Letitia was a long time in the room, and was not visible at all
downstairs during the moment of gladness which changed the aspect of
everything. Her door remained locked all the morning, and the housemaids
were shut out, unable to “do” the room, which was the most curious
interruption of all the laws of life. The bed was not made, nor anything
swept nor dusted at noon, when she appeared downstairs--a thing which
had never happened before in the house, which never happens in any
respectable house except in cases of illness. Missis’ room, too, the
most important of all! Nobody saw what went on inside in those two long
hours. Perhaps only John divined the strain which was going on in his
wife’s mind, and he but imperfectly, having little in his own nature of
the poison in hers. And John took very good care not to disturb Letitia.
He would neither go himself nor let Letty go to make sure that her
mother knew the good news about Mar, or to see if she were ill or
anything wrong. She was sure to know, he said; and no doubt she had
something to do which kept her in her room. But there was also no doubt
that he was somewhat nervous himself at her long disappearance. Two
hours she was invisible, which for the mother of a family and the
mistress of a house is a very long time. When she came downstairs she
had her bonnet on and was going out. She had ordered the brougham though
it was a very bright and warm day, and announced that she was going to
Ridding for some shopping she had to do, but wanted no one to go with
her--nor were they to wait luncheon for her should she be late.
“You have heard of course, Letitia, about Mar,” John said, as he came
out with his old-fashioned politeness to put his wife into the carriage.
“Is there anything new about Mar!” she said, with a sort of disdain.
“Oh, mamma, he’s better! the fever is gone, he is going to get well,”
cried Tiny, who was still dancing about the hall.
“Is that all?” said Mrs. Parke, “I heard that hours ago”--and she drove
away without a smile, without a word of satisfaction, or even pretended
satisfaction--her face a blank as if it had been cut out of stone. They
watched the carriage turn the corner into the avenue with a chill at
their hearts. “Was mamma angry?” Tiny asked. John Parke made no answer
to his child’s question, but went back to the library, and took up his
paper with a heavy heart. He had felt it himself, more shame to him,
more or less: a sort of horrible pang of disappointment: but she--it
troubled him to divine how she must be feeling it. What awful sensations
and sentiments were in her heart? It was not for herself, John said,
trying to excuse her--it was for Duke and for him. If she only would
understand that he did not mind, that he was glad, very glad, that his
brother’s son was getting better, that Mar was far too much like his own
child to make his recovery anything but a happy circumstance! John’s
heart ached for that unmoving, fixed face. Oh, if she could be persuaded
that neither Duke nor he would have been happy in the promotion that
came through harm to Mar!
Letitia sank back in the corner of the brougham where nobody could see.
She had been in almost a frenzy of rage and pain, walking about the
room, throwing herself on the sofa and even on the floor in the
abandonment of her fierce misery, hurting herself like a passionate
child. No shame, no pride had restrained her. She had locked her door
and closed her windows and given herself up to the paroxysm which would
have been shameful if any one had seen it--yet which gave a certain
horrible relief to the sensations that rent her to pieces. To have it
all snatched from her hands again when she had made up her mind to it,
when everything was so certain! To be proved a fool, a fool, again
trusting in a chance which never would come! It seemed to Letitia that
God was her enemy, and a malignant one, exulting in her disappointment,
laughing at her pangs. She was too angry, too cruelly outraged to be
content with thinking of chance, or that it was her luck, as some people
say. She wanted someone to hate for it--someone whose fault it was, whom
she could revile and affront and defy to his face. The deception of
circumstances, the disappointment of hopes, the cruel way in which she
had been lulled into security only to be the more bitterly awakened
from her illusion, made her mad. Not as Mary had been made mad, not with
any confusion of mind, but with a horrible and intense subversion, a
sense of being at war with everything, and living only to revenge
herself upon God and man. She had revenged herself upon herself first of
all, beating her head against the wall, digging her nails into her
flesh, because she had been such a fool, oh, such a fool! as to believe
that what she wished was to be. And then there formed in her mind an
awful thought, a movement of resistance, a refusal to be overthrown. She
would not, she would not allow herself to be played with, to be beaten,
to be foiled, to have the cup snatched from her lips just when she was
about to drink. No, she would not submit! Though God was the Master, yet
there were ways of overcoming Him--yes, there were ways of overcoming.
Though He said life, a human creature though so weak, if she had but
courage enough, could say death, and He would not be able to prevent it.
