CHAPTER XXII.
IN SUSPENSE.
yphoid fever!”
The doctor had come and gone, and that had been his unhesitating verdict.
“I may nurse him? You will not be so cruel to keep me away?” Sheila had pleaded, her eyes full of tears.
The doctor had looked her all over, asked a few questions as to her health and general condition, and had then made answer—
“If you will be sensible and take the proper precautions, you may help in the nursing. Typhoid ought not to be passed from patient to nurse, though it sometimes is. But a person in good health, acting under direction, ought to escape. I will try and obtain a nurse for you, but we have had to send for a good many already. Under her you may help, and you also, Miss Ray, since you wish it so much. But remember that you must be reasonable and obedient, or I shall send you both packing in double quick time!”
And so when North came back from an anxious day in the town, during which time he had found that nearly a dozen of their people had sickened or were sickening with the insidious fever, he returned home to find grave faces awaiting him, together with the news that Oscar had come back with pronounced symptoms of the malady, and that Sheila was with him upstairs, a nurse being expected from London in the course of the evening.
North went straight up to his cousin’s room. Sheila sprang up, thinking it was the doctor’s step. He took both her hands in his and gave her a cousinly kiss of sympathy. It was the first time he had offered her such a salute, and somehow it brought the tears to Sheila’s eyes. She felt that it was a mark of sympathy she scarcely expected from the undemonstrative North.
“What a good thing that you are here, Sheila!” he said.
“Oh, I am so thankful!” said the girl. “I should not have known how to bear it out there!” and she suddenly felt a wonderful illumination of spirit, as she realised the Fatherly guiding in all this trouble, as she had thought it, which had ended by bringing her to her brother’s side, just when he needed her most.
“I will try never to be angry and rebellious again!” she said in her heart, and turned to the fire to dash the tears from her eyes.
North went over to the bed and took Oscar’s hot hand in his. The listlessness of fever was upon the patient, but his eyes lighted at sight of his cousin.
“How’s little Tom? Have you heard of him?”
“Yes, I’ve been to see him. He’s got all he wants—except your visit. Hunt does not think his will be a bad case. But we have a good many down with it in that alley. It is thought to be the state of the drainage. You must have picked up the poison during some of your peregrinations there, but away from it all you ought to get on like a house on fire.”
North spoke cheerfully, nor was he unduly anxious about Oscar at this juncture; but he knew enough of the fever to be aware that it ran a tedious course, and that Oscar had a long bout of sickness before him. He was half surprised himself how much he had missed the boy at the office and about the works the past two days, and how little he relished the thought that he must learn to do without him for some weeks to come. They had got into the way of walking to and fro in company, or working together in the evenings, and discussing together a great many plans with regard to the business itself and the people in the employ of the firm.
“He has got this fever poking about amongst the work-people,” North mused to himself, “and it was my doing to a great extent that he took up with that. I ought to have been more careful, for we have been told often enough that the town is not healthy, and that a new drainage scheme is badly wanted. I suppose now we shall have something done. I only hope we are not in for a regular epidemic! Perhaps my father and I ought to have agitated more, but it was not exactly our business, and our hands always seem pretty full. Well, well, one must hope for the best, but I wish Oscar had not been one of the victims. He never seems to have much stamina. If it had been myself, I should soon have battled through.”
North went down to the drawing-room, where there was a family discussion going on.
“I don’t see that I am any good here,” Cyril was saying, “and you will want all the room you can get, with Sheila back and this nurse expected. So I’ll just go off straight to London, and take up my quarters there. I can really read better if it comes to that, and I shall be out of the way.”
The mother was about to give an assent to this scheme. Cyril was very precious in her sight, and having one invalid already on her hands, she was naturally anxious about the rest. But she saw that North’s face looked hard and cold, and she glanced across towards her husband.
Mr. Tom’s eyes were fixed upon the glowing fire; he seemed to be pondering deeply.
“Raby has gone to the Bensons, you say?”
“Yes, they sent for her immediately upon hearing the rumour of Oscar’s illness. Her room will be useful for the nurse; but as Ray and Sheila share Ray’s room, there is no need for Cyril to leave unless we think it better. Perhaps we should be more comfortable with fewer at home. There is always the chance of infection, whatever precautions we may take.”
“Just so,” said Cyril, “and then I should only be another worry and bother. The London plan would be much the best. I suppose you would provide the funds, dad?”
Cyril spoke with the ease and assurance of a favoured son. He was the only one who ever spoke to his father by that familiar title. Mr. Tom did not take his eyes from the fire.
“You have your own allowance, and we have only reached half quarter yet. You must have plenty in hand.”
Cyril coloured and then tried to laugh easily.
“What keeps one at home scarcely goes as far in London.”
“That allowance was fixed when you went to Oxford and has never been changed. Many a man has less on which to bring up a family. It should stand the strain of a few weeks in town.”
Cyril was silent, biting his lips. He was not accustomed to be denied anything.
“Well, I need not go, I suppose,” he said rather sullenly. “I can stay here and take my chance, of course.”
“Yes, and help in the press of work which this outbreak will entail upon us all,” said his father rather sternly. “That is a thing which had never occurred to you, I suppose.”
They were all rather surprised by the tone taken by the father towards Cyril, nobody more so than the young man himself. A thrill of dismay began to run through him. Something must have happened to change his father’s manner so completely.
“Of course if I can be of any use——” he began nervously.
“Well, that remains to be proved. You have not been much use in the world so far; but I think it is time your days of idling came to an end. Perhaps this emergency will give you your chance. Let us see during these next weeks the stuff of which you are made. Perhaps you will be able to make up for the purposelessness and shortcomings of the past year.”
