‘Gave him laudanum?’ Venetia exclaimed. ‘Oh, if he would swallowthathe must have been suffering dreadfully! He will never take drugs – not even the mildest opiate, only to make him sleep when his hip has been aching!’
‘Oh, he didn’t swallow it at all willingly, I promise you!’ he replied, taking her across the flagged hall to the staircase. ‘I respect his reluctance, but to be allowing him to play the Spartan youth, when he was suffering (unless I mistake the matter) as much from fear that he may have crippled himself as from his bruised bones, would have been folly. Or so I thought!’
‘You were very right!’ she agreed. ‘But unless you forced it down his throat, which I do hope you didn’t, I can’t imagine how you persuaded him to take it, for I never knew anyone so obstinate!’
He laughed. ‘No, no, I wasn’t obliged to resort to violence!’ He opened the door into Aubrey’s room as he spoke, and stood aside for her to go in.
Aubrey, lying in the middle of a big four-poster bed and wearing a nightshirt many sizes too large for him, looked the merest wisp of a boy, but he had recovered his complexion a little. Roused by his sister’s fingers laid over his wrist he opened his eyes, smiled sleepily at her, and murmured: ‘Stoopid! I’ve only bruised myself, m’dear: nothing to signify! I think I crammed him. Rufus, I mean.’
‘Cawker!’ she said lovingly.
‘I know. Damerel said, more bottom than sense.’ His gaze focused itself on Nurse, who, having set down a bulging portmanteau, was divesting herself of her bonnet with all the air of one determined to remain at his side whatever might be the consequences. He uttered thickly: ‘Oh,no, my God –! Howcouldyou, Venetia? Take her away! I’m damned if I’ll have her fussing and fuming over me as if I were a baby!’
‘Ungrateful brat!’ remarked Damerel. ‘You’d be well-served if your nurse took you at your word, and left you to my mercies! I should certainly beat you.’
Considerably to Venetia’s surprise this intervention, so far from offending him, made Aubrey give a tiny spurt of laughter. Turning his head on the pillow so that he could look at Damerel, he said: ‘Well, how wouldyoulike it, sir?’
‘Very much indeed! You are more fortunate than you know.’
Aubrey pulled a face; but when Damerel had left the room he said: ‘I like him, don’t you? You’ll say everything that’s proper, won’t you? I don’t think I did, and I ought.’
She replied soothingly, and he shut his eyes again. He was soon asleep, so that there was nothing for Venetia to do but to sit down to await the arrival of Dr Bentworth, while Nurse unpacked the portmanteau, her lips tightly folded in disapproval, except when she opened them to whisper warnings to Venetia against falling into the snares of the wicked. She was presently drawn into the adjoining dressing-room by Mrs Imber, and Venetia was left to while away the time as best she might. There was nothing to occupy her save her thoughts, and nothing to be seen from the window but a neglected garden bathed in autumn sunshine. Having mentally weeded this, stocked its flower-beds with her favourite plants, and set a couple of men to scythe the lawn, she wondered how long she would be obliged to sit idle. She feared it might be for a considerable period, for York was twelve miles distant, and it was more than probable that a busy practitioner might not be found at liberty to come immediately to Aubrey’s bedside.
When Nurse came back into the room Venetia was glad to see that her countenance had slightly relaxed its expression of uncompromising severity. Her opinion of Damerel’s morals, and her conviction that his end would be a lesson to other sinners, remained unchanged, but she was to some degree mollified by the discovery that he had ordered Mrs Imber not only to make up a bed for her in the dressing-room, but to obey whatever injunctions she might see fit to lay upon her. Furthermore, his valet was not, as might have been supposed, a saucy jackanapes, but a very respectable man who had behaved with great civility to her, deferring to her superior judgment, and begging, as a favour, to be allowed to share with her the duties of waitingon the invalid. It appeared that Nurse had graciously conferred this honour upon him, but whether she had done so because she was won over by this tact, or because she knew that Aubrey would strenuously resist any attempt to reduce him to nursery status, remained undisclosed. She was representing to Venetia in persuasive terms how unnecessary it was for her to remain at the Priory another instant when Aubrey woke up, rather cross, and complaining that he was hot, thirsty, and uncomfortable. Nurse thought this an excellent opportunity to change Damerel’s contaminating nightshirt for one of his own, so she summoned Marston to her assistance, and was pretty well occupied when Damerel walked into the room to invite Venetia to partake of dinner in his company. Before Nurse had grasped the scandalous nature of his errand the invitation had been accepted, and Damerel was bowing Venetia out of the room.
‘Thank you!’ Venetia said, as he shut the door. ‘You came in at precisely the right moment, you know, when poor Nurse was too much taken up with scolding Aubrey for being so tiresome to think whatImight be doing!’
‘Yes, I didn’t think I should clear that fence without a check,’ he agreed. ‘Would you have attended to her protests?’
‘No, but she is being strongly moved by the spirit, and the chances are it would have moved her to say something impolite to you, which would have covered me with mortification.’
‘Oh, don’t let that trouble you!’ he said, laughing. ‘Only tell me how I should address her!’
‘Well,wehave always called her Nurse.’
‘No doubt! But it won’t do for me to copy you. What is her name?’
‘Priddy. The underservants call herMrsPriddy, though I can’t think why, for she has never been married.’
‘Mrs Priddy she shall be. You won’t tell me I rank above the underservants in her esteem!’ An irrepressible chucklemade him glance down at her; he saw the brimming merriment in her eyes, and demanded: ‘Now what? Do I rank above them?’
‘I don’tthinkso,’ she answered cautiously. ‘At least, I never heard her say, even of the laundrymaid, that she would be eaten by frogs!’
He gave a shout of laughter. ‘Good God, does that fate await me?’
Encouraged by the discovery that he shared her enjoyment of the absurd she laughed back at him, saying: ‘Yes, and also that your increase will be delivered to the caterpillar.’
‘Oh, I’ve no objection to that! The caterpillar is welcome to my increase!’
‘No, how can you be so unnatural? Increasemustmean your children!’
‘Undoubtedly! Any side-slips of mine the caterpillar may have with my good-will,’ he retorted.
‘Poor little things!’ she said, adding thoughtfully, after a moment: ‘Not that it is at all easy to perceive what harm one caterpillar could do them.’
‘Do you know that you are a very strange girl?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Why? Have I said something I ought not?’ she said rather anxiously.
