Mary sat by the bed in which Agnes lay for nearly half the night. She
was so determined on this strange arrangement that her sister had to
yield, and as long as the darkness lasted, which in July moves slowly,
much more than in June, the conversation went on. Ford lay on the sofa
in a distant corner and slept soundly, but neither of the ladies had any
inclination to sleep. It distracted the thoughts of Agnes from the
possible awful importance of this night in Mar’s life to tell Mar’s
mother everything that had happened, dwelling as briefly as possible
upon the illness which had separated Mary from her child, and
endeavoring to blur over as best she could the blank which that illness
had left behind in Mary’s mind. It was indeed a very broken story, in
which a stranger wanting information would have seen the most serious
gaps and deficiencies. But to Mary the interest of the details in which
Agnes took refuge to avoid the more serious questions was so great that
it was always possible to carry her past a dangerous point, and the
murmurs of the two voices going on all through the night, low, breathed
into each other’s ears, was more like the whisperings of two girls over
their little secrets of love than the clearing up of what was almost a
tragedy, the revelation of the strangest, troublous story. Mary herself
was lost in a still vague and tremulous joy, all innocent and soft as
the little garment that had been the happy cause of it, possessing as
yet no complications, realizing nothing but that she had been proved to
have the dearest of all possessions to a woman--a child, a baby, who to
her thoughts was a baby still, and at present linked himself but dimly
to any idea of further developments. To be told that he was Mar still
gave little enlightenment to her mind, which did not know Mar. Something
that could be wrapped still in that little film of innermost
apparel--although it was at the same time something which could
consciously respond to her affection, reflect his father’s image as
Agnes said he did--something that was at once a loving human creature
and an infant entirely her own. This was Mary’s conception of the child
whom she had discovered as if it had been a jewel that was lost. She was
not shaken by her discovery as had been feared. She took it sweetly,
quietly, as was natural to her gentle soul. Happily it had come without
any harsh discovery, in the gentlest way, and as yet there seemed
nothing but happiness in the lifting of the veil, the opening up of the
old life. Mary cried as she sat and listened, shedding many soft tears.
Her eyes shone behind them with joy and peace. She had found what she
had lost. No more would her old lord frown upon her in her dream; no
more would she feel that imperfection, that something which she could
not understand, the mystery which had haunted her life, though she did
not know what it was. She could not, perhaps would not, for even in this
feeble state there is some moral control, allow herself to think
further. It was enough that she had come out of the darkness, and that
the light was sweet. When the daylight began to come in at the window
and make the candles pale, Lady Frogmore rose, as light and serviceable
as if it had not been she who had been surrounded with such anxious
cares for so many years, and placed upon such a platform of weakness and
disadvantage. She was not weak nor at any disadvantage now. Her maid
slept. Her sister, who had ministered to her all these years, lay
silent, looking on while she put out the candles and closed the shutter
on the window. “I am coming to bed,” she said, “if you will make room
for me, Agnes: not because I am tired, for I could sit and hear of him
for ever, but because we must be early astir to-morrow, and I suppose
rest is necessary. I don’t feel any need of it,” she said, with a soft
laugh. “None at all. I feel young and strong as if I could do anything.
I feel about twenty, Agnes. But make a little room and I think I shall
sleep. It is like old times,” she said as she took her place by her
sister’s side, “like old, old times, when the little girls were always
together. Do you remember the time when we two were the little girls?”
They kissed each other, laughing and crying over that old recollection.
How long, how long ago? And all life had passed since then, and here
they were, two sisters growing old, with wrinkles upon the faces which
the early light revealed, despising all the tender fictions of the
night. Mary soon slept as she had said, fearing nothing, innocent in the
discovery she had made. She fell asleep like a child with the light of
the summer morning growing on her face. But Agnes could not sleep. When
her sister’s regular breathing showed the deep repose in which she was
wrapped, Agnes stole out of bed and went to the furthest window where
there was a glimmer of the rising sun, and knelt down there in the
dawning ray, turning her face towards the east. Why she could not have
told. To turn her face towards the east was no spell, there was nothing
in that to secure that her prayers should be heard. And it could not be
said that she prayed. Her soul and body were both worn out. She knelt
there silent, her head bowed in her hands. The new day was bringing life
or death to Mar--which was it bringing, life or death? She knelt on
silent, like an image of devotion. It was something at least to await
that crisis, when it should come, upon her knees.
