At last, Dr. Martyn’s presence in the drawing-room was announced to her. She began her explanation with desperate bravery; and though the first words were met with a scoffing grunt, she found Mervyn less displeased than she had feared—nay, almost glad that the step had been taken, though he would not say so, and made a great favour of letting her send the physician to him in the dining-room.
After a time, Dr. Martyn came to tell her that he had found her brother’s head and pulse in such a state as to need instant relief by cupping; and that the young Union doctor had been sent for from the village for the purpose. A constitutional fulness of blood in the head had been aggravated by his mode of life, and immediate discipline, severe regimen, and abstinence from business or excitement, were the only means of averting dangerous illness; in fact, his condition might at any time become exceedingly critical, though perseverance in care might possibly prevent all absolute peril. He himself was thoroughly frightened. His own sensations and forebodings seconded the sentence too completely for resistance; it was almost a relief to
give way; and his own method of driving away discomfort had so signally failed, that he was willing to resign himself to others.
Phœbe assisted at the cupping valorously and handily. She had a civil speech from young Mr. Jackson, and Mervyn, as she bade him good night, said, ‘I can’t spare you now, Phœbe.’
‘Not till you are better,’ she answered.
And so she told Miss Charlecote, and wrote to Robert; but neither was satisfied. Honora said it was unlucky. It might certainly be a duty to nurse Mervyn if he were really ill, and if he made himself fit company for her, but it would not set her straight with the neighbourhood; and Robert wrote in visible displeasure at this complication of the difficulty. ‘If Mervyn’s habits had disordered his health, it did not render his pursuits more desirable for his sisters. If he wanted Phœbe’s attendance, let him come to town with her to the Bannermans; but his ailments must not be made an excuse for detaining her in so unsuitable a position as that into which he had brought her.’
It was not so kind a letter as Phœbe would have claimed from Robert, and it was the more trying as Mervyn, deprived of the factitious exhilaration that had kept him up, and lowered by treatment, was dispirited, depressed, incapable of being entertained, cross at her failures, yet exacting of her attendance. He had business at his office in the City that needed his presence, so he insisted till the last morning upon going, and then owned himself in no state to go farther than the study, where he tried to write, but found his brain so weak and confused that he could hardly complete a letter, and was obliged to push over even the simplest calculation to Phœbe. In vain she tried to divert his mind from this perilous exertion; he had not taste nor cultivation enough to be interested in anything she could devise, and harping upon some one of the unpleasant topics that occupied his thoughts was his only entertainment when he grew tired of cards or backgammon.
Phœbe sat up late writing to Robert a more minute account of Mervyn’s illness, which she thought must plead for him; and rather sad at heart, she had gone to bed and fallen asleep, when far on in the night a noise startled her. She did not suspect her own imagination of being to blame, except so far as the associations with illness in the house might have recalled the sounds that once had been wont to summon her to her mother’s room. The fear that her brother might be worse made her listen, till the sounds became matters of certainty. Springing to the window, her eyes seemed to stiffen with amaze as she beheld in the clear, full moonlight, on the frosty sward, the distinctly-traced shadow of a horse and cart. The objects themselves were concealed by a clump of young trees, but their forms were distinctly pictured on the turf, and the conviction flashed over her that a robbery must be going forward.
‘Perils and dangers of this night, indeed!’ One prayer, one
thought. She remembered the great house-bell, above the attic stairs in the opposite wing, at the other end of the gallery, which led from the top of the grand staircase, where the chief bedroom doors opened, and a jet of gas burnt all night on the balustrade. Throwing on her dressing-gown, she sped along the passage, and pushing open the swing-door, beheld Mervyn at the door of his own room, and at the head of the stairs a man, in whom she recognized the discarded footman, raising a pistol. One swift bound—her hand was on the gas-pipe. All was darkness, save a dim stripe from within the open door of her mother’s former dressing-room, close to where she stood. She seized the lock, drew it close, and had turned the key before the hand within had time to wrench round the inner handle. That same instant, the flash and report of a pistol made her cry out her brother’s name.