THE PATIENT AND MY LORD
THERE now remained but one other person in Lord Harry's household whose
presence on the scene was an obstacle to be removed.
This person was the cook. On condition of her immediate departure
(excused by alleged motives of economy), she received a month's wages
from her master, in advance of the sum due to her, and a written
character which did ample justice to her many good qualities. The poor
woman left her employment with the heartiest expressions of gratitude.
To the end of her days, she declared the Irish lord to be a nobleman by
nature. Republican principles, inherited from her excellent parents,
disinclined her to recognise him as a nobleman by birth.
But another sweet and simple creature was still left to brighten the
sinister gloom in the cottage.
The good Dane sorely tried the patience of Fanny Mere. This countryman
of Hamlet, as he liked to call himself, was a living protest against
the sentiments of inveterate contempt and hatred, with which his nurse
was accustomed to regard the men. When pain spared him at intervals,
Mr. Oxbye presented the bright blue eyes and the winning smile which
suggested the resemblance to the Irish lord. His beardless face, thin
towards the lower extremities, completed the likeness in some degree
only. The daring expression of Lord Harry, in certain emergencies,
never appeared. Nursing him carefully, on the severest principles of
duty as distinguished from inclination, Fanny found herself in the
presence of a male human being, who in the painless intervals of his
malady, wrote little poems in her praise; asked for a few flowers from
the garden, and made prettily arranged nosegays of them devoted to
herself; cried, when she told him he was a fool, and kissed her hand
five minutes afterwards, when she administered his medicine, and gave
him no pleasant sweet thing to take the disagreeable taste out of his
mouth. This gentle patient loved Lord Harry, loved Mr. Vimpany, loved
the furious Fanny, resist it as she might. On her obstinate refusal to
confide to him the story of her life--after he had himself set her the
example at great length--he persisted in discovering for himself that
"this interesting woman was a victim of sorrows of the heart." In
another state of existence, he was offensively certain that she would
be living with _him._ "You are frightfully pale, you will soon die; I
shall break a blood-vessel, and follow you; we shall sit side by side
on clouds, and sing together everlastingly to accompaniment of
celestial harps. Oh, what a treat!" Like a child, he screamed when he
was in pain; and, like a child, he laughed when the pain had gone away.
When she was angry enough with him to say, "If I had known what sort of
man you were, I would never have undertaken to nurse you," he only
answered, "my dear, let us thank God together that you did not know."
There was no temper in him to be roused; and, worse still, on buoyant
days, when his spirits were lively, there was no persuading him that he
might not live long enough to marry his nurse, if he only put the
question to her often enough. What was to be done with such a man as
this? Fanny believed that she despised her feeble patient. At the same
time, the food that nourished him was prepared by her own hands--while
the other inhabitants of the cottage were left (in the absence of the
cook) to the tough mercies of a neighbouring restaurant. First and
foremost among the many good deeds by which the conduct of women claims
the gratitude of the other sex, is surely the manner in which they let
an unfortunate man master them, without an unworthy suspicion of that
circumstance to trouble the charitable serenity of their minds.
Carefully on the look-out for any discoveries which might enlighten
her, Fanny noticed with ever-increasing interest the effect which the
harmless Dane seemed to produce on my lord and the doctor.
Every morning, after breakfast, Lord Harry presented himself in the
bedroom. Every morning, his courteous interest in his guest expressed
itself mechanically in the same form of words:
"Mr. Oxbye, how do you find yourself to-day?"
Sometimes the answer would be: "Gracious lord, I am suffering pain."
Sometimes it was: "Dear and admirable patron, I feel as if I might get
well again." On either occasion, Lord Harry listened without looking at
Mr. Oxbye--said he was sorry to hear a bad account or glad to hear a
good account, without looking at Mr. Oxbye--made a remark on the
weather, and took his leave, without looking at Mr. Oxbye. Nothing
could be more plain than that his polite inquiries (once a day) were
unwillingly made, and that it was always a relief to him to get out of
the room. So strongly was Fanny's curiosity excited by this strange
behaviour, that she ventured one day to speak to her master.
"I am afraid, my lord, you are not hopeful of Mr. Oxbye's recovering?"
"Mind your own business," was the savage answer that she received.
Fanny never again took the liberty of speaking to him; but she watched
him more closely than ever. He was perpetually restless. Now he
wandered from one room to another, and walked round and round the
garden, smoking incessantly. Now he went out riding, or took the
railway to Paris and disappeared for the day. On the rare occasions
when he was in a state of repose, he always appeared to have taken
refuge in his wife's room; Fanny's keyhole-observation discovered him,
thinking miserably, seated in his wife's chair. It seemed to be
possible that he was fretting after Lady Harry. But what did his
conduct to Mr. Oxbye mean? What was the motive which made him persist,
without an attempt at concealment, in keeping out of Mr. Vimpany's way?
And, treated in this rude manner, how was it that his wicked friend
seemed to be always amused, never offended?
As for the doctor's behaviour to his patient, it was, in Fanny's
estimation, worthy of a savage.
He appeared to feel no sort of interest in the man who had been sent to
him from the hospital at his own request, and whose malady it was
supposed to be the height of his ambition to cure. When Mr. Oxbye
described his symptoms, Mr. Vimpany hardly even made a pretence at
listening. With a frowning face he applied the stethoscope, felt the
pulse, looked at the tongue--and drew his own conclusions in sullen
silence. If the nurse had a favourable report to make, he brutally
turned his back on her. If discouraging results of the medical
treatment made their appearance at night, and she felt it a duty to
mention them, he sneered as if he doubted whether she was speaking the
truth. Mr. Oxbye's inexhaustible patience and amiability made endless
allowances for his medical advisor. "It is my misfortune to keep my
devoted doctor in a state of perpetual anxiety," he used to say; "and
we all know what a trial to the temper is the consequence of unrelieved
suspense. I believe in Mr. Vimpany." Fanny was careful not to betray
her own opinion by making any reply; her doubts of the doctor had, by
this time, become terrifying doubts even to herself. Whenever an
opportunity favoured her, she vigilantly watched him. One of his ways
of finding amusement, in his leisure hours, was in the use of a
photographic apparatus. He took little pictures of the rooms in the
cottage, which were followed by views in the garden. Those having come
to an end, he completed the mystification of the nurse by producing a
portrait of the Dane, while he lay asleep one day after he had been
improving in health for some little time past. Fanny asked leave to
look at the likeness when it had been "printed" from the negative, in
the garden. He first examined it himself--and then deliberately tore it
up and let the fragments fly away in the wind. "I am not satisfied with
it," was all the explanation he offered. One of the garden chairs
happened to be near him; he sat down, and looked like a man in a state
of torment under his own angry thoughts.
If the patient's health had altered for the worse, and if the tendency
to relapse had proved to be noticeable after medicine had been
administered, Fanny's first suspicions might have taken a very serious
turn. But the change in Oxbye--sleeping in purer air and sustained by
better food than he could obtain at the hospital--pointed more and more
visibly to a decided gain of vital strength. His hollow checks were
filling out, and colour was beginning to appear again on the pallor of
his skin. Strange as the conduct of Lord Harry and Mr. Vimpany might
be, there was no possibility, thus far, of connecting it with the
position occupied by the Danish guest. Nobody who had seen his face,
when he was first brought to the cottage, could have looked at him
again, after the lapse of a fortnight, and have failed to discover the
signs which promise recovery of health.