Mr Clinton went back to the office; it was his boast that for ten years
he had never missed a day. But he was dazed; he did his work
mechanically, and so distracted was he that, on going home in the
evening, he forgot to remove his paper cuffs, and his wife remarked upon
them while they were supping. Mrs Clinton was a short, stout person,
with an appearance of immense determination; her black, shiny hair was
parted in the middle--the parting was broad and very white--severely
brushed back and gathered into a little knot at the back of the head;
her face was red and strongly lined, her eyes spirited, her nose
aggressive, her mouth resolute. Everyone has some one procedure which
seems most exactly to suit him--a slim youth bathing in a shaded stream,
an alderman standing with his back to the fire and his thumbs in the
arm-holes of his waistcoat--and Mrs Clinton expressed her complete self,
exhibiting every trait and attribute, on Sunday in church, when she sat
in the front pew self-reliantly singing the hymns in the wrong key. It
was then that she seemed more than ever the personification of a full
stop. Her morals were above suspicion, and her religion Low Church.
'They've moved into the second 'ouse down,' she remarked to her
husband. 'And Mrs Tilly's taken 'er summer curtains down at last.' Mrs
Clinton spent most of her time in watching her neighbours' movements,
and she and her husband always discussed at the supper-table the events
of the day, but this time he took no notice of her remark. He pushed
away his cold meat with an expression of disgust.
'You don't seem up to the mark to-night, Jimmy,' said Mrs Clinton.
'I served on a jury to-day in place of the governor, and it gave me
rather a turn.'
'Why, was there anything particular?'
Mr Clinton crumbled up his bread, rolling it about on the table.
'Only some poor things starved to death.'
Mrs Clinton shrugged her shoulders. 'Why couldn't they go to the
workhouse, I wonder? I've no patience with people like that.'
Mr Clinton looked at her for a moment, then rose from the table. 'Well,
dear, I think I'll get to bed; I daresay I shall be all right in the
morning.'
'That's right,' said Mrs Clinton; 'you get to bed and I'll bring you
something 'ot. I expect you've got a bit of a chill and a good
perspiration'll do you a world of good.'
She mixed bad whisky with harmless water, and stood over her husband
while he patiently drank the boiling mixture. Then she piled a couple of
extra blankets on him and went down stairs to have her usual nip,
'Scotch and cold,' before going to bed herself.
All night Mr Clinton tossed from side to side; the heat was unbearable,
and he threw off the clothes. His restlessness became so great that he
got out of bed and walked up and down the room--a pathetically
ridiculous object in his flannel nightshirt, from which his thin legs
protruded grotesquely. Going back to bed, he fell into an uneasy sleep;
but waking or sleeping, he had before his eyes the faces of the three
horrible bodies he had seen at the mortuary. He could not blot out the
image of the thin, baby face with the pale, open eyes, the white face
drawn and thin, hideous in its starved, dead shapelessness. And he saw
the drawn, wrinkled face of the old man, with the stubbly beard; looking
at it, he felt the long pain of hunger, the agony of the hopeless
morrow. But he shuddered with terror at the thought of the drowned girl
with the sunken eyes, the horrible discolouration of putrefaction; and
Mr Clinton buried his face in his pillow, sobbing, sobbing very silently
so as not to wake his wife....
The morning came at last and found him feverish and parched, unable to
move. Mrs Clinton sent for the doctor, a slow, cautious Scotchman, in
whose wisdom Mrs Clinton implicitly relied, since he always agreed with
her own idea of her children's ailments. This prudent gentleman ventured
to assert that Mr Clinton had caught cold and had something wrong with
his lungs. Then, promising to send medicine and come again next day,
went off on his rounds. Mr Clinton grew worse; he became delirious. When
his wife, smoothing his pillow, asked him how he felt, he looked at her
with glassy eyes.
'Lor' bless you!' he muttered, 'on a 'eavy day we'll 'ave 'alf a dozen,
easy.'
'What's this he's talking about?' asked the doctor, next day.
''E was serving on a jury the day before yesterday, and my opinion is
that it's got on 'is brain,' answered Mrs Clinton.
'Oh, that's nothing. You needn't worry about that. I daresay it'll turn
to clothes or religion before he's done. People talk of funny things
when they're in that state. He'll probably think he's got two hundred
pairs of trousers or a million pounds a year.'
A couple of days later the doctor came to the final conclusion that it
was a case of typhoid, and pronounced Mr Clinton very ill. He was
indeed; he lay for days, between life and death, on his back, looking at
people with dull, unknowing eyes, clutching feebly at the bed-clothes.
And for hours he would mutter strange things to himself so quietly that
one could not hear. But at last Dame Nature and the Scotch doctor
conquered the microbes, and Mr Clinton became better.