The Woman in White (56 page)

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 heart-broken 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) make 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 bed-room 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.

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.