The Woman in White
nurse there? I’ll say a word to her before she goes into the sick-room.”
We found Mrs. Rubelle still enjoying herself at the window. When I
introduced her to Mr. Dawson, neither the doctor’s doubtful looks nor
the doctor’s searching questions appeared to confuse her in the least.
She answered him quietly in her broken English, and though he tried
hard to puzzle her, she never betrayed the least ignorance, so far,
about any part of her duties. This was doubtless the result of strength
of mind, as I said before, and not of brazen assurance, by any means.
We all went into the bedroom.
Mrs. Rubelle looked very attentively at the patient, curtseyed to
Lady Glyde, set one or two little things right in the room, and sat
down quietly in a corner to wait until she was wanted. Her ladyship
seemed startled and annoyed by the appearance of the strange nurse. No
one said anything, for fear of rousing Miss Halcombe, who was still
slumbering, except the doctor, who whispered a question about the
night. I softly answered, “Much as usual,” and then Mr. Dawson went
out. Lady Glyde followed him, I suppose to speak about Mrs. Rubelle.
For my own part, I had made up my mind already that this quiet foreign
person would keep her situation. She had all her wits about her, and
she certainly understood her business. So far, I could hardly have done
much better by the bedside myself.
Remembering Mr. Dawson’s caution to me, I subjected Mrs. Rubelle to a
severe scrutiny at certain intervals for the next three or four days. I
over and over again entered the room softly and suddenly, but I never
found her out in any suspicious action. Lady Glyde, who watched her
as attentively as I did, discovered nothing either. I never detected
a sign of the medicine bottles being tampered with, I never saw Mrs.
Rubelle say a word to the Count, or the Count to her. She managed Miss
Halcombe with unquestionable care and discretion. The poor lady wavered
backwards and forwards between a sort of sleepy exhaustion, which
was half faintness and half slumbering, and attacks of fever which
brought with them more or less of wandering in her mind. Mrs. Rubelle
never disturbed her in the first case, and never startled her in the
second, by appearing too suddenly at the bedside in the character of a
stranger. Honour to whom honour is due (whether foreign or English)—and
I give her privilege impartially to Mrs. Rubelle. She was remarkably
uncommunicative about herself, and she was too quietly independent
of all advice from experienced persons who understood the duties of
a sick-room—but with these drawbacks, she was a good nurse, and she
never gave either Lady Glyde or Mr. Dawson the shadow of a reason for
complaining of her.
The next circumstance of importance that occurred in the house was the
temporary absence of the Count, occasioned by business which took him
to London. He went away (I think) on the morning of the fourth day
after the arrival of Mrs. Rubelle, and at parting he spoke to Lady
Glyde very seriously, in my presence, on the subject of Miss Halcombe.
“Trust Mr. Dawson,” he said, “for a few days more, if you please. But
if there is not some change for the better in that time, send for
advice from London, which this mule of a doctor must accept in spite
of himself. Offend Mr. Dawson, and save Miss Halcombe. I say this
seriously, on my word of honour and from the bottom of my heart.”
His lordship spoke with extreme feeling and kindness. But poor Lady
Glyde’s nerves were so completely broken down that she seemed quite
frightened at him. She trembled from head to foot, and allowed him to
take his leave without uttering a word on her side. She turned to me
when he had gone, and said, “Oh, Mrs. Michelson, I am heartbroken about
my sister, and I have no friend to advise me! Do you think Mr. Dawson
is wrong? He told me himself this morning that there was no fear, and
no need to send for another doctor.”
“With all respect to Mr. Dawson,” I answered, “in your ladyship’s place
I should remember the Count’s advice.”
Lady Glyde turned away from me suddenly, with an appearance of despair,
for which I was quite unable to account.
“HIS advice!” she said to herself. “God help us—HIS advice!”
The Count was away from Blackwater Park, as nearly as I remember, a
week.
Sir Percival seemed to feel the loss of his lordship in various ways,
and appeared also, I thought, much depressed and altered by the
sickness and sorrow in the house. Occasionally he was so very restless
that I could not help noticing it, coming and going, and wandering
here and there and everywhere in the grounds. His inquiries about Miss
Halcombe, and about his lady (whose failing health seemed to cause
him sincere anxiety), were most attentive. I think his heart was much
softened. If some kind clerical friend—some such friend as he might
have found in my late excellent husband—had been near him at this
time, cheering moral progress might have been made with Sir Percival.
I seldom find myself mistaken on a point of this sort, having had
experience to guide me in my happy married days.
Her ladyship the Countess, who was now the only company for Sir
Percival downstairs, rather neglected him, as I considered—or, perhaps,
it might have been that he neglected her. A stranger might almost
have supposed that they were bent, now they were left together alone,
on actually avoiding one another. This, of course, could not be. But
it did so happen, nevertheless, that the Countess made her dinner at
luncheon-time, and that she always came upstairs towards evening,
although Mrs. Rubelle had taken the nursing duties entirely off her
hands. Sir Percival dined by himself, and William (the man out of
livery) made the remark, in my hearing, that his master had put himself
on half rations of food and on a double allowance of drink. I attach
no importance to such an insolent observation as this on the part of a
servant. I reprobated it at the time, and I wish to be understood as
reprobating it once more on this occasion.
