Volume Three—Chapter Nineteen.
Rest at Last.
A couple of months had glided away, during which time Richard Glaire had recovered from the severe injuries he had received in the accident, and then, as he said, gone on the continent to recruit his shattered nerves; though in confidence Doctor Purley told his lodger Dick Glaire’s nerves were stronger than ever, in consequence of eight weeks’ enforced attention to the orders of his medical man.
Richard wanted to get away, for several things had occurred to annoy him. He was only just recovering, when the news reached him that Daisy Banks had become Tom Podmore’s wife; and this was at a time when he was in the habit of saying bitter things to Mrs Glaire about the disgraceful arrangement by which Eve was still at the vicarage, where she had been carried from the church, and where she had lain through her long illness which followed, during which she was for weeks delirious, and knew neither of those who watched incessantly by her side.
Daisy Banks was her most constant attendant, and had taken up her residence at the vicarage with Miss Purley, who had told the vicar she would do anything to oblige him; and when he thanked her warmly, had gone up to her room at once to prepare, and sat down, poor woman, and cried with misery, because she was forty-three, very thin, and no one ever had, and probably never would, ask her to be a wife.
So the vicar became Doctor Purley’s lodger, never once crossing his own threshold, and Mrs Glaire went down daily from her son’s sick bed, to see how poor Eve sped.
Days and days of anxiety and anxious watching of the doctor’s face as he came home from his visits, and little hope. Days when the eminent physician from the county town came over, to give his supplementary advice; and still, though both doctors shook their heads, Eve lived on—a wavering flame, ready to be extinguished by the first rough waft of air.
“Selwood,” said the doctor one night, “I’ve lost over a stone weight since I’ve been attending that poor girl, and I’ve done my best; everything I know, or could get from others. I’m going back now, for this is about the critical time, and I shall stay all night. Why, man! Come, come, I say.”