XV

A few days after he got a letter from Lizzie, saying she was alone and ill, and asking him to come and see her. He took the next train to Brighton. The land-lady's daughter, a girl of about twelve, opened the door to him.

“How is Miss Baker? Is she any better?”

“Please, sir, she is not at all well, she has cold shivers; and mother went away yesterday.”

“And who looks after Miss Baker?”

“Please, sir, I do.”

“You do! Is there no one else in the house?”

“No, sir.”

“Is Miss Baker in bed?”

“No, sir. She said she would get up a little while this afternoon, 'cause she said she thought you was coming.”

“Go and tell her I am here.”

“Please, sir, she said you was to go upstairs—the back room on the second floor, please.”

“Come in.”

“I am so sorry you are ill, Lizzie. What is the matter?”

“I don't know; I think I caught a severe chill. I stayed out very late on the beach.”

“But why are you crying? Do tell me. Can I do anything?”

“No no. What does it matter whether I laugh or cry? Nothing matters now. I don't care what becomes of me.”

“A pretty girl like you; nonsense! Some one rich and grand will fall in love with you, and give you everything you want.”

“I don't want any one to fall in love with me; I am done for—don't care what becomes of me.”

“Do tell me about it. Have you heard anything further about him? Do tell me; don't cry like that.”

“No, no, leave me, leave me! I am so miserable. I don't know why I wrote to you. I hope I shall die.”

“It is very lucky you did write to me, for you are clearly very ill. What is the matter?”

“I don't know; I can't get warm. This room is very cold—don't you think so?”

“Cold? No.”

“I feel cold; my throat is very bad—perhaps I shall be better in the morning.”

“You must see a doctor.”

“Oh, no! I don't want to see a doctor.”

“You must see a doctor.”

“No, no, I beg of you. I only wrote to you because I was feeling so miserable.”

Lizzie stood between him and the door, imploring him not to fetch a doctor, but to go away at once, and to tell no one she had written to him, or that he had been to see her. “Nothing matters now—I am ruined—I don't care what becomes of me.” He marvelled; but soon all considerations were swept away in anxiety for her bodily health; and having extorted a promise from her that she would not leave the room until he came back, he rushed to the nearest chemist and hence to the doctor.

“I want you to come at once, if possible, and see a young lady who, I fear, is dangerously ill. She has not been in Brighton long. She is quite alone. She sent for me. I live at Southwick. I came out at once. I have known her a long time. I may say she is a great friend of mine. I found her very ill—I must say her condition seems to me alarming. I should like her to see a doctor at once. Can you come at once?”

“I am just finishing dinner. I will come in about ten minutes' time. What is the address?”

“20 Preston Street.—I hope he does not think there is anything wrong,” thought Frank. “He look's as if he did,” and with a view of removing suspicion, he said: “She is a young lady whom I have known for some years. We had lost sight of each other until we travelled down in the train together. I say this because I do not wish you to think there is anything wrong.”

“My good sir, I should not allow myself to have any opinions on the matter. I am summoned to attend a patient, and I give the best advice in my power.”

“Yes, but one can't help forming opinions—a beautiful young girl living alone in lodgings, and having apparently for sole protector a young man, are circumstances that might be easily misconstrued, and as I am engaged to be married, I think it right to tell you exactly how I stand in relation to this young woman.”

The doctor bowed.

“Do you not think I did well in making this explanation?”

“It can do no harm; we medical men see so much that we take no notice of anything but our patient. But tell me something of this young lady's suffering. Can you describe the symptoms?”

“She has a racking headache—she is shivering all over—she sits by the fire and cannot get warm. It looks to me as if it were fever.”

“Does she complain of her throat?”

“Yes; she cannot swallow.”

“Probably an attack of quinsy.”

“Is that dangerous?”

“No; but it is infectious.”

“I don't mind about that—she is alone. I will see her through it.”

“I will go round to Preston Street immediately I have finished dinner—in about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour.”

When the doctor had seen Lizzie, he said to Frank, who accompanied him downstairs: “Just as I expected—quinsy. She will take from eight to ten days to get well. We have taken it in time, that's one good thing. The throat is very bad. She must have a linseed poultice, and she must use the gargle. Is there any one in the house who can attend to her?”

