“Go instantly and prepare a room for my wife. I have but just saved her from the burning theatre!” The wonder-struck maids hurried to obey. “Stop! Don’t disturb your mistress, on your lives,” he said, and with this warning, dismissed them. To one of the men present, he exclaimed, “Run instantly to Doctor Cummings, and ask him to hurry hither.”
The man disappeared to obey. And during the issuing of these orders, Frank Fairfax was sitting on the sofa, sustaining the fainting form of his wife with one arm, while with the other hand he unlaced the velvet boddice. Presently one of the maids returned and announced that the room was ready. And Frank raised and carried his precious burden up stairs, into a pleasant front chamber, and laid her on a bed. Then, with the assistance of one of the women, he got off the stage dress, and supplied its place with one of his mother’s white wrappers, brought for the purpose by one of the maids.
He had scarcely done this, when the chamber door opened, and old Mrs. Fairfax entered, roused up by the noise in and outside the house. She came in, wrapped in a flannel dressing-gown, and saying, anxiously—
“My dear Frank! they tell me that the Richmond Theatre is on fire. I am so grateful that you are not there. Ah what is this? Who is that?” she asked, perceiving the form of Zuleime upon the bed, and advancing towards it. “Some sufferer you have saved from the fire, my dear Frank? God bless your brave, kind heart, my dear boy. But you should not have brought her in here—or you should not be here yourself. Retire, and leave the lady to the care of myself and my women,” concluded the lady, gravely.
“My dearest mother, yes! She is a sufferer I have saved from the fire! a most beloved sufferer! my wife! my wife! Dearest mother, I cannot leave her! I have a right to stay here.”
Here followed a wild, hasty disclosure of his imprudent marriage, kept secret up to that moment. And then amid the grief and surprise of Mrs. Fairfax, he also learned the fact of Mr. Clifton’s death, and of Zuleime’s disappearance and suspected suicide. In bitter self-reproach, Frank had made his confession—in deepest sorrow, he heard his mother’s revelations.
“How much she must have suffered! Good Heaven! how much she must have suffered!” he exclaimed. Then almost madly he cried, “Mother! look at her! Look at her! Oh, tell me, do you think she can live?”
Mrs. Fairfax had been all this time chafing her temples with cologne, while the two maids rubbed her hands and feet. But up to this instant she had given no signs of recovery, or of consciousness. And the old lady shook her head mournfully, and plunged Frank into deeper despair. They persevered in their efforts for half an hour longer, and then she sighed and opened her eyes. Her husband was bending over her. She met his eyes, and smiled faintly in recognition, without astonishment, and without joy—indeed she was too feeble for either—and murmuring, “Dearest Frank,” she sank away again, fainting, they supposed, until her low breathing revealed that she slept the sleep of utter prostration. And how changed was now that countenance. The look of weariness, care and sorrow had vanished, and the sweet, wan face wore the easy, confiding air of infancy; and even in sleep, she must have felt the shelter of protecting love around her, for often with closed eyes she smiled, as in delighted visions! All night they watched beside her bed while she slept. In the morning the doctor arrived. He had been absent all night, by the couch of one who had been severely burned at the theatre, and that accounted for his failure to come before morning; now, however, he stood beside the patient with grave and thoughtful brow.
“Doctor, for Heaven’s sake give me some hope of her. Tell me something about her, at least! Is she ill?”
“She is very ill,” replied the physician.