He ran over various necessities. Taking advantage of an hour when Gerald all at once became perfectly quiet, in an unrestful doze, he went out and quickly collected a pile of brush and kindling-wood in the space behind the garden. By throwing some kerosene oil and then water on the blaze he started a dense smoky column that he hoped should attract notice aboard some one of the vessels that glided far out. He came to the conclusion that there must be an uncertain and dangerous chain of reefs and shoals that made it necessary for vessels to give the little place a wide berth. He distinguished a light-house. “To those who know any thing about these Probasco people it will seem like only the farmer burning up some litter on the place, of course. Nobody will think twice about the smoke, unless the farm-folk themselves get sight of it”—which was precisely the case.
The fire smoldering successfully, he set to rummaging in the Probascos’ stock of books for one the title of which had happened to catch his eye a little earlier. He found it, a flashy-backed little volume, “presented” by a patent medicine company, giving some simple directions for taking care of the sick without a doctor. This guide-book showed its chief signs of wear and tear and agitated consultation on the pages devoted to “Rheumatism” and “Influenza,” hinting in what particular emergency it had been oftenest consulted. Devoting himself to one or two dark chimney-cupboards, he unearthed a limited and dingy stock of family medicines. Bottles were half filled and empty. Luckily, one or two of them were called for by Dr. Bentley’s Ready Guide aforesaid. Gerald was too weak to refuse the dose that could be ministered. “For my sake, old fellow. It’s the best I know how to do for you,” Philip said, apologetically; and Gerald, half in stupor, opened his lips. Then, after he had given the younger boy the last teaspoonful prescribed, and had sat beside his pillow a long time with a heavy and more and more fear-shaken heart, he sat down beside the window.
He wrote Mr. Saxton and Mr. Marcy the dispatch and the letter that ought to be ready for any opportunity. When that might arrive, of course, he could not reckon. At any moment communication with the world might be opened to them; it might not be for hours yet, possibly for days. He had given up speculating what had called away their hosts so suddenly, ceased fancying the cause of their absolutely inexplicable delay to return to their home and to the care of house, live stock, and garden. No ordinary accident probably lay at the bottom of the riddle. Now he could think of nothing besides the fact that he and Gerald were here, shut up in this singular asylum together, waiting for its owners and a deliverance to “turn up,” and that Gerald lay there in the broad bed before him lapsing into a fever, now and then into a light-headedness. That topped the list of the anxieties and sufferings of the past week. But he must just take things as they came.
“I never knew before now,” he ended his letter to Mr. Marcy, “what it was to feel a hundred years older, simply because what has happened in a few days has been of a kind to make one feel so. It seems as if it has been as long as that since we were all at the hotel, as gay as larks, and I with no more to worry me than Gerald had. I don’t see how there has been time for so much.” And verily, the Philip Touchtone laughing, rowing races on the lake, playing tennis before the Ossokosee House piazza, and riding about in Mr. Marcy’s light wagon seemed like an insignificant sort of creature who had known nothing of life.
“And to think that I would be—well—that other fellow, that old Philip Touchtone, this minute if Gerald had not happened to come up to the Ossokosee to spend the summer!” he reflected, as his eyes turned upon the sick boy’s flushed face. “But I don’t believe that there are many things in life that happen.” And it is to be concluded that there are not.
Speculations as to Belmont were not left out of his thoughts. Truly there was something more and more malevolent in the man’s conduct, however explainable. But he hoped that that chapter of their experience was ended as abruptly as it had begun.
He induced Gerald to take a light luncheon, feeding him, and coaxing down mouthful after mouthful and sip after sip with the gentleness and persistency of a hospital nurse. (That is, a hospital nurse of a certain kind. There are differences in hospital nurses, decidedly.) Gerald lay quiet for an hour or so afterward. But about three o’clock, when Philip returned from a stolen absence from his bedside (for the sake of their smoldering beacon and for a reconnoiter), he found the sick boy excited, though clear-headed, and needing any cheerfulness and detraction Philip’s sitting down near him could bring.
“Nothing heard from them yet, these—Probascos?” he asked, rolling about on his pillow.
“Not yet. They may march in on us any time before tea.”