“He couldn't use me worse. I have been wife, and mother, and sweetheart, and all, to him; and to be left like this. He treats me like the dirt beneath his feet.”
“'Tis your own fault, Phoebe, partly. You say the word, and I'll break every bone in his carcass.”
“What, do him a mischief! Why, I'd rather die than harm a hair of his head. You must never lift a hand to him, or I shall hate you.”
“Hate ME, Phoebe?”
“Ay, boy: I should. God forgive me: 'tis no use deceiving ourselves; when a woman loves a man she despises, never you come between them; there's no reason in her love, so it is incurable. One comfort, it can't go on forever; it must kill me, before my time and so best. If I was only a mother, and had a little Reginald to dandle on my knee and gloat upon, till he spent his money, and came back to me. That's why I said I wished I was his wife. Oh! why does God fill a poor woman's bosom with love, and nothing to spend it on but a stone; for sure his heart must be one. If I had only something that would let me always love it, a little toddling thing at my knee, that would always let me look at it, and love it, something too young to be false to me, too weak to run away from my long—ing—arms—and—year—ning heart!” Then came a burst of agony, and moans of desolation, till poor puzzled Dick blubbered loudly at her grief; and then her tears flowed in streams.
Trouble on trouble. Dick himself got strangely out of sorts, and complained of shivers. Phoebe sent him to bed early, and made him some white wine whey very hot. In the morning he got up, and said he was better; but after breakfast he was violently sick, and suffered several returns of nausea before noon. “One would think I was poisoned,” said he.
At one o'clock he was seized with a kind of spasm in the throat that lasted so long it nearly choked him.
Then Phoebe got frightened, and sent to the nearest surgeon. He did not hurry, and poor Dick had another frightful spasm just as he came in.
“It is hysterical,” said the surgeon. “No disease of the heart, is there? Give him a little sal-volatile every half hour.”
In spite of the sal-volatile these terrible spasms seized him every half hour; and now he used to spring off the bed with a cry of terror when they came; and each one left him weaker and weaker; he had to be carried back by the women.