In the madness of her disappointment and rebellion there came into
Letitia’s mind a suggestion, an idea. It did not seem so much in order
to have her own will, and her own advantage, as in order to get the
better of God, who had shaped things the other way. He thought, perhaps,
there was nothing she could do, that she would have to bear it. No,
then! she would not! He should see--He was a tyrant. He had the power;
but there were ways of baffling Him--there was a way----
Never in all Letitia’s struggles had this thought come into her mind
before. Mar had been helpless in her hands for years, but her arm had
never armed itself against him. She had never sought to harm him. If she
had exaggerated and cultivated his weakness it had been half, as she
said, in a kind of scornful precaution, that nothing might happen to him
in her house, and half from a grudge, lest he should emulate her own
sturdy boys, over whom he had so great and undeserved an advantage. She
had never thought of harming him. After, when he was really ill, when
Providence itself (for her mind could be pious when this influence which
shapes events was on her side) had seemed to arrange for his removal, as
she piously said, to a better world, it would have been more than nature
had not her mind rushed forward to that evidently approaching conclusion
which would make so great a difference. Oh, the difference it would
make! enough to deaden the sense of pity, to sharpen every covetous
desire. But still she had not thought of doing anything to secure the
end she desired. No, no! all the other way--nothing had been neglected,
nothing refused that would help him--nothing except her desire, her
strong unspoken wish, had been against him. And what had that to do with
the issue one way or the other? A woman cannot pray to God that a boy
may die. Thus the only unfair advantage which the intensity of her wish
might have given her was taken away. On the other side they had this
unfair advantage--they could pray, and pray as long as they pleased if
that was any good. She had only her strong, persistent, never-suspended
wish. Nothing, nothing had she done against him. She had never once
thought of assisting or hastening fate.
But now that God had turned everything the wrong way and dashed the cup
from her lips, and set Himself against her, now in the frenzy that
filled her bosom, the rage, the shame, the rebellion, the wild and
overwhelming passion, a new furious light had blazed in upon the boiling
waves. Ah, God was great, they said. He could restore life when
everything pointed to another conclusion. He could work a miracle--but a
woman could foil Him. She could kill though He made alive. A moment of
time, an insignificant action--and all His healing and restoration would
come to nothing. Where did it come from--that awful suggestion? How did
it arise? In what way was it shaped? From what source did it come--the
horrible thought? It came cutting through her mind and all her agitation
in a moment as if it had been flung into her soul from outside. It came
like a flash of lightning, like an arrow, like a pointed dart that cut
into the flesh. It was not there one moment, and the next it was there,
dominating all the commotion, penetrating all the fever and the
tumult--a master thought.
She drove along the country roads in the corner of her carriage, seeing
nothing--through the noonday sunshine and the shade of the trees,
through villages and by cornfields where the storing of the harvest had
begun--and heard nothing and noticed nothing. At last she pulled the
string strongly and told the coachman not to go to Ridding but in the
other direction to another little town, to a certain house where she had
a call to make. And she made the call; and came out of the house while
the coachman was walking his horses up and down, and went into the chief
street of the place and made a few purchases, then returned to the house
of her friend and got into the brougham and drove home. The coachman had
not been aware that she had done anything but come out of the house
where she had been calling when he drew up. And he drove home very
quickly, having himself come out before his dinner-hour, a thing that
did not please him. Letitia was very pale when she came home and tired
with her long drive, but she eat her luncheon and did not again shut
herself from her family--nor did she avoid speaking of Mar. She went to
look at him after she had rested a little.
“But I see very little difference,” she said. “He seems to me just as
ill as ever, too weak to move, and scarcely opening his eyes.”
“But the fever is gone,” they all cried together.
Letitia shook her head, “I hope the doctor was not mistaken,” she said.
Her words threw a cold chill upon the household after the delight of the
morning. But that was all. “Missis was always one to take the worst view
of everything,” the cook remarked, to whom the undeniable proof of
improvement which Mar had shown by swallowing his chicken broth was a
proof that needed no confirmation. She sent up a little of the same
broth to Mrs. Parke, hearing that she had a headache, and received a
message back to the effect that the soup was very good, and that it must
be kept always going, always ready, as the young gentleman was able to
take it. “But I’ll try him with a bit of chicken to-morrow, no more
slops,” said the cook. Thus, though she shook her head and owned that
she was not herself so hopeful as Dr. Barker, Letitia sanctioned more or
less the satisfaction of the household, and spent the afternoon in a
legitimate way. She was frightfully pale, and complained of a headache,
which she partly attributed to fatigue and partly to the sun. Yet she
saw one or two people who called, and explained Mar’s condition to them:
“presumably so much better,” she said, “but I fear, I fear the doctor
takes too sanguine a view. A week hence, if all is well---- But,” she
said, “the strain of suspense is terrible, almost worse than anything
that is certain.” There were people who saw her that day who declared
afterwards that they could not understand why it was said of Mrs. Parke
that she had no heart. Why, if ever there was a woman who felt deeply,
it was Mrs. Parke. The suspense about her poor nephew and his long
illness had worn her to a shadow; it had nearly killed her--especially
as, poor thing, she was not one who took a cheerful view.
