CHAPTER XI.

KELVIN'S ILLNESS.

Matthew Kelvin found himself considerably better the morning of the day following that on which he had been taken ill at Stammars, but in the course of the afternoon he had a sharp return of the previous symptoms. Then it was that his mother insisted upon sending for Dr. Druce, the family practitioner, and Olive seconded the plea. Up to this time Kelvin had strenuously refused to let any one be called in, but he now yielded reluctantly to his mother's wishes. He had never been ill enough to need the services of a doctor since those far-off juvenile days of measles and scarlatina, and he was loth to believe that there was any necessity for such services now.

However, in the course of the day, Dr. Druce looked in. He felt his patient's pulse, looked at his tongue, and asked the usual questions. Then he took off his spectacles, pursed up his mouth, shook his head at Kelvin as though he were an offending schoolboy, and delivered himself oracularly. "Disordered state of stomach. Nothing serious. Put you right in a day or two. Must diet yourself more carefully in future. What really charming weather we are having."

Everybody agreed that Dr. Druce was seventy years old; many averred that he was nearly eighty. The latter people it probably was who asserted that the doctor was purblind, that his memory was half gone, that it was hardly safe for him to practise, and that he ought to retire and make room for a younger man. The doctor, however, still considered himself to be in the prime of his powers, and as he had attended Mrs. Kelvin herself for a long series of years, and was, besides, an old personal friend of that lady, it was not likely that she would think of calling in any other assistance to her son.

As soon as Dr. Druce's visit had relieved in some measure his mother's anxiety, Kelvin began to express his desire that Olive should get back to Stammers without delay. "I shall be all right in a day or two," he said, "and my mother, or one or other of the servants, will see meanwhile that I want for nothing."

"I shall wait till to-morrow, and see how you are then, before I think of going back," said Olive. "You know that my aunt can do nothing in the way of waiting upon you, and as for the servants, they are all very well in their places, but they would be quite out of their element in a sick-room."

"A sick-room, indeed! You talk as if I were going to be laid up for a month," said Kelvin, impatiently.

"I talk simple common sense, Matthew," said Olive. "Besides, Lady Dudgeon promised me a holiday a month ago, and I don't see why I should not take it now. In fact, I may tell you that I have already written to her ladyship telling her not to expect me back for three or four days."

"Cool, I must say. Not but what you are welcome to stay here as long as you like: cela va sans dire; and I am greatly obliged to you for what you have done for me already. But as for spending your holiday in waiting on me--that's pure nonsense. A week at the seaside, now, is what you ought to have."

"Which to me would mean a week in a strange place among people whom I never saw before and should never see again. I would sooner hear Sophy and Carry their lessons from year's end to year's end than indulge in such a holiday as that."

"I shall be better to-morrow, you mark my words if I'm not, and then we'll have a little further talk about your holiday."

But he was by no means better next morning; rather worse, indeed, if anything. It was nothing, Dr. Druce said. The medicine sent by him had, perhaps, had the effect of increasing the sickness, but the patient himself was no worse than on the preceding day. A little time and a little patience were needed. It was not to be expected that an evil which had been growing for months, perhaps even for year, could be put right in a day or two.

Kelvin said nothing to Olive that day about going back to Stammars. He was very ill indeed, and he could not help admitting to himself that it was a great comfort to have Olive to wait upon him. His mother, at the best of times, would not have been of much use in a sick-room, seeing that it was a matter of difficulty for her to walk across the floor, and the very fact of Matthew being so ill only tended to make her worse than usual. As for a hired nurse, Kelvin shuddered at the thought. But such a nurse as Olive made all the difference. "You might have been born to this sort of thing, from the way you go, about it," he said to her.

"You forget that for many years my father kept a chemist's shop in a poor neighbourhood," she replied, "and that I seem to have been familiar with sickness and disease since I can remember anything."

"You are a clever girl, Olive, and I believe you could doctor me a deuced sight better than old Druce. I remember when I was a lad hearing your father say that you knew almost as much about his drugs and messes as he did himself."

