IN THE SICK-ROOM
Rex seemed worse, perhaps, than he really was, because of the delirium
which increased rapidly after his interview with Rena. The sweat which
stood in so big drops upon his face and hands was gone, leaving his skin
parched and dry. His head was very hot and rolled from side to side,
following the eye, which he said was watching him and moving from point
to point. Sometimes it dropped upon the pillow over his shoulder and
sometimes on the bed close to him, when he would try to brush it off.
How the idea of the eye originated I could not guess, but Colin knew,
and after listening awhile to Rex’s ravings he left the room muttering
something about stopping the infernal nonsense. Calling Nixon he bade
him take some heavy planks and cover up the well, putting a big stone on
the centre plank, so it could not be removed easily. Then he came back,
and sitting down by Rex tried to quiet him, telling him the eye was in
the well with the mirror, and he had covered it up.
“You needn’t tell me that,” Rex said. “It’s on your coat-sleeve, this
minute, winking up at you. Don’t you see it.”
“Whew!” Colin exclaimed, jumping up and brushing his sleeve vigorously,
while Rex laughed.
“You don’t like it either—that big blue eye staring at you—but you don’t
budge it at all. It sticks with all your brushing. There it is on your
shoulder now.”
“This is awful,” Colin said. “I think I’ll get out.”
He left the room hurriedly, taking the eye with him, so that for a time
Rex was free from its tormenting presence. But it came back again, and
all through the night and the next day he watched it and talked about
it, while his fever increased and his temperature went up and the doctor
began to look anxious, wondering how we could rid ourselves of that eye
which was making us both so nervous, especially when Rex called out that
it had alighted upon some part of our person. Even I began to brush
myself and to fancy I saw it flitting through the room and alighting
first on Rex and then on myself, and was afraid I was losing my nerve,
and wondering what I should do.
It was not until the second day that Rena came again, bringing the good
news that Tom was coming the next morning. He had apprised her by
telegram, and her face was very bright and happy.
“Tom will know just what to do,” she said, and then asked if she could
see Mr. Travers.
I did not think it best, he was so wild with delirium. The eye was in
full chase now around the room, and he was following it with feverish,
bloodshot eyes, which did not rest long upon anything. A new fancy had
also taken possession of him, and when it was not the eye it was a braid
of blonde hair floating out to sea, while he laughed as he watched it
mounting wave after wave until it finally disappeared and the eye came
to the front again. Rena could have thrown light upon the hair, but the
eye puzzled her. Sam had told Lottie what he had seen at the well, and
girl-like Lottie had told Rena, who thus knew that Rex had looked in the
well, but not of the half face and the eye.
“Let me see him,” she pleaded. “Don’t you know I told you I could quiet
people?”
Against my better judgment I let her into the room where Rex was trying
to catch the eye as it moved back and forth in front of him.
“Oh, is that you?” he said. “Quite a game of shuttlecock I am having.
Come and see if you can catch it.”
I had been trained in one of the best hospitals in New York, and thought
I knew how to treat the fancies of crazy people, but I gave the palm to
Rena, who went up to Rex and said, “Certainly, I can,” and taking both
his hands in one of hers she gave a rapid sweep in the air with the
other.
“I have it,” she cried, closing her hand tightly.
“Let me see,” he said, trying to lift his head from the pillow.
“Oh, no,” Rena answered. “It might escape, and I am going to send it
after that braid of hair.”
She went to the window, made an outward motion as if throwing something
from her, then returned to Rex, who was looking at her wonderingly.
“It’s gone,” she said, and taking her seat beside him she laid her hand
upon his head, telling him he must be quiet.
For a while he lay perfectly still, sometimes, with his eyes closed, but
oftener with them fixed upon Rena to whom he said at last, “It makes me
think of that night in the grove ever so many years ago when you picked
the pine-needles from Tom’s neck and I wished you were picking them from
mine. Do you remember it?”
“Hush! You are not to talk,” Rena replied, and he was quiet again until
the eye came in at the window, and with a start, he exclaimed, “There it
is! I don’t believe it found that braid.”
With a tact I could not understand, Rena managed to send the eye away
again and to keep Rex so quiet that I dreaded the time when she must
leave. I knew she ought to go and suggested it to her, but she stayed
until the clock struck five, and then left the room so noiselessly that
Rex, who was sleeping, did not awaken. In the lower hall she met Colin.
He had thought the matter over very seriously and concluded that
although it was a foolish joke, it was like a girl, and he had perhaps
been too hard on Rena. With Irene he was still angry. She had acted the
biggest lie, he thought, and then she was not real. She was bogus, and
had tried to win Rex under false colors, and had let him treat her as if
she was to be Rex’s wife. He was ashamed of all the things he had said
to her on that subject and vexed that she had accepted them so sweetly
as if they belonged to her. She was a fraud and did not seem as grand
and beautiful as she had at first. Rena, however, was real. She was
related to Nannie. She was the girl Sandy had seen and admired, and
though he mentally called her a little hussy for trying such a doubtful
experiment, he forgave her entirely when he heard she was with Rex
“keeping that confounded eye away.” When he met her in the hall she
simply bowed to him and was hurrying on when he put his hand on her
shoulder saying: “Not so fast. I want to speak to you. I was a brute the
other day to talk as I did, but I was mad for a minute, and now I don’t
think the joke a nice one; but, by George! you did stand up square for
Irene when I came down so heavily on her. I believe you’ve just as much
head on you as she has, and it beats me how you manage Rex and that
eye—her eye. He was fool enough to look in the well. Did you know it?”
