CHAPTER XXVI

DEPPINGHAM FALLS ILL

That evening Lord Deppingham took to his bed with violent chills. He shivered and burned by turns and spent a most distressing night. Bobby Browne came in twice to see him before retiring. For some reason unknown to any one but himself, Deppingham refused to be treated by the young man, notwithstanding the fact that Browne laid claim to a physician's certificate and professed to be especially successful in breaking up "the ague." Lady Agnes entreated her liege lord to submit to the doses, but Deppingham was resolute to irascibility.

"A Dover's powder, Deppy, or a few grains of quinine. Please be sensible. You're just like a child."

"What's in a Dover's powder?" demanded the patient, who had never been ill in his life.

"Ipecac and opium, sugar of milk or sulphate of potash. It's an anodyne diaph.o.r.etic," said Browne.

"Opium, eh?" came sharply from the couch. "Good Lord, an overdose of it would--" he checked the words abruptly and gave vent to a nervous fit of laughter.

"Don't be a fool, George," commanded his wife. "No one is trying to poison you."

"Who's saying that he's going to poison me?" demanded Deppingham shortly. "I'm objecting because I don't like the idea of taking medicine from a man just out of college. Now judge for yourself, Browne: would you take chances of that sort, away off here where there isn't a physician nearer than twelve hundred miles? Come now, be frank."

Bobby Browne leaned back and laughed heartily. "I daresay you're right.

I should be a bit nervous. But if we don't practise on some one, how are we to acquire proficiency? It's for the advancement of science. Lots of people have died in that service."

"By Jove, you're cold-blooded about it!" He stared helplessly at his wife's smiling face. "It's no laughing matter, Agnes. I'm a very sick man."

"Then, why not take the powders?"

"I've just given my wife a powder, old man. She's got a nervous headache," urged Browne tolerantly.

"Your wife?" exclaimed Deppingham, sitting up. "The devil!" He looked hard at Browne for a moment. "Oh, I say, now, old chap, don't you think it's rather too much of a coincidence?"

Browne arose quickly, a flash of resentment in his eyes. "See here, Deppingham--"

"Don't be annoyed, Bobby," pleaded Lady Agnes. "He's nervous. Don't mind him."

"I'm not nervous. It's the beastly chill."

"Just the same. Lady Agnes, I shall not give him a grain of anything if he persists in thinking I'm such a confounded villain as to--"

"I apologise, Browne," said Deppingham hastily. "I'm not afraid of your medicine. I'm only thinking of my wife. If I _should_ happen to die, don't you know, there would be people who might say that you could have cured me. See what I mean?"

"You dear old goose," cried his wife.

"I fancy Selim or Baillo or even Bowles knows what a fellow doses himself with when he's bowled over by one of these beastly island ailments. Oblige me, Agnes, and send for Bowles."

Bowles came bowing and sc.r.a.ping into the room a few minutes later. He immediately recommended an old-fashioned Dover's powder and ventured the opinion that "good sweat" would soon put his lordship on his feet, "better than ever." Deppingham kept Bowles beside him while Browne generously prepared and administered the medicine.

Later in the night the Princess came to see how the patient was getting on. He was in a dripping perspiration.

Genevra drew a chair up beside his couch and sat down.

Lady Agnes was yawning sleepily over a book.

"Do you know, I believe I'd feel better if I could have another chill,"

he said. "I'm so beastly hot now that I can't stand it. Aggie, why don't you turn out on the balcony for a bit of fresh air? I'm a brute to have kept you moping in here all evening."

Lady Agnes sighed prettily and--stepped out into the murky night. There were signs of an approaching storm in the sultry air.

"I say, Genevra, what's the news?" demanded his lordship.

"The latest bulletin says that you are very much improved and that you expect to pa.s.s a comfortable night."

"'Gad I _do_ feel better. I'm not so stuffy. Where is Chase?"

Now, the Princess, it is most distressing to state, had wilfully avoided Mr. Chase since early that morning.

"I'm sure I don't know. I had dinner with Mrs. Browne in her room. I fancy he's off attending to the guard. I haven't seen him."

"Nice chap," remarked Deppingham. "Isn't that he now, speaking to Agnes out there?"

Genevra looked up quickly. A man's voice came in to them from the balcony, following Lady Deppingham's soft laugh.

"No," she said, settling back calmly. "It's Mr. Browne."

"Oh," said Deppingham, a slight shadow coming into his eyes. "Nice chap, too," he added a moment later.

"I don't like him," said she, lowering her voice. Deppingham was silent.

Neither spoke for a long time The low voices came to them indistinctly from the outside.

"I've no doubt Agnes is as much to blame as he," said his lordship at last. "She's made a fool of more than one man, my dear. She rather likes it."

"He's behaving like a brute. They've been married less than a year."

"I daresay I'd better call Aggie off," he mused.

"It's too late."

"Too late? The deuce--"

"I mean, too late to help Drusilla Browne. She's had an ideal shattered."

"It really doesn't amount to anything, Genevra," he argued. "It will blow over in a fortnight. Aggie's always doing this sort of thing, you know."

"I know, Deppy," she said sharply. "But this man is different. He's not a gentleman. Mr. Skaggs wasn't a gentleman. Blood tells. He will boast of this flirtation until the end of his days."

"Aggie's had dozens of men in love with her--really in love," he protested feebly. "She's not--"

"They've come and gone and she's still the same old Agnes and you're the same old Deppy. I'm not thinking of you or Aggie. It's Drusilla Browne."