Olive's back was towards him as he spoke, and she did not answer for a moment or two. "That is a long time ago," she said, in a low voice; "and such knowledge as that is easily forgotten. Then, again, you remember how poor papa always would exaggerate a little."

How deft and noiseless were all her movements in the sick man's room! How soft, and white, and cool were her hands! Her dress never rustled, her shoes never creaked, her voice itself was attuned to the place and the occasion. She was never hurried; nothing seemed to put her out. She would either read to her cousin, or talk to him, or sit for hours by his side doing some noiseless stitching that would not have disturbed the slumbers of a mouse. When he was more than ordinarily restless she would bathe his head with eau-de-Cologne or aromatic vinegar, or sometimes, leaving his door ajar, she would go into the other room and play some of his favourite airs softly on the piano, and so, little by little, charm him out of his restless mood and soothe him off into a refreshing sleep.

It was on the evening of the second day that Mrs. Kelvin called Olive on one side. "You will not leave me to-morrow, unless my dear boy is better?" said the old lady, with tears in her eyes.

"I will not leave you to-morrow, or next week, or next month, unless my cousin is better," said Olive. "You may take my word for that."

"Heaven bless you, dear!" said Mrs. Kelvin, fervently; and she made as though she would kiss Olive, but the latter started back.

"I think Matthew is calling me," she said, and she hurried into the other room.

One day passed after another, and still Dr. Druce's patient did not improve.

"These cases are sometimes very obstinate, indeed," said the old gentleman, pleasantly, as he peered into his snuff-box in search of a last pinch. "And then they not unfrequently affect the liver. Now, I don't know a more obstinate noun substantive in the whole of the English language than your disordered liver. As for the increasing weakness that you complain about--why, I don't care much about that, because it tends to keep down any febrile symptoms. Of course, if you can't eat you can't keep up your strength; but when you once take a turn, you know, you'll have the appetite of a wolf--I may say, the appetite of a wolf in winter."

"What a comfort it is, dear," said Mrs. Kelvin to Olive, "to think that we are in the hands of such a nice clever man as Dr. Druce. He has had so much experience that I believe he can tell at a glance what is the matter with a patient. Experience, in the medical profession, is everything."

Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon drove over to see Mr. Kelvin a couple of days before their return to London. They were greatly concerned at his illness. As regarded Miss Deane, permission was given her to stay with her cousin as long as it might be necessary for her to do so. The young ladies, her pupils, were gone to pay a long-deferred visit to an aunt of theirs, and it was quite uncertain when they would return.

One of Olive's difficulties was thus smoothed away for her without any trouble on her part.

A few hours after Sir Thomas's visit, Mr. Kelvin suddenly opened his hollow eyes. "Olive, where is my mother?" he asked, abruptly.

"She was tired, and she has gone to lie down for half an hour."

"Then you and I can have a little talk together."

Olive guessed instinctively what was coming. "If what you were about to say to me is not very important, I would leave it unsaid to-day, if I were you," she answered. "You have done more talking already than is good for you."

As if to verify her words, he was suddenly taken with a severe fit of sickness which lasted several minutes and left him thoroughly exhausted.

Laying his wasted fingers on Olive's arm, and drawing her towards him, "What I was about to say was this," he whispered. "Since I have been lying here, I have had time to think of many things. But the thing that has weighed heaviest on my mind, the thing that I have regretted most, is my treatment of Eleanor Lloyd. It was you, Olive, who persuaded me to hide the truth from her, to let her live on in ignorance of her real history; to--to--you understand what I mean."

"You know what my motives in the matter were, Matthew," said Olive, in a low voice.

"Yes, I know quite well what they were, and very mean and despicable they seem to me now. Mind, I am not going to reproach you. The fault was mine in allowing myself to be persuaded by you. In any case, the past is the past, and nothing can alter it; but, so sure as I now lie here, the very first day that I can crawl downstairs, I will send for Miss Lloyd, tell her everything, and ask her forgiveness for the wrong I have done her!"

