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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 “Falling in love is a common enough experience,” he thought, “and it is
not to be treated as a tragedy. But I cannot think of it as a comedy.”
Miss Fortescue, it appeared at lunch, had thought deeply on questions of
ritual, or if she had not previously thought deeply, it apparently did not
stand in the way of her speaking strongly. A reredos, it seemed, was a
synonym for idolatry, and the absence of an extra candle on the altar was
the only plank, so to speak, which saved the English Church from being
immerged in the bottomless sea of Romanism. She proposed, as an
experiment, to make an offer to the chapter that she would present to the
Cathedral a small chapel in honour of St. Joseph, to be erected at her
expense, if they would build a corresponding one to the Virgin, and felt no
doubt that the thanks and acquiescence of the Cathedral body would be
accorded to her and her proposal. The ingenuity with which she twisted the
arguments of the other side to tell in her favour was truly remarkable, and
when, at the end of a hot half-hour, she raised her eyes to the ceiling, she
was not the only person present who was grateful for a respite. She had
already reduced Jack to such confusion of mind that he had founded some
theory on the seven veils of the Jewish sanctuary, and though he had not the
slightest idea what he was talking about, Miss Fortescue had, and convinced
him out of his own mouth of being a friend to the detestable enormities of
the Pope of Rome.
“You say you are going to see your mother at tea-time,” she said. “Very
well, tell her what I have said.”
Jack was discreet, but not provident.
“I am sure she will agree with you,” he admitted, eagerly.
“In that case,” said Miss Fortescue, “it is her duty to use her influence
with your father to get these things remedied.”
Jeannie laughed.
“Give it up, Mr. Collingwood,” she advised. “It’s no use. We always give
it up when Aunt Em feels strongly at church on Sundays. You will, too,
when you know her better.”
There were several people at tea when Jack came into his mother’s
drawing-room, and when he entered he saw that they had been talking on
some point which concerned him, for there was a lull in the conversation,
and yet every one looked interested and rather eager, which showed that the
conversation had been suddenly broken off. Mrs. Vernon, the gushing wife
of another canon, more distinguished for a vague æsthetic loquacity than for
tact, appealed to him at once.
“We were talking about your picture of Miss Avesham,” she said. “I
maintain—and do agree with me, Mr. Collingwood—that it is not the
function of art to be photographic. You have seized, it is true, a moment (oh,
such a dear, delicious moment!), but you have given us, have you not, what
I called the story of the moment?”
Jack looked a little puzzled.
“I don’t quite understand,” he said.
“Oh, Mr. Collingwood, you are laughing at me!” she cried. (This was
very unjust, and not appreciative of Jack’s gravity, which was creditable to
him.) “You are laughing at me. You want me to involve myself. I mean that
you could never have given us such a wonderful moment if you had not
known the ancestry, if I may say so, of it. You must have studied Miss
Avesham’s face till it was your own. To know and to show us exactly how
she looked when that dear little puppy was shaking (In Danger, too—what a
delightful title!)—you must have made a thousand sketches of her. For
surely it is impossible to paint a portrait—a real portrait, I mean—without
knowing the face and the character!”
Jack stirred his tea.
“Your theories are admirable, Mrs. Vernon,” he said, “and I agree with
them entirely. But I must confess that my portrait in this instance was a rank
contradiction of them. Until the moment that I saw Miss Avesham standing
as I represented her I never saw her before. And I finished the sketch before
I ever saw her again. I can only say that I am luckier than I deserve in
having done something which you are kind enough to consider as being like
her.”
Something of the interest died out of Mrs. Vernon’s face, and it occurred
to Jack for the moment that she had a theory at stake more interesting to her
than her theory about the true method of painting portraits. He flushed a
little, and was annoyed at himself for doing so.
“I am afraid it may seem to you that I did a very rude thing,” he said;
“but the facts are these: I was walking down by the river, about three weeks
ago, and suddenly saw what I tried to paint. I had no idea that it was Miss
Avesham, for, as I have told you, I had never seen her before. And without
sufficiently considering, I confess, whether the girl, whoever she was,
would see the picture, and whether if she did she would object to it, I
painted it. I saw Miss Avesham again yesterday for the second time. I am
staying with her brother and her for the Sunday.”
“I am sure she would be charmed and flattered at your picture,” said
Mrs. Vernon.
“I don’t know about her being charmed and flattered,” said Jack. “But
certainly she was very kind about it, considering what a liberty I had taken.”
“Rather what a compliment you had paid her,” exclaimed Mrs. Vernon,
effusively. “What a sweet girl she is! So simple and kindly. You are staying
there, are you not?”
“Yes, for the Sunday,” said Jack, with all his teeth on edge. “I knew
Arthur well at Oxford.”
“And did Miss Avesham talk to you about the portrait?” continued Mrs.
Vernon. “I am told she is so artistic.”
“Oh, yes, she spoke about it,” said Jack. “Indeed, it was a curious
coincidence, for just as I arrived she was out in the garden, and again the
puppy was shaking himself, having fallen into the fountain.”
Mrs. Vernon gave a titter of laughter, like a chromatic scale.
“There seems to be a fate in such things,” she exclaimed. “How exciting,
and how romantic! Thank you, one more cup of this delicious tea.”
Before long the others left, and shortly after Canon Collingwood retired
to the garden. Jack and his mother spoke of indifferent things till the tea-
table was cleared; and after the servant had gone:
“I wanted to talk to you, Jack, before you went. You received my letter?”
“Yes, this morning. I tore it up, as you asked me to, without reading it.”
Mrs. Collingwood was silent a moment.
“Thank you,” she said at length, simply. “My reason was this—I wrote
hastily. I could not but think that Miss Avesham would consider your
painting of that portrait as a great liberty. It appears she did not, and that
you are excellent friends. So I was wrong about her attitude.”
Mrs. Collingwood took a chair closer to Jack.
“Jack, you were right in what you said yesterday,” she went on. “You
and I are made very differently. We must accept it. I have been too much
given to judging you, to disapproving, and disapproval does no good. But
you must not judge me either. You have your own life to live. You can not
grasp my point of view, and if I am tempted to disapprove of you, I will be
careful in the future not to do that, but to simply say that I do not
understand.”
Jack looked up; his mother’s voice was trembling.
“Ah, my dear,” she went on, “in the Father’s house are many mansions,
and it is likely there are many mansions of His on earth. And if the windows
of some look out on to beautiful things and others on to austere
surroundings, suffering perhaps, and sin, those in the different chambers
must not judge each other. That is what I wanted to say to you. But I have to
go on in my own way. We can only do what we think right. There, that is
all. But tell me, what do you intend to do about this baby?”
“I shall have it to live with me, I think,” said Jack; “that is, unless
something else turns up. Mother, you don’t know how you have touched
me, and how glad you have made me that you have spoken, and how
ashamed.”
“No, Jack, not ashamed,” she said. “But I had to talk to you about it. I
have thought of nothing else since I saw you yesterday. You go back to-
morrow, do you not?”
“Yes.”
“Then say good-bye to your father before you go. I must leave you; I
have an evening class. Good-bye, my dear.”
She kissed him with a tenderness that was new to her, and left him.
But it is not in the nature of those who have lived in a groove lightly to
get out of it. Habit becomes nature, and to look permanently at one view
would, no doubt, if continued for forty years, tend to make the observer
believe that the world contained no other.
This was the case with Mrs. Collingwood. Her humanized interview
with Jack had jolted her as a stone on the line may jolt a train for a moment
without causing it to leave the metals. The direction in which it had been
running, its speed, and its weight have all to be overcome, and with her
long-continued convictions had given her great momentum, and an address
she delivered three days afterward at a Mothers’ Union showed no speck of
apostasy.
