LETITIA was a long time in the room, and was not visible at all downstairs during the moment of gladness which changed the aspect of everything. Her door remained locked all the morning, and the housemaids were shut out, unable to “do” the room, which was the most curious interruption of all the laws of life. The bed was not made, nor anything swept nor dusted at noon, when she appeared downstairs—a thing which had never happened before in the house, which never happens in any respectable house except in cases of illness. Missis’ room, too, the most important of all! Nobody saw what went on inside in those two long hours. Perhaps only John divined the strain which was going on in his wife’s mind, and he but imperfectly, having little in his own nature of the poison in hers. And John took very good care not to disturb Letitia. He would neither go himself nor let Letty go to make sure that her mother knew the good news about Mar, or to see if she were ill or anything wrong. She was sure to know, he said; and no doubt she had something to do which kept her in her room. But there was also no doubt that he was somewhat nervous himself at her long disappearance. Two hours she was invisible, which for the mother of a family and the mistress of a house is a very long time. When she came downstairs she had her bonnet on and was going out. She had ordered the brougham though it was a very bright and warm day, and announced that she was going to Ridding for some shopping she had to do, but wanted no one to go with her—nor were they to wait luncheon for her should she be late.
“You have heard of course, Letitia, about Mar,” John said, as he came out with his old-fashioned politeness to put his wife into the carriage.
“Is there anything new about Mar!” she said, with a sort of disdain.
“Oh, mamma, he’s better! the fever is gone, he is going to get well,” cried Tiny, who was still dancing about the hall.
“Is that all?” said Mrs. Parke, “I heard that hours ago”—and she drove away without a smile, without a word of satisfaction, or even pretended satisfaction—her face a blank as if it had been cut out of stone. They watched the carriage turn the corner into the avenue with a chill at their hearts. “Was mamma angry?” Tiny asked. John Parke made no answer to his child’s question, but went back to the library, and took up his paper with a heavy heart. He had felt it himself, more shame to him, more or less: a sort of horrible pang of disappointment: but she—it troubled him to divine how she must be feeling it. What awful sensations and sentiments were in her heart? It was not for herself, John said, trying to excuse her—it was for Duke and for him. If she only would understand that he did not mind, that he was glad, very glad, that his brother’s son was getting better, that Mar was far too much like his own child to make his recovery anything but a happy circumstance! John’s heart ached for that unmoving, fixed face. Oh, if she could be persuaded that neither Duke nor he would have been happy in the promotion that came through harm to Mar!
Letitia sank back in the corner of the brougham where nobody could see. She had been in almost a frenzy of rage and pain, walking about the room, throwing herself on the sofa and even on the floor in the abandonment of her fierce misery, hurting herself like a passionate child. No shame, no pride had restrained her. She had locked her door and closed her windows and given herself up to the paroxysm which would have been shameful if any one had seen it—yet which gave a certain horrible relief to the sensations that rent her to pieces. To have it all snatched from her hands again when she had made up her mind to it, when everything was so certain! To be proved a fool, a fool, again trusting in a chance which never would come! It seemed to Letitia that God was her enemy, and a malignant one, exulting in her disappointment, laughing at her pangs. She was too angry, too cruelly outraged to be content with thinking of chance, or that it was her luck, as some people say. She wanted someone to hate for it—someone whose fault it was, whom she could revile and affront and defy to his face. The deception of circumstances, the disappointment of hopes, the cruel way in which she had been lulled into security only to be the more bitterly awakened from her illusion, made her mad. Not as Mary had been made mad, not with any confusion of mind, but with a horrible and intense subversion, a sense of being at war with everything, and living only to revenge herself upon God and man. She had revenged herself upon herself first of all, beating her head against the wall, digging her nails into her flesh, because she had been such a fool, oh, such a fool! as to believe that what she wished was to be. And then there formed in her mind an awful thought, a movement of resistance, a refusal to be overthrown. She would not, she would not allow herself to be played with, to be beaten, to be foiled, to have the cup snatched from her lips just when she was about to drink. No, she would not submit! Though God was the Master, yet there were ways of overcoming Him—yes, there were ways of overcoming. Though He said life, a human creature though so weak, if she had but courage enough, could say death, and He would not be able to prevent it. In the madness of her disappointment and rebellion there came into Letitia’s mind a suggestion, an idea. It did not seem so much in order to have her own will, and her own advantage, as in order to get the better of God, who had shaped things the other way. He thought, perhaps, there was nothing she could do, that she would have to bear it. No, then! she would not! He should see—He was a tyrant. He had the power; but there were ways of baffling Him—there was a way——
Never in all Letitia’s struggles had this thought come into her mind before. Mar had been helpless in her hands for years, but her arm had never armed itself against him. She had never sought to harm him. If she had exaggerated and cultivated his weakness it had been half, as she said, in a kind of scornful precaution, that nothing might happen to him in her house, and half from a grudge, lest he should emulate her own sturdy boys, over whom he had so great and undeserved an advantage. She had never thought of harming him. After, when he was really ill, when Providence itself (for her mind could be pious when this influence which shapes events was on her side) had seemed to arrange for his removal, as she piously said, to a better world, it would have been more than nature had not her mind rushed forward to that evidently approaching conclusion which would make so great a difference. Oh, the difference it would make! enough to deaden the sense of pity, to sharpen every covetous desire. But still she had not thought of doing anything to secure the end she desired. No, no! all the other way—nothing had been neglected, nothing refused that would help him—nothing except her desire, her strong unspoken wish, had been against him. And what had that to do with the issue one way or the other? A woman cannot pray to God that a boy may die. Thus the only unfair advantage which the intensity of her wish might have given her was taken away. On the other side they had this unfair advantage—they could pray, and pray as long as they pleased if that was any good. She had only her strong, persistent, never-suspended wish. Nothing, nothing had she done against him. She had never once thought of assisting or hastening fate.
