Bellamy tried to persuade Lady Wychcote to send for Dr. Carfew and have Cecil placed in a sanatorium by force.
"Never shall that be done--never while I live," she said resolutely. "I will not have such a stigma put upon a son of mine. Let him die, if he must. Better dead than with the shame of madness put upon him."
In vain Bellamy argued with her, pointing out the difference between a sanatorium and a madhouse. She was adamant.
In despair, Sophy herself telegraphed to Anne Harding. The answer somewhat consoled her:
"_Mother doing well. Will come Thursday._"
This was Sunday. In three days, then, the little nurse would be in charge again.
When Chesney heard this, that awful, blind rage shook him from within. He felt the horror of "possession." It seemed to him that to kill was the only thing that would relieve him. His rash excess of the last week had ended by confining him to his bed again. He lay there after Sophy had left him, dozing fitfully, waking with dreadful starts from the unspeakable dreams that had begun to visit him of late, by night and day. He, too, had read De Quincey. He remembered how the wandering Malay had haunted "The Opium-Eater's" sweating dreams. Did the dark drug always send such visions? For now he, Cecil, was hunted down through the dark alleys of sleep by horrible deformed Chinamen, who squatted on their hams, mocking him, bedizened in cruel, violent colours that filled him with unreasoning fear; mopping and mowing at him with chattered words that iced his blood. And one dream that came again and again racked him with the extremity of loathing: a violin would begin playing somewhere--harsh, Chinese music; behind a stiff, embroidered curtain it would begin to play. Then, from under the curtain would peep a foot, the deformed "lily foot" of a Chinese woman; then there would crawl out from under the curtain the violin itself, like the brown carapace of some misshapen turtle, and its head was a woman's--a little Chinese harlot's, with gilded underlip--and in place of the turtle's flippers, the "lily-feet" and long-nailed, tiny hands would come scratching towards him. Then, like a luxurious cat, the little turtle-violin would begin rubbing itself against his feet, that were glued fast with terror, till the strings underneath its belly would give forth again that sinister Chinese music.