Читать книгу Juggernaut - Alice Campbell - Страница 8

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One bright afternoon about ten days after this the Rolls Royce of the Cliffords drew up at the doctor's door, and when the sandy-haired chauffeur had descended and rung the bell, there emerged from the car in somewhat ceremonial order Lady Clifford, her sister-in-law, and Sir Charles himself. To the casual eye it would appear that the first of these three could have no possible connection with the other two, any more than a bird of paradise would have with a pair of rooks.

"She has brought the old man with her this time," confided Jacques to Esther en passant, having admitted the trio to the salon. "He is a very bad colour, that man! I don't like his look."

Nor did Esther, when a moment later she opened the salon door and caught her first glimpse of Sir Charles, a gaunt, heavily built old man with sunken eyes, unnaturally bright, and a dry, yellowish skin tightly stretched across his prominent cheek bones. He sat leaning forward in his chair, wearing his heavy overcoat with the fur-lined collar drawn up about his thin neck and his big bony hands clasped so rigidly over the handle of his stick that the knuckles shone blanched and polished. He shivered slightly at the opening of the door.

"Here, Charlie, put on your cap," commanded his sister quickly. "This room is always creepy."

"Yes, do put it on," murmured Lady Clifford gently, taking a grey tweed cap from the table and trying to fit it on his head.

He brushed her aside with a petulant gesture.

"No, no, I don't want my hat on in the house. What do you take me for?"

The two women exchanged resigned glances, which patently said, "Well, if he won't, he won't." Miss Clifford sighed as if a little anxious, and the furrow between her brows deepened. She was strikingly like her brother, with the same heavy features, but she was a good ten years younger, and with her ruddy red-brown complexion and bright brown eyes under rather bushy brows had a look of alertness and vigour, as well as certain kindly simplicity which attracted Esther. She was dressed in good plain country clothes, and her felt hat fitted badly because of the thick coils of her hair, brown, streaked with grey.

"Will you come this way?" said Esther, holding open the consulting-room door.

The three filed past her, Sir Charles walking with a firm if inelastic tread. There was about him a look of obstinate, almost rude, determination; he had the air of coming here under protest. Miss Clifford looked at Esther with a certain interest.

"I have not seen you before. When did you come?"

"Only a few weeks ago."

"Ah, I see you're American. No, Canadian, is it? Well, it's pleasant having someone here who speaks English."

Dr. Sartorius had come forward with a more cordial manner than he usually displayed. He positively smiled as he took Miss Clifford's hand.

"Well, you're not looking very ill," he remarked in a tone almost jovial. "Don't try to tell me there's anything the matter with you. I'll refuse to believe it."

"Oh, heavens, no, I'm all right," laughed Miss Clifford agreeably.

"It's this tiresome brother of mine who's been bothering us a bit.

He's been feeling seedy for several days, haven't you, Charlie?"

Sir Charles shook his head, though whether in dissent or simply out of an ingrained desire to contradict was not apparent.

"Feeling seedy, has he? Well, and what seems to be the trouble?" inquired the doctor with that sort of purring patter which one can readily believe to be the first thing learned by a student of medicine. "Caught a slight chill, perhaps? The weather's been a bit tricky."

"Ah, I think it is that," put in the Frenchwoman eagerly. "That

Wednesday at the polo, Charles, when it came on to rain. … "

"Not a bit of it," denied her husband positively. "If it comes to that, I had all these feelings before I ever thought of going to the polo."

"I begged him to let me send for you, doctor, but you know what he is like," interpolated Miss Clifford. "He hates to admit he is ill."

"What sort of feelings?" blandly inquired the doctor.

Sir Charles thrust out his lower lip. He had planted himself in an armchair, while his wife remained standing a little behind him, her face, it seemed to Esther, full of anxiety.

"Oh, headaches, backaches. The back's the worst. Goes on steadily.

Had it for days."

"Sharp pain?"

"No, dull. Not like lumbago."

"He has no appetite," added his sister.

"Well, well, let's have a look at you."

The doctor drew a chair beside Sir Charles and reached for the gaunt brownish hand. At the same moment Lady Clifford made a little movement of solicitude, laying her gloved hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Are you quite comfortable there, mon cher?" she whispered. "You're not in a courant d'air?"

He let her hand rest, but shook his head impatiently.

"No, no, I'm all right. My God, doctor, what with these two women for ever fussing about my health and asking me how I feel a hundred times a day, the wonder is I manage to keep going at all."

He closed his eyes while the doctor counted his pulse. During the ensuing silence it struck Esther that both women were more worried than was necessary. The Frenchwoman in particular watched with an air of tense apprehension.

The doctor shut up his watch with a snap.

"Now the tongue," he said non-committally.

He examined the tongue, then the eyeballs, after which he held out his hand without looking round and took the thermometer Esther had ready for him. The silence continued while the old man sat sucking the little glass tube.

"Well," said the doctor at last, holding the instrument to the light, "he certainly has got a slight temperature."

Miss Clifford let her breath escape explosively.

"Thank Heaven for that!" she ejaculated in a tone of relief.

All eyes turned towards her in surprise.

"I suppose you're glad I'm ill, are you, Dido?" queried her brother dryly.

"Nonsense, don't be absurd! I'm only glad you'll have to admit you're ill and be put to bed properly where we can look after you. You should have been there days ago."

"Oh, very well, I'll go to bed. You'll never be happy till you've laid me by the heels, you and Thérèse both. What have I got, doctor? Touch of 'flu? They call a lot of things 'flu these days."

The doctor smiled and clapped him on the back reassuringly.

