When Letty came stealing into the ante-room as soon as she was up, which
was between seven and eight in the morning, she was received by Miss
Hill with a stern countenance, to the double surprise of the anxious
girl, who did not know she was in the house, nor that the kind Aunt
Agnes, in whom she had claimed a share for years, could look forbidding.
“Oh, you are here!” Letty said, with a little shriek of pleasure. “He
will get all right now you are here.”
“Why should he get well now I am here?” cried Agnes, with a gloom of
suspicion which Letty did not understand. “Was there anything wrong?”
The girl echoed the “wrong!” with a wondering face. “The nurses were
very, very kind,” she said, “but one wants to have somebody one is fond
of. They would not let me be here.”
“Are you fond of him?”
“I----oh,” said Letty, with a flush of generous feeling, “how can you
ask me that? Fond of Mar? Duke and I, and Tiny would die for Mar--if
that would do him any good.”
“I think you are true,” said Agnes, meditatively; “you’re too young to
be in any plot. Then you can help me, Letty. You must have everything
brought up here--the meat for his beef tea, even the water, fresh drawn.
You must see to it yourself. I am going to prepare everything for him
myself here.”
Letty promised with enthusiasm. She was so anxious to do something that
the commission delighted her for the first moment. Then she began to
reflect involuntarily. “But why? Oh, I’m afraid cook will be dreadfully
offended. She thinks so much of her beef tea. Doesn’t he like it? Did
nurse say anything----”
“I wish to prepare everything here,” said Agnes, in the stern tone which
was so new to her, and Letty, much troubled and cast down, stole away.
She was hardly gone when the other nurse appeared, fresh and neat, from
her night’s sleep. “Have you had a good night?” she said; “and how
is----” She started and drew back at the sight of the stranger. “Has
anything happened?” she said.
“Only that his mother is with the patient, and I am his aunt. We will
take charge of him in future,” said Agnes, stiffly. There were aspects
in which she was a grim old spinster, as the young men said.
The nurse stared, the cheerful nurse, who had always hoped, always
believed in the boy’s recovery. Agnes knew no difference between the
woman who had slept all the night, and this bright daylight creature who
had served him like a sister. She had been busy collecting what things
she should want, preparing for the charge she had taken upon her when
the nurse entered the room, and now went on with these preparations
calmly, putting coals upon the fire and collecting the glasses and
dishes which had been used to be carried away.
“You are making a large fire for such a warm day,” said the nurse in her
astonishment.
“I shall want it,” said Agnes curtly.
“Let me do that, it is my business--and there is no hurry. I must first
see my patient----”
“Nurse, I mean no discourtesy to you--but he is our patient now. His
mother and I have taken the nursing into our own hands.”
The nurse stared in consternation. “Does Mrs. Parke know?” she asked,
helpless in the extremity of her surprise.
“Mrs. Parke has little to do with it. His mother, Lady Frogmore, is with
him, and I am here to help her. We wish to do everything ourselves.”
“But----?” gasped the nurse. She added after a moment, “You are
dissatisfied with the nursing----?”
It was a struggle with Agnes not to bring forward the failure of the
other nurse; but she was honorable and just, and shut her mouth close
lest she should betray her. “I cannot say that,” she said, “for we have
not been here. It is only natural that his mother----; and then I prefer
to prepare everything for him myself.”
“To prepare everything! You must think, then, there is some reason----
Oh, here is Mr. Parke!”
That was a wonder, too; for John Parke was not an early man. And he was
very pale, and looked as if he too had been up all night. As a matter
of fact it was so many hours since he had been there before in the glow
of the summer night which was morning, yet too early for anyone to be
astir, that it seemed to him as to Agnes as if the day were already far
spent. He came in looking as he had done when their anxiety was the
deepest, with a cloud upon his face, and his hands deep in his pockets.
“You will take your orders from Miss Hill, nurse,” he said, “and Lady
Frogmore. It is natural that his mother--and my wife will not, I think,
come downstairs to-day. She is asleep now, but she has had a bad night.”
“I am afraid, sir,” said the nurse, “Mrs. Parke has been doing too
much.”
John Parke gave Agnes a troubled, alarmed, inquiring look, yet with a
menace in his eyes as if to silence her. “Probably it’s that,” he said.
And then, presently, after a pause, “It couldn’t be the fever. It’s not
contagious? At least, that’s what you people say.”
“It’s not contagious; but several attacks sometimes come on in one
house. May I go and see Mrs. Parke?”
“We’ll wait a little,” said John: “we’ll wait till the doctor comes. She
is a little confused in her head.” He fixed his eyes upon Agnes with a
great deal of meaning. “I scarcely think she knew what she was
doing--last night.”
