It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 63

"That is polite! Well, sir, the governor is somebody in most jails, but it seems he is to be n.o.body here so long as you are in it, and that won't be long. Come, Fry, we have other duties to attend to." So saying he and his lieutenant went out of the cell.

Hodges went, too, but not with them.

The moment they were gone--"Well, sir," burst out Evans, "don't you see that the real murderer is not that stupid, ignorant owl, Hodges?"

"Hush! Evans! this is no time or place for unkindly thoughts; thank Heaven that you are free from their guilt, and leave me alone with him."

He was left alone with the dead.

Evans looked through the peep-hole of the cell an hour later. He was still on his knees fearing, hoping, vowing, and, above all, praying--beside the dead.

CHAPTER XXII.

MR. EDEN, when he reappeared in the prison, was sallow and his limbs feeble, but his fatal disease was baffled, and a few words are due to explain how this happened. The Malvern doctor came back with Susan within twenty hours of her departure. She ushered him into Mr. Eden's room with blushing joy and pride.

The friends shook hands. Mr. Eden thanked him for coming, and the doctor cut him short by demanding an accurate history of his disorder, and the remedies that had been applied. Mr. Eden related the rise and progress of his complaint, and meantime the doctor solved the other query by smelling a battalion of empty phials.

"The old story," said he with a cheerful grin. "You were weak--therefore they gave you things to weaken you. You could not put so much nourishment as usual into your body--therefore they have been taking strength out. Lastly, the coats of your stomach were irritated by your disorder--so they have raked it like blazes. This is the mill-round of the old medicine; from irritation to inflammation, from inflammation to mortification, and decease of the patient. Now, instead of irritating the irritated spot, suppose we try a little counter-irritation."

"With all my heart."

The doctor then wetted a towel with cold water, wrung it half dry, and applied it to Mr. Eden's stomach.

This experiment he repeated four times with a fresh towel at intervals of twenty minutes. He had his bed made in Mr. Eden's room. "Tell me if you feel feverish."

Toward morning Mr. Eden tossed and turned, and the doctor rising found him dry and hot and feverish. Then he wetted two towels, took the sheets off his own bed, and placed one wet towel on a blanket; then he made his patient strip naked, and lie down on this towel, which reached from the nape of his neck to his loins.

"Ah!" cried Mr. Eden, "horrible!"

Then he put the other towel over him in front.

"Ugh! That is worse; you are a bold man with your remedies. I shiver to the bone."

"You won't shiver long."

He laid hold of one edge of the blanket and pulled it over him with a strong, quick pull, and tucked it under him. The same with the other side; and now Mr. Eden was in a blanket prison--a regular strait-waistcoat--his arms pinned to his sides. Two more blankets were placed loosely over him.

"Mighty fine, doctor; but suppose a fly or a gnat should settle on my face?"

"Call me and I'll take him off."

In about three quarters of an hour Dr. Gulson came to his bedside again.

"How are you now?"

"In Elysium."

"Are you shivering?"

"Nothing of the kind."

"Are you hot?"

"Nothing of the sort. I am Elysian. Please retreat. Let no mere mortals approach. Come not near our fairy king," murmured the sick man. "I am Oberon, slumbering on tepid roses in the garden whence I take my name,"

purred our divine, mixing a creed or two.

"Well, you must come out of this paradise for the present."

"You wouldn't be such a monster as to propose it."

Spite of his remonstances, he was unpacked, rubbed dry, and returned to his own bed, where he slept placidly till nine o'clock. The next day fresh applications of wet cloths to the stomach, and in the evening one of the doctor's myrmidons arrived from Malvern. The doctor gave him full and particular instructions.

The next morning Mr. Eden was packed again. He delighted in the operation, but remonstrated against the term.

"Packed!" said he to them; "is that the way to speak of a Paradisiacal process under which fever and sorrow fly and calm complacency steals over mind and body?"

A slight diminution of all the unfavorable symptoms, and a great increase of appet.i.te relieved the doctor's anxiety so far that he left him under White's charge. So was the myrmidon called.

"Do not alter your diet--it is simple and mucilaginous--but increase the quant.i.ty by degrees."

He postponed his departure till midnight. Up to the present time he had made rather light of the case, and as for danger he had pooh-poohed it with good-humored contempt. Just before he went he said:

"Well, Frank, I don't mind telling you now that I am very glad you sent for me, and I'll tell you why. Forty-eight hours more of irritating medicines, and no human skill could have saved your life."

"Ah! my dear friend, you are my good angel--you can have no conception how valuable my life is."

"Oh, yes, I can!"

"And you have saved that life. Yes! I am weak still, but I feel I shall live. You have cured me."

"In popular language, I have. But between ourselves n.o.body ever cures anybody. Nature cures all that are cured. But I patted Nature on the back; the others. .h.i.t her over the head with bludgeons and brick-bats."

"And now you are going. I must not keep you or I shall compromise other lives. Well, go and fulfill your mission. But first think--is there anything I can do in part return for such a thing as this, old friend?"

"Only one that I can think of. Outlive me, old friend."

A warm and tender grasp of the hand on this, and the Malvern doctor jumped into a fly, and the railway soon whirled him into Worcestershire.

His myrmidon remained behind and carried out his chief's orders with inflexible severity, unsoftened by blandishments, unshaken by threats.

In concert with Susan he closed the door upon all hara.s.sing communications.

One day Evans came to tell the invalid how the prisoners were maltreated. Susan received him, wormed from him his errand, and told him Mr. Eden was too ill to see him, which was what my French brethren call _une sainte mensonge_--I a fib.

A slow but steady cure was effected by these means: applications of water in various ways to the skin, simple diet, and quiet. A great appet.i.te soon came; he ate twice as much as he had before the new treatment, and would have eaten twice as much as he did, but the myrmidon would not let him. Whenever he was feverish the myrmidon packed him, and in half an hour the fever was gone. His cheeks began to fill, his eyes to clear and brighten, only his limbs could not immediately recover their strength.