by Ellen Wood
Lucy had been bending her head upon her hand for the last few moments, as she had done earlier in the morning at her sister Jane’s. “I got up with a headache,” she replied, lifting her eyes wearily. “I thought the air, as I came along, might have done me good, but it has not, and my throat is getting sore.”
“Throat getting sore!” echoed Laura. An instant’s pause, and she started from the sofa in consternation, forgetting her lameness, seized her sister, and drew her to the light of the window.
“Lucy! it cannot be! you are never going to have the fever!”
“Oh no, of course I am not,” was the answer.
But Lucy was going to have the fever. In fact, Lucy had the fever upon her then. And Lady Jane did not know of it until night, when she was expecting Lucy home; for Laura, from carelessness or from some other motive, never sent to tell her. At nine o’clock the footman was despatched with the news, but it was Mr. Carlton who sent him.
Lady Jane could not believe it. It was simple Jonathan, and she thought the man must have made some mistake. Lady Lucy was in bed, he said. She had been taken ill soon after reaching their house. Mr. Carlton was out at the time, but on his return he pronounced it to be fever. He had charged Jonathan to give his respects to Lady Jane, and to assure her that every care and attention should be paid to the invalid.
Now nothing in the world could have been much less welcome than this news to Lady Jane Chesney. To her mind there was something of duplicity in their thus taking possession of Lucy, and she remarked so privately to Judith. Apart from Lady Jane’s anxiety for Lucy, she had an unconquerable aversion to her lying ill at Mr. Carlton’s, to her being attended by that gentleman, or to herself becoming an inmate, however temporarily, in his house, which she must do, were Lucy to remain there. She took a moment’s counsel with herself, for Lady Jane was one who rarely did things upon impulse, then attired herself for walking, and proceeded to Mr. Carlton’s, taking Judith with her, and ordering her own footman to go as quickly as he could to Mr, Grey’s and bring back that gentleman to Mr. Carlton’s.
The best room, a large and handsome spare chamber adjoining Lady Laura’s dressing-room, had been hastily prepared for Lucy. She was lying in it, looking flushed and anxious, and complaining of her head and throat.
“Jane,” she whispered, as her sister bent over her, “Mr. Carlton says it is the fever. I wish I could have been at home with you I”
“You should have returned the instant you found yourself getting worse, Lucy,” was Jane’s answer. “I thought you were possessed of common sense, child. Laura, you ought to have sent her home. Where was your carriage, that she could not have the use of it?”
“It was not her fault — or mine,” replied Laura. “Mr. Carlton administered some remedies this morning soon after we found she was ill, and he wished to watch their effect; to-night he says she is too ill to be moved. But, if you will allow me to express my private opinion, Jane, I should say that all has happened for the best; for where can she be so well attended to as in the house of a medical man? And you may be sure she will have good nursing.”
“Laura, I would rather have her with me; she is under my charge, you know. I wonder if she can be moved now?”
“You must be stupid to think it,” returned Laura.
“I told Mr. Carlton I felt well enough to be taken home,” spoke Lucy, “but he said I did not understand the risk. I think I might be taken, Jane.”
Jane inquired for Mr. Carlton. He was in the dining-room, taking some refreshment after a hard day’s work, and she went to him. He rose in astonishment. Lady Jane Chesney in his house.
“Mr. Carlton,” she said, speaking quietly in spite of her anger, and she did feel very angry: “I have come to convey Lady Lucy home. I fancy it may be done without risk.”
“Impossible, Lady Jane. It might cost her her life.”
“I cannot but think, sir, before you had assumed to yourself the responsibility of keeping her, that you might have sent to inquire my pleasure upon the subject,” returned Lady Jane with dignity. “The fever must be quite in its earliest stage, and there was no reason why she could not have been sent home. She was well enough to walk here this morning, and she was, I make no doubt, pot sufficiently ill to debar her returning this evening.”
“It has come on very rapidly indeed,” replied Mr. Carlton; “and I think she will have it badly.”
