Ruth Axtell Morren - The Healing Season

She nodded and addressed herself to the youth. “Mr. Russell can tell you how we spent our evening. I haven’t had a chance to go home and change my garments.”

The boy was blushing furiously and stammering protestations.

“I would introduce you,” the surgeon said, “but as we didn’t have time for the niceties last night, I am afraid I am still ignorant of your identity.”

“Eleanor Neville.” She never tired of the sound of the stage name she’d given herself. It had the ring of quality. The syllables rolled off her tongue with self-assurance.

“Mrs. Neville,” the youth stammered. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

“Thank you.” She gave a demure smile. It was obvious he recognized the name.

The surgeon made no sign that her name meant anything to him. “Has she awakened at all?” he asked her.

“Once,” she replied. “She was thirsty and I gave her a few sips of water as you suggested with the powder. That was all she could manage.”

He nodded. “Yes, it’s to be expected.”

“I haven’t had time to go home yet. I wanted to ask you—can she be moved? It would be much easier to take care of her in my own house.”

“I’m afraid she has lost too much blood to be moved this soon.”

Eleanor frowned. “I don’t know how often I will be able to stop in to see her. Perhaps you could recommend a nurse. I could pay her.” She turned an apologetic smile toward the younger man. “I must be at work most afternoons and evenings.”

As he nodded in understanding, she turned to find the surgeon’s eyes on her. They held a censure that made her wonder what she had said that was so wrong.

In the light of day she saw that his dark hair was actually auburn, its coppery shade deepened to chocolate-brown in the eyes focused on her. Before she could speak, his attention shifted to his apprentice.

The two men spent the next couple of minutes discussing Betsy’s case. Eleanor heard words like erysipelas, necrosis, and blood poisoning. Mr. Russell took the woman’s temperature, felt her pulse and finally said to Eleanor, “Continue giving her the ergot. Also, comfrey tea. It will help bring down any inflammation and stanch the bleeding. I’ll be by tomorrow, but if she takes a turn for the worse, send the boy around again.”

She nodded. “I’ll do my best, but as I said, I must leave her in the evening to work.”

He looked down at her, and again she felt strong disapproval emanating from those dark irises. “Can you not forgo your evening’s activities for one night?”

She stared at him for a moment. Forgo her evening’s performance at the theater? What did he think she was—a mere chorus girl? She glanced at the young man, and seeing his cheeks turn deep red, she felt vindicated. Obviously he understood the impossibility of the suggestion.

She drew herself up. “I couldn’t possibly ‘forgo’ my duties tonight.”

“Are you so popular with your clientele that you cannot give up an evening’s earnings for the sake of your friend here? May I remind you she is still in grave danger?”

Her eyes grew wider.

“Ian,” the apprentice began hesitatingly, “Mrs. Neville isn’t…er…uh…”

As Eleanor glanced from one man to the other in puzzlement, it suddenly dawned on her. The good surgeon thought she was a prostitute! Her nostrils flared as she drew herself up.

Abruptly, she clamped her mouth shut on the set down she was about to give him. Putting both hands on her hips, she thrust one forward, shaking back her hair away from her face.

“Well, I don’t know now,” she drawled in her broadest cockney. “I got me clients, and they ’spect to see me regular. Kinda like yer patients, I should imagine. Wot ’appens if you don’t come callin’, eh? Go to the next quack down the block, I shouldn’t wonder.”

She blew on her fingernails and polished them against her bodice, as she gave the young man a firm nod. His mouth hung open and his eyes stared at her.

“There’re so many gents callin’ theirselves doctors nowadays, a cove’s gotta watch out for ’is business, ain’t it so, Mr. Beverly?”

“Oh…uh, yes, ma’am.” His jaws worked furiously, as if they needed to catch up to his words.

She began strutting around the room, hands still on her hips, swaying them just as she saw the women outside the theater do. “So, you see ’ow it is, Doc. I got me rounds tonight, just like you.”

She turned back to them and gave the doctor a long, slow look up the length of his tall, slim physique.

When she reached his eyes, she detected the same stern look he’d worn throughout the night as he’d battled for Betsy’s life. She flicked a glance at the young apprentice. He’d lost his dumb stupor and was actually grinning. He must have figured out she was playacting.

“Oh, we understand, perfectly, Mrs. Neville,” Mr. Beverly told her with a vigorous nod.

“All I understand,” said the surgeon, “is that your young friend’s life is hanging by a thread. Her only hope lies in skilled nursing help.”

As Ian strode from the building, he experienced the impotent fury he did every time he saw a young woman unmindful of the consequences of her street life. Hadn’t Mrs. Neville learned something from seeing her friend nearly bleed to death?

He clenched his jaw. The woman was more beautiful than she had a right to be. She might be able to ply her trade for a few short years, but then what? If she’d seen the ugly results he dealt with every day from women dying of the pox or clap, she’d rethink her occupation.

He chanced a glance at Jem, his young apprentice, already regretting having brought him. The woman had enthralled him in a few minutes of conversation.

In reality Jem was his uncle’s latest apprentice at the apothecary, but Ian knew how important it was for an apothecary to get practical experience with patients, so he took him on his rounds whenever he had a chance.

The boy was whistling a cheerful tune that Ian didn’t recognize. “You can’t let every pretty face discompose you, my boy,” Ian chided, remembering the boy’s blushes around the beautiful Mrs. Neville.

Jem’s pale complexion turned ruddy again. “But that wasn’t just any pretty lady, that was Eleanor Neville!”

“Is she related to royalty?”

The boy stopped in his tracks. “Don’t you know who Mrs. Neville is?”

“Not a clue. Should I?”

“She’s the greatest actress on the stage.”

An actress? He stared at Jem in disbelief. Then he remembered her strange turnaround, one moment a frightened young woman, her speech too refined for her mean surroundings, the next talking like any common streetwalker. She had been pulling his leg! He shook his head. He had misjudged her, and she had turned the tables on him. He couldn’t help a grudging smile.

“An actress, is she?” he asked thoughtfully. “I’ve heard of the great Mrs. Siddons and Dorothy Jordan, but of Mrs. Eleanor Neville, not a whisper.”

“That’s because those others are at the Drury Lane. Mrs. Neville plays in the burlettas at the Surrey.”

Burlettas! The word conjured up images of women prancing about a stage, singing bawdy songs.

“Don’t look like that! You should see her sing and dance. And she’s funny. She has more talent in her tiny finger than all the actresses at the Drury Lane and Covent Garden put together.”

“I guess I’ll just have to take your word for that.” Ian resumed his walk, unwilling to spend more time thinking about a vulgar actress. The description belied the delicately featured young woman who had fought beside him throughout the night.

“You can joke, but someday you’ll see I’m right,” Jem insisted.

“I doubt I shall have such an opportunity since I rarely indulge in theatergoing, much less musical burlesque.” He glanced at the street they were on. “Let’s get a hack at the corner and go to Piccadilly. We’ll visit Mrs. Winthrop and then stop in and see how Mr. Steven’s hernia is doing.”