I hit out with my blackthorn stick. "d.a.m.n you and your child!" I cried wildly, and fell face forward in a marshy puddle.
CHAPTER XIX
FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS
Long periods of time pa.s.sed; days perhaps, perhaps years. Some one, I know, turned with difficulty on his side, so that the puddle did not choke his mouth and nostrils. Some one, by and by, felt something warm and wet and rough against his icy cheek and was grateful for the feeling. Some one was reading to me from a book which described the sensations of a man lifted up and carried in a broken balloon that could only ride a foot from the ground, b.u.mping and jarring horribly, and I was that man, in some strange way, and at the same time I was the ill.u.s.trations that accompanied the tale. I read the story myself finally, aloud and very shrilly, as that unfortunate man b.u.mped along.
After days of this cold journey, the man fell out of the balloon into a warm lake and was delighted with the change, for his very soul was chilled--until he realised, at first dimly, that the water was growing hotter every minute and that the intention was to torture him to death! I was that man, moreover, and I kicked and screamed wildly, though every motion in the boiling water was agony. Just at the point when my breath was failing and my heart slowed, they turned off the water in the lake from a tap, and as it slowly receded, I was safe again, and knew I could fall asleep.
Long I slept, and dreamed inexpressibly, and then I would feel the insidious lapping of the warm lake, rejoice a moment in the comforting heat, then realise with horror that the temperature was rising slowly but surely, and the inferno would begin all over again. Every joint and muscle was red-hot, each burning breath cut me like a knife.
I could not count how many times this happened, but I prayed loudly for the man to die (he had been confirmed, so he had a legal right to pray) and after a long time I began to have hopes that he would, for he discovered a way of drawing his face down under the boiling water and ceasing to breathe. Whenever he did this, a cold, smarting rain drove through the water on his face and forced him to breathe, but he managed to sink deeper and deeper, till at last he felt the throb of the great world on its axle going round, and saw the stars below him, and knew he was nearly free.
"More oxygen!" said a tiny, dry voice far off in infinite s.p.a.ce, "more oxygen!"
I grew light and rose to the surface; the stars went out.
"More oxygen!" said the voice again, louder now and close to me. I fought to sink back again but it was useless; I burst up to the surface and breathed the sweet, icy air against my will.
"Now the mustard again, over the heart," said the voice, "and try the brandy."
Something ran like fire through my veins, I opened my eyes, stared into a black, bearded face and said distinctly:
"You nearly lost that man. He heard the thing going round."
Then I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
I was very weak and tired when I woke, but quite composed. That feeling of gentleness and conscious pathos that floods the weak and empty and lately racked body was mine, and I looked pensively at the white, blue-veined hand that lay so lax on the counterpane. What a siege it had been for the poor devil that owned that hand! For I realised that I had been very, very ill indeed.
As I studied the hand it was lifted gently from the counterpane by another and clasped lightly but firmly at the wrist. The arm above this hand was clad in striped blue and white gingham; a full white ap.r.o.n fell just at the limit of my sidewise vision. I was far too weak to raise my eyes, but it occurred to me that this must be my landlady, for I recognised the footboard of my bed. And yet it was not at all like my room. The arm-chair was gone, the books were gone, the student lamp was gone, although it was my sitting-room. Then why was the bed there? I frowned impatiently and then the white ap.r.o.n lowered itself, a white collar appeared, and above it a face which was perfectly familiar to me, though I could not attach any name to it.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Jerrolds? a drink, perhaps?" said a clear, competent voice, and I knew at once who she was--the Professor"s sister"s trained nurse. For one dreadful moment I feared I _was_ the Professor"s sister--it seemed to me it must be so, that there was no other course open to me, for that was the person Miss Buxton nursed!
Then, as she repeated my name quietly, it was as if a veil had been drawn, and I understood everything. My bed had been moved into the study; her bed was in my room. Doubtless the Professor had sent for her.
I felt thirsty, and hungry, too, a fact known to her, apparently, for in a moment she brought me a bowl of delicious broth, which she fed me very neatly by the spoonful. It made another man of me, that broth, and I watched her record it on a formidable chart, devoted to my important affairs, with great interest.
"Have I been ill long?" I asked, and my voice sounded hollow and rather high to my critical sense.
"Two weeks, Mr. Jerrolds," she said promptly, "quite long enough, wasn"t it? It has been most interesting: a very pretty case, indeed."
"What was it?"
"Inflammatory rheumatism," she said, with a gratifying absence of doubt or delay (such a relief to a sick person!) "and a great deal of fever, very high. You ran a remarkable temperature, Mr. Jerrolds."
I received this information with the peculiar complacence of the invalid. It seemed to me to denote marked ability and powers beyond the common, that fever!
"How did I get here?"
She sat in a low chair by the bed and regarded me pleasantly out of the kind, wise, brown eyes.
"I will tell you all about it," she said, "because I am sure you will be easier, but after I am through I want you to try to compose yourself and go off to sleep, because this will be enough talking for now, and I want you to be fresh for the doctor. Do you understand?"
