POVERTY.
After those exciting days and nights Nina fell into a low, nervous
fever. In the meantime Sibyl St. Alban had died and Talbot Strangemore
had gone back to Europe. The tender-hearted Fieldings were in despair.
They did not know what to do.
“Ought we to let her husband know that she is alive?” they had asked
each other many times, and one terrible answer had always stared them
in the face:
“She is accused of the murder of Mrs. St. Alban. If the officers of the
law knew where to find her she would be thrown into prison and tried
for her life!”
That terrible thought held them back from what seemed to be their duty
to Talbot Strangemore. Nina was safe with them now, and dead to all the
world beside. Full of fears and doubts and sorrow they decided to keep
her presence with them a secret still until she grew well and strong
again. Then Doctor Fielding said she should do as she pleased about the
matter and decide her own future. If she chose to remain dead to her
old life no one could greatly blame her.
But there were days and nights when Mrs. Fielding, frightened and
nervous, was almost tempted to send for Miss Drusilla and confide her
strange secret to the ears of the old lady, Nina lay so low and ill,
so perilously near the borders of the death for which she longed, that
she grew frightened. She was afraid that the girl would die indeed, and
her heart ached and her tears fell often while she gazed at the fragile
form and wan, white face, with the dark eyes looking so wild and wide
and dreary, as if she were so utterly wretched and undone.
In those long days and nights of sorrow and sickness, Nina always had
one reproach for Doctor Fielding. When he came and stood beside her
looking down at her with his kind, grave eyes, she would away say to
him with a pathetic sadness deeper than the wildest reproaches could
have seemed, “You should have let me die!”
“Should we not send for Miss Strangemore? She loves Nina, and she will
keep her secret,” the wife said one day when the girl seemed sinking
fast, and they had almost despaired of her recovery.
But she saw a shiver run over the wasted form, and the hollow dark eyes
flared wide open upon her face.
“No, no, no!” Nina muttered, in feverish displeasure, and after that
they spoke no more of it, but did their best for the poor sufferer and
prayerfully left the issues with God.
March waned, April came in with its soft showers and tenderer breezes,
and, contrary to all their expectations, Nina grew better. They knew
now that her dreary, darkened life would be spared to her, for although
she convalesced with painful slowness they saw that the improvement was
decided.
“She will live, but only God knows what she will do with her broken,
ruined life, for, oh, how empty the world will be to her without the
love of her husband,” sighed Mrs. Fielding, who was so happy in her
home, her husband and child, that she had a profound pity and sympathy
for less fortunate women than herself.
“I wish that we could take her to the sea-shore to recuperate her
exhausted energies,” Doctor Fielding said in May, for the wasted face
and the hollow dark eyes of the girl troubled his peace. He longed for
her to get well faster.
“And cannot we do so?” his wife asked, wistfully, for she, too, longed
to see the drooping, pining invalid grow well and strong again.
He flushed and sighed as though his poverty were a disgrace to his
manhood.
“I had as well cry for the moon,” he answered. “I am so poor, dear
little wife, and my income from my practice is so small that it barely
supports us, even with your strict economy and the toil of your little
hands over the weary routine of household tasks. Even the long illness
of that dear girl has been a heavy tax upon us, and it will take close
financiering to meet our expenses this year; so our greatest wish
cannot be gratified,” he added, little dreaming what terrible fruit his
kindly spoken and kindly meant words would bear in the near future.