His father looked straight at him then, and Cyril cowered as under a blow. Then Mr. Tom rose and walked out of the room, followed by North, whilst Cyril turned anxiously to his mother and exclaimed—
“What can he mean by that?”
But the mother did not know. Her husband had said nothing to her that could explain his rather mysterious words. Had Cyril heard what passed between father and son in the study he would have some reason to tremble in earnest.
“Have you discovered anything fresh, sir?” asked North, as they stood by the hearth.
“Yes; the report of the detective came in during your absence this morning. Every note has at last been traced, and each one to Cyril. He passed one through young Lawrence, as you found out some time ago; another was cashed in London some time later; the third was a long while in being traced, but it was paid at last by a small cigar dealer in Romford. And it was elicited upon close inquiry that it had been presented by a man exactly answering to the description of Cyril, who had made a rather considerable purchase there, and had given the note in payment. Some of the boxes with this man’s stamp on them have been found in our rubbish bin. The case is complete in my estimation.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Give him a chance to rouse himself from his selfish apathy during these next weeks, and to win for himself something of a good name. Of course, when Oscar recovers, the whole truth must be told. Meantime it will rest between you and me; and we will see if there is not still something behind that lazy, self-seeking exterior. I fear we have spoiled Cyril, and that this is the outcome. But some men will rise to an emergency, who otherwise drift along with the current all too easily.”
It was the father’s hope that the crisis they feared in the town would stir up Cyril to exertions and self-sacrifice, which would do something to obliterate the bitter remembrances of the past. Perhaps Mr. Tom forgot to bear in mind that whilst repentance for past sins may be a stepping-stone to better things, a concealed and unrepented act of wickedness is like a millstone about the neck, dragging the soul downwards, and raising a barrier between it and those promptings of the Spirit whereby alone men can rise to true nobility and self-forgetfulness.
And now a time of stress and keen anxiety arose within the little town of Isingford. The epidemic was restricted to a certain area, and was easily traced to the defective drainage of that part of the town; but its victims were very many within that area; and there were several isolated cases, like Oscar’s, which, however, were generally traced to poison germs inhaled in the infested locality.
Oscar did not appear at first to be very ill, and Sheila was quite certain that he was going to have it mildly, and would soon be better. The nurse was capable and kindly, and Oscar liked her. He always said he was comfortable, only too lazy to talk; and it was difficult to get him to take the food and medicine prescribed. He seemed to turn against everything except iced water, and yet they must keep the furnace going somehow.
In the town doctors and nurses were hard at work, together with a band of amateur workers, hastily organised, who went round to the infected houses daily, bringing those things which the doctors had ordered for the poorer patients, and in cases where nurses were not to be had, performing little offices for the sick, which they could not otherwise have obtained.
North and Ray were amongst the most devoted of these workers, learning much from the case at home how to treat others. But from Cyril there was little efficient help to be got. He had professed willingness to join in the work of personal ministration, but he shirked any actual contact with the sick. He would fetch supplies, and make a show of devotion, but there was no real heart for the task in hand. He loathed the close, crowded alleys and the sick-rooms. He could not make up his mind to enter them. He saw his brother and sister going about. He saw the clergymen, whose tasks he had so glibly spoken once of undertaking, toiling daily amongst the sick, taking the message of salvation to those who longed to hear it, and seeking to point the way above to such as had never been willing before to listen. He saw all this, but he could not do as those did. He would make his way with a sort of shuddering horror to some pleasanter place, away from the sights and sounds which disgusted him, and try to forget his father’s words, or his own vague misgivings as to coming trouble.
Nor was Isingford alone troubled by this outbreak. The outlying families amongst the gentry came forward with money and help of other kinds. May Lawrence drove in almost daily with supplies of good things from dairy and larder; and gladly would she have been one of the band of workers, but her mother could not bring her mind to sanction it. Nevertheless the girl was to be constantly seen driving through the poor streets, and leaving her doles, with bright and cheering words, at the doors of the poor houses; and North and Ray, who saw her so often, declared that she was like a sunbeam in those dismal places.
She always stopped to ask for Oscar, and at first got encouraging replies. Later, however, a different tone crept into the answering voices, and the reply would be gravely spoken.
“He does not get on. The fever keeps so persistent, and we can see no change for the better. It is always slow in typhoid, but Oscar’s case is not running in the usual lines. It puzzles the doctors and makes us all uneasy.”
May was sincerely grieved. She liked Oscar; she was truly fond of Sheila; and she had come to identify herself, in a fashion, with the household in River Street. She heard of their work, and saw it with her own eyes. The admiration she had always felt for North was increasing daily.
But Oscar?
Sheila scarcely left him now except when the nurse drove her away to take the needful rest, whether she could sleep or not. It seemed to her as though her whole life had been passed in watching that dear, wasted face. Everything else was so shadowy and indistinct; it seemed like scenes from another life.
Her past life used sometimes again to flash vividly before her, and at such times she would feel a strange sense of its emptiness and worthlessness. Suppose it were she who had been called upon to lie there, with death so very near! What sort of a record would she have to give of the talents and advantages entrusted to her. Great waves of humiliation and self-distrust would sweep over her, and she began to understand that there was only one thing worth having in all the world, and that was the life of the Lord within our own—the power to dwell in Him, as He has ever promised to dwell by the Spirit in us.
And when that sudden illumination had come into Sheila’s heart, all else was forgotten—merged in the sudden blinding light. All bitterness, anger, selfishness, seemed to shrivel up to nothing, and she was even able to throw herself on her knees beside the bed on which Oscar lay, and to say from the bottom of her heart—
“Thy will be done.”
(To be continued.)
