“Well, I do feel most uncommonly seedy,—no doubt about that,—having just waded through my packing somehow, and ‘bitterly thought of the morrow’, and how many leagues and hours lie between me and a snug bed, clean sheets and beef tea. But, somehow or other I do mean to push through and trust my luck for falling as usual on my feet, catlike. Specially anxious, by the bye, not to be spied out here or it’ll all go down to the baths”—she had been bathing in the Rhine before breakfast—“as I daresay this heavy cold may, which reduces me to, or below, the level of the inferior animals.
Well, three days hence! Who can’t hold out that time?”
She certainly did her best to “hold out,” dragged herself out of bed, and went downstairs looking like “une déterrée,” so Frl. v. Palaus said. She refused to see the school doctor, believing that he would prevent her going home, and also that he would insist upon her keeping her window shut. For some reason unknown Frl. v. Palaus resolutely declined to have an English doctor sent for, and so things went on for a day or two till the patient agreed that the German doctor should be allowed to say whether her throat was “of importance.” Whether he was allowed adequate means of arriving at a diagnosis we have no means of knowing. In any case his answer was in the negative. Two days later the patient was obviously suffering from a sharp and typical attack of scarlet fever.
It really was a blow, poor child! She was so longing for her Mother, “My year’s work just done so painfully,—and now my cruse snatched from my lips. It is hard, hard! I didn’t one moment doubt it was right,—only very hard.” Then like an audible voice came the reminder of the inner light, and all pain went.
It does not necessarily follow that she proved a very easy patient, though she tried hard to be reasonable, and even to keep her window shut at night, which was quite unreasonable. The whole situation was sufficiently trying for Frl. v. Palaus; and S. J.-B., although she and her nurse became attached to each other, got little of the petting which throughout life she so greatly valued when just the right person bestowed it. Her Mother’s letters as usual were an infinite comfort, and her Father was with difficulty prevented from sending out a London physician to look after her, and, in due time, bring her home.
She made a good recovery, and was allowed to start for England on the 27th, when an English lady was engaged to accompany her. “Very like getting out of purgatory into heaven,” she says. “The dear old folks!”
Her Father was nervous about infection, and, fortunately for him, a trifling driving accident some four or five days after her return forced her to consult “Sam Scott.” “He couldn’t swear me free of fever, but said, ‘If you meet my children on the cliff, you may kiss them.’”
So S. J.-B. settled down once more to the old life at home, not without occasional “cataracts and breaks,” for her Father did not advance with the times, and hers was not the only hasty temper in the family. But she never doubted that a definite work was in store for her somewhere.
Her diary is sometimes amusing reading. To an acquaintance who—after visiting at Sussex Square and hearing the intimate fireside names—wrote to her as “My dear Jack,” she replies,