CHAPTER II.

PODS STRATAGEM.

Days and weeks passed away, but still Matthew Kelvin did not get better. His condition fluctuated strangely. Sometimes for days together there would be a slow but sure improvement. Appetite and strength would alike increase, and his mother would grow glad at heart, thinking that she should soon see him out and about again, and as well as ever. But some morning, without the least warning, there would come a terrible relapse, which, in the course of two or three hours, would undo the improvement that it had taken days to effect, flinging him helplessly back, as some strong wave flings back a desperate swimmer the moment his foot touches the shore, leaving him, buffeted and bruised, and with decreased strength, to struggle again from the same point that he started from before. So it was with Matthew Kelvin. There were times and seasons, after one of these strange relapses, when to those about him he seemed on the very verge of the grave--times and seasons when the patient himself prayed that if there were to be no release from his sufferings but death, then that death might come, and come quickly. Then would Dr. Druce be summoned in hot haste by Mrs. Kelvin. Presently the old gentleman would totter slowly into the room, smile blandly round at the anxious faces about him, and, both by his manner and words, quietly pooh-pooh their exaggerated alarm.

"I told you from the first," he would cheerfully remark, "that the case was an obstinate one, and you must not allow these apparent relapses to alarm you. The dying struggles of disease are often the most severe. The garrison will sometimes make its most desperate sortie after it knows that in the course of a few days it will be compelled to capitulate unconditionally. For the present the pain is over. I will send a composing draught, which the patient must take at once; and to-morrow I doubt not but we shall find ourselves much stronger and better."

Better next day Mr. Kelvin would undoubtedly be, but not stronger. Each one of these mysterious relapses seemed to leave him a little weaker than before, a little less able to cope with the enemy that seemed bent on sapping away his life by slow degrees. But of this he hinted nothing to his mother. Her anxiety on his account was deep enough already; there was no need to add to her distress; so he kept his own counsel, and put a cheerful face on the matter, and would declare, on waking after one of the composing draughts, that he felt stronger and better than he had felt for weeks.

If any of Mrs. Kelvin's friends ever hinted to her that Dr. Druce was very old and very infirm, and that it might perhaps be advisable to seek some further advice, the old lady was up in arms in a moment, "Because people are old and not quite so active as they may once have been, I hope they are not necessarily fools!" she would tartly remark. "If that is the case, I must be a great fool, indeed. Dr. Druce has practised in Pembridge for fifty years, and if his experience is not worth more than that of a man thirty years his junior, I should like to know what is the good of experience at all. No, no; the older a doctor grows the cleverer he must become, if he has any brains at all." After such an outburst as this, there was nothing more to be said, especially as the patient himself seemed to have every confidence in Dr. Druce's skill and ability to cope with the strange malady from which he was suffering.

Nothing more was now said about Olive Deane's return to her duties at Stammar. It was an understood thing that she could not possibly be spared while her cousin's health remained as it was at present. Lady Dudgeon had very kindly consented to keep the situation open for her for a few weeks longer, in the hope that by that time Mr. Kelvin's health might be so far restored as to allow of Olive's resumption of her duties; but Olive, though she said nothing, had far different objects in view. She laughed to herself when she read Lady Dudgeon's note, and then tossed it contemptuously into the fire.

She had, indeed, long before this time, contrived to render herself indispensable both to her aunt and her cousin. She could not always be in the sickroom. Many were the hours that she and her aunt sat together alone. Such hours she did her best to brighten by means of pleasant, genial talk and long readings from her aunt's favourite books, and the old lady was proportionately grateful.

"I often feel as if you had always lived with us," she would sometimes say to Olive. "You seem altogether like one of ourselves, and however we shall be able to let you go again, I can't tell. If Matthew were a marrying man, he might do worse, my dear, than make you his wife. But that is out of the question, for I don't suppose he will ever marry now."

Olive was not quite so sure on that point as her aunt seemed to be. Her affectionate devotion to her cousin seemed as if it were about to bear fruit at last. He could not bear to let any one but Olive wait upon him or minister to his needs.

