"None," he answered. "It is not in my nature to be false, even in sport."
Her laugh changed to one of derision; and Mr. St. John, disliking the sound, disliking the words, turned from her, and joined the dean, who was then deep in a discussion with one of the judges.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
The days went on; and the dull, heavy pain in the head, complained of by Henry Arkell, increased in intensity. At first his absence from his desk at school, his vacant place at college, excited comment, but in time, as the newness of it wore off, it grew to be no longer noticed. It is so with all things. On the afternoon of the fall, the family surgeon was called in to him: he saw no cause for apprehension, he said; the head only required rest. It might have been better, perhaps, had the head (including the body and brain) been able to take the recommended rest; but it could not. On the Monday morning came the excitement of the medal affair, as related to him by Mr. St. John, and also by many of the school; in the evening there occurred the excitement of that business of the register; the interview with the Prattletons, and subsequently with Mr. Fauntleroy. On the next day he had to appear as a witness; and then came the deanery dinner in the evening and Georgina Beauclerc. All sources of great and unwonted excitement, had he been in his usual state of health: what it was to him now, never could be ascertained.
As the days went on, and the pain grew no better, but worse, and the patient more heavy, it dawned into the surgeon's mind that he possibly did not understand the case, and it might be as well to have the advice of a physician. The most clever the city afforded was summoned, and he did not appear to understand it either. That there was some internal injury to the head, both agreed; but what it might be, it was not so easy to state. And thus more days crept on, and the doctors paid their regular visits, and the pain still grew worse; and then the half-shadowed doubt glided into a certainty which had little shadow about it, but stern substance—that the injury was rapidly running on to a fatal issue.
He did not take to his bed: he would sit at his chamber window in an easy chair, his poor aching-head resting on a pillow. "You would be better in bed," everybody said to him. "No, he thought he was best up," he answered; "it was more change: when he was tired of the chair and the pillow, he could lie down outside the bed." "It is unaccountable his liking to be so much at the window," Mrs. Peter Arkell remarked to Lucy. To them it might be; for how could they know that a sight of one who might pass and cast a glance up to him, made his day's happiness?
That considerable commotion was excited by the opinion of the doctors, however cautiously intimated, was only to be expected. Mr. Arkell heard of it, and brought another physician, without saying anything beforehand at Peter's. But it would seem that this gentleman's opinion did not differ in any material degree from that of his brethren.
The Reverend Mr. Wilberforce sat at the head of his dinner-table, eating his own dinner and carving for his pupils. His face looked hot and angry, and his spectacles were pushed to the top of his brow, for if there was one thing more than another that excited the ire of the master, it was that of the boys being unpunctual at meals, and Cookesley had this day chosen to be absent. The second serving of boiled beef was going round when he made his appearance.