“I beg a thousand pardons,” he said. “How very thoughtless of me, but it never seems to have occurred to me all this time that you may have business of your own to attend to. If that is the case, even at the risk of appearing inhospitable, I beg you will not delay your journey here on my account. I shall be on my legs again in a day or two—one thing about this complaint, its attacks though sharp are frequently short—and apart from necessity it must be very tedious for you to feel yourself tied down in a rough and comfortless place such as this.”
“My dear fellow, don’t you bother yourself about me,” replied the other, decisively. “I’m going to see you through it before I move on. When a fellow’s ill in an out-of-the-way hole like this he wants a ‘man and a brother’ about him; and I’m going to stick to you like a leech until you’re yourself again. So don’t jaw any more, there’s a good chap, but just snooze off right away.”
In announcing this resolution the speaker was fully alive to what he had undertaken. It was the outcome of no mere passing impulse of generosity. And really, to make up one’s mind deliberately to dwell for an indefinite period in a very rough and uncomfortable tenement, in the midst of a burnt-up starving wilderness, destitute not only of the ordinary comforts of life, but almost of anything fit to eat or drink—this, too, alone with a perfect stranger in for a possibly long bout of severe fever—is something of an act of self-sacrifice, which we hope, virtuous reader, you will remember to set off against the man’s other failings and derelictions.
If circumstances had rendered Maurice Sellon a bit of a scamp—if a further combination of the same might conceivably render him a still greater one—yet he was, according to the definition of those who knew him, “not half a bad fellow in the main.” His resolution to see his newly found acquaintance through what would certainly prove a tedious if not a dangerous illness, was purely a generous one, dashed by no selfish motive. A subsequent idea, which flashed upon him like an inspiration, that even if the precious document relating to the mysterious treasure were lost beyond recovery, his newly made friend was almost sure to know its contents by heart, and might be brought to share the knowledge with him, was entirely an afterthought, and this we desire to emphasise. To slightly tamper with the proverb, “Want of money is the root of all evil,” and Maurice Sellon, in common with many worthier persons, stood sorely and habitually in need of that essential article.
But scamp or no scamp, his presence there was a very fortunate thing for his fever-stricken host. By nightfall poor Renshaw had a relapse; and for three days he lay, alternatively shivering and burning—intermittently raving withal in all the horrors of acute delirium. Then the presence of a strong, cheery, resourceful fellow-countryman was almost as that of a very angel of succour; and even then nothing but a fine constitution, hardened by a life of activity and abstemiousness, availed to snatch the patient from the jaws of Death himself.
Chapter Seven.
“Our Object is the Same.”
“Do you know, Fanning, you gave me the very warmest reception hero I ever met with in my life?” said Sellon, one day, when his patient was fairly convalescent and able to talk freely.