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                     EACH VOLUME SOLD SEPARATELY.

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                          TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

                              VOL. 3970.

                THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE. BY E. F. BENSON.

                       IN TWO VOLUMES.--VOL. I.

                     LEIPZIG: BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ.

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     =The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight.= By the author of "Elizabeth and
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                              COLLECTION

                                  OF

                            BRITISH AUTHORS

                          TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

                              VOL. 3970.

                THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE. BY E. F. BENSON.

                            IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.


        TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

       By the same Author,

  DODO                       1 vol.
  THE RUBICON                1 vol.
  SCARLET AND HYSSOP         1 vol.
  THE BOOK OF MONTHS         1 vol.
  THE RELENTLESS CITY        1 vol.
  MAMMON & CO.               2 vols.
  THE CHALLONERS             1 vol.
  AN ACT IN A BACKWATER      1 vol.
  THE IMAGE IN THE SAND      2 vols.
  THE ANGEL OF PAIN          2 vols.
  PAUL                       2 vols.




                                  THE
                           HOUSE OF DEFENCE

                                  BY
                             E. F. BENSON

     AUTHOR OF "DODO," "THE CHALLONERS," "THE IMAGE IN THE SAND,"
                   "THE ANGEL OF PAIN," "PAUL," ETC.

                          _COPYRIGHT EDITION_

                            IN TWO VOLUMES
                                VOL. I

                                LEIPZIG
                          BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
                                 1907.




                              DEDICATION

                                  TO

                               C. E. M.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

It is with your permission that I dedicate this book to you, and with
your permission and by your desire that I explain the circumstances of
its dedication. You were cured, as both you and I know, of a disease
that medical science had pronounced incurable by a certain Christian
Science healer, who used neither knife nor drugs upon you.

I, a layman in medical affairs, think, as you know, that your disease
was nervous in origin, and you will readily admit that the wise and
skilful man who figures here as Sir James thought the same. But it was
already organic when you went to him, and, after consultation with
others, he pronounced it incurable. At the same time, he acknowledged
its nervous origin, and you will acknowledge that with the utmost
frankness he confessed entire inability to say _how_ a nervous affection
entered the more obviously material world of organic trouble. He had
instances in plenty: fear, anxiety, he said, affected circulation and
digestion, and that, of course, is patent to everybody. So, too, is the
cure: remove the anxiety or fear, and you will get gastric affairs to go
smoothly again, _unless_ organic trouble has begun.

I suppose it is because we are all so used to that sort of mental
healing (do not contradict me yet) that we no longer see any mystery
attaching to it. But in such a cure there is no doubt whatever that the
mind acts on the body, even as it acted before, when fear produced the
imperfect action of the digestion, and heals just as it hurt. To go a
step farther, I see no reason why the mind should not heal the disease
of drinking or drug-taking, for in these, too, it is the brain that is
the seat of the trouble, and its disease and desire is the real cause of
the damage done to bodily tissue. But when--still logically, though in a
scale that swiftly ascends--you tell me that some power not surgical can
heal a compound fracture, then I must part company. At least, I do not
believe that any man living upon this earth can make it happen that
bones that are broken should join together (especially when the fracture
is compound and they stick out of the skin) without assisting Nature by
what you call "mere manipulation," but by what I call, "setting the
bone."

It is here we join issue.

We have often discussed these points before, and the discussion has ever
ended in laughter. But the discussion ends this time in the book which I
have written.

You have read these pages, and you know that in some points you seem to
me to be very like Alice Yardly, but those are the points on which we
agree to differ. I think Alice Yardly and you are often too silly for
words. But you are much more essentially like Bertie Cochrane, and it is
to you, in the character of him, that I dedicate this book. You, sick
with a mortal disease, found healing in Christian Science, and in it
found happiness. And now you yourself heal by the power that healed you.
For I hope I shall never forget that which I with my own eyes saw you
do--that which is the foundation of the last scene of the healing in
"The House of Defence." To save that drug-logged wreck, who was our
friend, when you saw no other way of convincing him of the beastliness
of his habit, you drank that which by all that is known of the drug
should have killed you, and you drank it with complete and absolute
confidence that it could not possibly hurt you. It is true--at least,
Sir James tells me so--that it is not quite easy to poison oneself with
laudanum, because the amateur will usually take too much, and be sick,
or too little, and thus not imbibe a fatal dose. But you drank a good
deal--I can see now the brown stuff falling in your glass--and it
appeared to have no effect whatever on you. I will go further: it had no
effect whatever on you. But it had the effect you foresaw on your
patient: it cured him.

Now, again and again I ask myself, how did it cure him? He was very fond
of you; he saw you, in the desire to save him, apparently lay down your
life for him. I believe that his brain, his will-power, received then so
tremendous and bracing a shock that laudanum for that moment became to
him a thing abhorrent and devilish, as no doubt it is. The sight of you
swallowing the deadly thing gave a huge stimulus to his will. That seems
to me not only possible, but natural. Only, if this is the case, it was
again his own mind, on which your action acted, that healed him.

That, however, does not explain why the drug had no effect on you. There
again we part company. I believe it to have been your absolute
confidence that it could not hurt you that left you unharmed and
unaffected. You said, with a faith that to me is transcendent, "This
thing shall not hurt me, because it is necessary for me to drink it."
And your body obeyed the orders of your mind, and was not harmed. But
you will have none of that explanation. You say it could not harm you,
because there is neither healing nor hurt in material things.... And
here we are again!

Let me cease to argue with you. Let me only say that to me that evening
was an epoch. I have seen and heard of cheerful and serene heroism
before, but it never before came so close to me as then, when the storm
bugled outside, and the fire spluttered, and you drank your deadly
glass.

Affectionately yours,

E. F. BENSON.




                         THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE.

CHAPTER I.


The little travelling-clock that stood on the broad marble
chimney-piece, looking strangely minute and insignificant on the slab
supported by two huge Caryatides, had some minutes ago rapped out the
hour of eight in its jingling voice, but here, in these high latitudes
of Caithness, since