Next morning Mar, who had slept little all night, was found to be
feverish and unwell, which was a state of affairs by no means unusual or
alarming, but which gave to Letitia a sort of additional triumph. “What
did I say to you?” she cried. “You dragged him out of the quiet that is
natural at his age and forced him to make a public appearance. You seem
quite pleased with yourselves, all of you, though I told you what would
happen. And here he is in bed again, and no telling when he may be
allowed to get up.”
“It was the walk yesterday, mamma,” said Letty, “and not sleeping, what
with the noise and the music. It was not making that speech----”
“Of course you must know best,” said the mother, “and you have favored
me with your opinion to that effect before.”
“Oh, mamma, don’t please be angry. Mar says he is quite well enough to
get up. He says it is only because he didn’t sleep.”
“Of course, he knows best,” said Letitia. “You are all so sure of your
own wisdom. But I hope it will convince you that for his own interests
that sort of thing must not be done.”
She went away, however, without giving any distinct orders, and Mar got
up. But when he was up he was giddy and “queer,” so he said, and quite
disposed to lie down again. The tide of life was so strong in the house
with all these young people about that a delicate boy was not much
remarked. Duke would rush up in the middle of his own occupation with
his tennis bat still in his hand, or in his cricketing costume fresh
from the village green, and say “Hallo, Mar! no better? You must get
better, old fellow, and come and have a game.” And Letty came in many
times a day to ask how he was getting on. “You really must be better
to-morrow, Mar,” she said. “Mamma puts it all down to the tenants’
dinner, and says you should not have been allowed to speak. She puts
all the blame on Duke and me.”
“There is no blame,” said Mar; “it is only that I am such a poor
creature. I am never good for anything.”
“Well, you must be better to-morrow,” Letty would say, and go off to her
ride, or perhaps to her tennis which she too played very well. And then
Tiny would come in with her hair flying in her haste, as soon as her
lesson was over. “Are you better, Mar?”
“Oh, yes a little, but I shall not go downstairs to-day,” the boy would
say, smiling at her.
“Oh, it is too tiresome,” cried Tiny; “I want you to come with me and
get some water-lilies out of the pond. Duke’s always so busy; he will
never do anything. And I want you to come down the village with me to
see the man about those little dachshund puppies. It is too bad of you,
Mar, to be ill now. I want you so much.”
“I am very sorry, Tiny, but you see I can’t help myself.”
“Oh, you could if you would try hard; just put on a resolution and make
up your mind, and do, do be better to-morrow!” cried Tiny with
vehemence. It is to be feared that this earnestness was simply on Tiny’s
own account, to whom Mar was a most serviceable follower--but the boy
was grateful for this vigorous demand.
“I will if I can,” he said--and then Tiny flew off with her hair waving,
and he remained till the next visitor arrived. To tell the truth it was
rather pleasant to them all to find him there always ready to hear what
they had to say; and when they expressed their impatience with his
illness, or ordered him imperiously to get well, they were though
unconsciously only half sincere. “It’s nice to have you to run to
always, Mar,” Tiny said, who, being the youngest, was the most unabashed
in the utterance of fact. And Mar smiled and replied that it was nice to
have them all coming to him. “If I am ever dull I know I shall soon hear
someone running upstairs.”
“But remember,” cried Tiny, “you have promised to be better to-morrow.”
“Oh yes,” said Mar, “I shall be better to-morrow.”
“If you don’t, I heard mamma say she would send for the doctor, Mar.”
“I shall be better,” cried the boy. And as a matter of fact he did drag
himself downstairs and got out to the avenue in a dutiful endeavor to
follow Tiny to see after the dachshund puppies; but he grew so pale, and
so soon found out that he could not drag one foot after the other, that
a great panic arose among the young people. Duke was called from his
tennis (for there were visitors that afternoon and a great game was
going on) by Tiny in a voice more like that of a signal man in a gale
than of a young lady. “Duke!” she said, “Mar’s fainted!” which brought
Duke with a rush like a regiment of cavalry across the lawn, followed by
Letty, her white dress flashing like a ray of light across the shadows.
Mar fainted! They flung themselves upon him where he half sat, half lay
upon a great trunk of a tree which had lain there for years overgrown
with moss and lichens--the very same upon which Mary his mother had once
thrown herself before he was born.
“No--I haven’t fainted--I’m only--very tired. I’ll go in again
directly,” said Mar.
“Oh can’t you carry him home, Duke? We’ll help you. Oh it is all my
fault,” cried Tiny, “if I had only known!”
