Two for Three Farthings (39 page)

She said nothing about how worried she was. Her lodger seemed worse by the hour, his fever racking him, his shivering unabated. He kept coming to and staring at her out of eyes hotly bright with fever.

She went up to him again, while the children obediently did as she had requested. Effel made no fuss at all about taking the tablet, although she didn't know what it was for. Orrice, sharp of mind, said it was so they didn't catch no flu themselves.

They went up when they'd finished their sandwiches. Miss Pilgrim was sitting beside the bed, a sponge in her hand, a bowl of cold water resting in her lap. They watched as she applied the sponge to their guardian's forehead. They couldn't think why she was doing that when they could see he was shivering. But his face did look very hot and flushed. He opened his eyes.

‘Who's that?' he asked, his voice dry and husky.

‘It's us, Uncle Jim,' said Orrice, ‘it's Effel and me.'

‘I'm wiv Orrice,' whispered Effel uncomfortably.

‘Orrice and Effel, Orrice and Effel.' Jim's voice wandered. ‘Well, I never, Orrice and Effel. Where's our angel?'

‘She's sittin' next to you, Uncle.'

‘She's got a sponge,' said Effel.

Jim sang croakingly, ‘Angels come to funny places, some of them with dirty faces.' New shivers beset his aching body. ‘Not Miss Pilgrim, though, not—' His voice wandered away and his eyes closed. Effel ran out, going into her bedroom. Orrice followed her. Effel was crying.

‘Don't cry, sis.'

‘Our dad did that,' she sobbed, ‘our dad said funny fings when 'e was ill.'

‘Our dad won't let Uncle Jim die, Effel. When you're in 'eaven, you can do things for people that's down here.'

‘We won't 'ave no-one again, no-one,' sobbed Effel.

They did not want to go back to school for the afternoon classes, but Miss Pilgrim was gently persuasive, and they went in the end. She did what she could for their guardian, she was constantly at his bedside, and she watched him fighting the fever. She gave him the tablets and the medicine at the prescribed times, and she got him to drink the fresh lemonade she made at intervals. He gave no trouble about that. She helped him sit up, she put the glass to his lips and he gulped the warm liquid like a parched man.

She sponged his fiery brow and she kept his restless body covered up. His skin was dry and burning. She knew he was in crisis, that unless she could help him break the fever he would be gone by morning.

The thought distracted her. There was a moment when she found it unbearable and fled downstairs to the kitchen, and to the sink, where she laved her face with handfuls of cold water. She paced the kitchen, her petticoat swishing and rustling, her distraught state made worse by a sense of angry helplessness. She might once have said such anger was a sin, for it was an anger at church and God.

She could not remain long from his bedside. She found herself running up the stairs to resume her watch. And as the time went by she saw him becoming worse. He was in incoherent delirium on occasions. She suffered for him, for what his racked, burning and shivering body was doing to him. But she persevered, she persevered in her watching brief and her ministrations. Sometimes his shivering was distressingly uncontrollable. At other times he tried to throw his coverings off. She kept them tightly around him.

When Orrice and Effel came home from school, she felt there was a pause in the worsening condition. He did not seem so racked. He was quieter. He was still very hot, but not so restless. She asked the children what they would like to eat. They could have supper, not just tea, she said.

‘Please, I don't want nuffink,' said Effel.

‘I'm not hungry, neither,' said Orrice.

‘I don't mind a drink of tea and a biscuit,' said Effel.

‘I don't mind that, neither,' said Orrice. ‘Miss Pilgrim, would you like a cup of tea? I can make it.'

‘Thank you, Horace.' Miss Pilgrim felt exhausted from her day-long watch. ‘You'll be careful with the kettle, won't you?'

‘Uncle Jim seems a bit better, don't yer think?' said Orrice hopefully. ‘D'you think he might like some tea too?'

‘Yes, Horace, we'll try that, shall we? It can do no harm. It's more liquid.'

Orrice gladly got on with making the tea. Effel stayed in her guardian's bedroom with Miss Pilgrim. The little girl sat on the edge of the bed, looking at his dry hair, his dry, hot face and his closed eyes.

There was a knock on the front door.