“I still wish to take heir home, if possible,” persisted Jane, somewhat agitated by the last words; “and I have despatched a messenger for Mr. Grey, that he may come here and give me his opinion upon the point. In doing this, I wish to cast ho slight upon your judgment and skill, Mr. Carlton, but Mr. Grey is my own attendant, and I have unusual confidence in him; moreover, he will not be prejudiced, for her removal or against it. You and I, sir, perhaps are so; though from opposite sides.”
“I do not understand you,” spoke the surgeon.
“I am prejudiced in favour of taking her; you, in favour of keeping her; Mr. Grey, on the contrary, will give his honest opinion, for he can have no motive to be biased either way.”
“Yes, he can,” rejoined Mr. Carlton. “A good patient will fall Into his hands, if he takes her away.”
True, so far; but the words vexed Jane. “She will be his patient in either case, Mr. Carlton. I mean, I say, no reflection on your skill; but my own doctor must attend on Lady Lucy, where-ever she may be.”
The cold, haughty tone of the words and manner, the “Lady Lucy,” stung Mr. Carlton. Jane’s treatment of him, her utter rejection of any intimacy, had been boiling up within him for years. He so far forgot his usual equanimity, he so far forgot himself as to demand, with a flash of passion and a word that had been better left unsaid, whether he was not as efficient as John Grey. Jane put him down with calm self-possession.
“Sir, it is true that my sister is your wife; but I beg you not to forget that I am Lady Jane Chesney, and that a certain amount of respect is due to me, even in your house. I do believe you to be as efficient as Mr. Grey; that your skill is equal to his; but that is not the question. He is my medical attendant, and I would prefer that he took the case into his own hands.”
“It’s well known, sir, that when people are ill, no place seems to them like home,” interposed Judith, who had quite adopted her lady’s prejudices in the affair, and followed her to Mr. Carlton’s presence. “We’d a great deal better have her at home.”
Before any rejoinder could be made, a sound was heard in the hall, and Mr. Carlton turned to it, Jane following him. Frederick Grey had entered: and Mr. Frederick was in a state of agitation scarcely to be suppressed. He caught hold of Lady Jane.
“My uncle was out, and I came in his stead,” he cried, his words rendered half unintelligible by emotion. “Where is she? Is she very ill?”
An altercation ensued. Mr. Carlton, whose temper was up (a most unusual thing with him), stepped before his visitor to impede his way to the stairs.
“Mr. Frederick Grey, I cannot permit you to be in my house. Had your uncle come, I would have received him with all courtesy; but I wish to know by what right you intrude here.”
“I don’t intrude willingly,” was the answer. “I have come to see Lady Lucy Chesney.”
“You cannot see her. You shall not pass up my stairs.”
“Not see her!” echoed Frederick, staring at Mr. Carlton as though he thought he must be out of his mind. “Not see her! You don’t know what you are saying, Mr. Carlton. She is my promised wife.”
He would have borne on to the stairs; Mr. Carlton strove to prevent him, and by some means the gas became extinguished; possibly the screw was touched. The servants were in the hall; hearing the altercation, they had stolen into it; Lady Laura, with her damaged foot, was limping downstairs. The women-servants shrieked at finding themselves in sudden darkness; they were perhaps predisposed to agitation by the dispute; and Lady Laura shrieked in concert, not having the faintest notion what there could possibly be to shriek at.
Altogether it was a scene of confusion, in the midst of which Frederick Grey, pushing every one aside with scant courtesy, made his way to the staircase. Mr. Carlton would have prevented him, but was impeded by the servants, and at the same moment some words were whispered in a strange voice in his ear.
“Would you keep her here to poison her, as you poisoned another?”
Simultaneously with this, there was some movement at the hall door: a slight sound as if some one had either come in or gone out. It had been ajar the whole time, not having been closed after Frederick Grey’s entrance, for Lady Jane’s footman stood outside, waiting for orders.
Mr. Carlton — all energy, all opposition gone out of him — stood against the wall, wiping his face, which had turned cold and moist. But that he had heard Frederick Grey’s footsteps echoing up the stairs beforehand, he would have concluded that the words came from him. Some one struck a match, and Mr. Carlton became conscious, in the dim flash of light, that a stranger was present, — a shabby-looking man who stood just within the hall. What impulse impelled the surgeon, he best knew, but he darted forward, seized, and shook him.
