Donal Grant by George MacDonald (best way to read ebooks .TXT) 📕

his hostess must at least be put out of the house."

"Good heavens!" cried the earl, changing his tone with an attempted laugh, "has the poor, hysterical girl succeeded in persuading a man of your sense to believe her childish fancies?"

"I believe every word my lady says, my lord. I know that you had nearly murdered her."

The earl caught up the poker and struck at his head. Donal avoided the blow. It fell on the marble chimney-piece. While his arm was yet jarred by the impact, Donal wrenched the poker from him.

"My lord," he said, "with my own hands I drew the staple of the chain that fastened her to the bed on which you left her to die! You were yet in the house when I did so."

"You damned rascal, you stole the key. If it had not been for that I should have gone to her again. I only wanted to bring her to reason!"

"But as you had lost the key, rather than expose your cruelty, you went away, and left her to perish! You wanted her to die unless you could compel her to marry your son, that the title and property might go together; and that when with my own ears I heard your lordship tell that son that he had no right to any title!"

"What a man may say in a rage goes for nothing," answered the earl, sulkily rather than fiercely.

"But not what a woman writes in sorrow!" rejoined Donal. "I know the truth from the testimony of her you called your wife, as well as from your own mouth!"

"The testimony of the dead, and at second hand, will hardly be received in court!" returned the earl.

"If after your lordship's death, the man now called lord Forgue dares assume the title of Morven, I will publish what I know. In view of that, your lordship had better furnish him with the vouchers of his mother's marriage. My lord, I again beg you to leave the house."

The earl cast his eyes round the walls as if looking for a weapon. Donal took him by the arm.

"There is no farther room for ceremony," he said. "I am sorry to be rough with your lordship, but you compel me. Please remember I am the younger and the stronger man."

As he spoke he let the earl feel the ploughman's grasp: it was useless to struggle. His lordship threw himself on the couch.

"I will not leave the house. I am come home to die," he yelled. "I'm dying now, I tell you. I cannot leave the house! I have no money. Forgue has taken all."

"You owe a large sum to the estate!" said Donal.

"It is lost-all lost, I tell you! I have nowhere to go to! I am dying!"

He looked so utterly wretched that Donal's heart smote him. He stood back a little, and gave himself time.

"You would wish then to retire, my lord, I presume?" he said.

"Immediately-to be rid of you!" the earl answered.

"I fear, my lord, if you stay, you will not soon be rid of me! Have you brought Simmons with you?"

"No, damn him! he is like all the rest of you: he has left me!"

"I will help you to bed, my lord."

"Go about your business. I will get myself to bed."

"I will not leave you except in bed," rejoined Donal with decision; and ringing the bell, he desired the servant to ask mistress Brookes to come to him.

She came instantly. Before the earl had time even to look at her, Donal asked her to get his lordship's bed ready:-if she would not mind doing it herself, he said, he would help her: he must see his lordship to bed.

She looked a whole book at him, but said nothing. Donal returned her gaze with one of quiet confidence, and she understood it. What it said was, "I know what I am doing, mistress Brookes. My lady must not turn him out. I will take care of him."

"What are you two whispering at there?" cried the earl. "Here am I at the point of death, and you will not even let me go to bed!"

"Your room will be ready in a few minutes, my lord," said Mrs. Brookes; and she and Donal went to work in earnest, but with the door open between the rooms.

When it was ready,

"Now, my lord," said Donal, "will you come?"

"When you are gone. I will have none of your cursed help!"

"My lord, I am not going to leave you."

With much grumbling, and a very ill grace, his lordship submitted, and Donal got him to bed.

"Now put that cabinet by me on the table," he said.

The cabinet was that in which he kept his drugs, and had not been touched since he left it.

Donal opened the window, took up the cabinet, and threw it out.

With a bellow like that of a bull, the earl sprang out of bed, and just as the crash came from below, ran at Donal where he stood shutting the window, as if he would have sent him after the cabinet. Donal caught him and held him fast.

"My lord," he said, "I will nurse you, serve you, do anything, everything for you; but for the devil I'll be damned if I move hand or foot! Not one drop of hellish stuff shall pass your lips while I am with you!"

"But I am dying! I shall die of the horrors!" shrieked the earl, struggling to get to the window, as if he might yet do something to save his precious extracts, tinctures, essences, and compounds.

"We will send for the doctor," said Donal. "A very clever young fellow has come to the town since you left: perhaps he can help you. I will do what I can to make you give your life fair play."

"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.


CHAPTER LXXIX.

A SLOW TRANSITION.

A dreary time followed. Sometimes the patient would lie awake half the night, howling with misery, and accusing Donal of heartless cruelty. He knew as well as he what would ease his pain and give him sleep, but not a finger would he move to save him! He was taking the meanest of revenges! What did it matter to him what became of his soul! Surely it was worse to hate as he made him hate than to swallow any amount of narcotics!

"I tell you, Grant," he said once, "I was never so cruel to those I treated worst. There's nothing in the Persian hells, which beat all the rest, to come up to what I go through for want of my comfort. Promise to give it me, and I will tell you where to find some."

As often as Donal refused he would break out in a torrent of curses, then lie still for a space.

"How do you think you will do without it," Donal once rejoined, "when you find yourself bodiless in the other world?"

"I'm not there yet! When that comes, it will be under new conditions, if not unconditioned altogether. We'll take the world we have. So, my dear boy, just go