Chapter XLII. In the Ballroom

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Though Dunstan village was cut off, by its misfortune, from its
usual intercourse with its neighbours, in some mystic manner villages
even at twenty miles' distance learned all it did and suffered,
feared or hoped. It did not hope greatly, the rustic habit of mind
tending towards a discouraged outlook, and cherishing the drama of
impending calamity. As far as Yangford and Marling inmates of
cottages and farm- houses were inclined to think it probable that
Dunstan would be "swep away," and rumours of spreading death and
disaster were popular. Tread, the advanced blacksmith at Stornham,
having heard in his by-gone, better days of the Great Plague of
London, was greatly in demand as a narrator of illuminating anecdotes
at The Clock Inn.

Among the parties gathered at the large houses Mount Dunstan
himself was much talked of. If he had been a popular man, he might
have become a sort of hero; as he was not popular, he was merely a
subject for discussion. The fever-stricken patients had been carried
in carts to the Mount and given beds in the ballroom, which had been
made into a temporary ward. Nurses and supplies had been sent for
from London, and two energetic young doctors had taken the place of
old Dr. Fenwick, who had been frightened and overworked into an
attack of bronchitis which confined him to his bed. Where the money
came from, which must be spent every day under such circumstances, it
was difficult to say. To the simply conservative of mind, the idea
of filling one's house with dirty East End hop pickers infected with
typhoid seemed too radical. Surely he could have done something less
extraordinary. Would everybody be expected to turn their houses into
hospitals in case of village epidemics, now that he had established a
precedent? But there were people who approved, and were warm in
their sympathy with him. At the first dinner party where the matter
was made the subject of argument, the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel, who
was present, listened silently to the talk with such brilliant eyes
that Lord Dunholm, who was in an elderly way her staunch admirer,
spoke to her across the table:

"Tell us what you think of it, Miss Vanderpoel," he
suggested.

She did not hesitate at all.

"I like it," she answered, in her clear, well-heard voice. "I
like it better than anything I have ever heard."

"So do I," said old Lady Alanby shortly. "I should never have
done it myself--but I like it just as you do."

"I knew you would, Lady Alanby," said the girl. "And you, too,
Lord Dunholm."

"I like it so much that I shall write and ask if I cannot be of
assistance," Lord Dunholm answered.

Betty was glad to hear this. Only quickness of thought
prevented her from the error of saying, "Thank you," as if the matter
were personal to herself. If Mount Dunstan was restive under the
obviousness of the fact that help was so sorely needed, he might feel
less so if her offer was only one among others.

"It seems rather the duty of the neighbourhood to show some
interest," put in Lady Alanby. "I shall write to him myself. He is
evidently of a new order of Mount Dunstan. It's to be hoped he won't
take the fever himself, and die of it He ought to marry some
handsome, well-behaved girl, and re- found the family."

Nigel Anstruthers spoke from his side of the table, leaning
slightly forward.

"He won't if he does not take better care of himself. He passed
me on the road two days ago, riding like a lunatic. He looks
frightfully ill--yellow and drawn and lined. He has not lived the
life to prepare him for settling down to a fight with typhoid fever.
He would be done for if he caught the infection."

"I beg your pardon," said Lord Dunholm, with quiet decision.
"Unprejudiced inquiry proves that his life has been entirely
respectable. As Lady Alanby says, he seems to be of a new order of
Mount Dunstan."

"No doubt you are right," said Sir Nigel suavely. "He looked
ill, notwithstanding."

"As to looking ill," remarked Lady Alanby to Lord Dunholm, who
sat near her, "that man looks as if he was going to pieces pretty
rapidly himself, and unprejudiced inquiry would not prove that his
past had nothing to do with it."

Betty wondered if her brother-in-law were lying. It was
generally safest to argue that he was. But the fever burned high at
Mount Dunstan, and she knew by instinct what its owner was giving of
the strength of his body and brain. A young, unmarried woman cannot
go about, however, making anxious inquiries concerning the welfare of
a man who has made no advance towards her. She must wait for the
chance which brings news.

  .  .  .  .  .

The fever, having ill-cared for and
habitually ill fed bodies to work upon, wrought fiercely, despite the
energy of the two young doctors and the trained nurses. There were
many dark hours in the ballroom ward, hours filled with groans and
wild ravings. The floating Terpsichorean goddesses upon the lofty
ceiling gazed down with wondering eyes at haggard faces and plucking
hands which sometimes, behind the screen drawn round their beds,
ceased to look feverish, and grew paler and stiller, until they moved
no more. But, at least, none had died through want of shelter and
care. The supplies needed came from London each day. Lord Dunholm
had sent a generous cheque to the aid of the sufferers, and so, also,
had old Lady Alanby, but Miss Vanderpoel, consulting medical
authorities and hospitals, learned exactly what was required, and
necessities were forwarded daily in their most easily utilisable
form.

