The Woman in White
To my astonishment Mr. Dawson showed more presence of mind. He stopped
her ladyship at the first step she took towards the bedside. “I am
sincerely sorry, I am sincerely grieved,” he said. “The fever may, I
fear, be infectious. Until I am certain that it is not, I entreat you
to keep out of the room.”
She struggled for a moment, then suddenly dropped her arms and sank
forward. She had fainted. The Countess and I took her from the doctor
and carried her into her own room. The Count preceded us, and waited in
the passage till I came out and told him that we had recovered her from
the swoon.
I went back to the doctor to tell him, by Lady Glyde’s desire, that she
insisted on speaking to him immediately. He withdrew at once to quiet
her ladyship’s agitation, and to assure her of the physician’s arrival
in the course of a few hours. Those hours passed very slowly. Sir
Percival and the Count were together downstairs, and sent up from time
to time to make their inquiries. At last, between five and six o’clock,
to our great relief, the physician came.
He was a younger man than Mr. Dawson, very serious and very decided.
What he thought of the previous treatment I cannot say, but it struck
me as curious that he put many more questions to myself and to Mrs.
Rubelle than he put to the doctor, and that he did not appear to listen
with much interest to what Mr. Dawson said, while he was examining Mr.
Dawson’s patient. I began to suspect, from what I observed in this way,
that the Count had been right about the illness all the way through,
and I was naturally confirmed in that idea when Mr. Dawson, after some
little delay, asked the one important question which the London doctor
had been sent for to set at rest.
“What is your opinion of the fever?” he inquired.
“Typhus,” replied the physician. “Typhus fever beyond all doubt.”
That quiet foreign person, Mrs. Rubelle, crossed her thin brown hands
in front of her, and looked at me with a very significant smile. The
Count himself could hardly have appeared more gratified if he had been
present in the room and had heard the confirmation of his own opinion.
After giving us some useful directions about the management of the
patient, and mentioning that he would come again in five days’ time,
the physician withdrew to consult in private with Mr. Dawson. He would
offer no opinion on Miss Halcombe’s chances of recovery—he said it was
impossible at that stage of the illness to pronounce one way or the
other.
The five days passed anxiously.
Countess Fosco and myself took it by turns to relieve Mrs. Rubelle,
Miss Halcombe’s condition growing worse and worse, and requiring our
utmost care and attention. It was a terribly trying time. Lady Glyde
(supported, as Mr. Dawson said, by the constant strain of her suspense
on her sister’s account) rallied in the most extraordinary manner, and
showed a firmness and determination for which I should myself never
have given her credit. She insisted on coming into the sick-room two
or three times every day, to look at Miss Halcombe with her own eyes,
promising not to go too close to the bed, if the doctor would consent
to her wishes so far. Mr. Dawson very unwillingly made the concession
required of him—I think he saw that it was hopeless to dispute with
her. She came in every day, and she self-denyingly kept her promise. I
felt it personally so distressing (as reminding me of my own affliction
during my husband’s last illness) to see how she suffered under these
circumstances, that I must beg not to dwell on this part of the subject
any longer. It is more agreeable to me to mention that no fresh
disputes took place between Mr. Dawson and the Count. His lordship made
all his inquiries by deputy, and remained continually in company with
Sir Percival downstairs.
On the fifth day the physician came again and gave us a little hope.
He said the tenth day from the first appearance of the typhus would
probably decide the result of the illness, and he arranged for his
third visit to take place on that date. The interval passed as
before—except that the Count went to London again one morning and
returned at night.
On the tenth day it pleased a merciful Providence to relieve our
household from all further anxiety and alarm. The physician positively
assured us that Miss Halcombe was out of danger. “She wants no doctor
now—all she requires is careful watching and nursing for some time to
come, and that I see she has.” Those were his own words. That evening
I read my husband’s touching sermon on Recovery from Sickness, with
more happiness and advantage (in a spiritual point of view) than I ever
remember to have derived from it before.
The effect of the good news on poor Lady Glyde was, I grieve to say,
quite overpowering. She was too weak to bear the violent reaction, and
in another day or two she sank into a state of debility and depression
which obliged her to keep her room. Rest and quiet, and change of air
afterwards, were the best remedies which Mr. Dawson could suggest for
her benefit. It was fortunate that matters were no worse, for, on the
very day after she took to her room, the Count and the doctor had
another disagreement—and this time the dispute between them was of so
serious a nature that Mr. Dawson left the house.
I was not present at the time, but I understood that the subject of
dispute was the amount of nourishment which it was necessary to give to
assist Miss Halcombe’s convalescence after the exhaustion of the fever.
Mr. Dawson, now that his patient was safe, was less inclined than ever
to submit to unprofessional interference, and the Count (I cannot
imagine why) lost all the self-control which he had so judiciously
preserved on former occasions, and taunted the doctor, over and over
again, with his mistake about the fever when it changed to typhus. The
unfortunate affair ended in Mr. Dawson’s appealing to Sir Percival, and
threatening (now that he could leave without absolute danger to Miss
Halcombe) to withdraw from his attendance at Blackwater Park if the
Count’s interference was not peremptorily suppressed from that moment.