In the course of the next few days Miss Halcombe did certainly seem
to all of us to be mending a little. Our faith in Mr. Dawson revived.
He appeared to be very confident about the case, and he assured Lady
Glyde, when she spoke to him on the subject, that he would himself
propose to send for a physician the moment he felt so much as the
shadow of a doubt crossing his own mind.
The only person among us who did not appear to be relieved by these
words was the Countess. She said to me privately, that she could not
feel easy about Miss Halcombe on Mr. Dawson’s authority, and that she
should wait anxiously for her husband’s opinion on his return. That
return, his letters informed her, would take place in three days’ time.
The Count and Countess corresponded regularly every morning during his
lordship’s absence. They were in that respect, as in all others, a
pattern to married people.
On the evening of the third day I noticed a change in Miss Halcombe,
which caused me serious apprehension. Mrs. Rubelle noticed it too. We
said nothing on the subject to Lady Glyde, who was then lying asleep,
completely overpowered by exhaustion, on the sofa in the sitting-room.
Mr. Dawson did not pay his evening visit till later than usual. As soon
as he set eyes on his patient I saw his face alter. He tried to hide
it, but he looked both confused and alarmed. A messenger was sent to
his residence for his medicine-chest, disinfecting preparations were
used in the room, and a bed was made up for him in the house by his
own directions. “Has the fever turned to infection?” I whispered to
him. “I am afraid it has,” he answered; “we shall know better to-morrow
morning.”
By Mr. Dawson’s own directions Lady Glyde was kept in ignorance of
this change for the worse. He himself absolutely forbade her, on
account of her health, to join us in the bedroom that night. She tried
to resist—there was a sad scene—but he had his medical authority to
support him, and he carried his point.
The next morning one of the men-servants was sent to London at eleven
o’clock, with a letter to a physician in town, and with orders to bring
the new doctor back with him by the earliest possible train. Half an
hour after the messenger had gone the Count returned to Blackwater Park.
The Countess, on her own responsibility, immediately brought him in to
see the patient. There was no impropriety that I could discover in her
taking this course. His lordship was a married man, he was old enough
to be Miss Halcombe’s father, and he saw her in the presence of a
female relative, Lady Glyde’s aunt. Mr. Dawson nevertheless protested
against his presence in the room, but I could plainly remark the doctor
was too much alarmed to make any serious resistance on this occasion.
The poor suffering lady was past knowing any one about her. She seemed
to take her friends for enemies. When the Count approached her bedside
her eyes, which had been wandering incessantly round and round the room
before, settled on his face with a dreadful stare of terror, which I
shall remember to my dying day. The Count sat down by her, felt her
pulse and her temples, looked at her very attentively, and then turned
round upon the doctor with such an expression of indignation and
contempt in his face, that the words failed on Mr. Dawson’s lips, and
he stood for a moment, pale with anger and alarm—pale and perfectly
speechless.
His lordship looked next at me.
“When did the change happen?” he asked.
I told him the time.
“Has Lady Glyde been in the room since?”
I replied that she had not. The doctor had absolutely forbidden her to
come into the room on the evening before, and had repeated the order
again in the morning.
“Have you and Mrs. Rubelle been made aware of the full extent of the
mischief?” was his next question.
We were aware, I answered, that the malady was considered infectious.
He stopped me before I could add anything more.
“It is typhus fever,” he said.
In the minute that passed, while these questions and answers were going
on, Mr. Dawson recovered himself, and addressed the Count with his
customary firmness.
“It is NOT typhus fever,” he remarked sharply. “I protest against this
intrusion, sir. No one has a right to put questions here but me. I have
done my duty to the best of my ability—”
The Count interrupted him—not by words, but only by pointing to the
bed. Mr. Dawson seemed to feel that silent contradiction to his
assertion of his own ability, and to grow only the more angry under it.
“I say I have done my duty,” he reiterated. “A physician has been sent
for from London. I will consult on the nature of the fever with him,
and with no one else. I insist on your leaving the room.”
“I entered this room, sir, in the sacred interests of humanity,” said
the Count. “And in the same interests, if the coming of the physician
is delayed, I will enter it again. I warn you once more that the fever
has turned to typhus, and that your treatment is responsible for this
lamentable change. If that unhappy lady dies, I will give my testimony
in a court of justice that your ignorance and obstinacy have been the
cause of her death.”
Before Mr. Dawson could answer, before the Count could leave us, the
door was opened from the sitting-room, and we saw Lady Glyde on the
threshold.
“I MUST and WILL come in,” she said, with extraordinary firmness.
Instead of stopping her, the Count moved into the sitting-room, and
made way for her to go in. On all other occasions he was the last man
in the world to forget anything, but in the surprise of the moment he
apparently forgot the danger of infection from typhus, and the urgent
necessity of forcing Lady Glyde to take proper care of herself.