Part 13 (1/2)
Gerald put the wounded member behind her. ”Thank you. I neither require nor desire a.s.sistance.”
”Pardon me, you do require it, and if you refuse to see the doctor--”
”Is that any reason why I should resort to you--and kitchen soap?”
”I grant it is a very homely remedy, Miss Vernor, but it is an excellent one and the only one I know.”
”I daresay. It is one more than I know of.”
”You will not try it?”
”No.”
”Perhaps you are afraid of the pain attending the dressing?”
It was a masterly stroke. Gerald gave him one look of intense scorn, almost of anger, and immediately reached out her hand. ”I am afraid of nothing--not even of your lack of skill.”
Denham took her hand without further ceremony, and holding it firmly, pushed back the hanging lace from her arm and began rubbing the soap over the burns, without so much as a word of pity for the pain he knew he was giving her. She winced involuntarily at the first touch, but set her teeth tightly lest she should cry out. It hurt her cruelly. ”I was not aware before that the custody of souls extended to that of the temples they inhabit,” she said, when she could command herself sufficiently to a.s.sume a supreme indifference of tone. ”You believe in purely household remedies, I see.”
”I believe always in doing what I can with what means I have. One moment more, please. I am not quite through.”
Gerald held out her hand again. ”Perhaps you had better try sandstone on it this time, or a little burning oil.”
Halloway did not answer, but hastily tearing his handkerchief into strips, bound the arm as closely as he could. ”There,” he said, surveying the bandages critically, and inwardly well pleased with his success; ”at least that will do till you can see the doctor.”
”Are you sure you are quite through now?” asked Gerald, in mock submission. ”You don't think it necessary to put the arm in a splint, or to fasten weights to it, or to amputate the first joint of the thumb?”
”I am sorry to say that is all I know how to do for you, Miss Vernor.”
”Then I will go back to Miss Lydia. By the way, would you recommend soap also for hysterics?”
”Applied with a close bandage over the mouth? Certainly, it will be both effectual and immediate.”
”Thank you. Good-night.”
”Will you not shake hands with me?”
Gerald turned as she was moving off and held out her hand, more as a queen might have extended it in motion of dismissal than as friend to friend. Denham took it between both his. ”Before you go, I want to thank you in the name of all Miss Phebe's friends,” he said, earnestly. ”You have saved her life to-night, and at the risk of your own.”
”The table-cloth was her savior, not I,” returned Gerald, lightly, but with a softened voice. ”And anyway, is it not quite thanks enough only to know that Phebe is safe? Now good-night in earnest.”
CHAPTER IX.
JOPPA'S MINISTRATIONS TO THE SICK.
All news, good, bad, and indifferent, flies equally fast in Joppa; and had there been a town-crier deputed for the purpose, Phebe's accident could not have sooner become a household tale in even the most distant districts of the place. After a contradiction of the first rumor, reporting her burned to a crisp and only recognizable by a ring of her mother's on her left hand,--which ring by-the-way she never wore,--and after a contradiction in due course of the second rumor, reporting Gerald to be lying in the agonies of death and Phebe to have escaped without a hair singed, followed a period of dire uncertainty, when n.o.body knew what to believe, and felt only an obstinate conviction that everybody else had got it entirely wrong. But at last the story straightened itself out into something bearing a family resemblance to actual facts, and then Joppa settled itself resolutely down to doing its duty. My duty toward my sick neighbor in Joppa consists in calling twice a day, if not oftener, at his house; in inquiring after his condition down to minutest and most sacred details; in knowing accurately how many hours he slept last night, and what he ate for breakfast, and what is paid the sick-nurse, and if it includes her was.h.i.+ng. My second duty toward my sick neighbor is to bring him something to eat, on the supposition that ”outside things taste differently;” or something to look at; or, if nothing better, at least something to refuse. My third and last duty toward my neighbor,--the well neighbor who possesses the sick one,--is to narrate every somewhat similar case on record, with all its circ.u.mstances and the ultimate career of the sufferer; to prescribe remedies as infallible as the Pope; to disapprove wholly, and on the best grounds, of those in actual use; to offer every a.s.sistance in and out of my power; and to say at leaving that I _hope_ it may all turn out well, but that _I_ should have called in the other doctor. Joppa had learned by heart its duty toward its neighbor from its earliest, stammering infancy, and it adhered strictly to the path therein marked out. It inquired after Phebe diligently; it thoroughly mastered all possible intricacies of her case; it made her gifts digestible and indigestible; and it said that, by all odds, it was Dr. Harrison who should have attended her from the first. Dr. Dennis took very good care of her, nevertheless, and it was not long before he p.r.o.nounced that all she needed was quiet and rest to complete the cure.
”We shall have her out of bed in a few days now, Mrs. Lane; in a week or so perhaps,” he said, as he pa.s.sed out at the front door where Mrs. Lane was standing talking with Mrs. Hardcastle. ”She is doing very well, as well as I could wish. All she needs is rest. Keep her perfectly quiet.”
And the doctor bowed himself off, first politely inquiring of Mrs.