Sir Percival’s reply (though not designedly uncivil) had only resulted
in making matters worse, and Mr. Dawson had thereupon withdrawn from
the house in a state of extreme indignation at Count Fosco’s usage of
him, and had sent in his bill the next morning.
We were now, therefore, left without the attendance of a medical man.
Although there was no actual necessity for another doctor—nursing and
watching being, as the physician had observed, all that Miss Halcombe
required—I should still, if my authority had been consulted, have
obtained professional assistance from some other quarter, for form’s
sake.
The matter did not seem to strike Sir Percival in that light. He said
it would be time enough to send for another doctor if Miss Halcombe
showed any signs of a relapse. In the meanwhile we had the Count to
consult in any minor difficulty, and we need not unnecessarily disturb
our patient in her present weak and nervous condition by the presence
of a stranger at her bedside. There was much that was reasonable, no
doubt, in these considerations, but they left me a little anxious
nevertheless. Nor was I quite satisfied in my own mind of the propriety
of our concealing the doctor’s absence as we did from Lady Glyde. It
was a merciful deception, I admit—for she was in no state to bear any
fresh anxieties. But still it was a deception, and, as such, to a
person of my principles, at best a doubtful proceeding.
A second perplexing circumstance which happened on the same day, and
which took me completely by surprise, added greatly to the sense of
uneasiness that was now weighing on my mind.
I was sent for to see Sir Percival in the library. The Count, who was
with him when I went in, immediately rose and left us alone together.
Sir Percival civilly asked me to take a seat, and then, to my great
astonishment, addressed me in these terms—
“I want to speak to you, Mrs. Michelson, about a matter which I decided
on some time ago, and which I should have mentioned before, but for the
sickness and trouble in the house. In plain words, I have reasons for
wishing to break up my establishment immediately at this place—leaving
you in charge, of course, as usual. As soon as Lady Glyde and Miss
Halcombe can travel they must both have change of air. My friends,
Count Fosco and the Countess, will leave us before that time to live
in the neighbourhood of London, and I have reasons for not opening the
house to any more company, with a view to economising as carefully
as I can. I don’t blame you, but my expenses here are a great deal
too heavy. In short, I shall sell the horses, and get rid of all the
servants at once. I never do things by halves, as you know, and I
mean to have the house clear of a pack of useless people by this time
to-morrow.”
I listened to him, perfectly aghast with astonishment.
“Do you mean, Sir Percival, that I am to dismiss the indoor servants
under my charge without the usual month’s warning?” I asked.
“Certainly I do. We may all be out of the house before another month,
and I am not going to leave the servants here in idleness, with no
master to wait on.”
“Who is to do the cooking, Sir Percival, while you are still staying
here?”
“Margaret Porcher can roast and boil—keep her. What do I want with a
cook if I don’t mean to give any dinner-parties?”
“The servant you have mentioned is the most unintelligent servant in
the house, Sir Percival.”
“Keep her, I tell you, and have a woman in from the village to do
the cleaning and go away again. My weekly expenses must and shall be
lowered immediately. I don’t send for you to make objections, Mrs.
Michelson—I send for you to carry out my plans of economy. Dismiss the
whole lazy pack of indoor servants to-morrow, except Porcher. She is as
strong as a horse—and we’ll make her work like a horse.”
“You will excuse me for reminding you, Sir Percival, that if the
servants go to-morrow they must have a month’s wages in lieu of a
month’s warning.”
“Let them! A month’s wages saves a month’s waste and gluttony in the
servants’ hall.”
This last remark conveyed an aspersion of the most offensive kind on
my management. I had too much self-respect to defend myself under so
gross an imputation. Christian consideration for the helpless position
of Miss Halcombe and Lady Glyde, and for the serious inconvenience
which my sudden absence might inflict on them, alone prevented me from
resigning my situation on the spot. I rose immediately. It would have
lowered me in my own estimation to have permitted the interview to
continue a moment longer.
“After that last remark, Sir Percival, I have nothing more to say. Your
directions shall be attended to.” Pronouncing those words, I bowed my
head with the most distant respect, and went out of the room.
The next day the servants left in a body. Sir Percival himself
dismissed the grooms and stablemen, sending them, with all the horses
but one, to London. Of the whole domestic establishment, indoors
and out, there now remained only myself, Margaret Porcher, and the
gardener—this last living in his own cottage, and being wanted to take
care of the one horse that remained in the stables.
With the house left in this strange and lonely condition—with the
mistress of it ill in her room—with Miss Halcombe still as helpless
as a child—and with the doctor’s attendance withdrawn from us in
enmity—it was surely not unnatural that my spirits should sink, and my
customary composure be very hard to maintain. My mind was ill at ease.
I wished the poor ladies both well again, and I wished myself away from
Blackwater Park.
II