Rena nodded and he went on: “He says he saw half her face and one eye,
but Lord, he didn’t see anything; he couldn’t.”
“Yes, he did; or he might,” Rena answered, beginning to understand, and
repeating Sam’s story and adding: “Tom tried the same thing on me, and I
saw half his face; so it can be done. Of course Mr. Travers knew it was
a joke. Irene must have told him.”
Colin shook his head doubtfully. Rex had said nothing about a joke, or
an explanation from Irene, as he would have done had there been any, and
something like a suspicion of the truth began to creep into his mind,
making him still more indignant at Irene. But he said nothing except
that “when men like Rex went into such rot and got crazy it was time the
performance was stopped,” and he had ordered the well closed up and was
glad the glass was broken, although he presumed there would be a howling
among the young people who might try to open the well. Then he added, as
she turned to leave him, “You are not to walk home; you are too tired. I
shall order the carriage.”
Rena was very tired and she accepted Colin’s offer gladly and was driven
home by Nixon. With Rena gone Rex’s paroxysms of delirium returned. The
eye came back and sat upon the wall and the ceiling and the bureau and
chairs, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another, while the braid of
hair wound itself now around my head and then around that of Rex, who
kept asking for Rena, and became so wild that the doctor said to me at
last: “I think we must send for that young lady. She does more good than
both of us.”
I was doubtful whether Rena would come again, but I wrote her a note
telling her the state of things, and was delighted when about ten
o’clock the next morning she walked into the house with Tom. He had
taken the early train from Boston and stopped on his way from the
station at Mrs. Parks’, where he heard from Rena all the particulars of
Rex’s illness—of his looking in the well, of his hallucination with
regard to the eye, and her confession to him.
“It was awful,” she said, “and at first my heart beat in my throat so I
could scarcely talk, and I felt as if I was about to be electrocuted.
But I am glad it is over, and he did not seem angry either, only hurt,
at the trick put upon him. I am going with you this morning to see him.”
“But is it safe to go there so much? Aren’t you afraid of fever?” Tom
asked.
Mrs. Parks had suggested the same thing. She was afraid, and was
fumigating with sulphur candles and chloride of lime to kill the
microbes which might stray her way until the house smelled like a vault.
But Rena had no fear, and was soon on her way to the McPherson place
with Tom, who was very anxious about Rex and curious to know how he
would receive him. I was at my wits’ end when he came, and I allowed him
to go in at once, hoping he might have a quieting effect upon my
patient, who was making frantic efforts to catch the eye, or rather the
eyes, for the room was full of them now, and his motions were like one
brushing mosquitoes from the head and face.
“Hallo, Tom!” he said. “Glad to see you, but excuse me if I keep at it,
driving them away. There was only one at first. I saw it in the well,
you know—I was fool enough to look in—and it has been with me ever
since. There’s a thousand here now. I have counted five hundred on the
bed at once, winking and blinking and mocking me, and they are
everywhere; shoo, shoo,” and he began to brush his hair and arms and
face.
It was pitiful to see him, and Tom’s chin quivered as he looked at him
fighting the imaginary eyes floating before him.
“Rex,” he said, sitting down upon the bed, “listen. There are no eyes
here, and the one you saw in the mirror was a reflection of Irene
herself standing by you in flesh and blood.”
“I know, I know,” Rex replied. “Somebody told me. Who was it? Sam, I
believe. He saw her. She came up close and looked at me. It was a trick,
a joke, a lie! I have been made the subject of a lot of late, and it
hurt me some, and you, Tom, were in it, too! _Et tu, Brute!_ we used to
read at school, but I never thought I should one day be Cæsar!”
A glimmer of reason was asserting itself for a moment, and Tom’s eyes
filled with tears as he said: “Yes, Rex, I was in it, and I am so sorry.
We are all sorry. Rena most of all.”
At the mention of Rena, Rex’s manner changed at once.
“Yes, Rena,” he said, with a ring of pleasure in his voice, “Rena, with
the little soft hands which take the eyes away. She can catch them!
Where is she? I want her. She’s the girl, you know, the other was
somebody else, very grand and tall and beautiful, and lives in Claremont
instead of New York, and is not the one Sandy meant. That was Rena—your
Rena, I want her.”
He was talking at random again, and Rena, who heard her name, went into
the room.
“I am here,” she said, going up to him, while he took his hands from Tom
and gave them to her.
There was no talk of eyes or hair or anything after Rena sat down beside
him. He did not say much, but slept a long time, which was a gain, and
we began to hope that the fever would reach the crisis at the end of a
week instead of running longer, as we had at first feared. Rena stayed
till night, and only left then because Tom insisted that she should go.
“I owe him something,” she said, “and I shall come every day till he is
better,” and the next morning she was at her post, looking rather pale
and hollow-eyed, but determined and brave.
She had brought Irene’s note received the evening before in the letter
telling of Johnnie’s death.
“Don’t show it to him now. Wait till he can sense it,” Tom said.
He was taking the lead in the sick-room and was so strong and masterful
that Rex continued to improve, and, greatly to our delight, a few days
saw the breaking of the fever and the clearing of the mists which had
clouded his brain.