But now that God had turned everything the wrong way and dashed the cup from her lips, and set Himself against her, now in the frenzy that filled her bosom, the rage, the shame, the rebellion, the wild and overwhelming passion, a new furious light had blazed in upon the boiling waves. Ah, God was great, they said. He could restore life when everything pointed to another conclusion. He could work a miracle—but a woman could foil Him. She could kill though He made alive. A moment of time, an insignificant action—and all His healing and restoration would come to nothing. Where did it come from—that awful suggestion? How did it arise? In what way was it shaped? From what source did it come—the horrible thought? It came cutting through her mind and all her agitation in a moment as if it had been flung into her soul from outside. It came like a flash of lightning, like an arrow, like a pointed dart that cut into the flesh. It was not there one moment, and the next it was there, dominating all the commotion, penetrating all the fever and the tumult—a master thought.
She drove along the country roads in the corner of her carriage, seeing nothing—through the noonday sunshine and the shade of the trees, through villages and by cornfields where the storing of the harvest had begun—and heard nothing and noticed nothing. At last she pulled the string strongly and told the coachman not to go to Ridding but in the other direction to another little town, to a certain house where she had a call to make. And she made the call; and came out of the house while the coachman was walking his horses up and down, and went into the chief street of the place and made a few purchases, then returned to the house of her friend and got into the brougham and drove home. The coachman had not been aware that she had done anything but come out of the house where she had been calling when he drew up. And he drove home very quickly, having himself come out before his dinner-hour, a thing that did not please him. Letitia was very pale when she came home and tired with her long drive, but she eat her luncheon and did not again shut herself from her family—nor did she avoid speaking of Mar. She went to look at him after she had rested a little.
“But I see very little difference,” she said. “He seems to me just as ill as ever, too weak to move, and scarcely opening his eyes.”
“But the fever is gone,” they all cried together.
Letitia shook her head, “I hope the doctor was not mistaken,” she said. Her words threw a cold chill upon the household after the delight of the morning. But that was all. “Missis was always one to take the worst view of everything,” the cook remarked, to whom the undeniable proof of improvement which Mar had shown by swallowing his chicken broth was a proof that needed no confirmation. She sent up a little of the same broth to Mrs. Parke, hearing that she had a headache, and received a message back to the effect that the soup was very good, and that it must be kept always going, always ready, as the young gentleman was able to take it. “But I’ll try him with a bit of chicken to-morrow, no more slops,” said the cook. Thus, though she shook her head and owned that she was not herself so hopeful as Dr. Barker, Letitia sanctioned more or less the satisfaction of the household, and spent the afternoon in a legitimate way. She was frightfully pale, and complained of a headache, which she partly attributed to fatigue and partly to the sun. Yet she saw one or two people who called, and explained Mar’s condition to them: “presumably so much better,” she said, “but I fear, I fear the doctor takes too sanguine a view. A week hence, if all is well—— But,” she said, “the strain of suspense is terrible, almost worse than anything that is certain.” There were people who saw her that day who declared afterwards that they could not understand why it was said of Mrs. Parke that she had no heart. Why, if ever there was a woman who felt deeply, it was Mrs. Parke. The suspense about her poor nephew and his long illness had worn her to a shadow; it had nearly killed her—especially as, poor thing, she was not one who took a cheerful view.