‘Will you answer it, Ethel?' asked Miss Pilgrim.

Effel went silently down to open the door. Molly Keating smiled at her.

‘Hello, Ethel. Is your Uncle Jim in?'

‘Yes,' said Effel.

‘Only he hasn't been at work today, and I wondered what had happened to him.'

‘'E ain't very well,' said Effel, and Molly saw the child's unhappy look.

‘Is it the wretched flu, Ethel? Shall I come up?'

Effel led the way up. Moments later, Molly was in shock. Miss Pilgrim kept the children out of the bedroom while she explained the patient's condition and told her of the doctor's visit and prescription.

‘Oh, my God,' breathed Molly, ‘all he had yesterday was a headache, he said.'

‘He's now suffering a particularly vicious type of influenza, Miss Keating, it's put him into a critically feverish condition which I pray will break.'

‘It must break,' said Molly, ‘he's someone we can't afford to lose. God, he doesn't deserve this. Look, you're exhausted, and it's showing. Go and rest for a while and I'll sit with him for a couple of hours.'

‘I would rather continue,' said Miss Pilgrim, ‘I'm really more worried than exhausted, and there's the tablets and the medicine. I am in the way of administering them. If you're agreeable, would you care to sit with the children? I think they need a grown-up with them, to keep them occupied. Mr Cooper, I know, would be grateful for that.'

Molly was unhesitating in her response.

Dr McManus made his promised evening call at a little after eight. Miss Pilgrim's hope that the fever was abating had long since proved false. The doctor's examination was brief, and he advised her that the patient's life was in his own hands.

‘It comes down to that in many cases of this kind, Miss Pilgrim. It rests with a patient's resilience or lack of it, with strength or weakness of will, and even with a subconscious desire to live or to give up.'

She was stiff-faced and tight of lip.

‘Mr Cooper has much to live for, Dr McManus,' she said. ‘As for resilience or strength of will, I could not fault him myself. He's made light of grievous disadvantages, and although he may not know it, he's won the lasting affection of two children he saved from the drabness of an orphanage. He's not a man to give up.'

‘Well, that may save him. But continue with the tablets and the liquids. He may be aware that you're fighting for him too. His temperature is sky-high, his condition acute. I know of no other medicine that will help him, except that which I've given you.'

‘There is God,' said Miss Pilgrim, ‘and his own self.'

‘I envy you your faith,' said Dr McManus. ‘I'll look in again as early as I can tomorrow morning.'

Miss Pilgrim would not give up her vigil or her ministrations, and Molly would not leave the children, except to dash back to the club and advise her parents she would be at Jim's lodgings all night. She was back in quick time to persuade the children to go to bed. Orrice lay wrapped in a blanket on the floor beside his sister's bed. Neither of them could sleep. Molly comforted them as best she could, but it was close to midnight before they at last dozed off. She went then to see Miss Pilgrim and the patient. There was no change for the better. Jim was a sick man with a restless, aching body and a dry, burning skin. Miss Pilgrim begged Molly to go downstairs.

‘Use my bed, Miss Keating. I'll listen for the children, I'm glad they're asleep at last. You go down. I'll call you if there's any real change.'

‘But can't I relieve you?' asked Molly in distress.

‘I'll see it through until two o'clock, say, and then you can take my place.' Miss Pilgrim was sure that by two o'clock it would all be over.

Molly went down to rest on the bed, and Miss Pilgrim kept her watch on Jim. She was tormented by his obvious inability to get relief. His shivering bouts constantly disturbed him, and the weighty warmth of the bedclothes and extra blankets still did not seem enough. He turned, he tossed and he shivered. She stood up. She drew a deep breath. Her whole being was feverish to save him. She slipped off her shoes. The house was in silence. She drew down the bedclothes and pushed herself in beside him. She pulled the sheet and blankets back into place, and she turned to him. He made a subconscious movement, turning to meet the body of a woman. Impropriety did not enter her mind. She put her arms around him. His own arm came around her. She pressed herself close and held him tightly to her. His body shivered, and to the warmth of the bed coverings she added the healthy warmth of her own body. She lay with him, beneath the weighty bedclothes, and she did not let go of his suffering body. His hot face lay on the pillow close to hers.