"You generously told me to ask you for anything we found we
required," Mr. Penzance wrote to her in his note of thanks. "My dear
and kind young lady, you leave nothing to ask for. Our doctors, who
are young and enthusiastic, are filled with delight in the
completeness of the resources placed in their hands."

She had, in fact, gone to London to consult an eminent
physician, who was an authority of world-wide reputation. Like the
head of the legal firm of Townlinson & Sheppard, he had
experienced a new sensation in the visit paid him by an indubitably
modern young beauty, who wasted no word, and whose eyes, while he
answered her amazingly clear questions, were as intelligently intent
as those of an ardent and serious young medical student. What a
surgical nurse she would have made! It seemed almost a pity that she
evidently belonged to a class the members of which are rich enough to
undertake the charge of entire epidemics, but who do not usually give
themselves to such work, especially when they are young and
astonishing in the matter of looks.

In addition to the work they did in the ballroom ward, Mount
Dunstan and the vicar found much to do among the villagers.
Ignorance and alarm combined to create dangers, even where they might
not have been feared. Daily instruction and inspection of the
cottages and their inmates was required. The knowledge that they
were under control and supervision was a support to the frightened
people and prevented their lapsing into careless habits. Also, there
began to develop among them a secret dependence upon, and desire to
please "his lordship," as the existing circumstances drew him nearer
to them, and unconsciously they were attracted and dominated by his
strength. The strong man carries his power with him, and, when Mount
Dunstan entered a cottage and talked to its inmates, the anxious wife
or surlily depressed husband was conscious of feeling a certain sense
of security. It had been a queer enough thing, this he had
done--bundling the infected hoppers out of their leaking huts and
carrying them up to the Mount itself for shelter and care. At the
most, gentlefolk generally gave soup or blankets or hospital tickets,
and left the rest to luck, but, "gentry-way" or not, a man who did a
thing like that would be likely to do other things, if they were
needed, and gave folk a feeling of being safer than ordinary soup and
blankets and hospital tickets could make them.

But "where did the money come from?" was asked during the first
days. Beds and doctors, nurses and medicine, fine brandy and
unlimited fowls for broth did not come up from London without being
paid for. Pounds and pounds a day must be paid out to get the things
that were delivered "regular" in hampers and boxes. The women talked
to one another over their garden palings, the men argued together
over their beer at the public house. Was he running into more debt?
But even the village knew that Mount Dunstan credit had been
exhausted long ago, and there had been no money at the Mount within
the memory of man, so to speak.

One morning the matron with the sharp temper found out the
truth, though the outburst of gratitude to Mount Dunstan which
resulted in her enlightenment, was entirely spontaneous and without
intention. Her doubt of his Mount Dunstan blood had grown into a
sturdy liking even for his short speech and his often drawn-down
brows.

"We've got more to thank your lordship for than common help,"
she said. "God Almighty knows where we'd all ha' been but for what
you've done. Those poor souls you've nursed and fed----"

"I've not done it," he broke in promptly. "You're mistaken; I
could not have done it. How could I?"

"Well," exclaimed the matron frankly, "we was wondering where
things came from."

"You might well wonder. Have any of you seen Lady Anstruthers'
sister, Miss Vanderpoel, ride through the village? She used
sometimes to ride this way. If you saw her you will remember it.'

"The 'Merican young lady!" in ejaculatory delight. "My word,
yes! A fine young woman with black hair? That rich, they say, as
millions won't cover it."

"They won't," grimly. "Lord Dunholm and Lady Alanby of Dole
kindly sent cheques to help us, but the American young lady was first
on the field. She sent both doctors and nurses, and has supplied us
with food and medicine every day. As you say, Mrs. Brown, God
Almighty knows what would have become of us, but for what she has
done."

Mrs. Brown had listened with rather open mouth. She caught her
breath heartily, as a sort of approving exclamation.

"God bless her!" she broke out. "Girls isn't generally like
that. Their heads is too full of finery. God bless her, 'Merican or
no 'Merican! That's what I say."

Mount Dunstan's red-brown eyes looked as if she had pleased
him.

"That's what I say, too," he answered. "God bless her!"

