A MIRACULOUS MEDICINE
There had been a military funeral at the cemetery at Ore. It was the
band-sergeant of the Rifles, who had served in the local Artillery and
Rifles for thirty-four years, and he was buried with full military
honors. Colonel Lane had gone to the funeral, for he had known and
liked Band-Sergeant Dean.
It was a bitterly cold day, and Colonel Lane was not well. His health
had failed a good deal since his daughter had left him.
When the comrades of the band-sergeant fired a volley over the grave,
Colonel Lane was seen to stagger, and but for the timely aid of a
friendly hand would have fallen.
He was taken home unconscious.
Mrs. Ransom had sent at once to Hawk’s Nest and to Dr. Nansel.
It was Mrs. Barrimore who first arrived with Mr. Burns.
Uncle Robert, who read his sister’s eyes, insisted that she should
remain.
“You will stay till he is well,” announced Uncle Robert. “No one on
earth is so good a nurse as you, and Mrs. Henderson will look after
Hawk’s Nest. It will do her good to have something to see to, so you
need not worry in the least. The boys will keep _me_ occupied.”
Mrs. Ransom, far from being affronted by the proposal Mr. Burns made,
was much relieved by it.
“The Colonel was ‘a bit of a handful’ when he was well, and goodness
knows what he would be like ill,” she said.
But Colonel Lane was not even “a bit of a handful,” as it turned out.
He was very ill indeed, and was as patient as very ill persons usually
are.
Dr. Nansel insisted on a professional nurse, but said that Mrs.
Barrimore might share the work with her. Dr. Nansel described the case
as complicated. The heart was very weak. There had been at one time
abscess of the liver, contracted in India. But nervous breakdown of
a very serious character was the cause of the present mischief. The
condition of the heart was such that death might ensue. Evidently the
Colonel had held up till he literally dropped. Careful nursing and
the enforced rest might bring him round, but Anglo-Indians slipped
through the fingers in a most amazing way. They had nearly always some
undeclared mischief, which asserted itself with direful results when
illness from another cause overtook them. Anglo-Indians were “a bag of
tricks.” Still, of course there was hope.
What Annie Barrimore suffered in the days that followed only God knew.
Philip, for whom she had sacrificed this man’s happiness and her own,
was now quite in the background. The mother-love which had been so
intensely strong in her gave place now to the passionate love she felt
for the man who was apparently dying before her eyes.
Had she married him this would not have happened. She felt that she
had murdered him she loved best. She knew now what she had not known
before, that her love for this man was greater than her love for her
son. Yet, this was not really the case; the love was _different_, that
was all.
Most days, when the trained nurse was in charge, Uncle Robert fetched
his sister to take a few hours’ rest in her home. He was not without
fear that she would break down; but he felt he had chosen the lesser
evil, for she would never have borne to be kept away from the beloved
patient.
On one of these brief visits home she found Philip there, and Philip
saw a side of her he had never suspected; in fact, that he would never
have believed could exist in one so uniformly gentle.
Mrs. Barrimore was cross and irritable; when he offered the usual
caress, she put him from her, asking to be let alone.
Philip was much hurt, but he recalled many occasions on which he had
repulsed his mother, and he realized now what it must have meant to her.
Mrs. Barrimore was in her Gethsemane at this time, for Colonel Lane
was too ill even to give her a sign that he knew she was near him.
His consciousness was clouded, and he was often so still that she had
thought he had passed away.
Uncle Robert had insisted on Sir Samuel Fergusson being called in, but
he had apparently been mystified by the case, and had had the honesty
to say so. He, however, had expressed the opinion that the Colonel
might recover, and had insisted on constant nourishment. Fortunately
the patient could swallow what was given to him, and did not resist the
food, which, of course, took a liquid form.
Uncle Robert took a more hopeful view than anyone of the case. He
declared that nature in Colonel Lane’s case was insisting on absolute
rest, even of the mental faculties. He had heard the Colonel say that
after a campaign he had once slept for four days and nights without
waking, and had been perfectly well at the end of that time, all the
weariness of war gone. Uncle Robert cited other cases he knew of, where
loss of sleep had always to be made up. His own mother had, after a
week of day-and-night nursing, spent most of a week in sleep.
Now the Colonel had been on a great strain for a long time. He had
spent himself for his friend Henderson. He had been ceaselessly
worrying about his daughter; also (and Uncle Robert put this first)
he had been condemned to resign the one woman who could have made him
happy. Was it any wonder that he should be in his present position?
Uncle Robert put all this to Philip after his mother had gone back to
Colonel Lane.
“Uncle, I don’t know how it is, but lately it has been brought home to
me that I have been a thorn in the flesh to everyone.”
Uncle Robert simply stared at his nephew.
“I wonder,” went on Philip, “that any of you can stand me at any price.
I was simply beastly about your book, and I was unutterably selfish
about--about my mother and Colonel Lane. I put my great barge of a foot
down, and prevented the happiness of those two. Now it is too late.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Uncle Robert. “I have an idea that you
have it in your power to administer the most potent medicine in Colonel
Lane’s case.”
“Then, by heaven, I will do it!” cried Philip, understanding. “I’ll go
right off now and see my mother.”
“There is no time like the present,” Uncle Robert affirmed. “I will
get my hat and go with you as far as the door. A blow on the West Hill
will do me good. I miss my swims at this time of the year.”
When you get about half way down Salters Lane you come upon a quiet
backwater of a road, in which are old substantial houses, with big,
sloping gardens, where century-old trees are bird-haunted.
In one of these houses, near that end of the road which is nearest to
St. Clement’s Church, Colonel Lane lived. On the opposite side was The
Hermitage, where some nuns who had been banished from France lived,
whom Eweretta had found out--to their advantage.
At the small gate that led into the garden of Colonel Lane’s house
Uncle Robert left his nephew.
Philip climbed the narrow steps, and then the steep path, bordered
still by gloriously-colored chrysanthemums, and knocked upon the
old-fashioned door softly. He would not ring.
Mrs. Ransom opened the door.
“He is slightly better, sir,” she whispered excitedly. “He smiled at
your mother when she came in. It is the first notice he has taken of
anybody.”
“Is she with him now? Do you think I could see her for two minutes?”
Philip asked.
“I can ask her, sir,” answered Mrs. Ransom with some hesitation; “but
she is not over-willing to leave him even to get necessary rest.”
“It is very important,” urged Philip, whereupon Mrs. Ransom asked the
young man into the dining-room and went noiselessly upstairs.
“What is it, Philip?” asked Mrs. Barrimore, turning tired eyes on her
son.
“Mother,” began Philip tenderly, “I have thought of a new medicine for
Colonel Lane.”
“Everything has been tried, Philip. He seems slightly better.”
“Not everything, mother,” rejoined Philip. “The medicine I am thinking
of will cure him.”
She made a little gesture of impatience. But for Philip all this sorrow
might have been spared, she was telling herself.
“Mother,” said Philip, taking her slim hand within both his, and
looking affectionately at her, “the medicine I mean is _yourself_.”
She looked up with startled eyes. “Do you mean----” she began.
“I mean,” said Philip firmly, “that you must tell him you will marry
him when he gets well.”