The Shadow of Ashlydyat Part 10

"I should like you to wait until things are asked for, and not to worry me," retorted Sarah Anne.

Ethel sighed. Not for the temper: Sarah Anne was always fractious in illness: but for the suffering she thought she saw, and the half doubt, half dread, which had arisen within her. "I think I had better call mamma," she deliberated to herself. "Though, if she sees nothing unusually the matter with Sarah Anne, she will only be angry with me."

Proceeding to her mother's chamber, Ethel knocked softly. Lady Sarah slept still, but the entrance aroused her.

"Mamma, I do not like to disturb you; I was unwilling to do so: but Sarah Anne is ill."

"Ill again! And only last week she was in bed three days! Poor dear sufferer! Is it her chest again?"

"Mamma, she seems _unusually_ ill. Otherwise I should not have disturbed you. I feared--I thought--you will be angry with me if I say, perhaps?"

"Say what? Don't stand like a statue, Ethel."

Ethel dropped her voice. "Dear mamma, suppose it should be the fever?"

For one startling moment, Lady Sarah felt as if a dagger had pierced her: the next, she turned upon Ethel. Fever for Sarah Anne! how dared she prophesy it? A low, common fever, confined to the poor of the town, and which had subsided; or, all but subsided! Was it likely to return again and come up here to attack her darling child? What did Ethel mean by it?

Ethel, the tears in her eyes, said she hoped it would prove to be only an ordinary headache; it was her love for Sarah Anne which awoke her fears. Lady Sarah proceeded to the sick-room; and Ethel followed. Her ladyship was not in the habit of observing caution, and spoke freely of the "fever" before Sarah Anne; apparently for the purpose of casting blame at Ethel.

Sarah Anne did not imbibe the fear; she ridiculed Ethel as her mother had done. For some hours Lady Sarah did not admit it either. She would have summoned medical advice at first, but that Sarah Anne, in her peevishness, protested she would not have a doctor. Later on she grew worse, and Mr. Snow was sent for. You saw him in his gig hastening to the house.

Lady Sarah came forward to receive him; Ethel, full of anxiety, near her. She was a thin woman, with a shrivelled face and a sharp red nose, her grey hair banded plainly under a close white net cap.

She grasped Mr. Snow's arm. "You must save my child!"

"Higher aid permitting me," the surgeon answered. "Why do you a.s.sume it to be fever? For the last six weeks I have been summoned by timid parents to a score of 'fever' cases; and when I have arrived in hot haste, they have turned out to be no fever at all."

"_This_ is the fever," replied Lady Sarah. "Had I been more willing to admit that it was, you would have been sent for hours ago. It was Ethel's fault. She suggested at daylight that it might be fever; and it made my darling girl so angry that she forbid my sending for advice. But she is worse now. Come and see her."

Mr. Snow laid his hand upon Ethel's head with a fond gesture, ere he turned to Lady 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 gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 pa.s.sionately 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 const.i.tutions 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."