“Old fellow,” cried Duke, who had the tears in his eyes, “if you’ll put
your arms round my neck I’ll carry you. I can, I can. Oh I wish you were
twice the weight.”
“Don’t worry him,” cried Letty. “He would rather walk with your arm and
mine. Oh, I did not know you were so ill, Mar!”
Here Letitia came hurrying towards them, which brought a little color
back to Mar’s cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “You have stopped two games rushing off
like mad creatures. Oh, I might have known it was Mar.”
“The two games may go to--Bath,” cried Duke, flinging away from him with
disdain the racquet which he had still been holding in his hand.
“I’m quite able to walk now,” said Mar. “I’ll go home. Go back to your
game, please. I’m not very well, Aunt Letitia. I couldn’t get on any
further, and Tiny took fright; that’s all.”
“You can give him your arm indoors, Duke, which he never ought to have
quitted. I can’t conceive what he means. He is always doing something to
pose as if he was not taken care of. Letty, go back to your friends--go
back when I tell you! I hope I know how to manage him. You can tell the
doctor to come when he has finished his game. It is a good thing he is
here. Now come along, Mar; a little energy. If you could walk so far as
this coming out, you may surely get back again.”
“Oh, easily,” said Mar. And though it was not easy at all he
accomplished it, and got back to the sofa in the schoolroom, where he
had spent so many wistful days, putting the best face upon it that he
could, and urging Duke to return to his game, which that light-hearted
youth, quite reassured to see that his cousin could walk and could
smile, did not hesitate to do, flying downstairs heaven knows how many
steps at a time to get back to his play. The anxious group which had
gathered around Mar like a whirlwind, dispersed again in the same way,
relieved, and thinking no evil. Oh, yes, he was better--no worse than he
often was; nothing to be frightened about.
“And now, let’s finish our game,” said Duke.
The robust yet careless family affection, which would have done anything
for the weakling among them, left him cheerful and comforted as soon as
he was “better,” having no anxious thought.
And Mar was left to Letitia and her terse and unemotional questionings.
It was Mrs. Parke’s habit to take all his ailments as a sort of reproach
to herself.
“You might have known that it was not fit for you to go out in the
blazing sun,” she said; “but you seem to take a pleasure in behaving as
if no attention was ever paid to you.”
She went and got him a cushion with her own hands, and thrust it under
his head with an irritable movement, and walked up and down the room,
drawing down a blind over the window which gave Mar a glimpse of the sky
and green trees he loved, and putting things in order which needed no
arrangement.
“The doctor is a long time over his game,” she said to the old nurse,
who still attended to the wants of the schoolroom. “I think he might
have come before now.”
“Don’t let me keep you up here, Aunt Letitia,” said Mar. “There is not
much the matter with me; it is a pity to trouble the doctor.”
“You will please not meddle with what I do, Mar,” she replied. “If you
would only pay a little attention to what may be expected from
yourself----”
The doctor came at last, and asked a great many questions and looked
very grave. He ordered Mar to bed, not to lie on the sofa any longer,
and gave a great many directions about quiet and fresh air and beef tea.
He himself helped the boy to his room, and was so careful and so kind
that there came to Mar’s mind a half elation, half melancholy, in the
thought that he was going to be ill--that at last, after his years of
delicate health, there was going to be something the matter with him
which would prove all that Mrs. Parke had said, and of which he would
possibly die. A great excitement, silent and suppressed, rose in his
mind with this thought. It was alarming and strange, but it was not
altogether unpleasing. There is a kind of pre-eminence, of superiority,
in being very ill to a boy. It was like going into a battle. He felt
solemnized, yet half amused. He was to be the hero of a sort of
drama--he was to be in danger of his life. It pleased his imagination,
which had so little food. And he tried to catch what the doctor was
saying when he followed Mrs. Parke into the next room. But by that time
he was getting drowsy, and his faculties dulled, and this he could not
do.
In the next room the conference was grave enough. “He has never been ill
before,” said the doctor. “I ever told you so from the first, Mrs.
Parke, delicate but not ill, and nothing that he might not shake off
with time. But he is ill now. If I am not mistaken he is in for an
attack of typhoid, and I fear a bad one. I’ll go straight to the
hospital at Claremont and send you a nurse--indeed, you had better have
two nurses--care is everything. With great care and unremitting
attention we may pull him through.”
Letitia was pale, but she was ready for the emergency. “It will not be
dangerous for the others?” she said.
“No, no, there’s no danger for the others--unless your drains are bad.