Letitia paid several visits in the evening to the sick room, or to the ante-room connected with it, after the night nurse had begun her duty. The other attendant was not in sympathy with the mistress of the house: but she stood with the night nurse at the door of the room and peered at Mar, and they mutually shook their heads and gave each other meaning looks. “I wish I could see him with Nurse Robinson’s eyes,” the attendant said, and Mrs. Parke replied with a sigh that she hoped most earnestly the doctor was not mistaken. “For I see no difference, nurse.” “And neither do I, ma’am,” said the gloomy woman. She paused for a moment, and then she added in a whisper, “I’ve no business to interfere, but I can’t bear to see you looking so pale. I do wish, Mrs. Parke, that you would go to bed.”
“I thought the same of you, nurse,” said Mrs. Parke, “indeed I wanted to offer to sit up half the night to let you have a little rest.”
“Thank you very much, but I must keep to my post,” the woman said.
“Then you must let me give you some of my cordial,” said Mrs. Parke. “I have an old mixture that has been in the family for a long time. You must take a little of it from my hand: it will strengthen you.” There was a little argument over this, all whispered at the door of Mar’s room, and at last the nurse consented. She was so touched that when Letitia came back carrying the drink, she ventured to give Mrs. Parke a timid kiss, and to say, “Dear lady, I wish you would go to bed yourself and get a good rest. It is almost more trying when one begins to hope, and you are frightfully pale.” Letitia took the kiss in very good part (for the nurse was a lady), and promised to go and rest. It was still early, the household not yet settled to the quiet of the night, and John had not come upstairs: so that there was nobody to note Letitia’s movements, who went and came through the half-lit corridor in a dark dressing-gown, and with a noiseless foot, stealing from her own room to that of the patient. She had made this little pilgrimage several times, when, listening in the ante-room, she heard at last the heavy regular breathing of the attendant in Mar’s room, which proved to her that what she intended had come to pass. Letitia paused for a moment outside the door. She was a little light woman, still slim, even thin, as in her younger days. She moved like a ghost, making no sound; but when she perceived that all was ready for her purpose, there was something that almost betrayed her, and that was the laboring, gasping breath of excitement, which it was all she could do to keep down. Her lungs, her heart, were so strained by the effort to be calm, that her hurried respiration came like the breath of a furnace, hot and interrupted. She stood holding on to the framework of the door, looking in from the comparative light of the room in which she stood to the shaded room in which Mar lay, with the light falling upon the table by his bedside, where were his drinks and medicines—and faintly upon the white pillow with the dark head sunk upon it, in a ghostly stillness. The nurse sat in an easy chair behind, out of the light, with her head fallen back, wrapped in sleep, breathing regularly and deep. Letitia stood and watched for a whole long minute, which might have been a year, peering with her white and ghastly face, like a visible spirit of evil. When she had a little subdued the panting of her heart she pushed the door noiselessly, and stole into the room. She kept her eyes upon the sleeping nurse, ready to draw back if she should move; but that was the only interruption Letitia feared. She had left the door open for her own safe retreat. It had not occurred to her that anyone could follow behind her. She went over to the bedside to the table on which the light fell. And then she stood still again for another terrible moment. Did her heart fail her, did any hand of grace hold her back? She might have done what she had to do three times over while she stood there with one hand upon her breast keeping down her panting breath. Then she put her right hand for a moment over the glass with the milk that stood ready, the drink for the sick boy. That was all. It was the affair of a moment. She might have done it in the nurse’s presence, and no one would have been the wiser. When she had done it she made a step backward, meaning to pass away as she had come. But instead of moving freely through the open air she came suddenly against something, some one, who stood behind, and who grasped without a word her clenched right hand. Letitia’s laboring heart leaped as if it would have burst out of her breast. There came from her a choked and horrible sound, not a cry, for she durst not cry. She kept her senses, her consciousness by a terrible effort. No! whoever it was, if it was John, her husband, if it was one of her children who had discovered her in this awful moment—whoever it was, she would not fall down there at Mar’s bedside like a murderer caught in the act. No! out of the room, at least, out of the scene—somewhere, where they might kill her if they pleased, but not there—not there!
He or she who had seized her from behind stretched a hand over her shoulder and took the milk from the table, and then the two figures in a strange, noiseless, mingling, half struggle, half accord, passed from the darkened room into the light, and looked in a horror, beyond words, into each other’s faces. And then all the forces of self control could no longer restrain the affrighted heart-stricken cry—“Mary!” which came from Letitia’s dry lips.