There were no letters bearing on the subject of Margaret’s disappearance; if any such had been addressed to him, they would necessarily be, as Maitland remembered after his first feeling of disappointment, at his rooms in London. Neither Miss Marlett, if she had aught to communicate, nor anyone else, could be expected to know that Mait-land’s first act would be to rush to Oxford and consult Bielby.
The guardian of Margaret turned with no success to his breakfast commons; even tea appeared unwelcome and impossible.
Maitland felt very drowsy, dull, indifferent, when a knock came to his door, and Mr. Whalley entered. He could not remember having sent for him; but he felt that, as an invalid once said, “there was a pain somewhere in the room,” and he was feebly pleased to see his physician.
“A very bad feverish cold,” was the verdict, and Mr. Whalley would call again next day, till which time Maitland was forbidden to leave his room.
He drowsed through the day, disturbed by occasional howls from the quadrangle, where the men were snowballing a little, and, later, by the scraping shovels of the navvies who had been sent in to remove the snow, and with it the efficient cause of nocturnal disorders in St. Gatien’s.
So the time passed, Maitland not being quite conscious of its passage, and each hour putting Margaret Shields more and more beyond the reach of the very few people who were interested in her existence. Maitland’s illness took a more severe form than Whalley had anticipated, and the lungs were affected. Bielby was informed of his state, and came to see him; but Maitland talked so wildly about the Hit or Miss, about the man in the bearskin coat, and other unintelligible matters, that the hermit soon withdrew to the more comprehensible fragments of “Demetrius of Scepsis.” He visited his old pupil daily, and behaved with real kindness; but the old implicit trust never revived with Maitland’s returning health.
At last the fever abated. Maitland felt weak, yet perfectly conscious of what had passed, and doubly anxious about what was to be done, if there was, indeed, a chance of doing anything.
Men of his own standing had by this time become aware that he was in Oxford, and sick, consequently there was always someone to look after him.
“Brown,” said Maitland to a friend, on the fifth day after his illness began, “would you mind giving me my things? I’ll try to dress.”
The experiment was so far successful that Maitland left the queer bare slit of a place called his bedroom (formed, like many Oxford bedrooms, by a partition added to the large single room of old times), and moved into the weirdly aesthetic study, decorated in the Early William Morris manner.