‘I think I do. The pain of the blister will rouse him.’
‘Precisely. But not for some time. You know, perhaps, that cantharides, or Spanish fly, takes some hours to work, when applied externally, like this. So we have a question. If I apply it now, it should begin to take effect somewhere round midnight. Not perhaps the ideal moment to have him violent on your hands?’
‘And how much risk do you think there is in delay?’
‘Impossible to tell. But, I tell you frankly, I don’t like this state of him.’
‘And no more do I. Very well, proceed at once, Doctor. I will see to it that I have the best of the men ready, in case he should be violent. They all love him you know.’
‘Yes.’ He was already delving in his black bag. ‘I wish I could stay with you, Mrs. Purchis, but I have to be at the other end of the county tomorrow. Frankly, I can only say I hope he does prove violent.’
She met his sad glance squarely. ‘So do I.’
***
At Anne’s suggestion, Juliet rested a while after supper. ‘I’ll let you know if there’s the slightest change.’ But there had been none when Juliet joined her in the sickroom towards eleven o’clock. ‘It’s hard to tell whether he’s asleep or awake.’ Without noticing it, they had both given up whispering.
‘Yes. Get some sleep now, Anne. Satan and Aaron are out in the hall in case I need them.’
‘And the boys too, I’m glad to see.’
‘Yes, just so long as he doesn’t reopen the wound.’
‘The doctor seemed sure enough. He has a splendid constitution, Monsieur Hyde; that’s why this is all so strange.’
‘I know.’ But she would not discuss, even with Anne, the effect that marriage with her cousin might have had on even the strongest constitution. ‘Rest well, Anne, you looked exhausted.’
‘If you promise to send for me —’
‘Of course.’
It was good to have him to herself, even lying there so still. She trimmed the lamp and moved it to a table further from the bed. Her father had knocked over everything within reach. But then she had been alone with him. Tonight she had help at hand. And Hyde — was Hyde. She bent forward to look at him more closely. Beads of sweat were breaking out on his forehead. It had started. Now he began to move, writhing, as if to get away from the agonising pain in his left shoulder. She caught that hand in both hers. ‘Hyde! Don’t! It’s a blister: to help you.
His eyes suddenly opened, huge and dark in the gaunt face. ‘Devil!’ he said. And then, ‘Josephine?’ He was actually trying to turn his head to look at her, the pain apparently forgotten.
‘I’m here. Try to keep still.’ The writhing had begun again and she felt sweat break out on her own forehead in sympathy.
‘I can’t see you.’ He spoke with difficulty, the words spaced out. ‘So dark ... nearer ... come nearer.’
‘It’s night.’ Did he perhaps think his sight was failing? She bent closely over him and pulled out her handkerchief to mop up the sweat that was now running in rivulets down his face. ‘Try to bear it, love.’ She suppressed a start as his right hand snatched the handkerchief from her. ‘Don’t! Your wound!’
But he was quiet again, the handkerchief held against his face. ‘Josephine,’ he said. ‘Stay with me?’
‘Of course. So long as you need me.’ What a blessing to be alone with him and able to speak freely. Freely? What had she called him just now?
She turned with a start to see Aaron peering anxiously round the door. ‘All’s well,’ she whispered. ‘It’s worked.’
‘Glory be to God.’ Aaron came a step forward into the room.
‘And him quiet as a lamb, praise be.’
‘Get out,’ said Hyde Purchis.
***
Dawn broke at last and the anxious little group of servants in the hall snuffed guttering candles and blew out smoking lamps. They had all slept a little, though none of them would admit it. Now, the question was, who would venture back into the master’s room from which no sound had issued since Aaron had left it.
‘Not I,’ said Aaron, ‘he told me to get out, the master who never said a cross word in his life. You go, Satan.’
‘No, sir. Me, an outdoor man in the master’s room? I think not.’
‘But supposing he’s run mad and strangled the mistress?’
‘Twould be a pity it’s the wrong one,’ said Aaron, and then, ‘law, Miss Anne, I never saw you come.’
‘So I understand,’ said Anne tartly. ‘Well, speak up, men. What’s happened, all night?’
‘Nothing,’ said Aaron. ‘Leastways, when I went in, hours ago, in the dead time of the night, she said it had worked, and he told me to get out. So I got.’
