“No, dear, only to me, or I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
He looked at her a moment in silence, then he laughed, but grew grave again before he spoke.
“No; you understand,” he said, and then the poisonous fumes of the drug stirred and recommended caution in his brain. “I think you would always understand,” he said. “I think I would always tell you everything.”
“About to-day, then,” said she. “You may tell me about it now. Oh, how wise I was not letting you talk before dinner! I’m sure you were taking a neuralgic view.”
“I was. I was thinking only of poor Sandie, who, they are afraid, is dying, instead of thinking about Donald Fraser’s wife, who seems to be a little better, though yesterday they thought she could not live. It was the Lady Neuralgia who made me remember the one and forget the other. There was something else, too, I wanted to talk about with you. It’s this, Maud. I made the plan only this morning: I couldn’t have told you before.”
He paused a moment. That last sentence, again, was, though absolutely true, an effort of self-justification. He had acquiesced in deceiving Maud on one point, should that point come forward; he felt as if he had to tell not only her, but himself, that he was showing the whole truth about this.
“I know you will feel with me,” he said, “though no doubt Catherine will make a fuss when she knows, if she ever does, and will probably paint everything with carbolic. But I must turn this house into a hospital for all those poor folk—for all, at least, who can be moved here. Think of it! A case appears in one of those tiny houses, and what happens? There are three, or perhaps four, rooms in them, and the whole of the family has to live in two rooms, or at the most three. The sick-room, too, where it is most important that there should be plenty of air—it is ten feet by twelve, and one small window! Dr. Symes agrees with me. He thinks, at any rate, that any case would have a much better chance up here. The moving is easy. They have one ambulance bed, and I have ordered more to-day from Inverness.”
He lit a cigarette, and saw Maud looking at him with shining eyes. This was the Thurso whom she knew and loved. Then he went on:
“There’s the big dining-room here,” he said: “it will hold a dozen beds. There is the hall: it will hold eighteen, I should think. There are all the bedrooms; there is the billiard-room. Also, up here every nurse can look after twice the number of patients that she can attend to in scattered cottages, and look after them all much better. So I have given orders. Dr. Symes will move up here to-morrow all those whom he thinks can be moved without undue risk. All fresh cases will come up here at once. Of course, you will go back to town. I—I appreciate tremendously your coming here at all, but now it will be impossible for you to stop in the house.”
Maud laughed.