Shillito from
somewhere up in the North.
But Shillito pondered gravely over the specialist's carefully
guarded phrases about "growths, possibly malign, but at the same
time--difficult to be sure quite so soon--perhaps harmless, might of
course be merely severe suppressed jaundice." When the pains
began--he hated the idea of operations, and knew that any operation
on the liver only at best staved off the dread, inevitable end for a
year or a few months--When the pains began, he had grown utterly
tired of life; so he compounded a subtle poison--he was a great
chemist and had--only his wife knew not of this--a cabinet which
contained a variety of mineral, vegetable, and acid poisons; and
kept the draught in a secret locker in his bedroom. Meantime
Arbella, who after all was human, was tortured at the sight of his
tortures. She felt she must end it, or her nerves would give way.
She trebled, she quintupled the dose of _aqua distillata_ embittered
with quinine. One night when the night nurse was sleeping ("resting
her eyes," she called it) the wretched man stole from his bed to
the night nursery and kissed both his boys. He then swiftly took the
phial from its hiding place and drank the contents and died in one
ghastly minute.
When the night nurse awoke he was crisped in a horrible _rigor_. On
the night table was the phial with the remains of the draught.
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