Lady Frogmore slept till it was late, long after Agnes had dressed and
come upstairs again to await at her bedside her sister’s awakening with
a little anxiety after all the excitement of the night. Mary had lain
very still; she had not moved for hours, and was sleeping like a child.
But when she began to give signs of waking, her appearance changed. She
moved about uneasily, her face contracted as if with pain; she put out
her hands as if appealing to some one. Suddenly she sprang up broad
awake in her bed. “Ford!” she cried, and then “Agnes!” as she perceived
her sister. Her breath came quick, a look of terror came over her face.
“Who was it?” she cried, “Who was it--that said ‘May he grow up an
idiot, and kill you----’ Who was it, Agnes?”
“Oh, my lady, my lady!” cried Ford from the other side of the bed.
“Mary! don’t think of that, for God’s sake.”
“Who was it?” she cried. “It was to me it was said.”
“Oh, my lady,” said Ford, “don’t think of such dreadful things.”
“‘May he grow up an idiot--and kill you--’ It was said to me--it was a
curse upon my baby--my child! Who said it Agnes?--you know.”
“Oh, Mary, what does it matter now? What harm could such wicked words do
to any one? Yes--yes, it is true. Mary, I ought not to tell you, it was
Letitia. Oh, what does it matter now?”
Mary pushed her away, flinging herself out of her bed. “Not matter!
Ford, let me dress at once. Order the carriage. Tell me what is the
first train. We must go at once by the first train.”
“Where, Mary? Oh, my dear, where?”
“She asks me where?” cried Lady Frogmore, appealing in her excitement to
the maid. “She asks me where, and she knows my boy is in that woman’s
hands--my child in that woman’s hands: She said, may he grow up an
idiot--my child, my baby! and he is in her hands. Oh, quick, quick, give
me my things! Order the carriage! There is a train, early, that we went
by before. Oh, the slow, horrible train it is, I remember, stopping
everywhere; but at least don’t let us lose it now.”
“Is it to the Park you are going, Mary?”
“Where else?” cried Lady Frogmore; “is not my child there? and in her
hands.” She was too impatient to accept the usual services of her maid,
but dressed herself in wild haste, her trembling hands tying strings and
fastening buttons all wrong. Her two attendants could do little but look
on as in her agitation she snatched at everything. The gentle Mary,
always so tranquil and mild, was transfigured with passion and
eagerness. When she heard that it was loo late for the morning train, it
was a shriek rather than a cry which burst from her breast. “Oh, why did
you let me sleep? Why did I sleep?” she cried bitterly. There was no
possibility of calming her, no means of explaining how they had arranged
everything for her comfort that she might rest after her unusual
excitement and exhaustion. She, rest! Mary, who had been the object of
unceasing care for years, whose every mood had been considered, and from
whom everybody near warded and kept off any possible shade of annoyance,
forgot all that in a moment. She became the Mary of old, she who was
Letitia’s right hand, she who spared no trouble, who thought of
everybody but herself. Mary was as much surprised at being the first to
be thought of, at having her rest cared for, as if that long time of
care and observance had never been. “Rest for me,” she cried. “You
should have known better, Agnes--you might have known I should not rest
till I have seen my boy.” She woke without a cloud upon her memory of
that fact, but with this new dread sprung up in her mind which could not
be calmed down. They set off in time for a later train after a weary
interval of waiting, an interval that seemed to both as if it would
never end. Mary had been seized in the new sense of motherhood with a
panic and fear of alarm which nothing could quench. She who had forgiven
everything to Letitia, who had thought of nothing either in her madness
or her recovery but the interests of her former friend, now feared her
as if she were a criminal, and felt that every moment the heir remained
in her hands was a moment of danger. “She will do him no harm,” Agnes
tried to say. “She is not kind. She does not love him, but she will do
him no harm.” Mary would not listen to this voice of reason. The woman
who had wished that the unborn child should grow up an idiot and kill
his parents appeared in no light but that of a possible murderess to her
who had newly discovered his existence and that she was his mother. She
waved off her sister’s soothing words. She put Agnes herself--Agnes who
had loved him always, who had been his first guardian, all the mother he
had ever known--in a secondary place as one who could not divine the
passion of the mother love. “It is easy for you to speak,” she said,
crying out in her impatience that the horses crept, that they would be
too late for the train, and then that the train itself was like a
country cart, and would not go. Then there came those long waitings at
the junction, the interval between one little country conveyance and
another. The rain of yesterday had all passed away. The day was bright,
illuminating the face of the country, mocking at the heaviness of the
travellers. Lady Frogmore was flushed and eager, full of enquiry,
walking about during the times of waiting, explaining to everybody that
she was going to her son, to bring him home, to the great confusion of
those who knew her story, and new too that Mar lay dying. Her
acquaintances looked at her with trouble and suspicion, looked anxiously
aside at Ford, who followed her mistress about as she walked up and
down. Had poor Lady Frogmore’s brain given way again, was what they
asked each other with their eyes? But it was none of their business, and
there was no one important enough to interfere.
