“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 Bumley had brought us-then she had tactfully withdrawn.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.
I was literally stunned. Nothing else can express what I felt as I listened to those revelations. To such a degree that I could not at first unclench my jaws and the silence between us grew too solid to be broken. How long it lasted I don’t know. What was the old man thinking? He remained motionless in the depths of the armchair, with that air of a broken old puppet which only added to the density of the silence. In the end he turned toward me a questioning, faraway gaze that seemed almost surprised at meeting mine. I found nothing to say except: “I’m stunned.”
He raised a weary hand, and his mouth twitched sideways in a grimace that might possibly be construed as a smile. “Quite so, quite so,” he said, just as he would have said to a child apologizing for being stumped by a difficult passage in Lucretius: Don’t get flustered, take your time, it’ll come.
I stammered something like “How could I have guessed…” or “It’s unimaginable…” to which he replied with rejoinders of the same type, such as “Naturally” or “I quite understand.” I too was slumped deep in my armchair, and the two of us must have looked very much like a pair of discarded marionettes after a show. The first clear thought I was eventually able to express was:
“When exactly did the last relapse occur?”
And as I uttered it I became clearly aware of the anxiety that had stealthily been gnawing at me: wasn’t it my doing, after all?
He said, “Let me see, let me see…” but could not manage to remember. However, by dint of checking his reminiscences, it appeared that the date was definitely prior to her last visit but one when Dorothy and I had had that curious conversation which had been first violent, then pathetic. And that very violence, and equally the pathos, were not at all normal for a woman who was so reserved as a rule, sometimes even to the point of being enigmatic. However, I still could not convince myself that I was quite free from blame.
“Deal as you wish with me,” I said. “I’ll do anything you like. I have a deep affection for Dorothy. If you think that marriage…”
At the same time I was thinking: Ah, never mind Sylva! She is nothing yet. The worst that can happen to her is not to become anything. Whereas Dorothy is a human being to be saved, a woman about to destroy herself, partly through your fault perhaps, because you don’t love her enough. Your duty is to love her: it’s probably the only way of rescuing her.
“Six weeks ago I’d have answered yes,” Dr. Sullivan was saying. “Now I’m wondering; and besides, it’s too late, it would be unreasonable to sacrifice the best years of your young life. I did not dare talk to you about it when maybe there was still time. I’m the only one that’s to blame,” he added, as if he had guessed my thoughts.
He had to start twice to heave himself out of his armchair.
“Shall I come with you?” I quickly suggested.
“What an idea, at this time of night! I won’t be home before one in the morning. I’ve only come to tell you honestly how things stand. Come whenever you can. Perhaps if she sees you, if she consents to see you… oh, I don’t know, I don’t know anything any more. But we must try. Yes, don’t delay too long, after all.”
“I’ll be over tomorrow, if I can. But tell me,” I added, “you don’t seem to have a third cure in mind. Why?” The thought had only just struck me.
He uttered a deep sigh and raised his long, lean arms.
“Who knows if it can still do any good?” he muttered. “The trouble with these cures is that they progressively lose their efficacy. Besides, Dorothy would first have to agree, to consent to undergo it. This doesn’t seem to be the case any more. You can’t imagine the state she’s in. It’s a complete collapse. Come and see for yourself. Thank you. I’ll be expecting you.”
Chapter 23
I AM not quite sure that what prevented me from going to Dunstan’s the very next day, as I had almost promised, was really work on the farm. It is a fact that I had some troubles: a sick cow, the beginnings of a fire in a barn right in the fields. But I could not conceal from myself that those successive delays, those successive excuses, brought me a cowardly relief. I was really frightened at the idea of finding Dorothy in the state which her father had left me imagining.
I was consequently at once surprised and reassured, as well as almost disappointed in a way, by the spectacle that awaited me when at last I showed up at the Sullivans’, on the third day. Dorothy was reading quietly, near her father, by the window. She gave me the same welcome to which I had become accustomed-the calm and mysterious smile. She even impressed me as looking better than the last time. But behind her I saw Dr. Sullivan sadly shake his head, as if to warn me: “Don’t you believe it.”
Dorothy asked me for news of my vixen; she knew about the enormous step forward which Sylva had made and seemed quite engrossed by the story of the apples she had recognized in the still life. Then she said, “I’ll go and make some tea.”
No sooner was she out of the room than I exclaimed cheerfully, “Why, she seems to me-”
“Tut, tut,” the doctor interrupted me. His face expressed the same anxious wistfulness it had shown a moment before. “Don’t trust appearances,” he went on. “Just wait an hour or so, till the effect of the drug begins to wear off.”
I gave a start. “Do you mean that at this moment…?”
He nodded silently, and continued in the same melancholy tone. “I am powerless to prevent her. I can’t go and search her room.”
“But she seems perfectly normal. Are you sure that…?”
I could never manage to finish my questions, so much did a sort of instinctive reticence make me bite back words that seemed to me unutterable in front of a father- though he uttered them himself without false shame.