About the end of September, I began to feel so ill that Nurse went for the Doctor who assured me that E—— was all right — I need not worry — ‘You go away at once and get some fresh air,’ and so forth. ‘I feel quite ill,’ I said, struggling to break the news.
‘Sort of nervous?’ he enquired good-naturedly, ‘run down? I should get right away at once.’
I began tentatively. ‘Well, I have a rather long medical history and perhaps . . . you . . . might care to read the certificate of my London Doctor?’
I went to my escritoire and returned with M——’s letter addressed to ‘The M.O. examining Mr B.’
Hodge pulled out the missive, studied the brief note carefully and long, at the same time drawing in his breath deeply, and gnawing the back of his hand.
‘I know all about it,’ I said to relieve him.
‘Is it quite certain? about this disease?’ he said presently. ‘You are very young for it.’
‘I think there is no doubt,’ and he began to put me thro’ the usual tricks.
‘I should go right away at once,’ he said, ‘and go on with your arsenic. And whatever you do — don’t worry — your wife is all right.’
After beseeching him to keep silence about it as I thought she did not know, I shewed him out and locked up the certificate again.
Next morning I felt thoroughly cornered: I was not really fit enough to travel; my hand and leg were daily growing more and more paralysed and J—— wired to say she could not put me up as they were going away for the week end. So I wired back engaging rooms, as with the nurse in the house and E—— as she was, I simply could not stay at home. . . .
On the way to the Station I was still in two minds whether or not to pull the taxi up at the Nursing Home and go inside, but harassing debate as it was, our rapidly diminishing bank balance finally drove me on.
—— came up to London with me and sought out a comfortable corner seat, but by the time the train left, a mother and a crying child had got in and everywhere else was full. A girl opposite who saw —— hand me a brandy flask and knew I was ill, looked at me compassionately.
At Reading, another woman with a baby got in and both babies cried in chorus, jangling my nerves to bits! — until I got out into the corridor, by a miracle not falling down, with one leg very feeble and treacherous. All seats were taken, excepting a first-class compartment where I looked in enviously at a lucky youth stretched out asleep full length along the empty seat.
All the people and the noise of the train began to make me fret, so I sought out the repose of a lavatory where I remained eating sandwiches and an apple for the best part of an hour. It was good to be alone.
Later on, I discovered an empty seat in a compartment occupied by persons whose questionable appearance my short sight entirely failed to make me aware of until I got inside with them. They were a family of Sheenies, father, mother and three children, whose joint emanations in a closed-up railway carriage made an effluvium like to kill a regiment of guards. They were E. end pawnbrokers or dealers in second-hand clothes.
I was too nervous to appear rude by immediately withdrawing, so I said politely to the man clad in second-hand furs: ‘Is that seat taken?’
‘Oh! yes . . . but you can have it for a bit if you like.’
I sat down timorously on the extreme edge of the seat and stared at, but could not read, my newspaper out of sheer nervous apprehension. My sole idea was to get out as soon as I decorously could. Out of the corner of my eye, I observed the three children — two girls and a boy — all garbed in black clothes and wearing large clumsy boots with nails and scutes on the soles. The girls had large inflorescences of bushy hair which they swung about as they turned their heads and made me shudder. The mother’s face was like a brown, shrivelled apple, topped with a black bonnet and festooned on each side with ringlets of curly dark hair. Around her neck a fur tippet: as I live — second-hand clothes dealers from Whitechapel.
The man I dare not look at: I sat beside him and merely imagined.
At ——, I got a decent seat and arrived at T—— jaded, but still alive, with no one to meet me. Decent rooms on the sea-front.
Next morning J—— went away for the week end and I could not possibly explain how ill I was lest she stayed at home.
To preserve my sanity, Saturday afternoon, took a desperate remedy by hiring a motor-car and travelling to Torquay and back via Babbacombe. . . .
On the Sunday, feeling suddenly ill, I sent for the local medico whom I received in the drab little room by lamplight after dinner. ‘I’ve a tingling in my right hand,’ I said, ‘that drives me nearly silly.’
‘And on the soles of your feet?’ he asked at once.
I assented, and he ran thro’ at once all the symptoms in series.
‘I see you know what my trouble is,’ I said shyly. And we chatted a little about the War, about disease, and I told him of the recent memoir on the histology of the disease —— in the Trans. Roy. Soc.. Edin. which interested him. Then he went away again — very amiable, very polite — an obvious non possumus. . . .
On Monday at 4 went up to to tea as previously arranged, but found the house shut up so returned to my rooms in a rage.
After tea, having read the newspapers inside out, sat by the open window looking out on to the Marine Parade. It was dusk, a fine rain was falling, and the parade and seafront were deserted save for an occasional figure hurrying past with mackintosh and umbrella. Suddenly as I sat looking out on this doleful scene, a dirge from nowhere in particular sounded on my ears which I soon recognised as ‘Robin Adair,’ sung very lento and very maestoso by a woman, with a flute obligato played by some second person. The tide was right up, and the little waves murmured listlessly at long intervals: never before I think have I been plunged into such an abyss of acute misery.
Next day the wire came. But it was too late. The day after that, I was worse, a single ray of sunshine being the rediscovery of the second-hand-clothes family from Whitechapel taking the air together on the front. This dreary party was traipsing along, the parents in their furs giving an occasional glance at the sea uncomfortably, as if they only noticed it was wet, and the children still in black and still wearing their scuted boots, obviously a little uncomfortable in a place so clean and windswept. I think they all came to the seaside out of decorum and for the satisfaction of feeling that they could afford it like other folk, and that old-clothes was as profitable a business as another.
On Thursday, returned home as I was afraid of being taken ill and having to go into the public hospital. Arrived home and went to bed and here we are till Jan. 1st on 3 months’ sick leave. However, the swingeing urtication in my hands and feet has now almost entirely abated and to-day I went out with E—— and the perambulator, which I pushed.