‘Do without you? Yes. I’ve a man at hand that will swallow your lines and biz in half an hour. Get a fire in your bedroom; have a good stiff glass of rum as hot as you can drink it. Get somebody to make you cayenne pills—cayenne-pepper and bread-crumbs. Take three or four, and have ‘em hot. Why, man alive, you’ve got an ague!’
The cab was brought, and Paul was helped into it and driven home. He could not lift his hand above his head to pay the fare, and the cabman descended grumblingly to take it; but seeing how his fare’s feet fumbled at the steps, got down a second time to help him to the door. Paul walked into the dining-room, hat in hand, and bent The boarders were at dessert, and Claudia for once was with them.
‘No beggars allowed in this bar,’ said one of the professional boarders jocularly, thinking the entrance a bit of playful masquerade.
‘I’m not very well,’ said Paul, with a frog-like roop. ‘I’ve been down to the theatre, and Walton has sent me home again. I’m afraid I can’t quite manage to get upstairs.’
He did not look at Claudia, but he was conscious of her gaze, and he knew somehow that there was fright in her eyes.
Two of the boarders engineered him to his room, and one undressed him whilst the other ran for rum and cayenne-pepper. They were all theatrical folk in the house, and kindly in case of trouble, as their tribe is always. Paul was put to bed, and had extra blankets heaped upon him, and a fire was lit in the grate. He was dosed with hot rum-and-water and the cayenne pills, and was then left, first to grow maudlin, and next to fall into a sleep which was full of monstrous dreams. At one time he lay in a great cleft between two hills, and stones rolled down upon him, causing him dull pain; then the stones formed themselves into a fence—a kind of rough arch on which other stones battered without ceasing till he was walled in thickly. At another time he had to climb up an endless hill, with hot chains about his loins and knees.
Somebody came into his room with a candle, and the light awoke him. It was one of his fellow-boarders back from the theatre, with news that it was nearly midnight. He forced more hot rum on the patient, and sat with him until he was sound asleep. The liquor did its work, and he slept without dreams until daylight. He strove to rise and dress, but the task was beyond him, and there was nothing left but to lie and stare at the ceiling, and to say to himself over and over again, without a touch of interest or feeling: ‘It’s good-bye to Claudia.’ The landlady came to see him, and found him burning and shivering, and complaining of the bitter cold. She went away, and came back again with a doctor, who told him cheerfully that he was in for rheumatic fever, big or little, as sure as a gun.
‘But he’s young, ma’am,’ said the doctor—‘he’s young, and we shall pull him through.’
‘Can he be moved?’ asked the landlady.
‘Moved? No, possibly not for weeks.’