Sarah. All Prior’s Ash loved Ethel Grame.
Tossing upon her uneasy bed, her face flushed, her hair floating untidily about it, lay Sarah Anne, shivering still. The doctor gave one glance at her: it was quite enough to satisfy him that Lady Sarah was not mistaken.
“Is it the fever?” impatiently asked Sarah Anne, unclosing her hot eyelids.
“If it is, we must drive it away again,” said the doctor cheerily.
“Why should the fever have come to me?” she rejoined, her tone rebellious.
“Why was I thrown from my horse last year, and broke my arm?” returned Mr. Snow. “These things come to all of us.”
“To break an arm is nothing—people always recover from that,” irritably answered Sarah Anne.
“And you will recover from the fever, if you will be quiet and reasonable.”
“I am so hot! My head is so heavy!”
Mr. Snow, who had called for water and a glass, was mixing a white powder which he had produced from his pocket. She took it without opposition, and then he lessened the weight of bed-clothes, and afterwards turned his attention to the chamber. It was close and hot; the sun, which had just burst forth brightly from the grey skies, shone full upon it.
“You have that chimney stuffed up!” he exclaimed.
“Sarah Anne will not allow it to be open,” said Lady Sarah. “She is sensitive to cold, dear child, and feels the slightest draught.”
Mr. Snow walked to the chimney, turned up his coat cuff and wristband, and pulled down a bag filled with shavings. Soot came with it, and covered his hand; but he did not mind that. He was as little given to ceremony as Lady Sarah to caution, and he went leisurely up to the wash-hand-stand to remove it.
“Now, if I catch that bag, or any other bag up there again, obstructing the air, I shall attack the bricks next time, and make a good big hole that the sky can be seen through. Of that I give you notice, my lady.”
He next pulled down the window at the top, behind the blind; but the room, at its best, did not find favour with him. “It is not airy; it is not cool,” he said. “Is there not a better ventilated room in the house? If so, she should be moved into it.”
“My room is cool,” interposed Ethel eagerly. “The sun never shines into it, Mr. Snow.”
It would appear that Ethel’s thus speaking must have reminded Mr. Snow that she was present. In the unceremonious manner that he had laid hands upon the chimney bag, he now laid them upon her shoulders, and marshalled her outside the door.
“You go downstairs, Miss Ethel. And do not come within a mile of this chamber again, until I give you leave to do so.”
“I will not be moved into Ethel’s room!” interposed Sarah Anne, imperiously and fretfully. “It is not furnished with half the comforts of mine. And it has only a bit of bedside carpet! I will not go there, Mr. Snow.”
“Now look you here, Miss Sarah Anne!” said the surgeon firmly. “I am responsible for bringing you well out of this illness; and I shall take my own way to do it. If not; if I am to be contradicted at every suggestion; Lady Sarah may summon some one else to attend you: I will not undertake it.”
“My darling, you shall not be moved to Ethel’s room,” cried my lady coaxingly: “you shall be moved into mine. It is larger than this, you know, Mr. Snow, with a thorough draught through it, if you choose to put the windows and door open.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Snow. “Let me find her in it when I come up again this evening. And if there’s a carpet on the floor, take it up. Carpets were never intended for bedrooms.”
He passed into one of the sitting-rooms with Lady Sarah when he descended. “What do you think of the case?” she eagerly asked.
“There will be some difficulty with it,” was the candid reply. “Lady Sarah, her hair must come off.”
“Her hair come off!” uttered Lady Sarah, aghast. “That it never shall! She has the loveliest hair! What is Ethel’s hair, compared with hers?”
“You heard the determination I expressed, Lady Sarah,” he quietly said.
“But Sarah Anne will never allow it to be done,” she returned, shifting the ground of remonstrance from her own shoulders. “And to do it in opposition to her would be enough to kill her.”
“It will not be done in opposition to her,” he answered. “She will be unconscious before it is attempted.”
Lady Sarah’s heart sank. “You anticipate that she will be dangerously ill?”
“In these cases there is always danger, Lady Sarah. But worse cases than– as I believe—hers will be, have recovered from it.”
“If I lose her, I shall die myself!” she passionately uttered. “And, if she is to have it badly, she will die! Remember, Mr. Snow, how weak she has always been!”
“We sometimes find that weak constitutions battle best with an epidemic,” he replied. “Many a sound one has it struck down and taken off; many a sickly one has struggled through it, and been the stronger for it afterwards.”
“Everything shall be done as you wish,” said Lady Sarah, speaking meekly in her great fear.
“Very well. There is one caution I would earnestly impress upon you: that of keeping Ethel from the sick-room.”
“But there is no one to whom Sarah Anne is so accustomed, as a nurse,” objected Lady Sarah.
“Madam!” burst forth the doctor in his heat, “would you subject Ethel to the risk of taking the infection, in deference to Sarah Anne’s selfishness, or to yours? Better lose all your house contains than lose Ethel! She is its greatest treasure.”
“I know how remarkably prejudiced you have always been in Ethel’s favour!” resentfully spoke Lady Sarah.
“If I disliked her as much as I like her, I should be equally solicitous to guard her from the danger of infection,” said Mr. Snow. “If you choose to put Ethel out of consideration, you cannot put Thomas Godolphin. In justice to him, she must be taken care of.”
Lady Sarah opened her mouth to reply; but closed it again. Strange words had been hovering upon her lips: “If Thomas Godolphin were not blind, his choice would have fallen upon Sarah Anne; not upon Ethel.” In her heart that was a sore topic of resentment: for she was quite alive to the advantages of a union with a Godolphin. Those words were suppressed; to give place to others.
“Ethel is in the house; and therefore must be liable to infection, whether she visits the room or not. I cannot fence her round with a wall, so that not a breath of tainted atmosphere shall touch her. I would if I could; but I cannot.”
“I would send her from the house, Lady Sarah. At any rate, I forbid her to go near her sister. I don’t want two patients on my hands, instead of one,” he added in his quaint fashion, as he took his departure.
He was about to get into his gig, when he saw Mr. Godolphin advancing with a quick step. “Which of them is it who is seized?” inquired the latter, as he came up.
“Not Ethel, thank goodness!” responded the surgeon. “It is Sarah Anne. I have been recommending my lady to send Ethel from home. I should send her, were she a daughter of mine.”
“Is Sarah Anne likely to have it dangerously?”
“I think so. Is there any necessity for you going to the house just now, Mr. Godolphin?”
Thomas Godolphin smiled. “There is no necessity for my keeping away. I do not fear the fever any more than you do.”
He passed into the garden as he spoke, and Mr. Snow drove away. Ethel saw him, and came out to him.
“Oh, Thomas, do not come in! do not come!”
His only answer was to take her on his arm and enter. He threw open the drawing-room window, that as much air might circulate