Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [4]
“I believe that your husband is dying, Isobel,” I told her.
Her fingers moved convulsively under my own, and then were still. “Dying. Were I to hear it so declared a thousand times, I still should not believe it possible.”
I surveyed my friend with silent pity, uncertain how to answer such distress. The transformation wrought upon her husband's agonised countenance was indeed extraordinary—and had required but a few hours to effect. That very evening, the Earl had led his Countess down the dance in Scargrave's ballroom, revelling in the midst of a company come to toast the fortunes of them both. Despite his eight-and-forty years, he shone as a man blessed with second youth, elegant and lively, the very charm of his race crying out from every limb. And tho’ he had complained of dyspepsia before, this illness came upon him of a sudden—and with a violence one may hardly credit to an overfondness for claret and pudding.
“Had he taken aught to eat or drink in the past few hours?” I asked.
My friend shook her head. “Only a milk toddy and some sweetmeats the maid brought to him upon retiring. But I do not believe he had long consumed them before the sickness laid him prostrate.”
The stench of the Earl's illness rose from the fouled sheets the maids would not change for fear of paining him further. His breath was caught thick within his throat, and his strength worn down by dizzyness and a violence of puking such as one usually sees under the influence of a purgative. His eyes were rolled back in drowsy oblivion, his skin was pallid, and his features were bloated. It was a trial merely to observe such suffering; to endure it must have been fearsome.
As I watched with Isobel by his bedside, awaiting the doctor summoned in haste from London, the Earl gave forth a great moan, rose up shuddering from his sheets, and clutched his wife's hand. “Blackguards!” his shattered voice cried. “They would take me from within!” Then he fell back insensible upon his bed, and spoke no more.
Isobel was all efficiency; a compress she had in a moment, and ministered to her troubled lord, and the violence of feeling that had animated his poor body but an instant before, troubled him not again.
I am no stranger to death—I have sat watch over too many unlovely ends by the side of my clergyman father, who believes the company of a woman necessary to sustain him in the most mortal hours of his ministry—but this was a sort of dying I had never witnessed.
A chill draught wafted through the chamber door from the great hall below. I turned my head swiftly, in hope of the doctor, and saw only Marguerite, Isobel's maid.
“Milady,” the Creole girl whispered, her eyes stealing from her mistress's face to the more dreadful one of the Earl, “the doctor is come.” Her countenance was pale and frightened, and as I watched, she made the Papist sign of the cross hurriedly at her brow, and ducked back through the doorway.
I cannot find it in me to scold the maid for such foolishness. She is a simple girl from Isobel's native Barbadoes, who accompanied her mistress upon Isobel's removal to England two years ago. Marguerite has sorely missed her sleep tonight—it was she who fetched me hastily before dawn to the Countess's side. But even I, a child of coldblooded England less susceptible to horrified fancy, must confess to sleeplessness these several hours past. For the Earl has uttered such moans and cries that none may shut out his agony, and all within Scargrave's walls are robbed of peace this night.
“Lady Scargrave,” the physician said, breaking into my thoughts. He clicked his heels together and bowed in Isobel's direction. A young man, with all his urgency upon his face.
“Dr. Pettigrew,” the Countess replied faintly, her hand going to her throat, “thank God you are come.”
How Isobel could bear it! Married but three