Chapter 5 No.5

Carew suffered much, more in mind even than in body. The thought of lying there like a damned log, as he put it, for the rest of his days filled him with most passionate resentment, and drove him into paroxysms of raging fury. He cursed everything under the sun and everyone who came near him, with a completeness and finality of invective which, if it had taken effect or come home to roost, would have blighted himself and all his surroundings off the face of the earth.

Even his wife, and the maid who took turns with her to sit within call, accustomed as they were to his outbreaks, quailed before the storm. Young Job alone suffered it without turning a hair, and paid no more heed to it all, even when directed against himself, than he would to the yelping of his dogs.

Wulfrey Dale came in for his share, chiefly by reason of his quiet inattention to the sufferer's impossible demands for extinction.

But he found his visits to the sick-room trying even to his seasoned nerves. What it must all mean to the tortured wife he hardly dared to imagine.

Once when he was there, Carew hurled a tumbler at her which missed her head by a hair's-breadth. Dale got her out of the room, and turned and gave his patient a sound verbal drubbing, and Carew cursed him high and low till his breath gave out.

"Has he done that before?" the Doctor asked the white-faced wife, when he had followed her downstairs.

"Oh, yes. But I'm generally on the look-out. I was off my guard because you were there. Oh, I wish he would die and leave us in peace."

"He'll kill himself if he goes on like this."

"He'll kill some of us first. He's wanting to die. It would be the best thing for him-and for us. Can't you let him die?" and a tiny spark shot through the shadowy suffering of her eyes as she glanced up at him.

"You know I can't. Don't talk like that!" he said brusquely, and then, to atone for the brusqueness, "I am sorely distressed for you, but there is nothing to be done but bear it as bravely as you can. What about your mother? Couldn't you--"

"It would only make him worse still, if that is possible. Pasley detests her. Oh, I wish I were dead myself. I cannot bear it," and she broke into hysterical weeping, and swayed blindly, and would have fallen if he had not caught her.

A woman's grief and tears always drew the whole of Wulf's sympathy. And he and she had been almost as brother and sister all their lives-till she married Carew.

"Don't, Elinor! Don't!" he said soothingly, as with her shaking head against his breast she sobbed as though her heart were broken.

Mollie, the maid, came hastily in, without so much as a knock, her red face mottled with white fear.

"He's going on that awful, Ma'am, I vow I daresn't stop in there alone with him. It's as much as one's life's worth when he's in his tantrums."

"Get your mistress a glass of wine, Mollie, and then find young Job and send him up. I'll go up and wait with Mr Carew till he comes."

He led Mrs Carew to the couch and made her lie down there, and explained matters to the girl by asking her,

"Does he throw things at you too?"

"La, yes, Doctor, at all of us, if we don't keep 'em out of his reach. He do boil up so at nothing at all," and she went off in search of young Job, who was passing a peaceful holiday hour in the company of thirty couple of yelping hounds.