“Who are you, you villain?”
But Mr. Carlton’s voice was changed, and he would not have recognized it for his own. The interloper contrived to release himself, remonstrating dolefully.
“I’m blest if this is not an odd sort of reception when a man comes for his doctor! What offence have I been guilty of sir, to be shook like this?”
It was inoffensive little Wilkes, the barber from the neighbouring shop. Mr. Carlton gazed at him in very astonishment in the full blaze of the re-lighted gas.
“I’m sure I beg your pardon, Wilkes! I thought it was —
Who came in or went out?” demanded Mr. Carlton, looking about him in all directions.
The servants had seen no one. It was dark.
“I came to fetch you, sir,” explained the barber, who sometimes had the honour of operating on Mr. Carlton’s chin. “My second boy’s a bit ill, and we think it may be the fever. I wasn’t for coming for you till morning, sir, but the wife made a fuss and said there were nothing like taking things in time; so when I shut up my shop, I came. I suppose you took me for a wild bear, marching in without leave.”
“Did you meet any one, or see any one go out?” asked Mr. Carlton, passing over the wild-bear suggestion.
“I didn’t, sir. I was going round to the surgery, when I saw the hall light disappear, and heard women screaming. Naterally I come straight in at the big door, wondering whether anybody was being murdered.”
At the foot of the stairs, standing side by side, contemplating all these proceedings with astonishment, and not understanding them, were the ladies, Jane and Laura. They now asked an explanation of Mr. Carlton.
“I — I — thought I heard a stranger; I thought some one had come in. I feel sure some one did come in,” he continued, peering about him still in a curious sort of way.
“Will you step down, please, sir, to the boy?”
“Yes, yes, Wilkes, I’ll be with him before bedtime,” replied Mr. Carlton. And the forgiving little barber turned away meekly, and met Mr. John Grey coming in.
Frederick Grey had made his way upstairs. An open door, and a light within, guided him to Lucy’s chamber. Ill as she was, she uttered an exclamation of remonstrance when she saw him, and covered her face with her hot hands.
“Oh, Lucy, my darling! To think that it should have attacked you!”
“Frederick! what do you do here? Where is Jane? It is not right.”
He drew away her hands to regard her face, he passed his own cool hand across her brow; he took out his watch to count the beatings of the pulse.
“I am here professionally, Lucy; don’t you understand? Could I entrust my future wife to any one else?” he asked in a voice that literally trembled with tenderness. “I have been at the bedside of patients to-day, love, young and delicate as you.”
“I do feel very ill,” she murmured.
The fear that was upon him increased as he gazed at her, arresting the life-blood at his heart. What if he should lose her? — if this scourge should take her away from him and from life? And of course there was only too much reason to fear that it might have been communicated to her through his visits. A scalding tear dropped on to her face, and Lucy, looking up, saw that his eyes were wet.
“Am I then so very ill?” she murmured.
“No, no, Lucy; it is not that. But this has come of my imprudence. I ought to have kept away from you: and I cannot bear that you should suffer pain! Oh, my darling—”
They were coming in, Mr. Grey and Lady Jane. The experienced surgeon moved his nephew from the bed, as if the latter were only a tyro. And indeed he was so, in comparison with the man of longer practice.
Mr. Grey could not recommend Lucy’s removal; quite the contrary. He saw no reason why she should not have been taken home at first, he said; but it had better not be attempted now. Jane was deeply annoyed, but she could only acquiesce.
“It cannot be helped,” she said, with a sigh. “But I am grievously vexed that she should be ill, away from my house. Remember she is in your charge, Mr. Grey.”
“In mine? What will Mr. Carlton say to that?”
“It is of no consequence to me what he says,” was the reply. “I cast no slight upon Mr. Carlton’s skill: I have told him so; and if he chooses to attend her, conjointly with you, I have no objection whatever to his doing so. But Lucy’s life is precious to me, and I have confidence in you, Mr. Grey, from old associations.”
