He had come straight down to the Castle on hearing of Sydney’s illness, to do what he could for Lord St. Quentin, under this fresh calamity which had fallen on what really seemed a doomed house.
He sat with the marquess in the library, except when, morning and evening, he walked down to the improvised hospital to get the latest news of the battle raging there.
Sometimes it was Dr. Lorry, with the trimness gone from his person and his eyes a little bloodshot, who would come out and report to the lawyer waiting there in the deserted play-ground. Sometimes Hugh’s tall form and young haggard face would emerge from the school-door; or sometimes Miss Morrell, who had come from Donisbro’ when the doctors were at their wits’ end to find sufficient and efficient nurses, and had stayed ever since, toiling with the rest to save the many sick.
Or sometimes it was the Vicar, striding between the Vicarage and the hospital, who would stay to deliver his report upon the fight which he was sharing with the doctors and the nurses.
And Mr. Fenton would go back to Lord St. Quentin, lying staring dumbly at the fire, and thinking—thinking of that Christmas Day, when the girl who lay upstairs in the grip of fever had asked him if he could do nothing for the cottages. If he had only done it then, when she had asked him, what anxiety and distress would have been obviated!
“They are saving so many,” Mr. Fenton would say, “and that young Chichester is invaluable. Dr. Lorry cannot say enough for him. They are saving so many, that one cannot help feeling very hopeful for Miss Lisle.”
“I have no hope,” said St. Quentin.
A specialist from London had come to see the girl on whom so many hopes were centred.
“She is very seriously ill,” had been his verdict—that verdict which seemed so terribly unsatisfying. “A great deal depends upon the nursing. There is no need to give up hope.”