THE day after the hurried visit of Agnes to the Park had been one of gathering darkness, and exhaustion to the young sufferer. He was so ill and had been ill so long that the interest of the household had almost come to an end. There was nothing to be done for him, not even the beef tea to prepare, the variety of drinks which had kept up a certain link of service between the sick room and the rest of the house. All that seemed over. He had passed from the necessities of life while still living, and now there was nothing but a half-impatient waiting—a longing of strained nerves and attention for the end of the suspense—till all should be over, and the little tale told out.
Letitia, who felt herself the chief person involved, did not feel even impatient that day. It was by this time a foregone conclusion, a question of time. The doctor even had said scarcely anything, had only shaken his head, and even the cheerful nurse, the woman of daylight and good hope, was daunted, and did not repeat her better auguries. John, who had avoided his wife, who had refused to discuss the subject, now let her speak, sitting with his head bent on his breast, and making little reply, but still listening to what she said. She had a great many plans, indeed had drawn out in her active mind a whole scheme of proceedings for their future guidance, of changes to be made both for pleasure and profit, things of much more importance than these alterations in the house on which she had set her mind the first time she came into it. Letitia spoke low, but she spoke boldly, bidding her husband remember that though it was very sad it was a thing that had always been necessary to look forward to, and that after all it was his just inheritance that was now coming to him. And John had not stopped her to-day. It was all true enough. The poor boy had been an interruption to the course of events, and now things were returning to their natural course. He had a soft heart, and it was sore for the poor boy; but Letitia had reason on her side, and what she said was not to be refuted or despised.
She was very busy that day, not going out for her drive or receiving any visitors, not even any of the anxious inquirers who came to beg for a little more information than the bulletin gave—the clerical people about, and the, nearest neighbors, whom hitherto she had allowed to enter; very busy in her own room planning out a great many things. It would make a change to everybody—a different style of living, a great extension and amplification would now not only be possible but necessary. She put it all down on paper, making out her arrangements systematically, which was an exercise that she loved. If the poor boy lingered for a week longer that would make no difference after all. She had promised to Duke to send for him if Mar became worse; but she decided that she would not do so, for what would be the good? Mar was far too weak to take an interest in any one, perhaps even to recognize his cousin. And Letitia felt that she could not bear the noisy grief with which her son would no doubt receive the news, which was the best news for him that could possibly be. It was bad enough to see Letty with her red eyes moping about the house, and Tiny devoting herself to her lessons as if the mortification of her soul over them was more appropriate to the crisis than anything she cared for. Little fools! who did not know what was to their advantage! But even to them it would not make the difference it would make to Duke. For Duke there could be no doubt it was the one thing to be desired; yet Letitia knew he would make a greater fuss than even the girls were doing, and this she could not bear.
Next morning she was a little later than usual in leaving her room. She had not slept well. Her mind had been so full of all that she had to do. It was not anxiety that kept her awake, for anxiety had almost left her in the certainty of what was going to happen; but merely the preoccupation of her mind and the responsibility on her shoulders of seeing that everything was done in this emergency so as to secure the approval of the world. Though her mind was full of exultation, she was most anxious not to show it; not to be spoken of as heartless or worldly. A slight fear that she had committed herself to the attendants of the sick room, and that they had penetrated her true feelings, troubled her a little; but what did a couple of nurses matter? She was so late that morning that she did not as usual see the night nurse, with her lugubrious countenance, shaking her head as she went to take her necessary rest. Letitia liked the night nurse best. She had always thought the other too hopeful; but what did it matter now what one thought or the other? She went direct to the sick room when she left her own, putting on as she went the necessary solemnity of countenance with which to receive what there would be no doubt would be bad news. It startled her a little to hear an unusual murmur of voices in the ante-room where the doctor was in the habit of pausing to give his directions. She could not hear what they said, but there was something in the tone of the consultation which struck her, like a sudden dart thrown from some unseen hand. What did it mean? She went into the room quickly, her composure disturbed, though she would not allow herself to think there was any reason. What reason could there be? The first thing Letitia saw was the nurse crying—the cheerful nurse—the fool of an optimist who had always said he would get better. Ah! all was over then? This woman had the folly to allow herself to get interested in the case; and, besides, might well be crying too for the end of a good job. A spirit of malice and fierce opposition somehow sprung up in Letitia’s mind, and prompted this mean thought. Yes, it was the end of a good job, of good feeding and good pay, and very easy work. No wonder she cried; and to make herself interesting, too, in the doctor’s eyes. This flashed through Mrs. Parke’s mind in a second, while she was walking into the room. It broke up her calm, but rather with a fierce impulse of impatience and desire to take the hussy by the shoulders than with any real fear.
