In churning up these conjectures I was also churning up my heart, torn in twain between two ever more irreconcilable sentiments. I was less than ever prepared to abandon Sylva now that she had given the first evidence of her ability to acquire a genuinely human nature. But to give up Dorothy! Her prolonged absence, the obstacles she seemed to put in the way of my desire to see her, aroused, as usually happens, feelings that might otherwise have remained dormant and uncertain.
I wrote her a first letter, couched in terms that were deliberately restrained, and received no reply. A second letter, already less reserved, remained similarly unanswered. I was preparing a third in which, losing all control, I was recklessly about to burn my boats when Dr. Sullivan made an unannounced irruption at Richwick Manor.
There is no other word to describe the way in which he arrived. It was raining, and over his black frock coat the old doctor was wearing an enormous old-fashioned cape which gave him, normally as lean as a furled umbrella in its sheath, the massive shoulders of a stevedore. I was alone; Nanny was upstairs helping Sylva to get undressed. I was reading the papers that had just arrived, or rather skimming through them with half an eye, my mind elsewhere. The door suddenly opened and somebody presented to me a back that I could not identify—in that vast cloak which he was shaking like a wet dog on the tiled floor of the hall. Then he turned around, removing his cloak, and at last I recognized the familiar figure. I jumped to my feet.
“You at last! After all this time! What kept you away?”
The doctor carefully folded his cloak, dry side out, and placed it with the same care over the back of an armchair. Obviously he was giving himself time to catch his breath and assume a calm countenance.
“What weather!” he said at last. “Forgive me. Yes, for coming without warning.”
“You’re always welcome, Doctor, so don’t apologize, but tell me, without further precautions—”
He raised his hand, sitting down in front of me, or rather letting his long body slump into one of the deep and somewhat worn leather armchairs. Then he looked at me and seemed to grope for words. His full lips, under the protuberant nose, were mutely forming words that he could not bring himself to utter. His eyes grew moist. And suddenly he stammered—but it was plain that it was not at all what he had meant to say:
“You must come. I’ve come to fetch you.”
“At this hour?” (Darkness had fallen.) “Is it so serious? What has happened?”
I was already on my feet to get my hat and raincoat. But he stopped me with a gesture, motioned me to sit down.
“No, there’s nothing new. Nothing urgent. But I’m powerless, I no longer know what to do. I’ve no idea whether you can do anything either. Perhaps you can. Perhaps it’ll only make it worse. I don’t know. We must try. What else can be done? It gets worse from day to day.”
This stammering did not enlighten me at all, and at the end of my tether with worry and impatience, I burst out:
“Will you tell me once for all what’s going on, for heaven’s sake!”
He seemed drained of all energy; his long black frock coat seemed to empty itself, to shrink deflated in the hollow of the armchair, while his bony knees stood out high in the tight trousers. His eyes looked at me as if through a rain-blurred window. His big chin moved and I heard, in a sigh of discouragement:
“It’s narcotics, my poor boy.”
“Even when she was still a little girl, I had to keep a close watch on her,” he said a little later, as he was sipping the tea which Mrs. Bumley had brought us—then she had tactfully withdrawn. “Yes, a studious child,” he said, “intelligent, but strangely weak-willed in the face of any temptation. She would guzzle sweets and marzipan in secret, and you’ll remember her at the age of twelve, fat as a goose, a real balloon. After the time of sweets, there came a more dangerous one: a period of dancing, flirting, boating. I could not always be about. You were too young, more’s the pity. There was that tall, handsome Godfrey above all, a brilliant fellow, too brilliant, but with something about his eyes that made me wary—not wary enough, alas! Perhaps I lacked energy.
“Dorothy told me the truth only a few months ago. One evening, lying on their backs, drifting in a punt, he held out his open hand to her: ‘Breathe this.’ She breathed it, and felt unbelievably happy. She has told me everything. She did not love Godfrey. He amused her, intrigued her, certainly dazzled her a little, but she did not love him. Not really. Only who else could have obtained for her the heavenly powder? She did not know where else to get it nor, had she known, would she have dared.
“Nobody understood her marriage, but nobody guessed the wretched reason for it, the impure, secret, squalid reason. Not even I, though I gradually learned appalling things about her husband and the revolting life he led—but not a word about drugs. His sordid death came as no surprise to me. I must confess I even gave a rather scandalous sigh of relief, all the more as Dorothy had never managed to hide from me how unhappy she was. I thought she would come back to me. And I failed to understand her reasons for staying on in London. She had found a fairly good job there but one that couldn’t possibly interest her: secretary to the manager of a brickworks.
“I only learned the truth when she had to go to hospital for the first time. The doctor wrote to me. There are always some risks involved during a cure—fits of raving madness, suicidal mania. I dashed up to London, but I was not allowed to see her. Fortunately everything went well. After the cure I wanted to take her back with me, but she pleaded her work, declared that she could not leave her employer in the lurch. It is a fact that he was full of praise for Dorothy when I went to see him. He had not guessed a thing and naturally I did not tell him. Perhaps I should have done so. He’d have kept an eye on her. But drug addicts are incredibly clever at outwitting surveillance, so probably it would have been no good.
“Anyhow, she started again. A relapse is always more serious. This time, her work suffered. She stayed away for two or three days at a time. So much so that, after her second cure, four years later, she found her place at the brickworks had been filled. In a sudden burst of clearsightedness she wisely decided to come home.”
As he was speaking Dr. Sullivan had remained with his empty cup in his hand, hunched forward, his eyes glued to the Tadjik carpet as if he wanted to engrave its pattern in his memory. He now put the cup down on a side table and turned toward me.
“I had counted so much on you.” He sighed.
I felt guilt-stricken and thought he was accusing me. But no, his disappointment was not caused by me.
“She was fond of you, more than fond—anyway, as much as a drug addict can be. When she was fourteen or fifteen she even had a crush on you. But you were too shy to notice it, and later your youthfulness played against you. Young girls have a weakness for men of a certain maturity, and afterward it was too late, she was in the grip of an exclusive passion which left no room for ordinary love. When she wrote me that she would like to see you again, I had great hopes. So had she perhaps. They lasted for a few weeks. And then… Ah, then…”
He had slumped down again in his armchair.
“I don’t know when she started again. I didn’t notice it at once. And even up to a few days ago I wondered how ever she could get hold of the stuff in a place like Wardley. An envelope in the wastepaper basket with a London postmark and a postbox address enlightened me on that point. I can’t keep her locked up, after all!” he exclaimed, and fell silent.