"You will tell me the simple truth, I know," she said, and waited, straining to catch his words above the clamour.
He answered her instantly with the utmost quietness, the utmost kindness.
"Lady Evesham, your own heart has already told you the truth."
She put out a quick hand, and he took it and held it firmly, sustainingly, while he went on.
"There is nothing whatever to be done. Give her rest, that"s all; absolute rest. She looks as if she has been worked beyond her strength.
Is that so?"
Avery nodded mutely.
"It must stop," he said. "She is in a very precarious state, and any exertion, mental or physical, is bound to hasten the end--which cannot, in any case, be very far off."
He released Avery"s hand and walked to the window, where he stood gazing out to sea with drawn brows.
"The disease is of a good many months" standing," he said. "It has taken very firm hold. Such a child as that should have been sheltered and cosseted, shielded from every hardship. Even then--very possibly--this would have developed. No one can say for certain."
"Can you advise--nothing?" said Avery in a voice that sounded oddly dull and emotionless even to herself.
"Nothing," said Maxwell Wyndham. "No medical science can help in a case like this. Give her everything she wants, and give her rest! That is all you can do for her now."
Avery came and stood beside him. The blow had fallen, but she had scarcely begun to feel its effects. There was so much to be thought of first.
"Please be quite open with me!" she said. "Tell me how long you think she will live!"
He turned slightly and looked at her. "I can tell you what I think, Lady Evesham," he said. "But, remember, that does not bring the end any nearer."
"I know," she said.
She looked straight back at him with eyes unflinching, and after a moment"s thought he spoke.
"I think that--given every care--she may live through the summer, but I do not consider it likely."
Avery"s face was very pale, but still she did not flinch. "Will she suffer?" she asked.
He raised his brows at the question. "My dear lady, she has suffered already far more than you have any idea of. One lung is practically gone, wholly useless. The other is rapidly going the same way. She has probably suffered for a year or more, first la.s.situde, then shortness of breath, and pretty often actual pain. Hasn"t she complained of these things?"
"She is a child who never complains," Avery said. "But both her mother and I thought she was wasting."
"She is mere skin and bone," he said. "Now--about her people, Lady Evesham; who is going to tell them? You or I?"
She hesitated. "But I could hardly ask you to do that," she said.
"You may command me in any way," he answered. "If I may presume to advise, I should say that the best course would be for me to go to Rodding, see the doctor there, and get him to take me to the Vicarage."
"Oh, but they mustn"t take her from me!" Avery said. "Let her mother come here! She can"t--she mustn"t--go back home!"
"Exactly what I was going to say," he returned, in his quiet practical fashion. "To take her back there would be madness. But look here, Lady Evesham, you must have a nurse."
"Oh, not yet!" said Avery. "I am quite strong now. I am used to nursing.
I have--no other call upon me. Let me do this!"
"None?" he said.
His tone re-called her. She coloured burningly. "My husband--would understand," she said, with difficulty.
He pa.s.sed the matter by. "Will you promise to send me a message if you find night-nursing a necessity?"
She hesitated.
He frowned. "Lady Evesham, you must promise me this in fairness to the child as well as to yourself. Also, you will give me your word that you will never under any circ.u.mstances sleep with her."
She saw that he would have his way, and she yielded both points rather than fight a battle which instinct warned her she could not win.
"Then I will be going," he said.
He turned back into the room, and again she was aware of his green eyes surveying her closely, critically. But he made no reference whatever to her health, and inwardly she blessed him for his forbearance.
She did not know that as he rode away, he grimly remarked to himself: "The best tonics generally taste the bitterest, and she"ll drink this one to the dregs, poor girl! But it"ll help her in the end."
CHAPTER II
THE TIDE COMES BACK
"Give her everything she wants!" How often in the days that followed were those words in Avery"s mind! She strove to fulfil them to the uttermost, but Jeanie seemed to want so little. The only trouble in her existence just then was her holiday-task, and that she steadily refused to relinquish unless her father gave her leave.
A few days after Maxwell Wyndham"s departure there came an agonized letter from Mrs. Lorimer. Olive had just developed scarlet fever, and as they could not afford a nurse she was nursing her herself. She entreated Avery to send her daily news of Jeanie and to telegraph at once should she become worse. She added in a pathetic postscript that her husband found it difficult to believe that Jeanie could be as ill as the great doctor had represented, and she feared he was a little vexed that Maxwell Wyndham"s opinion had been obtained.
It was exactly what Avery had expected of him. She wrote a soothing letter to Mrs. Lorimer, promising to keep her informed of Jeanie"s condition, promising to lavish every care upon the child, and begging her to persuade Mr. Lorimer to remit the task which had become so heavy a burden.
The reply to this did not come at once, and Avery had repeated the request twice very urgently and was contemplating addressing a protest to the Reverend Stephen in person when another agitated epistle arrived from Mrs. Lorimer. Her husband had decided to run down to them for a night and judge of Jeanie"s state for himself.
Avery received the news with dismay which, however, she was careful to conceal. Jeanie heard of the impending visit with as much perturbation as her tranquil nature would allow, and during the day that intervened before his arrival gave herself more sedulously than ever to her task.
She had an unhappy premonition that he would desire to examine her upon what she had read, and she was guiltily aware that her memory had not retained very much of it.
So for the whole of one day she strove to study, till she was so completely tired out that Avery actually took the book from her at last and declared that she should not worry herself any more about it. Jeanie yielded submissively, but a wakeful night followed, and in the morning she looked so wan that Avery wanted to keep her in bed.
On this point, however, Jeanie was less docile than usual. "He will think I am shamming," she protested. "He never likes us to lie in bed unless we are really ill."
So, since she was evidently anxious to get up, Avery permitted it, though she marked her obvious languor with a sinking heart.
The Vicar arrived at about noon, and Avery saw at a glance that he was in no kindly mood.
"Dear me, what is all this fuss?" he said to Jeanie. "You look to me considerably rosier than I have seen you for a long time."