The doctor was stooping over the table writing a prescription. A prescription! What did they want with such a thing now? He looked up when he heard her step. His face was beaming. He put down his pen and came forward, holding out both hands. “I have the best of news for you this morning, my dear lady,” he said.
Letitia was too much startled to speak. She would not, could not permit herself to believe her eyes. She drew her hands impatiently from his clasp.
“The crisis has come—and passed,” he said. “The fever has gone. I find his temperature almost normal, and the pulse quite quiet.”
“What?” said Letitia. She would not believe her ears. She had no time to regulate her countenance to look as if she were glad. Her jaw fell, her eyes glared. “What?” she said, and she could say no more.
“I do not wonder you are overcome. I feel myself as if it were too much. Sit down and take a moment to recover——”
She sat down mechanically and glared at him. Her feeling was that if there had been a knife on the table she would have struck at him with it—a sharp one that would have turned that smile into a grimace and made an end of it. Too much! The fever gone, gone! She panted for breath, fiercely, like a wild beast.
“It is wonderful, but it is true,” said Dr. Barker. He added after a moment: “It is curious the different ways we take it. This good little woman, who always hoped the best—cries—and you, Mrs. Parke, you——”
“Do you mean that he will live?” Letitia said.
“I hope so—I hope so. The only danger now is weakness; if we can feed him up and keep him quiet. It is all a question of strength——”
“You have said that ever since you were called in.”
“Ah, yes, that is true, but in a different sense. Strength to struggle with a fever is one thing; strength to pick up when it is gone is another. Yesterday, every moment the fire was flaming, burning out his life—now every moment is a gain. Look at him. He’s asleep. He hasn’t been asleep, to call sleeping—not honest sleep—for days and nights.”
All this was but as the blowing of the wind to Letitia. She did not hear the words. She heard only over and over again, “the fever is gone——” But by this time she had begun to call her strength to her, to remember dully that she must not betray herself. She interrupted the doctor in the midst of his phrase.
“Do you mean that he will live?” she said again.
“As long, I hope,” said the doctor, promptly, “as his best friends could desire.”
“I don’t seem to understand,” Letitia said. “I thought all hope was over. I thought he was dying. Why did you make me think so—and my husband, too?”
“I am sorry if I have given you unnecessary pain, Mrs. Parke——”
“Oh, unnecessary! it was all unnecessary, I suppose. You have—you have frightened us for nothing, Dr. Barker; given us such days—and nights.” She broke into a little wild laugh. “And all the time there was nothing in it!” she cried.
The nurse had dried her eyes and was staring at this strange exhibition, and Letitia had begun to perceive that she had got out of her own control, and could not recover the command of her words and looks. She had been so taken by surprise, so overwhelmed by the sudden shock that the commotion in her brain was like madness. It was all she could do not to shriek out, to fly at the spectators like a wild cat. How dared they look and see what she had not the strength to conceal?