‘And no one’s been back?’
‘You go, Miss Anne.’ They said it as one man.
In the sickroom, heavy curtains were drawn against the first daylight; the lamp had burned low and Anne had to trim it before she could see Hyde fast asleep in bed, with Juliet, also deep asleep, on the floor beside him, her hand still held in both of his.
‘Tiens!’ said Anne, and then, aware of the curious group of servants at the door. ‘All’s well. They’re asleep. You, Pete, run tell them to start heating water for a bath for the mistress. She’ll be stiff as a post when she wakes. And close the door behind you.’ Juliet was already beginning to stir. Only the good God knew what she would say when she woke.
But Juliet was awake, and smiling up at her. ‘It worked, Anne. He knew me.’
‘Knew —’ Hyde’s voice interrupted her from the bed. ‘Josephine,’ he said.
Arriving, late in the afternoon, Judge James was at once aware of the different feeling in the house. Pete took his horse with a broad grin and the news that the master was a different man today. Aaron greeted him at the front door with the same news; Miss Abigail came out of the parlour: ‘Congratulations on your treatment, Doctor.’
‘Not mine.’ He was ever a man to give credit where it was due. ‘It was Mrs. Purchis who urged it.’
‘Well.’ He could almost see the old lady bite back the suggestion that Josephine Purchis might not mind giving her husband pain. ‘At least it worked, praise be.’
‘He’s really better?’
‘Go and see for yourself.’
Sam, the indoor boy, was waiting to lead him down the side hall to the sickroom door. He paused outside. ‘Listen, sir!’
Incredibly, it was Hyde’s laugh. Feeble, of course, and cut short suddenly, as if it had caught either the old wound or the new blister, but unmistakably a laugh. Sam opened the door, ‘Judge James, ma’am.’
Surprisingly, for him, the Judge’s first thought was that Mrs. Purchis looked exhausted, but his quick surge of sympathy died at her greeting. ‘Congratulate me, Judge,’ she said lightly. ‘Our Lazarus has risen. And, please note, we have found something better to read aloud than your Mr. Gibbon and his Roman bores.’ She held out a calf-bound volume for his inspection.
‘Tristram Shandy?’ Surprise mingled with disapproval in his voice.
‘By someone called Mr. Sterne. I found it among my husband’s books. It looked well-read, so I thought, why not? Frankly,’ she made huge eyes at him, ‘I don’t understand a word of it, though I suspect some of it is vastly shocking, but it seems to entertain Mr. Purchis.’
‘Oh, well, in that case … But what kind of a night did you have, ma’am?’
She yawned prettily behind a surprisingly brown little hand. ‘I’m ashamed to tell you, Doctor, that I hardly know. To tell truth. I slept through most of it. Your mighty crisis was a deal less dramatic than you had led me to expect. Not that I am complaining, you understand, I find drama of all things the most tedious. But you will wish to be examining your patient. I will await you in the parlour.’
Chapter Nine
‘It will be slow.’ Judge James picked up his hat to leave. ‘Don’t delude yourself, Mrs. Purchis, that your husband will be squiring you to balls again before May at the ear
liest. Or able to spare you either.’ A flashing look from fierce old eyes. ‘You do seem to have a remarkable effect on him.’ It came out grudgingly.
‘Surprises you, don’t it, Doctor?’ She had seized the chance, while he was examining Hyde, to change into one of Josephine’s most frivolous gowns, an exquisite confection of lemon yellow muslin and cherry coloured ribbons, and looked, she flattered herself, every inch the town belle. ‘Poor Hyde.’ She unfolded her fan delicately. ‘Just because he has always behaved like an old sobersides, you all treat him as one. It’s gaiety he needs, don’t you see? Some pleasure in his life. No, no —’ she fluttered the fan defensively as if he was about to attack her, ‘I do not mean that I propose to take him jauntering off to Savannah. I’m not quite the fool you think me, Doctor. Even I can see that he will need many weeks of quiet before he is fit for work, still less for pleasure. Being Hyde! But because he is to be quiet, I see no reason why he should be dull. Ah,’ she smiled brilliantly over her fan at Sam Everett who had just been ushered into the room by Aaron. ‘The very person I had hoped to see.’