These were words that seemed so charged with meaning as to affect the
air differently from other words. There seemed a little thrill in the
atmosphere when they were said. And the pause that came after them was
not like other pauses. There was a vibration in it of mystery and
terror. And yet there was not one of the little group who quite
understood what it meant. Agnes was in all the excitement of an incident
which she was not at all sure was true, while John had nothing but a
horrible doubt in his mind, and did not know what it was he feared. And
the nurse knew nothing at all, but yet divined something perhaps more
terrible than reality, if there was any reality at all. What was the
mistress of the house doing last night, for which her husband gloomily
said that she was not responsible? But this no one dared to say.
Mary came out at this moment from the inner room. There was nothing in
her of either horror or mystery. Her grey hair was a little disordered,
curling in stray locks over the black veil which she had tied upon her
head; her complexion quite fresh, with its soft rose-tint unaffected by
the night’s vigil; and her eyes full of light. Lady Frogmore had always
possessed pretty eyes, they were the chief beauty of her face; not very
bright, but always softly shining and luminous. For many years there had
been, save on remarkable occasions, a sort of veil over them, a look as
if they were turned inward. Now they were fully aglow, lit like two
stars with a lambent quivering light. A look of supreme satisfaction and
content was upon her face.
“He has taken his drink,” she said, “and gone to sleep again, like a
baby. He will probably now have a long, sleep. Sleep is better for him
than anything. John, we invaded your house like a couple of thieves,
after dark. I had not time to ask for you or anything. I came upstairs
at once, knowing I was wanted, and arrived here--just in time.”
“What do you mean by arriving just in time?” said John Parke, with an
awful shadow coming over his face.
“I mean,” said Mary with a soft little laugh, “neither too early nor too
late--just when I was wanted; and if you ask me how I knew that I was
wanted I could not tell you. These things are mysterious. I came just at
the moment--”
What moment? There was a curdling in the blood of the spectators but
none in Mary. All the horror had died away; she could think of nothing
but the opportuneness of her own arrival. Perhaps she had forgotten even
what it was which she had stopped “in time.”
After that extraordinary thrill of silence John Parke spoke again in a
voice which quivered strangely. “I came to tell you,” he said, “that
Letitia is ill.”
“Ah!” said Mary. And she added gravely, “I do not wonder,” with sudden
seriousness; but there was nothing more in her gentle countenance; no
anger; no fear.
The nurse, who was the least enlightened of all, yet the most eager, the
most full of surmises, said with anxiety, yet timidity, “Mrs. Parke has
been so anxious. She has taken so much out of herself.”
“Yes, I am afraid she has been very anxious,” said Mary, still with that
mild, yet strange seriousness. “It was, perhaps, very natural--in the
circumstances.”
“She was afraid lest anything should be neglected, and so anxious for
every help that could be thought of--everything that the doctor or we
could suggest.”
The others listened silent to this plea. Nobody spoke. If Mary
remembered what had happened, or if she consciously and willingly put it
out of her mind, nobody could tell. She nodded her head several times in
silent assent. Then she spoke, her companions all listening as if to the
voice of fate.
“I understand that,” she said, “and then at the very last--it was the
overstrain at the last.”
What did she mean? Even Agnes asked herself this question, wondering
over again whether it was all a dream, or whether it was true. John
Parke stood amid the group of women, with his heart as heavy as lead,
his ears keen to hear any word that could throw light on the mystery.
But none came. Was there any mystery at all? Was it a mere encounter
between the mother who was happy, and the mother who was (God forgive
her!) disappointed--but no more? He stood for some minutes, waiting,
terrified, yet eager to hear--and then unsatisfied, yet painfully
relieved, as if he had escaped a sentence of death, walked away.
The doctor came afterwards, and pronounced the highest panegyric upon
Mar. He had done exactly what it was best and wisest for him to do. He
had slept, he had swallowed obediently all that was given him, and gone
to sleep again. There now remained nothing for him but to be promoted to
the disused practices of eating, and to go on. Dr. Barker, like an
elated and successful practitioner, who is aware that great honor and
glory would result to himself from the happy issue of this difficult
case, freely applauded everybody, even the melancholy culprit, who was a
woman of the keenest conscience, and could scarcely be kept from
denouncing herself. The nurses, he said, were half the battle, and he
had been most ably seconded. And he was ready even to agree without the
faintest idea of her meaning or any curiosity on the subject, in Mary’s
happy assertion that she had arrived “just in time.” “Precisely,” the
doctor said, “just when your appearance was the most invaluable
stimulant--just when he was able to profit by it. I agree with you
entirely, Lady Frogmore, you came in the nick of time.”
It was considered very strange in the house, accustomed to appeal to the
doctor in these constant visits of his if a finger ached, that he did
not see Mrs. Parke that day. John expected that she was asleep, and that
it was possible she might be quite well when she woke, and Dr. Barker
left the house thinking that there were too many women about, and that
they were an excitable lot, as women usually were, making as much fuss
about that boy as if his getting well were a miracle; whereas he (Dr.