As for Agnes, she was incapable of any activity. When she was permitted
to be quiet for a moment there fell upon her heart the other dreadful
burden which Mary had not understood, which Agnes shrank from insisting
upon. Was it all too late, too late, a terrible irony of Providence
which sometimes seems to keep the word of promise to the ear, as well as
the pagan fates, to give when the gift is no longer of any use? Was his
mother hurrying in all the new passion of her love and trust to find no
child, no son, but only what was mortal, the poor cast-off garment of
flesh that had once been her boy? Was it all over, that struggle? or had
it perhaps ended, as the nurse hoped, in life and not in death? As she
approached the time when she should know, Agnes’ mind began to play with
this hope: tremulous gleams of happiness and possibility flashing before
her eyes, which she dared not receive or dwell upon, but which came to
her without any will of hers, flaming through the dark, lighting up the
skies, then sinking into greater gloom than ever. While Mary walked
about in the intervals of waiting, Agnes sat out of sight in the most
retired corner she could find, dumb and faint with the awful suspense.
She could not communicate to her sister what she feared, yet feared
doubly for the consequence to Mary if in the heat of her newly awakened
feeling she should come suddenly against that thick blank of loss. Oh,
to forestall the wrong turn, to know what a few hours might bring
forth--happiness, the perfection being a new life, a brighter world--or
madness, misery and death? Thus the one sister sat dumb and incapable of
speech, her throat dry and her lips parched, while the other, all energy
and eagerness, soothed her impatience by movement and eager
communication of her purpose--going to find her boy.
The railways have almost annihilated distance everybody says, and it is
true. But when a succession of slow country trains on cross lines have
to be gone through, with many pauses, stoppages, and changes, there is
nothing which gives the same impression of delay and miserable
tardihood. To haste for a little time towards your end, and then to stop
and spend as long a time or longer in aimless waiting, repeating the
same again and again in an afternoon’s journey! No wagon on the country
road seems to be so slow, so lingering, so impossible to quicken. It was
dark when they arrived at the nearest station to the Park, and then a
long interval followed before they could obtain the broken-down
rattling, clattering country fly which drove them six miles further to
the Park. It was all that Agnes’ lips could do to utter an inquiry “How
is Lord Frogmore?” when the keeper of the lodge awoke, up out of his
first sleep, stumbled forth to open the gate, half reluctant to admit
visitors at such an hour. “I think I heard as the young lord’s a bit
better,” said the yawning lodge-keeper. Her heart leapt up, almost
choking her in her sudden relief. But how did she dare to trust this
indifferent outsider, who cared nothing? At least, at least, he lived
still, which was much. Mary had grown quite silent in the excitement of
the arrival. She put her hand into her sister’s and grasped it as if to
keep herself up, but said nothing. They dismounted out of the noisy fly
at the end of the avenue, Mary obeying the impulse of Agnes, asking no
reason. There were still lights about the upper windows, and a glimmer
in the hall, the door of which was opened to them by a servant who was
in waiting, and who at first looked as if he would refuse them
admittance, but gave way at the sight of the two ladies. He gave Agnes
in a subdued whisper the bulletin, “A little better--fever diminished,”
which in the instantaneous and unspeakable relief, took all strength and
power to move from her after all her sufferings. She leaned back upon
Ford, nearly fainting, her eyes closing, her limbs refusing to support
her. In that moment Lady Frogmore drew her hand from her sister’s. She
asked no questions. No weakness or sinking of heart or courage was in
her. She neither looked nor spoke to any one round her, but swiftly
detaching herself, throwing off her cloak, disappeared up the great,
partially-lighted staircase as swift and as noiseless as a ghost.