The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900 ... - Gredos

The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900)
known even a day's indisposition since Simon could remember; he had been wet
through one afternoon, indeed, and had not changed his clothes for some hours, but then
the same thing had often occurred before and no harm had resulted. He had had broken
nights, no doubt, and many anxious days, when he cared neither to eat nor to take his
accustomed
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exercise, and these may possibly have impaired his vigorous constitution, but, from
whatever cause, the effect was serious and alarming. Even the apothecary, hastily
summoned, declared himself apprehensive. That great broad chest of Mr. Fleetwood
was attacked, there was inflammation, not in one lung but in both, great pain, violent
fever — he was of opinion that Mr. Simon would do well to seek further advice.
A mounted messenger was despatched forthwith to Ormskirk to summon the physician
who had already attended Mrs. Fleetwood, and, meanwhile, Simon, poor lad! wandered
distractedly from one sick-room to the other. Mrs. Fleetwood's little strength was ebbing
fast; they had thought it well to conceal from her the serious nature of her husband's
illness, and she had not ceased to call for him, at first fretfully, then anxiously, and at
each renewal of the appeal Simon's heart was wrung within him. Yet he could better
endure to hear this weak lament than his father's groans, between spasms of pain, at the
mischance which had thus laid him by the heels at the very time when his wife most
needed him.
"If she gets worse I must go to her, you know," he said, turning his eyes piteously
towards his son. "Only think, boy, I have watched and waited on her all these years —
and to be away from her at the last — it is not to be borne!"
A woman, perhaps, would have bethought her of some way of soothing such anxiety,
but poor Simon, thoroughly convinced himself that his mother's last moments were fast
approaching, could only look down at him with his miserable blue eyes and keep
silence.
The longed-for visit of the great doctor, though eminently satisfactory to the apothecary,
whose treatment of the case he was good enough to commend, brought little comfort to
any one else. The drastic measures