 CHAPTER XIII
Jeannie threw herself into the life of the place with amazing energy, and
she had her hands very full. In the first place, the house in Bolton Street had
a new inhabitant—none other than the baby of Frank Bennett. It had
occurred to Arthur when Jack was telling him about it that here was a
possible situation, at any rate for the present, and before a week had elapsed
he had written to Jack to say that if he wished they would give the child a
home as long as the present régime of Bolton Street continued. Jack had
accepted the offer with the most thankful alacrity: to live there was much
better for the child; also (this he hardly admitted to himself) he could run
down with reasonable frequency to see how it throve.
Jeannie had wanted no persuading, and Miss Fortescue hardly more. She
had opposed the scheme at first on the same grounds as she opposed
everything, in order to see how the thing looked from the other side. That
such a plan was somewhat out of the way, and that it would give Wroxton a
good deal to talk about, she did not consider at all a disadvantage to them,
and a distinct benefit to Wroxton.
“We shall hear less of the S. P. C. K.,” she remarked.
The baby was to Jeannie of absorbing interest. The same instinct which
had led her when a child to make dramatic the lives of her dolls, and to
watch over them with an anxious benignity of which saw-dust and wax
were really not worthy, had here a sort of fruition. A doll had come to life,
the inventions of her childhood were being played over again in the theatre
of living, her play was become true. Arthur, who was the youngest of them,
was only a year younger than herself; she had thus never known a baby in
the house, and she found an ineffable charm in it.
But the baby, in being at least, was only a relaxation to be enjoyed in
odds and ends of time, for the solid hours were full. She seemed to have
taken on her shoulders the responsibility for the whole of Wroxton. She had
already written a paper for the Literary Ladies, which had caused a kind of
revolution in that gentle society, and Mrs. Collingwood had left the room in
a marked manner in the middle. It is true that she came back again, and
spoke venomously about it, but that was an after-thought, for by going away
she expressed her silent disapproval, which she repeated not at all silently in
the discussion that followed. Indeed, she might well be horror-struck, for
Jeannie, taking as her text that notorious and scandalous novel, The
Sheltered Life, had made remarks about “realism” and artistic treatment
which made Mrs. Collingwood not exactly blush, but bristle. In the first
place, the hero of the work was a professed unbeliever, and though, if we
are to believe the author, he sought for light, and lived a sober and innocent
life, there was no doubt about his religious opinions. It is unnecessary to go
into details of the rest of the story; that one fact was enough for Mrs.
Collingwood. But Jeannie seemed hardly to have noticed it. Instead, she
spoke of the admirable development of his characters, of the sobriety and
reticence of the narrative; of the skilled surgical dissection of the man’s
actions, and the exhibition of the real forces that swayed them, partly the
result of heredity, partly of early training and circumstance, and the one
thing that, according to Mrs. Collingwood, condemned the book, even had
it been written by Shakespeare and corrected by Milton, she passed over
with the remark that the description of the struggle of the reason against a
faith his reason could not accept was wonderfully rendered.
Dead silence followed her reading; and the Literary Ladies, who for the
most part had followed her with great interest, saw Mrs. Collingwood enter
again (she came in so punctually as Jeannie sat down that it seemed almost
as if she had been listening at the door) and cowered. Most of them looked
guilty, but it was noticed that Miss Clara, in her place as president, sat bolt
upright, and looked as brave as a lion. Indeed, several times during the
lecture she had applauded with her silver pencil-case on the table. Miss
Fortescue, who sat next Jeannie, also appeared unterrified, but, as her niece
sat down, she said in a whisper to her:
“You’ve done it now, dear. There’s war in that woman’s eye. But I’ll see
you through.”
Miss Fortescue was right. There was war in Mrs. Collingwood’s eye;
there was crusade in her eye, and she marched out to attack the hosts of the
infidel like Cœur de Lion. She made no parleying with the enemy, and
though she alluded to Jeannie’s speech as “most suggestive and clever,” it
was only to point out to her hearers how dangerous cleverness was. She
hurled texts at their heads: the house built on sand, the kings who did evil,
the captivity, the fall of Babylon, the mark of the beast, the seven foolish
virgins, the man who put his hand to the plough and looked back, the seed
on the dry ground, the pitcher broken at the well, the woman of Samaria—
all these, if rightly understood, proclaimed how abhorrent was The
Sheltered Life! Jeannie as she listened was first angry, and ended by being
amused. There had been a seven days’ storm; Mrs. Collingwood had sent in
her resignation, and Jeannie, hearing of it, sent in hers, provided that Mrs.
Collingwood would remain. It ended in Jeannie’s calling on Mrs.
Collingwood, in answer to the almost tearful request of Miss Clifford, and
talking it out with her. She explained that she had not been criticising the
data of the book, but the treatment of certain data, and made her points with
such sweetness of temper and apparent inability to take offence that Mrs.
Collingwood was charmed in spite of herself.
“But these things are the most serious in the world, Miss Avesham,” she
had said at parting. “You do not, I now believe, take them lightly, but that
was the impression your very clever speech made on me. I was wrong, I am
willing to confess that.”
Then Jeannie started a musical society, at the meetings of which the Miss
Cliffords quavered an uncertain alto, and Colonel Raymond thundered an
approximate bass. They met originally once a week at Bolton Street, to sing
glees for an hour, under the severe guidance of Miss Fortescue, who taught
them by degrees not so much what good part singing was, as what it was
not. Then they won their way to the passable. Her teaching seemed almost
hair-splitting at first, especially when she insisted on the middle of a note
being sung, and allowed nothing which to the ordinary mind was allowable
enough, and insisted on the existence of notes intermediate between
semitones.
“Because a piano has black notes and white notes,” she observed once,
“you think that there is no interval between. If you think you are lower than
A flat, and higher than G sharp, you must be singing A. The chances are
strongly against it. The basses again, please.”
But in spite of, or perhaps because of, this severity the club prospered.
The instinct for perfection is commoner than one thinks, even among those
who never attain more than mediocrity, and those new facts about intervals
were as fascinating as X-rays. Mrs. Collingwood even joined, for she
valued music among the higher relaxations. The apostles of this art she held
were Mendelssohn and Handel—these were the moons. And the greater
stars were Barnby, Stainer, and the Rev. P. Henley, whose chant in E flat she
ranked among the noblest productions of the world of art. A memorable
evening indeed came, when Mrs. Collingwood sang also in a drinking-song,
without turning a hair. She professed her willingness in a spuriously fugal
passage “to drink a bowl wi’ thee” fortissimo, though there was no foot-
note stating specifically that the bowl contained a non-alcoholic beverage.
A charity performance was to be given at Christmas, in which the drinking-
song would be performed, and Mrs. Collingwood knew it. But she made no
protest, and practised “drinking her bowl” every Tuesday evening with
gusto.
And Jeannie had classes of all sorts. She interested herself in the girls of
the soap manufactory at Wroxton, and taught them that there were more
things in the world than factory and followers. Some showed botanical
tendencies, and she would bury herself in Sowerby’s Plants in order to be
able to take them further in their hobby. Two others had violins, and Jeannie
made night hideous by bringing them to Bolton Street two evenings in the
week and accompanying their vagrant strains. There was another who sang,
and a fifth who had a mania for wood-carving. Jeannie weaned her from the
reproduction of imagining ferns tied together by amorphous ribbons, and
persuaded her to copy the lines of real leaves and flowers. All these various
elements were amalgamated on Sunday afternoon, when a large room over
the stables, which she had appropriated for her purposes, was thronged with
the wood-carvers, the musicians, and the botanists. On these occasions she
read to them and gave them tea. The readings were not strictly Sabbatical,
and Arthur, spying out the land one Sunday after they had gone, found a
large number of perfectly secular books with markers in them. Jeannie,
when confronted with them, only laughed.
