“He’s much better to-day, don’t you think?” was her greeting to the doctor when he came. And Dr. Bryant said afterwards that Mrs. Piercey looked as if she would have flown at his throat when he looked grave. She could not bear to be contradicted or checked in her hopes. And every day she went downstairs and assured Sir Giles that his son would soon be better.
“We can’t expect it to pass in a day,” she said, “for it is a very serious attack.”
“And he has no stamina, no stamina; we always knew it—we were always told that,” said the old gentleman.
Mrs. Piercey looked fiercely at her father-in-law, too. She could not bear to hear this repeated.
“Dear papa,” she said, “it comes hardest always on the strongest men.”
“God bless you, my dear!” cried old Sir Giles, falling a-sobbing, as was his wont when his mind was disturbed, “I believe that’s true.”
Oh, how could he go on living—that old man for whom nobody cared; who did nothing but keep the younger ones out of their own! What had he to live for? Patty wondered, with a wild, yet suppressed rage which no words could express; old, helpless, not able to enjoy anything except that wretched, tedious backgammon, and keeping others out of their own; yet he would live and see Gervase die! He would go on, and on, and see his only child buried, as he had seen his wife, and forget all about it after a week, and play his backgammon, and be guarded by Dunning from every wind that blew. Dunning! Was it Dunning, perhaps, that kept him alive; that knew things which the doctors don’t know? It was natural to Patty’s education and training to think this, and that some private nostrum would do more than all the drugs in the world.
“Shall I send down a nurse to you for a moment,” she said to Sir Giles suddenly, “and will you let Dunning come up and look at him?” Dunning could not refuse to go, but he looked at Patty suspiciously, as if she meant to betray him into some trap.
“I don’t know nothing about that kind of illness,” he said.
“Oh, but you don’t know what kind of illness it is till you see him,” cried Patty. She hastily led the man to her husband’s bedside, and watched his looks while he stood awkwardly, holding as far aloof as he could, looking down upon the half-sleep, half-stupor, in which the patient lay.