He said no more, but shut his eyes and seemed as if he were going to sleep.

Olive at this time had got Gerald Warburton's letter upstairs, and had, in fact, already answered it in the way that we have seen. For a moment she was tempted to show the letter to her cousin, but before she could make up her mind to do so, Kelvin was asleep or seemed to be. So telling herself that she did not care to disturb him, she let the opportunity go by, and as Kelvin, when he awoke, did not again recur to the subject, there seemed to be no reason why she should do so. Not much longer could the climax be delayed, not much longer could Eleanor Lloyd be kept in ignorance; of that Olive was quite aware; but she would, if possible, delay the revelation for a little while; delay it till Mr. Kelvin should have thoroughly recovered from his illness, and having got rid of all his foolish sick-bed fancies, should be prepared to carry out the scheme in all its features as originally proposed by her and agreed to by him.

But when would Mr. Kelvin have recovered from his illness? That was a question which, as yet, Olive was not prepared to answer. Sometimes it seemed to her that her plot was slowly working itself round to the fulfilment for which she so ardently longed; sometimes it seemed as if no such fulfilment were possible to her. That her cousin liked to have her by his side, liked to have her wait upon him, she saw clearly enough, and she fancied that with each day she became more indispensable to him. But was his heart touched by her devotion; was he slowly but surely learning to love her? That was a problem which at present she could in nowise solve. Time and patience might work wonders for her, and with them as her allies she saw no reason, when in her more sanguine moods, to despair of ultimate success. Having gone so far, having ventured so much, it was not likely, as she said to herself, that she should go back, that she should let herself be overcome by any childish timidity or nonsensical scruples, when, for aught she knew to the contrary, she might at that very moment be on the brink of success. She never knew what a day, what an hour, might bring forth. At some moment when least expected her cousin might put forth his hand and say to her, "Olive, my heart has come round to you again. I love you. Be my wife." If such a prize were not to be won without risk, she was prepared to run that risk, whatever it might involve.

There were times when Kelvin's mysterious malady caused him to suffer acutely. At such moments Olive was always by his side, "a ministering angel," as her cousin himself called her one day; soothing him with the gentlest attentions, anticipating each want intuitively, making herself, in fact, so indispensable to him that after a while he could hardly bear to let her go out of his sight, and if, when he woke up, she were not by his side, he would cry, fretfully, "Where's Olive? Why isn't she here?" and toss and turn restlessly till he felt her soft cold hand laid on his brow.

But even Olive's nerves of steel gave way sometimes. When, at midnight, or later than that, she would steal out of her cousin's room in the hope of getting an hour or two's sleep, sleep would not come to her. All tired as she was, she would fling herself on her bed, and, burying her face in her pillow, cry for an hour at a time as if her heart would break. To see the man she loved so passionately suffer as he suffered; to know that she had but to hold up her little finger, as it were, for his sufferings to cease, but that if she were to let her compassion so master her he would be lost to her for ever; to know that her only chance of winning him was to win him through those sufferings which she alone could soothe: to feel and know all this was at times, especially in the midnight darkness of her own room, torture unspeakable. But when, at cockcrow, the ebony gates of the realm of shadows and midnight fancies were silently shut, and when another day looked in at the windows with its clear cold eyes, the purpose of Olive Deane faltered no longer: her strong will re-asserted itself, and tears and compunction alike were for the time being thrust mercilessly out of sight.

"Oh, doctor, doctor, when are you going to get me downstairs again?" the sick man would sometimes wearily ask. "I am so terribly tired of lying here."

To which the old gentleman, tapping his snuff-box, would blandly reply: "That Mr. Liver is a deuce of a fellow to get right again when once he's really put out. So obstinate, you know, and all that. Wants a deal of coaxing. But we shall bring him to his senses by-and-by--yes, yes, by-and-by, never fear."