“I am afraid not; the landlady went away this morning, leaving no one in the house but that child. She will, I hope, be home to-morrow.”

“In that case you had better have a nurse in; I will give you the address of one.”

When Frank returned he found her lying on the bed weeping. As before, she refused to tell him the cause of her grief. She would make no other answer than that nothing mattered now, that she didn't care what became of her; and when he spoke of going to fetch a nurse, she waved her hands excitedly, declaring she would on no consideration stop in the house with a woman she didn't know. And, hardly able to decide what course he should take, he promised not to leave her; she clung about him, and he was forced to send the child (whose name he now found to be Emma) to the chemist for the linseed, and he wrote a note asking for explicit directions how it should be used. Then he had to persuade Lizzie to go to bed. She resisted him, and it was with great difficulty that he got her boots and stockings off; then she collected her strength, unbuttoned her dress, and took off her stays. Then she said: “Go out of the room for a moment.”

He found his way into the kitchen, and guessing that hot water would be required, he lit a fire. But there was no muslin, and he had to send Emma for some. Lizzie smiled faintly when they entered—Frank with a basin, Emma with a kettle and a parcel of linen. Frank poured some rum into a glass, and beat an egg up with it.

“What is that?” she asked; and her voice was so faint and hoarse that he turned, quite startled.

“Something that will do your throat good and keep your strength up. Possibly you will not be able to eat much to-morrow.” He held the tumbler to her lips, and at length succeeded in getting her to drink it. “Emma, is the kettle boiling?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You had better go downstairs and get some coals, and if you can't find any nightlights you must go out and buy a box. Have you got any money over?”

“Yes, sir, sixpence.”

“Now, Lizzie, let me put this on your throat. Throw your head well back. There, it isn't too hot?”

And all that night he sat by her bedside. Often she could not get her breath, and he had to lift her and prop her up with pillows; and four times he lit the candle, and, with tired eyes, mixed the meal and placed it on her throat. The firelight played upon the ceiling, the kettle sang softly, the sufferer moaned, the light brought the rumble of a cart, and they awoke from shallow sleeps that blurred but did not extinguish consciousness of the actual present. “You must not uncover yourself; you will catch cold. Let me pin this shawl about you.” About eight o'clock Emma knocked at the door. Frank asked her to make him a cup of tea. The morning dragged along amid many anxieties, for he could see she was worse than she had been over night.

“The disease must take its course,” said the doctor; “we shall be fortunate if by poulticing we can stop it; if we can't, it will come to a head in about eight or nine days' time, and then it will break. Did you see the nurse last night? Couldn't she come?”

“She,” said Frank, pointing to the sufferer, “wouldn't allow me to send for her; she said she would not stay in the house with a strange woman. She was very excited; I fancy she has had some great mental trouble—a sweetheart, I suppose. I did not like to cross her. I thought I could nurse her; I did my best. Was the poultice all right?”

“Quite right. But you will have to sit up with her to-night. You will be very tired; you had better get in a nurse.”

“I think I shall be able to manage. The landlady is expected home this evening or to-morrow morning. What had she better have to eat?”

“She won't be able to eat anything for some days. Try to get her to take an egg beat up in a wine-glass of rum.”

Hourly she grew worse, and on the following day Frank stood by her bed momentarily fearing that she would suffocate; once her face blackened and he had to seize and lift her out of bed, and place her in a chair. When she seemed a little easier he called Emma, and they made the bed and cleaned up the room together. Then he ate a sausage and drank a glass of beer that had been brought from the public-house.

The first night had seemed long and weary, but now the hours passed quickly; he had forgotten all but the suffering woman, and in the interest of inducing her to swallow some beef-tea, in the pride of such successes another and then another day fled lightly. Nor did he feel tired as he had done, and now a nap in an arm-chair seemed all that he required. So the landlady came as an unwelcome interruption of an absorbing occupation. Haggard and unshaven, he returned to Southwick, where he found a note on his table from General Horlock, asking him to dinner that evening.

