Kitabı oku: «Elster's Folly», sayfa 13

CHAPTER XIV.
ANOTHER PATIENT

It was eleven o'clock when Lord Hartledon entered. Lady Kirton was fanning herself vehemently. Maude had gone upstairs for the night.

"Where have you been?" she asked, laying down her fan. "We waited tea for you until poor Maude got quite exhausted."

"Did you? I am sorry for that. Never wait for me, pray, Lady Kirton. I took tea at the Rectory."

"Took—tea—where?"

"At the Rectory."

With a shriek the countess-dowager darted to the far end of the room, turning up her gown as she went, and muffling it over her head and face, so that only the little eyes, round now with horror, were seen. Lord Hartledon gazed in amazement.

"You have been at the Rectory, when I warned you not to go! You have been inside that house of infection, and come home—here—to me—to my darling Maude! May heaven forgive you, Hartledon!"

"Why, what have I done? What harm will it do?" exclaimed the astonished man. He would have approached her, but she warned him from her piteously with her hands. She was at the upper end of the room, and he near the door, so that she could not leave it without passing him. Hedges came in, and stood staring in the same wondering astonishment as his master.

"For mercy's sake, take off every shred of your clothes!" she cried. "You may have brought home death in them. They shall be thrown into the burning tar. Do you want to kill us? What has Maude done to you that you behave in this way?"

"I do think you must be going mad!" cried Lord Hartledon, in bewilderment; "and I hope you'll forgive me for saying so. I—"

"Go and change your clothes!" was all she could reiterate. "Every minute you stand in them is fraught with danger. If you choose to die yourself, it's downright wicked to bring death to us. Oh, go, that I may get out of here."

Lord Hartledon, to pacify her, left the room, and the countess-dowager rushed forth and bolted herself into her own apartments.

Was she mad, or making a display of affectation, or genuinely afraid? wondered Lord Hartledon aloud, as he went up to his chamber. Hedges gave it as his opinion that she was really afraid, because she had been as bad as this when she first heard of the illness, before his lordship arrived. Val retired to rest laughing: it was a good joke to him.

But it was no joke to the countess-dowager, as he found to his cost when the morning came. She got him out of his chamber betimes, and commenced a "fumigating" process. The clothes he had worn she insisted should be burnt; pleading so piteously that he yielded in his good nature.

But there was to be a battle on another score. She forbade him, in the most positive terms, to go again to the Rectory—to approach within half-a-mile of it. Lord Hartledon civilly told her he could not comply; he hinted that if her alarms were so great, she had better leave the place until all danger was over, and thereby nearly entailed on himself another war-dance.

News that came up that morning from the Rectory did not tend to assuage her fears. The poor dairymaid had died in the night, and another servant, one of the men, was sickening. Even Lord Hartledon looked grave: and the countess-dowager wormed a half promise from him, in the softened feelings of the moment, that he would not visit the infected house.

Before an hour was over he came to her to retract it. "I cannot be so unfeeling, so unneighbourly, as not to call," he said. "Even were my relations not what they are with Miss Ashton, I could not do it. It's of no use talking, ma'am; I am too restless to stay away."

A little skirmish of words ensued. Lady Kirton accused him of wishing to sacrifice them to his own selfish gratification. Lord Hartledon felt uncomfortable at the accusation. One of the best-hearted men living, he did nothing in his vacillation. He would go in the evening, he said to himself, when they could not watch him from the house.

But she was clever at carrying out her own will, that countess-dowager; more than a match for the single-minded young man. She wrote an urgent letter to Dr. Ashton, setting forth her own and her daughter's danger if her nephew, as she styled him, was received at the Rectory; and she despatched it privately.

It brought forth a letter from Dr. Ashton to Lord Hartledon; a kind but peremptory mandate, forbidding him to show himself at the Rectory until the illness was over. Dr. Ashton reminded his future son-in-law that it was not particularly on his own account he interposed this veto, but for the sake of the neighbourhood generally. If they were to prevent the fever from spreading, it was absolutely necessary that no chance visitors should be running into the Rectory and out of it again, to carry possible infection to the parish.

Lord Hartledon could only acquiesce. The note was written in terms so positive as rather to surprise him; but he never suspected the undercurrent that had been at work. In his straightforwardness he showed the letter to the dowager, who nodded her head approvingly, but told no tales.

And so his days went on in the society of the two women at Hartledon; and if he found himself oppressed with ennui at first, he subsided into a flirtation with Maude, and forgot care. Elster's folly! He was not hearing from Anne, for it was thought better that even notes should not pass out of the Rectory.

