FEVER-STRICKEN
“Cousin St. Quentin,” Sydney said, coming straight into the library, “I
want to tell you that I saw and spoke to Hugh to-day. You must forgive
me, please, this time—I won’t again.”
Her cousin looked at her with a curious expression in his eyes: at
another time she would have been surprised to see no anger there at her
confession, but now she did not seem to be surprised at anything. Pauly
was very ill—perhaps going to die—and Hugh had not cared to see her.
Nothing else seemed to matter very much.
“Are you ill, Sydney?” Her cousin spoke to her twice before she heard him.
She put her hands to her head. “I don’t know; my head aches rather.”
“Go and lie down,” said St. Quentin. “You’ve been worrying about that
poor little chap at the Vicarage. Lie down till luncheon; then you will
feel better.”
She felt dimly that his tone was kind in spite of her disobedience with
regard to Hugh. With a sudden impulse she knelt down beside his couch and
laid her head upon his hand. “I shall not disobey you again,” she said,
“for Hugh—Hugh doesn’t care, I think, to see me now.”
She was on her feet again, and had left the room before he had time to
answer her.
St. Quentin gazed after her with a softened look in his tired grey eyes.
“Poor little soul!” he muttered.
Dr. Lorry looked in at the Castle as Lady Frederica and Miss Osric were
sitting down to luncheon. Sydney had fallen asleep on the sofa in the
morning-room, and Miss Osric would not rouse her. The old doctor refused
luncheon and went to the library at once. His face was very grave.
“Is the little chap at the Vicarage any worse?” St. Quentin asked him
sharply.
“Very little change since yesterday,” the old doctor said. “I have great
hopes from young Chichester, and fresh treatment.... These young men, you
know, are up in all the latest developments of science.”
“What does he think of the fever?”
“Badly, I’m afraid. Now the school is closed he wants it turned into a
hospital, and to borrow nurses from Donisbro’, to work with the more
effective women here. He thinks the patients will have very little chance
of recovery in their own cottages.”
The marquess winced, then reached his desk and pen. “How much money will
you want to start with?” he said. “I am, of course, accountable for all
this. Save what lives you can, and never mind my pocket.”
There was no time for mincing matters. The doctor told him what would be
required, and St. Quentin drew a cheque for the amount and signed it.
“Let me know when more is wanted,” he said. “And now will you go upstairs
and look at Sydney. I think she needs change. If you agree, Lady
Frederica shall take her off to the South of France somewhere to set her
up after all this.”
Dr. Lorry made no comment upon this suggestion, but went quietly upstairs
to Sydney. She was awake now, looking rather better for her sleep and
eating a basin of soup, which Miss Osric had brought her.
Dr. Lorry sat down beside her on the sofa, felt her pulse, looked into
her eyes, and asked if she would like to go to bed.
“I think you would be more comfortable there,” he said, and Sydney did
not contradict him.
“Well?” asked St. Quentin anxiously, as Dr. Lorry re-entered the brown
library a few minutes later. “How about the South of France—or do you
think sea air would be better for her?”
“I shouldn’t recommend you to consider the idea of change quite at once,”
the old doctor observed cautiously. “You see, Miss Lisle has been a good
deal about among the cottages, and——”
“All the more reason for her needing change!”
“Yes—yes; but that cottage where she held her meeting for the women
was, I regret to say, in a most unhealthy condition, owing to defective
drains, and——”
“I know; it was one I had marked to be pulled down!”
“Miss Lisle was in it for two hours twice a week, and oftener when that
poor woman first fell ill,” the doctor persisted, as though his keen old
eyes failed to see that the subject of the neglected cottages was a very
sore one to their owner. He hated himself, as he saw how the thin face
flushed beneath his words, but something had to be said, and he said it.
“So I should not recommend your worrying over sending Miss Lisle away
from home at present.”
“What do you mean?” St. Quentin had turned upon him like a flash and
caught his hand as in a vice. “What is it? Don’t say the child is ill!
Good heavens! _not_ the fever!”
“Remember, she will have every possible advantage,” the old doctor
faltered, “every chance that anybody could have of complete recovery.
There is no need to be at all despondent, but I fear—don’t agitate
yourself—I fear we must not deceive ourselves into the belief that she is
going to escape the fever.”