“I know the meaning of this: Maggie will be there—a reconciliation! Can I?” He turned his ear quickly from his conscience; he was frightened of the voice that would tell him that Maggie was nothing to him, never had been, never could be; that he had been born for Lizzie Baker, as the soldier is for the sword or the bullet that kills him; others had passed him, had been heard sharply, had gleamed dangerously in his eyes. They were but signs and omens meant for others, not for him, and they had passed. But this one had remained, though often lost, as that remains which is to be, and she was now no less for him than before, though now seemingly lost irrevocably to another; and in all the seeming of irrevocable loss was drawing nearer—not with the victory and destiny of old in her eyes, but with no less victory and destiny inherent in her. Though far from him, she had been for long a disintegrated influence, but what had been distant was now near, and all was yielding like a ship in the attraction of the fabulous loadstone mountain. That room!—the wash-hand-stand, the dirty panes of glass, the iron bed-there his fate had been sealed. That body which he had lifted out of bed still lay heavy in his arms. He still breathed the odour of the hair he had gathered from the pillow and striven to pin up; those eyes of limpid blue, pale as water where isles are sleeping, burned deep and livid in his soul; the touch and sight of that flesh, the sound of that voice, those tears, the solicitude and anxiety of those hours of night and day conspired against him, and his life was big with incipient overthrow.

Lizzie was with him at all times. He saw her eyes, then her teeth, and the perfume and touch of her hair was often about him; and yet he was hardly conscious that a revolution of feeling was in progress within him; and when the time came for him to go to Horlock's he went there avoiding all thoughts of Maggie, although he knew he would be called upon that night to take a decisive step. He saw little of her before dinner, and during dinner the General's allusions to the quarrels of lovers being the renewal of love vexed him, and he thought, “Confound it! If I want to make it up I will; but I am not going to be bullied into it.” When the ladies left the room he found it difficult to pretend to the kind-hearted old soldier that he did not believe that Maggie would forgive him. “Forgive me for what? I have done nothing.”

“To get on with women you must always admit you are in the wrong—ha, ha, ha!” laughed the General; “now I have it from my wife—women know everything—ha, ha, ha!” laughed the General. “Have another glass of sherry?”

“No, thanks; couldn't take any more.”

“I took I won't tell you how many glasses before I proposed to my wife, and then I was afraid; enough to make me—a clever woman like Mrs. Horlock, I believe you wouldn't find a woman in England like Mrs. Horlock. Look round; all that's her work. Look at that white Arab—exactly like him. I won five hundred pounds with that horse; but I wouldn't be satisfied, and I ran him again the following day and lost it all and five hundred more with it. I had another horse. My wife is modelling him in wax; she will show it to you in the next room. Marvellous woman!”

Passing Maggie by who was sitting in the window, Frank inveigled Mrs. Horlock into an anatomical discussion. The General stretched out his feet, put on his spectacles, and took up the St James's. The conversation dropped, and, full of apprehension and expecting reconciliation, Frank went to Maggie and talked to her of the tennis parties he was going to, of the people he had seen—of indifferent things. The time was tense with the fate of their lives. Once she turned her head and sighed. Time slipped by, and still they talked of their friends—of things they knew perfectly. Maggie said: “I hope you are not angry; I hope we shall remain friends.” Frank replied: “I hope so,” and again the conversation paused. The General denounced Gladstone, and praised his wife's sculpture. Ten o'clock! Angel was lifted out of his basket. If Maggie had been Helen and Southwick Troy, he would not be kept waiting; the dogs had to be taken out; Willy came to fetch Maggie; hands were tendered, lips said good-bye, and, with a sense of parting, they parted.

Feeling adrift and strangely alone, he walked to his lodging. His future loomed up in his mind as vague and as illusive as the village that now glared through the mist, white and phantasmal. He did not regret—we can hardly regret the impossible. Then, falling back on a piece of prose, he said: “Where was the good? Mount Rorke would never have given his consent. Poor Lizzie; I hope she is better. I hope it has broken. She won't get any relief until it does.”

And next day, towards evening, he went to Brighton. He found her shrinking over the fire, wrapped in a woollen shawl.

“How are you to-day? You look a little better. I did not expect to find you out of bed.”

“I am better, thank you; it broke yesterday, and I feel relieved. You are very good. I think I should have died if it had not been for you. Think of that landlady leaving me in the way she did.”