But he says he was at that horrid little village on the other side of
the Park on Friday last, and got a drink of water there. That’s enough
to account for it. I’ve often spoken about the state of these cottages.
It would be a kind of strange justice if he were to be the first victim.
I suppose you’ll let his mother know?”
“What is the use of letting his mother know? She takes no notice of him.
I think I am the only mother he has ever known.”
“There was an aunt,” said the doctor, “who was very much devoted to him.
They ought to be told. The fever is high, and he has a delicate
constitution. He may have to fight for his life.”
“Will you come again to-night?” she said.
“I will send the nurses in at once if I can get two, otherwise, perhaps,
your old woman will take the night? I’ll come back first thing in the
morning. But I think you should let the relations know.”
When the doctor was gone Letitia followed him out of the room and went
to the schoolroom, which was quite cool and empty. She sat down upon the
sofa which had supported Mar’s languid limbs so long, and looked round
her as if upon a new world. Her whole being was filled with excitement
which threatened to burst all bounds. She felt as if she must have burst
forth in laughing or in crying, and if she did not do so it was because
the influence of conventional rules and common decorum are too strong to
be broken. Every pulse was going like the wheels of a steam engine, and
her heart thumping like the great piston that keeps all in motion. Was
it anxiety and alarm for Mar that roused that tremendous tumult in her
brain? It is to be supposed that she thought so, or tried to make
herself think so for the moment. But she knew very well that this was
only a gloss forced by a horrified consciousness upon her, and that in
the bottom of her heart it was a sudden and dreadful hope which had
sprung up in her mind. The child had been so delicate all his life, one
whom all the gossips declared she would never rear; and this had left a
vague anticipation as of something she could not prevent, which would be
good for them all if it came, modified by a fear of what might be said
should it happen in her house, which kept Letitia always uneasy, and
dictated those precautions which were half regard for other people’s
opinion, and half terror of herself. But Mar, though he had been so
delicate, had kept, perhaps for that very reason, curiously free of the
usual ailments of childhood. When he had them he had them in the
lightest form. Never before had this delicate boy, this interloper who
stood between Letitia and so many advantages, this child who everybody
prophesied could not live--never before had he visibly hung between life
and death. Typhoid fever! It was a name to chill the blood in the veins
of loving parents, of anxious friends. It made Letitia’s blood boil with
a fever of impatience, of desire, of horrible eagerness, at which she
was terrified, but which she could not restrain. It was not her fault.
She had done nothing to bring it about. He had got the poison out of her
house because of his own childish imprudence, exposing himself as she
never would have allowed him to expose himself. Letitia’s conscience was
quite clear, and nobody could blame her. And he would die--a creature so
fragile, with so little life in him, no constitution to fall back upon:
there was no fear of a long and terrible illness: a fever that sucked
the strength away, and killed the strongest men, would not last long in
such a case as this. He would die. She gasped with sensations
unspeakable, and felt as if she could not get her breath. He would die.
The obstacle would be taken away from her path, from John’s, from
Duke’s, and nobody could say that she had done it, or was in any way to
blame. What a thought to invade and fill her whole consciousness, all
the being of a woman who was a mother, and knew what it was in a way to
love those who belonged to her! She could not keep down the wild
buoyancy of her hope and exhilaration. This boy, who never ought to have
existed, who had been from his birth the obstacle to all her hopes, this
supplanter, this undesired, unnecessary child--he would die! and for
Letitia and all who belonged to her the future of her brightest hopes
would be secured at last.
But with this there sprang up in her mind a dreadful impatience. It did
not seem to her that she could go on day after day enduring all the
vicissitudes of this illness until the crisis came--if indeed his
strength held out till the crisis came. Sometimes the patient, if he
were weak, collapsed early, and the disease did not run its full course;
sometimes it was rapid, violent, _foudroyant_. A hundred confused
calculations ran through her mind. Mar had not life enough for that.
Probably the fever would be slow with his low vitality, not blazing but
sapping the life away--and he would have to keep up all
through--expressing anxiety, watching day and night for the change,
looking on with outward calm while the doctors would go through all that
daily pantomime with the thermometer, which she would scarcely be able
to endure. Yes, this is how it would be--weeks of it, perhaps; horrible,
lingering on when it might just as well be over at once without all this
slow torture. Letitia remembered after what seemed a long time that she
had an afternoon party on the lawn, and that all her guests would be
wondering at her absence. She would have to put on a grave face, and
speak of her anxiety and his delicacy, and go through all the fantastic
performances which decorum demanded. But he would die--of that certainty
at least there could be no doubt now.