* * * * *
Ten long days had gone by—the longest, Mr. Fenton thought, that he had
ever known.
He had come straight down to the Castle on hearing of Sydney’s illness,
to do what he could for Lord St. Quentin, under this fresh calamity which
had fallen on what really seemed a doomed house.
He sat with the marquess in the library, except when, morning and
evening, he walked down to the improvised hospital to get the latest news
of the battle raging there.
Sometimes it was Dr. Lorry, with the trimness gone from his person and
his eyes a little bloodshot, who would come out and report to the lawyer
waiting there in the deserted play-ground. Sometimes Hugh’s tall form and
young haggard face would emerge from the school-door; or sometimes Miss
Morrell, who had come from Donisbro’ when the doctors were at their wits’
end to find sufficient and efficient nurses, and had stayed ever since,
toiling with the rest to save the many sick.
Or sometimes it was the Vicar, striding between the Vicarage and the
hospital, who would stay to deliver his report upon the fight which he
was sharing with the doctors and the nurses.
And Mr. Fenton would go back to Lord St. Quentin, lying staring dumbly at
the fire, and thinking—thinking of that Christmas Day, when the girl who
lay upstairs in the grip of fever had asked him if he could do nothing
for the cottages. If he had _only_ done it then, when she had asked him,
what anxiety and distress would have been obviated!
“They are saving so many,” Mr. Fenton would say, “and that young
Chichester is invaluable. Dr. Lorry cannot say enough for him. They are
saving so many, that one cannot help feeling very hopeful for Miss Lisle.”
“I have no hope,” said St. Quentin.
A specialist from London had come to see the girl on whom so many hopes
were centred.
“She is very seriously ill,” had been his verdict—that verdict which
seemed so terribly unsatisfying. “A great deal depends upon the nursing.
There is no need to give up hope.”
Then he had gone away, leaving those who loved the girl to make what they
could out of those brief sentences.
“She is very seriously ill.”
“A great deal depends upon the nursing.”
“There is no need to give up hope.”
“She would have made a better job of the landlord business than I’ve
done!” St. Quentin said to Mr. Fenton, again and again. “She cared for
the people, and when I wouldn’t do my duty, tried to do it for me!”
“They are quite devoted to her in Lislehurst, and, indeed, at Loam and
Styles as well,” said Mr. Fenton. “It is most touching to see the way
men and women come rushing from their cottages as I pass, to ask for the
latest news of her. She has won their hearts in the short time she has
been among them.”
“She cared for them, and that accounts for it,” said St. Quentin. “She
even cared for me, though, God knows! I gave her small cause to do
so. I took her from the people whom she loved, and cut her off as far
as possible from intercourse with them. I made her unhappy for my own
selfish ends, and now I’m going to lose her!”
“Please God, no,” said Mr. Fenton, but his voice was not quite steady.
“I would give anything to think I made her happy——” poor St. Quentin was
going on, when he was checked by the entrance of a footman.
“Mr. Chichester to see Mr. Fenton, my lord.”
“Show him in here.”
Mr. Fenton rose. “Hadn’t I better go to him?”
“Show him in here.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The footman withdrew, and in a minute Hugh came into the library. He was
very white as he went forward to the man who had taken Sydney from them.
Neither attempted any conventional greeting, and Mr. Fenton’s murmured
introduction was unheard by both.
“So you are Hugh Chichester?” St. Quentin said. “Tell me—if I wire to
your father and mother to come down to Sydney, will they come?”
“Is she worse?” Hugh’s voice was metallic in the effort that he made to
keep it steady.
“No!” St. Quentin spoke so loudly as to make the lawyer jump. “Tell me,
would they come?”
Hugh laughed unsteadily. The question seemed to him almost a mockery.
“They’d come to her from the world’s end,” he said.
St. Quentin filled hastily a telegraph form with the words:
“Forgive me, and come to Sydney.
“ST. QUENTIN.”
This he directed to “Dr. and Mrs. Chichester” in full.
“Send it off as you pass the post office,” he said to Hugh, who took the
form and went out silently.
* * * * *
It was the night after the arrival of Dr. and Mrs. Chichester.
All was very quiet in the nursery at the Vicarage. At the foot of the
little iron cot knelt the Vicar, his face hidden in his hands. Hugh was
bending over it, his arm under Pauly’s head, his eyes intently watching
the worn baby face.