Even to his mother he once or twice spoke with a slight tinge of impatience; coming after Olive, her waiting upon him seemed slow and bungling indeed. "If you would only sit down in that easy chair, mother, and let Olive attend to me!" he would say. "I want you to tell me all the gossip, and not to be bothering yourself and me about the quality of my beef-tea."

As for having any common paid nurse to wait upon him, that was altogether out of the question now.

As he sat in his easy-chair one day, propped up with pillows and sipping at a cup of barley-water, while Olive sat on a low hassock close by, waiting till he should be ready to give her the cup, he said to her suddenly, after a long silence: "I believe, Olive, that if I ever do get better--which I sometimes doubt--I shall owe my life far more to your care and attention than to old Druce's filthy mixtures. I shall never know how to repay you. I never knew that you had half the splendid qualities in you that you have shown of late. But we men can hardly ever see farther than our noses where a woman is concerned. I am afraid I shall have to remain your debtor to the end of the chapter."

"You talk very great nonsense, Matthew," she said, in a voice that was hardly louder than a whisper. "You my debtor, indeed!"

One of her cousin's hands rested on the arm of his chair; by accident, it may be, one of Olive's hands found its way to the same place. Their fingers touched. Matthew put down his empty cup, and taking Olive's hand in both his, drew her towards him. Then he put one arm round her neck, and drawing her face close to his, he kissed her on the forehead. They both looked round with a start. Mrs. Kelvin had quietly opened the door, and was standing there with a smile on her face.

"Two's company--three's none," said the old lady, pleasantly. "I'll go back to my room for a little while, and next time I come I will be discreet enough to cough before opening the door."

"You dear old goose!" said Kelvin. "If cousins may not kiss, who may?"

"Oh, don't think that I object to your kissing each other!" cried the old lady. "That sort of medicine might do you more good than any other."

"By Jove, now, I never thought of that!" cried Kelvin, with a laugh. "Only, in the present case, it was altogether a one-sided affair. It was not Olive who was kissing me, but I who was kissing Olive."

These were the last words that Olive heard, as, with face aflame, she hurried from the room; but what had just happened was enough to fill her with strange, rapturous thoughts, and to strengthen hopes that were beginning to droop and grow faint for want of sustenance. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte. The ice was broken; the first step was taken; everything else would follow in due course.

No after allusion was made either by Matthew or his mother to the scene just described, but Olive flattered herself by imagining that there was a warmth, a significance, in her cousin's manner now, such as she had never noticed before. If he would but speak; if he would but breathe one word to which she could pin her faith--that she could treasure up even as a half promise that he would make her his wife--from that very day his illness should begin to leave him! But atpresent she dare not falter in the course she had laid down for herself. Were he to recover suddenly now, all thoughts of her and her services would be quickly swept from his mind by the inrush of hopes, cares, pleasures, and anxieties of everyday life, which the floodgates of sickness had for a time partially shut out. Every additional day that kept him helpless in her hands was so much gain to her hopes. The more deeply he continued to feel the need of her and her services, the more likely was his gratitude to lead him by imperceptible degrees into the easy pathway of love. If he had not loved her a little he would hardly have kissed her as he did. Let him but seal those kisses with a word, and from that moment the breath of returning life should fill his nostrils; while no man should ever have a wife more tender and devoted than she would be to him. How bitterly it made her heart ache to see him lying there in pain, which she alone could relieve but dare not--to see him wasting day by day into a haggard, gaunt-eyed skeleton of his former self--no one but herself could ever more than faintly imagine. "If he were to die, I should poison myself an hour after. But he won't do that. Suddenly, some day, the scales will fall from his eyes, and he will know that he loves me and that I love him; and that love shall bring him back to life and health from the verge of the grave itself!"

