Black Sheep

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 schoolfriends 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 comfortable 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!'

Abby begged pardon, kissed her cheek, and left her to the enjoyment of her mild triumph.

In the sickroom, she found Fanny tossing restlessly, and alternately expressing her determination to get up, and complaining of the various aches and pains which assailed her. Her pulse was rapid, and her skin very hot and dry, and it was obvious that her fever was mounting.

Mrs Grimston, drawing Abby out of the room, said that if anyone were to ask her she would feel herself impelled to say that they were regularly in for it. 'As nasty an attack as any I've nursed her through!' she said. 'Well, I'm sure it's not to be wondered at, the way she's been gallivanting to parties all over, and her no more than a baby! Burnt to the socket, that's what she is, Miss Abby, and so full of crotchets and nonsense as is enough to put one quite out of patience! First she must get up, and the moment my back's turned so she did! Only that turned her so dizzy she was glad enough to be put back into bed. Then she began to cry, but I soon put a stop to that, ma'am, for we don't want her to get into one of her ways, for, as I told her, that won't make her feel better! Then nothing will do for her but what she must speak to Betty about mending a frill on her blue muslin. "There'll be time enough for that, Miss Fanny," I said, "and no need to bring Betty into the room to take the influenza, for I'll speak to her about it myself." '

The arrival of Dr Rowton brought this monologue to a close. He was a sensible-looking man, with a latent twinkle in his eye, but it was not difficult to see why Selina thought poorly of him. He had cheerful, matter-of-fact manners, and had been known to tell ladies in failing health that their mysterious ailments arose from want of occupation, or from thinking too much about themselves. He said, as he shook hands with Abby: 'And how is Miss Wendover? I hear she has my old friend, Dent, attending her now. I thought it wouldn't be long before she gave poor Ockley the go-by: not her style at all!'

He did not take a very serious view of Fanny's case; but when he left her he told Abby that she would probably be laid up for some little time. 'Oh, yes, it's influenza right enough,' he said. 'It's running very much about, you know, and unusually virulent. A pity Fanny should have cau

ght it. Now, had it been you, Miss Abby, I should have said you'd be as bobbish as ever in a week but we both know what Fanny is, don't we? Always the way with girls of her cut! You'll have to keep her quiet – as quiet as you can! I was used to call her Miss Quicksilver, when she was a child, and she hasn't altered much. I'll send my man round with some medicine for her to take, and we'll see how she goes on tomorrow.'

He was a favourite of Fanny's, ranking amongst her oldest friends, and Abby had hoped that his visit would do her good. She did indeed manage to conjure up a wan smile, when he walked up to the bedside, saying: 'Well, Miss Quicksilver, and pray what's all this?' but the voice in which she responded: 'Oh, dear Dr "Wowton", make me well again quickly!' was very lachrymose; and when he told her, in his blunt way that she would certainly not be able to get up that day, or for several days, she burst into tears.

When Abby returned to the sickroom, however, she seemed to be resigned to her fate, and to be inclined to sleep.