She was nurse now, and he her patient. She began to undress him, and then stopped and hurried down to the bathroom, where Mr. Earlforward’s weekly clean grey flannel shirt lay newly ironed. She stole the shirt. Then, having secured her door again, she finished undressing the patient, taking every stitch off him, and rubbing him dry with her towel, and rubbed the ends of his hair nearly dry, and got the shirt over his shoulders, and turned down the bed, and lifted him into her bed, and covered him up, and threw on the bedclothes the very garments which in the early morning she had used for Mrs. Earlforward’s comforting. There he lay in her bed, and nobody on earth except those two knew that he was in her room with the door locked to keep out the whole world. It was a wondrous, palpitating secret, the most wonderful secret that any woman had ever enjoyed in the history of love. She knelt by the bed and kissed him again and again. He smiled; then a spasm of pain passed over his face.
“What’s the matter with you, Joe, darling? What is it you’ve got?” she asked gently, made blissful by his smile and alarmed by his evident discomfort.
“I ache—all over me. I’m cold.” His voice was extremely weak.
She ran over various diseases in her mind and thought of rheumatic fever. She had not the least idea what rheumatic fever was, but she had always understood that it was exceedingly serious.
“I shall light a fire,” she said, announcing this terrific decision as though it was quite an everyday matter for a servant, having put a “follower” in her own room, to light a fire for him and burn up her employer’s precious coal.
On the way downstairs to steal a bucket of coal she thought: “I’d better just make sure of the old gentleman,” and went into the principal bedroom and turned on the light. Mr. Earlforward seemed to be neither worse nor better. She was reassured as to him. He looked at her intently, but could not see through her body the glowing secret in her heart.
“You all right, sir?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Going to bed?”
“Oh, no! Not yet!” she smiled easily. “Not for a long time.”
“What’s all that wet on your apron, Elsie?”
She was not a bit disconcerted.
“Oh, that’s nothing, sir,” she said, and turned out the light before departing.
“Here! I say, Elsie!”
“Can’t stop now, sir. I’m that busy with things.” She spoke to him negligently, as a stronger power to a weaker—it was very queer!—and went out and shut the door with a smart click.
The grate and flue in her room were utterly unaccustomed to fires; it is conceivable that they had never before felt a fire. But they performed their functions with the ardour of neophytes, and very soon Mr. Earlforward’s coal was blazing furiously in the hearth and the room stiflingly, exquisitely hot—while Mr. Earlforward, all unconscious of the infamy above, kept himself warm by bedclothes and the pride of economy alone. And a little later Elsie was administering to Joe her master’s invalid food. The tale of her thefts was lengthening hour by hour.
V
The Two Patients
Towards four o’clock in the morning Joe woke up from a short sleep and suddenly put questions to Elsie about his safety in that strange house, and also he inquired whose bed he was in.
“You’re in my bed, Joe,” she answered, kneeling again by the bedside, so as to have her face close to his and to whisper more intimately; and she told him the situation of the household and how her mistress had been carried to the hospital for an operation, and how her master was laid up with an unascertained disease, and how she alone had effective power in the house.
Then Joe began excitedly to talk of his adventures in the past twelve months, and she perceived that a change for the worse had come over him and that he was very ill. Both his voice and his glance indicated some development of the malady.
“Don’t tell me now, Joe dear,” she stopped him. “I want to hear it all, but you must rest now. Tomorrow, after you’ve had another good sleep. I must just go and look at Mr. Earlforward for a minute.”
She offered him a drink of water and left him, less to look at Mr. Earlforward than in order to give him an opportunity to calm himself, if that was possible. She knew that in certain moods solitude was best for him, ill or well. And she went down the dark stairs to the other bedroom, which was nearly as cold as the ice-cold stairs.
Mr. Earlforward also was worse. He seemed to be in a fever, yet looked like a corpse. Her arrival clearly gave him deep relief; he upbraided her for neglecting him; but somewhat timidly and cautiously, as one who feels himself liable to reprisals which could not be resisted. Elsie stayed with him and tended him for a quarter of an hour, and then went to the kitchen, which the extravagant gas-ring was gently keeping warm, while it warmed water and tried to dry Joe’s miserable clothes.
Elsie had to think. Both men under her charge were seriously ill, and she knew not what was the matter with either of them. Supposing that one of them died on her hands before the morning,
