“That’s right, Martin—and if I were you I’d have the doctor from Plymouth again.”
Life had been so full of bliss lately, and yet he had not been afraid. Yes, it was the old story. “Metuit secundis.” That is what the wise man does. Fools do otherwise—hug themselves in their short-lived gladness, and say in their hearts, “There is no death.”
Mr. Baynham came in the afternoon, in answer to a little note from Martin Disney, and he and Isola were closeted together in the library for some time, with baby’s nurse in attendance to assist her mistress in preparing for the ordeal by stethoscope. Happily that little instrument which thrills us all with the aching pain of fear when we see it in the doctor’s hand, told no evil tidings of Isola’s lungs or heart. Thero was nothing organically wrong—but the patient was in a very weak state.
“You really are uncommonly low,” said Mr. Baynham, looking at her intently as she stood before him in the wintry sunlight. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing to yourself to bring yourself down so much since last summer—after all the trouble I took to build you up, too. I’m afraid you’ve been worrying yourself about the youngster—a regular young Hercules. I don’t know whether he’d be up to strangling a pair of prize pythons; but I’m sure he could strangle you. I shall send you a tonic; and you’ll have to take a good deal more care of yourself than you seem to have been taking lately.”
And then he laid down severe rules as to diet, until it seemed to Isola that he wished her to be eating and drinking all day—new-laid eggs, cream, old port, beef-tea—all the things which she had loathed in the dreary days of her long illness.
Mr. Baynham had a serious talk with the colonel after he left Isola, and it was agreed between them that she should be taken to Plymouth next day to see the great authority.
“You are giving yourself a great deal too much trouble about me, Martin,” she said. “There is nothing wrong. I am only a little weak and tired sometimes.”
Her husband looked at her heart-brokenly. Weak and tired. Yes; there were all the signs of failing life in those languid movements of the long, slender limbs, in the transparent pallor of the ethereal countenance. Decay was lovely in this fair young form; but he felt that it was decay. There must be something done to stop Misfortune’s hastening feet.
He questioned his wife, he questioned his own memory, as to when the change had begun, and on looking back thus thoughtfully it seemed to him that her spirits and her strength had flagged from the time of Captain Hulbert’s arrival at Fowey. She had seemed tolerably cheerful until then, interested in life, ready to participate in any amusement or occupation of Allegra’s; but from the beginning of their yachting excursions there had been a change. She had shrunk from any share in their plans or expeditions. She had gone on board the yacht—on the two or three occasions when she had been persuaded to go—with obvious reluctance, and she had been silent and joyless all the time she was there. Within the last fortnight, when Captain Hulbert had pressed her to go to luncheon or afternoon tea at the Mount, she had persistently refused. She had begged her husband to take Allegra, and to excuse her.