Frederick Grey found that he was to be excluded from the sickroom. His attendance as a medical man was not necessary. And both Mr. Grey and Lady Jane thought his visits might tend to excite Lucy. In vain he remonstrated: it was of no use.
“She is to be my wife,” he urged.
“But she is not your wife yet,” said Mr. Grey, “and you may trust her safely to me. Be assured that if dangerous symptoms arise, you shall be the first to hear of them.”
“And to see her,” added Lady Jane.
With this he was obliged to be content. But he was terribly vexed about it. He stooped to kiss her hot lips in the impulse of the moment’s tenderness.
— “Don’t — don’t,” she murmured. “You may take the fever.”
“Not I, child. We medical men are feverproof. Oh, Lucy, my best and dearest, may God bring you through this!”
Mr. Carlton was pleased to accept the alternative, and agreed, with some appearance of suavity, to attend Lucy in conjunction with Mr. Grey. Putting aside the implied reflection on his skill — and this, Jane reiterated to him, was not intended — he had no objection to the visits of Mr. Grey. The fact was, Mr. Carlton would have liked to bring Lucy triumphantly through the illness himself, as he felt confident he could do; she would have had his best care, looking for no reward, as his wife’s sister; and he felt mortified that the case should have been partly taken out of his hands. It was a slight, let Lady Jane say what she would; he felt it, and no doubt the town would freely enough make its comments.
“And now, Laura,” said Jane, seeking her sister, “as you and Mr. Carlton have saddled yourselves with Lucy, you must also be troubled with me and Judith, who is invaluable in a sick-room. I shall not move out of this house until I can take Lucy with me.” Lady Laura clapped her hands in triumph. “Well done, Jane! You, who would not condescend to put your foot over our doorstep, to be brought to your senses at last! Checkmated! It serves you right, Jane, for your abominable pride.”
“It has not been pride,” returned Jane. “Pride has not kept me away.”
“What then? Prejudice?”
“No matter now, Laura; we have an anxious time before us. Mr. Grey thinks that Lucy will be very ill.”
“Just what Mr. Carlton said; and he kept her here to take care of her. I am sure he will be glad to extend a welcome to you, Jane, as long as you choose to stay with us. He has always been willing to be friendly with y
ou, but you would not respond. He takes prejudices; I acknowledge that; but he never took one against you. He has taken one against Judith.”
“Against Judith! What has she done to Mr. Carlton?” asked Jane in surprise.
“Nothing. But he does not like her face. He says it always strikes him as being disagreeable. I like Judith, and I’m sure she’s a faithful servant.”
Mr. Carlton, inquire as he would, was unable to discover how that whisper could have reached him. That some one had entered the hall and gone out again, he entertained not a doubt of. He made inquiries of Lady Jane’s footman, whether he had seen any one enter; but the man acknowledged that he had been out of the way. After the entrance of Mr. Frederick Grey, he had waited a minute or two, and then had gone round to the servants’ entrance by the surgery.
So Mr. Carlton was as wise as before. And meanwhile no one could imagine why he should think that any stranger had been in the hall, in addition to little Wilkes the barber.
CHAPTER XII.
DANGER.
LADY LUCY CHESNEY lay in imminent danger. Only a few days ill, and her life was despaired of. The anticipations of the surgeons — that she would have the fever badly — had been all too fully borne out. They had done what they could for her, and it was as nothing.
None could say that Mr. Carlton was not a kind and anxious attendant. Lady Jane thanked him from her heart. She half began to like him. That he was most solicitous for Lucy’s recovery was indisputable; and it may be said that she was in his hands, not in Mr. Grey’s, his opportunities of seeing her being of necessity so much more frequent. Jane sat by the bedside, full of grief, but not despairing as those who have no hope. She possessed sure confidence in God; full and perfect trust; she had learnt to commit all her care to Him; and to those who can, and do, so commit it, utter despair never comes. Jane believed that every earthly means which skill could devise was being tried for the recovery of Lucy; and if those means should fail, it must be God’s will; she tried to think, because she knew, that it would still be for the best, although they in their human grief might repine and see it not.