Curiously to relate, the first person beyond the Rectory to take the illness was the man Pike. How he could have caught it was a marvel to Calne. And yet, if Lady Kirton's theory were correct, that infection was conveyed by clothes, it might be accounted for, and Clerk Gum be deemed the culprit. One evening after the clerk had been for some little time at the Rectory with Dr. Ashton, he met Pike in going out; had brushed close to him in passing, as he well remembered. However it might have been, in a few days after that Pike was found to be suffering from the fever.

Whether he would have died, lying alone in that shed, Calne did not decide; and some thought he would, making no sign; some thought not, but would have called in assistance. Mr. Hillary, an observant man, as perhaps it was requisite he should be in time of public danger, halted one morning to speak to Clerk Gum, who was standing at his own gate.

"Have you seen anything lately of that neighbour of yours, Gum?"

"Which neighbour?" asked the clerk, in tones that seemed to resent the question.

Mr. Hillary pointed his umbrella in the direction of the shed. "Pike."

"No, I've seen nothing of him, that I remember."

"Neither have I. What's more, I've seen no smoke coming out of the chimney these two days. It strikes me he's ill. It may be the fever."

"Gone away, possibly," remarked the clerk, after a moment's pause; "in the same unceremonious manner that he came."

"I think somebody ought to see. He may be lying there helpless."

"Little matter if he is," growled the clerk, who seemed put out about something or other.

"It's not like you to say so, Gum. You might step over the stile and see; you're nearest to him. Nobody knows what the man is, or what he may have been; but humanity does not let even the worst die unaided."

"What makes you think he has the fever?" asked the clerk.

"I only say he may have it; having seen neither him nor his smoke these two days. Never mind; if it annoys you to do this, I'll look in myself some time to-day."

"You wouldn't get admitted; he keeps his door fastened," returned Gum. "The only way to get at him is to shout out to him through that glazed aperture he calls his window."

"Will you do it—or shall I?"

"I'll do it," said the clerk; "and tell you if your services are wanted."

Mr. Hillary walked off at a quick pace. There was a good deal of illness in Calne at that season, though the fever had not spread.

Whether Clerk Gum kept his word, or whether he did not, certain it was that Mr. Hillary heard nothing from him that day. In the evening the clerk was sitting in his office in a thoughtful mood, busy over some accounts connected with an insurance company for which he was agent, when he heard a quick sharp knock at the front-door.

"I wonder if it's Hillary?" he muttered, as he took the candle and rose to open it.

Instead of the surgeon, there entered a lady, with much energy. It was the bête noire of Clerk Gum's life, Mrs. Jones.

"What's the house shut up for at this early hour?" she began. "The door locked, the shutters up, and the blinds down, just as if everybody was dead or asleep. Where's Nance?"

"She's out," said the clerk. "I suppose she shut up before she went, and I've been in my office all the afternoon. Do you want anything?"

"Do I want anything!" retorted Mrs. Jones. "I've come in to shelter from the rain. It's been threatening all the evening, and it's coming down now like cats and dogs."

The clerk was leading the way to the little parlour; but she ignored the movement, and went on to the kitchen. He could only follow her. "It's a pity you came out when it threatened rain," said he.

"Business took me out," replied Mrs. Jones. "I've been up to the mill. I heard young Rip was ill, and going to leave; so I went up to ask if they'd try our Jim. But young Rip isn't going to leave, and isn't ill, mother Floyd says, though it's certain he's not well. She can't think what's the matter with the boy; he's always fancying he sees ghosts in the river. I've had my trapes for nothing."

She had given her gown a good shake from the rain-drops in the middle of the kitchen, and was now seated before the fire. The clerk stood by the table, occasionally snuffing the candle, and wishing she'd take herself off again.

"Where's Nancy gone?" asked she.

"I didn't hear her say."

"And she'll be gone a month of Sundays, I suppose. I shan't wait for her, if the rain gives over."

"You'd be more comfortable in the small parlour," said the clerk, who seemed rather fidgety; "there's a nice bit of fire there."

"I'm more comfortable here," contradicted Mrs. Jones. "Where's the good of a bit of fire for a gown as wet as mine?"

Jabez Gum made no response. There was the lady, a fixture; and he could only resign himself to the situation.

"How's your friend at the next house—Pike?" she began again sarcastically.

"He's no friend of mine," said the clerk.

"It looks like it, at all events; or you'd have given him into custody long ago. I wouldn't let a man harbour himself so close to me. He's taken to a new dodge now: going about with a pistol to shoot people."