‘I’m flattered beyond words, Mrs. Purchis.’ She was amused to see that he also looked rather frightened. What passages between him and Josephine had driven him, neck and crop, from the house in Oglethorpe Square? He turned the subject quickly. ‘This is splendid news I hear from the servants, about Hyde.’
She flashed him a roguish smile. ‘I might have known I’d not be allowed to break my own good news. Yes, we think he is really on the mend at last, but tell me, quick, that Mrs Scarbrough’s party was a dead bore without me.’
‘Oh, deplorable.’ And then, aware for the first time of Abigail, disapproving in the window recess. ‘Your servant, Miss Abigail. I cry your pardon, I quite failed to see you in the shadows there.’
‘Didn’t expect to, you mean, young man.’ There were no compromises about Miss Abigail. ‘Well, I’m here, and intend to remain.’
‘Which is more than I can,’ said Judge James. ‘I’ll call tomorrow, Mrs. Purchis, and can only hope to find the improvement maintained. I’ve seldom been more pleasantly surprised in my life.’
‘Surprised!’ Juliet went into a great peal of laughter as the door closed behind him. ‘He’s flabbergasted, poor man. That anyone so intelligent as Hyde should find pleasure in being nursed by me. But —’ a quick look at Josephine’s jewelled watch — ‘That reminds me, I have been an immense time away from him already. So, to your commission, Mr. Everett. You are to purchase for me, if you please, some packs of cards, a bezique set, the smallest chessmen you can find, and a whole shelf full of books.’
‘Books?’ said Aunt Abigail. ‘But the house is full of them, child.’
‘Yes. Which nobody ever reads. And no wonder. The judge suggested I try reading Gibbon to poor Hyde. Well,’ more delicate play with the fan for Sam Everett’s benefit, ‘I ask you! Gibbon! He’ll be suggesting Sherlock’s Sermons next.’
‘But what books?’ There was something rather touching about Sam Everett’s anxiety to please.
‘Ah! There’s the question.’ She took a quick turn about the room, cherry coloured ribbons aflutter. ‘Something that I can bear to read aloud and Hyde can stand to hear. Not poetry, that’s for certain.’ Josephine had never been able to bear it, even in French, while the English, she maintained, was barbarous. ‘But novels, Mr. Everett!’ She made them sound a delicious vice. ‘There must be some novels, even in Savannah.’
‘I suppose so.’ Doubtfully. ‘Is there a bookshop?’
‘Oh, Mr. Everett,’ she stamped a tiny foot, whose cherry coloured slipper matched her ribbons. ‘Sometimes I despair of you. Go to my friends, sir! I have some friends in Savannah, I believe. Beg from them what they have had most recently from England.’
‘I have it.’ He was delighted with himself. ‘Waverley!’
‘Mon Dieu!’ She did not often allow herself to break into French. ‘Do you want us both to go into a decline? And not the Tales of my Landlord either. For one thing, can you imagine me interpreting all that bonny braw Scots?’ She made a ludicrous attempt at the accent.
‘My dear madam, in that case, I just don’t know ...’ He was entirely at a nonplus.
And what could she do? Everyone knew Josephine Purchis as someone for whom the word ‘book’ meant, at the most, La Belle Assemblie or one of the other English magazines of gossip and fashion that found their slow way across the Atlantic. ‘You must ask, Mr. Everett!’ Impatiently. ‘Ask my friends. Explain my position to them. Fixed here, for God knows how long, with an invalid who must be kept amused. Surely, when they hear of the plight I am in, they will think of something.’
‘Perhaps I might make a suggestion?’ Miss Abigail leaned forward from her chair in the corner. ‘There’s a favourite author of mine whose works Hyde took a deal of trouble to get for me when he was in Europe. A Miss Austen. She died, I am sorry to say, a few years ago. I get the most constant pleasure from her books, which strike me as being something quite out of the usual way. And I remember poor Hyde telling me he had read one of them, while you were ill, Josephine, on the voyage home. And liked it, I remember his telling me, more than he had expected. Well,’ apologetically, ‘being by a woman, you know.’
‘Quite so.’ Juliet could hardly believe her luck. ‘And you have all her books, Miss Abigail?’