“The point is to interest them in something,” she said. “Look what lives
they live. But the dreadful difficulty is that two of Mrs. Collingwood’s
Sunday afternoon class seceded to me. I didn’t know what to do.”
Arthur laughed.
“You should have tried to interest them in Mrs. Collingwood,” he said.
Jeannie frowned.
“I know. But it is so difficult,” she said. “I read them a story out of Plain
Tales from the Hills instead.”
The girls’ class led on to a boys’ class, and Wroxton was again
convulsed. For it was known that Jeannie allowed her boys, if they were
allowed to smoke at home, to smoke when they came to her class, and her
rule that not more than four might smoke simultaneously, for the sake of the
atmosphere, was clearly not directed against smoking in general. This class
was held on Saturday evening, in order to keep them out of the public-
houses, for “the boys” were for the most part grown men, and several
fathers of families had tried to steal surreptitiously into it. This Jeannie had
stopped with good-humoured firmness.
“Go and sit with your wives,” she said, “and help to amuse the children.”
But the smoking was the root of offence, and Mrs. Collingwood
stumbled heavily over it. She and her husband were dining at the Aveshams
one Saturday evening, and Jeannie, who had dressed before the class in
order not to break it up sooner than usual, came in, and, Mrs. Collingwood
said, “reeking of the pot-house.” But even Mrs. Collingwood, who had been
accustomed all her life to express things strongly, felt that her expression
fully met the enormities of the case.
The ramifications of the boys’ class and the girls’ class were
innumerable. There was the case of the girl who played the violin, and the
boy who professed to do the same. It was natural that they should be taken
together. But when it appeared that the boy in question was a follower of
the girl in question, Jeannie’s indignation knew no bounds. “I would not
play gooseberry to the Czar of Russia,” she exclaimed.
Then it happened that between the Literary Ladies and the glee club, the
boys’ class and the girls’ class, the violins, botany, and singing lessons,
Jeannie had not any hour of her own. There were also, as Miss Fortescue
said, several hours a week to be devoted to the suppression of scandal. An
instance of this occurred when Mrs. Vernon overheard an animated
conversation between Jeannie and a draper’s assistant in the High Street.
Jeannie’s voice carried, and the tones were audible to passers-by.
“Do come round this evening about nine,” she said, “because the others
are dining out, and I shall be alone. Mind you come.”
He came.
One evening, about the end of October, Jeannie had had an unexpected
respite. The policeman who was learning botany had to go on unexpected
duty, owing to the illness of one of the staff, and she had an evening free. It
would be false to say that she was relieved, for the patient was another of
her boys, and she was anxious about him; but she certainly ran up the stairs,
two at a time, to the nursery, where the evening toilet of the baby was going
on. The baby was in his bath, worshipping his toes. He crowed with delight
when he saw Jeannie, and when the bath was over the warm, wet body was
blanketed and hoisted into her lap. Jeannie was long ago initiated into the
mysteries of the evening meal, and the nurse, having mixed the patent food,
went by Jeannie’s request to her own supper, without any sense of shifting
responsibility on to untrustworthy shoulders.
It was a brisk, frosty evening, and the fire prospered in the grate. Jeannie
drew the nurse’s rocking-chair close to the fender and adjusted the bottle.
The baby was warm and hungry, and her thoughts turned inward, soothed
and driven there by the dear, helpless presence, and she meditated
nonsensically, so she told herself, as if she had been talking alone to the
baby.
“What do you know,” she thought, “of to-morrow and to-morrow and to-
morrow? Boys’ class to-morrow, and girls’ class the day after. Somebody
will play the violin a little less villainously, and some one will perhaps not
cut his finger at all. Oh, baby, it is a world where things go slow. First the
seed, and then the stalk, and who knows about the corn? Supposing a storm
comes in June? Ah, when will June come? How I long for June!
“Poor little fatherless mite, are we so much better off than you? Oh,
baby, Heaven prevent us from getting morbid! Yes, those toes are quite
beautiful, and all your own. Nobody has any more toes than you, and what a
consolation that ought to be. But nobody has any less. There is always that.
We are all very average, and we have no right to expect extraordinary
happiness. Yet I do, and so do you; you think that you will always have
some one to hold you like this, and have a fire to look at. But what if the
fire goes out, and somebody drops you?”
Jeannie’s face had got quite grave over these unconsidered possibilities.
But her brow unclouded quickly.
“You tell me that there is the other side of the question,” she went on,
“and that somebody else whom you like better may come and sit here,
ready to take you when the first person is tired. So they may, so they may.
And if ever you prefer anybody else to me I will bite you.”
She closed her lips gently on a little pink shell ear that peeped out from
the blanket.
 “I will bite you,” she went on, “and I will not hurt you. How should I
hurt you? You would have your avengers if I did. Many of them, many of
them, and myself among the first. Others also, one other particularly. Oh,
baby, I assure you that you are not in bad hands. That is a very good man
who comes to see you sometimes, that man whom I think you recognise. He
is clever, too, and once he painted a picture of a girl and a puppy dog, which
was quite extraordinarily like.”
Jeannie paused a moment, and adjusted the bottle again.
“What an impertinence, was it not? And I was very angry. You should
have seen us meet! He walked into the garden one day not long after, and I
told him what I thought. I said he was a cad; I troubled him not to do that
sort of thing again. I said it stamped a man, and he would have done better
to take example by his blessed mother, and write tracts for the G. F. S.,
instead of spoiling good canvas and wasting his time in trying to paint. He
had no idea of line, I told him, and less of colour. Did I really say all these
things? I can not be quite sure: it is so long ago.”
There was a step on the stairs, and the moment after the door opened
gently.
“May I come in?” said a voice.
Jeannie turned round quickly.
“Yes, come in, Mr. Collingwood,” she said. “I didn’t expect you till the
later train. Baby and I are having a talk, and I can’t get in a word
edgeways.”
“I caught the earlier train,” he said. “But I, too, didn’t expect to find you
here. Isn’t it the policeman’s night?”
Jeannie laughed.
“What an awful memory you have!” she said. “Isn’t it a great
responsibility? How did you think, to begin with, that it was the
policeman’s night?”
“I came a fortnight ago, you remember,” he said, “and you were late for
dinner because of the policeman.”
“Yes, that is quite true,” said Jeannie; “but poor Williams has a bad
headache and a touch of fever, and so Rankin is on duty.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack. “But baby and I are the gainers.”
Jeannie pointed to the little pink face.
 “Fast asleep, do you see,” she said, “two minutes after a heavy meal. He
always does that. Fancy falling fast asleep over dessert, and sleeping on till
eight next morning over the dinner-table. I must put him to bed.”
Jack stood by the fire watching Jeannie tuck the baby into its cot with
deft fingers. All her movements were sharp and decided; her fingers seemed
to have an intelligence of their own.
“I must sit here till nurse comes up from her supper,” she said. “Look at
that seraph!”
“I think he has his share of luck, after all,” said Jack.
Jeannie sat down again in the rocking-chair.
“Oh, but the responsibility!” she sighed. “We all share it. I believe so
much of the happiness of one’s life depends on the happiness of one’s
babyhood. The first glimpses of consciousness are what make the
temperament.”