"Who says so?" asked the clerk.

"I say so. He frighted that boy Ripper pretty near to death. The boy tore home one night in a state of terror, and all they could get out of him was that he'd met Pike with a pistol. It's weeks ago, and he hasn't got over it yet."

"Did Pike level it at him?"

"I tell you that's all they could get out of the boy. He's a nice jail-bird too, that young Rip, unless I'm mistaken. They might as well send him away, and make room for our Jim."

"I think you are about the most fanciful, unjust, selfish woman in Calne!" exclaimed the clerk, unable to keep down his anger any longer. "You'd take young Ripper's character away without scruple, just because his place might suit your Jim!"

"I'm what?" shrieked Mrs. Jones. "I'm unjust, am I—"

An interruption occurred, and Mrs. Jones subsided into silence. The back-door suddenly opened, not a couple of yards from that lady's head, and in came Mrs. Gum in her ordinary indoor dress, two basins in her hand. The sight of her visitor appeared to occasion her surprise; she uttered a faint scream, and nearly dropped the basins.

"Lawk a mercy! Is it Lydia Jones?"

Mrs. Jones had been drawing a quiet deduction—the clerk had said his wife was out only to deceive her. She rose from her chair, and faced him.

"I thought you told me she was gone out?"

The clerk coughed. He looked at his wife, as if asking an explanation. The meeker of the two women hastily put her basins down, and stood looking from one to the other, apparently recovering breath.

"Didn't you go out?" asked the clerk.

"I was going, Gum, but stepped out first to collect my basins, and then the rain came down. I had to shelter under the wood-shed, it was peppering so."

"Collect your basins!" interjected Mrs. Jones. "Where from?"

"I put them out with scraps for the cats."

"The cats must be well off in your quarter; better than some children in others," was the rejoinder, delivered with an unnecessary amount of spite. "What makes you so out of breath?" she tartly asked.

"I had a bit of a fright," said the woman, simply. "My breath seems to get affected at nothing of late, Lydia."

"A pity but you'd your hands full of work, as mine are: that's the best remedy for fright," said Mrs. Jones sarcastically. "What might your fright have been, pray?"

"I was standing, waiting to dart over here, when I saw a man come across the waste land and make for Pike's shed," said Mrs. Gum, looking at her husband. "It gave me a turn. We've never seen a soul go near the place of an evening since Pike has been there."

"Why should it give you a turn?" asked Mrs. Jones, who was in a mood to contradict everything. "You've seen Pike often enough not to be frightened at him when he keeps his distance."

"It wasn't Pike, Lydia. The man had an umbrella over him, and he looked like a gentleman. Fancy Pike with an umbrella!"

"Was it Mr. Hillary?" interposed the clerk.

She shook her head. "I don't think so; but it was getting too dark to see. Any way, it gave me a turn; and he's gone right up to Pike's shed."

"Gave you a turn, indeed!" scornfully repeated Mrs. Jones. "I think you're getting more of an idiot every day, Nance. It's to be hoped somebody's gone to take him up; that's what is to be hoped."

But Mr. Hillary it was. Hearing nothing from Jabez Gum all day, he had come to the conclusion that that respectable man had ignored his promise, and, unable to divest himself of the idea that Pike was ill, in the evening, having a minute to spare, he went forth to see for himself.

The shed-door was closed, but not fastened, and Mr. Hillary went in at once without ceremony. A lighted candle shed its rays around the rude dwelling-room: and the first thing he saw was a young man, who did not look in the least like Pike, stretched upon a mattress; the second was a bushy black wig and appurtenances lying on a chair; and the third was a formidable-looking pistol, conveniently close to the prostrate invalid.

Quick as thought, the surgeon laid his hand upon the pistol and removed it to a safe distance. He then bent over the sick man, examining him with his penetrating eyes; and what he saw struck him with consternation so great, that he sat down on a chair to recover himself, albeit not liable to be overcome by emotion.

When he left the shed—which was not for nearly half-an-hour after he had entered it—he heard voices at Clerk Gum's front-door. The storm was over, and their visitor was departing. Mr. Hillary took a moment's counsel with himself, then crossed the stile and appeared amongst them. Nodding to the three collectively, he gravely addressed the clerk and his wife.

"I have come here to ask, in the name of our common humanity, whether you will put aside your prejudices, and be Christians in a case of need," he began. "I don't forget that once, when an epidemic was raging in Calne, you"—turning to the wife—"were active and fearless, going about and nursing the sick when almost all others held aloof. Will you do the same now by a helpless man?"