Pod Piper was a frequent visitor in his master's sickroom. Whenever Mr. Kelvin felt himself a little better, he would send for Pod and dictate sundry instructions, chiefly replies to some of his many correspondents, which that young gentleman would take down in shorthand, to be copied out afterwards in the office downstairs. Of course, there were times when it was requisite that Mr. Bray, the head-clerk, should see his employer in person; but as he happened to be slightly afflicted with deafness, the labour of talking to him was sometimes too much for Mr. Kelvin, so he dispensed as much as possible with the necessity of seeing him. To Olive Deane it seemed far better that if any one must see her cousin frequently on matters of business, that person should be a simple country lad, the chief occupation of whose mind probably was to wonder what he should have for dinner, rather than that quietly observant Mr. Bray, who seemed to see so much and to say so little. So to Pod she was always coldly gracious, and when he had finished with Mr. Kelvin upstairs, he generally found a piece of bread and jam, or a slice of cake, or an orange, on the hall table, put there for him by Olive herself Whatever the article might be, it made no difference to Pod: he treated them all with the strict impartiality of a hungry lad: but his private opinion with regard to Miss Deane was not modified one iota thereby. He could not forget the scene between her and Mr. Pomeroy; he could not forget the base plot of which he had overheard the details, and of which his favourite, Miss Lloyd, was to be the victim.

"She's a snake in the grass, if ever there was one," Pod would often remark confidentially to himself, even while in the very act of munching the bread and jam which Miss Deane had prepared for him.

"Doesn't the governor seem to have got fond of her all of a sudden!" remarked Pod, parenthetically to himself, one day, as he was marching slowly downstairs from the sick man's room. "Nobody else must wait upon him, or even be near him. It's disgusting!"

There was a splendid orange waiting for him on the hall table this morning. He took it with him to his den to enjoy in secret; but all the time he was sucking the orange, his thoughts were with his master and Miss Deane. "How close she sticks to him! Seems as if she couldn't bear even the old lady to go near him. What a funny thing it is he don't get better! I don't believe Dr. Druce, who's no better than an old woman, knows a bit what's the matter with him. I've seen him two or three times when he's had one of his bad attacks on him, and I'm blessed if I don't have a jaw with Dr. Whitaker about it. _He's_ something like a doctor."

The Dr. Whitaker alluded to by Pod was a young practitioner who had been settled in Pembridge some five or six years. Some professional difference of opinion had arisen between him and Dr. Druce over a case to which they had both been called in, and the older man no longer recognized the younger when they passed each other in the street, or even spoke of him otherwise than in a tone of polite contempt: all of which in no wise troubled Dr. Whitaker, who plodded his way through life with a kind word and a pleasant smile for everybody--even including old Dr. Druce.

Kelvin and he had met several times at the houses of mutual friends, and had learned to know and like each other: and when the former was taken ill, Dr. Whitaker was the man he would have liked to attend him; but he knew that to have breathed such a wish to his mother would almost have broken her heart, so firmly did she pin her faith to Dr. Druce.

If there was one thing that easy-going Dr. Whitaker detested more than another, it was having to make out his own bills. In order to obviate this disagreeable necessity, he had taken of late to employing Pod Piper as his secretary. Pod wrote a capital hand for a youngster, and was only too well pleased to be able to earn a few shillings now and again by working after office-hours. Everybody in Pembridge knew of Mr. Kelvin's illness by this time, and Dr. Whitaker seldom saw Pod without inquiring after him. Thus it was that Pod saw his way to bring under the notice of Dr. Whitaker easily, and as if in the course of ordinary conversation, that which he was growing anxious to tell him.

Accordingly, the next time Dr. Whitaker put his usual query, "How has the governor been to day?" Pod was prepared to go more into detail than he had ever done before.

"Much the same as usual, sir, thank you," he answered. "But if I may make so bold as to say so, my opinion is that Dr. Druce is no better than an old woman. It's the liver, he says---nothing but the liver. If that's all that's the matter, why don't he cure it? Now, if master would only send for you, sir, I'm sure you would soon put him all right again."