“He has a good chance, then.”
“It is a crying shame if he doesn’t,” said Jeannie. “It is the easiest thing
in the world to make that child crow with delight. If you laugh, he laughs.
Oh, we mustn’t talk so loud. We’ve awoke him.”
Jeannie slipped softly to the side of the cot and began crooning a little
baby-song:

“Black grow the blackberries,

Cherries are red,
But golden are the curls
That grow on baby’s head.

“All the ladies in the land

Come to see the show,
But baby went on sleeping
And baby did not know.”

Jack watched her intently, and a sudden thrill of passion throbbed in him.
There was something in the sight of the girl bending over the baby and
crooning in that low voice that stirred all his nature. Her exquisite fitness
there, her absorbing joy in the young thing was a flash of revelation to him.
Her dormant potential motherhood suddenly became divine and real to him.
Every vein in his body seemed to have sent all the blood it contained in one
great bound to his heart, and it stood still on the top of its beat. A long-
drawn breath hung suspended in his lungs, and it was as if every particle of
the warm, brisk air of the nursery was bubbling intoxicating fire. The next
moment all that was within him bowed and fell and worshipped.
That moment of incorporeal existence must have been short, for Jeannie
had not got to the end of the second silly little verse when he was aware of
himself again, like a man who has come round after an anæsthetic, feeling
as if he had travelled swiftly from very far away. But he did not come back
to his normal consciousness; the world he awoke to was different, and
Jeannie filled it.
Almost simultaneously the nurse came softly in, and Jeannie got up
quietly.
“He is sleeping again now,” she said; “step gently, Mr. Collingwood.”
It was long past dressing time, and they went straight to their rooms.
During dinner Miss Fortescue was unusually vitriolic, and afterward they
played a game called Adverbs. Jack had only a confused recollection of
going out of the room, and being totally unable to guess what was required
of him on his return. Soon after this Jeannie and her aunt went upstairs.
Jack must have been really idiotic about the game, for Miss Fortescue
looked at him anxiously as she shook hands.
“I think you must have overworked yourself,” she said. “Be careful.”
She took several turns up and down her bed-room before ringing for her
maid. As she pulled the bell:
“Head over ears,” she remarked.
 CHAPTER XIV
Long-continued drought had marked this summer-time, and when in
September no rain fell the papers had been full of acrimonious comments
on the ways of water-companies. The water-company at fault was really no
earthly controller, and the most intelligent body of men can not milk the
clouds. But the British public is not happy without its grievance, and just
now it was certainly enjoying itself immensely.
Wroxton had hitherto suffered less than other towns, but by the
beginning of October the supply began to cause uneasiness. But the water-
company had another spring up its sleeve, and, to quiet complaints, about
the second week in the month it was drawn upon, and the intelligent public
was deprived of its right to grumble.
The weather was hot and unseasonable, with the heat not of an
invigorating sun, but of the closed and vitiated atmosphere of a packed
room. Day after day a blanket of gray cloud covered the earth as with a lid,
yet the rain came not. A windless, suffocating calm environed the earth; it
was rank weather for man and beast. The perennial green of the great downs
faded to an unwholesome yellow, like a carpet that is losing its colour from
the sun, and the nights were dewless. The heavenly forces that temper the
frosts of winter with a benigant sun and the heats of summer with the cool
dews of night seemed to have been struck dead. Clouds overset the earth,
but neither dispersed nor discharged. It was as if the vitality of the seasons
had failed, as if the earth was abandoned to decay.
Jeannie was immune from the assaults of climate, and Miss Fortescue
went out so seldom that she found no great disagreeableness in the
stagnation of the air. But Colonel Raymond felt it acutely, and said it was
like waiting for the rains in India. Miss Clara Clifford could no more write
poetry than she could play the mandolin, and Miss Phœbe would have as
soon thought of playing the mandolin as of embarking on an epic. But the
Colonel gave up the brisk walks while such dispiriting weather lasted, and
though Mrs. Raymond dwindled and paled, she found her consolation in
seeing the children play hide-and-seek among the gooseberry bushes.
 Ten days after the new spring had been drawn upon certain ill-defined
cases of illness began to appear in the town. For the most part they were
among children, and the doctors for a day or two considered them as only a
natural outcome of this long-continued sultriness and inclement air. But
they were not wholly at their ease about it, and as the cases increased day
by day it was no longer possible to exclude the idea that this was an
epidemic. By this time some of the first cases, which were now five or six
days old, began to look grave, and before the week was out it was generally
known that typhoid had appeared in many houses.
Several of Jeannie’s various classes were ill with the hitherto unspecified
fever, and she had been visiting them daily at their homes. She was up in
the nursery making herself agreeable to the baby one morning when Miss
Fortescue came in, looking grave.
“Jeannie, some of your girls have been ill, have they not?” she asked.
“Yes, four or five of them and several of the boys. I am just going out to
see them.”
“Leave the child,” said Miss Fortescue, “and come.”
Jeannie followed her, and a howl followed Jeannie.
“What is it, Aunt Em?” she asked, when they were outside.
“It is typhoid,” said Miss Fortescue.
Jeannie dropped her eyes for a moment, and then looked up.
“Is it infectious?” she asked; “I mean, can I carry it?”
“I don’t know,” said Miss Fortescue. “Jeannie, what is the matter with
you?”
Jeannie had sat down on a chair in the landing, and was looking in front
of her with wide, unseeing eyes.
“I may have given it to the baby,” she said.
“Jeannie, don’t be foolish,” said Miss Fortescue. “Oh, my dear, be
sensible. I have already written to Dr. Maitland saying that you had been
with probable typhoid cases, and asking what precautions one ought to take.
I thought it probable that you would be uneasy about the baby, so I also
asked whether it was possible that you had carried infection. That was about
half an hour ago; I expect the answer every moment.”
“Oh, Aunt Em,” said Jeannie, coming close to her, “you think it is all
right, don’t you? You don’t think I have been stupid or incautious?”
 “I think you are being very stupid now,” said Aunt Em. “Ah, here is
Pool.”
The butler came upstairs and handed Miss Fortescue a note; she glanced
at it quickly.
“Such a risk of carrying typhoid as the one you mention is
inconceivable,” she read, “and a baby of a few months old having it at all is
unknown to the medical profession.”
She passed the note to Jeannie, who glanced at it.
“Oh, thank God, thank God!” she cried. “Aunt Em, I am going to see Dr.
Maitland at once.”
“The Avesham nerves,” sighed Miss Fortescue. “Surely the note is clear
enough.”
“Yes, it is not that,” said Jeannie; “but if this increases they will be short
of hands. I heard that all the nurses in the hospital were working double
time. I am going to say that I wish to help in any way that he will allow
me.”
Miss Fortescue looked at her a moment, and neither surprise nor
criticism was in her eye.
“We will go together,” she said; “let us go at once.”
“Why should you come?” asked Jeannie.
“Because I wish to. I know something about nursing, though I have
never nursed typhoid, which is more than you do, Jeannie.”
Jeannie looked surprised.
“I didn’t know—” she began.
“You know very little about me, dear,” said Miss Fortescue, “and that’s a
fact. Go and get on your hat. I suppose I ought to forbid you to visit or help
in any way, even forbid you suggesting it. But there are certain risks on
certain occasions which every one is bound to run. Whether the risk in your
case is too great to be allowed I do not know. That is what we are going to
Dr. Maitland to find out. I remember only that people who are fortunate
enough to be as old as I are practically immune. I hear there are fifty fresh
cases this morning.”
