“As far as I can gather, the safety of typhoid fever patients depends almost entirely on scientific nursing, and the caution with which even liquid nourishment is given. The woman whose husband died this morning told me that he had seemed better in the night, and had asked for something to eat. She gave him a piece of bread and a slice of cold bacon, because he told her he fancied it. I could not explain to her, as she sat sobbing over him, that she had probably killed him. When we have patients in our ward, what shall we feed them on, and who will know how to nurse them? They do not know how to nurse each other, and the women in the village would not run the risk of undertaking to help us.”
But, even before he had left the house, the problem was solved for them. The solving of it lay in the note Miss Vanderpoel had written the night before at Stornham.
When it was brought to him Mr. Penzance glanced up from certain calculations he was making upon a sheet of note-paper. The accumulating difficulties made him look worn and tired. He opened the note and read it gravely, and then as gravely, though with a change of expression, handed it to Mount Dunstan.
“Yes, she is a creature of action. She has heard and understood at once, and she has done something. It is immensely practical—it is fine—it—it is lovable.”
“Do you mind my keeping it?” Mount Dunstan asked, after he had read it.
“Keep it by all means,” the vicar answered. “It is worth keeping.”
But it was quite brief. She had heard of the outbreak of fever among the hop pickers, and asked to be allowed to give help to the people who were suffering. They would need prompt aid. She chanced to know something of the requirements of such cases, and had written to London for certain supplies which would be sent to them at once. She had also written for nurses, who would be needed above all else. Might she ask Mr. Penzance to kindly call upon her for any further assistance required.
“Tell her we are deeply grateful,” said Mount Dunstan, “and that she has given us greater help than she knows.”
“Why not answer her note yourself?” Penzance suggested.
Mount Dunstan shook his head.
“No,” he said shortly. “No.”
CHAPTER XLII
IN THE BALLROOM
Though Dunstan village was cut off, by its misfortune, from its usual intercourse with its neighbours, in some mystic manner villages even at twenty miles’ distance learned all it did and suffered, feared or hoped. It did not hope greatly, the rustic habit of mind tending towards a discouraged outlook, and cherishing the drama of impending calamity. As far as Yangford and Marling inmates of cottages and farmhouses were inclined to think it probable that Dunstan would be “swep away,” and rumours of spreading death and disaster were popular. Tread, the advanced blacksmith at Stornham, having heard in his by-gone, better days of the Great Plague of London, was greatly in demand as a narrator of illuminating anecdotes at The Clock Inn.
Among the parties gathered at the large houses Mount Dunstan himself was much talked of. If he had been a popular man, he might have become a sort of hero; as he was not popular, he was merely a subject for discussion. The fever-stricken patients had been carried in carts to the Mount and given beds in the ballroom, which had been made into a temporary ward. Nurses and supplies had been sent for from London, and two energetic young doctors had taken the place of old Dr. Fenwick, who had been frightened and overworked into an attack of bronchitis which confined him to his bed. Where the money came from, which must be spent every day under such circumstances, it was difficult to say. To the simply conservative of mind, the idea of filling one’s house with dirty East End hop pickers infected with typhoid seemed too radical. Surely he could have done something less extraordinary. Would everybody be expected to turn their houses into hospitals in case of village epidemics, now that he had established a precedent? But there were people who approved, and were warm in their sympathy with him. At the first dinner party where the matter was made the subject of argument, the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel, who was present, listened silently to the talk with such brilliant eyes that Lord Dunholm, who was in an elderly way her staunch admirer, spoke to her across the table:
“Tell us what YOU think of it, Miss Vanderpoel,” he suggested.
She did not hesitate at all.
“I like it,” she answered, in her clear, well-heard voice. “I like it better than anything I have ever heard.”
“So do I,” said old Lady Alanby shortly. “I should never have done it myself—but I like it just as you do.”
“I knew you would, Lady Alanby,” said the girl. “And you, too, Lord Dunholm.”
“I like it so much that I shall write and ask if I cannot be of assistance,” Lord Dunholm answered.
Betty was glad to hear this. Only quickness of thought prevented her from the error of saying, “Thank you,” as if the matter were personal to herself. If Mount Dunstan was restive under the obviousness of the fact that help was so sorely needed, he might feel less so if her offer was only one among others.
“It seems rather the duty of the neighbourhood to show some interest,” put in Lady Alanby. “I shall write to him myself. He is evidently of a new order of Mount Dunstan. It’s to be hoped he won’t take the fever himself, and die of it He ought to marry some handsome, well-behaved girl, and re-found the family.”
Nigel Anstruthers spoke from his side of the table, leaning slightly forward.
“He won’t if he does not take better care of himself. He passed me on the road two days ago, riding like a lunatic. He looks frightfully ill—yellow and drawn and lined. He has not lived the life to prepare him for settling down to a fight with typhoid fever. He would be done for if he caught the infection.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Lord Dunholm, with quiet decision. “Unprejudiced inquiry proves that his life has been entirely respectable. As Lady Alanby says, he seems to be of a new order of Mount Dunstan.”
“No doubt you are right,” said Sir Nigel suavely. “He looked ill, notwithstanding.”
“As to looking ill,” remarked Lady Alanby to Lord Dunholm, who sat near her, “that man looks as if he was going to pieces pretty rapidly himself, and unprejudiced inquiry would not prove that his past had nothing to do with it.”
Betty wondered if her brother-in-law were lying. It was generally safest to argue that he was. But the fever
