Hope - Lesley Pearse [117]
She looked at him long and hard for a moment. ‘Why haven’t I caught it?’ she asked eventually, her voice shaking. ‘I didn’t get typhus when my parents died of it, even though I nursed them. Was that just luck?’
‘I don’t know, I’m afraid,’ Bennett said, feeling helpless. ‘There are so many different ideas about what causes these diseases. Some doctors think they are carried in the air, others think they are passed by contact, but no one knows for sure. I don’t personally believe they are airborne, but then if it is passed on by physical contact, it’s strange that some members of a family don’t get it.’
He wished he could say that if she hadn’t already got it, she was safe, but he couldn’t lie to her like that. For all he knew she could collapse with it at any minute, just as he could wake up tomorrow with it too.
‘Mother believed in washing everything with vinegar when someone was ill,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Do you believe in that?’
‘I do,’ he agreed. ‘Wash your hands with soap each time you touch one of them and don’t drink from the same cup as them either.’
He got up and took a small bottle of opium from his bag. ‘Three or four drops, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back to see them in the morning.’
Bennett felt strangely reluctant to leave her. He knew he must, he couldn’t do any more, and it would be folly to stay a minute longer than he had to. But it seemed wrong to leave someone so young with such a responsibility. He wanted to know why someone so beautiful came to be in this terrible place; in fact he wanted to know everything about her.
Mary Carpenter was right, she was intriguing.
‘Hope!’
She started at Gussie’s weak call, and was surprised to find it was now daybreak and she must have dropped off to sleep for a couple of hours.
Her heart leapt, for if he could call out her name he might be over the worst. ‘What is it?’ she whispered as she quickly moved over to him. ‘Another drink?’
He nodded weakly and she held the cup to his parched lips, but she saw only too clearly that he wasn’t getting better after all, for his blue colour was even worse by daylight than it had been by candlelight.
‘I’m dying,’ he croaked out. It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. But she denied it vigorously.
‘Don’t,’ he said, his sunken eyes making him look like a very old man. ‘I know the truth. You must get out of here now, it’s not safe for you to stay.’
That he should only be thinking of her safety when he was so desperately sick made tears spring to her eyes. She picked up a damp cloth and wiped his brow tenderly. ‘I love you, Gussie,’ she whispered. ‘You and Betsy have been such good friends to me and I can’t leave you. So don’t tell me to go.’
He just looked at her with those sunken eyes fixed on her for some little while. ‘I wanted you to be my girl,’ he blurted out. ‘So many times I wanted to tell you how I felt about you, but I didn’t dare.’
Hope blushed, surprised by his statement. But then she remembered all those times he’d taken her hand, the hugs that were just a fraction more than friendship, the way he’d looked at her sometimes. She might have been frightened by it had she realized what it meant, for she hadn’t felt the same way. She’d only loved him like a brother.
‘I wish you had told me,’ she whispered, unable to let him die thinking his feelings for her were not returned. ‘I’d be proud to be your girl.’
He smiled then. It was nothing like the wide, joyful smile she was used to, when his eyes would dance and twinkle, but just the ghost of it. Yet she felt uplifted that a small white lie could bring him some measure of happiness.
‘I used to dream that our luck would change, that we’d get married and live somewhere beautiful,’ he said, struggling to get the words out. ‘Get away from here, Hope, find that good life you deserve. I’ll go easier if you give me your promise.’
Her mind slipped back to good memories from the past. The many times