THE USES OF DELIRIUM

“Don’t you think I might get up and sit by the window and look at the sea, Carey?”

Miss Carew hesitated, and then summoned the nurse.

“Miss Dexter was to have one whole day in bed after the journey.”

The nurse, looking into Molly’s eager eyes, compromised for one half hour, in which Miss Dexter might lie on the sofa in a fur cloak.

It was a big sofa befitting the largest bedroom in the hotel, and Molly lay back on its cushions with the peculiar physical satisfaction of weakness, resting after very slight efforts.  Yesterday she had been too exhausted for enjoyment, but this afternoon her sensations were delightful.

The short afternoon light was ruddy on the glorious brown sails of the fishing-boats, and drew out all their magnificent contrast to the blue water.  But the sun still sparkled garishly on the crest of the waves, and the milder glow of the sunset had not begun.

Weakness was sheltered and at rest within, while without was the immense movement of wind and water, and the passing smile of the sun on the great, unshackled forces of winter.  Molly’s rest was like a child’s security in the arms of a kindly giant.  Her mind had been absorbed by illness—­an illness that had had her completely in grip, the first serious illness she had ever known.  There had been a struggle in the depths of her life’s forces such as she had never imagined; but now life had conquered, and she was at rest.  In that time there had been awful delirium:  horrible things, guilty and hideous, had clung about her, all round her.  One wicked presence especially had taken a strange form, a face without a body, and yet it had hands—­it must have had hands because the horror of it was that it constantly opened the doors of the different cupboards, but most often the door of the big wardrobe, and looked out, and that although Molly had had the wardrobe locked and the key put under her pillow.  And this face was very like Molly’s, and the question she had to settle was whether this face was her mother’s or her own.  At times she reasoned—­and the logical process was so deadly tiring—­that it must be her mother, for she could not be Molly herself being so unkind to herself; whereas, if the face had had any pity for her it might have been herself looking at herself.  But was that not nonsense?  There was surely a touch of hysteria in that.  Did the face really come out of her own brain?  And if so, from what part of her brain?  She felt sure there was a sort of empty attic, a large one, in the top part of her right brain, it felt hollow, quite terribly hollow.  Probably the face came out of that.  But then, how did it get inside the wardrobe? and once inside the wardrobe, how did it get out again when Molly really had the key?