Black Sheep (25 page)

“Which, to my mind,” Lady Weaverham told Mrs Ancrum, “isn’t the way a young woman talks about a gentleman she’s nutty upon! And never a blush, or a conscious look either! Well, I did think it was a case between them, but I daresay it wouldn’t have done, so it’s as well that it ain’t.”

Though nobody suspected that there was anything amiss with Abby, several people noticed that Fanny was not in her best looks. She was a little flushed, and decidedly heavy-eyed, but when Mrs Grayshott asked her kindly if she was feeling quite well she assured her that indeed she was, except for a slight headache. “Don’t say anything to Abby about it, ma’am!” she begged. “It would spoil the party for her if she knew, and I promise you it is
very
slight!” She added, before flitting away to greet some fresh arrivals: “You know how it is, when one holds a large party! However carefully you may plan it, there seem always to be such a number of things to do at the last moment that you can’t help but be rather tired by the time the party begins!”

It was true that she had been busy for most of the day, but neither fatigue nor a slight headache would, under normal circumstances, have much impaired her enjoyment of the party. But she too was faced with a difficult problem; and although she had made up her mind that if the choice lay between eloping with Stacy to Scotland and losing him for ever, Scotland it must be, the decision had not put an end to her heart-searchings, and it had certainly not raised her spirits. When Selina chatted happily of winter plans, and discussed the numerous dresses she must have for her come-out in the spring, she felt an absurd desire to burst into tears; yet when she tried to imagine what it would be like to bid Stacy goodbye, her impulse was to fly to him immediately, just to assure him that she meant to keep her promise. The trouble was that she had been granted no opportunity since their stolen meeting in the Abbey to exchange more than a few words with him, and those only in public. It was no wonder that she should be feeling low. Once she was with him, and no longer lived in dread of being separated from him, everything would be right: it was only the actual severing of the ties which bound her to Sydney Place which made her feel wretched, and she must naturally be sad at wrenching herself from her home. After all, she had been miserable for days before she had gone, once, to spend a month with her Uncle James and her Aunt Cornelia. She had been extremely homesick, too, but she had recovered from this in a week. And if she could do so when staying with her uncle, who was so precise and prosy, and her aunt, who was detestable, how much more rapidly would she recover when she was in the arms of a husband whom she adored!

Her heart leaped up when she saw Stacy bowing over Selina’s hand. How handsome he was! how elegant! how easy and polished were his manners, and how gracefully he made his bow! He made every other man in the room look dowdy and clumsy. He was top-of-the-trees—the Real Thing—and from amongst all the fashionable beauties who must surely have cast out lures to him he had chosen her—little Fanny Wendover, who hadn’t even made her come-out! She felt a rush of pride in him, and wondered how she could have hesitated for a moment to go away with him.

Yet when, presently, he made his way to her side, and tried to draw her apart, she would not allow it, saying in an urgent undervoice: “No, no, not here! not now!”

“But my darling—!” he expostulated caressingly.

She was terribly nervous, fancying that at least a dozen pairs of eyes were on her; a stab of pain shot through her head; and suddenly she was shaken by a wave of irritation, and whispered quite fiercely: “
Don’t!
”

He looked to be a good deal taken-aback. “But, Fanny, I must talk to you!”

“Not now!” she repeated. “I can’t—All these people—! Oh, pray don’t tease me! I have such a headache!”

The smile faded from his lips. He said: “I see what it is: your courage has failed you, or your love is not as strong as I believed.”

“No, no, I
promise
it isn’t so! Only we cannot talk here! Surely you must perceive the danger?”

“Then where?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” She saw the frown gathering on his brow, and said hurriedly: “Tomorrow—in the Gardens! At—at two o’clock! Aunt Selina will be resting on her bed, and Abby always visits old Mrs Nibley on Fridays. I’ll contrive to join you there without Grimston’s knowing. No more now: Abby is looking at us!”

She turned away on the words. The stabs of pain in her head were increasing, making her feel sick, and almost blinding her. A couple of uncertain steps brought her into collision with someone. She stammered: “Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t see!”

Her hand was caught, and held in a sustaining grasp; Oliver Grayshott’s voice sounded above her head. “Fanny, what it is? You are ill!”

