[CHAPTER XVIII]
THAT NASTY LITTLE STETHOSCOPE! A RETROSPECT ABOUT THE RECTOR AND MISS FOSSETT. A TRANSACTION IN KISSES. AUNT STINGY'S WEEDS, AND WHAT A GOOD COOK SHE WAS
The dead drunkard's funeral expenses had been made conditional on his widow postponing her visit to the Hospital. No doubt the stress laid by Miss Fossett and her brother's friend on Jim's unfitness to receive visitors, was owing to their desire to justify this. It is fair to say that the woman spent the money honourably on its assigned object. She belonged to a class that expresses its emotions in the presence of Death by the celebration of obsequies, just as much as Kings and Princes—perhaps even more, considering its limitations. The classes that keep funeral ecstasies in check are to be found half-way on the human ladder, somewhere.
The object of using the power thus gained was not so much to conceal the story of the drunkard's death—for it was soon clear that Jim would not be injuriously affected by hearing of that—as to keep from him that Lizarann was the worse for her exposure in the snow on that terrible night. It appeared to Miss Fossett and the Rev. Athelstan—or Yorick, as she always called him and thought of him—that a certain amount of playing double was justified by the circumstances. It might have been a very serious throwback to Jim to know that his little lass was being kept away from him by anything but his own wish to be "on his pins again" next time he saw her; and he held on so stoically to his resolution not to see her till then that it seemed a very diluted mendaciousness to say no more of Lizarann's health than that she had caught a slight cold, and would be much better cared for at the schoolhouse than at her aunt's—unless, indeed, Jim especially wished Mrs. Steptoe to have her back. Jim didn't.
"She's such a nice little girl in herself, Yorick," said Miss Fossett a fortnight after Lady Arkroyd's visit to the Hospital, "that one wishes it could be managed." She was referring to a suggestion her ladyship had made.
"Does one, altogether?" was Yorick's reply. "What was it she said?—'Get her away from her terrible surroundings, and give her a chance of doing well.' Our Baronetess is a good-hearted woman in reality—with a little flummery—only she's apt to be taken in by sounding phrases. This one would either mean taking the little person away from her Daddy, or else getting him away from his terrible surroundings. Who's to do it, Addie? You would shirk the task just as much as I, if you knew Jim."
"But couldn't he be got away, too?"
"Well!—of course, I was thinking of that as impracticable at the moment."