They found that Dr. Maitland was out and up at the hospital, where they
followed him. After they had waited for a few minutes in a bare, dismal
room, of which the principal furniture was a weighing-machine, a
stethoscope, and a bottle labelled “poison,” he came in, looking grave,
florid, and anxious.
“Yes, it is typhoid beyond a doubt,” he said, “and epidemic. Please sit
down. Personally I am disposed to think it may be traced to the water-
supply of the town, which has come since the drought was so bad from an
open spring in the Gresham fields. I am making a bacteriological
examination of it. Till that is settled I should advise you not to drink it, or
even use it for washing, except after boiling.”
“Are you very short of nurses?” asked Miss Fortescue.
“Yes, I am at my wit’s end to know what to do. My wife has volunteered
to help, and, I hear, two other ladies. There are some coming from London
and Shrewsbury to-day, but we have fifty fresh cases reported this morning,
and there will be certainly more I have not yet heard of.”
“Miss Avesham and I have come to offer our help,” said Miss Fortescue.
“I have been six months in a London hospital, and know something about it,
though I have never nursed typhoid.”
“That is very kind of you,” said Dr. Maitland, “and I accept your offer
most gladly. But it is right to tell you that you run some risk. As far as we
can see, the disease is of the most malignant type. Several have died
already, which is rare in the first week. In your case, Miss Fortescue, the
risk is light, but for younger people it must not be disregarded. There is a
risk.”
Miss Fortescue looked at Jeannie.
“I suppose many of the nurses are quite young,” said Jeannie.
“No doubt; but it is their profession.”
“Aunt Em, there is really no choice,” said Jeannie. “I am afraid I may
not be of much use, Dr. Maitland, but please let me do what I can.”
Dr. Maitland was not given to gushing any more than Miss Fortescue.
“I will certainly do so,” he said. “But you must remember that the work
is tiring and demands incessant watchfulness and patience, for typhoid,
above all other diseases depends on nursing. Please remember what I told
you about boiling and filtering water. If you cannot trust your servants, see
it done yourselves. There is no precaution half so necessary.”
“And the baby?” asked Jeannie. “Is it quite safe that it should remain
here?”
 Dr. Maitland had a merry eye.
“Perfectly,” he said. “But you will probably not think so. If you are in
any way likely to worry about it, send it away at once. I can not have my
nurses thinking about any thing but their patients. That is all, I think. If you
will be here again by half past two I will have arranged about your duties.”
He shook hands with them, and went hurriedly back to his work. Miss
Fortescue and Jeannie came out again into the hot, drowsy atmosphere, and
walked a little way in silence.
“Think it over, Jeannie,” said the other at length. “I quite understand that
you are not frightened for yourself, and I never expected you would be. But
you have to consider your duty toward your brother and other people who
are fond of you. Me, for instance,” she added, with an unusual burst of
emotion.
“There is no choice,” said Jeannie. “I must help if I can, and I am sure
you see that. But what about the baby? Shall we send it away? No doubt it
is stupid of me, but I think I should be happier if it was not here.”
“It shall go this afternoon,” said Miss Fortescue. “We will telegraph to
Jack Collingwood.”
“Don’t alarm him,” said Jeannie, and stopped abruptly.
Miss Fortescue devoted several seconds to the consideration of this
remark, and then smiled on the side of her mouth away from Jeannie.
“How could he be alarmed?” she asked. “I shall say, of course, what Dr.
Maitland said, that typhoid is unknown in babies.”
“Yes, that will be all right,” said Jeannie, rather absently. “But don’t
make the outbreak too serious.”
And her enigmatic aunt smiled again.
Arthur had got in to lunch when they got back. He, too, had heard the
news about the typhoid.
“They told me you had both gone to the hospital,” he said. “What do
they say there? Is it very serious?”
“Yes,” said Miss Fortescue. “The baby goes to Jack Collingwood this
afternoon. Not that there is the least risk, but Jeannie is foolish. She and I
are going to help in nursing.”
He had not expected anything else, for he knew Jeannie. Aveshams were
not demonstrative, and he only looked at her quietly a moment.
 “I supposed you would,” he said. “I suppose it is right. Is there much
risk?”
“Ordinary risk,” said Jeannie. “Dr. Maitland allowed it.”
“Yes, one wants to be of some use in such cases,” said Arthur. “I hear the
state of things in the lower part of the town is awful. The brewery stops
working to-day; there are over twenty men down with it. I wonder if I could
help?”
“No, Arthur, you mustn’t,” said Jeannie, quickly. “I wish you would go
away. Go up to Mr. Collingwood’s with the baby for a week or two. Dr.
Maitland said that for younger people the risk was greater.”
“Then we will ask him whether a man of twenty-three is much more
liable to infection than a girl of twenty-four,” he said. “It sounds highly
probable. Let’s come in to lunch. I am famished.”
Miss Fortescue went upstairs to tell nurse to pack and be ready to start in
the afternoon, and write a telegram to Jack Collingwood; and having
written it she paused for a moment, looking out of her window.
“It is a fine breed,” she said, “and it is not in my heart to stop either of
them. They will walk into the wards and feverful houses as if they were
going out to tea.”
Directly after lunch the two women turned out their wardrobes to find
some thin washing stuff suitable for their dresses. Jeannie could only lay
her hands on a pale-blue cotton, and though she was still in deep mourning
she put it on without question. As Miss Fortescue had said, neither she nor
Arthur regarded any possible risk for themselves any more than they would
have reckoned on the danger of a ceiling falling on them as they sat at
dinner. Personal fear was unknown to them, though they both heartily
wished the other would stop securely at home or go with the baby. The
three went up together to the hospital. Dr. Maitland was there, and came to
them at once, looking a little less florid, and a little graver.
“Twenty more cases,” he said, “and two have died in hospital in the last
three hours, Miss Fortescue. Ah, how do you do, Mr. Avesham? What can I
do for you? I hope you haven’t come to get your temperature taken?”
Arthur laughed.
“No, not yet,” he said; “I only came with my aunt and sister to see if you
could find anything for me to do.”
 “Certainly I can, and any one else also who comes. Start with Cowley
Street this afternoon—all that district is the worst—and see that all the
drinking-water in the houses is boiled. It is no use giving them advice. See
the pot on the fire. Don’t frighten them; encourage them, and tell them they
are perfectly safe if they will do what you tell them. Go first to the
dispensary here, and say I sent you, and tell the man to give you plenty of
bicarbonate of mercury, and instruct you how it is to be used. Distribute it at
the houses you visit, and show them how to use it. Be sure they don’t put it
into their drinking-water. By the way, have you a room to spare?”
“Yes; at your disposal.”
“You see, I take you at your word when you offer to help,” said Dr.
Maitland. “Two friends of mine are coming from Guy’s to assist me, but I
can’t put them both up. May I send one on to you?”
“By all means,” said Arthur.
“Thank you very much,” said he. “There is no time nor need, I think, to
tell you how grateful I feel for your kindness. By the way, Mr. Avesham,
can you use a clinical thermometer? No? That’s bad. When you go to the
dispensary tell them to give you one, and take your own temperature and
the dispensary man’s temperature several times, under the tongue. Get a
thirty-second thermometer, and your temperature is 97·6°. Take it until it is
right. Then you know how to use one. In the houses you visit, if you see a
man, woman, or child ill, insist on taking their temperature. If the
thermometer registers as much as half a degree over 99 take their names
and addresses and tell me when you come back. Also, after taking each
temperature, if there is any fever, dip the thermometer into a solution of the
mercury and wipe it carefully. Good-bye, and many thanks. The dispensary
is the second door on the right.”
