Sir Harry chuckled. “Give the poor fellow the support of your presence when possible. But don’t attempt to dissuade your sister from a close attendance on him, for you’ll get the worst of it. Never interfere with a woman in her own province. She knows what will bring her consolation, though you mayn’t realise it. That’s the advice of one who has had a good deal to do with women.”
“I’m sorry the association has been so unfortunate as to teach you such wisdom, General.”
“You young dog!” Sir Harry turned back on the verandah step and chuckled again. “But you’re wrong there. I thank Heaven no woman has ever known sorrow through me. Many are the tears I have kissed away, but never caused one to flow. And you are thinking, you irreverent young rascal”—with a renewed chuckle—“that to be kissed by a battered old phiz like mine would be more likely to draw tears than to allay ’em. I know you young fellows!”
“I wouldn’t dream of such a thought, sir!” with virtuous indignation. “But all the same, I’d give a good deal to be sure you don’t draw floods of ’em from my little Sally when I ask you for her, before you say yes!” he added sotto voce, as he supported himself by the pillar while Sir Harry mounted his horse and called out a farewell message to Eveleen.
CHAPTER XX.
IF SHE WILL, SHE WILL.
It would be pleasant to state that the shock Eveleen had received turned her in one hour into a normal wife, and that feminine intuition taught her to care for her husband in his weakness without jarring him by too great eagerness, but it would not be in accordance with the facts. Perhaps the ladies who disliked her were justified in saying that she was unwomanly. At any rate, the truth remains that she was absolutely incapable of realising that there are times—and a good many of them—when the soul of a sick person yearns for nothing on earth but to be let alone. She could not let Richard alone. If she was not doing some totally unnecessary and undesired thing for him, she was thinking of something to do, and if she could not think of any thing, she was asking him to suggest something. His bearer knew exactly how to make him comfortable in bed, but it would have been asking too much of Eveleen to expect her to believe this. She was quite certain she could arrange things more to his taste than any one else, and she arranged them complacently to her taste, only to see a possible improvement in less than five minutes, and to proceed to make it. Richard’s hours were passed in undergoing a continual series of experiments—each of which had to be talked about beforehand, discussed while it was in progress, and made the subject of mutual congratulation when it was over, until the next inspiration dawned on Eveleen’s mind. He could not quite decide whether the talking made it worse or better. It added the tortures of anticipation to those of realisation, certainly, but it might have been worse if he had been seized upon without warning. He was too weak to protest, too weary to be sarcastic, though he derived not merely bodily satisfaction, but a glimmering of amusement, from the air of portentous patience with which his bearer would take any and every opportunity of the Beebee’s absence to reverse each and all of her arrangements, and make his master comfortable in his own way. Perhaps it was as well that Eveleen’s inventive brain provided her with so many new and infallible ideas for the better treatment of the sick, since she could never be quite sure that the arrangement she found in force on her return might not have been her own latest experiment but one, and not the bearer’s at all. Her satisfaction in having her husband all to herself, and being able to do everything for him—she told him so perpetually—was so complete that Richard had not the heart to disturb it, and sufferance being the badge of the bearer’s tribe, he refrained likewise. The surgeon was the only person whose authority she acknowledged—to a certain extent,—and he knew better than to wound her, and probably provoke a scene, by throwing doubts on her capacity as a nurse. What he did, and earned thereby the patient’s sincerest gratitude, was to insist on her taking regular exercise—or in the enthusiasm of her self-sacrifice she would have forsworn even her beloved rides. The doctor used to detect, or so he imagined, a faint smile in the eyes of the man on the bed when he took upon himself, with friendly violence, to propel Mrs Ambrose from the sick-room. “Just a short ride, my dear madam, beside your good brother’s palkee”—for the surgeons had fulfilled Brian’s darkest anticipations by condemning him to a recumbent position and no riding for a week at least—“to cheer him up and give you a little change of scene. Otherwise”—darkly—“we shall have you unable to resume your kind care of Ambrose to-morrow, and what would become of him then?” with, it is to be feared, a perceptible wink directed towards the patient.
Richard’s constitution—mental as well as physical—must have been a good one, for he succeeded in surviving not merely his own imprudence on the day of the battle, but his wife’s nursing after it, and in arriving at the point when the surgeon said cheerfully, “Now we ought to see some improvement every day!” But the forecast was not justified. There was no relapse, but also no further improvement. The patient remained in the same state day after day—unwilling or unable to attempt exertion of any kind, still asking merely to be let alone. It was only natural that Eveleen should become impatient. Her active mind had run ahead of reality so far as to picture him convalescent and established out of doors in the shade, with herself fetching and carrying for him and anticipating his slightest wish. The trifling drawback that there was no shade out of doors did not at first suggest itself to her. The hot weather was coming on fast, and the emerald greenery which had made the country round Qadirabad such a refreshing sight to Indian eyes was growing brown and parched. Happily the Residency had been built to suit the climate, with thick walls and heavy chunamed verandahs, and an abundant supply of the mud-brick ventilators evolved by local talent—erected on the roof to catch every breath of air, and convey it in the form of wind down a kind of chimney into each room, accompanied by a disproportionate quantity of dust. But even in the Residency Eveleen gasped for breath behind the close-drawn blinds, and felt that life was only worth living when night and darkness made it possible to move about again outside, though only to find that all her favourite leafy spots were sere and dry. Then—probably by force of contrast—the thought of Bab-us-Sahel and the sea suggested itself to her, and instantly her mind was made up that a trip to Bab-us-Sahel was what Richard needed to restore him to health. Of course he would never shake off his lassitude here, with the hot breath of the desert blasting the vegetation and burning everything up. A voyage down the river—peacefully floating onwards night and day, drawing nearer each hour to real sea-breezes—that was what would cure him, and he must and should have it. She said so—without a thought of encountering opposition—to Brian, just promoted to a gentle ride morning and evening instead of the humiliating palkee, and was astonished and wounded to find that he did not agree with her.
“Can’t you leave the poor fellow alone?” he demanded. “Sure he only wants not to be teased and worried.”
“But who teases and worries him, I’d like to know? It’s rousing he wants—any one could see that.”
“Ask the doctor, can’t you? and see what he’ll tell you.”