I read it, and so may you.
Grassdale, Nov. 4th.
DEAR FREDERICK,—I know you will be anxious to hear from me, and I will tell you all I can. Mr. Huntingdon is very ill, but not dying, or in any immediate danger; and he is rather better at present than he was when I came. I found the house in sad confusion: Mrs. Greaves, Benson, every decent servant had left, and those that were come to supply their places were a negligent, disorderly set, to say no worse—I must change them again, if I stay. A professional nurse, a grim, hard old woman, had been hired to attend the wretched invalid. He suffers much, and has no fortitude to bear him through. The immediate injuries he sustained from the accident, however, were not very severe, and would, as the doctor says, have been but trifling to a man of temperate habits, but with him it is very different. On the night of my arrival, when I first entered his room, he was lying in a kind of half delirium. He did not notice me till I spoke, and then he mistook me for another.
“Is it you, Alice, come again?” he murmured. “What did you leave me for?”
“It is I, Arthur—it is Helen, your wife,” I replied.
“My wife!” said he, with a start. “For heaven’s sake, don’t mention her—I have none. Devil take her,” he cried, a moment after, “and you, too! What did you do it for?”
I said no more; but observing that he kept gazing towards the foot of the bed, I went and sat there, placing the light so as to shine full upon me, for I thought he might be dying, and I wanted him to know me. For a long time he lay silently looking upon me, first with a vacant stare, then with a fixed gaze of strange growing intensity. At last he startled me by suddenly raising himself on his elbow and demanding in a horrified whisper, with his eyes still fixed upon me, “Who is it?”
“It is Helen Huntingdon,” said I, quietly rising at the same time, and removing to a less conspicuous position.
“I must be going mad,” cried he, “or something—delirious, perhaps; but leave me, whoever you are. I can’t bear that white face, and those eyes. For God’s sake go, and send me somebody else that doesn’t look like that!”
I went at once, and sent the hired nurse; but next morning I ventured to enter his chamber again, and, taking the nurse’s place by his bedside, I watched him and waited on him for several hours, showing myself as little as possible, and only speaking when necessary, and then not above my breath. At first he addressed me as the nurse, but, on my crossing the room to draw up the window-blinds, in obedience to his directions, he said, “No, it isn’t nurse; it’s Alice. Stay with me, do! That old hag will be the death of me.”