Bessy Rane: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

[CHAPTER XIII.]

PANIC

The funerals were going about in Dallory. Dr. Rane's prognostications had proved correct; the fever was severe. It spread, and a panic set in.

As yet it had been confined to the poor. To those who for some months now had been living in despair and poverty. Some called it a famine fever; some a relapsing fever; some typhus fever: but, whatever the name accorded to it, one thing was certain--it was of a malignant and fatal type.

It possessed a somewhat singular feature: it had seemed to break out all at once--in a single night. Before the doctors had well ascertained that anything of the kind was in the air, before most of the public had so much as heard of it, it came upon them. The probability of course was that it had been smouldering for some days. On the afternoon that witnessed madam's departure from Dallory Hall--after the receipt of the telegram and the reading of Dick's letter--there had not been one decided case: in the morning no less than seven cases had shown themselves. After that, it spread rapidly.

Madam remained away. James Bohun was dead, and she stayed with Sir Nash. Matilda North, taking French leave, went up to join her without an invitation; she did not care to stay in the midst of the sickness. So the master of Dallory Hall was alone, and enjoyed his liberty as much as trouble had left him any capacity for enjoyment.

A week or ten days had passed on since the outbreak, and the funerals were going about Dallory. The two medical men, Dr. Rane and Mr. Seeley, were worked nearly off their legs. The panic was at its height. Dallory had been an exceptionally healthy place: people were not used to this state of things, and grew frightened. Some of the better families took flight, for the seaside, or elsewhere. The long-continued distress, resulting on the strike, had predisposed the poorer classes for it. It was they whom it chiefly attacked, but there were now two or three cases amongst their betters. This was no time for the medical men to speculate whether they should or should not be paid; they put all such considerations aside, and gave the poor sufferers their best care. Dr. Rane in particular was tenderly assiduous with his patients. In spite of that fatal letter and the mistake--nay, the sin--it involved, he was a humane man. Were he a successful practitioner, making his hundreds or his thousands a-year, as might be, he would be one of the first and readiest to give away largely of his time and skill to any who could not afford to pay him.

The last person whom the fever had attacked was one of the brothers Hepburn, of Dallory, undertakers, carpenters, and coffin-makers. Both were sickly men, but very steady and respectable. The younger brother, Henry, was the one seized: it was universally assumed that he caught it in the discharge of certain of the duties of his calling, and the supposition did not tend to decrease the public panic. Dr. Rane thought him a bad subject for the illness, and did all he could for him.

Bessy Rane stood in her kitchen, making an apple pudding. It is rather a sudden transition of subject, from sickness to puddings, but only in accordance with life. Whatever calamity may be decimating society around, the domestic routine of existence goes on at home in its ordinary course. Molly Green was pudding-maker in general: but Molly was hastening over her other work that day, for she had obtained leave to go home in the evening to see her mother: a woman who had been ailing for years with chronic illness, and lived at Whitborough. So Bessy this morning took the pudding upon herself.

Mrs. Rane stood at the table; a brown holland apron tied over her light morning gown, her sleeves turned up to the middle of her delicate arms. Hands and wrists and arms were alike pretty and refined. The apples were in a basin, ready pared, and she was rolling out the crust. Ever and anon she glanced at the kitchen clock. Her husband had been called out at four o'clock that morning, and she was growing a little anxious. Now it was close upon eleven. It cannot be said that Bessy was afraid of the fever for him: she shared in the popular belief that medical men are generally exempt from infection; but she was always glad to see him arrive home safe and well.