A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [282]
Robin, who had been sincerely attached to her, had sent her a short, regretful note, sneaked out through the good offices of Ronnie Sinclair. But since Manfred’s disappearance, neither Ute nor the girls had come to see her, nor sent a single word.
It was Joseph Wemyss, though, who was most visibly affected by the affair. He said nothing, plainly not wishing to make matters worse for Lizzie—but he drooped, like a flower deprived of rain. Beyond his pain for Lizzie, and his distress at the blackening of her reputation, he, too, missed the McGillivrays, missed the joy and comfort of suddenly being part of a large, exuberant family, after so many years of loneliness.
Worse, though, was that while Ute had not been able to carry out her threat entirely, she had been able to influence her near relatives—including Pastor Berrisch, and his sister, Monika, who, Jamie told me privately, had been forbidden to see or speak to Joseph again.
“The Pastor’s sent her away to his wife’s relatives in Halifax,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “To forget.”
“Oh, dear.”
And of Manfred, there was no slightest trace. Jamie had sent word through all his usual avenues, but no one had seen him since his flight from the Ridge. I thought of him—and prayed for him—daily, haunted by pictures of him skulking in the woods alone, the deadly spirochetes multiplying in his blood day by day. Or, much worse, working his way to the Indies on some ship, pausing in every port to drown his sorrows in the arms of unsuspecting whores, to whom he would pass on the silent, fatal infection—and they, in turn . . .
Or sometimes, the nightmare image of a bundle of rotting clothes hanging from a tree limb, deep in the forest, with no mourners save the crows who came to pick the flesh from his bones. And despite everything, I could not find it in my heart to hate Ute McGillivray, who must be thinking the same thoughts.
The sole bright spot in this ruddy quagmire was that Thomas Christie, quite contrary to my expectations, had allowed Malva to continue to come to the surgery, his sole stipulation being that if I proposed to involve his daughter in any further use of the ether, he was to be told ahead of time.
“There.” I stood back, gesturing to her to look through the eyepiece of the microscope. “Do you see them?”
Her lips pursed in silent fascination. It had taken no little effort to find a combination of staining and reflected sunlight that would reveal the spirochetes, but I had succeeded at last. They weren’t strongly visible, but you could see them, if you knew what you were looking for—and despite my complete conviction in my original diagnosis, I was relieved to see them.
“Oh, yes! Wee spirals. I see them plain!” She looked up at me, blinking. “D’ye mean seriously to tell me that these bittie things are what’s poxed Manfred?” She was too polite to express open skepticism, but I could see it in her eyes.
“I do indeed.” I had explained the germ theory of disease a number of times, to a variety of disbelieving eighteenth-century listeners, and in the light of this experience had little expectation of finding a favorable reception. The normal response was either a blank stare, indulgent laughter, or a sniff of dismissal, and I was more or less expecting a polite version of one of these reactions from Malva.
To my surprise, though, she seemed to grasp the notion at once—or at least pretended to.
“Well, so.” She put both hands on the counter and peered again at the spirochetes. “These wee beasties cause the syphilis, then. However do they do that? And why is it that the bittie things ye showed me from my teeth don’t make me ill?”
I explained, as best I could, the notion of “good bugs” or “indifferent bugs” versus “bad bugs,” which she seemed to grasp easily—but my explanation of cells, and the concept of the body being composed of these, left her frowning at the palm of her hand