An Invalid in Lodgings
BY J. M. BARRIE.
ntil my system collapsed, my landlady only spoke of me as her parlor. At intervals I had communicated with her through the medium of Sarah Ann, the servant, and, as her rent was due on Wednesday, could I pay my bill now? Except for these monetary transactions, my landlady and I were total strangers, and, though I sometimes fell over her children in the lobby, that led to no intimacy. Even Sarah Ann never opened her mouth to me. She brought in my tea, and left me to discover that it was there. My first day in lodgings I said "Good-morning" to Sarah Ann, and she replied, "Eh?" "Good-morning," I repeated, to which she answered contemptuously, "Oh, ay." For six months I was simply the parlor; but then I fell ill, and at once became an interesting person.
Sarah Ann found me shivering on the sofa one hot day a week or more ago, beneath my rug, two coats, and some other articles. My landlady sent up some beef-tea, in which she has a faith that is pathetic, and then, to complete the cure, she appeared in person. She has proved a nice, motherly old lady, but not cheerful company.
"Where do you feel it worst, sir?" she asked.
I said it was bad all over, but worst in my head.
"On your brow?"
"No; on the back of my head."
"It feels like a lump of lead?"
"No; like a furnace."
"That's just what I feared," she said. "It began so with him."
"With whom?"
"My husband. He came in one day, five years ago, complaining of his head, and in three days he was a corpse."
"What?"
"Don't be afraid, sir. Maybe it isn't the same thing."
"Of course it isn't. Your husband, according to the story you told me when I took these rooms, died of fever."
"Yes, but the fever began just in this way. It carried him off
in no time. You had better see a doctor, sir. Doctor was no use in my husband's case, but it is satisfaction to have him."
Here Sarah Ann, who had been listening with mouth and eyes open, suddenly burst into tears, and was led out of the room, exclaiming, "Him such a quiet gentleman, and he never flung nothing at me."
Though I knew that I had only caught a nasty cold, a conviction in which the doctor confirmed me, my landlady stood out for its being just such another case as her husband's, and regaled me for hours with reminiscences of his rapid decline. If I was a little better one day, alas! he had been a little better the day before he died; and if I answered her peevishly, she told Sarah Ann that my voice was going. She brought the beef-tea up with her own hands, her countenance saying that I might as well have it, though it could not save me. Sometimes I pushed it away untasted (how I loathe beef-tea now!), when she whispered something to Sarah Ann that sent that tender-hearted maid howling once more from the room.
"He's supped it all," Sarah Ann said one day, brightening.
"That's a worse sign," said her mistress, "than if he hadn't took none."
I lay on a sofa, pulled close to the fire, and when the doctor came, my landlady was always at his heels, Sarah Ann's dismal face showing at the door. The doctor is a personal friend of my own, and each day he said I was improving a little.
"Ah, doctor!" my landlady said, reprovingly.
"He does it for the best," she exclaimed to me, "but I don't hold with doctors as deceive their patients. Why don't he speak out the truth like a man? My husband were told the worst, and so he had time to reconcile himself."
On one of these occasions I summoned up sufficient energy to send her out of the room; but that only made matters worse.
"Poor gentleman!" I heard her say to Sarah Ann; "he is very violent to-day. I saw he were worse the moment I clapped eyes on him. Sarah Ann, I shouldn't wonder though we had to hold him down yet."
About an hour afterwards she came in to ask me if I "had come more round to myself," and when I merely turned round
on the sofa for reply, she said, in a loud whisper to Sarah Ann, that I "were as quiet as a lamb now." Then she stroked me and went away.
So attentive was my landlady that she was a ministering angel. Yet I lay on that sofa plotting how to get her out of the room. The plan that seemed the simplest was to pretend sleep, but it was not easily carried out. Not getting any answer from me, she would approach on tiptoe and lean over the sofa, listening to hear me breathe. Convinced that I was still living, she and Sarah Ann began a conversation in whispers, of which I or the deceased husband was the subject. The husband had slept a good deal, too, and it wasn't a healthy sign.
"It isn't a good sign," whispered my landlady, "though them as know no better might think it is. It shows he's getting weaker. When they takes to sleeping in the day-time, it's only because they don't have the strength to keep awake."
"Oh, missus!" Sarah Ann would say.
"Better face facts, Sarah Ann," replied my landlady.
In the end I had generally to sit up and confess that I heard what they were saying. My landlady evidently thought this another bad sign.
I discovered that my landlady held receptions in another room, where visitors came who referred to me as her "trial." When she thought me distinctly worse, she put on her bonnet and went out to disseminate the sad news. It was on one of these occasions that Sarah Ann, who had been left in charge of the children, came to me with a serious request.
"Them children," she said, "want awful to see you, and I sort of promised to bring 'em in, if so you didn't mind."
"But, Sarah Ann, they have seen me often, and, though I'm a good deal better, I don't feel equal to speaking to them."
Sarah Ann smiled pityingly when I said I felt better, but she assured me the children only wanted to look at me. I refused her petition, but, on my ultimatum being announced to them, they set up such a roar that, to quiet them, I called them in.
They came one at a time. Sophia, the eldest, came first. She looked at me very solemnly, and then said bravely that If I liked she would kiss me. As she had a piece of flannel tied round her face, and was swollen in the left cheek, I declined this honor, and she went off much relieved. Next came
Tommy, who sent up a shriek as his eyes fell on me, and had to be carried off by Sarah Ann. Johnny was bolder and franker, but addressed all his remarks to Sarah Ann. First, he wanted to know if he could touch me, and, being told he could, he felt my face all over. Then, he wanted to see the "spouter." The "spouter" was a spray through which Sarah Ann blew coolness on my head, and Johnny had heard of it with interest. He refused to leave the room until he had been permitted to saturate me and my cushion.
I am so much better now that even my landlady knows I am not dying. I suppose she is glad that it is so, but at the same time she resents it. There is an impression in the house that I am a fraud. They call me by my name as yet, but soon again I shall be the parlor.