Barker) had always been certain with proper care that the boy would get
well. He was not a pessimist, but always ready to think the best. And,
indeed, Dr. Barker, though he did not fail to dwell upon Mar’s recovery
as a wonderful proof of what science could do [“for we had no
constitution to work upon, no constitution, and everything against us”]
dismissed the boy otherwise from his mind and fixed his thoughts
wonderingly upon Mary, who seemed to have come out of her hallucination
or mania, or whatever it was, at a moment’s notice in the most
astonishing way. It was as if she had always been there, always anxious
about him, caring for him. And Dr. Barker smiled at her idea that she
was just in time. He had observed it though he had not said anything,
and put it down in a mental note book as a curious evidence of the
delusions which still linger in a mind that once has been off its
balance. Mary had made an immense advance by recognizing her boy, and
this mild little extravagance of thinking she had come “just in
time”--poor thing--showed how the wind was blowing; how her mind had
been affected by the supposed imminence of a crisis. He put it down in
his mind as a thing to note, when other patients were similarly
affected. The reader knows that the doctor was wrong; but so are a great
many, both doctors and other wise people, who take the reverberation of
an accidental fact for the foundation of an all-embracing theory--from
which many strange things sometimes arrive.
Agnes Hill enacted what she herself came to think afterwards a somewhat
ridiculous part for the rest of this day. She had everything that could
be wanted for the sick-room brought upstairs in what may be called a
rude form; pieces of beef and kettles of water destined to make Mar’s
beef tea, and everything else that could be thought of, so that the
ante-room resembled an amateur kitchen, filled with a score of things
that could be made no use of, and which the indignant cook sent up in
quantities, lest the ladies should want anything. A fire sufficient to
cook by in the height of summer is not a comfortable thing. And still
less was the condition of mind comfortable in which Miss Hill sat
watching, afraid to rest or to admit any alleviation, tolerating with
difficulty the presence of the nurse who, deeply interested and curious,
addressed all her faculties to the task of finding out what was meant by
these precautions. The food that had been sent up from the kitchen had
been very dainty; it could not be because of any imperfection in that;
and the nurse smiled at the thought that she could be supposed to have
been careless in the warming or preparation of anything. What then was
the meaning of it? When her colleague in her agony of compunction
confided the story of her dreadful failure, of the sleep that had lasted
all night, and the cordial that had presumably caused it, a strange
gleam of light came into the mystery. Mrs. Parke had been in the
sick-room when the night nurse had fallen asleep, and when she woke in
the morning Lady Frogmore was there, and Lady Frogmore had asserted
again and again that she had arrived “just in time.” It seemed a
wonderful gleam of light, yet on the whole it did not reveal much. What
had happened, what Mrs. Parke had done, what Lady Frogmore had found,
what had taken place while the legitimate guardian slept, could only be
guessed and dimly guessed. The nurse formed a theory in her own mind not
further from the truth than a theory unattended by actual foundations of
fact usually is--much more the truth than Dr. Barker’s conclusion as to
the rags of delusion which remain in the mind when its greater trouble
is gone. But it was a theory which Nurse Congreve of the Ridding
Hospital kept closely to herself. A nurse, like a doctor, sees many
strange chapters of family history--and among them this was the most
strange; but that was all that could be said.
The most curious thing was that before the day was half over, Lady
Frogmore, coming into the ante-room and finding it impossible to rest
there as she had intended, on account of the dreadful heat, suddenly
fell into a fit of suppressed laughter at her sister’s _batterie de
cuisine_, and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.
“What is all that for?” she said. “And do you think, Agnes, that you can
make things for him better than the cook?”
Miss Hill gave her sister a look full of reproach, but Lady Frogmore
still laughed.
“The cook is a _cordon bleu_, and you will be melted away before that
fire.”
“Mary!” said Agnes in a tone which meant a hundred things.
But before the time came, which was very soon, when Mar was allowed his
first chicken, even Agnes’ resolution had broken down, and she began to
be uncomfortably conscious that to this almost tragedy there was a
ludicrous side. Lady Frogmore was the wonder of wonders during all this
time. She was never tired, went without sleep night after night, and
only looked the brighter in the morning; every cloud departed from her
serene countenance, her eyes were lighted up with love and joy. To hear
her say “my boy” was like listening to a song of triumph. It was she who
shielded the night nurse from herself, and sent daily messages of
inquiry about Letitia. When a day or two had elapsed she made no further
mention of having arrived in time. Every appearance of having been
injured, or terrified, or threatened died out of her face. She became as
she had been in the old days when she first came to the Park as Lady
Frogmore, but more assured, more self-possessed, like a woman above the
reach of fate.
Meanwhile the centre of interest changed in the house. It was Letitia’s
room which was occupied by the nurses, shadowed from the sunshine and
daylight, and filled with anxious cares. The half of the county was
aroused by the news that Mrs. Parke, in her devotion to her nephew, and
constant attendance upon him, had contracted the same fever, and now lay
between life and death.