Letitia paid several visits in the evening to the sick room, or to the
ante-room connected with it, after the night nurse had begun her duty.
The other attendant was not in sympathy with the mistress of the house:
but she stood with the night nurse at the door of the room and peered at
Mar, and they mutually shook their heads and gave each other meaning
looks. “I wish I could see him with Nurse Robinson’s eyes,” the
attendant said, and Mrs. Parke replied with a sigh that she hoped most
earnestly the doctor was not mistaken. “For I see no difference, nurse.”
“And neither do I, ma’am,” said the gloomy woman. She paused for a
moment, and then she added in a whisper, “I’ve no business to interfere,
but I can’t bear to see you looking so pale. I do wish, Mrs. Parke, that
you would go to bed.”
“I thought the same of you, nurse,” said Mrs. Parke, “indeed I wanted to
offer to sit up half the night to let you have a little rest.”
“Thank you very much, but I must keep to my post,” the woman said.
“Then you must let me give you some of my cordial,” said Mrs. Parke. “I
have an old mixture that has been in the family for a long time. You
must take a little of it from my hand: it will strengthen you.” There
was a little argument over this, all whispered at the door of Mar’s
room, and at last the nurse consented. She was so touched that when
Letitia came back carrying the drink, she ventured to give Mrs. Parke a
timid kiss, and to say, “Dear lady, I wish you would go to bed yourself
and get a good rest. It is almost more trying when one begins to hope,
and you are frightfully pale.” Letitia took the kiss in very good part
(for the nurse was a lady), and promised to go and rest. It was still
early, the household not yet settled to the quiet of the night, and John
had not come upstairs: so that there was nobody to note Letitia’s
movements, who went and came through the half-lit corridor in a dark
dressing-gown, and with a noiseless foot, stealing from her own room to
that of the patient. She had made this little pilgrimage several times,
when, listening in the ante-room, she heard at last the heavy regular
breathing of the attendant in Mar’s room, which proved to her that what
she intended had come to pass. Letitia paused for a moment outside the
door. She was a little light woman, still slim, even thin, as in her
younger days. She moved like a ghost, making no sound; but when she
perceived that all was ready for her purpose, there was something that
almost betrayed her, and that was the laboring, gasping breath of
excitement, which it was all she could do to keep down. Her lungs, her
heart, were so strained by the effort to be calm, that her hurried
respiration came like the breath of a furnace, hot and interrupted. She
stood holding on to the framework of the door, looking in from the
comparative light of the room in which she stood to the shaded room in
which Mar lay, with the light falling upon the table by his bedside,
where were his drinks and medicines--and faintly upon the white pillow
with the dark head sunk upon it, in a ghostly stillness. The nurse sat
in an easy chair behind, out of the light, with her head fallen back,
wrapped in sleep, breathing regularly and deep. Letitia stood and
watched for a whole long minute, which might have been a year, peering
with her white and ghastly face, like a visible spirit of evil. When she
had a little subdued the panting of her heart she pushed the door
noiselessly, and stole into the room. She kept her eyes upon the
sleeping nurse, ready to draw back if she should move; but that was the
only interruption Letitia feared. She had left the door open for her own
safe retreat. It had not occurred to her that anyone could follow behind
her. She went over to the bedside to the table on which the light fell.
And then she stood still again for another terrible moment. Did her
heart fail her, did any hand of grace hold her back? She might have done
what she had to do three times over while she stood there with one hand
upon her breast keeping down her panting breath. Then she put her right
hand for a moment over the glass with the milk that stood ready, the
drink for the sick boy. That was all. It was the affair of a moment. She
might have done it in the nurse’s presence, and no one would have been
the wiser. When she had done it she made a step backward, meaning to
pass away as she had come. But instead of moving freely through the
open air she came suddenly against something, some one, who stood
behind, and who grasped without a word her clenched right hand.
Letitia’s laboring heart leaped as if it would have burst out of her
breast. There came from her a choked and horrible sound, not a cry, for
she durst not cry. She kept her senses, her consciousness by a terrible
effort. No! whoever it was, if it was John, her husband, if it was one
of her children who had discovered her in this awful moment--whoever it
was, she would not fall down there at Mar’s bedside like a murderer
caught in the act. No! out of the room, at least, out of the
scene--somewhere, where they might kill her if they pleased, but not
there--not there!
He or she who had seized her from behind stretched a hand over her
shoulder and took the milk from the table, and then the two figures in a
strange, noiseless, mingling, half struggle, half accord, passed from
the darkened room into the light, and looked in a horror, beyond words,
into each other’s faces. And then all the forces of self control could
no longer restrain the affrighted heart-stricken cry--“Mary!” which came
from Letitia’s dry lips.