Edward Arundel had held Nature in abeyance for more than four–and–twenty hours, and this outraged Nature now took her revenge by flinging the young man prostrate and powerless upon his bed at the simple Kemberling hostelry, and holding him prisoner there for three dreary days; three miserable days, with long, dark interminable evenings, during which the invalid had no better employment than to lie brooding over his sorrows, while Mr. Morrison read the "Times" newspaper in a monotonous and droning voice, for his sick master's entertainment.
How that helpless and prostrate prisoner, bound hand and foot in the stern grasp of retaliative Nature, loathed the leading–articles, the foreign correspondence, in the leviathan journal! How he sickened at the fiery English of Printing–House Square, as expounded by Mr. Morrison! The sound of the valet's voice was like the unbroken flow of a dull river. The great names that surged up every now and then upon that sluggish tide of oratory made no impression upon the sick man's mind. What was it to him if the glory of England were in danger, the freedom of a mighty people wavering in the balance? What was it to him if famine–stricken Ireland were perishing, and the far–away Indian possessions menaced by contumacious and treacherous Sikhs? What was it to him if the heavens were shrivelled like a blazing scroll, and the earth reeling on its shaken foundations? What had he to do with any catastrophe except that which had fallen upon his innocent young wife?
"O my broken trust!" he muttered sometimes, to the alarm of the confidential servant; "O my broken trust!"
But during the three days in which Captain Arundel lay in the best chamber at the Black Bull––the chief inn of Kemberling, and a very splendid place of public entertainment long ago, when all the northward–bound coaches had passed through that quiet Lincolnshire village––he was not without a medical attendant to give him some feeble help in the way of drugs and doctor's stuff, in the battle which he was fighting with offended Nature. I don't know but that the help, however well intended, may have gone rather to strengthen the hand of the enemy; for in those days––the year '48 is very long ago when we take the measure of time by science––country practitioners were apt to place themselves upon the side of the disease rather than of the patient, and to assist grim Death in his siege, by lending the professional aid of purgatives and phlebotomy.
On this principle Mr. George Weston, the surgeon of Kemberling, and the submissive and well–tutored husband of Paul Marchmont's sister, would fain have set to work with the prostrate soldier, on the plea that the patient's skin was hot and dry, and his white lips parched with fever. But Captain Arundel protested vehemently against any such treatment.
"You shall not take an ounce of blood out of my veins," he said, "or give me one drop of medicine that will weaken me. What I want is strength; strength to get up and leave this intolerable room, and go about the business that I have to do. As to fever," he added scornfully, "as long as I have to lie here and am hindered from going about the business of my life, every drop of my blood will boil with a fever that all the drugs in Apothecaries' Hall would have no power to subdue. Give me something to strengthen me. Patch me up somehow or other, Mr. Weston, if you can. But I warn you that, if you keep me long here, I shall leave this place either a corpse or a madman."
The surgeon, drinking tea with his wife and brother–in–law half an hour afterwards, related the conversation that had taken place between himself and his patient, breaking up his narrative with a great many "I said's" and "said he's," and with a good deal of rambling commentary upon the text.
Lavinia Weston looked at her brother while the surgeon told his story.
"He is very desperate about his wife, then, this dashing young captain?" Mr. Marchmont said, presently.
"Awful," answered the surgeon; "regular awful. I never saw anything like it. Really it was enough to cut a man up to hear him go on so. He asked me all sorts of questions about the time when she was ill and I attended upon her, and what did she say to me, and did she seem very unhappy, and all that sort of thing. Upon my word, you know, Mr. Paul,––of course I am very glad to think of your coming into the fortune, and I'm very much obliged to you for the kind promises you've made to me and Lavinia; but I almost felt as if I could have wished the poor young lady hadn't drowned herself."