Part 17 (1/2)

The stolid niece blundered heavily about the room, doing things that were entirely unnecessary, and raising much dust. She was a conscientious person in her own way, and felt that she must get through a certain amount of work in return for the antic.i.p.ated reward.

She banged chairs and table about, folded up scattered clothes, investigated them with much interest, and fingered and re-arranged the row of boots with muttered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and covetous eyes. She had previously contrived to get Arith.e.l.li into a night dress, had brushed her hair back and plaited it, and pulled the green shutters together to keep out the midday glare.

As she looked at the livid face patched with scarlet against the coa.r.s.e linen, Maria began to feel a little perturbed. Something in the atmosphere of the room had penetrated even the brick wall of her stolidity. She hoped the two Senors would soon return and relieve her of the responsibility of her charge.

The stillness oppressed her, for Arith.e.l.li had ceased her moaning and muttering for a merciful stupor.

As the hours went on the fever increased, and the horrible fungus in her throat spread with an appalling rapidity.

As Michael Furness had prophesied, the crisis would soon be reached, and she had everything save youth against her in the fight for life.

Maria crossed herself perfunctorily and mumbled a few prayers.

Doubtless the Senora was like all the English, a heretic, and therefore, according to the comfortable tenets of the Roman faith, eternally d.a.m.ned, but a little prayer would do no harm, and would be counted to herself as an act of charity.

That ceremony over, more mundane considerations engrossed her mind.

She could smell the pungent odour of the _olla podrida_, or national stew, insinuating itself through the half-open door, and she knew that if she were not present at the meal, there would be more than one hungry mouth ready to devour her share.

She drew a breath of relief as she marched heavily downstairs to the more congenial surroundings of the kitchen. She had done her duty.

Senor Poleski had not told her to stay in the room all the time he was away, and she could easily be back again before he came in.

Michael was the first to appear, almost aggressively sober, and carrying a small wooden box. His interest in his case was as much human as professional, and instead of wasting the afternoon, after his usual custom, loafing and drinking, he had gone, after one modest gla.s.s of the rough _Val de Penas_, to search in out-of-the-way streets for a certain herbalist of repute.

This was an aged Spanish Jew, unclean and cadaverous, with patriarchal grey beard and piercing eyes, a man renowned for his marvellous cures among the peasantry.

He was regarded more or less as a wizard, though his wizardry consisted solely in a knowledge of natural remedies, and the exercise of a power which would have been described at the Paris Salpetriere as hypnotic suggestion. By the aid of this he was able to inspire his patients with the faith so necessary to a successful treatment.

Michael was not fettered in any way by the ordinary conventions of a pract.i.tioner. He had neither drugs nor instruments of his own wherewith to effect a cure on ordinary lines, and what he had seen of herbalists in Spain had inspired him with a vast respect for the simplicity and success of their methods. The wooden box contained a quant.i.ty of leaves which, steeped in scalding water, and applied to the patient's throat, possessed the power of reducing the inflammation and drawing out the poison through the pores of the skin. Of their efficacy Michael entertained not the slightest doubt.

He walked straight to the bed, and glanced at Arith.e.l.li's throat, now almost covered with white patches of membrane. There was no time to waste if she was to be saved from the ghastliness of slow suffocation.

He went to the head of the stairs and yelled l.u.s.tily for Maria, whom he commanded to produce boiling water immediately, thus further adding to the reputation of the mad English for haste and unreasonableness.

Then he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and began busily to clear a s.p.a.ce on the table, on which he emptied the contents of the box.

All his movements had suddenly become alert and energetic. The joy of the true physician, the healer, had awakened in him at the prospect of a duel with Death, and he was no longer merely the slouching, good-natured wastrel who doctored horses at the Hippodrome.

He possessed for the moment the dignity of a leader, of the master of a situation. He smiled to himself as he moved about humming a verse of ”Let Ireland remember,” and swept away a _debris_ of books, a rouge pot, some dead flowers, and a large over-trimmed hat.

”Shure 'tis back in the surgery again I am,” he told himself, while his lean, ugly face beamed with satisfaction.

No one who knew Michael Furness had ever suspected the regret by which he was for ever haunted, regret at the loss of his profession. His rollicking manner made it impossible to believe him capable of any depth of feeling, and he had a trick of talking least about the things for which he cared most. The failing that banned him from his work was an inherited one. He suffered for the sins of his fathers, for the indulgences of many generations of hard riding, hard living, reckless hot-blooded Celts. He was too old to reform now, he would say.

Perhaps later on he would be ”making his soul”; in the meantime he drifted.

Emile, Maria and the boiling water all made their entree together. The eyes of the former travelled first of all to the bed and then to the heap of vegetation.

”_Qu 'est-ce que c'est que ca_?” he demanded. ”She is better, eh?”

”No, she's worse,” answered Michael. He seized upon the leaves and began to bundle them into the steaming basin.