Banked Fires Part 6

"I know it, but that's the way with me. I never remember that I have any!"

"You are a married woman and no longer a child," he continued reproachfully.

"I shall always be a silly fool, I'm afraid," she sighed. "However, he's only the doctor, and a doctor is something between an angel and an automaton."

"The devil he is!" Meredith growled, kicking a ha.s.sock to the other end of the tent.

"Come here, you big goose," she said wearily, stretching her limbs; "kiss me this instant, and go back to the malefactors. I want to sleep off this attack and get well quickly."

Meredith could not bear to see her looking ill and wanted no second bidding to demonstrate his love for her. After kissing her most tenderly, he tucked her in comfortably, and, much against his inclination, left her to the doctor's ministrations.

CHAPTER IV

A POINT OF VIEW

Dalton filled the ice-bag he had brought with him and settled down to nursing with the skill of a woman; and no hands could have been gentler.

Occasionally the worried husband would pay the tent a flying visit and return to listen to a pleader's lengthy oration with all the attention he could muster under the troublous circ.u.mstances. Visions of his wife's flushed face lying still on the pillow with closed eyes would haunt him with agonising fidelity to detail--especially in relation to the attentive doctor hovering near, adjusting the bag or removing it to be refilled, and administering the necessary doses of medicine. He took special notice of Dalton in his new character of nurse, and had no fault to find with his manner. He was as silent as the Sphinx and as professional as a nursing sister, and though Meredith thought it objectionable that his wife should always have to be treated in illness by a male physician--there being no lady doctor within hundreds of miles--he was obliged to take comfort in the fact that his beloved could not be in better hands.

Elsewhere, the ayah crooned lullabies to the baby who no longer needed strict watching. She fed it from the bottle and wondered, philosophically, who would be the next to be taken ill; for experience told her that it was a mild form of epidemic chill, familiar to all at the changing of the seasons.

Meals went forward with clock-like regularity, whether the sahibs were inclined for sustenance or not. The camp table in the dining-tent was laid with silver and crockery; a tight bunch of green leaves adorned a centre vase, and a gong rang at the appointed hour, while the dishes remained warm in the portable "hot case" where an open charcoal fire burned redly.

"Isn't the fever rather persistent?" Meredith asked at dinner while toying with his food.

"It's early to judge," said the doctor.

"What do you think of it?"

"Unquestionably a touch of the 'flu.'"

"It isn't enteric?" the anxious husband asked fearfully. "I have a holy horror of enteric."

"You make your mind easy, it is not going to be anything of the sort. I am afraid, however, you will have to give up all idea of Mrs. Meredith's camping for the present," he added definitely. "She and the child don't take kindly to canvas, and at this time of year we must avoid exposure to malarial conditions."

"The District is particularly free from malaria," said Meredith.

"Bengal is full of it; the many bogs and pools of stagnant water around are responsible for the anopheles mosquito."

"It's dashed inconvenient when I must put in a deuced lot of camping in the cold weather."

"Do most of it after Christmas," Dalton suggested.

"It will be just the same--they won't be able to stand it."

"Frankly, I don't think they will. Perhaps, both might be more acclimatised later on," was the diplomatic reply.

Meredith pa.s.sed another night on the cane chair which he placed alongside of his wife's bed, and was conscious during periods of rest that the doctor never slept at all. He was in and out of the tent at all hours of the night looking after his patient with untiring zeal. An easy chair in the dining-tent had served as his couch, and the English newspapers entertained him during the long hours of the night.

Yet at the end of the vigil, Meredith knew Captain Dalton no better than before. He was still the silent, repellent being, with eyes of a thought-reader and a baffling smile which might have meant contempt or tolerance; he was altogether incomprehensible.

By morning, Joyce was free of fever with a temporarily lowered vitality, and showing no ill effects. All day she convalesced happily, enjoying the petting she received from the men; Captain Dalton's methods being un.o.btrusive, but effective; Meredith's, on the other hand, being tactlessly affectionate and blundering.

"You are a darling, Ray," she laughed, after a specially clumsy service, "but you were never born with a faculty for nursing, like Captain Dalton's. He is so capable; he never spills my mixture down my neck before I can drink it; nor does he pour out over-doses, and empty the surplus on the drugget!"

"'Comparisons are odorous,'" he returned, looking hurt.

"The tent is, if you like. It smells like a chemist's shop! Your proper place and function are in the court, and sentencing criminals to punishment."

"You want to get rid of me so that you may have the doctor all to yourself! I wonder what you find in him at all. He fairly chokes one off."

"I told you he was either an automaton or an angel; I find he is both, only he would like us to think him a bad angel."

"A man knows himself best. So you want to desert me tomorrow?" he cried reproachfully.

"Dear old thing!--you wouldn't have me stay if you knew that I should be miserable?" she coaxed, drawing down his face to be kissed.

"Miserable with the husband who adores you?"

"If you love me so much, you should be unselfish and think more of Baby."

"Must Baby always count above his Daddy?"

"Naturally he must be considered more, while he is so young and delicate."

"Where then do I come in?"

"You mustn't be jealous of your own child!" she cried reproachfully.

"Think of his helplessness, his need of me!--Of course you need me, too," she said putting her palm over his mouth to stifle his eloquence on the subject of a husband's rights, "but then, there's a difference.

You can manage without me, while he must not. A babe is a sacred trust to its mother."

"And when he grows older and is impressionable, there will be a mother's _moral duty towards his soul_ to separate us. You and he at home, and I out here, alone! I know the jargon, having watched such comedies for years. Now it has come home to me. One hears that a child is a blessing from G.o.d.... I believe it is a blessing very much in disguise, for I see only the disguise at present."

"Why look so far ahead?" laughed Joyce, determined to mend his humour.

"By the time he is old enough to become a 'moral' responsibility, you will probably be only too glad to get rid of me. I am such a worry as a wife."

"I wonder!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed ruefully.

Joyce reminded him of the many week-ends he could spend at the bungalow, when they would contrive to have very happy times. "I shan't be so anxious with a doctor on the spot, so to speak; and shall be ever so much more of a wife," she promised, looking adorable in the ribbons and laces of her snowy night-dress, backed with befrilled pillows.

The prospect had compensations, he felt, but he found it hard to explain without incurring the imputation of selfishness, that, parted day after day from the light of her presence, deprived of the sight of her loveliness and the natural expression of his pa.s.sion for her, he would a.s.suredly ache unceasingly and pine himself sick. She would not understand, since she had little comprehension of the ways of mankind, so he could only sigh and capitulate.

"At least there will be many honeymoons!" he allowed, trying to hide his disappointment in satire.

"What a man you are!" she laughed. "Won't you ever get used to being married?"