"Piper," said Dr. Whitaker, as he leisurely proceeded to light a cigar, "Dr. Druce is one of the antiquities of Pembridge, and antiquities should always be respected. Oblige me by getting on with your work."

Dr. Whitaker went out, and was gone for upwards of an hour. When he got back, Pod was putting away his papers for the night. "He was dreadfully sick this morning when I was in the room," remarked Pod, quietly, as if there had been no hiatus in the conversation. "In fact, there's hardly a day passes that he isn't dreadfully sick. But of course it's all the liver."

"Ah, ah! he's often sick, is he?" And then Dr. Whitaker whistled a few bars below his breath. "Is his sickness accompanied or followed by any particular pain, or any peculiar sensation, do you know?" he said, in a minute or two.

It is not needful that Pod's answer should be set down here. It is sufficient to say that whatever it was it put a sudden end to the young doctor's careless mood. He lighted another cigar, and made Pod sit down opposite to him, and questioned him closely and minutely for upwards of half an hour; and when at last he let him go, it was with a caution not to say a word to anyone about their interview. "Watch closely, and tell me everything," he said. "To-day is Tuesday; you will come to me at seven on Thursday evening. Contrive to be as much with your master during the interval as you can be without exciting suspicion, and note particularly those points which I have specified."

Fortune favoured Pod next morning more than he would have dared to expect. He was called up, as usual, to take down Mr. Kelvin's notes in shorthand. Kelvin, this morning, seemed feebler than usual, and was obliged to pause several times while dictating his instructions. He had got about half-way through the morning's letters, when Miss Deane came in with a cup of tea in her hand. "Take a little of this, Matthew," she said. "It will help to revive you."

He was sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows. He took the tea and sipped at it. "It's a little too hot," he said. "I will drink it presently."

Olive was in the act of putting the cup and saucer on the little table which stood close to her cousin's hand, when there came a hurried knocking at the room door, and next moment the head of one of the servants was intruded into the room. "Oh! if you please, miss," said the girl, "Mrs. Kelvin has met with a little accident. She slipped just now as she was coming downstairs. I don't think she's much hurt, but she wants you to go at once."

Leaving the cup and saucer on the little table, Olive hurried from the room.

"Send me up word, Olive, as soon as you can, whether anything serious is the matter," her cousin said to her as she was going.

He was evidently anxious. "We will leave the papers for a little while, Piper," he said, presently. "We shall have some news from downstairs before long." Then he took the tea and drank a little of it. "I don't know how it is," he said, more as if speaking to himself than addressing Pod, "but of late everything seems to have such a queer taste."

The cup was still in his fingers when Olive opened the door.

"There's nothing to alarm you, Matthew," she said; "nothing serious the matter. Aunt missed the bottom stair as she was coming down. She is a little shaken--nothing worse. If you don't want me just now I will go and sit with her for a little while."

"Go, by all means. Piper and I have not quite finished," said Kelvin. "I am very glad indeed that nothing more serious is the matter."

Olive left the room, and Kelvin put the cup and saucer back on the table. Then he took up a long letter which he had partly read before, and Pod expected he was going to finish it; but, after reading a few lines, he paused, as though considering some point in his mind. He was still holding the letter, still evidently thinking about it, when, by-and-by, he shut his eyes. Pod thought that he had shut them in order to think out more clearly the case before him: perhaps he had. But in the course of two or three minutes the hand that held the letter relaxed its grasp, and Mr. Kelvin's low, regular breathing indicated that he was asleep.

Pod Piper had been sitting very quietly all this time, thinking chiefly of what Dr. Whitaker had talked to him about last evening. Now that his master was asleep, there was nothing to hinder him from taking a long look at him, and tears came into the lad's eyes as he gazed at the hollow-eyed, sunken-cheeked wreck before him. "If this is her doing--If her hand has done this--she must be a daughter of the devil him self!" muttered Pod.

