.
Hands? For the first time Esther noticed them. What was it about them that was different, that filled her with a mixture of fascination and repugnance? They were not large; they were soft, milky-white, marvellously manicured, each nail a plaque of carmine enamel. Yet there was something wrong, almost like a deformity. Of course! It was the shortness of the fingers, or rather, of the first joint, a general look of stumpiness, the nails trained to long points to hide the deficiency. The thumbs, in particular—how squat, how stunted! They appeared to have only two joints instead of three. Somehow they gave her a feeling akin to nausea. … She sponged the puncture with iodine, smoothed down the skirt, cleaned and replaced the needle in its case, and all the time she was thinking of those oddly repulsive hands. Repulsive to her, that is. She knew that not many people would have noticed them specially.
Lady Clifford had risen, a sort of nervous expectancy in her manner.
The doctor glanced at her, then turned to Esther.
"You may as well go home, if you like, Miss Rowe," he said. "I don't think I shall need you for anything more."
"Oh, thank you, doctor!"
It still wanted half an hour until the time she usually left off. For a moment it flashed upon her that there was, after all, a spark of kindliness concealed in that big, slow-moving machine, and the thought warmed and pleased her. She always wanted to like the people she worked for, it was so much jollier. But when she smiled her appreciation she met with no answering gleam whatever. He had already forgotten her as a person, was merely waiting for her to leave the room.
"There's no use," she sighed ruefully as she closed the door. "I might as well try to be fond of the Woolworth Building!"
"Oh, nurse," Lady Clifford called to her suddenly. "Perhaps you will be so good as to give a message to my chauffeur. Tell him he is not to wait, but to call instead for Sir Charles at his club."
"Yes, Lady Clifford."
She quickly got into her things and slipped out of the front door. The car waiting by the curb was a luxurious Rolls, the sandy-haired English chauffeur was smoking a cigarette and reading the Sporting Times by the aid of a tiny electric light. Inside the car on dark blue cushions a small Aberdeen terrier, the picture of patient good-behaviour, sat gazing resignedly out of the window. The rug heaped beside him showed a lining of sable pattes. Clearly Lady Clifford, whoever she might be, possessed an abundance of this world's goods. How doubly odd that she should allow her physician to order her about in so peremptory a fashion! Probably no one else dared to, she looked arrogant enough herself, for all her fairness and fragility.
The chauffeur stared at Esther attentively while she delivered the message, then with a stolid face, "Right-o, miss," he replied and, touching his cap, started the engine.
"How do you do, Miss Rowe? Is this the place where you are employed?"
Esther jumped, astonished at anyone's knowing her name. Then, seeing who it was who had come up behind her, she smiled in recognition.
"Oh! Miss Paull! I had no idea."
It happened that Miss Paull