There was not a day which passed in which he did not
involuntarily say the words to himself again and again. She had been
wrong when she had said in her musings that they were as far apart as
if worlds rolled between them. Something stronger than sight or
speech drew them together. The thread which wove itself through his
thoughts grew stronger and stronger. The first day her gifts arrived
and he walked about the ballroom ward directing the placing of
hospital cots and hospital aids and comforts, the spirit of her
thought and intelligence, the individuality and cleverness of all her
methods, brought her so vividly before him that it was almost as if
she walked by his side, as if they spoke together, as if she said, "I
have tried to think of everything. I want you to miss nothing. Have
I helped you? Tell me if there is anything more." The thing which
moved and stirred him was his knowledge that when he had thought of
her she had also been thinking of him, or of what deeply concerned
him. When he had said to himself, tossing on his pillow, "What would
she do?" she had been planning in such a way as answered his
question. Each morning, when the day's supplies arrived, it was as
if he had received a message from her.

As the people in the cottages felt the power of his temperament
and depended upon him, so, also, did the patients in the ballroom
ward. The feeling had existed from the outset and increased daily.
The doctors and nurses told one another that his passing through the
room was like the administering of a tonic. Patients who were weak
and making no effort, were lifted upon the strong wave of his will
and carried onward towards the shore of greater courage and
strength.

Young Doctor Thwaite met him when he came in one morning, and
spoke in a low voice:

"There is a young man behind the screen there who is very low,"
he said. "He had an internal haemorrhage towards morning, and has
lost his pluck. He has a wife and three children. We have been
doing our best for him with hot- water bottles and stimulants, but he
has not the courage to help us. You have an extraordinary effect on
them all, Lord Mount Dunstan. When they are depressed, they always
ask when you are coming in, and this man--Patton, his name is-- has
asked for you several times. Upon my word, I believe you might set
him going again."

Mount Dunstan walked to the bed, and, going behind the screen,
stood looking down at the young fellow lying breathing pantingly.
His eyes were closed as he laboured, and his pinched white nostrils
drew themselves in and puffed out at each breath. A nurse on the
other side of the cot had just surrounded him with fresh hot-water
bottles.

Suddenly the sunken eyelids flew open, and the eyes met Mount
Dunstan's in imploring anxiousness.

"Here I am, Patton," Mount Dunstan said. "You need not
speak."

But he must speak. Here was the strength his sinking soul had
longed for.

"Cruel bad--goin' fast--m' lord," he panted.

Mount Dunstan made a sign to the nurse, who gave him a chair.
He sat down close to the bed, and took the bloodless hand in his
own.

"No," he said, "you are not going. You'll stay here. I will
see to that."

The poor fellow smiled wanly. Vague yearnings had led him
sometimes, in the past, to wander into chapels or stop and listen to
street preachers, and orthodox platitudes came back to him.

"God's--will," he trailed out.

"It's nothing of the sort. It's God's will that you pull
yourself together. A man with a wife and three children has no right
to slip out."

A yearning look flickered in the lad's eyes--he was scarcely
more than a lad, having married at seventeen, and had a child each
year.

"She's--a good--girl."

"Keep that in your mind while you fight this out," said Mount
Dunstan. "Say it over to yourself each time you feel yourself
letting go. Hold on to it. I am going to fight it out with you. I
shall sit here and take care of you all day --all night, if
necessary. The doctor and the nurse will tell me what to do. Your
hand is warmer already. Shut your eyes."

He did not leave the bedside until the middle of the night.

By that time the worst was over. He had acted throughout the
hours under the direction of nurse and doctor. No one but himself
had touched the patient. When Patton's eyes were open, they rested
on him with a weird growing belief. He begged his lordship to hold
his hand, and was uneasy when he laid it down.

"Keeps--me--up," he whispered.

"He pours something into them--vigour--magnetic power --life.
He's like a charged battery," Dr. Thwaite said to his co-workers.
"He sat down by Patton just in time. It sets one to thinking."

Having saved Patton, he must save others. When a man or woman
sank, or had increased fever, they believed that he alone could give
them help. In delirium patients cried out for him. He found himself
doing hard work, but he did not flinch from it. The adoration for
him became a sort of passion. Haggard faces lighted up into life at
the sound of his footstep, and heavy heads turned longingly on their
pillows as he passed by. In the winter days to come there would be
many an hour's talk in East End courts and alleys of the queer time
when a score or more of them had lain in the great room with the
dancing and floating goddesses looking down at them from the high,
painted ceiling, and the swell, who was a lord, walking about among
them, working for them as the nurses did, and sitting by some of them
through awful hours, sometimes holding burning or slackening and
chilling hands with a grip whose steadiness seemed to hold them back
from the brink of the abyss they were slipping into. The mere
ignorantly childish desire to do his prowess credit and to play him
fair saved more than one man and woman from going out with the
tide.

"It is the first time in my life that I have fairly counted
among men. It's the first time I have known human affection, other
than yours, Penzance. They want me, these people; they are better
for the sight of me. It is a new experience, and it is good for a
man's soul," he said.