After a night of torture, when I got up several times to do my duty as a nurse, with my aching limbs bathed in my own perspiration and that of my suffering companion, I got a little sleep in the small hours, but when I tried to leave the bed at eight o'clock in the morning, I found every limb locked; each joint racked, and I howled with pain. It must be remembered that up to then I did not know what bodily suffering was.
In my impotent rage, mad with the burning fever of rheumatism, I lost all manly feeling and so far forgot myself as to bitterly upbraid my poor sick Lily.
“I have sacrificed myself for you. You have had the best part of my life. I never refused you anything I could afford to give you, and now you have taken the only riches I had left-my health! I shall be a cripple, and then what will become of me? As long as I was hale and hearty, I never complained. I have endured fearful nights of unrest by your side, as you tossed your fevered body about, and I have tried to sleep bathed in your sweat, and rushed, reeking, suddenly into icy atmospheres, to fetch you your medicines, light fires, and attend to you as if you were a baby. Each night you found me with clockwork regularity at your bedside. And now I am a physical wreck! My health and strength gone from me by your fault! You have taken everything, even to my health! God knows how I shall come out of this hellish strait! And just when I wanted all my energies to retrieve my fallen fortunes!”
I am ashamed to write more of my ravings. I was mad. I cursed myself, I cursed the world and I cursed our bed, and spat upon the mattress and tumbled sheets all fuming with my sweat.
Poor Lily stood aghast in a corner, her eyes distended with horror, and convulsive sobs shaking her debilitated frame.
One day I will ask her forgiveness for what was delirious blasphemy. She will pardon me, for she always loved me and always will. She has proved her love. She possessed every quality we are supposed to find in a woman-tenderness, devotion, and truth.
Perhaps I have already asked her pardon? Who knows?
How I huddled on my clothes; how I crawled out, I cannot tell, but I managed to be hauled into a cab and drove to my aged mother's little cottage in the outskirts of Paris.
There I hung upon the railings until I was carried to bed; a helpless, groaning stiffened log, on the morning of February 10, 1898.
I now went through all the sufferings of muscular and articular rheumatism. I knew my malady well, as I had seen my mistress through it.
I felt my hands beginning to pain me, and made haste to scribble a few lines with a pencil, from my bed, to tell Lilian Arvel, at Monte-Carlo, how bad I was.
On the morning of the twentieth of February, I received the following undated letter.
My two hands were now attacked and they were shapeless, evil-smelling bundles of cotton wool. Nevertheless, I had Lilian's letter placed on my pillow, and waited until I was left alone. I took it between my two stumps, although it was untold agony to move my arms. With my teeth, I tore open the envelope, and read as follows:
LILIAN TO JACKY.
Friday. (No date or place.)
If my Papa would give great pleasure to his little daughter, he must send her two hundred francs by return of post. Figure to yourself that since I came here I have lost freely, so that I have not a halfpenny.
It is naturally impossible that I can remain like this, and I at once thought of you, knowing well that you would be delighted to render me this slight service, and by the same occasion prove to me that you really love me as much as you say you do.
For the last two days I have been very, very ill, and I pity you with all my heart being in bed, and suffering as you do lately. If I could only be near you, how happy I should be to care for you in every way, to pet you and thus be able to prove to you how much I love you.
I long to be back in Paris. I am horribly bored here. I am like those village girls who fret when they can no longer see the steeple of their village church. I am absolutely lost when I am so long away from my dear Paris.
Yes, I flirt, but out of patriotism; so you need not be jealous, for you alone possess my love.
You will ask how I manage to flirt patriotically, so I explain:
There is at this hotel a young German officer, who is absolutely, madly, in love with me. I encourage him, and sometimes I laugh at him, just when he believes that I am beginning to let myself be persuaded. This plunges him into fits of melancholy, which it would be impossible to describe.
You see my darling Papa, how wicked your little daughter is!
But enough gossip, I shall finish by wearying you with all my stories. So I leave you, telling you that I await next month with impatience. You guess why?
LILIAN.
My head fell back on my pillow. I shut my eyes and groaned with mingled physical and moral pain.
3
… Telle que la voilà
Sous les rideaux honteux de ce hideux repaire,
Dans cet infâme lit, elle donne à sa mère,
En rentrant all logis, ce qu'elle a gagné là.
BEL:… Sure it must feel very strange to go to bed to a man!
LADY BRUTE:-Um, it does feel a little odd at first, but it will soon grow easy to you.
The next day came an illustrated postcard, bearing a view of the Château of Monte-Carlo, with the words: “Souvenir de Monaco.”
Lily had written thereon: “Best and affectionate remembrance.”
It is needless to say that I did not answer her letter. I was too ill and too much worried on all sides.
ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.
10 Rue Vissot., Paris. March 4, 1898.
My dear Jacky,
You must excuse my not having written sooner to thank you for all the pleasant hours you procured for me in the midst of my stay at Monte-Carlo, where I think I nearly qualified for a hospital nurse, with the influenza, which thinned the company at dinner and filled up all my spare time.
I had some news of you all from Colonel B., who was down at Monte-Carlo, not precisely “picking it up,” I am sorry to say.
I hope your people are all quite well. Remember me to all your family.
I am still reading some of the books you gave me and when you have time and “envie,” remember that the cook is not dead yet at the Villa Lilian, which is on the point of being done up and made beautiful forever.
With every good wish, in which both the ladies join, and hoping that Mord Emly will, for the sake of Lilian, turn out all right and not a Pall Mall Tribute, I remain, very truly yours,
ERIC ARVEL.
Mord Emly was the title of a serial story, detailing the adventures of a cockney girl, and then running in the pages of a weekly magazine which I sent him regularly. The allusion to the virtue of the heroine in the novel that Mr. and Miss Arvel were reading together struck me as far from delicate.
I still continued to suffer greatly and I had several relapses. My mistress was very ill as well.
ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.
Sonis-sur-Marne. March 11, 1898.
My dear Jacky,
I am very sorry indeed to learn from your letter that you have been called on to experience what a sad thing it is to be laid up. I do hope that the second convalescence will be more serious than the first and that when I call on you some day in the next week I shall find that you are right again.
Do not trouble to send me any books or papers. Wait until I call for them and see you at the same time.