His voice roused her and she rose at once, caught his hand in hers and kissed it again before going to a side-table and eating and drinking whatever Aunt Sophia placed in her hands.
“She’d make a splendid nurse,” said the doctor to himself, “so obedient and patient. I didn’t think she had it in her, but somehow I don’t quite like her and her ways.”
Just then he turned and met Prayle’s eyes fixed upon him rather curiously, and it seemed to him, in his own rather excited state, that his friend’s cousin was watching him in no very amiable way.
The thought passed off on the moment and he went down on one knee by Scarlett’s extemporised couch. For by this time the patient had been made comfortable where he lay with blankets and cushions. The doctor too had found time to change, and had prescribed for himself what he told Aunt Sophia was the tip-top of recuperators in such a case, a strong cup of tea with a tablespoonful of brandy.
“Poor old boy!” he said tenderly, as he laid his hand upon Scarlett’s breast. “Yes, your old heart’s doing its duty once again, and, and—confound it! what a weak fool I am.”
He remained very still for some minutes, so that no one should see the big hot tears that dropped in a most unprofessional fashion upon the blankets and glistened there. But it was a failure as far as one person was concerned, and he might just as well have taken out his handkerchief, wiped his eyes, and had one of those good sonorous blows of the nose indulged in by Englishmen when they feel affected; for under the most painful circumstances, however natural, it is of course exceedingly unmanly of the first made human being to cry. That luxury and relief of an overladen spirit is reserved for the Eves of creation. All the same though, there are few men who do not weep in times of intense mental agony. They almost invariably, however, and by long practice and custom, the result probably of assistance in accordance with Darwinian laws, contrive to switch the lines or rather ducts of their tears, shunt these saline globules of bitterness, and cry through the nose.
“There! he’s going on capitally now,” he said, after a time.—“Mr Prayle, you need not, stay.”
“Oh, I would rather wait,” said Prayle. “He may have a relapse.”
“Oh, I shall be with him,” said the doctor confidently. “I will ask you to leave us now, Mr Prayle. I want to keep the room quiet and cool.”
Arthur Prayle was disposed to resist; but a doctor is an autocrat in a sick-chamber, whom no one but a patient dare disobey; and the result was that Prayle unwillingly left the room.