‘But what was Mr. Ward about?
‘“Says I to myself, here’s a lesson for me; This man’s but a picture of what I shall be,”
‘when Master Tom gets the upper hand of me,’ returned Dr. May. ‘Poor Ward, who has run to me in all his difficulties these thirty years, didn’t like it at all; but Mr. Henry was so confident with his simple epidemic, and had got him in such order, that he durst not speak.’
‘And what brought it to light at last?’
‘Everything at once. First the clerics go to see about the family where the infant died, and report to Spencer; he comes after me, and we start to reconnoitre. Then I am called in to see Shearman’s daughter—a very ugly case that—and coming out I meet poor Ward himself, wanting me to see Henry, and there’s the other boy sickening too. Then I went down and saw all those cases in the Lower Ponds, and have been running about the town ever since to try what can be done, hunting up nurses, whom I can’t get, stirring dishes of skim milk, trying to get the funerals over tomorrow morning by daybreak. I declare I have hardly a leg to stand on.’
‘Where was Dr. Spencer?’
‘I’ve nearly quarrelled with Spencer. Oh! he is in high feather! he will have it that the fever rose up bodily, like Kuhleborn, out of that unhappy drain he is always worrying about, when it is a regular case of scarlet fever, brought in by a girl at home from service; but he will have it that his theory is proved. Then I meant him to keep clear of it. He has always been liable to malaria and all that sort of thing, and has not strength for an illness. I told him to mind the ordinary practice for me; and what do I find him doing the next thing, but operating upon one of the worst throats he could find! I told him he was as bad as young Ward; I hate his irregular practice. I’ll tell you what,’ he said, vindictively, as if gratified to have what must obey him, ‘you shall all go off to Cocksmoor tomorrow morning at seven o’clock.’
‘You forget that we two have had it,’ said Mary.
‘Which of you?’
‘All down to Blanche.’
‘Never mind for that. I shall have enough to do without a sick house at home. You can perform quarantine with Richard, and then go to Flora, if she will have you. Well, what are you dawdling about? Go and pack up.’
‘Papa,’ said Ethel, who had been abstracted through all the latter part of the conversation, ‘if you please, we had better not settle my going till tomorrow morning.’
‘Come, Ethel, you have too much sense for panics. Don’t take nonsense into your head. The children can’t have been in the way of it.’
‘Stay, papa,’ said Ethel, her serious face arresting the momentary impatience of fatigue and anxiety, ‘I am afraid Aubrey was a good while choosing fishing-tackle at Shearman’s yesterday with Leonard Ward; and it may be nothing, but he did seem heavy and out of order to-night; I wish you would look at him as you go up.’
Dr. May stood still for a few moments, then gave one long gasp, made a few inquiries, and went up to Aubrey’s room. The boy was fast asleep; but there was that about him which softened the weary sharpness of his father’s manner, and caused him to desire Ethel to look from the window whence she could see whether the lights were out in Dr. Spencer’s house. Yes, they were.
‘Never mind. It will make no real odds, and he has had enough on his hands to-day. The boy will sleep quietly enough to-night, so let us all go to bed.’
‘I think I can get a mattress into his room without waking him, if you will help me, Mary,’ said Ethel.
‘Nonsense,’ said her father, decidedly. ‘Mary is not to go near him before she takes Gertrude to Cocksmoor; and you, go to your own bed and get a night’s rest while you can.’
‘You won’t stay up, papa.’
‘I—why, it is all I can do not to fall asleep on my feet. Good night, children.’
‘He does not trust himself to think or to fear,’ said Ethel. ‘Too much depends on him to let himself be unstrung.’
‘But, Ethel, you will not leave, dear Aubrey.’
‘I shall keep his door open and mine; but papa is right, and it will not do to waste one’s strength. In case I should not see you before you go—’
‘Oh, but, Ethel, I shall come back! Don’t, pray don’t tell me to stay away. Richard will have to keep away for Daisy’s sake, and you can’t do all alone—nurse Aubrey and attend to papa. Say that I may come back.’
Well, Mary, I think you might,’ said Ethel, after a moment’s thought. ‘If it were only Aubrey, I could manage for him; but I am more anxious about papa.’
‘You don’t think he is going to have it?’
‘Oh no, no,’ said Ethel, ‘he is what he calls himself, a seasoned vessel; but he will be terribly overworked, and unhappy, and he must not come home and find no one to talk to or to look cheerful. So, Mary, unless he gives any fresh orders, or Richard thinks it will only make things worse, I shall be very glad of you.’
Mary had never clung to her so gratefully, nor felt so much honoured. ‘Do you think he will have it badly?’ she asked timidly.
‘I don’t think at all about it,’ said Ethel, something in her father’s manner. ‘If we are to get through all this, Mary, it must not be by riding out on perhapses. Now let us put Daisy’s things together, for she must have as little communication with home as possible.’
Ethel silently and rapidly moved about, dreading to give an interval for tremblings of heart. Five years of family prosperity had passed, and there had been that insensible feeling of peace and immunity from care which is strange to look back upon when one hour has drifted from smooth water to turbid currents. There was a sort of awe in seeing the mysterious gates of sorrow again unclosed; yet, darling of her own as Aubrey was, Ethel’s first thoughts and fears were primarily for her father. Grief and alarm seemed chiefly to touch her through him, and she found herself praying above all that he might be shielded from suffering, and might be spared a renewal of the pangs that had before wrung his heart.
By early morning every one was astir; and Gertrude, bewildered and distressed, yet rather enjoying the fun of staying with Richard, was walking off with Mary.
Soon after, Dr. Spencer was standing by the bedside of his old patient, Aubrey, who had been always left to his management.
‘Ah, I see,’ he said, with a certain tone of satisfaction, ‘for once there will be a case properly treated. Now, Ethel, you and I will show what intelligent nursing can do.’
‘I believe you are delighted,’ growled Aubrey.
‘So should you be, at the valuable precedent you will afford.’
‘I’ve no notion of being experimented on to prove your theory,’ said Aubrey, still ready for lazy mischief.
For be it known that the roving-tempered Dr. Spencer had been on fire to volunteer to the Crimean hospitals, and had unwillingly sacrificed the project, not to Dr. May’s conviction that it would be fatal in his present state of health, but to Ethel’s private entreaty that he would not add to her father’s distress in the freshness of Margaret’s death, and the parting with Norman. He had never ceased to mourn over the lost opportunity, and to cast up to his friend the discoveries he might have made; while Dr. May declared that if by any strange chance he had come back at all, he would have been so rabid on improved nursing and sanatory measures, that there would have been no living with him.
It must be owned that Dr. May was not very sensible to what his friend called Stoneborough stinks. The place was fairly healthy, and his ‘town councillor’s conservatism,’ and hatred of change, as well as the amusement of skirmishing, had always made him the champion of things as they were; and in the present emergency the battle whether the enemy had travelled by infection, or was the product of the Pond Buildings’ miasma, was the favourite enlivenment of the disagreeing doctors, in their brief intervals of repose in the stern conflict which they were waging with the fever—a conflict in which they had soon to strive by themselves, for the disease not only seized on young Ward, but on his father; and till medical assistance was sent from London, they had the whole town on their hands, and for nearly a week lived without a night’s rest.