He never could tell afterwards what prompted the thought to enter his mind, but all at once, while gazing at the sleeping man, his face flushed, his eyes brightened, and he rose nervously from his chair. Yes: the breakfast-cup was on the little table, and still three-parts filled with tea. On another table near the door were a couple of empty physic-bottles, put there for the servant to take away. Pod's mind was made up in a moment. Another glance at the sleeper convinced him that there was no present fear from that quarter. Stepping lightly and on tiptoe, he went round the foot of the bed to the other side. Then he took the cup of tea and crossed the room with it to the table on which the empty bottles were standing. One of these bottles he uncorked, and into it, with the loss of a few drops only, he dexterously contrived to pour the tea. Then he recorked the bottle, hid it carefully away in his pocket, and put back the cup on to the little table. That done, he quietly resumed his seat by the sleeping man.

Five minutes later, Miss Deane came into the room. Pod warned her by a gesture that Mr. Kelvin was asleep. She stood gazing at him for a moment, and then she glanced across at the tea-cup. "Did he drink his tea before going to sleep?" she whispered to Pod.

"Yes--every drop of it," answered Pod, without a moment's hesitation.

She took up the cup and saucer and one or two other things, and moved towards the door. Then she took up the empty bottle, and then she looked round as if searching for the other one. Pod was furtively watching her, and his heart came into his mouth. She stood for a moment as if in doubt, but not being quite sure, apparently, whether there had been one bottle or two, she made no remark, but went out of the room as quietly as she had come in.

In ten minutes she was back again. Kelvin was still asleep. "I think there is no need for you to wait any longer," she whispered to Pod. "Mr. Kelvin may sleep for an hour, or even longer. Should he want you when he awakes, I will send for you."

So Pod went, and very thankful he was to get away. When the dinner-hour came, he rushed off at once to Dr. Whitaker's, and telling that gentleman what he had done, left the bottle with him.

Twenty-four hours later. Dr. Whitaker handed a sealed letter to Pod, with instructions to give the same privately into the hands of Mr. Kelvin at the first possible opportunity. That opportunity came next morning, when Miss Deane left the room for a few minutes while her cousin was dictating his letters to Pod. The moment the door was shut behind her. Pod, who had been on the watch, passed the letter into the hands of Mr. Kelvin. "You must read this in private, please, before Miss Deane comes back into the room."

Kelvin looked at the lad, but broke the seal without comment. Then, glancing at the signature, "From Whitaker!" he said. "What on earth can he have to write to me about?"

Dr. Whitaker's letter ran as under--

"My dear Kelvin,--

"I need not tell you that I have been truly grieved to hear of your long illness, as I do not doubt that you would be grieved were I in the same unfortunate predicament. As your clerk, young Piper, is frequently employed by me of an evening in making out my accounts, I have been enabled to question him pretty closely as to the progress and symptoms of your complaint. As a professional man, such details are never without interest for me, more especially where one of my friends is concerned. Certain things which Piper has told me of late (in answer to my questioning) have set me thinking very seriously.

"I have a certain delicacy in writing to you as I am writing now. Druce and I, as you are well aware, are by no means the best of friends. He looks upon me as a juvenile who has hardly learnt the ABC of his profession--as a believer in new-fangled notions such as the world had never heard of when he was young; and, finally, he holds me in most general contempt. He is quite welcome to his opinion of me. I may have mine about him, only I keep it to myself. In such a state of affairs, for me to interfere, either verbally or by writing, with one of his patients, is a professional crime for which nothing less than hanging, drawing, and quartering ought to be punishment sufficient. Indeed, I may tell you, that unless the occasion had seemed to me a very serious one indeed, no such interference on my part would have taken place. But were I to go to Dr. Druce and tell him what I have reason to think about your case, how should I be received?

"As it happens, there is no need to answer this question. I am not going to Druce. I am going to put him aside, and, breaking through all the rules of professional etiquette, to communicate with you direct.

