The Marquis resigned himself to hours of tedium; but he had not many of them to endure. Long before even the earliest farm-worker was awake, he would readily have compounded with fate for a week of tedium in exchange for the anxiety which beset him as soon as the effects of laudanum began to wear off. At first only restless, muttering unintelligibly, but sinking back into a slumber, Felix grew steadily harder to quieten, passing from a state of semi-consciousness to a confused realization of his aches and pains, and of his strange surroundings. He uttered his sister’s name, from a parched throat, and struggled to free his arms from the blankets, hurting his sprained wrist, and giving a sharp cry; but when Alverstoke took his other hand in a firm clasp, and spoke to him, he seemed to recognize him. His ringers clung like claws; he stared up into Alverstoke’s face, and panted: “Don’t let me fall! don’t let me fall!”
“No, I won’t,” Alverstoke said, stretching out his hand for Dr Elcot’s saline draught, which he had poured out at the first sign of agitation. “You are perfectly safe now.” He disengaged himself, and raised Felix, setting the glass to his lips, and saying: “Here’s a drink for you! Open your mouth!”
“I want Frederica!” Felix said, fretfully turning his head away.
He responded, however, to the note of command in Alverstoke’s voice when he said again: “Open your mouth, Felix! Come! do as you’re bid!” and Alverstoke, whose small experience of medicines included none that were not extremely nasty, gave him no chance to recoil from the dose, but tilted it ruthlessly down his throat.
Felix choked over it, but after his first slightly tearful indignation, he seemed to grow more rational. Alverstoke lowered him on to his pillow, and withdrew his arm. “That’s better!” he said.
“I want Frederica!” reiterated Felix. “You shall have her directly,” promised Alverstoke. “I want her now!” stated Felix. “Tell her!”
“Yes, I will.”
A short silence fell. Alverstoke hoped that Felix was sliding back into sleep, but just as he was about to move away from the bed he found that Felix was looking at him, as though trying to bring his face into focus. Apparently he succeeded, for he murmured, with a sigh of relief: “Oh, it’s you! Don’t leave me!”
“No.”
“I’m so thirsty!”
Alverstoke raised him again, and he gulped down the barley-water thankfully; and, this time, when lowered on to his pillow, dropped asleep.
It was an uneasy sleep, however, and of short duration. He woke with a start, and a jumble of words on his lips. He was evidently in the grip of a nightmare, and it was not for several moments that Alverstoke’s voice penetrated it. He said then, vaguely: “Cousin Alverstoke,” but an instant later moaned that he was cold. The Marquis began to look a little grim, for the hand which clutched his was hot and dry. He spoke soothingly, and with good effect: Felix lay quiet for a while, but he did not shut his blurred eyes. Suddenly he said, in a troubled voice: “This isn’t my room! Why am I in this room? I don’t like it! I don’t know where I am!”
The Marquis answered matter-of-factly: “You are with me, Felix.”
He spoke instinctively, uttering the first words that came into his head, and thinking, an instant later, that they were singularly foolish. But, after blinking at him, Felix smiled, and said: “Oh, yes! I forgot! You won’t go away, will you?”
“Of course not. Shut your eyes! You are quite safe, I promise.”
“Yes, of course, as long as you’re here, because then I shan’t fall,” murmured Felix hazily. “I know that!”
Alverstoke said nothing, and presently had the satisfaction of knowing that Felix was asleep. Carefully withdrawing his hand from the slackened hold on it, he moved away, to alter the position of the candle, so that its flickering light should not fall on Felix’s face. It seemed to him that the boy had dropped into a more natural sleep; but his hope that this would endure was speedily dashed, and he did not again indulge it. For the rest of the night Felix, even to his inexperienced eyes, grew steadily worse, his face more flushed, and his pulse alarmingly rapid. There were intervals when he dozed, but they were never of long duration; and when he woke it was always in a state of feverish excitement bordering on delirium. He seemed to be suffering considerable pain; in one of his lucid moments he complained that he “ached all over,” but when Alverstoke bathed as much of his brow as was not covered by the bandage, he was relieved to have his hand struck away. “It’s not my head!” Felix said angrily.
A second dose of the saline mixture produced an alleviation, but Alverstoke hovered a dozen times on the brink of summoning Judbrook, and telling him to send for Dr Elcot. Only the doctor’s last words, which had been a warning that Felix might become feverish, and the knowledge that he could still recall the boy’s wandering wits, restrained him.
With the dawn, the fever abated a little, but not the pains. Felix wept softly, and moaned: “Frederica, Frederica!” At five o’clock, the Marquis heard the creak of a door being cautiously opened, and went swiftly out of the room to intercept Judbrook, who was tiptoeing along the passage, with his boots in his hand.
Judbrook was very much shocked to learn that Felix, far from going on prosperously, was extremely ill. He promised to send one of his lads to the doctor’s house in Hemel Hempstead immediately, saying that it was only a matter of four miles, and the lad could ride there on the cob. He took a look at Felix, and upon hearing that more barley-water was needed, ventured to suggest that a cup of tea might do good. The Marquis felt doubtful, but Felix, whom he had thought to be asleep, said, in the thread of a voice: “I should like that,” so he nodded to Judbrook.
“You shall have it in an ant’s foot, sir!” said Jud-brook, adding, under his breath: “At all events, it won’t do him any harm, my lord!”
The Marquis felt still more doubtful when the tray was brought to him. He was not, like his friend Lord Petersham, a connoisseur, but he profoundly mistrusted the mahogany brew which issued from the pot, and fully expected Felix to reject it. Felix did not, however, and it seemed to refresh him; and when, an hour later, Dr Elcot arrived, he merely said: “As long as you didn’t give him hot wine, I’ve no objection. Now, my lord, before I go in to him, what’s amiss? You’re looking a trifle out of frame yourself: had you a bad night with the boy?”
“A very bad night,” replied Alverstoke, somewhat acidly. “As for what’s amiss, I trust you will supply the answer! He has been extremely feverish, sometimes delirious, and he complains all the time of pain — he says it is all over him, but it doesn’t appear to be in his head, thank God!”
“Dutch comfort!” growled the doctor.
He stayed for some time in the sickroom; and, at the end of a long and careful examination, said cheerfully, as he drew the bedclothes over Felix again: “Well, young man, I don’t doubt you’re feeling pretty down pin, but you’ll hold for a long trig! Now I’m going to give you something to make you comfortable.”
Felix was not delirious, but he was not by any means himself. He had objected violently to the doctor’s examination, saying that it hurt him to be touched; and had only submitted when the Marquis had commanded him to do so. He now revolted against the evil-looking potion Dr Elcot had measured into a small glass, and the Marquis, prompted by a significant glance from the doctor, again intervened, taking the glass from Elcot, and administering the dose himself, saying, when Felix jerked his head away: “You are becoming a dead bore, Felix. I dislike bores; so, if you wish me to remain with you, you will do as I bid you — and at once!”