"Isn't Daddy splendid!"
Her companion, Roy Morton, answered with sincerity, in which was a tincture of irrepressible bitterness.
"He's every inch a soldier."
The bitterness came from the fact that a broken tendon—received during his last football fight for Yale—disqualified him for military service, for which he longed more than ever in this hour when he saw the girl beside him so thrilled by the pomp of war, when he saw her pride and exultation in the military bearing of the father she revered. He felt that he must seem a slacker in her eyes, even though she knew that no fault of his own kept him at home, while others marched away to serve their country.
For Roy loved Ethel and his chief desire always was to show perfect in her eyes. For that matter, he was successful enough, since the girl loved him. Their troth was plighted, and in due time they would be married with the full approval of Colonel Marion, who both liked and respected his prospective son-in-law. So, in preparation for his own absence from home on military service, he strictly charged Roy to watch over Ethel and guard her from any possible peril. It was only a father's instinctive act in protection of his child. As a matter of fact, what danger could by any possibility threaten the well-being of this Ethel, who would remain living quietly in her father's New York house, along with the elderly cousin who acted as chaperon to the motherless girl, and the staff of old and faithful servants?
During the summer weeks that followed the departure of her father, Ethel lived happily enough, content with a routine of life that included entertainments of the usual social sort and especially the almost constant company of her lover.
One of her favorite diversions was a visit to her father's yacht, which lay at its moorings off Eighty-fourth Street in the North River. There was only a caretaker left on board during the Colonel's absence, but Ethel was fond of spending an afternoon in solitary enjoyment on the yacht. Under the after awning she would sit at ease in the low wicker chair, by turns reading, watching the ceaseless traffic of the river, musing on love and happiness—which meant, always, Roy.
Came a day when Roy was summoned home by the illness of his mother. Ethel went with him to the station and saw him off. It was long after noon when she had given the last word of farewell and the last kiss of tenderness to her lover. Ethel thought that she would like to seek the repose of the yacht for a period of tranquil meditation in the luxurious depths of her favorite chair under the after awning.
She rode to the dock in a taxicab, and the yacht's tender took her to the vessel. It was just then that a great steamer passed, and as she would have mounted the stairs to the yacht's deck an unexpected swell from the passing steamer smote the stairs so violently that Ethel was thrown back into the boat she had just left, with an ankle crushed under her own weight.
The girl realized that it was badly sprained. She gave orders that she should be carried on board the yacht forthwith. She decided then that she would send home for whatever might be needed—and, too, for the family physician.
With the assistance of the caretaker she managed to reach her cabin, and then sent the fellow to bring the physician in all haste. She pulled off her outer garments and donned a kimono, and crawled into her berth, to await the Doctor's coming.
It was within the hour that the little tender came back toward the yacht, carrying a passenger.
This was Doctor Gifford Garnet, the family physician. He hurried up the companion way, and went at once to his patient's stateroom. A very short examination sufficed. He saw the girl was suffering excruciating pain from the injury to her ankle.
The physician himself was a victim of morphia. And, too, he was a man of imagination—a most dangerous quality in one of his profession. Now, as he regarded the girl, he realized the intense suffering caused to her by the wrenched tendons in the ankle. That thought of suffering sickened his sensitive nature, so that he felt an emotion almost of nausea from the pain he knew her to be enduring. … And he was a coward. Pain had come to him often. Because he was a coward, he had fled from it—interposing morphia as a shield against its attack. So, now, in sympathy for the anguish endured by the girl he turned to the drug to give her relief from suffering. He made an injection into Ethel's arm. … The girl watched his movement with listless eyes. Then she sighed and smiled as she felt the gentle sting of the needle. At once she sank into an untroubled sleep.
Dr. Garnet regarded her for a moment with a curiously contemplative stare. Then he grinned grimly, pulled up his coat and shirt-sleeve, and pressed the piston of the hypodermic, driving a heavier charge of the drug into his own blood.
One minute he spent in deft examination of the injured ankle, then bandaged it. Afterward, he left the girl, and went up on deck, where he stood staring through long minutes toward the fleecy masses of cumulus clouds that lay along the New Jersey horizon.
CHAPTER V
A Prisoner of Morphia
It was mid-forenoon of the following day when Ethel awoke from the profound sleep superinduced by the drug. It was with a vast astonishment that her startled eyes took in the surroundings of the stateroom. There was a blank wall straight opposite her widely gazing eyes, where should have stood a dressing table of Circassian walnut, topped by the long oval mirror always ready to show her the reflected loveliness of her face. And there should have been also lying exposed on the polished surface of the table an orderly and beautiful array of those things that make for a woman's beauty—the creams that cleanse a skin too delicate for the harsh water poured from city mains; in a gold-topped bottle a lotion for the hair, delicate and effective; in dainty phials essences of perfume, subtle, yet curiously pervasive, with the fragrance of joyous springtime. Indeed, a medley of the arts evolved through the ages for the perfecting of that beauty, which, after all, is God-given—a thing not to be attained by the processes of even the most skilled beauty-doctors. …
But Ethel possessed the thing itself. To her the accessories were but absurdities—unnecessary and wanton, means whereby to emphasize a natural loveliness.
There should have been a glimmer of pure white light from the back of a hair brush, lying on the dressing table. Ethel had loved the purity of that ivory surface. She had loved it so much that she refused to have it broken by the superimposition upon it of initials wrought cleverly in silver or gold or platinum. That brush meant so much to her! Night by night, she toiled with it. After she had undone the masses of her bronze-gold hair, she worked over them, with a sybaritical, meticulous care.
She was used to sitting in negligée and having her maid brush the strands. That brushing made the hair resplendent. … Now, Ethel looked—there was no dressing table—no mirror—nothing, of the sort that she was accustomed to see when she awoke in the morning.
She thought again of her own bedroom at home. She was minded to take her bath, which must be drawn and waiting. … And then, suddenly, that blank wall there before her eyes hammered upon her consciousness.
She was stricken with a curious sense of horror in this instant of realization that she was in some unknown place—absolutely apart from the dear, familiar things of home.
For a few horrid instants that shock of a vague terror pressed upon her like a destroying incubus.
A moment later, recollection thronged upon her. She remembered everything—the coming to the yacht, the fall, the wrenched ankle, the arrival of the physician, the almost dainty pain of the needle thrust into her flesh. And then Ethel began to think that it would be pleasant to be an invalid on board the yacht for a long time. It would need only a judicious selection of guests to make a voyage the most agreeable of diversions.
Just