Name and Fame: A Novel

by Adeline Sergeant

"Yes, she had bad news which distressed her. She fainted upon hearing it."

"That did the mischief. She was not in a condition to bear excitement," said the doctor, rather sharply; but he was sorry for his words, when he noted the distressed look on Sydney's face. He was the more sorry for him when it was discovered that he could not be admitted to the sick-room, for his appearance sent Nan's pulse up to fever-height at once, although she did not openly confess her agitation. The only thing that Sydney could do was to retire, baffled and disconsolate, to his study, where he passed the night in a state of indescribable anxiety and excitement.

When the fever abated, Nan fell into such prostration of strength that it was difficult to believe she would ever rise from her bed again. Weaker than a baby, she could move neither hand nor foot: she had to be fed like an infant, at intervals of a few minutes, lest the flame of life, which had sunk so low, should suddenly go out altogether. It was at this point of her illness that she fainted when Sydney once persuaded the doctor to let him enter her room, and the nurses had great difficulty in bringing her back to consciousness. After which, there was no more talk of visits from her husband, and Sydney had to resign himself to obtaining news of her from the doctor and the nurses, who, he fancied, looked at him askance, as blaming him in their hearts for his wife's illness.

"I can't make Nan out," said Lady Pynsent to him one day. "She is so depressed—she cries if one looks at her almost—and yet the very thing that I expected her to be unhappy about does not affect her in the least."

"What do you mean?" said Sydney.

"Why, her disappointment about her baby, of course. I said something about it, and she just whispered, 'I'm very glad.' I suppose it is simply that she feels so weak, otherwise I should have thought it unnatural in Nan, who was always so fond of children."

Sydney made no answer. He was beginning to find this state of things intolerable. After all, he asked himself, what had he done that his wife should be almost killed by the shock of finding out that he had behaved—as other men behaved? But that sort of reasoning would not do. His behavior to Milly had been, as he knew, singularly heartless; and he had happened to marry a girl whose greatest charm to him had been her tenderness of heart, her innocent candor, and that purity of mind which comes of hatred—not ignorance—of sin. A worldlier woman would not have been so shocked; but he had never desired less crystalline transparency of mind—less exquisite whiteness of soul, for Nan. No; that was the worst of it: the very qualities that he admired and respected in her bore witness against him now.

He remembered the last hours of his father's life—how they had been embittered by his selfish anger, for which he had never been able to make amends. Was his wife also to die without giving him a word of forgiveness, or hearing him ask her pardon? If she died, he knew that he would have slain her as surely as if he had struck her to the ground with his strong right hand. For almost the first time in his life Sydney found himself utterly unnerved by his anxiety. His love for Nan was the truest and strongest emotion that he had ever felt. And that his love for her should be sullied in her eyes by comparison with the transient influence which Milly had exercised over him was an intolerable outrage on his best and holiest affections and on hers. "What must she think of me?" he said to himself; and he was fain to confess that she could not think much worse of him than he deserved. It was a bitter harvest that he was reaping from seed that he himself had sown.

He was almost incapable of work during those terrible days when he did not know whether Nan would live or die. He got through as much as was absolutely imperative; but he dreaded being away from the house, lest that "change," of which the nurses spoke, should come during his absence; and he managed to stay at home for many hours of the day.

But at last the corner was turned: a little return of strength was reported, and by and by the doctor assured him that, although his patient still required very great care, the immediate danger was past, and there was at least a fair hope of her ultimate recovery. But he might not see her—yet.