She thought about him, she thought of what had concerned him so much, and of his audacious interference. She thought of what she was doing, holding a dying man in her arms, and she thought of another man who had suffered death.

Clarence Guest. Clarence had been a worldly man, with a sophisticated wit and charm. A broker making his fortune in Shanghai, he became a close friend of her parents, and a welcome contributor to the mission house funds. His smile and his worldliness fascinated her, and quite endeared him to her mother, still a very attractive woman at thirty-nine. She herself was just twenty, and Clarence declared her far too delicious to be a missionary's daughter. She was depriving the world of her sweetness by devoting herself to Chinese orphans, he said. She was meant to grace the ballrooms of London and Paris. He called often, and sometimes stayed at weekends. He expressed amazement at her father's interest in snakes, and in the fact that the conservatory was actually used for housing many different specimens, its temperature always kept at tropical level throughout the year. Cho Ling, the family's most trusted servant, looked after the snake-house and its serpentine inmates.

Clarence was going on for thirty, but still engaged himself enthusiastically with her, declaring himself smitten. However, after five months, her father wished her to know he considered Clarence unsuitable for her, and therefore, if she was favourably disposed towards him, to cure herself of her feelings. A devoted daughter, she began to exercise self-restraint in her relationship with Clarence. She did not question her father's advice. But her mother continued to invite Clarence, and to take a special interest in him. He was a man, of course, who was like a breath of fresh air in the cloistered atmosphere of the mission. The snakes fascinated both her mother and Clarence, and they were often in the conservatory together. It was a huge place, and the snakes were restricted by glass surrounds.

The memory of a horrifying moment still caused her pain. Coming back to the mission from a shopping expedition in Shanghai one day, she showered the Chinese orphans with little presents she had bought out of her own hard-won savings, then went up to show her mother a new dress. Cho Ling appeared on the wide landing. Seeing her, his usual placid Oriental countenance took on a look of dismay. She asked him if anything was wrong. He shook his head and hastened away. She walked along a corridor and entered her mother's room. Her mother liked to take a rest at this time of the day. She could not believe what leapt to her eye. Clarence, who had arrived for the weekend that morning, was on her mother's bed, with her mother. What they were doing she had never given name to. Neither of them saw her, neither knew she was at the open door. She wanted to die of shock and shame, and she even wanted to kill Clarence. She retreated in horror, and when she found herself in her own room she could not remember if she had closed the door on the infamous spectacle. Her father was away in Canton.

She did not know how she got through the rest of the day, how it was that she managed to survive the evening meal with her mother and Clarence, or how she got through the table conversation. She escaped as soon as she could. Out on the verandah, the sultry air of the hot evening felt suffocating. Cho Ling, passing by, stopped to look up at her from the ground. He pressed his hands toether, put them to his lips and gave her a little bow to signal devotion.

She hardly slept that night. When morning came a servant found Clarence dead in his bed, body contorted and twisted. And lying in the bed, close to his body, was a venomous viper. She and her mother were brought by the servant to the scene of dreadful death. Cho Ling had also been summoned. He seized the viper by its neck, just below its head, and carried it out. As he passed her, his expression was quite inscrutable. Her mother dropped in a faint.

Clarence's sister and her husband, George Lockheart, were in Shanghai at the time, and they were called to the mission. And the Reverend Pilgrim was summoned by telegraph from Canton.

Mrs Lockheart had hysterics, and her husband voiced suspicions, but the inquest returned a verdict of death by misadventure, especially as a broken glass surround was discovered in the snakehouse.

But Miss Pilgrim had always known who had carried the viper to Clarence's bed. Cho Ling. It was an act of revenge for the dishonouring of the family he served. She knew it, and had said nothing, either then or at any time. After the war, after the death of her husband, Mrs Lockheart suffered a mental breakdown and was eventually admitted to an asylum.

She was back there now, having been quietly apprehended and re-admitted.

Jim shuddered in Miss Pilgrim's arms, and she thought it was the shudder preceding death. She had been there in the bed with him how long? An hour, a full hour, holding him close to her body, trying to give him heat and life. Now he was going. The unfairness of Providence shattered her.