Dr. Lorry had been sent for to the Castle. Short as Sydney’s illness had
been in comparison with little Pauly’s, its crisis had come to-night, and
they knew that before the wet February dawn crept up into the sky they
would see whether life or death were to be the girl’s portion.
“Put a light in the passage window next her room, if—when—she turns the
corner,” Hugh had said to Dr. Lorry, when the old man was summoned to the
Castle that evening. “I _must_ stay with Pauly to-night, but—put a light
in the window! I can see it from the Vicarage!”
“I will, my boy,” the old doctor said, and went up to the Castle,
thinking deeply.
“One” boomed out from the clock upon the church tower, and Pauly stirred
and moaned. His father was on his feet in a second, but Hugh signed for
silence and put something in a spoon between the child’s lips. Pauly
cuddled himself close into the circle of the young man’s arm, and closed
his eyes.
“Is he going?” whispered the poor father hoarsely.
“Hush!” Hugh said, and there was silence again.
An hour went slowly by. Hugh was sitting now upon a high nursery chair
beside the little cot, but sideways, that he might not move the arm on
which the child was resting. Two struck, and the Vicar, with a long look
at the little wasted face, rose from his knees and stole out to the
hospital.
Three struck, and four: the Vicar had returned, with a whispered, word
to Hugh that all was well at the hospital and in the village, and Dr.
Mitchell, who had come to their help, satisfied. Outside it was very
dark. Mr. Seaton rose and looked long and earnestly from the window.
“Is there a light in the passage next her room?” Hugh’s voice was hardly
more than a thread of sound.
The Vicar came across and laid a hand upon the young man’s shoulder.
“No.”
The nursery clock, ticking on evenly, sounded very loud in the
stillness. The nurse stole into the room to peer round the shaded lamp at
the little patient, and then go away again.
Five struck, and with it came the first faint sleepy twitter of a
half-awakened bird.
Pauly stirred: the Vicar raised his head: the child looked at his father
for a moment with a half-puzzled smile of recognition; then, with a
little drowsy sound of contentment, dropped back upon the pillows,
peacefully asleep.
Hugh rose from his cramped posture and rubbed his stiffened arm. “Thank
God!” he said. Mr. Seaton’s hand closed over his in a way that was more
expressive than any words had power to be. “The little chap will do now,”
the young doctor told the father gently, and left him with his child.
He went down the stairs like a man in a dream, looked into the hospital,
and then directed his steps straight towards the Castle. The whole world
seemed unreal to him to-night; he was unconscious that he had not slept
or eaten for hours. All his powers seemed centred on one thought: Was
there a light in that passage window?
The lodge gates had been left open for the convenience of the doctors,
and Hugh made his way unopposed through the Park, where Sydney had gone
that first morning.
As he drew near the Castle he saw that he was not the only watcher. Half
a dozen figures were grouped near the marble steps, waiting, for the most
part, silently. As he joined them Hugh saw that one was old Banks the
groom, and the rest men from the village. No one made any comment when
the young doctor stood among them. A common trouble makes the roughest
quick of understanding.
Old Banks was speaking as Hugh came up to the little group.
“She were a rare one for the riding,” he said in a low husky voice.
“Bless you! I’ve put a many up, but never one as took to it better than
she did. And his lordship were fine and pleased, he were, for I saw the
look in his eyes as we went past they windows of the library.
“‘Please tell me anything I don’t do right, Banks,’ she says, as pretty
as can be, ‘for I want to ride well and please my cousin.’”
Hugh went and stood close beside the old man, and silence fell again upon
the little group of watchers.
“It were _her_ as were all for the building of they new cottages on
the hill,” Sawyer said presently. “Mr. Fane, he told me so himself. His
lordship wrote to him as it were ‘by the wish of his heir, Miss Lisle.’”
There was another pause, and in the silence they heard the distant clock
upon the church strike six, followed immediately by the deep booming
notes of the Castle clock above the stables.
Hugh involuntarily turned his head to hear from what the deep solemn
sounds proceeded. As he turned old Banks caught his arm in a convulsive
grip—“Look, sir!”
A hand had come to the window in the passage, dark and shrouded till that
moment, and had left a light there.
A minute later, and the young doctor, of whose courage Dr. Lorry could
not say enough, was hurrying back towards the village, crying like a
child.