‘Yes. Surely you remember,’ her voice sharpened, ‘you were not best pleased that Hyde chose to “cumber your baggage” with them.’
‘Oh, well,’ lightly, ‘I must make you my apologies now, must I not, and beg to borrow them to read to him. I am sure I remember hearing, oh a million years ago, in France, that they were favourites of the English Prince Regent himself. I think someone told me one of them was actually dedicated to him, at his own request?’
‘And you think that a recommendation?’ Abigail’s dry voice told her that she had achieved just the effect she intended. ‘You are right, however. Emma — not one of my favourites — is, in fact, dedicated to the Prince. I cannot imagine what he saw in Miss Austen’s books.’
‘Not what you do, that’s for certain,’ said Juliet flippantly. ‘But I confess it makes me a little more hopeful of finding some trace of entertainment in reading them aloud to my poor log of a husband.’ And then, aware, with an odd kind of satisfaction, that she had succeeded in shocking them both, she went gaily on. ‘To whom, by the way, I must return. He gets quite absurdly restless if I am away too long. Ridiculous, is it not? So, Aunt Abigail, I can rely on you for my reading matter, and on you, Mr. Everett, for some games to play with my great child. Oh —’ she turned in the doorway, ‘and anything else you can think of [she had nearly added, “if you can think”] — spillikins, fox and geese ... I am quite counting on you, Mr. Everett.’
***
Hyde had indeed been getting restless. ‘He’s been asking for you.’ Anne rose with relief to vacate the chair by the bed.
‘For Josephine, you mean.’ Absurd to mind this so much. Impossible not to.
‘Well, it’s the same thing, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ The look that went with this question sent Anne off to her bedroom where she fell on her knees in prayer to the good God who had never answered her yet.
But Hyde’s recovery continued, slow, steady and satisfactory. Judge James, visiting the big house as often as his legal duties allowed, could hardly make up his mind which surprised him more, the improvement in his patient or that in his wife. They were always busy at something when he got there. At first, Josephine was usually reading aloud out of that curious set of novels Miss Abigail had provided. He failed to see much point in them, himself, but since they seemed to send both Hyde and his wife off into peals of helpless laughter, he concealed his private opinion that they were just a lot of female knick-knackery, and listened with sympathy when Hyde, in his still rather halting voice, explained that they were celebrating the humours of someone called Miss Bates.
In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Purchis had a rather irrit
ating habit of quoting Miss Austen’s works to each other, when he was there, and then going off into fresh fits of laughter. It was a relief to arrive, a couple of weeks later, and find the books put away and cards the order of the day. It was a very simple game, he noticed, and one, surely, that must be vastly tedious to Mrs. Purchis, a devotee, by all reports of faro and ombre and all kinds of more sinister ways of losing money. But she seemed to be enjoying this simple game of beggar-my-neighbour well enough, though, watching from the door, he suspected her of a little quiet cheating against herself.
He also noticed, and was ashamed not to have done so sooner, that she was looking fagged to death. ‘When did you last go out, Mrs. Purchis?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Out! Good God, Doctor, what need to ask? Why, the night before Twelfth Night. Lord — an age ago and a very dull party too, as I recollect. Now, Mrs. Scarbrough’s, next day, was quite something else again, by all reports. I have not lacked kind friends, I can tell you, to let me know what delights I missed. The new house Mr. Jay has built for them in West Broad Street passes everything it seems. Our noses will be quite out of joint when we go back to Oglethorpe Square.’
‘No, no, I don’t mean “out” in that sense, Mrs. Purchis.’ His impulse of sympathy for her jaded looks was lost in a more normal irritation at her incurable frivolity. ‘I meant, when were you last out of doors?’
‘Oh, I see. Why, this morning. I picked these for Hyde.’
He had noticed the bowl of hyacinths that scented the whole room, but had taken it for granted that the fresh flowers that decorated the room every day were provided by the servants. ‘And very pretty too,’ he said now, his tone, he himself felt, a trifle grudging. ‘And how far from the house did that take you?’
‘All the way to the walled garden. Miss Abigail had them planted there years ago and they are thick on the ground now. No trouble at all to pull. And quite far enough for my slippers.’
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