‘But you will be no use anywhere when you are dead. A living dog, you know, is of more value in the world than a dead lion. If you go on doing the lion’s work yonder you will soon be in the condition of the dead lion, and of less use than the most insignificant live dog. They would stuff you and put you in a glass case, no doubt—or rather they would subscribe for a handsome tablet in the parish church, setting out your virtues—but the tablet would be useful to no one.’
‘Your argument is forcible,’ said Cyril. ‘If I find myself really breaking down at Bridford I will ask you to let me come back to my work here.’
‘Be sure you do.’
The cousins were not alone together during any part of the evening. It was between ten and eleven o’clock when the Vicar and Kenrick returned from the Water House, and they found Mrs. Dulcimer alone in the library.
‘Poor Cyril was tired after his journey,’ she said, ‘and I persuaded him to go to bed half an hour ago. Oh, Clement, I never saw such a change in any young man. I’m afraid he’s going into a decline.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ exclaimed the Vicar. ‘There’s nothing consumptive about the Culverhouses. Cyril has the shoulders of an athlete, and the constitution of a Spartan, reared at the public tables on the leavings of the old men. But if he goes on working night and day in the tainted air of Bridford, he will get himself into such a feeble state that his next attack of fever will be fatal.’
‘I am sure I had no idea he was so seriously ill last September, or I should have gone to Bridford to see him,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, ‘but he tells me he had excellent nurses, two Frenchwomen, sisters of some charitable order. You needn’t be frightened, Clement. They were not nuns; and they made no attempt to convert him.’
‘I would not despise them if they had made the attempt,’ answered the Vicar. ‘Every man has a right to offer his idea of salvation to his brother. The feeling is right, though the theology may be wrong.’
Kenrick was up soon after seven o’clock next morning, a wintry gray morning, without a ray of sunshine to gild his hopes. He was nearly dressed when he was startled by the sharp voice of Rebecca.
‘A letter, sir, brought by hand from the Water House. I’ve put it under the door.’