“I should think we had. The lad can drive over in the milk-cart. Murchison did the thing; he’d better mend it, if he can.”
Murchison drove through the July fields where the corn was rustling for the harvest. The cottage gardens were full of flowers, sweet-pease a-flutter in the sun, the borders packed with scent and color. On the river’s bank the willows drooped lazily, and the meadows had been shorn of their fragrant hay. To the south the pine woods of Marley Down touched the azure of the sky.
His welcome at Boland’s Farm was neither cordial nor inspiring. Murchison had expected sour faces, and sour and sinister they were. Mrs. Baxter was a cynic by choice, one of those women who count their change carefully to the last farthing as though forever expecting to be cheated. Her manner towards Murchison was abrupt and aggressive. She bore herself towards him with a threatening dourness, as though she held him responsible for her husband’s critical condition.
“I am sorry to hear Mr. Baxter is no better.”
The lady looked supremely sapient, as though the brilliance of her genius had foreshadowed the event.
“I think I told you, doctor, that I don’t hold with all this operating.”
“I am sorry that we disagree.”
“Perhaps you will step up-stairs, doctor, and just see Mr. Baxter for yourself.”
Madam’s presence was not enthralling, and Murchison escaped from her with relief. The ugly parlor, with its texts and its piety, seemed part and parcel of the world to which farmer Baxter’s wife belonged. But sick men cannot be responsible for their wives, and Murchison knew that Tom Baxter was more sinned against than sinning.
Nurse Sprange was sitting by the patient’s bed, looking limp and tired, as though her patience had been torn to tatters by Mrs. Baxter’s restless temper. She rose as Murchison entered, and drew back the curtains to let more light into the room. Murchison nodded to her, and took the chair that she had left. The farmer was lying very still and straight, his eyes half closed, his breathing shallow, as though any expansion of the chest gave him acute pain.