CHAPTER XXI.
MISS FRANKLIN'S MISTAKE.
Tom Robinson went still deeper into the shadow of the valley, possibly as far as man ever went and returned. He grew as weak and helpless as an infant, until at last he lost consciousness, and lay prostrate and still, with closed eyes and sealed ears—nothing alive in him save the subtle principle which is compared to a vapour and a breath which no man can see or handle, yet whose presence or absence makes all the difference between an animated body still linked to both worlds and a mass of soulless clay hastening to corruption. All that skill and devotion could do—and Tom Robinson had them both—was to keep on without despairing, maintaining warmth against the growing chillness, and administering stimulants and nourishment by spoonfuls and drops.
On the night which it was feared would be Tom Robinson's last, Miss Franklin would no longer be denied her place among the watchers. She had been kept away in obedience to poor Tom's express orders, that in the attempt to minimize the fever no communication should be kept up on his account between the Corn Exchange where he lay and either his house or "Robinson's," notwithstanding the proofs that the disease did not spread by contagion or infection.
Miss Franklin did not desire to dispossess Annie of the post which, in spite of every remonstrance, she was holding latterly almost night and day. Miss Franklin had no faculty for nursing, and small experience to guide her. She was rather a nervous woman in her impulsiveness, and after one look at what was like the mask of Tom Robinson, utterly incapable of recognizing her or communicating with her, she was so much overcome that she was fain to retire to another room and submit to be gently ministered to by Dora.
Miss Franklin was only too thankful to be suffered to stay there in the background. It did not strike her as odd that nobody in the house except the other patients should go to sleep that night when her cousin was hovering between life and death—nearer death than life. Neither had the outspoken, kind-hearted gentlewoman any particular application of her speech in her mind when she said sorrowfully—"Dear! dear! how grieved he would be if he knew how worn out you were, Miss Dora. He thought that his coming to the hospital would not only serve as a precedent, it would be the simplest, safest, least troublesome plan where he himself was concerned, though if he would have let me, I should have been only too glad to have turned my back on 'Robinson's' for a time, and done what I could for him. There is enough difference in our ages, and I have known him all his life, in addition to our being connections if not near relations, so that nobody need have found fault. Not that I pretend for a moment that I could have done what your sister is doing—that is something quite wonderful in every respect" (and here Miss Franklin did draw up her bountiful figure, and fix the rather small eyes, sunk a little in her full cheeks, pointedly on Dora). "I dare say he liked to have her about him to the last, so long as he was sensible of her presence. Men are extraordinary creatures—that I should say that now, oh! my poor dear cousin Tom."
After she had recovered from her outburst of grief, and was sipping the tea which Dora had made for her, she turned again to her companion. "You look like a ghost yourself, Miss Dora. Will you not lie down in your bedroom and trust me? I shall sit here and bring you word the moment I hear that a change has come;" and at the ill-omened phrase poor Miss Franklin's well-bred, distinct enunciation got all blurred and faltering. In fact she shrank a good deal from the ordeal she was magnanimously proposing for herself. As it happened she had never undergone anything like it before, though she had reached middle age. It was not easy for her to contemplate sitting there all alone through the dreary small hours, knowing that Tom Robinson's spirit—the spirit of the best friend she had ever known—was passing away without word or sign in the adjoining room. It was a relief to her when Dora Millar, looking as if she had been sitting up in turn with every patient in the ward, as pale as a moonbeam and as weak as water, yet shook her head decisively against any suggestion of her retiring to rest.
There was a strong contrast between the couple who were to wait together for death or the morning. Miss Franklin herself might be on the eve of dying—but so long as she lived and went through the mundane process of dressing, she must dress exceedingly well. She was a good, kind woman all the same, and this night she bore a sore heart under her carefully contrived and nicely put on garments.