POOR MAGDA.
Nobody paid any attention to her on the morning following her visit to
the library, except Celine, and Frank and Roger. The latter had sent her
a bouquet which he arranged himself, while Frank, remembering that this
was the day when she was to give him her answer, had asked if she would
see him, and Celine, through whom the message was sent, had brought him
word that “Miss Lennox was too sick to see any one.” Then Frank had
begged his mother to go to her and ascertain if she were seriously ill,
and that lady had said she would, but afterward found it convenient to
be so busy with other matters, that nursing a sick girl who was nothing
to her now except a person whom she must if possible remove from her
son’s way, was out of the question. She did not care to see Magdalen
just then, and she left her to the care of Celine, who carried her toast
and tea about nine o’clock and urged her to eat it. But Magdalen was not
hungry, and bade the girl leave her alone, as she wanted rest more than
anything. At eleven Celine went to her again and found her sleeping
heavily, with a flush on her cheeks, and her head occasionally moving
uneasily on the pillow. Celine was not accustomed to sickness, and if
her young mistress was sleeping she believed she was doing well, and
stole softly from the room. At one she went again, finding Magdalen
still asleep, but her whole face was crimson, and she was talking to
herself and rolling her head from side to side, as if suffering great
pain. Then Celine went for Mrs. Walter Scott, who, alarmed by the girl’s
representations, went at once to Magdalen. She was awake now, but she
did not recognize any one, and kept moaning and talking about her head,
which she said was between two planks in the garret, where she could not
get it out. Mrs. Walter Scott saw she was very sick, and though she did
not pet or caress or kiss the feverish, restless girl, she did her best
to soothe and quiet her, and sent Celine for the family physician, who
came and went before either Roger or Frank knew that danger threatened
Magdalen.
“Typhoid fever, aggravated by excitement and some sudden exposure to
cold,” was the doctor’s verdict. “Typhoid in its most violent form,
judging from present symptoms;” and then Mrs. Walter Scott, who affected
a mortal terror of that kind of fever, declared her unwillingness to
risk her life by staying in the sick-room, and sent for Hester Floyd.
The old woman’s animosity against Magdalen had cooled a little, and when
she heard how sick she was she started for her at once.
“She nussed me through a fever, and I’d be a heathen to neglect her now,
let her be ever so big a piece of trumpery,” she said to herself as she
went along the passage to Magdalen’s room.
But when she reached it, and saw the moaning, tossing girl, and heard
her sad complaints of her head wedged in between the boards, and her
pleadings for some one to get it out, her old love for the child came
surging back, and she bent over her lovingly, saying to her softly,
“Poor Maggie, old Hester will get your head out, she will, she
will—there—there—isn’t it a bit easier now?” and she rubbed and bathed
the burning head, and gave the cooling drink, and administered the
little globules in which she had no faith, giving eight instead of six
and sometimes even ten. And still there was no change for the better in
Magdalen, who talked of the will, which she was trying to burn, and then
of Roger, but not a word of Frank, who was beside her now, his face pale
with fear and anxiety as he saw the great change in Magdalen, and how
fast her fever increased.
Roger was the last to hear of it, for he had been busy in the library
ever since Lawyer Schofield’s departure, and did not know what was
passing in the house until Hester went to him, and said:
“She thinks her head is jammed in between them boards in the garret
floor, and nobody but you can pry it out. I guess you had better see
her. Mr. Frank is there, of course, as he or’ to be after what I seen in
the hall yesterday.”
“What did you see?” Roger asked, and Hester replied:
“I found her in my room when I went from here and I spoke my mind
freely, I s’pose, about her snoopin’ after the will when you had done so
much for her, and she gave a scart kind of screech, and ran out into the
hall, where Mr. Frank met her, and put his arm round her and led her to
her own door, and kissed her as he had a right to if she’s to be his
wife.”
Roger made no reply to this, but tried to exonerate Magdalen from all
blame with regard to the will, telling what he knew about her finding
it, and begging Hester to lay aside her prejudice, and care for Magdalen
as she would have done six weeks ago.
And Hester promised, and called herself a foolish old woman for having
distrusted the girl, and then went back to the sick-room, leaving Roger
to follow her at his leisure. Something in Magdalen’s manner the
previous night had led him to hope that possibly she was not irrevocably
bound to Frank; there might be some mistake, and the future was not half
so dreary when he thought of her sharing it with him. But Hester’s story
swept all that away. Magdalen was lost to him, lost forever and ever,
and for a moment he staggered under the knowledge just as if it were the
first intimation he had received of it. Then recovering himself he went
to Magdalen’s bedside, and when at sight of him she stretched her arms
towards him and begged him to release her head, he bent over her as a
brother might and took her aching head upon his broad chest and held it
between his hands, and soothed and quieted her until she fell away to
sleep. Very carefully he laid her back upon the pillow, and then meeting
in Frank’s eye what seemed to be reproach for the liberty he had taken,
he said to him in an aside, “You need not be jealous of your old uncle,
boy. Let me help you nurse Magda as if she was my sister. She is going
to be very sick.”
Frank had never distrusted Roger and he believed him now, and all
through the long, dreary weeks when Magdalen lay at the very gates of
death, and it sometimes seemed to those who watched her as if she had
entered the unknown world, he never lost faith in the man who stood by
her so constantly, partly because he could not leave her, and partly
because she would not let him go. She got her _head_ at last from
between the boards, but it was Roger who released it for her, and with a
rain of tears, she cried, “It’s out; I shall be better now;” then, lying
back among her pillows, she fell into the quietest, most refreshing
sleep she had known for weeks. The fever was broken, the doctor said,
though it might be days before her reason was restored, and weeks before
she could be moved, except with the greatest care. When the danger was
over and he knew she would live, Roger absented himself from the
sick-room, where he was no longer needed. She did not call for him now;
she did not talk at all, but lay perfectly passive and quiet, receiving
her medicines from one as readily as from another, and apparently taking
no notice of anything transpiring around her. But she was decidedly
better, and knowing this Roger busied himself with the settlement of his
affairs, as he wished to leave Millbank as soon as possible.