"'Tis time you was away," she said. "Your grandfather and I and a few more are just walking down to see the train off, and the carriage is waiting for you and the luggage is at the station. So be off in five minutes. You'll be all right, Margery? I shan't be gone very long."
She departed and soon afterwards Avis and Robert bade the invalid 'good-bye.' She kissed them, then heard laughter and cheerful words below, looked out the window and saw the carriage with two grey horses drive off. There was a white satin bow on the coachman's whip. She crept back to bed again and her heart throbbed. She had grown weaker, and she cried now, not at the emotion of the moment, but before the whole spectacle of her shattered life and maimed existence. In her present state she had ceased even to lament the failure of her last effort to return home. Now she felt that was no great matter. She was enfeebled, indifferent and had lost the will to live. But there grew in her one desire: a great wish to see her husband again and bid him farewell. None would help her on her side; but if he received a direct message from her, it was certain that Jacob would come.
She could no longer concentrate her mind for more than a few minutes at a time, and was sleeping when her mother returned to her.
CHAPTER XII
A PROBLEM FOR AUNA
Jacob Bullstone now did a thing he had not yet and sought Dr. Briggs, the medical man who was attending his wife. The physician had been Margery's doctor of old and knew her well. He allowed himself great latitude of language at the time of the separation and he entertained violent dislike of Jacob. Bullstone waited on him and, without concealing his aversion, the thin, grey-whiskered practitioner snapped his evil tidings.
"There is no reason, I imagine, why you should be kept in ignorance. Your wife, so to call her, is exceedingly ill, and the natural weakness, which I was able to combat pretty effectually of old, has now gone much further."
"She's taking iron I hope?" inquired Jacob, and the other regarded him with aversion.
"Need you ask? The iron has entered into her soul—not the iron I gave, however. You'll say I'm not professional and so forth. Perhaps you don't want to know the reasons for this collapse—only the extent of it. Perhaps you do know the reasons? At any rate I can repeat to you, as I have a dozen times to her parents, that the old tendency to anæmia, owing to certain obscure defects of the nourishing system and so forth, have, under her fearful mental trials, become chronic and are now developing the gravest symptoms. A few weeks ago she suffered from a sharp chill during the recent harsh weather. It threatened immediate danger; but I got her through that. You cannot, however, minister to a mind diseased."
"Perhaps the one that gave the poison might best find the antidote," said Bullstone humbly, and the doctor looked at him with some bitterness.