“What was the reason? Why did she rush off in that way?”

“She went to town to see her sister, and she says she was taken ill. She drinks.”

“Does she? I hope she looked after you yesterday?”

“Oh, yes.”

“As well as I did?”

“I don't know about that; you are a very good nurse. It was very good of you; no one else would have done it.”

“What, not even he?”

“You were with me for four days, and you never even went to bed—never took your clothes off.”

“Never even washed myself. By George! I was glad to get home and have a good wash. I was a sorry-looking object—haggard and unshaven.”

“Where did you say you had been to?”

“Nobody asked me.”

“Not Maggie?”

“No; I didn't tell you our engagement is broken off.”

“No; you didn't say nothing about it.”

“On account of you. She discovered that you had been to my studio, and she said I was keeping a woman in Brighton.”

“Keeping a woman in Brighton—she thinks you are keeping me! I will write to her and tell her that it is not true. What right has she to say such things about me?”

“She doesn't say it about you. She says a woman.”

“She means me.”

“No, she doesn't; she doesn't know anything about you. Some one told her I went into Brighton every day by the four o'clock train, and she put two and two or rather two and three together, and said it was six.”

“But I will write to her. I will not be the cause of any one's marriage being broken off.”

“You need not trouble. I saw her last night, and I could have made it all right had I chosen—she was quite willing.”

“You can't care for her!”

“I suppose not. I don't think I ever really loved her. I thought I did. I was mistaken.”

“You are very changeable.”

“No, I don't think I am—at least not so far as you are concerned. I was mistaken. I was in love with some one else—with you.”

“With me?”

“Yes, with you. I was in love with you when we went to Reading, and never got over it. I thought I had, but when love is real we never get over it. I always loved you, and those four days I spent nursing you have brought it all out. I shall never love any one else. I know you don't care for me; you said once you couldn't care for me.”

“I! I am too miserable to care for any one. I wish you had let me die; but that is ungrateful. You must excuse me, I am so miserable. Why speak of loving me? I can love no one. I don't care what becomes of me. I am ruined; nothing matters now.”

“I wish you would confide in me; you can trust me. Has he forsaken you? Can you not make it up?”

“No, never now; I shall never see him again.”

“Has anything happened lately, since you came to Brighton?”

Lizzie nodded.

“Don't cry like that; tell me about it.”

“What's the use? Nothing matters now.”

“Has he been here?”

Lizzie nodded, and Frank folded the shawl about her, and wiped her tears away with his pocket handkerchief. “Since you were ill?”

“No, before I was ill; he was down here watching me. He found out I had gone to your studio, and he said the most dreadful things—that he would break your head, and that I had never been true to him, and that I was not fit to be the wife of an honest man.”

“But I will tell him that you came to my studio to sit for your portrait.”

“No, you mustn't write; it would only make matters worse. No use; he says he will never see me again.”

“Where can I see him? Has he gone back to London? I will follow him and tell him he is mistaken.”

“No, please don't, and please don't go to the 'Gaiety'; he is a violent- tempered man; something dreadful might occur. Please, promise me.”

“Not go to the 'Gaiety'? He doesn't know me.”

“Yes, he does.”

“Have I seen him? Do tell me; you know you can trust me. I am your friend. Tell me—”

“You have seen him in the 'Gaiety,' in the grill-room—the waiter, number two, the good-looking tall man.”

“Oh!”

“He wasn't always a waiter; his people are very superior. He has been unfortunate.”

“And it was he you loved this long while?”

“I never cared for another man.”

“I must write and tell him he is committing an act of injustice. I will make this matter right for you, Lizzie.”

“Do you think you can?”

“I am sure of it.”

He rang for the landlady, and asked for writing materials. She apologised for the penny bottle of ink, and spoke of getting a table from the next room, but he said he could write very well on the chimney-piece. “I suppose I had better begin, 'Sir'?”

“Don't people generally begin, 'Dear Sir'?”

“Not when they don't know the people they are writing to.”

“But you do know him a little. He always said you were very haughty. You used to sit at his table.”

“I think I had better begin the letter with 'Sir.'”

“Very well. You know best. He was always very jealous.”