I dropped my eyelids in token of agreement and she went on.
"You remember that you complained of feeling unwell in Paris at Mr.
Bradley"s house. You probably had quite a temperature then, though you might not have known it. You came directly back to Oxford, but for forty-eight hours no one knew where you were, for the people here supposed you there. Finally, when Mr. Bradley telegraphed, they grew anxious here, and while they were wondering what to do, your dog ran in, acting so strangely that they suspected something and followed him. He led them directly to you and they found you unconscious in a marshy old lane about six miles out from the town. They brought you here in a horse blanket, the Professor sent for me, and we have been taking care of you ever since. Mr. Bradley has been here twice, but you were too ill to see anybody; he saw that everything possible was being done. I shall write him directly that you are on the uphill road now, and that care and patience are all you need.
"Now, take this medicine, Mr. Jerrolds, and repay me for this long story by going directly to sleep."
I took it, lay for a moment in a dreamy wonder, and drifted off. As she had said, the uphill journey had begun.
That afternoon I saw the doctor, a grizzled, kindly man, and it was he who told me what I had already somehow divined--that I owed my life to Harriet Buxton.
"I never saw such nursing," he said frankly; "the woman has a real genius. It was nip and tuck with you, Mr. Jerrolds, and she simply set her teeth and _wouldn"t_ give up! One can"t wonder the American nurses get such prices--they"re worth it. Now it"s hold hard and cultivate your patience, and get back that two or three stone we lost during the siege, and then good-bye to me!"
But oh, how long it was! Day after day, and night after night, and day after day again I counted the pieces of furniture in the bare, dull room and read faces into the hideous wall-paper and stared into the empty window. The little night-light punctuated the dark; the feeble sunlight struggled through the rain. The few kindly friends who called upon me I could not see; their sympathetic commonplaces were unendurable to my weakened nerves. Had it not been for the return, now and then, of the pains I had suffered in my delirium, mercifully less and less violent, which made the periods of their absence hours of comparative pleasure, I think I should have grown into a hopeless nervous invalid from sheer ennui. I had never been ill that I remember since the days of my childish maladies, and I fretted as only such an one can and must fret under the irksome novelty of pain, weakness and irritation.
How Harriet Buxton bore with my whims and fads and downright rudeness, I cannot tell. When in a fit of contrition I asked her this, she smiled and said that men were generally irritable.
"But I should go mad if I were obliged to humour the caprices of such a bear as I!"
"But you are not a nurse!" she answered quietly.
After ten days of steady convalescence, when I was propped up a little upon my pillows and could feed myself very handily from an ever-increasingly varied _menu_, I asked suddenly if she had heard from Roger lately.
"Yes," she said promptly, "only yesterday. I was waiting till you asked. Before I give you the letter I must tell you that they are no longer in Paris: they have gone back to America."
"America?" I echoed vaguely, with a half-shocked consciousness that I did not care very much one way or the other where they were.
"Yes, Mr. Bradley came in the day before they sailed, but you were far too ill to see him. At the same time I saw no reason why you should not pull through, and told him so. Mrs. Bradley suddenly expressed a wish to go to her old home, and though for some reasons they did not like to let her begin a sea voyage, for other reasons they wanted to gratify her. She grew quite determined and they decided to allow it.
You know she expects her baby in June."
"Yes I know," I said quietly. I remembered the man who had tramped the wet lanes, but to-day he seemed to me a wicked fool, justly punished for his folly. For I knew, though no one had told me, that I should never be the same after this sickness. The very fibres of my soul had been twisted and burned in that white-hot furnace of my delirium, and though Nature might forgive me, she could never forget. Every winter she would take her toll, every damp season she would audit my account, after every exposure or fatigue she would lightly tap some shrinking nerve and whisper "Remember!" A pa.s.sion whose strength I had never suspected had brought me to this bed, and in this bed that same pa.s.sion had struggled and shrivelled and died. It was with no mock philosophy that I thought of Margarita. No, the fool knew his folly now. But it was a folly of which I had no need, I verily believe, to feel ashamed. It was not that I was the sort of monk we are told the Devil would be, when he was sick, although my physical weakness may have lain--G.o.d knows!--at the root of it, once. No, I had changed.
Those who have gone through some such change (and I wonder, sometimes, how many of the pa.s.sive, unremarkable people I pa.s.s on the street, in the fields, in hotels, have gone through such) know how well I knew the truth of this matter and how little likely I was to deceive myself. I loved her, yes, and shall love her while consciousness remains with me, but it would never again be bitter in my mouth and black in my heart.
"Let me see the letter, please, Miss Buxton," I asked, and she brought it, cutting it for me with her neat accuracy of motion and conservation of energy. I spread the single sheet open and began, but I never read more than one line of that letter.
For it began,
_Dear old Jerry:_
_Ever since Kitchener found you, I have changed_--
"Kitch! Kitch!" I cried, overcome with shame and penitence. "Oh, Miss Buxton, do you--does anybody--"