As soon as he was gone Dr. Maitland turned to the others.
“A fine absence of nervousness,” he said; “he looked as if he was going
to pay a call. And I don’t see any nervousness here, either. Miss Fortescue, I
think you said you knew something about nursing, so I have put you with
Nurse James in charge of the first ward. In a day or two she will have put
you in the way of your work, and then probably I shall ask you to look after
certain houses, or take charge of patients by yourself. Miss Avesham also is
under her in the same ward. You have about forty cases, some very serious.
Please put yourselves entirely in her hands: she is admirable. There is no
need to tell you that on your care and watchfulness many lives depend. You
will both have day nursing only. This way, please.”
 CHAPTER XV
The weeks that followed were the most terrible and most wearing that
Jeannie had ever known. During the first day or two she showed a real
aptitude for her work; she was gentle, firm, and untiring, and as the
epidemic increased Miss Fortescue was soon moved to help in a larger
ward, and a dozen cases in a smaller ward, off the one under Nurse James,
were put under Jeannie. The head nurse was thus always at hand in case she
wanted her, but otherwise Jeannie had to manage her patients alone. It was a
constant matter of anxiety to Jeannie as to whether she ought or ought not
to summon the other. At first the slightest rise in a patient’s temperature
seemed to her enough grounds on which to ask the inspection of the elder
woman, for she had been told she could not be too careful. Nurse James
herself was worked almost to death; and on Jeannie’s calling her one day to
look at a patient she had exclaimed, snappishly:
“It would be less trouble to look after them myself.”
Jeannie flushed slightly, but said nothing, and went back to her work.
Nurse James hurried out of the room, but returned a moment later.
“You must forgive me, Miss Avesham,” she said, “but I am worried to
death. What we should do without you and Miss Fortescue I don’t know.
But the temperature always goes up a little in the afternoon; it is only the
very sudden rise or sudden falls, particularly the latter, which need alarm
you.”
Jeannie smiled.
“I see; I will try to remember,” she said. “You are very patient with me.”
The work was terribly severe to any one unaccustomed to it. In her ward
were women and girls only, who were easier to manage than the men, but
who were more hopeless and apathetic, and Jeannie often thought that she
would sooner have them fretful and irritable if they only would be less
despondent. One woman, who was having the attack very slightly, and
getting through with it very well, would spend half the day in sulky tears,
pitying herself, and moaning over the cruelty of Jeannie, who, in obedience
to her orders, did not, of course, let her have a crumb of any solid food.
Sometimes when she was giving her a wash in the morning she would be
called away by another trying to raise herself in bed or wanting to be
attended to in some way, and when she came back there would be nothing
but querulous complaints of the time she had been left; she felt sure she
would catch a cold; Jeannie had not dried her properly before she went. At
another time she would beg for food with tears, saying how she had read a
story in which was described an epidemic of typhoid, where a charitable
lady in the village had sat by her patients and fed them with cooling fruits.
Jeannie had laughed at this, out of the superiority of her ten days’
knowledge.
“My good woman,” she said, “if I wanted to kill you I should give you a
cooling fruit.”
“You are killing me with starvation,” cried the woman. “Look how thin I
have grown with a fortnight of this. Oh, for God’s sake, Miss, give me just a
crust of bread!”
Jeannie had finished washing her, and covered her up gently.
“Now I am leaving you, and I shall come again to you in two hours with
your milk,” she said. “Look, you have two hours before you. Just say your
prayers, and thank God for getting over this. And ask Him to make you
more sensible and more patient. You are more trouble than all the rest of the
ward put together.”
Jeannie took down the woman’s temperature-chart, which hung over her
bed, and put down the ten o’clock register.
“You are doing very well,” she said. “Just think over what I have said.”
The next case was as bad as a case can be. It was a girl not more than
sixteen years old, and even now, when the second week of the fever was
only just beginning, her strength was terribly exhausted by the continued
high fever. The afternoon before Jeannie had spent two hours sponging her
with iced water, and had only succeeded in bringing it down to 102°. She
came on duty herself at eight in the morning, and as she put the
thermometer into the child’s mouth she looked at the temperature-chart. It
had been 102° again at six in the morning, when it should have been lowest,
and she looked anxiously at the face. It was very wan and thin, and the skin
looked hard and tight as if it had been stretched. Below the eyes were deep
hollows, and though they were wide open it was clear that the girl was
scarcely conscious. She waited a full half minute, and then drew the
thermometer gently out of her mouth and looked at it. It registered only 98°.
She frowned and put it into her mouth again, hoping there might have been
some mistake. Then when she saw it a second time she hurried into the next
ward.
“That girl, Number 8,” she said to Nurse James, “had a six-o’clock
temperature of 102°. It has sunk to 98°.”
Nurse James hardly looked up; she was watching a man who lay quite
still, but tried every other moment to get up in bed.
“Dr. Maitland is in the next ward,” she said; “go and tell him at once. It
may be perforation. Then, when you have finished your round, if all the rest
are doing well, I wish you would come here while I finish. I can’t leave this
man alone. You can hear any sound in your ward from his bed.”
Jeannie hurried on and told Dr. Maitland. He came at once, looked at the
girl, and shook his head.
“You did quite right to send for me, Miss Avesham,” he said. “Yes, she is
as bad as she can be. I can do nothing.”
At moments like these Jeannie felt sick and utterly helpless, and almost
inclined to say that she could bear it no longer. But she said nothing, and
went on to the next bed.
The next patient was a robust woman of about thirty with a baritone
voice. She proclaimed loudly that she was perfectly well, and was being
starved. Her gray Irish eyes used to plead with Jeannie for something to eat,
and she badly resented being washed. But this morning she took it in
silence, and thanked Jeannie.
“She’s bad?” she asked, looking hard to the next bed.
“Yes, very bad,” said Jeannie, hardly able to speak. She took the
woman’s chart down from the wall and indicated the ten-o’clock
temperature on it.
“You’re nearly through, I hope,” she said. “Yes, quite normal this
morning. Now all you have to do is to lie very quiet, and you will get
stronger every day. The doctor said you might have beef-tea this morning
instead of milk.”
She smiled at her rather sadly, and was passing on, but the woman seized
her hand.
“It’s cruel hard on ye,” said she; “but don’t mind so, don’t mind so. An’
me worrying you and all. I’ll bite out me tongue before I say another hasty
word to ye.”
Then came two or three very bad cases. One was a frail, tired-looking
woman, who glanced at Jeannie wistfully as she examined the thermometer.
“I’m no better?” she asked.
Jeannie smiled, but with a heavy heart. The woman, she felt sure, could
not last through very many days of this.
“How do you feel?” she said.
“Weak and tired—oh, so tired! And I have a pain in my back.”
“Do you cough at all?” asked Jeannie.
“I couldn’t sleep for it last night,” said the woman, “and that makes a
body weary.”
“Keep yourself warm, then,” she said, “and lie still.”
“But I’m no better?” she asked again.
“That was one of the questions which we settled not to ask,” said
Jeannie. “When you are quite well you will get up. Till then, nothing,
nothing.”
Half an hour more sufficed to finish the round, and she went into the
next ward to watch the man who was so restless. For nearly an hour she had
to sit close by his bedside, with her hands continually pressing on his
shoulders to prevent his getting up. He was more than half unconscious and
wandering in his talk, saying things now and then which ten days ago
would have made Jeannie turn from him in horror and disgust. But now she
had nothing of that left, only pure pity and the one great end in view to let
none of these poor people die.
Then when Nurse James had finished her round she came back to her,
and by then it was time to get the patients’ food. Some of the more
advanced and progressing cases were already allowed Mellin’s Food, but
for the most it was still only milk and beef-tea.