“I will go,” she said, “and call John; he will tell you what he thinks,” with the impulse of a maddened woman to bring a man’s strength into her quarrel and punish her adversary. What she thought John could do to Dr. Barker she did not know; and indeed she did not go to tell John. She returned to her room which she had left only a few minutes before, and from which she chased the frightened housemaids with a stamp on the floor which made them fly wildly, leaving brooms and dusters behind. The windows were all open, the sunshine bursting in in a great twinkling of light after yesterday’s rain. She locked the door that she might be alone, and closed the windows one after another with a sound like thunder. To give expression to the rage that devoured her was something, a necessity, the only way of getting out her passion. The fever gone, the fever gone! the fever which was her friend, which had worked for her, which had promised everything—everything that her heart desired. And they looked her in the face and told her it was gone! the fools and hypocrites, that vile woman crying in her falseness, the man triumphing over her, pretending to congratulate her when he must have known—— How could they help knowing? They must have known! They had done it on purpose to make her betray herself, to surprise her thoughts, to exult over her. And she had been so sure, so easy in her mind, so certain that everything was going well! Oh, oh!—her breath of rage could command no more expression than that common monosyllable. She could not appeal to God as people do in such wild shocks of passion. It was not God who could be appealed to. The other perhaps if she had known how—there are times when devil-worship might be a relief if it could be done.
“My God!” said Dr. Barker, who was not so restrained. “She is wild with disappointment and rage. Did she wish the boy to die?”
“Oh, doctor—she wished her own boy to be in his place,” said the nurse, who perhaps had a semi-maternal light upon the matter. The doctor kept on shaking his head as he finished his prescription.
“Don’t wake him for this or anything—not even for food; but give him the food as I told you.”
“I know, I know,” said the nurse, on whom the overstrain of her nerves was telling, too; “don’t you think I know, sir, how important it is.”
“Don’t you go off, too—don’t leave him for a moment. Avoid all noise or discussion. Try and keep everyone out, especially——” He did not finish his sentence, but it was unnecessary.
“All I can do, doctor—all I can do. But Mrs. Parke is the mistress of the house.”
“She will not come back again,” he said, “she will be in a terrible fright when she knows how she betrayed herself. Poor thing! as you say, it was to put her boy in his place. They were wild before when this boy was born. Well, perhaps there is some excuse for them.”
“But you will come back to-night?”
“I should think so, indeed,” he said, “and before to-night. And I shall see John Parke as I go.”
But by that strange influence which nobody can explain, before the doctor left the room the news had somehow flashed through the house. The fever gone! John Parke came out into the hall as Dr. Barker came downstairs. “Is it true?” he said. It would be vain to assert that there was not a dull throb which was not of pleasure or gratitude through John Parke’s being when that rumor had come to him. The cup was dashed from his lips again, and this time for ever. He had to pause a moment in the library, where he was sitting, thinking involuntarily of the new life, to gulp down something—which shamed him to the bottom of his heart. But when he came out to meet the doctor that very shock had brought all his tenderer feelings back. “Is it true?” he said with a quiver of emotion in his voice. And at that moment Letty came flying in from the park and flung herself upon his neck, and kissed him like a whirlwind. “Oh, papa, Mar’s better!” she said, her voice between a soft shout and song of joy ringing through the great house. There was no doubt, no hesitation in Letty’s rapture and thankfulness. And it was with almost as true a heart, notwithstanding his momentary pang of feeling, that John grasped the doctor’s hand and said “Thank God.”
How the news ran through the house! It was known before it was ever spoken at all to the cook, who immediately rose from the retirement in which she was considering her menu, and ordered a delicate young chicken to be prepared to make soup. “I know what’s wanted after a fever. Something hevery hour,” said that dignitary. It swept up like a breeze to the housemaids upstairs busy with their work. “Oh, that’s what’s put the Missis in such a passion,” they said with unerring logic. Tiny, released from her lessons by the same instinctive consciousness of something, danced a wild jig round the hall to the tune of “Mar’s better. Mar’s better!” all her hair floating about her, and her shoes coming off in her frenzy. And thus nature and human feeling held the day and reigned triumphant, notwithstanding the fierce tragedy, indescribable, terrible—a passion which rent the very soul, and to which no crime, no horror was impossible, which raged and exhausted itself in the silence, shut up with itself and all devilish impulses in the best room, in the bosom of the mistress of the house.