As they walked towards the vicarage, he went on talking.
"When I lie awake at night, there is one thread which always winds itself through my thoughts whatsoever they are.
I don't find that I can disentangle it.It connects itself with Reuben S.Vanderpoel's daughter.You would know that without my telling you.If you had ever struggled with an insane passion----""It is not insane, I repeat," put in Penzance unflinchingly.
"Thank you--whether you are right or wrong," answered Mount Dunstan, striding by his side."When I am awake, she is as much a part of my existence as my breath itself.
When I think things over, I find that I am asking myself if her thoughts would be like mine.She is a creature of action.Last night, as I lay awake, I said to myself, `She would DO something.What would she do?' She would not be held back by fear of comment or convention.She would look about her for the utilisable, and she would find it somewhere and use it.I began to sum up the village resources and found nothing--until my thoughts led me to my own house.There it stood--empty and useless.If it were hers, and she stood in my place, she would make it useful.So Idecided."
"You are quite right," Mr.Penzance said again.
They spent an hour in his library at the vicarage, arranging practical methods for transforming the great ballroom into a sort of hospital ward.It could be done by the removal of pieces of furniture from the many unused bedrooms.There was also the transportation of the patients from the huts to be provided for.But, when all this was planned out, each found himself looking at the other with an unspoken thought in his mind.Mount Dunstan first expressed it.
"As far as I can gather, the safety of typhoid fever patients depends almost entirely on scientific nursing, and the caution with which even liquid nourishment is given.The woman whose husband died this morning told me that he had seemed better in the night, and had asked for something to eat.
She gave him a piece of bread and a slice of cold bacon, because he told her he fancied it.I could not explain to her, as she sat sobbing over him, that she had probably killed him.
When we have patients in our ward, what shall we feed them on, and who will know how to nurse them? They do not know how to nurse each other, and the women in the village would not run the risk of undertaking to help us."But, even before he had left the house, the problem was solved for them.The solving of it lay in the note Miss Vanderpoel had written the night before at Stornham.
When it was brought to him Mr.Penzance glanced up from certain calculations he was making upon a sheet of note-paper.The accumulating difficulties made him look worn and tired.He opened the note and read it gravely, and then as gravely, though with a change of expression, handed it to Mount Dunstan.
"Yes, she is a creature of action.She has heard and understood at once, and she has done something.It is immensely practical--it is fine--it--it is lovable.""Do you mind my keeping it?" Mount Dunstan asked, after he had read it.
"Keep it by all means," the vicar answered."It is worth keeping."But it was quite brief.She had heard of the outbreak of fever among the hop pickers, and asked to be allowed to give help to the people who were suffering.They would need prompt aid.She chanced to know something of the requirements of such cases, and had written to London for certain supplies which would be sent to them at once.She had also written for nurses, who would be needed above all else.
Might she ask Mr.Penzance to kindly call upon her for any further assistance required.
"Tell her we are deeply grateful," said Mount Dunstan, "and that she has given us greater help than she knows.""Why not answer her note yourself?" Penzance suggested.
Mount Dunstan shook his head.
"No," he said shortly."No."