At mid-day she had a couple of hours’ interval, usually returned home to
lunch, and went afterward for a walk. But to-day she felt too fagged and too
sick at heart to do more than sit in the garden and beneath the pitiless leaden
cowl of the sky. The effort of appearing cheerful and remaining cheering
was too great, and when alone she abandoned herself to a sort of resigned
hopelessness. Just before leaving the ward she had seen the terrible screen
put up round the bed of the girl who was dying. That was all the privacy
that could be given her. She almost hoped that when she got back the end
would have come; only two days before she had sat in the still and awe-
struck ward while a woman passed through her last hours. She had heard
the wandering, inarticulate cries; she had counted her breaths through the
long, pitiless silences; she had shut her teeth hard to bear, without
screaming audibly, that one last exclamation in which the spirit clutches
with unavailing hands not to be torn away from the inert body, the one last
convulsive breath in which the body tries to retain it, and she thought she
could hardly bear it again. Then she cudgelled and contemned herself for
her paltry, selfish cowardice. Was there ever, she thought, a girl so puny-
spirited?
During these ten days in which she had been nursing the epidemic had
showed no signs of abatement. Sometimes for a couple of days the return of
the fresh cases was suddenly diminished, and once when Jeannie went to
the hospital at eight in the morning to take up her duties they told her that
there had been no fresh cases reported since the night before. But on all
these occasions the lull was only temporary, and in the next twelve hours
there would perhaps be seventy more reported. She pictured the disease to
herself like some hideous monster which would lie down to sleep for a few
hours after one of its gigantic meals, and then, when the victims were
digested, would rise up again and clutch at them with his hot hands. Once
as she was leaving the hospital Dr. Maitland had called her into his
consulting-room to ask her a question about one of her patients, and as she
rose to go he had said:
“Would you like to see what is the matter with all these people?”
He pointed to a microscope which stood on the table, and Jeannie looked
through it at the drop of water which was beneath the lenses.
“There are a quantity of typhoid bacilli in that,” he said; “they are long
and black, with one pointed end, rather like pencils.”
He adjusted the light for her, and among the infinitesimal denizens of the
water she saw five or six little dark lines seemingly as lifeless as the rest.
She drew back with a shudder.
“I thought of it as some terrible beast with claws and teeth,” she said;
“but this is the more terrible.”
Never before had she realized on what a hair-breadth path this precarious
life of ours pursues its way. The strength and the wit and the beauty of man
were slaves and puppets in the hands of this minute organism. A king on his
throne mixes one day a little water with the wine in his golden cup, and
with it one of these black pencils, invisible but to a high power of lens, and
thereafter he ascends his throne no more, but another sits in his place,
before whom they sing “God save the King.” And the father is but one
among the uncounted dead.
This afternoon, as she sat under the trees in the garden after her lunch,
thoughts like these flitted bat-like through the gloomy chambers of the
brain. How insignificant and insecure was life! It was like some ill-
constructed clock which might stop any moment. And how mean and trivial
were all its best aims. Here was she, with a fair average of birth and brains
and heart, and life held for her no more heroic task than to wage war—and,
oh, how hopelessly!—with an infinitesimal atom. The peace and sheltered
security of Wroxton, the busy tranquility she had fashioned for herself here,
were all knocked in the dust. Everything was at the mercy of the bacillus.
Luckily for her peace of mind these unfruitful imaginings were
interrupted by Pool. She did not hear his step on the soft grass, and his
voice spoke before she knew he was there.
“Mr. Collingwood is here, Miss,” he said, “and wants to know if you can
see him.”
Jeannie did not move, but her voice trembled a little.
“Yes, ask him to come out here,” she said; “and bring another chair.”
She rose to meet him.
“Ah, how do you do?” she said. “Tell me, the baby is quite well?”
“Quite well,” he said, and then there was silence.
Pool brought out another chair, and still in silence they sat down.
Jeannie’s heart had suddenly begun to beat furiously.
“I heard from Arthur this morning,” he said, “and that is why I am here. I
knew, of course, from the papers that there was an epidemic of typhoid
here, and I was frightened. But his letter told me more. It told me that you
spent all your days in nursing at the hospital. And I could not bear it.”
Jeannie said nothing, but a great, pervading peace took possession of her
troubled soul. It was as if she had suddenly passed from a stormy,
mountainous sea round into a harbour, and the bacilli resumed their real
dimensions.
 “I could not bear it,” he said, again looking at her.
No word of explanation passed between them. His right to question what
she did Jeannie did not dispute, and he did not miss the significance of that.
“I could not help myself,” she said. “It was impossible for me not to do
what I could. Oh, it has been a terrible time, and we are not at the end of it
yet. Oh, these poor people!”
“Leave the place, come away,” he began, suddenly and passionately, but
then stopped, for he saw in Jeannie’s face the light of pity, divine and
human and womanly, and all that was selfish in his love for her, all that said
“I cannot live without her,” died.
“Do not leave the place,” he resumed. “Do all that your heart prompts
you to do. But promise me this—promise that you will leave no precaution
untaken to minimize the risk to yourself. I know there is no need to ask you
that, because that is your duty as much as the other, but it will comfort me
to hear you say it.”
“I promise you that,” said Jeannie, simply.
The divine deed was done, and the word yet unspoken had changed all.
Three minutes before there had been only a leaden sky, the withered,
drought-yellowed grass round her, but the grass was become the paved
sapphire of the courts of heaven, and the sky was the sky. Each of them was
so utterly in tune with the other that Jack felt no desire to speak directly, nor
did Jeannie wish it. The pause out of which music should issue was theirs.
“And what is to be done with me?” he asked, in a lighter tone. “May I
stop here?”
“No, Jack,” she said, and the utter unconsciousness with which she
spoke his name smote him with sweetness. “No, you are to go back to your
work, too. We have all got our work; nothing can refute that. Tell me about
the baby.”
“He cries for you,” said Jack.
“Kiss him for me then, and pray for us. Oh, let me tell you about it all. It
will do me good, and I am too heart-sick to talk it over with the others. If I
tell Aunt Em about my cases it is a double burden for her, and if she tells
me about hers it is double for me. Arthur behaves splendidly. He goes his
rounds all day, like a milkman, he says, with cans of disinfectants.”
 “Ah, he helps too, does he?” said Jack. “He never mentioned that in his
letter.”
“No? That is so like the dear boy. He has found lots of cases which they
were trying to keep dark, for they hate going to hospital, and he alone of us
all remains perfectly cheerful. But it is terrible at the hospital. I have about
a dozen cases almost entirely under me. One died two days ago; another, I
am afraid, will die to-day. It is so awful to work and work and work, and
with what result? Oh, I am a stupid, ungrateful little fool! Is it not enough to
find that little silver line on the thermometer a little lower than it was at the
same time yesterday, and perhaps a degree lower than it was the day before?
But one feels so helpless. And it is all on account of a little invisible demon
which the carelessness of dirty people allowed to get into the water-supply.
People talk of the horror of war. The horror of water-companies seems to
me the more frightful.”
Jeannie paused a moment.
“But I would not have gone through it, and I would not be now going
through it for the kingdoms of the world,” she said. “The mischief has been
done, and it is an inestimable privilege to be allowed to help in minimizing
the results. It is giving me a new view of life, Jack. Here in this sheltered,
peaceful town I was in danger, I think, of becoming a sort of ruminating
animal, sleek, and living in the meadows like a sort of cow.”
