As the door closed on Ernest, the doctor just gently wiped a certain unusual dew off his gold spectacles with a corner of his spotless handkerchief. ‘He’s a good fellow,’ he murmured to himself, ‘an excellent fellow; but he doesn’t manage to combine with the innocence of the dove the wisdom of the serpent. Poor boy, poor boy, I’m afraid he’ll sink, but we must do what we can to keep his chin floating above the water. And now I must go back to the study to have out my explanation with that detestable thick-headed old pig of a Blenkinsopp! “Your views about young Le Breton,” I must say to him, “are unfortunately only too well founded; and I have been compelled to dismiss him this very hour from Pilbury Grammar School.” Ugh—how humiliating! the profession’s really enough to give one a perfect sickening of life altogether!’
CHAPTER XXIII. — THE STREETS OF ASKELON.
Before the end of the quarter, two things occurred which made almost as serious a difference to Ernest’s and Edie’s lives as the dismissal from Pilbury Regis Grammar School. It was about a week or ten days after Herr Max’s unfortunate visit that Ernest awoke one morning with a very curious and unpleasant taste in his mouth, accompanied by a violent fit of coughing. He knew what the taste was well enough; and he mentioned the matter casually to Edie a little later in the morning. Edie was naturally frightened at the symptoms, and made him go to see the school doctor. The doctor felt his pulse attentively, listened with his stethoscope at the chest, punched and pummelled the patient all over in the most orthodox fashion, and asked the usual inquisitorial personal questions about all the other members of his family. When he heard about Ronald’s predisposition, he shook his head seriously, and feared there was really something in it. Increased vocal resonance at the top of the left lung, he must admit. Some tendency to tubercular deposit there, and perhaps even a slight deep-seated cavity. Ernest must take care of himself for the present, and keep himself as free as possible from all kind of worry or anxiety.
‘Is it consumption, do you think, Dr. Sanders?’ Edie asked breathlessly.
‘Well, consumption, Mrs. Le Breton, is a very vague and indefinite expression,’ said the doctor, tapping his white shirtcuff with his nail in his slowest and most deliberate manner. ‘It may mean a great deal, or it may mean very little. I don’t want in any way to alarm you, or to alarm your husband; but there’s certainly a marked incipient tendency towards tubercular deposit. Yes, tubercular deposit... Well, if you ask me the question point-blank, I should say so... certainly... I should say it was phthisis, very little doubt of it... In short, what some people would call consumption.’
Ernest went home with Edie, comforting her all the way as well as he was able, and trying to make light of it, but feeling in his own heart that the look-out was decidedly beginning to gather blacker and darker than ever before them. Through the rest of that term he worked as well as he could; but Edie noticed every morning that the cough was getting worse and worse; and long before the time came for them to leave Pilbury he had begun to look distinctly delicate. Care for Edie and for the future was telling on him: his frame had never been very robust, and the anxieties of the last year had brought out the same latent hereditary tendency which had shown itself earlier and more markedly in the case of his brother Ronald.
Meanwhile, Dr. Greatrex was assiduous in looking about for something or other that Ernest could turn his hand to, and writing letters with indefatigable kindness to all his colleagues and correspondents: for though he was, as Ernest said, a most unmitigated humbug, that was really his only fault; and when his sympathies were once really aroused, as the Le Bretons had aroused them, there was no stone he would leave unturned if only his energy could be of any service to those whom he wished to benefit. But unfortunately in this case it couldn’t. ‘I’m at my wit’s end what to do with you, Le Breton,’ he said kindly one morning to Ernest: ‘but how on earth I’m to manage anything, I can’t imagine. For my own part, you know, though your conduct about that poor man Schurz (a well-meaning harmless fanatic, I dare say) was really a public scandal—from the point of view of parents I mean, my dear fellow, from the point of view of parents—I should almost be inclined to keep you on here in spite of it, and brave the public opinion of Pilbury Regis, if it depended entirely upon my own judgment. But in the management of a school, my dear boy, as you yourself must be aware, a head master isn’t the sole and only authority; there are the governors, for example, Le Breton, and—and—and, ur, there’s Mrs. Greatrex. Now, in all matters of social discipline and attitude, Mrs. Greatrex is justly of equal authority with me; and Mrs. Greatrex thinks it would never do to keep you at Pilbury. So, of course, that practically settles the question. I’m awfully sorry, Le Breton, dreadfully sorry, but I don’t see my way out of it. The mischief’s done already, to some extent, for all Pilbury knows now that Schurz came down here to stop with you at your lodgings: but if I were to keep you on they’d say I didn’t disapprove of Schurz’s opinions, and that would naturally be simple ruination for the school—simple ruination.’
Ernest thanked him sincerely for the trouble he had taken, but wondered desperately in his own heart what sort of future could ever be in store for them.