"Humph." The doctor glanced at his clinical thermometer. "You have a temperature, young man. Now let me—" he applied the stethoscope. "I am afraid you are in for a bad dose," he said after a careful examination. "I wish you had sent for me twenty-four hours sooner. These things should be taken in time. And it is marvellous how you have kept about so long. But now go to bed at once. Keep yourself warm, and the temperature as even as possible. It is all a matter of nursing; but I'll save—" he had been going to say "your life" but changed the phrase—"your voice, never fear!"
The Tenor smiled: "Pneumonia, I suppose?" he said interrogatively.
"I am sorry to say it is," the doctor answered as he rose to depart; "and double pneumonia, to boot. I'll send you something to take at once"—and he hurried away before the housekeeper had time to speak to him.
When the medicine arrived, however, she had the satisfaction of administering a dose to her master, and she begged at the same time that she might be allowed to stay in the house that night in case he wanted anything, but this the Tenor would not hear of. He did not think he should want anything—(he could think of nothing unfortunately but the risk of mentioning Angelica's name). She might come a little earlier in the morning and get him some tea; probably he would be glad of some then, He was not going to get up in the morning, he really meant to take care of himself. The housekeeper coaxed, but in vain. There was no place for her to sleep in comfort, no bell to summon her, and as to sitting up all night that was out of the question; who would do her work in the morning? There would be plenty of people to look after him to-morrow. One night could make no difference.
Had she heard the doctor's orders she would have disobeyed her master, but as it was his manner imposed upon her, he spoke so confidently; and accordingly she left the house at the usual hour, to the Tenor's great relief.
When she had gone he was seized with an attack of hæmoptysis, and after he had recovered from that sufficiently he went to bed—or rather he found himself there, not knowing quite how it had come to pass, for the disease had made rapid progress in the last few hours, and he now suffered acutely, his temperature was higher, and the terrible sense of suffocation continued to increase.
It was at this time that the dean, in his comfortable easy-chair, looked up from the Tenor's note, and said to his wife deprecatingly: "He is ill, it seems, and wishes to see me. Do you think I need go to-night?"
"No, my dear, certainly not," was the emphatic reply. "There cannot be much the matter with him. I saw him out only yesterday or the day before. And at all events it will do in the morning. You must consider yourself."
So the dean stayed at home to lay up a lifelong regret for himself, but not with an easy conscience. He had a sort of feeling that it would be well to go, which his dislike to turning out on a raw night like that would not have outweighed without his wife's word in the scale.
Nothing was being done to relieve the Tenor. There were no medicines regularly administered, no soothing drinks for him, no equable temperature, no boiling water to keep the atmosphere moist with steam, the common necessaries of such a case; all these the Tenor, knowing his danger, had composedly foregone lest perchance in a moment of delirium he should mention a lady's name; and that he had had the foresight to do so was a cause of earnest thanksgiving to him when every breath of cold air began to stab like a knife through his lungs, and his senses wandered away for lengths of time which he could not compute, and he became conscious that he was uttering his thoughts aloud in spite of himself.