What happened exactly I can't say, but from something old
Dixon said to me the other day--I have been attending him for
rheumatism--I imagine there was a big row between the two men. Why
Faversham didn't throw up there and then, I can't understand. However
there he is still, immersed they tell me in the business of the estate,
but incessantly watched and hampered by Melrose himself, an extraordinary
development in so short a time; and able, apparently, even if he is
willing, which I assume--to do little or nothing to meet the worst
complaints of the tenants. They are beginning to turn against him
furiously.
"Last week the sight of Mainstairs and the horrible suffering there got
on my nerves. I sat down and wrote to Melrose peremptorily demanding a
proper supply of antitoxin at once, at his expense. A post-card from him
arrived, refusing, and bidding me apply to a Socialist government. That
night, however, on arriving at my surgery, I found a splendid supply of
antitoxin, labelled 'for Mainstairs,' without another word. I have reason
to think Faversham had been in Carlisle himself that day to get it; he
must have cleared out the place.
"Next day I saw him in the village. He specially haunts a cottage where
there is a poor girl of eighteen, paralyzed after an attack of diphtheria
last year, and not, I think, long for this world. The new epidemic has
now attacked her younger sister, a pretty child of eight. I doubt whether
we shall save her.
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