“I don’t think we need worry about that, Auntie dear,” Mary answered kindly, with just a hint of patronage. She began forthwith to describe the hospital at Glenburn, painting it in colours rather more glowing than reality, and working without haste towards the climax, which was tremendous.
A long pause followed, then Douglas said, deeply pleased:
“Five hundred pounds and a house . . . and the bit garden for your vegetables. . . . It’s fine, man, it’s downright handsome.”
“Not to mention the laboratory and the chances of research,” Mary put in quickly.
“This,” the aunt drew in her lips with a hiss of satisfaction, “will be gall and vinegar to the Stoddarts.”
“Hush, Minnie.” The baker offered his hand to Moray. “I congratulate you, David. If ever I had a doubt about you and this whole affair, it’s gone now, and I can only ask your pardon. Ye’re a fine lad. I’m proper glad my daughter is marrying you, and proud to have you as my son-in-law. Now, Minnie, don’t you think this calls for a celebration?”
“Without a doubt!” Minnie was won at last.
“Run down then, Mary, to the wee back press—ye’ll find the key in the top drawer—and bring up a bottle of my old Glenlivet.”
The bottle was brought and the baker, using sugar and lemon, and with due regard to the varying dilutions of the aged spirit, mixed for each of them a glass of good hot toddy. It was a comforting drink but it came too late for Moray. All evening he had felt his shirt clinging damply to his chest. The toddy made his head hot but his feet were leaden cold. He was relieved when they persuaded him to stay overnight, but when he went to bed he was shivering. He took his temperature, 101˚, and knew he had caught a chill.
Chapter Eight
Moray spent a restless, fevered night, and when he awoke from the snatch of sleep into which he had fallen, towards morning, he had no difficulty in diagnosing his own case; he was in for a bout of acute bronchitis. His breathing was tight and painful, even without a stethoscope he could hear the râles in his chest, and his temperature had risen to 103˚. He waited with commendable self-control until nearly seven o’clock, then knocked on the wall which separated him from Mary’s room. He heard her stir, and a few minutes later she came into his room.
“Oh, dear, you’re ill,” she exclaimed at once in dismay. “Half the night I was worrying you’d caught cold.”
“It’s nothing much. But I’ll be laid up for a bit and I can’t make a nuisance of myself here. You’d better ring the hospital.”
“I’ll do no such thing.” She had taken his hand, which felt so hot to the touch that her heart contracted with concern. “You’ll stop with us in this very room. And I’ll look after you. Who else, indeed!”
“Are you sure, Mary?” Suddenly he wanted her to care for him. And what a bore it would be getting the ambulance, trundling back to the Infirmary as a patient. “I’ll only be a few days. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d far rather stay.”
“And so you shall,” she said firmly. “Now, should I send for the doctor?”
“No, no, of course not. I’ll prescribe for myself.”
He raised himself on his elbow and wrote a couple of prescriptions. The effort made him cough.
“That’s all I need, Mary. And occasional hot fluids. . . .” He forced a smile. “And you.”
He was worse than he made out. For ten days he was quite ill, with a high fever and a racking cough. She nursed him devotedly and, for one untrained, with surprising talent. With Aunt Minnie, she poulticed him, brewed him nourishing beef tea, fed him calf’s foot jelly with a spoon, made up his bed, exerted to the full her practical mind and housewifely skill to ease his distress. At the crisis of the attack, when he was obliged to have a steam kettle, she sat up half the night tending him. The dislocation of the household was, of course, acute. Meals were upset; sleep lost; service in the shop disturbed; Willie, back from the camp, had to be farmed out with Donaldson, the foreman. When, at the end of the second week, he was able to be up, and to sit in a long chair by the window, he apologised shamefacedly to Douglas for the trouble he had given them all.
“Not another word, Davie,” the little baker interrupted him. “Ye’re one of the family now.” He smiled. “As good as, anyhow.”
When her father had gone out of the room Mary came over and knelt beside his chair. She gripped his knee tightly.
“Don’t ever say you were a bother, Davie. What do you think would have happened to me if I hadn’t got you well?”
His eyes filled with tears, he was still rather weak.
“What a perfect wife you’ll make me, Mary. Don’t think I haven’t noticed every single thing you’ve done.”
Presently he was out, walking with her on the Esplanade, slowly at first, then at a faster pace. Finally he pronounced himself recovered, and ready to look out for a locum tenens that would carry him through the next few months. He still had a stitch in his side that worried him, but he did not speak of it. To complain now would be a poor way to reward their united efforts on his behalf. However, on the following Monday when he travelled by train to Winton to leave his name at the Medical Employment Agency, he had a sharp bout of pain, and decided it might be wise to look in at his old ward and have his chest gone over by Drummond.
It was unexpectedly late when he arrived, back at Ardfillan, and Mary, who was serving a woman customer in the shop, read at once the dejection in his expression. The moment she was free, she came towards him, looking up into his face.
“No luck, Davie?”
He tried to smile, but the attempt was scarcely a success.
“As a matter of fact I didn’t manage to get to the agency.”
“What went wrong, dear?” she said quickly. She saw that he had something on his mind.
At that moment the shop door pinged and a child came in to buy sweetie biscuits. He broke off, relieved by the interruption. What a cursed nuisance it all was, and what a damned sickly nuisance of a fellow they would all think him.
“Now, Davie?” She turned to him.
“It’s hard to explain, Mary,” he said feebly. “I’ll tell you upstairs.”
It was just on closing time. Hurriedly, she drew the blinds and turned off the lights, then followed him to the upper room. Her father and Aunt Minnie were there with him. He did not know how to begin. There was nothing for it, he had to reveal the reason for his visit to the hospital. Bending forward with elbows on his knees he kept looking at the floor.
“So when I got there Professor Drummond screened me—X-ray that is—and apparently I have a patch of pleurisy on my left lung.”
“Pleurisy!”
“It’s very localised,” he said, refraining from mentioning Drummond’s insistence that neglect would induce tuberculosis. Striving to keep the despondency from his voice, he added: “But apparently it knocks out any possibility of a locum.”
“What’s to be done then?” Douglas said, looking rather blue, while Mary sat silent, her hands pressed together.
“Well, I could go into the country . . . somewhere not too far away . . .”.
“No, Davie,” Mary intervened nervously. “You’re not to leave us. We’ll look after you here.”
He gazed at her dismally.
“Impose myself on you for another two months? Impossible, Mary. How can I hang around here, bone idle, just being a confounded nuisance, on top of all the fearful bother I’ve given you? I’ll . . . I’ll get a job on a farm.”
“No farmer in his right mind is going to employ a sick man,” said Douglas. “Surely the doctor . . . the professor ordered something definite for ye?”