“Oh, it’s you!” she said, clinging gratefully to his hand. “I’m not ill. It is only that my head aches so dreadfully! I shall be better directly.”

“Yes, but not in this squeeze,” he said. “You must go to bed at once!”

“Oh, no, how can I? It would break up the party, and create a horrid fuss!”

“No, it won’t,” he said calmly. “No one will notice it, if you slip out of the room. I think you have a
migraine
,
and I know, because I’ve had ‘em myself, that there’s only one thing for it, and that’s to he down on your bed. Shall I fetch Lavinia to go with you?”

“No, pray don’t! It isn’t as bad as
that!
Nurse will know what to do for me. Only don’t say anything to frighten my aunts!”

“Of course not,” he replied.

“Thank you,” she sighed. “I’m
very
much obliged to you!”

He watched her go unobtrusively out of the room, and then made his way to where his mother was seated, talking to Canon Pinfold. He soon found an opportunity to tell her that Fanny had retired with a headache, and was anxious that her aunts should not be alarmed. She said reassuringly that she would convey the news to Abby, who would be neither alarmed nor even surprised. “ She told me, when I said I thought Fanny not looking quite the thing, that she was pretty sure she had the headache only the silly child wouldn’t own to it.”

In point of fact, Abby had observed Fanny’s departure. She said: “Yes, I saw her go, and I was excessively grateful to Oliver for persuading her to do so. What a kind young man he is! I shall take a peep at her when I go upstairs to bed, but I need never be in a worry about her when Grimston has her in charge! I expect she will be quite restored by tomorrow.”

She was mistaken. While she was still sipping a cup of chocolate on the following morning, she received a visit from Mrs Grimston, who came to request her, ominously, to take a look at Miss Fanny as soon as might be convenient.

“It’s no more than I expected, miss,” said Mrs Grimston, with the peculiar satisfaction of the devoted retainer who has detected incipient illness in one of her nurslings. “‘Yes,’ I said to myself, when she came up to me last night, ‘there’s more to this than a headache. If I know anything about it,’ I said, ‘what you’ve got, poor lamb, is the influenza!’ Which she has, Miss Abby.” She took the empty cup from Abby, and added: “ And, if I was you, ma’am, I would send the footboy to fetch the doctor to her, because she’s in a high fever, and there’s no saying
but what
she may throw out a rash presently, though the measles it can’t be!”

“No, of course it can’t!” said Abby, throwing back the bedclothes. “I don’t doubt it’s nothing more than influenza, just as you say!”

“Is it’s not the scarlet fever,” said Mrs Grimston, depressing optimism. She held up Abby’s dressing-gown for her. “For I shouldn’t be doing my duty, Miss Abby, if I didn’t tell you that she’s been complaining for the past hour and more that she has a sore throat!

“Very likely,” Abby returned. “So did I, when I was laid up for a sennight with the influenza, last year!”

Balked of her wish to allay anxiety by her superior knowledge and commonsense, Mrs Grimston threw in a doubler. “Yes, Miss Abby, and if it
is
the influenza, it’s to be hoped Miss Selina hasn’t taken it from her!”

“Oh, Grimston, you—you
wretch!
”
Abby exclaimed ruefully. “If she has, we
shall
be in the suds! Well! all my dependence is upon you!”

Mollified by this tribute, Mrs Grimston relented, and said, as she accompanied Abby to the sickroom: “And so I should hope, ma’am! They say that there’s a lot of this influenza going about, so I daresay Miss Fanny hasn’t taken anything worse. But you know what she is, Miss Abby, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll send for the doctor!”

Abby did indeed know what Miss Fanny was, and she gave a ready consent to the footboy’s being sent off immediately on this errand. Fanny, though rarely ill, was a bad patient. If any seasonal ailment, or epidemic disease, attacked her, it invariably did so with unprecedented violence. None of her school-friends had been as full of the measles as she had been; none had whooped more distressingly; or had been more tormented by the mumps; so it came as no surprise to Abby, upon entering a room redolent with the fumes of burning pastilles, to find her in a high fever, and complaining in a miserable wail that she was hot, uncomfortable, aching in every limb, and hardly able to lift her eyelids.