The woman trembled all over. Clerk Gum looked questioningly at the doctor. Mrs. Jones was taking in everything with eyes and ears.

"This neighbour of yours has caught the fever. Some one must attend to him, or he will lie there and die. I thought perhaps you'd do it, Mrs. Gum, for our Saviour's sake—if from no other motive."

She trembled excessively. "I always was terribly afraid of that man, sir, since he came," said she, with marked hesitation.

"But he cannot harm you now. I don't ask you to go in to him one day after he is well again—if he recovers. Neither need you be with him as a regular nurse: only step in now and then to give him his physic, or change the wet cloths on his burning head."

Mrs. Jones found her voice. The enormous impudence of the surgeon's request had caused its temporary extinction.

"I'd see Pike in his coffin before I'd go a-nigh him as a nurse! What on earth will you be asking next, Mr. Hillary?"

"I didn't ask you, Mrs. Jones: you have your children to attend to; full employment for one pair of arms. Mrs. Gum has nothing to do with her time; and is near at hand besides. Gum, you stand in your place by Dr. Ashton every Sunday, and read out to us of the loving mercy of God: will you urge your wife to this little work of charity for His sake?"

Jabez Gum evidently did not know what to answer. On the one hand, he could hardly go against the precepts he had to respond to as clerk; on the other, there was his scorn and hatred of the disreputable Arab.

"He's such a loose character, sir," he debated at length.

"Possibly: when he is well. But he is ill now, and could not be loose if he tried. Some one must go in now and then to see after him: it struck me that perhaps your wife would do it, for humanity's sake; and I thought I'd ask her before going further."

"She can do as she likes," said Jabez.

Mrs. Gum—as unresisting in her nature as ever was Percival Elster—yielded to the prayer of the surgeon, and said she would do what she could. But she had never shown more nervousness over anything than she was showing as she gave her answer.

"Then I will step indoors and give you a few plain directions," said the surgeon. "Mrs. Jones has taken her departure, I perceive."

Mrs. Gum was as good as her word, and went in with dire trepidation. Calne's sentiments, on the whole, resembled Mrs. Jones's, and the woman was blamed for her yielding nature. But she contrived, with the help of Mr. Hillary's skill, to bring the man through the fever; and it was very singular that no other person out of the Rectory took it.

The last one to take it at the Rectory was Mrs. Ashton. Of the three servants who had it, one had died; the other two recovered. Mrs. Ashton did not take it until the rest were well, and she had it lightly. Anne nursed her and would do so; and it was an additional reason for prolonging the veto against Lord Hartledon.

One morning in December, Val, in passing down the road, saw the Rectory turned, as he called it, inside out. Every window was thrown open; curtains were taken down; altogether there seemed to be a comprehensive cleaning going on. At that moment Mr. Hillary passed, and Val arrested him, pointing to the Rectory.

"Yes, they are having a cleansing and purification. The family went away this morning."

"Went where?" exclaimed Hartledon, in amazement.

"Dr. Ashton has taken a cottage near Ventnor."

"Had Mrs. Ashton quite recovered?"

"Quite: or they would not have gone. The Rectory has had a clean bill of health for some time past."

"Then why did they not let me know it?" exclaimed Val, in his astonishment and anger.

"Perhaps you didn't ask," said the surgeon. "But no visitors were sought. Time enough for that when the house shall have been fumigated."

"They might have sent to me," he cried, in resentment. "To go away and never let me know it!"

"They may have thought you were too agreeably engaged to care to be disturbed," remarked the surgeon.

"What do you mean?" demanded Val, hotly.

Mr. Hillary laughed. "People will talk, you know; and rumour has it that Lord Hartledon has found attractions in his own home, whilst the Rectory was debarred to him."

Val wheeled round on his heel, and walked away in displeasure. Home truths are never palatable. But the kindly disposition of the man resumed its sway immediately: he turned back, and pointed to the shed.

"Is that interesting patient of yours on his legs again?"

"He is getting better. The disease attacked him fiercely and was unusually prolonged. It's strange he should have been the only one to take it."

"Gum's wife has been nursing him, I hear?"

"She has gone in and out to do such necessary offices as the sick require. I put it to her from a Christian point of view, you see, and on the score of humanity. She was at hand; and that's a great thing where the nurse is only a visiting one."

"Look here, Hillary; don't let the man want for anything; see that he has all he needs. He is a black sheep, no doubt; but illness levels us all to one standard. Good day."

"Good day, Lord Hartledon."

And when the surgeon had got to a distance with his quick step, Lord Hartledon turned back to the Rectory.