Part 52 (1/2)

The window next Mr. Digby did not fit well into its frame. ”There is a sad draught,” said the invalid.

Helen instantly occupied herself in stopping up the c.h.i.n.ks of the window with her handkerchief. Mr. Digby glanced ruefully at the other window.

The look, which was very eloquent, aroused yet more the traveller's spleen.

”Pleasant!” said he. ”Cott! I suppose you will ask me to go outside next! But people who travel in a coach should know the law of a coach. I don't interfere with your window; you have no business to interfere with mine.”

”Sir, I did not speak,” said Mr. Digby, meekly.

”But Miss here did.”

”Ah, sir!” said Helen, plaintively, ”if you knew how Papa suffers!” And her hand again moved towards the obnoxious window.

”No, my dear; the gentleman is in his right,” said Mr. Digby; and, bowing with his wonted suavity, he added, ”Excuse her, sir. She thinks a great deal too much of me.”

The pa.s.senger said nothing, and Helen nestled closer to her father, and strove to screen him from the air.

The pa.s.senger moved uneasily. ”Well,” said he, with a sort of snort, ”air is air, and right is right: but here goes--” and he hastily drew up the window.

Helen turned her face full towards the pa.s.senger with a grateful expression, visible even in the dim light.

”You are very kind, sir,” said poor Mr. Digby; ”I am ashamed to--”

his cough choked the rest of the sentence. The pa.s.senger, who was a plethoric, sanguineous man, felt as if he were stifling. But he took off his wrappers, and resigned the oxygen like a hero.

Presently he drew nearer to the sufferer, and laid hand on his wrist.

”You are feverish, I fear. I am a medical man. St!--one--two. Cott! you should not travel; you are not fit for it!”

Mr. Digby shook his head; he was too feeble to reply.

The pa.s.senger thrust his hand into his coat-pocket, and drew out what seemed a cigar-case, but what, in fact, was a leathern repertory, containing a variety of minute phials.

From one of these phials he extracted two tiny globules. ”There,” said he, ”open your mouth, put those on the tip of your tongue. They will lower the pulse, check the fever. Be better presently, but should not travel, want rest; you should be in bed. Aconite! Henbane! hum! Your papa is of fair complexion,--a timid character, I should say;--a horror of work, perhaps. Eh, child?”

”Sir!” faltered Helen, astonished and alarmed. Was the man a conjuror?

”A case for phosphor!” cried the pa.s.senger: ”that fool Browne would have said a.r.s.enic. Don't be persuaded to take a.r.s.enic!”

”a.r.s.enic, sir!” echoed the mild Digby. ”No: however unfortunate a man may be, I think, sir, that suicide is--tempting, perhaps, but highly criminal.”

”Suicide,” said the pa.s.senger, tranquilly,--”suicide is my hobby! You have no symptom of that kind, you say?”

”Good heavens! No, sir.”

”If ever you feel violently impelled to drown yourself, take pulsatilla; but if you feel a preference towards blowing out your brains, accompanied with weight in the limbs, loss of appet.i.te, dry cough, and bad corns, sulphuret of antimony. Don't forget.”

Though poor Mr. Digby confusedly thought that the gentleman was out of his mind, yet he tried politely to say ”that he was much obliged, and would be sure to remember;” but his tongue failed him, and his own ideas grew perplexed. His head fell back heavily, and he sank into a silence which seemed that of sleep.

The traveller looked hard at Helen, as she gently drew her father's head on her shoulder, and there pillowed it with a tenderness which was more that of a mother than child.