“I didn’t gather you were in danger of that,” remarked Jack. “You did
happen to hold some classes in your meadow, did you not?”
“Yes, classes of other cows. We were all cows together—at least I was.
But out of all this suffering there comes, I know not what—certainly
despondency; but I do not believe that that is the permanent net result. One
learns what a little thing is life, and how great. Also it seems as if I was
learning to be egoistic.”
She got up out of her chair.
“Oh, you have done me good!” she cried. “Look, what was that?”
Jack had seen it, too; it was as if the sky had winked. They waited in
silence, and in a few minutes came the growl of answering thunder. Jeannie
stretched out her arms with a great sigh.
“Thunder!” she cried. “Perhaps there will be rain. How I have prayed for
that. You don’t know what it may mean to us. Well, what is it, Pool?”
 “Mrs. Raymond is here, Miss,” said he, “and would like to speak to
you.”
“Very well, I will come in. Wait here, Mr. Collingwood; I will see what
she wants.”
Jeannie went indoors with a new briskness of step and found Mrs.
Raymond standing helplessly in the middle of the drawing-room.
“Oh, Miss Avesham,” she said, “will you come? Maria is ill, and I can’t
find any doctor in. So I thought, if you would be so kind, you would come
and look at her, as I heard you have been working at the hospital.”
“When was she taken ill?” asked Jeannie.
“She wasn’t well yesterday at lunch, and had no appetite. And my
husband said it was all nonsense and took her out for a walk. She was very
bad last night, but he said she would be all right in the morning, and now
she’s no better.”
Jeannie gave a little exclamation of impatience, and looked at her watch.
“Yes, I’ve just got time before I go back to the hospital,” she said. “Have
you a carriage here?”
“Yes, it’s waiting,” said Mrs. Raymond.
“Very good; get in. I’ll follow you in a moment.”
She went quickly into the garden again.
“I must go,” she said to Jack. “I have to see a girl before I go back to the
hospital.”
“And I am to go back to paint my silly little pictures?” he asked.
“Yes; you don’t paint badly, you know!”
“I will try and paint better. But I may come again?”
Jeannie shook hands with him.
“Yes, do come again,” she said.
 CHAPTER XVI
They drove quietly through the dusty, sultry streets, and came in a few
minutes to Lammermoor. Mrs. Raymond conversed all the time in a low,
monotonous voice, like the tones of some one talking in their sleep, chiefly
in defence of her husband, though Jeannie had said no word about him.
“Colonel Raymond is so very strong himself,” she said, “and I think
sometimes that he doesn’t quite make allowance for the children. But he
disagrees with me, and I dare say he is right. He always finds a good walk,
he says, the best cure for a headache or a feeling of tiredness; he says such
things are best walked off. But with children, you know, it may be different;
they are so easily tired, and the Colonel always walks very fast. But Maria’s
walk yesterday certainly did her no good, and my husband was as anxious
as myself to-day that some one should see her, and the doctors were all out.
That was why I came for you, and it is so good of you to come. Colonel
Raymond is terrified for the child; he does not at all like illness in the
house. He has seen so much illness in In—in his service. And here we are!”
Jeannie followed Mrs. Raymond up the narrow gravel walk and up the
three stone steps, with balls at the top and bottom, into Lammermoor. A
strong smell of tobacco and camphor was apparent in the hall.
“Colonel Raymond says smoking is the best disinfectant,” explained his
wife, “and he has been sprinkling camphor about in the study and in the
dining-room. He says camphor is a good disinfectant, too.”
Jeannie sniffed.
“I should recommend you to open all the doors and windows in the
house and let in some fresh air,” she said. “Fresh air is better than either
camphor or tobacco.”
“I will tell my husband what you say,” said Mrs. Raymond. “Will you
step into the drawing-room a moment, Miss Avesham? I know Robert
would like to see you.”
“I really haven’t time,” said Jeannie. “I must be back at the hospital at
three.”
“Then perhaps you will come upstairs straight?” said the other.
 The house reeked of the Colonel’s disinfectants as they mounted the
stairs. On the first floor the door into his dressing-room was just open,
disclosing a view of him putting some clothes into a small valise, with a
cigar in his mouth, and in his shirt-sleeves.
“Oh, here is Robert,” said Mrs. Raymond, in her thin voice. “Robert,
here is Miss Avesham very kindly come to see Maria. What are you doing,
dear?”
The Colonel treated Jeannie to his best military bow, and took the cigar
out of his mouth, but his usual heartiness was absent from his greeting.
“Very kind of you, very kind, I am sure, Miss Avesham,” he said, “to
come and see our poor little Maria. The hot weather—she feels the hot
weather, poor child.”
A curious, grim look came into Jeannie’s face. Like most people who
have the salt of courage necessary for the conduct of life she felt unkindly
toward cowardice. She noticed also that this bluff and gallant gentleman did
not advance to meet her, but rather retreated farther into his room. She
remembered also the confidence that Miss Clifford had made her on the
stair-case, and she hardened her heart.
“How do you do, Colonel Raymond?” she said, still advancing toward
him, but the Colonel retreated behind his open luggage.
“What are you doing, Robert?” asked his wife again, in the same voice.
Colonel Raymond did not reply at once, and Jeannie did not break his
silence.
“Well, I’m packing,” he said, at length. “If there’s illness in the house a
man is only in the way. Better make myself scarce, you know; better make
myself scarce.”
Jeannie looked at him fixedly for a moment. Then, breaking into a smile:
“You need not be frightened,” she said. “For any one well over forty
there is really no risk, even when typhoid is about. And I thought you said it
was only the hot weather that had tried your daughter. Well, Mrs. Raymond,
I have to be back at the hospital very soon, and I think we had better go and
see your daughter at once.”
She turned her back on the Colonel, and followed Mrs. Raymond to a
higher story.
 “My husband is very careful about infection,” said the latter as they
mounted the stairs. “That is so right, is it not? But I did not know he was
thinking of going away.”
“He is quite right to be careful of infection,” said Jeannie. “But there is
no need for him to go; and, indeed, we do not know if there is any reason
yet.”
Maria slept in the same room with one of her sisters, the eldest having
the dignity of a room to herself. Jeannie cast one glance at the little
haggard, fevered face, and took out her thermometer.
“Put it under your tongue, dear,” she said, “and keep it there till I take it
away. Don’t bite it. No, it’s not medicine; it doesn’t taste nasty.”
She glanced at it at the end of half a minute.
“That’s all right,” she said, reassuringly. “How do you feel?”
“Headache,” piped the little feeble voice from the bed.
“We’ll soon make that all right then,” said Jeannie. “Now lie quite still
and covered up, and your mother will come to you again.”
“And I sha’n’t go a walk to-day?” said Maria.
“No, you shall stay in bed and rest. You are a little tired.”
Jeannie closed the door when they came out.
“Yes, she has high fever,” she said to Mrs. Raymond. “Go and sit with
her, and don’t let her raise herself in bed. I am afraid it is typhoid, but we
can’t tell yet. I will see you again before I leave the house. I am just going
to speak to your husband, unless you will take the responsibility of what
you do.”
“You must speak to him, then,” said Mrs. Raymond. “But please
remember, dear Miss Avesham, how careful he is about infection.”
“Yes, I will remember,” said Jeannie.
The dressing-room door was shut when she went downstairs again, and
she knocked at it. It flew open, and it seemed to Jeannie that the Colonel
thought he was opening to his wife.
“I want to speak to you, Colonel Raymond,” she said. “Oh, please don’t
apologize for the state of your room. I have only a minute, and you need not
come downstairs.”
“You have seen Maria?” asked the Colonel.
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