"My dear Kelvin, I have heard enough from Piper about your case both to puzzle and alarm me. Yours is certainly no ordinary liver complaint. I may tell you that much at once. What else it may be, I am hardly prepared as yet to say--or even to hint. But if you have any regard for my words, or any belief in my knowledge, you will do what I ask of you, and do it without hesitation or delay.

"What I want you to do is this: To send to me by Piper, in a bottle sealed by your own hand, about half a pint of what ever liquid may be brought you to drink after you have read this letter--it matters little whether it be tea, barley-water, toast-and-water, or anything else. Do this unknown to anyone but Piper, who will at once bring me the bottle and contents. Whisper no word to anyone as to what you have done, and ask Piper no questions. He may be trusted implicitly, but of the details he knows nothing. Till you hear from me again, which will probably be to-morrow evening, take as little liquid as possible, and eat nothing but plain biscuits and dry toast. A little weak brandy-and-water will do you no harm, but either mix it yourself or see it mixed. Be sure that I am not asking you to do all this without a reason, and a very powerful one too. Above all things--_silence and secrecy_. Burn this as soon as read, and believe me.

"Your sincere friend,

"Cyrus Whitaker."

"Burn this letter," said Kelvin to Pod, when he had read it through twice. When he had seen it shrivelled into ashes, he lay back on his pillows, thinking, and neither stirred nor spoke till Miss Deane came into the room, some quarter o f an hour afterwards.

"Olive," he said, but without turning his eyes towards her, "I feel more thirsty than usual this morning. If you have any barley-water ready-made, I should like you to get me some."

She smiled, and went without a word. Five minutes later, she came back with a small jug and a glass.

"Will you take a little of it now?" she asked.

"Yes, just a little, and then you can put the things on the table within reach." After she had given him a little of the barley-water, he said, "Piper and I have rather a heavy lot of papers to wade through this morning, so, while we are finishing them, I wish you would just step round to the library and get me that book of travels we were talking about last night; or if that one is not at home, some other: you know the sort I like."

As soon as Olive had left the room, Kelvin turned to Pod. "You have got a bottle in your pocket, I suppose?" he said.

"Yes, sir."

"Then pour that barley-water into it, and cork it up tightly."

When this was done, Pod lighted a taper, and Kelvin sealed up the bottle with his own trembling fingers, and stamped it with the monogram of his ring. Then the bottle went back into Pod's pocket.

"No more business to-day," said the sick man, wearily. "Take those papers back to Mr. Bray, and tell him to do the best he can with them. As for yourself, you will go at once to Dr. Whitaker, and give that bottle into his own hands. I suppose I may rely upon your fidelity and discretion in this matter, eh?"

"You may do that, sir, with perfect confidence," said Pod, with much earnestness.

"Yes, I think you are true and honest," said Kelvin, slowly, with his eyes fixed full on the boy's open face. Then, as Pod went out, he added to himself: "That letter of Whitaker's has instilled such a horrible suspicion into my mind, that I no longer know whom or what to believe."

Next morning. Pod smuggled another letter into the hands of his master. It was very brief, but very much to the purpose.

"My Dear Kelvin,

"I must see you as quickly as possible, and in _private_. Your restoration to health, nay, your life itself, may depend on this. No one must know of my visit except Piper; and you must let me know through him when you can arrange to have me admitted to your room without any of your household being aware of my visit. Not a word to anyone. Burn this.

"Yours ever,

"C. W."

For fully half an hour Matthew Kelvin remained buried in thought after reading this letter. Then he said to Pod:

"Instead of Mr. Bray signing the letters this afternoon, you will bring them upstairs to be signed by me." At five o'clock, up came Pod with the letters. Kelvin was sitting up in his easy-chair by this time, and it struck Pod that he looked brighter and better than he had seen him look for some time past. When the letters were signed, and Pod was about to go, Kelvin put into his hand a sealed envelope. "Give this to Dr. Whitaker, and be sure that he has it to-night."

Inside the envelope was a scrap of paper, on which were written these words:

"To-morrow morning at half-past eleven.

"M. K."