“Poor Fanny!” Abby said softly, lifting the folded handkerchief from her brow, and soaking it afresh with vinegar. “There! is that better? Don’t cry, my pet! Dr Rowton is coming to see you, and he will soon make you more comfortable.”

“I don’t want him! I’m not ill! I’m not, I’m not! I want to
get up! I
must
get up!”

“To be sure, and so you shall, just as soon as you feel more the thing,” Abby said soothingly.

“I
do
feel the thing! It’s only that my head hurts me and I can’t hold my eyes open, and everything aches all over me!” wept the sufferer. “Oh, Abby,
please
make me better
quickly!
”

“Yes, darling, of course I will.”

This assurance seemed to calm Fanny. She lay still for a
while, dropping into an uneasy doze; but within a very few minutes she became restless again, insisting that she was better, trying to get up, and bursting into tears when Abby gently pressed her back on to her pillows.

Having had considerable experience of her mercurial temperament, and knowing that whenever she was condemned to lie in bed it took much to persuade her that her ills would not be instantly alleviated by her getting up, and going for a walk, Abby set no particular store by her agitation. Leaving Mrs Grimston to sit with her, she withdrew, to dress, and—when fortified by breakfast—to break the news to Selina.

She found that Fardle, Selina’s maid, had been before her, carrying such an unpromising account of Fanny’s condition that Selina’s appetite had been destroyed. When Abby came into her room, she was sitting up in bed, eating pieces of toast dipped in weak tea: a melancholy diet to which it was her custom to resort in times of stress. She greeted her sister with a moan, and a demand to be told whether the doctor had been sent for.

“Yes, dear, an hour ago! I daresay he will be here directly,” replied Abby cheerfully. “Not that I think there is much to be done for her, but I hope he may be able to make her more
comfo
rtable at least. Grimston gave her a fever powder at seven o’clock. but it hasn’t answered, so I have told her not to repeat it.”

“No no, don’t let Grimston quack her! Oh, Abby, if she should be beginning in the smallpox—!” uttered Selina, staring fearfully at her.

“Beginning in the
smallpox?
”
echoed Abby, in astonishment.

“Good God, no! How can you be so absurd, Selina? Why, surely you haven’t forgotten that Dr Rowton persuaded us all to be inoculated last year? Besides, where could she have contracted it? There are no cases of it in Bath that I’ve heard of!”

“No, dear, very likely not, but one never
knows
,
and Fardle has been telling me—”

“Fardle!” exclaimed Abby. “I might have guessed as much! I am perfectly sure that she has a sister, or an aunt, or a cousin, who nearly died in the smallpox, and that her symptoms precisely resembled Fanny’s, for we’ve never yet had an illness in this household, but what one of Fardle’s relations had had it too, only
far
worse! Pray don’t fly into a fuss, dear! I shall own myself surprised if Dr Rowton finds Fanny to be suffering from anything more serious than influenza.”

“Oh, my love, why didn’t you send for Dr Dent? I have no great opinion of Rowton, though an excellent man in his way, of course, but
not
clever! You know how well Dr Dent understood my case when
I
had influenza!”

“Yes, dear, but I was persuaded you would wish me to send for Rowton, because he is familiar with her constitution,” said Abby diplomatically. “Do you mean to drive into town this morning? Will you buy a bottle of lavender-water, if you please?”

“Fardle must procure it,” said Selina, in a failing voice. “I shall rest quietly in bed this morning, for I have already felt a spasm, and heaven forbid
I
should be ill at this moment! Such a dreadful shock to be roused with such news! Yes, and she must bring me some camphor, for I don’t believe there is any in the house, and you know how susceptible I am to colds and influenza!”

Abby agreed to this, but ventured to suggest that not the most susceptible person would be very likely to contract influenza, twice within the space of a month.

“No, dearest,” replied Selina, directing a look of patient reproach at her. “I daresay an ordinary person might not, but alas, I have never enjoyed high health, and as for not contracting influenza twice in a month, I had
three
epidemic colds last winter one after another! And I recall that you said exactly the same when you came home from Lady Trevisian’s card-party, sneezing and snuffling, and I begged you not to come
near
me, but to go up to your bed immediately! You said
I
could not catch it from you, because I had not been out of my bed above a sennight! But I did!”