"Oh, perhaps. It's impossible to say yet. However, your sister's right; you mustn't be walking about with a temperature, however slight." He rose and the others followed suit. "Go home, get comfortably to bed, and I'll drop in early in the evening and have another look at you."

"Then you think it's nothing serious?" inquired Lady Clifford with a sudden appeal, her beautiful eyes glancing from her husband to the doctor.

"You know, doctor," broke in Miss Clifford eagerly, "I've sometimes wondered if there was anything wrong with the water. I … "

"Rubbish, Dido, I never drink the water."

There was a general laugh at this.

"I'm not sure that you don't," insisted the old lady defensively. "And I've always been told the water in France is only to be used externally."

"And precious little of it is used in that way," commented Sir Charles, moving towards the door, where he looked back with a curt, ironic gesture of leave-taking. "It's au revoir then, doctor, and not good-bye. Coming, Dido?"

His wife followed him to the outer door.

"In a minute I will join you, darling. Get into the car and put the rug well around you."

She bundled the fur collar closely about his throat and patted him affectionately on the shoulder. He was well over six feet, even though he stooped a little, so that she had to stand on tiptoe to reach him.

"There, I'm all right," the old man objected testily, but he was not displeased.

Perhaps, thought Esther, she was mistaken after all in regard to Lady Clifford's sentiments towards her husband. She could not, of course, be supposed to be wildly in love with him, but she undoubtedly did appear to be fond of him, even though her feeling might be that of a daughter for a father. At any rate, when it came to the point, she seemed genuinely concerned over the idea of his being ill. Most likely, in common with many very emotional women, she dramatised and exaggerated her slightest feeling, professing far more than she meant. This would easily explain that conversation at the tea-table. She might have meant all she said at the time, but she had probably forgotten it completely by now.

Waving aside all offers of assistance, Sir Charles made his way slowly to the car. His sister let him go ahead, then halting on the doorstep, took hold of Esther's arm confidentially. "One moment, nurse," she said in an undertone, "I'd like to ask you something. Tell me frankly, do you think the doctor saw anything alarming in my brother's symptoms?"

Her plain, pleasant face was puckered with anxiety, her eyes searched

Esther's.

"Why, no, I honestly think he meant what he said, that it is too soon to tell anything definite."

"I wonder! Doctors are all alike, they never give anything away," and she frowned thoughtfully. "I daresay you think me foolish, but the fact is I am extremely apprehensive. You see, I'm afraid it may be typhoid."

"Typhoid!"

Esther could only repeat the word, unwilling to admit that the same suspicion had occurred to her.

"Yes, there's a great deal of it about the Riviera this season, as you may know."

"I've heard so."

"There have been several cases quite close to us, and one actually in the house, one of the maids. She went down with it four weeks ago, and has had a severe case. She's in a nursing home now. An attack of typhoid as violent as that would probably prove fatal to a man of my brother's age and in his state of health—for he hasn't been at all strong for several years. So you can understand how I—how we—feel about it."

With an impulse of sympathy Esther grasped the gloved hand on her arm and gave it a warm squeeze.

"You mustn't think such things," she admonished earnestly. "It may be nothing at all serious, over-fatigue, a slight cold. Besides, typhoid fever needn't be fatal, even at his age."

The elder woman's face lit up with a sudden, grateful smile.

"You're right. I shouldn't cross bridges—and I mustn't let him see

I'm worried. Thank you, my dear!"

She took a step downward, then turned and smiled again at Esther with friendly curiosity.

"What is your name," she asked, "and how do you come to be here?"

Esther told her.

"Well," remarked Miss Clifford, "you're a very different sort from the young Frenchwoman the doctor had here before you came—all paint and powder, busy making herself up whenever she thought you weren't looking, always ready for a flirtation." She made a grimace. "Not that she got very far with the doctor, I may tell you," she added, then nodding good-bye, joined her brother in the car.

Esther went into the salon and straightened the disarranged pile of magazines. Then going to the window she peered through the net curtain at the two occupants of the Rolls Royce. The old man was leaning back with his eyes shut and his haggard face sunken into lines of weariness; his sister was adjusting the rug more comfortably about him, watching him with troubled eyes. What a good sort she was! Esther liked her downright honesty and warm-heartedness; she thought she had never met anyone of that age so utterly guileless. How did she get on with her temperamental sister-in-law? What did she think of her really?

She heard the door of the consulting-room open, the other one, leading to the hall.

"You think—but are you sure?"

It was Lady Clifford who put this question in a voice which, though low-pitched, had a note of sharp insistence.

"Sure! Can one be absolutely sure of anything?"

All the geniality was gone from the doctor's voice; he sounded cold, as though wearied by a tiresome topic.

"Yes, but you know what my nerves are like! Can't you say something more?"

A short silence. Then:

"You say he had his milk regularly—the pint and a half a day?"

"Yes, yes, of course—every day."

"Oh, then, I don't think I should worry."

The front door closed; a moment later the car drove away.

Puzzled and slightly curious, though not intensely so, Esther found herself wondering what meaning there was in the doctor's last words. Was the old man ill—or wasn't he?

As she continued putting the room to rights the doctor pushed open the glass doors and stood regarding her undecidedly. There was no clue to his thoughts, but then there seldom was.

"Fools, these people," he remarked at last. "The more money they have the bigger fools they are. Always insisting that you tell them more than you know yourself, never willing to wait for a disease to declare itself."

With a kind of contemptuous snort he lumbered back into the consulting-room and closed the door. Had he been offering an explanation in case she had overheard? Or merely expressing aloud a general opinion regarding patients, all of whom he evidently held in scorn? For the life of her she could not decide.